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Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Tom I Source Review 11038 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: tom-i-2009-06-20-tom-i-founders-day-indianapolis-in-story-aa-2009-archive-11038.mp3 Duration: 01:15:57
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Well, folks, thanks very much. Tom is an alcoholic. I'm a member of the Primary Purpose Group in Southern Pines, North Carolina, and my sobriety date, as you can tell, was a long time ago. It's February 2nd of 57. And I am absolutely, deeply grateful and found that incredible to believe such a thing had happened. Man, I wouldn't have bet on 30 days, much less this long. So I am very, very grateful to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, not only to have been sober for a long time, but I am grateful, deeply grateful, that here I am at this age. If you won't tell anybody, I'll tell you how old I am. I'm 76. And God, that is old. That is flat old. And I have been blessed not only with sobriety, but I've been blessed with being able to maintain my energy, my enthusiasm. I've got as much creative thinking today as I've ever had in my life.
And so I'm not somebody who's an old-timer in repose. I'm an old-timer that is wide open. And a while back, I was telling Molly, I had a, I want to get a lot of sympathy for this young, I found out to my shock and dismay that I had a brain aneurysm. I didn't just discover it. Something happened. I went up to the hospital. The guy told me he had one. I said, what's that? He said, oh, you don't really want to know it. So he told me. And then a fellow tried to do some surgery on it, couldn't. And he said, you know, what you got's the kind of thing. He said, we're not going to try surgery anymore, because the surgery was going great, but you weren't going to make it through it. And I said, well, I commend you on your judgment, because that was a great call. Let's call this thing off.
And he said, well, it's the kind of thing that it was not going to bother you. He said, you could just go right on with your life, wide open, if you want to. And what'll happen is one day, you'll just have the worst headache in the history of the world, and fall over, and your wife can pronounce you gone, because you are out of here. And I said, well, that's really something. And I said, I've always kind of had it in the back of my mind that when I go out, I don't want to go out checking my pulse every 15 minutes and sitting there taking my, you know what I mean. I said, I want to just go out wide open. And then I just want to, and he said, I'll tell you what, you've got a good chance of doing that. So I've had people telling me for a long time I ought to slow down. For what? For what?
Good God, sit around and dissipate? Yeah, I'm not going to slow down. I'm 76 years old, for God's sakes. I don't have much time left. I've got to speed up, not slow down. I've got so much to be grateful for. I couldn't make it in 104 years, never mind 52. So I still got stuff to do. And I'm blessed to be able to do it. So I am pleased to be here. I'm proud of you for having the Founders Day. I just think that's great. Appreciate Gary giving the rundown on what's been in the legacy of this. I think it is awfully important to sort of observe our roots and realize that we didn't just happen to just find ourselves in a meeting here one day. Some people did something. And what I'm, I'm not going to go into, I'd love to, but I'm not going to go into the history talk, but just a little bit. And the thing I was thinking about when Gary was saying that, every place that Alcoholics Anonymous has grown, including Indianapolis, happened because somebody heard the message that there was something called AA, and somebody decided to plant the flag in Indianapolis and said, let it be here. And held the fort until somebody else showed up. And so to me, those are always incredible stories that the word got out. And in every town in this community.
I'll tell you how it started in my state, in North Carolina. I wasn't there, but I heard about it. And what happened was, you know, when they wrote the book, they, the notion was that the book would be bought by, it was targeted toward professional people, made it real big, so it would look like a bargain. And so they, the idea was people would get the book and read it, learn about AA. Well, that was a great theory, except it didn't sell many books. And, but it happened in North Carolina. A physician in that state who was not an alcoholic, he was a drug addict. But he got hold of the book, read it, and he said it made sense. And while it didn't apply to him, it just made enormous sense. And he had
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some good friends who were, who were, I always wreck the place. But he had some friends who
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were alcoholic. And he invited them to come over to his office, and they went down to the basement and had the, what turned out to be the origin of alcoholics in my state. There were four or five guys. I met most of them. I never met the doc. And he told them about the book, told them about it, and he said, it's not for me, but I think you guys could do well with this. And that was the first group in my state. And so it happened by design, the way it was laid out to be. And I had the pleasure of speaking at the 55th anniversary of that group a few years ago. And the two nurses, the doc's been long gone, but the two nurses who were on duty were at that meeting. Well, I mean, I was as excited as a guy on his first date. And I wanted to get, I don't mean literally get hold of those nurses, but they, anyway, you know what I mean. But I wanted to, I wanted to talk to those girls. And so I grabbed them after the meeting, and I said, you've got to tell me about that. You know, when you knew this stuff was going on, what did you think? And so I asked the first one, and she said, well, it didn't look like anything much to me. It just looked like a bunch of guys shooting a bull. And I said, well, okay.
And the other one I asked her, she said, that was not my impression. I really felt that something important was going to come out of this. And sure enough, did. And then that was the origin development of AA in our state. The first meeting ever, first AA talk ever made in our state predated that group. A fellow, you know, place in the book, it talks about some of us travel, and as we travel, we can carry the message to people wherever we go.
What happened, a guy was flying into Charlotte, a salesman, and he flew over, Gary knows, Charlotte's unmistakably a prison. And so he's flying over there, he said, I bet there's some drunks in there. That's a pretty safe bet. And so he got, when he got off the plane, he went over to that prison, talked to the warden, and said, you got any alcoholics? He said, my God, we got a house full of them. And he said, can I talk to them? He said, shoot, yeah, man. Rung a bell and told them to go out there if they wanted to hear a guy talk about something called Alcoholics Anonymous. He had a house full of people. That's the first AA talk ever made in our state. And so those stories are always just tremendously important to me about how somebody, I'll just tell you one more, that had to do, it was a strange kind of a deal. If you ever go to Branson, Missouri, you better love guitars because I swear to God, man, they play those suckers will drive you up the wall. I mean, they play them 24 hours a day. And go to Branson, if you fly, you've got to go to Springfield.
And to Springfield, they have an archive set up, just like you guys do. And in the archives, I read how AA developed in Springfield, Missouri. Somebody got the message and learned that there was AA in Kansas City. Now, that's a long hike, a long hike. And so they got two guys and they drove to Kansas City overnight, every week. They'd drive a long trip. And the group grew, traveling from Springfield. And so they got up to five members. And one night they got in the car and one of those brilliant alcoholics finally woke up and said, why are we driving to Kansas City? We've got more members in the car than they've got in the group. And so the first home group, the first group formed in Springfield, Missouri met in a car. And they kept meeting in the car for a long time until they outgrew it.
