Jay P. from Myrtle Beach, SC at Northern Illinois Area Spring Conference

My name is Jay Plumbach, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Jay. Hi, everyone. If I had to get that damn thing out of my face, everybody here is normal size. Yeah.

I was sitting next to Bob over there and, I asked him. I said, now, I said, just tell me, you're not her husband. He didn't tell me what he told you. He said, do you see any scars? He said, feel the back of my I'm not a doubting Thomas.

I took his word. I wanna thank you for inviting me here. Mike called me a while ago and and, told me that on behalf of the committee, he'd like to know if I'd come up here and and share share with you this weekend. And I told him I'd be honored to when I am. I wanna thank Mike and the rest of the committee for making me feel so welcome.

It's just been absolutely fantastic, just fantastic. I know the rest of the weekend is gonna be as good as this part has been as soon as this part is over, And I didn't plan on being here either. You know, hell, I can't remember, you know, ever sitting down and saying, you know, I can't wait until I get into my fifties and on a Saturday night get to Northern Illinois and tell them about me. Wasn't my plan. I had other plans.

I I I was born to an upper middle class family in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio and a nice suburb. And, I don't talk much like I was from Cleveland, but that's where I was from. But when I was growing up, I had a lot of other things I wanted to be. Growing up and being a wino wasn't one of them. I wanted to be a policeman one time.

I thought that'd be good. You know? I wanted to be a lawyer one time. I'd read a book I remember in school about Clarence Darrow. God, that impressed me, you know, reading about it.

He was good. He was flamboyant, and and he made a lot of money. And I said, I wanna be like that. I had all these things I wanted to be. I never did say I wanna be a drunk, but I didn't know that I wasn't gonna be able to be any of those things because I wasn't willing to pay the price.

In order to attain any of those other dreams there was a price to be paid. I'd have to go to school and I'd have to learn things and do things and I wasn't willing to pay that price. And yet if you'd have told me the price that I was gonna pay to gain admission to Alcoholics Anonymous, I'd have said you're crazy. If you'd have told me I was gonna sacrifice a family and ruin a career, destroy my health, and almost lose lose my life to get here, I'd have said you're nuts, I'll never do that. And yet I did just that just to get here.

I had some things wrong with me as far back as I can remember that I didn't think were wrong. They were just a part of me. You know, I accept them to just be everybody had them, I thought. I had a feeling of anger as far back. I didn't know I had this now.

I just had it. It was there. I didn't uncover any anger in me until I was sober about a year and a half. I was sober and Alcoholics Anonymous year and a half doing everything they told me to do. I was sort of a poster child of AA, you might say.

Well, I made coffee and cleaned ashtrays and and, you know, I'd talk if they asked me. And I went to all the meetings and made good comments. The way I made them is I'd go to a lot of meetings, and I'd hear you talk about step 4. And I'd go over there next night and talk about step 4. And, I mean, I and I'd do it real well.

You know? So and I was doing everything. I was everything in my home group, the Nuestra Esperanza group that first year and a half that they'd let me be. I never was treasurer. I still ain't been my sobriety date is March 8, 1974, and through god's grace, I have not had a drink from that date of this, and I still ain't been treasurer.

I don't know why. Maybe my group will change their mind. Well, now they're broke. Maybe another group. But but I was doing everything in a a except working the steps.

Now that had sort of sorted I hadn't done that, but I I was in a meeting one night and after the meeting at Northwest Browns, a guy put his arm around my shoulder. And he told me that he loved me, and he told me that I was a phony and I was about to get drunk, and I hated him. But I knew inside of me that he was telling the truth. And he carried me home with him that night, set me down on a stoop of his trailer, and he talked to me about Alcoholics Anonymous. He explained to me that guys like me couldn't get by just not drinking.

I was gonna have to do more or I'd be drunk. Vince last night talked about desperation, and I understood desperation because at that point, a year and a half sober, I was completely desperate. John talked to me about unmanageability in my life. You know, I had accepted prior to that that I was powerless over alcohol but that wasn't enough. There was unmanageability in my life.

Sober a year and a half, he pointed out I was going bankrupt. He pointed out to me that a year and a half sober, my wife and I weren't getting along at all. My kids hated me. And as he pointed out these areas of my life and I looked at them and talked about them, I knew that my life was unmanageable. And at that point, I accepted step 1, and we boiled it down to 2 words that I can't.

