The Old Disease That the Treatment Is New For – 1961 – Joe L.

He had lived there for nine years and had never gotten over to Catalina, and when they went back for his visit, his wife insisted that they go to Catalena. And he went reluctantly, and he sat down every chance he got, and then he got pecked, and he thought, my God, I hope nobody sees me. And about that time he heard somebody say, hey Joe, and it was Ethel Barnes. That was my introduction to Joe. I've never heard him talk, and I'm sure that you will agree with me that you want the full treatment. They say he is a treat. We feel that, as Dutch did last night, good, healthy laughter is a wonderful thing. It's truly an expression of joy, and it's indicative of the happiness that you feel here. It is with great pleasure that I give you Joe. Thank you. Can you hear me? these things are like the old bar room spittoon if you don't get the proper aim on them you can make a hell of a mess I've been to a few AA parties recently and I'd like to take some of these flower flowery introductions and write them down and use them for the epitaphed on my tombstone. Half of it anyway, unless the birds finish it. Ah, you get to where you believe that stuff pretty very later, you know. I've got a thing here that has my name on it. That's right. My name is Joe. by staying around with these drunks for quite some time now, I've been able to find a better way to live. No, I didn't. I found a way to life. All those marbles run to one side of my head while ago when he was talking about, are you here or ain't you? I'd like for him to run that back by me again, but I'm not sure. But I am partly here, and I think I'll never recover completely, but we don't need to. I was talking to myself when I came in here, and I still do. The spirit just jumped me on the plane today about it. She thought I was stopping to her, but I had better company in that than stopping to me. Well, I know I was telling you this morning about how many people died way back there in history from alcoholism, you know, it's a hell of an old disease. the treatment's new but the disease is very old I think that I've laid around in hotel rooms and read these giddy bibles until I'm a sort of neophyte teacher anyway and I I been been doing some research on these drunks in the scripture first character I found there real early Noah I believe he was and he had a lot of characteristics that we outcasts have he did everything that God told him to and when he got through with it he wanted everybody to react and they didn't and he found that crush Grace, and you know the rest of the story. They found him drunker than a hoot-owl. And he had another characteristic that's phenomenal in alcoholics. We hurt the people that try to help us the most. He condemned his own son to professional servitude. And further along I ran across this not so long ago. One of the things that we talk about in AA and program of ours is you're not out of house, you won't know anything about this BT and I found the first recorded case of BT's in the Bible a fellow named Belchaz he was the sort of high-powered fellow who was right a king of sorts and he had characteristics some of us A-members had he liked the women and another characteristic that I had he sold his wine out of the temple and set about to have an orgy whatever the hell that is I think that's an old way of saying a high old time but the book says you go read it and Daniel said within an hour quick working line you know And his hand appeared and started writing on the wall. Well, hell, it jolted him. His first case of D.T., after you've had him a long time, he gets worried and sits back and enjoys it. Evidently, it was his first case. and the book says verbatim that his loins became loose and his knees smoked one upon the other he had them didn't he And then to add insult to injury, he did what a lot of us other drunks have done during the process of our feudal drinking. He called in a psychiatrist. There was a fellow in the Bible floating around those days. His name was Daniel. And he was this first-class fellow cutting up these jeans. And we'd call him a psychiatrist now, you know. And this fellow was so shook about seeing his hand on the wall that he was willing to go to any length to find out what would be sore. So he calls in this Daniel and tells him he's trying to imperfect this thing and paid him a hell of a fee. They've gone up since I started going, you know. Gave him half of his kingdom. As a fee, they took my britches off when I was there. And Daniel's like all psychiatrists. He speaks in a fine spray of generality. He's a veritable myth. nothing concrete that you can put your finger on and it took him 32 verses to tell this fellow you are coming to no good end well well I could have told him that if you belt that gallow around you ain't got a chance but after history some of these in the 1500s this Shakespeare character comes up with some beautiful and flowing language where Hamlet's portraying a crazy man and the words go like this O wine grant me thy careless laugh thy mocking jet grant me thine intoxicating joy O wine glad-sign oblivion to my soul. You know, that kid must have belted it around too. Well, the recovery is new, but the disease is pretty old. And I suffered for a long time. I was sick for a Long Time before I found out anything was wrong with me. I was subjected to every cliché that you've heard by a misunderstanding society. They used to say to me, straighten out and be a