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Source: Howie L – Memphis Tenn – Reel 0805-69 (1967) – 1967-10-29.mp3 File: howie-l-memphis-tenn-reel-0805-69-1967-1967-10-29.mp3 Duration: 01:09:50
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They're short and cold, so we have to adjust here. Tonight, we have a speaker from out of Memphis. I hope that all of you got the opportunity of meeting him. If you didn't, I hope you will after the meeting. It brings to my mind as I introduce this man what it tells us in the AA program. It tells us that we are responsible to the suffering alcoholic. Yesterday morning, the man who was to hold this meeting for us was stricken with an illness and he could not appear.
Through the efforts of a couple of three or four people, this man who is holding our meeting tonight was contacted. There was no ifs and buts or anything. I'm sure that he must have felt that he was responsible to his fellow alcoholics, because where he's from is almost as far as Tenaga Falls, and I've driven it, and it's 900 miles there. But this man is here tonight to bring us a message, his own message. I met him last night and have had dinner with him here today, and it's been a pleasure to be in his company. So I feel that he will have a wonderful message for us, because under this short notice to come this great distance to pass on to us what AA has done and is doing for him.
I hope and pray, and I'm sure the prayers of all of us are with Stan, who is in Washington, Pennsylvania, that he will soon recover and be able to come down and see us at another time. But at this time, I'm going to introduce our visitor, our speaker for tonight. I admitted deliberately on there that we had people from Cleveland, Ohio, because our speaker is from Cleveland, and I will not take any more of his time. I'm looking forward to his message, and I'll give you Harry L. from Cleveland, Ohio.
Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Boy, are you anonymous down here. How about that, Wally C., Bob D., right? I even heard one guy during grace praying to Jesus C. I'm glad to see my old friend the butterfly again. I wondered what happened to him since I got sober. I didn't know he was still living. I see he's living in Memphis now. He's a little smaller than when I had him. My name is Howard Arthur Chapin Benedict White L.. Ain't that awful? Hang a name like that on a six-pound blue-eyed baby boy. I had to go wrong, and I did. I did. Oh, God, am I alcoholic.
But some people say, look at that handsome fellow. He couldn't possibly be a drunk, and I've got to qualify. Boy, I am, and I'll tell you about part of it. Not that I like a drink-by-drink description of drinking any more than you do, but I like to hear where a man's been. Then I know where he came from, and it gives you a measure of what the program means to him if you hear another man who suffered the way you did. You drank in the same bar as I did. You fell off the same stools. You puked on the same couch, I'm sure. The only difference between us maybe was our address was different, but under the skin we were brothers.
I have a sister-in-law. Before I get to that, I have a sister-in-law. She was the one that always used to lock the door when I'd come to visit her sister. God, they couldn't stand me. They didn't like me before we got married. You can bet they hated me after we got married. They used to take out a hunting license every November just in case it ever got legal to shoot brother-in-laws. But after I sobered up, this woman who couldn't stand me and had plenty of good reason, like tonight I went to the back door and tore the porch off, she's become a great friend of mine.
And once, somewhere, she found a little poem in a church, I don't know where, but she sent it to me. It's real long, but I want to read to you just the opening stanza. It says, Dearest Lord, all Thy creatures are more worthy of Thy grace than this vile and wretched sinner who now kneels before Thy face. Yet one claim have I upon Thee, which Thou never will deny. In the bounds of Thy creation, no one needs Thee more than I.
[00:05:06]
I was sober once for 16 years. The first 16. And then one night I bumped into a buddy of mine, I was going to high school, and his dad was a bootlegger. And this was in 1940, and Prohibition was repealed in 1933, so this guy didn't read the papers. I'm 43, if you're counting. And his dad kept whiskey in the bathtub. Homemade booze in the bathtub. Honest to God he did. After all those years of Prohibition being repealed, he still made bathtub whiskey.
And that's so he could pull the plug if the cops ever came. Used to sell it out the back door at all the bums in the neighborhood. So one night his kid and I got into the bathroom, neither of us had ever drunk, there was a little miniature beer mug on a shelf above the tub, and we both dipped it in the whiskey and both drank a couple of them, and I damn near gagged on it, but I got it down. And that was my first drink. And we went out of the house, in the back of the house there ran an alley, and we were standing up against a garage in this alley, and there I was, 16 years old, a wet-eared, pimply-faced, snotty-nosed punk of a kid. Gosh, I was scared of doors slamming. I had no guts whatever.
And suddenly that warm booze started up from my feet through my belly up my back and hit my head, and suddenly I was King Kong. Boy, I got 8 inches taller and 300 pounds heavier. I felt like King Kong. And I just, well within the hour, we were tearing up and down Lorain Avenue in a stolen florist's station wagon, throwing flowers at people. And that was the beginning, for the first time in my life, nothing had ever done anything like that to me before. Nothing had ever affected me that way before, not even girls.
God, it was great. A warm and wonderful feeling that was new to me, an impressionable kid. And I wanted my whole life to be like that. And boy, I tried. I really tried. But I found out soon enough that you can get drunk, but you can't stay drunk. And if you're an alcoholic, you're going to pay and pay a lot for something you can't stop doing. By the time I was 20, I'd already been in jail three times. When I was going to high school, I was going with a hangover. We were bumming nickels and dimes on the street. There was a winery up on Lorain Avenue. It burned down many years ago. But there used to be a winery there. You could bring in your own jug and fill it out of these huge kegs.
And we'd go in and fill them. And I drank through those years. And it was the beginning of what was to be a hell on earth for me and this little high school sweetheart of mine that I married when I was 20. She didn't know how could she. When I was courting her, I'd always leave her by midnight because the bars were open until 2.30. She didn't know that I was drinking after I left her. But she found out on our honeymoon what a drunk she'd married. Can you imagine 20 years old, full of vim and vigor, full of love, your pretty little pink blushing bride up in the bridal suite? And guess where lover boy was?
