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Source: DICOBE-00676 – Ted B – 8TH WICHITA KANSAS SPRING RNDP – 1983-04-10.mp3 File: dicobe-00676-ted-b-8th-wichita-kansas-spring-rndp-1983-04-10.mp3 Duration: 01:10:05
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Thank you very much. My name is Ted B., and I'm an alcoholic. It has been by the grace of God and with the help of the people and the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I haven't found it necessary to take a drink in eight years, seven months, and 18 days, and I'm very, very grateful for that. I want to thank you folks for having me down here. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. And I'm a lawyer, and I guess I'll tell you a lawyer joke. This guy was up in one of these Goodyear balloons traveling over the country, and he got lost.
He saw this fellow on the ground who happened to be a lawyer, and the fellow in the balloon called down and said, where am I? And the lawyer looked up at the fellow in the balloon, and he said, you're in a balloon. Now I want you to notice three things about that answer. It was precise and to the point. It answered only the question asked, and you didn't know a damn bit more after you got through answering the question than you did before you asked it.
I come from Lamarck, Texas, capital L-A, capital M-A-R-Q-U-E, and that's a twin city to Texas City, Texas, and it's about halfway between Houston and Galveston. I think probably my life started off unmanageable from the very beginning. I really don't remember much of what I did when I started out in life. It's very vague to me. But you could see me walking down the street somewhere, and you'd swear it was me because it looked like me, but it wasn't really me because you couldn't see the resentment and the fear and the guilt and the loneliness. That was me.
You know, I'd go home and I'd look at myself in the mirror, you know, because I didn't feel like you and I looked, and I was always surprised to see that I looked just like you did. I don't recall having any principles to live by when I grew up, although vaguely I think I must I think I must have had, but I lost them somewhere. And I tried to get some principles by doing things that I thought would please you.
My plan of action went something like this. I'll call attention to myself. I'll do things that make people like me, then they won't hurt me, and I'll feel better. But I resented the fact that I had to try to please all you dummies, and I rebelled from that. Next, I tried religion as a way of life, and I'd go to one of these churches and they'd have a fellow up there in a black suit, and he'd be saying something like this.
Friends, there's coming a day. It's going to be a blaring of trumpets and of horns. It's going to be a final day. It's going to be a judgment day, and they're going to haul your butt up in front of this wide video screen, and they're going to flash back on there every rotten, miserable, lousy, despicable thing you ever did in all your life. And I could just see all these dummy singers sitting around.
They're looking at the screen. They're looking at me. They're looking at each other. They don't know their turn's coming up next, and they're all sitting there saying, shame, shame, shame. And I got the idea in religion that you had to feel bad in order to be good, and I rebelled against that. Next, I tried doing just what I wanted to do. I'd do just what I felt like doing, but the trouble was there that I had taken all my feelings and buried them so deeply
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that I didn't even have any feelings to act on. Remember, I used to sit there in my chair, and my wife said I smirked at her, and the knives and the furniture would be whizzing by my head, and I would look at this crazy, demented wife of mine pitilessly, and my reaction to life was non-reaction, and I think 12 by 12 calls it sulking and silent scorn. I lived a lifetime of it. And when you try to live on crazy feelings like this, well, you're going to be crazy as hell.
And I was. I was just as crazy as hell. I tried success as a way of life. I was a judge. I was a lawyer. I was high on the social register. I had charge accounts in every liquor store in Texas City and Lamar, and one in Galveston. That's success. But success was not the thing that I was looking for either, because I rebelled against this. I guess the best way you could describe my life before I got to AA would be to say I almost made it. I almost made it.
I didn't know that God wanted me to be happy and joyous and free, and I wasn't, so I guess my life was unmanageable. But I found a form of manageability. I found alcohol, and when I drank it, I was happy, and I was joyous, and I was free. And any drug in this world, any drug, I don't care what it is, that can give you freedom, or the illusion of freedom, has got real power. Alcohol did something for me that not even Alcoholics Anonymous has been able to do.
It seemingly put me in two worlds at the same time. I'd take a drink, and I could live in self-fantasy land. I was who I wanted to be. I was where I wanted to be, and I was doing what I wanted to do. And at the same identical time, I was living in reality, because I could be your friend, I could chat with you, I could be helpful and kind, and I could solve all your problems. But there was a problem. Alcohol was temporary. It didn't last. It wasn't real.
But without it, man, I was a nothing. I was a dull tool, laughing on the outside and dying on the inside. But with it, I was magnificent. I was witty, I was charming, and I was suave. My God, I've always hungered for suavity. I could not, I would not get involved in life. I did the least I could that would just barely get me by, and that always left me with a lot of potential. My God, those people always told me about that potential.
But you know, when you only do exactly what you want to do, and don't do anything that you don't want to do, that always leaves you with a lot of potential, doesn't it? Someday things were going to be different. I was going to be a success. I was going to get it all together. I was going to be on top. People would be sorry that they hadn't seen this vast potential that lay beating fiercely just beneath my timid breast.
And though they mistreat me now, someday they would understand, and I would forgive them, one and all, someday. But someday always seemed like such a long way off, and I was a very impatient person, and I'd take a drink. And just like that, it was someday, I was in charge, and I was in control. A secret smile would tug gently and insistently at the corner of my sensitive lips, and I would take my rightful place in society easily, smoothly, and comfortably.
