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Source: DICOBE-00664 – Tom O – GOPHER STATE RNDP IV – 1977-07-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00664-tom-o-gopher-state-rndp-iv-1977-07-15.mp3 Duration: 01:24:16
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It's got to be a great weekend. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for A.A. membership. We are self-supporting through our own contributions. A.A. is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution, does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes.
Our primary purpose is to stay sober and to help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. Would you please stand and help me open the meeting with a serenity prayer. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, to hurry to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Thank you. We have with us a gentleman of many years of sobriety, and he often describes himself as a Virginia hillbilly.
He's going to chair our meeting tonight, and I'd like to present Julian B. Thank you. Thank you very much. My name is Julian Wasserman, and I'm an alcoholic. I would first like to thank the committee, the program chairman, for making this mistake. Because up to now I've had a good time. Very frankly, I don't know for sure what I'm doing here. And I've run into quite a few others who don't either. I knew that while I was drinking I was going to do something, and this is, I guess, what it was.
I've been misplaced in a lot of meetings and for a lot of reasons and different things. I just drank so long that my memory wasn't too good when I came in here, and it's slowly disintegrated since coming here. I mean this. I'd rather like to go far down home. He said he couldn't remember this, that, and the other, and they told him to go see the psychiatrist. He went in and he said, I can't remember where I work, what my wife sent me to the store for, what I'm doing or where I'm going.
He said, lay down on that couch. And he laid down and he said, how long has this been going on? He said, how long has what been going on? I hope I can remember that they told me not to talk more than five minutes. But I really am proud to be here, and I have a slight suspicion that it is quite possible that on this kickoff meeting with me here, I might have been sent here for a purpose, to upset the trend of this meeting, to keep it simple.
I'd like to say, I know we have some intellect here, the alcoholics here, they bound to be. But I am a Virginia Hillbilly, and I am a Virginia Hillbilly, and I am a Virginia Hillbilly. I am a Ph.D., paper hanging drunk.
[00:05:12]
I happen to have been at the meeting that our Dr. Bob said, keep it simple. I heard this. But I'd like to also tell you that if you keep it much simpler than I am, you might not get it at all. As I've many times said, I have been sober a long time. You can tell by looking at me, I've been somewhere a long time. And for but no other reason for you new people here, drinking might make you look like this, so don't worry.
This is really all I have to offer. And I mean by that that during this meeting you're going to hear, not this particular one maybe, but during the meetings you'll hear here over the weekend, you'll hear many fabulous, great success stories. And they are true, and they can happen, and they will happen to many, many of you. But I can only serve as a power of example. I've been sober many years, and I am living proof that you can stay sober and not amount to a damn thing.
Now, I don't like to work, and this is probably one of the reasons I never mounted any day. I believe sincerely and honestly in this program. And any of these people that tell you they love their work, you watch them. They'll lie about other stuff, too. Very frankly, I just told Tom, if he don't know who he is, I don't know how he'll expect me to tell you. But that's what I came up here for. He introduced Tom. I think it's about time that I do that.
I've heard some awful things about him, and I'm not going to tell you what they were. I've talked to him last night. I think that he's basically got what I like, Big Book AA. That for me is what it is. I've heard a lot of other philosophies and a lot of explanations by many people. It might do you well with so many new people here for me to tell you before I introduce Tom what an alcoholic is, where I came from. All due respect to the doctors that are here tonight, they didn't seem to do me much good. And I mean by that that I like them. If I get sick, I want one. We had one down home. Treated a fellow for yellow jaundice for two years before he found out he was a Chinaman. So I like him.
A lot of you are so young you might still be wondering what an alcoholic is. Now when I came in we had a very brilliant doctor speaking. I'd been sober about six months and I was still at that stage where I didn't know whether I was an alcoholic or what caused it. And he explained to me what an alcoholic was. He said an alcoholic given a pint of alcohol and tapped the spine in 12 hours, the alcoholic through some non-alcoholic threw it off through some filter in the system. The non-alcoholic retained it in the system. And he went on and explained this for about 45 minutes in language and words that I didn't understand and doubted if he did. But he was real brilliant. He explained this filter once torn down could never be rebuilt. And I mean he was real smart. Now he got drunk later on but he knew what he was talking about that night. And he went in great detail and he said this filter once gone if you're an alcoholic you're never going to get over it and all that. I finally at the end of his talk I came to the idea of what an alcoholic was really. I came to the brilliant conclusion that I had busted my sprain and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. If you keep it that simple you might make it. And maybe Doc can tell you or Tom can tell you what it's all about. I'll introduce to you now Tom Oates.
