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Source: Jack B – From Detroit, Michigan – Date Unknown.mp3 File: jack-b-from-detroit-michigan-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:15:04
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Isn't Judge Restibo the nicest judge you ever came face-to-face with? I can sure see how that guy got elected or appointed. Whatever it was, he really has that that charisma, that understanding, and back of it, a real understanding of people and love, and you can feel it. He was talking. I couldn't help but remember that in my experience, both my own personal experience and what I have observed as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, I have never seen one alcoholic recover until that alcoholic had to come face-to-face with the consequences of his unacceptable behavior. Never. Sometimes when we stand up here and talk, it sounds like that one beautiful Thursday morning we awakened and with a smile on our face, we looked out a window into the beautiful sky, thought about all the money we had in the bank and how much people loved us, and said, Gosh, I think I will stop drinking.
And I probably can't do it by myself, so I think I'll just mosey down to the closest AA meeting that they have tonight. That's what it sounds like, but man, that's not like the way it really is. No way until people like Judge and wives like some of you Al-Anons and employers, until people start ringing those bells and blowing those whistles and clanging those doors and saying, Whoa, no more. You see, somebody has already decided that we've got a problem before we decide we've got a problem. Remember how that was? My name is Jack B. and I'm an alcoholic.
And I sure am glad I'm an alcoholic. Wouldn't change it. Glad wouldn't change it. And I'm glad I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I love it. I love this fellowship. And I love what this fellowship, the principles, the power that sustains and supports that created this program so that it was here when you and I came along, the people that were there were there. They were standing at the right place at the right time for you and me that Thursday morning when we woke up and looked out the window and everything looked so good. We decided to join Alcoholics Anonymous.
I love our program. I love our name, but it's a rather ridiculous name that we have, Alcoholics Anonymous. Have you ever seen one anonymous drunk in your whole life? There ain't no such cat nowhere. Now, we're the last ones to find out. I'll grant you that. We play that game of being anonymous, but we really aren't. And as our chairman told you, we protect our anonymity at the level of the press, radio, and television, and in my case, the film, the movie.
But you know, I've never had any problem losing my anonymity at the level of the press and radio and television or films, and I have none anywhere else, nor do I care for it. My name's Jack B., and you bet I'm very proud to be here, grateful, not proud for what I have accomplished, but grateful, so grateful for what God has done to me through this fellowship that I don't care who knows it. And the only reason that I didn't announce, incidentally, I'm a minister now, a former atheist. The only reason that I didn't announce to the two services at my church this past Sunday that I was going to be here was that I forgot to.
They all know that I'm an alcoholic and a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And usually when I go off to speak somewhere, the board says, Do you want us, would you like for us to pay your way? And they mean there and back, you know, they don't mean just the one way.
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It's different now, friends.
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It's better on this side. People in our nation are proud of this fellowship. It's one of the beautiful traditions that has sprung up in the 20th century. It's the greatest thing that's happened in the world in the 20th century. Did you know that? And if you are new to this program and someone has, through protecting their anonymity, and they can choose to do so if they like, if they have created an indication to you that somehow we are afflicted with something, I just want you to know that the only thing I'm afflicted with is good health and a little sanity. Now, we don't have an affliction and we're not stigmatized at all. Not at all. Don't you believe? The world loves us, not individually but collectively, for what we are trying to do with our lives. Not just staying sober. That's a part of it, and a very important part of it. Not to take a drink today is God's greatest gift to me.
But that's the starting place. Man, I was born sober. And when I got back to being sober, I hadn't accomplished one thing yet. That was the beginning. That was the opportunity for something to begin to happen. And through the grace of God and the power of this program, it began happening to me 21 years ago on July 10, 1953. One reason why the world is so proud of us is because the world is reaching out, people are reaching out. Normal people, whatever that is, are reaching out.
At my church, I have what is called a dial-a-thought, and we started with one little old machine and then two little old second-hand machines, and now we're up to six pieces of telephone answering equipment, and we get between 1,000 and 1,400 calls a day from people in Detroit calling that number. And if you're in the Detroit area, I have some cards here that you might wish to call. It's pure AA, sort of camouflaged, because normal people need it too. You know, these principles work. They really work. But this dial-a-thought, there are a lot of people that call it, and not long ago, a dear, sweet little lady that sits on the front row of church, well, you know how it is when the service is over and the minister goes to the back of the church and the people come by, and sometimes they say nice things and sometimes they just shake your hand. And this particular Sunday, she had three visitors with her and got back to the rear of the church, and she was introducing me to the friends that she had brought to the church, and she was very proud of being a member of our church. She'd sort of backed the crowd up behind her, and they were a little, well, they were trying to get through and crowding around, and she was, she got a little flustered, and she wanted her friends to know more about what was going on, and she was trying to tell a friend about the dial-a-thought. And she said, you just would be surprised how many of us go to bed with Jack B. every night.
What she meant was that she dials that number the last thing, and then when she tried to get out of it, it was worse than that. Life is so good, it is so rich and beautiful, and I just can't tell you how good it is to be alive. Well, today, today I was riding along in my automobile and thinking about coming down here, how marvelous it is that you've invited me down here tonight, to be in my right place, in my right mind, to share with you some of the joy that has happened to me in my life. And I drove along and found myself stopped at a stop sign, and the tears were just running down my face. Sometimes I listen to beautiful music, and it sounds so good, I just can't stand it. Not long ago, I bought a Milky Way at a drugstore and walked out to get in my car, and before I put it in gear, I thought, I'll just take a bite of this Milky Way. I did, and it tasted so good, I could just hardly stand it. I just sat there crying.
