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Source: DICOBE-00349 – Jack C – CORNHUSKER RNDP VI – 1983-08-19.mp3 File: dicobe-00349-jack-c-cornhusker-rndp-vi-1983-08-19.mp3 Duration: 01:04:05
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And give you the impression that I've known him for a long time, uh, because that's not true. I just met him today. And, uh, in addition to that, I don't feel that I probably know him well enough to insult him, but I will tell you this, I was tripping down the hall this afternoon with my sponsor, and, uh, we ran into the, we ran into the Cockwells in the hall, and I guess the best way to describe that meeting is using superlatives.
And, uh, I would have to say good-looking, uh, a sincere willingness to help other people, dynamic, energetic, ambitious. Uh, and then when I got done talking to his wife, Jean, I turned around and shook Jack's hand. Our speaker tonight is from St. Paul, Minnesota, and, uh, please join me in giving him a big hand to welcome to the Cornhusker Roundup. Thank you. Thank you for that. This is incredible. I, uh, nobody goes to a meeting at 11 and 30 in the evening.
Nobody, nobody does that. I figured somebody'd show up, but not this many. This is, uh, I'm going to assume that the hardcore Elkies are here tonight. And I'll tell you, I couldn't be more at home, because I'm always the last one to leave, too, if you don't believe me. My name is Jack Cockwell, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, everybody. I, uh, you, uh, you honor me with your presence here tonight, you really do.
I've burned a lot of bridges behind me, and, uh, there's, uh, there's nowhere else for me to go. You're my people now. So, uh, by being here tonight, you honor me greatly. I want to thank, uh, you got a hell of a roundup going here. I, I have, uh, been privileged to do some work with the Gopher State Roundup, and, uh, I, uh, I know how much work goes into these things, and, uh, I think you got, I think you got quite a deal going. I want to thank Jim and, Jim and, and, uh, what's his name over at the tape booth over here?
Dick, and, uh, and Nobe, and everybody else on the committee that had something to do with, uh, inviting us here to be, uh, inviting us to be here with you tonight, because there's nowhere else on earth I'd rather be. I, uh, the committee wanted me to announce, by the way, they, uh, they're on a roll now, and so they have decided that the, uh, Cornhusker 7, scheduled for 1984, has been moved up a little bit. It'll be in this hotel next weekend.
And, uh, so you all be here, and they're gonna keep on working. If you like this roundup, uh, catch the people with the ribbons on it, say committee, and tell them you enjoy it. If you don't like it, see Dick and Jim and the other people that I talk about now. Tell them how you'd straighten it out. My lovely wife, Jean, did come along tonight. She's in here somewhere, and, uh, it's a, you know, it's entirely appropriate that she be here, because she's a big part of my story. Sometimes she comes, and sometimes she doesn't, but, uh, it's appropriate that she be here.
I didn't drink. Uh, she had no idea what she was getting into, but, because before… I didn't drink before we got married. It was only after I got married that… Let me rephrase that. There's absolutely no evidence that spouses cause alcoholism. Don't read anything into that. But, uh, she's a faithful member of Al-Anon, and she's changed, and, uh, gotten a little, uh, more assertive, too. In fact, I feel kind of badly. Uh, this weekend is real special, because, uh, I'm losing her for about three months.
Jean, uh, is leaving Monday morning for Nicaragua. She'll be down there for about three months. At the request of the government of the United States of America, she's going down there to advise the anti-Sandinista guerrillas how to fight dirty. I'm sorry. Is it too late to say I'm sorry? All right. What I do, uh, when I'm asked to do this is what our book says that we're supposed to do. I'm not real good on theme talks or spiritual talks and that kind of thing, so what I do is a case history.
Uh, I heard somebody say one time that we hear the same things differently, you with your ears and mine with, uh, and me with mine. And, uh, some of what I talk about is my own opinion. So if you're new here, especially tonight, I don't speak for Alcoholics Anonymous. Uh, nobody does, so take what you can leave and, uh, take what you can use and leave the rest. And, uh, you don't have to, you don't have to agree with me.
The traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous give you every right in the world to be wrong, so you can just… Okay, let me, oh, before I begin, I want to tell you something. Uh, I'm still very sensitive, and my feelings get hurt very easily. The last time that I, this is going to be hard.
[00:05:02]
The last time I gave a talk, something very embarrassing happened to me. And I want to tell you about it and hope that it doesn't happen again. If it happens again, I'm going to walk off the podium and go home. I, yeah, uh, I was in the, I don't know, third or fourth hour of my talk and this guy got up and walked out. I don't think that's funny. But it was very embarrassing and I yelled at him and I said, hey, where are you going? I'm not done yet.
And, uh, he said, well, Jack, I'm going to get a haircut. Can you believe that? I said, boy, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. If you needed a haircut, why didn't you get one before you got here? And he said, well, Jack, when I got here, I didn't need one and off he went. Okay, enough of this. Let me, uh, let me give you my case history. Let me tell you how I was brought here tonight. I was born in Los Angeles, California.
I was born in Los Angeles, California in 1942. And the reason I start there, I was born sober. This isn't, this wasn't prenatal. If I had joined AA in, in 42, I'd have 41 years of sobriety. Pretty good, right? No, my story has to begin there because my father was an alcoholic and I hadn't been around AA very long. And it was clear to me that there were a lot of people in the meeting. Just, uh, just hordes of them that had some alcoholism in their families or some insanity or something back in the closet that made them different.
And, uh, I'm one of those that think that at least a part of the reason that I'm alcoholic is because I grew up in a home where there was an alcoholic personality. And I think some, some bad things happen to children that grow up in that environment. The, the violence and the, uh, the fears and the nightmares and that kind of thing. But anyhow, my father's drinking, uh, was progressing right along.
He had bad checks plastered all over the valley out there. So we had to leave LA and we moved to Chicago, Illinois and we lived there for a number of years. But again, he did, uh, there's somebody from Los Angeles or Chicago, one or the other. We have one representative from LA and, uh, we lived in Chicago for a number of years. But again, he went through all the jobs and all the people and we had to pick up and leave again.
Uh, he got involved with AA back in the, uh, in the late forties in Chicago. And, uh, I can still remember his sponsors. Uh, we probably, uh, at least where I come from, we don't, we're not quite as intimate as they used to be. But his sponsors used to come to the door with bags full of groceries, uh, for my mother when, uh, when he'd spend all his paycheck. And, and, uh, if he would, if he got violent, they'd call his sponsors and they'd come over and escort John out of the house and, uh, that kind of thing.
And then he, and in fact, he got some, some brief periods of sobriety together and he would go out with his sponsors. And he used to sit with, with these, uh, Elkies for four hour shifts and feed them the soup and all that crap they used to use to sober them up. And, uh, but anyhow, he didn't make it very well. And, uh, we had to move up here. He got involved with AA briefly up here, but never managed to put much sobriety together.
And, uh, the ultimate crisis came for him in 1960 when my mother died. She died a very young woman. And whatever control was left in, uh, uh, in his drinking just went right down the tubes. His drinking went from chronic to catastrophic. I tried to live with him for a little while, but, uh, that didn't work out. We had an apartment together and that was a nightmare. And, uh, it got to the point finally where I had to commit him to the state hospital up in, uh, in Minnesota.
