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Source: DICOBE-00254 – Dave C – MISSISSIPPI STATE CONV – 1978-06-09.mp3 File: dicobe-00254-dave-c-mississippi-state-conv-1978-06-09.mp3 Duration: 00:57:20
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It's a real pleasure for me to present to you Dave C. from North Carolina. Let's give him a big round of applause. Thank you, Frank. Someone asked me as I was standing beside the door when all this activity was going on, whether I was nervous. I said, yes, I am. He said, well, you don't look like it. I said, well, I'm really not nervous. I said, I mean, a thought just came to me when he was mentioning about nature and taking his calls.
Since I've been in this room, I've drank three glasses of water and two cups of coffee. That makes you think a little. The committee, I'd like to thank them for inviting me down here this weekend to be a part of this thing. It's true I was here in 1969, and it's nice to be asked back. A while ago, before you opened up the barn door there, it looked like we had a hell of a crowd in here, and then you opened the door and it looked like there was a little ego involved in this thing.
And you stand up here and say, well, where the hell did everybody go? And you start thinking about things like that. But I'm glad to be here. And I'm finally glad that he left the impression with you that I was a hell of a chairman, but he didn't say anything about me speaking. I reckon somebody said, well, I hope he gets up and starts talking and gets it over with. That's what I like to do. But after all the preliminaries, it's nice to know that I am the only speaker tonight on this program.
I get hung up on that a lot. You know, you've been to some of these things where they have two and three and people get to squirming. It reminds me of a story I've told many times, and I keep telling it, about a convention that Harriet had many years ago back in North Carolina, so I was told. And they had one of these long-winded speakers, and there were some of them around. And he got to going and he talked on the twelve steps, and after about an hour he got into the twelve traditions, and then in the third hour he got into the three legacies.
And lo and behold, people began to leave, and finally all of them had left except one man, and he kept sitting down on the front row, and the speaker happened to notice him. And he got his curiosity up, and so he wound up his talk. After three hours and a half, he ran down from the podium and grabbed the man by the hand and said, I want to ask you one question. He said, Everybody left but you. Why did you stay? He said, Hell, I'm the next speaker.
You know what I'm talking about, don't you? But I'm an alcoholic, and my name is Dave Cook. Hi, everybody. And I'm a member of the Big Book Group in Raleigh, North Carolina, which I think is the finest group in the whole wide world. And if you don't think the same of your home group, I suggest maybe you need to find another group. When I came into AA, I had a lot of trouble with groups. After a few days and a few people talking to me, I come to find out it wasn't the group, it was usually me.
But by God's grace and because this program worked for me and through the help of an understanding sponsor, through the love of a loving wife that I found as a result of this program, and through the help of many people just like you, I haven't found it necessary to take a drink or any tablets since the day I've come to Alcoholics and Honors. And that was September 12, 1957. I don't give my sobriety date because I do it in Texas. I give it for two reasons, two reasons only.
The first reason is the second meeting I ever attended in Alcoholics and Honors was in the old Central Group in Roanoke, Virginia, one of these discussion meetings. And I had 13 or 14 wicker chairs sitting in a circle, and people began to talk and it seemed like everybody had a problem. And this is my second day of sobriety. And I began to wonder what I was going to say when it got to me, no different from anybody else that walks into this program.
And finally it got to me, and the man who was to become my first sponsor spoke up and told me what to say. He said, That's all you are qualified to do. And as a matter of fact, after the meeting that night, he told me that's all I was going to be qualified to do for the next year, was to give my name and sobriety date. And the second reason is in that old group in Roanoke, Virginia, where I came of age, they had a saying in that group that when you got behind the podium in that group, if you didn't give your sobriety date, you usually didn't have one. So I've been given mine ever since.
I received a lot of benefits from this program, just like you. A lot of benefits that I call marginal benefits, such as peace of mind, a little security, a lot of happiness, some heartaches along the way.
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But any time I talk about marginal benefits, I have to think of certain basics that I've received. And the basic benefit that I've received from this program, beyond my sobriety, the sobriety that had to come first, the basic benefit that I've received is my sanity. And today, as a senior alcoholic, I find that I don't have to run anymore, I don't have to lie anymore, I don't have to cheat or steal anymore. And most important of all, I do not have to sober up anymore.
And I didn't know that when I came here. The program tells me that I don't have to sober up anymore. I don't know when I became an alcoholic. I don't know why. And I'm not concerned about it today. The fact is that I am one. I haven't made the program. Maybe, just maybe, the day I die, and you bear with me, maybe you can say then if I'm still sobering up and doing what I'm supposed to do as these principles tell me, maybe you can say then that Dave's made the program. I don't think I have. I'm working at it. I'm working at it.
I got the alcoholics and alums the hard way, and you don't have to do it the way I did. I can't recall my first drink or my first drunk. I remember I was about 16 when I started enjoying booze. I knew what booze could do to a grown man because I'd seen what happened to my father. I led to a divorce in my home when I was 12 years of age. My mother was able to clothe me and feed me and give me an education. And I can remember as a kid promising my mother that I'd never be like my daddy. I'd never be like my daddy.
