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Source: Tommy B – Speaker Talk – Date Unknown.mp3 File: tommy-b-speaker-talk-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:05:47
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Will you all please find your seats. Gentlemen, your second speaker of the evening is a gentleman that I also met in Toronto last July. He is also a devoted GSO trustee, and his name is like a name of a very young singer of a few years ago. He used to be called Tommy B., and he was a boy singer, and I asked your speaker if he were that party. He said to me, no, that party you refer to was a soprano, and all my years I was known as a whiskey tenor.
And I would like to present to you this evening Tommy B. of Winnipeg, Canada. Chairman Jack, Reverend Judge M., my name is Tommy, and I am a recovering alcoholic. Hi. A friend of mine in this society, when he gets in this position, says, my God, look at them, acres and acres of eyeballs. I would be most remiss. When I was coming in this afternoon, late for this afternoon, but early for this evening, somebody said, Tom, you're early.
I would like you to know that I am one year late. I was invited last year, but I came down with the flu. First time I have ever had the flu since I quit drinking. I had it 400 times before that. But you were kind enough, Frank and Ed, to invite me back, Karen, and I'm deeply grateful. It's wonderful to be here, to see so many wonderful AA friends, meet new and renew old acquaintances. I was sitting here chewing on a roll-aid.
That gives all the front row the impression that I'm on goofballs. And that'll give you a conversation topic after the meeting tonight. But I have discovered that there is a direct medical connection between doing this and over acidity. So I do that. I am privileged, deeply, deeply privileged, to be a trusted servant of our fellowship and to work with people like Judge M., who are known alcoholics.
It's one of the great privileges that anybody in this fellowship can have. You know, when we go into meetings, it never enters your mind who is and who ain't. Some of the nons act more like alkies on some occasions. But how lucky can we be? How lucky can we be in this fellowship to have people like Judge M. to devote their time to us? We're indeed the luckiest segment of the human race. And I'm deeply grateful to be able to work with.
It's good to be with Beth again. I didn't know there was anybody worked at the office other than Beth. Every time I went to a conference, Beth was there. She was going to tell my story, and I was going to tell hers tonight. But she can't lie near as good as I can, so I'm going to tell my own. I am what the experts in alcoholism call these days a primary alcoholic. That is, an alcoholic who has had trouble from the very first belt.
Whether you be young like me or old, like Grant, who I came with, some of us in the business of alcoholism were alcoholics from the very first drink. And some drank for many years with comparative impunity. And I think there's evidence to substantiate both of those theories. But I happen to be one who was in trouble with alcohol from the very first drink. It did something for me. Therefore, I'm called a primary alcoholic.
I've always wanted to be a statistic of a different nature than I was a statistic before I was appearing before people like His Honor. We have in our country, and you have them here I'm sure, AA meetings called, we call them at random meetings or call-up meetings.
[00:04:59]
If you don't know what kind of a meeting to have, you have a call-up meeting.
[00:05:02]
And that is you put the finger on a few drunks in the crowd to come up and say a few words. And we're never hesitant to say a few words. The word few is a little awkward to us on occasion. And if the first speaker happens to get up and say to you that I started drinking at the age of 14, it immediately becomes a competition. And the next guy has got to get up and say, well, I drank at 13 and 12 and blah, blah, blah.
And if you don't run up out of drunks, you wind up with a prenatal alcoholic. Well, I thought this was a wonderful pitch for a while, but I was down in Louisville a while ago with Marty, and we were sitting together, and after I sat down, after I had talked, Marty said, you know, that's no joke, Tom. She said that in New York City recently, and I understand in other areas, I'm not a medical man, that there have been children born of mothers who have been extremely inebriated, which was a word I didn't know what it meant till I got here either, who have been extremely intoxicated, and the children were born and suffered withdrawal symptoms within three hours after appearing on the earth.
How do you like to be born half-baked? You'll have a head start on that. Well, I don't think I was born with a bag on, but at least they told me I wasn't. But I found an answer in booze very abruptly and very rapidly in my life. I don't think that there's any records for how soon you started to drink, and I don't think it's important how soon anybody started to drink. I think the only thing that is important if you and I are trying to ascertain whether we belong in this fellowship is what happened to us when we did.
Now, not necessarily even how much, because I was 14 and a half, I think, when I took my first drink. Well, who cares? I was with my family at the time, and the more pious, dry members of my family blame it on poor father, which so did I till I got here. Found out I couldn't blame it on father at all. I was with him. My dad was a big guy. He was six foot three and a half, 260 pounds. A very big man, a dynamic man, a very successful man.
He was the kind of a guy that when he said something that was said, and you didn't argue with him, and I never won an argument with him. I always felt like I was playing second fiddle to him. And I suppose when you're 14, that's exactly what you're supposed to be playing to your father. But I resented him, loved him, but resented him. And we were out together hunting or doing something. I was about as big as I am now when I was 14 and a half, had the same problem that Glenn did, getting booze in places where they dispensed it when I was too young to get it.
And I guess we ran out of pop or something, and he said, well, you know, he looked at me up and down and said, you're kind of a big slob and you don't, you look like you might have a half a brain in your head. I guess you can handle this. He said, you better have a beer. It was a warm day. So he was on that side of the car and I was on this side. He handed me a beer and I drank it and stole the second, drank that and walked around the car and looked at father and a wonderful thing had happened to him.
He had shrunk. By God. He didn't look near as big or smart or top. And I proceeded to tell him so. That was my first mistake, I suppose, as a practicing alcoholic. Because I made a very abrupt discovery, the one we all make the next morning too. After we've made the first one, this is the second one, or is it the third? The first one was that one drink tastes like two. The second was that it shrinks people and problems and conditions and circumstances.
