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Source: DICOBE-00603 – Bob T – TENNESSEE STATE CONV – 1971-04-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00603-bob-t-tennessee-state-conv-1971-04-15.mp3 Duration: 01:10:34
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He's a noted gemnologist and quite proficient in his field, and I'm also told that he is quite a fancier and quite a judge of Tennessee walking horses and things of that kind. Bob is an outstanding man, but I think the greatest tribute that anybody can pay to him is the fact that after all of these years in AA, he is willing to take the time, spill from a busy life, drive 60 miles to an airport, stay up most of the night, and come and share his experiences and his strengths and his great message with us.
So it is my happy privilege this afternoon to present to you Bob from Gulfport. Mr. Jim Denbo, Long Distance, Important. Thank you very much, Hugh, for those most gracious words. And I'm very happy and very grateful that I have been afforded the opportunity to be on this program, and I hope contribute in a small way to the success of this wonderful convention. Now, I am an alcoholic. I didn't always think I was one, and the first time that I ever heard that I was one, my wife called me one, and it made me so mad that I went out and proved I was by getting drunk.
You see, at that time, I thought that an alcoholic was a low-down drunken bum who was lying in a gutter, and since I had my head up on the curb, I felt like there was a great deal of difference. This afternoon, when I say that I'm an alcoholic, the word has a far different connotation to me than it did then. In the first place, I know that I am one of a group of men and women who, for some reason that medical science can't tell us this afternoon, have passed over a line to a point of no return.
And I know, for me at least, that if I am to be happy, the balance of my life, I must exclude alcohol from it. When I say that I'm an alcoholic, it means that I had to learn nearly a half-century of my life passed me by before I learned something about living. Before I learned that the real joy in living does not lie in receiving. It lies in giving. And when I say that I am an alcoholic, it means that I have had to learn, as tortuously and as painfully as any man I know, that there is a power greater than I am that can keep me safe and happy in my sobriety.
So this afternoon, I want to talk a little bit, if I am able to, about this thing of how to live for us alcoholics, which is no more than telling my own story. But to bring this thing home at the outset most forcefully, if I can, to you, I came by this memorandum quite a number of years ago. But it is the truth, and so I propose what I am going to try to say, that it may be of some service to you this afternoon.
In 1923, a very important meeting was held at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago. Attending this meeting were nine of the world's most successful financiers. Those present were the president of the largest independent steel company, the president of the largest utility company, the president of the largest gas company, the greatest wheat speculator, the president of the New York Stock Exchange, a member of the president's cabinet, the greatest bear in Wall Street, the head of the world's greatest monopoly, the president of the Bank of International Suddenness.
Certainly we must admit that here were gathered a group of the world's most successful men, at least men who had found the secret of making money.
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Now, 25 years later, let's see where these men were. The president of the largest independent steel company, Charles Schwab, died of bankruptcy and lived on borrowed money for five years before his death. The president of the largest utility company, Samuel Ansell, died a fugitive from justice and penniless in a foreign land. The president of the largest gas company, Howard Hobson, is now insane. The greatest wheat speculator, Arthur Cutton, died abroad in Salvon.
The president of the New York Stock Exchange, Richard Whitney, was just a few years ago released from Sing Sing Penitentiary. The member of the president's cabinet, Albert Ford, was pardoned from prison so he could die at home. The greatest bear in Wall Street, Jesse Livermore, died a suicide. The head of the greatest monopoly, Ivor Kruger, died a suicide. The president of the Bank of International Settlement, Leon Fraser, died a suicide.
All of these men had learned well the art of making money. Not one of them had learned how to live. We Anchor Artists, if we are to successfully handle our problems, have to do that one simple thing. To learn how to live. How to live a way of life. Necessarily this afternoon, we will, as we have in the other talks that have been given here at this convention, talk about two words, alcoholism and the alcoholic.
Now, alcoholism has been defined many times in these talks as an illness that is a physical allergy coupled with a mental obsession. You can look in the medical books for their definition and you'll read about two and a half pages in which they try to explain what this illness is. But after all, our good friends the doctors can't be blamed too much because it was not until 1950 that they were willing to recognize it officially as an illness.
So, we have this question that we, as we've come along, have used this simple definition and I do not know of one any better. But I do not know whether we give as much thought to the illness that we are suffering from as we should. Perhaps some of you have done as I have done in the years past, just given lip service to that simple definition. But when I realized that if I wanted to stay sober, I had to learn a great deal more about myself and about the illness I had.
I began to learn that what I suffered from when I said that was a compulsion that's a thousand times more powerful than any habit could ever be that caused me to reach out and take the first drink and a physical allergy that set up immediately that condemned me to keep on drinking until I died. Now, what is the proper proportions of that illness, I am not qualified and I don't believe anyone is qualified to say.