[00:10:12]
I have to sip on that water because I got false teeth and if my mouth gets dry I have trouble with words like fellowship. And he's right about that big book. I learn something about that big book every time anybody even mentions it. I was thinking when Larry was reading tonight and it's the first time this ever came to me. I'll bet you when I was drinking I had a hundred people say to me, fellow you seem to have been born that way. And every place I go I'm always being told by somebody, man I'd sure hate to follow him. And it's the same old story and tonight I got to follow Julian. And he's already thrown that doctor bit in there and has suggested to you that I might be an intellectual. Of course I got two college degrees but shortly after I got into A.A. my sponsor straightened me out on that because he explained to me that a rectal thermometer has got degrees and everybody knows what to do with a rectal thermometer. And since the subject's been brought up I might as well go ahead and tell you right straight on out before you get confused that I'm a dentist. Now the reason I want to say that is some of you might get to thinking I'm a psychiatrist and I got nothing against psychiatrists except I think that anybody that goes to see one ought to have his head examined. And on top of that I want you to understand that I'm a dentist and you're going to have a real doctor later on in the program. One time I had an old gal come to me it wasn't too long ago and she had a face swollen up this big and I said well you're going to have to get some antibiotics. And she said well don't you think if I don't get antibiotics I ought to go see the real doctor. Well hell one of us is going to get seven bucks not just going to be me. But I just ain't sensitive about that kind of stuff anymore and one thing I'll tell you for sure nobody has ever accused me of not being a real alcoholic. Now I'll do the thing that I have to do I'll caution the engineer to be a bit close to the controls because I just can't get up here and talk dignified like say Tom Breen can. And I'm sort of up and down and I know you can tell already from the way that I'm talking that I was born and raised in Duluth. But my name is Tom and I'm an alcoholic. Hi everybody.
I'm an alcoholic and a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and that's a lot of information to be giving you just like that boom boom boom boom. And there's probably some of you out there that ain't even paid your registration fee yet. But I like to say that Tom is who I am and an alcoholic is what I am and when I got up this morning the who told the what that we wasn't going to drink and that's the way it's been all day long. But it wasn't always that way. It used to be that the who would tell the what we wasn't going to drink and the what would say who said we ain't. And the who would say I said we ain't and the what would say just you wait and see. And then the what would go out and get drunk and the who would have the hangover.
Out and Get Drunk and the Who'd Have the Hangover, and that reminds me of a story, well it don't
[00:15:12]
really remind me of it, I've known about it all the way along, but it's about them three drunk rabbits, and their names was Foot and Footfoot and Footfootfoot, and they was always carrying on, they really was alcoholic rabbits, and I mean they was always arguing back and forth with each other and all that kind of stuff, I mean Footfootfoot would go to Footfoot and he'd say, look Foot's been stealing my booze, and Foot would say, look Footfoot, you and Footfootfoot are going to have to straighten this out by yourself and leave me alone, just leave me out of it, always carrying on like that, and then one day Foot died, and they give him a good funeral, but you know how it is, you got to get juiced up to go to a funeral, and they had to get juiced up to put him away, and after it was all over they were a little hung up, and they were sitting out by a fence with their ears, you know how a drunk rabbit looks, and Footfootfoot turned to Footfoot and he said, well I guess we might as well go to Alcoholics Anonymous now that we got one foot in the grave, and there's other ways to get here I understand, but if you can't find them, that no work, now I don't know exactly when I started drinking, but I know why I started drinking, I started drinking because everybody else was doing it, and you may not think that's a very important reason for doing anything, but I do, I used to say that I started drinking for the same reason that a bull-legged girl would wear a miniskirt, but I mean nowadays, well there's just some things that you know you ought not to do, I mean, all of us have got stuff that would be better off if we didn't expose to the public, I mean, I ain't calling the character defect, but I'm just saying it'd be better off if nobody else knew about it, I mean, and some of you guys out there with them long haircuts that's in my age group, I mean, you're in the same class, I mean, and I'll bet you anything there's ten guys out there that at home has got a suit with narrow lapels on it that's as good as new, but you got it pushed so far back in the closet that you can't even see it when you open the closet, and the reason is you got to come out in these wide things because everybody else is doing it, you see, and it's hard, really, it is hard if you don't have some kind of inner strength, and I'm like you, and I ain't never had to have a whole lot of that, I mean, it's hard to stand off to the side and be different, and actually the earliest memories that I have are memories of being off on the side and feeling like an oddball, different, today I call it unique, I mean, but in them days I didn't know that, I mean, and these were the first memories that I really had, you know, and I do have to just tell people, and when they started I didn't want to be called a fish in a panty waist, and so just to be one of them, I drank two, and that's the reason I started, it's just that simple, and I had trouble with my drinking right from the very beginning, and I'm not going to waste any time, I'm just going to go right ahead and tell you what the trouble was, when I drink I puke, puke, puke, and a lot of people don't like me to use that word, I mean, there's always somebody comes up to me after me and says you ought not to use that word, you ought to say you were sick at the stomach, but that wouldn't be telling me exactly like it was, because while it's true that sometimes I was sick at the stomach, a lot of times I wasn't, I think I drank too fast, nobody ever taught me how to drink, I mean, I'm a self-educated drinker, and maybe, you know, if I had been taught how to drink, I wouldn't have turned out like I did, chances are I would have, but I mean, who knows, but at any rate, nobody ever got any instruction in drinking, and I was a little nervous about it, and I think
[00:20:01]
I drank too fast, and I said, you know, a lot of times I'd say one, two, three, real quick, slow, and I'd be feeling just as good as I feel right now, with a clear blue side tooth, and anything you do over and over and over, you get good at it. And I got good at puking, I did, I got so I could walk down the street and puke and never miss a step, and never get any on me either, and I'll tell you another thing that I learned later on too, I found out that once you master a skill, you never really lose it. Now, I've got a son that graduated from Westport, and he transferred to the Air Force, and he's a navigator in the Air Force now, and one time he and his wife and little infant son came to visit us, and they brought that 24-hour flu bug with them, and man, with that stuff, you get sick in all directions. It was the first time in my life I'd ever been sick sober. And we ain't got but one bathroom at home, and everybody's got it. And I told my son, I was ashamed of him, I told him, I said, hell, you know, if you ain't no brother in the air, then you are in the bathroom, and the country's been a hell of a place.
