The Obsession That Replaced the Obsession to Drink – Joe L.

My name is Joe and I'm an alcoholic. God, that sounds good. I'm just another bumble, lovable old AA member like we've had you see so many of here the last couple of days and these gentlemen all here who look as though they're hanging on everything I say with rapt attention will steal anything I say and take it to the they'd make alabama and the 40 thieves look like saint paul i don't know really how to get started i'm too close to home really they say that a prophet is without honor in his own country and there seems to be a popular thing going now around AA about taking a whack at the old member in AA I don't know the new people spend about half of their time you know they it's a sign of growth when you learn to criticize your sponsor. Our lovable fat friend over here who looks like a camel in labor. he dropped on it a little last night just cut all the old fellas all to pieces but at the expense of being sober and not kidding for a little while i'm gonna vary a bit and say that when i came to the program of alcoholics anonymous they told me that i could make a way of life out of it and that it would last as long as I practiced these principles and became involved in Alcoholics Anonymous. So tonight, I have a little thing that I'm going to humor myself with. I want you to meet the oldest living AA member in the state of Texas. Stand up Carl! And if I don't quite cover this thing as well as I should tonight, corner him and ask him a few questions after the meeting. He read the Jack Alexander article in 1941. His father insisted that he did. and he was afraid that if he got to A.A., they'd fix him where he couldn't drink anymore. But he caught a freight train and rode from Seguin, Texas, to Houston and stayed undercover there, I understand, for a year and a half to keep A.I. from finding him. But his anniversary date is in September of 1942 and he's 31 years sober. So ask him, maybe, why it's necessary to keep coming to alcoholics and hominids. This is a great way of life. I've got a lot of notes here, which I'll probably drop on the floor before it's over with, because I'm one of the old members and I'm becoming senile fast. I'm like you, I know what I want to do, but that's the extent of it. Trying to get a dirty trick on me, they get this Hebrew to introduce me here. If that had been gefilte fish, you could have pronounced it. Mike's a great friend of mine. Sometime... You can't hear the thing. Can't hear? Come on up, Bill, and let's get the goddamn... Get the thing? Bill and I, we have a thing about these. right down at it and talk to it we talk about the fallacy of modern day engineering and we were discussing it this evening these people who plan these buildings and great facilities and spend thousands of dollars on seats and table covers and then they spend three and a half on one of these damn things When they go to pieces, some bookkeeper with a pocket knife comes around and wants to help you work on them. They've been the hell for me ever since I was talking, you know. How about that? Can you hear it? What part do you want me to go over? Seriously speaking, I think sometimes we do get carried away with ourselves and try to make a picture to the new fellow in Alcoholics Anonymous that something mysterious about this program. That it's a cloak and dagger sort of a thing. And go through a lot of calisthenics. that's, to us, not true. Because you just looked at a man who has naturally lived a very happy and contented and peaceful existence for 31 years. Yeah, that's proof enough itself, isn't it? Back in 1955, I became a friend of the fellow that wrote our book too and some of the rest of the guys. But there was an old Catholic priest named Father Ed Dowling, who's mentioned in our book, A.A. Comes of Age. And he was talking about this thing in St. Louis and it was one of the last talks that he ever made. His bones had already begun to atrophy and they stood him up to the table. And he said this, Alcoholics Anonymous is natural. it is natural at the point where nature comes closest to the supernatural namely in the humiliations and in the consequent humility so this is a natural way to live and we who come into Alcoholics Anonymous and have the patience the tenacity if you please or whatever, or maybe the price of failure is too great, I believe sincerely that we live better than any other facet of society. Go. now i would have to go back to another day and tell of a little story that happened that permitted you and i to be here tonight maybe some of us at least me and when bill came out of the hospital first i got to tell a joke. You know, you're supposed to tell a joke. He told a joke and Tom told three of them. Tom tells jokes all the time about itching. Shit, I thought everybody did. But the drunk at the late hours in the bar, and this sounds so natural, it sounds like me and I thought was terrifically amusing. Stuck his head over very close to the bartender and he said to the bar tender, does your lemons have feathers on them? And the bartenders said why of course not whatever gave you the idea. He said I think it just squeezed a canary. Maybe we can identify with that, you say the least. But years ago, when Bill came out of town's hospital with his spiritual experience, he went out and for five months he was harped upon the spiritual experience that he had. And at intervals, he visited back with a little doctor in the hospital. And he went by there, and these are Bill's words. have tape for this he visited with him just before he went out to akron and the little doctor lit a candle to our society which probably permitted all of us to be here he said bill quit preaching to the drunk he said you've been around here for four or five months now telling them about their spiritual experience and you ain't got a damn one of them he said tell him about the malady of alcoholism about alcoholism as a sickness and tell him about your experience then you can tell him about the spiritual thing and he worked from that and Bill thought enough of it that he put it into our book of experience and it reads like this and I'll read it to you verbatim continue to speak of alcoholism as a sickness a fatal malady talk about the condition of body and mind which accompany it keep his attention the new man focus mainly on your personal experience explain that many are doomed who never realize their predicament explain that many are doomed who do not realize they're bigamons. And Bill listened to the little doctor because he had a lot of respect for him, and he went from there to Akron, and most of you know the story. And he made this statement somewhere that night as he was looking through the telephone