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Source: Tom B. (Jr) – From Charlotte, North Carolina – Date Unknown.mp3 File: tom-b-jr-from-charlotte-north-carolina-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:04:42
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My name is Tom B., Jr., and I am an alcoholic, and by the grace of God, which has come to me through the Twelve Steps of this blessed program and the people in this blessed fellowship, I haven't had the compulsion to drink since July 20th, 1965, and this is a miracle. Any of you folks have to go to the bathroom. I've got this bladder problem, I came to AA with it, I've remained in AA with it, and if you came to AA for your bladder problem, forget it, it won't do anything for you. And if any of you have to go to the bathroom, go ahead, I wish I could go with you. And I really mean that. I'm not kidding you all. I brought the person with me this weekend that I consider, in my opinion, the best al-anon in the Southeastern United States, my wife Donna. Where are you, honey? Would you stand up?
Now, my wife knows me very well, and she always gauges the talks that I make by the times that I go to the bathroom beforehand. Her name for me is Thomas P. B.. I remember the first convention I ever talked at, and I called her after I had talked, and I said, hi, this is Tom. She said, Tom who? I said, how many do you know? She said, oh, it's you. She said, how'd you do? I said, I don't know. She said, how many times did you go to the bathroom?
I said, I lost count on number 13. She said, you must have made a hell of a good talk. Now, I'm an alcoholic, and that means that I suffer from a fatal, incurable disease. How many of you out there are alcoholics? Would you raise your hand? May I also say you're one of the finest groups of diseased people I've ever seen in my life. I do believe it's fatal. I do believe it's incurable. When I talk, I try to talk in what Bill Wilson called the language of the heart.
Alcoholism, to me, is not a logical disease, and logic did not get me sober. As a matter of fact, as an alcoholic, the logical thing for me to be tonight would be drunk. It is not logical that I am sober. This is a program of miracles, not logic, and miracles go beyond logic. In the preamble to our fifth chapter, there's a couple of lines in there that really tell it like it is, and this is what I try to talk about when I'm making a A-doll. There is one who has all power. That one is God. May you find him now.
And when I talk, I talk basically about powerlessness and about power. I talk about me, and I talk about God, because my very life depends on the recognition of which is which. I found out in Alcoholics Anonymous where I am. I am also finding out slowly but surely what I am not. Now, I never know which direction that I'm going to head when I get up here. People have criticized me for never making the same talk twice. I consider that a compliment, because I grow in this program. If I have a canned talk, that means I'm a canned human being. I am standing still. I am stagnant and static, and I don't know where I'm going to head tonight, and I'll tell you something else. If that power is not here, we're in a lot of trouble. And I tell this story every time that I talk. This much remains the same about this little boy who lived down in the flat pine forest in North Carolina. And every day about sundown, this fellow would get out there, and he would get lost. In those pine forests, you can't chimney up a pine tree very well. Everything's flat. He couldn't find his way home, and his mother had to send out a search party to find this little kid every single day. And one day, when he got lost out in the woods, and they found him and brought him home, she said, Johnny, next time you get lost out in the woods, get out on your knees and ask God to show you the way out. He'll do it. He said, okay, Mom. I thought that was a pretty good idea. Next day, he got out in the forest. Sure enough, he's playing around, and the sun starts going down, and he's lost again. He gets down on his knees, and he says, Lord, he said, I'm lost. I want you to show me by some sign how to get out of here. Amen.
He got up, and he held his hand out here, and nothing happened, and he held it out here, and nothing happened. He held it over here, and nothing happened, and he held his hand out front, and a little bird flew over and dropped one right in his hand. He looked at that, shook it off, got back down on his knees, said, Lord, please don't hand me no crap. I'm really lost.
[00:05:08]
I heard an old fellow tell the story. This has nothing to do with A.A., but it was funny. He got up and made a talk on New Year's Eve down at Myrtle Beach, North Carolina. He said he had heard about this friend of his who left his wife who was 40 years old and had taken up with two 20-year-olds, and about six months later, he came back, and his friend asked him, what happened? He said, hell, I found out I wasn't wired for 220. Has nothing to do with anything, really.
Just, you know, something to get loose with. In addition to being an alcoholic, and I may as well tell you this now, I'm also a Baptist, and being a Baptist is a lot like being an alcoholic. You know that? Once a Baptist, always a Baptist. I spent half my life in the Baptist church. My mother is hostess of the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. My father 50 years on the board of deacons. He sings in the choir. He teaches Sunday school.
I spent really, literally, half my life in that Baptist church. Now, I've never heard a Baptist preacher that didn't talk in triplicate. They always give three examples. So, if I get yelling at you tonight in triplicate, attributed to my Baptist background, I used to try to cover that. I don't cover it anymore. I used to also say that I had two diseases, alcoholism and baptism, and by the grace of God, I've recovered from both, but I no longer say that.
This old man down in Myrtle Beach has told that little story. Something about alcohol is synonymous to me that night, too. He bumbled, and he tried to say what he wanted to say, and he couldn't say it, and finally, he just stopped, and he said, I came back to AA, and I got reborn. Said it like it is. It's like my two kids. I have two AA babies, one little girl, five, and a little boy, seven. I picked them up at school the other day, and I was bringing them home, and they were confused about age and size, and my little boy was saying, so-and-so's only seven, and he's bigger than I am, and I said, son, Will Chamberlain is seven foot two, and he's taller than I am, you know, trying to get it across to us. My little girl piped up and said, yeah, said there's one person that's bigger than anybody, and my son Jason said, who's that? He said, God. He said, right on. Now, the kids nowadays say right on instead of amen. There's very little difference. I'm glad that I'm here. I appreciate being asked, and in case I forget it, I may not know you, but I do love you. That much I've learned in alcoholics. Dr. Bob, one of the founders, says in the final analysis, you boil this program down.
