Listen to Audio Recording

The Raleigh, North Carolina. I was glad to see Betsy take that chair. What was said this morning about some of us older people, I was beginning to wonder if they thought I was going to make it through this thing. And, hell, you never know what's going to happen. And for the benefit of Jack and Jim or Sheila, we've come to the conclusion that a hell of a lot of us here this weekend that if it wasn't for us you wouldn't be here in the first place.

And I've come to another conclusion, like I tell a lot of my pigeons after about five years and you get to knowing it all, you know, they're just serious. I'm a fact, but they are serious, so remember that, Sheila. It's good to be here. And, God, I've been trying to get here for about four or five years, I believe. A lot of sickness and things that just happen in a normal, sober, alcoholic life. I want to thank the committee and Jim for their hospitality.

And being here this weekend, I really enjoyed it. And just seeing old friends. There's a lot of people in this room tonight or this weekend that I've known for some time. Some of my A.A. travels really began rather hectic yesterday when I was met at the airport by Bart, a young fellow, a nice fellow. Didn't know where the hell he was going. You know, you've got to watch these committees. He met me and just hollered out at the airport, called my name and attracted a lot of attention.

And got ready to pick up luggage and he had to go call a gal. Left me there with my luggage, got my luggage. He didn't attempt to pick it up or nothing. I had to struggle with that. And, you know, I said, hell, he don't know who I am. We got in the car and started down the road and he started drinking Coca-Cola. I was lucky to get in the damn car. If you've seen Charlie's Deal, you ought to see Bart's.

Cans, checkbooks, clothes. I made a remark. I said, I believe you live in this thing, don't you? And we got out there on the road and he said, I really don't know where we're going. And I found out he really didn't. And so we got here and I enjoyed the ride. Rather eventful. You know, these things, you never know what's going to happen now. I sit there and get all primed up to get up here. And it reminds me of a story that I've told many times and I won't tell it again.

They say years ago back in my part of the country in North Carolina, I had a convention and they had one of these long-winded speakers. And he got to talking and he, you know, got wrapped up on the steps. Got through the steps and went into traditions in the second hour. And by God, he got through the traditions and he went into three legacies. And people began to leave. And they will leave. I found it out one night.

And this fellow, one fellow kept sitting on the front row, just kept sitting there. And the speaker got concerned, so everybody left but one fellow sitting on the front row. He wound up his talk, ran down from the podium, grabbed a man by the hand and said, Hell, I want to ask you one question. Everybody left but you. Why did you stay? And he said, Hell, I'm the next speaker. Well, you kind of know what I'm talking about, don't you?

I'm an alcoholic. My name's Dave Cook. Hi, everybody. I'm a member of the Big Book Group in Raleigh, North Carolina, which I think is the finest group in the whole wide world. And if you don't think the same thing about your home group, then maybe you need to find another one. But I'm here by God's grace and because this program works for me, through the love of a loving wife that I found as a result of this program and through the help of some kind sponsors.

But with the firm hand, I haven't found it necessary to take a drink or any tablets since

[00:05:03]

the day I became the Alcoholics Anonymous. And that day was September 12, 1957. Now, I give my surprise today. It didn't come from Texas. I came in A.A. in old Roanoke, Virginia, an old central group. The second meeting I ever went to in A.A. was a discussion meeting. And they had 13 or 14 wicker trowels sitting in a circle. And I was no different from anybody else that goes to our first discussion meeting.

I began to wonder what I was going to say when it got to me. And it finally got to me, and the man who was to become my first sponsor spoke up and told me what to say. He said, Give your name and your sobriety date. That's all you're qualified to do. Now, as a matter of fact, a few days later, he explained to me that that's all I was going to be qualified to do for the next year, was to give my name and sobriety date.

And that's about the way it was. The second reason is, in that old central group, they had a saying that if you were a member of that group and you got behind the podium in that group and you didn't give your sobriety date, you usually didn't have one. And so that's the reason I give my sobriety date. I've just received a lot of benefits from this program, a lot of things I call marginal benefits, peace of mind, some security, a lot of happiness, a lot of love.

Any time I think about marginals, I have to think about certain basic benefits. And the basic benefit that this alcoholic received from this program, of course, my sobriety came first. But the basic benefit that I've received from this program is my sanity, is my sanity. And now, as a sane alcoholic, I don't have to run anymore, I don't have to cheat or steal anymore, I don't have to lie anymore. And most important of all, I don't have to sober up anymore.

Now, I didn't know that was the name of the game when I got here. I don't have to sober up anymore. And as I look back at my life prior to coming to AA, I'm very grateful to be here this weekend and be here. You know, there's a lot of young people here. And I was thinking of Sheila this morning. I was 29 years of age when I got the Alcoholics Anonymous. And at that time, man, if you were 29, they really grilled you and they looked you over good and you had a lot of qualifying to do.

