The Usual Suspects Men's Retreat in Camp Garner Creek in Dickson, TN

They've given me a seat belt here. I guess they think I'll fall over. I don't know.

My name is Jerry Jones and I'm an alcoholic.

I've been sober by the grace of God and the steps since January, the first of 1973, for which I'm very grateful.

I,

I don't take a lot of credit for that. You know, I just showed up and kept, kept going. And if you some of the old timer says if you just don't drink one day at a time and don't die, it happens to you sooner or later.

I I'm many things. I'm the adult spouse of an Al Anon.

Somebody has to do that.

I'm a recovering lawyer.

I haven't sent any bills, took any questions,

appeared in any courts for about eight or nine years and my my recovery is going very well. I'm

so don't bother to ask me any questions 'cause you'll get no current information. I'll tell you that

I usually I like to start off. I used to like to start off with lawyer jokes,

but as the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court John Rogers said the other day, I found that lawyers don't laugh

and everybody else takes it seriously. So I quit telling them.

I came to Alcoholics Anonymous not because I wanted to, but because I I didn't know exactly what was wrong with me.

I didn't think probably I was an alcoholic. I had a difficulty with that word. It didn't come easily to me. When I tried to say it, it's stuck in my throat

and I'd spend the whole meeting trying to listen, trying to to think how I was going to say it when it came my turn and it

it was hard for me. And then one day, I remembered.

I remembered a story from my childhood that helped me understand what an alcoholic was.

It made it easier for me. Had a dog. Had a dog named Patches. Patches was mostly a bulldog. He was a big fella and he he was a hero because he had killed a badger in a nose to nose fight.

It taken a couple hours to for him to get that job done, but he had finally got it done and he was celebrated throughout the community because most dogs can't whip Badgers. The badger weighed one more # than he did, so it was a pretty even fight

to give you a little insight into his personality. Patches would go up in the field where the carcass of that badger was, and for about a week he'd pick it up every day and just shake hell out of it. Just

just to let the badger know if he was going to be reincarnated or anything like that. By God, he was still there and still willing to play.

He was a dog of commitment. When he committed to something, he really did it in the day. I'm going to tell you about he was in our yard. He was laying there with he had no problems. He was a hero. He was well fed, he was well loved. He had no competition in the barnyard. He was just there and just king of the roost. And into our yard came the neighbors. Boar hog, big hog, ugly hog,

long yellow Tusk ambled into the yard and Patches made a bulldog like decision to get hold of the hog and he went sailing into that hog and caught hold of him. The hog begin to squeal. The dog was barking. My dad came out of the barn and he got out there and he was cussing and kicking hogs and dogs. I saw this fray going on. I went running into the middle of the damn thing. My mother saw her kid going into this hog and dog fray

and there was chaos in the backyard. Everybody there had a problem

and they all knew the solution to the problem. Patches turn loose. The damned hog turn him loose. Well, he didn't turn him loose, but he all got him up against a barn and drug him off and wheeled around and laid up on the shoulder and neck with one of those long tusks. And he was bleeding. And Dad caught him about that time and picked him up and he was snapping and scarling. And Dad took him over to a water hydrant and ran cold water on him. And I was sent to the barn to get some pine tar to put on the stop the blood.

Things settle down.

Things settle down. And we turned him loose and he went right back and got hold of the damn dog again. And it was the same thing. There was barking and biting and cussing, kicking and screaming and ringing of hands. The hog knew the problem solution. And we knew the solution. Everybody knew the solution, the problem, practice. Turn loose. The damn hog turn him loose.

Well, he finally came off again, and this time my dad realized that Patches was not himself. Patches seems to be emotionally disturbed.

Patches might have been considered crazy as hell because that that war hog was a lot bigger than he was. And Patches,

I needed restraint. What it was we committed him. That's what we did. Some of you know about that.

We chained him to the water hydrant and

Dad got in the pickup and drove the hog home and I was given the job of

counseling with Patches.