And, uh, when he got out of there, he went to live at 7th and Wakuda in St. Paul, which, uh, used to be the Union Gospel Mission. They've moved it now, but, uh, I'd had enough of him and I went my way and he went his. I kept an eye on him for a little while. I used to get out on that mission at 3 o'clock in the morning and go up to that second floor dormitory and, uh, check him out and make sure he was okay.
Pay his rent, uh, bed cost a half a buck a night and he was always about three weeks behind in his rent. And they, but, uh, they were very good to him down there. I used to see him down on E7th Street sitting on the sidewalk every now and then with, uh, with his cronies and, uh, a little brown bag and, uh, and some wine in it, sipping on it and that kind of thing. But I pretty much had had enough of him.
In 1961, I went to work for an airline. In 1963, I met Gene and we got married. Now, up to this point in time, I had never touched a drop of booze. Not one. I was 23 years old before I took my first drink. And, God, I had 23 years of sobriety, too, and then I had a slip. I never thought of that. But I never touched a drop of booze. All through high school, I never did. Uh, and the reason I didn't, I used to tell people and I used to believe that I'm not going to do to my family what my father did to us and so I just don't need it.
And so I didn't drink. But, uh, I finally got around to it. I, uh, Bill, uh, in A Comes of Age, talks about his first drink. His first drunk. He can remember it. He was at a party and somebody shoved a highball into his hand and he said it was the missing link, the elixir of life, he called it. And he can remember how well he could function after that. I can remember my first drink. And I got drunk the first time I drank.
I stole a couple of bottles of champagne from that airline that I worked for. And I took them home and Gene wasn't home and we had a daughter by that time. And I sat down on my easy chair and I started to drink this stuff and it went down like water. I'd always heard that whiskey burned when it went down. Well, this stuff didn't burn.
[00:10:00]
And I went through both quarts before I knew what was going on and I got drunk. And Gene came home and she took one look at me and just laughed her head off. She thought that was the funniest thing she'd ever seen. And I did too. God, I laughed and I cried. But, yeah, I hadn't cried for years. It had been 20 years since I'd cried. But I'll tell you something. I can remember that overwhelming feeling of, phew, God, now I'm okay.
And this stuff is great. And I can remember thinking, why have you been so afraid of this stuff all of your life? I mean, this stuff, there's nothing wrong with this. I feel relaxed and I feel comfortable and I feel at ease and I'm going to start going to PTA meetings and parent-teacher conferences. I'll vote in the next election. And I wasn't quite so afraid of people anymore. I turned into Don Juan.
I lost 40 pounds and all my pimples fell off and it was just, God, I never felt so good. And I thought, geez, there's nothing wrong with this stuff and I'm going to make up for lost time. I thought all of the misery, this uncomfortable life that I was living, had been due just to an alcohol deficiency and if I'd have started this stuff years ago, I'd have been a lot more comfortable. Well, that was the beginning for me.
I think in the beginning, alcoholics drink for the same reason that everybody else does. They drink for the euphoria or the relaxation. Later on they drink just to be normal and finally they drink for oblivion. The first four or five years of my drinking weren't so bad. There were some good times and we had some fun together. Gene and I drank together. And we went to the parties and we did the social things with alcohol.
But after about four years, some of the pain started to enter in and it was nothing big at first, just the little things. Making a fool out of myself at these parties and going out by myself and losing the car. God, I used to lose the car about every weekend. Sunday morning at our house was family morning. That's the morning we took car number one to drive over to downtown Minneapolis and try and find car number two that I lost the night before.
A prettier sight you've never seen than a drunk reunited with his car. God, we found it again, thank God. And it was Gene's chronic bitching the morning after. She'd say, I think your drinking is inappropriate. At least it was last night. And I'd say, no, it wasn't. There's nothing wrong with my drinking. The only thing wrong with my drinking is you. And if you wouldn't bitch so much, then there wouldn't be any problem.
And I believed that, I really did. And I was getting in trouble at work. I started stealing more booze. The stealing never stopped. And so I was taking the little miniatures off the airplanes and drinking vodka and eating peanuts because it leaves you breathless, I thought anyway. I can remember the first time that I ever got concerned about my drinking. I woke up one morning and Gene wasn't in bed with me.
And we had two daughters by that time and I checked their bedrooms and they were both in the room sleeping. And I was going downstairs, we had an attached garage, and I was going downstairs into the garage to see if her car was still there. And I heard a sound coming from the laundry room. And I walked into the laundry room and over behind the furnace and I found my wife curled up in a blanket behind that furnace.
And when she saw me, she looked up and she began to shake and to cry uncontrollably. And she said, please Jack, don't hurt me. I'll do anything. And I said, Gene, what are you doing down here? I don't understand this. And she said, oh God, Jack, please don't hurt me. I'll take the girls and we'll leave. And I said, cut it out. What are you doing? What's going on? And she looked up and she said, you don't remember, do you?
And I said, no, what are you doing down here? I don't understand this. And she said, for God's sake, Jack, you took your gun down last night and you held it to my head and you threatened to kill the girls and I if we didn't get out of the house. And she said, we didn't have any place to go. And I said, Gene, you're lying to me. Don't you tell me that. I would never do that. I know I wouldn't do that. Why are you telling me that?
And she said, I'm not lying to you. That's what you did last night. You did this to me and you don't even remember. And then she got angry and her whole demeanor changed and she said, for God's sake, look at me. Look what you've done to me. You've turned me into a frightened, panicked animal. And no man has ever abused me, not even my father. And I'm not going to let you start now. And I grabbed a hold of her.
I needed forgiveness that morning more than I'd ever needed it in my life. If Gene died tomorrow, I would not feel as bad as I did that morning. And I thought I was going insane. I didn't understand what was happening to me and how I could have done such a thing. And I grabbed a hold of her and I said, now listen to me. I want to tell you something. If you'll just forgive me, I promise to God I will never touch another drop of booze.
You're exactly right, Gene. This thing has gone way too far and it's time to stop. And I'll never drink again if you'll just forgive me. And of course she forgave me. And I ran upstairs and I woke up my girls and I said, girls, I'm sorry if Daddy scared you last night. I had too much to drink. But it'll never happen again because I'm never going to drink again. And I believed that. I really did. If I'd have had a million dollars, I would have never done that.
[00:15:10]
And it wasn't until I got to Alcoholics Anonymous that I finally understood how, in God's name, it was possible for me to be sitting, two days later, to be sitting at the bar at Ganna's Restaurant in St. Paul at 8 o'clock in the morning, telling myself, ah, it wasn't so bad. And I could stop if I wanted to, I know I could, but I just don't want to. And she had no right to expect me to make that promise. That was an emotionally charged issue, and I'll show her that I can drink like normal people.
And I'll tell you, that's the insidious part of alcoholism to me. Sitting there that morning, and my brain telling me that I had the choice, I really believed that, I had a choice as to whether or not to drink a highball or to drink a glass of pop, but I made the conscious choice to order that highball, and I'm going to pick it up and I'm going to swallow it. I could not do that if I wanted to, but I don't want to, I want to drink it. And God, I live with that. I really believe that. And I didn't do that just once, I did that many, many, many, many times. And every time I told myself again, I could stop if I wanted to, but I don't have to, and I'll show her I can drink like other people and everything will be fine.