Life is good. It really is good, and I didn't know that. It took me a long time to find out
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how good life is, and how to learn how to begin to appreciate it. I talked in Florida last year, and when I got off at the airport, driving over town in the limousine, there was a sign, an advertisement by a bank, and it said, Discover the Beauty of Being Appreciated. That's pretty good. That's nice. I always wanted to be appreciated. I just stood around waiting for somebody to come up and appreciate me.
The longer I stood there, the fewer people were there appreciating me. But in Alcoholics Anonymous, we learned it the other way, that Discover the Beauty of Appreciation. To begin to appreciate the little things, the thousand little things that happen in your life every day that are beautiful and sweet and dear and kind, oh, God! I used to drink all that booze, running all over this nation, looking for some place to have fun, looking for something to appreciate. Remember how that was? And all the while, it was right there inside me and all around me and in my own backyard.
Well, I discovered shortly after I was in Alcoholics Anonymous, not the first day, that in a little while, I discovered that the primary purpose of this program is not to just not take another drink. We've often heard that our program is based on, we don't take a drink today. I found out I, by myself, couldn't not take a drink. What the program really says, it's in the big book, that what we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of my spiritual condition.
If I wanted sobriety, I had to come up with something called a spiritual condition. And for an atheist, that's kind of a long shot, isn't it? A spiritual condition. And that the primary purpose of this program, and it says it in the big book, is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and to the people about us. Now, man, that's a strange kind of thinking for a guy that's been standing there waiting for someone to come and appreciate him. To fit yourself to be of maximum service to God and to people when you don't like people and don't believe there's a God?
Funny kind of language in that big book. Well, it really works. It really, really works. And for twenty-one years I'm telling you that I have lived a life that, to me, is so exceedingly satisfactory on an increasing basis. I'm not implying to you that I have not had problems in these twenty-one years. I've had every kind of a problem that you can imagine. I've made every mistake that I've ever made in my life before except one. I haven't taken that drink or one of those pills, one of those sedating or tranquilizing drugs, which is the same problem that we have. But for twenty-one years I've been able, through the grace of God, to be standing in the midst of the solution.
And you see, we are here tonight not because we have the disease. Yes, we all have it. We alcoholics. The Al-Anons have it too. It's contagious. They've got a disease called Al-Anon-ism. You show me one new drunk coming into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous with his wife or her husband, and I'll show you two goofy people. We've got the same disease. And the big book tells us that, you know, leaving the drinking problem aside, we're all the same. We've got the same problem, a living problem. And sometimes the Al-Anon is maybe just a little bit goofier than we are. Now, if you don't believe it, ask the kids. You go home and ask the kids. And they'll say, well, all Daddy did was just get drunk, but you should have seen Mama. I'm teasing, but I'm not really. What I'm saying is that there's a group of people here tonight who are not members of the Al-Anon.
I'm saying is that there's a group of people here tonight who are not members of Alcoholics
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Anonymous, but the dear and beloved members of our fellowship that we call Al-Anon, the spouses of members. And I don't have a wife. I have a dear friend with me, Karen. But without these people in our lives, many of us would not be here. And not only that, some of the people that have inspired me the most in 21 years of sobriety have been some Al-Anons who have come into our program and practiced it, friends, like we sometimes don't do. They really get with it. They really get with it. They flat don't stand around saying, well, I'm just not going to take a drink today, and I'm sober, aren't I? They have to discover a way of life to recover from the insanity that has been inflicted upon them and that they then assume to be their own. Right? Well, let me tell you a story that just fascinates me. That's the story of my life. I can't get over it. It just overwhelms me when I look at it and listen to it. Twice in my life I've been ten years old, if I'm twenty-one years old now. And at my church Wednesday night, on a Wednesday night there were three hundred people there, and they brought me a birthday cake. It said twenty-one years in AA. Isn't that neat? Of course it was a week late, but that's all right. But twice I've been ten years old. When I was ten years old the first time, when I was a boy, late in that day, that hot June day, late in June, seated in the dirt and cinders beside a railroad track in Roanoke, Virginia, between Ninth and Tenth Streets on Shenandoah Avenue, underneath the bridge, the bridge was right here that crossed over. This was on the wrong side of the tracks. And there was the Tenth Street bridge that crossed over from the right side.
And sitting there in that dirt, I could remember that just a short time ago we used to live over on the right side of the tracks. But on this day it wasn't that way at all. To go back a bit, my father had been one of the dearest men that I can remember in my life. I've heard many people say that Jack B. never hurt anybody but himself. But you and I know it isn't true, because he died from alcoholism when he was twenty-nine, the same age at which I got sober. And any alcoholic has hurt somebody besides himself. We know that, a lot of people. My father had inherited enough money to last him and his family for a long time, but it didn't do that. Money doesn't last long for alcoholics, you know.