Right. I was downstairs in the bar drinking booze with a gal behind the bar who had a face that would scare a bulldog off a meat wagon. But she had the booze. And that's when Mary found out, I guess, that there was something wrong with her darling Howie. And she was to find, as the years went by, that there was something real wrong with me. I was in radio then, just a green kid and a lot of big success had come to me. And I wasn't ready for it. I probably would never be ready for it the way I was. I was alcoholic, compulsive drinker from the very start. Many people have years before they get that way. Some people, like myself, are that way from drink one. Falling down puke and drunk from the very beginning. And that's how it was.
By the time I was 23, I'd lost beautiful jobs. Well, I came into AA, let me tell you, that I was 21 years old when I came into AA. This happened in 1946. I'd been out on a, I'd gone out drunk one night and taken a bartender's car and he didn't know who had it and he reported it stolen. And I got picked up and I was charged with auto theft and he couldn't get the charge knocked off. And so I went to jail for auto theft. I was on radio in Cleveland. It was a big story, picture in the papers, the whole bit. The humiliation was pretty bad.
But then that was just the first public exposition of the drinking that I was to do in the years to come. But about that time, my wife went to see a priest who contacted some men in this thing known as AA. And they came to see me. I'll never forget it. It was on a September night in 1946.
[00:10:19]
It was 1946, that's right. This is 67. I was 22 years old when they came to see me. I had just made my 22nd birthday. And they told me about AA and I started coming to meetings with them. But all the men I saw were at least twice my age. But I knew something was wrong. I knew even then there was something wrong. I didn't know what was wrong and I tried to buy what they were trying to tell me. And it was easy for me to say, yes, I'm powerless over alcohol, and I said it to anybody who would listen.
And so for the first three or four months in AA, when they said go to meetings, I went. When they came for me, I went with them. But about that time, I also changed jobs and went down to Savannah, Georgia. And on the day after Christmas of 1946, I kissed my little wife and our dear little daughter, our little baby daughter, goodbye. And I went down and got on the train to go to Savannah. They would follow me in a few days. I'd go down, get the job, find a place for them to stay and send for them. So I got on the train, three or four months in AA, heart full of love, head full of AA, going to make it, Southland, here I come. And I was drunk before I got to Columbus, Ohio.
The minute I was with me, I was with somebody I couldn't handle. And oh, God, well, it took me three days to get down to Savannah, and it was a fast train. I lost it somewhere in Virginia and got the hell knocked out of me by a couple of Marines. I never did find out what I said to make them mad, but I made them mad. When I got down to Savannah, I was wreckage. But the man down there, who I knew in Cleveland, put me to work. Anyway, we were there six months and then back to Cleveland. But the madness had begun. It was no longer fun, not for me, not for anybody, not the drinking I was doing and the way it affected me.
And it got so that if I ever went one day without a drink, it was a triumph, a personal triumph for me. But those days were very rare. And the more I drank, the more I had to have. And the more accustomed to alcohol I became, the madder my moments of drunkenness. Mad, insane, never knowing, unpredictable, wild, crazy, breaking up bars, smashing up the house, crashing up cars, absolutely insane. A madman, if God ever made one. Insane from the first drink through the last. Never a sane moment. Never a moment of the least logic or reasonable behavior, except when I was sober. And I was sober so rarely.
And the people who tried to help me tried everything. The AAs did everything they could. They came for me and took me out of jail. They hospitalized me. They sat with me. They pleaded with me. The station hired a bodyguard to go with me. They did everything they could. And I wore them out. I wore them all out. All my friends and all their patients, they couldn't take any more. They couldn't take me climbing out windows to get away from them to go to a bar to drink. They couldn't take the sweet, innocent look on my face and the all-American boy Jack Armstrong talk I'd give them. And I'd yes them to death. And I'd crawl out the window the minute their back was turned and run off to a bar and get blind.
I didn't know what was driving me to it. Why I hungered for it the way I did. Why, when I was sober, people loved me but I couldn't love them back. Why I couldn't stand reality. What there was about being real and being myself that I couldn't take, I didn't know. But I knew that when I drank, it was the only moments of relaxation, when the tension would leave, when the world of unreality could come in upon me and I could enclose myself in the sweet, warm euphoria that alcohol would bring. And I could feel the tension and the pent-up feelings just fall away from me as I drank.
But you can't last like that. Because I wasn't just a psychotic drinker. I was alcoholic. And because I was, I was sick, very sick. And then I'd be sorry and sick and sorry, then sober and sorry, then just sober, then drunk, then sick and sorry and always sick and always sorry. And wishing I could and trying to. And trying to. And half the time that I went to meetings, I went of my own accord, and tried to find what they were, what they had.
[00:15:07]
But there must be a madness in me, and an ego that was bigger than any wish I might have, because I know how many times I went to meetings and sat and looked at them, and I thought with their clear blue eyes and their pot bellies, oh damn you, if you wanted to drink like me, you wouldn't be sitting there with that half-eaten smile on your face. Do you know what it's like to really want to drink? I wondered about them. It never occurred to me that anybody else wanted to drink as much as I did.
I honest to God felt for all those years that the men who got sober got sober because they were never too bad anyway. And it didn't matter that some of the stories they told were my own. I had to go there too. And I guess I discounted much of what they said. When you're 24 or 25 and strong like bull, you can't believe that the bridge was made for you, or that you might bum on the streets too. But before my 26th birthday, I was sleeping under the bridge and bumming on the street, and seeing friends that I had gone to school with that I bummed nickels and dimes from, some who gave them to me and some who turned me aside, and none of them recognized the bearded, wretched, stinking, pussy, bleeding bastard who begged from them, and didn't know who I was.
Down on the road, bumming nickels and dimes, too sick to crawl the hill, giving quarters to kids to go get the jug, please get it kids, please come back, and sometimes they wouldn't. Laying on the side of the hill with a bottle for a pillow, and waking up in the morning, you find the last time you took a slug of that muscatel, you didn't put the cap on tight enough, and some of it ran out, and you bite the dirt.
