Wilbur M. at the 11th Bluff City Roundup – 2020

It's an privilege to be able to be here tonight and especially to be introducing the main speaker, the main event, so to speak. And it has been really a wonderful and truly a great experience to meet and talk to the speaker today for some time over the last couple of hours after picking him up at the airport. And I guess as he said earlier, he is one of the most non-anonymous members of Alcoholics Anonymous. And so, without any further ado, let's have a real resounding clap of hands and introduction to Wilbur Elm. Thank you very much, Jim. I'm Wilbur Melos, a very, very grateful alcoholic. hi everybody I wonder what had happened here with the police force, the mayor and everybody else that we'd all get out and get drunk I know one time I attended a meeting and the mayor suggested that I say something that would guarantee that everybody in the audience would not take a drink I'm not going to do that tonight because there's no guarantee that I know anything about and I told him then it was a great pleasure for me to get to be here and see so many people I feel like I'm in the big leagues now this many. Usually you get about 50, you know, that want to hear you. Some of them go to sleep on you, but still it's a real pleasure to get to see so many sober people. I wonder if you feel like I do, that you're really grateful that you are an alcoholic. I say that because I know what's wrong with me. There's so many people throughout the world, many of them in very important positions in some of the nations of the world who don't know what's wrong with them everybody else does they're slightly insane nothing's wrong with them but they don't know we alcoholics know what is wrong with us we know what to do about it and we do it and we stay sober a day at a time by not taking a drink so I don't see anything wrong about being an alcoholic frankly and I don' hold my head in shame anymore there was a time when I did But let me get back to how it was, talk about that a little bit and what happened and what it's like now. I came through in a hospital. A doctor had sent me there, I understood later. He said he had found my blood pressure was high above and below the line. He thought I was going to have a stroke or a heart attack or something. He sent me to the Bethesda Naval Hospital. I was in a blackout. I didn't know anything about it. I woke up in the hospital some days later. above and below the line. I thought I was going to have a stroke or a heart attack or something. Then they sent me to the Bethesda Naval Hospital. I was in a blackout, I didn't know anything about it. I woke up in the hospital some days later, I don't know whether it was the next day or the next week. There was a man standing by my bed, he said he was a doctor, I didn' t know. He didn' d have any blood on his clothes, he hadn' t been operating on his ass. He said he had been assigned to my case. Well, I told him there wasn' t much you could do about it. And he said, Do you know what's wrong with you? I said, Yes, I know what' s wrong with me. I've got a tumor of the brain. He wanted to know why. I said well, I can't remember from day-to-day what I've done. Actually that was a minimum statement because I couldn't remember for months and months what I'd done. At any rate, I had been to Boston one weekend. Some of you may be old enough to remember that I made a stage appearance up in Boston. I did what any congressman is supposed to do. The lady said she needed help, and I went up there to help her. That's the way you stay in office, is helping people, you know, doing what they want you to do I was back on the floor on Tuesday morning after being up there on the weekend but I don't remember going, being there, coming back from there. But I was waiting for the Speaker to recognize me to move to override the veto of a President. President Ford had vetoed a bill that he shouldn't have vetoed. I didn't think it had my name as author, and I thought that would have been enough notice that it was a good bill. But he vetoed it anyway. Had to do with the hurricane that went through West Virginia, the winds that finally destroyed a lot of property in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, and we were providing $15,000 for people who didn't have anything and who had lost everything to enable them to start rebuilding. The IRS said that that money was subject to tax. Well, we didn't intend it to be in this bill if we had passed, eliminated the any tax on that gift. But he had vetoed it. He's misinformed, of course, about it. Very laudable purpose. Anyway, as I stood behind the rail waiting, Charlie Bennett, who's still in the Congress from Jacksonville, Florida, He's told me all this later. I don't remember it. Some other Democrats came back behind the rail, and they were looking at me. Well, you look like you're sick. And I told them I was sick. Not only sick, I was dying. I'd already diagnosed my case. I knew what was wrong with me. Well, don't you think we'd better call a doctor? There's nothing a doctor can do. It's too late. But they called the doctor anyway. He came over and felt him a pulse and sent him to the hospital. them. I don't know whether they were interested in my health, really, or