Three Frogs on a Log and the Third Step Is Still Just a Decision – Don M.

Thank you, Clara. And with nothing else to do, I'm going to introduce this Kentuckian.
And would you all please help me welcome Don M.
Thank you, Jim, and thank all of you. My name is Don Major, and I'm an alcoholic.
And I'm just real grateful to be here today. I was thinking while we were having trouble with the PA system.
Incidentally, can everybody hear me everywhere? Okay, maybe I stand a little closer. Can you hear me now?
Okay, can you hear me now?
Okay, well, I'm going to have to talk.
I'm going to turn the volume up a little bit here, I guess.
And incidentally, if at any time you all can't hear in the back, would somebody please raise their hand?
Not that I figure anybody's going to get drunk if they don't hear it, but we're all here.
But I was thinking, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart.
This is the second year in a row that I've been up to this conference, and I've been in this area.
And I've been up to this area an awful lot.
And nowhere in this world that I have been are there finer, more hospitable people than the program people in this area of Indiana.
And I just really love you all an awful lot, and coming here is special.
I've made some very good friends and met a lot of wonderful folks here.
So thank you for letting me come here.
Thank you.
I don't know that I ever made an A.A. talk in my life that my brain didn't try to take it over.
And, of course, my brain's been my problem all my life.
And there's always something a little special about every talk.
You're talking in an institution, or you're talking at a conference,
or you're talking at a meeting where somebody is that you just know ought to hear of this and so.
And my brain works on every talk.
And by the grace of God, I think so far I've been able to get that little flash of sanity always before I get up behind the podium
and realize that I don't have but one story and that I can only offer you folks what I've got.
And if I let myself get in the way and use the only valuable things that I've really got, lose the only valuable things,
I've got to share, and that's my honesty and my humility,
then I'd kind of mess the talk up,
but it's important to me that I would only kind of mess it up,
because, you know, I used to get really nervous before these talks,
and I still get some butterflies.
But somebody shared with me one time,
that I wasn't nearly important enough for God to trust the welfare of a room full of folks to me.
And that, well,
we've got a lot of fun and we've got a lot of fun.
So thank you very much.
was supposed to happen was going to happen, and people were going to hear what they were
supposed to hear, regardless of what I did or didn't do.
So I'm going to try to get out of the way and let my higher power take it over.
I'm kind of a big book fundamentalist.
I believe that in that book, if I'll read it literally and refrain from letting my brilliant
mind interpret things, that it tells me what I need to do in every area of my life, or
certainly points me in the right direction.
And how it works, that we read before most meetings, is that our stories disclose in
a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we're like now.
And this brilliance that I've referred to, and I was just very nearly terminally brilliant,
another couple of IQ points and I'd been a goner.
But that brilliance, when I got here, kept me from needing to examine any words specifically.
I could hear something and my brain would take it over and I knew what it meant, or
I'd glance at the page and I knew what it meant.
So consequently, for the first couple of years that I gave AA talks, I'd get up and say,
the big book says I need to tell you folks what it was like, what happened.
And I'd say, well, I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know what it's like now.
That's not what the book says.
It says what we were like, what happened, and what we're like now.
And after I realized that, I got to thinking about it, and you know, there isn't even any
relationship between what it's like and what I'm like, whatever it is.
I've sort of come to the conclusion that it just is.
It's just there.
What's variable is me.
You people led me to the book.
You led me to another conclusion.
What varies about me is what I do.
You all led me to the conclusion that was 180 degrees from the way that I had run my
life, all of my life, the ultimate reality was what little Donnie thought and what little
Donnie felt.
If lightning would strike me and make me feel right and think right, or if you could give
me something to make me feel right and think right, then I could actually feel right.
I could act right.
It never occurred to me that I had to start acting first.
So I believe now that how I am depends on how I act.
Because I believe now that I've always been the sum total of what I did, and I'll always
be the sum total of what I do.
So I'm going to try to tell you folks not what it was like, but what I was like, and
not what it's like, but what I'm like.
You know, some days, it is fine.
No bill collectors are calling.
The people in my life are pretty well doing God's will according to Don.
I've got everything I need.
And if I'm not actively working these twelve steps in my life, I can be a basket case.
And then on other days, it can be going to hell in a handcart.
The bill collectors cannot be quiet at all.
And the people in my life cannot be doing God's will according to Don.
And I can be physically ill.
But if I'm actively working these twelve steps in my life, I'm okay.
So what I'm like is a whole lot different from what it's like.
My body grew up on a farm down in southwest Kentucky.
The rest of me is still struggling along.
Some friends of mine and I talk about the fact that it's really kind of rough to be
growing up and growing old at the same time.
It's hard.
It's hard.
It's hard.
But I guess it's a whole lot better than not ever growing up at all.
And I used to think there were all sorts of remarkable things about my childhood.
And I was sincere.
I got sober when I was thirty-seven years old, by the way, on April the ninth of nineteen
eighty-one.
Forty-six now.
And for that first thirty-seven years of my life, I sincerely believed that by my intellect
and my iron will, I had picked myself up by the bootstraps.
From poverty to the staggering heights that I had reached.
And I hadn't been sober thirty days before I realized that that was all a bunch of crap.
In the first place, we weren't poor.
We were middle-class farming people who had as much or more than most folks around.
In the second place, my heights were a whole lot more staggering than they were high.
I hadn't been sober very long when a Clint Eastwood movie came out that had a line in
it about a fellow being a legend in his own mind.
And you know, that still embarrasses me when I hear that said, because it's something that's
so true of what I was all my life.
A legend in my own mind.
I believe now the remarkable thing about my childhood was the way I felt.
What was wrong with me as far back as I can remember.
I always knew something was wrong, something was missing.
In fact, at a convention, at an Indiana State convention back in nineteen eighty-three,
I heard Gary B. sitting up there describe it as having a hole in his belly that the
wind blew through.
And I had never known to put those words on it.
I had never known to put those words on it.
But when I heard Gary describe that, I said, yeah, yeah, that's what it is.
I've had a hole in my belly all my life.
And I felt like sometimes that not only was the wind blowing through it and it was cold
and it hurt, but I felt like somehow that hole could swallow me up, that it could just
swallow me down in it like a black hole.
I knew it was different from other people.
I know now that that hole in my belly was largely fear.
My sponsor, my original sponsor, told me that I had a hole in my belly.
My sponsor told me that my ego gives birth to fear, and fear in turn gives birth to every
character defect that I can ever have.
And I believe that with all my heart.
Part of that hole in my belly, and my sponsor also told me that my alcoholism is not alcohol,
it's not dope, it's not money, it's not sex, it's not food, it's not lies, it's not any
of the dozens of things that I have used and abused to try to fill up that hole in my belly,
and make me feel okay, make me feel good enough that I can stand it.
He told me that all those things were my attempts at a solution.
He told me that my disease is that hole in my belly, that inability to be comfortable
inside myself without something from outside myself to make me feel good enough that I
can stand it.
And he told me further, and pointed out that the big book tells me that what causes that
hole in my belly is my ego.
That there's just something wrong.