And I went on off to school, and I was in an environment where the fellows a lot older than I was had just came back from World War II and even had a drink. And this is where my drinking began when I was a freshman in college, 16. And I enjoyed it for a while. Oh, I had some problems in the beginning. Started out on that salsa, beer, and then it got to the hard stuff. And I had to go through some of those gagging exercises that we do.
And I used to hear these fellows talk about the pleasure that comes from drinking, and I didn't know exactly what they were talking about. Because I was always throwing up a lot, you know, getting that stuff down. And one night I asked one of the fellows, I said, when does the pleasure come that you speak of? And I've never forgotten what he said. He said, Dave, if you recall, there's a moment in between from the time you throw up and when you take the drink. That's when the pleasure comes.
I had a lot of fun in college drinking. I never got into serious trouble. I didn't know what a hangover was. But maybe, just maybe, my alcoholic behavior started when I was a senior in college. I had studied engineering. I was there on a partial basketball scholarship. And because of the fact of my basketball ability, I was offered a job coaching high school basketball when I graduated from college. I looked back at my alcoholism, and somehow or another, to me, coaching at that time, as I look back at myself, it seems to me that there was a lot of glory in it, and this was good for my environment.
And so I went to coaching high school basketball and teaching high school when I was twenty years of age, down in northeastern North Carolina. Had a lot of success in it for a few years. And gradually I can look back now, all this is hindsight, I can look back now and see how things begin to change for me and my drinking pattern. I began to meet my former classmates at various cities throughout the state on various weekends, and we'd have these parties, and they were weekend drunks. And then the trouble did come, when I really got into the bottle. I guess my last five years of drinking, what I call squirrel-cage drinking, everything happened to me that can happen to a young man.
And I'm very fortunate in the fact, and this is no reflection on the older member that comes into AA, I was very fortunate to find an alcoholic from almost the age of twenty-nine, and I'm very grateful for that today. And now we have them coming in in their teens. But I could never see myself as I really was, even back then. I didn't think I had a problem with drinking. All the problems began to be associated with the things that I was doing. I was getting into a lot of trouble. I wasn't taking care of my responsibilities.
School officials began to talk to me. I found the morning drink after about four years of teaching school. It got to the point where I had to go to school on an influence. It got to the point that I was having a hell of a problem, and everybody in the community knew it except me. And then they began to talk to you about it, and want to do something about it. And you resented, and you argued with them.
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And then they put you on probation. If you don't do certain things, you're going to be fired. And eventually I was fired. But prior to this, I began to try to get people off my back. You know, the alcoholic, it says in our book, not only is alcohol cunning and baffling and powerful, but the alcoholic is, too, and is alcoholism. Not many dumb bunnies become alcoholics. We work at it, and you've got to be smart to do the things we did to get here, as far as I'm concerned.
And I knew what he meant in a sense, but in application I really didn't. And it wasn't until I got into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous that I knew what willpower was. Willpower was the thing that I did to drink like I did. And my second sponsor explained that to me one time. As a matter of fact, we went on a press-step call one time, and this young boy's mother was standing up, preaching to him and giving him a good sermon, and said, If you use some damn willpower, you'll be all right. And my sponsor said, Madam, have you ever tried willpower on diarrhea? Now you can begin to touch.
You know, it's about the same thing. There's no such thing as willpower in alcoholism, as far as I'm concerned. It didn't work for me. But I began to get people off my back by getting married. And I, of course, like a nice girl, short-lived, I omit that two-week romance, and we got married. And I really thought that they'd take notice of this. Well, they did take notice of this, because it began to be a mistake from the very beginning.
We lived together a year and a half under all false pretenses. Everybody in the community knew that I was community drunk by a man except she and I. That's the truth. This marriage was a mistake, and because of the fact that I'm an upstanding citizen in the community and a schoolteacher and a coach, we wouldn't seek a divorce because of the embarrassment involved. And hell, I've been to jail three times by now for bad checks. And I know none of you have ever had any problem with that. For a long, long time in my early career, my good mother, when she was able to do it, she took care of these things for me, these bad checks, until the bank was kind of slow sometimes and people began to come to see me about these things.
I can remember that deputy sheriff coming to the schoolhouse so many times to see me about this paper. Oh, the thought was just like it was yesterday. I can remember when I used to go outside on the schoolground. At that time they all drove these black clumps, and they always had a buggy-whipped aerial. A buggy-whipped aerial always, to me, seemed like a sign of authority, and it always was waving after it stopped. I mean, it just kept on waving.
And as I'd go out to the car, the students began to look out the window, and some of the teachers would also. And my thoughts at that time were, well, they don't know it, but I'm on the co-agent for the sheriff's department. And that's what I was thinking even then. I wanted to be with somebody else most of the time, and I usually wanted to be doing something else most of the time. Never satisfied. I eventually got fired from the school on account of my drinking, and I got into a lot of trouble. I kept moving east in my home state, and if you keep moving east, you move to the big body of water.
