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Source: DICOBE-00566 – Alabam C – EAST TEXAS RNDP – 1976-04-03.mp3 File: dicobe-00566-alabam-c-east-texas-rndp-1976-04-03.mp3 Duration: 01:12:27
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Good morning, fellow alcoholics and friends. I'm Alabama C., and I'm a grateful, happy alcoholic. God, the lengths I'll go to, to get a free trip to Texas to see all of my friends. I'm not up at Ken Lava Moments, and I don't know for sure I know where I am now. But anyhow, I'll try. I said my name was Alabama C.. I got another name, and it's Evelyn. And it's not a thing in the world wrong with that name, but when I got here to you, I didn't like that gal Evelyn Brand.
And it was so much easier after the boys started calling me Alabama, to just continue with it, because it gave Alabama a chance to take that sick girl Evelyn's inventory. I had compassion for her, and it's almost like taking somebody else's inventory. And still, I wasn't real capable of doing that, but I had sponsors that were real good at it. And they took a real good fourth step for me, and I'm grateful for that.
I love this part of the country and these adjoining states. It seems like to me I come often, but not as often as I want to. And when I said I was glad to be here, you don't have to believe it, but I better believe it. I'm glad to be anywhere. I'm glad to be alive. And I'm glad to know where I am. And I'm glad to be at the place I was invited to come. And the beautiful part, when I get back to California, Sunday as planned, I'm going to know where I've been.
And that's a switch. I was a traveling drunk, and I tell you, I've been so many places I don't remember, and other people do, that's what makes it bad. I came to North Hollywood, AA, the first time in 1951. And I came without the requirements of coming to AA. I had no desire to stop drinking. I wanted to learn how to be a controlled drinker, and to drink like a lady. Oh, God, did I want to drink like a lady.
And I usually said the lady I was. I wore a facade so long that I believed it. I put on all the color I could find this morning, because I dressed in black, a navy blue, a tan, something green, you know, rug color green. The whole idea was, if I passed out, I'd blend in with the scenery. I wore that facade so long, trying to look like a lady, because I felt like a bitch. And, you know, the little string of pearls, the white gloves, and all that goes with it.
And now I won't wear those colors very much, because it reminds me of what I was like. And I did a lot of bathing in those days. I don't have to bathe so much now. I bathed, first to get the scent off, you know how it smells coming out of the pores. And secondly, to try to bathe the way that guilt I had. And I got here, and I found out why all of those baths didn't help. It's an inside job. And I was trying to take care of it externally, where it showed.
I came to my first meeting in, oh, I've got to tell you how long I'm sober. I don't really know. They were so busy trying to save my life. And as I have said, my ass. I shocked the girls I sponsor when I get up and say, this is a save your ass program. But, you know, that's what it is. And I shocked me the first time I said it, because I was very careful to use the proper words when I was drinking.
So you'd know I was a lady until the man I boned. But anyhow, I was so sick that nobody wrote down the day I came into that little rehab house. It wasn't exactly a rehab house. It was just a bunch of drunks that got together and loved other drunks and tried to help me get well. But I'll get to that later. I came into North Hollywood Group in California in 1951. And I came back to you in the latter part of November.
I celebrate the first Thursday in December. So that was in 1952, and I believe that's over 23 years.
[00:05:01]
And I don't expect you to be impressed, but I sure as hell am. I came out of a sanitarium. It was my first sanitarium, and I just loved sanitariums. I had been going to regular hospitals, because they didn't take alcoholics or drunks. And I'd been going to these regular hospitals, and I had to always think of some new disease to have. And it had to be something that was an emergency, so they'd have to take me.
And so I could go by ambulance, and people would not think that I went because I was drinking. And the only bad part about my going by ambulance, I wouldn't let them put me in the back of it. And the doctors, I always asked the doctor's office to call for the ambulance, and he would tell them it was an emergency. And they'd let me sit up front, because I made scenes when I didn't get my way. And I wanted to blow that horn.
And I made up so many symptoms, I got where I listened very carefully. And there were patients in hospitals like me, because I'd listened to all their symptoms, but they didn't know I used them to get back in hospitals. And I described some so accurately that I expect I've had a surgery or two I didn't need. But most of the time it was pneumonia. And you and I know it's that alcoholic pneumonia we get when we're coming off of a long-time drug.
I said I was an alcoholic. And I hope, if any of you girls are here, that you really don't mind being called an alcoholic or calling yourself an alcoholic. I think it's real refined-sounding. And I think maybe if you do so, you may have to drink until you're called a drunken bitch, and then the alcoholic will be okay with you. That's what happened to me. That's what happened to me. That's what happened to me.
Well, a man came over to the Starrers Drive. That's our local drying-up place in North Hollywood. And he was real eager to save the world, and he asked us if we wanted to go to a meeting. And I said I'd love to go, because I wanted to get out of that hospital. They didn't have any idea how to sober up a drunk. They didn't understand that I'd had a love affair at that time for 19 years with alcohol.
And I remained true to it. I didn't cheat with those pills. Now, up until that time, it's the only thing I'd ever remained true to. But, you know, since then I've remained true to Alabama. And that's a switch. But they wanted to give me Pherrell to hide and pills. And I didn't want to take them. And I explained it to the doctor that I just sobered up with whiskey. You know, his idea of sobering up with whiskey was about an ounce every four or five hours.
And you know if you've been drinking like I had that you can't get sober that way. And I liked to sober up that way, you know, taper off and taper on so easily I didn't know when I'd taper off. And they didn't like that kind of sobering up. Well, anyhow, I got all dressed in my blue suit and my little hat and my little white gloves, fresh of course. And then I asked him to stop on the way to get me a bottle.
And the man explained to me he wasn't going to buy me a bottle. That wasn't the purpose of this trip. And I explained to him I had money of my own and I could buy it. And he'd stop. I'd just get out of the car and I wouldn't go with him to the meeting. So I heard later that she was supposed to come to AA with an open mind, an honest desire at that time they said to get sober, and the willingness to do what was suggested.
