I Wanted to Be Ordinary – AA Speaker – David B.
David B., first AA member in Quebec, shares his story from a privileged childhood through decades of alcoholism, hospitals, and a moment of clarity that led him to recovery and 21 years sober.
David B. from Montreal was the first member of Alcoholics Anonymous in the province of Quebec. In this AA speaker tape, he walks through his journey from a childhood marked by fear and privilege to decades spiraling through blackouts, hospitalizations, and a desperate two-year period living on substitutes for alcohol—until a moment of defeat in a police station led him to a book, a sponsor 500 miles away, and the ordinary life he’d always wanted.
David B. shares 21 years of sobriety after becoming the first AA member in Quebec, tracing his path from early childhood fear and rebelliousness through escalating alcoholism, multiple psychiatric hospitalizations, and a three-time admission to a psychiatric hospital. He describes the moment he found the Big Book while imprisoned, connected with a sponsor in New York City, and rebuilt his life with his wife and family. His talk emphasizes the role of sponsorship, trust, and gratitude in long-term recovery, illustrating how acceptance of powerlessness and connection to AA fundamentally changed his life.
Episode Summary
David B. opens by acknowledging his role as trustee on the AA General Service Board and his 21 years of sobriety—a milestone he’s determined never to take for granted. He begins his story at the very beginning: a childhood in Mexico City during revolution, his mother’s death when he was young, and a pervasive fear that he believes planted the seeds of his disease. Spoiled by his grandmother and aunts, he developed a rebellious streak and a deep sense of insecurity. The turning point came at boarding school when a friend suggested a beer. That first drink opened a door David had been afraid to walk through, and suddenly he felt like he could be everything he’d always wanted to be.
What follows is a detailed account of how alcohol became the answer to every uncomfortable feeling. He became the center of attention, the big wheel at school, willing to do increasingly outlandish things to maintain that status. Back home in Quebec City, his drinking escalated. He describes standing on the stage at a formal ball in white tie and tails, declaring Scottish war cries and being led out in disgrace. People around him were concerned—colleagues said he should cut down, family members thought he’d grow out of it. But David was defiant. He never missed work. He never drank every day. This was his business.
Then came the blackouts. One morning he woke on a train in Hamilton with no memory of how he got there. Dishonesty became his companion—first with others, then with himself. He’d tell himself alcohol wasn’t really a problem, that he could handle it, that it was nobody’s business. But that morning feeling would come, that creeping dread that he was living a phony existence.
Transferred to Winnipeg, David found himself in what he calls an alcoholic’s paradise: living upstairs over the bank where he worked, with the Corona Hotel just a back-alley run away. Each incident had to be bigger and more outlandish than the last. He recalls standing naked on top of the bank building at the corner of Portage and Main, wearing only a fur coat, requiring the fire department and police to bring him down. Thirty years later, someone would still be telling that story.
At 21, David fell in love with a young woman. When transferred to Vancouver, his insecurity convinced him that someone else would take her away. In a desperate attempt to secure the relationship, he impulsively bought an engagement ring, then a wedding ring, and married her on the same day—all without telling anyone. It was not a foundation built to last, yet he speaks of this with wonder: 36 years later, that same wife would still say goodbye to him as he left for speaking engagements.
His father got him the job back, but his drinking continued. He was fired, then rehired. In Vancouver, the real consequences began. A blackout led him to a police office seeking a permit to carry a revolver—he had no memory of it. He made his first real attempt to stop, but it lasted three days. The party that followed ended with him waking in their apartment with a terrible headache, a strange fear, and pins and needles down one side of his body. His wife called a doctor who initially dismissed it as simple alcoholism, but when delirium set in, they discovered he’d suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. He was paralyzed on his right side.
At 23, crippled, David was transported back to Montreal in disgrace. The self-pity was immense. If there was a God, how could He do this to him? But the fear of paralysis, the warnings about death—these couldn’t stop an alcoholic. He rationalized that they were just trying to scare him. One day he had a beer, then another. He didn’t die. He wasn’t paralyzed. The drinking continued, though he never could handle as much after that.
The Bank sent him to a psychiatrist. David lied through every session. The psychiatrist eventually left a note on his desk, packed his wife in a car, and drove over a cliff into a river. David doesn’t claim responsibility, but the event haunted him.
Then came the hospitals. Round after round of psychiatric care. A clergyman friend tried to help. David and his wife had a son, Bill. The night Bill was born, David had hidden a bottle, determined by sheer willpower to stay sober. When his wife went into labor, he couldn’t find the strength to drive her to the hospital without stopping at a hotel first. He arrived at the hospital dirty, unshaved, half-drunk, dragging enormous flowers down the hallway. He remembers his wife’s face—her tears, his shame—and he walked away to get drunker.
