Big Book Will Travel – AA Speaker – Don B.
AA speaker Don B. traces early AA history from San Francisco to Akron, then shares his journey from a life of deception and alcohol-fueled chaos to finding purpose through sponsorship and the Big Book.
Don B. is an AA speaker who spent decades living a lie—successful on the surface but utterly useless beneath it. In this talk, he weaves together the hidden history of early AA (the role of Mrs. Orm, Ted C., and the first meetings) with his own bottoming out on January 15th, 1985, and the simple sponsor who handed him a card that said “Big Book Will Travel.” What emerges is a stark picture of how the program works when you actually work it.
Don B. opens with the largely unknown origin story of AA in San Francisco and Akron—how Ted C. and Mrs. Orm sparked the first meetings, how Bill W. called for another alcoholic in a hotel lobby and reached Dr. Bob, and how the Big Book was designed as a carrier of the message when no other option existed. He then tells his own story: raised in violence and alcoholism, he spent decades as a professional liar and manipulator, eventually drinking himself to uselessness despite money, boats, and status. On the verge of suicide with a loaded gun, he found his sponsor John and learned that recovery means working the steps as written, taking inventory, and fundamentally changing who you are.
Episode Summary
This AA speaker talk moves between two stories with equal weight: the forgotten history of how Alcoholics Anonymous actually began, and Don B.’s personal descent from a kid who swore he’d never be like his parents to a man so broken he couldn’t pull the trigger on himself.
Don opens with AA history that most people never hear. He describes how Ted C., a periodic drunk, rented a room from Mrs. Orm in San Francisco. Mrs. Orm heard about the Big Book on a radio show (Gabriel Heatter’s broadcast, arranged by Morgan Ryan, a newly sober man trying to get the word out). She got a copy, brought it to Ted, and they held the first meeting in her kitchen. A man named Fred C. and another member named John C. showed up. The group dwindled—at one point, 14 out of 16 members got drunk. But Fred and John had a moment that defines AA: when John suggested they were wasting their time, Fred said he’d show up next Tuesday whether alone or not. “I need them as much as they need me,” Fred told John. John put his hand on Fred’s shoulder and said, “I’ll shut up. I’ll be here.” That’s the foundation—one alcoholic’s willingness to keep showing up for another.
Down south, a woman named Kay Miller tried to start AA in Los Angeles with no success. Then a stockbroker named Josephson, dry drunk and desperate in Palm Springs, read the Big Book and got sober on it alone. He found Kay and took referrals she’d nearly thrown away. They built a group. Meanwhile, Bill Wilson was in Akron, Ohio, on a business deal that was failing. He was six months sober, terrified, and heard the laughter from a bar. Instead of drinking, he called around for another alcoholic. A preacher gave him the name Henrietta Seiberling. Two weeks earlier, at an Oxford group meeting, Dr. Bob had admitted for the first time: “I’m an alcoholic and I can’t stop drinking.” They prayed for someone to help him. Days later, Bill called: “My name is Bill Wilson. I’m a rum hound from New York. I haven’t had a drink in six months, and I desperately need another alcoholic to talk to.” The miracles started that day.
Dr. Bob had tried 12 dry-out farms. He thought he’d drink until he died. But when Bill explained the physical allergy and mental obsession, something clicked. Dr. Bob worked the steps with Bill and never drank again. In the first 10 years of his sobriety, while most of the foundational work happened, he helped 5,000 alcoholics. He and his wife took people into their home to detox because there were no hospitals. When word got out that a doctor in Akron could help, people came—invited and uninvited, brought by relatives. His sister said those were the happiest times of their lives. Their mother cooked and cleaned for the newcomers. Their father served them. They found a way of life unlike anything else.
Then Don shifts to his own story. He was raised in violence. His stepfather beat his mother regularly until Don, at 19, nearly killed him over it. Don joined the Navy in 1954 swearing he’d never be like his parents, never drink. Within weeks, he took his first drink—Jack Daniels—at a motel with other recruits. He remembers it like yesterday, even though he’s forgotten the names of women he’s slept with.
The disease took decades to unfold. Don became a professional liar. He carried business cards saying he was a banker, a brain surgeon. He lied about being a widower to join Parents Without Partners, claiming his wife died when he was actually estranged with two children he told people was four. He manipulated sick, lonely people. Alcohol destroyed everything. He had money, a 36-foot boat, a floating home, Cadillacs, a wife making good money, a statewide corporation—and none of it mattered. He was useless.
By the end, he drank in cycles: beer first, then vodka. He’d pass out for five or six hours, wake up, and fight with himself about whether to drink. The mind would say, “Beer’s not drinking.” He’d have three beers. The mind would say, “A little vodka couldn’t hurt.” He’d blackout. After 10 to 14 days, his body would force him to detox—shaking, throwing up, smelling vodka through his skin, ashamed beyond words.
On January 15th, 1985, his wife left. He sat alone, useless, in incomprehensible demoralization. He got a loaded .38 revolver. He couldn’t pull the trigger. He broke down and said, “God help me.” Within 35 minutes, he was hospitalized.
At the hospital, a band around his arm marked him as part of the treatment program. An old man named John, sober many years with a gravelly voice, approached him. Don said, “I need a sponsor.” John handed him a card: “Big Book Will Travel. Johnny Marlon.”
John asked, “Boy, do you believe in God?”
“Yes, I do,” Don said.
“Well, then you must pray, mustn’t you?”
Don wanted to lie. He’d never prayed except when desperate or in jail. But he said yes. He hadn’t cried since childhood. John told him it was okay to cry. Don cried.
He took his first inventory on the 31st day sober, not with John (he was afraid of him) but with an old doctor. He stayed with it. John checked on him. Eventually, Don hired John when he retired, just to keep him close.
Don came to understand that the Big Book was designed to carry the message because there was no other way. In 1939, there were two meetings in the world—Akron and New York. The book went out everywhere. Many places started on the book alone.