Well, I didn't have any of the requirements. Instead, I came with open pores and a bottle of vodka in my pocketbook and no desire to stop drinking, just a desire to stop eating and to learn to control my drinking. And you know, you didn't know how to help me. And you said you didn't know how to control your drinking or you wouldn't be here. But that night came in and either Mike Ross or somebody like him was leading the Tuesday night beginners.
They didn't let women lead in those days. And explaining the program to us. And then after they explained the program to us, people got up and they called on short speakers. But I'll get to that in a minute. But we walked into that place that I love better than any place in the world now. And if you don't think your home group's the best, I'm sorry for you. I really am. Because if I didn't think mine was the best, I'd do something to try to make it that way.
But I walked in and it was a little old church converted into a clubhouse.
[00:10:04]
And they had all those tacky signs. The first one I saw was, We Care. And I thought, who in the hell cares whether a bunch of drunks care or not? And you know, not only was that sign up there, but it was lit up. And it was on back of one of those beer, you know, they put it in one of those beer frames. And I saw it flickered on and off, but I've been told that nobody's seen it but one other girl. And then they had the little signs around, and like, Easy Does It.
You and I know Easy never did anything. But for the grace of God, and I got sick in my stomach, and all of these little things, and Face Things First, and I was sure glad when I saw that one, because any good drunk knows that you gotta get a bottle before you can drink it. So I told them that's what that one meant. And there was one that said, Think, Think, Think. And actually, I don't know why we keep it up there, because we tell the newcomers it's their thinking that got them here, and let us do their thinking for them at first.
My sponsor told me that I'd do well to remember I just couldn't take that drink. And when you come at the brain damage, I too had suffered from it. And I thought when I did get back and wanted to stay, that maybe that I was constitutionally incapable of being honest with men that had too much brain damage. And my sponsor sort of put it to me this way. They asked me if I could still tell a glass of water from a glass of whiskey.
And I said, Yes, I could. And they said, That's all brain you have to have left to make this program. And they were a little bit afraid I didn't have that. Well, you know, all these little signs that were around. And then they explained the program. See, I already knew intellectually that I was an alcoholic. I had read Jack Alexander's article. I was living in Little Rock, Arkansas, then out from it at Pera.
And my husband had contracted to do the tunnel for the city of Waterwood. You know, that new dam that built there. And I identified so well that I destroyed the magazine and prayed that they'd be out of copies before we could get to Little Rock. Because I didn't want my husband to know that I was an alcoholic because he might get the idea I couldn't drink. And I knew it intellectually, but I had never accepted it at the gut or the heart level that I was an alcoholic and that I couldn't take that first drink.
But they told us about the program, and I heard everything that I hear now that night except I didn't hear them say that you don't take that first drink or that you put the cap on the bottle. So I missed the whole thing. They asked people to speak, you know, from three to five minutes. And people got up there and spoke. And I listened for the differences. I listened for the differences. I heard somebody said they had been in jail in Lincoln Heights.
And, you know, people just laughed and clapped. And I thought, my God, what is that? You know, it must be a wonderful place or something. You know, sometimes I'm a little jealous I didn't make the jail because I feel like they've got a fraternity of all their own. And that I could laugh with them and wink at somebody, you know, knowingly. And then they said they got 502s. And I punched the man next to me.
And I said, what's a 502? And he said, drunk driving in California. And in a very pious manner, I said, I've never had one. And he said, of course you haven't. You don't live in California. That stopped me there. And then we had people from Skid Row that got up there. And I was so ignorant that I didn't know that Skid Row wasn't a place. And I thought it was great they had somewhere to come. And it was only after I started getting well on this program that I realized that Skid Row was a state of mine and I'd been living on it for at least 11 years.
And everywhere I went, I took Skid Row with me. And we even had somebody that got up and said they had been in a prison. And I'm going to tell you, I was embarrassed for them. I just wondered if they didn't know that you didn't talk about things like this as a social event. And I thought, but good dear. And I thought, but poor dears, I am so glad they've got somewhere to come to.
[00:15:03]
And I tried to recall if I had ever known anybody of my acquaintance that had ever been in a prison. And then I remembered that I've a bootlegger, uh, had been put in prison, but it was on a false, uh, charge. He was accused of raping a girl that everybody but the judge and jury knew you didn't have to rape. And my daddy got him a pardon because he got to have a bootlegger, you know, in a dry state.
And, uh, uh, but I was glad for these people. And lest I forget, after I was sober long enough and eligible to go into the penitentiaries, I identify better in the federal penitentiaries than I do in the jails when I go. And realize it is but for the grace of God that I wasn't there. Because when I wanted something, I wanted it yesterday. And I wanted the best. And these girls, you know, in talking to them, they would, uh, I thought maybe just people who had come from depressed areas had, uh, you know, went into prisons and so forth.
And I found out that some of them came from equally as good families as mine. Very wealthy, some of them were. And far better educated than I was. And they had gotten there for such things, you know, as robbing on robbery. You know, like they needed a drink in the, uh, robbed whiskey store. Well, I would have done it if I hadn't gotten a drink elsewhere. But, uh, I had money to buy my drinks, but I couldn't always get to them until at the end my husband kept my drinks locked up in the daytime.
And I just watched the neighbors when they'd go out shopping, and I'd go in and borrow a bottle. And… When I was checking my inventory, uh, my sponsor suggested that I write down that, you know, about the stealing I'd done. And I said, I didn't steal. You know, I had cash register honesty and that I didn't steal. And he said, well, I've heard you say that you went into people's houses when they weren't at home and took a bottle.
Did you tell them when they got back that you took it, and did you pay the bottle back? And I said, no, because they'd know then that George locked up my whiskey, and I'd be embarrassed about it. And they said, Alabama, let's don't rationalize it any longer. Just write down the word thief on the end of the story. And they asked me about the married men that I went out. My husband died a year before I got to the program.
