The Progressive Disease That Left Him in a Straitjacket – Jack B.

My privilege and I mean privilege to hear our speaker who is going to speak to us tonight. There was a crowd in this hall at the forest, I would guess to be even larger than this one. Never have I heard a crowd so large where there were so few distractions. This man, this man held us completely spellbound. I had never heard him before, I had never met him before. Today I was privileged to spend a few hours with him, and he's my kind of AA, and I think he's going to be your kind of AAA because he has strictly hard-nosed big book, AA, and he doesn't deviate. And it's with a great deal of personal pleasure I give you, Jack B. from New York. Good evening, friends. Hi, y'all. we stopped in uh howard johnson on the way down i know i'm in the south you know we were leaving any girl said y'all hurry back i love that really you see and you know when you sit back there you hear a damn thing everything goes that way but i heard that tape that was nice and loud and i understand that good going up and down see i was going down to go up to my room and I fell up the stairs. I never heard of anybody falling up the stairs, but I did this afternoon. And I'm very happy to be here. I'm very happy to be anywhere, absolutely. But it's nice to come to a place such as this is. And they tell me that used to be a girls' school or something. I know it's very lovely, very beautiful. And when you walk through the gates out there, you ride through the gate, it's like you're leaving the world outside. And this is the experience I have up where I live, you see. I live up near Graymoor, Garrison, New York. It's a very lovely place too. They call it the Holy Mountain. Monasteries and schools. It's beautiful. And I go up there most every week and spend a few hours with the monks and just absorb peace and quiet. Because, you see, my name is Jack Brent. I'm an alcoholic. And I have trouble living. I have struggle living in a normal world because I'm only 5% of a very small minority of the population. And I suffer from a disease. The disease is called alcoholism. Very misunderstood by the 95% that don't have it. Very tremendously misunderstood. So when I come down here to a, or anywhere, to a group of Alcoholics Anonymous, I just feel wonderful. I feel like part of everything and it's good because I need this. I lived too many years in a bottle. I lived in a barrel because nobody understood me and the things that I wanted, I never knew how to approach or get until I came to AA. So it's very important to me and I think to every alcoholic that they know the disease that they suffer from. That's a very real bit, very, very real chemical disease. And it will kill you, very fatal. They have been steadily moving it up in order of importance in the medical association for years. It used to be fourth. Now it's in second place. And I think if the truth were known, it would be the first in first place, very rapidly. So it's important for me to always understand my disease and remember that when there's something wrong or something bothering me, that's my disease, it's like myself. And with the help and the knowledge that I've gained here in AA, I can generally overcome any situation or feeling of ill that I have. And in this manner, AA has taught me to live. And I live with a disease that I'll never get rid of, but I'm a happy person. I have peace in my heart. And I came here tonight because my friend upstairs wanted me here tonight. I don't know who, but I do know that there's one person out there that will benefit by something that I say. And that one person is the one that I speak to. And the rest of you can sit there quietly and listen, but that one place is important to you. And it's important to me because this is what is left of my life, don't you see? This is why I was left alive, this is why that I've lived for 25 years and I should be dead. And I'm not. Of course the man upstairs saw fit to leave me live as long as I would do as he saw fit to have me do. So I'm here tonight because of the higher power. And when the phone rings and someone calls me to come to an AA meeting or a convention I go. If it's humanly possible, I go because I know that's why I'm alive. So to that one individual, I would like to explain just a little bit. I would like to display that the disease that you suffer from is very real, very chemical, very similar to diabetes and if you have any children, it's possible four times to one that one of them will be an alcoholic too. And this is the disease that we suffer from and it manifests itself in three ways. It manifests itself physically, mentally, and spiritually. And it manifests itself mentally in that it makes us do things that normally were not capable of doing if we're not drunk or drinking. It makes men take money that belongs at home and spend it. It make men take wives that are very dedicated people, mothers of their children, and give them a life that no dog deserves. And it makes women do the same thing to their husbands. And it make children very irresponsible toward their parents and their wives. And this is the nature of the mental disease that we suffer from, the disease that affects us mentally. The one physical disease affects us in three areas, and physically it will kill you. You have ever seen an individual throwing up in the morning, trying to keep a drink down in the can? Have you ever seen the alcoholic shaking and trembling, eyes full of fear, sitting in a corner? The physical manifestation of the disease is alcoholism. And then we have the spiritual manifestation of that same disease. In spiritual, a lot of people shy away from that word, I don't. It's very important to me because AA makes us alcoholics, as alcoholics it makes us spiritual. It gives us back our spirituality and dignity as human beings. So to me, the word spiritual simply means a person that is needed and wanted and loved. And if you're needed and needed and loved, then you're spiritual. And you can see very readily how the alcoholic is not at all spiritual. Nobody needs him, and nobody wants him, and nobody loves him. Certainly nobody loves them. So this is then the one disease that we suffer from affecting our whole entire lives. Well, I was born just like everybody else. I had a mother and I had father. And I knew both of them, contrary to what you may have heard around or there's been a bit of debate about that over the years, but I did know the both of them. They were very lovely people. And for about six months, I think they liked me too. But it became apparent very early in my life that there was something wrong with me. I was very different from other people. was one of nine children and i was the only alcoholic that was born of this parent mother and father and it affected me very strangely from the earliest day that i can remember in my life i was full of fear a basic ungrounded and unfounded fear i couldn't understand why i was always afraid i was afraid at night time i was a freighter daytime not afraid school i was afraid of doctors i was affrayed of people i was fred of everything I was just one big mass of fear from the moment that I was born. And I couldn't understand it. And as I grew up in the world and things started to get a little more clear, I became more of a round block in a square hole. I was absolutely useless. I couldn' t do anything right. And I had a bunch