The first 60 pages teach the ABCs: A, you’re alcoholic and can’t manage your life (Step 1). B, no human power can relieve it (Step 2). C, God could and would if sought (Step 3). When Don told God, “If you’ll save me from me, I’ll serve you,” something shifted. Steps 4 through 9 get you in spiritual condition. Steps 10 and 11 keep you fit. Step 12 is the work.
He closes with what he’s seen in recovery: people out of insane asylums, a man who did 27 years in prison now 10 years sober and happy, joyous, free. He’s seen people accept who they are. “I know exactly what I am,” Don says. “I’ve failed at everything I’ve ever tried. That’s the truth.”
But the promises work. When his wife left and took the money and Cadillac, Don was living in a small room in an office building, paying a woman $25 a month to shower at her house—humbling for a man like him. One day, he got a call. A man offered him his parents’ mansion rent-free. His mother had broken her hip. They just wanted someone there. Don moved into a three-story house with five bathrooms, a grand piano, an all-glass room overlooking the river. He didn’t have to pay the phone bill. He’d soak in a hot tub, jump in a shower, run downstairs to another shower. “This is living,” he’d think. People would ask, “How much is the rent?” He’d say, “Nothing. It don’t belong to me.”
That’s what happens, Don says, because of the fellowship. You show me a way of life. The fourth dimension of life. It’s a place you must experience.
Notable Quotes
I need them as much as they need me.
If you make that decision with God, you’re dealing with God. This ain’t small claims court. You better wake up to that fact.
I know exactly what I am. I have failed at everything I’ve ever tried to do in my life. That’s the truth of it.
Our sobriety hinges on inches and seconds.
God is an experience, not an idea.
Sponsorship
Hitting Bottom
Step Work
Founders & AA History
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Big Book Study
- Sponsorship
- Hitting Bottom
- Step Work
- Founders & AA History
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Full AA Speaker Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors. For the best experience, listen to the audio above.
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We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. >> My name is Don Brown. I'm an alcoholic.
By the grace of God and the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, I've not found it necessary to drink in quite some time. I don't know how you drank. I never know what I'm going to say.
Oh, they got a watch up here. That's good. fella told me to speak till 8:15.
Don't get worried. That was that's a lie. I was just uh I they asked to give a little history and and I suppose I could do a little bit of that for you.
And I love history and uh I like uh looking back. There's a lot of good books out, lots of good books. I've been very fortunate to meet some people that made history and record them.
at this place called Se View. God provides a place for this thing to happen. Uh I don't have a lot of money.
Don't seem like I need a lot. Uh somebody asked me, uh I sponsor lots of people and a lot of them got lots of money and some of them don't have any, but they ain't none of them happier than me, which I think is kind of important. You know, it's a pretty good life I have.
I guess I'll start out. Um, I certainly welcome all the newcomers here tonight. Uh, this is a remarkable place.
It's a special place. There's not any other place like this place. I'll tell you, if you just hang with us for a little while, you'll find that out.
I'm a veteran for the veterans that are here. I drank my way from 1954 to 1957. I got out with an honorable discharge.
I do not know how what what I was doing. Oh my, I'll tell you it was those were rough days. I thought drinking and puking went together, you know.
It didn't seem to bother me any, you know, it was like natural, you know. That's what you do. You drink and then you puke, you know.
And I got good at puking. I could projectile vomit without even getting my clothes dirty, you know. But it was a, you know, you would think that that would be a warning sign that there's something wrong, you know, but when it came to alcohol, man, I the first time I ever drank, that's the way it was.
Big Book Alcoholics Anonymous came to I won't give you any dates cuz I'll probably be wrong. Um, came to San Francisco through a lady by the name of Mrs. Orm.
Mrs. Orm was not an alcoholic. She was newly married to a young man and who was a contractor along with his brother.
And they had rented an upstairs floor of a huge building that's still there. And if you go to the archives, he'll tell you where that building is located. And it's still up there.
And the second floor had a bunch of bedrooms on it. And being a very uh good wife with the depression years, not too far behind them, uh trying to make ends meet, she rented rooms to people. And one of the rooms she rented was a guy named Ted C.
And Ted C was an alcoholic and he was a periodic. And Ted C kind of helped the record for being into mental institutions. But when he was sober, he did well.
He did all right. So he's a salesman for a living. And they had a meeting.
The first meeting of Alcoholics and was in her kitchen. And what had happened to her? She used to listen to a guy named Gabriel Heater.
I imagine some of you people might know who that guy was years ago if you're old enough. He had that very fast, snappy kind of talk, you know, he give you a quick quick story. And they they were looking for ways to to publicize this big book and sell big books.
They weren't doing too well. And they had a guy by the name of Morgan Ryan who was a red-headed young fella who had been sober for a few days. and he said, "I know Gabriel Heer, and I think I can get on that that radio show with him and and maybe he'll interview me about my alcoholism and get sobered up and and maybe make a plug for the book and and maybe that'll help us some cuz they were dead broke.
Things were not going well." There's a great uh a great tape out with Bill Wilson talking about the early days of this program and this book should have never got here. Uh God inspired program, I believe. Anyway, they uh she's on there and she hears this thing and it's got this box number and she sent and got the book to give it to Ted who she knew he's an alcoholic and she wanted to help him.
So, they had their first meeting and in that first meeting there was a guy named Fred C there and there was another guy Ted was there and the two brothers were there and Mrs. Orm. Now, they're not alcoholics but they're there and uh and one other guy that Fred said faded.
It's kind of an interesting story because Fred and another guy named John C, an old Irishman, he called him a blockhead, an old tough guy, had uh got in this meeting. They're working on getting people in and and they had 16 people. They had one meeting a week on Tuesday night.
One meeting. Look at us today. I mean, Jesus, you can't hardly go around the block without finding a meeting of some kind.
You know, if you don't like AA, try something else. I mean, they got all kind of 12step meetings out there. They had one meeting a week and they went down one night, this guy Fred and uh John, and they got there and 14 members had gone out and got drunk.
