Audio
Transcript
Source: DICOBE-00073 – Lynn M – NEBRASKA STATE REUNION – 1980-06-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00073-lynn-m-nebraska-state-reunion-1980-06-15.mp3 Duration: 00:55:46
============================================================
She's, uh, she got sober in Hastings. She's lived in Ogallala for 34 years, and right after she said that, she says, well, and I ain't telling you my age. So, but she's a daughter of a alcoholic who's in AA, and she's dual addicted. She's in AA and Al-Anon. And let's give a hand to Lynn G. Thank you. My name is Lynn. I'm an alcoholic. I love it. Somebody asked me how I like being married to an alcoholic, and I said, well, I'd rather be one. I didn't know what a rough road an Al-Anon had to hoe until I became an Al-Anon. I'll tell you, it's tough. So my heart goes out to all of you Al-Anons having to put up with us alcoholics.
I'm not a very good Al-Anon either. I get things confused. AA's treat alcoholics one way, and Al-Anons treat alcoholics another way, and I really get screwed up. If you see me with two very lovely young ladies, they're my daughters, and I'm really very grateful. They're sitting in the back of the room, so I'm not going to introduce them. I was hoping that maybe they'd sit up in the front row, but I'm very grateful they're here. They don't remember a whole lot about my drinking because I didn't drink too much at home. My mother sobered up when I was 13 years old, and she did do a lot of her drinking at home, and was very miserable. So I at least learned something from that. But this is the first time that they've heard me talk, and if I say anything that might hurt a little bit, I'm sorry, but I have to tell things the way they are. We talk about problems that we have when we were drinking. Spouse problems, money problems, job problems, hangover problems.
My biggest problem was babysitters. I never knew when they were going to come. This got to be very complicated because my drinking pattern was that I could drink for a good share of the evening, and sometime prior to coming home, I would black out. And I would never remember when I would tell the babysitter to come back again. You could only call babysitters so often to ask, when did I tell you to come back again? I didn't want them to think there was something wrong. I certainly didn't want them to think I was crazy. So I learned a whole bunch of little neat tricks, which I could only use on occasion too. I would call up, and I had just one babysitter, a very dear lady by the name of Mrs. Cole. And I'd say, Mrs. Cole, did I tell you to come at 4 or at 5? Now, if I was lucky, she would say, well, you want me to come this afternoon at 4. Sometimes she'd just say, well, I'm supposed to come at 4, and I'd have to figure, you know, I'd just have to pray it was that day. And sometimes it was, and sometimes it wasn't. And I would get ready, and if she came, then I'd go, and if she didn't, then I wouldn't. And sometimes she'd show up when I wasn't ready. And then I'd have to figure out where in the hell I was supposed to go.
Now I did have one advantage. My two drinking buddies, we never all three blacked out at the same time. So if I was lucky enough to be drinking with them the night before, then if Mrs. Cole would come, and I couldn't remember where I was supposed to be, I could check with one of them, and one of them would usually remember. If I had not been drinking with them, then I'd have to go down to the office, and with sneaky little questions, try and figure out from my husband where I was supposed to be. After I sobered up, Mrs. Cole said
[00:05:00]
to me one time, she said, you know, you're not as confused as you used to be. And I just smiled at her. I just smiled at her. But it was a real hassle. And now my daughter's old enough to kind of babysit for the two youngest ones. So I don't have babysitter problems anymore, but it was a real pain. My second daughter tells me the story that I'm about to tell is crude. And I guess maybe it is. And I was going to apologize before I told it, but then after listening to the story about Brown, B-R-O-W-N, last night, and the skunk and the Polack story this morning, I think the one about the Indian in the house of prostitution is going to work out just fine. The reason I'm telling this story is because, maybe none of you will think it's funny, but it really applies to me and to my sobriety. This Indian went to this house of prostitution, and he knocked on the door, and the madam answered. And he told her what he wanted. I'm cleaning this story up a little bit, by the way. And she said, well, do you have any money? Oh, he said, me got plenty of money. She said, have you had any experience? He looked at her a little funny, and he said, no, me had no experience. Well, she's kind of trying to get rid of him anyway, so she said, well, you'll have to come back after you've had some experience. And he said, well, how am I going to get experience? Well, to kind of brush him off, she said, well, when you get back to the reservation, if worse comes to worse, find an old dead tree and use a knot hole. So about four months later, here comes the Indian back into town. Excuse me, Shirley. Shirley and I are old friends. He comes back into town. The same process happens. He goes back to the same house. She answers the door. He tells her what he wants.