But I was just as good as I was 20 years ago. I could be sitting around that round table in my dining room as some of you in this room have been at, and get up and go do what I had to do mentally, and get back and never miss my turn to talk. And I think this was social drinking, not fun drinking, and it was very important to me to learn how to drink successfully, and I did, and successfully drinking, and then I said I could go out in town on a real load and somehow or another get home. And then when the bed passed by, I'd jump in. And then when it started to go round and round and round and round like that, I'd hang on and pass out. Well, I'd have to get up and go to the bathroom and kill me. And that, to me, was a successful drink. Well, now this was kid stuff, and later on, I went off from Lake Providence to go to college. I wanted to be a successful hero, and I didn't teach myself this kind of stuff I've been describing. And the only reason I tell it to you in the first place is to demonstrate the point that it was important to me, not to you, but to you. And the thing that it emphasizes to me is that if you want to be an alcoholic, you've got to drink. Now, there's a lot of people who would like to belong to Alcoholics and Honourists. They like everything we've got here. They like the warmth, and the fellowship, and the friendship, and the love, and the concern, but they won't drink. I mean, they won't drink in a fair shape. I mean, I know people that'll drink and puke and quit. And you can't get any place that way, I mean. And in this day and age, when we've got underprivileged groups and disadvantaged groups and things like this, a fellow's got to be careful in the words he uses when he's talking about groups of people. And I think pity is a horrible word to use. But this is the only word I can use to describe people who would like to be alcoholics and ain't got what it takes. I pity them.
And you see, just to be a neurotic ain't enough. It might help, I mean, but it ain't enough.
[00:25:12]
To be an alcoholic, you've got to drink. You see, to be an alcoholic, just everybody can't be an alcoholic. To be an alcoholic, you have to have certain outstanding characteristics. You have to have courage and fortitude and determination. And you have to have the capacity to envision a goal. And let nothing keep you from achieving that goal. And some people just can't pull it off. And that's why I say, I mean, I have real pity for people that would like to be an alcoholic and ain't got what it takes. And that's one of the reasons I mention that is because I say it's important for me to say that if you're going to be an alcoholic, by golly, you've got to drink. And of course, while we're on the subject, this brings up another thing that a lot of people don't understand. And that is, if you're going to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, you've got to quit. Now there again, there's a lot of people that love everything we've got here. They love the fellowship and the love and the concern and the friendship. All these beautiful, warm things that we've got and they miss out on the part about not drinking. I don't think it's entirely their fault. I don't think all the time that we tell them the entire truth from up here. We kind of sweat it. I mean, this old-fashioned defect of wanting people to fool keeps us from saying the real honest-to-God truth of the thing the way it is. Now there's a requirement for membership in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I didn't make it up. It was here when I got here. The requirement for membership in AA is a desire to stop drinking. I think that the trouble is that a lot of people don't know what a desire is. And a lot of people think that a desire is something that'd be nice if you had it, and if you ain't got it, it's all right, it don't make any difference anyway, what the hell. But that's not so.
Now my wife taught me what a desire was. I'm married to a good-looking broad sitting down here in the second row who's a good cook. And one night we had some people over to the house before a meeting, and she put on a good feed for them. And afterwards there were three couples of us in the car going to the meeting, and they complimented her on the feed she'd put on. And she said, yeah, that's the reason Tom married me, because of my cooking.
And she said it three times, and I just couldn't stand it any longer. And I told her, I said, looky here, I never will forget the first time I saw you walking down that hospital corridor on them high heels shaking from side to side. And I was an alcoholic right at the stage where booze made me think I was God's gift to women. And I told her, if you think I married you for your cooking, you're crazy as hell. And like I do a lot of times when I say things like that, I went home and meditated on that. And in due course it came to me that no married man at any rate should ever have any trouble understanding what this program is about, what the requirement for membership is. Because it may have been so long ago you'd forgotten about it. But that's what them gals did to us when we was courting them. They knew by instinct that attraction was better than promotion. And they led us on and led us on and led us on and put a whole lot of ideas in our head and got us ready for action. And then one day they drew a line and said, uh-uh. And what they really said, if you ever stopped to think about it, was, If you ever stop to think about it, if you've decided that you want what I got, and are willing to go to any length to get it,
[00:30:17]
then you're ready to take certain steps. Of course, there's some of these we bought. We thought we could find an easier, softer way. You see, that's a desire. A desire is a screaming, meany itch to get the thing you desire. And you'd do anything in God's green earth to get it. And I'll tell you another thing about a desire, too. I mean, it's this. If you're going to have a desire, you've got to have some kind of general idea of what it is you're going to desire in the first place.
I mean, you can't just go sit out in a field and desire. But like I say, I come to this little dumb, hip town of Lake Providence in Louisiana, and for heaven's sake, don't nobody come up after the meeting and tell me that you've been through Lake Providence. Where would you be going? I mean, people come to Lake Providence if you've got a reason to go there. Well, hell, nobody goes through Lake Providence.
So don't come up here with that stuff after the meeting. When I was going to go up in this dumb, hip town and be a success and a hero, it never occurred to me that maybe you couldn't take a little hip seed boy out of the country and put him in a university setting, and he might not feel comfortable. But that's what happened to me. I went off to college, and I didn't feel comfortable at all. I got around people who seemed to know a lot of things that I didn't know, and they seemed to be up on things that I wasn't up on.
