The Knot in His Gut That Only Alcohol Could Relieve – Joe H.

Thank you, George. Before I get started, I've got a little chore I want to do, and it's a privilege for me to do this because I've known this man. He's out in our area for a while, several months, and made a lot of our meetings. Would O&E please come up here? I'd like to give you a three-year chip. Today is his birthday. Now the Alateens have something that they want to give him. Ladies and gentlemen, that's what it's all about. Owen spent some time in our area and he made a meeting, so if any of you missed him for about nine months, he was making meetings. I wasn't drinking. That's right. My name is Joe Hudson and I'm an alcoholic. I have to give you my sobriety date because in Texas, if you don't give your sobriete date they won't let you talk. So my sobrietie date is January the 12th, 1969. And that is one week and eight months and sixteen years tonight is when I ended my most recent drunk. Now I know you people in Alabama have a hell of a lot more faith than they do in Texas. taxes. And that's the reason you don't have to give yours, but over there they don't take nothing for granted. I sure want to thank the committee and I want to thank all of the people that have been involved in making this the most pleasant stay that I've ever had anyplace. From picking me up at the airport yesterday, Pat, Owen and Jimmy me last night, and Gilbert this morning, and in the meeting with the committee, and George and his wife Virginia tonight, and Red and his his wife. I just can't express the hospitality. Peggy G., call your mother. Peggie G. I don't me she's in the room. But I do thank you and this has probably been the most hospitality that I've had at any place I've ever been, and I sure want to thank you for this. And I sure thank the committee and yesterday. And Marty, thank you for giving me this card. It has helped tremendously of who's going to do what out at a certain time and everybody's been on time. You know, 16 years and one month or eight months and one week ago tonight, I felt and knew about as much about staying sober as that oil man did that lived down in Fort Worth, Texas. And at 55 years old He wanted to get out of the oil business. He retired, and he moved up into Arkansas, and he was going to raise cows. And he come up there and bought him a ranch, whole three acres. And he bought him two cows, and he put them out there on his ranch, and he fed those cows for three years. And all he had were two fat cows. And the farm agent come by one day, and he said, when am I going to have some cash? He said, well, you have to have a bull if you want cash. And that oil man took those two cows into town the next day and traded them for a bull. So I knew about as much about staying sober When I come to you people, is that all a man did about raising cows? Because I was a daily drinker, and the last five years of my drinking probably have not gone over any 48-hour period without being loaded on alcohol. I was not the falling-down drunk. I was the one that stayed hot, the maneuvering drunk, and for the last five years spent a great majority of this time in a blackout. So I might be telling you some things tonight that might never have happened. But as far as I'm concerned, it's true. Because my wife tells me that I don't get all of those stories right and I'm going to tell you some thing that she told me that i didn't even know. In fact, about five years into the program, she was telling some friends that I come into Alcoholics Anonymous with red hair. And I didn't know that. And I had to call back and talk to my first sponsor to see if I did come in with red hair. And he told me I did. Well, I was so sick that it did grow out before I even knew that I had it. it seems that I mixed up something and put on my hair and turned it red and I don't know what it was so I'm quite sure there's some other parts of my life that I will probably never know because I was this blackout drunk but tonight I want to talk about feelings I want to talk about fears Fears, guilt, and remorse. Because basically that's what brought me to Alcoholics Anonymous. The guilt, the remorse, and the fears of the unknown. Everything that I've ever done, anything that's been good for me has had to be through pain. Getting here and growing in this program has had come from pain. Because it seemed that I had to either grow or I had go. And I didn't want to go. I'd like to, to, Connie, my life in a cabbage head was pretty damn close to the same damn thing. You know, a cabbage plant, you plant it and it comes up and it has nice loose leaves on them and they're flowing in the breeze and they don't have a well. But pretty soon that cabbage head starts to grow a little core And then it starts to grow some leaves and they start to tighten up and that core gets bigger and there's more leaves. And as it continues to grow, it performs a head with a rather large core. And then you go out there and you cut that cabbage head and you come in and you cut it down to the core and you have cabbage. Well basically this is what happened in my life. It started out like the Cadmium Square. I had no worries, but I started developing some cores. And the damn cores is what, damn yeah, choked me to death before I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's what I like to call that knot that got in my gut. And I'm probably the only person in this room that ever had a knot in their gut that only alcohol would relieve to keep it from choking me to dead. there. Now the fear started with me when I was all, and it was fears of rejection, when I was probably nine years old. I had whooping cough. I have a severe case of whooping cough. And it was just after the banks had closed and the stock market had failed. And my father, we lived in the country and my father was a barber and he had a little, we We had a little farm, and every year he'd go buy his seeds, his fertilizer, and he'd have some cotton, some corn, some wheat. And then in the fall of the year when he sold the cotton, he'd pay the fertilizer bill and the seed bill. And I know he had just sold this cotton. He'd put the money in the bank. The banks closed, but he hadn't paid his bill. And this doctor come out to see my sister and I. We both had whooping cough. And the doctor diagnosed my case as tuberculosis. and I heard my father tell the doctor as he said the doctor told him said you'll have to see him me about once a week and my father I heard him tell him he said I don't have any money to pay because he said i only have a dime left in the bank score he said well I know you will in time so they put me in a room and isolated me from the rest of my two sisters and they would bring me the meals and it scalded all of these utensils. And I stayed in that room from something like