So before he was gone, he was living a skid row existence and the family had broken up. I recall a few sweet moments in my early life. I remember one time when my dad, we had a new car and it was late in the summer night and I was pretending to be asleep, almost asleep in the back seat. I remember as a child someone lifts you up and you fake being asleep but you're awake and they carry you inside and take your shoes off and your clothes off and put your pajamas on and you don't open your eyes, you squint your eyes closed. And remember that feeling of comfort and joy and security and all is well and there'll never be a problem. You don't know what a problem is. I must have been three, four. And after that there were nothing but problems in our family, in our life. And suddenly the family was broken up. I remember sobbing and crying the day my father left home. Then there was no home. I remember the first, when I first went to school, the first month or week in school the first lie that I can remember telling was to protect my dad, a drunk. The teacher asked me a question and a little six-year-old boy just stood there and lied like a Turk to protect his drunk father. And six months later my father, in the winter of that year, was dead, frozen to death between the railroad tracks and the river from too much canned heat, Roanoke, Virginia. Three or four months ago I was back to Roanoke, my hometown, and
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I registered in advance, long distance, to the newest Holiday Inn there. And they had built it since I was in Roanoke. And I took a room that night and when I got up the next morning and pulled my blinds, looked out into that beautiful day in the spring, I looked across the river to the very spot where they found my father, before the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I loved him. I really loved him. And I know that wherever he is, God is there. Six months after he was gone, my mother was gone, indirectly from alcoholism. I didn't grieve. It seemed like a relief, really. I didn't know that until I was in Alcoholics Anonymous and took my first searching in fearless moral inventory and went back and looked at my life from the very beginning and saw some of the lies I had told myself all my life about my life. What a blessed relief that was. I saw how I hated those people.
Then I could begin to love them. My dear little grandmother, blessed little woman that had run her son and her brother away from home because they drank, man, she would never take a drink or allowed in her house. And because of the tragedy of alcoholism in her life, my mother and her daughter's death, and then my father, the doctor prescribed a little toddy. They didn't have tranquilizers. And that dear, sweet, little, white-headed, gorgeous woman was off and running from the first shot out of the bottle, just pure alcoholic. You never saw anything like it in your whole life. And I found myself jumping from the frying pan into the fire, and it was the Depression, and man, things were tough around our house, except we didn't have a house in a short period of time.
And so on this day that I'm telling you about, my tenth birthday, sitting in that backyard, my life had come unglued from alcoholism. The only thing I knew for sure was that we were going to move next week. Well, we just moved last week. Well, we were going to move next week, too, probably, in a short time. And in that house there was no electricity, no food, just booze, people drinking. You know the sounds of alcoholism because not only have you heard them, but you have made them. You know how it is, I don't have to tell you. Do you think a drunk doesn't… I was talking to an alcoholic who still likes to nip a bit, attending a meeting of AA in our church last week, and he was telling me that he's never hurt his children. They love him when he drinks. Well, we know, don't we?
We know. We know how it is. I sat there in that backyard and I wanted out of my life so desperately. I had never known love and security and beauty and abundance. I had never been a child. I never was a child until I came into Alcoholics Anonymous. Why do you think I love fun things so much, being alive and playing and enjoying life? Because I never was a child. This has been being born again for me to be in this fellowship, to learn how to love trees and stars and the sky and people, and just walking down the street, looking in windows, sitting down eating a butterscotch sundae. I just love it. I just flat love being alive. Because I never was. And sitting there on my birthday, and no one had recognized it, and there was no birthday cake and no presents, and I was barefooted simply because I didn't have any shoes. It wasn't because I liked to go barefooted. And sitting there beside the railroad tracks, a train, late in that afternoon, was picking up speed, leaving the station downtown, going west. And trains in those days were longer than they are now. A train was passing me, almost as close as this front row. I was sitting right on the bank and up a little bit where I could look right in the windows and I could see them just like I can see you. And as that train was picking up speed, the clickety-clack of the wheels on the rails, and I suddenly had this child's overwhelming desire to be out of that place and out of that experience and away from those people and all that hurt and shame. I was ashamed of everything that existed there. There was nothing beautiful.
And I would have given anything to be on that train. And the thought came to me, I wonder if anyone on earth could possibly love a little boy like me and could appreciate me.
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And then on the end of that train there were two dining cars and the porters in their jackets were seating the people. And the train was gone into the distance and I settled back down into the dust and into the hopelessness of my life. But not really. Because I was going to grow up and not be like my dad. I was going to do something with my life. I was going out there and be successful, I was, on my terms. I was. And I couldn't wait until I could be a man. When I was ten years old I couldn't wait until I was eleven. And so on. I just wanted to grow up and get away until I could be on my own. But I wasn't going to drink, smoke cigarettes, say those bad words, and there were a few other things.
I can tell you that to this day I have never smoked a cigarette. But all the rest of those things passed along the way, I'll guarantee you that. Because when I was sixteen I was out with three other guys and they were good guys and they still wear white hats, they really do, they're great guys. One of them had his daddy's car and the other one, one of the other guys had a fifth of cheap wine. And like boys they were taking a few drinks and I wasn't going to drink and they kept picking away and finally Griff said, come on Jack, take a drink, just one drink won't hurt you. And I thought about that for a minute and I knew that was right, it wouldn't hurt me. I mean, just get them off my back. I'd take one drink and they'd be out of the way and I'd never do it again. Wouldn't be like what happened to my daddy. And so I said okay and I took a drink and handed it back and about three or four minutes or five passed. And I said, Griff, pass that bottle back here again. You see, something happened inside me that every drunk in this room knows about.
It just started right here and it expanded and it got, well, I can't put it into words. But I felt an adequacy come over me that I'd never known before and a sense of awakening appreciation. Beauty. This was not like what had happened to my father. This was an entirely different thing. This was beautiful and it was like, well, you know, I'm not going to go high in the sky. You know, it was years before I knew what they meant when they said get high. And I had been that way. It was just being in the clouds. It was like having a spiritual experience with that God is really what it was. And you know that from that moment I was hooked. I didn't get drunk that night. I discovered that I could drink better than Griff and the other two guys. It was a funny thing. It was obvious to me that I could do it better than they could. I had just started and they had been doing it for some time and I could do it better than they could. I was getting lots more out of it than they were and I stood there and marveled. They didn't really know what they were doing. But I was.
