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Source: 1975 Denver International Convention – 1975 Denver Int., with John W, Duncan M., Joy N and Harvey K Part 1 of 2.mp3 File: 1975-denver-international-convention-1975-denver-int-with-john-w-duncan-m-joy-n-and-harvey-k-part-1-of-2.mp3 Duration: 01:02:33
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My name is John Waterfield. I am an alcoholic. Hi, everybody. The programs here are run in the same manner. We will start with a moment of silence for all who have covered AA in the past 40 years. Following this, we will all join in a serenity prayer. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. There may be someone here who is not familiar with our tradition of personal anonymity at the public level.
If so, we respectfully ask that no AA speaker or member be identified by full name or pictures in published or broadcast reports of our meeting. The assurance of anonymity is essential to our efforts to help other alcoholics. In our tradition of anonymity, remind us that AA principles come before personalities. I am an alcoholic, and I always say a very grateful alcoholic. Early in my sobriety, I heard something that has been very important to me.
A man said that if one is grateful each day for his sobriety, consciously grateful, it is very difficult for him to take a drink. I believe this, and I am grateful each day. I've had the privilege of attending the Miami Convention and the Toronto Convention, but I'm sure that those of you that have had the same privilege will say this one tops them all. It was a beautiful thing to see 14,000 white eyeballs all in one place.
That'd be 28,000, wouldn't it? And the other 8,000 we couldn't see that were looking at it on closed television. I am grateful to AA for giving me a chance to live again. And I believe, as I was told, that the way to real happy sobriety is to get involved, contribute something. And I found this to be true. Someone looked at my badge and said, what is a trustee? I said, that's someone who is allowed to go out without his sponsor.
I stole that from somebody, but it's not bad. We are going to have a very interesting and very fine meeting tonight. I am not going to take much of the time with my story. Suffice it to say that I did not get here by mistake. I worked hard at it. I drank for 30 years. And when I first came into the fellowship, and I would see people standing up here, and they'd say, I've been sober three years. I got my wife back.
I got a gold Cadillac. I got a raise. And I'd be sitting there with three months and wondering when the hell it's going to happen. I wanted instant sobriety. And I had to learn the hard way how true it is that we live one day at a time.
[00:05:07]
And so without any further ado, it is my pleasure to present to you Joy. My name is Joy, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, everybody. I often wondered why my mother named me Joy, because when I drank, I cried a lot. I wasn't too happy. I'm not an authority on alcoholism. I'm not an expert, but I definitely am an expert and authority on my alcoholism. And that's what I want to talk to you tonight about. I have lots of pieces of paper up here.
I need lots of pieces of paper because when I was asked to participate, I had to go back 40 years, and that's a long, long way back. Forty years ago, I graduated from high school, crossed the border in the bootleg territory in that dry state of Kansas. Alcohol and I became very close buddies at an early age. I think the first drink I really tasted was I stole some of my dad's home brew. We weren't allowed to make it in Kansas, but that's how we got our supply.
Of course, we had friendly neighbors here in Colorado, on the west, Nebraska on the north, Oklahoma on the south, and different places that bootlegged it across, and for those people, I have always sort of been grateful until I found you people. I should have gone to my 40th high school reunion, but I preferred to come with my new classmates here. I had done experimenting with alcohol prior to graduation.
I graduated from high school when I was 16 years of age. I was young, I was immature, but yet this strong chemical drug did lots of things for me. It made me be somebody that I wasn't. I could be anybody I wanted to be, and like the songs from the unsinkable Molly Brown, I could be a queen if I wanted to be. I went to school. I was raised in an alcoholic home. My father was a sick alcoholic. Thank God he found his way out of the alcoholic fog before he died.
I used to say I'd never be like my dad, and I turned out to be exactly like my dad. I used to say I hated my dad, but before I came to you I had learned to say I hate myself. After high school I went to college. I became a school teacher. I taught school in western Kansas in Oberlin, and right across the border was McCook, Nebraska, which was a very nice place, to get nerve medicine for the teacher who couldn't stand some of the fourth and fifth and sixth graders that I was trying to teach.
After teaching three years, I decided that that was sort of an uninteresting life for me. It wasn't too exciting, and I went back to school and I became a secretary, and I moved. I kept moving west. My father's drinking caused much unhappiness at home, and I tried many, many ways in many years to figure out a way to get away from there. So I ran away from home, and I came to Yellowstone Park, and that was my haven that summer.
I loved it in Yellowstone Park. I drank ale in Yellowstone Park, and they talk about the high altitude in Denver. Well, if you drink enough ale, you suffer from the high ale-titude in Yellowstone Park. After I left the park that summer, I went to California. If I look familiar, I probably am, because I drank in lots of places. I moved to California, and I received, I got a very nice and interesting job with the British Air Commission.