And the third one was the next morning when I found out the old boy had grown up again. But it's too late at that point, isn't it? For those of us who find something in that jug. It's too late. Because we look back and say, by golly, now I can handle the old boy last night. What happened yesterday? What are the set of circumstances yesterday that allowed me to handle him yesterday? It was that beer or whatever you're drinking.
Well, now if I have a little more of that, maybe the old boy won't come down again. And I had a little more and down he came. And this is a great thing.
[00:10:00]
Which would indicate to me, which would indicate to me and to many of us who are alcoholics, as I am, that if this thing happens to us on our first, second, or third drink, or early in our drinking, if I discovered, like I did, that if this alcohol would allow me to cope with people, conditions, and circumstances a little bit better, it would indicate to me, as many of us think, that there was a problem before I ever picked up the glass.
And I believe this. I believe this. If there wasn't a problem, it wouldn't have been an answer. Because I wouldn't have needed an answer. I don't handle the old boy without that thought. So I had an answer. And all the people around me for a long time thought that alcohol was a problem in my life, and you know alcohol wasn't a problem in our lives. It was a problem for them, it wasn't a problem, it was an answer in my life.
Hell, I can handle anything and anybody. But as some people in alcoholism say, and I believe it to be, that it takes more of this stuff to get the same effect. I discovered that when I took two beers, when I was 14 and a half to get father down to shooting size, when I was 18 and 19, it took four times or five times that much. Not to get him any smaller, but just to get him the same size. I never did get him beyond a certain point.
And I used to drink gallons and gallons to try and get him down farther. And he never went down farther. And eventually he never went down at all, do you notice that? The time comes when you can drink it by the scoopful and nothing happens. But it's a great discovery to a person like me. Which I suppose would indicate that it's basically a psychological problem, basically a moral problem, a physical problem.
I don't look upon alcoholism as any one in particular thing. I don't think you can lump alcoholics into one lump. You can say they're all psychologically disoriented, all social misfits, all this or that. I was talking to a group of, I happen to wear two hats and I'm deeply grateful for this too. And I happen to be talking to a group of professional people. Half of whom were drunk. And we were discussing alcoholism at length.
And they were discussing it because they were told to discuss it, not because they wanted to discuss it. And they all came with a bag on. And I talked. And we talked about Alcoholics Anonymous and the one fellow was there, he was a nice guy, he was an Irish fellow and I liked him immediately. At first. I, like many alcoholics, like to think that I'm a little above the average intelligence. The statisticians say that.
I believe it's old Chuck out of the coast who says that the only place that he's ever heard the high alcoholic IQ discussed is when you and I are discussing it. I think that's right. Do you sit around, sir, with the rest of the judges and discuss our genius? I'll bet you don't. I wish you would. But don't tell us your conclusions. We're in a hell of a shape, we're liable to lose an argument. This guy said, well, he said, AA is a wonderful thing.
And I, he had me right there. But he said, it certainly doesn't appeal to too many people with any intelligence. And he lost me. But hell, he had two geniuses right there. W. and I were there and I said the doctors and psychiatrists and engineers and atomic scientists in our society are going to be highly indignant with you. But you and I like to think that we're highly intelligent people. And I don't think that intelligence, per se, has very much to do with alcoholism.
You know? I don't think you can lump us all into one bag. They've been trying to do this for years, for years and years. They're saying we're all this, we're all that. And they soon get a beautiful pattern going, a bunch of rummies come in and shoot it down in flames again, you know. Which would indicate that alcoholism just affects people. People, period. Alcoholism is a living problem. It's not even a drinking problem.
It's not even a drinking problem. It's a living problem. If it was purely and simply a drinking problem, then when the judge put you and I away, we would solve it, wouldn't we? Merely separating us from the bottle would solve alcoholism, but it doesn't. There isn't anybody in this room who hasn't quit drinking. Our problem isn't quitting. …quit drinking. Our problem isn't quitting, it's stopping from starting.
[00:15:03]
Who was the guy that said he quit so many times he'd get tired of quittin' and quit quittin'? It's a frightful exercise, quitting. You eventually say, to heck with it, and don't quit anymore. By the time I was nineteen, I was diagnosed by the medical and psychiatric people in my community as a chronic alcoholic. Now I do not know to this day what a chronic alcoholic is. I don't. I know what an alcoholic is, I know what acute alcoholism is, but I am doggoned if I know what a chronic alcoholic is.
My doctor said, through his glasses, he said, my boy, you're a chronically alcoholic. I said, I got news for you. I've never heard of anybody being defined as chronically pregnant, or chronically other things, but I have a chronically alcoholic, and I called him a quack and changed doctors. And you and I know that if we change doctors long enough, we'll find one who prescribes the right medicine. And I did, and so did you.
We have a guy up in our country these days who's prescribing, well, just put a little more water in your whiskey, he's telling the drunk. And they turn green right away. Some guy said, what's water? Well, we continued in school for a while, and on to the university for a while. Two years, I think, and then there was the unanimous decision held by the school, my father and I, that I should leave. I was upsetting.
That would come under that, yes. God, I could have been thrown in the Bastille for that. And I went into my father's business, thank God, or I'd have starved to death. I was made an instant vice president. What do you do with somebody like this? You keep an eye on them, you keep them handy, and you give them a desk. Me being an alcoholic, I didn't know what that was at the time, but me being what I was, an alcoholic, I thought the whole joint revolved around me.
And I had a desk with my name on the front of it, and vice president, it said, and there I sat. Adding and subtracting long lines of figures. As time went by, I noticed that my desk got farther back. I'd come in some morning and go to sit down, it wasn't there, it was over there, you know. They would come in the first thing, who's that guy? They'd say, that's the vice president. I'm a bad-looking fella.
As time went by, they'd say, who's that? They'd say, he's the boss's son. Eventually, it got so far back, they said, what's that? And they said, we don't know. Still thinking, that fantastic ego that you and I have, or that I had. Regardless of where my desk was, regardless of where I was, what condition I was in or where I was, fully convinced from the bottom of my soul that this whole organization was evolving around me.
