The South East Texas Area 67 convention in Beaumont, TX

I grew up. My name is Joe. I'm an alcoholic. Friday, June 5th 94. I'm just thankful that I know how to be for that today.

You know, a lot of people start with their childhood and all that kind of thing and and, I just don't because that's boring to me when people start that away. Other than to say, I always say I come from a good family. I I really did. My, my folks raised a a preacher and a missionary. And my sister's almost an angel.

And I was the only sorry one in the bunch, you know. And I kinda blaze the trail to hell and everybody else went the other way. They went to church. Don't know how that happened. You know, the only thing I know about being alcoholic is the way I drink alcohol, and the only thing I know about staying sober is Alcoholics Anonymous.

It's that simple. I'm a share with you in a general way what it used to be like, what happened, and what it's like now. And and I wanna thank the committee for inviting me. It's it's always an honor and a privilege to get to be asked to do anything in Alcoholics Anonymous. And, when you come from where I come from, to get to do anything, anything, It's just, it's a miracle.

It's a absolute miracle. So I'm a get started with my favorite day of my life. I was about 10 or 11 years old. I was walking home from school one day and a friend of mine, Jamie, said, we're gonna be real men. We've got a dip Copenhagen snuff.

And I said, by God, you're right. And, I got a big old dip on my mouth, made about 3 or 4 steps, and I've been doing it ever since, you know. Got to his house later on that afternoon, and he said, if we're gonna be real men, we've gotta drink whiskey. And I said, by God, you're right. And, he poured he got this bottle of Jim Beam.

I'll never forget it as long as I live. I can tell you everything I was wearing that day, everything happened. Total recall of that day. He poured a shot and I looked at it. Never hadn't taken a drink in my life.

I said, you know what? That's not gonna be enough. And, that's the truth. So we got this plastic cup. We filled it about halfway up and I got that juice down the hole where it does most good.

And let me tell you, I felt just like a man out of field. I wanted to go kill somebody, find me a girl, roll around in the hay, and fight. You know? And, you know, I thought I have a ride. I have arrived.

And I thought to myself, I I'm gonna do this every day. Every day for the rest of my life. I can't wait till I get grown. I can get this done on a regular basis. Basis.

Half my family is Irish Catholic and the other half is the Assembly of God folks. So I was confused and you can just tell from the start which side I fit in best with. You know? I like the drinkers. So anyway, all my people are on my dad's side, which is the catholic side, are up in Kansas City and I was, my first drunk was a whole lot like my last.

I was with all the people I wanted to be with doing exactly what I wanted to be doing, and I overshot the mark and got sent home the next day. That's how that works. So we're up there, and my cousin is on home leave from the navy, and he said, what would you like to drink? And got this big old plastic cup, and I said, man, just pour a little bit of everything in there. And he did.

God, it was wonderful. The last thing I remember was passing out in the or making snow angels in the front yard, blacking out and passing out. You know, that's just how it went. Right after midnight mass, it was great. Got got up the next morning.

I was still drunk and nobody seemed to notice and and, got back home. And man, I just I was just looking forward to it. I grew up in a small town. If I lived in Fort Worth for a long time and and they think anything east of 360 is east Texas. Kinda like y'all down here think everything north of 10 is is Yankeesville, you know.

Kind of the same thing. I say them for me because it just makes sense because I talk so funny and and it just kinda explains it a little bit. But, that's grew up in a small town and it's never hard to find somebody to buy you a little booze or somebody's always got an older brother or sister. Somebody's house is fortified. I wasn't from a real drinking family so but I never had a problem getting a hold of alcohol.

And from the beginning it seemed like I had a great capacity it seemed like, you know, we get a 12 pack of beer with the with my buddies and and they'd have about 2 or 3 and they talk about getting buzzed, you know. I have never been buzzed in my life. I am either sober or insanely drunk. There is no in between. When I read about social drinking in the book, I think who are they talking about, you know.

I never did any of that. So things kind of rocked along. I started getting in trouble real early. I I was all I was bad about getting in my piece. I relate a lot to Mike what he was talking about.

He never got DUI. I never got DUIs either. I never had a car. I had one once for a while but lost it. And, anyway, so I was always getting in troubles.