of brothers and sisters, and they were all quite normal. They went to school. They come home with good report cards. They lived and they enjoyed themselves. they played games, and they had girlfriends as they got older. And I met Jack. No, I was different. And nobody knew what was wrong with me. My mother used to say to me all the time, why don't you just relax and be like your brother? And I tried then for many years to relax and to be like my brother. But I had one big problem that my brother didn't have. I was deathly afraid of my father. And my father was an alcoholic. Although in those days, nobody called him alcoholic he was according to who looked at him he was either a drunken bum or a gutless person or very religious an irreligious person he was anything but an alcoholic because the word alcoholic was not known and if you had alcoholism in your family you just buried the alcoholic you didn't talk about them put them in a closet and bury them don't talk about anything but the alcoholic so there i was with a father that tried very hard to stay sober and never made it because there was no a.a and every time that he would come home drunk he would have lost his job and he would be in fights and i was petrified i was terrified and i used to hide in the basement behind the boiler and nobody could get me out so my father sold it up i wouldn't eat i wouldn' sleep i would just sit behind that boiler and tremble and my mother would come down and she'd say what's wrong with you i said i don't know i just feel like i'm going to die and everybody else is going to die and this is where i lived as a kid then my father would sober up and he would promise me that there'd be no more that he's gonna buy me a pair of skates he's going to do a lot of things and i would believe him you see and then about two or three weeks later he would come home drunk and the whole thing would start all over again and i used to sit in the kitchen between my mother and father trying to protect one from the other and just sitting there and watching that nobody hit anybody else and it was not a way to live, believe me. My brothers and sisters, they slept fine. Nothing bothered them. They went to bed, they got up, they went to school, but not me. I was deathly afraid and I was scared. I were terrified. And if my mother went to a store, she stayed out a little long, I would always see her under a trolley car or a bus getting killed. And I worried constantly about things that I had no business to worry about. And I always hated Christmas. I couldn't stand Christmas. I was never happy. In fact, this last Christmas is the only Christmas I ever had in my life that I actually enjoyed, this past Christmas. And it took a long, long time for me to do that, believe it. So you see, as a kid, I was afflicted with the disease of alcoholism. Although they can't call you an alcoholic until you start drinking. But the basic malfunction of the glands in my body, my chemical makeup, is such that the moment that I got the alcohol, I found relief from the tremendous fears that I had all my life. And this then is the story of alcoholism. The guy that will go out and pick up a drink because it's sociability or social customs and not expecting anything, but he'll pick up the alcohol and he'll drink it. He'll pick a drink and suddenly he finds relief from these nameless fears that he suffers from and he then becomes, the alcohol then becomes to him the most important thing in his life. So you see it's not a question of whether I wanted to be an alcoholic it's never a question anything like that it's simply that I stand up here and tell you that I'm an alcoholic and I hated alcohol I hated alchohol with a passion because every time that my brothers or cousins or someone would come in the house with a bottle I knew what was going to happen alcohol and my father trouble Alcohol and Jim Brennan trouble. And I knew that just as sure as God made little apples. And I hated the sight of alcohol, beer, wine, whiskey, anything. I just hated it because I knew what was going to happen and I loved my mother very dearly. She was a very beautiful woman and to me she was the epitome of everything. And I just couldn't see the abuse that she was getting. And little by little I began to hate my father. I began To hate his guts because he always promised no more and two weeks later he'd be drunk again. And the drunks started to get closer together and longer and I remember going to school or trying to go to school and sitting in the classroom and wondering what was happening at home. And I remember trying to keep my breakfast down if I had had breakfast. And I'd go to School and I'd have to leave the room, go out of bed and throw up from fear in my belly. And this is the life that I lived as a kid. And I only bring this out because so many people tell me, Jack, that was me too. I never associated with my disease. Well, you see a lot of people don't know what their disease is. They think maybe that they're mentally sick. And that's true. You suffer from a very real physical disease and when these things happen to you, the best you know what's wrong. Because the person that knows what's raw can handle it. But you can't walk through this world with two feet finally planted in midair. You have to be one way or the other. And it's like they say up in where I come from, if you pray, why worry? And if you worry, why bother praying? Well, if you're in AA, AA is the answer. This is it. This is where the action is. This is what it was. Because 3,000 years ago, the Chinese had a saying. It was the first and earliest recorded history that I know of of the disease of alcoholism. The Chinese said that the man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drinking, then the drink takes the man. That was 3,000 years ago and until 38 years ago that's the way that it was there was no help anywhere for the alcoholic nowhere but 38 years a miracle happened when Bill Wilson was given this gift of Alcoholics Anonymous from a higher power so I stand here tonight and I tell you that my name is Jack Brennan and I owe everything in this world that I have or what I am. I owe my very life to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I believe with all my heart that this is a God-given, God-inspired program, and that the head of this program is the higher power himself. And I can see it no other way. I can absolutely see it no other ways. And if anybody would presume to tell me that they know an easier, softer way, like this lad just read here, that there are those that will seek easier and softer methods to no avail i don't buy that because this is where the action is this is what the results of a gift from a higher power so like i said i was born an alcoholic and it didn't take only but one drink to prove that something was wrong with brennan because i was in the bedroom at age 12 with my brother he was 10. and he came up from under the bed with a bottle of wine and he said said, Jack, look what I found. And I said, what is it? And he said, I think it's what the old man drinks, wine. So he took the cork out and smelt it. He said, you know, it smells pretty good. Why don't we try it? And I says, why don't you try it because you see my mother didn't raise no super children and I was not about to get into a bottle that I didn't know what was in it and I watched him as he took his first drink and he said oh