And then they finally had to move. So there are amazing stories to that thing of how we came about. And thank God we did. I can't help but just dwell a little bit on history. It's tremendously important to me. I've been reading a little bit. I'm not going to read to you. But I've got to tell you, just in case you forget. I'm leading the big book discussion in our group this month. And we've been dealing with the portion in there where Dr. Bob gets sober and he talks about that feeble beginning there. And then they describe how he was AA number two. You know, Bill was first and then Bob was second. And then he told about, I've been intrigued to listen how he grew. The third guy was another guy
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named Bill. And I don't want to put him in his street, but he was an attorney, but that's fifth step material. And you ought not to tell it. Anyway, he was the third one. And there was an incredible story. It's in that book. It talks about how he was so defeated that when Bill and Bob came in to see him, he said, don't waste your time with me. I'm done. I am no good. I can't make it. There's no way. I'm drunk before I get home. And they carried the message. You know, they did what we do. They talked about their experience.
They talked about how they found a solution. And while they went home, this old boy thought about that. And the next day they went back and the old boy, Bill, said, you know what you said makes sense. I think I'm going to try that. And he became AA number three. And then the fourth one, I can't remember what his name is, but in the book it describes him as a sort of a frisky young fellow. Probably wasn't too frisky if he was in that hospital, but anyway, he was young. And so that's how it started, just one at a time. And that's how it's gone across the country. And that's what happened in Indianapolis, Indiana. And to me, that's what's really significant about this stuff. And by the way, Gary, that San Quentin, where the first AA meeting was held, I go out there to California quite a lot.
And any time I go in that Bay Area, I always like to go to San Quentin. And it's kind of like an Arab going to Mecca. You know, I just want to go there and remember that had it not been for that first group that formed in that prison, you'd probably have a different speaker here today. So that has a very real connection to me. And so to go in there, just like a lot of things, locals will tend to just sort of take it for granted. It becomes old hat. And when I went to the prison, I asked the guys about it. Some of them didn't even know that that's where the first AA meeting was held. And so I took a little umbrage at that. I think that is almost sacred ground for me. And so what they're going to do, they didn't know they were going to do it, but what they're going to do in February, they're going to have an anniversary of that group, and they're going to find a way to memorialize that room. It's where this thing started. And just like you guys are doing with some of the artifacts and archives, that'll be the San Quentin archives.
Also, I didn't do any good with it, but those of you who were at Montreal may well recall that, no, at Toronto, may well recall the big book, 25 million, 25 million, 25 million big book was presented to the ward in San Quentin. And she took it back to California, and she's not an alcoholic, so that explains some of it. She lost the book. And God knows, you're talking about a historic symbol. And so I was out there shortly afterward, I said, now guys, you know how to steal books. I'm going to see if you know how to find one.
I don't expect the employees to find it, but I expect you to. Now, they haven't found it yet, but anyway, it's a piece of our history. So anyway, that whole business about, you know, what happened, what happened, and I'll lead into what I'm going to tell you about time. I'll say it this way. I was over in Rhode Island a little earlier with another fellow doing a workshop. At the end of it, a guy said, would you like to go to Roland, it was great, Roland Hazard, the non-alcoholic guy who was one of the people who got Ebby Thatcher out of court, who did the call on Bill Wilson that ultimately resulted in AA getting formed. And so I was over there, and he said, this guy was hosting, said, Ebby is buried, I mean, Roland Hazard is buried right up the road here a little bit. And he said, last year, our first time we did it, we went over there on Sunday morning when we were wrapping up just to sort of have a little memorial gathering in behalf of Roland, who was a pivotal guy. So we went over there, and they got a lady to read the portion of the book that directly relates to Roland. And then they asked me, I guess because I was old as a rat in the farm there, to just sort of connect the dots with all of the people who were significant in that early development of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I didn't have to go look up anything. I mean, those are names that live with me. And so I touched base, and I realized while it was going on, Roland was one of the few places in Alcoholics Anonymous that I hadn't touched our history,
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physically touched our history. And I'm grateful for that. The only place I haven't been is Steppenstone. They called me this spring and asked me to come up there and speak at some gathering, and I couldn't make it. I was tied up, and I couldn't make it. But I want to go. Anyway, history is very, very important to me because that's who I am, and when we were talking about each one of the things I've mentioned, had it not been for that reaction of each one passing on to another one, I wouldn't be here, and if I may be so bold, neither would you.
We might be in some other fellowship, or I don't know, but it wouldn't be what we're in now, and so when I look at history, it's not just some lesson in ancient stuff. It's a visit with that chain reaction that one day came to me, and I became a link in that chain, and so it's very vital to me. And so I'm a guy that I never did even think I'd have a history. I was a guy that I'm going to kind of go through this in a hurry, not because it's not important, but I love drunk-a-locks, I swear to God.
Some people are just sort of disrespectful to drunk-a-locks. Not me. Man, I love to hear somebody talk about gagging and throwing up their tonsils and all that kind of stuff. I love drunk-a-locks, especially mine. I can listen to that thing all night long because that's exactly what communicates. That's why I think an open speaker meeting is the most important meeting in Alcoholics Anonymous, without exception, because that's what we connect to. We don't connect to lofty spiritual principles or philosophy. We respond to what Bill, A.A. No. 3, responded to.
These guys are like me, but they're not like me now. And A.A. No. 4. These guys make sense. And then when it got to me many years later, that fire lit with me, and I became a link in that chain. I like the drunk-a-lock because that's a part of that thing. I was a guy that, yeah, I was like most everybody ever here in Alcoholics Anonymous. I was somebody that was just well-prepared to have problems with alcohol, simply because it really did something important for me.
I was somebody, I won't go into a lot of causation. I'm not a causation freak, but I'm not the village idiot either. I don't think that I bought my alcoholism at a bootlegger. My alcoholism is how I was constituted so that when I took a drink, it had more importance to me than it did to the average cat. And that's exactly what it was to me. When I started to drink, you know, I formed just like every other human. I formed with some assets, some liabilities, some traits that were born of my experience that we call defects of character, things that were just interwoven into who I am.
You know, I became an inveterate liar. I mean, I am still somebody who will instinctively lie if it's necessary. I mean, if I get really caught up quick and have to think fast, I have never in my life blurted out the truth. I mean, it has not become a reflex for me. I've still, that thing's there. And I control it pretty well. I don't lie too much. If I do, I don't mean to, but it'll just happen. So that was just one. And I had an inordinate amount of fear, anger, embarrassment, shame. Dad left the family when I was four years old. All of those things are not without impact.
And some people, we all experience the pushing and shoving of life. All of us do. But some of us respond to it and become stronger. But others of us don't, of which I was one, who react to stuff and internalize it. And so that's what I started to do. I internalized stuff. And I developed those kind of underlying things that I never talked with anybody about until I was sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. But they were the things that drove my canoe in such a strange kind of direction. And so when I look at my alcoholism, I was a perfect setup because I was just, like you hear so many people say, just kind of a tangled up guy.
