The 60th annual Texas State AA Convention in Dallas, TX

Are you alright? I'm Stuart Watts. I'm a happy alcoholic. Hi, everybody. I wanna thank the committee for letting me come out here and be part of this 60th Texas State Convention.

I don't know whether I'm thankful about this chairman I got here or not. It's just been a great experience so far. Everything you all just really know how to treat us. A couple of guys picked us up, whisk us right over the room, was ready, got a nice big care package. Everything's just been just been wonderful.

And, you know, it's it's a great AA experience. I've met a lot of old friends, met a lot of a lot of new friends and and that's the way this thing's supposed to be. And so, I just wanna thank the committee for for making us so comfortable and allowing us to come out and share with you. You know I kinda figure like, you know, I wonder sometimes why I'm invited to one of these things and I think it's because I'm an alcoholic that's found a substitute for alcohol. And I looked a long time at a lot of things before I found that substitute here in Alcoholics Anonymous.

And, you know, know, you told me when I got here for that substitute to work, I had to do a lot of things. I had to I had to get a sponsor. I had to go to meetings. I had to read the big book, I had to get the 12 steps and put the principles I learned there to work in my life. And and because I did those things, I found a god of my understanding that a day at a time has allowed me not to have a drink since September 25, 1973.

And for that, I'm very grateful. Now, I'm gonna tell you, I told you I went through a lot of things, before I found a substitute here in Alcoholics Anonymous. So I'm proud to tell you tonight that since that time in September, I also haven't had to be analyzed, tranquilized, hypnotized or baptized, this thing. This thing, Alcoholics Anonymous, worked well for me all the way through. And, for that, I'm very grateful.

You know, we hear a lot of we hear a lot today about problems other than alcohol. Oh, man. I had problems other than alcohol before. I ever knew alcohol existed. You see, I'm not only an alcoholic, I'm a hillbilly.

And and and I, I come from Appalachian mountains of Virginia. I was born right in the middle of the depression and I'm only son of a hillbilly school teacher. And they named me Sterling Fletcher Watts the third. I don't think I had a chance from a very get go, you know. Lot of things happened right from my very first remembrance.

I had I had no identity. I just didn't know who I was. Mama taught school for 40 years, the 13th, the first, oh, 18 years of my life. Everywhere I went, I was miss kitty little boy. When I was 19, I married this farmer's daughter from across the river and overnight I became Mac Jackson's son-in-law.

And I had, you know, and I had one son and he was quite a football player. And I, he played over Clemson and played up and signed a little bit for, the pro teams. And so when I got down to South Carolina, I became Waldo's daddy. And and you know, I tell you that, to let you know, I don't know how some of y'all got into a into AA. I know a lot of you out here from Erwin and and Plano and different places.

Just came up knocked on the door and said, hey, I wanna come in and I've been drinking a little bit and it's hot and tired. I wanna work these steps and get spiritual. Well, I didn't get I had a whole lot of help getting here. I'll tell you. I had judges, but mainly I had help from Al Anon.

In fact, I say that I came into Alcoholics Anonymous when I became powerless over Al Anon, you know, My, my wife got to Illinois several months before I came into a ad. I don't know how many months, you know, but, you know, I tell you about that identity problem because you can imagine when you allowed me to stand up here and say I'm Sterling Watts, I felt like I'd arrived. And and, you know, do you remember the first night they ever asked you to read? I'm supposed to read how it works this night, and I've never been so happy. I went back to the restroom.

I studied up. I didn't wanna miss a word. I'm sitting there on the front row and the chairman says, and to read how it works, and he forgot my name and said Nancy's husband. You know, when, when my sponsor and I went through my went through my steps and that 5th step and we just we just kind of figured out like I was a weird kid I We are the most studied species other than white rats I think there is. And along came this word dysfunctional family.

Now that sounded a lot better to me than me being a weird kid. So I said, Jim, we ought to rethink this thing. You think I might have been raised in one of these dysfunctional families. He said, I'm sure you were. You were there, weren't you?

You know, That when I think back on it, everywhere I went got dysfunctional pretty quick, you know. Now, I, I had a trade, a good trade. I I guess I've been lying ever since I could remember, maybe since I started to talk. I don't know. And and I was good at it.

I'm a good liar, you know, and I was a different kind of liar. You know, I just didn't lie and leave. I'll tell you a lie and I hung around to make sure you believed it. I wasn't gonna leave till I made sure you believed it. And I'd lie to you about anything and I don't know why this was, but I did.