And John's mad. And he's telling Fred, he says, "Fred, these people don't want this program." He said, "Uh, we're wasting our time here. I'm going to stay sober.
You're going to stay sober." And so Fred began to argue with him. He said, "I don't know about that." He said, "I'm pretty sure you're going to stay sober, but I'm not too sure that I can do this by myself. I just I don't think I can do it." And John, you're going to leave here and and and that'll be the way it is.
And then he got tired of being mad at him, so he kind of made amends to him. He put out his hand to shake his hand. And he said, "John, I've got no choice.
I'm going to be here next Tuesday night. Whether I have to sit alone, I'll be here. And I'll be here the next Tuesday night.
And maybe maybe one of those guys will come back because I need them as much as they need me. And I may cry a little tonight. I get tearful about things like that.
That's what some of your forefathers are made of. And John, he put out his hand and John, the old tough guy, slapped his hand aside and put his arm around him said, "I'll shut up. I'll be here." And the meeting stayed.
And the meeting stayed. He said it was very strange because the only two sober alcoholics in Alcoholics Anonymous were arguing about the 14 that were out drinking. We have great concern for each other.
There's amazing stories here. I love the stories of Alcoholics Anonymous. I love the stories of recovery.
Every one of you has got a story of recovery. Every one of you. I know some of you pretty good.
Everyone. And that story is so important. It's so important.
Your story is as important as any. I don't care how long you've been here. I've been here a long time.
You can tell by looking at me. I've been somewhere a long time, you know, and it's, you know, it's okay to laugh. It's all right.
Everything's not serious, you know. And that's the way a got started here. In the meanwhile, down south, they were really funny.
They had some people, a lady who had come in by the name of Kay Miller. She was married to an alcoholic back east and was divorced. And she started, she knew Bill Wilson.
She started to try, she's a non-alcoholic, but she tries to start a aaa down in the Los Angeles basin and it didn't take and Bill called it the flickering candle. it would just almost go out and something would happen and a guy came along by the name of Josephson and he was a stock broker coming out of Denver and he he ended up holed up in Palm Springs, California in which he had a big book in his beliefs but he was so drunk he couldn't go on and he had heard about this meeting these people in California and he was trying to find them. There's no meetings in Palm Springs.
There's no meetings anywhere. Think about it for a minute. and he had a big book in his beliefs and drunk he read it and he got sober on that book and he made it over to Los Angeles and he found her and so she had a bunch of referrals that came out of the GSO office in New York and he said uh he asked her he said where you going she said I'm packing to go to a war it didn't work nobody wanted to come but he said do you still have the referrals he said yeah they're they're in the waste basket think about that for a minute Wilson said that sometimes s our sobriety hinges on inches and seconds.
Life is hinges on inches and seconds. And had he not been there just exactly when he got there, he may have not got those referrals. And he took those referrals out of the basket and he started out knocking on all the doors she had knocked on.
And they started a group. It was called the mother's group. Now before that, we didn't have any uh traditions.
So the mother group got started and a guy named Frank came over from a real nut came over from uh Phoenix, Arizona. Uh he sponsored some pretty famous people named Norm Alpie. Some of you might have known about Norm Alpie who sponsored a guy named Johnny Harris.
You can figure out these lines if you stay with it long enough. and they incorporated aa all of California was incor you couldn't start a meeting here without their without their okay now that's a little ridiculous isn't it there was a lady named civil the first lady who was sober in aa and remained that way for the rest of her life tried to quite a girl her her daughter got sober not too long ago I know her she's been sober quite a while now I knew her sponsor a lady named Vivian Hinton who's long gone now used to ride around the wheelchair smoking cigarettes and taking in oxygen. And she was probably 40 years sober.
And Vivian Hinnham was a go-getter. Let me tell you, she was a go-getter. Her sponsor was a guy named Tex, Civil's brother.
Tex was responsible because this big this mother group meeting was kind of an uptown group of people that some of them were Hollywood starlets and they all dressed real nice and Tex didn't come from that kind of background. And he came from he started a thing called Hole in the Wall. holding the ground, excuse me.
And these poor people would come there. Many, many fantastic recoveries. Man named Cliff Walker came in because Mort Joseph knocked on his door while he was drinking and invited him to a meeting and he stayed, became a trustee of this organization.
The stories of the amazing alcoholics. One of the things I think I want to go back just a little bit now and I've kind of wound up and started to pitch. I got a little joke for you.
I heard it the other day. You might have heard it. There's a guy who's drinking and driving and he's got his future Alanon wife with him.
And uh and a cop pulls him over and the cop pulls him over and says to him, "Uh, sir, you're speeding." And she says before the guy can open his mouth up, he he goes, "Well, I couldn't have been speeding. I had my car on on this set control." And I know I couldn't been speeding, she turns to him and says, "He's lying. I told him to slow down 5 miles ago.
He was going to get a ticket." He says, "Shut up. I'll I'll I'll deal with you when I get home." So he said, "And besides that, sir," he said, "you have a tail light out." He said, "Well, it must have just happened." I checked. He said, "I've been telling about that tail light for the last six months." Said, "Shut up.
I'll deal with you when I get home." So, pretty soon the cop is writing a ticket. He turns in, he looks at her and he says, "Lady, does he talk to you that all the way all the time?" Said, "Only when he's drinking?" Well, I'll tell you, I've known a few like that. I interviewed Dr.
Bob's son one time, Junior. He was a quite a guy. And put up your hand if you've ever heard him speak.
He spoke for Alenon for years. Yeah, he's a great speaker, great guy. He was 82 years old.
He died at 84 from a bad heart. Just a wonderful man. He was 17 years old when his dad got sober.
and their house changed overnight. That's part of the specialty. I was telling you about this place.
This is a special place. Things happen here. And I said, "Did you ever invite children to your home, your friends, when dad was drinking?" He said, "No." He said, "My mother had gone lost part of her eyesight in one eye and they were afraid to try surgery on the other one and she had to, you know, she was always in depression and she was always in tears.