my goodness that's nice and it's sweet and it's really good. Well, I watched him for a few minutes to see that he didn't collapse or anything. And when he did, I said, let me have some of that too. I had no thought in my mind of anything except to just try to see what it tasted like. And I took that first drink at age 12. And i want to tell you, it was a miracle, absolute miracle. All my fears left me and I just looked at the world with completely different eyes you see i was in the bedroom in the first place because another drunk was starting it was a saturday morning and my father had gone out for the paper and he came back and he was drinking beer and brought some with him and i knew right away trouble my mother knew too she said jack get in the bathroom because he started and when he started it was trouble so i got in the room and i was full of fear wondering what was going to be that night and the next night and then the next night. And that despair, that emptiness that comes into the alcoholic or the family of an alcoholic. I understand it's good. And I was filled with that. And suddenly with that first drink, it all disappeared. I didn't care whether my father was drunk. It didn't bother me. And I looked at my brother and I said, that is wonderful stuff. He said, yeah, it's sweet. He kept saying it was sweet. I always said that he was stupid. Now I know it. Because he didn't understand what had happened to me. And he said, let's have another one. I said, by all means. So he had two. And again he stopped and he said oh boy is that good. It's sweet. And I said what a dummy this is. It is sweet. I took the second drink and I was 10 foot tall. I could do anything. And here was a kid now that couldn't even go to school. The kid that sat in the back of the room. The kids that wouldn't answer a question if the nun ask them because if i answered the question if i knew the answer maybe i was wrong and maybe they would laugh at me and i couldn't stand being laughed at i hated to be different and when i sat in school i always watched people and i always had my brother's shoes and my brother pants on and let anybody say anything about my poorly fitting pants i would kill him and i would never answer questions i would not do anything but now with this first drink i was capable of anything anything and i looked at my brother and i said boy that is good stuff and i thought let's have another one and he said no well now that was over 40 years ago and i'll tell you something if you're in lingbrook long island you meet a guy named joe brennan don't drink with him don't drink with them because he does the same thing today that he did to me then he will give you one drink he will gives you the second drink and then the cork goes back in the bottle and the bottle goes back in the closet and you have had it that's it you don't get more than two drinks you see he's all through and you just lit the fire and that's what he did to me 40 years ago that's why he'll do to you today because he's not an alcoholic he doesn't need it doesn't want it two drinks is all he wants and when i suggested a third he said no they said you drink too much stuff you're gonna be sick and i said you're out of your mind and i told them then and i believed it if the lord made anything better than this you want to keep it up there because it's not here and i took my third drink and four drinks and you know something the next thing that i remember it was sunday morning and my mother was waking me up and she was crying bitter tears i came through with a start you know what it is when you're alcoholic you don't know what happened but you know someone's wrong because you'll have a belly full of remorse. And that remorse too is peculiar to alcoholics. They don't do anything even, but they're sorry. Have you ever seen an alcoholic in the J.A.? He stands in a corner shaking, mind his own business, drinks a cup of coffee and someone coots individual or knock his coffee all over his soup. And the poor alcoholic says I'm sorry. He's sorry, he didn't do nothing, but he's sorry. Well this is what is known as remorse and very peculiar to the disease of alcoholism that morning i was full of remorse i didn't know what i had done but i was sorry and i looked at my mother crying i said what happened and i sat up in bed like a scared deer and she said jack please don't ever do again what you did last night and i said what did i do and she says you drank almost three quarters of a gallon of wine and you were in the bedroom with your brother and you started to drink and you didn't stop and she said by the time i called you to take a bath last night you tried to take a bath in the bathtub you almost drowned you passed out in the bath tub your father broke the door down off the hinges pulled you out put you in bed you slept all night since yesterday afternoon and he said jack one in this family is enough please for the love of god don't ever do that again and you know something i promised her i promised really i said mom please stop crying it will never ever happen again never I said it was just a mistake I don't know what happened really I don' t even remember what happened I said but I'll never do it again please stop crying because for me to hurt this woman was the last thing in the world that I wanted the last day I used to go out and have newspaper routes too and I used run my legs off after school and before school delivering newspapers and collecting money and bringing it home and throwing it on the table And she would say to me, Jack, why don't you take a half a dollar for your stuff? I'd say, no, I don't want it. Because, you see, I think I was trying to make up for the poverty that alcohol had inflicted on the family. And I used to always tell my mother, Mom, one day we're going to get out of this place and we're gonna go, Jayden, we're gon' live in a little house and I'll buy you nice clothes, you know, and I'ma make sure you have plenty of money. Because I hated to see her scooping and pennies and nickels and dimes trying to feed nine kids. And my old man out drunk and throwing away money over the bar and coming home with all kinds of stupid candy and ice cream And I never would eat it never would take it. So you see I never wanted any trouble, never And the last thing I wanted to do was hurt her and when I saw her crying that morning, I was devastated I was Devastated but you see something I had also found alcohol and I was an alcoholic I was chemically predisposed to be an alcoholic the moment that I was born and when I found this relief I couldn't help do except what I did do. I lied to her I told her mom there's gonna be no more and while I was telling her that I would scheme in how I was going to get More because anything that made me feel that good. I was not about to put down No, I couldn' do it and I said well i'll just drink nice and quietly i'll have a little bit now and again and i'll be able to live i'll go to school i ask questions and i'd be like the other kids i could play a little baseball maybe i wouldn't be sitting in a corner with a book upside down reading and not reading you know this is the type of kid that i was old in another world but with alcohol i could live i could be like my brother and everybody would always tell me to be like my brother and i wanted to be like him in fact i tried so hard to be like him and every time i couldn't be i hated him