DICOBE-00693 – Joseph M – CHALK TALK – 1977-01-15

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Source: DICOBE-00693 – Joseph M – CHALK TALK – 1977-01-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00693-joseph-m-chalk-talk-1977-01-15.mp3 Duration: 01:14:00

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Ladies and gentlemen, good evening. Thank you for having me here. What I hope to do tonight is the Chalk Talk without chalk. They are doing me the kindness here at the church of making a master tape for me, and in order to get all the information down, I'm going to be forced to say a lot of the stuff that you would just read, and perhaps it wouldn't come out correctly to the ear if I had a chalkboard here, so you'll have to bear with me.

Alcoholics are among the strangest breed of people on earth. Because they live drugged, and their subsequent behavior is therefore drugged, they get judged accordingly. And this is the only disease on earth that manifests itself through obnoxious or goofy behavior. And that's why the alcoholic remains a mystery to the non-alcoholic. Just try, you will see why many people send alcoholics to psychiatrists.

It's because of their behavior. But of course we have found out that the behavior is the result of the drinking rather than the cause. A man bought a terribly expensive antique grandfather clock in Germany. And he came back to England, and he took it down to a local clockmaker to have it repaired and brought into working order. And when they rang him up to tell him to come get it, he did, and it cost him another fortune.

There was only one way to get it home, and that was to carry it. So they put this huge grandfather clock on his back, and he's bent double walking careful step by careful step through the village. And he went opposite the pub, a drunk came flying out and plowed into him. Of course the clock was shattered. He said, why don't you watch where you're going? The drunk says, why don't you wear a wristwatch like everybody else?

Alcoholics just say and do strange things. Now I told that story for a reason. Alcoholism is the most complicated disease on earth. We don't even know what causes it. Alcohol doesn't. It's the necessary ingredient. The cause is whatever is wrong in the one who consumes it. Drinking, or alcohol, plus susceptibility equals the disease. It is absolutely complete. It affects body, mind, emotion, and soul.

It is devastating. Most alcoholics die. Not because they're weak-willed or perverse, but simply because they haven't been given a chance at proper treatment. And it is devastating and the results on others, those who live with it or near it. And yet I truly believe that humor is the greatest teacher of this disease. I believe that a couple of little stories can illustrate more than hour-long lectures.

For example, you tell somebody what compulsion is all about. Somebody who has never experienced it. A drunk walked into a bar one night and he saw a sign that read, All you can drink. All you can drink. One dollar. He said, give me two dollars worth. Alcoholics are built that way. Compulsion, compulsion. And I believe that it is only fitting. It really is only fitting that we be able to retrieve something of the comic from the previously tragic.

What I'd like to do tonight is pass on to you a few of the facts about this disease that were given to me in my treatment. What I'm about to tell you tonight helped to save my life. The information comes from a series of lectures given when I was in treatment by a man by the name of Walter Green, M.D. He was a little doctor, physically little, but a giant in stature, as another man used to say of him, who had lost everything because of his drinking, beginning with his license to practice medicine.

That went and then he went down further from there. He wound up on Detroit's Skid Row. And as he himself used to say, you don't get AA, it gets you. And AA got him and he went back to the top. But he went back with this difference. He dedicated his life to alcoholics and he treated over 6,000 of them before he himself died of cancer some years ago. And it was my privilege to have known this man. And the little doc used to say that he had a friend in the medical community who had worked in cancer for 25 years, alcoholism for 27.

[00:05:00]

And his friend used to say, the causes and cures for cancer will be forgotten long before we come even to a smattering of knowledge about the causes of alcoholism. Now, ladies and gentlemen, we can discover the causes of drinking. That's simple. But the causes of compulsion, who knows? There are a lot of myths, there are a lot of half-truths, there are a lot of misconceptions about this disease. And they always result in tragedy because this is a terminal disease and we're playing with human lives.

Alcoholism is a question of life or death. If the alcoholic does not stop the drinking, the drinking will ultimately stop him. And so there is no room for theories in this field or half-truths or misconceptions. And so the little doc used to say what can be known should be to avoid tragedy. For example, here's one of the myths. I think we honestly believe, and many in some of the professions honestly believe, that if you send an alcoholic to a psychiatrist or psychologist or someone along those lines to learn why he drinks, they believe that the drinking will disappear.

Suppose you have an attack of appendicitis and you go to a surgeon and find out why you had it. So what? You still need surgery. Supposing you go to a dentist with a toothache and he explains to you exactly why it hurts. That does not stop the hurting. Ladies and gentlemen, there's only one thing that takes care of any problem and that's proper therapy. Proper therapy. Same way with alcoholism. So let's begin.

There are reasons why people drink. There are reasons why they drink everything they drink. So let's go through the list of the things that people drink and why they drink them. The first two beverages that cross human lips are water and milk, and they are drunk because they're necessary. We have to to maintain life. Water to slake thirst and to provide the liquid, the moisture that is essential for life, and milk is nature's perfect food for health, at least in the initial years.

In fact, you remember from your first year of high school biology class, we are scientifically labeled, along with a whole lot of other animal species, as mammals. That's nothing but a term, a scientific term that means milk drinker. A milk drinker is a mammal. A mammal is a milk drinker. The Latin word mama means breast, the source of milk. These two beverages, water and milk, are essential, therefore they're natural.

They're perfectly natural. But the human animal drinks a lot of other beverages. Usually when he's very young, because of a preference for sweetness in the taste buds of the young, we are given something sweet. Soft drink, soda, hot chocolate, anything sweet. Now, have you ever noticed that as we get older and we become more sophisticated, we develop the use of big words? Why do people drink soft drinks or hot chocolate?

In your first year psychology class, you will be told, for oral gratification. That's a ten cent phrase, means that it tastes good. It tastes good. You drink it because you like it. Normal, ordinary terminology. It is drunk to please a desire rather than to fulfill a need. Then we come to coffee. This first beverage contains a drug. Now it's different from water, milk, and sweet things in this. We have to learn to drink it.

We have to acquire a taste for it. Why? It's not necessary, it doesn't taste good. Why do we drink it? Several reasons. Number one is why we do anything. Number one is curiosity. It's a big people drink. They drink it and don't give us any. And when we get old enough to ask for it, we're told, you can't have it, it's not good for you. So we want some. And somewhere along the line, somebody will take a little coffee, cut it with milk or cream, put a little sugar in it to sweeten it and make it taste good.