It comes down to two things, love and service, and we all know what love is, and we all know what service is, so let's try to get started with this talk. As far back in my memory as I can go, I remember fear. I have always been afraid. One of my continuing problems today is that I am subject to fear. I remember reading a book one time by a psychologist, a very brilliant man, I suppose, and he listed 206 different kinds of fear, and I read through all 206, and I'd had them all, and I got to the end of the list, and I said, no, there's one more fear.
There's one other kind of fear that every alcoholic knows, this fear of impending calamity, and it goes like this, oh my God, I don't know what's going to happen to me. I don't know who's going to do it to me. I don't know when or where it's going to happen, but something's going to happen to me, and it's going to be bad, and every alcoholic, I think, has known that feeling. As I look back on my life, I realize I had a lot to be afraid about.
Also, my own mother tells me she had never seen an ugly baby until I came into the world, and she didn't take me out of the house for the first six weeks I was in the world. I was so ugly, and as I grew up, I grew wall-to-wall freckles, and I had silver white hair, and every picture that was ever taken of me, I was standing there with my eyes squinted up, you know, holding on to my mama's apron string. Now, I quit squinting before I let go of the apron string.
I held on to that for 30 years, and when I turned sideways, I was so painfully skinny that my shoulder blades stuck out like handlebars on a tricycle, a typical ugly kid, you know. I figured if I ever get rid of these freckles, I won't be afraid anymore. I got rid of the freckles. That replaced with the prettiest set of pimples you ever saw in your life. My mother and daddy always told me if you did certain things, you'd have pimples on your face.
[00:10:08]
Well, I want you to know I didn't do any of those things, but when I walked down the street, everybody knew what I was doing, and that made me afraid. It didn't make anybody afraid, and I was still skinny, 6'3", 145 pounds, and you picture that with wall-to-wall pimples, knowing that everybody knew what I was doing. I set out to master this fear. I set out to master it in the only way that I knew how.
I became a professional. I found out that if I were in the spotlight, that if I excelled at everything that I did, that if I were getting the pats on the back, that I didn't have to fear you, and when I was in the spotlight, when I had your approval, I wasn't afraid. When I was 17 years old, I took up the habit class of mastering everything that I ever did. Everything anybody ever did, I did better and quicker, and if I couldn't, I'd sneak away so nobody would know I couldn't. In the Baptist Church, they have a group called the Royal Ambassadors for Christ. It's a boys' organization, and the highest rank in the Royal Ambassadors was Ambassador Plenty Potentiary, and I couldn't even pronounce the word, but I was one quicker than anybody had ever been one before, and they gave me a sword and a shield and a crown, and they put the spotlight on me, and they'd mash my button, and I'd recite memory verses.
That was my strong point, memory verses. Mash my button. One right after the other. Memory verses you had never heard and didn't want to hear, and I want you to know that later on in my life, and I'll get back to this, I tried the same thing in alcoholics and not. I knew all the words. I knew every dot and every tittle, and I was drunk still. I firmly believe from my own experience that Alcoholics Anonymous is not a mind trip. It has nothing to do with the intellect.
It is very much a heart trip. It has little to do with rationality. It has everything to do with inner feeling, gut level intelligence, the intelligence that lets me choose to live at some point in time instead of keep dying. As a perfectionist when I was 17 years old, I borrowed a bullfiddle from the band director at the high school, and I practiced bullfiddle every day for two solid weeks, hours upon hours upon hours. I like to drove my mother and father crazy plucking on that bass fiddle, but at the end of two weeks, I was playing with a college dance band at the age of 17. That's what a perfectionist will do, and I could give you many more examples. I was the little boy that all the other mothers pointed out to their sons and said, why don't you like Tommy? If there was a solo to be sung, I sang it. If there was a part to be read with the spotlight, I read it. I couldn't stand to be second or third or fourth.
I always had to be on the top of the heap because that's the only place I felt comfortable, but not comfortable enough. I was still afraid, still afraid, and I began building a wall around me, and you know the stones I used in the wall, because you did too if you're an alcoholic. Resentment and fear and guilt and remorse and despair and loneliness, and they were all cemented together with the a number one alcoholic problem, selfishness, and you know what? Still afraid.
I'm a very sensitive human being. I hear Chuck Seeds not in California talk about how sensitive alcoholics are. Well, I am. You know, we lived in Kentucky for a while while I was still drinking over in Lexington, and one of the things I used to do, and I'll get into this later, is listen to one song by the four freshmen called Their Hearts Were Full of Spring, and I want you to know before we left North Carolina today for out here, my daughter found that record and put it on, and I still sat there and cried when I was listening to that record. I get chill bumps all over me when good things happen. I can hear a chord in a piece of music, and it's automatic chill bumps. One of the greatest things I've learned in Alcoholics Anonymous is how to feel for somebody besides myself. I can cry when I need to. That's what I'm trying to say, and I'm not ashamed. I feel stronger when I can do it, but I'm a sensitive human being, and the sensitivity comes in handy when it is guided by the principles of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. When it's not, I am a mess.
Oh, it's phenomenal. When it's not, I am a mess.
