Treatment Centers Versus the Actual Program of AA – Jerry J.

And you came here to hear him, Jerry. I am Jerry Jones and I'm an alcoholic. I've been sober since January the 1st of 1973 and it was not a New Year's resolution. bring you greetings from texas and particularly from wino joe joe has just had another little bout with a heart attack i'm happy to tell you that he's doing well and uh he said he had it just exactly at the right place in the right time he was in an aa meeting in a hospital talking to a doctor when it happened and he said you can't get any better than that if you're going to have one and he's up and about already and i'm sure home by now i want to thank the committee for asking me up here and i've enjoyed meeting all of you and i think you've done a really good job jim stills done a fine job putting us all together and the committee's done obviously done a lot of work on this uh i really thank you for the opportunity i uh i want To also thank you because, among other things, I have a number of things that are handicaps, some people call them. One of them is that I'm a lawyer. They don't know how to treat lawyers in Texas, but you all do. I got to the airport this afternoon and Rolls-Royce was waiting for me. Dick was driving the Rolls Royce, whisked me over here, and I've been treated really nice. to contrast that with the way they treat lawyers in Texas. Let me tell you what they're doing in Texas now. At Texas A&M, where they conduct a lot of scientific experiments, they have ceased using white rats and begun to use lawyers for their tests. As a member of a protesting part of our bar association, I talked to the head man down there, and I asked him, I said, why are you doing this? we're people we're human beings and he said well he said there are two reasons he said one there seemed to be a lot more of you than white rats and secondly we don't get nearly as emotionally involved with you as we do with the rats so that's the way they treat lawyers in texas i have had a lot of bad treatment in my life i suffer from this thing that many of you do called Al-Anon brutality. My wife preceded me by quite a while in this deal, and she didn't always treat me with the kindness and tolerance that I really thought I was entitled to receive. There may be a reason for that. I heard a story recently about the drunk who had been gone for several days. His boss had called and told his wife that we're going to fire him this time for sure and finally he came stumbling in broke clothes messed up terrible shape flopped down on the bed and his wife said well this is it i'm all through with you and he said wait a minute wait a moment he had that bright glimmer of a spiritual awakening just starting right there you know he said i think i'm ready to do something about my drinking now She had been trained in Al-Anon, and she said, have you decided that you can be totally and completely honest? And he said, yes, I can. She said, do you concede to me that you are an alcoholic? He said, I am. She said. Do you know that you're going to have to have some spiritual help to get well? He said. I do. She said all right now we're going pray right now to God and ask for some help. and she got down on her knees beside the bed and she said God, George here is a helpless, hopeless alcoholic who's just ruining our lives and he nudged her and he said don't tell him that tell him I've had the flu it's hard for some of us you know honesty does not come easily it's really great to see this group of people tonight I'm particularly happy to see so many young people I'm especially happy to see people with 41 years of sobriety like Don Farrell who's here tonight I really appreciate all of you I hope tonight that you can take a minute and really realize that the fact that there are so many of us or it doesn't make it any less miraculous that we are here sober and with a chance for life tonight when you go home if you'll get your bible down and read proverbs 23 29 i believe it's 23 29 or 29 23 i never can remember that but that portion of the proverbs written by king solomon i understand 2 000 years before the birth of christ describes an alcoholic it describes what alcohol does to people it just says it while it's pretty in the glass it stings like a matter and it talks about all the things that that happen and the way you know it's talking about an alcoholic is when he ends the phrase or ends the chapter there he says when i awake i will drink again now between the days of King Solomon he stops right there with the problem he says don't do it but of course we didn't maybe have much chance in doing it and between the days of king Solomon and until late 1934 and June of 1935 there was never any real hope for an alcoholic i've recently lost a friend of cancer the doctors told my friend we have no hope for you we have nothing we can offer you and i had a terrible terrible feeling when they said that to me and i know that there are literally millions of people in the history of man who've been told that by people who knew as much as there was to know about this disease we have no hope for you. As a matter of fact, Bill, our founder, was told that by Dr. Silkworth only a very short period of time before this confluence of powers and forces got together. Strange and wondrous circumstances took place and met in one man. Now there were many people who contributed. Dr. Silkworth was an earlier man to discover that this is a disease. It has to do with an allergy of the body. Your chemical makeup's a little different than other people and an obsession of the mind. That was new then. Dr. Carl Young, another great physician, knew what it took to cure alcoholics. he says in our book and it's quoted in here that that what must happen is that there must be a huge emotional displacement the ideas and motives and concepts of a lifetime have to be set aside and new ones received for the alcoholic to get sober he called that a spiritual experience and he told a man named roland that he had tried to treat he said i know what to do i know what we need but i can't make it happen and he said go somewhere and get close to a group of people who are interested in things spiritual because that will be your salvation and roland of course went back and found a thing called the oxford group and got some sobriety and he met a man called ebby who happened to have a friend called bill and one drunk to another another another great power was forged there bill had a spiritual experience in town's hospital he read about what had happened to him in james's books the variety of religious experience he was at crisis he was totally without power he was defeated and he asked god for help and james and his book says that that's always required for a spiritual experience so bill learned from another source there and he set about to try to do this with all these alcoholics that he found me for six months he tried and he had zero success and then one day after he'd been told by dr silkworth don't preach and after he had had a great crisis again