just a little bit more he was the kind of a kid that when he died he had one job for 37 years my average was about 37 jobs a year don't you see and he went to school and he got good marks he got lovely marks everybody loved him he was a fine fella he would go to church even when it wasn't sunday and he was just one of these kids you know and he would hang his clothes up his shoes were always shine i could never find anything i would put my books down and build milk all over them i was just wanted those kids and he with another time and for me to be like him was a tremendous effort and i failed miserably and when i failed of course i hated him but now you see i didn't care about it all these days i found relief in alcohol and i drank and you see it's very easy to drink when you're a kid and you're an itis catholic something very easy all you have to do is be an altar boy see and i was an altar boys and i used to go to church and i would tell the priest say father how about you give me the six o'clock man well he could never get anybody for the six-o'clock mess that was the middle of the night so he would say oh i'm happy to have you and he even thought about me becoming a brother at one time, you know. I wasn't interested in the six o'clock mass. I used to get there at a quarter after five for the six-o'clock man because, you know, you go into the sacristy and you set up everything and you have yourself a nice drink. You'll get yourself...and they'd go first class in them sacristies too, I tell you. Some of the best drinks I ever had in my life came out of sacristy and I would go there and I was set up nicely and we would have the mass with the two little old ladies in the front row but nobody had the six o'clock mass just me and the priest and a couple of little old women they're only there because they're afraid they won't make the day so they get there early and everything was fine but once in a while I would run into an alcoholic priest and he would get there quarter to five for the six O'clock Mass And I would get there, you know, and I would be all charged up and ready to go and walk in. He would say, good morning, Jack. And I was dying because that was a bad day then, you see. Here's this smart little kid the day before going back to school and telling the nuns, sister, why don't you take a seat and I'll take over the class today? With a drink I could do that. But then when this guy would horn in and I didn't get my morning drink, you know, it was a bad day. I would come in and I wouldn't even open the door. I would come underneath without opening it. And I would sit in the back of the room and I would be just Jimmy the Dunk. I would say nothing. I wouldn'y answer questions. And then no one used to ask me what happened? Where's the smart little boy that was here yesterday? And this is the way that my life went. Well you see, make a long story short, I drank because I thought that I had to drink. I had the drink in order to be in this world. And And I looked at my father many nights. He came home and he worked hard when he was and God love him I made my peace with him before he died, but I hated him for years But you see he used to work hard when you were she was a scene for them And he had no electric pipe shredders He used to spread all this pipe by hand and he was a bull of a man And I look at him and I look in my shoes And I would say hell if that's what boy gets for you I don't want to work, because I went to bed many, many nights hungry with cocoa and cheese, tea sandwich and cocoa for supper. There was no money in the house, and this guy used to break his back working, and I'd say, how is that noise? So to make a long story short, I looked for an easy way to make $1, and I found an easyway to make it $1. And I'm not proud of it, you know. I just stand up here and I tell you honestly what happened to me, and I don't shy away from anything and I won't embroider anything it's just a series of facts that happened in my life and I tell you one thing at this point though, I thank God for AA and I thank God for the 12 steps of AA because you see when they tell you that this is a new way of life, you had best believe it it is I didn't know anything about a new way of living but I do know one thing If I had to live just without drinking the way I was when I came into AA, if I had remained the way i was when i arrived here but i was sober, i would cut my throat because i couldn't stand the stink of me when i came into aa. I just couldn't stay in the think of me. There was so much horror in my life and so many rotten miserable nasty things that i had done that if somebody promised me sobriety and nothing else, I would say, keep it. I don't want it. And I would die. I would just as soon be dead as just be sober. So I know that there is a new way of life here because I have lived the new way of life since I came into AA. And I repeat again, thank God for the 12 steps. They enable me to bury my garbage in the back of me so that I can't smell it unless that I want to. And when I speak here at meetings, I smell it pretty good and you smell it too. and that's good but it's bearable now you see because it is in the past and there has been things happen to me that have made up for some of the garbage in my life but i never want to forget it because it's the thing that keeps me going and makes me know that this program works so well and i would say this too to that one individual that i'm here to speak to if i can do it you can do it too definitely if i could do it all you have to do is the same thing that i did Throw yourself into this program wholeheartedly. Come in with both feet. And let the man upstairs run your life and see where it will take you. I guarantee you that you will never, ever be drinking again one day at a time. It's a wonderful way to live. But to get back to me, my life is full of horror, as I said. Because I went out at a very early age with a gun. And I took what I wanted. I didn't ask nobody anything. I just got myself a few drinks in the morning, and I was capable of anything. And I've stolen an awful lot of money in my time, and I've hurt an awful Lotta people, and I'd been shot, and i've shot people, and I did a terrible Lotta nasty things to a Lotta People. I was never satisfied with just stealing an individual's money, and I would bash him across the bridge of the nose with the butt of the gun, too. And you see, it's like I'm talking now about two other people. See, I was a wheelman for a mob in New York. I drove a car. What they call a wheel man is the guy that drives the car. And I drove the car 100, 110 miles an hour many, many years ago. And I've been shouted at by police and I've led them in many cases up and down in Jersey and in Washington. I'm not very proud of me but you see there's one thing the disease of alcoholism does affect us mentally and it makes us capable of doing things that normally we're not capable of doing and that was me and if that sounds like a cop out to you it isn't because one drink and i'm a maniac i'm an maniac with one drink so you see i'm very very grateful for how it's done and i ran with these bunch of people you know and i did some very desperate things and they told me that I was a very fine real man. But you see, I always blacked out and I always had these spells of not remembering. And it was on one of these things, you know, you wake up in the morning and no