Charles J. from New York, NY speaking in Cleveland, OH

Certainly can't look out on this tremendous gathering here tonight. Probably the largest crowd I have seen at a nay a dinner in the city of Cleveland at least throughout the many years that I have been privileged to be a part of this program. Without looking back to some degree, and sort of running through the years in one's mind, all the things that have transpired, and what brought this great gathering about. I think that this year of 1959 is one of the really important years in the life and history of AA in Cleveland because of the fact that it commemorates the 20th anniversary of its founding. The first meeting of AA in the city of Cleveland and what many of us consider the first all AA meeting in the United States was held in May of 1939 at the home of Abby and Grace Golrick on Cleveland Heights.

Previous to that time, AA was associated somewhat with the Oxford program, and the early members of this movement were going to Akron every Wednesday night to meet at the home of t Henry Williams and decided for a number of reasons, principally, I think, because back in those those days, money was hard to come by. It cost money for gas to get to Akron. And in order to save some expenses after the program, Cleveland wise had grown to a membership of probably 6 or 7 people, it was decided to hold the first meeting in Cleveland. And I think the faith and the zeal, courage, and foresight of people like Clarence Snyder, people like George McDermott, John Dolan, Fred Beisel, and Charlie John's now deceased, and Lloyd Tate, who foresaw unbelievably fantastic yeah. Unbelievably fantastic belief back in the days when AA was in its very infancy, when getting drunks to come into this program was missionary work, when it was figuratively ringing doorbells and house to house solicitation.

The faith and zeal and courage of these people is certainly to be commended. We were fortunate in the year 1939 as far as growth was concerned to have the plain dealer articles under Harlow Hoyt's byline appear, which created for us a great deal of activity and enabled us to do a great deal of 12 step work and which prepared us for the great and tremendous influx of people who came as a result of Jack Alexander's article in the Saturday Evening Post in 1941. I think that we owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the people who have the faith and the courage and foresight to start this program in Cleveland, and who have the belief and the zeal to persevere under the most trying circumstances to build what we now classify as the greatest AA in the United States or anywhere in this world. I think we have much to be grateful for as a result of this early pioneering because where for so little have we seen so much taken in? Where is it possible in any other program in life to give so little and to be able to achieve so much?

Where is it possible to build on the misery and grief and heartache and sorrow and mental torture of years of drinking. By the simple process of belonging to the program of AA with an overwhelming desire every single day that we live to stay sober, and to be willing to follow to the best of our abilities the things that's program recommends. Where is it possible to ever be able to accomplish for ourselves the things that we have been privileged to accomplish as a result of our association with AA. Tonight is a night of reflection. Tonight is a night of gratitude in Cleveland, AA.

I think each and every single one of us with humble hearts and deep and undying gratitude can say to the Snyder's, to the Dolan's, to the McDermott's, to the Tates, to the Darrows, and everyone who participated. God bless you. We are grateful that we had you kind of people to lead us. Thank you. We wanna thank the committee of 10 ladies who came down here early and helped at the door and with the tickets and the arrangements.

We are very much indebted to them. Our speaker for the evening is very proud that within the past week, he is the named chairman of the Lenox Hill AA Group in New York City. While qualifying for membership in this exclusive country club, He's managed to do considerable on the credit side of the of the ledger. His literature has been highly praised in the world of literatures. Sinclair Lewis' and the Philip Wyllys have referred to him as r James Joyce, the American Dequincey.

Very high praise is beneath upon this man with cause. He has lectured with distinction at Dartmouth, at Columbia, New York University, and I'm told at 4 or 557 Street saloons. He has a very colorful career that he brings to this platform this evening. It is with great pleasure as chairman of this banquet that I present mister Charles Jackson of New York City. Thank you, Joe.

Good evening, everyone. New friends and old. I want to add my congratulations and goodwill to the Cleveland Group on this wonderful milestone of 20 years. To members of AA everywhere, Cleveland is a kind of hallowed ground. And I wish that every single one of the Cleveland group could know individually how deeply honored I am to have been asked out here to share in this anniversary of yours.

