You Really Have to Get Up Early in the Morning to Drink Enough to Get Kicked Out of the University of Georgia 🤣 – Jiggs T.

Let's have an AA meeting. My name's Tim R. and I'm an alcoholic. Welcome to the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers meeting on NABA Zoom, where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more of sobriety tells his or her story. This reading is based on a passage from page 29 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Each individual and our personal stories describes in their own language and from their own point of view the way they establish their relationship with God. These give a fair cross-section of our membership and a clear-cut idea of what has happened in their lives. We hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts in bad taste. Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women in our NABA Zoom room tonight and listening later on aabluchipspeakers.org, desperately in need, will hear tonight's speaker. And we believe it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems that any of us shall be persuaded to say, yes, I am one of them too. I must have this thing. It's my great pleasure to have Jiggs T. speak to us tonight. I first became acquainted with Jiggs early in my sobriety. He had been sober for quite a while. I would be at a meeting in Gainesville where, it was a Sunday meeting, and he would share recollections from his early days in sobriety. And he was very gentle, had a very gentle nature and a really warm sense of humor. I'm not promising you that he brought it with him tonight, but I bet he did. Jiggs, please come and join us. Thank you, Tim. My name is Jiggs Turner, and I'm an alcoholic. And I'm very grateful. I'm very grateful to be here tonight. I hope that I can live up to Tim's description there. I don't know. I haven't spoken at a meeting in some time, and I will certainly keep it brief. I'm grateful today, not only that I'm sober, but that this is December 7th. I sell the Medicare Advantage plans, and not only will I not have to fool with that anymore, I won't have to see Joe Namath on the television. If y'all have seen that, I have gotten I don't know how many calls today, the last day about the Joe Namath thing. So I turn my phone off if anybody wants a Medicare Advantage. I'm going to have to wait till next year. So I'm very grateful to be sober and also finished with that for the year. I started just trying to think about what to talk about and what really, um, I think about when I think about my drinking career is when it started and why it started and it started between my junior and senior year in high school at Daytona Beach, Florida. And I remember I remember the actual the the first drink I ever took it was we were drinking beer back then and we had to get it ice cold because we couldn't stand the taste of beer. I mean, I can't imagine nobody. Liking the taste of beer, but I didn't like the taste of beer. But what I did like and was the effect it had on me and the way it made me feel it made me feel so empowered. And as a junior in high school, you can imagine the only reason I was at Daytona Beach was because there were girls at Daytona Beach and I was, I wouldn't say I was shy, but I was I was somewhat intimidated and the alcohol gave me this sense of power and this I could go up to girls and talk to them and shoot a lot of bull to them. And it just sounded so wonderful. And if you could know by history the horrible unsuccessful history with women with two ex wives would wonder why I would want to. Get in a position so I could talk to women because I never have been able to really have much of a success relationship. But you know, that's the way alcoholics do things. But I remember that is clearly is anything else how it made me feel. And I thought that I had found the solution to all of my problems when I drank those ice cold beers and I had that feeling of empowerment. And I wasn't afraid to go up and talk to women. And I continued drinking when I got back to to to Gainesville from Daytona Beach and during the summer and obviously my senior year in high school, even though I played football, we all continued to drink and some I know that we got away with it and didn't seem to I never was much a football player anyway, so I don't guess it really affected my. Football playing, but it was never. I never drank like anybody like a lot of other people drank and had I known what I know now, I might have taken a different approach to it. I don't know whether I would have or not. Can you ever know that an alcoholic what what an alcoholic would do? It was I had a choice. So whether I drank or not, but once I started drinking, I just couldn't quit. And I would drink and drink even in high school and drinking. It would always cause me problems. It would cause me sometimes. I was a funny drunk and sometimes I wasn't funny at all. Sometimes people would want to beat me up and throw me out of the party. Sometimes that was the life of the party. It just it was it was hard to determine how it was going to affect. But it made me feel good. And that's all that mattered to me. When I went to the University of Georgia, I got through my senior year in high school without it. Call me a great deal of problem. Back then the DUI was not a big deal. I didn't get a DUI, but I could have gotten a thousand DUIs. I went to the University of Georgia and this was in 19. 