I was a periodic drunk. I'd go days, I'd go weeks, I'd go months without drinking.
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First I'd feel fine, but then I'd get restless, I'd get irritable, and I'd get discontented. And the longer I didn't drink, the more the horrors of the last drunk would fade, and the greater would become the memories of the good times that I had had while drinking. I'd go stark, staring, sober, and I'd take that drink. People would tell me, you oughtn't drink like that. I was surrounded by idiots. Hell, I knew that.
I knew I hadn't ought to drink like that, but there was no cause for them to be alarmed because, you see, I was right on the verge of figuring this thing out. I mean, I almost had it. There was no need for all these people to get excited. I simply could not find what it was that I was looking for, that I was searching for so desperately. I drank until I just could not drink anymore. I mean, there was no way, but I kept on drinking anyway.
But it was no use. The good old days were over. They were at an end, and I simply could not live with that fact. Once again, my life had become unmanageable. Alcohol no longer worked for me. During some of my worst drinking, I served as Justice of the Peace of Texas City in Lamarck, Texas. I held that office from 1967 to 1978, and I held court at 2 o'clock every afternoon. I used to get ready for court by going over to the Holiday Inn, to the Caravan Club, and ordering vodka martinis on the rocks.
And I might be worried about some decision that I was going to have to make that afternoon, but after one or two of those, no problem at all. And I'd come to court, and I'd sit there and drink until I could not stand up, and then I'd go sit down, and I'd hold court. And they would bring people before me, many of them drinking, many of them for other crimes. Drinking was involved most of the time. And I would sit there, and I would wonder, why in the world you couldn't control your drinking, like I was doing?
And they'd bring cases before me, and I'd be drunk by the time I couldn't hear what they said. And they'd get through with their case, so I could tell they were through because all the lawyers sat down. And I'd mumble something, and the lawyers would ask that clerk, what did that guy say, what did that judge say? And I had her very well trained, and she said, who says you're guilty in the fine that's $52.50? Pay right here.
I'd take care of that case, and we'd move on to the next one. But it didn't do any good hearing those cases. I'd hear stuff like this. I had a witness up there one day, and they asked this lady, exactly where was the defendant shot? And she'd say, Judge, do I have to answer that question? And she'd say, yes. She said, well, Judge, you won't believe this, but he was shot right in the subpoena. And said when the police got there, he was D.O.D.
What is that D.O.D.? She said, that's dead on the driveway. And I must have had a wonderful personality back in those days, a lot better than it is now. Because people would give me money for no reason at all. And I just figured it was because they were so grateful, because they knew I was going to decide the case in their favor. And I used to marry a lot of people when I was Justice of the Peace, but I had a problem there.
Because I'd be drunk a lot of times. But I solved that problem. I was also with a real estate man there in Texas City, and I taught him the marriage ceremony. So if people came to me to get married, and he was drunk, or I was drunk, he'd perform the ceremony. We've got a lot of sinners running around in Texas City and Lamarck right now.
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And I worried about my appearance a lot. I always wanted to look good. And I figured I was getting a little thin on top one time, so me and another drunk went up to Pasadena there outside of Houston to get a hair transplant. I'd read about them. And I went into an old shady office and this doctor says, Well, we can give you what we call plugs. What they do, they take these little round cutters and they cut circles out of the back of your neck, back here where your hair is thick, and then they plant it up here on the top.
You dig holes in the top of your head and they plant these things up there. And these things grow just like corn. And he says, We can give you 20 of these things for $5 a plug. And I figured $100 was a good price for a luxurious head of hair. So I stand here before you tonight with 20 plugs sitting right around the top of my head right here. And I have this fear right now that one day all my hair is going to fall out and I'm just going to be standing here with 20 plugs standing in front of me.
If you don't have any hair on the back of your neck, don't worry about it. They'll tell me they can get it from other parts of the body now. But I want everyone here to know that mine are from the back of my neck. But I don't remember much about that. I don't remember much of what I did when I was drinking because I was drinking. And I don't remember much of what I did when I wasn't drinking because I wasn't drinking.
I came to AA to find some way to be miserable and sober instead of miserable and drunk. I didn't know you had any other choices. And really that was a strange thing to do because I had been sober a lot of times before I ever got to AA. And I was sober when I got to AA. As a matter of fact, I've been sober the same exact number of times that I've been drunk. That ain't no big deal. So I came to AA looking for something that I already had in a program that didn't even provide for it in the first place.
But that's all right. I did things like that all my life. That's the story of my life. I was determined that I was going to find some way to stop drinking. And being a smart-aleck college graduate, I started reading. And I read all the experts. And as a result of reading these books, well, I started jogging. They said it worked in Switzerland. And I got a pair of the shortest shorts that I could find because I've always had these good-looking hairy legs.
And I would jog around the block and wait for those Venetian blinds to shake because I knew those housewives would be watching when I went by. I tried yoga. That worked when I was all tied up like a pretzel. But when I got untied, sometimes I'd take a drink. I tried Transcendental Meditation. But all I could meditate on was why the jogging and the yoga wouldn't work for me. I tried psychiatry. I remember in college they said if you go back in your youth and find out what went wrong back there and bring it to light, that this would free you.
