The Feelings of Inferiority That Preceded the First Drink – Jack B.

It's my pleasure at this time to introduce our main speaker, Jack B. from San Diego. Hi everybody, my name is Jack Breen and I'm an alcoholic. I want to welcome all the people that got tokens and cakes tonight because that's really a nice thing to watch. No matter how long you're in the program, it's awesome. There's a type of power that will take somebody that comes in with all the wrong attitudes and doesn't want to be here and keeps them sober for 30 days and up to that first year, you know. And there's a different kind of power in these rooms that takes a man who's been sober or a man or woman who's had a hard time or a woman who has been sober 15 or 20 years and has got an entirely different lifestyle to contend with and keeps him maintaining their sobriety, you now. So there's lot of power in rooms like this, you kno. And if you're just brand new, then listen up because all I intend to prove here tonight is show you how much that alcohol can ravage your human mind and body and what can happen when you come to a place like Alcoholics Anonymous and finally become willing to make a change. And I want to be able to portray that there's been an awesome change in my life. And I think that will be obvious from the result of this talk tonight. I think, like any alcoholic, my difficulties started long before I picked up a drink. I had an enormous inferiority complex. When I was about 11 years old, we moved to a farm and I grew up in the country and I thought that was a downgrade. when you went to school, there was the farm kids and then there was the real people. So I was in that group. And I was covered with acne. I weighed... I was as tall as I am now. Over six foot tall, I weighed 145 pounds. I was really ashamed of myself. I mean, there wasn't nothing right about me. I just didn't fit anywhere. And I didn't sit in this family. And I want to say that my mother and father are as normal as you can get. They're hard working. They love their children and they did everything they could for him. And I felt unwanted, unloved, and apart from. And I remember only being about 12 years old and hanging with my head out the window crying because I knew that this world was so screwed up and I just didn't feel any reason to go on. And I didn't have any friends. I sought escape compulsively from a very young age. As soon as I was old enough to read, I got into library books and I read books going from class to class where other kids talked to each other and made appointments to get together after work or school, all I did was read. And it isolated me and kept me apart from. And I didn't know anything about how to deal with life on any term until I ran away from home to join the military after high school. Some guys asked me if I wanted to go out to have a few beers and I thought that sounded like a good idea. I was away from Home now, you know, and if I did get drunk, wasn't anybody going to give me hell when I got home? And we went out to town in Biloxi, Mississippi and I found out something for the very first time in my entire life that I could do good. I had two hollow legs. Man, they looked up to me. I mean, I put them down and I put him down and some of the others passed out and we carried them to the car and we come back in and I drank some more and they set some shots of Old Granddad in front of me and I tried that too and that stayed down and I got drunk but I didn't get out of control. I got real, real drunk and earned a reputation for myself and from that time on it was easy to do all the things that I couldn't do before. That was the great equalizer. I thought I had found the most magical extra in the entire world. I could drive better, talk to girls, do anything I wanted to do now and I could do it better than anybody else. And gone was that restless stirring in the stomach and the gut and feeling different. But I had to drink to feel that way. And so I did on a daily basis for 13 years. And the first four years in the military, nothing really unusual happened. I had blackouts from the first year I drank. They lasted all night long. I didn't know what they were. I thought they were amusing instances. You know, I thought it was kind of ridiculous when you spent six or eight hours and you couldn't remember any part of it or who you were with or what you did. And other people made fun of me, but we just laughed it off. It was no serious big thing. When I got out of the service, I met with a friend of mine from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and we went over to Chicago. And we were going to get us some good jobs, you know, and have some fun in a big city. Within about a year, my lifestyle, I was still a loner. You know, I'm living with these guys in this beautiful house. And they all had a normal social life and all Jack did was get off work and go drink, you know. And I became more and more apart from these people until they asked me to leave. And so I went and I got an apartment. And then I drank some more and I lost the apartment and I Got a sleeping room, you know. And I drank Some more, you Know. I remember I was in my early 20s and there was another guy named Jack who was 40 years old that worked at this place I worked. And he was an alcoholic. and we started to work at 8 o'clock and the bars opened at 7 so at 7 we'd take off and we'd sit in a bar and we drank little 7 ounce bottles of beer and a shot of Jim Beam along with 4 or 5 bottles of bear and that was breakfast and then we'd go to work and at lunch time we went out and we drunk a 64 ounce pitcher of beer for dinner and we went back to work and when we got off work we went to the local tavern and we drink beer until about 6 or 7 and then he got dressed up in this fancy outfit and he was a bartender at this cocktail lounge and then we went over to the cocktail lounge and we got serious, you know. And we had beds there, you know, just in case. And a lot of times we went to work right from there. And I thought this was all quite normal, you know. I thought this was all real quite normal. He even had a drunken parakeet. We'd sit in his house and I'd have a shot of Jim Beam and that parakeete would come down and take some till his head back up with about three of them, you know, and he'd be flying into the walls and we thought that was hilarious. The local tavern we stopped in had a beagle hound. His name was Jack, too. We used to feed him glasses of beer until he'd go over under the bowling machine and burp and go to sleep. Poor dog, when we quit drinking, I don't know what he did. But I was supposed to be an assistant supervisor in an electronics plant, and my address had deteriorated to a point where I had to lie about what part of town I lived in. What I did was live in a transit neighborhood, and it was a pretty run-down neighborhood. And I think at the time I was paying something like $16 a week for a sleeping room, and it got to a point where they put a lock in the door because I couldn't ever pay my rent. And there was an abandoned car in an alley out back, and I used to sleep out there at times. And I'd wash my clothes out in some restroom, gas station restroom, and sit on their john, lean against the wall all night to sleep, and then walk ten miles to work in Chicago in the wintertime. I'd worked in a supermarket in high school and I knew that they threw parts of produce out that, you know, wasn't all bad but if it just had a little blemish on it they couldn't sell it. And it got to the point where I was dining at the back of the supermarket at three o'clock in the morning because that's the only food I could