matter where you are, sometimes it would be a beautiful hotel suite in Jersey or in New York or somewhere and sometimes it'd be in a little furnished room holed up waiting for the police to get off your back. No matter where it was, a strange phenomenon always happened to me. when I slept after a drink and drunk I would wake up and I would always be back to being a 12 year old scared kid it was the most annoying and devastating thing that ever happened to me in my life I would awake up in the morning, I would be full of fear full of terror and remorse and I was always 12 years old and scared so you can understand why I took my first drink immediately because I do believe that the alcoholic is two people just like that one behind the other and it's this alcoholic that we create that covers up the person that we don't like and we live like this. We live like this for years but as I slept, this individual would disappear and out would come the 12 year old scared kid and I hated that kid. That was a kid that wasn't capable of anything, nothing. I couldn't even ask a man for a cigarette unless I had a drink. I was backward and I was shy and I stupid and I with ignorance and I was full of fear and I didn't like that because that was not me, not what I wanted. I wanted to be a part of everything. So I give my morning drink very early but I will never ever in my life forget what it feels like to be a 12 year old scared kid. It happened to me regularly and I would reach under the vet and I would take my morning drink and I would get my feet on the floor and I would say, My God. Oh my God what did I do last night because I never remembered. And then I was going to get my gun and I would smell it to see if it had been fired. And then I would count the bullets and then I will look in my pocket to see if I had any money. Trying desperately to put the pieces together before I met anybody and never quite succeeded. And I used to go down, I used to ask them stupid questions at the alcoholic. I would meet the president and I'd say, how did everything go last night? They would look at me in amazement. They would say, don't you know you drove your car? And I would say yeah but I was busy you know. And they would say busy? And you know they used to call me Crazy Jack the Umbriago. Well you understand what Crazy Jack is and I didn't like that at all but I laughed with them. But the Uambriago part I didn' t like at all because that's Italian for drunkard don't you see? And anybody that mentioned or even insinuated that I was like my father, he was likely to get himself a fat lip. Nobody ever talked to me about being an alcoholic or drinking too much. I just wouldn't stand for it because I didn't want to be like my father in no way, in any which way. I thought that he was a nothing. I taught that he was just nothing. And the sooner that he got out of this world, the better. And if he got in my way, I would help him out of his world. In fact, at the age of 16, my mother to throw me out of my home. She threw me out of my house for threatening my father with a gun. And she said, I don't know where you ever came from. He said, You are a vicious, nasty person. And your father, he may not be much, but he's certainly not like you. He doesn't actually hurt anybody. You know, he's got problems with booze and he drinks and he don't work too good. But as a father, he's not the best. But my God, Jack, you, you're something else again. And she says, you do nothing but hurt everybody you ever come in contact with. Because this particular morning I was sitting with a gun and a bottle of booze and a roll of money that I wanted to give her, and she wouldn't take it. She said, it's stolen money. I don't want it. I never had any stolen money, and I don'T want it now. And I, please get out of our lives and leave us alone. Go away somewhere. So at 16, that's what happened. And then I went completely berserk. And I went out and I did a lot of desperate things. And then suddenly my world came to an end, too, because one day these people that I worked with, they called me in and they said, you know, Jack, you are a very fine real man. There's no question about it. You drive a car like Bonnie Oldfield. There's not question you're a good man. But, you now, we think you have a little problem. We think that maybe you forget sometimes. And we just suppose that one night, instead of taking us home, that you would take us to a police station. And I have to admit that they had a point, don't you see? So I lost my first job on account of alcohol. And I said, well, that's all right. You guys can go to hell and I'll get me another job. And I couldn't get another job because, you see, people knew me. So I went out on my own, and I operated on my home. And I got in a lot of trouble. I've been arrested over 125 times. and I've been arrested up and down the East Coast West Coast, you name it I've never been in trouble because you see I couldn't operate without myself being with me and where I was there was always trouble trouble followed me and you know many people tried to help me along the way many many people there was priests there was ministers and there was social workers and I would come to a prison somewhere and I'd be doing a little time maybe or waiting for trial these people would come in and they would say to me, you know, you're a nice young fella. And when I would drink, I was a pretty nice young fellow, you know. I was quiet, and I wouldn't say anything nasty to people. I was two different people. And we're going to try and help you. And I would say, OK, good, because I certainly need help, you knows. And they would think the first thing that you've got to do is stop drinking. Well, right then and there, I would chase them. I would tell them, you've done enough. I would take that at the end of the conversation. Get out. Leave me alone. because if you want me to stop drinking, I can't. I can start breathing quicker than I can stop drinking. So if that's your help, get out. Leave me alone. Don't bother me. Just leave me alone." And he would say, Well, why can't you stop drinking? Look at the trouble that you're getting in. I'd say, I am not in trouble. Well, then he would tell me, Why are you in jail? I'd think, Well, you win a few and you lose a few. And they would say Well, according to your record you've been losing pretty steadily, you know. And I would say, well, it's a matter of break, you know. After all, next time will be different, gee. Next time is always going to be different. There was no next time. It was me. It was alcohol. And I didn't know it at the time, but I was on the way out, you see. And I went down and I went downhill rapidly. It got so that I couldn't even stick up a telephone in the middle of Grand Central. Nothing. I couldn'T make a dollar nowhere. If it was raining soup, I would be out with a fork. It was a, it was a terrible thing. I went to Pennsylvania one time and Philadelphia, I'll never go there again. I have bad memories of Philadelphia because it's all one-way streets and you know I had heard about this place and I said I'm going to knock it off and I did but what a horror because it was an afternoon joint you see and a lot of women in there and a bunch of men in there they weren't supposed to be in there not together anyway and they operate without a license and I say well I'll knocked this joint off and didn't go so much because they