And I can remember when the old times, the first day I was around AA, when they got me off the streets, they began to ask me a lot of questions. And I told them how bad I hurt and where I hurt, and they said, You're in the right place. And I don't know, I feel like I've been in the right place ever since then. And I know what it is to come in here sometimes and wonder what it's all about, because that's what I did so many years ago when I found the Alcoholics Anonymous.

And my background getting to AA is rather unique. I got here fast, and I thank God for that, too. I was raised in a home where my father and mother divorced when I was 12 years of age on account of his drinking. Right side of the tracks, had about everything I needed growing up. My mother damn near loved me to death, if you know what I mean. And I had a good mother, and she was able to send me off to school and get an education after I finished high school and went off to college and got around the fellows that had just come back from World War II and knew how to drink, a lot older than I.

I was in that environment, and I wanted to do what the big boys were doing. And so that's where I got a hold of John Bollicorn the first time, was a freshman in college, 16 years of age. And I don't know, I look back now and it's all hindsight, but I had a good time drinking when I, you know, after I went through those gagging exercises and all that. You know, we would work at it. And we really worked at it.

I can remember those older fellows were talking about the pleasure that comes from drinking. And, hell, I was throwing up most of the time, you know, to get it down. And one night I asked one of them, I said, when does the pleasure come? And he said, Dave, if you'll remember, there's a little pause in between from the time you take the drink and when you throw up. That's when the pleasure comes. And I had some problems there, but I began to cultivate a taste and had fun with it and began to do strange things about my junior year.

I'd get in trouble, but no hangover, didn't know what a hangover was. I was studying engineering. As a matter of fact, my degree was in civil engineering. But I was there on a partial basketball scholarship, too. And when I finished school, I don't know, I look back at it now and, I don't know, there's some glory associated with it, I coached high school basketball for six and a half years. You notice I said a half a year?

Well, by the time I got out of college and went to coaching high school ball and teaching a little, I was twenty years of age. And my drinking at that time was just a weekend affair.

[00:10:02]

I'd get in, fellows I was in school with, we'd meet on some weekends at various places and have these parties. And sometimes I'd get back on Monday to the school, sometimes Tuesday, and sometimes Wednesday and, you know, the school authorities didn't look too well on this, began to ask a lot of questions. And after about the second year, I was fortunate enough to move to a much larger high school that had a lot of success.

I fell upstairs in the coaching profession after the fourth year and was really producing and had a name for myself in the coaching field in high school ball. And lo and behold, I began to cultivate friendships with the people, the school board members that drank, which gave me a place to go about every night and drink. And it got to the place about the fifth year that I was going to school under the influence of alcohol early in the morning, because I'd gotten to that place I'd found the morning drink.

I'd gotten to the place I needed it. And things were going bad. I began to let go of my responsibilities, began to write a few checks while I was been there. I never wrote a check that I wasn't going to make good the next morning, you know what I mean. And my mother took care of these things for a long, long time until it got to be embarrassing to her. And I can remember when the sheriff used to come to the schoolhouse to see me about bad checks, and they'd call me outside to talk to me.

You know, they've got to talk to you in there. The cars were black plumbers, if I remember correctly. And they had that old buggy whip, just waving, waving, waving. And I don't know, I see one of those radio girls and they always seem like an authority to me. But as I would go back down the hall and outside, the kids would be looking out the window, and the teachers, too. And what they really didn't know was that I was undercover agent for the sheriff's department.

And you can see things were going wrong for me along then, if anybody's thinking like that. Undercover agent for the sheriff's department, writing these damn bad checks. And things were going like that. My mother got concerned about what was going on, and I got a leave of absence from school to where there was no such thing as treatment centers. They were called drying-out places. And I went to some places up and down the East Coast in a period of about six months, between 25 and 26 years of age in the summertime.

And I'd come back from these places usually in worse shape than when I went. Some of the best. And then I, you know, the alcoholic, the book says it, you know, cunning, baffling, powerful. Now, you know, you get people off your back the best way you can. So I decided I'd divert their attention. So I did a little courting for about two weeks and decided to get married. I got their attention all right.

It was a whirlwind courtship for about two weeks. And I married this girl in the community that was a mistake from the very beginning. And, I don't know, it's true as we say. It's a family disease, and I can look back, man, and see how it affected her life. And she had nothing to do with my drinking. I guess I had become an alcoholic by then. I don't know. But I know I'd gotten to the point I'd do anything to find alcohol and anything to obtain it.

She had enough of this marriage after about a year and a half. But we stuck with it for a period of time because the embarrassment it would bring in the community, me being a coach and a schoolteacher and seeking a divorce. But yet I'm the community drunk by now. As a matter of fact, a few months later I lost my job on account of my drinking. In my home state I just kept moving east, and you keep moving east.

And, my God, you get out there to the driving off place, and that's finally where I got to with my drinking now. Out there, moved to a school that was a rock bottom of schools, and they offered me a job, and it was a terrible deal. And I was able to last about six months. The wife had left, been gone, and I was living in a place where I had to commute about twelve miles. And it got to the point the only way I can describe my drinking at that time, I had to get up at four or five o'clock in the morning.