There's just something wrong with my ego, the thing's out of kilter, it's not right.
And unless I do something about it, it'll make me so uncomfortable I can't stand it.
There was a time when I was a child when I could stop, can y'all hear me okay?
Never was a time when I could stop and be still and say to myself down inside, hey Don,
how we doing down there?
Because if I tried that, what I got was, hey, don't.
Hey, don't be doing that.
Don't be doing that, because you can't stand knowing how it is down here.
And for God's sake, don't let anybody else see or know.
Keep running.
Keep doing your cute and smart act.
And if that doesn't work, cause a negative commotion.
But for God's sake, don't let anybody draw a bead on you.
Because if you run hard enough, maybe nobody else will see what's in there, and maybe you
won't have to stop and face it.
And maybe you can just barely stand the way you feel.
That's it.
That's the deal.
I never once felt like I was in the right place at the right time with the right stuff.
I felt like I was a fraud.
School was easy for me, and I abused that.
I knew everything that I accomplished was a fluke.
I knew that any day I was going to be unmasked for the fraud that I was.
And all those things haven't gone away, by the way.
I practice law again now today.
And when I say again, we'll get in a little bit to the fact that the commonwealth is a
law.
It's a law.
It's a law.
It's a law.
It's a law.
It's a law.
The commonwealth of Kentucky requested that I refrain from that activity for a while.
But on any given day, there are generally some times during that day when I feel like
that had it not been for that little problem with alcohol and a wee tendency to procrastinate,
that Clarence Darrow wouldn't have been anything compared to me.
And there is rarely a day when I don't know for an absolute certainty.
He must've had a pretty good idea why he's here today, I gotta admit.
Some time as a child, in a country far, far away, somewhere in my own town.
He didn't really care for me at that time.
But he trusted my understanding, real tangible.
He liked to challenge my wild instincts, and show it to people as much as he could.
Yeah, he did in response to me.
So, okay, where's Paul?
Paul grinded his teeth in that problem.
A mar 심oty, not only did he have it went through a soy, but it would have caused great
a stroke.
Yeah.
He was there for some time for two decades.
But people call him the American 야 Акбар.
Andgi came into the life.
And he brought us back again here from New York after about 30 years, into Louisville or
either 43 years later, down in Jamaica from Burgys.
with an inferiority complex. I've always been perfectly capable of feeling too good for
something and not nearly good enough for the same thing at the same time. I've got a specific memory
of about the time I started grade school. I guess I was five or six years old, and I remember
thinking that it was obvious that I had been born into the wrong family, because a fellow as
magnificent as I was ought to have been born into great wealth and power. And I can remember knowing
at another level at the same instant, yeah, boy, you were born into the wrong family, all right,
because there's no way in this world that a completely worthless stack of dung like you
belongs in this family of warm, loving people the way your family is.
Connected with that disease of ego, it was never acceptable to me at all that there was a power
greater than myself that had anything to do with the daily operation of my life.
I don't ever remember calling myself or thinking of myself as actually an atheist. I had all sorts
of intellectual theories about the creation and a supreme intelligence and that sort of thing,
but it had to be a detached supreme intelligence, a detached creative force. I believe I just
couldn't stand the idea that there was anything that held daily sway over my little old brain,
that I had to put my brain in the driver's seat. And I realize now that connected with,
as I said, I was completely and totally unteachable and completely and totally without humility.
And as a result of that, with the incurable, progressive, and fatal disease that I've got,
I was going to die unless I was given some teachability and some humility.
Now, if somebody had suggested to me that I was unteachable, I would have told them very quickly
that I could learn anything and learn it damn quickly, thank you. And if someone had suggested
to me that I didn't have the ability to teach, I would have told them, I would have told them,
if I didn't have any humility, I would have given them probably as close to a blank stare as I allowed
myself to give anyone in those days. Because you see, until I got sober in this program,
to the extent that I thought about things like humility and gratitude, I believed that I thought
they were character defects. I can remember my father, who I know now, died at 95 years old a
year and a half ago. And I remember him saying, I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die.
I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die.
A profoundly spiritual man all of his life. Never a religious man, but a profoundly spiritual man.
And I can remember when I was a little child, my father talking about how grateful he was for the
dew on the grass and the tobacco plants that morning. And what a wonderful morning it was,
and how much we had, and how we ought to be grateful for all that. And I can remember him
on other occasions talking about how a man ought to keep himself down to size. He ought to keep
himself in perspective, he ought to realize that he's just a little speck of dust on another speck
of dust. And I remember thinking, you old son of a bitch, if you didn't have this defeatist
attitude, we wouldn't have to be out here digging in this dirt. We'd have an indoor bathroom to go
to. And I meant that. I meant that. That's the way I thought. See, another thing about the way
I was is that I always wanted to be an alcoholic. Now, I didn't know why I always wanted to be an
alcoholic until I'd been sober about a year. But around that farm where I grew up, there were a lot
of good, hardworking Christian men that either worked somebody else's land or had a few acres
of their own land. And these men would have an old pickup truck, 10 or 15 years old, that they
didn't know a quarter on. And they were married to these old gals that would wear flower sack
dresses and weren't very glamorous looking to me at all. They looked real drab. And maybe they'd
have a little bit of a problem with that. But I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean,
three or four little old kids that I didn't like the looks of that deal either. And those guys
would get up in the morning with the chickens and they'd get in that old pickup truck and they'd go
out to that land and they'd dig in that dirt and they'd come back home at the middle of the day and
they'd have dinner and they'd go back and they'd work all afternoon. Then they'd come home and
they'd have dinner with that woman and those children and they'd go to bed and they'd get up
the next morning and start the same damn thing over again. And then maybe on Sunday they'd get
up and put that same drab looking woman in that little pickup truck and they'd go out and they'd
that old pickup truck and go up the road to Julian Baptist Church or down the road to Locust
Grove Baptist Church, do something with family all that day, sit around and visit. Made me itch
just to think about it. And then on Sunday they'd get up and do, or on Monday morning they'd get up
and start that same routine over again. And as far back as I can remember, and I can remember
these physical feelings, to even think that I might grow up to be like any of those good
decent men caused a physical reaction of fear, caused my crotch to feel like it's crawling all
the way up in my abdomen, caused my knees to get weak and my energy to feel like they were
turning to jelly. I grew up in a dry county, but about six or seven miles from the farm there was
a county line and across that county line it was wet. And they had some beer joints over there in
a little town named Gracie. And I've got a brother who's 12 or 13 years older than I am, and by the
time I was 12, he was a little bit older than I was. And he was a little bit older than I was. And
I was five or six. He started taking me in the beer joints occasionally. And they had those
jukeboxes over there. And any of y'all old enough to remember, they had Hank Williams and Kitty
Wells on those jukeboxes. And they had those old boys in there that were driving those big fancy
cars that they couldn't pay for. And they were running around with these women that looked a
hell of a lot better than those old gals in those flower sack dresses. And they didn't care whether
those women were married to somebody else or not.
