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Source: Joe M – Founders Day 1993 – Speaker Talk – Date Unknown.mp3 File: joe-m-founders-day-1993-speaker-talk-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:52:23
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I went to the airport yesterday, picked this man up, 4 o'clock in the afternoon. And up until then, I thought I knew this man pretty well, because I've bumped into him all over the country. But after spending the last couple of days with Joe, I found out that I didn't know anything about him. This morning we got up and we got ready to, we was on our way to breakfast, and we was talking about both of our favorite subjects, Big Book.
And here's a man that's given Big Book seminars all over the world. But he told me that last night when he was reading this Big Book, he found something new. So that tells me that I've got to keep reading. I'm not going to prolong it anymore. I'm going to give you, as we affectionately call this man in this area, Big Book Joe from Little Rock, Arkansas. My name is Joe, and I'm a real alcoholic, through God's grace and because this program works one day at a time in my life, I haven't found it necessary to take a drink since March of 1962.
And for this, I'm extremely grateful. I would like to thank Jim for the opportunity to be here tonight. As he said, he was very persistent. He would call me every year in January for about three years. I felt kind of bad. I said, this guy is too sweet and too nice. I have got to do something. You know, I think it's very appropriate to be here. I think I'm in the right place at the right time, when I was supposed to be.
I think I feel in awe tonight as I stand here in Akron, and I have been in and out of Akron, but it's my first time to Founders Day. And I think that it's very fitting that this weekend that we come back and say thank you. You know, that's what this is all about for me. You know, to show this area, Akron and this city and its people, and the First Party people, thank you for the way of life that you have given me.
I feel a very blessed person tonight. I was thinking about it today. I have lived half of my life in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. They say in an AA talk we tell a little bit about what it was like and what happened and what it's like now. And I'm always fascinated with the opportunity to talk about these areas of my life. I could talk a lot about what it was like. I think it's necessary for us to identify with each other.
I could talk a lot about Forever Tonight, about the wonders of my life tonight. My life, to me, is another dimension of living. The book speaks about that I never knew existed. But I think what's really the most important thing that we need to talk about regardless of where we are on the road of recovery, just beginning like the young lady with one day or the gentleman with 56 years, we all have the same problem.
You know, what happened in our lives? What happened? How did we renew this miracle of our spiritual experience, of our life-changing process? How did this happen in our lives? This is the most important thing we need to discuss. You know, I don't know why I'm an alcoholic. My home's in Louisville, Kentucky. I was thinking about that this week, too. It's one thing how these periods of time, how we reflect back on our lives.
We never really get to examine our own lives. This week I was thinking about coming up here and thinking about 1935 and thinking about
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my own life and where was I in 1935? I was five years old and I lived in Louisville, Kentucky. June of 1935 was a very significant time in my life as a five-year-old child because my mother died that month. And I look back on things tonight and I realize at the same time God took something dear out of my life, somewhere else he placed something very important in my life. And I remember, you know, growing up as a child after that, my father remarried and my stepmother, I had a wonderful stepmother that raised me, but we were poor people.
In fact, you know, everybody was poor in those days. They hadn't drew the poverty line yet. Everybody was behind the line. We didn't know we were poor. But we had plenty to eat. I always laugh about it because every time I ask my mother for some more, she says, you've already had a plenty. So I know I had plenty to eat, she told me about that. But I remember growing up in this environment and this life, and I don't guess my childhood was any different than any other child's.
Growing up was a very painful process, it was for me. And I remember my very first introduction to alcohol, you know. I remember my first drink, I happen to remember, you don't have to, this is not a requirement to be a member. But I remember my first drink and I remember my last drink, a whole lot of difference between those two drinks. And I remember my first drink and I remember how, it was many years searching what really happened in my life and I think that so much of my life is the big book Alcoholics Anonymous.
It seems to be the only information I've ever had that explains what took place in my life. And I can look back on that very first night and Dr. Silkworth talks about it, he says we arrested this early but discontented, unless we can again experience the sense and ease and comfort that comes with taking a few drinks of alcohol. Except we see others take them with impunity. And I remember that first night I took a drink, it gave me a sense of ease and comfort that came at once in my life.