It's a compliment and an honor I will never forget. It is true as Joe said, that I've just been chosen chairman of the Lenox Hill Group, and that I'm proud of it. But I think we in New York, with our 6 years of sobriety, or our 8 years, or our 12 years, and sometimes 15, could learn a little bit about humility from the Cleveland group. Where 20 years seems to be almost routine from all I've learned today. It has always been a hazard for me to speak at an AA meeting.

But I'm glad to say it is much less of a hazard than it used to be. It used to be an actual danger. When I was first in AA, I couldn't wait to get up to speak. I couldn't wait for my 3 months probationary period to be over, because I knew that I could do better than other people. I really had a story to tell.

I was more articulate. I could dramatize it. And I would really knock them dead. The time came when I began to speak, and I took to it with great joy and ego, and spoke all over the place. I was on the circuit, as we say.

And at one time, in February, a little over 5 years ago, I spoke 6 nights in 1 week, And including Springfield, Illinois, Wilmington, Delaware, and Lenox Hill in New York. And the morning after I spoke at Lenox Hill, when I've been AA in AA 6 months, the next morning, I found myself in hospital after a slip. I was terribly shocked by this. I couldn't believe that it happened. I've been saying all the right things, doing all the right things, I thought, and certainly I've been carrying the message.

But I had forgotten who I was. In Lenox Hill, a friend of mine in the Nickelback Hospital, a friend of mine called on me from Lenox Hill. And I said, Dick, I never can speak again. It's definitely bad for me. It goes right to my head.

I don't dazzle the audience. I dazzle myself. There's something about getting up in front of an audience that brings out the worst in me. I'm performing. I must never do it again.

And he said, Charlie, you've got to do it. You can do it. You've just forgotten a few things. You've forgotten about why you're up there. And that there's something else there besides yourself.

And he said, let me tell you a story. And he told me a story of a group of priests on the Hudson, who had a small AA group together. And one of these priests also was on the circuit, as I have been. And this priest got to speaking everywhere at the meetings. One night after another.

Every night in the week somewhere. And the other priest thought this was definitely bad and bad for him. And the word got back to him that, he was going too far. And he was a little concerned about this, and he went to his superior and he said, father, I'm told that I'm under criticism for speaking so much. I think I should do this.

I have the gift. Do you think I should hide my light under a bushel? And the old father said, no, son. I don't think you should hide your light under a bushel, but you shouldn't forget whose light it is. My name is Charles Jackson, and I'm an alcoholic.

My story isn't much different from other people's. It's the story of a man who is made a fool of by alcohol over and over and over, year after year after year, until finally the day came when I learned that I could not handle this alone. I always hope when I speak that I'm speaking to newcomers. But I think equally, I wish to reach members of AA who had so much trouble in AA as I did during the 1st years. And it's these people who are falling in and out of it, as I did for quite a while, that I would like that I hope to reach.

I would like to try to make 2 points only. And these are, once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. This I learned through long and bitter experience. And the other point is that the alcoholic, or at least this alcoholic, cannot maintain his sobriety alone. I know because I tried.

I began drinking relatively late. I hear in AA people who had their first drinks at 10 and 12. I was 26 before I began to drink to amount to anything. And it is true that within a year, I knew that I was an alcoholic, or at least that alcohol was a problem for me, and that I drank differently from other people. I knew this because I was living in Europe at the time, and I knew this because I wanted the morning drink and the day after.

And this was a thing that shocked my friends. They couldn't understand that. And I couldn't understand that they didn't want it, as I did, after a night of heavy drinking. This was when I needed it most. And I realized that there was a difference between my drinking and theirs.

And I knew that it meant trouble. At least that I was different as a drinker. And I kept this fact to myself. By 1933, 36, when I was 33, I was tired of trying to fight alcoholism. I couldn't win.

