The Spiritual Dilemma That Laid the Seedbed for His Alcoholism – Tom I.

The program has been touched by God, and he's going to come and share his heart with us. Would you welcome Tom Ive from Carolina? Seems like such a shame to mess this up with a drunk-a-log. Jim, thanks. Thanks very much. I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know this man and listening to this man. I've enjoyed all the announcements, too. I really have enjoyed that because I think every time I'm ever in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and I hear somebody ask for an announcement, it reminds me of a thing that happened a good many years ago. ago, I was at the point where I had a lot more enthusiasm than sense. And I was in a town that had no lady alcoholics. They didn't even have any women alcoholics in the program. Murph and Beth and I were talking about some of the hazards of that situation. I was the only guy in town crazy enough to work with drunk women. And my mother used to go with me on 12-step calls after I got hit on enough times that I knew it wasn't safe to go out there by yourself. So she has made more 12-stop calls than a whole lot of members. And I was working with a girl, 24 years old, and one of the worst drunks I ever saw in of my life. And she was doing great. She'd been sober, God, three or four weeks, I guess. And for her that was phenomenal. And I was really charged up about it and I went by her house one night to pick her up, running late as I sometimes want to do, and started to pick up Shirley. And there she sat, drunker than a billy goat, and had another one with her, drunk in a hurry. Well, I didn't have time for any Freudian psychology or anything, deep-seated counseling. I just said, get in the car. We're going to the meeting, both of you. Well, they did. Women are like that. So they just got in the cart, both of them running over and we went to the meeting. I was the chairman that night. Got up and did the usual just like we did here. Then I made the mistake of that night, any announcements. Well Shirley was okay but the one that I didn't know stuck her hand up and I said oh my god what is it? She said I'd like to announce that I'd like to get the hell out of here. Well, by golly, she did too. I never saw that lady in my life again. Shirley's sober today down in Florida. God, The memories that you build up over the years of this program just absolutely boggle the mind. And like Jim, I'm a fellow for whom this program has worked awfully good. Awfully good. I'm not one who's paid a heavy price to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm doing better than I've ever done in my life. I'm going to do it again. I'm still doing better and I never had any idea I could do. So this program's been good to me. I've had the great privilege of meeting my fellow alcoholics all over the United States. Well, not much in the West, but all over the eastern part of the states, up in Canada, all but one of the provinces of Canada, and everywhere I've gone it's been the same thing with building up more to the treasure of memories that come in this program, and I'm deeply grateful for that. This will be another addition to that treasure chest chest of memories. Love of Texas. By the way, I'm not used to, I had to write it down so I wouldn't forget it, dry dates. That's sort of confusing for me. I am Tom Ivester and I'm an alcoholic and it's awfully good to be here with you. My dry date is November the 19th, 1956. The sobriety date is February 2nd, 1957. And I make an important distinction between the two because my dry date had to do with the last time I went to jail. And it just so happened that I found sobriery in that jail. And so I don't take credit for the the dryness that I had with handcuffs on. I counted from where I started in this program, so I make a distinction. My sobriety date is where it started to be somewhat a matter of my hopes anyway, not my decision, just my hopes. I really have enjoyed this. I don't know what love of Texas looked like to Mac Davis and his rearview mirror, but I know what it's going to look like to me when I look back on it. And I'll remember some things. By the way, I've got a blue preaching suit just like Van Lee that I was going to wear this morning. And if you've got an affixation about blue preaching suits, come on over to the room and I'll show it to you. I meant to wear it, but I couldn't get in the blasted thing. The hospitality room is something else. I put that thing on this morning, I swear to God, I looked like a weenie tied in the middle. I had to get this stretchy thing out that I could get in so if you want to see I am proud of it my wife bought it for me for Father's Day and I swear I don't get to wear that thing I remember lots of things and it's little things that carry a message to me I don' t think I'll ever think of Lubbock, Texas that I don''t think of Jim and his mother Madeline standing on this stage Saturday afternoon singing Two folks that used to cry together, singing together. And I understood what recovery and reunion is all about. Lots of things. I remember Brown and Mary in tremendous kindness, warmth, hospitality, consideration. consideration. Everywhere I've turned, there's been Brian and Mary, can I help? And I remember that. What is it that sets the hub of the plains? We grew up with that, a group of us last night, and what is it sets it apart? It's not a special convention. It's no, I've been to much bigger, much fancier, much more elaborate conventions. But there's a thing here that we sometimes sometimes bendy about in Alcoholics Anonymous that's very basic to what it's about. I think basic to this is a thing called love, and I think that's what Hub of the Plains is about. That's what I see in that hospitality room and in the music and the sharing and all of the things that have gone on, so it's going to be a very warm experience for me, and i'm grateful for the great privilege of just being a part of it. Now, I've got a lot to say, and I'm not going to say it all, but I'm going to try to get as much of it in as I can. I know that we don't compete in this program. We just don't do that. But I swear to God, I can't help but feel like the caboose of that train that almost hit Beth. It's an intimidating thing to get behind an array of speakers like we've heard. Not just on the main programs, but that NIDAL meeting was absolutely a moving experience for me. That was a great meeting. So we've had something else, and to just be standing at the end of this is something else. It's awe-inspiring. This is a program that's worked awfully well for me, and that's not past tense. Folks, that's today. day. As you gather from my sobriety date, I just got through in February celebrating my 26th year. And strangely, but maybe not strangely enough, it was probably one of the most dynamic, exciting, enthusiastic, rewarding, vital years I've ever had in Alcoholics Anonymous. us. I'm not one of those who's gone through a period, a process of depression of activity. I'm one who's going