ICYPAA in Louisville, KY

This is a good thing here. My name is Joe Anisandsel and I'm a recovered alcoholic. I love each and every one of you too because it's necessary. Amy, thanks for asking me down here. This this is, I'm not gonna strip.

Thanks for having me here. You know this meeting really means a lot to me. A whole lot. And as I tell my story in the hour here you'll find out why. The last couple of months I've been asked to speak at places that I've told my story 9 years ago out in Oregon and 8 years ago down in San Antonio, and it's caused me to reflect on my life on what's happened in that period of time.

And, I've been doing this, talking at meetings like this around the country, because I'm one of the sicker members of AA. God sends me far far away to hear things that he knows I didn't hear Wednesday in my home group because I'm a slow learner. But I started out doing it 19 years ago at the 26th International Young People's Convention in 1983. And that's how I started. I just started sharing my story.

They go, you gotta hear this goofball. This guy is nuts. And, so my story, my traveling around the country and being exposed to other people that have helped me grow spiritually started with this convention in 1983. I was asked to be a a speaker. They wanted somebody that got sober young in a local area to be a kickoff speaker on Thursday night and I thought well who's going to be there on a Thursday night?

And there were 100 and 100 and 100 of people It just blew me away and it seemed like everything unfolded from that. I was sober four and a half years, my wife was 6 months pregnant with our first boy And, if you would have told me that my life would have unfolded the way it has the next 19 years from that day in 1983, I would not have believed you. There's no way that I you could have gotten me to believe that I would become a happy, whole, and useful human being most of the time. You just couldn't have gotten me to believe that. I would tell you a little bit about myself before I get going.

I've been sober since October 5, 1978. On April 10, 1977. I've lived in the same house the last 17 years. I've been married to the same woman for 22 years. My 2 boys are 17 18 years old and I've been on the same job with the same company for 22 years.

I just wanted to share that with you because I had no idea that I was gonna be coming around here 19 years later to report back to you on what my life was like in 1983. And sometimes I forget to tell people what my life is like now and what, you know, where I live and who I live with and all that stuff. And I just want to tell you that and get that stuff out of the way first. That's who I am, that's where I live, my wife, my kids, my job. I've had the same home group since I started coming to it in in in 1977 called the Giant East 4th Street Group of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And, we meet in Kentucky now. We did meet in Cincinnati. We got too big and moved over to a clubhouse called the Promises Club. And, I'm just glad to be here. I'm glad John came down.

He calls me a sponsor and Bill Bill Bill's anniversary is today he's over 17 years. Bill lives in Tampa now, but he was 19 years old when he got sober and he asked me to be a sponsor and it's been a real joy knowing the guy over the years. We I think we've helped each other out pretty much both of us back and forth just by knowing one another. I grew up in the sixties and, they were a wonderful time to grow up in, man. There was a lot of stuff happening.

I just loved it. Every day something different was happening. You know, and I know you're young, but puke smells like puke in the sixties just like it does in the 21st century. Alright? And, in 1963, I remember Kennedy got killed, the president got killed.

I just we couldn't believe it. I had just blown away. And then a few years later, in 1968, his brother got killed, Martin Luther King got shot, and they had the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and they're beating the hell out of all these people and they have college campus riots all over the country protesting the Vietnam War. 1969, they went to the moon. I mean, Walter Cronkite is bringing in the Vietnam War every night, 6:30, every night into the living rooms of everybody's homes watching the news.

Something was happening every day and it was a wonderful time to grow up in. And I grew up as a kid in the sixties seventies and I looked at all that stuff and I couldn't wait to jump in somewhere. It was exciting to me. It was fantastic. And, everybody in my family is alcoholic.

We all weren't sick at one time. 3 out of 4 of us are sober, and that's pretty good. My mother is sober 31 years. My brother's sober 18. I've been sober 23.

My father's never found sobriety. But we all weren't sick at the same time. Everybody got sick at different paces, you know, and there was nothing out of the ordinary about my life. I wasn't one of those disadvantaged kids. I didn't grow up feeling weird and looking weird.

