Jerry J. from Dallax, Texas at Rocky Point Roundup, October 13, 2000

Hi, I'm Jerry Jones, and I'm an alcoholic.

I don't own the Dallas Cowboys.

I don't have any football players at all.

I am not only an alcoholic, but I'm a

recovering lawyer.

I've been able to refrain from practicing since January the first of 1998.

I've been married to your outlet on speaker tomorrow

almost

almost 46 years.

My wife, Billy,

that entitles me to tell you that I am the adult

spouse of an Al Anon.

I want to thank the committee and everyone for having me here.

Billy and I have been treated like royalty. We've got baskets of fruit and goodies of all kinds in our room. We've been

Squire down here by Taylor who drove us down in his car and we've we've just had a wonderful time thus far and I expect to continue. I think I'll enjoy this program in about an hour

and the rest of it'll be pretty good. I think

we people ask me frequently how are you

and my response has for many years, since January 1st, 1973,

been better than I deserve.

And a lot of you could echo that, I'm sure

we are entirely, we're blessed beyond measure to be members of Alcoholics Anonymous, to have this program, to live in the country we live in, to associate with the people we have around us going on a similar way. I want to thank each one of you for being here because you're being here is a celebration of the fact that a A works. And gosh, I don't know how many of you here, but there's a bunch of you and

I hope I get to meet a lot of you and, and,

and to celebrate with you the miracle of recovery.

I don't know what happened to me or why I turned out to be alcoholic.

I know I did my part in trying to be an alcoholic. I drank every time I had a chance.

I came to Alcoholics Anonymous

totally out of reality.

You know, The steps of AA are designed, I believe, to cause you and I to get in touch with reality, to find the great reality deep within ourselves so that we can live a life

that allows us to be happy, joyous and free without any kind of chemical altering our minds. That's worked for millions of people since 1935, and to be a part of that is probably the one of the biggest miracles of the 20th century.

When I got here, I didn't particularly like the label alcoholic. There were a lot of things I didn't like. I didn't like

the fact that that book that everybody talked about all the time said that I was bodily and mentally different from my fellows. I did not want to be bodily and mentally different from my fellows. I couldn't understand why I was, and I still don't know why I was. But today I can very readily assure you that I am. Our book says that you can tell whether you're one or not

by asking yourself a couple of questions. You know, says that Alcoholics

have a bodily reaction to ethyl alcohol

that has a phenomena of craving attached to it. Now

I tried to think that craving was like I craved a cigarette. It was a little different from that.

What happened to me was when I take a drink of whiskey or beer or Aqua Velvet or whatever the hell it was, you know,

it would go down and hit the bottom and you get that, You know, the feeling that when it gets there, spread warmly over your body. And a, some kind of signal was sent to my brain and the signal was, I think we'll have another one of those

and another one and another one until we've had way too many.

The other thing it says is that we have an obsession of the mind that alcoholism centers in our mind.

I don't know what you know about obsessions. I didn't know much about them, but I've come to believe they're pretty simple. They are a great big thought. It's so big it pushes all the other thoughts out of your mind. Memory goes, plans for the future go. Everything goes except the thought. And my thought was a drink would improve this situation.

Whatever the situation was, a drink would make it a little better. So when you hook those two together,

you have a very powerful enemy. So powerful that

most of us were imprisoned by it. We were not free.

Our theme this weekend is Freedom through Action.

Well, first you have to recognize that you are imprisoned before you can really do anything about it.

And I had to find that I was imprisoned. Looking back on my life today, I can't imagine

how I missed it. But the cunning nature of alcoholism is that the victim is the last person to know he's got it,

and I'm sure a lot of you can identify with that. I didn't know it. I thought I was drinking what I wanted to drink. Sometimes I wondered why I drank as much as I did. But I thought I was doing what I wanted to do, and I didn't realize how powerless I was over that commodity for a long time.

The next thing you've got to recognize is that recovery

has nothing to do with alcohol.

