Transcript

[00:00:00.100 – 00:00:02.080] Hello, I'm Esther. [00:00:02.080 – 00:00:10.960] I'm an alcoholic, and from solemn truth of alcoholic anonymous, to the best of my ability, I have been dry since May nineteen forty-one. [00:00:10.960 – 00:00:20.380] After Charlie's introduction, a thought came to me of, you know, AA is not a museum of accomplishment. [00:00:20.380 – 00:00:27.540] I have to strive each day, just as all of you do, to maintain my sobriety. [00:00:27.540 – 00:00:37.620] But I'm glad that I do, that there is no graduation point, because I don't know what I would do or how I would live without this [00:00:37.620 – 00:00:40.240] wonderful fellowship of AA. [00:00:40.240 – 00:00:49.100] I think that, uh, I'm pretty notorious throughout Texas, and I think most of you all know my story. [00:00:49.100 – 00:00:59.260] However, uh, my press agents aren't very honest, so I will try to give it to you myself , and then you can correct them when they tell you these different

[00:00:59.260 – 00:00:59.540] things. [00:00:59.540 – 00:01:06.360] Like, you know, Macon and Vern, they really elaborate on a lot of things, but then I think they leave out a lot of others. [00:01:06.360 – 00:01:11.440] But anyway, I started drinking socially just like all of us did. [00:01:11.440 – 00:01:14.440] I didn't think that I was different from other people. [00:01:14.440 – 00:01:20.360] Alcohol had been socially accepted in my home all of my life. [00:01:20.360 – 00:01:30.640] But I do know that I was a very self-conscious person, and, uh, I had no poise, [00:01:30.640 – 00:01:34.220] and I had no inner feeling of adequacy. [00:01:34.220 – 00:01:38.620] I didn't know that or realize it till long after I came into AA.

[00:01:38.620 – 00:01:49.180] But other than a few drinks on different occasions, I never did find out what alcohol could really do for me until the night I married. [00:01:49.180 – 00:01:57.080] And I had a big church wedding, and, uh, oh, there was just excitement all over. [00:01:57.080 – 00:02:06.740] And all day long, I was frightened to death that there weren't going to be enough people in the church, that my dress wasn't gonna fit right. [00:02:06.740 – 00:02:12.280] Just all those things, that I wasn't going to cut the figure that I should cut at the wedding. [00:02:12.280 – 00:02:13.800] Nothing else bothered me. [00:02:13.800 – 00:02:15.780] I was just frightened to death. [00:02:15.780 – 00:02:21.560] And about two hours before the ceremony, I had to be dressed and have my picture taken. [00:02:21.560 – 00:02:26.300] I had this enormous bouquet, just like a funeral spray.

[00:02:26.300 – 00:02:29.180] You know, I was married so many years ago. [00:02:29.180 – 00:02:32.240] We didn't have these little, tiny orchids in your hands. [00:02:32.240 – 00:02:34.060] I had to hold this great big thing. [00:02:34.060 – 00:02:40.120] And for two hours, I sat up and wept for God to try to take my picture. [00:02:40.120 – 00:02:47.160] Well, I was self-conscious, and my face ached me, my body ached me, and I was about to faint. [00:02:47.160 – 00:02:54.260] And just before I went to the, uh, church, my father came and could see the condition that I was in. [00:02:54.260 – 00:02:57.860] He asked one of the servants, he said, "Miss Esther looks sick. [00:02:57.860 – 00:03:08.800] Will you bring her a drink?" So Robert ran around, found a muddy, and he came back with a half a water glass of whiskey, and down my gullet.