And in chapter 2 it talks about it. It says that at certain times we are unable to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago, and that the almost certain consequences that follow taking even a glass of beer don't enter into our minds to deter us, and that there's a complete breakdown of that mechanism that keeps us from putting our hand on a hot stove. And I didn't know that, I really didn't.
Well, it was about that time that Jean decided that if she was going to save my life and her life and the lives of our children, that something had to be done. Well, what she did is she called some friends of ours who were alcoholic and they referred her to an agency in St. Paul, who in turn referred her to an AA group. And she started to disappear every Tuesday night. And I didn't know where she was going and I didn't care, she wasn't bitching quite so much, I knew that.
But finally my curiosity got the best of me and I grabbed her one night and I said, Jean, where have you been going every Tuesday night? I thought she had a boyfriend or something. And she said, no, I have been going to orientation meetings of the Eastside group of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I said, well, God, Jean, I know you get sick when you drink, but I don't think you have to go to those damn meetings.
She explained to me then that she wasn't going over there for her, she was going over there to try to find out what in the hell was wrong with me. And then I got angry. I said, you know what you're going to do to me, you're going to put a mark on me that will stay with me the rest of my life. And if my boss finds out that you're going over to those meetings, they'll fire me. And if our neighbors find out, they're not going to let our kids play with their kids anymore. God, you got to stop going.
And I pleaded with her, please don't go to those meetings anymore. But it didn't do any good. She kept on going every Tuesday night with regularity. She was going over there. And of course today I'm glad she did. She met some awfully nice people over there. People that I will love the rest of my life because they took care of her at a time when I was unable to. And when I would do something insane, which was most of the time, she'd call them up and they'd take her out to lunch and console her and that kind of thing. She met one guy in particular she met over there, a guy by the name of Ray. And boy, from that time on, Gene was always behind me the morning after saying, you want to talk to Ray? You want to talk to Ray? I said, no, I don't want to talk to Ray. Tell him to stay away from this house. Somebody might recognize him. He'll come in here.
And I didn't want him anywhere close to my neighborhood. I listened to that for six solid months. And finally, I thought, God, she'll be so tickled if I let this jerk come over. So I said, yeah. And I was drunk. This was the morning after. I was pretty drunk. And I said, yeah, tell Ray he can go ahead and come over. But I said, you tell him I'm going to keep drinking when he gets here. And she said, that's all right. He won't mind.
So she called Ray. And of course, Ray came over about 10 minutes later. And he walked in and he introduced himself. And I said, hi, Ray, how are you doing? Would you like a drink? I'm pouring one for myself. And Ray said, no, you go right ahead. But I don't want one. And that threw me off. I thought that would drive him right out of the house. I said, well, Ray, how long has it been since you haven't been able to drink? And he said, well, I haven't had a drink for 19 years. And I said, well, that's too bad. We all have our crosses to bear.
Well, Ray spent about the next hour trying to explain to me that that last 19 years had been the best 19 years of his life. But I didn't hear any of that. I was pretty drunk that morning, I guess. And Ray left. But he told my wife something when he left. He said, we may not have done any good this time. But he said, I think I planted a seed. And maybe one day when this guy is ready to quit, if he ever is, he'll know somebody that he can talk to.
I wasn't to see Ray again for about six months. And that was another one of those mornings after. And I was filled with the guilt and the remorse that we go through and the anxiety. And Jean came up and she said, would you like to talk to Ray again? And I said, yeah, I'd like to talk to him again, but I don't think he'll come back, will he? And she said, he'll come. Of course, he'll come. And of course, Ray did come. And we had a pretty good talk that time. And I stayed sober for a while. But again, I guess I wasn't ready. And I continued to drink.
[00:20:10]
Now, all of this time that Jean was going over there, they were changing her, too. They really were. They told her that she didn't start my drinking and she couldn't stop it. That was a dumb thing to tell her, now that I think about it. And they also told her that she had to allow me to suffer the consequences of my own behavior and that if she could create some new crises, that that might even help. And she learned that lesson well. My wife was a doting mother all the way up to about the last year of my drinking. She'd take care of me.
I spent a lot of time throwing up. I know a lot of you did, and I did, too. But even on my knees over that toilet, she'd come in and hold my head and clean the mess up when I got all done and help me back into bed and all that. When she started going over there, she didn't do that anymore. That wasn't the worst part. The worst part was walking out of that bathroom out into the living room, and she'd be sitting in her easy chair with that smart-ass look on her face.
And she'd say, Oh, what's the matter, baby? You got the flu again? That's too bad. Incredible. You think that's pretty good, huh? I solved that problem. I got up late one morning and I jumped in the shower. And I got in the shower and then I had to throw up. And I thought, God, she'll really get a kick out of this one, throwing up in the shower. I got out of the shower and walked out in the other room. She didn't say a word. She didn't know that I'd thrown up. She couldn't hear it with the shower running.
So from that time on, any time I had to throw up, I jumped in the shower real quick. I may have been a drunk, but I was a clean drunk. I took three and four. Don't laugh. Don't knock it. It works pretty good. If you ever go back to drinking, try it. It works good until the drain clogs up, and then you're in trouble. If I didn't show up about two hours before I was supposed to be at work, she'd automatically pick up the phone and call me in sick. She just knew it. She knew I was out on another toot, and she'd call me and say.
I had to work nights at that time, and I got home. I was supposed to be to work at 11 o'clock. I got home about 10 o'clock, and I just assumed that old Jean had called work for me. So I jumped in bed. I was drunk. I laid down. We both went to sleep. About one o'clock, the telephone rang, and we both sat up in bed together. She answered the phone, and I could just hear her side of the conversation. She said, No, he's not sick. The son of a bitch is drunk. You want to talk to him?
And she threw the phone at me. I said, Jean, what are you doing? You're crazy. Don't do that to me. But that's the kind of thing. It's funny now, but I'll tell you, it wasn't funny then. That had a devastating effect on me. Just devastating. I couldn't understand it. They never told her that she should divorce me over there, but what they did tell her is that she may want to decide one day whether or not she wants to live alone or live with the drunk.
I guess the ultimate crisis for me came the day that the guy came to the door with the paperwork and said, You had so many days to get out of your house. At first, I was amused. Yeah, I mean, giving up the best thing that ever happened to her. Who else would live with her? And I really believe that. Nobody would take care of her the way I did. But then, I don't know how they do it today, but back then, on the last page, they listed every rotten, dirty thing that I had ever done.
Gene had gone public, and boy, I got angry. The reason she did that, by the way, is because Ray referred her to an attorney who was also a longtime member of the Eastside group of Alcoholics Anonymous. He told her, That's the way you got to do it, and so that's what she did. And I didn't know it. I like what Father Doherty, one of our early clergy friends, used to boom out. I heard him in a tape one time, and he said, The greatest gift that God ever gave a man was a sin that was too big to hide.
Boy, I didn't believe it that morning, I'll tell you. But I got angry, and I called her up. She was working at the time. And I called her up, and I said, Gene, you'll be out in that parking lot in five minutes, and if you're not, I'm going to come in there and drag you out by the hair. And I think I would have. That's the kind of animal I was back then. I drove out there, and she was in the parking lot waiting for me.
