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Source: DICOBE-00467 – Tom C – CENTRAL ARKANSAS INTERGROUP – 1984-12-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00467-tom-c-central-arkansas-intergroup-1984-12-15.mp3 Duration: 01:15:52
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My name's Tom C. and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, y'all. Well, I can just tell you that Little Rock, AA, is famous the country wide. We all know about Little Rock, AA, in Montgomery, Alabama, and it's all true. I've been hearing about the Little Rock plan since I first came in the program. It's all true. I'm delighted to be here. I think it's great. I really appreciate the opportunity to come out and share in your fellowship, particularly to get to share in David's discussion of the Twelve Traditions this afternoon. I hope any of you that missed that will take the opportunity to talk to some of the folks that heard it or maybe get a tape or something because it's really delightful. It meant an awful lot to me. Thank you, David.
Before I start to talk, I want to say something. You see, we're all having a good time and I appreciate the laughter. It doesn't ever snow in Alabama. Did you ever think you'd probably get rid of them better if you called them dust scrapers? I'm going to take my dust scrapers back to Alabama. We're going to have a good time, and I already have, with the chili and the fellowship and everything. About this time of the evening, when I'm asked to share, it often dawns on me that as good a time as we have, that we're about some very serious business. Alcoholism, the disease that I have, cunning, baffling, powerful, progressive, and terminal, that means it always gets worse and it'll kill you if you don't do something about it.
The things that we laugh about so much now and enjoy, at the time that they happened, they weren't funny. I begin to recognize that there probably are some people here tonight that are fairly new in the program. When you're real close to some of the terror, when you're real close to some of the pain, when you're real close to all of that hurt, it's not so funny. I want you to know that if you're new here and you're still hurting real bad, that there's a whole room full of people that have felt the way you feel, and we all love you, and I love you, because I hurt real bad. When I was in that northeast Oklahoma state mental institution in Venita, it wasn't funny at all when I was there. It's funny sometimes now, but it wasn't funny at all when I was there. I got to share my story with you.
David talked about, this is my Baptist preacher story, and I told myself, I said, Seth, you get to quit telling that story. You've been sharing it for several years now, but I like it. And everywhere I go, before I offend anybody accidentally, I are one, a Baptist, that is. And I don't want to offend anybody, because it just as easily could be something else besides a Baptist. I can't imagine what.
David mentioned Baptist preachers, and everybody has. This is a story about a Baptist preacher in a little South Alabama Baptist church, and I mean, this was a wonderful soul. He was a shepherd of the flock. He was a pastor to the family. He had labored long and diligently in the vineyard of the Lord. And the congregation appreciated him so much that they took up a large collection, a love offering, and they sent the preacher and his wife on an extended vacation over to the islands, to Hawaii. They just had a wonderful time. They sat around the beach and they enjoyed the weather and they observed everything. They just had a wonderful time.
And then they came back, and they were in their car going to church that first Sunday morning that they were back, and the preacher's wife turned to the preacher and she said, hon, what are you going to preach on this morning? And he said with a lot of confidence, he said, well, I'm going to preach on surfing. She said, you what? He said, I'm going to preach on surfing. She said, I thought that's what you said.
He said, no, while we were over there in the islands and sitting there on that beautiful beach, and there was the splendor of the beautiful blue sky and the puffy white clouds stretching on to infinity, the handiwork of the Lord. And there was the power and the grandeur and the majesty of the roaring sea and balance between those elements, those beautiful young people on those boards, and it was beautiful, and I'm going to preach on surfing. I think there's a morality there.
She said, you can't preach on surfing in South Alabama. And they got in a big fuss all the way, I will, I won't, I will, I won't. And they pulled up in front of the church, and she said, if you're going to preach on surfing and embarrass me, I'm going to sit right here. Hmm, and there she sat. Well, the preacher got in the back room, doing whatever they do in the back room before they come out in the front room and do it to us, you know. And he got to thinking to himself, and he said, you know, maybe that good woman's right. Maybe I ought not preach on surfing.
[00:05:06]
And he went over to his file cabinet and he opened the drawer, Joe, and fumbled through there, and way in the back was an old yellowed, moth-eaten, kind of dog-eared, rusty old Baptist sermon on sex. And he looked through it real quick, and he strode into the pulpit. I mean, he's turned up, turned on, turned loose, turned over, he's motivated, he was anointed, he was on fire. He preached the doggone-est Baptist sermon on sex you ever heard.
I mean, ooh, it was wonderful. The little old ladies were cheering, the deacons were ducking down, you know. It was wonderful. And when the service was over, the people just poured out of that little Baptist church, you know, and a couple of the sweet little old ladies saw the preacher's wife sitting over there, and they were just ooh-ing and aah-ing, and they ran up to her, you know, sitting there, and they said, ooh, it was wonderful, it was marvelous, it was the best sermon your husband ever preached.
And she looked up at him, she said, I can't understand that, it's a subject he don't know anything about. She said, he only done it two times, once before we were married and once after we were married. And he fell off both times. You know, that story, I like that story. That story doesn't have anything to do with anything much, but it does show, it does show an absolute and complete and total breakdown in communications, you know.
And if I could, if I was blessed enough, if I was lucky enough, if the higher power would help me, I'd like to communicate a few simple truths about a program called Alcoholics Anonymous and how it saved my life, and it's saving my life one day at a time. But I've been around y'all long enough that you've taught me some things, and I remember that to communicate takes two things. It takes a transmitter, and that's what I are right now, and it also takes a receiver, and that's what I hope that most of you are, but if there's a breakdown on either end of that, then there's no communications.
And I remember so well, I remember so painfully well when I sat in meetings and somebody was standing up here trying to communicate some simple spiritual principles that were keeping them alive a day at a time. And I remember when I sat back there and there was no communications because I heard the words. But at whatever level the program keeps me alive today, it was not getting through to me. I also know, and I'm sorry, but it's probably true, that there are people sitting in here right now who have a disease called alcoholism. That's what I have. And for some reason, none of us know why, but they'll probably decide to drink again.
Don't have to, but they'll probably decide to drink again. And I feel that responsibility, not that I am responsible for anybody getting well. I'm not, and I'm certainly not responsible for anybody staying sick. But the sign on the wall says, I am responsible, and I take that very seriously. We have a good time, like I mentioned a minute ago. But we need to communicate these simple truths because we've been blessed through a book called Alcoholics Anonymous and a fellowship in God as I understand Him. We've been blessed with a great gift, and for that I'm grateful. We've been blessed with a gift of sharing our experience, strength, and hope. And that's what I'm going to try to do. That's all I can do. That's all the program licenses me to do.
David says that we can't share opinions, that we share experiences, and I thoroughly endorse that. We share. We don't counsel or educate or theorize. We just share. So I'm going to share my experience, strength, and hope, and I'm going to tell kind of how it was, like the book says, and what happened, and maybe kind of how it is now. It's wonderful. It's wonderful. And I'm going to do that, I hope, in the way that the people at the downtown group in Montgomery, Alabama taught me. The downtown group, I'm sorry to tell you this, but I'll announce it with a certain amount of humility, is the world's best AA group.
The downtown group of Alcoholics Anonymous in Montgomery, Alabama is the world's best group, and my sponsor, Big Time, is the world's best sponsor in the known universe. And I share a little bit about Big Time. You know, we always laugh like that, but I really believe that you ought to think that your home group, you ought to have a home group, and I really believe that you ought to think that your home group is the best group in the world. If you don't, you've got two choices. One, you can work like a dog to make it the best group. That's probably the best choice. And the other is, you can find another group.
But the home group is the key, it's the touchstone to the program. At least that's the way they taught me, and I can only share again what I have experienced and learned. If I had to describe myself, I'm fixing to, if I had to describe myself as what kind of AA person I was, I would say that I was an extremely ultra-conservative, far-radical, right-wing, big-book AA member.