When I took that first drink, it had enormous importance for me. I fell in love with it because it was the best I'd ever felt in my life. And that sounded like more. And I went for it. I was not an alcoholic. There are two parts to alcoholism. One of it is the mental. Our book says that the problem lies essentially in the mind. But there's also a physical component to it as well. And certainly that mental part was there. And so when I started to drink, I just loved it, loved everything about it. Well, almost everything. I never got used to dry heaves. That was always very unpleasant. But it was worth it for what I got before I started dry heaving.
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And so I just sort of took off. I wanted out of Dodge. I got my folks to lie about my age and went in the military when I was 16 years old and spent a wonderful military career in ADAC out in the Aleutian Islands out somewhere from Alaska. I never did really understand the geography. All I wanted to know was where's the boat to get out of here. That's all I wanted to know about it. I didn't care much about it at all. That's where I developed alcoholism. And I drank like a fish. And something happened to me that's described well in this little big book.
The best definition I've ever heard of alcoholism, and I've heard a lot of learned discussion of alcoholism, the best definition I've ever heard is in the third chapter about midway of the page, two lines in there that mean a lot to me. One says we learned we had to fully concede to our innermost self that we're alcoholic. First step in recovery. Concede is a private word. It's not a public word. I told you I'm an alcoholic. That's not conceding. That's just communication. You know, you won, I am too. Let's talk. That's all that is.
Conceding means that I accept defeat on the inside. Don't announce it, but I am just beat. And that happened to me. The other one is that I really like, is the best I've ever heard, we alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control their drinking. And I love that definition. I love it because it has no drama, no histrionics, no Wild West stuff. We're folks who have lost the ability to control our drinking.
I know alcoholics, decent, self-respecting alcoholics who've never been in jail. I mean, there's something wrong with that picture. How could you possibly drink with any real gusto and not go to jail once in a while? I mean, that's their problem. But I mean, there's an awful lot of folks that have never been to jail. Crazy. What are you doing, praying? Oh, I was going to say, heal. Thank you, Fred, very much. I know alcoholics who have held the same job their entire drinking career. They had to have dumb bosses, I swear. But it happens.
Been married to the same person for a lifetime. Incredible. Now, I wasn't that type. I did not, I was not guilty of any of that. But there's some like that. But the commonality with all of us is that all of us, in our own way, lost the ability to control our drinking. And the cage is not much different. I don't care whether it's San Quentin or a home where two people are destroying each other. Not much difference in the cage. It's just a matter of location and furnishings. But otherwise, it's the same thing. Alcoholism is not about the events of our life. For my judgment, it's about dying on the inside and desperately trying to prove that's not so.
But just losing all of the stuff and dying. I remember what it was like to be in my late teens and early 20s, look at myself in the mirror and want to throw up at what I saw. Look at myself and the best I could come up with was, good God, God, why don't you just end it? And I'm talking about a young guy, late teens and early 20s. But I was just that type. I was that type of an alcoholic. And so that happened, that occurred, certainly I didn't know it at the time, but while I was out on those Aleutian Isles freezing to death is where I crossed that line. And I certainly didn't know that. But when I got sober and looked back, I could see it, hazy to be sure, but I could see that that's where my drinking changed.
Not so much in amount. I drank as much as I could before I was alcoholic. But after alcoholic, if I took a drink, I could not predict what I would do. Could not predict. I had one thing in mind, would wind up doing something else, wind up drinking someplace, wake up in the next state. I remember one night drinking in Chicago and I came to, I was in a cornfield in North Dakota. God knows you've got to be drinking something bad to go from, anyway, that was just the way I was. And so it just affects people differently.
And so that's what happened. So they booted me out of the military. They got tired of messing with me. After 38 months, I was called in and three or four nice looking officers called me and I looked like I'd been pulled out of a dumpster.
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I'd just been drug off the floor of a city jail in the adjoining town to the base I was in. They took me in really looking like a superstar and told me, a 20-year-old guy, they gave me my papers. They talked to me a little bit and they gave me my papers. What it said on it was undesirable discharge, unfit for military service-alcoholism, 20 years old. Now this predated, today we do a far better job with our military. Now I wasn't a military folk. I wore a uniform. But man, if I was military, I was on the wrong side of the war. I tell you that. I was more damaging to the troops than I was helpful.
And so I couldn't take any blame for that. And so they told me that and then they broke my sword and I wandered out in the desert. And then I went off and just did the same old stuff. And I basically, let me just sort of frame it this way. A place in the book that, several places really, that describes the state of mind that's part and parcel of alcoholism. They used two terms that have great meaning for me. One is delusion. Not denial, but delusion. An inability to differentiate the true from the false. I understood that when I got in AA and I could look back.
I could understand how I could live such a bizarre, crazy life and not respond to it. I mean a wino could have diagnosed me a block away. But I'm living it and I can't diagnose it. Wasn't trying to. And the other is illusion. An inability to see the world as it really is. And that really frames what my performance was. My serious drinking only lasted a period of eight years. I started serious drinking at 16 before I had what I hope and pray was my last drink eight years later when I was 24.
And in the course of it did incredible damage to everything I ever came in contact with. To every person that was ever foolish enough to get involved with me. I couldn't think of one person that was better for having known me. If they got involved with me they got dirty, hurt, misused, taken advantage of, lied to, scared to death, all of that stuff. It's just the litany of an alcoholic I guess. It's certainly this one.
And so when I got out I just sort of just followed it on and wound up living up in the state of Michigan and not too, uncomfortably close to here. I was in Flint, Michigan and that's a marvelous little resort that's just sort of a little north of Detroit. And put them together and you got a real double whammy. Then I wanted to Flint. You got to be drunk to live in Flint. I mean my God man. That is bad news. I lived there and it seemed normal to me.
I'm living in what was twice voted the worst city in the United States of America. And I'm in the worst section of the worst city. They thought I was in Mayberry or somewhere. But that's bad, bad stuff. And I just crashed ahead living in that delusion that one of these days I'm going to get my act together and this illusion. It's strange to me. I never really saw my alcoholic behavior clearly until I was sober in AA.
And then in retrospect I could recognize those countless times when I would come to in some bizarre circumstance, cornfield in North Dakota or a jail in some state I didn't even know I was in, sit in somebody else's bed and don't even know whose and do this kind of stuff just over and over and over. And failing I never saw that. Those words in the book it refers to this frame of mind that you come out of when you come out of the fog. It's pitiful incomprehensible demoralization. And when I first read that I thought boy Bill really got carried away with the phrasing about what a hangover is like. I mean I never heard grandiose language like that.
