The Industrial Rehabilitation Program That Still Works – Tom W.

It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you someone who I'm sure can tell you much more about how he discovered AA and AA's impact on industry programs than can I. Tom? Thank you and good morning. Thank you, Professor, for a very complimentary introduction. I'm sure that I can only remember one when I received a more complimentary one. I was invited to speak in an AA group. The chairman didn't show up and I had to introduce myself. was very encouraging to me at the time. I discovered this morning, after I entered the hall, that you're never home free in Alcoholics Anonymous. I can lead a very effective meeting, if I'm allowed to lie a little bit. Unfortunately this morning I discovered the gentleman who I had occasion to call in 1939 and who served as one of my co-sponsors in AA. So he knows my story as well, if not better than I. So of necessity, it will be a dull session because I am forced to stick to the truth. When I was contacted and asked to speak at this session of the conference, I again was not home free because I very often have occasion to speak in A.A. meetings, and when I do, I give an AA talk. On the other hand, I am very often asked to speak at other functions, civil, civic I should say. I've spoken several times at high school and psychology, high school college psychology classes, business and industrial groups. On those occasions, I stay more or less to the problem of alcoholism and its several recovery programs. They ask me, however, to speak for a half an hour, cover some of my own story, and at the same time touch on some of experiences in regard to AA and or alcoholism in industry. In pondering this, I discovered that almost of necessity my AA story, my vocational background, and my avocational background must and are synonymous. For a 17-year period prior to 1939, I was very successful in accumulating for myself a very vicious reputation as a common drunk around the city of Cleveland. And very often, as a result of the trouble that I would get into, I would find myself before the courts. And mainly, possibly at the time, because of my age, my family standing in the community, not because they were having anything in particular to do with me, and possibly because they would like to try to find out if possible exactly what was wrong with me i would be referred to the eminent dr royal s grossman who is still head of the psychriatic division of the cuyahoga county courts to be psychoanalyzed and the good doctor and i went around and around on several occasions and it was invariably his findings that i was a hopeless and incurable alcoholic, and it was his stern recommendations to the courts that if they were to keep me alive for any length of time, then it was His recommendation that they keep me incarcerated. Of course, I like to feel that I had some very close friends as judges at that particular time because that's exactly what they did for me. I don't mean anything as palatable as 30 days in cost. It was usually a year, and I did several of those years as a habitual offender at the Warrensville Workhouse. There was one judge, however, on the bench, the late Louis Drucker, who was very much interested in the problem of alcoholism at that time, and was very interested in my case in particular. It offered all types of help, which I naturally didn't accept. I used to visit him religiously each time I was released from the workhouse, but for one reason. The judge was always good for five bucks, and when I got out of the workhorse, I needed five bucks. But on this particular occasion, in addition to the five dollars, he gave me a telephone number and told me that this would put me in contact with a bunch of drunks that had somehow found a way of keeping each other sober. I thanked him kindly, stuck the telephone number in my pocket, but hung on to the five dollars. But like most alcoholics, when our back is to the wall and we have no way to turn, we begin to grab for straws. And I found myself in such a position and I grabbed for that telephone number and was contacted by my sponsors and co-sponsors in Alcoholics Anonymous. Shortly after that, when there was an indication that I had accepted the program to some extent, a good judge got in touch with me, called me in, and gave me a session in investment. He pointed out the fact that the courts and their agencies had invested a great deal of time and money in me and, in turn, I had certainly invested a lot of my time with the courts. He suggested further that when people make investments, they usually do it with the intention of making a profit. And he suggested at that time that I cooperate with the court and bring my knowledge of what I knew of AA to them in the hopes of helping others. And this I agreed to do. This, at that time, was the straw that broke the camel's back because there was quite a bit of dissension and discussion around the area at that point in time. At that time when I presented myself to Alcoholics Anonymous, number one, I was considered probably to be too young. Number two, I Was One of the First Ones or The First One in the Area That Brought a Record With Me Such as Mine. an established recommendation that I certainly was a hopeless and incurable alcoholic in a jail, a police record, a jail record that would take quite some time to read. There were people in AA around the area at that time that felt certainly that if Alcoholics Anonymous was going to amount to anything it would become a very exclusive fraternity, if you please and by strict invitation only. But I shall always be very, very grateful to my sponsors and co-sponsors because it was those men who felt that Alcoholics Anonymous should be for anyone who had a sincere desire to stay sober. And certainly they gave me every opportunity to accept this program in its entirety and make a success of it. When you begin to deal with recovery programs in alcoholism, you almost immediately become involved with employment security for the people with whom you are working. And this naturally became some of my experience. I hadn't worked myself for a period of about 10 years. I had no job, but I suddenly found myself contacting employers on behalf of the people that we were working with. and then, and certainly because I have learned a long time ago there is a purpose and a reason for everything that happens to us in AA one of those miracles happened after four months of sobriety when I know today I had reached the point where I was able to accept the responsibility of a job again and I found one within five minutes of the courthouse where I could visit every noon and I discovered when I returned