Recovery from this condition, this disease, whatever you want to call it,

is a spiritual recovery. You have to have a spiritual awakening and bring a power greater than yourself into recovery if you're really going to get the full, full benefit of this program. I can illustrate this story I was told I had to tell about this

I I was raised on a farm out in West TX. My grandparents on both sides were homesteaders out in in eastern New Mexico and West TX and

and I was raised out on that farm and grew up there and I had a dog. My dog's name was Patches.

Patches had an experience one day that illustrates the disease of alcoholism. About as good as I can do it.

Patches was laying in our front yard. He didn't have a problem in the world.

In fact, he was right at the peak of his powers.

He was popular and well known in the community because a few days before that he had whipped a badger.

Now Badgers are bad news for dogs and the badger weighed 1 LB more than Patches. We know because we weighed them both after Patches killed the badger.

So he was, people were dropping by to see this dog that could kill Badgers and

he was well received in the community. He was popular, he had no competition, he was well fed, loved. Everything was going good for Patches.

He had no reason to do anything

like he did.

He

he was laying there with no problems. It was quiet and peaceful in the barnyard.

In a neighbor's hog came strolling down the road and turned into our place.

Big ugly hog, long yellow Tusk on either side

and Patches made a bulldog like decision to get hold of the hog

and he was, he went out and he got hold of the hog and it made quite a bit of noise when he did it because he was growling, bargaining hog was squealing

and Bulldogs, I don't really know this or not, but when they get hold of something they're not likely to turn it loose very easily. They just walk on.

Well, he got hold and he had locked on and he was a dog of great conviction.

For example, with the badger, after he killed him every day for a week, he went up there in the field and picked up the carcass and shook hell out of it. Just to let it know that if you want to come back through reincarnation or whatever,

he was there and ready to play.

So this is the same dog that got hold of the hog and he is going to hang on to that. My dad comes running out of the barn to see what this commotion is and he gets in the middle of that right away, kicking hogs and dogs and trying to get them to turn, getting patches turn loose. Everybody knew the solution. Patches turn loose. The damn hog, Turn him loose.

You got hold of something you can't handle. Turn him loose. Well, the hog drug him alongside the barn until he came loose,

and then he wheeled around and cut him across the shoulder and neck with one of those tusks.

And Dad was able to get hold of patches and he'd drug him out of that fight and

sent me to the barn to get some pine tar to stop the bleeding. And we patched him up and

things settle down and thank God that was over. You know,

we can get back to our lives.

Mom had come out,

she had seen me trying to get into fight and she was trying to take care of her kid and I was trying to take protect my dog. You know, everybody was involved in this thing and we

we turned him loose in a little bit and he went right back and got ahold of that damn hog again.

It is the same deal. It was barking and squealing and kicking and cussing and

Mother Tring in her hands and trying to Get Me Out of it. And Dad matter in hell, fighting the dog in the hog, and finally he came off again. Everybody knew the solution. Hog knew it, we knew it. Everybody knew it. Turned loose to that damn hog, Patches. Turn him loose. Well, when he came off again, Dad recognized that Patches was not himself.

I mean, I think the psychiatrist among us would say that his emotions were in charge of his intellect.

That means you're crazy as hell. That's what that means.

He was hooking up with something that was a lot tougher and bigger than he was, and he wasn't winning.

So Dad decided when you get people that are crazy as hell, what you do is some of you know this, you get committed.

And we're not talking about making decisions here. We're talking about locking people up.

And we took a chain and we tied patches to the water hydrant and we ran water on him to cool him off and stop the blood.

And Dad got in the pickup and drove the hog off to remove temptation.

You know, they've always been trying to do that

and I was given the job of being

Patches first counselor. I guess

I sat with him and asked him deep and penetrating questions like, you know,

does your family enjoy it when you get hold of hogs?

Have you ever, ever had a good day getting ahold of hogs?