November until February and I was getting to the point I was so weak I couldn't walk. And my father, I told him one night he'd come in and he picked me up on one hand and he weighed me and I can't remember but I think it was something like 38 pounds. I know I could hardly get out of bed and walk up and sit down in front of the open fireplace. place and i told my dad i said i'm going to die if i don't get out of this room and he said tomorrow you're going to get out so we got out and we got into that room and i got outside and i started getting a little better and i started getting more strength back and the doctor had told me that i would have to be protected for the rest of my life i couldn't do certain things because I had tuberculosis well in 1929 tuberculosis had a stigma attached to it even worse than alcoholism did when I come into the program 16 years ago yeah Yeah, it's Polly, and that's Goins. Polly Goins, please call your mother. It's an emergency. If anybody sees Polly have her to call her mother. there but anyway as these if I would go and living in the country and we didn't have close neighbors but as I would walk by up and down the road in front of these houses I could hear the mothers or the father whoever it might be calling their children inside of the house don't play with him he has tuberculosis and I tried to make like this didn't hurt but it did it did i missed a year in school and i started back to school and the next session the kids would come up to me and said my mother and my father told me not to play with you you've got tb and i tried to make light that it didn't work but i was burying this hurt down in my gut up, and I was putting a leaf around it, and a core had begun to develop. So the fears of rejection had started at a rather early age. Now, I did not know this, and I did no know I kept some of these resentments down here until I come into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and tried to do a fourth step as thoroughly as I knew how and some of these things started coming out well it was long about this time and I my family and I was going with the Southern Baptist and we're going into the church and I wasn't you know they didn't ask me if I want to go to church he took me to church and that's every time the door open and when When you get to be about 12 or 13 years old, if you haven't joined a Baptist church, I mean, they have some prayer meetings over you. Because you're supposed to join the church when you get that old. And we had these revivals two weeks in each summer. And then the baptizing was after the revival. And I went through one of these years at about 12 years old with the do-gooders of the church coming and praying over me and wanting me to join the church and give my heart to God. Well, nothing was happening in here, and I didn't join the Church that year. But there wasn't any services, and there was two services a day that somebody didn't come to me and try to get me to rejoin the Church. But I made up my mind that year that I wouldn't go through that again. I was going to join The Church the next year. I made it up my own mind. and at that first revival meeting when i saw this tall man come out of the car i knew he was coming to me and he did and he put his arm around me and said are you ready to give your heart to god i said i'm ready let's go and i went i joined the church and i was baptized and nothing happened in here and that's when the guilt started to develop because nothing happened. See, I'm not putting the church down and don't get me wrong. See, my mother found as a young child in her church in that same Southern Baptist Church what it took me 47 years to find in a lonely bedroom in Las Vegas, Nevada with a draped pool and tinfoil on the windows and I was alone and I found a God of my understanding and something did happen inside that morning on January the 12th 1969 so the guilt had started to build the fears are already there and when you get these two then the remorse starts now on December the 7th 1941 I was 21 years old, I was driving down the highway and I had the radio going in my car and they said something about Pearl Harbor being invaded. And I don't even know where Pearl Harbor is so it didn't make any difference. I wasn't a very good student in school but about an hour later I realized where Pearl Harbor was and what we was in war. And I was a prime suspect to be a soldier. And you cannot believe the fear that set in because I knew I'd be rejected. I had a lot of friends that went in, and they joined, volunteered the next day, the next week, and the next month. And most of them had gone in and volunteered to get the branch that they wanted in the service. I dreaded the day that the greeting would come because I knew again I'd be rejected. And it went down into my gut, and I was trying to cover it up. And so more leaves got around this core that had begun to ballot. See, I I had a lot of isms before I started drinking alcohol because I did not start actively drinking alcohol until I was 30 years old. The day come and I got that greeting. And that morning when the bus that they put 50 of us on left to go to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, I wanted something to happen to that bus. I did no want it to get there because I knew I'd be rejected I knew there'd be three that wouldn't come back two of them was cripples and shouldn't have even gone to start with and me and we did get there and we didn't we did get our examination and then they talked to you and and they interview you you know at the end and they ask a question have you ever had tuberculosis and I told them yes yes. And there was more questions. And then I was talking to a guy, I didn't know who he was, he had two little silver bars up on his shoulder. So the night when the bus, they called all the people's names, my name was not called. And I stayed over. The rest of everybody else went back. The other two guys were rejected. And the next day they put me through the same examination they had done the day before. Except when I got to the end of the line, I didn't think he was as high up as the first man I talked to because he only had a little silver eagle up here. And his first remark to me was don't perjury yourself. And I had no idea what he was talking about. Don't perjorate yourself. And he asked me the same questions. And it got down, have you ever had tuberculosis? And I said yes. He said yesterday we thought we might have had the wrong set of lungs. Today we know we have the right set. He said, you have never had pneumonia. I said no, sir. He said, you really never had a bad deep cold because there's not a blemish on your lungs. And then he showed the light on them. But he said, if I hadn't have known that some of the doctors worked through children during