Take a sip, you're doing just what the big people do. That really is one of the first steps out of infancy for many humans, is doing something that adults do. It is drunk because it is customary to drink it. Custom dictates the use of coffee. It is so customary it's written into some labor management contracts. Many of you work in places where at a certain given time you have a coffee break. In fact, those of you here who belong to AA, Doc Green used to say, if there's an AA group without a coffee urn, you can hold that group suspect.

It is so customary. And a third reason, and this makes it different from most other beverages, conviviality.

[00:10:00]

There is a social aspect to the drinking of some coffee. Now, we all know that the first two in the morning are essential for survival. But I'm talking about something else. The coffee break. You're not thirsty, a sip of water would take care of that. But it happens to be a break. Everybody's drinking coffee, and you have one too. There is a social aspect to it. Now we come to alcohol. Why do people drink alcohol?

Ladies and gentlemen, the reasons are just as simple as those just enumerated for other beverages. There are a few more reasons, but they're simple. And the very first reason why anyone and everyone on God's good earth has ever drunk alcohol is out of curiosity. It's a big people drink. They drink it and don't give us any. And when we ask, we're told that we can't have it. It isn't good for us. We want some.

And somewhere along the line, someone will take whiskey, add a little ice or water to cut it, a little sugar to sweeten it, make it taste good. We have to doctor it to get it down, because we have to learn to like it too. It's an acquired taste. And put a little garbage in it, call it a cocktail, take a sip. We're doing a very sophisticated adult thing. Curiosity. Custom dictates the use of alcohol.

It has always been associated customarily with festive occasions. Last year on an airplane, the airline magazine, they had a picture. It was this month, May, of a mint julep. We have seasonal beverages. Oktoberfest, the wines of Germany. Tom and Jerry eggnog at Christmas. Cider in the fall. Tom Collins and the tropical drinks in the summer. Alcohol has always been associated with happiness. Scripture refers to wine as the gift of God that gladdens the hearts of men.

It has always been associated with weddings. Wine. Christ's first miracle was at Cana, to preserve embarrassment for the family that ran out of it. For you lovers, the very word honeymoon comes from booze. In the Scandinavian countries, they celebrate weddings for a month. Not a calendar month, a lunar month, a whole moon. And during that month or moon, they drink a beverage called mead. Here, champagne is always associated with weddings.

You toast the bride in champagne. Over there, they drink mead, M-E-A-D. It's an alcoholic beverage made from honey. So that's called the honey month or the honey moon. That's for your storehouse of totally useless information. But I think you can imagine after 28 days of that, where the expression the honeymoon is over came from. Anyway, festive occasions. Births, deaths, weddings, wakes, celebrations, graduations, anniversaries, feast days, holy days, holidays, Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, go right down the line.

Conviviality. Alcohol has always been associated with conviviality. There's a physical reason why, and we'll see it very shortly. Alcohol has been called a social lubricant, and it is. Many people are much easier to take after you oil them a little bit. It's true. It is a social lubricant, and it is. It is drunk for escape. Here's where the professionals get all, oh, he's drinking to escape. If he's got any sense, he is.

Please see if this is not rational. God Almighty built us to seek to substitute the pleasant for the unpleasant. When it's cold, don't you put on a coat. When it rains, don't you come in. You have a headache, you take an aspirin. You're tired, you go to sleep. To seek to escape the unpleasant is perfectly normal. Now, some escapes from responsibilities, that's another thing. Why you want to escape is another thing.

But just to seek to escape the unpleasant, Scripture calls it the gift of God that gladdens the hearts of men. You have problems? Take three or four bags of this magic leopard sweat and just sit back. The problems remain, but they don't seem to bother you. You have somehow escaped from them. Husbands, wives, jobs, bosses, everybody. Many people escape the tensions of the day with what is known as death.

Keep the tensions of the day with what is known as the pre-dinner cocktail.

[00:15:02]

For those who can take it and are not bothered by it, and who do not deliberately abuse it, or who because of alcoholism, un-deliberately or unwillingly abuse it, then fine. It has been used as a painkiller. How many of you have ever seen or said to someone, boy you were feeling no pain, there's more truth than humor in that. Many an alcoholic winds up with his arm in a cast and wonders how it got there.

He was so drunk he broke his arm and it took him to an emergency room. He's blacked out, doesn't even remember the pain of it. I know an alcoholic who used to measure the severity of his drunks by the length of the cigarette burns between his fingers. If a cigarette burned all the way through, he knew he was very, very drunk. Alcohol is, literally, it is a painkiller. But we have better painkillers.

So just beware of the fellow who uses pain as an excuse for his drinking. So somebody walks into work tomorrow morning at 8.30, drunk, and you ask him why, and he says receding gums, not good enough, it's not good enough. There was a fellow, and I'll mention him later too, who when he drank and couldn't make it to work because of a hangover, would call in and say I can't come in today, I have to get a tooth pulled.

He got sober and he and his boss were speaking about his drinking days and the boss took out a worksheet and said, when you were drinking you had 76 teeth pulled. He had a record on them, all I know. The sixth and basic reason why everybody uses alcohol, this is almost too simple, one word, it is drunk for euphoria. Drunk is a Greek word that means a sense of well-being. People drink because it makes them feel good.

You really don't drink because of the taste. Now some people do like the taste. But why is it that people pay $2.50 for a cocktail, three ounces, when they can get, let's say, a six or eight pack of a soft drink for the same price? It doesn't make sense, volume-wise, except one cocktail will do what all the root beer in the world can't do. It gives you euphoria and that is the basic, simple reason, combined perhaps with any of the others of these, conviviality, let's say, at a wedding reception or whatever, but euphoria is the basic reason why everybody drinks alcohol, to get something from it, a sense of well-being.

For most professionals that is just too simple because people like you and me can grasp that and they want it to be a little bit more complicated. People drink alcohol for euphoria. Why do alcoholics drink? Because they can't not drink. It's that simple. They have a disease whose primary symptom is compulsion. We'll see that in a minute. What is alcohol? It's a chemical substance composed of three elements, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, C2H5OH.

That does not show brilliance on my part at all. I memorized that. I know about as much chemistry as most of any of us who ever went through a chemistry course. I do know that H2O is water. We all do. I have learned that K9P emanates from the south end of a dog. I just do that every now and then to see if you're there. Alcohol is digested, oxidized, burned up, handled by one organ, the liver. Now when you drink, 20% of the alcohol gets into the bloodstream through the stomach wall.

