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Source: DICOBE-00078 – Ray O – GOPHER STATE RNDP V – 1978-07-01.mp3 File: dicobe-00078-ray-o-gopher-state-rndp-v-1978-07-01.mp3 Duration: 01:13:50
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I like Ray from the time I first met him because, obviously, he is a down-to-earth, very real, very generous human being. And I feel guilty about having talked this long without letting you have a chance to hear him. It's with great pleasure that I introduce Ray O.. My name is Ray O. and I'm an alcoholic. Thanks for the introduction, Judge. I am a member of the world-famous Mimarinac Group at Mimarinac, New York.
You have heard of that group, no doubt. I bring you greetings from the world-famous. In fact, I am authorized by the world-famous Mimarinac Group to wish you a happy round-up. That authorization came to me at a meeting of our steering committee. And the vote of our committee was 11 to 7. Laughter I'm not surprised that Elsa forgot the name of the Al-Anon speaker. I have a lot of trouble remembering myself.
Laughter In fact, I was rather amazed that both Elsa and my wife Stephanie were here at all. There is, and I'm surprised that they are not attending a very, very super and important meeting of the Al-Anon family group which is being held in New York in the mother church of all Al-Anon, the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Revenge. Laughter I am also happy to be back again in Minnesota. I have had that privilege twice before, and I have met people here that I have known before, and it's always good to be back.
And I also have a personal reason I'll tell you about later, why I am happy to be in Minneapolis. In any event, let me tell you about my drinking. I don't want you to miss any of this. Laughter This is a thrill a minute. This is… Laughter I grew up in one of the neighborhoods in New York City, and my neighborhood was rough, and it was tough, and it was Irish. You won't know anything about this here in the land of the lakes, but they drank in that neighborhood.
Oh, yes. Laughter You would actually see people on the street under the influence of alcohol. Yes. Laughter If you looked in my house, you'd see a little drinking. My mother, the widow O'Keeffe, was known to take a drink from time to time, and when the pressure got on, Kitty would go for the light wines and the spirits, and something would fly, usually one of the children. Laughter My brother Billy, on the other hand, was a very bad drinker, and in a neighborhood of Irish drunks, Billy O'Keeffe stood out as a drunk.
And so when I showed up at the local joint and ordered up whatever it was they were handing out to 14-year-olds that afternoon, nobody paid any attention to me, just another O'Keeffe coming by, seeming to do what came to the rest of the family so naturally. I don't even remember what they gave me that day. I suspect it was a beer. That was the neighborhood drink. But whatever it was, I liked it. I liked everything about it.
I liked the way it looked. I liked the way it smelled. I liked the way it tasted. I liked what it did for my head. I liked the noise and the smoke and the confusion. I liked the Irish music and the fistfights. I liked the bullshit. That's what I really liked. I was going through the parochial school system in a manner of speaking. And I got into all of the difficulties and troubles you might imagine a young man would get into trying to go through that system drunk.
I was thrown out of high school a number of times. A number of times I held the neighborhood record for being thrown out of high school, a record previously set by my brother Billy.
[00:05:03]
When I was finished with high school, or more properly put, when they were finished with me, because someone made a mistake somewhere in a small school in New England, I got a chance to leave the neighborhood and I went away to college. And my drinking changed. In the neighborhood we drank beers, and we drank shots and beers. We'd call those bats and balls. But when I got north, they weren't drinking that way.
There were no bars in that place, just restaurants. And they sat around the tables and they drank beer out of bottles. And they sang college songs. And they wore white shoes in the wintertime. And being a man of no particular moral fiber, I had a pair of white shoes. I learned the words of a few college songs. I drank beer out of a bottle. I got very collegiate. World War II was just about over. And I was relatively safe.
And things were slow on the campus. And one afternoon I went out to get a haircut and I joined the Navy. And I ended up in a minesweeper tied up in San Francisco. And I hate to be indelicate at such a large gathering, but I must tell you that I had a lot of trouble with my kidneys when I drank. And in the Navy, we slept three to a tear, and a new man slept on top. Don't get ahead of me now. This is very difficult, what I'm doing.
Just stay with me. I came back from my first liberty in San Francisco with all the beer and me I could buy. And I had one of those rare nephritis attacks. And I met the fellow that slept below me that night. I guess he figured he'd be wet sometime in his Naval career. It just hadn't occurred to him it would happen while he was sleeping. I was immediately transferred to a lower bunk. One day this mighty ship of the line bristling with armament was floating around in the South Pacific trying to stay out of harm's way.
And my executive officer sent for me and he told me something that I was to hear many, many times in my life. But it never helped me with alcohol. In fact, if anything, I think it hurt. He said, you are a very, very smart kid, O.. And I agreed with him right away. I thought he was beginning to show good judgment. And he told me if I would pass some examinations that the Navy would give me, I would end up with an appointment to the United States Naval Academy from the fleet.
