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Source: DICOBE-00366 – Joe L – INTERGROUP 36TH – 1979-05-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00366-joe-l-intergroup-36th-1979-05-15.mp3 Duration: 01:18:24
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So Joe, but anyway, he's one of us. He's an alcoholic. I don't know, they ain't got a handle for me. I was too bad, I guess. But anyway, it's a pleasure to have you here, Joe. So he can have the floor. Thank you. I thought you weren't going to get to me. My name's Joe, and I'm an alcoholic. And I've been frustrated very badly ever since I got here. I don't have anything to criticize. Being from Texas, that's the national pastime down there, you know.
I came in here, and everything was just right. I walked up to the desk, and the fellow genuflected three times, and I guess he thought I was a welfare person. And the food has been lovely, absolutely. The food's been nice, and everybody's loved me to death. And everything was going fine until about nine o'clock this morning, and a ten-year-old kid came up to me, and he said, Are you the one that's a wino? And I guess you can't ever live it down. Now, if you notice, I stood up in that first bunch. I'm an old member, NAA, or whatever the hell that's worth.
And I would like to remind you that the reason that Alcoholics Anonymous was so successful in the beginning, that it got started with such great ease, that there were no old members around. Everybody was new. And, you know, in the animal world, if you get out into the mammals, like, you know, the mink and whatnot, if the mink, if you panic one of those animals, they will eat their young. You know that? And in AA, when they panic, they eat their old. So, if you're coming in for any points, just forget it. You come in, they tell you you're the most important person here.
And then you keep working hard as hell, and go to your group three or four times a week, and by the time you're 29 years sober in Alcoholics Anonymous, you're completely ignored. I had a good example of that. When I came to AA, I was real hot and gung-ho, and I did everything they told me to. And I washed the cups and the saucers, and God, there were a lot of them in those days. And a fellow came up, one of the older members, and put his arm around me, and he said, boy, with your attitude, you're sure going to go a long way in this outfit. And I beamed.
Twenty-five years later, I picked up the same cups, and started to wash them, and a new man was heard to say, look at the old bastard, he's still trying to run this outfit. But with the absence of any levity whatsoever, it is as imperative for me to be here tonight as it was the first night I came. You new folks, remember that, please. Now, I'll have to wander around here for a while and see if I can get something started. What the hell is that flamboyant extravaganza? Jason, do you work for the Chamber of Commerce?
I come from Tyler, Texas. Nobody knows where Tyler is. They have sent a man up here from Tyler, Texas, who I suspect is a member of our local Chamber of Commerce, to check on me. So whatever I say to you will have to be good. Nobody goes to Tyler intentionally. The population of Tyler is made up of people who have been stranded there at one time or another.
[00:05:20]
So wherever you're sitting, Mr. Chamber, take that back to him. You know, I've got to look at this bunch here and look at how far our society has come. And it's absolutely mind-boggling to think that as we're gathered here tonight, that in two years after the inception of Alcoholics Anonymous, they had less than 40 members. And in four years before the book was printed, less than 100. So somebody in this area has been doing something right. And I suspect that our society is a very prideful thing.
And God intended that it would work, or he would not have put it in such inept hands as ours. Now, Alcoholics Anonymous, the face of it, has changed a great deal in these last few years. Alcoholics Anonymous has become fashionable. You know, looking at you, I believe it, too. It used to be we weren't a great deal in Alcoholics Anonymous. It's stigma. The biggest problem is keeping up the social clout.
This is the only place that's known to mankind where the newcomer apologizes for not having it longer. But we are. We're real sophisticated and fashionable. I've just come from Hollywood, where they're casting some new souls. And they have put three alcoholics on, or written three alcoholic stories into three soap operas. Now, we're on soap opera. We've replaced two homosexuals and one bad ovary. Now, if you're worried about the stigma on alcoholism, there is still some of it here. Those of us who came a long time ago have never been quite able in our communities to live it all down.
I'll give you a good example of that. I have a nephew in Dallas, Texas, who is a very eminent psychiatrist. And I have another nephew in San Francisco who's a homosexual. And do you know that my people brag on them more than they do on me, and I'm an alcoholic. So, if you're coming to make any points, forget it. And it takes us a long time when we come into this mess to get our head on straight. Now, let me say here that Alcoholics Anonymous is not a religious organization. I think that Van straightened that out with that joke he told here a while ago.
And I sometimes wished it were. I could promise and shout my way into sobriety, and I wouldn't have to work those damn steps. So, it's not a religious order, and it's highly separated into the spiritual area. And we have a great thing going now with all the money that's been heaped upon us. Society seems to labor with a misapprehension that if they can just explain alcoholism well enough, the drunk will quit drinking.
