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Source: Morris B – Myrtle Beach, SC. – 1985 – Speaker Talk – Date Unknown.mp3 File: morris-b-myrtle-beach-sc-1985-speaker-talk-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:11:52
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Hi, I'm Morris B., and I'm a grateful alcoholic. Gratitude is kind of mixed up right now inside of me. I had some moments of rapture this weekend, looking at the ocean and running into some old friends, but I don't like to talk, I'll tell you that. But I do it. My sponsor, when I first told him years ago, I said, you know, I don't like talking. He said, you ain't got to like it, just do it. And I do.
I'm from the I-95 group. That's my home group in Lumberton. That's where I am now. I've done a lot of traveling the last two years. I'm glad to see a lot of them here tonight. I heard some reference today made to the Gratitude Mafia. And I wouldn't have said that if I hadn't seen Royce standing in the door back there. But I couldn't help it. I couldn't help it. The two words are so far apart, you know.
I prayed before I came up here, I'll tell you. And the message I kept getting was, stop thinking. So see, my thinking got me in here, and my thinking will get me out of here. And I'll swear, the worst enemy I've got in my mind. It's all up between my ears. And I come to these meetings and kind of, you know, get leveled out. You know, a lot of times in my sobriety, you know, you can go insane sober.
I've had a few bouts of insanity sober, and I've been empty inside, and I've had that hole in me. It's people like you that help fill up that hole. By the grace of God, I'm here tonight, and only by the grace of God, because all the other methods fail. And you know, when I first came into this program, I didn't like that word God. It was God as we understood him. I'm glad that it was in there that way.
I was so arrogant and full of rage, and I still got enough to last me a couple of lifetimes. And I try to get it out a little more appropriately today. I guess the purpose is to share, and for me to share me with you, you need to know a little about me. It's hard. It's difficult to really portray that. There was a lot wrong with me besides alcohol, folks. I ain't going to blame it all on alcohol. I used to blame it on everybody, you know.
I was reading something the other day. It said about 1830, they called people like me moral imbeciles, moral insanities. That's what the label used to be. Then about the turn of the century, they called us constitutional psychopaths. And then later on, they called us psychopaths and sociopaths, and nowadays they call us antisocial. So that's like calling Hitler a sinner, you know, antisocial. And then a psychiatrist in Raleigh once told me, he said, you know, people like you don't usually get well.
I said, what do you mean? He said, well, character disordered people. Well, there's another label. See, I've been labeled incorrigible and labels and labels. I said, well, what should I strive to be? He said, just become a good neurotic. Well, so I want to know the difference between a character disorder and a neurotic. He said, well, character disorders, they blame everybody. They blame their family and their government and God.
He said, neurotic, good old neurotic, blames himself for everything. So I've become a neurotic. And now they've wiped that out of the diagnostic manual. There's no more neurotics. So I don't know what I am other than an alcoholic. And I do know one thing from the bottom of my soul, that the reason this program works for me is through the grace of God, and it's nothing I did, and it was a gift. You know, I resigned from AA in 65.
I flat resigned. I sent the books out the windows, and I didn't come back for five years. But believe me, when I got back, I was ripe. And I was ready. And I was buried alive, too. So I can't explain to you the degree of the insanity, the incidents and things that happened to me, but maybe the purpose of talking is to show you that this program defies a lot of analysis. It works. I've seen too many people like me, and I've seen them get well when everything else fails.
And like Dr. Bob said, it takes a surrender, a belief in a higher power, a house cleaning, and helping others. And I don't always live this program to the best of my ability.
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I am grateful that I know what I am and who I am today.
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But again, if I was all that grateful, I'd be out there running on the beach, and I'd quit smoking, and I'd be doing some other things. So you see, I have to be very careful with how I communicate with people. But I am grateful that I belong to this fellowship. I was born in North Carolina, and don't hold that against me. I left real early. You know, I was a problem early in life, even in the first grade in school.
You know, in those days, they used to tie you up, and I used to get whipped, and I'd get one at school, I'd get one at home. And today, they might do something with those kind of kids. They would probably diagnose them. But I ran away from home early, you know, and went in the National Guard when I was 15, and went on maneuvers with them, came back, and they were getting ready to mobilize, so they got me a discharge.
I turned 16, I went in the Navy, and I didn't know what responsibility was. And when I got out of boot camp, that's when I started drinking, and that's where I date my alcoholism from. I thought for a long time I had some pleasure drinking, because some alcoholics do. Alcohol never added one thing to my life. It took away, and took, and took. And see, I didn't know I was sick. Sick people don't know they're sick.
And I fathered two children, and I'll tell you about that later on. I didn't see them for 24 years. This programming gave me a new life. I'm so fortunate. I never knew such a life existed. Things have been put in my lap since I've been sober. Sometimes I can hardly handle them. You know, even in my continued distorted thinking, it seemed like sometimes I was overloaded since I've been sober, and I've been at plateaus in my sobriety.
And I've looked up to God several times and said, You know, I know you're not going to put any more on me than I can handle. Of course, I found out later on he don't put this on me anyway. But I wish you didn't have so damn much confidence. And, you know, it's all worked so far. And I'm not going to stand here tonight and tell you it's been a bed of roses. It's been a bed of roses compared to what it was.
I haven't been arrested since my alcoholism was arrested. I've been stopped for speeding quite a few times, but I've never been put in jail. I haven't been broke. And none of those terrible things that used to happen, none of them have happened to me. The gentleman that talked here last night was at my first meeting when I came back into Alcoholics Anonymous to stay in July of 1970 in Central Prison.
Tom, I was there. And I remember, I'll have to lead up to it later, how I got to that meeting. Because, you see, I told you I resigned from AA. I'd been in Central Prison about seven months before I'd go to meetings. It was something that drove me into that meeting. Something I didn't have anything to do with. But I went in there and I told them, oh, I went to AA out on the West Coast for about five years.
And the reason I never stayed sober, I didn't take the first step. And I remember Tom saying, the reason you didn't stay sober, you didn't take the first step. Well, anyway, thank God there was AA in prison. Because I was a broken and empty person. So, in the Navy those six years, General Court-Marshal, Apprentice Seaman three times, Trouble Trouble was my middle name. You know, I thrived on trouble.