And then in desperation, after I left this school, a school hired me. It was the rock bottom of schools. That's the truth. It was the rock bottom, but you know the alcoholic history. I'm there for accreditation. That's the only reason they hired me, to see that the school was accredited. And God, I look back now, and I can't imagine a school board hiring me, but they did. Me, but they did, and I was able to last this job for six months, six months, and I was
[00:15:05]
there in my six and a half years as long as I was able to last in school teaching and coaching Bob, and all the glory I'd had and success I'd had in coaching had gone down, and I was living in a city twelve miles from this school where I was teaching, and a wife had long since gone, living by myself, and my mother was supporting me part of the time. By now I'd been to several drying-out places trying to find an answer in the summertime, you know, to get off this stuff, and never found an answer. And one day at school a principal just asked me for the keys. Hell, he didn't even call me in his office, he just stopped me in the hall and said, You're through, we want the keys. And I've never forgotten that day, and I didn't cry, and that's unusual at that time. I didn't cry, I didn't give no argument, and I handed them the keys. And I've often looked back at this moment in my alcoholism, and I really believe from what I know today about alcoholism, I think by now I had crossed this invisible line. When I left school that day, to go back supposedly to the place I stayed, because my day at that time seemed like to me it was something like this. I had to get up at four or five o'clock in the morning and drink enough booze to stop shaking. At that time I had it, too. To stop shaking so I could get my clothes on, you know, get gussied up to go to school, and the shakes had stopped. And invariably about twelve they'd come back, and I usually had something hidden in the gymnasium or the automobile where I could take a few shots to stop the shakes, and pray for three o'clock when I knew I could leave, and go to the beer joints and drink beer and go by the store and buy enough booze to go home and get stoned to the ears again. And that's what went on that last six and a half months at this particular school. And the day I left that school to go home, I didn't get home. I don't know where I went for a period of two and a half weeks. I had experienced blackouts before, but never a prolonged blackout. But this was the first time that I ever woke up in jail and somebody was talking to me. I woke up in jail in the city where I was living, down in eastern Carolina. A man began to talk to me. I didn't know where I'd been. I later found out this man was a county health doctor.
He said, Son, your mother has come down here and straightened out all this mess, and we're going to send you to a place where they can cure you. Now, I knew what he meant by the mess, because I'd been in these several times and she'd always made arrangements. But when he said, cure me, I knew I was weak, run down, hadn't eaten in a long time, but never the drinking. Well, the next day I found out where I was going for the cure. In my home state of North Carolina, the state in St. Anselm is called Dick's Hill. I've always said that I, too, found my thrill on Dick's Hill. That's where I went for the cure. Twenty-seven years of age. When I got there, I didn't know what I was doing there. The first couple of days they put me in a place they called the Inebriate Ward, and I didn't know what that meant. I really didn't. The Inebriate Ward, and the only thing I remember about that, I just that environment, too. People chased squirrels. So I became a squirrel chaser as a matter of a day, and I began to chase squirrels. A few days later they put me in a building with the rest of the men alcoholics, I later found out, where I was to go many, many times.
The first few days down there they put me down in what they called Skid Row, down in the basement of the building in a paddock cell where they took my clothes away from me and let me have my running fits. Days later when I got through having my running fits, they gave my clothes back to me. I was allowed to do the only thing I could do for the next thirty-some-odd days, walk up and down a corridor day in and day out, wondering what in the hell I was doing there. I didn't understand what I was doing there, because I began to look around me and I didn't see anybody there my age. The men were a lot older than I was, and I didn't understand it. Somebody had made a mistake. In the beginning I took the intelligence route, you know, we always smarten up. I've never known many people in A.A. that I've worked with and talked with that at some time didn't want to write a book before they got here or after they got here, or change the book, you know what I mean. But at that time
[00:20:00]
I thought, well, the reason I'm here, I'm here to expose this thing to society. This is it. Write a book on this thing. I could see it in the papers and everything. This was the reason. But one night, I'd been there many, many days, and I was watching these older men play poker. They were using matchsticks for chips, and they began to talk about the reason they were there. And I heard this face, and that's the way I refer to it. I don't know whether he's still in Dixieland, well, I know he's not in Dixieland anymore, whether he's dead or whether he's in A.A., but I heard this face, and I've never forgotten this man's face. I heard this face say, I'm here because I'm an alcoholic. I'm here because I'm an alcoholic. And I heard the word, and I resisted the word, and the only thing that I could think of at that time was, I began to play a game that was to plague me until I got the alcoholic phenomenon. Well, even after I got in A.A., and the only thing that I could think of was my daddy, and I began to play a game that was to just about cause me to die, compared my drinking with my father's drinking. And if the truth was known today, my father died of alcoholism. But if the truth was known, he was a much better man than I ever hoped to be in his drinking. My father lost a family, but he never got kicked out of his profession. He never got kicked out of his profession. He didn't have to be put in Dixieland, and he didn't ever have to be put on the chain gang and put away, because it was his responsibility on account of alcoholism that I did.