I wasn't a very good stenographer, but I used to tell my British bosses that, well, please slow down. I don't understand your accent, and that's the way I got by. I was a good con artist and manipulator, and after a while, I began to talk like the British,
[00:10:01]
and after one or two martinis, they loved to have me around because they could say that I was from England. I returned to the park several summers, and one year along came Pearl Harbor, and I decided I wanted to be one of Uncle Sam's little nieces, so I joined the Coast Guard, and that slogan was, don't be a spare, be a spar. I enlisted in California. I took my boot training in Iowa, and then I was shipped to the 13th Naval District in Seattle, Washington.
I liked that drinking seacoast town, and I've often wondered in the service, drinking along with the male sailors, how we won the war. We got bombed, not from the war, but quite often every night after work. If I got in trouble with the shore patrol because I came in late, and I didn't get into my barracks in time, and we had rules and regulations, and I didn't like rules and regulations, I would tell them that I needed to see the chaplain, and no one could be refused that right, and the chaplain was a marvelous Irish priest who always had a bottle of whiskey in his brewer, and I would come back to the officer of the day with liquor on my breath, and she couldn't figure out how I got that, but I knew.
I made a tour from Neah Bay, Washington to Brookings, California with the captain of the 13th Naval District and a group of people that were inspecting the beach patrol, the dog patrol, and every other kind of patrol, and one hot afternoon we came near Portland, Oregon, and somebody mentioned the Columbia River Bar, and I got awful thirsty, but I discovered that the Columbia River Bar was not a place where you got scotch and water.
After the service, I went back to Yellowstone Park again, and I became the chief reservation clerk there. I drank more. The workload that year was very heavy, and you'd drink two if you were trying to find a place for all these thousands of tourists with their weary heads and bodies every night, and again I suffered from the high altitude of the park. I moved from place to place, but I have only discovered in the last few years that the reason I had trouble was because I took joy every place I went.
I couldn't get rid of me. I came to Denver and worked for a year and a half, and I used to give lectures down here in the bar in the Albany Hotel, but nobody ever paid any attention to me in those days. One night after the horse races, I think it was on the 4th of July. I can't quite remember what day I was celebrating. I am one of those people who celebrate birthdays and feast days and holidays, and Groundhog's Day was my favorite day to celebrate, but we were celebrating the horse races, and we had some people that were from Dallas, Texas in the group, and we took them out to the airport to send them back home, and as we got to the airport, this one fellow said to me, Joy, you better stay in the car.
You're a little too drunk to go in with us. So I said okay, and after they left, I noticed they had foolishly left the keys in the car. I looked down, and I thought they can't tell me that I'm too drunk, so I took the keys. I mean, I took the car, and I thought I'll drive myself home, and they can pick the dumb old car up tomorrow. I proceeded to drive another person's car. This is stealing. I had no driver's license.
I was very drunk. I think I was on Colfax Avenue here in town. I hit a telephone pole as well as a parked car. I knocked myself sober, but when I looked up, there was a nice policeman standing beside me. He took me to jail. I'd never been in jail before. I said to the policeman, I'm very frightened. I've never been in a jail before, not even to sell Girl Scout cookies, and the policeman said, we don't want any cookies tonight, sis.
So I stayed overnight in jail here. I had no idea how one gets out after you get in. The steel door slammed awfully hard, but the next morning, a very nice woman attendant told me how you found the Bones woman. She got me one. They took me home, and the first thing I wanted when I got home was a drink, so I dashed over to my friend's house. I was real nervous after that night. I relayed the story of my plight, had a few drinks, and she handed me down considerable pain.
[00:15:05]
had a good drinking lawyer friend who took my case, and that evening cost me about $1,200, and I wasn't making that kind of money. The man who defended me at my drunken driving court was a good attorney. He was a good drinking buddy of mine, and he's now dead. He was killed in a tragic car accident because of alcohol. Then we went west to San Francisco. After I was there a while, there was a tragedy in our family.
My brother's wife was killed in a car accident and left him with three little children, and I decided I must immediately go home and help my brother. The great Andy Joy would become the stepmother and play the martyr role to a hilt. I went back to Wichita, Kansas, and that's still in that dry state of Kansas, and after I'd been there for about two months, I wondered what I was doing, and I wasn't really making and providing a nice home for my brother's homeless little children.
I was very unhappy. I was very cruel to my brother, mentally cruel, and I reminded him each day of the things I'd given up, the good job, the social life, and everything to come home and help him, blah, blah, blah, and he didn't appreciate a thing that I was doing for him. I decided I needed a job other than being a housewife and stepmother to these children, so I got a job with a big airplane company and was in their public relations department, did lots of partying there, and after about a year's time, my brother announced he was going to remarry, and I was very glad, not for him, but for me, I'd get out of this mess. I could get out of this dull routine that I'd gotten myself into.