This I knew. I had been to a psychiatrist then, already at that early age. I had been once in Bellevue Hospital. I was living in and out of the pawn shops. I didn't want to live this way, but I was helpless.

I hated it as much as everybody else around me did. But I couldn't help it, and knew this. I knew I was sick and couldn't get help anywhere. And finally, I decided to try it on my own. I stopped drinking on November 11, 1936.

I don't know why I chose that date. It happened to be Armistice Day. But I did. I disappeared from the upper east side of New York, where I lived with my brother. Disappeared from my family and the circle of friends, and the girl I later married, and moved to the west side in a very cheap boarding house, rooming house.

And there I decided to stay alone and try to stop my drinking. I was a periodic drinker, drinking very heavily for 10 days and then offered for 5 or 6 weeks. And I thought that if I stayed there alone long enough, I would break this cycle. I didn't tell anybody what I was going to do. I knew better than to say I'm through drinking.

I had said this many times. I knew I had to say it to myself, and I did. I came back to my neighborhood in New York after 8 months of almost solitary living on the West Side, and told my brother and my girl and my friends that I was through drinking. I had it licked. It was behind me.

And I was through forever. This I absolutely meant. Absolutely believed. And then began quite a wonderful period for me. I've heard many alcoholics say that when they went on the wagon or stopped drinking alone, it was the most miserable period of their lives.

This was not true with me. I was very happy in this. I was very productive. I got a very good job straight off with the Columbia Broadcasting System. Was the first job I'd had in 10 years.

I married a year later. 2 years later, we had a child. 3 years later, we had another child. And all this time, I was very happy in what I was doing. And I was writing and working.

And sober, at least dry. About 1942, I thought this was a hell of a thing to have gone through. Nobody understood what the alcoholic was like. They think he's a deliberate troublemaker, that he's having a good time, that he's doing this on purpose. I knew otherwise.

I knew that he was sick, that he was helpless, that there was no answer for him in himself. And I decided to try to write a novel about this from the inside, from my own experience and thinking and observations, describing as well as I as honestly as I was able, the psychology of the alcoholic. And I wanted to write it in such a way that every reader would know what was the matter with a hero, although he himself never did, which is really what we are like as alcoholics. We are almost always the last one to know it. Everybody around us around us knows it before we do.

I wrote this novel. It was published in 1944. It was called The Lost Weekend. And as most of you know, it was quite a success. My life was turned completely upside down almost overnight.

This was something I had always looked forward to. I had always wanted. It's what I thought I'd been living for. I didn't dream what it was going to mean to me in the way of disaster. For unstable characters like myself, success can be as difficult and dangerous as failure.

I became a public figure when I arrived in Chicago. I was interviewed, that kind of thing, everywhere I went. There was also enormous curiosity everywhere about my personal life. Was this I? I thought and said that I had written a novel.

This was not I. The more I was asked about this, the more I was interviewed and so forth, the more I retreated from it. I think I got tired of being my own hero. We'll come back to that in a moment. In April 1944, we were living happily in Washington Square, 2 small children.

And this financial success and a certain prestige, when my telephone rang one morning, and there was a man on the other end that I knew by name, and that was about all I knew about him. What I all that I knew about this man was that he was the proprietor of the Washington Square Bookshop. I knew that because he sold my book and I was often in the shop. And also that he was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. This I knew because every time I went in the shop, he sounded off to me, a sober man, about Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I thought he was a bloody bore. This one morning, he called and he said, mister Jackson, I read in the paper today that you're going to Hollywood. I said, yes. I am. He said, well, I wish you'd do yourself a favor.

I wish you'd take down an address and telephone number I'd like to give you. It's the telephone number and address in Beverly Hills of Alcoholics Anonymous. I hit the ceiling. I said, you SOB. If you don't think I know what I'm doing by now, after 8 years of sobriety on my own, then you don't know very much.