And the day came that I had to leave Dixieland, I went back to the only place I could go, and that was back to my mother. She was a man of twenty-seven years of age, of college education, and had been earning a livelihood for several years, and he goes back home and doesn't have a thing. And he doesn't have a problem with booze. And the good doctor at home, our family physician, ignorant of my situation, decided he would help me. He had helped me many times before. I don't know a lot about drugs and pills, but I know a great deal about tablets. And the good doctor, the family doctor, gave me some tablets to help me with my nerves. And I took these tablets, well, not as prescribed, but you know what I did. And I didn't have to drink as long as I took these tablets, for about nine weeks.
And then one night I was with a bunch of fellows that I had been in school with, and they passed a bottle and I took a drink. And I found out something I'd never known before, and that was I couldn't stop on one drink. To make a long story short, I was back in Dixieland just a short time. I went back to Dixieland five times in six months. On account of one fact, as I know it today, I had become an alcoholic. I'd take one drink and could no longer guarantee you my behavior. The last time I went to Dixieland, I went back and when they took me, well, I tried drinking on top of antibiotics, a jug of wine, and it just don't work. I can save some of you some time if you ever want to try it. It don't work. And this is the time they cut me back in an amulet and they put me in the nut part of the bug house instead of the whiskey part. And there is a distinct difference, in case you're interested. And this is the time I found out about straitjackets and being tied down to a bed and how you live better electrically and a lot of other things I'd never known before. And I began to accept my fate that I was going to die in this place, that I was a vegetable and I'd be there. And I can recall a lot of it, but a coincidence, a coincidence.
This is the word you hear in Alcoholics Anonymous even today, a coincidence. A coincidence happened. I was put back in that ward again with those men by some strange coincidence. And I'd been there so much they more or less made me an honorary attendant. I was allowed to work in the kitchen and go get the mail and things like that. And going to get the mail one day, I, well, I don't want to sound dramatic, but I escaped. I ran like hell is what I did.
And two other fellows were with me, and we managed to get out of there. I was in downtown Raleigh, and we were drunk that night. And two weeks later I was back in my hometown and broke into my mother's home. She was off in the hospital up in Richmond, Virginia, with a nervous breakdown, while I was working on her for the cure again. And when they brought
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Mother home, they found me. And I'd been there for two weeks, taking advantage of some of her friends. And that was the day that they got together. And they called me downstairs and they got in the other room and cracked the door just enough that I could hear what they were talking about. And you know how that goes. And they gave me a lot of money and told me to leave that part of the country and not come back. And, God, that was my salvation.
You know, the alcoholic gets green on his hip, all his problems are solved. Well, I didn't have no drinking problem. Dick's Hill was just something in the past. And they gave me that lot of money, and it was enough that I could have gone to the West Coast and lived comfortably for a while. I'm an alcoholic by now. I went four miles to a neighboring town, fell into an old hotel, which later became my paradise, and began to drink and dream. And eventually the money ran out, as it will do. And, of course, the alcoholic always reverts back to his pattern. And I did. I began to write some checks. Just four miles, went over there one day, I bought an outboard motor. I didn't have a boot, but I bought a motor. You know, write a big check, get the change, pick up the motor later. And that's what I did. I went on back to my quarters over in a neighboring town, and those folks had called my mother and told her that my motor was ready. And John Law was there that afternoon, and back to that local jail again in my hometown. Three blocks from my mother's home, nobody came to see me in a period of two weeks. Everybody came in that lockup every night without the next morning except me. And I began to raise a little hell down there.
I didn't understand what I was being charged with. As a matter of fact, I began to raise so much hell one night, I finally got him down there and he said, What do you want? I said, I want my attorney. Who is your attorney? I told him. He said, Talk to him all you want to, he's in the next cell block. And he was. Now, alcoholics and others work in strange ways. And this man, I'll have to say this, he is a member of AA today. As a matter of fact, he's a member of our state legislature in North Carolina. And it worked for him, too. But finally one day they carried me upstairs and I had to stand trial in court of law for something I didn't know I'd done. And I want you to get this scene now. They carry me up there and my sister is the city clerk. And they call my name and she doesn't seem to know who the hell I am. She didn't even bear an eyelash, she just kept right on writing. The city solicitor was my mother's next-door neighbor. And he didn't seem to know who I was either. And they took me on back downstairs and got through with the formalities, and then they took me to another courthouse the next day and I stood trial again for something I didn't know I'd done on a previous drunk.
And the end result was I had to be put away down in an isle of poverty country called the Great Dismal Swamp. On account of one fact, I'd take one drink and could no longer guarantee my behavior. And I'm ashamed of where I had to go. But I believe for me, and it doesn't have to be for you, but for me it had to be this way. I have to accept it anyway. Sure, I'm ashamed of it. But if it took this for me to eventually get to Alcoholics Anonymous, I thank God for it, I really do. And I think it took this for me. And still in this environment, where I got to, and the people that I was with, and they had a name for me. I was the only one in this camp that had an education. But I learned to adjust to this environment. And I existed. And the day came that I had to leave, I didn't want to leave. I really didn't want to leave. I was ashamed. No problem with booze. No problem with booze. And the day I left, they carried me back to my hometown and put me out at the city limits. And I went to the only place I could go again, and that was back to my mother. Close to 29 years of age. And unbeknownst to me, I tried to take my mother's life on the last drunk and didn't know a thing about it, and she was scared of me. And that afternoon, she let me get on the back porch and began to talk to me. And they got together again.