these times, I would have thought you was lying and I thought you were perjuring yourself. cell. And then he gave me a date to report with the friends that I went with the day before to active service. Now, I felt good about that I didn't have no, had never had tuberculosis. But when I got on that bus alone to ride back in the next three, three and and a half hours. I cannot explain the feeling that went into my gut, because by this time that doctor had become the wealthiest man in our county. And I could not go back and tell these people, even my mother, that I never had tuberculosis. So I buried it deep down in my gut, and it started a core, and those leaves started to tighten. And I buried it. And I've buried it so deep that I've become unaware of it. But I made up my mind when I got out of service, I was going to be a wealthier man than that doctor, and didn't make any damn difference how I done it. but I was going to be a wealthier man than he and that's not a very good attitude but I had buried and I'd started this core to really roll well I won't bother I won' t bore you with a a blow-by-blow description of what happened to me but I'd started the fears the guilt and the remorse had started to build before I started drinking alcohol. So I had the isms. I just hadn't let them down. I am not going to tell you I was an alcoholic the first time I drank and got drunk. I could change my mind, but alcohol didn't do to me in the beginning what it done to me in the end. Because I could take it or leave it in the beginning, but I couldn't in the end. And due to health problems with my first wife, we moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 1948. And I went to work for one of the largest grocery companies in the state and went up real fast with this company. And at 29 years old, they had made me a vice president in this company in charge of purchasing. And this put me to dealing with alcohol and I was being entertained with alcohol. I started entertaining with alcohol, and then it worked its way on up to where I was going going to lunch about every day with somebody different, and was going to four restaurants. And these four restaurants knew when I come in that they were never to serve me a drink in front of me, Sedona Martini. But they were to put four ounces of vodka in every glass of water they brought me. If I had coffee it was a coffee royal because we had a policy in our company we didn't drink on duty. And I wasn't drinking on duty, but we'd go into these restaurants and I'd go in with a rep from this company or that company and they'd have two or three martinis. They'd walk out fine and I'd go out stoned. Now these are plateaus that took me quite some time. You know each plateau you're going down all the time. And it got to where I couldn't wait for that noon thing and in 1964 I decided I'd better retire and get the hell or resign and get the Hell away from that company before they fired me because I could tell the hounds was after me and here the third largest stockholder and a senior vice president and I knew I about about ready to get fired. And I resigned and moved to Las Vegas, Nevada. Now that's where you need to go if you're an alcoholic. Where you can get booze around the clock 24 hours a day 7 days a week and you get free if you want to act like you want the gamble. Well the last few things that happened in my last year of drinking basically brought me me to Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, my wife, and let me do this, let me give Al-Anon a plug right here before I forget it. I never talk if I don't give Al Anon a hug. It's probably the biggest driving force behind me being sober today is the program of Al-Ana. When my second wife saw what was happening to me she started trying to find help for me and she found help for herself in that little old program that I got mad about called Al-Anon but now the reason that I say it saved my life see I already had cancer and again I had developed tuberculosis I stayed sore with blue spots on me all the time now Now, that was my cancer, because I'd rub it to make sure that it was going to hurt. And I coughed and I gagged every morning for about two hours until I could get some drinks down. But my wife joined Al-Anon, and it changed. And my cancer got better, becauseI didn't no longer have those blue places and spots I couldn't explain. wings. And I couldn't figure out how I got them. And she was going to one meeting a week and then two meetings a week, and then she was gone six nights a week. And at first I was mad, and when I got to the point, I didn't care. You know, it took me three years of being sober before I found out what the hell happened to me. See, when she started going to Al-Anon, she quit kicking me. When I would pass out, she would put on them sharp-toed shoes and just kick the hell out of me, and she didn't pick her spots. So Al-A-Non basically saved my life before I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, this is in her story, but she said the morning that I paced her in the hall and I put up my hands like that. She knew she'd become a beast. But see, a lot of you Al-Anons, you might have had husband abuse, but I had wife abuse. youth. Well, along about this time, I was a member of the Satoma Club, Service to Mankind, and it was a noon meeting. And this gave me two drinks going, two drinks at the meeting and two drinks coming back, and to hell with mankind. So then one day they had a meeting for me. Now I'm at the point now that I don't want to discuss my drinking with nobody. I'm disgusted with myself. I can't quit drinking. I've done tried and I can. And do you know that that Satoma program chairman brought in an alcoholic alcoholic and an Al-Anon to be the program. And they were just telling us the facilities that was available for the alcoholic man and woman, but they showed a little film for about ten minutes that shows what happens to you when you become alcoholic. You take the drink, the drink goes to the blood system, and then that drink starts going up here. You've already got the allergy of the body coupled with the obsession of the mind, and it showed them but a white monkey's going to your brain. For one, it's too many and a thousand's not enough. Well, I left that meeting and I went back to my store and I sat down and I wrote a letter and I resigned because I could not, my business would not permit me to go to any more noon meetings. Now, I never got drunk one time from that till I had my last drink I couldn't see them damn white monkeys going to my brain. So that was one hell of a 12-step job they put on me. I got sober, I went back, I joined that club, went back to the same Satoma Club, and one year from the month I resigned, I was made Satoman of the Year because I went to work and trying to do