And I knew I was going to do it again and I wondered why I had waited so long to discover this good and beautiful thing. And I defy any human being to have an experience like what took place inside me. Man, if you got that from sipping prune juice, you'd be in real trouble. Because you sure wouldn't quit sipping that prune juice, I'll tell you that. If you thought that's where it came from. I was in Alcoholics Anonymous before I discovered that the way I felt that night when I took those first drinks is the way that a human being is supposed to feel. We were created to feel good and joyful and with an awakening sense of beauty. This is our real nature. But not that way. That's not the agent or the chemical. That's not the way to go about it. And I did not see, because the disease happened so slowly, I did not see that every subsequent attempt that I made to feel that way by drinking, that I was getting farther and farther away from feeling that way. I was losing it. The very chemical that seemed to give me this tremendous sense of life was bringing about my death. And the farther I got away from life toward death, the more desperate I was to get back to life, and so I drank more and more desperate.
get back to because I was dying with the thing that I was trying to get back there with.
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Did you follow that, friends? You and I are never going to go back there that way. But does that mean that we can't get back there? Oh, no, because we have a way out. That's what the program was originally called. It wasn't called Alcoholics Anonymous. When this book was written, it was named The Way Out, as you know. The drunks in the Oxford Movement wrote it because the language of the Oxford Movement was too churchy, too religious, and the drunks couldn't stand it. They had to bring the language down to get all those religious words out of it, and so they wrote a book called The Way Out. Then they discovered at the last moment that there were twelve other books in the Library of Congress called The Way Out, and they didn't want this to be the thirteenth. I guess they were superstitious.
So they had a terrible argument and ended up naming it Alcoholics Anonymous, and that was in 1938, and the book was published in 1939. You know the story. It's The Way Out. This is The Way Out, but it's the way into the most beautiful way of life that is. It's the way into your real identity. It's the way into your real self. It's the way to experience far more than booze or pills ever gave us. It's the way to be something, someone. And I discovered that my greatest problem was that I never knew who I was. I had no real identity. No way. I had a lot of hats I wore, but no real identity.
So I took those drinks that night, and I was already bound to try it again and again and again and again, not knowing that it was a problem, but believing that it was a solution. Now friends, how can you have a solution unless you've got a problem? You've heard it said that our problem came about because we drank over a long period of time. Well, maybe for you that was true, but for me and for most drunks that I have observed, you can take it right back to the beginning, right back there. Not that I fell over backwards because I flattened it and I did it better than they did. And I looked good at it for quite some time. And I was the one that, when the party was over, I was still standing there looking around. And I was the one that carried all of the drunks home. Isn't that amazing? Especially Joe. Everybody's got a Joe in your life, if you're an alcoholic. And if you're a lady alcoholic, it might have been a Josephine, but you've got a Joe or a Josephine. Joe is that guy that if you ever get as bad as Joe is, you'll quit. Remember? How carefully we selected somebody whose pattern of drinking was entirely different from ours. We can never be like Joe was if we both died under the bridge. But if I ever get like Joe is, I'll quit. What I couldn't see was that the Joe I had selected, and there literally was such a guy, played a remarkable part of my story. I'll try to tell you about it, a little one.
Every time I got as bad as Joe was, he had just gotten worse. And I kept saying, if I ever get as bad as Joe is, I'll quit. Funny how we delude ourselves. Well, in high school, like so many of you, I was voted by the class the one most likely to succeed. And I set out to succeed. And for a period of time in my young life, it looked like I was going to make it. I did pretty good at the level where I was on my own terms. I took credit for that pretty good. One of the things that helped me was drinking. It introduced me to a lot of nice people like I was, one of whom was Joe. Country club and two cars in the garage and lots of nice things. Just nice, you know, successful living, young America.
Looked real good. Funny how we keep falling uphill, just a lot of us do. But the passage of time, and I'll try to cut this part of my story short, the passage of time I saw, even I could see that some strange things were happening to me. Because when I was a
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young man, there was a softness about me. I really cared about people. I just loved people. But I noticed that something had happened to my personality. I lost my temper where I didn't lose it before. And finally I got to where I was the terrible tempered Mr. Bang. Remember him from the comics? I've punched more holes in plaster than anybody in this room. I became an expert at patching plaster, not because I liked that kind of thing, but kicked out those panels in the door, acted in an insane way at times when you weren't supposed to do it. Remember those Sunday mornings when I awakened? What was that I had said last night that made Harry so angry? Because his wife was standing there.
He just didn't have a sense of humor, did he? I wonder if the car is out in the garage? It was. Then one time it wasn't. Those times of going down to Silver Gables just to get a few beers and ending up in New Orleans, Chicago. Disconcerting, isn't it, when you just go on three blocks down the street and don't get home for two or three weeks? Something a little strange taking place here. And the former intense desire to get out there and be successful in life, selling and doing something with your life, and now you're staying in the bed, can't get out, full of fear and shame. So you stop off at Silver Gables and three o'clock in the afternoon you're standing there playing the pinball machine, faking those reports. Strange, insane things. The whole pattern of your life is changing but you can't admit it because you're too smart, you know too much. You're the smartest guy on the block and smarter than that. And you know that there isn't anything you don't know.
All those one-way streets in your hometown, they just put them in the wrong way, and you know they did. And they don't run railroads like they used to. That's the way it was with me. I had that terrible sense of impending doom and fear, and I'd sit up nights, afraid, drinking, reading Robinson Crusoe or something, and hear that sound in the basement. I was always hearing sounds in the basement and wondering whether I'd locked the back door or not. Being very brave, I had to go down and see. But you know what? It's a terrible thing to be so brave and so afraid at the same time, isn't it? And I always was going to put boards on the backs of those steps, those basement steps, because I had a horror of somebody reaching out and just cutting my legs off when I went down to see who was in the basement. Some insane things that would happen. And there was a guy that used to play the organ on Sunday evenings at 11 o'clock on one of the national radio programs. I'd listen to that organ music and sit down in my office at home and write the most beautiful poetry. Oh, it was so beautiful. I'd just sit there and cry, writing that poetry. And it was sad poetry, but it was beautiful poetry, and it was sad because of what was in my heart.
