Illinois State Conference

Folks, thanks very much. Tom Ivester, an alcoholic,

helped her up. She's younger than me. I had to get up here by myself.

Great to see everybody. I'm a member of the primary purpose group of A and Southern Pines. Delighted to be here. My sobriety day is Groundhog Day 1957 and

thank you very much. I really appreciate Lorraine being here with 46 years keeping me from being the oldest rat in the barn and that's a good feeling. And so now I feel like a security blanket having somebody here. I am delighted to be here and and congratulations on a good conference. Thanks for the great work that's been done, obviously been done.

This is a counter conference that I like a great deal because it gets right down to the fundamentals of Alcoholics Anonymous, the theme of it, you know, the with the steps, traditions and the, and the concept very much at the heart and soul of of what we're about. And I like that. I like the fact that it's been a conference with a lot of content. A lot of we had workshops or panels on just about every area of service we could. We missed a couple but, but most areas of services had had active panels going.

Had a chance to get into two of them and they were really good. So and it's a good loose, warm bunch of folk. I went out kind of working the crowd a little bit while ago. I just wanted to sort of feel like who was here. Sometimes when you get up in front of one of these crowds, it looks like a bunch of enemies, you know, what have I done to these folks?

So I like to just get out and mix it up a little bit and, and, and sort of feel at home and feel connected and, and, and I surely do it. I'm just happy to be here.

I want to tell you as much as I can on my story. I would tell it all, but I'm afraid you all quit.

I have a kind of a, kind of a system I've developed in, in trying to talk to folks at a A

I like to quit just a few minutes before you do.

You've been talking and you just sort of see the curtain drop. You know, you keep on talking if you want to, but you're done now.

So I kind of look for signs, you know, the first sign of a glaze, man, I say, whoa, let's get out of dodge, You know, so, so I'll be looking for that. I'll quit. I don't care. It's mid stroke. I mean, I'll I'll head out for the airplane. So I, I am just delighted to be here and I've appreciated very much being here and getting a good look at.

I thought Chicago was made-up of an airport and a hotel. That's, that's all I'd ever seen of it. And this time I came in on the Friday and Mike put work over me and turned me over to A, to A, to a

Julia. And so I spent the afternoon Friday on the way to the hotel with a good looking woman in her husband's convertible with his permission tour in Chicago. And what a what a beautiful, beautiful thing. I'd never really taken the time to just kind of take a look at the things that make up his city. And I think I'm going to move up here next week.

Of course wife won't come, but I'm coming anyway I think.

So thanks for all the all of the courtesies and consideration. I met a lot of folks, got to see a bunch of old friends. Now I'm going to talk about drinking whiskey and stuff.

They they, I really want to talk about some stuff. Nice. I'm going to I'm going to hurry. It won't sound like it to you. I'm from North Carolina. But but,

but I'm gonna be going hard as I can go. And it sounded like slow motion, but it ain't.

I'm a guy that I don't know. I'm no expert on anything, certainly no expert on alcoholism, no expert on a A

not any much anything else. If you leave here tonight any smarter than you came in, it won't be my fault. It it'll be thanks to your dinner companions or something. And So what I want to do is just share with you a little bit. I want to just share one thing that I've come to believe in a a that sort of forms the foundation for what

what we do in A and what I like to think about when I'm talking. I like to keep it fresh in my mind what we're dealing with here, and that's alcoholism. Now, alcoholism is a killer illness, absolutely a killer illness. I understand. And I believe that 95% of folks who have alcoholism die of that condition, never effectively knowing that there's a way out.

95% of people in the world die and and usually very, very much ignorant. Most folks die at a fairly early age. At 52

is the average life expectancy of a of a still practice in alcoholic. Interesting to me that when I came in the program all those years ago, the life expectancy was 52 years. And now with all the research and advanced training and development of stuff that we've done over the years, it's 52. We're dealing with a tough, tough illness. It doesn't yield readily. Those of us, I believe, who are fortunate enough to grab this brass ring called recovery

and hang on to it, or among the luckiest people on God's green earth, because it is a tremendously difficult deal.

