The XXXIX Gopher State roundup in Bloomington, MN

My name is Dick Anderson. I am alcoholic, and I am a member of the Macklin Group in Powder Springs, GA

and if you looked on the flyer it said I was from Lithium Springs, Georgia. It's actually in Lithia Springs,

but for those of you who are manic depressive, come and visit us. The spring does have lithium in it. There is hope.

We're grateful to be here.

And Barbara spoke here last year and had a great time here last year. And, and one of my, the people I've been friends with who's helped me stay here for a long time is Bobby, one of your founders, and Linda is Barbara's sponsor. So it's been a real blessing for us to be here with them. And we spent some time with them here on Thursday night. We got in, it was about, I guess, 50°. We were out at the the big mall yesterday

in 4850° whatever it was, I was cold, I was kind of chilling and everybody was wearing short shorts and flip flops.

And we understand this is what you all call spring weather. For us, this is the deep of winter. So

I want to thank Jeff and the committee for the invitation. I want to thank my host, my host Ross, who has been an excellent host. He's given me whatever I needed, took care of it. I appreciate Vista with him. And he was at our table tonight. There were a bunch of people that were, I don't think anybody was above 25. And they were all active members who had five, 6-7 years in their own committees. And they're working. And that's the future of our fellowship, and it's what's going to keep it here for a long time.

And a good friend of mine. There are lots of friends here this weekend,

Bill and you do need to come here, Bill. Bill gave us my name is Bill W and more recently Louis Wilson story when love is not enough. So those two films are his films. And you certainly want to be here tomorrow afternoon when he when he talks about he was friends with with Bill Wilson and friends with Lois and and you do not want to miss his session tomorrow afternoon. But we've been friends. There are a lot of other friends here. Rick, who was up here, who was originally scheduled to introduce me and I got to work together at

at the General Service Conference when I was a delegate.

The speakers this weekend are tremendous. But one of our friends, one of my close friends is from Louisiana. He was a delegate when I was delegate. And he is, his name is Irvin, and I'd like for him to stand up because this was his 22nd birthday this weekend.

And for those who would like to know, he's single and he's making a lot of money in the oil business over there. It'll be around all weekend.

Yeah.

Lily is going to speak. One of my favorite people is here. Lily is going to speak Saturday night. Franks message and the work that he's done with his group is has been an example to me and help keep me here. And Palmer we've been friends with the only two new people were Jennifer who you heard earlier this afternoon who was just gave a tremendous story and Magdalena. So I'm looking forward to hearing her and just looking forward to spend the rest of the weekend with you. But one of my great privileges here

is going to be able to introduce Sandy B on Sunday morning. Sandy is my favorite AA speaker and I don't have to to hesitate at all. There's not I mean, Sandy is I don't know anybody that gives a talk like Sandy beach and and and Sandy has been a good friend to me for a long time. Sandys also Marine and that reminds me that the reason for this weekend is it is Memorial Day. I come from a family of of everybody serves men and women, and I'd like for everybody who is a veteran to stand right now.

We can recognize it.

Like Jennifer, I come from a family where you wouldn't think that there would be a large insolence of alcoholism. I am the first alcoholic of record in my family. I don't come from a family of wealth, but I come from a family of honor. My dad's one of the most decorated pilots during World War Two and my little sister is a retired Bird Colonel, served well and with distinction. Her husband served in Vietnam and retired as a Bird Colonel. Their boy graduated from West Point.

Name from a great great grandfather who was Richard and Anderson, three star general under Robert E Lee and he was named for his grandfather who was General Dick Anderson, who was a captain and commanded the first boat across the Delaware in 1776. So that's the family that I grew up in. And if you know anything about me, you know, immediately I don't fit in with that family. I,