And so I ended up with such an appointment and I was sent to a very fancy preparatory school in Maryland. I was only there a matter of months when the executive officer of the school called me in. His experience must have been different from the other man's because he threw me out of the school. He told me they had rules about people like me who went over the fence and came back drunk and started riots.
And he suggested that I resign my appointment and rejoin the fleet. And he put his suggestion in the form of a written order. Being a well-trained military type, I got packed and ready to be sent far, far away. But with characteristic military efficiency, I was placed on board the yacht of the President of the United States. I would like to bemuse you with tales of intimacy with the President and my participation in affairs of state.
Unfortunately, I have no such report to make. It was the Navy by me. I got paid and then I got drunk. And then I waited to get paid. And then I got paid and then I got drunk. And then I waited to get paid. And this is how I spent the balance of my enlistment. When that was over, I came back to the neighborhood. Everything was under control in the neighborhood. The widow was out in the weeds somewhere.
My brother Billy was over the hill from the New York City Police Department. Having invited a citizen of Puerto Rican ancestry off a five-story roof, the citizen bounced and lived to identify the Irish cop. Billy went west and went into another line of work. The 5220 Club was available for heroes. I qualified for a few checks. I gravitated to the local joint. I took up the game of shuffleboard. And I was planning a life of petty crime with some of my boyhood companions
[00:10:01]
when I had one of those clear thoughts that come every once in a while. I remembered that I'd been to college. I went back up there on a bus and I arrived in the middle of a blizzard and I walked into this place and there they were sitting around a table drinking beer out of a bottle, singing those songs, wearing those shoes. So I got another pair of shoes. I got into uniform. I got collegiate. And I was now receiving a check from a grateful government every month.
So I was moderately solvent and therefore moderately stewed all the time. And I was staring around the campus one day in my usual shape and I saw a list of names on a bulletin board of people who were qualified to graduate. And my name was on the list. And that was good news. I thought I had another year to go. I notified the widow of this great event and she came north and that was a rather tender sight.
The widow and her youngest child stagging around under the elms. About ten years later I served as a trustee of that college and I'm still talking about my mother. It isn't often in the state of Vermont they see a little old lady get off a train drunk at nine o'clock in the morning. When I was over I came back home to the neighborhood and the question was what to do. My uncles who ran a family had decided unanimously that I should be a New York City policeman because that's what my father had done.
That's what my brother had done. That's what my mother had done. That's what all my uncles and cousins were doing except for the two idiots that worked for the phone company. But I told them that I was going to do what I wanted to do because I always did what I wanted to do. That's part of being alcoholic. And I told them I received a free ride to law school and I'd be unemployed for the next several years.
And that was received with mixed emotions. So what I did, I went to law school and my drinking changed again. I had never seen a lawyer before I went to law school. We didn't have any lawyers in my neighborhood. We had cops and we had priests. We didn't need any lawyers. I hate to be disloyal to the profession but I'll tell you when I got to law school I found I was in the company of the biggest collection of stiffs that I'd ever assembled under one roof.
These guys were very deadly. They all had a blue suit and a white shirt and they wore glasses. So after I got into uniform I looked around for somebody to drink with, a companion. My mother always said, play with nice boys your own age. But no one drank in this crowd. They were all studying. They were all grinding away. So I became the biggest grinder you ever had in that place. And I didn't drink at all in my first year and very rarely for the next two years.
With the result of that, when I came out of school I was taken into a large, white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, Wall Street law firm. They hired me as sort of the resident immigrant. And my superiors there determined that I ought to be trained as a trial lawyer. And so I was sent up to the courthouse in New York City to learn my trade. And I'd only been in the courthouse a little while when I noticed that all the wise guys were across the street in a saloon.
They weren't hanging around that dirty old building. So I moved my office into the saloon. I got a line of credit, a little priority on the phone. And I learned to drink in a different, a more civilized, more genteel fashion. Very few members of the profession were knocking down bats and balls where anybody could see them. I discovered scotch in a tall glass with water and ice. And you sip on that.
And it takes a little while, but it gets the job done. I was introduced to all of the rituals and all of the mysteries that surround the very, very dry martini. And to this day, to this minute, my love, my admiration, and my affection for the people of New York City.
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is surely the greatest case of unrequited love the world has ever seen. I've just been handed a note that as of 8.25 today there are 6,001 registered. That's about what we get on an average Saturday night at the world-famous Mamaroneck Roof. After this civilizing process had continued for a while, it was necessary in my natural development that I be married and I had located this lady or she had located me.
I don't know how those things work. I met Ms. O., my wife, my current wife. I always call her my current wife. I find it keeps her on her toes. I met Ms. O. when I was working during school. I was working as a bellhop in a hotel. I was a bellhop and she was a guest. And that pretty well characterizes the relationship right now. Ms. O. and I got married and we settled down and set up light housekeeping.