That they couldn't get by without my genius. They shipped me to Detroit, Glen, and to learn something about the business. We were in the automobile business, or they were. And I spent three months in Detroit, learned very little. Wound up in the Detroit city jail, which is not a high-class place. Took me four days to figure out how to get out of there without letting the school know, because they were very narrow about that sort of thing.
You couldn't phone them up and say, I'm in the can, come and bail me out. You said, bail yourself out and then go back where you came from. While we were in Detroit, there was 11 of us on this course, 10 of us which were alcoholics. Four of them are now an alcoholic synonymous. That's not a bad percentage. One guy had ulcers, he was the only guy that didn't drink. He came by them naturally, I don't know how you do that.
So we decided we'd go to Louisville one night, one day or one sometime. And we headed for Louisville. Now, I don't know too much about geography, but I know enough that if you headed for Detroit through Toledo to Louisville, you should get to Louisville and not to Nashville.
[00:20:07]
If you drew a line from Nashville up, you'd have to go through Louisville from there, wouldn't you? But we missed it. And we wound up in Nashville. Now, being a meadowlark from western Canada, I've always been a fan of country music. It's great drinking music. Crying music. You can bawl like a baby. Everybody's dying and what all. Nashville, of course, is now the music capital of the world, I guess.
It was then and is now the home of the Grand Ole Opry. I was intrigued with this. And I got very drunk and woke up on Sunday morning. The acute, the very brilliant businessman, the young executive coming up in the world. I woke up on Sunday morning with a certificate about the size of this lecture. It had the stamps and wax seals and ribbons and the signature of the governor of Tennessee. And I discovered later on in that day that I had spent, I think, $300 the night before I had invested in 50% of a hillbilly singer that had been dead for 10 years.
My business successes continued along the same line for some time. But you know, as you grow and walk into alcoholism or into the growing caught alcoholism, there's a nasty little voice starts appearing in the bottom of your tummy. The dirty little thought that maybe you're not doing this thing the same way everybody else is. That they can't feel the way I do. Why do they get up and go to work? Why do they do these things?
How can they do that? Why don't I go home when they go home? Why do I get into trouble? Why do I fight with policemen? Why does this happen to, you know what, poor old me? Nobody understands me. That pitch. And there's an annoying feeling that along with this feeling that there's something wrong, is the worst feeling of all that we live with constantly. I think it's maybe God's grace, a saving grace too.
It not only drives us nearly insane, but it also probably is one of the big reasons we get to the point where we have to have an answer. It's that lousy, lonely, dirty feeling that we're sliding right out of the human race. It's like a drowning man clawing on the rocks. And the only way I knew how to get back into the human race was to drink my way back into the human race. You could tell me anything and do anything and I wouldn't believe it.
The minute you threatened to take away the one thing in my life that made my life bearable, you had a fight on your hands. You know, many non-alcoholics don't understand this and I certainly don't blame them. Why, when we try to help a person with this problem, do they throw it back in our face? With venom and with vengeance and with bitterness. And of course, the closer you are to us and the more you try to help us, the nastier it is.
Why is this? And you talk to us about can't you see what you're doing to yourself and to your family and to your self-respect and your human dignity. And we know what's going on. We don't want to admit it necessarily to ourselves, but we know way down deep that things aren't going too well. And you talk to us about backbone and willpower and standing up and being a man and turning over new leaves and pulling up your socks.
I had my socks up to my eyeballs. With apologies to the clergy. I believe it's Joe the Wino, isn't it? Who says that the only fellow he ever heard of that had any success turning over leaves was a fellow by the name of Adam. That was a long time ago. And I think he was an alky, too, by God. He had a little trouble with snakes and women and things. He's an honorary brother. Why don't we throw it back in people's faces?
The people that love us the most in the world and the people who we love the most in the world, regardless of where we are in the business of living. Because when you threaten to take away something, the one thing that makes my life bearable, regardless of how unbearable it may look to you who are standing around,
[00:25:05]
it is the one thing that is making my life bearable at that time and I'll defend it until death. And this is why I guess we treat you so horribly. It is most necessary and was most necessary for me to defend what I was doing because I couldn't fathom living without it. Bethany said it this afternoon, bless her heart. We just can't see life without that stuff. Oh, we can stop drinking, I could quit, gone.
Terrible affair. You start running out of people and you start losing time and you start, that dirty feeling gets worse. You have a feeling of hopelessness, loneliness, fear, futility. People tried to help me, I have clergymen in my family, God bless them. They used to, I thought they were pursuing me. I discovered they were running the fast that way and I was this way. They always seemed to catch me when I haven't pushed the glass far enough under the Davenport.
And they talked to me in love. Everybody that ever talked to me, talked to me in love. I called it in those days persecution, I think, but they came to me and they talked about sin and salvation and God and hell and I've always believed in God. I was taught this way when I was a child. I had no faith in God. I had faith in dollar bills and whiskey, period. But I always believed there was a power and I always called this power God.
I had not much use for the religious people. Why? You know why. We couldn't stand being around them. We blamed them. Why should I go to church full of hypocrites? Do you remember the late Reverend Dr. Samuel Shoemaker in Long Beach who said many alcoholics have had trouble with the church and many think they have? I could have kissed him. That was me. I was convinced I had a lot of trouble with the church.
I had never been in the joint. I never had any trouble with them. I thought I had. It was another argument in my bag of tricks. And they talked about hell. My conception in those days of that place or condition was one of hopelessness, loneliness, and fear. If anybody could tell me about hopelessness, loneliness, and fear, I'd be interested to hear it. I was an authority on hopelessness, loneliness, fear, and futility.