My my dad wasn't a mean man. He said he was just a drunk and you never knew when he was coming home. You never knew what was going to happen.
And he said we just didn't have anybody in the house. It was too embarrassing. And that's my experience.
I was raised in a world of alcoholism. I've never I've been in alcohol all my life. You people are very normal to me.
Let me tell you. I was raised by insane people who did insane things. My mother would uh I'll tell you a little bit about my life.
Anyway, he was talking and I said, "Well, how was it after they did that?" See, in those days, they didn't have any detoxes. They didn't have they couldn't put them in the hospital yet. They didn't get that started yet where Sister Ignatius came into play.
And so they they would bring them home with them. And they were they were they had his dad had joined the Oxford groups two and a half years. Bill Wilson had been with him for about six months.
I think that's a story worth telling. And uh he said that uh anyway, I'm ahead of myself a little bit. Wilson uh went to Aken, Ohio on a business deal.
He was 6 months sober. He was trying to get it all back. And I don't think that that's why he went there.
I think that's what he thought he went there for. You know, a lot of people in this room, I'm sure, have had that experience. I think I know what I'm doing, but before I do it, it don't turn out that way.
God's got another plan. I get up with a plan every day about what I think I ought to do that day. And often times that phone rings and my plan is changed immediately because there's an alcoholic on the other end of the line.
And we start talking about whatever we're talking about. And whatever my little plan is, it ain't worth much. Anyway, they uh his dad had joined the Presbyterian church which is about two blocks down because the Oxford group told him to their whole family was trying to go to church.
But Wilson came and and Wilson is in a business deal. Some of you probably heard this deal and he's losing. He doesn't have enough money to pay his hotel bill.
He's got to stay over to Monday. It's Mother's Day and he's walking the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel and he wants to drink and he wants to drink bad. He's irritable, restless, and discontented, full of shame, guilt, fear, remorse, resentful, depression, and he can hear the the laughter and the gaity from the bar.
And the mind starts out by saying, "Well, I'll go in there and I'll I'll get a little Selza water and drink that." No, that'll look funny. I'll drink one, but no more than three. And the first drink is on him.
And so he decided to to do something a little different because he'd had some experience for 6 months trying to help other alcoholics. None of them had gotten sober. So he but he had tried.
Now 10 years later as he traveled the country, there was about 77 of them and uh 68 of them were in AA. he had planted the seed. They just weren't ready when he told him about it.
And that happens a lot here. He ended up then calling around and trying to find another alcoholic to talk to because that's all he knew. That's that's one of the first things we knew about staying sober.
I can try to help you whether you get sober or not. I'll probably stay sober. That's all he knew.
Didn't have a book. Didn't have a lot of experience other than his own experience. And so he started calling around and he got a hold of a preacher, an Episcopal pagan preacher and he asked him, he said, "I'm a rum hound from New York and I need to find another alcoholic to talk to.
Do you know of anybody?" And the guy gave him the name of this woman, a woman named Henrietta Stybling. And two weeks before that, and if this is not the hand of God, it's certainly the finger of God. Two weeks before that, Dr.
Bob had been invited to an Oxford group meeting and she told him, "We're going to share something that is costly. This in this meeting, all of us is going to share something that is costly that'll hurt your ego, that will will make you look bad in front of other people." And for the first time in his life, Dr. Bob said, "I'm an alcoholic and I can't stop drinking." And they asked him, "Would you would you like prayer?" He said, "Yes." and they got on their knees and they prayed that God would send somebody from somewhere somehow that could help Dr.
Bob. Two weeks later, a man calls on the phone and says, "My name is Bill Wilson, and I'm a rum hound from New York." That's what he used to call himself. I haven't had a drink in 6 months, and I need desperately to find an alcoholic to talk to.
See, this is a Wii program. I could have never made it without you. Never.
I'm so glad you were here when I got here. I'm so glad that groups like this all over the world today were here when my youngest son crawled out from underneath the bridges in Martinez, California, and came to the loving arms of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and hadn't found it necessary to drink for 10 years. I feel so good about the fact that my daughter who called me a no good so and so.
Don't you never come back here ever again is now sober nine years because of you people. You might not think you're worth much. I think you're worth everything.
You're the most fantastic people I've ever met in my life. Not that I've known too many great ones. Anyway, the he calls him and Dr.
Bob couldn't come that night. She immediately calls Anne Smith, her friend, and says, "Bring Dr. Bob over.
We got a man here that that hasn't found it necessary to drink for 6 months, and he thinks he can help him. He wants to talk to him." And she arranged for him, cuz he had no money. She arranged for him through some rich friends.
He's a very rich woman, at least married to a lot of money, and ends up calling on uh this guy to give him this guy a room for a little while out of a country club. And the miracles begin to happen in the lives of these two men. And they came over and they they were he said Dr.
Bob was one of these real he had five languages. He's a very smart guy. And Wilson says to him rather than I'm the big shot.
He said Bob this is what this is what Dr. Silkware says is wrong with us that we have a physical allergy and a mental obsession. And the old doctor because of that medical background could put that together.
He said that makes sense. He'd been to 12 dry out farms. He thought he was done.
He thought he would never be able to quit drinking. He would die drinking. He had the same step work that Bill had.
He wouldn't do his nice step work. And as soon as he did, he finished forever. 15 years of sobriety.
He was a a cancer colon specialist, a proctologist. That's what he died from. In the first 10 years that he was sober, where most of this work took place, he helped 5,000 alcoholics.
He makes me look like a per. He hospitalized them, detoxed them. By this time, they got the hospital going, but I want to go back to their home.
Young Smith said that my dad because there was no place else and the Akran people in general, the recovering people in Akran, all kept people in their homes. And when the news got out that there was a doctor in Akran who had found a way to help alcoholics, they began to show up invited or uninvited. They were brought by loving and unloving relatives.
