Don M. from Louisville, KY at Tennessee State Convention

Thank you, Mike, and hi everybody. My name is Don and I'm an alcoholic,

and I'm just real, real grateful to be here tonight.

I want to thank everybody that's involved with putting on the conference. I want to thank all the committee members and everybody that's worked so hard. And thank Dawn for calling me originally and Mike for being such a delightful host. Thank you all.

And it's not something I say just to be polite. It really does. No matter how many times it happens, it touches me that that people would want me to come somewhere and be with them and and share with them.

And I expect one reason for that is because my drinking guide me to the point for years where not only was I not invited anywhere, I was usually invited to leave. So it just it just really touches me every time that happens and and I am especially grateful to come to Clarksville. When I was first asked, I explained that I have another commitment to talk later on this weekend so I have to leave right away, but that

that I would be glad to come because

Tennessee means an awful lot to me. My parents are buried about a mile from here. I was born and grew up on a tobacco farm about 20 miles from here across the land in Kentucky. And the Mama, my family had moved from Tennessee across the land when Fort Campbell expanded during World War Two, right before World War Two. And my momma never took a drink. But I've always kind of suspected that if Mom had ever had one, she'd been off and running.

Because, because I'm telling you, bless her heart, she's the dearest woman in the world. But she could cultivate and water and feed a resentment better than anybody. Ave.

she had checked on it every morning, make sure it was in good health, you know, and gone with it and and it made her mad when daddy moved across the land into Kentucky. And you notice and I said both of them are buried in Tennessee. And when I when I got able to walk, she wouldn't let me walk on the ground until she brought me back to take my first steps on Tennessee earth.

And and also as you're here in a little foul, probably

I got sober in Tennessee, got sober in Nashville and and lived my first 21 month sober in Nashville. So Tennessee means an awful lot to me at at every level of my life. So, so thank you guys for letting me be here.

And I also love the theme of the convention rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence. I've used that a lot because that's not something that happened to me once. That's something that continues to happen to me over and over and over again. And it's always the result of the same thing. It's always the result of using and doing the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. And when I do it, I just rocket it, get rocketed over and over into that wonderful 4th dimension of existence.

What I need to do tonight is I understand the directions. And believe me, I've had a lot of trouble with directions in my life. But as I understand them for the night and they're so simple that maybe even I can try to follow them and need to share in a general way what I used to be like and what happened and what I'm like now. And this Netherlands set of directions in the big book that didn't get really important to me until just a few years ago. And it says that our personal story is telling

own language and from my own point of view, how we've been able to form a relationship with our God. And that's really important to me. Now, you folks that are newer, let me tell you why that is important to me. Because when I first came around here, I was absolutely allergic to this God deal. Every time anybody would mention God or higher power, the little hairs would stand up on the back of my neck and I would be terribly insulted that you religious fanatics

talk about such claptrap in front of such an intellectual chant.

I I was one of the really, really fortunate ones. I am one of the really, really fortunate ones because I lived long enough to let you folks talking about God and how our power run me off and then alcohol run me back in here because I wound up not having any place else to go enough times that it finally began to take. And I have a family became willing to act as if

I believe that there was some power greater than myself that might be able to take care of the fatal problems that I had.

So it's real important to me that my story carries that message. And I hope it does already told you that my body grew up on that tobacco farm up just the road, just up the road here. And I guess the rest of them is kind of growing up and growing old at the same time, which which probably beats never growing up. And the 1st 1213 years of my life was absolutely nothing like I thought it was

until I got sober. And and by the way, Massa Brady date is April the 9th of 1981 and I was 37 when I got sober.

And until I got sober, you could have hooked me up to a lie detector box and I would have passed with flying colors when I told you about my romantic and interesting childhood and subsequent rise to power.

And, and, and I'm in it so sincerely believed it that I would usually get you and me both crying before I got halfway done telling it. And of course it was all about how by my Aaron Will and my sterling intellect, I had pulled myself up by the bootstraps from the depths of poverty to those staggering heights I'd reach. Well, I wasn't sober a month before I realized there was all a bunch of crap in the 1st place. We weren't even poor.

We we weren't even close to poor. We were middle class farming people that had everything we needed and most of the things we wanted,

and those heights scores were a whole lot more staggering than they were have. I've had to be careful all my life to try not to be a legend in my own man.

