Audio
Transcript
Source: 1960 Long Beach International Convention – 1960 Long Beach Alkathon Rev Tom OC, Louis R Part 2 of 2.mp3 File: 1960-long-beach-international-convention-1960-long-beach-alkathon-rev-tom-oc-louis-r-part-2-of-2.mp3 Duration: 00:37:35
============================================================
So I'd like to give the floor to Tom Olsen of Marathon. Hi everybody. Hi. My name is Tom. Father, because I'm a Catholic priest, that's why I'm dressed like this. Some of us still dress like this. I was born in Canada, raised in Maine, the original Prohibition State. Educated to some extent in Massachusetts. I arrived at the age of 21 in Maryland, where I also became an alcoholic. So I call myself a Canadian-born, Yankee-bred, Massachusetts-educated, Dixiecrat, Democrat, alcoholic.
For Louie's comfort, there are some good history books available. A black bishop in Africa was introducing a new white missionary to his black congregation. This man had volunteered for the missions, and the bishop took him out to introduce him to his people. And he said to the people, my children, I want you to know that Father comes to you as my representative. He has in this parish my authority.
He teaches in my name. And while his skin is white, I want you all to remember that his soul is just as black as ours. Because I have always had an exceedingly deep sympathy for my black brothers, I have angered some of my white friends, and one of them one time very angrily said to me, well, after all, you're prejudiced. Everybody knows that an Irishman is nothing but a black turned inside out. So I'm glad you've got a black son.
I mean, an Irish son, you've got an Irish brother. My progress into the sickness I know by the name of alcoholism, I think, was rather rapid. Once I started adding alcohol to the other ingredients. I suspect I was born an alcoholic. I had everything it takes to make an alcoholic except the alcohol. I think I'm like a lot of the WCTU people walking around the country. They're alcoholics, but they don't drink, and so they never found it out.
I added the alcohol and then the combination had its usual effect. My progress was rather rapid. I haven't a very interesting story. It's pretty dull by comparison with some of those I've heard. I sometimes at AA meetings feel I may be there under false pretenses because, well, I never, for example, was able to consume more than a fifth and a half in a day. I tried, but I hear people talking about drinking three-fifths and four-fifths, and I remember one fellow talking about drinking unbelievable quantities of some kind of juice extracted from torpedoes, 185 proof.
But I learned in AA, of course, that it isn't how much a man drinks that makes the difference. It's what it does to him, and what I drank did a number of things to me and for me. I suspect I might have, one of the big reasons, we're always looking for reasons why later on is not terribly important really, but I think I drank because I wanted to be accepted by people who drank. I liked drinking people.
My father used to drink. I always liked my father. And his friends, some of his drinking friends were the nicest people that ever came to the house. I'll always remember one of them in particular who gave me the first gold watch I ever owned. He took a fancy to me. Perhaps he saw something in me with which he identified. But at any rate, he gave me his gold watch, and it was a nice one,
[00:05:02]
an old-fashioned one, but a valuable watch. So they were always nice people. I liked them, and I drank a lot for that reason. I suspect it may have had this desire for acceptance had its roots way back somewhere. I was a third son. I've never been a mother. I think if I were one and I already had two sons, I'd be praying for a girl. I'm sure my mother must have been praying for a girl, novenas and all that sort of thing, you know.
And when I came along, well, there I was. And I could see my father walking into the little cabin where I was born up in New Brunswick, saying to my mother, what is it? They say, you know, that babies, even unborn babies, have a certain cognitive faculty, that they learn things even before they're born. The little pictures have big ears, you know, even if they're not yet in this world. And I may have heard this, you know, within the few minutes after my birth, known that from the beginning I was rejected.
Later on, when I found that alcohol brought me into pleasant situations, I used it. At any rate, beginning to use it, my progress was rather rapid, comparatively speaking. I drank with groups who drank because, as I say, I wanted to belong. I found out that something was happening that was different. I wasn't getting enough with these people who were drinking. They weren't drinking fast enough. You know, there was always one in the group who played with his drink, made rings with it on the table.
The host would say, time for another round? Oh, no, Jack's not finished yet. So why doesn't he stay home? So it's at that point that I began to drink a few before the party began. And then there was always the bottle in the closet waiting for me when I came home, if things had gone too slowly. Well, here again, if I had recognized it was a sign of incipient alcoholism. And then the withdrawal from the group, and the beginning drinking to be accepted, and then withdrawing from the group and drinking alone.
I wasn't getting enough. They weren't drinking fast enough. Or there were reasons now, of course, for hiding. I didn't want them to know how much I was drinking. So it meant withdrawal from the crowd. Then the desperately important necessity for having a supply on hand. And I belonged to an outfit that never paid me. I got a salary that I never saw. So you had to sort of, well, as the old Irish lady used to say, use the tips.