book or madly going to the bar in the back. He said, Suddenly I realized that I needed him more than he needed me. and this was the beginning of the secret of the love in Alcoholics Anonymous and Tom O'Sullivan mentioned it last night when he used the expression the light went on Tom and Chuck and I were talking one night over in Dallas I guess a year ago we were reliving this particular episode that took place when Bill called on Bob and the meeting lasted for some five hours it should have lasted for five minutes 15 minutes or so and one of us asked the other the question was me or tom or chuck who how do you think that bill felt when he saw the light go on and bob So this is what's happening. This is what I'm looking at here tonight. I can see the light, I can it in that old gungy's head over there. I see it over here and I can see the bright light shine. We don't have to talk about what we are or where we came from and what it's like because we can see that light. So if I got anything you say, had left to talk for a few minutes about the light going out, about the light getting dim, about frightening lonely experiences of the alcoholic when the old lamp soon flickers and dies and she's gone for good. And did you know that the percentage of us that the light ever comes back on into very small. We're playing with the thing that's about 65 a game. The odds that we're here are very scarce, so we are most most most fortunate minority of society those that are here tonight. So I started drinking and then if I had a the light, it flickered a little. But the book tells us that the alcoholic drinks, and this was an amazing thing for me, a genius, to find this out. The alcoholic drinks essentially because he likes the effect produced by alcohol. Now I've been at A nearly a quarter of a century and I've been to one seminar and one retreat and this nearly bowled me over. Those goddamn psychiatrists had me believing that I drank because my mama put me on the pot backwards. alcoholics drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol and I went to this seminar and I never will forget that this psychiatrist and he looked like one he did and I never will forget the profound statement that he made what an impact it left on me this fellow who had studied years in the greatest universities and he said that where heavy drinking doesn't occur alcoholism seldom fails My wife has got a, I lost my faith in psychiatry about that time, my wife's got a nephew that's a psychiatrist. He's a nice little fellow. We never heard him say anything real smart. The other day her mother had passed away and a group of the family gathered to take the furniture out of the house and we asked him to help us, he came along, and I went out to get him in out of the rain. And he was a frightening sight to look at, really. His coloring crayon had gotten wet and he'd been sitting out back doing coloring books there and brought him in and we tried to get him to help us a little bit and I sent him to town three times and he enjoyed the trip, I'm sure. To get us a cap to put over a guy's pipe. And I finally had to send somebody else to get it. He couldn't quite differentiate between three quarters and one half. But he's a nice kid, a nice child. We don't brag about him in his pictures not hanging in our den, but I lost a little faith in the experts along about this time when that fella said that when little drinking is found you sell them by now holly. God that's smart ain't it? We've got some experts today peddling news like that around and they've got a pamphlet for everything now and you just all you gotta do is read and not many folks getting sober but they're reading the hell of a lot but if we're drunk start drinking from whatever cause he may drink i drank i don't know who was it here said that they drank because there's visit but skinny over here the drink was handed to him I drank because I wanted to drink, be a bunch of the group of the boys, and this drink I took did something to me that it didn't do to the rest of these fellows. It didn't to the rest of them. There's six or seven of them in my hometown. I still know them. They're still in the realm of social drinking. If there is such a place, I've never met a a social drinker, you may have. I've taken a little dope socially, but, you know, a few pills socially, never had drank socially. Every time I drank, I conducted myself not nicely, but I began to use it and use it, and use and I liked that work, and it did what it was supposed to do for quite a long time. It furnished me with all the things that I needed to function as a human being. Now I know these about social drinking have their little preacher over here. Is he still here? Yeah there he is. His name's Mendel. happy passover yeah happy pasover they tell me that the hebrew passover that's when they do all the feasting they must have 80 years that he's been to my house that many times he's had to get extra food stamps But I have a very humble opinion about social drinking. I think that if you take the most pious and unctuous old sister out of the church and slap about eight slugs of that gallow in her that I used to drink, she's going to become unsocial as hell. Ain't no way she can take eight drinks of gallow and be sociable. Just no way. But be that as it may, those people can stay over there. They're not of our ilk. We're not concerned about creating alcoholics. There are enough of them who make themselves. We don't need to create any. We used to have a stigma on alcoholism years and years ago when us old dingies came in. And it was quite the thing. we were ashamed of being an alcoholic and duck into the club and duck out of it, and we'd talk hush-hush. And we just didn't talk about it too much. And now, now, the biggest problem we have is keeping out the damn social climate. Yeah, it's kind of a thing to do. I'm in the only club in the United States over in Tyler. I've got some of my members here to make me honest about this thing. We've got a fellow who parks a Rolls Royce in front of our club. And he could carry it down if anybody knows what he's in there for. And he's got enough money to burn a wet mule with. You ain't got no stigma problem over there, but I drank and I had to frighten the experiences. And things begin to happen. And the more things that happened to me bad became things that I could not discuss. Now let that run through your head a few minutes. This becomes and is, and I think always will be, the loneliest malady that can strike mankind, without any doubt. Now if we could talk about this thing, these things that are happening to us with freedom, I believe it wouldn't be near so bad. But the things that start happening to us and we cannot