man. And I did just like that. Another old favorite, haven't you learned your lesson? here was a good one you never have heard this one turn over a new leaf I'd like to say here that the only guy I've heard of that he's allowed turning over them leaves is this Adam chap who's in the bottom line Well, I was subjected to all that, and I didn't know there was anything wrong with me. I started drinking when I was 17 like the other guy. Have I been struck deaf? I started drinking to be accepted. I wanted to be one of the group, and I think with that first drink, I remember it vividly. There were a group of us, six or seven boys, and out of that group of six or staff and I found something that they didn't find. Some of the rest of them, I know them personally, are still drinking socially. It's a hell of a word, ain't it? Socially. I have a very humble observation to make about social drinking. I believe 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 belt around, she's going to become unsocial as hell. But in that first drink, I went back to it again and again. I found something, and I don't believe it was compulsive. I don' t think it was. I think it wa quite a while before I crossed over this, what are these high-sounding words that float around, asocial and pathological. You hear them quite often. And I like to term it where I quit drinking living to drink and started drinking to live. About the same thing. Or even better than that, if you want, at the expense of sounding intellectual, and I dare not, you can take the words pathological and tear them down to pate or petros either the Greek or Latin means pitiful and logos makes in the Latin means to make silly talk so I started to drink and make silly talks or drinking with pitiful logic I had no control over it I think this came about when I at a very early age I was 21 years old when I could alcohol began affecting me I found myself in Southern California as an understudy to one of the lingerie designers and was considered a skilled man. My profession had all the opportunities it supported in any young man of my brilliance, which is doubtful, and had all chances on earth making names for myself and loved my work. That's where you cut these sleazy, soft, silk, intimate things that the women wear. Many of you girls got a pinch. I didn't do it. I've been away from there a long time. But it was here that drinking began to bother me tremendously. We got a step, and I believe it's the second one talks about you having a gopher in the garden up there, you know. sanity, and it came to me pretty early. If you cut a bunch of brassieres with three of those places in them, you're nuts. I told the guy just about that later, and he said that was just wishful thinking. Ah, but things progressed. The disease would be relatively simple, ours would, I think, if we could only harm ourselves. But it seems that we take everybody with us and everything that we touch suddenly starts to decay, and that was the progression of my drinking. I always got to be known around the Garment District in Los Angeles, if you please, as that drunk man was a scissor. It's very easy to establish either a good or a bad reputation in a small town, but when you get to where people in cities as large as Los Angeles have heard about you, before you get there, you stink. And I got to where I used up everything that I could in this immediate area. I couldn't work at my profession anymore. The very fellow who had taught me all that I knew, who had invested a lot of money in my education, told me. He said, Joe, you're going to have to go. You're goingto have to leave. And as much as I've got invested in you, we can't keep you any longer. Sorry, you can't drink like other people. And he added a little aside there. He said, I'm glad you weren't a rabbi or you would have destroyed our whole race. And I began a progression of geographical movement, and the war was going on. Bless that war. I don't know how to make it without it. And I went down to the Pedro, Wilmington that is, and I bought a plumber's license out the back door of a union hall down there. And I didn't know a rubber mallet from a hammer. And I was a master plumber. And I wasn't a master thug. and even as badly as help was needed in those days I didn't last there very long I have a piece of paper at home now that I treasure very dearly a little pink piece signed by the Department of War Labor and it prohibits me from working within 25 miles of the city of Los Angeles Ah, they love me. And I left, I moved away, and in AA we always talk about inventories and taking an honest look at ourselves, and I think that during the progression of our drinking that frequently through some quirk or circumstance we're forced to sober up and take a look at ourself. We don't stay that way long. We get drunk again quickly. But every now and then, we have to sober up through brute force and awkwardness and take a look at ourselves. And this was one of those occasions. As I moved on up north, I took a little inventory there. And I said, Joe, you kind of tore your gown down here in Los Angeles. Didn't do so well. Those people didn't appreciate you. and had a nice heart-to-heart talk with myself. I remember it was late at night one night, but never anything about this booze I was drinking, this thing that was actually progressing to a point that was devastating. And I went up in Northern California, and I'm briefing this, you know, it's bedtime, the mind can only retain what the seat can