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Source: DICOBE-00355 – Tom I – SESSIONS BY THE SEA – 1980-09-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00355-tom-i-sessions-by-the-sea-1980-09-15.mp3 Duration: 01:04:08
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Dr. Tom Iverston, Alcoholic, Al-Anon, Alateen, Narcotics Anonymous, Al-Anon, Alateen, Narcotics Anonymous, Alateen, Narcotics Anonymous, Alateen, Narcotics Anonymous, Alateen, Alateen, Alateen, Narcotics And he has really gone all out along with the others to really help us get settled in, and I very much appreciate that. I appreciate the opportunity of being here. I'm one who counts it an honor to be asked to share among my fellow alcoholics, and I'm one who is well aware that it's not because of any special skill or expertise that I have that my story is like yours.
I don't know if I'm a typical alcoholic or not. I don't even know if there's such a thing as a typical alcoholic. I'm one who came into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous at a very young age, back when young people in AA were not all that common. So in that sense, I may not be typical in that I came along some time back. If I stay sober till Groundhog Day of next year, that will have been 24 years of continuous sobriety. I am deeply grateful for that.
Thank you very much. My dry date was February 2nd, 1957, and back then we were a quarter of a million strong, and there really weren't that many of the quarter of a million who were young. So in that sense, I may not be typical. I'm also a fellow who's had an extremely checkered career, to put it mildly. I'm one who qualifies from a lot of standpoints. I'm basically an institutional-type character.
Seemed like I spent a good portion of my life in and out of various kinds of institutions, and I'll get into that a little later on. I guess a typical alcoholic, if there is such an animal, is one who goes through a riches-to-rags-to-riches experience, so to speak. Most of us tend to go through some sort of achievement cycle, in which we sort of get our act together, and we start to make some gains, and we demonstrate some outstanding abilities, and then we lose it.
And we go down to the bottom, and then if we find this program, we tend to make a comeback. So mine hasn't been quite that way. Mine's not a riches-to-rags-to-riches. Mine's just a rags-to-rags-to-rags-to-riches. So I'm not sure about how typical. I used to think I was born an alcoholic because I got drunk the first time I ever took a drink in my life, and I got drunk the last time I ever took a drink in my life. But I don't really believe that I was born an alcoholic.
I think, instead, I was either born or developed very early in life the emotional characteristics, the personality that made me a ready-made candidate for alcoholism. And when I look back and try to put the pieces together, try to put together what was it that made me a little bit different in my tendencies than other people, the thing that comes to mind right away is that I was always a fellow, as a youngster, who was extremely shy, backward, bashful, a very awkward, clumsy kind of kid.
And I remember those awful feelings of distress at being around other people. I was always very ill-confident. I was always a fellow who felt much out of place. And so along in my teenage years, when I discovered booze, I found something that, for me, was absolutely magic, and I fell in love with that stuff right from the start. I loved everything about it. I loved the places they sold it. I loved the smell of it, the taste of it. I loved those old rock-em-sock-em places down in North Carolina with sawdust on the floor.
I loved all that scuffling and fighting and slipping and sliding and loving and puking. Not the puking. I didn't really love that. But everything else about that, I absolutely loved it. I fell madly in love with booze right from the start.
[00:04:59]
No wonder it did so much for me. It was an enormously dependable friend.
[00:05:05]
I never once in my life got into a situation that was so distressful that I couldn't solve it with booze, no matter what it was. I've never been so fearful that I couldn't steady the fear with booze. I've never been so unable to communicate with people that I couldn't facilitate and ease the communication with booze. So I would have been crazy not to drink. I think that was the seedbed. That was where it came from.
Early in life, I found that, for me, booze was a great solver of those problems. And I drank to solve those problems very successfully. But it didn't last very long. I was the kind of fellow who got into instant trouble, instant trouble with booze. It was a problem for me almost from the start. I think I went through a very brief and tense period of what I call problem drinking. I started drinking seriously when I was 16 years old. By the time I was 18 years old, I was an alcoholic.
Now, I know this by hindsight, of course, like I know everything else about me. Only in looking back am I able to see those changes that occurred. And what I see when I look back is that gradual change that occurred. And with me, it was not a very gradual thing, but it was gradual to the extent that I was just vaguely aware as it happened. I remember in my 18th year is about the time that I started to have a creeping awareness that somehow or other when it came to drinking, I was not quite like other people.
I was in military service at the time with hard-drinking people, people that were holdovers from the Second World War. Drinking was a way of life. But I noticed that even there, my drinking was not quite in step with those. I started to find that I was always the one who finished his drink first. I was always the one who wanted to reorder first. I was always the one who wanted to leave last. So I started to be slowly aware that somehow or other when it came to drinking, I was not quite like other people.
I started to experience difficulty. I started to lose friends. Every friend that I ever had in my life left me in disgust. So it was an awareness that started to present itself in the things that were happening around me. The loss of friends, the sudden and dramatic marriages and divorces. I've been married three times in my life. Once to a lady I didn't even know. Needless to say, she didn't know me either.
So that didn't last very long. Whoops. I think I'm nervous. I got it. So it was that sort of slowly developing awareness that started to evidence itself in those things that were happening to me and around me. The loss of jobs. I set up a pattern of going to jail very early in life. First time I went to jail I was 14 years old. The last time, 24. In between, so many times that I honestly have no idea how many times it happened.