I got drunk and enlisted and I was a staff Sergeant in Vietnam and I had two tours in Vietnam. I seemed to do well in combat, But, but, but the rest of life was AI was clueless about. And from the very beginning, I didn't feel like I fit in with the family. I didn't feel like I fit in with the rest of the family. All my uncles would show up and they're all in uniform and they would take off and they would go and do their duty and, and our family didn't go down to the VFW and drink. I, I joined the VFW when I got back from Vietnam because I found out you could always get a drink in a dry county. So a tip,

those are planning to have a slip. And so

but but in my family, I just felt like I didn't fit. And I was I was scheming to get a nickel off my mom's dresser so I could get a candy bar. While the rest of the family is quietly serving honorably. They didn't brag. You know, my dad was given the Army Cross, which is like a Navy Cross next to the Medal of Honor, had a couple of Silver Stars, Distinguished Flying Cross, all of these decorations. I never heard any of these stories. There wasn't any bragging that went on. Everybody in the family just served and I didn't get that. I wasn't part of that. I didn't feel like I fit in. We didn't

go to church. We, there was nothing pragmatic or dogmatic about the way we were church, but they were people of great faith. You know, one of my dad's heroes was Stonewall Jackson. Stonewall Jackson was called Stonewall because he believed that if we trust God, we're going to go when it's our time to go. And so he stood straight up, even during combat, and his troops admired that there was No Fear. And so that's the family I came from. I didn't remember seeing a lot of fear,

honest. If they had a nickel too much change, they would take it back. And from the very beginning, I was scheming and trying to,

and if you live like that, you can't really tell people what's going on. And if the great thing about Alcoholics Anonymous, we have somebody called a sponsor where we can tell these things to, but I had no sponsor to tell these things too. So I just kind of faked it the whole time. I pretended to be somebody I wasn't even when I was four or five, six years old, all the activities that I was involved with were activities that taught me the principles I'm supposed to know in a a, the things that we come to know in a A, I was a member of Little League, YMCA, the church, Vacation Bible School, 4H, Boy Scouts. If you remember, what

it said in the Boy Scout handbook said we please God best when we do something to help another person each day anonymously, and that's exactly what we do in this fellowship. But I didn't get it. It doesn't make any difference why I didn't get it. I just didn't get it. And so I lived kind of a playlife.

And the only place that I found any kind of solace when I was a kid, we had a new invention. It was black and white. It had kind of a lot of static on it, but it had these pictures and it just come out. This is in the 50s and it was called a television. And on this television, there were shows like Ozzie and Harriet, Leave It to Bieber, Father Knows Best, The Andy Griffith Show.

And somehow or another I could relate more to the characters in that show than I could the people around me. In my real life. I couldn't tell my Little League coach or my Boy Scout leader, any of these people what was really going on with me. But if Opie or Wally ever got off the beam, by the end of the show, Dad would take his pipe, turn it to one side,

say something gentle without judgment. Opie or Wally would get the message and they'd get back on the beam. And that became my moral compass. I became one of the characters, didn't see myself on the screen, but it was real to me. And I became very much a part of that. I had my first spiritual experience when I was about six or seven. I went to the drive in theater with my dad, my little sister, the soon to be retired Burke, Colonel, my dad to Colonel, all the heroes and me. And we go to see this movie. And I had never seen anything in color because television was black and white.

And up there on the screen, 120 feet wide, there was the most power I'd ever seen. And the big book says lack of power is our dilemma. And I actually thought there was something in theory about me, my family, they were one way. They have something I didn't have. They had some power that I didn't have,

and up there on that screen was the most power I had ever seen. There was not only in color, it was in Technicolor, 120 feet wide. And it was a guy up there named Moses, and he had a staff and he would just push it to one side. The name of the film was the 10 Commandments. And I made two decisions that night. One, I wanted to be around whatever that was. It turned out God was listening because I've been around film and TV for a long time. But the second decision I made was I wanted to be on God's side

because I saw what Charlton Heston had done to Eul Brenner.

And so the next day, much to the surprise of my mother and father, who did not know I was having a spiritual experience in the back of the 55 Ford, I went down the aisle and Linda Baptist Church and got dipped and dumped to a song called We Surrender All. And I was about 3 1/2 feet tall and I surrendered all. There wasn't me. And but I was like, and I had a real emotional experience. I thought that this was the answer. I didn't fit in

my this family that I was around talked about God. So I'd give myself to God and I'd be OK. I'd be like them,

but I was like the newcomer who comes to A A

who comes to our meetings and sits and may make a decision but doesn't do anything about it. I wasn't taking any steps to change. And because I didn't take any steps to change, after a few days, months, weeks, whatever it was, I was still the scared little babys Boy Scout. And I felt like there was an expression they used back then, called the chosen ones. And I felt like I was not one of the chosen ones when I now I don't fit in with my family and God doesn't want me. And I made a decision that God didn't want me. I walked away from

church and I became as angry as I could be towards God. And I carried that until I'd been into Alcoholics Anonymous for a long time. And I behaved that way. I faked it for a long time until I had my next spiritual experience. I was 14 years old and my buddy Dave and I were playing a Babe Ruth League Baseball game the next day. He was left field, I was center field. And he got, I had never wasn't around alcohol. Our family reunions, we had iced tea and lemonade and he got 1/2 pint of gin and a six pack of beer. And I drank the beer and he drank the gin.