afford to buy. I wasn't going to spend any of my money on anything except booze. Landlords didn't understand that. Bill collectors didn't understanding that. Work didn't understand that they had an honor system at work they had soft drinks in the refrigerator and you just went in threw your coins into their little box and helped yourself to soft drink and the boss come to me one day and he was telling me about they were having a serious problem with somebody who was going through the change box and would I keep my eyes open for them alright you know I mean in them days a seven ounce glass of beer cost ten cents so you could go pretty far on a couple dollars per and I always made sure I had I always had at least a couple bartenders that I had credit with. Another way I continued to drink was that they had some machines in these bars that were absolutely fantastic for making money on. They were bowling machines. They had a big round ball that you rolled down and picked up the pins, and no matter how much I drank, I could do 300 games like that. I could walk in broke and borrow a couple quarters from the bartender, and I'd be rolling. We bowled for, you know, there would be four of us, and the lowest person had to buy a round of drinks and put the money in the machines again. So if I had a couple quarters to get started, I not only drank, but sometimes we played for money. I'd go in broke and get drunk and walk away with $40 in my pocket. I thought that was pretty neat. These people were bound and determined that the more I drank, the worse I'd play, and it didn't work that way. So that's part of how I supported myself because I had an expensive habit. I had two hollow legs. And things got so bad that I was hanging around on a street in Chicago called Wilson Avenue. And it was, nobody worked on that street. Well, not the kind of work we're familiar with. It was a mixed bag of people, you know. There was Indians there. There was black people. There was southern hillbillies. And it wasn't just a little rough. Most of the people stole for a living or hustled or were prostitutes or one way or another they made a buck illegally. And I definitely didn't tell anybody I had a job that I managed to get to most of the time. And it was a time when I realized that the next step to this street, Wilson Avenue, was downtown Madison Avenue on Skid Row. And I knew that. And I kept hawking everything I owned to support my drinking. And I was getting sick. And I wanted to change. I wanted really to change it. I didn't want to be that way. You know, I thought there had to be more to life than just staying drunk all the time and going to work just long enough to get enough money to drink some more. And I thought, there's got to be more to Jack Breen than this. But believe me, I was trying as very hard as I could to be the most that I could be at that time, and that was it. Sleeping in an abandoned car and eating at the back of a grocery store. And that's the most I could do at that point. That's what I could eat at that moment. I was instilled with an honesty system from my parents that lasted all through my drinking. I remember not eating for two or three days, and I went in a little store, and it was in the wintertime, and I had a big jacket on. A can of soup cost ten cents, and I knew that I would take the can of soap and put it in my coat and go back and warm it up, and it would really help. And I couldn't do that. You know, I thought, what if somebody found out? What if my parents heard that I got arrested for stealing? And I couldn't live with that, so I went hungry. I remember going to church and there was a man named Dr. Preston Bradley. And I went into church and I listened to his sermons and there wasn't something about this man. I mean, there was an aurora about him. I mean he was very dynamite. And yet I looked around at the other people in that church and they weren't like me. They had nice clothes and they'd come there with their families and they talked about going out to dinner afterwards, you know. And I wasn't a part of there either. But that man said something that saved my ass and saved my life a few times. And that was, he said, something simple as when you feel like you're at the end of your rope, he says tie a knot and hang on and something will happen to change it. And when I was ready to cash in a couple of times, I thought about that and I tied a knot mentally in what was going on in my life. And I hung on and sure enough, I was able to straighten out just a little bit more. And finally when I knew I was losing it and I knewI didn't want to go to work anymore and I knew I was headed for Madison Avenue. I was standing in a phone booth, you know, I was about 24 years old and I'm standing in the phone booth on Wilson Avenue and we're going to call Alcoholics Anonymous and I put the dime in and I just couldn't dial, you now. I looked at that phone and I said, God damn, you ain't that bad. All you got to do is pull yourself up by your bootstraps, get your ass in gear and straighten your goddamn life out and quit playing and running into AlcoholicsAnonymous games. I hung up the phone and I quit my job and I went back to Pennsylvania because I knew if I lived in the same town as my parents that I couldn't possibly live the lifestyle I had been existing as at that time. And I went back there and I stayed there four years. In the first few years, I got a job and I bought some riding horses and built a stable and the kids in the neighborhood all used to come over and ride and everybody thought Jack was a pretty nice guy and then I kind of thought I owed it to myself to do a little more drinking and the drinking got really bad. I smashed up a couple cars with my parents and I quit going to work and I kept paying room and board and I was just a general nuisance and they really didn't know what to do with me. And just before I got thrown out of the house, I found this great new job 200 miles away in New York. I went up to Rochester, New York and interviewed for the job and passed all the tests until I got to my physical. And by this time I was so bad that, I mean, I was really in pitiful shape. And they took my physical, and they said, Jesus Christ, man, you're almost dead. They said, You want a job? You passed all the written tests and everything like that. We're willing to hire you, but you better take a couple months and go to the hospital and get yourself straightened out. So I went back to Pennsylvania, and I quit drinking for a whole month. I was really proud of myself. I mean, I had to get a job, don't you know, to support my habit. And it was about two months later that I went back and I just squeaked by the physical examination and I got a pretty good job, made decent money. But this was the beginning of the end. This was only two years before I quit drinking. The only people I associated immediately fell in with practicing alcoholics. I didn't know it at that time, but you know, that's exactly what they were. The only couple friends I had drank just like me. We couldn't wait to get off work. We went and drank lunch. We went out and drank all night long until it was time to go back to work again if we could make it. There was a point about six months before I quit drinking, I was supposed to go to work in the afternoon at 3.30, and I stopped in a bar about noon. And I mean, I was really sick. I didn't know you could hurt that bad. And I didn'T have money to spend on booze, that's for sure. You know, they were trying to repossess my car. I had to park at a different place every night. I could only go in my apartment at 3 o'clock in the morning when the landlord