And do you know that bastard won't do it? He just will not. And the more you explain to him, the more he drinks. He won't quit with a good explanation. And I hear so much of it around. I read it in the papers, big deal, yesterday, one today. People explaining alcoholism to the alcoholic, but he just won't quit drinking.
[00:10:22]
Then another problem that we have is, what is an alcoholic? Oh boy, that's taken up hours of time with the medics and the psychiatric boys, and even us in AA, we indulge in a little of that every now and then. How come me to be an alcoholic? What is definitely an alcoholic? You know, I've been in AA for 29 years, and I cannot give you a good clinical description of an alcoholic. People ask me all the time, what is the difference between an alcoholic and a non-alcoholic?
And I say, well, I don't really know. I think the alcoholic drinks more than the non-alcoholic. I never have met one of us who did not drink. You've just got to do it to buy a ticket to one of these things, you know that. And then they test you out on it. Years ago in general service, and I think they've still got it floating around somewhere, they had a little pamphlet, some of you may be familiar with it, 44 questions.
And they were little, oh little, tame, that's a good word I guess, or innocuous questions, very mild, and you could answer all 44 of them and not know whether you were or you ain't. You know, little questions like, did your boss give you that look today? Or did you fall off of the sofa? Little questions like that that were not applicable to my particular illness. Now I have contrived some questions here that I think will be, it'll take less than 44 if you're coming at all.
Have you ever had the roof of your mouth sunburned? Have you ever had malfunction of the zipper? They used to call me rusty. Have you ever been arrested while in jail? Have you ever been run over by your own car while driving? Have you ever woke up with a circus midget in bed with you in the morning? You heard about that midget that got thrown out of the nudist camp because he was going around getting his nose in everybody's business.
This is the question. Have you ever woke up in the morning feeling rather delicately and lose your glasses and wash your teeth with preparation A? That'll give you a pucker. I, I think from some of the reaction that we get here, I believe there's somebody out here who might affiliate with us, you know.
[00:15:07]
I think we have some candidates here tonight. And I love to hear the resounding laughter that comes from the hearts of alcoholics who've cried and cried and cried on their pillow at night. And our co-founder, Bill, loved it as well as any of us. He was a very humorous man. And there's a line in our book of experience that says, why shouldn't we laugh? We have recovered. And I like that, because I cried when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous.
I really yet cannot give you too good an explanation of what an alcoholic is. I can tell you what an alcoholic is not. Maybe we'll go in the back door that way. Recently, I was flying out to Las Vegas to hold services. And a fellow got on the plane, an impeccably dressed gentleman. He just reaped of affluence. And, you know, when the planes take off, the first thing that happens is that the stewardess starts hustling the booze.
This is the first thing they do. And this gentleman who sat next to me ordered one of those big, double, beautiful, frosted things. Aren't they beautiful? And then he did the thing that was mind-boggling to me. He set that drink on his tray and began to read. And he liked to have driven me out of my mind. And I'd sit there and squirm and say, for God's sakes, drink it. Please, drink it. And you know that when the stewardess carried the drink away, it had some left in the glass.
Now, the difference is this. She said to me, Mr. Leith, would you like to have a drink? And I said, no, ma'am, I have to be home in February. And she said, I don't understand. And I said, honey, you never will. You just never will. And this, to me, is the sickness of alcoholism. Now, I'll tell you a little about myself, rather nauseous story. It has no point other than the fact that it is a story of recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous.
And there is no story in Alcoholics Anonymous that points towards recovery that is without merit. Our co-founder said that the perpetuation of our society hangs upon personal narrative. And he was a great believer in this story. I was raised in Tyler, Texas, for God's sake. And I took my first drink there at age 17 to be accepted in a group of boys, I guess, like everybody. I like to use the word innocently enough.
I took that drink that night. Here I was, a nice kid raised in these circumstances. And it seems to me that every time a drunk comes to AA and gets up here and starts talking, he tries to hang on to every vestige of dignity that he can. And sooner or later, before he gets through talking, he will say to you, but I came from a fine Christian family. And I've heard that so much in AA that I've begun to believe that fine Christian families are breeding places for alcoholism.
And I took my first drink. And it wasn't long before Tyler became too small for me, you know. There's something about an alcoholic that moves on, you know. And it changed my whole personality that first drink. Now, the six other guys with me that drank that night did not become alcoholics
[00:20:03]
because, and remember this, that drink did not mean anything to them. The alcoholic, the drink, means something to him. And that night I found an elixir that never left me until the day I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't know whether I was born an alcoholic or ready for alcoholism or what, but that night things happened up here in this fungus that is between my ears that I recall now as vividly as though it were yesterday.
And I knew that this was the painkiller of all time, that it would do things for me as it did that night. And I started going back to it again and again and again. No obsession yet. I was using alcohol. Alcohol at that time was an answer for me. It was not a problem. And I used it for the answer. This is the piteous thing of our illness when it goes from an answer to a problem. Tyler became too little for me and I left.