I mean I had this hair my whole life. I wasn't cool till Jimi Hendrix came along, but I just I don't think I felt any more weird than any other kid growing up. I think feeling weird is part of puberty and, thank God I didn't have to experience puberty till I was in my twenties in AA, you know. Thank God for alcohol and drugs. And, nothing really seemed out of the ordinary in our family.

We had some weird relatives. My mom's dad, he was a drunk. He was a heavy drinker for years. He drank 40 some years and and quit because the doctors told him he had poor circulation in his legs. So he just stopped.

I thought he was weird. You never stop just because the doctor tells you, you know. I could see myself saying, No. Get me a wheelchair. I'm not done drinking yet, doc.

Rolling up to the liquor store with no legs. I mean, a doctor telling me to stop is not gonna do it, but grandpa stopped because the doctor told him to. But before he stopped, grandpa was entertainment for us. He would come down the street. We lived on a little dead end street.

Today, they call them cul de sacs. There are no outlet dead ends where I grew up. And, we lived the 4th house from the end. Everybody knew everybody. If a strange car came down the street, we knew they didn't belong there.

I mean, everybody just knew everybody. And my grandpa was a heavy drinker. He drank Echo Springs Whiskey almost every day and he had a buddy of his that was a yellow cab driver. And they used to like to get drunk and come down our house. And they would come down the street in a yellow cab and my dad would go, oh god, Jubilee, your father's out there.

Get him. He's drunk. And she'd go outside. Me and my brother, we're about 10, 7 to 7 and 10 years old. We're looking out the window and Dan's just pacing because grandpa's drunk.

They pop the trunk on this yellow cab and they have a possum on a leash. And he's walking around drunk in the neighborhood. And his buddy, the yellow cab driver is walking with the with the possum and my dad's going, oh God, get your mother too. Get your grandpa. Get your father.

Get somebody. Get him out here. Everybody's gonna see. Get him get him get him get him. He was freaking out.

Me and my brother are going, that's cool. That's cool. Grandpa's got a possum on the leash. How how many people's grandpa do you know have a possum on the lease? I mean, but we didn't think anything about that stuff.

I mean, I I was grandpa. And then on my, same thing on my mother's side of the family. Her mother's mother lived in what we used to have as state mental institutions, And she lived there for 40 years of her life because of alcoholism. She was 24, she died when she was 64 of ovarian cancer. But we all used to go out and visit grandma.

You know, with summertime everybody would pile in a car. Aunts, uncles, cousins, we'd go out to the state institution to visit grandma. And grandma would be sitting there babbling, spitting on herself in the commissary. She'd be all buzzed out on pills. And, I didn't think anything about it.

I thought everybody had somebody weird in their family and sick. And I come to AA and I found out we do. Everybody I know in AA has got somebody sick in their family. But I didn't think anything about that. I didn't feel inadequate.

I'll be honest with you, I was a happy positive kid. I was. I enjoyed life. I had a zest. I had an adventure for life.

My mom had a hard time holding me back because once I got my idea on what I was going to do, there was no stopping me. I mean, that's just the way God built me. I can't help it. I was born positive. And, I guess I was about 10 or 11 years old, joined the boy scouts.

That's what kids were doing in 1966, whatever. And, had fun doing that. It was fun. By the time I was 14 years old, I was an Eagle Scout. I had god and country award in the church.

General Westmoreland gave me my Eagle Scout award. That was pretty cool. He was in charge of the Vietnam War. It was his war. And, he called it my army.

And then I had a guy that was my sponsor as a young boy, President Yacht Langston of the University of Cincinnati. He offered me a free college education at 14. But what I didn't know at that time was I was an alcoholic. It didn't matter what people's plans for me were, alcoholism had a different plan. I was 13 years old.

The guy across the street, 16, he says, hey. There's this girl over at the high school who wants to know if you wanna come to her party. I said, well who is it? And he tells me and she's 18 years old. And you know, when you're 13 and she's 18, that's called opportunity.