The pattern repeated: house to house, hospital to hospital. Moving constantly because he couldn’t stand to see the places again. He crawled up hundreds of steps to a shrine to ask Brother Andre for help. The fears worsened. He couldn’t undress at night, couldn’t go to bed, just sat in a chair waiting for something terrible to happen. His young son learned to run under the bed when his father came home, never knowing whose side to be on. A friend, a clergyman (who would later become the Bishop of Toronto), finally told him: “Dave, nobody can stand this anymore. You have to do something about it.”
David took a voluntary interdiction—a legal status in Quebec that removed his civil rights, declared him a “common drunkard and a vagabond.” He was admitted to Verdun Protestant Hospital for the insane. When the alcohol wore off and he felt better, defiance returned. How could they lock him up in a lunatic asylum? He was getting out, going back to Vancouver. But he didn’t. He was released, drank again, and was readmitted—this time as a three-time loser, meaning they could potentially keep him there for life.
The defiance on the outside masked crushing fear on the inside. He told Dr. Porches he’d never stop drinking, not even if they kept him a thousand years. The doctor said maybe they would keep him long enough. The question circled his mind: Was he going to be there the rest of his life? When he finally got to a phone, he begged his wife to get him out. She did. Dr. Porches told her there was nothing more they could do. David would probably need custodial care for the rest of his life.
For two years, David lived in and out of a dream. He’d discovered substitutes for alcohol—paraldehyde, bay rum, essence of vanilla—all cheaper than the real thing. Half of those two years he remembers; half is blank. He tried to join the army, thinking he might be killed and his family would be better off. A doctor at the recruitment center recognized him from Verdun and refused to take him. “If you were the last man in Canada, I wouldn’t take you.”
The end came in the bullpen at Number One Police Station. David describes what Bill W. called “deflation at depth”—absolute hopelessness, nothing left, a loneliness beyond anything he’d ever known. And then, for reasons he attributes to God’s mercy, he remembered a book. His sister had brought it to him years earlier at Verdun. It was the Big Book, *Alcoholics Anonymous*. He remembered the stories inside—drunks just like him who got sober, got their families back, went to work, came home and read the paper. They were ordinary. That’s what David wanted more than anything: to be ordinary.
He was released on Easter Tuesday and went to his father’s house. His father asked what he had to lose and financed a long-distance call to a small office in New York City. A woman named Bobby answered. She said, “I’m an alcoholic, too. There are a lot of us down here. If you want help, we’ll help you.” That simple statement—that people 500 miles away in a different country understood—changed everything. Bobby became his sponsor and wrote him every single day for nearly a year until there were enough members in Montreal to form a group.
His wife came back. His father financed an apartment. David got into AA.
He credits his wife’s support and belief as crucial. She was the only one who ever said, “You can’t help but get better, can you?” That trust meant everything.
The rewards that followed came through God and AA, David says. His father, who’d spent money bailing him out for years, appointed him executor of his estate. When David opened the old safe, he found an envelope with his name on it containing every newspaper clipping about AA since David had been sober—his father’s quiet acknowledgment of the miracle. His wife, suddenly stricken blind in New York, was miraculously connected with one of Canada’s finest eye surgeons through a chance meeting. She regained her sight.
Today, David sits around his dinner table with his wife of 36 years, his son Bill (now 25, married with a grandson on the way), and his two youngest children born in sobriety. He closes with a poem by a New England poet: “I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year, give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown. And he replied, Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God, for that shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.” His son later gave him the complete version, which ends: “So I went forth and finding the hand of God trod gladly into the night and he led me toward the hill and the breaking of the day in the lone.”
Notable Quotes
I think I was one of those people that was predestined to be an alcoholic, if there is such a thing as predestination. I’ve had all of the characteristics of the alcoholic for as long as I can remember. Particularly do I remember the fear.
When I had a drink, a whole new world opened up for me. I could be all of the things I’d always dreamed. I could be all of the things I’d always wanted to be.
There was absolutely no hope anymore. There was nothing. I don’t think there’s any loneliness in the world like that.
I remembered a book that I hadn’t thought of for years—a book called Alcoholics Anonymous. And that book had talked about drunks just like me who found a way to get sober. And I don’t think there was anything in the world that I wanted more than that right then—to be ordinary.
Bobby said, ‘I’m an alcoholic, too. There are a lot of us down here. And if you want help, we’ll help you.’ Here were these people 500 miles away in a different country who understood.
God give me a grateful heart.
Sponsorship
Hitting Bottom
Big Book Study
Emotional Sobriety
Family & Relationships
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Step 1 – Powerlessness
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- Hitting Bottom
- Big Book Study
- Emotional Sobriety
- Family & Relationships
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Full AA Speaker Transcript
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Welcome to Sober Sunrise, a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience, strength, and hope from around the world. We bring you several new speakers weekly, so be sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at sober-rise.com.
Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Marty.
My only qualification for chairing this meeting, which I am honored and privileged to do, is because I am an alcoholic. If there are any members of the press here, I would like to ask them to pre preserve the anonymity of any of our AA speakers who speak here tonight and respect our traditions as such. How did you like the food?
looking good. Thank you very much. How did you like the Oregon interlude?
Ladies and gentlemen, our guest speaker tonight was the first member of Alcohol Anonymous in the province of Quebec. I guess you've heard about this province before. He is an accountant by profession and he is also is the Canadian trustee on the general service board of Alcoholics Anonymous.
He's well known throughout AA circles as a great little guy. I've uh spent a little time with him since last Thursday night. and u I've grown to love him too and he is positive proof positive that this program really works.
He is here tonight with us with 21 years of AA sobriety under his belt. And I think that this is something in itself. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you with confidence Dave B of Montreal.
Dave, thank you. Good people. I can't remember all the proper titles I'm supposed to say about the head table.
So, I will only say honored guests at the head table and my friends out there. There are two things I wanted to say before I started to tell my story because I've been asked to tell my story. And one first was to thank you people so much for inviting me here.
You know, up here in Canada, we have the largest area in the AA world from which a trustee is selected. And I have been in every area now that I have been in Alberta from Eufinand to British Columbia and it has been a most rewarding experience to me and I thank you that you have made it possible for me. My term is coming to an end.
this year as your servant at on the board. We have a new one who is a westerner too. He's not really the trustee yet because we haven't elected him, but he is the trustee nominee.
I've never never known one yet that wasn't elected. And he is Tom. He is here today from Winnipeg.
And if he is in the room, I haven't been able to see him so that you can see your representative on the board for the next four years. I wish Tom, wherever he is, would stand up. There he is.
I'm an alcoholic. My name is Dave Vanra. >> I like to say that for various reasons and the main reason is to remind myself.
It's quite a long time since I had a drink. It's something I don't ever want to forget. I'm going to tell my story tonight and that reminds me a little more and it reminds me particularly of one of my favorite prayers and that is God give me a grateful heart.
It reminds me too that this thing wasn't of my own doing. It is something that I have to remember the last little phrase that we use in the Lord's prayer. It says, "For thine is the kingdom, thine is the power, and thine is the glory." And that's the way I hope that I can always look at it.
I think I was one of those people that was predestined to be an alcoholic, if there is such a thing as predestination. I've had all of the characteristics of the alcoholic for as long as I can remember. Particularly do I remember the fear.
My very first memory is a fear. And that was we lived in Mexico City when I was a very small boy and we were there during the period of the revolution and I can remember the soldiers coming to the house and taking away my father's riding horse. I can remember the soldiers who were not having time to bury them as they were burning on the street.
I can remember the terrible earthquakes that used to frighten my mother so much. And she used to stand, we used to all have to stand under the lintil of the door. My next memory is a memory that created even more fear in me.
Very shortly after that, my father and mother took a trip over to Europe and they came back. And shortly after they came back, my mother died. And then there was the fear, who's going to look after us?
What's going to happen to us? Where are we going to go? And this seems to me to have given me perhaps the main characteristic of the alcoholic and that is fear.
I was looked after by my grandmother and two maiden ants and I was very badly spoiled. And I think perhaps that is what gave me that other characteristic of the alcoholic. I didn't want to take orders.
I didn't want to do what I was told. And I became pretty rebellious and I was going to run things my way. And then my father remarried and I had to go home and I had to take orders.
But I was rebellious and my car such a commotion around the place that eventually I was shipped off for a boarding school. I had other characteristics too. I had I think what they used to call in the old days the will to fail.
I can remember my father bringing me up to the head office of the Bank of Montreal where he had worked for many years introducing me to the general manager and the president of the bank and saying this is my son. He's going to follow in my footsteps. And I can remember feeling inside myself, I'll never be able to do that.
I can't do the things that everybody expects me to do. Things got so bad at home, they sent me to a boarding school. And in my last year there, I was shy and I was small and I wasn't too much good at games and I wasn't too much good at studies or any other thing that I can think of.
I didn't have, I guess, another one of the oldfashioned characteristics called moral courage. I remember we were down in Sherbrook one day and we were walking past the old Magog's house and somebody said, "Let's go in and have a beer." And I don't know why I had a feeling this was the wrong thing to do. Alcohol wasn't something that was forbidden in our house.
I don't believe I ever really saw it abused there. I don't know why I'd never had a a drink previously, but I hadn't. But inside me was a feeling this wasn't right.