And they were talking about the fact that by God everything was going to go to suit them or they'd
just make it that way. And they were going to do this and they were going to do that. And they
weren't going to put up with this shit and people were going to do that and the other. And they were
going to have it that way. And that's the way it was by God. It's my life and I'll do what I want
to with it. And I took one look at those fellas and I fell in love. I wanted to be just exactly
like them. And I made it. I just didn't know what it was I wanted to be.
I got drunk the first time when I was 12 or 13 years old. And the first night that I got drunk,
I puked. I got in a hell of a lot of trouble. I blacked out. I passed out. And I woke up the
next morning with a terrible hangover. And I remember pacing the floor in my family's old
farmhouse and gnawing on my hand for some reason. And parts of the night would come back to me
and I'd remember something else and I'd get more terrified and I'd think, oh my God,
those Baptists are right. This drinking,
it's terrible. I'll never do it again. And then I'd go puke or dry heave off the porch again and
I'd come back and I'd pace the floor some more and gnaw on my hand until I remembered something
else. And I think it was either four or five days before I got drunk again. And I never did learn
to like all those things, all that puking, blacking out, passing out, trouble and hangovers.
I didn't like them when they called them hangovers and I didn't like them when a nurse in the asylum
told me they were withdrawal.
And I've decided that's when hangovers become withdrawal. It's when a nurse in an asylum tells
you, no, it's not a hangover, it's withdrawal. But at any rate, by any name, I never learned to
like them. But before any of that happened, the most important thing that had ever happened to
me happened. When I got enough of that booze in me that it radiated all the way out through my
abdomen to the ends of my fingers and the tips of my toes and my face got all hot and flushed
and it started tingling up around my mouth, that hole in my belly quit opening. And I remember
hearing, for the very first time in my life, I was in the right place at the right time
with the right stuff. I didn't have to run. I could be comfortable without running for the
first time in my life. I wasn't too good and I wasn't too bad. I wasn't too smart and I wasn't
too dumb. I was just okay. If I said something to one of the little old girls, she probably
wouldn't even think it was foolish. And if she did think it was foolish, to hell with her,
it didn't matter.
Just say something to one of the other little old girls. And you see, I had never been able to be
still and be comfortable in my life. And I know now that our first step in this program says
admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. And that first
drunk for me completely defined my powerlessness. With all my attempts not to do it again, beginning
with that next morning when I said I would never do that again, the fact was that once I found
the only thing in this universe I'd ever found that let me be comfortable inside myself without
running until something else came along to fill up that same hole in my belly, it was the only game
in town. And I was eventually going to go back to it and there wasn't any question about it. And that
was my powerlessness. I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on a drunk-a-log this morning,
so I'm going to try to really kind of put my drinking career,
in a small package, this morning. I never really looked back after I stopped drinking,
or after I started drinking, rather. It spanned about a quarter of a century until I was 37 years
old. A lot of things happened in my life. Some days I think that nothing worthwhile in my life
happened until I got sober in this program. And then I look at it a different way and it did.
They didn't happen for any right reasons, but they happened. For instance,
getting an education and getting through law school. That wasn't caused by ambition,
that was caused by terror. That was caused by terror that if I didn't get out of that bed and
go stick a toothbrush in my mouth and puke, which is what I did a good half the days of my life after
12 or 13, and walk through the terror and put on the appropriate clothes and go show up where I
was supposed to show up, then you would find out what I was and I'd have to face what I was.
And I couldn't stand that.
And I was more afraid of that than I was afraid of the pain of doing it.
I didn't have any emotional wellness.
What passed for emotional wellness in me, I'm convinced today, was a highly refined
ability to mimic people that I knew felt differently inside than I did.
As far back as I can remember, as I've said, I knew that something was bad, wrong, and
that other people weren't like me.
And I became an expert at observing people that I knew were better.
And I mimicked the way they acted, the way they talked, the very vibrations that they
put off.
And I think that at times I could give a very, very good imitation of having not only emotional
wellness but ambition and a lot of other things, but I knew I didn't have them.
All that cold was raging down there, that unrest, and there never was a day that I didn't
know at some level that I lived in a house of cards that was about ready to fall.
It was about ready to collapse.
Got through undergraduate law school.
I went from the farm to Louisville, Kentucky when I was sixteen.
As I said, school was easy for me, and I was an early admissions student at the University
of Louisville.
Went to one-year-a-day school and found out that I didn't have the money to drink the
way that I literally had to drink without working full time.
So I quit school and went to work full time and went to night school for seven years and
finished undergraduate law school.
I had three jobs.
I had three jobs during those years.
School, my work, and being an alcoholic.
And if they conflicted, believe me, being an alcoholic won.
It was the center of my existence.
Every decision of any importance in my life was made by alcohol and my alcoholism.
When I left the farm was decided by my alcoholism.
Where I went was decided by my alcoholism.
What I studied in school was decided by my alcoholism.
The women that I dated were decided by my alcoholism.
The women that I married were decided by my alcoholism.
The cars that I drove were decided by my alcoholism.
Where I lived was decided by my alcoholism.
The fact that I became a lawyer was decided by my alcoholism.
The type of law that I began to practice was decided by my alcoholism.
Started practicing law in the spring of 1968, and my daughter, who was my only child, was
born in the same year.
I was born in the same spring of 1968.
From 1968 to 1978, I practiced law successfully in Louisville, Kentucky, primarily as a criminal
defense lawyer.
By the mid-70s, a law firm of seven or eight lawyers had built up around me, and we had
built a three-story office building a block from the Hall of Justice in downtown Louisville.
I'd made a lot of money, I'd gotten a lot of publicity, I'd won a lot of cases, and
I was very nearly dead with the disease of alcoholism.
I knew a lot about alcoholism, as far as knowledge went.
The first psychiatrist suggested to me that I might be an alcoholic when I was 17 years
old, which was the first time that I found it expedient to get a little crazy to get
out of a jam that I was in.
I can remember that fellow listening to what I was telling him, and I remember his name
was Dr. Cox.
I remember Dr. Cox suggesting that I might be an alcoholic, and me looking at him and
thinking, you dumbass.
I've known that for 20 years.
I've known that for 20 years.
I've known that for 20 years.
I've known that for 20 years.
I've known that for two or three years.
And saying to him, oh no, my problem is far deeper than that.
You see, what's wrong with me is connected with the fact that I see things so much more
clearly than other people.
And I've got this great reservoir of compassion inside me, and I play on the stage so much
broader than other people.
And really and truly, this thing that you see wrong with me is an adjunct to my greatness
and my creativity.
And there was a part of me that believed that.
You know, I knew about it.
I knew about Hank Williams and Ernest Hemingway and Winston Churchill and Alexander the Great
and all those folks.
And sometimes I'd get right teary-eyed about the fact that I knew.
It was kind of like hemophilia to the czars of Russia.
You know, it was just a price that I paid for my greatness.
But at any rate, Dr. Cox was the first of a long line of psychiatrists who suffered
at my hands.
I sincerely believe that taking an alcoholic to a psychiatrist is a great thing.
It's like taking a jellyfish to an orthopedic surgeon.