And Ms. O. then began to deliver herself of children in a rather boring and monotonous fashion and with a regularity that's known only to the devout Roman Catholic. Could I get some more of that, sir? And after the second of those events, I received a phone call from the dean of the law school I had attended. And the dean asked me to come by and I went to see the dean and he invited me to become a member of the faculty and to become Professor O..
And I responded with great alacrity. And there I was, the boy professor. And I was nervous about this job because I didn't know really whether my background merited that position. And I knew that I drank an awful lot so I thought I would cut back on my drinking. And I entered into a period of controlled drinking which lasted four, three, four years. But I wasn't, I didn't, it wasn't successful. I didn't control anything.
But as the time went by, I became a little more secure with the teaching. And so then I went out to drink the way I always wanted to drink. In fact, the only way I knew how to drink. My father died when I was two. My brother Billy taught me a lot, brought me along and he showed me the ropes and he also showed me how to drink. And I drank like Billy. I drank until I fell down. Or the cops came. Or the place went on fire.
Or something happened. I would see people leaving and I would wonder where they were going. I knew there was whiskey there. And I moved around the city of New York in those days and I did all of those things that lawyers do when they're on the make. And I belonged to a lot of organizations and I moved about and I served by appointment of the governor of New York in a number of capacities. And I was teaching and practicing law and I even ran for office one time and lost.
And I did a lot of stuff that really isn't important. In this period of time, too, Ms. O. and I bought a large, semi-authentic colonial home in a village called Larchmont, New York. A place which abounds in semi-authentic colonial homes. And we added up to five or six kids and a big house and the usual memberships and the usual obscure clubs. And I was moving around and teaching and working and politicking and whatevering.
And had you asked me in those days how I was doing, I would have told you I was doing very well. In fact, whether you asked me or not, I would have been delighted to bring to your attention my version of the American dream. Truth of the matter was, at this time, at age 34, I had become a terrific daily drunk. My day would have killed a lesser man. I used to come to in the morning in that wet bed because the problem with the kidneys had continued unabated all those years.
And I would struggle out of that wet sack and I would begin my morning calisthenics. And my calisthenics would perform kneeling with my head in a john. And then I would get dressed and come downstairs carrying over my shoulder, much like Santa Claus,
[00:20:01]
a sack of wet laundry because Mrs. O. told me that the diaper service was for the children. And she did not think that a lady of her extreme breeding ought to do the wash of a 34-year-old bedwetter. You can imagine a man of my stature in the community starting off each morning with a load of wash. But once I got my wash out of the way, help was at hand. I used to keep a quart of vodka in the refrigerator.
My children called that daddy's juice. And I would get up in the morning and I had daddy's juice. And I would take a few bangs on daddy's juice. And then I would wonder how the day would go. I knew if I lit up a cigarette it was all over. Sooner or later I would get a train into New York City and into Grand Central where again help would be at hand because Grand Central, if you know it, is really not a railroad station.
It is a collection of saloons that are connected by tunnels. And I would tear around a tunnel like a mole and jump up and down every once in a while. And I'd get to the law school and as soon as I got into that imposing institution my first thought was how do I get out of here? And I would get out and I'd tear across town to a law firm and steal. Every morning I would steal 20 bucks. And then I'd be in a cab and I'd be take off to where I really belonged, my first parish, the bar room down by the courthouse.
And by this time the other lawyers were considering me something like a mascot or a playmate and I'd run in and I'd throw up the dough and I'd buy one and they'd buy one and the bartender would buy one. And maybe we'd talk about some business and maybe we wouldn't and maybe we'd settle a case and maybe we wouldn't but the main thing would be that the booze would keep coming. And I had curiously figured out somehow that I was particularly brilliant at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon.
And so I would tear up to the school and inflict myself on those poor unwilling sophisticates who had come to study law at my feet. And I would shortchange the kids and I'd be out of there and I'd be in a taxi over to Grand Central to commute. Now even though I grew up in the city I understood the theory of commuting. Commuters are entitled to a drink before they get on the train. So I'd have 10 or 12 and I would take a train going north.
You didn't have to go to Larchmont. North was good enough for me. And I got to see a lot more of Bridgeport, Connecticut than any civilized man ought to have to. Sooner or later I would get home and bounce off the walls and take what was left of daddy's juice out of the refrigerator and filled up an old cheese glass that some kid had left laying around and inquire if anybody wanted a martini. But I was the only one that drank in that house.
And I'd have a few pops and then I'd eat or not eat depending on my mood. Evenings I would spend in civic endeavor. Civic endeavor by me was cracking up the car puking on some hostess' rug or playing a little grab ass with the ladies of Larchmont and a sorrier looking prop you have never seen. Most evenings I would just stay home and vegetate and I'd watch television with one eye like that trying to get those sets to come together and I'd watch the TV with one eye and I would drink and I would go through the programming and the news and the late show and everything else.