whether they were trying to avoid the embarrassment of following a fellow who had advertised that he was a drunk over the weekend, or following the President who hadn't even had a drink. I'll never...I don't know which it was, but I suspect it might have been the latter rather than my health that they were thinking about. At any rate, they got me to the hospital. And when I told this doctor what is wrong with me, he said, well, we'll find it if you've got one, we find it. Couldn't pay any attention to my diagnosis. Passed it right off. But I said, but doctor, mine is malignant. He said, how do you know that? I said well any doctor one on half sense would know if you've got a tumor anywhere in your body and you've lost as much weight as I have, it has to be malignant." Well that's reasonable, but we'll find it, don't worry. We'll find out if he's got it. There's something else wrong with you. He said, have you ever had a Bloody Mary? And I said I've seen them, I've never drank any happened, but I've seen them. He said, you notice what the alcohol does to the medicine use? And I said, yes, turns into pale pink. He says, well, your blood, we've been taking some samples of it. I guess it's just at least a gallon. Yeah, he didn't give any credit on my hospital bill for it. He goes, I don't know what they did with it. But he said, your blood is a pale, pale, palepale pink. You are a chronic alcoholic with an acute case. Now, here he was, a lieutenant commander in the Navy, hoping to be a captain. Of all the insults in my life, that was the worst insult I'd ever received from anybody. I knew that. First thought went through my mind, young fella. You've gone as far in the navy as you're ever going. I knew the secretary of the navy. I knew his boss, the surgeon general of the Navy. I knew them all. I wasn't going to let him get by with it. I detested him. I hated him from that moment on for a long time. This fellow crossed the aisle, crossed the hallway from me in his room. He could look out in my room. I could look in his ears. He was a retired admiral. I'd known him when he ran to Bethesda Hospital. When he retired, he was the assistant surgeon general of the Navy. I thought a very able doctor. He wouldn't have gotten that high. And this darn young sprout had told him he was an alcoholic. Well, he couldn't be. He told me he couldn'T be. He said, I just drink beer. I never drank anything but beer in my life. You can't be an alcoholic drinking beer. I said, well, Admiral, how much did you drink? Oh, a case or two a day. And incidentally, I know his daughter who is in AA and she says he's still drinking a case or two today. So it didn't work for him until the last, 11 years into this month when we were there. Anyway, the doctor now is one of my very best friends. He is a captain. He got to be a captain because he probably diagnosed my case, I think. I believe that's why they promoted him. I've often kidded him about it. He called me the other day. He's now in Norfolk Naval Hospital in Virginia, and we talked on the telephone, and he found me very friendly with him and all that. He said, you're a lot more friendly now than you were the first two or three days I knew you. But I had a feeling about it, but you know, my whole life passed in review just in a second or so. I couldn't be an alcoholic. I just couldn't be. I hadn't set out in life to be one, hadn't intended to be one. Hadn't taken my first drink except under compulsion. I was out hunting one time when I was 12 or 13, out on the wake, hunting rabbits or squirrels or something with a couple of my friends about the same age. I knew where all the stills were back then around my hometown, but I stumbled on one I didn't know about. And I knew the fellow when he walked out behind the tree, but I'd never seen him with a rifle in his hand. And he had that open at the time. It was the biggest thing I ever saw. I've seen a lot of stills, but never saw one that big. I know I had helped him load the sugar on his wagon. He'd always buy 2,200 pounds packs of sugar. And I knew I had help him load that very sugar on that wagon that was making that vacuum moonshine. But I'd neve seen him without a rifle and it disturbed me a little bit. He handed it under the tree. Of course, the smoke would go up through the leaves and branches and disintegrate rather than it sitting fixed, you know. So he said, well, come in. Took a cup off of a twig on the tree and handed it to him, and he said I'm about ready to put all this stuff in those mason jars. And they had them stacked low up almost to the sky, quarts and pints. They did wholesale business in those days in White County. They took it to Chicago. Shot loads out of it, and none of them were ever stopped. But this fella handed me the cup and he said, brush the scum back and put this down about to your elbow and come up with a cup of it and drink it down. I want you to sample it. Well, at 12 or 13, I had already become known as the sampler of moonshine. How, I don't know. But now what would you have done? Man had a rifle in his hand. Told you to take a drink. Now that wasn't voluntary on my part. I wanted you to know I didn't set out to be an alcoholic. I took the drink, and then later on he said you can't fly on one