Well, I went out with some of them before he died. And, uh, they asked me about that. And I said, I just borrowed an escort. I'd like to go to the better places where you had to be escorted. And I just borrowed an escort from the evening. And my sponsors referred to that as stealing. Stealing the man away from his wife. Allowing him to spend money on me that the family possibly needed. Well, I had to explain to them that I didn't go out with men that didn't have enough for all of us.
And, you know, they thought I rationalized a lot. And they wouldn't, I don't know, a lot of people I sponsor just write volumes in their four steps. My sponsors asked me if possible not to make a complete sentence. Because they said given a paragraph that there wouldn't be any truth in it. And that they had seen me rationalize in one sentence. And they did best that I just list in words combinations of words my character defects.
And they helped me when I couldn't find it. I talked a lot about fibbing. And they explained to me that you either told the truth or you lied. And they just said write down lie, Alabama, that'll cover it. And I just sort of thought I went, you know, kind of in the gray of it. You know, I learned that I was the worst kind of liar of all. I didn't tell direct lies. That was too simple. I'd tell 99% of the truth and throw a cud.
And sometimes I'd tell every bit of the truth and then I'd laugh like it was a big joke. I remember the first time when I was 16 and the first time I got drunk. Mama asked me what we did at our little spend-the-night party. And I said, Mama, I don't know what the rest of the girls did. I got drunk. And I laughed and shrugged my shoulders and Mama said, Evelyn, you mustn't talk like that. Someday people are going to believe what you say.
[00:20:04]
And I got by with this a long time. But you know that's the hardest kind of lying to start? I've had to watch it for over 23 years now. And I catch myself still doing it. And I don't like to be a liar because I may start lying to me one day. And if I start lying to me, possibly the first lie I'll tell me is that one little drink wouldn't hurt me. You know. And I never took one little drink in my life beginning with that age of 16.
I only count 20 years of drinking, though, because I didn't, you know, really work at it until I was 19. And by the time I was 28, I was a chronic alcoholic. And then when I was 39, I had been an acute alcoholism for about a year. But, you know, I've been sober longer than I drank. And I think that's a miracle. I think that's a miracle. But anyhow, at this meeting, going back to the people that were in prison, some of my very best friends have been in federal prisons.
Some of the people I love the most in this world. I was to marry a man that had been in prison and was married to him a year. And it was a great marriage. Spiritual job. Quite a guy. And he died in an automobile accident, sober. And you know he was in prison for doing the very same thing I did, except he did it differently. He wrote bad checks. And I wrote bad checks. But he wrote, wasn't as careful as I was, what banks he wrote them on.
Or whose name he signed to them. Now, I always wrote mine on the same bank. And I told the people when I gave it to them, it wasn't enough money in the bank to cover it on many occasions. But that I'd get it there as soon as I was able to get back to where I came from, you know, and go and sell something and cover it. And nobody ever prosecuted me for these checks. And I wrote them in large figures too.
Because, and I didn't have to steal a car to go from a dry state to a wet state. I chartered airplanes. And gave them bad checks. And somebody always covered my bad checks. My husband covered them. And after he died, my father and my brothers covered them. The chairman of the board at the bank covered them. And if your husbands were there, they may have. Laughter. I was younger then. God, I hated drinking at this age.
Laughter. Well, I found out that I didn't have to steal a car. We had two cars. And my husband had a company car funding. I found out the reason that I hadn't been arrested for drunk driving in whatever state I was in. I just conveniently forgot that my husband wouldn't let me drive. You know, when I was, well, he didn't let me drive much period. We had a chauffeur. And it wasn't that he wanted to impress anybody.
But he just didn't trust me to get back home. I could start out sober and I might, he didn't ever know where I might end up. And I didn't either. I would have told him. But I identified very well with the people in the prison. And you know, I believe, as surely as I'm standing here, that I'm capable of doing anything that any of those alcoholic girls that are in the prison today have ever done. And I believe if I should forget that and believe that I couldn't do what some other alcoholic woman's done, that I'm going to have to drink again and do it.
And I hope I never start believing that I am better than. And I hope I'll never believe again that I'm worse than. I just believe that I'm a normal runner drunk. Sometimes, you know, alcoholics sound so refined, sometimes I say I'm a sober drunk so I won't forget what I was like. Well, needless to tell you, I made quite a few trips to the restroom that night to take a little swig of that vodka. Then I took me some back to the hospital with me.
And to sober up with, of course. And it wasn't very long before I was in St. John's Psycho. Another thing, when I heard you say you had been in, you know, state institutions and mental institutions, I thought I was different. And then somebody brought to my attention that they got bars at St. John's Psycho. And the only difference was it cost more there. And that I was just fooled to have paid it.
[00:25:02]
I ended up there. And, you know, of my own accord, I took antabuse. It was kind of new that day at the time I took it. They had been giving it to the men in the Army, but they called in a specialist to give me the antabuse. They saw my husband coming in. They called specialists. I had seven doctors at one time. And there wasn't anything wrong with me except I was a drunk. Seven doctors on the payroll.
They called in a doctor to decide if I could take the antabuse. And they told me, kill me if I drink on top of it or make me so sick I couldn't. And they're lies. They said you had to leave it off four, five, six days, better a week, you know, if you were going to drink. Now tell me, how did a man get a degree in psychiatry if he thinks that an alcoholic is going to know five or six days ahead of time when to go out to have a drink?
I drank right on top of it a number of times. Of course, they put me in coma several of those times, and I was raced back to St. John's Psycho. But I was so insane, I kept taking the antabuse. Now, nobody made me take this antabuse. And I hadn't figured out yet why I took it, because I didn't want to quit drinking. But the doctor asked me if I could stay sober without it, and I said, I don't know, I've never tried.
