Jack K. from New York at New York June 14th 1992

Hi, my name is Jack Keegan and I'm an alcoholic

By sobriety date is July 14th 1969.

I have an add on to the announcement made earlier about in the event of an emergency. In the event of an emergency, we'd like all Al Anon members to remain seated while the alcoholic leave the room.

That's so awful, isn't it?

This is such an honor to be speaking at the 57th anniversary of a A. I mean, I can't tell you how great I feel about it.

I was five years old when a A began, and I was a kid in the Bronx, and I was probably playing marbles or playing doctor with some neighborhood girl

when Bill Wilson was fooling with my lifeout in Akron. You know, he was going back and forth between the bar and the church directory, and my life was hanging in the balance.

And then Doctor Bob had to go down to Atlantic City fooling around with my life.

But the power greater than all of us got them together. And here we are in the Biltmore on a Sunday afternoon

and excuse me, the Hilton

keep coming, somebody said.

But here we are at the Hilton right on a Sunday afternoon and just great in June. And

I always like to remember Sundays in June when I was drinking. You know, you wake up

and some Army patrol had gone through your mouth during the night

and your tongue is about an inch and a half thick

and you have no idea what happened the night before.

Well, as you know, I was born and raised in the Bronx and

I just love drinking. Just loved it.

I just when I found out about it, wow. I mean the lights, the buzz, the action, the I like everything about drinking. Just loved it.

I went to college and

I didn't have much trouble in college, as if you call losing your two front teeth, having your nose broken and having a black eye not too much trouble. Then I didn't have too much trouble. I used to give the name of the college that I went to and one night in Washington Heights a lady came to me and she said my son is going to go to that college. And I knew the fear that she had in her face.

So I don't give the name of the college anymore. I simply say it's a large Jesuit university in the Bronx,

and

that keeps its anonymity.

I got out of college and I went to law school and

I didn't have much trouble in law school. That's if you call passing out of the wheel of a of a moving vehicle at about 6:00 in the morning. Not much trouble then. I didn't have much trouble, but I did that, you know, I had taken my first semester's examinations and you know what happens? I deserve to drink and

I passed out at the wheel of a car. Incidentally, I might add that it's difficult to explain that to a motor vehicle commissioner

passing out at the wheel of a car at 6:00 in the morning and claiming that you suddenly fell asleep.

I I graduated law school and I got into

working for law firms. What I really should have done was I really should have been a management consultant. You see, I had this gift that God had given me. Perhaps there's someone in this room with this very same gift,

but I could work in an office for two weeks and I could tell you who should be fired.

Just a gift,

didn't ask for it,

but I knew who should be who should go. Now the only thing left was the opportunity to tell people who should be fired.

That usually came at a Christmas party or an outing.

And you know, I would tell people how they should run their business, and I have no memory of it. I think blackouts is a way that God shows His kindness toward us.

And then there's always some dummy the next morning that says

what got into you last night

and he has to re tell you things that

make no sense.

And I would go from job to job to job

after these parties.

And I finally ended up in White Plains working for a single practitioner. And that was just great. We were, he kept me on the cutting edge of poverty, so I didn't have too much to to spend. And he had one big client whom I knew how to correct

and I was working for him for about 7 years. And he said to me, Jack, I'm going to make you a partner.

I thought, that's marvelous. It's really nice. I worked hard. I was going to be a partner, going to have my name on a letterhead.

And then there came this outing.

Perhaps some of you have heard this story

and his big client was at this outing

and I straighten them out.

And the next day, to this day, I don't know what he said to him. The next day my boss said to me, Jack, you don't have to leave, but you can't stay here.

Well,

I thought the best thing was I would open my own law office. And that, of course, is an attempted suicide. But long about this time, my older brother was having trouble drinking. He had a lot of trouble drinking, and he was living on Long Island. He had about seven children. And my sister-in-law called me up and she said, would you mind coming out to talk to your brother, Jimmy? I said I'd be delighted.

