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

Thank you, Stewart. I am Wallace, and I'm an alcoholic. Hello, Wallace. And my sobriety date is February 16, 1964. It's real meaningful to be here this morning.

It's always good to be in an AA meeting, and I really enjoy being in conferences. And I'll thoroughly enjoy this one in about an hour. Before I forget, I definitely want to thank Larry and the committee for inviting me to come and share here, at this conference. It was just a few years back I was in Irving, and it's always good to be invited back into the same neighborhood that you've been into before. I have been places and would be thrown out before I stayed very long.

So it is good to be here and see some old friends that I have known for many years, and it's good to be making some new friends that I've met this weekend. I'm looking forward to meeting more of you. I am indebted to the committee for having been so nice to me. It's it's just great to be accepted and appreciated and loved and to find the kind of love that I felt here, especially for the nice room, all of the goodies that are in it. And it's just a big place for one man to be living.

Great big group. The nicest suite I've ever had at any place I've been, and I really appreciate it. This morning when I attempted to take a shower a little bit after 5 o'clock, the handle came loose and I couldn't I couldn't get a shower and, so I took a birdbath. It didn't bother me too much, but I was fearful that you people might recognize the fact that I hadn't had one. But I intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle me.

I notified the people on the front desk, and they had it repaired about by 9 o'clock. And, I did get one before I came down here. And I know y'all are great, and I am too. I also wanna thank Tim for being my host while I'm here. He's a great guy.

He's been real nice. And right after I got here, we had a little meeting in the room and drank coffee and shared. And, it was just good to be with him and to be with him frequently during the conference year. The 3 guys that met me at the airport, I sort of felt like, I was in the company of the CID or the CIA. They showed up on a black SUV.

1 of them had on a white shirt and a black necktie. 2 of them got in the back seat and they put me up front. And I thought I hope we're going to an AA meeting. But it is good to be here. It's always good to be with my people and AA people have been my people for many, many years now.

I've been looking up on the wall here this weekend, noticing that this is the 60th anniversary of the Texas State Convention. And that's something that you people could be real proud of. And the fact that AA has been around here in this state for that long. And I'm grateful for it too. And I'm also grateful that a while back we had the opportunity to celebrate the 70th anniversary of AA.

I'm grateful for that. Grateful that God and his infinite mercy divinely inspired Bill Wilson and those early people to get this program going. Because they knew that people like me and Tom and Larry and all of you guys and gals were coming along and we would need a way and means to do something about our alcoholic problem. And as I look out over this audience this morning, I see the smiling faces. And I know that we are in a program of recovery.

With not the people that we used to be because of God's grace and because he divinely inspired this program through Bill Wilson and doctor Bob. And they, in turn, got in touch with others who hammered out this thing on the anvils of the experience down through the years, whereby works with work if we work. And those who come in desperately wanting help can find a way of men and means of doing something about their problem. And I'm grateful that we do have alcoholics and owners. I'm also grateful that warden Clinton Duffy back in 1941 realized that the alcoholic inmate needed a way and means to address this problem because he had provided those inmates with all sorts of recovery programs.

And he found out that even though he taught them how to be carpenters, how to be brick masons, how to do other jobs, that when they went out into the community and they had not done anything about the alcoholic problem, He soon found out that they became drunk carpenters, drunk brick merchants, and many of them would end up in this institutions again. And then he recognized that AA is in Oakland and in San Francisco. We're doing something about that problem, and he called those guys in to start the a group in Central Prison, in San Quentin. And I'm grateful for that because it eventually spread into North Carolina. An old Allen Gill back in Raleigh, North Carolina.

I'm grateful for him because he started AA in Central Prison in 1951. And eventually, a guy came along that was instrumental in the program of recovery in the Department of Correction, and his name was Tom I. And he began working for the department of correction years years ago. Apparently, they knew that a guy by the name of Wallace b and many others would be coming in there who needed a way and means to address that problem. I am an alcoholic, and I ended up in that group and I found a way of life.

And I wanna talk briefly about that journey that I went on. That carried me to the gates of Central Prison. And I'm certainly not proud of some of the things that I'll share with you, but I will share from the bottom of my heart. Because the big book tells me that our darkest past is our greatest asset in working with others. And I know that my many, many trips nowadays into the institutions provides me an opportunity to share with those who lost the way just like I did.

