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We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. >> It is uh with great pleasure that I take now to introduce our speaker uh for the evening uh Jack K from Los Angeles. I'm an alcoholic of the hopeless variety.

My name is Jack Kissell, member of the Thursday night West Hollywood discussion group and I want to thank the committee for giving me the privilege to be here this evening. I crawled out of an alley 11 years ago to get here. Um I have a statistically slightly different story than uh most of the members of Alcoholics Anonymous.

80% of us according to uh statistics had a period of time in their life when they were indistinguishable from social drinkers. Uh many of us that lasted a long time. I have one friend that got sober when he was 70 and he's now 82 and doing fine.

And uh so most of us do have that period of time varying in length. In my case um if I did any social drinking, it was for about an hour and a half one night in May in 1946 and that was the end of that. It uh it just got off and running pretty fast.

Uh, as it turns out, in retrospect, I was uh behaving like an alcoholic before I ever got to alcohol. I found that out after I got in here and started listening to people sharing their stories. Um, I took my first Geographic when I was 13 and I hadn't really done a lot of drinking yet.

Um, I stole a little wine as an alter boy, a few minor things, but nothing, you know, nothing serious. But I had decided by then that my problem was my father, who was an alcoholic. And I decided in my devious and cunning fashion, to run away from home without anybody knowing I was doing it.

And if you're Irish Catholic in South Bend, Indiana, there is no more socially acceptable acceptable way to leave home than to go study to be a priest at Notre Dame. So that's what I did. And uh I got out there and I was I was there about 6 months and it dawned on me that I didn't feel any different than I had at home.

At home my earliest memory was feelings of being lonely, separate, different, angry, and afraid. And I was out there in the seminary about 6 months and I discovered that I felt lonely, separate, different, angry, and afraid. I hadn't fixed it.

And I realized I had made a terrible mistake cuz my parents were very pleased that I was in the seminary with their oldest son, a priest. They figured they had a free ticket to heaven. And uh so I faked I faked it for two more years until I got up the courage to leave.

And then I came home at 16 um and I felt like a failure. I had failed God as I understood him at the time and I failed myself in a little goal I had set for me you know to become a priest and then also I had cancelled my parents' free ticket to heaven. So it was tough.

The night after I got home I was 16. It was May in 1946. Some of the guys who had been in regular high school out of generosity and I imagine a certain degree of curiosity invited me to go out with them.

I think they wanted to see, you know, what this was like. Cuz for 2 and 1/2 years, I'd been out there practicing 20 hours of silence a day from the ages of 14 through 16, trying not to think about girls, you know. So, we went out, five of us, and we got we didn't even buy a whole case of beer, so there wasn't a lot to drink.

But that night is that's when I did my hour and a half of social drinking. And then some of the symptoms of my disease developed that very first night. One of my symptoms is bad judgment.

And if you're my size, belligerance is bad judgment, let me tell you. And I I was belligerent that night, most nights thereafter. Um, and in addition just to being uh belligerent, I also had the bad judgment to choose a guy to pick on particularly who had while I was gone out there uh he had become an all-state halfback.

I didn't know that. And he beat me up that night three times because I didn't get the message the first two times. And then in that same evening, I had what I now know to be an alcoholic rage.

And then it took three guys to subdue 55 and 120, you know, because I just got maniacal. I wanted to kill somebody. And the three of them subdued me.

And they got me in the back of a car and laid me on the floor and two guys sat in the back seat and held me to the floor with their feet and a third one drove me home. And on the way home, I experienced a personality change. I just became warm and wonderful and I started to cry and I threw up on his floor.

They dragged me out of the car uh at my house and helped me up the front steps and leave me against the front door of my house like a thing and pushed the doorbell and ran cuz they didn't want to deal with my father. And my father opened the door and here was his oldest son, 16, ex- seminarian by one day, drunk. And uh dad was a practicing alcoholic at the time.

He did the only thing he knew how to do. He punched me out. That was my first night of serious drinking and I loved it, man.

I loved it. I never skipped a drink to the best of my ability for the next 24 and a half years. I also during that evening there are one or two Alanons I know in the room I experienced um a phenomenon that many of us have gone through called a blackout and since at least the Alanons have never experienced that I think it it's only fair that I tell you what it feels like um it's a period of time at least in my case ranging anywhere from a half an hour to 5 days during which I was very active and not present.

I mean, that's it's just how it felt. I had my first blackout that evening and uh I also ran into a little phenomenon that that uh I found many people very willing to do. Uh they were able to fill me in on the hour and a half that I didn't wasn't present for, you know.