And he talked to me about step 2, and I accepted that god could. God could restore me to sanity. I just came to believe that and I and I accepted that. And based on those two facts, we got on our knees and we prayed the prayer in the book, step 3. You know, I got a pretty good mind.

I know that now and I've been able to memorize a lot of things and I've never memorized that prayer. And yet I say it on a daily basis today. I don't take step 3 on a daily basis, but I reaffirm that decision. I have that prayer written out, and I'll read it every morning. We read it that night, and and I remember getting off our knees.

John had a tablet all ready for me, a yellow legal tablet, and he had it in 4 columns. He had it drawn out. He said at the top of the first column, he said I want you to write the word I resent. And I said John, I don't resent anybody. He said, what do you put down I hate?

Well, hell, I can do that. I hated everybody. I didn't know anybody I didn't hate including him. Now speaker Ajit said this afternoon, put yourself at the top of the list. Hell, that ain't what John told me.

He said to put another guy at the top of the list. He told me he said put down the name Siraj. Now that don't mean nothing to you, but it meant something to me. It was a guy living in my house. He was he was an Indian.

Now he wasn't from India like Bombay where Ajit's from. He was from Sri Lanka, which is an island off the coast of India, and he was living in my house. He was sleeping in a bed in my house, my son's bed. My son was sleeping on the floor, and I hated him. He was my business partner.

I brought him over here. I it was a condition of them being partners my house And then John said put down why you hate him. And I put down why I hated him. He's sleeping in my son's bed. I put down he's eating raw meat, and we're eating beans.

I put down, hey, he got my money. I had some money, and I was broke, and I hated him for it. And as I put down the reasons that I hated him because he wore a dress. Now they didn't call it a dress. They called it a sari, but it's a dress.

And as I put down why I hated them, the hate was there on paper where I could see it. And I went back through my my whole life starting from that point backwards, and I put down who I hated and why I hated them. And I found that I hated my put down that I hate my parents, I couldn't have done it. But I did it doing it the way it was, with Don that I hate my parents, I couldn't have done it. But I did it doing it the way it was in the book, and I found that there was anger in my life as far back as I could remember and yet I had accepted it.

Had accepted. I was a liar as far back as I can remember. Now I did not consider myself a liar, I just lied. It was a way of life with me. You know, Angelique was right last night.

Boy, she made a good talk. You know? But, when she talked about alcohol, she tried to apologize that some of us lie. Hell, I like lying. You know?

I mean, today, I I sort of lean that way once in a while. You know, if you ask me on the phone how much I weigh, I'm liable to say 165. But, you know, lying, I could be whatever you wanted me to be. I thought it was a gift from God, really. If you wanted me to be smart, I tell you how smart.

If you wanted me to be a thief, I could tell you what a good whatever you wanted, I could use my mouth and I told a lie. And the difference between my lies and the lies that other people told were that I believed them. And when when you didn't believe them when I told them to you, I'd get mad. So I was a liar as far back as I can remember. I was also a thief as far back as I can remember, and I didn't consider myself a thief.

I guess I figured I was a short fat Robin Hood or something. I might take something from Vince, and I turn around and give it to Mike. Now I didn't take it for me. I took it, just took it. And I didn't consider the fact that he'd earned money and bought this thing, whatever it was.

What I figured was if I give it to Mike, he'd want me to be around. See? Now if I was talking to one of them counselors or something, they'd tell me that I was trying to buy someone's love. But, hell, I wasn't doing that. I was just doing that, and nobody taught me that.

See, a lot of times people gotta learn this. I didn't have to learn it. It just came natural, and I think that's a part of alcoholism. I didn't feel like I fit in. I didn't feel like I was a a part of that family that I was born to.

You know, I never remember my mom or dad ever hugging me or kissing me or telling me that they loved me, yet I'm sure they must have. I look at my sisters. I have a sister a year older, 1 a year younger, 1 3 years 4 years younger than that. I have a kid brother that was born when I was 18 years old, and I have seen my my brother and sisters given physical and emotional love for my mom and dad throughout their lives. And I'm sure because of that that they did the same things for me, and yet there was something in me that kept me from ever feeling It has kept me from ever remembering it, and I think that's a part of my alcoholism.