I started dating the justice of the peace's daughter. You know, I thought man that'll that'll keep me out of a little trouble. Later on, I had to move up to the DA's daughter and and, eventually had to marry her. But, that's way later on in the story. But things are rocking along and I I'm the kind of guy I wasn't afraid of anything.

I just was not afraid of anything and I don't know why I really should have been. I did a lot of dumb things. I ran off to Mexico one time. I was about 15, and I called my folks from the border and told them I'd be back directly. It was about a month or so later.

It's worst beating I ever got was best time I ever had, you know. It was just a it was a ball. And what, you know, what are you gonna do? I mean, I was out of control long before we ever had that first talk, but my folks had gone on a vacation and they were, dim enough to let me stay at home by myself. I had a little old preacher brother with me and they sent sister off to grandma.

Our house was not very big y'all. I mean, not very big at all. And I had about a 150 of my best friends in there, and we broke every bit of furniture in the house, you know. And just one of those one of those great parties. Kinda like an animal house kinda deal.

And, I'll never forget to look on my folks face when they walked in the door and and and they're asking what happened. I said, you know, we've been here for about 11 years and I just felt like we need to rearrange a little bit. That's that's when mom brought the first faith healer home. And, we'd also his son was with us that evening and we did what you're supposed to do. We dropped him off on the on the front yard and ring the doorbell and all that kind of good stuff.

And so preacher come over and and and he's he's given me the talk. He's given me the talk and and he's laying hands on me and he's speaking in tongues and he's trying to cast that alcohol demon out of me. And, he says, boy, do you realize that you are going to hell? And I looked him dead in the eyes and I said, yes sir. I do.

And I plan on taking as many of you as I can with me. And, and that healing stopped. He just left. He just left. He just left.

Things kinda rocked along, and I'm doing what I do. And I eventually wind up down at the park, in the park in my my hometown. It's kinda like a lot of east Texas towns. It's just it's just the way it is. It ain't right.

It just ain't right, but it's a segregated place, you know. Everybody has their place, and and and I just I fit wherever there was a lot of drinking going on. I showed up down there one night, and my best friend, we've become my best friend in the world. His name was Rondell. He was the most cross eyed man I've ever met in my life.

One eye went that way, the other one went that way. And whenever we play basketball, the goal's in front of you and he's looking like this. He never missed, man. He could have been the next Michael Jordan, but, the bull got a hold to him too, you know. And, the lady last night was talking about wild Irish rose.

I love people drink wild Irish rose. The best stuff you ever hadn't seen fruit one squoze in it, you know, and it just tastes just like whiskey. I just fell in love with it. Best thing ever happened to me. So I'd stayed down there for a few months and, you know, my brother could could get away from the house for, you know, 24 hours and my folks would go running around looking for them.

I'd be gone for 3 weeks. Nobody ever looked for me. That still bothers me. You know what I mean? Now I didn't wanna be found but but I I was worth looking for, I thought.

You know? So I've been down there for a few months, and and things have have just I am just drinking constantly. I'm drinking constantly. Mom had had already had that talk with me. 1 of them crying, sobbing stories.

Oh, baby. Please don't let it control you. You control it. And by the time that had come around, I'd long since overshot that mark. There was nothing I could do about it.

She had found me one afternoon and said, boy, you have become notorious. And mom can say that with about 47 syllables in it, and everyone of them hit you in the mouth, you know, and it's just it's awful. She said you're going to Houston. That's where my dad my dad lived and, he is at least a heavy drinker. Don't know whether he's alcoholic or not.

That's his business. But, we lived in a wonderful part of town. It's right off of Hammerly, right behind d's pit stop at the time. And, that is the most wonderful bar you've ever met in your life. Some of these guys know what I'm talking about.

But, she sent me down there because she thought if if I was living with my dad and saw what alcoholism was like, I might wanna stop. What she she didn't know is that, she thought she was sending me to the worst place I could be, but it was just like heaven, man. I made some of the best friends I ever met in my life. My best friend when I moved down here, his name was Charlie. Charlie lived in the dumpster next to the bar.

He never he never ate. He never bathed. He never did any of that. Beer and I thought, you know, growing up my favorite movies is them country and western movies. Those old drunks, they never had to eat or bathe and everybody feeds some booze and that's what I wanted to be when I grew up, you know.

