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Source: DICOBE-00665 – Bob S – 8TH WICHITA KANSAS SPRING RNDP – 1983-04-09.mp3 File: dicobe-00665-bob-s-8th-wichita-kansas-spring-rndp-1983-04-09.mp3 Duration: 01:05:00
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Thank you, Carol. My name is Bob, and I'm an alcoholic, and I intend to enjoy talking tonight. Fifteen years ago, I was disinherited, discredited medically, and I had no money. My children lived in a coal house with no fuel to heat the furnace. All of that was fifteen years ago, and now I must tell you that I am better than I ever was before I was an alcoholic. I want all of you that have any problem with anxiety or depression or those kind of things, you listen to my story tonight, because I was one flaky kid before I ever drank, and I had a lot of problems, and the AA program has come along and helped me not only with my alcoholism and my other addictions, but just pure old AA Twelve Steps has just given me everything there is in life, and I'll tell you a little about that at the end. Well, as you said, I was born in Alabama, and I was born among a lot of very non-drinking people. As a matter of fact, I don't ever remember seeing any booze as a child. I don't ever remember seeing any playing cards. I was raised a Southern Baptist. Do you know why Southern Baptists won't make love standing up? They're afraid somebody will accuse them of dancing. My first memory in life is that of shame. I had glasses tied on me at age nine months. I was a funny-looking, sissy kid with a lot of baby fat. My first dream, I still remember, I was naked in the street trying to hide and find a way to get home to my house without anybody seeing me. My life truly was not like it is you see me tonight.
I was a sissy kid, for sure. I didn't get along with the guys. I wasn't good at sports. I was the last one that they picked when the boys got together to play softball. I never the team. I was always the one at the end of the line. My father tried to help me become a jock, and he bought me a fishing rod and reel, and I went out to the lake, and on my very first cast, I threw the entire rig. I just never made it as one of the guys. I think I was born horny also.
I don't know what all the professors say about what age things come along, but I can tell you, as long as I can remember, I was always very uncomfortable around the girls, and they were uncomfortable around me for very good reasons. So everybody attest that little Bobby Stucky was a loner. I was always alone, always restless, always anxious. I had sweaty palms. I couldn't look at anybody in the eye, and I was very much an uncomfortable kid.
People used to say to me, why can't you sit down? I never knew why I couldn't sit down. I just knew that I was a restless, anxious kid, always alone. Well, several good things really dominated my life, however. My parents truly supported me. They were loving. They were people that I could trust. They loved each other. My grandparents were the same way. My grandparents always played together and worked together. I came from a very beautiful family of couples who loved each other.
I was just always slightly on the outside of that. I never felt I belonged to those couples in quite the same way. They were good to me, but I was always alone. I used to sit out a lot on summer nights. By the time I was six or seven years old, I had a prayer life, and it was a meaningful one,
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and it has lasted throughout a major part of my life. I used to watch the stars come out, and I used to cry because I had a great sense of loneliness, and I had a great sense of how God was, but I always had a sense God is there, far away but there. I will summarize by telling you my view of life as I grew up in Alabama. That is, God is good, people love each other, and something's wrong with me. That is how I have always felt and have until almost this past week.
I sought closeness by getting recognition, and I would fake not knowing things and try to get my mother to teach me how to walk on a picket fence, and then I would hop up on it and prance back and forth. My mother would say, my, isn't he wonderful? That became the pattern of my life. I became the youngest Eagle Scout in the state of Alabama, and I had a World War I hat down over my eyes and a merit badge sash all the way down to the floor. They took my picture in the Birmingham News as this youngster, and my mother's arms around me, I'm about that high, and she's saying, my, isn't he wonderful? That's how I did it, folks. As soon as I would get a merit badge, though, I would move on to something else. Then I took up violin, and I became the local snake charmer and got a scholarship in that, and you know what my mother said. Then I left that and went to photography and got some awards. Then I went to watercoloring, and then I got a pilot's license, and then I got into Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. You know, I was such a loner. I memorized the map all the way to New York City and down the streets of Manhattan, and I drove my parents all the way there down 168th Street and Broadway to the medical school, stopped in front of it, and my mother said, my, isn't he wonderful?