They came over, my two sisters and my brother-in-law came this time. Well, I don't want to get wound up on him, but anyway. Laughter I do want to get wound up on him, but I'm not. I do want to get land up on him, but I'm not. And I left home the following Saturday to go back to this job that I was focused on the following Monday.
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The only way I had to change buses up in Virginia, and outside of what I do, I had to have one drink. The alcohol adds, subtracts, and multiplies kind of funny. I'm going to have one drink, but I'll buy two pints. I guess I was going to give some of the other ladders a drink on the way. You know, I'm just going to have one. And this was the beginning of my last drunk, the only drunk that I really like to talk about, the drunk that I never want to forget because I think if I forget this one, I might have another one coming.
I don't want to forget that last drunk. I don't want to forget what I experienced, the horrors, the hurts, and above all, the loneliness that I experienced on my last drunk. I was able to last for, oh, I got to drinking good in a period of about three days. The fifth day, I got back to the morning drink. In a period of two weeks, I lost a job twice, and they tried to help me, and nobody knew what to do.
My mother found out what had happened in a period of about the third week, and I finally got kicked out of the place I was staying and wound up on the streets. But before I was kicked out of this place, my mother got in touch with me on the telephone, and she gave me the greatest gift she's ever given me since the day I was born. That's when she kicked me out of a life, and she meant it, and I knew she meant it.
And I thank God for the fact that she did today. I know it's the hardest thing that she's ever done in her life is when she kicked me out of her life, and she did. And I wound up on the streets in North Virginia not knowing what to do or where to go, not knowing a soul but one man, one man. One man. That was Fugetown City Schools in North Virginia. I panned him and did the best I could. On Sunday, September 11, 1957, I was in a back alley in downtown Roanoke trying to get a drink to let the band.
And the thought occurred to me that I might just die in that back alley. Another thought occurred to me was that I didn't want to die in that back alley, and I was hurting. And the next thing that happened was, maybe, maybe, maybe this is the drinking that's causing all this. Maybe it's the drinking. Something that I don't understand even to this day, in spite of being sober for a while and working with a lot of people.
And I was the same way. The inability to see myself as I really am in my worst moments, and I wasn't able to do it until I just about was able to die. Coincidence? Coincidence. And that day in that back alley, I prayed to God, I need nothing but somebody please help me. A few hours later, the only man that knew me in that city found me in that back alley. At Sue Tom's City School. Who carried me through his home, tried to help me, didn't know how to help me.
He knew a man that knew a man in A.H. And I didn't know nothing about A.H. And I got in touch with him. And that afternoon that man carried me to Alcoholics and Honest on a Sunday in September 11th. And I was introduced to Alcoholics and Honest. And at that time it was all over the easy budget club. They had a little club down on Virginia, down on Franklin Road. And they had to carry me up the steps.
The fact was I wasn't drunk. And long past that point, you know, I couldn't find that oblivion anymore. I'd gotten to the point that I hurt. I hurt all over. My hair hurt. My toenails hurt. And I was sick and tired of the high cost of living. And that's about what it is. And I was just ready. And they carried me up those steps. Pulled me in. And as I walked in the door, we say we don't look them over.
But by God, you looked me over when I came in. And I don't mean that disrespectful. But it seemed like they kind of got over in a group to the left. And began to shake their head and talk a little. But there was an old gentleman sitting in the right-hand corner. And I never stood behind a podium. I don't mention his name. His name was John Kellogg. He's dead and gone now. But old man John was the man that rang my bell the first day in A.A.
While you were looking me over, he called me and said, I want to tell you something. Put his arm around my shoulder. He said, all you've got to do is listen to these people and do what they tell you to do. And you never have to be alone again. You never have to be alone again. And I knew what that meant. I knew what it meant to be out there again. And I didn't want to go out there again. Not by myself.
Not by myself. Well, I began to shake a little. After about an hour or so, I asked them, you know,
[00:35:04]
could I have a drink? And they said, we don't do it that way. They said, if you get so bad, we're gone. If you're a doctor. And I said, well, how about some tablets? And my God, I thought I'd started a revolution now. Now, tablets was no-no. No tablets. Now, drink some of that coffee. Drink some of that coffee. And God, that was that roti coffee. And you know what I mean. Like a friend of mine says, you know, there's a hell of a lot of people in AA making coffee that ain't got no business doing it.
And that day, that was one of those days, because they said, drink that coffee. Drink that coffee. And I started drinking that mess. And time passed in that afternoon. And it wore on. And then they cut me to my first meeting that night. And I wanted to jump out the window. I don't know what happened, what went on. But I remember the people after the meeting. Complete strangers. And I was a stranger to them coming up to me after the meeting and said, you're in the right place.