Go and talk to those people who need it. That's the trouble of you holy rollers. And hung up on it. I went to Hollywood that summer to do a picture and I had no trouble. I went again the next year on another contract, and again I had no trouble.

And I went again the next year, and again, no trouble. But 3 years later, 3 years after that phone call, I was in Bermuda. I had just finished another novel, and I'd given myself a little holiday. I went to Bermuda alone for a month. And down in Bermuda, I thought, well, it's 11 years now since I've had a drink.

I knew I was an alcoholic. I thought if there's any trouble, I would try this. And if there's any trouble, I'll be here long enough to recover, and nobody will be hurt but myself. But I honestly believe this. As I say, I knew I was an alcoholic, but I did believe that the reasons for my drinking might have changed.

I was no longer frustrated. I was recognized. I had money, and so on. And I tried it. That dangerous, idiotic experiment.

I drank just beer. But being an alcoholic, I drank an awful lot of beer. There was no trouble in Bermuda. At the end of the month, I returned home, and my wife met me at the airport. And as we were driving into the city, I said, what do you know?

I'm drinking again. She said, you are? What are you drinking? I said, I'm drinking beer. And she said, well, Charlie, I think that's great if you can.

And I said, apparently I can. I had a secretary who came every day at 10 o'clock and left at 4, and I did a lot of dictating. And, I held off my beer drinking till 5 o'clock. But I noticed after lunch, as I'd be pacing back and forth in my study, dictating, I kept glancing at my watch. And I realized then that I was in possible trouble.

I thought, if you have to glance at your watch to see how soon you can have that glass of beer, already it's become too important to you. I don't remember what happened or how long or short a period it was. But within a very few weeks, of course, beer wasn't enough, and I went off into hard liquor again. And then I was gone. The thing that obsessed me during the next 22 year next 6 years and 22 hospitalizations was the thought of losing 11 years.

I could never possibly recover those 11 years. Of course I couldn't. But I could have started all over again. But I didn't think that was possible. I'd gone too far down now.

I'm going to skip ahead now to 6 years ago next month. We were by now living in New Hampshire. We thought, as many alcoholics do, that the change of scene, a small, quiet, tiny little village in New Hampshire would be idyllic, peaceful, good for me. Actually, I'm very gregarious, like people, and it turned out to be very bad, as any place would when I was drinking. But what I remember now of those years in New Hampshire is this.

When I think of our living in New Hampshire, I don't think of the automobile accidents, the night in jail, the hospitals, hospitals, hospitals, the strain and the fear that I lived under, and the strain and uncertainty of my family. What I remember most now about those years of drinking in New Hampshire is this. We had a beautiful house. I remember all day long, day after day after day, looking forward tonight to being alone in my room, where I didn't have to see anybody. And then at night, I remember lying awake in my bed and thinking of my New Hampshire neighbors in their little frame houses down in the street, and being keenly aware of how they envied me, because I used to hear this a good deal.

But I knew how much I envied them. And I envied them because they had love in their lives. And I didn't. And I didn't seem to be able to have it. It is true that I was living in the midst of my family who loved me.

My wife did. My children did. But at the same time, I had no love because I couldn't love anybody. I couldn't get outside of myself. And I think this is a thing that plagues the alcoholic so much.

It seems that all my life long, I had never been able to get outside of myself. I used to discuss this with my wife and wonder how it could be done. It couldn't be. I was too self absorbed, too self infatuated. And I drank.

One morning in July 1953, my wife said to me, after another calamity, I'm leaving today and I'm taking the children with me. This had been threatened many times. And always I had been able to talk her out of it. You know how we do, how we are. But this one time, she meant it.

She had to for her own self protection and the safety and security of the children. I had long since turned over my bank account I had left, my agents' fees, my royalties, and so forth to my wife. I knew I was not responsible with the checkbook, so everything was in her name. And she said, I've left a check for you on your desk, and we're going. We have to go.