But I would like to give my own opinion which you can take or throw out the window as you prefer. But I believe that the illness that we suffer from, the greater part of it, is the mental obsession, the mental aspect of the illness. I have seen thousands upon thousands of alcoholics since I was first privileged to come in. And not one single time have I ever known or heard that any of them have ever died from the physical allergy if the mental part of it was controlled.
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But I have been pallbearer to too many funerals in my own group, in my own state, for those who are not able to understand the mental aspect of our problem. You may not agree with me and you have a perfect right to disagree with everything that I say. But it is my belief that you and I who are alcoholics suffer from an illness of the personality. And that the sooner we may learn that, the sooner we may find happiness in working out our problem and our salvation.
And this strange individual that we call the alcoholic is a man or a woman, as the case may be, in most instances, who set out just to drink, to have a good time. I have never in my life, among all the alcoholics that I know, found one who ever set out to become an alcoholic. It's a confirmation, devoutly, not to be wished for. But it happened. We just arrived, and we do not understand how. All we know is that it started off so sweet and so innocently, and then things began to happen.
And we suddenly began to vaguely realize that we had a tiger by the tail and couldn't turn him loose. We did not know just why that was true. And so we couldn't confide in anyone, we couldn't talk to anyone about that, because we were always a target of criticism. You know, we have two great words that we use. The psychiatrists use them too, but they would cost you $64 a word if you had them in a psychiatrist's office, and you'd get them here this afternoon for nothing.
That's rationalization and projectionism. Now, by rationalization I mean simply this, that there never was a time in my life when I didn't have at least 15 or 20 good excuses for the drink I took. And this question of projectionism is simple. We just place the blame on somebody else except poor Bob. And my wife, being the nearest object at hand, has gotten all the credit for all the misdeeds and sins that I have committed under the name of alcoholism.
The result is that we have to use these words to defend ourselves, because the distaffed side of our family is always asking the perpetual question, Why? Why did you tell Miss Jones that terrible joke that you told last night? And you've cluttered your brain and you can't even remember who Miss Jones is, much less what you said to her. And so when you can't defend yourself, you have to withdraw into yourself.
And as you gradually withdraw, you spend a little cocoon about yourself, until finally, though you may touch life at many points, it touches you at no point. And finally you seal yourself off. And if you are fortunate that they come, that you ask for help, and you begin to try to break out of the prison that you have placed your own self in. And I found out that in breaking out of that prison, it was easier, much easier, for me to act myself into right thinking than it was to think myself into right acting.
You and I who are alcoholics is in the fact that we try to treat that illness in balance in all three phases. AA is not the only movement that has ever been started to try to do something for the alcoholics. The Oxford Movement did something about it. The Washingtonian Movement tried. But each of those, with all credit to them, that may be due, did not involve and treat all three phases, and did not attempt to hold them in balance.
So we find…
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Now, the strange thing is that you cannot come to Alcoholics Anonymous and listen to what somebody else pronounces upon you in the form of a judgment as to whether you're an alcoholic or not and have any success. It makes no difference to you what I think about whether you're an alcoholic or not, nor does it make any difference to me what you think about me. It's what I think about me and what you think about you that determines what we are going to do with this question of alcoholism.
It reminds me of the play of Macbeth, when Lady Macbeth was losing her mind, and Macbeth went to the court physician and asked if there was not some potent potion that he might give that could restore her to sanity. And he says, No. Methinks this is a case where the patient must become the doctor. And the patient must become the doctor if we are going to survive. There is no way or substitution of some other individual that's going to make the difference.
You and I must take the medicine, and there's only one medicine that I know of that can help and indeed do everything that's necessary for the alcoholic. Almost every paper we pick up, at least once every month, some doctor, some foundation, has discovered or are working on a pill that's going to solve the alcoholic's problem. And lots of alcoholics who have that reservation tucked way back at the base of their brain are so happy to think about that. But I tell you this afternoon, with all the sincerity that is in my being, that they will never find a pill, no matter what genius may try, they will never find a pill that can correct the mental processes that have brought you and I to our unhappy state. The only medicine that has ever been found or ever will be found that will do that for you and me is simply the love and the grace of God.
When I first came into our group, I didn't like what I saw on the board about God because I was bereft, spiritually, physically, mentally, any other way that you might think of. But I didn't want to hear anything about God, and quite a number of them that had been there sometimes said, don't mention this word God, you're going to scare some of these boys away. I say to you this afternoon that we know and we have always known that there is only one way that this program can work for you and for me, and that is complete surrender and to make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand him.
And if we are not willing to grapple with that and try to work that out, we are indeed doomed. My drinking experience ran over a period of about 23 years. The first 15 years of that, I guess, were not too bad, though I couldn't tell you this afternoon at what point I crossed over. All I know that I did, and I know that the last 8 years, were horrible. But about 8 years before I came into AA, the local doctors had just about despaired of trying to do anything for me.