And finally my big moment would come when they played the Star Spangled Banner and the destroyers would come through the water and the marines would go up Mount Suribachi and the airplanes would fly by and I would cry. Here's an announcement. Jerry Weiss, a family emergency. Come and pick up your mother-in-law at the Hotel Sofitel. That's J. Weiss. And when I was finished crying about all the Star Spangled Banner I'd go upstairs and wet the bed and that was it.
Well, as anybody who's ever been married can tell you while all this was going on Mrs. O. was not entirely silent.
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From time to time she would have the temerity to suggest that there was something radically wrong with the way I drank. But I would pay no attention to her. Why should I? First of all, she's a woman and women don't know anything. And secondly, she is not an attorney and I told her that. And then we would have the argument and I'd say, now wait a minute, wait, wait. I don't drink that much. I don't even drink as much as my mother.
And she would say, nobody drinks as much as my mother. And I'd be right out the door, you know. Well, this drove her wacky and she ended up at her doctor who, as you might imagine is an obstetrician. And he could find nothing the matter with her until she told him that she lived with a drunk. And this explained her condition to him and so he sent her home to me with a message. And I used to sit in this room, in this house.
It was a nice room. It was a den and it was very nice. And we don't live in that house anymore. We childrened ourselves out of that house. That is a polite expression of how we came to move from that home. Anyhow, and it's… You going to stay with me or what? You got ahead before, now you get behind me, it's no good. Stay right with me, I'm going faster now, anyhow. And in this room, on the wall of this room I had erected a shrine.
Now this shrine was not to any saint that you ever heard of, this shrine was to me. And there were pictures of the great and the near great and there were diplomas and proclamations and plaques and certificates and all the stuff I'd collected for many, many years and letters, you know, Dear Ray, Love Jack, one of those and they'd be hanging up there and I'd watch the television with one eye and I would drink and they'd put on a commercial and I'd look out the wall and I'd think this is terrific.
Well, Miss O. came to pay a visit to the shrine this evening and the message that she brought me was that her doctor the obstetrician, had diagnosed her husband, the professor, as an alcoholic. I was outraged to hear this and I rose and began one of my usual jury harangues and the first point I made was a good one I took a very stern and dim view of a doctor who would diagnose a patient without having seen him I was against that practice and then I went into high gear and I asked Miss O. a question to which she has not yet discovered the answer I asked her what kind of a man became an obstetrician in the first place Huh? Huh?
Huh? And at this point the conversation was coming downhill at a terrible rate and then it happened. I don't know how this happened I can only tell you what happened I cannot explain to you how this happened I can explain many, many other things to you and I probably will in the second or third hour of this terrific talk that I'm in but I don't know how this happened After all of this confusion and yelling and noise I suddenly admitted to Miss O. for the first time I had ever admitted to anyone that there was at least the possibility that I drank too much sometimes This was a very serious tactical error because three days later I found myself a prisoner in a mental institution in Stanford, Connecticut and I was only there a matter of moments when I discovered a very serious architectural deficiency in that building There was no doorknob on my side of the door They had sandbagged the old professor and I was once again overcome with feelings of outrage and self-pity because in addition to these terrible circumstances in which I found myself, an innocent person it was also the occasion of my thirty-fifth birthday and it was the occasion of my thirty-fifth birthday and it was also the occasion of my thirty-fifth birthday I mentioned this to a man in a white coat who was passing by, and I very carefully explained
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to him that on that very day, I had attained age 35, and therefore, under the Constitution of the United States of America, was eligible for the office of President. He urged me not to plan any campaign. He said there were two other Presidents in residence, Washington and Jefferson were there. This was no ordinary dryout joint, this is a very fancy rattle box, as befitted a man of my position. And he went away and he left me, and then, of course, I did all of those wonderful, warm, happy, interesting things that alcoholics do when they withdraw from alcohol.
I shook, I sweat, I did everything wonderful that you can think about, and I finally came up for air after the first week or so, and I was then visited by the staff of the hospital, and they, of course, were psychiatrists, and the first one in to see me was the head of the hospital, and I would have expected no one less. And he fixed his cool, professional glance upon me, and he asked me that question that so many people insist on asking alcoholics.
It's such a brilliant line of inquiry. He said, tell me, Professor, why do you drink so much? So I told him. I told him about my wealthy parents. I told him that Dadar and Mumsy used to travel a lot, and I had been left in the hands of cruel servants who were black, and I had become insecure and turned toward alcoholics. And he was very sympathetic, said I'd come to the right place. Then he left, and about an hour later, one of his colleagues came in and asked me the same question, so I told him.
After all, one doesn't lie to a professional. I told him of my impoverished youth. I told him of the beatings I received at the hands of my drunken mother. I even told him about the time my sister Marie stole my rubber duck when I was three years of age. He told me that help was at hand. He said it might take a long time, said it might be a little expensive, but he said with his help, and with the help of medical science, one day I would drink safely again.