Um I later on married somebody who was very good at doing that. It's a little game that many of us married alcoholics have played called, "Do you know what you did last night?" Uh, at first I used to say, "Of course I do." You know, and then I knew that she knew. And so then I finally admitted that I didn't.

And her program wasn't all that honest then either because after a few years with me, she began to add things that I hadn't done, but I didn't know the difference. So I took the blame for all of it, you know. And I had that that experience that first night.

And the next day there was a guy very willing to tell me what had gone on during the hour and a half when I had not been present. So that's how it started for me and it didn't get any better. It the price of my drinking went up rather rapidly.

Uh like many of our fellowship, I love the line that is often quoted at meetings uh during the seventh tradition when they say we have no dues or fees cuz I know very well I've paid my dues. You know, I paid them when I was 17. Uh after having been drinking for 6 months, I was at a coroner's inquest for involuntary manslaughter.

And uh the price of my drinking went up very fast. I was um acquitted of that charge. They didn't indict me.

And the reason for that was that I lied and that the little girl who had been with me in the car lied and the deputy sheriff St. Joe County in Indiana lied and he perjured himself uh at that inquest because he was trying to give me a break. I was 17 from a poor family and I had won a scholarship to the university and he didn't want to spoil the career of a promising young man.

I was able in the course of my years of drinking to find a lot of people who would help me evade the responsibilities of my actions. People who would let me slide one more time, give me another chance. It happened numerous times in my drinking career and and it was always pretty much the same.

Uh, I got out of that deal. I'd been in a blackout when the incident occurred. My mother woke me when I was 17 one morning and said, "Dad, uh, she said, "Jack, the man died and they want to see you this afternoon at the courthouse." And, uh, it was a it was a terrible experience for me.

And when I was acquitted that afternoon, I celebrated by getting drunk. I didn't know what else to do. But I also made a vow.

I said that this will never happen to me again. I am going to turn my life around. And I went out to the university with great ambition and high aspiration, determined that my life would be different from now on.

That that was just a bad break that I had to overcome. And that's when the jackal and hyde part of my life began because I really did try when I went to school. I studied harder than I had before.

And the one side of me which the book refers to as the jeal uh aspect of this alcoholic, you know, did pretty well. I won a national award for poetry. I got pretty well known on campus for legal extracurricular activities and uh and did okay.

In those same four years, while I was, you know, relatively successful at school, I was also arrested for inciting a riot, for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. I attempted suicide in some fashion u three times during my over the years. Uh they were not exactly attempts to do away with myself.

Let me explain what I was doing. Those suicide efforts were really vignettes that I would stage uh to show the world how badly the world was treating me. You know, uh I give you one example is uh there was a time when I when we were driving back from Niles, Michigan, having closed the bars.

They stayed open later over there. Uh and the guy that was driving was going 85 m an hour down the Dixie Highway. And I decided to throw myself out into traffic.

And I threw open the passenger store door and started to roll out into traffic slowly enough so that somebody could save me. You know, I didn't want to get hurt. And uh that's that was the way my suicides were.

So by the time I I was about to graduate, I realized that there was something seriously the matter with me. I decided that it was psychiatric in nature. And with my devious uh alcoholic personality, I what I did was decide that I needed psychiatric help and I was going to get it without anybody knowing that I was doing it, including the psychiatrist.

And uh the way I figured that out is I got myself drafted and I had been an English major, nothing to do with medicine, and assigned to the medics and then assigned to psychiatric social work where I could be trained by the government at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio in psychology so I could find out what the hell was the matter with me. And I went through that course successfully. I managed to uh be second in the class on upon graduation, but I didn't learn what was the matter with me because other symptoms of my disease had developed channel hearing and tunnel vision.

And when they got to that section in our training about alcoholism, I sat there in class and tuned them out. I just didn't hear that part. I knew whatever they had to teach about neurosis and psychosis and character disorders, but I skipped the part on alcoholism and uh just kept on going.

By then I had added some other chemicals to my recipe. I started smoking grass long before it was a social movement. Uh I added I added grass in 1953 to the booze.

Eventually, I added uh I added benzadrine to the grass and the booze. And then I added cocaine to the benzadine and the grass and the booze. And then I added uppers and downers to the benzadine and the cocaine and the grass and the booze.

And then I added heroin to the cocaine and the uppers and the downers and the benzene and the cocaine and the grass and the booze. And then I added psychedelics for religious reasons. No.

Well, isn't that what you did? if you could just get right with the cosmos, everything would be all right. You know, I got out there and wasn't sure I was ever going to come back.