I remember the night I left his home, he said, Joy, I'll drive you down to the bus station. I was going back to Salina, and I said, I don't need you to drive me. I don't need you to help me. I don't want your help. I can do these things for myself, and as he stood there in the door with his little seven-year-old daughter, Annie, Annie looked up at her dad and said, Daddy, what's wrong with Annie, Joy? Is she sick?
This aggravated me at the time that that small child was diagnosing my illness. I was sick, but I didn't know it. I stayed in Salina only about 48 hours, then went back to San Francisco, and after being there with the winter, I went to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and that's a good drinking state, good drinking town, and then on my way home, I was going to return to San Francisco. I came via Helena, and I was offered a job as a receptionist to the governor of the state of Montana.
I don't know why we always seem to get beautiful jobs, and then we almost always blow them. I worked for the governor, and I admired him very much. He had had a drinking problem at one time, but he no longer drank alcohol. When I worked for him, I met and fell in love with a very fine doctor in Montana who lived in a small town. He was a country doctor. He was a widower, and he had four children, and again I decided maybe I could play the role of a stepmother.
I'd had practice. Perhaps this time it would be different. I moved to a small town. There were only 1,500 people in that town. We lived 35 miles east of Helena, the capital city. I again felt, what am I doing here? I've lost my identity. I've moved to a small community. Nobody knows who I am, the great joy, so I began to drink alone. I was a hidden housewife. I started my party every afternoon by myself in my home about 1 o'clock, and if one of my boys forgot his track shoes, or forgot a football helmet or something, I was very angry because they usually found me pouring myself a drink.
The guilt was pretty terrific. I drank from 1 to about 4, then tried to straighten myself up a bit. My husband would be home about 5. I would drink with him, and I know sometimes he wondered how I got drunk so fast, but I'd had a four-hour start on him. I used the same routine on him that I used on my brother. You don't appreciate me. I gave up my glamorous job to help you. All you wanted was a housekeeper.
You don't love me. I had four stepchildren. One gal was 18, one boy 16, one boy 11, and one 7. In the last stages of my drinking, my bottle became my master. I craved it daily.
[00:20:04]
The thing that frightened me, I think, the most in the last stages of my drinking was I didn't really always… Well, when I woke up in the morning, I was still drunk. I couldn't really get sober. And my mother and father came to visit me from Kansas, and I didn't really want them to come because I knew they'd spoil my afternoon drinking party. When they were ready to leave, to go back to Kansas after about a week's time, and I'm sure they felt unwelcome in my home, I took them to the railroad station and held them there at 1 o'clock in the afternoon, and their train didn't leave till 7 o'clock that night.
I had to get back to my bottle. They'd been in my way, and this mental cruelty was eating at me the guilt and the remorse, and I was beginning to hate myself. Then one day a gal called me and said, Joy, I heard the most awful thing about you at a bridge party last night. She said, Somebody told me you were an alcoholic. And I said, Who me? My husband drinks twice as much as I do. Why, you know this isn't true.
And the flag of denial, which someday if I have time I'm going to design one. I haven't quite figured out what's put on it, but I think maybe who me and no. Not too long after she had called me, she was the gal who planted the seed. It got me thinking. I knew there was something wrong. A very nice Catholic priest came by my house one morning, and he said, Joy, I've got a book I want you to read, and it was the story of the life of Lillian Ruff. I'll cry tomorrow.
I read the book and heard about AA. I didn't know for sure or not whether they had women in this organization, but I started mentally writing my letter. I was trying to get some information, but I didn't want them to know that I was the one who had the problem. So I said to myself, I never wrote this letter down in longhand. It was going to start, Dear Sirs, I have a friend in Townsend who has a sister who has a very severe drinking problem.
I never wrote the letter, and I never sent it. On July 26, 1956, I went to a cocktail party, and as I was standing in the buffet line, somebody next to me said, Joy, do you know that man over there with the white hair? I said, well, I don't know him really. I've seen him. He said, you know, he's the most interesting fellow in the world. He belongs to AA here in Helena. He used to be the town drunk.
He was the first human being I had ever seen who belonged to this wonderful fellowship. So after a few drinks, I walked over to this man, and I said, I understand you belong to AA. He said, yes, I do. I said, you know, I've just finished reading the most interesting book. It's called I'll Cry Tomorrow. He said, oh, yes, I know the book. I said, you know, that's interesting because I have a friend in Townsend who has a sister who has a very serious drinking problem.
And I wonder how we can find some help for her. And he says, well, maybe we can find some help for this lady. I started out my line, but after a while, this man's smile, his gentle laughter, I know now that he knew that I was the girl. But anyway, this was one of those parties that went on to another party, and I didn't want to go to the other party that night after I'd met the AA man. I went home.
I left my husband to go to the second party. I drove my very nice car out of the driveway very fast, and I don't remember too much of that drive home, 35 miles. But at one point, I do remember the road was under construction. There were barricades. There were red lanterns flashing. Speed, 25 miles an hour, danger signals. And as I came up over a very narrow bridge, gravel hitting my fenders, I looked down at my speedometer, and I was going 95 miles an hour.