I know that it was somewhere close to the number of towns that I was in. Because I was the kind of drunk that just presented himself in a way that he had to be jailed. The kind of fellow that would go to sleep in the middle of a street, sitting on a sidewalk, in anybody's place of business. And I was a very nuisance kind of drunk. Because it is aggravating when you're trying to run a place of business and you've got somebody laying around like that.
I was always a fellow who puked a lot too. And that's a little testy if you're running a place of business. So it started to present itself that way. I started to get hospitalized. I was hospitalized the first time when I was 18 years old. Just a kid. I barely shaved. And I was hospitalized for the first time for just the effects of drunkenness. Now I'd been hospitalized a couple of times before for drunk and broke something.
But this time I was hospitalized because I got acquainted with that loving condition that we know as the monkeys. 18 years old. And I got on a week's binge. And I got sober. And I didn't do it right. I learned then a lesson I was to never forget. You just don't get sober without something to help you through. Never forgot that. Because I had that brush with the monkeys then. Seeing things that weren't there.
Hearing things that weren't there. And scared mortally to death. So young I didn't even know what was happening to me. To be the beginning of a series of things like that to happen. Hospitals, clinics, doctors, psycho wards. At age 20 I was thrown out of military service with an undesirable discharge out of a psycho ward for alcoholism. No earthly idea what was going on.
[00:10:04]
My alcoholism is something that, as you can see, had many faces. And I can look back at any of those checkered careers. The jail, the hospital, the friends, the wives. All of the things that came and went in my life. And I can see the tell-tale evidence of alcoholism any way I look. Lots of things happened. I was a fellow who went in the short span of 8 years. From age 16 to 24. Went from a fellow in high school at 16.
Filled with all the dreams of youth. To a fellow at 24 who couldn't even hold a job. Living on the streets. Living like an animal almost. Living an almost subhuman existence. And I can see the devastating effects of alcoholism. Hundreds and hundreds of experiences that simply reinforce and prove to me the nature of my condition. And yet, fellow alcoholics, when I try to come to grips with the nature of my condition, all of those things are of secondary importance at best.
And what I'm talking about is this. I believe that right today, just like I mentioned in the beginning, after this period of sobriety, I pray God that it will be at least that much longer. Why? What is it that propels us into sobriety? What is it that motivates? What is it that causes us to hang on when the goings-rough? When I try to capture that nature of the illness, what it was really like, what I like to remember is what happened to me as an alcoholic that not a soul in this world knew about.
Not a soul. It was an inside job. What happened to me that I pray God I'll never repeat is the thing that happened to me as a human being. What happened to my life. And when I look back and try to remember what is it that I pray God I'll never know again, there are a number of things that come to mind. Let me just share just two or three with you. Like, I like to remember not how many jails I was in, but I like to remember what it was like to be 21.
Twenty-one is a time in life when most people are just getting started. They're full of all kinds of hopes and aspirations. They usually feel very good. They're just getting into school or getting out of school, just getting their first job, just falling in love for the first time. It's usually a very optimistic time in life. I remember vividly what I was like at 21, so filled with despair that my constant thought was I just wished it was over.
I pray God I'll never know that feeling of desolate hopelessness again. And I knew it at 21. I like to remember the fear. The kind of fear that produced that basketball in the stomach that every alcoholic in this room has known. That knot in the stomach that just ties your gut. Fear, the nameless, nagging, undefinable fear of alcoholism. I'm not talking about being scared, and you know that. I'm talking about fear that's a way of life.
Fear that ran the complete spectrum from anxiety all the way to sheer terror. Fear that was a way of life. Fear that was an ever-present awareness in my conscious mind. The kind of fear that used to wake me up invariably at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning and cause me to jump straight up for no reason. Fear that was a way of life, a fear that was so real you could taste it. I pray God that I'll never know that fear again.
I found the cure for it here. I like to remember the loneliness, the loneliness of alcoholism. How great it is to be able to do what you and I are doing tonight. Think of who we are. Here are a group of people, self-confessed hopeless cases. And here we are gathered in this setting, sharing together in a special kind of way. A special kind of way that is such that I can walk up to anybody here, stick out my hand, introduce myself, and listen back, and I don't need to say another word.
Isn't that special? That's what the heart of this program is about. That kind of sharing and togetherness and fellowship that is the heart of this program. It dispels that loneliness of alcoholism. You and I never have to be alone again. You and I never have to be alone again.
[00:15:00]
Remember the loneliness of alcoholism. Again, a kind of condition that cannot be explained. I think there's something unique about the loneliness of alcoholism. Now, every human being in the world knows loneliness. Everybody. But there's something different about the loneliness of alcoholism. I had a thing that really had a lot of meaning for me a while back that pointed up loneliness to me. I was on the way to a meeting on a Sunday afternoon. It was about noon.
And I went through a little town down in North Carolina. And you know how sometimes you see a thing that just absolutely captures your attention? You know what I'm talking about. You'll see a picture and it just grabs you. And it says something profound to you. And I had that kind of experience going through that town. I watched an old lady who was walking along the street. And she was in her 80s if she was a day.
And as she walked along, she did, and you've seen old people do this, she would walk along in sort of a shuffling gait. And in the span of time it took me to drive by, I saw her do it twice. She would take five or six steps. Then she would stop and sort of catch her breath and get her balance. And then she'd go again. And immediately when I saw that lady, what came to mind was this thing of loneliness.
And I thought how lonely this old lady must be. And then I thought about the loneliness of alcoholism. And I thought, I wonder what this old lady would do if I stopped the car and said, well, let me introduce myself. I'm Tom I. and I'm an alcoholic. Let me tell you what a lonely condition that is. I probably wouldn't have gotten a lot of sympathy out of that old lady. Now, I don't know what would happen. It's just my imagination.