So drunk and so sick you can't walk, and falling in the river, and so desperate for a drink that when a police car pulled up beside me one day down in the flats, and I was half crawling and half walking, trying to get up the hill to get to Stone's Grill to get some more of that muscatel wine, and dirt and scum all over me, too filthy to eat, they wouldn't even let me in the squad car. But even these policemen, who can look with a hard hearth upon agony that they see every day, they couldn't stand it either, they gave me half a buck.
And then the workhouse trips began, up to now, all those trips to jail, almost daily. But everybody knew me, liked me, wanted to help, but they couldn't help anymore, and judges got tired of saying, cost suspended, cost suspended. So they started sending me to the workhouse. And I was getting hospitalized time and time again. Every time I'd take a drink, I'd put on my pajamas, I knew I was going anyway.
I was in and out of those hospitals, honest to God, everybody knew me by my first name. Every jitter joint in town had me, we called them Gooney Roosts. And you know, I got so, I loved Peraldehyde, would you believe that? Do you know what Peraldehyde is? It's a clear, liquid, kind of oily looking, it's almost pure alcohol with ether mixed in. Are you ready? God, I got so, I loved that stuff, I'd put it on ice cream, I'd drink it in milk.
I got, honest to God, I loved it. But the trouble with Peraldehyde is, if you take a drink on Monday, you still stink from it Thursday. Stays with you for days. I used to wish they'd freeze it and put it on a stick. A Peralde-sickle, oh, I loved that. Oh, I was crazy about that. Boy, I'd take anything to put me out of this world, anything. I got so, I loved the goofballs. The goofballs, I really fell in love with.
Here were these little capsules that they'd give me, red ones or yellow ones. And I'd say, what's that? They'd say, shut up, take it. I took it, I found out what it was, it was dry booze. Those things affected me just like whiskey did. Oh, sweet mother, this was Nesca-booze. I loved it. And I'd take all I could get. And I had a buddy who was on them, he was popping them in his mouth like they were peanuts.
And what he was dropping, I was scrambling for. And I found out who his doctor was, and I went to see this doctor, and he's dead now, God rest him. But I don't know what he was on, but it was good too. And I'd go see him, he'd write me three or four prescriptions, unlimited refills. I'd plant them in drugstores around town and go on the bum. When they called them goofyballs, they named them right. God, they make you goofy.
Your mind is fine. Your brain is clear, your mind is fine. You're thinking, you're talking, you're producing. But your body doesn't go where your mind tells it to go. You're absolutely legless.
[00:20:02]
You know, you've got an iron will and rubber legs. You take a walk, you take up the whole sidewalk. I remember sitting on the edge of the bed with goofballs in my hand, looking at the doorway. Three feet from me, saying, I'm going right through that doorway. I'm going through, bong, right into the wall. You go to take a drink of coffee, right down your neck. I'll show you the skies. Madness, insanity.
So it was wine, and it was whiskey, and it was pills. Then no more wine, no more whiskey, pills only for years like that. In and out of little hotels, any place I could get, getting sicker and sicker and weaker. Legs puffing up like Popeyes, like this. The bottoms of my legs from not eating, swelled up. The rest of my body so skinny you could read a newspaper through me. And stinking pus in my ears.
A real mess. A living cabbage and a rotten one. And they'd throw me in the workhouse whenever they'd catch me. And I'd go out there to stay. I even got so. They serve a dish out at the workhouse, which they call a meat and vegetable plate, but which all of us prisoners call blah, blah. Blah, blah. God, it was awful. It was pig's hind ends and old black tomatoes and potatoes all cooked together, see, with some sauerkraut.
And oh God, that kraut was sour. But I got so. I liked that. I can remember going in the workhouse once, and I got the Chuck Horrors, you know. I got the Chuck Horrors. I was going around gnawing on doorways. I was so hungry. I hadn't eaten in weeks. And suddenly a great peace, a great calm settled on me, and I went into the Chuck Horrors. You've had them. You know what I mean. You suddenly want to eat everything.
Everything. No amount too small. I go in the chow hall. You line up. You march in. You sit down. They put a metal plate. They pour this stinking stuff in front of you. Honest to God, you wonder when they pour it, did I eat it or am I going to? Lord, it's awful. And there was an old man sitting across me, rolling snot and slobber into his plate. And he took about two bites and quit. He took this plate and drank it down.
That was blah, blah, blah. I was chasing the birds away from the bread to get at it. That's just how bad it was. Skinny as a rail. And I leave that workhouse with my belly puffed up and the rest of me still skinny. I look like a pregnant broom. They tried everything with me. They didn't know what in the hell to do with this nut. They sent me down to county jail four different times to be bugged, to go through their psychiatric clinic.
They get me down there and they say, oh God, here he comes again. And they put me up there and you know what hurt my feelings? Every time a cop would pick me up and throw me in the paddy wagon, I never minded that. Although I never walked into a paddy wagon. I got into them maybe 30 times. But I never walked into a paddy wagon. They always threw me in. Always, because my big mouth was going, you know.
And that's all that poor cop needs, right? He's going to go to work. He straps on that thin blue suit and that little tin badge and puts on his gun and goes out to put his very life between you and criminals. To put his life on the line to protect law and order. He gets to work. He's full of zeal. He's full of community spirit. The phone rings. Go get that jerk L.. He's drunk again. He don't need that.
He don't need for me to come puke all over him. They don't want me. So they throw me in the paddy wagon. And behind the driver's seat in the paddy wagon, there was a heavy wire screen. You know that heavy wire crisscross? And many a morning I went in front of the judge with the big Z's on my bald head, you know. I looked like I'd been pinched by Zorro. Anyway, those things never humiliated me so much.
The most humiliating thing that ever happened to me was in county jail when I'm sitting up there shaking and trembling. Too weak to run the toilet paper off the roll, you know. And they'd come up and in order to take me from the fifth floor to the psychiatric clinic on the third floor, because I was a dangerous type, they'd handcuff me. Something there is about handcuffs that really touched the spirit.