I shouldn't do this. But I didn't want the other boys to think the less of me. So, I went in and I had a beer and then another and a whole new world opened up for me.
I could be all of the things I'd always dreamed. I could be all of the things I'd always wanted to be. Didn't matter about all these things I wasn't too good at.
I could sit there and dream. And then something else. When I got back to school, I became the big wheel.
I was the center of attraction. I can still remember the the little boys around the school saying, "Boy, did you smell bankrupt? He's been drinking." And that really made me into something I'd never been before.
I think that I was the type of alcoholic who's an alcoholic right from the very first drink or perhaps before he takes his first drink. I went back home after that. And I drank, not all the time, but when I drank, I always wanted to finish the evening.
I wanted to see the end of the bottle. I wanted to get drunk. Didn't seem to sleep very well if I hadn't done that.
And I can remember it wasn't too long until I got the dishonesty part of the alcoholic. I would pretend I was going home when the others went home, but I would go off somewhere else and finish it out and then go home. I can remember too in those old days in Quebec City being in this hotel reminds me of it in the shot of Front Mack.
You know, I used to do the most outlandish things that I could be the center of attraction. It seems to be when you start to do outlandish things, you got to keep doing bigger and better ones that people don't talk about you anymore and you aren't really the And I can remember going to a very fancy St. George's Day ball, white tie, tails, red rose in the button hole.
And I can remember standing up on the stage at the end of that and remembering my Scottish ancestry and saying Scott away Wallace bled and down with a satinac and uh I was led out of there in disgrace I might tell you. There were a few other incidents like that and I found myself transferred out of the city of Quebec down to the maritime and from there I went to the Ontario division by this time alcohol had become quite a problem at least every other every other person thought it was except me and people were saying why don't you cut it down why don't you take it easy and others were saying why doesn't he he's just throwing is wild oats. He'll get over it.
He'll grow out of it. And I used to get very defiant in those days and say, "It's my business if I drink." I never missed a day's work. I've never been late.
You look after your affairs. I look after mine. But that trip to Hamilton, I woke up the lower birth of a train.
The porter is shaking me. There's a bottle on each side of me. He says, "We're in Hamilton." and I get out and I didn't get into work.
I didn't get into work for 2 or 3 days until the accountant of the bank came over and got me. That was another part of the dishonesty. I think the person I was most dishonest with was myself because I can remember many many times after that saying alcohol isn't really a problem.
I've never done this and I've never done that and I can handle it and it's my business if I drink. But the every once in a while in the morning when you'd wake up that old feeling was there and this would come right out of where you've hidden it and you'd know that you were living a kind of a phony existence. And after that I was transferred out to Tom's hometown out to Winnipeg.
Winnipeg was an alcoholic's paradise. I lived upstairs over the bank. I worked downstairs.
And all I had to do was run through the back alley into the Corona Hotel. And I did that all that winter. And as I say, you have to keep doing bigger and better and better things all the time.
I can remember I was at the Winnipeg Roundup a few years ago. You know, sometimes you people out in the west have a strange idea of us a seat easterners, I guess. And somebody said to me, "You're from Montreal, are you?" And I said, "Yes." And uh he said, "Boy, well, there's one story you'll never top.
You know once oh years ago and uh it was 30 years ago there was a fellow came out from the east and he stood out top of the bank there at the corner of Portage and Maine didn't have a stitch of clothes on only a fur coat and a bottle in the pocket and finally it took the the extension ladder the fire department the police and everybody else to get them down. I didn't say a word until I got up to speak. When I did, I told that story and I thought it must have really been something if they remembered it after 30 years.
I can remember too. I can remember in the morning I can remember the manager of the bank when I was called down there. I can remember the look on his face, the look of disgust.
And he said, "What is the matter with you? What is it? Are you crazy doing things like that?
I can remember having to go down to the police station. I can remember having to pay the fine. And I can remember what the head policeman down there said to me.
And those things hurt for a little while. You decide you're going to straighten around, but I didn't. And I was now becoming very defiant.
I wasn't taking orders from anybody. And nobody was going to push me around. I also had the fears on the inside.
I can remember to everything, you know, I think most alcoholics are like that. Everything that happened in this world or anything that happened, I related to myself. It was personally directed against me.
I never thought of the other people in the world or that anybody really thought about anybody else except Dave Buff. everything that happened that related to me and I had fallen violently at love as boys of 21 do young lady of 15 and then all of a sudden the blow fell I was transferred to Vancouver and I thought that this was personally directed against me and I can remember I was making $800 a year which is worth a little more than it is now and I can remember deciding because of that feeling that most alcoholics have that it's a feeling of insecurity that if I get away from here some far better looking man and somebody smarter than me will take this girl away. And so I decided I'd use some of my expense money and we would straighten this thing up.