But probably that old lady knew more loneliness that day than I'd ever known in my entire life of a kind. But hers was the loneliness of not having anybody. You see the difference? The loneliness of being separated from other people, of not having anybody to share with. Hers was the kind of loneliness that could probably have been relieved by any human being. Probably even me, had I been concerned enough to stop the car and just say, hey, let me give you a hand or let me walk with you.
That would have probably relieved her loneliness. That's the loneliness of deprivation, of not having anybody. That's not the loneliness of alcoholism. The loneliness of alcoholism has absolutely nothing to do with having or not having other people. It has to do with being separated from the human race. It has to do with that thing that started when I was 18 years of age, when I started to feel that somehow or other, when it came to drinking and even when it came to living, I wasn't quite like other people.
That wedge that started to enter between me and other people, so that I started to be separated, and the more I got separated, the higher the wall got, until finally I couldn't relate to anybody except in negative terms. I could hate, I could resent, I could curse, I could despise, but I couldn't relate. That separation, the loneliness that's a product of that, has nothing to do with where people are.
I remember one of the most poignant lonely times I ever had in my life was one Christmas Eve when I just willed myself to be sober and went to be with my family. I don't think I've ever had a more miserable time in my life because I sat there at that beautiful season, I watched my family go through the meaningful experience of sharing Christmas together, the giving of gifts, the singing, the laughter, and I might as well have been from another planet, totally separated even from the closest people in this world to me.
The kind of loneliness that has nothing to do with situations or settings or places or people. I've been extremely lonely on New Year's Eve at a loud party with a band playing and dancing and whooping and hollering and secretly feeling completely isolated from the people. I've felt extreme loneliness in the arms of a loving woman, a time of life if there is ever sharing when it ought to be, and yet feel somehow totally separated and unable to relate.
That's the loneliness that I'm talking about, the kind of loneliness that absolutely drives men mad. I pray God that I'll never know that loneliness again. That and much more is the nature of the condition that I don't want again. That's the nature of alcoholism to me, not the physical events that happen just like Doris and I were sharing. The jails that we were in that really mean something are the jails that were our lives, not the ones that somebody put us in.
That's what my alcoholism was about.
[00:20:02]
I was the kind of drunk that I truly believe would have drunk himself to death. I was a very episodic kind of drunk. I was the kind of guy who never drank with any purpose or control or reason or rational thought, the kind of guy who just blindly lashed out. I drank myself into the weirdest kind of situations you could imagine. I just don't believe I was the kind of fellow who would have ever come to a rational point of decision to reach out for help.
I'll never know that. It was not to come to that sort of an end, obviously. Instead, I was brought to an end, to a stop. I'm not fond of the way I was brought to a stop, because I wound up doing what I think every alcoholic I've ever known has feared doing. Every alcoholic I've ever known, with whom I've shared in any detail, has indicated to me the fear of doing some irreparable damage to other people, the fear of doing something in a blackout that they couldn't undo.
I had those same kinds of fears. I woke up one morning in jail in Genesee County, the state of Michigan, a jail I'd been in a number of times. A man came by a little after I was awake. I knew him. I asked him when I could get out. He said, I hope never, and walked off. I had no earthly idea what he was talking about. Then a little later on, some people in there told me that the night before, I had run down and killed two young people on the streets of that city.
I don't understand a lot about the human mind or much of anything else. But I've come to understand this. The mind will not accept what it can't handle. That was my experience there. That explains a lot of behavior to me. It won't accept what it can't handle. When I had to face the fact that I had done more damage than any drunk ever ought to be allowed to do, I just could not accept it. But then gradually I came to know that that was true.
I'm not going into any detail, of course, about that. This is not the place. What I had to look at was trying to live with why I was still here, trying to live with the enormous burden of guilt, trying to face with what on earth do I do now, all of those kinds of things. I did a lot of thinking. I was in jail, charged with manslaughter. I was kept there for 76 days and then was released on bond. That was the only time I'd ever been in jail in my life that I didn't want out.
I didn't even let anybody know that I was in there. Then somebody let my family know, and they came and got me out. During those 76 days, I did a lot of very deep and serious thinking about what I was faced with and what I was left with, what to do. I made up my mind that I would never drink again. I meant that, fellow alcoholics. I have absolutely no doubt today that I meant that. I didn't drink the day I was released.
I stayed sober by walking the streets. I walked streets that I didn't know. I couldn't stand to face anybody. I couldn't stand to face myself. I walked until I got so tired I couldn't walk anymore. Then I went into my room and didn't sleep. I just sat there. The next morning I got out and started to walk again. I made it until about lunchtime. Then I started to drink, of course. For the next few months, I drank like nobody I've ever seen.
I'm not talking about raucous, two-fisted drinking. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about pathological drinking. I'm talking about pathetic drinking. I'm talking about absolutely spiritless, methodical drinking. I was trying to drink myself to death and was consciously aware. I couldn't live sober. I couldn't live drunk. Every waking moment, my only thought was to blot out and just sort of get to that point of numbness and nothingness.
Many times I can remember that little period just before I would go under, having the conscious thought, God, I hope I don't wake up this time. But, of course, I always did. On November 19, 1956, I had what I pray was my last drink. I certainly didn't think so at the time. I wasn't thinking much of anything at the time. I finished off a bottle of gin that morning. It wasn't much, about that much. I finished it off and was going to court.