So I went back and I made a study of my youth as well as I could. Found out I hated my father. Well, I hated just about everybody, really. I wasn't okay. And by God, none of you were either. I've had a troubled childhood. And I want to tell you, it's certainly been a long one. I tried psychology. I've heard these guys at AA meetings. They say what you've got is a bad behavior pattern. What you do is stay away from the places where you drank.
Stay away from the people that you drank with. This will break the behavior pattern and you won't drink anymore. I stay away from the people I drank with. I stay away from the places that I drank with. And I woke up one morning and I went ahead and drank anyway. I didn't care. I read a book by Dr. Tim Terra. He said I had bad adrenal glands. This was my problem. And he said if I'd get my adrenals fixed up, I'd be able to drink like everybody else.
And he suggested adrenal cortex extract. And I went to my doctor and I said, give me some of this stuff.
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He said, this is a large dose. It's going to be painful. I said, no, the pain is too great to return to social drinking. He shot me in the rear end. The only effect it had was that I had to stand up when I drank. I read two books by Dr. Valles at the Veterans Hospital in Houston. He said I had a bad hypothalamus. This is a small gland up in the center of the brain. When you get ready to drink, this thing just starts titillating.
It just goes berserk and whirls around on your head. And this is what causes you to drink. And he said if I had a brain operation and had my hypothalamus removed, I'd be able to drink like everybody else. And about this time, I was beginning to think I needed an operation. But I read all about this hypothalamus and I found that it also controls appetite and sex. And at that time, I was not willing to go to any lengths to get sober so I didn't get the operation.
I tried antabuse and all it did was make my eyeballs red when I drank on top of it. I've taken glutamine and tycopan at the instructions of a chemistry professor at the University of Texas. It didn't work. I've tried health foods. I've tried diets. I've tried everything I believe that I've ever heard any drunk in or out of Alcoholics Anonymous has ever tried. And none of it worked for me. I read somewhere finally that you could drink an ounce of alcohol an hour, night and day.
If you just drank one ounce, it would never harm you. And I said this is it. I finally found the answer. I'll drink one ounce an hour and be wonderful. Went down to the bar and ordered a drink. Finished it in ten minutes. Had fifty minutes left to go with the next drink. I said, well, what I'll do, I'll have the next drink. Next I'll drink now and the next time I get there I won't have that drink. I got drunk. I got drunk.
But I thought these things were working and I used to go up down the streets of Texas City and Lamarck telling all my friends how wonderful it was not to drink. I was a periodic drunk and I went long periods of time without drinking. Do like I do. Be wonderful. Stop drinking. And I've always had these delusions of grandeur, these visions. And I was, you know, dreaming about helping others before I ever got to AA.
And I thought I could help people with the drinking problem. And I used to see myself up on top of a tall, high mountain somewhere. And there would be people down this mountain and coming up the next side and running over the next ridge. A veritable sea of humanity. And I would be standing at the top of this mountain addressing this multitude and I would be dressed in these white robes and they would be gently shifting in the breezes and this great circular shaft of light would be descending from the heavens and playing in my glistening tassel hair.
And this strange, eerie, haunting melody would be playing from afar and yet so near. Seemed like it was rock of ages. And you have to have a certain air when you address multitudes, you know. I would say, oh, come unto me. All ye who labor in our heavy burden and I will give you rest. For thine yoke is heavy while mine is light. Yea, and verily I say unto you, go, my children, and drink no more. I was one crazy son of a bitch when I got to AAA.
Every time I stopped drinking, I always left a reservation. I said, now this is absolutely, positively, without a doubt, I'll meet at this time, Keats X and Tickle Rock all the way around never again. This is my last drink. That's it. Unless maybe something comes up real bad later on. And you know something always did. Something always did. I tried AA without trying AA. I was campaigning for a judge there in Texas City and I ran into an old time AA member, Sam Harkins.
And he said, well, Ted, since you're campaigning for judge, he says, why don't you come over here to this anniversary we're having in Texas City. We're going to have a bunch of alcoholics there and you can go in there and get their votes. Well, gosh, I didn't think these kind of people voted, you know,
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but I wasn't going to pass up any opportunity. So I went over there and I said, hello, Sam. I started passing out my card. I said, my name is Ted B.. I'm running for judge. Vote for me on election day. And I've always thought that I held a special attraction for the ladies and I had a special campaign slogan for them. I would say, ladies, before you go to bed, think of Ted. That was one of the elections that I lost.
Some years later, I went back. I remembered that anniversary and my drinking had gotten bad. And I had heard something there, something had been planted in me at this conference. And I wanted really to see if I could find out what they were doing in AA. But for me to go to Alcoholics Anonymous would be my ruination, the end of my illustrious political career. I was a judge by this time. The end of life.
So I went down here and I was drinking with a millionaire there in Texas City, the richest man in Texas City. And I was trying to get his law business, and I was trying to figure some way to accomplish both things at the same time. So what I did, I went to this AA meeting to get some literature for him. And I walked in. I was a judge by this time. And I said, Sam, I remember that anniversary back there several years ago.
And y'all are doing fine work. I want you to keep it up. I said, now I've got a very wealthy businessman that I drank with. He was too ashamed to come down here. But I have taken time off from my work to come down here for him. Do you have any literature that I might bring to this man? I stayed for the meeting and Sam gave me a big book. And I took this book home and I read it. And it looked a little bit churchy to me.