It was a terrible moment, But I thought, characteristically and instantaneously, I thought, I feel awful about this, but I'll think of it some other time. I won't think of it now. In a little while, they'll be gone and I can do as I please. But I remember that terrible day. It was a beautiful morning.

And I will never forget, as long as I live, the sight of the children carrying out to the car armloads of books, and then they were gone. And I was relieved. I went to my desk, and there was a check for $250. Well, this was great. There would be no policemen around in the form of my wife to try to check up on me.

I could do just as I please and have a whale of a time. I didn't have any such time at all. By night, I was so lonely, I didn't know what to do. I drank, and I didn't enjoy it. I'm telling this part of the story in some detail because this, for me, was the turning point.

That night, drunk of course, I telephoned to my wife. I knew where she was. She had gone 500 miles south to my brothers in South Jersey near Delaware Bay. And I telephoned her and said, we promised the children summer camp. You have to bring them back.

I tried to act like the head of the family. And of course, I got nowhere. I did this for 2 or 3 nights. And then, on a whim, I hired a taxi to take me to Hanover. From Hanover, I took a plane without a hat or coat or toothbrush.

Took a plane to Boston, to New York, to Philadelphia, and there took a cab some 50 miles into the country to my brother's house to bring back my family. The very moment I entered the house, I knew that it was a lost cause. The children left the house at once in some embarrassment. My wife would not talk to me, and I realized that, of course, I had no moral authority at all. I was drunk.

I knew then that the thing I must do was go back to New Hampshire, to my favorite little hospital in Hanover, where I prescribed my own treatment, unlimited peraldehyde on my chart, and sober up the easy way, and then when I was sober, try to recover my family. I couldn't do it drunk. I asked my brother to drive me to the airport in Philadelphia the next morning, and we started out. On the way into Philadelphia, something happened to me. I got scared.

I thought I may not make New Hampshire. I knew that I would get on the plane because my brother would see to that. But I knew also I must have had one last little grasp on reality, because I knew that I was out of control, and there was no telling where I would be the next few hours. I might make New York, Boston, and Hanover, but I had no guarantee of it. I was not responsible.

I might be dead that night. And I told my brother of these fears, that I was afraid I couldn't make it. And I asked him if he knew of a hospital in Philadelphia for alcoholics. He said he didn't. But we would be going through he knew of a doctor in New Castle, Delaware.

And we would swing around there and ask this doctor to put me into a hospital put me in a hospital in Philadelphia. We drove into this charming little town of New Castle, drove up to the doctor's house, and he said come in, come on in. I said, no, you go and ask. A few moments later, the doctor appeared beside the car. And I remember his first words to me were, you need a shave.

I said, what I need is a drink. He said, well, alright. Go to the corner and get one, and then come on and talk to me. I went to the corner, and momentarily expecting my brother to appear, I ordered a scotch double scotch and soda and a glass of beer, drank the double scotch as fast as I could, and stood there holding the glass of beer innocently, in case he should come. Of course he didn't.

I drank that too and went back to the doctor's office. The doctor said, I have a bed for you in the Saint Saul Clinic, the Saint Luke's Hospital. You're very lucky to get it. It's the last one left. He said, it's not the Ritz Carlton.

It's pretty rough, but they will take care of you. And he tells me now that I said, and I don't doubt at all that I said it, that I said, well, you understand. I have to be among my intellectual equals. And he said to me, what are you talking about? I'm a better man than you are right now.

And I said, well, how do you figure that? And he said, because I'm sober, and you're drunk. I went into the hospital. I must have done a lot of talking to this doctor in the hospital in the, Newcastle office. I must have also told him about my predilection for barbiturates, second oil, Nembutal, and so forth.

Because when I got to the hospital, there was no medication prescribed for me at all. It was a terrible place. It was dirty. There were no nurses to be seen. There was no doctor at all.

It was run by corpsmen from the Army or Navy. And I had a fit. I said to my brother, I can't stay in a place like this. I can't stay. And I put up a holler.