It was not to a trial. I didn't want a trial. I was going to court to take my punishment. I knew that I wasn't coming back. I went down there that morning. I had no earthly idea what was going to happen. But I stood in front of a man by the name of Stephen J. Roth, a very fine jurist. He retired from the federal bench. He's dead now, but he was a very fine gentleman and a very fine jurist.
[00:25:02]
That day I remember Steve Roth and I remember what he talked about. I remember some things that he said to me that I heard. Then I heard him sentence me to 5 to 15 years in the Michigan State Prison System. I had been a real character in my life. Going to jail was a very common occurrence in my life, but going to a penitentiary was not. I remember, as if it were today, immediately I felt a sense of fear, because I didn't know what was going to happen.
It was an instinctive reaction, but almost simultaneously the most real sense of relief that I'd ever known. Because, fellow alcoholics, I knew that it was over. You know what I'm talking about. I knew it was done, and it was a relief. It was not a relieving kind of relief. It was the relief of resignation. I knew it was done. The next day, November 20, 1956, I was loaded up literally on a chain with five other guys, loaded in a vehicle and carried off to Jackson Prison.
I remember that as if it were today. I don't think I'll ever forget that. I remember the pain and the hopelessness and the defeated young man that walked into that place, absolutely resigned to the fact that I would never come out of there and really didn't care. Just an absolutely beaten-up, defeated, helpless, hopeless piece of humanity. I remember walking into that place, thought I had gone there to find the end.
Little did I know that it was to be the beginning. It certainly was not the beginning because of any magic that anybody worked there or any will that I had or any desire that I had. Let me tell you about the miracle of this program in my life, the miracle of God in my life. I was interviewed, and I really was a mighty sick young man. I had been myself for the first 30 days that I was there and never spoke to a human being unless somebody asked me a direct question.
I just sat there and stared in his face or read or did anything I could to keep from thinking. Somewhere during that time I was interviewed one day by a little old male social worker. A fellow, Mr. Martin was his name. Fresh out of college, a bright-eyed, shiny-faced young fellow. Didn't know beans about alcoholism. But I had an experience with Mr. Martin that was to be a very critical point in my life.
He interviewed me like lots of other people had. I'd been interviewed by experts. I'd been interviewed by veterans. And I had had many people point out to me that it looked like I had a lot of trouble with booze. And I knew that. I knew that I was a drunk. Thought I was a little crazy. So there was no shock in me there. This fellow did what about everybody else that had ever reviewed my record did, pointed out to me it looked like I had a lot of trouble with booze.
But then he did something that nobody had ever done before. He said simply, we've got an AA group here and I think you better go. And that was exactly the way he put it. It wasn't an encouraging invitation. It was just a flat statement. I think you better go. And the interview ended. I had never heard of Alcoholics Anonymous in my life. I didn't even know what it meant. I went on back to my cell and a few days later I got a little slip of paper.
It wasn't a letter, it was just a little slip of paper. In my cell it said, report to your first meeting, Groundhog Day, 1957. It didn't say Groundhog Day. It said February 2nd. And I tell you, I was not overjoyed about going. I was 24 years old. I didn't believe I was an alcoholic. I knew I was a drunk. I knew I was crazy. I knew I was a bum. But I didn't believe I was an alcoholic. And somehow or other when I thought of Alcoholics Anonymous, the thing that immediately came to mind for me was that it was a sad thing.
Somehow I could picture AA as a very sad, morose kind of thing. I could just picture a bunch of old, worn-out dudes sitting around in a dim room. But God knows I had enough trouble already. I just was not overjoyed about going. And February 2nd, 1957 came. And I swear, it wasn't all that different, really. I went into that first meeting. There were 300 people sitting in that room. And there wasn't a smile in the crowd, I don't believe.
There wasn't much to smile about. They all sat there. They didn't look bad. Every one of them dressed just alike. They all looked about alike. One guy spoke to me that day. They had an officer on the door. The officer said, Yep, sit down. I sat down in the middle of the 300. In the middle of the 300, I didn't know what they were going to do, but whatever I thought,
[00:30:00]
that wasn't it, because some of it I expected. The reading and the praying and all that kind of stuff, that seemed somehow fairly normal, and I could cope with that a bit. Then they introduced the speaker. I shall always love the memory of the man who spoke at my first meeting. Some of you may have known him. His name was George Walker. Everybody called him Shy. He was from Kalamazoo, Michigan. Probably one of the greatest human beings I've ever known, a dynamic member of Alcoholics Anonymous who helped literally thousands and thousands of people in the time that he was passing through.
I listened to Shy Walker at my first meeting. When they introduced him, I was sitting back where any respectful new member would be, way back, and I sat there and looked at this guy. You remember, I came from off the streets, and I was fairly accustomed to a seamy side of life. I was about as close to shock-proof as a fellow could get. I don't know of anything in the world that I have not done. I don't get much excited anymore, because I'd be doggone if I didn't do everything that a fellow could do before I got here.
If I didn't do it, I just wasn't able, or never thought of it. I never took drugs. They just didn't have any back then, much. I sure would have if I'd have known about it. So I was not exactly a shrinking violet. But I sat there and listened to him, and he was a pretty nice-looking fellow from a distance. If you got close to him, he wasn't exactly a pretty man. He had been a pro-fighter at one time, and apparently not a very good one.
He was a beat-up old dude. The reason they called him shy, he was supposed to have been some crazy gangster, and he was, around Chicago. He loved Chicago better than Peter loved the Lord. I sat there and listened to this fellow, and he told stuff, folks, that I wouldn't have told to anybody, the drunkest I'd ever been in my life. And I swear, he shocked me. I couldn't imagine, what on earth was he doing that for?