I lived with it every second of the day. And the doctor said, Tom, 1921 I was when this guy. If you don't quit drinking, I was built like a Mack truck like I am. If you don't quit drinking, you're going to die. He always told me that on the mornings I was afraid I wasn't going to die. You'll have cirrhosis of the liver or something. You can't scare us. You cannot scare an alcoholic into quitting drinking.
This psychiatrist talked to me about going crazy. If he hadn't used the word going, he might have got me. If he'd have said you are, he may have had me. But he said going, and I thought I got a little training time left. But he didn't understand that it wasn't his fault. So I kept going. I was afraid. I was afraid to get up, afraid to go to bed, afraid to eat, and couldn't usually. Afraid to drink and afraid to quit.
It was a lousy way to live. I've been sober for many days and woke up in the middle of the night after being sober. This isn't a DT. After being sober 6, 7, 8, 10 days. Woke up standing in the middle of my bedroom at 3 o'clock in the morning. Woke up standing, soaking wet, shaking like a leaf. And for the life of me, couldn't figure out what I was afraid of. But I was afraid. Afraid of the night and afraid of the day and afraid of everything.
Fear is a constant companion of the alcoholic. I heard it described and defined, or saw it the other day, described as the lonely sickness. There has never been a better definition or description of our illness. The lonely sickness. Dear God, it's a gut-eating loneliness. And we put on a big front and we're on a blah, blah, blah, and we're falling apart at the seams inside. I was a geographic alcoholic.
And I thought, alcohol isn't my trouble, Winnipeg is my trouble. Forty below zero. We have a lot of people doing a lot of research up there on the fact that if you drink enough whiskey, you won't freeze to death. The fact that if you're drinking up whiskey, you won't freeze to death, and you're dying like flies.
[00:30:06]
So I go to Vancouver, and Los Angeles, and Houston, and New Orleans, and I noticed on these excursions that you and your geographic excursions and through alcoholism, that when you were going to New Orleans, you met the boys from New Orleans coming to Chicago, and you got drunk in St. Louis together. Trouble with everything in my life. Very lucky in my life. More trouble with me than with anything.
Knew I was hurting the people I loved the most in the world, knew I was destroying what they wanted me to be, and what I wanted to be. Isn't that awful when you lay in the morning after you've been out and come back and you hurt somebody that you don't want to hurt, and you ask yourself why. You promise yourself it'll never happen again, and you mean it. An alcoholic who promises in the morning that he's not going to get drunk that day or see 90% of the time means it as sincerely as they can mean anything in the world.
But I had no defense against drinking. None whatsoever. I thought about killing myself. I had every reason in the world to live. Every reason in the world to live. Every opportunity in the world to live. And wanted to so desperately that I could taste it. And we'd get straightened up, and we'd stop, and we'd start, and I was the greatest starter you ever saw in my life, and the worst finisher. And this is a fear that we carry into AA, isn't it, this fear of failure?
Lord, I never went through anything in my life successfully to its ultimate conclusion. What would make me think that when I joined you that I'd be able to make it? And it's a terrible, gut-eating fear here. Fear of failure. It's a horrible thing. If you hang around long enough, it seems to disappear. Hopelessness, loneliness, fear, and futility. Hmm. We got her. Willpower? I don't know. I, uh, I think I had willpower.
Strange kind of willpower. We'll go to any lengths to be what we're not. Have you discovered that? We'll go to any lengths to prove that we're not what we are. When I was nearly 20 years of age, I had been away for a week or two on an alcoholic survey. My good mother found me in a bar in South Florida at 10 o'clock in the morning. She had no idea where I had been. She walked in the door, as they always do.
And they come up, why do they always come up to us when we're sitting at a bar and say, what are you doing? I don't know. So I said, I'm waiting for a bus or something. She said, do you know what time it is? I said, sweetie, I don't know what day it is. She said, what are you drinking? I said, a whiskey sour. She said, only alcoholics drink in the morning. And a whiskey sour, for those of you who don't know it, is an alcoholic's drink.
From that day to the day I joined this society, I never drank another whiskey sour. And I drank everything that was too thin to chew. And for three years, I would not take a drink before the sun went over the yard arm, because I was doggone if I was going to be an alcoholic. Isn't it funny? I'd die a thousand deaths until noon. But at 1201, stand back. It's amazing. They got no willpower. I don't know what that is, but I did not want to be an alcoholic.
I remember I came home one time after being away for a day or two. My mother was there with two or three of her friends playing bridge. I was at home, and I had never played bridge in my life. And I went in to give them a little advice. Very drunk, very lousy, poor three-day growth of beard. And I went in to straighten them out. And I fell in the bridge pit. On my back. And here were people, all these, my mother, God love her.
Oh, I have a great lady. And friends of hers who had known me since I was knee high. And I was laying on my back looking up and they were looking down. With tears running down their face. And they had to look. You know what the look is, brethren and sisters.
[00:35:00]
It's a look that you and I think is one of disgust and loathing, but it is not. I am fully convinced that those who love me never loathed me. Never hated me. They're still around. And I firmly believe they never did. It was a look of bewilderment. That somebody they love is falling apart at the seams and they can't do a thing about it. But I used it. And I said, well, to myself. After they looked at you like that.
You crawled out from under a flat rock. I was very sane at that stage of the game. And I said to myself, well. You're only child. After all I have done for you. Don't dwell on that too long. I'll fix you, I said to myself. I'll fix you, I'll kill me. And I went upstairs. They were bawling and I was mad. And I kept in my drawer my clothes where I used to keep them in Canada. We call them Mickey's. You call them pints down here.
But they're easy to pack around jobs. And I went into my cupboard and got one of the. I had them in there in varying degrees of emptiness or fullness dependent on your need. And took a belt walk for some reason around the corner out of my room onto a balcony. We had a little balcony out at the back of the house for no good reason. And look down. It was 20th of November. It was 20 degrees below zero.