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If there was a John Burt Society of AA, I'd be in it. And, you know, some of the things I might share with you, some of the things I might say, you might disagree with them. And that's okay, and that's going to hurt my feelings if you tell me about it. But it's okay, it's going to hurt them a lot if you tell me about it. But, you know, it's okay to disagree with me. But I really believe that if you find yourself in that frame of skepticism where you begin to disagree with the big book as you read it, as it is a textbook, a textbook to a way of life called Alcoholics Anonymous, if you begin to disagree with the big book, I think you're on real dangerous ground.
And you really want to just run like crazy to your sponsor or to your home group or to wherever you go or, at best, just start praying as fast as you can. Because if you're like me and you have a disease called alcoholism, cunning, baffling, powerful, progressive, and terminal, that means it always gets worse and it'll kill you if you don't do something about it. And the do-something-about-it goes on.
The do-something-about-it does not stop with sobriety. It doesn't stop with a year of sobriety. It doesn't stop with any period of time. I have a chronic illness, and my sponsor told me that I need a chronic recovery. And that's what the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is for me. You know, I would hope that in sharing my story somebody might be sitting back there and say, you know, if that guy can stay sober, darned if I can't stay sober. See, that's identification. And that's what I see now when I read the stories in the back of the big book.
Now, I remember the time when I read the stories in the back of your big book, and I read those stories and I said, boy, this is better than As the World Turns, you know. And then I saw that section that says they stopped in time, and I read a few of them and I said, uh-uh, they didn't stop in time. If I ever get that bad, I'll quit too. You know, I'm not that bad. And I missed the whole point. I missed the whole simple spiritual truth. We spend a lot of time, I think, talking about the 12 steps of chapter 5. I like to concentrate a good bit on the ABCs of chapter 5. A, that I was alcoholic and could not manage my own life. B, that probably no human power could have relieved my alcoholism. And C, that God could and would if he were sought.
I don't claim that I even did the soughting. I think that you gave me all of that. And I think that by working a daily spiritual program contingent on a conscious contact with God as I understand him, that I can have a wonderful way of life and recovery from this program. Oh, I've got to share something with you quick. There's so many old-timers in the place like Little Rock, and I've been around some of them today. I was in Neosho, Missouri about two years ago, and I mean, there was some old moss-backed old-timers there. I mean, they'd been sober forever. And one of them spilled the beans.
Are any of y'all interested in how you can have 30 years of continuous sobriety? Does anybody want to know how to have 30 years of continuous sobriety? Don't drink and don't die. I don't want to give any secrets away, but that's what he said. Well, shoot. I grew up in a military family and graduated from a little high school. We were talking about high schools this afternoon. Somebody said there were 3,000 students at this big high school over here. My graduating class at Hayneville High School had 19 students in it. And in those days, there was not a lot of this stuff that they're calling peer group pressure to drink.
And we didn't even hardly know what drugs were, and if we did, it was something that some sort of ghetto folks in Baltimore or Detroit did or something, you know. At Hayneville High School, the boys played football, baseball, and basketball and chased the girls. That's all the boys did. And the girls let us catch them. That's all the girls did. And it's really a beautiful existence. You know, in thinking back now, some values were programmed into me. Good things, good things. I'll share them with you real quick.
I was supposed to grow up. That's a big year. I was supposed to grow up and graduate from an accredited college, preferably with Dean's List grades, and I was supposed to get a job with a large corporate structure and rise unerringly to the top one step at a time through perseverance and sweat a brow. And I was supposed to marry a pretty blonde girl, preferably from an old rich family, and have two beautiful kids and a three-bedroom brick with a two-car garage with two kids.
brick with a two-car garage with two cars in it and a pocket full of credit cards and
[00:15:02]
be a deacon in the Baptist church. I think that's a wonderful goal of life. But you see, I also had something else working on me because I don't know where I got it, but also deep down in me was the knowledge that along with that I had to learn to drink like a gentleman. The one thing you taught me later on, the one thing that I just cannot do, to use Dr. Silfworth's language, I cannot drink with impunity. But I set out to learn to drink like a gentleman. I used to have all kinds of fantasies, you know, being from the South like I was. I used to think of sitting out on the veranda in one of these big neo-Greek columns, beautiful old Southern homes like from Gone with the Wind, sitting out on the veranda under the wisteria, you know, sipping mint juleps out of leaded-cut crystal decanters with a liveryed servant bringing them to me, yassa, you know. And I'd say, fetch some more.
Or I'd think about being a sophisticated suave, kind of like some of your General Motors friends with Brooks Brothers suit and a Hathaway shirt and a patch over my eye, drinking those martinis at lunch, you know. And when I'd really let myself go, I'd think of these real hard-drinking, redneck, pulpwood, South Alabama drinkers, you know. They probably have some of those hitting. Come into the saloon on payday evening and grab them a fifth of whiskey and break the top off and drink about half of it down, grab some blonde by her ponytail, drag her in the back room, you know, to give her a drink too.
The one thing that I can't do is drink with impunity. You see, I have a disease called alcoholism. Cunning, baffling, powerful, progressive and terminal. That means it always gets worse and it'll kill you if you don't do something about it. And I didn't know I had it. And consequently, I certainly didn't do anything about it. And from the very first exposure to alcohol, my life was unmanageable. I began to have major problems in my life revolving around drinking. I did not understand it. There is something different about me.
I got excited the other day. I was reading some high, lofty, academic, scholastic and clinical research paper. And it said that this bunch of doctors, after a great deal of research, had finally concluded that alcoholism is a biogenetic, physical disease coupled with psychological and psychiatric subsymptomatology. That means it's an allergy of the body coupled with an obsession of the mind. It does. Well, I got that stuff, see.
And by the way, it does not. You taught me this. I don't get along with ethyl alcohol. I don't get along with ethyl alcohol in any form. And this was important early on for me to learn because I don't get along with 60-year-old five-star Napoleon Brandy. I don't get along with 12-year-old Tennessee sour mash sipping whiskey. I don't get along with Coors, Budweiser, Falstaff, Aqua Velva, Rub-a-Dub or Squeeze. I don't get along with none of that stuff. And so my first chance out in the world to learn to drink like a gentleman ended up with being dismissed from Auburn University. And at 17-and-a-half years old, I summarily kicked out of college for drunk, drunk, drunk. You know, I was off my track a little bit. And I went back home to Hayneville, Alabama, and the sweet little old ladies at the Hayneville Baptist Church kind of cocked their eyes at me a little bit, but I was forgiven.
And I was from one of the old fine southern families down there, you know, and we have a tradition in that part of the South. They said, the fine young southern gentlemen go out all during the week and sow their wild oats, you know. And then they come to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure. They must do that in Arkansas, too. Anyway, you know what it boils down to? It boils down, after a lot of study and reflection, I have concluded beyond question that I was born a half pint low. Really, I was kind of out of sync with the rest of the world. Everything was, have you ever been in one of these 3-D movies where you put those glasses on, you know, and you have a red lens or something, and everything looks good and things pop out of the screen at you. But if you take those glasses off, it all gets just a little bit fuzzy. The world was a little bit fuzzy to
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me. I was a little bit different. I saw everything slightly different. And that half pint brought everything in focus. It made me well and it made me comfortable and it made me assertive and it made me happy. And for a period of time in life, it was my friend. The only thing wrong was I never could balance that half pint. Just about the time I'd get right, I'd get wrong. And I began to have these problems, like getting kicked out of school. And then there were things like all kinds of arrests and reckless drivings and drunken disorderlies and nothing like keep it simple. I mean, it was always teeth, hair, blood, eyeballs, blunt instruments and guns. And it was complicated. But I got back on my track. I was hard-headed.