When I when I look back on my childhood now, it it all seems pretty simple. My first sponsor, who was Cherry Carpenter from Nashville, Cherry's been dead about 12 years now. Cherry told me real early on, He said, Don, you know, the book says that selfishness, self-centeredness that we think is the root of our troubles. He said what that means to you

is the first thing wrong with you is you've got a disorder of your ego, he said, and it's from that disorder of your ego that all the rest of it has flowed. The physical allergy to alcohol, which means that once you pick up a drink and that physical allergy kicks in, unless something interrupts the process, you're going to die. The mental obsession with alcohol, which absolutely ensures that you will pick up the first drink unless something is changed inside you that you cannot.

All those things flowed from that disorder, the ego. He told me. And he said what that means is that all your life done, you've been so obsessed with yourself. You've been so obsessed with how you feel, so obsessed with how you believe you stack up against other people in the world. That all that obsession with yourself has created so much pain and so much emptiness down inside you that you've never been able to stand the way you feel inside without either running as hard as you could

or stuffing something in there to try to do something about that pain and that emptiness. And looking back on the 1st 12 or 13 years of my life, that's all that was going on.

I don't think I ever felt like not one single time felt like I was in the right place at the right time with the right stuff. See, all my life I have been and I remain today. Thank the good Lord I don't have to act it out all time today, but I have always been an egomaniac with an inferiority complex. Now what I mean by that is real simple. I have always been perfectly capable of feeling too good for something

and not nearly good enough for the same thing at the same time. Too smart for something and too dumb for the same thing at the same time. In sobriety, I'll find myself vacillating between being powerless over everything and powerless over nothing.

You know, it just goes to those absolutist extremes. And the only thing that I've never been able to feel on my own is I've never been able to feel just right or OK for anything.

I spent the 1st 12 or 13 years of my life trying to keep all the bells ringing and the smoke going and the mirrors flashing and that sort of thing to, to keep you from seeing what I was and what I wasn't. And me having to stop and look at what I was and what I wasn't. And I'm pretty well made it through that first 12 or 13 years trying to stay 1/2 a step ahead of a screaming fit,

which by the way, I didn't always do. The screaming fit would catch me occasionally. And

another couple things about what I was like on camera, that same ego disorder. And as far as I'm concerned, that's at the very heart of my alcoholism. It is the root of my alcoholism. I was never able until it got sober to consider the possibility that there might be a power greater than myself that had anything to do with running my life on a daily basis.

Now is usually OK with some sort of intellectual theory about a creative intelligence or creative force or something. But when he got down to the possibility of what I believe my religious friends today call a personal God, something that was more important in the actual running and unfolding of every minute of every hour of my day, then my little old brain may ego vetoed that big time said no way we can't consider that.

And on kind of that same ego disorder, I don't believe I had any teachability or humility whatsoever for the 1st 37 years.

And the reason I don't is I've never been able to remember a single time in that year, in those years that I voluntarily followed a suggestion that anybody made about how to run my life unless I understood it and I agreed with it and I thought it would work. And, you know, it doesn't bother me too much that I ran my life that way for the 1st 37 years. But it does bug me that that still sounds like pretty good idea tonight,

you know, After all, I'm going to tell you some things that will probably lead you to believe that I might be a little crazy poo, you know? But this whole, there's a whole lot of difference in crazy and stupid. So why should I do something voluntarily about my life if I don't understand it or I don't agree with it or I don't think it'll work? When I get honest, it's real simple. You see, I've got a talking illness. My illness has been running its mouth at me ever since I can remember. I have no idea whether you'd be an alcoholic before you take a drink or not.

Tell you the truth, don't care. If somebody was on the other side of the parking lot and had all the answers to all those questions that I thought were so important about what makes me tick and Wham and alcoholic and all that sort of thing. I wouldn't spend 30 minutes of my time to go find it out because I've got the solution now. But those things used to be so important me. And I don't know whether you'd be an alcoholic before you ever take a drink or not, but I know I was a crazy little sucker before I ever did. I know I was. I know I was real crazy.