I had booze then. Drink enough to stop the shakes, so I could shave, get the clothes on, go to that schoolhouse and that gym and begin to do what I was supposed to do. Knew what was going to happen about twelve, the shakes would come back. Have some hit in the gym or the automobile to take a few drinks, stop the shakes, pray for three o'clock, get in the car and go back to town and do the same thing again.

And this went on for about six and a half months. And one day the man just stopped me in the hall of the principal's school and said, Dave says, we don't need you anymore. Didn't call me in to have a conference. Didn't call me in to have a conference.

[00:15:00]

I didn't cry, and that's unusual at that time. Just, we want the keys. And I had experienced some blackouts prior to this. Never no prolonged blackouts. And I left school that day, and I don't know where I went for a period of about two weeks. I know where I wound up. I wound up in jail for the first time in my life in the community where I was living. And when I came to, a man came to a cell door one morning and began to talk to me.

I later found out he was a county health doctor. And he said, Son, says your mother's come down here and straightened out all this mess, and we're going to send you to a place where they can cure you. Now, my mother had gotten me out of a lot of messes. I mean, big money, big money. And they're going to send me to a place where they can cure me. And I began to see one of those drang out places where I would taper off.

I don't know if you've ever tapered off or not, but I went to a lot of places where I tapered off. But I never completed it. I would always get just about there, and I just enjoyed tapering off. It's a good way to stay drunk. Just taper off. And, you know, I was beginning to see, well, they're going to send me to places where I can taper off again, or where I sit in a lawn chair and sip a little under an umbrella and soft green grass.

And that wasn't what it was. That wasn't what it was at all. In my home state, the state insane asylum is called Dick's Hill. I've often said I, too, found my thrill on Dick's Hill. That's where I went for the cure. I was just about 28 years old when I went there for the first time. And I never want to forget my first trip to Dick's Hill as long as I draw a sober breath. I never want to forget it. Now, I didn't know what was wrong with me.

And nobody else seemed to know what was wrong with me. Some people told me I was drinking too much. Everybody told me what the problem was. Nobody gave me a solution. Nobody. And I talked to some psychiatrists. My mother sent me to some of the best psychiatrists in that area. And everybody told me that you're drinking too much and maybe you're an alcoholic. Never pinpointed. But they were sending me to these places for nervous breakdowns, they called them.

Nobody ever said I was an alcoholic in the pure sense of an alcoholic. Beating around the bush. And I've often said, I don't know about you in your city block where you probably live, and I was one of them. You know, when I begin to have problems, it seems to me as I look back now, my family wanted to kind of hide it for a while. You know, push a button, get over it tonight is all they wanted to do.

Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. But if we can just get through the night and get him fixed for the night, we'll be all right and we'll worry about it. And that's the way it was. I was a hidden alcoholic for a long time. I know that. But at Dix Hill you're not hidden. And when I got there, they put me in a place called the Inebriate Ward the first few days. Sounded good to me. Didn't know what it meant at that time, but it sounded pretty good.

And I've often said that in sobriety, and I think there are different environments in sobriety, you adjust to it. And the same thing at Dix Hill. I adjusted to that environment too. These people that I was in this ward with chased squirrels most of the time. They were just running up and down the wall and under chairs and under beds and at the dining room table. And so, hell, I began to chase them too and got pretty good.

I never caught one, but I come down close one time and I was right with them. And I don't know, one day a word that we hear in our AA vocabulary very distinctly, a coincidence. Maybe it was a coincidence. I don't know. I look back and a coincidence happened one day. They took me out of that ward and put me over there with the rest of the rummies. And they put me down in a cell, in a basement cell where I was padded.

And they let me have my running fits. And that's what I had. And days later when I got through having my running fits, they gave my clothes back to them. And then I was allowed to do the only thing I could do for the next 30-some odd days. That was walk up and down the corridor day in and day out, wondering what in the hell I was doing there. Wondering what I was doing there. Because I looked around and the men there were a lot older than I.

A lot older. Old enough to be my father. One night a bunch of men were playing poker. They were using matchsticks for chips. And they began to discuss the reason they were there. And one man said, I'm here because my wife wanted to get rid of me. And you know, I thought my old mama wanted to get rid of me and she put me here to get rid of me. And the truth of the matter is, no, she did everything she could to help me.

And I didn't know that. Then I heard this man speak up and said, I'm here because I'm an alcoholic. First time I ever heard it per se.

[00:20:02]

And the first thing that popped into my mind was my daddy. My daddy. And I began to play a game that was to plague me until after I'd gotten alcoholic. And I was comparing my drinking with my father's drinking. And as the truth was known today, my father was a bunch of mutter-bam and I ever hoped to be in drinking. Because he lost a family. He never got kicked out of his profession. He never had to be put behind prison bars.

He never had to go to Dixie Hill. But I did. And the day came that I had to leave that place after I'd had the cure, as they called it. I didn't have anywhere to go but back to my home where I was raised, my mother. Twenty-eight years of age. You go back home at this time in life. You know, you just go home for special occasions, Christmas, holidays, death, family. And people begin to want to know why you're here.