And in about two hours I had him cured. You could tell he was cured. He was laying on the ground. He wasn't tugging at the chain anymore. He his tongue was lulled out and he had that little bulldog smile on his face and he was wagging his little stub of a tail. You know, it's back and forth.

So I went to see my father, the warden, and told him that Patches was well.

Well, Dad didn't take my word for it. He'd had a little bad luck with Patches that day. So he came walking around him and looked at him and

scratched his ears and you know, he said. I think you're right. Turn him loose.

So I turned him loose.

He had to go 2 miles to find that hog that time.

Dude. Can anybody out there identify with that dog

I, I I of course can identify with? I was one of the first Haagen Dazs in West TX. I couldn't understand what in the hell is wrong with my dog. Why was he getting hold of this thing He obviously couldn't have? Turned out it wasn't hogs at all. A little bit later he got hold of a cattle truck. Just one, just one.

A lot of people who have eye disease

get hold of cattle trucks.

A lot of people don't have anyone to back them off or tie them up and confine them.

Lots of people die from this condition

and it seems like the solution is so obvious.

Turn loose of the hog,

turn loose and stop doing that thing which is destroying you.

But we can't see it.

That old dog that seemed to be the answer to his problem, but he had a deeper problem. You see,

it was whatever sent him out there to get that hog in the 1st place, and what sent him back again and again and again in the face of overwhelming evidence

that he could not handle that hog. He was powerless over

the hawk.

Alcoholics Anonymous

makes no claim that it can

stop that urge.

Keep you fixing you permanently so you can get hold of hogs.

It doesn't make you any better able to handle whiskey than you ever were. As a matter of fact, all the evidence that we see is that if you have this condition, it's going to stay with you the rest of your life. Not only going to stay with you, but it's going to make you more susceptible as time goes on

to the effects of alcohol. We used to have a deal in my group at home that if anybody ever found a way to drink successfully, they had to promise to come back and post a notice on the bulletin board about how they did it. We had a lot of people leave, but we never got any notes back,

never gotten, no one ever successfully drank again that I knew of.

We have to find a way to live comfortably and happily without chemically altering reality. Isn't that what booze does for us? Don't we kind of chemically alter reality or what Seems like we do. I used to like to take a drink and let the, you know, the problems that they kind of slide off my shoulders and, you know, fuzzy up the world a little bit and make it a little nicer place to live. Not getting me where I didn't give a damn. That's what really helped a lot

because I could have a few drinks and I didn't give a damn when the school kept or not.

I was number longer responsible. I was irresponsible and I like to practice irresponsibility when I'm drunk.

I love drinking.

I was man from the first time.

I like the way I felt,

and it wasn't long before I could get positively excited about the idea that we're going to get drunk A week from tonight,

man.

We're going to buy some booze and some gasoline for somebody's car

and we're going to get in the car with the booze and there's no telling where we'll be tomorrow morning.

No telling. And there wasn't. Our first question most often was where are we?

Followed closely by what did we do?

And nobody had the complete answer. We had to piece things together and I was the guy who always was looking for half a can of beer or whatever I could find and send. Let's do it again. Let's do that again. That was good. Let's do that again.

And I wasn't ever going to give that up. I had no plans at all to ever give up drinking.

I right away had problems with it. I was in the Dean's office at college. I was had problems with those people that drove those cars with those funny little lights on the top. And I, I was, you know, I lost friends. I remember two of my friends from high school came up to me and told me after I've been drinking six months. Jerry, folks back home would not like what you're doing.

You're out of control. You're not, you're not living the kind of life that we're supposed to be living.

And I told those guys that they just have to mind their own damn business that I was doing what I needed to do and what I like to do. And as they walked away from me,

I wondered, why in the world wouldn't people want to do what I'm doing? Why wouldn't they want to do this? This is fun. I liked it

and I kept on liking this, and I was raised on that farm,

taught a lot of responsibility, was always a very responsible person, except when I drank and that took the pressure off of me. It was my way of taking a little vacation from responsibility, and the vacations ran together until I was almost in perpetual vacation for a long time. Then I got in the service and I got married and had a kid and I went to law school.

