The High-Functioning Lie of the Controlled Drinker – John M.

Everyone, and welcome to the regular Friday night open meeting of the Lake Worth Manor Group of Alcoholics Anonymous. Tonight your chairman will be Tom D. of Jupiter. That's all right with my aggressive humility, I don't mind. My name is Tom Daly, and I'm an alcoholic and a member of the Riverbottom Group up in Jupiter. I deem this a great privilege and honor to be chairman here tonight, all you wonderful people. And I might add, too, that if John S. is there, this is my anniversary month, John. I made it again. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is an honest desire to stop drinking. There are no fees or dues for AA membership. We are self-supporting through our own contributions. AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, or organization or institution. It does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. We have a speaker here tonight, and I don't want to take any of his time. He's all the way down here from Statesboro, Georgia. He's an M.D. and a very dedicated worker of A.A., so without further ado, I'll give you Dr. John. Thank you, Tom. I was waiting on you to make about a 30-minute speech here and settle down for it. My name is John Mooney, and I'm an alcoholic, and I're real happy to be here. I see many familiar faces here. I love the people down in South Florida, and it's a wonderful experience to be back here. I was working this afternoon in my office seeing patients, and it was hard for me to believe that you could do that in the middle of the afternoon up in Georgia and then be way down here at an AA meeting that night. And I've been looking forward to it all day. We have in AA our doctors group, we call it, International Doctors in AA, which a bunch of us fellows in the medical profession and dentistry get together once a year for a meeting. And one time they were holding one of these meetings and I was there, and the chairman made the statement that the physician has a special place in AA. He said, this is a disease and there's no doubt about it that the doctor does have a special space that is unique. He says, as a matter of fact, this fellowship was founded by a stockbroker and a physician. But he said, never forget one thing, Docs. He says the stockbroper was sober and the physician was drunk. And I try to remember that because in practicing medicine and studying alcoholism, and then in my own case of this disease, I found nothing in my professional education to help me get sober. And I tried everything there was to offer, I think. I hope I have, and I hope that anybody comes up with anything new that I won't feel compelled to go back and try it. And I don't think I will. I don' t know what made me an alcoholic other than like my friend Bob in the Savannah group says that he's an alcoholic and he thinks whiskey caused it. And I believe that too. And I think this may be nearer to the truth than some people who deal with it want to think. I know no doubt about it that I had an emotional or mental disorder. I don't know what it was, but I'm sure I had one. But I don'T think this was a thing that made me an alcoholic. I think that my alcoholism was my solution to the problem rather than the cause of it. I think the thing that made me an alcoholic, whatever it was, was the fact that whenever I got in trouble or whenever I felt real good or whenever i was in a situation of any sort, good or bad, that my first tendency was to polish it off with a drink and either that if I was in trouble to try to seek solace in a drink And I think this is the thing that makes me an alcoholic, and why I did that I don't know. And I don' t know that that question has ever been answered about any single alcoholic to the satisfaction of all concerned. So I'm not here tonight to dwell in the why or the causes of alcoholism. When I get into an AA meeting, I feel that the only contribution that I can really make the knowledge, if there is anything in it, of this disease is to tell you my story like it says in the fifth chapter of what I used to be like, what happened, and what I may be trying to be now. I know one thing that was characteristic of my alcoholism was the fact that I was a liar all the way through, completely into my soul. And that's one of the hardest things in the world to get over. And even when here in AA, and I've been in not as long as many of you, I've being in a little over six years now, I still find myself lying automatically. I don't know whether you do that or not, but I'll get up in the morning and the doctor will say, Where are you going? And I'll say, I'm going to the hospital. And I stop and go back and I'll said, No, honey, I am going to post office. I just automatically say something different from what I am supposed to do and I have to watch it. And I'm reminded of a story of a little girl, young lady, that was getting a divorce. And she went to see the judge in the courtroom room, and the judge said, Suzy, on what grounds do you want this divorce? And then Suzy said, Judge, I want this divorced on the grounds of infidelity. My husband has been unfaithful to me. And he says, Suzie, in what way has your husband been unfаithful tо you? She says, Judge, l don't think he's the father of my child. This was me. l could blame anything in the world that happened to me on somebody else or something else, and I did consistently for nearly 30 years before I finally, through the grace of God, came into AA and have been sober since. I've never had a drink since I came to AA. I've ever had a pill. I don't take any medication at all. I prescribe an awful lot of medication for my patients of one sort or another. I might state that I'm a little slow in the tranquilizers and sedatives with anybody, though. And I live on food and water, And I used to make quite a little to-do about that and tell people how I hadn't had an aspirin tablet in six years. And then one night after I got through talking, this guy came up to see me, and he was drunk. And he said, Doc, I've been listening to you talk, listening to your talking. I think you're wonderful. You've done me a lot of good. I'm still drinking liquor, but I ain't taking no aspirin. But I don't say too much about that anymore. I don' t know what made me an alcoholic. I was anti-alcoholic. I didn't like people who drank, really. It disgusted me. Some of my high school friends who used to go out and get drunk and they'd get sick and they would throw up all over the car and I'd say, how in the world could somebody throw stuff like that in their stomach when it treats them that way? I did not like it. I couldn't understand it. I could not understand why people drank. I went to church. I was an active member of my church and just my family was opposed to it. I got an idea decent people didn't drink. And I went to Emory University, which is a church school. My sophomore year up there, when I was just past my 18th birthday, I was at a party one night and I decided to take a drink of whiskey. I don't know what the mental processes were that went on in my mind, but I know that somehow for a few days maybe before then, I became receptive and when I got there that night, I knew that I was going to drink. I was going to try this thing that everybody seemed to have so much fun with. It seemed to me that most of the people who were having the fun were drinking, that this is where the fun was, and I guess I wanted to participate in it. So I took a drink of corn whiskey that night, and it made me sick. I had a hard time keeping it down. I took another one and another one. It put me up in seventh heaven, I guess. I was in a wonderful frame of mind, and I had been introduced to something that I didn't know existed. And I just kept drinking this stuff because the feeling it gave for me was wonderful, but it wasn't quite good enough and I wanted another drink to make it perfect. Incidentally, I kept