I was one of the first Hargenine counselors in West TX and sure for sure I was the first hogging on because I I was only one around that way.

And I talked to that dog. I talked to that dog deep and penetrating ways. I asked him, You know, have you ever had a good day getting old hogs?

What does your family think of it when you get old hogs?

Is there any peace and contentment in your life while you're getting hold of heart? Do they taste good?

What the hell do you get out of this thing except misery? And you know, in about two hours I had him laying down. He wasn't tugging at the chain anymore. He had his tongue out and that little silly smile on his face that Bulldogs get. He was panting a little bit. He's laying down on the ground. So

I went and got my dad and I said Patches has recovered

and dad said I'll go look at him because I've had a fair amount of problems with him today. So he looked at him and he decided sure, he's he looks OK, Pat just looks like he's all right. We didn't did the chain,

he had to go 2 miles to find the hog the next time.

Some of you can identify with one of the players in that

I've said I was the first Hogan on, but a little later on I crossed the Magic line.

It turned out it wasn't hogs at all, wasn't hogs at all, wasn't hogs or Badgers. He just caught one cattle truck and that's all there was to Patches. A lot of people with our disease catch the cattle truck.

We don't know we have it. We think it's our nature. We think it's just the way we are. We can't see the problem that exists in our lives, and I couldn't. I was raised on a farm out there in West TX, and my father didn't drink after he got married. My mother never did drink. There wasn't anybody in that community that drank much that we knew about.

It was virtually impossible for me to become an alcoholic from where I started,

but I made it. I made it

I

in World War Two came along I was 10 years old and all the guys, all the men went off to war a 10 year old boys began to drive tractors and do men's work. That's what I did, had a lot of responsibility thrust on me, which I took pretty well and and handled pretty well. Except

from time to time, I'd get through with the responsibility and I'll lie down to what the cure for the load you had with responsibility was a thing called irresponsibility.

You wanted to drive a car real fast. You want to drink beer and run out from under the cans. You wanted to, you know, shoot insulators off telephone post, do all those cute things that we did as country kids. And then when I finally found beer and and alcohol, it just fit like a glove. I was in college at that point in time and

God, I don't know about you guys. I just love to drink. I just, I, I could get positively excited about getting drunk. A week from tonight

we're going to buy some booze,

we were going to buy pool our money and put some gas in somebodies car and there ain't no telling where in the hell will be the next morning. And there wasn't. Our first question usually was where are we?

Followed closely by what did we do? And nobody knew for sure. We had to kind of piece it together, you know,

And I was always the guy though, from the very beginning who said let's do it again, let's do it again, by God. And I, I was never going to give that up. I like to drink. I liked what it did for me. I like the people did it. I like the places we went. I like the places they drank. I like the whole, I didn't even mind the damn hangovers. They were just a price I had to pay and the trouble I got into, you know, I got into a fair amount of trouble

right away. I had to convince the Dean of the college that I was going to that while I wasn't on the band and it passed out on the band bus at a football game. The reason for that was

I had become very sick while wandering around the parking lot looking for my car and finally found a place of refuge in the bus and laid down and just went to sleep. And nice man that he was, he let me. He bought into that crap, you know,

and I went right on from there.

I went to the Navy, drank some in the Navy, didn't get in any trouble, drank when I was sure you and they wouldn't let us drink on the ship.

Went to law school, got married, went to law school and had a kid didn't have enough money to drink there. And I couldn't pass those damn tests if I was drunk. So I I drank between semesters and then I got out and I got a job, a good job and a law firm in Dallas. And that was

where it really began to take over. I just, I just like to drink.

I drank every day. I could afford to drink a little bit and it began to escalate on me and I

I had some things that drove me. I was, I had some ideas. You talk about our old ideas, how we have to give up some of them.

I,

I had to compete. I don't care what you were doing, if you're throwing washers at a crack, I had to get a washer and get out and with you and start throwing that washer, you know, and I, I as a lawyer, I started out in doing business litigation. Some of you, some guys here do that. And I couldn't do that because how the hell are you going to win a deed? You can't win a deed. You just a damn piece of paper or whatever, you know? So I got into trying lawsuits

and it felt like a glove,

except I don't like to lose.

