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Source: Harris K – Growing Up All Over Again – Date Unknown.mp3 File: harris-k-growing-up-all-over-again-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:57:40
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This recording is part of the Northern California Tape Library about alcoholism. It was made at Isilomar, June the 3rd, 1972, and the speaker is Harris K.. Thank you, John. And now comes the time when it is my privilege to introduce Harris K. from Amarillo, Texas. Thanks, Fred. My name is Harris K., and I'm an alcoholic. I want to do this because you all expected high, you all. By God's grace and the Alcoholics Anonymous program, as I understand it, I haven't found it necessary to take a drink or any type of pill since the 17th of December of 1962.
I'm very grateful to be here. I am a member of the Southwest Group of Alcoholics Anonymous in Amarillo, Texas. I am addicted to drugs. I didn't find this out until I'd been sober a year. I thought being a dream was normal living until I got sober in AA. We have a little girl that comes to our group, and she says she's a potential alcoholic, and her folks are all alcoholics, and she says that she is a sex abuser, so I guess I fall into that category, too. I was a sex abuser.
I don't know. These young kids get hooked up on whatever makes them identify. I don't know. Maybe I need to be young again. I can tell you my story tonight, and that's what I intend to do, but really my whole problem is alcoholism, and it's kind of an ego thing. I carry around a pretty good set of clothes to look real nice to you and to try to look like a good old boy, and then down underneath when the chips are down, well, I turn into an SOB, and this is really what my story is. It has varied considerably since I came into Alcoholics Anonymous. It's improved an awful lot, but down underneath, that's pretty much what things have been since I came into Alcoholics Anonymous ten years ago.
I'm very grateful for this program. I think that probably I am unique to a degree because AA started putting me together long before I got to AA, and I didn't realize a lot of these things until I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. The only reason that I am a dentist is that my father, who was in AA, had a sponsor who started Alcoholics Anonymous in Amarillo, Texas, and he decided that Amarillo needed AA, and he came out of a hospital in Chicago and came back to practice dentistry in Amarillo after he'd drunk up two or three good dental practices, and of course my father was there for him to begin to work with, and so he started Alcoholics Anonymous in Amarillo, and I had a hangover when I was going to the University of Texas. I don't know how I got to drinking, because I wasn't going to be like those people down there in Alcoholics Anonymous, but I had a hangover and I felt real bad, and I called my father's sponsor up, and I said, George, I think I'd like to go to dental college. Now, I don't know how the rest of you alcoholics operate, but any time I have a failure in one area, which was just normal college, well, the thing to do is to go into graduate school.
And so I said I'd like to go to dental college, and it took him about four days to get me in, and I didn't get in on my own hook at all. I guess I'm bright, but I wasn't that bright. So the reason that I'm a dentist is because of Alcoholics Anonymous, and this was about probably about somewhere in the nature of eight or nine years before I found Alcoholics Anonymous. I guess that I took some courses in psychology this last year, and I found out what I was when I was growing up. I was an inadequate personality.
I don't know. I couldn't find this. They're real ambiguous in those books. You know, you get a label for yourself, and then they get some other labels, and pretty soon you fit just about everything in the book. But I worked harder in the wrong direction at being an inadequate personality than anybody I know. I just worked real hard, and I don't know if the
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rest of you had that experience, but it just seemed like I was always working like hell in some direction, and I still felt inadequate. I was very fortunate I didn't drink in high school, and I kind of get to talking to my daughters now, and they kind of think this is kind of odd, and they're sure that I'm very old-fashioned when I tell them this because, you know, from junior high on, they're doing just about everything else now, and so they thought this was kind of a queer approach to things. And I got a scholarship to Yale, and Yale University is a very good place to get a liberal education, and they have a beautiful library, and they have beautiful buildings, and they have wonderful teachers, and the teacher ratio there is something like 10 to 1, 10 students to each professor. But what really impressed me was the green cups down at Morrie's, and they had great big cups, you know, and I don't know if this really, Bill and I were out at the outrigger last night talking about the lights across the bay and sitting there and drinking and crying. Well, I always like to drink and cry. I like to talk and cry, and I love the green cup at Morrie's. They have things this big, you know, and you sit there, and you help each other to it, and you pick it up and drink out of the green cup. Of course, it spills out. I had a blue blood laser that was half green. And we drank and cried, and poor little lambs that go astray and all this, you know. And that was my liberal education, and it became so liberal at the end of the second year, they gave me some C's and D's, which was bad for a scholar of my note. So I decided to transfer colleges. And, you know, it's unbelievable the rationalizations an alcoholic can get going, and this was my rationalization, you know, that I transferred college. So as I said, I went to Texas University, and I said, well, this is going to be different. I'm going to drink coffee, and I'm going to smoke cigarettes, and I'm not going to do those terrible things that I did at Yale. And like I said, by the end of the year, I was into the same problem. I was having difficulties with grades, I was having difficulties with other things, and so I decided that what I better do is get into college. And so this is what happened to me. I got into college, and the only trouble was there was a summer between the time I left Texas University and the time I got into college. And I don't know whether any of you have been presented with this problem of finances before, but I was presented with the problem of finances. It takes some money to go to college, and I certainly didn't want to go to work. That did not appeal to me at all.