I'll join you. I'll join you. And it's a, it's, it's a predatory type of an illness. It's, it's an illness that can knock you out in a heartbeat. And it is something about it. You know, I know that when I say I'm an alcoholic, I'm also acknowledging that I have the mind of a chronic alcoholic,

and it isn't going to change from that. That's what it is. And the only defense that I have from the fatal nature of this illness is the practice of spiritual principles that keep my defenses in place. And all I have to do to revisit alcoholism is let up on that and let my spiritual condition deteriorate and what at this point would seem unthinkable to me would become very normal.

So it's a tough feeling. I'll tell you what, just one little quick story about that, about what happens in terms of that mental obsession.

Like our book says, that the mind of a guy like me can and does turn at times irresistibly to the thought of a drink. When I first started hearing that, AAI sounded like some pretty strong language. I didn't know how strong it was till I experienced that first time I ever ran into a real live barking obsession. I'd been sober 3 1/2 years. I was very active in the program, as active as I know how to be,

and I had to make a trip

on a plane. Nothing radically different about that. It was a jet. I'd never been on a jet. They just invented those things, I think. Or they did it while I was drunk. I didn't know a plane could fly without a propeller. Here we went.

I might have been a little excited about that, but not much, you know? Nothing radically different

took off. And you know how it is, man, you, you don't even get leveled off where they start hustling that hooch, you know? And so that day I was sitting near the front of the plane, they got to bug you out and they started pushing it up the aisle, announcing what they had on it. Now, I'd heard that lots of times, but you know what I mean when I say I heard it. I heard it. And all at once, the spiritual giant was absolutely overwhelmed with an obsession to drink.

And I'm not talking about goofy thinking like, well, maybe you're not really an alcoholic. Maybe you overreacted and came here too quickly. I no, didn't enter the mine. No goofy stuff like you're 30,000 feet in there. Who would know? Didn't enter my mind. Or wouldn't a drink be nice? Never entered my mind. I sat there and went from spiritual giant to an absolute shivering wreck of an alcoholic. Knew I was going to drink and fellow Alcoholics, I didn't want to drink.

I didn't want a drink. I knew I was going to. Took a dollar bill out of my pocket, stuck it in my shirt pocket, and I'm sitting there sweating bullets.

And I thought, my God, what do you do? Well, what do you do in a situation like call your sponsor, good luck, catch a meeting, drop by the club. I tell you what I believe you do. You're either prepared or dead meat. One or the other. Because that's alcoholism. That's the dilemma of alcoholism. What I did, I got through it. Tell you that now. But what I did was what I'd heard in the egg. Remember your last drunk? That helped a little, but bad memories aren't enough.

Bad memories won't do it.

And then I remember what folks said. When you're right up against it, you don't know what to do. Pray. When I walked into Alcoholics Anonymous, I didn't even know that our Father. But I'd learned to pray and believe with all my heart that the prayer would work. So I said the simplest, most profound prayer man's ever uttered. I said, God help me.

It was gone as quickly as it came. Now, that wasn't the last one, but that's the dilemma of alcoholism. It requires very little provocation. It just seems to happen sometimes where all I have to do is let that little bit of a defense down and here we go. So I believe that. I believe very much what John said when he finished that countdown, and I'd say it to all of us, We are dealing with a tremendously formidable illness.

But thank God this program is stronger. It's stronger in every possible way.

Thank you very much.

Was that good?

Is that good enough to get a drink of water, you reckon?

Thank you very much, Jack. Thank you. I used to be very bad to drink,

so that's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a condition. And even though it's been a long, long time, I have absolutely no illusions. I've gone to funerals of folks senior to me for whom this illness came knocking again. So I take absolutely nothing for granted. I don't know exactly why I'm an alcoholic. I think the most important thing that I know about alcoholism is the fact that I have it. I have absolutely no question in my mind I have it, and where it came from, I couldn't care less. I've read a lot of stuff, heard a lot of stuff, all kind of

about alcoholism. Some I like better than others. There's one that says that we tend to be alcoholic because we seem to be overly endowed with skills and abilities far beyond average people. That's

a well, that's a nice theory. You know that there's something about the alcoholic mind that the brains just too big for the head. You know what

all kind of theories about that fantastic alcoholic mind I've heard them discuss for years, but only in Alcoholics Anonymous.

Ain't nobody at you. I studying that incredible mind. But that's a good one. Yeah, I kind of like that, that we just sort of creative people. We just burst and won't explode. Be like Vince going and cut off her ear with that creative. Well, I don't know about all that. It's nice. Fact is, I don't know. I know this. I believe that I was a sitting duck for alcoholism.