endure. and of all things got a job on the railroad and since coming into AI I found out that all railroad men eventually end up in Alcoholics Anonymous I don't know why that is but they do and in order to show these people what a genius they'd hired I stayed sober for three months through brute force and awkwardness And I'd been drunk for a long time. I wasn't a periodic drinker, I was in there the day. And the railroads are very narrow-minded people. They have a rule about drinking. They say it reads that if they see you coming out of a place that sells alcoholic beverages, you're subject to media dismissal. I never came out very often. And if I did, then it was under duress and coercion. But I guess they felt that if a man was a little bit addled, you know, they run more than one train or two trains on one track, and I suppose they felt that if the guy was a Little Bit Not Himself, he's liable to mix them up, and I did. Terra, mountainous territory, I remember it very well due to the implications from Sacramento over the Sierras to Reno there and you go up 7,000 feet and you had an engine on the front, two engines on the back, tremendous thing, quite a movement. And when you got up to the top, you cut these engines on the back off so they could go back. And you went into what they called an electronically controlled interlocking system. And they boasted that it was physically impossible to make a mistake up there. And I did. I managed, through some alcoholic manipulation, to get two engines going towards one another. And between them were a car of carrots, lettuce, celery and apples. And I made the biggest goddamned fruit salad in history, no question enough. And the reason that I remember that so well, oh of course they tried to fire me. And I had another alcoholic representing me at this investigation, and he proved some atrocious lies, and they didn't. But the thing that hurt them so bad was that here was a flaw in their perfect device. And they flew a couple of fellows out from this gyroscope company in the east and they followed me around for two weeks trying to find out what did you do, and I didn't know. And it worried them and I finally became aggravated at this interrogation and I suggested to one of them that he'd buy me a quart and I'd try it again. Many experiences, and that siege of living up there was too hellish even to remember. I've told this story at a lot of AA meetings, and I like to relate it again, I hear these drunks come in and their one fatal cry is that they always had trouble hiding a jug. Since that time, Earl tells us that they've gone to make them square bottles. They did that after I got sober where you could hide them. But everybody had the problem of hiding a jug, and I like to think of this experience where they call me for a local freight train to go up to Marysville, California. And during the fruit season, I gathered to my crew a group of people like me. I had to help the engineer up on the engine to get out of the terminal. And through some manipulation, we got a little work done. And wandering around in the dark up there, I found a shed, an almond shed, that had a track in it. And I took this train and scattered the cars all out where they would have no semblance of being a train. And I put the engine in the caboose in this Ammon shed and locked the door. And we all went to the bar. And the war was going on. The dispatcher hadn't heard from us in hours. And they sent a man in an automobile up from Sacramento to look for us. At 3 o'clock in the morning he came in this combination pool hall and bar, and these are the words that he said to me. What did you do with it? Don't tell me you can't hide a jug, I won't have any problems. I like to hear that laughter because we cried so long. That's the greatest thing I've found in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous because when I hit it deck, it was a very serious proposition and I don't remember when I had smiled the last time and I think the first time I did it, it Was unconsciously, and that's the greatest gift we could get out of AA is a little blasphemy. Things go on endlessly in the life of an alcoholic. My relationship with everybody was at a very low low. I remember one experience. I had been in the bar all day and had drunk myself to a point of saturation and had been asleep in the nice bar, had sleep-in facilities. And I got up late in the afternoon and walked home, and we were living with my wife's sister, Hell of a pleasant relation And I went out and lay down on the bed And they thought I was asleep And this is the conversation that went on in the next room My wife, in hysteria Said to her sister What would you do if you were living with a man like that? And my wife's sister didn't hesitate a minute She said I would poison the son of a bitch I smelled of the soup around there for a long time, I'll tell you. You know, I was too poor to hire a food taster and I knew I was on the way. alcoholism as it has been explained to me is a three-fold thing mental, physical and spiritual and the physical end of it started to entrap me I got down I got on wine I don't know whether you've gotten any winos back here it's inherently a West Coast disease got on it quite by accident I had befriended a little bartender in the lobby of my hotel and he had an awful case of a shake and I had a half a glow on, felt very benevolent and I gave him the $5 bill and I said go get to feeling better and he was a lovely little Irish fellow I hope