And she got in the car, and I spent about ten minutes screaming every obscenity that I could think of at her. I have never been so angry, never before nor since. And when I got all done with that tirade, she put her hand on my arm very gently, and I looked over at her, and she had big tears streaming down her cheeks. And she said, Jack, you know that I don't want this. I love you, and you're my husband, and I promise to live with you in sickness and in health.
But you're dying, and you're killing us, and there's nothing else that I can do. I've tried everything, and I don't know what else that I can do. And she said, you get so drunk now that you don't know what you're doing, and you get violent, and I'm afraid, and the girls are afraid. But you know that I will love you forever, and I will love you no matter where you are, but I have to do this.
[00:25:04]
And when she said that, I knew she was right. And I told her to get out of the car, and I went home, and I packed up, and I got an apartment. And that was the beginning of what was to be the worst couple of months of my life. I really believed that I was going to live the gay, carefree bachelor life. I couldn't afford furniture, but I went out and stocked up on liquor so I could entertain all my friends.
No, nobody ever showed up, by the way. I didn't have any friends. And in a very short time, my drinking, just like my father's, went from chronic to catastrophic. And the time came when I just wanted to get drunk and stay drunk, and that's exactly what I did. And I quit work. I didn't go back there. And I just quit everything. The first thing that I thought about in the morning was drinking, and it's the last thing I did at night.
And I think you enter into a phase where it's almost a nightmare world. You're never sober, and you can never get quite drunk enough. You drink a couple of hours, and you wake up again, and you start it all over again. You drink for a few hours, and you sleep again. And God, that was horrible. That was just unbelievably bad. And I went through that for a period of time, and I thought to myself one day, I thought, this is insane. You're losing your identity, and you're going crazy.
You've got to stop this, and you've got to sober up now and get back to the real world. And I thought, I'm going to sober up today, and I'm going to go back out to that airline that I've had some bad times, and that I'd like to get my job back, and I'll see if I can't get back on the right track. And I thought, but nobody would expect me to sober up after being this drunk, cold turkey, so I'm going to taper off.
And I used to watch my dad taper off on a six-pack all the time. So I went, and I had a bottle of beer. I'd never been sicker in my life. My heart was pounding, and I was shaking like a leaf. And boy, that bottle of beer hit like a ton of bricks. And I'll tell you, a little bit of the hurt went away, and a little bit of that warm glow started up. And of course, I just got drunk all over again. And I went out, and I hit the bars again.
And I got home that night, and I think for the first time in my life, I knew that I was in very, very serious trouble. And I knew that if I went to sleep that night, I'd never wake up again. I just knew it. I knew that if I went to sleep, I would die. And I was afraid if I died, I'd go to hell. I didn't believe in God, but I believed in hell, I'll tell you that much. And I wasn't very good for asking anybody for help.
I was going to call the police department and tell them I was having a heart attack, so they'd haul me off to a hospital or just anything so they'd lock me up for a few days so that I could sober up. I knew if I could just get sober, I'd be okay again, and I could drink socially if I could just sober up this time. And then I remembered Ray. And I remember thinking, I wonder if he would come over and talk to me one more time.
And I got a few wrong numbers. He owned a monument company, and he was in the Yellow Pages. And I remembered his last name. And after a couple of wrong numbers, I finally got him on the line. I said, Hi, Ray, this is Jack Cockrell. Do you remember who I am? I thought, Oh, God, please remember who I am. And he said, Hi, Jack. Oh, of course I remember. How are things going for you? And I said, Well, they're going pretty good.
Gene's kicked me out. I've lost my wife and kids. I've lost my job, and I'm drunk. I think if I go to bed tonight, I'm going to die. Other than that, everything is fine. I don't want you to think this is real serious or anything, Ray. But I said, Listen, I've been drinking pretty heavily, and I wonder if you'd mind coming over and talking to me one more time. And he said, Sure, I'd be glad to. And it was about half an hour later, and there was a knock on the door.
And I opened it up. And Ray's a great big hulk of a man with green hair. And I opened that door, and I just broke down, and I started to bawl. And I told Ray I didn't know what was wrong with me, and how come I couldn't stop drinking, and why it was so bad for me, and why everything was falling apart in my life, because there's something that he could do to help me. And he said, Well, you're pretty sick, and you belong in a hospital.
And I said, God, do I have to go to a hospital for this? And he said, Well, you should. I've never seen anybody quite as drunk as you are. So he said, But I can't get you in a hospital tonight. He said, You'll have to stay here. And I said, I can't stay here, Ray. I won't stay here tonight. He said, Well, let me call Jean. I'll see if she'll let you come home for the night. I said, Oh, God, don't do that. She'll never let me come home. I know she won't.
So he called her anyway. I didn't know it until about a year later. He called her before he ever came over to my place. But he made a fake telephone call from my house, my apartment. And, of course, it was all set up. And Jean said, Yeah, of course you can come home. And I was down on my last quart. I was about halfway through with a quart of blackberry brandy. That's all I had left in the house. And he grabbed that quart and put it in his pocket.
And he grabbed me, and he took me home. And he stayed up with me all night that night. And we talked, and Ray said, Keep him drunk, or he'll never go in the morning. And so she did. And it was about 10 o'clock in the morning and Ray came over and I chugga-lugged what
[00:30:00]
was left of that blackberry brandy and he hauled me off to the hospital. That was the last drink I was to have. I didn't know it then, but I certainly didn't plan it, but that was the last drink I was ever to have. I wish I'd have known it. I thought about this in early sobriety, the first year that I was sober. I didn't know whether I wanted to be sober or not, but I thought, God, your last drink was blackberry brandy. If I'd have known it was my last drink, it sure as hell wouldn't have been that. I like vodka and I like scotch and things like that, but God, the only reason I drank that stuff was it was the last thing in the house. And I really dwelled on that, that first year of sobriety.
But Ray came over and he hauled me off to that hospital and they put me on an IV and gave me withdrawal medications and all that crap. But you know how it is. After a drunk, a couple, three days go by and you start to feel a little better and I was laying in that bed on the alky floor and I was thinking to myself, God, you've done some crazy, stupid, insane things when you've been drunk before, but this takes a cake. My God, why did you call him? You didn't need him that bad. And then I thought, you've got to get out of here.
You don't belong here with these people. So I started to plan my escape. I didn't know that I thought I was a prisoner and so I started to plan my big escape and my roommate looked at me and started laughing. He says, what are you doing? I said, don't tell anybody but I'm going to break out of this place. He laughed. He said, hell man, you can leave anytime you want. In fact, he said, if you don't obey the rules, they'll kick you out.
I said, good, we'll do everything we can. I went to the staff then and I told them, I don't belong here with these people. I'm leaving. I got to go get my job back and all this and that. Coincidentally, the phone rang about 10 minutes later and it was Ray and he said, hi Jack, how you doing? I said, well, I'm doing fine now, Ray, and I want to thank you for what you did for me, but I don't belong here with these people and I got to get out of here. And he says, well, where are you going to go? And I said, well, I'm going to go home. And he said, well, I'm not sure you can do that. You might want to call Jane and find out. So I called Jane and I told her the same thing. I didn't belong here with these people and that I was leaving. And she said, good, where are you going to go? And I said, well, I'm coming home. She said, no, you're not. No, you stay there until they release you and then we'll see whether or not you come home. And so I stayed and I'm kind of, and I'm glad I did, I think. I firmly believe I would have made it to Alcoholics Anonymous in spite of that hospital or without them. Anyhow, that was kind of the beginning for me. You know, when I first got to AA, I thought, I looked at those 12 steps. I'd never looked at them, even all those years that my father was involved with AA and I'd never looked at them, but I took my first good look at them at the first meeting I went to. And I thought to myself, boy, this is too complicated. It really is. And, and it's, there's way too much God in it. 2, 3, 6, 7, 11 are just saturated with God. And even if I were an alcoholic, which is a remote possibility, but even if I were, this program would never work for me. It's just way too complicated. And I felt that way for quite a while. I'll tell you what really helped me. And that was when I finally got around to reading some of the traditions of this program. And I got a feeling for the heritage that we were left.