And I said, Yeah. I'll go. You know. It's like, I'm not worthy. Yeah.

What are we gonna do? We said, Well, her brother's over in Vietnam and he's sending them pillowcases home of marijuana once a month and she's got a new pillowcase. You wanna try it? I'm 13 years old and I go, Well, yeah. I'd seen that stuff on TV.

I saw all those hippies. I saw them all rioting and marching and protesting. I thought I'd try it. I didn't know what that stuff was. Now believe me, I know this is Alcoholics Anonymous and I'm not here to disrespect Alcoholics Anonymous.

But my God, when I was 13 years old in 1967, I wasn't sitting there going, this will piss them off in the next century in AA. I was a 13 year old kid. Okay? I was innocent. It was 1967.

People were trying that stuff out. I tried it out. I went over there and they're they're smoking these cigarettes that look like American flags and some of them are brown, some are yellow, some are pink and, before you know it, you know, I got these headphones on. I'm listening to James Gang Funk 49. I'm smoking this stuff.

All of a sudden I opened my eyes and went, oh my god. Look at that. I mean, it was like my senses were on volume 10 and it was like, wow. This is like going to a carnival. Never had to leave my seat.

Look at that. But the first thing I noticed was, man, my mouth was dry. Wow. My tongue is sticking to the top of my mouth. I said, Do you have anything to drink?

And they said, Yeah, kid. Come on in here. And I went into the kitchen, had one of those swinging kitchen doors and somebody knocked the can opener on the floor. They're all high on this Vietnamese pot and they thought that was the funniest thing they've ever seen. They're all laughing about this can opener.

And I'm laughing about the can opener. I go, I can't believe I'm laughing about a can opener. And this guy says, Here kid, have some of this if you're thirsty. And It was one of those big bottles of Bali Hai wine. Oh, you too.

I love that. The hair on my arm kind of tingles when I think of Bali Hai. And I start I crack the top. It was one of those big bottles. One of them big round ones.

And I start hitting on that and they're still laughing at the can opener on the floor. And I'm hitting it and there's still 15 minutes went by and I took the last swig out of that bottle and they looked around and go, hey, you're what? I Said you're supposed to pass it around. I said, Well nobody told me. I'm 13 years old.

I don't know nothing. I drank that whole bottle it tastes like fruit punch. You ever drink one of those big peanut butter malts and you can't stop sucking on it? Till you get down to the bottom. That's the way I was with that valley high.

And you know what I remember? I remember feeling like $1,000,000. I remember these older people accepted me into their crowd. I remember, like Bill talks about in his story, he felt like he had arrived and was accepted by his peers. Now looking back on it, I know that's not what happened.

I know there were a group of 18 year old guys going give the kid some wine. Watch what he does. He's like a monkey. You know, the more you give him, the more he does. They were using me for entertainment now and I didn't know it, but I felt like one of them.

I felt like I'd fit in. And I didn't become alcoholic overnight. I didn't become obsessed. I didn't start stealing money out of my mother's wallet yet. You know, I wasn't there yet.

Some guy come along on 14 and says, Here, try this LSD to give you a better understanding of yourself and the world you live in. Wow. You know, in 1968, people were trying to find themselves. They were trying to find the truth. And I said, what does it do?

They said it makes you see things that aren't there. I said, really? He said, yeah. And you're the only one that's gonna see them. I said, well, what will you be seeing?

He said, I'll be seeing something else. I said, really? He said, yeah. He said, but that's why you take it, to see things. And remember, if it gets too hairy, it wears off in about 8 or 10 hours.

So whatever you see just remember it's not there and enjoy it. And I said, Okay. I'll try one of those. That that marijuana stuff that was like going to a carnival. Let's try this.

I am bizarre. I love that. Did it about 400 times. I loved it. Just thoroughly loved it.

And, it was the era that I grew up in. And I'm sharing these things with you because I wanna make a point. Knowing drugs doesn't make somebody an alcoholic. I mean, I did a I answered 400 times. That's not what makes me an alcoholic.