I went into class the first day hoping to be one of the guys, which I had never been at that point, and everybody there was dressed identical. They all had on blue blazers and striped ties. And I was sitting in the very front row of the amphitheater with a bright yellow aloha shirt on. Well, it really did color my feeling about myself among the classmates at Columbia University, and I went through those four years the same way. I did my studies just fine, but I was always alone, always restless, always curious, always uncomfortable, sweaty palms, couldn't look anybody in the eye, real anxiety, true anxiety, much more than I'm indicating here with humor. I just couldn't get comfortable no matter what I did.
Now, the good thing about all this is that I was always an optimistic kid. Although I couldn't get comfortable socially, I always hit the floor every morning thinking it's a wonderful day, God is good, people are wonderful, something's wrong with me. But it drove me in a way with positive motivation. I always was an optimistic, curious kid. I finished medical school and went to my first cocktail party.
And it was a penthouse on Park Avenue in New York, and I was totally awkward, did not know how to use all the silverware, very embarrassed in those formal social occasions. And somebody gave me my first drink of alcohol, and it was a full water glass of martini, a total
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tumbler of martini is what I started out with in 1954. And I went into that room uncomfortable and everybody else comfortable. I had a tumbler full of martini, and I felt so at ease and so comfortable that I did a front flip in that living room floor. Now, something really big happened to me psychologically. I fell flat on my face, rolled over, and looked up and recognized that wonderful thing. Not only am I comfortable, but now, by God, I've made everybody else uncomfortable.
And that, of course, is much better, you understand, after all the years that I had spent. My following year, I tried to drink every time I could, but I had no money. I was earning $50 a month as an intern in Charlottesville, Virginia. I was dragging home furniture from in front of other people's homes. I had no money to drink. But a little old scatterbrained nurse solved my problem. I would leave the hospital about midnight, and I'd have to be back scrubbed for surgery at 6 o'clock the next morning.
Interns' lives really are not reasonable, and in those days they weren't anyway. Well, a little nurse gave me a pill called Daprasal. Daprasal is a pill for menstrual cramps. And I took it for the next 14 years. It has speed, and I'm telling you, that's almost as good as cocaine. And it was cheap. I mean, dirt cheap. Even when I finally quit 14 years later, I had 10,000 things in jugs in my waiting room. For my whole career, I took that combination of speed and Amitabh.
Well, anyway, now came drinking, because I finally got out of that damn internship and made some money. And I had already made my mind up, as soon as I started making money, I was going to get down to some real drinking. And I thought it all through very logically, and it worked. I wanted to go overseas in the Air Force for two years. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I even joked with everybody. I told them, I'm going to Japan and ruin my liver. And I did exactly that.
I went to Japan for two years, and as a matter of fact, I caught up on everything that a little Southern Baptist boy is behind on. I recommend it to all Southern Baptist boys. Well, it was two fantastic years. I stayed high the whole time. I was the base surgeon. I could finish my work in the morning by 11 o'clock. I would deliver babies and fix fractures and do all kinds of things, play golf all afternoon, but mostly all afternoon and evening I would drink.
Two years. And at that time, I saw the movie, The Days of Wine and Roses. It was black and white. I remember it was very black. I remember I came out of that movie so stunned because I knew that was me. One, because I knew that was me.
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Hell, I'm only twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old, and I mean, I, I hadn't, I hadn't, I had only had a couple of good years there drinking. So, it was very sad, but I realized I better do something about it. I, I, I know the following night I went to the Officer's Club, and I had eighteen scotch and sodas, and I couldn't get high. And, so, I decided I'd quit drinking. And I, um, I got, uh, myself back into Columbia University, uh, to train to be a psychiatrist, which seemed the right thing to do, given all the problems I had.
I'd made an A-plus in surgery and medical school, and I'd made a C in psychiatry. I love, I love emergency medicine and using my hands and doing things, you know, I don't like sitting still listening to people's troubles. But now, as some of you may recognize, I'm deaf, I'm a deaf psychiatrist, so I don't have to listen to people's troubles anymore. But in those days I did, and, uh, it was awful, it was just awful. I got back to New York City to Columbia University. I wasn't drinking, I wasn't playing golf, I wasn't doing anything fun.