But at any rate, with that illness talking to me all my life and telling me all those things, and I don't think that my alcoholism has ever tried to kill me. And the reason I don't is I think my alcohol and I have nearly died from alcoholism dozens of times. But the reason I don't think it's ever tried to kill me is I don't think it cares whether I live or die. I believe my alcoholism is the perfect sociopath.

I believe the only purpose it's got for existing is to try to get itself another drink. And it'll tell me anything in this world to get it. It'll tell me something that might kill me or might kill you. It'll tell me totally inconsistent lies back-to-back with one another without ever dropping a stitch. It doesn't care. It just slings it all up against the wall, hoping some of it will will stick. Now, Cherry told me some a lot of things merrily so Brad and another thing he told me said, Don, don't get it in your head that recovery necessarily

means that your alcoholism is going to stop talking to you. And said don't get it in your head that recovery necessarily means that that old crazy picture show that's rolling in the back of your head is going to stop rolling. He said if you get that in your head, you may get discouraged and you may drink. And in your case I'm pretty sure that would mean to die. He said recovery may wind up being not those things going away,

but you getting to the point where you can recognize that they are not reality and you don't have to obey them.

And that's exactly the way it's been for me. Now, if I could always recognize those things because you see all those years that I had that ultimate veto power in the universe in my brain, that's what it is. If I'm not going to do it unless I understand it, I agree with it and I think it'll work. I have made my brain the ultimate authority in the universe. You know, it vetoes everything else. But I didn't go around for 37 years believing I had the ultimate veto

authority in the universe in my brain because you know what? It felt like

common sense. And that's exactly the way all of my sane ideas approach me. I've never had a single insane idea come up to me and say good morning, Don, I'm a crazy idea and I'm here to try to kill you today.

Because you see, if it did, I would probably step around that sucker. I probably wouldn't mess with it. So all my insane ideas come up the same way. They say good morning down. How are you, buddy? I'm common sense

and they immediately start talking about how special I am and how unique all the pressures on me are that nobody else has got on them. And it it'll tell me, you know, whatever it is in my heart that I know just exactly what the next right thing to do or not do it. And my brain is assuring me if I don't do the exact opposite, it'll be a terrible mess. Whatever it is, this insane idea dressed up like common sense to say, you know, Don, if those other folks in a A had all those pressures on them that

have got on you, why they do it that way too. And it'll say, you know, a lot of them are probably doing it that way and just won't admit it.

And then it really gave me say, wait, wait a minute. Now we may not be looking at this just exactly right. You know, if we look at this three or four times removed kind of left-handed man, it might help somebody do it that way. So no, you know, you got to do it. It's just common sense. What if I can always recognize those insane ideas and always recognize me on this? Trying to get a drink and recognize it for what it was and say, ha, I'll just laugh at that old crazy picture showing back of my head and go to

waiting or give somebody in the fellowship a call or pray or read the big book or whatever. That'd be great. But you see, my alcoholism is truly a mini splendored thing. That sucker has gotten more heads than a hydra. And and another real big face of my alcoholism is that if it's anything at all, it's an illness of perception. And what that means is real simple, guys. That means I don't see things right.

I don't hear them right.

I don't always recognize them for what they are. So if I've put that ultimate veto power in the universe in my brain that I'm not going to do it unless I understand it and I agree with it and I think it'll work, and named it common sense. What I've done with what I've got wrong with me is put myself under death sentence.

And that's one reason that I got to be here tonight. You know, if I believe anything about this, about this deal of AAI believe that the only recovery program is steps one through 12. I was taught and I believe that you can go to 10 meetings a week. You can latch on to this fellowship like a Leech and not do these steps and you might stay dry for a week or 30 years. But if you do that, you'll have absolutely no recovery. You'll have absolutely no healing of what's really wrong, that disordered ego, that

ease inside ourselves, except just precisely as we do these steps. So I think the steps are the full program of recovery. So why can't I lock myself in a big book with my lock myself in the room rather with big book and my hair power and pray and meditate and levitate and whatever and and stay sober and have sane?

Well, one of the best examples I know of is just exactly what I'm talking about. Not one single time in a little over 20 years of sobriety has one of my insane ideas sounded like common sense to anyone of you guys.