through an acceleration of it and it was a tremendously exciting thing. That may seem a little strange at first but when I think about it a little bit deeper it starts to make sense because as I've heard more and more this weekend the longer I'm in this program the more I'm impressed with the fact that it has darn little to do with drinking. It has everything to to do with living. And when I think of it in those terms, the fact of this being a vital year makes eminent sense. And it makes eminate sense from another standpoint as well. I've had more problems in my 26th year of sobriety than I did in any year of my drinking. When I was drinking, I didn't have but one problem. I drank and it didn't agree with me too too well. I didn't have any problems with a family, I didn' t have any family. I didn't' have any problem with a home or house payments, I did' n't have a home or house payment, the latter part of my drinking. I did not have any problem with the job, I d' nt have any job. The last year that I drank, I made no pretense of trying to work, I lived on the streets. I dn't have any problem wth commitments, I din' t even know what the word meant. I did'nt have any probelm with decisions. Any time I had two competing things things to choose between, I'd get drunk and it'd go away. So I didn't have many problems back then. I had one problem. I drank too much. I got awfully drunk. I Got awfully sick and crazy. I got in jail a lot, hospitals a lot. And today I live in a rather complicated world. I live in a world in which I have some responsibility, responsibility that I'm very grateful for. So this program works for me because I've learned that no matter what comes my way in life, life. So far there has not been one single problem too big that this program was not equal to, not a single one. And so it's vital today. It's dynamic. It permeates my job, my home, my relationships, everything about how I feel. My values are a product of this program. So it is a dynamic part of my life. I hope I don't ever become an old-timer. Other Other folks call me that in my area because I am one of the older fellas around, but I don't think of myself that way. I don't really know why I'm an alcoholic particularly. Well, I reckon it's because I drank too much would be a very simple way of putting it. I didn't know anything about alcoholism when I came here, but I've come to believe that there are two things that are required to develop alcoholism. One definitely is alcohol. I've never met an alcoholic who didn't drink. But I don't think that's enough, because not everybody who drinks is an alcoholic. It requires a peculiar kind of reaction. Heard Murph talking about that stuff she drank, and it just didn't do right. Most of us who are alcoholics, other than Frank from Chicago, remember indelibly the first drink we took. We know what day it was. We know who we were with. We knew what it was. We remember without any fading what it felt like, that marvelous glow, that marvelous effect that it had. So I think you have to have a predisposed personality. I think you've got to have seedbeds so that when the drink hits, it does something important. And that's what it is for me. I've had two phases in my drinking. One is what I refer to as problem drinking. I drank because I was overwhelmed with an awareness of the problems of my life. I didn't like anything about me. I didn't what I looked like, I didn' like where I came from, I didn't how I felt. I had a sort of constant nagging discontent with life. And when I found booze that started to resolve, it started to go away. And I had had a phase of drinking for two years that I refer to as problem drinking. I drank because I had problems, I drank to solve those problems, did it very successfully. I believed that I could have stopped any time I wanted to, but I didn't. And then two years later, I moved into alcoholism. Now certainly I was not aware of that when it happened. Everything that I know of any real consequence in my life is a product of hindsight. I look back and I can recognize where important changes occurred in my life. And alcoholism for me came when I was 18 years old. I can see it now very clearly, and I simply did what it says in the big book, I lost control of my drinking, pure and simple. I lost Control. I started to become aware, not dealing with it consciously, but I startedto become aware that somehow when I drank, it was not with me like it seemed to be with other people. I noticed that I was always the first guy to finish his drink. I was the first one to want to reorder. I gulped drinks. I started experiencing changes of personality. I've always been a rather affable type of fellow. I'm not a particularly friendly guy at heart, but I've been a fairly good-natured, easygoing type of guy. But I started to, when I drank, have a profound change of personality. I'd start to get mean and arrogant and nasty with people. Start fights. Start fights with my best friends. For no reason. Just a change of sexuality. I startedto experience blackouts. And I'm not talking about going to sleep. I'm talking about blackouts, periods of time when I would have absolutely no idea where where I was, what I had done, who I had been with. Woke up one morning in a town about 100 miles from where I had started drinking, and I was laying in the front seat of the car, and as I looked out the front view mirror, I looked at the windshield, chill. I saw a cliff, you know, just a sheer cliff. And I bet I laid there for ten minutes trying to figure out how I did it. I said, well, maybe I'm dead. How in the world could anybody fall that high and not get killed? I mean, that was a very, very difficult kind of process to think through. And then I looked out the other window and saw the road that I drove up there on. But I was a hundred miles away. I didn't even know what town I was in. Turned out I was in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. Arbutus can tell you about that. That's the moonshine capital of the world. I guess I got drunk and went to Mecca. That was my pattern. So I started to experience that sort of thing and from that point on I was an alcoholic. I didn' t know it it, but I started to experience the normal progression of the disease that most people do, only in my case with some rather marked kinds of speed and marked kinds of events that fortunately do not happen to most people. I set up a pattern of going to jail with sickening regularity. To this day, I don't have any earthly idea how many times I've been in jail. It's somewhere close to the number of towns that I've I've been in. And that's the truth. I don't think I was ever in a town for as much as a week that I didn't go to jail. And it wasn't because I was violent and nasty and mean and crooked particularly. I was, but that wasn't the reason most of the time. It was because I just went to sleep somewhere. And I was the kind of drunk that you'd find laying in the street or leaning against the post. I could look at the horses out there yesterday day and what I'm standing