And I discovered the first symptom of alcoholism. I didn't know it at the time for what it was until many years later when I got an I.I. When I got back to New York City in 1959, at age 29, I had lost absolutely all the good qualities that I'd had as a young man. I didn't believe in God. I didn't believe in love. I used to make sarcastic remarks when people talked about either love or God. I didn't believe in psychiatry. I didn't believe in anything, but I wasn't drinking.
I think I had a spiritual illness begin during the two years when I was just seeking pure pleasure. At the end of those two years, something had gone in my spirit. I had lost it. I couldn't get it back. I didn't know what was wrong. I didn't know what to do. I tried to believe in psychoanalysis. I really did. Psychoanalysis, I have to tell you, some of you don't realize, you don't realize that in the 60s and 70s, they believed like you believe in God, or like you believe in I.I., they believed that the way your mother fed you at age 30, that the way your mother fed you at age six months, or the way you were toilet trained, that that affected everything else the rest of your life.
And I didn't believe that then, and of course, it's proved to be total baloney now. But all of my professors believed that. And the way you would go to a psychiatrist nowadays, you would lie on a couch for an hour and talk about yourself while the psychiatrist sat behind you silent and said, mm-hmm. And you would do that four days a week if you were rich. And there was a great belief that deep down, if you just kept talking, that some great deep insight into what happened between you and your mother would finally emerge and you would be free like a butterfly, leaving the larva, and you would just become a beautiful person.
Well, every day I sat and listened to these people talk, and I sat and listened to my professors analyze what it meant, what all of they said, and I kept getting more and more restless and more and more restless. And finally, one day, all of my classmates and my staff had the professor, Professor Lawrence Cobb. He was president of the American Psychiatric Association, the chairman of the department at Columbia University, the author of the textbook, and he had on his white coat and his Columbia button.
And I sat in front of him and all of his classmates, and they all listened intently. And for an
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hour and a half, all of those doctors sat there, all of them totally intrigued by why my patient lay on his couch with his hand like this rather than his hand like that. And I looked at these guys, and I said to myself, either these guys have some ability that I don't have. Either they can look down into a man's soul where I can't see, or else they're full of shit. And I went back to daily drinking from that moment.
And I got a degree in psychiatry, and I went back to my dapper sals, my menstrual cramp pills. I got a degree in public health at Columbia University, and I got me a three-piece suit with 19 pockets with a reversible vest, and they were all little beanbags of every kind. And I was very skinny in those days, and I had a little plastic flask of gin, and I was a true example of better living through chemistry. And I would drink myself to sleep every night with a lot of water, because I didn't like hangovers, you see. Now, you listen carefully. If you drink yourself to sleep, you have hangovers in the morning, right?
Well, I found if you drink a lot of water and you take a lot of aspirin with your alcohol, it'll get you up in the middle of the night. And when you get up in the middle of the night, then you take one of those menstrual cramp pills, dapper sals, with speed in it, and you'll come flying out of the bed at 7 o'clock in the morning with no hangover at all. And then I began to wash them down with a few Sequinols, because I was taking so much speed by that time. But I would chug a lug 25 swallows of gin without breathing, and I had this ritual to do that every night. And I had this great belief that if I could hold my breath that long, that my heart and lungs must be in good condition. So each night I would drink 25 swallows of gin in order to do a physical exam on myself. In those days I was director of three mental health clinics and one suicide prevention service.
On several occasions I woke up in the middle of the night suicidal, disguised my voice and called my own suicide prevention service. I am not making this up for my story, I swear to you. I was a director in Menlo Park, it was the first one in the state of New Jersey, and I was drinking myself unconscious at night and crazy as hell, and I did literally call for help on my own line. Well, I had a beautiful office, and I had a beautiful car, and a beautiful house, and a beautiful wife and beautiful children, and I had a faculty appointment at Columbia University, and I got pulled over on the parkway once, and I started getting out my driver's license, and a cop said, never mind that boy, your back seat's on fire. And I said, well, I'm not going to do that, I'm not going to do that, I'm not going to do that. I told you I was restless, you know, and always on the go.