[00:15:00]
I'm a manic depressant. I was always either too happy or too sad. No middle ground for me. And I still go into some of the blackest depressions you've ever seen. The difference is they're not as long and not quite as deep. And the mania doesn't raise me quite so high. There's more levelness in my life now than there was before. And that's progress. And I'm thankful for it. Now I want you to know I was an intellectual also.
I work at a college now in Charlotte. And when I tell some of those kids around there how many colleges I've been to, they think I must be the most brilliant human being on the face of the earth. I got kicked out of a lot of colleges. Do you know that when I went through college, finally, I graduated cum laude with a 3.94 average out of the possible 4. I was elected to who's who among students in American universities and colleges my junior and senior year. I was in every honor society they had.
Soloed with the college choir. Sang with the alumni quartet. You name it, I did it. I had so many scholarships when I graduated from college, they owed me $16. I can take you home tonight and show you my annual. A half-page picture of me. And underneath is my pedigree telling you how wonderful I really am. Now they took two of those pictures. The first one they took, I was so hungover I was about to shake out of the chair.
And the second one they took, I was drunk and about to fall out of the chair. But you see, I kept this facade, this wall, this front that I wanted the world to see. And I hated my gut. Because I knew I wasn't on the top of the heap. And I didn't like me for it. And I knew you weren't on the top of the heap. And I didn't like you for it either. Very smart guy. By the time I was 23 years old, I had been in religious homes for alcoholics.
Alcoholic Rehabilitation Centers, jails, psycho wards. I've had over a thousand stitches taken in my face alone as a result of driving while drunk. I've lost my driver's license three times for drunken driving, was on five years probation, and was never supposed to drive again. And I went to hell when I was 23. Now there's a fellow in Raleigh, North Carolina, where I attended my first meeting, who told me after I was sober about three years, Tom, I don't want to hurt your feelings, I'm going to tell you something.
He said, do you remember the first night you ever came to AA? And I said, beggingly. He said, I remember it well. He said, you came through the door with your little pregnant wife, dragging her through that door. And he said, I punched the guy next to me and I said, that guy ain't just an alcoholic, he's crazy as hell. And that reputation was to be built within Alcoholics Anonymous. I was a manic depressive, always up, always down.
Guess what kind of alcoholic I was? Periodic. I'd get drunk, I'd get sick, I'd go to AA. I wore a fur down the central aisle of every Baptist church in Raleigh, rededicating myself, waiting for God to tempt me with the magic wand and make me well, in a big way, by the way, in a big way. And it never happened. And I'd go back to AA meetings. And in North Carolina, we'd give out chips. And for a white chip, that's for a beginner.
And I was one of those guys who, every time I picked up a white chip, had to make a speech about how I was never going to do it again. And you know, I'd stay around AA until I began to eat a little bit again, began to think a little bit. The great mind would start working again. And do you know what would happen to me every time? Alcoholic insane. Every time I'd get feeling good and thinking again and get everybody off my back and get everything smoothed over, do you know what idea would come into my head?
This time, it's going to be different, Tom. This time, if you just handle it right, Tom, you can drink like everybody else. This time, Tom, this time, Tom. And then came a drunk, and then I was down, and then it was back to AA, and then I started thinking and eating again, and I'd do it all over again. I've heard one person in AA say the alcoholic lives by a philosophy of I'll show you, I'll kill me.
Think about it. Now, my wife tells a story about a cousin of hers. I've met him, and he's not too smart, but this is a beautiful story. When he was a kid, he was standing out in the backyard, and he was arguing across the fence with another little kid. He was an argumenter.
[00:20:00]
And he ran into the back porch, and he picked up a ball-peen hammer. And he came running back out in the backyard, and he yelled across to that little kid, If you don't do what I tell you to do and say what I want you to say, I'm going to hit you on the head with this hammer just like this. He damn near killed himself. Now, you sit out there and laugh. I'll tell you about a problem we think about too.
How many times did I say I'll show you? I'll get you just like this. I'll tell you how many times. Time after time after time I did. See, alcoholic insanity is like no other insanity that I know of. Like no other. Because it deals not with the head, but with the gut. And let me explain it to you. You take any dog or any cat and give them something to eat or drink that makes them sick. Will they eat or drink that thing again?
No. No. They'll have the basic intelligence to recognize what's good for them and say yes to it and to recognize what's bad for them and say no to it. I did not have that basic intelligence. As a matter of fact, I kept drinking the thing that was killing me. I kept saying yes to the thing that was killing me. Insane people, you know, I think have one thing in common. And that is they believe in a lie.
They believe in a lie. You go to the back ward of a mental hospital and you'll see a guy over in the corner and he's all balled up in the fetal position. And he's giggling and he's singing and he's talking but he's talking only to himself. The Hebrew-French and we say Wow! He's talking to himself. He must be crazy. He's talking to himself because he doesn't think there's anybody else to talk to. And that's a lie.
And you take the paranoid who's finally worked out a system to break the bank at Las Vegas and he thinks everybody's following him trying to get his system. He's got no system and nobody's following him. It's a lie. We look at him and we giggle and say, hey, he's crazy. How about Tom? So no matter how many times alcohol had almost destroyed me I could tell myself the big lie the big alcoholic lie this time it's gonna be different.
I got a friend up in Raleigh, North Carolina tells a story about the alcoholic insanity. He says you take a normal man an alcoholic and a schizophrenic and put them in this room tonight and say when they walk out the door back there tonight there's a man standing outside with a baseball bat. Says the normal man goes through the door and the man slaps him upside the head with that baseball bat and he'll never go through that door again.