There is simply nothing inside us for them to work on, as well-intentioned as they are
and as much good as they may do otherwise.
For us, I don't believe that it works.
And I intellectually knew that my drinking was wrong from the very beginning.
But you see, I guess I thought that if, one, we're falling into the real pitfall of the
alcoholism that all areas of their life had to deteriorate sort of along together, I realize
now it doesn't happen.
My recovery doesn't go that way.
There are parts of me in recovery that are doing great, that are out there just in front
of the pack and, you know, doing real good.
There are other parts of me in recovery that are real sick and hanging around the starting
line and don't want to go anywhere.
And that's the way my disease progressed.
Because during the ten years from 68 to 78, I could run that law firm and do all those
things.
And I couldn't take care of my teeth.
All I could do was let them rot out and then go give a dentist several thousand dollars
to prop them up, and then two or three years later go give another dentist several thousand
dollars because I was embarrassed to go back to the other one to prop them back up.
I couldn't go see my mother when she was dying of cancer, and I had all sorts of rationalizations
when I had to apply.
I didn't go see my mother.
But I didn't go see my mother because I was too sick to go see my mother.
I couldn't have anything that even resembled a normal family life.
And I had all sorts of rationalizations for that too.
I would tell you that a fellow had to be a candy ass to need a home and security like
that.
That I didn't need that security.
They put me out on the street and I'd find a home in 20 minutes, thank you.
But I knew what was wrong with me.
I knew what was wrong with me was that in order to have a family life, that you had
to have the ability inside you to meet some responsibilities at times.
That you had to be able to give.
That you had to be able to make yourself do things.
That you had to be able to make yourself do things that considered other people other
than what you were compelled to do.
And I knew that I couldn't do that.
I knew that it was absolutely impossible for me to do that.
I couldn't get an automobile washed.
I can't remember whether it was three or four new Corvettes in 1976 and didn't wreck any
of them.
But not one of them ever got washed once either.
And what would happen?
They'd get so filthy.
And the inside would get so piled up with cigarette butts and cans and bottles and glasses
and filth that I'd get so sick of it and so sick of me that I'd just go turn it in
on another one and try to play that off as being cool too.
But I knew it wasn't cool.
I knew it was real, real sick.
Started using a lot of drugs other than alcohol in the early 70s.
But I don't believe they made any difference in my story until 1978 because my alcohol
usage was so overwhelming.
And figuring out what was wrong with me.
That's what I did.
And I'll tell you, in February of 1978, I had spent an afternoon drinking snot scotch
and snorting cocaine with the federal judge.
It was a Friday afternoon, and I decided that I needed to get out of town for the weekend
because I had been working so hard.
I was remarried to my daughter's mother at that time, and I called some ladies to go
with me on my R&R trip.
I've always kind of thought that one of them was my daughter's daughter and that's
the thing.
mother, but I don't remember. If it was, she passed. And I got hold of a lady that I had been
seeing, and she said yes, that she would go. So I went to her house, and there were some Quaaludes,
and I took the Quaaludes, and then I got two bottles of vodka. I think I thought it was against
the law to take a trip in 1978 without two bottles of vodka. And I got on the road. I had reservations
in French Lick, Indiana, so I headed for West Kentucky to see my father. And I got on the CB
radio and got hold of a truck driver, and the truck driver had some speed, and he wanted some
vodka. So I pulled over, and I gave him a jug of vodka, and he gave me a handful of speed.
And I made it about 50 or 60 miles further down the road and went off the road at 130 miles an
hour. Did an awful lot of things to my body. I broke both legs, crushed both knees, lost the
main artery in my lower right leg. They had to do a bypass in the upper leg and take out a vein
and graft it in to replace the artery.
Separated my pelvis and severed my urethra so that I did not have a urinary function.
I had a half dozen major surgeries the year following the wreck. I was in the hospital
more than six months of that year. They made the bid up with me in it for between four and five
months. The doctors told me that it was highly unlikely that I would ever walk again without
at least braces and a cane. And they told me that there wasn't a real good chance that they'd be
able to find a doctor who was willing to try to fix my plumbing.
Just for the record, and through no fault of my own, I can walk and run today if I choose to run,
which is damn seldom, without braces or a cane. And we did find a doctor. Our doctor was found
to fix my plumbing. I didn't know that. And what I'd do, I'd lay in the hospital after I got him
to take me back to Louisville. And you get a lot of dope, you know, when you're a pretty well-known
lawyer that's hurt that badly. The doctors give you a whole lot of dope.
And the hospital I was in would serve you some booze from the kitchen. But I wasn't getting
nearly enough of either. So I would have my friends bring in both. And I would lay up in
that bed with those tubes running in and out of my body. That super cubic catheter rammed through
that hole drilled in my abdomen and needles and tubes taking fluid in and out of my body from all
different directions and cast it all the way up to here, totally immobile. And I would hold that
drink in my hand and say something like this, boys, this is the only mistress I've ever been
faithful to.
The only one that's ever been faithful to me. And just by God, because the price gets a little
high, we can't abandon her. And I'd drink it down. And you see, that's genuine insanity and that's
genuine powerlessness. But I was in the same spot I was in after that first drunk. There wasn't any
other game in town. I hadn't found anything else that made me feel good enough inside without
running that I could stand it. So I had to go back to it. Didn't go broke that first year after the
wreck because I was sick. I was sick. I was sick. I was sick. I was sick. I was sick. I was sick.
I was sick. I was sick. I was sick. And I got here in the first year, I was a senior and founding
partner in the law firm and the money kept rolling in. Wound up eventually married to the lady who
had been with me when I had the wreck. During the first year after that wreck, something real
significant happened. The big book talks about the phenomenon of craving. It says that it will only
develop in alcoholics and it will develop in every alcoholic who drinks long enough. And quite simply
what the phenomenon of craving is, as I understand it, is that at some point in the alcoholic's
drinking career, once we get some ethyl alcohol in our system, then our bodies crave more.
Now, my body craved more the first drink I ever had. I sincerely do not believe I ever in my life
intentionally set out to have only a drink or two, because all that ever did was made me feel worse,
a lot worse. I never started drinking in my life unless I had a reasonable expectation of getting
enough in me to get over the hump and get some relief from that hole in my belly.
But for all those years, even though my body needed another drink after the first one I took,
and of course that progressed along with other parts of alcoholism, but for all that 20-odd years,
the fear that if I drank the way I needed to, then you'd find out what I was and I'd have to
face what I was.
Was greater than my physical need to keep on drinking. And that first year after the wreck,
the scales tipped a little bit. And the physical need, that phenomenon of craving,
became a little greater than the fear of you finding out what I was and me having to face
what I was. And once that happened, then once I started drinking alcohol, something pretty well
had, I had to have physical help in stopping because the physical drive to keep on drinking
was so strong. As a result of that, about a year after the wreck,
something pretty well had to have physical help in stopping because the physical drive to keep on
drinking was so strong. As a result of that, about a year after the wreck,
sometime around the first year of 1979, I wound up in my first asylum. Now, I don't use the word
asylum to be funny or cute. The big book uses that word. A lot of the places I was in were called
psychiatric hospitals. A lot of them were called treatment centers. But asylum is just a real handy
word for me. And by the time I got to that place, it took three or four days for me to get through
the withdrawal from ethyl alcohol so that I was able to sit up in a chair and go to an AA meeting.