I thought that's what I'll do. I'll show them. I'll jump off the balcony. So I went back in to have me another drink to think this out. As I went back in, I went by a mirror and I noticed I had my new suit on. And I didn't want to get my new suit. I've been drinking in it for three days. I didn't want to get it dirty. So I took it off. Took a belt and was in my shorts. I am no hell in my shorts, I'll tell you.
Drunk or sober. I went back out onto the balcony and at 20 below. You don't feel the cold really. You don't stay there too long. I went back out and looked over. Didn't look bad. Went back in. Had another belt and went back out again. Said, they'll be sorry, thinking of myself. You know, have you ever done this where you're trying to argue yourself into it and out of it at the same time? You really don't want to do this, but you kind of committed yourself.
I went out on the balcony. I climbed over the balcony and I stood there for a minute. It was dark, thank God. I let myself down and hung on to Eve's trough. You know, wondering to yourself, how did I get here sort of thing? I said, well, goodbye cruel world or some profound statement like that. And let myself go and fell three feet into six feet of snow. I got up. Brushed myself off and rang the doorbell.
I had forgotten my key and I don't know about your shorts, but mine haven't got pockets in them. Now, my good mother answers the door. And there's the prodigal. She said, my God, what have you done? And as unconcerned as can be, I said, I just jumped off the balcony. She said, oh, you poor dear, come in and I had her. She said, what can we do for you? I said, well, I think I'll go to bed and a nice hot scotch would be real nice.
I do not tell that story. I had orders to tell it tonight. I don't tell that story if Mrs. B happens to be in the audience. Because she's never been able to get to the point where she sees anything humorous in it. And I feel that part of my amends in this program is not making people feel badly. It's trying to help people. So I just don't tell her that she's here. And I feel better and so does she.
If she ain't here, you've had it. I am very renowned in this society. Nobody knows my name. Nobody knows where I live. Nobody can spell Winnipeg. Nobody can spell Manitoba, but everybody said he's the guy that jumped off the balcony. Nice to be famous for something. But you know, you get sober and you start to think.
[00:40:00]
And you get scared because this isn't what you want to happen. This isn't the way you want to live. And I stayed sober for 30 days, gritting my teeth. And then I picked up a glass again because I couldn't stand staying sober. And I drank another year or two, and I don't know what happened in that year or two. I know very little about it. I couldn't tell you. And I know that one day, New Year's Day, I was with my family out in the country.
I had been many times as sick. I had been ten times as lonely, ten times as scared, in ten times as much trouble with me and them and the law and everything else. And I got up on New Year's Day, very sick, had a few drinks, felt a lot better, started to party around the town, the little village we were in at the time. We eventually arrived over at a person's house. This, to me, is something that I think about quite often, as to why it happens to you and I when it happens to you and I.
Not how it happens. Why did it happen when it happened? Why did it happen when it happened? Think about it. If you were watching me like the rest of those people up there are watching me, and I was away, I was sick, I was lonely, I was scared, and I was in a hotel room somewhere, I was in the New Orleans parish jail, you'd say, now he'll learn. This will teach him. This will be the time that he'll come to his senses, and it never was.
Here I was, surrounded by the people I love the most in the world and the people who love me the most in the world. Not in too much trouble, not too lonely, except that lousy loneliness we live with all the time. And that was the day it happened. And I, for the life of me, can't think of why. And this, I think, maybe is the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous. The timing of the miracle of surrender. The timing of the miracle.
And I ran into a guy at a cocktail party. This guy I knew had lost his wife and kids. He wound up on a skid row in Toronto. He joined something called Alcoholics Anonymous. It was a horrible name. And he got his wife and kids back, and he looked like an Olympic athlete, and he was tending bar. Every time I quit drinking, it was isolation. And I walked in, I looked at him. I'd never been in a skid row in Toronto, except to pass through and buy a few years to listen to my genius.
I'd been through and in and around everything, but it hadn't happened. I never had a wife and kids to lose, so I didn't identify with this guy in this way. We hadn't been in the same places, done the same thing. We hadn't drank too much together. But there he was, and he was pouring. He poured me a drink, and I went in, sat down, took a mouthful, walked back in, tapped him on the back. He'd been in AA about six months, this guy.
He was younger than I was, which knocked that theory into a crap hat. I said, Bernie, I want to talk to you. He said, okay, fire away. I said, not here. You know, you don't want anybody to know you've got a drinking problem. I said, well, listen, we'll go down to the basement, and there are very steep stairs. He walked ahead of me, and I went down behind him. Nearly fell into him. And when he got to the bottom, I was halfway down, and I said, Bernie, I can't quit drinking.
What do you do to quit drinking? How do you quit drinking? And he turned around with a grin on his face. Everybody that I'd ever asked that question to before gave me the, well, routine, you know, with their chin on their navel, and… Now, let's look into this thing, and we'll look at this from all sides, and all that hogwash with the big, long face. This guy, didn't he turn around and he was smiling?
I said, damn it, it's serious. I mean it, you know. Well, now I know why I was smiling, why he was smiling. It was just a miracle. Here he was. He'd been sober six months. He was surrounded by drunks. He was pouring whiskey. He was up to his eyeballs in it, and out of the woodwork comes a 12-step call. Me. Well, he started to talk, and I never heard anybody talk like this before. He didn't talk about willpower and backbone and new leaves and things.
He never asked me where I'd been or what I'd done. He didn't talk about God or sin or salvation. He didn't talk about outward manifestations of inward frustrations. He talked to me, not about me at all. He talked about himself. That's old shit. Because you're standing there with the answers ready, aren't you? Every time anybody patted me on my bald little head and said, Tom, old boy, you're not doing too well, I think it's time we had a heart-to-heart talk.