He'll find another way out of here. Says the schizoid just trance through there one more time just to see if it was real. And he gets hit the second time and it's all over for him. He'll never go through the door again. He'll go through the door time after time after time after time after time and says one night he'll get there and the man with the bat's not there and he'll sit down and wait for him.
If you don't do what I tell you to do I'm gonna hit you on the head with this hammer just like this. I'll show you, I'll kill me. Alcoholic insanity. God. Very very deep. There's some things I don't want to forget about my alcoholism. Forgetting on my inventory was one of the top items because forgetting what had happened to me in the past in favor of the idea that this time it was going to be different almost killed me.
So forgetting is an important item in my inventory and I still tend to forget. I don't want to forget for one thing the Wake County Jail in Raleigh, North Carolina where I woke up from the time I was 17 years old until the last time I was in Raleigh and took a drink. And I always woke up in the bullpen shaking and I was one of those drunks that didn't shake on the outside too much, I shook on the inside.
My eyeballs used to click. And I'd pace up and down the bullpen didn't have any cigarettes did you ever wake up in jail with no cigarettes? I never did. Send the old trustee out, give him a dollar, he'd bring you a pack of camels whoosh and then they'd bring the breakfast at the Wake County Jail. Now the Wake County Jail can be any county jail you've been in jail, you've been in jail I've been in a lot of them and jail is a jail.
But at the Wake County Jail they brought breakfast on one of those tin plates and it was hot
[00:25:01]
and they had coffee in one of those tin cups and it'd take your lip off when you tried to drink it and laying on that tin plate was a yellow, pile of yellow powdered eggs laying in grease 2, 3, 8 day old bread you know been toasted a little bit but a long time ago when it was soggy a couple of weenies split down the middle and fried that's supposed to be your sausage the thing I'll never forget at the Wake County Jail is the grease them grits been laying on that plate so long you stick your fork in the whole damn pile would come up like an ice cream cone and one of the biggest reasons I stay sober today and you can laugh if you like it I don't want no more of them grits and I don't want to forget the psycho ward either you know how I very nobly committed myself to the psycho ward one time and in the psycho ward I excel, I want you to know that I mean when you went in the psycho ward you went in on floor 9B they always put the nuts on the top right you been in that ward I want you to know I didn't stay in 9B for two days and went on to 9A and I want you to know I skipped 10B and went straight to 10A and had to run to the hospital and I liked being in the psycho ward I know what it means to be institutionalized man I had it not all I had to do was act a little funny and I got all kinds of goofballs I was good at acting funny I didn't even have to try some of the time I had a doctor that hung on my every word he gave me a notepad and a pencil said write down your dreams and I wrote some do's but I couldn't put my own dreams down there I lied in my dreams I had to dress them up if I had told him my real dreams he would have been in the psycho ward and I took occupational therapy that's a goody and I sat on my stool and shaved and the attendant was ready to grab my razor at any minute you know it was like a zoo like the James Taylor song they're knocking around the zoo on a Thursday afternoon there's bars on all the windows and they're taking up the spoons and that's the way it was in the psycho ward and we'd go to occupational therapy everybody else was weaving baskets and rugs right? you know what I was doing?
making paladin gun and holsters sad and the doctor let me in the medical library and I got symptoms he had never heard of and that cut out and I took every test they had I took so many Rorschach tests I was sick of Rorschach and the Minnesota personality inventory that long one so they can tell if you lie you had it? you had it one day they came in there and they brought a box about this big and in that box was every kind of paper doll you've ever seen in your life and they said Tom they took a frame out and laid it down on the table they said Tom why don't you take these paper dolls and put them in this frame just like you want them and when you get them in there tell us a story about well I had the fleeting thought this is a hell of a thing for an intellectual to be doing but I put those paper dolls in there and the embarrassing part about it today is I enjoyed that more than anything I ever did in my life laughter you know I put those paper dolls in that frame and they stayed put, they didn't argue they didn't talk back I could have them laying down, sitting down, standing up every piece of furniture was where I wanted it nobody argued, nobody talked back in that situation I really was God and I enjoyed it I got kicked out of the psycho ward I got kicked out of the psycho ward one of my favorite things in the psycho ward was playing ping pong with a schizophrenic Cherokee Indian he never smiled he never frowned he never said a word the best ping pong player I have ever seen in my life just went over and hit the ball no expression my fellow patients would say Tom how come you mess around with him he's dangerous, he's going to blow up on you one of these days well you know why I kept playing him ping pong don't you because I couldn't do it
[00:30:00]
So the good doctor let me out one night to go to an AA meeting, you know how many AA meetings I went to. I came back to say I couldn't walk drunk. And I ran this good little Cherokee out of his bed. I threw him out of there. And I slept in his bed that night. You know what I'll show you. I'll kill me. And the next morning the doctor's looking at me through those horn-rimmed glasses. Why do they all have horn-rimmed glasses?
And he's saying, Tom, I've tried to help you, but I've gotten so close to you, I can't really see you. Now here's another thing. I am, was, and always will be a calm man. That's a part of me. And every alcoholic is, we have to be. And when people are a danger to us, we work and we work and we work until we get things going our way. I lived my life having to control everything and everybody and every event around me, or I was afraid.
I wanted the world to be right. In other words, my way. And it wasn't. And I worked very, very hard to make it my way. Alcoholics Anonymous is freeing me from that. You know that. Kirsten Stockton's got a song, and there's a line in that song that goes this way. Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. Look at the third step of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. I know now that it's no longer necessary for me to control people and things and events in order to live without fear. And it's nice not to have to try to control the world anymore. That's what real freedom is to me. I can depend on God. I can depend on you. Freedom to me doesn't mean separateness from everyone else.