We love you, and we understand. And you're going to be all right. And God, I thought they were crazy. You're going to be all right. And that night, it was proved to me that I didn't have to be alone anymore because three men got me a room in the YMCA and stayed with me all night long. Many people have asked me from various times, how did you get sober? Well, I got sober one minute at a time by three men telling me I didn't have to take a drink, that I might be able to make another minute.
And when I had a minute, I had an hour. And they told me, and they talked to me all night. They didn't nurse me. They took turns sitting on top of me once in a while. And God, the sun finally came up the next morning, and old Claude, Claude's dead now, but I'll never forget his words. He said, David, this is all we do in this club, and we try to do it one day at a time. Maybe you can make it today.
And my God, I thought a wink had gone by. Maybe you can do it today. And they carried me back down to that clubhouse that morning, and I was introduced to the man who had become my first sponsor. And this man gave me a part and sat down, and he had that unique ability to talk to me on my level of understanding. And I think that's what you have to do to a drunk. And he told me all about this program and what could happen if I could do certain things, if I'd follow the directions.
And God, I thought it was lying. I thought it was lying. I thought it was lying. He asked me a lot of questions, too. And I can remember every answer I gave him in the beginning was negative. Do you have a job? No. What happened to your job? I told him. Do you have a family? No. So on and so on. Everything was no. And the sum total of the conversation, when he said, it seems to me you ain't doing so hot.
My God, you know, I began to think about it. Well, I was doing so hot. And he told me about the 14 promises that I'd learned in that book. And it was vague, but I remember it today. Those promises have been fulfilled in my life. The only thing that I was promised when I walked in the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous was sobriety. And they said, if you can stay sober, you can have anything in the world you want.
But you've got to stay sober. I didn't believe it in the beginning, but I believe it today. I really do. Well, it wasn't long before I got physically dry and began to move around a little and stop shaking. And I really didn't know what I was doing half the time. And they were leading me around, telling me what to do, where to go. Didn't have a job. I don't know where the money came from in my first six months in AA.
Who paid the rent? I do today. And who puts clothes on them back? And my sponsor found me a place to stay in a boarding house with six other men alcoholics, all members of AA. Some of them had long-term sobriety. Some of them had short-term. And out of those six men, two of them are sober today, two of them are drinking today, and two of them are dead today. I helped burn them. I was kind of going back to the bottle.
And I learned a great deal from those six men. A great deal, huh? Every day I draw a breath of sobriety, I think of those six men. Because we had meetings after meetings. I remember the first bottle of shaving lotion I bought in my sobriety. I thought I had committed a sin. And they took it away from me. And I'd been sober for a week. The first pair of shoes I ever bought in alcoholic phenomena. I'd been sober six months.
Seven of them went with me to buy the damn shoes. Now, you can understand by now that I wasn't such a good case, and they didn't have much hope for me.
[00:40:04]
And there were a lot of them taking bets. But things began to straighten out, and finally I had a lot of them. After I'd been sober a few months, I met my present wife, Sue, whom a few of you know. And this was a gift from God. And this woman had never seen me drink, never seen me drunk. But she'd been through more hell than my first wife did when I was drinking because this woman had seen me try to grow up.
And that's what I'd been trying to do in this program, is grow up. And she was a gift. Coincidence, maybe. You know, AA kind of talked to me one time about going to work. And people in AA, you know, I began to float around there. And I've often said, and I contend, and still contend, I've learned a lot more from people with less education in alcoholic phenomena than the so-called experts. My employment problem was solved by a man with a third-grade education, a sand plant.
His name was Red. We were sitting down at the talk table one night after the meeting, talking about my employment problem. And Red said, Dave, it seems to me that if you studied engineering, that's what you ought to be doing. I'm glad. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. Nobody ever explained it to me that way before. And so, at Red's advice, I went into the engineering profession, what I've studied with the Virginia Highway Department.
Scared to death, scared to death. The day that I was hired, they asked me, could I go to work the next day? I said, no, there'd be three weeks. I've got a lot of business I've got to do. Scared to death. And some of you know what I'm talking about. Oh, God, I look back now. And through this, I got the job by telling the truth. And I've come to know that there is no resistance against the truth. The man asked me, he says, tell me about yourself.
And by God, I told him. And he sat there in complete amazement. And he knew I wasn't lying. And he says, you're hired. The man at the hotel that had $1,800 worth of checks on me in my last drunk day in Long Oak, after I'd been sober three weeks. My sponsor says, you've got to make some amends right now. We first began to talk about these bad checks. He says, we'll take care of those things right away.
Well, hell, I thought AA was going to pay for them. Uh-uh. Just done, buddy. Goes with him down to the hotel and sits across the desk with a man that I owe $1,800 to on bad paper. Now I'm sitting there and I say, I'm going to remember AA and I'm going to get sober and I'm going to try to pay you back this money. And then he says, if you're willing to help yourself, we're willing to help you too. And the third place I went to was the same way.