So we went into a little jewelry store on Portage Avenue and we bought a ring and the little man in the jewelry store said, "You know, these things come in set. Perhaps you would like to get the wedding ring at the same time." Well, you can't look small in the eyes of your beloved. And so we brought the wedding ring.
And then he reached under the counter and he said, "Are you planning on getting married right away?" And I got frightened and I didn't say anything but he said if you are uh here's a minister who will marry you way up in the other end of town and who can look small in the eyes they're beloved and so we got in a taxi and we were married and I don't suppose that a marriage like that has one chance in I don't know how many million of being successful. But I can tell you something else. 36 years later, a few days ago, that same wife came and said goodbye to me as I started off for here.
These are some of the tremendous miracles really I think that have happened. I think God does have a special eye for the drunks and the children and the helpless kind of people. I went out to Vancouver.
We hadn't told anybody we were married. And finally, he perhaps part of my trouble was that my father juted me out of all the jams that I was ever in. And I finally wrote him a letter and told him what I had done.
And he said, "There's nothing I can do with the very strict rule. Go and report it to the superintendent," which I did. And I was fired right there on the spot.
And here I was 3,000 miles from home, no money, a wife in Winnipeg. And then Dory's father took action to have the have the marriage in those. And that made it even worse.
And then my father did straighten it up at the bank. And he sent me $500. And this was supposed to be our wedding present to get things started.
When Dory arrived in there in in Vancouver, I was in the hospital. There was no $500. There was nothing to start with.
And she had to go and live with the family of the accountant, the bank which I worked. That's not a very pretty start to life. And you would think about this time I would be saying to myself, well, it must have something to do with the alcohol.
Maybe I'm going to straighten up. But it wasn't yet that yet. The next thing came was a blackout.
The first real blackout that I had had. And I found myself sitting across the desk from a police left tenant looking for a permit to carry a revolver. And I had no idea of how I got there.
I had no idea of anything except that I already had a permit to carry a revolver while I was on the bank's business and this frightened me terribly and I made my first real attempt to stop drinking. It lasted for 3 days. The bank kept transferring me from one branch to another branch to another branch.
And finally, I landed up in the old hotel in Vancouver. And it was there that the beginning of the end really came. But it was only the beginning of the end because the party started in one of the rooms that night and we ran out of liquor.
And it's all very vague in my mind. And I woke up the following morning in the little flat we had with a terrible headache. And I didn't very often have headaches.
I got awfully sick. There was also a funny little feeling of of fear. And it was a kind of a fear that I was to get to know very well after that.
And I suppose most alcoholics do. It was a fear of the unknown. Something terrible was going to happen.
You don't know what it is. It's a fear of sort of impending doom. And it was right.
But I had the answer for that. There was some beer in the ice box. And so I went in there and I got that and started to drink.
And the beer the feeling got worse and worse. And there was good reason for it because very shortly I felt a feeling of pins and needles all down one side. My face was all pulled over and I was terrified.
I called Dory. She called the doctor and it turned out that I had had first the first doctor that came said it's alcoholic in your right. Uh treat them well, give them shots of this and that.
You'll be all right in a few days. You know these drunks, they drink and they don't eat. But in a couple of days, I was delirious.
And so he called the bank doctor and it turned out that I had had a cerebral hemorrhage and that I was paralyzed all down my right side. That was the time when the loan companies that I was well known to by this time started clamoring for their money from the bank. It was a time when the when all the checks that I had cited out all over the countryside because I was a good position to do it started coming back home to Ruth.
And as soon as I was able to travel, I was transferred back to Montreal in disgrace. And I can remember now the bitterness that was inside me. What had I ever done?
23 years old, paralyzed, crippled for life. If there was a God, how could he ever do a thing like this to me? I don't think anybody ever had such self-pity.
And instead of being the kind of person that was quite talkative and enjoying everything and lots of friends and all the rest, I became withdrawn. I began to hate everybody and everything. And I was afraid to drink.
I was afraid to drink at first because they told me I might be paralyzed for the rest of my life if I did and flat on my back or die. I don't think you can frighten an alcoholic. And then there's that kind of rationalization that alcoholics do because it wasn't too long before I was saying to myself, I think they're just trying to make me stop drinking.
I think they're just trying to scare me. And this was something nobody could do and say one day I went in and I had a glass of beer and then I had another and I didn't die and I wasn't paralyzed and I never could handle as much after that but that really was the beginning of the end. I can remember not too long after that they sent me up to a branch up town and this was going to be better.
I can remember walking in the door and I was still walking with a cane. I can remember the accountant of the branch, a man really who did me the greatest favor that anybody ever did. He took one look and he said, "What are they sending up here?