It's what happens when I drink. That's what makes me an alcoholic. I've done it all. I got hooked on crystal methadrine, did mescaline, did sobers, did it did it all. Stole some Thorazine out of somebody's cabinet one time.

I'll never ever do that again. Ever ever ever. You know how we are. If one's good, 2's better. And they were 500 milligrams, a 1000 milligrams.

And I'm laying on my mother's patio at 9 o'clock in the night on the stones on the on the floor. Outside, she goes, why don't you come in and go to bed? I said, if I could get up, I would. Wow. I just thought, oh, I just I never did that.

It hurt. It just ached. Oh, I never did that again. And the whole time, the drinking's picking up. The drinking's picking up, you know.

My hair's out to hair. I have one of these big afros. We turn your head and the hair moves and catches up to it. And, my drinking's picking up. We're drinking Boone's Farm Apple Wine.

Woo. Yes. Damn. That felt good when people that is the Strawberry Hill, Chianti, Thunderbird. It's just it was wonderful.

It was wonderful. And I don't know what people drank around here in the sixties, late sixties, early seventies. But Stroh's beer was the big thing back then. And everybody had quartzes Stroh's. Everybody's drinking Stroh's.

And I'm I'm having a wonderful time and I'm doing all these other drugs but the drinking is starting to pick up. Just a little more. Just what's working its way in there. And before you know it, I'm running away from home at 16 years old having a bad day. Got in an argument with my mother.

I didn't like what she said. I said bye. And I hitchhiked to Miami Beach with 9¢ in my pocket in February, no code. And, I wasn't taught that in the Boy Scouts. I had my emotions were getting scrambled from drinking all this wine and doing all these drugs.

And you know one thing about LSD and black mollies and all that stuff? They let you drink and you can just drink and you don't fall down. You just keep going and going and going. And, my thinking and my decision making process was fried. Just fried.

And if something didn't go my way, I'd say, Bye. And I'd go all the way to Florida. Gonna find myself. I found myself in a trailer park down there in North Miami Beach. I'm a busboy in a Chinese restaurant at 16 years old.

I have hair out to here. I'm the only white guy in there. Everybody else is Chinese. I'm going egg roll? I mean I didn't I mean how do you go from President Langsam offering you a college education and General Westmoreland saying I like young men like you in my army to egg roll?

I don't know. But that's alcoholism and I kept trying to brush it off brush it off. I'd hitchhike back to the trailer park and get picked up by weird people that want to do weird things. And I'd say, No. Let me out this light.

And I'd go, That didn't happen. That didn't happen. And all of a sudden, I get homesick. I'm 16 years old. I go back home.

I'd run away when things aren't going well again. I'm 16. I just turned 17. It's 1971. I get thrown in jail in Cordial, Georgia for hitchhiking.

I had hair out to here. I mean, it was out there. And the guy with me had hair down to his butt. And, they didn't like that in Georgia. They, they didn't like anybody if you weren't from Georgia.

And this guy that pulled me in this guy that was hitchhiking over, he was big and fat. Had the mirror glasses on. He walked waddled up to me. He goes, you white or black, boy. And, I didn't know your rectum could tighten up that fast.

Oh my god. We're in trouble. And you don't realize I've just seen that movie, Deliverance. You know what I mean? And I I could hear that banjo wailing in the background.

I said, oh oh my god. You know what they're gonna do to us? You know? And, the other guy, he was a skinny sheriff's sheriff's deputy and he said, we tie these boys up, throw them in the swamp. Nobody knows a thing about it.

And I thought I thought that movie again where he goes, sure got a pretty set of lips on him, don't he? We're we're really in trouble, you know, because that movie was made 60 miles from where they picked us up and I thought, this stuff's real in and out of it. I mean and they were having fun with us. They knew we were a bunch of runaway kids. They were they were just toying with us, but it scared me to death.