And I believe with all my heart that if I share with them and work with them as many, many others in North Carolina are doing, I believe that many, many of those guys will have the same opportunity to address that problem, do something about it and find the power whereby they can stay out once they get out. But more important than that is that many of them may not ever get out. But I learned in AA, in the walls of the prison unit. The a was a program that would work behind the walls of any institution and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole when the principles of the program are applied. I became a free man behind the walls of Central Prison.

I did not find my program of recovery in the community. I found it through God's grace behind the walls of Central Prison. And I'm grateful for that because it has enabled me to find a joy, a happiness, a way of life that I never ever dreamed possible. I didn't wake up one morning in Roxborough, North Carolina, a little small town up on the Virginia border, and decide that someday I wanted to become an alcoholic. Didn't make that decision.

I didn't decide when I was 17 years old when I started drinking that I wanted to become an alcoholic. But I made a conscious decision at the age of 17 to take a drink with a few guys who were running around with me because I had an automobile. I enjoyed the new popularity I had. I had grown up not being very popular. I had always been tall and skinny and awkward and unable to participate like I should in football and some of the more, vigorous, athlete programs.

But I was pretty good at golf from the time I was 9 years old alone. But I grew up feeling bad about myself. And at the age of 17, when I began to sip that beer, I didn't like the taste of it. It made me feel nauseous. I couldn't understand why those guys are going to drink 2 or 3 sometimes.

And during the next 3 years, I pulled out a lot of good beer. I didn't like the taste of it and couldn't understand why they would want to drink 2 or 3 and act silly. And I I just didn't enjoy it and didn't feel the effects of it. But all of that changed when I was 20 years old. I had already been in the army for several months down at Fort Jackson, South Carolina in basic training.

I had been transferred to Fort Lee, Virginia. And I came home to Roxborough, North Coronado on a weekend pass. And on a Saturday night, out at around the square dance, a room about half as big as this room here. I was standing at a heater doing what I normally did when I was out in public. I would be watching other people have a good time.

They can laugh, talk, dance, socialize, and I would stand back and watch other guys dance with the girls and just have a nice, enjoyable, sociable time. And I couldn't do it because I felt awkward. I felt skinny. I felt out of place. I felt country.

I felt uneducated. I was a high school dropout. I just didn't feel good about myself, and I was not an outgoing person by any stretch of the imagination. I'm standing at the heater that night, and I look over toward the door. And I saw, something that I was quite shook up with to be an exact.

2 humongous protrusions come in that door that night. And and they were attached to a beautiful woman. And they came in the door a long time before she did. And she bounced all the way across that floor directly to the heater where I was and began talking to me. And I was embarrassed.

My buddies were standing over there looking at me giggling. And when she had bounced across that floor toward me, I had recognized even though I'd never seen them before in my life. I had recognized her from stories I heard in pool rooms, at service stations, at Vigilance. And she talked with me for a little bit and some guys really began to giggle. And it wasn't but a little bit, she invited me out to her car.

Apparently, it was some wolves in the parking lot. And she needed protection and I'm right out of basic training and had on that army OD uniform and those little pins on the shoulder to make it look better. And all of the medals I'd earned that afternoon at the p x. So I escorted her out to the car that cold November night, and, vivid really remember how that old Chevrolet sputtered when she tried to get it going. And then she turned the radio on and reached way over in front of my knees to to turn that heat button on those old cars, and she got it going.

And while she was over there, she began to peck on my ear and nudge up against me and trying to get me going. And I was restless, ill of these, and discontent. Embarrassed. Embarrassed. Even out there in that parking lot, I was embarrassed about the situation I was caught up in.

Because I had been warned about getting into situations like that. A preacher brother had warned me about being with naughty women. In fact, he had warned me from the time I was 6 years old, giving me man to man talks, telling me what I should and should not do. And I recall the last time that he had given me a man to man talk was when I was behind the barn with him, and I was about 14 years old. And he told me that Sunday morning prior to going back to South Carolina And he always changed his voice when he talked.

And he told me that morning that if I ever drink white whiskey, rum with naughty girls, or play with myself, I'd go to hell. I knew I knew that Sunday morning I had never been with another girl. I never drank any white whiskey, but I was already in trouble. I'm I'm sitting there on the call that night with that woman and she's pecking on my ear and whispering sweet things. And I'm restless l of these and discontent and country and backward and totally unexperienced.