there asleep. And I could relate to that dude, because I could just lean up somewhere and follow. Terrible way to live. And that's how I'd get scooped up. Yeah, it's probably good that I did. Well, the progression went very quickly with me, as I mentioned. And finally, I wound up at the age of 24. A street derelict darn near. I just darn near surrendered to my disease, what they call it. I just almost gave up the ghost, got to the point that I made no pretense of trying to live a normal life. I sold blood. I have hustled and bummed and stolen and lived in ways that I never thought I would. So all of the thousand shameful, disgusting, embarrassing, humiliating, ludicrous, bizarre things that happened, happened. And that's part of the story. But there's another side to that story. And I believe it's really what alcoholism is about because my honest belief is that to this point I haven't really said what alcoholismo is. I haven'T really told you my story. Because when I think about alcoholism, the nature of the disease, the thing that comes to mind to me is, well, it's like my good friend Cecil says up in Canada about another thing, it's an inside job. And when I try to think about what alcoholism was like in my life, what was it, what is it that makes a fellow, after more than 26 years, pray God it'll be at least that much longer? What do you suppose it is? What makes us hang on? Fear of losing a job, fear of going to jail, fear of puking, fear my wife leaving me. What do you suppose? I rather doubt that it's those things. It's not the trouble that I got into with other people or the world. It's the trouble I got in to with me. And when I think today, what is it that I pray God I'll never know again, it's not a particular brand of whiskey or brand of trouble. Let me just share with you a couple ideas. I never want to know again the despair of alcoholism that I knew and I hope that I never forget that feeling of utter hopelessness and despair that was was a part of my life. I want to remember forever what it was like to be 21 years old, time in life when most people are just getting started they're really cranked up with life having a good time looking forward to things falling in in love for the first time, getting married, going to college, getting a job, starting a career. It's a green time of life. Most people enjoy it. When I was 21 years old, the most prevalent thought in my mind, I just wished it were done. I can remember many, many times looking at myself in the mirror and be so filled with self-loathing and disgust. That's the only thing I could think of. I just wish it were done. I pray God that I'll never forget that feeling, nor that I will ever know it again. I want to remember the fear of alcoholism. Now, I'm not talking about fright, I am not talking about being afraid of people or things. I'm talking about fear that's a way of life. Somebody said that fear and faith don't live in the same house, and I believe that. There's a type of fear that goes with alcoholism, at least it certainly went with mine, that has nothing to do with what's out there. it has to do with what is in here or what's not in here. The fear of alcoholism, a fear that was very difficult to understand, and it still is, but a kind of fear that permeated my life, that followed me with my constant companion everywhere that I went, everything that I did. A kind of peer that used to wake me invariably at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning for no reason, just wake up with a start, jump straight out. A kindof fear that I used to carry with me down every street that I walked in every town that I was. The kind of fear that used to obsess me with the notion that something was going to happen, it was going be bad. The fear that made me scared to death to answer the phone, look out the window, wonder. The kinda fear that went the gamut from mild anxiety to total panic. I'd hear that fear talked about in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, at least that's how I relate it. You hear people talk about that cold knot in the stomach, that basketball that we carried around to me that's the knot of fear and it's a product of a life totally devoid of faith i pray god that i'll never know that fear again i like to remember the loneliness of alcoholism that's something that can be easily misunderstood because i think every human being in this world understands that loneliness and knows loneliness from time to time I'll guarantee you there's somebody in this room today that's feeling loneliness like few people do. Feeling acute loneliness. And for most people, it has to do with an abortion of a relationship. It has to deal with not having somebody. I'll give you an example. My mother never really had much of a life. She had a drunk for her son and she married two or three bums for husbands. husbands. And she really never did have much of a life here. A few years back, she was withered and she started going to—you've got to watch those Baptist gyms—she started going to a little old Baptist church. I don't mean to throw off on them, but that's where it happened. And, she was going down there to sort of get regrouped. And they had a big old boy down there that looked like Slim almost. He was the Sunday school director. And And they got to making goo-goo eyes at each other. I reckon that, here she was, she's 68 years old and he's about the same age and they got the flirting and carrying on. Well, don't you know, that was the funniest thing in the world. They just fell in love, they got married and I swear they had three of the grandest years that anybody could possibly imagine. He called her youngin', some such thing. And they just had a silly little teenage romance and an absolutely marvelous marriage. But Clive had a bad heart condition, and he died after three years, so she was with it again. This time there was a difference to this day. My mother stares out the window at nothing. She reads a newspaper and can't remember the headlines. lines. She's got a hole in her life that nobody had ever filled but old Clyde. He was taken away. It wasn't his fault, her fault. It was just a fact, and she can't handle it. She's locked in grief. I'm sure we help a bit. She loves me, and I know that. She Loves my sister. Loves the grandchildren better than anything in the world. But that ain't the same, is it? She lost her mate, her partner. Now, that's loneliness. That's loneliness, but it has to do with not having her partner, and that isn't the same as what we know, is it? Because our loneliness has little to do with where other people are. It has little little to do with how other people feel about us or how they try to relate to us. It has to do our total inability to relate them. Now, it's not a noble condition at all. It's my full belief that it's a product of our self-centered disease. And every drink that we took, we built a wall a little bit higher between us and the rest of the world until finally we were locked into a prison as surely as any ever built. We couldn't