It was too bizarre to make up. It had to be the truth. Ain't nobody tell a lie like that. And it made no sense to me. I made no connection with anything he was saying. He was as unlike me as anybody I have ever met before or since. The only man I have ever seen in my life who talked naturally like gangsters do in the movies. You remember the old Edward G. Robinson guy there, if Shy Walker said he loved you, it would be somewhere like that.
A real violent little old beat-up fellow. But something happened that day, Shy Walker communicated something to me, and I'll always love the memory of that man. He became one of my first sponsors. It was not an awareness of anything that happened. If somebody had stopped me when I went out of that meeting and said, Well, what did you just do? If I had said anything, I would have probably said, Well, you wouldn't believe it.
I have just heard a crazy man telling some crazy stuff, and they're going to be after him with the net before long. I didn't associate with anything he said. But something stuck with me, and later on, again, like everything I know, it's with hindsight. I look back and I think, What happened to me that day? Shy Walker introduced me to something I'd never seen before. He was the first man I had ever seen talk about not drinking, who sounded pleased about it.
The only man I've ever seen that talked about not drinking didn't sound like he was talking about a funeral. He was a fellow who was happy. He didn't need to tell you that, folks, it just jumped out and grabbed you. You couldn't deny it. That man died, I think, absolutely the way he wanted to die, almost. He died on the steps of the State Hospital of Ypsilanti, Michigan, on the way in to conduct an AA meeting.
I think if he could have changed anything about it, it would have been on the way out after the meeting. What a remarkable fellow. I asked him one time after I got to know him and love him, why was it that he always had that joy, that effervescent quality that was so important. I hope I never forget what he said. Basically what he said was, he said, When I go into a meeting, I imagine that if folks will just give me half a chance, I'll let them know that I'm an alcoholic.
He said, I might even let them know that I've been sober at that time, it was 15 years. He said, Somehow or other, I always figure that there's going to be somebody in that room in a little worse shape than me.
[00:35:02]
He said, I figure when I tell them that kind of stuff, that I'm an alcoholic and I've been sober 15 years, that I ought to act like it. You understand the message? Of course you do. That's what Shy Walker communicated to me that day, the fact that there's hope. I think that somehow or other he touched a flickering hope that was in me. I went back the next week, I went back every week, I never missed a meeting the whole time that I was in that insane place.
Not because it had any great meaning for me, but I think because I just must have known that there was something here. I didn't have to go back, of course. I could have sat in my cell and stared at folks across the way if I wanted to. I was not one who took very rapidly to AA. I felt very much apart from here. That same loneliness that I knew as a practicing alcoholic, I knew as an AA member. I was as much apart from AA as I was from people before I came in.
I didn't instantly resolve these things. I sat in AA meetings and I felt just as apart from AA here as I'd ever been from anybody, because I was still the outsider. I said I was an alcoholic. I didn't really believe it. I just hated to be the only one in the whole group that was something else. So I said I was, but it didn't mean anything. I sat there and went through the motions. I listened to the same speakers, read the same books, participated in the same discussions to the extent that I could.
But it had no meaning to me. I'm one who does not believe much in the process of osmosis when it comes to AA. I'm not one who believes that you can attend X number of meetings and something will automatically happen. I base that on my own experience and nothing else, except what I've just come to believe. I'm not one who believes there's anything accidental about this program. I've never met a person who has just accidentally gotten sober, and darn sure nobody has just accidentally stayed that way.
It's hard work. It's hard work. That was very much my experience. Now, I do believe that it's a miraculous program. I believe with all my heart that Alcoholics Anonymous is a God-inspired, God-guided, God-given program. But I don't think it's one that's just given gratis. I believe this, for whatever reason, I don't know why. I think God has given me two chances at this thing called life. He gave me one when I was born to my mother, and in the fairly short span of 24 years I completely wrecked it, threw it away, it was gone.
Did everything but die. I was still breathing, but that's about it. Reached a point that I had to be confined, locked up like a wild beast, not even fit to live with human beings, and that life was done. I know of absolutely nothing redeeming that I can say about it. It would have been better had it not happened. And then for some reason or other, I look back and I see the undeniable steps that started to happen.
I believe that God guided, influenced Judge Steve Roth in what he said to me, because I remember all these years and things that he said. I think it was the beginning of the listening process. I believe that God had his hand on his shoulder when he did that. I believe with all my heart that he took that little old rookie social worker and influenced what he said and how he responded to me, because he's the first person, a rookie, who ever said anything that made sense to me.
I know without a shadow of a doubt that God's hand was firmly in the hand of Shia Walker in everything that he was and in everything that he gave. So I believe that God gave this program to me. I believe that he took me because I didn't even know what it was, I didn't even know I had the condition. And I believe that he led me to this program and gave it to me freely, didn't do a thing, I didn't even have to have a willingness, just gave it to me.
But I believe just as surely that that free gift came to an end, because I don't believe that God gave that program to me just so I could grin and say, Thank you, sir. I believe that he gave me a mind, some capabilities, and expects me to use them. I think he let me have a grace period to sort of get myself together. And I base that on this. My second chance at life started when I was eight months in the program.
I went to a meeting one day and there was a man who spoke. He's now a close personal friend of mine, has been for many years, a fellow named Johnny from Flint, Michigan. And Johnny's the kind of guy that's always enthused about something. And it just so happened that at that time he was enthused about the fourth step. And he went into, for one solid hour, a dissertation on the fourth step. He read parts of it out of the book, he talked about the importance of being honest, and he stressed the critical importance of writing the inventory.