And, hell, you don't tell them you've been to Dixie Hill. You might say I've had another nervous breakdown. Been in a state hospital. Been home a few days and the family doctor decided he wanted to help me. He was ignorant of my situation. I don't know a thing about drugs. I want you to understand that. Not a thing. But I do know a great deal about tablets. The good doctor decided that my nerves were in bad shape.

And he gave me some tablets to take. And I agreed. And I took these tablets, like popcorn, you know. And it did the trick. And I was running around with a crowd I'd been in school with about every night. And they were passing a bottle about every night, but I was taking my medication. Taking my tablets. And I was getting along a lot better than they were. Just loose, you know. Loses a goose. And the thing that I remember most distinctly were stoplights.

You know, red, green, yellow. There was one up there that said, go ahead, Dave, it's all right. You know, go with the flow. Just smooth and everything loose. And I got on those darn tablets. But one night I was with that crowd after I'd been at home about nine weeks. And they passed a bottle. I said, I'll have a drink. And I took a drink. And as I know what we say in our program, and the compulsion came, and I had to have another drink.

And to make a long story short, I went back to Dixiel again. The same place. I said, I'll never go again as long as I live. As a matter of fact, I went back to Dixiel five times in six months. On account of one fact, I'd become an alcoholic. I'd take one drink and I could no longer guarantee my behavior. And that's the shape I was in. And the last time I went back to Dixiel, they put me in the nut part of the bug house instead of the drying out part.

And there's a distinct difference. And this is when I found out about being tied down in a bed and straitjackets and how you live better electrically. I found out about that, too. And I began to accept my fate that I'd die right there. In that ward I was with those nutties. And a coincidence, one day they just, for some strange reason, moved me back over to the rummy ward with the rest of them. And, hell, I'd been there so much it more or less made me an honorary attendant, working in the kitchen, going to get mail for them.

And one day, two other fellows and myself decided we'd leave. I don't want to sound dramatic, but we escaped. It was like cops and robbers then. And I go by that fence quite often in some of my travels. I don't know how we got over that fence, but we did. But we escaped from Dixiel. It was in one of the hotels that afternoon, watching TV. And it came on the news, three just insane, criminal insane people had just escaped from Dixiel.

We were just drunks, is all we were. And we were saying, well, I wonder who the hell they are. And that's real interesting when you sit there and they're talking about you and you don't know it. And we got kind of feared for our life there. So the first thing I know is we finally figured out who they were talking about. And the money played out, and we dispersed, and we had to go our own way. Well, what happened was a friend of the family in that city, in Raleigh, was able to send me back.

I was raised down in eastern North Carolina. And found me on the streets one day and gave me enough bus fare to get back home. And I got back to my hometown. And my mother was off in Richmond, Virginia with a nervous breakdown, really, truly. Been in the hospital. And I broke into my home where I was raised and was up there in my little bedroom where I was a kid, you know. And I'd been there about two weeks when they brought my mother home from the hospital and found me.

[00:25:03]

And I don't know about you, but that afternoon they got together. And they were my two sisters, a young and I, and a friend of the family like a father to me and my mother. And you know who they are. They are those people that get in one room and they crack the door and put you in the other room and they begin to talk about how much they love you, but what they've got to do. And the end result was that…

It wasn't that bad, I know, but anyway… It must have been that bad. Yeah, lack of power. Anyway, they got together and the end result of the conversation was they walked in their room and they said, you're a killing mother and you've got to leave this part of the country. And I was killing my mother. And I… They said, we're going to give you some money and want you to leave this part of the country.

And there was enough money to go to the West Coast anyway and live comfortably for a period of time. And I kind of agreed with them when I saw the green, you know. When an alcoholic gets green on his hip, problems begin to be resolved. And I agreed, I thought it was the best thing to do. And they bid me farewell and I did the same, I won't bother you anymore. I left town and went four miles to a neighboring town and pulled into an old, broken-down hotel and had a lot of friends there for a while until the money gave out.

And when the money gave out, I'd go back to my hometown and do the same thing I'd always done before when I needed money. I'd just write a check. Went over there one day, I bought an outboard motor, but it didn't have a boat, but I bought a motor. And I write a big check, get some change, pick up the motor later. And they called my mother a few days later to tell her that my motor was ready and she began to put two and two together.

And John Law came to see me that afternoon. Not only that afternoon did John Law come to see me, but the first contact I ever had with alcoholics and numbers came that afternoon too. A fellow in my hometown, the oldest living member, he's dead now, came over and heard about my plight and was trying to help me. And I appreciated it, but the end result was John Law took me back and put me in jail in my hometown, three blocks from my mother's home.

Stayed there for a few days and I began to wonder what they had me charged with. And so one night I was down there just raising hell. You know, I want to see my mother. You ought to give it to him up there instead of me. Anyway, I was down in that jail cell raising hell. And I said, I want to see my attorney. And he said, who is your attorney? I told him. He said, talk to him, all you want to do is the next cell block.