looking for that perfection in alcohol as long as I drank and it never quite gave me everything that I was looking for. I found what I was working for when I came to AA. I got drunk that night and they put me to bed and I woke up the next morning with a hangover and I swore off. I said, never again. Anybody that will react like this to a drink of whiskey ought not to drink it. And I stopped. And I think I was an alcoholic from the very first drink. I drank all I wanted and I got drunk. About six months later, I did the same thing again. And then I entered upon a long period of controlled drinking. And to me, alcoholism is controlled drinking when you refer to alcoholism as uncontrolled drinking. To me, this means the late stage, the very late stage when you could die at any time because alcohol is a poison. and when you're putting this stuff in your stomach without regard to the amount, you can die any time. And I know that. And the long drawn out history of me when I was drinking years and years was the controlled nature of it. The fact that I would space my drunks. I would work during the week and then I would get drunk on the weekends. I would relax with alcohol. I felt like I needed it. I had a dependency on it and I controlled it. I had to control it. If I drank all I wanted every time, I would get drunk. This to me is alcoholism. This is the stage of alcoholism that 90% of the people in this country are in. It's in this stage when they can do like I could do. I could prove to you any time that I was not an alcoholic. Any time you got a dance and there ain't going to be no drinking, I'll go there and I'll enjoy that dance. I'll tell you I had a wonderful time and I won't drink. I won' t tell you what's going on in my mind that I'm saying now. If we'd have had a little drink, it would have been a better dance. But I had this reaction and I was able to do it. And because of this attitude, this ability to control it over a long period of time, I was able to convince myself that I had no problem with this stuff. This stuff was too important to me. It couldn't be a problem. I loved it too much. I couldn't admit to myself that there could even be the slightest problem. In spite of the fact that every now and then this little control breaks down, and it did for me from the very beginning. That first night, of course, I didn't exercise much control, but later on, several years, I was at the party one night where I was going to drink just a little bit and enjoy myself. And something happened during the evening and I woke up the next morning asleep in a bed and it wasn't my regular bed, it was a baby crib and I didn't have any clothes on and I was out in the hall and it was in a lady's house there in Atlanta and I got up early in the morning and I think some other people had noticed it because I heard about it later and I uh what happened you know what happened you got a little too much just a little too much that's all and I laughed about it and all the others but this is one of those nights when that control broke through when I didn't quite keep it and I think as time went on that I increasingly had this loss of control when I didn't want to got drunk when I did not want to I didn' t mean to get drunk I got on through medical school and college I know now that my scholarship suffered when I was in medical school I did NOT make the grades my last year that I did the first year because I was becoming increasingly dependent on it. And I married just after I graduated and started interning at Grady Hospital. And I met a charming Atlanta debutante, a lovely girl. There wasn't a thing wrong with her. I picked her out for my wife. I thought I was in love with her and I'd been going a long time. She seemed to me to be the ideal girl for a man who was going to be a distinguished doctor and really wake up the people in medicine in South Georgia. They were going to know about me of course, everywhere out there, and I needed to pick my wife very carefully because we wanted to move into proper social circles and somebody that was going to have all this prestige that I was going to have and all this income and all these summer homes and winter homes and things. I mean, all this goes together, you know, with breeding and culture. So we got married, and we came down to Statesboro, and I quit drinking. Doctors don't drink. You aren't supposed to drink and practice medicine and treat people, so I stopped drinking. It lasted about a week or two. I found out the tensions of private practice were much greater than those of an internship And I had to start drinking again because I needed it You know, if you don't drink, you're liable to have a heart attack And I'd heard about doctors in their 30s and 40s Who worked themselves to death and never got the proper relaxation Who died from heart attacks And I sure didn't want to do that What's better than a little drink on the weekend? So we'd go off on weekends and get drunk The war came along I joined that very quickly And got in the medical corps drank very heavily and when I came back after the war I had a bad alcohol problem and I think I was beginning to suspect that I did but I knew the cause of it I knew my increased drinking first was I had an awful case of war nerves because I got away with an awful lot because of it in a combat unit you know all shook up and one doctor looked at me one time and he said war nerves if I ever saw it And I went to a hospital on that, and this girl that I had married had deteriorated. She wasn't the same person that she was when I left. She didn't have this same attitude. I don't know what had happened to her. I guess the war affects everybody. She'd gotten tied to a mother's apron string. She was always on the telephone talking to her mama about my drinking. And I tried my best to help her. I beat her up a few times, and it didn't help her at all. and she finally got on it. My mama came down and they went back together to Atlanta and I've never seen her since. We got a divorce. And I blamed her for my drinking and when she left, I got drunker than ever. I settled down and then pretty soon I met Dot and then we got married not too long afterward and we've been at it each other ever since. Dot says in her story that anybody had much trouble courting as we did ought not to have gotten married. But we did and we're here tonight and we are grateful for it. Now, sooner or later you've got to begin to settle down a little bit. You've got start some sort of steadiness or dependability in your practice and I knew that I was drinking too much that I couldn't drink like this and I began to get worried about it and we'd go off on weekends and get drunk and come back on Monday morning or Tuesday more often I guess and I couldn'T go to work And every doctor has got a ready solution to that if he wants to use it. And I was one who wanted to use It. I got a little black bag, and I got A sample cabinet. And in That bag I got all kind of drugs. And I got some drugs in There that will take the effects of A hangover away immediately, some of them that work Beautifully for me. And my favorite drug out Of That bag was codeine. And I used to begin to, I started taking This codeine for hangovers. And this will take away the effect of a hangover. It'll make you feel wonderful. You can go on about your work, and you really feel good. The dosage increases as you continue to take it, and you run into one of the side effects. There's nothing, there's no drug anywhere that doesn't have a side effect. They never have invented a drug that would do just what it's supposed to do and nothing else. Every drug has got a side affect, and you're going to get into it if you keep taking it. That includes aspirin or vitamins or anything. And I ran into a side effect of this codeine. It made me sick, nauseated. And pretty soon, I began to take a little bromionil and barbitale. It's a little preparation that fizzes