The Sandlapper Roundup in Myrtle Beach, SC

I'm starting off and I'm a happy alcoholic. Hi everybody.

I want to thank the committee for inviting us down to speak this weekend. It's one of the way we stay sober, so they're helping to stay sober another day. And I want to thank Stan and Robin for going out of their way to make us very comfortable this weekend. It's been great. And you know, if I qualify to be here, I sometimes wonder why I qualify to to make an AA talking. I feel it because I'm a real alcoholic, has found a substitute for alcohol,

and I didn't know that's what I was looking for when I got here.

But to make that substitute work, I had to do some things. I had to get a Home group. Incidentally, my Home group is a traditional group in Greenville, SC. We meet on Tuesdays and Fridays. We have an equal number of discussion meetings about the steps on Friday night and on. We have a speakers meeting on Tuesday night. All these meetings start at 8:00 and we love to have you come visit us if you're in the Greenville area.

I also had to get a sponsor and I had to

go through these steps and and find out what the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous were and try to apply them to the best of my ability in my life. And I've done that. And because I did that, I haven't found it necessary to take a drink since September the 25th, 19 and 73 now.

Ah, you know, I tried to in hunting for this substitute, I tried a lot of things to fix me. So it's it's with a lot of pleasure that I tell you this morning that since that same day

in 1973, I haven't found it necessary to be analyzed, tranquilized, hypnotized or baptized.

You see, I'm one of the portion was that Alcoholics Anonymous has done the whole deal for me. You know, we here today we hear a whole lot about problems other than alcohol. Well, man, I had problems other than alcohol from a very get go. You see, I'm not on an alcoholic, but I'm a hillbilly and and I was born right in the middle of the depression, the only son of a mountain school teacher. And they named me Sterling Fletcher Watts the third. I don't think I had a change from the start and

and you see I had all these years I never had any identity till I got the Alcoholics Anonymous. Mama taught school for 40 years. So everywhere I went the 1st 18 or 19 years of my life, I was known as Miss Kitty Little boy. And when I was 19 I went across the river and married a prominent farmers daughter and overnight I became Matt Jackson son-in-law. And I came down to to Greenville, SC to get away from all that. And I had one son who was quite a football player. He was Allstate Shrine Ball, played at Clemson

down there, and I became Waldo's daddy. And I tell you that because, you know, a lot of people get into a a lot of different ways. And I know a lot of people from Conway and Brooklyn and, and Los Angeles and different places just came up and said, hey, I've been drinking. I'm tired and I want to come in work steps and get spiritual.

I didn't get here that way. I had a heck of a lot of help. I had help from from bosses. I had help from judges and, and state troopers and doctors. And, but the main help I had was from Al Anon. In fact, I say I came into the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous when I became powerless over Al Anon.

You see, she'd been, she'd been going to Al Anon several months before I got here. And I tell you this, you know, do you remember the first time I ever asked you to read? They asked me to read how it works, man. I went back in the restroom and studied. I was ready for this night. And I'm sitting there on the front row. And they said in the read how it works. And they forgot my name and said Nancy's husband.

So you see, when I finally got to stand up here and say I'm Sterling Watts, man, I thought I'd arrive, you know, but

and also,

you know, I was a liar. I think I was born to lie. I probably learned to lie when I started to talk. And I was a little bit different kind of a liar. I was a kind of liar that would tell you a lie. And I didn't leave it at that because the thrill I got out of it was knowing that I'd made you believe it. And I hang around, if necessary, I tell another one or two till I got you hooked, you know,

and, and for instance, this is a very religious home that I was raised in. I sometimes think maybe that's a launching pad for alcoholism. I don't know. I hear a lot of it, but but

we, if we were going to eat on Sunday, we had to memorize Bible verses and recite them before each meal. And I was capable of memorizing Bible verses, but I took a lot of thrill in making them up. And,

and I remember one that I made-up was if a man goeth on a long journey and returneth not, he stayeth a long while

now.