So I took it over to this fellow that I drank with. His name was Billy. He wasn't there and his wife was. And I said, Mert, this is the book that those drunks use to sober up with down there at that Alcoholics Anonymous. I said, I took time out to go down and get it for your husband. She said, well, how much is the book? And I said, well, I had a small book down there and it was $5.98, but this is the big book and it's $10.
I bought two-fifths of Canadian Club with the $10. I tried to give Mert the money for the book later on, but she wouldn't take it. She said the book was well worth it, but I had to put the money in the plate. It wasn't long after this that this fellow Billy came to see me. He'd been out on a bad bender and he wanted me to save him. I didn't really think that my ways were going to work for him. You know, I was beginning to secretly doubt that my ways were going to work for me.
But I thought here was an excellent opportunity for me to get back to Alcoholics Anonymous without anybody knowing that I'm an alcoholic. So what I'll do, I'll take this fellow down to AA, and I'll go down there as a friend of his and as kind of an advisor of yours, and I'll go down there and find out how you all stay sober. Then I'll leave AA, I'll get Billy's business for getting him sober, and everything will be wonderful.
So that's how I started going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I took Billy. And I made a lot of meetings. I liked AA. You know, it's fun to go to AA meetings if you're not an alcoholic. Did you know that? Man, you can float around those meetings and just be superior to everybody in there. You really can. You really can. And, you know, I was trying to get everybody to do it my way. I was having them jog and doing yoga, and I was selling vitamin pills to some of the members.
I bought them wholesale and sold them to them for retail. And I used to go down to this little sewing machine shop nearly every day where Sam's wife worked, Celia. And she used to spoon-feed me AA. Don't feed me AA, and I wasn't even an alcoholic, but I couldn't stay away, and Sam invited me over to his house one time, and I'm still, I'm just coming to AA, I'm not an alcoholic, I'm not an Al-Anon, I'm just somebody coming to AA, and you know, nobody ever come up and asked me what I was doing there, you know, never did, Sam said, come out to my house, I said, what time, I only work by appointment, and he said,
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well, come out any time, it don't make any difference, and I said, yeah, but what time, he says, any time, so I finally went out there, the wife and I, and here Sam and Celia was, and he's got about ten drunks out there in his backyard, he's feeding them honey and talking to them, and then suddenly he takes off to get some feed for all these animals he's got in the backyard, it looks like a zoo back there, he's got chickens, and ducks, and geese, and pheasants, and a little bull, and a deer, and that was the damnedest menagerie I ever saw, and I asked his wife, how much does all that feed cost, she said, $200 a month, and I said, this poor man, here he is, taking up all his time with these drunks, and spending all his money feeding these animals, I felt sorry for him, I felt sorry for him, I kept coming to these meetings, and I was doing so much for them down there that sometimes they'd call on me to talk, and I could see that they didn't understand alcoholism very well, so I'd get up and I'd explain it to them, you know, primary, secondary, first stage, second stage, third stage, everything that didn't have a thing in the world to do with recovery, well, that's what I was telling them, newcomers thought I made great talks, man, they'd just line up, you know, and shake my hand, old timers, they'd just sit back there, and they didn't say a word to me, you know, I figured they were all jealous because I had gotten it together so quickly, and was putting it across so much better than any of them could, and sometimes they'd call me, and I'd say, my name is Ted B., and I'm a judge, and I'm a lawyer, my law office is right down the street, just three blocks from here, and my law hours are nine to five, and I want you to know that I'm, as a judge, I'm grateful to have an organization like this where I can send people who need this kind of help, God bless you, and I sit down.
I've been coming here about four months, and I got one of these big cards in the mail, and I opened this thing up, and it was this dog, Snoopy, in the peanuts column, one of these big old cards, Snoopy was up there in his aviator outfit, and he had all these little birds around there, lined around in a semicircle beneath him, and man, he was really laying it on these birds, I mean, he was really letting them have it, and the caption on this thing said, if you can't dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with your bullshit.
And the card was unsigned. There's a lot of smartasses in alcoholics now. Well, I'm coming to AA, and suddenly things change. People start looking at me funny. And I can see what it is. You see, Billy seems to be doing all right, yet here I am still coming to these AA meetings, and people are starting to wonder why I'm there. I can see it. And I can see that I need a little bit more cover. So what I do, you see, I start sentencing people to Alcoholics Anonymous, down to this 518 club there in Texas City, from my courtroom, and then that way, you see, I go to all these meetings, not only to see that Billy is there, but I go to see that all the people that I have sent to Alcoholics Anonymous are there.
And I used to go down there, and I had a little black book. Carried it right there. Had a pen right over here. And I would walk up and down the aisles of this group, and I would check off the names of the people that I had sent to Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'd say, are you here? Are you here? If you don't make these meetings, I'm going to have to issue a warrant for your arrest. I figured I was single-handedly building up a group that had been faltering badly until I arrived, you see.
Then I made a mistake. I went to a conference with Sam and Celia, Lone Star Roundup of 1974 in Dallas. And I thought I was going to go up there, and I was going to explain to these people how us judges were sending everybody to Alcoholics Anonymous. And I went up there, and they didn't ask me anything. I had to sit there and listen to all these other drunks.