was asleep because I hadn't paid rent for a couple of months. And there was no reason I should have been taking a drink. And I knew that I was going to order a beer and I knewthat I was gong to drink it and that scared the hell out of me because I had always said that I could stop any time. And that day I knew I couldn't stop no matter how bad I wanted to stop, that Iwas going to drink that beer no matter what it did to me and whatever it didto my life and whatever the consequences were, Iwas gongtodrink that beer. And I ordered a beer and I drank it. And now I was running scared because I just was totally out of control. My life was unmanageable. I knew it. And I tried everything I could to straighten my life out. I didn't think about not drinking the rest of my life. That was a little too far-fetched. But I really humbled myself. You know, I went in and I told them I worked and I was having a great amount of trouble dealing with life and I really didn't know what to do. I wanted to be a better employee. They sent me to see a shrink. And I said, wait a minute. So I said, well, you know, why not? This is the ultimate, you know, I mean, I really humiliate myself. I'll go see this goddamn doctor. And so they set me up an appointment and I went and I talked to a psychiatrist. I think I went there about four or five times. Every time I'd go talk to him for an hour, I had to pay for this. About 50 bucks at that time. And then I'd get up and then I go across the street to the bar and I get a bottle of Budweiser and a shot of Old Granddad and contemplate what we had talked about. And after about the fifth session, I decided that I didn't tell, or that some of us didn't tell me anything I didn'T already tell him first. fifty dollars for this so there it is you see i had tried the ultimate i went to a shrink to straighten out my life and nobody really understood and there was no way anybody could help me and that this was the best it ever was going to be and so i might as well drink myself to death and it was only a short time later that i was at work in the uh second shift and we went out at lunchtime and i had some beer and when i got time to go back to work that time i just didn't want to go back it was wednesday night and uh i just kept and drinking and I drank Thursday and Thursday night and Friday and Friday night and somewhere Friday about 7 o'clock at night I ordered a mixed drink in a bar that I was familiar with in my town when I woke up it was Saturday at 3 o' clock in the afternoon I had been on a blackout I come through in the back of my car and I was so far away from the town that I lived in that I had to get a road map to find out how to get back and I didn't know where I had bent and I wasn't sure and I checked my car over real closely and somehow I was really scared that I would run over a child that I could have run over a child and killed it and not known it. And it really scared me. And Saturday I drank, but I couldn't drink very much. For some reason my tolerance had dropped off and I thought that was a sign I was losing my masculinity and that really hurt. And I isolated myself and I didn't talk to anybody. But I couldn'T drink like I used to drink. My tolerance had droped off. In here I learned that that's the chronic stages of alcoholism where your ability to hold alcohol drops off. And finally Sunday I was only able to get down four or five beers. And come Monday I actually got out of bed and thought that I was going to go to work. In the meantime, I stopped about noon on a real hot August day and I ordered a glass of beer at Elmer's Inn prior to going to work and I took a sip of beer and I swallowed it three or four times and I got off the stool and I went in the men's room and I threw it up. And I come back out and I put a little tomato juice in it and I take another swallow and I swallow it three of four times and I go into the men' room and throw it up and about the third swallow of beer I found out that there wasn't going to be any drinking that day my body totally rejected alcohol I reached this capacity for holding any kind of alcoholic beverage in any way shape or form and I had nothing left to do except crawl out to my car and drive to this little sleeping room in a run down hotel as I lay down that afternoon on the bed I was real sick I was really confused I was very scared I didn't know what was going on and I didn' t care anymore I didn''t care what my parents thought of me I didn't care if I went to work again I didn' t care if i died and some lights started coming through the window and going across the ceiling I thought it was just headlights from a car then the shadows took on colors vivid colors psychedelic colors and I thought some son of a bitch put LSD in my beer you know because I don' t take notes so I laid there a little bit longer up to this point I had been a social drinker and laying there in that bed that day I thought I was. Laying there in that bed that afternoon, I had to say, Breen, you're an alcoholic. Social drinkers don't have DTs, you know? And now what the fuck are you going to do? And the only thing I knew about AA was people who went there didn't drink. And that was pretty goddamn strange to me. I didn't know anybody that didn't drinking for a good many years. It was a couple of days before I was strong enough to get out of bed and I went to a phone and I called Alcoholics Anonymous and I asked if there was a meeting and she told me where it was And I said, that's three miles from here and I haven't got a car. And she said, well, if you want to get there, you'll be there. And she hung up. I heard a lot of other stories, you know, that didn't happen that way to me. But I walked that three miles, God damn it. I walked a lot more for a beer, so I walked three miles to a meeting. And when I got to the meeting, I got in the parking lot and I looked around and I said holy shit, there was Mercedes Benz and Cadillacs. Well, this don't work, you now. They'll never let me in here. Ain't no way if they know anything about me they're going to let me into that door, you know? And I must have stood out there about a half an hour and then I realized, you now, there was tears running down my cheeks and I was sicker than I had ever been in my life and I knew that I was either going to go down those steps and see what was going on in that room or I was going to die. So I went down the steps alone and I walked into my first meeting with Alcoholics Anonymous. They were very understanding people. They brought me a cup of coffee about this high and only put this much coffee in it. They took me over to their chair and they sat me down and they put an old timer on the other side of me. And they introduced their stuff and they didn't seem too threatening, you know, and they did not ask a lot of questions and that was good. And I got to tell you that the first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, I can't tell you one single word that was said. I was too sick, way too far gone to understand what was being said at a meeting with AlcoholicsAnonymous. All I saw was a bunch of average looking people that didn't seem to be harming me in any way. But the only thing that I got out of that meeting was something deep down inside my gut. And that was hope that somehow I could come from where I was to where some of those people talked about them being, you know? They talked like they had felt like me. They talked as if they were me. They talked a lot like they did some of the things I did. And yet they weren't like that today. They were dressed nice. They had smiles on their faces. You know, and I liked that. And I wanted to be