Well, I had a white Chrysler convertible with big tail fence, and I used to keep those things stuffed to gin, and I used to drive that thing with the top down year round. And I found
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that, I don't know if you know this, but if it starts to rain on you in a convertible, if you get up to 50 miles an hour, you won't get wet, even if the top's down. So I rarely put that top up, and in the fall it filled up with leaves, and in the winter it filled up with ice and snow. It was about this time of year that it all thawed out and caught fire in the back seat. It was the same time of year that you would have been able to get to the spot that I was an alcoholic by walking in front of my house, because my Halloween pumpkin was still sitting out. My patients started discovering I was crazy, because sometimes unbeknownst to myself, I would schedule two new unrelated families for the same hour.
And when I would walk out into my waiting room, I would think that two families were all one giant big family. So I'd have them all come into my office together, and then I would pretend that I knew what I was doing. Well, they gradually all realized I was crazy and my practice waned. I had one successful case. Crazy as I was. He was a man who had the office next to me. And one night I heard a loud crash against the wall, and I couldn't get in his door, so I looked in his window, and he was lying there on the floor unconscious with an empty bottle beside him. And I figured, Aha! I know what this man's problem is. His name was Paul, and he was a chemist. Well, when he finally came to see me, I sent him to AA, and he got sober. Do you know that for seven years after I sent him to AA, I used to fall unconscious on my side of that same wall? I would get up and put the bottle in the trash can, climb up to my big black desk, go through the big psychiatric textbook of 119 labels, go through each one of them to try to figure out what was wrong with me.
For all those years, I was going to see psychiatrists. I was going to be psychoanalyzed, and I was getting therapy, and I was reading those books. And all of those years, I was totally convinced that I had a deep personality inadequacy that I'd had all my life, and that alcohol was helping me get by a day at a time. I really believed that I was a phony through and through and was about to be discovered, and in the meantime, I kept going to the shrinks, and I kept thinking, Well, alcohol is getting me by. And I had the total alcohol tolerance delusion that alcohol was Paul's problem, and alcohol was my answer. I believed that sincerely, and it almost killed me. I mean, it almost killed me. I was taken in several times, not breathing. I was hospitalized eight times. I had 13 psychiatrists, and with their help, I lost absolutely everything in life. And I had no idea what was wrong with me.
My favorite treatment was shock treatment. Shock treatment, they give you a shot in the arm and IV every morning when you wake up, and it's just absolutely as good as the Love Act. It is fantastic. And you get it every morning reliably. You don't have to negotiate for it or anything. And then you get gourmet food, and I had private nurses, and I went swimming.
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I mean, how can you not like that? So, at the end of three weeks, I was feeling terrific. I got out of the Institute of the Pennsylvania Hospital, and went right across the street, and sat down in a bar. And I toasted, here's to the Institute of the Pennsylvania Hospital. They got me back to drinking faster than any other doctor so far. I spent a lot of time in mental hospitals, but I spent a lot more time in psychoanalysis.
And you, I've got to describe it to you, right? Well, I was working for $6 an hour, got it? I was paying him $40 an hour, and my wife was going, and I was like seven visits a week. You figure all that out for a few years. Well, my analyst diagnosis of me was that I was a latent homosexual. And the reason that he said that is because I had a dream that I was getting screwed. One day, I was riding in there, going across the George Westman Bridge, and it occurred to me.
Anybody that spends $10,000 in order to lie on a couch and talk about himself is getting screwed. And I gave up psychoanalysis, and the dream went away, and I never had it since. Well, my life came close to ending. I was really very sick and very crazy. I could only work for two or three hours a day. I was falling down drunk. But in that state, I got the most important recognition of my life. I brought the first community mental health center to the state of New Jersey.
And I brought $9 million, and I was an overnight celebrity all over the state, and I had my picture made everywhere with the governor in his office. And incidentally, on that same day, I came home and urinated in my own closet. I just remembered something here today, talking to Carol, that I don't think I'd remembered before. I got a call about that time from Governor Lurleen Wallace, seeing if I wanted to come back to Alabama to be the commissioner of mental health in Alabama.