he's found it, he needed it badly and it was one of the best investments I ever made I followed that little devil for over four years and drank over $4,000 worth of whiskey off of that $5 loan. He didn't remember it. I reminded him of it. And I got him fired from one place, and he went right and got another job, and I was right on his back. But he was an industrious little fellow. But I remember after having gone through a terrific siege of drunkenness and drinking wine, who is that? Said he don't like whiskey. I like that line. Oh, that's a tremendous ride. For those of you who have never experienced it, it is the best. I went into Curly's place one morning at 6 o'clock and could no longer hold anything. I had the brown whimpers and the flapping woo-hoo, you know. What is that high-sounding word? regurgitate. And I go in and I say to him, Curly, I can't take my breakfast this morning. And he's a very sympathetic soul. And he said, well, that's too bad. Try a drink of that delightful port over there, and then you can go back to whiskey. And i would like to say here that I have never gone back to whiskey. I like what that stuff does to you. It's kind of like a closed umbrella going down and it opens up all of a sudden. I still think that all this atomic fishing business came from a couple of winos under a tree somewhere. I thought of it a lot of times, but I just couldn't get it on paper. But, mind you, I'm four blocks from a place that has been lightly called Skid Row, and I've heard the word wino. Pretty dirty-sounding thing. And I was ashamed, but I wasn't ashamed enough that I didn't like the effects of wine instead of whiskey, and I didn' t go to it as a steady dive. and to show you how utterly phony I was I bought a bottle with wicker around it some expensive rum concoction and poured the rum conicoction out and poured this 35 cents a quart wine in this beautiful wicker bottle and drank it out of there to keep me from being a wino how phony can you get but I finally as I said with the physical end of it I got up in the hotel room there and saw the little man. I had the VTs, and for those of you who have experienced it and listened to my conversation a while ago speaking of it lightly, don't try it. It's something that is beyond description. And I stayed up there I know not how long, and how I got over it and got up and got out and went back to my apartment, I don't know. But I went back to my apartment, and I think my wife knew that something was terrifically wrong with me. And I told her, I cried out to her, and I said, I'm sick. And we couldn't call a doctor. We didn't have any family doctors. And I never had been sick, except this earthen sick you get in the morning. I thought everybody threw up every morning. I didn't know any better. I used to rent a hotel room with twin buds in it, one to sleep in and one to throw up in. That's that. We finally called this railroad physician in spite of the fact of this rule about drinking, and I would like to say here that some of these babes that come into AA with their husbands are not entirely clean in the honesty department. He comes down there and takes a look at me, and I'm laying there with all the symptoms. And he said to her, Does he drink? Uh-uh, she says. And he gives me a pop of the happy medicine in the arm there and gave her a prescription for some of the most delightful pills. I later learned to love them with a passion, phenobarbital. Paul. I don't know if you've heard of them or not, but they are a fast ride also. And he said some words there. He told her, he said, this man is sick. Hell, he wasn't breaking any news to this boy and used a lot of high-sounding language, none of which I understood. And I was sick. I was sick with this disease that we've come to know about in its extreme state. And he said to her, this man needs to be in a hospital. And they got the ambulance there and loaded the corpse in, so to speak, and here we go from Sacramento to San Francisco making 95 miles an hour with the red light on and the sirens screaming, and I'm up in the back eating them pills. And here's the irony of it. They're in a hell of a hurry to do something. God, they've been drunk 18 years, and they're running like the dickens now. And when I got to the hospital, it was a day and a half before I saw a doctor. I guess they were out testing cigarettes or something. I didn't see anything like that. They put me through one of the most stringent clinics on the West Coast. I drank the chalk, walked on my tiptoes. Not a lot of fun with shapes, I'll tell you. And the result of this was that I had nothing organically wrong with me. A hospital has to have an answer, you know. They work on a certain theory. They couldn't say, well, he's just been here for the vacation. and that was my introduction to psychiatry. I'd like to venture an observation here that those members of Alcoholics Anonymous that I know who have been cured of their alcoholism by having it beaten out of them through their knees are very few. But they brought this reflex detective in there. and he asked me a lot of silly questions and I gave him a lot of brilliant answers. He's not around me now, it's not my fault. And the thing that got me so bad is that he used to bring two interns with him to take notes. I don't know whether I was a real plumb among the nuts or what, but I educated over 135 interns in that hospital. Now, if you want to set about to drive a psychiatrist crazy, or is this gilding the non-existent lily? You