63. I don't know what it's like now, but drinking was just a part of the culture at Georgia. And as a first quarter freshman, I got real drunk at a fraternity party. And I went up to the Dean of Students. Remember his name was Dean Star and I said something real smart. And he was going to kick me out of the University of Georgia going to kick me out of school. And I think about that now how how much you have to drink to get kicked out of the University of Georgia. You really have to get up early in the morning to drink enough to get kicked out. And had I not been a first quarter freshman, he would have kicked me out. And you know, I didn't even that didn't even faze me when I think back on that. It didn't even faze me that I almost got kicked out. Out of the worst drinking school in the South. Didn't even I didn't even consider that. Maybe I had a problem because I was always around other people who drank basically the same way. I did. I always want to be around people used alcohol the way I did. I was able to control the drinking because as I said for years and years, it was always a choice of whether I drank or not. And there would be long periods where I would not drink anything at all. I didn't typically keep alcohol in my house. If somebody came over and wanted to drink, I would have to run out and get a bottle. I didn't keep booze around. I didn't come home and have a have a beer or anything like that. I was just somebody who drank usually on social occasions or something like that. But it always once I got started. I just never could quit. I never could quit like other people. I never could moderate my drinking like other people seem to be able to. It always caused me problems in relationships, especially with with women because that's a lot of times. I felt like I had to drink just so I could be around women and feel comfortable. And I usually always drank too much and made a fool out of myself. So, that didn't really enhance my relationships. My first wife said to me one day that I was an alcoholic and I didn't really care for that at all. I mean, I didn't want to hear that because my father was an alcoholic and his father was an alcoholic. And on my mother's side, her brother was an alcoholic and my cousin. That Michael knows Jack Whitworth. He was an alcoholic and I didn't want to be like them. I wanted to be different. I want to be able to drink and not have to suffer like my father had suffered and his father had suffered. My uncle and my cousin. So I just ignored the fact that I was an alcoholic and always said that I didn't drink every day. And I always said I had a choice to drink. So there's no way I could possibly be an alcoholic. And that's the way it was until I was. I don't remember exactly how I was, but it was in my late thirties. And I was around 37 years old. I was still married to my first wife. And I actually remember the day that I went to sleep and I woke up and I knew that day that I was going to have to have a drink. That afternoon and from that day and from that day forward, I drank every single day of my life. I don't think I ever missed another day drinking. I didn't drink to excess every single day, but I always drank to the point that at least I was high every day after some that day and night. And when I was 37 years old. And it's strange that I guess that the. Alcohol has a way of. Just changing the chemical makeup in your body at a certain point in time. And that's what it did to me. And I was hooked on alcohol as much as you could ever be hooked on anything. I had to have the alcohol every single afternoon and I always drank to excess. I always usually would go to some place after work and drink and I would be driving home. Technically DUI. So I could have gotten a thousand DUIs. I never had. I never got a DUI. I had two wrecks and they didn't charge me in the wrecks and I was drunk as I could be. I don't know how I got away with that. I'm not sure I really got away with anything. It probably would have been good for me if I had to deal with it way back then. But it is what it is. And that's that's what happened. So my drinking career. As a true full blown alcoholic. Got started when I was 37 years old and it's it increased over the years. And thank goodness that I have what I have found that a lot of alcoholics apparently don't have. And that's an extremely low tolerance of pain. I can't stand pain. Pain just is not in my. I just don't like it. And the alcohol was causing more pain. Then it was numbing out. And that was one of the wonderful things about having a low threshold pain. It was a little bit easier for me to look at the problem and deal with it. But it was not easy. It might have been a little bit easy. But I just I could evaluate how much pain the alcohol was causing. Is how much it was covering up and it just wasn't doing the job anymore. The thing that I was had gone through a divorce. I had been living with a girl and she had moved out. Partly because of my drinking. Partly just because of my alcoholic behavior. And as I look back, I don't blame her for moving out. I'm surprised she stayed as long as she did. But I was miserable. I wanted her to come back. I wanted her to move back in with me. And I was drinking to the point that I had never really drunk that much during the daytime or in the mornings. But I was started drinking in the mornings just to get to work. Drinking at lunch and drinking all day long. It was really getting out of hand. I was having a hard time handling it. And I I was It was in 1987. On a cold January day. I went out to go to find a place to eat. And it wasn't a holiday or anything like that. But everything was just packed. Everywhere I went, there was a waiting line. To get something to eat on a cold January day. So I went to this little sandwich delicatessen in Gainesville. In between. That a friend of mine. A couple friends that owned Suzanne and Wesley Gailey. Because there was there was nobody there and I just wanted to get a sandwich right. And so I walked up to the counter and Suzanne. Looked at me and she said, I'm going to give you the number of a woman that you need to go talk to. And she wrote down Elaine Hickey. Wrote down a telephone number in Helen, Georgia. Actually, it's right outside of Helen, Georgia in Roberts town. I don't know if any of y'all have ever heard of the Hickey house. Long-term care center in Helen. Love maybe some of you. The only thing I wanted to Elaine Hickey to tell me. Is how to get that girl to come back