Probably some relief that I probably needed at that time, I don't know really what would have happened had I not found alcohol. But it allowed me to talk to people, it allowed me to be a part of, and it probably allowed me to begin my road to alcoholism. I hear a lot of different things that people say that cause you to become an alcoholic, I don't know, I'm not into that, you know, I think drinking whiskey has got a lot to do with it.
But they want to lay it on everything else. But I remember I sat out on the road and I believe, you know, some people like the fellow this morning drank for many years before he ever had a problem. Some people do, some people start out with a problem and I think I was alcoholic from the very start. You know, I hear people get up behind these podiums and talk about all the things they lost through drinking.
I'm going to disappoint you tonight, I didn't lose anything from drinking. I didn't get anything. I started out at 18 years old, and you know, I did not know I was an alcoholic. Now that's strange. In fact, no alcoholic really knows he's an alcoholic. You know, according to society's standards, I was not an alcoholic, but I know right today according to what AA knows, and that's about the only place where you can find out if you're an alcoholic, is in Alcoholics Anonymous, because those are the only people that know anything about it.
So I was an alcoholic and didn't know I was an alcoholic. And when you're an alcoholic, you don't know you're an alcoholic, then you do what non-alcoholics do. Try to, like get married and get a job. And if you're an alcoholic trying to do what non-alcoholics are doing, you're in one hell of a shape.
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But I proceeded to make all this thing work. When I got married and had two kids with that, and we were divorced, and I came back home to my father. You know, they say this is a family disease, that we have family problems. I didn't have too many family problems. I needed my family. I took care of those people. I mean, I'd always go home to my father when I got broke, you know, and I would always get an interest.
I'd say, you ought to go see your father. That's not right. And I would go home and lose a job and make a fool out of myself and get in some kind of trouble. And I would say, this town ain't no good. I think I'll leave. And he'd say, how much you want to borrow? He would always lend me some money to leave. And you know, I would always, I got off and I got into some situations then I had been divorced and back home and couldn't keep a job and just couldn't make things work in my life.
Alcohol had always been a problem to me from the very beginning. You know, I become kind of a traveling drunk. I'd travel away and come back, and on this occasion I went to, was off and things got bad for me and I just, I just couldn't see myself subjecting myself back on my father. I had some spark of decency, you know, I guess deep down God within us regards to, there's some governing order in here anyway.
That little guilt feeling that I always had. So I couldn't go back to my father, so I thought about my sister. My sister lived in Little Rock. She had went down there to go to college, God bless her, and married a young man and made a home down there and had a couple of kids. And you know how my alcoholic mind says, when I got in bad shape that time I said, you ought to go see your sister. That's not right treating her that way.
So this is the way I went to Arkansas, 35 years ago. You know, I feel very blessed tonight. You know, I think, you know, I went to Arkansas because, through God's directions probably. Just me, it was another drinking trip. But I think, you know, that it was there that I found the right people, and the right people were there. I'd uniquely chosen in my life to bring about my recovery, but little did it look like the great beginning of a great purpose when I went to Little Rock.
I got off the Greyhound bus that night, and I had $4 in my pocket as my world's possessions. I had a little raggedy suitcase about that full, a little drunk suitcase. You know how drunk suitcases are. They're not too crowded. And for some reason or another, you have to tie a necktie around one end of one latch and tie another. That's the way I dressed a drunk suitcase. I still travel the same way. I watch them today.
Like I say, I run a treatment center, and I see drunks come in, they still got them drunk suitcases. Sometime nowadays, they don't switch to garbage bags. Had one guy come in a few years ago, and the guy said, man, this guy can't get sober. I looked, he said, what's the matter? They said, he's got alligator luggage. But I got there, and I could always find me a job. I never seen a real alcoholic that couldn't find a job.