something for mankind. But I had to sober up first. and there was about this time that i went out one morning and my car was dazed it was good see i couldn't see any too good and i looked in and there Was a little bit of smoke coming out of the seat and i thought well when these high school kids come by here this morning and throw a cigarette in there so i went in and got me a little saucepan and i come back to put out the the car. Well, the saucepan I throwed away and I got the garden hose. I'd been smoldering all night and I pulled all the uproasting off of the front seat and I thought I had it all out and I had water in the bottom of the car and I went and got me a towel and put over the seats and I'm going to work. Now that morning my wife went on, she's going to Al-Anon, she went on and opened up the store. See if I'd drunk she'd be going to the store, she wouldn't have me if I was was drinking, and most of the time she didn't help me because I was drinking. But that morning she went on and opened up the store, and I started to work. And man, I got about two blocks from the house, and hell, I was getting brandy. Them damn springs were hot. And I pulled into a service station and asked them where the closest fire station was. And I was right up next to their gas pumps. And they talked about my mother, and they talked about my relatives and they told me to get that thing away from there but they told me where the fire station was and I started to drive and I hit a school zone now when an alcoholic starts to think he's in trouble and I said if I don't want it to flame I won't give it any air so I rolled up all the windows as tight as I could and I went to the bar station and I got there and I rolled out I I couldn't walk. I stumbled in and told them I brought him a fire. And, you know, that fireman didn't believe me. So another one come by. He said, can I have you? I said, yeah, I brought you a fire, and he didn't leave me. So the chief come in, come by, and I said I brought your fire. He said where is it? I said out there in your driveway. way. And he went out there and come back in, and he said, damn sure did. And they went out there, and they tore the rest of that posting out of that car, and got me some cardboard, but they told me not to drive, and I told them I was fine. So I started on to work now. I don't have nothing but springs and cardboard in the car and poor water, but I'm going to work. And I got so dizzy that I couldn't, you know, I just started just about to pass out and I stopped at home. And that day we had a lady that come in and helped us one day a week and she was there and I passed out. And when I woke up, she took me to the hospital and they kept me about three and a half hours. And they told me another 10 to 15 minutes in that car and I would have died. So I went on home, and about 11 o'clock that night, I started feeling normal again, and I started drinking alcohol again. It didn't stop me from drinking. But that insurance company was narrow-minded. When they got the bill for all of that, they said, for God's sakes, the next time you get a fire, call the fire department. Don't try to take it to them. So I guess that is a little unusual. But, you know, with all of this going on, when I was growing up back in the hills of North Carolina, we have a lot of tunnels in those mountains up there, over the railroad. And as a kid, we used to walk into that tunnel. And, you Know, you keep walking and the light gets dimmer out here, and you get into that tunnel, and then you can't see either end, so there's no light. It's complete darkness. And see, this is what was happening to me. I was bearing all of these problems I had down here in my gut and covering them up with more layers, more layers like the cabbage head. And the core was getting larger and larger. And then as you get in that tunnel, and if you continue to walk, you start seeing a little glimmer of light on the other end. and then it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and then you keep walking and then you walk back out into the sunshine and this is basically what happened to me I'll walk myself into complete darkness with alcoholism and but I kept on walking and I walked back out into the sunlight through the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and that's the best way in the simplest way that I know what happened in my life now Now, along about this time, my wife was trying to get me sober, going to Al-Anon. And she got us to go up into the mountains on weekends. And we'd go up there on Lee's Canyon and we'd camp out. Now, the first time I went up there, I put vodka in a spare tire. I let the air out of it. And I put it every place because she was checking me pretty closely as to what I was drinking. But I knew I couldn't go up there and spend a weekend without a drink. But she said, now let's come back. I got drunk, and she couldn't understand me. But she says, let's go up here every weekend, and that's fine. But the next week, I went and bought me 12 half-pints, and I went back. And I hid them in 12 different places. I knewI would never find all of them, but I'd find part of them. So we went back, and we enjoyed that summer. I didn't get sober, I stayed drunk, but on the side of that mountain there was a cave down about halfway. The animals could come down and get under these rocks in the caves. So whenever it decided that after making my... The last time I went to church, probably I had the most remorse when I walked out of it. See, I changed from that Baptist church. I got away from that Buddhist church years before because that was what was keeping me drunk. But I joined the Presbyterian. I didn't know about some of these other churches or I might have done something else. But I knew they drank some. But you know, my drinking didn't get any better. It got worse. But when I went to that church That Sunday morning My wife and my youngest son Would no longer go to church with me Because my life was unmanageable And that morning I knew the reason It hadn't been doing me any good Is I'd been drinking before I'd go But I got up, I took a shower I put on the best suit of clothes I had And I started to church The 11 o'clock service And about halfway out to church church. That knot was so big and choking me to death, and I said, well, if I just have me a half pint under the seat, it'll help. And I stopped and I bought me a half pint, and put it under the sheet. And I pulled on that churchyard, and I couldn't go in until I laid down in the floorboard of the car and drank half of that half pint of vodka. And I went in and the service lasted for 45 minutes or an hour it was cold it was in december and i knew everybody in there knew what i had done and i didn't have a dry dry thread on my shirt and as i walked out of that church door