So I went out to talk with him and he, all these children are running around this very small house. And I said, Jimmy, we cannot talk of such an important matter in this house. We must go to a place where men gather.

So I went to a saloon to talk to my brother about his drinking.

Now I didn't want to see him stop drinking because I knew I was next.

So I said to him, I said, you know, just drink beer and behave yourself.

That lasted about two weeks and I brought him to an AAA meeting and left quickly

lest they ask questions.

I've been to an AAA meeting while at that famous Jesuit school. I was writing a paper on it. Seemed like a good idea at the time. I was very impressed with people laughing and not drinking. That had not happened in my house. My father had periods of not drinking but not of laughing while not drinking. But I knew that this thing worked and I brought Jimmy to that meeting and Jimmy states over and was a great example to me until the day he died.

I opened this new law office. Now let me tell you something

before I get started on this career of mine.

I am really honored to be here today, but I must assure you

that when I open my own law office in 19 January 1st, 1965, it was not my ambition to be a member of AAI. Think this outfit is the only organization in the world the members of which never wanted to belong to it in the first place.

AA is like the mafia, you leave, you die.

I had certain

I had certain promises I had to make to myself when I embarked upon this new business of mine, one of which was that I was not going to drink at lunch. And I kept this promise for 2-3 weeks

until someone asked me that question against which I had no defense. They said to me, Jack, what will you have?

I didn't know how to answer that.

I had something alcoholic. I don't know what it was, but it went along and I was a steady story of progression.

Things were not going so well at home with Missus Keegan as you might might anticipate.

I used to collect for Catholic Charities, not for any altruistic reason, please. In my neighborhood, when you collected for Catholic Charities, you got a drink.

That's how that worked.

And I would come home on a Sunday afternoon loaded

for the sake of God, collecting for Catholic Charities.

Well, one night I decided to bring back the returns to the rectory. My wife was a little nervous when I went out at night and I was going out this night. She said where are you going? I said I'm going to return the contributions to Monsignor. How long will you be? Dumb questions, you know,

I said. You're getting paranoid. I'm going to the rectory and I'll be right back.

Well, about 3:00 in the morning

I come rolling in and she mentioned something to the effect that she could no longer trust me to go to church.

At which point I said, you want me to stop drinking, I'll stop drinking. Six months, I'll stop drinking. I'll show you. And I did, you know, no sense being Irish less You can be thick.

And for six months I brought home candy and dirty books. I didn't want to give up everything

and I sat at home for six months. We went nowhere,

she said. Let's go to the movies. Not a chance.

Why not? I'm not drinking.

What has that got to do with the movies? Everything

since I've come to this fellowship, I find out that a pledge is a promise to drink on a certain day.

And of course, six months later I got drunk and got loaded and off to another pledge and the same routine. We didn't go anywhere. And she said why don't we visit Charlie? No, Charlie's your friend since grammar school. Not a chance. Why not? Not drinking. OK,

Finally one night she said to me,

for God's sakes, would you please drink?

And I said for you, my sweetheart, I will do that.

I would never get into that box again.

I went on my very way. If you were to stop me in the street the day before I come into, AAI would have told you I was a social drinker.

A heavy social drinker, but a social drinker nonetheless.

I kept this definition until one day I was selecting a jury. I used to do a lot of drunken driving defense work. Don't ask me why, it just happened that way. And I was defending this fellow one night in the Village of Scarsdale Justice Court. And you never try a drunken driving case before a judge.

You always try a drunken driving case before a jury. Going before a judge is like going to sentence

you try a jury case and hopefully to get jurors that drink the way your client drinks.

My client blew a 2-3 at 12:00 noon on a Sunday and struck the rear end of a Scarsdale police car.

In those days, the salons did not open till 1:00.

It was a difficult case.

For those of you who don't understand the serological significance of 2-3, it's about 2 1/2 times what you need to be legally drunk. So I began to question jurors. And the first juror I questioned, I said, are you a social drinker, Missus Van something from Scarsdale? And she said, indeed I am. But she didn't look like one of my people, you know?