She said, have you got any money? Yeah, he's got plenty of money. She said, have you had any experience? And he said, oh, me have plenty of experience. So she takes him upstairs. They get upstairs, and they're taking off their clothes. And she bends over to untie her shoes, and he's got a stick about that long. He just jabs it. And she is hopping up and down and crying out. And she said, my God, what did you do a thing like that for? He said to me, check them for bees. Maybe us alcoholics have more things in common than I realized. I don't know about you, but I spent a good share of my sobriety checking for bees. Just like the Indian, I learned a very painful lesson. I did not want to learn it again. So I have taken some precautionary measures. And my biggest precautionary measure, of course, is AA, the 12 steps, meetings, sponsor, the fellowship, contacting an AA member every day, besides the one I live with, doing my meditations. These are the things that keep me sober, that keep me from the horrible pain and agony of what happened to me when I was drinking. I'm going to be very brief. One of the neat things, when I was asked to speak here today, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I was going to say. And that was very good for me because I thought of a lot of things that I had forgotten, things that are very important to me. I kind of did a little preview of my sobriety. And I'm going to tell you three stories, three experiences that happened to me. Prior to this meeting, there's a gentleman here who was my sponsor when I was in Hastings.
I didn't realize what an important role he played in my sobriety. But he kind of interweaves through all three of these stories. But he and I were talking to Connie from Omaha, made mention that they was my sponsor. And Connie said, God, you must have had a handful. Well,
[00:10:04]
God had a handful with me, too. I was like the Indian. I learned everything the hard way. And I had a real problem with my relationship with higher power. The first story I'd like to tell you is about a time when there's another individual that kind of plays along with all three of these stories, or at least two of them. She was an old drinking buddy of mine. She was in and out of treatment several times. Had the opportunity to attend AA. She passed away about six weeks ago in a coma. And I don't know really whether she was drinking or whether she was not. But I know that she never found the peace and the happiness and the love that we find in AA. But she and I were, as I said, good drinking buddies, but we also became rivals because one of the aftermaths of my drinking was that my husband at the time was not very happy about me sobering up. I was not near so controllable. And I had a lot of very painful experiences until finally I severed the connection. And when I severed the connection, this old drinking buddy of mine began a relationship with him.
And I'm like this gentleman down at the end. I had a resentment about that for a long time. But in the divorce, I got an old run-down motel. And she had the motel right across the road, just down about two, three blocks. Hers was not really run down. Now here I'd been sober about a year, a little over. And I was working my fanny off at that motel. I was trying to stay sober. I was trying to be a good AA member. I was trying to be a good mother. And I was trying to run this business, which at the time I didn't feel I was adequate to do. And so what I used to do, I used to walk out to the highway and I'd look down to see if her no vacancy sign was on. And if hers was on before mine, it was a very miserable day. If mine got on before hers, or if mine got on and hers didn't, then I felt really good. Well, I was coming back from town, and I had stopped at Dave's, and he was doing some concrete work. And he had a little extra concrete, so he put it in the back of my car, in the trunk, in this thing with a, what did you call it?
Mortar box. Mortar box. Okay, a mortar box. You know, I got this brand new Eldorado. It was the biggie in my life. You know, I thought I was really uptown. And I pull into his place, and I ask him what he's going to do with this wheelbarrow full of concrete, and he said, well, he said nothing. And I said, well, I need to do a little concrete work. So he pushes the button and opens up my trunk and puts his mortar box in and gives me a shovel and says, here, take all you want. So I'm shoveling in the concrete. On the way out to the motel, I pass this other one. And the no vacancy sign is on. So the first thing I do is I run check to see how many rooms I've got rented. And I had five. And I was angry. Why should this woman, who is drinking and crowding around with my ex-husband, who has a manager that is stealing her blind, be full? And me, who is staying sober, who is trying to do all these neat things, why should I just have five rooms rented? Well, I pull my back my car up, start shoveling out the concrete, and I got enough. And I was sitting there, and I was troweling. I was following Dave's directions, you know, keeping it wet and troweling it, trying to make it smooth and even so it looked like the rest of the concrete. And this kept playing over and over in my mind. Why? Why do I have five rooms rented and this witch down the street is full? And this voice came to me, and it said, but are you grateful for the five rooms you have rented?