let two drunks lay up in bed one night and memorize the same dream to tell him the next morning. That will send them packing, I'll tell you. And another humiliation, this character would come around, and he had a fetish about people chewing their fingernails. and every morning he'd come out oh it was so humiliating to me and he'd say hold out your hands and he would look at my hands to see if I had chewed my fingernails this is the same psychiatrist who had had my teeth pulled out three weeks before that I certainly chewed him if I don't want to I don' t know whether he thought I had some benevolent friends that would chew them for me or not, but I didn't. Oh, we played block. We picked up colored string. I became very adept at basket weaving and he enjoyed it more than I did. And then he prescribed another little dose that some of our women in AA are quite fond of, He gave me five little shot glasses a day, and he said to calm me down. And with my alcoholic reasoning I thought that if five little shots glasses would calm me down the jug would be a hell of a lot better. And I got an unsuspecting intern to sell it to me for a buck a jug. It's clear, tastes like sea water, and the marvelous thing about it is the food doesn't disturb it. The only thing wrong with it is that it will drive you utterly berserk. You talk about living a day at a time on A. Hey, you drink bromide and you don't live but a few minutes. I can understand why these Aunt Minnie's sit in the back bedroom and suck on that nervine. It is a beautiful life. Aunt Minnie is sick. She's nervous. Don't come out very often. Oh, it'll take you that bromide well. but you ain't got nothing much left when you get back. So we had these tri-rhythmic seances, this fellow and I, you know. And one day we were walking down the hall, and I'd been there 25 days then, and I staggered into him. And he stopped and rubbed his palms and said to me, You are staggering. And I said, I bet that's a sense of me sometimes. I could walk. I came in there immobile, a laying-down passenger, and they'd gotten me up on my feet in spite of all the stuff I was taking. And after about thirty days of this excellent treatment he came to my nervous ward one morning and with more of a gleam in his eye than usual, and he said, you can go home now. You would have thought that he had performed a delicate piece-of-brain surgery, and he gave me an age-old and time-worn lecture. Go home, take care of yourself, and get plenty of rest. Rest from what? I hadn't worked in months. A few new guys in AA watched that word. But I go home and I kind of got my cake, and I can eat it. My wife's got great confidence in these things, and she knows it's the answer. And the best thing I could get tagged on me, psychiatrically speaking, was nervous anxiety. That's a pretty weak one. Made good conversation in the bar. there I was still stumbling and I got double-crossed by a bartender he called my wife one day on the phone and he said Mrs. Leith you think your husband's sick when you go to work in the morning he gets up and comes down here and then he runs home at 11.30 and gets in bed and lets you come home at noon and prepares meals and serves it to him over the side of the bed and when you come back to work he gets up and comes back down here, and we don't want him. And this was quite a blow to my wife, and she was so perturbed that she called this psychiatrist, and I don't know what he told her, but that was when she left. You know, we can look back on these things were the greatest of levity, but we as practicing alcoholics, the people that we are grasping for every crutch that we can see, I have no rancor in my heart for my wife leaving me because her leaving was only the absence of another crutch. And some of my railroad buddies got me out of a wine house and I didn't get the royal treatment this time. loaded me on a cot in a baggage car and shipped me off back to the hospital. This might explode a theory or two, but there are some psychiatrists who have a limit to their patients. This goonie wouldn't come to see me anymore, and the hospital is still without its answer. Here he is again. We didn't cure him. He's back. So they sent out to the university and they got a little Freudian fellow that was just over from Vienna, and brought him in to see me. He looked like one. He had a Van Dyck beard and thick glasses and he had a tic like that, and he couldn't speak English and I couldn't speak what he spoke. And we got along excellently, but through the fog I remember one of the most profound questions that he asked me was, do you wet the bed? And that's always bothered me because I know that's a result of drinking and not a cause of it. Well, I'll kill more leprechauns of blood. We played games for another 30, 40 days. I was in the joint three and a half months. Finally, the floor physician came to my ward one morning and in a whisper said, come out in the hall. You know, this guilty feeling that we drunks have, I'd been going around cheering up some of the patients, and I didn't know what was coming off. And in a literal whisper, as though he were ashamed of it, he said, We have come to the conclusion that most of you are troubled from drinking. Three and a half months in this place of science and learning, and they had made this profound discovery. And this bartender could have told them that the day I came down there. And he said, you've got to get out of here and let some sick people come in this hospital. Where will you