And so he couldn't do me any good. Coincidence, maybe, this man later became a member of Alcoholics No Limits, a member of our state legislature and a good member of aid, but he died a few years ago. But he couldn't do me any good. A few days later they carried me upstairs and tried me in a court of law for something I didn't know I'd done on a previous drug. You have to understand this. My sister was city clerk, one of my sisters.

She was in the courtroom. The prosecutor was my mother's next-door neighbor. He didn't seem to know who the hell I was either. And hell, they just railroaded me. And sent me to another jail the next day, and I was in another trial, and they just dragged me down a little bit further east. And like I said, in my part of the country, you get down there to the swamps, just before you get to there, a great dismal swamp, they call it.

I was put on a chain gang. On account of one fact, I'd become an alcoholic and I didn't know it. I'd take one drink and could no longer guarantee my behavior. And even at this time, I didn't understand that I had a problem with booze. And that's the hell of it. And that's the thing that I don't understand today, is the inability of the alcoholic to see himself as he really is in his worst moments. And that's the way I was.

I could not see myself as I really was. I stayed there the time I was supposed to, and I had some good time. And the time came that I had to leave, I didn't want to leave because of the shame. Nobody in my family would have anything to do with me. But this superintendent of this camp must have known something because he began to have me over. I've known something because he began to have me over to his house. I cut his grass on Saturday afternoons. He let me eat supper with him and his wife. And this man began to talk to

[00:30:03]

me about maybe drinking was my problem and talking a little about AA. And I didn't listen. And the day came that I had to leave, they put me on a pickup truck and carried me back to my city limits where I lived and put me out. And again, I went back to the only place I could go, back to my mama. And this time I went to the back door instead of the front door. I guess I was second class. And my mother came to that door and began to look at me and talk to me and fed me and let me in the house. And they got together again that afternoon.

And my brother-in-law came over this time. I won't get into that, but anyway, they began to argue. And I heard my mother say, he stays here tonight whether you like it or not, he's my son. And that's when I, at the time, I didn't know what sobriety was, but I said, well, I'll just do this for her. I just won't drink anymore. And I was able to do that for a period of about four months. My mother gave me what I needed and finally was suggested maybe I should go to work. It had been a while. And I didn't think I could get a job coaching in North Carolina, so I threw an agency up in Virginia. I had the responsibility of taking this job, assistant basketball coach and teaching mathematics. And he says, I want to ask you something. He says, I've got to get on the phone and find out about some of your background.

And I knew the jig was up then. And he got on the phone and came back and appeared and he says, I want to tell you something. He says, I understand you had a problem with booze at one time. He called it alcohol. But that you're cured now. And I said, yes, sir, I understand. And he said, well, we want you to go to work. And this was in August of 57. And now I went back to my hometown. My mother financed the whole place. I had a place to go to stay, a nice home to stay in, to board. A new job in spite of where I'd been. But I didn't know I was an alcoholic. I thought I could take one drink. And on the way back to that job, two days later, I had a little layover up in Virginia, Richmond.

And I sat out to have one drink, but I bought two pints. You know how we are, we add and subtract rather funny. And so that was the beginning of my last drunk, the only drunk that I'd really like to talk about, because that's the drunk that got me into alcoholic phenomena. That's the drunk that I experienced loneliness, like someone was talking about this morning that I'd never experienced before. That was the drunk that I found out about guilt. That was the drunk that I just didn't care what happened. And what happened was I was able to last at the job for about five days, and I got back to the morning drink on the fifth day. And I lost the job twice, and they tried to help me. And about the middle way of this drunk, my mother got in touch with me by a telephone. I didn't go to this place where I had a room to stay. I stayed in the big hotel up on the hill and wrote up a few checks, you know, to live good. And they gave me a chance, but my mother got in touch with me halfway that drunk and gave me the greatest guilt that she's ever given me since the day I was born. And that's when she kicked me out of her life. And she did.

And it was just a few hours later, as a matter of fact, that same afternoon, I was kicked out of that hotel and I was on the streets. On Sunday, September 11, 1957, early in the morning, I was in a backyard on Skid Row in Ronald, Virginia, trying to take a drink of water, and I couldn't get it down. And finally my moment of truth came, that I was dying from what I was doing. And I had enough self-respect that I didn't want to die in that back alley, I guess. And it seemed to me that everything on earth stopped moving. There was complete silence. You could hear a leaf fall. And I cried out to a God I really didn't know anything about, with some help. Maybe it was a coincidence, I don't know. Just a short time later, the only man that really knew me in that city on a first-name basis, souped down a city school, found me in that back alley. He'd been looking for me for days.

He didn't know anything about drunks, alcoholics, anonymous, sobriety, anything. He just wanted to help a human being. And he'd been looking for me and he found me. He hadn't taken a drink. And he carried me to his home over in southwest Roanoke and tried to help me. And he got in touch with a man that knew a man that knew a man and alcoholics anonymous. And I was carried to a place in Roanoke, Virginia that afternoon called the Easy Does It Club.