But one brave soul told my wife that he would try once more. He later became a brother of ours and has just recently passed on. So he sent some medicine out there for me to take. Now, I know that most of you don't know anything about those things,
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and so I'll tell you what they were. What they were, they were little red capsules that they called succinols, or red devils. And I didn't know anything about them either then. But they had on the directions there that immediately upon my retiring, I was supposed to take one. If sleep had not been attained in four hours, I was to take another, but no more. And my wife, being the trusting soul that she was at that time, let me have the whole box.
So I immediately retired. And I took one. And you alcoholics know how fast time does pass. And in 15 minutes I was ready to take a paralyzed oath that it had been four hours. So I took another, and another, and another. And I just wasn't getting any action or reaction out of those things at all. So I got up and I poured me about a half a tumbler of good bourbon whiskey and took it down. And then about 2.30 in the morning, my wife heard the crash.
Now, in our dining room, the distance between the stretcher, the dining room table, and the floor is less than the distance between my two ears. But my head was under that thing. And I called my wife, and she came there with much tugging and jerking and grunting and a little skin and blood. We finally got my head out from under it. And by that time, she was getting pretty disgusted with the whole proceeding.
And she said, Bob, for goodness' sake, stand up. I said, well, now, my dear, if you'll just explain to me which way is up, I'll try to make it. And then she grabbed me by my pajama coat as though I had a bad case of leprosy. And I crawled on my stomach through three rooms to get back to my bed. And when it came by, I nailed it. My poor wife was distraught, just like some of your wives have been. She called upon my former law partner, one of the federal judges there in our district.
And all he could do was offer her sympathy, and she already had plenty of that. And then she called upon my middle brother, an engineer, Jackson, Mississippi, who's since passed away. But he refused to come down to help her. He said, I would love to come and help you, but when he gets drunk, he goes insane. And sometimes he's going to hurt somebody very badly, and I don't want to be the one to get hurt.
And then she called upon my younger brother in desperation, a judge in Corpus Christi, Texas. And he came over with a ballow born of ignorance and proceeded to take charge of the situation. And the next thing I knew, I was headed toward one of these institutions that we heard so much about this morning, in the same town. And I told him and I told my wife, I said, now, if you're going to put me in one of these places where they have bars on the windows and locks on the doors, there will come a day when I get out.
And when I do, I'm coming to see both of you. They said, no, now, you've just got the wrong idea about that. And we're going to send you to a place where you can come and go just as free as you want to. And I said, well, I don't believe that. And he said, all right, we'll let the doctor himself talk to you. So they put the old gentleman, whom I supported for the next eight years, on the telephone. And he said, yes, my boy, you come up here and we'll take care of you, and you can come and go just as free as a bird.
And when I got up there, I found out he was telling me the truth. I couldn't come and go just as free as a bird if I was willing to travel with no more clothes on than a bird had on. I was so filled with shame and humiliation over the disgrace that I felt I'd brought upon my wife and my two daughters,
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all three of whom are very lovely, that I made a firm resolution I would never take another drink as long as I lived. So for three days and three nights I refused all forms of sedation, and I wouldn't take any liquor to taper off on. Of course, I didn't know as much about whiskey then as I do now, so I never made that mistake. And the third night I went in to deliver him tremors. And he was saying no useful purpose this afternoon for me to try to regale you with what happens when you're in the D.T.
But as the old country boy says, if you ain't been there, you ain't seen nothing yet. He knew just exactly what he was talking about, to be in that never-never land where you're half sane and half insane, and you don't know which time is which. And to see things forever and eternally in motion is an agony that the human mind cannot long endure. And on the third night they narrowly pulled me through.
And that scared me when I finally found out what had transpired in those three days and three nights. Many things there that I'd be too embarrassed to talk about. But one thing that did happen was a long conversation, two hours and a half, with my wife. Somebody said that it was a fairly intelligent conversation. But the only trouble was that my wife was 165 or 170 miles away when I was carrying that on.
And finally, I also found that I tried to jump out of the third-story window at that establishment. And fortunately, a lawyer from over in Louisiana, who was up there for the same reason, caught me and saved my life. The last thing on earth that I wanted to do was to break my precious neck. I don't know what in the world happened, but I can subscribe to the insanity theory a whole lot better after that.
At any rate, I became worried enough that I decided I would stay at that institution and take whatever they had to offer. And boy, they had plenty to offer if you had a little money to pay for it. And I took it all, and finally wound up with the housing treatment, and if you all have not had that, that's just a mild way of learning how to walk on walls and ceilings with no effort at all. And finally, they were ready to discharge me, discharge me as cured.
In fact, the doctor said that if I had five more bucks, he would give me a diploma that said I was cured. But I took his word for it, and I went back to my home, and I gathered up the very badly scattered reins of my law practice. The dogs quit growling at me when I'd come in at night, and they got to where they didn't be easy to table with them again, and life began to take on a very rosy hue. And I lived in a state of bliss there for something like six months.