wing. I'd never heard that before. You should have another one. When he told me to take it out, I didn't sip it. I just took it down, and something happened inside of me. I don't know what, but everything burned. My goodness alive, I got hot. I couldn't hunt anymore. I didn' t get drunk all night, but I couldn' t hunt anymore. That day I couldn see the sight at the end of my gun, so I had to go back home. I went off to college when of high morals. My mother had hand-picked it for me. She didn't want her son to be affected by some of these lowlifers that might be in some of our colleges. She wanted me to go where their morals were great. I was there about a month and a half, down in the basement, Martin Hall. Knock on the door, I had two roommates. I off in the corner studying three of the greatest biggest men you've ever seen they must have weighed 250 60 pounds they were football linemen i mean when they were they didn't know me from adam they were seniors came through the door we're looking for wilbur mills i held my hand up made a mistake made a mistake to come with us on the way up to the third floor they told me they'd selected me now out of the freshman class to take on the cognac drinking champion of henry sorry the cognac drinking captain of henry started thinking like yeah i just got into food and they identified me right quick how they could i don't know i don' know it wasn't what i must have looked at the d.c field and i always did anyway i went up i late said that i took more than i can remember taking the cognak we had was homemade the only similarity between it and what you can buy in a liquor store is they both made out of grapes this must have been 180 proof at least it burned all the way down i hadn't had much drink if anything between the time i had my first one and this and on this occasion i don't remember having a drink even but at any rate they said i had more than that but you know when i woke up in there incidentally he remained the champion i didn't beat him but he died when he was 49. i don' t know what happened to him He didn't live his full life span. I don't know whether he drank or not. But he could drink that night, I'll tell you that. Now we were drinking out of, I guess they looked like peanut butter jars, glasses. And I remember having three of them. But I woke up the next morning and I couldn't get out of bed. I wasn't sick in my stomach. I didn't have really a hangover like many of you discussed. But I had to pee. And I could hardly talk. So I called another sewage infirmary told her that i had something wrong with me she said i can tell on the telephone you've got the flu you can hardly talk you better come on over here and let's give you some medicine so i went on to give an excuse to be absent for two days he treated my alcohol with something that you would ordinarily give in each case of flu or some antibiotics or something i don't know what but anyway i was all right at the end of those two days and went right on i never had any trouble with drinking never did i drank when i wanted to maybe go a year the time without taking a drink. Now, I don't remember getting drunk. I went off to Lelstew later on and booze was always free in Boston. A Coast Guard or somebody would apprehend these liquor boats running down the coast that come in too close to the land and they'd seize them, fling their stuff in and dump it on the pier there. Anybody wanted could go by and get a case. I ran down there several times and got a case with some of my friends. get corks and pints, but invariably I'd get a case of those little bottles. Just one drink to the bottle, you know. And I was flushing all the time at myself for being so unlucky. Why couldn't I get a quart or a pint? Why would I get those little models? I don't know, you know, if it gets as much in the case in those little balls as it does in the big ones. I love getting cheated. But at any rate, I did that, and we drank some, but not much. And I later came back and ran for out of gas. The year after that, I lost the running for county judge in my home county and was elected, still wasn't drinking. My county was dry. I had to make the decision. After that election on the question, and I decided the county was drier. They thought I was influenced by the preachers, of course. Maybe I was. At any rate, they appealed the decision, I mean, the circuit judge reversed me. So then I got the crowd together that was for the county being dry and I told them I had to go to the Supreme Court. I wasn't going to take that. I knew I was right and the circuit judges were wrong. So they went to the Spring Court and the Supreme Courts sustained my original decision. So it became dry when I was county judge in 1935 and has remained dry ever since. Then I wanted to go into Congress. Well, I had given the congressman out of the way So we ran him for the Senate. Lo and behold, he beat the governor and was elected to the Senate in 1937. And that opened the way for me to run for Congress in 1938, and I did. And my people were very kind to me and let me stay there for 38 years. All my life, from the time I was 8 or 9 years of age, that's all they wanted to do. I wanted to go to Congress. Too hard for me to understand my grandson, who's 21 now. Still