I was a sitting duck anyway for for for using alcohol more than average Cap is simply I won't go in a whole bunch of causation, but but what I mean when I say as a sitting duck, I think I was a guy that was just set up so that when booze came, I didn't need to learn to use it. It just fit my life as naturally as breathing because that stuff did something for me. I was kind of a miserable kid. I was a guy that was a study in conflict.

I did. What I mean by that

was that what you see wasn't what you got Now studying conflict, I was one guy on the inside, quite another on the outside. On the inside, I was a guy who was fearful, a guy who was anxious, a guy who was extremely isolated. I was not somebody who could readily connect with other people. On the outside. I look like a loud leader type of guy that was always starting something

wasn't that kind of guy. I was a guy who on the outside, when in my good moments look like a winner,

on the inside I was a loser because I had a remarkable ability to screw up stuff on a regular basis, no matter how good. So I was a guy who was a study in contrast and a lot of conflict. And so when I started to drink, the magic happened for me. No mystery about it. That stuff did something important. I loved it. I would have needed examination if I had not continued to drink. Man, that stuff was wonderful. I never had anything worked as well for me as booze. Sure, Beach

and was a lot cheaper and and so I just took to it. I was not an instant alcoholic, not a born alcoholic, not an alcoholic at all. I was a guy who found marvelous freedom and release and relief to the kind of uncomfortable life that I had and and I just fell in love with that way of life, fell in love with booze, Silkworm said we drink essentially because the effect produced by alcohol. Amen. Silk work. That's exactly what I love that feeling. I loved what it did for me

and I loved the places people drank. I just loved, I've been just itching to get to that jab. There's jazz going on somewhere in Chicago right now. And now when I was drinking, I would, I would have been there. That was like a magnet to me. It still is. I still want to get down there because that, that kind of environment, I don't know, it just sort of has a, a seductive quality to me. And, and so I just love that. I love the places. I love the people who drank

as I just fell in that it became a way of life to me. And I was a guy who wanted the endless party I'd go,

never wanted to quit. I was always the last guy to give it up. And I'll let you in on a little secret as as as ugly as it might have looked to an observer, looked awfully good to me. And if I had been able to continue it, no matter how bad it looked, I would be doing it tonight. Now, I don't mean that I'm yearning because I've learned you've listened to jazz sober and hear it, actually hear what's going on. So,

so if I went or go, it'll it'll be, it'll, it'll be, it'll be so, But

that thing just had that kind of a magic appeal. And so that was all it was. And the only reason I stopped drinking is because I couldn't stop drinking. I developed alcoholism. And why? I don't know. I understand that if 10 people take a drink, nine of them going about their business have no appreciable difficulty with it, and they drink if they want to and don't, they don't want to. I don't understand those nine. They don't understand me because I was the odd man.

There was something happened to me that didn't happen to other folk. I don't know why, don't care why, I just know that it did and something happened my 18th year where we refer to it in the program is crossing a line you from, from whatever kind of drinking, whether it's wild celebrational, recreational party drinking, heavy drinking, whatever, Cross a line into uncontrolled drinking or alcoholism. And that's what happened to me when I was 18 year old, had not a clue that it had happened,

had not a clue till I was sober for a good while. Looked back and then I could see that the undeniable fact was that it was as if the curtain closed on Act one, opened on Act two and it was a different deal. And I had no awareness whatsoever. I don't think anything's changed so much. And how much I drank. I drank about as much as I could before I was alcoholic. I've been so drunk I couldn't lay on the floor, man. And

you can't do much better than that, alcoholic or not. I couldn't even blame and and, and, but so nothing happened in in those terms about getting drunk or even getting in moderate trouble.

But the thing that happened was I got so that I could not predict how much I drank or when I would stop. Now, I didn't analyze that at the time, never really seriously thought about that till a sober and a but that clearly was my pattern that I had no clue what would happen. I knew what I intended to happen. I intend to stop by, have a couple of drinks, loosen up shoots and pull going home, do do my chores, and then wind up almost invariably closing the joint

and and winding up in bizarre situations.

I was a guy who had rather chronic difficulties with blackouts. I had a remarkable ability to wake up in strange places, often with strange people, and gets a little testy if you do that on a regular basis that yeah, I got. So I used to wake up, come to, and I wouldn't open my eyes immediately. You know, because a lot of times if you open your eyes too quick, there'll be some yo-yo standing there

asking you tremendously difficult questions like, who are you?