And the point was I didn't know why I was there. I was sober. I couldn't even give you an honest explanation of why am I in jail in Cordele, Georgia being hassled by a fat guy with mirror glasses. I don't know. I couldn't say, well, I was trying to find myself because that didn't pan out.

I didn't know my decision making process had become scrambled by alcoholism. And, I went back to Cincinnati again, I ran away again, and and finally I got in so much trouble. It it was either go to prison or go into the military. I went into the military, make a long story short, I signed up for 4 years, I could only handle a year and a half, and I had to get out. I didn't know I needed a drink until I got out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

That's a bad place to find out you need a drink. I'm in the bottom of a ship. I'm in the bottom of a ship with boilers and turbines just I'm sweating and I'm working 16 hours a day and I'm standing on a 4 hour watch getting 4 hours of sleep. And I'm going, This is a bad idea. I don't know why I did this.

I don't know why I I don't know why I went to the Navy. I should have went to jail. And I I told this guy, I said, I made a bad decision getting in the Navy. I think I'm gonna get out. And he left.

He said, You can't get out of the Navy. Once you sign up, that's it. And I thought, You watch me. An alcoholic, you watch me. I'll show you.

And I went to the Bupers manual. I found the discharges and I went through them and I found flat feet. And flat feet, I thought, I have weird looking feet. I can do that. And I played the game to get out.

Alcohol said, 'You're going in the navy.' Alcohol says, you gotta get out of the Navy. I didn't know that back then. I thought I'm going home to help my mother. My mother had been sober and Alcoholics Anonymous for about 5 years at that time. And I went home to help my mother and I didn't know that I was a drunk.

I didn't know that once I started to drink I couldn't control how much I drank or what happened. And I just really I ruined her life. I ruined the girlfriend's life. I would go to work and I didn't know what the hell was wrong with me. I didn't know I had a physical allergy that once I started to put alcohol in my body, game over.

I don't know how much I'm gonna drink and I don't know what's gonna happen. That's what makes me alcoholic and I didn't know I had that allergy. I would I would make up excuses of why I'm doing what I'm doing because I didn't know what I was doing. You know, I remember getting a job one time. I went to work every day for 2 months.

I started to drink. I didn't show up for work for 2 weeks. I couldn't stop. I I couldn't stop drinking. I'm gonna go to work tomorrow.

I'm gonna I'm I'm gonna make it. All of a sudden I wake up and it's 10 o'clock in the morning, the birds are chirping. I'm going, oh no. I did it again. I I I can't I can't get to work.

The phone rang after 2 weeks and this kid's my boss. He's calling my mother's house. He says, do you still work here? I go, no. As a matter of fact, I'm glad you called.

I made a career change. I'm going to school to be a truck driver. I'll be in to pick up my check. Thanks. I wasn't going to truck driving school.

But you gotta have something fast to tell them because if you don't have something fast to tell them, they think you're nuts. They think you're crazy. What am I gonna do? Say, Ah, well, I can't come in. I can't stop drinking.

Don't know when I'll stop, but I'll be in when I'm done drinking. No. They think you're crazy. And I always tell the story because it's so true. Drunks like me have to have fast answers because they don't know what's wrong with them.

I remember passing out with my pants down around my ankles at a party one night. Oh come on this is AA. Don't act shocked. Some people need to have their pants on. But I I woke up one time with my pants down around my ankles and the girl says, well how come you had your pants down around your ankles?

I said, well I was hot. I didn't even think about it. It was the first thing that came out of my mind but I wasn't gonna say, they they were down around my ankle. Oh my god. Because if you let people know you don't know, they're gonna think you're nuts.

I had to rationalize and justify and come up with lies fast fast fast to make you think that there's nothing wrong with me. And you know what? Everybody around me knew there was something wrong with me. Employers, my family, girlfriends. It got to the point where my mother had to kick me and my brother out because now I was violent.