can't make up his mind what he wants to do, but I know that's not uncommon there's so many opportunities outside the house of young people that it's a little difficult for them to decide whether they want to be a lawyer business man or doctor he went to college to be a doctor changed his mind after about two years wanted to go to business school i had him working in washington this summer and now he wants to be a lawyer i think i've ruined him but uh i knew from them from the time i was eight and nine as i say that i wanted to come to congress that's all i wanted well a person who had that kind of ambition couldn't get shouldn't be an alcoholic that didn't fit the picture. I just knew it couldn't be. I'd seen them on the streets in Washington. Come up to you, used to be the one to dine. Now they'll ask you for 50 cents or a dollar, wine's gone up I guess, I don't know. They'd always say they want a cup of coffee. People were out of home, people with no place to take a bath and see everything else. They're still there, the homeless, and they're in all our cities I guess but we've got a flock of them in Washington. They were the alcoholics to me. They only represent about three percent of all the total alcoholics out there now that are still drinking. I forgot that they can be an alcoholic, you know, that stays home and drinks by himself and maybe just at night as I did. But I didn't fit the picture. I couldn't be an alcoholic. So you can understand why I was so mad at this doctor for insulting me. Uh, they began to bring things to me, they bought me a book book. I didn' t know what it was. I threw it aside. I wasn't interested in reading they find the person who needed it but i didn't need it and uh they began to have some meetings that came from around maryland and virginia and washington put on these meetings i thought it was in the basement of us so then i found out when the lady that was there and arranged it all spoke at my 10th anniversary last february he said it was in in the Admiral's office, in the Admiral's quarters. And I thought I was in space, but you didn't see it. You didn't feel how confused I was. But that time of year and then they'd tell me how great it was. One of them told me he hadn't had a drink in 20 years. Well, I proved him a liar right quick. I asked him if he went to any athletic events. He said, what do you mean? Football games, baseball games, basketball games. Oh yes, I go to a lot of those. Well, nobody ever went to a game like that without having at least a can of beer. I know. I did. You just couldn't enjoy of the game without a can of beer. So I knew he was lying right then. If anybody had told me he'd have ten years, I knew that he was lying. It's just impossible for anybody to go ten years without a drink. This was my idea. I stayed in the hospital for sixty days. They didn't know what to do with me. The betting around town was that I'd never get sober. Everybody knew I was an alcoholic because of me. I couldn't make up my mind. I couldn't envision it. At one of these meetings, though, one night they put on these impromptu meetings for me. At one of them, somebody made a very important statement to me, and I'll never forget it. He said, there's one way, Wilbur, whether you can tell you're an alcoholic or not. If you can take one drink, then you don't have to have another one. In all probability, you're not an alcoholic. But if you take one drinking and find yourself compelled to take another drink, in all probability you are an alcoholic." Well, I'd never been compelled to take a drink in my life. I knew that. I took them because I wanted to. That still didn't bother me. So when I left the hospital, I had this firmly fixed in my mind. First thing I'm going to do when I get home is to go out and get me some liquor and I'm gonna prove to that incompetent doctor and these very nosy people asking me all about my private life, questions that I didn't want to answer. I'm to prove to all of them that I'm not an alcoholic by going through that test. Well, I went to them. I went out and I bought me two quarts and a hundred proof vodkas to take one drink. Well, actually, I thought that was wise at the time. Now I know it's still been nothing but alcohol and insanity. Why would I have had so much around me if I was just going to take one drink? But my thinking was this. I want to have enough for everybody who comes to see me tonight and one for myself. Now, I'd forgotten that people had quit coming to see you at night. I didn't drink during the daytime. I didn't have to drink during the daytime. I would take about 500 milligrams of Librium a day. That was enough to carry me, you know. Get home at night, I finally ended up drinking two quarts of 100-proof vodka every night before I'd go to bed. But at any rate, people from home had quit calling me on the telephone at night. Said they couldn't get a good telephone connection. They talked to them in the daytime, but they couldn'T get a phone call. They couldn'T give a good phone connection at night so they quit calling at night but I bought the two quart anyway. I'll have to tell you a little bit about the progression of my drinking, too. Way back when I started, except for that first drink I had in that cup, I always