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Man, I got tired of that. We were sitting around the room that weekend, and they were talking about this being a program of attraction rather than promotion. And I saw a chance for my star to shine at last, and I said, now wait a minute. I said, that's ridiculous. What AA needs is more promotion. We need articles on the front pages of newspapers throughout the country telling everybody what AA is, and that way everybody will know about Alcoholics Anonymous, and everybody will be in AA.
And Celia, this Al-Anon, she got upset with me. And she said, Judge, just why in the world are you coming to Alcoholics Anonymous in the first place? There was a lot of people in that room. I did not like that question. I said, well, I'm coming to AA to see that Billy comes, and I'm coming to see that all these peoples that I sent down here to Alcoholics Anonymous come. And she says in front of everyone in a loud voice, I think that you're coming to Alcoholics Anonymous because you are attracted here to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, and the reason that you are attracted down here is because you're an alcoholic.
My God, my world came to an end. I couldn't believe she'd said this to me. I'm a very sensitive person. And Sam and Celia had a mutton jiff act. She knocked him down, and he picked him up. And he smiled very gently, and he said, Judge, he said, I guess you'll just have to go down and pick up a chip like all the rest of us did. Oh, it was embarrassing, man. And I got out of there as quick as I could, and I went to my room.
I tried to sleep that night. I sweated some when I drank, but nothing like that. And I tossed and I turned and sweated all night long. Fifteen minutes I was an alcoholic. Fifteen minutes I wasn't. Fifteen minutes I was an alcoholic. Fifteen minutes I wasn't. But the thing that really bothered me the most was I said to myself, what if I go down there, pick up a chip, join Alcoholics Anonymous, and then ten years later it turns out I'm not really an alcoholic.
Ten years completely gone out of my life. But I didn't have anything else to do. I wasn't drinking. What difference did it make? I might as well have gone down there with them sloppy, old, miserable drunks and been miserable with them. So come Monday night I went to a small group where I didn't think any of them would be, and I picked up a chip, firmly convinced that my life was at an end. I had no way of knowing that my life had only begun because life started for me with Alcoholics Anonymous.
So there I was, a 100% genuine member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was not impressed with your cornball signs. I was not enchanted with your beautiful poetry and your great thoughts, and I didn't want to hear about God. I thought that you were the luckiest people in the world to have a wonderful fellow like me consent to join up with you. I thought that you needed me, but that I did not need you. Well, I'll tell you what kind of guy I was.
Have you ever asked a doctor or a lawyer a question just to have them look at you? This is the way I used to sit up there on the bench. I was always up above the people that came before me, and they would be down here, and I would be sitting up there on the bench judging them. Maybe some of you have been charged with some crime before. Instead, you know what that means when I was looking down on those people down there?
You are a dumb bastard, and I am Mr. Wonderful. That was my attitude when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. Of course, I was so busy trying to keep people from finding out that I was in AA that I didn't have time for anything else in AA.
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I remember some nurses came to an open meeting there on a Friday night, and I knew all three of them, and I sat there praying that the chairman wouldn't call on me, and he didn't. And I saw one of these nurses, and she said, Judge, what in the world were you doing down there at that meeting? And I said, Oh, I'm kind of an advisor down there. They do good work. But it was a matter of coming to AA and the time, and I was telling some people that I was in AA.
I remember I went over to a sergeant that I had known for years, and I said, Sergeant, did you know that I've joined Alcoholics Anonymous? He was sitting down, and he stood up, walked around to where I was standing, put out his hand, and said, Judge, I sure am glad to hear that. And, you know, I thought I'd always been kind of a secret drinker, you know. Everybody in Texas City, Lamarck, and half of Galveston knew I drank, but I didn't want a soul to know that I was trying to change my life.
Well, I was a head trip man in AA, finally. Got through that stage, trying to find out how it worked. And I'm sitting at a meeting one time, and this guy says, In order to stop drinking, it is first necessary that you stop drinking. Now, I'd never heard that anywhere. It hadn't been in any of those books I read. Well, I knew that wasn't right. In order to stop drinking, first of all, you've got to find out how not to drink, and then you can not drink.
To just stop drinking without knowing how wouldn't work. And you can keep on drinking while you're finding out how not to, because it wouldn't do any good to stop drinking unless you know how. So I went up to this guy, Ben Rodney, and I said, How does this thing work? And he says, Utilize, don't analyze. And I said, Well, how am I going to utilize it, unless I analyze it to see what it is I'm supposed to utilize?
And he says, It's not necessary. He says, We're going to tell you what to do. Well, hell, that's what I was trying to avoid, you know. I went over to this other guy, and I said, How does this thing work? How do you not get drunk? And he said, The stupidest thing I've ever heard in Alcoholics Anonymous. He said, Don't take the first drink, and you won't get drunk. Well, I could see these guys really didn't know how it worked, you know.
I went over to a guy with even more time than he had, and I said, How does this thing work? How do you not get drunk? He said, Don't take the first drink, and you will not get drunk. I'd never heard such a thing. I said, None of these people really know how this thing works. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to find out how this thing works, and then I'm going to come back, and I'm going to tell all them.