I never forgot those men. I never forgot those people. They had some faith in me. Well, really what they had faith in was the program of Alcoholics Anonymous because they knew something about it. And I began to grow a little and I got physically dry. It wasn't long before I had a year of sobriety. And I began to let them talk one night. And I've been asked to sit down many times from the podium when I was speaking, in case you're interested, in case any of you are getting tired.
I'm trained to sit down now when somebody says, I ought to help. One of these men in this boarding house had been on a drunk and I'd been sober nine months, I think, and they asked me to talk. Of course, in that group, I was always giving them a lot of trouble. But it was very powerful in that group. If you had an out-of-town speaker, you had to go through them first and they'd meet their approval.
I invited two one time and didn't say a damn word to them. They got upset about it. And they had a special session on when they asked me to talk to approve it. And they laid down some conditions and let me talk. And my first talk in AA was on how not to slip. I know it doesn't hurt a lot, but I gave one, started to give one. It seemed to go on about 20 minutes and I heard somebody say, sit down. And, you know, you don't hear them, but you do.
I got brave and I kept on going. He said, I said, sit down, damn it! And came to the podium and got me by the arm and took me back to the bed. Well, in our group at that time, all the old family sat on the back row. We called it humility row. And guess who always sat with them? You're right, I was always carrying them back to my seat in the humility row. You were right, I was always, tell me back to my seat in the humility room, this is the truth, as I was walking back, you know, the thought occurred to me, I got a little bit too much power for him and he don't want me to overdo it, that's all it is.
[00:45:09]
Well, it took me a while to learn, because I began to have some growing problems, and it wasn't long before I began to hang around some people in the program that began to tell me to take what you want and throw the rest away. And no man, no man in this program ever had a better foundation than the basic grade that I did through my father, because I began to adjust to another environment. I always said, and I believe this for me, that my sobriety is dictated by the environment I have in Alcoholics Anonymous.
And there are different environments. And thank God, thank God for the people that saw what was happening to me. They didn't take the responsibility, they had the guts to tell me what was, they didn't tell me what I wanted to hear, they told me what I needed to hear. And I got to the point eventually, after about a year and a half sobriety, I got to the point that, well, I'd go 300 miles to make a talk, but I couldn't go one mile down to my home group to listen to anybody else. And when you get like this, you're kind of in bad ways.
And these people saw what was happening to me, and one day they called me in and shut me down when they had a conscience about it, and told me what I had to do, and told me about the Twelve Steps and about self-honesty. And, God, I got mad. The very idea of talking to the backbone of the group like this. And, God, I charged out of the meeting hall upset and went back to that board and had to shut the door. I didn't want to take a drink, I didn't want to get drunk, but I wanted to get back out of it. And I decided what I'd do, I'd send them a written resignation. I just resigned from Alcoholics Anonymous.
And the more I sat in that room that afternoon, I kept hearing my sponsor's voice. Because as I walked out that door, he said something I've never forgotten. He said, David, before you leave, I want to ask you one question. I said, what is it? He said, When was the last time you thanked God for a day of sobriety? And it kept on ringing, and it was like an echo. And, God, the first thing I knew, I was down on my knees praying to a God I knew nothing about. And God to me at that time was a question mark in the sky, maybe yes, maybe no. And the end result of that prayer was that afternoon I went back to my home group that night and I rejoined Alcoholics Anonymous. I've rejoined 19 times since then, and I rejoin every year.
And I became a member of the clique. If you want to know what the clique is, you go to the meetings sometimes early and see who does the work, who makes the coffee, who sets up the chairs, who takes the abuse, who sweeps the floor. I became a member of the clique, and I began to do what they told me to do, and things got better. And it was a few months later that I had the good fortune to move back to North Carolina, to my home state. A coincidence, the man who was beginning to sponsor me when I moved there, my first sponsor in later years was a man who had taken me over, I'd met him once. And so I knew this man. He was one of the first 100 M.A.s. He was a native New Yorker, New South, a lot of the people there, some of the old towners in here knew him, Tom Burrell.
Tom Burrell was my second sponsor. And, God, he gave me much. After I moved to Raleigh and I went back with the North Carolina Highway Commission and Sue and I were eventually married, I moved to Raleigh and I was one of these people in my early sobriety that I'd ask people questions and let them know how smart I was. I used to ask Tom a lot of questions. He said, read the book and then we'll talk. Read the book.
I never asked him that. He said, read the book. He was the man who introduced me to service work, and I found out about service work through him. And he was also the man who gave me a great lesson about standing behind one of these podiums. I'm just a substitute. That's the only reason I'm here today. I'm just a substitute. After I'd been serving about five years, I began to go to a few of these conventions and saw these people standing up here talking. It kind of appealed to me. I saw the hugging, the kissing, the clapping, the people patting them on the back. I began to think a little. One night I told Tom I wanted to talk to him after the meeting. He said, what is it? He was having me in a little ante-room. He was one of these people who always made you sit down and he stood up and talked down at you.
He said, what's the problem? I said, I don't think I'm a convention speaker. I can't repeat what he said, but what I found bottom line was this, that from that day on, any time I spoke in my home group, he'd let me know when.
