“They Fired Me From the Mob for Blacking Out at the Wheel” – Jack B.

About This Speaker Tape

Jack B. was arrested over 125 times, locked in straitjackets 12 times, thrown out of Brooklyn by a judge, fired from the mob for blacking out at the wheel, and spent two and a half years on the Battery in New York — not sleeping, not eating, just existing. A judge told him he had five years to live and would likely kill his own family in a blackout without knowing it. That was his bottom.

He traces everything back to age 12, when he found a gallon of wine under his father's bed and felt fear leave his body for the first time. His brother had two sips and stopped. Jack drank until he passed out in the bathtub. That difference — that chemical reaction — is the spine of this talk. He describes alcoholism not as weakness or mental illness but as a physical disease, citing a newspaper article by Dr. Lester Coleman that he had reprinted 400,000 times. He compares it to diabetes: same glandular deficiency, different stigma. The willpower argument, he says, is like telling someone with diarrhea to just try harder.

His sponsor Sam — a Jewish man, which Jack notes with characteristic bluntness since he'd been expecting an Irish Catholic — showed up to a skid row toilet and said: come with me and you won't have to drink anymore. Jack did. Twenty-five years later, he's standing in Denver. His wife died on January 27th of that year; he was home instead of at a speaking commitment in Midland, Texas because something told him to stay. He stood in the rain outside the emergency room and told his Higher Power: I don't know what you're doing, but I trust you.

For the alcoholic who thinks their story isn't bad enough, or the one who thinks it's already too late — Jack went further than most and came back. If you're sitting in a corner afraid to walk on the sidewalk, this is the tape.

Topics

Timestamps

• 5:00 Jack opens with jokes — the piano in the men's room, the lady's sauna — then pivots hard: 'I didn't come here to make you laugh. There is one alcoholic out there who needs to hear what I have to say.'
• 14:00 Jack explains alcoholism as a glandular disease, not a mental illness, and reads from a Dr. Lester Coleman newspaper article he has personally reprinted 400,000 times.
• 23:00 Age 12: Jack finds his father's wine, drinks until he blacks out in the bathtub. His mother finds him and begs him not to become his father. He promises her. He is already lying.
• 33:00 Age 16, sitting at the kitchen table with a gun to his father's head. His mother tells him to take his filthy money and his filthy gun and never come back. He is thrown out of his own home.
• 43:00 A judge reads Jack his prognosis: five years to live, irreparable brain damage, possible homicide risk to his own family. He is removed from his home in open court. His wife's face is pure hatred.
• 52:00 Two and a half years on the Battery in New York — no address, no name, hemorrhaging in a filthy toilet. He throws the bottle over his shoulder and says, for the first time, 'I am having trouble with alcohol.'
• 61:00 Sponsor Sam arrives — a Jewish man, not the Irish Catholic Jack expected — and says simply: come with me and you won't have to drink anymore. Jack looks in his eyes and believes him.
• 69:00 Jack's wife died January 27th of this year. He stood in the rain outside the emergency room and told his Higher Power: I don't know what you're doing, but I trust you. He closes with a prayer he recites every morning.