like that. After the meeting somebody said, you want to go to a meeting tomorrow night and I said why this meeting won't be here next Wednesday and they said well yeah but and I thought well you know I got my whole god damn life to straighten out I'll be here the next Wednesday and I was I might have been sick but I was still arrogant and I would say I was so stubborn that I still had to do it my way and so I come to AA meetings and I'd listen to what I wanted to listen to I wouldn't listen to him because he'd been in mental institutions and that wouldn't have been to jail and that's the woman I can't listen for And, you know, there was very few people that I could listen to, you know. And this was going to take a long time. And I got to say, I was able to do it my way for a whole year and a half. And at the end of a year and an half one day, I'm driving down the road in my car. I said, Breen, where the hell are you going? So I turned the car around. And I'm going the other way, and I didn't know where I was coming from. And I knew something was drastically wrong, you know. I was either going to go insane, really flip out completely. I was going to get drunk. Well, I had to go to you and tell you that I had a problem I didn't know how to deal with. And about that time, somebody came up to me and they said, Hey Jack, there's a young people's conference. So all young people, about 100 of us are getting together at this retreat for a weekend. It's great, nothing else is going right. Half of the young people are female young people so I'm going, sign me up, you know. And that's the reason I went. But that was the beginning of a new way of life for me because what I found there that weekend was people who got down to the itty-gritty of things. On Friday night, we had to come to a podium like this and I had never done that before. And what you did was to get appointed, you come up here and you told who you were, how long you'd been sober and what was going on in your life at that time. And what happened for me was I got up there and all I was was really, really horrified. And I was standing there twisting my thumbs and my legs were rubber. And I did something at that point that was ten times harder than the DTs. And that was that I had to tell you people that I didn't have the answers to how to make my life work. That I wanted to be a better person in the worst kind of way and everything was turning out shit and down. And they jumped up and put their arms around me and they said that they understood. And they said it was going to be alright. And I get emotional when I talk about that weekend because when I think about it, when I'm going to talk about it on there. People sat down, a couple named Denny and Joanne and they talked to me about things that I'd never heard anybody talk about before and they should have been ashamed to say them they should've been devastated and yet they spoke about these things very lightly and they said that it was only things that they had to do when they put alcohol and drugs in their system and that today they were free of that and that they could live a life they didn't believe possible for them and only because the people in Alcoholics Anonymous were willing to help them walk away they had never walked before and that they didnít know existed and that they were willing to help me, now that I had finally asked for help. Before that weekend was over, I realized that there was a God, that there was a god that loved people very much, who was, his influence that weekend was so profound. I remember a man who had been sober five years and was a proclaimed atheist. And I guess just the spirituality, the spirit of God was so heavy there that about mid-Saturday afternoon he fell down on his knees. And he started to cry, and he begged God to forgive him, that he realized that there was a God, and He wasn't it, and that the reason he couldn't make things work right was because he hadn't surrendered. I remember that, and it was impressive. Now, I want to tell you, I had gone to church as a child, and I realized there were some good things about God, but He had done me so many dirty tricks that I had walked away from Him at age 21. And now once again, I was feeling that this God had something good and something powerful. And I felt it, and I wanted it, but I was afraid. But somewhere, people, somewhere deep down in me, I found some guts. And I went and I talked to these people that had God written all over them. And I wanted to know what they did, how they felt, where they got what they got. And I listened with rapt attention when they told me. And whatever they said to do, I went and I did. And it was the beginning of my growth as a man and as a human being and a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I committed myself to work in the 12 steps to the very best of my ability. And what I got myself involved with was a bunch of young people about 15 or 20 of us and we got together on a regular basis a couple times a week. And we really got on each other's cases and we worked these steps together and we kicked ass on one another and we forced one another to talk about exactly what was going on. There was no bullshitting. And we got to know each other so well that you could walk in with a smile on your face and five minutes later everybody was in your shit because they knew better, you know. And they drew it out of you. And there was no hiding in this group. I ain't kidding you. I mean, we would go to the beach all day and we'd play ball and we would play in the ocean and we do all these things, but we all knew. It always was the same. We went to somebody's house. We turned out the lights. We sat on cushions. We sat down on the floor. We lit a couple of candles and we made a podium. If it was an orange crate on a kitchen chair, that was a podium and you got up and you went and you stood in front of your peers and you told what the hell was going on with your life and what was going along with working the steps for you that day. If we thought you were telling the truth, fine. If you needed help, we gave you help. If you need your ass kicked, you got your ass kicked. And nobody lied too often in those meetings and in-depth fellowship and in that people that grew. And those people are all sober today. All those people I started with, and this was back in 1970, 71. It was back in New York. Back there they told you, you know, you've got two ears and one mouth you put the cotton in your mouth and listen. The only thing that you can tell the first year is how to be a failure and we already know that, you know. So you haven't got anything to say. So I did a lot of listening and I did a lot reading. And even though for a while I was scared, I thought I wasn't an alcoholic because I heard mental institutions, I heard drunken driving, being arrested for drunken driving. I heard wife beating. I've heard a lot things that didn't have anything to do with me. I was the guy they always passed the keys to. Let Breen drive, man. He can handle it. No sweat, you know? And I always was the last guy after everybody else passed out. And, you know, I couldn't identify for the longest time. But in that literature, because I was hiding out from all of you, I saw certain things, certain feelings, certain fears, certain things run amok in my life that I identified with. And I said, well, you know, if all these things are true, I guess it don't really matter if I went to jail, And it really doesn't. If you drink, even if it's only once a year, and you can't predict what's going to happen, and when it happens you don't like it, you belong here. People said, did you