And I remember I was sitting in the middle of the bed, unshaven, for two or three days. I'd been there for two or three days. I was totally in withdrawal, detoxing at home, shaken, unshaven, dirty, greasy. I mean, I literally could not get out of my bedroom without a Thorazine or something. I couldn't get out of my bedroom. And I got a call from Governor Wallace. And I explained to her that I had too many commitments in New Jersey to come for an interview.
Well, it was at that time that I wrote this Community Mental Health Center grant, and they made me the featured speaker at the biggest event of my life. Legislators, freeholders, congressmen, psychiatrists, all kinds of people were going to come to hear me speak about how to get federal dollars in community mental health centers. I was to give this speech at Hackensack Hospital on January the 27th.
And I drank myself into a coma, don't remember anything from Christmas on, and woke up in Hackensack Hospital. It was total coincidence. I woke up in a nurse's arm, and I asked her what day it was.
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And it was the day that I was supposed to speak. Now, what I haven't told you is that after people heard me speak about community mental health centers, they were going to get a tour through a brand-new locked psychiatric unit that had just been built at Hackensack Hospital. Well, folks, I woke up in that locked psychiatric unit. And I recognized that shortly all of the people that I had wanted to impress all my life, they are about to come through that door and tour that new psychiatric unit.
And there I am standing, unshaven, in one of those green gowns that shows your rump in the rear. And I'm standing in my little paper shoes. And I get, you got the picture? So I go up to the head nurse, and I explain to her, I am the featured speaker here today. I ask for a one-hour pass to give my talk. And she did not take me seriously. Now I've got a problem. Now I'm locked up. They're all coming through.
And I think and I think and I figure it out. I grab a blanket, roll up in it, and get under my bed. Now my roommate pretended not to notice for a long time. He could not see the wisdom of what I was doing. Finally his curiosity got the best of him. And he asked me, by the way, what do you do? I explained from under the bed, I'm a psychiatrist. That young man had taken rat poison on a Saturday night before in Rutherford, New Jersey.
But after I spoke with him, he never complained of one depressive night. He complained of one depressive symptom again. He was discharged the following day as cured. The only miracle of my life, and it was done from under the bed at Hackensack Hospital. My life quickly came to the end of this chapter. My mother would no longer speak to me. Even my dog Max would no longer come to me. True story. I couldn't even get Max to come to me anymore.
I had no money, much to drink. My wife got a job in Florida. Now then, some of you that understand these issues know that I am either going to have a spiritual awakening or die now that my wife is no longer there to feed me. Well, what happened was we had a plan. And the plan was that I was going to go into the VA hospital. I really was looking forward to being locked up because I couldn't. True, I wanted to get away.
You know, some of you people don't understand hospital walls. Hospital walls are not to keep the patients out. I mean to keep the patients in. Hospital walls are when you're one of those sick, sick people. You want some walls to keep the world out. And I got that sick. I wanted to be behind walls.
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Literally. And I wanted to be able to be protected. And I wanted to be able to eat cornflakes. And I wanted to sit very simply. I wanted to have on overalls and be back in my parents' home in Alabama. I didn't want much. I had totally given up that I was a phony, that I couldn't be a doctor, that I couldn't be a husband, that I couldn't be a father. I was totally hoping just to stay alive, be able to laugh, and be able to live in my parents' basement.
That's all I wanted. Well, we had this final day together. And we were going to do one thing as the Bob S. family. We were going to visit our former babysitter. She's now graduating from nursing school. They invited us to their home. We got in our old wrecked Chrysler and silently, angrily, fearfully, rode to our babysitter's home. And when I got there, absolutely everything that I had seen as a child came back to me.
I saw a family that loved each other. I saw a family that was for each other. I saw people touch and affectionate and happy and twinkle in their eyes. And they had that spirit for each other. We got back in the car. I was crying by that time. My kids were screaming. We all realized it was our last day together and we all realized that we are all, right down to the six-year-old, we're all a failure.