My experience with women up until that night was about like being in the army. I had fired off a few good rounds, but I've never been in combat. I didn't I didn't know what to do. But anyway, after she sat there for a little bit and pecked on me, she reached upon the seat and came out with a pint of moonshine whiskey in 2 cups. And, you know, I thought at first that she must be mighty thirsty.

And then she stuck a cup of whiskey out to me, and I ain't never drank no white liquor. And I began to think about the things I'd heard about her in pool rooms and service stations. I began to think about the possibilities of the evening. And then those thoughts about that my brother had brought up occurred to me, and I was fighting between choosing between this and choosing between probably, Because I looked at her and I looked at them and them told me to take a drink. And and and I poured it down.

And you're talking about the And and and I poured it down. And you talking about a dance here tonight that was a dance that night. We sat in the car for a while and then went into the dance and she grabbed me by the hand when that old fiddle and guitar and banjo struck a a tune, and we got on the floor. And we began to dose the dough and promenade. Lemonade.

Whatever it was they're doing, we did. Doing the bunny hop, I did that. Got carried away. They had to call me down. It just come natural.

About 2:30, Sunday morning, I'm back upstairs in the bed at home, the bed I'd slept in for many years prior to going in service. And I'm laying there fighting off sleep. I didn't want to ever go to sleep again. I just wanted to relive everything that had happened Saturday night. Thinking about how I had grown up and become a man.

Thinking about how my preacher brother, mom and dad had lied to me about white whiskey, telling me that it was something that would send me to hell. I had absolutely been in hog heaven on Saturday night, and I couldn't hardly wait to get back and get some more of that good stuff, all of it. I thoroughly enjoyed everything that had happened. And I knew that Sunday morning about 2:30 upstairs in that bed that I had found a solution to my problem. A magic ingredient that will enable me to be like normal people.

To laugh, talk, dance, socialize and get along and be able to do things that I had never had the courage to do before. And a lot of those things were things against the moral teachers that mom and dad had taught me. But with the booze in my system, I have a courage that I had never had. I had the ability to do things I had never done and did them quite well. I think.

I know I was doing real well dancing one night until somebody stepped on my hand. And my perception might have been a little bit different from some other people's. I got along real well there for a while, having an awful lot of good times drinking. And I can tell you that I know that from the night that I put that booze in my system, I'm not talking about the little beer ship from 17 to 20. I'm talking about when the magic took place, when that stuff really hit my guts and came up to my head and made me a different person.

I had gotten in the automobile that night, very self conscious, timid, shy backwards. I changed in that automobile that night. 6 foot 8, 268, bigger than Stewart. Became very articulate, knowledgeable, educated, handsome. My teeth straightened out, my hair got curved.

I changed. And I know that from that night on for a long, long time, I began to drink precisely for the reason that doctor Silkworth talks about in the big book. That the alcoholic drinks because he likes the effect produced by alcohol. And I definitely like the transformation that had taken place in me that night over 20 to 25 minute period. Loved it.

And began to pursue that weekend week out and had lots of good times. It was 6 weeks before I came to in jail 1 Monday morning, not knowing why I was there. The previous Sunday afternoon, I had been drinking vodka with some guys, I was told. And I got drunk and left the service station where we were, and I was picked up for drunk and driving. And I came to on Monday morning supposed to have been back at Fort Lee, Virginia, but I wasn't.

And it's the first time my father got me out of jail. The The first time I was late getting back to Fort Lee. The first time I was in trouble with the officials. First time I was, had to go into the court system. And it was a lot of first in my life, but that definitely became a pattern over the next 10 years.

And over the next 10 years, there was many, many different charges of driving under the influence, driving after license for vote, resisting arrest, striking police officers and all this sort of stuff. I lost driver's license from North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. Well, I didn't really lose them. I knew where they were. They were in Richmond or either Raleigh or Columbia.

I knew where they were, but I didn't have them. Them. But I can tell you that you do not need a driver's license driving automobile. I can drive just as good without one as I could with. But they sort of come in handy when you don't get stopped.

But it don't make a whole lot of difference if you're drunk though. It still doesn't help to have one. But anyway, that was just minor problem. And I don't wanna go into all those drunks. I don't have time to this morning because I certainly wanna talk about recovery.