When he got through, I went back to myself and I said, OK, well, I'm going to try this
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thing. Now, I've always been a fellow who, I'm a very curious fellow, but by the time I get out of here I'll probably know a great deal about Ocean City, Maryland. I mean to know a great deal about it. I mean to know about the session by the sea. I'm a curious fellow, I always have been. I tried to read when I was drunk. I used to read with one eye, couldn't see. But I've always been an avid reader, a curious fellow.
In those first eight months, hey, I had tried to learn, I'd read everything I could find, but I read it like it was something you check out of the library. It was a study. It was up here. It didn't mean anything in my life. But I understood what he was talking about. It wasn't Greek. I went back to myself. Now I had been doing some mental inventory taking, if you will. That's sort of an exercise in futility for alcoholics.
We are, without a doubt, the world's most profound schemers. I don't know anybody in the world that can rationalize quicker and better than alcoholics about anything. God knows we are absolutely—well, anyway, you know what I'm talking about. I had been sort of thinking about it, and I was at a point, and it sounds a little silly now, but I was at a point where I was reflecting, and what I had figured out—some of you all may relate to this—I was trying to figure out how on earth such a nice fellow could have got in such a mess.
So what I was doing was looking back, and at that point I had figured out what went wrong. My mother and father broke up when I was a small child, about four or five years old. About a year later, she remarried. She remarried to a little old dunce of a man, just a runt, a little old guy named Alvin—absolutely one of the most outrageously obscene people I had ever seen in my life. Just an ugly little old devil, and I mean he had nothing.
That guy, I knew that thing wasn't my daddy, but I was little enough that I had to call it daddy. I always had a burning resentment about him. I always promised myself if I ever got big enough I was going to whip him, and then when I got big enough, I was too big. I never did get to whip him, he died. I'm not altogether kidding either, I still don't like him, I don't even like him dead. I kind of figured out anybody who grew up under that kind of influence would have to be a little haywire.
So what I meant to do, in typical genuine alcoholic style, I meant to write a little story about Alvin and life's cruelty and, you know, the same old stuff. The Founders were wise when they said, write the inventory. Have you ever tried to write yourself one of those fairy tales? That's the silliest exercise I've ever seen. I wrote about two or three lines about old Alvin, and then without intending to whatsoever, I started to write about me.
I don't mind telling you, fellow alcoholics, that was without a doubt, bar none, the most important day's work this old boy has ever done. Because when I got through with it, friends, the fun and games were over. I came to that moment of truth that old Hemingway wrote about a lot. I came face to face with me. That day I looked squarely at the fact, based on the evidence of my own life, that I was an alcoholic, and I admitted that fact that day.
I went back to Alcoholics Anonymous different than I had been. I went back with a foundation. I went back knowing that I belonged. And you know the thing that's incredibly astounding to me, really? Never once since that day have I ever seriously doubted what my trouble is. I have never once seriously doubted that I'm an alcoholic. I know that. That is the basic truth of my life. Never once. I've come, God knows I've come, close to drinking, but never once with the deception that I don't know what's wrong with me.
I went back to Alcoholics Anonymous. And it was not any quick thing for me. I don't know if I was the dumbest fellow that's ever been here or the stubbornest, but I was a mighty sick fellow. I know that. And I was not one who could readily do what I'm doing tonight. Who Could Readily Do What I'm Doing Tonight, If Anybody Had Ever Told Me That I'd Get Up in Front of a Group of Folks and Tell Stuff Like I've Done Here Tonight, There Ain't No Way I Would Ever Believe It, I Was in AA for Three and a Half Years Before I Ever Talked,
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But Folks, Don't Kid Yourself That Talking Is What This Is About, I Think Probably What I'm Doing Here Tonight Has Some Value in the Program, But It's Probably the Least Important Thing I Know Of in the Recovery Process. I Believe There's Some Magic in This Program, But It Ain't The Kind of Magic That's Hard to Understand. Remember A Minute Ago I Said There Ain't No Such Thing As Accidental Sobriety, and I Believe That, But I Believe There Is A Little Magic Here. It's Magic of Action, The Magic of Action, Because What I Found Was That There Were Some Things I Could Do, And What I Became Was The Fellow Who Came In, I Started Setting Up the Chairs, I Started Working with the Ashtrays, I Started Doing Those Quiet, Hard Things That Have to Be Done, and What Enormous Awards Came to Me.
I Couldn't Work Any Magic on the Thinking Part of It, But the Physical, Sweating Part of It I Could Do, and By Golly, It Was a Start, and It Started to Make It Work for Me. I Started to Become a Part of the Program, Not a Part from It, and It was Absolutely the Magic, the Miracle of Action, the Miracle of Action in My Life. The Other Part of It, the Working Part of It, I Found Working the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous the Hardest Work I've Ever Done in My Life. Now, I Don't Know About You, But I'm Not One Who Found This a Comfortable Fit. Everything in this program was as if it were backward for me, and I Fought Everything in It, I Fought Everything in It. Thank God I Lost Every Fight. It's a Strange Thing We Talk About, the Paradoxes. I Don't Know What It Is. I Fought That First Step Forever, and It Was Only When I Took It Simply as It Is, Looked at That Step, Admitted We Were Powerless Over Alcohol, Our Lives Were Becoming Manageable, a Statement of Abject Failure if There's Ever Been One, but Isn't It Strange, the First Time I Ever Honestly Made that Admission to Myself, the Greatest Victory I've Ever Known, the Greatest Peace I've Ever Known, the Greatest Pride I've Ever Known, was when I took that step. And that experience revisited each of the steps, fighting and kicking and screaming all the way, so that it worked. It's a Strange and Remarkable Thing to Me. The First Free Day I Ever Knew in My Life, I Mean Ever in My Entire Life, was in Jackson Prison, a time in my life when I had absolutely nothing that most people consider important, didn't even have a name. Behind a wall so high that I couldn't see sunshine but a few hours a day, locked up in a cage like an animal in a zoo, isn't that a strange place to get free? What I learned is the truth of this program, the greatness of this program, it doesn't make any difference if you're in jail or Yale.