Come in, and we'll sit, and I'd say, oh, indeed, we will, and then we'd go, and he'd say, now, the first thing, and I had the answers before he thought up the questions, and so did you. Why do you drink? Don't you think you're drinking too much? Can't you see what's happening? Blah, blah, blah. Quack, quack, quack. This guy never talked about me at all. He started telling me about himself. He didn't tell me about…
And He Talked About Loneliness, And He Talked About Fear and Futility,
[00:45:01]
And He Built a Bridge of Understanding That I Couldn't Help But Come Over, And All the Time He Grinned at Me, And You've Been Grinning at Me Ever Since, I Never Met Such People in My Life, I Say, Yeah, But You Better Hear About Me, And He Says, Yeah, And I Understand That The Worse My Troubles Got With The Other People, The Longer Their Faces Got, The Worse My Troubles Got With This Bird, When He Finally Let Me Talk, The Wider He Grinned, And I Loved Him, And You People Just Don't Grin Through Your Mouth, You Grin Through Your Hands, And Your Face, And Your Eyes, You Smile From Top To Bottom, You Have The Most Fantastic Sense Of Humor, There Is Nothing But Humor And Tragedy That Is Most Astounding, And I Don't Think This Is New Or Uncommon, I Think This Is God's Grace, I Firmly Believe That When I Walked Into My First AA Meeting, If You Would Have Been All Sitting Around With Your Chins On Your Navels Feeling Sorry For Yourselves Because You Couldn't Drink, I May Not Have Stayed, But You Were All Sitting Around Grinning Like A Bunch Of Cheshire Cats, I Think That The Humor That You Have, Thank God I Believe This From The Bottom Of My Heart, Is The Vehicle That Almighty God Gave You To Allow You To Give To People Like Me, I Think It Is A Purpose To It, Don't Ever Lose It, We Have A Few Cardinals Up In Our Area, Have You Got Them?, Say I Take This Thing Seriously?, I Said You Bet I Do, You Bet I Do, But If It Hadn't Been For Their Laughs, And Their Smiles, And Their Chuckles, And Their Humor, I Might Have Died, And I Hope You Never Quit Grinning At Me, Or Smiling At Me, And Sharing Your Laughter With Me, Because That Is The Thing, You And I Are Often Convinced That We Can't Drink, But By God It Never Entered My Mind That Staying Sober Was Gonna Be Fun, And You Made It Fun, You Made It Good, And Rich, And Full, And Thank You, I'm Deeply Grateful, Don't Ever Stop Smiling, It's Your Greatest Asset, That You Can Live Without Drinking, Comfortably, Enjoy, You Talk To Me About How?, You Talk To Me About The Serenity Prayer?, You Ring A Bell Or Something, Will You Jack?, You'll Be Sorry, I Don't Want To Prove The Judge A Liar When He Said We Were Long-Winded, Never Argue With Judges, I Always Say, I Learned That From Experience, I Tell You, Never Want To Argue, God Grant Me The Serenity To Accept The Things I Cannot Change, You Know The Things I Had Trouble With Accepting That I Couldn't Change?, Two Things, Number One, That I Couldn't Drink Like The Rest Of The People, And Number Two, Was Yesterday, I Had A Lot Of Trouble Accepting Yesterday As Yesterday, To The Fact That It's Written In The Book, That It's There Good, Bad, Or Indifferent, And I Couldn't Accept It Myself, I Couldn't Accept It Without You And Your Program, And Our God, I Had To Have Help To Do This, And You Didn't Push Anything At Me, You Know The Guy That Told Me There Are No Musks On His Tongue And His Cheeks Sticking Out Of Yards, And I Knew He Was Lying, But There Aren't Except What We Impose Upon Ourselves, And This Is For Sure, They Didn't Say I Had To Believe In Anything, They Didn't Say That, They Just Said I Had To Do These Things To The Best Of My Ability One Day At A Time And See What Happened, They Didn't Ask Me If I Was A Catholic, Or A Protestant, Or A Methodist, Or A Presbyterian, Or A Jew, Or A Mohammedan, Or A Buddhist, Or An Atheist, Or An Agnostic, And They Couldn't Have Cared Less, I Always Believed, But When I Read The Twelve Steps, They All Made Real Good Sense, But I Didn't Like Them Particularly, When I Got To That, I Was Still Arrogant Enough When I Read Step Six And Seven, To Feel That If I Ever Got To That Point, I'd Be Stainless For The Rest Of My Life, Bill Describes It Beautifully In A Comes of Age, Somewhere He Says That We Have A Great Fear Of Becoming Too Good Too Soon, And He Hit Me Right On The Head, I Have Several Affidavits From My Family That Says The Chances Of That Happening Are Most Remote, And They Are Willing To Bet Large Sums On It, But We Do, We Are Arrogant Enough To Think That If We Do These Things, We Are Going To Be Evangelists,
[00:50:00]
And If Evangelists Could Carry Our Message, We Wouldn't Need AA, There Has To Be A Combination Of Things You Had To Have To Get To Me, A Combination Of Love, And A Combination Of Living Experience, And A Combination With Humor, And Sincerity, And Brutal Frankness, This Is What You Had To Have To Get To Me, The Rest Of Them Tried In Love, And I Certainly Don't Throw Rocks At Them, But They Couldn't, Because They Didn't Talk My Language At That Time, You Know Some Of Us Say In This Business That Nobody Understands An Alcoholic But An Alcoholic, I Do Not Believe That, Nobody Will Tell Me That Some Of These Non-Alcoholic People Who Work Around Us And With Us Do Not Understand, You Bet They Do, Don't Tell Me This Man Doesn't Understand Alcoholics, Or These Gentlemen Of The Claw, They Can't Seem To Build That Bridge Of Understanding, And They Refuse To Take The Course, But They Understand Us, And They Love Us, And That Is A Bonus And We Ought To Thank God For That, Let Me Tell You, There Is A Great Identity In This Program, A Great Identity, I Have Heard People Say Well I Can't Go To AA, People Say Well AA Doesn't Work For Everybody, Sure It Doesn't, Neither Does Anything Else, Well You Gotta Be Intellectually, You Gotta Be This, You Gotta Be That, Or You Gotta Have Faith, You Don't Have To Have Anything Except What You Have Right Now, Whatever That Is, How Little Or How Much, Well I Can't Go To AA Because I Don't Believe In God, Who Was The Guy That Told Me Not Long Ago That In The First Instance AA Is Something Like Castor Oil, You Don't Have To Believe In It, Just Take It, I Don't Care Whether You Believe It Or Not, If You Take It Something Will Happen, I Took It And Here I Am, You Took It And There You Are, You're Smiling And You're Laughing And You're Sharing, You Didn't Come Into This Fellowship With A Profound Belief And Faith In Almighty God Or Anything Else, You Came In Like I Did With A Tremendous Desperate Lonely Need To Get Out Of That Rat Race, To Get Back A Little Self Respect And Human Dignity Because You Couldn't Stand It For Another Second, Faith Schmanked, Let's Do It And See What Happens, And We Start Doing It And By Golly It Happens, Doesn't It?