But in 1953, uh, behaving like that and drinking and smoking my brains out to oblivion every night. In fact, that was my that was my, uh, cocktail. Here's to oblivion.

Boom. And, uh, that was my condition. And for a year and a half in that condition, every morning I went out to Fort California and counled neurotics.

And you know, oddly enough, I was some help to some of those people as long as their problem wasn't these. I mean, I had learned a little bit about the other things and I would help them and listen to them and I cared about them and I really did try. If their problem happened to be drinking, I would listen carefully and say, "I don't see your problem.

I drink more than that." you know, so that's how that was. So when I got out of the army, um, I realized that California psychology and discipline had not helped me. And so I diagnosed my problem again.

I decided that it wasn't psychiatric in nature. My my real problem I I then discovered was that I was just too capriccious, too freespirited, too wild, too sensitive for this world. And I just I figured that I prescribed for me uh that what I needed was some stability.

So, I went to New York City and a month after I got there, I found a good woman and she had a little three-year-old girl by a previous marriage and that fitted my prescription exactly. See, it was an instant family and that would give me responsibility and then I would settle down and everything would be all right. And that's when Jean got hooked into my disease.

Now, my wife is here and she's been with me for 28 years and she is not an alcoholic. I know that it almost killed me to find it out. Uh, I was able to see that she was a little unusual.

Very soon after we met, I took her with me one night. I mean, I don't think we were together a month to a party and she did the strangest thing. We went to this party and we weren't there a half an hour and Jean forgot where her drink was.

Man, I never did that in my entire life. I knew where your drink was. I thought that was a little strange of her, you know.

And then later on, I think it was the same evening, I she said the darn I said to her, I just happened to be going to the bar. Uh, do you want another drink? And she said, "No, I've had enough.

There isn't enough. If the Pacific Ocean were Kentucky bourbon, I would worry about evaporation. You know, there ain't enough." I thought what a strange thing to say.

So I got my own drink and I think probably even that same evening I also later on I said uh I I happen to be going back to the bar. Do do you want a drink? And she said no I don't want one.

Well I knew she was lying but I admired her self-control. I I really impressed me. In fact, it is one of the reasons that I have been able to discover how my self-esteem began to slip.

Just that simple little thing of her saying, "I don't want one." Uh Dr. Silkworth in the doctor's opinion states as the unifying characteristic of all alcoholics is the fact that when they take a drink they want another one. That's all.

It is not your wrap sheet. It's not your list of jobs, number of marriages, how many jails or mental institutions. The unifying thing that all alcoholics have in common is that when I when I or they us when we take a drink, we want another one.

Now, I've known some people who uh were able to take a drink or two and not take another one. That doesn't make them non-alcoholics. That's why I believe Dr.

Silkworth also said it was a self diagnostic disease. Only I know if when I take a drink I want another one. Well, I figured she was lying cuz I didn't know until I was sober 3 or 4 months and Jean was in Alanon.

It never dawned on me that her self-control, that wonderful strength of character that she had exhibited to me all those years when she was able to refrain from having a a 12th drink, you know, uh wasn't really all that admirable. I discovered when I was about 3 or 4 months sober that when my wife takes a drink, it just lays there. It doesn't do much for her.

Now, when I take a drink, there is a soft explosion inside of me. Cools me off, mellows me out, and indicates to me that everything is going to be all right. right after that things generally turn to poo poo but I don't care by then you know and I figured that she had this marvelous self trait and I admired her secretly I admired her tremendously and my self-esteem continued to to erode as she was able to exhibit this willpower, you know, and it was it's hard to live like that.

It's not easy. And she didn't stay quite as understanding as she had been in the early days because soon after we'd been together a little while, instead of saying, "I've had enough," she used to add, "And you've had enough." You know, I don't want to hear that. I'll be the decider of that.

And I was never apologetic about my drinking. I never have been. You know, I just, in fact, she'd say to me, "You've had enough." And I'd say, "Well, I don't know what you're talking about." And she said, "Well, you're drunk." And I said, "Yeah, but I'm still conscious, you know, and if I pass out and you're a friend of mine, wake me up and pour me one, you know.

I mean, I don't want to miss the party." So, I never did apologize. Even when things got a lot worse and denial, as you know, is one of our symptoms, but it's one of theirs, too. She was marvelous at denial.

After a while, I think she was better at denial than I. I remember an incident. One time, I think it was when we were in Ohio, I I drove up onto the front lawn about 2:30 in the morning and fell out of the car and I climbed uh crawled across the front lawn up the front steps and I was able to locate the front door key and then I couldn't find the front door and she threw it open and looked down at me and said, "Have you been drinking?