And I thought, no, I'm not. And the voice said, well, you know, you could be set and empty, so you should be grateful. And I thought about that. And I think that was God's way of telling me to quit being a complainer. As a way of telling me to quit being a complainer and start remembering all the things that he
[00:15:03]
had done for me. That was a very valuable lesson in my life. I forgot it once and I almost got drunk. I haven't forgotten it for three years now and I hope I never do forget it. And sometimes when I am telling God how grateful I am for the things that he has done for me, I find that I am just kind of parroting the words and I have to stop. And I have to really feel that gratitude down in my guts. Because without gratitude, I am a complainer.
And I spent a good share of the first two years of my sobriety wondering when all the little goodies were going to roll in, never knowing that I had to go out and work for the goodies. So I don't dare complain, because when I complain, then I get envious, I get jealous, I get dissatisfied, I get resentful, I get angry, and I get to feeling sorry for myself and then I get depressed and I want to die.
And so again, like the Indian, I don't want to go through that. So I try very hard every day to maintain an attitude of gratitude. The next little story I'd like to tell you happened on a Friday afternoon. It was in the middle of summer. My motel, I was very fortunate in one respect, my taxes were low because I was across the street from the city limits. So I was out in the county, but I had my own sewer system and this thing was a devil at times and my pump would go out always at the wrong time.
But this time it was the biggie, it was the middle of summer, it was on a Friday night, the motel was full and I had been out doing some work in one of my rooms and I came back in, I was going to get cleaned up and the switchboard rang and I had two entertainers staying at the motel and they said to me, we need to take a shower, when is the water going to come back on? And I didn't know the water was off and I went and checked right away and sure enough, so my sponsor Dave, being an electrician and having gotten me out of several predicaments in the past, he was the first one I called.
And usually when the well went out, the pump went out, it was an electrical problem. Well this time it was a little different. There was a big cornfield right behind the motel and this guy had irrigation pumps going all day and night. It was that year that we had the big dry spell. And Dave comes back in a few minutes after checking it out and he said, you know, I don't think your pump's in water. And I thought, oh my God, what am I going to do?
Well he said, you're going to have to get a well driller. And so I started calling every well driller in the country and naturally it was six o'clock and none of them answered their phone. And I was frantic. By this time, the switchboard was just ringing off its ears. Everybody was wanting to know. And I was telling them, you know, the old alcoholic comes back sometimes just at the right moment and I'd say, well, we have just a minor problem and it'll be fixed in just a few minutes.
I didn't want to give that damn money back. And so I kept telling them this, praying so hard, not knowing what in the world I was going to do. There was one guy in Minden, Nebraska called Miller the Driller and I was just getting ready to call him, went in, walks these two fellas who had stayed at the motel. They were fairly regular customers and guess what? They were well drillers. They had called that afternoon to make a reservation and I hadn't known that.
Now they'd been at the motel all week. They had been doing a job in Blue Hill, Nebraska. They had checked out Thursday night because they figured they would finish Friday sometime and they'd go home for the weekend. And something happened and they didn't finish their job in Blue Hill. So they had called and came back to the motel and they walked in tired and hot and sweaty and they said, boy, can we use a cold shower?
And I said, well, I got news for you guys. And I explained the situation. Now Dave was still there. I think he was praying too. I explained the situation to these gentlemen and they said, well, geez, you know, we'd love to help you. You know, we'd drop that pump five, ten foot to get you by, but all our equipment is in
[00:20:00]
Blue Hill. And Dave said, if you will drop the well, I have all the equipment you need. Got the pipe, the tools, the whole business. So they told him to go get it. And in the meantime, they hadn't had anything to eat, so you better believe I fixed them some supper right quick. And Dave got back and they lowered the well and I had water. Now that was very, you know, that, that, that was beautiful. That was absolutely beautiful.
I'd have to be a real dummy not to believe that God does work for us when we are trying. Because he surely worked for me that day. You talk about coincidences. I heard a lady up in South Dakota a couple of years ago define coincidence. She said a coincidence is a small miracle in which God wishes to remain anonymous. Well there were an awful lot of small miracles on my side and on these well drillers' side.