You Don't Like It, Well I Went To AA But It Didn't Work For Me, It's Not Supposed To Work For Me, I'm Supposed To Work It, Your Friend And Mine, I'm Going To Name Old Chuck, Says That This Is A Recipe For Living, I Never Heard Of A Better Define, A Recipe For Living A Recipe For Living Sober, A Recipe For Living Without The Necessity Of A Drink, Now If You Got A Recipe, The Recipe Doesn't Do The Work, The Recipe Tells Us How To Do The Work, Now You And I Can Have Six Big Books, We Can Have One In The Office, One In The Car, One At Home, One In The Bedroom, One In The Bathroom, One In The Living Room, We Can Kiss Them All Before We Go To Bed, We Can Go To AA Meetings Seven Nights A Week And We'll Get A Bag On Regularly Once A Month If We Don't Do What The Program Says For Me To Do, I Went To AA It Didn't Work, He Read The Big Book, No, How About Step Five, He Said What's That, How About Step Four, Nothing Wrong With Me, I Got A Drinking Problem I'll Tell You, I Don't Need All That Stuff If I Could Just Quit Drinking, So You Say Okay Quit, And When You Quit, Quit And Come On And See It The Recipe Doesn't Do The Work, The Recipe Tells Us What To Do, It's A Formula And We Do The Formula Whether We Understand It, Whether We Believe In It, Whether We Like It And Something Happens And God Made This Thing Such That When We Do It We Start To Love It And We Start To Like It If We Didn't Like This Thing Do You Think You And I Would Be Sitting Here In This Hot Room With Smoke On Those Chairs Listening To A Monkey Like Me, No Sir You Would Not, You Want To Share You With Me And Allow Me, Thank God And I Thank You To Share Me With You Because We Found A Formula In The Business Of Living That Allows Us To Live Without A Drink, To Roll With The Punches A Little Bit And To Serve Almighty God And This Society, The Greatest Privilege That We Were Ever Given In Our Life, The Greatest Privilege We Were Ever Given Say He's Not Going To Work For Me Unless I Work It, My Preamble Says These Are The Steps We Took Well, Three More Things And Then I'll Shut Up And Never Drink
[00:55:07]
Fun, Dry We Talk About Gratitude In Alcoholics Anonymous, I Do With Great Profundity Now We're Grateful For This, I Even Judge Your Gratitude Why Aren't You Grateful Enough To See That's What You Should Be Doing, Why Aren't You Going To One Meet In A Week, Aren't You Grateful, Blah Blah Blah Can't You See, You Ought To Be Living Better I'll Tell You How To Live, This Program, Don't Do As I Do, Do As I Say And You Get Along Fine, Same Old Kick I Talk About Gratitude To God And To You, To This Program But I Don't Think That Gratitude Is Worth The Breath That It Takes To Utter It Or The Ink Or Paper That It Takes To Write It On Unless It's Expressed In The Form Of Love And Service I Believe This From The Bottom Of My Heart With Every Fiber Of My Being Love And Service In The Total Picture A Isn't Three Parts, It's One Part And The One Part Happens To Flow Into The Other And It's A Total Picture, The Full Circle It's Like The Sea Of Galilee And The Dead Sea, Isn't It The Dead Sea Is A Dead Sea Because There Is Nothing Going Out Or Coming In And The Sea Of Galilee Is A Live Beautiful Crystal Clear Sea Because Something Is Coming In And Something Is Going Out And You And I Have To Have A Constant Flow Of This Thing If We Are Going To Keep Sober And Be Able To Continue To Serve This Fellowship And This People And This God And I Believe This From The Bottom Of My Heart There Is A Freedom In AA, A Freedom That We Never Thought Of Or Hoped For Or Prayed For We Knew We Had To Quit Drinking, I Knew I Had To Quit But I Never Knew I Was Going To Find In This Thing What I Found Peter Told Me I Had To Do What I'm Doing Tonight Or I Would Have Dropped Dead People Say How Do You Talk To People? You Don't Talk To People, You Talk To AA's And There Is A Flow, A Constant Flow You Feed, You Nourish Forgiveness Forgiveness Is Not Essential To Staying Sober But It Is Indeed A Great Bonus If We Are Fortunate Enough To Live With People Who By God's Grace Can Forgive Us I Happen To Be Fortunate Enough To Have Been Forgiven I Don't Think They Have Forgotten Nor Do I Think They Ever Will I Pray God For Their Sake They Can But I Know They Have Forgiven Me Because They Are Better Than I Am At It And It Is A Great Freedom It Is Like The Fifth Step, It Is Like Dependency I Remember Brother Kane In His Article He Said That You And I Are Staying Sober From Dependency On Fear I Don't Think We Are Staying Sober Now I Don't Think I Am Staying Sober Tonight On Dependency From Fear I Think I Am Staying Sober On Dependency From Certainty Certainty That If I Do What You Have Taught Me To Do With The Help Of God Then I Won't Have To Drink Anymore I Have A Healthy Fear Of Booze The Same Fear Of Booze That I Have Of Trying To Swim Across Lake Michigan Or Sit On A Hot Stove Or Do Some Other Stupid Thing I Have A Good Healthy Fear Of Booze But I Am Not Staying Sober On Dependency From Fear Anymore Let Me Tell