And yet those things, the lying and the stealing and the not getting, not feeling like I was a part of, all that stuff going on did not make me an alcoholic. That just made me a screwed up kid. You know? I remember and I didn't want it to be that way. I wanted to feel comfortable.

I could look around and everybody else got along and felt good, and and that's how I wanted to be. I remember, you know, at about 8 well, I remember going to the 1st grade. It seems like we got a lot of people went to parochial schools. I went to a parochial school and I remember the 1st grade I had a nun. Her name was Sister Lucy.

God, I'll never forget her. She's old. I mean, real old. And she is ugly. And and I'm she was dressed in early s and m.

She had black and white, and she had leather and chains hanging down. She clanked when she walked. And I scared her. You know, you're supposed to be, and I was. And I remember in the 1st grade, she called my parents, told me to have my parents come in halfway through the school year.

And I had them come in. And I didn't know what I'd done, but I knew I'd done something because I always knew there was something wrong when they wanted to see somebody. And my parents went in to see her one afternoon like she like they were supposed to, and and I'm arrested out the door eavesdropping. I always was nosy, you know. And and she told my parents that it appeared as though I was a gift a gifted child and that I'd be able to go anywhere and do anything I wanted if I applied myself.

And when I heard that, heard her telling them that, my education stopped. I couldn't learn another damn thing. I'm defiled. That's smart. How could I learn anything?

There was a lot of dummies out there teaching. So I started getting in trouble. By the 2nd grade, I'm being paraded in front of the class and being called the class clown. I remember and and I kept doing things to get attention. I didn't know what it was, and I didn't want it to be that way.

I wanted to be like the other kids in school. I remember in about the 3rd I really wanted to be like Roger. I had a kid lived up the street from me. He was golden haired, rosy cheeked kid. I his name was Roger.

God, if I could just be like Roger, everything would be alright. Just let me be like him. You know, Roger was also the kid you caught after school and beat the hell out of because the parents would always say, why can't you be like Roger? And nobody wants, you know, someone held up like that. Well, it was going to be my life.

If I could just be like someone else, I'd be all right. I got to AA. It started to be that way. I'd see people and say, if I could just be like this one, if I could just be like that one, it'd be alright. You know, one of the one of the greatest freedoms or tools that you gave me as a result of the tools is the fact that I no longer have to be just like anybody.

When I said I'm Jay Plumbach and I'm an alcoholic, I said absolutely all there is to know about me that I need to know. I know who I am and what I am and I am satisfied with that. I'm not comfortable with all the things that are still wrong with me, but there are tools that you've given me that can change those with god's help. But I can be me today, and what a great freedom that is. Great freedom.

But I was in school and I wasn't getting along, and I didn't want it to be that way. I wanted I wanted to like I said, I just I knew things could be better. So I and the way I behaved, stealing and lying and not getting along, I started going in front of juvenile referees. First time I went in front of 1, they sent me back home. And I was running away from home and I wound up in front of another one and they sent me off to an orphanage.

Now it's crazy. I got parents. Why would I go to an orphanage? But that's where they sent me. And and there were other guys in there, and and they weren't orphans either.

They were just like me. And I found out later what I was. They labeled me incorrigible. Now I guess that was a politically correct name for it. I don't know.

What I really was was a punk. Just a juvenile delinquent punk, and that's where they put punks into places like that to try and straighten them out. And they wanted me to get straightened out, and I didn't know it. I thought it was a punishment deal. And it wasn't that.

And I stayed there for a while and got back out and kept behaving the way I behaved and got locked up again. And and I stayed locked up off and on until I was 17 and a half years old, in a variety of different reformatories and places like that. The last school I went to, 9th grade, I was thrown out of a school. It was a parochial school I'd got to because of of apparent abilities, and they threw me out because I wouldn't go by the rules. I was back in another reformatory.

And I remember at 13 and a half years old, a miracle came into my life. Something that was gonna change the whole direction of my life. You know, I decided to get a drink. I was on the street for a short period of time and I decided to drink. And in Ohio, you had to be 21 years old to drink.

Hell, I didn't even look 13, so I stole an eyebrow pencil. I gave myself a beard and a mustache. I remember doing it, but I darned if I can remember what it looked like. You know? I I know it didn't look like text, you know, but it it was the best I could do with the tools I had.