like salapatica. It's got a bromide and a barbiturate in it and it will stop your nausea. And it did. By combining the codeine and the B&B as we call it, I wasn't nauseated, but this stuff will make you sleepy. So I... so I took Benzedrine to wake me up and Benzedraine will make you jittery and nervous where you can't write a prescription so I take Nemutel to calm me down this is a process of treating yourself symptomatically we doctors are great hands at it we doctors don't treat ourselves like we treat other people you come to see me and I'll give you a prescription and I say you go home and take one of these capsules every six hours by the clock. But when I get sick with the same illness, I take a handful of that stuff frequently. See, I'm different from you. I don't have the same reaction. This is what I believed about myself. And so this, although I knew that the things I was taking were dangerous dosage for other people, I don'T fit into the category of other people. I had this feeling within myself that I was different. I could not see myself in anything that went on around me. One time on a drunk, real bad drunk, I'd gotten off way up in New York and wound up in Birmingham and then back in Warner Robins in Fort Valley, Georgia. And my preacher had called up his mother and father and they put me in the hospital and he'd fix things up with Dot for me to come home. And he came up there to get me and he and I were sitting in his car and we were talking. And He said, John, you know what's the matter with you? You think you're something special. You think that you don't react like other people. And you think that you have certain characteristics and certain talents that other people don't have. He said what you've got to realize is that you ain't nobody but plain old John Mooney. That's all you are. That you're just like everybody else. I said, Preacher, I'd like to believe you but it's just not true. This is my opinion of myself and I began to take all this other stuff and I got sicker and sicker from it. And I finally got into my sample cabinet and I took all kind of medication and one night I had a convulsion and this broke a vertebra. This got through to me, this convulsion because I knew that there was something bad wrong. I knew there was nothing wrong with my mind or my emotions that caused me to drink. Now to take this dope that other people didn't take this stuff in the extent that I was in. And I set out through psychiatric treatment to find out what it was. I went to psychiatrists all over this country. I went from New York to North Carolina, Atlanta, of course, Savannah. I came down to Florida to a place over here called Anclote Manor. And then I went back to Connecticut and finally into Kentucky trying to find a psychiatrist that would tell me what was wrong with my mind that caused me to drink so much and caused me to take this dope. I knew I was an addict then. I knew that I could get addicted to dope. I had not yet seen myself as an alcoholic or seen my alcohol as something that I could not control if I tried hard enough. I never found this doctor, and I don't think anybody ever will, because I think what I was looking for, see, was a solution to my emotional or mental problem so that this thing could be resolved, I'd get over it, andI wouldn't have to drink so much or take so much dope. I don't think I was really looking for a complete life of abstinence. I guess I didn't believe that was really possible for me, that somehow I'd have to take some sort of drug sometime. I kept getting in trouble over and over again. Finally, I wound up in a hospital up in Connecticut for a real, real course of psychiatric treatment. I'd get drunk. I'd be on pills. I'd had to decide which I was going to come off first, the pills or the liquor, or whether it was better to come off of, if I was on pills and narcotics, tranquilizers and things, whether it's better to get drunk and then come off the liquor, or better to stay on these and come off them straight. All this stuff, and I would try to do it, andI couldn't do it. And I finally wound up in a hospital. So I wound upin this hospital in New Canaan, Connecticut, a real swanky place, and a real intensive psychotherapy that lasted about three months. This guy gave me a real good dose of this. He told me I was disorganized, that I had to get order back in my life. and a doctor who makes rounds routinely at 3 o'clock in the morning and wakes his patients up to ask them how they're feeling is disorganized and then comes back and goes to bed and has morning office hours from 2 to 4 p.m. and goes home and eats a light lunch and then stays drunk all night so you never get around any supper and I was doing this I was just sleeping and eating occasionally and getting up and going anytime he said you've got to get on a regular order you've gotta get up in the evening in the early morning take a little exercise eat breakfast and get on a schedule and I set out to do this and I did a pretty good job of it for about a year now another thing this doctor did for me that was a decisive thing that I did not buy to see it at all he handed me the big book Alcoholics Anonymous to read this was in 1953 he said read this book you might like it and I read that book and I didn't like it this is a wonderful book for the alcoholic and every alcoholic I've got at home I'm going to give this book to them when I get back I saw nothing in this thing for myself. There are stories in there that are right down the line like mine, but I did not see them. I came back and I started working and I got on this psychiatric routine and I did pretty good. I didn't take anything for about a year. I had no continuing program of recovery. I did try to work in the church some. I taught a Sunday school class. I was full of resentments. I still had a lot of this self-pity. I expected my patients to come back to me, and many of them didn't. And I blame this on the other doctors for talking about me. I had all these thoughts about what other people were doing to me. And yet, on the outside, I looked pretty good. I was going. I was playing golf. I was getting up at 7 o'clock every morning. And I was staying off of liquor and pills and dope. I hadn't taken anything. I'm a guy that can get hooked on anything. I've got an addictive personality, and I could get hooked on an empty capsule if you told me it would make me feel better. And so I was. I was on narcotics or Deloited, Demerol, Panopon, Tranquilizer, Sedatives, or anything, whichever I happened to be available at the time. It was just some type of medicine. But during this year, I was off of everything. And I felt pretty good about it, but I had planned no program of continuing sobriety to replace this drug, these drugs that I was taking. So one day, I Was going out to play golf on one of my regular days, and I slammed the car door on the index finger of my left hand and I broke this finger all to pieces. I broke the bone in there and I went in and I made an x-ray and it was fractured. Well, that night this thing hurt me terribly and I told Dot that this thing was paining me, that I had to take something and that I hade read somewhere that when a narcotic addict, and I knew I was, had been rehabilitated that it was safe to take narcotics in case of an emergency provided they were administered under the direction of a physician. Now, I am a physician I will order for myself 100 milligrams of Demerol and I did and I took this Demeril and it was five years between five and six years when I finally came to AA before I got off of everything again. I was in and out of hospitals over and over again. The first time AA came to me was in that hospital handed to me on a silver platter this wonderful program right there before me, the 12 steps, everything about it. And I could not get any of it on a silver platter, and I turned it away. I always turned AA away. I never reached out and