I went through jobs. I'm coming home at 3, 4 in the morning. Mom's 6 2, my mother's about 5 2. And I would tower over my mother in her kitchen at 3 and 4 in the morning calling her all kind of names, names that you have used yourself because you drank like I did. Watching the tears stream down my mother's cheeks because she was afraid of me and she was saying that I was dying in front of her eyes and she knew there wasn't anything she could do.

I would come home and I'd throw lamps and just throw them up against the wall and break them. I would throw fans that were plugged and on. Didn't care. You know, I'd put put fists through walls, tear doors off the hinges. And, my mother finally got to the point, she says, my god, Joe.

I I can't live like this anymore. The people in AA tell me I don't have to live like this anymore. I said, those people in AA are crazy. I said, just because you join Alcoholics Anonymous, we have a drink once in a while, you gotta kick your damn kids out. Those people brainwashed you.

You're nuts. Dan was right. You are crazy. I mean, that's the way I would talk to my mother. It's sad, but that's the way and I could hear myself saying it and I'm going, oh my God, what did you say that before?

But I was like, I was watching myself and I couldn't turn it off. It was like I was on a movie and I couldn't change the channel. I'm saying these things to my mother and I'm feeling terrible on the inside but yet they're coming out on the outside. She says, you and your brother are gonna have to get out of here. I can't live like this anymore.

And she kicked us out. She changed the locks. She got restraining orders on us. We weren't allowed within a 100 feet of the house or we were going to jail. That's pretty bad when you get restraining orders on your own kids.

But that's what my mother had to do. And you know, it took my mother talking to members of AA a sponsor and a social worker. It took her 2 years to come to the conclusion that the best thing she could do for her sobriety and the best thing she could do for her boys was to kick us out. I thank God That was one of the best things my mother ever did for me in my life. She kicked me out because by allowing me to live there this is just my case.

I don't know about anybody else. But by allowing me to live there, she was telling me, It's okay. You can kill yourself. You can live off a woman. I'll pay your bills.

You can flop out. You don't have to go to work. You can tear my property up. That's what she was saying by letting me live there. And what she said when you gotta go was, no.

I can't do this no more.' She said, 'Joe, I hear a siren. I think they got you again. You're always in these wrecks. You might not be driving but you're in the wrecks.' She said, 'Joe, the phone rings.' I thought, oh god. They've got him downtown.

They've got him down to jail. Somebody says, you've got to come get.' I can't live like that anymore. You're coming at 3:30 in the morning. The garage door is going up and down. You've got strange people coming in.

I don't know what you're doing out in the garage, but it's breaking me up. You know, I'm dealing out in the garage. And, so I had to go and I got a sleeping room in No Hope, Kentucky. Nothing personal. It was in Covington, Kentucky on 15th and Scott.

And I always talk about this because alcoholism took me there, an old roach infested sleeping room on Scott Street. I had a bare mattress on the floor for a bed and a cardboard box turned upside down for an end table. I had a light that hung from a wire on the ceiling. I had curtains, plastic curtains with grease on the blinds. I had a sink in my room.

You know what I use this thing for. You track like me. This is AA. I would come in and hit those lights. Boom.

Those roaches would start running all over. I never had any food in there. I thought, what the hell are these roaches doing in here?' But alcohol was still working for me. You know when alcohol's tearing your life up and it's still working and it's still making everything okay, I'd come in and this is how alcohol is still working for me. Now I'm living in a roach infested sleeping room across the laundromat on Scott Street, downtown Covington.

I'm the only guy in the building under 65. Holes in the walls. I have no food, no nothing, but alcohol's still working for me. I hit the door, the lights make all the roaches move all over the place. I slam the door, fall out on my mattress.

And you know what alcohol says? Don't worry about that mattress. You hang in there. We're gonna get you box springs and sheets one day but right now you just hang in there. And then I'd say, well, alright.

And I'd just pass on out. Or I'd look over at my my box, my end table where I put my room key and my 6¢, my change. And you know what alcohol would say? Hey hey, don't worry. It's a member of the Wood family.

We'll get you real wood one day. You just hang in there. Alright? And I'd say, Well, alright. And I'd just go on out.