I really don't like to lose. And that losing fear of losing, I didn't know it was, I thought I'd like to win. But I can tell you after 40 years in the pit trying lawsuits, I can recall very few cases I ever won. I can recall all of those that I lost. And I can tell you the guy's name on the other side, the lawyer, the judge's name was the plaintiff's name. I know the God damn case and I know why I lost that sumbitch some way.

I just know that.

But that

that was my drive and it that drove me. And I always knew I was, you'd win them and you'd win them and you'd win them and you'd think, well, I'm sooner or later you going to lose. Sooner or later you going to lose. This may be the one you're going to lose. The client will fire you. He'll never hire you again. And that pressure that I put on myself internally built up. I had other pressures. I wanted to be a man,

a man. I had hair on my legs, little on my chest. I needed to be a man by God. I was watching my dad one time, that little old boy, and dad was working on a rusty bolt on a plow and he gave up trying to take it off of the ranch. And he got a chisel and a hammer and he was beating that, bolted it with that hammer and chisel. And he hit it a little crooked and that chisel flew out of his hand and

hit his knuckle and he bled

good for that. And he stood up and he cussed pretty good. And it was OK to cuss if you're a man. I knew that. And

he started back to work again and I said, daddy, that hurt. And he looked me just dead in the eye and he said hell no.

Few days later I was out playing with a hammer and chisel, practicing being a man.

I hit my hand with a hammer. You know what

hurts like a devil really does?

I cried

and I was afraid to hit the hammer. We get to hit the chisel anymore with the hammer. I flunked being a man on three counts right there in that one time. So I always had that feeling that I didn't quite wasn't quite what I wanted to be, but I had to act like that's what I was. So I went on with my life, living that kind of facade,

trying to be something, trying to be what I thought you wanted me to be. I was one guy if I was talking to the Baptist preacher. I was another guy if I was talking to the bootlegger. But I always wanted to be what you wanted me to be. I had all that stuff rolled up inside me and I poured booze on it to give me a little relief, to make things a little better, to chemically alter the reality I thought I was living in.

And I wasn't going to give that up.

My drinking escalated over over over years. I I got in a lot of trouble with my wife. I was not coming home. And so I'm that old responsibility since kicked in again. And I,

I just quit going out with the boys, just started staying home, just brought my disease right in the house and shared it with the whole family. And I sat there in my green chair and drank whiskey and the kids came up to me. You know, they, they got the brunt of it. They'd come up to me. And when I walked in the house that night, I was just, you know, happy and had a pretty good day. And I, they'd say, I'd ask them how their school work was or did their ball team win a game or whatever it was, you know,

and they tell me about it. And I'd go sit down in my green chair and begin to have a few drinks. And the thoughts and the memories and all those things would come back to me. And they come up to me and start to tell me something else. And I'd snap at them and say, what? Why do you, what do you think? I'd be interested in that kind of crap. Just get the hell out here and leave me alone. Jekyll and Hyde, I think they call that. I was not an easy person to live with. It was not easy to live with

my wife was a We've been married 52 years now.

She's a strong woman, I'll tell you that. We,

she began to, she had sort of an AB reaction to alcohol. I mean, she, she was hypersensitive about alcohol. She,

it was, it was kind of uncomfortable living with her there. You know,

it was bad enough that I finally sent her to a psychiatrist to

and sadly she was sick enough to go. So she went and they talked and he told her that she was a little too strict about drinking and and she did spend a little too much of money, which was the other thing we talked a lot about. And

then he said, well why don't you send Jerry in and let me talk with him. And so I went to see the shrink and we talked about football and

any illegal problems he might have. We didn't talk about me. I was not going to talk about me. And and I left and she'd keep going back. And finally, she wrote a letter. She wrote a letter to the Texas Commission on Alcoholism and asked him if they had anything that would help her determine whether her husband had a problem or not.