Then I started to understand that that's exactly what my life was. And every time I'd come to in the latest bizarre circumstance, you know, my thoughts would be essentially the same. Well, you've done it again. You've done it again. And would consider my options. Number one was always, why don't you just do yourself in, everybody would be better off. That was always, always there. And the second one would always be, why don't you, it's sort of a romantic notion, I guess.
It didn't feel romantic, but it's this notion
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of why don't you just keep going. Just go off into the sunset. Don't even pretend to try anymore. Just go away. And then the third would be to just suck it up and go back and try again. And what I tried was never anything that was going to lead upward. It was always down. And so that's how I wound up. I never believed I'd ever live like that. In that culture that I lived in, I was not a criminal. I've never been a criminal.
I mean, I've been in jail a lot. But I have never, I've never done a predatory crime in my life. I'm not a thief. I mean, now, if you left your drink at the bar, I might help you out with that a little bit, but that's sharing, that's not stealing, because I've got to go to the bathroom pretty soon and then there goes mine, so that's just reciprocal trade, it just works that way. In the same way, I never was a criminal, but when you live in an environment like that, it's a dog-eat-dog world, and in there, there's only two classes of work. You were either the rollie, that means you got rolled, or you were the roller, which means you were friskier and got the other guy.
Now, I live like that, as if it were normal, and it seemed normal. My God, I wasn't reared for that kind of stuff, but it's just amazing what's selling my blood, five bucks a throw. I'd let them pump me dry if they hadn't had controls on that stuff. And so, anyway, I never imagined I would ever wind up in a thing like that, and then many of you, and I've got a lot of friends in this group, and many of you know that I wound up doing the kind of thing that I know there's not a person in this room, alcoholic or not, who has lived with alcoholism who hasn't feared doing the unbelievable damage to somebody. Everybody does, there's that morbid fear.
Now, just like many people, every time I'd come out of a blackout, it would always be that panicky feeling of where have I been, what have I done, go out and look at my car and see if it's in one piece if I had one, if there's blood on it, and then breathe a sigh of relief and go do it again, over and over and over. And I know that. I'm not a Singaporean who can't identify, but I was one of those that unfortunately there are far too many of who wound up having those greatest fears realized. I came to one morning in jail there in Flint, no novelty to that. That was a routine thing.
And after I was awake a little while, a jailer came by whom I knew quite well, and I said, hey, guy, when can I get out? And he just looked at me. I mean, sometimes an expression tells you more than words, and he just looked and didn't answer. And at first, and then he said, I hope never, and walked off. I had no clue what he was talking about. And then some of the other guys in the tank told me that the night before, some guy had been arrested for driving drunk down the main street, striking and killing two people, and that I had been arrested for the crime. I had absolutely no inkling of what they were talking about, none.
And, you know, it's a strange thing about the mind. I can remember my first instinct was just to push it away and say, no, that couldn't be, because the mind will only accept what it can handle, and I simply was not equipped to handle that. And it gradually accepted the truth, that indeed I had done more damage than any alcoholic ever ought to be allowed to do. Two fine young people were dead simply because they made the mistake of trying to cross the street where I was trying to drive, and that could have happened hundreds if not thousands of times.
Any time I put a weapon or a car on the street, I might as well put a weapon out there and fired it, because when I'm drunk, I have no sense of anything. But when I was greeted with that, I just simply could not handle the information and refused to believe it. And it gradually accepted the truth. I had done more damage than any drunk ever ought to be allowed to do. And I couldn't live with that. I just simply, as long as I haven't ever been in jail, I didn't try to get out. I didn't want out. I didn't want anybody to see me. I didn't want to look at anybody. I was ashamed to be breathing, for God's sakes, never mind mixing in with life.
And it's a strange thing about that area of Flint that I lived in. It's a strange thing about people. I'm talking about people who would rob you on a given night. I can't tell you how many of those guys came to that jail and would say, hey, guy, you need a story. You need a story. And would put it on the line. And I didn't want a story. But it's an amazing thing about how people will just respond. And so I didn't want out. And I just wanted to disappear. I wanted to be gone. And then for some reason, there was some policeman there. I'll never know who, because I'm not going to try to find out. I think he chose to be anonymous.
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But he saw, I think, saw the shape I was in. And I was just a blood-bubbling idiot. I was like a comatose guy almost. And he learned that I had family in North Carolina, called my folks, and my family did what many, I know there are many family members here, and my family did exactly what your families probably did. And they made a, it wasn't their first trip to get their little boy out of jail. But thank God it was the last one for my mother. After she got me out of jail on bond, she lived 29 more years with a heart full of gratitude for a program that had given her a son, of whom she was more than a little proud.
And everything I have ever done over the last 52 years would be worth it ten times over to be able to say what I just said. What a payoff, eh? What a payoff. And my sister's still living. She's still got a chance in case I decide to go back. And so they came. They couldn't afford that trip. They drove from North Carolina to Michigan and got an attorney they couldn't afford to get a guy out of jail who didn't want to get out of jail. But I didn't know how to say that. How do you tell somebody, no, I don't want to? I couldn't even hardly say good morning, much less explain something.
And so they got me released on bond. I was released on the 17th of July of 56. I had my last drink. I'd hope and pray my last drink on the 19th of November. When I got out of jail, I started back drinking. I knew I never would, but the day after I got out, I started drinking. And from the 18th of July until the 19th of November, I literally drank like no person I've ever seen. And that's not some casual statement. I have worked personally with thousands of alcoholics, not a few. I've worked with thousands. I've never worked with one like me.
Every alcoholic I've ever worked with always had some scrap left in them and always fighting and resisting and all this stuff. And I just gave up. I just flat gave up. And I know there was no question that I didn't think it through, but I was just instinctively just trying to drink myself to death. And I don't have any doubt about that. And then the 19th of November, I finished off a bottle of gin and went to court, knew it would be a one-way trip, that I wouldn't be coming back. And so I went to court and was charged with involuntary manslaughter, completed the trial. I testified.
And I'll tell you, somebody in a blackout, to listen to the testimony, tells you a lot about blackout. Because everything they'd ask me, the only thing I could say is, I'm sorry, I don't know. You'd be the same way. If you were somebody who had an accident, a blackout, somebody comes to you and says, you know what you did in July of 1996? If you were blacked out, the best you could say is, I wouldn't do that. And so that's what I was. And listen to the policeman testify who investigated the crime, first time I'd ever heard a description.
And when he got through, I mean, there was absolutely no drama or intrigue there. I knew that I would be found guilty. If I'd have had to vote, I would have voted guilty. And I was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, sentenced to a sentence of five to 15 years in the Michigan State Penitentiary. Well, I'd never been to a penitentiary. I'd been in jails and stockades and pea farms and all that kind of stuff. But it was always kind of nuisance-level stuff, just various street-type stuff. There was no real major kind of felonies or anything.