And of all the places that I ended up, I had to go to Hollywood, California. And of all the professions for an East Texas clod to get into, I became an understudy for one of the famous lingerie designers in Hollywood. Can you believe it? This is a very pleasant profession. And you work with models. And this fellow was a fine, compassionate Jewish man. He took me in because he liked me. And he spent a barrel of money in training me.
And I, sooner or later, attained a modicum of renown in that particular area. I became very proficient and very skillful in that. Made quite a name for myself, short-lived. Now, we have a step in Alcoholics Anonymous, the second step, I believe it is, where it infers that you might have a gopher in the garden. If you cut a bunch of bazaars with three of them places in them, you're nuts. There's no question about it.
I told a psychiatrist about that, and he said it was just wishful thinking. Needless to say, this first profession I left and drank myself out of because alcohol was becoming a problem. And I remember the hurt that began to take place here as a result of a malady that I had no control over whatsoever from then on. This Jewish fellow loved me as dearly as he did his son, but he could not tolerate me any longer.
Those Jewish people are very strange. If you start hurting their pocketbook, they lose their love for you in a hurry. This guy had a weird sense of humor. We were talking one day, and he said, Joe, you're fired. And he had the worst weird sense of humor. He said, you know, everything, something has a blessing into it. And he said, I'm glad to say, if you would have been a rabbi, the way you used those scissors, you would have destroyed our whole race.
You ought to let that roll around for a little while there. And this was the first job, the first hurt that I remember. And I suspect that the alcoholic in the beginning of this movement gets an old question that hangs in the back of his head that he cries on the pillow at night and says to himself. This is what we call an A.A. self-pity. He says to himself, why? Why does it have to happen to me? And he begins looking in that direction, never pointing at anything.
[00:25:01]
But why doesn't it happen to somebody else? These chain of events that seem to plague the alcoholic until the day he either dies or goes to A.A. So have any of you folks ever heard this plaintive cry? If you're alcoholic, you must have this word. Honey, I said to my bride, why don't we go somewhere else where nobody knows us and we don't know anybody and let's start all over again. Has anybody here ever done that sort of thing?
God dares to hands over there, I saw. You're honest in the program. You're going to go a long way if you don't wash cups. What's the matter? Have I been struck deaf? I thought I was struck deaf. So we moved. This was a series of moves. I retired from my fifth profession, incidentally. And every one of them I went into as a result of being an alcoholic. No other reason for it. The old alcoholic and the treatment for alcoholism until the advent of Alcoholics Anonymous has been one thing, keep him moving, keep him moving, keep him moving.
No family likes to admit they got one of us. It's not bridge table gossip yet. You don't hear them saying in the room. One of the gals says, what's that noise in the back room? Oh, that's my son. He's an alcoholic, you know. Forget it. They don't do that. So we moved and we went from Los Angeles to Sacramento. And I get a kick out of the guys standing up at any of the podiums and telling the sad things that happened to them through the course of their drinking.
And I can win that contest hands down right now with a sad story. When we moved from Los Angeles to Sacramento, I was run over by the welcome wagon. And I remember how embarrassed that woman was that hit me and she was trying to give me tickets to a car wash and I was walking. I didn't have any. The work of all places is for the railroad. Good God. And I'd love to say here that the railroad people are the most narrow-minded people I've ever met.
They have a rule about drinking. It reads in essence that if you are seen coming out of an establishment that dispenses alcoholic beverages, that you can be fired. I did not come out very often. And if I did then, I was flying through the air so fast they couldn't identify me. You know that. But they are awfully narrow-minded and they just are. All railroad people do, it seems to me, is breed more railroad people.
That's about all their accomplishments are. But they have some strange habits. They run more than one train on a track. And I don't understand it yet. Never did try very hard. I'd just sit there with my watch in my hand and pray, you know. And I knew one day it would happen to me. I just knew it. The law of averages, you know. Murphy's law. Have you ever studied Murphy's law of random perversity? It reads that all things being equal, I'll get screwed.
That's it. I think that alcoholics live under the prudence of Murphy's law all the time. And the railroads hang out bulletins in the most obscure places. And we ran these trains over the mountains and, if you know any of the vernacular, from Sacramento over to Reno. We had to go all over the Sierra Nevadas. Over to Reno, we had to go all over the Sierra Nevadas, and we used helper engines in those days.
[00:30:02]
And when you got to the top of the mountain, you cut off all of your helper engines, and you didn't need them anymore, and they'd go back to Sacramento. And you did this movement, if you follow this parlance, and a thing that they called an interlocking system, a beautiful, fine system made by the Sperry Company. And the railroad had the unmitigated effrontery, if that's a good word, to hang a bulletin up in their depot and tell me that it was physically impossible to make a mistake up there.