[00:03:08.800 – 00:03:11.580] Well, the church was just about four blocks from the house. [00:03:11.580 – 00:03:12.560] We got in the car. [00:03:12.560 – 00:03:18.900] It was cold weather, and we were at the church in no time, and I hit this warm church. [00:03:18.900 – 00:03:21.580] It was packed and jammed. [00:03:21.580 – 00:03:30.340] The alcohol started taking effect, and I strut up that aisle just like Mae West in her prime. [00:03:30.340 – 00:03:40.060] Well, I know that consciously, I didn't realize what had happened, but subconsciously, it registered. [00:03:40.060 – 00:03:43.060] Well, why didn't I know about this before? [00:03:43.060 – 00:03:46.780] It just eased the whole situation for me.

[00:03:46.780 – 00:03:52.020] So after that, every time I went any place, I wanted a drink or two. [00:03:52.020 – 00:03:56.140] And for quite a few years, I held it discreetly. [00:03:56.140 – 00:04:03.720] And when I passed the line from social into pathological drinking, I do not know. [00:04:03.720 – 00:04:12.000] But I know even long before I passed that line that I was leaning on alcohol for something that it didn't do for a normal person. [00:04:12.000 – 00:04:20.959] So I think it was about nineteen thirty-two that my drinking started causing comment, if you know what I mean. [00:04:20.959 – 00:04:28.860] All the men and Esther got too much to drink, and then finally, Esther got more than the men got to drink. [00:04:28.860 – 00:04:38.860] And I thought it was because I was going with a rather crude crowd, and I never did think that it was [00:04:38.860 – 00:04:39.560] myself.

[00:04:39.560 – 00:04:41.420] Well, we were in Tulsa at the time. [00:04:41.420 – 00:04:51.540] We moved back to Dallas in nineteen thirty-five, and it took me a while to sort of readjust myself and pick up old friends, and I was spending a lot of time [00:04:51.540 – 00:04:54.120] at home and drinking alone. [00:04:54.120 – 00:04:59.060] And so finally, my husband couldn't stand much more of it. [00:04:59.060 – 00:05:06.460] And one morning, he said, "Esther, why do you drink as much as you do?" He had come home the night before, and I had been passed out. [00:05:06.460 – 00:05:13.580] And I said, "Well, I don't know why." I think all of us wanted to know why, why, why we drank. [00:05:13.580 – 00:05:22.600] Well, he said, uh, "Would you like to see a doctor about it?" Well, I had been reading a lot about psychiatry, and I thought, well, that would be swell. [00:05:22.600 – 00:05:24.160] That's what I would like to do.

[00:05:24.160 – 00:05:32.640] So Frank said, "Well, I'll find out who to go see." So off he went with my alcoholic problem, so I got drunk. [00:05:32.640 – 00:05:42.920] And then when he came home, he told me that he had seen this psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist wanted me to go to his private hospital and, [00:05:42.920 – 00:05:46.080] um, be under observation for a week or two. [00:05:46.080 – 00:05:47.420] And would I like that? [00:05:47.420 – 00:05:49.120] Yes, I would like that. [00:05:49.120 – 00:05:51.820] So I, I went. [00:05:51.820 – 00:05:57.900] Well, of course, we always get drunk on the way to cure, so I was drunk when I got to the private hospital. [00:05:57.900 – 00:06:05.160] And so I didn't know I was in a psychopathic hospital till I came out of my drunken stupor.

[00:06:05.160 – 00:06:10.868] I had never known what a psychopathic hospital was till I awakened in one. [00:06:10.868 – 00:06:17.108] And I have never in all of my life experienced anything like that. [00:06:17.108 – 00:06:20.028] Well, of course, the psychiatrist got nowhere with me. [00:06:20.028 – 00:06:24.448] I gave him the body and the money and he did nothing for it. [00:06:24.448 – 00:06:29.868] So I just figured that psychiatry didn't work. [00:06:29.868 – 00:06:37.568] The year after that, my husband had to go to New York and I had just gotten a dog and I wanted a new house. [00:06:37.568 – 00:06:41.228] I thought I shouldn't keep a dog in the apartment. [00:06:41.228 – 00:06:45.908] Well, Frank said, I cannot go to New York and leave you in a house.