to my car i knew i would never sober up and this is when i started having the suicidal thoughts and the way i was going to take my life that I was going to get me a tow sack full of high pints of vodka and I was gonna climb up on that mountain in Lee's Canyon. I was wanna come down and get under that rock and drink myself to death. But then I'd have thoughts like, in case it don't kill you, you don't want to starve to death Now, you've got to have you some pork and beans and vinaigrette sausage and some crackers and that's gonna take another tow sack. that. Now, I can't travel one at a time. So how am I going to get two up there? And I'm still trying to figure this out, how to take my life. And I got sober before I figured it out and still haven't figured it out. Well, about that time, my car looked like a buzzer. I didn't ever wreck a car. I was a fender bender. And when I come to Alcoholics Anonymous, my car flopped in the breeze, the fenders. And I don't remember putting one dent on those fenders, not one. And you never know what your timing when you're making a 12-step call. You never know. And i think only God knows the timing. But that afternoon and me being in so many blackouts and I put a big dent on the car the night before and and I didn't know where it was. And I knew that someday, that there's going to be somebody walk in and serve some papers on me for something that I was unaware of. And I lived in this kind of fear. And that afternoon, there was a tall six-foot-two man dressed in a suit of clothes come in that front door of that store, of that Western Auto store, and I heard him ask for me. Now, I'm at the point that if you come to do business with me and I don't know you, I want you to go away. I don' t even want you around. And I kept him waiting for 30 minutes because I wanted him to go away because to me he looks like a district attorney. And when he wouldn' t go away, I went over and I said, Can I help you? He said, Yes, I'd like to see you in the back room. and my knees almost buckled. And we walked to the back room and he reached in the pocket and I thought, oh my God. And he comes out with a card. He says, my name is Don W. I'm an alcoholic. I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't know about your hugging and your kissing but that man almost got kissed in my back room that day. But I remember what he told me that day, or what I told him. I said, I can quit any time I want to. Only my wife thinks I drink too much. He said, if you ever have a problem, give me a call. And turned around and walked out of that store at the front door while I stood in that back door and watched him. And I couldn't believe an alcoholic wearing a suit of clothes and walking straight and a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I looked at his card, district manager of Omaha Life, a businessman. Now, I got drunk that night. I saw the monkeys go into my brain and I also saw that man walking out of my store as an alcoholic. And I never got drunk from that time on that it was the monkeys and Don I could see. Now, if you don't think that this will drive you nuts when you're seeing these things because my hallucination was people to start with and it was about to drive me nuts but I couldn't quit drinking and I had just give up that I couldn'T quit drinking So I guess on the morning of January 11th, 1969 It was a Saturday morning morning, I guess I just got tired of the high cost of low living. And that morning I got up and I shook my fist and I said, today I'm not going to drink. And nobody could have meant that any more than I meant until I got in the car. I didn't take a drink that morning. And I drove three quarters of a mile, I re-evaluated that statement and pulled it into a liquor store. And I bought me a high pint. See, I'd already got to the high pint. I'd got away from the cases, the fifths, the fourths, and it would have been high pints for a long time. Because I could carry in those baggy pants, I could carried two high pints and you'd never know it. But that day I drank all day long. It stayed hot. My wife wouldn't come help me. And only one employee showed up. Really, my business was at the Point didn't need him. But I got drunk. And that night we was going to a ball game at Convention Center off Paradise Road, and that night my wife wouldn't go with me and my son wouldn't come with me. And both are sports fans. They wouldn't get together. They wouldn' t go to church with me, they wouldn' d go to a sports event with me because they never knew when I was going t come unglued. And I couldn' t understand it. So I told them to hell with it. I'd go by myself, and I didn't go home. And I went. And at half-time, I went out and I drank half of the half pint I had under the seat. I come back in, and sometime during the last half of that game between Las Vegas and Houston, I left. I can only remember going to the car, I found it, and I remember drinking the half of a half pint. And the next thing I remember, I'm driving on a lonely road. Now this is not unusual because I've come out of blackouts many times driving. But I couldn't understand why I was driving on this lonely dark road. And I looked up and I saw a sign that says to the Blue Diamond Mine entrance. And I thought, what am I doing up here? I know I'm drunk and I'll pull over, I'll go to sleep. But God that night was working overtime with me. I didn't pass out. I blacked out again, and the next thing I can remember, I am pulling back onto the expressway, overlooking the city with all the lights. I know I'm drunk. I knowI should pull over and go to sleep. Told I've done a lot of other things. My wife picked me up on home. I'm moving all this time. I'm not wasting any time. She was on her way from an outlaw meeting, and she picked up my trail as I went to the store. And I was spending over 50% of my time in the back room with that Western Auto store. I had me a cot because I felt secure. When I'd go in there and unlock the door, and then I had my chain, I'd wrap around the doors on the inside and put a padlock on it. And I felt secured. And that's where I was spinning over 50%. And my night was drunk in the background of that store. door. She said, I went in and I had the half-pints. You could tell when I had the half pints in my pocket. But I didn't stay. I went home. And I got home and that's the next thing I remember. And now I'm going to get out and I'm going to go in the house. And so drunk I can't walk. So I decided I'd crawl. and I couldn't crawl. I was too drunk and I got back in the car and passed out and sometime during the night they got me out of the car and into that lonely bedroom by the youngest son and my wife and the next morning I woke up it was January the 12th and I wokeup about 7 o'clock with the clearest thoughts I've ever had. I