got it. AA was thrown at me and thrust upon me. I was made to go to AA before I finally got there. The next time it came, I was drunk. I don't know what on. By 57 or 58, I Was Sitting in My Living Room One Afternoon, and my family had gone out to the country with the children. I don't know how long they'd gone to stay, but I was there alone. And this man named Henry came in to see me and said he wanted to talk to me. Now, Henry was an old friend of mine. I'd known him all my life, and I'd watched this poor fellow throw himself away with alcohol, and I just felt so sorry for him. I'd raved right across the street. I'd seen him rise to be a high-ranking officer in the Army, an owner of a very prosperous business, and then I'd watch the poor fellow just drink himself until he lost it all right on down into the gutter and Henry came in there and told me that he had found sobriety through the AA program and he was a member of the Statesboro AA group and I was real happy for Henry. He told me all about his recovery and I said boy this is a wonderful this fellow has really come out of the gutters amount to something and he asked me if I wanted to go to a meeting and I said I sure do Henry you get the fellas together and I'll go up there and tell you about alcoholism anytime you want me to this was a 12-step call i didn't know he was making it nothing whatsoever in that story could i see for myself nothing whatsoever i guess they just went back and waited for me to die or something like i said they knew the truth i know they did now because i've talked to them about it and i know the truth too that i had the pride i had to close mine I had this refusal to see myself as I was at any cost and that I wasn't going to get any better until something happened to me. Something happened to be to get through this thick shell, this ego, ego Donald calls it in our group and I think it's a better word because this was a tremendous shell, this ego I had around me that I wouldn't let anybody have a peep inside if I could help. I had a big image up there that I wanted you to look at and think that that was me when inside I knew it wasn't at all. See, I didn't have a very good opinion of the guy in sight. Well, I, uh, I didn't go to AA then. I kept on with my situation as it was. I guess that reminds me of another story right there. This, uh I guess this does illustrate the sort of fix I was in. These three girls were applying for a job as airline stewardesses and so they sent them before a board of examiners to see what their reaction was to certain situations And this particular one was a situation involving their ideas about men. So they said, these girls one at a time, said, now we're going to give you a situation with a problem and you tell us how you would solve it. You have been wrecked in the ocean on your airplane and you're adrift on a little life raft and you've been out there some time and you'RE alone and you find this raft drifting up on an island and youRE overjoyed to see land. But as you get closer, you see some men on this island and you see pretty soon that these people are 25 U.S. Marines, and they've been on this island a year, and they haven't seen a girl, and you're drifting right up on that island where all these men are. What would you do? Then one of the first girls said, Well, those life rafts have paddles. I'd take that paddle, and I'd paddle as fast as I could in the other direction. Well, he asked the next girl, What would she do? She said, Well, I made it a habit all my life to carry a revolver, and I would consider that good protection. I would go ashore with that. And he called the third girl in and says, you've heard the situation, how would you solve this problem? She said, I've heard The Situation, but what's the problem? I had a situation. I didn't know whether there was a problem to it or not, but I was in a mess. When you've got pride like I had, when you have resentments toward the people who are trying to help you, the people that I thought were doing to me when really they were trying to do for me and I wouldn't let them when you've got something like this there ain't but one way for God to get through some bad things have to happen you gotta come to your senses and when you feel like you're something special when you look upon yourself as a prominent physician when you're already a dope addict don't know it you've gotta not don't want to admit it to yourself I guess you knew it something bad has to happen Well, I got on narcotics pretty heavy and I got off the alcohol And the fall of 50 in the spring of 59. I was on demerol And I was getting this from my drug stores And the drug stores became increasingly difficult to deal with they didn't want to let me have this stuff And I began to order it wholesale from the druggist on these narcotic order blanks and You have to keep up with every dose when you get it wholesale and I'd taken all this stuff by the hundreds and I hadn't kept up with any of it. I hadn' t even made a record of it and every time anybody walked in my office with an attache case or anything like that or two men came in together it scared the living fire out of me because I was sure this would be the Treasury Department coming to inspect my narcotic records and I knew if they did that I was in trouble and then one day all six druggists came to see me in a body and told me that they were not going to let me have any more narcotics They said, you're using more than all the rest of the doctors put together. We don't know what you're doing with it, but you're going to have to get it somewhere else. And I was scared to order any more from the wholesaler, and I started running, and I starting going around the country to other towns and thinking up fictitious cases that I was in consultation with and writing these ficticious prescriptions to nonexistent people and signing my name to it. This is a narcotic privilege I have as a physician to use this stamp to write prescription for narcotics, and I misused it. And this is a violation of the Georgia law and the federal law. And I began to become conscious of what I was doing and knew that the matter of trouble was just around the corner, that unless I did something, I was going to be in deep, serious trouble, and I knew that I was in serious trouble with myself already. So I talked to Dot one day, andI told her that I've sent my other people to Lexington, Kentucky. Now, I've been going myself to a lot of these fancy places all up and down the eastern coast, and I have tried to get treatment here or there, and it's cost a lot of money, and I've got nowhere. And I know that some of these people have been to the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital for Narcotic Addiction at Lexington, and they have gotten better, and I'm going. Now, I knew that this place is a prison, that they also take volunteers, and I will go up there as a volunteer, and I'll stay until I'm over this habit and they've done something for me and I can live without these drugs because I knew that I was going to get in trouble if I kept on with it. But I think there was something deeper that went on in me at that time, and I believe that more sincerely now, and that was that I had an honest desire for something better. I don't believe that I wanted to stop drinking, I wanted the quit dope, but I think I was sick and tired of the situation I was in and I wanted out. I did not want to keep on living this way. I think this was sincere, and I think This Is Where God Started With Me. The first thing that happened to me, of course, when you have got this much pride in God's plan, sometimes are rough. Well, I went up there and I had a little Thunderbird, a little white 1956 Thunderbird with a red top and red upholstery. And I used to have a little White Hat that I'd wear. I always kept the top down on this car because I wanted to get a suntan. I looked sort of gray from all this