A bunch of cripples?" And I can remember inside myself saying, "I'll show that man. I'll show that man if it's the last thing I ever do. I hadn't learned to write too well with my left hand and all the rest and handle the cash.
But I was so mad and so hurt that it wasn't too long until I did. But the drinking still continued. And I can remember eventually they sent me up to a psychiatrist.
Not that I have anything against psychiatrists. Some of my best friends and some of the people who have helped me the most are psychiatrists. And I don't really say this uh in any spirit of anything but telling my story.
And I went up to the psychiatrist and I had laid out the money. I forget how much it was, but it was a good deal of money in those days. And I sat up there and the psychiatrist kept looking at a spot in the wall over my head.
And I sat there and not thinking of my $10, I lied to him. I wouldn't tell him one word of the truth. and I didn't have much of a trouble and so on and so forth.
And I went to him a second time and lied even more, I guess. And the end of that story was that the psychiatrist one day packed his wife in a car and himself and left a note on his desk and drove up north and over a cliff and into a river. I don't really think that it had anything to do with me, but nevertheless, it was something.
Maybe I was the last driver that that broke the camel's back and then started the rounds of hospitals. I forget how many times I was in that western hospital. And then started an old friend of mine, a clergyman, an Anglican church clergyman, who tried so hard to help me.
And how much time I spent with him and in and out of those hospitals. And then again came that great experiment. Maybe it shouldn't be Jory and I just living alone.
Maybe if we had a youngster, this was going to be was going to be different. I can remember the day that Bill was born, my oldest son. I can remember how much I wanted to be sober and I wanted to do this thing right.
I had put away about that much in a bottle up on a top in the kitchen. And by great strength of character, I had kept it up there. And this was to be for the night when Dory said, "I've got to phone the doctor." Well, that night came.
By the time I found the the bottle and got myself unshaky enough, I couldn't dial. She had dialed the doctor. And then I started to drive her to the hospital.
And on the way, I had to stop at one of the hotels and get a package of cigarettes. I came up some long time later. and I barely got her to the hospital in time.
I couldn't bear the thought of going back to that lonely apartment by itself myself. And so I went and stayed at the old Ford Hotel and I just drank and I just drank and I just drank and about the third day I thought, "Well, you can't do this. I've got to go up to Dory." And I went out and I bought a thing of flowers, a tremendous thing of flowers that would have looked well in Dominion Square.
And I got in a taxi and I went up to the hospital. Dur has a picture of this. She saw me coming walking down the hall, dirty, not shaved, still half drunk, dragging this great thing of flowers behind me.
She remembers all that. But I'll tell you what I remember. If there's ever a glass in front of me that I have any intention of picking up and taking a drink out of it, I hope I remember it right then.
I hope it comes right in front of my face. I remember the look she took at me and I can remember that she burst into tears and all I could do was walk away and go out and get drunker than I already was. This went on.
I'm not going to tell you of all the various hospitals in and out and in and out and in and out and the absolute hopelessness that comes after that. The moving from this house to that house to the other house because you hated the places so much after you'd lived there a little while. You couldn't stand couldn't stand to see them again.
I can remember once crawling all the way up to the top of the shrine, which is hundreds and hundreds of steps, and asking Brother Andre up at the top if he could help me. He gave me a little medallion, which I brought down, and we just found a little while ago, and that's what reminded me of it. But he said he couldn't help me.
I can remember all the other people that tried to help me. I can remember a day in the place that we were living at that particular time which is certainly not a very nice place where my friend the minister came one day and I had had hallucinations a few times and they carted me away. The fears had got so bad I couldn't undress at night.
I couldn't go to bed. I'd sit up there in a chair waiting, waiting for something to happen. Just like that feeling in impending doom.
Something terrible was going to happen. You can imagine what this was doing to my little boy who was about two by this time. I can remember coming home at night and he'd run under the bed because he didn't know whose side to be on and the quarrels and upsets that would go on when I would get home.
But I can remember this day Fred Wilkinson arrived. He's the bishop of Toronto now and a tremendous friend of mine. I can remember him arriving and saying, "Dave, nobody can stand this anymore.
They you can't go on like this. It'll kill you and it'll kill your family. You've got to do something about it." And he suggested that I go down to the court and take a voluntary interdiction.
I found it was voluntary to get into, but not very voluntary to get out of. I imag I remember standing in front of judge for in the superior court. I don't feel sorry for myself for these things really.
