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Source: DICOBE-00684 – Joe M – FT SMITH MINI-CONF – 1986-11-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00684-joe-m-ft-smith-mini-conf-1986-11-15.mp3 Duration: 00:53:04
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I'm an alcoholic. I'm real pleased to be able to introduce our speaker for this morning. At a lot of conventions I think that they just listen to tapes and choose whomever is the best one on the tape, but I've been able to know Joe for the past twelve years and I know he's good. Joe is one of the men who I'd like to have a program like he has. He can walk the walk and he can talk the talk and I'd like to introduce Joe to you.
Applause My name is Joe and I'm a real alcoholic. Hi Joe. Through God's grace and because this program works each day in my life, I haven't found it necessary to take a drink of alcohol since March the 10th, 1962. For this I'm grateful this morning. It is good to be here. I would like to thank the committee for inviting me. As I was driving up yesterday and I think one of the most rewarding things in Alcoholics Anonymous in my life is to be invited to be part of Alcoholics Anonymous at home.
It was great to go many places all over the country, but it's so good to be invited to be a part of something at home and I think that's more rewarding than anything that we can do in Alcoholics Anonymous. Because Alcoholics Anonymous is all about what we do in our home and this is where AA is. They say in the AA talk we tell a little bit about what it was like and what happened and what it's like now and I love these three facets of Alcoholics Anonymous.
In my group they say that a little different. You know, we've got a way of saying things. We say what was going on and what went down and what's happening now. I think that these things are fascinating and I have really never gotten, and I hope I never get tired of talking about Alcoholics Anonymous. I love to talk about the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous. I think this is the most important thing that we need to discuss is what happened.
Because regardless of where we are in our sobriety or in life, we can all learn more about that particular phase of Alcoholics Anonymous. What happened in our lives? We get up here for an hour and talk about something we don't know anything about. For many years I think the real difficulty in my life was I was an alcoholic and the great problem was that I didn't know I was an alcoholic. Alcoholism is a very unique illness.
It's an illness in itself that tells a victim he ain't got it. It's the only illness in the world that tells a victim he ain't got it. In fact, that's the way you can tell who got it. The one that swears he ain't got it has got it. You might ask one of these social drinkers, you know, you say, you might be an alcoholic. He'd say, I might be. He ain't got it. So I had something for many years I didn't know I had.
And not only was I suffering from alcoholism, I was suffering from ignorance. I feel very blessed this morning. I think we too all should as people that we are blessed because through Alcoholics Anonymous and through Dr. Silkworth, through Bill and through the messages that have been handed down, we have been given an opportunity to know that we are alcoholics. Now most alcoholics will never have this opportunity.
Yet today with all the AA there is and all the treatment and all the information, the majority of alcoholics in our time are going to die never knowing they were alcoholics. But we've been given the opportunity to see. And this sets us apart. We are very blessed people. I was telling them, we was talking, Bob Ted and I was walking down the hall talking about anniversaries and dates. You know how we get off into this.
And I'm looking, Thanksgiving, this Thanksgiving, this coming Thanksgiving, I was just thinking about the other day, I had my first drink on Thanksgiving Day 40 years ago, this Thanksgiving, so I got an anniversary coming up. And I had my last drink in March of 1962, so I remember my first drink and my last drink and I had a lot of things happen in between those two drinks.
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I guess it was described in the doctor's opinion. And I loved the big book. I guess my life. The only, I have never read or can I say, my life. The only, I have never read or can I give a better description of my life than the big book gives. I have read, I cannot come up with nothing better myself that fits the description, my life is in there. And Dr. Silkworth says, you know, that I was restless and irritable and discontent.
And I remember the first time, my first drink. I remember the sense of ease and comfort that came at once when I took the first drink of alcohol. That night. And it probably gave me some relief in my life that I needed. And I often wonder what could have happened had I not taken that first drink. And I experienced that ease and comfort. And my book says I pursued that great illusion to the gates of insanity and death.
You know, I had a, I never could really drink. You know, it's funny how we come around AA for a while. I first come to the program, somebody said, Joe, how long, someone in the old time was around, old 24-hour clubs, how long did you have a problem? I said, oh, last six months it's been bad. Then I was around sober, you know, 18 months or so. Came up one morning, somebody said, how long did you have a problem, Joe?
I said, oh, three or four years. And finally after about four or five years sobriety, somebody said, Joe, how long did you have a problem? I said, I never could drink, you know, really. It's funny how we look at things. I never, the only thing I worked at and got worse. I never, you know, they say practice makes perfect. But the more I drank, the worse it got, you know. And I'm very, I never could drink, really, from the first drink.