She didn't have that nice puffy beery look to her, you know,

And I thought perhaps we'd better get a definition of terms. And I said to her, Mrs. Van,

what do you mean by social drinking? And she said, well, my sister and I have a glass of wine at Thanksgiving and a highball around the holidays.

I had not heard the word highball since 1940.

I said to her,

is it would you consider a social drinking for a man to come home and have a couple of cocktails after a tough day just to shave the edges off a very sharp day.

And she looked at me as if I had a hole in my head and said, why on earth, Mr. Keegan, would anyone drink every day?

I didn't have an answer for that.

I excused Aaron lost the case.

However, I got a new definition of social drinking. It didn't affect me much, but I knew that there were some people in this world that did not consider what I did. Social drinking.

Life at home was a lot of fun.

I was in a blackout for most of the night. Every night was drinking. I I would have no memory of what was on television. And people would ask me the next morning, did you see this show or that show on television? No, no, I didn't. And then I get these flashbacks. I don't know if there's anything like that it's ever happened to anybody in this room, but suddenly you get a flashback of a part of the TV show. Oh, yes, that was funny.

I thought you said you didn't watch it. Oh, I must have. You know, just in passing. I was drunk every night of the week, week. I used to watch a guy on television, Channel 4 fellow by name of Jim Hart, and he was sober every night at 11:00. Now that may not seem important to some people here today, but it was terribly important to me in those days

that anybody could stay sober till 11:00 at night and deliver the news.

It was a live show. I knew that. I checked on it.

This guy was sober. When on earth did he do his drinking?

I could hardly open a door at 11:00 at night.

I think fear gets everyone into a A and my fear came

and a form that I'll tell you about in a little story.

I represented a young man who was charged with vehicular homicide, and he was not guilty of vehicular homicide,

clearly, but he was indicted. But he was not guilty of it. And his case was coming up for trial. And I knew that all I had to do was to be an adequate lawyer on that day and I would win that case. I knew that

didn't have to be any. Clarence Darrow just had to be an adequate lawyer. I had to be sober on the day his case was tried.

His case was 18 months from trial.

They weren't concerned about speedy trials in those days. He was out on bail. And I tell you, for 18 months I was terrified as to what my condition would be the day his case was tried. If you're not an alcoholic, you may not understand that, but I tell you I was terrified because by that time I had lost control. Some days were good, some days were bad,

but I couldn't tell you which one was good or which one was bad. How I was going to be.

Some nights I thought drinking have 5 drinks. Some night I saw drinking have 2530 no rhyme or reason to it. And I would wake up in the morning 45 o'clock terrified, palm sweating, afraid that this was the case. This was the day that his case was to be tried,

as Alcoholics can do.

His case was tried. I was sober and the case was one. But that's not the important thing. The important thing that is I had lost control and I didn't know it.

I was alcoholic full blown and I didn't know it and I continued on. My day came, as you know, July 14th, 1969.

It was a day that I was out drinking with my younger brother,

who was not alcoholic, but he was with me, you know, and if you were with me, you were drunk. You couldn't stay with me and not be drunk. I insisted on you being drink for drink. And anybody drank with me got drunk. I don't care who you are, Monsignor's sister, whatever. You got drunk, you couldn't stay with me and not get drunk. And

at that moment, that night, I guess God said, I think King has had enough because at that moment, at that night, I said, if I don't stop drinking, I'm going to die.

And my brother Raymond said to me, why don't you go to AA? Your older brother Jimmy's in. I said, sound like a good idea. So I was drunk. I went to an A, A meeting drunk. And most a A meetings, unlike this meeting, have metal chairs, as you know.

And when you're drunk and you come into an A A meeting and you sit down in a middle chair, you make a lot of noise, let me tell you.

And I made a lot of noise.

And those AA people, as Glendora has so marvelously described

with those little AA smiles,

they turned around and they looked at me and they smiled.