And that was the truth, possibly the only thing true I told him. I went through the route of going to the psychiatrist, and they tried their best to find something about my unhappy childhood. Well, my childhood had been very happy, but it lasted too long. And I went to… I really had some help from a psychologist, though. I went to this lady, and I got rid of a lot of my unreal guilt by the time I was 28.
And then I proceeded, and I think a lot of us suffer from unreal guilt. But right after I left her, I went out and I made me some real guilt. I broke every standard that I had set to live by. I first started breaking the standards that my church and my mother and my father had set. And then I broke the standards that I set. And I think you girls know what I mean. And then… Oh, you mean me too? And then I started breaking the standards…
After I started breaking the ones I set, I started changing them daily. And I couldn't live up to them. And I hated me. And I would drink to forget what I had done, the memory I couldn't stand to know that I was doing these things that I did. And I don't enumerate them because I don't think it's necessary. I did everything it was necessary to do to stay drunk until I was 39 years of age. And I have been told, and I believe a lot of the girls when they tell me, that they didn't find it necessary to do some of the things I did.
I was a protected drunk and, of course, I wasn't in jail. We traveled a great deal and that was to my advantage because I'd go in a new community and I made friends readily. And, you know, they'll tolerate you being drunk two or three times, you know. My husband always explained about my migraine headaches or whatever I was suffering from at that time. And I would get real busy in the community. My husband was a mining engineer and did consulting work a great deal and we traveled a lot.
And I'd get busy in the church and I had all that nervous energy. And with that energy, you know, they'd put me on committees and, you know, they're always looking for a new worker, make me chairman of the committee, and I'd do a darn good job. But most of the time I couldn't show up to the event because I was drunk. And then I'd be glad that we were going to move to another town. I hate to leave the people.
But, you know, I thought I'm going to start all over and it's going to be different this time. God, I think that's the hardest drinking in the world is when you're trying to keep up the appearance of a woman who isn't a drunk. And when you're trying to go out socially with people and when you're trying to be a credit to your husband, which reminds me, if I don't you, my husband was a mining engineer in North Carolina one night.
The chairman of the board was entertaining the largest stockholders and the officers of the company and so forth. And I'm sitting to his right. And I say, to his right, and I said, tell some kind of silly little joke, and he looked at me, and he said, Evelyn, I didn't know you had communistic ideas, but you don't say that to a rebel and a drunk, and I stood up, and I said, you son of a bitch, my husband had never heard me say it, and I'm whispering, my voice will carry, but I wasn't whispering, and we were in the nicest place there, and then the
[00:30:24]
North Carolinas that they had, right out on the dance floor, where everybody could hear it, I said, my people were making this a safe democracy, when your family was trying to get steerage together, and I took his inventory, but good, my husband stood up, and you know how the mind works, when you're drunk, you lose his job, if he says anything, and I said, you sit down too, you're nothing but a damn Yankee, just sit down, and on the way home, he said that he was going to resign from his job the next day, and I said, George, please don't, George was 22 years older than I was, and for the rest of his life, he would be well fixed with this company, and it was a profit-sharing plan, and all these things, and I said, I will leave you, and when we got home, I insisted that I was going to leave him, and I asked him to pull the trunk out, and I'd pack, well, I put a few things in it, and every time I put something in it, I nearly went in, and finally I looked at him, and I said, George, I'm too drunk to pack, you'll have to leave me, well, he never did, and he didn't lose his job, he was a damn good engineer, I lived in Boulder City, Nevada, and I decided that people in that town might get an idea that I was a drunk, and that I best get very active in the Episcopal Church, and let them know I was a good woman, just, you know, that I was really a good woman, and I made up my mind that I was going to get elected to that altar gale, but now there have been women waiting for other women to die, who, you know, deserve being on that altar gale, but every time they need something in the church, I buy it, you know, we contributed in memory of somebody, and sure enough, they asked me to serve on the altar gale, and when they did, I told them I wasn't worthy, God, I've been politic and proud ever since I've lived in Boulder City, so they sent the minister to ask me, and I said, well, you know I drink, and see, this is part, you know, the lies, the kind of lies I told, and he said, well, I know you do, I'm drunk with you, you don't believe that I told him that I just was, you know, warming up while he was there, that I did my real drinking after he left, you don't believe that I told him how many times I'd paced out, the things that I did, the drunks that I'd gone where nobody could find me, and traveling all over the United States, no, I didn't, I didn't tell him any of things, I let them tell me that I was a wonderful woman, and they needed me, and do you know, I made it a point never to drink, just before I went to take care of the altar, I cut it off, the cutoff time was four o'clock in the morning, well, you know they smell me, and we had talent week in the Episcopal Church, it's where you give to God of your talents, and I really could, some of the women, you know, who had servants, went out and washed each other's windows, babysat or baked and sewed things, and I didn't bake, and I didn't sew or crochet or any of those kind of things, and I really couldn't think of any talent, and finally I just said that I thought I'd give a cocktail party, and they said I better check it out with the rector of the church, and he said it would be okay if I just include the church people in the Episcopal Church, and my friends, because other people might think it was a funny way to make money for a church, and I gave a cocktail party, and my husband, I didn't know it at the time, but he had become a chronic gambler, that's when I worked for a living, you know, and what I spent too, I'm taking his inventory now, and I'm up here to talk about me, but I went over on the strip, and I got those managers to furnish me the bartenders, the whiskey, the glasses, I made the hors d'oeuvres, that's all I did, and they not only did that, but they came and set up the house, and as soon as the last guest left, I couldn't walk, and I crawled to the door and pretended that I was funnying, you know, to say goodnight to all of them, and then, you know, took another drink, and I could walk alright, so my husband invited the people who had assisted me at the party, including the rector, to come over to Railroad Pass with him, that was in Henderson, and if you will remember it, it had a western decor,
[00:35:17]
and we were all sitting at the bar, and I am dressed fit to kill in the black cocktail dress and the long white kid gloves, and I fell off of the bar stool, and I caught my elbow, white kid gloves and all, in the spittoon. Now that ruined my image, and it made me so mad, I got up in order to double, but those are just a few of the things that I did, I was to later go drunk in Sedalia, Missouri to the Bishop's dinner, and I was the only person that it was obvious was drinking there, I took their inventory, because somebody from that dinner told my brother about me being drunk, and I called them up and told them I thought the church was for the people that needed it, not the saints, and he got right to that hospital and gave me communion, right to that hospital.