And I thought to myself as I took my foot off the gas, if you don't kill yourself, Joy, you're going to kill somebody else. And then I learned that at that time I had a 3,000-pound murder weapon in my hands. I was driving on a public highway. I couldn't get this man out of my mind after I had met him. I went back to Helena on Tuesday.
[00:25:01]
I parked my car. I turned to walk up the block, and I looked up, and there was that man. He said, how's your friend's sister? I said, I really don't know. I just talked to you last Saturday night, and she lives on a ranch about 30 miles from here. Well, I haven't had time to find out how she is. He said, how long are you going to be in town? And I said, oh, just long enough to get my hair done. And he looked at me and says, you wear your hair just like my wife does.
It takes her about an hour to get her hair done. So why don't I meet you at the candy shop, and I'll buy you a cup of coffee or something, and we'll talk about your friend's sister. Maybe we can help her. I tried to figure out in the beauty shop how to get out of this, but I couldn't. But yet down deep in my heart, I wanted information not for my friend, but for myself. I met him. He gave me the literature.
And he said, you know, there's a wonderful test that we give people to help them decide whether or not they're alcoholic. Would you sit down at my desk? And he handed me a pencil, and he said, Joy, be more honest than you've ever been in all your life. So I narrowly went down the list of questions. Of course, he covered up the answers, and I got 19 of them yes out of 20. I began to cry, and I admitted to my first human being that I was the gal who had the problem.
Now that I'm more honest and work your program thoroughly, I make 100 on that test every time I take it. It was a rough time. I was a loner in my little town. I sneaked my sobriety for about six weeks. I went in every Tuesday night. And in Helena, they only had one meeting a week. I drove 70 miles round trip to this meeting. I paced the floor in my home. I read, and I paced some more. I had a glass of fruit juice always in my hand or something because my hand was shaped like this and nothing else fit.
I went to the meeting, and then I decided one evening, I better tell my husband where I was going because I learned some honesty from you people. So I told my husband that I had been going to Helena to a meeting on Tuesday nights, and he went to water, and he hadn't missed me. And I said, if he wonders where I'm going, that's where I'm going. And he said, well, I haven't missed you, but what kind of a meeting is this?
I told him that I had tried to stop drinking by myself, but I had found some people who would help me. And he was a typical male. He said, my joy, you're strong enough, you can do it by yourself. And he said, no, I can't. I have to go, and if you won't let me go, I'll have to leave because my life depends on this. He said, well, what will people think? And that was another thing I'd been taught by you people.
I mustn't let what you think they think bother me. I must listen to what you think and help me. As I've grown more comfortable in my sobriety, I don't worry too much about what people think anymore. The first big party I ever went to after I'd sobered up, I worried a little bit that day what excuse I was going to use because I drank with all these people. And a good old mortician friend of mine said to me, joy, what would you like to drink?
I always hung around morticians. I wanted help handy. He always got my husband's mistakes. But he said to me, joy, what would you like to drink? And I said, well, I'll have a plain ginger ale. And he said, what's the matter? Your ulcer's kicking up? And all day I'd worried about what I was going to say. He gave me that excuse. I don't have ulcers, but I don't care whether he knows it or not. I found a way that I can live and it works for me.
I can't handle alcohol. It handles me. Good things have happened in my life since I became sober. And with the help of God and my AA friends, I've been able to cope with these real things. My husband died about 12 years ago from cancer. I lost one of my youngest stepson, 21 years old, who fought in Vietnam without a scratch on him. Came home, was going to the University of Montana, brilliant boy. I was going to the University of Montana, brilliant boy, celebrating his straight A report card, drinking beer, and driving his new automobile 135 miles an hour.
[00:30:05]
Dick no longer has a drinking problem, he's dead. Good things have happened, bad things have happened, but you have taught me how to live a real life. I no longer do strange and weird things, I do some nutty things every now and then, but I like being abnormal, it's quite normal to be abnormal. I like to drink quinine water with lime in it now instead of gin and tonic, which I drink always in the summertime to ward off malaria in Montana.
I never did have a case of malaria. I no longer ride horses on the 4th of July up to saloon doors in West Yellowstone, get off my horse, hitch him outside and say to the bartender, my horse and I are thirsty. That way I got two drinks. I'm terrified of a horse, sober. It always took a pitcher of martinis and lots of spray cologne because I heard that when the adrenaline gland works it secretes fear and I didn't want that horse to know when I was scared.
So the poor horse wasn't scared either, he was confused. I was thrown that day, the horse decided when I said, well I'll race you to the stables to my mortician friend that I was riding with. The horse went home and left me behind. I worked as an alcoholic counselor for women alcoholics at our state hospital for five years and now I live in Bozeman and somebody says if you put another O in that town it's Boozeman, Montana.