wanted, if it was bourbon or scotch, I'd always wanted that fizz water in it. And I hadn't been drinking more than three or four years until I decided that fuzz water was doing something to my mind. So I had a defense for that. Had to quit using it. So, I put tap water in. Some years later, it dawned on me that that water was taking space in my peanut butter glass that could otherwise be utilized by the alcohol. So I put the water and just began to put ice cubes in it with the liquor, drink it. It had to be cold. I couldn't drink it unless it was cold. I never could drink anything like that if it wasn't cold. Maybe the reason I didn't carry my car, maybe the reason I didn' t keep it in the office, I don't know. But at any rate, that was my background. Toward the end of my drinking, a question arose in my mind one night, Well, but what would happen to you if you swallowed one of those ice cubes? And my wife's ice cubes are big. What would happen? Why, you'd strangle. Well, I was in one awful shape. It had to be cold, so I just moved my wife milk and all that out of the icebox and put my liquor in. Usually it was a half gallon I was buying. And you put two half gallons in an icebox and not much left, anything else. But at any rate, when I got back from the liquor store with these two bottles I put one of them in the ice box I was a little bit in a hurry. I didn't let it get real cold. It just chilled a little bit. So, I filled my peanut butter jug. And ladies, you know it's awful hard to get all that peanut butter out at one time. I never did like peanut butter, but I liked the size of the jars, of the glasses. So I'd always empty it out just all at one time, just throw it away and get some glasses. And I was always breaking them, you know, and slip out of my hands or something when I drank it. So there was always a need But at any rate, I let this get chilled enough, and I got my peanut butter glass down, and I filled it with this chilled water and took it down. All my life now, I never did sip a drink, I just took it down. And this, of course, you have to get your breath occasionally, so I had to get my breath here the whole time so I could swallow it all. When I did, I swallowed it all! Oh, now I beat, I passed my test, passed my test. I always had my liquor in the kitchen and I drank in the kitchen. I went back into the living room, sat down watching TV every evening doing something. Lo and behold, about five minutes after I took that drink, I had the worst compulsion I've ever had in my life. You talk about a compulsion to do something. I quit smoking twice for 29 months once and for 27 months again. Never did want a cigarette like I had to have that drink. It was the worst thing that ever happened. I'm telling you, I was powerless, absolutely powerless. once and for 27 months again, never did want a cigarette like I had to have that drink. It was the worst thing that ever happened. I'm telling you, I was powerless, absolutely powerless. And here I'd never had that happen to me before. Now since I've been in A.A., these people have told me that you got to let at least five minutes left between drinks for the compulsion to set in. Well, I wasn't letting any five minutes last. That's where I made my mistake. I just wasn't making it last. But I would have taken the chair I was sitting in. The end of the kitchen would have been if I hadn't turned loose with the arms of that kid. It was just that strong. Well, I drank that bottle and I put the other one in when it was getting down and let it get soup. I drank that. Newt Carey had invited me, he was a member of the Ways and Means Committee before he ran for governor of New York and I'd been up in 74 helping him in his primary. So he invited me to his inauguration, I think first day of January, sometime early in January. Well this was the 13th of February. I rented my plane out there. This Columbus, the wild-out city, JV Jet Service, he's operating the National Air Force. They did what I was drinking. As soon as I flipped, they disbanded their operation. I never did want to be seen on a commercial plane with a drink, you know, so I fly these private planes. I called my favorite pilot, Jim Thomas, and told him I was going to New York. What are you going up there for? I'm going up to an operation. I didn't tell him what. So I got up to New York, and I found out that you had been governor a month and a half. I had just been a little late getting there. I was drunk when I got there, so I don't remember even getting there, but at any rate, I ran into the nicest bellboy you've ever seen in your life. He had a pint, or I mean a fifth of vodka in his pocket when he took me up to my room. Well, he and I sat there and drank that. And I don't know what time it was, and he said, you want some more? I said, yeah, you can get it. It may have been two o'clock in the morning or whatever it was. Oh, I know where I can get some. So we went out and got him some fine mower, and I don' t know that we killed that, but maybe he did. But he was a nice fellow. Somebody in my office, or my wife, Juan, called somebody and found out that there was somebody in New York, N.A., here to find me. They didn' t want to send the police after me. They knew I was drunk. They didn't know what