This program works. It worked for me in Jackson Prison. It gave me the hope, it gave me the fact that I knew I could live again. Not only live, but feel good about it, feel free. The first happiness I ever knew was the same place. Because I found that these are things, again, it's an inside job. It's not an outside job. Nobody can give me freedom, nobody can take it away. Nobody can give me happiness, nobody can take it away. It's an inside job. Same thing.
I don't know that I have ever solved a problem in Alcoholics Anonymous. Not ever. I don't remember ever learning how not to hate. I don't remember learning how to stay sober in nine easy lessons. I don't know that I've ever solved a problem and just said, Eureka, I've got it figured out. Mine hasn't been that kind of experience. I don't know if this makes sense to you or not, but the way this thing looks like to me, and I want to just sort of sum up this recovery process and hit a couple of other things and then quit. Basically it looks like this to me. When I came in, picture the scales of justice. Picture that old gal with that balancing scale, and think in terms of this.
This is what my life was like when I came in. The character defects. I was weighted down with all of those defects of character, the fear, the loneliness, the hate, the misery, all of those things that were my life. And as this miraculous program started to hit and have effect in my life, as I started to relate to Shy and to lots of other guys like him, as I started to just have that feeble faith, as I started to take those tentative steps of action, what started to happen?
It started to even up a bit. What I found that's a profound truth for me is that hate and love don't coexist. Now I've never learned to solve hate, but I learned to love. I learned to be loved. I learned to be a loving person. And as that started to happen, the scales started to balance. The same with fear. I don't know how to solve fear, but I know that faith and fear don't
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coexist. And as I started to get that flickering faith, what started to happen was this. Now weekends like this, it goes away over here. I'll sit in here for four days and I'll just lap this up. And the scales will be like this when I get back. I'll leave here with my buckets of darn foliage running over. The scales tip out of sight. Most of the time it's some of this, because I know that when I go back Monday, I'm going to have a whole lot of folks mad and I'm going to have to do some unpleasant things. I'm going to have to make decisions. I'm going to have to work. Most of the time it's like that. And that's what this process has been like for me, maintaining that balance. I got out of jail. Don't get the notion that I'm going to go much over because I'm going to quit. I told you I'm going to quit this stuff and enjoy it. I do want to get you out of jail, though. Getting out of jail ain't no difficult thing. It just takes time.
But I finally got out. I don't know if you can relate to this or not. I know there's at least one or two folks here that can relate to it. You can't imagine what your frame of mind is in an institution unless you've been there. It's like understanding alcoholism. You can't really know what it feels like. You may understand it, but you don't know what it feels like. I remember times I used to sit in the institution and I used to wonder pensively if I would ever have a friend, ever. I'm talking for real. I'm talking if I ever would ever have a friend, in or out of AA. I used to wonder if I would ever be able to have any semblance of decent life. And I truly wondered if it would be possible, because folks like me coming out of that kind of experience aren't exactly a marketable commodity. There ain't no people out recruiting for folks like me. And I truly wondered if I would ever be able to be accepted as a just a normal human being again, even in AA. The first night that I got home out of Jackson Prison, I went to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm sure that everybody in that room knew I had just got out of something, because I was dressed in one of those suits that they put you in, and I swear I was a funny looking thing. Looked like I just got off the boat. And if it made any difference to anybody in that room, I couldn't tell it. And you can tell if it does. I think it might have made a little difference, in the sense that everybody in that room, there were only about 12, but I think every one of them came over to me, grabbed that hand, said, glad to have you. And they meant it. You know if they don't mean it. And I knew I was home. I knew the acceptance, the greatness that is this program.
If you look around this room, wouldn't it be something if we just knew each other. You know, like I said, we can relate to each other. But think of what a remarkable group of people we are here tonight. Think of the stories that are here. Every person in this room has looked death bang in the eye and come back. What a truly marvelous group of people this is. The loving acceptance of Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's what I felt in spades that night when I walked into that room. I knew I was home. I'm a fellow who's been deeply blessed with some things in Alcoholics Anonymous. Let me share this with you in the hope, and I hope very much, that it will not be confusing to anybody. I'm always a little reluctant to talk about some things, because I know that, I know what I'm trying to say, but I'm not sure what folks are hearing. I went into a town several years back, and a fellow that's sitting in the club, when I walked in, he said, hey, I want to see you. And I said, good, what about? He said, you got me drunk. And I said, well, hell, how did I do that? And he said, well, you came up here about six months ago, and you told your story, and you told about all the great stuff that had happened to you, and I thought, well, God knows, it doesn't happen to me. And I got drunk. So we talked about that.
I have had some truly miraculous things happen in my life, and I want to just very quickly share a few of those things with you for a point. When I got out of jail, remember the feeling that I was just talking about, wondering if you'd ever be accepted to be a friend. Two months after I was out of that institution, I'd gotten very active in a small prison near my home. Two months after I was out, I was asked to be the outside sponsor of that group.