I'm glad they happened to me because I can appreciate things that I've got now so much more. I stood in front of him and he read out this long thing. They have a thing in Quebec called the family council and all my family's behind me and I listen while he read the book.
of taking all my civil rights away and finally he says the reason why because I'm a common drunkard and a vagabond and I took my first trip after that down to the Verdun Protestant hospital for the insane Mr. in those days and I can remember the terrible fear and I can remember what's going to happen to me now and I can also remember after the alcohol had worn off and I got feeling pretty good saying how could they do this to me imagine locking me up in the lunatic asylum they can't do this wait till I get out of here just wait I'm going back out to Vancouver but I didn't go to Vancouver or anywhere I was mostly an early and I started drinking again and I was back in again and then I got out again and this time it was going to be different. This time, you know, poor old Dave, he couldn't stand the pressures of city life, of routine in the office, and we were going to put him out in the farm.
And they did put me out on a farm about 70 mi out of Montreal. And I determined that I wasn't going to drink. I started raising chickens and I did not too badly at it.
I made a little profit while it was operating. Took some prizes for setting eggs at Bone Fair, too. I can remember that.
And then one day in the old house that's been in our family for many generations, I saw in a beam in the cellar a bottle way up there and I picked it down. I looked at it and said, "Dr. Somebody's boine bronchio syrup, 40% alcohol." And that was the end.
and I was shortly on my way back to the Verdun Protestant Hospital. And this time I was a three-time loser. And I don't know how it is here, but there that means that if they want, they can perhaps keep you there for the rest of their lives.
And I can remember the defiance that was in me. The defiance that was on the outside and the fear that was in the inside. And walking into dear kindly old Dr.
porches office who tried so hard to help me and saying, "You'll never make me stop drinking. You'll never make me stop drinking if you keep me here a thousand years." And he said, "Maybe we will, Dave. Maybe we will, if we'll keep you here long enough." And that began going around and around and around in my mind.
What did he mean keep me here long enough? Was I going to be there the rest of my life? That wasn't too long when I could get to a phone that I finally got hold of Dory.
I said, "You can't do this to me, Dory. Remember the good years. You can't keep me locked up in this lunatic asylum." And she, God bless her, came down and got me out.
And that's another one of the things I don't ever want to forget. If there's ever a glass that I ever have any intention of picking up, I can remember sitting in Dr. Porchess's office with my wife with little Billy and I can remember him saying, "Dave is an alcoholic of a type with whom we've had very little success.
There's nothing more that we can do for him. He'll probably have to have custodial care for the rest of his life. But he let me go and Dory went to live with her sisters and took little Bill.
Bank gave me a pension. My father supplemented a bit and I went to live where and when and how I could. Half of that two years is a sort of a dream world.
I'd learned by this time that there were all kinds of substitutes for alcohol. I'd learned that you can drink parag, you can drink paralahhide, you can drink essence of anacey, you can drink bay rum and all of these various other things and they're an awful lot cheaper than alcohol. I learned many things and as I say half it I remember half of I don't.
There's one thing I didn't know if this was true or not. I remember going to a doctor who tried very hard to help me over the years and telling him that somebody had given me a white feather. This was during the Second World War.
You know, I did have a paralyzed arm. But after a couple of beers, if I didn't have too many that I could use that just as well as the other one, this was a wonderful excuse for drinking. And so with the white brother, I went down to the recruiting office and I signed up.
And then the next day I phoned up Dory and said, "Well, they're taking me over across to the Jakarta barracks. I'm going to join the army and I'll probably be killed and you'll be well rid of me and it'll be the best of everything for all of us concerned." And so she was all frightened and she came down and they were loading us all on an army truck and I'm standing on the back, the great recruit waving Dubai off the thing. And I get over there and I go through the medical thing.
They strip everything off except my shoes and socks. And I'd had a few drinks so my arm was all right. and I got as far as the man who comes to examine your feet.
I'd been in another accident due to drinking when I'd been in Vancouver and lost the toes off one foot. But when the man looked at that, he says, "Good God, we can't take you any." He said, "No toes on that foot." And I had visions then maybe I wasn't going to get this. And what would all these people say now?
And so I talked him into letting me go through the rest of it. He said, "Well, maybe he can go down work in Long Point and some desk job or something." Anyway, so finally I come to Green Bay's curtain at the end and they pull this back and I'm to go in to see the man who is the psychiatrist. He takes a look at me and he happened to be one of the staff doctors at the Verdon Protestant Hospital.
He said, "If you were the last man in Canada, I wouldn't take you in this man's army." So, I had to come out and I had to say I wasn't going to save the world anymore. The end of that two years was in the bullpen in number one police station. I'd been there a good many times before, but something was different this time.
I think I was what Bill called deflated at death. There was absolutely no hope anymore. There was nothing.
I don't think there's any loneliness. And the alcoholics in the room will know what I mean. I don't think there's any loneliness in the world like that.
Who can understand? Who can who can believe you when you tell them these things that you've done? And who can understand that awful loneliness?
I was there for some unknown reason. And I like to think that maybe it was the good Lord looking down and saying, "This poor guy has had enough. I'm going to give him just one more chance.