The rest goes to the liver to be broken up. Now that's important. We'll see it later. What is this magic substance that makes you feel good after the taste is gone? What is this stuff that gives us that little lift, the buzz, as some call it? It is many things, a solvent, an irritant. It has been called a stimulant, but it is not. It's an antiseptic, an anesthetic. It's a solvent, and a good one. It has been known to remove stains from tables, stomachs, paychecks, bankrolls, careers, families, marriages, and lives.

It's the best solvent on earth. It's an irritant. Cut yourself, spill a little alcohol in the cut, you will rise again. It is not a stimulant.

[00:20:01]

The paradoxes of alcohol. It is not a stimulant, but we believe it is because of the wacky things people do when they drink it. I know a fellow who is sober in AA. When he enters a restaurant, and they say, would you care for a drink? He says, I would care for about 62 drinks, but I have to be in Albuquerque in August. Here's another fellow, his standard reply, care for a drink, no thank you, I'm allergic to it.

And they kind of just walk off and leave him alone, but one night a little waitress said to him, you're what? He said, I am allergic to alcohol. She said, never heard of it. He said, I've heard of people being allergic to strawberries, and lobsters, but never to alcohol. What do you mean you're allergic to it? He said, when I drink, I break out in spots, Albuquerque, San Francisco, Seattle, and he did, he did.

And this is the reason people call it a stimulant. People get a few drinks and do goofy things, we'll see that in a minute. It's an antiseptic. You remember when the fellow fell among thieves, and they wounded him, and the Samaritan came along? He used wine and oil to treat his wounds. The wine was poured in to clean it, it's an antiseptic, and then the oil to soothe. It's an anesthetic. We just passed by Lent and Easter.

You're all familiar with Good Friday Afternoon, when the Roman soldier took a lance, put a sponge on it, dipped it into cheap wine, and held it to the lips of Christ. I've heard so much spiritual garbage thrown around about that by way of interpreting what it meant. That was an act of simple human kindness. Cheap wine, into which they mixed another drug called myrrh, was carried by all execution teams of the Roman army, and they gave it to alleviate the pain of the people that they put to death.

Solvent, irritant, antiseptic, anesthetic, and basically in its drinkable form, ethyl alcohol or ethanol. Alcohol by chemical nature is a sedative drug. Alcoholism is addiction to it. That's this whole talk in one line. Alcohol is a sedative drug. Alcoholism is addiction to it. Now, what is addiction? Addiction, ladies and gentlemen, is like life. It's like God. It's like electricity. It's a mystery.

We don't know what it is, but we know something about it. What do we do with mysteries? How do we describe God? By describing him, we give descriptive definitions of mysteries. We look and we chronicle what we're looking at. We know enough about electricity to light cities and to power submarines. We know enough about life to prolong it, to cure some of its ills, and to alleviate others. We know enough about God, at least to say what he is not.

Every term we use of God is negative. He is infinite, not finite. He's not like us. He is immense. He's not composed of parts. So what we do is we look and we describe what we're looking at. Now, what do we know about addiction? Two things. Number one, compulsive use, compulsive use. How many of you have ever had your alcoholic say, only two, honey, and he drinks 12? And this goes on and on and on.

He's not doing that because he's perverse. Ladies and gentlemen, please believe this. Those of you who honestly believe that an alcoholic just by willpower can stop, please believe this, even if you don't. If alcoholism were a question of willpower, there wouldn't be any alcoholics. Now I happen to be one. My will is as strong as yours ever was, and I couldn't handle my intake of alcohol. So don't judge me.

I don't like it. And don't judge any compulsive, addicted person. They use or drink against their will. Why don't you drink like normal people? Please believe that the alcoholic tries every time he picks up a glass. The second characteristic is progression. It gets worse whether you drink or not. It lasts until death. Ladies and gentlemen, there is no cure. There is no cure, and you always speak of people, well, go get the cure.

There's no cure. It's like diabetes. You can arrest it. You can recover from it, but you can never cure it. And a drink, no matter how long you're sober, will reactivate it. The longer a person is from his last drink, the worse he is when he picks up another one.

[00:25:01]

What I'm trying to say is this, and the only thing you can do is describe. When an alcoholic drinks again, after a prolonged stretch of sobriety, he does not pick up where he left off. He picks up where he would have been if he had been drinking all that time. Now what happens? God knows, and he won't tell. No one knows. But the fact is so because hundreds of millions of alcoholics have tried to disprove that, and they've never succeeded.

And this is why these theories about teaching alcoholics to drink again after proper therapy is garbage. I have never met one. Show me an alcoholic diagnosed as such who, after this so-called magic treatment, has been drinking, not abstinent, but drinking without ever once having gotten drunk, let's say for ten years, and I'll listen to you. But until then, don't talk about that theory. It has killed people who wanted to believe it and tried.

All right. Now we have seen addiction. Alcoholism is addiction to the sedative drug alcohol. Let's prove that alcohol is a sedative drug. And here's the way Dr. Green did it. You learned this in first high English class. The strongest figures of speech, comparison and contrast. Contrast is the most powerful. If you want to see the beauty of gratitude, look at the ugliness of ingratitude. That's contrast.

Now comparison. Suppose you know something I don't know, and you want to communicate it to me. Compare it with something I do know, and I'll see the similarity. Now Dr. Green proves that alcohol is a sedative drug. He compares its action with that of an accepted anesthetic sedative drug, ether. You're all familiar with ether. Now I don't know a whole lot about it. I feel certain that most of you don't know a whole lot about it, but I believe that it is universally accepted that an anesthetized rabbit could be referred to as the ether bunny.

I sincerely apologize for that. An anesthetic drug is one that interferes with the oxygen supply to the brain and puts it to sleep. Dr. Green used to say, let's take an adult person and give him ether, and then we'll give him alcohol, and we will see that the action is identical. What is the brain that this drug interferes with? It's an organ in the head composed of parts that control functions. The outermost part of the brain is where we have the seat of reason, intellect, judgment.

Behind it, imagination, memory, emotion. More protected is your let, which controls your motor activity, the movement of parts. And then the semi-automatic or semi-voluntary functions, the blinking of your eyes, which at times you can control and at other times you don't. The purely automatic or involuntary functions, your stomach and your intestines. And the most protected part of the brain is where we find those functions that are essential to life.

The let word for life is vita. What is essential to life is therefore vital. The vital functions, your heartbeat and your breathing. Now the brain goes to sleep much as if you were to lower the house lights in a theater. Let's take an adult and subject him to ether and watch what happens. What's an adult? Dr. Green's simple definition, one who functions according to the formula I over E, intellect predominating over emotions.