I don't know whether y'all have found that drinking and working and going to school just does not mix. Drinking and working doesn't mix too good, but when you're young, it mixes better than when you're older. So I tased the situation, and I looked around the town, and I found me one of these doctor's daughters who had a lot of money. And I thought, you know, if I go with rich girls, if I marry one, then a doctor wouldn't want his son-in-law to just be a bum, would he?
Well, I got my good old boy's clothes on, and I did the very best I could to work this situation for what it was. And I had had one of these things that we were talking about here, one of these sex abuser problems for a long time, and that frightened me a little bit. And I began to case this situation a little bit with this rich doctor's daughter, and I decided that, you know, there's no sense in proposal, because she might reject me, and I'm an alcoholic, and I couldn't stand rejections.
So if we went to bed enough, maybe we wouldn't have to worry about that marriage. So, you know, when I came in, somebody told me one time, they said, Harris, you just quit thinking and quit praying for anything. He said, every time you ask God for something, he gives it to you. And he said, you just can't have it. Well, to make a long story short, I started my freshman year in dental college with, oh, about six weeks gone into the first semester, I had a wife that was pregnant about three months, and I didn't have any more financial worries in dental college. That was all taken care of. I didn't feel like that my father-in-law's
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allowance was adequate, but he was awful chintzy, you know. I thought it was terrible for him to treat his daughter like that, but anyway, we got through dental college. The only thing wrong with this is she miscarried about Thanksgiving, and it was kind of a sad situation there, but I decided to make a go of it. Now, this is an honest program. We have to tell it like it is. And something happened to me, and I feel like this is one of the spiritual things that happens to me, is I got struck sober in dental college. I really enjoyed dentistry, and so I stayed relatively sober except for about three college parties during those four years.
And I don't know whether any of you have ever been sober before outside of AA, but it does wonderful things for you. It builds you up, and you get the wrinkles out of your belly, and pretty soon you get to feeling like you're a pretty good old boy, you know, and I had four years of sobriety there, and I got pretty good, and I got to spitting on some of the people in dental college that weren't as smart and bright and articulate as I was, and I got to be a pretty I got to be a pretty snotty old boy, you know, and then there was this real cute little hygiene that was there, and you know, I'd worked awful hard in those four years, and here I was just a month before school was out, and I needed to play a little bit and have a little fun. Of course, by that time we did have a daughter, and that complicated things a little bit, but not much, and I had decided that my father-in-law's allowance wasn't adequate, and I had joined the Navy, and the Navy was paying for my senior year in dental college, and so I decided that that was a very good way to make a living. You know, you can make pretty good income if you've got a steady allowance from your parents or your in-laws, and you're getting paid Navy pay. This wasn't bad, and of course, with this type of pay, I really needed to have a little bit more fun than I was having, and I don't know what was wrong with this wife of mine. She really was kind of, oh, I really feel like that she just didn't understand how hard I was working, and she wanted to change the baby's diapers and all this crud, you know, and it just wasn't any fun anymore, and so this hygienist and I hooked up, and we just almost didn't make it out of school, and I should have known that I had a drinking problem. They used to call me in and say, don't you think you ought to slow down with this little deal you got going, and I dropped from second in the class to fourth in the last month, so I should have known that I had a problem, but I couldn't see it, and luckily, I don't know whether any of you have gotten into these affairs or not, but they're hard to end, you know. I have found that that's one problem with adultery. It's hard to get shut up, you know, and I had joined the Navy. It was almost like I knew what was going to happen next, you know, like I was manipulating my own life. It was real eerie, you know, and I joined the Navy, and then they sent me to the Philippine Islands.
Well, by golly, it's hard to have an affair with a hygienist in Dallas when you're in the Philippine Islands. The long-distance telephone calls are kind of embarrassing, but other than that, it's all right. So that ended the situation in dental college, and I decided, going over on the boat, I told my wife, I said, you know, I really had enough of this drinking now. From here on out, we're not even going to have liquor in our house. In fact, I think I'll quit smoking while we're out there. We're going to have a good, healthy time, and it's going to be a great place.
Well, I got out there to the Philippine Islands. I don't know whether any of you have been overseas or not, but wine just didn't cost anything, and gin was 85 cents a fifth. In fact, we used gin instead of the charcoal lighter. The charcoal lighter was a dollar five. And it was wild, you know, and cigarettes were a dollar and a nickel a carton. Well, a dollar and a nickel a carton for cigarettes, I decided maybe I better reconsider this.
