An alcoholic. Hi. I’m getting old enough now I started doing what my babies tell me to do. Banner month, January, in Alcoholics Anonymous. Have you noticed? Sure you get a lot of new people in January. Keep coming back. Uh, I’m an alcoholic. I, I’m a pedigree alcoholic. I have papers here. I- If you’re new, you don’t need papers, but I, I found it helps ease me into my story here. So if you’ll indulge me a little bit, I’d like to read you a little bit of this. It’s from the Philadelphia General Hospital alcoholic ward. It had my name on them and dated July 1st, 1955. Here’s some of what it says. “This is the first Philly General Hospital admission of this twenty-three-year-old man in an acute alcoholic state.” So right away you know I wasn’t always this old. “He was to the clinic last evening where he was seen by the doctor who recommended inpatient today. He has a heavy odor of alcohol about him.” Huh.

“He had a drink this morning.” “His present drinking episode began about three weeks ago, having consumed large quantities of wine, whiskey, and beer, but prior to that, he states that his pattern was that of a weekender.” “He usually worked. He feels that his drinking has gotten to be a problem since about a year ago and admits to blackouts. And yesterday, for the first time, he saw a peanut jumping around in a glass container.” I only admitted to one peanut. You should have seen all them lousy- “Hostile red pistachio nuts were chasing me.” “And I admitted to one peanut. This seems to worry him.” If I’d have told them what I saw, it’d worry them too. “1951, he was undesirably discharged from the Air Force after having been drunk and stolen a car during a weekend drinking spree.

His present drinking bouts have been exemplified by belligerence, numerous fights and arguments with drinking associates, which has frequently landed him in the clink.” That’s what they call jail in Philadelphia. Here’s my entire drinking story in this next line from the day I took my first drink to the day I took my last. “He is entirely unfamiliar with the dictates of alcoholism. He therefore is not aware that he is an alcoholic.” Hey, a lot of you guys knew what you were when you got here. I didn’t have a, I didn’t have a clue. But I’d like to tell you about that undesirable discharge. It’s the most expensive drunk I have ever been on in my life, and the alcohol was free. I didn’t spend a dime per drink, yet it turned out to be the most expensive drunk I have ever been on. I was in the Air Force. I was at the engineer school in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, right outside of Washington, D.C. Uh, uh, I was ironing shirts in the barracks.