Aquinas defines us as rational animals. We function guided by reason. All right. Watch what happens in that formula when the brain that controls it gets drugged. Step one, if you've ever undergone ether, you experience a kind of a dryness in the throat because it's highly absorbent of moisture. It dries out those mucous membrane and you feel as if you're going to suffocate. You want to pull the mask off and just pull air in.

But before you can, the next step, you feel good, euphoria, wee. You are on your back, you will be cut open in about 30 seconds and you couldn't care less. If the nurse were to say, look, we're going to have to take that whole arm off, he says, take them both. I got legs. Why? Why do you feel good in a situation that would normally make you feel bad? Simplicity itself. When this thing begins to drug, what do you mean by drug the brain?

Put it to sleep. The first thing that gets hit is the first part is. So it's I over E except after D. Add a drug to that formula and knock out I.

[00:30:06]

Intellect, judgment, reasoning. The emotions come up, you have a reversal of that formula. It's now E over I. And if you were to stop that anesthetic at this point, you'd hear the person saying goofy things because judgment has gone to sleep. Please note, the next part of the brain that gets hit is what controls your emotions so that when they come out, they come out drugged. They come out drug-affected.

You are not watching emotional behavior in someone who has been drugged that far with either. You are watching drugged emotional behavior. But with the E over I, you enter now an excitement stage. And this is why that sheet is wrapped tightly around you. This is why they're standing there. Hey, by the way, this is why medical ethics forbids medical people to bear outside that room what you say in it. You're not in your right mind. You're not in your right emotions.

The excitement stage is dangerous. There's a possibility of nausea. That's dangerous. That's why they slam you through. What is it they used to say? Count backwards from 100, you get to 96, and it's all over. They can do that very, very quickly. What we're doing is doing it by stages here. Nausea. You can walk past a hospital and just inhale the odor of ether, and it just kind of turns your stomach. There's a nurse there with a basin to catch anything you might have to offer, but normally there won't be anything because before major surgery, especially in the abdominal area, they keep that whole your stomach and your intestinal tract clean and empty, and you're all familiar with how they do that.

The most sophisticated medical technique known. The enema. I remember once I was in St. Joe's Hospital in Pontiac, Michigan. I had six of those little devils in three days, and when that man walked in with the fourth, I hopped out of bed and saluted him. The rear admiral of the fourth floor. Seriously, how do you make small talk with someone, a stranger who is giving you an enema? Hi there. I absolutely have to tell you this story. I read it about 30 years ago in the Reader's Digest.

A man in a small town went to his doctor. A buddy came with him. The doctor said, what's the trouble, George? He said, I need rest, doc. He said, can you put me in the hospital for three or four days? He said, what's wrong? He said, I'm heading for a nervous breakdown. He said, my buddy here is a practical joker, and when he's not scaring me to death, I'm scared of when he will. Well, he said, fine. Now, he said, keep him away from me. Doctor said, no problem.

So they put him in bed that night and gave him a dose of something, and boy, he just slept like a dead man. Next day, his buddy came to visit him, and of course, they wouldn't let him in. So his buddy went to the proper place and got a hold of a cap and a mask and a gown, and he went up to his friend's room. He disguised his voice, knocked on the door. Come in. He said, I'm here to take your temperature. So he opened his mouth, and the fellow said, no, rectally, now assume the position. Made him get on his hands, and he said, I'll be back to read that.

He left the room, took off the cap, mask, and gown, put on his jacket, and left the hospital. So it's about an hour and a quarter later, and one of the nurses is walking down the corridor, and she knew he wasn't sick, but she just wanted to check on him. She looked in the room and did a triple take. By now, he is so angry, he's purple. She said, what do you think you're doing? He says, what do I think I'm doing? I'm having my temperature taken. She says, with a geranium.

I can be serious for about five minutes at a stretch. You know, I like to be given a serious talk, and then just throw this one out, you know. Funny thing happened to Kojak in a bowling alley. About 20 minutes later, somebody begins to snicker. Anyway, you're not in your right mind. You're not in your right emotions. Your motor activity has been affected. You're not in your right body. If they were to take you off that table, you'd stagger and collapse. When the semi-voluntary functions are put to sleep because the part of the brain controlling them is hit, you are unconscious. That's called pre-anesthesia. You cannot yet be operated on without pain. It's when the purely involuntary functions, that part of the brain

[00:35:07]

that controls them, is put to sleep, you are anesthetized. Ladies and gentlemen, that is a comatose state, leaving you with your vital functions. When they are sedated, death. To hover between anesthesia and death is a very dangerous thing. An anesthesiologist is an M.D. who does nothing but that. I just toss this out for your concerned thought. The professions, all of them, including medicine, have a very high rate of alcoholism. Suppose your anesthesiologist is hungover. There was a doctor back home who died a very tragic suicidal death.

Patients would say, I do not want him in the room with me, and then the surgeons themselves refused to use him because of his problems. Not a soul tried to help him. Anyway, we'll go on from there. Coming out of it, you go through the same process in reverse. From anesthesia to pre-anesthesia, you'll be sick, you'll undergo an excitement stage, but there will be no euphoria. Part of the sickness after surgery, and I remember I've had a couple of major surgeries, and I asked Dr. Sullivan, my surgeon, what happens is there's a buildup, it's a phenomenon what's called gas. And if you've ever experienced it, you know that it's indescribable.

The first day you feel as if you're going to die, and the second day you're afraid you won't. What happens is you come to, but those involuntary functions don't come to until later. And Dr. Sullivan explained it this way. He says surgery is an unnatural way to function, to preserve life. Those internal organs were not meant to be played with, and when you go in there and handle them, he said, I think there's a kind of a natural retreat, and it takes a little while for them to begin to function again. Boy, by the middle of that third day, you're about ready to give birth to a rhinoceros. I mean it. It's unbearable. It's absolutely unbearable. And yet a week later, it's all just a memory. But nonetheless, now please, when you enter that excitement stage coming out, this is the reason why you go to a recovery room and why they have a crack team of professionals who specialize in watching over you. You go back to your room, and as soon as you're in bed, a massive dose of morphine. Number one, obviously, to alleviate the pain, and number two, to prevent you from hurting yourself in that excitement stage. Now, let's just erase ether and write alcohol, where we had ether. The effect of alcohol is exactly identical to that of ether, and the reason is purely chemical. They are both composed of the same three elements, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen. When you put them together, you know what ether is?