Spiritual experience that I had. But, you know, the good guy always came into the little picture too, and I decided that what I needed was a little league team, so I got me a little league team. And I still have a frame on the wall in the office there of my little league team, and they gave me an honor about being a good little league coach. Well, it didn't take long to find out that they had those hygienist type women, only they weren't really dental hygienists.
Identist type women, only they weren't really identist.
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But they had those kind of women out there in that little native temp. And I don't want to talk about that too much. Some of the native, you know, some of those gals look real good in the bar and you take them home and the pig is in the hall on the way to the bedroom, you know. But if you have enough of their tuba, that's the native wine in the Philippines, it's okay. So by this time I was in a good state of situation with the drinking and I was in a good state of anesthetic.
And I had found by that time that people don't like drunk dentists working on them. So I would come in and get me a handful of pills and I found that bicarbonate of soda and a little bit of, oh, usually Demerol or something like this would kind of calm me down. Of course if I got a little sleepy I could take something to pick me up. Like I said, Benzedrine as far as I knew was a normal living. I just was a ball of fire the whole time I was out there in the Philippines.
And they used to say, well, I don't think Doc drinks. I said, how could a guy work that hard with the kids in the clinic and work out there on the little league kids and drink like that? Well, it was kind of confusing to me too, you know. I didn't know either. And by this time we had another child. I had two daughters now and I decided the reason I drank was because I had two daughters and I'd always wanted sons.
So this was my problem. And I remember being very tight and cursing and denouncing the medical officer that delivered my second daughter because he didn't get me a son. And, you know, to this day this guy was so great that he just, you know, he was so nice to me when I was just ranting and raving at him and everything. I just couldn't believe that I was such a jackass. But again, I think that's why we drink, is we drink because we do some of these things when we drink.
And the old SOB would always come up to the top, particularly when I would get in a crisis and I was drinking. So my experience in the Philippines was beginning to deteriorate considerably. And one night I was out drinking with one of my Little League mothers. And we had not been intending to be out there. And after 1,800 hours, and we had gone out at about 1,400 hours, and it was 1,800 hours, and after 1,800 hours you're supposed to have long pants on.
Well, we were in the Frank Buck era in the Philippines. We had these jungle buckets that you wore on your head and the little shoulder epaulons on your sports shirt. And you wore these white pants with long socks and everything. And I was out there in my short pants. And they were having a fight in the bar. And I don't know if any of you have ever been an officer, but you need to keep things straight when you're an officer, and I was an officer.
And so I went over to this fight and I said, I said, stop this immediately. And I took my billfold out so they could see I was an officer. And I said, stop this immediately. I was an officer in the United States Navy. And he did. He hit me right in the nose. And I must have scooted all the way across the bar and banged my head and laid splatter down the floor. I'm sure I was pretty sad in my short pants.
So everybody left except me, you know. And the shore patrol showed up and they said, there's a damned officer in short pants who's in a fight. So I was going to be court-martialed. And the executive had already had some run-ins with me. We'd had some difficulties. The executive officer didn't mind drinking. He just didn't like the way that I was approaching the problem. And so typical of an alcoholic.
Right there I had my problem all on the line. And I knew what the problem was. And I could see the problem coming. And I knew that I was an alcoholic because I had seen my father's pattern. But it's so typical. I began to work and scheme and work with things. And I had all my Little League fathers come down there and testify to what a great guy I was. And the damnedest thing I've ever seen. You know, by the time we got through with this, the only fool in the whole thing was me.
And I was believing that I was a great guy. And they went into the court-martial proceedings. And I've got a letter of apology that they're sorry that they gave me such a hard time. They did say that they're going to have to put a letter in my record that I was out in town in short pants. And this was against Regulation No. 106502, Civic Bay, Philippine Islands.
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Was that all right? And I said, well, that would be all right. And did I want to bring any charges against the executive officer or the officer, the dental officer there in the dental clinic for being such an ass? Oh, and, you know, here's the good old boy again. I was off the hook. Why not be a good old boy when you're off the hook? I said, no, no. These people will have their own mystery. So I guess, you know, one thing about being an alcoholic SOB is you know when to quit.
And maybe that's trouble with normal SOBs. I went to Hong Kong and Singapore and things improved a little bit, I think, as I went to Hong Kong and Singapore. I think the girls got younger and prettier. And the drinking was just as bad. And there didn't seem to be anything I could do about this. I don't know whether some of you have gone through this, but it just seemed like that the drinking continued and I didn't want to stop it and it didn't seem to be something that, it was just kind of a hopeless situation.