And so he passed that sentence, and I guess it's just a human thing. I had an instinctive reaction of fear. I can remember that just sort of jolt of fear. But simultaneously, the most real sense of relief I'd ever known, because I knew it was over. It was over. I'm not talking about happy ending or there'll be light at the end of the tunnel. That's not what I'm talking about. I mean, it's done. It's done.
I've talked to people, you might have too, who've had near-death experiences. And it's always telling to me that when they describe the experience, they'll always describe almost euphoria or relief at the point where they, in their terms, die. And that's exactly what I felt, was just that relief. It's over. It's over. And the next day was led into that penitentiary at Jackson, Michigan, on a chain with five other guys, and walked through that wall. And inside that prison at that time, there were 6,300-and-something guys locked up behind one wall. And I'm just one more lost face in a huge crowd.
And so I walked in. When I walked in, I had absolutely no doubt that I wouldn't walk out, that I was confident that my life would end. If I ever came out of there, it would be toes up and that there's no way I would survive.
[00:40:11]
Even though I was a street character, I knew the kind of people that were locked up there. They were the same kind of people I hustled on the street with. And when you're locked up with that kind of people, that is not a great place to be. And I truly believe if it was not for what we celebrate here tonight, that prediction would have been true, absolutely true. And what happened, I didn't believe I was an alcoholic. I'd been thrown out of the military for it. I'd been diagnosed alcoholic, a problem drinker, a drunk by everybody who ever captured me.
I never believed any of it. I believed I was a guy with a lot of potential. One guy told me one time that I had a lot of potential, and I believed him. And he took me through that drill that you go through, probably some of you have experienced that intake form. They do them in hospitals. It's the darndest thing to watch somebody going into a hospital with excruciating pain and somebody stops with a clipboard.
Now, what was your grandmother's maiden name? I did that to a guy having kidney stones one night. He couldn't say anything but, oh. I just made it up. I said her name was Mabel Jones, and I just lied like a dog, man. I'm not going to sit there and watch that charade. So anyway, the guy went through, and he made the same diagnosis that everybody who ever talked to me made. He said a little different, which wasn't telling to me, but he said, man, you've had a lot of trouble with booze.
And I said, yeah. I mean, my God, that's obvious. I had a record three inches thick, and I've never committed a crime deliberately in my life. Everything in there was drunk and something, anything you could imagine. And so he said, you've had a lot of trouble, and I said, yeah. And he said, I never heard of this before. He said this was way back in the primitive days, but he said, we have an AA group here at the institution, and I think you ought to go.
Now, Scott, we were talking about that now we have refined that process so that we've almost institutionalized the process. So when people get in, we give them to some mechanical process. We put them under custodial care or short leash or something and mandate them to hear after. So I don't know what all that stuff is, but they didn't do that. This guy said, we have a group, and I think you ought to go.
It was about as dramatic if he had said, you look hungry, why don't you go eat? It would have been about that dramatic. I didn't have any clue what he's talking about. I mean, none. I never heard of AA. Now, certainly it wasn't a household term then, but when I came into the AA, talking about history, there were 125,000 members when I came in. So I made 125,001, I guess, if they were counting real close.
And so I'm here. And so he said, we've got a group. I had no clue what he's talking about. Back then, like the military, nobody ever mentioned AA or didn't have any treatment. When you got soldiers that got too rowdy, they'd just kick them out just like they did me. And thank God now we've got a little better ways of dealing with that. But anyway, that's what happened. And so this guy said, we've got an AA group.
Now, he might as well have said, we have a ballet corps here, and you might as well. It wouldn't have meant about it much. I mean, I didn't have a clue. I went back to my cell, and I was an extremely – Fred, I'm sorry, buddy. You just got to get better furniture here. I appreciate the help there. That's my old behavior coming out here, I think. And I was – when that was done, I went back to my cell.
And a few days later, I got a little slip of paper from him. It said you can go to your first AA meeting, February 2nd of 57. I didn't want to go to AA. I was a guy that was extremely isolated. I don't – even though I made a lot of noise, you know, The life of the party and the clown of the town, all that, that's not who I was. Inside, I was basically an isolated, introverted guy. I didn't want to let anybody get close to me, drunk or sober, nobody.
And so when I got that little note to go to AA, my instinct was not to go anywhere.
[00:45:03]
The last thing isolated people want is to go yuck it up with somebody. And so I didn't want to go into AA or anything else. I wanted to sit in that cell and stare at my navel and do anything I could do to keep them thinking. That's what I wanted to do. But I was blessed. I didn't know at the end how blessed I was. But I was blessed with what I think is the sweetest word in the language of sobriety, of recovery.
That word is surrender. Surrender. Because I was beaten as a human being could be beaten. I had nothing. I mean, I had no defense. I had no argument. I'm just a loser of a guy who by any measure ought to have been dead. So I had no resistance at all. And so I didn't have any urge to go to AA, whatever it was. But I didn't have any resistance to not go. And so when I got that thing, they made the noise and said, the AA group, I wandered over.
I looked like a guy on Thorazine. I'm shuffling across that yard going over to AA, whatever that is. And I didn't know. I'd heard somewhere it stood for Alcoholics Anonymous. And I tell you, that's not a jazzy name. That is, can you imagine somebody putting in their high school yearbook, I want to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Secret drunks. Anyway, it's just not a heartwarming thing. You know, I said, gee, I'd love to go down there sometime.
And so I wandered over there. One guy spoke to me. They had an officer on the door. And he read my name on his shirt. I was driving. Yes, sir. And he said, sit down. And I sat down. In the middle of 300 guys. They had 300 members in that group. Well, we had 300 people attending that group. Members requires a little more commitment than just being there. But there were 300 guys in there. And I figured it was going to be some kind of a religious frenzy of some sort.
I figured it would be a bunch. Every time I was in county jail, it would be a bunch of clean old people would come in there, and they'd tell about themselves, and then they'd sing hymns. And if they sang Amazing Grace, man, I'd just blubber. I joined whatever they were selling. It didn't matter to me what it was. I joined last about 30 minutes. And so none of that ever happened. I figured it was going to be something like that.
Went in there, and now I was a guy. I didn't say anything about it earlier. I won't say much now. I'll just take it for a gospel. That I was a guy who, before I started school, slammed the door on anything that even rhymed with organized religion. As a child, I got introduced to that Bible Belt religion down there. And rather than seeing a warm, welcoming environment, what I saw was something that scared the fool out of me.
I would see those people leaping up and down and jumping and rattling snakes and beating guitars. Well, that was not very enticing. And I promised myself if I ever got big enough, I would not be hanging out there. And I was serious as a heart attack. As soon as I got big enough to yank loose from Mama, I didn't go back into a church until I was sober 11 years. So when I say I was shut down, I mean down.