I looked up at her and said, "God, I hope so." You know, I mean, have you been breathing? I've been drinking. I mean, come on.

What else do you want to talk about? So, I didn't ever apologize for my drinking. I don't want to lead you to the idea that I never apologized.

I apologized all the time. I began apologizing early on. I was apologizing to that judge at 17.

I apologized for my behavior constantly over and over. I apologized to judges, to jailers, to policemen, to my wife, to my mother, to my father, to my children, to uh a variety of bosses and boards of directors and everybody I could. Eventually, just before I got there, I was apologizing to total strangers on the street.

I mean, somebody passed me by and I said, "I'm sorry, you know, and I was I was sorry to be occupying your world. I was sorry to be breathing your air. I didn't belong here.

I couldn't find where I did, but it wasn't here." And so, I just stumbled around apologizing cuz I didn't belong. I I have a friend, God lover, used to say when she was new in AA, we had one meeting in Los Angeles about the size of this meeting and she said she always had the feeling when she got there that everybody else came in the same bus and she came alone, you know, and I felt like that about the whole world. You all knew each other, you know, you just didn't know me.

And I didn't I love there's a book came out a few years ago and I just love the title because it was my it was my inner life. The the book was called uh what do you say after you say hello and I didn't know I used to ease drop all the time listening to what you said to each other and then I would imitate it so that I was just reading your lines cuz I didn't know how to behave. I didn't know how to act.

I couldn't feel a part of anything or any place. And that's the way it was. And it was like that before I got to booze.

And it was like that while I was drinking. Booze helped me. But it didn't solve the problem.

Cuz when I drank, I didn't become a part of I became the leader of the gang. I mean, that's all it did for me. It just I just took over.

But I never felt a part of. And it was like that after I got sober too for a while. I I don't know exactly when I joined the Fellowship of the Spirit.

But when it happened, it was an incredible experience cuz I'm never alone. I never feel alone. When I'm alone, I'm not alone.

I'm a part of It feels like that today. And it sure didn't for many, many years. So G joined my problem.

She's not an alcoholic. Clearly not an alcoholic. And decided that she was going to help me get well.

She diagnosed my problem the same way I did. Lack of responsibility. And so she decided to help me get some by having children.

Um, she had been told that it was lifeendangering for her to get pregnant because she couldn't carry the term, but she was determined and uh hadn't found Alanon yet. So, she had six miscarriages and then my son John. Now, those miscarriages made me nervous and when I get nervous, I drink.

So, the more pregnant she got, the drunker I got. finally had John and it hadn't made me any better. It made me worse.

So she then said the problem was that I needed a little girl of my own. So she had three miscarriages and then my daughter Christy and by then I was pretty sick and we actually had a fourth child which Jean insists she had given up the motive of making me well by giving me children. And she says that Mindy was for fun and for free.

And I guess she was, you know, so we had children and I got worse. And uh that was the period of time when I I began to have um changes of careers. At least that's what I called it.

What of course it was is losing jobs and finding another one. Uh but for a long while uh I masqueraded that from everybody including me because it looked like I was just changing careers. I went from an unemployed actor in New York to an employed high school teacher and I I'd had a lot of trouble in New York City.

And so when we moved to New Relle for me to take over as a high school teacher, I went there with great ambition and high aspiration determines turned my life around. Uh and I got to be the most popular teacher in that school, especially with this one little group cuz I was their connection. But I'm talking about the general population, too.

Uh but other symptoms of my disease had developed by then. defiance and rebellion. Don't tell me what to do.

You know, I just can't follow your rules. And so, I had become defiant and arrogant and rebellious. And at the end of three years at that school, you're supposed to have a master's degree or you can't stay to get tenure.

And by then, I had been to graduate school at Colombia and at Fordom and I had graduated from Notre Dame. So all I actually needed to complete the masters was to go to class one night a week for one semester. Complete the requirements and give me the degree and I wouldn't do it.

I figured to hell with them. If they want me so badly just change the rules. That's all you got to do.

Now by then another one of the symptoms of my disease had developed. I didn't recognize it, of course then, but have found out since I've been sober. See, lack of power is my dilemma.

And in the course of my drinking, that lack of power began to to exert itself in me. And I began to look for power. I began to try to exert power.

And in that instance, I set myself against the board of education at New Relle, New York. And I was determined to bring that board of education to its knees. And I organized the kids in the high school and they picketed on my behalf.

And the PTA petitioned the board on my behalf. And the local newspaper ran a banner headline editorial attacking the board of education for its decision to let me go. And they decided to stick to the rules and dropped me.