And I found out that before we had a 12 step program, we had a six step word of mouth program. And even before we had that, there were just those five basic precepts that Ebby Thatcher gave to Bill Wilson that November day in 1934. They used to call it Ebby's formula for sobriety. And Bill, he said, well, what is it? What are you doing over at these Oxford groups? He said, well, the first thing we do is we get honest with ourselves and we admit that we're licked. The second thing we do is take an inventory and confess our defects. The third thing was the restitution, trying to undo some of the harm we'd done. The fourth thing was helping another drunk without any any thought of payment. And the last thing was a spiritual. They prayed to whatever God they thought there might be to help them carry out these simple precepts. And boy, I'll tell you, when I read that, it just simplified the whole thing for me. And I believe today. Now, this may be heresy. I understand that.
But I believe today that each one of these 12 steps just addresses one of those key precepts. That's all it does. And it never ceases to amaze me. The Oxford groups found it out first, I guess, before we we borrowed it from them. But when those five key principles are addressed in a spiritual way of life, it arrests the disease of alcoholism and the compulsion goes away. And it just helps me to look at it that way. That first, I guess the first one was the most difficult for me. Alcoholism has been called a disease of denial. And boy, I sure had it. Chains of alcoholism are invisible until they're too strong to break, or the alcoholic cannot see the disease until he's recovered from it. What other disease can you think of that defies treatment because the victim won't accept the fact they've got it? And I didn't know I had it. I really didn't. Even after all of those years and all of that pain, I didn't think I had it. And so I said, I said, well, tell me what is an alcoholic?
Maybe if you tell me what an alcoholic is, I'll tell you I'm not one and I won't have to mess around with all of this stuff. Well, over at the Eastside group, they said, we can't tell you whether you are or not. We don't see a whole lot of people sitting in these meetings that don't belong here. But but we don't know. But we don't know whether you are or not. They told me what the book said, that I had an obsession of my mind to condemn me to drink against my will. And coupled with that was the allergy that was going to kill me. And I, and the obsession made a lot of sense. They talked about the control factor. They said that as an alcoholic, I would not be
[00:35:04]
able to determine whether or not I would drink. And once having taken a drink, when I would be able to stop, that made a lot of sense. Ray told me, he said, you know, Jack, if you're drinking has caused one person that loves you to shed one tear, then you should stop drinking. And if you can't or won't, you're probably an alcoholic. And that made sense because my drinking had caused a lot of tears in my family. And another guy over there, he told me something else. He said, Jack, you know that you're that the booze may be maybe only 10 percent of your problem and the other 90 percent percent of the problem is you the way you are. In other words, you're not you're not sick because you drink, you drink because you're sick. And that made a lot of sense, too. And it made me feel better. Nobody ever said that before to me. And I didn't understand that. They also said I was getting an extra kick from the booze that other people weren't getting. And an overwhelming, exaggerated feeling of relaxation and euphoria. And I didn't know that. Sure, explained a lot of things, though. You ever stop with the guys or gals after work and you bought the first round, of course, he's always by the first round and bang, it's gone. And you're sitting there waiting for these people to finish their drinks and you're going crazy. You're kind of going like this. I used to watch him pick their drinks up and they put it up to their mouth and I think, oh, come on, big swallow now. And they'd they'd sip it and put it back down and I'd go, oh, God, no. Come on, drink her up, will you please? You didn't want to buy the second round because you didn't want to lose your dignity. What I used to do is excuse myself and go up to the end of the bar and get a double shot of something so I could go back and sit down and wait for these fools to finish their drinks.
And I thought that was normal. I really did. Or you've stopped after work and for a couple of drinks and after a couple of drinks, everybody else gets up and they go home. I was always the last one. I never went home. The last thing on earth I could do after a couple of drinks was stop. I could never do it. I was just ready to get started. And I didn't quit. I didn't quit till I passed out or lost a car or ran out of money or whatever it was. And I didn't know it.
My wife, I keep liquor in my house and we serve our non-alcoholic friends. Hell, we serve our alcoholic ones if they want it. But my wife has this sewing or crocheting or whatever it's called and she has her girlfriends over the house. And there's this one gal. My wife will go to pour her her third glass of wine and she'll hold her hand over it like this and she'll say, no, no, that's enough for me. And I'm starting to feel it. And I look at her and I think, feel it. God, what are you drinking for? I don't, she could be drinking water or something. But, but, you know, social drinkers don't like that feeling that Gene doesn't like it. She doesn't like it after, after three or four drinks, she gets that out of control feeling. And she says, I don't like it. God, I got killed for that feeling. And most social drinkers don't like that out of control feeling. They don't like to do that. Well, listen, I didn't go to AA because I wanted to. I was forced to go. As a matter of fact, it's been my experience that most people that come to us are forced. The court send them or their boss sends them or their family send them or they come for the orgies on Saturday night.
See Dick, he'll tell you where tomorrow night's orgy is. But they come, they come for all the wrong reasons. They're forced to come. And so was I. I, that's one of the things that I had to promise in order to get back in the house. My wife let me back in. She put the divorce on hold. She didn't withdraw it. She put it on hold. And one of the things that I had to do was to promise her that I would go to meetings once a week with Ray on Tuesday night. And I'll tell you, I hated it. Oh, I never hated anything more in my life. I would start to, to, to be afraid about Sunday night.
And the closer, the closer it would get to Tuesday night, the sicker I'd get. And Ray would come and pick me up and we'd go over to that damn meeting. And I'd walk in the room and I just felt like I was going to pass out. I really did. That's how afraid I was. And we'd be sitting down at the table and it would be getting close to my turn to talk. And my hands are sweaty and my stomach is growling. And, and my heart used to beat so hard. I used to hold my arms over my chest because I knew they could see my shirt going up and down like this. I'd have got them left, but I was too afraid to do that. And then it gets to my turn and I'd say pass. God, I hated it. I just hated it.