I always wanted to be a pilot in the Navy. And I got in the Navy flight school and everything. And flying drunk. You know, drunkenness cost me, it's always cost me every opportunity that I ever had. I wasn't stupid, I was just crazy. And I've already told you, there was more wrong with me than drinking and later on, pilling. My drug of choice was always alcohol, but later on I discovered weed. And I probably took two bathtubs full of it.
And they went hand in hand. And I would get pretty screwy. When I got out of the Navy, when the war was over, I grew up in World War II. I remember my 18th birthday in Casablanca and I'm sick and drunk and puking. And I got out in 47, under honorable conditions. Now, that's the only thing that ever had honorable to it. Because I had had a General Court-Marshal, I've been an officer, and all these things.
I've apprenticed three times. But when I got out, I was lost. It was like, it was an anticlimax.
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The war was over and the excitement was gone. And of course, I was heavy into drinking. So instead of going on to school and doing the things that most people would do. You know, I remember in the Navy when some of the young men would come in during the war and they would, the ship would pull into New York or Philadelphia and I remember those guys, they would go to the museum. Can you imagine going, and they'd go out to eat?
And they would take in these cultural things and I was at the Ratzkeller in the Times Square Hotel drunk. So the ship was ready to go. You know, these people evidently had a semblance of normalcy about them and I didn't. So when the war was over, my drinking, it progressed. But I didn't know, I never, I don't even remember the word alcoholic until 1960. Fathered those two kids and deserted them. Just didn't have any sense of responsibility.
Well, it wasn't long after I was out of the Navy and I wound up in the federal penitentiary. Now I have to tell you about these places that I stopped off at because that's my story and it's the only story I got and I'll try not to get off on a tangent because I could spend a story in Frisco or L.A. or the day on escape. I could just spend the whole hour on that. But I can't do it now. And I just have to kind of breeze over some points.
See, I've cleaned my story up so much I don't hardly recognize it myself. I really wasn't that awful because I'm a coward and I don't like to hurt. But you can psych yourself up to do a lot of things and with chemicals you can really do some weird things. But I wasn't out of the Navy long and I wound up in the federal penitentiary at McNeil Island. No, here I go. Lewisburg, Pennsylvania was the first one.
And that wasn't a bad place. They called it a country club. It had mostly income tax people and it was kind of like an extension of the military service. But then the next place I went to was North Carolina. And there is no semblance of the military in North Carolina. It was almost like in the dark ages. And I wound up in there and I started getting in a lot of trouble inside with no alcohol. Now I'd take any kind of pill that anybody could get hold of.
I was introduced to cocaine before it became popular. They used to operate on Thursdays in Central Prison and there was a guy who worked up there and you could get a cc of that liquid stuff that they did in the head and neck surgery. You could get a cc for a dollar. And you could get a nice flash or two and I'd always save up a couple of Nimbetols and then I'd take those yellow jackets that would spread out the flash, you know.
And that wasn't my drug of choice, you see. But in Central Prison things got bad. Now, I didn't realize it at the time and I had to spend 11 months in solitary in there. I had to fight somebody all my life. I was fighting the system. All the punishment that was heaped on me was self-induced. You know, I was a troublemaker. And then I deliberately did some acts to prove my point. You know, the code was a little different in those days and if you said you were going to do something, you better do it.
And so I did some violent things like whacking somebody up or something. And that was cold sober. I can't blame alcohol for that. And I got off of solitary. I finally got out to a unit and tried to get away. It was up at Burnsville and Burnsville was my security. It was rough. And you can't get out of those mountains anyway. If you ever try to run in the mountains, see how far you can run, you know.
You can't run far. But my cellmate was killed and he was from down around Longworth and to where I am right now, he was from Raiford. His name was Bud Johnson. He was killed up at Burnsville. And anyway, I got off to a camp that I could get away from. So I took off one morning. I had on a pair of striped pants. See, I'd been in and out of the hole. They used to take the chains off when they put you in the hole.
So I didn't have any chains on and I didn't have a shirt on. And I remember that day in May of 1954 and I remember taking off and I remember running all day. I remember running across an old lipstick. You know, when you start running and you get the cramps in your legs, you get thirsty. So I found a jar and got some old brackish brown water and ran up to a fellow pants. And I ran up to a fellow's house, and I got some clothes, and borrowed his tractor, which was a green John Deere tractor, and had an old hat on my head, and a shirt on by then, and the briars had cut me up pretty bad.
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I'm riding down the highway with his 13-year-old son up behind me, the black kid, he was going to bring the tractor back, and the highway patrol was zooming up and down the road, and the cage, and I got up the road and told them to take the tractor back, and I hit the woods again, and I came out that afternoon late, right where I started that morning. I'd run in about a 15-mile circle, and I got out of town, I was walking down the road, it was real dark at night, and I remember I got out in a pasture, and I stepped on a cow, and they all woke up, and a light would come on up the road.
So I got back on the back top, and was walking, and I'm walking up to an intersection, and I remember going out in the truck in the morning, and something said, don't walk down that intersection. So I went around, and as I went around, I saw a guy light a cigarette, and there was a carload of them, sitting right in that intersection. So I made it out, and I made some connections, and I got out of state, and thank God I can't get into too much of what happened, but I had to get refinanced.
And I printed some stuff up before I got locked in solitary in the print shop in Central Prison, and had it kited out, some identification and some other stuff, and I got it from New York, and first shot of hair I never had. I had been taking speed and drinking, and this buddy of mine asked me if I wanted a little bit of that, and he gave me a little, and I was headed out for the evening, and I'll tell you, I was as sick as a dog for about five hours.
I don't know what was in that, whether I caught a fish or what it was, but I was one sick, so that's the first and only shot of H I ever had, and I don't want any more. So that cured me of that. I came back to Atlantic City, and I rented a car, and I paid a week's rent, I remember that, and then I took off cross-country. Of course, some other things happened, and there was a lady with me, and I was teaching her how to drive. She didn't know why every afternoon at about three o'clock she got to drive, but when you're heading west, you know, the sun comes in there.
But I lasted, I was on escape about six months, drinking a lot of booze, and I got knocked off in Los Angeles, and they sent me to Folsom Prison. Now, you usually get to go to San Quentin, but you have to goof up in Quentin to get to Folsom. But since I was on escape from North Carolina, I went to Folsom, and I stayed there a little over two years, and I had some federal charges to face, and you know, it seemed like the end of the world.