discuss them, even with our closest and dearest. You just cannot walk up to somebody on the street and say I have wet my pants. Our move over I'm going to throw up there. You ought to hear Tom make a dissertation on, he started last night, but they didn't give him enough time. He's a puking authority. He can talk two hours on pukin from all the way from projectile puken to spray pukes. See, only the drunk know these things. But this is the hellish part of the disease of alcoholism. the old brothers can't talk about people asking questions and society jumps on him and condemns him and tires him to pieces and then they say to him how are you getting along Joe just fine that's fine good great how are you getting alone just funny you can't say I'm dying inside these things that are happening to me i cannot explain and i lay awake at bed and die and cry silently because you can't say a word about it and i say that it's the loneliest thing that could ever happen to a man most frightening thing and i think it's the thing that drives us ultimately maybe through the false pride to the doors of alcoholics and not. This is a hell of a thing. It says in that book that he thinks that his alcoholic life is the only normal one. Pretty soon after a time, it's kind of like in your scripture where it says, and it came to pass. He cannot differentiate the true from the false. You no, no, whether this is this or that's that. And society jumps all over him and says, if you don't quit drinking, you're going to die. And he ponders with this for a while. He does. He wonders because the average alcoholic who has gone through the things that most of us have has died a thousand deaths. And he says, what do you mean, die? die like i did when i lost my life is that what you're talking about am i gonna die like I did when I did a little stir time looked up at the cement and shook is this what you are talking about and they threaten him and condemn him for what an obsession makes him do that he has no control over whatsoever. An obsession makes him do it, and he has not control over it whatsoever. And I think that some of the frightening experiences that we go through here are the things that ultimately bring us to a place where the price of fame is too great. Brings us to the door of AA. I'm going to tell you a little story by request. It's not nice, and it may not be all true about the frightening experience that an alcoholic can have because it may—I do not know where hallucination stops and the truth starts. But many years ago, back in my early drinking i drank out of control completely but i found myself lying in this cotton patch not too far not too many miles from here and the habit in those days when you set out to get drunk we did i've heard the term let's go get drunk huh well certainly And one of my favorites in the summertime was to take a bunch of bottles of wine and go and get into the lie in the cool sand in between one of these cotton furrows and look up and dream and drink gallop. and this particular morning I don't know what time it was because time means nothing to the alcoholic I know I was laying in this cotton roll paralyzed from my hair down dreaming and I look up in the sky and here is a group a flock or a herd or whatever a bunch of buzzards up there flying around flying around i thought to myself this is a very common thing happens in east texas all time any kid knows about buzzards they know that they fly in groups and they're looking for an animal that's nearly dead a rabbit, no doubt a cow I've seen them you've seen them if you've lived in East Texas and they're very patient and they circle fly around and as I lay there paralyzed from the hair down I looked up and here's the group of buzzards flying around and finally one big buzzard came down and made a couple of passes by me and he looked over his shoulders as he went by and he became more brazen and he made a long sweeping turn and came in just about as close as Carl is there about five rows over and he put his flaps down and just stopped on the top of this row folded up his wings, and stood there and stared at me. Have you ever been stared at by a bug? Just like this. I don't know how long this went on. I'm telling you that the story could be more hallucination than the truth, really. but I do know that it's a frightening experience to be stared at by a buzzard in close range and I thought well he's an odd buzzard piling away his time and his curiosity's got the best of him and he's looked at me and he flew away and I lay there dreamed some more dreams and reached over and took another honk on the gallows. I know I've been there a few days because my restroom had gotten pretty close to it. Here they are, gently flying, and pretty soon he brings a friend. Two of them. They came in in a pair just like they'd been trained it to colorado air force school circled around gently looked over their shoulders they passed by and finally put their flaps down and stopped right over there and they both stared at me this was of great and interminable length and i do not know how long they stared. But I know that buzzard number one looked at buzzard number two. And winked. And there was enough consciousness within my mind that them sumbitches ain't a waitin' on no rabbit. That wink meant that dinner be ready pretty soon. And I got up and staggered out of there by brute force and offerings. And I'll say to you that whether most of it was a truth or hallucination, it was one of the most frightening experiences I've ever had. An old buzzard got the dirtiest looking head. You ever seen a buzzard's head? when they wink, they wink all the way down here now if I had and this is purely a matter of conjecture met somebody on the way into town and they had said to me Joe how come you're looking so bad do you think I would have said to them I just winked at the buzzard. Nowadays, I'd have been afraid to because some son of Mitch would have said, well, we got a pamphlet about buzzards. you do not talk about these sickening things the alcoholic drinks and drinks and drinks and he begins to float with the group and i think one of the greatest words of understanding is the word that bill brought out of that hospital for us to use in our society And that's the gentle word, obsession. Did you ever stop to think of it? He could have said that in our book that we read so much and talk so much about. He could've said that we had a compulsion. Or he could've said that we had an addiction. Or even some of the modern cats could've said we had an alcoholic syndrome, whatever the hell that is. I used to think a syndrome was a cat house where they competed he didn't do that he said we had an obsession an obsession that we had no