And I offered to pay them and they wouldn't take any money. I did give them their room free and I gave them an awful lot of gratitude because I certainly was grateful. They saved my butt. And I could see, you know, I could see God working in, in both those situations. And it was through things like this that I really came to believe. Not up here. Because I, I could intellectualize a God. But I never had him down here.
The third little story I'd like to tell you deals with my drinking buddy Sondra. She called me one day. This was, oh, I don't know, a year and a half, I suppose, after my divorce. Or maybe not. I don't know. I don't remember how long it was. But anyway, I still had a tremendous resentment for her. I felt like she did me dirt. Because she was supposed to be my friend. You know, I don't know about you, I have a few friends that are not members of AA.
But not many. When I filed for that divorce, I found out just who my friends were. It was very unpopular in Hastings for a while to be my friend. And naturally all my society drinking pals dropped me like a hot potato. But the AA people didn't. They sure didn't. They carried me through. They came over when I was hysterical on the phone. My sponsor spent a night with me one time. She was a marvelous lady.
I wish she was here today. I wrote her a letter and asked her if she was coming, but didn't get a response. Millie from Lincoln, you might know her. She did a tremendous amount for me, too. But these people that I really didn't want to associate too closely with. These people that I did not really want to get down to what I considered their level were the people that picked me up, let me cry on their shoulder, called me, were concerned about how I was doing.
I didn't find that with all these women and these couples that I had invited over for big buffet and champagne dinners. In fact, I ran into a couple of them one time in the grocery store, and when they saw me, they whipped their carts around and went down the aisle around the corner so they wouldn't have to talk to me. So I valued friendship very dear, and I thought Sondra had really played me a nasty trick.
And the fact that she was a sick, suffering alcoholic didn't matter. So she called me one day, which was unheard of, and she said, I've got some clothes for the girls, can I bring them over? And I said, no, you can take them over to Marlon's apartment like you usually do, and the girls can pick them up the next time they see their father. And I hung up the phone. And after I hung up, I thought, my God, you know, now there was something in that phone call more than a sack of clothes.
[00:25:01]
And again, another little coincidence, Dave called me just to visit, see how I was, and I told him what happened. He said, you get back on that phone, and you call her, and you apologize for your rudeness, and you tell her that she would be most welcome to come over to your house and talk. And I said, Dave, I can't do that. I said, I resent that woman. I said, I can't do it. He said, you've got to do it, or you'll never get rid of that resentment.
And he said, I'm going to give you five minutes, and I'm going to call you back, and if you haven't called her, he said, you're going to get in a lot of trouble. And I don't know exactly what he specifically, I figured I was going to get a chewing out, a real good one. So I called her, and I apologized, and I said, Sandra, you wanted to talk to me about something besides these clothes, didn't you? And she said, yes, I did.
She said, I want to talk to you about my drinking. And I said, well, come on over. And I was nervous, and I was praying, because I didn't know what I was going to say to that woman. So she came over with a sack of clothes, and we sat down and talked. And she'd gotten out of treatment, and I had knew from the grapevine that she'd been invited to AA meetings. She'd even been invited to AA meetings in Blue Hill, because she said she didn't want to attend a meeting in Hastings, because I'd be there, and it would be awkward.
And she said this to me. She said, you know, it'd be kind of funny, everybody knows what's happened between us. And she said, if you're at the meeting, and I walk in, everybody's going to wonder. And if I'm at the meeting, and you walk in, they're all going to wonder and talk, too. And I said, well, why don't we walk into a meeting together? And I offered to pick her up that night. And she hemmed and hawed, and she said, you know, you didn't suffer.
You haven't suffered like I have. And I said, you know, Sondra, I might not have suffered physically, and, you know, the outward signs of alcoholism, but I said, I think I've suffered just as much in my guts as you have. Well, she said, I'll go to the meeting. So came time, about five minutes before I was going to pick her up, and she chickened out. And she said, I can't go, but she said, will you come over to my house after the meeting and talk to me?
And I said, yes. I got to the meeting, and, of course, I filled in Dave as to what happened, and I said, you know, I said, I can't go over there alone. I said, I just can't do that. It would be too painful. And he said, well, I'll go with you. So we went over to her house after the meeting, and she was gone. And that was my last contact with that woman. But you know, Dave was right. I could feel compassion, and I got rid of the resentment.