So I took a leave from AA, and I went out and I ordered a drink, and I had my pad down to make notes so I could tell them all about it. Finished it in ten minutes, and I said, I am not drunk. I feel good. I have no problem. I'm not intoxicated, therefore it's not the first drink that gets you drunk. And since it's not the first drink that gets you drunk, what I'm going to do is have one more first drink.
I got up the next morning, and I couldn't read a damn thing that was on that pad after that. So I had to come back to AA, like those same old goose, and I have come here from Lamarck, Texas, clear up here to Kansas tonight to give you this spiritual message. Don't take the first drink, and you will not get drunk. And don't order two, push the first one by, and take the second one either. That won't work either.
I already got a 24-hour club in Houston one night, and by his own admission, he was just as goofy as he could be. And he said, this fellow over here asked me, he said, how can a guy with 23 years of sobriety and as screwed up as you are have that much time? And he says, it's very simple. I keep my program simple. He says, you don't drink, and you don't die. He says you don't drink and you don't die.
I got to watching you people in AA, and I could see that you were alike in a lot of ways,
[00:45:04]
and that you were very similar in your characteristics, things about you. And in an attempt to help you, I made a list of those things, and I put it in the form of questions. I call it the BBB of AAA, the B. Big Book of the Association of Alcoholics Anonymous. And this is in the form of questions, but my questions are superior, I think, to what you'll find laying around these AA rooms, because my questions you don't have to answer if you understand them while you may be one.
Why is it that an alcoholic, I wrote them down, they said you write down inventories. Why is it that an alcoholic always thinks that he's the most unusual, the most unique, and the most important person in all the world? Why is it that an alcoholic always says leave me alone, leave me alone, but just can't stand to be lonely? Why is it that an alcoholic can't be shown anything? Now you wives, don't tell your husbands where to turn on the road, that's a bad mistake.
Why is it that an alcoholic can't take directions from anybody? Why is it that an alcoholic always thinks that he is entitled to continuous and extra excitement, but when things get a little bit slow, he'll go look for the biggest pile he can, the one that's going to stink the most, and he'll start stirring. Why is it that an alcoholic always thinks the other fellow hasn't got the least idea of what he's talking about?
Why is it that most alcoholics hate Christmas, and get that queasy feeling every time they get a gift or a compliment? Why is it that an alcoholic is never, never, never, never manually, no way, never satisfied? Why is it that an alcoholic keeps on making the same old mistakes time after time after time after time after time after time after time? Why is it that an alcoholic always hates drunks, but always manages to get drunk himself?
Why is it that every time something comes up, an alcoholic wants to talk about it and sit down and discuss it and analyze it and think about it, and after he sits down and discusses it, talks about it and thinks about it and analyzes it, Why is it he can never do things in a small way? It's always whole hog or none. Get him! Why is it an alcoholic won't ask for help and hates even worse to accept help?
Why is it an alcoholic always, always has to have everything his way, right down to the smallest, most infinitesimal detail? Why is it an alcoholic hates to stand in line or wait for anything? Why is it you can't get him to admit anything? Why is an alcoholic just sits around waiting for something bad to happen? Man, I know what's going to happen. It's going to be bad, too. When? When's it going to be? I know. I know.
Why is an alcoholic just fine? Always fine. You ever see him? Hello, Bill, how you doing? Fine, just fine. How are you, Joe? Fine, just fine. He's dying and he's just fine. I go to one of these drunk's funerals where they've got him laid out, and they've got that casket open. I'm afraid if I go up there and stick my head and look down there, he's going to sit up and say, I'm fine. And why is it that no matter what you say to an alcoholic, no matter what you do to an alcoholic, it is inevitable, inevitable, that he is going to drink again unless a miracle occurs in his life.
I took your inventory. I didn't need to take mine. I wasn't really an alcoholic. Now, I might have been a technical alcoholic or a textbook alcoholic or slightly alcoholic or barely alcoholic or a little bit alcoholic or almost alcoholic or just about alcoholic or on the verge of being an alcoholic, or if I kept on drinking, I was going to be an alcoholic, but I wasn't really an alcoholic, not really.
And if you're not really, really an alcoholic,
[00:50:00]
then you're not really an alcoholic, right? And even if by some tortured, fine, technical interpretation of the word alcoholic you could say I was an alcoholic, you can bet your last dollar I was a better alcoholic than you were. I was different. Police stopped me there and put me in jail. They'd take me home and say, Judge, you've had enough, and they'd put me to bed. I'd sleep until about three or four o'clock in the morning.
I'd get up and I'd run down to the jail. Had a dentist in there. He came to A.A. later. Said, Judge, we got that old drunk dentist back there again tonight. You want to cut him loose? I'd say, no, I'll leave that son of a bitch there. He's a bad drunk. And then I'd go out to my car and I'd get a pint from under my seat and I'd take a drink. But you can see the difference. He was in jail. I was out.
He paid a fine. Guess who collected it? Well, some of the people in A.A. started noticing my attitude and they started giving me things to do in Alcoholics Anonymous. Well, I didn't have anything else to do. I wasn't drinking. I mean, what difference does it make? You're not drinking. What difference does it make what you do? Every time I had a marriage in the group, I had to go to it. I didn't go to marriages.