God, I hated those handcuffs. And they'd lead me like a cattle down to the third floor. And Dr. Grossman was the county psychiatrist then. He was a wonderful guy, a warm, wonderful human being. May God rest him always. A splendid man. But I knew what he was doing, and he knew that I knew. And I liked him, and he knew that. And he knew he had my confidence, but he also knew that I was resisting any psychiatric examination.
So we would have great personal conversations, and then I'd start throwing real funny answers at him. He knew what I was doing, and he'd laugh about it. I was resisting the fact that they were implying that I was nuts.
[00:25:01]
What I didn't realize was that I was acting a little crazy. So what other conclusion is he going to draw? I'll never forget one day, though. They test you at these psychiatric clinics, and they put me in a room at a little table with two chairs. Just a plain table in a plain room with two chairs. They said, sit in the chair. Somebody will be in to see you soon. I went, and I sat in the chair for perhaps 15 minutes, and I think that's part of it.
They leave you there alone long enough to get uncomfortable. And then the door opened, and in walked one of these severe, collared, male-shirt, cuff-link, square-shouldered, V-necked, degree-on-the-wall type lady psychiatrists. You know, you can't tell them from the boys until they talk. So this one sits down across from me and looks at me and gives me one of those lopsided grins that says, you're not even in this world, aunt, but I'll talk to you anyway.
And she started to examine me and ask me questions, putting pegs in the proper holes, repeating sequences of numbers, meanings of words, quick questions for reactions, and then she gave me what they call the Rorschach test. This is a test where they have a stack of little cards that are about 4 by 8 inches or so, maybe 6 by 8, and on these plain white cards are big splotches of ink, just ink splotches.
And you look at them, and you know, that's all they look like is a big splotch of ink. Some are purple, some are red, some are blue. And they will hold that, she'll say now, when I show you this card, tell me the first thing that pops into your mind. She maybe had 30 or 40 cards there. And so she held it up, she said, what do you see? I said, I see an ink splotch. She said, no, no, no. She says, look at it, and what do you see there?
Does the shape of it remind you of anything? Do you see it? And then I realized what she meant. It's like, did you ever see clouds going overhead, and you look at the clouds, and sometimes the clouds will seem to form a person's face, or a dog, or a horse? You haven't, huh? Okay. Anyway, I realized what she meant. She wanted to know, did I see anything in these ink splotches? So I guess she felt she was going to show me all those cards.
She got as far as the first one, and that's where the case ended. When I looked in that thing, I saw a couple dancing. I knew a couple of guys in the band. I saw an airplane. I saw a football game. I saw World War II with the original cast. I said, and the last thing, and she, you know, she keeps looking, huh, huh. And the last thing I saw, I said, I see a lady out walking her dog. And she said, where?
I said, there. Oh, yeah. And when she said, oh, yeah, the examination was over. But that's how it went. Then out to the workhouse all gone. And living on those damn things, living on these goofballs. And how I really got started on the goofballs, though, was that my wife and I were separated again. We were several times. And so she threw me out once more. And I wanted to get back in the house and get back in her good graces.
You know, I don't like it down at the Y. And they didn't like me either. So I came back and I promised I wouldn't drink. I wouldn't drink, honey. I wouldn't drink. I'd go to meetings. I'd pretend like I was going to meetings, but I wouldn't go. I'd go shoot pool, go to a movie or something. But I was, you know, going crazy, dying for a drink. But I'd sworn I wouldn't drink. And if I took a drink, I couldn't go home.
Then I remembered, the goofballs. So I went back out to see my doctor friend. He wrote till he got writer's cramp. And so I started taking the goofballs just a couple a day, trying to fool somebody. You know, but it's like whiskey. You try to take a couple, huh? It's insanity, just insanity. And pretty soon I was taking so many. I was absolutely. By the way, I was selling cars at that time. Oh, I'd lost my job in radio.
Nobody would touch me. I was selling cars at the time. And none of them trusted me either. I was the only automobile salesman in the city of Cleveland who took a bus to work. That's the truth. But I remember one night I came home and I'm coming down the street. I'm absolutely legless from these goofballs. And I'd rather have Mary think I was drinking than on goofballs, you know. So I stopped in a beer joint and got a couple of beers so I'd smell right.
And I went on home and I come in the house and I'm really loaded. And I'm raising all kinds of hell. …and I'm raising all kinds of hell, get me this, get me that, and I had a couple of beers under my arm, there was a very popular brand of beer in Cleveland called P.O.C., the initials, P.O.C., P.O.C. beer, big beer in Cleveland, and I had a couple of bottles under my arm, and I drank those, and I told her to go get me some more beer, and of course she's yessing me to death, you know, she knows this insane husband of hers, and she's afraid if she says a word to me, I'm gonna start tearing up the house, and maybe her, and I'm insane, crazy,
[00:30:24]
telling her what to do, and ordering her all over the house, and this poor little meek little mild little darling, no bigger than, as Jess Cosby used to say about his wife, she was just about as big as a pound of soap after a hard day's wash, she only weighed 91 pounds, once she went up to 108, and that turned out to be our daughter, I was raising hell with her, and I'm telling her, you know, and I ran out of beer, so I said, go get me some P.O.C., get me some more P.O.C., so I sent her out for a P.O.C., and she came back with a C.O.P., and I was back to the workhouse, and then came the really bad years, like those were good years, to stop there and say, and then came the bad years, that's funny, not very is it, not very, because you know, the agony I felt, and she felt too, but now I can laugh, from here I can laugh, from there I cried, but then it got so bad, and it finally happened that I got so legless and so beat up on these things, Mary and I were, I went to the workhouse for six months for illegal possession of goofballs, this was my eighth trip to the workhouse, this was in the fall of 56, they picked me up, I had goofballs in my pocket, in my hatband, in my shoes, and they wanted to know naturally, where did you get them, and I told them I didn't know, they said, wise guy, and they put me in jail, honest to God, I didn't know, I was so goofy, I could have, I don't know where the hell I got them, I might have sent to Macy's for them, I don't know, I was so crazy on them, I didn't know where I got them, but they put me in jail and charged me with illegal possession, and I went down in front of this old lady judge, oh God, Judge Grossman, what a dragon, boy she took one look at me and she says, six months, $500 fine, boy that's the maximum, and she gave me the max, and she sent me out to jail, and after I got to jail she discovered another