But I can tell you that I quickly trans my life quickly changed over from from being a weekend ranker to uncontrolled ranking for some reason or other. I don't know if I drank too much too long. I'm not sure that happened. I don't know if it's genetic or what have you. I don't know if mama put me on the potty backwards and caused it or what.

But I quickly began having trouble. And, I didn't want those things to happen. All I wanted to do was just to drink enough to get to that little euphoric plateau where everything would be just right and I'd be lovey dovey and slick tongue and articulate and handsome and, you know, just be like normal people. Quite often, I would pass that before I ever knew I've been there. And And I'd end up getting drunk, and I'd end up getting in trouble.

And I didn't want to be that way. I had made a conscious decision to drink at 17 with those guys, but I certainly did not make a decision to become an alcoholic. That was not my intentions. It never occurred to me because I really didn't know what an alcoholic was at that time. I knew what some drunks were because I had 2 brothers that were doing quite well in that capacity, real well in that capacity.

In fact, only 3 of us in my family became alcoholic out of a family of 6 boys and 6 girls, only 3 of us became alcoholic. So, the others may be psycho or neurotic, but, they are not alcoholic. But, they are not alcoholic. But we became alcoholic. And alcoholism caused me a lot of problems, really.

I got out of the army the first time in 1955, honorably discharged, went back in in 1956, 18 months after I've gotten out. And, problems began to occur there. Even though when I went to Korea in 1957, I had made up my mind on a ship in route to Korea that I was tired of all the problems I had picked up over the years in my adult life. And I wanted to do something about them. For some reason, I knew that I got in trouble when I drink and I swore off in Korea, a 5 month period of dryness.

When I was going to school at night, I was soldiering and doing the things that I should be doing, working real hard to keep my mind off drinking. And I prospered. I got along real well. I had gone back in with the rank of corporal through the National Guard. And in 5 months, I was put before the promotion board because I had been soldier of the month 5 consecutive times and battalion soldier of the month 3.

And I was promoted to sergeant. In the same Saturday afternoon, I went to the club to buy my friends some drink. It was a club I had not been into before. I hadn't been any place where there was drinking going on. And I sat in the club that afternoon and watched my friends socialize by drinking and dance with Korean girls.

And I sat down And the illness that I know now that I had that day, which I did not know at the time that I have, began to talk to me and tell me that I had been over there 5.5 months. I had gotten along well. I had prospered. The people respected me. The Koreans respected me.

And I had done such a tremendous job that I owed it to myself to to socialize with those guys and have a few drinks. And I had a few drinks and danced with the girls a little bit. And then I really got carried away apparently because within 2, 2 and a half hours after taking the first ring, the bouncers in that club threw me out through the screen door. I had become drunk and disordered. That was a Saturday afternoon before dark.

Sunday morning, I reached over and got the 5th and did the same thing Monday, knowing that I was going on duty. And it wasn't long before I was getting in trouble in Korea. And that trouble continued all through the next several months that I was in Korea. That trouble continued on up until I was in Fort Lee, a year or 2 later. And the trouble was continuing that.

You see, I had picked up a new bride in 1956 prior to going back into service. Not because I wanted to get married, but because it was a gentlemanly thing to do in those days under those circumstances. I had got married and I had run back into service running away from problems. Not because I was patriotic. I was running away from the problems I had picked up during the 18 months I've been out.

And, I lost jobs and I'd gone to jail and lost driver's license and old mother money, my father money. And, didn't want to be married and didn't want to be a father and all of those things was taking place. And that was my patriotism so far as going back into the service was concerned. But, when I when I got back from Korea, mom and dad, and this was in August of 1958, mom and dad, gave me enough money to furnish an apartment. And I was to come home from Fort Lee and be a father to that little girl and a husband to that wife.

And I really and truly fell in love with that little girl with all my heart. Beautiful little girl, just like a daddy. And, I was come home on weekends, but it only lasted for a few few weekends before I was bringing the boos in. And I was bringing the buddies in from Fort Lee because I had never had a living room before. I had always lived with somebody else before, mom and dad, in service.

And I never had a living room or an apartment. And I began to celebrate that with those guys I was bringing home. Fort Lee and wife, number 1 got a resentment about it. And then she began to resent the fact that I was irresponsible, that I wasn't buying groceries, that I wasn't paying the oil bill or the light bill or the phone bill. And I walked out of that apartment in January 59 and went down to the highway hitchhiking back to Fort Lee, Virginia because I knew I couldn't be a father.