And I, you know, I I remember when I was just a little talk about so big, well, we had to learn Bible verses and recite them before every meal we ate on Sunday. And I was capable of, memorizing Bible verses, but I love to make them up. And, you know, what I remember to this day, one of the ones I made up was if a man goeth on a long journey and returneth not, he stayeth a long while. Now, and and you know, it's you know, it's really bad enough to be making up for scriptures, but I tell you what I dearly love with old folks thumbing through that Bible trying to find that verse, you know? That that made me feel warm all over.

I really enjoyed that. There was something happened when I was about 6 years old. I told you I was born in the middle of the depression. When I was about 6 years old, my family lost everything we had, and they had a big auction. And they sold everything we own.

And I remember standing out there in the front yard of these big pine trees and I had my mama's hand on one side, my daddy's hand on the other, and and the auctioneers up there and he's even selling the bed I slept in. And I looked over and the tears are running down my mother's face. And, I couldn't understand that. And I knew that the bank had foreclosed. The man had taken everything we had.

And that's, you know, up until that time my daddy had been the most powerful person I knew. But somebody else was more powerful. Now I didn't know who the man was, had no idea. But as a little tack, I began to hate the man. And I said to myself, nobody nobody will ever have that much power over me.

No. I'll be independent. I will not allow anybody to be able to and that nearly killed me till I got here to Alcoholics Anonymous. But, that, that set up that set up a way for me to live for the rest of my life. I was just an individual.

I didn't trust anybody or anything. And, and I was not going to allow you to do anything for me because I had to pay a price. I didn't want to be beholden to you. And, now in this home, there were, there were 4 of us. I had, there was a mother and a father and a sister 5 years older than I.

Now, you know, there's only 2 per 2 perfect people ever walked face to this earth and she was one up. And, she never she never told a lie. She never came home late. She did nothing wrong. She made straight A's all the way through school.

She was valedictorian in high school, dean list in college. I didn't have a chance. And, right the very first thing that I ever remember as a child is why can't you be like Elizabeth? I didn't know why I couldn't be like Elizabeth. I just knew one thing, she'd cornered the market on being good.

And if I was gonna if I was gonna get any attention, I had to get I had to learn to be bad to get any attention. And that's kinda how this thing started out. And everybody in this family seemed to have a plan for me. Mama wanted me to be a Methodist preacher and bless her heart till the day she died. She still had some hope.

And and, and and, my daddy want me to be a trial lawyer. And my sister just want me to go away. And then anybody asked me what I wanted. Now what I wanted I think is indicative of how, of what my thinking was at that time. I there was one old boy there named Daryl and, he he lived with his daddy and his daddy stayed drunk and anything he wanted to.

He could go swimming naked anytime he wanted to, go barefoot, lay out of school, He could cuss as good as anybody I've ever heard to this very day, you know, and I I really want I'll tell you another thing about Ariel. It It really impressed me. He didn't have to take a bath unless he wanted to. No. I I love the way RL smelled.

He had that gusto, you know? And and I everywhere I went, it seemed like to me I smelled like life boy soap because mom was always washing on me ears and all. So that's the kind I just wanted to be like Ariel. And I realized today, see, Ariel, Ariel's daddy was a drunk. And I realized that's why his mother left home.

So one of my first prayers that I remember was that daddy'd get drunk and and mom would leave home and I'd get to live like RA. Well, so that's the aspirations I had as a young man. Now, drinking as a teenager was not, was not, I'm sure I tried it, but it was never it never was important in my life because I had such close supervision. Ducked from high school, I went 15 miles away from home to be inducted into service. Enlisted in the army and that was that was the first time I'd ever been that far away from home without adult supervision.

And this was in September of 1946. And that night I got drunk and I got sick and I just about died, I thought, you know, and to show you that there's a lot of insanity here, 26 years later, I'm still drinking too much. I'm still getting sick and I'm still almost dying. And, you know, for a human being to go through what I went through just to be able to drink liquor and I did not realize it then, I only found that out after I got to you. But I changed jobs, I changed everything constantly.

And I realized today just to be able to drink and to drink in peace. I had a short term in service. I stay I was supposed to stay 18 months and after 13 months they called me and I've been in trouble. I've been drunk ever since I got there and they called me and they said, if you just go home, if you if you just go home right now, just 3 months early, we'll give you an honorable discharge. But if you stay here, I'm afraid we're gonna have to put you in Leavenworth.