[00:35:06]

I'd gotten to the point, you know, that I couldn't find oblivion anymore. I couldn't black out anymore. I hurt all over. My hair hurt. My toenails hurt. Tired of the high cost of low living. And by God, that's what it is. Sick and tired of being sick and tired. And to do anything. And this principal and that superintendent carried me up those steps and I was introduced to alcoholics anonymous in that 12-step clubhouse that afternoon.

And I don't want to ever forget that day. We got upstairs and it wasn't the fact that I was drunk. I was just weak. Hadn't eaten. And just weak and run down. And we got in there and they began to talk to you over here. And by the way, you kind of looked me over when I came in. We say we don't look them over. By God, you looked me over when I walked into the doors. Everything I owned was what I had on and what I had in my pockets. A little paper bag. A razor, a toothbrush, and an ear syringe. And they said, Come over here. And I waddled over to this old man. And I never got behind a podium, I don't mention this man, because he rang my bell. He rang my bell. And he put his arm around my shoulder and said, Son, I tell you what, all you've got to do is listen to these people and do what they tell you to do and you never have to be alone again. Do what they tell you to do and you never have to be alone again. And unbeknownst to me, what I know now is what he was telling me. It was the first few lines in chapter 5. Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed Paul. That's what he was telling me. Old man John was his name. Now, we hear a lot this day and time in some A.A. circles about different kinds of alcoholics. And you hear a lot of things in a lot of meetings now that I go to in some places in the country.

some of the coffee. I want you to drink some of the coffee. And what I'm about to say is not in reflection of who made the coffee here this evening. But I'll tell you something. I've always maintained and still maintain that there are a hell of a lot of people in alcoholics' homes making coffee that ain't got no business doing. That was one of those days. It just comes. And they just drink the coffee. I thought it was a problem. So I drank the coffee until I got sick. And I remember my first A.A. meeting that night in the old country booth. I don't know what went on, but I remember after the meeting, a complete stranger walked up to me and gave me the magic word. We love you.

We understand. And you're going to be all right. And nobody told me that when he walked in the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous, but you got shortchanged as far as I was concerned. But that night, it was proved to me I didn't have to be alone anymore because three men came in and got me a room at the YMCA and stayed with me all night long. And they talked to me. They didn't nurse me. They took turns sitting on top of me once in a while. And they said, if you get too bad, we're going to get a doctor. And they talked to me all night long about the program. And the sun was coming up when I began to say, Dave, you've been so many hours without a drink. And maybe you can make it. And the first time I ever heard it was that morning on September the 12th when he said, Dave, you've been so many hours and that's all we do in A.A. one day at a time. We just try it one day at a time.

And I don't know, as I look back now, I really know that somewhere in the darkest recesses of my mind I knew one fact. If I did make it one day, I had to be around them to do it. I had to be around them to do it. And as I stand here tonight, after some years of sobriety, I know this, that if I have another day, I've still got to be around you to do it. And so I was to embark on a life in Alcoholics Anonymous that was exciting. In my first year

[00:40:05]

I had a lot of growing up to do. That morning they carried me back to that club room, and the man who had become my first sponsor began to talk to me and told me about Alcoholics Anonymous, what it could do for me, and asked me a lot of questions. And I didn't know how he knew all those things, but how many checks do you have out? And then he asked me another pointed question, which was, Do you want to quit drinking worse than anything else on God's green earth? Are you willing to do what we tell you to do? And then the question, Do you want to quit drinking forever? And I lied on that one. I knew what the answer was. And so he gave me my first test in honesty that morning. We left that clubhouse, and he said, Now I've got to go to the barbershop, and you go over here and see if you can get some breakfast. And breakfast was rather hard to come by and get down at that time.

And I never forgot him. He gave me a $10 bill and said, You go get some breakfast, and I'll meet you here on this corner at a certain period, in about an hour. And I had a chance to run and drink some more if I wanted to. And I bought that breakfast, and I went back to that corner again to wait for that man. And that was the man that led me through my first year and a half sobriety. And he was a good leader, because the introduction to the program as I know it today, the basics, what the steps were about and what the book was about, and the tradition. And I don't know, I look back now, and I've been blessed with good sponsorship, good sponsorship. And I thank God for it. And so I got along pretty good there for a while. And then after a period of, I guess it was about three months, I met my present wife, Sue. And there's a few in here that know her. My wife, Sue's never seen me drink, never seen me drunk. But she's been through more hell than my first wife did, because she's seen me try to grow up. And that's what it was for me, trying And I don't know, I got sober and very active in the group. I began to have a lot of, answer a lot of questions for people that had any questions. And I began to know a lot about the program, after about six months. And after about a year, I got to be an authority. And I went through some rather unique experiences in my early sobriety. I know I'd been sober about nine months. And I was staying in a boarding house with six other men. Each of us had a room there, and we boarded there. And Charlie was one of them, Jim, old Charlie P. And they were like brothers to me. And I learned a lot from those six men. Out of those six men today, and I'm one of them, two of them are sober and alcoholic synonymous.