Yeah. Here, I'm a 13 year old kid with 10,000 blackheads dotted on my chin. In fact, I have and I liberated some money, stole some money for my mother's purse. Hell, that's where I always gotta steal it. I stole it from her purse, and I went down on a skid row to get something to drink.

And I don't know where I'd learned to go out on skid row to drink. You know, maybe the places I've been. I don't know. And I'm sure that I had had alcohol I had had alcohol in me prior to that. The reason I say I'm sure of it is because of the environment in which I lived.

My daddy was a drinker. And I mean my dad drank all the time. He was a news analyst, news commentator, and analyst for for a major radio station in the Midwest with a coast to coast hookup, and he'd go to work early in the morning. He had a drink in his hand when he left the house. When he come back in the house in the afternoon, he had a drink in his hand.

He drank and all mighty. All he did was drink, and yet I never saw him drunk. I never saw him slur his words. He just always drank. My mother drank regularly, 2 or 3 drinks every night to relax, she'd say.

Never saw her out of the way or drunk. The family got together 3 or 4 times a year for get togethers, 4th July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, that kind of stuff. And they'd have kegs of wine and beer and mixed drinks. And whenever the adults drank, the kids drank. And we didn't have to steal it.

They gave it to us. It was just the way they lived. Not much. We got a little bit of whatever the grown ups had. So I'm sure I had alcohol in me many times prior to a prior to my 13th year, and yet I remember nothing about it.

I guess, again, if I was talking to one of them counselors or something, they'd tell me that was my social drinking. And hell, they'd be right. Yeah. We heard some talk about social drinking this weekend. Hell, that was social drinking.

Social drinking's when it don't mean nothing or do nothing. If you call my wife up, she's a professional social drinker. I felt sorry for her for a long time. But if you ask her, say, Von, when was the last time you had a drink? She couldn't tell you.

If you ask her what did it taste like, she wouldn't remember. She wouldn't it did nothing to her or for her, so it meant nothing. And that's what alcohol was to me till age 13. But at 13, I made this decision to drink. And I remember we went to enough bars down there, enough joints down on the lower end of 25th Street, which is a skid row in Cleveland, and finally, we got what we wanted.

We got 2 bottles of mixed screwdrivers and 2 bottles of Thunderbird wine. You know? And I can remember you know, hell, I don't know why we ordered that. I can only guess. Thunderbird's always been appealing to me.

You know, you see what used to have these billboards with the birds soaring through. It just looked free and wild. Oh, god. It looked good. And the stuff that went along with it, you know, what's the word?

Thunderbird. You try and do that with Morgan David and you get no response at all. Know, so it had promise to it, you know, and screwdrivers, I guess, just could have sounded sexy. I don't know. But we got that stuff and they put it in the sack.

We went out behind the bar and started to drink. And I don't know which one we started with, don't know what it tasted like. But I know what happened shortly after we started drinking, whatever we started with. For the first time in my life, everything came together, and I was alright. For the first time in my life, it wasn't as though I didn't fit in.

I became enough, and I didn't even know that it happened. It's only in retrospect as I look back at it that I realize that it had to have been the most fantastic feeling a guy like me could have ever felt because I pursued the recapturing of it at every opportunity for the next 17 and a half years, and I never got it back quite the way it was that night. And I didn't even know what happened. I woke up the next morning in a way that I was gonna wake up in over and over again until I got to you people. I woke up in a mess and it was mine.

I woke up with a new fear about me. I say a new fear about me because I've been afraid all my life. I was always afraid. I was afraid of getting caught. I was afraid of not being able to love.

I was afraid of not being loved. I was afraid of getting out or I was afraid of going back in. I was afraid of heights. I was afraid of hurting. I was afraid of being hurt.

I had all fears. I had a new fear that night. I didn't uncover that until I was taking that inventory that I started telling you about a little while ago. You know, when I had them people on the list, let me get through that resentment thing first. I had that guy on that list, that guy Saraj, you know, and I told you what he had done to me or what I perceived he had done to me.

And I went through that list and had everybody on there and what they had done. And then John had me go back through the list to the next column and see how it affected me. I'll tell you how that guy affected me. It affected my security because I was going bankrupt. It affected my self esteem because I know I wasn't doing my job as a husband and a father.