I'm trying very hard to give away what you people have given to me, the tools to my sobriety. There are days when I wonder what I'm doing wrong but quickly I have a friend who's sitting in the office that told me to turn in my God button and as I go in my sobriety I know that I'm not running the show anymore. My sobriety is a gift from God and I only hope that as each 24 hours go by I can accept this gift graciously.
I've received so many gifts from my sobriety that God and you people have given to me. The greatest gift I think that I've received is that now I'm a real human being and if I don't touch alcohol I can never be unreal again and I like being real. Thank you for letting me participate and God bless all of you for helping me. Thank you very much, Julie. Next speaker to share this meeting with us, I had the pleasure of meeting a year or so ago and it gives me a great deal of pleasure to introduce Duncan.
Thanks, John. I have a few commitments to make first. When I was asked to come down, I didn't know that all the people I knew around the program, around where I come from, were going to be here, so I'll have to be honest with you. My sponsor is here. At our meeting a few weeks ago we told anybody that wished to have their name mentioned, and this was before Cease Cargo and the other meetings, that we would make arrangements.
I have to mention Pat, Clem, Don, and today I had the privilege of meeting a guy I used to drink with. He left our part of the country and went west, so Len and Megan. And for the rest of you cheap people who wouldn't put the 15 bucks in, we're not going to mention your name. My sponsor also said, before I go too far, my name is Duncan MacArthur and I am an alcoholic. I have the privilege of being the delegate for Western Ontario in Canada.
And that's where I met John when I was a delegate in New York, when John was delegate. Before I came to this program, I knew a lot of the people that are here now, and I had good reason to believe that they should be here, because of the way they drank.
[00:35:04]
And the reason I came to the program, I have no idea, because I came drunk. The first night I came, two chaps took me there, after I had made inquiries about what went on at AA meetings, because I had been around when we dropped one or the other off in the car, and I saw those girls going in, and I thought, Boy, Duncan, that's where the action must be, you better get in there. And I got here and I didn't find that much action.
I didn't start out in life to become an alcoholic, and I must be like Joy also, alcohol was no stranger around our home. My father was a very heavy drinker, and whether he was an alcoholic or not, I couldn't say, but he was in the contracting business, and we lived high in the summertime, and we starved a lot of times in the winter. But there was always booze around, and I always used to say, I'll never be like him, because he was mean and miserable, and hard to get along with.
My father was a prince to what I became, and the way I put my wife through this hell on earth that I gave her. And I'm quite privileged that she is with me tonight, and I'm glad she's here. I'll have to tell the truth. I had no idea that I had a problem with alcohol, because I had no trouble with drinking alcohol. The last day I drank, I drank more, I think, the last time I drank than I'd ever drank in any single day that I, you know, normally drank.
My problem wasn't drinking, it was trying to get stopped. And up until that time, I never had any great desire to stop, because I could see no wrong in anything I was doing. I was working, and the only reason I was still working at a steady job was I was in the services. I hear a lot of people say, you know, get around the R.H. Brackett, that when the war came along, then I got into the service. And you think they grabbed them at the door and said, here, you've got to drink this now, and you've got to drink it again, and again, and again.
I spent over 26 years in the service, and nobody forced me any day that I was ever in there to take a drink. They didn't have to. I would take it for any reason whatsoever. If it rained, I got drunk. If it was a nice day like today, that was a good reason, because you had to celebrate when you got good weather. If I got a promotion, I got drunk. And if I didn't get one, I got twice as drunk, because I couldn't figure out why those stupid people that were over me in the Army couldn't realize the potential that I had to straighten things out.
I remember sitting in camp back in England in 1940 with a couple of my buddies, and we had a way figured out that with 187 rough miles, we could be in the center of Berlin, and we would end the war overnight if they would just let us go. But they never did. When I came to the program, I was fortunate that the night I decided to go, and they took me up, and I left a full glass of rum sitting on the table in the bar.
They hurried back, I guess, and finished it. They said, if you wait here, there will be a meeting. I went down into this basement in the church, and there was one lady there. I saw her many times at that meeting place after that, so she didn't have a problem, but I think she liked our company. She came over and said, Do you have a problem? I said, Well, I guess so. I hadn't been home for three days, and there I was, magnificent, with my uniform on, and a big red sash, and a big heavy-brimmed cap with brass bands on it.
Why should I have a problem? I was working. I had a home. I hadn't been there. By the end of the evening, I found out I didn't have any money to go home because I'd lost my license just before this. It's a humorous thing up in Canada that when you're charged with impaired driving and the magistrate says, I'll take your license, your privilege to drive away for three months, that those people that run the Department of Transport, they can also imply another three or six or a year.
So I found out that I lost my license for six months. Now I came home one day, and the policeman came to the door, and he said, I would like the license plates off your car. I said, What for? He said, The Queen wants them. Oh, I wonder why the hell the Queen wants my license plates. The only reason I want them is just so you don't sneak the car out at the odd time
[00:40:01]
with no insurance and things like that and no license to drive. When I came to the program, I don't know whether I was looking for an excuse or a reason, but I'm awfully glad I got here, and I'm awful grateful today that I'm still here. When I came to the program, they told me many things. My sponsor used to tell me lots of things, and I never believed anything he told me, because I know how he got into the program.