Charlie was kinda like, Bill w's dog girl on the tombstone. He died before the end of the summer of acute alcoholism. He drank himself to death. And, I might should've taken a little heed to that, but I didn't. And that's just the way that goes.

Me and my dad, we didn't get along too good. I didn't get along too good with anybody. And, he tried to cut me off at the bar one evening, and we got in a big to do. And, I gonna stab him, put him out of his misery, and he gonna beat the crap out of me. And and something happened that night, and neither one of us got killed, and that was good because because it was gonna happen.

And and, he I'd only been here for a couple months. He decided it was time for me to go back already. A couple of significant things happened to me at these pit stop. There There was a a guy there named Hacksaw and I remember walking in to the bar one day and, I used to back when I was a kid, all I cared about was fighting football and another word that starts with f that I'm not gonna say, but you can figure it out. I would imagine.

And, anyway my dad always had a Coors Light and a bourbon press waiting for me when I got to the bar after I got off work. And I told him, I said, well, you know, today I don't think I want one. I think I'm gonna go, to the gym and work out a little bit because the most important thing in my life was playing ball. That was it. That's what I live for.

I live for that and whiskey. But, I I told my dad no and and Hacksaw said, boy, I admire you. You have willpower. And I thought about that. And I thought, you know what?

He's right. I could probably have a beer and then go on about my business and you know the rest of the story. I didn't leave the bar the rest of that night nor the rest of the summer and that's just the way it went. That's just the way it went. Had that big to do, he sent me back home and over the summer, I'd worked long enough to, save up a little money and buy bought a car, 87 Camaro.

It was beautiful. The most most fun thing I ever had and I made a decision when I was on my way back from Houston that until football season was over with I was not ever gonna take another drink. I wasn't gonna do it. I didn't tell anybody this, I just told myself and, so I stopped to get a 12 pack for the ride home. I meant when I got back to to town and I got to that I got to that four way stop and if I gone right, it was to the girlfriend's house.

If I gone left, it was to the liquor store. So I just went left and I went right, you know. That that that deal about not drinking lasted about 5 minutes, you know. About 5 minutes and, got started, got to rocking and rolling, and and I got hurt really early on in the season. I wound up separate my shoulder many, many times and I got to where my arm would just fall out and losing sensation and feeling in my hands.

And and I was 17, so my folks signed this deal and the doctor signed this deal and I couldn't play ball no more. And as far as I was concerned, life was over with. That was it. I am done. I am through.

There's no point in living. And I began a real serious attempt at trying to drink myself to death. That's what I was trying to do. We I was already you know, they kicked me out of the house not long after that or not long before that, you know, it was just it was one of those things. They had rules.

Like, one of their rules was you can't drink and stay here. Well, I had to drink. I had to drink every day. I had to drink every day. I'd gotten to the point where at that period of time, I was, not welcome anywhere because everybody had rules.

Most of them had to do with not drinking and I started staying in the shed next to a friend of mine's house. I stayed there for a good long while. A good long while while I was drinking, a good long while after I got sober. I didn't need to had to be homeless, and you're never really homeless in a small town. Y'all know how that goes.

You can you can always couch crash or something like that, but but that's just where I was. I would rather be that away. I just would. I'll never forget walking home one day and and, walking through the street and and my folks were standing out in the front yard and they're asking, boy, where's that car? I said, man, I have no idea.

I lost it. I I still got the keys entitled to it, but I can't find it. I'm sure it's in some pasture somewhere rotten today, you know. And and that's just those are the kind of things that happen on a real regular basis. I was passed out in my front yard one morning.

It was long about December, right before Christmas, and I got 12 step by my neighbor. The old fashioned way. A lot of folks say you don't talk to a drunk when they're drinking. Well, had they waited for me to sober up, I never would have found this place. He come over.

It was about 2 or 3 in the morning or something like that. And he hit me on the head and he said, boy, I don't know but you might have a slight drinking problem. And he said, maybe you ought to read this book and he gave my first copy, the big book, 5 callers anonymous. Just at that time, my very best friend in the world got sent off to a Goony Roost, because he was bad about doing that that dope and all that stuff and drinking too much. And they sent him off and I thought, man, I needed a break.