ever ask yourself if you were an alcoholic or not? I said, well yeah, I used to ask myself about nothing. They said social drinkers never ask. Wait a minute. Give me a break. I was sober about two years and somebody said they would be smart. I was going to a young people's group and they said, we need a GSR. What the hell is a GSAR? General Service Representative. That means you get in your car once a month and you drive anywhere within 100 miles and you attend a meeting, a statewide meeting and they're talking about AA worldwide. And you're going to be the group representative and you get to go to these meetings and you can bring back the information to all of us so we know what's going on worldwide. You know, I was really impressed. It got to my ego. I thought, Jesus, these people trust me to drive 100 miles? Even gave me $5 for gas, you know. And I said, I don't have to go to that meeting. But, you now, they gave me five dollars. I'm going to go. So, I started going to GSR meetings. Well, the meeting was at two o'clock. And usually because I'd never been to the town before and I didn't know where the church was, I made sure I got there early enough to have lunch and then get over to the church early. Well, my General Assembly meeting was two o´clock and at one o´cock there was another kind of meeting everybody kept going to. It was called H&I. Now, what the hell is H&N? So, one day I didn´t have anything else to do and I walked in and I stood in on a meeting. And it was hospitals and institutions. And I said, God, I've never been to them. I don't want to hear this shit, you know? So I listened to it, and a couple people in there knew me. And they said, well, we're glad to see you, Jack. Why don't you come to this meeting in Rochester? And next thing I knew, I was all involved in service work, you know? And let me tell you, I had a personality conflict with people in the young people's group in my hometown. And it would get to a point where I would quit going to the meetings there. And the only meeting that I looked forward to going to, the only thing that saved my sobriety and saved my ass was the fact that once a month I went to a GSR meeting. And there I met a special kind of people, people that cared about other people, people that were grateful for their sobrietry and the way they had been able to change their life and they were working to help other people reach the same thing. And I liked that about those people and I made some good friends there. And I would go to these meetings and I kept going back and it was probably three years of going to that GSR meeting before I really got my head straightened around at these young people's conferences and with that group I told you about where I could apologize to the people that I was holding resentment against in the young people group in my hometown and where I can actually become a part of the group there. So what I'm saying is if it wasn't for service work I wouldn't be here today and I did a lot a lot a different kind of service work. I was single I had no responsibilities I made good money what happened was I moved into a rooming house and there was a guy there that was the president of National Council of Alcoholism and there Was another man who lived there whose name was Einar Mattson and he was a professional and he Was the son of alcoholic parents and it didn't take very long for us to set up a trio and we went around to colleges and we Went around to high schools and we Went around to any place that they would invite us and Bob spoke as a professional in the field of alcoholism the field of alcohol alcoholism has a disease and I spoke as the alcoholic, the recovering alcoholic. And I imagine spoke as what it was like to be the son or daughter of practicing alcoholics. And that was another couple years that I did that. And I really got a lot out of that. And I remember going to schools and we used to ask questions, let the kids ask questions afterwards. And the way I worked it was that I would tell them they had to write the question on a piece of paper and they didn't put their name on it and then they all threw it in a hat. That way nobody knew when I answered the question Nobody in the room knew who I was talking to or about. And I was really a guest. I did not know. I thought alcoholism was my disease. And what I learned from them kids was that they were well in tune and well aware of alcoholism, the disease, whether it was in their mother, their father, their brother, sister, or their own stuff at eight or nine years old. It was a real awakening into the world of alcohol. Alcoholism in this society. Somewhere along the line, somebody got me interested and gone to Attica State Prison. And that was really a trip. I mean, that was a trip I mean we went in there and you went through a sliding door and it was a guy standing in a cage with a machine gun and you ran into a little entryway and the gate closed behind you and then this one opened and they had the other guys locked up in cages and they'd hang there yelling things at you as you walked by. You were very popular in there. And you had to go through seven different doors into seven different levels of that prison and then up to the third floor. And they locked us in a room with a couple hundred cons. They shut a steel door about that thick and turned it with a key that long. And you were in there for two and a half hours. And I looked around, well, this shit works, you know. But I met some people in there that made me very, very grateful for the freedom that I had, you now. There was a man in there I met that, I think he was about 21 years old, right? he's going to spend the rest of his life in Attica State Prison. And what happened, he was just a little social drinker having a beer one night. He remembered ordering a beer about 10 o'clock at night and the next day he woke up and he was all beat to hell and he wasn't in prison and the cops weren't treating him very good and nobody would talk to him and finally they got, you know, okay, well I don't remember, why am I in here? And what happens was that half of the bar had walked out in the alley when they heard screaming and so he took a butcher knife and cut a 17-year-old girl's head off. And there he is. In Attica he learned he was an alcoholic In Attica, he learned that he was out of control because he drank alcohol. He did not want to hurt anybody. He did never want to ever hurt anybody before he drank. He did no longer want to harm anybody now. But when alcohol was in him, he lost control. And for him, it put him in Attica for the rest of his life. You know, and I would have an AA meeting there and I'd have feelings similar to an AA meet on the outside. And yet I could walk out of those cold gray walls with them doors closed behind me for the last time I was so goddamn grateful. So I had the freedom to go home. I had a freedom to visit the mountains. I had the freedom to go to a friend's house, to eat in a restaurant, to do all the things that those people couldn't do. And a lot of them were in there because they were alcoholics. Because somewhere along the line they went over that line and they did something and society didn't like it and that's where they are. Some of them had to do it over and over and again and go to the county jails and then make the big time. And so I did that. I was moderator at Attica State Prison for another five years. And I cleared the people to get in there and I took them in and I put on EAA meetings for the people. And it was very beneficial cleansing and a perspective aligner for Jack Breen. It allowed me to learn exactly who I was and what could happen to