Somebody asked a priest at a meeting one time, you have a vow of poverty, haven't you, father? And he said, yes. And then the questioner in the audience said, well, how did you ever get money enough to buy enough liquor to become an alcoholic? He said, I stole it. Are there any more questions? Of course, it's not stealing when you're an alcoholic. It's occult compensation. It's only when you get to the eighth and ninth steps in our recovery program that suddenly it becomes stealing again.
And you find yourself saddled with a heavy debt. I suspect that I'm not going to die young because I still owe quite a lot of money. And since it's God's money, he's not going to get it back if he doesn't keep me alive. I'd rather dread the day when the debt is all paid up. There may not be any more reason left for living. However, I hope to be ready by that time. Came the usual things that you all know, you who are alcoholics know, and you who have lived with alcoholics know.
The despair, the fears, the confusion, the bewilderment. I never, I didn't know what alcoholism was. I had never heard the word used to me. If I heard it, I put it away. I suspect that something was stirring back there because one time after I had got back home and was sober, I, checking through some old files, found some materials on alcoholism that I had filed away years before. So something was stirring down here.
[00:10:01]
But like most alcoholics who say they never heard of AA, they're lying. They've forgotten. They've put it away. They've put it in this little Dutch oven that we all keep back here with a tight little lid on it. The losses of jobs, the superiors who said, look, you're going to have to do something about your drinking or we're going to have to do something about you. That happened to me. They called me a lot of things.
They called you, sometimes they used nicer words, but the meanings were the same. But the fears and the dread, the terror, I suppose somewhere down the line we all thought we were losing our minds. I had a grandfather who had a couple bouts in a mental hospital before he died and I suspected that the family curse had descended on me. That was quite a possibility. Then I'm a Catholic priest after all.
I'm standing up front, you know, preaching away, trying to tell other people how to do it and I can't find out how to do it myself. This is confusing. The running. Sometimes men have to put wives away and abandon children because they get in the way of one's drinking and when one has arrived at the state of alcoholism at which I had arrived, I was drinking because I thought I had to drink in order to live.
Living and drinking had become one and the same thing. You threaten my alcohol, you're threatening my life, so you've got to go. The friend who comes to me and says, gee, Tom, don't you think you're overdoing the drinking a little bit? He becomes an enemy right away. You're on the defensive, of course. What does he know? He knows something. So right away, attack is the best defense. What do you mean?
Well, like last night. I had no recollection of last night. Well, telling the archbishop you thought it was high time he resigned, you know. So he ceases to be a friend. He doesn't get a Christmas card this year. The fears. I thought I was losing my faith and that's a dreadful thing, you know, to think that his faith is the greatest gift God ever gave him. My moral fiber was disintegrating, whatever that means.
I was degenerate of some sort. I didn't think my prayers were being heard because they weren't worth hearing. God had turned his back on me, that sort of thing. It's a dreadful, dreadful thing to be. And I suppose it's a dreadful thing to be a sick alcoholic sitting out in a church listening to a long sermon, trying to stand up straight or hold your hymn book right side up or something, and not lean too heavily on the big lady sitting next to you.
But have you ever thought how much more difficult it would be to be up front under the same conditions? It's pretty horrendous. But at any rate, by the grace of God and somebody's prayers, I'm sure my own, I never discount an alcoholic's prayers for himself because ultimately they play their part too in his recovery. Prayers were heard and my superior sat down beside my desk one day and he said, Tom, he called me Tom.
I don't call him Mac, but he calls me Tom. He said, you are sick. Nobody had ever said that. He had never said that before. He had said other things, but while I was becoming an alcoholic, he had been learning something that I had not learned. And he said, alcoholism is a sickness. You can't handle it without help. We'd like to help you. And then he asked the million dollar question, do you want help?
Thank God that day I was ready and I said, Father, I want help more than I want anything else in this world. And he said, we'd like to send you to a place out in Michigan where the help is available. Will you go? Well, I can remember, of course, this is hindsight now and my memory may not be too accurate, but I remember feeling a tremendous sense of relief to think that there is a place where help is available.
And then he had used the word sick. If I'm sick, then maybe it's not my faith. Maybe it's not my moral fiber disintegrating. Maybe, well, it was hope opened up and shining bright. So I latched onto it and I was sent. So I latched on to it and I was sent to a lovely place up in near Pontiac, Michigan, called Guest House.