The responsibility of raising families and trying to make a living from my

wife and children kind of took over for a while. But Annette always drank some, always took a little vacation from time to time. And when I took a vacation, when I started drinking, I didn't stop until I was

all 'til I was drunk.

That continued for a long time. And I'm one of the lot of people, I guess. Can't say this, but I'm evidence of the fact that success does not,

does not enter into this equation of whether or not you're an alcoholic or not.

I had good success. I advanced in my law firm. I got good clients. I had a wife, couple of kids, nice house, good cars, money in the bank.

And my life went to hell.

My life was not worth living. I had everything I had ever thought would make you happy,

and I'd gone for a long time chasing what I call more, better and different. I kept thinking if I had just a little more money or cars or whatever, or a little different kind, or a little better one or a little different kind, I would be happy. And I would get those things. And the happiness would last maybe 15 minutes sometimes. And then I'd know again that I needed more, better or different. And so I'm off chasing it again.

And I made more money every year I drank.

I can't say I practice law as well as I did when I got sober, but I kept moving along

and

everything just quit meaning anything to me.

I was out of control. Did not know I was out of control.

Doctors talk to me. Doctors showed me tests that showed my liver function was shot to hell.

Doctors showed me tests the next year that showed it was even worse than it was the year before.

The doctor told me stop drinking for 10 days and come back in here and let us check this again to see what alcohol does to your liver. Well, I'm smart enough to know that my liver is off the chart and I stopped drinking and he goes, stays off the chart. He's not going to tell me to start drinking again. So I never went back, just didn't go back. Can you imagine that? Goofy as hell, probably. You all understand that better than most people would. The civilians out there don't understand this.

Anyway, things rocked along there and

and my wife messed up pretty bad about this time. She'd had a lot of problems through the years. She had sort of a

unreasonable sensitivity to drinking.

It got so bad, I finally sent her to a psychiatrist because she just, you know, she just

didn't approach this rationally at all.

She wouldn't drink. She didn't want me to drink. She didn't even want me to hang around people who drink,

so we sent her this conscious knee. He kind of agreed with me for a while, but then he asked to see me and, you know, everything kind of went to hell there. And

then She

she did another

really a terrible thing.

She went to Al Anon.

She went to Al Anon and didn't tell me she was going.

I had to find this out

almost by accident.

I asked my daughter one time, where is your mother?

Uh, and she said, I don't know, Daddy, She may be at one of those meetings.

And I said, what kind of meeting is that, Karen? She said, oh Daddy, I don't know. It's some kind of a family meeting. Well,

that doesn't sound like much, but at that point in time, we were. We'd made a decision that if our marriage didn't improve in the next six months, we'd terminate it.

And it occurred to me as a lawyer that if she was going to family meetings under those circumstances, I probably needed a representative present at those meetings.

So I decided I would find out about the meeting

and she came in and my wife, my wife is I practice trial lawyer for almost 40 years. She's the most difficult witness I've ever cross examined.

When she doesn't want to answer your question or give you information, she'll never lie to you.

But it's like hypnotized snake with an ice pick. You know, it's really difficult to do to get her to tell you what you want. She came in and I said where have you been? She said out

out where? To a shopping center. Which one? Preston,

what did you do there? Met some friends. Who were they? You wouldn't know them.

What did you and your friends do?

Oh, we just shared our experience, strength, and hope.

So I recognize that I'm dealing with them. I'm going to have to dig this information out of her. So I just bore in, close the door and narrow the field. close the door, narrow the field. Finally, I get this word out of her. A word I had never heard in my life

and it was

Al Anon.

Now things were pretty heated about this time

and

I didn't want to appear ignorant

so I had to guess at what would be an al Anon.