And sometimes they said, "There's the house on Ardmore. Don't you come back to your sober." And they would take them in the house and he would knock them out for about three or four days. And he said when they came home, him and his sister, and they came home and they smelled that palahhide, he said they knew that he she was going to the couch and he was going to the attic.
And I said, "Well, how was that in your house?" He said, "It was the happiest times of our lives." You would think it'd be miserable. He said, "We were so happy. My mother worked like crazy cleaning up after them and cooking for them.
My dad worked with them service and they found a way of life that I tell you there's nothing like it. There's nothing like it." So, we're still here almost 70 years later. We are the longest lasting program that's ever been on the face of the earth for the alcoholic.
We are the only program that was ever started by alcoholics for alcoholics to give to alcoholics. It was always somebody else trying to tell us how to get sober. And if you go through the history of alcoholism and treatment and you took the problem Mr.
Wilson said he he had learned by going to an electrical engineering school he had learned how to solve a problem and he said you got to know what the problem is and that's what he got from Dr. Silkworth physical allergy and a mental obsession and he went on to say if you know what the solution is the the problem is and you can develop a solution. Step two came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.
Wonderful stuff. And three make a decision to go on a plan program of action that he took from the Oxford groups. First time in history of the world that had ever existed in one place.
Many many organizations, Washingtonians, Oxford group people tried to help. The great prohibition era when they wanted to shut it all down. That didn't do any good.
That didn't slow an alcoholic down. We we'll go to great lengths to get alcohol. I guarantee you.
Think about your old life a little bit, you know. And these people stayed in there and and if it weren't for them, I'm not too sure where I'd be today. I want to tell you a little bit more before I start my own story about a guy, this guy, Ted C.
Ted C did a lot of good things just like Ebby Thatcher did a lot of good things. Just because he doesn't maintain his sobriety does not mean he hasn't done something worthwhile. And they both made great contributions.
Ted C ended up on Skidroll. He got rolled, got hit in the head, and died from from a brain hemorrhage, but he did some good things. And that's, you know, that's that's our legacy that's been left to us.
And it's our responsibility to continue on. That's the deal I made with God. When I got here, I was 50 years old.
I had a string of wreckage behind me that I dared not look at. Uh my first wife, I had four children. We'd call her a normal woman.
Three of my children were alcoholic. Once never drank. Uh I wasn't a violent man at home.
I was just drunk. I worked. My kids all had braces on their teeth.
That kind of thing. And uh but I wasn't dependable. You're supposed to pick up the kids at church.
Oh, was I? What? What time is it?
They've been waiting an hour and a right now. Don't worry about a thing. You know, you couldn't depend on me very much because of this program today.
I can tell you it's a long walk from the girl that calls you a no good so and I never want to see you again to daddy I'm going to have a baby and I want you to be here. Those are the kind of things that have happened in my life. Actually, I came to I want to start, I guess, a little early.
When I came to I'm a little ahead of myself. My mother was a Valley Victorian of her class. There were nine children.
My grandmother had 11 children. Two died when they were little. We are Okeis.
Uh, poor oakis. Uh, some of my family came out here just like uh John Steinbeck wrote about and uh grapes of raft. They lost everything they had in the dust bowl.
Grandma hung on to her farm. My grandfather killed himself in 1933. He had a brain tumor.
In those days, they didn't operate on brain tumors. And the pressure of the brain tumor was so great, it took him blind. And he also, in those days, farmers all had big hernas, and they used to put straps around him and pull them up.
And it was pretty tough. And and he decided he was pulling the family down. He went down in the field and killed himself.
It had nothing to do with alcohol. Out of that group of people at nine children that survived, my mother and one brother, definitely alcoholics. And I was fortunate enough to have one for a mother.
When I was 6 years old, she married a man who was an alcoholic. And we begin to live a life of hell. I've seen my mother beaten many, many times until I was 19 years old.
And I'm not going to bore you with a long string of those stories. And when I was 19 years old, I'd grown to be a pretty big guy. And I was about 6'5 and a half and I weighed 155bs.
He was old, fat, and ugly. And I was young and I'm I'm snake mean by this time. And he went to slap her at the dinner table and I reached out and grabbed his hand.
We had a little power struggle. He got outpowered and knew it. I said, "Don't look at me, old man.
I'm going to kill you." I uh sponsor lots of convicts and I could have been right with them. All I had to do was turn left instead of right. There's a butcher knife laying on the table.
He's looking at it and I'm looking at it and I said, "I'm quicker than you. Don't make a move." And uh I would have killed him. That's how angry I was.
And the whole place just came apart. My sister cried and screamed and my mother went to tears and nobody knew what to do. And finally my mother reached out and grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him out of the chair and took him into the to the room their room and locked the door behind us.
And I'm sitting there going, "What am I doing here? She's taking the enemy in there with her. She's taking the guy that abuses her in there with her." So I went down and joined the United States Navy and I was out of town the next day.
Now he tried to make an amends to me. I want to be real real honest about it all. Like most alcoholics, he wasn't all always all wrong.
My dad had a Jean one time had a nervous breakdown. They wanted to put her in the state institution called Bonita, Oklahoma. It's a snake pit.
And he had some money and he said, "No." He said, "I'll put up the money. We'll put her in a private institution. She's well today." I hope because of some of the help he gave her.
You know, they paid they paid it back. That part of it was done. So, I can't tell you that everything he did was wrong.
As far as I was concerned, my biggest resentment here, if you've ever done an inventory, was my mother. It took me three and a half years to find that out. And then my mother's family.
Anyway, I uh I joined the United States Navy and came to California in 1954. It wasn't the first time I'd ever run off from home. I ran off when I was 10.
I ran from Dallas, Texas to Oklahoma City on my own. I got in the chief, they picked me up, police department did. I wouldn't tell them who I was and they put me in the Sunshine's Children's Home.
I liked it at the Sunshine's Children's Home. It was a good place. Yeah, it sounds strange, I guess, but I liked it.