I couldn't be a husband. I could not be responsible. I was living to drink and drinking to leave. And I crawled in a back truck that night when he stopped to pick me up. I was hitchhiking, and he asked me when I got in the truck.

Says, soldier, why are you crying? And I couldn't tell him why I was crying. But I knew that there was something drastic wrong in my life. Anybody that would be walking out on a beautiful little girl about 14 months, 15 months old, walking out on a white, knowing that I would never come back to that apartment again, and I never did. Fort Lee, the problems began to, crop up to a greater extent.

Working after duty hours at the NCO club. Working after hours as manager of the NCO club swimming pool to get additional money to finance my drinking habit. And then with a little additional money, I got what every drunk needs, another car, a Virginia driver's license illegally. And it wasn't long before I was caught in Richmond, Virginia, drunk and driving and hit and run. And before I could be tried on that, I was caught in Colonial Heights 7 different charges, driving under influence after license revoked and all that crap.

And the company commander was tired of complaints coming in about me coming into the barracks drunk. He was tired of the mess sergeant complaining that I was coming into the mess hall in the mornings and vomiting in the mess hall. Those guys were not at all like the brave soldiers we have in Iraq today. They couldn't even stand a little puddle of puke. And they were getting fed up with me.

And the company commander sent me to see a chaplain who counseled with me, and it didn't work. That chaplain reminded me of my brother, and he talked like my brother. And he didn't do any good. The psychiatrist he sent me to did not help. I didn't like his looks when I walked in and I would not be truthful to him.

And they asked me a lot of stupid questions, which I didn't have the answer to. But anyway, when the the company commander had a phone call from their prosecuting attorney where I had all of these court cases appealed in the high court, and the prosecutor told to come to command with that in the event I was found guilty on those charges, I'd be pulling some time in Virginia. And then come to command and took action first. He took my record for the past 2 years and put it before 12 officers. And those 12 officers read all of the drunken, insane events that had been going on.

And every one of them unanimously agreed that I had become alcoholically unfit for military service. I did no longer look like the guy that had been soldier of the month in Korea for 5 consecutive times. Not at all. I was not neat. I needed a haircut most of the time.

Most of the time, alcohol was on my breath. I no longer could hold my head up and look at people and walk with dignity and respect because I didn't have the respect of anyone. I was in constant humiliation from the time I got up in the morning until I went to bed at night. And I'd walk around holding my head down because I couldn't look up and look at people. And of course, the prosecutor was right when I went to court the next day after getting that undesirable undesirable discharge.

They gave me a 90 day jail sentence, which I did in Petersburg jail. Got out in 57 days. Got out because my girlfriend was up there to get me out. I had, conceded that I'd never lived with wife number 1 anymore. And I had picked up a girlfriend that was a anymore.

And I picked up a girlfriend that was a real, well, doll, crack a doll or whatever. She was out in the parking lot that morning. She was out she was out in the parking lot that morning. And 2 of her children and all of her grandchildren were in the back seat. And I went out to the car after she had paid that $575 fine.

And when I got out to the car that morning, I told Ruth that I'd never go to another jail. And she said, let's drink to it. I hadn't seen a pint in 57 days, and she handed me a pint of something. And I broke a seal on it and toasted old Petersburg jail. Pulled the only thing 2 or 3 times, and then I handed it to her.

And I remember she spit her snuff out and took one. And the next morning, Ruth was back up there again to get me out. This time, it didn't take $575. It took $18.75. Her brother-in-law and sister come from DC to Petersburg to celebrate Ruth's lover getting out of jail.

Well, Mac got caught for drunk and driving that night, and I was passed out in the back seat and they locked me. I couldn't even pass out without getting in trouble. It seems that little cloud of impending doom just followed me every which way I went. Everywhere I went, there I was. And, And, eventually, mom and dad found out where I was in Virginia, and they invited me to come home, and I was glad.

After about a year of being up there, I moved back in with mom and dad. And this time, they said no drink. And again, I thought to myself, now since they're not gonna allow me to stay here with no drinking, I'll just go ahead and get my life straightened out. I'm gonna try one more time. And another 5 month period of dryness cropped up.

I worked in the mill at night from 11 to 7 in the morning. I stayed around my father's store, stayed with them. I'd, really and truly by that time determined that I'd never lived with wife number 1 again. And I had divorced her. And they introduced me to a lady that was 8 years old of the night that mom and dad feel like would be my salvation.