and come back and move in with me. And so I. I went up there. And during the meeting, I remember right before I went in to see Elaine Hickey. This is a woman that deals with alcoholics all the time. That's all she does. She has a degree in counseling and that's all she does. I drank a big thing of scotch in the car before I went in. But I chewed some chewing gum. So she wouldn't know that I've been drinking. And I walked in to see Elaine Hickey. And I kind of knew that I was not going to be able to pull anything over on her when I walked in to see her. I don't know exactly why. But I guess you can just tell when somebody has a BS meter. It is going off pretty loud. And I started talking. You could hear it going off and she kept referring to my alcohol. Listen. And I just I couldn't believe that she was saying things like that to me. And she would say, well, you might want to deal with your alcoholism first. And maybe this girl would come back and we could talk about that. But you'll need to deal with your alcoholism. And. I left there. I was so angry. I didn't know what to do. Well, I didn't know what to do. I went home and I think I got the drunkest. It's one of the drunkest I've ever gotten in my life. I just wanted to completely ignore everything she said about my alcoholism. So the logical thing to do is just go out and get drunk. And that's what I did was I did it right there at my house this time. And I woke up the next morning. And with the low threshold of pain, I realized that I had to do something. And the thing that I wanted to do. Is not to convince her I was not to really deal with my alcoholism. I wanted to convince Elaine Hickey that I was not an alcoholic. I felt like if I could convince her of that, then there'd be no need to do anything else about my drinking. And so what I had another appointment with her in about ten days, I think. And so I decided that I was going to go ten days. Without drinking anything. And I made it ten days. I smoked about a pound of marijuana to get through that ten days, but I made it the full ten days. And I was so proud of myself. I didn't know what I could not wait to get back. Show her how wrong she was about me being an alcoholic. And I remember walking into her office. And I was. I was just filled with joy because I was going to tell her that I hadn't had a drink in ten days. And I sat down and before she could say anything, I said, before we get started, I just want to tell you that I have not had a drink in ten days. And I honestly thought she was going to say, oh, I'm so sorry. I called you an alcoholic. Please forgive me. You know, let's go have a drink together, whatever. And she said something that changed my whole sobriety and my whole recovery. She said, you've made it ten days. She said, do you think you could quit for a year? And when she said that, she had me. I didn't know what to say. I couldn't imagine anybody could quit for a year. I mean, I couldn't imagine anybody would want to quit for a year. But I knew. But I knew that once she said that and I didn't have an answer for it, then I was caught. But I still didn't give up. I still didn't give up. I decided I would quit drinking. But that was all I was going to do. So I quit drinking. And I was able to abstain from alcohol. And I actually quit drinking the last day of January of 1987. But I continued to smoke marijuana until sometime in February. And I couldn't remember exactly when it was. So I just adopted Valentine's Day, February 14th of my sobriety day, because I know I didn't use anything after Valentine's Day of 1987. So that was the easiest thing to do. And for nine months, I was on a pill. I was on a pink cloud like I've never been on in my life. It was wonderful. I thought this was the greatest thing in the world. I wasn't going to any AA meetings. I wouldn't go to AA. I just thought I could quit drinking. I didn't think that I needed God. In fact, I was an atheist. I didn't think that God was going to play a part of it. I didn't think that AA was going to play a part of it. I just thought that I just quit drinking and that would be all there would be to it. And so for nine months, I functioned wonderfully. And then in the ninth month of my sobriety, I crashed like I have never crashed emotionally before in my life. The only thing I did all day long was cry. I cried from morning till evening. I cried at lunch. I cried all the time. I carried a towel. I carried a towel with me in the car because I would have to pull over and cry. And I guess it was just that all of those emotions and so forth that I'd been numbing out with alcohol were all coming out now. And they were all coming out in the form of tears. And it was so cleansing. But it would be to the point that my stomach would cramp. I would cry so much. And that lasted for a good while. I kept going to see Elaine Hickey as my therapist. And she would help me as much as she could. And then she would say, you need to go to AA. You need to go to AA. And I said, but you don't understand. I just I'm going to quit drinking. And so, again, the pain got so bad that I decided to finally do what she suggested. And I decided to go to AA. And so, really, the first AA meeting I went to was a big book study at the Hickey House in Robertson. And I remember as it came around to my time to read and I was going to have to say that my name was Jiggs and I was an alcoholic, I wondered how that was going to feel. And when it got around to me and I said it, I realized that that's exactly how it was going to feel. That I was an alcoholic. And I needed to be in AA. And I needed to study the big book and learn the lessons of AA and work the 12 steps. I think about the fact that the person I went to see that cold January day was the very person I needed to see that she gave me Elaine Hickey's telephone number. And had I not gone to AA, I would not have been able to go to AA. I would not have been able to go to AA. I would not have been able