White-Knuckle Sobriety as the Most Insane Period of an Alcoholic’s Life – Jack Q.
About This Speaker Tape
Jack, a Maryland lawyer turned circuit court judge, opens by laughing about how unqualified he feels to speak at an AA convention — he's never been arrested, never lost a job, never been divorced, never even gotten a good tattoo. He grew up watching his alcoholic father drink through a men's store and a marriage, and at 14 he prayed his father would quit. When his dad got drunk the next day, Jack closed the door on Higher Power and decided he'd have to run his own life.
Alcohol solved his adolescent awkwardness instantly. Five years of high school, community college, and three summers as an Ocean City boardwalk cop followed — summers he spent confiscating underage drinkers' coolers and drinking the contents with his sergeant and lieutenant. A drunk state's attorney whose ticket got dismissed in the chief's office inspired Jack to go to law school. He became a deputy state's attorney, then a state senator (license plate and all), then a circuit court judge, drinking alcoholically through every promotion and collecting professional courtesies from troopers along the way.
On April 7, 1982, a Tia Maria at the Venice Lounge turned out to be his last drink. Within days his pancreas was digesting itself, his kidneys shut down, and he spent seven weeks between Hagerstown and Johns Hopkins, turning 40 in the ICU with doctors telling his wife he was going to die. Discharged undiagnosed, he white-knuckled sobriety for seven more years — separated from his wife, juggling a primary girlfriend, a backup girlfriend, and a special-occasions girlfriend, sending alcoholics to AA from the bench while refusing to attend a meeting in his own town.
Two friends, Bob and Ken, brought the Big Book to his chambers every Friday and fed him the program one page at a time. On December 22, 1989, Jack opened a package bomb in his apartment, bled out on the floor standing in a spreading puddle, and prayed the Serenity Prayer until peace came over him. He survived four pipe bombs and shrapnel a hair from his femoral artery. Bob sat at the foot of his hospital bed grinning and told him Higher Power had work for him — starting with the third step.
Discussion
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