Before I get to that, I do want to tell you something that I started on a minute ago and
wandered, about knowing that I was an alcoholic. In the very early 70s, I got so sanctimonious about
my greatness that I got to feeling sorry for those alcoholics who weren't strong-willed
and intelligent enough to handle their alcoholism. So I started donating to the
treatment center there in Louisville. I think it was the only one that was around in those years,
a place called Pleasant Grove. And I donated enough to it that they redid the recreation hall
and named it Major Hall after me. And it was still named Major Hall when I got kicked out of there a
couple of times for getting drunk while they were trying to drive me out years later. You see,
and for anybody who's new, if I could pick one thing to pass on to you,
and nothing else, I think it might be this. I made a lot of mistakes about the disease of
alcoholism, but none was more nearly fatal to me than the assumption that somehow I could live
with alcoholism. That somehow I could outsmart it, I could outrun it, or I could bribe it,
but somehow I could live with alcoholism. And it wasn't until I accepted that for me,
as every alcoholic that ever lived, this thing is incurable, progressive, and fatal.
And if I have alcoholism, I will either recover from it or I will die from it, period.
There is no gray area. Nobody who ever had this bitch called alcoholism ever fell through the
cracks. We either recover from it or we die from it. And it wasn't until I accepted that that was
the case with me that I could begin to get well. All of the knowledge of alcoholism,
on earth, was of absolutely no avail to me. But at any rate, they got me to that first asylum in
somewhere around first year of 79, and by that time my withdrawal took three or four days before
I was able to sit up in a chair and go to an AA meeting there in the place. And if those of you
who are progressed far enough that you know about that three or four days, there's no need in me
describing it. And those of you who are not yet progressed that far, there's still no need in me
describing it because you won't believe it.
The most horrible thing I've ever gone through, the last couple of hundred times that I came off
ethyl alcohol, each one of them was so much worse than any major surgery I ever had that there's no
comparison on this earth. I told somebody this morning that the day that I die, if by the grace
of God I never drink again a day at a time, the day that I die I ain't going to be nearly as sick
as I've been. In fact, I ain't going to be as sick as I've been and gone to work the day that I die.
Because I've never had any sickness like coming off that alcohol. But at any rate, they got me able
to sit up in a chair and go to the meeting and somebody read how it works. They got to step
three, made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood
him. And I climbed up on my crutches and straightened out my braces and straightened up
my catheter bag and said, do you mean to tell me there are people in this world who believe such
crap? And I made some phone calls and got somebody to come get me to get me away from those religious
fanatics.
You see, I've got the only disease in the world that not only talks to me, it lies to me. And
it's an absolute psychopath, my disease is. It will tell me something that'll kill me, that'll
kill you, that'll destroy anything in this world, just on the off chance that it can get itself a
drink. It cares nothing about the consequences whatsoever. And I can remember while I was
waiting for somebody to come get me, being sincerely convinced that it would be a tragedy
for someone of my great respect. And I can remember that I was waiting for somebody to come
get me, saying, you are so irresponsible. You know, you don't even know yours is the
right thing to do. Who are you doing that we're doing it on? Who's getting you our
consequences? Who's your thoughts? Who's getting your세�
77
nineteen
seventy
and forty
and twenty
election
there.
And I was having fun. And, you know, I was filling, buying other people's work for every
reasonable reason I've ever done. And you all said somebody in the room said you were no
I went back to the asylum 17 more times. I've been able to remember 18 trips to the asylum.
When I applied for readmission to the bar, they had some real embarrassing questions on that thing,
like, have you ever been in a mental institution? And the only thing I could put was, see attached.
And then at the bottom of the page that I attached, I put a caveat. And now what a caveat
it is for you non-lawyers out there. It says, what I said may be true, but don't bet on it.
And my caveat was, I really think there's some more asylums, but I can't remember.
And if in checking my background you find out there were, please don't hold it against me,
because I didn't mean to mislead you. I just didn't know. Another thing that happened in
that two and a half years was that I became addicted to hard narcotics. I became a needle
street junkie, and I'm so grateful for that.
Because had that not happened, I don't think the fellas would have kicked me out of the law firm
that I had founded. And I proved that I wasn't going to get sober as long as I had a wristwatch.
I damn sure wasn't going to get sober as long as I had a law firm. The Commonwealth of Kentucky
accommodated me a little further by removing my law license. I laid eyes on my daughter in January
of 1980. And it turned out I was not to lay eyes on my only child again until February of 1983,
37 months later.
The internal revenue took my part of the office building and things of that nature. The mortgage
companies took the big homes. The banks hauled off the expensive automobiles. The money,
the expensive jewelry, got lost, stolen, frittered away, traded for dope. I began to leave the
clothes in one flop house after another as they would turn off the electricity. I assumed that
I was under indictment. I don't know what month or even what season of the year I left Louisville.
I was living on an expired Blue Cross Blue Shield card.
The lady that I had married who had been in the wreck with me had had to leave me because of my
insanity. And while I was making the rounds of the asylum, she was staying with some girlfriends and
died in an accident. And that added to the horror of it. I assumed by the middle of 1979 that I
would die of alcoholism and drug addiction. And I believe that everybody who knew me assumed the
same thing. After all the money was gone, I went down and stole my father's Social Security card.
He had nothing but that and he was in his mid to late 80s. I used and abused everybody in my life.
My daughter did not want to see me again. She told me later that during the period of time that I was
gone that she would have a reoccurring dream that I had sprouted vampire fangs and wings and was
hovering outside her bedroom window with blood running out of the corner of my mouth and a cock
pistol pointed at my own head. She told me later that she never loved me, that I had been obnoxious,
egotistical, that I always smelled like blood.
And that she really and truly had always hated me. By the time I hit asylum number 17,
it was the fall of 1980 and everything was gone. I had changed and a half of clothes. I was still
crippled from the wreck. No law license, no job, unemployed, unemployable, no money, teeth
rotting out of my head. The business manager of that place told me later that he only let me in
because he didn't think I'd live another week if he left me on the street. Got in there and stayed
30 days. Some people in there said, I'm not going to live another week. I'm going to live another week.
I had some dope and I took it. I was never clean 30 days in my life until the 30 days following April
the 9th of 1981. Got out and I had no place to go. Had had a roommate in there. He was a very young
fellow and his mom was in AA there in Nashville and his dad was in Al-Anon. And they asked me if
I wanted to stay with them a few days and I went and lived with those people on absolute charity
for 11 months. I didn't stay straight for the first five or six months of it, but I got better.
I went to a whole bunch of meetings.