So I made a gas and as near as I could guess it was probably an aluminum kitchen utensil of some kind.

I've been trying to get her to go to work for a long time and I thought maybe she's by God going to sell kitchen utensils. It's all with me.

So

she told me it wasn't that.

And now, while she'd been real close mouthed, not willing to tell me anything at all, suddenly she, man, I just opened the floodgate. She began to tell me about Al Anon. What a wonderful program it was, how it saved lives and families, how everyone was welcome there, how God, it was just marvelous. People would pay $500.00 for a seat in that place if they just knew how good it was.

And I heard her say that it was a public meeting, anybody was welcome.

And I sobered up almost instantly

because I had just made senior partner in my law firm

and I knew they didn't want anymore Alcoholics.

They had two already and I knew they were talking about getting rid of them just as soon as they could.

I'm just getting started and when they find out I'm an alcoholic, I'm out.

So I sat her down and I said, Billy, listen closely to this. Do you understand

that I'm the only one who makes money at this house? She said. I understand,

I said. Do you know that if I lose my job with that law firm,

the money stops? That sounded reasonable to her.

I said there won't be any more money coming. And if we don't have money, do you know what will happen?

Know what will happen? Well, we're talking about foreclosure on the House. We're talking about taking back all the stuff we've got loaned out here. I said we're not talking about college education for our kids now. We're talking about financial crisis. We're talking about standing naked in the streets of Dallas in the middle of the winter with our children. That's what we're talking about. This is a major damn problem.

You can't go to any more of those meetings.

And she looked at me with those steely blue al Anon eyes and said,

I think I need to go.

And I said, Billy, please do not go to anymore of those meetings,

she said. Jerry, I think I'm going to keep going.

Then I said something loving, like, you know, if you go to another one, I'll kill you. This sure as hell,

she said. She said.

I'm going to go

and I didn't kill her,

but she drove me crazy.

Every day I went to work. I expected them to knock on my office door and come in and tell me we here

that your wife is going to public meetings because you are drunk.

We don't need you here out.

It wouldn't happen that day. And I'd go home and I'd try another tactic of some kind to get the woman out of Avalon. We fought incessantly about this one subject.

I tried everything. I tried frontal attacks. I tried sneaking around the back. I tried to woo her out of it. I blew in her ear. I did everything I could think of to get her out of there. One night I was going to start an argument. I knew I was going to start an argument on this subject,

but I needed to get her to agree to certain facts before I got into the thing real heavy. You know,

I kind of sneak in up on her. And so I went in the kitchen and I put my arm around her and I said, you have a nice day. And she said she did. And I said dinner smells good and thank you. She said. I said the children. All right. Oh, yeah, children are good. How are the dogs? All the dogs are good.

Been a wonderful day for the dogs

and

I said, Billy, I've been thinking, you think I'm an alcoholic?

And she said, I don't know whether you are or not.

I said, well that's damn funny, you've called me an alcoholic for months and years. She said yes, but I was wrong

it she said it doesn't matter what I think, it doesn't matter what the doctor thinks, it doesn't matter what your partner's think, it doesn't matter what your parents think. It just doesn't matter.

There's only one person in the world who can make use of the information of whether or not you have a drinking problem or an alcoholic,

and that's you. Because if you don't think you got one, you will never do anything about it.

It's real hard to get a fight going when they're acting like this. I'll just tell you that.

And I'm totally off balance here. I don't know. I don't know how to deal with this thing and I make a mistake.

A good trial lawyer never ever in the middle of a cross examination ask a question when he doesn't know the answer.

But I did. I said, well,

if I wanted to find out if I was an alcoholic, how would I do it?

And the jaws of the Al Anon trap closed just like that,

she said.

Well, Jerry, they tell me

that there's a number of ways you can find out. One, you could just stop drinking, but I don't think you want to do that. I said you're right, I don't want to do that, she said. The other thing you can do is try some control drinking

and I said what is controlled drinking?