I had perseverance. I did something. I was trying to kill myself is what I was doing. I went to the University of Alabama and matriculated into there, you know, and things were a little bit different. They were different to the degree that I learned something. I learned a survival technique that later on some Al-Anons taught me were called building up a system of enablers. You just can't survive, I couldn't, as a practicing wet alcoholic without a group of enablers that helped support me. And when I was at home, of course, it started out with my parents and their relatives and even the sweet little old ladies at the Hainfield Baptist Church. But I had to build up my own system. And when I got to the University of Alabama, I found out that the one thing you could do was do very, very good things on the one hand, overachieving type of things, because I knew that I was going to do very bad things on the other hand. And those two things would just kind of balance out for me, you know.
So I tried very hard to maybe be the best student at the University of Alabama. I hear that so much in AA meetings. Somebody will refer to a person as, that is the most marvelous and wonderful mechanic that a man ever had. I mean, that guy can do more work than any ten mechanics when he comes to work, you know. Or some wife will say, oh, that man is the best husband, the finest provider, the most wonderful, caring, considerate, loving father when he's home, you know. I tried to be the best student at the University of Alabama and I did very, very good. I made good grades and I got some recognition and a lot of what they call ego strokes, I think, you know. And then I did the inevitable bad things.
There were lots of little crises, but I'll share one of them that wasn't funny when it happened. But I had been with my friends that evening at this bar, you know, and they called last call at 12 o'clock there and I probably ordered about six or something. Anyway, when we was getting ready to leave, I was walking out of the bar and I always met the most fascinating, intellectual and stimulating people you ever saw. They were always brain surgeons and airline pilots and electronic engineers and occasional or early astronaut. And Dr. Silk worked with the first of them somewhere at Lower Companions. I had run into this Lower Companion and as we were leaving the place, a craven was flung on me for some fried catfish. Now, if there are any psychologists out there and you want to talk about obsessive compulsive behavior, I don't want to hear it. I just have cravens flung on me. I still have cravens flung on me. But nowadays when a craven is flung on me, like if I woke up in the middle of the night in the wintertime and I wanted some orange sherbet and ginger ale, I'd get up and get dressed and get in my car and go to four or five 7-Elevens until I found Canada Dry ginger ale and Barbara's orange sherbet, if it hair-lipped the boogerman, you know.
But nowadays I am somewhat a respecter of the law of the land and torts and human rights and all that sort of stuff. But back in my drinking days, if a craven was flung on me and you had it, you were in a world of trouble and you might not, you know. And a craven was flung on me for some fried catfish and Tuscaloosa was a small town in those days and everything was closed up and my Lower Companion said, you know my uncle is a catfish fisherman down on the Warrior River and he always has a lot of catfish in his deep freeze and we could go on over there and get some and take it back to your dormitory and fry it up in the electric skillet and drink these little pony buds and have a good time and I said let's do it. And we got to the uncle's house and it was dark and after knocking on the door it became obvious that nobody was home. I welled up four semesters of Dean's List grades. I welled up all of the academic knowledge that I had learned and did the only logical thing, I kicked the door down. And we went on in the house and got the catfish out of the deep freeze and as we were leaving, exiting the premises, I believe the correct
[00:25:03]
terminology was later, as we were exiting the premises, this guy said, you know this is my mean uncle. I said uh-huh. And so I got my gun out. Now if there are any psychiatrists here, Freudian types, and you want to talk about guns being an extension of your male virility and all of that, I don't want to hear that either. I just like guns. I liked them before I drank, while I drank, I still like them and I think Smith and Weston made everybody nine feet tall, you know. But I got my gun out and using the finest fashion that I had learned in ROTC, I shot the pictures off the wall and I blew the television's little one eyeball out and I shot the lock off the door. Because I had figured in my crafty intellectual collegiate mind, I had figured that when the FBI and the CIA and the Tuscaloosa City and County Police, when the Alabama Highway Patrol and the Canadian Northwest Mounties, when they came to investigate this grand happening, they would think that it was some interstate desperado like David A. that done it, you know. Not me, you know, fine young straight-A student out in the dormitory, would they? When I woke up in jail, I found out that I suffer from impaired judgment. I won't explain impaired judgment. Impaired judgment is not when you do stupid things. Impaired judgment is when you do stupid things while thinking they are crafty and clever. That's something that I learned in this program too. Anyway, the outcome of that was that the dean of men asked me not to come back to the University of Alabama and the judge asked me not to come back to Tuscaloosa. And I didn't. The way things go full circle in this beautiful program we have, I did not go back to Tuscaloosa for almost exactly 12 years. And when I did, I went in to do just what I'm doing right now, to share at an AA meeting at the Tuscaloosa group. And I went in after dark and left before daylight. I don't know what the statute of limitations on grand theft catfish is, you know. But here I was, here I was 19 years old, don't you see. I had been kicked out of two universities, arrested a number of times, and definitely off my track. And do you know up here, I wasn't dumb. I had impaired judgment. I wasn't dumb. I had alcoholism.
And I knew, I knew this as clear as I know right now on an academic, on a mental level, I knew that every time that I had been in trouble in my life, I had been drinking. I knew that. I also knew though, and there was the other part of me that would say, yeah Tom, that's true. Every time you've been in trouble in your life, you've been drinking. But on the other hand, every time you drink, you do not get in trouble. And I'd hang on to that and I'd say yeah. You see, you taught me that the insanity of the second step, really not the crazy things that I was doing while I was intoxicated. Anybody will do crazy things while they're under the influence because when you're under the influence, you have impaired psychomotor coordination. That means you stagger and wreck cars and fall down.
And you have impaired judgment. That means you do stupid things while thinking you're doing clever and crafty things, you know. But the insanity of my disease of alcoholism as I understand it now was that those bad things would happen. The pain would be so great. The embarrassment would be so large. And then I would be able to say to myself, yes, but this time it's going to be different. And I would start that whole chain of behavior over. I was so able to selectively forget the pain and the hurt and the bad things and remember the decreasing number of good things when I hit that right level, when I danced with that pretty girl, when I won the polka hat, when I drove the car the fastest or whatever I was remembering. I'd remember those goodies and I'd forget those mounting number of big baddies. And I remember now waking up in that jail at nineteen and a half and I had every feeling that I had at my last drunk. I had guilt. I had remorse. I had fear, great globs of some sort of black fear of real things like the jail and the judge and the fine.