And I just felt terribly ill at ease. And I never will forget, for example, one time we went out for a steak dinner, some of us, when I first went to college. And one of the waitresses come around and asked everybody what kind of dressing they wanted on their salad. And when she got to me, I said crab. Now you see, you're just like they were. They laughed at me, and right then and there, I began to live a style of life in which any time I said anything, I had to observe you closely to see how you understood it so I could figure out what I meant.
And you see, from then on, if you laughed, I was a comedian, and if you left puzzles, I was a philosopher. And any time I went off to college, I had to laugh. I had a trouble with the continuation of the problem. I had the same problem with President Carter, where I left him. And when I left, I didn't know him. Even today. And I used to get, when I'd get around, when I'd have to talk, I'd get flustered.
Somebody told me that wasn't the right word to use. Somebody told me that wasn't the right word to use. And I always did like that, and still do. And even today, you know, you're my choice of boys or girls. I take girls every time. But you know, I'd be talking to some chick, and I'd be looking at the tops of my shoes, and I'd be pulling on my finger like that, you know, and I'd be saying, Don't get no place at all.
No social life whatsoever. And somewhere along the line here, this is my early 20s, I began to drink again, and I don't know whether it was because my body had grown up, or whether I drank differently,
[00:35:01]
or the climate had changed, or whatever it was, but this time it was different. I didn't throw up so much. And I discovered that when I had a drink or two in me, a terrific thing happened, and what it was, was this, that with a drink or two or three in me, people changed. And I could have a drink or two or three or four, and you looked good. Well, no, no, you didn't. And not only that, but with a drink or two or three in me, I could go out amongst you now, and genuinely participate in the things you do.
I mean, you did. I mean, really, really, genuinely participate. And this is something I couldn't do when I was sober. I mean, sober, I would have just been dead. But with a drink or two or three or four in me, I could get out here amongst you, beautiful-looking people, and really participate in the things you do. And so, I mean, this is one of the great benefits that came to me from drinking in the beginning.
People looked good. And it wasn't just that people looked good, I looked good. And I used to like to drink sometimes, take a drink or two or three, and I would look at myself in the mirror, and I would talk to myself. I used to call myself Sully Baby. And I'd say, Sully Baby, you know, you're all right. And then, sometimes, I liked to drink when I was alone. When I was in New Orleans going to dental school, I lived in an apartment building that outside in the daytime was a kind of cruddy-looking thing, just some old streetcar tracks and some beat-up trees.
But at night, with a drink or two in me, God, it was beautiful. And I used to like to sit there by that window and have a drink for two or three. Or four. And just look out at the sheer beauty of the night. And then, sometimes, I used to like to sit at that window and look out at the beauty of the night, and I'd get sweet music on the radio, and sometimes I'd cry. And I loved to cry. I don't mean bawl, but I mean just fill up all the way right to here.
And have real honest-to-God tears coursed down my cheek. And I always did think that there was something beautiful about having a drink or two and feeling good and being sad. And I liked this way of life, and I pursued it. And I've often said that for me, it was just as though I'd been walking down the street and turned a corner and got lost and couldn't find my way back. Because all of a sudden, I had become successful.
I was out of dental school and had some postgraduate work behind me. I'm in the regular army. I'm overseas on a sensitive diplomatic mission. I've got money, position, prestige, power, beautiful family, everything the guy could desire. And it all began to fall apart, and for the life of me, I couldn't tell what was happening to this life that I'd built up. The first thing was that people started talking ugly about me.
They said I smell bad. Well, it's the truth. Someplace in my drinking career, I stopped bathing. I didn't taper off, I just quit. Now, there really is a reason for that. A drinking man like me has got to keep on the move. And there ain't no telling what could happen while you're taking a bath. And I'll tell you another very serious thing about bathing if you're an alcoholic. And if there's anybody out there that don't know, I'll just pass this on to you for free.
A drunk don't never want to get caught without his pants on, man. I don't care what happens, don't get caught without no clothes. Because you think you're powerless over alcohol, you find out what you're powerless over when you've got no clothes on.
[00:40:01]
So, as I say, I quit drinking. I mean, I quit bathing someplace in my drinking career. And I don't make any bones about it. Fortunately, when I came to AA, I mean, they had sprayed deodorants and that helped a little. But you see, I didn't come to AA on Sunday and start bathing on Monday, either. I mean, it never has worked that way for me. And actually, I hear people say that when they came to AA, everybody had their arms outstretched and said, Man, we love you and we've been waiting for you to come, but they didn't do that in my group.
They were really disappointed when I came. Now, that's no two ways about it. And you never had any trouble getting a seat at a meeting that I was at in them early days. I mean, there was always one in front and backing on either side with bacon. One reason was, when I come to AA, something was crawling on me. And I spent a lot of time hunting for it and I never could find it. And toward the end of my drinking career, I had had some trouble with muscle spasms.
Now, what I mean with this, I could be talking to you and… You know, and worse than that, I mean, I'd be walking down the street in groups. And it really didn't bother me. As a matter of fact, I missed it when it went away. But I'd be sitting in them meetings, hunting for whatever it was that was crawling on me, and I'd have one of them spasms and… And everybody in the group thought I'd found it, you know.
And so, you see, that's part of the ugly talk. They were saying I smelled bad, you know. And then another thing they were saying was that my hands were shaking. And I'll admit, if you've got a dentist coming at you with one of them long needles, and his hand is as steady as mine is today, it ain't too good, but I mean, if he's coming at you like that… But I knew that my hands were shaking and I was working on it.