And I would like to close with a little poem that kind of fits my life, kind of explains how it was with me. This is a little more sophisticated than the Indian. It said, the Lord let me experience fear so I would understand faith. The Lord gave me anger so I could compare it with compassion. The Lord allowed me to hate so I would know the beauty of love. The Lord gave me tribulation so I would thank him for serenity.
The Lord caused me to endure pain so I would submit my will to him. The Lord let me become helpless over life so I would turn mine over to his keeping. The Lord humbled me so I would be proud to call him Father. The Lord led me into the bottomless pit of terror so he could help me climb to the mountaintop of blessed peace. Thank you, O God, for thy concern in my life. May I now deserve thy love. I'm grateful to be here.
Thank you. Our next speaker is from Kearney, has been around for three years. He started in Alateen and thank God he worked himself, you know, got into AA. You know, I got into AA because this guy seems to me like the type that goes all out. He wants
[00:30:03]
to help everybody. He started at NA and Carney, then he went to Holdridge and he started Alateen. I'd like to present Curt. Help start those. I'm just involved with some people. My name is Curt. I'm an alcoholic and drug addict. Hi Curt. I'm from Carney. A little scared, a little fear, but it's not the same type of fear, same type of being scared as what I've known in the past. I was sitting here thinking about an incident I haven't thought long about for a long time, which is the first AA meeting I ever went to.
It wasn't for me. It was for a friend of mine who was two years older than I was and was sentenced to go by the courts. I agreed to go with him one night after we went out and partied and then we went to the meeting. It was five years ago, I believe. It was in Superior, Nebraska. It was, I think, three or five days before Christmas. I was down there on vacation and I walked into the room and there were three gentlemen sitting there, all older gentlemen.
One had to get up every so often, I noticed, and went to the bathroom about three times before the meeting. The second one sat on a little round pillow and the third one took his dentures out and dipped them in his coffee and put them back in. I actually went to this meeting and I was feeling no pain. I wasn't there because I didn't have a problem. One of those guys had the guts to pull out a piece of paper and say, If you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, we can help you.
Stories alter a little bit. I did go to that meeting. Those three gentlemen were there. But that's the impression I got. That's my first impression of AA. It was a whole bunch of old people sitting around who had a hell of a life and had a hell of a lot of problems. I felt sorry for them. It does my heart good to stand up here and look over the audience and to go to a meeting and to see some of you older folks come into the program.
Because I know how hard it would be after all those years of drinking and it does me good to know that you don't have to suffer anymore. I'd like to have a dime for every meeting I went to that was said about the younger people. When I did formally come into the program for my own problem this time, I looked around the room. The next guy, youngest, I believe, was 35 years old. There weren't any young people in the program in Kearney at that time.
One came along later. Oh, a lot of my program, too. We stuck together. But when I first went to that meeting, I did come out of treatment. I found a lot of reasons why I shouldn't be there. If you think of every excuse in the world why I shouldn't. And that would seem to be the number one reason is because I can't relate to these old people. These old people that lost a house, lost a home. And by comparison, I can't stand up here and say I'm an alcoholic.
Because I didn't lose a family, I didn't lose a home, I didn't lose a car, I didn't go bankrupt, I lost a class ring once. But the material things, I didn't have to lose yet. I was at the age where I didn't have a family established, I didn't have a home established, I didn't have a business established. But I did lose a lot of other things that I've again learned that I do have. I grew up in a family of an alcoholic.
My father's an alcoholic now in AA. AA a year and a half before I came in the program. And so I grew up around alcohol, so my values said alcohol was alright. Alcohol was a kind of a manhood test you went through before you made that jump into adulthood.
[00:35:07]
And I could see nothing wrong with it. It seemed that I noticed, even being younger, I noticed that my family when they got together at Christmas or they got together at Thanksgiving didn't get along that well. When they first got there. But after a few drinks were consumed, after a few people started getting loosened up, we started getting along better. So I kind of learned then that alcohol was a positive thing.
Alcohol was a way to get along with other people, a way to be able to communicate with other people. A way to be able to communicate with other people better. When I was in the fifth grade, I consider myself today, I look back, as a person that felt downright rotten about themselves. Had a whole lot of problems with social skill. Had a whole lot of problems making friends with other people. And I think like everyone here, I wanted to be accepted by the group of friends who I chose.