I'd gone from £215 down to about a 160, 155 in a short period of time and it was it I was at my whiskey weight, like Mike was talking about last night just at my whiskey weight and and I was I'm telling y'all all I wanted to do was die. All I wanted to do was die. So they took me to the meetings and I'm gonna tell you exactly what I thought at my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I looked around the room and they had all them signs hanging on the wall and everybody was so old and to me it looked just like a geriatric kindergarten, you know, and I thought I'm 17 years old at the time and the youngest guy there is 30, you know. That's that's double my age.

I thought, my god, if I ever got that old, I quit drinking too, you know. Because I poked along. I visited for about 30 days. I get a desire chip every day. I drink every day.

You know how that goes. I go to school pass them out like show and tell. You know? Everybody just thought it was so wonderful. Somebody going to a hay.

After about 30 days they had enough of me and that's no joke. Because I I did a research paper one time. I knew there was something wrong with me. I figured out why I was alcoholic. I inherited it or something.

You know, I could tell you the chromosome number and color and all that neat scientific stuff, and I just tell them all about it and they didn't care. You know how they are. Sit down. Shut up, boy. They, they didn't they didn't wanna know anything about it.

So one one evening after meeting, they had had their fill, and about 4 or 5 of them were standing on the porch. And they said they said, boy, what you need to do is go sign go try some control drinking. I said, man, that sounds wonderful. What is it? And, they said, well, it's on page 31, but since you probably can't read, we're just gonna tell you.

And, so they told me and my buddies rolled by and I I I jumped in the back of the truck, went to that old party and and I did what they said to do. I had about 6 beers, 2 shots, and when you were drinking the way I was drinking, that didn't do nothing for you. The next day, I got up, had a few more, just absolutely miserable. And on Sunday, you know what I said, the heck with it. And I started drinking like I like to drink.

And, that that began a 6 month period of just only way I know to describe it is zombolic drink. And I have no idea what happened, where I was, what was going on, or anything like that. I have no idea. Couldn't tell you. Couldn't tell you where I was, who I was with, nor did I care.

And that was the thing. I just didn't care anymore. I just didn't care. A lot of bad things were happening. I mean, if it could've got worse, it didn't.

Everything everything I ever said I was never gonna do happened in that period of time. I'd stopped by the house one evening and I needed to pick up some money and, stop well, steal some money from my brother what I was doing. And, and, mom standing in front of the door trying to block it, keep me from getting out, and, she's just begging and crying. Baby, please stay here. Please stay here.

And what do you do when your mom is standing in front of you begging you and trying you to try and telling you to stay? You just throw her out of the way. That's what I did when I drink. That's what I did. And you go on about your business.

And, I'll never forget that day. I'll never forget a lot of days, but there's a whole lot of stuff like that that went on. We got this big senior trip planned to Puerto Var to Mexico. In my graduating class, there were a 106 of us, you know, and it's not very big. Everybody knew everybody first, last name.

We known each other our whole lives, and that's just kind of the way it was. And and, I'd made I'd said a prayer before I left that last meeting where they told me about controlled drinking. I believe it was the most sincere prayer I ever said in my life. I said, god, either let me die or make me wanna have what these people have. That was it.

That's what I wanted. And, we're out doing what you do when you're from the country. I drink with one of my coaches and we picked up a bunch of pretty girls and we're on these back roads and and, we're swerving and ducking and dodging and and we're in this brand new 1994 Pathfinder and it starts to roll. And when it starts to roll, the the thought that goes through my mind is thank God it's over. Thank God it's over.

And and I wasn't dead, you know, obviously. And I was disappointed. I was disappointed. And I thought to myself, this is my sign from god. This is it.

I will never drink again as long as I live. We got everybody back to town and within 15 minutes, we were out there getting all the bottles that hadn't broken and the cans that hadn't busted. And I finished that drunk just like you're supposed to. I was bad about not being where I was supposed to be like school. They expected it on a regular basis.

I I didn't do that. My mom was there one morning. She said, boy, I'm here about your attendance. How many days you think you missed? I said, well, probably about 10 or 11.

And we got the office more like 43. And that's that's not good because that's like half of the deal, you know, and you're not gonna get to graduate. They work something out where I'd had to go to detentions like before and after school every day on Saturday and go out to the vice principal's house on Sunday and bail hay and do those kind of things. That's just the way it works. By the time I was 15, I'm gonna slide back a little bit.