A real alcoholic has several professions. Yeah, he's a real alcoholic, but he'd do almost anything. He's telling you the truth. So I got me a job, went to work, and I live with my sister. And I always look back in life, you know, how I was struggling in my life. I just had got there, things were in bad shape, and living with my sister. My sister's a very religious person. She's as sweet as she can be, but she's always been involved in church since we were kids.
She stayed with us. She has a beautiful voice, and she's into music. She prays the organ in the church. So she was the organist in our little church at this time there in Little Rock, and her husband was the lay speaker of the church later.
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of one of our largest churches there. But these were young people working in the church, and they would get up, and I was staying with them, and they would get up and go to church every Sunday morning, and I'm laying in there trying to get over Saturday night. So it sounded like they were inviting me to church, and then it sounded like they were threatening my existence, so I decided to go to church one Sunday morning with them.
This is where I met Lou Bell, my alumni. It's a great part of my life, part of my recovery. I doubt if I'd be here tonight without her. You know, wasn't nobody but me in my life at that time, and Lou Bell and my sister were good friends. Lou Bell was in the choir, and the choir director and the choir, they're good friends, and so I remember how we met there at the church that morning. You know, I had a good front.
After all, I had the organist and the lay speaker, they were fronting for me. I tell them, you know, all we alcoholics are pretty good at selling fast conversation to these slow-thinking Al-Anons, you know, and I did my best job on her that morning, you know, and I remember I have never done a job that well. Now, remember now, I'm working out of this suitcase, I've been there about three weeks. Lou Bell had a good job, good job for a working lady.
She had a new car, and she owned her own home, and I thoroughly convinced her that she needed me to take care of her. They still have an Al-Anon meetings on that one. Anyway, we were married shortly after that, just a few months, and I stood, I stayed at home to, I took a little vacation off my job, I was a waiter. She had to go to work, but I stayed home, you know, I was a go-getter, I took her to work and went and got her.
After about a week of celebrating there, I had the honeymoon by myself, drinking, sitting at home. After about a week of celebrating, I drank myself into the old state hospital. Now, we didn't have, this was a little, this was before detox centers and treatment centers, you know, we had asylums. I'm glad they still had those things while I was drinking. You know, if they had those treatment centers we got now, the type of drunk I was, they'd have detoxed me to death.
They would have killed me. But they put you in there with them mental patients, you know, here I am, married a week or ten days, and there I'm in a nut house already. My wife, she kids me now, she says, you're still outpatient from out there. Anyway, and I was the smartest guy in the nut house. They didn't do me no good, you know, I had a problem, I'd had a problem since my first drink. I was 37 years old then, I had a problem, I didn't know, I didn't understand it.
People at the hospital didn't understand it. They didn't mention anything to me, kept me there 30 days and let me out, and I continued to, I got out, and I tried to control my drinking. Oh, has anybody here ever tried to control your drinking? You know, it's hard to control your drinking while drinking. You know, I, so I went through this period of time, and off and on, and I was doing this, I was on one of my excursions, and I met a wino of all places in a bar in Kansas City.
I'd been up there for a few months, only drunk, and a little wino in the bar, and one morning he didn't have any money, it was four or five of them, they were trying to get a pint of wine, it was 60 cents. They didn't have no money, I had about three or four dollars, so I told them I'd buy, so I bought a pint of wine, and this girl would pour the wine up in the glasses, they wouldn't give them the bottles, they'd make them pour it up in the glasses, and she could pour it, and one would just go right down the line.
When she got through, the glasses were level, but all the winos would get out and, you know,
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check the level out. Nobody's perfect, and they would finally determine that one guy, one glass did have a hair more than the other, and they would give that to the guy who bought. You know, winos are classy people. So we were standing there talking, and this little wino in a bar, God uses, I hope, God uses strange people in my life. It's not the high and almighty, it's not the educated, most talented, effective in my life, it's the common people, the little people that God spoke to me in my life.