go? I didn't have any place to go. I had lost everything of a material nature that I had ever acquired. I liked your description of poverty. And he says, where are your people? and I said oh down in Texas and his eyes lit up I think he was hoping that a car would run over me or something but he said go down there by all means and then he gives me the same time long lecture take care of yourself and yet plenty of rest I got to Texas and I found a small town psychiatrist down there he was a lonely fellow they get so lonely those birds and we would sit and discuss Syria and he was so anxious to know what was going on in San Francisco and he'd give me goofballs with a popcorn sack full grand fellow, I loved him very dearly and I got the resting so well that my mother called the sheriff and had them to come and take me. We talk so frequently in AA and everybody's story that we relate in Chapter 5 as it tells us what we were like, what we did, what we're like now. And the basis of the whole thing is our suffering and how we rise above it. You hear that? And you know, there's a great emphasis upon physical suffering in AA, but the medical men will tell you that if you could remember pain, you'd still be in it. And I think that the greatest suffering that I ever did and the things that I remember about alcoholism is the suffering of humiliations and indignities that I brought down upon myself, and I didn't have the answer for it. Why do these things happen to me? And no answer. And I well remember these two fuzzies. They woke me up out of a peaceful slumber and said, Come on, go with us. I remember I had a hard time getting my shoelaces tied, and I asked one of these deputies to help me with my shoelares. And he said, Go ahead, Bill, it's your staff. I said, We've got plenty of time. And I found out that they did. That's the commodity with which they dispense time. And they carried me up to this pokey. Here I was in about three days, these pellets wore off in me, a very, very bitter person hating my own mother for having brought this great humiliation down upon me. The city slicker has returned, and this is the kind treatment that they show you. Mind you, I have been gone eighteen years. And I stayed up there in that boudoir with the vertical Venetian blinds for some three or four days, and one day there came to my cell door a man whom I had never seen. called for me by name and gave me, in essence, what we have come to know as the A.A. Pitch. He talked exclusively about himself and he said, Joe, I've had lots of trouble with my drinking. And he went on to relate some of the incidents and then he said maybe you have too and he hurt my feelings. and I turned him away I really got very, very smart with him and the thing that galled me was that I couldn't stir everybody that I'd ever encountered in my life I wanted them to react and this guy I couldnít rush and I envied subconsciously the peacefulness with which he stood there and told me without any let or hindrance all about himself. And when I get to giving him the guff that I did, he pulled in his pocket and pulled out a little pamphlet on the front of which reads, Slaves of Drink find peace of mind. It was a little piece of literature that had been printed here in the... ...in the early days of A.A., and put his name on the back of it and said, if you ever need this, call us. And with that he went. I later heard about this conversation. He went back to my mother and, you know, non-alcoholics are funny people. Ain't they? Ain't THEY? She expected him to go jab the needle in, you know, and go forth and sin no more. And she said to him, what's the good word? Is he all right? And he said, no, I'm afraid that your son is not ready for AA. And she says, being the wise woman that she is, what do we do? If we let him out, he'll get drunk. And this fellow said, yes, these words, his condition will make him get drunk. Now my people are pretty substantial citizens down in that area. None of them have ever been hung for horse thieving. And they arranged, I like that word, they paid some good green money to have two deputies load me in a police car and carry me 200 miles to Houston and sit with me in the depot until the train went west. I don't know whether they've been reading Horace Greeley's admonition about go west, young man, or not, but they wanted to get the hell out of Texas with me. And I shall remember sitting in that depot until my dying day, these two big burleys sitting on either side of me in that immense station, and I knew that everybody's eye was on me. On the way down there, they sent my brother along to be sure that I left. He was to come back and report. He's a non-alcoholic, very uninteresting person, dreadful bore. And he works for the post office. I don't know what's the path of it. I think he breaks packages or something. But along about halfway down there, he said to me very seriously, this brother of mine, he pulls out 50 postcards and he said to me, he says, now, there's no reason why we can't hear how you're done. We'd like to hear from you. And he said, I've made it easy. I have addressed all of these postcards. All you've got to do is let us know. And I would stay out on the west coast, drink that wine, eat those pills, and mail him a blank postcard every time I felt like it. If I had a good day, I'd mail him two. I didn't go back to California in one long hop. I got off of the train in San Antonio and filled up a bag with the only thing I know to fill a bag up with. and