There's nobody beating anybody up, nobody calling bad names, and, you know, wash a few dishes and run uh baby carriages around. But they finally found out who I was and came got me about 38 days later. This time when I got ready to leave home, home home and I are done.
I've always been on my own. I I knew there's no there's no going home. That's not going to happen.
And uh so I joined the Navy. Sometime in the neighborhood of December of 1954, the kid that left home that said, "I will never be like my folks. I will never drink.
I know. I know all about alcohol, man. I know all about it.
Let that court bottle get down about that far. We used to call it shoot out the lights and call the law cuz it's on. Something's going to happen and it ain't going to be nice.
I could not bring a human being to my home. I would not allow you to come to my home. I know right from wrong.
My folks are embarrassing. Can you imagine bring me bringing some little girlfriend? You know when you meet your first girlfriend, you know, you bring her home with you.
You know, introduce you to her folks or they take you there. Can you imagine what that look like at my house? I peek through the door.
He's got her by the throat. He's beating the hell out of her. I said, "Well, come on in, Mary.
It's okay. Don't worry about them. They'll be all right in a minute.
They'll go off in the bedroom a little while. Then they'll come out. We'll have some pie." You know, give me a break.
Give me a break. Didn't lend itself much to anything. I've been working all my life.
He would sit when he was drunk and he would say, "You part of the baggage here, boy." What he's saying is, "If your mama wasn't here, you wouldn't be here." I understood that loud and clear. I'm not mad at him. He's just a sick man.
We uh in 1954, I made my first mistake. And because of social pressure from 15 young men, we got together. We're what they call advanced uh boot camp.
We're getting ready. We're graduating from the beginning to the next level. I don't have any other friends with these people.
And they said, "Uh, we're chipping in $5 a piece, Don. They're going to let us out at noon on Saturday and we got to be back by midnight and we're going to rent a motel and we're going to get some booze and we're going to drink." Now, I don't know what girls do when they drink, but I do know what boys do, young boys anyway. I know what old boys do, too.
Um, we talk a lot about a lot of things we don't know nothing about. You know what I mean? So, 15 of us kicked in five bucks a piece.
We had a 300 lb guy, young fella, and he went with some old sauce we picked up off the street cuz we wasn't old enough to buy it. And they went and got this booze. And we were sitting in this motel.
I can remember it. It was like yesterday. And I can bet you you could remember your first drink >> like it was yesterday.
I can tell you the brand Jack Daniels. I have never It must have been a very important event for me because I have never forgotten it. I've forgotten lots of stuff in my lifetime.
I've slept with pretty girls. Can't call her name, but I can remember Jack Daniels, you know, and I I didn't know I didn't know I was alcoholic. And the boys is drinking and cutting up.
And the more they drank, the more they cut up, and the more they talked about all kinds of stuff, and they got around to sex. Now, they had a girl in in sight. That tells you how much they know.
Took me a while to figure that out. If they really knew anything about sex and girls, they'd have been out with one, right? No.
No. They're in a room with 15 guys. And of course, you want to talk about how tough you are, you know?
And you want to start doing that. I call it Billy Goat. Get that arm wrestling going like button heads, you know, playing around, telling stories, just bull, all lies.
But I I think it's pretty clever, you know. guy comes by and said, "Say, uh, how come you don't drink?" I wouldn't tell him what I just told you. In those days, I lied a lot.
My stepdad's a big time banker back in Oklahoma City. My mother's an Eastern Star with the Masonic Organization. She has a big education as a teacher.
I'm going to get a Ford uh convertible when I graduate from boot camp. I'm not like you people. And I I lied that way all my life.
Do you know that story kind of brings up a part? Do you know that a man or woman can go to a printer and have anything put on that card he wants? You can be a banker.
You can be a brain surgeon. And let me tell you, when I use those cards at the top of the mark and I used to get a bunch of money and I'd roll some hundreds in there and some 20s and I'd look like I had a bunch of dough and I'd be dressed to the nines and I'd go in there and I'd start talking and I'm a over when you're trying to get over. You know what I mean?
one of them good-looking girls that you think, you know, she's Oh, boy. Tricky world out there. I'd live that way.
I went to Paris without partners one time. It was partially true that I didn't have a partner. I had a wife and four children, but u but uh I was out of the house as you know how that happens to some people were thrown out.
And I I had heard about parents without partners. And I assumed because I was thrown out of the house, I qualified. And you talk about lying, cheating, and still.
I'm perfect for it. And I go in there and I see. See, I'm a I'm a liar, cheating, a thief, and have been for a long, long time.
Getting over was my game at anybody's cost. It didn't make any difference. It didn't make any difference.
I didn't care about your spiritual, mental, emotional, or physical being. I just wanted to have my instincts fulfilled. whether it cost you or not.
And that was a place full of very sick people, very hurt people, and easily took advantage of by a guy like me. So, I had this big lie. First of all, I carried a very small bottle in with me.
I would not want anybody to think I drank. And I didn't have four children. I had two.
and they come around and say, "Oh, why are you here?" Well, I'm a parent without partner. My wife, I'm a widowerower. See, it's much better to be a widowerower than it is a divorce man.
First of all, if you're a widowerower, you still have something. And I said, you know, it's been terrible. It's taken me two years to come here.
As if I really had somebody that I cared that much about. And I couldn't leave it alone. You know, the kind of guys that like that, you just can't leave it alone.
You know, I said, "I have a nice job and a nice home and my kids are well behaved and you know, we just do pretty good, but there's something missing in their life. I I think they need a mother." Oh, boy. He's got a house and he's got a job.
You know, he's widowed. He's not divorced. Oh, this is a good catch.
Let's get him. I said, "You know something else is bad?" And they said, "What's that?" And I said, "The insurance money didn't help either. I just couldn't leave it alone.
I just had to keep working the game. Keep working the game. Alcohol destroyed everything around me.
Like I said, I had a list of wreckages. I came into sobriety. I took it as far as I could take it.