I said, well, I'm not sure what I might have told him. I there. You gotta think about that or or about his bed. What are you doing here? And you don't even know where you are, you know, so I got so I would wake up and not show any evidence of it you and listen for the clues. You if I heard metal clanging, I knew it was OK. I was I've never been put in one of those places by accident. I thought it was, but I never heard anybody say I made a mistake. Man, we shouldn't have put you in here.

They always put me

spot one a mile away.

I don't want to look, but he put a policeman right on the front row.

What that, but that was the kind of stuff that happened. And so I, that's way my life became and, and now, now I'd had absolutely no awareness of what was going on. You know, I, I don't know, I've never heard anybody else describe this very much. But it was certainly true with me that I don't think until I got into Alcoholics Anonymous, I ever made a direct connection between the first drink and what happened.

I've never woke up in jail and said, Jesus, I should not have started drinking. Never. I don't ever. I've never had that consciously had that thought

to me when I would come to in some bizarre circumstance, my response would always be remarkably similar. It it would be something like coming to taking a look at the at the latest wreckage of the past and experience what Bill wrote about. I used to think it was a little a little exaggerated the way he described pitiful and comprehensible demoralization.

Until I saw clearly what my life had become.

And that's exactly what I would experience when I would wake up. And there I am, failed again and on the rocks again. And So what would always follow would be that kind of moral whipping. You've done it again, you've done it again. You're no good, you're worthless, you have no responsibility, you have no discipline, you have no character. And that is honest to God. What I believed, I did not believe it had to do with alcohol doing something different with me than it did with other people. Never remember having that thought

and then would would follow the options that some of you may have experienced some of this. I'm sure you have. It's think of the options you ought to look at that thing. I look at this life that looks like a worthless sack of nothing and then look at what I do first always. But why don't you just end it? Why don't you just end it? Everybody would be better off including you.

Or if not that, why don't you just keep going?

Just disappear, Just ride off into the sunset and don't bother people anymore. Just go away

Or do I suck it up and make up another bunch of lies and go back and try to start again?

Pitiful and comprehensible demoralization. And that was characteristic of, of, of, of my drinking. What alcoholism started, you know, my, my, my, his, my alcoholism started in a, in a, it, it, it was a compact sort of a thing in a way. My serious drinking is 9:00 and I started at 10 minutes till

that was close. You know,

my alcoholism, in order to see it

in a real clear panoramic view, was a short period of time, relatively speaking. I started serious drinking at 16, had what I hope and pray was my last drink eight years later at 24, and in those ensuing 8 years between those two points absolutely destroyed everything ever touched at the end of that period. I couldn't think of 1 human being who wouldn't have been better off if they'd never seen me. Not one.

Could not think of 1 worthy thing that I had done that I could point to with pride. Never had a job for as much as a year in my life except the Army and I didn't want to keep that one.

Every time I'd quit, they'd come get me and put me in jail, you know, And then they got tired of that game and threw me out when they wouldn't let me quit. But they threw me out with an undesirable discharge. 20 year old guy. And and so when I looked at that life, it was, I mean, I was not just somebody who had intermittent difficulties. I was a guy who was life went down the tube in a hurry. Some of us are just that kind. We tend to be basket cases from day one and get worse.

And so that's what I was. And in eight years

I went through a whole bunch of stuff with constant kinds of difficulty, jails, hospitals, psych wards, just stuff. And and then, then I wound up just north of here, just up the lake from here. When I got thrown out of the military, I just kind of migrated up there like a wild goose or something. I just didn't mean to go. It just wound up up there. And so I, I, I hit, I hit my, some of my roughest going in Detroit and, and a beautiful

resort just north of Detroit called Flint. And

if you haven't been, you just owe it to yourself to go one time.

You can't go there. You might try the mountains of Afghanistan. It'd be about.

But that's where I wound up, you know? And yeah, at one point, Flint was named the worst city in the United States in which to live. And, you know, when you don't have much to be proud of, you always look for something. And when I saw that rating, I felt a little sense of pride. You know,

at least I made them put get on the list a little bit. I contributed that. Well, that's just where I wound down And and and so I wound up went up. I started working General Motors till my reputation got in front of me. And if anybody bought a 53 or 454 Buick,

I'm sorry.