You take one more molecule of alcohol and remove two H's and an O. H2O is gone. What you have in lay language, ether is a double shot, two alcohols, without a chaser. Of course, they do the same thing. They can't not do the same thing. The only difference between alcohol and ether is the molecular structure. Ether, obviously, is double strength plus. Now, let's see that. Do you remember your first shot of straight whiskey? If you have ever drunk straight whiskey, it was not so much a taste as a sensation. It was like ground glass, and then you experienced this horrible, irritated burning in your throat. Why? The first paradox of alcohol, it's a liquid that dries out your throat.

It is highly absorbent of moisture, and then being an irritant, if you remember, it hurts. You know those ads for men and thanks, I needed that? Scrape your skin with a razor blade and put an aftershave on it that has alcohol in it. Burns. It's an irritant. All right. There's this burning in the throat, and then you feel euphoria. This is why people drink it, to get that feeling. What happens? Now, let's go back to the process. Alcohol is handled by the liver, and it is handled at approximately the rate of an ounce an hour. Actually, it's about three quarters of an ounce, and you will find an ounce of alcohol in two ounces of 100 proof whiskey. Suppose you drink 10 of them in an hour. The liver handles one, and by the way, ladies and gentlemen, you can neither accelerate nor decelerate that process. The body acts as it acts. So you know all these myths.

Well, you give an hour, you give a drunk black coffee. Why? The only thing you get when you do

[00:40:06]

that is a wide awake drunk. It doesn't do a whole lot of anything, but if it makes you feel good, go ahead and drink it. It's like all these movies, you know, no matter what the pioneer doctor was doing, setting a bone, pulling a tooth, he always turned to somebody in the family and said, boil lots of water. Never saw him use it. Did you? You always boil water. I think what it does is get them out of the house or out of the room, but anyhow. You feel good because alcohol will get to the brain and begin to sedate it. How does it do that? From the liver, where in the course of an hour, one ounce is handled. The rest gets into the bloodstream to take its turn, and when the blood gets to the brain, it brings the alcohol with it, and when the alcohol hits the brain, it begins to sedate it.

How do we know? Simple observation. Ladies and gentlemen, don't you know when you're in the presence of someone who has had a few drinks? You begin to notice it in the motor activity. The slowness of the blinking of the eyelids, the thickness of tongue, the staggering, if it's very pronounced, that initial wavering, getting the key into the ignition, this whole business of drunken drivers, because you feel you function better with a drink doesn't mean you do.

My friends, it is a physical impossibility to drug your brain and function better, but we delude ourselves because we think we do, and my friends, this has nothing to do with alcoholism. This has to do with any of you who ingest this beverage that we call alcohol. It drugs the brain. Most people drink for a little bit of euphoria. They drink enough to get it, and that ends that. They have no problem. The alcoholic seeks euphoria, but drinks compulsively and shoots through it to the misery beyond. All right. You feel good because alcohol, like ether, puts to sleep what would make you feel bad. Your job has got you down. You're in a state of nerves. You come home, you have two cocktails, and suddenly you feel relaxed. That's a physical result of the application of a drug to the brain. It's I over E except after A. Knock out reason, liberate the emotions, and they come out. You have a reversal of the formula and enter an excitement stage, and this is why people think alcohol is a stimulant. In the very process of going to sleep, we enter an excitement stage because reason has taken a back seat to emotion.

And again, please remember this. You are not watching emotional behavior. You're watching drugged emotional behavior. Now please listen to this. It's important. E over I. That's the way the alcoholic lives. He lives that way whether he's physically drinking or not. He has gotten into a pattern of denial and everything else, and here is why we scratch our heads with alcohol. He said, good heavens, can't he see what his five-year-old knows?

He can run a company and he can't see his own problem. Of course he can. And this is why, remember those jokes I told in the beginning, the nutty reaction of the alcoholic and the goofy things he says? If he does this enough, we ship him to a psychiatrist. He doesn't need a psychiatrist. He needs to get sober to find out if he needs a psychiatrist. You've got to get the drug out of the person to evaluate them properly. Dr. Green used to say, and by the way, for people who go into all of this head stuff, he's an alcoholic because, he drinks because, but he's an alcoholic because his body became addicted.

The percentage of alcoholics who do need psychiatric care after they get sober is exactly the same as the percentage of non-alcoholics who need psychiatric care for their problems. And for those of you in AA, don't play doctor and don't play psychiatrist. Some of our AA brothers and sisters, after they get sober, desperately need other help for other problems. Don't deprive them of that. AA does two things. I'll get you sober and keep you sober.

Now, if you need a marriage counselor, go to one. If you need a used car, go there. I always tell people, Lordy, if you see me in an accident, don't get me to a meeting. Get me to an emergency room. Get me to an emergency room. AA is not the be-all and end-all of life. AA is not the be-all and end-all of life. It's primary for alcoholists to get you sober, keep you sober, and give you a way to live.

But if you have other problems, get help for them.

[00:45:02]

The excitement stage. This is why people believe alcohol is a stimulant. Watch the different types of emotionally drugged drinkers. There's the Jocose type, the Bellicose type, the Lacrimose type, and I coined one, the Amarose type. Now, I don't know what these words mean to you, so anyway, Jocose. Jokester. Means what it sounds like. The good-natured slob. He's very shy, but give him a few drinks and he's the life of the party.

Bellicose. Warlike. By the way, a word of advice, and I'm dead serious about this. Don't play around with big drunks who get nasty. I mean it. They're drugged. Well, I can handle him. He's my friend. Maybe you can, but there's one day he'll handle you. Don't stay around big drunks who become violent. But usually the Bellicose drunk is about four foot one. He weighs 67 pounds, and he's afraid of the dark.

But give him about six bangs of this liquid moral courage, and he becomes a giant. Huge, aren't he, right? And he's talking to a 92-foot animal. Well, I've always said that in AA you can spot the Bellicose drunk after he gets sober. He's the new man with the new teeth. The Lacrimose drunk is the crying drunk, the tearful drunk. Now, if you've never met one, and you would like to, put on one of these, a Roman collar, and get on a train.

Any train, anywhere. Go to the last car, the last seat, move next to the window, and bend over a magazine. Three minutes later, here he comes in from the club car. I don't know how they do it. This must have a magnet in it. Wonk, they spot that one square inch of white at your throat. And then you get the greeting. Hey, father. You say, hi. And then the grand announcement. I'm a Catholic. Down he comes, boy, right down.