in his life and when he was needing to drink pretty good out of his great weakness came the final key and the final key was that he needed to talk to one alcoholic to another and share his own experience and not preach and he talked to bob smith and the two of them got together the last chink was made there and the the structure was complete and the growth commenced and why no joe would tell you that there There was one more great miracle, and that was the miracle of 1938 when by a bare majority the sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous in Akron, Ohio, voted to allow Bill to write this book. The solution may have been discovered a number of times in life, but nobody ever wrote it down. And believe me, if they hadn't written it down we would have screwed it up by now. have people trying all the time. And I'm here to tell you a couple things. I don't know a lot, and I'm not one of the old-timers in this program, but I do have some strong opinions. And one of my opinions is that there is a difference between treatment and recovery. I believe treatment is fine, but i believe that recovery for the alcoholic comes out of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. It requires the principles set down in this book to make contact with a power greater than ourselves, and when we make contact with that power, we know how to do it. And there's only one way I know for alcoholics to make contract with that power. And that's through the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I don't know anywhere you get to those steps except out of this book and in the meetings of Alcoholic Anonymous and you can trace your lineage, your AA sobriety lineage one drunk at a time back to that gatehouse in Akron, Ohio in 1935. And for that, we must be eternally grateful and we must never ever forget it. And that's why I'm so proud that you're having a function like this this evening. And I am so honored that you let me talk to you. I didn't know what was wrong with me. I had not a goose's idea of what was going on with Jerry Jones. I thought I did, but I really didn't. I had no idea. I had never had a spiritual awakening. I was still asleep and I needed to awaken to reality. I lived largely in a world of illusion, a false perception of reality. The book talks in several places about illusions and delusions. One of the illusions that I had was that I would one day somehow, somehow beat the game of drinking. I had no idea that we were talking about a disease. I got really in bad shape because I didn't know it was a disease, I thought it was a lack of willpower or morals or something was wrong with me, but I didn't know what it was. And I couldn't bring my experience to bear to find out what it Was. And no one seemed to be able to tell me, or if they told me, I couldn' t hear. My recovery began when I began to understand something about my problem. The very first principle of Alcoholics Anonymous is do you have a problem? Look at it. Do you have a problem in your life? And then it begins to tell you how to look and find out if you've got a problem and to see whether that problem, what it is, and whether it's alcoholism. The disease is twofold. It has to do with a physical part and a mental part. When I was a kid in West Texas, I had a dog, and his name was Patches. Patches was a good dog. Patches Was a bulldog. He was brave. He fought a boar badger about two weeks before this story took place that weighed one pound more than he did and he whipped him and killed him and every day for a week patches would go up there in the field and pick up that old dead badger and shake hell out of him just to let him know he was still boss he had a strong personality and one day he was in laying in our yard and the only problem that he had was maybe the flies buzzing around his ears he was well fed well loved no problems anywhere and into our yard walked a boar hog big mean boar hawk he got out of a neighbor's place and came down to see us long yellow tusk and patches made a decision patches decided he would get hold of the hog and he went out there and he got hold of the hog right away that created a problem in our place there was a lot of noise associated it the dog was barking the hog was squealing my dad got out there pretty quick and he began to kick hogs and dogs and that created more confusion. And I knew there was a real problem going on and that hog was going to hurt my dog. And, I was crying and my mother was trying to console me. And everybody knew the solution to the problem. If Patches would turn loose at the hog, everything would be all right. Patches' nature was not to turn loose of things. And he hung on until he got torn loose. And when he got shook off or knocked off, the old boar hog wheeled around and cut his throat with one of those teeth, tusks. And we got him then. We cooled him down and we petted him and we loved him. And we caught him off of hogs and we poured water on him and got everything all right and we turned him loose. And he went right back and he got hold of that hog again. Same deal. Same kind of problem. Same result, father. Same kicking hogs in dogs and me crying and mother after me. and just chaos in the barnyard. And we once again knew the solution to the problem was for Patches to turn loose of the hog. Hog knew it, we knew it everybody knew it. We were the first hog-anon chapter in West Texas. Finally he came loose again and this time we recognized that this dog was beside himself he wasn't really all there. His emotions were on top of his intellect He wasn't in touch with his feelings at all. And so we got him off, and we committed him this time. We tied him under the water fountain. And we let him think about his life and review it and recognize that every time he got a hold of hogs, something bad happened to him. And that really nothing good came out of being a hold on hogs. And that Jerry didn't like for him to get a hold o' hogs and Clarence and Irene, and nobody liked for him you get ahold of the hogs. And really, the hog never had done anything to him. And we left him there for two hours and he was beginning to wag his tail and, you know, he was a friendly acting dog. The hog was gone. We turned him loose. He had to go two miles to find that hog. That's the best description I can give you of alcoholism. And Al-Anonism, I might add. We took responsibility for the dog, and the dog had a hold of something he couldn't change. And we all thought, you know, the problem was if he just turned loose of the hog. And that's what I thought. If I could just handle or turn loose of alcohol, I'd be all right. But you see, the old dog had another problem, probably more severe than the first. And that was what sent him to get a hold on the hog in the first place and what returned him to getting a hold off the hog again and again and once again. a mental process, a mindset, an obsession, a thought that pushes all of the thoughts out of your mind. Judgment is gone. Reason escapes us. And we go back again and again. And if we don't stop drinking, which