Yeah,

Now

what I really liked about that was over late at night, I'd see the old folks coming through that Bible trying to find that verse. A little packing picked up on

that made me feel warm all over. You know now

in his family of mine, I have one sister five years older than I. You know, there are only two two perfect people ever walk to face this earth and she was one of them. She never told the lie. She never came home late. She never did anything to disturb enough. She's just a perfect person. She made straight As all through school, valedictorian in high school days list in college, the whole bit. And somewhere along the line, it looked like, you know, I love detention. And

all the way out, she'd cornered the market on being good. There's no way I could compete with that. So I, I think I started out trying to corner the market on being bad and,

and, but it started right away. I got used to. Why can't you be like Elizabeth? And, and you know, I remember they used to tell me say, well, when you get her age, you can do so and so and it's a little tight. That excited me. I realized later I was never going to get to be her age. She's always five years older than me, you know, well,

in this, in this family unit, everybody had an idea of what they wanted from me. My Mama wanted me to be a Methodist preacher, Bless her heart. She prayed for that. I think till the day she died, My daddy wanted me to be a great trial lawyer and my sister just wanted me to go away, you know, that is. And nobody ever asked me what I wanted and and what I wanted. I think pretty indicative of, of, of my thinking and, and my aspiration in life. We had a fellow there named RL. Now RL was

he was my age, but he seemed much older and wiser and, and his

he lived by himself with his daddy and his daddy stayed drunk all the time. I know now his mother had to leave home, but Ariel didn't have any parental guidance. He could do anything he wanted to. He could go swimming anytime he wanted to. He could go naked anytime he went naked swimming anytime he wanted to. He could he could cuss better than anybody I ever heard and probably knew more about sex than Doctor Ruth, you know, and this, this really intrigued me And, and, but the main thing about him, he had no rules to follow. He didn't even have to take a bath unless he

and I love Dario. I love the way he smelled. He had that gusto, you know, and,

and, and as a kid, everywhere I went, it seemed like to me, I smelled like life buoy soap, you know, But anyway, that was my aspiration to be just like RL. And, and this didn't work too well in the family situation that that I was in. I can remember probably the first serious prayer I ever remember praying that mom would get drunk, and I mean, daddy get drunk. Mom would leave home so I could live like RL and

you know now today some things don't always change. Today we'll go on vacation and after about four days if I just I like to lay around and not shave and not shower. Donald say I believe or else come to see us, you know,

well,

not drinking as a teenager was not a problem. I know the kind of I had some I tasted it and one thing another, but I just had too close a supervision. I couldn't drink. And shortly after graduating from high school, I went 55 miles an hour away from home to be inducted into service.

And that was the first night that I'd ever been away from home that far without adult supervision. And that night I got sick and I got drunk, and I almost died. And that was in September of 19 and 4627 years later, in September of 19 and 73, three states away, I'm still getting drunk, still getting sick, and still almost dying. So there's a certain amount of insanity that goes along with this disease of alcoholism. And,

you know, I did not realize it, but as I look back on my life, I changed. I changed jobs, I changed situations, I changed locations.

I did everything I could to protect my alcoholism. And I didn't know that that was happening at that time. And I had three things that right from the very start in drinking that that I know today shows that I was just as alcoholic at 17 and 18 as I was the day I quit. Now I've got to tell you, I was a sick drunk and sick drunks are not popular. You know, you don't invite them over to look at your new carpet And and

I I started

when I first started making my A talks. I was talking about this sickness and my Al Anon said, look, I have to put up at that kind of can't you leave that out? Said I've I've lived clean enough of that stuff up. I don't want to hear about it anymore. And I I developed the word I said I own swallowed a lot. So and she accepted that and it sounds pretty neat, but it still hurt the same way. But anyhow, you know, I can remember one of I had a friend in 1956 that got the prettiest Pontiac automobile I'd ever seen it to that either today it was silver,

had pretty Gray interior. And we were working the third shift. We got off that morning and we're riding down the road and I started rolling the winter down. He said my reputation had proceeded me said not in here you don't. And so he put me out so I could unswaller and I put my hands on top of the car and unswallowed back in the window. And

now

you see, I had not only I had blackouts and I had sore eyeballs, I had the sore eyeballs of any more that you ever saw. I can remember laying on my back sometimes the morning after and I'd fly, go by and I'd move my eyeballs and it would hurt me all the way to my hip pocket.