And then you listen. I always tell clergy this. I live with a family. It's been my privilege to live with them for about ten years now, so that I can function the way I do. And the mother happens to be in AA. She's the daughter of a Baptist minister, and she was riddled with guilt because of her own drinking problem. One night, she called every clergyman in the local telephone book. Not a one of them spotted or suggested alcoholism.

Not a one even questioned. She asked them to pray over her. She said, I've been prayed at, prayed over, prayed for, prayed with. I'm not condemning prayer, but does prayer help with a toothache? Yes, if you say it on your way to the dentist. Prayer, we hope, will get an alcoholic into proper treatment. God Almighty wants us to take the natural means to the end. You stay here after this is over and pray that God put you home after this.

But I wouldn't try it. Drive the way you came. I always tell clergy, never ever turn off a crying drunk, and I'll tell you why. Remember I said this disease manifests itself through bad, very often immoral behavior. When an alcoholic believes that he is as evil as he is told he is, and believing that something is morally wrong with him, that he's damaged, he can't do right, his love of God very often turns to fear.

But he gets drunk and drugs his intellect, and he seeks anything connected with God to clean up. Don't ever turn off a crying drunk. Ladies and gentlemen, alcohol does not stimulate sexually. It does exactly the opposite. It's a depressant. It decreases sexual potency. Ask any woman married to an alcoholic. What does it do? It knocks out control over what's already there. It kills conscience, judgment, and everything else.

Then the emotions take over and you have the behavior that follows. Even Shakespeare knew that. It was in Hamlet. I think the porter said the promise and the performance are usually two different things.

[00:50:00]

Now, that's the excitement stage, which leads people to believe that alcohol is a stimulant. You may or may not get sick. That's neither here nor there. But if you drink enough, you'll deaden the brain to a point where you pass out, unconscious. This is why alcohol is a poor anesthetic. It's a liquid. It must be drunk. And when you anesthetize yourself down to unconsciousness, you can't pick up the glass to go down and do anesthesia.

How then does it kill? Can you sedate the entire brain? Yes, you can drink enough in the beginning to kill it all. Normally, we reject excess and you would vomit it up. But sometimes it stays and some people sedate their brains to death, especially if they combine alcohol and pills. It kills on the highway. It kills through the secondary means, you know, cirrhosis, the respiratory and gastrointestinal problems.

You know, it kills about a ton, you know, out on the highway. And then the most ignominious death of all, many an alcoholic, very drunk, who sleeps on his back, will regurgitate slightly in the night and choke to death on his own vomit. Coming out of it, you go through the same process in reverse. Pre-anesthesia, you may or may not be queasy and have a hangover and so on. You enter an excitement stage, and this has to do with handling a drunk, is to realize what he's going through and act accordingly.

But there will be no euphoria coming out. The word intoxicated does not mean drunk. They have driving while intoxicated. Uh-uh. That's an unfortunate term. Toxin means poison. When alcohol is digested, it breaks up into ketones and aldehydes, which are poisons. When you swallow one mouthful of beer, the 5% of that mouthful, that is alcohol, when it is digested, breaks up into poison. So if you swallow a mouthful of beer, you're intoxicated.

That doesn't mean you're drunk. All drunks are intoxicated, but all intoxicated people are not drunk at all. But we use the term. So I don't know why I brought it up. Let's look at two people who go through this process. One's an alcoholic and one isn't. Charlie and Charlie's aunt go to a New Year's Eve party. Please listen to the purpose, to have a good time and see the New Year in. Charlie is a compulsive drinker.

He's an alcoholic. He burns his throat, feels good. He goes through personality changes. For a while, he is the loving wife of the party. He changes. His personality changes. He becomes nasty. Somebody smacks him. He cries in his beer and passes out. Advice for how to handle a drunk. Get him out in the air. The spoons has interfered with the oxygen supply to his brain. Put him in the car. His car. Not your car.

Drunks do funny things in cars. Make sure it's on his upholstery, not yours. About four o'clock, he will wake up, sit up, and throw up. He will then come back to the door with these words on his lips. He's in the excitement stage. His body is demanding more of the drug that he can't do without. I want a drink. The wife always says, you've had enough. And then two people say to each other what animals wouldn't.

What's the proper procedure in a hospital? You enter an excitement stage, they knock you out with a dose of morphine. Doc Green says, give him a double shot. Knock him out, throw him in the car, and get him home and have your fight in the morning. Why do you give him more of the normal procedures? You never give addictive substances to addicts. But in this case, you do for two reasons. Number one, he'll get it anyway.

An alcoholic will crawl through ice to get a drink. Number two, he's got the keys to the car in his hand. He's going to use them. Make sure he doesn't. Anyway, watch Charlie's Aunt. Aunt Mabel, there's one in every family. Mabel is strong-willed. She does not understand his drinking. She doesn't experience it herself. In fact, she doesn't drink because he does. Mabel is the type, you've seen him. She wakes up in the morning, looks at her hair in the mirror, and says, part.

And it does. They slip a screwdriver onto Mabel, telling her it's orange juice. After she's halfway through it, look at old Mabel. She's sitting over there. Have you ever seen this stupid grin? Three hairs are out of place, and her foot is tapping time to the music. Now, she's not out of it, but she's in her own slightly euphoric stage. Two sips later, wonk, Mabel is out. The next morning, Charlie will wake up about an hour after he goes to sleep, shaking, in need of a drink, reaches under the bed.

He needs three drinks before he gets out of bed so he won't commit suicide when he shaves. And Mabel doesn't know she's had a drink. What's the difference between these two people?

[00:55:00]

What is an alcoholic? I suppose everybody has some concept, some notion, and they're all pretty much correct. One whose drinking causes problems has a drinking problem. My friends, that is what we call a self-evident truth. You can't prove it. It's there. And it is based on the principle, what makes trouble is trouble, because it makes trouble. What else is there to say? When one's drinking becomes the topic of serious, concerned conversation on the part of others, my friends, that is the classic textbook case, where there's smoke, there's fire.

No one discusses non-problems. Have you ever had an argument about your drinking? You're talking about a problem. Has your drinking ever made you lie about your drinking? I use one question, one single, simple, solitary question to diagnose the disease. Look at the behavior you're concerned about. My mother hides bottles. Now answer this question. Do normal drinkers do this? Whatever it is. If your answer is no, you're talking about abnormalcy.