stuff I was taking. And I'd try to stay out in the sun to get it a little color, you know, where they'd think maybe the corpse wasn't quite ready to be buried yet. And so I started off there in this little Thunderbird for the purpose of going to Lexington and staying there. Well, I got up there, and I went in there as a volunteer. Now, I had visions of what a volunteer was in there, but they had the prisoners over here on this side with all the bars on the door, and they had us high-class volunteers over here in these buildings with the nurses. It never dreamed to me that these people would put a distinguished doctor like me in there with a bunch of dope fiends in a prison. but that's what you did oh boy i got in there and they had them all together and they had me right in there with the rest of them you know what they gave me a number 55280 i've always said if they'd have called me dr 552 80 i'd have felt better about it but they put me in there would the common dope fiends and this humiliated me i could not see myself there i said gosh this is awful and they slammed these doors on me and they and nobody knew that I was a physician at all. It was a terrible situation and I didn't like it and I resented it. I'd gone up there and told Dodd I was going to stay a year. I thought that's how long it was going to take. Well, at the end of a week I decided that I had had enough. I said this is a form of shock treatment. This has shown you what's going to happen to you if you keep on taking dope and drinking liquor. You're going to have to learn to live without any of this stuff the rest of your life and you're strong enough, you can do it because this is what's going to happen to you if you keep on taking. You're going to be just like these others. I didn't realize I was already like those others. I wasn't ready to admit that yet. I could not identify with that thing at all and so after a week I signed up and I went out the door and I promised myself that never again as long as I lived would I ever touch a drink of liquor or ever take a narcotic shot or a tranquilizer pill or a sedative anymore under any circumstances. And you know, I was sincere with this promise and I felt better. I felt a little release. Don't know whether you ever made one of those promises or not, but I did. And I felt good. I felt much better. And I got in my Thunderbird with the top down and I started riding back to Georgia on U.S. 25. And I remember how good I felt. Looking out at the trees and the sky and all that, I felt real good. Of course, I think one reason I felt good was because I'd out of that place. You know, I was loose again. And yet I had every intention of never drinking again. And I came to a sign that said, last chance to buy whiskey before Knoxville. Knoxville's dry. Well, the wheels get to turning and I get to thinking, now because I'm going to quit drinking don't mean everybody else has got to quit. In other words, I'm not going to be a damper on anybody's party. I want the people to carry on. I won't doubt the drink. I want people to carry on just like I was doing, see? I'm not going to try to force my will on anybody else. I want to spend the night with a friend of mine named Jim who lives in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and Jim likes to drink, so I'm going to stop and buy Jim a little whiskey so he can have a nightcap tonight. So I bought two-fifths of Canadian Club. I got back in that car, and I closed that door, and when I did, I realized that Jim had moved from Greenwood, South Carolina, to Greenwood South Carolina two years before. but I'm stuck with the whiskey not many needed to somebody else so I drive on content with the belief that I'll never drink again well I got to to Knoxville and I stopped at one of these little hamburger joints and I got thinking about this business staying sober the rest of your life now it seems to me that if a person is going to stop drinking all the rest of their life and never touch this stuff again or any dope as long as you live and practice medicine the rest it's alright to take one little drink today Here I am up in Knoxville, and this makes sense to me, you know, at this time. And so I started drinking. I got drunk that night in Gatlinburg, and I got up the next morning swearing off again because I was going back, but I was way up in Tennessee, and I was miserable, and I took a drink for the road. I took another one, and the last thing I remember was putting my hands on the car door and opening it. I remember putting my hand on that car door, And I woke up in the Gatlinburg jail with what my friend C.D. Collins calls the striped sunshine coming through the window. And I had parked my car out, they said, squarely across the highway and gone to sleep. Well, I got locked up in three states, arrested in three States, didn't get locked up and all of them, got arrested in free States trying to get back to Georgia. Now this trip taught me something. I came down there and Dodd didn't want me to stay there because she's done all she could. I tried to get a hospital in Savannah, and they didn't want me. And I kept drinking more and more. And I came home, and I got in the kitchen, and I started drinking. And my little boy, just six years old, looked up at me and says, Daddy, you're drunk. And then he went upstairs, and he wouldn't even tell me goodbye when I finally left. But all these things got through to me a real important lesson, I think. See, I was coming down from Lexington to Statesboro, down US 25, and I had an honest, sincere promise that I had made not to drink anymore. And I meant this when I made it. And it hadn't even lasted one day and I knew it. There wasn't anybody involved in all this thing except me and a bottle of whiskey, the little Thunderbird, and U.S. 25. That's all. There wasn' t anybody else. There was no conspiracy out for me. And yet I was getting in trouble everywhere I moved. AndI knew that with the fix I was in, I couldn't even drive down a highway. This got across to me the protection I had had. And I thought about the people who had done for me. When I went to Connecticut, I went in an ambulance with a private nurse. Now, I didn't go to Connecticut. I was carried to Connecticut and most of these hospitals I've been in, I did walk in the hospital and say, treat me. I was carried, flopped out in an ambulance by my friends, my wife and all, and put into this hospital. People had done for me everywhere and I was just fool enough to think I had been doing for myself. But This trip I knew I was not doing for myself, that I had been held up, the people that looked after me. Well, I got on up to Atlanta and I got drunk up there. I went into a rehabilitation hospital, Peachtree Hospital, trying to get in a Georgian clinic. And I got out of there. I panicked after about... I'd never gotten to a Georgians clinic. I stayed in this hospital about three days. And I Got all upset and I paniced. They tried to keep me there and I just went out and I went about half crazy. I guess. I don't remember what happened, except that I went down and bought a lot of liquor. I bought a load of clothes. I bought him a hat. I never wore one in my life, see? Hoping maybe that'd make me feel better. I didn't know why, but I bought it. I finally wound up in the Henry Grady Hotel drunk, taking these tremendous big drinks. I found out later I had been missing for about two or three days, and they'd had the detectives looking for me. And they walked into that room about 2 o'clock in the morning of July 4, 1959, night. And I was arrested. I was arrested on a lunacy warrant, which Lord knows I needed. I had a bottle of Canadian Club still sitting in there. See, I started off on corn liquor and I wound up trying to go first class to the very end. I had this bottle of Caribbean Club sitting there and I asked them if I could take a drink. And they said yes because where you're going you ain't