Everybody was a failure. Everybody was sad. Everybody was frightened. Everybody was paralyzed. And we rode home in total silence and fear and anger. Who knows why? And I said, in all that pain, I will never drink again. And I got home and they wanted to be away from me and they all went up to the bedroom and I remember the television was showing Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. They all sat down in the television.
I couldn't stand it. I got drunk. And then I wanted to be with my family that last night, but I was drunk. And I went up to be with them and I lunged into the room and I knocked my daughter out from in front of the television. She had the favorite place, sitting at the foot of the bed, in front of a big color TV set. And I knocked her over and then I looked over at what I'd done, my daughter, the last night, and I saw her, I saw her pain.
I can't describe it that way. What happened to me is, I think, almost for the first time in my 38 years, I was no longer concerned about whether something's wrong with me. I was now, for the first time, identifying with another human being. I saw my little daughter, Pam, junior high school girl, perfect skin, perfect eyes, too young to take care of herself in the world, depending on me and knowing that I can't take care of her.
She's got absolutely no way to turn. She's sitting in a little quilted gown and a little quilted house coat and a little quilted hat. And I look in her eyes and I want for her, I want for her to not be frightened and I want for her to not be paralyzed. And I only know I felt all of her pain totally and it got me out of myself. At exactly that moment, a Christmas card blew off of the television set and even though it may sound corny to some of you, to me that was absolutely a message from a higher power.
That Christmas card was so powerful, I carried it with me for the next three years in my back pocket every day. A Christmas card said, For one child's sake, may life ever be a land of wonder and awe and may each child on earth be free. And I just began to cry because I remember I remember how curious I had been, and how I'd felt the wonder of God in the heavens, and how much I'd trusted.
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I'd been a kid who totally trusted his parents and believed them. My daughter had nowhere to trust. She saw no wonder. She had no freedom. And I cried for my daughter that night. And I looked around the room, and the bed springs and mattress were on the floor. And there were dog hairs, and urine smells, and cigarette burns, and a windowpane, and leaves, and plaster. And that's what my daughter had.
And I swore I'll never drink again. And I went downstairs, and the night went on. Eleven, twelve. And I paced, and I went outside, and I walked in the woods. And I ran up and down the street. One, two. Two o'clock that night, I could not stay sane. And I found a bottle, and got drunk. And I woke up sometime before morning. And that chapter of my life ended this way. I did only one thing. I did one thing right.
I did it so thorough that I've never backed up on it in any way in fifteen years. I lay there on that floor and said, I know I can't not drink. It was totally clear to me that I can't quit. Instantly, I had a kind of bright light that also was embarrassing. I had a total sense of understanding, a total sense of God's presence. And simultaneous with feeling God, all of my atheistic days were over. I just said, God help me.
I knew God was going to help me. I don't know anything except I gave up. Prayer came automatic. Help came automatic. Hope came automatic. Insight came automatic. I knew that means now I let other people run my life. And I called Paul. You remember Paul? Thank God for Paul. I called Paul and he borrowed some money and put me in a drunk tank. And I went straight on into DTs. I went into hallucinations.
Now I want to tell you a little about this. I want to tell you because not many of you have been psychotic and had some insight into what was going on. I was coming off of alcohol, Valium, Doradon, Darvon, Speed, Sequinol. I don't remember what else, but anything I could find. And I went into a delirium where I literally was crazy and my mind was, I know they had to tie me down and give me shots. I know that I did not know what was reality and what wasn't.
The things that all went together to me that day, I remember Bob Gibson was pitching the World Series against the Yankees. I remember two astronauts in space. But equally real to me was the fact that two of my medical school classmates had pistols and were chasing me around that drunk tank. And I was totally, totally crazy. I had convulsions. Incidentally, I never was upset by having convulsions. I used to just tell the nurse, I'm about to have a convulsion now and get all the furniture away.
And I'd just sit in the middle of the room and boom. I would say it's very relaxing to have a convulsion. And there are some crude things I don't think are important. It was a true drunk tank. I mean, they'd line us up nude to give us shots and it was no program and no lectures and no groups. I was locked up for ten days. A bunch of New York City policemen I remember mostly. And yet, I'm trying to tell you, it was just a grubby situation.