This little wino in a bar, you know, I had talked to a psychiatrist at that hospital, he didn't know anything about it, and I talked to this little wino drinking my wine, and he said, Joe, you know, you're a pretty nice guy. Well, I've been knowing that, and he said, you're a lot different from me, and you're a lot different than a lot of the guys down here on the street, and I know that wasn't like him.
He's a wino. He said, but there's one thing wrong with you, Joe, and I said, what's that? He said, Joe, you're drinking too much. Here was a man standing in the middle of one of the biggest problems I ever seen. He should know something about it, and for some reason or another, the van affected me, the first human being that ever affected me, and I began to think about that, and I began to say, well, you know, I've got a problem, yeah, I do have a problem.
This is where I began to see my problem. See, I had a problem, but I didn't know I had a problem. The first step to recovery is when we can see and understand our problem. This is the first step to recovery. Van began it there with me many years ago. Two years before I got, Van told me I had a problem, and I began to look at myself with that, and I knew, I said, well, you know, I need to get out. I got out of that town in about three or four days.
It bugged me so much, and I came back to Arkansas, and I decided that I had a problem. I had a drinking problem. You know, that's the way we start off learning about this. That's the, you know, that's not what our problem, my problem wasn't drinking. My problem was quitting. In fact, it wasn't, in fact, I was good at quitting. I just couldn't stop starting, starting wasn't a problem. So I said, I came home, I thought it was a drinking problem, so if it's a drinking problem, just quit drinking, right?
So I quit drinking, but that wasn't my problem, and I went out, you know, and I know Dr. Silkworth talks about it in the book. Thank God for the book. He says, I was restless, irritable, and discontented, unless I could again experience the sense of ease and comfort that would come at once by taking a few drinks. And I remember I went around for nine months like this, and I didn't drink, and I began to, I remember it was the most horrible time of my life, really the last year of my drinking, nine months I didn't drink.
And finally that day came, and I, you know, I say this, I wouldn't be here tonight without the big book Alcoholics Anonymous. But it's only in this book and through these people's lives that I, that they lay down their experience, and I can compare my life with their experiences and see where I was in my life. It talks about the day will come when you don't have defense against this first drink, and that's what happened to me that morning after nine months, and I remember very vividly, I remember how I was sort of like Jim in the big book.
I remember when I took that drink, and I went over and poured a pint of vodka, and I took the top off of it, and I said, hey man, you sure are messing up, and I drank it. And I went through the well-known spree, thank God that was it, and on March 10, 1962, I found myself sitting on a bar stool, you know, in Little Rock, Arkansas, and I had reached that point of total surrender. You know, it's sort of like Bill said, you know, as he reached that point, no words can tell the loneliness and despair and a bitter morass of self-pity.
Quicksand stretched around me, I had met my match, alcohol was my master. You know, I think this is a gift from God. You know, I didn't have with me the ability to reach this point, but all at once, I'm sitting there on that stool, and I had enough. I didn't need another drink, I didn't need anything else, I had had enough. I didn't know anything about Alcoholics Anonymous, thank God that I looked back at my time and where I was, and thank God for some of the things that's going on in Alcoholics Anonymous and in with our government about alcoholism.
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At least we have informed the general public about alcoholism. But in 1962, no one in my neighborhood had ever heard of Alcoholics Anonymous. It was so anonymous, we couldn't find it. In fact, I had never seen anyone that, I knew a lot of alcoholics, but they all died. I had never heard, no one heard of an alcoholic that got sober. So the only thing I knew was this state hospital, so sure enough, this is the only kind of help, so I went back and checked myself back into this whole state hospital.
This was the Arkansas Insane Asylum, and there wasn't an alcohol ward, they just, they put the alcoholics in with the mental patients. And this is, you try to come off a three-week drunk and watch 75 Nuts at the same time, you got to really be, you're going to be quick on your feet. And this is where we sobered up. And I remember, when you first go into one of these places, people don't talk to you too much.