I knew I had to come back to North Carolina, and I knew I had to do the California time, and I knew I had some more federal time to do. And it's pretty hard, leaving one place, going to the next place, and I'll just speed it up. I went out in the federal court, and there were seven charges from New Jersey, and got them transferred. I got 70 years, but the judge ran them all concurrent, and left me 10 years.
And I got up to McNeil Island, the federal place, and I got a letter my father died. Now, he started drinking heavy at about 35 years of age, and he was dead at 54. I don't believe you ever heard of AA. He's a good man. I hadn't seen him in a long time, and right after that letter, I got another letter saying, wasn't it nice of Judge Halbert to reduce that 10 years to a year? This is a federal judge, three years later.
So something was working and happening even in those days. And the next thing you know, I'm en route back to North Carolina. And that's another story I could spend an hour telling you about, that train trip across the United States, shackled up. But I got something to drink on that trip. I was pretty well shackled up. And, you know, when you're traveling by train, and trying to sleep shackled, my nerves got on the end, and I rattled those chains pretty bad.
And that guy that was escorting me got a little nervous, too. And he would doze off, and I could see him in the mirror. I'm in the top bunk, and I'd rattle those chains. And he just finally kind of blew, and wanted to know what in the heck was wrong with me. And I said, I want a drink. You know, he got me a pint. And then he was going to give me a little cup full, like that. Well, I got hold of that thing, and got a half of it down, and I slept like a baby a couple hours.
And then I woke up, and ain't nothing to do but rattle. And I got all of that. And I didn't get any more on that trip. I got two more beers.
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That was all I got. I never thought I'd be glad to see Central Prison. But when I came back from that train trip, I was delighted to be home. I discovered that being nothing, and I didn't have any identity, and I was trying to be bad. And I wasn't really all that bad. Some of the stuff just doesn't seem real today, anyway. But while I was gone, they had built a place up close to the Virginia border called Ivy Bluff.
Warden Herman, he's out at McNeil, had written to Colonel Bailey, and they were going to utilize my talents when I got back to North Carolina. And by God, they did. They sent me up to Ivy Bluff, and you went in naked, and you went out to work in a rock hole. And the fourth day I was in that quarry, and it was granite. And it was pretty hard. Again, it was a big chisel, and the guy was trying to carry me in.
The guard said, no, he's got to get toughened up. On the fourth day, four of us, we put some stove wood under our leg. And can you imagine somebody taking a sledgehammer and hitting their own leg twice, and the other three let somebody else crack theirs. And all they did was take us to Raleigh, give us a tetanus shot, and brought us back and locked us up. That's all. And some of this stuff, I'm not going to belabor this gory stuff, because you probably wouldn't believe some of it anyway, but the next thing we did, it's an awful feeling, too, to ride that far with lye in your body, hoping it don't burst.
But one little inhaler full of lye would ride four people. And all you do is spread a little out on you. I was going to take four toes off. Spread it out and wet the cloth and wait about four or five hours. You got a big, black, burned scab there. We wound up about 15 of us in central prison, skin grafts. I let my skin graft take. I only had six months to go. And it took. The rest of them would rip theirs when they'd come out of the operating room.
But they sent me right back up there. And I was flattening out my time. And on December 7th of 59, 19 of them got out of that place. It's interesting. We were doing a seminar up in the western part of the state of North Carolina one night. And I had to talk. And another AA member, who's a special deputy attorney general, talked. So he was at one end of the continuum and I was at the other. And I went into details about that night.
What happened and who started the bars and who did this. And how they went in and got the drop on Sergeant Shoupie and everything. And, you know, after that meeting, they said, you know who's sitting in the back of the room? Captain Shoupie. So, you see, you know, I don't go into that story with a normal crowd, you know. So, anyway. I didn't go anywhere that night because I was getting out in January.
January the 29th of 1960, I got out of prison. Flat time and I was clear, but I was crazy. I went to Dunn, which is my hometown, Dunn, North Carolina. And I stayed home a couple of months and I was drinking. I remember my mother saying, if you're going to drink, don't drink that white stuff. Because it would make my eyes real red and I'd get crazier than I would when I drank the bondage stuff. And I also was beginning to have trouble with people at the Honky Tonks, the beer joints.
And so I had whacked somebody and they had a record for whacking back. So, I'm riding around town and I sawed off a shotgun and kept it under a sweater on the front seat. See, I was a very, I don't know why I'm still left here today, if you want to know the truth about it. Because at Burnsville, I heard the shot on the ground in November. And I remember about four times, maybe five, once in the operating room in Oakland, when I don't think I should have been left here on this earth, but I'm here anyway.
So, anyway, my brother put me on a plane, sent me to California and I was stoned drunk. And when I got to California, the other brother met me at the airport and he's an Episcopal priest. Now, he's in the program now about ten years. I think I helped him along. Because he was drinking, he was drinking sociably when I got out. I spent ten days at his house in San Bernardino. And he was a new curate and he had just gotten out of seminary and everything.
And I drank all night long, played the stereo and looked at those spooky Latin things they had up over the fireplace there, the mantel.
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I spent ten days with him like it drove him crazy. So, he took me into Los Angeles and I went in there to get a job. And that was about the time. And that was about the time. I never drank much wine, but that was about the time Thunderbird was popular. And I got introduced to that. It was too sweet, but I drank it. I went to the employment agency at Wilshire and Western Boulevard. And I filled out some applications and some papers, took some tests, looking for a job.
And a lady that ran the place said, wait a while, I want to talk to you a minute. And I waited until 4.30 and everybody else left. And she said, now, what is this thing here? And she's looking at my application. She said, there's a lot of holes in this application. I said, what do you mean? She said, well, you say you work for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, the North Carolina Department of Prisons, self-employment.
What do you do? And I said, I work for them. She said, in what capacity? You know, she was a member of AA. And you don't con those people. She saw right through me and she got me a good job. She really did. She verified all the references. And I didn't have any references. It was a nice little one-man operation office. And at that time, I'd done about eight years in prison. I only did 12 years all told.
I still had to go back for that final dose. I got to drinking every day and used to. I could drink four or five days and then I'd start beating up eggs and milk and sugar and I'd get over it so I could do it again. You know, I don't like to hurt. So this time, I beat up the eggs and the sugar and it didn't help. I couldn't quit. I couldn't even get right so I could get wrong. I mean, I just couldn't get right.