were legal anyway see at two o'clock in the evening i pulled up and i went in and i knocked this place off and i put everything into a brown paper bag about 35 40 people all the valuables bars and the register and everything i went outside and got my car and i told them properly you know anybody sticks their head out of that door is going to have a hole right between their lives for at least 10 minutes and i took off in my car i said boy that was a cinch but you see i went up the corner it was a one-way street and i trained properly you never make any more moves when you're getting away from a height and i said the next corner was a one way street too and i turned again and you know something about three minutes later i was coming back past the same damn place there's a big fat cop in the middle of the street and he stops me and he says all right now get that thing out of here we just had to stick up here. I said, did you? Oh my. And I went up to the corner and started that same routine again, one way street. So somewhere in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia on a corner is parked a very fine stolen automobile because I left that damn thing there. And I took my little brown bag full of loot and I made my getaway on a trolley car. See the big, the big real man from New York on a trolleyscar. and i stayed away from philadelphia for one hell of a long while believe me i still run weary when i go there that may sound funny to you and it is funny a lot of it but you see i was growing up and years were piling on top of years and i met a woman that i married she never knew what she had married and i had fears of being like my father and i kept everything from everybody i was very secretive And while we were courting, my wife and I, she used to go and drink with me a little bit, you know. And she used think that I was a very hilarious person drinking. She thought my friends were really something. She loved all my friends. And she didn't know they're a bunch of cutthroats. She was just amazed at the amount of money they spent. And I never did tell it with other people, but she was amazed anyway. And the thing was that now I had come to the point where I wanted to get married, and I did. But it was no good. Because, you see, you can't get up in the morning, a 12-year-old scared kid, and not look a woman in the face. And you can go into the refrigerator under the bed and come up with a jug of whiskey and take a half a water glass to open your eyes. And she started looking at me kind of strange-like. And I said, don't say it, whatever you think, and don't say it. And, you know, I knew how to get away from there. I had to. So shortly after I was married, I went to sea. And I was doing really good, but then a war came along and I wasn't doing so good because I didn't even know there was a war on until one day I found myself swimming. And I asked the guy next to me, what happened? He said, there's a war around. We've got torpedoes. And I said, a guy could get hurt over here, you know. And there went my castle. That was my castle because, you see, on a ship, I answered to nobody. I just went to work for four hours. I'd come up and drink for eight hours. In fact, I worked for four, and that's the way it went seven days a week. And when I would commit to port, I would replenish my stock, and I just had a ball. My wife, whenever I thought about it, I'd send her a few dollars, you know. That's the way I would manage. But she didn't laugh long because I went completely berserk and I was taken off the ship with her. I was taking off the ships with psychoneurosis complicated by acute alcoholism. I had been in a prisoner of war stockade in Germany and I went in there to kill some Germans and instead of me killing them they almost buried me and the result was that I came home after 16 days in a coma on a hospital ship. They took my papers away from me and they sent me home on crutches. I was beat to a pulp by these prisoners of war. And I remember knocking on the door of my apartment where my wife lived with my son and opening the door and I didn't want to be there. I was fighting with the doctors that I wanted to go back to see because I didn' t want nobody to know that I was having trouble with alcohol. And now I knew that the cat was out of the bag and I told the woman, I said, get me some booze. And she said, what is that? I said, whiskey. Whiskey, where do you keep it? She said, Jack, I don't have any whiskey. I live here with this little baby, I said. He's our son, you know, I live near him. There's no whiskey here, we don'thave any parties or anything. And I said, well, hurry up down and get me a bottle of whiskey. So she went down and she got me a bottle of whisky, come back up again. It's a six-story walk up in Brooklyn. I'll never forget the expression on her face. She watched me dive into that bottle and I drank like there was no tomorrow. And I drank and I drank and drank because I couldn't live without it. And she would say to me, Jack, what's wrong? What are you doing to yourself? And I said, get away from me because now you see all the pretenses gone. There was no more pretty anything Just me and booze and that's all I wanted. And the war I imagined had left its mark on me And every time that the fire engines up the street went out, I went out the window I was panic-stricken completely. The booze was not even working for me half the time I was just drinking out of desperation, and she watched me. And she said, Jack, this is no good. You don't talk to your son. You don' do anything but sit in the corner in the bedroom and hide and drink. And what's going to happen to you? I used to tell her, hey get the hell away from me. Leave me alone. Go away. Take that lousy kid out in the street who makes too much noise and go for a walk in the park and don't come back till it's dark. Leave my alone. I was an animal. I was an animal but she wasn't satisfied with leaving me alone she said, I have a husband and I need a husband and my son needs a father and I'm going to find out what's going to be for you and I want to do something about it I'm not going to let you die and I said, just leave me be and mind your own damn business but she went out and she came back with all the information on Alcoholics Anonymous and she gave me a big book one day. She said, you're not a returning hero, Jack. You know what you are? I said, no, why? She said you're a drunken bum. And those were frightened words, but she was ready for fighting. Now this was a naive, simple girl that I had married. Very naive. She never saw anything of life, nothing. Very gentle, very naive person. But suddenly she became very smart and very hard. And I asked her one day, how come? And she said, well, I had a good teacher. You taught me a lot, kid. And she said, I know more of the answers now than you think I know, and you're going to get sober. And I said, you get the hell away from me and leave me be. Well, she came in one day, and she gave me the book of A.A., and I threw it at her. She gave me a big book, and I asked her what it was, and he told me, and i busted her with it. I threw that out, and almost knocked her head right off the shoulder. And i said, don't ever do that again, because you're the last person in this world that i have. And don't you turn on me too. That everybody's after my booze, and it's all that keeps me alive. And don't you come around here