You know, in a mental ward, they won't, it ain't like going to the detox or everybody, but you go into this mental ward, I found out what was happening. Now on this, some of these guys have been there 12, 15, one guy had been there 30 years, one of the mental patients. And when you ask those mental patients what they, in there for all the mental patients to say, I'm an alcoholic. See, we alcoholics, we were the class of the ward, you know.
We got good treatment, the aides talked to us, they let us go out and get cokes. So the mental people wanted to be alcoholics. And when you ask one of we alcoholics what we were in there for, we said we had nervous breakdown, so you couldn't tell who was who. So I told these guys, these four or five alcoholics on the ward, they said, I'm in here for drinking. I didn't say nothing about no alcoholic.
And there was a little guy on the ward, another little guy, thank God, he didn't say nothing to me. But the next day he came up to me, one of the little alcoholics on the ward, and his name was Ora. And I thank God for Ora, my life, Ora was the first person that approached me with the book Alcoholics Anonymous. He was not a learned man in the program. He didn't have great knowledge of the big book.
He had two weeks of locked up sobriety, and the big book Alcoholics Anonymous. And what he got my attention, he had a carton of Camel cigarettes. I didn't have no money, and I didn't have nothing to smoke, and Ora's got a whole carton. Now nobody on, God prepares his messengers. Nobody on this ward had a ready roll, but Ora had a whole carton. Now I'm sitting in there, I never rolled, they gave me some of this roll your own tobacco.
I'm coming off a three-week drunken, I'm shaky, never rolled a cigarette in my life. I would try to roll that thing and it would fall down in my lap, it would burn me, flare all up, and I wanted a cigarette so bad. I don't have any trouble talking about your life is unmanageable, because the only way I could smoke was take my tobacco and paper and give it to one of them nuts and let him roll it and lick it and give it back to me.
And this guy come up and hold out his cigarettes, and he would, I used to say he'd talk about the big book Alcoholics Anonymous, he would talk about the big book. After many years, I realized we never talked about the big book those first few days, Ora didn't know anything about it, but I'm here tonight, thank God, because some people were living the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, not talking it, but living it.
There were three guys that came on our ward, and these were real alcoholics. And they would, Ora talked about these three men from Alcoholics Anonymous and what they said and what their lives were all about. You know, that Wednesday night, I just can't, I shudder every time I talk about it. That Wednesday night, it's like I say, 31 years ago, Ora pushed his chair back from the wall, he hardly got up out of the chair, and he said, all you winos, amen.
I left the back wall.
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dining room where these three guys from Alcoholics Anonymous were. And Ora told me, he said, Joe, they'll bring some coffee and they'll bring three packs of cigarettes and lay them on the table, which they did. And I left the back wards of that old hospital because the guy told me he was going to have some hot coffee. And all I wanted was a hot coffee, some hot coffee and a cigarette. And God gave me a fabulous way of living. We talk about the grace of God. All I wanted out of this deal was a cup of coffee and a cigarette.
And God, thank God there was a real alcoholic out there. Charles was out there. Charles was a great part of my life and became my sponsor and is my sponsor today. And Charles has, you know, he was there. He was uniquely chosen for my life. And I'm fortunate to have him in my life for 35 years. Charles was one of the first people to set up the first chartered group at the Cummings Penitentiary, one of the worst in the world. He said he, coming to the program, went into prison. I went into, got into trouble and he was about 14 years old. Ended up, he was 38 years old and coming to prison in the 50s and he got in Alcoholics Anonymous and he was paroled about 1953 and about 105 years against him. A four-time loser, been locked up all his life. And he found me locked up in a state hospital. But this guy was a real alcoholic and I just struck it from right away. And I remember I always had an opinion about what was going to happen if anybody messed with, and these AA people were people that meddled in your business. That's what I thought. And I didn't want nobody meddling in my business. And I said, if they meddle, but this guy didn't meddle in my business.
He talked about himself, like I hope I do tonight. In fact, he talked about himself so bad that he got my attention, like the big book says, let him ask you. So I went up after the meeting and I said, Charles, I hear what you said about your life, but I invited it. And he was waiting for me too. I said, what do you think I should do? And he looked down at me with a big smile, just like he does today. He says, fella, I was telling you what I did. He said, frankly, I don't give a damn about what you do. That's your business.