get out and nobody else could get in. A kind of loneliness that defies description and definition, but also denies denial because it was there and it was real. A loneliness so real that you could taste it and it wouldn't go away. I've known that loneliness in the middle of a loud party. I've know it in the circle of my own family. I've knew it in arms of a loving woman when I felt isolated and separated separated and unable to relate to my to my fellows the loneliness of alcoholism i pray god that i'll never know that loneliness again and i don't have to i don'T HAVE TO that's the beauty of this program much more but that's when i think of my alcoholism when i THINK OF WHAT IT IS i DON'T WANT TO KNOW AGAIN THAT'S THE KIND OF THING THAT I LIKE TO REMEMBER IT'S WHAT HAPPENED ON THE INSIDE WHAT HAPPENED TO A HUMAN BEING AS HE SLOWLY DRANK HIMSELF TO DESTRUCTION and complete hopelessness and despair. And that's what was going on the inside. Nobody knew that but me, not a soul in this world knew that for me. I was the kind of drunk that I truly believed would have drunk myself to death had I not been brought to a stop, and that's why I'm here today. That's what happened with me. I don't like the way that I stopped drinking. I never will. What I did, I'll regret the rest of my life because I wound up doing what I think every drunk in this worldview is doing, particularly those who suffer from blackouts. I never have met an alcoholic that didn't have the concern that in some drunken stupor he might do something to somebody else that couldn't be undone, and I did. I woke up one morning in jail, in a city, in a jail that I'd been in many times. And the jailer came by shortly after I wokeup, and I asked him when I could get out. He said, I hope never, and walked off. I didn't know what he was talking about, but I knew he wasn't kidding. And then a little later, somebody in there told me that the night before, in a drunken blackout, I had run down and killed two people and don't even remember it to this day. Well, you know, it's a strange thing about the human mind. It only takes in what it can handle. And my immediate reaction to that was disbelief. I just blocked it out. I could not accept the fact, and yet I knew that it was true. And then gradually I came to accept the act that I had done more damage than any drunk ever ought to be allowed to do. And it was a matter then of what do you do? I'm not going into a lot of detail about that. It's not the time or place. Suffice it to say that the proposition then was what do You do? How do You balance the scales between a scummy street drunk drunk, and two fine young people with their lives still in front of them. Obviously you don't. That's the only time I've ever been in jail that I didn't want out. Didn't tell anybody I was in there. And finally, after a couple of weeks, somebody called my mother. I don't know who. I think it was a police sergeant. I knew he asked me some questions. And then he made a call to my mother down in North Carolina. And that dear lady made what what I hope and pray was her last trip to anybody's jail to get her boy out. And I didn't want out, but I didn' t know how to tell her that I didn''t want out. I was afraid to get out. Couldn' t stand it. Couldn' d face it. She negotiated bond, and finally, July the 17th, 1956, I was released on bond, charged with manslaughter to a weight trial, and walked out. Now, I meant to never drink again. I know that today. I meant that. I did not understand anything about this disease, because the first day I didn't drink. I stayed sober but walked in the streets. I walked streets that I didn' t know. I couldn't face anybody. I couldn' t face myself. I walked the streets until about midnight and I went in and didn't go to bed, just sat there. The next day I got out and started again, and I did the same thing until about lunchtime and then I started to drink of course. For the next few months I drank like nobody I have ever seen. I've worked with hundreds, maybe thousands of drunks over the years But I have never worked with one like me And I don't mean, fellow alcoholics That I was the world's worst two-fisted drinker That's not what I'm talking about I was a pathetic piece of humanity Trying deliberately to drink myself into total oblivion Every minute of every day Clancy said you can't stay drunk more than 14 days And I did come up for air once in a while But it was darn little air and then it was right back under I deliberately tried to drink myself to death It was a conscious awareness Finally November the 19th 1956 my dry day I Had what I hope and pray was my last drink Certainly didn't know that at the time. I was past thinking at the times I just finished off a little bottle piece of a bottle of gin wasn't much just about that much and then went to court court, not for a trial. I didn't want a trial, I had no defense. I just presented myself. There was no mystery about what was going to happen. I knew that I wasn't coming back and didn't care. I've often thought the cruelest punishment they could have given me would have been to just turn me away and say, �Go live with yourself.� I remember that day very clearly. I stood in front of a man by the name of Steve Roth. He was a fine jurist, a fine gentleman who later retired from the federal bench. He was was a fine man. He's dead now." And that day he talked with me a bit, and then he sentenced me to five or fifteen years in the state prison of southern Michigan, a little place called Jackson. I've seen close to half of the prisons in this country, and in my honest opinion that's the worst prison they put human beings in in this county. It's a strange thing. You have gathered I was not exactly a Rhodes scholar. I lived on the street lived like a veritable animal and i've told you my high bottom story today i was not exactly shock proof been in jails all over the country but when he passed that sentence there was i guess a normal instinctive reaction of fear an instinctive thing and yet almost simultaneously the most real sense of relief i'd ever known if you're an alcoholic slaved like me i think you'll know what i mean i knew it was done there was relief relief. There was relief. I knew it was over. It wasn't an optimistic thing, it was the relief of resignation. I know it was done. The next day in November the 20th they loaded me literally on a chain and walked into Jackson Prison. I never believed I would ever come out of that place alive and honestly didn't care. Little did I know that that was to be the land of beginning again for me had no earthly idea i was a mighty sick young man i didn't know how sick till i started to get well i didn's speak to people i couldn't carry on a conversation i never greeted anybody nothing just sat myself stared at my navel whatever it is that we do when we're off like that and one day i was called out of that cell by a social worker, and he was a classic rookie social worker. That little old roly-poly pink-cheeked fellow that just had graduated from college, that must have