I couldn't believe it. I I I lost that battle. I couldn't believe it.

So, we had to move in and left that job. Next thing I decided to do was form a regional theater with her next movie star. I noticed at the time that she had she didn't drink.

I thought that was kind of strange. I didn't usually trust people that didn't drink, but uh I needed her power and influence, so I brought her along. I've talked to her recently.

She hasn't had a drink for about 25 years, but I didn't know that then. And so she and I got together and picked a board of directors and set out to form a professional repatory theater. We raised $85,000 in the first year and never did a play.

There is another name for that. Fortunately for me, the board of directors that I had handpicked never did trust me and so they kept the money in escrow that had been contributed to us and uh at the end of the year they fired me, disbanded to the theater and gave the money back or I would probably have found you under different circumstances, you know. So I was out of the job.

I didn't know what to do and I by then had diagnosed my problem a little differently. I now realized that my problem was that I had too much responsibility. Those four children and that wife, I mean, it was too much and I needed to get rid of them.

So, I had decided to abandon my wife and children without anybody knowing I was doing it. And so, the way I did that was get a job in Ohio. And I told uh Gan that I would go out there ahead of time and get things squared away and find a place to live and so on that I'd send for them and I never intended to see him again.

And uh interesting thing about that is years later when we both got to the program we discovered that she had decided to leave me and didn't tell me either. We abandoned each other forever without telling each other. Shows you how good our communication was.

I went out to Ohio. It was the first time in my life, I was 33, that I'd ever had the opportunity to drink without somebody looking over my shoulder. You know, my mother, my father, the the the college, the army, my wife, the kids.

Uh, and now I was alone and I could drink like I had always intended, like a gentleman. And uh, at the end of 6 weeks, I was dying. So, I called my wife in New York.

Now, I'd already learned how to manipulate her perfectly. If you're ever decide you want to go back to manipulating your wife and and she's been with you any length of time and and needs the program on hasn't gotten there yet, I'll tell you how to do it. It only takes three words.

I called her and I said those three powerful words, I know. I said, I need you. She sold the furniture, packed up the four kids and the dog, and came out to Ohio to take care of me.

Now, I was really grateful that they were coming back. I mean, they didn't know it, but I had abandoned them forever 6 weeks ago, you know, and so I was relieved and delighted they were coming back. And I I tell this little incident so that I won't forget it.

It's not a dramatic thing particularly, but it exemplifies for me what Booze did to me so much of my life. I was delighted that that family of mine were returning and I had found a beautiful house for us and had rented it and I put flowers in every room. I've always been a little grandiose and got all dressed up and went very early so that I could meet them at the train and I stopped at the Milano Club for lunch.

Yeah, you got it. Uh, I went in there and I had a little cocktail before lunch. Every gentleman does.

And there was a guy there that I knew and he bought me a drink and I bought him one. And then another fella came in and he bought a round. And then I bought around and another guy bought around and before you know it, the conversation became so engrossing that I forgot to meet my family at the train station.

Now, I meant to be there, just as I had intended to be at the births of each of my three children. I never was, but I meant to be. It's just that those births made me nervous.

And when I get nervous, I drink. And then I don't know what I'm going to do. So, somewhere in the middle of the afternoon, I suddenly said, "What time is it?" I said, "Well, it's about 3:00." I said, "Oh my god." and I raced across town to the train station.

And by then, my wife and children had been met by strangers who knew me and had been taken to the house that I had found. And so I raced across town to the house and Jean opened the door and I explained to her how an urgent business matter had arisen and that it was just impossible for me to be there. And she said, "I understand." And I knew that she knew and she knew that I knew.

But we didn't know what else to do. So we lied to each other and kept on going. I lost that job at the end of two years out of arrogance.

I'm hostile, irresponsible, arrogant, and I was extremely successful as far as their business was concerned. But they decided to the board of directors decided to settle for a little less success and a little peace and quiet. And so they fired me.

And by then I had added all those chemicals that I listed for you. My hair hung down to my shoulders. I had a free man chew mustache and I was trying to grow a beard.

And I got the best job of my life. It was a job that I needed desperately. it.

When you have the lack of self-esteem that I have, you desperately need the esteem of others. You desperately need somebody else's approval because you have none of your own. And I was given a job with the right kind of prestige.

I was made professor at a university and head of the department. And also by then I was at weird. But I went out to that university with great ambition and high aspiration determined to turn my life around.

But I went out to that university with great ambition and high aspiration determined to turn my life around. And in some ways I did. When I got there there were two people majoring in my discipline.