I don't care if you just got out of the asylum this morning, you knock it out for me just like that and then do the same thing for you. And that's a big reason I've got to be here, a big reason I've got to have this fellowship. Let these things see the light of day. Another real quick thing about what I was like, and I don't want to drag this out,

but I always wanted to be an alcoholic. That was my ambition. That's what I wanted to grow up to be. But of course, I didn't know that until I've been sober about a year. But looking back on it, it's real simple. It's just real simple. You see, by the time I was four or five,

I looked around at the decent, responsible, mature men in the community where I grew up. And these were decent, responsible men going about their business, doing what they were supposed to do. And here's what I saw. I saw the dullest bunch of old dudes you can imagine men. They were driving those old beat up, paid for pickup trucks mad. These ladies that didn't know I was just a little kid. They were drab looking to me, you know, out in the country wearing those old flower sacks and stuff like that. And more often than not that have a whole house full of

not in those kids and these guys would get up every morning their life need breakfast with that drab looking woman, all those kids and go getting that old beat up paid for pickup truck and go right exactly where somebody had told them to go. And all day long they would do what somebody told them to do. And then what really blew me away was that at the end of the day, they'd come home to the same people that left that morning and then they'd eat supper and go to bed with the chickens, get up next day and do the same food thing. Maybe on Sunday you'd see them load that whole

through in the pickup, go up the road to Julian Baptist Church or down the road to Locust Grove Baptist Church. And then maybe on Sunday afternoon do something like go visit the people for heaven sakes. And, and, and, and see a big part of that ego disorder of man is I have never been able to have but one knee jerk reaction to anything in this world. And what that reaction is, is of course, what is this got to do with me? So I looked at those guys and had the only reaction I could have and it came to me. Were you a little boy? And they're grown men. So maybe when

grow up, some parts of your life will be something like that. Like the scared me to death. It absolutely terrified me to think that anything in my life would be like those decent, responsible men. Now my brother Dan, who lives about 15 miles from here, turns 70 years old this summer, 13 years older than I am, as far as I know, did not 'cause my alcoholism. I don't believe my family 'cause my alcoholism.

I have no idea, and I'm not knocking

psychology or theory. Anything Big Book makes it real clear that I'm supposed to use the doctors and counselors that God put in this world, but I found that I need to use them on the things that are left after I've used these 12 steps on alcoholism. I found out that if I take my alcoholism to those people in those things, it's about like taking a jellyfish to an orthopedic surgeon. It's not their fault. There's just nothing in me they can work on. But, but at any rate, I don't mean to be being snat or knocking anything, but I don't

have a clue what a dysfunctional family is. And the reason I don't is I've never met anybody that claimed that they came from a functional family. So unless I can identify a functional family, I don't know what in the world a dysfunctional family is. But I'm pretty sure I was the most dysfunctional thing in my family. And, and, and by the time I was by the time I was about six or seven years old, I had aggravated my brother Dan until he would occasionally take me over to the wet county little old place in Christian County, Kentucky, called

and let me sit around, drink big oranges, need pickled eggs while he drank beer. And of course I would observe and listen. And the first thing I observed was a lot of those honky tonk heroes had those big flashy cars they couldn't afford. And then I like that. And we'd walk on in and it, it's was burned into my memory forever. How cool those guys look sitting at that bar. Lord, it just knocked my socks off. They they do stuff like gays down into that beard look like they were lost in it, you know, plumbing its depths. And

and I didn't have to take but one look tell those guys were intelligent and deep and romantic and so much more interesting than those old drones out there on that farm. And and then I'd look over the booth and I'd see one of them with his arm draped around a lady that looked a lot more interesting to me than those old gals in those flower sack dresses. And and they didn't care if they were married somebody else and they didn't care for us women were married somebody else. But most magic thing of all, I didn't get to finish the first Big Orange until I had overheard enough conversations in

to know that nearly every one of those guys was only about that far from being rich and famous,

everyone of them had at least one great big deal going there was going to pop and they were flag going to be somebody. And I love big deals, Cherry told me literally first week ever. So we said, Don, what's the matter to use? You've got a disease of big deals, he said. Your whole life has been one big deal right after another. Good big deals and bad big deals all stumbling, falling over one another says no mystery on accounting. You're hopelessly fouled up ego