I I was not well at the time I had

yeah, but I bombed went around my reputation did get in front of me and I wound up in Flint, MI of all things, unemployed. Darn. You're unemployable. And I I wish I could tell you there was some real, real nice into this story. It isn't I I wound up. I used to say that that the last couple years I live by my wits, but that's a little bit euphemistic for what I what I was doing, which was not exactly it. I live by my lack of character. You can hear him believe that I'm not proud of it, but any stretch of the imagination. But I started to

a way of life that I honestly didn't know existed when I grew up in Maybury down in North Carolina. Yeah, I I did not know people did like that. But it's amazing what happens when you incrementally fall apart, when you just sort of go a notch at a time. Because what happened every time I would hit the wall, crash, start over, I would ratchet down a notch, ratchet down a notch. And what at one time would have been unthinkable became the only normal thing for me. Took me a long time when I got sober

to start thinking in something less than substandard terms. Took me a long time to to relate to 1st class and and so but that that's how I wound up. You know, I did that thing of yesterday wasn't with I I live by using people taking advantage of folks hustling, bumming in in Flint. If you've ever been there, it's not really criminal activity. It's the food chain to do things that some folks call criminal. It's a case of either

roll or be rolled, one or the other. Whoever's friskiest on a given day is the one that drinks. And so sometimes I was friskied, sometimes I was the frisky. But

but that's just the way it worked. I wasn't reared to do that. I'm not proud of that. I'm not proud of conniving and hustling and using people. I'm not proud of selling my blood 5 bucks a throat. But that's what guys like me did I? I never want to forget that period of my life when I wandered the face of this earth with no place I could comfortably call home.

Don't forget that somebody mentioned today about the loneliness of this condition. God, is that ever true? That has little to do with the nearness or distance of other people. It isn't about other people. It's about an extreme isolation and inability to connect with the world around living in that great pit of despair and done. And in my early 20s, look at myself and marijuana gang, at what? I saw it when the only thing I could think was jeez you'd be better off if it

just done. Those are thrilling thoughts for a gowned way to the party, but as what it was and I never want to forget that grim reality and and it would be nice

if I could tell you that one fine day I had enough and call for help. Somebody threw a rope, but it didn't work that way. Good. Many of you in here well aware that mine was to be one of those stories that

that contain what I know that practically every person in this world is in this room for sure has feared doing. I never met many Alcoholics, particularly those who've who've had blackouts or or even blackouts or not, who hasn't lived in fear of doing something that couldn't be undone to somebody else. Most Alcoholics don't want to hurt folk. It's hard to tell that, but deep down most Alcoholics pretty decent folk and don't want to hurt people Then I was no different. I knew I was capable of anything, but

I was not a predator with birds. I wasn't somebody want to hurt folk. And I always had a fear that I would do something horrible that couldn't be undone. And like everybody else, I was the kind of guy that would wake up and panic and go look outside if I had a car to see if it was there, to see if it's in one piece or if there's blood in it, and then breathe a sigh of relief and go do it again. And that was my life. I was just routine and one morning woke up

in jail. No novelty there. I mean, that was a routine deal. As I woke up, the jailer came by

and I knew him quite well and I said hey, when can I get out? He would normally say 10:00 that day. He said, I hope never.

And I had not a clue what he was talking about. And then

not him, but some of the other guys in there told me the night before, I've been driving somebody's car down the Main Street of the city and had run down and killed two people in a, in a blackout, blind drunk right right down the Main Street. And

absolutely no awareness of that then now ever. But no doubt that that's what happened. You know, with a guy like me, you know me, me driving down or even walking down the street

was a dangerous act because it was like firing a loaded weapon down the street. It was just a matter of whether it hit or not. And so it when that, when I learned that, you know, my response was, you heard Bo describe the other side of that. The

my response was, it's a strange thing about the mind. It won't take in what it can't handle. That explains a lot of behavior to me. It won't take it in if it can't handle it. And my response was just to push that away and then gradually accept the truth. The only time I've ever been in jail, didn't try to get out.

And then somebody contacted one of the policemen, I think learned that I had family in North Carolina. I don't know how they didn't ask me. I wouldn't have told them, I don't think. I didn't want to get out of jail.