going to get one. And I took a great big drink out of that bottle. Now I looked at that bottle, and it was about a third full when I left. And I told myself that whatever this trouble is I'm in, I didn't know what it was then. All I knew these people were picking me up, and I thought I was all right. Whatever trouble I'm In, when I'm through with it, I'm coming back and finish that bottle. Well, that was my last drink. Out of all the thousands of times that I quit drinking and swore off, I always drank again. But this last time, when that drink was taken, the last one up to now that I've had, I thoroughly intended to drink again. Because you see, I was locked up for nearly five months after this on various things I'll tell you about in a minute. And during that time, I joined AA. And AA has told me, you don't have to quit drinking. Quit quitting. Just take that first drink. Just don't take that First Drink today. That's all. And so really, it's a paradoxical thing that my last drink was taken with the full expectation of taking another one, but up to now I haven't had it. I came on back and I was in bad trouble. They'd picked up all this paper that I had cast about, these prescriptions, and I hung it all over South Georgia and they had picked up one, which was all they needed, for the illegal possession of a bottle of Demerol. And they charged me, the grand jury indicted me, and they charged Me with a felony. And I pled guilty because if they had kept looking, they'd have found 1,000. I knew all they needed was one. And they sentenced me to two years in the Georgia State Prison at Reidsville. And this kindly old judge said, John, I don't think you're a criminal. I think you's sick. And if you will go back to Lexington and stay there until those doctors release you, I will probate this sentence. Now, this is, I went back to Texington. I said thank you, and I was glad to get it. And this was a break for me. And I went black to Lexinton. and this time I didn't go in a Thunderbird. I went on an airplane with a deputy sheriff and he put me out at the gate and told me that if I stayed there as long as the judge told me which would be for the period of their cure about five months that I could come out but if I tried to leave before they released me that they would pick me up at the gym to Lexington. I said thank you and I was glad to get it and this was a break for me and I went back to Lexinton and this year and this is the first time I didn t go in the Thunderbird I went in an airplane with a Deputy Sheriff and he put me out at the gate and told me that if I stayed there as long as the judge told me which would be for the period of their cure about five months that I could come out but if I tried to leave before they released me that they would pick me up at thegate and I'd serve my term out in reasonable and I went in this time with a little different classification I still wasn't a prisoner because they only take federal prisoners in this place I was what they call a committed volunteer now figure that one out i knew i'd rather stay there than reasonable so i stayed i knew something bad was wrong i knew I had to get over this thing I was sick I was in bad trouble now I think that these bad things happened to me because God had to find some way to get rid of this pride I had and Lord knows it has plagued me all my life and still does if I'm not careful and the way he had to do it because of my inherent, I guess, inborn stupidity was to let bad things happen until no longer could I deny that I was in serious trouble. And I knew it now. I knew I was In Trouble and I knew I had to stay there. So I went to the doctors and said, I've got to have him. They told me after three hours of interviews that they would give me a full psychoanalysis and they said, that's what you need because to fix your mind's end, you're not going to get well unless you have it, provided you'll stay until it's over. They said, the longest we can keep you on this probated sentence is about five months. But if you will stay till we finish this analysis, we will start it. I said, how long? They said one, two, three years. We don't know. Well, I had a little break of honesty then, I think, because I knew that when I got to feeling better, when the blood got to circulating and I got the old mind working a little bit where I could think up excuses a littlebit, I wasn't even making excuses at that time, that I'd find some reason to come out of there. And so I turned it down. And this guy says, brother, if you won't take our psychotherapy, your next best bet is AA and you better go. They assigned me the job of editing the AA publication in there when I was trying to get a job in the operating room and told them I didn't want it. And they said, well, all you'll do in the, in the operation room is scrub floors and we don't know you don't want to do that. We got plenty of people to do the surgery. And so they assigned me this job. The psychiatrist sent me to AA because I wouldn't take his treatment on his condition. They gave me this job as editor of a little AA paper against my will. I finally accepted it and was glad I did later, but at the time, I tried to argue out of it. So you see, AA was forced upon me in this place, and I began to study this program because I came into AA knowing that there was nowhere else to go. I didn't want it. I wasn't looking for it. I had been to a few meetings, and I liked it. I enjoyed the fellows, But I was not looking for Alcoholics Anonymous to solve my problem until the other avenues had been closed to me, and I knew that unless I found a solution here, there wouldn't be any. I'd tried the church too for years. So I started going to these meetings and reading these 12 steps and studying them. We got in study groups, and we got in discussion meetings. We had talks. We had outside speakers come in. I memorized the steps. We'd sit by hours, talk for hours talking about it. I wrote about them. I published this little book and edited other people's stuff and all that, and I stayed 24 hours with AA. My job and most of my leisure time was spent in discussing AA. For a long time it was discussing AA too, not my problem. And I began to learn two things. I did one thing in there. One thing I did was an inventory. I took a lot of inventory there, and I began to look at myself. And another thing was the meaning of the first step. I began to study this thing, and we talked about that a lot. What does powerless mean? What does it mean when you're powerless over alcohol? And we carried this along a great deal. And one night in a discussion group, another man said, I can't conceive of really having fun without a shot of dope. And he said, how can I be powerless over something when it means that much to me? And I says, good gosh almighty, I can'T conceive of the same thing. I can't conceive of really having fun unless I've had a drink or some dope or something to elevate my mood to that point. To me, this means powerlessness. If I have to depend on a chemical to really get what I want out of life, the feeling I want of it, this real feeling of fun, just that euphoria, you might call it, whatever else you want to do, then surely this is powerlessness because I don't believe God put us here to feel that way. I took this inventory and I found out that I was in worse shape than I thought I was. I think this is invariably true of inventory, if we'll all take it carefully. As we look at ourselves closer and closer and see ourselves as we really are, as I did in that place, I saw I was in one awful shape. And I began to realize that I was so bad that I could not stand another drunk. I couldn't stand another bout with dope, tranquilizers or anything. As time went on in there and I began to take more inventory and look at it, I began to doubt. I began to doubt whether or not I could stay sober because powerlessness, see, was beginning to mean something a little