And for the first time in my life, I felt that power is called distilled spirits. I felt that spirit that they were talking. I thought they were talking about in church. And it's easy to get the two confused. Jennifer was talking about it earlier.

Suddenly I felt No Fear. Everything dropped off my back. I felt like I was about 6 feet tall. I felt like Moses must have felt when the wind was blowing through his hair. And so from the very beginning, I was not a stay at home drunk. I was a go to town drunk. And go into town when you're 14 means hitchhiking. And we hitchhiked up to a place called the White Castle, and I don't know if they have them up here or not,

do they? OK. It's a place where you go when you're drunk at 3:00 in the morning to get about a dozen cheeseburgers with all those onions on them, which seems like it's a good idea when you're drunk at 3:00 in the morning.

So we head to the White Castle. We're up there. My buddy Dave is not having the same spiritual experience I am. I discovered table hopping that night. I was scared to death of anybody who was an adult that night. I was meeting people, you know, getting to know people, and I was flirting with a redhead behind the counter. My buddy Dave is not having the spiritual experience. Dave's getting a little woozy. And I had never had a cup of coffee either. But I had seen in Perry Mason where if you have too much to drink,

you get a cup of coffee and it sobers you up so you can talk to the police.

So I ordered a cup of coffee for my buddy Dave, and it didn't have the desire to fit.

Dave threw up down the stainless steel counter.

As it turns out, if you're looking for a Louisville city policeman at midnight, the best place to find them is at the White Castle. So they came down to ask me what was wrong with my friend. I would have been scared to death to talk to a policeman before this, but I'm feeling fine now. And they said, what's the matter with him? He's just had a little bit too much to drink, really. How old is he, 14 How old are you? 14? So I was in Louisville City Jail 4 hours after I took my first drink

and that was pretty much the end of my social drinking.

I drank as much as I could on every occasion from that moment until I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. I was arrested 22 times before I got to Alcoholics Anonymous.

I would have told you when I got here that I had a drinking problem and it started the last two or three years of my drinking. During that period, I had lost control of my kidneys and bowels. I was staying in a basement apt. I was had been fired from my 7th job in a row. My last job, I wasn't paying my rent, but because of the arrangement where I had been an officer with the company, they thought the company was going to pick it up. So they let me stay there longer than they might have. And I had no furniture in this apartment and I'm sleeping on the

the bathroom floor and I'm

coming to and shaking and I would dry haven then I would get a drink or two down. I was hallucinating. I was hearing voices coming out of the heating ducts. I knew something was wrong then. But here's what happened. The first three times I take a drink, The first time I take a drink, I come from a family where nobody has a drinking problem and nobody gets locked up. I get locked up and I cannot think about anything except the way I felt. And the next drink I'm going to have. The next time I took a drink I just transferred to a new school and one of the older kids on the football team got me something that I would highly

recommend if you're going to have a slip Cherry vodka.

And believe it or not, it didn't taste good the first time.

The third time I took a drink, I drank what I drank until I got here, Kentucky Straight bourbon whiskey, and it didn't taste good the first time. I never drank for the taste. I drank for the effect from the very beginning. And I want each time I got something with more proof. The other thing that happened during that few week period, there was only one person on the planet that I related to and she was this girl that I absolutely idolized. I was infatuated with her. I loved her with all my heart as much as you can love somebody when you're 14. I talked to her every day for about 3 or

hours. We talked on the phone, we went to Hay Rise, we went to movies. I was the quarterback on the JV football team, she was the captain of the JV cheerleaders. And just shortly after that first occasion, she called me and she said I need to tell you that my dad has a drinking problem. But I haven't told you about it before because he gets mean and it's ugly and I didn't want to talk about it. But I need to tell you that I'm not comfortable with you having a drink when we go out

and it took me less than a day to break up with her.