And I went through all these experiences, and I'm not going to blow by blow, but I had a lot of things, got married, got divorced. And four or five years I was back where I see a lot of alcoholics. I was back at my father's house. You know, we seem to come home a lot. And when I got broke and I had difficulties, I would always return, I would always, like a prodigal son, I would always return to my father's house.
And my father, he wasn't glad to see me coming, like the prodigal son's father. He didn't kill the fatty cat. He put his hand on his pocketbook when he saw me coming. And the only time he, he was a little man, God bless him, he had a fourth grade education. But he was way ahead of me. Only time he would lend me some money was to leave town. He would always lend me some money. You know, I was sober several years before I figured out what he was doing.
You know, he was getting rid of me. And I would embarrass him, get in some kind of difficulty, get in some trouble, lose a job, and I would always say, this town ain't no good. He said, I said, I think I'll leave. He said, you want to borrow some money? So I had been married and divorced. Never had any, alcohol never gave me any success at all in my life. You know, I'm a very blessed person to be an Alcoholics Anonymous.
Because I knew no success in my life before Alcoholics Anonymous, in any phase. You know, I see a lot of people in Alcoholics Anonymous behind these podiums, and I feel sorry for them. They lost a lot. You know, they lost money, they lost businesses, they lost all these great things. I didn't lose nothing from drinking. Drinking didn't ever let me get anything. I never did get nothing. But I… So I left and I would travel back and forth in and out of Louisville, Kentucky, and this is what brought me to Arkansas.
I feel very blessed. You know, I'm here by choice. Some people were born here. But I… I love it here. I love Arkansas. I wouldn't go anywhere else in the world. I go a lot of places, but there's nothing like it to me. And I feel very blessed today that not only God gave me a new life, but God gave me a purpose for my life. I feel like my work in Little Rock, that I have not only found what my life was all about,
[00:10:00]
I found that what I'm here for. You know, all of us are here for a purpose. God created all of us for a purpose. And the happiest we're going to ever be is when we find out what we're here for and start doing that. And I feel in the later years of my life that I have found the purpose of my alcoholism, the purpose of my sickness, the purpose of my recovery is what I do. And I'm totally happy. And I thank God for that.
And I think my purpose began many years ago. And I saw that God took an interest in my life and that he brought me to Arkansas and brought me to some people. And I remember when I came to Little Rock that night, it didn't seem like the beginning of a great purpose because I came here broke like most drunks. And I came into Little Rock at the Greyhound bus station. I met another guy some years ago. He said, we traveled the same route except you was on Greyhound and I was on Trailway.
But I came to Little Rock about, I guess, almost 30 years ago, broke and sick. And I had a sister that lived in Arkansas. She wanted to come here and went to school, went to college in Little Rock. And at Philander Smith College there, she was going to school. And I hadn't seen her in quite a few years. So when I got in trouble this time, I couldn't go back to see my father. I said, you ought to go see your sister.
That's not right. You ought to go visit her. So this is the way I got to Little Rock. They weren't too glad to see me coming either. She was just a struggling young, they were a young couple, had a couple of small kids. And she hadn't finished school and she was beginning to teach school. And her husband, he was in, they were involved in this little church there in Little Rock. And when I got here in Little Rock, I got here that night like most of the drunks, still traveling.
I had a little drunk suitcase with a necktie tied around one end. I don't know why they make little drunk suitcases. They just put one latch on them and you have to tie a necktie around. They still make them the same way for drunks. I watched drunks come to Serenity House every day. They still travel the same way, little cardboard boxes. Back this summer we had a guy come into Serenity House and somebody looked down there and looked at his bags and said, my God, what in the hell is this?
This guy'll never get sober. He had alligator luggage. You can't get sober with alligator luggage. But anyway, I got a job. I could always get a job. And my sister, God bless her, she hadn't changed a bit. She just, I don't know, been that way all her life. Just one of them steady folks, you know. Never just normally sick, you know. I would be, you know, they don't know what they're missing. That's boresome living a life like that.
You know, just going to work and doing those things, going to church and going back home and going to work. But they were just great folks, I guess. It was kind of bad, you know. It kind of hurts you being around them kind of people, Washington. Every Sunday morning they'd get up and go to church. It was kind of making me uncomfortable, so I decided to go to church with them one Sunday morning. This is where God placed Lubell in my life.