He came to the program so he could stay out of jail, and he lived right across from the street from me, and he was in this program for quite a while before I came around, and he never once went out of his way to come and tell me what a marvelous program he belonged to. All I could see was when we lived in the merry quarters, and there was a big circle, and I was sitting at our window one night, and there was a honking horn and the cars running around the circle, and I said to my wife, what the hell is going on over there?
She said, oh, that's Pat. He's celebrating his anniversary in AA. And I said, big deal. The whole neighborhood. And this is an anonymous program. There were only three of us on the street that finally became members of AA, but everybody in the street knew we were in it. But when I came, they offered me hope. And this is the greatest thing we have in our program, that we offer hope to anybody that wants to come and reach for it.
And I found hope, that I could hope to wake up some morning and I wouldn't have to worry about taking another drink. They told me the first night I was there that just possibly I had taken my last drink. And everybody's given their sobriety date. Mine is December 11, 1959. And that's a poor time for a Scotsman to start thinking about quitting drinking just before Christmas and New Year's. I think that year would have been necessary because I wouldn't have had the money.
But when they offered me the hope that I possibly had my last drink, I was willing to take any reason, because I had lost everything. I couldn't get any kick out of alcohol. I told you I drank more the last day than I'd ever done. I couldn't get that blackout. I couldn't get that glow. I could get nothing. Now I find that I may reach out to help someone and give them the hope that I had found. And I found that this is what our program is all about.
We say we're a fellowship who share our experience, strength, and hope. Do we ever fully realize this is what we are offering when we say, here, we share this with you? The one stupid thing I did, which they used to stress quite a bit back in those days, was get a sponsor. Get a sponsor. So I got a sponsor. And my sponsor told me many things. And when things would go wrong at home, and they still go wrong at home because I still haven't lost all the ego and I am right attitude, I would go over and talk to Pat or I'd go talk to Don.
And the wonderful thing about this fellowship is you don't have to tell them what's bothering you, but you start taking other people's inventory and your program comes out and what you want to know, you get the answer, and you're able to go back and then face that. And you don't tell them what it's all about, but I think they can sense it. And this fellowship of ours… I met a chap yesterday or the day before.
I've been telling my wife all week, we come down here on Tuesday and she just informed me we came on Wednesday. That's how mixed up I am this week. I thought I recognized the chap from Buffalo and I went over and shook hands with him. He didn't have a badge or anything on. I went over and shook hands with him. And I said, you're so-and-so from Buffalo. And he said, no, I'm from Dayton. And I said, well, you belong to the fellowship, don't you?
He said, yeah, but how'd you know? And I said, well, I think we can sense one another. And I don't think I'd ever met the gentleman before, but he did. He looked familiar. He looked like a drunk. And while I'm at it, there's some drunks over here from Hamilton. If they want to move down into the better seats, they can move. I didn't have any problems coming into this program. I didn't have any problems coming into this program and accepting the belief that I had a higher power because I drove a great number of miles in a car and I used to drive a lot in those things we call blackouts.
[00:45:08]
And the only reason I knew about blackouts is that one time I was having a problem at home and I said to my wife, well, I'll go and get something from the doctor to make me stop drinking. So I went down and saw a young English doctor and he picked up this pamphlet and he said, well, I can't give you anything to make you stop, but I may get you something to help you. So he put me on anti-abuse and he was questioning about how much do you drink?
And he said, two or four ounces in an evening. And I said, I'm coming here for help and he wants to know if I drink four ounces a night. So I tried to explain to him that I could be with someone and we could have four bottles, not four ounces. And I said, I might not remember drinking them all, but I would be there until they were finished. And he said, well, how can you drink if you don't remember?
And I said, well, that's the way I am. And I can also travel from place to place and not know where I am. And we talk about that invisible line, we do a lot of invisible moving in our day. But we persevered and he explained to me how this anti-abuse would work. And I have nothing against anyone that needs the use of anti-abuse because it's a good crutch if you need it. But I went through the series and I went back down at the end of the week and he gave me a little bit in a glass and said, how do you feel?
And I said, if I had been honest then I would have said more, but I didn't. So he said, well, you didn't get any reaction. And I know through my experiences up to the day that I had too much alcohol in my system for anti-abuse to work at that time within a week. I went back for another session and then I did get a fine glow on from what he gave me and the anti-abuse. And he said, I'll phone you in the morning to see how you are.
And I answered the phone in the morning when he phoned and he said, how do you feel? And I said, fine. And I did. Except that all night I had horrible dreams, but I had no ill effects from anti-abuse. And again, I still had too much alcohol in my system for anything to work. I had no trouble accepting the higher powers, I said, because I used to do a lot of traveling and somebody somewhere was looking after me.