Like I said, I was going to the justice of the peace on a regular basis and and and he called me the town drunk and I was so proud and, he he he he taught me how to get around all that stuff. He said, god boy would you just put all that stuff in a suitcase, go to one pasture and stay all night, you know? Because that's where you drink when you're from the country in the pasture. There's no bars or any of that kind of stuff. Just go out there and raise cane, burn stuff down.

It's wonderful, you know. And we did it real good. We did it real good. Everybody in town know what happened by the time I woke up the next morning. That was one of the other deals.

I had to go set up the whole deal for graduation and stuff like that, and and people are asking me what happened, Joe? Are you okay? What's going on? I didn't remember a thing. They took me by the car later on that that, afternoon, and I just couldn't believe anybody survived that wreck.

I really couldn't. I really couldn't. It was amazing. And every one of us walked away. Every one of us walked away.

We got got through that deal, got my little diploma and all that stuff, and I got on a good run of drunk. I wound up somewhere down in Corpus Christi or Robstown or something like that. I I vaguely remember being at a quinceanera or some big Mexican party, and it was great, man. Because they had tons of tequila and tons of rum, and it just couldn't have been any better. I fit right in.

Fit right in. We had a few days left before, we're supposed to get on that flight. And every bit of money I'd gotten for graduation, everything else was gone. And and by the time it was time to make that trip to the airport, I remember why I had this. I have no idea.

It might have been some women involved, but I had this box of wine. And, it was about empty. And you know how that stuff is. You gotta rip the box apart. And on the way to the airport, I'm squeezing on that bladder, pulling on that that little deal trying to get that last little drop out because I was afraid they weren't gonna serve me on the airplane, and that was true.

When we got there, my mom was there, girlfriend was there, her mom, everybody I knew in this god's world was there. And everybody was well, my mom and her mom and her, everybody was crying, Joe. Please don't drink. Please don't drink till the last day. Please please please, baby.

Don't do it. Don't do it. Alright. I won't do it. But I fell in love.

There was this girl that I believe believe she danced for a living, and I fell in love right away with her and her friend and that's just my kind of deal. So I left the girlfriend everything else. I'm running around trying to do what I need to do. And and we get down to this resort thing. I remember trying to sign in.

They wouldn't let me drink on the plane and I was right. I started going getting into them bad shakes and I was shaking so bad I couldn't sign my name on a little piece of paper. My buddies are holding my hand. They're saying, Joe, you gotta stop drinking, man. And, this orientation deal lasted about 15 minutes.

I was good for 2 and went to the bar and the first thing I did was order a glass of tequila. Then I asked for some rum. And when I drink rum, things get stupid in a hurry. I mean real stupid. You know, where I grew up there's lots of trees and you can kinda go the bathroom everywhere you wanna go.

In Mexico, they're a little bit smaller. And, well, I was using one and, I missed and I hit somebody's table while they were eating and that didn't go over so well. And then, I guess I had to go again real soon, so I just used the pull. And, that didn't go over real well either. The little bartender cut me off.

I got angry. So I tried to beat him to death with a barstool, and, they locked me up in the room. They thought maybe I need to take a break. Maybe if I get a little sleep, it might might wear off a little bit. Later on that afternoon, the sleep wasn't helping none.

They brought me back down and thought if I get some food in my my stomach I might sober up a little bit and, that's when I saw my opportunity. I was gonna kill myself. So I grabbed somebody's drink as I'm making my way out to the ocean and I'm just gonna drown myself out there and I got about 4 or 500 yards out and the water never got above my chest. And my buddies are chasing after me and they're dragging me back in the shore and just in case you want to kill yourself in Mexico, don't do it in public. It's against the law.

I know that because the federalities were passing by and they were ready to take me in and, they convinced them to let me just go back to the room and I'm standing there screaming and yelling and cussing out. I'm telling to go back to their own country and leave me alone. Don't they know who I am? I have no idea where I'm at and, you know, I have another opportunity. I'm gonna place of glass.

That that knocked me down for a bit, and that was good. And I come to and I was in the best fight I'd ever seen in my life. Everybody just beating the crap out of me. It looked like they were having fun. I wasn't.

I was under room arrest, you know, but the guards give up later on into the evening. I made my way to them girls, see what I could do with that, and find me some more whiskey. And, I remember coming to the next morning because that's what I'd been doing for a long time. I'd been shaken awake at about 4 or 5:30, just having to take another drink, and that's what happened one more time. And I couldn't I couldn't find it.