It affected my sex life because she'd moved out of the bedroom. That'll affect your sex life. It affected every area of my life and underneath it all was fear. And I went through that list and put what everybody else on it same way, every other resentment. And then John had me go back to the list.

He said, now we're gonna look at it from a different angle. We're gonna put out of our minds the wrongs that we think others have done, and we're gonna see where we were wrong. And I looked at that first instance and I saw where I was wrong. I pulled a guy out of his country many thousands of miles away from from where he was born, where his family was. We've broken a lot of laws in Sri Lanka.

We've broken laws to the extent where he would never be able to return home. If he went back, he'd go to prison. And we did that because I was greedy, because we were importing and not drugs or anything. We were importing semiprecious stones, and we broke just so many laws over there coming out that there was no way he'd go back. And I didn't care about that.

I cared about the fact that I thought I'd become very, very rich doing that. I told you they got my money, and I realized as I looked at that what my part in that was. I tried to get their money. I thought they were real wealthy, and I'd be able to steal our money, and it'd be alright. It was business practices, the way I'd looked at it.

As I looked at the exact nature of the wrongs I had done to him and wrote them down on paper, an amazing thing happened. My hatred for him left. I was no longer mad at him for what I thought he had done because I saw what I had done. And as I saw what I had done, I not only was relieved of the hatred, but I also had a game plan for what I was gonna have to do to try and make things right, what I was gonna have to do. And then I went through that list and, you know, I'm here to tell you, I don't know about anybody else and what happens when they take an inventory.

But in my inventory, as I went through that 4th column, there was not a single resentment on there where I was not able to find where I was wrong. In every one of them, I was able to find where I was wrong in some way. And as I did, it relieved me of the anger and the hatred that was coupled with it. We got through with that part, we went on to fear. And John had me write my fears down and I listed them much like I told you.

You know, all the things I was afraid of. I was afraid of her leaving. Hell, I was afraid of her not leaving. You know? They were both real.

It depended what time of day it was. But when I got them all down on paper, John said, let's get on our knees and ask god to remove them. And we got on our knees, and I prayed. I just said, god, please take them. I can't handle them.

And I told John, I'm still afraid. And he said, what are you afraid of? And I said, I don't know. I just feel afraid. And he opened up the book, Alcoholics Anonymous, to Bill's story where Bill talked about that fear of impending calamity.

And John put it in words that weren't quite so fancy. John says, the fear that something bad is gonna happen and you can't stop it. And hell, I knew that fear. That was that fear that when the doorbell rang, I wouldn't answer it. When the envelope came in the mail and there was no return address, I was afraid to open it.

When the phone rang, I didn't wanna answer it. I knew that fear and I saw a word going back through my life. Bill says again, he he talks about it being an evil and corroding threat. It ought to be classed with stealing. Our lives were shot through with it.

Hell, I saw where my life was shot through with it. I saw where it threaded back into my life. And as my alcoholism progressed, that fear progressed until by the time I got to you people, it overwhelmed me entirely. The only time that I escaped from it at the end was when I was blacked out or passed out. We got through with fear.

Before I move on, I'll tell you there was a third part of that inventory and we addressed that also, and that was sex. And we did exactly what the book said to do. I did the writing and then I had to write further what my conduct was going to be. Not what you wanted me to be, but what I thought my God wanted me to be. And I asked him for help in living towards that.

You know, those standards once sent can always set can always be improved on. If I wanna live a program of spiritual action and try and improve, I have to improve. See? Anyhow, there was that fear that morning, you know, when I woke up on that first drunk and there was a third thing wrong. And that was the fact that I didn't know what happened the night before after I started to drink.

You know, if I was talking to one of you, you'd probably have told me that I blacked out. But hell, I didn't think I blacked out. I just didn't remember. I didn't know that blacking out and not remembering were the same thing. And I know there's a lot of people that are they say they're afraid of blackouts.

You know, I was never afraid of them. Hell, I accepted them. That not remembering, I thought, went with drinking. And I didn't tell nobody about it either. I don't ever remember saying I don't remember last night or I don't remember last week or last month.