deeper to me at that time and it did before I left there. It meant to me not only that I could not take one drink and quit, that I could not control alcohol or pills that once I started taking them I was going to get drunk or get hooked on them. It met also to me that I couldn't keep from taking them that every time I'd ever been anywhere and I found this in inventory I had promised myself over and over again never again will I touch this stuff and each time I had I said now what different has happened here what different is happened here nothing when you get out of here as surely as you do you're going to walk out of there and sooner or later you're going to take a drink are you going to find an excuse because see I could see myself for a conniving liar as I was that I could fool myself and you're gonna drink you're gonna take dope and when you do your gonna be dead and this scared me because I didn't want to die i wanted to live i wanted to live more i think than i ever had so what was i up against i was up against the situation where if i drank i was going to die and i couldn't keep from drinking and this will shake you up and it shook me up and i began to lose sleep in there i beganto get real upset about this thing i'd lie there at night and figure how in the world am i gonna do it as the time came closer for me to leave this got increasingly worse and i nearly went to pieces on the right up of the time I was about to be discharged. But I think God knows when we need something, and I think he knows when the time is to step in again and give somebody a little something when they realize that maybe this guy is trying hard to do something about his problem, and he wants to live. He wants to stay sober. Because he sent me a sponsor from Frankfort, Kentucky who had been seeing me in there, and we'd been talking, and this sponsor was able to talk to the medical officer in charge of this institution and get another patient and myself out of there for a one outside AA meeting before I was discharged. Now, see, I'd been going to this group in the hospital, and you use AA in an institution for everything except staying sober. You know, you don't have to worry about that because you couldn't get enough liquor or dope in there to carry on a decent alcohol habit anyway. And so what do you use it for? You use it to better fellowship, to get special privileges, for a chance to meet with the ladies every now and then because they have joint meetings, and that's a rare sight in this to see a girl. All these things for I got a pass. They let me visit wards that others couldn't visit because I was a member of AA and was trying to help people, and all of us on the steering committee got this pass, but not to stay sober. I went out that night to the Tuesday night group in Lexington, Kentucky, to the token club, to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, and this was the first time I had been to a meeting like that, and this thing hit me right between the eyes. I think this maybe could be the greatest moment in my life was the night I met you people at that meeting in Lexington. I went in there and I saw the happiest people I think I have ever seen, I know I've ever seen anywhere. My first impression was they're on some sort of dope, I wonder what it is, because you just don't feel that good without something. And pretty soon I realized that they were not. They were cordial to me, they came up to me and they wanted to know what I thought about myself. And I said, I think I can make it. And they looked me in the eye and they said, we know you can. And I wondered how they knew when I didn't know. And I know now. They knew because they had made it. I heard some of their stories later and I heard them talk to me after that meeting and I knew they had been down the same road I had and they knew I could make it because they had. And I came out of that meeting with hope. I knew that somewhere in this program was the answer to this unanswerable question that there was something here could keep me from getting drunk if I'd stick with it, and these people had it. And I determined right then that I was going to stay with AA people as long as I lived if I could, and I don't think I've departed too much from that up to now. I went back to the hospital that night, and I was discharged about three days later. Very much disturbed, very much shook up. I'd been locked up for five months as a prisoner, and I wasn't accustomed to that. I was firmly convinced that I was one of the boys now.I didn't have any pride about me being in the wrong place. I knew know now, and I knew then I was in the right place, that I wasn't an alcoholic. I was a dope fiend and there wasn't any of them in there, any worse than I was. And I wanted help, I think, as bad as any of you. And so I went to the police station and I said, well, I'm going to go to the And I was very much disturbed about leaving because I did not know what was going to happen. I knew that I had to go down to Statesboro to set the record straight. I was determined to go down there and show the people of Bullock County and Statesboro, Georgia, where I had last up, that I could walk the streets sober, that I could make something out of my life. Now, this, I think, is a reaction of pride. I think that was still pride left. It was making me go show folks that I can be sober. And when I got to Atlanta to change planes to go to Statesboro, I could not walk up the stairway to that other plane. And I'm not supposed to be afraid of airplanes because I was a paratrooper during the war and I fly frequently now. But I could nicht that night. The way I see it now, I didn't have enough pride to make that last step. There wasn't enough left in me to go any further. I wound up in a motel room that night as miserable and hopeless and helpless as I've ever been. I went into a depression. I gave my ticket away and traded it for a ticket the next morning. I called an AA man and talked to him. He said he would come out, and I said no. I guess I knew it was something that had to be solved with me alone. When I had nowhere else to turn, when there was nothing else to do, when there wasn't nowhere to go, I got out on my knees and said, God, help me. that moment I got instant relief from all this terror and fear that had plagued me all my life I think that moment that I realized the meaning of the third step of what I had to do, that I had make a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood it and if I could do this then God could and would take care of me and keep me sober and I wouldn't have to do this thing by myself I thought I had an understanding of God But I learned after that moment That I had never really known what God was Or who he was or where he was I learned there he'd been with me all along Been looking after me Been waiting for this shell to break down This pride to go away So that he could get through And show me that he was willing to help He wanted me to depend on him Instead of all these pills and dope And pride and willpower and everything else I got instant relief I slept like a baby that night I got up the next morning And I caught that plane And I went down to Statesboro And Dot met me there Savannah, and then we went to State's Bar. She met me in Savannah. We went on back home, and I had a most wonderful feeling from then on. I've never needed or wanted any alcohol or any pill or dope since then because, see, I realized in that moment that God was what I had been looking for in the bottle, that this whole thing had been a search, that that was why the bottle never gave me quite what I wanted. The shot never gave it to me. See, when I took a shot of narcotics, It would make me feel real good, but never quite good enough. And before I ever got that quite good enough, I would pass out. And I did this with the bottle. Each drink fell short of doing what I wanted it to do. Of course, later on, it