I don't mean I was just sort of a confused young fellow. I mean I was flat down. And I wasn't particularly mad. I just wrote that off as nice, philosophical stuff, but didn't have much meaning. And when I walked in, my fears were realized. First thing they did was they opened a meeting with a serenity prayer. And while they were praying, I said to myself, yep, just what I thought. Just what I thought.
They'll be in here any minute deep-dunking and carrying on. And then they opened the meeting. They got past the prayer. They read everything but the phone book. God knows they read all night. And when they didn't get finished, they just quit. Thank God they finally quit. Introduced the speaker, and I heard the first alcoholic I'd ever heard tell his story. Tell his story. And this guy stood up there.
He was a nice-looking fellow if you didn't get close to him. But he was a beat-up dude. He'd been up for everything. He'd been a professional boxer at one time. And apparently not a very good one. He was one marked-up dude. Looked like a hockey player. He just had tattoos all over. But anyway, I'm sitting there listening to this fellow. And what is he doing, for God's sakes? I never heard anybody tell stuff like that.
I mean, I'd heard drunks tell stories, but not their own. They just kind of come up with one. But that had to be the truth. Nobody was going to make that up. And I thought, my God, here's this guy in here. Looked decent. He had on a blue preaching suit. And he's stripping himself naked in front of 300 hair-legged convicts. And it made no sense. I didn't understand one word he talked about in any useful sense.
I mean, none of that made any sense to me.
[00:50:01]
I thought the man was a little bit loose. If anybody had told me a year later, he became my first sponsor. My first outside sponsor. I had another fellow for a while. But anyway, I mean, he didn't say one thing that I related to at all. And went away probably more confused than I went in. And then the next week I was back. And nobody sent for me. They wouldn't have cared if I hadn't come back. Josh and I were talking about these mandating folk around, pushing them around and stuff.
Nobody could have cared less if I came. They wouldn't have even known I was gone. I mean, nobody's going to say, where's that nice young fellow who was sitting here laughing. They couldn't have cared less. I mean, these people all got their own troubles. And so I just found myself back. And what brought me back, one reason that I'm a pretty enthusiastic guy. But I am slow motion compared to him. He was the most enthusiastic guy I've ever seen.
When he talked to a group, he was so excited he'd just tumble over his own words. Because he just had so much he wanted to share. And he was the guy. And that's what drew me back to my second meeting. It was not the story of the guy or any advice or anything. It was the spirit, that contagious spirit of enthusiasm. That drew me back. And I stayed in there three and a half years and never missed a single meeting.
But you can hurry up and believe I was not an immediate convert. I truly didn't believe I was alcoholic. I thought I was too young. I was 24 years old. I thought I was too smart. In reality, yeah, that one guy told me I had a lot of potential. And I was hanging on to it. And I really didn't. I heard people talk about alcoholism being an illness or a disease. I found that an embarrassing concept. What on earth is an illness about getting drunk?
I mean, it made no sense to me. And so I was a pretty primitive piece of stuff to work on. But I kept going back. I've always been a reader. And I read everything. We didn't have much back then. But I read everything we had. And fortunately, I was in a good group. It was a good group. Now, I don't mean we had 300 superstars. You know better than that. Every time we gather, we're always people who are in various stages of repair.
You saw that in the countdown here tonight. You've got people like me, old and senile. Then you've got some people brand new. Where's my girl? Oh, yeah, right here. Eleven days. Eleven days. So we're the two extremes of this group. And so we always have that, that we're not one thing. We're people who are in various stages. And you never know. I never speak to a group that I don't have in my mind that there may very well, probably will be somebody in that group who is delicately hanging in the balance and could either come or go.
And even though I clown around a little bit, I'm always as serious as a heart attack about trying to stay congruent with what this program is about and not off the wall with just a whole bunch of palaver. And so in that group, the strange thing about a group as opposed to casual meetings, now I'm a strong group guy. My home group is the primary purpose group of Southern Pines. I belong there. I am a real member of that group.
If there's a problem in that group, it's my problem. If there's responsibilities, they're my responsibility. If somebody comes in, it's my job to make sure they get a shot at recovery. I'm a group person. I believe the definition of a group is a gathering of alcoholics in action, and that's what we are. I was telling Lisa that the name of my group is the primary purpose group. That's also our job description because that's what we do.
That's what we exist for is to carry this message to the next alcoholic still suffering. And so the recovery group was what I belonged to at that penitentiary. And it was a good group in the sense that there was a hard core of real solid members in there. And the strange thing about a group is there will be a certain sensitivity to when to pick up on somebody. Some people need encouragement and a little pat on the back.
Some need a little bit of a shove. And a group will sense that. They'll sense it and sort of seek it out. And that's what happened there. I don't know what the guys saw in me, but they started sort of working on me a little bit. And they'd say stuff like, Tom, come on, go with us. I'd say, where are you going? Don't worry, come on. And where we were going was to do service work. Nobody ever asked me if I wanted to get involved in service.
They just said, come on. First thing you know, I'm doing it. Don't even know what I'm doing. And I'm probably one of the world's best chair setter uppers. I am good at that. I am really good. If I've got to have been doing it 52 years, I ought to be pretty good at it or quit. But it's tremendously important because I was so scared about getting up.
[00:55:03]
I thought if I read, I'd go into a coma. I mean, I could not even fathom the notion of getting up and saying something to a group. I was scared to death, literally. And so I did a lot of chair setting up. I did the physical stuff. And I like the physical stuff because that makes me feel like I'm on a team. It feels like I belong here. I'm connected. I'm doing something. And so that was a group that did that kind of stuff.
They had a little introductory session that they did in that group where they would just take a few guys, like the newer guys and some of the older members, the inmate members, would just pull them aside and explain what alcoholics and almost is. And within a few months, I was one of the guys who was doing that. That's how it happens. You just sort of get introduced to that stuff. And back then, there's some romantic notion that back then we used to do a better job of taking people through the steps.
Well, if we did, they hid it from me because I never saw it done one single time. I never went to a big book meeting the first 15 years I was sober for simple reasons. There weren't any. We were so busy chasing drunks, we used big books primarily to beat them over the head to get them somewhere. But these studious think tanks, that's a rumor. Believe me, that's a rumor. And so it was action oriented.
We did a lot of step stuff, and we did a lot of active work with people. And so I fumbled my way through the steps. Some of the guys told me that if you take the actions laid out in those steps as honestly as you know how to do, when you get through, you'll be a different cat. But that sounded silly to me. May God know that, of course, you've got to be honest and sincere. No, you don't. Because what they said and what I found to be true is if you take those actions when you get through, your motives will be right or you'll be gone, one or the other.