Well, that'll drive any drunk crazy, did you know that? I used to see that sign in the night, and it'd bother me. Physically impossible to make a mistake up there. Don't tell a drunk that. Don't say to him, you can't. Just recently, I was up in the Illinois University, making a talk in their nice dining room up there, and I had to stand there and talk and look at this sign over here that said, Don't.
Don't take the dishes out of this hall. And I'd talk a while, and I'd look at that damn, Don't. And I'd love to report to you that I've got two of them dishes in my damn hall. I cannot stand Don't. And these people said, You can't make a mistake up there. Well, that's a challenge to any self-respecting drunk. And by some quirk of circumstance, alcoholic I presume, I got two engines going towards one another, with four cars between them, carrots, apples, lettuce, and celery.
And I made the biggest goddamn Waldorf salad that's ever been done to mankind. And do you know, those people wanted to fire me about that. They got real excited over, you know, a couple of hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment. And my record was already a little spotted with them. And they have investigations the railroad do, and they're kind of like the government, about 18, 19 percent efficient, I guess.
And I got another alcoholic to represent me at this investigation. And we proved the thing that about a million to one, we proved that there was a Mexican track walker walking down to the side of the track that night, swinging a lantern in his hand, and that I had mistaken his lantern for a given signal. They never did find that damn Mexican. And they gave me 60 days. And I never will forget the old superintendent when he came out of that.
He was livid with rage. And he was a big fat man. He was apoplectic, actually. And he said to me, you ought to be arrested for even walking on our right of way. And then he said some words to me that I suspect some of you dear Al-Anons have said to your loving spouses at one time or another. I'll get you if it's the last thing I ever do. Let us be serious for a moment. You don't have to get even with an alcoholic, my friends.
He's got a little mechanism in him that if you will leave him to his own devices, he'll get even with himself. One day he will get even with himself. And there is nothing that you can devise to call him or do to him that he hasn't already said to himself on the pillow at night.
[00:35:02]
You ain't going to give the drunk nothing new. He's had it all. So this is one of the things that makes me so very proud and grateful for a process that works by our side but is not a part of us. And that's the program of Al-Anon. Some of the miracles that I have seen happen in this society where the damned old curious husband finally follows his wife in are beyond any spiritual description. And I now take off my hats to the gals that stayed a little longer than anybody else would stay.
I love you everyone. Well, I'm going to make it as brief as I can. I got down, I got down, I got down, and then I quite accidentally got on wine. Now, don't make fun of the wine. Oh, there's a few of them left, I think. It's predominantly a California illness, but it has spread over into some of the outlying provinces, has it not? And you shouldn't do that. Wine has got some very fine medicinal purposes.
It'll cure hay fever. If you drink it like I did, you don't dare sneeze. You talk about being born to the purple. God forbid. So the railroad company eventually, they never did fire me until after I got to AA, really. It was some little obscure rule that I hadn't gotten wise to too quick. But anyway, I got down. I got down. I remember when I took my first drink of wine. Now, you talk about alcoholism and being ashamed.
In those days, I had never heard the word alcoholism back in the good old days. I had heard the word wino, if you please. And I had stumbled over these people going from my hotel to the depot to go to work and had not a moment's compassion for them and had literally stepped over them. And I remember the first drink of wine, the depths of shame, if I may describe it that way. I was running, at that time, one of the finest extra fare passenger trains on the railroad when I first started drinking wine.
The city of San Francisco wore beautiful uniform with gold buttons and we wore a rose on our lapel every day when we went to work. And I was carrying my wine in one of those quart wax milk bottles. I'd buy a quart of milk, pour the milk out, pour the wine in. And I always had milk for my lunch. And the piteous thing of how shamed I was, I'd go to Reno. And those were the days when there wasn't any Las Vegas.
Reno had to do the whole job for these freaks. And I would keep walking and keep walking and keep walking until I could find a bar that there was nobody in there but the bartender. I was that ashamed to order wine. And then at home I would go to the liquor store and say to the man in the liquor store, would you let me have a, you know, kind of offhanded, my wife is marinating some meat today and I'd love to have a quart of that port.
You're looking at a man who has marinated intestines today. But the old dodges and the shame and the humiliation of it are more, I don't need to tell an alcoholic about that. One of the greatest contributors to our society, I was talking to the father here tonight about him, was a great priest named Father Ed Dowling who came out of the Oxford Movement
[00:40:01]
and Bill loved him so very dearly I met him in 1955. And he said about Alcoholics Anonymous, he said this, Alcoholics Anonymous is a natural process. It brings the natural as close to the supernatural as it can by the means of humiliation and indignity. This is where the natural and the supernatural meet. And if you have not been humiliated or suffered any indignities that some of us old gaspers have, maybe you need something else, I don't know.