Someone said, "Tell them the airplane story." I didn't come in broke. I had a I had a uh oh second wife. I sent two women to Alanon before I ever got here.
I was I was doing my part, you know. I mean, I didn't know I was doing my part, but I was. They didn't stay, but I did.
I uh found bottom on January the 15th of 1985. And I don't know how you drank, but I can tell you how I drank. I had become useless.
I had money. Had a 36 ft sens. I had a 1,800 foot floating home.
We were called the mayor. Everybody called me the mayor of this harbor where I lived. We drove Cadillacs.
Had a wife making quite a bit of money. Had a statewide corporation. Uh no money in it, but I had a statewide corporation.
Some more of this show. And uh I had um I found myself when I read the big book and I was reading this was came later but I was reading the part where it says quicksand stretched around me in all directions. I had met my match.
I'd been overwhelmed. Alcohol was my master. And I knew that.
I don't know how you drank. I drank in the latter days of this disease. I had no idea about uh detoxes.
I just drank until I would pass out. My life was so painful. I was so useless.
I was useless to you. I was useless to her. I was useless to my children.
I was absolutely useless. And you gave me a reason to live when I found you because you said, "I need you." They said, "Don, stay with us. we need you.
And on that particular day, my Alanon wife, the second one, they all have the same story after they've been to Alanon for a while. She's on her way to the store and I said, "Hey, how about picking up a half a gallon of vodka for me? I'm running a little low.
I got two half gallons waiting on me, but I that's low for me." And in the end, I could only drink beer. Uh, anything else? Beer and vodka and white wine.
Anything else would come up immediately and I would have to sit and I don't know if you ever drank that way, but I would have to sit until I got sung down. I had a puke bucket ready to go. This isn't normal, in case you haven't recognized that.
And uh, she said, "No." She said, "I I can't do that anymore." That's the outon word. And she's pointing a finger. If you want, you have to go get it yourself.
Well, by this time for me to go get it took planning because I drink until I pass out and I'm out about 5 and 1 half to 6 hours and when I come to the fight is on again whether I'm going to drink or not. And I always lost the fight. And it went like this.
I would usually drink high school beer and if it would stay then I'd move to vodka. And I thought I had a vodka problem. And so I would drink ice cold beer to see if it'd stay.
And the mind would always say, "Don, beer's not drinking." I said, "You're right, but I'm not having that damn vodka today." And I'd go get the beer. I'd have to go downstairs to get it out of this thing and get it nice cold beer. And I would sip it and my hands are shaking.
You have the shakes. And maybe some of you know about that. And I'm trying to light cigarettes.
It's a little hard to do sometimes chasing a cigarette around. and uh burn your eyebrows once in a while. And I'd sit there and look at the screen cuz it just had that flaky stuff on.
It didn't seem like it made any difference what was on there. I just whatever was there, you know. And uh I get the first beer down and it says, "See there, Don?
The disease would say, see there, you feel better." I said, "You're right. I do feel better." Little hair of the dog that bit you. Any alcoholic knows that.
How many people in this room know how to stop a bed from spinning? Before you puke, put your foot on the floor in case you go back out sometime. I want to help you out a little bit.
You can get if you can get turned up, get try to pass out on your stomach so you don't inhale your own vomit. Anyway, I uh I had this uh I'd go back down. I'd get another beer and I'd drink that beer and and and it I'd feel better.
You bet you another way to go. And I go down and get that third beer and that can no more than get empty. And I'd put it down there and the mind would say, "Don, a little vodka couldn't hurt." I say, "You've been right three times in a row.
How could you be wrong?" And I go down, get a half a gallon of vodka, and I'm on my way to pass out one more time. Now, you can only drink that way about 10 to 14 days. It's impossible.
They've tried to prove that you can't stay drunk forever. I can guarantee you you can be drunk kind of not quite drunk drunk but you can't the way I drank and at the end of about 10 to 12 days I'd have to detox and I had no idea what that was. I thought I had the flu.
I would shake. You all I'm sure have had shakes. I would throw up just till there was nothing left.
I would take shower after shower after shower. You could smell the vodka coming through me. Couldn't get rid of that smell.
Just couldn't. ashamed. I don't know how ashamed I really was, but I I I had a suspicion there was something wrong.
She left one time. We weren't much of a marriage anymore. She was going her way and I was going mine.
And a set of miracles began to happen in my life. And I was sitting there on January the 15th and I I was in incomprehensible demoralization. I was useless.
And when the person, you're not supposed to be useless. You weren't made useless. God didn't make you to be useless.
And I'm absolutely useless. And I decided the only way for me to handle this whole problem was to kill myself. So I got the 38 out.
I'm I can't get drunk and I can't get sober. Some of you might recognize that place. And the pain of my existence and what my pain really was was separation from God.
It was spiritual pain. It's called psychic pain. Psychic in the Greek means soul.
And I had pain of soul. I was separated from God. I didn't know that at the minute.
And as I sat there dreaming about how I ought to do this, well, I want to do it in style. I want to go in and put on my tan suit that looks so good with the, you know, the double breasted outfit. and I'll go out on the back of the boat and do it in different ways and I couldn't pull the trigger and I I I played and played and finally I'm lucky didn't shoot myself and finally I broke and I pushed that gun aside and I said, "God help me." And within 35 minutes I was hospitalized for the disease of alcoholism.
Not my plan. Not my plan. And from that hospital, I had a band around my arm and they took us out to meetings and I found an old man named John who'd been sober many years.
And he had one of them grally voices that you hear on old alcoholics that have been drank too much and smoked too much ra voices. I said, "John, I need a sponsor." And he said, "I see by that little thing on your arm there that you down here at the treatment program." I said, "Yes, sir. So he's walking along and I don't think he's going to get they're waiting for me to get in the bus to go back and I said I'm getting a sponsor.