to work that I could work steady, that I would be able to do what I wanted to do. That I could be there on time and I also found that I could advance myself. Regardless of the work that I was assigned to, invariably I would find myself with the responsibility of the personnel. And certainly when you're working in any company that has any number of people at all, somewhere in the neighborhood of 3% of them will be alcoholics And certainly in my own companies, or the companies that I worked for, there was always the opportunity there to inject some sort of a recovery program. I did cooperate with an individual at Graphite Bronze. He came up with a formulated plan that was accepted and became one of the first industrial rehabilitation programs in industry. And it's still very much in effect, and basically I think it is the formula used for any of the other industrial programs that I've heard about or read about. I discovered quite suddenly that it certainly doesn't pay to dangle a job, a spouse, or a jail sentence in front of an alcoholic as a reward to stay sober. I have discovered also the importance of setting an individual down across the desk and explaining to him the reason that he is an alcoholic. And when you can give an alcoholic a fundamentally sound, acceptable explanation of why he is an alcoholic, point out your own shortcomings, you will for the first time have given him some justification at least that he might reconsider his own resistance to the help that has been offered him. We learn, too, that the relationship between the employee and the employer at that level can be very effective. There seems to be a feeling between them that's entirely different than somewhere else, and this is one of the reasons that And I am sure that programs within industry come up with a very greater percentage of success than the other ones. We work with the supervisors, as it has been mentioned. They can refer an idea to the personnel department and we start from there. I've never once brought someone into the office and said that you are an alcoholic. If you don't get sober and join Alcoholics Anonymous, you're going to be fired. We're very careful not to put that sort of an insistence in any of the programs that I've had anything to do. The educational portion of it is important. It's certainly a great help to an alcoholic trying to accept a recovery program to sooner or later have his supervisor give him a pat on the back, tell him he's doing a good job. And as the word is confidentially leaked out to the other members of AA and the plant that isn't long before, some of his fellow employees is giving him a little bit of encouragement. And then more or less, he lets these things happen, and the first thing you know, you will see them at an AA meeting. I think one of the most amazing things that I had the privilege of observing was in one plant where one of the laborers was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and one of the executive management members was a member of alcoholics anonymous. And while these two people had absolutely very little in common in the plant, certainly it was a thrill to see them enjoying coffee together at an AA meeting. Recently some of the major insurance companies of both the United States and Canada, and probably in other parts of the world, recognize the problem of alcoholism in industry. And they have come up with some very effective programs. One group for instance points out that two million alcoholics on the payrolls of business and industry is is costing business and industry $2 billion a year. And as always is expressed first, yes, we know we have absenteeism as a result of alcoholism, but certainly they doubt very much whether it could amount to that amount of money. They forget that it costs a great deal of money to put a man on a payroll and get him to where he's paying the company a dividend. And I disregard the absentee figure to some extent. I'll grant you that it is substantial, but I do know this, that some companies would have been a lot better off if they would have allowed certain employees to be absent without leave and paid them double time for it. I'm thinking, for instance, of a sweeper, an alcoholic sweeper who through his negligence will allow combustible material to gang up in a certain place and eventually a fire starts and costs the company a tremendous amount of money and time. I'm thinking of a machine operator, an alcoholic machine operator through whose negligence costly damage to tools and equipment and machinery can result, if not personal injury to himself or others. I'm thinkin' of the production, the alcoholic production worker who allows the quality and quantity of his work to deteriorate, and the inspector who will allow it to pass and eventually get to the customers. The traffic manager, the alcoholic traffic manager if you please, who will reroute materials over remote carrier lines so that he might pay his obligation to the agents who apparently, knowing of his weakness, supplies him with some means of drink. This is a costly item to accompany. And two, we mustn't forget the executive management of these concerns who in a drunken condition can contact customers and destroy that relationship which certainly can be costly to accompany Add these costs to the absentee factor, and I'm sure we might find that the $2 billion might even be a conservative estimate of what alcoholism costs business and industry today. AA to me has never been a club or an organization. it's been a plan of living designed to allow me to live a happy normal life designed to allow me to enjoy a fair share of happiness contentment and peace of mind the 12 steps is our heritage the 12th step is our responsibility to perpetuate the movement of Alcoholics Anonymous. I can remember back in the beginning where we very often would refer to the fact that there must certainly be something miraculous in the AA program. And I'm sure that if there is, it's contained in the workings of the 12th step. Don't we say that the only way that you can get this program is to have someone give it to you. The only way that you can keep it for yourself is to give it away. And the more you give it away, the more you will have left. Folks, this has been an exceptionally fine privilege to have had the opportunity to be here to another international conference and to again have the opportunity of meeting so many nice people. And in closing, may I close the way I do all of my talks by wishing each and every one of you a continued life of happiness, contentment and peace of mind through the ideals and the principles of AA. Thank you. Thank you very much, Tom. I think it could stand repeating.