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[00:00:00.320 – 00:00:07.200] Let’s open this meeting with a moment of silent meditation, followed by praying together the Serenity Prayer.

[00:00:07.200 – 00:00:17.320] God,

[00:00:17.320 – 00:00:27.340] grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and

[00:00:27.340 – 00:00:29.040] the wisdom to know the difference.

[00:00:29.040 – 00:00:30.060] Amen.

[00:00:30.060 – 00:00:32.110] Amen.

[00:00:32.110 – 00:00:42.260] Dupree took up all my time, and, uh, well,

[00:00:42.260 – 00:00:46.220] he didn’t take quite all of it.

[00:00:46.220 – 00:00:56.440] And this is a great privilege for me to be chairman tonight, and I’ve got to tell you a little bit why.

[00:00:56.440 – 00:00:59.840] I’m a transplant in South Carolina.

[00:00:59.840 – 00:01:04.040] My home is in Egypt, Effingham County, Georgia.

[00:01:04.040 – 00:01:07.100] Now, Savannah is a suburb.

[00:01:07.100 – 00:01:14.360] And it’s 18 miles as the crow flies from Egypt to Statesboro, Georgia.

[00:01:14.360 – 00:01:24.500] And our speaker, the first I remember hearing of our speaker was

[00:01:24.500 – 00:01:28.440] about a drunken doctor in Statesboro, Georgia.

[00:01:28.440 – 00:01:34.040] And apparently this was a rather…

[00:01:34.040 – 00:01:41.400] They had two or three doctors in town, and this created quite a sensation.

[00:01:41.400 – 00:01:44.940] It was the talk of the community.

[00:01:44.940 – 00:01:56.700] And, uh, I had been associated with the fellowship for a short period of time, and

[00:01:56.700 – 00:02:02.740] my wife was from Statesboro, Georgia, and she knew this individual.

[00:02:02.740 – 00:02:07.380] So all kind of things happened.

[00:02:07.380 – 00:02:09.400] I’m not gonna tell his story.

[00:02:09.400 – 00:02:19.000] But finally, Alcoholics Anonymous was for him.

[00:02:19.000 – 00:02:31.400] And through this fellowship, like so many good things happen to so many good people, I

[00:02:31.400 – 00:02:32.840] met this doctor.

[00:02:32.840 – 00:02:43.600] We became very, very, and I mean very close friends, the four of us, John

[00:02:43.600 – 00:02:45.540] and Dot, me and Louise.

[00:02:45.540 – 00:02:51.619] I was living in Savannah at that time, 50 miles from Statesboro.

[00:02:51.619 – 00:03:00.400] And this is the type of AA that we practiced together.

[00:03:00.400 – 00:03:06.609] We’d drive to Statesboro every Saturday night to the AA meeting.

[00:03:06.609 – 00:03:12.120] After the AA meeting, we’d go to John and Dot’s house.

[00:03:12.120 – 00:03:22.420] We would sit there, and when the sun came up Sunday morning, we were still talking AA.

[00:03:22.420 – 00:03:26.440] Now, this didn’t happen one weekend.

[00:03:26.440 – 00:03:29.320] This was an every weekend occasion.

[00:03:29.320 – 00:03:35.620] And at this particular time, Dupree’s lovely wife wasn’t married to Dupree.

[00:03:35.620 – 00:03:43.340] She was married to an individual who was a member of the fellowship.

[00:03:43.340 – 00:03:48.120] And if we weren’t at John and Dot’s, we’d probably be at their house.

[00:03:48.120 – 00:03:52.340] This is the type of AA that we had in that community.

[00:03:52.340 – 00:03:58.280] And John and Dot, Louise and I became very close.

[00:03:58.280 – 00:04:08.420] So it does me a tremendous amount of good, and my heart is

[00:04:08.420 – 00:04:09.760] filled with gratitude.

[00:04:09.760 – 00:04:14.820] My heart is filled with love because AA is my life.

[00:04:14.820 – 00:04:20.000] AA did save my life, and this man played a part in it.

[00:04:20.000 – 00:04:31.440] And in addition to that, I’ve got my sponsor here tonight, too, the man that got me by the coattail in Savannah and said, “Come on up them steps,” 27

[00:04:31.440 – 00:04:32.300] years ago.

[00:04:32.300 – 00:04:42.880] This is the beauty of this thing we call the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous,

[00:04:42.880 – 00:04:47.060] in which Bill Wilson tagged the language of the heart.

[00:04:47.060 – 00:04:50.180] And to, to me, this is what it is.

[00:04:50.180 – 00:04:54.380] And I now give to you my good friend, John M.

[00:04:54.380 – 00:05:04.820] My

[00:05:04.820 – 00:05:06.840] name is John Mooney, and I’m an alcoholic.

[00:05:06.840 – 00:05:08.270] Hi, John.

[00:05:08.270 – 00:05:08.840] Hi, everybody.

[00:05:08.840 – 00:05:12.500] I, I’m grateful for the chance to be here.

[00:05:12.500 – 00:05:18.380] I was here five years ago down at the Landmark Hotel.

[00:05:18.380 – 00:05:24.980] And, uh, I was concerned a few minutes ago with Corneal.

[00:05:24.980 – 00:05:26.080] I said, “Corneal, you know what?

[00:05:26.080 – 00:05:36.080] I wonder if they’ll remember those jokes I told five years ago, ’cause I haven’t gotten any new ones.” But when all the new people started standing up, I, I figured there, there’s probably a whole lot of

[00:05:36.080 – 00:05:39.560] people that never heard of me sitting in this room tonight.

[00:05:39.560 – 00:05:44.340] And I’m sure there are a lot that have never heard my, heard me talk before.

[00:05:44.340 – 00:05:54.220] And since I’m, uh, belong to the old style of AA, old class of AAs that tells a story, and I would feel better if there’s somebody here who hasn’t heard it.

[00:05:54.220 – 00:05:58.560] Will everybody who’s never heard me talk or heard one of my tapes, raise your hand.

[00:05:58.560 – 00:06:00.720] How about that?

[00:06:00.720 – 00:06:02.060] Thank you very much.

[00:06:02.060 – 00:06:08.200] I can talk freely without any fear of re- being repetitive with a rather large group of people.

[00:06:08.200 – 00:06:18.572] Um, I came up here to get, uh, to, to stay sober, to get a little deeper in my sobriety.

[00:06:18.572 – 00:06:28.672] I’m a professional who works with alcoholics, and I consider this hazardous to sobriety and trying to help other people with their

[00:06:28.672 – 00:06:29.092] problems.

[00:06:29.092 – 00:06:39.152] Therefore, I’m grateful for the chance when I can come out to a group of people in AA and spit out all this garbage and let you kind of nurse me

[00:06:39.152 – 00:06:42.072] and help me back to some stability in my life.

[00:06:42.072 – 00:06:45.571] And I need this periodically, and I need it this weekend.

[00:06:45.571 – 00:06:52.172] We were out on the West Coast all, uh, for two weeks now on things that were not AA.

[00:06:52.172 – 00:06:54.932] We went to some AA meetings out there, but it was other things.

[00:06:54.932 – 00:07:04.932] And I was almost panicky, really, in getting over here to Myrtle Beach where I could kind of settle down and be myself and be with you people that, that mean

[00:07:04.932 – 00:07:05.632] so much to me.

[00:07:05.632 – 00:07:15.712] So I’m grateful for the chance to be here, and I want to thank the committee, the board, Thornhill and Dupree, and all the others that give Dot and me a chance to be

[00:07:15.712 – 00:07:19.232] at this thing and to experience this weekend.

[00:07:19.232 – 00:07:22.972] I’m having trouble with responsibility.

[00:07:22.972 – 00:07:25.582] And, uh, I, um…

[00:07:25.582 – 00:07:30.572] Uh, they know this, so they assigned me this weekend two simple tasks.

[00:07:30.572 – 00:07:33.912] They says, “Now, there are two things we want you to do.

[00:07:33.912 – 00:07:44.032] We want you to be there Saturday night at 8:00, and you are not to be late.” And another thing they assigned me to do was to

[00:07:44.032 – 00:07:50.352] take Tony and Helen, who talked to you this morning, to a restaurant and be there at exactly 6:00.

[00:07:50.352 – 00:07:59.392] And they said, “The restaurant’s out of town, so you better plan this thing.” So after lunch, I went out and I located the restaurant, and I did a dry run.

[00:07:59.392 – 00:08:06.692] I took my car, and I measured the distance from the re- restaurant to the, to the Driftwood Motel where we’re staying.

[00:08:06.692 – 00:08:08.592] It’s nine and four-tenths miles.

[00:08:08.592 – 00:08:14.272] I estimated the time, and then I measured the time, and it took 18 minutes to make this trip.

[00:08:14.272 – 00:08:24.332] So I say, “If I have these people meet me at 5:30 at the Driftwood, and then if we waste five minutes getting in the car, and with

[00:08:24.332 – 00:08:34.392] the usual, you know, pouring the coffee cups out and shaking hands and congratulating each other on how well they’re looking and things like that, that we should make it about three

[00:08:34.392 – 00:08:37.692] or four minutes before 6:00.” And I was on schedule.

[00:08:37.692 – 00:08:46.312] And then as we got to riding down up north on 17, Tony and I got to talking about some experiences, and we got to talking.

[00:08:46.312 – 00:08:55.852] And finally, I looked down at my speedometer, and I says, “Tony, what’s, uh, 49 plus, uh…” And I named off the…

[00:08:55.852 – 00:09:05.972] He says, “24.” I says, “Well, if it’s nine and four-tenths miles from the, from this restaurant to the, to the Driftwood Motel,

[00:09:05.972 – 00:09:16.292] then it ought to be 18 and eight-tenths miles for a round trip, and we have come 26 miles.” “So that, we have, we have gone six miles beyond

[00:09:16.292 – 00:09:24.492] this place.” But I said, “I think I can still make it.” So I turned around and I went back, and I went as fast as I could, but I got there five minutes late.

[00:09:24.492 – 00:09:28.652] But I’d like to report that I reached this place 10 minutes ahead of time.

[00:09:28.652 – 00:09:30.882] So, see, I’m, I’m doing better.

[00:09:30.882 – 00:09:33.392] I’m not as bad as I …

[00:09:33.392 – 00:09:38.272] That’s leading up to another thing I’m going to explain to you.

[00:09:38.272 – 00:09:43.332] Now, on Friday night, of course, I’m in a, I’m in a mess here with these talks.

[00:09:43.332 – 00:09:53.372] Uh, that remind me of a little story I heard one time, a long time ago, and I told this story to some, but I feel real, real conscious of this thing tonight, and I’d like

[00:09:53.372 – 00:09:53.952] to repeat it.

[00:09:53.952 – 00:09:57.132] Whether it’s an old story, whether you like it or not, it’ll make me feel better to tell it.

[00:09:57.132 – 00:10:06.012] After hearing those talks on Thursday and Friday night, and then that program this morning, uh, I feel like this, this boy on the football team.

[00:10:06.012 – 00:10:16.072] These two colleges were having a little, a little high school co- uh, teams, however, rather than colleges, were having this rivalry, intense

[00:10:16.072 – 00:10:17.492] rivalry about football.

[00:10:17.492 – 00:10:21.432] And this particular season, they’d played two or three times, and nobody had won a game.

[00:10:21.432 – 00:10:28.512] And on the last game, one team had the ball first down on the two-yard line of the other team.

[00:10:28.512 – 00:10:31.412] Only a few minutes to play.

[00:10:31.412 – 00:10:35.712] And the quar- the coach, uh, hollered out to the quarterback.

[00:10:35.712 – 00:10:45.772] He says, “Give the ball to Calhoun.” The quarterback ignored him, and somebody else carried the ball, and they made about a yard, and it was second down, two yards to go to

[00:10:45.772 – 00:10:46.832] score.

[00:10:46.832 – 00:10:48.492] And the coach was a little more emphatic.

[00:10:48.492 – 00:10:53.212] He says, “Give that ball to Calhoun.” And they ignored him.

[00:10:53.212 – 00:10:55.552] Somebody else carried the ball.

[00:10:55.552 – 00:10:57.832] They made about a yard, and it was third down.

[00:10:57.832 – 00:11:03.692] And the coach was getting a little bit excited, and he, he got up out of his chair and he walked down to ye- the, the line.

[00:11:03.692 – 00:11:10.252] He said, “Hey,” he says, “Give that ball to Calhoun.” And they ignored him still, and they didn’t make the touchdown.

[00:11:10.252 – 00:11:13.272] And it was fourth down and a yard to go.

[00:11:13.272 – 00:11:16.132] And the coach was beside himself, and he leaned up.

[00:11:16.132 – 00:11:26.912] He says, “Give that ball to Calhoun.” And the quarterback turned around and says, “Calhoun don’t want the damn ball.” That’s

[00:11:26.912 – 00:11:28.612] about the way I feel now, you know?

[00:11:28.612 – 00:11:33.292] I’d rather sit down there and listen to somebody else talk, but I’m up here and you go at, you’re stuck with me.

[00:11:33.292 – 00:11:38.932] Now, I’d like to explain something else about the scientific nature of this meeting that needs to be explained.

[00:11:38.932 – 00:11:41.452] You heard it was decided very carefully.

[00:11:41.452 – 00:11:51.492] You heard the first night on, rather, last night, Friday, you heard, uh, a talk by a gentleman who was brilliant but who was uneducated, and he wound up in

[00:11:51.492 – 00:11:51.612] AA.

[00:11:51.612 – 00:11:55.732] Highly, uh, intelligent and uneducated.

[00:11:55.732 – 00:12:03.332] And this morning you heard a talk by some people that were brilliant and were also educated.

[00:12:03.332 – 00:12:09.092] I represent a third group of people who are educated beyond their intelligence.

[00:12:09.092 – 00:12:14.016] And some of the- And this is what I have to share with you tonight.

[00:12:14.016 – 00:12:19.136] You can, you can see I’ve got, I got a lot of college degrees, whatever that means.

[00:12:19.136 – 00:12:24.676] But I sure ain’t very smart or I wouldn’t have wound up in the fix I did after 30 years of drinking.

[00:12:24.676 – 00:12:28.416] I’m a alcoholic.

[00:12:28.416 – 00:12:30.016] I’m an addict.

[00:12:30.016 – 00:12:34.516] I, I get hooked on an empty capsule if you told me it’d make me feel better.

[00:12:34.516 – 00:12:37.196] There just isn’t any, any doubt about it.

[00:12:37.196 – 00:12:46.016] I became completely, uh, well, I qualified under this new term that we have, hear used all the time now called the chemically dependent.

[00:12:46.016 – 00:12:50.676] And if that’s what it was, I call them dope fiends, is what they told me I was.

[00:12:50.676 – 00:12:54.656] But nevertheless, that’s, uh, sounds a little more, you know, maybe a little more euphemistic.

[00:12:54.656 – 00:12:56.296] But that’s what I am.

[00:12:56.296 – 00:13:05.756] You read the articles and you’ll see at the beginning of an article often a little synopsis, a few sentences, uh, maybe one or two sentences explains what’s in it.

[00:13:05.756 – 00:13:16.056] And I’ve got a little story that I can tell you that’ll kind of explain who I am and, uh, tell you in a short, uh, uh, sentence there, a short joke story,

[00:13:16.056 – 00:13:20.216] um, a kind of a synopsis of my story of alcoholism.

[00:13:20.216 – 00:13:30.316] There was a guy who was losing his hair, and he had lost it, and he’d lost his hair, and he kept losing it, and finally he had just one hair left

[00:13:30.316 – 00:13:31.376] in the top of his head.

[00:13:31.376 – 00:13:40.836] And he became real, real an- anxious about this hair, and he started taking care of it, and he would, he would massage the scalp around it.

[00:13:40.836 – 00:13:47.576] And when he went out in the morning, he would curl it up and pat it down with a little grease, and he’d wear a hat, and he wouldn’t even let the wind blow it.

[00:13:47.576 – 00:13:50.716] And he’d come in at night and he would massage the scalp again.

[00:13:50.716 – 00:13:52.356] He would stretch the hair out.

[00:13:52.356 – 00:13:56.716] He would massage around it, and then he would pat it down and put something over it and go to bed.

[00:13:56.716 – 00:14:03.416] And in the morning, the first thing he did was get up and go in the bathroom and look in the mirror to see if his hair was still there.

[00:14:03.416 – 00:14:05.896] And one morning, the inevitable happened.

[00:14:05.896 – 00:14:07.856] He woke up and there was a hair on the pillow.

[00:14:07.856 – 00:14:11.716] And he picked it up and he looked at it, and he went in the bathroom.

[00:14:11.716 – 00:14:21.775] He looked at his head, and he looked at the hair, and he says, “My God, I’m bald.” I heard

[00:14:21.775 – 00:14:22.106] Chuck C.

[00:14:22.106 – 00:14:32.496] say one time that there are two classes of people who get into AA: those who, uh, who run out of places and things, and those who recognize

[00:14:32.496 – 00:14:34.816] the nature of the illness before it reaches that point.

[00:14:34.816 – 00:14:38.156] Well, I’m one of those that ran out of places and things.

[00:14:38.156 – 00:14:46.596] I didn’t see my alcoholism until the last hair was gone, until there wasn’t any doubt in anybody’s mind or my mind that that’s what it was.

[00:14:46.596 – 00:14:54.476] That’s what it took to break through what we call this denial mechanism that’s talked about so much, and I had a bad, bad case of it.

[00:14:54.476 – 00:14:57.576] It was a bad attitude.

[00:14:57.576 – 00:15:01.836] And I have a little story about attitudes I want to tell you.

[00:15:01.836 – 00:15:06.556] I’ve told this before, but somehow there, it seems like it’s a good time to tell it again.

[00:15:06.556 – 00:15:16.676] There were three girls who had applied for a job as airline hostess, and they had passed well until, uh, it was down

[00:15:16.676 – 00:15:24.796] to three of them, and they had a little question about, a proposition about the, their relationship to men that they wanted to, to find out about.

[00:15:24.796 – 00:15:27.856] So they confronted them, each one, with a situation with a problem.

[00:15:27.856 – 00:15:31.656] They called them in separately, and here’s the situation and problem.

[00:15:31.656 – 00:15:34.576] They said, uh, “You’re on this airliner.

[00:15:34.576 – 00:15:40.336] It’s a transoceanic ship, and it gets in trouble, and it ditches in the middle of the ocean.

[00:15:40.336 – 00:15:50.336] And after all of the initial fright is over, you discover that you’re the sole survivor, and that you’re on this life raft, and there’s nobody there but you.

[00:15:50.336 – 00:15:55.876] And, and you’re frightened, and you’re, and you’re scared, you’re really, and you, you don’t see any hope.

[00:15:55.876 – 00:16:02.436] And, and, uh, when you’re about to give up hope and realize that you can’t be saved, you see in the distance what appears to be land.

[00:16:02.436 – 00:16:06.156] And as you drift closer, you see that this is indeed land.

[00:16:06.156 – 00:16:09.536] And as you drift still closer, you see that this is an island.

[00:16:09.536 – 00:16:17.396] And as the current carries you up toward the island, you see that on this island are 25 US Marines that haven’t seen a girl in over a year.

[00:16:17.396 – 00:16:21.196] What would you do?” Well, the first girl says, “No problem.

[00:16:21.196 – 00:16:23.996] Uh, islands occur in chains.

[00:16:23.996 – 00:16:25.436] Life rafts have paddles.

[00:16:25.436 – 00:16:35.636] I’d just paddle till I found me another island.” Called the second girl in, “What would you do?” She says, “No problem.” Says, “I would have my handbag with me, and in my handbag, I carry a little gun, a revolver,

[00:16:35.636 – 00:16:41.016] and I would consider this adequate protection.” Called the th- third girl in and said, “You have heard the situation.

[00:16:41.016 – 00:16:50.176] How would you solve the problem?” Says, “I’ve heard the situation, but what’s the problem?” That’s the…

[00:16:50.176 – 00:16:53.856] I had, I had an attitude that was mixed up.

[00:16:53.856 – 00:17:03.936] I was kind of like the, back in, during the early years of the war, my father, who was, uh, who followed the World War II while I was overseas and wrote me encouraging letters,

[00:17:03.936 – 00:17:06.156] wrote me a letter one time.

[00:17:06.156 – 00:17:12.606] It contained a joke, and I didn’t think about this joke a lot until after I got sober in AA, and then it has real meaning for me now.

[00:17:12.606 – 00:17:15.976] But he was writ- telling about another boy that was overseas.

[00:17:15.976 – 00:17:26.356] This young man was overseas, and he wrote his daddy a letter and said, “Dear Daddy, I can’t tell where you am, where I am, but I shot a polar bear yesterday.” And a few weeks later, he got another

[00:17:26.356 – 00:17:36.516] letter from his son, and he says, “Dear Daddy, I can’t tell you where I am, but I’ve been transferred, and I danced with a hula girl yesterday.” And a few weeks later, he got another

[00:17:36.516 – 00:17:41.396] letter and says, “Daddy, I still can’t tell you where I am, but I’m in a hospital.

[00:17:41.396 – 00:17:49.955] I should have danced with the polar bear and shot the hula girl.” And my life was a lifetime of doing the wrong thing.

[00:17:49.955 – 00:17:55.196] Always trying, trying to know what was right to do and doing the wrong thing.

[00:17:55.196 – 00:17:57.096] It was a battle.

[00:17:57.096 – 00:18:00.936] It was a battle from the very beginning.

[00:18:00.936 – 00:18:06.576] I think that, you know, um, we don’t know much about alcoholism really.

[00:18:06.576 – 00:18:09.316] Even those of us that are supposed to know something about it don’t really.

[00:18:09.316 – 00:18:10.796] I don’t know what causes people to drink.

[00:18:10.796 – 00:18:12.776] I don’t know the cause of alcoholism any as anybody.

[00:18:12.776 – 00:18:14.852] The total cause is unknown.

[00:18:14.852 – 00:18:18.511] It’s, uh, kind of like now, you, you got a choice about what you say.

[00:18:18.511 – 00:18:25.852] Uh, like the girl that was school teacher that was applied for the job in the school, and the school board n- wanted to ask her some questions.

[00:18:25.852 – 00:18:28.862] So one of the members said, uh, “How do you teach?

[00:18:28.862 – 00:18:35.652] Do you teach that the world’s round or the world’s flat?” She says, “I’ll teach it any way the school board wants me to.” And this is about the score of alcoholism.

[00:18:35.652 – 00:18:38.492] You can sort of pick it up, and you can believe about it what you want to believe.

[00:18:38.492 – 00:18:41.552] And so I know that the thing is, is unknown.

[00:18:41.552 – 00:18:43.332] We don’t know what causes it.

[00:18:43.332 – 00:18:45.652] I don’t know what caused me to be an alcoholic.

[00:18:45.652 – 00:18:51.592] But I know that something happened to me when I took my first drink that changed me.

[00:18:51.592 – 00:18:54.572] I was never the same after this.

[00:18:54.572 – 00:18:58.592] Before I took a drink of liquor, I had certain ambitions.

[00:18:58.592 – 00:18:59.832] I had certain feelings.

[00:18:59.832 – 00:19:02.912] I had certain, uh, aspirations.

[00:19:02.912 – 00:19:12.912] I had a, a value system that I believed in, things that I thought were right and things I thought were wrong, and I was brought up in the kind of home that gave me, I think, a, a

[00:19:12.912 – 00:19:15.032] good Christian values to base this on.

[00:19:15.032 – 00:19:18.372] I was a sophomore at Emory University.

[00:19:18.372 – 00:19:26.152] It was about a week after my 18th birthday, and I went to a dance one night, and I was anti-alcohol.

[00:19:26.152 – 00:19:35.592] I didn’t think people ought to drink, and yet some reason that night, I guess I got a little adventurous or something, but I wanted to find out what was happening to the people that did.

[00:19:35.592 – 00:19:38.592] Maybe it was because they seemed to be having a good time, so I took a drink.

[00:19:38.592 – 00:19:42.352] I took a drink of corn liquor out of a tin can.

[00:19:42.352 – 00:19:46.512] It was the worst tasting stuff I’d ever put in my mouth, so I took another one.

[00:19:46.512 – 00:19:57.072] And somebody says, “Were you an alcoholic from the first drink?” I used to say, “Yes, I was,” but really, there was a period between

[00:19:57.072 – 00:20:03.332] the time I tasted that stuff and the time it got to my brain, lasted about a minute and 45 seconds, in which I was a social drinker.

[00:20:03.332 – 00:20:07.612] But after that, I was an alcoholic, and I’ve been one ever since.

[00:20:07.612 – 00:20:13.912] It took me 30 years to learn this because I thought that what was happening to me and my drinking was just the routine stuff.

[00:20:13.912 – 00:20:16.952] I didn’t know that everybody wasn’t going through the same thing.

[00:20:16.952 – 00:20:19.692] I didn’t know that everybody didn’t worship the stuff.

[00:20:19.692 – 00:20:21.362] I thought everybody got the same-

[00:20:21.663 – 00:20:27.843] glow in the feeling out of it I did because that drink I took that night just picked me up on a plateau of feeling I’d never been on before.

[00:20:27.843 – 00:20:30.103] Gosh, it was great, tremendous.

[00:20:30.103 – 00:20:37.343] And I, uh, I got up there and I wanted to get a little higher and a little higher because I wanted more of it, and I kept on drinking.

[00:20:37.343 – 00:20:44.003] In the beginning of the evening, it was so important, I remember who all was there and everything, the event, the whole deal about the thing.

[00:20:44.003 – 00:20:48.323] But my memory got a little foggy toward the end of the evening, and I had a blackout.

[00:20:48.323 – 00:20:50.643] And toward the end, I don’t know anything about it.

[00:20:50.643 – 00:21:00.683] All I know is I woke up the next morning in the fraternity house, uh, with a hangover and a feeling that never again will I touch that rotten stuff that will do this to

[00:21:00.683 – 00:21:00.823] me.

[00:21:00.823 – 00:21:05.803] Everything my mother and my father said about it is true, and, uh, I quit forever.

[00:21:05.803 – 00:21:12.123] Everything I said there is a symptom of alcoholism, every bit of it, and I had it from the beginning.

[00:21:12.123 – 00:21:22.523] But I had been inoculated with the, with the sheer pleasure of this stuff, and even though, uh, I got some pain out of it, too, I got a bad hangover,

[00:21:22.523 – 00:21:27.963] pretty soon the memory for the hangover wore off, and the pleasurable thoughts remained.

[00:21:27.963 – 00:21:34.203] It’s what they call the pleasure-pain principle in which we tend to remember the things that are pleasant and forget the things that are painful.

[00:21:34.203 – 00:21:43.283] And in about six months, I did it again, and this time I was even more, uh, firm in what I said, that I won’t do this anymore.

[00:21:43.283 – 00:21:47.683] But by golly, it wasn’t long, I set out again, but this time I was careful.

[00:21:47.683 – 00:21:52.603] I said, “You’ve got to exercise great care in doing this, and you, I can never drink all I want.

[00:21:52.603 – 00:21:57.703] I’ve got to take it in small amounts and watch it.” And I was able to do this most of the time.

[00:21:57.703 – 00:22:06.723] So that some 30 years it was drinking in which I tried to control it and was successful enough to convince myself that I really don’t have a problem.

[00:22:06.723 – 00:22:11.603] I go on through college and, uh, the rest of college, I graduate.

[00:22:11.603 – 00:22:13.783] I get in the graduate school.

[00:22:13.783 – 00:22:19.223] I’m gonna be a college professor and study about insects and protozoa and things like that.

[00:22:19.223 – 00:22:26.203] And pretty soon I got disillusioned with this and decided I wanted to go into medical school, and I did, which was my original choice anyway.

[00:22:26.203 – 00:22:30.323] I wound up in, at Emory and graduated in 1935.

[00:22:30.323 – 00:22:34.723] Took my, uh, post-graduate training at Grady Hospital in Atlanta.

[00:22:34.723 – 00:22:37.263] Set out to practice medicine in Statesboro.

[00:22:37.263 – 00:22:38.943] Got married in 1935.

[00:22:38.943 – 00:22:41.923] Married a wonderful Atlanta girl who was a good girl.

[00:22:41.923 – 00:22:44.443] There was nothing wrong with her, but I drank her up.

[00:22:44.443 – 00:22:46.823] I just drank this girl up.

[00:22:46.823 – 00:22:50.003] But I had learned to rationalize.

[00:22:50.003 – 00:22:51.923] I had learned to use people.

[00:22:51.923 – 00:22:59.283] I had learned to blame people, and I blamed her with all the trouble, even the trouble that happened when I was overseas during World War II.

[00:22:59.283 – 00:23:06.323] And I came back and blamed her for everything that went wrong in my life was because of her.

[00:23:06.323 – 00:23:08.923] I pointed out to her her defects.

[00:23:08.923 – 00:23:12.363] I even beat her up a few times, and it didn’t help her a bit.

[00:23:12.363 – 00:23:14.703] She just kept on being sorry, you know?

[00:23:14.703 – 00:23:18.453] So she left me and went to Atlanta, and we got a divorce, and I’ve never seen her since.

[00:23:18.453 – 00:23:21.423] I met Dot shortly after that.

[00:23:21.423 – 00:23:23.323] I went back to Statesboro.

[00:23:23.323 – 00:23:30.683] I stayed in Statesboro and tried to practice, and Dot and I sweated out this thing for, for 12 years before we both wound up in this fellowship.

[00:23:30.683 – 00:23:40.443] And now we’ve, now in our, as of September the 30, 13th, are in our 31st year of marriage and making it a whole lot better now than we were back then.

[00:23:40.443 – 00:23:50.443] But I, uh, I began to, to really get worried about myself when things happened that I

[00:23:50.443 – 00:23:51.363] couldn’t deny.

[00:23:51.363 – 00:23:58.743] I’m a physician, and I was able to explain most of it away by saying that, “You know, I, uh, I’m really not this way.

[00:23:58.743 – 00:24:06.943] This, uh, it’s the stress, the strain of the practice is doing it.” But there were a few little things that happened that I couldn’t explain away very well.

[00:24:06.943 – 00:24:09.423] I had the DTs one time.

[00:24:09.423 – 00:24:11.923] Now, I say DTs, we were talking about that tonight.

[00:24:11.923 – 00:24:17.943] I mean the bad shakes and all this, and it wasn’t as serious as the medical DTs we talk about, but we call them that.

[00:24:17.943 – 00:24:26.323] Anyway, I was in Florida in a hospital in Ybor City, and I’d gone there because I was drunk, and it was the only hospital that would take me.

[00:24:26.323 – 00:24:28.823] And, uh, I went in there.

[00:24:28.823 – 00:24:34.123] A friend of mine put me in this hospital, and I was lying there on the bed trying to shake out a drunk.

[00:24:34.123 – 00:24:42.882] And I looked up, and I saw a cockroach as big as a jackrabbit climbing across the curtain, and he dropped down the curtain, and he fell on the bed.

[00:24:42.882 – 00:24:44.123] I kicked him off on the floor.

[00:24:44.123 – 00:24:47.123] He went back up that curtain again, and there was another one.

[00:24:47.123 – 00:24:55.243] And I looked at these things, and I determined that these are cockroaches, and cockroaches don’t get that big, so this must be an hallucination.

[00:24:55.243 – 00:24:56.243] And I said, “I’ll be golly.

[00:24:56.243 – 00:25:00.083] I didn’t really believe a hallucination would be quite that vivid,” but it was.

[00:25:00.083 – 00:25:06.843] Well, I was kicking those things around up there and as I did, I heard some voices out in the hall.

[00:25:06.843 – 00:25:10.523] And I listened to them, and these were people I knew.

[00:25:10.523 – 00:25:11.063] They were talking.

[00:25:11.063 – 00:25:16.283] I says, “Gosh, there’s nobody from Statesboro down here that I know of.” So I went over to open the door and looked out there, and there wasn’t nobody there.

[00:25:16.283 – 00:25:17.583] I closed the door.

[00:25:17.583 – 00:25:20.183] As soon as I did, they started talking again.

[00:25:20.183 – 00:25:24.423] So this time I waited very carefully, and I jerked that door open.

[00:25:24.423 – 00:25:27.303] But they’d all stopped talking by the time I looked out of there.

[00:25:27.303 – 00:25:34.693] So I said, “Gosh, you’re having auditory hallucinations.” And they were saying things like, “You know, old John said we ought to go see him,” you know, and, “We ought to talk to him.

[00:25:34.693 – 00:25:36.623] We ought not disturb him.” They were talking about me.

[00:25:36.623 – 00:25:41.383] And I recognized the voices, and some of them I think, I thought were dead, but I wasn’t sure.

[00:25:41.383 – 00:25:45.383] But anyway, uh, as soon as I closed that door, they started talking again.

[00:25:45.383 – 00:25:46.383] I jerked it open again.

[00:25:46.383 – 00:25:47.303] They, they quit.

[00:25:47.303 – 00:25:53.243] So I went out this hall to the lounge, and I sat down in that lounge.

[00:25:53.243 – 00:25:58.463] And when I did, I lit a cigarette, started smoking this cigarette, and all these people came in.

[00:25:58.463 – 00:26:00.623] And they came down.

[00:26:00.623 – 00:26:03.383] They were laughing and joking, and they shook hands with me.

[00:26:03.383 – 00:26:05.983] And I said, “How’d y’all get out of that hall so quick?” And they wouldn’t tell me.

[00:26:05.983 – 00:26:08.223] They said, “Wouldn’t you like to know?” They teased me.

[00:26:08.223 – 00:26:11.403] And so the nurse came in, and I introduced her to all these people.

[00:26:11.403 – 00:26:19.663] And she said, “You feel all right?” I said, “Yeah, these folks, uh, told me they chartered a bus and drove all the way down here to see me.” And I introduced them to her.

[00:26:19.663 – 00:26:26.563] And she said, “Let’s go back to your room.” So she did, took me back and gave me a shot, and I went to sleep.

[00:26:26.563 – 00:26:28.223] And when I woke up, the people were gone.

[00:26:28.223 – 00:26:32.019] But I remembered that because these people were real.

[00:26:32.019 – 00:26:33.108] There’s no question about it.

[00:26:33.108 – 00:26:34.859] I didn’t think that was any hallucination.

[00:26:34.859 – 00:26:44.859] And one day at the hospital in Statesboro, a few years later, I was walking down the hall, and one of my patients was in the room there, was, was, uh, pulling

[00:26:44.859 – 00:26:46.839] at his, at his pajamas like this.

[00:26:46.839 – 00:26:56.319] I said, “What’s the matter?” He said, “These lizards, these lizards are about to get me.” He says, “Come help me with them.” So I sat down, and I pulled those lizards out of there with him for about 30 minutes because I couldn’t see them.

[00:26:56.319 – 00:26:59.939] But I knew they were real to hi- him because I’d been there.

[00:26:59.939 – 00:27:02.999] That didn’t teach me anything.

[00:27:02.999 – 00:27:09.859] The denial, as I said, was, uh, was so strong with me that there wasn’t any way I could learn from this.

[00:27:09.859 – 00:27:11.899] I went right on back.

[00:27:11.899 – 00:27:12.639] I wrote it off.

[00:27:12.639 – 00:27:18.039] I, uh, charged it off to a physical condition, and I kept on going with the thing.

[00:27:18.039 – 00:27:19.919] I…

[00:27:19.919 – 00:27:29.959] Several years later, I ran into another example of this denial in which it should have been evident to me that there was

[00:27:29.959 – 00:27:33.079] something wrong, uh, and I couldn’t see it.

[00:27:33.079 – 00:27:43.399] I made a statement that anybody who is a, who drinks non-beverage alcohol is an alcoholic, that if you drink Sterno

[00:27:43.399 – 00:27:53.719] canned heat or rubbing alcohol or Green Lizard shaving lotion or hair tonic or brake fluid or Solax paint thinner, you’re an alcoholic.

[00:27:53.719 – 00:27:56.119] I made this statement very plainly.

[00:27:56.119 – 00:28:06.139] And one day, I took drunk, and they, that’s the, that’s this conspiracy that operates around us that’s always gonna make us do something we don’t

[00:28:06.139 – 00:28:06.679] want to do.

[00:28:06.679 – 00:28:08.399] That’s, by that I mean sober up.

[00:28:08.399 – 00:28:18.459] And my family, my sister, my wife, and some others, got an ambulance and hauled me down to Savannah to a hospital and put me in there, and I was angry and mad about the whole

[00:28:18.459 – 00:28:20.419] thing, and I didn’t want to go.

[00:28:20.419 – 00:28:23.799] And so they were trying to help me.

[00:28:23.799 – 00:28:25.918] They gave me shots, and it didn’t do any good.

[00:28:25.918 – 00:28:36.199] And so I was lying there, and this little nurse, and they’re about to give, uh, lose their patience, and she came in with a bottle of rubbing alcohol and said, “Maybe if I rub your back with some alcohol that,

[00:28:36.199 – 00:28:40.459] uh, it’ll help.” So I lay down, and she started rubbing it, and it did feel better.

[00:28:40.459 – 00:28:43.559] And then a little bell out there rang, and she got a call.

[00:28:43.559 – 00:28:47.989] She set that bottle of rubbing alcohol down on the table, and she went out in the hall.

[00:28:47.989 – 00:28:50.659] I sat up, and I picked it up and looked at it.

[00:28:50.659 – 00:28:56.699] And it said Norcohal, put out by the Norwich Chemical commit- uh, company in Norwich, Connecticut.

[00:28:56.699 – 00:28:59.279] Says, “For external use only.

[00:28:59.279 – 00:29:08.759] Will cause serious gastric disturbance if taken internally.” And I said, “By golly, I don’t believe it.” And I poured out a glass of this stuff, and I drank it.

[00:29:08.759 – 00:29:12.219] And I didn’t have a serious gastric disturbance.

[00:29:12.219 – 00:29:13.739] I felt better.

[00:29:13.739 – 00:29:16.779] It was the first thing I’d had in that hospital that helped me.

[00:29:16.779 – 00:29:19.589] And so I took a few drinks out of it, and I got by the evening.

[00:29:19.589 – 00:29:30.039] And then after that, when I went home, any time that I got a little too, uh, uptight and couldn’t get ahold of the kind of liquor I wanted, I would drink rubbing alcohol.

[00:29:30.039 – 00:29:40.199] And the idea, the thought never occurs to me that, “Look, John, you’re doing something that you’ve said if anybody does it, that person’s an alcoholic,

[00:29:40.199 – 00:29:43.139] therefore you’re an alcoholic.” My mind don’t work that way.

[00:29:43.139 – 00:29:45.039] I don’t think that way.

[00:29:45.039 – 00:29:46.829] I don’t apply these things to myself.

[00:29:46.829 – 00:29:50.319] When I drink, I become two different people.

[00:29:50.319 – 00:30:00.399] I’m a person sober, and I’m a person drunk, and that drunk person, uh, per- drinking person doesn’t, uh, mind doesn’t work the same way, and those rules just don’t get

[00:30:00.399 – 00:30:00.879] through.

[00:30:00.879 – 00:30:03.319] And it never gave me any trouble at all.

[00:30:03.319 – 00:30:07.339] I just found a solution to one of the problems I had when the liquor ran out.

[00:30:07.339 – 00:30:07.979] That was all.

[00:30:07.979 – 00:30:10.639] So I go along deeper and deeper.

[00:30:10.639 – 00:30:16.199] Somewhere along the line, I get involved with medication.

[00:30:16.199 – 00:30:18.499] I don’t know when this was.

[00:30:18.499 – 00:30:27.119] I had my first touch of cocaine about the same time that I had alcohol, somewhere along that, and it was a terrific feeling I got from the thing.

[00:30:27.119 – 00:30:37.559] But, uh, I began to, to delve into drugs on a medical, uh, basis, treating colds and things like this, and also treating my hangovers.

[00:30:37.559 – 00:30:47.818] You know, I wanted to be a good doctor, be a good father, be a good husband, a good citizen, a good church man,

[00:30:47.818 – 00:30:48.519] and drink whiskey.

[00:30:48.519 – 00:30:50.879] I, I didn’t want the mess, you know?

[00:30:50.879 – 00:30:52.699] I just wanted that as part of the good life.

[00:30:52.699 – 00:31:00.539] And I said, “Some way,” uh, said, “Something I can do to mix this thing up so that, so that I can have all these good things.” I just didn’t want to give up any part of it.

[00:31:00.539 – 00:31:07.039] And increasingly, what was happening was as I drank the whiskey, I gave up more and more of the other things.

[00:31:07.039 – 00:31:13.039] And I didn’t want it that way, so I began to use substitutes for alcohol because I didn’t want to be a drunk doctor.

[00:31:13.039 – 00:31:23.219] So I began to go down in my bag and come up with some medication, and the first drug that I found and learned to enjoy and to take and it worked

[00:31:23.219 – 00:31:23.919] was codeine.

[00:31:23.919 – 00:31:28.739] And I came up with, uh, w- with the same things you heard this morning.

[00:31:28.739 – 00:31:30.859] Oh, gosh, Sheldon, that was great.

[00:31:30.859 – 00:31:32.179] You just named my drugs.

[00:31:32.179 – 00:31:33.879] That Seconal, that Nembutal.

[00:31:33.879 – 00:31:38.539] There’s one I had in there, terpene hydrate and codeine, that I used in there.

[00:31:38.539 – 00:31:47.479] And, and, uh, then I put in the, the Panaphon, the narcotics, the Emprit number four, all swimming around, you know, in a big, big bowl of Paregoric.

[00:31:47.479 – 00:31:48.239] It was great.

[00:31:48.239 – 00:31:49.899] I had the same things.

[00:31:49.899 – 00:31:51.099] Beautiful.

[00:31:51.099 – 00:31:54.819] And I just had the nicest life you ever saw because I could balance this thing up.

[00:31:54.819 – 00:32:00.819] You can control narcotics and drugs a little better than you control alcohol for the effect.

[00:32:00.819 – 00:32:10.159] You can, you can put a little bit of this and a little bit of that and wind up at least erect and walking if you don’t get too far from the wall, where you can catch every now and then.

[00:32:10.159 – 00:32:12.679] And you can, uh, you get along pretty good.

[00:32:12.679 – 00:32:17.359] Liquor, you know, once you reach a certain point, you go progressively over, and finally you’ll fall flat on your face.

[00:32:17.359 – 00:32:21.019] It’s very difficult to maintain a balanced life on alcohol alone.

[00:32:21.019 – 00:32:24.179] And so you’ve got to get these uppers and downers in there.

[00:32:24.179 – 00:32:30.039] You’ve got to get some amphetamines and some Ritalin, and you, you work basically back and forth from morphine and…

[00:32:30.039 – 00:32:37.751] And then, uh, in imprint number four, a little Paragard scattered in it that, that you can carry in your pocket, and you get it a little easier than you can the other.

[00:32:37.751 – 00:32:40.831] And so I call it my balanced life because that’s what it was.

[00:32:40.831 – 00:32:43.211] It was a chemical balance I had to maintain all the time.

[00:32:43.211 – 00:32:44.990] And it’s a busy life.

[00:32:44.990 – 00:32:50.181] And it, it’s a, it’s a, it’s kind of a, it- it’s a real, it’s a serious life.

[00:32:50.181 – 00:32:51.371] You, you gotta watch it, you know?

[00:32:51.371 – 00:32:54.970] A lot of little things that are ordinarily present aren’t there anymore.

[00:32:54.970 – 00:33:00.501] Like eating, you know, you just eat and talk and all that, but you better not do that when on your pill.

[00:33:00.501 – 00:33:03.951] You stick that knife, that fork in your eye, you’ll stick it in your throat or something like this.

[00:33:03.951 – 00:33:04.731] You gotta watch it.

[00:33:04.731 – 00:33:06.971] The automatic things don’t happen.

[00:33:06.971 – 00:33:09.480] You gotta watch your shoelaces when you tie them.

[00:33:09.480 – 00:33:12.111] You’ll tie them together, or you’ll tie one shoelace to the other one.

[00:33:12.111 – 00:33:14.951] You’ll button up your, your, your clothes wrong.

[00:33:14.951 – 00:33:17.151] All kind of things you have to watch.

[00:33:17.151 – 00:33:25.411] Walking down the hall at the hospital, I’d have to fix my, my eye on the window at the end of the corridor because if I took my eye off that window, I’d zero into the wall.

[00:33:25.411 – 00:33:30.891] But, uh, a lot of effort and you can get by because people can’t smell anything.

[00:33:30.891 – 00:33:35.151] And when they can’t smell anything, they’re gonna say, “You probably got a brain tumor,” you know?

[00:33:35.151 – 00:33:43.911] I, I was told this several times, “It must be a brain tumor he’s got that makes him act like that.” A brain tumor is respectable, you know?

[00:33:43.911 – 00:33:46.681] They’ll just, they’ll be sorry for you.

[00:33:46.681 – 00:33:50.851] But, uh, I go along with all this stuff, and then I get another crisis.

[00:33:50.851 – 00:33:54.451] I get a crisis that oughta taught me something, but it didn’t.

[00:33:54.451 – 00:34:03.331] One night, sitting in my living room, waiting on my wife to fix supper, I had a grand mal seizure, and it was a rough one.

[00:34:03.331 – 00:34:07.871] I broke two thoracic vertebra in this seizure, and it should’ve gotten my attention.

[00:34:07.871 – 00:34:14.311] That’s when they sent me off for the electroencephalogram, the neurosurgical consultations to determine.

[00:34:14.311 – 00:34:16.231] They were pretty sure I did have a brain tumor.

[00:34:16.231 – 00:34:18.571] It was just a matter of locating it, see, and where it was.

[00:34:18.571 – 00:34:20.631] And they asked me about medication.

[00:34:20.631 – 00:34:22.331] No, I wasn’t taking anything.

[00:34:22.331 – 00:34:25.751] I was eating out of my sample cabinet.

[00:34:25.751 – 00:34:33.311] You know, the drug houses send doctors everything they want, and I was getting this stuff by the box full in there.

[00:34:33.311 – 00:34:40.911] And all I was looking for on the label was the little thing said, said maybe habit-forming because I knew a habit-forming drug is always gonna give you a buzz if you take enough of it.

[00:34:40.911 – 00:34:42.511] And that’s what I was taking.

[00:34:42.511 – 00:34:47.691] And I don’t have any knowledge to this day of what I took that day and the previous time.

[00:34:47.691 – 00:34:49.511] But I wound up in a hospital.

[00:34:49.511 – 00:34:57.691] I wound up being treated for, for a convulsion, and I wound up in a psychiatric hospital.

[00:34:57.691 – 00:34:59.791] It was my first one.

[00:34:59.791 – 00:35:05.011] And there I began to learn something about me and the psychiatric problems I had.

[00:35:05.011 – 00:35:07.071] That I was an alcoholic.

[00:35:07.071 – 00:35:12.331] That I, uh, I, I mean, that I, that I was a, a psychoneurotic.

[00:35:12.331 – 00:35:15.831] That, uh, possibly schizophrenia.

[00:35:15.831 – 00:35:18.811] They had a passive-aggressive label they put on me.

[00:35:18.811 – 00:35:24.931] They mentioned the drinking, but as far as I know, to my knowledge, I was not called an alcoholic or an addict.

[00:35:24.931 – 00:35:26.931] But they told me what was wrong.

[00:35:26.931 – 00:35:28.691] I was overprotected as a child.

[00:35:28.691 – 00:35:34.311] I couldn’t stand competition, and I needed to go back and get, uh, order into my life, see.

[00:35:34.311 – 00:35:37.011] So I went back, and I felt like, uh…

[00:35:37.011 – 00:35:41.891] and as a matter of fact, what I discovered on my own, uh, the dentist taught me.

[00:35:41.891 – 00:35:48.911] The dentist, uh, discovered six abscessed teeth, and he removed these teeth, and I said, “Doc, Doc, it’s all due to these abscessed teeth.

[00:35:48.911 – 00:35:54.771] Now they’re out, I’ll be okay.” We went down to Johnny Harris’ in Savannah and got drunk to celebrate my recovery.

[00:35:54.771 – 00:36:00.951] But that was the first of psychiatric hospitals, and I went to many more.

[00:36:00.951 – 00:36:03.550] It was a downhill course.

[00:36:03.550 – 00:36:12.711] In telling anybody, if they want to find out if they’re alcoholics, I say, “Look for the progression.

[00:36:12.711 – 00:36:16.351] Is it getting worse in any way over the years?

[00:36:16.351 – 00:36:24.271] Has something happened now that wasn’t happening before?” Not necessarily drinking more because there are control factors that influence it.

[00:36:24.271 – 00:36:25.951] What’s happening to your life?

[00:36:25.951 – 00:36:28.311] Are things going on that haven’t been there?

[00:36:28.311 – 00:36:31.511] And things started going on in my life that hadn’t been there.

[00:36:31.511 – 00:36:37.931] When I went to this first psych- psychiatric hospital, I just started a new, a new experience in my life.

[00:36:37.931 – 00:36:48.251] And I started a merry-go-round treatment of going to a psychiatric hospital, getting out, getting drunk, getting back on pills, getting worried about the pills and the liquor, I mean, and the narcotics

[00:36:48.251 – 00:36:48.911] I was taking.

[00:36:48.911 – 00:36:52.971] And then, uh, trying to stop and couldn’t and getting drunk and then going back to the hospital.

[00:36:52.971 – 00:37:02.971] And did this round over and over again all over Georgia, Atlanta, Savannah, many places, Florida, North Carolina, Kentucky, New

[00:37:02.971 – 00:37:05.711] York, Connecticut, all around.

[00:37:05.711 – 00:37:08.851] Asking the same question, “What is causing me to do this?

[00:37:08.851 – 00:37:10.391] What’s making this happen to me?

[00:37:10.391 – 00:37:14.811] What can you do?” And I go on this way year after year after year.

[00:37:14.811 – 00:37:18.991] Somewhere during there, I did have a year of good sobriety.

[00:37:18.991 – 00:37:29.091] I went to a place up in New York, uh, Connecticut rather, that, uh, that taught me something about good

[00:37:29.091 – 00:37:29.671] living.

[00:37:29.671 – 00:37:35.411] They said I was, uh, uh, that my life was unorganized, was disorganized.

[00:37:35.411 – 00:37:36.851] And I agreed with them.

[00:37:36.851 – 00:37:45.211] Any doctor who is making routine rounds on his patients at two o’clock in the morning and waking them up to ask them how they’re feeling- …

[00:37:45.211 – 00:37:51.831] and holding morning office hours at 5:00 PM and stuff like this is disorganized, and I was.

[00:37:51.831 – 00:37:56.051] And they said I needed to get order back in my life and get on a psychiatric routine.

[00:37:56.051 – 00:38:04.311] I stayed in that place three months, and I didn’t drink any liquor or take any drugs most of the time while I was there.

[00:38:04.311 – 00:38:09.131] Toward the end, I got out a couple of nights and threw one, but aside from that, I came out.

[00:38:09.131 – 00:38:16.851] And they told me I should never drink alcohol or liquor anymore.

[00:38:16.851 – 00:38:26.891] And they said they, they didn’t, I don’t recall them telling me to join AA, but he gave me the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous to read, and I read this

[00:38:26.891 – 00:38:27.251] book.

[00:38:27.251 – 00:38:29.731] And I said, “By God, this is a great book.

[00:38:29.731 – 00:38:36.991] I’m gonna send it to all my friends who, give it to my patients who have drinking problems.” Uh, I saw nothing in there for me.

[00:38:36.991 – 00:38:40.491] And he said that AA is a good thing.

[00:38:40.491 – 00:38:50.611] But he said, “There’s one thing that AA does that, uh, I don’t like.” And he said, “That’s the 24-hour program.” He said, “You should go out and just make one decision that you’ll never drink

[00:38:50.611 – 00:38:54.371] or take drugs anymore as long as you live, and then forget about it.

[00:38:54.371 – 00:39:02.871] Go on about your business and, and, and live a regular life, because if you leave off the drugs and the alcohol, you’ll be okay.” And I believed this thing, and that’s the way I did it.

[00:39:02.871 – 00:39:07.111] I stayed a year sober and off drugs.

[00:39:07.111 – 00:39:09.331] I got on this regulated life.

[00:39:09.331 – 00:39:13.431] I got up in the morning at, uh, every morning early, ate breakfast.

[00:39:13.431 – 00:39:15.251] I took my exercises.

[00:39:15.251 – 00:39:17.291] I played golf twice a week.

[00:39:17.291 – 00:39:18.571] I kept regular office hours.

[00:39:18.571 – 00:39:22.851] I kept– I took meals right on time, and I got organized, and I did pretty good.

[00:39:22.851 – 00:39:27.631] I got me a Sunday school class at the church, and I started teaching Sunday school, and I did okay.

[00:39:27.631 – 00:39:31.731] I was doing great in my physical department.

[00:39:31.731 – 00:39:35.791] I wasn’t having a lot of compulsion or anything to drink.

[00:39:35.791 – 00:39:46.051] But I still had something that we deal with in AA that we weren’t dealing with today, things like I talked about a while ago: responsibility, compulsions,

[00:39:46.051 – 00:39:47.211] resentments.

[00:39:47.211 – 00:39:51.571] Gosh almighty, I began– I couldn’t understand why the patients didn’t come back to me.

[00:39:51.571 – 00:39:53.811] The other doctors are talking about me.

[00:39:53.811 – 00:39:54.731] They won’t let them come.

[00:39:54.731 – 00:40:05.051] They’re telling them that, “Bill John’s not up to par.” And I blamed the doctors for, for having a conspiracy against me, and I had no program to take care of these feelings, these resentments.

[00:40:05.051 – 00:40:09.071] And so, but I kept on with a smile and doing pretty good.

[00:40:09.071 – 00:40:13.231] It was the best of the years I had through there because I was alcohol and drug-free.

[00:40:13.231 – 00:40:23.051] And then one day, going out to play golf, I accidentally slammed the car door on the index finger at the hinge side, and I fractured the bone in there.

[00:40:23.051 – 00:40:24.431] I went back in the office.

[00:40:24.431 – 00:40:30.071] I took an X-ray of it, and the X-ray showed it crushed, and it hurt very badly.

[00:40:30.071 – 00:40:31.171] It was really painful.

[00:40:31.171 – 00:40:34.571] And I went home that night, and I told Dot it was hurting.

[00:40:34.571 – 00:40:38.571] And, uh, I knew I was an addict.

[00:40:38.571 – 00:40:40.070] I knew I ought not to take drugs.

[00:40:40.070 – 00:40:42.781] But I had read something about this, and I-

[00:40:43.046 – 00:40:53.226] I told her, I says, “I’ve read somewhere that, uh, any narcotic addict who has been successfully rehabilitated may,

[00:40:53.226 – 00:41:03.605] in case of an emergency, take drugs safely provided they are administered under the direction of a physician.” I am a physician.

[00:41:03.605 – 00:41:12.266] And I gave myself 100 milligrams of Demerol, and it was six years before I was off of everything again.

[00:41:12.266 – 00:41:18.946] And so I learned about the chemical nature of this thing, that there is a chemical component here that we got to respect.

[00:41:18.946 – 00:41:20.926] We can’t, uh…

[00:41:20.926 – 00:41:23.506] AA is not a program to keep a person from drinking liquor.

[00:41:23.506 – 00:41:27.746] Uh, it’s not a program to keep people from taking narcotics or drugs.

[00:41:27.746 – 00:41:30.346] That’s a condition of recovery.

[00:41:30.346 – 00:41:34.726] AA is a program of recovery that’s gonna work provided you don’t drink.

[00:41:34.726 – 00:41:36.526] It’s not an objective.

[00:41:36.526 – 00:41:38.186] There’s nobody can keep you from doing that.

[00:41:38.186 – 00:41:44.246] And I began to, to learn the first part right there, how important, how important that element is.

[00:41:44.246 – 00:41:47.606] The chemical element of the thing, I know, changes us.

[00:41:47.606 – 00:41:54.786] That’s the thing that flips me from, from John the sobra- sober person back to John the alco- the active alcoholic or the active addict.

[00:41:54.786 – 00:41:59.386] There’s a chemical change that goes on in my body, and the other things come on with it.

[00:41:59.386 – 00:42:00.266] I heard Dr.

[00:42:00.266 – 00:42:03.346] Jellinek one time at a meeting make a statement.

[00:42:03.346 – 00:42:05.246] And somebody’s asking Dr.

[00:42:05.246 – 00:42:10.126] Jellinek, for those of you who don’t know of, uh, is probably the greatest authority on alcoholism that ever lived.

[00:42:10.126 – 00:42:14.126] He’s dead now, but if it ever has a name, it’ll be called Jellinek’s disease.

[00:42:14.126 – 00:42:22.826] And I happened to be privileged one time before he died, he died about 1963, to be in this group that morning, one Saturday morning.

[00:42:22.826 – 00:42:23.986] And they ask him a question.

[00:42:23.986 – 00:42:24.706] Somebody says, “Dr.

[00:42:24.706 – 00:42:34.766] Jellinek, what is alcoholism?” And he says, “Everything and nothing.” He says, “The only thing that we know for sure about alcoholism is that there

[00:42:34.766 – 00:42:37.066] are two constants which are always present.

[00:42:37.066 – 00:42:47.066] One is alcohol, the other is damage.” So what we do in AA, we leave off the alcohol, and we treat the damage that

[00:42:47.066 – 00:42:51.766] this thing has caused in each one of us and try to build a new life, and that’s way, that’s how simple it still is.

[00:42:51.766 – 00:42:53.765] But I didn’t know all that then.

[00:42:53.765 – 00:43:00.306] And I came out of this thing repeatedly drunk, down, down, down.

[00:43:00.306 – 00:43:02.286] Every time I went somewhere, it was worse.

[00:43:02.286 – 00:43:03.346] I lost…

[00:43:03.346 – 00:43:12.126] I’d had some jobs with industry, and I lost these jobs, and I began to have trouble with my patients in the hospital and getting time and get- being able to stand up and do surgery.

[00:43:12.126 – 00:43:18.286] And finally, in the spring of 1959, something happened to me.

[00:43:18.286 – 00:43:21.106] You can call it what you want to.

[00:43:21.106 – 00:43:24.586] I call it a spiritual experience.

[00:43:24.586 – 00:43:30.326] You know what this program is, i- is great, in what it lets us do with things like this?

[00:43:30.326 – 00:43:35.485] Make up our own mind as to what is a spiritual experience.

[00:43:35.485 – 00:43:39.606] Another story I like to tell, there were three umpires.

[00:43:39.606 – 00:43:42.455] They were talking about balls and strikes.

[00:43:42.455 – 00:43:52.466] And one of them says, “I call them like I see them.” The second one says, “I call them like they are.” The third one says, “They ain’t nothing

[00:43:52.466 – 00:43:55.766] till I call them.” You know, you think about that.

[00:43:55.766 – 00:44:00.386] If I call this thing a spiritual experience, that makes it a spiritual experience.

[00:44:00.386 – 00:44:01.406] There’s no other test.

[00:44:01.406 – 00:44:04.166] There’s no other category it has to come under.

[00:44:04.166 – 00:44:09.486] There’s not anything in the world, any rule that has to be applied to a spiritual experience in AA.

[00:44:09.486 – 00:44:17.146] When you get up and declare something that’s happened in your life to be a spiritual experience, brother, that’s it, and there’s no way that anybody else can say no.

[00:44:17.146 – 00:44:23.106] I’ve learned that about what it means when it says, “God as we understand Him,” it really means it just like that.

[00:44:23.106 – 00:44:25.706] So I say this is a spiritual experience.

[00:44:25.706 – 00:44:28.056] You may not think, it may not appear that you…

[00:44:28.056 – 00:44:35.506] You may not ha- have a similar view of what I mean, but nevertheless, I’m riding down the street, and I get a thought.

[00:44:35.506 – 00:44:37.235] I get a feeling.

[00:44:37.235 – 00:44:40.426] Now, John, I don’t want to be this way.

[00:44:40.426 – 00:44:43.106] I’m sick of this life.

[00:44:43.106 – 00:44:44.406] I want something better.

[00:44:44.406 – 00:44:46.346] Now, this was different.

[00:44:46.346 – 00:44:50.986] I had told myself many times, “John, you’ve got to quit this thing.

[00:44:50.986 – 00:44:52.706] You’ve got to get out of this life.

[00:44:52.706 – 00:44:53.886] You ought not to be here.

[00:44:53.886 – 00:44:55.906] You ought not to be doing these things.

[00:44:55.906 – 00:44:57.106] There’s a better life for you.

[00:44:57.106 – 00:44:59.746] Uh, gosh, what are you doing with your life?

[00:44:59.746 – 00:45:04.626] You’re throwing it away.” And I knew this, and I was told this very freely by the people around me.

[00:45:04.626 – 00:45:06.706] I was reminded of this every chance they got.

[00:45:06.706 – 00:45:08.166] “John, you’re throwing your life…

[00:45:08.166 – 00:45:12.686] John, you would be such a wonderful guy if, if you wouldn’t do that.

[00:45:12.686 – 00:45:15.666] John, have you ever thought about what you might amount to if?

[00:45:15.666 – 00:45:19.766] John, have you ever thought about what this is doing to your family?” You know, all this sort of thing.

[00:45:19.766 – 00:45:27.026] And I would defend myself, and I would get mad with myself, and I’d say, “By golly, I ought to do better.” But this day there was something different.

[00:45:27.026 – 00:45:30.226] There was a feeling went in there, I want something better.

[00:45:30.226 – 00:45:36.706] And I think this is something that my God added to me, and I think that desire that came in there was spiritual.

[00:45:36.706 – 00:45:44.966] And I still believe so because from that moment on, everything that happened to me seemed to be part of a plan.

[00:45:44.966 – 00:45:49.366] Uh, Tony talked about the chaos this morning, and that’s what it was.

[00:45:49.366 – 00:45:59.446] My life was chaos until after that death, uh, that, that day, the chaos seemed to go away, and it seemed to look as if something, some big plan

[00:45:59.446 – 00:46:00.526] was taking place.

[00:46:00.526 – 00:46:06.586] The first thing that happened was something had to happen to my pride.

[00:46:06.586 – 00:46:09.986] Now, I got the worst pride anybody you ever saw.

[00:46:09.986 – 00:46:20.186] You know, this is, uh, this, uh, this feeling that I’m different, this feeling that I can lick this thing, and I feel like this pride has nearly

[00:46:20.186 – 00:46:21.066] destroyed me.

[00:46:21.066 – 00:46:26.006] And it had to go because I had the feeling then, by golly, I can do this thing.

[00:46:26.006 – 00:46:29.036] And I, I said, “I, I want something out of this.

[00:46:29.036 – 00:46:33.476] I’m not going to these expensive places anymore where I, it, it costs so much money.

[00:46:33.476 – 00:46:43.986] I’m going to the US Public Health Service Hospital at Lexington,” because I was hooked on narcotics that day riding down the street, bad, on morphine and Panatan,

[00:46:43.986 – 00:46:45.766] and I wanted out of it.

[00:46:45.766 – 00:46:47.326] I wanted something better.

[00:46:47.326 – 00:46:57.370] And so, uh, I went home and told Doc that I had sent this patient to Lexington, and this man, a narcotic addict, had gotten better, and that

[00:46:57.370 – 00:46:58.050] I was going.

[00:46:58.050 – 00:47:01.650] So I left not long after that.

[00:47:01.650 – 00:47:05.710] I went up there with expectations of treatment.

[00:47:05.710 – 00:47:09.230] I felt proud of myself because I was doing something about it, you know?

[00:47:09.230 – 00:47:13.740] And I sort of figured, I guess, other people were gonna say, “Oh, John, how about that?

[00:47:13.740 – 00:47:14.810] He’s come to his senses.

[00:47:14.810 – 00:47:17.830] He’s going to do something.” It wasn’t that way.

[00:47:17.830 – 00:47:21.969] I went up there, expected to be treated like a physician.

[00:47:21.969 – 00:47:26.350] You know, every other place I ever went, I always got special treatment.

[00:47:26.350 – 00:47:27.490] “Oh, he’s a doctor.

[00:47:27.490 – 00:47:29.610] Give him a private room if you got one.” Okay.

[00:47:29.610 – 00:47:30.510] “Oh, he’s a doctor.

[00:47:30.510 – 00:47:30.690] Yes.

[00:47:30.690 – 00:47:34.760] Oh, let, let’s get the, the RN to sit with him,” you know, that sort of stuff.

[00:47:34.760 – 00:47:36.830] Um, enabling business.

[00:47:36.830 – 00:47:38.630] It nearly kills us, and it nearly killed me.

[00:47:38.630 – 00:47:39.490] But there wasn’t that…

[00:47:39.490 – 00:47:41.310] Uh, that thing wasn’t present in Lexington.

[00:47:41.310 – 00:47:47.330] Those people up there know about this enabling business, and they know about this thing, and they didn’t, uh, they, they…

[00:47:47.330 – 00:47:56.550] Everybody looked the same to them, and they didn’t come in, “Doctor, uh, we are glad you came.” They said, “You, take your clothes off,” and I did.

[00:47:56.550 – 00:48:06.250] And they put me a uniform on, and they got a book, and they wrote out, and they took a stamp, and they stamped number 58520.

[00:48:06.250 – 00:48:12.510] And that’s the number on that uniform and on those shorts and on the underwear, on the socks.

[00:48:12.510 – 00:48:17.250] They stamped on everything I had in there, and they handed it to me and told me I had to turn it in when I left.

[00:48:17.250 – 00:48:21.850] And I looked, and I had that feeling right then, if they just put Dr.

[00:48:21.850 – 00:48:24.090] 58520, it wouldn’t be so bad.

[00:48:24.090 – 00:48:34.490] Plain old 58520, and they never paid no attention to my status as a prominent Southern physician,

[00:48:34.490 – 00:48:35.330] and I hated it.

[00:48:35.330 – 00:48:41.210] I hated it, and I says, “I can’t stand this place,” and I stayed a week, and I left there.

[00:48:41.210 – 00:48:45.090] The pride, you know, uh, I, I couldn’t, I couldn’t stay.

[00:48:45.090 – 00:48:56.550] The doctor says, “John, I wish you’d stay because if you don’t stay now, you’re gonna be back here on a court order inside of a y- uh, a year.” I went home determined

[00:48:56.550 – 00:48:58.010] that I would never drink again.

[00:48:58.010 – 00:49:03.870] Never again will I touch the stuff, and I swore off forever.

[00:49:03.870 – 00:49:07.070] Six hours later, I took my first drink.

[00:49:07.070 – 00:49:13.850] I took the first drink of the last drunk I’ve had today, and when I took the drink, I knew what had happened.

[00:49:13.850 – 00:49:17.590] I had, I think, uh, I think I had a moment of truth there.

[00:49:17.590 – 00:49:27.590] When I took that drink, I persuaded myself it was okay, that I needed it, uh, to get home, and I took it, and I feel like now that I knew what I was

[00:49:27.590 – 00:49:30.150] doing, and the panic started.

[00:49:30.150 – 00:49:33.210] It was a panic drunk that covered three states.

[00:49:33.210 – 00:49:35.850] It wound up with me in jail.

[00:49:35.850 – 00:49:45.949] It wound up with me being turned loose there and coming back, getting in loose on the streets of Atlanta with, uh…

[00:49:45.949 – 00:49:53.270] Finally, it took a lunacy warrant to find me and to put me in, in the Fulton County Jail to do something about it.

[00:49:53.270 – 00:49:58.450] The narcotics I had obtained, obtained illegally were picked up.

[00:49:58.450 – 00:50:00.390] A case was made against me.

[00:50:00.390 – 00:50:10.490] I was indicted by the grand jury, and I was brought before the judge, and I pled guilty to the illegal possession of a bottle of Demerol because I knew if they looked, they’d

[00:50:10.490 – 00:50:11.310] find the thousand.

[00:50:11.310 – 00:50:13.150] And that judge looked at me.

[00:50:13.150 – 00:50:17.049] All this in that two weeks, toward the end of two weeks period, that two weeks drunk.

[00:50:17.049 – 00:50:19.449] The whole roof caved in.

[00:50:19.449 – 00:50:23.450] Convicted felon and everything gone and lost in that length of time.

[00:50:23.450 – 00:50:33.050] And the judge looked at me and he says, “John, I think you’re sick, and I’m gonna probate this sentence to Reidsville, to the state prison.

[00:50:33.050 – 00:50:43.310] It’s a felony conviction, but I’m gonna probate it, provided you’ll go to, back to Lexington and stay there till they release you.” It was a state charge,

[00:50:43.310 – 00:50:45.290] and Lexington is a federal penitentiary.

[00:50:45.290 – 00:50:50.010] I said, “Judge Renfrow, I’ve never been in your court before.

[00:50:50.010 – 00:50:53.210] Uh, I, I know I can make this now.

[00:50:53.210 – 00:50:55.250] I found out what’s wrong.

[00:50:55.250 – 00:51:01.910] I’m an addict, and I’m an alcoholic, and I know that I can straighten up, and I can live right like a man ought to.

[00:51:01.910 – 00:51:12.870] I’ve learned responsibility about this thing, and I want you to give me a suspended sentence and give me a chance.” He says, “John, I don’t think you heard me.” Thank

[00:51:12.870 – 00:51:13.810] God for that man.

[00:51:13.810 – 00:51:20.650] He said, “Either you go to Reidsville, to the state prison, and serve your two years down there, or you go to Lexington for treatment.

[00:51:20.650 – 00:51:31.450] Now, which do you want?” Thank God for that because if that man had turned me loose on a suspended sentence because on the simple fact that I’d never been before him

[00:51:31.450 – 00:51:33.870] before, then I’d have been dead.

[00:51:33.870 – 00:51:36.570] It wouldn’t have lasted because the fight was gone out of me.

[00:51:36.570 – 00:51:46.570] If that man had sent me to Reidsville to make a, uh, to make a kind of an example of me, to teach people they ought not to do this sort of thing, that would have killed me, too, because

[00:51:46.570 – 00:51:50.130] there was no, there was no strength left to endure that thing.

[00:51:50.130 – 00:51:59.410] He gave me the one chance that I needed, and I went back to Lexington two weeks after I had left there, when the doctor said, “It will be…

[00:51:59.410 – 00:52:06.750] You’ll be back here on a court order within a year if you don’t stay.” That’s what you call doing it in a hurry.

[00:52:06.750 – 00:52:17.010] And when they were asking my admission history, and this guy was asking me some questions about myself, he says, “John,

[00:52:17.010 – 00:52:26.470] how long you had a problem?” I says, “About two weeks.” But I went back with a different idea.

[00:52:26.470 – 00:52:35.070] I went back to try to do something about my problem because I wanted help, and I didn’t feel the same way.

[00:52:35.070 – 00:52:45.490] That experience cut away some of this pride, and I began to look at me more, and I began to see more of what had actually happened, and thank God for it now

[00:52:45.490 – 00:52:46.670] because that’s what it took.

[00:52:46.670 – 00:52:53.818] When you got a guy as dense, as stubborn, as ignorant And stupid.

[00:52:53.818 – 00:52:54.998] I have to say stupid.

[00:52:54.998 – 00:52:57.838] You know, I hate to say, I hate to call myself stupid, but by golly, that’s true.

[00:52:57.838 – 00:53:01.638] It was just plain stupidness, that stupidity that kept me going so long.

[00:53:01.638 – 00:53:04.698] Denial, okay, I’ll go along with that, too.

[00:53:04.698 – 00:53:14.738] But anyway, I went back up there, and I wanted help, and I was comfortable there, and I didn’t feel different from those people, and I no longer felt like they ought to be putting doctor on

[00:53:14.738 – 00:53:16.178] my number, and that’s great.

[00:53:16.178 – 00:53:17.738] I went in there.

[00:53:17.738 – 00:53:20.338] I began to look for help.

[00:53:20.338 – 00:53:30.338] I had been to psychiatric places over the country, and I was convinced that I had some type of emotional or mental disorder that had to be cleared up, that there was a, some

[00:53:30.338 – 00:53:37.638] sort of underlying, uh, underlying, uh, bad, bad illness in me, mental disease or something.

[00:53:37.638 – 00:53:47.618] I had been told I was a psychoneurotic, that I was a manic depressive, that I was a paranoid schizophrenic, and one guy told me I was a constitutional psychopath.

[00:53:47.618 – 00:53:48.918] That means you’re born crazy.

[00:53:48.918 – 00:53:59.238] And, and I believed that there was something bad wrong, and so I applied for psychiatric treatment to try to straighten this stuff up and get rid of this underlying thing so I wouldn’t have to drink

[00:53:59.238 – 00:54:02.238] and take the drugs, at least so much of it.

[00:54:02.238 – 00:54:10.938] They gave me interviews, thorough interviews, three, uh, uh, uh, uh, three hours of various kind of tests and all kinds of…

[00:54:10.938 – 00:54:18.618] R- roll off and got all my records, and then they called me in for a conference after several weeks and said, “Look, John, we’re willing to treat you but only under our condition.

[00:54:18.618 – 00:54:26.258] We’re gonna have to turn you loose in about five weeks, uh, five months, as you will have completed what the probation period calls a cure.

[00:54:26.258 – 00:54:28.698] But that’s not long enough to help you.

[00:54:28.698 – 00:54:38.718] Unless you’re willing to stay for full psychoanalysis, which may take two or three years and for which we can promise nothing, we’re not gonna treat you at all.” And I

[00:54:38.718 – 00:54:46.318] turned down the treatment because I knew I wouldn’t stay that long, and they said, “You better go to AA because there’s nowhere else for you to go.” So that’s the way I came to you people.

[00:54:46.318 – 00:54:56.938] I came in here hopeless, really, uh, convinced that whatever the job the psychiatrist wasn’t gonna do, you would have to do,

[00:54:56.938 – 00:55:06.958] and really feeling that there wasn’t much hope because I thought I was too sick for a bunch of people, laymen, like they said was in AA, could possibly do it, or

[00:55:06.958 – 00:55:07.498] could help me.

[00:55:07.498 – 00:55:17.958] So I started going to meetings, and I began to get little, a little breakthrough from some of you on the honesty

[00:55:17.958 – 00:55:20.558] that goes on and the direct approach of this fellowship.

[00:55:20.558 – 00:55:27.658] And there was a visitor out there one day, and I was telling him about my concern about what it was causing the problem.

[00:55:27.658 – 00:55:37.878] I said, “If I could only find out what it is causing me to get drunk.” He says, “John, did it ever occur to you it’s the whiskey causing you to get drunk?” And I began

[00:55:37.878 – 00:55:48.458] to learn my first, first little, first little bit about the responsibility involved in this thing, and they began to tell me about responsibility.

[00:55:48.458 – 00:55:51.898] Says, “You must accept responsibility for your drinking and your drugs.

[00:55:51.898 – 00:56:01.998] You must accept it like this, that you took a bottle, and you took a glass, and you poured some liquor in the glass, and you drank it,

[00:56:01.998 – 00:56:08.418] and you did it all by yourself, and not one other human being or situation or pressure in the world had anything to do with it.

[00:56:08.418 – 00:56:09.598] You did it all alone.

[00:56:09.598 – 00:56:19.638] You did it all by yourself, and you must accept that responsibility.” That was rough, you know, because I felt like my practice and, uh, other problems I’d had had something to do with it, but they wouldn’t

[00:56:19.638 – 00:56:20.738] let me get away with that.

[00:56:20.738 – 00:56:28.338] They said, “No, sir, you must do this, and you also must take responsibility and accept it for your recovery.

[00:56:28.338 – 00:56:34.758] You can’t do this through willpower, but you can use a little willpower to get to a meeting.

[00:56:34.758 – 00:56:40.838] There are so many meetings in this prison here every week, and you can be at every one of them.

[00:56:40.838 – 00:56:44.078] You ain’t got nothing else to do, so you can certainly be there.

[00:56:44.078 – 00:56:49.478] There’s a steering committee that has a vacancy, and you can have a place on that steering committee if you want it.

[00:56:49.478 – 00:56:54.158] There’s a little AA paper that needs to be put out, and there ain’t nobody here to put it out.

[00:56:54.158 – 00:56:56.118] And you talk about your education.

[00:56:56.118 – 00:57:02.478] Why can’t you go up there and print that little paper?” And so I did these things, and I made AA my life in there.

[00:57:02.478 – 00:57:11.738] And I began to take an inventory, and my sponsor said, “Look, it’ll be the best chance you ever had in your life to take a hard, honest look at yourself because you ain’t got nothing else to do.

[00:57:11.738 – 00:57:13.337] You got no job interfering with it.

[00:57:13.337 – 00:57:15.178] You’ve got no other duties.

[00:57:15.178 – 00:57:21.678] All you gotta do is just live AA and look at John for this period of time.” So I set out to do this.

[00:57:21.678 – 00:57:22.318] I believed him.

[00:57:22.318 – 00:57:24.818] And I began to learn about me.

[00:57:24.818 – 00:57:29.178] And I learned more and more, and I began to learn what the program means.

[00:57:29.178 – 00:57:39.558] And one day, there was another little significant event in my life that I’d like to share with you that has meant much to me because it brought the spiritual part of it to me,

[00:57:39.558 – 00:57:42.278] and it brought the disease in the proper context of what it is.

[00:57:42.278 – 00:57:49.838] I was sitting in the, in the, uh, day room looking out the window at a herd of Angus cattle.

[00:57:49.838 – 00:57:52.078] They were wandering out in the field.

[00:57:52.078 – 00:57:57.938] And I got to thinking about these cows that are gonna be butchered and eaten, are wandering around loose.

[00:57:57.938 – 00:58:03.778] A little old fence out there that any one of them could have pushed over, and yet they’re wandering around loose.

[00:58:03.778 – 00:58:06.938] And here I am with all my college degrees.

[00:58:06.938 – 00:58:09.338] Here’s Mooney with his college degrees, locked up.

[00:58:09.338 – 00:58:11.298] And why?

[00:58:11.298 – 00:58:19.798] Why are animals that are gonna be butchered allowed to run loose, and a human being that’s supposed to be an educated citizen locked up?

[00:58:19.798 – 00:58:29.518] And I could come up with only one answer, that if I hadn’t been drinking liquor and shooting dope, I wouldn’t have been there.

[00:58:29.518 – 00:58:35.618] I had thought myself, about myself as having a nervous condition that caused me to drink.

[00:58:35.618 – 00:58:44.918] But I had to face the terrible reality they don’t put you in Lexington for being nervous, and they put me in there for drinking liquor and shooting dope.

[00:58:44.918 – 00:58:55.198] And I turned it around, really, for the first time and saw that whatever had happened to me to put me in, in, in Lexington

[00:58:55.198 – 00:58:59.758] needed further examination, that I needed to go back in my life.

[00:58:59.758 – 00:59:10.294] And not try to find out what it was that was causing me to drink liquor or shoot dope, that I must accept responsibility for this,

[00:59:10.294 – 00:59:14.834] but I w- should look to see what the liquor and dope had caused in my life.

[00:59:14.834 – 00:59:18.454] And I came up with the things that I’m telling you tonight.

[00:59:18.454 – 00:59:20.913] A life that began to go wrong.

[00:59:20.913 – 00:59:29.494] Things began to happen from the date of that first drink, and it kept on doing that way till I came in there and took my last drink.

[00:59:29.494 – 00:59:33.094] I stayed up there for the full time.

[00:59:33.094 – 00:59:43.634] I was released and, uh, I came out in a state of disturbance, wondering whether or not I was going to be, be able to,

[00:59:43.634 – 00:59:48.554] to make, uh, to make it back and how I was gonna do it.

[00:59:48.554 – 00:59:58.554] I had a, uh, I had a crisis in the airport in Atlanta when I was making, uh, waiting to change planes to go from Lexington

[00:59:58.554 – 01:00:05.214] to Savannah, where my wife was waiting for me with the children, and suddenly I can’t climb on the plane.

[01:00:05.214 – 01:00:15.454] I find myself giving away my ticket, and I find myself in a motel room in the deepest depression I’d ever been in and a feeling of, of hopelessness and uselessness

[01:00:15.454 – 01:00:24.154] and despair that, that I wa- that was strange to me even then, and feeling that there was no way I could go out of there and face people.

[01:00:24.154 – 01:00:28.674] And I sat there, and the more I sat and thought, the worse it got.

[01:00:28.674 – 01:00:38.814] And finally, when there was nothing else to do, I dropped down on my knees and I said, “God, help me.” And when I said this, instantly, instantly, like

[01:00:38.814 – 01:00:42.894] you heard described this morning, instantly it went away.

[01:00:42.894 – 01:00:47.354] All the despair, all the fear, all the resentment, all the…

[01:00:47.354 – 01:00:57.414] Everything about it just went away, and I began to feel myself caught up in some sort of a force, a feeling that was strange to me, that it was very, very much like the high you

[01:00:57.414 – 01:00:58.894] get from drinking or shooting dope.

[01:00:58.894 – 01:01:04.254] And pretty soon I’m floating i- in a tremendous exultation and even beyond

[01:01:04.569 – 01:01:11.589] I’d ever felt out of any type of chemical, and I had the realization this is a spiritual experience.

[01:01:11.589 – 01:01:14.289] This is God doing something to you in your life, whatever it is.

[01:01:14.289 – 01:01:15.369] That’s what it was to me.

[01:01:15.369 – 01:01:22.149] And, uh, and I had the feeling that this is what I had been looking for all along.

[01:01:22.149 – 01:01:32.069] I heard Chuck C call it one time, “The almost disease,” the disease that gives us almost what we want, but not quite.

[01:01:32.069 – 01:01:40.949] In that motel room that night, I found the fulfillment of what I had been looking for in a bottle of liquor or a shot of dope, either one.

[01:01:40.949 – 01:01:46.089] I would take a, I’d take a drink, and it would make me feel so good.

[01:01:46.089 – 01:01:47.629] I’d take another one and another one.

[01:01:47.629 – 01:01:54.509] I’d get higher, and finally I’m, I’m wanting that ultimate feeling, and I’d take that last drink, and then wham, I pass out or I get sick.

[01:01:54.509 – 01:01:58.809] I throw up or something, and I’m, I’m waking up the next morning with a hangover.

[01:01:58.809 – 01:02:08.809] But in that motel room that night, I felt the, I felt the fulfillment of this feeling, and I knew what it was, that I was using my alcohol,

[01:02:08.809 – 01:02:18.789] my narcotics, my pills as a substitute for God, that my alcoholism addiction was a search in which I was looking for something big.

[01:02:18.789 – 01:02:22.929] I was looking for the big spiritual force in my life in that bottle, and it wasn’t there.

[01:02:22.929 – 01:02:24.349] It wasn’t there.

[01:02:24.349 – 01:02:28.909] And in that motel room that night, God chose to reveal it to me, and it was there.

[01:02:28.909 – 01:02:31.209] I stayed that way a while.

[01:02:31.209 – 01:02:38.769] I went over, I was relaxed, and the craving for alcohol or drugs went out of my life.

[01:02:38.769 – 01:02:42.649] That was in November of 1959, and it’s never come back.

[01:02:42.649 – 01:02:44.729] I’ve never had to fight.

[01:02:44.729 – 01:02:48.089] I’ve never had to fight alcohol or drugs like some people had.

[01:02:48.089 – 01:02:50.969] There have been times, you know, when things would look good.

[01:02:50.969 – 01:02:56.729] There have been times on hot days when a can of beer would just show on these beer signs, all that frost.

[01:02:56.729 – 01:03:00.249] It looked pretty good, but it’s never been to the point that I’ve had to struggle with it.

[01:03:00.249 – 01:03:07.269] And, uh, I tried to decide what would be safe for me that I could take, and I couldn’t come up with anything.

[01:03:07.269 – 01:03:09.269] And so I didn’t have any hurting.

[01:03:09.269 – 01:03:13.088] I didn’t have anything I couldn’t stand, so I didn’t take anything, not even aspirin.

[01:03:13.088 – 01:03:23.109] And I go along for years and years and never even take an aspirin tablet, and I used to talk in AA a lot about not taking aspirin, and I quit that because one night after a meeting, a guy came up to

[01:03:23.109 – 01:03:23.919] me and he was drunk.

[01:03:23.919 – 01:03:38.229] He says, “Doc,” he says, “You sure have helped me.” He says, “I’m still drinking a little liquor, but I ain’t taking no aspirin.” I

[01:03:38.229 – 01:03:42.849] slept that night, and, uh, I, I went home.

[01:03:42.849 – 01:03:44.509] I caught the plane the next morning.

[01:03:44.509 – 01:03:45.289] I had no problem.

[01:03:45.289 – 01:03:46.329] My wife was waiting for me.

[01:03:46.329 – 01:03:56.029] I went back to Statesboro with a new feeling, a, a new feeling of, of having found something in my spiritual life that I’d never had before.

[01:03:56.029 – 01:03:57.989] It was a great thing.

[01:03:57.989 – 01:04:08.049] And, uh, I think I was deceived by this thing just like I had been by the bottle, that the de-denial mechanism

[01:04:08.049 – 01:04:16.589] we talk about, we gotta watch even, uh, even when we’re sober, to feel like maybe we’ve got all the program we need.

[01:04:16.589 – 01:04:26.409] I had a feeling from the time that thing was over, this self-will, this run riot, this ego, this pride began to come back, and I said, “You know what?

[01:04:26.409 – 01:04:33.569] Uh, I read in the book where most people don’t have these spiritual experiences, but Bill Wilson did, and I kind of had something like Bill.

[01:04:33.569 – 01:04:35.489] Me and Bill kind of in the same boat here, you know?

[01:04:35.489 – 01:04:44.689] And when I get down there, I’m gonna join the Statesboro group, and I’m gonna tell them about this spiritual experience, and it ought to help them.” I get right back in the driver’s chair.

[01:04:44.689 – 01:04:53.039] I get back up there with the, “I guess what I’m gonna be, instead of being, just playing five-eight-five-two, I’m gonna be Professor five-eight-five-two.

[01:04:53.039 – 01:05:03.049] I’m gonna teach them something.” But anyway, I say, “First chance I get, this is what I’m gonna do.” Before I left Lexington, my sponsor had told me that he

[01:05:03.049 – 01:05:13.209] was sober 17 years, and he says, “I go to five, six, seven, eight meetings a week.” And I didn’t tell him what I was thinking, but my mind was clicking while he was doing this, and I’m saying, “Boy, that’s great.

[01:05:13.209 – 01:05:14.609] That’s wonderful.

[01:05:14.609 – 01:05:21.929] You know, when I get his age, uh, that’ll be nice to retire and go to five or six or seven meetings a week, but I got a living to make for my children.

[01:05:21.929 – 01:05:27.029] And so if I make a, a meeting once a month, that’ll be all right for a while.

[01:05:27.029 – 01:05:29.929] I’m gonna put AA first, and I’m gonna get to at least one a month.

[01:05:29.929 – 01:05:37.369] And then as time goes on and I get reestablished, I’m going to, uh, go to more.” And that was my feeling.

[01:05:37.369 – 01:05:39.069] So I didn’t go to AA.

[01:05:39.069 – 01:05:42.129] I went to church, and I talked to my preacher about my spiritual experience.

[01:05:42.129 – 01:05:51.369] I talked to some other friends about it, and they thought it was wonderful, and they began to say, “Well, John, I believe you’ve been converted.” And I said, “Yep, sort of looks that way, doesn’t it?” And we go along talking this way.

[01:05:51.369 – 01:05:53.169] Two weeks, I don’t go to no AA.

[01:05:53.169 – 01:05:56.709] I just stay around and kind of bask in this little feeling.

[01:05:56.709 – 01:05:58.509] I’ve still got it, still kind of hanging on.

[01:05:58.509 – 01:06:08.709] It’s a wonderful feeling to be relaxed and free from resentments and guilt and anxiety when you fought this battle of depression and anxiety so long, and suddenly it’s all gone

[01:06:08.709 – 01:06:10.569] and I feel like I’m, I’m released.

[01:06:10.569 – 01:06:13.689] I got freedom, see, from myself and my feelings, and it’s great.

[01:06:13.689 – 01:06:16.089] And everything, my wife was glad to see me.

[01:06:16.089 – 01:06:16.849] They were happy.

[01:06:16.849 – 01:06:26.569] But I began to hear some rumblings, and I got a message to go to Atlanta, and I went up there for the State Board of Medical Examiners, and they said, “Dr.

[01:06:26.569 – 01:06:29.649] Mooney, you have been convicted of a felony.

[01:06:29.649 – 01:06:36.129] You cannot practice medicine in the state of Georgia with that on your record,” and they revoked my license to practice medicine.

[01:06:36.129 – 01:06:44.249] And I went home shaken, miserable, not knowing what was gonna happen, and yet not one thing in the world I could do about it.

[01:06:44.249 – 01:06:46.309] Why does this have to happen to me?

[01:06:46.309 – 01:06:47.989] Cussing, angry.

[01:06:47.989 – 01:06:52.619] Why couldn’t they have let me go with this thing, uh, given me a chance?

[01:06:52.619 – 01:06:55.289] Because I feel like now I really do have the program.

[01:06:55.289 – 01:06:57.649] But there wasn’t no way in the world.

[01:06:57.649 – 01:07:04.909] The doctors up there tried to, to give me a chance, and the legal counsel for the board sat there and says, “You can’t do it.

[01:07:04.909 – 01:07:06.249] You’ve got to take his license.

[01:07:06.249 – 01:07:06.909] Do it now.

[01:07:06.909 – 01:07:09.029] It’s the best time.” So they did.

[01:07:09.029 – 01:07:10.909] So I came back.

[01:07:10.909 – 01:07:14.281] And when I got home, I was wondering what I was gonna do.

[01:07:14.281 – 01:07:15.861] And I sat down at my desk.

[01:07:15.861 – 01:07:24.301] I let my nurse go, tell my secretary to collect some, help me collect some bills on old accounts maybe, and wondered how in the world we’re gonna live.

[01:07:24.301 – 01:07:27.921] Thought I’m not even sure they’re gonna give it back to me in six months.

[01:07:27.921 – 01:07:30.621] So I just sat down and waited.

[01:07:30.621 – 01:07:32.921] And a thought entered my mind, a man’s name.

[01:07:32.921 – 01:07:42.981] About a year and a half before, one Saturday afternoon when I was drunk, Dot had gone out in the country to her mother’s, and I

[01:07:42.981 – 01:07:48.421] was sitting in the living room at home watching the test pattern on television, which I like to do.

[01:07:48.421 – 01:07:53.921] And this man named Henry came in, and Henry was an old friend of mine, and I’d known him for years.

[01:07:53.921 – 01:07:57.301] We were brought up together, drank liquor together.

[01:07:57.301 – 01:07:58.001] I tried to help him.

[01:07:58.001 – 01:07:59.160] He was a bad alcoholic.

[01:07:59.160 – 01:08:01.861] And Henry came in, and Henry looked different.

[01:08:01.861 – 01:08:03.181] He, he didn’t, he didn’t look drunk.

[01:08:03.181 – 01:08:04.401] He had a clean suit.

[01:08:04.401 – 01:08:14.461] He sat down and said, “John, I want to talk to you.” I said, “Okay, Henry.” He said, “I want to tell you about me.” He said, “You knew I’m, I’m a drunk, don’t you?” And I said, “Yeah.” And he went on talking and he says, “But I

[01:08:14.461 – 01:08:17.321] want you to know, I know you’ve been interested in me over the years.

[01:08:17.321 – 01:08:18.541] I want you to know I’m sober now.

[01:08:18.541 – 01:08:23.421] I joined Alcoholics Anonymous.” And he told me about the group, and he told me about himself.

[01:08:23.421 – 01:08:25.001] And I felt real good about this.

[01:08:25.001 – 01:08:26.021] I said, “Boy, that’s great.

[01:08:26.021 – 01:08:33.481] If it can help Henry, uh, there’s no telling what it can do for anybody.” So he says, “John, would you like to go to a meeting?” And I said, “Henry, I certainly would.

[01:08:33.481 – 01:08:39.861] There’s one thing that I don’t, that I think is bad, is this terrible illness of alcoholism that is sweeping the country.

[01:08:39.861 – 01:08:42.721] And anything I can do to help, I’ll do it.

[01:08:42.721 – 01:08:49.341] And if you’ll set the meeting up, I’ll go up there and lecture to these people any time you want me to.” And Henry thanked me, and he walked out.

[01:08:49.341 – 01:08:53.921] And I never thought about Henry I don’t think much anymore until that day.

[01:08:53.921 – 01:09:00.661] I sat down and suddenly Henry’s name pops in my mind, and I pick up the telephone and I call him.

[01:09:00.661 – 01:09:05.021] And I says, “Henry, I’m ready to join AA.” And he was around there in about five minutes.

[01:09:05.021 – 01:09:07.701] And the next night I went to my first meeting.

[01:09:07.701 – 01:09:10.631] Then I kept going and going and going to AA.

[01:09:10.631 – 01:09:18.821] And, uh, I didn’t like it too much at first because, uh, they didn’t pay much attention to this beautiful spiritual experience I had.

[01:09:18.821 – 01:09:21.001] They had other things on their mind.

[01:09:21.001 – 01:09:24.441] Uh, the first meeting I went to, they asked me to talk.

[01:09:24.441 – 01:09:31.661] And I got up and I talked for about 15 minutes, and, uh, my subject was the rehabilitation program in Lexington.

[01:09:31.661 – 01:09:37.001] And, uh, I was told later that it’s the worst AA talk that’d been made in South Georgia.

[01:09:37.001 – 01:09:41.321] And after the meeting, Sadie and Ida, some of y’all know them.

[01:09:41.321 – 01:09:44.521] They’ve been here, and they’re kind of sponsors of ours, too.

[01:09:44.521 – 01:09:52.181] And Sadie and Ida came up to see us and said, “What you doing after the meeting?” “Nothing.” And they took us to their home, and they played a tape.

[01:09:52.181 – 01:09:58.001] And the next night they said, they said, “What you doing the next, tomorrow night?” “Nothing.” “We’ll pick you up at 7:00.

[01:09:58.001 – 01:10:01.441] We’re going to Savannah.” And then the next night, “Where you going?

[01:10:01.441 – 01:10:04.001] What you doing tomorrow night?” “Nothing.” “We’ll pick you up at 7:00.

[01:10:04.001 – 01:10:08.241] We’re going to Augusta.” And they started carrying us.

[01:10:08.241 – 01:10:17.501] These two people sent from God that gave us enthusiasm when we didn’t have it, taught me what it means to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

[01:10:17.501 – 01:10:23.521] And I began to realize that there’s more to AA than a spiritual experience.

[01:10:23.521 – 01:10:30.681] I don’t want to, to, uh, undervalue this thing because it took that type of thing to get through to me.

[01:10:30.681 – 01:10:32.801] But that won’t keep you sober.

[01:10:32.801 – 01:10:38.201] I had been under the feeling that, by golly, you know, uh, this is all I need to do.

[01:10:38.201 – 01:10:43.441] And I wasn’t even sure how much I needed to go to AA and how much I needed to go to church.

[01:10:43.441 – 01:10:45.241] But I knew it wouldn’t work after that.

[01:10:45.241 – 01:10:46.781] And I started going.

[01:10:46.781 – 01:10:48.101] We went for six months.

[01:10:48.101 – 01:10:51.221] And Dot came in with me, and we started going together.

[01:10:51.221 – 01:10:55.341] And at the end of six months, I had learned what it means to be a member.

[01:10:55.341 – 01:11:04.761] I started off that, uh, period after I left Lexington, I’m gonna go to AA as much as my practice will let me go.

[01:11:04.761 – 01:11:08.180] And during that six months, I reversed this thing.

[01:11:08.180 – 01:11:13.401] I’m gonna practice as much medicine as AA will let me practice, but I’m gonna put it first.

[01:11:13.401 – 01:11:16.261] And I knew what it meant to put it first.

[01:11:16.261 – 01:11:22.881] It meant sitting there in the meetings, being responsible, a responsible member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

[01:11:22.881 – 01:11:28.141] And I went to Atlanta in June 1960, and they restored my license without reservation.

[01:11:28.141 – 01:11:30.101] And I’ve had it ever since.

[01:11:30.101 – 01:11:35.601] In a little while, alcoholics began to come to see us and began to, to, to treat them.

[01:11:35.601 – 01:11:38.961] And we began to get deeper into this thing and go places.

[01:11:38.961 – 01:11:43.021] My practice began to, to, uh, just sort of go away.

[01:11:43.021 – 01:11:44.281] It didn’t go away.

[01:11:44.281 – 01:11:45.761] I just didn’t have time to do it all.

[01:11:45.761 – 01:11:51.081] It just, it began to, I d- began to do less surgery, and I stopped doing obstetrics.

[01:11:51.081 – 01:11:56.141] But my alcohol practice began to pick up, and people began to come to see me from other places.

[01:11:56.141 – 01:12:05.181] During that year when I got out of the hospital up in New Canaan, Connecticut, a place called Silver Hill, I sent the patients to the psychiatrist.

[01:12:05.181 – 01:12:11.961] I said, “They cured me.” And during this, uh, time, I took these people myself, and I began to try to help them.

[01:12:11.961 – 01:12:17.121] And we took them into our home, began to get involved, and our whole family got involved in this thing.

[01:12:17.121 – 01:12:21.661] And over the years, we just, it just sort of drifted around and, and I got deeper.

[01:12:21.661 – 01:12:23.141] And we had some ups and downs.

[01:12:23.141 – 01:12:26.681] We had some drifting between the two of us.

[01:12:26.681 – 01:12:29.741] Uh, but we worked it all out.

[01:12:29.741 – 01:12:35.401] We found out that when we got sober, there were a lot of problems that were created by sobriety.

[01:12:35.401 – 01:12:40.321] There were financial problems we just didn’t have back when we were drinking because we didn’t have no money.

[01:12:40.321 – 01:12:43.701] And there were problems that came along with the children.

[01:12:43.701 – 01:12:45.641] And, uh, we were getting sober.

[01:12:45.641 – 01:12:47.061] We were aware of the problem.

[01:12:47.061 – 01:12:48.321] I guess we had them back then.

[01:12:48.321 – 01:12:53.361] The, we became aware through our children of some things that had happened to us.

[01:12:53.361 – 01:12:55.601] You know, this Alateen, this Al-Anon, it’s a great thing.

[01:12:55.601 – 01:13:03.361] Your children ain’t gonna tell you about this thing unless you give them the opportunity and take the, the fear away from them so they won’t be punished if they talk about us.

[01:13:03.361 – 01:13:08.021] And our children had never talked about what had happened there until after they got in Alateen.

[01:13:08.021 – 01:13:15.221] At an Alateen meeting at a convention one night, they asked little Jimmy, he was about, uh, 13 at the time, if he would tell about something.

[01:13:15.221 – 01:13:17.061] And Jimmy said, uh, that, “Didn’t do too much.

[01:13:17.061 – 01:13:23.989] I remember one night…” that, uh, mother and, mom and daddy were in the living room and they were arguing.

[01:13:23.989 – 01:13:34.039] And, uh, daddy told me to, uh, mama told me to go to bed, and we started up the stairs, and daddy told me, said, we all started upstairs, and daddy told me we didn’t have to go to bed, so we came

[01:13:34.039 – 01:13:34.768] back downstairs.

[01:13:34.768 – 01:13:38.929] And as soon as we got downstairs, mama said, “You must go up those stairs to bed,” so we went back up the stairs.

[01:13:38.929 – 01:13:48.979] We got to the top and said, “Daddy told us to come back.” And then, uh, mama said, after that, said, “Okay, well, if he wants you to stay down here, you can, you can stay down stairs.”

[01:13:48.979 – 01:13:50.989] But when she said that, said, daddy said, “No, you can’t stay now.

[01:13:50.989 – 01:13:53.988] You got to go back upstairs.” Said, gee, he said they switched sides on him.

[01:13:53.988 – 01:13:56.209] I mean, remember this sort of stuff.

[01:13:56.209 – 01:13:59.809] But how do, how do children live in a confusion like that, you know?

[01:13:59.809 – 01:14:02.169] It’s amazing, but they did.

[01:14:02.169 – 01:14:11.549] And now we went on and we’ve, uh, become involved professionally with it, and we’ve been fortunate to be able to work with and treat other alcoholics.

[01:14:11.549 – 01:14:17.949] And yet, uh, I have to spend time working on me, and we’ve gone with this.

[01:14:17.949 – 01:14:21.629] The last few months, um, things have made a change.

[01:14:21.629 – 01:14:29.289] We got a great big house there that we built and enlarged back in the ’60s when we had patients in the house.

[01:14:29.289 – 01:14:34.409] We sometimes would have twenty, twenty-five patients in the house, and then we also had children.

[01:14:34.409 – 01:14:42.229] The last of our children, our youngest daughter, our AA daughter, who was born in AA, never knows anything about our drinking.

[01:14:42.229 – 01:14:47.069] She got married and there’s nobody in the, in the house now except Dot and me.

[01:14:47.069 – 01:14:53.669] And it’s a big house, and she goes back to the bedroom, and I want to watch, uh, television.

[01:14:53.669 – 01:14:58.289] I call her up on the telephone to ask her how she’s doing, and it’s just, uh, it’s just too much.

[01:14:58.289 – 01:15:03.749] And so we, she and I have become involved in, in more and more couples work.

[01:15:03.749 – 01:15:11.529] We, in getting couples groups and couples workshop, we’re working together with couple problems because we had our, we had our hands full of these things.

[01:15:11.529 – 01:15:17.329] We had to work through some monsters in order to maintain our marriage and work with it, but it worked beautifully.

[01:15:17.329 – 01:15:23.729] And so now we’re moving out of this house, and we’re going to use that for some, for the couples program, and we’re getting us a little smaller place to live in.

[01:15:23.729 – 01:15:24.549] And that’s a thrill.

[01:15:24.549 – 01:15:32.909] It’s a thrill to, to be free a little bit, you know, to be over here and not have to call up to see if somebody’s going to take your kid to school tomorrow.

[01:15:32.909 – 01:15:35.709] Of course, I miss them, and I, we’d be awfully lonely.

[01:15:35.709 – 01:15:42.029] But somehow or other, when these things happen in your life, you get a different relationship with each other, and that’s what’s happened to us.

[01:15:42.029 – 01:15:50.289] And in many ways, life seems more beautiful than it ever has before in all of it, all of it through this, this, this fellowship.

[01:15:50.289 – 01:15:52.809] You know, I was nothing when I came here.

[01:15:52.809 – 01:15:53.989] Absolutely nothing.

[01:15:53.989 – 01:16:02.169] I, I was bankrupt in every way except the last little signature that would have made it financial.

[01:16:02.169 – 01:16:06.049] I had fought a battle of trying to hold things together.

[01:16:06.049 – 01:16:14.049] I wanted to be a good doctor and a good father and a good husband and a good citizen, a good church man, drink liquor, and I tried this over and over again, and it didn’t work.

[01:16:14.049 – 01:16:21.389] When I finally decided that I can give up the liquor, I, I never really decided I could give it up.

[01:16:21.389 – 01:16:26.049] I just was willing to, and AA showed me how, and the liquor went out of my life.

[01:16:26.049 – 01:16:27.529] The other things have come through.

[01:16:27.529 – 01:16:37.529] They’ve all come out, and I’ve had a feeling that somehow or other our life is working out like God meant for it to for the first time, just the last few years, where it

[01:16:37.529 – 01:16:40.409] seems to sort of be, be what, that’s what he wanted.

[01:16:40.409 – 01:16:47.669] And it’s a feeling, it’s a feeling of, of gratitude that I can’t describe to you, and I owe it to you.

[01:16:47.669 – 01:16:49.209] I knew nothing about love.

[01:16:49.209 – 01:16:52.569] I got a couple of experiences I want to share with you, and I’m going to be through here.

[01:16:52.569 – 01:16:54.609] I knew nothing about love.

[01:16:54.609 – 01:16:55.749] I was afraid of love.

[01:16:55.749 – 01:16:57.449] I was afraid to talk about love.

[01:16:57.449 – 01:17:03.569] Afraid to, to, to, to, uh, to get in any kind of a display of love.

[01:17:03.569 – 01:17:06.429] I didn’t want to talk much about God.

[01:17:06.429 – 01:17:16.669] I had a, an, an intellectual sort of a, whether you want to call it that, a, a sort of a mental thing about God, and I could analyze him and tell you all about him, but I couldn’t

[01:17:16.669 – 01:17:17.029] feel him.

[01:17:17.029 – 01:17:18.969] I couldn’t be part of it till I came here.

[01:17:18.969 – 01:17:28.969] To give you an example of what I mean, uh, I was down in, in, in Florida one time in a psychiatrist office, and he says, “John, what do you want?” I said, “I want to be a good father, a good

[01:17:28.969 – 01:17:32.129] husband, a good citizen.” I kept naming these things.

[01:17:32.129 – 01:17:33.429] He was shaking his head.

[01:17:33.429 – 01:17:38.949] He says, “Are you a Christian?” I said, “Sure, I’m a Christian, member of Pittman Park Methodist Church, paid up.

[01:17:38.949 – 01:17:49.049] I don’t owe them a dime out there.” He said, “Do you know how a Christian would answer that question?” I said, “How?” “A Christian would say, ‘I want to please God.'” Well, my

[01:17:49.049 – 01:17:52.589] reaction to this was, if anybody ever asks me that question again, I’ll know the answer.

[01:17:52.589 – 01:17:55.729] And that’s where, that’s where the thing worked with me.

[01:17:55.729 – 01:17:58.629] That’s the, that’s, that was the spiritual life that I was involved in.

[01:17:58.629 – 01:18:05.349] And so sure enough, up at lectures, they asked me that question, “What do you want?” And I wrote, “To please God,” like any damn fool ought to know that was the answer.

[01:18:05.349 – 01:18:06.709] That was the feeling I had.

[01:18:06.709 – 01:18:08.269] Thank God I can answer that one, you know?

[01:18:08.269 – 01:18:10.229] And, uh, this is the way it was.

[01:18:10.229 – 01:18:14.809] I didn’t know till I got in AA that this is what the, what the third step means.

[01:18:14.809 – 01:18:20.669] Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him was, look, I’m going to try to please God.

[01:18:20.669 – 01:18:22.609] And it got through.

[01:18:22.609 – 01:18:25.509] See, they, he knew it, but I didn’t.

[01:18:25.509 – 01:18:26.309] I wasn’t capable.

[01:18:26.309 – 01:18:28.469] I didn’t have that little thing open in my mind.

[01:18:28.469 – 01:18:33.789] I didn’t have the little key to open the little door that would let that kind of feeling in.

[01:18:33.789 – 01:18:42.829] And you are the ones that opened my heart to let that type of feeling, that type of expression, language of the heart, Cornel called it, let it come into me.

[01:18:42.829 – 01:18:50.689] And I’m grateful for that because it’s a whole new world of understanding and relationships of one human being with another and love.

[01:18:50.689 – 01:18:55.029] Gosh, I was, I was way out on that thing.

[01:18:55.029 – 01:19:02.049] And, uh, John, uh, Charlie was talking the other night about this similar thing, and it happened to me here.

[01:19:02.049 – 01:19:07.829] I’m sitting in a psychiatrist office in Atlanta one time, and this guy is a therapist.

[01:19:07.829 – 01:19:12.128] Now, those of you who don’t know much about psychiatrists, I’d like to give you a little rundown on them.

[01:19:12.128 – 01:19:13.049] There are different kinds.

[01:19:13.049 – 01:19:18.249] There are psychiatrists that will, uh, train to ask you leading questions to bring out thoughts.

[01:19:18.249 – 01:19:24.289] There are psychiatrists that will share, see, that will give you maybe direction.

[01:19:24.289 – 01:19:29.037] advisory type, but they also got a group called therapists that don’t say nothing.

[01:19:29.037 – 01:19:30.757] They just sit there and stare at you.

[01:19:30.757 – 01:19:40.917] And, uh, your reaction is gonna be when you meet one of these fellows is stare back, but don’t do it because, uh, they take special training and you can’t

[01:19:40.917 – 01:19:42.217] stare down a psychiatrist.

[01:19:42.217 – 01:19:43.057] There ain’t no way you can do it.

[01:19:43.057 – 01:19:45.577] You can try all day, but he’s gonna blink first.

[01:19:45.577 – 01:19:51.817] And so this guy is a therapist, and he was sitting there staring at me, and I was trying to stare him back.

[01:19:51.817 – 01:19:59.117] We were alone in this place, you know, and I’m trying to stare him back, and I’m very uncomfortable because all this silence is costing me $50 an hour.

[01:19:59.117 – 01:20:06.237] And, uh, he leans over and he says, “I love you.” And I’m alone with him.

[01:20:06.237 – 01:20:16.277] I get my hat, and I’m married, and I’m not used to this type of approach from a man, and I get me a hat and I get out of there, because, uh, I don’t

[01:20:16.277 – 01:20:17.237] like this sort of deal.

[01:20:17.237 – 01:20:19.117] You know, I’m not, I’m not that way.

[01:20:19.117 – 01:20:21.137] And, and so I said, “I don’t…

[01:20:21.137 – 01:20:28.857] So what’s wrong with him?” And so I just let this thing bug me for years, and finally, when I got in AA, I realized what this man was trying to do.

[01:20:28.857 – 01:20:33.617] He was trying to find out what the word love meant to me, and he found out all right, too.

[01:20:33.617 – 01:20:36.897] But I didn’t find out till you taught me.

[01:20:36.897 – 01:20:40.597] And I come in here, and I realize now what it means.

[01:20:40.597 – 01:20:42.497] I was unclear on this thing.

[01:20:42.497 – 01:20:46.117] I didn’t have these type of, this type of feeling separated.

[01:20:46.117 – 01:20:55.577] But you opened this door with the language of the heart and looked me in the eye and said, “I loved you,” said, “I love you,” and you meant it, and I know it, and it was the men and the women that told me this.

[01:20:55.577 – 01:20:55.837] And I…

[01:20:55.837 – 01:21:01.677] You, you opened your heart, and I could look back at you and say, “I love you, too,” and I can do that tonight.

[01:21:01.677 – 01:21:11.817] And to have this experience of being in this room and knowing that there’s love here, like you won’t find it anywhere else in the world, that flows between

[01:21:11.817 – 01:21:14.817] us at this moment, it’s just the greatest thing in the world.

[01:21:14.817 – 01:21:18.997] You can call it whatever you want to, but to me it’s the redeeming grace of Almighty God.

[01:21:18.997 – 01:21:21.617] Thank you, and God bless you.

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