[00:15:04]
I see some of my fellow alumni in the congregation, thank God. And there I discovered that the backbone of our therapy was the AA program. An attendant appeared at my door shortly after I arrived with a stack of literature, on the top of which was the big book, Alcoholics Anonymous, and he said, the director would like to have you read these things as soon as possible. I read them quickly, went to the director and said, okay, I'd finish that, what comes next?
And he said, well, let's settle down to the job now of finding out what the words mean. So we went to AA meetings for miles around and I found out what powerlessness over alcohol means. I didn't know it. For years and years and years I had been fighting alcohol, thinking I could lick it, there must be some way I can handle this brew, and failed. And I had to learn that the first step in my recovery, to refer to Bob's humility, is that tremendous act of humility that every recovering alcoholic must make if he's going to have any success at all, an act of complete surrender.
I can't do it alone. I need help. And I may have to reach my hands out to some of the very people I've told to go away, let me alone, drop dead, get out of my life. I may have to turn to some of them and say, will you please help me? And the moment a man does this, then I think, at least the moment I did it, I laid the first beginnings of that tremendous, solid footing which must rest under every alcoholic's recovery program, and it goes by the name humility.
I failed in lots of instances. I am sure I nearly lost out with my whole program by a kind of subconscious or unconscious resistance. I hated my therapist. I had to go to a clinical psychologist twice a week, and he was a mess. He was a little bit of a runt with a mustache, and I hated that. I hated his office. He sat in a high chair. I'm sure his feet didn't touch the ground, but they were hidden behind a big desk, and he had us seated in very low chairs with our back sides scraping the ground, and he could look down at us like robins looking at worms, you know.
It's a cheap trick. I've used it myself with some of my students. But what a crucifixion it was to have the tables reversed. And I hated it, hated every minute of it, and one day I was ready to kick the whole thing out the window and quit. I was going to call my superior and say, I'm coming home whether you like it or not. I may die a drunk, but I'll die the best drunken priest that ever drank, and so on.
But something happened. I don't know whether it was, perhaps it was a little piece of something that Francis told us, a bit of the same cloth. But before I made this decision to leave, I was going to spell it all out. The director was away. I wasn't going to sneak out in the dark of the night. I would resign. I'm an O'Connor after all, O-R on the end, the royal family. I would rent a Cadillac and be driven to the airport by uniformed chauffeurs, possibly with the O'Connor escutcheon flying from the fenders.
This was going to be a king's retreat. So during this tremendous traumatic experience, I was given a vision, whether it was something God gave, I believe it was. I was myself strapped to an operating table, dying, and in the hands of the care of a surgeon who was about to save my life. And I'm telling him, go away, I don't want you, I want a tall doctor. I don't like this operating room, I want a blue room.
I don't like this hospital, I don't like the town the hospital's in, I don't like the county the town is in, I don't like the state the county is in. I want out. I had to ask myself, where will I go? There's no place to go. There isn't any other place like this in the world. And will I have to go through the whole thing again, with another psychiatrist, psychologist? This is foolish. I had asked for help, I believe that it was God's gift to me, that I was sent, my orders come from superiors, God doesn't talk to me directly.
I have bosses who communicate his will to me. I had asked him for help and the answer was go to guest house. So there I was. Well, if God had put me there, what right had I to tell him
[00:20:02]
that he couldn't use this instrument or that instrument or another? And that day I think I made my surrender. I think this was my real bottom, seven months after I had begun to stop, had ceased drinking. There are all kinds of bottoms, of course, and then things began happening, and they began happening very swiftly. I discovered that the will I had thought I had turned over to God hadn't been turned over at all in many departments.
I had never really and truthfully asked him, please remove this compulsion I have to drink. Take it out of my life, Lord. I had, like so many alcoholics, I guess, asked him to help me deal with this problem, but never to remove it. And I found, I realize now the promise in the big book that this compulsion will be lifted out of your life. It will be as if it had never been there if you will follow thoroughly in our footsteps.
I tried to follow, and I've been anxious and eager to find out where those footsteps are so that I can put my feet down where they put their feet down. That's the wonderful thrill of being present at this particular conference. Tonight they're going to have a meeting with 25 alcoholics who have been sober 25 years, all in the same room together, talking. Just prodigious miracles. And I'm here to find out what they did.
What did they do? What are they doing? Because I want to do it too, because I want this thing that God has given me to endure. If they want to put on my tombstone, here lies the body of the Reverend Thomas E. O'Connor, alcoholic, I won't mind. They won't have to put, may he rest in peace, if they'll just put, he died sober. The rest of it has been what you're all doing. Trying to share a little bit what God has given me.