And it didn't look like I was going to get thrown out of the Navy. I was past that crisis and the wife couldn't divorce me. And so I just, you know, kept drinking. Well, I got transferred to Beavell, Texas. If any of you have been in Beavell, Texas, they've got a Navy base and two Baptist churches and a Church Christ and a bank. And that's about it in Beavell, Texas. And you can't get drunk too easily in Beavell, Texas.
So I spent a summer in Beavell, Texas, a winter in Beavell, Texas, and got sober. And this enthralled my wife so much she decided that I needed a son. So she got pregnant and sure enough I had a son. And we moved back to Amarillo, Texas for me to go into the practice of dentistry. Now, with this inadequate personality and with all these experiences, you better believe that after these years of sobriety in Beavell, I decided that, you know, I'm all right now.
I'm really not that guy out there in the Philippine Islands. So why not set up a situation there in Amarillo that would just be impossible for me to get in trouble? So we moved in with my mother, and my in-laws lived four blocks away. My mother signed my dental note, and my father-in-law was responsible for getting me on the staff there at the hospital. Well, you know, I came home and this old friend of mine was at home.
The night I got home from Beavell, Texas, and I was going to open my dental office the next morning, and he said, you know, a drink wouldn't hurt you. And I'd just been to a cocktail party where all my prospective patients, and I decided to specialize in children's dentistry because I didn't want to treat adults. I think the reason I didn't want to treat adults is I knew I'd be so shaky that, you know, adults wouldn't let me at them, you know.
So I became a specialist just by saying I was a specialist. You know, you could do this in dentistry 12, 15 years ago, which is a pretty gutty thing to do, you know. So I had gone to this cocktail party where all the prospective parents were for my patients, and I turned down liquor very vocally. No, I don't drink. And then I went home to my house, and there my old friend was, and he said, a little bit of drink.
And we had some good times. And, oh, me, it seemed like I just never did get over that drink. That lasted for another two years. It was just terrible. And I had these assistants in the office that were like those hygienists, and they were giving me problems. And there were some mothers in the practice that were like those mothers out there in the Little League team, and they were giving me problems.
And the druggists were giving me problems. They weren't filling some of the prescriptions the way I wanted to, but I found some wholesale drug companies that took care of that problem. And then the family would get together with me, and I would just lay down to rest my eyes sometimes with a schedule of mine. I don't know whether you all have this problem, but I like to lay down and rest my eyes a lot of times when I was carrying all these burdens around.
And I'd lay down in the bin, and they would all come in and meet and decide what they were going to do with me, you know, my wife and my mother and my mother-in-law and my father-in-law. And they would meet and decide what to do with me. And so my little sister came home, and she got in on the meetings, and that was more than I could take. And so Christmas of 1961, I moved out.
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And I moved into my office. It's very difficult to live in your dental office. My mistress, one of my mothers, came over to take care of me. One of my patients came over to take care of me. And bacon and eggs, you know, smelling all through the dental office, a very strange smell, you know. So this is a strange existence. And so my mother reacted in typical Al-Anon fashion. My father had been an alcoholic in AA and never made the program, and she had a few holes in her Al-Anon program, I think.
And so she kicked my wife and kids out of her house, you know. Well, this really presented a problem. You know, I'm over-living in my dental office. My wife and kids are out on the street. The in-laws are raising hell, you know. And so I would say that we were in a crisis at this stage of the game. And, you know, the only thing I can think about doing, and this is what really cracked me up last night, Bill, is I used to sit there and I used to play the music of the Alamo and the Green Leaves of Summer.
I'd just play that and drink and cry and try to figure out what the hell was wrong with me, you know. Well, I was such a nice guy like me having such trouble in life, you know. And, you know, it just was all kind of a nightmare. I didn't seem to be able to do anything about it, you know. Well, I had a spiritual experience. I went to my fifth class reunion in dental college, and everybody was screaming and hollering at me up in Amarillo and telling me, do this, do that, and hell, I didn't know what to do except, like Bill said, we were sitting there drinking and crying, you know.
Listening to that music, drinking and crying, you know. And I walked into my class reunion, and I was to experience what I was to experience in AA ever since. And this is about a year before I got to AA. But we'd all gone to dental college for four years, and if you're 80 people and you've gone to dental college for four years, you've kind of gone through a lot of the experiences that I think you do in AA, you know, and you build up a feeling.
And these guys literally loved me sober. And I just got enough love from this bunch of people where I got struck sober. I don't know why I didn't get to AA. Well, I know why I didn't get to AA, because it was necessary for me to go the long route. But I couldn't stop my drinking. It was just going on and going on, and when I got with this group of people, automatically I didn't need to drink anymore.
Well, I came back home from this class reunion, and I was having this trouble with this girl at the office, this mistress, and I was knocking on the church door. Knocking on the door is building a new church. So I don't know whether any of you have got the church kick, but I got the church kick good. And that again is kind of bad. You know, you start becoming saintly in the church. And I thought, well, I've got this mistress and I've got this church thing going, and it's pretty good, but maybe I ought to throw in something else.