It means utter trust and dependence on everyone else. So it's no longer necessary for me to run the world. Now, if you think I'm far afield from Alcoholics Anonymous, turn to the fifth chapter. And it says, if we're going to recover, first of all, comma, we have to quit playing God. Period. And we all do it. We do it because we have to. And we come into AA and we find out we don't have to. And we get loose.
And we get free. And we get reborn, if you like. I told you I came to Alcoholics Anonymous when I was 23 years old. And I was in and out and in and out for the next seven years. With not as much as 90 days to bribes. I made 89 days one time. I want you to know that. And the reason I knew that is because I had me a calendar on the wall. Every day when I'd come home, I'd X out another day and jump in bed.
And on the 90th day, we give out a red chip for 90 days to bribe you. I had a red chip pasted on that calendar. And I made it 89 days. And on the 90th day, they say I rest it. You know, I came in Alcoholics Anonymous. And that first meeting, I saw a guy standing up front. And he had a blue book in front of him like this. And on that side was 12 Steps. And on this side was 12 Traditions. You know where he was behind the podium.
You know what was on him, the spotlight. You know who was listening to him. Everybody. And right away, I said, that is for me. I learned what's in that book. I learned what's on those blackboards, you know. And they'll put me up there, and I'll be telling them. Right? I memorized the big book from cover to cover. When I wasn't drunk, I was delivering some theological treaties at an AA meeting. Nobody knew what I was talking about, including me.
I was majoring in philosophy and history. And I had minors in religion and Greek and English. And I was going to be a Baptist priest. How do you like that? A real danger. And you know, I'd go to AA meetings. After sitting out in my den out of the college, you know, in the meditative position. Waiting for my spiritual awakening to come through the window. God, I was crazy. I figured if the Lord could not fall off a jackass, the least he could do is hit me with a bolt of lightning.
It couldn't be like yours. It had to be special. So I'd assume the position, and I'd read Martin Buber and Paul Tillich and Aristotle and Thomas A. Kemp. And then I'd head for an AA meeting. Did you ever go to an AA meeting where you had such heavy knowledge to lay on the fruit that your hands were sweating?
[00:35:07]
Did you ever sit around a discussion table and play, can you top this? Did you ever play, I'm more spiritual than you are? Did you ever sit around and play and talk about God at an AA meeting? We become immediate experts on God. You can hear the soft violins and the music in the background. And I got a friend in New York that said his first encounter with God was more like falling into a set of kettle drums.
And so was mine. I'd go to the AA meeting, and if you go to the AA meeting in Burlington, North Carolina this coming Tuesday night, I'll tell you where you're about to be sitting. Barney's leaning over against the wall. Jim is about the second row back. And then there's Freeman, and then there's Martha. And you get over on the right-hand side of that room, and the second row, the second chair from the wall, sat the meanest man that God ever made.
His name was Bill C. And I called him Grumpy. Now Grumpy always told me the truth. That's the reason I didn't like him. Grumpy would look at me and he'd say, boy! He always called me boy. And always turned his finger at me. He'd say, boy, how come you're always running around looking for God? He ain't lost. He ain't lost. He'd say, boy, you don't think your way into good living, you live your way into good thinking.
I'd think to myself, cornball, shut up! And he'd go around the room on Tuesday night, and everybody would say the same thing every Tuesday night. Do you believe that? Same thing every Tuesday night. And here I sat. And they'd get to me late. It was like the meeting was over when it was my turn. Some of them had the audacity to get up and start for the door when I started talking. I'd say, Paul Tillich said this, and Martin Buber said that, and Grumpy would turn around and look at me.
Oh, Lord. And say things to me like, hey, boy. God gave you two ears and one mouth. Does that mean a damn thing to you? They'd go on across the hall and drink their coffee. They didn't care what Martin Buber and Paul Tillich or anybody else said. Much less what I said. And I set out to get Grumpy on my side. I had to win him over. See, he was one of those I was afraid of. Are you with me? And I decided that I would save a soul.
Now, there are twelve sufferers in the alcoholics' mind. What's in their soul to save us? The twelve sufferers know that all they've got is a message, and all they can do is carry it. And the results are up to God. The soul saver is different. The soul saver is the guy who goes out, shoulders somebody up, dresses him up, takes him somewhere to speak in hopes that he'll talk about him. The soul saver expects results.
I had my golden opportunity one day. A fella had been drunk two months. Laying up in a little cabin outside Elon College, North Carolina, with no indoor plumbing. Two months. I got out my white Charger and on my own. And I got my Lance and I headed out. And that place was so filthy, folks, that we had to shovel it out. And we mopped and we swept and we cleaned and I got him a doctor. He was about dead.
And when all the work was done, I went to the telephone and I called Grumpy because I wanted him to see what I had done. And, you know, in shoveling through all that mess, I found a half a gallon of wine and when Grumpy got there, I was drunk too. And that's what soul savers do. We better knock them off bars too, see. Like one old fella said to me one night, I guess, gotta quit drinking, gotta quit drinking, you're gonna die.
He said, Tom, shut up, I don't want to quit drinking. I said to the bartender, give me a six-pack of slicks. If you can't beat them, join them. I'll show you, I'll kill me. Seven years. And Grumpy, Grumpy slept there on Tuesday night and Grumpy would rattle his chains and pull his nose and run his hand through his hair. And rattle his chains and pull his nose and run his hand through his hair. And say the same thing every Tuesday night.