And finally, I began to rationalize a little bit, as I guess alcoholics have since the beginning of time and will to the end of time. I thought, well, now one or two drinks is not going to hurt me, especially if I drink like a gentleman, however that is. And so I took just one or two little old drinks, and in 24 hours they had me back in that institution tied down to a bed. And then back and forth and back and forth I went until I just became a sanitarium commuter, until finally I wore out my welcome and my pocketbook at that institution.
And the welcome seemed to expire coincidentally with the pocketbook given out. And then my wife decided that perhaps I needed a change of scenery, so we shipped it to Foundation Hospital in New Orleans. Of the five men who founded Archner Clinic there, two old schoolmates of mine at the University of Mississippi, and you know Foundation doesn't care any more about drunks than the average hospital does.
But with a little finagling, I got in under a diagnosis of incipient diabetes, for just as drunk as the Lord. I was just as drunk as the Lord. Now, one psychiatrist, as fine as many of them are,
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one psychiatrist is just enough in any one person's life. But my wife decided that I needed four. And there I was, laying on a little white bed, shaking and shivering and sweating, all at the same time as only an alcoholic can. And those four learned men of medicine came in and looked down at me like a group of scientists looking at an insect under a microscope and said, What do you propose to do about your problem?
I said, Problem? I don't exactly understand what you mean. I don't have diabetes. I'm just slightly drunk. I thought everybody knew that. And the only problem I've got is to get sober in time to try a lawsuit in Biloxi and federal court next Thursday. Now, if you can solve that one, you've got mine solved. And they turned right around and walked out with not another word to my anxious and fearful wife who was awaiting the verdict of the jury.
And they said, We're awfully sorry, but he just doesn't have the proper attitude. All we can foresee for you is a continuous round of these institutions until finally he'll develop the wet brain, and then you can put him in an insane asylum and go home and rest and know where he is for a change. Now, up until that time, I had sworn off as many times as any man under the sound of my voice. And the strange thing was that every time I'd gotten my wife to believe that this was really the last time until those doctors talked to her.
And then all the hope went out of her heart. And the next time I got drunk, which wasn't too long off, the next morning I was badly hungover, could hardly reach my head to scratch it. She came in to talk to me. I don't know whether any of you have ever experienced it or not, but it always seemed to me that when you dine for one more good slug, they want to come in, sit down, and talk over the facts of life with you.
She says, I've talked to the children, and we've all decided that you're not going to quit drinking, you're going to drink until you die. And whether you believe it or not, we don't want to be there and see that. So we're going to leave, we're going to let you have it. And we're going outside of Gulfport to get a lawyer to represent us, to get a fair division of what little bits left, because we don't think any of your local brethren would sue you.
And I said, well, I'm very sorry that you feel that way about it, but I can't blame you. And I won't stand in your way. But you won't have to go outside of Gulfport to get a lawyer to represent you. I'll represent you. And I'll do more for you and the children than any lawyer could ever do, and far more than any court would ever require of me. If you'll send to the office for one of the girls, come out, I'll dictate and execute an estimate that will give you and the children everything in the world I possess except one suit of clothes, and I'll leave.
And she said there literally a gasp. She said, Bob, you just can't mean that, that you give the children and me all in the world you have, but you won't turn loose a bottle of whiskey. I said, I can't turn loose a bottle of whiskey. And I think then my wife realized how terribly ill I was, because like so many fine women in their age, she stuck, and she stuck all the way. In May of 1949, the lawyers in my state conferred upon me the highest office in our power to give.
I was elected president of Mississippi State Bar. And by all the rules of the game, that ought to have been enough to have kept me sober during the greater part of my tenure in office. But I was drunk in less than two weeks' time. And had I not found Alcoholics Anonymous in November of that year, I would have had to resign that high office in shame and disgrace. Things began to pile up on me pretty rapidly then.
My drunks were getting longer. It was harder to come off of them. It seemed that I could never do it, except in a hospital, where I still never did think that alcohol had anything to do with me. The governor of our state, Governor Fielding Wright at that time, appointed me on a committee, in virtue of my office as president of the state bar, to serve with other members of the judiciary and private individuals
[00:35:07]
in trying to work out some satisfactory program that would stop this drunken driving. Drunks running up and down the highway and killing people. And I told him I'd be happy to serve on it. And I went up there, and I stayed sober. And we drew up the entire recommendation after about three days of hard study on the thing. And then Justice Holmes of Mississippi Supreme Court was the chairman of that committee.
And the night before the meeting was to be held, and something was going to be done about that, they had people coming from everywhere. The clergy, and all the peace officers, and all the state officials, and all public-spirited officials were going to meet there in this giant meeting at Jackson to hear the recommendations. And the governor's office called me the night before, and he said, Justice Holmes has just had to undergo surgery.