And I don't know now why I made such a fuss, because only 6 months before, I'd been on the flight deck, as they call it, the violent ward at Bellevue Hospital. Anyway, I stayed. I thought they're trying to do something for me. I have to stay. And I did stay.

And as I said, I was given no medication for the first time in a hospital. And during that first night of terror, fear, despair, and thinking literally that my mind was going to go, something occurred to me that had never occurred to me in my entire life. I suddenly thought this is your natural home. This is where you belong. If you landed in a place like this once, or twice, or four times, it might be accident.

But after 18 times, and this was the 18th time, it is no accident. It's a definitely established pattern. And that's the way it's going to be from now on. You'll get out of here 5 days from now, but you'll come back. And you'll get out again.

And you'll come back. And you'll get out again. And you'll come back. And this is the way your future is. It was a terrible thought.

Actually, it was surrender, and I didn't know it. Always before when I'd been in this dilemma, and I'd been there many times, I had always told myself, when you get out of here this time, you'll be clever. You'll be careful. You won't go so far next time. You won't get into this mess again.

You'll be careful. Now, for some reason, I knew that I never would be careful. That I was unable to be careful once I started to drink. In the morning, a doctor came around for an hour and he said to me, Charlie, what are we going to do about it? And I said, meaning it, there is nothing to do about it.

I'm absolutely helpless. This is what my life is going to be. I've been psychoanalyzed by one of the big men in New York. I've been 3 years with a psychiatrist. I wrote a book that's been called the definitive picture of the alcoholic, and it did me no good.

I was sober 11 years on my own, and it did me no good. I've been hospitalized over and over. I know everything there is to know about the alcoholic, but the answer and there isn't any such thing. I'm just through. And he said, good.

Now maybe we can do something about it. Have you ever tried Alcoholics Anonymous? I said, no really. Doctor. Don't give me that.

You're a medical man, a man of science. You know better. Are you a member of AA? I asked him. He said, no, I'm not.

But I do know, I know that AA is doing for the alcoholic what the medical profession can't do. What have you got against AA? I said, I don't know much about it. I've heard all the usual things. Psalm singers and all that.

Highly emotional people who have to get together out of mass hysteria. I said, this is great for those people who for whom it'll work. It wouldn't work for me. They say the Lord's Prayer at their meetings. This I couldn't possibly do.

They're always talking about the spiritual. I haven't got an ounce of the spiritual in my makeup. He said, you love your children, don't you? And I said, yes. He said, you believe in doing what's right when you can, don't you?

And I said, yes. He said, well isn't that spiritual? It's not material. And I said, well maybe it is a little tiny bit. I never thought of it that way.

He said, tomorrow morning there's a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous here in the hospital. Will you sit in on it? You don't have to stay. If it offends you, go back to your bed. But try it.

And I thought, well, this guy is trying to help me. The least I can do, out of ordinary courtesy, is to go and sit in on the meeting. So the next morning, in my paper slippers and bathrobe that had once been terry cloth, fastened with a safety pin, I shuffled down the hall with the other bums. So self conscious I thought I would die, Not looking to right or left. And the first speaker on the platform was the doctor in New Castle, Delaware, who had sent me there.

He was a member of AA. Now this was a staggering thought that only registered later. The thought that possibly I hadn't gone 500 miles out of my way to find this doctor entirely by accident. I was enormously impressed by by what I heard that day at that meeting, although I can't tell you what was said. What impressed me was this.

Here were 3 people with whom I had nothing in common at all, except alcoholism. And that was a major bond. These people knew about me. They were speaking my language. They were reaching me in a way a doctor had never reached me.

And I understood them. And I had never had this kind of rapport with psychiatrists, psychoanalyst, or doctor. I knew that these people had had been where I had been and had something that I didn't have. And I wanted it. And even if these three people hadn't represented more than 200,000 other people, the fact that there were just 3 of them would almost have been enough.