Man's been sober 26 years, man. I couldn't understand that man with all my know-how and intelligence and all my book learning and all of my logic and my reason and all of my approval. Why could he do it and I couldn't? I hate that man's guts, I didn't do nothing.
[00:40:03]
And I'd go out and get drunk. As long as I wasn't drunk, I'd make him talk. I'd make him talk so hard over I couldn't even, you know, hold over to the poet. And people were strange, you know. They'd always look at me with a faraway look in their eyes. Like they were saying to me the same thing Grumpy was saying about two ears and one mouth. And they loved me. The ladies loved me and the men loved me and all of them told me I was too young and handsome to be an alcoholic.
Don't you believe it? Some of us can get sick real, real quick. Since my drunken driving should have told me all this, I was one of the best drivers you ever saw when I was drunk. I could drive the straightest way I knew ever saw. I couldn't turn a curve. Every wreck I ever had was on a curve. Going straight. I ended up in front yard, telephone post, March 11th, 1964. We were living in Kentucky. I was traveling in Wheeling, West Virginia, and I drove straight under the trailer of a tractor trailer.
And I almost hid myself in there. I was three months in traction. My face was torn all up again. I got medically addicted to morphine. I lost from 225 to 140 pounds. I couldn't walk. I came out. I came back to Lexington and found me a doctor who started me on Percodan, which was supposed to be a strong aspirin. It is not. And I knew it was the first one I ever took because I followed it with a second and a third.
It made me feel good. And I drank because I wanted to feel good. And anything that makes me feel good, I'm going to stick with. And that's one reason I stick with Alcoholics Anonymous. It feels good. And I got on Percodan and Sequinel. And the first thing, when I was able to walk again, I got in my car and I went out and got drunk. Only this time, it was the booze and the Sequinel and the Percodan.
Talk to me about alcoholic. God, I shudder to think about it. Seven years in Alcoholics Anonymous. An utter failure. And I hated me more. There's a story told about these two identical twin boys that were like in every way except one boy was the eternal optimist and the other was the eternal pessimist. And their parents became concerned about these differences and took them to a world famous psychiatrist and said, please try to find out what it is about these boys that makes them so different.
And he said, okay, leave them with me for a week. I'll test them and everything. And he took the little pessimist and he put him in a room filled with every kind of toy that a little boy could ever want. There were balls and bats and horses and trains and cars and everything he could want. And he locked the kid up in the room and left him. He took the little optimist down the hall and he put him in a room that was filled this deep with horse manure.
And he locked him in. One week later, he came back to that room where he left the little pessimist with the toys and he heard all this weeping and wailing. Weeping and wailing. He ran to the door. He opened it up. And there sits a little boy in the midst of every toy he could need to make him happy. And he said, what's wrong, son? He said, it's a nice rocky horse, but you have to rock it to make it go.
He said, it's a nice electric train, but you have to plug it in. And he said, I love that little truck, but you have to wind it up or it won't do anything. And he kept crying. And the psychiatrist threw up his hands and ran down the hallway where he left that little boy with the horse manure. And when he approached that room, he heard the darndest shuffling he'd ever heard in his life. He threw the door open and the little boy is standing there and he's throwing it right and left.
He said, son, what are you doing? He said, man, with all this here, there's bound to be a pony somewhere and I'm going to find it. Now, for seven years in Alcoholics Anonymous, I sat smack in the middle of every tool I could need to stay sober for good. And I cried because you had to plug it in or wind it up or rock it to make it go. And the difference with me today is there's a pony here somewhere and I am finding it.
Alcoholics Anonymous is a program of action. And that's what I didn't know. I kept drinking until I was 30. And I came to a place that we all know. It's called Bonham. A Place Called Bottom Bottom is where you can't lie to yourself anymore, you can lie to other people, but not to you.
[00:45:01]
Bottom is the place where you know all the stops are out, that everything is gone, that everything is hopeless, that you're going to die, and there's no way you can change it. But like I heard a lady from Georgia say once, don't forget, that where your rope runs out, God's rope begins. And so Bottom for me was a wonderful place. Joe Grumpy did a horrible thing to me before I left Alcoholics Anonymous.
I called him one night drunk. I was one of those test pattern drunk. When the test pattern went out on TV, I started calling and crying, oh me, what am I going to do after I was drunk? And Grumpy lit into me, boy, he said, don't you ever call me when you're drunk again. As a matter of fact, don't you ever call me again. If you want to get sober, you know where we meet, and don't call me to come get you. Frankly, he said, I don't care if you ever get sober or not.
Boy, that's what you call AA old-timer non-electric shock treatment. Right? God bless the old-timers. God bless the old-timers who grab me today and slap me up against the wall and say, hey boy, who do you think you are? Wake up. You haven't got the program knocked. Let me tell you a few things. Boy, now listen. You know how I got back there? I walked. I was on five years probation with a two-year active prison sentence hanging over my head. I had just gone to work at the college and I was still drunk. And I had absolutely no hope of ever stopping and saying stop.
You see, I was one of those people, quote, who had tried AA, end of quote. Tried as hell. It never sunk any further than right here. That's the reason I couldn't stay sober. I went in that meeting. I sat on the back row and I left early. I knew it was my only hope. I met a man there, a woman named Harry B. And I liked him. I'll be honest with you, you know what I liked most about him? He smoked $2 cigars. And he wore tailor-made clothes like I had always wanted. And he was obviously wealthy. And he was a lawyer. And he drove a company. But what I really liked about him more than anything else was his eyes.