That smile that says we'll get to you later, smile.

And I sat there in my load

and this woman came up to me after the meeting and she told me this. She asked me the sweetest, the sweetest words I've ever heard in my life,

She said to me. Do you need some help?

And I said, you don't understand, I'm going to die. And she said, well, you don't look like you're going to die. Let me get someone for you to talk to. And she got the man who was to become my sponsor. And they say that a A has a sponsor here for everyone. And this one God had waiting in the wings for me.

He came to me, shook my hand, and he did a peculiar thing. He smelled me,

shook my handy one

and he said

you've been drinking tonight. And I thought to myself, what a perceptive guy.

No one had ever told me that at 10:30 at night, you know, I said, as a matter of fact, I have, he said. Then he he began to ask these questions, you know that sponsors ask that, you know, they probing

nasty. And he said to me, he said, do you think your life would be better if you didn't drink? And I said, Oh my God,

I got a great business, great family, and the booze is killing me, he said. You're in the right place.

Then he, he told me some very profound things and I won't go into all of them now, but for example, he told me that if I did not want to drink, I should not go into bars.

No, that may not seem like anything to you now, but I tell you in July of 1969, that was profound.

I said, would you repeat that?

And he did. You see, every night of this pledge I was in a bar

and he said don't go in there anymore. And we went back to his house and we talked and talked and talked and finally about two hours passed. Now

these Eagles in my stomach were no longer there. Things had quieted down. They were like butterflies. I was going to live.

Perhaps I was immortal,

but I no longer needed this dummy from AAI tell you that.

So I he had spent a lot of time with me and I wanted to ease him out.

And I said to him, I said, Don, I really want to stop drinking tonight. But in March, this is July. I said in March I go on vacation and I always drink on my vacation in March. You understand that?

And he looked at me like that Lady and he's like, I had a hole in my head. And he said, Jack, this is July. I said, I know that. He said you can't drink in July for March. You have to wait until March comes. I said repeat that

and he repeated it.

Another profound saying.

You said, Jack, just go home, get to bed. You just got tonight,

he said. I want to take you to a meeting tomorrow night.

Now the resistance comes in.

Well, tomorrow night is my aunt's birthday.

I had never seen my aunt on her birthday.

Then he said to me, he said, what time are you getting home? And I said, oh, 11:00 be late. He said, I'll be on your front steps. He was there, he said the next night and we talked and talked again, of course. And the next night he said, I want to take you to a meeting tomorrow night. I said, I have a cookout,

one of those emergency cookouts that newcomers have. I have a cookout. He said, what time? Oh, I won't get back to 11:45. Twelve o'clock, I'll be here. He was there. He sat on my front step and we talked and he talked. He saved my life. I can put it no other way. He saved my life. He he gave me a copy of the Big Book and he just saved my life

and I haven't found necessary to pick up a drink since.

And he got me going to meetings and he got me into the steps.

I don't know about life. You know, life is the only game in the world,

the goal of which is to find out the rules. I didn't know the rules.

You know, Funny

newcomers,

you know, some normal person gets a flat tire and they call a AAA newcomers get a flat tire, they call a suicide prevention hotline.

And that's the way I was.

I didn't know anything about living.

I'm going to talk to you about three of the steps that are very important in my life this afternoon. Got a little time with it.

The first is the second step, and that's very important to me and I have a little story that goes with that. I used to love Howard Johnson's hot dogs. They were kind of out of business now, but anyway, they had a marvelous hot dog. I don't know if anyone's familiar with them. They come in a little toasted bun, little cardboard carrier, and they're delicious. And you put mustard on them. And they were like heroin to me.

I could not go by a Howard Johnsons hot dog stand without getting four or five of them. Couldn't do it. And this one time I got about five of them and I had this terrible pain in my stomach and I went to the hospital and the doctor took all those tests and I thought I had a heart attack. And he said, Jack, you had, you don't have a heart attack. He said, well, what did you eat? And I said, how much on his hot dogs?