And in the words of the happy song, my cup runneth over. And if it didn't, I'd have nothing to say to you. But because it does, I hope a little bit that I've been able to say will spill on you, and that you'll find some little hope and a little encouragement and a little confidence in the future as I am finding in associating with you these blessed days. God be with you. Thank you, Father. I don't know, I enjoyed it so much, and it seems like we do have a little time left.
It's seldom that I ever hear Father leave time. It wasn't easy. And I'd like to share with you a couple of thoughts that I have and experiences after about nine years of sobriety. I was one of those people that came around AA, and I enjoyed the program. I accept it. I've never had a desire to take a drink since I came in. But I've never refused to attempt to do anything that the program suggested. I was one of those guys that enjoyed twelve-step work.
I sort of began to grow one of the things that I no doubt had before I came to AA that Father talked about. After about ten years of sobriety and becoming rather perfect in doing all of the twelve steps, I'd done them all. I accepted them all. I had had an early experience in the traditions of this program. I remember once recognizing that I was certainly in the right program. I was at a meeting in a group, and I was the only black there at the time, and a fellow said, you know, it was a nice meeting, but I didn't have any business in the room because I was the wrong race.
Of course, he was a little more positive. But the chairman pointed out one thing that remained, I thought, very deeply embedded in my thought, in my mind. The third tradition of this program states that the only requirement for membership is the desire to stop drinking. And if there was anyone in that room who felt uncomfortable, they could always leave the door swung open. I knew then that I was in the right group.
I had maybe a year of sobriety. I thought then that I had arrived at the kind of thing that would keep one sort of secure in associating with other people.
[00:25:01]
But after about nine or ten years of continued sobriety and practice in the 12 steps of this program, and no doubt not being as active in the traditions as normally I should have been, it only took time, and I guess a little self-thought of how great I am staying sober or becoming complacent so far as taking the inventory. I received a call at a very critical time when there were many people doing many things in many programs, such as I said Martin Luther King and the other group.
I received a call to go on a 12-step call to a person that I had talked with or had been in the audience maybe three months before. At about 18 or 20 miles from where I lived, and it was in one of the neighborhoods that we called complete lily-white northeast. And I thought, well, this guy don't realize that I'm colored. Because when I saw him, he was a drunken actioner. And he just don't understand.
I went through that for about three hours. But I received a call about every hour or every half an hour from his wife, and she'd always ask the same question. Bill is asking for you, will you come? I said, yes, I'll be up. I sent a delegate that lived right in the area right after the first call. And the guy stayed out of the back room and threw him the hell out. But when his wife called back again, I said, well, I'll be up.
I said, but I'm sending a man around that might get there before I can make it. She said, yeah, he was just here. He threw him out. I didn't want to ask her did she remember that I was colored. Well, about 11 o'clock that night, this started about 6 in the afternoon, I called my sponsor after she called back at 11 o'clock, and I'd like to thank God for the non-alcoholics that I've come in contact with since I've been in this program.
Because I think that call that night made my sobriety a little more secure. I certainly think it gave me the foundation that I have in AA today. Because with her continuing the call, I made it up my mind at 11 o'clock by calling my sponsor, and I had said many times to many guys around because I had associated with many groups, look, if you get a black alcoholic, don't call me. Your call, you cover.
I felt very comfortable. I felt very clean, very pure. Yet, this particular night, I had refused a guy help. And when I called my sponsor, I knew he was a guy that wouldn't go out of the neighborhood. I called him and I told him of the situation. And of all things, this particular night, he said I'll be right over. I didn't expect it. He came over, rented his truck, we got the jackhandle out, and we made the trip.
Well, I got out of the car. I was about 18 miles from home. As I said, this is one of them real areas where no black man is supposed to be after sundown. Here I am in the northeast. I knocked on the door, and his wife sort of staggered around the door. I mean, she opened the door, and she sort of reached out, as these girls are always friendly. And I said, wait a minute, where is he? And he staggered around the room, and he put his arms out and said, come in, Lou, I've been waiting for you.
I didn't think you were coming. I walked in. I don't know how in hell he remembered me. He was drunk the first time and the only time I'd seen him. And I walked in, I sat down, and I started talking with him. And I sort of laughed. I said, well, my buddy's out in the car with a jackhandle. He's going to lay it on me if he's got to starve or anything. Well, I talked with that man that morning until four o'clock.
Harry and I did. He lives here in Miami. From that day until today, so far as I know, as he had kept constant contact with me, he had not had a drink. As I look back, this is the only man that I remember talking to basically the first time and stayed sober for a long time. But I think the important part of my life happened on my way back. I began really sincerely to take an honest, search-and-feel this moral inventory.