[00:06:45.908 – 00:06:48.268] I don't know what will happen. [00:06:48.268 – 00:06:53.028] He said, I'll get the house for you if your father will come stay with you while I'm in New York. [00:06:53.028 – 00:06:56.668] So my father came to stay with me. [00:06:56.668 – 00:06:59.248] I got a new house, a new fur coat. [00:06:59.248 – 00:07:05.188] I had my new dog and my daddy came and I loved my daddy and everything was going to be swell. [00:07:05.188 – 00:07:08.788] And Frank went to New York and I got drunk. [00:07:08.788 – 00:07:14.908] So my father talked me into taking a liquor cure. [00:07:14.908 – 00:07:17.308] Well, that is the Samaritan.

[00:07:17.308 – 00:07:18.907] You know, the Earth treatment. [00:07:18.907 – 00:07:24.388] There's no easy way to get sober, but that's the most excruciating. [00:07:24.388 – 00:07:27.508] Well, I won't go into those details. [00:07:27.508 – 00:07:32.188] I went through that three times and that didn't work. [00:07:32.188 – 00:07:36.268] And then finally, my minister tried to work with me. [00:07:36.268 – 00:07:43.047] Well, I know that the doctor, the psychiatrist was looking on me as a crazy patient. [00:07:43.047 – 00:07:48.528] I know that when I was in there with these other nuts, I couldn't identify myself with them. [00:07:48.528 – 00:07:59.148] And where my minister was very nice and very sweet to me, I felt that all along he was looking down his nose at me, that he didn't understand,

[00:07:59.148 – 00:07:59.888] which he didn't. [00:07:59.888 – 00:08:04.127] And finally, in 1940, we moved down to Houston. [00:08:04.127 – 00:08:08.528] By that time, we had just worn out everybody. [00:08:08.528 – 00:08:12.368] I had worn out more doctors coming for hangovers. [00:08:12.368 – 00:08:21.828] When we got down to Houston, there was nothing else to do except get a doctor and a practical nurse in to sober me up. [00:08:21.828 – 00:08:24.608] Well, I did one thing after another. [00:08:24.608 – 00:08:28.208] I fell out of bed and knocked my two front teeth loose. [00:08:28.208 – 00:08:33.508] I caught my dress on fire and I didn't sit down for three months.

[00:08:33.508 – 00:08:39.758] I dropped a two-quart water bottle on my big toe and had compound fracture. [00:08:39.758 – 00:08:46.488] The doctor had to leave the cast on six weeks longer than usual because he never found me sober enough to take it off. [00:08:46.488 – 00:08:47.768] He was afraid to take it off. [00:08:47.768 – 00:08:49.208] I'd go out and vote. [00:08:49.208 – 00:08:52.408] It was one thing after another. [00:08:52.408 – 00:09:02.348] And finally, one afternoon, about three or four o'clock, I was taking my dog for a walk. [00:09:02.348 – 00:09:04.708] I was just as drunk as I could be. [00:09:04.708 – 00:09:11.648] And all of you who know me know that I do not walk straight sober, but you should see me when I am drunk.

[00:09:11.648 – 00:09:16.758] So I was wading down the street in Houston when a cruising car passed. [00:09:16.758 – 00:09:19.748] So they picked me up. [00:09:19.748 – 00:09:22.348] They could see the condition I was in with my dog. [00:09:22.348 – 00:09:24.588] And I guess they were going to take me home. [00:09:24.588 – 00:09:29.588] But I must have gotten kind of snotty and said, you can't do this to Mrs. [00:09:29.588 – 00:09:35.708] Elizalde because they took the dog home and they took me to jail. [00:09:35.708 – 00:09:45.648] Well, the second time in my life I had bars around me. [00:09:45.648 – 00:09:49.328] And so don't fence me in ever again.