control over and I believe it as stringent or as strong as anything I did in society condemned us and cursed us not for the obsession per se but for what the obsession made us do this is what they fussed at us about this is what they said to us you ought to be ashamed yourself for destroying everything that you love so dearly they didn't know that we didn't have any control over this obsession now if you go to your dictionary and look up the word obsession you'll find it described like this to be possessed to be possessed of an idea to the exclusion of all other ideas hey you're owned by it to be possessive of an idea to be exclusion of all other ideas. Alcoholism is not the only obsession you can have, but I'm so proud that Bill found the gentle description, and I later found out that the only way to get rid of an obsession is to replace it with another. And our 11th chapter in the book of experience tells you about this. We won't talk about that now. An obsession, to be possessed of an idea to the exclusion of all other ideas, and if you've got one, you've got one. There ain't a hell of a lot you can do about it. He wants to get up and dance right now while I'm talking, and he's got an obsession to do it. He's going to do her. Maybe I can explain it another way. Some people seem to understand this a little better. When I was a kid, my father had an old dog, and for some unknown reason, they named him Millard Fillmore. I don't know why. Millard was just a good old dog. Just a dog dog. I wouldn't know how to describe him any other way. It was my father's favorite. But Millard had the worst case of fleas that you've ever seen on a dog, and he scratched all the time. I know you've seen a dog. You were raised in the outlying districts like I was, but Millard scratched all of the time, and we cursed him for this scratching that he did. You know why he was scratching? He was scratching to relieve his discomfort when we became uncomfortable we drank but when millard was uncomfortable he scratched and you know have you ever heard a dog thump at night and we'd curse him for the millard kept me awake all night and my father tired of this and he bought some of the most hellishly bad smelling liquid soap that you can imagine. And after a couple of rounds of close-in fighting, we threw Millard in the tub and defleated him. I remember as a child how pink his skin was when he got through it. Just took every flea off of Millard. Didn't have a flea left on him, promise you that. But he still wanted to scratch. He still wanted to scratch the necessity to remove his discomfort had become an obsession and he'd look up at me with those old brown eyes and want to scratch and I'd hit him I wouldn't let him scratch and he became furtive about it and he would run around the side of the house and I'd see him sneak in a scratch. To be obsessed, to be possessed of an idea to the exclusion of all other ideas and to be helpless in its possession. And this is the plight that the alcoholic comes in and he rolls along and you fuss at him, and he don't pay much attention to you because he can't now but now differentiate the true from the false. Really don't know how he feels. He don't. He don'T. He really doesn't. And this is the pathetic state of alcoholism as I see it. when he drinks and to explain to a non-alcoholic society about drinking against your own will is a rather futile project even our bill early early early in a day and a when he was became so enamored of our program and he wanted to tell everybody about it he finally came to the conclusion and he made this statement that people who do not have an alcoholic problem are notoriously uninterested in people who do. He said that. And it's hard to explain this to your wife, and Bob and Tom did such a beautiful job last night. God, I hope most of you were here to hear it about we did it because we love them. We did it because we loved. And we laid in bed at night and cried silently to try to get away from me. And they say to us, why? Why? Why do you do it? You can't answer the question yourself. Your whole trip down that avenue of whatever direction you're going is a long why. You sit up and try to add questions up. Well in my case, the genius that I was, why do these things happen to a fellow like me? And you can compare yourself to the great God. Why, why, why? Do they have to happen to me? When you start trying to talk to an alcoholic and our book comes up with a description and it says continue to speak of Charcoalism is a sickness. Tell him of your experience. This is reading our preamble here tonight. We share our experience. Now, there's a hell of a lot of difference between sharing your experience and imposing your opinion on somebody. I just thought I'd throw that in. A lot of different. This is what brought me finally to the portals of AA and a fellow sharing his experience with me and letting me know that he knew how I felt. This is What Got Me. It wasn't anything profound or educational or anything, but really I do not believe that the drunk knows actually how he feels. He becomes so shelled up with it around him that he just can't tell. I'm going to tell one more story, it's a request of Ramona, and that's all. That's when you've got time for no more. What time is it here? Oh God, I ain't near ready to get well yet. but to show you that the drunk can orient himself to any condition anything you just you know put him in the corner like tom said and our folks don't brag about us they don't you don't find this saying that they're proud they got us in the family it don't make a stable conversation you come in what's that noise in the back oh that's my son he's an alcoholic you know you don't hear that they try to hide this keep us moving most of the time this is my problem and ramona tells it's a bit subdued it's hard to hide 165 pounds of drunk you know it's harder to do but this little story i think tells in a way about how non-poly can fit himself to any environment and just, you know, roll with it. Many years ago we lived in a little town called Goose Creek, Texas which is not there anymore. I don't know that I had anything to do with it or not but I was down there selling insurance and my wife left and went up north Illinois with her sister to help her have a baby. And while she was gone, I got fired from this job. And the process in those days was when I got fired from a job, always went home to mama. That's what you're supposed to do, you know, and start over again. Had a little bad luck, you know. You told them that. Need a little handout and you go from there. So I loaded up this little car and Mary and i have always had cats we've never but seemed to have been without cats in our family we had two red big