That's how much trouble I got. Well, I came back to the mountains and while I was gone, industry had moved into the mountains and I got a job right away in the textile mill and, I married my childhood sweetheart and, and this was in 'forty eight. I married my childhood sweetheart and a year later my son came along and, I guess in 1954, we built a bought a p a parcel of land and all the husbands we, that like everybody was doing after World War 2, we all built nice little homes and I worked hard and got a lot of promotions. And if you'd asked me, I would have absolutely been absolutely certain that drinking was no problem in my life whatsoever. I, but when I look back now and I'm talking about a period like from, oh, 19, 48 to 1960 2.

Things looked normal to me. That's my perception of things. But I was in 5 or 6 automobiles that were totally lost. And And one Thanksgiving day, I had 3 wrecks in the same day. Now, now that day I hit the same man twice.

And and I didn't hit him over, you know, close by the second time. I got him 15 miles away over in the afternoon where I'd hit him that morning. And in those days, you just called your insurance and insurance agent and reported you your traffic accident. So I remember reporting it and he said, what's how drunk are you? You've hit him, you know, he said, you you you hit that man again.

And I no. He said, you reported that accident this morning. I said, no, I didn't. I've hit him again. I'm not drunk, you know.

Well, now now, you know, I'm not, I'm not handy with tools. I've always been unfortunate. I'm not handy with tools and I don't have a green thumb. I'm not a gardener and unfortunate. Right after we got married, wherever we moved, I'd move right in amongst a bunch of handymen that could fix anything.

Or I'd move in and I'd look out the window and there'd be a sign say yard of the month and all I ever got was like yard of wild onion of the decade, you know, or something like that. So right away when we got married, the first thing I heard was why can't you be like Herb and why can't you be like Tom? Well, that didn't bother me. You see, I'd been to I'd been to boot camp on that back there. Why, I couldn't be like Elizabeth.

I didn't know, but I I, I told you we built we built a house here in 1950 4. All the young husbands built these houses and it's supposed to be turnkey jobs. Well, these handymen went to work. Some of them put in the plumbing, some of them put on the roof, some of them put in the furnace, you know how you are. And and I hadn't done it.

I think that's the first time I've I remember knowing what impending doom was. She's looking at me like you better do something, you know. Well, she'd gone up to her daddy's this afternoon and, I got a brilliant thought. Now, you know, let me stop here. You know, by this time a certain thing had begin to happen in my life.

Everything that I didn't want to do, any job I didn't like, I had mentally assigned a certain amount of drink to it. I I just if I didn't want to do it, I got about drunk, you know, and if I didn't do it right, I would have if I hadn't been drinking. And if I did it real good, I blamed it on the liquor. I'm a kind of painter and I'm a kind of painter, and I'll get to drop off in the paint, you know. And if I was gonna, you know, if I were gonna borrow money, I didn't like facing the banker.

That took a 5th. And if I was gonna trade cars, it was a 5th. And I didn't get along with that sister. I called her my 2 pint sister if she's coming to visit, you know. Well, I never had it.

You know, I got to thinking about this thing. Nobody on that street put a mailbox in it. Well, I thought, you know, I'll I'll do this thing right now. I don't know how much liquor I'll sign to this job because but it, I think right much, I went down to the plant and it's alcoholic I'd say, I, I got the head engineer and we got a 2 inch, 2 inch pipe, 8 feet tall, 2 inches in diameter and took another 8 foot pipe, inch and a half in diameter and put it down in there and spot welded it all the way up. I came back home and dug a 4 foot hole and put in steel reinforced concrete, went down to Sears and got the biggest mailbox they had.

It was that long and I put Sterling Fletcher Watts the third across. It might have been no English letters, I don't know. But I put that boy down in that concrete and I tamped it well. Now I've been drinking all day and it was hot and you alcoholics know when you just kind of fall over and go into that peaceful slumber. That all only a drunk can go into.

And I'm thinking, gosh, she's gonna be proud of you when she gets home and sees that mailbox. And the next morning, my phone rang and it was my neighbor. He said, what's what wrong with you yesterday? I said, why? He said, you got that mailbox in facing your house.