But when you come to a society like this and it opens its arms to you, I like AA for that reason, I like AA for a lot of reasons, but that's it. I'm going to break into my story and tell you this, why I like AA. I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and was roped into the magnificence of this thing and took it real fast and in stride. And I had no interest in how AA had ever been put together until I'd been sober six or seven months.
And then I began to wonder and I began to hear the old members talk. And I found out that Alcoholics Anonymous was not put together by any visionary person. It was not put together by any do-gooders. It was not put together by any reformers. It was not put together by any agency that had studied us. My dignity began to soar when I found out that Alcoholics Anonymous was put together by two fellows who couldn't drink any better than I could.
This is what I liked, and I liked that right off. Here's two guys that put this thing together out of sheer desperation with only one thought in mind, and that of survival. And these two fellows I hold in high esteem. They proved that our program would work by working it. How else? And then they did a thing for us that is beyond my imagination. They wrote it down. And whoever won that book here tonight, my boy, you have the greatest treasure that's been left to us in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.
This is a story that was written out of desperation about you and he. And I suspect that most any problem that you will have or have had is discussed in great length in that book. And I say to you, read it, not academically, but with love. So much for the book. I got out and I got in a railroad hospital, and in those days we didn't have anybody that treated us. There was no such thing. How would you think that a railroad would admit that they had a conductor in there who had been responsible for the lives of four or five hundred people every time he took the train out and admit that he was a drunk?
Can you imagine that? There was no wards in those days for healthcare now. You don't have to believe me. In Israel, over in Israel, last year they had a 29-day doctor's strike. And the death rate went down 50%. I love them very dearly. One of our co-founders was a fine surgeon. The best ever. But they finally got around to me, and I was what they described under sedation, and in a frightful state. I'd been on wine for many months at that time, and was real sick.
And they put me in the hospital. And they put me through one of the most stringent clinics west of the Mississippi, from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet.
[00:45:03]
And it's not a lot of fun with the shakes, I'll tell you. Oh, they had a proctologist there that had a gorgeous finger on him. With a hangover, yeah, they do this to you. Now the ironic thing about this trip through the clinic, the ever test that one could imagine, I came out of there and they found nothing, nothing, N-O-T-H-R-N-G, nothing organically wrong with me. And you know a hospital's got to have an answer, they've just got to have an answer.
And that was my introduction to psychiatry. And they brought in this frustrated piano tuner and he beat on my knees with his rubber mallet and he asked me some very silly questions and I gave him brilliant answers. If he's not a rummy now, it's not my fault. You know, all them little personal questions those fellows ask you. Did you ever wet the bed? You know, stuff like that. Well, that's a result of drinking, that ain't a cause of it.
A good day for me was when I didn't wet my bed, you know, it's that good. Oh yeah, and I got into a little game with him. None of you ever ought to do this, but I'd feed him symptoms. And this is an exercise, it's the funniest thing on earth. You know, you lead him down a couple of days this way and then change your symptoms. And the poor fellow, I later heard that he had a bad end. Now if you want to get rid of a psychiatrist, I can tell you how to do it.
In case you, other than running out of money, that's one way to get rid of them. You let two drunks lay up in bed one night and memorize the same dream to tell him the next morning. That'll make him pale when that second fellow starts working on him, you know that. Well, needless to say, this therapy was not of great benefit to me. I learned about another little dose while I was in there. Something that the girls used to take and they ate called sodium bromide elixir.
You've never heard of that, have you? That's the granddaddy of Nervine. You know about Nervine or have they quit making it? Lord, that used to be a famous drink with your old folks. They used to say, Aunt Minnie can't come out today, she's nervous. Well, hell yes, she was stoned for that reason. Sodium bromide elixir is the finest thing you ever ran into. Food doesn't disturb me. It has a few little side effects, your eyes will cross.
May do a little frothing at the mouth, but it's just a real good dose. And I learned about that in the hospital. And then I learned of a very delightful little thing called phenobarbital. This was before Valium came along and became popular as it is today. But I got phenobarbital and if you want to run an idiot that's already crazy, crazy, let him get on a steady diet of sodium bromide elixir, phenobarbital, and gallow wine.
And let all of that run concurrently, if you please, and you got an idiot on your hands. It's really the truth. And then when a guy comes today, they get real excited when we start talking about their head.
[00:50:06]
The drunk don't want you to talk about up here. I don't know, it's highly offensive to him, you know that. In our book of experience in chapter two, Bill goes to great length to describe alcoholics and alcoholism to us. He says all of the different kinds of alcoholics. He talks about the real alcoholic and he just carried away with himself. But finally he says in there, all of these observations would be academic if the drunk never took the first rank.