[00:09:49.328 – 00:09:54.028] But you don't get hotel service in those places. [00:09:54.028 – 00:09:56.108] I didn't have my cigarettes with me. [00:09:56.108 – 00:09:59.168] I had nothing but a pair of denim slacks on. [00:09:59.168 – 00:10:03.048] So I started beating this thin cop. [00:10:03.048 – 00:10:07.048] I wanted the jail to come and bring me some cigarettes and a few other things. [00:10:07.048 – 00:10:09.948] And I beat that cop. [00:10:09.948 – 00:10:12.947] It was about that time that my husband arrived. [00:10:12.947 – 00:10:17.448] Well, they had called him and he was frightened to death.

[00:10:17.448 – 00:10:24.668] He didn't know what I was in jail for, but I had been picked up for drunken driving. [00:10:25.424 – 00:10:30.124] I think he was vastly relieved when he found out it was just a plain drunk charge. [00:10:30.124 – 00:10:35.244] But when he got there, I was going through this beating of the tin cup business. [00:10:35.244 – 00:10:38.324] So they told him they didn't think it was any place for me. [00:10:38.324 – 00:10:39.744] I didn't know that, though. [00:10:39.744 – 00:10:47.464] And they told him to come back for me later, that they thought it would be good for me to cool off for a couple hours. [00:10:47.464 – 00:10:52.864] Well, he came back and got me about seven, I guess it was. [00:10:52.864 – 00:10:53.904] And Mr.

[00:10:53.904 – 00:11:00.444] Jeff took me along this corridor, and they had this jail or this barred gate. [00:11:00.444 – 00:11:08.624] As he was opening that gate, my husband had paid the fine and was signing something at this, uh, window. [00:11:08.624 – 00:11:17.684] And I looked over at him and I said, "Don't you sign anything in this place." I was gonna sue that city, you know, for putting me in the jail. [00:11:17.684 – 00:11:28.324] And he turned around and he looked at me and he said, "Esther, remember you're in jail, not at home." And [00:11:28.324 – 00:11:33.184] I tell you, I never want anyone to look at me like that again. [00:11:33.184 – 00:11:43.464] It was shortly after that, just about a week, that Frank handed me the Saturday Evening Post article [00:11:43.464 – 00:11:45.104] on Alcoholics Anonymous. [00:11:45.104 – 00:11:49.124] It was in the March first issue of nineteen forty-one.

[00:11:49.124 – 00:11:52.584] He had had it for a couple of months. [00:11:52.584 – 00:11:58.584] He was frightened to death to give it to me because everything he seemed to do, I resented. [00:11:58.584 – 00:12:01.584] But he gave it to me at the right time. [00:12:01.584 – 00:12:05.724] He gave– I had not stayed sober at all after I got out of jail. [00:12:05.724 – 00:12:07.444] I could not live with myself. [00:12:07.444 – 00:12:12.924] I was consumed with fear every time the doorbell rang, the phone rang. [00:12:12.924 – 00:12:17.124] I just didn't know where I was going or what I was doing. [00:12:17.124 – 00:12:23.004] So one morning before he left, he came in my room and he said, "I'm not going to lecture you.

[00:12:23.004 – 00:12:33.104] I'm not going to do anything, but I want you to read this article." He said, "If you– after reading this, if you want to try this [00:12:33.104 – 00:12:43.644] method," he said, "I am willing to go along with you." He said, "If you don't, you will have to go back home." He said, "I cannot sit by and watch you destroy [00:12:43.644 – 00:12:52.644] yourself any longer." So when he left, I was, uh, oh, just like this, and my eyes, I don't see good. [00:12:52.644 – 00:12:53.854] I need to see an eye doctor. [00:12:53.854 – 00:12:56.164] So when drunk, my eyes won't focus. [00:12:56.164 – 00:13:05.424] So I had to take a, obviously, had to take a few drinks, and I read what A had to say. [00:13:05.424 – 00:13:12.504] With the most marvelous feeling of relief, I found out that I was a sick person. [00:13:12.504 – 00:13:15.144] I wasn't mad or vicious.