And I had anxiety, that big overwhelming gray kind of fear that doesn't have anything that's real, but you just know it's there. And I had that big round hole in my stomach right down here that the cold wind blew through. You close that hole up for me. Sometimes if I don't work my program, it begins to peek open a little bit. Work My Program, It Begins to Peek Open a Little Bit, It's a Little Fail Safe, Maybe I Have, Because It's Still There, It's Still There, But a Day at a Time, You Help Me Keep It Closed, With God As I Understand Him, And I Had All Those Things, And I Had a Hangover, And, And, And, You Know, I Got Bailed Out, My Enablers Came to My Rescue, Now I'm Not Going to Knock Enablers, Don't Get Me Wrong, I Love Enablers, Enablers Saved My Life, Enablers Save A Lot of Alcoholics' Lives, Because Enablers Are the Ones That Later On Broke Down Doors in Rooms,
[00:30:24]
And Brought The Rescue Squads In, And Did The Resuscitation, And The CPR, And Carried Me Off In The Ambulances, Yeah, Enablers Can Save Your Life Too, So I'm Not Knocking Enablers, But Here I Was, Off The Track Again, You Know, And I Joined The Army, And I Was In The Army For A Couple Years, And Nothing Really Happened, Except The Continuation Of The Same Pattern, You See, I Had The Same Alcoholism, And In The Service, For Example, Doing The Good Things And The Bad Things, I Got Two Letters Of Commendation Signed By General Officers, This Was In A Pre-Vietnam Type Of Time, And I Was Brought Up To Enjoy Uniforms, And Polishing Shoes, And Polishing Brass, And Standing Tall, And Flags, And General Orders, And Reviews, And All Of That, I Like To Play Soldier, And I Did Good, I Got These Two Letters Of Commendation, I Also Got Two Court Marshals, See, Balanced Out Perfectly, And I Got My Honorable Discharge, I Don't Really Know How, Because There Were Lots Of Things That I Was Not Apprehended For, I Believe Today, And It's One Of The Reasons I Like To Work In Institutional Work So Much, Because My Sponsor Got Me Involved In Institutional Work, And I Went Every Wednesday Night For About Three Years To A Prison Group, And I Knew Real Firmly, I Didn't Like To Hear The Doors Go Clang Behind Me, And I Didn't Like To Have To Go Through Those Metal Detectors And Not Be Able To Leave When I Wanted To Until I Got The Head Count, But I Believe That There Are Two Kinds Of Alcoholics, The Caught And The Uncaught, And When I Go Into That Institution, They Were The Caught, And I Know That Lots Of Times I Was The Uncaught, And Only Through The Grace Of God And The Fellowship Of A.A. Am I Pleased And Fortunate And Blessed Enough To Be The One That Has The Opportunity To Carry The Message Inside, You Know, But I Got Out Of The Service And Got That Honorable Discharge And I Kept Getting Back On That Track, See, The Track, The Good Track, Rising Early To The Top, Three Bedroom Break, Two Car Garage, And I Just Get After It, I Had Even Been To School While I Was In The Service, You Know, I Went To The University Of Maryland, I Took Nine Psychology Courses, University Of Maryland, To Figure Out What Was Wrong With Me, I Knew That I Was Different, I Knew That I Wasn't Doing The Things That I Wanted To Do, I Had Something, You Know, The Real Pain Along There Somewhere, Some Of The Real Pain Came Not From The Bad Things That I Was Doing Because I Was Always Getting Out Of Them, Daddy's Money Or A Lawyer Or A Judge Or A Friend Or Somebody Would Get Me Out About Anything I Could Get Into, The Real Pain Was That I Kept Violating Myself, I Kept Violating My Own Sense Of Right, I Kept Violating My Own Values, I Think They Call That Something Like Characterological Conflict Or Something, I Know Paul Talks About It In The Second Half Of The Seventh Chapter Of Romans Where He Says That He Always Did The Things That He Didn't Want To Do And Never Could Do The Things That He Knew Were Right, You Know, And I Felt That Real Hard As I Kept Trying To Get Back On My Good Path, And I Had This Disease Of Alcoholism And I Didn't Know It And It Was Killing Me And I Didn't Know It And If I Had Have Known It, I Don't Suspect At That Time I Wouldn't Have Been Able To Really Act On It, But I Got In The University Of Tulsa Right Over Here In Tulsa, Oklahoma, My Family Was There And I Did Good, I Made The Good Grades Because I Was Blessed To Be Able To Put The Right Answers On Test, And I Could Always Get The Right Answers On Test, I Didn't Learn Anything But I Put The Right Answers On Test, And I Met And Married A Beautiful Blonde Girl, Now She Was Not From A Wealthy Family But She Made Up For It In Other Attributes If You Know What I Mean, And I Got The Job With The Large Corporate Structure, Sears And Roebuck, You Know, And Started Rising Unerringly To The Top And We Got The Little Three Bedroom Brick And The Two Cars And The Pocket Full Of Credit Cards And A Couple Gorgeous Children Were Born And Most People That Would Have Looked Would Have Said There Is A Young Man Who Has Everything, But They Were Missing A Biggie That I Had, Maybe Some Of You Would Have Seen It And I Think You Would Have Had Alcoholism, Cunning, Baffling, Powerful, Progressive And Terminal, That Means It Always Gets Worse And It Will Kill You If You Don't Do Something About It, And I Didn't Do Anything About It, And It Got Worse, It Got Lots Worse, I Still Marvel On How This Works, But There Was Some Kind Of Clock In Me, Because Some Days I Would Get Off Of Work At Six And Some Days I Would Get Off Of Work At Nine, But About A Half Hour And The Clock Knew Which Day It Was Even Though I Forget Sometimes, About A Half Hour Before I Was Supposed To Get Off Of Work, All Of A Sudden I Would Get All Nervous And Shaky And I Would Start Trembling And Perspiration Would Break Out On My Brow And My Breathing Would Get A Little Bit Irregular And My Stomach Would Fill Up With All These Butterflies Like They Used To Do Before The Big Havel Fort Deposit Football Game, You Know, And I Would Get All Fidgety,
[00:35:14]
And I Would Get Off Of Work And I Would Get In My Car And I Would Drive Down To The Hollywood Liquor Store On Admiral Boulevard And I Would Walk In That Door And The Owner Would Say, Hi Tom, And I Would Feel All Validated And Good Because I Was A Prime Customer, A Man Would Even Cash My Checks For Me, Wonderful Friend, And I Would Walk Across Right Over There, I Walk Across Right Over There And When I Got About Nine And A Half Inches, When I Got My Hand Within A Foot Of That Bottle Of Seagram 7, Some Sort Of Brown Vibration Would Come Out Of That Bottle And My Breathing Would Level Out, The Perspiration On My Brow Would Dry Up, I Would Get Steady And Calm And All Those Butterflies Would Fly Off To An Al-Nam Meeting Somewhere, I Would Feel Wonderful, That Was Before I Even Touched It, You Know, Because My Whole Existence Had Started Revolving Around The Security In That Bottle, Not Out Of God As I Understand Him, Not Out Of My Job, My Family, Spiritual Values, God, Country, Mom, Chevrolets, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie, Nothing, The Brown Fluid In That Bottle, And I Take That Bottle Home And I Take My Straight Shot While Mixing My Mixed Drink And Things Would Get Right With The World, And Then I Would Go In My Living Room And Sit Down In My Big Chair And Put My Feet Up On My Footstool, Drink My Bourbon And Order My Woman Around And That's What I Did Every Evening, And Many Was The Night That I Woke Up Far Into The Night And The Television Set, David Didn't Have A Test Pad In There, It Had That Old Squiggly Looking Stuff Going, You Know, Looking At You, And I Would Wake Up And I Would Say To Myself, Self, You Poor Hard Working Over-Stressed Young Executive, You Are Just Working Too Hard, You Have To Learn To Relax More, And You Have Fallen Asleep In Your Big Chair, You Know, You Hadn't Played With Your Pretty Children, You Hadn't Had Supper With Your Family, You Hadn't Gone To Bed With Your Pretty Wife, You Just Had To Quit Working So Hard, And I Would Stagger Off To Bed And I Would Pass Out, Every Evening, Really Beautiful Lifestyle, You Know, Things Began To Get Bad In Several Facets Of My Life, Oh Lord, That's When I Developed The Toothpaste Allergy, Every Morning When I Woke Up And Went To Brush My Teeth, I Would Start Gagging And Retching And My Eyes Would Start Hurting And My Head Would Pound, I Changed Toothpaste All The Time, You Know, Nothing Would Work Boy, Every Toothpaste, And Somewhere Along There, Now, I Got To Tell You, And I Really Hate To Do This, Because I Don't Want To Spoil Anything Or Hurt Anybody's Feelings, Because We Are Sensitive, You Know, But If You Wish To Call Montgomery, Alabama, There Will Be Any Number Of Folks That Will Tell You That Tom C. Loves Al-Anon, I Mean, I