anything that being a stretch of your imagination you'd have make have anything to do with you. You blow up into a great big deal and said, let me tell you, if you're ever going to get any comfortable sobriety, you're going to have to get to the point where you're willing to act like because you are way too self-centered to ever get to where you'll feel like that. Anything that's got anything to do with you is not a big deal. You're going to have to get the point where you willing to act like that anytime you make a big deal out of anything, including your health, including your kid, including your

including your sex, including your money, that anytime you make a big deal out of anything that is not God and not these 12 steps. What you really making a big deal out of is yourself. And when you do that, you're back in the ego and you're back into alcoholism. And I've found out over the years that I have to keep going right back to that because I don't need big deals in my life. But I sure didn't know it then. I love the big deals. And what happened was that I took a good look at those guys and, and what

I was looking at was self will run rant. I was looking at total lack of consideration for other people. I was looking at total disregard for honesty on any level. And I fell in love with everything about it from the first time I got a good look at those guys. And only real ambition I had in my life was to grow up to be just like them. I wanted to grow up to look like them, sound like them, treat people the way they talked about treating people. Man, I, I could tell they didn't take anything off anybody. All I had to do was,

you know, I wanted to put off the very vibrations that those guys put off. And I got my ambition. I just didn't know what the right name for it was. Now, I got drunk first time when I was either 12 or 13 years old. And that first first night that I got drunk, I got an awful lot of trouble. I puked, blacked out, passed out, woke up next morning, had a terrible hangover and swore all those Baptists were right and I would never do it again.

And I sincerely meant it. And it was nearly a week before I got drunk the second time,

because the magic could happen. I didn't know the magic had happened. All I knew at the time was that for a few minutes on my way to puking and getting in all that trouble, I had passed through a right pleasant neighborhood. But, but, but, but looking back on it, I know it was the magic. When I got enough that stuff in me that that for the first time it did something about that pain and that emptiness down inside me, it made me feel good enough inside that I could stand the way I felt without running. You see, since part of myself centeredness is that the way I feel has always been

most important thing in the world to me. Always has been. And today, thank God I don't have to act on that. In fact, it wasn't until I got sober at 37 that it crossed my mind for the first time that a human being could live their life on any basis other than how they felt being the most important thing in the world. It just literally had never crossed my mind. So for the next 25 years after that first drunk, when I wanted to change the way I

badly enough, it didn't matter what it cost and it didn't matter who it cost. And I believe that that was very much at the heart of and is very much at the heart of my powerlessness over alcohol the next 25 years. And I'm not going to spend much time drunk tonight because I assume most of y'all know how to get there if that's what you want to do. I don't need any instructions on it, but I do need to to let you know that I didn't get here because the stuff give me gives me the hiccups.

For the next 25 years, alcohol dominated everything in my life,

not just alcoholism, the alcohol itself. I'm confident I went to be a drunk, at least a not drinking drunk at least 80% of the nights in that 25 years.

I didn't have people in my life. I had positions because by the time I was in my mid teens, I'd figured out if you stayed around me long enough and close enough, you'd wind up calling time on my drinking. And when I did, I wanted to have your replacement interviewed, whatever your spot in my life was. And I'm not proud of that. I've had to do a lot of amends on account of that, and it's probably a pretty good partial description of a sociopath, but that's the way I live.

School was easy for me and by the time I was 16, I felt like that my drinking had caused so many problems that had to get out of the community where I grew up.

So I took a Greyhound bus a couple 100 miles up to Louisville, KY, and I wound up on the doorstep of the University of Louisville. And they gave me much test and let me in as an early admission student. And then over the next eight years, I drank and worked my way through undergraduate and law school. And I've got very few memories that it's just a blur. In the spring of 1968, I graduated from law school and my daughter, who was my only child for over 20 years, was born and I started practicing law in downtown Louisville and I practiced for 10 years with

degree of material success. And I I have to be real careful about that because, you know, our story is genuinely do change after we've been sober a while. Because for the first several years I was sobering. I could not have been more rigorously honest. I had been fabulously successful during those ten years, you know, if it hadn't been for a little problem with booze and some procrastination here. And they're probably better than F Lee Bailey, you know, just absolutely fantastic. And if I stay sober and live to be

over 30 years, I may have been a total failure. I don't really know. But but the best I do tonight is moderately successful. And I know I had some material things. And that's what I would stick in your nose when you suggested that there was something wrong with somebody to live the way I did. And believe me, there was a lot wrong with the way I live. At least a third of the nights in that 10 years, I didn't make any effort to go to bed like an ordinary person. You know, take off your clothes, get in the bed, pull up the cover. At least a third of the nights I passed out in some situation other than going to bed.