I was truly a fallen down late stage drunk in DTs, right? I mean, that's pretty bad. But you know, I remember the whole thing pleasantly. You see, the reason I tell all this
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is if you truly give up on yourself, in my experience, if you truly do believe in God, if you truly do have trust and faith, and if you truly are open, then even psychosis ain't so bad, folks. It's not so bad. There's not much to fear if you learn this great power of surrender. And of course, that's what all the professors in the world don't understand. It's what the medical schools can't comprehend.
I'm going to come back to that in a minute. What happened to me was I surrendered because I'd tried everything and I was able to surrender because as a child I'd known faith and it was easy for me to have trust, and it's easier than if you've been a child of an alcoholic and been in a situation where you can't trust. And anyway, I ended up very clearly surrendered in a drunk tank. And I want to tell you there were just a couple of things there that happened to me that's so powerful they're still the center of my life.
Three things in that drunk tank in the first 24 hours and they're the same as the 12 steps if you listen and think about it. Same power. First, there was a picture on the wall that was a picture of Jesus knocking on a cottage door that has no doorknob and no way to pull it open from the outside. And I was taught in Sunday school as a kid that God's love comes to you provided you do one thing, only one thing.
Nobody can pull you open. You've got to become an honest, open person by opening yourself up to the world. You've got to take risks. You've got to be vulnerable. You've got to reach out. You can't be defensive. You can't be closed off. You can't have secrets. And I made my mind up that I was going to be honest and open and vulnerable and let my people tell me what to do. I was going to stay vulnerable and open.
On the floor was a sign, but for the grace of God. And I enjoyed that amazing grace tonight like I enjoyed it as a kid. And what I understand of life is that God is good. What I understood standing there in that drunk tank, locked up, Bob S., God doesn't give you life according to what you deserve. God gives you life according to his grace and his love. He gives it to everybody. You don't earn it.
You get it in spite of yourself. And I stood there in that place and felt total relief, and I have mostly felt relief since that time. I know that I am forgiven for being a failure as a father and a doctor. And my kids were scarred and my kids were hurt and my kids had to suppress their feelings and learn how to control their feelings and not trust. I damaged some human beings in this world, and I couldn't live with myself if I didn't believe in the grace of God.
The way it worked then was even though I was totally discredited and disowned and ashamed and everything else, I got back all that I'd ever had as a kid. I truly believe, and I believe this night, something good is going to happen to me because that's God's love. All I have to do is stay open. Stay reaching out. Not holding off. Reaching out. And I believe good things will happen. I believed it then, I believed it then, I believed it then, and I had one more lesson that I learned there.
That night they had to tie me down with sheets. The nurses did. Apparently I got psychotic out of my skull and they had to tie me down. All I know is I woke up in the night tied down, and they were tying some other guy down, and he was screaming and yelling and hallucinating and terrified. He was, I can't imagine I was ever as terrified. He just seemed totally terrified of the bugs on the wall. And all that night was not long, I was just feeling compassion for that guy.
I'm glad I can feel compassion for people.
[00:55:01]
I know some of my colleagues can't. I felt compassion for them that night. I got up the next morning, had breakfast, and I was coming off of Valium and Sequinol and all that thing I told you, and I was having what's called myoclonic jerks. It's different than tremors. Tremors are like this. Myoclonic jerks, your body goes. People don't know whether to wave back at you or how to behave. I couldn't pour my milk, and I spilled it all over myself and my lap, and I was very embarrassed and ashamed.
And the guy that had been tied beside me sat down there, and I started feeling for him and just sitting at the table, not eating. And a guy came in, chalk white. His face was flat from lying in the gutter the night before, I remember. I thought he was going to die. Well, that rascal came right to life, smiled, snaggletooth, I still remember your snaggletooth, reached over and poured my milk. And the guy who was tied down in the bed with me all night and crazier than hell reached over and poured the flathead guy's milk.