Two of them are dead on account of going back to drinking. One of them had thirteen years of sobriety when he started back. And two of them are dead as a result of drinking. And I, and two of them are still drinking. And they gave me much. They gave me much. Well, I wanted about nine months to die, but the group decided to let me talk. And that was a hell of a mistake. And they had, the other fellows had brought one of the fellows that had been under the weather a little and got puny, you know, and had a few sips, and was rather out of it, and brought him to the meeting and propped him up in the room.

And I thought the object of the exercise was me to kind of help him. And so I, well, I started a talk on how not to slip. Now, I know it's unheard of, but by God, I started one. And I was going about five minutes, and I heard somebody say, Sit down. And you know how it is, we don't hear them. And I kept on going, and he said, Sit down. And I wasn't going to sit down, and finally he came to the podium and sat me down. And as I was walking down that center aisle, everybody's eyes were kind of big, you know. And the back row, the back row was called Humility Row. That's where all the old-timers sat, guess who sat with And as I was walking down the row at that aisle, the thought came to my mind, Well, I've got a little bit too much power for him tonight, and he don't want me to overdo it. That's all it is. So you can begin to see how my mind was developing. And I've often said I've learned much more from people with A.A. or less education now. The men that solved my employment problem have a third-grade education. There was a sign-painter named Red, and that old center group, they had a, well, hell, it was an inventory.

was. They had a little ante-room to the meeting hall that the old-timers would call you in and set you down and just took you in the door.

[00:45:01]

Unannounced, they'd just call you in and just read you the riot act, and they called me in one night and talked to me about my employment problem, and they began to discuss it, and Red spoke up and said, Dave, it seems to me that if you studied engineering in college, that's what you ought to be doing in life. Well, hell, nobody ever explained it to me that way before. Please turn your tape, do not rewind.

Turn your tape and continue on side two. Please turn your tape, do not rewind. Turn your tape and continue on side two. So through Red's help, I and Red and Sue took me over to the Virginia Highway Department a few days later to talk to a man about a job, and I was honest about it, told him about my IAEA and what I was trying to do. And he told me the same thing that so many people told me. And I went back out in the car, Sue and Red were outside, and they said, do you get the job?

And he had asked me, he said, when can you go to work? Well, this was about the middle of December, just over a few months. I said, it would be about the 1st of February, I've got a lot of business to take care of. You know how it is, scared to death. But I've got a lot of business. And he said, well, fine, when you're ready, we'll look for you to take care of you first. So I went back out in the car and said, do you get the job?

He said, yep, when you go to work. I told him what happened. Hell, they took me right back in there. And I went to work the next day. Yeah, the power of the program is what you call that. And I worked until about a year ago when I retired and entered the profession. And what happened was, I guess it was about a year and a half sobriety, I got to know it all. I mean, hell, I was a hell on wheels in AA, let me tell you.

And I was running around the local groups making talks. It got to the point where I'd go several miles to make a talk, but I couldn't go one mile to listen. Too busy, too busy to listen to anybody. And my sponsor was getting concerned. And one night they called me in that inventory room. And Suzy about had her fill on me. And so they got me in there and began to talk to me. And the end result of the conversation was that they told me I was going to have to start working on the steps if I wanted sobriety.

Now, I had to get honest with myself. And the rate I was going at, I was going to get drunk. Now, this is a hell of a thing to tell the backbone of the group you're going to do, you're going to get drunk. And that's what they told me. And I got mad, and I resented it, and I got ready to go out to the meeting hall. And you know what I'm talking about. And I want to hurt them, I want to do something.

And my sponsor spoke up and said, I want to ask you one question before you leave. He said, when was the last time you thanked God for a day of sobriety? It made me madder. And I left and went back to that boarding house, shut myself up in my room. And I thought of taking a drink and never ending up in my mind. I wanted to do something to them. Twist something, you know what I mean. So I sat down and wrote a written resignation now like an alcoholic from hell.

And I was sitting there with this damn thing and writing, and I began to hear a voice. My sponsor's voice. When was the last time you thanked God for a day? It became an echo. It got so powerful that it forced me to my knees, and I began to pray to God after a year and a half sobriety in AA that I really didn't know anything about. To me at that time in AA, God was a question mark in the sky, maybe yes or maybe no, in spite of the raising that I'd had and where I was raised in the church.

[00:50:02]

Maybe yes, maybe no. But the end result of a juvenile trial was I was able to walk into a bathroom and look at myself for the first time in my life in a mirror and know what I really was. That I was just a speck on this universe, and someday I'll die and soon be forgotten. And that if I wanted sobriety, continuous sobriety, the only thing I could do was go back to Alcoholics Anonymous. So with a lot of eating crow and withdrawing a resignation, I rejoined Alcoholics Anonymous the next day, and I've rejoined every year since then because it works for me.