is the next thing that Alcoholics Anonymous tells us to do, you may not have been told that recently, but that really does help get sobriety. Face the problem, recognize the problem and then stop doing whatever's causing the problem. That's a really good idea. And if you don't stop drinking, you see, you never can find out what that other problem's like. And if You stop drinking and You don't find out what that another problem's likes, then You're going to go back to drinking. Now, that's the first step of alcoholic synonymous, isn't it? To find out if you're powerless over alcohol and then the second thing is to ask if your life's unmanageable. I had a long time studying the first part of that step. It took me 20 years to finally understand, and I never would have understood it probably. Maybe not, never is not a good word, but it would have taken a long time if my wife hadn't come down on it. I was a high-powered lawyer in Dallas, Texas, senior partner in the largest law firm there, and I Never Had Known Anybody Who Looked in the Yellow Pages for an Alcoholic Lawyer. They just don't, if you got one, you try to get rid of him. You know, you don't want those kind of people. And clients don't hire them and other lawyers don't want them for their partner and judges don't want them in their courts. They're just not real popular. And my wife, I found out, went to Al-Anon. And I didn't know what Al-A-Non was so I began to cross-examine my wife. First of all, I didn' t know where she's going. She just wasn't there when I needed her. And I began to cross examine her and I found out that she had gone to this thing, a public meeting called Al- Anon. And in a little bit more cross- examination I found that had something to do with Alcoholics Anonymous and I knew she didn't know any person who drank at all for maybe 2,000 miles except me. And here I was being tried and convicted of this terrible damn disease and I hadn't even got to speak up anywhere. And that she should be going to a public meeting to do this just blew my mind. I explained to her. I did very carefully. I said, Billy, look, you know no one wants an alcoholic lawyer. You know the courts don't want me to practice if I'm an alcoholic there. You knows the partners will kick me out of my law firm if they find out I'm a alcoholic. Now, you've got to quit going to those public meetings. It is essential because if you don't, they will find out. I'll lose my job. We'll lose the house, the cars. The kids will not go to college. We will become destitute, hungry. Starvation will be upon us. We'll become bankrupt. Nothing good can come out of this thing. And she explained to me that she needed to go. And I guess she needed more than she needed because she kept going in spite of everything I could do. I'm really glad she can't hear that applause now because I've been, no, I'm not. And I couldn't leave her alone. Every time she got around me, I started on her again and I pick fights. Sometimes I just decide tonight we're going to have a fight. I don't feel too good. They haven't been too nice to me at the office today. I'm just going to lay waste around here, kick the dog a couple of times and sit down in my chair, get me a tall drink. And I start on her and I always start the same way. I established those facts about which there is no controversy. Let's just get those, build a basis and we'll go from there. And I said, Billy, you think I'm an alcoholic? No controversy there, right? And she said, I don't know whether you are or not. I said what are you talking about? I've been taking tests and you've been on me for years about this. And she says yes, but I was wrong. Did you ever try to fight with somebody who's acting like that? She said, that's your decision. You're going to have to make that decision. It doesn't make any difference what I think. It doesn'T make any difference what any person in the world thinks. You've got to decide. Well, this is new medicine for me. And I'm so confused at this point that I make a mistake that no good trial lawyer ever makes. I asked a question when I did not know the answer. And I said, if I wanted to find out if I was an alcoholic, how would I do it? And I was ruined right there, I'll tell you that. Because she said, the way you do it, they tell me, is you try controlled drinking. you uh you take two drinks every day and you never drink any more than that do that for six months two drinks Every Day I said you want me to drink to prove I'm an alcoholic or prove I am not and she said yes I want you to and I just knew that this conversation was going nowhere I was out in the swamp I didn't know where I was going and I Just broke it off and got away from there quick set out on my green chair and began to doing some contemplative drinking and thinking this thing. And over the next few days and weeks, I recognized that somebody was going to have to make a sacrifice if our family was going survive. She was obviously going to keep going to those public meetings, and the only way I could get her out of there and save our children's education and all those things was—maybe my intentions were not quite that good—but I was going to have take the damn test. Now, I'm smart enough I didn't tell her I was going to take the test, but I began to take the test, and right away I had to make a couple of small changes to the test. No, seriously, two drinks didn't do me any good at all. I was drinking about a quarter day at the time, and two drinks just, you know, I might as well not have had any at all, and I had a large glass, and I decided that what I'd do is I'd have, I would do me three, two before dinner and one after dinner. Two big martinis, which was beef eaters gin and one brandy with just a little bit of soda maybe. And I started trying to do that. Now this is the part where I began to lose touch with what I thought was touch with reality, but really I began TO GET IN TOUCH WITH REALITY. It is totally illogical for a grown man not to be able to limit his drinking to three big drinks a day there i don't need it to subsist there's no reason why i can't do that it's very important to me that i do it so i can do it right logic reason everything tells me i can do that and i start trying now funny thing happens to me i drink one of those drinks and i'm doing great actually i begin to feel a little better cares of the days slide off i'm enjoying the ease and comfort of those first few drinks and i have another one and i recognize well that's about all before dinner. And then here it comes, a thought drifting in from left field. It says, what are you doing? Are you over 21? Is this your house? Is that your bottle of whiskey over there is this your body are you going to let a bunch of little old ladies in tennis shoes tell you how much of your and the answer was always the same hell no and the reaction was always the same i drank the bottle generally with a little anger and billy i wouldn't tell her i was taking the test she didn't know anything was going on see and i'm drunk and i wake up the next morning, and