And I said, thank you, Doctor. He was my kind of a doctor, that doctor. And the last psychiatrist that came in to see me, and the last psychiatrist I have ever seen, with the exception of one I drive to meetings now from time to time. This last one was a gentleman of dubious medical qualifications and a pronounced Middle European accent. And he was fascinated by two things. One was my professorial status, and the other was the fact that I was wearing sneakers in January.
We had a long discussion about the footwear. He found something significant there that had escaped me for many years. And he finally popped the question, and I told him, I gave him a sexual aberration that drove him out of the room. He thought he'd been given a great degenerate to work with, and perhaps he had. Well, I wasn't as smart as I wanted everybody to think, because they had a staff meeting, and they discussed the fat guy in 102.
And they came to the conclusion that there was a fraud in their hospital. And so they sent for poor Mrs. O., and Mrs. O. had to come up through the snow and the ice. And I was brought into a room quite as large as this, and Mrs. O. was in the middle of it hysterical. And she told me that I was in grave danger of being expelled from a mental institution. And I said, let's go. But she prevailed upon me to stay.
She was determined that I would become sober if it took the last dime her father ever made. And it almost did. Well, I went back to where I was staying, and I was engaged in a Monopoly game with
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three other gentlemen who were there. They were not alcoholics, they were just there. We had this great Monopoly game going, and one of them was under the impression that I was his real estate broker. Now, if you know anything of the game of Monopoly, and some nut thinks you're his real estate broker, you do very, very well. I had the boardwalk, number of hotels. I was doing great. And I was into about the third day of the Monopoly marathon, when I was told I had another visitor, and I didn't know who this would be, so I went in my room and I waited.
And through the door of that room came this very imposing-looking guy, and he told me that he was from the Darien, Connecticut group of Alcoholics Anonymous, and at the hospital had asked him to come speak to me of our program. And I said to him, Alcoholics Anonymous, what, are you out of your mind? And I started, and he told me to shut up. I figured he had not been properly briefed. I thought they'd forgotten to tell him who it was he was speaking with.
So I continued to speak. He told me to sit down, and to shut up, and to listen to him. Well, he was an imposing-looking guy, and I was not a well person. So, for the first time in 35 years, I sat down, and this man, Page, began to explain to me, as I have been trying to indicate to you, what his life had been like, how he had come to Alcoholics Anonymous, and how things had been for him since. And he asked me if I would like to go with him to meetings.
And I said, you mean outside to meetings? He said, outside. I said, I'll go. Besides that, he gave me matches. Nobody else had allowed me to have any matches. So that's how it began with me. Page drove me all over the snow and the ice, and I came back home after a month or so, and began to attend locally, and I don't remember so much of all of that. I was too new, and too nervous, and too afraid, and too everything, and the hospital had turned me loose with a large jar of those pills that they insist on giving alcoholics.
And I walked around, and my head buzzed a lot. But I know myself fairly well. I figured I would come to Alcoholics Anonymous. You would recognize me as a superior person. You would elect me your president. I was always president when I joined something. I would serve a term as your president. You would give me a plaque. I would put it on the wall of the shrine, onward and upward, another wonderful chapter written in an already fascinating life.
Well, as it happened, and this should come as no surprise to you, although it was a terrible shock to me, I found myself some ten months later very, very drunk. And of course, this time I was drunk with a great difference, because I had turned away from the great power that is in this program. And I was to stay drunk for a period of time. And I will not bring you through it, because it just takes too long, and it gives me the willies even now.
But let me tell you, it was without question the worst period of my life. It was murder. It was pure and simple murder. I would drink a week and then not drink a month. I would drink a month and then I wouldn't drink a week. I would drink and come to these meetings. I would come to these meetings and then I would drink. I never knew at the beginning of a day where I would be at the end of the day. I never knew whether I would be drinking or not drinking.
I never knew where I would wind up when I was finished drinking. And so I continued to drink. And things began to happen to me in this period of time that had never happened to me before. And I do not speak to you now of things that happened to me in this period of time that I no longer consider to be significant. I do not speak to you now of the fact that I was dismissed from the faculty and fired
[00:40:01]
as a tenured professor of law. I do not speak to you of the fact that I was in serious, and I mean very serious, personal, professional and financial difficulties. I do not even speak to you of the fact that I had lost the affection of all those who were around me. All of this happened to me in this period of time, but that is not what I am speaking to you about. What happened to me then, I see now, was that there was in my case, and perhaps in yours, a terrible, terrible wasting of my spirit.
My spirit, that thing that separates me from my cat and separates me even from each of you, that spirit which gives to this particular form whatever individuality, whatever personality it might have. And this was a spirit which once had burned in me so bright, and it was now for all practical purposes extinguished. And I knew it, and there wasn't anything that I could do about it, and so I continued to drink.