But a funny thing happened after, after about three months, I noticed I wasn't quite so afraid to go anymore. And we used to go for the meeting after the meeting at the, at the ice cream parlor, parlor up there. And that was bad too, because God, the joint is packed. And all of these guys, I mean, there's tables right up all over, all around yours. And, and these guys and gals are talking about alcoholism and Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm sitting there going, Oh God, I'm not with these people. I am forced to be here. I'm not one of them. Oh, it was horrible, but I wasn't quite so afraid to go anymore. And then after about six months, I started to look forward to going to those meetings. And they, I'll tell you why too. It was because they were very attractive and they befriended me and nobody had ever done that before. And they were just like me. God, I thought they'd been reading my mail and they were telling my story, but they had peace and serenity and
[00:40:00]
happiness. And they were talking about things in that meeting that so easily and with, with such grace. And I thought those are things I would never talk about. And, and I didn't feel quite so unique. You know, somebody would talk about something in a meeting and I'd say, God, there's one more person on earth that's done that too. And I thought that I was the only one that ever done it. And then of course you have to have something clever to say in the meeting or nobody's going to like you. So I'd run home and I'd study up in the books and I'd come home and BS all the folks in the meeting and they were just very good to me. They let me grow at my own pace. I don't know how, I can't tell you the day or the hour that I took the first step, but, uh, it was after about a year and it just got okay to be an alcoholic and all of those walls of denial came down and I knew I was home and I never needed or wanted another drink as long as I live. And, uh, God, that was just the neatest feeling for me. I don't recommend that if you're new. Uh, if you've already taken the first step, I think you're ahead, but, uh, that's the way it happened with me. Next thing I did was I took that inventory that they talked about. It had never occurred to me, never occurred to me to take an inventory that, you know, that, that concept that, that my major problem was me. And if the alcohol was just a symptom had just completely eluded me. And I believe that I need to be sufficiently comfortable in life that I don't need to drink anymore. And I think that's what the inventory steps do for me. They helped me to change. And I'd completely lost focus on that. Just didn't understand that at all. I'll tell you a story about a little boy that lost focus on a problem. Uh, he was one of three little boys and they're, they were living with their mother. Their father had died and, uh, the boys had a problem though. They had a horrible, horrible swearing problem. One day in utter frustration, the mother took these three boys to the parish pastor so he could listen to him. And, uh, he listened to him for an hour and he came out and he said, yes, ma'am, you're exactly right. I've never heard language quite this bad from three boys so small. What you need to do is start with some discipline. So when you get them at home, you discipline them for swearing from now on and see if it doesn't get better. Well, the next morning, the oldest boy came down into the kitchen for breakfast and his mother says, good like for breakfast? And the little guy says, I'd like some of them damn Weedies. And bang, he gets a crack right in the mouth. The second little boy came down into breakfast and his mother said, good morning son. And what would you like for breakfast? And the little guy says, I'd like some of them Damn Weedies and bang, he gets a crack in the mouth. The youngest little boy was standing at the top of the stairs, watching all of this. He came down at the kitchen and his mother says, good morning, son. And what would you like for breakfast?
And the little guy says, you can bet your ass I don't want any of those Weedies. The little boy had completely lost focus on the problem and so would I. You know, there's a list of personality traits that are common to most alcoholics and boy, I sure got most of them, I'll tell you. They talk about the low frustration tolerance, can't stand any pain, either mental or physical for long periods of time. That's me. I don't drink anymore. I relieve that with food and cigarettes. You know, I had my favorite thing for breakfast this morning, food. Doesn't matter to me. And they talk about the anxiety, that horrible feeling that any minute something is going to explode or I'm going to, something tragic is going to happen to me and I never understood what that was all about. And they call it free floating anxiety, I guess. And I never knew even why I should be anxious. They talk about the grandiosity. If you felt as bad about yourself as I did, you didn't dare let anybody know about it. So you put on this big suit of armor that says, I'm okay and everything's fine with me, but inside that you're just dying. And the isolationism, we don't have a whole lot of friends. We're kind of loners, pretty much. The oversensitivity, God Almighty. If you criticize me back then, I'd crawl in the corner like a little boy, needed the constant approval of everybody on earth in order to be happy. I used to, I used to hate to go into restaurants by myself. You'll walk in and the maitre d' looks at you and says, Oh, are we all alone today? Yeah, I guess we are. And then when she takes you to your table, you just know everybody in the joint is saying, look at that loser. You can't even find a friend to go to lunch with. And I used to think that way. I really did. I hated to do it. And they talk about the defiance of the alcoholic. We're not humble people when we get here. We're arrogant people. Lack of assertiveness. Hell, I still don't have a lot of that today. My wife, I'd eat a steak raw. I really would before I'd send it back. Not Jane. She'll send it back three and four times and I'm ready to crawl underneath the table. And when there's a shirt to take back to the store, guess who takes it back? Not me. She does. That lack of assertiveness. Nothing in between. It was either explode or say nothing. And that's all that I could do. And that's gotten better now too. But, but all of these crazy, and they talk about the, the, the character defects. Resentment, the biggest killer of alcoholics. I don't know how you handled your resentments, but I'll tell you what I used to do. If you did something to hurt me, I would withdraw me from you. I would punish you that way. I wouldn't talk to you for 10 years if that was necessary. And I used to play that game on people. I really did.
And I did that to a guy that I work with and he was one of my bosses and he hurt my feelings very badly. And so I didn't talk to him. I didn't talk to him for two solid years. I'd see Frank coming down the hallway and I'd look straight up at the ceiling and walk right just knowing that any minute he was going to come crawling and say, Oh, Jack, what did I do to hurt your feelings? Well, of course, he never did. I got to the ninth step of this program,
[00:45:02]
and I went to Frank, and I said, Frank, I want to talk to you for a minute, and this is going to be difficult, so I want you to listen carefully. I said, I need to apologize to you. I'm sorry for treating you so badly these last two years, and I'm sorry that I was mad at you. Please accept my apologies. And he looked at me and he said, Gee, Jack, I didn't know you were mad at me. What was the problem?
And I said, Never mind, Frank. I'll talk to you later. I used to lay at home at night figuring how I was going to kill Frank, and that son of a bitch was home sleeping like a baby. Didn't even know I was mad at him. Didn't even know I was mad at him. And I did that with a lot of people. I really did. But he was much too mature to see any of that. I don't do that anymore. I pray now for people like we're supposed to do, and it works just fine.
They talk about fear. My God, I was afraid of everything. Most folks could go to weddings and funerals and PTA meetings and things like that. I couldn't do any of that. I just didn't fit. God, I was afraid of girls all of my life. I was afraid of women. I'm amazed I ever wound up getting married. I don't know how the hell that happened. Even in high school, I'd go to the dance and I'd be standing up against the wall, and it was just horrible.
One of my little, you know, these petty little fears that were the worst for me, one of them that drove me crazy for most of my adult life, I was afraid of needles. I saw a kid pass out in school one time when he was getting a shot, and so I thought, if I get a shot, I'm going to pass out. I know I will. Sure as hell, the next shot I got, I got white and lightheaded and out I went. And I thought, that's it. I will never be embarrassed that way again.
And so I didn't go to the doctor for years. I would be so sick that I was dying, but I wouldn't go to the doctor. I'd rather die than be that embarrassed. Well, in recovery, Ray says, you face these fears now. You don't run from them. And so now every chance I get, I let him stick a needle in me. If I go to my doctor and he says, we don't need any blood work, I say, oh, yes, you do. You know, they take some blood out of your arm, and they put a little teeny-weeny Band-Aid on it, and most people go home and after a half an hour, they tear that off and throw it away.
Not me. I go home and I put a great big one on, and I wear it for a month, just like this. People say, what's that, Jack? Oh, no big deal. I had a little blood drawn, you know. I love it. One of those huge victories for me. But those were the kinds of things that I lived with. Our book talks a lot about sex. The big book is really a pretty sexy book. If that doesn't encourage you to read it. The only reason, I didn't have any trouble with my sex life during my alcoholism, but I know most of you did, so that's why I talk about it.