They just did not understand me anymore. I'd go to my funeral. I've been to my funeral so many times. The casket would always be right up here, and I'd be back in that corner. It was the most beautiful funeral parlor you've ever seen in your life, and there were as many people coming in a line down that side. I went over this a thousand times in my mind. As many people there as there are of you, and they look kind of like you too, friends, I'll tell you. And they'd be filing slowly by me in the casket, but me standing back there in the corner would be watching them, and as they came by, looking upon my lovely face. Now, I never did look at me in the casket. They would pause and very tearfully say, Poor Jack, if only we had understood him a little better. If only I had not done that terrible thing to him behind his back. And I would say, Yes, you son of a gun, if you
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hadn't done it. And then the next one would pause, and they would say the thing they had done. And the line would move slowly and tearfully out. And I would stand there and know with absolute certainty that I was in that box because of them. They had done it to me. And I hated their guns, especially Garnet. All of us have a Garnet. I'll tell you about Garnet in a few minutes. Garnet is the guy that I used to carry a shovel in the back of my car for, because I was working out a perfect plan to eliminate him so that no one else was going to have any trouble with Garnet. And I spent a lot of time thinking about Garnet, and I had a pretty good system going, except every time I got it figured out, it worked this way. If I did it this way, they would probably catch me. But if I did it that way, they wouldn't catch me, but Garnet wouldn't know I had done it. You see, he had to know that I had done it. Now, when I came into the program and read that second step about being restored to sanity, man, I didn't balk one bit. I knew how goofy I'd been. But I hated Garnet, and I hated life, and I wanted out. And one day, one Sunday morning, I awoke and looked out the window. It didn't look so good out there, and I figured a way out. Why get out of that town? Get out of that state, get out of that neighborhood, get out of those in-laws, get out of that company that didn't appreciate you. And I was absolutely astonished that I had not discovered the way out sooner. Why move? If a drunk is going to move to get out of these problems, and he lives in Virginia, he's not going to North Carolina, California.
Hawaii had not been admitted to the Union at that time. And so I immediately made arrangements to move to California to solve my problem. Now, drinking was not my problem. These people were my problem, you know. Oh, I drank a little bit too much sometimes, but that wasn't a real problem. I would not drink so much if it were not for the conditions. So I got to California and kept falling uphill, and I applied for a job position. Not a job, and still had a good record back east in sales. I applied with several national organizations, and one day the company of my second choice called, and the district manager said, Jack, we'd just love to have you come to work for us. We've checked you out. Obviously he hadn't checked me out carefully enough. And I was somewhat disappointed, because there was another position that I wanted more. But the keen, cunning mind of the alcoholic came to my rescue, and I thought, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. So I said, I would love to come to work for you. And what I really was saying was, I would like that salary and the commission that's on top of it, and the expense account, and that company car. See, I didn't know then about service. All I knew about was survival, barely surviving.
The next day the telephone rang, and it was the company of my first choice, and the district manager said, Jack, we'd just love to have you come to work for us. And I was about to say I'm sorry, but I've accepted another position. But the keen, cunning mind of the alcoholic came to my rescue, and I thought, two birds in the hand, overlapping territories at the level of business in which I was functioning at that time, very little supervision, you're on your own, it was assumed that you had the integrity to function at that level. Two salaries, commission on top, two almost unlimited expense accounts, company car. Great, just marvelous.
Except I couldn't get to work on either job. I couldn't get by that bar. And if you think that a drunk salesman has got trouble filling out one expensive report, man, you try faking two of them. And I couldn't make the payments on my house. The payments on my house. One night at a party given by Tennessee Ernie Ford, who was a neighbor,
[00:45:00]
I made something of an ass of myself. It didn't seem to me to be that way, but it apparently did to some other people. I saw him looking at me, and in that moment there was a moment of truth, and you've had a moment of truth or you wouldn't be here. I saw myself. I saw some things about myself I'd never seen before, and I couldn't stand it, and I went home and tried to take my life. Because there was no life, there was no way. There was no way out, and I knew it, and obviously I didn't make it because I'm standing here talking to you.
That was Saturday night, but I meant it, and I knew that in time this would happen to me because there was no life, and I wanted out. Monday I went into the company of my first choice to resign, and the district manager said, Jack, we're so glad that you're resigning. It will keep me from having to fire you today. Perfect timing. Perfect timing. I went back to Virginia, took my three sons and my then wife, and deposited them with her family to be supported by them, and I went back to the other side of the town, to the other side of town, the wrong side of the tracks, the side of the town that just two years before my next-door neighbor, that guy that cut his grass all the way around the house, my neighbor had seen me on that side of town one day, and I'd lied to him because it was just an unacceptable part of town, and I'd said, Mac, I wasn't over on that side of town today.
I was in Martinsville, sixty miles away. He said, Jack, I know I saw you, and I looked at him and lied, and he knew that I was lying, and I knew that he knew I was lying, and he knew that I knew that he knew I was lying. And you Alamans know how thatty is, every one of you know, and I see you nodding your heads. That drunk walks in and he tells you something, and both of you know it's a lie, and he sticks to it. Two years later, I was living on that side of town in one room in a house that was about to be torn down because it was unworthy. I mean, unworthy, that's not the right word. Anyhow, it was about to be condemned, and I had been told by the landlady that I had to move. So I wasn't doing so pretty good, friends. I was not being too successful with my life, and my unemployment compensation of $22.50 a week was about to run out, and I had started borrowing. And by borrowing I mean that I would go down on the market or downtown and bum for quarters or fifty cents or a dollar or whatever I could get. Skid row existence. And I was just waiting until something happened that I would die. That was all. There was no way to go.