And I had it just about perfected to where I was in tip-top shape up to 10 o'clock. And if you'd have come to me by 10 o'clock, you'd have got the best treatment that there was. Now, I never did like to get up early in the morning, but as I told you, LeBron believes you've got to eat well if you're going to stay well. And she wanted me to eat a good breakfast before I went to work. And in those days, I couldn't get up and just eat. I had to get ready to eat.
And so as much as I hated to get up early in the morning, I had to get up early enough to get drunk up enough to eat breakfast. And then breakfast would sober me up, and I had to get drunk up enough to go to work, but not so drunk that I couldn't go to work. And that's work. I mean, hell, it's six days a week. That's what I'm talking about. An alcoholic's got to have courage, fortitude, and determination.
Everybody can't pull this off every morning of their life. And just before I'd go to work, I used to put a drop of Shalimar perfume on my tongue. And later on, they had some proceedings against me in the Army, and they asked the major that had an office next door to me how I smelled when I came to work in the morning, and he said he smelled like a drunken French whore. And so many times I can remember I'd have somebody cut on the inside from here to here, and it'd come time to sew them up, and the clock would strike ten.
And I'd have to stuff a lot of cotton in their mouth and go off in the corner and take a drink. And they was narrow-minded. Well, see, y'all was just like them. Well, see, y'all was just like them. Just like them. I got to explain it to you too. You see, if I had been a jack-leg dentist, I'd have let them go with the damn gums flapping in the breeze.
[00:45:05]
But I ain't never been that kind of a fella. I have always been a professional man with the highest ethical and moral standards. And I wouldn't dream of letting one of my patients leave my office without being properly sewed up. And the only way I could do it was take a drink. And I was the only dentist within 1,500 miles. And then somebody said to me one time, they said, well, if you're having trouble with your hands shaking, why don't you take a goop ball?
We have registered 3,500 AAs, Al-Anons, and Al-Ateems as of 8.15 tonight. And damn, if you're all out there, God bless each and every one of you. They said, if your hands are shaking, why don't you take a goop ball or two? Or three? And so I did, and one day I went to sleep and the ladies left. And then when I come back to the United States, I knew something was wrong with me, and I went to see an Army doctor that was well thought of, and I told him I thought I might be an alcoholic.
And I had no idea where I got that word from. I was a captain in the dental corps at the time, and he said to me, he said, I'm glad you came to me. He said, just last week I cured a major gymnast. And so they put me in a hospital, and they stuck a lot of needles in me and out me and up me, and the cure didn't take. And for a long time I thought it was because I was just a captain. I did, you know, I didn't understand what was happening to me, and I used to think to myself, man, if I was just somebody else, this wouldn't be happening to me.
But it was just like, you know, I remember one time I went in a room where there was four people, and I said I thought it might rain. And they all got up and walked out. It was like I had broke wind. And I got the same advice you got. They said to me, why don't you drink like Bill? Bill is a bald-headed brother-in-law of mine. I've been sober in LA for a little over 16 years, and tonight I feel about Bill exactly as I did 20 years ago.
I don't want to do anything like Bill. And besides, how do you drink like Bill? And then they used to try to scare me into stopping drinking. You can't scare an alcoholic into stopping drinking. They used to say to me, if you don't stop drinking, you're going to die. And that reminded me of a story I once heard. They used to say to me, if you don't stop drinking, you're going to die. And that reminded me of a story I ought not to tell, but I'm going to tell it anyway.
About a little boy that his mama caught him playing with himself. She gave him a doomsday lecture. And she said, I'm going to make you go blind. And he said, where could I keep on doing it just until I have to wear glasses? And he said, I'm going to make you go blind. And then they used to say to me, get right with God. Well, look, I got the same question tonight I had 16, 18, 20 years ago. How do you do it?
How do you do it? Now look, I'm going to stand here and say something that you don't need to pay any attention to at all.
[00:50:01]
If you don't agree with what I'm saying, just remember always, you've got a constitutional right to be wrong. But I'm going to stand here and tell you that I believe that the glory of Alcoholics Anonymous is that we don't have the answer to your problem. And the reason I say that is there is no chapter in the big book titled, there is an answer. But the title of the chapter is, there is a solution.
And that's what we got. We got a time-tested, experience-proved solution. And you've got to put you in the solution and come up with your own answer. Thank you. And I'm also going to say that we may be unique amongst the organizations of the world in that we don't pretend to have an answer. Because this is the trouble with the world today in the field of alcoholism and every other thing that plagues the world.
Is that every Tom, Dick and Harry that you run into has got the answer to your problem and they don't even know what your damn problem is. You can take off your collection now. And I'm one of these people who believe that an alcoholic is sick in direct proportion to how self-centered he is. And I never have seen an alcoholic come in there and say that he's as self-centered as me. And a girl in North Carolina told me one time that that's a self-centered statement in itself.
But I happened to be one of those guys that had to go all the way down to the bottom. And if you're young or new or out there wondering, you don't have to go the rest of the way with me in this story. You can pick me up in about five minutes. But I'm one of those who had to go all the way to the bottom. And I did and I lost everything I had. I lost my job, my money, my home, my wife, the family. Everything that I had and I was reduced to the level of a street bum in the city of San Antonio, Texas.
And I am a man who at one time numbered amongst his patients the president of a nation. And the last job I had for many a day was with a feed and seed company that was importing bulbs from Holland. And my job was to separate the bulbs from the peat moss. And I got fired from that job, they said, for inefficiency. And so because there was nothing left to do, I, who had left Lake Providence to become a hero and a success, I had to go back to Lake Providence, a broken, drunken bum.