And the governor has asked if you would come up and present the program. And I assured him it would be a happy privilege. And I went up, and I stayed sober, up to and including the time of making the report. And I read the report. And the sum and substance of it was this, that these drunken drivers were running up and down the highways of Mississippi, endangering and perhaps killing your child and mine has got to stop.
And your committee recommends that they have no leniency, whatever, at the first time they take the driver's license away from them. And the applause when I sat down was something deafening. In fact, it was ringing in my ears so strongly when I went back to my room that I decided I was entitled to drink. Three days later, not having shown up at home, my wife called that same engineer brother of mine in Jackson.
He finally located me and started me home. And on the way home, I got arrested for drunken driving. Now, I have argued cases in virtually every court in this country, including the United States Supreme Court. But I want to tell you that I have never put up an argument that compared with me arguing with that patrolman who had me arrested. I said, you are making the most serious mistake in your life.
You remember this meeting that we had up here at the first part of the week? When that report was introduced, that's going to create all these… But we have done so. It has… You check up with your superiors. We were on the same side. And it will be a tragedy beyond words if this gets out at all. And he called up, and sure enough, he found out I was his child. And he took care of me. And when I got back, he said, I'm going to trust you now.
He said, I'm going to let you go. He never could to me. His gas had run out of my car. The reason he was able to apprehend me in the first place. And so he just filled up enough in the carburetor for me to get started for about 10 feet. And he said, wait a minute now. You just lay quiet, and I'll go get some gasoline and bring it and put it in there and get you started at home. Don't move out of the car.
Promise me you won't. I said, I won't. And I got to searching around in my car, and guess what? I found another pint. And I cracked that thing. And by the time he got back, my wife and my younger daughter had left from Gulfport and had just about arrived. They'd come up to see which ditch I was in because I was overdue. And there I was, sprawled out in the back seat in an Irish linen suit and that mulberry red face.
And I was a spectacle to behold. My wife took charge of me, and we got home. That ought to have been enough to awaken me, but somehow or other I didn't connect drinking with that episode at all. And then the old judge, who had been my faithful law partner for a long number of years before he went on the bench, came out to talk to me. And he said, Bob, would you like to go for a ride? And I said, yes.
He said, well, you know, in all the years we've practiced together, I don't believe you ever told me a lie about anything. And you don't have to answer me if you don't want to now. But I would really like to know why you drink like you do.
[00:40:01]
And I said, well, Judge, I wouldn't tell anybody else this, but you. But just confidentially to tell you the truth, I think I'm going nuts. And he said, I do too. And that shook me up. He wasn't supposed to say that. But I still wasn't satisfied. And then a bootlegger, whom I had defended times without number in federal court for a little bit of cash money and a whole lot of his excellent products, came in to see me.
He said, Mr. Bob, I want to talk to you about something that's strictly none of my business. But you know you come out there with your big bay horse and your foxhounds to my place to hunt. And you turn those hounds down through the hills and hollers. And there's a lot of cutover laying in there and well of stump holes. And then with my help, you get on that big bay horse and you cut him aloof wide open down through there.
And one of these days, he's going to hit one of those holes and he's going to break his neck. And he's a fine horse, and I hate to see him die. He says, I think you're a fine man, and I hate to see you die. Don't you think you're drinking too much? And I said, well now Pete, I'm one of those people that whiskey has never been a problem to. And I can just take it or leave it any time I want to. And if it's going to worry you, I'll leave it.
He said, well, I probably shouldn't have come, but I'm glad I said what I did anyhow. But after he left, I got to thinking, well now if the bootleggers in Harrison County are getting concerned about my sobriety, perhaps it's getting time for me to get to thinking about it. And then I got to thinking. You know, we alcoholics are the greatest people in the world to start thinking and do heavy thinking and rise to zero.
We do that better than any other group of people that I know. And suddenly the answer to my drinking problem appeared before me, and I was a little embarrassed at my stupidity in not having seen it earlier. All in the world that I had to do to solve my drinking problem was to find out which one of these drinks got me drunk and stop on the preceding drink. So there was nothing to do but stare forth for the noble experiment.
So I stared forth for the noble experiment, and I turned my hands loose, and they did their part of the job well. I had stocked coffee, sandwiches, some old charter whiskey. And I had long since bought me an automobile that made up into a bed because I was always afraid that if I passed out on the cold, hard ground, I might contract pneumonia, and I didn't want to do that. So, in due course, I passed out on the bed, and the next morning when I came to, one lousy hound had come in.
The rest of them were in full cry. And with that kind of a situation, I did what most any good fox hunter would do. I reached over and I took another drink. And I found out that I exhausted my bottle. So I repaired back about two and a half miles to a little restaurant, and I got another bottle of old charter, and I had the man to cook me some bacon and eggs. And after I'd had about a half a tumbler of bourbon, and the bacon and eggs were about to come up, I said to the man there, I want to use your phone.