I had also gone to Sunday school and I was sure I was one of God's chosen children because I'm a Presbyterian. I'm not like the rest of these speakers you've been listening to all week down here that all belong to that other, you know. I thought when I first come along, you sure must have to be Catholic and Irish before you can join Alcoholics Anonymous. But today some of my best friends are Irish and Catholic.
My sponsor, one of our past delegates who is sitting down here who I have the pleasure of serving on the committee with and I talk to quite often. And my joy, she's one of those retired schoolteachers. They must have been miserable people, schoolteachers I mean. But my higher power that I learned about going to the Presbyterian Church and listening to Caroline Barkley read the news of the world. She used to tell us all about the murders that people were committing and rapes and all these horrible things.
But in between times she told us a little bit about God and what he would do to us if we did these things and all that. I was scared until I learned better. He just couldn't pounce down on you all the time because when I was in the service and serving overseas and in Italy, I was quite friendly with God. And when things were kind of rough and I was down in the bottom of a slit trench and I was making all those bargains, if he would just let me out of this one, I would do marvelous things.
But he never did those marvelous things, so you kind of lose that little belief and faith that he can just press the button and things are going to happen. But I found out after I came into this program that that's what I call bargaining, and there's no way I can bargain with my higher power. I turn my will and my life over to my higher power, and what he thinks is good for me, I'll get it. And as my sponsor-sponsor said, sometimes he is willing to give it to you, but not just right now.
[00:50:00]
You'll just have to wait a little bit when you ask for some of these favors. I can ask for help from my higher power for any one of you people, but also I can ask for myself as a little guidance, that I may help somebody find our program and help someone who is in the program. But as far as asking for anything from myself, material gains or anything like that, I know damn well I'm not going to get them because I'm not worthy of it.
My higher power, I don't have to get down on my knees. She said the best way to get down on your knees is to put your boots down, and I usually leave the boots right in front of the Chesterfield where I've been watching the TV, and I stretch out on it. I might as well tell you this because my wife would tell you the same thing. She was even so mean one time when I was drinking that she got one of those sectional Chesterfields just to see if I would move.
The only thing that moved was the Chesterfield. It was split in the middle and I went on the floor, and she left me there. That's where I used to sleep. I'd wake up and the pattern would be on. I was thinking just the other day there, when I was going through all those drinking experiences, and then I come into the program, they used to have a saying up around our way, John's been dry for 17 years.
Mike's been dry for 14 years. Joy's been dry for 20 years. I said, what a hell of a way to go through life, dry. It seemed kind of barren to me because I can tell you what dry is. Dry is about 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning when you wake up and you're dry, and you don't know whether a cold drink of water will help. You know there's no booze left because you're pretty sure that you didn't bring that morning supply with you, so you can't get into that.
My dry period used to be when I would sneak to the refrigerator and open the door and get the quart bottle out and gurgle it away, and then a voice would come down from upstairs, don't drink all that milk, that's all there is in the house. And here all I was trying to do was keep myself alive and get the fire out. And that was dry to me, and I sure didn't want to go through the rest of my life with that feeling of being dry.
Today I can think that I am fairly contentedly sober, and that's the way I would like to remain. When I think of my higher power and I ask him for help and guidance, and he's going to give it to me, and I think about the steps that I have taken to get to where I'm asking my higher power for guidance, then I'm sure that he's going to forgive me. But then I'm also sure that for me to work along the lines that I think I should work, I should forgive myself.
And I forgive myself pretty much every morning. And I don't have to go to confession to do it. If I do anything wrong, I forgive myself right off the bat. I'm sure that if we ask for help, that if we keep dragging up all the nasty, mean, miserable things we did, and we don't allow ourselves to grow in our marvelous program, that it's just possible that some of those mean old things might just make us go back to drink.
So we must forgive ourselves. We can't forget them all. Those things are going to be ground into us for the rest of our lives, the same as our problem is going to last us for the rest of our lives. So we must forgive ourselves. One thing they say we can't afford in the program are resentments. And I have a marvelous talk on resentments, that I had resentments against pretty much anybody that I ever met and anything that I wanted to do.
Now, I don't say that you people in the United States shouldn't have resentments against the form of government that you've had to go through lately, and we in Canada are in the same position. Nobody that's a Canadian should have any resentments, or shouldn't be without resentments against the government, because they're horrible. I'm a conservative, and we have a liberal government. But I found out through my time in the program that we say that these resentments that we let build up within ourselves might drive us to drink.