could see me for what I was and I knew I drove that Las Vegas strip in that blackout and it literally scared me to death now I probably drove it hundreds of times unaware of it but that night I knew I had drove that Las Vegas trip in a blackout and any of you that's been there you know what the traffic's like on a Saturday night and they don't have too many stoplights A lot of lighted crosswalks. And that morning, it was like I had run into a wall that I couldn't go over, I couldn t go under and I couldn' t go around, and it didn't have a door. And I knew prayer wasn't going to do any good because I had tried this for a long time. I knew I could not drink and live, and I didn't know how to live without drinking. you. And if you've been to that spot, ladies and gentlemen, you know where I was that morning. And I just rolled out on my knees and said the simplest prayer that I've ever said, but the most sincere. God, I didn't even have to be sober, God take the desire of alcohol haul from me. I can't do it. I laid back in bed and I was churning and my mind was rolling and I got up to go see if I'd put some more dents on the car and that high pint I had in my pocket was laying out on the lawn and I picked it up in a little brown bag, clipped it at the top and I I picked up the newspaper and I walked through the front door and it was like I was carrying 200 pounds off my shoulders and it dropped off. I set the vodka down, I set The Newspaper down and I went back to that lonely bedroom and fell in bed and slept for about three and a half of the most content, relaxing sleep and rest that I'd had for years. years. And from that moment till this moment, I have not had the desire to have a drink of alcohol. See, that morning something left me that hadn't returned and something come into my life that hadn t left. And that morning I want to think that I made a surrender to to alcohol. That day I watched Joan Amos and the Jets beat Baltimore and thought I was watching the first Super Bowl game. I didn't know what was going on around me. The next night, as my wife was going to her Al-Anon meeting, and five minutes before she was ready to go, I said, I believe if you'll wait a minute, I'll go with you. Now, I was not an an alcoholic, but I wanted to go to see what kind of a problem I might have. And I walked into a group of people about 35 at a stag meeting and there was about three newcomers and they got up and they said their name if they were an alcoholic. I just told them my name was Joe and I wasn't an alcoholic you know I didn't say I was an alcoholic but as As every person got up there and talked, I said, my God, my wife's been out with him. The next person that got up and talked I said to God, she's been out with Him. Every person that had got up there and talk, my life had been out with every one of them and I knew it because she had told him what to say when I got there. See, I did not know that this is a language of the heart and you You can't talk this talk if you've not walked that walk. And they'd walk the walk, and I'd walk to walk, and they were talking the talk. But I got mad. She's been gone six nights a week. She's being going out there. We're mad. It's in this meeting. And I told her on the way home, I said, I might go once a month, but it's not going to be for me. And she didn't fuss. But the next day, I could hear your laughter and I could see your eyes and you had something I wanted so I went back the next night and it was a mixed group and I was identifying with the women and I said my God she's been out with them too I'm not an alcoholic yet but I went by my third night and it wasn't it was closed meeting and I didn't know it was close meeting meeting, but I went in that meeting and I was not an alcoholic. But when that meeting was over, I had not only admitted I was an alcoholic, I accepted it. And that night I bought the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I had told my wife earlier that I was going to go to one meeting a month. The first year that I was in AlcoholicsAnonymous, I made over 450 meetings. I needed something to take this this void. I was a round-the-clock drinker, and I liked those meetings at 2 o'clock in the morning, at 10.30 at night, at 1 o' clock, at 12 o' o' clock, 8.30. I liked all those meetings and all those times, and I would make one to two and sometimes three meetings a day because I needed this to take care of this boy. Because I went in and I got into the program, and I started reading the big book. And I too was like Margaret talked about last night. She couldn't retain what she read. The first time I read the big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, there's one One sentence is all I can remember, and it's in chapter 3. And it says, if you be alcoholic, you're like the man with no legs. You can't grow new ones. See, two and a half years prior to that time, my father was a diabetic. Admitted it for 30 years, but he never did accept it. When he felt good, he done what he wanted to do. When he fell bad, he don't know what the doctor said to do, So the result was that he lost one leg and then two legs and then it took his life. And to me, what that sentence told me was if I be alcoholic, I cannot take one drink and live a normal life. So I thank God for that this thing come to me through my father because it maybe has saved my life, or helped save my life. Well, I'd been in the program and going to all these meetings, and a little over eight months my business had started to improve. I wasn't completely broke when I got to AA. I had gone through a fortune in the last five years, but I wasn't completely broke. And my stores started picking up in business. All they needed was somebody who was sober to run them. That's all they needed and started doing good. And on the 5th of October of 1969 we had some racial disturbances that you probably never did read about. I could bring you newspapers that high with headlines that big that never got outside the city because Las Vegas could not afford this kind of publicity. To my knowledge, my wife and myself were the only two white people, it was on duty that day, that got away without getting hurt one way or the other. I had a spiritual experience that day that I cannot really explain but any of you that's had this, you know what I'm talking about. When I went to the back room to get the shotgun and I come out with it and I walked out on the floor and there was a thought come to me, go set it down. I took that shotgun to the Back Room and I set it Down and a calmness that I cannot explain to you come over me. I know what it was. I didn't ask God to take this, but God took this and he put the calmness. And I took a pistol, my wife took a pistol, and we took the money out of the register and we walked out through this mob