And I'd sit in the park, and many times I've looked at the squirrels there, and I would have given anything to be a squirrel, just anything to be a squirrel. One night, standing on the corner of the post office, Sunday night, bumming, except there was no business, no traffic. And I tried to cross the street, and I couldn't cross it. I just couldn't get across the street because I wasn't drunk, but I couldn't move. There was no energy, there was no zeal, there was no place to go. My life was over, and yet I couldn't live and I couldn't die. I can't tell you the hell that was in my mind. And I tried to go back in the direction from which I'd come, and I couldn't go that way. And finally, I got across that street and down to the corner and turned to the right, and here's the perfect timing of God. And I was an atheist. As I turned that corner, walking down the street, a small group of people, about five or six in number, just emerged from a doorway. And on that door were two letters, AA. And the first guy that stepped out, as I was about to pass, across the street, was Joe. If I ever get as bad as Joe is, I'll quit. Joe was sober. He saw me, came across the street, we went around to the corner, to the bar.
I knew what would happen when we got to the bar. Joe would drink, but Joe didn't drink. He bought me something to drink. Joe had only been in AA less than two weeks. Think of the timing. Two weeks later, I called him, and one of the most difficult things I've ever done in my life. I went to the telephone bar, and I didn't have a telephone or anything. I called Joe and I said, Are you still sober? And he said, Yes. And I said, Joe, now listen to this. There must be something wrong with me. Hardest thing I ever said in my life.
[00:50:09]
Must be something wrong with me. Man, I knew there was something wrong with the world, but there still wasn't really anything really wrong with me. And Joe said, Where are you? And I told him, and he came, and to speed this up, short time I was going to meetings, and up those same steps, and I would pace myself as I turned the corner, just to make sure. Now here I was, still on unemployment compensation, didn't have a job yet, ducking up those steps, those AA meetings, because somebody might see me go in there with them.
Have you ever had that feeling, friend? Why, I might be stigmatized if they saw me with them. I stayed sober, no, I stayed dry three weeks. See why I'm so proud of this fellowship and of you. I was out, and it was the darndest nightmare you can imagine, because the first time in my life I was drinking and drunk, knowing I was an alcoholic, and I could not get sober, and I desperately tried to get sober. I don't remember getting drunk, but I remember trying to get sober, and I could not, and I could not, and I went through hell, and I had acquired a job selling second-hand automobiles for a second-rate, second-hand automobile dealer. It was the only kind that would hire me. And I had one of their cars, and they had called the police department and said, We've got a drunk salesman that's tearing all over town with one of our cars. And the police department was trying to catch me, and for three weeks we just went tearing around all over that town, and they never did catch me. One night I got away from them by going the wrong way through a tunnel. Insanity?
You bet. And then I was back at the meeting, my first meeting on July 10, 1953, and willing to go to any lengths. And I thought I might be one of the hopeless ones. There were no reservations about me, and I was willing to go to any lengths. And I went to every meeting that we had, two a week. And I stole a key, because you had to be sober six months to get a key to the clubhouse, and I would go down and sit in that hot clubhouse for the hour during the day. The temperature, with the windows closed and no air conditioning, must have been 125 or more. Because it was the only place on earth that I could find any security. Inside me, though dry, there was pure hell going over in my mind. My life was over, but the resentment and the fear and the self-pity, the nightmare, was still there. Going to meetings. I'd been sober about a month, desperate. Sometimes our greatest desperation comes after we've taken our last drink. You know, I see some of you nodding your head. I was an atheist, and I had stood up and said to some people in AA, God, as you understand me, my understanding is that there ain't one. That's my understanding.
And it works for me, I said. Well, this night it wasn't working. This day it wasn't working so well. And as a last resort, parked in one of those secondhand cars I couldn't sell, I decided to pray. Except I didn't say that. I decided to try to get in touch with God. My heart was pounding and my pulse was racing, and I started talking that day. And I made a good start. I said, God, I don't believe you exist. Now, man, that's a good start, because that was honest. But if you do exist, you know that I cannot go on without help.
I can't make it. I can't make it on my own terms. Now, I did not know it. I did not know about the Twelve Steps or the program of recovery. All our group was doing at that time was not taking a drink today and getting the heck out of that meeting at nine o'clock. A program of recovery, what's that? We just don't take a drink today. Keep it simple. The group was seven years old, but the oldest sobriety in the group was 18 months. Keeping it simple.
You can simplify yourself to death in this program, friends. I said, I need help. And suddenly the most amazing thing happened to me. I saw that when
[00:55:04]
I was saying, I need help, God, what I meant was, fix me. I wasn't saying, give me something. You know, lay some on me, some money or a check in the mail, or give me a better job. I needed a worse job. I didn't need a better job. I couldn't handle what I had. Don't give me anything else to do because I can't do what I've got. Don't send me someplace. Do something to me. Fix me. There's something wrong with me inside myself, and I know it, and I admit it, and I'll go to any lengths. I'll do anything to be fixed. Fix me. Heal me. The first, second, and third steps, not intellectually taken, but taken with such deep intensity and honesty that I would give anything if I could reproduce it right here, right now. God, how good it felt. Nothing happened until the following Sunday morning.