Lubell's, I don't know, I wouldn't be here today without Lubell. She's, we just, we have one life together, both of us. But we met there at the church that morning, and she tells it different and I tell it different. But, you know, she was quite impressed because she saw this nice-looking young man. That's some years ago. And, you know, I had a good camouflage. I had my sister who was the arganist of the church.
Now Lubell was in the choir night. Now you know the relationship between the choir and the arganist. Lubell's still in the choir, you know. I kill her. She still goes to choir practice every Tuesday night. I've been listening to them 30 years. They still sound the same, you know. But, see, my brother-in-law, I was with him, and he was the lay speaker of the church. Today he's a pastor at one of our largest United Methodist churches.
So I had a good front. And you know how we all exaggerate by selling fast conversation to these slow-thinking ladies. You know, I give them my best shot. Didn't let her think too long. And we got married very shortly. Now you have to really understand this. She still hasn't recovered from this. This is one of my best jobs I ever did. Now Lubell had a good job, you know, for a working lady. She just retired some years ago and closed her plane.
She gets back at me now because she's not working. And we're enjoying life that way. I enjoy having her at home. But she worked on that job for 31 years. So she had this little job. She had a brand-new car. She had a brand new car and she had a little home, a little modest home, the one we still live in today.
[00:15:04]
And I'm still working out in a suitcase doing that. And I thoroughly convinced her how she needed me to take care of her. I ain't never top that, you know. And we got married and I stocked in a good supply of liquor, right. It was a Christmas, Christmas. We got married Christmas Eve. So I, you know, I had to celebrate. I had all planned this and got a company of liquor and stocked it in to celebrate at the honeymoon. Uh, well, both of us couldn't take off. She had to go to work. So I had a honeymoon there by myself. I'd tell her I was a go-getter. I took her to work and went and got her. And after a week, after one week of honeymoon in there, I spent my first trip to the old Arkansas State Insane Asylum. You know, I, I checked in less than a week or 10 days. I was in the hospital, drank myself in the hospital. And that's kind of embarrassing being brand new married and in a nut house, you know. Um, I know it was embarrassing to her when she went to church that first Sunday and somebody said, how's marriage life? And she said, that fool's in a nut house. She did me in in one week. I tell her all the time about, you know, she's going to run me crazy. She said, you're still outpatient. They never cut you loose from out there. But I was the smartest guy in the nut house. You know, that's a very peculiar thing.
I think that's what I'm all about today because that was a forerunner. That was the only thing that we had in the state of Arkansas for alcoholics. And I think about, you know, how blessed we are today. But I was there 30 days. I was there, yeah, 30 days. And on my ward, there was not a meeting. No one on the staff, doctors or no one else mentioned alcoholism to me. They didn't do anything. Kept me locked up for 30 days and then let me go.
I still didn't know that I had a problem. And the problem I did have, I didn't know anything about it. I continued to drink and went through a lot of changes. And two years later, you know, I was sitting on a bar one time and I hardly make a talk without talking about Van Little Wino, was the first and closest place to my life in a bar. These winos were trying to get a drink and God uses strange people, by the way. And I walked in at six o'clock in the morning and they were trying to get a drink and I said, well, I'll buy. I was a big shot that morning. I had four dollars.
They were trying to get some nickels together to get a pint of wine for 60 cents in those days. And it'll begin to, as I bought these winos to drink and begin to drink, they wouldn't give the winos the bottle. They'd pour it up in glasses. And this Lucille could really pour this wine. It was a girl named Lucille. I never shall forget her name. And she would set the glasses up and pour them one, two, and three. And when she got through, she was so good at it, the glasses would be level. And of course, there's nothing perfect for alcoholics, you know. After she got through, she was good, but all the winos would get out and check the glasses, you know. I didn't know what they were doing. And they would finally determine that one glass did have a hair more than the other. And classy people as they were, they would give that to the man who bought. That's class.
That's me. That wino's a classy people. And as we began to drink, Van said, Joe, you're a pretty nice guy. I knew that. And he said, you're a lot different from me and a lot of other people down here on the street. I knew that. But then he said, Joe, but you're drinking too much. I had a lot of people talk to me about that. But Van was the most effective than anybody I had ever met. Because he rung a bell. Because Van had the problem.
The rest of the people didn't have the problem was telling me that. But Van was standing in the middle of one of the biggest problems I'd ever seen. I remember leaving that bar. I remember the turmoil. It wasn't no big thing. But it began to eat away. Three or four days, I was able to. I left that place and I was only one of these excursions drinking up there. And I came back to Little Rock. I didn't know the exact nature of my problem.