Hang on. And so we go out to the car, his car and he turns around and hands me a card and it says big book will travel Johnny Marlon. He was about 25 years sober, maybe 27 years sober at the time.
And I said uh he he looked me right in the eye and he said, "Boy, do you believe in God?" I said, 'Yes, I do.' He said, 'Well, then you must pray, mustn't you? Oh, I wanted to lie so bad. I don't pray.
I don't pray unless I'm going to kill myself. I don't pray unless I'm in jail. I don't do it.
Are you kidding me? I don't do none of that stuff. I mean, that's for squares.
If I do it, I'm going to do it all by myself somewhere. I don't want you to see. Hadn't cried.
till I came to UP. I quit crying. I said went shed another tear while I was 50 years old.
Cuz you told me it's okay to cry. When things are sad, I cry. Sometimes I cry up here over people I I know that I sponsor that decide to go back and try it again.
That led me to that hospital and the 31st fifth day of my recovery, I took my first inventory. I didn't take it with him. I was afraid of him.
So I took it with a kindly old doctor who didn't know much more about this disease than I did who died from this disease about five years later. But I got busy and I stayed with it and John would check on me now and then. I hired John when he retired so I could have him close to me.
Tricky. God bless that man. He was just right for me.
And eventually I wrote a pretty good inventory the year and I began to understand the program just a little bit and I understand that the book was designed to carry the message because there wasn't any other way to do it. In April of 1939, there's two meetings in the world. One in Akran, one in New York.
Not very many people sober. And this book begin to go out all over the world. And many, many places started on the book and the book alone.
And I understood the first 60 pages were designed to convince me of the ABCs. The ABCs. A, I'm alcoholic.
Cannot manage my own life. Step one. B that probably no human power can relieve my alcoholism.
Step two, see that God could and would if he were sought. It doesn't say he's found. Says sought.
That's all I have to do is seek. God's not lost. I'm the guy's lost.
So I uh I commenced that and I made my decision in step three based upon that information given to me. It says being convinced. And when I told God in step three, God, if you'll save me from me, I'll serve you.
And I understood somewhere deep within me, the spirit within me understood that I had to get in fit spiritual condition to serve God. And 4 through9 will do that for you. 10 11 will keep you fit and 12's the work.
And I tell them old convict boys, I said, ' Let me tell you something, friend. If you make that decision, you're dealing with God. This ain't small claims court.
And you better wake up to that fact. I'm going to close now. I'm going to tell you that on page 15 of this book, Wilson tells us many, many things that he saw.
I have seen people come out of insane asylums. One of my guys did 27 years in the joint. He's 10 years sober.
He's happy, joyous, and free. I have seen prisons open. I've seen insane asylums open.
I have seen people that were so complicated in their disease that no medical thing had ever worked for them. It came here and this worked. I have seen people accept exactly who they are.
I'm one of them. I know exactly what I am. I have failed at everything I've ever tried to do in my life.
That's the truth of it. It's not what I used to tell you. I started five businesses.
They all failed. Well, the last one hung on a while. One time I had this business going and I'll close with this story.
It represents the way I live today. There's a promise in the third step that says he'll provide what I need if I stay close to him and do his work well. See, that's the business deal I made with him.
That's what I did with him. And when the second wife left and she took all the money in the Cadillac with her, I lose Cadillacs that way. They just seem to go with the girls.
And I got the old one naturally. And I'm living in my uh I'm I'm running a big place down in Martinez, a big office building. And I'd moved to uh on the second floor, there was a room that wasn't being was a coffee room, but nobody was using it.
And I it had a sink and a and a uh refrigerator, little refrigerator, and I put a little bed in there, and I stayed in there. And I would go home at night after I'd been to the hospital alone. And that was great time for me because what he did, it humbled me.
I paid a woman $25 a month to take a shower at her house. That was humbling for a guy like me. And I made it very clear to her there'd be no sex involved.
I already told you I was a liar. Anyway, I ended up uh one day I got a phone call from a man and I got this this six sense we talk about comes in the if you do your work and it ends up coming to you in the 10th step. I live by that six sense today and I've learned to trust it.
God is an experience not an idea and I had lots of experiences with God. And this particular day God had said to me, Don, forget about this legal business. forget about this corporation.
I have something I need for you to do. And I am so glad I made that decision. Few days later, a man called me and he said, "Are you still living in the building?" I said, "Yes, sir." He said, "How would you like to live in my folks's house?" I said, "Oh, man, that's a mansion.
Are you kid I can't afford that. Are you kidding me? I can hardly eat." And he said, "No, we just want you to live there." I said, "No rent." He said, "No." I said, "Well, Jesus, man.
I I'll mow the yard for you." He said, "Juan mows the yard. Been doing it for 30 years. Don't take any money away from him." This guy's daddy was a big- time doctor.
They had a grand piano in their foyer. They had five bathrooms in that house. It was three stories.
And what had happened, his mother had fallen and broken her hip, and dad was dead. They just wanted me to live there. So there'd be somebody there.
And you know what I'd do? I'd go home at night and I'd get up there. They had an all glass room out here that you could look down on the river and the town of Martinez and the bridge.
I I don't even have to pay the telephone bill. How does that happen? And I go in there and they had an old time tub, big long one.
I'd run in there and fill that thing with hot water and I'd jump in it. Then I'd jump out of that tub and I'd run over there and I'd get in the shower. Then I'd run downstairs and get in that shower.
I mean, I'm living. This is great stuff. I'd sleep in any one of the bedrooms.
Finally, I ended up down on in in the basement. It was good down there. The deer would come along and eat on the stuff.
They were all kind of animals that ran around there. People would come to do their fists and they say, "My god, I knew you had some money, but I didn't know it was like this." I say, "This don't belong to me." "What's the rent?" "It don't cost me a dime." "I can't believe it," they'd say. You see, those are just some of the things that have happened to me because of you.
You showed me a way of life. We call it the fourth dimension of life. It's a place that you must experience.
Only you can make the journey. God bless you and thank you for having me. Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise.
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