It had just occurred to me that I came out there for only one purpose, and that was to find out which drink got me drunk. And there I was, as drunk as I usually was, and I hadn't found out. I know, of course, this afternoon the first one was the one. And so I called the man who had approached me earlier about A.A., and I said, Charlie, if this A.A. business means what you say it does, you come and get me because I'm not going to get home today under my own power.
He says, well, Bob, I can't possibly get there for at least two and a half hours, but if you can just hold on that long, I'll be there without fail. And I said, well, that'll be no problem to me. You'll find me out there on Big Biloxi River Road there, towards Advanced School where you and I used to bird hunt so much. I'll be there piled up with the hounds. I'll be there piled up with the hounds. And that was more prophetic than I intended for it to be because they pulled four hounds off when they got to me.
[00:45:02]
And they carried me home and they told my wife the joyful news, that Bob is going to join AA and we're going to sober him up to AA weight. And her eyebrow elevated on that last statement because she thought that she'd have to pay for every way known to mankind to sober up drunks. But she was not one to quibble about miracles. So she said, well, boys, you can have him. Here's the house. There's plenty of coffee here, plenty of food in the refrigerator, and plenty of bed.
I'm going to my aunt. And when the miracle has come to pass, come and tell me that I also may see. And the second morning, not having gotten the word, she came over and I was drunker than when we'd started. She said, well, I tried to tell you boys at the onset that he's a Peraldehyde, baby. And he had been sobered up at hospital so long that he's become fairly institutionalized. And you just will carry him back if you want to get him sober at all.
And so they said, well, we'll take him up for you. She said, no, that won't be necessary. I can take him up. And they said, well, he's been a little rough here. I said, all this country that you see, this place and this place was not us. That was your beloved. She said, well, that's all right. And the old doctor told me many years ago the proper method to use in handling him. I can take a pint of Old Pillar and lead him to the very gates of hell without a struggle.
And I'll take him by myself. And she did. And I walked in to the old doctor who let me write my ticket to sobriety most any way I wanted to as long as I was willing to pay for it. He said, well, all right, big boy, how do you want it this time? And I said, well, doctor, I've had enough. I've just about lost my law practice. My wife and children are going to leave me. I don't have any more friends. But most of all, I've lost my own self-respect.
And I'm going to try Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't know what it is, but I have tried everything else in the world. And I want you to get me sober the quickest way you know how. So Monday night and Tuesday night, I was thoroughly paralyzed. And that means complete oblivion to any of you who haven't been there on that. And on Wednesday morning, they let me go. My wife had stayed with me. My head was clear, but I was awfully nervous.
We drove back. And the next night was a night, Thursday night. And the closer we got to that night, the more nervous I became. And I began to hedge, and I wanted to back out, because Charlie and my wife were adamant. And they said, no, you've given your word now, Bob. You've got to go. And so I went. And then we started up the steps. I had never known where they met in Gulfport. I never was that inquisitive.
I wanted to find out anything but that. But as we started up the steps, I recognized it as a former funeral home. And I thought, well, how exceedingly appropriate this is. I went in, and I took a seat on the back row and in the very back seat. And I held myself like this to keep my hands from flying off into outer space. I was shaking so badly. And two men talked that night. The first man talked about his two fine boys, whom I've since come to know quite well, the two boys you ask about today.
And the saloon keeper in Bay St. Louis would call up there to the boys and say, for goodness sake, come down here and get the old man out of my place. He's ruining my business. And when you are enough drunkards to ruin the business of a saloon in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, you really are in low cotton. And I understood that language perfectly. And then the other man talked. And he had a daughter, Patsy, who was about the age of my younger daughter.
And Patsy had decided she wanted to have a birthday party, and her mother had told her that she might do so. And she went out to invite her little friend. And they came back to her and they said, Patsy, we are awfully sorry, but our mother says that your father is a drunkard and we can't come to your house.
[00:50:08]
And it nearly broke that child's heart. And I could understand that because many a night I had seen my two girls lock themselves in each other's arms and cry themselves to sleep because their father was drunk. And I, like the drunken, stupid fool that I was, had to stand there and suffer the pangs of bitter remorse and to just wonder if it wouldn't be better for me to take myself out of this veil of tears.
And whether I'd ever done it or not, I'm not prepared to debate this afternoon, but I had made a firm resolution that when the day came that the outgo exceeded the income, there wasn't anything else left for me to do but that. And I'm convinced this afternoon that there's many a fine man and woman who lies forever stilled in death by their own hands because they believe that it was the last decent thing left for them to do.