And I had blackouts and, and I had these blackouts. And if you're a blackout drinker, you know the difference between blocking out and passing out. I'd go two or three days and,

and really not just come to, and I'd come to on Monday and not remember anything since Friday. And I spent a good bit of time backtracking then trying to see and some things I can remember a little bit of. But I remember those first Black House very vividly. Later on they followed me, but later on I just learned to accept them as part of the a normal life, I guess. And but I look back on these things and, and I knew you see this sickness, it was causing me some trouble, embarrassment, people

having all kinds of problems with it. And I my daddy had an ulcer

and he had two uncles that had nervous stomachs. So I figured how unfortunate I was that I'd inherited this stomach condition from my daddy's side of the family. Now, my mother had a thyroid condition and she had slightly protruding eyes, and I assumed I'd inherited his awful eyeballs from my mother's side of the family

blackouts. I didn't address it. Nobody ever asked me if I blacked out, so I assumed if you drank, you blacked out. And I just accepted this. And with this great knowledge, I came back from service in 1948 and started out on a normal career.

If there was any normal drinking, I know what normal is about normal drinking. But if there ever was such thing in my life, it was from 48 to 62. I had a little lady out in Texas. I spoke out in Texas. And when it was over, she said, well, I know what normal is. Said that's a sitting on a washing machine. So that's about as much as I know about normal but

but I got back from service and industry had moved into the mountains while I was gone, and I got a job on the ground floor and a textile industry and things went fine. I worked hard and got promotions and I married my childhood sweetheart. A year later our first son, our only son, came along. And I seem to be rather popular in the neighborhood. I belong to everything there was there, the Elks of Kiwanis and J CS and Moose, the VFW, the disabled veterans, anything I'd join, anything that had me it looked like, and the reason.

But when I take a look back at that, most of those places serve whiskey. And I lived in a dry county and I think that must have had a lot to do with it. I was also active in church. I was Superintendent Sunday School, the largest Methodist Church in Pulaski, VA, for a period of four years. So things look normal.

Uh, we group of us in 1954, a group of young men got together and we bought a piece of land and we all built homes out there like everybody was doing after World War Two. It just seemed like it's real good. But when I, when I got and had to look at my four step and I look back during that period of time,

for instance, I was in five or six automobiles that were totally lost. Sometimes I was driving, sometimes I was riding. Most of the time we had no idea who's driving, who's riding, you know. And one day, Thanksgiving Day, one year, I had three accidents in the same day. And that day, I hit the same man twice now.

And, you know, I just didn't hit him over in the parking lot. Later on that same morning, I got him way over in the afternoon, 15 miles away from where I'd hit him that morning.

And, and in those days, you just called your insurance company and reported these accidents. And I called mine and he said once, how drunk are you? You reported that accident this morning. I said, man, I'm not drunk. I've hit him again, you know,

he, he. Give me a break. You know, well,

now

I, you know, I'm not handy with tools. I don't know a screwdriver from a power pliers and I don't know a hammer from anything else. I'm just not handy and I don't like, I don't do yard work. I I'm just not handy. I don't have a green thumb. I don't care about that. In fact, I never did anything it got you at any points with the lady folks.

I like to hunt and fish and shoot poo and gamble and play cards and play golf and all that kind of stuff. And so right out, you know, I told you, we bought this. We bought this track of land and all we were going to have these turnkey houses. Well, all my life it's been why can't you be like Elizabeth? It started when I was just a kid and right after we got married. It was like, can't you be like Jim and Tom and Bill? Because everybody could fix things. Handyman had pretty yards If if I, as I perceived,

if I were to move into you, you are in your neighborhood tomorrow, I'd lookout the window and right across the street would be a sign that said yard of the month. And all I ever got was wild onion of the decade, you know, and and so instead of being turnkey houses, he's handyman started goofing things up. They started putting in their gutters or their furnace or their cabinets, all of them doing something, pouring their concrete. I'm not doing anything. Don't we don't intend to, But that's when I think I first felt impending doomed. She's looking at me and I know she's going to

sooner or later and won't know why I'm not doing something. And she'd gone up to her dad's on 4th of July and it dawned on me one of those real alcoholic thoughts that nobody on that on that street had put in their mailbox yet. And so now by this time, an interesting thing that happened in my life, as I look back, I use liquor to control things. And mainly I control things I didn't like.

Any job that I didn't like or didn't want to do or any person I didn't want to face, I had

consciously signed a certain amount of liquor to it. I it, you know, for instance, if I was going to paint, that was a court job. I was kind of, I was a kind of painter that got the liquor and then I got to paint in the drop cloth. And then by that time I had to get the liquor again, you know, but, but if I had to work in the yard, that took probably a case of beer, a pint or, and I had this sister, we didn't get along. I called her my 2 pint sister, you know, so I don't, I don't know.