I couldn't find it. And, I got down to to the main floor, and they had a a little bus waiting for me and a couple of police cars, and they were I was being deported from Mexico for Christ's sake. How do you get thrown out of Mexico, you know? That's hard to explain. So, you know, you get on the bus and you get going and got to the airport.

I tried to make it to the bar and, that didn't work out so good and I saw the biggest man, the biggest biggest man any shape form you've ever seen. He was my bodyguard and bigger 3 times bigger than Bobby and that's pretty big. And, anyway, they they take me out to the plane on my very own bus, one more little bus by myself and I got my bodyguard and he's sitting next to me on the plane and all these important people are are loading me up, shipping me out and, this poor old woman sitting next to me on the on the plane ride back and and I know I just reeked because I hadn't bathed in days and I've been hard drinking like I like to drink and and, I remember just crying. Just crying. Every time I ask for help, it was always a stipulation to it.

That evening there was no stipulation. Or that morning, I just said, god help. And that's all I could get out of my mouth. God help. Didn't know what to do.

Got back to the airport. My mom standing there crying one more time. My stepdad standing there laughing. He's a big shot administrator at one of the oldest, treatment centers in Dallas at the time. And he asked me a real important question.

One of the one thing I gotta say this, the one of the guys that kinda headed up the trip, and a couple of the chaperone people were asking me right before they sent me off. They said, Joe, why do you drink like you drink? Why do you do this? Why do you always do this? I told the absolute truth that morning.

The first time, probably last time I've ever told the absolute truth in my life. I said, you know, I don't know why I do what I do. And that wasn't a sufficient answer for a non alcoholic. They don't understand that. You can come in here and say I don't know and we all get it.

We know you don't know why you do what you do. They want answers. You know, like who, what, when, where, why. Those are just lie questions, you know. If you ask me, I'm just gonna lie to you just for the principle of the thing like, where you've been, who you've been with, what's the I don't know, you know, what do you want to hear?

You know what I mean? What's gonna make you feel better about all of it? So, that's what I'm gonna tell you. Get back. My dad said, well, what do you think we ought to do with you?

I said, well, if you take me to jail. I know I got warrants out some kind of place or or maybe we can go to that treatment center you work at. And he looked me dead in the eyes. He said, boy, you ain't worth the money. And, I said, well, what about AA?

He said, best idea you've ever had. And, so they did a little rolling stop at the meeting, dropped me off. I'm gonna, they said don't bother coming home. And I said don't worry, I ain't. And walked to the glass door and the the lady was sitting there, her granddaughter was in my graduating class, and the whole room just busted out laughing because they knew where I was supposed to be.

And I just blubbering and whining and crying, didn't know what to do. And I didn't pick up a desire chip that night. They stuffed me full of a lot of cigarettes. Nobody offered me a ride anywhere home or anything like that. They just turned me aloof when the meeting was over with, because they didn't like me very much.

And I don't blame them. I had a and a tough decision to make. I didn't know what to do. And, I walked by the liquor store and it just happened to be a Sunday. It was closed.

I couldn't get nothing. So I walked around town all day, and one of the gifts I'd received for graduation was round trip tickets anywhere I wanted to go. So I flew to Houston. I figured if anybody could help me out, maybe my dad could. Because I wanted I wasn't wanted where I was at, and I just needed to get going.

I do that a lot. When I ain't wondering where I'm at, I just get going. Sometimes I just get going because I need to. I kinda I like to run a lot, and that ain't so good. I'll I'll best lesson I ever learned in alcohol anonymous is sometimes it's just best stand up and be counted, and that's okay.

That's okay. That's the greatest lesson I've ever learned here. A lot about becoming a man. But, anyway, made my trip down to Houston. I know he'd helped me get get off a drunk and he did.

Fed fed me a lot of orange juice and honey and stuff like that and I shook it out for a good 3 days and every time I laid down in this little old old old bed, you know, it's a it's a drunk house and, you know, there ain't no furniture. There's just beds set up everywhere. And, I remember every time I'd laid down, I felt like I was falling into hell in the walls and the ceilings was shaking and moving on me and stuff was crawling out of the carpet and as I was having my my first real good shot at DTU. It was great. You know, free trip, I guess.