me and to see the progression of alcoholism in a human mind and body. There were many, many people in my sobriety that served to teach me the lessons. A lot of failures, a lot of people that didn't make it went ahead of me to prove to me that if I didn't get serious about this program, that someday I wasn't going to be here, that I would go back to drinking and drinking would be suicide. I would be dead. I remember a man named Curly. Again, I was sober a couple of years and I was kind of bored and I wasn't playing with the idea. I don't even smoke regular cigarettes and I'm thinking about smoking marijuana because just staying sober wasn't all that great. And this guy talked about using drugs and alcohol. And as he talked, his drinking and his lifestyle was just exactly like mine right up to the point he had DTs. after he had the DTs he continued to drink that's the only part different you know all that time I'm going rah, rah, raw you know he's a big tiny speaker up here you know and he drank just like me did all these things what happened was about six months after the DTS and he had continued drinking he was married and his wife had asked him to leave because she couldn't put up with his drinking and she was a waitress and she wasn't in this restaurant in Canada and so he drank for two weeks he kept going in there and begging her to take him back and she said no I can't do that So finally he walked in there one day after a two-week bender and he picked up a butcher knife in front of all the customers and he stabbed her to death. And again, the man is in prison in Toronto and they threw the key away. An alcoholic synonymous went into that prison and eventually he heard about it and he made fun of it because he could drink like a man. Eventually, some way, somehow, he wound up at that AA meeting and eventually after many years Canadian authorities were willing to recognize the fact that Alcoholics Anonymous had a part to change it. He was real radical in the prison. You know, he was real good at beating people up and getting his way and he had a complete turnaround and they noticed that and they knew it was only after he had gone to AA meetings and what they did was they put him on an airplane and they took him to Buffalo, New York and they sent him over to the States and they said if you ever come back across the line we'll shoot you. And he took up residence in Ohio and to the best of my knowledge man is still sober today. And this was back again in the early 70s. I was in a halfway house early in my sobriety. After six or seven months of sobriery, I went to a halfway house and there was a man named Jimmy there and he was a taxi driver. And Jimmy had been in and out of the halfway house, you know, and he walked around with 300 Valium in his pocket jingling all the time, you known. He was just a happy-go-lucky guy and nothing bothered Jimmy. And Jimmys stays sober two months and Jimmy stays sober six months and then go drinking again. And I tried lots and lots of times to talk to Jimmy, and they called me radical, you know. I was real gung-ho for AA while I stayed there. And let me tell you, I stayed at a halfway house a year and a half, and there's only two of us in the whole year and a halve that are still sober today, you now. I wish the radical one, and all the ones that knew it all are drunk or dead. That's what happened to Jimmy. One day, there's a state hospital for alcoholism in Rochester, New York, where I got sober. They have meetings there on Wednesday night. And I went over there and I saw Jimmy coming across the grounds and I called out to Jimmy. Jimmy was too far gone by this time. Jimmy didn't know who I was. You know, he just walked along. And a couple weeks later, Jimmy was dead. You know? But he didn't need AA. There was another young man, 21, 22 years old. And he comes to the meetings. And He was real gung-ho. He had a beautiful wife and he had just had a little baby boy. And he'd been in and out of the program for three or four years at that young age, and he finally decided that this is it. I am going to commit myself to this program. One night, I heard him talk at a meeting and a hair went up on the back of my neck and I realized the man was really, really sick. About two weeks later, I went to a Wednesday night meeting at the state hospital and there he sat. He didn't know his own name. He was just rocking back and forth like this. They They finally carried him away upstairs. Now, upstairs they had a place for the wet brains. And people thought there was absolutely nothing more wrong with those people than that they said they were social drinkers until they didn't even know their own name. Because when they didn' t know enough to eat, they went to the bathroom whenever they had to. They had absolutely no control over their life. They were wet brains." And I used to go up on that floor and I'd open the door and I' d stand there. And the nurse would say, ''They're just alcoholics, you know.'' That's the only thing wrong with them? That's all. They just wouldn't quit drinking. And I'd go downstairs to the meeting on Wednesday night and I'd be so goddamn grateful that somehow I knew enough not to drink that no matter what was going on, I could make it better if I stayed here and I worked with these people and I did what they told me. About six years sober. You know, famous last words of an alcoholic. It sounds like a good idea at the time. I don't know, everything was going well when I decided to get married. And about two and a half years later I had a home and I had two new cars and I did a good job with Eastman Kodak and we had money in the bank. About a month later I didn't have any of those things. And I remember walking across the bridge, much like the Coronado Bridge, it was a couple hundred feet over, about two foot of water and a lot of rocks and people used to shh all the time. And I had to walk over that bridge to go to work. And I walked over the bridge and I'd eight years of sobriety and I was stripped to absolutely nothing. and I knew exactly how those people felt when they took that bridge. Yet, I had a warm feeling inside of me because the God that I knew, the Alcoholics Anonymous Fellowship that I belong to, allowed me to know that if I put one foot ahead of the other and I tried to do God's will for me today, that everything would be all right and there absolutely was no reason in God's world for me to jump over that bridge, you know? That anything I had, I've had up until now. Nothing's forever. Nothing's guaranteed. You just put one foot ahead of the other. I had eight years of sobriety, I had a sense of humor and I had God that loved me. That's all I needed. I said, I started from scratch very, very sick eight years ago and I reached the modium of success. And I said I'll just do it all over again, I don't care. And I wound up in California and I really liked it out here. I got connected with a good job at General Dynamics within the first year and things just went along uphill from then on. You know? I now, I got another house, you know. I own a nice home in Santee and it's been filled with a lot of art objects and things that I didn't even know I had an interest in 10, 15 years ago. It's a real nice place to go home to. It is my castle, you now. It isn't to be compared with anybody's castle in La Jolla or Ocean Beach or wherever, you kno. It s my castle. It what makes me comfortable. It's what makes me feel good. And it fills the things that make me feel their expression, a jacquering of my interest and my taste of what makes be feel comfortable and good, you know. And today I step out easy in life. Today I'm comfortable