I got to where I could go two or three weeks without getting messed up on some kind of chemical
and they didn't put me back in the asylum but one time in that whole five or six months. And at the
rate I'd been going, that was tremendous progress. I had gone dead broke about the first of the year
in 1980 and I had known since about that time that if I would mail a letter back into Louisville with
a return address on it, that I would be mailed an insurance check for $2,500. But for over a year,
I was so tired of it. I was so tired of it. I was so tired of it. I was so tired of it. I was so
terrified of Louisville in my past that I wouldn't send a letter with a return address back in there
despite the fact that I was truly destitute. Finally, in March of 1981, I got up the nerve
to send the letter. I sent the letter. They sent the money. I got drunk and I had long since gotten
to what I call the pop-off vodka slash Listerine stage of drinking and I've drunk a ton of both of
them, believe me. And if anybody out there is not through drinking, let me give you a practical hint.
The Listerine cost a little more than the pop-off. And I was sitting on the edge of the bed in
Nashville, Tennessee in what I call a brownout, which is a condition in which even if you factor
in the last nine years, I've spent probably 10% of my adult life. And that's where I'm basically
in a blackout, but there are flashes of light where I remember things. There might be blue lights
flashing, glass breaking, women screaming or something. But in this particular flash of light
in the brownout, I'm sitting on the edge of the bed in Nashville, Tennessee, and I'm sitting on the
edge of the bed and there's a blonde-headed woman in my room. And I'm explaining to her that there
are two kinds of men. There are men who are psychologically pimps and men who are psychologically
tricks. And she's messing with Don H. Major, who is 100% pimp, and she's not to forget it.
And the next flash of light, I'm sitting on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands and she's
stolen every quarter I had and left with it. Now, I had been on the streets long enough to know that
pimps aren't supposed to get rolled.
But I don't tell that for whatever sick humor may be in it. The next instant is the closest I can
come to identifying an instant at which I bought them. Because for the first time in my life,
I thought, Major, this is not working. Now, you would think that I would have figured out that
it wasn't working before then. And I thought I had figured out it wasn't working. Because tens
of thousands of times, I had thought, hey, you know, if you don't quit, you're going to lose
this. If you don't quit, this person is going to lose this. And I thought, hey, if you don't quit,
this person is going to leave you. If you don't quit, they're going to put you back in the asylum.
If you don't quit, they're going to put you in the penitentiary. If you don't quit, you're going to
die. Tens of thousands of times, all these, if you don't quit, it's going to. But never one time
had I thought, hey, boy, you're as full of this stuff as you can get and you can't stand the way
you feel inside yourself, so it's not working anymore. Made some phone calls and those people
that I was staying with on charity, reluctantly but lovingly, let me come out there and pass out.
And for you new folks, I had no earthly idea that I was getting sober. The things that I'm
going to talk about for a few minutes now are things that became clear to me over the months
and sometimes the years. I didn't feel like any dove of peace had descended on me. I felt like
my rear end was falling off. And I was just as convinced at 60 or 90 days sober that I would
die of alcoholism and drug addiction as I was the last day that I drank and used. But I'll get to
something in a minute that's very important.
When I shook it out, this loving God had given me some gifts. And as I say, I didn't know what
those gifts were. The first gift was a will to live that I hadn't had for a long time. The last
two years that I drank, I had taken step one. I didn't pick up the first drug or drink thinking
that I might get away with it. I picked it up because the pain was so great and the will to live
was so weak that I just didn't have any choice. And I picked it up. God gave me a will to live,
and the vehicle that he used to give it to me was humor and curiosity. Because I can remember
thinking as I was shaking out that last drunk, what would people do with me if I lived? If I
didn't have the common decency to die after the messes that I've made throughout everything that
I've touched?
If I did live, when people ran into me, it'd be like seeing somebody that you bid a tearful goodbye
and then you run into them in the service station, you know, you don't know what the hell to say to
them. And I found that humorous. And that was how God began to give me a will to live. And God had
given me something else that I didn't know he'd given me. He'd given me the first teachability
or humility I'd ever had in my life. And I don't have but one definition of teachability and
humility today.
And for me, that is the willingness to follow suggestions that are made about how to run my
life, even though my brain does not understand them, does not agree with them, and does not
think they would work. Because, you see, that's why I had no humility and no teachability.
First 37 years of my life, I never once followed a suggestion about how to run my life unless my
brain understood it, agreed with it, and thought it would work. And I didn't even realize that by
giving the ultimate veto power in the universe to this, I was able to do it. And I didn't even
realize I thought this s-s-s-such a s-s-dank organちら ancient hear that I had doomed myself
to death. I thought this was the way it was supposed to be. I thought I was doing the
right thing.
But God just should have cracked the door a little bit. Now, I went back into the clubhouse
there in Nashville, TH, where they had AIA meetings, and they knew me well. I had shot
dope in the men's room, I had passed out at meetings, and they had warned the people
they'd sponsor to stay away from me that I was a loser, that I was going to die. And
about 60 days before I had gotten sober, an old boy with an achei boy was walking into
the house. So the three of us wanted to know who that son of a unloading guy very well
was. He started to say, as he came about of the door mechanisms he calmly gave to me that
got sober, an old boy named Joe W. walked up, about 6'8", he walked up to me and said,
Major, I'm beginning to think you really are too intelligent for this program. And I swelled
up inside like a little banty rooster and thought, well, by God, it's about time these
people figured out who they're dealing with. And then he went on to say, and that's a real
shame, because we've never had anybody too dumb for this program, and we bury you assholes
all the time. And that grabbed me like an icy hand right there. It was still stuck in
my brain when I went back in that clubhouse. Now, of course, this didn't happen in one
conversation, but in a series of conversations. I went back in and I asked, hey, will you
all tell me again what I need to do if I won't live? And they said, yeah, Don, we'll tell
you. Don't drink, don't take dope, and go to meetings. And by the grace of God, for
that first 60 days, I went to over 150 meetings. And my brain was yelling, you don't need to
be going to that many meetings. You better get your shit together.
And go make some money and do something. And by the grace of God, I was able to turn
around to my brain for the first time in my life and say, yeah, I know that's what you
think, but you and I have damn near killed one another. We got to try something else.
And then they told me that I needed to get a sponsor. And my brain yelled, you don't
need a sponsor. There's nobody in AA in Nashville nearly as intelligent with the breadth of
experience that you have had. And I was able to tell my brain the same thing. I got an
old guy.
I didn't need a sponsor. I didn't need a sponsor. I didn't need a sponsor. I didn't
need a sponsor. I didn't need a sponsor. I didn't need a sponsor. I didn't need a sponsor. I didn't
even like to be my sponsor. Hadn't been sober. I wasn't a week away from my last drink when
I asked Cherry Carpenter, who died last year, to be my sponsor. And Cherry would sit around
meetings and what I thought kind of pontificate, tell people who laid the rail. But I knew
he knew the program. And I asked him. And I sure did come to love Cherry. And I don't
think I'd be sober today had I not gotten somebody very much like him real soon after
my last drink. And then they told me to read the big book. And I said, but I've read the
big book two or three times. And they said, yeah, Don, we know. You've read it to memorize
it, to impress us, to argue with us, to criticize the literary style, and to distinguish yourself
from those low-bottom drunks in the 1930s. And above all, you have read it as a philosophy
book. They said, if you want to live, you're going to pick that book up again. And this
time, you're not going to read it as a philosophy book. Because if you want to live, you will
understand that there's nothing in this universe that you can learn that'll keep you sober
for a heartbeat.