So I got me a psychiatrist. A woman psychiatrist. Woman. Well, you know, psychiatry did something for me. They said that, you know, you're inhibited. You've got to do what you feel like doing, you know. But I never had beat my wife up. I never had beat my wife up but once, I think, when I was drinking out in the Philippines, and I think that, I don't know what that transpired about, but anyway, if psychiatry did anything for me, it turned me into a word bully into a physical bully.
I became a wife beater by going to psychiatry. You know, anything to, I think we're out of this stage now, but if you ever went to a psychiatrist back in the early 60s, well, automatically this kind of made your wife that was divorcing you, sit up and take notice and she'd take you back. So the wife took me back and we started off again and I began to do pretty much what I was doing all my life, being terribly inadequate as an inadequate personality and working very hard in the wrong direction.
This is the end of side one. Please turn the cassette over. Thank you. I worked very hard for about six months in the wrong direction and then I had an opportunity to have a drink and I said no and then I watched where they put the list. And then I watched where they put the liquor. And after everybody was gone, I had a drink.
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And I began to run the same pattern all over again. I had the mother problem at the office, the dental assistant problem at the office. I had the good guy complex going. But also, it makes this little wife beating thing. And I don't like to sit here and talk about this, because this kind of upsets me. But this is the way it really was. And the upshot of this was, again, I got sober and went the psychiatrist route, and we put the marriage back together again.
It took my first wife and myself two and a half years to get a divorce. We really worked at it hard. And, I mean, we really were working at it. And it seemed to be just a real wild situation. And, of course, typical, true to farm, it just seemed like that every time we were planting something, she got pregnant. And in the middle of all this divorcing, she got pregnant again. So, this was a mess. Well, if you're drinking and you've got an inadequate personality and your wife beat her, and you're going to the psychiatrist and you're heavy in the church, the upshot of the whole year of 1962 was on the morning of the 16th of December of 1972, I met my wife on the church steps to try to reason with her.
Now, I'll really admit, I was a little bit overhung, you know, hung over. And I did have some problems. And I had tried to reason with her some other times, and I had beat her around the neck and ears a little bit to try to loosen up the listening box. And it didn't do too much good. Well, I don't know what happened. One thing led to another, and I beat my wife up on the church steps. Well, if you're a dentist and you want to keep your license and you want to keep from going to jail, I don't know what you all do in California, but we go to hospitals in Texas.
And preferably not in the state of Texas. I went to a hospital in Colorado Springs. And I guess that this is probably really and truly where my AA life, as far as I was concerned personally and me starting to put some effort and service into it, started was right then. I will say that there was another little thing that I don't like to mention, but this is an honest program and I like to bring it up because this is exactly where I was.
In treating children, I probably became quite a bully, and I was quite successful in treating children. A lot of times to be a good children's dentist, you've got to be kind of firm and you've got to be kind of a bully. I was very hungover and I was very upset with this situation with my wife and her not understanding how a doctor's wife is supposed to act and everything. And I had roughed up a child in the office, and her lips had gotten quite swollen and the family was quite upset.
And so this all was another good indication for me to leave Amarillo temporarily. You know, I got this in AA after a while. I was sitting in an AA meeting and an old timer came up to me and we were talking about rehabilitation hospitals and things like this, and he said, oh, hell, he said, the only reason you went to a hospital is so they wouldn't throw you in jail. And it really had sounded good up until then, but then I realized that's exactly why it was.
I was in the income class who could afford to go to a hospital instead of jail. I probably belonged in jail because I was definitely dangerous to myself and other people. Well, I got in the nut house, and there was a guy that impressed the hell out of me. He was a guy in AA and he'd had a slip, been sober 11 years, and he'd had a slip. And he was the only one that could out-talk the psychiatrist, you know.
It really threw me. You know, everybody else, getting mad and everything else, he never lost his temper, but he could out-talk the psychiatrist. He impressed me. So I told him how much AA had helped my dad and how my dad had gotten 10 or 11 months at a time in AA and done real well. And he said, well, are you an alcoholic? I said, no, I don't think I'm an alcoholic. I said, they've already given me a diagnosis down there of manic depressive.
And he said, well, why don't you try AA when you go back? But I kind of lump out when I tell this part of my story because it really is something that ties in with this conference, which is service. And I think that AA becomes service in depth at whatever stage you are in the program. My sponsor came to take me to a meeting a year before I went. And she's an old, frumpy gal, not very pretty, good friend of my mother's and dad's.
She came and asked me if I wanted to go to the meeting.