and I'm serene and I like what's going on. And that's, you now, like 99% of the time. I have a bad day about once every year and a half, you kno. I think God just wants me to let me know what it still feels like, you kow. You think this is a free ride. I never took this program for granted. I say I'm taking out insurance when I go to a meeting, when I call some new kid up and say, Hey, want to go to the meeting? And he says, Jesus, Green wants to take me to it? Yeah, I'll be ready in a minute. He's doing me more good than I'm doing him. I know where my side of my bread is buttered on. I know exactly what I have to do to keep this program ingrained into my life. I want to say something else about God because that's what I live for today and that's why I'm alive today. I know that. When I was about three years sober, I got enough spirituality from people like you that I was really curious about. You know, I knew that whenever things got really down, I could go to God and I would ask Him and like that it was answered, you know. I immediately had an answer and things were resolved and it worked out better than I could ever dream. The only people I knew were Catholics. And I was raised Protestant, but I was thirsty to know more about God. I knew a lot by coming to these meetings, but it wasn't enough. I wanted to know more. I wanted it to know for my own personal reasons. God was something at that time kind of distant. Every once in a while, a little bit of His goodness would dribble into my life. And I went to the Catholic church and I listened to what they had to offer and I took what I wanted, what made sense to me. And I Went to the Pentecostals and I went through the Holy Rollers and I Went through every kind of church and religious experience that was going and I Listened and I Paid Attention and I Used and I Built Together a Spiritual Program. And I've got to give it to the Catholics once again. They hold something called a Crestillo. It's a weekend movement where you go in, you take off your wristwatch, you don't make any phone calls. There's no sense of time whatsoever from Thursday afternoon to Sunday. And this whole weekend, this whole program is for you to get to know Jesus as your own personal Savior or to know God on a personal one-to-one basis. Okay? And I got to tell you that at the end of that weekend, not before the weekend was over, What I knew was that there was a God and He knew Jack Green as an individual, that He understood everything about me, that He loved me very much and He would do anything, absolutely anything, anytime. All I had to do was ask. And I was just overwhelmed. I knew that. I know that just like I know this with my right hand. And no one could ever tell me different ever again. I realized that if I did every day what God wanted me to do, the things would be so good I couldn't stand it It got so better I mean there was no way that I could dream or sit down and design the kind of lifestyle that I wanted that would make me comfortable and make me happy And yet if one day at a time you get out of bed and you do what you think to the best of your ability what God wants you to do I guarantee you it'll be different but it'll been so good that you'll wonder why you ever did it your way again What I'm saying is it requires a humility before this God That this God is all loving and all understanding and all willing to help, but He demands certain things. He gave you a free will. And if you say, I want to do it my way, He says, go ahead and take your licks. And when you're tired of taking your lcks, come talk to Me. He doesn't force it on you. He never will. You can die not asking God for help and He won't interfere because He gave your free will But I pursued this God and I thought, you know, if He'll come to me in that, oh, maybe every three months was where I really didn't know what to do. I really couldn't get something just screwed around the way I wanted it. And I would take it to Him and immediately it was corrected. And finally, I got the message that, you know, maybe if He's that good and He's not willing to help, what would happen if I developed on a day-to-day basis a rapport with this God that I really tried to understand with the very depth of my being what He wanted me to be doing each day? You know, if I could say to myself at any time, any day, Jack, is this what God would want you to be doing today? Sure, it sounds funny. It sounds damn strange if you're brand new. But I've got to tell you that doing what God wanted me to do has been the most comfortable thing that I ever did in my life. It has brought more friends and more love and more respect into my life than I would have ever asked for. It's given me a chance to be something I never thought I could be. You know, every area of my life has improved. I remember I was in high school, and I always wanted to go out for track or some kind of athletics. They got the sweaters with the nice sweaters they used to give to the girls when they were the heroes, and I wanted one of them, you know? So I'd go out on track, and they'd take three further high jumpers, and then I'd be four. And 100-yard dash, same thing. They'd take the three fastest people, and we'd come panting in four. And I tried out for basketball, and I tried out for all of it. And I always failed. And then when I got sober, I found out I had not the greatest heart in the world, and I went to do some exercising and some jogging. And I started pushing my body. Instead of being lazy, I pushed it to limits I didn't know I could. And what I found was that I was better than average. A lot better. You know, I remember I was 46 years old I run a two-mile race with people of all ages, and I come in second. And I realized that the only thing different from there and from high school was I didn't ever try. Now, I don't know that the three people that got on the team weren't out there every night after school practicing. That's what they should have been doing. That's What they probably were doing. But see, I didn' t think like that at that time. So in every area of my life, I've been able to improve. I've been able to grow. I remember when I was in school in the Air Force, a young kid, I was so intimidated by every other human being. I was less than anybody. And when they called me to the board to describe some electronic circuitry, up here I knew the answer. But when I got up here in front of all you, my mind just went blank and I couldn't... You know, I looked like the biggest dummy you ever saw. I'd stutter and I'd stamper and I just didn't know. And they didn't understand how I could pass the test When I was alone and nobody bothered me, I could write what I had heard. But I couldn't do it in front of all my life and work and jobs. I had always disassociated myself from bosses or lived in some other world. You just don't talk to bosses. They're the gods and you're just a flunky and you just go in and do your thing. And that's the way I felt. I didn't know any different. And I never understood when I saw one of the workers, my co-workers, kind of socializing with the supervisor. He actually went into his office and sat down and just talked to him comfortably, and I didn't understand that. That's the way it was for a long, long time. That's what kind of changes that take place. One day they come to me at work and they ask me to be a boss over the rest of the other 30 guys I worked with. Today, you better believe I'm not intimidated. I will go to any level of management, knock on his door and say, hey, I want to talk to you about something. and I'm handling my job that I didn't think I was capable of doing, and I am