And as these two men talked along, a little hope came into my heart that maybe there might be a chance for a guy like me. And I went home that night and I slept very little. But my whole sordid life passed before my eyes in kaleidoscopic review. And I made a firm covenant that night that I was going to give the Alcoholics Anonymous a fair shake. And I've done it since then, and it's paid me off very wondrously in dividends.
The first thing that I learned was the beauty of the 24-hour program. I learned that you have to do with all this fear and this failure and this despair and this remorse. It's gone, and it's gone forever. And neither you nor I nor any other living person can call back one single fleeting moment. And tomorrow is yet unborn. But today is here, the ever-glorious present. It's here for us to take and shape into something fine and beautiful or to throw it away and make it just another yesterday.
And the choice lies entirely with you and me. A little verse from the Sanskrit very beautifully expresses that thought, I think. When it says, look to this day, for it is life, the very life of life. For yesterday is already a dream, and tomorrow is only a vision. But to do well will makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. So look well to this day. And then I began to get to work.
I learned that those who were staying sober in AA, in my group, had found something, a genre that was bigger and better than they. Something that they could hit to, a star out there. And they had hit their life to that, in that faith. And I wanted that. I wanted it because I began to learn that man's reach must forever exceed his grasp, else he'll perish. If everything that was good in Alcoholics Anonymous could be gotten by one fell swoop of the hand, it wouldn't be worth the reaching for.
It is in the constant and the continual state. But I have power and an understanding with that power. A willingness to turn our will and our lives over to that God, however we understand him. That makes a difference. I couldn't understand that then. But I needed something. And I had spent a great part of my life in trying to read every half-baked philosophy that had ever been written. And always trying to find something that was an answer to everybody's problem.
Never considering for one moment that I was the one that had the problem. And I had become bereft of faith. I had measured in science, received my degree in literary works in science. And I'd almost made it my God. And then, in talking to Bill one time, and I mean Bill W., he had mentioned Human Destiny by LeCount de Noy.
[00:55:01]
And I got Human Destiny, and I read it. And it was just like a vision of life unfolding itself before me. All that I had ever learned. And a great deal more than that. Because LeCount de Noy is a man of science in his own right. An eminent scientist. And there was a most beautiful reconciliation of all the scientific facts that mankind has ever been able to assemble. Completely reconciled with God, and in complete harmony with God.
And it gave me the answer that I needed. Maybe you don't need that. Maybe you can get that some other way. But I needed it. And I got it. And I have crawled. Crawled. Tried to walk. Never to run. I've failed perhaps a thousand times, but I have never forgotten the goal. And during all of this, my wife has walked side by side with me. And I do not know of anything in our literature that more beautifully expresses what we found than in the words of Ingersoll in his eulogy over the body of his dead brother, when he said, Life is a narrow veil between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities.
We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cries. From the boisterous lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word. But in the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love hears the rustle of a wing. And I know that in my night of death I saw the star of AA, and my wife certainly heard the rustle of a wing. All seemed to go well then.
And sobriety, if that's all it had given me, would have been enough. But when I came in, my older daughter was so happy that I had come in. She came down to AA, she joined in the discussion with them, and she was so happy that her father had found some way to stay sober. But my baby daughter, Babs, who had been there in high school those last terrible years, she could not understand, nor did she want to understand.
All she knew was that she was fake. And she wouldn't let me talk about Alcoholics Anonymous. Indeed, she would not even let me say that I was sorry or give any forgiveness. Just sit there and stare. And I tell you this afternoon that there is no condemnation that any man or woman can suffer that is greater than the condemnation that lies in the eyes of your own child. And I would have been willing for my life to have paid the forfeit if I could have taken away the hate.
But I couldn't. And somehow or other I stayed sober. And the weeks mingled into months. And the months mingled into a year. And I still could make no headway at all. I learned the bitterest lesson that any man or woman, I think, can learn, and that is that you can't purchase the love of your child. You must earn it. And so I told some of them there, I said, you keep talking about this peace of mind and serenity of soul.
Where is it? I am willing to do anything under this sun that I can do to atone for all the hate that I have caused. And I can get nowhere. And then I was invited to my sponsor's hometown of Tupelo, Mississippi, to make a talk on a Sunday afternoon at an open meeting. And Babs was home from Ole Miss on a weekend holiday. She went back with Charlie and me, and she was going to catch the bus from Tupelo on over to Oxford.
Not a very long distance. Nothing in the world I wanted more than for that child to hear me talk and the perhaps vain hope that she might understand that all of this was not entirely of my own making. My own mission, but I would have died before I'd exercised any parental pressure to make her come. So I said, baby, you've got some friends here in town, take the call and have a good time,
[01:00:02]
and leave the keys at the bus station, and I'll pick them up after I'm finished talking. And then as I went after thought, I said, but now if you would like to come, you're of course most welcome. A young lady from Greenwood, Mississippi, preceded me on the program that afternoon, and about 3.20 as I arose to speak, I saw my daughter come into the auditorium and take a seat on the last row. And you can bet that I poured out my heart in that talk that afternoon, and she was gone before I had a chance to see her.