So the bunch of us, we started smoking, which is a big thing. Smoking cigarettes. And once in a while, when we could get a hold of something, you know, we'd drink it. But one Friday night, or one Wednesday night, my friend's parents played bingo. And we all went over to his house, where his brothers and sisters were, who were in high school and older. And they were smoking pot there. And I tried some.
I had no physical effects of the marijuana at that time. But I got high off of just doing the same thing everybody else was doing. Being able to fit in the group, being able to feel like I was part of something at that time. I smoked pot for two years before I ever had a physical effect of it. And that's kind of when the whole ball started rolling, was in the eighth grade. I felt inferior in a grade school of 60 students.
And I went from a school of 60 students to 360 students, and I felt all that more inferior. I wasn't good in athletics. I didn't have an interest in athletics. I didn't have an interest in being on student council. I was a scrawny little thing. I wrestled 78 pounds on the eighth grade wrestling team. So I kind of felt pretty rotten about myself. And at that time, I found out what one thing that could become my friend.
Which at that time I thought would be a very positive thing, could do for me. Which was going out, getting stoned, or getting drunk. Just having some mood-altering thing inside of me. Because that always made me feel good. I can remember thinking, when I was in junior high, that people weren't always going to get me. I can remember thinking, when I was in junior high, that people weren't always going to guarantee me to make me feel better.
I learned that people were going to talk behind my back, people were going to go to the show on Friday night, and not ask me to go along with them. I found out people, you know, weren't always kind to other people. And so I wasn't always guaranteed that other people were going to, you know, give me a good feeling. But I found the thing that would give me a good feeling, and by God, I was insured of that.
Every time I did it, I got a good feeling. So I did start drinking in junior high. Started drinking, smoking dope. In ninth grade, started getting into some of the heavier chemicals. Went into high school. My sophomore year in high school, things, the worst year of my life. I got in trouble with the law. Got picked up for ripping off things, stealing things. I ran away from home, stole my own parents' car.
And just had a whole lot of things going on. But I always considered that way of getting outside, or being able to feel contented with myself, as you just go out and get just stoned and drunk, and like I used to call it, wrecked. Because that's the way I wanted to be. I found out when I drank, or when I used drugs of any kind, I was the smartest guy. I was ten feet tall. And I was one of the most good-looking guys around.
And when I was sober, that wasn't true.
[00:40:00]
But when I was drunk, I was believing that. So I was into that delusion then. And my definition of delusion is believing your own bullshit. So that's kind of where I was at that time. Went on through high school, along these very same lines. Just kind of got progressively worse. Before school, during lunch, after school. During school. Any time I could break away to do something. And the people I associated with were the people that were pretty heavy users.
And I had that reputation around the school. I remember my senior year. I decided, you know, I've got to clean my act up. I've got to get some things straightened out. So I did start my senior year. And I did start getting involved in some And I did start getting involved in some some activities with other people. And along all this time, in the back years, I wanted to get those good feelings from other people.
I wanted to be involved with other people like I saw friends of mine doing. But I just didn't know how. So my senior year, I worked really hard. I tried to work on the float. I tried to get involved with the business club, the DECA club. A lot of different clubs. And one day, and I went straight for that time. Went straight for two months. One day I was walking down the hall in my school. I'd gotten permission from my art teacher to go down and get my books out of my locker.
Walked in there, and an instructor grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me back in his classroom, where he had a class, and said, just what do you think you're doing running up and down the halls by my class all the time? And I says, what do you mean? And he says, you know what I mean, you little drug addict. And he called me by those words, right in front of the whole damn class. And I was mad. I was to the point, I don't know if anybody's ever been mad enough where they couldn't stop, and it's just a feeling of helplessness when you can't explain yourself.
But from that time on, I said, to hell with this. To hell with this. And I went out, and I went back to the life that I knew. Graduated from high school. Did make some achievements. Did have a job. I didn't do real well at that job. I think every evaluation I got was an attitude problem. I couldn't understand that then, but I can now. And I decided this working stuff wasn't for me. It was getting in the way of too many other things.