Therefore, therefore, the alcoholic's problem centers in his mind. What do you immediately think when you inquire about somebody's health and they answer you by doing that? Why it's the nicest, gentlest way that the Society of Alcoholics Anonymous has got to tell you that you're crazy. The alcoholic's problem centers in his mind. If you've got problems in your mind, what the hell's the matter with you anyway?
You're crazy in the mind. Now he didn't say that the problem was in your prostate or in your upper armpit. In the mind, up here. And that's where it is. And drunks are rebellious as hell about somebody talking about insanity and AA. And believe you me, if you suck on that flip bottle, as long as some of us, you get the alternative that Bill gave us in the first part of the book, you either go mad or die.
And until the advent of this society, this was all of the alternative. And I thank God so well that on June of 1935 he saw fit to make a provision for us that night in the Mayflower Hotel in Akron. I think the alcoholic was rattling his chains and becoming terribly disturbed. Why isn't something done about me that night? When Bill, in desperation, picked up the phone and called to try to find another alcoholic to talk to.
And he knew that somehow or other the understanding between two of us held a solution to our problem. And the irony of it is that he had to go through three non-alcoholics to get to the drunk. So I say to you that in our arrogance behind these podiums, we at Alcoholics Anonymous do not have a patent on everything good. Were it not for some of the contributors who came to our rescue in the early days like Sam Shoemaker and Father Ed Dowling and Sister Ignatia and numerous others, I suspect that this great thing would have gone by the wayside.
We owe so much to so many. We owe so much to people who came into this society and made a contribution and never got to enjoy a day of sobriety. We even got our name, Alcoholics Anonymous, from a wet break. Do you know how we got our name? They had the book in print and they didn't have a name for us. And they went to this dingbat group up in New York, 29 members, and they said we've got to have a name for this thing.
And you know what talking to 29 drunks is worth? About every one of them has got an opinion. They don't need alcoholics' knowledge. They've just got an opinion. Everybody wanted to name it something. And they said we've got to have a name for it to put on the backbone of that big red book. They tried, what was it, Mary? The Way Out, was it one of those? They tried that and they discovered that there was a whole bunch of books named The Way Out.
Then I think they tried The Exodus, did they not? And they discovered that there was something else like that. And there was one dummy sitting over on the front row,
[00:55:01]
and he said how about naming it Unknown Alcoholics. And there was a wet brain sitting next to him who they had brought out of an institution up in upstate New York. His name was Joe Wirth. He had been the founder of the New York Magazine and was as crazy as a bed bug. And he sat there and looked at the floor and mumbled under his breath, Alcoholics Anonymous. And we got our name from him. And two weeks later he was back in the nut house and believe you me, 22 years later he was still in the nut house.
There have been so many who have contributed to the perpetuation of this society that you have not enjoyed a moment of it. And I think the lesson is this, that if we don't learn to love the losers, we ain't got a chance of having any winners by God in AA. And we don't go to see drunks because they're drunks. We go to see them because we're drunks. This was the beginning of this society And Bill in the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel said that night, suddenly I realized that I needed him more than he needed me.
And you newcomers sitting here tonight, bless your heart, I envy you so gawk-eyed much I can scream. We need you worse than you need us. We'll be here if you are. Please for God's sake, give it a fair shake. Give it a chance to germinate in your heart. The greatest thing that was ever given to me in Alcoholics Anonymous when I came the first night, some dummy walked up to me with a pair of overalls on, looked like he was illiterate.
And he said, we're glad you're here. And I thought, you glad who's here? And I suspected that may be the great message of Alcoholics Anonymous. Do I have another five minutes? Well, not near ready to get well yet. They ran me out of California. I used to say nicely that I left California a thoroughly discredited man. Doesn't that sound fashionable? They ran me out of the state, by gosh. When I came to AA, I was wanted in two states and not wanted in 46 others.
You know that. And the first psychiatrist I ever went to said to me, do you ever feel unwanted? And we're the master of that feeling. So I go back to Texas. And this is not the story. I kind of like the story of the prodigal son, but it gets off the track. They saw him coming from afar and threw his butt in jail, you know that. Now imagine my humiliation. Imagine me, the smart guy, the hot cat, the fellow from Hollywood in Beverly Hills, the resourceful man, the fellow that had all the answers, to be humiliated like that and have my own mother throw me in the county pokey down in a little place called Tyler.
And if you don't think I was seething with hate, God knows it was way past resentment, I'll tell you that. Still the same, why? Why? Why does it have to happen to me? Now, my friends, we will not laugh so much. On a Monday morning there came a fellow to my cell whom I had never seen before. And he asked for me by then. And he stood there and threw those cell doors and gave me what we've come to know as an A.A. pitch.
And he used five magic words on me. And these five magic words, I suspect, are the same. These five magic words, I suspect, are the soothing and most delicate words that we use in Alcoholics Anonymous. He said to me, he said, he, I know how you feel. How about that?