been the only job he could get, and he hated that thing with a passion. He was just a prissy little old guy. I always did think male social workers were a little strange anyway. He called me out, and if he had come in there as a prisoner, there. Somebody would have bought him the first day, I think. But thank God he was there. Because that guy did what social workers always do. He filled out a social history and asked me the usual questions. And I told him the usual lies. But then he did what every other interviewer had ever done to me. I've been interviewed by dozens of people. I'd never had but one diagnosis in my my life. You drink too much. The only diagnosis I ever had, and he made the same diagnosis, you drink too Much. But then he went on and said something I had never heard before. Most other people always said, why don't you quit or do something or drink like me or change brands or whatever. This guy said something I never heard. He said, we have a group of AA here, and I think you better go. That was exactly his words. I don't know if we had any more conversation or not, but that's what what I remember, we've got a group and I think you better go. And I walked out. I had never heard of Alcoholics Anonymous in my life. Had no idea there was such a thing. I never even heard of helping drunks. Where I lived, you didn't help drunks, you'd roll them and hit them over the head and lock them up and fire them and shoot them and laugh at them. I'd never heard of helping a drunk in my light. Every time I ever went anywhere it was because something was broke. I have a broke ear, a broke nose. I think everything I've got that will break has been broke at least once. I can't breathe to this day from—well, anyway, I never had been to no place where they worked on my soul, anyway. They'd patch you up and go fight again. This fellow said that, and I walked away trying to figure out what it would be like. And I had the period from November 19th to February 2nd. And a little while after I left, a few days later, I got a little slip of paper. wasn't even a letter and it had my name and number and address if you can call it that whatever you call it said report to your first meeting ground didn't say groundhog day but that's what it was february 2nd i will tell you the truth about it i didn't want to go for even though i didn' know what aa was it just didn't sound very good it is a terrible name for a movement isn't it alcoholics anonymous it looks like we could have got some uplifting sort of thing that you could sing or something yeah somebody Somebody was just trying to sell me some Don't Be Fat stuff, and the name of it is Meadow Fresh. You know, that sounds good. That just sounds like something you'd just love to just sort of take a bath in. But Alcoholics Anonymous didn't strike me that way. I could just picture—it seemed like a sad thing to me. I could Just Picture this bunch of worn-out old dudes sitting in there commiserating with each other, and I don't know, I just could not fancy myself going into that. I didn't believe I was an alcoholic. I knew I was a drunk. off. I knew it was crazy, but I didn't believe I was an alcoholic. That's different. The appointed day came and I walked in. It was a meeting almost as big as this. They had 300 members in that group. One guy spoke to me. They Had an officer stationed on the door. Ivester, yes sir, sit down. And I sat down in the middle of that 300. I had no earthly idea what they were going to do. Some of it I suspected. I'd been to enough soup lines and missions and, you know, I expected a certain amount of the ritual. I knew somebody was going to sing Amazing Grace. There had never been nowhere where drunks are cooped up that they don't sing Amazing Grace. And every time they'd sing it, I'd go up to the bars and cry with them, but none of that ever happened. So I thought they'd do that, and they didn't. They did about what we did here. They had not quite as many announcements, but they had I had a fair number. Read a bunch of stuff, and I swear, I don't know if I was rum-dumb or dumb or both, but it was a long time, well, you know, a few weeks before I realized that that was a program. I thought there were poems or something that the people were reading. And for a long term, I thought the serenity prayer was the most remarkable device man ever created to get a crowd quiet before you started. You know, I didn't really attach catch a lot of significance in that stuff. And then they introduced the speaker. It's a guy named Shy Walker. He's dead now, been dead for a number of years. Shy Mark Walker was one of the most remarkable folks I ever met in my life. I don't know, Clancy, I'm going to do a... I'm gonna get a speech therapist to do an interview with him and do a study of effective sponsorship in Alcoholics Anonymous because I think there must be some requisite quality that requires them to speak like Edward G. Robinson imitations, you know, with that vroom-vroom. That's what that guy was like that spoke at that first meeting. I just absolutely drew back from him because that's the way he came on with that old hard gangster street talk. And he wasn't even a gangster. He had been. He was a fellow who had been in that very prison. a real character if you have ever seen one i mean a real real ding-a-ling and i sat there in utter amazement now what he did was told his story but i never heard anything like that because on the street you don't you don' t tell the truth if you can help it i mean it just ain't natural yeah and this fella that had to be the truth ain't nobody gonna tell a lie like that and i mean he was something else he'd been in that prison and when he was in there there. One of the things he did, and it was true, he told it in front of the people. When he was in there, he had a job running the warden's elevator that carried him up to the third floor where his offices were. And this cat put a homebrew stand, a still, on top of the wardens' elevator. And yeah, it made sense. Murph, you talk about cunning, baffling, and powerful alcoholics, it really did make sense because it never was found. The fumes would go right straight up the shaft. Nobody smelled it. And every time the warden went to work, he'd stir it for him. So it made a lot of sense. But I sat there listening to that guy, and I thought, my God, this one's busted loose from somewhere. He didn't look bad. Van Lee, he looked okay from a distance. He had on them blue preaching suits. and i sat there and looked at him and and he did look fairly good he was a little short fella he didn't stand close examination though because he'd been a real thug and a convict and a professional fighter and apparently not a very good one because he was beat up rascal and as unlike me as anybody i have ever seen in my life before since but he became my first sponsor. Not that day. When I walked out of there, if anybody had asked me where you'd been, if I'd have said anything, I'd say, well, friend, you wouldn't believe it. I have just heard a pure lunatic talk for an