Am A Big Supporter Of Al-Anon, My Wife Is One Of The Original Black Belt Al-Anons, You Know, And I'll Guarantee You I Love Al-Anon, And In Fact, I'll Credit Them In A Few Minutes, Who Probably Happened To Save My Life, But There Was A Time, Friends, There Was A Time, When If You Would Have Asked Me What An Al-Anon Was, David, Don't Tell Gracie, But If You Would Have Asked Me What An Al-Anon Was, I Would Have Said There Is A Bunch Of Nosy Nagging Bitches, That's What I Said, And This Was The Time In My Life, Because My Pretty Innocent Blonde Wife Fell Amongst Them, She Fell Amongst A Cloven Of Them, And I Mean To Tell, I Mean To Tell You, Well, Let Me Share The Good News First, They Taught Her Something Really Good, It Was Called Acceptance, Now Acceptance Lit My Candle, I Loved Acceptance, She Quit Holling At Me, She Quit Pouring My Booze Out, She Quit Beating On Me When I Was Passed Out, You Know, I Really Liked Acceptance, And Then They Taught Her Something Even Better, And I Still Get Motivated About It, They Called Her, They Taught Her Detach With Love, Now We Was Already Detached, And Love Was What I Wasn't Getting, And I Like Detach With Love, I Mean It Was Really Good, But Then Friends, They Taught Her The Most Cruel, The Most Insidious And Diabolical Thought Ever Dredged Up In The Dark Recesses Of The Feminine Brain, They Taught Her Something Called Don't Take Up For Your Alcoholic, Don't Make Excuses For Your Alcoholic, Don't Cover Up For His Problems And Pick Up His Bounce Checks, Let His Problem Arise And Surface,
[00:40:11]
And One Morning My Boss Called Up The Store Manager From Sears, And He Said Where's Tom, Is He Sick, She Said No Sir, He's Drunk, I Don't Know If That's Tough Love, But It's Tough, That's When I Condescended To Interview A Psychologist, I Think I Even Interviewed Dr. Smith In His Office, And I Think I Taught Him A Lot About Excessively Stressful Systematic Young Executive Drinkers, And He Taught Me That I Was Basically Angry, Hostile, Caustic, Aggressive And Rebellious, Angry, Hostile, Caustic, Aggressive And Rebellious, It Cost Me $500 A Word, I Didn't Pay Him But That's What He Charged Me, But Anyway Of Course You See We Didn't Do Anything About My Drinking, That's Why He Didn't Have A Chance And Why I Didn't Either, We Didn't Set Out To Do Anything About My Drinking, We Set Out To Do Things About The Socially Unacceptable And Aggressive Behavior That Went With My Drinking, In Other Words We Were Going To Make Me A More Well Adjusted Drinker, And Of Course Y'All Taught Me Later On See That's One Of The Things I Cannot Do In Life, People Worry About What Kind Of Alcoholics They Are, Whether They're Spree Alcoholics Or Daily Alcoholics Or Periodic Alcoholics Or Weekend Alcoholics, My Sponsor Taught Me That I Was A Period Alcoholic, I Can't Drink Period, This Psychologist Didn't Have A Chance, And Then I Condescended, I Mean I Really Stooped Low Because I Had A Real Weak Moment And I Went To One Of Your Meetings And I Sat Back And I Marveled, I Had Learned About You In Abnormal Psychology And I Marveled I Said Isn't This The Most Wonderful Non-Directed Informal Group Therapy And Action That You Ever Saw, It Is So Good For These Poor Unfortunate Ones, And I Memorized Your Serenity Prayer And That's When I First Read The Stories In The Back Of Your Big Book And Didn't Identify With Them, And I Had Pride, Great Pride That I Never Drank Before Your Meetings, I Always Drank After Your Meetings You Know, Let Me Make An Important Announcement Right Now That Somebody Shared With Me One Time That Made A Lot Of Difference, And I Heard This, We Were Talking About This Earlier, I Heard This And Maybe Nobody Else Heard Elmore C. Say This In A Talk One Time In About 1971, But I Share It With You, Nobody In This Room Including Al-Anons And Al-Ateems And Guests And Anybody Else That Might Be Peeking In The Door, Nobody In This Room Ever Has To Take Another Drink Unless They Want To, And Nobody In This Room Ever Has To Go Any Lower To The Disease Of Alcoholism Unless They Choose To, If You Are Here Tonight And You Have Not Gone Down The Tube Like I Did, Let Me Please Try To Communicate That You Don't Need To, You Don't Have To, You Don't Want To, Don't, But You See I Didn't Know That, And Some People Probably Told Me That Just Very Much The Same Way, But I Had To Go Out And Drink Some More, For Four And A Half More Years I Drank After My First Solid, And I Went To More Than One Meeting, I Went To Lots Of Meetings, I Had To Go All The Way Down And Lose Practically Everything That You Can Possibly Lose To The Disease Of Alcoholism Except My Own Life, And I Wanted To, Many Was The Time That I Wanted To, Not Long After That Was A Three Day Weekend, And Three Day Weekends Are Always Hard On Me, And We Had Some Friends Coming Over About Seven That Evening For Steaks Or Something, We Still Had Some Friends In Those Days You Know, And They Supposed To Come About Seven And I Started Drinking Pretty Heavy About Six That Morning, And Somewhere In The Middle Of The Afternoon My Behavior Got Beyond The Realms Of Whatever Even A Budding Young Al-Anon Can Tolerate, I Was Not Physically Abusive Of My Family, But I Was Extremely Psychologically Abusive Of My Family, You Know I Used To Worry About Why, I Hear People In Discussion Meetings Talking About Why Do We Hurt The People That We Love The Most, And If You Don't Know Me It Is Very Simple, It Is Because The People We Love The Most Are The Ones That Are In The Room With Us You Know, You Just Don't Drive Across Town And Abuse Total Strangers You Know, If Somebody Is Sleeping In The Same Bed With You, You Abuse Them You Know, You Don't Go Next Door And Abuse The Neighbors Kids, You Just Abuse Them.
No, if the, you don't go next door and abuse the neighbor's kids, you disabuse your own. Well, somewhere in the middle of the afternoon, I started this business of hurting those that I love the most.
[00:45:01]
And you see, I knew that I was not going to kill my wife. But I was 220 pounds of bloated, total, drunken beer gut, and dirty and unshaving and hysterical and sane and drunk and ugly and mean and bad smelling and everything you can think of on a Monday afternoon on a three-day holiday for an alcoholic. And I knew I wasn't going to kill Julie. But Julie was sober and sick and weighed about 100 pounds of pretty willowy blonde.
And when I told her that I was going to kill her, you see, I knew I wasn't going to kill her. But she didn't know that I wasn't going to kill her. And I don't fault her now for what she had to do to save her own sanity and she thought her own life. I told her that I was going to take our little neonatal son, T3, who was then about four months old. I told him that I was going to take T3 and hold him by the feet and bang him against the wall until his brains ran down the wall.
And I broke a bottle of 57 sauce in the floor to show her graphically what it was going to look like and then said, clean it up, woman. She did the only thing she could do. She ran out and said, don't ever go to Oklahoma. Great, Scott, if you ever plan to drink again, stay on this side of the border. They got some of the weirdest laws in Oklahoma. I'm just warning you now because I love you. I had been arrested in four or five states for what they call public drunk.
And I had been arrested in two or three states for what they call common drunk. That hurt my feelings. But they got a charge over there in Oklahoma that's called private drunk. That's when your wife calls the police and they come arrest you in your own big chair. And she called the police, she did, yeah, and they knocked on the door and came in. And you know, alcoholism taught me a lot of things. One of the things alcoholism taught me was how to go to jail.
You don't want to go to jail dressed in shower shoes and Bermuda shorts and an old T-shirt. No, because you go to court the next morning usually and once you go to jail in the night before. You want to get dressed up like I am now and go to jail, yeah. So I told the police, I said, fellas let me run in the back room and change and then we'll, you know. And they said okay. And I got back in the back room and a craving was flung on me to have some fun with the Tulsa Police Department.
And boy I read about this and see it so often and it doesn't always end up non-tragically or like it did in my case. I got my shotgun down and I leaned around the door jamb and I said, hey. And they said, hey. And I said, I've got a loaded shotgun back here. It's a pump, you know. And they said, uh-huh. And I put the gun back in the closet and I sat down on my bed and started working on my reserve pint that was in my sock drawer and I let their minds work on their minds, you know.