[00:50:04]
This is five years sober now. At eight years sobriety, he called me over to his house one day and said, Dave, you're going down to Columbia, South Carolina. You're going to talk at a convention and you're going to do this and you're going to do that and you're going to do this, and this is what you do. He said, but before you go, there's something I want to tell you. They asked me to go first, you're going as a damn substitute, and don't you ever forget it as long as you live.
And so I'm just a substitute. I want to ask something about honesty and self-honesty, because I really believe that the core and guts of this whole program is the truth. The truth, and more briefly, you've got to be honest with yourself. I've seen enough in my time and age not only to believe but to know that there is a power behind this universe that stands ready to help you and I if we're willing to help ourselves.
A lot of my friends and I, they call me the man of sales. I choose to call them God. The God of my own family. The God that I found in alcoholic phenomena. The God that I found through you, by your love for me. And it's through this power that I've been able to sustain a few days of sobriety. It's through this power that I'm able to be here tonight, and it's through this power that I'm allowed to be a member of alcoholic phenomena and walk in good standing.
But in spite of this good standing, there are still certain things that I know I have to do. I don't know about you. And the first one is that I have to continue to have a monumental desire to stay sober. A monumental desire to stay sober. Remember when I came in and I told you that I was willing to go to any length to get this program, and I was. And sometimes I have to say the same thing today. And it usually comes some nights when that phone rings at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, and some guy needs some help.
And the thought occurs to me, well, he can wake up after breakfast. And thank God I'm not a thought of terrorism. That's those three men, that first night, they didn't dump me in the way I'm seeing today that we'll see after breakfast. I continue to have a monumental desire to stay sober. The second thing I have to do is I have to go to AA meetings. And that's the name of the game as far as I'm concerned. The greatest love that you and I have, or the greatest asset, I should say, that you and I have in this program is the love of our home group. We can go there when we can't go anywhere else. I know I've found that in my life.
And I know that I've begun to realize that my sobriety is dependent upon the fact that I can survive among these individual egos on a day-to-day basis when I have to sit down and share with them my eyeball to eyeball. And they know what makes me tick, and I know what makes them tick. And as a result of this, I'm able to try to walk like a toddler, and they've taught me that. And my group and your group, I'm sure, is the best. It's the little people. There's a couple in my group, a man and his wife, that I've been sponsoring. One of them has eight years sobriety, and he has three. He had a little trouble, Vernon and Gertrude. And just being with those two will keep you sober.
I know it's tough with a husband and wife, but you've got to know them. If you know them, you'll stay sober, although I'm the one. They'd been sober about four years, both of them, at one time. It was a Christmas Eve night, and we were talking about the Eighth Step. I've never forgotten it. And after the meeting, there wasn't many people there, and Vernon and Gertrude didn't have no license at that time, and they said, Let's go get a sandwich, a Christmas Eve night, let's go get a sandwich. They got in the car, and I've never forgotten what Gertrude said. She said, Vernon, when are you going to make some amends to me? And I've never forgotten Vernon's remark. He said, Hell, Gertrude, you're not even on my list!
It's people like this that keep me sober. And the third thing I have to do is I have to continue to work these steps to the best of my ability. Because I believe, as the line in the book sums it up for me, it says, We are granted a day of reprieve contingent upon the maintenance of our spiritual condition. And I know for this outfit that my spiritual condition is much improved on a day-to-day basis as long as I try to work these steps to the best of my ability. And that's what it's all about.
[00:55:06]
The fourth thing I have to do is some days I just have to do the best I can. And there are days like that. Just do the best you can. Tom told me many years ago that nothing is so bad that it won't become better if you just hang on and do the best you can. And I feel like that just a day of my experience can bar my hope that the day is going from one to the other and doing the best I can. And somehow or another I feel like that as long as I can walk hand-in-hand with you down this road of half-adjustment that we speak of in this program, that I too will be allowed another day of sobriety as long as I try to practice these principles in my life. Just follow the directions.
That's the reason I'm here tonight. I've been able to follow the directions. And I've had some people to show me the way. And that's what A.A. is about as far as I'm concerned. My mother is the best friend that I have today. It took nine and a half years for us to ever get back together. A.A. told me that this too will come to pass, and it did. It finally came to pass. She didn't understand A.A. in the beginning. She couldn't understand how I could get sober for a bunch of strangers and couldn't do it for her. And she despised me and appeared to think we couldn't be in each other's sights. But God does work in mysterious ways. Coincidence. Coincidence.
And I love her, and she knows where I am tonight. As long as it's A.A., it's all right. Coincidence. Strange word. If it is a coincidence, I'm here tonight. Marcia is here tonight to sober me. So many of our friends that I know, if it is a coincidence, I have found a coincidence, an act of God in the midst of time. The same God that has been doing for you and I what we could not do for ourselves. Coincidence.
In closing, I'd simply like to say this. The greatest thing that has ever happened to me is alcoholics and I. And the longer I stay sober, the greater it becomes. Thank you very much.