the police might want to do to me, but they wanted somebody to locate me. I had no idea where I was. You know, they found me in an hour's time. There were three stockbrokers up there that came looking for me, and they found in an hours' time. And I understand there's more than one hotel in New York City. But they came in there. I was in the wall of a story. I don't know why. I'd never been there before. But if I only had stretched out, passed out of course. And one of them brought me back on the plane to Washington. And he happened to know my sponsor. And Buck wanted to know what happened. Well, I told Buck what had happened. These fellows he sent to get me got me drunk. They got me drank on a plane coming from New York down to Washington, about a 30-minute flight in one of those jets. He he said I had five drinks coming by. And maybe I did, I don't know. But Buck was getting all over him for giving me drugs, fleeting me, you know. Finally it developed that he found me stretched out in my bed and the hotel passed out. He picked me up. He said he had to do that to keep me from tearing the plane apart piece by piece in mid-air. Maybe he did. But I came to in the same hospital again either the next day or the next week, I'll never know when. I hadn't checked back. And here was Buck, my sponsor. He was a self-appointed of mine, but I'll have to tell you about that. You know, that man had the nerve to tell me that I couldn't make an important decision for a year. I couldn' imagine what was going to happen to the country if I couldn''t. And he told me he was going do my thinkings on him. This was way back earlier. My God, I didn''t even know whether he had a job or not. Going do my thingings on where he was standing at the foot of the bed, and this so-called doctor was standing there with him. Both of them had silly smiles on their faces. I was coming out from under a drunk, my last drunk, I hope, and I had everything wrong with me that all of you put together have had along with you coming out of under a drunk. I had the flu, I had a bone in my body ache, I have a muscle in my body ache. I have nerve in my I had the awfulest headache I've ever had in my life. I was sick at my stomach. Everything that never had happened to me before happened then. I think it's a miracle. It woke me up. I'd failed to pass my test. I knew it. I knew. Buck says, why do you think you are now, whoever? If you think I'm an alcoholic, I'll say I'm an alcoholic. It's not what I think, it's what she thinks. Buck says, where do you think you are now, whoever? If you think I'm an alcoholic, I'll say I'm an alcoholic. It's not what I think, it's what you think. It's what you think." I admitted then in spite of the article that was written about me on December 30th, I think where I said I was an alcoholic—I didn't believe it—but they told me that it was a good idea for me to say it, so I was trying to help myself, you know, and I let them put it out over the press from the hospital, but on that occasion I admitted for the first time that I was an alcoholic. But now let me tell you about these fellas standing there with smiles on their face when I was dying. For God's sake if you ever go around a person coming up under a drunk don't have a smile on your face. Have an expression on your faith that reflects what his feeling is. Now he's down, he's sad, he hurts me. My God don't laugh at him. Just don't laughing and I thought they But when I made that admission that I was an alcoholic, to me I became the lowest thing that God let live. I was not an alcoholic. This is the way I grew up over home. Took a stand to take a drink. A mortal stand to ever get drunk. And here I had been drunk. Well, I had no chance in the world for the year after. I might as well have been an atheist as far as I was going. I was blind. Well, I had no chance in the world for a year after. I might as well have been an atheist as far as I was going. I was blind. I had disgraced myself. Some of the things I had done going on the stage in Boston wasn't done for popularity. Things like that that I'd done, I disgraced myself. And I had become, in my own opinion, despectable, a disgrace, an alcoholic. I went off to a place in Florida. I still was insane, but I wasn't crazy. They kept talking to me about going to Tehran or going to Connecticut, going to New York, going to Minnesota, going somewhere where there's snow. Finally I said to them, I said, Now, if I'm going anywhere to get over this, if it's possible to get over it, I am going where the sun shines. Any place in Florida, somewhere down in Texas, somewhere, I could go where the sun is shining in February. They called a man who used to be the coach of the University of Miami, who was then the chairman of the Governor's Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse in Florida. He told them about some places in Florida and they picked us from out in Palm Beach for me in West Palm Beach, I mean, Palm Beach Institute. And I went down there. Well, the first thing they did, they wouldn't even let me out of the building without somebody who had been there a week or two going with me. There were liquor stores all around it. They thought I was going to head for one of my guests. I felt like I was in prison and I