[00:13:15.144 – 00:13:24.544] I was suffering from an actual disease that had a name and symptoms just like diabetes or TB. [00:13:24.544 – 00:13:29.684] And when I found that out, I could accept myself in that light. [00:13:29.684 – 00:13:39.764] I could never identify myself with the crazy person in the psychopathic hospital or the criminal in jail, but I was sick, and I felt [00:13:39.764 – 00:13:40.384] sick. [00:13:40.384 – 00:13:48.564] And with that came a strong desire and a willingness to do something about myself. [00:13:48.564 – 00:13:49.804] Thank you. [00:13:49.804 – 00:13:59.414] or some person with whom you are in contact or who you're interested in helping. [00:13:59.414 – 00:14:08.484] In the first place, I want to say that anything else that I may have to say is very highly opinionated in all probability.

[00:14:08.484 – 00:14:10.844] And if you like it, good. [00:14:10.844 – 00:14:13.024] If you don't, I hope you'll disregard it. [00:14:13.024 – 00:14:23.104] You know, every speaker who is up here, you may think we just, uh, these boys just kind of pick out a few and, [00:14:23.104 – 00:14:24.464] uh, run them up here. [00:14:24.464 – 00:14:29.924] But there is, there is some qualification that every speaker who is here must have. [00:14:29.924 – 00:14:38.704] Now, uh, I'm not perhaps any worse drunk than any of the rest of you. [00:14:38.704 – 00:14:41.424] I certainly don't know any more about A.A. [00:14:41.424 – 00:14:45.203] or probably as much as most of you.

[00:14:45.203 – 00:14:49.504] But I do have one outstanding claim to fame. [00:14:49.504 – 00:14:58.244] You surely picked me on this deal because I am probably the most ignorant A.A. [00:14:58.244 – 00:15:00.244] in Alcoholics Anonymous today. [00:15:00.244 – 00:15:09.764] And the facts that I'm going to relate to you, I believe without any fear of successful contradiction, will prove the point. [00:15:09.764 – 00:15:17.084] I'm not going to give you too much history because my history is just like yours. [00:15:17.084 – 00:15:24.144] Went on over a period of about fifteen years, except to say that I wasn't a periodic drinker. [00:15:24.144 – 00:15:26.244] I was a daily drinker. [00:15:26.244 – 00:15:36.524] And I believe at one time in that fifteen years that I went sixty days without a drink, and that was because I was shanghaied by my uncle at Sheppard

[00:15:36.524 – 00:15:38.944] Field, and they didn't have any whiskey on the post. [00:15:38.944 – 00:15:45.644] That's about the extent of it. [00:15:45.644 – 00:15:55.644] Suffice it to say that in nineteen hundred and the last of nineteen forty-six or about the first of nineteen forty-seven, I was a [00:15:55.644 – 00:16:05.644] character who, like many of you, had withdrawn from most of my friends and certainly very largely from the world of reality as we look on [00:16:05.644 – 00:16:06.324] it today. [00:16:06.324 – 00:16:12.984] And the first thing that I did every morning was to get up and drink a pint of whiskey. [00:16:12.984 – 00:16:22.984] And for a good while after drinking a pint of whiskey, I incidentally was living on a ranch at that time, and I didn't have to have too much [00:16:22.984 – 00:16:27.104] contact with anything except horses and sheep and cows.