She was a nice lady and she had a nice house, 13 acres of land, nice automobile. And after 5 months of dryness and going to church with her and staying around the store and staying in her house, some with her, and taking care of those chores around her home that all good Baptist Sunday school teachers need taken care of. She probably appreciated my efforts and she asked me to marry. And we got married. And 3 weeks later, we went to a dance, and I got up and tried to dance sober and I could like a bull elephant in a china shop, bumping into everything.

No real music didn't sound right. People were laughing at me, making fun of me. I couldn't dance. I'm a guy that worked in the mill, gave me some old granddad while she was in the powder room. And I did dance when my wife got back for 2 or 3 numbers.

And also that night when the dance was over, my wife went out of the room crying because they had to wake me up at the back of the room where I passed out. And I put her through a lot of hell for the next year. Many, many times during 1962, I tried to stop drinking and I couldn't. I tried working after hours in the basement building, wooden objects and bookcases and so forth, and none of that work. I tried going with her back to church again, and that didn't work.

Nobody had the solution to my problem. They were all pointing a finger at me, but they were not pointing me in the direction to go that would work for me. And what they suggested did not work. And, my drinking was getting constantly worse and worse. It was the most important thing in my life.

I was living one day at a time back then. If I can get just enough to drink today and get through today, I'll be okay. Had never heard of AA, but that's what I was living for. After Christmas of 1962, for the next 3 weeks was almost complete drunkenness. I didn't work, but 2 or 3 days during the entire time.

And on a Friday afternoon, the 3rd week of January of 62, I got off at 2 o'clock because of inclement weather and began drinking and don't recall going home Friday night, don't recall going home Saturday night, or Sunday night. I have big memories of a few members of Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon. And other than that, the weekend was a blackout because blackouts have been a way of life for me for a long, long time. A long, long time. I had driven my car on occasions from Roxburgh to Fort Lee and put the car in the parking lot and would remember where I had parked.

So blackout blackouts was not unusual for me at that time. And on on that Monday morning, after 4 days and 3 nights of drunkenness, my wife was shaking me real hard asking me was I going to work that morning. And I said, yes, when she got me awake. And when I turned to the right that morning to get off my bed, my elbow hit something on the pillow. And it was 2 pints of white whiskey on that pillow.

And I sat down and began to drink and she came in the room late and saw what was going on. And this time she approached me and said some things with more authority than she'd ever used all that year. Telling me basically I was a no good drunk to get out of her heart, out of her life, out of her house forever that we withdrew. And when she got home that afternoon, she wanted me out. And apparently, late that morning, I did go to town after going down to the bootleg joint.

I was told I learned this from other people. And I went from the bootleg joint uptown, and late that afternoon, I got in trouble. I do recall that when the sheriff testified out of trial and I don't take step 5 from up here. But I heard a sheriff testify that he had looked out his window that Monday afternoon about 4 o'clock. And I was on the street drunk.

And he said he was coming out to arrest me, but the telephone rang. I said he talked on the phone for about a minute. And when he came back to the door to see where I was, I was gone. And he figured the police had me or would have me in a little bit. And since it was extremely cold, he forgot about it.

And I wished a whole lot of times that I had been arrested that Monday afternoon because offenses were committed that that brought about my arrest again the next morning. And I was placed in jail the next morning and no bond was allowed. January 21, 63. February 11th, I stood in superior court with no defense because of having been in a blackout, not knowing where I've been, what I had done or what had happened. The lawyer said he had nothing to do but just stand mute because he couldn't defend me under those circumstances.

So we stood mute that meant that we had to listen to the evidence and then the judge would act. And after the judge listened to the evidence, he says, young man, stand. And when I stood up, he's told me that for the offenses committed on the statues of North Carolina says, I now hereby sentence you to a period of natural life plus 40 years in the expiration state penitentiary in Raleigh. I have some February the 11th. 2 days later, they carried me into the walls of central prison handcuffed and shackled between 2 other inmates.

I was placed in the general population shortly thereafter. Then I had to go before a classification committee. And when I went before that classification committee for job assignment and so forth, those officers looked at my sons and they told me that basically, if you don't be a good boy, you'll never get out of here. You'll never get out of here under these circumstances. I knew that in that short period of time I had been there, I didn't like that place and I wanted to get out.