I liked what was happening in his eyes. Lots of drunks come into Alcoholics Anonymous and watch their eyes. If you want to see life begin and flower and rebirth, visible rebirth, look at a drunk's eyes while he's sobering up and you will see it. I looked over at his eyes and I said, hey, will you sponsor me? Sitting over in his den and I'll never forget. You know what he did? Clamped his pointed finger at me. He said, boy, I have heard about you.
He said, they say you're crazy. They say if you come my way for me to go the other way. But he said, I'll help you on one condition. I said, what's that? He said, we do it my way. And I said, what's your way? And he held up that book. He said, this way right here. Okay. He said, first thing I want you to do is get to meetings early. I want you to go in and shake everybody's hand and ask them how to do it.
I said, I don't want to get there early. And I don't give a damn how to do it. I said, why should I do that, Harry? And this started a whole string of why, you know? And he had one answer for me. Don't ask me why, just do it. And I started doing it. Let me tell you something, I'll never forget this. You know, when I first started shaking hands, I was seeing shoe tops. And then my eyes started to raise a little bit and I saw some shins and some knees and some thigh bones and some hips and some waist. And finally, I was able to look those people in the eye and honestly say, I am glad to see you. How are you doing?
I didn't care if I had eight zillion pimples on my face or anything else. I was no longer afraid because I could look you eyeball to eyeball, something I hadn't been able to do in 30 solid years just because I did what my sponsor told me to do. And 12-step work, you talk about 12-step work, he'd like to run me to death. He'd take me on 12-step calls, but there was one qualification. I went in on the first one. I said, Harry, what do I say?
[00:50:03]
He said, you don't know nothing. You don't say nothing. You sit down and shut the hell up. Now, that hurt my ego, but I knew he was right. He started letting me talk a little bit and he'd sit back there and smoke that big cigar. And when I said enough, he'd cut me off. If I said something wrong, he'd shake his head. And why is it that people like Harry, a real strong-ass sponsor, are the type of people that drive big cars, smoke cigars, have one arm over the back of the seat, drive 85 miles an hour, turn towards you, and talk to me?
You know, in the old days, Grumpy was like that. They don't get you sober, it's gay to death. And I started getting sober. And the people knew how long it had took me to get a red chip. In the night, I picked up my red chip. You'd thought I'd been sober 30 years. They called Grumpy and said, hey, Tom's been sober three months. He said, you're damn right. Harry said, yes, he has. He wants you to come down. He said, I'm in my bed and I'm sick, but I'd go to West Hell to see that.
And he came. And I said, man, I'd hate it so much if I had to pay him a penny for every time I caught him, I'd owe him for the rest of my life and I wouldn't anyway. I'd love him to death. People call me hard-nosed AA now. Because I don't take much blow, and I tell it like it is when I'm working with an alcoholic. You know why? It's not something that I just had in me, it's something I learned from my sponsors, and I learned it from Grumpy, and I learned it daily from old-timers. God bless them. I got sober. Well, I didn't think I was going to stay sober.
Neither did my wife, by the way. I mean, I was a loser. You know, they made bets on me. They bet Harry he'd never keep me sober a year. He collected. And you know, I didn't remember when the last drink was because I didn't think it was going to be the last one. So, I picked a date in July, which I knew was far enough along. I picked July 20th. Okay. You ever heard the statement, God takes care of drunks and fools, right? I got a double indemnity fine. Now, on my year's birthday, I had the exhilarating experience of lying in on the bed, giggling, while my wife and my sponsor argued about who was going to give me my birthday party.
Now, how's this for a drunk? People arguing over it now. And that night was my night. Would you believe I was waiting for that spotlight? And they called out that one-year tip and the place went wild. And I strutted up there and I picked up my one-year tip. And I went back and said, Al, and you know, they kept counting. Do you know how long they counted? To 25 years. And a nice, quiet, little old gray-haired man that I had never noticed, but who was there all the time, came forward and picked up a 25-year chip. I had picked his birthday.
I call him my pigeon now. I say, Pidge, if you keep on doing what I tell you, you'll be okay. Unless you lie, he'll pick up a 34-year chip. The most beautiful human being that I know. He's quiet. He's simple. He's not flashy. He is anonymous. He does good things for people, and he doesn't have to tell anybody about it. It's enough just to be able to do it. It's enough just to be able to do it. I wonder back and I think back. When I hit bottom, what happened to me? What happened? And I know now. I know courtesy of my little boy, Jason, the first AA baby, who, by the way, I'm going to tell you, was a prayer baby.
We had one kid and we tried to have another and couldn't. And we finally had exhausted all means and we prayed. And we did other things, too. But before you know it, Donald was pregnant, and here came Jason. And Jason is a special kid. When I bring a crowd of drunk soldiers to the house, do you know who he goes straight to? The sickest one, the woman shaker. Jump up on his lap, hug his neck, kiss him, say, I'm Jason. Who are you? I love you. He's a loving kid. Well, you've heard of armchair philosophers.
Jason's a potty chair philosopher. When he's growing up, he sat on his potty chair. He wants somebody to talk to. And he's about 100, four or five years old one night. I'm sitting in there
[00:55:02]
with him and he's philosophizing away, you know. And he got real quiet. And all of a sudden, he looked up at me and these were his words. Dad, Jesus turns the power on. His words. And I said, oh, did mama tell you that? No, sir. Did you learn what your son just did? No, sir. Well, how do you know that? He said, it's simple. I just know. That's why. And I look back at my bottom and I look at every human being's bottom on the face of this earth.