Now, I I had about an hour to dig it up and turn it around. You'd have thought I'd build a small swimming pool and thrown it in there, you know. Well, now I was a tavern drinker. I love the dark lights, the beautiful country music, the beautiful ladies that are there to play shuffleboard with you and to listen And and to listen to your problems, you know, and, and, but I was also wanted to be a good husband. And I, I could I worked hard and, I'd stop off in the tavern just to have a couple of beers before I went home.

And I meant that. And, you know, I I'd sit there and I knew that I had a son at home, but I loved and I'd even when I had the first couple of beers, I'd look forward to what we might do that afternoon and inevitably they have to throw me out when they closed the place and I I don't know why I did that. I just know that she hated the drinking scene. She hated everything about drinking. In fact, you know, you can see why this marriage, she didn't anything about it and that's all I knew how to do good.

And so she, we developed the thing along about this time that you call, I call it a chemical, muscular chemical reaction. And And and I call that chin music. And that was the chinningest woman you ever saw in your life. I'm telling you. She'd say things like you almost stopped and got a beer.

She knew when I was even thinking about it, you know. And so you see the marriage is not working too well when this is gonna happen. So but and so I took a look in, at at the salesman that called on me. And, by this time, I bought a lot of chemical and I bought a lot of machinery. And these salesmen, well, they drank just like I did.

They had 1 then this, advantage over me. They left home on Monday and they didn't go home till Friday. 5 days, no gin music. So I gave up probably the very best job I ever had and, came to South Carolina to seal chemicals. I know today I came down there to drink liquor, to drink liquor and peace.

I went to work for, one owner chemical company and, he was up in Rhode Island and he said an interesting thing to me. He said, he said, you know, my company is not well known down there in the south and, said I'm gonna give you this new car and an unlimited expense account, and I want you to get the name of my company, kinda spread around down there. Don't get ahead of me. And now I know he meant where they had chemicals to sell, but man, I got it everywhere. I tell you, I had it on every state trooper and judge and interesting.

The reason I know I went down there to drink liquor out in Virginia, you could only haul a certain amount. I think, a court per person or something in the car. I don't remember, but you can haul all you could buy in South Carolina. I put about 3 cases of liquor in the back of that car and start running up down the road calling on these textile mills. And, you know, in those days, we didn't have any any over the bar drinking, no mini bottles, nothing.

Everything was brown bag. And I'd pull in there and raise the trunk and we'd go out there and have a couple of drinks in the parking lot or go down to the spring or down to fishing hole or golf course. I had one old boy said, you call down here 19 months and we wasn't sure what you said and we thought you was a liquor salesman in the wrong place. Now, I, I was real good at what I did. I had a lot of knowledge of my chemicals and I did work hard, but I had one thing that made me a good salesman in the industry that I called on, a textile industry, I like a lot of other industries, you know, we had the old deal, you work hard, you play hard.

And, and, I could, and I met a lot of you guys since I got here that did the same thing. I, as long as I kept my alcohol level at the right place, I could go a long time and not sleep. I could go 2 or 3 days and not sleep. I could play golf all day. I could deal cards all night, take a shower, go right back out and play golf.

I guess what they call the man's man. They loved it. They'd say, hi, hear him say things. Well, I'd rather ride with Watts and him drunk. Then I had Tom over there and him stone cold sober.

And I just swell up and drink a 5th and take them anywhere they wanted to go, you know. And and, but I need to tell you that when I got to you people in Alcoholics Anonymous, I weighed almost £300. So it was taking its toll on me, and I don't know when I blossomed up that big. I know it had to be gradual, but, and I'm sure that I was full of, of, of fluid and that kind of thing. So, but anyway, the I the company wanted me to take an insurance exam.

And I didn't wanna take this insurance exam. I don't know why, but they they just kept after me. It'd either get fired or take his insurance exam. So I went in, I took his insurance exam and the lady took my blood pressure and she left and I started rolling my sleeve down and here she came around the corner with this little card. I said, what's that?

She said, that's oxygen. I said, what's it for? She said, well, your blood pressure is so high, you're in stroke zone. I said, wait a minute. I just came in off the street feeling good to have an insurance.

Now, if my blood pressure is that high, I ought to have some kind of symptoms. She said, well, usually you're dizzy. Yeah. Now I've been dizzy. I've been dizzy off and on for almost 2 years.

And in fact, I had this back called a drunk alley that I come home at night and, to keep no troopers were ever back there. And I'd come in late at night and they had 3 or 4 bridges on there. And when I'd come to 1, there's 3 bridges there, I couldn't get across it till I pulled over to the side. I could sleep a little while and to get it down to 2 and I could get across the bridge. And and it got to happening so often that I couldn't believe, I mean, drinking didn't used to do that to me.