I never did tell anybody about them. I just accepted it and figured when you drank, you didn't remember and it was okay. Happened to everybody. And it was a funny thing the way my mind worked is my alcoholism progressed. You see, blackouts didn't happen every time I drank, but they happened more and more frequently as time went on.

And as they went on, I did not, what I would I would think inside of me that I wasn't responsible for what happened if I didn't remember it. Now I know I'm responsible. I know today that I am, but there was sort of some kind of mechanism going on in my brain that said if you don't remember, you ain't responsible. I remember one time I've done some stuff I really I was so afraid of being caught, and I said, well, if they catch me, I just say I was drinking and I don't remember. As if that was a logical way to get out of it.

And I was only in my my 13th year, And if you'd have told me that I had these symptoms of alcoholism, I'd have said you're crazy. How could I be an alcoholic? I haven't even gotten my first zit yet for god's sakes. I never knew what an alcoholic was. I have to go through a large part of my life wondering what an alcoholic was.

I could spot them. It was never me. You know? I could look around. I'm pretty good at it today.

I can spot him good. You know? When I saw Vince, there was not a doubt in my mind. I knew. I mean, hell, it was obvious.

You know? Mike Mike met me at the airport. He didn't have to have a sign. He was just standing there. That's an alcoholic.

You know? And that was sort of the way my life went. You know, I could spot them, but it was never me. I mean, I could be around people. And I you know, I remember one time my wife and I, we were with a guy named Eddie.

And Eddie was drinking, and I was drinking, and we're both drunk. And then he started throwing up, and blood started coming out. And I remember looking at my wife and said, boy, he's in bad shape. She said, he sure is. He ought to quit drinking.

I said, you're right. I believe he's alcoholic. See, I can spot him. About 6 months later, she come in the bathroom and I was throwing up blood in the toilet. And she said, you look awful bad.

She said, I believe you're alcohol. I said, no. It didn't that at all. So last night, we had cherry stone clams. They've affected me somehow.

No matter what, it wasn't me. I never knew what an alcoholic was till I got here, and you gave me that definition. There's a number of them in the book, but the one that I like best, the one that fit me best and was so simple is the one on page 21, where you say, what about the real alcoholic? God, I love that. Real alcoholic.

That gives us some class, sort of like being a doctor, or judge, or lawyer. Well, not lawyer, but, you know, professional. But you say, what about the real alcoholic? Here, she may or may not be a heavy drinker, may or may not be a daily drinker, but at some stage of his drinking career begins to lose control once he starts to drink. That fit me as accurately at 13 as it did at 30a half.

The only thing that changed was the progression. What a great definition. But yet if you'd have pointed it out to me, I'm sure I I'd have laughed. I'm sure I said there's no way I'd have gone on my way. I was to be locked up a number of times after that, you know, 2 more times.

And the last time was on an indefinite sentence when I went away to upstate New York for some things I had done. And I remember that I was out in an honor grade area where I was able to run and I ran, and I went off and joined the navy. I got a guy to sign me into the into the US Navy, and I I went to boot camp up here in Great Lakes Naval Training Center. And I remember as I went up there, I wrote my parents a letter and I told them where I was and what I was doing, that they were gonna be proud of me. And I was tired of being what I had been, and now things were gonna change and I'd be different.

And I was gonna be a loving son and do what loving sons are supposed to do. I remember they wrote me back, and they told me they were proud of me. They was glad I was in the service, and they were gonna come up watch me graduate from boot camp. And they rode a Greyhound bus. They'd fallen on hard times.

They rode a a train and a Greyhound bus up to Chicago and went went up to the boot to Great Lakes Naval Training Center and saw this little ceremony. And and that ain't a big deal, but it was a big deal for them because I had never done nothing they could be proud of. And I remember after that, they carried me down into downtown Chicago on a 12 hour pass. And we went into a restaurant. My dad looked at me.

I told you, you always drank. We're in this restaurant. And I remember he looked at me. He says, son, you're not old enough to to drink, but if you're old enough to be in the service, I'll buy you a drink. What would you like?

You know, I got that warm feeling about me. You know, I said, god, now my dad and I are gonna be drinking buddies and everybody knows, you know, that's great. So I said, I'll have a beer. And he ordered me a beer. He ordered himself a cup of coffee and my mother a Coca Cola.