But I had a business in the beginning. But Van, I knew that my problem was drinking. Now, that is not exact enough. But at that time, I thought my problem was drinking. And if your problem is drinking,
[00:20:04]
then the solution would be to quit drinking. That's obvious. If that's the problem. That's what I thought the problem was. So I quit drinking. And I had a little difficulty at it, but I finally quit drinking and I didn't take a drink for nine months. But that was not my problem. My problem wasn't quit drinking. My problem was starting. I quit drinking, but I couldn't stop starting. I didn't do nothing about that. I just quit drinking.
And then about nine months, you know, I started up again. You know, finally, after about six weeks of drinking, I was sitting on a bar one morning. And I had had this nine months of sobriety or not drinking, not sobriety, but I hadn't been drinking. And I took this drinking. In six weeks, I was sitting on the bar, sick and broke and in a lot of trouble in my life. And I had a, I think, which is one of God's great gifts to alcoholics.
You always used to think for many years that I did this. I had something to do with it. But I experienced this moment of truth, which I was not capable of. This point of surrender and sitting on a bar stool on March 10th, 1962, I gave up on me. And I think that's what, that this is a gift from something, because I don't think many alcoholics are capable of that. And I said to myself, as I was sitting on that bar, I just said, you know, I can't go on like this. If there's any other way, I just gave up.
I think that this is, our program is all about giving up on ourselves. I don't think we have to find God. After all, God ain't lost. It's just giving up on ourselves. And God comes in when we remove self. And I think that's what happened to me that morning. The next thing, I had some stupid idea about going back to that nut house. And for two solid years, I had sworn when I left there that I would never go back. And this was burned into my mind. All at once that morning, I was, I said, well, I ought to go back to the hospital. Now, the reason, I guess, you know, most people that do that today with the information we got, they say, well, I, now that I give up, I'm going to Alcoholics Anonymous to get some help. Well, I didn't know anything about Alcoholics Anonymous. Alcoholics Anonymous was so anonymous in my neighborhood that I didn't know it was there. I mean, we didn't know nothing. We didn't know that.
So, the only thing that helped me know was the old nut house. So, I went back out there and I checked in there that morning and I know what you get that morning. And when you go back to, when you go into one of those mental institutions, there's a lot of different people. I see people going to detox and all that. That's great. I love those things. And we need them. They're not, nothing is too good for the alcohol.
But back in our days, you know, we didn't, if you went back to this, I see people go back to Benton three or four times, 27 times. Man, if you went back to this place three times, they'd put you in a nut ward and never let you go no more. You'd have to be crazy to go back there three times, too. That, that was your diagnosis. He's crazy if he comes back here. Now, you'd have to realize that we were, this was an old, we had bars on the windows.
This was in the old state hospital that they tore down there on Markham Street. Old brick building that was built back in 1800. And most of the people on our ward had been there many, many years. I know one guy had been there 36 years and he was been there, he was 36 years old and he had been there since he was six. Most of these people had been there many, many years and most of them, that was their lives.
They lived there. This was the only existence they knew. Now, alcoholics would come and go. They didn't really like to help us out there. Like the doctor told me, he said, I don't know why y'all come out here. You know, we got a lot of sick people. We can't help y'all. You know, when you can't get in a nut house, that's bad, you know. They don't want to be bothered with alcoholics. So they had four or five alcoholics on our ward. And I finally found out, you know, when I first went in there that morning, you know, when you go into a nut house, people don't talk to you, they watch you.
Now, what happened, you know, all the nuts been there, living there, they see alcoholics come and go and stay 30 days and leave. Now, we alcoholics, while we were there,
[00:25:01]
we had visitors. Some of them had, they never, no one ever visited those people. Their families put them in there and forgot about them and act like they were dead. See what I mean? So they had no one to care about them. The hospital staff cared nothing about them. And we alcoholics are right in there amongst them and the age is treating us different. And we're having company and visitors and we got special privileges.
So the nuts looked at us as the class of the ward. When you ask one of them nuts what he was in there for, he would say, well, I'm an alcoholic. See, alcoholism was a status symbol in this institution. And when you ask one of us alcoholics what we're in there for, we said we had nervous breakdowns, you know. So you couldn't tell who was who in there. And so, and I thank God, you know, that was on a Saturday morning and Monday morning AA came to me in the state hospital.