And I worked about four months for this guy and I got on that drunk and I couldn't quit. And so, the way I thought in those days, God knows the way I thought was awful. But I thought that, you know, I gave it my best shot. Now you rip everybody off and you take off and change town. I thought you were supposed to do that. I called Mr. Campbell up after I got out of the hospital. That's the first time I'd ever been called an alcoholic.
Now, all these labels that had been assigned to me through the years, nobody had ever diagnosed me an alcoholic. Well, they did at Fortale. And I called Mr. Campbell and he said, You can get on a binge without quitting. Well, I didn't know that. I didn't know you could get drunk and keep jobs. Although I never had that many jobs. But that wasn't my strong suit. But, you know, what he was telling me was you didn't have to quit.
Well, then I proceeded on a good drunk. And Betty, the lady that ran the employment office, I went back down to see her. She asked me if I could go somewhere with her that night. And I said, yeah. She dragged me down Wilshire Boulevard to a big old white church. And all these people in there, they had these stuff written up on the wall. And I thought it was an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Now, I had heard of AA.
The first time I ever heard of AA was in Folsom. I don't know why those crazy guys… I could never understand people going to AA in prison. Well, I understand it today. But then, if it was group therapy or anything like that, I was anti. I didn't like do-gooders. I didn't like church. I was anti everything. But they had two big AAs up over the auditorium. And they were… Had an active group in Folsom.
But you see, I didn't know what it meant. I didn't know I needed it. There's much more to AA than… Just like there's much more wrong with me than drinking. There's more to AA than just getting sober. To me, it's a beautiful program of living. It'll work for anybody. Anyway, she took me to that meeting. And I read the steps. And all I remember that night was the guy said, If you're an alcoholic and you continue to drink, the end is death or insanity.
Well, we never think that we're going to go insane or… You know, we never think we're going to die. It's always going to be somebody else. But he left out an important thing that he didn't tell me. The end may be premature death. I can guarantee you it will be. Or locked up. Insanity. But that living hell that we're going to go through, nobody mentioned that. They left out that middle part. Before you can die.
Because I've seen many times I wished I could have died. And I couldn't. I wish I wouldn't wake up, you know. So… I went to quite a few AA meetings. I'd get drunk when they were having the 20 field. I'd get drunk when they were having the 25th International Convention at Long Beach. I was at home, drunk.
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Bailey was a rescuer, bless her heart, thank God for the rescuers of the world. I've had one in every city I've ever been in, and at that time, couldn't live without them, couldn't live with them, but they would get you out of jail, they'd get you well, so you could get drunk again, and so I don't want to put down the enablers and the rescuers. I think there's a place for them, and they, thank God, they helped me, I'll tell you.
Boy, especially the lady in San Francisco, bless her heart, she helped me. That was in the days you couldn't hardly get a drunk in a hospital. They took me to three one night, and then the last one they took me to, they said he's been taking some funny kind of pills too, and boy, they pumped my stomach, and they stuck that thing down my nose, and I don't like to swallow, I farted off, and that thing was pumping red water, and I thought, and that guy was punishing me, and I stayed two days that way, and I pulled that damn stuff out and got out of there.
I'll tell you one thing, I'll never tell them if I've ever taken anything else again, because their pumping that stomach ain't too funny, you know, but that's how they got me admitted. Okay, I learned how to use AA. I'm not proud of this, but I learned how to go to the club, I read the book so I'd know how to argue, I kind of superficially messed with the steps so I could sit in a group and intellectualize, you know, they said don't analyze the program, analyze yourself.
We call it an intelligent investigation, but I would really love to argue that stuff, and I could talk a good line of AA and leave there and get drunk. I've left meetings, and I'll swear I was, it seems like sometimes I was almost getting on it, and I'd leave the meeting, and the urge would hit me to take a drink, and I'd stop and go in a bar and order a shot and a beer, and I'd say, okay, I'll take over.
You know, it was, you're talking about insanity. I had a desire to quit drinking, but I wanted a bowl of lightning to hit me or something like that. I never called anybody or made any effort to sober up. I used AA, flopped in and out for five years. If there's anybody slipping and nipping and taking Valium and Librium, go on and get a couple of cases and get with it, and if you live through it, you can get well.
It's harder the other way, I swear. I believe there's a lot of things worse than dying. I know there are things worse than dying. And I also don't know why we were chosen either, before I forget it. I know a lot better men than me that are not with us anymore that just seem to, so maybe that's not all that bad. I don't know why, why I was left on this earth. I don't know, except to try to walk that razor's edge, that narrow path, which I'll tell you about in a minute.
I found out some things the last couple of years. Took me a long time to discover about myself. But anyway, I learned to use AA. I liked that intellectual banter back and forth, and I got on the darnedest, and after I went to those meetings at Huntington Park and Van Nuys and out to Hollywood and around Los Angeles, I learned the AA way. And that drunk that got me to Phoenix, I drove up, I found the Arid Club.
That's what the name of the club in Phoenix is. And I was jerking and jumping. You know, I never did shake that much before I went to AA. I swear I never shook that much. But it just never was the same anymore. I don't know what happened, but something was working on my demon. But these two guys got me in a crossroads, which was a halfway house facility. I was there about three weeks. I mastered the program again.
You know, I never dreamed you'd do those steps for yourself, you know. I read the book, so I would know something that was in it. And I left on another drunk. All these drunks seemed to be turning points. They all seemed to be a way of getting me closer to this program. It was kind of like the guy in the motel room with the filth sitting there praying, God, help me quit drinking. And God, he just keeps, well, he's helping him.
So if he winds up in AA sober, of course, he almost died. But that's how we get help. So you got to be careful what you pray for. I found that out. But anyway, Phoenix, I've been a long drunk down in New Mexico, down in Nogales. And that was a weird drunk because I had saved up, yeah, I still had a car and I saved up a little money.
[00:35:00]
And I had about six bottles of turbinhydrate and codeine. I had some little green hearts. And I'm mixing it all up together. And I remember on the way to Tucson, the highway patrol stopped me, those little sand-colored cars. And I got out and sat down and talked with him about an hour about how lethal a weapon an automobile was and talking about panology. You know, he should have been able to look at my pupils and tell that there was something wrong with me.
I didn't have any pupils. I mean, he reduced it to 85 miles an hour and let me go. I remember just a couple of more things in that few days and I woke up in the Arizona State Hospital. I still thought I had a hat on my head. You know, that speed shrinks things, you know, it kind of. And I keep reaching for that hat and it wasn't there. And I closed my eyes and I could see the white line in the road.