I really don't know how much booze I assigned to this mailbox job, but I assume knowing me right much.

It's interesting how this mailbox came about. I went down to the engineer, the head engineer at my company and we got a 2 inch pipe 8 feet in diameter and down in that we put another 8 foot pipe inch and a half and we spot welding them all the way up. And I came back up to my house and went down to Sears and got the biggest mailbox I had and put Sterling Fletcher Watts 1/3 on, just let it flow. It was beautiful and

I, I, I came back and I dug this 4 foot hole and, and put in steel reinforced concrete, put that boy in there and tapped it. Well. And

you know, I don't know whether you all have done this or not, but when you work hard all day and it's hot and you drink all day, it only an alcoholic knows you just before you go into that peaceful slumber. You know, I thought, gosh, she's going to be proud of me tomorrow when she comes home next morning by 6:00 my phone rang my neighbor, he said watch what the hell is wrong with you yesterday? I said, what do you mean? He said you got that mailbox in face in your house now.

Now.

And, and it's, it's hot, 4th of July, about 100°. And I got about 45 minutes or an hour to get that boy turned up and turned around and I'm unswallering and digging and pushing. And when I got through it looked like you'd build a swimming pool and filled it in, you know,

and another thing is beginning to happen in our in our life here is, you know, I was at cavern drinker and I love to drink in the just I stop in a Tavern, have a couple of beers and they have to throw me out when they closed. I never I just could lose time when I got in those dark places. I love the beautiful ladies that came here to dance to the good country music and the tear jerking songs. And I love the shuffleboard. I mean, it was just paradise and I could get in there and I had no idea what time it was or anything else. And

it was just wonderful. And my wife hated every ounce of anything that went along with drinking she hated. So you can see that everything I liked, she hated. And this marriage is just not getting along too good. In fact, long about this time we developed a situation that I later referred to as a as a chemical muscular reaction. When I bent my muscle to take a chemical, her mouth flew open. I call that chin music. And that was a chin in this woman you ever saw in your life. I never got to drink in peace

this time. I'd work my way up and I was Superintendent of a couple of departments and I bought all the machinery and all the chemicals and these salesman that called on me knew I love to drink. So when they came to town, which we usually had one or two every week, they had plenty of booze and we had a lot of fun. We did a lot of drinking and it dawned on me,

hey, these guys, they leave home on Monday, they don't go back home till Friday. They got five full days and nights to drink with no Chin Music. I quit the very best job I probably ever had and came to South Carolina to sell chemically. Now I know that I came down there to drink is it's no question about it. They gave me a new automobile. I'll never forget. This was A1 Owner Company and the man lived and resided up in Rhode Island, so he didn't have much.

Didn't have much control over me, but he said an interesting thing. He said

the people in the textile industry in the South are not familiar with my company, and I want you to take this unlimited expense account and see that my name gets established.

Well, don't get ahead of me.

I know today that he meant in the textile industry where he had products to offer. But you know, state troopers, judges, jails, everybody got to know that company. Before I was finished with the first thing I did, I got a new Ford automobile up in Virginia. Where I came from, you could only haul a limb to the mount of booze in the car. At one time in South Carolina, you could haul all you could pay for. I put two cases of booze in the back of a new Ford automobile and ran up and down the road selling chemicals. Did real good

because I had a couple of things wrong. I had AI, had the ability, if I could, if I could keep my alcohol level just right, I could go two or three days and not sleep. I could play golf all day, play cards all night, shower, go back and play cards all day, run a card game all night. And they love that kind of thing. And they'd say things like, why I'd rather ride with old Watch when he's drunk and I had Tom and him sober, not just swell up and drink a pint and drive him anywhere they want to go.

I love that kind of thing. And

you know, I somewhere along the line, when I got to you people now I wait about almost three 289 lbs. It's the highest I think I ever gotten. I was just full of full of, I guess you, the fluid that you've seen us. And, and so somewhere along this time, I'm running up and down the road selling these chemicals and, and I had one guy tell me what occasion what would happen. See, we didn't have bars and we didn't have, we didn't have

many bottles. We had brown bagging and I'd pull in, raise the trunk of that car up. We'd have a few drinks right there in the parking lot, go around to the spring and have a few drinks or down to golf course and fishing holes.