But in about three days, I received a letter from her that as poor as I am this afternoon, I wouldn't take a million dollars for, when she told me that for the first time in her life she understood that all of the misery and the shame and the sorrow that alcohol had brought into our home had not been of my own making, and she forgave, and she forgave cheerfully. The years have rolled along, but my drinking had a tremendous impact upon both of my daughters.
When Natalie, the older girl, graduated from the University of Mississippi, she enrolled at Northwestern in social work. With the intent of giving her life to trying to help somebody else, she fell in love with a young minister and married him, lived in Cincinnati, and is very happy in pursuing that very same thing. Even though she is my child, I do say, and I do not exclude even my wife and my mother, both fine women.
She is the most spiritually minded woman I know of anywhere. And then the younger daughter, Barbara, when she finished at Ole Miss, she received a scholarship to Yale Divinity School, and she graduated from there with a B.D. degree, and then she has gone into wire work and intends to give her life to that, as charge of the universities and colleges in six states. I know that the tuition price that you and I pay to come in here to become members of A.A. is high indeed.
But if all that I have gone through has been in some ways partly responsible for my two girls finding a charge that they can use to stay a life, and coming to Port St. Louis, it's been worth it, and worth it a thousand times over. And I have tried in the time that has been left to me, I have tried to busy myself in the wake of A.A. as best I am able to. It says in the twelfth step that having had a spiritual awakening, we are allowed to practice these principles in all of our affairs and to carry the message to other alcoholics.
We try to do that. We who are alcoholics have been given something priceless. It hasn't been given to the men of the clergy. It hasn't been given to the men of science or the men of medicine. It hasn't been given to the loved ones that we have to reach the alcoholics. That has been given to the alcoholic himself or herself. If you don't know what a spiritual awakening can be, then I think when you sit down by the bedside of a man or woman, out of whose eyes have gone all hope of life, and in your faltering ways you tell the story of what you are, of what happened, and what you are trying to do now.
And as you tell it, you see a spark light up once more. And then you see them falteringly at first, but later with a kingly and queenly grace walk among mankind again. If that does not give you a spiritual awakening, I don't think you'd do one in this world. But all of us must remember that this is God's gift to us to act only as a channel through whom his love and his grace may flow to be given to somebody else.
[01:05:05]
If once you or I think that we originated that, then our usefulness is over. But as long as we can be a channel of God's love and God's blessing, then we have done the job, I think, as we were intended for. We have begun to pay in a small measure the overwhelming debt of gratitude that you and I owe. Gratitude is the lifeblood of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is the thing that keeps us going, to know that as we try it, we can never repay.
And thank God we can never repay the obligation, because you and I are sober this afternoon, and we owe a debt for that. And if God spares us through the night and the next day, we owe another debt for that. And the only way that we can carry that is to go back to the men and the women that we left behind and give them. There are over 20,000 of them that are going to die this year, at least, because they don't know the way out.
We know the way out, we know the way of life, and we know what happiness can be. The old poet Matthew Arnold says, We all would have inward peace, but we will not look within. And within, as was so beautifully said last night, is where we find the answer, if we can look deep enough, deeper than the rubbish that has been in the way, and clean that out. What does AA give us? There are many hundreds of ways of saying what it does.
My wife is one of these devotees of the antique, and she takes her little magazine about them. And I saw in there one day a medal that was given about the time of the Spanish-American War. It has a most beautiful thought in it, and expresses to me at least what Alcoholics Anonymous gives you and me. It was called the Courage Medal, and it had on there this inscription, Dedicated to all of those who have the courage to face adversity with a conquering spirit.
That's what Alcoholics Anonymous can give to you and me. And in return, the shackles that have made us prisoners can be cast aside, and we can walk as free men and free women among all mankind. There are two great ways, or many great ways, in Alcoholics Anonymous, which are two greatest to me, are love and service. The world is in bad shape, we know, but we can't do too much about that. But we have carved out of a segment of humanity men and women who suffer like you and me.
And we can do something about that. And we can carry the message that can make the difference between life and death for those. We can love them so much that we go to them even though they may curse us for coming. Because we know what the suffering is, and our love can be all-encompassing. So much so that we can give our lives in service. I firmly believe for myself that in gratitude for what God has so graciously given me, so bountifully given me, his grace, something that I didn't merit, something that you didn't merit, something that none of us earned, has given us to us, that it has made the difference in our lives.
And I feel like that I hold a great part of what's left of my life in trust to try to do something about this problem. And to never be too tired, and to never be too weary to go when the call comes.
[01:10:06]
All that this whole program means to me is so beautifully summed up in the last three lines of that wonderful prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi. For it is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned. And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Thank you.