When they fired me two years later, there were 90 people majoring in my discipline and we had won competitive awards against every other college in that state. But the hide part of me had also become an active militant revolutionary and I organized 26 kids on campus and we were planning to blow up the administration building. That is not the way to find job security.

Let me tell you, I needed the job. I needed the job. But I just couldn't resist my rebellion and my defiance.

And I masked it under the guise of social conscience. I masked my rage and my rebellion under socially acceptable, at least to me, socially acceptable uh motives. It took me a while sobering alcoholics an anonymous to recognize that I didn't give a damn about the downtrodden or the blacks that I cared about Jack and power because lack of power is my dilemma and I will do anything to get it.

I was determined to bring that university to its knees and I did. stopped all classes for three days. They surrounded my house.

When my wife went to the grocery store, we were followed by she was followed by a deputy sheriff's car. My children huddled away from the windows in our house. We had our meetings in my front room.

My wife, who had not yet found Alan on, tried to calm us down by serving a lot of cookies. Now you were all smart and stuff man. Yeah, I'll have some more of those.

She didn't know it was going. I also at that time lack of power is my dilemma was desperate to find power and I made friends with gangsters. I had friends who hurt people for a living.

If you hurt my feelings one night in a bar, couple weeks later, somebody will come up and hurt you. And you never knew that it came from me and it felt like power. And what it was was terror.

So when they fired me from that job, the four kids and Jean and I got together in our little front room in our little house in Ohio and tried to figure out what to do next. I had used up the East Coast and I had just used up the Midwest. There wasn't a whole hell of a choice.

Christy says the reason they all wanted to come out to California is they were hoping maybe the sun would dry him up. But the sun did not dry me up. I spent 3 years of absolute hell.

By then I had made it impossible for me to work. The only thing I had left as far as earning a living, I I I was able to do this successfully. I I got the want ads and found a couple of likely jobs for G.

And then I drove her to the interviews and helped her prepare to get the interview. And then when she came out and hadn't gotten a job, I debriefed her, tried to figure out what she said wrong. and I was finally able to get that woman a job.

It was a great relief. It was also one of the more humiliating things of my life because I knew that she was our only hope to earn a living. And then it began for me.

The end of my road was three years of hell. I like to remember before those three years the little ugly things, the little humiliating things that I don't want repeated in my life. I like to remember when I was 18 years old and I was treated like a hero at our house at home because I had saved the house from burning down.

What they didn't know, of course, was the mattress fire that I put out, I started, passed out with a lit cigarette in my hand, woke up to a burning couch, in it, and dragged it out. I don't want to forget the humiliation of knowing the truth. I don't want to forget the my wedding night.

We had a very romantic time a couple of weeks ago that I'll get a chance to tell you about in a little bit. But our wedding night was culminated by my throwing up on her just the wrong time. Right.

There's romance for you. I don't want to forget the humiliation. I don't want to forget it.

I don't want to forget the little ugly things that I hated happening that I passed off with bravado and a smartass remark. In those three years doing them, I experienced hallucinations. Now, if you're new here, let me hasten to point out to you that the symptoms I'm going to talk about in the next few minutes are not requirements for membership.

It's okay if you never had a hallucination. You know, you don't have to go out there and try it. And the thing for me that was difficult about hallucinations was not so much the frightening things that I occasionally saw or the auditory hallucinations that were threatening and frightening.

It wasn't. It wasn't that so much. What really bothered me is that I knew that they put you away not for being crazy, but for acting crazy.

And I was desperately trying to act sane. Now the problem is that I never knew for sure if what you were seeing and hearing is the same thing that I was seeing and hearing. And it's very difficult to act same under those circumstances.

Like for example, I used to get these phone calls. And it dawned on me after a while while that only about half of them were real. But I heard the the ring and I heard the voice.

And so to defend myself against those strange looks that she began giving me, I got a little false case of hide of hearing. So if the phone rang, I watched to see if she heard it. If she did, then I'd run and get the phone cuz there were lots of things going on I didn't want her to know about.

And so it was difficult. And a little incident happened when I was about 3 months sober between my sponsor and I. That is for me the best example I know of the power of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Simple little thing that probably nobody else in the meeting noticed. I was sitting next to my sponsor and a huge black bug came flying right at me and then darted between my sponsor and I and we ended up looking at each other. Well, I didn't say anything.

First thing that was said, my sponsor said, he looked at me and he said, "It was really there, Jack." I didn't ask him. You know, I'll be damned if I'd ask him. I was relieved to hear it, but I didn't ask him.

And it occurred to me that there isn't a psychiatrist or a therapist or a priest or a mother or a father or a husband or a wife perceptive enough to answer a question that hasn't been asked. There's really only one way you can do that. You have to have been there yourself.