I loved my husband, and I've heard people say that it's impossible for an alcoholic to love like we said that we did. I loved my husband all I was capable of loving any human being. He was the only man that I had ever wanted to be married to. I didn't love these other men, I just, you know, I just followed the Bible. I wasn't, I didn't kid myself I was in love with anybody else. I loved my husband, but I wasn't a good wife, but I was as good a wife as my disease would allow me to be.
And when he died, my whole wall I thought was gone, because I had become terribly dependent on him. And then when I found out that he had lost so terribly much money in gambling, and I didn't know it because we had not sold anything, but the banks had all of our stock and so forth, you know, and some of it was blue chip and we'd borrowed up over 75% on some of it. And then I got mad. I got mad that he would leave me in the condition I was in, broke. Well I wasn't completely broke, but I mean it seemed like it.
Now I didn't have anybody left that I had to try to be a good wife for. And my family tried to help me, they gave me a job in that place of business. They were great to me. You know the people that loved me damn near killed me. Damn near killed me. And they did it with love. And I traveled a lot. Everywhere I went I thought it's going to be better the next place I go. But I took me of that thinking thinking and that drinking habit with me. I met a man and I was drunk when I met him and I never went out with him. I could drink an awful lot and walk straight most of the time.
And nobody realized, you know, that I had so many blackouts and everything. I didn't know a thing in the world really about this man. I went to Connecticut to meet his family. And when I got there they celebrated my arrival. And I heard his mother say to one of the daughter-in-laws, he's a lovely southern belle. And I'll tell you something, when I left there the bell had quit ringing. And it was clanging. We celebrated my arrival and I fitted in. You know they were heavy social drinkers. And one day, you know, like after the second day they quit celebrating my arrival.
And all the family except Carl and I went visiting the neighbors there around their summer place. And Carl and I were listening to a ball game. And I am dying. I have finished the whiskey I brought with me to drink between drinks. And my early morning supply and I finished it. And I am just dying for a drink. So I thought the game would never end. And when it ended I said, Carl, let's have a drink. And he looked at his watch and he said it was too early. And I couldn't believe my ears. It was in the afternoon, you know. And he said, and besides we don't want to drink alone. And I thought, we don't.
And I decided I don't know much about this man. You know, it was a moment of clarity. And so I asked him, you know, what his taste in books and plays and, you know, what his purpose in life was other than making money. I already knew that I wouldn't go.
[00:40:03]
And I found out after, you know, a five, ten minute talk with the man that we didn't have a thing in common but baseball. And the season I knew was too short. But I lay out in that hammock nearly dying. And I looked at that property and I knew its value. And I wondered with his traveling could I possibly get sober before he would get home. You know, because I needed a good, strong man to support me and to protect me from me. And I knew it wouldn't work. Because no matter how hard I had tried to be a good wife to George, I couldn't be.
And things went alright because the family got home pretty soon. But the time came that Carl quit serving me whiskey. And you know what I did? I took a cab and went about thirty miles and got a bottle. I brought it home and he took it away from me. Now when I came to you I did not believe that I was a hostile woman. My husband and my mother had said I was a wonderful woman. The only thing wrong with me was that I drank too much. I couldn't believe that I was hostile and an angry woman. But when Carl took that bottle away from me I tried to kill him.
I took a full Coca-Cola bottle and tried to hit him in the head with it. And fortunately he was fast and he protected himself with a chair. And this was all in front of his little mother. They were glad to see me going into New York for my stay there. And there I met a man. I speak a lot of men. But that's my story. And I met this man and he asked me to marry him. I thought maybe this was just part of the DTs. But we did call Alabama and he talked to a woman I called my aunt.
And he talked to her and she knew his family. And when she got back on the phone she said, Evelyn, they're great people. They're Episcopalians. They own one of the hotels on Miami Beach and they're a good-faced family in Florida. And she said, I'm real happy about it. And one morning I was sitting across the table, you know, about noon. It looked like it was noon by the way the people were dressed. And we were having champagne and he looked at his watch and he said, we better hurry. And I couldn't imagine what you're going to hurry about when you're drinking champagne. And I didn't like it but I drank it. And I was a bourbon Scotch woman.
And anyhow, he said we'd miss our plane. Well, I didn't know where we're going and so and for time I asked him, couldn't we take another? And he said, no, that would make us late in Miami for our wedding. I give you my word of honor. I studied this man's features carefully. And I couldn't recall his name. And here I'm going to Miami to marry. So I said, I'll finish this drink and I'll run to the bathroom, come back and finish the drink. And I best go to the hotel ahead of you. You go ahead and eat because it's going to take me a long time to pack. And I called a cab and I said, take me as far away from this place, I don't even know where I was, as you possibly can. And if you can find a hospital emergency room, take me there.
And I turned myself in and told him I was insane. And I was. In recalling a little bit more of this, oh, I forgot to tell you, I've hunted for this man since. Times have become tough. And I figured he's got to be an AA or an insane or sour, I'm a dead. He had to be a drunk or he would never have asked me to marry him. And, you know, I haven't had total recall. I remember where I met the man. I remember where I met him. But as I tried to get honest with me and thinking I was so different from the other girls, in quote, I had to remember a couple of things about this association. I remember that he offered, that I made an excuse that we couldn't be married in New York because I didn't have a proper trousseau.