And they sent her a damn test.

Now, I'm good at taking tests. I, I did all right in law school. I know how to take a damn test. And I realized when I looked over that test, you read all the questions first. That way you can tell where they're trying to go. This test was obviously written by somebody that was a prohibitionist. He didn't want, he didn't want nobody to drink.

So what you had to do, I drank. So what I had to do was just show that I was moderately in trouble

and they ask questions. Dumb questions. Do you drink alone? Well, hell yes, nobody will drink with me. I'm a

you know, what's what's with this and and other things like that, a name type of questions. And and I took the test and I come out a heavy drinker, which was OK with me. I always told I told the guys in the jail the other night when I'm there, I had I had the image that I wanted to be a lover and a fighter and a wild horse rider and a right smart of a windmill hand to

and

that's what I wanted to be And I didn't mind drinking a little on the side. It's just fine. Well, that didn't satisfy her very long. She then she did something that was just to this day I marvel at it.

She went to Al Anon without asking me.

She didn't discuss that problem with me. She didn't do anything. She just went to Al Anon.

And I, she didn't even tell me she was going. That was the sad thing. She had been going quite a while when I found out. And I'll tell you, if they get them for a little while, they'll damn sure keep them. That's what happened. My mind,

they brainwash them real quick

and they have them do funny things. They they give them sponsors.

Those sponsors are deadly creatures. I'll tell you my wife's sponsor was just I tell the story about

I was that setting at home alone with my dog

having a few drinks and I got to thinking that, you know the only energy in this house that loves me this dog.

God, this is not fair.

And my wife came in from one of those meetings

and I said this do you know what? This dog here, this dog here is the only thing in this house that loves me.

And she said, just a minute, I'm going to call my sponsor.

And she did. And she came back in a few minutes. And she said, my sponsor says, you're right.

She says we're going to fix that because we're going to buy you another dog.

That's what that's what you can expect from that people as they saved my lives, what they did. She kept going and I kept trying to get her out of get her out of that thing. I threatened her. I did everything I could to run that woman off from going to Alan means. I explained to her as carefully as a man can that she was going to ruin our lives.

I gazed deeply into her eyes, sat her down and said, Now listen to me.

Have you noticed that I'm the only one who brings any money to this house? She said, yeah, she knew that. I said, do you realize that if those lawyers in my firm downtown find out that I've been, my wife's been going to a public meeting

for they for her alcoholic husband, that they'll kick me out of that law firm that day and I won't take any clients with me. And we'll be standing on the streets of Dallas in the middle of the damn winter with their kids naked,

no money.

I made a pretty good pitch there

and she said, Jerry, I think I need to go. And I said, Billy, Billy,

you must not go, she said, Jerry, I think I'm going to go.

I said Billy, I said something loving like, you know Billy, if you go to another one of those damn meetings, I'll kill you this year as hell.

She went and I didn't kill her,

but I kept trying to run her out al Anon and one night I came home and I'd planned. I don't know about you guys, but sometimes I plan fights. I plan to have a fight. I, I know we're going to have a fight when I get home

and I kind of figure out some questions I can ask her to get some information I'm going to need to win the fight.

And I sneak up on her.

And I went in this house this evening and I gave her a little kiss on the cheek and told her the dinner smelled good on the stove and said hello to the dog and the kids. And I turned and I said, Billy, you think I'm an alcoholic?

And she said, I don't know whether you are or not.

I said, well, that's damn funny. You've called me an alcoholic for years

and she said yes, but I was wrong. It doesn't matter what I think.

It doesn't matter what your father or your mother thinks your partners think your friends think your doctor thinks.

It matters only what you think. If you don't think you have a problem with alcohol,

you'll never do anything about it.

Well, I'll tell you what, this conversation was not going the way I had planned it,

and I was caught off guard. But I had a question.

She seemed to know something, so I said, well, how would I find out if I was an alcoholic?

The jaws of the Al Anon trap closed just like that.