She said. Well, it's like they suggest that you take 2 drinks a day, no more, no less, every day.

And if you can do that without exceeding 2 drinks for six months,

you're not an alcoholic,

I said. That's the dumbest damn test I ever heard of in my life.

Are you telling me you've been trying to get me to quit drinking forever and now you're trying to tell me that you want me to drink for another six months?

And she said yes. And I realized I was out being a pretty sick woman and I better get the hell out of there. This conversation wasn't going my way at all. So I I went and sat in my green chair and drank whiskey for about two weeks and thought about this thing.

I had to get her out of that damn gal Anon. I mean, it was serious to get her out of there. Just I'm on borrowed time. They're going to find out soon. Somebody's going to call in and say we saw your partner's wife at an Al Anon meeting. What's an al Anon meeting? Oh, that's for drunks. You know that. That's for families who've got a drunk in there. And I'm the key to Al Anon for Billy Jones. That's what I am.

So I decided somebody's going to make a sacrifice. I've been mean cut back. Actually, I, I was drinking a little over 1/4 day and I didn't know anybody else that was drinking that way. And I was going to work every day, but I, I was had to leave early sometimes because I couldn't wait to go home and at 5:00 and drink then. And I drink to my my bottle of whiskey in the evening and

she'd put me to bed and

we'd we'd go on from there. We had so I decided to do this and I I had to change that test a little bit

and I wasn't going to tell anybody I'm taking the damn test 'cause she's watching me. She knows how much I drink. She

council and I'm just going to drink 3 drinks a day. I got a

pretty big glass and

I'm going to have two martinis before dinner, which is just Beefeaters gin, sometimes with ice, sometimes not just

and I'm going to have a big Brandy and a little bit of soda. After dinner I'm going to switch to coffee

and nobody. Nobody except a prohibitionist

could fault me for drinking that way, and they couldn't.

And then I got my first dose of reality about my disease.

I would drink that first drink

and begin to loosen up a little bit in my shoulders and neck, you know, and

then I'd get about through with the second one

and the thought would come to me. Alcoholism centers into mind. You know, The thought would come to me.

Well, that's about all the martinis today.

And then another thought would drifting out of center field and it would be,

what are you doing?

What are you doing? Are you over 21? Are you a man who supports all these damn people around here who has to go down and fight all those other judges and jurors and lawyers? Are you going to let a bunch of little old ladies in tennis shoes tell you how to drink whiskey? For God's sake?

The answer was number no, I'm not going to do that. I'd go to the bottle and drink the damn bottle

far. Or when I walked in from work, I'd walk up to the bar and I'd think you had a bad day today.

A bad day ain't going to be no damn test today, I'll tell you for damn sure.

And I drink the bottle.

Or some days I could forget it

called conscious forgetfulness.

I'd forget to take the damn test

those days. I drank the bottle too.

So whether I took it, didn't take it, forgot it, I drank the bottle,

but I'd always wake up and I'd always remember I was supposed to take it. And it was illogical to assume I had a lot of willpower.

I had a lot of willpower in my life.

Why kidding? A man with a lot of willpower decide he's going to drink 3 drinks and justice drink 3 drinks.

What's wrong with me?

Oh, that's a good question.

What's wrong with me? Because see, nobody knew I'm taking this damn test. I'm the only one that knows it. I'm the only one that knows I'm plucking it.

I gave it a fair chance. I ran it a year and a half.

I never passed at one time. Not once did I ever passed it then,

and at the end of that time, nobody knew what was going on in my head, but I was. All I thought about was drinking or not drinking or wishing I had a drink. I even began to sneak it in the house. Hell, I just carried it in before by the crate because I'm just by God gonna drink what I'm gonna drink. And I just defy anybody to talk to me about drinking, particularly my wife. But now I've got to, I don't know, I begin to sneak it in and try to get to. I was drinking so much. She

she got upset with me one time. Somebody told her that

you could make iced tea glasses out of Brandy bottles, and she said, well, Jerry drinks some Brandy. I'll just save up a few of them and

and you'll show me how to cut them off and I'll make them. Well she had about 6 bottles in about 6 days and

I know she she was kind of disappointed in the amount I drank or that and she talked about it. So in any event,

I wound up on December 31st, 1972

at a real low point in my life.