That's the only time I'd ever felt that way. I was, I was afraid to go. I wasn't afraid to drink. I just was afraid to face anybody. I couldn't face anybody. Oh, deeply ashamed to be breathing when two fine young folks no no longer were because of me. And so they, somebody learned about the family. They contacted him, told him how to get up there in a lot of trouble. And my folks had a mother and sister in North Carolina, and they came and,

and God, I didn't know how to tell him. I didn't want to get out. And so they got an attorney. I was charged with manslaughter. They got me released on bond and I knew I would never drink again. Like, my God, how could you? How could you after something like that? Anybody will tell you if it gets bad enough, you won't drink. Well, don't you believe that? If you're talking about alcoholism, the more logical question is how would you not drink after something like that?

I didn't have a clue. I just know that a day and a half later I got I walked the streets and was doing whatever I could try to do to, to just,

I don't know, just wondering. And then about the middle of the day, I started drink from July to November of 56. I drank truly like nobody I've ever seen. And it was there was no, no mystery about what I was doing. I was doing what they called psycho. What do you call it is pathological drinking? You know, just just I was trying to drink myself death and anybody could have seen that. And

and then the 19th of November of 56 was actually the date of my last drink. And

I hope it was my last drink. I pray that it was my last drink. It has been so far. I finished a bottle of gin, had about that much and a bottle of gin and I finished it, went down to court. I knew that I wouldn't be back and had no absolutely no illusions about it. Yeah. And and when I went into court, my attorney, I had never heard the plea. I'd always been in the drunk line and just plead guilty to whatever they said, you know it. And my attorney said,

stand, there's a plea called stand mute,

thought, my God, what an eloquent plea. Stand mute. Because what else could you say? I'm not even witness. Somebody had to tell me what I'd done and it was obvious that I had and and so, and so that was a plea I entered. I was found guilty, of course, and sent us to to 5 to 15 years in the Michigan State Penitentiary. Now I knew what that meant. I, I, I was, as you gather, I wasn't a hothouse flower, but but I was, I had never done any serious. You know, I'd always been

tanks or county jails or pea farms or stockades in the military, something like that. It all just sort of lightweight 30 day sentences or whatever. And that this I knew was a different ball game. I'd been on the street with a lot of guys that were in and out of that joint and I knew if there were guys like that in there, it was no place to be. And, and so when they passed that sentence, I think it was really telling to me that I had an instinctive reaction of fear. I guess anybody would.

But at the same time, the most real sense of relief I'd ever known, because I knew it was over. It was over. And I'm not talking about optimism or hope or there'll be a new day. I'm talking about it's over, it's done. And now next day I walked into, I was LED into that prison on a chain with five other guys and a new absolutely without any question. I never come back out. I knew that and I'm absolutely convinced

had it not been

for the program that you and I celebrate tonight, I would not have walked back out if I'd have gone in there and tried to live in that jungle with my street behavior that eat me alive. I don't have any illusions about that. And and so I walked into that place and didn't care. I was absolutely resigned to that fate and had absolutely no concern about walking out. I did. All I wanted to do was disappear.

I snapped back into isolation as severely as I've ever known

and I didn't engage in conversation with people. I sat like a guy catatonic state almost. I just never engaged in any kind of dialogue with people. I just sit and and read anything to keep from thinking and one day amazing to me about how the turning point comes that starts to make. I've had many turning points. Most of them have turned the wrong way, but I've had a lot of them in shaping the new life that that have been monumentally important. And while and they might have seemed

at the time like the thing that started the ball rolling in a new direction for me, although I had no clue about that. But one day a guy called me out for an interview that worked there, a fellow, that

fellow named Martin, and he called me out and he did a little, I know now it was a standard social work interview with a lot of crazy questions. And I'm sure I gave him a lot of alcoholic answers and probably lied like a dog. But it's a funny thing about that. They, I've never had but one diagnosis in my life.

It sounded different. Sometimes folks say you were drunk or you're no good or you're a bummer, you're alcoholic or whatever. I'd heard that all in my life. And, and from there people would say like, why don't you quit drinking, you know, or something like that. I never could think of a good reason to quit drinking. I mean, that drunk was bad enough. Sober was unbearable. I never saw anybody that didn't drink, that didn't look like they didn't drink. They just look miserable, look like they're just in pain or something. And I never had any burning desire to be sober.