Couldn't keep gas in cars, have a pocket full of money, new cars and pocketful of credit cards, run out of gas two or three times a month. Just absolutely lived in chaos. I began to use a lot of things other than the booze during that 10 years. But for that 10 years, just like they were with Bill Wilson and Doctor Bob, they were sad shows to the booze. They were things to change the effect of the booze, increase the effect, decrease the effect. Help me try to function on the hangovers. But the booze was the big 10. February 10th and 1970,

it was a Friday. I've been practicing law for 10 years. I was still holding on to the material things by my fingertips. I was propelled out of bed that morning by the same terror that I was always propelled out of bed for 25 years. I wasn't really motivated by any healthy ambition. I was motivated by Tara. I was motivated by terror that if I didn't get out of that bed and go try to put on the clothes I thought I was supposed to supposed to put on and show up where I thought I was supposed to show up and try to make the right noise, that

you would see what I was, not have to face what I was. And I knew I couldn't stand that. It'd be like the earth would swallow me up through that emptiness in my own middle. So that morning I was propelled out of bed. But that same terror, there's a 5050 chance I puked when I brushed my teeth because I did that at least half the time for 25 years and did not know there was anything wrong with it. By the way, you know, it's not something you discuss a lot. You didn't stand around cocktail parties and say,

say, sweetie, did you puke when you brush your teeth this morning and you don't talk about that? And, and, and it started happening to me about puberty. So I sort of vaguely associated with reaching puberty, but,

but, but I'm happy to report that I have not puked when I brush my teeth a single time since April of 1981. But, but whether or not I did that particular morning, February 10th of 78, I don't know. But I know I went to the office and I went to court, did what I had to do. And then by noon I'd made it. It was a Friday and I'd made it to a restaurant and lounge there in downtown Louisville where I held court that afternoon. And I held court drinking Scotch and snorting cocaine. And

sometime during the course of the afternoon I decided that I needed to get out of town for a long weekend 'cause I'd been working too hard.

Now, by that time I was remarried to my daughter's Mama. And I'm not going to give you all a blow by blow of my marriage to life because we got to get out of here before midnight and I'm not proud of that. I heard a lot of people have had to do a lot of amends on it. But I'm also not going to fail to laugh at myself for foolish things that I did. Sometime during the course of that afternoon, I decided that I needed some feminine companionship on my long weekend for of R&R, and it was not my daughter's mother I called.

Now, even though I'm not going to give you a blow by blowing that, I do want to make one observation. You know, the big book at one point says that it is hoped that this book will need no further authentication. As far as I'm concerned, my alcoholism doesn't need any further authentication because I want you to think about it. Nobody ever remarries the person they just divorced, except us. Not ever under any circumstances,

if a normie even considers

jumping back in the frying pan, they just got out of there tear the door off the asylum getting into protect themselves. And we do it all time drunk and sober and it seems to work for us. I'm not criticizing it, you know, Oh, Joe and Sue divorce. But that day and they'll probably get back together. You know, it's just perfectly normal thing for us. And that's just an observation. I'm not criticizing it. But at any rate, that was my situation. So the lady I got hold of was knocked my daughter's mother and and I went and picked her up. Had a new

4 bed with a built in CB radio after you young folks they built in CB radios in cars in 78 and I stopped and got 2 bottles of vodka that I thought you had to have for a road trip in 78. Thought you'd get a ticket if you didn't have them. They caught you. And I went and picked my little lady friend up, took a handful of quaaludes and I had I had the reservations up north in French Lick IN up north of Louisville. So I headed to Hopkinsville, KY to see my daddy. Now until I get to the wreck,

absolutely nothing unusual happened that day. It was just a normal day in my life until I get to the wreck was somewhere on the West Kentucky Parkway. I got plant the CB and it got hold of a truck driver and he had a handful of those little old yellow Desoxin speed beans and he wanted some vodka. So we pulled over and I gave him one of my bottles of vodka and he gave me a handful of speed. I made it down to the Crofton next and on the Penny Round Parkway. I drove past there today