Monday morning, a little guy named Ora, a patient on the ward came to me with the big book Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, I think about the grace of God and the wonders, the power of God, you know, and how he works in human life. And this guy was not a learned member of Alcoholics Anonymous. He wasn't founded in the principles of the program, the steps, or did he know the big book? He didn't even know the syringe of prayer.
I mean, but he had the big book and he had a carton of Camel cigarettes. And I'm sitting there broke. I had 50 cents when I got to the hospital and I bought one pack of cigarettes. I believe it was 35 cents there. You know how long ago that's been. And I blew the other 15 cents on a couple of candy bars. This guy's got a whole carton of Camel cigarettes. I don't have any problem talking about being your life being unmanageable because the only way I could smoke was take my tobacco and paper and roll your own tobacco and give it to a nut and let him roll it and lick it and give it back to me. You know, I wasn't doing too good. And I love the work of Paul, you know, I think about, you know, I complied to my life.
He says God's grace is sufficient. Just enough. Oral was enough. No more, but oral was enough for me. This guy sat down to, and I used to think many years, he started talking to me about Alcoholics Anonymous, but I didn't know nothing about Alcoholics Anonymous. And I thank God that I think that this is what's so important to me today that people, you know, a lot of people talk to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.
But I think it's very, very important, you know, that we live the program of Alcoholics Anonymous in our daily lives. And I know today that I wouldn't be here if some people hadn't been living the program of Alcoholics Anonymous because Oral didn't talk to me about Alcoholics Anonymous, he talked to me about these three men from Alcoholics Anonymous that came to our ward. He just talked incessantly what they said and what they did and what happened to them.
And that Wednesday night he asked me when I go to the AA meeting, so that night, that's been over 24 years ago now, close to 25 years. And I left the back wards of a state hospital because a drunk patient, a little patient had been nice to me, giving me a cigarette. And he told me that three guys from Alcoholics Anonymous would come and they would bring three packs of cigarettes and lay on the table and they'll bring a pot of coffee. And he said, well, you go to the meeting. And I went out there for a real cigarette, really, and a cup of coffee. And God gave me a brand new life, gave me a way of living that I never knew existed.
And this morning, I know just a little bit about heaven, not much. And all I went for was a cup of coffee and a cigarette. We talk about the grace of God, the grace of God, a gift unwarranted. And I met these three guys from Alcoholics Anonymous and thank God for, he thought enough to send the very best. He didn't send no chumps out there. He sent some real alcoholics because he knew what I was. I met some real alcoholics. I met Charlie that night that was going to become our sponsor.
I met Charlie that night that was going to become our sponsor, and this guy got up, you know, when I went out that night, I was real resentful about AA, you know, alcoholics can be resentful about anything.
[00:30:06]
Alcoholics even resent Jesus Christ, I don't know how you do it, but they can be resentful about anything. And I, AA, I hadn't, I didn't know anything about AA, but immediately I formulated an opinion. You know, you know how we alcoholics are, we're fast. Damn bunch of do-gooders, you know, I, I knew that to me, and to me, AA, I formulated the idea that AA was something like a plainclothes Salvation Army.
They didn't have uniforms, you know, but, same thing, you know. Bunch of people meddling in your life, telling you you need to do this, like all do-gooders, you know, they got a lot of information. And I said, if they want to mess with me when I go out there, I'm going to, I'm just going to tell them off. And this guy didn't defend me at all. He got up, and I thought he was going to meddle with me, and the guy talked to AA about himself.
Boy, how can you, you know, you can't get mad about that, but then… I wasn't mad, and I should have left him alone, but he was standing over there drinking coffee, and you know how it is, that just eats at you. So I slid my way around, he was on the right-hand side of the room, and I forget. I kind of worked my way around where he was, and I said, Charles, I hear what you had to say about what you did.
Just like the big book said, make him ask you. I said, but what did you think I should do? And he looked down at me with a big smile, and he said, fella, I don't give a damn what you do. That's your business. He said, I will tell you what I did. And I think that this really, this is what really turned me on to alcoholics, and I, and Charles. Because, you know, then, then I got inquisitive. I began to, I remember, I left the hospital, and I didn't drink again, thank God, but I drifted for about six weeks.
And I got out of there, I went in there on April or March, I got out April the 30th, and on June the 13th, 1962, I got a letter from Ora, who had been on the war with me. And this man was a player, a fine player for me in my life. And this little letter, you know, I didn't knock down, I hadn't been to an AA meeting. You know how drunks are. Same way today. You know, we gotta get it together, and then we're gonna go to AA when we get things straightened out.