Well, this guy made the same diagnosis. Said, man, you've had a lot of trouble with booze. Then he said something I'd never heard before. He said we have an AA group here. I don't know if he said Alcoholics Anonymous or not, but it but he said we have an A group here. I think you ought to go. And they were just conversational like that. It wasn't putting a noose on me and dragging me and capturing me or anything like we do so much often now just for to say you're hungry, go over there. They got groceries, you know, and that's bad. That's about what he said. If you got a drink, Rob, they fix

over there. And then I got a little note from him a few days later about that big. He didn't want to waste paper. He got a little piece of paper about that big. Says you can start your first meeting February 2nd on 57th. And now I didn't want to join our colleagues now because I'm a 24 year old guy. I mean, how's the guy going to be an alcoholic AT24I? Jeez. I knew some, but none of them like me. I mean, I was a guy with enormous potential.

I had one guy tell me that one time and I never forgot it.

I had 1000 killed me. I was about to vote worthless sucker they'd ever seen, but I remember that one who said boy, you really got something and that's what I remembered and and so I didn't want to join. The only reason I believe the only reason that I even went was that I don't know if you've ever been to this point or not, but I was so beaten, so absolutely beaten that I had no fight. I just had no fight and I think I just wanted and it told me to Russian army out of probably going over there just about

is willingly. And so I was just there looked like I was on Thorazine. I just kind of shuffled along, you know, and and I walked walked in and had my name on my shirt. These guys said Ivester. I said, yeah, I said sit down and I sat down and listened to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And at another huge turning point. Thank God for that first meeting that I walked into. Thank God it was into a group that was well ordered and purposeful and structured. And, and even though it was in a maximum custody penitentiary, it was just finding a, a group as I've ever attended in my life,

including my Home group right now. And thank God for that. Thank God it wasn't some little gaggle of folks sitting around talking about nothing. It was really a well ordered purpose. What kind of a thing? And I didn't feel that that day, man. I felt like I was on a foreign land. I sat down in there, 300 people and, and felt as as out of place as any place ever been in my life. Ran much like this. Read a lot of stuff. We didn't count anything. They did count us,

but

they didn't count how long we had we

and they got through it all the reading and stuff, introduced the speaker and a guy.

Hope Chicago folk aren't offended. But this guy, it wasn't his name, but the only name he ever went by was Shot CHI And he was a guy marvelous man. He, he got nicknamed shy because he loved this city. And before he got sober now he'd he'd been in that prison one time and been out for a long time. And during his criminal career, he used to come to the Windy City and do a lot of crime down here. He loved to rob stuff in Chicago.

And so he was named Shy. That was the only name anybody ever, ever called him. And he spoke that day and he told a story. And I swear to God, I'd heard drunks tell stories,

but not their own.

I was sitting there shocked out of what on earth would a guy come in here, look nice from far back in the room? But if you got close, he didn't look too good. He, he was a head on that blue preaching suit and he was up there just took that message and and I thought, my God, he was like a geek in a circus or something. It just, I couldn't imagine why he was doing that. It just made no sense

talking to 300 hairy legged convicts about stuff like that. I wouldn't have told nobody

and now I didn't identify with him. He was as different from me as anybody ever met.

I came to love him better than Peter loved the Lord. He became my first real sponsor. And but it surely wasn't that day. I'll guarantee you that I sat there dumbfounded at the whole deal. And but I'll always be grateful for that guy because he he was one of those people that was absolutely endowed or practiced or whatever.

With the magic of enthusiasm, he was the most enthusiastic guy you have ever seen in your life. When he would tell his story, he was so excited. You'd get excited with him

and he was just one of those people that made you feel good to be around. And there's absolutely now there was a mystery in my mind the next week when I came back, but there isn't today. The one thing that brought me back to that next meeting was the spirit of that guy. Because I was like, it was like a magnet almost. AI was, I was sort of drawn in to that thing. Couldn't have told anybody why I was there. Nobody asked. I just walked in, sat down

and for several months,

I don't think I've ever felt more out of place anywhere in my in my life than I did in alcoholic tsunami. You're 24 years old, Lorraine can tell you we're not coming off the production line very readily. Back in, in those days and a 24 year old sitting, I was the youngest guy in the whole joint and certainly the whole youngest one. And that most of the guys in that group that drunk more years than I was years old. And I, I felt like a pure wimp there compared to some of those folks. And, and I, I didn't believe, I truly did not believe I was alcoholic. I said I was