She was the most important person in my life

and I had only had one drink or one night,

and I broke up with her. That's how much alcohol had on me from the very beginning. So I said I got locked up 22 times. Only one of those was a DUI. I was smart enough. When I came back to Vietnam, I hung my uniform with the ribbons in the back, and back in those days they didn't have computers or anything else, and I'd be drunk out of my mind. If I had the uniform in the back, they'd usually let me go. The 21 other arrests were not for crimes of commerce or intelligence or anything else. They were crimes of defiance. If you're trying to find out what humility is, it is the opposite of defiance.

Defiance is nobody's going to tell me what to do. Humility is God. Please tell me what to do.

And I was the guy where if you were pulled on the side of the road, my friends loved me. If you were pulled over on the side of the road by a state trooper

and I would get out, I'd been drinking Country Club malt liquor. I was a mourning and noon and daily drinker in high school. I would pull over behind the state trooper, got out of the car and say, officer, what seems to be the problem?

And my friends love me because within a short time period, they were going home and I was the one in handcuffs being carried off.

I was arrested six times my senior year. I was arrested at my senior prom. Now I'm 18 for two felony counts of assault and battery on a police officer. And because of the way I behaved and because of the family I came from, I was told that I if I couldn't behave any better than that, I would have to find another place to stay. So what I did was I emotionally blackmailed my mother to go back now and then. But I found an apartment with some older kids. So even in high school, I had a place to go to. So they never knew where I was. They didn't know where I was that died that I my mother.

I didn't realize how much I had done to damage my parents until I'd been sober for a long time. I put a lot of other things on my men's list way before that, but that was the behavior that I had in high school.

But they found out where I was

after the oppressed, the arrest of my senior prom,

because we have something in Louisville at the same time, a prom called its little horse race called the Kentucky Derby. And this time they didn't throw me in the juvie tank or the DUI tank. They threw me in the Felon tank. And there were eight bunks in the Felon tank. And the next morning on ABC, NBC and CBS News, my parents and everybody else found out where I was because I thought I knew all about race relations in high school 'cause I knew two kids were black and got along with both of them. But that night I came out and I was in in the of the tank with seven

Black Panthers who were arrested in Louisville, KY. This was in the 60s. It made national news. They were there to blow up Churchill Downs and been caught with a bunch of explosives. So on ABC, NBC and CBS News, here comes the Seven Black Panthers and me and my little powder blue tuxedo jacket.

And the other kids didn't get to do things like this.

I was a kid who made

when, when 1600 was the highest you could make on the SAT's. I made a 1480 good enough to go to Brown, Harvard, Yale, any place else who had to use my connection with my uncle who was a Dean at the university, Kentucky, just to get into state school, which had to accept you if you were a state resident unless you had a felony arrest. And so I went down to UK and I was down there for a while. I was continuing to see a lot of films. The year that I went down there, they had a film called The Graduate. I've made it all the way through school without

smoking at all and I saw the graduate 10 times, started smoking, had an affair with an older woman, she'd be about 89 now.

But one night and I've been, I still read a lot and I was reading a lot of Hemingway. We sat, we drank, we enlisted and I was with a bunch of guys and we all got drunk and we talked about how we didn't want to miss out on Vietnam. Our dads have been off to World War Two and we didn't want to miss out on Vietnam. What should tell you? I was the one with the drinking problem. I was the one who went down and listed the next day. And so I go off to Vietnam now. I found a group of people that I could look down on. I had pretty much been the lower companion in high school,

but now I found a group of people I could look down on because in Vietnam there were people who were doing drugs. And I know Kentucky is kind of cutting edge of hip, but I actually never saw any drugs when I was in high school or college. My drug was a bottle that had a Confederate flag says Rebel yell. It was stitch a well or whiskey. And and so I go over there and there are people doing drugs and and I'm not, I'm not saying that. And I just felt like if you did drugs, you lacked self-discipline.