charge she had overlooked, and she mailed me 30 more days, first time I ever got sentenced through the mail, and I was already in the workhouse, they knew where to find me, so I did four months of that, and the guy that I'd been selling cars for paid my fine, and they got me out, and I came home, and I swore to Mary I'd never drink again, and when she had already filed for divorce, all she had to do was go down and get the papers, that's all, the file was there, her lawyer had called her, said come sign the papers, and you're rid of this jerk, but I came home and pleaded and begged with her, and she said alright Howie, I won't go sign the papers, and I stayed with her a week and we lived as man and wife, and we lived and we loved together, and a week later I fell in the door drunken full of goofballs again, well that did it, out, out, damn it, and out I went, and she got the divorce, and I went on this six week pill and wine binge, I didn't even know where the hell I was, really I didn't, I was out of this world, I slept under bridges and back of the buildings and in trash barrels, and bummed from all my friends, and told them awful stories to get enough to get some more pills, and stayed insane to where finally I'd taken so much of this stuff, deadly fatal doses of it every day, enough to kill eight or ten men, and I was just packed full of it, and the effects of it were so bad, and they took me to the workhouse again, but before I went, I heard from Mary, and here after all these years of putting up with me, and we had one child, a daughter who was eleven then, after all those years, when she finally decided she'd get the divorce, she said she loved me, but she was going to get the divorce, because she couldn't take it anymore, because every time I came around, she'd take me back, but she figured if she got the divorce and she's rid of me, and doesn't see me, then she won't, you know, take me back, and she'd go hide, go hide somewhere, she didn't know where, but she was going to hide, but the poor darling, remember I told you I was home for a week, and we lived as man and wife, at last she's rid of me, no children for eleven years, she's at last divorced, has some freedom in her life, and she's not feeling too good for a few mornings, guess what, right, she's on the nest, oh God, that's all she had to know, that the last time I'd been home, I'd
[00:35:05]
left her something to remember me by, the poor sweetie, well I guess she nearly went out of her mind, she didn't know what to do, she could have gone back with her family, she just didn't know what to do, in the meantime I land in the workhouse, I came out, I went up to the Stella Mara's home, which is a private home for alcoholic men, for the homeless, just as your harbor house is here, and I stayed there, and got a job with the roofers, and got sober for a few days, and we went down and got another wedding license, and I pleaded and begged with her to please remarry me, and she did, and I was so happy to have her back, so delighted to have our little daughter, and another baby on the way, and married again, and our own little apartment, and our furniture was scrubby, but it was ours, that I stayed sober almost a week, and I got drunk again, and each weekend drunk, and the poor thing half insane with worry, and carrying this child, and wasting away to nothing, well she, a month before the baby was born, I finally got so sick and desperate, and was brought into the program this time, and my friends around AA, who had never tired of trying to help me, and only waited for me to say help me, but I didn't say it, I was on the street one day, off my latest drunk trembling, and shaking, no money in the house, nothing, looking for a job, when a guy went by, and saw me, and stopped his car, and got out, and said Howie, I'll come by for you Thursday, and he came by for me Thursday, and the reason I was home was because payday was Friday, and he took me down to the meeting, and for the first time in my life, I didn't look at the men the way I used to, I had just gotten sick enough, but I didn't know it, I had to be taken to the meeting, what if that man had not seen me on the street, what if he had not stopped, what if he'd have said, Oh God, there's L. again, the hell with him, what if he'd have just drove on, but he didn't, he stopped, and talked to me, and what if he'd have said Thursday night when I came, I haven't got time to go pick up that jerk, we've monkeyed around with him for eleven years, who needs him, what if he had, but he didn't, he came for me, and I went to the meeting with him, and the first time in my life I heard the lead, and the first time in my life I didn't think that these men didn't have a problem like mine, I knew they did, so I started listening, because I wanted to know what they had, and my buddy Farrell Gallagher was there, big Farrell, big redheaded Irishman, we were friends, drunk and sober, and I was amazed when I went in the meeting and found Farrell there, and he'd been sober two and a half years, two and a half years, this big goofy Irishman, he was a nuttier drunk than I was, and he was two and a half years sober, boy he took me under his wing, and where he said go, I went, and what he said do, I did, and when he said shut up, I didn't say a word, and people after a few months started asking me to lead a meeting, he said you'll lead a meeting, you'll lead a meeting when you're sober a year, shut up and sit down, he was very kind that way, sweet guy, he never called anything but the way it looked, but I took his word boy, and we used to, and I'd laugh inside, because I'd say me, sober a year, ha ha, it's a riot, that's funny, you know, I had no confidence, but he did, he'd come around for me night after night, he'd take me on twelve step calls, or we'd go to a baseball game, but wherever we went the talk was always AA, it's always a day at a time, you can do it, trust God, everybody believes in God, but nobody trusts him, trust him, trust him, trust that for a day you can live without a drink, but I knew me, I knew what would happen, this was another one of those false starts, I knew what I'd do, I knew that I'd be sober a month, maybe two months, maybe three months, maybe even four months, but I knew what would happen, it had happened every time before, no matter how sincere I had been, always came the day when my belly crawled for a drink, and my brain was burning, and my mouth was dry, and my nerves were jumping, I knew what would happen, and there'd be nobody around, and four bucks in my pocket, and I'd get that thirst, and that hunger, and that tension again, and I'd get to thinking about the sweet smell of that booze, and the way it gets into your warm belly, and turns you on, and cuts off the tension, and sets up the glow, I knew what would happen to me, and by God it happened too, the feeling came one day, one day when I was all alone, down on West 14th Street, nobody around, 80 bucks in my pocket, Friday, and I don't have to be to work till Monday, belly crawling, stop, my car stalled in front of a beer joint, are you ready? Right in front of a joint, the joint's called the Oasis, it's a crummy little joint down there in a