Like the parties I wanted to go to. The partying that I had to do. So I decided to quit my job when I started school, Kearney State College. No friends. Nobody that I could really call a friend. Nobody wanted me as a friend, I think at that time. I decided I'd join a fraternity. I'd pledge to a fraternity. And if there's anybody here that has been in a fraternity or knows anything about a fraternity, it's a good place to go if you don't have any friends.
Because, see, you buy them there. You pay for them. They're not friends, they're brothers. And they're supposed to be loyal to you. But that went down the tubes, too. Our fraternity was the wildest one on campus. We had done some pretty crazy things. I did some pretty crazy things that I kind of regret now. Like going down to the Phi Delta house and going up to their lawn. And we had a little song.
It sang, Phi Delta Theta, we are pissing on your lawn. Come on out and we'll piss on you. And I was right up there, boy. That's when I was ten feet tall. I was the smartest guy in the world. And I was just fun-loving all the time. And I was right up on the steps. And they came out. They came out on the front porch. And I kept on singing. And I turned around and everybody else was running back to the house.
You know. So that wasn't a totally good time, either. I remember at one fraternity meeting, they asked me, they said, Kurt, would you like to make your apologies mass or would you like to do it individually after the meeting? That's kind of the person I was. I didn't give a damn who I stepped on. I didn't give a damn what I did to other people. At that time, I was in it for myself. And I didn't care if I had a pound of marijuana on my own.
If somebody else had an ounce, I'd smoke their ounce first. Until they didn't have any. You know, I was a good guy. I was a good guy. I was a good guy. I was a good guy. I was a good guy. And maybe some people that knew me and didn't care for me and saw me as being self-centered
[00:45:04]
thought that maybe didn't bother me. But I'll tell you, I don't know if there's anybody here that's had to make those Sunday afternoon phone calls, Sunday morning phone calls. When you get up in the morning and you feel so damn bad about something you did last night, things you can remember, you try to call that person on the phone and half-jokingly try to apologize to them. You know, that's not a real easy thing for me to do. And that did bother me.
I was depressed. I got to the point where I dropped out of the fraternity. I was flunking out of my classes. I had no respect from other people. I had no friends. I had nobody to turn to. I defied my parents who at that time were in AA. I was supposedly an allotine at that time. And I couldn't take their changes in attitude. I seen them changing and that just made me all the more madder because I couldn't blame my problems on them anymore and my dad's drinking.
A good friend of mine who I went to that AA meeting five years ago with went to Norton Valley Hope for a weekend. And this friend of mine, who we used pretty heavily together, always told me that we had a problem and sometime we're going to have to do something about it. And at that time, I told him he was, you know, full of baloney. You know, someday I'll get married, my connections will drop off and I'll just quit everything. You know, I don't have a problem. But that friend went to Valley Hope for a weekend, came back, went to the school counselor and the school counselor told him that this person wanted to be a drug counselor. The school counselor told him, if you wanted to be a drug counselor enough, if you want to make something out of your life, you just quit. You just quit. And he tried that and it didn't work. And they told him at Valley Hope, and I can remember him telling me this, that we've got to change. Playmates, play things and play grounds. And he couldn't stand to even look at that. His reputation was bad enough in the town that he just was in confusion. The following week, I went to Norton Valley Hope for a weekend.
I was in confusion. The following Tuesday, after that week that I was there for Labor Day, I got a call that he put a gun in his mouth and blew his whole side of his face off. And that's how he went straight. He was seeking at that time, and it bothers me now because we were close enough at that time that maybe some understanding of where things were at would have helped, but it's unchangeable. So he went straight a little different way than I guess I did. And I reached a point of being depressed all the time. I told myself I wasn't going to use, only on weekends was I going to use. And the following Wednesday, something came up. Somebody didn't look at me right, or either I celebrated something and I didn't do it. And I can remember at that time thinking maybe I'm not going to try to quit because maybe I'll find out I can't.
And I can remember days on time, days on end when I'd sit and lay in my apartment with not enough energy to get up, walk up the stairs, go do something, just lay there, not having any energy to do anything. Depressed. I woke up one morning with two decisions of what I was going to do. Whether I could end it the way Tony did, or I could try to find help through AA who had 12-stepped me, who I thought were fools when they did. But I somehow made the decision I was going to try to get help, and the only ones I knew to turn to was my parents.