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Well, I'd cast you people out in AA. All you did was sit around card tables and drink coffee and smoke cigarettes and play gin and rummy. And I wasn't going to do that. I had a lot of things to do in life, and I certainly wasn't going to do that. But she came to take me to a meeting in 1961, and I wasn't ready. And so she waited until I got out of the bug house. And she came and brought an English professor with her this time to add a little Palette class to the thing.
And he said, you're just like I am. And he said, got that damn bathrobe on. And he said, you don't know whether to get dressed or whether to take it off and go to bed, do you? Boy, that really hit me between the eyes, because I've been sitting around the house for two days in that damn bathrobe trying to figure out what to do. And if they'd said, would you like to go to a dog fight, I would have gone.
And so I went with my sponsor and with this English professor. And a great story I have to tell you about this is this same lady 13 years before had been in very, very bad shape. And my dad, who was about 5'7", and this old gal that's about 6 feet, she was a client, a niece of one of his clients. And he was a lawyer, and he went to get her and tried to straighten her out. And he got her in the car and took her up to a hospital in Oklahoma.
And she got out of the car in one of these little towns in west Texas that had hills, up and down the hills. And he had to chase her, that 5'7"-stature, the 6-foot gal was just drunker than a skunk. He had to chase her up and down the hills, but he finally got her up to the hospital. And then when she got dried out, he took her back to her first AA meeting. And so 13 years later, after my dad was gone, here this gal comes and takes me to my first AA meeting.
And my dad never did really make this program. He made 10 or 11 months at a time, and then he'd have a slip. But if you don't think that the rewards aren't here in AA, I've been able to see this program over a period of about 25 or 30 years now. And I'm not the only one that I've seen that has experienced this in his own family. And so it doesn't really make much difference what a level your service is or how much time you've got in.
If you're trying, it's amazing as to how this pays off. I don't think my dad could have given me a greater gift in my life than sobriety. And as far as I'm concerned, that's what he did with 112 Step Com. So I got to AA, and I was so glad. I haven't had to play one of those damn games again, Rummy, since I've been here. Y'all haven't had me playing any of those games again, Rummy. And things have gone just real well since I got to AA.
It's been up and down, I guess, because I brought some really sicker-than-other traits in here. Some of us get here with all our marbles, and some of us don't. I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, like I said, I was in the middle of a divorce petition. My wife was pregnant. My practice was a mess. And so in the first year in AA, I lost my wife and my kids and my dental practice and just about everything that I thought that I was going to lose, drinking.
And I lost them sober. And so I don't take much truck with these guys that come to AA and tell me, well, I've got to have my wife back, or I've got to have this back, or I've got to have these things back, because I sat there and just watched them all disappear in that first year. And this was exactly what I needed. I thought the worst thing that could ever happen to me in the world would be to be an alcoholic.
And this is the greatest thing. This is the reason that I've got anything that I have. I thought that the worst thing that could happen to me would be to be associated with Alcoholics Anonymous. And this is the only reason that I have anything tonight is because of Alcoholics Anonymous, not only before I got here, but after I got here. The things I was so worried about in the bug house, just sitting there trying to figure out how to save my wife and how to save my practice and everything, and gosh, you know, like I said, I thought, boy, if I lose these things, it would just be the worst thing in the world.
This is the greatest thing in the world. I don't know how many doctors you have out here. We have a lot of doctors, and they've always got something left. And doctors that have anything left are smart. And it's amazing how stupid you get when you lose everything as a doctor. And I was able to do nothing more than to go to meetings. They didn't want me in the Dental Society, and that preacher said, We don't want you back up here at the church.
And I'd say, Preacher, we need the church for salvation. He said, You've got it. He said, Just any time you want it. He said, Just stay out of the church house. If you want anything for AA, you just holler.
[00:40:00]
We'll give you a room to have a meeting in or anything. Just holler. Don't come to church anymore. We can't help you in the church, he'd say. Put the Oral Roberts to me, you know. There I was, drinking and beating the wife up on the church steps. So the first year at AA was the greatest year that I've ever had in my life. And it's just absolutely terrific. Like I said, I lost my wife. I lost my practice.
I lost everything that I thought was necessary for me to be anything. And then I found out that what I really needed was this Alcoholics Anonymous Fellowship. And I just really feel this way tonight. Alcoholics Anonymous is the greatest thing in the world. And this is what it's all about. About the end of the year, I met somebody who has been my AA experience for the last 8 years. Most people are not this fortunate.
She did tell me one thing. I met her, and I sent her to Al-Anon first, and then she became a drunk after a year in Al-Anon. But she said, you know, you have a funny approach to the 12th step. She says, as long as we're married, I think you better work with men from here on out. No more female 12-step calls like you did on me. This is a great experience, and we've had an AA group, I guess, ever since then.