And it wasn't as though I didn't know about drinking. I knew about drinking. I had a memory. I remembered the neighborhood. I remembered my family. I had been to the funerals. I had seen what happened to people that drank like I did, and there just wasn't anything that I could do. I had been here, and this didn't work for me, and by this time I'd been everywhere else. I'd been through the drying out places and the doctors.
I'd been through the jobs and the finances. I'd been through my friends and my money and their money, and I had been through all of the help that was available, and everywhere I turned, it was always the same thing. And so I knew that there was no hope for me. And then one day, my time came. My time came one day. My time came. This is simply my opinion, but I say to you that there is a time for all of us, and there is a time for each of us.
I say to you that there is a line somewhere beyond which we simply are not permitted to cross, and I say that there is a point somewhere below which we simply are not permitted to sink, and I say to you that there is a level of pain somewhere beyond which no human is required to endure. I don't know where this line is for you. I can only tell you what happened to me. This is a very individual and personal thing, and we must all come to it in our own way and in our own time.
And for some, it may be death, and that's the way it was for my brother Billy. I received a phone call one night from the Veterans Hospital at Fort Snelling, and they told me that my brother had died of alcoholism in the Veterans Hospital at Fort Snelling, where he had been taken from the skid row of Minneapolis. And my brother Billy died because he had reached that point. And my brother Billy doesn't drink anymore.
And so this morning, And so this morning, with my friend Marvin Spooner, I went out there. And I thought,
[00:45:04]
but for the grace of God. Now for other people, it can be something very trivial. You don't have to die. But the line is there somewhere. And I came to it one day that wasn't much different from many other days. I was in my office. I was about three, four days away from a drink. I was thirsty. I thought I better get a drink. I thought I would have a drink. I knew it would help. Instead of doing that, I did something I had not done before. I called a longtime friend of mine and a longtime member of this program. And his name is John. And he is my sponsor. And I asked him if he'd come over. And of course he came over. And he came into that room and he looked so good. And I felt so bad. And I asked him what I would have to do to be as successful as he was in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And John gave me that look he has. And he said, don't drink. Go to the meetings. And I said, you see, John, you really don't understand. I said, the real problem is this place where I'm working. This is no place for a lawyer or my statue, John. And he said, yeah, well, don't drink. You go to meetings. You'll be all right. And I said, well, at home, it's I can't go back there. You know the trouble up there, John. Oh, he said, sure, but don't drink. And you go to the meetings. You'll be fine. And I said, John, let me just tell you about Bankers Trust. I'm having a terrible problem with the bank, John. And he said, well, don't drink. And you go to the meetings. And I sensed that there was no dialogue there.
And so did John. Of course, he made a few phone calls and he said, come on, Raymond, you're not doing very much anyhow. And he took me up to Grand Central and he stuck me on a train for Larchmont. It's about a 40-minute ride. Halfway up, I reconsidered. What did I call him for? Don't drink, huh? Don't drink my ass, don't drink. Wait till this train stops. And that was my attitude when I got off the train and standing on the platform of the Larchmont station was my mailman, a guy named Al, who was then chairman of the world-famous Memorial Group. And Al said, get in the car. And I said, get out of here, Al. I don't hang around with mailmen. And he said, some guy named John called me about you. Get in. So I got in Al's car and I said, Al, I'm in a lot of trouble, Al. And Al said, well, don't drink and you go to meetings. And Al took me for a ride and we had some coffee and he came back to the house and he took me to the Memorial Group that night.
And I didn't drink that day. And I haven't had a drink since. And it was the day before Thanksgiving in 1965. Thank you for that one. And I have that day because two members of our fellowship were so filled with the gratitude of our fellowship that they took what God sent that day, the drunken, dishonest, arrogant man. And because they were grateful for what they had received, they gave me a day. And it is, I hope, that same sense of gratitude that allows me to be at the Gulf Estate this evening. Because like Al, like John, and like each one of you, I have a great debt to pay. And this is one of the ways that
[00:50:01]
I do it. And after I had that day, I had other days. And I would see John every day. And I'd see Al every night. And I'd get my instructions. And after I'd been around for a few months, one day John said to me, you know, Raymond, he said, you're not so bad. You're a pretty good fellow. You hang out good. You don't drink. You're going to the meetings. He said, you know, there is a great deal more to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous besides not drinking. He said, it's time for you to learn something of the program. He said, it's time for you to read the book. And because I'm the way I am, I said, oh, John, what are you kidding me? I read the book. Rarely have we seen anyone fail or thoroughly. And John gave me that special look that sponsors have. You know that look? That long time members of AA reserve for smart ass people. John let me have it. And he said, read it again. And I said, yes, John. Because by that time my sponsor had taken me to the point where I hope your sponsor has taken you. Well, no matter what he said, ultimately I would say yes, John. So I began to read again the book and Alcoholics Anonymous. And I was appalled at my initial ignorance. I did not know or understand then, as I understand now, that at the time the book was written, a hundred or so men and women had become sober. I did not then understand or appreciate that years had passed between the meeting of Bill and Bob and the publication of the book, as Dave told us about this morning. I did not understand that the steps that are contained in the fifth chapter of that book were steps literally taken by these men and these women as they had become sober. I thought when first I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, that if I said to you that my name was Ray O. and that I was an alcoholic, I was doing something about the first step of this program. Of course that's my name, and I'm an alcoholic. But the men and the women who founded this program did a great deal more than simply identify themselves as alcoholics. They admitted that they were powerless over alcohol, that their lives had become unmanageable. And their lives had become unmanageable because they were powerless over alcohol. They were powerless.