She said, well, Jerry, one way you could determine it is if you quit drinking entirely, but I don't think you want to do that. I said, no, you're right, I don't want to do that. She said the other way, you can try it. There's a book called the Primer on Alcoholism that was written by a woman who was the first member of woman member of alcoholic Synonyms. And she, she says in that book, if you have a question about whether you're an alcoholic or not, you should drink

two drinks a day every day for six months, no more, no less, but every day. And if you can do that and never exceed that amount, at the end of six months,

you'll know you're not an alcoholic,

I said. Wait a minute, Let me let me get this on my mind.

You've been trying to get me to quit drinking for years. Do I understand you want me to commit to drink six more months? And she said yes. And I realized I was dealing with a seriously deranged woman who was this conversation was going nowhere. And I got the hell away from I just said it's the dumbest test I ever heard and walked off, sat in my chair and and and drank for about two more weeks and thought about that damn test.

And

I,

I was really worried. I just made senior partner in my law firm.

I did not want them to know my wife was going to meetings in which they discussed whether or not I was an alcoholic.

I didn't want them to have even a hint that I'm I well, they'd, they'd ask me a couple of questions about the way I drank and they, I didn't even need any more fuel for that fire. I could tell you that for damn sure. I, I was sure they going to fire me. And I realized that sudden somebody was going to have to make a sacrifice for this damn family.

And I guess that's going to have to be me.

Yes. I'm just going to have to take the damn test.

I didn't tell anybody I'm going to take the damn test. I'm not that stupid. I, I, she watched me drink all time. She knew exactly what I drank. So I what I planned to do, was I just going to

start taking the test? And she had noticed in a couple of months that I was doing that, doing just fine. And she'd get the hell out of that Alalon thing because she had to realize how the dangerous thing she was doing for the family. And then she quit and I could go back to my normal life.

So I started to test. Well, I I had to change the test a little.

Two drinks really didn't do anything for me,

but I had a pretty big glass and I figure 3 drinks I'd have two martinis which consisted of beef eaters, gin, maybe a little bit of a move. Not necessarily. Sometimes there was ice and sometimes there wasn't, but I had two big Beefeater gins and then I would eat dinner.

And then after dinner I would have a Brandy

in that same kind of glass with a little splash of soda for my digestion, which is what gentlemen did the world over after dinner.

And she would not be able to say anything to me about drinking 'cause this was reasonable. Unless she was a completely a probationist, this was a reasonable way to drink. I would not cause anybody any problems if I did this.

So I started trying and my recovery commenced. On the first day I tried that, I didn't know it I was recovering. I didn't know I was finding out I had a problem. But I what I found out was I'd have about two of those drinks and toward the end of the second one, I think.

That's about all the martinis today.

And then it would happen. It would happen.

A thought would come in my head

and it would say what are you doing?

What are you doing? Are you over 21?

Are you a man?

Are you going to let a bunch of little old ladies in tennis shoes tell you how to drink whiskey?

And the answer was hell no.

And I drink the bottle

are some days I'd come in and I'd walk up to the bar

and I think that's been a bad day today,

bad day-to-day. Ain't gonna be no damn test today. No test today by God

once in a while I could forget the damn thing

kind of on purpose, kind of push it out of my mind and

but my that sponsor of my wife's, she had her doing things that were just

unconscionable. She had her when she woke up in the morning, the instance she awakened, the moment the second she awakened, she was supposed to say out loud and with some feeling, This is the day the Lord has made. I shall rejoice and be glad in it

now when you've had a quart of whiskey the night before.

And you hear that

your heads throbbing, that boom, boom, your gun tongues got that, you know,

thick layer of something on there you could shave. You know

one of your eyes has been propped open for several hours and you have what I call dry sockets, and

you're pretty sure you're not going to rejoice a hell of a lot that day. I just tell you that

and you'd think

why did I do that?

Why did I drink that? I was going to just drink 3 drinks.

What's wrong with me?

What's wrong with me? Good question.