I think, why'd you do that? Why did you do that? You committed to yourself that you were not going to drink more than three drinks. Why did you do that? You've got to get that woman out of Al-Anon. You're going to lose everything you've gained thus far. And I always had the sublime confidence the next day was going to be different. Today I'll be able to do it. Now, some days I couldn't take the test. Well, it had a bad day. You know, there are days when you just really don't feel like messing around with tests. They'd been picking on me all day and I'd just go to the bar and I think, well, by God, I ain't going to take that test today. And I drank the bottle on that day too, you see. And for a year and a half, I gave this test a pretty good run, for ayear and ahalf. I either didn't take the test and felt guilty about that and felt guilty about drinking and being drunk. Or I took the test and felt guilty about being drunk. And at the end of that year and a half, my friends, I was goofy as a loon. All I could think about was drinking or not drinking or taking the test or not taking the test or wishing I had or wishing I hadn't. Just it was swirling around my head all the time. And it had me. I did not have it and I knew that. I did not know why. I had no understanding whatsoever of why I couldn't drink three drinks, but I could not. And that led me to the next part of my recovery. The next part of my discovery came on December 31, 1972. I'd had a bad december i mean i've been drunk at a sunday school party and a couple things that are a little difficult to explain and i my wife and i were not getting along real good and on december 31st it was important for me to last till the new year's came in we were going to have go out to dinner with a few friends and then we're going to come home and i knew why we were coming home because they didn't want jerry to be out drunk somewhere and i had a tendency to do things that other people don't do when they're drinking and so they got me back home that was going to be the idea The only problem was that I passed out at 5.30 in the afternoon. I planned all day long to last till midnight, and I passed out at 4.30. At 5. 30 in the afternoons. And I woke up at 10 o'clock at night, and there sat my wife in her house coat, and I looked out, and it's dark. I said, Billy, shouldn't we be getting ready to go? It's dark, and she said, oh, Jerry, don't you know what time it is? And I looked at my watch, and it was 10 o'.c. at night. and I had that horrible sick feeling that you have when once again you've been whipped by something you ought to be able to handle you've disappointed people you love and I got up and I mixed a drink and I was like and I had no idea that that was the last drink of whiskey that I'd ever take but it was I tried the next morning to do something I'd never done before I told my wife I was going to quit drinking I was gonna try to quit drinkin' And that was the only thing I could think of to try. And she said, Would you like for me to call somebody from Alcoholics Anonymous? And I said, Hell no. I got myself in this mess. I'll get myself out of this mess." And she happened to have a book that looked just like this one. Had a little 24-hour-a-day book that they publish up at Hazleton. And she says, You may find these helpful. And I threw them across the kitchen against the wall. And I says, Let me tell you something, lady. I don't know whether I can do this or not. And I don' t think it's going to be pretty. But you keep them damned AAs and the kids and yourself the hell out of the way because I'm going to do this thing by myself if it's ever done. And I started trying not to drink by myself. Strange and wondrous things took place then. For some reason that I do not understand, if you're doing something that's bad for you and you quit, you ought to start getting better, right? It doesn' t work that way with me. first of all i shook all day long i uh i don't know why i was shaking but i was shaking on the inside and the out and it was in january and it was cold and i was sweating all over i could not find a place that ought to be if i was in the kitchen i needed to be in the den if i were sitting down i needed to be standing up if i Was walking i needed To be laying down i could just god i was In constant motion i couldn't sleep can You imagine that i was tired and i could Not sleep the yippies going around all of me you know and i don't know what this is all about the second day i decided i better look in that little i caught billy out of the kitchen and she just left those books in there so i sneaked in there and i read january the 2nd in the littlest book because i didn't want her to catch me looking to see what these aa people might suggest and they said you ought to turn your drinking problem over God. Well, I can't tell you how disappointed I was here. I am in deep, deep trouble and they're giving me Sunday school pap, you know, turn my drinking problem open. God, I need something big to do here. I've been looking for God all my life from the time I was a little kid. I wanted God to prove himself to me. I heard the preachers talk about hearing music and seeing lights and having these great emotional displacements and all this kind of stuff, you know? And I wanted one of those pretty bad. And I asked for one. I demanded one. And when it didn't happen, I sat on the back row of those damn revivals and listened to all that going on, you know, and some people, they're good people, I don't mean to be critical, but I couldn't get it. Finally moved to the front row, finally decided it ain't going to happen until I get up and go up to the Front. And so I went to the Fron. I shook hands, everybody cried, my folks come around and all the neighbors, and they all loved me and told me how proud they were of me and said, don't you feel different? And you know what I said, Don't you? Oh yeah. I feel a whole lot different. The only difference I felt was a deeper disappointment than I'd had before because nothing had happened for me and i kept trying to do that and i became convinced because i was faking it that everyone else was facking it and i watched them and i saw them do things that's not supposed to be done according to that other big book and i heard them talking about things they did that was not according to what's in that other book and I knew if they'd ever had that big experience that they were talking about they'd never again do that and i knew they were all hypocrites and the church was full of them wasn't until i got an a.a and my sponsor asked me said well you think they're all hypocritics in the church he said can you think of a better place for hypocrites than the church and i said guess not but they weren't but i was judging them by my my own experience and when i read that on january the first second there was no solution for me. But I didn't have much to lose that day. I had to hold something I couldn't handle and almost laughed when I read it. And I tossed that little book over in the corner again and I said, God, if