Now that was a lie because I had bought clothes to go meet the family of the man I was engaged to. I broke that promise. of the man I was engaged to. I broke that engagement just before they, he did. And, uh, uh, he said, well, I should be able to buy everything I needed in New York. And this man pulled out a roll of bills like I have never seen before or since. So he had to either be with the mafia or insane to carry that much money on him. And he said, this should buy you a good one. And I remember spending every
[00:45:21]
inch as tall as I could when I got out of the bed, and, uh, explaining to him that a lady did not accept money from a man that she was not married to. And, you know, I pitted myself that I was different. You know that I was different. I was. I was. I was stupid. My family found me. I got in the knickerbocker wing of their rope, or whatever that hospital is in New York that a lot of people sobered up in. I had to be put in that hospital by, uh, with, by an AA member, and they had panels that came out and called to you, just the selected people that came and called on you, told you about the program.
I never did tell the people in California, uh, in New York that I had been to AA in California. I never did tell the people in Missouri that I had been in California and in New York. But I made a practice of doing a one-courtesy meeting. If you were good enough to get me in a hospital, I thought I owed you the courtesy of a meeting when I got out, and I refrained from drinking until after that meeting.
Uh, my family found me, and they had a nurse and doctor get me on the plane and send me back to, uh, Missouri, and they said they didn't know whether they could get me on there or not, and my brother said, well, what you do, you buy a bottle, and you carry it, and you walk one step ahead of her, and you go on the plane and tell her it's hers when she gets on the plane. And she'll follow that bottle, and I did. I did.
And they got me home, and they threatened to have me incarcerated, and I knew that my family didn't want to incarcerate their sister and daughter. It just, it doesn't reflect very well on the family, you know, and I knew they didn't want to do it. I knew they should incarcerate me. I knew I was insane. But I tell you that I knew it, but I didn't believe it. Intellectually, I knew it. And I said, Dan, you know the only time, uh, you know that they get me in a state hospital, that I can prove in a psychiatrist's court that I'm sane. He said, yes, but before they, uh, have a hearing, maybe you'd be sober long enough. Uh, I said, I'm just insane when I'm drunk, and I believe that.
And he said, maybe you would make a decision what you want in your life before they had the psychiatric hearing, and said, we know enough doctors that love you that would be glad to sign the papers. I knew they weren't going to do it. And they got, they were real cool to me, real cool. They just couldn't tolerate me any longer. And my brothers had flown all over the country to pick me up, to get me in hospitals, and left their families and their places of business. And in my inventory, I had to write about stealing time. Stealing time from doctors that were trying to help me that I lied to. Stealing time from my brothers and stealing them away from their families.
And then I went to a doctor. Thank God, every time I went to a doctor, they said something was physically wrong. I was so relieved, because I hated to just always just go to hospitals, because I had to come off of a drunk. And they said, the doctor told me that he was very much afraid I had breast cancer, because I'd had the lumps quite a little while. And he told my family. And they assured me, they all gathered around with love and money. And they assured me that there wouldn't be anything that wouldn't be done for me. They were going to call in the finest specialists in that part of the country. And they did. And they came to see me daily. And they bought me new things. And they brought me my food, so I wouldn't have to eat that hospital food.
And I had everything going my way. And the priest had already come from the Episcopal Church to give me communion. Had everything going my way. I knew before I had that surgery that God wasn't going to let me die of a respectable disease like cancer. That he's going to make me live and suffer. And that's what happened. It wasn't malignant. They kept me in that hospital nearly three weeks. You know, just always they kept me three weeks. Trying to get me strong again. Giving me IVs. Giving me a high-protein diet. Getting me physically strong so I wouldn't have to drink. You know what they did? They built me up so I could drink more. And one day, I didn't hear from anybody in the family.
[00:50:17]
And you know that old feeling of impending doom? And it started going over me. And I knew something was wrong. And I knew it concerned me. And that night, my brother came in. And I asked him to sit down. And he said he preferred to stand. He didn't bring me my dinner. I had to eat that old hospital food. And when he came in, he said that they had had a family conclave that day by phone and those of them that could got together. Now some of you Al-Anon members got to my brother. I think you called yourselves family members then. And I love you because it helped save my life.
He told me that they thought that every adult should have the right to live or die. And apparently, I didn't want to live. And he wanted to ask me to forgive them for keeping me alive. And if I wanted to die, that I was going to have to die by myself. That they weren't going to be responsible for my death any longer. And he released me as surely with love as any Al-Anon has ever released their family. And you told him about this.
And I knew he told me how much he loved me. But he told me he didn't want me in his home again if I had had that first drink. That he didn't want his children to see me ever again drinking. That they seemingly knew that I was a sick woman and not a bad woman. My sponsor-to-be told him about that. And let's keep it that way. And when he left, he cried unashamedly. He knew every member of the staff and every person possibly in that hospital. And he didn't care who knew he was crying because he knew his sister was dying. I made the decision. I didn't make any promises to him. I never made any promises to anybody but me and God as I love him that I wouldn't drink again.
But I made the decision that I wouldn't. And do you know it was the first time I'd ever made the decision? And I honest to God didn't know I couldn't stay sober if I tried. And I fought it for quite a few hours the night I was released from the hospital and by midnight I'm drinking. And I had met a man in the hospital that told me his story. And it was a miracle. Everybody in town knew I was drunk.
After I got to my first AA meeting in Sedalia, all of these people that had come from the church to see me were members of AA. But they didn't tell me. But this man told me his story. He was a patient there in the hospital. And I had known him socially before. And I was drunk by midnight that night. And I hadn't wanted to drink. I hadn't wanted to. I tried not to drink. But I couldn't stand the thought of what I had become. And I couldn't stand the state of sobriety any longer. It was all right while I was in the hospital. I hadn't been out for a drink while I was in this hospital. So I must have been making the decision. And I called him and I said I needed help. And he says, what's your problem, Evelyn? Do you need transportation or booze?