I became a member of the clique. You want to know what the clique is? Well, you get to the meeting sometime before it starts, and see who does the work, who makes the coffee, who sets out the ashtrays, and who takes the abuse, and stay after the meeting and do the same damn thing over and over and over again. And I still do it, still do it. Not long ago I heard one of the young ones talk about it. I was in there washing cups.

Talking to somebody, I heard one of them say, Look at the old SOB, still trying to run things, isn't he? Just washing cups, you know. But I'm still trying to run things. And I'm going to keep on doing it because it's part of my sobriety. Well, it was about this time that I listened to what they told me, and I got back into the book and the steps and started really getting into the program. And it was this time that I moved back to North Carolina because of the fact that I went to marry Sue and I had to go back to North Carolina to get a divorce.

And I went back to the Department of Transportation. They hired me in North Carolina, same job, same circumstances. And Sue came later, and we were married in 1960. My sponsor had made arrangements for another man to sponsor me when I got to North Carolina. I met him one time because he was traveling salesman. This man was one of the first 100 members of Alcoholics Anonymous. His name was Tom Barrett.

He was a native New Yorker, a murder girl in Raleigh. As a matter of fact, he had placed Dr. Bob Smith in an overalcoholic foundation. Dr. Bob died as a trustee on an overalcoholic foundation. And this man knew Alcoholics Anonymous, and he knew me. And he helped me. And he was the man that really rammed the book down my throat because when I moved to Raleigh, I'd ask people questions to let them know how smart I was.

And Tom would say, Read the book, and then we'll talk. And he gave me a wonderful lesson about talking behind one of these podiums. I was sober about five years and had been going to a lot of these conferences, retreats, and conventions, and saw these jokers stand up here talking, you know. And I began to think a little. And so one night at the old Hayes-Barden Group in Raleigh, they had an inventory room, too.

Not as powerful as that first one, but it was an inventory room. And I told Tom, I want to talk to him after me. We went into the little ante room. And he was one of these people that made you sit down, and he stood up and talked down at you. I sat down, and he stood up, and he said, What's the problem? I said, No problem. I said, I think I'm a convention speaker. I can't repeat what he said, but. A moratorium was put on my speaking for three damn years.

I wasn't allowed to speak on the podium for a period of three years. Not even my own group. Just sit down and listen. And it was the best thing that ever happened to me. And one day, I'd been eight years sober, just before I went to Brownwood the first time. Tom called me one day and said, Dave, come over here and bring Sue with you. We want to talk to you. I said, Oh, hell. So we go over that night, and we go in the den.

I sit down, and he stands up, and he says, Dave, you're going down to South Carolina to talk at the state convention. You do this, you do this, you do this, you do that. Before you go, there's something I want to tell you. They asked me to go first. I can't go. And you're going as a damn substitute, and don't you ever forget it as long as you live. And hell, that's all I am, just a substitute. Anything I say, I've learned from somebody else, any philosophy I have, and I just feel better when I'm a substitute.

I don't know how many people I asked to come here this weekend. I'd probably substitute with somebody else. That's good, because that's what it's all about. He gave me much. He died in 64, and at that time he had 28 years of sobriety. So he was a lifetime. So Sue and I got married. Things were getting to rock along. I got involved in service, got sobriety. And I don't know what the hell time it is.

Don't worry about it.

[00:55:00]

Don't you worry about it? I'm going to worry about it. The air conditioning is gone too, ain't it? Anyway, I got involved in A.A. in service and went through the deal of the delict and all that, and really got involved in the program. And along in 65, we started the first big book group in the country, in case you're interested. And I'll tell you who was responsible for it. A lot of them, but Bob White.

I met Bob Marcellin in 63 and 64, and got to know him through my first sponsor. And I went out to Midland to spend some time to see how to run the 07-10 group and some of those study meetings. And I went back home and we started a big book group in Raleigh. Pulled out of the home group that I'd been going to for years and was criticized for it. And all we wanted to do was study the books. That's all we wanted to do.

We were tired of this crap of magazine articles. Stuff to go into meetings and talk about bunions and everything else. And programs that are a little bit not connected with A.A., but you know what. And it was three of us that had some sobriety. I had eight years of sobriety. One had seven and another one had about eight. We got three new ones that had less than a year. And we got out and got new drunks.

And gave them the book and said this is the only way. Didn't tell them any different. Didn't announce to the old timers in town to come over to our meeting. We just went out and got new ones. And of course we were the Holy Rollos for a while and all that crap. And today it's probably one of the biggest groups in that part of the country. And seven groups have spawned off from that group. And I don't know.

I got involved in that and got to know people. And it's through these steps that I got involved and began to know about me more. Oh, there's a person I'd like for you to see in me. And then there's a person you've probably seen in me. But there's a person I see in myself. And that's what the whole ball game is about. I'm sorry that is the end of the talk due to power failure. That's all the talk that we could get.

Approximately ten minutes is missing. Thank you.