you're there, I'm going to give you this drinking problem. And if you take it, I may do some more business with you. Best prayer I ever said. See, I was totally honest. I really was at my wit's end and I had no place to go. Now they didn't close the liquor stores in Dallas and I still didn't see any lights and I Still didn't hear any voices. But the next day I began to have a thought. God talks to me through my mind. My idea of this power functions through my mind. And that may be why, if I'm taking something mood-altering or drinking, that I can't get anything through there. And I, next day, knew that I was not going to be able to do this by myself, despite all my brave words that I wasn't going to function without some kind of assistance. And so I called Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't call the group that my wife went to because they knew all about me. She had already told them about me I knew. And I wouldn't let her go to my group, and I did not go to hers for a long time. I was a little bit paranoid. And I talked to the lady, andI told her that I needed a nice, quiet, secret group somewhere. I would prefer that they all be college graduates, and if it were close to a country club, that'd be nice because people wouldn't wonder where I was going, and l could tell them. I knew there was a lot of trouble there because she said we ain't got none of them. And so I took the second best thing, which was a little home group, and I began to go to AA there once a week. And just hanging on by my fingernails, just barely able to do it. And into my life came another man. His name was David, and he had come from a treatment facility, and he knew more about alcoholism than I knew what to talk about. All the people in my little home groups had years of sobriety. The baby of that group had a year and a half sobriete. I couldn't really believe that anybody who had been sober for a year and a half or five years or whatever had any real drinking problem. But David had had only about three or four months of sobriety, and he looked like a drunk. He talked like a drink. He had the scars of drunkenness on him, and he had this whole handful of literature, and he'd done these things, and I said, David, what do you think about this AA thing in this group? And he said, I think if you don't get out of this group and get in one where we go to a lot of meetings and really get involved in this thing, we're going to get drunk because we're not going to be able to do the things that we need to do to cause these ideas and attitudes of a lifetime to change. And so I followed a success story. I learned about the great principle of Alcoholics Anonymous called experience. What man has done, man can do. And that's why you have confidence when you go to an AA meeting And you sit there and you find someone you can identify with. And you think, by gosh, if he can do it, maybe I can too. And I found myself in the midst of a bunch of these people. They were fools. They really were. You'd say your name or somebody's speaker would say his name and they'd all say, Hi, Jerry. I thought I was the royal order of the moose or something like that. I couldn't imagine it. And they hugged each other and kissed. And I didn't want to hug or kiss anybody. I didn'T want to stay there any longer than I had to stay. I didn't like what they talked about. I had little funky signs on the wall about let go and let God and all that kind of stuff, and their little step signs. I didn'T know what they meant. And I would not have gone back except there was no place else to go. David said I needed to go there, and they seemed to know something about the problem. And then I discovered they knew something about The Solution. I began to watch them, and they had something that I wanted. I didn't hear anybody talking about money, power, prestige, any of those things. All they talked about was themselves. And they told the damnedest stories about themselves you've ever heard in your life. Embarrassing things. Terrible things. I had my 45th automobile collision when I had My 18th convulsion. And I ran over a bridge and tore up, you know, something. And everybody just falls out on the floor laughing like crazy. I couldn't understand what's wrong with these people, you know. But I'm competitive. And I decided, well, I did a couple of kind of cute things. Maybe I'll tell them one of mine. And I told them and they put their arms around me and said, that's good. You're beginning to open up. You're begin to open yourself up. You're getting to be who you are. Just Jerry Jones. No pretense. No facade. Just Jerry James. And I watched those people. and I came to know that those people had something that I really did want, something I had been looking for all my life. It's that feeling you get when you're talking to a good AA, the steadiness of the eye, the easy grin, the ability to handle whatever kind of problems life brings you with ease and dignity. And I decided I wanted that. And my group at that time was really my higher power. I knew what this God thing was I hadn't been able to do anything with God yet I'd said my little prayer but I wasn't able to do much more than that and I began to I made a decision I don't remember the day I made that decision but I committed way down deep inside myself that one more time I was going to try to find God and this time I was gonna do whatever they told me to do no matter how ridiculous it seemed to find him to find Him I was gone I was gon' look for Him and I was gunna try to find Him And I read that part back in the back of the book where it said, I have to be that honesty, open-mindedness and willingness are absolutely indispensable if I want it. And I began to try as hard as I could to be as honest as I can get and to be open to any ideas I could find. I was so open about it, as a matter of fact, I went to a little deal out in the country, a church retreat kind of thing that the Baptists gave. Now, I'm a Methodist, you see. And for me to go to a Baptist function was really kind of a miracle all by itself. And I hadn't been there two minutes until I found out I'd already made a mistake. These people were standing around. The very first thing they did was begin to give testimonials about what God was doing in their life. And I just hate that. I just couldn't stand that. And I was trapped. I couldn't get to the door. There weren't but about 15 people there, and I was going to be obvious when I left. and then i began to listen just because it's going on and they had funky little problems they didn't have any real problems god wasn't really doing much for them didn't seem me like some of them said they couldn't drive on our expressways without god and i've been doing that for a long time couldn't run their business that god i'd done pretty good with my business that god couldn't raise their family i'd raise two good kids without god and i begin to think you know here i am i've Been sober three months i've been sober three months and it all started with that little funky prayer i said on