And that's what we've got. We have been there. If you're new, believe me, we have been there.

Maybe not me personally, but somebody. I challenge you to test me. Go to a meeting and share that thought that you have that nobody else ever thought or that emotion that you have experienced that nobody else ever had.

Or tell them what you did that nobody else has ever done. I guarantee you the guy sitting next to you or the woman across to you did it too. Thought it or felt it.

and they will share with you how they live through it. That is a power that no other to use one of the current terms modality of treatment can offer. We have been there.

I love that one. I you see a commercial down in Los Angeles. You probably see here too.

Uh there's one modality of treatment that for $6,000 will make you sick when you drink. Don't you love it? I got sick when I drank all the time.

What I what the secret to that is drink more, you know, then you don't get sick just once at the end. I love that. Anyway, we've been there.

I paid all my dues one night in Kansas City in an alley when three guys left me for dead. I was perfectly alcoholic. As I nearly died, I was thinking, I bet they thought I fought a good fight.

Don't you love the arrogance? I would die for your approval, man. During those three years I talk about all emotion left me.

My friend Nat says that booze washes all the god out of the good out of us and it washed the god out of me. I had been as a young man very serious spiritual seeker. When I was 18 years old, I read the sternote theological by St.

Thomas Aquinas, which is a proof to an attempt to prove by rational means the existence of God. What it proved to me is there is none. But I was seeking.

And by the end of my drinking, I was no longer seeking. I knew for a fact that this was a designless, purposeless universe full of accidents. And I just happened to be one.

I used to go to intellectual bars like the Ski Room that opens at 6:00 a.m. and find some great big Irish Catholic and say, "You believe in God?" And he'd say, "Of course I do." I'd say, "Is he a loving and merciful God?" He'd say, "Of course." I said, "Yeah, well, what are you going to how are you going to explain to me war and disease and malformed children and bigotry, poverty, disease, where's your loving God?" And then he would beat me up to prove there was a God. He did prove to me there was a power greater than myself, you know.

I was an antagonistic intellectual atheist when I found you. I now define intellectual as someone who has been educated beyond his capacity. But then see it was a symptom of my disease.

It was a the most intellectual people I've ever met are in prison and I believe their motives were the same as mine. If I could just figure out the nature of the cosmos of the human psyche, then maybe I could get some control and live my life. And I couldn't figure it out.

And I kept seeking and I couldn't find it. And so I drank and used and abused. And pretty soon, as I say, all the emotion had left me.

The only emotion I felt for about a year or so before I got sober was contempt. I had nothing but contempt for you, for me, for every idea, ideal, or institution. There were no exceptions.

fought for my four children in my drunken irresponsible modeling Irish fashion. I love my kids. And one night early in June in 1971, my four children, the youngest was seven, the oldest was 20, got together in the front room of my house and they told me they didn't love me.

They said they didn't love me, they didn't want me, and they didn't need me. And somewhere in our literature, spirituality is described as being loved, wanted, and needed. And on that night, my alcoholism had successfully made it possible for nobody on the face of this earth to love, want, or need me.

I felt lonely, separate, different, angry, and afraid. What else is new? And I stood outside the front door of that little house with a suitcase that my kids had packed for me.

They told me to get out of their lives. They begged me to leave their mother alone. I was killing her.

And I stood out there with my suitcase and felt contempt for my children after all I had done for them. And I got drunk. What else do you do?

I didn't know what else to do. And I drank that day. And I drank that night.

And then I called my wife and I begged her like a child. I was 30 then to take me back and give me another chance. She'd been giving me 17 years of other chances.

I had humiliated her and hurt her in every way I knew possible and she gave me another chance. So I came home and I drank that day and I drank that night. And then I picked a fight with her so I could get out to the bars and I got to my little favorite bar there where I always got my mail.

I they used to call me there first and then see if I was home. My wife used to say like I'd come home at 3:00 in the morning and she said, "Well, why did you come home?" I said, "This the only place open." So, I went to my little bar and I picked up a little girl about the age of my oldest daughter and by the route we were taking, apparently we were going back to my house. I think I was going to introduce my wife to her replacement.

I was a nice guy. I didn't get there though because I got arrested again. Now, I've been arrested a lot of times before, but I have to tell you that that particular arrest was a bum wrap.

It was a false arrest. Never should have happened. Really?

I'm serious. You don't know. I mean, it shouldn't.

But all that happened was that my extreme caution while driving drew the attention of the heat to me that night. I sat through three green lights waiting for the right one. They thought that was strange.