Because this process of recovery is not a learning process, it's a doing process. And
if you want to live, you'll pick that book up this time as purely an instruction manual
for your actions. And you'll start going down it one line at a time, reading only the black
part and not interpreting one damn thing. And if you come across something that you
believe doesn't apply to you because of your special circumstances and all you've been
through and your background and your education, do that first, because you're going to learn
that you're probably needed worse than anything.
And by the grace of God, I was able to start doing that. I did not believe it would work.
You see, my brain was saying, hey, this is not going to work, this is simplistic, this
won't work. Your problem is far too complicated for this, Don. This will not work. But by
the grace of God, I went ahead and took those actions.
And then they told me to get down on my knees and ask a power greater than myself to get
through the day without drinking and drugging in the mornings and get down on my knees and
thank that power for getting through it.
And I really squalled then. I said, you know, I can't do that. You know, that second step
is what's been killing me. I can't do that because I don't believe. And they said, shut
up, dummy. And by the grace of God, I was finally able to hear them when they said,
said, no. Said, son, it doesn't make a bit of difference in this world what you think,
feel, or believe, because you see, for the first thing, you are way too sick to have
any valid thoughts, feelings, or beliefs.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
But in the second place, your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs are your disease, and your disease
is your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, and there isn't even any overlap. They are one
and the same thing. And in the third place, whether you live or die is going to be determined
solely by what you do. What you think, feel, or believe won't have one damn thing to do
with it. So you get down on your knees and you start saying the words, it's totally irrelevant
what you think, feel, or believe about it.
And by the grace of God, I was able to start doing it. And the miracle of the second step
happened to me. And they told me in Nashville, they said, you know how it works in the big
book, says, here are the steps we took which are suggested as a program of recovery. And
they said, nothing else in this big book is called a program of recovery other than these
twelve steps. So what that means is that you can be going to ten meetings a week, sponsoring
thirty people, talking at conventions all over the country, and working part-time in
a treatment center. And if you are not actively working steps one through twelve, you are
not in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, you are just in the fellowship. And you are
not taking the only medicine in this universe that has ever proved even remotely effective
against the incurable, progressive, and fatal disease that you have got. And I'm so grateful
that they told me that. They walked me through that third step.
You know, after I began to come to believe, I started getting these great rushes of spiritual
erudition.
And I remember going to my sponsor, Cherry, and I felt kind of like I was going to be
like Jesus about twelve, you know, going in the temple and astounding the wise men. So
I went into Cherry to talk to him about the third step and let him know the depth of my
understanding and the strength of my grasp on it. And he let me rave for a while and
said, Don, what does the third step say? He said, don't quote it, I know you can do that,
you were doing that when you were drunk. What does it say? Paraphrase it for me. And I said,
well, the third step is turning my will and life over to the care of God. And he said,
no. I said, well, it is, too. He said, no it isn't. It's making a decision to do that.
And I said, well, because I knew he was splitting hairs. But no, I said, Don, let me get up
on your intellectual level on this thing. If there are three frogs sitting on a log
and one decides to jump in the pond, how many are left on the log? And I said, two. He said,
no, you dumbass, three. And he said, no, there are three. And I said, well, there are three.
And I said, well, there are three. And I said, well, there are three. And he said, well, if there
he just decided he hadn't gone anywhere and then he said look you decide to go to new york tomorrow
you're not going to move one inch until you do a whole bunch of actions he said that's what the
third step is and he said let me tell you something when folks are sitting around a
discussion meeting wondering if they've done the third step if you're wondering you haven't done
the third step because pages 62 and 63 of the big book alcoholics anonymous described the third step
with probably more specificity than any of the 12 steps are described and cherry explained to me
that that prayer on page 63 came from the very beginning of alcoholics anonymous and that the
word sponsor is connected with that if you think about it you know the word sponsor doesn't make
much sense we're more like counselors or step step guiders or something we're not really sponsor in
any other sense the word and cherry explained to me that where that word came from was that in the
beginning
when there was a prospect when there was a drunk that was dying somebody that was already in the
fellowship would go and talk with them and then if this person wanted what we have and if this
person was willing to get down on their knees with the person that was already in the program
and say something very similar to that prayer on page 63 then and only then would they take
them to the first meeting and say here he is i think he or she is ready and the
reason they did that was they didn't think they had an ice cubes chance in hell of making this
program if they weren't willing to get down on their knees and make a decision to turn their
will and life over the care of god as they understood it and then i knew where the
complication was i said okay i'll accept that so it's this simple decision that can be made in five
minutes but if i decide to turn my life and will over the care of god just how do i do that
because i knew that had to be where the complexity was so that's just as simple
so that all you're deciding to do when you decide to turn your will and life over the care of god is
two things number one work the rest of the steps number two is you walk through life when what you
want to do which will always be your will is different from the right thing as you know it
in your heart which will always be god's will you're going to do the next right thing instead
of what you want to do so if you do that you won't have to sit around worry about what god's
will is for you because god will make your life and will what he would have it be
and i've spent nine years trying to prove cherry wrong and i haven't been able to make the third
step any more complicated than that i don't turn things over to god by thought processes and by
changing feelings i turn things over to god by taking action you ever try to turn a toothache
over to god without going to a dentist try praying a toothache away if you get hungry
lock yourself in the closet and pray for a hot dog and if one comes squirting through the keyhole call
i want to know no cherry explained to me and he was so right that i turned things over to god
by taking the appropriate action and then he explained to me that the big book says that
third step's all well and good but that if it's not followed at once by a fourth step that it
won't have much permanent effect and he said if that meant when you are ready or when your group
thinks you're ready or so on it would say in this book when you think you are ready or whatever that
you will know when you're ready to do it and he said if you're ready to do it when you're ready to do it
fourth step says no so the book says that unless the third step is followed at once
by a fourth step it will have a little permanent effect so if you want to live and be healthy
and you don't want your third step you don't want things bouncing back in your lap as soon as you
give them to god do a fourth step so he took me by the hand and led me through that he taught me
some things about sponsorship he taught me that maybe sometimes we we we say too much about talking
to our sponsor he taught me to think in terms of listening to my sponsor of calling him up to
and stating my problems shutting the hell up and listening and then being willing to do what he
suggested doing by the time i celebrated my token birthday in nashville i still had no job i was
still basically unemployable i was living on charity and i was happier than i ever dreamt it
was possible to be in this light i didn't think there was a chance in the world on my token
birthday that i would ever get a law license back i had had to become comfortable with my
relationship with my only child
while accepting that i might never in this life lay eyes on her again i had had to learn to write
her letters and let my sponsor and other people in alcoholics anonymous read them to make sure
that they didn't have any of those alcoholic defenses or barbs or any of that horseshit in it
that they were absolute expressions of unconditional love and i had to mail them
and i had to let go of whether they were read or thrown in the trash can i had to believe the
people when they told me that if i put anything in front of this program that i would be able to
accept it that i would lose it
they told me that i would die and that if i made getting my law license back my goal and that i would die if i made getting my daughter back my goal
but they told me that if i would make these twelve steps of alcoholics anonymous in my god the most important thing in my life
that miracles would happen for me and wonderful things would happen
and they told me that if i wanted to do this program right that the rest of my life i only had two jobs
first one is don't drink and take dope
to me that God wasn't going to knock a drink out of my hand and nobody in this program
was not going to knock a drink out of my hand. They explained to me that I'm powerless over
alcohol, but I ain't powerless over my elbow. And that what was wrong with me all of my
life was that I kept wanting lightning to strike me to make me feel right so I could
do right. They taught me if I wanted to live, I had to start doing right. And the first
do right I had to do was not drinking just because I wanted to drink. Now, by the grace
of God, I haven't wanted to drink for about eight years and nine months now, one day at
a time. But in the beginning, the first thing I had to act right about when I didn't feel
right was not drinking when I wanted to drink. They led me through the steps and about 18
months sober, still didn't have a job, still living on charity, but it's a pure side effect
of working steps eight and nine. My law license was put back in order and I went back to Louisville
terrified, working the eleventh step to death because I was so afraid to face everything
that I had left behind up there. Got back in January of 1983 and started practicing
law. My finances, incidentally, were such that after I had been sober three and a half
years, got sober in April of 81, in October of 1984, my sponsor and my lawyer and I got
together and decided that my financial condition had improved to the point that I could file
bankruptcy without getting indicted. So it literally took me three and a half years sober
to work up to bankruptcy.