and we got in our car and we Got Away and we go home and we saw a television camera moving in and we watched our business carried away that day. We watched them riding the bicycles. bicycles. We watched them rolling their automobile tires. We watched them carrying the TVs. Now that wasn't a particularly good day, but it was a good day to me because I didn't have to drink. I had found something that was greater than the material things. That day when we had friends that was calling us, we had friends it was coming over from the program, we had a lot of Al-Anon and that night I went to that Monday night meeting. And And whenever these big meat people and these ugly people, men would come up and put their arms around me and say, all you've got to do is don't drink and everything's going to be all right. And for their love, I cannot tell this without getting emotional to this day. Because they meant it. You'll always have a shelter over your head. you'll always have food if you just don't drink see most of the days that I've been in Alcoholics Anonymous they've been fantastic days and then there's days that all I do is I just don't drank and as these days come and go it gives me faith and drops out the fear that I had when I I come here. But I had picked out a man that looked like my father, who'd been in the program for eight and a half years to be my sponsor. And after this all happened, I did not have the insurance to take care of him. I did no longer have the money to pay the people I owed him. And my attorney had wrote up bankrupt papers. My accountant said it wouldn't work. My banker said it wasn't worth it. But my sponsor was a busboy at the El Cretes Hotel. He had eight and a half years in the program of alcoholics and non-alcoholics. He said, if you don't want to take bankruptcy, you don' t have to. Use the principles of alcoholic synonyms. I said, George, I don' T know what you' re talking about. He said, well, the first thing, you little SOB, you've got to start being honest. Go to these people. Tell them you can't pay them, but you will. And don't you promise them anything you can do. I went back and I told these professional people that I wanted to try this. And they said it won't work, but I'm going to try it. But you can try it." Had 45 people. I went to see R wrote letters to 45 people How many do you think went along with me? All but one. And I couldn't get him to answer his door, his mail, or his telephone. And I hope he's in our program today because that's the way I acted. He's the only person that I paid off 100% when he turned it over to collecting agents. George is no businessman. A businessman he's not. up. And I've told him this many times, but he gave me some advice that was better than the advice that the professionals was giving me. After about three years, the bank that said it wouldn't work loaned me enough money to pay off everybody so I'd only have one payment. And George even set this up that I could pay it off in seven years. And the And the way it worked out, I made my last payment in six years and eleven months. And I didn't have to take bankruptcy. Two years ago, I asked George, I said, how could a dumb guy like you, a busboy, give me advice that was better than the professionals? He looked at me and he said, somebody told me. And it dawned on me. me. That's the way this program works. Somebody told me, and it's working. Now I handled that elephant. The day before Christmas the first year I was sober, I got up that morning, my wife gave me a grocery list. I needed some money out of the bank and I needed to mail some packages. There are three things that bugged the hell out out of me then and it still bugs me. Now, I went to the post office to mail some packages to North Carolina the day before Christmas. I'd stand in line and I could see some people back there taking a break and I couldn't see them. If you're going to take a break, get the hell out of the way. Don't let me see you. I don't want to stand inline while you're taking a break. So I got my packages mailed. I went to the bank to cash a check. You can go in and they put in all these teller windows, and you go in there at 10 o'clock in the morning and there's always somebody out to lunch. And we stood in line with, and they still had a bunch of cages open. And by this time, my emotions, my energy was going. I was just getting to eat up. And then I went through the grocery store, and I've only been in the a grocery bin is 25 years. And I know the day before Christmas is the busiest day that you have. But I get in there and I have to stand in line again, and they've still got some of those check stands they don't have open. And when I got home that night, I was completely drained to the point I had to go to bed. And as I lay in there for a little bit and started thinking about that day, I said, hell, those packages are not going going to get there. I should have mailed them two weeks ago. I knew I was out of money. I should've gone to the bank before the day before Christmas. I know better than to go to the grocery store. And I started to laugh. See, I had let the mosquitoes eat me up all day long. And there's one thing that I want to remind you of. Elephants don't bite. Mosquitoes do. shoes. And it's been the mosquitoes in this program that have damn near eaten me up. It reminds me of the drunk, the alcoholic, he's still practicing, and he went to the doctor and he had both of his ears bandied up. And the doctor said, well, what happened? He said, well, my wife was on him and the telephone was over there next to it. So I went over to answer the phone and picked up the hot iron. The doctor said, well, that explains one thing. What about the other one? He said, yes, I'll be called back. So we keep doing the same things and I was drinking over and over. And I got to where I didn't like to work too well. I'd do anything to keep from working. And that reminds me of the alcoholic that the police picked up. And he was out riding around on this morning, and about 11 o'clock the police picked him up. He had drunk. And he said, the questioner said, do you work? And he says, yes. He said, where do you works? He said I work at the domino factory. He said what do you do? He said i put dots on dominoes. He said how come you're not working today? And he say hell, today they're running double blanks. So, I mean, these are the things that I would do to go to any length Not to work, but as long as I could drink And you know, we get sober We get sober in this program And we start trying to be truthful And sometimes we tell the truth And our spouse don't believe it and there was a story of this man he had a good looking secretary and he had been wanting to ask her for a date for a long time but he didn't have the courage so one afternoon about 4.30 they finished