I had worn out in 1972 completely. I needed a New year, man,

and all I had to do to bring in the new year and make things better

was to go out to dinner with our friends

and to come back to our house and spend the rest of the evening and bring in the new year. That's all I had to do that day. I wasn't mad at anybody. I didn't have any great pressures on me. All I had to do was just that simple thing

and I knew why we were doing it that way. It was unspoken, but I had gone out a few days earlier with to a party and it had been very difficult to get me back home after I had been out for a while. So we're going to go out early and have dinner and kind of bring me home. And, and you know, they all expected me to get drunk and I just needed to be on my feet and functioning a little at midnight. That's all I had to do.

So I started off the day and I was pacing myself carefully and

Billy warned me about us going out to dinner and I knew. I know, I know. And

then I woke up

and I looked out the window. I was in my green chair

and it was pitch dark outside

and I looked over to my wife's chair and she was there in her robe.

Three little book. They read lots of little books.

And I said, Billy, shouldn't we be getting dressed to go to dinner?

And she said, ah, Jerry, don't you know what time it is?

It was 10:00 at night, 1015. I'd passed out at 5:00 in the afternoon

and I had no one to blame for that. Not a soul in the world

and I was sick of Maine.

I knew that she had to call those people and tell them we are not going to dinner.

I knew she had told those same people you can't come to our house tonight. And she being a good Al Anon had probably told him. Because Jerry is drunker and Cootie Brown in his chair

and I didn't like that.

I didn't like me or what I had become or what I was. It was just another day,

another defeat at the hands of alcohol that was inexplicable,

irrational,

just made no sense at all.

And I went to the bar and got a big drink because I wanted oblivion and I knocked myself out with that drink.

I pray to God that that's the last drink I'll ever have

that ended a 21 year drinking

career.

I

I got up the next morning to the Sawyers looking world I'd ever seen

and I had no solutions. I sat there on the edge of the bed and thought about that night and

and thought about what I could say to those people and my wife and I couldn't think of anything to say. I didn't have any excuses. There was number

I deserved whatever they thought.

And I considered my options and I thought about what I tried to do the test I tried to take. Nobody knew I took the test, but I I knew I'd taken the test. And so I got to the

end of my thoughts and the only thing I can think of that I hadn't tried was to stop drinking

something I promised I'd never do. But that day, that didn't seem like such a bad eye day. So I got up and I went in the kitchen and I told Billy that

I was sorry about the night before. She wasn't impressed with my apology.

I said I think I'm going. I'm going to try to quit drinking.

And she was impressed.

She ran over to the bookcase and got happened to have a copy of the book. Alcoholics Anonymous

copy the little book. 24 hour a day meditation book.

She came running back to me with those two books and thrust them into my hands and

I said, would you like for me to call somebody from Alcoholics Anonymous?

And I threw the books against the wall pretty close to where she was standing and told her hell no. I got myself in this deal and I'm going to get myself out.

And she said something loving, like you got it and walked off and I had my problem with no solution

and I started trying to not drink. It should be easy. If it's bad for you and you're not and you stop doing it, it should get better, shouldn't it? Well, it's surprised you'd know. It didn't get any better. I couldn't sleep all night long. I rolled and tossed and sweated. I sweated on the inside. On the outside, I shook. I had the Yippies, you know, I moved around. Like,

I looked at people and I saw that they weren't doing that, and all I could think about was having a drink

and my stomach was helping out. He was sending a signal to my brain on a very regular basis. Hey, Clyde, you forgot something.