And I hitchhiked into Lake Providence one Labor Day weekend on a tasty bird poultry truck. And even that guy hurt my feelings because just as we were coming into town, I was telling him I could make a lot of money if he followed some ideas I had. And I remember he said, all hell. And I went back to Lake Providence and there was nobody there but my mother and she was in her seventies and I became the town drunk.
I just stayed there and became the town drunk. And I couldn't stop drinking. And I've been saying that I couldn't stop drinking, you know, and then one time I heard a guy tell a story about a little girl who had asked her mother how babies were made. And her mother told her and she didn't leave anything out. And the little girl asked if it was fun making babies and her mother said, yeah, it is fun making babies.
And the little girl said, well, do you eat chocolate candy while you're doing it? And her mother said, well, no, you really don't eat chocolate candy while you're doing it. And the little girl said, well, if you don't eat chocolate candy, it can't be fun. And I understand the little girl, you see, because she never dreamed that there was another existence someplace where men and women did things that were so meaningful and fulfilling and joyous that they would never dream of eating chocolate candy.
[00:55:05]
And I never even suspected that the life I'm living tonight even so much as existed. And all I was doing was trying to recapture a memory. I tried so desperately to recapture the memory of those early days in my young twenties when booze had made me feel whole and at one inside. And I damn near killed myself trying to recapture a memory that had gone forever. As I say, I stayed down and came to town drunk.
I got on wine. Everything's different on wine. You don't even keep different on wine. While you do, all that other stuff just splatters out, but wine, you could take a scissor and cut it before it hit the ground. And then my mother died. I watched my mother die. I stepped up to the bed and kissed her and stood back and watched her die. And never in my life have I wanted to feel anything like I did that morning.
But if you're an alcoholic, you understand this story I'm trying to tell you, and you understand that I never could really feel anything. I never could really laugh, laugh, cry, give, or receive tenderness unless I was a little bit drunk up. And my mother died without too much warning that morning, and I didn't have a chance to even try to get a little drunk up. And so I had to just stand there and watch it all happen, not being able to feel anything.
But someplace inside me, a thought started to grow, and it grew and grew and grew until I thought it would bust me wide open. And that thought was, what's going to happen to me now? Because now there was nobody left to take care of me. There was nobody left to buy my cigarettes and get me out of jail and cook my meals and put me in hospital. And I was all alone in that big house, and I was scared, and there's no way I can tell you how scared I was.
Good God, I was scared. And then one day in the 90 days after my mother died, I had what I guess you'd call a spiritual experience, although there was no feeling associated with it. And it all happened because I fell out of bed. And that wasn't anything unusual, I was sleeping back there in that little old filthy room on a Hollywood bedclothes down on the floor. And it wasn't anything for me to fall out of bed, and it didn't make any difference to me whether I woke up on the floor or in bed.
I don't ever remember waking up in between, but it wouldn't have made any difference either way. This night I fell out of bed, and while I was laying there on the floor, I heard in a manner that I've never heard before since in my life. And as I lay there on the floor, I had what for me then was the deepest thought I had ever had as an adult. And the thought was what you're used to getting back in bed.
I didn't have anything against it, but just wasn't used to getting back up there, I'd fall out again. And it was like as if a light had been turned on, and all of a sudden I saw that that's all my life consisted of. Was getting in bed and falling out? And the light stayed on long enough that I had to answer to the question I had asked myself, was getting in bed and falling out? And the light stayed on long enough that I had to answer to the question I had asked myself, And the light stayed on long enough that I had to answer to the question I had asked myself the day my mother died, what's going to happen to me?
I was going to become a homeless drunk, and I don't know if I minded being a drunk so much because I didn't know anything else. But I didn't want to be homeless and alone and in the cold world. And the light stayed on a little bit longer, and I saw for the first time in my life, that I was not a high-strung, intelligent, sensitive, creative, artistic young man. I was a sloppy, lonely, drunk, laying on the floor, and nobody gave a damn what happened to me. And I heard enough that night that I prayed. I didn't say anything, because I
[01:00:05]
didn't know anybody to say anything to. But I don't think prayer is necessarily saying things. I think prayer has a lot to do with total inner attitude. And that night, I really and truly had gone as far as I ever wanted to go in my life. And that night, laying on the floor, I wished earnestly that my life would change. This is the message center of Gopher Hall. Gene Salva, S-A-L-V-E-R, come to message center. That don't mean me, go out there.
Gene Salva, go to the message center, please. I think prayer is a matter of total inner attitude. And that night, I earnestly and in a heartfelt manner wished that my life be changed. And I didn't care what direction it would change, just that it be changed. I never asked for sobriety for the simple reason that it never occurred to me that that's what I needed. I really believed that if I had even suspected for a moment that sobriety was where I needed to might have asked for it. But I didn't even have that many brains. I just asked that my life be changed. And the big deal is, I've never had a drink since then. Now, I got up off the floor, and I opened this little dental office at home. And practically the last words that my mother had said to me was, she said, son, don't try to start anything here in this little town, because nobody will come to you. And I didn't do this to disobey her dying wishes. I did it because I had discovered that this is something I've had to do in AA and in life many, many times since then. And that is this, start all over again today, here and now, with whatever I've got, and do the best I can a day at a time and see what happens.