I'd driven and the car, I kept putting gas in it but didn't put the oil in it. Blew up in some town. And then in the Arizona State Hospital, when I came around, I felt like my legs were paralyzed because they were shooting that Thorazine and, you know, you're not supposed to use that stuff with alcoholics, but they didn't know it then. And they told me how I acted when I came in and apparently I was pretty nuts.
And an AA meeting came into the hospital. I was one person that could get, sorry, I was sorry, I could get pin-ups, I could do pin-ups so quick. And I got to that AA meeting. You know, those people had something I wanted. You always had something I wanted. I just didn't get ready for it for a while. I went to that meeting and my 30 days finally got up and I started going to AA in Phoenix. You know, in five years of in and out of AA, I never got over two months.
So last night or somebody hoot said, I just lost a wife. I said, well, that ain't nothing hoot, I lost three. But the thing was, I got sober and I got married again in Phoenix. And she should have known better because she had been sober a few years. And these sociopathic types like me, you know, we can look sane. We really look sane when we're operating, you know, without being drunk. And they fool a lot of people, you know, because I've run into some of them since I've been in the program.
And I know where they're coming from. And it is an imbecility, moral imbecility. Okay, that didn't last long. I had to leave Arizona. I can't get into what happened. I got a job and had all kind of gotten mad at the owner and dumped all his records in the competitor's yard and pumped business with real competitive down there. But anyway, I've had to leave two states. One was Louisiana when I went to see my children way back there.
And one was Phoenix in Arizona. And then I went to San Francisco. And that's about the time the hippie movement was started. And that was in 63, yeah. Well, I went to AA in San Francisco and Oakland, but I couldn't stay sober. Yeah, I never could surrender. That's a word that must have been said a thousand times to me. I never heard the word surrender. And that's what I found out when I got sober. It takes an unconditional surrender.
There's many degrees of desire and want, but, you know, in the preface to the second edition when it refers us to Appendix 2 back there and it talks about the spiritual experience, I believe that from the bottom of my heart, as it takes a rearrangement of emotion and a displacement of some of that old garbage, I believe that, that something had to happen to me before I could ever get sober. And before I forget it, I believe from the bottom of my heart, if somebody could come into this program and work it in its purity, one day at a time, total faith, no thought for tomorrow, I don't believe it can be done.
I don't believe it's an absolute. But if it were possible, I know it would work. And this is something to strive for, is to try to do this, try to work toward that goal. Anyway, San Francisco was one hell of a place. And I got hooked up there with the people and drinking and really got heavy in the speed. And I was working. I got hooked in with the unions. And in fact, the business agent wore dark glasses and was strung out.
[00:40:03]
So, you know, and you could, out in, it was a record and tape place. And out in the warehouse, you could smell pot burning. There was about 80 people working there. And technically, most of them worked for me because I was a foreman. I don't know how all that happened, but that's where I was working. And I knew this company was going to emerge. And one of the truck drivers, every time I needed a set of tires or something, he'd bring it to me.
He could bring in anything I wanted. So he and I made a deal. And when he would bring in the records and the tapes, we'd leave part of them on the truck. So he and I rented a warehouse and we were going into the record business. And I started going up to Reno, you know, about once a month and the Monkees and the Beatles, you remember all that stuff? And, but we had classical, we had all kinds of records.
And the thing of it was, the day came when I was getting pretty hot. I'd been in some trouble and I was on bond and my girlfriend's house burned down. And they blamed me for it. And you know, I wasn't doing anything. Of course, her place needed new carpet and they needed painting. It was a beautiful house. And she got all the insurance and everything. But they asked me if I'd take a lie detector test.
And I said, of course. And they let me out. And then I refused to take it. You know, why incriminate yourself if you didn't do something? This was an honest program. But anyway, it was getting time to leave San Francisco. And the fellow I was dealing with, he said, we've got to find a fence for these things. And I went to Eddie, who was a, hell, he was everything. Fence, ran a bar. I mean, you could place orders for anything you wanted.
You know, it was really, they just didn't like violence around there. That was all. And I was in good with Eddie. And he says, yeah, I think I got an outfit out of Chicago that'll handle that stuff for you. And he called me at work and he said, hold up on that. Says, that outfit you're working for is hooked in with that outfit I thought we could dump these records on. So I left San Francisco. And I'm telling you, I ain't been back.
I sold out my share cheap to Luna. And I came across country. And by that time, I was getting bad sick, folks. I'd check into motels and I couldn't remember where I hid stuff. You know, I could find unique carpet and fold stuff up in blankets. And then I'd wake up and be halfway lucid and then I couldn't find what I'd hidden. I would hide pills. You know, I would sit and have to get half loaded to remember where I hid stuff.
And I came on back and I went to Key West. And I got to speed this thing up. I get to Key West and I spent the whole winter of 68 and 69 down there drunk. That's where I bottomed out. I went down there November 68, left in the spring, came up to Fayetteville where my brother was in business. And he ought to be in this program, too. He's the only one. The other one is in the program, but Herschel hasn't gotten there yet.
I robbed a place in Fayetteville and I had my dog. All I had with me was my dog. See, I just couldn't. I'm still pretty much of a loner. And even when I was messing around, I did most of my stuff by myself. Because every time I tied up with somebody, I got caught quicker. So it just seems like that I got that and then I head back to Key West. And I think it was sometime along, maybe one of those trips.
I was in South Carolina once or twice. Car painted in Darlington in a barn on Sunday one day, waiting for it to dry. And I hit I-95 before it got, well, we got the masking tape off and I picked up a few bugs. See, I had to change the color and I had different, I had all kinds of license tags in the trunk. But I go down to Key West and I'd spent the whole winter down and I had a good roll then. And I got all unpacked at the same place I was living.
And I'm going to get a couple hours sleep and then I'm going to meet somebody at the bar downtown. And I wake up, the dogs barking, little dachshund. I still got another dachshund at home. But somebody was rattling my door and I just reached under the pillar and picked up the little .25 and I just popped a couple of caps on the door. And I just roll on over and back. And in a minute all these policemen come up there.