january 2nd if those baptists knew what god could do for a real alcoholic he'd blow their socks off what it'd do i believe i'll tell them and so i began to practice my speech in my head like i do a lot you know i mean so i make a good impression and i uh i got after that pretty good and i was just about to make my speech it's gonna be my turn next pretty little girl stood up 32 years of age had two children ages two and three her husband had been very unmanly he'd stood up and tried to talk and he cried of all things and i felt embarrassed for him being a man and showing that kind of emotion you know and she began to talk about some funny things she began to talk about being grateful and her eyes had that look and she had a little smile and she was pretty and she was calm. And she said, I'm really grateful to know that my children will be raised in a good Christian home even though I'm not there. And that my husband will not be bankrupt because of my last illness because we have a good policy of medical insurance. And I came to know I was listening to a young woman who was talking about dying of cancer And she wasn't talking about dying from cancer a year or two from now. She's talking about in a month or two. And she stood there in those few minutes without any regret, but with only gladness and joy. And talked about the solution of God as she understood him in her life. And our book says that we have great thoughts once in a while. It talks about the agnostic or the atheist who said, who am I to say there's God? A big thought hit him. Well, I had one of those. Mine, I didn't know God talked like this, but mine was like this. It said, ain't you got it tough, cowboy? Ain't you gotta tough? You've been sitting here in AA for three months, sucking your thumb, feeling sorry for yourself because you can't drink anymore and run with the big boys. You've being sitting here judging these people about their little problems and their little God. Here's a lady who's got a disease just like yours. It's incurable. and she has a solution that you don't like your solution if you could offer her to her right now if i could offer her aa going being with those wonderful people and doing those things she had taken that solution in a minute she would have committed forever to that she just said take both my legs too so grateful was she been and i didn't make speech that day I didn't say a word my throat was closed up the way it should have been and I crawled out of that meeting ready and that was the last day I've ever felt sorry for myself for being an alcoholic I just ain't sorry for Jerry Jones for being alcoholic anymore because I had been given contact with power and I had a way out hundreds of people could rely upon and millions had that worked i was a long time recognizing that that little gal had a solution too and her problem was bigger than mine maybe but there's the same solution i just couldn't see that for a long term but i was grateful for mine and i went back and i began to do more i was willing to take to look at myself to examine my life in that fourth step to really get down to the causes and conditions of my problem and i understood for the first time ever that the reason you can't make contact with God oftentimes is because you're self-centered. It says that we have to find, in the fourth step, we've got to find what's blocking us. And what's locking us is this thing called self-centeredness. And why self- centeredness? It's the way you think. It's it's the things you're concerned about. I didn't know that. I had an awful time when I read that page in the book the first time where it talks about self-selfishness and self-centeriness. I skipped the rest of the page because it didn't apply to me. My goodness, I like to give my kids things. I couldn't be called selfish. I contribute to the church. I do all them good things you know. And I didn't understand it for a long time. Do you know where I discovered self-centeredness? On the freeways of Dallas. That's where I found it. I don't know what you got up here in Omaha but in Dallas if I was to arrive today I'd have one here in Omaha if I had my car here. It would be called my lane of traffic. it's the one i own it's the one my car is in it changes whenever i want to switch over a lane whatever goes on in that lane i take personally if they're driving too fast behind me i take that personally they're doing it to me if theyre driving too slow and i gotta go somewhere theyre messing around with me if they cut in front of me and are discourteous there have been times in my life when it was necessary for me to punish those people just go up three cars cut back over and run them off the road what the hell they deserve it somebody's got to take care of people like that i enjoyed that but i began to recognize that this self-centeredness was a taking of things personally whatever it was i viewed it as taken personal to me i i could not see that when you acted when you didn't speak for example that you might be having a bad day i thought you were mad at me and my reaction was always angry towards you i didn't know i promise you i did know i have two degrees and i did not know that a resentment was a memory a resentment is remembering something that happened that didn't go the way i wanted it to go. And it's associated with a feeling in my gut that tightens me up and I'm ready to fight somebody. Now, my body doesn't know it's not happening right now. So it kicks out a whole bunch of adrenaline and stuff like that. And we get ready to fighter run. And I used to sit in my green chair at night and do that, you know, and get ready the fighter run and the kids walk in. I've been a nice happy drunk 10 minutes before and they bother me and I just chew their arms and legs off, you know. Jekyll and Hyde, they call it, because I've come out of that. I didn't know that fear was no more than an anticipation of what's going to happen tomorrow. I really never was much afraid of what was going on right now. It's what's gonna happen. That's gonna be bad. Well, matter of fact, it's gonna be worse than that. It really is. Really gonna get bad is what's gunna happen. And I could court disaster out of just, you know, give me a hangnail and I could turn it into cancer in about 25 minutes. And those thoughts dominated my life. And the instincts, sex, security, society, those things dominated me. I was always working for them, always striving for them. I had values that just had to ruin me. I didn't know these were bad. And by American standards, they're really not. One of the ideas that I came up with is that I needed to be a man. Bad, I needed to be man. And I could go back and remember how I came to do that. They kept telling me when I was a little kid, you'll grow up to be the man someday, Jerry. I knew I wasn't then but I was going to be. And they kept telling things like little men don't cry. Little men aren't afraid. Little man don't act like that. Be a man, Jerry! And I bought all that stuff. And I concocted an idea of what a man was that hardly anybody