And she was right. They didn't come a running. And for a long time, I resented the people that didn't come. But I don't anymore. Actually, today, I think the people that did come were damn fools. I wouldn't have come to me. And then I got my wife back, same wife, she insisted on me saying that. And the kids came back, and they had had kids, and now I was a grandfather. And life was going along on its merry pace, and I was on my way to become a sober big shot. And a guy come by the office one day and asked me if I'd go to an AA meeting. And I did. I had been exposed to AA previously, and it didn't take. This time, I thought I'd go see what was what. So I went out there, and I saw some people I knew out there. Lake Providence, the town of about 7,000 people, maybe. This little dental practice was doing pretty good. I was grossing about $200 a month.
And I thought it'd be better if I didn't say anything about having a drinking problem. And actually, what this guy had said to me was, he said they were starting this little group, and he thought it'd be nice if they had a doctor come out there. So that time I came to AA, I came to AA as a doctor. I didn't say anything about being an alcoholic. And I lectured to you people on alcoholism. I mean, I'd go home and get my books out and I'd come back and tell you about how the body oxidizes alcohol. That's how it breaks it down into carbon dioxide and water. And the drunk gets gas and sweat.
But you see, I take issue with some of these old-timers. I mean, sometimes they call me. They say, you know, when you walk in that door back there, you've got to tell the truth. Hell, I don't believe that. If I'd had to tell the truth, I'd have never made it. I had to come in for three years to find out what the truth was, and for another three years to find out whether I wanted to tell it or not. Man, I hear people talking about, I don't know why you need to write an inventory. I'll tell
[01:05:01]
you one reason you need to write an inventory. I was shot down in World War II and made my way back to my own line, my own outfit. And that in itself is a good story, just that. But when I come back from overseas, they said the veterans didn't want to talk. Well, hell, I did. And so I told about my story, and of course I kept adding on to it. And in its final form, I had been captured and escaped. And let me tell you how I escaped.
I was walking at the tail end of a column, and under the pretense of having to relieve myself, I walked off through a shallow ditch onto a brown grassy plain into a sparse forest, and simply kept walking. Now, that never happened. That never happened at all. But as I'm standing before you here tonight, I can see as clearly as I can see any one of you here in this room, I can see that shallow ditch and that brown grassy plain and that sparsely treed forest. And I can even see the tree that I picked out. And you get to imagining these things and building pictures of them in your head, and when you come here to Alcoholics Anonymous, you don't know what's true and what's false.
And I had to get it down on paper to try to find out what the hell it was. And I thought I knew I'd get it sooner or later. I just wasn't born to be dignified. And I had to write all that stuff out so that I could get it clear in my own mind. And as far as that particular story is concerned, I never could straighten it out, and I just made up a good one and memorized it. And I won't talk too much about it, but if you want to hear it, I'll tell it to you later on. And it's the same thing about the fifth step. I mean, people don't understand why you got to take the fifth step. That's because people don't understand Alcoholics Anonymous. You got to come here and give it a try.
When I was nine years old, I stole a buck off the collection plate in church. And all my life, I've been carrying this thing all around the world with no single doubt for stealing a buck off the collection plate. When I came to AA, I thought, well, hell, you know, after many a little while, I thought I'd tell somebody, you know, that I stole a buck off the collection plate. You come here, you know, you've been dreading this all your life, and you're thinking to yourself, I'll tell them, I'll get it off my wrist.
You start to tell them what a rat you are, and they say, whoa, wait a minute, they want to tell you what a rat they are. Every time I go to tell somebody about stealing a buck off the collection plate, they interrupt me. They wanted to tell me what a bum they were. So, God, it was a relief for me to find a guy that'd sit down and listen to all this stuff, and not interrupt me. I finally admitted that I was an alcoholic one night at the meeting.
Don't make any difference whether you come here lying or sincerely. I hate the word sincere anyway, because I guarantee you can sincerely go to hell. You better believe you can. I don't like to get to talking about sincerity, I mean, because I get off talking about other things I ain't got no business talking about. I don't like a lot of these slogans that I see around these clubs, and I tell you what, I know I'm going to step on somebody's toes, and I'm sorry. I don't like these slogans that they got up on the clubs nowadays that say, expect a miracle, because this is the damn thing that nearly killed me in the first place, was expecting a miracle, was thinking that all the rules was going to be suspended just for me. If I had a club, which I ain't got, and if anybody asked me what to put up on the wall, which nobody has ever done, I'd say put up there, rarely have we seen a person fail, who has thoroughly followed our path. That's what the motto would be in my club.
[01:10:01]
Then I went out and made some amends. A lot of people don't understand about these amends. I say an amend is a lot like driving a nail into a beautiful piece of furniture, and you admit you're wrong, you say you're sorry, and you pull the nail out, but the damn hole's still there. What are you going to do about the hole? I told that to my wife the other day. She used to tell me how many times she told me she's sorry. I said, hell yeah, but you drove the nail in, and you pulled it out, and look at the hole. She ain't done nothing about it yet.
You know, and then they say continue to take personal inventory, and when you're wrong, promptly admit it. I don't have no trouble with that. One word, and that step gives me problems, and that's only one word, promptly. If the step right, continue to take personal inventory, and when you're wrong, eventually admit it, I wouldn't have no trouble. Seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, and put on His knowledge of His will to be in the power to carry it out. Seek, that means hunt.
There's only two things anybody ever needs to know about prayer, just two things. One is to begin, two is to keep on. That's all anybody ever knows, everybody needs to know about prayer. One of those guys told me one time, he said, they're going to get started talking about prayer later on in AA, and he said, I want to call you up on the corner here and explain some things to you, because he said, an intellectual guy like you will screw it up.