handling it well. I remember the first couple of months I was running my ass off and the adrenaline was pumping, and now I have settled into a comfortable niche where I can go in and just get things done and it is real comfortable. It is like I belong there. And this happened when I was 50 years old. And I suppose I could have done it a long time ago, but I did not believe that I could. Slowly, I have to understand that I am 10 times the person I thought I was. And if I only get out there and try, If I only have the courage to believe that God will help me walk where I can't walk alone, then I've got no problem. Do none of us have any problem if we want to get somewhere in life? We just can't do it our way. There is a good way. There is the right way. There is The Best Way. And yet when we come in here, we don't want to do any of these things. We absolutely ask beneath us. We're afraid we're going to lose control. And this is the best control I ever had. You know, when people look at me today and it looks like I have my life squared around pretty good, you know, it's not me. It's this power that I live with. It's the power that we live in. It's just power that i believe in. It's his power i come here to share with you tonight. Because this power is here and it's willing to help. It's willing help every single man and woman in this room. And the sorry thing is that most of you will turn it off. You know if i ask for a show of hands they call this a pyramid effect. If i ask your show of hand for everybody with less than a year or two-thirds of you are going to hold up your hand. If I ask for people with five, there will be a lot less people. If I asked for people with over ten years, it gets down to two or three. And that's at any meeting you go to because the sorry thing is that people think this is a game. They don't think it's serious and they don't have to do that and they're not going to give in and they need any God and all these things. So they come in and they stay for a while and they go. And they try to come back and they leave. And then they go and then you don't see them or you hear they're dead or they're in jail or they are in a mental institution. So this is serious business, people. Coming to a meeting like this and coming to any meeting and becoming a part of this fellowship by being active and doing what the others have done before you will keep you here and will make your life worth something to write home about. One of the problems I had when I got here was that I hated my mother. It took me years, three years to admit that. And thanks to the people in here that understood and told me what I had to do and showed me what I have to do. You know, I have a very loving relationship with a mother today. You know? And I was very glad that I had affected that relationship when I lost my father four years ago. And I'm the oldest son of six kids and I was able to go to my hometown of Pennsylvania. And I would be able to be with this mother that I hated for so many years. And I could hold her in my arms and I could comfort her as we shared a man we had both loved for so long. For so many years. It's things like this that make this program worth coming to. I'll be coming here when I'm 50 years sober, I hope. Because it's contact with people like you, encouraging people like você, getting feedback, getting perspective. It's what makes it work. I remember going to meetings when I was young in a program and I would feel very distraught and I was ready to quit it all. And I would go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, any meeting, anywhere. And I would sit there. And at the end of the meeting, I would leave and I would feel great and I knew I could handle whatever I had to handle. And I thought, what is that? You know, I went to a room and it was a collection of drunken failures sitting around this table. And they talked for an hour. And I got up and I went home and I could feel better. And there was an X Factor in that room and I had believe that there was something stronger than human power. something that brought those two first men together 50 years ago so that our asses today, tonight could be saved for something worthwhile for a plan, a life plan that God has for each of us that we can't even dream and we have to be like children it has to be blind you have to reach out you have the courage to step out and do things even though you can't see the result and where it's going to turn out it's like stepping off the curb in a fog and knowing that with God's help you can get to the other side of the street and no cars are going to hit you. And over on the other part on the side of this street is the most beautiful, magnificent event in life you ever want to be a part of. And you know it's there but you have to go. And what I go with today is the God that I know and love. The God that loves all of you. The Godthat a lot of you don't know yet. But He's willing to listen to you in any form that you would choose to address Him. It doesn't have to be fancy. It doesn' t have to formal. can be all alone where no one can see. And six years sober, I went to a conference. And I used everything about my program I knew to correct a situation in my life and my stomach was a mass of knots. And this woman knew me and she come to me and she said, Jack, you having a problem? I said, yeah. I said I don't know what it is. You know, I really don't understand it. I'm all up in knots. I said that's not a problem. I've done everything. I've said my prayers. She said, you know, I've heard you talk many times. She says, I never heard you say you get on your knees. Oh, well, you know, if he wants to listen to me, he can listen to my knees. I've got bony knees. I can't get down on the bed. And I went on with these excuses. And she says, well... She says... I want to tell you. She says I fought the same way, you now. She says but when I humbled myself, it's like... It's just an act, a simple act. But it says, okay, I'm humble before you. And she said you'll get more, you kno. He'll give you so much depending on what you do. But if you want the whole nine yards, you've got to do it His way. And I walked upstairs and I went into my room and I got down on my knees and in ten minutes the tears were running down my face and the problem I had fought for two months and struggled with I had the answer to and I felt completely serene and comfortable. And you know, to this day, I still get out of bed in the morning and I get on my knee and I ask only for the knowledge of God's will for me today so that to the best of my ability, I can do what God wants for me because I know that this is going to give me the greatest lifestyle far more than I guess I deserve. But that's the way it is. And at the end of the day, no matter how distraught, no matter what happened to me or what somebody did to me, I say thank you. I say, thank you for the power to be able to deal with my reality today and I don't have to run and I do not have to be afraid and I am not afraid of anything any human being can do to me. I am NOT afraid of any situation that may exist in my life. I know that me and God can handle anything that comes along. You know, anything. And I never had that assurance before. All of you have that same power. Every one of you. You have to look for it. You haveと be a part of. You can't hide at this meeting. You can' t hide and listen to only what you want to listen to. You can'T only do what you wanna do. You know too many people don't stay here because of that. Give yourself to this program. Walk with us. Let our love touch you. and be the best human beings you ever were. Thank you.