And half of a pint later I decided I'd escape and I cut the screen out of my window and I got ready to flee out of the bedroom window. And I looked out in my yard behind my big oak tree was a SWAT trooper with his shotgun. You got it. They had barricaded and evacuated the neighborhood. They had called out SWAT. And when I surrendered, I surrendered live in living color on the 6 o'clock news. You know, I ended up in, of course, in the Tulsa County Jail with a whole host of charges and then Julie, don't go to Oklahoma, they got another weird law.
She flung a mental hearing on me. And the judge, after they reviewed me and everything, I passed the test. They asked me who was the first president and what year it was and I passed. I made good grades, you know. And then the judge told me, he said, we can either, you know, bring charges against you for all kind of things or you can voluntarily be court committed to the insane asylum. I want you to think about that a minute.
I was voluntarily court committed. Alcoholism taught me a lot of things. Alcoholism taught me that the lock-up ward in the insane asylum is a great improvement over the isolation cell in the county jail, improvement in lifestyle, in quality of life. You see, I was locked up for 72 hours in a little room about a fourth as big as this stage up here. Four steel walls with a little slit in the door that the food came in and a little hole in the concrete floor that the food later went out and that's all.
No mattress, no nothing. In 72 hours, I was locked up in there. So when I got to the lock-up ward at the insane asylum, it was a great improvement.
[00:50:03]
Even though the first night that I was there, I got up to go to the bathroom and somebody got in my bed and went to the bathroom, you know, but it's still better than the jail. And then after about a week, after about a week, I graduated into an open, what they erroneously call an AA ward. And they erroneously call it that because, of course, there are no AA wards or AA hospitals or AA treatment programs, but this was back in the late 60s and it was as good a program as you could find in a state institution at that time.
I didn't know it, but I got on that open ward and they had a recovering alcoholic counselor and they had a big book study and the institutional group from Venita, the institutional group brought the message in two nights a week. And after about four weeks, I graduated to being the head drunk. They elected me chairman so that I could introduce the outside speaker when he came in, you know, that's Dennis.
Now I'm not saying that that was the best place in the world to be because the Northeast Oklahoma State Mental Hospital thought that alcoholism was a basic leather craft deficiency. I made so many belts and billfolds, you know, and I think they thought I was going to take care of my alcoholism. But I'm going to, you know, here I was, and this is important because to me it speaks of the insanity, the true insidiousness of the disease of alcoholism.
That thing that I still have, even though I have not found it necessary to take a drink a day at a time for a long time, and that is that physically in the middle of about five and a half weeks, and I was to be discharged and staffed and discharged and my rights returned at the end of six weeks or so, but in the middle of the fifth week, I had been getting up early, I had been doing some exercises, I had been eating good food, I had not had any drugs for over four weeks, I had been doing a little physical therapy and a little leather craft deficiency therapy and occupational therapy and all that stuff.
Physically, physically, I was as sober medically and physically as you could possibly be. But of course we know through the program and through what you taught me that physically my body may have been free of the chemical aspects of the alcohol, but mentally, emotionally, spiritually, I was sick, sick, sick. And all of the isms of alcoholism were active and raging in my body. Because in the middle of the fifth week, the craving was flung on me to escape.
I could have waited four days, been staffed and released, but the craving was flung on me to escape. Now, I have observed all of my life that if you put on a suit and a tie, get a clipboard and a pencil, walk fast and look down, you can go anywhere you want to go in this world. And I put on my Sunday visiting clothes and I got the chart from the nursing station and I walked right on out the door. And I walked on over to the administration building, this was off-limits, and I started up the steps and a man was coming down the steps.
And I said, Sir, he said, Yes, son. I said, Here I am a fine young graduate student from the University of Tulsa and I'm out here trying to get a summer job to help these poor afflicted ones and I wonder if you could give me a ride into town. He said, Sure, son, hop right in. And I got in the car and as we were driving through the gate and waving at the guard, I looked over his sun visor and that rascal was a Tulsa County Deputy Sheriff.
He brought some poor beggar in, but he took me out. Now, remember that physically, physically I was sober. Y'all taught me later on, and I used to sit on the front row those times that the program didn't take and even in the early days when maybe it did by the grace of God, and I'd sit on the front row like you're doing and some sanctimonious old buzzard would sit up there and say, You don't get sick overnight and you don't get well overnight.
And I'd just grit my teeth. Not to drink or not a drug for four and a half weeks, and when that guy let me out, on this side of the street was the Greyhound bus station, maybe 40 miles straight into Tulsa and what I perceived as freedom and happiness and hope and good and mercy and joy. And on this side of the street was a little brown, rustic, shingled, gorgeous building. And it had, oh, it had a big blue sign on the side of it going blink, blink, blink.
It was looking me dead in the eye and saying Coors on draft.
[00:55:01]
I said to myself, Self, here you've been in the insane asylum five and a half weeks getting well for your wife and children and all those people at Sears and everybody. You deserve one draft beer. That's the insanity of alcoholism. I was passed out before I finished escaping. And when I finally came to, I basically fled on into Tulsa and under duress, kidnapped that same infant son, fled across state lines and got into more mess than you ever saw.
Moved over to Alabama and later on talked my family into coming with me. After I had surrendered and gone back and been arrested and back in the insane asylum and all of that kind of business, it was not fun. But I did something that I now know to be a kind of like a geographic cure or whatever. Hey, I got another big announcement for you. Are you ready for this one? If you, somebody might even want to take a note here.
Wherever you go, there you are. Are you ready for that? Wherever I went, wherever I went, there I was. And when we got to Alabama, things got bad. Things got real bad. I got a little old job teaching school because my cousin was the superintendent of education and my sister was my boss. And I tried kind of hard. I taught English and lit in a little country high school, the one I graduated from. And things got bad.
I got into that period of life, and I won't take up the time to share about it, but it was just all pain. Because I reached that period, forget all the insane behavior and everything else, but I reached that period there where I was in hospitals and out of hospitals and one step ahead of shock treatments and in and out and psychiatrists and psychologists. But the bad thing was that I was 100% completely, absolutely miserable when I was not drinking.
And I was also 100% completely, absolutely miserable when I was drinking. And that left me one place to go. Passed out. And there's a real problem, friends, with passed out. It's called come to. And I always did. I always did. Not by my own devices or by my own intention. That's where those enablers would pick my lock. Many times, more than three, four or five times, I would retreat into the back bedroom in the mobile home that we were buying.
And I had taken the screens out and covered them with aluminum foil so it was absolutely dark back in there. And I'd take a half a gallon bottle of I.W. Harper. It had a big handle on it, you know, and I'd go back into that bedroom with no real intention of coming out. And then maybe a day later or two days, somebody that loved me would call the emergency squad and pick the door or break it and haul me off and detoxify me, which of course means de-poison.
Detoxification is not alcoholism treatment. Detoxification merely gets you physically well enough to do one of two things, and that is to try to get well or to drink again. And my choice was always to drink again. I knew no better. My wife was going to Al-Anon, and bless her heart, some Al-Anons, 14 years ago right now, almost maybe to this very day, some Al-Anons haul me off to a new kind of doctor, a recovering alcoholic doctor in a little small town called Tuskegee, Alabama.
And Dr. Carl was different. He didn't believe in giving you all those shots and pills and letting you float around for two or three days and have that old Thorazine shuffle, you know. He didn't believe in that. He believed that you ought to shake and sweat and hurt a little bit and appreciate your sobriety when you got it. Not that he would jeopardize your life, because I'd gotten to the point where I was getting convulsions and seizures and my blood pressure was going out of the top, and I was 30 years old and near death on numerous occasions.
But I went into this new place, and the whole month of December, 14 years ago, in the biggest part of January, I was in and out of that hospital, in and then leaving against medical advice and running and getting drunk and buying guns and shooting something up and grabbing me and putting me back in. And let me share this little thing, kind of the what happened, with you. And I want to share it with you because lots of times our own spiritual batteries get a little bit low.