It's been something that's just been tremendous. She won't talk anymore, but I'm going to ask her to stand up because she really is about the greatest person that I've ever met in my life. Pat, stand up. We got in AA, and we got heavily involved in AA in this 4 and 5 meetings a week thing. And for those that are sicker than others, I think this is the greatest therapy in the world. I flat wore that poor old psychiatrist out with the 4th and 5th step, but I needed more 4th and 5th step when I got here.
And I'm glad that I worked with that lady psychiatrist because she gave me a pretty good run on the 4th step. And I've never ceased to work the program because I think that this is the way it's got to be. It's got to be a continual thing. I never did feel like that I completed any step. I think that it's something that starts over and over again. Pat and I knew what it was to start our own group. We watch and surely enjoy this conference and everything, putting it together, the people that worked on it.
We started a little retreat back in Texas, and this has been one of the greatest highlights of our life, to watch a little retreat of about 90 people to grow to, you know, people from all over the country coming into it. And this year I came to Cedar Glen, which is our little conference that we had, and I was really in, you know, bad shape. And this service thing works. I came to my AA retreat this time as a taker.
I didn't have anything to give, and it put me back together so I could go back outside and live sober. So there's no way in the world, as I see it, that you can give anything to AA that you can't get it back, you know, just a hundred times. I was looking at this nut bill last night, and, you know, this is just terrific. We got our biggest mess with a bunch of drunks, and then we're in a little halfway house, and we're just arguing, fighting, scrapping, and everything.
And the one thing it does for me is it keeps me from taking life seriously. And, you know, you just can't get serious when you're trying to get alcoholics all straightened out. They just know it. And, you know, this is a great thing, because I go to these dental meetings and all these normal people's meetings, and they get together, you know, and they get on these motivation kicks, and, you know, they get all serious about things.
And, you know, when you're an old crippled-up drunk dentist, well, you're done lucky to open that door in the morning, you know. And I get overmotivated at times, and then I realize where I am and who I am and where I came from. And I have had probably one of the most miserable relationships with my ex-wife, and I don't think this is anybody's fault but my own. As you know, you beat your ex-wife up on the church steps.
This does not help communication.
[00:45:21]
Supported Me Through Dental College. I didn't know he had quite so many poker chips. He had more poker chips than I did, and that judge changed his decision, and so I have had to, you know, learn to accept that I really don't know all the answers to everything, that I really don't know what's best for people, and so consequently, this little thing with my kids was kind of a real hurt that I carried through this program with me, and I just had to release it. I just had to let it go. After working with it for about six or seven years, nothing happened.
Pasadora has always lived with us since she was about two years old, and she's been one of these great kids that's just kind of taken over for my kids and kind of raised me. I've been five times as hard to raise sober as I was drunk. In other words, I've had twice as bad a temper, and the old SOB keeps bubbling up, and I've probably beaten this child and spanked this child when she deserved nothing at all.
But she's raised me, and so this has just been terrific to have a family when I'd already lost mine. About three years ago, Pat and I had our little AA baby, and she's a little redhead Virgo that's just absolutely tremendous. A lot of things have done some things to me in AA, but something with this child just opened up my heart, you know, is you have so many things that crack you up in life, you begin to build a little bit of a shelter.
And I think that this was the crowning blow to what AA had given me is it just kind of opened some things up and some channels to where I could begin to really feel and to really communicate with life as a whole. And AA got me in shape and continues to keep that channel open. And my life has been so good since I came to AA that I can't believe it. I'm personally a very negative person, and I don't believe anything's ever going to work out. I'm sure I'm going to be dead by next Tuesday.
And I carry this around with me, talking to you now. I'm going to be a good old boy, see, but I'll be an SOB by Tuesday because I'm sure I'm dead. I think everybody has the bumps that happen in life. I've had a very inspirational roommate this time. Stan has told me his story, and I was just very, very impressed. And one of the things that happens to you in life is you have to be ready for change. About six weeks ago, Pat and I sat down and talked, and Pat decided that she would like to be a liberated woman and that I was kind of a hard guy to live with and that if she was going to work her head off, she'd just as soon do it without a husband.
Well, you know, it's great to be up here talking in this program, but what is even greater is when they take the signs down and take the book away from you and you go out on the pavement and start practicing it. Well, you know, I don't know about you all, but I've been through the beating the wife up in the counseling bed and the psychiatrist and the churches and everything, and I decided that must be one of my things.
You know, every ten years, one of my wives files for divorce. That just is a routine pattern. It must be that I'm the constant factor here. And so when Pat and I started thinking about coming to California, and Jack and Shirley had asked me to talk out here, we got to thinking, well, now, if she files for divorce, should she come to California? And, you know, AA is our life, and I don't think we've changed a thing. I think probably the divorce will go on through another six weeks.
Six weeks? Yeah, six weeks. But, you know, you all may not think this program works, but I'm tickled to death to have the relationship with my new ex-wife compared to my last ex-wife.