Now, that may not mean a whole lot to you, unless you can identify with the feelings I was talking about, what an enormous, enormous affirmation that was. About the same time,
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about two months after I was out, I was paroled from the state of Michigan with two entries on my parole papers. One said this man is to never drink alcoholic beverages, and the other one said this man is to never operate a motor vehicle. Now, I was a very fatalistic fellow. I accepted that as a reality in my life. And about two months after I was out, my parole officer came to me one day and he said, you're pretty active in this AA thing, aren't you? And I said, yes sir. He kind of scared me. I thought he might be going to slow me down or something. And he said, wouldn't it be a little easier on you if you could drive? And I said, yes sir, but I can't. And he said, okay, let me check a bit. About two weeks later, I got a call one day and he said, can you meet me up at the Sears store? That sounds like something down home, but the Sears, the license agency was in the Sears store. And I went up there. He handed me my driver's license. I never took a test. He didn't even know if I could drive, I don't reckon. I didn't even pay for it. Now folks, you can call that what you want to, as long as you don't call it political connections. Don't call it that, but you can call it anything else you want to. I call it a miracle because I had accepted the fact that I would never drive again. And I accepted that. And I had never once even intimated to anybody that I'd like to do anything about it. Free will, walked up and handed it back. That's a miracle. There's a slogan that goes around this program a bit. It says, the program will provide.
The program will provide. First time I ever heard that, I thought it was the silliest thing I'd ever heard. Some guy comes up and says, I'm broke. And you say to him, don't worry about that. Just keep on going to meetings, work the steps. The program will provide. Well, hell, that seems kind of silly. The program will provide. Sounds like witchcraft. But you know what's the truth? It's the pure truth. About five months after I was out, those of you who are active in service know what I'm talking about. We had an election in my area for the district committeeman. Now normally, that's work. That's hard work. And they were looking for somebody to represent as a trusted servant, AA in 12 cities. Who do you reckon they elected? I wouldn't even run him. I didn't even know what a district committeeman was, hardly. But I sure found out. The same guy who wondered if he would ever have, even one friend, would ever be trusted with anything. About two years after I was out, I was sitting in my house one day, and I got a phone call from our state capital.
Guy asked for Mr. I. and I told him that was me. And he said, we're considering expanding our rehabilitation program in the prison system, and we wonder if you might be interested in a position. When you live like I do, you learn to operate at two levels. One is what you show the people level, you know, the interacting level. But the other is the level of reality. And I said, what are you supposed to do? I said, God knows I'd love that better than anything in the world.
To myself, I said, boy, ain't nobody ever hired an ex-con in that sort of position in our state or any other that I knew of, and I never thought it would happen. I had a little bit of education to finish up. He asked me to see if I could knock that out, and I did. In November of that year, I was employed as a supervisor in the rehabilitation division of our prison system. The greatest responsibility I've ever had, the greatest opportunity that I'd ever had up to that point.
I knew without any doubt that when I asked God to let me serve, he did. For nine years, I worked primarily with alcoholics and drug stuff for nine years. And then I started getting some people talking to me about going into management, into administration. And I didn't want to do it. Somehow or other, I just didn't want to be the authority guy. But then I finally recognized that it might broaden whatever influence I could have a bit. And so finally I agreed, and in 1970, I was appointed superintendent of a prison. Now, if you don't think that's a long way from Jackson to being superintendent of a prison, your imagination is limited.
That was ten years ago. About four years after that, I was asked to open and develop a brand
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new institution for a special purpose for youthful offenders in our state, for kids under 18. And I accepted that challenge and opened that facility. It's still running. And then three years later, I was asked to open a second institution, move the age group up to 21, and to link those two facilities and make it a continuum, so to speak. And so I did that. And then about a year and a half ago, I was asked to open yet a third one for females. And we've got that now. We've got those three facilities that function as a consolidated kind of organization. Tremendous responsibility. When we get fully operational, we're still developing, when we get fully operational, we'll have about 700 folks there, about 315 on staff. Enormous responsibility, but what an enormous opportunity. Just to think that me, with the background I had, and I told you the nice side of it tonight, with that sort of background, could be put into this kind of avenue of service is absolutely mind-boggling. It's mind-boggling. A lot of things are coming to me from A, and I want to wrap up on this note. I've worn lots of labels in my life—alcoholic, ex-con, undesirable discharge, failure, reject—lots of labels. And I wear some labels today.
It reminds me something about the new way of life that's ours here. I'm a citizen. I'm a citizen of a town. I vote and I pay taxes, and I'm a concerned member of my community. I'm on the school board in my area. A concerned citizen. A strange new experience. I'm a father. I don't have a single friend that doesn't have grandchildren, and we have two little ones at our house, eleven and nine. A husband. And I mean a husband. I don't mean I'm married.
I mean I'm a husband. And that's a strange new experience for me. I've been married a few times, but I've never been a husband but once. I'm a responsible fellow. I've learned to be responsible. I've become able to serve, and I guess more important of all, willing. Many times when I get to sort of wavering and wondering if I'm on the right track, I simply have to take a look at those institutions filled with young people and just observe the fact that they're just about the same age of the two that I killed many, many years ago, to realize that when God says he'll use you, he will. And to realize that there is absolutely nothing of any value whatsoever in my life that's not a direct product of this program. That's why I'm deeply, deeply grateful. Thank you.
Thank you, Tom. That was tremendous. And thank you for sharing with us another miracle of alcohol.