See, this is a spiritual program. There's not a spiritual part to this program. Read the book. It's a spiritual program. And it's contingent upon a daily building of our spiritual battery. And there are a lot of things that discharge our battery. Go into meetings, charge it. But when your battery gets low, part of what we have in the power and the love of the group is that we can share one another's spiritual charge.
Me If Your Battery Ever Gets Weak, Just Like I Share What You've Given Me When My Battery
[01:00:00]
Gets Weak, It Does, It Does, I'm a Fallible Human Being, FHB, Fallible Human Being, I'm a Flawed Vessel, If You Like That Kind of Thing, Our Program Talks About Spiritual Progress, About Spiritual Perfection, And I'm Among The Worst, But On This Incident, It Was The Third Day, The Third Hospitalization, I Had No Job, I Had No Money, I Had Bounced Checks Everywhere, I Had Shot Holes In Things, Because I Always Did, One Car Was Wrecked, The Other One Was Being Repossessed, No Friends, The Little Old Ladies At The Hamble Baptist Church No Longer Wanted, I Didn't Have Enough Self-Respect, I Didn't Have Enough Self-Concept, I Didn't Have Enough Self-Image, Whatever That Is, To Go To The Post Office During Daylight, I Would Creep Out At Dark And Check The Mail Or Go To The Bootlegger, And I Laid There In That Bed On About The Third Day Of The Third Hospitalization And My Dad Came To Visit, And Bless His Heart, He Looked Down At Me In That Bed, The Trembling Wreckage Of Active Alcoholism That I Was, And With A Lot Of Pain In His Eyes, He Looked Down At Me And He Said, Son, I Have Some Bad News For You, And I Almost Laughed At Him, Almost Laughed At Him, He Said, Son, Jill Has Taken The Children And Gone Home To Oklahoma And Probably Won't Be Back, And My Dad In His Latter Years Loved His Grandson, T-3, Named After Him, Thomas The Third, Loved Him More Than Anything In Existence, And You Could See The Pain In That Man's Eyes, You Could See The Pure Hurt That He Was Not Going To Be Able To See That Grandson Anymore Except Maybe On Visits. And Then He Said, We Had No Need For The Mobile Home That You Were Buying And You Were Way Behind On The Payments, So We Called The Finance Company And They Came And Got It. When I Lost My Home, I Literally Lost It. When I Came Out Of That Hospital, There Was Nothing There But A Pile Of Concrete Blocks And A Power Pole And Some Kerosene Drums, You Know. And Then He Gave Me His Biggie, Which He Developed Independently Of Al-Anon, Because He Never Found The Beauty Of That Program, He Got His Spiritual Battery Filled In Another Program, But He Developed His Own Brand Of Tough Love.
He Looked Me Dead In The Eye, And I Got Broken Teeth From Gritting When He Said That. He Said, I Love You, Son, Because You Are My Son, But I Don't Like You. And Then He Did His About Face And He Left. Well, I Kind Of Followed Him To The Door. And Right Down In The Front Of This Hospital Is A Beautiful Lake. It Is The Water Supply For The City Of Tuskegee. That Is Where Tuskegee Institute Is. It Is A Pretty Little Town. And I Stood There At The Door And I Knew Deep Down In The Uttermost Part Of What Was Left Of My Being, I Knew That I Would Just Run Down That Hill And Drown In That Lake. Not With The Type Of Motivation That Doesn't Work, But With The Type Of Motivation That Does. By The Way, You Know, Very Few Alcoholics Commit Suicide While They Are Actively Drinking.
If You Check It Out, The Biggest Part Of Them, And Lots Of Them Do It, Is About The Third Day When They Are Coming Back Into The World Of Reality And The Total Desperation And The Total Depression Of Reality Begins To Hit Them In The Face. And That Is Where I Was. And I Was Going To Run Down And Drown, Not To Get Myself Off The Pity Pot That I Was On, But To Get The Burden That I Was Out From Around The Neck Of Those Few People I Thought Still Loved Me. And I Stood There Totally Prepared To Do It. Now Friends, All My Life In Those Churches And Others, And I Failed To Mention This Early, But My Grandfather Claunch Was A Circuit Riding Baptist Evangelist. Started A Lot Of Churches In Arkansas, Including The One Down There In Conway. In Fact, There Is Even Supposed To Be A Little Town Up In North Arkansas Named Claunch, Arkansas. All My Life I Had Been Taught Those Kind Of Values, But I Was Told That God Helps Those Who Help Themselves. I Don't Believe That For A Minute Anymore. I Don't Believe It Is True. I Don't Think It Is New Testament Scriptural, And I Don't Think That It Is What It Says In The Big Book. Back To Point B Of Chapter 5, No Human Power Could Have Relieved Our Alcoholism. Friends, The Biggest Human Power Of All Is Self. What I Believe Now Is That God Helps Those Who Admit They Are Helpless. God Helps Those Who Admit They Are Helpless. When The Alcoholic Cries Out In Utter Desperation, I Give Up, I Surrender, God Help Me. Inevitably You Will Find Out That Help Is There In One Form Or The Other. And I Stood At That Door And Just Kind Of Cried Out, God Help Me. And Something Told Me That Before I Did This Thing, Not Not Do It, But Before I Did This Thing That I Ought To Touch Base With The Baptist Minister Before I Did It. And I Went To The Phone Book, And I Looked In The Phone Book, And If You Will Appreciate The Way I Was Born And Reared In The Prejudice And The Insanity And The Suicidal Mania And The Alcoholism That Was Present In Me, And You Will Appreciate What I Am About To Tell You. Tuskegee Is About
[01:05:00]
Ninety-Five Percent Black. It Is Where Tuskegee Institute Is. And I Looked In That Phone Book And There Were Two Baptist Churches. And I Knew That One Of Them Was The Black Baptist Church And One Of Them Was The White Baptist Church. And I Was Darned If I Had Called A Black Baptist Preacher To Save My Soul Before I Committed Suicide. And I Was Too Proud And Too Vain And Too Insane And Too Sick To Go Ask The Black Attendants Which Was Which. And I Stood There Suicidal And Going Crazy. And A Little Old Black Lady Sitting Right There, Right Behind Me, Manning Her Own Business All The Time, I Was Going Crazy. I Opened The Door. I Opened The Door To That Hospital And A Man Walked In Because I Was Standing In The Door. I Opened The Door And He Walked On By Me And Down The Hall. That Little Old Black Lady. She Said, Look Me Dead In The Eye. And She Said, Isn't That Reverend Butler, The Baptist Minister? I Said, I Don't Know Lady, But I'm Going To Find Out. And I Followed Him Down The Hall And I Waited Down The Hall Until He Came Out Of The Room Of The Person He Was Visiting With. And I Asked Him And It Was Reverend Butler, The Baptist Minister.
But That's Not All. Back In The Early Seventies, Most Baptist Ministers Were Not Too Keen On The Disease Of Alcoholism. And Did Not Understand, But This One Did. This One Did. He Had Been To A Number Of Open Meetings. Very Supportive Of Al-Anon. Sent People To AA. Worked Closely With AA In The Community. And Reverend Butler And I Prayed Together And Something Went Away. And Before Reverend Butler Went Away, Here Come That Crazy Recovering Alcoholic Doctor.
He Just Didn't Come Around That Time Of Day. But He Said He Just Out Riding Around. Thought He Would Come By And See How I Was Doing. And Before Dr. Carl Left, Something Went Away. And Before He Went Away, Here Came George And Clara B. From The Tuskegee AA Group. And They Said They Just Riding Around, You Know. And They Just Thought They Might Stop By And See How I Was Doing. And We Talked. And Before They Went Away, The Phone Rang. It Was Buddy, A Thirty Year Old Recovering Alcoholic In The Tuskegee AA Group. Said He Just Thought He Would Call And See If I Wanted To Go To A Meeting In Opelika That Night, You Know.