[01:00:05]
No one had ever said that to me before. And he stood there and told me all about himself. And I do not remember any of the profundities that he let go of me. I remember one thing as vividly as though it were yesterday. I remember that he stood still. God Almighty, how still did that man stand? You know, like this. And he did everything that was required of him in chapter seven of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. He stood so still that it frightened me. And for a guy like me, it must have been a cruel scene. I'm a jumper. No, I'm not a jumper. I'm a leaper.
Have you ever seen a picture of the guy in a Cosmopolitan magazine with a high hat on carrying his bride across the threshold? You've seen that picture, haven't you? I used to do that to people on the street. Just jump up in their arms, you know, like that. And this guy stood still. He stood so still. And you can't argue with standing still. You know that? And he gave me everything he had. And when he saw that he wasn't making a killing, he wrote his name and his address upon a pamphlet. And as though he were not concerned at all, he sat over his shoulder. If you ever need us, call us. He gave me that damn pamphlet.
And that was before the days when we had pamphlets like a member's eye view of Alcoholics Anonymous and problems other than alcohol and all the good stuff that we got now. This was written by two losers, a doctor that died drunk and a pill head I saw not so long ago flapping around on his ankles. In the front of this pamphlet read, Slaves of Drinks I'm Peace of Mind. Never read it, never got her open, never read it at all. And my people are nice. They're kind of influential people down there. They paid two deputy sheriffs when they found out that I hadn't been healed. They paid two deputy sheriffs to load me in a police car and carry me to Houston, some 200 miles away. Keep him moving, keep him moving. You know, my family didn't want to admit they had one either. And for the next five months, we will not even talk about it. I drank as few people have lived to tell the tale. They carried me off of the train in a wheelchair in the old Los Angeles Depot. Me and three old bags that I had tenaciously clung to and dumped me out in the front foyer. And then I hit the track. I don't know what load it takes for you, by what circuitous route you have found this society, but I say to you that when you have your day, please respect it.
And one night in a flophouse in Sacramento, a block from the jail, I had my night. I got all of me I could stand. And I, I don't know, I was in a maudlin state. I'd been drunk for months then. And I fell on my knees that night and punched my ticket into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. This and this alone. God help me. This is our ticket to this society, if you please. And I got up and staggered out of that place and with brute force and awkwardness, if you know what shape I was in, and I was going to walk back to that guy, 2,600 miles to see what made him stand still by God.
And I did it. Can you imagine my pitiful story that I would tell in the early days of AA about this long journey coming back to 2,600 miles? I discovered, if you want to get the drama knocked out of an alcoholic story, I discovered that there was an AA club three blocks from that
[01:05:05]
flophouse. And I had to do her the hard way. I guess we all are that way. If you pick a hard way, the drunk will do it. I found the man. Pretty soon we'll go home now. I'm going to tell you what it's like now, what we are like now. Let's don't misquote the book. It says what we were like, what happened, and what we are like now. Not what it was like. It's still just as crappy out there as it ever was. So he took me to my first AA meeting, and God knows that's something else. I'll tell you. I think that if we have, I see a sign around our society that says, I'm responsible, I'm responsible. You see that on every turn. It's the first time in Alcoholics Anonymous that the word I has been used. I would rebel at it at first. It's always been we.
But I think if we have any responsibility whatsoever, it's what we show that guy when he comes in the door, the very first meeting. Because whatever happens that night is to him, Alcoholics Anonymous. If you play the piano, that's to him, that's all he sees. And our responsibility is to put on a good act that first night for the guy when he comes to stay. And God knows these people quit everything they were doing, it seemed to me, and hovered around, and this dummy comes up and says, we're glad you're here. I can't describe that from here on out, the understanding. And I suspect that that night, this haunting loneliness that plagues every drunk as long as he sits on the stool and drinks left me.
And by God's grace, and your grace, I've never been lonely a day since. I've never been by myself a day since that night. Now to see an alcoholic get sober sometimes is a very wonderful thing, you know. I learned it, oh I guess it took me two weeks at least to know all there was to know about Alcoholics Anonymous. I quit cussing, and I got, well you might even say that I got godlike. Have you ever seen any AA members who are godlike? And one night I got a call to go see a drunk, and this drunk, the bartender had taken his jug, and all he wanted us to do was to recover his jug.
And I didn't see that, I was so godlike, and I got him and put him in a new automobile, and started to give him the pitch. And God, I felt so good. And I talked with sheer eloquence, and he's sitting there, and his eyes begin to water, and I thought, I'm getting him. And pretty soon, with further piousity, Father, and eloquence, he gently lay his head over on my shoulder, and I knew I had him. Did you ever hear of a drunk puking silently?