And I looked at him. I said, what's the matter? Aren't you drinking? And my mother looked at me and she had that funny look in her eyes some of these women get, you know. Said, no, your dad doesn't drink anymore.

He's a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and he's been sober for 3 months. I found out later how my daddy sobered up. My daddy sobered up in 1959 at Rosary Hall in Cleveland, Ohio. There was a nun that ran that place then called Sister Ignacio. Now back then it's different than they have things today.

Back then, I understand that the only way you got in is if your sponsor your AA sponsor checked you in and they detoxed you and then he they checked you out to his care. When you were in there, nobody saw you except your AA sponsor and the men that he had on a list that were allowed to see you. It was strictly male facility back in. There were no women in. There were no TVs or radios.

They had a big book in 12 and 12 and grapevines. That was all the that was all the stuff in there to read. You were just there to get dried out. And they they tell me that my dad laid there in straps for 5 days in convulsions in the hallway and that he almost died. And and when he came out of convulsions, they kept him one more day and they and they let him go.

And when they let him go, his district nation gave him a little little brass token that had the serenity prayer on it and a step in a tradition. And she gave that to him. She said, Jim, if you go with your sponsor to Alcoholics Anonymous and do what those men tell you to do, you'll not have to take another drink again a day at a time as long as you live. My daddy went with his sponsor to Alcoholics Anonymous, and he did what you told him to do. And he didn't drink from then until he died 20 couple years later.

And he died sober. There my dad is 3 months sober, and and, you know, I I know today how he must have felt 3 months sober because I know how I felt 3 months sober. 3 months sober, I was whining around the house. 3 months sober, I was sick, and I still wanted to drink, but I wasn't drinking. And I'm sure my dad must have still wanted to drink.

You know, and I didn't think of that then. I didn't know anything about it. You know, I didn't know this act of him offering to buy me a drink, what an act of just unselfish trying to be whatever to me was. I didn't see it that way. You know what I saw it as?

I saw the fact that he wasn't drinking as an act of anger from him. I knew in my heart that the only reason he wasn't drinking is because he didn't like me and didn't wanna drink with me. And I thought to myself, how soon can I get away away from these people and meet my friends and do some drinking? This is the same guy that wanted to be a loving son, the same guy that wanted to do what I was supposed to do. You know, when you talk to me about alcoholism, you explain to me that drinking is but a symptom.

You said our bottles are but a symptom. You said selfishness and self centeredness, that we think is the root of our problem. I have no trouble at all accepting that. All I've gotta do is look at the record. Just look at the record.

I got away from them. I met my friends and I drank. And I woke up the next morning the same way I woke up the last time I drank. Same fear, same mess, and same not remembering what happened the night before. I did get a tattoo.

I remember that. I mean, every day, it's ugliest damn thing I ever saw in my life. Popeye. I got I got it on State Street. I think it was named it here in Chicago.

Jesus. I didn't remember, but I can remember it today. I see it. But, anyway, my career in the navy don't take a long time to talk about. Slightly less than 6 months after I went in, I got thrown out.

Now at the end of boot camp, I went to my 1st AA meeting. And I don't talk about this much. I just don't know why it came out today, but I didn't go there as a drunk. I went to my a I went home to my parents' home for a 2 week leave or part of a 2 week leave, and my my dad and mom carried me to an open AA meeting one time. And and looking back at it, I understand now that they introduced me to a guy named Dave who had been in the service, and and I had thought they were taking me just like they used to take me to the press club when my dad went to the press club or rotary or, you know, the Lions Club, that kind of stuff.

That's all it meant to me. And and maybe look at me, maybe he had something else. I don't know. But, I mean, it didn't mean nothing to me. Of course, it didn't.

I didn't have anything wrong with me anyhow. Thought it was wonderful he was going to him. Keep it up. You needed it. Career in the Navy didn't last long.

5 months, 29 days after I went in, I woke up. Woke up in a room about a quarter of this size. It was a nut water to the Naval Hospital in Pensacola, Florida. Hell, last I remembered, I was on a ship called the Antietam. It was an aircraft carrier, and I'd gone ashore just like I always did, and I woke up.

And I woke up the same way I've been waking up, and they called me 4 board board officers, and they gave me a paper to sign. They said if I signed it, they'd give me an honorable discharge. And if I didn't, they were gonna court martial me. Easy decision to make. I signed it.