And you know, I could hate all you people tonight for getting us out here speaking at midnight, when any sensible people should be home, and you must all be a bunch of alcoholics or you wouldn't be sitting here. But I could go home, and I could be hating every one of you. And you'll go to here tonight, and you'll go home,
[00:55:01]
and you'll go to bed, and you'll go to sleep. Now, if I've got a resentment against you, I'll go home, and I'll lay on the bed, and I'll roll from one side, and I'll roll to the other, and I won't get any sleep. And I'll get up in the morning, and I'll still have the resentment. You'll get up tomorrow morning, and you'll feel fine. The whole trouble with resentments, if you don't let people know about them, is that they don't know you've got a resentment against them.
So rather than you do all the worrying when you get a resentment against somebody, go and tell them. You may get punched in the mouth, but you won't have any resentment. So that's one way to get rid of resentment. I don't have much time left, but I must tell you the heart of my program is service. And this year at the conference in New York, our theme was unity through love and service. And the theme for our program here tonight is Let It Begin With Me.
And I would like each and every one of you, whether you're in service or not, just to take with you, the two of them together, unity through love and service and Let It Begin With Me. I often have heard them say that up in Toronto in 1965, when Bill and Lois stood up and gave the Responsibility Pledge, that people held hands and tears streamed down many cheeks, and everybody was going to go out and rescue the rest of the world.
And as soon as they walked through the doors of Maple Leaf Gardens and came out into the clean, fresh air, the responsibility didn't seem so great. And the Responsibility Pledge, they read it once in a while at meetings. But when you ask them to do something, a little bit of work, well, I've got to go here and I've got to go there. It's the same as 12-step calls today. You tell anybody that's making a 12-step call that it must be made before 10 o'clock, because I've got to watch that TV program and I've got to watch the news that comes on at 11.
And it's pretty difficult. Could you call me tomorrow? And in the meantime, you're saying, well, Jesus, should I go and see him? I wonder if I can get him into the hospital. I'll get him down to the detox center anyhow and we'll get rid of him for the night. Well, no more sponsorship. No more head-on meeting the drunk. As Paul said tonight, he said, the no-timer in the program is the one who's scared somebody else is going to puke all over him.
So I think sometimes we get a little far removed from what this program is all about, helping another alcoholic. And I found out that I get a lot of satisfaction through service. You've heard people, many of them say to you, get active in the program. My sponsor told me this right off the bat. You should get active in the program. I know now that when these people say get active in the program, that they've got a job that they don't want to do, so you may as well do it.
That's getting active in the program. That's why John's trustee, because somebody said keep active, and as soon as he finished off his two-year term as delegate, they bang him in now, and they'll keep him busy for another four years. My chairman up in Western Ontario, he claims there's only about 5% of the people in Alcoholics Anonymous who have any idea of doing anything whatsoever towards service.
And yet we stand at our meetings, and we read the steps and traditions, and some of us queer people who are in service now will tell you about the Twelve Concepts someday. Thirty-six points that we have to live by, and some of them haven't even taken the first one, but they're willing to help a still-suffering alcoholic. In their time, in their way, when it's convenient. I still remember that. If they hadn't been ready when I came, what would have happened?
I still remember it. If they hadn't been ready when I came, what would have happened? We have people in our own group, and I'm going to give you Americans a plug. You've done a lot of horrible things to us in the past, but the one good thing you did is that when this fellowship was started 40 years ago, that you didn't keep it to yourselves. That it had to be given away for it to live. And when the people up in our country say, well, they don't need to send any money to New York.
We're getting along all right. I always say, well, suppose they had said I always say, well, suppose they had said, we won't send any literature out of the country, but we won't let anyone other than Americans find out about Alcoholics Anonymous, we'll keep it just on our side of the border, where the hell would we be?
[01:00:03]
So, any of you Americans here tonight, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Applause That's even taking into the fact the consequences I had to suffer in Rego Buto in Sicily, when the Feds dropped bombs on us one day, came back and dive-bombed us the next, and the third day came back and machine-gunned us. Other than that, you're not bad. Laughter I see John's starting to fidget, and I've been talking long enough, but I think if you'll just bear with me for one minute, and think, if it weren't for the people who are a little interested in service, that's the guys that open the meeting, put the coffee on, set the chairs up, stay around and wash the cups, and think that once in a while, maybe that there is something more to this program, outside of our own little group, outside of our own little area.
I know at the conference, Dr. Jack mentioned when he came back from his trip, that there were only six big books in all of India, and yet our groups are willing to go to any length to carry this message. So we asked them if they would like to contribute a little bit of money to buy some extra literature, and they said yes, they would, but then they would have to have their names inscribed in the book that this group donated a dollar towards buying the big book to send.
Be grateful as much as you can, but be recognized. Laughter I know that my friend's wife, Megan, who had to put up with some of my drinking problems, when Len and I used to visit in the evening, when we were supposed to be working at the armories or something, as a member of Al-Anon. So Len, I can only tell you that the thing I know about Al-Anon, is that we often say on anything that we're working with, cooperation, but not affiliation.
And I think that you, living with an Al-Anon member, you have affiliation, but not a hell of a lot of cooperation. Thank you very much. Applause Thank you very much, Duncan.