[00:16:27.104 – 00:16:36.892] After drinking that pint of whiskey, it was my practice to eat a steak and potatoes and a half a dozen eggs along about ten o'clock. [00:16:36.892 – 00:16:39.571] But you know the old story. [00:16:39.571 – 00:16:44.592] Pretty soon you feel so good from that pint of whiskey that you don't want to put out the fire. [00:16:44.592 – 00:16:54.732] And so I reached a very happy stage of getting pretty, pretty well oiled in the morning and drinking my pint, [00:16:54.732 – 00:17:02.092] and then go ahead and perhaps by about noon having drunk another pint, and take a nap. [00:17:02.092 – 00:17:10.632] And then I'd drink another pint in the afternoon and finish off with a pint or a few drinks before dinner and wind up every night drunk. [00:17:10.632 – 00:17:20.652] I didn't keep any account of the amount of whiskey I drank, and I'm giving you my wife's figures because [00:17:20.652 – 00:17:22.252] she kept pretty accurate count.

[00:17:22.252 – 00:17:33.332] Well, she has a record which she says, and it's proved to my satisfaction, that from the time I was discharged from the Army in 1945 [00:17:33.332 – 00:17:43.272] until I was introduced to Alcoholics Anonymous in 1947, I drank an average personally of two quarts of whiskey a day, and many of you have done the same thing. [00:17:43.272 – 00:17:53.552] I merely give you that so that you can know without using your imagination the kind of condition that I stayed [00:17:53.552 – 00:17:56.552] in for two years. [00:17:56.552 – 00:18:06.592] And at the end of that two years, when I was first introduced to a couple of members of Alcoholics Anonymous in San [00:18:06.592 – 00:18:16.572] Angelo, I didn't have sense enough to know, of course, that I was an alcoholic because I didn't know what an alcoholic was. [00:18:16.572 – 00:18:26.572] But I, who had been drunk every day without exception for two years, winding up fifteen years of drinking, who [00:18:26.572 – 00:18:36.612] had withdrawn from my profession, who had withdrawn from my friends, who had mistreated my wife, who had done almost

[00:18:36.612 – 00:18:46.272] everything except go to the penitentiary or the insane asylum, at the end of that period of time, I didn't even have sense enough to know I was a drunkard. [00:18:46.272 – 00:18:53.532] Consequently, my friends, I lay claim to being the most ignorant A.A. [00:18:53.532 – 00:18:57.532] here this morning and perhaps in the state. [00:18:57.532 – 00:19:06.272] I want to tell you about an old friend of mine. [00:19:06.272 – 00:19:11.172] He lived in a little town close by the ranch. [00:19:11.172 – 00:19:14.972] He, too, was a drunkard. [00:19:14.972 – 00:19:24.972] He was a little more fortunate than I was because he didn't have a business that would bring him in whiskey money without working, and he had to work [00:19:24.972 – 00:19:25.692] once in a while.

[00:19:25.692 – 00:19:31.352] And consequently, he was a little more sober most of the time than I was. [00:19:31.352 – 00:19:36.212] But he was my dearest friend for one reason and one reason alone. [00:19:36.212 – 00:19:46.242] Whenever I went with a bottle of whiskey to see him, he never said, "No, I haven't got time to [00:19:46.242 – 00:19:56.732] take a drink." He was my buddy, he was my friend, and he is the best friend I ever had because he always [00:19:56.732 – 00:19:57.452] drank with me. [00:19:57.452 – 00:20:08.052] And it didn't make any difference whether it was six o'clock in the morning, or whether it was noon, or whether it was six o'clock in the afternoon. [00:20:08.052 – 00:20:10.192] He was always ready. [00:20:10.192 – 00:20:20.372] And I was very fortunate because of having an indulgent father who had set me up in a little business and abandoned

[00:20:20.372 – 00:20:25.772] me as a black sheep drunkard son, that I had enough money to buy whiskey. [00:20:25.772 – 00:20:35.382] Now, I didn't have very much money, and I didn't have enough to do a lot of things, but I always had enough money to buy whiskey, and you know how that goes. [00:20:35.382 – 00:20:37.692] We always do. [00:20:37.692 – 00:20:47.912] Fortunately, my old friend had a wife who was a pretty sharp [00:20:47.912 – 00:20:48.292] girl