I don't know what to tell you. He had this little little bottle of tequila on the wall. It said break in case of emergency. It was enclosed in glass and I studied that thing for 3 hours trying to figure out is this an emergency or not, you know. You know, wound up not drinking and called my folks said, hey, look.

Can I come back to Kaufman and and because I didn't know that AA was anywhere but in Kaufman in Dallas, Texas? I thought that's the only place that existed and, I needed to get back. I needed to get back there. They said you can come back to town but you can't come home and I said that's fine. Started going to meetings on a regular basis and and the first night I was back, they took me into the back room.

And if you getting took to the back room, you're you're going to a good place if you're ready to stop drinking. And they give me that talk. It's about 4 or 5 of them. They said here there are gonna be some conditions for you here, and one condition is you cannot say anything until we ask you to. And, I said okay.

I said okay. They said, you're gonna have a case of sugar diabetes. What you need to do is keep you some candy and something sweet around, and have you something to get you through the shake. Because I shook awful bad for a long time. It's a good 6 months before I got a hold of full cup of coffee without spilling it.

And they said you're gonna get a sponsor And they gave me a sponsor. His name was Head. Head was a real hillbilly. He had hair way down past his neck, you know, and he quit school in the 6th grade. He only had about 9 months at the time but they figured if he were there was no way I was gonna stay sober but if he worked with me it might help him out out and that's how that whole deal worked.

It worked out real good because, Ed didn't know nothing you know. We just got started on the book and he didn't read so well. So what we would do to work the steps is get together and I tell him what the big words meant. He tell me what to do. And we started right at that front blank page, you know.

And there, it wasn't like it kinda is in some of the big cities where they talk about working a step a month or a step a year or anything like that. If you're well enough to stop shaking and you can read the book, you're ready to start working the steps. That's just the way they felt about it. They said all we had to offer in alcoholics anonymous was a spiritual experience. The only way they knew to produce that was with the steps.

So you get started right away. We got going, you know, we got going. We got to work on it and a little bit of time had passed and things were kinda going good and I was out at his house. Are you trying to get me on the 3rd step and I was trying to do it by myself. I kept coming back and telling him, you know, nothing's happening.

I thought something big was supposed to happen. So we're out of his place one day and before things had really gotten good at his life, he lived in this old seventy trailer. He built 5 extra rooms on to, you know, whenever broke down vehicle he ever had, and it was just the way it ought to be. Broke down horse and and we're pitching horseshoes and we go over to the butane tank. That's where the t is.

He said, boy, get on your knees. I said, I didn't sign up for nothing like this. That's exactly what I said. He got on his too. Thank god.

And and he reached under he reached under that butane tank and he pulled out a big book and he had it planned out, you know. He said, looky here, God. He he told me he said, we're we're fixing to do this Thursday. He said, looky here, god. Smokey Joe's fixing to turn his will life over to you, so watch out.

And he said, boy, read that prayer. I read that prayer. I'm a tell you something. Something happened that day. By the time I was finished, I felt like if I turned around, Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, or somebody would have been standing right behind me.

Something something happened that day. Something something changed. And immediately after getting up, he said, boy, you need to go home and do that 4 step right now. Well, you know how that goes. You you get flushed that old spiritual in them and you ain't ready to do nothing.

I'm I'm hanging out for 2 weeks and I'm sitting on the back table by the at the back door and he said you got that 4 step done yet? And I said, no sir. I was real arrogant. Kind of like I am now, maybe a little worse. I said, hey, I don't think I want to know everything it is to know about me just yet.

So he grabbed me by the arm, threw me in his pickup truck, and we went down to the liquor store. Walked inside. He got a 5th of Jack Daniels. Came back out, set it in my lap. He said, well, the problem is boy you hadn't had enough to drink yet why don't you just get with it?

I said I'll have it done Sunday. That was Friday night. Rode it. Got it done. I was out of his place doing my best shot at a at a 4th and 5th step.

And I'm gonna tell you something, I did the very best I could do at the time. That's the god's honest truth. Was everything on there? No. It wasn't.

I made a fatal mistake though. Almost a fatal mistake. I willfully withheld one piece of information. One thing I'm never gonna tell another human being as long as I live. It was gonna be many many more years before I ever talked about any of that stuff.