I performed marriages myself. But I had to go to these things. They made me go to these old A.A. dances. Man, I didn't even dance when I was drunk. But I had to go to all these things. Somebody get in the hospital in our group, I'd have to go visit them. I never went to hospitals unless I was going to slip a pint to a buddy of mine. Only time I ever went to a hospital. Every time somebody died in the group, I had to go to a funeral.
I never went to funerals unless I had a pint hit out somewhere. I mean, what's the use of going to a funeral? If a guy's dead, he's dead. He don't know you're there. But I had to go to all these funerals. Every time I'd come in, they'd say, We want you to go around. We want you to shake everybody's hand in here and ask them how they're doing. I said, I've got a better idea. I always had a better idea.
I said, I'll stand up here in the front of the room, and when people come in, I'm a Democratic judge. I'll shake their hand. They'll come up and I'll just shake it. They said, No, we want you to go around and ask everybody in this room how they're doing. I went on, How are you? How are you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. How are you? And one day I got to enjoying it. But the thing that really tore me up in AA, worse than anything else, it used to make me go around to all the people's houses in the group and visit them, just sit there and chit-chat.
God, it used to drive me up the wall. They'd say, Do you think it's going to rain? Hell, I'm not a weatherman. They'd say, Little Billy started kindergarten today, and I'd think to myself, The hell he did, you know. Then they'd come out with a blockbuster, How much was your electric bill this month, you know? Would you like to see my children's pictures and their children's pictures? Oh, hell, yeah, let me see them all, you know.
Man, I really got with it. And it made me do something that I had never, ever done before in my life. They made me listen when somebody else talked. Man, I'd never done that. Somebody say something to me, I ain't paying attention. I didn't know what it was, couldn't be too important. If somebody say something to me, and I'd laugh. And 99% of the time, I'd get by with it. And the other 1%, they'd say, It's not funny that my mother died, you know.
And I'd say, Oh, I thought you said your mother-in-law died, you know. And I'm still looking for this answer in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm in the 24-hour club in Houston again. And right in the middle of the meeting, I have a spiritual awakening. I'm looking at this sign on the wall, and I say, There it is, I found it at last. The answer to Alcoholics Anonymous. And Sue was sitting with me, and she pulled me down by the seat of the pants.
She said, Sit down, you crazy thing, you're disrupting the meeting. I said, Look, there it is, the answer to Alcoholics Anonymous. You know what it was? It was this sign that says, Thank, thank, thank. You know, it was an unusual answer for an unusual fellow like me, you know.
[00:55:04]
Wasn't in the big book. Wasn't like all those other signs, easy does it, first things first. This thing had a little thank on top, a great big thank in the middle, and a little thank on the bottom. It read the same from top to bottom or bottom to top. Thank, thank, thank. And I got to looking at that thing, and I got to studying on it, and I got to meditating about it. And I swear I didn't know whether I was supposed to have a little thank and then a great big thank and another little thank.
Or whether I was supposed to have a big thank in the middle and two outside little thanks. And I got to thinking about this thing, and I couldn't think what the hell it was I was thinking about. I believe my kind of thinking got me here at AA. I always said, I think I'll have a drink. You know what was really going on? What was happening was I felt like having a drink. It never was what I thought in AA.
It was always what I felt. It was always what I felt. How many times have I sat at those bars, pounding at bar top, demanding another and saying to myself at the same time, my God, how in the world did I ever get started again? Now I'm going to have to think this thing out. Once I started drinking, I could not stop. Why did I ever stop drinking? Why? You know, I could think a little bit about the consequences of drinking or I could think a whole lot about the consequences of drinking or I wouldn't think maybe at all about the consequences of drinking, but the result was always the same.
I always took the first drink. It ended up the same. There was no effective mental defense against the first drink. I was afraid to drink, but I was more afraid not to. What alcohol did to me always faded away into insignificance in the memory of what alcohol did for me. Alcoholism is so cunning, so baffling, and so powerful that not even the almighty power of God himself will give me more than a 24-hour reprieve.
Then I thought I was going to think my way out of it. Sam kept telling me over and over and over. He says, Ted, you don't need to understand anything. Just do what I tell you to do, and you're going to come to believe. You ever try to explain AA to somebody outside AA? They say, oh, is that right? Isn't that nice? They understand what you're saying, but you know what? They don't believe a word of it, do they?
Don't believe a word of it. And there's another trouble with this head knowledge or head trips in AA. I mistakenly believed that I had to understand something before I could do it. And worse than that, I assumed many times when I knew something that I was putting it into effect in my life. Where did I get that from? I think it came from the fact that when I was in law school, I got out and I could easily apply the principles that I learned, no problem.
I could take figures 2 plus 2 equals 4, and I would always get the result. But it didn't work that way in AA. I would have the knowledge over here of what to do, and I would have the action over here to produce a result. But what happened between the knowledge getting to the action? There's something in between. What is it? It's me. It's me. And the knowledge would say over here, and this thing would come back and say, I'm already doing that, or this doesn't apply to me, or my case is different.