Coming back from a poker game, I'd been out playing poker all night, looking for the solution, and lost. And wrote some hot checks. Hey, remember, going to a poker game like that and writing hot checks? Doesn't sound too spiritual to me. And on the way home that Sunday morning, so desperate, that quickly I felt a presence. I felt the presence of God. And it was in me and all around me, and it was everywhere present, and it had always been, but just suddenly I was recognizing. And the moment that I was aware of a presence, I felt a love that was so unbelievable that I can't describe it to you, and if I think about it, I won't be able to speak. I saw that not only was I loved and had always been, but everyone was, everyone is, every one of you is loved so intensely that there's no way to comprehend it. And it is we who separate ourselves from that love, and the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I saw that as clearly as I see your faces, those twelve steps have nothing to do with being sober. Those twelve steps are fulfilling the conditions of a spiritual awakening, and the love that follows, and the solution that comes. I saw that and knew it. I knew that I had a lot of work to do. And for the first time in my life I was filled with joy and happiness. Life was good. And I could see this presence in people and I just wanted to go around and shake them and say, wake up. Man, you don't know how marvelous you are and how beautiful you are. You just don't know how beautiful you are. And I knew that things were going to be well for me because the presence told me then that if I would fulfill the conditions daily, that everything would work out in my life. And I can tell you that in twenty-one years, those days that I have fulfilled the conditions, everything has worked out well in my life, including the so-called bad things.
The best things that have ever happened to me have been the worst. I am here because of all the worst things, so they must be the best things. Right? Right. And a real excitement came over me in my program of Recovery and Alcoholics Anonymous and these principles. I knew they would work. I knew that if I would work on myself and change my ideas about things, about everything, that I had to take myself apart. And this is what the twelve steps were all about, and especially that fourth step and fifth and sixth and seventh.
And the program of recovery became and continues to be the most exciting thing to me in all the world. It works. If I had to give up anything on earth, the ministry, or being in the Church, or any friend, or my children, or any relationship other than Alcoholics Anonymous, I would hang on to this. Of course, I don't have to make that choice. There is nothing greater than what we have because it is the solution and from it will come anything that you need and that your heart desires. On page forty-two of the big book it says, And the greatest tragedy of the movement of Alcoholics Anonymous is that we have speakers that stand up and say that all this program promises you is physical sobriety. That's a lie. Unintended. It promises you life and joy and beauty and peace of mind and recovery.
Beauty and Peace of Mind and Recovery and the Freedom from the Fear of Economic Insecurity and Freedom from the Fear of People and Man, Was I Ever Afraid of People?
[01:00:00]
Someone walked on that used car lot and I'd run around behind the shed. I couldn't function. I had to have help and I had it and it was dramatic and it continues to be when I permit it to be. I was recovering and man, things were just great and picked up that book called The Sermon on the Mount one day by accident and I was just so excited because what I was reading about was what had been happening to me and then a short time later Marty Mann told me that that was the original big book, kind of.
Before they had the book, early members used to stick that in a new member's hand and say, Read this and go out into your life and practice these principles. They work. And I was working them and one day reading that book, I saw that I had to forgive everybody and that suited me pretty good and then I remembered Garnet and I went about to forgive Garnet all the things he had done to me and all that wonderful, beautiful time I'd spent hating him.
Why, it would just be wasted, wouldn't it? You know, the last thing that a drunk will ever give up is not the bottle. You think that drinking is the last thing we'll ever give up? Oh, no, friends, suffering. Long after we stop drinking, we hang on to that suffering, oh, that sweet suffering. Just go over those thoughts, oh, God, what they've done to me, poor me. And Garnet had really done it. Everybody's got a Garnet, I'll tell you.
And then the President said to me, But you're not doing it for Garnet, Jack, you're doing it for Jack. The program is for you. Man, you don't forgive them and go out and make your amends so that they will understand you. You do this so you can be sane. You've been goofy. You've been plumb crazy. You're going to have to learn how to live and be somebody. You're doing this for you. And I knew that was correct and I had to do it for me.
And so I started loving Garnet, except I hated his guts. And I thought about it and I prayed about it and I just didn't work. And one day it came to me how? My youngest son was two years old, a beautiful kid with a smile on his face that wide. And twenty-one years later it's still there. Love that boy. And so does everyone else and dogs and cats and just a lovable kid. And he had long hair down to here, and he still does.
And I would just love Alan so good, I would think about Alan or I'd hold him in my arms and I'd get the feeling of love for Alan and then I would switch it to Garnet. And he would just die. When he hit Garnet he would go. And I worked at that and I kept it up because I was determined that I was going to practice these principles in all of my life. I believed in this program then completely and I still do.
I must practice these principles in my life today, all of them. I must because I love what happens to me when I do. This is not for anybody else on earth, but it's for me and it works. And it's for peace and joy and happiness and love. And one day it kind of worked. I kind of had a feeling for Garnet and then it got better and I prayed for him. And shortly after that, and it was in the fall of that same year, 1953, I was driving along in one of those old second-hand cars that I couldn't sell.
On a four-lane street, a road, and the new automobiles had come out. And here chugging along five miles an hour faster than me was a brand new Buick or Oldsmobile. First one I'd seen, that model, lovely color. Moved out in front of me and I was thinking, gee, I'd like to have one like that. Looked up at the driver, guess who it was, Garnet.
[01:05:04]
And I loved him instantly without thinking about it. I was glad that Garnet had that car and the tears just ran down my cheeks. And a short time after that I went to Garnet and I made my amends to him for the things I had done to him and I told him that I would go to people and correct the erroneous impressions that I had given them, the lies I had told them about him. And I did. And a short time after that, Garnet died.