resented it and told them that and I was gonna leave. So you've already paid, now we don't return any money. Well that had an appeal to me. I say, about four weeks after I'd been there, I walked into the doctor's office one morning and he said, Polly's on the phone. Where's my wife? I want to talk to you. Well, when I went to Florida, she went to Arkansas. And I knew good and well she'd gone down there to get a divorce. And then it occurred to me that I know everyone in Arkansas. They're all my friends. Not a one of them would sue me for divorce. My spirits would go back up. Then I think, but by gosh, they graduate a new prof every year. nothing would suit one of those young sprouts been to have his name in the paper suing me for divorce my ego you know so I'd go back down into his altar well I knew she was down there for that purpose but here she was on the phone I'd never once ever thought I would ever ask anybody my determination was I'd remember I'd do it myself I'd ask anybody I wouldn't ask God I wasn't going to ask the soul to ever help me with my problem I was going to do it himself again my ego just wasn't going to ask anybody I'd do it myself words came out of my mouth and this is another miracle that I never intended to stutter I said Father I'm lonesome and I was why don't you come to Florida and stay with me now she had been sober about 20, 22 months before I took my last drink you know I didn't know what was going on with that woman she'd been my drinking partner all this time and suddenly she just wouldn't take a drink with me and then she'd go off and leave me for three or four months at a time She couldn't stay around me and stay sober. That's the truth of it. I knew she didn't. I thought that meant she didn'T love me. And I always had to have somebody to drink with, so I started going out on the town. I wouldn't go to a respectable place. People would know me. So I'd go to all these bars. And you know, a policeman would follow me just a few minutes after I'd gone there. Every time I'd going one of them, a policeman was coming behind. I knew Nixon was spying on me. I just knew it. And it made me mad that he was then just a city policeman. Why didn't you send the CIA here or the FBI to follow me? Downgrading me again, you know. I had it bad. Anyway, she came to Florida. She'd never been to a facility, so she stayed six weeks and I stayed six months. Whether we stayed ten weeks altogether. I don't know whether it did me any good or not. Because the minute I got off the plane in Washington, I passed by one of those liquor places where they sell it with a glass, you know, cocktail bottle. and it hit me just like that. I had to have a drink. I knew I had this awful feeling about myself. Didn't want to go anywhere else, but as long as I lived, I didn't want to take a drink, I just didn't wanna live. I didn' t want to face anybody and have to say I was an alcoholic and have them know I was alcoholic. But at any rate, I had this feeling about myself and wanted to take drink. So every minute that I was awake from been on until sometime up in December. One night, some wise member of AA said, well, but you're not happy. And here I had a smile on my face that would have been the envy of Jimmy Carter if he'd just seen it. Well, the thing on the outside was great. People would ask me how to, oh, it's wonderful to be sober, dying inside, not wanting to live. Well it's all right for me. I think some of us in AA are turnsight better at looking inward to people than even the psychiatrists are, and I don't mean to offend them in any way. But I think we can penetrate some of it then. This fellow could. He saw through my front, my charade, right inside of me. He thought that I was unhappy. He said, well, but you're unhappy because you don't know what alcoholism is. So I said, where did it get out at me? I knew what alcoholism was by then. That's all I'd heard for ten weeks down in Florida. I thought I know about you. You don't know what it is. If you say to yourself 100, 200, 300, 1,000, 2,000 times a day, however often it takes, this very simple statement, in time you'll believe it and when you believe it, you get to be happy. Alcoholism is a disease. Alcohol isn't not a stigma. Alcohol isn't an illness. Alcohol is not a disgrace. Hitler proved to the world that you can believe a lie if you've said to yourself long enough, this is not a lie. You say it to yourself and you'll believe it. I woke up one morning in December. Incidentally, I had my last drink the 14th of February in 1975, and this was December of 1975. And I looked in the mirror as I shared. I saw something there that didn't look too good, but it was something more than what I thought myself to be. And I began to feel a little bit of liking for myself. Here, I was liking myself as an alcoholic. Unbelievable! Unbelievable. But it was. And I got to where I finally was willing to live with it and accept it. The more I've been sober the more firmly entrenched in my mind is the idea that it ain't all that bad to be an alcoholic. It ain't all that bad. You know, I've been around an awful lot of people in different parts of the United States. I met an awful lot of peoples when I was in Congress, fine folks. But I must say that in the last ten