He said, I'm going to tell you how to pray. He said, I don't want any public display at home on your knees before the family. He said, when you get up in the morning, you go in the bathroom. And he said, it don't make any difference whether you stand, kneel, or sit. I'm glad my mouth was dry and wet then. But he said, whatever position you take, you say this, you say please, and don't say anything else.
And he said, then at night, you go back in the bathroom and you say thanks. And what he told me was, he said, if you do this in time, the right words will come. And they have. I don't go in the bathroom to do it anymore. I mean, I still go to the bathroom, but not for that. The first conscious thing that I have when I awaken in the morning is, please, dear God, with your help, I'll not take a drink today.
And the last thing that comes to my mind at night is, thank you for this sober day. Having had a spiritual awakening is a realistic step. I try to practice these things with all I've had. Practice, to me, means to do over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over until it begins to become natural. My wife likes for me to open the door on her side of the car when we pull up.
I can't understand why. She's a lot closer to it than I am. I mean, it's… But one time after I'd been sober a little while, I figured out I'd do it, you know, what the hell. And so I did. And then I did it again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and finally, I never will forget this night, I was walking around there doing it while I was saying, I ain't gonna do it, I'll do it.
And then I did it again and again and again and again and again and again and again and I was walking around there doing it while I was saying I ain't gonna do it. And of course, I guess finally the biggest thing in this whole program is being able to carry the message to others. And I'm running short of time due to knocking glasses off. But I'm gonna try to tell you just this one story real quickly and then we'll knock it off so Green can have it.
Tell you about the first guy I ever carried a message to and really sponsored. This guy was on the prison farm and I used to go out to the prison farm and talk. I went to the prison farm and talked. And later on, I was 18 months sober at the time, and later on he said that some of the things I said out there made sense. Now that's an indication of how sick he was.
[01:15:00]
But when he got off the prison farm, he went and tried, he went to live with his father, and his father lived across the levee in the garbage dump. And he went to live with his father, and then one day after he'd been there a couple of days, he tried to drink again, drink some wine, and he couldn't do it, and he terrified him. And he'd come running around the house, and he asked Ziner first of all, and then later me, if we would help him learn how to stay sober, and of course we said we would. And so, Eddie used to come over to the house early every morning, and Ziner would feed him three good meals a day.
And then in between pastures, which at that time was a long time, I'd give him Jim's a whiskey. And then at night he'd go home to his father's house in the garbage dump. Now, I said that my wife had left me, and she had because I'd become dangerous to live with. But I got a thing about that gal, I really have. And from the moment I got sober, this is what I wanted most of all, was to get her back with me.
And it wasn't easy, but finally I got her back. And I had just gotten her back, really, when all this stuff started to happen. And one night, or one afternoon, late in the afternoon rather, I was on my side of the house, playing a high five. And she came over and said it was too loud. And I said it ain't, and she said it is, and I said it ain't, and she said it is, and I said it ain't, and she said it is, and I said it ain't.
I'm beginning to get upset. And I said, look here, why don't you just leave? She said, for heaven's sakes, you don't mean to go back to San Antonio for good. I said, that's exactly what I mean. She said, well, I ain't leaving unless you give me some money. I said, I'll give you $20 a week if you go. You could tell I'm one of the last big spenders. She said, that's not enough. I went to $40, not enough. $80, not enough. $160, $320, $640, $1280. She said, it ain't enough.
I sat there and let that woman bid me up to $3,650 a week if she'd just get out. And she said, that ain't enough. And I began to shake inside and tremble all over, and I stood up and I pointed my finger in her face, and my voice was quivering, and I said, look here. I said, I'm an alcoholic and you're making me nervous. And I said, you know you ain't supposed to make alcoholics nervous. And not me, because I wouldn't talk that way, but my wife said, bullshit.
And I tore up out that room, out that side door, into the side yard, and I thought I was going to break into pieces. And I looked up and there in the gathering twilight come old Eddie. He'd been home to his father's house in the garbage dump, and had forgotten some of them gems of wisdom I'd given him. And come back to find out what they were. And I put him in the car and got him straightened out, and went home and got straightened out with her.
And I like to remember that night, because I believe that that night even God himself was in trouble.
[01:20:06]
Because he needed somebody to send to me. And as he looked over all his vast creations, the only person he could find who would go, was a tall, skinny drunk with a scratchy voice that lived in the garbage dump. You see, what we do here is help each other. Let's never forget it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Tom. Now this thing didn't blow up, I guess. I said before, and will say again, that I think no fellow's talk needs explaining by the chairman. But one thing it reminds me of, and I don't know, I hope it wasn't this man that was so proficient at vomiting, but there was an officer that I was told about when I came into AA that had an awful drinking problem. And he had one of the privates looking after his uniforms, and one morning he asked the privates, he says, get my dress uniform, go have it cleaned, I have to attend a meeting at 10 o'clock, and I was out late last night.
And this was a drunken officer, and he says, I was out late last night, and I took a drunk home, and he vomited on my uniform, would you please have it cleaned, right quick. And he brought it back in a little while, and he says, you sure what, that man you took home, he must have really been drunk, he messed in your pants too. Couldn't help but bring this back to me when Tom said that. Thank you very much, and there will be another meeting here in 20 minutes. So, I'll tell you from where in the country I came from. We'll close the meeting with the Lord's Prayer.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as 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.