could live with. It was John Wayne and Robert Redford and, you know, King Kong all rolled into one. Did you ever see John Way say, I'm a little bit insecure? Or I'm afraid to go out there because somebody might shoot me? Hell no, they don't say that. And I bought all that. And I judged myself by those standards. I remember one day when I was a little boy, my dad was working on a plow and he was my first example of a man. And he was cutting the head off off a boat with a cold chisel and he was hitting that chisel hard with a hammer and the chisel flew out of his hand and he busted his thumb blood went everywhere and he cussed it's okay to cuss and be a man i knew that and i practiced that quite a bit and he got up and he picked that chiseled up again he walked back over and just before he started hitting that shizzle again i said daddy did that hurt and he looked at me with those steely eyes and he said, hell no. And he went right back to hitting it. Well, you know, I was practicing being a man a few days later. I was working on a plow and I had me a chisel and a hammer and the chisel flew out of my hand and I hit my hand. Know what? Hurt like hell. Not only did it hurt, but I cried. And not only did I cry, but i was afraid to pick the damn thing up and hit it anymore i flunked being a man on three counts right there and it never got any better i had these unrealistic ideas of what i was supposed to be and i compared my insides to your outsides all the time and i didn't know that was happening to me and i was uncomfortable and that's why i love to drink to escape i needed not to lose god i needed to be a winner so bad I needed to be important to you and I did not want to be insignificant. I wanted your acceptance and I couldn't stand your rejection and I had all of these things that I tried to avoid or to gain all the time in an emotional sphere and I found out about those and I was able to tell somebody about them and that day I ceased to live alone. When I told my sponsor about those things about me I didn't have to fake it anymore. I was floating free for the first time in my life somebody knew all there was to know about me and I didn't have to fake anything anymore I remember when I'd start to fake after that I'd think to myself there's not much reason to do this because somebody knows and I began to be Jerry Jones just who I was supposed to be in all my life warts and all and I found the greatest freedom that I'll ever know is to be myself and live within my value system I've got to live in my value system or change my value system because if I'm living outside it, I'm uncomfortable and I'm likely to drink again. So I had to do what I thought was right. And I had to pay attention to that too. I had watch what was going on in my head. Thoughts become your actions. Actions become your habits. Habits become your character and your character becomes your destiny. And when you start with the fourth step, you start right back there with thoughts. And you learn to think about those things that It gives you things to think about. It tells you to stop thinking about things that are causing you trouble and begin to think About Things That Are Good, and I started doing that. And guess what? It's good for me to thinkabout. It'sgood for meto thinkabout other people. It'sgood for metocuit going to meetings because I need a meeting. I didn't do that on purpose, but it happened to me one day. I went to a meeting one night, and I don't know what night that was, but I went because I was interested in what was happening to someone else, and that was really where my recovery took off. I became interested in what was going on in my group. I became interesting in Alcoholics Anonymous. I became interest in a lot of things besides taking care of number one. And the more I became intersted in those things and acted toward trying to be of maximum service to God and my fellow man, the better I was, the happier I was. And I really couldn't understand how that all took place. The first step that deals with that is the eighth and ninth step. the first thing you do when you make that shift when you become entirely ready to give up those things that are blocking you from being of maximum service to God and your fellow man is to start making amends and I had amends to make I had people that I'd hurt I had to stop doing things that were hurting other people and start doing things that helped them and I made as much amends as I could make and the result of my life has been really really good for me I have had those promises that they talk about. I have found this power that they talked about. It wasn't the kind of power I thought it was. I still have trouble with the word God and God to me today means whatever it is that works in Alcoholics Anonymous. I can't define what that is. I know it's more than a group therapy though and I know there's something going on there that I've never been able to find anywhere else and I like it and I feel good about it and it's produced results in my life that I just, I can't explain. I began to see God in a different way. I always wanted to see him directly. I wanted to see direct evidence of what I've been given is circumstantial evidence. Things that would not have happened unless there's some kind of power greater than myself at work and life. And that's all I'm probably ever going to see. And that's good enough for me today. When I'd been sober for a few years, my mother became ill and I got maybe my greatest lesson about Alcoholics Anonymous at that time. My mom and I were really close. She was a great gal and she loved me with an open hand. And she is kind of, you know, it's close to Mother's Day and I've been thinking about her today. She did not approve the way I drank she died with 74 years of continuous sobriety and she didn't think six months or six years or whatever was any big deal because she just never had any family needed to drink at all and she uh but she she left me to do what i was wanted to do and she for a while i kind of respected her wishes i wouldn't drink when i was around her or i wouldn'T drink in her home but you know how egotistical we get and after all i got us 21 and i can drink for a damn well pleased and I was going to have to grow up sometime and she was just going to have to adapt herself to the he-man that I had become. So I did all those things to her and then she got cancer and we thought it had been cured or arrested and five years passed and we were all pretty sure of it and then one day I got a call and they said there's another lump, another mass in Mother's abdomen. You better come up. They're going to operate and I went up there and I didn't take any bottle with me. I was going to honor her this time. I was gonna do right. It was important to do that. And I went up there and I did all right for a day or so and they operated. And the operation hadn't been going very long when they came out of the room and they said, Jerry, it's no good. Told dad and I, I said, you know, his cancer's everywhere. And I just walked out of that