This guy wrote me a letter, he said, I'm coming back to Little Rock to an AA meeting. To the meeting, to the war, meeting on E3 on Wednesday night. I don't have time to write you. I will see you there. That's all it was. A little folded up piece of paper, which I have later found and framed. That little, that one single strand carried me to AA. You know, I had been right there in town. You know how drunks are.
Right here in Little Rock, and this guy was in Dumas, 90 miles away, coming back to the meeting. I'd been living here in the town for six weeks, and he made it there. You know, alcoholics are a hell of a thing. He can get all drunk, he can get drunk and go to California, but when he gets sober, he can't get to that AA meeting six blocks away. And you know, so I went, and O.R. came at night, and this is where the thing began, I think, in my life.
It talked about the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. My book talks about that we're normally the people that should not mix. You know, we come from all walks of life, different social backgrounds, different economic backgrounds, different occupations, even different races. You know, we are a strange bunch of ducks in this room. You know, we are so different, you know. We should never have known each other.
Our paths should have never crossed. But among us, there is a fellowship and a friendliness and an understanding that is indescribably wonderful. We are such varied people, but there is something here. And that's what I think that I came under that night. I felt that, and I became a part of it that night, the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. My book says we're like the passengers on the great liner.
All these people from different social backgrounds, they shouldn't even have mixed. They're from different economic backgrounds, but in a moment of disaster, once they were thrown into the water, they came together, because they had a common problem once they hit that water. You know, and we have a common problem of alcoholism. In fact, that's the only thing we have in common. We have nothing else in common.
But that's a poet, you know. That's power in that group. That's therapeutic to be with people who have recovered from the same thing that's killing you.
[00:35:05]
And I was able to draw from that that first night. I didn't know what it was, but it was something there. And I went home, and Lubell was in the kitchen. I remember right here I was sitting. I remember what she was saying, and we didn't know nothing. She said, well, what's AA like? What's it all about? She wanted to know what kind of services we had, I guess. And I said, oh. I remember telling her, it ain't a whole hell of a lot.
They don't do a hell of a lot. I said, they just drink a lot of coffee and smoke a lot of cigarettes. I said, but it sure makes you feel good. I believe I'm going back next week. And that's all. I didn't know what it was. But I went back. My book says that in itself. That's great. The Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous is great. It's a powerful tool. But then it tells me, it said, but that in itself would have not held us as we are now held.
The fellowship is great, but that ain't enough. He said, my book says the other thing that joins us in brotherless, harmless action, the thing that really joins us together is not only that we have the same common problem. The thing that really joins us is we have the same common solution. That's what puts you in this program. And we'll get this common solution through the working of the 12 steps, which brings about this spiritual experience.
And that's really what puts us together. Not only do we have the same problem, we have the same solution. Now you people that stood up there this morning and said they were new in this thing, you're a part of it. You have the same common problem. If you want to really be a part of this thing, you've got to pursue the common solution. And you know, just being a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous, the fellowship, I earned that out there by drinking.
I say, you know, you can't become a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous just by going to AA meetings. People say, go to AA meetings, you'll be all right. Ain't not what the book says. No more you could go to PTA meetings and become a parent. You know, you'd have to go a little further. You'd have to go a little further than that. You know, you'd have to do something. So I again began to pursue this thing called recovery.
And I think this is the joy of my life. You know, as I look back on it, not in what I was doing. And I began to go to the dormitory, the old dormitory, the 14th and Scott. And this was in the early days, and it happened to be in 1962. And most of us remember that here in Arkansas in 1962, it wasn't the best time for the first black in AA to be trying that, you know. And we were still going through some changes.
And this was the summer of the demonstrations in the set-ins now, and I show up in AA, you know. So I had some problems in that area. And people, I remember old Neil, God bless him. There's people in here who remember Neil. And old Neil, I would go to the dormitory in the mornings, you know, and they would allow me to come to the meetings at 7 o'clock in the morning. And I would go to these meetings, and they would tell me, finally one morning Neil come in and put his arm around me.
He said, son, I need to talk to you. I don't know why he called me son. He probably called everybody that, but it felt something special to me. And he said, son, I need to talk to you. He said, you can, he said, I'll get in a lot of trouble. I'll get in a lot of flack about you. And he said, why don't you just come to the meetings in the morning? And he said, but when the meetings over, leave. Don't stand around and don't drink coffee.