So I made up my mind I'm gonna be a good boy. But within 3 weeks, there's good intentions that I had about being a good boy went by the wayside just as they had done time after time after time in the community. Good intentions never did accomplish much for me. They went by the wayside because some guys took me into that confidence and introduced me to some things in the prison environment that enabled me to sleep at night. Little bottles of alcohol were being smuggled in out from the hospital into the general population, and I began to take anything up to get my hands on and get high.

In June of 63, 3 things happened. I was fired from a job, but they didn't send me home. Sent me to work in print shop. A man broke into my wife's home and assaulted her. And I went to AA.

All of those things happened in June of 63. And in a way, to make a long story short, and for the next 8 months, I attended the AA meeting. I sat in the back of a room. I didn't participate. I didn't read.

I didn't get involved in anything, making coffee, cleaning up, setting up, doing nothing. I just sat in the back of the room. Occasionally, I go up to the water cooler or something and and take a pill. I wasn't interested in a a. A a, at that time in Central Prison, as a little back on it now, was not the best group in the world, but it was the only group there.

And I did go. I hadn't hit Bob. But on February 16, 1960 4, having been drunk all from Sunday afternoon up until Sunday night, I came to him a cell block by Sunday night, and I'm way up on the 4th floor. I came to that night sometime after 8 o'clock, and I took an inventory of where I stood in life. Here I am in central prison with the sons of natural life plus 40.

No way will I ever get out. I can't get as drunk and stay as drunk for as long as I wanna stay drunk because I don't have the money to do it. The availability of supply was limited. It was harder to get than it is in the community. So I couldn't get sober and couldn't get as drunk as I wanted to.

I couldn't get sober because I had no program of recovery. I wasn't in a I was around. And I can tell you guys that those guys in there who just have the names on a prison roster and attend meetings and don't do do anything, it's very, very unlikely they'll ever get sober or ever find a way of life. That's the way it was with me. Having my name on the prison roster did not give me sobriety.

And, I came to that Monday night, the Sunday night, knowing that I had no future and was unable to tolerate the present and couldn't think about the past because I've been such a failure. Made up my mind that I was gonna jump over the railing that night head first and end my wretched existence. And I took everything I had to stood at the door. And I know that God and his infinite mercy that night prevented me from going over that railing. Because I came to sometime around 9:30 or 9:40 that night.

And it was a roll of vomit to the commode. And I was choking and gasping and had my head in the commode and apparently passed out on the commode because I came too late on and got in my bed. And the next morning, when I went out, the guys in the cell block on the right told me that that night I had cried out real loudly, God, if you help me get back to AA, I'll try. Try. You see, I have been going for 8 months.

The foreign Thursday night, I walked in the doors of a a at Central Prison. I moved from the back of the room up to the front and sat down on the left side of the podium, and that became my seat. Shortly thereafter, after moving into that situation, and I had gone back into that group with a gift. A gift that I had acquired in previous week. And that was a gift of desperation.

I desperately wanted to do something. I wanted more than anything else in the world to find relief from the torment that I had been going through for years years prior to ever being in prison. And I went into that group that night knowing that this is my only hope. The agro was the only treatment for alcoholism in the prison system that I knew anything about. And I went into that a group looking for help, and I found help.

And I found that AA is what I need today. Short left, I went into that group. Tom gave me a copy of the big book, Alcoholics and Loans. She told me what I wanted to do with what I needed to do with it. And I took it back to my cell block, began to read it, began to study it.

And I began to get active in the group, I began to write letters to free people, inviting them to come in and speak, write them letters of appreciation. And I maintained group rosters for the group. And I would do this on Saturday morning. I give up my movie time in order to have access to a typewriter. And I would do those things.

I got real, real active in the group. And it wasn't many months, after I got into the group that, Tom shut the group down. The group he we had had a meeting 1 Sunday night and he had called on several guys to come up and share. And it was just a mockery really of a a the guys did not know what to say, didn't know anything about it. And he shut the group down, Completely shut it down.

No meetings. And then when he shut it down, he began to call 5 or 6 of us into a little library room and meet with us. 5 or 6 or 7 of us that he felt like had potential. The possibility we really might be interested in a and he began to meet with us on a regular basis, in that little room to talk with us about an a group and what an a group was about. And it wasn't too long before we started a group back with new leadership.