But then he said in the next turn, if you would like for me to show you what I did, I will show you. And he was firm, right? And we struck up a deal there. It's been going on 31 years. And he showed me what he did. You know, we started to go into, I would go to the meetings there and he, I began to, he invited me to come to this meeting downtown there at the old dormitory. We had an old place there, we called it dormitory. And what it was, it was a place where men stayed and went through the program. It was a forerunner.
It wasn't a treatment center. We called it a dormitory. And people stayed there and they sponsored us and they went through the program. And they had meetings there every morning at seven o'clock. But you know, this was 1962. And I don't know if most of y'all might not remember, 1962 was some changing in the South. Some changes was taking place. And I was the first black person to sub up in Arkansas. And in 1962 wasn't the best time for that to happen, you know. To be the first black doing anything in Little Rock, you know. It was right after the, you know, the school thing there in 57. This was still going on, hot and heavy. And I showed up in AA. And I had my problems, right? I was told I could come to the meetings but I couldn't drink coffee. And as soon as the meeting was over, I would have to leave.
But you know, I came back. That wasn't really my problem. In fact, I don't know what they got so excited about. I used to say to myself, if I was going to integrate something, it wouldn't be this dumb, you know what I mean. Really, I didn't. But I came back and as I say all the time, I came back because I had a right to be there. And it ain't but one
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thing that… And it ain't but one thing that gives us a right to be here. And that's a desire to stop drinking. That's the ticket that gets us in here. A desire to stop drinking, nothing else. And I had that. And you know the way you get a desire to stop drinking? Drink it. If you drink enough booze and get enough trouble, you'll get your ticket. So I was there and I didn't care about what they said. I wasn't there for that. I was there for what they had. I saw people sober. And you know, I believed from the very beginning. I never had any doubt. But back in those days, you know, back in that time, this was in the 60s, when you came in, AA was a little smaller than our area. AA was small. You know, it was just a few hundred people, maybe 150 people in the city in the program. It was two groups. You couldn't go to more than 90 meetings in 90 days. And we just had two groups. And one thing about it, when you went to AA, it's not like today. We don't know where you come from or who's here or where did you come from another meeting. When you went to an AA meeting in those days, when you walked in, everybody knew you was new. Because everybody knew everybody else in AA. And the first meeting you went to, you had about 25 people tell you what you had to do. You couldn't hang around in AA.
You would get the message. You know, and I remember, you know, we began to work the program. I didn't have any problems with what this program was all about. I think this program was real simple. And it was in my life. And still yet today, and so much it was, I can see it in the earlier people, the program as they laid it out. The same basic way that we solve any problem. Problems, the problem of alcoholism is just like solving any other problem. There's a procedure to it. And the steps is laid out so beautifully, masterfully done. You know, I just, you know, the more you look at it, the more you see God within our program, within the hands of these first 40 people that laid this out. The perfection is there. Because the first thing they explained to me the exact nature of my problem. And as I found out, you know, maybe number one, I was powerless over alcohol. Number one, Dr. Silkworth's work showed me that because of the allergy, I can't safely drink alcohol. I didn't know why, but I'm glad to learn I could not safely drink alcohol. Every time I took a drink, it developed a craving that was beyond my control. So it was easy for me to see the step one, that I was powerless, I couldn't drink it. But my main job, main problem wasn't that, I couldn't leave it alone. I couldn't, I couldn't drink it and I couldn't leave it on, therefore I was powerless over alcohol. Now, once I seen the problem, then the second step showed me a solution.
It showed me an answer. You know, it talks about, my book says lack of power, that was our dilemma. God, that's the problem. That's our problem. And they said, well, if that's the case, then obviously it takes a power greater than ourselves. If we don't have the power, it takes another power outside of ourselves. And then the very next statement, it says on page 45, well, that's the main purpose of this book. If you are powerless and your solution is power, the main purpose of this book is to enable you to find that power, which will solve your problem. And once I seen my problem, it was easy for me to believe. In fact, it was totally impossible for me not to believe when I seen all these other people that were sober. I began to believe that I could stay sober.