You know, I didn't used to do this way, c3 bridges. And and so I figured if the alcohol was having some kind of reaction, maybe I was having some brain tumor problems or something like that. But I remember I would that was one reason I was scared to get this insurance exam. So I remember coming home and and, and telling, Nancy, I said, hey, we got nothing to worry about. I'm in good shape.

Nothing wrong with me. Nothing to do with drinking, just a little blood pressure problem, you know? Well, I, but she that's when she's she noticed all this stuff and she got me going to AA. And I I don't remember much about when I went to 1st AA meetings. I don't even know.

We might have gone some to the automobile association. She just she is sicker than I was, you know. And so but anyway, But things just got so bad one day, there's so much chin music going on around there I couldn't stand it. And I just told her, I said, well, I just call we met this old guy named Squire, Squire Jones, been sober. Every town's got one.

He'd been sober longer than dirt, you know, and she just loves squire. And I said, I'll just call squire. She had the number ready. I guess it'd been in her hand all the time, you know. Well, I called squire and I said, I'm ready to talk.

And he said, good. And he got in his car and started to cross town, I got in my car and left town. And now he came over there and I'm sure I I cued him a long time. He kinda 12 step Nancy. He told her a lot about his life and she had to tell him a lot about me because he knew I was shaking now.

And I was shaking, man. I was going so wide. I could thread a sewing machine, it running wide open, you know, and and the only thing that came out of this deal, he convinced her that if I take Karo syrup and honey and put it in some orange juice and she'd give me that, I'd be alright. That's what she perceived. Well, it started to ritual.

I'd come home about half drunk and she'd be standing there at this Cairo and she'd shove 3 tablespoons full down my throat, hand me this concoction to drink and I'd get it down. And by the time I got down there to my clothes hamper where I had my vodka here, I'd be so stuck together I couldn't get a drink in. You know? Now now I'm gonna tell you, we know that AA come in here in AA and go back out there, AA ruined your drinking. That they're gone honey and orange juice don't do much for it.

I can tell you that. Well, so it just didn't, AA didn't seem to be working for us. You know, she, I guess maybe if I had stayed around there under that that kind of thing, I'd have been the fruit flies that have been following me out of been so sweet, you know, but so she found a she she didn't give up. She is the nation. She found this guy that had he'd gone to he had the same kind of job I had and he'd gone to Alcoholics Anonymous and it didn't work for him either and he'd gone to a psychiatrist and got some psychiatric treatment and he was all rosy and he is in good shape and he came over and talked to him and so off was starting at the dealer going to the psychiatrist.

Now, this is my opinion. This is I have never seen I sponsored 1, but I've never seen a psychiatrist that can hold a light to an alcoholic if the alcoholic don't wanna be there. I'll guarantee you we'll drive him crazy. If that guy, if he'd have stayed in session with me, he'd have been in the sanitarium in no time, I can tell you that. But he was smart enough.

He realized he wasn't he wasn't winning this battle. And he told her, he said, the next time he acts up, now we're gonna do we'll put him somewhere where I can observe him more closely. Now, it's right interesting. We back in late sixties early 70s, we didn't have detox, we didn't have, you only put a drunk two places in the hospital for the emotionally disturbed or in jail. So I went off to this hospital for the emotionally disturbed.

And, you know, it's an interesting thing. I've been over there 5 or 6 different times. And, every time I went over, I was dog drunk. I've been over in the back of a car. I've been over in the back of a pickup truck.

I've been over in an ambulance. Every time I went in there, I was dog gone. But you look at my record. It doesn't say it says schizophrenia, paranoia, hypertension, you know, you know, it doesn't say a thing about drunk. And I reckon it was because of those prices they were charging me.

I don't know. But anyway, now, you know, I'm I'm a kind of drunk at you give me a couple of shots of liquid Valium and let me sleep for 3 or 4 days. I just wake up and I feel pretty good. And and I I can only tell you now how I perceived what was going on then. And and, my, I just woke up and I'm in, occupational therapy.

Now, I'll make it. Now here's a man that can't do anything with him. Can't do anything with his hands, and I'm making ceramic ashtrays. I'm making leather watch bands. Now I'm talking about quality stuff too now.