Had one guy down in Abbeyville said you call down here 18 months and we weren't sure what you were selling. Said we thought you were a liquor salesman in the wrong place and,

and not along. About this time, somewhere along in here, the company had insisted that I take a, an insurance exam and I, I just wasn't going and I told you how heavy I was, but maybe that was a reason. But anyway, I finally had to go in rather than getting fired and have this insurance examined. When I went in,

I remember they took my blood pressure and the nurse left and I'm rolling my sleeves down and here she comes back with this little car to stuff. And I said, what's that? And she said, that's oxygen. I said, what's that for? She said, well, you got your, your blood pressure is so high, you're in stroke zone, Said you could have a stroke in a minute. I have to wait a minute. I just came in here feeling good, wanting to have an insurance exam. Now, if I'm that sick, shouldn't I have some kind of symptoms? Should my blood pressure's that high? She said, well, usually you're dizzy.

Yeah, Now I've been dizzy for a couple years and see, and I had things like seeing Three Bridges. I don't know whether y'all ever saw Three Bridges or not. I couldn't handle Three Bridges. I'd have to pull over and rest a while till I could get it down to 2 and then I could shut one eye and get across that bridge. And I was suspecting that booze might have something to do with this. Show you how sick I was. I came home tickled to death that drinking didn't have anything to do with it. It's just my blood pressure making me dizzy and give me eye problems. And

how long about this time

my wife had noticed some peculiar behavior. She she what would happen? She'd she'd get in touch with everybody and they get in touch with me. And finally somebody from AA got in touch with me to shut her up. We went to some meetings. Now, I'm not sure where we went. We might even gone to the sometimes to the automobile club because she's sicker than I was. But one of the guys we met along here was a guy named Squire Jones. He's dead now. And he was a tremendous member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Aaron Green. Well any why little old fella and he

things to me after this he'd see me in July and I'd be hot and sweaty and wait almost 300 lbs and he'd say why didn't you wait till it got colder to get drunk? You just wanted to kick him, you know. Well,

but and he'd said, if you ever get ready, call me and and I you know, so one day that chin music got so bad I couldn't stand it and I called. Why? I said come on over here and talk to me. I'm ready. He got in his car and started to cross town. I got in my car and left him and

now Squire got over there and he's kind of frugal and he figured he'd spent his money and he kind of quest that night. So he told her a little bit about his story. And evidently she told him a little bit about mine, because what came out all this was that she figured she'd got the idea that hunting orange juice would fix everything. You see, he she had to tell him how bad I was shaking. And man, I was shaking. I was shaking so bad I could threat a sewing machine running wide open. And she

she

but in Squire told her said well, to help these nerves and stuff, give him honey and orange juice and Cairo syrup and orange juice. So a ritual was I'd come home and she'd be standing there at this concoction and

she serves, shove about 3 tablespoons full of that honey down my throat, give me some of this concoction to drink, 1/2 honey and half orange juice. And I'd get it down and I'd walk down the hall to where I had my vodka head. And by the time I got it out also stuck together, I couldn't hardly get a drink down. You know,

you know, they say, hey, we know that if you come into Alcoholics Anonymous and you go back out there, Alcoholics Anonymous will really mess up your drinking. You get, you know, there's not much worse than a head full a A and a belly full of beer. And and but I'm OK that hunting orange juice don't do much for it either. I tell you, I was getting be the sweetest drunk in the Southeast anyway. Well, that didn't work for a A wasn't working for me. You could tell that. So she didn't let that stop her. She found a fellow that a A didn't work for him, but he'd gone to had a job

guy and he'd gone to psychiatrist and he'd gotten all well. So he came over and talked coming off. I went to my first mini trip to the psychiatrist. Now that's a whole another two hour story. And you know, if even there have been there, they put that little hourglass up there and you start talking and when the sand runs through sessions over. Well, I didn't do it that way. I watched his eyes and I could tell I'd feed him a Miss Kitty story and watch his eyes and when I had enough, I cut the session off. That's all he's going to get today 'cause I knew

be there a long time and I'd go home and I'd get 1/2 pint and I'd sit down till nights. How much progress was making, You know, I look back on that today. That's one time I feel like I got conned. He is getting $70.00 an hour for that little game where he's playing, you know. Well, anyway, he said an interesting thing.