And that insulted me. And I said neither one. I have my own transportation and I have plenty of booze, but I can't stop drinking. And he said, how long have you been drinking? And I told him, he says, you can put that cap on the bottle and get sober by yourself and I'll meet you at the foot of your stairs tomorrow night and walk you around the corner to the AA meeting. I didn't even know it was there.
And he took me there. And they called on the raise of the hands for the alcoholics. And I didn't raise mine. They called on the raise of the hands for the Al-Anon members, our family members, I think they called them then, and I didn't raise mine. They went through every category they knew. And finally they said, did they have a non-alcoholic Vista there? If so, would you stand and introduce yourself?
And I stood up and told them my name was Evelyn Brown and that I had come to commend them for the great work they did in the community. And God, I felt sick as I was saying it and it makes me sick when I think about how phony I was. And on the way home I said I just couldn't admit to all these people that know my family that I was an alcoholic. It was just disgrace then.
[00:55:12]
I've been falling damn drunk everywhere I've been in the town. Only about 26,000, 30,000 people there. The policemen knew me. They never arrested me, but they would pretend they were joshing with me and they cupped their hands under my elbows and my feet didn't touch the ground as they took me back to my hotel apartment. Everybody in that town that knew me knew I was a drunk. I was the town drunk. And it was only out of respect to my family that I wasn't arrested and put in jail every time I got out on the street. And I went back to AA and told them I was an alcoholic and that I needed help. But that's all I did. I didn't change any way I lived.
They told me to take telephone numbers and to call them. I never called anybody. They invited me to join them after the meetings. They asked me to get the names and the telephone numbers. I didn't join them after the meetings. I went to the cocktail lounges and the clubs and places where there was drinking for the vicarious thrill. And I seldom drank when I went, but when I got home I started drinking.
I continued going out with married men and continued to live the same way I'd been living. And I don't think I need to tell you without making any changes that I didn't stay sober. And I got sick and tired of these slips. I referred to them as slips, but I don't believe in slips. I drank because I had to drink every time I drank. It wasn't a slip because I wasn't in any program. I wasn't observing any program.
I never have had a slip. I just got drunk a lot. And I ordered me a case of whiskey and I decided that I'm going to drink until I have all the whiskey I want, until my family has me incarcerated, until I die, or until I die. And none of those things happened. After I take that first drink, I have never had all I wanted to drink. I'm the kind of person, you know, that runs out the nose. I do a cup job like that and try to get the bottle, you know, another drink down. I never had all I wanted to drink. I wanted it as I was passing out. And they didn't have me incarcerated. And obviously I didn't die.
What happened was I started living. An AA woman called me up and said, could she come over? And I said, uh, Ruby, don't come over. I'm getting ready to go to work. It was late afternoon. I hadn't been to work, you know, in several months. And actually, my brother's just built an office in the back of their place of business to try to keep me busy. And I said, I must get ready to go to work. And she said, well, I won't detain you from your work. But let me come over and talk to you a few minutes. Well, what was happening, that I tried to bathe and get a blouse buttoned all day. And I get so hot trying to button that blouse, it buttoned down the back, I'd have to bathe again. And you know you've got to have some whiskey to bathe with.
And I was drinking, you know, all day long, but thinking all day that I'm getting ready to go to work. That's how insane I was. And I had burned a mattress and endangered the town of Sedalia, you know, because I lived right there in the business district. And Ruby said, Evelyn, go home with me. And I guess for the first time, I was frank. I don't know whether I was honest. I said, Ruby, I'm not through drinking. And she says, I know it, but we're afraid to leave you here alone.
And I said, can I take my bottle? She said, no, we'll buy the bottle so we can handle it. But she said, we won't let you suffer. We'll give you some drinks. And she took me home with her. And I don't know what she said to me. And I don't know what all of the AA members that visited me said to me. But I remember them lifting me out of the bed and bathing me. I remember them sitting around the clock with me. I remember how they looked. They looked like you. And I remember the look in their eyes. And I wanted to be like you. And I remember that crying with self-pity and saying, but I've lost the respect of everybody that I love. I have nothing to get sober for.
And Ruby had a little grandson that reached… And Ruby had a little grandson that reached up just a little bit above my knee, and he hugged my knee, and he says, I love Shalabam, and you know that's all I remember that was said to me while I was at Ruby's house, but I think it turned the tricks, and I wanted to be like these people, and the next day I told one of the men that was to become one of my sponsors that I wanted to get sober, but I was scared to death.
[01:00:17]
I stopped drinking, I was afraid I'd die, and he said, we understand you're drunk so much you have to have help, and he took me, ironically, to Independence, Missouri, and I just loved that word, because it means freedom to me, and he took me to a place that was as near as they have to Skid Row in Independence. It was upstairs over an empty building, store building, where the winos left the bottles at the door, and in the front of this building upstairs was an AA club, and in the back was some rims that they bring alcoholics in to sober them up, and I was so happy that I was going to be.
There wasn't like you. There were no drapes at the window, there were no rugs on the floor, the furniture looked like Salvation Army rejects, but with you there trying to help me and loving me, I felt that it was a beautiful place, and I started getting sober, and then I went insane. I don't mean just DTs. For five days and nights I fluctuated from sanity to insanity, and they called in a man named Dr. Nathan, he was an AA member, and he knew how to treat me physically speaking, and he said, but it's dangerous to keep her here, that if she goes totally insane that she can kill a man twice her size, the adrenaline's pumping so fast, and Walt said to the doctor, I'm not afraid to stay with her.
Remember you found me in this condition trying to beat my brains out in the jail. I'll stay with her, and stay with me he did for five days and nights, and over and over and over Walt told me he was like me, and that he understood, and he told me I could get well, and I could be sane if I would ask God to help me, and he said, Alabama, just give up. Just give up. Just surrender, and ask God to restore you to sanity, and ask God to remove the obsession to drink from you, that he can, and he will, and it would be his pleasure, and the miracle happened.