Every human being, be he alcoholic or not, when he reaches that crisis point where all the stops are out, everything is beyond human control, we will say the equivalent, I'll lay a hundred to one on. Our three words, God help me. Why? Because we just know. That's why. It's built in. It's automatic. We don't have to think. It just comes. The big book says deep down inside every man, woman, and child is the fundamental idea of God.
We just know. That's why. Nathan's laid a lot of heavies on me in this program. I've had pigeons that have laid a lot of heavies on me. I learned more when I started sponsoring people than I'd ever learned before. I love sponsorship. I'd rather do that than anything that I know of because it's a great learning experience for me to find out once more that I just don't know all the answers. As a matter of fact, I know very few. I've been an alcoholic synonymous, what, nine and a half years?
I'm reasonably happy. I got my driver's license back. The judge didn't believe I was sober either, but when they went and told him I was sober, he said, if he is, I'll give his license back. And he gave it back. I started as an instructor at the college and now I'm in administration. I make good money. I have a nice home. We have three nice kids. I have friends all over the United States and Canada, courtesy of Alcoholics Anonymous. I've been all over the place.
And you know why? Because I found the secret to getting loose and being free. Let God be the principal, the big book says. And you be the agent. Hereafter in this drama of life, he's the director, we're the actors. He's the father and we're the children. And it says most good ideas are simple. And this idea, namely that he's the father and we're the kids, is the keystone of the arch through which we pass to freedom. Freedom. We have nothing left to lose. We don't have to control. We just have to be.
Heard old Baptist preacher say last Sunday morning on the car radio. He says, for God's sake, be what you are and not what you ain't. Because if you ain't what you are, then you are what you ain't. I got to tell Grumpy that one. He'll appreciate that. And you know, the world around me hasn't changed that much. People are still doing the same things that people do. I'm surrounded by booze. I don't need it. I'm surrounded by strife on all sides and there are days it doesn't bother me.
What has changed? What's it got to be? Me. But I'm without power to change. But there is one who has all power, that one is God. And I suppose I've found that I no longer deliver theological dissertations. God can have his mysteries as long as he continues to change my life. I'm satisfied. I agree with Martin Buber now that God is meant to be talked to, not talked about. He's not something that I have to dichotomize and say his mercy's here and his love's here and his justice is here. God is God and God is one and I'll never understand him. But I can relate to him and I can feel him. Feel him! Working in me. Not a mind trick.
No way. Thank God! There's a story told about a man and his little boy. You probably heard it. and his little boy. You've probably heard it before. I picked it up in AA. And every day the man would come home from work and meet his little boy at the gate and they would play. They'd have the best time every afternoon you ever saw. And one day he came
[01:00:00]
home and he had a bundle of work to do. And the little boy met him at the gate and said, let's play. And he was trying to think of some way, you know, to get out of it for a few minutes because he had all this work to do. And as he went in the house, he saw a map of the world laying on a table beside the door. And he took the map and tore it up into hundreds of pieces. He gave it to his little boy and said, here, you go put this together. And when you do, come back and we'll play. Congratulating himself, he sat down, pulled out his papers, started to work. About 10 minutes later, the little boy came in, held up the map, said, OK, let's play. He said, son, how in the world did you do that? He said, Dad, what you didn't know is on the other side of this map is a picture of a man. And all I had to do was put the man back together and the whole world fell into place. Right on.
I haven't got this program left up. And they will have. I used to think rebirth was the end. But rebirth is the beginning. I have been given my life back. God has given me the ball again and said, like Grumpy, OK, boy, see what you can do with it this time. You do the footwork, I'll provide the knowledge of my will and the power to carry it out. And as long as you do my will the best that you can, not perfect, Tom, but the best that you can, you're going to be a sober man. And I believe it. And I buy it. Hook, line, and sinker. You're going to read something good tonight when you go back to your airfield room here, pull out the Gideon Bible and turn to Psalm 116 and read it real slow. The Alcoholics Psalm, as far as I'm concerned. It's a beauty.
I don't know what I've said tonight. I don't know if it helps anybody, but I feel better. I hadn't thought about going to the bathroom for a long time now. But I'm beginning to think about it. There are parts of me that are very time oriented, you know. Let me leave you with my favorite of all favorites. Hope. It was battered and worn, and the auctioneer thought it scarcely worth his while to waste much time on the old violin, but he held it up with a smile. What am I bidding, good folk, he cried.
Who starts the bidding for me? A dollar, two dollars, and we'll make it three. Going for three, but no. From the back of the room a gray-haired man came forward and picked up the bow and wiping the dust from the old violin and tightening up all the strings. He played a melody, soft and sweet, as sweet as an angel's hand. And the music stopped, and the auctioneer in a voice, now soft and low, said what am I bidding for this old violin, and he held it up with the bow.
One thousand dollars and we'll make it two. Two thousand and we'll make it three. Three thousand once, three thousand twice, and going and gone, said he. And the people cheered, but some of them said, I just don't understand. What changed its worth? And the man replied, the touch of the master's hand. And many a person with life out of tune and battered and torn within is auctioned cheap to a thoughtless crowd, much like the old violin. A mess of pottage, a glass of wine, a game, and we travel on. We're going once, he's going twice, he's going and almost gone, but the master comes. And the foolish crowd will never quite understand the worth of a soul and the tunes that's wrought by the touch of the master's hand.
I'm reborn. I'm growing. I'm moving. I like me. And I did not do it because I don't have the power, but God does. And may God bless you and keep you. I love you. Thank you.