to go to AA. I would not have been able to go to AA. If I had not gone to see Elaine Hickey, what would have ever happened to me? I don't know. I guess I would have either drunk myself to death or kill myself in a car or something. I don't know. I don't know exactly what I would do. But it was just I think an act of God and something that I had to take a look at that there was a God. There was a God that I could pray to. A God that cared about me. A God that wanted me to get well. A God that was actually guiding me. And if I would open myself up to God's love and guidance and the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, then it would be something that could save my life. So I started to go to meetings. Elaine said I need to go to 90 meetings in 90 days. I think I went to 186 meetings in the first 90 days. I had ironically made a fair amount of money the year before. And I was single and I don't have any children or anything. So I didn't have any expenses. So I didn't feel much like working. So I had plenty of money. And all I did was just go to meetings and go to the Hickey house. And I had the opportunity that a lot of alcoholics evidently don't have to really work on my recovery. And get a leg up on it. And that's what I did. And I'm so grateful to have had that opportunity. To have been able to have met Elaine Hickey and to have established a relationship with Elaine. And Tom, her husband, was also an alcoholic counselor who became my sponsor. And I spent a lot of time with both of them. They influenced me. And what all they did for me still continues to work in my life today. And I'm so grateful. I heard somebody talk about gratitude. If there's anything that I could say about AA and sobriety, I am so grateful I don't have to fool with that stuff anymore. I mean, I'm so grateful that I don't have to fool with alcohol. And all of the stuff that it did. I see people today, I have friends who have kids that have had to go to jail because of DUIs. I've had people that have died because of alcoholism. I've had friends that have been in wrecks because of alcoholism. I have just seen it destroy people's lives in so many different ways. And when I think about that now, I am so grateful to everybody who was helpful to me and influential to me. And the 12 steps that I just don't have to fool with drinking and worrying about all the stuff that goes along with alcohol. And I am so glad that I found a God. I found a God that I could deal with. Not a religious God, but a spiritual God that cares about me, that I pray to every single morning. I ask God for help every single day. I think the 12 steps of recovery are, I mean, to me, they're magic. If I work the 12 steps of recovery, it doesn't matter about alcoholism. That's just, to me, the 12 steps of recovery is just a wonderful thing. A wonderful way to learn how to live life. I don't do it that well. I do it okay. I always say I'm not an example of how well AA works. I'm an example of how well I work AA. And that's still the way it is today. I still backslide. I don't drink, but I still backslide. I still don't work the program like I should. Honest. I really didn't want to speak. I had a way to get out of this. But I knew it wasn't what I needed to do. I needed to come here. I'm so glad that y'all are here tonight. And I'm going to end on that with a note of gratitude and thanks that Tim chose me to speak. And I hope that you got something out of it. If you didn't, I did. And I hope I'll come back and see y'all again. Thank you very much. Thank you, Jegs. I love you. We'll take a minute. But we'll take a minute just to fellowship. I'd like to speak, if I may. Yes. Jegs, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I know how you feel, but I would rather be beaten with a baseball bat than to speak. But again, you did it. I can relate. You did a fabulous job. You stuck to the topic. You're just awesome. I'm so happy I tuned in. Thank you, Jegs. Thank you. Thank you, Isla. Jegs, I know you said it, but I don't remember. Where do you live now? I actually have a Demarest address close to Clarksville. Okay. God's country. God's country, for sure. I love it up there. I have a dear friend that lives just outside Clarksville. I live on the Chattahoochee River. If I open the door, you can hear the Chattahoochee River. Oh, please do. Right on the Chattahoochee. Please open it right now. That's great. That's great. Thank you so much for your story. That was awesome. Hey, Jegs. My name is Bill. I'm an alcoholic. Hey, Bill. I just wanted to thank you for speaking tonight. I know Elaine Hickey. I lived at the Hickey House for two years, and they were a very important part of my life. Thank you. They were a very important part of my life, her and Tom, and just I related to that so much, and it was so good to hear you reflect on the help that they gave you and just made me think about all the positive influence they had in my life and what a special place that was. So thank you for sharing. When were you there, Bill? I was there from 95 to 97. Well, I'm sure I came there during that period of time all the time. I'm sure. Yeah. Probably so. I had a sponsor named John. John C. Yeah. He was my first sponsor, but yeah. Oh, no. John's 30 years. Really? Yeah. Jesus. Good guy. But anyway. But thank you for sharing. Yeah. Thank you, Bill. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Joyce. Thank you, Bill. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Bill. Thank you. Thank you, Bill. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Right. Thank you very much. Thank you, Israel. Thank you. And sound. Thank you. Yeah. What'd you do that night? Theтом Neau. And someone on the bus made me no background music just for that night, right? Oh, my God. Oh, yeah. Keep me working till I work it on And enough light I need in the shadow of death From the bottom of the merchant for one star Keep me working till I work it on Keep me out of the shadow