Or I'd be laying there and all of a sudden one of those little critters would come up and I'd open my eye and they'd be giving me one of these in my eye. I'd say, well, everybody's got to have a place to live. Alright. Alcohol made an unacceptable situation acceptable. That's alcoholism.

It changed my perception on where I was. It was kicking my butt and it was making me like it And I loved every step of it. As long as I was drinking, I felt alright. It didn't matter what problem I had. It was okay.

You know, I really love Al Anon. If it wasn't for Al Anon, I wouldn't be married right now. But the non alcoholic does not understand that alcohol makes the alcoholic like me feel in control. But non alcohol I'm not drinking. I'm not in control.

The non alcoholic, they go, oh, it makes me feel so out of control. I don't know why they wanna feel out of control. It made me feel in control, man. I was the center of the universe. I felt like $1,000,000 and I'm living like this.

I'm tearing people's lives up. They don't want to have anything to do with me. I'm living in filthy conditions and I'm going, you know, isn't this great? Nobody to complain about my drinking. I don't like to hear my mother whine and complain about how I'm coming in drunk anymore.

This is beautiful. And as time went by, I I lost the ability to work. I was there in 76. I'm 21 years old. I turned 22.

Now, it's 1977, January 18th, 1977, 25 below. Wind chill 70 below. I was out there in that cold weather. No hat, no gloves, Ohio River's frozen. People are walking across the river that year and all of a sudden I find myself going from a bar downtown a bar out in North College Hill.

Now I'm downtown Cincinnati looking up the crew tower and it's about quarter to 4 in the morning and the winds howling. I have no glove, no hats, and I'm in the middle of the Ohio River going across the bridge. And if you just said, Joe, do you think you might have a problem with your drinking? I said, well, hell no. I don't have a problem with my drinking.

I've got 30¢ but the buses aren't running. What do you mean a problem with my I don't I don't have a problem with my drinking. Drink drinking? No. I you know, my problem's that mother, you know.

If she wouldn't have got Sober and Alcoholics Anonymous, my mother father wouldn't be divorced. I'd be a college graduate by now. No. She had to go to damn AA. I, you know, that's really my problem.

My problem is the Navy. You know, if I had got a job in an air conditioned room, nice white clothes like a radar man, maybe I'd be a lifer. I've been a career man by now, But no, I was in that damn boiler room. I know what it is, it's because I have a GED. I don't have an education.

That's why I'm out here. It's the girlfriend that dumped me. It's the car they towed away. But it can't be the alcohol. The alcohol is the main thing that made me feel like $1,000,000.

The alcohol is the thing that let me dance at that high school dance. Do you remember what it was like feeling all geeky at the high school freshman dance? You know, it wasn't that you didn't know what to say. You couldn't get the words out. Alcohol took the fear away.

Shit, I danced with the guys. I didn't care anymore. You know what I mean? Anything that makes you feel that good can't be the problem. It's gotta be all these other things.

And, I came to AA for the first time as a young sick man at 22 years old on April 10, 1977. I had a spiritual awakening. I had called Alcoholics Anonymous and the person who answered the phone was my mother. Yeah. And, I says, mom, this is Joe.

She says, what do you want? I said, how do you stay sober? I I I I something inside of me says I don't have to drink anymore.' I had this profound spiritual awakening. And she puts me on the phone with a guy at the AA clubhouse and says, you think you might have a problem with your drinking? I said, Well, I might.

I mean, I really didn't know. He said, why don't you come down to the meeting tonight? I said, well, I'll tell you what, I'll be down tomorrow. I'm just wore out. I'm cooked.

I'm dirty. I wanna go home and get cleaned up. Go back up to the community bathtub that all 10 of us use that are up as up on the second floor and get cleaned up and go to bed. I'll be down the next day. And I went to my first meeting on April 10, 1977.

I had hair out to here. I had bib overalls on with absolutely nothing on underneath. No shirt, no underwear, no socks. An old pair of worn out earth shoes. And when I walked in, I knew somebody was gonna say, Ma'am, why don't you get a haircut?