fat tomcats and i knew that if i didn't bring these tomcatz home with me that there'd never be any end to it i just knew it was a must so i loaded this little car with what few belongings we had in it, and threw the two cats in the back and headed for Tyler, which is some 300 miles. In those days you didn't travel so fast. And I drove from Goose Creek to Houston, Carl, and as I got out on, I believe it was Airline Boulevard in those days, wasn't a very nice neighborhood if I remember right, but I saw a beautiful sign there that said three pints for the price of two. And not ever being one to pass up a bargain, I bought the three pints and the price was two. And drove north then, and it was a cool night, oh it was delightful, and with every drink the car ran better. and I'd talk to my staff, and I sang old prose. It was just one of those delightful nights. God was in his heaven, and everything was all right. It's just one-of-those things. It's miraculous what that brown fluid can do for you. And I'm just sailing along. You never have done that. And I got to a little town called Cleveland, Texas, and I got out to get a chaser for one of the jugs, and when I got back to the car, one of them damn tomcats got out. And by this time, I'm what psychiatry describes as addled. And I chased this tomcat all over this little town of Cleveland in the dirty old red mud, and I finally treat him up under a cotton gel, I think, and I pulled him out by his hind leg and I whipped him all the way back to the bar. And I threw him in the back of this hot automobile and he did a thing in that back seat that wasn't nice. Sort of a Picasso study in brown. It didn't bother me a bit. I crawled right in and took a hog off of the jug, Drove north, sang, and talked to my staff. Oh, I promise. And at 2 o'clock in the morning, I threw up in the front seat. Wind is closed, the heater's gone. It hurts me to even think about it. And about daylight, I drove into a little town called Alcoa, Texas. It had a couple of dim streetlights, and I pulled over to the side of the road to take a honk on the jug and to start the day right. And there was a town clown there, a sheriff or a door rattler, an officer of some sort, And he hadn't had a chance, I guess, to make an arrest in a long time. And he raced up to the side of the car and rapped on that glass and he said, let that glass down. i let the glass down and he shot his head in that one there and he said what do you think Oh, and he slowly walked away. Oh, let me prevail upon you. When you put your arm around that sick old drunk, he don't know how he feels. He really doesn't. And he may not be such a pretty mess. maybe we can boast of the most obnoxious and offensive disease of anybody on the face of the earth but don't expect too much out of it tell him of your experience tell him of your experience because if you're going to read a pamphlet you better do her quick or he'll puke on you Tell him of your experience. And this is one of the finest things that came out of our book of experience. Bill, the author of it, was just a human being like you and I. One of the things that makes me know that this book came out of providence and was spiritually divine is the fact that the fellow who wrote it wasn't capable of it. How about that? The fellow who wrote the book wasn't capable of it. But every now and then in relating his experience in this book, you can see him getting carried away with himself. He does. He's a human being. And he's so sure that this thing will work that he repeats himself time after time in the book of experience so that the drunk can't miss. And one of the lines in that book goes like this. It says, burn the idea into the consciousness of every man that he can stay sober regardless of anyone if he will but clean house and trust in God. Too little recklessness there. And I somehow believe, all of the experts notwithstanding, that the perpetuation of our society hinges upon visiting the drunk, telling the story, and praying a little. These three requisites. I don't know what the hell ever came of the idea that you don't visit the drunk anymore. We have a chapter in our book, number seven, which devotes a whole chapter to step 12 in our book, and it's under the title, Working with Others. And it begins to read in this chapter, it says that practical experience shows us that the surest immunity against drinking is extensive work with other drugs. That's what we came for. This is what I came for, to be removed from the obsession to drink. I wanted to be immune from it. And here's the promise. Here's the premise. Practical experience shows us that working with other drugs will make us immune from drinking. And it adds another sentence there. It says that this works when all other activities fail. And the manuscript of our book of experience is a very interesting little thing there. They filtered it out in the printing of it through these hundred old hard-headed guys and they, Bill had a hard time getting some of it by but this one particular sentence Bill wrote and I I wonder why they didn't leave it in there. He had it reading like this, This works when all other spiritual activities fail. This is the way it reads in the manuscript. I have it at home like that. Working with drums. And then the next sentence says unequivocably, if you like that word. I'm an English major, in case any of you didn't know it. Smarter than a damn whip. And I was taught that any sentence that had an exclamation mark behind it was a command. Or at least they wanted to get your attention, you know. And it says, carry this message to the out-and-home, exclamation mark, in our book, Chapter 7. And I'm so glad, I'm proud, I'M SO GRATEFUL that the fellow that came and told me about AA had read that line. He could have misinterpreted it like some of the smart cats today and said, oh, we work on the basis of attraction rather than promotion. That's our public relations policy. Our staying alive policy says carry this message to the alcoholic. the hell with public relations unequivocally carried this message to the alcoholic and this was a grateful thought because the fella came to see me I had been thrown out of a hospital in san francisco and been through the psychiatrist and the rest of the dainty bit and thought i'd set up for the winter and some double crossed me and run me out and i came back to tyler and my own mother had me locked up now this is not you know you ain't good standing with the family when this happened And I remember, I was up in this jail hating my own mother for having brought this great humiliation down on me. God, it wasn't my first jail, nor was it my last incidentally. But here I was, up in here hating my old mother for having