My case is different. But in order for me to get any result in AA, I must, with God's help, get me out of the way and get the knowledge and the action to come together to produce the result. Well, I've been coming to AA when I picked up a chip about four months, and the night I came into AA, Billy asked me to be his sponsor, and I thought I was Mr. AA, and I proceeded
[01:00:07]
to tell Billy how to work the program. He didn't want anybody messing with him. He was mine. And four months later, he went home and he put a twelve-gauge shotgun to his head and he blew his head off. And when the people called me and they told me what had happened, you know what I thought? I said, how could this guy do this to me, and what are people going to think of me now? Resentment and fear happens every time I've tried to play God on Alcoholics Anonymous, every time. But by doing some of the things that you people have told me to do, and not doing some of the things that you have told me not to do, I've had a change of heart about you, and about Alcoholics Anonymous, and about me.
And I came to the conclusion that all my life I had been wrong about everything. Looks like I could have been right about a couple of things. Hell, I hadn't been right about nothing. And I came to you from a long, long way off, a place called Self. Way back there I made a bad decision. The world didn't do right, wouldn't work right, and I said to hell with it. And I made a trip deep into myself, into a land of compulsions, fantasies, a dream world.
And I want to tell you how far I went into that world, up into five and six years into Alcoholics Anonymous I'm talking about. I've only been in here eight years and seven months. I did not know how old my two boys were. I did not know what grade in school they were in. I did not know my marriage date. I did not know my wife's birthday. I must have married hundreds of people while I was Justice of the Peace. I didn't remember five of them. I must have had hundreds of clients while I was practicing law. Didn't remember five of them. Didn't remember five of them. And the only way out for me has been interest in and concern for other people and the demonstration of that interest and that concern by action. I have a stepson. He's 32. He was in the drug scene. He was in the penitentiary twice. Every time I run for office, his name appeared on the front page of the local paper. The judge's son picked up in local drug raid. God, I resented that boy. But he put the eight-year star in my card on my last birthday. He has had varying periods of sobriety. He picked up a 60-day chip last Tuesday. But he's been sober a lot more.
He's been drunk, and I'm grateful for that. And he says himself he would be dead today if it were not for Alcoholics Anonymous. He's held the same job now for seven years. He's been given pardon so he can vote and has all the rights of a citizen. I'm a grandfather now. I can show you my grandchildren's pictures. I have another son in Austin. He's 27. I paid $25,000 to put him through college. When he got out, he went to work as a damn grocery clerk. They just will not do it my way.
And I went out there trying to make up for the fact that I'd never given him five minutes of my time. And I walked up and he was making a list of the kilowatt hours. He keeps a list. He must have economic insecurity as one of his problems. He keeps a daily list of the kilowatt hours that thing is running. We come inside and he's got two cats. Somebody gave him and said it costs $275 a
[01:05:04]
year to raise a cat. I thought he's going to have a heart attack. And then we proceeded into the bathroom and he told me that it takes seven gallons of water per flush in a commode. But then we were going to put some bricks in here so that it would only take three and a half and it would cut his water bill in half. So I spent the afternoon putting bricks in the commode. I went back after Christmas and he showed me the gift that he has given his wife. And he's a B., all right. He had given her five pairs of bikinis, teeny-weeny bikinis, all different colors. And he got them out and he showed each one. He laid it out there so I could see each one of them. But the trouble was that they were too big. And some smart aleck said, why didn't you give them to Margaret, your wife? And I went back to see this other boy, the one that had been to the penitentiary.
He lives right there in my town. And I was going to go back, make a fuss over the kids, do things I should have been doing all those years. He had moved two years before and I didn't even know it. That's pretty far gone. We're on good terms today and I'm real, real grateful for that. All my life, you know, I wanted to be good and I wanted to be kind and I wanted to be considerate and I wanted to be wonderful. But I never was. I was just a drunk whose mind was sedated with alcohol. But here with you I am. I'm a wonderful guy.
Now you can look at me and you can say, well, you don't look so damn wonderful to me. But you did not see me when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous eight years and seven months ago. You'd know I'm wonderful. This is a program of progress and not perfection. That was my problem. I tried to take God's place and it just didn't work. Didn't work. I saw a statue one time and that was a good looking statue. It looked just like me.
Must have been one of these Greek gods or something. He was standing there and he had this world up over his head, just like that, and he was holding it. And his muscles just shone and I kept looking back at him to see that he hadn't slipped some because it reminded me of me. Just standing there, man, his muscles just shone. That's where I was when I walked into AA. I walked in just like that and they said, you got any problems? And I said, no. I said, I'm a personal friend of this very wealthy man here in Texas City. Do you have any literature that I might give him? And I turned around and walked out. I come in a second, still the same way. Still had this world up there. Just holding on for dear life. They said, you have any problems? And I said, no, man. I jog and I yoga. I do things that 90% of the American people don't do. Look at me. Don't I look good? And I got into AA and they started making me do some of these old crazy things, things that weren't going to work. And this thing really got to be a load. And I finally had to put down one of these hands to start doing some of these crazy things that they were making me do.
And this thing really got heavy then. It really got to be a load. And I finally, I just threw it down and I said, here God, you take this thing. It's really yours anyway. I was just playing like all the time. It was mine. I had to give up and I had to let go. I looked for you a long time, all those places, and I didn't know I was going to find what I was looking for amongst a bunch of old sloppy, miserable drunks.
But I made it. And I'm grateful for that. And tonight, let me give me you and you give me you. Let me give me me and you give me you. And we're going to stay sober tonight. Okay. Thank you a lot.