The miracle happened. I wish it had happened on a mountainside or somewhere so I could give you a real beautiful spiritual thing, but it happened in a dirty bathroom that fourteen drunks were using to sober up in, with the door slightly open because I wasn't allowed alone in this bathroom, you know, in case I tried to kill myself or something, and it was while I was in there that I heard God say, and please don't misunderstand me, if you'd been there, I don't think you'd heard a word. The God within me said that I didn't have to be insane, and that I didn't have to drink a day at a time on a lifetime basis. I now know that every word I heard was what Walt had told me for five days and nights.
But I asked as God talked to his children, and I've known from that day that if I was willing, that I could stay sober, and the miracle happened, and I wish I could tell you that I have used everything that I was taught, and that from that day hence that I have worked all twelve of these steps, as several other speakers said, I've made every mistake in the book, except I didn't take that first drink. I had four men for sponsors, and I have heard it said that men sponsor men and women sponsor women, but I don't see it in the book. And I had four men for sponsors and men that loved me enough that they protected me from me.
And men that taught me something about honesty with self, and I started getting well. And they told me I couldn't be a parasite any longer, that my family couldn't support me, that I couldn't take the job that my family could get me with the state, that the taxpayer shouldn't have to pay a salary to somebody that didn't know how to do anything. They told me I should earn the right to my sobriety, and they got me a job at 76th Cincinnati in a department drugstore, and I bitched about the 75th Cincinnati, 76th, excuse me, 76th Cincinnati, and they said, Alabama, you ought to be paying them to teach you how to work.
And I'd love to tell you girls that if you have to go out and find a job, and if you've never had to earn your living, that in four months' time I was out of my department, and I felt that I was earning my right to stay sober.
[01:05:16]
They told me I could be as happy as I would allow myself to be, and I believed them. And the days I wasn't happy, I put a smile on and pretended I was. And one day I was walking down the street on the way to work, and I'm singing, and I can't carry a tune. And you know, I thought, my gosh, I'm happy. And I don't even know when it happened. And I was glad I was alive, and I was glad that I was on my way to work.
But then I got a little holier-than-thou, because there wasn't many women staying sober in Independence, Missouri. And I had these four men that were real proud of me, and I was speaking a little and sponsoring a lot. And I went down to the club, and my sponsors told me what I was doing, I was spreading the disease instead of the mess. But I stayed sober. And I went down to the club. They told me to come to the club before I went to work. On my lunch hour and after work. And I went to the club one day, and they brought a new girl in. And I went down that night. Now, I missed a lot of meetings. They didn't have many there. So what would happen, some of the men would stay, and we sort of had Alabama's round table.
Well, they stayed there. That consisted of what my day had been like and how I could improve it. And I asked the boys to excuse me and said that I believe I'd go upstairs and see that poor sick girl that they brought in that day. And I was wearing a halo. And if you've never seen a drunk with a halo on, it sure isn't becoming. It was sliding and tarnishing and so forth. And I came downstairs, and I walked over to the table, and I said, oh boy, I'm so glad I didn't go to the link the poor girl upstairs did before I got to you.
And Dick Durano looked at me and said, Alabama, what's she doing? You ain't done. And I said, what's she? He told every one of us she was a bastard thief. And Dick looked at me, and he shook his head, and he pointed his finger at me, and he says, Alabama, can't we, ain't you gonna ever get honest? Ain't you gonna ever get honest? Can't we speak to the meaning of self-honesty? And I said, Dick, I don't know what you're talking about. And he said, I believe you.
He said, don't you know the only difference in you and that gal upstairs is that you didn't know you could sell it, and besides, you didn't need the money. So every time I start getting a little tired, I see Dick pointing that finger at me, and I remember how stupid I was. I wish I could tell you that what you have meant to me, I have been through a lot of things. I lost quite a bit of money. Sold what stock I had left at about $19, $36 a share, and it went to a hundred and split. I married for the wrong motivations. Well, exactly the reason I married. A very nice man. He sold a good husband to another woman.
But, you know, because it all worked, not a good motivation to marry, and it just didn't work out. I told you that Jim had died. I've been through a lot of things. I've just lost a sister who was an alcoholic recently. I had a brother die of alcoholism since I've been sober. My father died. I lost another brother. And many things have happened. Things that I couldn't have gone through, but we could. And you've always been there. You told me you would be, and to call you. I remember when Jim died, the first call I made was from an alcoholic, and I thought, I could go in that kitchen and get a drink, and I wouldn't have to believe that this happened. I could just forget it happened.
And all I remember was saying, just for today, though, I don't have to drink. And I called in a memo. I couldn't have gotten through many of these things without you. But we can do what I can't do. And I thank God for all of the we's in my life. I thank God that he has allowed me to be, you know, to walk tall, to have human dignity. That's the greatest thing that's been given to me since I've been sober. I thank God that I have a job, and that I am not a parasite any longer. I thank God I'm becoming a first-class citizen.
[01:10:14]
And I thank him that a drunk like me doesn't have to drink if we don't want to. That there is a way out. That there is a way out. I don't know how to thank God for my very life. They were afraid that I was going to have a wet brain if I lived. I don't know how to thank God for my sanity. I don't know how to thank him for all of the happiness and richness that I've had in my life for these past 23 years. But until I learn how to thank him, I'm just going to keep on trying to carry the message that if you don't drink, you won't get drunk.
And try to serve him in my own way until I find out what his real purpose in life for me is. But I do believe that in doing what I'm doing, that I've learned to love him more every day. And I think maybe that's what it's all about. Thank you for inviting me to one of the most wonderful conferences I've ever been to. Thank you. Thank you. I will remain standing, please. There's nothing to say after a talk like that. If you will, join hands and let's pray together the Lord's Prayer.
We forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen.