Thank you. I'm Chief Black Hawk, and I'm an alcoholic. Deeply grateful alcoholic, and I wanna thank the committee that brought me out here and asked me to come over here. I'm deeply grateful that anybody asks me any place, any time, to go anywhere today. That never happened when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, I wouldn't expect anybody to be like me. I came from the bottom, and I had no place to go but up, so I didn't have too much of a chance of going down. And I'm not gonna get into my story too much, except for the fact to let you know that I lived on skid rows of Detroit, Michigan Avenue, for about two and a half years before I met the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And my life had led from a millionaire's country club life to the criminal world, to the sporting world, and then down in skid row in Michigan Avenue in Detroit. And when I came here, I didn't think I was gonna be alive. I was the youngest kid that walked into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous in the Detroit area, and I was scared. You know, I'm not used to being amongst white people. I wasn't brought up that way. My father never allowed you in our home. And I found out the thing that alcohol done for me, it allowed me to tolerate you and mix with you and go to school with you. A lot of things alcohol done for me, I was deeply grateful for. And when you heard those words, cunning, baffling, and powerful, I know what they mean 'cause I never dreamed that alcohol was gonna take me on the road that it did, down through two wars. And then in the World War II, that's where I started my drinking. And I'm not gonna get in that, and I'm not gonna get up to where I ended. I'll tell you what I'd like to get into, something that every alcoholic sitting in this room can identify with, and that's simply this: someplace, somewhere, we all took our first drink. And I don't know about you, but I certainly never said to myself, "If I go at this stuff hot and heavy for about fifteen years, I can join AA." Something happened along the line, and I'll tell you this: the minute I tasted alcohol, I loved it. My career started with the hundred and ninety proof al– hospital alcohol that I picked up in, in Guam during World War II. And I loved every bit of it and progressed from there, and I loved everything I drank and everything I tasted about alcohol all of my drinking life, except the few things down I used to drink on Michigan Avenue in Detroit of skid row. The one I really couldn't stand was Mennen shaving lotion. I don't know if you've ever tasted that, but that stuff stays with you for two weeks in your food and everything else. But, you know, I was a young man when all of this happened. Very ambitious, well-educated. Had ambitions of becoming the first American Indian president of the United States. I had a million dollars and lost it. And I sat on skid row one time looking up at the sky and said, "God, what has happened? What's happened to me? I'm all alone," and I knew it. You know, I love this program so much, and I love talking about it, but I honestly believe something. You know, when this young man in Town Hospital got down on his knees and said, "God, if there is a God, please help me," that's when your Alcoholics Anonymous program was born. God is the founder of this program, and Bill is the co-founder. Don't let anybody tell you any different. I get kind of sick and tired of hearing a lot of things that have come into Alcoholics Anonymous today. It's killing a lot of young people. And I still feel that I'm pretty young, and I've worked with young people all of my life since I've been in AA. Ninety meetings in ninety days. Hell, I wouldn't have lasted ninety, ninety minutes when I came here. But, you know, I know God knew what he was doing when he tapped Bill on the shoulder because he knew on October the 13th, 1958, a very sick little Indian was gonna be dying if he didn't do something. And he gave him many opportunities, and I never took them. I lost many things. Most of you know I lost a son, that have heard me before, through alcohol. And if you don't think that puts a lot of self-pity in you, you're crazy. My wife got tired of listening to me talk about that so many times in AA that she says, "I'm sick and tired of listening to you talk about losing your son." She says, "You lost your son because, because you drank. God gave you the opportunity to have many sons and many children." And thank God he has. 'Cause I've worked with over 3,000 people and only lost about 12 that went back to drinking. We will guarantee you a 90% success rate. I will take anybody in this room and guarantee to be happy in two weeks' time. We have a program now that I've practiced for 36 years, and we have that kind of success rate. Of course, I got a little advantage over you white people. I, I got a heavy tomahawk. If you don't straighten out, you know what happens. But, you know, the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous came to me one day when I was speaking at a conference in North Dakota, and I was standing before 8,000 people, and I said to myself and to that audience, "I love white people." And to me, that's the biggest miracle that ever– AA has ever performed on me, and I still believe it today. And you may not think so when I get done talking. But I truly love every single one of you here tonight, and I'm sure glad you showed up. I'm glad I showed up. But most of all, I'm glad He showed up, and that's what I can believe today. He knew I was coming, and he had to form this program. After all, you white people should have formed some program for us Indians. You … You got us drunk in the first place. See, you, your weapons didn't beat us. John Barleycorn beat us, and you knew it. But thank God Alcoholics Anonymous came along, the greatest thing going on the face of the earth, bringing me the one most wonderful way to live in your life. I've been happy, and I've been sober since October the 13th, 1958, when I walked into this program, and I still am today. I love every one of you. I want to congratulate you again coming down to Founders' Day. I know you're gonna have a wonderful weekend to enjoy yourself, to meet in fellowship because here's where it is. It's here in Akron. You people who have come here have gone the extra mile, which many people don't do, particularly a lot of times the old-timers. I'm not speaking to the young people. I'm speaking to the old-timers now. It's pretty tough in Detroit. We don't have that many old-timers. It seems like the only time we see them is when they got a birthday coming, and we show up at a meeting, everybody says, "Who the hell is he?" Did you ever hear in your program down around this way, you know, you get a token, they say, "Tell us how you done it"? I was prepared for them one time in about the 30-some years of sobriety I had. I had a piece of paper in my pocket, and I was going for a job, and I had a resume in there, and they said, "How'd you do it?" And I pulled this paper out, and I started to read. They've never asked me that question again. Again, I want to thank you very much for having me here, and I want to thank the committee for the wonderful accommodations. And last night, I didn't think I would be here because I was so sick that I could not walk. But it seems like the power of Alcoholics Anonymous and the grace of God has always gotten me anywhere I needed to go in Alcoholics Anonymous. I made that pact with God a long time ago. "If you will give me the power and the grace to go anywhere you send me, I will go." I know when I get done speaking, the pain and everything else will probably come back, but that's all right. I'm here. And I'm deeply grateful for just one other thing. When you get to be my age, and you're still above ground, you better thank God. My greetings, my greetings come from a person called Munster. Now, Munster's a 50-pound Indian cat that lives with me today. He says, "Tell them to stay sober." I got another friend called Cheepy Bird, and he's a con– parakeet that's been with me for about six years now. But most of all, it comes from a loving ex-wife of mine who I talked to today, who's only two years behind me. We're the two youngest kids in Alcoholics Anonymous in Detroit. And due to circumstances, finances, everything, we're divorced for 10 years now, but we still love each other very much. And I think of her, and every time I go to a conference, I call her up and, and ask her the one simple question: "What do you want me to tell those people?" And all she ever says is, "Tell them to stay sober or else." A greeting from Northern Michigan. I'm hereditary chief of the Ottawa Chippewa Nation in the state of Michigan, belong to the Little Traverse Bay Band of Indians. My home is a museum. I'm the great-grandson of Chief Blackbird, one of the last hereditary chiefs of the Ottawa Chippewa Nation. And from my world, I want to bring you the greetings and the gratitude that you white people have brought me and the happiness that you've given me every day of my life irregardless of what's happened. And it's sure great to be here today. Thank you very much. Good evening, everyone. Good evening. My name is Dave the Indian, and I am an alcoholic. Dave the Indian. A guy asked me one time, he says, "Why they call you Dave the Indian?" I said, "Because I'm not a Polack." I mean, what, what else? So I, uh we got a, we got a few Polacks in the crowd. Uh, yeah. You know, with the sad news and affairs and stuff that's going around, um, so again, I have a little announcement to make. The sad news is that, uh, we're sad to learn last week of the death of one of our most valuable members, Someone Else. Someone Else, uh, passing creates a vacancy that'll be hard to fill. Uh, Else had been, uh, with us for, uh, uh, for many years. And, and, and every one of those years, Someone Else did far more than a normal person's share of the work. Whenever leadership was mentioned, this wonderful person was looked to do the inspiration, looked for inspiration as well as results. Someone Else can work with that group. Whenever there was a job to do, one name was on everybody's list: Someone Else. Someone Else will do it. It was common knowledge that Someone Else was always the one that the organization relied upon to support a particular project. Everyone just assumed that Somebody Else, Someone Else would provide what was needed. Someone Else was a wonderful person, sometimes appearing superhuman. But a person can only do so much. Were the truth known, everyone expected too much of Someone Else. Now Someone Else is gone. Mm. We wonder what we're going to do. Someone Else left a wonderful example to follow, but who's going to follow it? Who's going to do the things that Someone Else did? When you have a chance to participate in any Alcoholic Anonymous activity, remember, we cannot depend on Somebody Else anymore. Mm. Amen. Amen. Poor Else. We had, uh, some of those, uh, Elses were demonstrating t-this weekend, marvelous weekend that it was. It's a big book, uh, study thing, and it was marvelous. There are people who are, uh, in the fellowship who are really instrumental in carrying the message, and it's really important to do that. I said in the beginning that I'm a North American Indian. I, I come from a reservation across the river from Montreal, uh, where the fiftieth anniversary of this program was held in 1985, the fiftieth anniversary of this program. And, uh, at the time, I was in New Jersey, and I had a, a horrendous accident. I busted five discs in my back, tore my shoulder. I'm an ironworker. I worked on a job, and I was going back and forth to hospital, to physical therapy. And when I heard that the International was gonna be held in Montreal, I said, "Wow, I gotta get there." And when I heard that the big meetings were going to be in the Olympic Stadium, I said, "I gotta get there if I gotta crawl." You know, I was little walking and all this stuff. That is Jenna F- Jenna Forman in Mexico. We built that Olympic stadium. So I made it. Uh, and some guys from here in New Jersey were kind enough to, to– they got a van together and hauled me on up there. And, uh, I got to meet Lois. You know Lois's wife, Lois? And one of the guys from Linden, Bobby, he was one of the bodyguards for Lois during that convention. Not that she needed a bodyguard, but she needed, they needed people to stop from crushing her. You know, she was, like, ninety years old at the time, very fragile. But I, uh, come back to my own self. Uh, that's where I'm from. And, uh, uh, just a little touch upon something that's really important about Indians and about the problem of alcohol, uh, in this continent, the whole continent. When the people came over here from Europe, and, uh, in a really very short period of time, they found that they had something that became a very successful trade good when they were trading with the Indians. And they found when they traded this particular good with them, alcohol, they had to get a long ways away. I mean, not a few hours, a few days- -away. Because of what we know about them, but unmanageability, you know. They were introduced to alcohol, and because they, they were duped out of a lot of things and they were scandalized and all kinds of stuff. They were used terribly. And, uh, but, uh, you know, in the end, uh, uh, we got even. We gave them tobacco. You know, I like what, I like what Clampy said, you know, about the tobacco issue. You know, he says years ago, like I was born in his era. And he says about that time, at that time, because he went down to get these contraceptives. He didn't know how to use that word at the time. They'd go to the drugstore, you know, he was waiting around, the place was clear. They say, "Give me a pack of cigarettes and a pack of condoms." Now, today they go and say, "Give me a pack of condoms and a pack of cigarettes." How things have changed. But every weekend tobacco, you know? So, but e- years, years ago, uh, in the days, uh, when I was drinking, this little reservation, Kahnawake the name of the place is, you know. And we would leave, the iron workers, uh, would come home on the weekend, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and Sunday afternoon we'd leave and head back to New York again to work on the big buildings in New York. And, uh, we'd stop in the little French-Canadian village before we get to the ba- the, the, the border. Uh, well, it was either, it was, uh, Saint-Constant. We used to go to this hotel over there, and we'd get beer and wine and stuff to fortify ourselves for the trip going through. Now, if you saw this place, I mean, it was a Fr- little typical French-Canadian village, and the first thing you saw from a distance was a church steeple. You know? Like that on the wall back there, church steeple. And then there was a scattering of farmhouses around maybe a hotel, 20 or 30 houses, little farmhouses, and a railway station. Old, reddish-brown railway station. And there was an old man there, old Pierre. He had been station master in Saint-Constant, Saint Constance in English. He'd been station master there for 50 years. Never made a mistake, never had a fault, you know? And the Canadian National Railway office in Montreal, they, they said, "That's impossible for one man to be station master at the same place for 50 years and never make a mistake." So they sent an inspector over. The inspector went over all the system, all the books, and found absolutely nothing wrong. Nothing. Nothing. But he called the old man. He said, "Pierre," he said, "come here." He said, "Tell me, uh, what would, uh, you do if a train was coming from the east at 80 miles an hour, and a train was co-" Coming from the west at eighty miles an hour on the same track. What would you do? Well, he said, "Monsieur," he said, uh, well, he said, "In that case," he said, "I go to my telegraph, huh, and send a message five miles up the track and five miles down the track and stop the train." Pierre, he said, "What would you do if you went to your telegraph and it don't work? What do you do?" "Well," he said, "Monsieur, in that case," he said, "I go to the switch control panel," he said, "I put the switch two mile up the track and two mile down the track and stop the train. After all, what can you do, huh?" "Suppose, Pierre, you went to your telegraph and it don't work. What are you gonna do?" "Well, monsieur," he said, "that case, huh, I go to my, uh, guardrail. You, you call it a couple man, and I take the flag pole, the flag, and walk half mile down the track," he said, "and stop the train. After all, what can you do, huh?" "Pierre," he said, "suppose you went to your guardrail and somebody stole your flag. What are you gonna do?" "Oh," he said, "monsieur, you make a situation very difficult, eh? Well," he said, "in that case, huh, I go to my house, and I get my grandmama and her rocking chair and her shawl and bring her down the platform, the railway platform, and put on her shawl and tell her, 'Grandmama, in five minutes, you're going to see the biggest damn train wreck in United States history.'" Easy does it. Live and let live. But for the grace of God, you know? All that stuff comes into being, right? So there's, there are simple, simple things. I mean, we can complicate so much stuff, right? Yeah. So easy to complicate and easy does it. I was, I was raised… Uh, my family, uh, were the ways. Like, you know how a lot of… Like myself, I went to New York, and a whole bunch of you went to Boston, some were in Detroit. Well, my family, my grandparents, my uncles went to the city of Toronto, where, uh, after the First World War, in the '30s and stuff, there was a lot of work to put the bridges around the Niagara River and, uh, and the big, uh, hotels and Royal York and Union Station and stuff in Toronto. And, uh, so it was nineteen fifty-five, one of those bridges by Niagara was crashed into the ice and carried it down. My uncles, my grandfather, and they all worked on it. So that's what brought a whole pile of Italians up to Toronto. And so we were raised there and went to school there. And, uh, I… When I was a, a young fellow, I was around fourteen years old, and, uh, we had three hockey cushions in the, uh, schoolyard where I went, and we had a huge pleasure rink, probably about four times the size of this room. And I was helping this old man, old man, part of working wool Scots, and helping to flood these hockey cushions. And, uh, it was a very cold night, maybe about twenty-one below zero, and, uh, and I'm in the shack getting warm, and the old man was down. We had finished the hockey cushions, and he was flooding this big pleasure rink. And I'm in, and I could hear a voice saying, "What the heck is that?" I listened. "Kid, kid." Jesus, it was the old man. I went out, and I went down, and he had fallen down in the ice. And he had a great big old tweed coat and big mitts, and he was stuck to the ice, you know. So I had to use the hose to help get him unstuck from the ice. And you couldn't see him coming up this shiny crunch, crunch, crunch. And we got into this little shiny… We had a little potbelly coal stove, and it was cherry red hot in there. The old man started to peel off his coats and his jackets and this, and we're hanging the stuff up. And he says to me, "Kid," he says, "go outside." He says, "Reach down in the straw." He says, "Where the valve is, you'll find a bottle." He says, "Bring it to me." So I go outside, you know, where the, the valve is and the hose to the hose. In the straw was a bottle of wine. And I brought it in. The old man, he went, caught this thing and says, "Here you are, kid." He says, "Have a drink." So I never drank before, and I took this bottle and glug, glug, glug, glug. Oh, jeez. What a nice warm, tingling feeling went down my throat, through my belly, and it was, ah, electric. The old man took a drink out of this bottle and passed me the bottle back. We never went back out and finished flooding the rink. We sat there and consumed that bottle, and I went out of there. It was about, it was after midnight or so around that time, and I, I'm going across through the schoolyard, and my legs weren't meeting the ground. Like I was whoa, out of orbit, out of sync. I thought, "What's the matter with me?" And wow. I said, "What's gonna happen? My mother and father seen me like this." First time drink, first time get the fear about drinking. So I didn't go down the street in front. I went down a little side street, over a wall, down the back alleyway, and into the back of the house. Luck of the first time drinking, my mother and father had gone to the movies. They hadn't come back. So I got away with it. That was the first time I ever drank in my life. When I went back again, the old man followed, "Have a drink, laddie." I, I say, "My first exercise in controlled drinking. I'll have a little sip, but I won't do like I did the last time." Right? Sip or two here and there. Go out and skate, come back. Another sip or two. No, wouldn't do that again. But, you know, that was the beginning. My father had taken the school. Excuse me. Me and my brother John went to work. So I went to school at night Yeah. And, uh, by the time I was 15 or 16 years old, the place where I was working at, there was a guy who was retiring, and, uh, they got Hiram and Walker to sponsor this, the stag party for this guy 'cause he's going away, moving to Canada. Now believe me, big place, and all, both sides of the room was these long tables like you see down there, and there was bartenders behind it. There wasn't a bottle of beer in the joint, but there was all kinds of whiskey and scotch and wine, you name it, and the guys would shake it and mix it and do whatever you wanna do with, and tons of food. Now, for guys like me that were raised in hard times, depression days, and stuff like that, and didn't have a whole lot of money, that was so much food you'd never seen in all your life. And booze, man, oh, man, I made a pig of myself. And after a while, guess what happened? There I was in the toilet, right? In there, and I'm throwing up, and I'm throwing up. And for some reason or another, I take paper towels and was covering it. I didn't want nobody to see it. I throw up some more, and everybody's standing looking at me. I throw up some more. I take more paper towels and hide it. I didn't know who the hell I was hiding it from. But anyway, I put more paper towels, and I got out of there, and some guy said to me, "Dave, you know, what'll really fix you up is have another drink right away." He says, "That'll help you." I was staggering right now. Sound like a good idea. So I did that. Oh, man, I'll never forget coming home. Coming up with this guy, Joe, who's driving this car. And I'm coming up to Yonge Street, and I'm looking like this, and the road is weaving like this. And the buildings are weaving in and out like this here, and I'd pick my head up off the dashboard and, "Oh," put my head back down again, "Oh," look up. It was still weaving. They got me to the house, and, uh, they got me up to the door. My mother come to the door, and she says, "Joe, he's drunk." And he said, "No, he's okay." And my two brothers got me by the arms and took me in, and plop me in, threw me on the couch. They got a big bucket there. So, I mean, that's the puking bucket. Mm-hmm. You know? Well, that was the first time I was ever drunk, come home drunk. Well, you would think now, that's it. Never again. You know, won't do that anymore. Uh. Uh, I think that's the alcoholic's theme song, isn't it? True. Never again. Never again. Or, or the other a- thing is, but you don't understand. You don't understand. Anyway, that always been with Nick. You know, I was at a meeting a couple of weeks ago down in Dover. I, I moved down to, down to, in Delaware, and there was a woman there, beautiful woman in the program. And she said that when she was 40, she finally realized that she was an alcoholic, that she was having trouble drinking. I said, "Wow, that's something." That's something, isn't it? 40. I was 15 at my uncle's place, and I fell off the chair right on my head. Bam, right on the floor. And at 15 years old, and they had to pick me up and take me in a army taxi and take me home. I didn't knew I had a problem. Matter of fact, I, I, I'm gonna tell you something I never told anybody before. Um, there was periods of time, you know, when you're drinking and all kinds of stuff happened. I was married and had a family, and my wife had taken off, and I got a cousin of mine to look after the kids, and I went to the unemployment office, and she… And right around the corner, you could get the money, 'cause you get the money in those days. And you went downstairs, and right in the Anglo Café, down below in the back in St. Joseph's. And I'm sitting down there early in the morning. I was 21 years old, and I clearly remember this, and I a- asked for two beers and go like this. In Quebec, that means two beers, you know. So the guy gives me two beers. They were 10 ounces of glass. And I went to pick up the glass of beer, and my hand was shaking so bad I couldn't, I couldn't pick it up. And I looked around to see if anybody was watching me. And, uh, I stopped. I said, "God, am I an alcoholic?" Mm. 21. I reached down to grab that c- that glass of beer with two hands. Had to hold two hands to drink it. And once I got that down into me, and I got the second one down into me, the shakes kind of eased off, and I got some. 21. So, I mean, there's a, a lot of things I can say, you know, that I was astonished at this woman who was 40. I said, "God bless her." 'Cause I was like, you know, I knew years ago that alcohol was a problem, and it, it's been a problem for Indians for centuries. Something else I discovered, uh, some years before I got sober. I was reading, um, um, the province of Ontario had put out a booklet, and it was about Indians and Eskimos in the North. And they had a problem with highly refined sugar. Now, well, this weekend there was some Inuit people, Eskimo, well, Inuit people come from the, from the shores of Hudson Bay and the Arctic Ocean. They were su- supposed to come down. They didn't quite make it because Joe got a, um, timing chain busted on his car. But those people in the extreme North live off caribou, fish, or seal. So if you live off a caribou, and growing on the rocks and near the rocks are lichen or moss, and that's what the caribou eat. When you eat them, so you're only two steps away from dirt and rock, moss. And they had absolutely no sugars in their system other than the carbohydrate from the animals they were eating. So when people came to this country, and they were introduced to highly refined sugars, it devastated I- Indians and, uh, Eskimo people Devastated them. I've seen Eskimos make them tea, the kind that drinks like tea, put 10, 15 spoons of sugar in a cup of tea. And I looked at it and said, "Wow." So why did alcohol devastate these Indians and Eskimo people? Alcohol is a highly refined sugar. The substance that's in it, that makes the alcohol in the corn or the grape or whatever it is, is the natural sugars found within them. And in the, uh, in, uh, in the 12 or 12, the big book, it says that man has had trouble with this ever since they first learned to crush grapes. So that's the problem, that the Indian people's, uh, system was not able to handle this highly refined sugar. Well, I'll, I'll come, maybe I was going to come back to that. But I'll, I'll explain something in the beginning that affected this program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Uh, we know Bill Wilson wound up in the hospital, wound up in Town's Hospital in New York. And it was a man, uh, Dr. William B. Sikor. And he, he, Dr. Sikor had worked with over 40,000 alcoholics by the time Bill Wilson came along. He worked with many, many alcoholics. And he talked about something that was necessary for alcoholics to know in order to get sober. And that was this phenomena of craving. And he says, if you read the doctor's opinion in the big book, he says in the doctor's opinion that the body is equally as sick, if not sicker than the mind. And what happens, what I spoke to you about, about the sugars, the highly refined sugars, the, uh, the body gets really, really sick. Uh, if you take a little bit of, uh, snake venom, for instance, and you take a tiny bit of it, and after a period of time, you take a little more, a little more, and your body becomes kind of immune to this snake venom, or bee venom, or whatever it is, if you're handling bees. So what happened to me, when I was 14 years old, and I was drinking, didn't take very much for me to throw up and puke my guts out and heave it onto the floor, cover with paper, whatever the case may be. Why did I puke? If you took a jar of honey and a spoon, and you started eating spoon after spoon after spoon of honey, it gets down in your system, and after a while, you puke. Why? Because that sugar gets in, has a reaction on your pancreas. It's your pancreas that has the job, and the upper part of your stomach in here, has the job of eliminating excess sugars in your system. It produces, uh, insulin normally. And that's what it is. Your pancreas is reacting, and it makes you puke. It wants to get this out of your system. It's, uh, it's alcohol. It's a poison. And it has, your body detoxifies it naturally. So I discovered that, and so did, uh, uh, Dr. Sikor. And this is the reason why he talks about the body has completely changed. Chemically, your, my body has changed. If, at the end of my drinking, when I drank about, uh, about a quart of scotch a day, or, you know, it was an assistant, Cartnick or whatever it is, I drank, and then besides the beer and wine and all that kind of stuff, glad we didn't count beer and wine as drinking. And, uh, but anyway, they, if I drank that amount when I was 14 years old, if I drank that amount in a day, it would have killed me. The body would not have been able to take it. So like that bee venom or snake venom, over the years, your body produces, uh, something that happens to become acclimated to all this alcohol. So the, your body, cellular structure of your body completely changes. It changes completely. I haven't had a drink of alcohol in almost a quarter century. I've gone, come close to 24 years. And, but the cellular structure of my body has changed to this day, and it will be that day, be that way until the day they bury me in the ground. It will not change. It has always changed. You know, that if I take one lousy drink, that sets up what Sikor talked about, the phenomena of craving. And, you know, there's, I've demonstrated in my life over and over and over and over and over and over and over. I, uh, there were three things that made it possible for alcoholics to get into stay sober. There were three, three important things. And, uh, uh, at this moment, I'm not, I'll come back to my, my problems in, in the beginning, and maybe I'll inter- uh, intersperse this, because these three things that, that made it possible for alcoholics to get to stay sober came from, uh, three doctors. It didn't come from Bill Wilson or Dr. Bob. The three pertinent ideas, as, as mentioned in the big book, the three pertinent ideas were given by God to three medical men, to three doctors. They weren't all medical men. The one was Dr. Carl Jung. The other was Dr. William Sikor. And the other was Reverend Dr. Sam Shoemaker, who was an Episcopal minister. And, and they were sober. The, uh, the ingredients were necessary for alcoholics to get and stay sober were given by God to these people. When Roland Hazzard went to Switzerland, you know, we got seven-day program, 14-day program and stuff. He went over there, and you know the story of, uh, Roland Hazzard. His family had a lot of money. He went through different psychiatric care and stuff. He couldn't stay sober. So they went, he went to Switzerland with Dr. Carl Jung. In that story of the big book, he's referred to as the American businessman, went over to see Dr. Carl Jung, and he spent a year there with Jung. And, uh, he learned about the isms and the psychology involved and all that stuff. Stayed sober while he was there, and he left there. Now, you gotta picture this because there was no aircraft flying across the ocean at the time. This is in late 1929, 1930, around that era, and you had to go by ship. So he left Switzerland, went to Paris, and in a very short period of time, he got drunk. Got drunk. He came back to Carl Jung, and he asked him, "How come? Why? What happened?" He said, "You're the alcoholic of all variety. Okay? There's another clinic said, all varieties. Never gets to stay sober, unless you lock you up, put you under 24-hour guard." "Wow." He says, "Are there any exceptions?" "Yes," he says, "There's been exceptions from time to memorable people who have found a spiritual God, um, religion for thousands of years, turned their lives over 180 degrees, got stayed sober, never got drunk again. So I've been trying to implant this in you, too, but, uh, with no success." Well, Rollin Hazard, uh, he left there. He said, "You, you, you gotta find some kinda spiritual experience." He left there, went to England. In England, there was an organization that had been in business from the 1700s. And it was the, uh, called the Oxford Movement. Not the Oxford Group, but Oxford Movement, which is a part of the Episcopal Church of England. This country, you'd call it the Episcopal Church. In Canada, you'd call it the Anglican Church. But anyway, it's the Church of England. And, uh, Frank Buchman, he'd gone up there in England. He'd learned about this stuff, like a medical thing, came back to the States. They started the Oxford Group. Well, Rollin Hazard found this thing in England, came back, joined up with Buchman and them people, the Oxford Groups here in the United States. Never drank again. Wow. He never drank again. So that was the one thing that was necessary, a spiritual awakening or whatever, and the second thing that was necessary for alcoholics to learn and to understand is what Silkworth talked about, was that phenomena of craving. thing that's in the body, and the body changes, you know? And without understanding these couple of things, you know, how do alcoholics get to stay sober? Because they tried various methods, uh, to get sober. I lived in an area in Toronto, and just down the street from us was one of those dry tanks. It was a doctor and his wife, and they had one of these places where people who had a lot of money would come, and they would get dried out. And they would be there for a month or so, and then they would go back. And then six months or a year later, they'd be back to dry out again. And it cost them a lot of money. You had a lot of money to do that. Well, there was that third thing that made it possible for those other first two things to work, and the Oxford Group had that third thing. It is called the Six Step Program of Recovery. They had six steps, came from Reverend Sam Shoemaker. You can find them in the Big Book on page 292, the six original steps there. Bill Wilson got sober on those six steps. That man, Rowland Hazen, another guy, Zebe Gregg, had gotten sober, and they ran into a guy in New York City, uh, Ebby Thacher. And, uh, Ebby, and they went, they said, "Come on." They said, "We'll, uh, give you a drink." They brought him down to what was the clubhouse in New York City, and, and they gave him coffee. That wasn't exactly what he was looking for. But they gave him coffee. But they gave him something which was far more valuable than the drink, be it coffee or beer, whatever. They introduced him to the Six Step Program of Recovery. And Ebby, in turn, after he got sober for a while, he was the guy that brought the six step message of recovery to Bill Wilson. He, and he worked these steps with Bill Wilson. He talked about, you know, if you read the Big Book and Bill's story, how Bill had got, had Ebby come in to see him and eventually Bill got sober. Matter of fact, if you read and understand Bill's story, or if you read… There's a book that today, um, because of my working with a lot of drunks and the experience that I've had, I do something different today. The new people coming in, I give them a copy of that book. Used to be AA Comes of Age. Now they call it Pass It On. And they tell them to read that book first before you read the Big Book of Alcohol. Why? Because in that book, it tells you about all this stuff, about Ebby and Loretta Sively, how Ebby and the people brought this stuff together, how they pieced it together, about Rowland Hazden, Dr. Jung, and it has pictures of them, and it has the dates and the places and the exact times. So that if you read that book, Pass It On, or AA Comes of Age, if you read that, and then read the Big Book, you will thoroughly understand what they're talking about in that Big Book of Alcohols Anonymous. You'll be able to put your finger on the names, the dates, the pe- people and places. And it's really important, I learned that now that I'm sober, to, to, to have these people read Pass It On first. When I come in and got sober, that book, uh, AA Comes of Age, sat there on the piano, gathered dust. You know, with blue and white stripes on it. And there was something else that was sat on a piano, uh, in the room where we met. Because we were all just beginners at the time I came in. And, uh, there was a big book, and they're all talking about the big book. They're saying, "Big book." What are you talking about? Big book. I didn't dare ask anybody, you know? And, uh, so I thought, "Well, they must be talking about the Bible. You know, of course, must be the Bible." And I asked them, "Why me?" They said, "No, no, it's that big book over there." I go, "Wow, it is." You know, the blue book was over there. Didn't have the dust cover on it. A blue book. Said, "Alcoholics Anonymous." I was lingering around this club for a long time. Once a month, until finally he showed me. And you know what's peculiar? The last years, the guys said to a new guy in the program, "You gotta have a big book." And they give him one of the little wee things about this big. You know, the, the little just 164 page. He said, "This is a big book?" Funny. Yeah. But, you know, uh, here I was just wondering about all the, all the stuff and what it is. Well, there, AA Comes of Age had been around for years, and years, and years. And alcoholics, you know, one of the hardest things for alcoholics to learn to do, because my problem before I come to AA was trying to remember stuff. To put things together, to try to remember things. Now, if you drink over a number of years to forget about the relationships, the broken relationships, my children in foster home, splits from my wife. I'd be the reason why we split from her. And on, and on, and on. And the bill collectors, and all this kind of stuff, and I wanted to forget about this. I thought, "Oh, man, let me get out of here." I'd start crying. "Let me get out. Down the street, go to such and such bar and grill, give me a drink." You know? Next thing you know, I'm trying… I'm drinking to forget. And by the time I got in the program, I drank to forget so much, I couldn't remember nothing. While I was drinking, I tried to read a few lines in the Readers Digest. Maybe read the funny little jokes at the bottom, you know? And I read, and I, and I go over. I said, "What did that say?" I reread it again, and I couldn't put it together in my head. I couldn't. So if you drink long enough to forget stuff, you're not gonna be able to remember them by the time you get in this program. At the front of the podium, behind this little coffee, said, uh, serenity prayer. I come in here, and I sat here for six months, and I tried desperately to read- To memorize those few lines of the Serenity Prayer, I couldn't. Took me six months to be able to, to finally be able to memorize those few lines of the Serenity Prayer. So try to make amends. I gotta backtrack a bit. Because I worked, started working in Toronto. I met a young woman, became my first wife, and she came from Nova Scotia in the Maritime provinces of Canada. And, uh, I went down there. Everybody from Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, were leaving there, and they were coming to Toronto and here. Stupid me, I'm going from Toronto down to, down to the coal mines in Nova Scotia. There was no work. There was nothing down there. But my wife wanted to go there, and that's for him, and also so I go down to Nova Scotia, and I worked there in the coal mines with the Ministry of Coal Coal Board. That was an experience. But you know, I was in there, I was there maybe five or six months, and if you'd have seen my father-in-law, what a wonderful person he was. Great big redheaded guy, about six foot five. And he was the smallest of several brothers. Wow. They, they called them the big McCackins or the wild McCackins. And he, he would, uh, go to church on Sunday, come home quiet, very peaceful, loving person. And finally, after a little while, I'm sitting there in the kitchen, my mother-in-law says, "Here comes Papa. Here comes Papa." And they're all running, and she's running. My wife included, all running and hiding. And I look at the door, vroom, in the door comes this monster. I said, "What the hell? He's only drunk." You know, when you talk about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Here was this big red-haired guy. Oh, man. Well, but not my dad. Found a drinking partner, me. But that was a tragedy. That man and all the people in the coal mines down there go to the dance up there, up 12 they call it. You know, they had to at the parish, St. Michael's Parish, Saturday night. And it starts off as a very nice social evening, and before it's halfway through, they're out there having a little guys, all the coal miners are out in the back, big fighting and battling. They're up the pickets, up the fence and swinging each other. And an awful, terrible thing to see, you know? So you can, you, you can understand why I left there and, you know, not, I wasn't down there very long. I worked in the coal mines, and I came back, and I came back to the reservation, the home where I come from. And I went, I went to work, and I, I, uh, uh, went to a job. It was coming on the close to Christmas. And, uh, hard to believe, I went to, uh, I went to, uh, a place across the river. It was, uh, Seagram's. House of Seagram's. Oh. Said I'm gonna get a job at Seagram's. Uh, I went over there, and they weren't, they were laying people off. They weren't hiring anybody. So anyway, what happened, they, uh, uh, they weren't laying. So I went over to a place close to there, Standard Brands. I went to work there. They were making a product that was relatively new. It was called instant coffee, and I worked with them. And that drinking problem of mine, uh, took off, and I, and I was working in several places, and I couldn't understand why all these places were reaching back and laying me off, and I couldn't hold a job, and, uh, and, and why? Because you're lying. You know how many days you're sick, you can't make it to work, and how many people you always attracted. One guy, I forget, uh, he had three hundred and some odd teeth pulled. So many dentists. And, and, and by the way, there was an old Indian at home. He worked over there at, at Seagram's, and he drowned in a vat of whiskey. Hmm. They had to pull him out four times. And I, well, they, they had to pull him out. Pulled him. Anyway, they… But you know, one of those, uh, times I was back and forth, the Arctic and stuff, I, I was at the Mohawk Regional Office and s-signed the board. In the, in the n- I had wound up in nineteen sixty-one after coming out of the Arctic. I wound up in the Royal Victoria Hospital, sick with doc. And, uh, it was the first time I ever got to stay sober in that, um, July tenth, nineteen sixty-one. And I stayed sober on the strength of it. The title would change and people, places and things, and I… My brother-in-law, Gene, had got turned orange. His eyeballs was orange, and doctor told him, "If he doesn't stop drinking, he's gonna die." He's been sober from that day until today. Right. Forty years. Mm-hmm. And, uh, he never drank a tape. But me, I, I, I left there, and, uh, uh, I'd been in the hospital ten, fourteen days, and a German doctor told me that if I didn't stop drinking, he says, uh, "You think he was quick. He was quick." And I said, "Quick?" He goes, "Quick." Who the hell is this John Bishop to me, you know? So, but he told me that if I didn't stop drinking, I'd be in a never-ending success at doctor after doctor trying to find out what was wrong. And by the time I came to New York City, I left there with my brother-in-law, Gene, and I started working in the big skyscrapers and stuff in New York City. I stayed sober six months, and I went in a bar at Sixty-Sixth and Amsterdam. Wow. There was a guy, Kissy Montour. He was working with us. Connected, I was running around there. It's, you know, six inches wide. And he'd come down and drink for an hour in the bar, and the sidewalks in New York weren't wide enough for him. Mm-hmm. It was like elastic bands all over the place. I went in there to make sure that Kissy got out of the bar and back to Brooklyn with us and back home for the holidays. And I went in the bar, and they were all saying, "Come on, Dave, have a drink. Come inside with me tonight." Now, here we go. Oh, man. And there's an old rebel, old man Baker, I can tell you. Said, "Come on up here, boy. Have a drink, boy." So I went up, and I had a hot gin. Mm-hmm. And picking up that one lousy hot gin took me on a trip By 17 years, and I never come out. Almost 17 years. I come in in the middle of the late '70s in this program, and I was in and out of the hospital. I never went back to jail. I never went back to court because I had got too sick, and I wound up in and out of the hospital for 17 years. Wow. Nearly died a drunk. So there are some things that happen. Everybody talks about a bottom. You gotta reach some kind of a bottom, or you ain't gonna stop. And bottoms, you know, for me it was something. Okay? I almost ended me. The only reason I come in this program is a woman that became my second wife. She wound up like Karen and Clementine. She wound up in the hospital, and they had to pump her stomach and all kind of stuff. She was mentally in and out of the hospital. And it was through that that I found the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I started going to meetings and out with her, and, uh, what a change it made in my life. What a change. And when coming around, I wanted to know most of all from you, what are you doing that's different? What are you doing to stay sober? Because I wanted to find out what you were doing. And I heard it here, about prayer and meditation and the important things. Don't pick up the first drink. You can't get drunk. Talk to the grace of God one day at a time. Those are the things that I just for today, I clung to. And you know what happened? Miracle, miracle. They tell you, you know, well, around this part of the cheers was always they speak at you. It's like, like, "Don't drink, dummy." That was one of the slogans then. Take the cap out of your ear and stick it in your mouth. You know, all that stuff. And then, you know, they tell you, shut up. Said, "They weren't nice, man." Shut up. Huh? And then, you know, in the old timers, you know, those, they were great guys. And they'd… I tell you, for 90 days, you can't open… You can't speak to each other. Not shut up, they would tell you. Then they give you a little pin. Tiny, little pin. Now they cut the dummy loose. Goes all the way from George Washington Bridge clean down to Trent. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Drunk-a-lot, right? Blah, blah, blah. One of those days, we went down to, uh, the semi form, down to Marlboro, right? We're going in there, carrying the message down to Marlboro. And I'm walking through this huge place, and this guy's sitting on the curb. He's going like this, "Please." "Please." On the curb. He said, "Get me out of here." And I said, "That poor bugger." There we go. I said, uh, "How did you catch?" He says, "You're the ninth." You're the ninth, he says. Say, "You're ninth," he said, buddy, buddy. Hey, you know something? There was a, there was a guy, we were talking today, and people think about their families and stuff. I didn't get any guys. You remember Dennis Lyle from the Outlaw Club out in Newark. Anyway, Dennis was speaking with Mrs. A's one time in a… come out here in a Sunday morning meeting, an anniversary. And he was talking about his family. And what he used in illustration, he says there was these cannibals. They were at a banquet, and one cannibal turned to the other one. He says, "I don't like your mother-in-law." The other guy says, "That's all right. Just eat the noodles." Sure. Just eat the noodles, he says. Dennis, and them people, they were work, piece of work. You had to be around with those guys because a lot of them guys, and Vince and old Dan, and all them guys from the Outlaw Club. And all in all, my sponsor, my, my sober sponsor was Bill Duncan, and he's still alive. And he introduced me to the prisons and institutions and stuff like that. But those are the things that, that keep you sober. I was six months, and I became sponsor for the Middlesex County Jail. And I replaced Bill Duncan as chairman for prison industries in northern Jersey. I became involved with Intergroup and served as a delegate, and I served in the general service capacity, newsletter committees, all kind of stuff. And my, my first thing was six months. If you want to learn what it is to get sober… Do you say you, you can't get pregnant without getting into some kind of action, right? But that's it. You can't learn to swim unless you jump in the water. So if you want to get sober, the surest way to help to keep you sober is to get involved and to do something in it. Into action, whatever it is, whatever it takes. If it means going out speaking or whatever it is. And after a period of time, I got away from that, that business of drunk-a-lot and on and on and on and on and on. And my first indication of that, when I spoke, uh, when Duffy took me down to the Middlesex County Jail, I'm sitting in the corner. And he said, "Tonight we're having as a speaker, Dave the Indian." Jesus. I nearly fell off the chair. I thought he was just dragging him down there. You know? And I got up, and I started, "Ah, blah, blah," you know, the drunk-a-lot stuff. And all these prisoners are in there, and they're, "Blah, blah, blah, blah," talking. And the guards are coming in, and the thing in the corner is zapping flies. The fan is going. And I thought, "Who the heck am I talking to?" I'm looking. Who? And finally, for the first time, I looked around at all the faces, and I seen three people. I said, "I'll talk to them." Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And I said, "If, when you get out of here, if you ever have a problem with alcohol or drinking, remember, the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous are always open." And I started to talk about Alcoholics Anonymous, and they all started to listen. Mm-hmm. They didn't want… If you think you're drunk-a-lot, it's no important. Go down and speak at the jail. They'll put a pin in that balloon, you think. Anyway, you know what? They… But you talk about the program. Because… And I come out and talk to Victor. He said, "Son, that's what it is. You're a carrier, a messenger." So what does it say in step 12? Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we try to carry this message. It's not the drunk-a-lot or the guy down the street or your father's message or your mother or anybody in your family. The message is a message of a spiritual awakening. Have you had one? Have you had one? Says, having had a spiritual awakening as a result of working these steps, these 12 steps- To practice these principles in all our affairs. To pass it on to others, to people in this program. So that's an important part about service work, that no matter what structure or what part of it is, if it's from the beginning to making coffee or doing whatever. There's, uh, people, there's Charlie and Joe and these guys here, and Mike and Bill, and who knows what all. And there's big book things that's going on. When I come in, there was n- from Sayreville to Newark, there was no step meetings, none. There were much less of the Big Book meetings, absolutely none. We started something. I, I, I got a hold of some people in the hospital. We got two or three people together in something. The guy who became my sponsor, Jimmy Toner. And we started something that's called an introduction to the steps. We went through a history of AA, all the steps, and all the traditions. And out of that group of people, Sandy James started, uh, who, who was with us in that thing, he started, uh, step meeting in, in, uh, Fords. Then we started the first speaker step, uh, speaker step meeting. And, and Kurt Samboy that moved to Parlin became the Parlin young people. So out of that came a nucleus of people that started the whole Parlin step meetings. And the young people that were coming to me started to stay. They were tired of listening to the old soldier, old shit, they said. The old soldier said, "Young soldier bullshit." You know? So they, they stop- stopped that controversy, and the young people came in, and they started to listen and to read and to work the steps. And that's what made the dramatic change in this part of New Jersey. So it wasn't just those two sheets that hung on the wall that made a difference. It was the Big Book, because that eventually led us down into working the first 164 pages of this program, the Big Book of programs recovery. I'd like to thank you all very much for having me tonight. I'd like to thank, uh, my young friend Jimmy. Been knowing him for a number of years for asking me. So we go, we go back a long ways. And, uh, some mutual friends of ours, and I, I'd like to get everybody back together again. One of our friends got married next door, right? Yeah. So I wanna thank you all very much. And remember, you only heard it a thousand times. If it only took you came in, I do. I love you all. God bless.