Every time I've ever gotten godlike with one of them bastards, they puke on me, you know that. One more, I don't know how long you worked with a drunk. I worked with one for four and a half years when I first came to Alcoholics Anonymous. Mary took the call one Sunday morning, she said, yes, Joe will come. Joe went, and here's a scurvy guy about like me, fixing to go into DTs, and I borrowed a goblet full of whiskey, and poured it down him, and knocked him out, really.
And when he kind of came unshackled from that drink, he was in an AA club. I believe anywhere you can get them there is good, they don't bother me. And he got sober, and stayed sober for three months, and then he got drunk. Didn't bother him because he was used to it, but it grazed hell with my ego, and I was determined that he was going to sober up under my direction. And I went and got him again. Three months, drunk. Three months, drunk. Sometimes two months, drunk. Three months, drunk.
And he just, I prayed about him. I'd say, God, you've been watching him spare us too much to
[01:10:04]
let me have this one, you know. And I kind of made a side project out of him. And he'd go to, I know none of you ever done this, he'd go to faraway places and call me collect, to tell me that he was drunk. And about 15 years ago, he got on for him what was his last drunk at one of our local motels. And he called another fellow from our group, who's not half as smart as I am, and he went out and talked to that bastard 10 minutes, and he never had another drink as long as he lived. And I hated his guts. I'd sit in the club and look at him and think, you ought to be mine. And if I know anything of the treasure that God gives us in this society, I suspect that I owe him more than he owes me. He kept me sober for four and a half years, that bastard did. I don't know how to explain the treasure of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I'll try to do it with a little story that comes out of another book, little book that belongs to him. This is a story that was written about 2,000 years ago about a sick fellow. He was awfully sick, and the scripture talks about him as the demoniac. And I'll have to tell it the way it settles on me. I may not be letter perfect. But it seems that this guy was in bad shape, and said that he was so wild that no man could tame him. He was a real nut.
And that the manifestations of his disease, this is quoted in the scripture, said that the manifestation of his disease was such that they had to keep him in fetters and chains. Hell, that's just like me, you know that? And then it said that he got so bad, this fellow, this demoniac, they called him a demoniac. They didn't have any psychiatrists in those days. They, you know, a maniac full of demons. If he'd have been today, and psychiatry got a hold of him, he'd have been a bedwetter, catatonic.
They had to run him out of the town, and the poor devil ended up out on the riverbank, just like me, eating with pigs. If you have the imagination that I have, and if you've experienced moments like that, you can see this picture, I suspect, very clearly. The babble, the filth, and the blubbering idiot. And it seems that at that time, there was a little carpenter fellow who was going around the country teaching some strange new philosophy about love.
And he accosted the nut. The little carpenter had a facility that we at Alcoholics Anonymous have not quite acquired yet. He could see no ill in anyone. And he says to the nut, my friend, are you having some trouble? And the fellow in his sep-pity reared back and said, trouble is my name. I have so many problems that they call me Legion, which means many. Am I not right? There he is. So the little carpenter didn't say to him, are you ready? He effected a treatment on this cat that was as little understood in those days, I suspect, as the treatment of Alcoholics Anonymous is understood today. It had to do with casting some evil spirits out of him, and he cast them into the pig.
Out of him, and he cast them into the pig, and the pigs, if you remember the story, you must have learned it at your mother's knee, the pigs ran off into the sea and were drowned, now this is not the end of the story, there were some school pigeons around, like there always is, and these people went into town and told the people that owned these pigs, now in those days the pig business was big business,
[01:15:15]
you know, so the school pigeons go into town and they say to these people in town, you out of the pig business, and you know how these people were felt by gosh, and they came it says in mass, out to the river bank to see what had happened, and here we come to the most beautiful statement I suspect that's in our scripture, it says, there he sat, fully clothed, and in his right mind, we've got a step in AA like that, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity, there they found him, there he sat, fully clothed, and in his right mind, these people were not concerned with the fact that one fellow got well, they were too interested in the material loss of their pigs, and they said to him, get out, get out, now this is the beauty of Alcoholics Anonymous, we better be concerned with the fact that one fellow got well, hadn't we? How many of you folks came in a bunch?
There he sat, fully clothed, and in his right mind, these people got rough with him, wanted him to get out, get out, get out, and I can see this cat having come from the hellish existence that we came from into this new life and not having had the time to enjoy any of it, and I can see his timidity, and I can see his fear come upon him, and he looked at his sponsor, and said, let me go with you, and the little carpenter broke a rule, it seems, for us, everybody that he'd ever helped up until that time, he had said to them, go on, go on, and don't mention it, you were blind, and now you see, he'd made little to do over anybody but this one cat, and he said to him, my friends, what I will say to you lovingly, stay here, so that others can see what has happened to you, thank you so very much.