And I'm not saying I didn't smoke a few joints or accidentally do LSD on a plane ride one time,

but while Turkey 101 was my primary drug and I knew where I was going to go. Well, not really. But I mean, I kind of knew the the Rev up and the feeling and all this stuff. So I just kept drinking. And I have two tours in Vietnam. I put down on my dream sheet. I wanted to go to Key West. They had a detachment down there. And I, I put on my dream sheet that I was going to Key Key West 21 times. I got to go to Vietnam twice and to the Pentagon the third time. And I did OK in combat. I came back. I did not do well at the Pentagon. Pentagon, they get up early,

idea of a breakfast meeting is tennis. Their idea is about 5:00-ish. And so I knew I wasn't going to be a career Marine or soldier like the rest of my family. And so

I got out. Now I think Jennifer said she was engaged 7 times. She has me. I was only engaged 6 times. And everybody that I was engaged to was somebody who looked like somebody I just seen in the film. When Romeo and Juliet came out, the Franco Zeffirelli film, I found somebody, a nurse who looked like Olivia Hussey. And I got engaged and we were together for three months and then that fizzled. And

but the guy I worked for, my drinking buddy was a Gunny named Frank. And he was married back in Louisville. We come back and the girl that lived upstairs looked like Olivia Newton John. I know there's some very young people in here. If you don't know who I'm talking about Googling, but

she was a hottie and, and so, so I'm at so so I, we just immediately fall in love. I'm getting out. I'm, I'm transferred back. I go back to Louisville. I got a job. I started working at an ad agency there. I'm I'm writing and producing commercials. I'm doing really well. We're talking about we're absolutely infatuated. We're spending every minute together. We're in love and we're talking about getting married. We're just trying to figure out what to do with her husband.

And

he was an attorney and advanced man for a Nixon who was running for reelection. And so he was on the road all the time, which was convenient. And I was an expert marksman and had been, and we had a few run INS. I went after him a few times with a shotgun. He came after me a few times. He was an attorney with a warrant and so

so so but you know how we are. We do not give up. I don't know who says we don't have willpower. Will you stick in there and stick in their eyes stuck in until I got her out of that bad marriage and we were about to we were we're close. We within two or three weeks of getting married and I was a daily drinker. As I mentioned, I started with Country Club malt liquor in before homeroom and that was drinking by this time I'm drinking everything around the clock, bourbon round the clock. And they didn't really care that I was drinking at this at A to see. They just cared that I showed up,

but they didn't care that I was drinking. It was a different time and so.

We're three weeks from the wedding and I was because it was a daily drinker, I didn't have a lot of blackouts, people who drink all times. And in my case I didn't have a lot of blackouts. But now and then I would go on a binge on top of the daily drink. And when I went on a binge on top of the daily drinking, I could lose a day or two. And about 3 weeks before we were supposed to get married, I missed two or three days. I don't think I was doing anything improper, but I just don't know where I was. And so I'm trying to explain this to my fiance. My fiance is concerned and she says I think

we need to postpone this wedding. And I was one who from the as young as I can remember, if something happened and it didn't work out right and all you had to do was reject me a little bit. God had already rejected me. I didn't fit in with my family. You rejected me. And immediately I was gone. And so she said, let's think this over again. And I took that as a rejection and I ran out of there. And the only thing that was important to me before I got to Alcoholics Anonymous was making me feel better.

That could be the center of my life, was how I could make me feel better.

Now, I don't do drugs very well. I couldn't drink any more than I was, so how am I going to make myself feel better? There was a magazine we had seen in Vietnam and it was called Penthouse and it had a section in there called the Letters or Forum where they discussed philosophical ideas about different kind of lifestyles and alternatives.

Now, I have not seen Penthouse before I went to Vietnam. I had seen Playboy, but when I was growing up and we live in a different time. For those of you who can go on and find, you know, buy mega, whatever it is you want, you can find online. The closest thing we had to that when I was growing up was the tribal section of National Geographic.

So we're over in Vietnam, we're seeing this magazine section and I'm seeing I'm, I'm looking and I'm I'm we're talking about this idea. And a terrific idea is called a menage, a choice. And so,

and obviously I didn't speak French at the time, but

the idea of two women and me, it was just for all of us, all of us guys, we just thought it was a whoever thought this up was very bright. And so,

so it's one little idea that just stuck with me. So now I've wounded my fiance has cast me out. We're not going to get married. I'm hurt and I need to comfort myself in some way. And so I go looking for this menage in Louisville, KY, 45 years ago.

And I bring this up because this is the kind of trouble you can get into without a sponsor.

There was another concept in there called that I now know I did not quite understand called lesbian. So I'm thinking I want to get together with these two women. I would like for them to like each other. And so I'm now looking for a lesbian bar in Louisville, KY 45 years ago to find two women that want to be with me.

And if you're not sure what's wrong with that, keep coming back.