Grace of God. Perfect timing. For twenty-one years I've been standing, it seems to me, like at the right place at the right time. But not I, the power that is within me, when I fulfill the conditions, does its work. It really does. I wish I had all night to tell you about the miracles I have experienced, the fantastic miracles that come from this program, not from staying sober. Staying sober, we have not done anything that we should not have done to begin with.
Let's not pat ourselves on the back for that. Let's be grateful for it, right down to the pit of our stomach, grateful for it. But that's an opportunity to become real men and women who become involved in this spiritual program of recovery, of recovering from the insanity that remains after we stop drinking. A man stopping drinking does not take away the goofiness of any alcoholic ever that I have ever seen, or Al-Anon.
That's why we've got the program called The Way Out of That Insanity. And it works. And it's magic. It has been magic in my life. If you have any problem in your life, if you're new in this fellowship, you're truly blessed, as I am. And I promise you that if you will go to meetings and not take a drink and talk to your sponsor and get that book and read it and become willing to do something about yourself, your life, and to clear away the wreckage of the past, the most amazing things will happen to you.
Everything that you ever wanted from life will begin to unfold, gradually, at the beginning, but then with an increased momentum. And the feeling that you looked for in that jug, you'll have. It'll come from within yourself and will not require a chemical. It'll be yours. It'll come from a power greater than yourself. You've made a junkyard of your life. No matter how bad, no matter how far down the ladder you've gone, our book says, you will not only recover, but you'll be glad that it happened that way.
I wouldn't change a thing that's ever happened to me. If I did, I might disappear. You know, you'd say, what happened to that speaker standing up there? It reminds me of a story that one of the Sunday school teachers at our church, not our church, another church, told about working with a little child. And she was telling the children in class about how wonderful and forgiving and loving God was and about the beauty and joy and love that he has for all of us.
This little boy couldn't really understand that, but he made a plaque, a paper plaque, that he placed on his bathroom mirror so that he would see it every morning when he was washing his face. And it read, I am strong and healthy, wonderful, W-O-N-E-R-F-U-L. God don't make no junk. God don't make no junk. People do, especially drunks. But there's a way out, and it's a beautiful way out. We are caught up in this fellowship of the Spirit, and we're blessed.
I'm blessed to be with you, all of you, and I thank the committee for having me here. I had just completed my first year of sobriety and stood up to get my chip and stood there and cried. I just stood there and sobbed like a baby, and I'm about to do it now, just thinking about it. My second birthday, did I tell you that? My second, tenth birthday, I must tell you that story. At the time of my tenth birthday, I was invited, along with the president of my company, to take a trip.
I was invited by the vice president of the Norfolk and Western Railway in Roanoke, Virginia,
[01:10:01]
along with some other business people in that city, to take a trip over into West Virginia, a kind of a recognition for civic responsibilities assumed the year before. I didn't want to go. I didn't feel qualified. I wasn't, really. I had other things to do, and I was in the process of taking my fourth step. I do that twice a year, completely, whether I need it or not, and, of course, I always need it.
Late in the day, in June, late June, I got down to the station. We were going to go on the train. There were two business cars attached to the back of this train. My friend, the president of the company, and I stepped on board that train. The vice president of the railroad met us there, turned to his porter and said, John, Jack and Bud will have coffee instead of cocktail. He knew that we were members of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Of course, the way he knew was that we had taken his brother to some meetings, and that was probably the civic responsibility that we had done that year. Now, I didn't want to be on that train, taking that trip, but it was my tenth birthday in Alcoholics Anonymous. I was told that I would be seated in the next business car, have dinner in the dining area in the center of that car. There was a jerk of the train as it left the station, and I was being introduced to one or two businessmen that I did not know had not yet met.
The train was picking up speed. The other men were seated, and I was still standing there because I looked out the window of that train, and I was standing in the exact position of that train to be looking out toward Shenandoah Avenue—not away from it, but toward it. And it was Fifth Street, and Sixth Street, and Seventh Street. And all those years I had forgotten my tenth birthday as a child, sitting on that very spot that I knew I was going to see in a moment, and the goosebumps came out on my spine, and the tears just leaped into my eyes.
Because here, on my tenth AA birthday, I was on a train heading west, late in the day, and I looked out and saw the very spot on the bank where I sat as a boy. Everything that that boy had desired and had asked for, I had—security, a family, hundreds, thousands of people like you who are my brothers, my fellows, people whom I love and who love me in return, a way of life that was beautiful and good, nothing in my life of which I was ashamed.
Why do you think that happened? Why do you think I was on that train at that special time? Do you believe that was a coincidence? Do you see why I love this fellowship and the God, the power that I understand that has saved your life and mine, and more than that, has brought such a beautiful opportunity to live and to love to us? Oh, my friends, we have a magic thing, and a beautiful thing, and a precious thing, and I cherish it and I value it.
I'll go to any lengths to carry this message to the alcoholic or the al-anon or just a plain ordinary human being who still suffers. Oh, Great Spirit, whose voice I hear in the winds and whose breath gives life to all the world, hear me. I come before you, one of your many children. I am small and weak. I need your strength and wisdom. Let me walk in beauty. Make my eyes ever to behold the red and purple sunset.
Make my hands respect the things you have made, my ears sharp to hear your voice. Make me wise so that I may know the things you have taught my people, the lesson you have hidden in every rock. I seek strength, not to be superior to my brothers, but that I may be able to fight my greatest enemy, myself. Make me ever ready to come to you with clean hands and with straight eyes so that when life fades, as a fading sunset, my spirit may be at rest.
Anonymous, you and I will surely make it. Thank you.