And I think, you know, this is what we're talking about. You have, whatever you believe, you become. You know, believing is the beginning. You know, this is where we start. As soon as we become believe or become willing to believe, we emphatically show you, you're on your way. And I had to, and I was in an atmosphere of believing. My sponsor, I could see it in him and what he had
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done for his life. And it was easy for me to believe that this power could restore me to sanity. And so then I began to pursue the main job. Then how do I find this power? And I said, don't worry about it. We've got a program of action laid out. And if you take this program of action, you will find the power and the power will solve your problem. And it was real simple process. And as we went through the steps and we, this was all inside of six weeks when you come in the door, you started there. Yeah. You come in the door, you started. You worked the steps in the first six weeks and you did your inventory. And this is the way, this is the way they did it in those days. You know, you didn't hang around and, you know, and do that. And so we begin the steps and, you know, he said, well, if you are powerless and you see that your solution is power, then you have a decision. You got a choice. You know, you got to see which way you want to go. And I had to make this decision to turn my will in my life for the care of God. So I pursued this step. And I remember they said it was just the beginning. And then we had to do some work to carry that out.
And I began to get into this program of action laid out in the steps. You know, decision was but a beginning to be followed by a vigorous course of action. And I see the other steps as I proceed these other steps to, I had to go to work to remove the things that blocked me from God. And I had a lot of, I had a lot of things in my life. I've been living as an alcoholic, screwed up. There's no way God's going to direct my life. My life was mostly directed by all the people I hated. My life was directed by everything that I was scared of. My life was directed by all the guilt and remorse of all the damage I had done to other people. There's no way God could direct my life. That decision couldn't be carried out until I went to work. And I had some work to do in my life. And I'm still working on the same, still working on the same mess today. It was a life-ending job. I continue that action as I did it then in steps 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. That's a program of action, hard work. Nothing thinking about those steps. Those are working steps. Those are work. And as I begin to, as I end of those action steps that I applied in my life, God, I hear people reading them. I hear people reading them and talking about them in the meeting. But to me, the promises are something you've got to experience. You know, they are something you've got to experience. And I remember when I first experienced them in my life, when I first began after doing this work, and when I knew a new freedom and a new happiness, when I was able to comprehend the word serenity. Up to that point, serenity was something that they talked about down to the club. In fact, I was beginning to think, well, since I was black, I wasn't going to get any of it, you know. They were going to really hold out on that part. But I remember beginning to, for the first time in my life one day, I was standing at work. I remember where I was. I remember what I was doing. The first time I could comprehend serenity. You know, to comprehend serenity, you have to experience it. I remember the first time in my life. And I no longer believed this was work. I began to know. When I got the results, I began to know. You know, I continued in this thing, and I remember right away I did other things. I began to find out what I could do. In three months of Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, I guess in the beginning, even though they didn't want me, I always felt I was a part of Alcoholics Anonymous. I always felt home in Alcoholics Anonymous. Even in the beginning, I knew that this was where I needed to be. In a very few months, I began to work with alcoholics. It was just something about six months, maybe less. Some guys told me, they said, we've got some people in a jail down here, in the county jail. It was kind of like a, you know, kind of a medieval operation. One of those, a dollar a day on your fine for drunk. And they would have to work it out, and so they said, you go down. Some guys were carrying a meeting down there, and so I went down there.
and so I went down there one Sunday morning with them, and I remember, the next week they said, you gonna come back?
[00:45:00]
I said, well, I can't come every Sunday, because I work on Sunday. And then, so the next Sunday, I didn't know whether to go or not, and whether they were going, so I said, well, I better go, because they might not go, and they didn't show up. In fact, they never did show up anymore. They kind of left me with that. And I began to work with these alcoholics on the county farm, went down there every Sunday for 10 years, and it's become something for a way of life for me.