They had no power. They were without power. It says in our book that the dilemma of the alcoholic is his lack of power. He has no power. He is powerless. But they didn't drink, and time began to pass for them. And time has passed for me. And time has passed for this remarkable roundup. And if you come here new, time will pass for you. And time has a wonderful way of passing in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. It passes one day at a time. And somewhere after this succession of days, these men and these women came to believe that there was a power greater than their own. And they believed that that power could restore them to sanity. And this was not just a casual observation that they made, or an offhand reference that they shared. They believed this. They really believed this was part of them. This was vital to them. They believed that a power greater than their own could restore them to sanity. And as they believe, I believe. And so firm and so true and so real was this belief that they were able to make a decision. And they decided to turn over their will and their lives to the care of this power that they had come to believe in, this God of their understanding. And they were very, very bright. Because at
[00:55:04]
a time in the history of this country when no one else had this notion, they conceived alcoholism to be a disease. They conceived it to be a disease that was physical and mental and spiritual. A disease of the body and of the mind and of the spirit. And when they stopped drinking, they found that their bodies responded quickly. And when the time had passed had come to believe in this power greater than their own, they began a mental recovery.
It was slower than the physical recovery, but they could notice it. It was perceptible. And when they made that decision, when they made that decision, well, to make a decision to turn over your life, that wasn't so much. They had already admitted that their lives were unmanageable. But when they made the decision to turn over the will, that was the thing. The alcoholic will, that thing, that was the thing that had me in all of that trouble for all of those years. I was, and perhaps I am, what the book describes, an extreme example of self-will run riot. But when they were able to make that decision, when they were finally able to surrender, when they truly were able to let go and to let God, they began not only a spiritual recovery, but they lay down the basis for a spiritual way of life to which you and I are heir. They left that to us. They gave that to us.
And they were smart enough to know, too, that it wasn't enough for them to simply stop drinking and start praying. A lot of people have tried that. It doesn't seem to work. They knew that if they were to be sober, if they were to be successful, somehow they would change. And in order to affect this change in them, they began a searching and a fearless moral inventory of themselves. They could be searching because by now they were relatively clear. They could be fearless because they had made a decision to turn over their life to the care of this power that they had come to believe in, this God of their understanding.
Imagine an alcoholic without fear. That's impossible. It embarrasses me to tell you that the ruling emotion of my life when I drank was fear. For all of those years, the boy professor and the great man was afraid most of the time. But this program helps with that. And when they were finished with their inventory, so great was the love and the affection of these people, one for the other, that they were able to take this inventory to someone else and to share it with them. And it was a great help for me to be able to bring my inventory to John, my sponsor. I was the kind of a guy that spent an awful lot of time in bars, making sure that everybody knew who I was. And I was very, very careful that no one ever knew what I was. It was a great relief for me to bring this to my sponsor and get his help with it. And then they developed an attitude which came hard for me. They became entirely ready to have God remove all of their defects of character. And with great logic, they went to this power that they had come to believe in, and they humbly asked that God to remove their shortcomings. And it began to work for them. And no matter what else is ever said or written or even thought about this fellowship of yours and mine, the one thing upon which the world would have to agree unanimously is that it works. It certainly works. And they were smart enough, too, to know that they had not come here alone.
They knew that in their lives, as in mine, there was a terrible amount of wreckage. And so they wrote a list of everyone they had ever harmed. on the list. And they didn't just talk about it, they went out and they did it. And you
[01:00:00]
may remember it describes in A Comes of Age and in our book, Dr. Bob's first day, when he had a beer in the morning and went to work and he came back that night and he was late. Bill asked him where he had been and he said he had been driving around Akron, Ohio, on his old Buick, mending fences. That's an old Vermont expression. He was making amends the first day that he began to stop drinking. And I don't think we have to wait too long, you and I, before we do everything that's required of us by this program. And by this time these were fairly sober people. And our book says that at this time they had been restored to sanity. And they knew that what had been given to them was something very, very precious. And so they resolved that they would maintain it. And so they continued to take personal inventory. I think they did it on a daily basis. They knew they could not afford the luxury of a resentment. They knew they could not be hateful or resentful.