And just, you know, and you'll be all right. He said, but be here in the morning. Will you be here? I said, yeah. And I knew if I didn't come back the next morning, I was never going to come back. So I was back the next morning. But, you know, this is, this was my experience, and all this was a part of my recovery. And I remember that things changed as the weeks and months went by early. Usually when I was accepted into the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And I remember my first conference at Sumba 24 years ago at the old Marin Hotel. I heard them talking about that there were 500 people at, this was a record, that they had 500 people at the state conference in the Marin Hotel in 1962. And I remember I showed up there, and I was the only black person there that morning. I remember how I felt. And I was sitting in that room, and I remember what was going on, and I remember what was going through my head.
I said, well, God, I'd be glad when this is over so I can get the hell out of here.
[00:40:03]
You know, I just felt uncomfortable. And I was sitting in the middle, and the way I was sitting, I was in the middle of the room, and you had to come in this way, so I was just trapped back there. That was the only seat that was left. A great friend of mine in Alcoholics Anonymous, Jim, in Little Rock, was sitting up on the front seat of me, a great friend of mine today. And he said he saw me, and he said, that fellow, he sure looks uncomfortable.
He said, I know how you feel. And I was saying to myself, I sure am uncomfortable. Let me get the hell out of here. And Jim said he was saying, well, as soon as the meeting's over, I want to say something to him. So as soon as the meeting's over, Jim, I started shooting toward the door, and he stopped me and said, come here. And he shook my hand, and he began to talk to me. And as he did, several other people stopped and started talking to me.
And you know how everybody likes to talk to the speaker after the meetings, and so they were all talking to the speaker. And one or two started talking to me, and I guess it must have been at least an hour after that meeting's over, people were still talking to me. And I look up, and even the speaker, he had lost his crown. He was waiting to talk to me. And I think that morning in August, that's why I always go, State Commission is something special to me personally, because I think this is where it all began for me.
I came in really in June, and that was the August of 1962. This is where I became a part of Alcoholics Anonymous. And it's my hope, it's my life. I began to pursue this program, and we said the steps, we won't be able to go through. But I began to, I think the whole thing is, the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are very simple. I think the problem was me, that I was powerless over alcohol. And I think the whole scope of the AA program, Dr. Bob said, just don't forget our simplicity.
And I think we have some now. We complicate the hell out of this. The problem of alcoholism is that we're powerless. It's quite obvious when that's the case, then the solution is the second step, which is power. And if we are powerless and the solution is power, then the main purpose is how to find this power. And that's what the problem of Alcoholics Anonymous, that's what the ten steps of recovery are all about, is a planned program of action, enable us to find a power greater than ourselves, which will solve our problems.
And I was able, it was obvious that I was powerless over alcohol. And it was easy for me to, you know, I had to wrestle with this thing of believing that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. But in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, it was so simple and obvious to me that, you know, all these other people said that this had happened to them, so it was easy for me to believe.
I could look at the other members of Alcoholics Anonymous. I could see all these other people. It's almost impossible not to believe. And so I had to take this program. And I remember it says you had to make a decision about all this. You know, I, it's easy when you see the first step. And I think the greatest thing in the whole thing is the first step. This is a, this is a motivating factor. It's the only step I had to take 100%.
And I had two problems, and the first step showed me, obviously, that I couldn't drink. It explained to me why I couldn't drink, because I have a physical craving for alcohol. I can't drink alcohol safely, never could, never will be able to do that. Not only I couldn't drink, I couldn't quit either. And that was my main, the book said that's the main problem. I tell guys the same way. I never learned how to swim in my life.
My brother didn't let me go to the swimming hole with him when we was kids and we didn't have, I just never got around to learning how to swim. I ought to go now and go to the Y. Never can do it. I can't swim, and I can't drink. That's two things I know I can't do. But my swimming problem is a lot like my drinking problem. I didn't have an obsession to jump in the pool. I'm so glad about that. I had an obsession to do something that I couldn't do.