A guy that's had the kind of drive that I had, a guy that's had the kind of discipline that I had that couldn't decide to drink 3 drinks a day and not drink anymore.

That's a damn good question.

And I tried. I gave that test a pretty fair shot. I tried it about a year and a half and I never passed it once.

On December 31, 1972,

I had only one objective for the day. I needed to be sober so that we could go out to dinner with a couple of friends

and have dinner on New Year's Eve and come back in the house. We're coming back to my house. I know why we're coming to my house because I've already got out one time that that month and, and it was hard to get me back in and we're going to get me back in the house and that they feel, I guess they take the car keys. I don't know what they're going to do. They're going to keep me in that house. Let me bring in the new year. That's that's what I think they're figuring

and I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. It's important that I do it. I need to do this. And I started that morning. I had to decided I'd had just a little drink, just kind of loosen up up, up the day and watch the football games, just, you know, just a little sip. And

I was pacing myself throughout the day, watching it very carefully. And

I was in my green chair and I woke up and I looked out the window and it was dark, pitch dark outside and looked over and my wife was sitting in her chair and she was in her robe reading the books. A little book that they read. Lots of little books. I've noticed

they leave them around for you, but I never read them.

And I said, Billy, shouldn't we be getting dressed to go to dinner?

She said. Oh, Jerry, don't you know what time it is?

It was a little after 10. I'd passed out at 5:00 in the afternoon.

I had no excuse. I wasn't mad at anybody. I wasn't celebrating anything. I had no reason in the world to drink the way I drank that day.

I was sick of myself. I knew that she'd had to call those friends and tell them we couldn't go to dinner. And not only that, she had to call him and say, you know, you can't come over here either.

Probably she'd being an Al Anon like she was, she probably told him because Jerry's passed out in his chair. I don't know what she told him, but I was ashamed of myself. I was sick of myself. I was sick of what I was and what I wasn't,

and I got up and I went to the bar and I mixed a big drink.

I wanted oblivion, and it knocked me out. God willing, that's the last drink I'll ever take.

I got up on January the 1st, 1973 to the sorriest looking day I ever saw in my life.

I sat on the edge of the bed that morning hungover and sick, and Billy had already got up and gone to

kitchen or somewhere. And I sat there on the edge of bed and I thought, what, you know, what am I going to do this year? It's a new year. What, what are you going to do this year that's going to make your life any better? What are your options? What options do you have to deal with this problem? And I couldn't think of any option except one. And that was to stop drinking.

So I decided I would stop drinking.

First time I'd ever had that thought in the many, many years that I had drank

and I showered and I went in the kitchen and I told Billy that I was sorry that I'd messed up the night before. She was not impressed with my little apology. She didn't hardly respond to me at all.

And I said I have decided I'm going to try to quit drinking. And that got her attention. She wheeled around and she said just a second. She ran over to the bookcase and she happened to have a copy of the big book, Alcoholics Anonymous and the 24 Hour Day Book. And she came running over to me with those books and she said you may find these helpful. Would you like for me to call somebody from Alcoholics Anonymous?

And I threw the ball books against the wall and said hell no,

hell no. You keep them damn Day A's and everybody else the hell away from me. Keep the kids away from it because this ain't going to be easy. This ain't going to be pretty,

but by God, if anybody is going to do it, I'm going to do it. That's the way it's going to be. And she said something loving in Allen. Like you got it and walked off

and I had it. I didn't know I had had it, but I had had it, and I don't know how it was when you and you quit drinking, you, if you're doing something bad

when you stop it, shouldn't it get better?

Didn't happen to me. I began to shake inside and out. I got quick,

couldn't sleep.

I walked. I couldn't. I was not in the right place. I was never in the right place. If I was laying down, I ought to be standing up. If I standing up, ought to be outside from outside, ought to be inside sitting down. I'm just moving and grooving around and I'm shaking and I'm looking and we go to the neighbors to watch the football game and I don't see much of it, but I've looked all over the screen

and it doesn't get any better right away, I'll tell you that for damn sure. At the end of the end of the second day, I caught her out of the kitchen and I knew she'd left them damn books around there somewhere. So I decided I better go read them books and see what those A, A and a, a few people do, whatever the hell they are. So I went in there and I didn't have time. I'm sorry. I didn't have time to read the big book, just didn't have time to do that. But I picked up that little 24 hour day book and I opened it with that keen alcoholic mind. I noticed there was a date on the top of every page.