And I truly believe that. I don't believe that. I know that. I know it. And that's what I did. And I'll tell you this. If you don't think AA is a powerful program, that penitentiary I was in, nobody puts gold star ratings on them. But I would personally, I've been in prisons around the world, and I would rate it as probably the third worst prison I've ever seen. And it was a place where man's inhumanity demanded routine behavior, where kindness was weakness, sincerity was stupidity, and on and on.
And in that environment, I had an absolute transformation as a result of these steps. I found a brand-new life. I found a freedom. Even when I'm locked up like a wild animal, I became a free man. In every way that counts, except my setting. But I was a free man. Experienced the first dignity and honor that I'd ever known in my life, the first integrity. I didn't even know the word. And it came to me in a maximum-custody penitentiary.
So I had an absolutely marvelous experience. And in spite of that, if there's ever been a human on this planet that hated a penitentiary worse than me, I'd like to meet them because I doubt that anybody could have hated it more. But in spite of that, this program was powerful enough that I became a good citizen in that environment. I'm one of the youngest, dopiest guys in the institution. I became a leader in that institution.
That's just something that people give you. If you do what you say you're going to do and you stand for what you believe in, people respect you. I don't care where it is. So I had a great experience. And not finally, it was quite early. The eligibility for a 15-year max was three and a half years. And they called me up and told me they'd give me parole if I would go to North Carolina and not stay in Michigan.
And I said, oh, you mean I don't get to go back to Flint? Yeah, right. And so I was released. I had to grow up before I could appreciate my own home. So I went back and got immediately active in AA. And that's the understatement of the century. I stepped into that. It's a good thing I was well prepared. I had a contact a year before I was able to get out. So when I hit the street, I knew what I was going to do.
I didn't know that I was going to walk into a place where AA was devastated. There was one guy in town that called himself an AA member. And he was an old man. He was as old as Ronald. Well, not that old. But he was old. He was really old. And it was me and him. And I looked at that place, I said, good God, man, the worst A meeting I've ever been to was the first one when I got out of prison. I'd never been to them. If we'd have had a meeting like that in prison, somebody got hurt.
I mean, we didn't have that kind of junk. And I sat there listening in shock and dismay. I thought, good Lord, this can't be it.
[01:00:01]
You know, and the city was 25 miles away. I said, I'm out of here. I'm going over to the city to get some action. Then a disturbing thought occurred to me. When do you become responsible? When do you take a stand? When do you take up the strike? When do you move in and handle some responsibility? Those are disturbing thoughts, and they come with recovery. Darn it. And so I said, well, I had to stay.
And I had the magnificent privilege of starting Alcoholics Anonymous in the city and watching it grow. That's why I like history so much, because it's what happens. Somebody takes the flag and says, let's do it. Let's do it. And two years later, when I left that town, we had 60 members in that group. and that's no genius of mine, all it takes is one dedicated person, I can't tell you how many meetings I've gone to where it was me and the big book and a little bit of coffee, some of the best meetings I ever went to, I mean, they were great business meetings where it snapped, but it was a tremendous growth experience, what a growth experience, and I was there, I got immediately active in prison work, it's a lot simpler then than now, two weeks after I was out, I was back in a prison, some guys asked me to go, and I said, good God, are you insane, I just got out, I can't go back in there, they said, ah, come on, so I went, told them I better hope I got out, and I did, and two months after I was out, this won't mean much if you're not familiar with the institutional world, two months after I was out, I was named outside sponsor of that group, and I'm going to be the service leader for putting together, giving the leadership to a group in a penitentiary, I just got out of one, tremendous experience, about the same time my parole guy came in, you believe this, you take it to the bank, because this is the gospel, that from the time I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, I'll just make a blanket statement, I had a job waiting when I got out of the penitentiary, my family got it for me, a lousy job sweeping the floor at night in a mill, a lousy job, but it beat what I was doing in the penitentiary, so I loved that job with a passion, and from that point forward, I never applied for a job in my entire working career, never, never, I was on the street, I kept that grungy job because I absolutely was committed to not going back to the old way.
I had some job offers, I'd done a little sales work when I'd come up for air once in a while, and I was elected salesman of the year in a company and fired the same year. That's real alcoholic performance. But I had a little history in that, and people tried to recruit me to some jobs, and I said, no, I need the security, I wanted to be, nobody was going to bounce me around in that job, nobody would have it.
And so I wanted to stay there and make sure, if I got in the fast lane too quick, who knows. And so I wanted to stay there and get solid and get sound. And I was elected DCM five months after I was out in that area, and same guy who wondered if he'd ever be trusted by anybody. Here my AA family is asking me to be the trusted servant for 15 cities in my state. What a tremendous honor. And my pro guy came to me one day and he saw what he had on his hands, he said, man, you're really active in that AA thing.
And I said, yeah. And the conservative guy thought he was going to tell me I needed to slow down, and I knew I wouldn't. I knew AA was my lifeline, not parole, that AA was my lifeline. You know, rules and regulations challenge me, even if I write them. They challenge me. But that was not what he had in mind. He said, wouldn't it help you if you could drive? Now, for obvious reason. When I left Michigan, he put big letters like that, this man's never operated a motor vehicle, period, ever.
Two months after I was out, my parole guy said, wouldn't it help you if you could drive? And I said, yes, sir, but I can't. He said, well, meet me, he called me a little later, he said, meet me uptown at the Sears store, which happened to be, you know, this sounds like Mayberry, but it happened to be where the license station was. And so I went up, my sister drove me up there, I went in, and my guy was there, my parole guy, introduced me to the fellow I didn't know who was the license man, and the guy that I didn't know said, Mr. Logan, my parole guy, says that you might be interested in having a driver's license.
And I said, well, sir, it would be helpful. And don't ask me to explain it. If any of those lawyers, I was kind of casting aspersions toward, if any lawyers here, they can tell you what happened ain't supposed to happen. What the guy did when he asked me if I'd like to have a license is handed me a driver's license. He didn't even ask me if I could drive.
[01:05:02]
No test of any kind whatsoever. Didn't even pay for it. Now, some people say, well, you must have been connected well politically. Oh, yeah. The sheriff and I were intimately acquainted in that county from previous experience. So I'm exactly who I just told you. I'm a junkyard dog who's been turned loose with a new way of life. And it doesn't take long to read character. It doesn't take long to read whether people are for real or not.
And so the guy asked me that, handed me the driver's license. That's not the way it works. It can't be legal. But 50 years later, I'm still driving. Well, not the same license. I've changed it a few times. But anyway, didn't even pay for it. Two years after I was out, I was sitting in my house one day. A phone call came in for me, and it was my mother's house. And I got on the phone, and it was a fellow from the headquarters of the prison system.