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bad neighborhood on the near west side, you know it's one of those joints where all you can smell is the men's room, you know, and I'm standing out front listening to that, and there's some hillbilly in there singing Born to Lose, and it sounded to me like the Boston Pops, honest to God, and I'm just standing there with my belly crawling, and my stomach jumping, and my head bursting, screaming inside for a drink, screaming, I just heard screaming in my head I wanted a drink so bad, but I remembered that this was the day I prayed for this morning, this was the day that just five hours ago I had asked God to help me, that no matter where I was or what I did, that I wouldn't drink today, and I said to myself, don't you remember what you said just five hours ago, look at you, look at you, five hours ago you were pleading with God to keep you sober today, and you're standing here now counting your damn money with a nose full of the stink of beer, and you're ready to fall apart again, because I don't drink normal, I don't drink like a man, I drink like an animal, and I act like one, but it's madness, it's insanity, and you can't judge that, but isn't that what they've been saying at the meetings, my God, that's what a day at a time is all about, so that you will be ready for the day when it does come, I don't want to drink every day, I don't want to drink sometimes for weeks at a time, months at a time, but I do it each day, I have to, because God knows which day will be D-Day, drink day, which day will be the day when this nut, this uncertain character, this mercurial personality of mine will turn me into a trembling chunk of human wreckage, trying for a drink, and I'm thinking that's six or eight Sinokos and I can drive straighter, I know me, see, I know me, and I know how I act when it comes to booze, I didn't come down here to tell you that I was a top-bottom drunk or I was a soft-hearted drunk, I'm a mad, insane, crazy, compulsive, lousy, rotten, fallen down, puking, alcoholic, pathological drunk, there's nothing sweet about me, but I remembered, see, I didn't realize that this five months that I'd been making the meetings with Farrell, that I'd been putting something in the bank, something had gone in, and I don't mean money, because boy, when I needed a day's grace, I got it.
I went into a gas station and called a cab. First we pushed my car, and a guy came out from the gas station, we pushed my car into the gas station, he couldn't fix it for a few hours, so, because it was Saturday, it was busy, Friday afternoon, he couldn't fix it, so I got the cab, I called the cab, the cab came, I got in the cab, I went home, Mary had dinner ready, she said, where have you been? I said, oh, I was delayed, honey, I didn't say a word to her, I just wanted to eat, because when I eat, that helps. I don't know about you, but when my belly's full, that little devil that's in me for the drink, he hides, he leaves, and so I ate, she had stew, and I ate three bowls of stew, until I'm out like this, and I look pregnant again, and then I told her what happened, and she said, whew, and I said, whew, but you know, that was the day I found AA. All that had gone before was prologue. Every other meeting I'd ever been to was to make me ready for that day, because it was the first day I had ever said no to me. It was the first day I had ever believed in God enough that I felt that, see, when I want a drink, I want to so bad that I work myself into such a state that I have to, you know? But I thought, God will help me, it'll pass. And I went home and ate and took a nap, and when I got up from that nap, honest to God, I was like a little boy again. And so there have been many days like that since, days of agony and pain, days when I lost the program and I lost myself, days when I couldn't find my way, when I was completely lost, where I forgot where God lived. And they say, when you forget where God lives, think a minute, who has lived, who has moved? Who moved, right? You moved. So I need it all the time. If, if I could If you ask me, well, isn't it a constant agony then? Well, no, it's not. Because what you taught me was what I had to know, that when you come to know yourself, you know the one that you need to know. When you come to understand yourself, now I know that I am hot-tempered, egotistical, insanely self-centered. I know this.
[00:45:20]
I know that I can't stand not to be liked, that I have driving ambitions that drive me. I have hungers and tastes and lusts and appetites that propel me. I know that I get tension headaches from the intensity of emotional phases that I go through. I know this. But these are not so bad, if you know it. When I came to accept the fact that I was powerless over alcohol, I bought it lock, stock and barrel, that I cannot drink because I just can't. If I could change myself, I would, but I cannot. And that's the thing that saves me from being torn with self-pity. If I thought there was something I could do to change me, I would, because I'll be frank with you.
I will tell you the truth, okay? I don't like being an alcoholic, all right? I don't enjoy it. I don't like it. And I'd rather not be. But I had no choice in this matter. God didn't hand me a book and say, pick one. I got this damn thing, and I got to live with it. I don't want it, and I'd rather not be. I'm grateful that there is a program like AA that can help men like me. But ask me now, would I be again? And I'd say no. I don't need this. But I know I have it. And it's knowing that I have it and having seen it, now I can sense my periods, my times of weakness.
Now I can sense when I do not have the good sense of the strength within myself to help myself. I know that God has given me as much desire for self-preservation as he gave any human being. I know that he has given me all the tools of self-defense that he's ever given anybody. I have an instinctive desire to protect myself. When there's a loud noise, I jump. When it's cold, I put on warm clothes. When the traffic's heavy, I watch out for it. Although I form habits so easy that, honest to God, I think if I ever came to a street corner three mornings in a row at the same time and the same car just barely missed me three days in a row, if I ever got there early one day, I'd wait for the guy.
I know the kind of person I am. But I have these instincts for self-preservation, and I know that I want to live, and I want to do the right thing, and I have as much strength as any other man. But I have something else. I have an illness that is stronger than I am. And all my natural tools of self-defense—wisdom, experience, logic, and reason—don't prevail against illness. I've come to understand that now.
I don't like to tell you that I'm a sick man. I would rather tell you that I am a strong, robust, and healthy man. But I am not. I am a sick man. I am handicapped, but my crippling illness, my crippling injury is invisible. You can't see it to look at me, but you know it. You who are alcoholics know it, as I do, that we have this invisible injury, this invisible illness. Well, I know that I have it, and I have to accept the fact that I must live with it.
But I don't have the strength to cope with it, not by myself. You can't use reason, logic, and love against illness. People don't understand that. My wife used to say to me, you don't love me. I'd say, yes, honey, I do love you. No, you don't. Yes, I do. She said, you don't love the kids either. Yes, I do, darling. I love them. Then why don't you quit drinking for them? Just like that, see? She figured, you know, love is the greatest emotion of all. Love can move mountains. If I love her and the kids, then I would quit drinking, right?