they carried me off of that train in a wheelchair in Los Angeles. Some fellow said, you can't live here. This thing goes up and down the road. You've got to get out, and I couldn't. And they took me and three old bags that I had tenaciously clung to on the foot of this wheelchair and rolled me through that station and very unceremoniously dumped me on the curb out front. and with all the jocular remarks that I might make, all the levity about my drinking, I went through the next five months of living hell. I mooched wine for my railroad buddies up and down the West Coast and I had a permit from this hospital that would entitle me to go into any railroad hospital and get goofballed by the sack full. They said I was suffering from a nervous disorder and I ended up in a flophouse in Sacramento and every time I go into an AA club and see that sign hanging on the wall but for the grace of God I think of that flophous you know there were 18 beds in that place and I don't know where the other 17 fellas are sometimes I have to wonder Why, we are such a fortunate minority. Such a fortunate majority. Probably in this other 17 beds there lay somebody who would have made just one hell of a good amen. Those of you who have traversed that area know that it is not uncommon for four or five a night to walk off in the river. And however it got out of there, I don't know. Yes, I do too, but to the grace of God, I told you a minute ago. I got up and got out of that place and wandered this 2,100 miles back to Texas to find this character that gave me that damn little pamphlet. Every time I opened one of those bags it seemed to me like the old shell game. It was right on top. I never read it. Never read it All I saw was the front page Slaves of Drinkfine, Peace of Mind And I came back looking for this character I got home drunk, how else? How else does a drunk come home? And my people haven't changed They still believe in this iron cure and it was an old uncle of mine he's dead now and he came to my rescue which shows us that we don't have a patent on everything good he never had any problem with alcohol he'd never been subjected to the humiliations and the indignities that I had as a practicing alcoholic and he said some words that probably have been the treatment of the alcoholic or at least the attitude down through the centuries. Go into the back room and get out of sight where you won't bother anybody. No family likes to admit they've got one and my family sure as hell had one. Go into the back room and get out of sight where you won't bother anybody. I've read a lot of books about spiritual experiences, some fantastic and otherwise. As I lay in that back room watching three half pints of wine and some phenobarbital that I had inadvertently clung to disappear, I came to some realization. I don't know what it was. I think I cried out for help. I think i came to a realization that there was something wrong with me that I have to go outside myself for help And I woke this compassionate old uncle up in the morning at three and walked in on him. And I said to him, I think I'm an alcoholic. And the old gentleman never argued. I don't know, it seemed to me that somewhere in my past that God had withheld a moment from me and upon whim had suddenly thrown it back at me, this realization that I was helpless. Oh, some of us have to go through great lengths before we realize that. And he said, why don't you call this fellow that came to see you? And the very thought of it went against everything I'd ever dealt with. Everybody I'd never come in contact with was a one-shot proposition. and to ask a man to come again who had been once. And I think that that's one of the secrets of this society, the second trip. My God, how long do you work with a drunk? He closed his office on Monday morning and came again and gave me the same pitch and told me a lot of things And I noticed the absence of drinking in there so much. He talked about many other things, but he didn't talk much about drinking. He talked abut hating people and self-pity and a number of other choice little items that I didn't particularly approve of, but not much about drinkings. And he took me to my first meeting. I don't know why they're all upstairs, but they are, most of them. And these stairs are cut on the bus, and I remember him shoving me up there that night. And I don' t remember any of the pearls that were dropped that night, I don''t remember anyof the profound and erudite statements that were made by the old heads. and they, hey, I remember that here are some people like me. Here are some People Like Me. And I went away from that meeting with an ecstasy that I hope I never lose. There sat in that club that night a fellow over in the corner smoking a cigar, and he had on a big diamond ring. It looked like somebody broke into 50-pound junk eyes And he had one of these serenity things that we get, you know, when we get sober here. And sitting there puffing gently, and I'd been gone, mind you, for a long number of years, and I thought I recognized him. And he sat there so peaceful. My God, what else do we get out of AA? Smoking his cigar, shining that diamond ring, and flashing this AA punch he's got on, see? and it finally after the meeting I realized that I had soldiered with him 20 years prior to that time and the last time I had seen him he was a blubbering idiot. He was chained to a post in this army camp, that was their treatment for alcoholism, and we would slip him whiskey to watch