We I think we probably most alcoholic, I know driver psychiatrist crazy if they really listen to us. But anyhow, he he said the next time he acts up and this is a funny thing. So next time he acts up, I'll put him where he can be observed more closely. And so this was my first trip to that Marshall Pickens Donald was talking about which is the hospital for the emotionally disturbed. Now it's an interesting thing. I was over there five or six times. I've been over there in the in the back of a pickup truck. I've been over in the trunk of a car,

been over on an ambulance about any way you can get there. Every time I went I was dog drunk. But you can look at my medical record over there and it drunks not mentioned. It's hypertension, schizophrenia,

just paranoia, depression. I guess with the prices they were charging, they didn't think drunk would look too good. But anyway, they never addressed, they never addressed anything to do with drinking. And I'll never forget the first time I was over, all of a sudden I came to and I'm an occupational therapy

now, man, I'm telling you know, I told you, I'm not handy with tools or anything. I'm making these leather watch bands faster than I I could make. They're pretty leather watch bands too. And I could make three. I can make three and one out and the next best person in there took them about all three or four hours to make one. I never been so proud. I was popping the fan run out of leather. I'd still be over there, I can tell you that.

And

they they have no thing over a call group therapy.

And in my group, it was 19 women in me, and

17 of these women had had hysterectomies. Now,

if you think Alcoholics got problems, you ain't heard nothing, I'm telling you.

And all of a sudden it dawns on me what I'm doing over there. You see, my drinking is not bothering me. It's driving Nancy crazy. It's just driving her crazy. She's wearing herself to death about it. And so it just made sense to me that what they were telling me was that I was not as good a provider as I thought I was because she had a place to live and food to eat and a car to drive. That I should provide her with one of these operations. She'd have enough to worry about and I never had to be bothered again.

I got out of that hospital feeling good, went straight home, set her down and we discussed what she is supposed to do.

She wasn't willing to go to any leaks, I can tell you that. But

now

wait, we had another thing in that if you'd been an ideal client, they called us. If you'd been an ideal client all week, you got to, you got a reward on Saturday, you got to go on a field trip. Now, a field trip consisted of gathered up in the lobby and they gave you a peanut butter and Jelly sandwich and you got to hike over to Kmart and

I'm standing there with our little group. Now, you got to remember that all these people, most of these ladies were taking shock treatments and they're very nervous

and they all smoked,

but they couldn't be trusted with matches.

I got the matches. And if anyone of them want to smoke while we was on that field trip, they had to come and see me. And I can remember walking out there thinking they really, they really recognized my leadership ability.

I kind of felt like I was an officers training school and

and you know how sick I was. I was out there a year before I realized what had actually happened,

that I was 44 years old and I'd worked myself up to the keeper of a matches in a nut house as well.

I got home and now, you know, it's wonderful and thank you all for laughing with me because I had to learn to laugh at myself before I could start to recover. See, all these are things I thought I'd never tell anybody, but, you know,

I,

I got out of there and and I went home and you Alcoholics know I'm running out of things to do. I'm trying everything and nothing working and I'm getting sicker and sicker. And she said, well, you haven't tried to be rehabilitated. Well, we didn't want to miss anything. So

all of I went to Palmetto Center, which is a state rehabilitation center up here at Florence. And, and I tell you, when I got there, I got the biggest resentment I ever had in my life, right the very first day. Now I didn't know what a resentment was then, but I got mad at the Dickens because everybody there was a war to the state except me. We, you know, they were getting free treatment 28 days. It's going to cost me $600.00. Now I didn't,

I had a job, but I didn't have any insurance. So the $600.00 was going to come out of my pocket and I was the only one out of about 30 paying. And I, we had a doctor and he just locked his doors, no practice. He was getting free treatment. So I had, I had an awful resentment. Now this starts where I think God started making an impression on me and working with me, my alcoholism and I'll tie it all back in together. So let's remember the $600.00 that I was so mad about. They said, well, you can go over to Alcoholics Anonymous, they come on Thursday if you wish to. We don't,

we don't recommend it or not recommend it. We provide a place for them to come in and talk to you. You can go if you want to. I had nowhere else to go I guess and I went. Now what I heard and saw there is indicative of of what was going on in my mind. I thought y'all were the sickest bunch of people had ever been. People would drive 50 miles, as I saw it, to tell me their problems. And I'm so sick that I'm being down there paying $600.00 for rehabilitation and what made me think that they were telling me their problems.