hospital. It's just as though my mind had shut off. And I walked out of that hospital, and I got in a car, and I went to a liquor store, and I got a bottle of vodka. And for several days, I played like I was sober, but I was drunk the rest of the time I was there. And my mother survived that surgery, and she told me she knew, she could tell, she could smell it. She knew I was drunk in the room. In a few days, they sent me home, cuz I wasn't any good to anybody there. And once again, the chemotherapy worked for a few years and she got better and I thought it was going to be all right again. And I got an Alcoholics Anonymous and I got sober. And the first thing I ever did, and the first amendment I ever made was to mail my parents a copy of this book and told them, I said, you don't have to read that whole thing, but read the first 160 some pages there because that's what I'm going to try to do with my life. And they loved it. They loved that book and they read it to each other and they came to hear me talk and they went to AA meetings and every time they passed the hat dad tried to buy AA. He couldn't understand that self-supporting bit at all and we got easy with one another. I stopped doing the things that were harmful to my mother and began to do things that were helpful and nurtured her. She saw our family come back together, she saw my wife and my relationship improve my kids do well and thrive and and cease to hide from daddy and and life got pretty good for us but you know there's a funny thing about life you don't just get it in a you don't просто do the steps and then ride happily off in the sunset i know that's what we all would like to have happen but life keeps on going just one day at a time it grinds it out and there's death and there is unhappiness and there are divorces and disappointments and all sorts of things happen. But our program, if you keep practicing these principles is big enough to handle anything. One day I got this call again and it said, we found another problem with mom and we're going to have to operate again. And I went up to their home again and I went in and I saw my mom and we visited, we were alone for a little while and we talked and she said, I said, all right, how do you feel about this? And she said well, Jerry, she said I don't know whether I'm going to make it this time or not. She said, I'm awful weak. There may not be much they can do. And she said, I'd like for you to get the family in here because I need to talk to them all for a minute about this. So I gathered the bunch up and got them in there. And she says, I just tell Jerry I don't know whether I'm going to be able to make it this year or not because it's going to be pretty rough I think. But she said Jerry will get you through this. He will be your strength. lean on him and it'll be okay they operated for a week she got a little better then for another week ten days she got in the hospital she got worse in the middle of all that my dad had an ulcer that perforated and they had to take out most of his stomach he didn't get to go to the funeral she died but I didn't drink never one day one moment did the thought of taking a drink cross my mind. I was the strength of that family. They did lean on me. Now, do you see that the only difference between those two occasions is the program of Alcoholics Anonymous? I loved my mother no less one time than the other. I wanted to do right no less one time and the other, but I lacked the power. But because I had done these steps and they'd worked in my life. When I needed it, I had the power. God doesn't give us something we can't handle. If we're open and the channel's open, He's there and it works. And it worked for me. It's continued to work for me My dad died a little later. I've had all kinds of problems come and go in my wife just like you have. Every time one of them happens, I know there's a lesson in it for me to learn. My faith has deepened. My experience has deepening. You see, I don't have to believe what you believe about God anymore. I have my own experience with this power that you can't take away from me. That's my belief. And that's my strength is my belief and that's where you're supposed to start with your search for God, what you Believe in and add to it. Always be willing to add to It because more and more will be demonstrated to you. And that' s what' s happened in Alcoholics Anonymous. since 1935 there has been thousands millions of people who have been touched by this program since 19 35 there have been millions of People Who Become Alcoholics and they're growing at an alarming rate do you know where the responsibility for the solution to this problem lies do I have to tell you it's unique somebody was at a a somebody was looking for me somebody was trying to help for me the day I finally got to where I could use it. Somebody's out there tonight looking again. Somebody needs to know that's never heard of Alcoholics Anonymous. We need to break our anonymity among our friends and our places of business and our doctors so we know there's a solution. There are doctors who don't even know there is a solution. My son is a medical student or a graduate of medical school now. All he learned about alcoholism in medical school, one of the finest in the country, was a half a day. A half a Day of Lectures. And that's okay because medicine doesn't have a solution for alcoholism. It's this power. Medicine's solution is don't drink and that's the first part of it. It's the ability to not drink that's, that's The Problem. Docs have been trying to help us for a long time. We just don't know, we just can't do it. And we insist on going back to them. But now there's some of us that know, and there's ways to go. And the power of AA just goes on and on. I heard a story the other day that I think reminds me of Alcoholics Anonymous. The Canadian geese fly out of the north. And they always fly in these big Vs, you know. And it's always marveled, people always marvel at their strength, that they could fly 70 miles an hour for so far. And no one really ever understood why it can't. They can, a flock of those geese can fly 70% further than one goose can fly alone. And they found the way they did this is that one of them is out there in the front breaking the wind and he flies in that front position until he begins to tire and then he drifts back to the back where the air is broken and a new goose moves up. And those at the back hawk to encourage the guy up in the front. And it's that way in AA. This lunatic organization we belong to with no leaders, no professionals no rules one of us breaks the strong wind one day and you're not supposed to take it that way and the rest of us float along behind and then it comes our turn you give to me one day and I give to you the next we have got an enormous thing going here we are so blessed it's difficult to describe but you feel it and you know it's true and if you know that give it away we got a hell of a deal and we got it tough thank you Thank you, Jerry. On behalf of the greater Omaha area...