That night, again during a sleepless night, I thought it over. And suddenly I remembered the telephone call 9 years before in New York, when mister Horton called me and suggested I take the name of Alcoholics and the number and address of Alcoholics Anonymous in Beverly Hills, and how I'd called him an SOB, how I'd lost my temper. And I thought, my gosh. All that man was doing was trying to be kind, trying to be helpful. And it had only taken me it had taken me 9 years to understand what he was saying.

It is true that I didn't go off that summer, but I might have. And he knew I might have. And it didn't make any difference that I didn't that summer. I did eventually. And it was a kind thing to have done.

But the thing that shattered me about that recollection was this. This was a thing that surprised me terrifically. I thought, you're the guy who always thought you knew yourself so well. If you had known yourself one half as well as you thought you did, why didn't your anger at the time tell you that your security was by no means security as a recovered alcoholic was by no means as sound as he thought it was. Had I been really secure secured my sobriety, I wouldn't have lost my temper.

I'd have just said, thank you very much. I may need it. I may not. But thank you. But no, I had lost my temper.

And actually, it was a sign of danger ahead that I didn't even know. I learned a lot of things during the first oh, I must tell you first. I when I left the hospital, I stayed around Philadelphia for a few weeks, and the doctor took me everywhere at night to AA meetings. And within 3 weeks, my wife and children returned with me to New Hampshire. And there I went into AA, up there, in Vermont.

I learned a lot of things about AA straight off. About myself, straight off in AA. And one of the first things I learned was what had been wrong with my 11 years of sobriety on my own. One of the very things that had been wrong with it was that it had been on my own. It was entirely my own doing.

I was arrogant on this subject. I was the whole cheese. I didn't know anybody like me. I was unique. And because of that solo performance, it was highly fallible.

And And another thing that was wrong with that 11 years of sobriety was that it had been forever. I had always told myself I'm through drinking forever, and had believed it. Well, in AA, I heard for the first time about the 24 hour idea, and it appealed to me enormously as being so sensible, so much easier, not to promise anything about the future, Just to stay sober today. Anybody could do that. And I could do that.

I had never heard of this wonderfully simple and useful precept. One of the things I didn't learn in AA, and didn't learn for quite a while, was the danger to my sobriety of the sleeping pill habit. Some of you may object to hearing this kind of thing discussed. But I find it very common in AA in the East, and it may be that it's not unknown here. At least it was part of my alcoholic story.

I had a dependency upon on these drugs and could do nothing without them. I gave up liquor again very easily. Of course, I had the pills. But I didn't know this was a danger. I didn't know it had it was against AA.

It was not discussed then much. But I had a real dependency on these. I couldn't meet a friend for lunch. I couldn't write a line. I couldn't attend an AA meeting.

And most certainly, I couldn't speak in an AA meeting without the help of these drugs. And though eventually it cost me a great deal physically, I think that the moral damage was far worse. When I got down from the platform after speaking at an AA meeting, somebody would say, Charlie, that was a very good talk. And I felt awful every single time. Because I knew that I was a fake, a fraud, and couldn't tell anybody.

So I thought. We cannot get anywhere, anywhere in AA, being this dishonest with ourselves. I believe that alcoholics are addictive people by nature, and that we cannot afford to find the thing that blurs the edges for us, that gives us that little un little touch of unreality that we prefer. Most people will take one pill as prescribed. The alcoholic will take it exactly as he does liquor.

If one pill makes him feel good, 2 will make him feel twice as good, and so forth. At least this is what it did to me. I tried to control it. But I could no longer no more control that than I could alcohol. And I knew that eventually it had to go.

And finally, after almost 4 years in AA, and 4 hospitalizations in 1 year for overdoses of barbiturates, I was taken into Bellevue Hospital again 2 years ago next month. I was now at the stage where I took 20 a day and could not get along unless. In Bellevue, I'm not trying to tell a horror story here in this part. I'm only trying to illustrate that some of us have to pay a terrible price for the sobriety that we all along have wanted. In Bellevue, I was taken off of these without a substitute, and began to hallucinate very badly in a couple of days.