I found out the one thing that has been important, very important to me. What I was when I came to this program and what I claim to be after the first eight or nine years of this program, and what I claim to be after the first eight or nine years of sobriety. First 8 or 9 years of sobriety. And when I had the very first test of what I thought of, the AA program, I denied another individual the right to sobriety.
[00:30:06]
From that point until today, my life has changed. Because I then became aware of not just the twelve steps of this program, but the twelve traditions of this program was the most important factor in my life with sobriety. Because the Big Book did mention something about change my own ways, they also gave me the twelve steps and the twelve traditions and service. They gave me a method of how to live with other people.
I thought about the immature way that I approached Bill that night. The immature thoughts that I had before I had decided to go. Then I began to think in terms of what did the twelve steps say in the beginning. It's a program of recovering. The twelve traditions is to make it possible for me to live with other people and changing my ways. I had to learn how to become a part. I had to learn how to practice the third tradition of this program.
I had to learn how to express and practice the second tradition. The only authority in the ears of loving God is he may express himself in our group consciousness. I found out then that my sobriety would never be secure unless I put the same effort forth in my traditions that I had put forth in my twelve steps. Because I believe for me the twelve steps is a very self thing. This is for my personal recovery. This is what keeps me sober. But how do I do what is encased in the twelfth step of this program? They gave me directions. I believe if I have found any humility or if I've had the kind of spiritual awakening that I believe is necessary for me to practice these principles in all of my affairs, I must learn how.
And I think the first unselfish thing that I've done that I was forced into that night was going on that particular call. But I have been on many calls since then. Not because I basically wanted to, it's because this program had demanded this of me. But I've also found in practicing these principles and learning the art of accepting what is encased in the traditions of this program, I have applied this to many states and I've found that it works.
The twelve steps will not do the job for me. I must have the complete program. I have found in trying to practice the principles and traditions of this program that service became one of the things that has been encased in God's thinking for me. It's to do something for somebody without being found out. This is what the traditions mean for me. It's to protect the other person's sobriety or anonymity without being found out. It's making sure that I can work with the same interest, a person anywhere in the world, as I find at my next door neighbor. I don't have to know a guy.
So the traditions became equally important or more important to me than the twelve steps because here I begin to do something and work in accepting the ideas and suggestions of other people for the benefit of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have found in thinking in terms of other people in this program, I believe anyone in this program will do anything that I will do to keep their sobriety, to have as much interest in their sobriety as I have in mine.
In doing service, I have found many times when the word has been said, they won't do it. Well, I lost the word from that day on. They will do it because everybody in there is interested basically in their sobriety. I must put forth the effort. I've had many experiences in the attempt of trying to carry the message in many states around Pennsylvania, Delaware, Indiana, without fear. Simply because I was the first black speaker, I could walk anywhere in this country today without fear. I believe that you will do the same thing. This program has the same effect on you as it has on me. Therefore, I have no fear.
I don't believe that I could have gained this faith in the twelve steps, but in the traditions I've found in listening and sharing the impact of what the traditions are saying that I can't have faith in you to the point that I live without fear. And I think this is what the fourth step of the program meant, being able to take a fearless moral inventory, not just with God, but with man. Everything that is encased in my twelve steps and twelve traditions is to be applied with man and my association with man, because to me, man is where I have my action and my reaction. This particular night, I blew it, but it came very important from that point on.
And the reward, I like to believe, is the very fact that I'm a delegate in Pennsylvania, because I think from this we all grew. We grew to the point that we began to practice the things that are encased in the traditions. That it isn't important who you are or where you come from. The fact is, are you willing to carry the message?
[00:35:19]
Today I build my thinking not around the individual, NAA, but I believe the program of Alcoholics Anonymous penetrates deep enough to protect all people. I don't have to fear the days I had some years ago other than an alcoholic or other people that I know is interested in the alcohol program or alcoholism. It gives me this complete proof because I don't have to be right. It's all right now to be wrong. It's all right to listen to other AA members because I think this is how God speaks to me. I believe today I do know the will of God because to me it was pointed out very clearly in the twelfth step of this program and in the twelve traditions of how I can live with other people.
And my purpose of living with other people is to become a service, basically to him, and to do his will and to share his will with others as he did his with me when I was so undeserved. Because the day before I came to this program I tried to take my own life because I could not find living worthwhile, yet he could. With all of those imperfections, he accepted me, and I think this is the thing that the traditions are pointing to, is for me to remember that day and look at other people in the same way. I'd like to thank my speakers. I'd certainly like to thank you as the audience. Thank you again.
I'd like to close in the usual manner by saying the Lord's prayer in unison. May we rest from beginning to end in the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.