brought his great humiliation down on. I'll show it. Me, the resourceful guy, the fellow that had all the answers, the genius, fresh from Hollywood in Beverly Hills, locked me up like this in a dirty old jail. And I felt very, very small. I don't know, Tom and I talked about it one night that I guess the drunk's got to get to that real low, low, low, LOW, low place when he knows that it may be getting close to the end. We described it as being real over. Real over, I think you know when it gets real over. I think that's everybody but one Monday morning in this strong institution this fellow appeared at my cell he was supposed to have been our chairman here tonight and I did it for purely sentimental reasons and he stood there perfect stranger and he came and I want you to remember this word if you don't remember anything else I say tonight he came unsolicited if you folks that have waited for me to call you, the most drag-looking, uninteresting, coffee-drinking, cake-eating boars that one could imagine. To get caught in a trap like that, you would have still been waiting and I would have been dead. So he came to see me unsolicited. He had read that line in chapter 7, and he felt the same thing that Bill felt. And he was doing an obligation maybe not to me but to himself. When Bill said suddenly I felt that I needed him more than he needed me. And here he stood. And And I was a shaker. Well, if you drink, you know, gallow wine and eat phenobarbital and let them run concurrently, it does something to your nerves. I don't know what it is. I'm not a doctor. I have no description for it. But you do this. They fly over. And Chuck says, you're a leaper. I was the leaper Have you ever seen a bride leap in her groom's arms to carry her across the threshold? I did that to people on the street. And I'm in jail. No pill, no wine. She's dying out. And if I were going to describe the scene, I would describe it as cruel, really, absolutely. Very cruel scene. When you're in jail, you're a captive audience, whether you like to know that or not, by God. People used to get up too close to me and talk to me about your aura. Quit drinking, might spin on my heel and leave, you know. can't talk to me that way i'll tend to my own business but when you're in jail you ain't got far to speak and you've got to stand there and listen and this fellow stood there and told me in essence the story that's been handed down told me all about himself. Harp upon the experience, it says here. Tell him of your experience. Keep his attention focused upon the malady. Talk about the sickness of alcoholism. This is what you did. And I didn't hear much that he said, but I do remember this. And I hated his guts for it. He didn't shake. and he stood still and the fact that he stood still was what made me remember it for that and he gave me the whole pitch and I had to stand there and listen to it and I remember how I talked back to him and I tried to cut him and knife him like I did everybody else in society that I met in those days and I couldn't make him react and he said more than once we have found from our experience that there are a few little principles if you practice them it is an automatic thing that you drink no more and I found it so many years ago and I thought you poor bastard when he saw he wasn't getting anywhere with me He put out a little piece of pamphlet that read on the front of it, Slaves of Drink Find Peace of Mind. We didn't have all the literature that we have now. It was a little peace of literature that was printed over in Shreveport, Louisiana by a fellow who never made the program, one of Jim's old friends here. We did the best we could in those days. And this little pamphelet has it. I still have it at home. Slaves Of Drink Find Piece Of Mind. And this cat wrote his name and his address on the back of the pamphet And he said, if you ever need us, call us. And left. And that was that. And he went back and reported to my people. And, you know, non-alcoholics are funny people. Well, by God, ain't they? They say, you go shoot the needle in, and that's all there is to it. And my mother asked him, said, well, is he all right now? and I don't know what his retort was other than to say that he didn't follow me then I don' t think, I don''t know whether he said he ain't ready or not and my people are good substantial citizens over in Tyler they were at the time and they paid I want to pronounce that real loud they paid two deputy sheriffs to load me into a police car and carry me to Houston, Texas and put me in the train and sit in the depot with me and help me out on the train that night when it went west. Now this has been the treatment for alcoholism down through the centuries until the advent of our society until somebody wanted to take the time to see what made us tick. Been the treatment to the drunk. Keep it moving. Keep it going. Out of sight. Out of mind. and if I live to be a thousand, I'll never forget the humiliation of sitting in this big depot in Houston with these two big burly fuzzies on either side and their pistols were out. And I knew, like you have known many times in your humiliations, that everybody was looking at you. Everybody was looking. You fellas that have been there know what I'm talking about. and that night late they helped me out onto the train and it's not a quick way to make friends on a train, really. And I got off in San Antonio and filled up a bag with the only thing I know to fill a bag up with and when I got to Los Angeles they carried me off of the train in a wheelchair. I had kind of set up shop in one of the toilets some smart guy said you can't live in here we use this car and it goes both ways get out and i got up to try to walk and i couldn't you know if you sit for a long time drink you know three four days your muscles something's happened to them i don't know what the hell it is but they took me in the three old bags and shot me through this old depot out into the front of the station in Los Angeles and very unceremoniously dumped. And with all of the jocular remarks that I might make, and all the fun and the levity that we have kicking it about among ourselves, looking at the foolish antics of an alcoholic, I can honestly say to you that for the next five months I went through a living hell. And I right, as few people have lived to tell the tale. This is an honest story I'm telling now. And I ended up under the bridge in Sacramento and later found out this is one of the roughest in the country and it was not uncommon for a guy to walk off in there and leave a few bubbles and not walk back out. Johnny will talk to you about that after the meeting. I'll tell you where it is. And I ended up in a flophouse about two blocks