him perform you know like a monkey yet he became very adept on this chain and he was chained of this post and that was the last I had seeing of him and here he sits in an AA club his calm and peaceful smoking his cigar. And I thought if it'll help him a little bit, it'll make a damn genius out of me. And then there was an old guy that gave me the thing that A.A. is based entirely upon. He came and put his arm around me and he was the sheriff, mind you, who had locked me up some 12 years prior to that time. Here he was in AA, sober four years, and he put his arm around me and he said, Joe, this may sound funny to you, but I love you. AA is a gift of love. And he gave me some of the wisest counsel that I've ever come in contact with. I don't know what we were like, what we did, what we are like. Now, I don' t know some of th e fallacies of AA life. I wouldn't stay here all night to tell you that. I know that I went through all the cycles that everybody else has. I became very godlike when I got sober. Oh, I get so pure. Run along. Let me tell you about a guy I worked with. One morning he called my wife. That was in the days when I went every trip. And she said, yeah, I'll send Joe to see you. And I went out to see him. He was a scurvy mess. And I borrowed a drink of whiskey to jolt at him really. He was verging on VTs. And when he came unshuckled from this drink, he was in an AA club. I believe any way you get the rascals there is all right. But he got sober, this guy did. He was scurvey, I tell you. And then he got drunk, and he continued to get drunk, and he had a little affectation that some of the rest of us have had. He would go to faraway places and call me, collect at 2 o'clock in the morning to tell me that he was drunk. I wouldn't give up, though. I thought sooner or later this genius, this piosophy that I've acquired in AA is going to take effect on him, you know. He likes to run me crazy. You better have your pistol cocked when you ask God to send you somebody to help because he won't let you down, I'll tell you. And I thought, well, God, you've sure been watching the Sparrows too much, so let me have this one. He is a star. He became part of a side project with me, you know. But I wouldn't give up on him. I worked with that bastard for four and a half years. About three and a halve years ago, he got on for him what I hope was his last drunk in one of our local motels. And he called another fellow from our club that's not half as smart as I am and he went out and talked to that bastard ten minutes and he's been sober ever since. So, I hated his guts. I used to sit in the club and look at him and think you ought to be mine. You ought to be mine and in reflection I know that I owe him a lot more than he owes me. He kept me sober for four and a half years. I don't know. I love them all. But they'll lie to you the same as they always did. A drunk's got to be a liar and never get his second job. But every time I have tried to take the place of God with one, something happened to me. I well remember picking one up. The guy called me in a restaurant and said, come down here, I think I got a candidate for you. He wants to talk to somebody in AA and I went down, took another fellow with me and all he wanted was for me to get his jug from the fellow that ran the restaurant. But I loaded him in the car and got his jug and had him between me and this other guy and I'm giving him the AA pitch. Oh, I'm shooting it to him, dropping the whole load on him, you know. And he sat there very quietly and took it and pretty soon his eyes started to moistened. I knew I had him. Oh, I was giving it to him and wore him so beautiful. And he laid his head on my shoulder and I thought, I've got him now. Did you ever hear of anybody throwing up without making any noise? In our egotism and in our arrogance, through the procession of our drinking, I'm sure that all of us thought we were above the average person. I'm sure of that. I knew I was. And I sometimes grow weary of hearing them speak of reaching down to get the alcohol. Friend, you've got to go up and get them off of the lambs. They are way above you. And it seemed to me when this fellow talked that he said where you sit is a lonely place. Come down with us. And I had to go way down before I ever started up. A has meant a great deal to me and to you, I'm sure. And I'm indeed grateful that, as I said a while ago, I'm one of the fortunate minorities who have accepted this gift. If I were going to parallel the way I feel about this thing that was given to me so graciously, I could think of nothing better than the little anecdote about the master teaching at Capernaum. As the story goes, there were four fellows who were anonymous. Their names weren't mentioned. And they had a sick friend. And they felt that if they took their sick friend to hear the master and this new philosophy of love that some good would come from it. And they loaded him in a basket, these four fellows, who were autonomous. and they took them. And when they got there, the room was so crowded that they couldn't get in. And they were so determined that they effected an entrance through the roof and they let their sick friend down to the master of these four fellows who were anonymous. And when he saw this example of faith, these are the words verbatim, by their faith he shall be healed. I came into AA it wasn't faith of one or four but many thousands and it was something over which I had no control. You gave it to me. Thank you.