They knew that if they were hateful, they would drink. And if they drank, they would die. It was simple for them. And so when they were wrong, they promptly admitted that they were wrong. And so great, so true, was their reliance upon this power greater than their own. But they resolved that they would improve their conscious contact with that power. And they did that by prayer and by meditation. They meditated. They gave thought to their condition. They considered who they were and what they were. And they engaged in a very fine and a very excellent form of meditation. It is a form of meditation in which you are now engaged. They listened. They listened on the odd chance that this power that they believed in would speak to them. And this power that they believed in did speak to them in their groups, at their meetings. And they prayed, brothers. They prayed. And no one needs a sermon from me on the value of prayer. When they prayed, they prayed only for knowledge of God's will for them and the power to carry it out. And when they prayed, they wrote for us later in the twelve and twelve, that a great sense of belonging came to them. The sense of belonging that Johnny spoke about and Dick spoke about last night. It says that a great sense of belonging came to them. They were no longer lost or frightened or purposeless.
That despite all of the evidence to the contrary in a seemingly hostile world, they knew that a loving God watched over them. And they knew that when they turned to him, all would be well for them here and hereafter. And a little while later, they came upon another prayer and they thought it would help them. And so they appropriated it. And this time they prayed only for themselves. And the thing they asked for was peace of mind. And so they prayed that God would grant them the serenity to accept the things they could not change. And they did change. Something happened to them.
Something has happened to me. Something happens to everyone who comes here and puts this program into their lives. There was a great change in these men and women. There was a great difference between being drunk and being sober. There had been a great conversion of their values and a great
[01:05:03]
substitution of their standards. And this difference in them, the difference between being drunk and being sober, they termed a spiritual awakening. And they had that spiritual awakening as the result of these steps. And these were the men and the women who at the beginning of this process had admitted that they were helpless and hopeless and powerless. These were the ones that had no power. But having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, they found that they held in their hands and in their hearts and in our program one of the greatest sources of spiritual power that the world has ever seen. They actually had the power to arrest the disease of alcoholism.
They actually had the power to save life. And what they were using was the great power of example of one drunk for another. And armed with that power, and having had that kind of a spiritual awakening, they began to carry the message traditionally, spiritually, and anonymously, so that they always did, as your theme suggests, place principles above personalities. And they carried that message so well that you and I have come together on a night in July of 1978 in the town of Bloomington, Minnesota. And that, my dear, dear brothers, is a long, long way from Akron, Ohio.
And they knew. They knew what my sponsor knew. They knew what my friend Lorne Nelson and Marv Spooner know. That there is a great deal more here in our program besides a simple device to keep me from drinking like a pig. They knew that what had been given to them was an entirely new way of living. And in order to enjoy this new way of living, they resolved that they would practice the principles of this program in all their affairs.
And so, where they had been, as I always was, very dishonest, they tried to be honest. Where they had been, as I habitually was arrogant, they tried not to be so arrogant. Happily for you and for me, they said that this was not a program of spiritual perfection. It was a program of spiritual progress. And my sponsor has instructed me, and so I believe, that I can progress in this program if I don't drink and go to the meetings.
I could keep you for many, many more minutes and tell you all of the good things that have come into my life, simply and wholly and solely, because I am a member of the world-famous Mimeronic Group. But Chuck is showing me signs that I am to stop speaking, and it is time to stop anyhow. If you have a good wish for me, and I'm sure that you do,
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please be assured that anything that you might wish for me has already happened in my life. Solely, simply, and wholly, because I am a member of this fellowship. I am one of the members of the fellowship who is privileged to travel extensively around trailing this story behind me. And everywhere I go, I say about the same thing. And every time I leave, I leave the same way. And I leave by reminding you of a pamphlet in AA that is dear to me.
Indeed, I hope that anything I've said to you about our program tonight comes from somewhere in our material. I hope truly that there is no original O'Keeffe in this little talk. And in that pamphlet, A Member's View of Alcoholics Anonymous, the author at the end takes a biblical turn. And he reminds us of the time when John the Baptist was once again languishing in one of Herod's prisons. And John sent two of his friends to inquire of his cousin Jesus as to whether or not he was the Messiah. And these two men walked with the Lord a while, and they finally stopped and asked him the question. And they said to him, Are you the Messiah? Are you the one that we've been waiting for, or should we wait for another? The Lord didn't answer that question directly, but he said to these two men, Go back to John, and tell John only what you have seen, and only what you have heard. And tell John that the lame walk in the blind seat, and the sick are made well. And tell John that the poor have the gospel brought to them. I was taught in my early training that the word poor in that context could mean poor in spirit. And everyone knows that the word gospel simply means good news. And so, my brothers here at Gulf Estate, if you will accept a report from me, based upon my observations in Alcoholics Anonymous, I will tell you only what I have seen and only what I have heard. And based upon that observation, it seems to me that the lame do walk, and the blind do see.
And most certainly, the sick are made well. And I have seen over and over and over again, through the longest day and into the darkest night, the good news of our program brought to the alcoholic who still suffers, the poor in spirit. Thank you so much.