I really chuckle, you know. You pick up the morning paper and you read where they've done a john sweep or something like that, and you look at the addresses in the paper, and none of the men that were arrested for trying to pick up a hooker live in that neighborhood. They all live way out in the suburbs. And I think, God, I wonder, are they bad or are they just alcoholic? And so I get a little 12 and 12 card from Intergroup, and I mail it off to them anonymously, and I wonder if they ever do anything about that.
But I'll tell you, you get your name in the paper for doing something like that, or you get your name in the paper because you were caught at Susie's Sauna when you don't belong there, and then see how many friends you got. I'd move out of the neighborhood. I took a drug and alcohol course over at the University of Minnesota for a couple of quarters to try to learn a little bit more about the disease.
And in a textbook, the author quotes Shakespeare. I think he was an Elkie. He says, Wine provoketh the interest, but retardeth the performance. You guys know what I'm talking about. That's the limp thing, you know, that Dick was talking about earlier. But I had to look at all of these areas of my life, and so I did my inventory, and it was in the inventory steps that I got rid of all the guilt. And Chapter 5 talks about it.
We're driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, and that our troubles are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot. And they were right. They were absolutely right. I went on, and I made my list and did my restitution. I don't understand the therapy. I should. I'm a Roman Catholic, and I spent half my life in a confessional.
But I, as all I know, I wasn't going to do the eighth and ninth step. I proudly announced in the meeting one day, I said, I'm not going to do this. I don't need to. And first you tell me I'm sick, and then you tell me I have to go apologize to people. And it didn't make any sense to me. Besides that, I was afraid, and I didn't want to do it. And by the way, if you're ever going to do that, don't do it early in the meeting, because they spent the next hour and a half on my case telling me why I needed to do the eighth and the ninth step.
About halfway through that, I thought, God, I wish I'd have kept my mouth shut. I learned something that day. I did it because an old guy in that group that loves me very dearly said, you know, you talk a good game, but you're full of crap. He said, you do it because this is a suggested twelve-step program,
[00:50:01]
not ten steps. So I went out and I did it, and I made my amends, and I got the benefit from it. It didn't matter what they said. I got the benefit. The next thing that these drunks did was try to help another drunk without getting paid for it. Now, if you're brand new here tonight, you might think that I'm doing you a favor by coming here and talking to you. But if you've been around for even more than three or four months, you'll know that that's not the case.
By allowing me to come here, and sitting here and listening to me, you're giving me the greatest gift that you can give an alcoholic, and that's the chance to insure my own sobriety. There's nothing better that you could give me than insurance for my own sobriety. And that's the way it works. God, I could make a twelve-step call on an empty lot, and it would have the same effect. It doesn't matter.
As long as I try. That's all I have to do. It's amazing to me that out of that carnage and that wreckage, the thing that I thought was the worst part of my life has now become my major strength. That's just amazing. It's something that was given to all of us in our weakness, and now it's become our strength. And at times, only I can reach another alcoholic. Clergy can't do it. Shock treatment, psychotherapy, treatment centers, nothing.
Just me telling my story. And when I go on a twelve-step call, I do what the book says we're supposed to do. I don't talk to him about his drinking. I talk to him about my own drinking, and I try to do that within the scope of my own experience and hope that that alcoholic can identify their drinking from my story. And that's how it works, and that's all I'm supposed to do. I try to remember Ray's example, too.
It would have been real easy for him to say, Well, Jack, I've been to see you twice. You've been drunk both times. It's late at night. I'm in bed, and you're drunk again. Now, if you really want help, you call me up at 10 o'clock at the office tomorrow morning, and we'll see. But Ray didn't do that. He said, I'll be right over. And I hope I always remember that. Sometimes I worry. I sit in a meeting, and you hear people say, Boy, I don't go on twelve-step calls if they've been drinking.
And I think, Jesus, how quickly we forget. But that's how it works. The last thing was the spiritual. Now, I'm a Roman Catholic. I mentioned that. And when I got to AA, I had forgotten all of that and everything. I was pretty much an atheist when I got here. And then when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, it seemed fashionable to be agnostic, so I decided to switch, so I became an agnostic. But I got turned off on God very early in life.
I got to kindergarten in Chicago, and I can remember the nuns looked at me that first day, and they said, Little boy, we have some bad news for you. We think you're going to hell. And I said, Why? And they said, Well, just about everybody does. But they said, If you're real lucky, you might get off with 266 trillion years in purgatory. And they explained that a purgatory year was nothing like an earth year.
They're an awful lot longer. And all of that stuff. My parents had a book of indulgences. That's something you do over here to get time out of purgatory over here. And if I had done something wrong, I'd go to the book of indulgences and do something that I thought equaled the time I had coming in purgatory, so that when I died, I could go right on up. Just nonstop. I'd miss Mass on Sunday, and I'd say, God, please don't kill me this week.
I'll go to two Masses next Sunday, I promise. Then I'd miss this next Sunday, and I'd say, God, don't kill me. I'll go to three. I promise I'll go to three. And that went on. I got 21 Masses behind. I thought to hell with it. I'm never going to make it. I'm going to hell. And I just kind of gave up on the whole thing. But I don't want to alienate any Catholics. I'm a practicing Catholic today, and they've changed, and so have I.
But those were my early memories. I went to the University of Minnesota, along with what was known as the West Bank crowd, and they didn't have much to offer either. So by the time I got into AA, I had kind of forgotten about God. But I'd miss the whole point. It was the big who? Willingness, honesty, and open-mindedness. And that's all that was required. That's all I had to do. And that's how I made my beginning on this spiritual walk.
I'll share my spiritual walk with you today. I was sober a couple of years, and things were pretty good, but it wasn't what I wanted it to be. And I got down on my knees one day, and I was in my home, and I asked this God, in my understanding, to reveal Himself to me because intellectually, I would never be able to believe. I had tried too many times. Too much pride. My ego was too big. And God did reveal Himself to me that day.
And Bill Wilson talks about the hot flash that he had in Charlie Towns Hospital. And I had a hot flash that day too, and it gets better all the time. Don't look for any halos, by the way. You won't find any. The big difference between what I used to be and what I am today is that I'm a forgiven man. I'm not a good man. I'm a forgiven man. And I know exactly why I'm here now, and I know exactly where I'm going, and that's all been settled with me.
And I worry sometimes about… I see touches of spiritual self-righteousness within AA, and we have a little saying I think we ought to get rid of. Somebody introduced me from the podium one time and said, he talks the talk because he walks the walk, and God, don't do that to me because I can't live up to that edict. I really can't. And the God that I found in AA is a loving and a forgiving God. And I know grace now, and I know mercy, and that's what I live by.
[00:55:00]
St. Augustine said, when you sin, sin boldly. And I've tried to live up to that, I'll tell you. But I really do. I worry about it. But that's what happened to me. And it's been the best part of it. I'm not insensitive to the fact that a lot of members of AA get here and they lose everything they have after they get to Alcoholics Anonymous. They get divorced and they lose their homes, and they have a lot of bad things happen to them.