And I caught up in what was going on at the table, reached over and poured the bald-headed man's, the man who was tied down, poured his milk. And I tell you I'm telling this slow because I'm going to tell you that's all there is to this program. That's all there is. You can word that however you want to word it. I can word it a dozen different ways in a dozen talks. I can tell you that I cannot meet my own needs in this world, and you cannot meet your needs for happiness and closeness and love.
I cannot meet my own needs. I cannot do for myself. But if all of us get together and truly get involved and open to each other, feeling with each other, the power comes from a higher power that's given to a group that's not given to an individual. The power comes, and if we truly care about each other, our needs get met. And I find that is the most important part of my program to this day. Now I want to just brag a little bit.
Don't tell my sponsor back in New Jersey, please. And then I'll close. I have had a lot of trouble. I've been fired since I got sober. I went into a hospital with 23 psychiatrists, and I had an office that gave me power, and I proceeded to tell them they were ripping off drunks and various other things about how they treated alcoholics. I did that when I was too young before I understood power and before I understood a lot of things.
I did that because when I got sober, I did exactly what I did as a child. I went back to my same personality pattern. When I got into AA, I was going to be the best AA. They said go to five meetings a week. I went to five meetings a week. They said read the big book every morning. I read the big book every morning. They said pray twice a day. I prayed twice a week. They said eat cheese three times a day.
I ate cheese three times a day. Everything anybody told me to do, I did. I did a daily written inventory. Daily Written Inventory for five years, every single day, and meditation.
[01:00:01]
Well it paid off for me. My life's gotten better and better, but I want to make one point. What happened was, when I was working the program, absolutely by the numbers, I went back to trying to get recognition. I went back to trying to get the wrong things and be, I tried to be super drunk, right? And what happened was, I became a self-righteous prick, and I was miserable. I was miserable. And I then began to wage war on all the doctors in New Jersey, and I got fired.
I was totally disorganized. I had tried so hard to be a super drunk and a super drunk doctor, and now, one night, I stood in New Jersey and I had no home to go to and no job. I went up to see Bill Wilson's grave. I have worshipped Bill Wilson. I met him, and that's another story. I've worshipped him more than any other person alive. I got up to see his grave, and it had a little stone about this size.
I remember it was New Year's Day and it was snowing, and I looked and it was silent, and I spent an hour or two. I finally found it, and I was just totally mortified. I mean, there were all these beautiful mausoleums and stones and all kinds of people up there in Dorset, Vermont, and Bill Wilson's is one you can't find, and I mean, it's like a thousand others. It's meaningless. It's just in the ground, and it's just meaningless.
Well, what I learned from that escaped me at the time. I was just so totally depressed that I came back home and said to hell with it. I don't know what the meaning of anything is. I was totally disorganized there for a few days, and then I got into AA the right way without anybody quite telling me or even telling myself. I got in in a way where I haven't taken myself so serious, and I am concerned.
Cecil told me that I was too crude in my AA talks, and I want to tell you, if I've been too crude for any of you people, tell me afterwards, otherwise I'm going to give this talk exactly the same way. Anyway, I got into AA the right way, and I got into AA like a spade. I decided that God is really the important one, and Bob S. is really not that important, and I learned that from seeing Bill Wilson's grave, and I really don't need to get up and speak in front of anybody anymore.
I really don't. I really don't care if nobody knows who I am, and I am now happily married. My children, who didn't want to be around me for the first five years after I was sober, I was sober and self-righteous. You got it? My kids couldn't stand me. I was a rigid, judgmental, critical guy, and my failure got me over it. My failure humiliated me, gave me something of gratitude, and now I'm just glad for life.
I'm glad for pretty much anything. I really don't pray for anything. I just pray God's will and help me enjoy the day, kind of, and do thy will and that's it. I'm not so serious about it. Now, what the good news, and what I'm going to brag about, is this past week I found myself totally together in my family, and my family was. All my kids really like to be with me now, and I just got appointed as a lecturer and senior clinical consultant to Harvard Medical School, and they're bringing me in there specifically to teach them the AA program and help the doctors at Harvard understand AA.
That happened to me just two days ago, and I am one happy man tonight. Thank you very much.