And I Did. And I Came Back. And I Never, Never, Never Went Back Into That Total, Utter Depth Of Desolation And Depression And Darkness That Is The Insane Part Of Alcoholism. All Five Of Those People Are Dead Today. All Five Of Those People Were Dead Within Maybe Three Years Of When That Happened. Reverend Butler Died Six Months Later. Mature, Beautiful, Wonderful Fulfilled Christian Life. Died Of A Heart Attack. Not Too Long After That, Clara, Because Of The Pain Of Arthritis, Took Her Own Life. Later On, Lonely, George Died Of A Stroke. Dr. Carl Did Not Really Ever Recover From His Own Alcoholism And Took Drunk On And Off For The Next Few Years And Then Didn't Recover From Open Heart Surgery. And Buddy Died Drunk At Age 32. All Five Of Those People Were There That Night When I Cried Out In Utter Desperation. God Help Me. I Don't Understand That. But I Do Know That Things Like That Occur In This Program With Frequency. And If We Will Open Up Ourselves And Look And See What Is There To Behold In This Program. Yes, Indeed, Friends, There Are Real, Live, Modern, 20th Century Miracles Of God. I Was Going To Talk A Little Bit About My Sponsor, But The Time Is Late. I Want To Say This About Big Tom, Though. Big Tom Was In His 16th Year Of Sobriety. And He, Joe, Was The Assistant Director Of A Little Halfway House For Reconciliation Alcoholics. He Had A Fifth Grade Education. He Was 65 Years Old Then. And He Blind In One Eye And Legally Blind In The Other One. Not My Kind Of Person. Living In A Halfway House For Alcoholics. And Yet A Relationship Struck Up Between Big Tom And Myself That Transcended Any Love That I Have Ever Known For Anyone. My Father, My Friends, Anybody.
In Fact, He Basically Moved In With Us For A While. And I Love Big Tom Beyond My Ability To Describe. And What He Shared With Me Is True Beauty. He Was In His 16th Year Of Sobriety. And Everybody Knows That Is One More Dangerous Year. And He Knew He Needed To Go To Lots Of Meetings. And He Asked Me To Take Him. I Took That Old Man To Meetings Every Night For A Year. Got Him Through That Dangerous Year Practically Single-Handedly. And He Gave Me That Silver Dollar. He Gave Me That Silver Dollar. Because Almost Unknown To Myself, I Had Not Taken A Drink One Day At A Time For That Long Period. Family Came Back About Six Months Later. And Life Began To Get Pretty Good. Because You See, I Wanted What You Had.
And I Was Willing To Go To Any Length To Get It. I Deserve No Credit Whatsoever And Will Not Take Any Now For My Own Recovery Or Anything Else. God Working Through You. Somewhere
[01:10:00]
About Two Years Into Sobriety, I Think I Discovered What Is The Key For Me. And It Is That Thing We Take So Lightly That Is Called Live One Day At A Time. I Was Too Darn Smart. I Had Been To Too Many MBA Courses And Studied Too Much Statistics And Probability And Forecasting And Sales And Marketing And Budgeting And Everything Was Going To Be Next Year And A Year After That. And I Was Too Smart To Live One Day At A Time. Until That Same Education Along With A Little Inspiration From God Just One Day Dropped On Me Like A Bomb. That Every Great Religion And Every Great Philosophy. David Mentioned This This Afternoon Too. Every Great Religion And Every Great Philosophy That The Anthropologist Have Studied Have Endorsed That Simple Phrase In One Way Or The Other. You Know The Ancient Chinese In The Days Of Confucius Talk About The Longest Journey Beginning With A Single Step. Back In The Old Bible. How Did If You Remember The Children Of Israel Wandering In The Wilderness For Forty Years. How Did God Take Care Of Them? Go Read It. One Day At A Time. Gave Manna From Heaven And Some Of Them Didn't Trust Him. Wanted To Store Some Up For The Next Day Just In Case He Forgot. The Stuff Would Fall. And Every Day They Would Get A New Supply. And When The Master Walked The Rocky Shores Of The Sea Of Galilee And Gathered The People Together In That Beautiful Dissertation That We Call The Sermon On The Mount. Which You Remember Is Where A Lot Of Our Program Came From. When The Master Gathered The People Together On The Rocky Shores Of The Sea Of Galilee And Taught Them. In Matthew 34 26 In The Foreign Language Of King James It Says Sufficient Unto The Day Is The Evil Thereof.
If You Look It Up In Today's Living Bible It Says Live One Day At A Time. And In Just A Few Minutes When We Join Hands As We Did This Afternoon And So Frequently Do In Closing Our Meetings. We Will Pray Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread. We Won't Ask For A Week Supply Or A Month Long Inventory. Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread. And That Simple Thing Made My Life Easy. It Opened Me Up To Overcoming Whatever Burdens And Barriers With Your Help That Are Flung In Front Of Me. All Is Not Happiness And Joy. Mental Health For What It Is Worth And That Sometimes Is Kind Of A Dirty Word. But Life Is Not Easy. Life However Is The Ability To Overcome Our Challenges And Our Problems. And That Is What A.A. Gave Me And That Is What You Gave Me. That Is What You Gave Me And The Ability To Not Drink One Day At A Time. I Share One Other Thing With You In Close That Is Important To Me. Because We Live In A Controversial Time. There Is So Much Going On Out There. Our Disease Has Become In Some Ways Almost Popular At This Point. Unfortunately Not Necessarily In The Right Directions. But People Are Going Berserk Over Drug Driving, Over DUI's And They Should.
And There Are Prosecutors And There Are Groups And There Are Funds And There Are Commissions And There Are Institutes And Alcoholism And All Kind Of Things That A.A. Is Not Involved With. But Because So Many People Are Getting Interested In It. We Get A Lot Of Cheap Shots Sometimes. People That Don't Understand The Fellowship. Most Of Our Cheap Shots Come From The Outside. And I Want To Share Something That I Think Is A Tremendous Way To Handle That. And It Again Patterns On Something That The Master Shared When He Walked The Rocky Shores Of The Sea Of Galilee And Taught The People Some Two Thousand Years Ago. The Master Had A Cohort In Another Group Across The Valley There. His Name Was John. John The Baptist.
John Was In Another Group And John Found Himself If You Want To Check This Story Out. He Found Himself Incarcerated. And I Identify With That. And John Was Locked Up Over Here And He Got To Thinking About It And He Had Heard About The Master. And He Got A Couple Of The Guys In His Group And He Called Them Over And He Said, Hey, Go Over There And Ask The Master If He Is The One Who Is To Come Or If There Is Another. And So They Said, Okay John, We Will Go Check Out This Other Group Across The Valley. And They Went Over There And They Came Up To The Master And They Said, Hey, We Are In John's Group. And We Came Over To See If You Are The One Or If There Is Another One To Come. Now The Master Set A Beautiful Example For Me As To How To Deal With Skeptics And Critics And People Who Take Cheap Shots.
The Master Did Not Get Into Doctrine. The Master Did Not Get Into Theology. The Master Did Not Get Into Philosophy Or Methodology. The Master Was Results Oriented. And He Turned To Them And Said, Go And Tell John What You Have Seen And What You Have Heard. The Baptist and what you have heard. The blind see, the deaf hear, the sick are made well, the dead rise, the lepers are cleansed. Go and tell John what you have seen and what you have heard. When you experience the beauty, the joy, the love, the fellowship of a meeting
[01:15:02]
like this, and the power and the beauty that we have in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, when you run into skeptics, bring them to an open meeting. Love them into a public information meeting. Share our literature and our big book with them, and then look them dead in the eye, and say the same as the master. Go and tell what you have seen and what you have heard. As I am standing here now, families are kept together, jobs and careers are saved, the drugged are clean and the drunk are sober. Go and tell what you have seen and what you have heard. I love you.