But you, we have willpower now. I lived in an apartment where there were eleven of us. We all need each other as Marine Corps, Army, Navy, whatever. We all had our flags out there. Every Sunday morning, whoever got up first would pop the keg. We had a pool. We played volleyball. If you had to stay over, you'd bring her out to introduce her to all your friends and all your alcoholic friends out there was a great life and so. But these guys are square. They're not going to know where I'm going to find a lesbian bar. I've just heard about the concept myself.

And so, so, but I stuck in there. I'm working on an ad agency. There was an art director in the back who I was talking about it one day and he said, well, I know where to go. And, and so he told me and I go down to this place and I'm down there and I'm, I'm drinking my Wild Turkey 101. No water bruises the flavor

drinking my and I'm smoking 4 packs of L&M's a day because I like the couple on the pack was walking along in the leaves in the fall and so but nothing's happening. There's a guy playing at the piano bar and there's a woman at the piano bar with me. But I know there's not going to be any menaging and and I'm thinking I got some bad information here and I've got that, you know, you just smoke enough and get enough whiskey down. You got that kind of sexy kind of that come hit her voice.

And you are not going to get any sexier.

So if it's going to work, it's going to work now. And suddenly, like in the movies, at the other side of the room, there was something going on upstairs. The doors opened and there was a staircase, a long staircase. And cascading down the staircase was the most beautiful redhead I'd ever seen. Just like in slow motion, she moves to the middle of the dance floor. And I'm starting to move to the middle of the dance floor. And we hold on to each other and we're kissing and we just cannot get enough of each other. And, you know, when you're in love, you take three steps over this way and you hold on to each other again to make sure that you haven't fallen out of love yet. And it's just,

this is real. And then I remembered my mission. I said, by the way, do you have a girlfriend we could add tonight? And and her name was Erica. And and Erica said, I'm just going to wait to see how the signer does the story. And Erica says,

Erica says, why don't we get to know each other tonight and we'll add somebody else tomorrow. And I'm thinking, thank God I did not marry that Republican woman. And so

we get back to my place and drugs rears its ugly head one more time. Erica had a pill big enough to choke a horse. It was actually a horse tranquilizer called a quaalude and pulled it out. She took it. I said no thanks, I don't do drugs. I took another shot of Wild Turkey and two things happened. Erica passed out and I found some equipment I wasn't looking for

and after three or four days I said this is not right.

This is the point at which my moral compass stopped working because I had never seen Opie or Wally ever deal with this in any episode

and it was a time for a change. I got fired from that job shortly, not for drinking, but they said. Are you aware that you missed 91 days this year? I don't know how many days that is out of a year, but apparently it was more than they wanted me to miss.

So I got fired from that job. But like everything, I knew I was going to fail. Once I started drinking and got used to what it did to me, I knew I was going to fail. So I'd have another girlfriend lined up or another job lined up. And so I had a job lined up. I was very good at what I did for a short time each day. And so I had another job lined up with the biggest ad agency in New York. So I left Louisville to go to New York. I'm working for this big agency. It's the biggest agency in the world. I'm doing Coca-Cola commercials. I'm flying around on a Learjet. I've got a production assistant whose primary job was supposed to be to help me produce, but I

considered their primary job to make sure I had Wild Turkey 101. No matter where we went. And, and, and I won. I did some good work. I want a couple of Cleos. I had a commercial that I worked on, worked on with Coca-Cola, with a football player. There were lots of things that I was involved with that that that reflected a good life that looked like I was doing OK, but I was only doing OK just a little bit, just enough to hang on. I was getting overpaid and that allowed me to get by with a lot of things,

but it didn't change what alcohol did to my body. At 10:00 in the morning, I was at a recording session and we were recording music. I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. And we didn't have computers in those days. And there was a a large group of people and musicians and singers and I couldn't talk. I thought I'd had enough to drink that morning, but I hadn't and I couldn't talk. And I walked around the corner to a bar where as one of those bars, you look in the mirror and you see yourself about 5 feet away. And I walked in and I didn't know the place. It was A

and the guy said he just poured me a triple. He didn't ask anything. And my thought was I wonder how he knows I'm a big drinker because I thought of myself as a John Wayne combat big drinking guy. I had no thought of myself as somebody who was an alcoholic.