I know that. And if that happened to you, I'm sorry. But that's not what happened to me. I guess the best thing has been that I found a God of my own understanding, and that would have never happened without Alcoholics Anonymous, never in a million years. I got my wife and my children back, and things are going well there. You'd be amazed at how much Gene has straightened out since I stopped drinking.
It's just amazing how that works. And I love her today, and I think we're going to get old together. I really do. That's if she straightens out pretty quick. And my kids love me too, and I never thought I'd have a relationship with them. One of the hardest things for me during my drinking was one day I went to give one of my daughters a hug, and she pushed me away. And I asked Gene, I said, what have you been telling them about me?
That they hate me now. And she said, you know, I'd never do that to you, Jack. I'll tell you why they pushed you away. It's because they're afraid of you. Well, my daughters aren't afraid of me anymore. They think I'm pretty neat, and I don't do anything to dispel that either. And I'm very careful to hug and kiss my daughters a lot, and it's just really neat. They know that when they go to bed, I'm going to be there in the morning, and they know that they're not going to wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning listening to some animal screaming at their mother anymore.
And that's just been really great. I got my job back, and there's been several offers of promotion. Things are going pretty well out there. Financially, I was in way, way, way over my head, I'll tell you. I had three loan companies, a couple of banks, and credit cards, and on and on. I was sober a couple of years, and God took care of that in a very unique way. We came into some money as a result of litigation.
We didn't have any idea that this was even going to happen, but it did. We got $20,000. The lawyer got a third. We wound up with $13,028. We sat down and had a credit card cutting up party and paid every bill we had except for the two cars and the house. And when we got all done paying the bills, it came out to $13,004. Now, you can believe that's a coincidence if you want, but I think that's God, as I understand Him, telling me, all right, Jack, I'm going to bail you out one more time, and I'm going to give you $24, you and Gene go have lunch.
And that's exactly what we did. We have all the credit cards again, and we're right back in up to here. Are you listening, God? We're in trouble again. I have usefulness today that I never thought I'd have in a million years. I didn't have a friend when I got to AA, and now I number my friends literally in the hundreds. And I never thought that's the neatest thing. I guess that's why I do five, six days a week in AA.
Gene says all the time, I lived with a nightmare of the disease, and now I'm living with a nightmare of the recovery, you know, that kind of thing. But it's just been really nice. That doesn't mean that every day is good. I'll tell you, there are days when I go through a lot of pain, and we have a couple of daughters, as I said, and sometimes they get off on the wrong track. But I suffer pain with a big difference.
I try not to suffer in ignorance. Bill wrote a letter to a guy in 1950, and he said, I used to commiserate with everybody that suffered, but now I only commiserate with those people that suffer in ignorance, that do not understand the usefulness and the utility of pain. And I try to remember that. And I have people I can call up, and I do do that now today. But I'll tell you, some days those character defects jump out, and they grab a hold of me, and I get angry.
It's an old joke, but I'm like the little boy whose mother caught him masturbating, and mother said, little boy, if you don't stop that, you're going to go blind. And he said, well, can I do it just until I need glasses? I guess it's not so old. But I'm just like that little boy. These character defects will jump out, and I'll say, well, I'm only going to resent for a little while. I've learned a lot in AA, and I'll just do it until I feel like getting drunk, and then I'll quit.
Or I'm going to feel sorry for myself just for a while, because there's some pleasure in that for me, but I'll stop before I get drunk, and I know just how far I can go now. Or I'll lust for a while. I'm a happily married man, and yet I walk around, and I have this lust sometimes, and it grabs all. But I won't do it for very long, just until I feel like getting drunk. And I play those crazy games, and I get angry with God.
I really do. I get angry that I have to live with the burden of those damn character defects. But most of the time, it's real good. I'm terribly, terribly grateful. I wasn't aware that most of the alcoholics never make it this far. I thought all the alkies were in AA. I really did. But they're not. But they're not. Way over 90% of the Alkies never get this far, never in a million years. General Service Conference says we're about 500,000 in this country, and there's anywhere from 20 to 30 million Alkies out there.
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So they never get this far, never. Most of them live out there and they go crazy out there and they die out there. They never get this far. And that's what happened to my father. They found my dad in a pool of his own vomit down at the mission one morning. And he had aged, he was 57 when he died, but he looked like he was 90. And I hated him. I was glad he was dead, I really was. I hoped that he was in hell, that's how bad I hated him.
And it was a useless death. He had no friends, nothing. There was nobody at his funeral. And it was a tragic death, it really was. But I don't hate him anymore. He wasn't a bad man. He was just sick. He was terribly, terribly sick. But I'll tell you, I watched a bright, vibrant, handsome, well-educated human being go right down into what most people consider the dregs of society, and he could not or would not stop.
He lost everything a human being can lose, and he couldn't stop. And that's the way he died. But maybe he died so that I would remember, and maybe that helped me to live. And I talk to him now. I tell him that I'm not angry with him, and I'm sure he's in a position to help me out, and I ask him to do those kinds of things. If you're relatively new, I hope there's somebody that's new here tonight. I really do.
Because if I can make it, anybody can make it. Honestly. I have a lover's quarrel with a part of Chapter 5. It says, If you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, etc. Well, I didn't want what you had, and I sure as hell wasn't willing to go to any length to get it. But the power of this program reached out and grabbed a hold of me anyhow. And if there was any justice in this world, I would have been dead and in hell a long time ago.
Justice wasn't applied in my case, though. I've been a victim of a lot of mercy. And if it can happen to me, it can happen to you. It really can. If you were forced to be here tonight and you don't want to be in AA, good. Hang around. A lot of people worry about members coming in, people joining AA that don't belong in AA. Well, I don't see a whole lot of that. I think that's a bunch of hooey. People that belong stay in those that don't leave. I don't worry too much about that.
But this is a good place to find out if you belong here or not. I've watched the winners, and I have my private little survey. They do four things, and they do them with regularity. They don't do them well, but they do them with regularity. The first thing that they do is they go to meetings. I don't know anybody that's sober that doesn't go to the meetings. I don't think God wants me sitting home in fellowship with myself reading the big book.
He wants me here with you. You lean on me, and I'll lean on you, and today we'll stay sober together. So I think you must go to the meetings. The second thing that they do is they work the steps. They work the steps to the level of their understanding. And that doesn't mean they do it well. I don't do it well. Some days I don't do it at all, but they try to work the steps. The next thing that they do is they read the big book.
You read it once, you read it twice, you read it a third time, and then you sit down and study it. I don't read the Hazel and stuff, and I don't read the CompCare stuff and all that. Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not knocking it. If you read it and it helps you, then God bless you. But I think if you're new, you should get a grounding in the big book, and if you don't, you're going to shortchange yourself.
The last thing that these winners do is they get a sponsor or two or three, and they talk to them on a routine basis. They depend on them. I've got a couple of sponsors. Ray is sober 28 years now, and Warren is sober 29 years. They told me to stick with the winners, and I've been accused of overreacting, but I wanted to say there's a real sense of urgency about my sobriety, and I never, ever, ever want to leave this and get drunk again.
So you do what you're told. If you're brand new, you just do what you're told. You don't have to like it, and guess what? You don't even have to understand it. You get enough childlike faith to do it just because you've been told to do it, and it is in the doing that you will come to understand. My time is up. God bless, and thanks a lot.