Wrong. Love can't change these things. My God, if love could cure illness, the hospitals would be empty. Next week, they'd be storing cotton in the hospitals, right? They wouldn't need them, because somebody loves them. Did you ever go into a children's ward at a hospital and see the little ones, the little sick ones, the little crippled ones? Did you ever see the parents hovering over them, the nurses that tend to them? Love pouring out of them. Love till it's almost liquid pouring out of them.
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And still some little children die. Still some family men die. Still some beloved mothers die. But they were loved. But love could not check illness. For all my love of my child, I could not stop drinking because I loved them, not just for that reason. And this Mary couldn't understand, and for a long time, neither could I. But give me a choice. Give me a choice and I'd die for them. If they came to me and said, your daughter will die without your blood, I'd say, give me ten minutes to say goodbye and take it. I'd have a choice. But I don't have any choice in this matter.
If I had a choice, if it was my fault, if there was something I could do to change me, I'd be too damned ashamed to talk to you or to ever come to a meeting. And I'd probably either cut it off or kill myself. One. But I can't change what I am. I cannot stop the fact that I am alcoholic. And I have found, though, that miracle and wonder and miracle of miracles, and this is an incredible fact, that as long as I know that I'm powerless, as long as I am practicing the principles of this program and I know it from bitter experience, that as long as I believe in the steps and you, that I believe that a power greater than myself can give me strength when I need it, strength when I have no strength of my own, as long as I live happily and simple-mindedly and keep it as simple as it is, that even with these driving desires, with this compulsive recurring itch to drink, even with this, I live with it like it was a hangnail.
Pooh. It's been a long time since it was agony. I can live with it now. I can live and understand with myself. I can fall asleep in chairs now. And for a long time I couldn't even be in the house alone. There isn't much change in me physically, not much change in me mentally. Some change in me spiritually, a little change in me morally. But the man who drank under the bridge is still before you. The flesh that walked the workhouse yard stands in front of you now.
I am that same man, these same bones, this same blood. It was me. I didn't want to go there and it was agony to do it. I didn't want to get arrested on the streets of Cleveland more than 40 times and charged with everything from auto theft to assault and battery to illegal possession of drugs. I even got 10 days once for sitting down. Of course I sat down in the middle of Clark Avenue. That was where the 10 days came from. I didn't want those things but they happened to me. And I am the same man and I know it. And I know that I can change overnight that quickly.
That that's just how mercurial and unstable I am. I'm like a potato chip in a wind tunnel. He is my anchor. You are my anchor. You're on the bottom for me, dragging me and holding me back from the compulsions and temptations that occasionally beset me. And people say, well, isn't it tough to live with, Howie? Gee, my God, what agony. No, it's not. It's not because now I know it. You see, I used to drink when I got uneasy because I didn't know what the hell else to do.
Now I know that the uneasiness will pass. That it will pass. That so long as I understand that I am powerless with the help of power greater than myself, I can be restored to sanity as long as I make an earnest effort to just be nice and to be honest with myself. Painfully honest. Honest in things where it's easier not to be honest than it is to be honest. I can think of little situations that come up. Just a week or so ago, something happened at the station and it made, oh yeah, we missed a spot. We missed a spot, a commercial that was supposed to go at a certain time.
The program director saw me in the hallway and said, what happened, Howie? And I said, oh, the damn engineer screwed it up and I walked on. Ten minutes later, remembering what I said, I went back to his office and said, say, let me tell you what really happened. I forgot it and I'm sorry.
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See? A little matter of personal honesty. It wouldn't have mattered. They would have made it up easily enough. But the point was, it didn't satisfy me. It was easier for me to blame it on somebody else than to accept the responsibility that was mine. I even carry it to the extreme now that if I'm driving down the street and I finish a pack of matches, I throw them in the litter box. I'm even using my ashtray now in the car.
Oh, God, what a nut. You know what I mean. I mean, that's nuts. That's sensible and you should do that. But the point is that I'm doing it with myself. With myself as my own watchman, my own guardian. That I am making this matter of personal honesty a matter of principle. And when honesty becomes principle, then it becomes true honesty. Honesty before others to make you look good is not so good. Honesty when you're afraid of getting caught ain't bad, but not real good. But honesty for principle's sake is beautiful, satisfying, lovely, and very character building.
Even when sometimes it's like swallowing hot acid to admit that you were wrong. Boy, I tell you true. This honesty bit, you buy it. But a lot of your honesty is just like mine. You're afraid you're going to get caught so you don't do it, right? But the real honesty is when it becomes a matter of principle. When it's important to you that it is the truth what you say. When you say to me what you would say to anyone, including the person you're saying it about.
When you can become this honest and don't try. Don't try, friends. Even I try it and oh God, I fall all over myself. But I'm trying. So why not, right? Besides, the four absolutes, the honesty, unselfishness, purity, let's see, absolute love, absolute unselfishness, absolute honesty, and absolute purity. I always remember H-U-L-P, hope. These are absolutes. Nobody can achieve them. There was maybe one guy who made all four of them and they nailed him to a tree. The absolutes, the four absolutes, are to be desired. But you couldn't reach them.
God, I don't want to meet any man who's reached them. There's enough guys in AA now who are so heavenly they're no earthly good. I don't want to meet none of these perfectionists, you know? I still can't stand the AA who comes down the street with a big book under one hand and the Bible under the other and, oh, got the message, son. What you need is to have it explained to you. Oh, deliver me. I just don't need him because I don't think God speaks in a loud voice and I don't think that faith speaks in a loud voice. God works quietly within you where he lives. And who your God is is your business. It's a power greater than yourself.