from the jail over at 3rd and I Street, Central Methodist. And every time I come into an AA club and see hanging on the wall, this one sign must be there. But for the grace of God, there is no way to get from there to here there is absolutely no way to get from Thurden Eye to Longview, Texas but for the grace of God don't forget it I don't know what happened to the other 17 fellas that slept in those places. There might have been some of them that had some folks at home praying for them. I don' t know. There might, by some stretch of the imagination, been some there as smart as I was. I doubt it. There might've been somebody there as worthy of this thing that we have as I. I don''t know that. But this is the only question that is left unanswered to me and the Society of Alcoholics Anonymous is not how it works and when it works. But how come I was the lucky one? How come I was the luckiest And I got up and staggered out of that joint, and every time I opened up a bag at night, it seemed to me which may have been another hallucination this damn pamphlet was on top. Slaves of drink find peas of vine and I never had the guts to read it and I didn't have the guts to throw it away. And I come out of there and I made a 2,600 mile track back to Tyler to find the fellow who'd come to the jail unsolicited to give me that damn pamphlet. Now you know, we alcoholics are most dramatic. We tell the saddest of stories and sometimes it gets rather competitive. And it's very disheartening to find out that after making a 2,600-mile trip with two or three jails and two or three bridges, that there was a goddamn AA truck three blocks from where I started. This is thoroughly undramatic, but I came back and I went there and found this fellow and he hadn't changed a bit, but, I had. This is the difference. This is a difference. This is difference. August the 12th in 1950 was my day. I hope you get a day and keep it, and it's your day. You'll have it forever. He had September 1940. That's his day. Every one of us got a day coming. August the 12th, 1950, and I came to AA. I followed him up the stairs of a dirty old AA club, and I've had to compare every other AA meeting that I've ever made by that one. God, it was a dingy place. And I went up there and I remember none of the things that were said. I didn't hear any of the old geniuses like Tom and the healers here. None of the great spirits were there that night. No profundities. There was a big old Jewish boy come up to me and said, My God, you stink. Harold Evans, oh, God rest his soul. And he used to tell this story later at every one of his birthday parties, his wife, what was his wife? Gladys. And he didn't talk much in AA but he told about the night that I came to AA and he said he went home that night and he said, Gladys, I think we got one too late tonight. God, I'm so glad it happened like that. And here's the old ego, and there's a guy sitting over here in the corner smoking on a cigar, gently puffing on it. He's got a big diamond ring, and he's got this serenity thing on him here already. And I knew and knew him, but it bugged me the whole meeting. I'm still coming off of pills. The whole wall was revolving. But I knew this guy. and after the meeting I discovered that I had soldiered with him some 20 years prior to this time he was the camp idiot and they kept him chained to a post this was their treatment for alcoholism and he was sitting in the AA club that night gently puffing on the cigar the diamond ring and the serenity and I looked at him and immediately my arrogance sprung out and I said if it'll do him that much good it'll make a goddamn genius out of me. We buried him not too long ago, sober thank God. This is a great thing and there was one more fellow at that meeting that night and I think It's that we talk about obligations in a, if we have one. We don't have any, maybe. I've heard it argued every way. But if there is one obligation that we have in our society of alcoholics anonymous, it is what we show that fellow the first night he breaks that door down. This is it. This is the obligation. The rest of it may be up to him, and it may be up for God. But our obligation is what we show him the first night he breaks in that door. I believe it so stringently, that night they put on a show for me. There's a fellow standing there with two pistols on, the very symbol of everything I hated. He was the sheriff who had locked me up in his jail 12 years prior to that time for felonious drunk driving. Here he was at A.A. Sober that night, and if I might be a little maudlin, at this point he came and gave me probably the essence of our society because he came after the meet when it was over and gently put his arm around me and said, boy, I love you. How about that? Very simple of everything I hated. here he stood in AA and he died sober too I love you and you can stay sober just like I do what is this gift that God bestows on such a few well we are the most lucky minority of society that could be anywhere who lives as good as we do once we find this thing like it is Who lives as good as we do? Who will sleep collectively as peacefully as we will tonight? Answer that one. I think it's the most prideful thing that a person can be affiliated or be close to in the Society of Alcoholics Anonymous. Oh, I got well and learned everything. thing a student like me couldn't help it you know do blossom out and was two weeks and I knew everything and I quit cussing and just was cold here than now I got I guess if you were going to describe me say I was godlike have you ever seen any AA members who became godlike. And then I got a call to go see a drunk, and all he really wanted was to get me to retrieve his bottle for him, and I couldn't see this. I was so godlike, and i took another buddy with me and put him in my new car, which was a product of AA, and put it between me and I began to talk to him, and I felt so good and I knew that with my piosity and eloquence that I bound the gate and as we drove slowly and I talked with sheer eloquense the drunk and I could see his eyes begin to water and I thought I'm getting him and as we drove further and I talk with further eloquance he gently lay his head over on my shoulder and I knew I had him did you ever hear of a drunk puking silently every time I've ever gotten in the godlight in front of the dirty bastard he pukes on me I'll tell you about another one, then we can go home. I went to see another one many years ago. I don't know how long you worked with a drunk. I've come through some hard things, and I've got some buddies here in my own group that we've hit some pretty hard things together. And I think by the course of this, we've learned to love each other more. We've