and tell me to stop drinking too, because I was drinking when I married you, and you knew damn well I was drinkin', and I told you I was a drinker, and I've told you don't ever interfere with me." He said, he wouldn't. He said,"Don't you start now too, I got nobody else to go to. My brothers wouldn't talk to me, my sisters wouldn't talked to me. My friends on Mulberry Street would have no part in me because I'm dangerous. The cops were looking at me cock-eyed every time walked down the street i couldn't get a job i hated everybody that i come in contact with and now she's telling me you've got to stop drinking oh no no not you too so we have played a game up till now but now the game was ended and one day i went to my favorite bar and i said give me a drink he said get out and i thought what's wrong with you and he said get out he said your wife was in here this morning and she told me that if i serve you even one drink today that she's going to burn my bar down now you get the hell out of here and i said that woman is going to get herself killed yet and so i went around a corner to a little delicate death and he told me the same thing and i couldn't get a drink nowhere and i went back home and i was loaded for beer. And I said to her, what'd you do to me? She said, I fixed you good, didn't I? And I say, yeah, you damn sure did. I'm going to fix you good too. And she said, no, wait just a minute. You want a drink? I said, well, I better have a drink. I've blown out of my mind. She said I'll buy you a drink if you get on the subway and go to New York with me. And I said no, no not the subway. I couldn't ride on the subway. That's a long ride. That sort of 15 minutes from Brooklyn to New you're underground. I couldn't do that. I said, no. She said, you want a drink, you will. So she bought me a drink and I got on the subway and I died to New York. And I come up out of station, I was so shook up, she bought me another one. And she said, now we are going into that church over there. And then I said like hell we are. I say, that's a Protestant church. I don't go with the Protestant churches. I'm an Irish Catholic. And he said, your drunken bum, you haven't been in church in 20 years and you're going in there, I'm going to kill you. Well, I said, all right, I'll go in. So I went in. And I said what is this place? He says this is AA. And they're going to help you. I said yeah, I know. They're going to help me just like everybody else wants to help me. Stop drinking. I said okay, I'll listen. So, I sat in the back of the room and I listened. And some jerk got up here like I'm up here tonight. And you know what he said, amazing. Don't take the first drink and you won't get drunk. And I almost cried. I said, is that what I come from Brooklyn to hear? I didn't have to come here to hear that. I know that. If you don't drink, how could you get drunk? What is he, some kind of boy scout or what? I said I'll kill him. And i hollered from the back of the room to hear myself, I get me, I'll kill you. I broke up the meeting. I got out of there just before the cops arrived. And on the sidewalk, my wife said to me, you are hopeless. You are hopeless. She said, I don't care anymore if you fall down the sewer, get shot. I don' t care what you do. Just get away from these guys. Because I try to help, and you don't want to help. And I would say, you get away for me too, because I don''t want you in my life. Well, three days later I went home. I think it was two days and I found two cops in my apartment. And that for me is very strange because you know I don't have anything to do with cops, nothing. If my hair was on fire and I was laying in the gutter with my hair on fire there was one standing next to me I wouldn't ask him to spit on a fire. Nothing. Just nothing. Ignored them. Maybe they'll go away. That's the way it was. And here's two in my apartments and I said what do you do here. I didn't say that of course, you know, but there are a lot of ladies here. And I said this is not right and they said you almost killed your wife last night. I said she's out of her mind. I wasn't even home last night and she said oh yes she was and you were fighting the war all over again Jack and I was the other side and she had you almost kill me and she showed me her neck with all black and blue I was frightened. I don't remember so I told the cops all right get the hell out of here. This is my home." And they said, no. And I said, yeah. They wouldn't go, so I threw them. And you know something? Even in Brooklyn they frowned on that, you see. And when I threw them out the door and down the stairs, they went out to get reinforcements. They come back and then they threw me. Now you know for the next about a year and a half we were playing king and the hill with my apartment here, see. and I walked around the streets of Brooklyn in a coma and I didn't know where I was going or where I would come in or what I was doing nothing I knew nothing all I knew that I had been hurt because you see the cops used to take me in the back of the alley they'd club me pretty good and they'd bounce me off walls and they would put their foot in my throat and they used to say stay there if you get up again we're gonna knock you down again I'd say will you stop knocking and you know something I wound up in King's County Hospital and Bellevue Hospital 12 different times in a straitjacket, completely berserk for trying to kill cops. Now, if there's any cops here tonight, forget about it. That's a long time ago. And from here on, peace. I have no more animosity, but I tell you they were my mortal enemies. And I used to roam the streets of Brooklyn looking to get even. well you see if you don't never come to in a straitjacket in the hospital you don' t know what terror is because you know you're 12 years old again and you're scared you lay there with your arms strapped across your chest you can barely breathe you can feel the stitches pulling in your head you know and you can see your eyes closed you might have your jaws wired together too like I did you feel the holes in your mouth where the teeth used to be or maybe they're busted off in the root of your mouth and you ache all over and you might have a broken rib or two that nobody noticed and it's killing you but you better lay there quiet even if you want to drink a water don't ask for it because if you open your mouth they ain't gonna take that straight jacket off they're gonna leave it on you so i used to lay there and the sweat used to roll up me. And I used to say, my good God Almighty, what am I doing? And how did I ever get into this? And what did I do? And all the terrors and the fears used to come, and I would say, if I don't bite my tongue hard, I'm going to scream. And if I scream, I'll never get out of here. Maybe I'll go over the edge, and maybe I will be crazy like these other people do. So I used to fight for two or three or four days just to keep my sanity, just to be not crazy. And then it would finally take that lousy stinking jacket off me and I would sit up and I would breathe and I was saying oh boy never again, never again. But you see when you leave you go home and you sit in a home with a woman that looked at you at the corner of your eyes and you see the kids that are there and you know you're working. You can't work, you can't even answer the telephone because you're an alcoholic and you're suffering from