So obviously, the solution, the problem is not, is in my mind, not the body. So the solution
[00:45:01]
is a power greater than myself can remove this obsession. That's the solution. And then the program is all about, then, the simple way to find that power. The first step is make a decision. That's the first step of any process. So I made a decision to turn my will and my life for the care of God as I understood Him. And then I had certain work to do. This was but a decision. I had certain actions to take to carry out this decision because I had a lot of things that blocked me off from God. Just that decision is not enough. And so in steps four, five, six, and seven, I worked a program to remove the things, six, seven, eight, and nine things in me that blocked me off from God. I had to take an inventory of these things, identify them. In step five, I was discussing with someone else. Step six, I became ready to let them go. And step seven, I asked God to remove them. As these actions began to take place, I was carrying out that decision. Steps eight and nine, I completed my work and my relationship with other people. We said in these three steps, these three areas and steps, I had gotten well spiritually as a result of one, two, and three. Mentally, my mind, I'm a product of myself in four, five, six, and seven, and my relationship with others in eight and nine. The promises being unfolded in my life, I began to know this new freedom. Even after the ninth step, and this new happiness, I could begin to comprehend the word serenity for the first time in my life, and I knew peace, peace. And then I had steps to pursue the rest of this program, to continue to grow for the rest of my life in the last three steps. I think we were very blessed this morning that we have been given, not by chance, it's been through a lot of hard work and through God's grace, that we have been given the information that has been handed down, information handed down. We think about the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I think sometime I was talking to Ted this morning, I don't think we can be grateful enough. You know, God saw fit many years ago that the alcoholic could recover. You know, we can go back to Dr. Rush, I believe it was 1787 that this man said alcoholism was a disease, and no one believed, God gave it to him and nobody would take it. No one would accept what he was saying. God, many other ways, and then in 1840, the Washingtonian movement, God bless these people. You know, these guys were sitting at a, of all places, in Chase's Tavern in Baltimore, Maryland.
I believe this was April of 1940. Six, six alcoholics, six or eight alcoholics, working people sitting around a tavern drinking, and there was a temperance movement meeting going on down the street, and they had the idea, let's go down there and find out what those people are doing, maybe they'll have a little fun. And they were so affected by what they heard, they came back and they said, we ought to start a society of non-drinkers. And after a year they did this, and after a year, they started a tavern, and after a year these people had a thousand members that grew faster than they had. And in eight or ten years they had, they said they had over 700,000 members in the United States. They started the meetings, and their meetings consisted of people coming up and telling their stories. They had a few spiritual concepts. They had no traditions. So they got aligned with the wrong things, and they failed. But the main reason they failed, they didn't have a program. Beautiful fellowship. Now later on, God saw fit to give this to Bill, and therefore later on this failed. So this time God gave it to the same group of people, the same sort of circumstances.
But he gave us, he gave them a procedure for recovery. He gave them a program. They had spiritual concepts, and also we have a vital thing, and we have traditions to guard us from some of the traps that other people fell in. Then God gave this to Roland H. You know, the solution to Roland H. And Roland brought it to Abby, and Abby brought it to Bill in Bill's kitchen, and Bill had received a first step from Dr. Silkworth. And I think how these things were made together, and the miracle of these people recovering. Roland H. tripped to see Dr. Carl Jung, and now Roland H. came back and gave this, and heard about Abby being
[00:50:04]
in trouble. And I heard Bill on a tape recently talking about this situation of Abby. It seemed that Abby was doing a little driving, and he had run off the road, and happened to run into a lady's house. And he only caught it on fire after a while, but it seems that Abby was quite intoxicated, and when he got out of the car, he was in the lady's kitchen, and he said he bowed and said, Madam, how about a cup of coffee? The judge took a damn view. He didn't have a sense of humor, and he wanted to put Abby in a nut house. So this is where Roland met. And through these series of circumstances, all these things came together as God directs us, and it left us. These things made it in Bill's mind. Bill said, I was only a vessel. You know, the work of Dr. Silkworth, the first step. The second step, the solution which came from Dr. Carl Yoon to Roland, from Roland to Abby to Bill. And also from Roland, Roland had found his power in the Oxford Group movement, so he brought him the planned program of action, which became my ten steps. And these things were written down and put into the big book, Alcoholics Anonymous. And they had been passed down, handed down to people and down to childs, and handed down to him, to me. And this is our responsibility. You know, AA, we say, and we know AA is, nothing is guaranteed in this world. If AA is to preserve in this world and in our community, it's through the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, because if we lose our program, our fellowship will not exist. Our fellowship is based on the recovery program, Alcoholics Anonymous. I think one of the greatest things that we can do as individuals, and I thank God that when I come on board this journey, I look at Alcoholics Anonymous like a great vessel. You know, it's a vessel of recovery. It's a vessel of happiness, a great life on this vessel. I think about when I got on this vessel, you know, there was a message here. There was a program here. And if it had not, I could not have found recovery. I think my responsibility and our responsibility, you know what I mean, is to avoid your life as we proceed through this life, that when we leave this vessel, that we will at least find, you know, as much of the message that was there when we got off as it was when we got on. This is our responsibility, that we preserve the message of recovery for the new alcoholic within the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. I thank you all for allowing me to be here this morning, and God bless you.