The nature of that bankruptcy is such that if my health holds, I stay sober and the economy
holds, about 15 years after my last drink, the financial wreckage of my past will be
cleared away, but that's okay. That doesn't bother me at all on a daily basis.
And in February of 1983, I laid eyes on my daughter for the first time in over three
years. And in April of 1983, she moved in with you people and with these twelve steps.
And I wrote a letter back to you last year too, having said that my
gravest parts wouldn't have clowning stopped when I had agreed to join you and the entire
business."
8.9. Indian��라고요
no daughter in my life if I was going to dance, I was going to dance to that tune. And if
the tune was going to be no law lessons in my life, if I was going to dance, it was going
to be to that tune. But in April of 83, she moved in with me, and we've had some ups and
we've had some downs, but all in all, I haven't had a better friend in my life, and she's
here today. She came down with some friends from Chicago. I don't think she minds saying
that she celebrated four years in Al-Anon. The first three years she lived with me, she
wasn't sick, by the way. Since I had stopped drinking and taking dope, there was no longer
a problem. But she celebrated four years in Al-Anon, and we talked more days than not
back and forth from Chicago, where she's a senior in college, and we talk about turning
grades and work and that sort of thing over to God, and it's a beautiful relationship.
I go to five or six meetings a week now. I try to do what I'm asked to do in Alcoholics
Anonymous. Eighty percent of the human contact
I have is with other alcoholics and drug addicts usually recovering, and I didn't plan it that
way. I think God knew that I needed that. I think he gives us exactly what we need.
God will do for me what I can't do for myself, but he won't do what I can do for myself,
and that's where I have a world of trouble. And the days when I get to looking at my life
and I think, my God, I'm not any better. I'm just not drinking and taking dope. I get to
looking at my desk and I think, you know, I still don't know how to do all that stuff,
and I'm going to get sued for malpractice, and they're going to find out today what a fraud I
really am. Today's the day. And then I get to looking at what relationships have been in my
life since I've been sober, and by God, that gets my attention. And then I get to thinking about
my wonderful relationship with my daughter, and I turn the telescope around. I think, my God,
I ought to be in the asylum. She ought to be in the asylum. This is awful. And then I remember
what Cherry said.
Cherry told me about that. Told me several things. One thing that he and some other folks
told me is that they don't put you in the asylum for being crazy. They put you in the
asylum for acting crazy. And they don't let you out of the asylum for being sane. They
let you out of the asylum for acting sane. And it was explained to me that being crazy
is harmless. Uncomfortable as hell, but harmless. Acting crazy will kill me if I don't act crazy.
Quick as a bullet. But I can be crazy, and it doesn't hurt a thing if I'll pray and call one of
you folks and say, hey, what would a person with some sanity do? And then if I'll do that, the first
thing, you know, I'll be feeling sane again, and it'll be funny that I was crazy. But it doesn't
get funny nearly as quick if I act crazy. The other thing he told me was that the only valid
comparison I can ever make again, as long as I live, is to compare myself to a person who's crazy.
If I compare today to the last day that I drank, if I compare myself to the way I think I was 10 years
ago or 15 years ago, or the way I think I'd like to be five years from now, or the way I think you
may be today, I'm going to wind up miserable. I'm going to wind up resentful. I'm going to wind up
uncomfortable. I'm going to wind up with what he called, Max Ponch incidentally did not believe in
the term dry drunk. He thought it was a contradiction in terms. He believed in the term a case of the
red ass.
And I'm going to wind up with a case of the red ass. And he explained to me that the only cure for
a case of the red ass is to soak in a tub of gratitude. And when I do that and make that
comparison to the last day that I drank, this is what I come up with. I haven't wet my britches
today. I haven't had a drink of alcohol or even wanted a drink of alcohol today. I haven't had
any dope or even wanted any dope today. Nobody's even trying to put me back in the asylum today.
With the possible exception of one sore tail federal prosecutor, there's not even anybody
trying to put me in the penitentiary today. I haven't stolen anything today. I haven't told
any lies today. I've got a place to go to work. The last day I was supposed to go to work, I went
to work. And I'm up here on Saturday morning sharing with you wonderful people in the middle
Indiana at an AA conference. Hey, I'm a hell of a lot better. All those things from physical health
to friendships, through money to all of these things. I've been told a lot of things. I've been
told a lot of things. I've been told a lot of things. I've been told a lot of things. I've been
told a lot of things. I've been told a lot of things. I've been told a lot of things. I've been told a lot of things. I've
through finances, through raising children, all those things that are so far from perfect in my
life. Now, I've got to try to apply these 12 steps to each and every one of them every day of my life
because if I don't try to do that, I'll fall back in that pit and I'll die. But I need not expect
perfection because people out here that never had a problem with alcohol are never going to get a
single one of those things perfect in their life. I need to be content with the progress today and
I am content with the progress this morning. And I just really thank all of you. You are beautiful
and it's such an honor and privilege for me to be standing up here sober and to be able to share
with you this morning. And I sure feel a whole lot better. I love you. Thank you.
Thank you, Jim.
South West Central Indiana Mini Conference 1990 with the Serenity Prayer on the other side and
Don M on the bottom. Thank you. Thank all of you.
Well, this is a starter. This right here is just things to come. I'm very excited about today.
I've also found out through his lead that
them damn lawyers get drunk just like construction people and coal miners.
The next meeting is going to be a little bit different. I'm going to be talking about the
starts at one o'clock.