There's a young man there, look like he wasn't a day over 30 years old,

and he stood behind the podium in front of us and said he couldn't take one drink without getting drunk. Never felt sorry for anybody in my life.

My God, Can you imagine? Drunk, you know, and

I knew. I knew he was that big problem that I could help him solve. And so I wrote his name down. I was going to look him up. I was always good hearted, but this particular time, see, I knew

what I knew about drinking. If I could get him and, and and I could keep him paying, I believe I could keep him going for three weeks anyhow, you know, so I I got ready to leave down there and they told me an interesting thing. They said go back to Greenville and don't drink. We think you'll be all right. Now. I begin to suspect this, but I had no way of knowing I'd try to lost. I couldn't quit drinking. I didn't know how to do it, not drink, but by gum I was going to try because

they charged me $600.00 and this I was going to do everything they told me to do,

and I proved to him it wouldn't work and I'd sue him and get my $600.00 back. So I went home and I didn't drink for five or six months, just like they told. Now I'm living proof of what happens to a real alcoholic of my type when you take alcohol out and put nothing in. I was miserable. The most miserable. Six or seven months, whatever it was that I ever spent.

I hated everybody and I hated everything. I got a glass about this big and I filled it full of ice tea and everywhere I went I said, hey, look at me,

I'm 44 years old and can never drink again. I said things like, let's get our milk and cookies and go to bed. You know,

I thought my manhood was gone. I thought everything you did, it was fun in life was gone. So and I I hated you if you could not drink and be happy. And I hated you if you could drink and not get in trouble.

And I just hated everybody. And had I not gotten drunk out of committed suicide, I had a choice. And I got drunk. And that started the period of several months of when I drank what I referred to as zombolically, I was just a zombie. I didn't know what I was doing or where I was going or anything else. It attacked me with the vengeance. And right quickly I, I just, I'd come to hold and steering wheel and I'd look down and if I'd been, if I don't swallow it all over myself, I knew it was coming home. If I was nice and clean like I am this morning, I

going out, I didn't know where and I drive around the corner, check in the motel and have a few drinks just to let everything clear in my head so I can find out where I'm supposed to be and put everything in perceptive and you know, the rat race start all over again. I'd have things in my particular sales job, I'd see my clients once, maybe take them to lunch and I'd call and say can I come over tomorrow for lunch? They'd say, well, who use over here yesterday and all I'd say they'd call and say this is Tom, where is my sample? I had no idea who Tom was or where his sample was. I just was operating

like a zombie. And I came back from Augusta, GA, sometime in September of 73. And I think I came home to die and I went back and what Nancy referred to as my rat hole. We're not sure how long I stayed back there because by this time she had, she had developed a habit of going to visit relatives. She didn't have any, but she went somewhere and the neighbor thought she's going to visit relatives. But anyway, I remember that coming to this night,

I never want to forget it. I've been laying back there several days in the drunken liar and you know, the smell and the stinks and the claminess and the sweat and all of the mess I'm surrounded in and I, I can hardly stand up. I have to crawl to the, to the bathroom and I'm in serious trouble. But the main thing it's wrong is when I can get a drink down, it does absolutely nothing.

Liquor didn't work anymore and I didn't know what to do. I just dropped my head over my hands and I said Mike got nobody knows. She's standing there. And she said, yeah, somebody knows, they knows. And somehow she got me dressed that night and we went to an AA meeting. I don't remember what all went together and that what all went on in that AA meeting, but I remember one thing. I think that's the only time that I got a little bit honest with me. Don't The first time I ever got honest with me about my drinking is on the way home. She said you didn't take a white chip, a desired chip. I said no, I'm too sick, I'm too sick. If I don't get a drink down tonight, I'm

die. And see before that I told you out there, we went to some a, a meetings and always fire. Somebody would take me to an, a, a meeting. We'd go in, we'd have coffee and a cookie and whatever. And we'd sit down and give out chips and he'd punch me and I'd jump up and get one feet to punch six times that have gone right through the medallion. I didn't care. But this night I got a little bit serious. I was thinking and so I did get a drink down sometime that night. I'm not sure when and but that was on the 23rd. Now this is an interesting thing that happened in my life and it's it's very important to me. I wait 2 days