And in a minute all these policemen come up there and took me down, locked me up. They didn't know how hot I was then, but I called some people I knew, and they came and
[00:45:01]
got me out, and then I was raised in Kansas, they wouldn't give me my gun back. But then this fellow said, are you hot? And I said, yeah. He said, you better get out of these keys before daylight. So I had to load all those clothes back in, and I got out of the keys, and I got to wind this thing up. I got on back up, and you know, it never dawned on me, right here in Myrtle Beach, God, I never thought, I was over here at Northside Pharmacy.
I went to see a doctor, got a prescription, told him I was a writer from California, and had California tags, and I was taken by sediments, and if you look it up in the PDR, it says it's used with alcoholics. And I told him that taking these kept me from drinking, and he wrote me a prescription, and I went to the North something pharmacy, and the guy said, I only got eight, I don't have thirty. He gave me the eight, and I didn't have any little bills, because I just paid the doctor, and all I had was hundreds, and I gave him one, and I went on back to the motel, and the next day I go back to get the balance of my prescription, and boy, they were waiting on me when I walked out of there.
And they didn't know what to charge me with, they charged me with counterfeit. That money wasn't counterfeit, they wouldn't let me make bond down here, they put me in the dog bowl from jail, down there, right here in Myrtle Beach. And about midnight, the guy came in there and said, well, the game's up, we know who you are. They checked labels and clothes and things, and so in a day or two, here comes the major down from federal, and took me in the dog bag, and I went on to court eventually, and I got fifteen to twenty years.
Now, that was my fifth felony conviction, fifth felony conviction, boy, you talk about one lost soul, you would think I would have hit bottom line in that jail cell. Here it was, I was forty-four years old, my life was wasted, been on the run like a nomad, and by golly, when I went into court, part of me was relieved, and the other part was just full of rage, just wanting to leak it out all over everybody.
Fifteen to twenty years wasn't a bad felony, because there was a shooting, and it was just a ricocheted bullet, there was a couple of guys that wouldn't behave that night, and I just fired it in the floor, and it hit a lady in the hip when it ricocheted. And they didn't try me for that, and they only gave me fifteen to twenty years, and I go back to Central Prison, back to my old alma mater, and they let me work in the kitchen office, and a couple of guys that worked in the kitchen office went to the AA meeting in prison, and they asked me, did I want to go, and I said, no way, it doesn't work for me, and I resigned, and to hell with AA, and your church, and anything else you got.
And I was so bitter, I can't tell you how much I hurt. I was empty, and I was broken, my family didn't want any communication with me, I had embarrassed them all their life, I'll tell you, it was dark, it was a dark night of the soul, worse than any I've ever had sober. And one Sunday morning in July of 1970, and these guys had kept dropping those little cards out up there, and I didn't want any of this AA business, and I was taking inventory in the cold storage room in Central Prison on a Sunday, and I opened the door with the keys into a cooler room, and counted the eggs and the oleo, and then I started into the cold storage locker, and bolded on the cold storage locker was the serenity prayer.
Now this is deep in the bowels of a prison, in the bowels of a cold storage room is a serenity prayer. And I got it at home in the bedroom, it's a piece of wood about that wide, and not too crude lettering, pretty good, and it reminds me every morning where I came from, I don't ever want to forget it, I don't ever want to graduate. But you know that serenity prayer triggered something, and it wasn't the word God, but yet it was God's work.
The word except, I said, my God, now I've turned 45, my life's wasted, there's no way in hell I can get out of here for eight or ten years, I'm going to have to do most of this time with my record, they got me in close custody, they're not going to let me get out to a camp. But I kept saying that serenity prayer, and things started coming into my mind of things I'd heard at meetings. It conjured up things that I had heard, if you drink, this is what's going to happen to you.
There's only one way, and that's down the tube or out of it, one or the other, there's no semi-alcoholic.
[00:50:02]
My way hadn't worked too good, see? Today I know what doesn't work, I don't know always what does work except the program work. I found out what doesn't work, but that serenity prayer, it started going over in my mind, and I went to my bunk that night, and I kept saying, God, grant me the serenity to accept the things, so my life's wasted, so accept it. And I said it over and over and over, and it would not leave my mind, but I slept that night.
We used to get up in the morning before daylight to go to the kitchen, and that was the most horrible to wake up and hit reality, my God, look where I am, you know? That serenity prayer stayed on my mind, and that Sunday night I went up to the auditorium to an AA meeting. It was a catalyst. Now, I got in some trouble. I went back, I was going to read all the books again, I was going to get good quick.
You know, you've seen people come in on Sunday and they're well by Wednesday. I was reading all the books over again, and I was going to the meetings in there, Dale S. was coming over, and Tom, and I'll be darned, I'd been going to AA two or three months and thought I was getting honest, and there was a big old guy named Goldie, and I told him the next time a certain thing happened, I was going to do something.
And it happened, and I'm reading the 12 and 12, and I laid the 12 and 12 down and went and picked the stool up and hit him in the head, and you know, that's insanity. See, you just can't go read the book and get sane. So they put me on the other side of the prison, and Sam Garrison, the warden, all my old cronies says, boy, they got you now. You'll never get back on the east side. Well, you know, I felt like I needed to be punished, but punishment's not like it used to be.
There's no starvation anymore, no little cell. Starvation die, you know, one meal in ten days, none of that business and having to drink that mineral oil or castor oil before your third day meal. They did away with all that stuff. So I had 30 days over there, and I was reading and talked to some guys, and you know, they let me go back on the other side. The AA group in prison went to bat for me. Believe it or not, in about three more months, they called me up one day.
The Honor Grade Committee, the Minimum Custody Committee was meeting, and these are the same guys on the Disciplinary Committee that had me for the major infraction. And they called me in there, and they said, Captain Sanders said, we're going to reluctantly recommend you for Honor Grade. That's Minimum Custody. Well, Captain Sanders ain't never reluctantly recommended anybody for anything. I didn't like him then, I don't like him now.
But somebody had told him to, I think, you know, and nothing says I've got to like prisons, and I don't like them. I'll go in and talk, and I'll help prisoners, but I don't like prisons, and I can't help it. I can't help that I've got to like prisons, I just don't like them. They put me in Minimum Custody, folks, three months after a major infraction. Now, they don't do these things. If you know the correctional machinery, and Tom knows it, there is no way in heck that they do this stuff.