And after I was there 7 nights, I went out of my head completely. That is, I remember everything up until a Friday night, and suddenly I was gone. And I was taken to the violent ward. This was the withdrawal from these things. And I was there 3 days in a straight jacket without even knowing that I was there.

I came to on a Sunday night, 3 nights later, when a Catholic priest friend of mine called on me and I recognized his face. Then I went back to the other part of Bellevue and stayed 2 more weeks, while the doctors debated what to do with me. And a couple of days before I was released, a young psychologist who worked there, the man who took the Rorschach test and played the color charts and games with you, and took the IQ and so forth, came to me and said, mister Jackson, can I see you in my office? I went into his office and he said, your case is up for dismissal on Monday. And I wanna tell you something off the record.

This is not official. The doctors here will not tell you this when you leave. But I know you pretty well by now. I think you should know it. And I think you can take it.

He said, look, you're an addict by nature, and you always will be. You will never be anything else. Just look at the record. 22 hospitalizations by now, and that's the way it'll be. So when you get out of here, I know what you mean.

You mean to stay off these things. But the least emotional upset, You'll remember what they did for you. They're very easy for you to get. They're also very easy to get away with for a long time. And you'll return to them.

I have only one word of advice to you, and that is ally yourself with a good, middle aged, kindly psychiatrist. Not deep Freudian therapy because you've had that. Just a sympathetic, kindly man to whom you can go 2 or 3 times a week and unload as a confidant, and settle for the fact that you'll be doing this proudly for the rest of your life. And this may keep you out of trouble. But that's all I can suggest.

It was a pretty grim picture that he painted. But I wasn't surprised. I knew it. It was not unlike what I had told myself in Philadelphia. But I thought this.

There are certain things, there are some things this man is not taking into consideration. It's true that I hadn't been really sober in AA, but I had learned things. Even so, as a friend of mine at Lenox Hill says, just keep on bringing the body around and the mind eventually will take hold. I had learned things in spite of myself, and these things came to my rescue then. I thought what this man is not taking into consideration is love.

And I mean family love. Another thing was this enormous will we have to survive. This mysterious thing that raises us up again and again after our periodic descends into self destruction. And another thing was faith. And I'm very glad to say that I was, by now, a man of faith.

And certainly, he was discounting Alcoholics Anonymous entirely. And I thought, when I leave here, I must go back to Alcoholics Anonymous and really see what it is. Really give yourself up to it. Really listen. Stop talking.

Stop performing. Stop patronizing the groups with your little celebrity. And really listen and see what it is these people have. And that's the way I returned to AA. And, of course, being an addict, this has now become my addiction.

So that I go 5 nights and almost and generally 6 a week. But it keeps me well. It keeps me happy. And I think it keeps me good. I'm utterly convinced that AA is nothing if it is not a spiritual program.

I also firmly believe that Alcoholics Anonymous wouldn't last 6 months if all it gave us was physical sobriety. What is it that brings us back night after night after night, year after year, to this thing? Staying sober? We're sober. There's more here to get than physical sobriety.

An old lady I know talking to me recently about this kind of thing, although we weren't talking about AA, brought up a wonderful definition that I love. She said, the humility is the quality of being teachable. And I think through AA, I at last, at the age of 56, am finally teachable. I've always thought of myself as a well read man. But it is true that I have learned more about who I am and what I'm here for, and where I belong to Alcoholics Anonymous than I ever have to any other agency or medium.

And the thing that surprises me most now, although this is a thing I've only realized the last few months, is that I've also gotten something that I never dreamed was possible for me. And that is to get outside of myself. The church couldn't do this. Even love as I knew it as I knew it then, couldn't do this. But in AA, I have realized I have finally gotten outside of myself and belong with people.