You Not One Bit There Is A Freedom In This Thing A Fantastic Freedom Ken Scudder Who The Judge May Know Was With The Osborne Association Was The First Warden Of Chino Worked With Clint Duffy Told A Story About Forgiveness The Saving Grace And I Will Speed It Up It Is About The Little Guy Who Was Doing Time In San Quentin And He Had Been In There For Quite A While And He Was Due To Be Released And All The Time He Had Been In The Institution He Had Never Heard From His Family He Had Written To Them They Lived Down In One Of The Valleys Between San Francisco And Los Angeles He Had Written Them And They Had Never Had A Word From Them So As His Release Date Grew Near He Wrote Them Along These Lines Saying That I Am Getting Out Of Here And I Have Been In Quite A While I Haven't Heard From You But I Understand I Haven't Lived Exactly A Good Life And I Know That I Have Dragged Your Name And Dad Through The Mud And Our Family And I Know That I Have Broken Your Heart And I Know That I've Broken Your Hearts, And I Ask Your Forgiveness, I'll Be Getting Out Of Here In About Four Weeks, And I'm Going To Take The Train From San Francisco, And It Goes Right By The Old Outer Field Where That Cherry Tree Is, Now If You Can Forgive
[01:00:04]
Me For What I've Done And How I've Hurt You, Hang A White Ribbon On That Cherry Tree Out There, And I'll See It And Get Off, And If I Don't See It I'll Understand And You'll Never See Me Again, Well He Never Got An Answer, He Didn't Really Expect One, But As The Time Drew Near For His Release He Became So Full Emotionally, So Panted Up, So Rot, He Couldn't Eat, He Couldn't Sleep, He Got Physically Sick In His Stomach, He Was Just A Little Guy, And Of Course As The Time Drew Nearer It Got Worse, And They Had To Take Him To The Doctor, And Eventually, Duffy Said To Scudder, You Better Go With This Kid, He's Able To Jump Off The Golden Gate Bridge, He's So Overwrought With Anticipation, With Fear Of What The Answer Will Be, We Know What Fear Will Do Don't We, So They Did And He Went With Him On The Train, And All The Way The Kid Had His Nose Glued To The Glass Window, Except When He Was In Being Sick, He Couldn't Eat, Couldn't Sleep, He Was Just A Wreck, And Eventually The Train Came By The Outer Field Of The Old Family Farm, And There Was The Cherry Tree, And You Know There Wasn't One White Ribbon On That Cherry Tree, There Was Five Thousand White Ribbons, It Was Just A Mass Of White Ribbons, And It Was Just Like Somebody Had Stuck A Pin In This Kid, And All The Resentment And The Fear And The Loneliness Flowed Out, And All The Love And Understanding And The Grace Of God Flowed In, And I Think It Happens To You And I Through The Doing Of This Program. God In His Infinite Mercy Has Allowed Us To Get Rid Of All Those Things, And If We Are So Disposed To Take On An Understanding And A Love, A Sharing Of Things, We Are Indeed The Luckiest People In The World.
In Step Two It Talks About Caring, And In Our Definition It Talks About Sharing, And I'm Fully Convinced That If You And I Can Continue To Care Enough, To Share Enough, We'll Never Have To Worry About Our Fellowship. I'm Convinced Of This, That If I Can Continue To Care, Care Was A Definition I Had Once For Maturity Somebody Gave Me. If I Can Continue To Care Enough, To Share Enough On The Bed, In The Dark Room, I Think I Can Stay Sober. But I'm Still A Little Afraid Of Change In My Own Life, Or In The Life Of My Group. You Know, We Gotta Move Our Group.
The Cardinals Say It's Fallen Apart. It's Not Like It Used To Be. Indeed It Isn't. You Can't Get A Chair. So, We Gotta Move. And I'm A Little Scared. I Haven't Been Sober Too Long. I'm Afraid Of Change In My Job. I Think Alcoholics Get A Little Panicky Whenever There's A Big Change In Their Life. But Through This Program, We Find Out That We Don't Have To Get Panicky, That We Can Roll With It. And I Am Firmly Convinced, That I Am Convinced That You And I Are Here This Evening.
That I Never Need To Again Fear Change In My Life. In My Personal Life, In The Life Of My Family, In The Life Of My Group, Or In The Life Of Our Fellowship. I Never Have To Again Fear, As Long As I Keep In The Forefront Of My Consciousness, That There Is One Ultimate Authority In My Life, A Loving God, The Father Of Life. Thank You. Shy Guy. I Want To Take This Opportunity To Thank All The Alcoholics, Especially The Non-Alcoholics Who Made This Conference The Success It Is Up To Now.
I Want To Remind You That At 12 O'Clock Tomorrow, We'll Resume This Conference. I Think They Made It 12 O'Clock, So All Those Who Want To Attend Breakfast Tomorrow Morning That Ends At 11, Got An Hour To Get Down Here. We Do Have Some Very Wonderful Speakers Tomorrow. I Want To Thank His Honor, Judge M., Tommy B, Reverend, For Being Up On The Platform With Me Tonight, And In Closing, I Would Like To Ask The Reverend To Assist Us In The Lord's Prayer.
[01:05:03]
Let Us Pray. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, ever and ever. Amen.