Question, do normal drinkers hide bottles? Answer, they have no reason to. Therefore, they don't. Have you ever lied about your drinking, yes or no? Do normal drinkers lie about it? They have no reason to. I'll tell you what an alcoholic is. This young boy called me up. I was up in Anchorage, Alaska. There was a school of alcohol studies there, and I was on one of these talk shows at night. It was two solid hours, and I hit it off very well with a disc jockey.

He's a retired Air Force fellow, Dick Bishop. Dick and I had a lovely time, and he enabled me to go through about an hour and a half of this talk, all this stuff. Then the calls began to come in. Many people concerned about their own drinking will say, I have a friend who, referring to themselves. Now, this boy did not do that. He said, hey, I'd like to talk to you about my drinking. I said, great.

I could tell from his voice, I said, are you drinking now? He said, yes. He was not drunk, don't mistake me, but he was drinking. He was very honest. He was very upfront about everything. He said, now, I only drink beer, but I drink a lot of it. I said, well, like what? He said, usually a couple of six-packs a night, and on weekends I do some pretty serious drinking. But he said, I've never lost work.

And he named all the things that alcohol had not done to him, I was thinking, yet. When he got through, he said, I don't know about me. I don't think I'm an alcoholic. But he said, do you think that I am or could become an alcoholic? I said, well, son, I don't even know you. I've never seen you with a glass in your hand. I wouldn't know him today if I met him. I said, I'll tell you what I do know. I like string beans.

But never in my entire life have I ever picked up a telephone at 1130 at night and called a radio studio to ask a complete stranger if he thought I had a problem with him. Of course he's an alcoholic. If you're worried about your drinking, you are worried about a something. I call it alcoholism. Now you can make of that what you want. People do not worry about none problems. There's a young man in jail back in the Baltimore area.

He has one arm, and he's in prison, obviously. He's 28 years old. He started to go to AA meetings just to get out of his cell. And he heard that when alcohol makes trouble, it is. That boy drank, but he went on horrendous drunks three times in his life. The first time, he lost his arm in a farm machine. The second time, he lost his family. They pulled out. And the third time, he committed a crime that lost him his freedom.

He concluded quite correctly that he had a drinking problem. I call it alcoholism. So let's now, and this is the last stage of this thing, let's just run through the symptoms of the disease to see what the disease is. When you see them, you're looking at alcoholism. The first characteristic of all alcoholics is an excessive drinking pattern. Now a lot of people drink too much, too often. They're called alcohol abusers.

Their drinking is uncontrolled. The alcoholic's drinking is uncontrolled. Controlled. The alcoholic's drinking is uncontrollable. He has an excessive drinking pattern. He usually drinks too much. I'm not saying he's drunk every time he picks up a glass. Many alcoholics

[01:00:00]

drinking is very, very slowly progressive. Alright. What do you mean by excessive? Everybody gets paranoid about that. And you know, you look at somebody and say, you drink too much. You know what he does? I don't drink as much as, and he always names three other guys. To show you how E functions over I. You say, we're not talking about them. The doctor looks at you and he says, I think you have cancer of your skin. I know three people whose skin is worse. What's that got to do with it? This is yours. But the alcoholic doesn't want to be an alcoholic and so he skirts around it, you see. Supposing any of you men were coming home and there's your little boy and he's got a cut on his leg. You say, for heaven's sake, go in and get your mother to wash that out and put a band-aid on it. And your little kid looks at you and says, this is not as bad as the cut on Jimmy's leg. His is really deep. You see, we're not talking about Jimmy. Get in there and get the cut fixed. Talk to somebody about his problem drinking and he, he's all over the place. We say, we're talking about your drinking. He says, who won that ball game last night? Another subject, another subject. What is excessive? Whatever is excessive for you. The amount that you drink, the amount that causes problems. And if one drink makes you take another, that's too much. What do we say in AA? One drink is too many. A thousand are not enough. First symptom, blackouts.

Present inability to remember something done recently under the influence. You can remember graduating from high school and you cannot remember driving a car home last night. Now we use language like I did such and such in a blackout. No, you didn't. You didn't do anything in a blackout. Your blackout is now. It's your present inability to remember. But when you were doing it, you knew what you were doing in a faintly fuzzy way. A blackout is a present inability to remember a given period of time. Number two, gulping and sneaking drinks. Answer this question. Suppose some of you men were to go home tonight. If you were to see your wife sneak out of the dining room, into the bathroom, open the toilet tank, pull out a quart of milk and drink three shots, you'd have her committed with no questions asked. An alcoholic will sneak drinks for years and never give it thought. This is normal for us abnormal people. I always say at the beginning of AA meetings, we're all here because we're not all there. Gulping and sneaking drinks, normal drinkers don't drink that way.

Hey, by the way, did you ever always look at the guy who rushes to volunteer to be bartender? He wants where that supply is. Now watch him out there. He had one for you and one for him, and he's banging them off like peanuts. Did you ever catch an alcoholic sneaking a drink? He's got it halfway up and you walk in the room. Hi, Henry. Oh, hi. He doesn't know what to do with it. It weighs 16 pounds. This does not happen to normal drinkers. Normal drinkers are not ashamed or embarrassed by taking a drink. Number three, loss of control.

Have you ever in your entire life drunk more than you determined you were going to drink? Than you determined you were going to drink? If your answer is yes once, you are probably an alcoholic. That's indicative of compulsion. If you can say yes twice, you can sign up. Loss of control is indicative of compulsion. Now, the alcoholic is as bewildered by it as you are. In fact, more so. Why did you drink that way? And you're asking yourself.

I said I was going to drink three. I made up my mind I was going to drink three, and I went on a two-week binge. What happened? What happened? He's got to have, well, number four, the alibi system. You know what an alibi is? It's an unreasonable reason for doing something. Why did you get drunk last Thursday? He says it rained. How about Saturday? He says it didn't. My team won. My team lost. It's the dog's birthday. The sun came up.

It didn't come up. It's Tuesday. Whatever. He has a reason for drinking that is unreasonable. Number five, the eye opener. That's the need of a drink after a period of deprivation. It usually occurs in the morning, but it doesn't have to. This disease does not depend on a wrist watch. It occurs in the morning because the period of deprivation was sleep. Number six, drinking alone. Ladies and gentlemen, the alcoholic does not want you to know he drinks as much as he does as often as he does, so he drinks where you can't see him. The office worker who has to go to the bathroom eight or nine times before lunch. You need

[01:05:00]

a drink, but you don't drink at your desk. Question, do normal drinkers drink in the lavatory? Not usually. Number seven, change the pattern. You don't want to admit you're an alcoholic. I can take it or leave it alone, but you know you've got to do something about your drinking, so you switch from bourbon to scotch to beer to wine to vodka to whatever. Can you be, well, how can my father be an alcoholic? He only drinks beer because beer has alcohol in it. That's what the addiction is to. The addiction is to alcohol, not the clothing it wears. You know the difference between a beer alcoholic and a whiskey alcoholic?