become a happy family. But this guy called one Sunday morning, and that was in the days when I went every time. Didn't call a new man to go. I used to go, and Mary took the call for me. She said, yes, Joe, come. And I go to see this guy, and he's scurvy as hell. He's kind of like I was when he came to AA, and she said, no, I'm not. And he's a nut. and he's bordering on VT's and I borrow a goblet full of whiskey and poured down on Dr. Joe and knocked him out really and when he kind of came unshuffled from this drink he was in an AA club I believe any way you get the bastards there is good and he got sober and he stayed sober for three months and he got drunk didn't hurt him a hell of a lot but it was a blow to my ego i knew that he had sober up under my direction he just had to and i went again and i got him and he not sober three months from same thing went on used to get to see his wife more than did him he'd be out in the back room but i kept on going never did give up prayed about it said to god you've been watching them sparrows too much to let me have this and i kind of made a sound project out of it but it never did kept going three months sober drunk and he had an affectation that i know none of you folks ever been guilty of, he'd go to faraway places and call me collect to tell me that he was drunk. But I never gave up. And about 12 years ago, he got on for him what I hope was his last job in one of our local motels. And he called another fella from our club And he went out and talked to that bastard ten minutes, and he's been sober ever since. hated his guts. And I'd sit in the club and look at him and think, you ought to be mine. And if I know anything of the treasure that God gives us in AA, if I know anything about what Bill said when he said suddenly I realized I needed him more than he needed me. That dirty rascal kept me sober for four and a half years. And I owe him more than he owes me. I cannot describe the ultimate happiness in AA. I can't do that. That's beyond my comprehension to describe a way of life like this. Bill said in chapter one, said suddenly I was catapulted into an existence that's beyond description. That's good enough for me. Suddenly, I was catapulted into an existence that's behind me. That's beyond inscription. That's plenty for me, so when I sit down, I'll tell you a little story, and then I'm going to promise you, and I'll take this story from another book. It's a little book that the preacher probably uses over here. Came out of the scripture, and it's about a fellow going to see a sick guy. Mm-hmm. They got a story in there about it, too. It seems this, about 2,000 years ago, that there was a fellow in the scripture and it was written by a doctor. So you know it was very coldly and abstractly written. He had nothing but the facts, nothing but what he saw. But it's the story of the demoniac. and this fellow, they called him in those days he didn't work as brilliant as we are now and they didn't have any analysts or psychiatrists and he was a maniac full of demons I guess if they'd had a whack at him now he would have been a catatonic or a bedwetter you know, but for the lack of better verbiage he was demoniac and it's said that he was so wild that no man could take Said that the manifestations of his disease were such that they had to keep him in fetters and chains. Hey, he's kind of like me. Said that he finally got so bad that you ran him out of town. Hey, that's just exactly like me. And he ended up out on the riverbank eating with the pigs. And if your imagination is half as good as mine, you can see that picture of the nut, The pure nuts, the babble, the smell, the habiliments have developed with an obsession. And there seems to have been at that time a little carpenter fellow who was going around teaching a new philosophy of love and he had a facility that you and I and AA have not quite acquired, yet. He could see no ill in anyone. And he said to this cat, he said, say, fella, you're having some trouble, ain't you? And this fellow said, failed with self-pity, he said the trouble is my name. They call me Legion, which means many. And I can see him sigh for himself eating with the pigs been there why the hell came to see it so the little carpenter knew that he needed some help and he didn't wait very long in giving it was a rather strange sort of treatment and the people in those days understood it about as well as they understand the treatment of alcoholics anonymous today just about as much had to do with casting some evil spirits out of this nut into some pigs. And the pigs, if you remember the story, ran off into the sea and were drowned. And there were some stool pigeons around, like there always is. And they went into the city and they told the folks that owned these pigs—the The pig business was big business in those days, you know. And these two pigeons went into the city and they told these folks that you're out of the pig business. And they were incensed by it. By God Almighty, you'd be if somebody comes over to you. You're out-of-business, you don't want to be. And the story goes like this, they went out in mass to see what the hell had happened to their pigs. These are the beautiful lines in the scripture and either they were taken from AA or AA was taken from them. It said when they got there, there he sat fully clothed and in his right mind we've got a step in alcoholics anonymous that says come to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity and my friends i'll say to you that to come to believe is a long journey for some of us there he sat fully closed and in his right mind. I can see him, can't you? Timid, scared to death, sitting by his sponsor. At least people that's lost their pigs are raised in hell with him. And they prevailed upon him to leave, which was natural. Get out, get out, and like to scare the hell out of him because he had just come from one existence that was hellish and had not had the chance to experience the joy of the new one. I can see him in all of his timidity because I felt that way when I got to AA. And I had to turn and run for my sponsor at every breath. And he said to the little carpenter, would you let me go with you? And the little carpenters broke a rule for us. You know what? He broke a rules for us, everybody that the little Carpenter had ever helped, you know the blind man and all he'd say go on don't say nothing about it you were blind now you see everybody that he'd ever helped he'd say that to him but he broke the rules for us and he said to this nut what I will say to you if you believe in this society and what it stands for He said, no you can't go with me. Stay here so that others can see what has happened to you. Thank you very much.