And he simply said to me, don't eat them anymore.

And from that day to this, I haven't had one. I haven't had to go to one meeting about it.

I don't hide them under the front seat of the car. I don't go out late at night and get them. They're out of my life,

but I couldn't do the alcohol without the power grade on my own. The power of AAI couldn't do the alcohol without you people,

and you were the power and God is the power. And I needed them and he was there.

And I don't worry about picking up a drink. I worry about life. The next step is the 6th step that I'd like to talk to you about. And of course, a lot of you are familiar with this story of the drunk who had a little shack in the middle of a terribly desecrated lot. And the minister would go by and look at this shack with a garbage and the weeds and the falling apart,

so shake his head. Then the drunk came to a A

got up and he painted the shack and he mowed the lawn and planted flowers and cleaned up all the garbage and it looked just beautiful.

The minister went by and he said, I've got to tell him and he knocked on the door and a drunk came to the door and he said, I just have to tell you what a marvelous job that you and God have done on this lot in the past few months. And he said, well, thank you, but you should have seen this place when God had it all by himself.

And so it was with me on the 6th step. I was at the at a meeting one night and I said, we're entirely willing to have God remove all of these. And my sponsor fell on me like an old suit. And he said the word is ready is ready. You're going to be ready to have these defects removed. And it's very much like I have a lawn at home, you know, and my lawn looks like the Aberdeen Proving Grounds. That's just horrible.

But I know I can have a nice lawn if I'm ready to have it.

I have to plow it up, I have to rake it, I have to seed it, I have to water it. And God will grow the grass if it's ready, but I have to get it ready.

And God will take away these defects of character if I'm ready, if I'm ready to substitute understanding for anger, if I'm ready to substitute tolerance for envy, if I'm ready to substitute honesty or dishonesty. But I have to be ready. And He will grow the grass, be assured. The last step I want to talk to you about the 11th step, absolutely changed my life. Absolutely changed my life. You know, when you're 39 years old

living by the wrong rules, It's amazing.

Let me tell you a little story about this. I was nine years old in the Bronx, of course, and we lived on a fifth floor, walk up, three rooms, three children, my mother and father. Nobody that I knew lived in a house that they owned. One kid had a backyard. In the backyard were rabbits

and he said to me one day, Jack, would you like 2 rabbits? There isn't a nine year old boy in the world that doesn't want two rabbits. But I knew if I went to Mrs. Keegan, the Mrs. Keegan

and asked her for permission to bring these two rabbits into the home, she throw me down the stairs. I knew that.

So I needed divine intervention.

And I went to the local parish and I did the 12, the Stations of the Cross, 14 Stations of the Cross. And it's the liturgy takes about an hour and it's a lot of kneeling and breastfeeding and it's really, but I was assured by my sister at Sunday school that it would bring whatever I wanted. And I did this and I went home to my mother, and I said to my mother,

may I have two rabbits home?

And she threw me down the stairs.

But when I came into AAI, realized that I had been praying for rabbits all of my life.

The rabbits came in different forms. They came in the form of a job. They came in a form of sickness. They came in a form. I once prayed that Santiago was the capital of Brazil, because that's what I put on a test paper.

I prayed for everything

and the eleven step says no, you're doing it wrong. Only for the knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. And that was it. And it's been a great, great, wonderful life. I'm not going to bring this saga to a close

and I'm going to read to you

from a little message that I have plagiarized.

What is a A but plagiarism, right?

And it kind of sums up our experience. I believe in a

We ask God for strength that we might achieve. We were made weak that we might learn to humbly obey. We ask for help that we might do greater things. We were given infirmity that we might do better things. We ask for power that we might have the praise of others. We were given weakness that we might feel the need of God. We ask for all things that we might enjoy. Life.

We were given life

that we might enjoy all things we got, nothing we asked for, but everything we hoped for. Almost despite ourselves, our unspoken prayers or answered, we among all men almost richly blessed. What a deal.