and I was doing about 130. Roads were icy so it probably wasn't real, you know sensible

and and I went off the road about 130 and did an awful lot of bad things my body I broke both legs, crushed both knees lost the main artery in one lower leg head do a bypass and upper leg take out a vein grafted in to replace the artery and separating my pelvis and snapped my plumbing into so it didn't have a urinary function for over a year. I had a suprapubic catheter, they call it was just a plastic tube with a flange on it where the borehole in the abdomen pop that sucker into your bladder to carry your urine out to a bag. And I had a half dozen major surgeries. First

that Reg was in the hospital about six months after that after after out of the first year. Now the doctors told me early on that I would never walk again without at least braces on both legs and one or two canes. And that they did not think we could find a surgeon anywhere that would ever attempt to put my plumbing back together so I would ever have a urinary function just purely by the grace of God. And for the record, because believe me, it was not because I followed directions,

that's I said, I've always had a big problem with directions. When you're smarter than you're smarter than the people that make the directions, it's just problematic,

you know? But, but, but, but At any rate, I've been sober a little over 20 years and haven't owned a bracer cane for over 21 years. And about a year after the wreck, the head urology down to Duke University put my plumbing back together and restored my urinary function. But I didn't know that was going to happen. It was 2 1/2 months before they stood me up right on an electric tilt table for the first time. And my reaction to that prognosis is that I would lay in my hospital bed

and I would have my friends bring me in every day, more booze and dope than the doctors were giving me. And I would lay in there and say really intelligent things like, you know, fellas, anybody can quit drinking when the going gets a little tough, But it takes a man to lay in there with it when the bills start coming in. And then I explained to him that a man wasn't supposed to be out there doing the crime if he wasn't prepared to do the time. And they weren't going to hear me whining just because some bills had come in. And that's real insanity, and it's real powerlessness. I didn't go broke right away

because the law firm had built up around this other guy and myself. And in the course of the first year after the wreck, my my daughter's mother finally divorced me and I wound up married to the young lady who'd been with me when I had the wreck. About a year after that wreck, sometime around the first year of 79, I made my first trip to the asylum. And I don't use that word to be cute. Bill Wilson uses that word, and it's good enough for me. By that time, the phenomenon of craving that the book talks about. And all that is, is the physical addiction to ethyl alcohol

had progressed in me to the point where once I started drinking, I'd just pretty well physically lost the ability to stop myself from drinking something had to intervene and get me priced loose from alcohol. And with something did that, it took three or four days for me to be physically able to do something like set up in a chair. Well, they got me in that first place. I still had my tube in my belly and my caster bag, my braces, my crutches. And they, they got me in there and they got me through three or four days and they set me up in the chair and for some reason thought an, A, a meeting would be appropriate.

I had an, a, a meeting where somebody got a Red Hat works and they got step three. We had made a decision turn our willing lives over to the care of God as we understood him. And that insulted my intellect. So I climbed up on my crutches and straightened up my catheter bag and said and, and said as loud as I could, Do you mean to tell me there are people in this world who believe such crap? And then I hobbled on over the telephone, call somebody to come get me away from the religious fanatics before they somehow polluted my pristine intellect.

Well, that was sometime around the first year of 79. I wound up getting sober about 2 1/2 years later in April of 81 and I really don't remember much of that.

But some of the things that I do know why that I went back to the asylum 17 more times in that 2 1/2 years. I became addicted to hard narcotics. I became a needle St. junkie. Real grateful for that because that brought enough pressure on my law partners to kick me out of the law firm that I had founded. And I proved that I was so hard headed that I wasn't going to hit bottom. And you know, bottom used to be such a mystery to me and it just seemed like it was so unfair that we were just look like little dry leaves out here. And if if we were lucky and we got

blown to bottom, then we could get sober and we could live. But if we were unlucky and didn't get blown to bottom, then we just had to die. It's not that way for me today. Bottoms, pretty simple bottoms about 85% of decision. It's a decision for me, not just on booze and dope, on everything in my life because I hit bottoms on a regular basis. Still. It's a decision. Now I have learned