And he poured me that triple and I spilled it all over. I shook it across the bar. And I'd seen another movie called Lost Weekend with Ray Milan where he uses a towel to use as a bar, so leverage to bring up a drink. And I used it to get the triple up and another triple up and I eased off and I went back

and they didn't fire me. They sent me to, they sent me off of the major account, sent me to a secondary account down in Atlanta. And I go down there. But I did get fired from there. Before long. I'm sleeping in that basement apartment where I didn't have any furniture. I wasn't eating. I had nothing to eat for my last two years. I was bleeding from the, I thought the stomach, but it turned out to be the esophagus. And I'm sleeping on a bathroom floor. I'm estranged from my family.

Even the guys that I used to drink with aren't hanging out with many more and all I could do was go up to the liquor store and come back. I wasn't driving anymore.

And so I got evicted from that apartment. And when you get evicted, they don't give you 2 days or a week. They give you 6 weeks or two months. But that's never enough time for an alcoholic. And I went up, I had been evicted. I just didn't deal with it. And I was evicted. And I went up to the liquor store and I thought as long as I've got my whiskey, I'll be OK. And I went into that liquor store and the guy, there's only one around there. And I was the guy said just a minute. He called out the owner and the owner said, we know

that that check is no good, and we know that the last few checks you've written are no good and we need to ask you not to come into our liquor store anymore.

And as humiliating as that was, the only thought I had in my mind is, oh God, I hope he gives me that whiskey.

And he did. And I walked outside and I only owned, and I still have them in a box, what I owned when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, a pair of yellow brownish pants that I thought made me look like a blonde, a Country Club, but they were very practical. A blue polo shirt, some loafers with holes in the bottom. And I was carrying a 45 because I got real paranoid my last couple of years. And I had no food the last two years. And I walked around the corner and I was going to get a drink out of that. And almost like slow motion,

I don't know what happened, but I had their concrete landing and something happened where that bottle just fell out of my hands and slow motion hit the concrete and spilled all over the place.

And I was more afraid and more hopeless at that moment than I ever was in a firefight in Vietnam because I had nothing to fight back with.

And I got angry and I got angry and I pulled a 45 out and I wasn't going to write a note because there was nobody I'd been talking to. I just wanted to end it.

And there was a bullet in the chamber and I put the safety off and I got ready to pull the trigger. And I started screaming at God because all this anger at God, the one who had made my life this way, the one who wouldn't accept me, the one I was angry at the most. And I started screaming at God. Got blanket, got blanket, got blanket, just cursing God. And something happened and I broke and I started saying God help me, God help me, God help me.

And for justice, a moment, there was this piece that came over me and I saw another scene from a movie I'd seen 50 times called Days of Wine and Roses, written by one of our members, coordinated with our public information office up in New York.

And it was that scene where Jack Klugman walks up to Jack Lemmon and says, I understand you need help. I'm from Alcoholics and islands.

And I swore I was in the middle of that scene and I just felt peace. And I walked up to a phone booth on a street corner. We didn't have cell phones in those days. This was 35 years ago. Week after next. It was a hot summer day and I called the operator. I didn't have a nickel and I was crying. I said I'm an alcoholic. I think I'm an alcoholic. And somebody from a public information committee had told the phone company about what we do and how we do it. And they said, hold on a minute. And she connect me to a woman named Helen

who had just started working in the central office of Atlanta. And Helen is still there. She had nine years then. She has 44 now.

And she said, I know you're hurting and you stay right there. We're going to get some help to you. And I got a kite coming out to talk to. His name is Ed. And Ed came out and Ed was a railroad man. Somebody I normally wouldn't have associated with had a bad toupee pipe. He had, as I remember, a striped shirt and Plaid pants

bad on some and I'm trying to figure out whether or not to listen to this guy or not.

Shoot myself or listen to go with a badly dressed guy.

And he did what the Big Book said. He had read it, he had lived it, he relived the horrors of his past, and he shared with me his story.

And I looked behind all that and I saw somebody who had the same thing as me. He's the first person that I had sat down to talk with who had the same disease as me. And I did the most complete third step I've ever done in my entire life. And I turned all of me over to Ed, and I was shaken badly. And Ed took me to a place to dry out. And there was another man there named Joe Hubbard, who's dead now. And Joe stood with me for five days. I had D TS. And if you hold somebody's arm who has D TS, it brings them out of delusions.