That was one of the toughest things I did. For so long I told my parents, get off my back, leave me alone, it's my life, let me live it. And now I had to turn around and ask those same parents for help. That was really tough. In my own mind, in my own mind, in my own thinking, I thought they might even pull out a 22 and shoot me. At that time my thinking was so screwed up, that's what I thought they might do. But I did get into a treatment center. Spent 30 days there.
Got 30 days of sobriety under my belt. Learned a little bit about myself. Learned a little bit about this program. And I came back to Kearney. Got into the program. Like I said, I was reluctant at first. Looked around, all these older people. Thought I couldn't relate to them. But I've since changed that frame of mind that AA does have nothing to do with physical stature, color,
[00:50:00]
sex, age, or anything. It has to do with the common problem that binds us together. And I know I started seeing something in the people that were at those meetings. I saw something that I did want. I can't explain to you what it was today, but I know when I went to those meetings, people treated me like a human being. And when people treated me more like a human being, I felt more like a human being. And so I kind of liked those meetings and I kept going back.
I kept going back. And I soon learned that I was going to start studying the people that were making it, because at that time I had a strong desire to stay sober. I had a strong desire to keep going. And I started watching the people that were making it. I started studying the people that were making it. And the things that I was noticing about those people were that they all had strong spiritual programs. The other thing that they were making meetings, I didn't see them once every month or once every three weeks. I saw them just about every meeting I went to.
And they also, when someone was in help, they were the ones willing to go out for coffee with him, willing to reach out, go on a 12-step call, reach out to somebody in need. So I started picking up some of these things, got involved, and really started to enjoy it. I consider myself a member of AA, not a person that just goes to meetings. And I have a strong spiritual program. I don't have a perfect spiritual program. I hope I never will.
Because I consider my spiritual program a growing process. It's a process, not a product. And every day when I get up in the morning, it's kind of an enthusiastic feeling to think, this day I have an opportunity to become closer to a higher power who I choose to call God. And that's my journey for the day. I live by the quotation of the big book that says, I have a daily reprieve contingent on a spiritual relationship with a power greater than myself.
And I believe that. It doesn't say contingent, or it doesn't say I have a yearly reprieve, or I have a monthly reprieve, but I have a daily reprieve, and I have a daily chance to become closer to him. He's an integral part of my program, and I keep that conscious contact every day. Kept the conscious contact when I was sitting in that chair there, because I was nervous. I think that, you know, there's no way I can stand here and I can say, I'm going to be sober forever.
Because that may not be true. But I do know one thing. The big book tells me I'm alcoholic. It's a disease. I will die with it. But I know the program, and I know a little bit about the program, that I do think I have a choice, whether I want to die sober, or I want to die a drunk alcoholic. And today I choose to die a sober alcoholic, and I hope I keep that out of my life. I kind of took up a little too much time, probably, but this program means an awful lot to me.
The people in the program mean an awful lot to me, and I'd like to thank everybody here who is working in programs of sobriety, because everybody in AA helps me in some way or another, whether I reach out to them or I just see them at a meeting, here's something they say. I know that one of the problems I have in the program is being egotistical, and sometimes my mind gets a little closed. But this program was an open-minded program, or it wouldn't be working. There wouldn't be the interaction with people that there is.
I still have bad times, but you know, today I'm grateful for those bad times, because my most spiritual growth and my most personal growth has come out of being in those slumps, and having to, by God, work myself out of them, without having to climb into a bottle and having that worked out for me. And I'm grateful for that, and I'm grateful that I'm here today, and having to, by God, work myself out of them, without having to climb into a bottle and having that worked out for me. So I'm grateful to be here, glad to be sober. I've got one story.
I'm done, but I'm not the Dunn from Ireland. There was a Dunn from Ireland that came over here. He told his mother he was going to Georgia, moving to Georgia. He got to Georgia. He wrote his mother a letter and says, I'm living in Georgia. I'm living in a White House. And that's the last time she heard from him. Three years later, this lady in Ireland,
[00:55:00]
the mother in Ireland's next-door neighbor, was going to move to the United States too. So she says, I haven't heard from my son Dunn in three years. Would you look him up when you get over there? He says, I sure will. So he goes to the United States, gets off the plane. He takes a taxi cab to the Georgia border. He stops at a filling station with a little White House behind it. Walks up the little White House, knocks on the door. A guy comes out. He says, are you Dunn? He says, yes. He says, well, why don't you write to your mother? Thank you.