hour. I mean, I didn't relate to nothing he said that I recognized. But apparently I did, and thank God for that man. Thank God for that man." He was one of those rare people who communicates a sense of enthusiasm and joy joy and life, God, that has such a healing power. So important. Thank God I didn't get some bleeding deacon who was down on the world for my first meeting. Thank God for that. Thank God I was put in contact with a fellow who didn't need to say it. All he needed to do was just sort of open up and you knew it. He carried that sort of vibrant kind of quality, or the kind of person that you meet and you want to stay around him. You meet an awful lot of the other kind. Don't you hate to run into folks, you ask them how they're doing and they tell you? Oh God. It's a pretty safe bet that any time you see three people talking for more than 15 minutes they're either cutting somebody up or framing up on somebody. That's the fabric of life that seems to keep us going. Thank God this was a guy who was dynamically alive and shared it and cared enough to give the best that he had. Fine man. I think somewhere deep down there must have been a little opening, and I think that's what I related to was that joy, that enthusiasm. It was a long time before I could understand that. The only thing I understood was that I went back to the next meeting. I was in that place for 42 months. Never missed a meeting, whether we met once a night or once a week or whatever. I never missed a meeting. For a long time, it certainly wasn't because of any conviction about the program or any real awareness of my need. I was just a lost soul following a crowd. I've always been a curious fellow. I always have been. I guess I've worried —I probably worried poor Brian to death getting acquainted with the love of Texas—but I'm just that way. I want to know. I wanna know things. And that's where I was about AA. I read everything I could get my hands on. If it had an A on it, I'd read it. Now, I wasn't a hungry student. I think what I was looking for was something that would define alcoholism. Everybody who did this was one except this one over here, and I wanted to be that one. It was defensive reading, but it was reading nonetheless, and it was valuable. It gave me a framework. I'm also very grateful for the fact that I got introduced to AA where I did. For 42 months, I never had a single word of encouragement from anybody anybody except the outsiders who came in. Not a single word. I had a steady diet of people who diagnosed my phoniness in several languages. I had a heavy dose of people who laughed and disrespected any show of sincerity. Prison is a strange world. Sincerity is considered a synonym for stupidity. Weakness is a synonym for kindness. Love is a dirty word. It's a world that doesn't support the kinds of efforts that we talk about in Alcoholics Anonymous. So for 22 months, I started to feel the effects of this program without a whole lot of applause and adulation. And I'm very grateful for that today because I've learned that it's not absolutely necessary. necessary. I get it everywhere I go, but it isn't necessary. I've gone to meetings where I've had darned fights and I've left with the same feeling of reward because it was treating my illness. So I'm thankful for that. I'm also thankful for the fact that I got introduced to AA in a place that was very hard-nosed, not just the cruelty of the people to each other, but in the way the program was presented i was taught this program people just literally taught it force fed and worked on my head and it started to have some effect but darn little first eight months that i spent in alcoholics anonymous i honestly believe were as miserable as any period ever spent in my life i'm talking about in alcoholix anonymous folk i ain't talking about before i got here or while i was in limbo after i came in this program and i think sometimes it's awfully easy to lose sight of the misery of sobriety when it's new kind of like the old boy i heard from arkansas he said he got so sick of folks patting him on his back and telling how great it was and him trying to agree with it but inside he's saying it ain't great at all it may be one day but it ain t now and that's sort of the way i was i was a lost soul following a crowd hoping against hope had some purity of ideas but it was all up here just a guy going through an experience i'm I'm one who doesn't believe in the process of osmosis as it applies to Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm not one who believes that you can go to X number of meetings and something magical is going to happen. I just don't believe that. I believe you can get a meeting for the rest of your life, and if you don't work this program the only thing that's going to happens is you're going to, just like Bob said, warm some seats. And I believe that, and I believe it based on my own experience because that first eight eight months, I had a wavering sort of fleeting hope at this program. And that was all. I believe I could have been knocked over by the first blow that came. And then something happened to me after eight months. It was a buildup of things. And I do have to say why me a lot of times. Because when I think of that group of 300 people, you know how many of them, at least as far as I know, and I know most of them. You know how any of them are sober in Alcoholics Anonymous today. Anybody want to venture a guess? Too many Doug, too many. One more. There's two that are sober in Alcoholic Anonymous. There is one who's been sober since his first meeting. Thank God I'm that one. I told you I got introduced. I don't mean to be ugly but I did get introduced this thing in a rather hard-nosed way. I'm not like a fella I I heard him speak out in North Carolina a while back, and God loved him for it. But he stood up in front of a group of folks and said, It may come to the point that one of us, you know, me or the group, will have to drink again. And he said, If it does, I hope it's me instead of you. Yeah, I love you folks out in Lubbock, Texas, and I've enjoyed that hospitality room and the love and the warmth. But now, friends, if by some quirk of fate we got confronted with that dilemma, it ain't going to be this one. It's going to been you now. And I hope you feel the same way. Baloney, baloney. Now, I just don't have that much love. I don't care how Christian and chivalrous that is. The heck with it. No way. Well, there were a lot of people who gave to me in a very important way. And it gave me the hope, something to hold on to. And then finally, something happened that was to be the turning point for me. I don't ever like to tell my story without talking about this. I went to a meeting one day, and I don' t know what the heck I'm taking that off for. I'm going to just hurry as quick as I can anyway. Went to a meetin g one day and the speaker was a guy named Johnny C., still living, from Flint, Michigan. And Johnny spoke for one solid hour about nothing but the fourth step. That's all. He went into great