In fact, to say G-O-D, God, in AA is not really right. You don't like that? But I think that's true. It's a power greater than yourself. We have room in AA for the Pope, if he ever gets too much of that holy wine in him. We have room in AA for the Rabbi, if the Manischewitz drives him out of his mind. We've got room in AA for the most devout minister of all, if he drops the Bible and grabs the bottle. We have room in AA for the most spiritual people could accept our program and we have in this program a thing so perfect that even an atheist could buy what we believe.
A power greater than yourself. Even somebody who will not accept God, G-O-D, God, or Jesus or Mary or the saints. Even an atheist, agnostic, or a person of deep faith can accept this program because what we really say is, right, a power greater than ourselves. And even an atheist who believes in human values rather than superhuman values can believe that, that there is a power greater than ordinary human strength.
is a Power Greater Than Ordinary Human Strength. It is the Power of Humanity, of Brotherhood, of Kinship. And I've talked with many atheists, many atheists, and I've talked with them,
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and I've heard, and I've found almost without exception that they are wonderful, warm, considerate, courteous, terrific human beings. And yet they say to me what sounds shocking, you know, I don't believe in God. God is dope, it's opium. God is the retreat of the weak, and so forth. You know how, you know what they say, you know what they say. But then I talk with them, and find that they believe in courtesy, practice brotherhood, and show love and consideration for others. And although I've never said it to them, inside myself I say, you believe too, yes you do, you believe, but you're not the first one who ever threw a temper fit, and wouldn't call love what it was, or God who he is, so that's all right. But really in AA we can take anybody, that nobody could come into this program and feel that his conscience is being compromised. Neither the atheist, the agnostic, or the most devout of people could find AA perfectly suited to them. Perfectly suited to the creatures that we are. We are men and women. We are the race of man. We are brothers under the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. We are God's most distinguished creatures. We who have the short flat teeth, just practically tiny little hairs on our body, claws that couldn't hurt a squirrel, toenails that couldn't dig a bear's belly, arms not nearly as powerful as the alligator's muscles, or the elephants, or the gorillas, or the tigers, or the lions. And yet of all these great beasts on earth with massive strength and huge weapons, man is king. Man rules the earth because man has reason, memory, and creativity. Alone of all the creatures that God has made, he gave one creature the one power he has himself. He gave to men the power to create. The seat you're sitting on was made from metal, from ore that was dug from the ground, converted by man, made into metal, shaped into the chair, the table before you, the top, the formica, came from the earth. Man found it, found a use for it, changed it, shaped it, created. Man is king of the animals, king of the world, and has dominion of over all the beasts of the earth. Nothing that flies or crawls or swims or sings or growls or roars has one thing as great as what man has. The one gift that God gave to men that he gave to no other creature, creativity. God made man able to do what only he can do, that is to change and to create. One power he does not give us. We cannot create from nothing as God can. We must create from what he has given us, but we can change and we can create. You could say, well, gee, birds create too, right? They build nests. Look at the oriole that builds a beautiful nest that comes down around three feet, kind of a globe-shaped nest. Isn't that beautiful? That bird's creating. No, that nutty bird is not creating. Comes mating season, something bugs them, and they start looking around for some mud and twigs, and they've been doing that for two thousand years. They say, well, look at the chimpanzees. Did you ever see them? They teach them to dress, ride bicycles and everything. Yeah, but you know where their mother and father are? They're still falling out of trees over in the jungle. They're just creatures that are taught things by repetition.
It is man that has the soul. It is man who knows God and worships him. And no other creature on earth, none, has ever built a church. No other creature has ever sensed the presence of God. Only man. And that is why I do believe that the words are true when the Bible says, and the ancient words have been passed down from century to century, that man is created in the image and likeness of God. I don't think that means that God looks like me physically, that he's somewhere up there ninety feet tall and bald. But I do think it means that in the image and likeness of God, we were created with many of the gifts of God, that we are truly the children of God. How do you account for the soul that you have? The sound of music is beautiful to you, the colors that you love, the things, the shapes, the entirely ethereal things that are meaningless to any other creature on earth, but are meaningful to man. A cat could sleep on the Mona Lisa. A cat could scratch the Mona Lisa just to sharpen its
[01:05:05]
claws and couldn't care less, right? Right? A cat could crawl upon an altar and couldn't care less. But these are the creations of man. He makes visible his belief in a power greater than himself. And this sense of deity, this knowledge of God is found in all races, no matter how primitive. They found a tribe of Aborigine natives almost in the center of Australia about ten years ago, an altogether new culture of human beings, an altogether lost tribe. And scientists were ecstatic that they found these people, because they felt that they had found mankind in his most primitive state, and indeed they had. And so scientists went into this native camp, into this native village, and lived with the natives for weeks on end to find out their way of life, their language, what they did to sustain themselves, and to find out everything they could about them. And you know what they found? They found a little altar. They found a little altar, the proof that they believed in a power greater than themselves. And no tribe or trace of mankind has ever been found in which there wasn't some evidence of a sense of deity, of a sense of God. So yes, I believe in God.
To me, he has a shape and form. He's like a father to me, more like a father and brother both. He's my father on Sunday when I'm scared to death of him, and Monday through Saturday he's my buddy. But God is as you see him, or how you would have him be. He lives within you, and he acts through your speech and through your actions. And he works with you when you work with him. Prayer alone will not turn the earth, but prayer and action will move the earth. Prayer alone did not sober me up. The candles Mary lit, the novenas she made, the prayers that she and many a priest and friend and minister and rabbi said did not sober me up. But the day that I got up and prayed and worked and strove to help myself when I asked from God and gave him back and practiced the principles that you have given to me were the days that I have lived happily in this program. And to all of you, I am grateful for that. On your 19th anniversary, congratulations. I hope you have 19 more. Thank you. Good night and God bless you.
Howie, I want to thank you, from all of us here, for making our 19th anniversary a wonderful success. It's really been wonderful. I've enjoyed it, and I always get something out of our speakers. All of us, I'm sure, go away from here carrying a little something with us that will help us through this coming week. Howie, come back and see us again. It was really a pleasure to have you. One more announcement before we're dismissed. I was asked to request that members of the family group stick around and help us clean up a little. Shall we stand and all be dismissed 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, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.