And if he'll take it, if he'll only take it, I'll help him." Maybe it was what St. Paul says that out of defeat comes victory because I was certainly finally defeated. But I didn't believe that there was anything that I could do.
And then for some reason, I remembered a book, a book that I hadn't thought of for years. A book that my sister had brought up to me when I'd been locked up in Verdon. It was a book called Alcoholics Anonymous.
And that book had talked about drunks just like me who found a way to get sober. They had their wives and their families, at least some of them. They got up in the morning and they went to work and they kiss their wives goodbye and they come home at night and read the paper and they were just like ordinary people.
And I don't think there was anything in the world that I wanted more than that right then. And I hope it's what I want right now. I got out of there on it was an Easter weekend on the Tuesday morning.
I got out to my father's place who'd retired by this time out to Nolan. I asked him if I could get in touch with these alcoholic synonymous people and he said, "What have you got to lose?" And he financed me to a telephone call to what was then a very small office down in New York City. And I got hold of a girl eventually down there named Bobby.
And Bobby said, "I'm an alcoholic, too. There are a lot of us down here. And if you want help, we'll help you." I hope I never say forget to say that to anybody that I may be able to help.
That was something to me. Here were these people 500 miles away in a different country who understood. And the next day I got the two pamphlets of the day and the day after that I got the big book.
And you know that girl, she's dead now. She became my sponsor and God bless her. She wrote me every single day a note, a memo, a letter or something for nearly a year until we had two or three more in the group in Montreal.
This really is one of the reasons why I try so hard to help general service because if they hadn't been there, I don't know where I would have been. It wasn't too long after that till Dory came back, my father financed the flat and that's how I got into Alcoholics Anonymous. I'd like here to give a little credit to the wise of alcoholics.
I doubt very much, you know, you go to places and people sometimes say, "What a great guy you are." I doubt very much if I'd be here if it wasn't for the support and the trust and the belief that Dory had in me. She was the only one I think that used to say, "You can't help but Dave, can you?" Nobody else ever said that. And she did, I think, as far as any non non-alcoholic can understand, she understood.
And I think that helped me more than anything else. I'm just going to take a few minutes. I think I've gone over my time, haven't I, Marty?
I'm only going to take two or three more minutes to tell you of the tremendous rewards that have come to me. They've come to me through God and through Alcoholics Anonymous really and not too much effort on my part. My father who I had spent all the money he ever had and left him in debt when he died left me or did me the great honor or had the great faith in me of appointing me as executive.
Now he was one of these oldfashioned people that never talked too much about AA. He didn't really understand what it was all about and he thought perhaps it wasn't quite the proper thing for me to be in. But boy, he was so happy I was sober.
He never said very much about it. But when I opened the safe, the oldfashioned safe and the country house up there, there was an envelope and it had my name on the outside and inside were all the clippings about AA that had ever been ever since I'd been in AA. And I felt that that was a tremendous reward.
There was a few years ago my wife suddenly was stricken blind when we were in New York. Nobody seemed able to help her. There was a doctor from McGill and from Montreal just happened to be in the place where it was.
She didn't know that this might be a permanent thing and all of these various things that seem to work so strangely. This doctor that had been in Miguel happened to know the most one of the most famous eye surgeons in Canada who you couldn't get an appointment with for a year. He'd been a fraternity brother of his.
He phoned him up. He said certainly I'll see her get her husband to drive her home. and I did and he saw her and he operated on both her eyes.
She didn't know that you might never see again. So one night casually I'm up at the hospital. They said, "Uh, you know, the doctor took the bandages out today and I could see his fingers." I said, "Girl, why didn't you tell me before?" But she didn't know.
That's another one of the things I'm so tremendously grateful for. I sat just before I left here around a table in our own house. That same wife is sitting at the other end.
That little boy, Bill, that might have turned out so badly. 25 now. He has married a lovely girl.
We all love her. My grandson's in the basket sort of thing behind me and my two little AA dividends, Mary who's 16 and Paul who's 10. And sometimes I look out over things like that and I say, "What wonders hath God wrought?" And that's why I have a prayer.
God, give me a grateful heart. And I'm going to close with one of my most favorite poems. Probably all of you have heard it.
Was written by a New England poet. It says, "I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year, give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown." And he replied, "Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God, for that shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way." I thought that was the end of it until my son Bill, who gets a little irritated at the misquotations I'm always making, gave me a cop copy of Bartlett's quotation. And that was the first thing I looked up.
And there's something more in it. And it's something I think that applies a little more to those of us who been around for some time in AA because it says, "So I went forth and finding the hand of God trod gladly into the night and he led me toward the hill and the breaking of the day in the lone." Thank you. >> Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise.
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