detail. He read part of it out of the book. He talked about the critical importance of being objective and writing down the good and the bad. Talked about the, the, the critical important of writing the inventory. And when he got through, I said, okay, I'm going to try that. And what I meant to do, I didn't mean to write an inventory. I was at the point in my sobriety, I'd been doing some mental inventory taking, and you let an alcoholic mind operate in privacy. That's dangerous. That is dangerous. We are the most deceiving, deceitful, God knows. I had figured out what was wrong with me, and I meant to write down a little story about life's cruelty and what a victim of circumstances I was and how I was really a good fellow who just never had a chance. That's what I meant it to do. But the founders were wise when they said to write it. Have you ever tried writing yourself one of those fairy tales? God knows. I wrote about two lines, what I had in mind, and then without any thought, without any intention, without any preparation, I started to write about me. I'm like another fellow who says that the average inventory takes about nine months and 20 minutes. Nine months to get ready and 20 years to write. And 20 minutes to write him. Mine took about eight months and about 40 minutes, and then the dam broke. And it was just a torrent. Now, I didn't write a classic fourth step like it says in the book. The dam broke, and the flood poured. And for the first time in my life, I took an honest look at who I was. I mean, the first times in my whole life. First time ever. And it wasn't a profound experience for me, much like Hemingway wrote about that moment of truth, the time when a man comes face-to-face with himself. When I got through that, I knew something about me. I knew that I was an alcoholic, period. Not the complicated case or the tragic case of the youngster in the group. I was a alcoholic, pure and simple. I also knew that... I had never once in my entire life, drunk or sober, ever taken a look at who I was. I didn't know who I was. And I think in that experience, I came to understand something very important. One One was that I never wanted to be a drunk. Never did. I never want to be sober either. Sober seemed like a very unnatural condition to me, and I wasn't one who sat around yearning to be sober. I always thought sober was about a first cousin to rigor mortis, that it just didn't seem like any fun at all, and i never wanted it to be that way. I wanted to be about halfway between, you know, that little plateau. But I understood in that inventory that if I wanted anything decent in life, because I was an alcoholic, the price of it for me was not to take one drink of anything. And I went back to Alcoholics Anonymous different than I'd been. And this program worked for me. It worked for my life. It worked in Jackson Prison. as beautifully, as indelibly, as excitingly as it ever has anywhere in my life. It worked for me there enough so that strange though it may seem the first day of freedom I ever knew in my life I knew in Jackson prison. I guess I learned what we all learned that freedom is not something somebody gives you. It's not something somebody takes away even with a cage they don't take it away it's something we sell but drink at a time and it's something that comes through the grace of god i knew freedom there even stranger i knew happiness there because happiness just like alcoholism just like sobriety just like freedom them it's an inside job it doesn't have anything to do with where you are it has to do with who you are and i was a happy free sober alcoholic locked up like a gorilla in a zoo god knows i got a long ways to go and and i i gotta catch a plane i don't know about you but i gotta get on the plane now i'm gonna wrap it up here right quick It used to just bother me no end when I would run out of time, when I was still in jail. But it doesn't really bother me that much anymore. I know I got out now. Y'all can just take my word for it. I do want to, with your kind tolerance, I just want to sort of get into a rush of the real miracles of this program in terms of what they've done in my life and share with you. That's where it started for me. And the miracle of miracles was that I went through that place without a scar on my body, not too many on my mind, and with a firm hold on something that was to save my life. I don't believe I would have ever lived to have gotten through Jackson Prison had I tried to survive there like I had on the streets. They'd have eaten me alive. I know that this program and what it gave me, the strength of character to do what was right, is the reason I made it. I did finally get out. And I knew when I got out, I was going to Alcoholics Anonymous, there's no question about that. And I immediately got active as soon as I got back to North Carolina. They wouldn't let me stay in Michigan. They ordered me back to north Carolina and I didn't want to go. I was a city boy. I didn' t want to back to the sticks. I immediately got active two months after I was out I became the outside sponsor of a small prison group four miles from my home now that's the kind of thing that's usually a thankless job in this program and most people shy away but let me tell you something friends I could not have been more honored and pleased had they elected me governor of the state what a rare opportunity to go back and give what had been so freely given to me. God, what a tremendous, tremendous reward. When I've been paroled from Michigan, I want to just tell you just a little series of miracles that happened. And I do this for reason because there just might be somebody here sort of wavering in the hope department. If there is, hear what I'm saying now. Hear what I am saying. and believe what I'm saying. I didn't come out here to tell you a lie. I'd been two months, about the same period. My parole officer came to me one day. And when I was parole, they had on my papers and letters that big, this man is to never operate a motor vehicle, this man has never drank. And I took that as gospel. Two months, the parole officer came to him one day and he said, you're pretty active in this A thing, aren't you? And I said, yes, sir. And it scared me a little bit. I thought he was going to tell me to slow down. And I said, it's awfully important to me. He said, wouldn't it be a little easier if you could drive? And I says, yes, sir, but I can't. He said okay. A couple weeks later he called me and asked me to meet him up at Sears and weren't going shopping. It so happened the license agency was there. Now he's dead now. I can say this freely. I don't know if it's legal or not. But I walked into the Sears store at the agency and he handed me a driver's license. I didn't take a road test. I didn' t take a paper test. He didn' d even know if I could drive. I didn''t even pay for it. Now, you can call it what you want to. I call it a purity old-fashioned miracle. And I believe with all of my heart if I had come out of Jackson Prison trying to con and