turned upon me and made me sick all the time. But I found in this moment of contact with God what I had been looking for in the bottle, that this was a thing, this contact with Gott. And I could never have found it there because alcohol to me, sedatives, tranquilizers, narcotics are just poor substitutes for God. They were giving me something that I needed, but not something that I thought I needed when what I really needed was God. I came on back down there. I got with Dart. We went on down and I had a real wonderful feeling about this thing because I knew that whatever I had to do, that God would help me do it. I entered into the worst stage of my recovery, I guess, whatever it was, if you call it recovery at that time. There was still a lot of confusion and everything. but the worst stage I had been in because I came down there I thought about this thing in the Bible this little verse that says we can do all things through Christ who strengthened us and I said well we can do anything here with God on my side now all these things that I want to do are good I want a I want to reestablish my good name I want to be a good father a good husband a good citizen a good doctor and all these things I want to do are good God is on my side now I've had a spiritual experience with God and now we're going to do it together god is my partner and i felt real good about this well i think that had this continued like that that uh and had i got these things back and stayed sober and all through it that it wouldn't have been long before with this pride that i've got and this ego that i've gotta say well thank you god the going's pretty good now we won't be needing you no more if i needed you again i'll call you i think this is exactly what had happened and i think god knew it too. I'd been down there about a week or two and I started making appointments and we're getting back together with my patients and I'm real happy. I'm on this pink cloud and it's wonderful and I ain't worrying a bit about disgrace or anything like that anymore. I got a call to go to Atlanta and I go up there for the State Board of Medical Examiners and they say, Dr. Mooney, you have been convicted of a felony. You cannot practice medicine in this state without on your record. So they revoked my license to practice medicine. So I went back to Statesboro. It didn't shake me too much because I had enough faith in this newfound power that somehow that it was going to be right, that something good was going to happen. This was God's will and I didn't see why because there's nothing in the world I wanted more than to try to get back in the stream of things at that time but that somehow it was gonna turn out all right. I came on back. I let my nurse go. I kept my secretary to try collect a little money, kept my office open which wasn't hard because it was willed to be by my father. I own it. And I had been there two weeks, and I hadn't called AA, see? See, when I left Lexington, my sponsor told me that he went to five or six meetings a week, and each one of us had to decide for ourselves what we needed in AA. Well, I had thought about that, this fine old gentleman who was retired and who had the time to do this, and that me being a busy doctor naturally wouldn't have that much time to AA, but I was going to try to get a meeting every week or two weeks, a month anyway, to really put something into the program. Well, I'd been there two weeks now through this business and I haven't called AA at all. But when I came back, I had nothing else to do. The first thing I thought of, well, I guess we better contact the AAs and see if that group's still here. I didn't know but one man, that was Henry, and I called him and Henry came around and we started going pretty soon dot came in with me and we started going together and uh i went to savannah and i went down to florida i went down to many many places and i Went all over georgia. I went every night. We went every day And I began to find the a that you have here The a that is keeping people sober one day at a time now I needed both these days I needed one of that institution because that was a study period for me I did an awful lot of work and study in the program and I think that many of the things that I learned there have begun to get through to me now. I don't think I could have come into an AA meeting like this and made it without this confinement, without this hospitalization and the treatment I got there. But during this six months we went to AA. They told me at the end of six months in June 1960 that I could apply for reinstatement of my license. There was no guarantee it would be given to me. So on June 5th, I think it was, I went back to Atlanta and I applied for reinstatement and they reinstated me without reservation. They even gave me my narcotics stamp back. At the end of this time, I had discovered that it took just about as much AA for me as it did for my sponsor, that it takes about five or six meetings. When I came down to Statesboro, I was a guest at AA meetings. I was present at AA meeting. But I was not a member. when I got my license back and God let me have this thing back to go to work again in June I was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous in good standing and I am today, I believe and I hope I'll always be there I think this six months is one of the most vital periods of my life I didn't know what had happened but if you listen in AA to the speakers and listen to people talk pretty soon somebody's going to tell you what happened to you, see and this man was talking and he's talking one night up in Virginia And he says there are two miracles in AA. He says the first miracle is a miracle of release from the addiction to alcohol and drugs, release from this terrible affliction that we have in which we no longer need it. This happened to me at airport that night. I've never needed a drink or a pill or anything since that night." He said, "...that's the first one." He says, "...the second miracle is the slower one that takes a long time, is a Miracle of Returning Sanity." See, this is what happened to be to a certain extent. It still continues, I hope. But see, I knew not how to use this power. I didn't know what it meant to me. I didn' t know what God had to be in my life. I was going along with my will for things and thinking because these things that I wanted to do were good, they were helpful to other people, they had service in them, that God was going to approve of it, and he was going be for me and help me do them. This isn' t true at all. I don' t Know What God Wants For Me, See? I have to pray. Every morning I get up, I say a prayer, God, show me the way. What do I do? I ride down the road, and I try to keep a contact and pray to let God guide me and lead me because I don't know. I can't be sure from one minute to the next that he may change his plans for me and find something else, as he often does. I have to keep this awareness all the time with me, and I learned this during this six months. I learned a lot of things. I learned what some of the people had been trying to tell me back when I was drunk. I was down over here at Anclote Manor, and this psychiatrist was talking to me one time, and he said, John, what do you want? I said, oh, I want to be a good doctor, a good father, a good church member, a good citizen, all these things. And he sat there shaking his head. He said, you're a Christian, aren't you? I said sure, I'm a Christian. I belong to the Pittman Park Methodist Church in Statesboro. He said do you know how a Christian would answer that question? I said how? He said a Christian would say I want the peace of God. You can call this program psychotherapy. You can called it any group therapy or fellowship or anything that you want. But to me, the thing that keeps us here is God's love working through people, the grace of Almighty God in AA. Thank you and God bless you. Thank you.