You look you look a little wild. Why don't you take a bath? You stink. You can't wash wine out of your pores that's still coming out just because you stopped drinking the day before. I smelled bad.

I had that wine smell. I knew somebody was gonna say, why don't you get a job man? Where's your car? Where is your underwear at, man? Where is it with the bbds?

I knew they were gonna say that to me because you know that's what I said to myself every day. I woke up in that sleeping room on Skid Row. When are you gonna get a haircut? When are you gonna get a job? Where the hell is your underwear?

What happened to your truck? Jeez. I I just, you know, and I I could never come up with any answers. I didn't know what was wrong with me and I knew these people were gonna say the same thing. And you know what?

A guy 55 years old came up to me and he walked up and he shook my hand and he says, Welcome. My name is so and so. It's really glad to have you. Why don't you come on over here and have a cup of coffee with us? And, I thought to myself, This guy is just being nice to me because he knows my mother.

I was sober 5 years in Alcoholics Anonymous before I found out on that day he didn't know who my mother was. He saw a drunk that was sick and need in need of help and he came up and he stuck his hand out. And he says, we don't know if you're an alcoholic like we are, but if you are, you're in the grips of a progressive, fatal and incurable illness. Never gets any better without spiritual relief. You know, and then another woman, she was really old.

Christ, she was 40. You know, I'm 47 now. 50 is mild. But when you're 22, 30 is gone. Okay?

She was 40. And, she said, you know, if you wanna find a way up and out of your problems, we'll share with you how we did it. She didn't say, we'll tell you what to do. And thank God she didn't because I don't hear tell. There are some people who are humble enough in AA to let someone tell them what to do.

I would have told you to go well, you know what I would have told you. I didn't have underwear. What did I have to lose? And, you can't give instruction to people who don't have underwear. I can tell you that.

And I heard a guy tell a story that night, Don M. And he'd get a sponsor get a sponsor. He'd been to prison and he looked like he'd been to prison. His nose was way over here and oh he looked bad. But I could identify with the way he drank.

I could identify with the way he treated people. I could identify the way he felt when he got sober. After the meeting, I didn't know what a sponsor was but I immediately started making decisions based on lies. That helped me. I looked around and all these people were old.

I thought they must all be sober. Wrong. Most of them weren't. I looked around. I thought, well, they must all have one of these sponsors.

Wrong. Most of them didn't. But in my head, I thought that's the way it was because they were all old. So I turned to the guy next to me and I said, Would you be my sponsor? And he goes, Yeah.

And he's been my sponsor ever since that day. I didn't pick him because he knew the big book. I didn't pick him because he was happy. I didn't pick him because he was an active member of AA. I picked him because he was there.

And he sat there and he he was one of the very few people in the Cincinnati area that was my age. He was about 9 months older than me. And he says, well, these are the things that I do to stay sober in AA. And it was almost like this guy's too happy. He was like Disneyland happy.

You know, he would laugh. You know, in the warped, sick, twisted mind of the alcoholic, everything's exaggerated. I'm cooked. I don't have underwear. And this guy's happy about not drinking, okay?

Laugh he's going, Yaho, Yaho, Yaho. I'm going, you know you're nice but you really can't be that happy about not drinking. Alright? And this guy talked to me about going to meetings and talked to me about what he did to stay sober and and he talked to me about having a sponsor and talked about having a home group and and taking those meetings into the jails and the hospitals and the psych wards. And I thought, well this guy is nice but he's obviously stupid because I don't have underwear.

I don't need all those things. I really need a job. And he hands me this book called Alcoholics Anonymous and he says, I read this and I try to do what it says to do. You might wanna try it. And I opened this book up.

Remember, I have no shirt on, no socks, no underwear and I breezed through the book just to appease him and I'm thinking, there's not one damn picture in this book. You know what? I would have thought there'd be like one of those diet ads. You know, at least they had one of the cofounders passed out in the bathtub or something, you know. Here's Bill drunk.