connive my way into that, I'd be walking today. Now, I believe that. I call It a miracle. You call It what you won' t do As long as you don't call it political connections. If you want to call it that, you better make that darn sure that I ain't too close. Five months after I was out, we had an election for a DCM dug in my area. I didn't even hardly know what a DCN was. I was a guy that used to sit in Jackson Prison and wonder, truly wonder, if I would ever have one friend. One. I used to truly wonder if anybody would ever trust me with anything. I used to truly wander if there was any hope of ever being accepted in this world. I knew I didn't deserve to be. But when they had that election, who you reckon won? I wasn't even running. it. And again, most people sort of shy away from that. But here's one that was deeply grateful for what happened and continues to be, continues to being. To this day, I'm actually in service. I'm secretary of my district because that's the least I can possibly do. Two years after I was out sitting in my house one day, and I got a telephone call from our state capitol. And there And there was a guy on the phone that I'd met one time, and he opened the conversation by saying, Mr. Ivester, and I said, yeah, nobody called me that. And he said, we're thinking of expanding our rehabilitation service in the prisons, and we were wondering if you might be interested in a position. And I sat there in absolute amazement, dumbfounded and totally disbelieving. Again, when you work on the streets and live in prisons, you don't take things like that very well. And I said what you would normally say. God knows I'd love it better than anything in the world. Promptly dismissed it. But I told him, I said, You probably don't know who you're talking to, do you? And he said, Yep, we know you better than you know yourself. And sure enough, a few months later, I was employed. The first ex-con in history. Hired in a supervisory position in a prison system. Could not believe it. I absolutely couldn't believe it I darn near worked myself to death For the next nine years, I never took a vacation God, the whole thing was a vacation What a tremendous affirmation of this program And what it does in a human being's life For about nine years I worked primarily with alcohol and drugs And various programs like that And then 1970 I was approached by some people Who asked me to take over a prison and become what most people call a ward, and we call them superintendents. And with a lot of reservations and a lot apprehension, I finally agreed to do it. I felt I just didn't want to do it, and then I finally recognized that perhaps there was some service that I could provide there, and I would be in a position to do some of the things that I thought ought to be done in a prison. And so I agreed and became superintendent. And I'll guarantee you If you don't think it's a long way from a cell in Jackson Prison to being head of a prison, you better work on your geography some. That is a long, long trip, and I could not believe it. Four years later, I was asked to open up a brand-new institution for youth. We wanted to separate the youngest of our population from some of the older guys, and I was given the high privilege and honor of opening a prison from the ground up and hiring the first staff member and bringing in the first resident. What a marvelous experience. And then three years after that, in 77, they asked me to keep that one and open a second one. A year later, in 78, they askedme to keep those two and add a third one for females. And that's what I do today. I'm the administrator of a complex of correctional institutions. And I absolutely stand in awe of what's happened in my own life. I believe with all my heart that for every alcoholic who comes to this program there's an avenue of service that will open up and i believe that it's different things with different people and i'm involved in lots of things because i've got lots to pay back but every time i get to wondering if i'm doing what i should if i're on the right track if i get tired and i get aggravated and i'd get overwhelmed with things and i wonder if that's where i'm supposed to be all i have to do is take a look around and I see those facilities filled with 700 young people just about the age of the ones I killed many, many years ago. Then I know that God's in His heaven I'm in His world and I feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. I'm a man truly blessed. I ain't much but I'm all I got. I live in a little old town about the size of this hotel, 1,500 people. But I'm a citizen of that town. Vote. I even vote in the wet and dry elections. I vote wet, too, because that's where our members come from. That's a great privilege. You probably can't relate to that if you grew up in Cordell, Oklahoma or Lubbock, Texas. You probably cannot relate to that. But have you ever been to a point where your whole world measured nine by seven feet? If you could even conceive of that, you may know what it means. Today I've got a family. A little Canadian wife had to go to Saskatchewan to find somebody to had me. And I was introduced by a strange and violent man named Cecil to a little girl who's now my wife. Two little old kids, 14 and 12. I'm closing up. I've got to brag a little bit though because I think there's a point in it. My daughter is in the gifted the gifted and talented program at Pinehurst, North Carolina. My son has been on the distinguished honor roll every report period but one. Now they didn't inherit any superior intellect from me and I don't think from their mother. What'd they get? They've got a home where they feel secure, where they fill with support. They're not bright kids particularly. But they've got a home where they bring their friends home. They bring their accomplishments home, and we stand in cheer. Mercy me, my bucket's full. They've got to father, or they think I'm pretty great. A father who doesn't know what a good father is. Never had one. Know what a bad one is, know what the series of bad ones are. So I've got horrible example to plan from. But I've got a program that provides exactly what I need to help me become what I need to become. And I think that's exactly why. I'm a guy who doesn't believe that Alcoholics Anonymous competes with anything or anybody. I've heard a lot of people say, Hey, he's got to be the most important thing in your life. And I understand that. But when I get right down to it, I have to recognize that AA is not competing with anything else in my life. It is my life! And if I'm working this program, if it doesn't make me a better employee, a better employer, a better citizen, a husband, a father, I'd better check up and see what I'm doing because I just missed the boat. I appreciate the high honor of your attention for the great amount that you've given me. I appreciate very much the high privilege and honor of being able to share what I'm supposed supposed to share. I will carry back a tremendous amount from Bluff of Texas, and I thank you very much.