their work and he asked her would you like to have a drink and she said yes I would so they had two drinks at the office that led to two drinks at the club and that led to two dranks at her apartment and he fell asleep sleep and didn't wake up until 5 o'clock in the morning. He jumps out of bed, he takes a shower, puts on his suit, and he asks his secretary, he said, do you have any powder? She said, what kind? Oh, I don't care, baby powder, talcum powder, anything. He said, oh yes. He says, come in here and put it on my sleeves. And she powdered his sleeves, both of them up real good. He jumped in the car, he gets home about 5.20, walks in, opens the door. Yes, I sure was. He walked in with his hands like this. She said, where in hell have you been? He said, well, yesterday afternoon, about 4.30, my secretary and I had two drinks at the office, led to two drinks at the club, two drinks to her apartment. I went to sleep and I just woke up. She says, what do you got in your hands? He says, nothing. Let me see them. She pulled them out with all that powder. She say, you lying SOB, you've been in the pool hall all night. And you know, and you know those things happen so many times when we might want to get truthful too fast I think sometimes. But I've heard several stories in AA. And one of my favorites, because there's so much truth to it. It seems that this member of Alcoholics Anonymous died and he was at the funeral home and a lot of the members was going to pay their last respects. And as they would go by, there was another corpse over in this room and a little guy sitting up on a stool looking into the casket it and he was crying. And as the last member of Alcoholics Anonymous left that night, he stopped to go over to talk to the little man, and he put his arm around him, and he said, a brother? He said, no, just a good old drinking buddy. And he drank himself to death. He said well did he ever try Alcoholics Anonymous? Oh, he said, hell no. He never did it that bad. And any of you that's making 12-step calls today, you know what I'm talking about. They'll tell you he never did get that bad. I called my wife last night to tell her what a beautiful time I was having and how wonderful you people were. And we got all of this out of the way, and she said, do you do you remember Mary Ann that I took to Al-Anon about six years ago? I said, I sure do. Do you remember her husband? I said I sure did because he wouldn't have no part of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And after a few meetings in Al-Anan, she decided they could do this a different way. And yesterday morning, she picked him some breakfast and he walked out to his pickup truck, pulled out his shotgun and blew his head off. but he never did yet that bad. So, I mean, we have a lot of good stories and good things that happened to us in this program. But there's also some tragic things. And I've had to learn to accept the bad along with the good. I would like to have opened up something in that man's head, turned a little screw, and give him some of what I had, but he wouldn't accept it. so we're dealing with a very deadly illness it will kill you it is suicide sometimes it takes a long time sometimes it take a short time and I only thank God that he saw fit to let me find him or he found me and it don't make any difference because the God of my understanding has completely given me a new way of life. And I'd like to hear a speaker tell me what it's like today in his life and in his work. And I don't tell you this in a boastful manner, but I went to work for a company 12 years ago. Had nine stores. When I left on Thursday, we had 199 stores. stores. I've been director of marketing there for the last eight years and worked in practically everything I've seen the small company grow. I know I've had a little to do with it because we have probably 25 or 30 recovered alcoholics that's working in our company, and last month month. I had four that come to my office. If you come to work there and you're new, and if you're there two days, and if I see you, I'm going to tell you I'm an alcoholic, and if ever you have a problem, my door is open because I make unsolicited calls because Don made one on me. And I don't wait for you to come if I know that there's a problem. I will go and I will talk to them. And it has paid off, I think, in some cases. And there's a lot of them in the company that don't like me. And I accept that. But it is a privately owned company. But the man that owns the company, he does give me a lot credit. In fact, he told me he wished every employee he had was an alcoholic and a member of Alcoholics Anonymous because he said you people have more friends than any other group of people that I know. And I think that's right. I think it's true. I think they're right. Now, I could have got up here tonight and I read to you what I'm going to read to your man close and I could sit down and you would know me. I cut this out of a religious magazine magazine, before I ever stopped drinking alcohol, it didn't mean anything really to me. But as I stayed sober, this got to meaning more and more to me, and today I never like to close without... I do not have it memorized. I should have but I don't. I don' t have nothing memorized because that woman had told me when I come in, when I already had memorized the the preamble, and almost had Chapter 5 memorized. She got up, and I thought she was looking at me. She said she didn't even look at me, but she said all these new people that come in, the first thing you know they've memorized everything, and the next thing they're getting well off of a drunk again. And I un-memorized everything I knew, and I still don't memorize nothing because I wanted to stay sober. But this is called Footprints in the Sand, and I'm sure a lot of you know this. But it says, One night a man had a dream. He dreamt he was walking along the beach with God. Across the sky flashed scenes from his life. From each scene he noticed two sets of footprints in the sand. One belonged to him and one to God. When the last scene had flashed before him, he looked back at the footprints and noticed that many times along the path there was only one set of footprints on the sand." He also noticed that this happened during the lowest and saddest time in his life. This really bothered him, and he questioned God. God, you said once I decided to follow you, you would walk all the way with me. But I noticed during the most troublesome times of my life, there's only one set of footprints in the sand. I don't understand why. Why? When I needed you most, you deserted me. God replied, My precious child, I love you and I will never leave you. During the times of your trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then I carried you. Thank you and God bless you.