And I hadn't met him much. Apparently somebody told him to come by where I was in with the aid group and just say hi to me, I guess. And so the guy came. I remember him. And so he told me who he was, and he said, well, let me get right to it. He said, we're expanding the rehabilitation program in our prison system, and we were wondering if you would consider accepting a position. Now, hear who he's making that phone call to.
Now, I've just described to you who they're recruiting, the junkyard dog right off the scrap heap, with a history that defies imagination. And they're asking me to take a profile. I'm on parole from a maximum custody institution in another state. And they're trying to recruit me. And the first thing I said, for an obvious reason, was, do you know who you're talking to? And the guy said, oh, yeah, we've checked you out.
And I said, man, I'd rather do that than anything I could possibly imagine. I'd never thought of it, nor had anybody else. The day of that phone call, that's the first time any call like that was ever made to an ex-convict. I was the first ex-con on this planet hired into a professional position in a prison system. I didn't believe it would happen. But what I found is that when God has work for me to do, the walls come down.
If God's got work for me to do, not if I want to do it, but if God's got work. That driver's license, I think God had work for me to do and figured transportation would help. And that thing there, that's an impossible wall. An ex-con on parole is going to be hired by God. You can't even get in as a volunteer. And they're going to hire me as the man. And I said, good Lord, I'd rather do that than anything I could imagine.
I knew it wouldn't happen, but it did. And so I went to work. Thirty-nine years later, I retired. And in the course of it, I had as fine a career as a man could have. I don't care if he went to Yale. Well, I went to jail. He went to Yale. I don't care what the history would be. Nobody could have had a better career. And you believe what I said earlier. I never applied for one single job, promotion, transfer, pay raise, nothing.
And I wound up going to the top of my profession. Going to the top of my profession. Not once pursuing career goals or planning strategies or any of that. What I did, and it's very simple. I'm somebody who believes that my work tells you who I am. If I do sloppy work and just do what I need to do to get by, that's who I am. I'm a sloppy, non-caring guy. And so what I did, nobody trained me to do it, but what I did was gave my very best to every job I had.
Treated it like it was the most important job in the world. And I'll tell you, there's a hunger. I know we've got some real unemployment going on, but what I've found is that there's a real hunger for people who will really be oriented to taking care of a job and take care of me. There's a hunger for leadership. I moved into supervision and management. And then one day the head of our system called me.
We were in the same office building, and he said, Come by the office, I want you to do something. That normally meant pinch hit for me somewhere. And I went by and said, What is it, boss? We chatted a minute. And he said, Tom, I'd like for you to take over an institution as warden. I was off the road by then, but they'd take care of that, too. But they got me when they took over. But now if you can imagine, can you imagine sitting in a maximum capacity joint like Jackson?
Of all the things you dream about and have visions and fantasies about, can you imagine some yo-yo sitting in there? You know, I think I'll get out of here and run one of these suckers. Show them how to do it, you know.
[01:10:02]
When God has work for us to do, the walls come down. And so I finished a 39-year career, and I wouldn't have traded a job with Bill Gates. I traded bank accounts, but I wouldn't have traded a job. It was an absolutely tremendously rewarding and challenging thing, and so it demanded my very best to the very end. And so finally I found out I was the oldest rat in the barn, and I said, shoot, I'm going to hang it up.
And I retired. And I want to close with just two points that I want to make around this, just write quick like. At AA, we have, to be an anonymous fellowship, we have an incredible great body. I mean, word gets around unbelievably quickly. And word got out. I didn't tell it, but word got out among my AA buddies in the state that the old guy is hanging it up. And a delegation came to me from our state service structure and said, Tom, we need some help in our AA work in corrections that it needs some leadership, and we think you might be the guy to give it.
Now, I didn't say anything, but my thought was, good God, guys, give me a break. Man, I'm just finishing a 39-year high-pressure career. Yeah, nobody made it but me. I made it high pressure. And give me a break. I need to go sit in the mud or play golf or something. And then I thought, and I'm talking seconds. I'm not talking about going to sit on the mountain and wait for the message. I'm talking seconds.
I thought, if there's anybody in this country that understands the dilemma of the alcoholic man or woman in prison, it's me. And if there's anybody in North Carolina that has access to the system, it's me. And if I could have turned my back and walked away for selfish purpose, you wouldn't want me here tonight, because that would tell you that there's not much to me, not much to me. And so I did. And my wife was thrilled when I got home and told her, well, now I'm retired, and I've just taken on a little minor two-year commitment to this.
And she said, oh, God, here we go again. Anyway, I'm still extremely active, extremely active. In fact, I'm honest to God. We're not racing, but I'm the busiest guy I have ever seen. And I wouldn't change one iota of that. I'm having a great life. I'm having a tremendously rewarding experience, and I'm having a good time with it. And I honestly believe, bottom line, I'm the most rewarded man I know.
And that second thing I just wanted to allude to a bit, because I know that there's some good soldiers in here. There's some good hardworking members. And a lot of times you feel some ambivalence about, you know, how much is too much, you know, and what's that strange kind of mystical notion of balance, you know. What is it that keeps you from destroying yourself? Well, I truly believe that if we live by principles, everything we do has principles.
My profession has principles. And my marriage has principles. My parenting has principles. All of these things have principles. And our colleagues at Anonymous does. And if I am operating by principles, I think I will automatically be guided to do things in such a way that it's not injurious. As active as I've been for these 52 years, just like anybody else, I've had a career, and my career could not have been better.
Absolutely couldn't have been better. Married to the same woman for 41 years, my God. And she grew up bright, but she doesn't leave. She wants me to slow down, too. I have a couple of kids. They went through the airhead phase, and they wound up quite well. My daughter is a major in psychology, and she has a commitment to working with people who are having a hard time making it. My son, I thought he was a tremendous candidate for Alcoholics Anonymous.
He was really showing potential. And he went to Jamaica on a class trip and was elected king reggae. When we got that word, my wife said, isn't that awful? I said, oh, yeah, geez, that's terrible. And to myself, I said, yeah. That's my boy. And then I don't know what happened to him. I think he fell out of an upper bunk or something hit his head, and he decided to go into medicine. And I thought, good God, that can't be.
And sure enough, he got into medical school and said, And because if you get that, you need a law degree to go with it. And that wasn't bad enough. He became a specialist in maternal medicine. fetal medicine, which means he operates with nothing but problem cases, you know, could
[01:15:03]
get suited up just with regular OBGYN, well obviously, and now they've done a wonderful job of giving us two grandkids, and so the point is, as busy as I've been, there's absolutely nothing in my life whatsoever that has been negatively impacted or hurt by this level of involvement, and so when I'm doing it right and I'm operating by principles, I can't miss, and that's why I'm here tonight, by golly, and I know I've gone a little past what she told me, that I died at 930, and I said, well, he came back for ten more minutes, so I appreciate your listening and congratulations on what you're doing here, thanks a million.