These leather watch bands, I could make 3 leather watch bands in 1 hour when I was on top of my game, man. It took the next best one in there, it took them about 3 hours to make one. And boy, I thought, if they hadn't run out of leather, I'd still be over there probably, I can tell you that. Well, now they, they had another thing at this hospital that, you know, we they called us clients and if you'd gone through a whole week and hadn't caused any trouble, you got a reward on Saturday. Somebody asked me one time, I speak, said, how do you how do you cause trouble in the hospital?

Well, I can tell you one way. They had a 60 foot fountain out in front of this place and I put a box of tide in it one night. They had a snowball bigger in this building out there. You know? But the group I was in had been good this time.

And, and so we, we gathered up in, up in, what it consisted of is you all gathered up in the lobby and you got to go on a field trip. Now there was 19 women and me in this group, and most of these ladies back then were taking shock treatment. And to say that, you know, to be they were nervous. Let's put it that way. And so what this field trip was gonna consist of was we got a peanut butter sandwich and we got to hike over to Kmart.

Now, and he called me up front and explained to me that most of these ladies smoked and they weren't very handy with matches. And so I had I got the matches and and we went off and I, I remember walking out and had my little entourage behind me and and and I really thought, I said, you know, at last, they've seen my leadership ability, you know. I felt like I was in officers candidate school, you know. And show you how sick I was is about a year later and I really realized what had happened. I was 44 years old and I'd worked my way up to the keeper of the matches in the night house.

Now, you know, it's nice. I I had to learn to laugh at all this mess or I couldn't get sober. I couldn't take it so serious, and we know that all this but here's you alcoholics know the serious thing that's happening to me is I'm getting a little bit worse, a little bit sicker, and a little bit sicker. Nobody's meshed into the 12 steps. Nobody's talking to me about the disease, and I'm just getting worse.

And but this day I came home from the hospital this last time, and, not much better than I was. And last time and, not much better than I was when I went over there. And she said, well, you haven't tried to be rehabilitated. Well, we didn't want to miss anything. So, she We had a state and it was run by the state.

And, and so, state and it was run by the state. And, and so, all I went down there and, when I got down there, I got the biggest resentment I ever had in my life. Now, I didn't know what a resentment was then, but I got mad. And what got I still had a job, but I had no insurance. And it was going to cost me $600 to stay down there 30 days, 28 days, whatever it was.

Now the rest of the people in there, the whole 35 of us, all of them were wards of the state because they didn't have a job. We had a doctor, he just locked up his practice, nickel. And I was mad about that thing, you know? Now, I think this is where God started to work and he you out get back to you with this $600 he would later to get my attention. Anyway, they said to me, if you want to, AA comes in here to talk, you can go over there on Thursday night if you want to.

I had nowhere else to go, I guess, and I went over there. Now, to show you what, this is my perception again. I thought y'all sickest bunch of people that I'd ever seen in my life. And I can tell you why. They were driving 45 and 50 miles an hour as I saw it to tell me the troubles.

And I'm so sick it's costing me $600 to try to get straightened out. And what made me think that you were telling me your troubles? There's a young man stood up here. He didn't look like he was a day over 25 years old. Never can you imagine wondering drunk, you know, and I said, there's something wrong here.

Now I tell you, I and, and I wrote his name down and I knew when I got out of there, if I could keep him by, and I bet you I could keep him going a month anyway. I knew that. Well, when I left there, they said the interesting thing. They said, what do you think if you'll go back to Greenville and just not drink, you'll be all right? So on the way home, I got to think about that thing.

And I said, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna do just what they tell me to do. I'm going back to Greenville. I'm not gonna drink. It's not gonna work for me and I'm gonna sue them and get my cotton picking $600 back.

I what I'm gonna do. Well, I, I'm living proof of what I did. I went back to I went back to Greenville and I didn't drink. And I'm living proof nobody out there has tried. If you hear new, you don't have to try.

I did not drink, but I put nothing else in. I didn't put. I had no program, I had no God, I had nothing. Just took liquor away. And I had all those raw nerves.

You know, I I found out after I got to you all that what I was made me drink, not what I drank made me what it was. So I was right back where I started from and I was miserable. Had I not got I hated everybody and everything. Had I not gotten drunk, Had I not got I hated everybody and everything. Had I not gotten drunk, I would have committed suicide.

You see, I hated you if you could drink and not get in trouble, have a good time. I hated you. And if you could not drink and have a good time, I hated you. I got a glass about this big and filled it full of iced tea. Everywhere I went, I said, look at me, poor little old thing.