The amount of alcohol in a 12 ounce bottle of beer is what you'll find in one ounce of whiskey. The difference, you have to drink more beer to get it and go to the bathroom more often and it just ain't worth it. A fellow in a bar one night ordered a Schlitz, went in the men's room, just poured it in the toilet. Someone said, have you lost your mind? He said, no, he was just tired of being the middle man. He just had enough. He couldn't handle it. Number three, antisocial behavior. How many of you have ever said about an alcoholic friend, gee, he's a wonderful fellow, when he's sober. She's the best nurse in the hospital when she's here. Antisocial behavior. Ladies and gentlemen, it's perfectly all right to have a few drinks at a party and sing songs. That's why you have parties, isn't it? But it's not all right after the 19th hole on a Saturday afternoon to stagger into a neighbor's house, climb up on his piano with your golf shoes on and then throw up on his virgin rug.

That is frowned upon. That's antisocial behavior. The results, number nine, loss of friends, jobs and families. You can lose friends if you don't shower. You can lose jobs for a hundred reasons and families break up for jillions of reasons. What I'm trying to say tonight is this, if alcohol is involved in any of those major problems, that's an alcohol problem and I call it alcoholism. Families takes forever to talk about. I won't even go into it. Number ten, doctors and hospitals. I know a woman down in Texas. She's helping me to raise money to get our operation started up there, Ashley, our treatment center. She went through nine treatment centers. Finally something clicked. Somebody pressed the right button. Many a person who's going to a treatment center or a hospital or under a doctor and he says, you have cirrhosis. Drink again and you will die. And fear keeps them sober, let's say for ten or eleven years. Now watch progression. At the punch bowl's brink, let the thirsty think what they say in Japan. First the man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes the man. He reasons this way, without the constant therapy of AA, he gets to thinking, stinking thinking, I'm a man, I can handle a beer and he does. And the next day he handles a beer and the next day he handles a beer, fine. Next day he handles three beers. Four days later he's handling four shots. And three days after that, three fifths handles him. In a relatively short time, he picked up where he would have been if he had been drinking all that time. What's the explanation? God knows and he won't tell.

The only answer to alcoholism is total abstinence, one day at a time, for the rest of your life. Number twelve, tremors. The inner shakes that makes your body scream for a drink. Scream for a drink. You'd walk through snow to get a drink. Here's Dr. Green's words. It is indicative of the tremors. That phenomenon is indicative of a positive cellular craving for the drug without which the alcoholic can now not function normally. He needs it to become normal, if you will. He needs it to function. Thirteen, binges, benders. He doesn't know what hit him. He's been to the hospital, he stays sober for twelve years. All of a sudden he starts to drink again. He has found that it has progressed. He goes on these benders and binges.

He wonders what hit him. He never drank that way before. Protect the supply. He says, I can take it or leave it alone, but he always chooses to take it. He knows he's got to you, so you keep that line of supply open. This is called hide the bottle. Pay the bartender. Keep your bar tab paid. Fourteen, unreasonable resentments. This is why we think he should quit. He's going crazy because he is. He has lived so long, E over I, he's beginning to live that way. His reasoning is becoming shot. His alibis are gone. They're used up.

[01:10:01]

And so he deliberately picks fights to get people to yell at him, and he reacts and goes out. His resentments are unreasonable. I've heard women say, I'm damned if I do. I'm damned if I don't. If I say yes, I'm wrong. If I say no, I'm wrong. The alcoholic engineers that so he can have something to drink on. Fifteen, nameless fears and anxieties. I have always said that this disease teaches his victims one single, simple, solitary lesson.

That's how to be scared to death. The alcoholic smells of fear. He lives with it day and night. He's afraid of the dark. He's afraid of silence. He's afraid of people. He's afraid of the phone. Until he comes to the end of the line, the last symptom is the collapse of the alibi system. This is called reaching his moment of truth. I've heard a lot of people in AA use the expression to hit your bottom. I've never used it and never will. I just don't like the term. Do you think you hit your bottom? Pick up a drink. You'll find out what bottom is all about. The alcoholic reaches a moment of truth. A moment of truth. A moment of decision in which he decides to not drink rather than to drink. Or some sickly make the choice to drink and die. I know alcoholics who know they're alcoholics. And they drink to death.

If the alcoholic surrenders to his addiction, choice one, he winds up incarcerated, insane or dead, or he can surrender to help. And the primary therapy for alcoholism is Alcoholics Anonymous, a 12-step ladder out of the pit. And without going into it, step one says, I can't handle it. Step two says, God can. Step three says, I think I'll get in touch. And then they take it from there. Is it true to say that you can't help an alcoholic until he wants to get well? Ladies and gentlemen, you will attend his funeral waiting for that moment. You can confront. You can force. If you have authority. If you have a clout, you can force an alcoholic into treatment. The only thing you can't do is to force him to accept it. But you can force him to make a decision. How can he reject help if it's never been offered? How? And I think that detach has been grossly misinterpreted by some. They don't detach. They do nothing. Doesn't mean that at all. It means to detach yourself emotionally from all of the involvement that has hurt you and the alcoholic. It means to detach yourself from the practices that have not worked but made the problem worse. But it doesn't mean abandon. Is it true you can lead a horse to water and not make him drink? Yes, I know that. But you can lead a horse to a well and make him thirsty. Give him something to choose or reject. Industry is saving lives. A superior saved my life. The military is saving lives by ordering people into treatment. Ladies and gentlemen, the greatest thing I ever learned was that I was sick instead of evil. And I would never have learned that if I hadn't been put into treatment. Most sick people want to be well, especially if they know how to. Sixty to eighty percent of people who enter treatment centers get well, so why don't we take the chance? Anyway, my friends, that's all I have to say for this evening. I most certainly thank you for being here and doing me the courtesy and the kindness of listening. And if any of you out there are on the fence, you don't know whether you're an alcoholic or not, I hope that this talk has just spoiled your drinking for you.