[00:50:02]
Oh, man. I'm not being alcoholic. Nobody can live a life like this. I do really, I'm really very, very grateful for this program, and I'm particularly grateful for it, like I said, in the last six weeks since all of this came up. And I really and truly feel like that there are times when people need freedom and growth. And the one thing that I guess I've learned in Alcoholics Anonymous is you have to allow people this freedom.
You know, we say if you don't want to stop drinking, you know, it's not our business. That's what we say. And I think this applies to a lot of other things in life. I really and truly have got to get in shape for this anyhow. With four daughters coming up, I can see that my problems with women are going to kind of be on the other side of the fence. All those problems that I had with women, with those mothers and those hygienists and everything and assistants, I believe that's on that other side of the fence down there.
And I was giving them the problem. I'm afraid that it's going to be the other way around now. My daughters and I don't see eye to eye on how we should dress, and I really do feel like 13-year-old girls should not be topless. And my Aquarius daughter feels like I'm quite square about this. So, I don't know, I can see that there's a handwriting on the wall. I'm going to have to get open-minded. I'm real glad we got here tonight. We're very grateful to you all for asking us out here.
I have to tell a joke because I was going to tell a dentist joke, but nobody likes to hear dentist jokes anymore, especially if you're a dentist. I heard a proctologist joke. The fella goes into the bar and says, give me a martini. And the bartender is shaking the martini up and he has a glass eye and he drops the glass eye into the martini shaker and pours it out in the glass. And the guy gets the martini and slugs it down. The bartender says, hold on, that's my glass eye.
And he said, golly, it just went down. He said, gosh, don't have an eye. So about two or three days later, the guy that had the martini became a little bit constipated. So he went to the proctologist. So the proctologist got him on the table and he got that proxacope down there, took him a look there, seized that eyeball, looked him back at him. He goes over and washes his hands. He said, now, Mr. Jones, if I'm going to treat you, you're going to have to trust me.
I guess that's my trouble as a dentist. I just didn't trust people. Many of my patients didn't trust me. In all of this, I have one conclusion to draw about my AA experience. My AA experience is that I think any of us that get to Alcoholics Anonymous are the luckiest people in the world. I think that all of us that come into Alcoholics Anonymous get to live life at a level that most people never do see.
I was talking to Jerry tonight, just at dinner time. And he told me a story that I just can't keep from wamping out when I hear some of these stories in AA. This is the most beautiful fellowship in all the world. This is what all the books are written about, and this is our privilege if we can just see what it's all about. As I said, I thought the worst thing that could ever happen to me in the world would be to be an alcoholic.
I thought the worst thing that could ever happen to me would be to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. And this has turned out to be the very thing that's the whole core of my being. It's been the very thing that's made everything go with me. I would have never had any idea of a higher power. I would have never had any training for a higher power were it not for Alcoholics Anonymous. Were it not that I was an alcoholic.
And I feel like that most of our problems in life are really this same way.
[00:55:03]
I've had things that happened to me that at the time they happened, I thought this is the worst thing that could have happened to me in the world. And it seems like day after day, all of these things keep turning out exactly like the way I felt about alcoholism. Is that, by golly, this has turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to me. I had a little experience just before I came down here.
Our halfway house is a terribly dilapidated thing, Bill. But we have a very wealthy non-alcoholic lawyer that has a beautiful office on the side of skyscraper building that's brand new in Amarillo. It's a brand new skyscraper. And I guess all of you do this. We drive down the same streets in town, the same way to work. We go by the bank. We go by certain drugstores. And you just begin to see life in the same routine.
This is the building front here and here and here. And I got up in the office the other day at this board meeting that we were having at the little rehabilitation center. And of course it was a typical alcoholic argument, some side issue that was very definitely very important. And it took an hour to solve that problem. And I had ample opportunity to look out the window. And as I looked out the window from about 25 stories up, I began to see, or 18 stories I think it is, I began to see all the things in town in a completely different perspective.
And it didn't look at all like it did when I kept driving past those things. For the last 40 years that I've lived in Amarillo, I've driven past these buildings and everything. And they've changed a few storefronts and everything. But basically it was a part of town that was pretty much the same. And being up there 18 stories, I took an entirely different perspective of what Amarillo looked like right there.
It was completely different. And I suddenly was just completely inspired by the fact that, golly, you know, you look at this from a different area and a different angle, and there's all sorts of things that can be done. There's all sorts of things that can happen. And this has been, as far as I'm concerned, the AA experience of everybody. As we all are going down our little ruts in life and we're trying to do things with what we know how to do.
And we get into Alcoholics Anonymous and we're up on the 18th floor all of a sudden. And all of a sudden, all of our problems and all of our efforts in life take on a completely different meaning. I'm real glad that I came here tonight. Thank you very much and God bless you.