years I've met the finest people on God's green earth, you people. I don't know of any group of people anywhere that would sacrifice their time and effort to help another person, like you would. You go to most of these crowds where you speak, no alcoholics in the crowd, somebody gets up and walks out and has a heart attack, they'll all run to him. But up the street is that drunk who falls, maybe dying, we won't know. Who runs to him? Those people half-time. Somebody said it's half- time. Or full-time, two o'clock in the morning or three o' clock in the mornin'. It doesn't bother you, does it, to have somebody call and ask for help? Now who else does things like that? Who else loves like you people do? There are no good people more honest than you people. I have to be honest with myself about my alcoholism in order to stay sober. And if I'm not honest with you, I'm going to forget sometime, to be honest with myself and I know you feel the same way. I spoke one time at a...I mean, I led a meeting one time over at the General Printing Office, the Government Printing office, at 9 o'clock and followed it with a meeting at 10 o' clock. And I was going to read the A.A. Preamble and I added my pocketbook so I pulled my pocket book out and I leave it and I forget it. Well, of course, about 4.30 that afternoon I spoke my pocketbook. So I called this fellow who had asked me, and he said, no, there's a black pocketbook here, Benny, on my desk all day long. Well, you know, I don't run a place in government where I could have left that pocketbook, except at an AA crowd, and come back and find my three dollars then. But they were there. They were there, they were there. Well let me tell you this, and I've spoken longer than I intended to, but let If there's anybody in this audience who has got any regrets now about being an alcoholic, get rid of those regrets. You're not disgraced. You are not stigmatized. People don't look down on you. They don't. They've got a great deal of respect for you. There may be some of these hypocrites in church that don't and there are a few of them around, sanctimonious kind of people. I have no more chance of going to heaven than the devil himself, but I get disgusted with some of them. I'm not talking about religious people, I'm talking about people who put on the front of being religious. But at any rate, you'll find that people appreciate what you're doing. You know, the great sadness to me is that not all of us, not many of us have a way to be known that we're recovering alcoholics. I've often wondered if it wouldn't be a great help to the fellow out there who still can't make up his mind whether he's an alcoholic or not, to see somebody who is a recovering alcoholic, to have that fellow talk to him, or that woman, as an alcoholic. Not a member of A, but as an alcoholist. I've seen these young people go into high schools, speaking to high school students about the yields of smoking marijuana and drinking beer together, who are recovered from alcoholism openly flagrantly saying it not ashamed of it and i've seen the effect that it's had on the audience of young people in those high schools and there's a great problem there too folks there's great problem here great problem because we've got about three and a half million teenage alcoholics out there that need help people in retirement centers one place where i was 49 percent of them had become alcoholics after moving in to the retirement center 65 years of age or older. Nothing to do, nothing to do. I think for our young people the community is going to have to wait up, begin to plan for them, have some program of activity for them. They're going to do something and their peers are going to lead them down the wrong path if we don't supply them with an avenue down the right path. I think it's the responsibility of the community as a whole to see to it that their activities are confined to the right paths. Baseball teams, things of that sort, sports activities, anything to give them what they desire they have to exercise, the desire they have for doing something. When I grew up, I had a yard to keep, I had a cow to milk and a few other things. But that's the days of the past. We live in cities now. There's little for our children to do in the way of activities around home. And as peer suggestion is a terrific thing, in school they tell me one fellow can be responsible for getting a senior class on marijuana and beer. You're a sissy if you don't do it. Just that simple. We need to do a lot along that line. Not just us, but people as a whole need to do it, to begin to think about it. I don't want to see this country become a drug-oriented society and when i read and hear of the use of cocaine a deadly drug a deadly drug among business executives people high up you've got to have a lot of money apparently to afford it it's serious to me if i were the communist world and wanted to beat us That's what I'd do. I'd supply them with it. Boy, what an eloquent and dynamic message that leaves me kind of butterflies. Well, we are on behalf of all of us in attendance and the convention here wish to present you and give you this little memento. And with that I guess we will close the meeting in the usual manner by standing and joining hands and