the disease of alcoholism and nobody understands you." And my poor wife used to say to me, Jack what are you gonna do? I said, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I don' t know. I said I need a drink so bad that I don''t want to drink because when I drink I go crazy. I knew that. So I would sit in a corner for six or seven days or eight days or a week. I couldn't go no more. and then i would come out of my skin and my brother would come he'd say come on i'll get your job i know a lot of people i would say go away from me please i can't walk across the street what the hell do you expect me to work i can work i would sit in a corner i would shake and i would be 12 years old and scared nobody understood it's nobody and my sister would come she would say my husband's working two jobs to feed your family you're drunk and bum go out and get a job. I don't want my husband dead to feed you and your family. Take care of your own." And I would look at her and say, please, just leave me be. And she would say, just leave be. That's all you ever say. You ain't worth one good damn in this world. Why don't you die? And I will say, yeah why don't I? It would have been a lot easier. And I I would look at my wife and I would say, right, what am I going to do? She'd say, I don't know, Jack. I don' t know. But if you drink, you know it's going to happen. I would think, well, I'm going to drink. And I would said, give me a dollar, please. I got to get out of here or I'm gonna go crazy. And I will get a dollar and I promised her faithfully one drink so I could get on the subway. That's all. No more. Just give me dollar, half air, and one drink. And I'll go get a job. and I meant it just exactly the same as my father meant that I meant and I would go down a corner I would order one drink and I'd tell the pastor I want one just give me one and the minute I put it in my mouth and it hit my stomach it was like somebody turned a key in my head two different people one drink and if I went out there tonight and took one drink that exactly the thing would happen I know it So I suffer from a very real physical disease, and there ain't nothing wrong with my mental capacity. And I am not a weak-willed person. And I'm not an religious person. It's simply that my glands don't work properly like my brother's. And when I throw a chemical alcohol into my mouth the allergy that comes from it causes me to go completely berserk in my mind mind and I'm capable of anything. I didn't understand that then, and I thought that maybe one drink would be medicine and I'll be able to get on a subway, but no! One drink and boom went the key and I would say, I'm gonna find that cop that hit me last week. Yeah. No more thought of a job, no more thought of the kids running around without shoes, my wife being on welfare, no thought of anything like this just let me find that guy that belted me last week and maybe i go over to mulberry street i can make a score maybe i can get a gun and do a bit on somebody don't tell me about the disease of alcoholism i know i know because i went through this routine 12 different times 12 times and i didn't no more want to drink and hurt people than i wanted to fly to the moon never but i did and i'm responsible for me and i'll tell you the last time i came out of the hospital two dicks that i knew picked me up and carried me to a police court where there was a judge sitting and i begged them let me get a drink and said no no drink we got specific orders today no drink for you kids and i said what are you going to do to me i've been 23 days inside now I was 12 years old again and scared. And these two boobs picked me up in the front of the hospital. I didn't get out past the front door. Then they said, what could you want with me? I don't know, the man wants to see you so come quietly. So I went quietly full of fear and sick in my belly. What are they going to do now? What did I do? And I went there and here's this judge that I knew he said, Jack how do you feel? I said, I feel fine. Did you ever hear an alcoholic say it felt bad? Oh, how do you feel? Fine. I didn't feel fine. That was the other Jack talking, hard guy that I created. And he said, well, I don't think you do, but that's all right. And then he called my wife. She was sitting in a corner. He said, Mrs. Brennan, come up here and bring your children with you. I said, what the hell is this? And I stood there in amazement. And I said what are you going to do? He said don't get upset. I Said it's allright. He says calm down, take it easy. and he said, Jack, we want you to hear something and we want you to understand this because you don't understand too good whether you understand that or not and he says, you don's and he say, we have a prognosis here on you from three very fine doctors and I want to tell you what they said because it's very important and I said, what did they say and he read it off to me, he said that Jack Brennan is a homicidal maniac and he might wipe his family out overnight not even know that he did it. He said that Jack Brennan is suffering from wet brains due to alcohol, and that he will not live for the next five years, and if he does live five years he will spend a lot of part in a mental institution completely out of his mind. And said this man cannot differentiate between right and wrong, he doesn't know the difference. And he also said it's highly He recommended that he be removed from his home for the protection of his family. And I said, no, I won't hurt my family. And he said, oh, Jack, you wouldn't. When you drink, you're capable of anything. It is to be true, but when I was sober, no. So I pleaded with him as a sober individual. But I knew he was right. and I turned to my wife and I said hey what are you doing to me she said I got some news for you Jack I tried to help you and listen she said now I'm telling you something the judge awarded me these kids they're mine too mine not yours no more and she said if you put your dirty filthy face where I'm raising my children again I'm going to kill you I'll put a knife in your belly while you're sleeping and I'll kill you, just like somebody should have killed you a long time ago, but I'll do it because these kids are going to get a chance to live. And I'm going to see they get a chance to life. Without you, you're drunk and bummed. And she said, get out of our lives. And she used almost the same words that my mother had used. You do nothing but hurt anybody you come in contact with, so leave us alone. While I stood there, I couldn't lie. I said, all right. And I figured, I'll go to Mulberry Street in New York. They threw me out of Brooklyn, told me don't come back. My wife went one way, I went the other. And I was going to go and I was going to get me a gun. I was going to do a lot of things, you know. I couldn't because, you see, I'm an alcoholic. And the progression of alcohol had been such in me that I didn't even know it. My friends saw me coming, they would turn the other way. I was a mess. I wasn't capable of anything. I was just living unborrowed time and I went over Mulberry Street and I was going to do a lot of things, alcoholic dreams. I wound up on the Bowery and I lived on the bowery for two-and-a-half years. That's the biggest joke you'll hear tonight. A Bowerys devil can look at me tonight flying in planes and coming down and talking to all you people, and AA's, nothing but AA's.