I said, I can't have another drink as long as I live. I said things like, let's get our milk and cookies and go to bed. You know? I thought my manhood was gone, you know. I just everything I'd ever done, you had to drink a pint just to shoot marbles with the big boys up in the mountains, you know.

So I, but I did, I was miserable. And had I I did get drunk and had I not, I would have committed suicide. And this started the period in my life, I don't know how long I drank what I call zombolically. I was just a zombie. I didn't know whether they were going to come.

In my job, in my job, we, I usually call and ask people, can I come over for lunch? Maybe once a week or once a month or twice a month or something. And I'd call and I'd say, can I come over for lunch tomorrow? They said, you was over here yesterday. The phone would ring and I'd answer it and they'd say, this is Sam.

Well, I wouldn't know Sam was, but I'd say, how are you doing, Sam? He'd say, fine. Where's my sample? I didn't know where his sample was. I didn't know anything.

And I, you know, it's kinda like, a simple way to put it is I'd come to holding the steering wheel. Now if I look down and I I would been sick all over myself, the only thing I knew I could tell what I've been eating, where I've been the night before, but I didn't know where else. I didn't know anything. But if I looked down as clean like I am tonight, I knew it was going out. I didn't know where I supposed to be.

I didn't know where I supposed to be going. And and so what would I do? I drive around the corner, check-in a Connaugh Lodge just to have a couple of drinks to get settled down enough to find out where I'm supposed to be going. And you know the deal over and over and over again. I came back from Augusta, Georgia sometime in in September off of that 6 month drunk or whatever it was that I don't I don't remember much about, but I think I came back to die.

I, I don't know. I went back to what Nancy used to refer to as my rat hole, and I don't know know it was, at that time, she never had she had no relatives, but she always was off visiting them. She'd get away from me some way, you know. So she was having one of these visitations with some of these relatives, I guess. And if you you drunks know that, I've been back there 5 or 6 day in a drunken liar and and the odor and the stench and my legs were wobbly.

I just had to crawl to the bathroom. And and when I could, you know, I couldn't get a drink down, I'd put one down, Ford come up and but the one thing that happened is liquor had quit working for me. Liquor had quit working for me and an alcoholic of my type. When that happens, it's panic time. And I just dropped my head over in my hands and I said something like, my God, nobody knows.

And she said, yeah. Hey. She got me dressed. We went to an AA meeting that night. I don't know, I don't know much it went on.

I just know on the way home, back home, we have a chip system. And on the way home, she said you didn't take a a desire tip tonight. Now see, she knew all about chips. And you remember I told you I went to some AA meetings way back there and whoever took me Squire, whoever would take me, they'd give me a cup of coffee and some donuts and we'd sit down. And when they gave out the chips, they'd punch.

I'd jump up and get one. They'd hit me 6 times, I'd have gone right through the birthday chip. You know, I I didn't have any desire. But she said, you didn't get a chip. I said, no.

Because if I don't get a drink down tonight, I'm gonna die. Let's hurry up and get home. And, and I, I got a drink down sometime that night, I think. I don't know when. But, you know, an interesting thing, and this is only to me, and I consider it, it's one of the many, many miracles in my life.

I for all intents and purposes, I haven't had a drink since the 23rd, but I'll wait 2 days to celebrate my dry date. And I that has to be a God thing because and I think God knew that with the kind of a drunk that I am had I come around the rooms and get to thinking maybe maybe I didn't have an honest have a real honest date. If I got to thinking that way I'll I'll lose respect for you that I'd fooled you and I'd probably go out and get drunk. But for whatever reason, I do wait 2 more days till September 20 5th to celebrate my dry date. Now, I'm here tonight to tell you that I had absolutely no idea that it was possible to have the change in one man's life that has changed mine since that day in September of 'seventy 3 to today.

I had no idea that I could be as happy, joyous, and free as I am tonight. I had no idea that I'd be standing in Texas I know that this is a gift. I know that it's a gift and I don't know why I have the gift. Drunks are gonna die all over Dallas tonight. They're gonna die all over Texas and South Carolina and all over the world.

And I'm one of the fortunate ones that got the gift. And I'm not sure what the gift is. I most of the time, I think it's the the gift was become willing. But I've got the gift. And And I don't know exactly why I have it, but I do feel a tremendous amount of responsibility because I have this gift.