Now turn to January 2nd

and it said alcohols ruined your life. And I said yes Sir, yes.

And it went on to tell me that this year we're going to give our drinking problem to God.

I can't tell you how disappointed I was.

How you going to give something to somebody you can't find? I've been looking for God ever since I was a little old bitty kid. I wanted to find God. I wanted to see somebody walk on a little water of burning Bush. I wanted to something, something too big to happen to convince me that this was not some kind of con. I was always a skeptic, always Santa Claus born that way,

and it never happened. I demanded God show Himself to me and He just didn't do it. And there I was in deep, deep trouble. And the book telling me I got to give my drinking problem to God is the only way I'm going to get out of this deal. And I don't know why I did what I did, but I threw that book out in the middle of the table

and sat there in that chair and said, God, if you're there, I'm going to give you this drinking problem. And if you take it, I may do some more business with you.

Maybe. The best prayer I ever said. It was dead honest. It was expressed myself exactly the way I felt,

and I need a drink just as bad after I said it as I did before.

But I got through that day and the next morning I got up and I knew something that I hadn't ever known before.

I knew that myself sufficiency wasn't going to handle this deal. I was going to have to have some help. If I was going to quit this thing, It had me. If I didn't get some help that day, I was going to. I was going to drink before the night was over.

I needed some help with skin on it. I didn't need some spirit somewhere. I wanted somebody, some people.

And the only people I knew was Alcoholics Anonymous. My wife had, you know, she, I knew about her. I couldn't call her Bunch, though. She'd been there talking so damn long about me being a drunk that I, I couldn't, she'd poison the well there. I couldn't go there,

so I called the central office. Found it in the phone book. It sounded important. Central office

and I got the most unsympathetic woman on the telephone I've ever heard in my life.

I said I'm having a little problem stopping drinking

and she said how long have you been sober? Well this is my second day you need to go to an AA meeting. I said OK, OK, OK, fine. But

I gotta, you gotta understand that I I'm a pretty big time lawyer and I can't just go anywhere. I gotta go a secret place,

she said. Where do you want to go? What kind of group do you want to go to? And I said, well, I'd like to go to a group that's, you know, near a Country Club

that has college graduates.

And she said, we ain't got none of them.

And she said, and I said, I can't, I can't go to a meeting every night. I can't I'm, I'm a busy lawyer too. And she said, well, what are you going to do at night? What have you been doing at night? I said, well, I've been drinking at night. And she said, well, you going to stop that? So you going to have some free time, ain't you?

So I said give me a little quiet group. I want a quiet little group. It's got to be secret.

So she gave me the town and country group. Sounded kind of woodsy, you know?

I figured everybody drove station wagons that went there, you know, and I fit right in. And I went to that meeting and hell, like that was a revelation in yourself. Their baby, their baby had a year and a half sobriety. The next guy had five. And then they got serious. They had 10/15/20 years. And I didn't even believe that you could. Hell, I couldn't stay sober a week. How you going to stay a year and a half or 20 years

feeling the way I do? You can't do that. So they didn't have a lot of credibility with me. And we met once a week whether they needed it or not. And

she had told me I needed to go every day. And I, you know, I didn't believe much about her. And about the third meeting that I went to there, an old boy came in

from Heart View, North Dakota treatment Center. He had literature sticking out of every pocket.

Damn, he was hot. He was hot. He'd been there four months. He was a 28 day program and it had taken him four months to get out of there. Something about refusing to do a fourth step. I don't know what the hell it was, but I didn't know what that fourth step was anyway. I thought it's sort of like the Texas two step or something. I didn't really know anyway.