There was something at work. I wasn't smart enough, I still don't understand it, but by golly, they did, they put me in Minimum Custody. I went out to the Honor Grade Unit, and that's where I met Big Gene, and they let me go out to meetings. In Central Prison, Bill J., and Willard, and Willard P., and Bob S. from Greensboro, they would come into the prison and talk to us. They don't know what an inspiration they were, but when they would leave, all that stuff that I picked up going in and out of AA would come to life in me.
You know, they told me what would happen if I kept on. I started going to meetings in Raleigh, and Gene would take me home on weekends, he was my sponsor, hell of a guy, and we didn't tell his wife everything. Gene had my FBI record, but Oprah, we didn't show that to her, she didn't get a copy, you know, but Gene stuck by me, and the next thing, they started a school, and they picked eight or nine of us and put us in this school.
They were going to teach us to be paracounselors in the prison system, and I got through nine months of that, and if I'd have been doing two or three years, there's many days that I would have just gone on and done it, but I couldn't flatten out that 15 to 20. I could have flattened out a couple years, but my AA program, a little 24-hour book, every morning, turning it over, then going to meetings out in Raleigh, and you know, one night they asked me to chair a meeting in Raleigh.
I felt ten feet tall. You don't know the feeling it is to rejoin the human race, to feel like you might be
[00:55:01]
worth something, because I was convinced that I was nothing, and I was trying to find meaning in my suffering in there. I was a big zero. I had contributed nothing to the world or to life, and then you ask you to chair a meeting, an AA meeting, I honest to God, that was the greatest feeling, and I'll never forget it. Since that school, they paroled all my buddies, the other eight of them, and I couldn't, they ran a parole investigation on me down in the fed bowl, and those law enforcement people said we don't want him on the streets, and I understand that, and that's what the governor got back.
So they came and told me, and said, well, we got a pretty bad report from the fed bowl of law enforcement. I said, folks, and I told this fellow, I said, look, I got a program now, and there's a higher power run in my life. I had a better program then than I got now. I had more spirituality. I felt it. I depended on it more. I think I've complicated it probably from those first years, but I wasn't worried.
I didn't go to that AA meeting to get out of prison, I'll tell you that. So help me God. I didn't think I could get out. I just wanted to sleep and get some peace of mind, and you know, a couple of weeks later, I get a commutation. They cut five years off the bottom of my sentence so I could be paroled, and the parole board called me in. I talked to Mr. Randall. I talked to each parole board member, and they said, what are we getting ready to do?
You know, just a little while previously, you know, when Dale S. had taken me out to a meeting, I called home one night, and my sister Faye answered the phone, and she recognized my voice. She said, oh my God, where are you? I said, I'm at some people's house. I've been to them. Have those people in Raleigh lost their mind? This is my family. I'm glad they wasn't on a parole board, I'll tell you, my own family.
But you know, you talk about miracles. You see, I'm the only one that has to know these are miracles because I know the machinery, and by the grace of God, I got out, and I went to work at Polk Youth Center, and again, I told you I didn't like Christmas. A phone rang one day and said, we're going to start a program over at mental health. Would you consider working over there? And I said, I don't know.
I'll let you know. And I went to Gene and Bill J. and these guys, and they said, you'll know when. Well, right after Christmas of that year, I knew, and I wound up in Raleigh at mental health, sicker than any patient probably they ever had there, working. And in those days, this was 1972, maybe January of 73, and I stayed there six and a half years. That's when I got to know a lot of the social workers and the psychiatrists, and they taught me some things.
And I used to laugh and kid about you had to be crazy to work at mental health, and it does help. I agree. But no, but I used to kind of scoff at that, but you know, though, my life, I must have needed that six and a half years. I needed a little more than most people. Took me four years to get rid of my anger and rage. And I walked around fearing that I was going to lose control, and I'd pray like to hell, and just go to meetings and pray.
I was afraid I was going to lose my cool and blow it because of that rage, you know. But looking back on it, you know, hindsight is always 20-20. In retrospect, I must have needed to be there. And so after six and a half years, I quit. I was secure there. I took a trip out to California, and I saw a guy that had sat with me in intensive care. I hadn't seen him in 18 and a half years. And I was one of his early pigeons.
And I saw a doctor in Phoenix, and God, we sat and talked, and he had sewed me up and gotten me out of jail. And I went over to Vegas, and I watched the pink linen and the synthetic stuff and drank a lot of coffee and played a lot of poker and did a few other things, and I didn't like it. And I didn't like California. And I wrote an inventory. I didn't like my sister-in-law either. I wrote another inventory, and I wound up in Charlotte.
And I stayed in Charlotte for about three and a half years or four years. And I saw my children in 75. Now they had grown up. It had been 24 years. And the boy came to see me in Raleigh. The boy came to see me in Raleigh. And he had been in the Marine Corps, and he said the Marine Corps had been his daddy, his father. I wanted him to tell me about himself, and he did. And I had prayed before I saw him.
[01:00:05]
And he wanted to know about me, and I told him that I'd been locked up 12 years and I was an alcoholic. I took him to a meeting in Raleigh. He said, you know, nobody ever told me that you were locked up or that you were an alcoholic. He said, I knew you'd have a little tax trouble or something. So you see, there's different degrees of sorriness, I guess. He thought that I deserted him and his sister and his mother, which I did, but he didn't know anything about this other stuff. And today I hear from him. The relationship with him is a lot better than with the daughter. She never could understand, and Steve, I agreed with him not to tell her, and we didn't tell her, and I think that was a big mistake. But today I can tell you this life that's been given me through the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is a miracle.
And I believe that only men are evil, that the evil in this world. I hope I'm not deluding myself. I don't know anything. I don't understand anything. But I know I got to keep growing. If I haven't told you all I love you tonight, I do. I don't know anybody I resent. Today I know if I let somebody or something make me angry, if I'm angry over five minutes, I'm defeated already. And I used to be eating up with the mad. Just eating up with it. And I can get rid of it usually within five minutes. Because if I don't, I'm the victim of my, these malignant emotions. And I'm going to have them the longest day I live.
Two years ago, when I was working at Charlotte, I got the urge to go back to Key West. And I took off a couple years ago. And I went to Key West and we put a program in down there. They didn't have much down there. They didn't have anything down there really. And when I got ready to leave Key West, I came up last Christmas, a year ago, and talked to Raleigh. I let a guy know I was ready to get back in the field and go to work. I headed for Charleston. I never got to Charleston yet. I wound up in Columbia for four months and now I'm in Lumberton. And you know what, I've come to the conclusion that my life is not in any of my business.