I began to love these people, and they were, you know, winos, street people, and it became my life. It became part of my life and my makeup. You know, I continued to work on with alcoholics, shortly after about four or five years, this little old treatment center that had been moving along where men stayed and where they wouldn't let me stay. You know, I would go down there every two or three times a week, and I sponsored people there.
Most of them were white guys. There wasn't any black guys around, so I sponsored these guys, and I worked with the guys there at the treatment center. After about four years, they asked me to be on the board of directors of that club. I can't imagine they want me to board on directors, and four years before that, they didn't want me to come in there. But I did, and I worked with them for about 10 or 12 years.
But I began to work with alcoholics, and then in 1971, after about 10 years of working with alcoholics and doing things, in my way of life, I became involved against my wishes at that time. Really, I thought, I became involved in the treatment field. I became involved in and worked with alcoholics, and I opened up a treatment center, which I operate today in Little Rock. I've been in it 22 years. And I treat street people.
But the main things that have happened in my life, as I talk about the miracles of our recovery, I think it only could happen in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, I think about all the other things that have taken place in my life. I began to work with alcoholics. I began to work with state government to help alcoholics in our community. I began to work with state government to help alcoholics in our community.
I began to work with state government to help alcoholics in our state. I'm very proud of that work. I have one of the governors. Every governor, I believe, since I worked with every governor beginning in 1968, I was appointed to a commission to set up our first programs in the state, and to become a part of the authority that run those programs. I've been to every governor up until this time, and I've tried to do a lot of things within my state to help alcoholics.
At one time, I was chairman of the commission that runs all the programs in our state, and, you know, setting up or dividing millions of dollars to help people. And at the beginning, I could not even go in one of those programs. So I think nowhere else could this happen other than Alcoholics Anonymous. Truly, my life is a miracle of this program. And I think that's what we all hear this weekend about, is celebrating a miracle, not only a miracle in the beginning, but a miracle in our lives, and an opportunity to come back, an opportunity to say thank you, Alcoholics Anonymous.
You know, sometimes we kind of suck sobriety up, you know, and take the good way of life. I've seen so many people do it. I still see today, but I've always, you know, felt like what else can I do for alcoholics? What else can I do for Alcoholics Anonymous? My book says, you know, if this has worked for you, you know, if you have applied this in your life and it has worked for you, then it's our responsibility to carry this message to other alcoholics.
This is our responsibility. So not only should we come back here tonight and say thank you, but I think it should be, to me, it's a time of rededication of what we are all about. You know, out there, many alcoholics still suffer, and that is our responsibility. So it's been good to be here tonight and to be able to say thank you, Alcoholics Anonymous. In closing, I look back at one of my favorite stories,
[00:50:02]
and it's sort of like we alcoholics. In the big, big, big book, it talks, there's a story in there about some leopards, and I think we are the modern-day leopards. You know, leopards were people that they didn't like to have around. They were unclean, and sort of like we alcoholics. And so what they would do, the custom was, was to keep those people with leprosy far off somewhere. And it seemed like that the master was out and he saw these leopards, and they came running toward him and some other people, and he said, Now, don't come over here.
He didn't want to break any of the rules of society. He just said, Y'all go toward the temple, and you will be healed. He said, Don't come over here. Just go right on toward the temple, and you will be healed. So these ten leopards started walking toward the temple, and as they walked, they noticed they were cleansed. And you know what? It's just probably like our alcoholics. Nine of them kept on going.
Nine of them got real busy. I've got to go see my girlfriend. I've got to go get me a ride. I've got to go see about my job. Nine of them got busy with their business. One of them came back. I think that's about the way of the day with us. One came back to say thank you. So we are here this weekend, and I think we can leave. We can be whole, as he said. Our faith has made you whole. We can feel a little more complete when we go back to work Monday morning.
We'll feel a little better about ourselves, and I know I will feel better about myself because I have had the opportunity tonight to come back to say thank you, Alcoholics Anonymous, for a fabulous life. God bless you.