I swear that I just don't know what's going on. You know? And I don't even know what I want. But I know what doesn't work. And by the grace of God, one day at a time, you know, I heard a lady that worked on a shrimp boat in Key West. She said, Denial ain't no river in Egypt. And you know, we got a little club going in Key West. And you know, it'll be open two years this February the 1st. First year it was open, 30 people got sober. Bartenders, barmaids from Sloppy Joe's, taxi drivers, doctors, lawyers. This program will work anywhere. And it'll work for anybody. You know, I believe there's a lot of power in this room tonight. I know there is. I try to practice the presence of this higher power. That sabbatical I took, when somebody in the program told me, he said, that's obscene. Whoever heard of taking a year off? Well, I couldn't stand another year. I'll tell you, I found out something, that I'll never retire either. I'll be used up. I got to be busy doing something. I've never done so much fishing and swimming and snorkeling all my life. And I'll do anything. When you get too much of it, it ceases to have its value. You know, you can just, and all of these things that we think that will fill up that big hole in us, that big empty feeling, and we think money, sex, position, and you know, that stuff ain't going to fill that hole up. That hole is only filled up in these meetings.
And when I'm on my knees or talking to my higher power, I don't know why we were chosen, but I'm going to tell you, it's a narrow path. It's grow or go, they tell me. Everything I know came right out of these rooms. You get ripe, you rot. You stay green, you grow. Love, to me, is spiritual growth, to grow spiritually and help others grow spiritually. To me, the people that belong to this fellowship, the most wonderful people in the world, because, you know, I know there's power in here.
Before I came up here to talk tonight, I turned this thing over. Now, I think, I don't know if I went into a blackout or self-hypnotized or what. I don't even know what the hell I said, but something guides me. There is a force, and the presence is here,
[01:05:06]
and I'm not a religious person. I don't have a religion, you know. When I got to Lumberdood, they said, what church you go to? I said, well, my mama's a Baptist, my sister's Methodist, my two kids are Catholic, and my brother's an Episcopal whiskey paleon, and I said, uh, and I go to AA. I mean, that's what I got. Now, twice in the last two months, I've been drugged to church. Not dragged, I went freely, and I may wind up one day.
God bless the people that can supplement their AA, and, you know, there are people that can use it. Maybe I ain't ready yet for them, or they ain't ready for me, I don't know what. But whatever it's to be is going to be. Before I close, there was a couple of things I, see, when I think, I get in trouble. I'll tell you, it's between my ears, and the pettiness that I used to hook into around AA, I don't do it anymore.
God, you know, we're supposed to gain some stature in this program. I'm still human, and that razor's edge is thin, and growing up in public is a bitch, I'm going to tell you. And, uh, that spiritual journey, I got hung up on the Carl Jung stuff, because, you know, I read some where it started in his office when he told Robert to go back and get, that's why I believe in the solution, it takes a spiritual experience.
I found out about the dark side of me, and it took me all these years to find out, so I tried to wipe out the evil side of me. I wanted to get perfect. I ain't going to get perfect, I'm going to try though, I've got to keep trying. But I found out about these demons in me. You know, that rung a bell, there's a priest in LA told me I was demon possessed and defected. And I used to laugh at that stuff, and it doesn't sound kind of screw it, but they keep talking about light and darkness, light and darkness. You know, in my sobriety, I've been so angry at God a couple of times, and then I felt trapped. One morning I got up in Charlotte, and I said, buddy, I ain't asking you for your will today, not after yesterday.
And, you know, then I think of my options, and I ain't got any of them, I'm trapped. What in the hell is an alcoholic going to do if you don't, if you leave AA where you're going, you know? And I started laughing in about an hour. But, you know, when we ask for his will, boy, that's heavy stuff, because you don't know what he's going to lay on you. And I'm careful what I pray for, because I've gotten a few things, and they're hard to get rid of when you get them. But I'll have a little depression and anxiety as long as the day I live, folks.
This is the only program I know that you can get miserable in, and you don't have to get drunk. If you want to be miserable, have at it. You know, I used to enjoy it. I don't anymore. I didn't get near to be miserable. But I have those bad days, and when that old dark side takes over, I can get suicidal mentally. Now, that don't mean I'm going to cut my throat or overdose. I mean, I can get suicidal, and the fact that I get destructive or my thinking gets messed up.
I used to say I gave resentments instead of getting them. No, that was that old macho crap. It's gone now. You know, I'm a coward. But I've learned in this program how to transcend pain. And that dark side of me, if I shine a light on it and stay positive, I don't get suicidal. Where do I get positive? Out of the book. There's a fellowship and a program. It takes both for me. I can come to these meetings, and I can fill that hole up that's inside of me. I can be talking to another alcoholic and get that moment of rapture that I get every now and then. Because this is my family. This is where I belong to be.
And I don't know what I've said tonight. Thank you for inviting me. I want to thank the committee. I like this crowd down here. And I see people here from Hickory. And Pat back there from Wilmington says, we sure as hell didn't come up here to hear you. And an old foamer said, well, Marsh, we came all the way up here to hear you. I'll tell you if they keep you confused in this program, I don't know. Boy, oh boy. But I'll tell you what, if you don't believe AA is a self-cleansing fellowship, get out of line. Get a little funny, a little dishonest, and you see if
[01:10:02]
somebody won't self-clean you right quick. Or you'll get drunk. See, that's the price we pay for getting phony. And I'm still selfish. I still get angry at times. I'm still phony a little bit. I have all these malignant emotions from time to time, but thank God I know what to do about it now. And I am a long way from where I want to be. I see a few people that I want to be where they are, and I would suggest you pick out somebody and try to emulate them. I see some people, there's some of them right back there at the back, that I like what I see because I see it from the inside out, their eyes. There's something radiating from the inside of those people.
You know, I didn't get sober to be a monk or to get too good, but I'll tell you, I want some peace of mind. And the only way I found it is through the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And so for God's sakes, if you're new, give it a chance. Give it a chance and become willing, it'll work. And if anything's been said here tonight, it got me weller. I'm not as sick as I was. I'd hate to think I'd been in here 14 and a half years and was still sick. I still got alcoholism, yeah, but I think I'm a little bit better person today. And I think the scales may be balanced a little bit better. I enjoy life most of the time. I love you all. I've run out of what to say, so I'd better shut up. Thank you.