They pulled me over and they and they blessed me. Now I had been searching through varieties of religions, philosophies, psychedelics. I used to do acid masculine suicide and then get stoned and then get drunk for religious reasons.

And I never could figure out what was wrong with me. And those two young members of the LAPD were able to figure it out on first glance. They arrested me for drunk, which is what I was and what I am.

Now, I hope you like the suit that I wore tonight. Can I have a hand for the same thing? cuz I was not dressed then the way I am tonight.

I looked a little different. My eyes were sunk deep in my head. I saw those eyes yesterday when I went to court for a baby of mine who had 2 and 1/2 years of sobriety and decided he could get away with a little grass and then decided he would sell a little and then decided he needed to rob to get some more.

and he's been in jail a month. And I sat in court and watched him uh set the trial date. And his eyes were sunk in his head.

He was scared. He was feeling lonely, separate, different, angry, and afraid. I knew those eyes.

They were mine. In 1971, my hair hung down to my shoulders. I was wearing a free man mustache, flounce shirts, bouquet bells, and a shoulder bag.

Honey, I was hip. Proudest moment of my life was a few weeks earlier than that when I was standing in a corner in San Francisco, stoned to my eyeballs, and some dude drove by and said, "Are you the heroin man?" I said, "No, he's on the next corner, baby." I managed to get word out to a street kid that was watching the bus so that he could call my wife. I antagonized the arresting officers.

And when I got to the jail, I antagonized the jailer. I wasn't too tactful. I made fun of his name and he didn't think it was funny.

He showed me the pearl handled pistol that he wore. He kept me standing in a receiving cell for an hour and a half. I kept telling him I have to go to the bathroom.

He kept saying go ahead. I demanded a phone call. You got rights.

I'm a revolutionary. So, he let me make a phone call. It was 3:00 a.m.

and I called New York City. And he didn't think that was funny. So, when my wife, who didn't know any better, came down to bail me out, he lost me.

They had a little argument out there in in the front of the jail. She said, "I'm here to bail out my husband, Jack Kessle." She She said, "He's here." And and he said, "No, no, I don't think he's in this jail." She said, "No, I know he's here. One of the one of the She didn't know how to describe my friend.

One of those people told me that he's here." He said, "Lady, I don't think he's in this jail." She said, "Yes, he's here. That's his purse." Well, he still wouldn't bail me out. He sent her home.

By then, it was about 4:30 and he gave me a kick out at 5:30. That night in that jail was the ugliest night of my life. I felt abandoned, hopeless, incomprehensible demoralization.

I watched the boy get raped in that drunk cell that night >> and couldn't do anything about it and didn't really give a damn. And I stared through the bars in a desperate effort to take a vacation to blank out my mind to empty my mind. It is my belief that that night in that jail cell for an instant I emptied of myself of me long enough to start the process.

There is no better explanation for me. The next morning he gave me a pickup at 5:30 and I called my wife. We had one of our usual conversations.

I said, "Where the hell were you?" She said, "I was there. I'll come right down and pick you up." And I said, "Don't bother. I'll walk." And I hung up on her.

I don't know why I called her. I guess just to make her feel bad. And I stumbled and staggered.

stopped on the way to get well. And when I got home, it was 8:00 and June said that the kids were right. I never should have let you back and I won't again.

Be gone by noon. And if you're here when I get home at noon, I will have you rejected. And she went to work.

And I felt lonely, separate, different, angry, and afraid. I reached under the kitchen sink and got a bottle of white wine. and I smoked a little boo and drank my wine and passed out on the bed.

Nothing else is new. Teen went to work and for the first time in 17 years, a new thought occurred to her and she grabbed the telephone book and looked up alcoholism and she talked to a woman and told her a little bit about what we laughing and it called our relationship. And the woman said, "It sounds to me like you're married not to a crazy man or even to a rotten son of a It sounds to me like you're married to a man with a disease, a physiological, pharmacological, diagnosible disease for which there is help.

And told her what to do. And Jean came home and I was lying on the bed, not bothering anybody. My eyeballs was yellow cuz my liver was failing and she had trouble getting me awake.

And by the time she did, she was crying. And I'd seen my wife cry many times. I've seen her cry in pain, rage, fear, frustration.

She was crying the night she tried to put a butcher knife through my stomach in front of our four kids. And I raised my hand and said, "Go ahead, do it. You'll be doing us both a favor." But she couldn't.

I didn't understand the nature of her tears. until months later, suddenly I realized that she was crying that day out of compassion because as she tried to get me awake, it dawned on her that I was dying of a disease I never chose to have. And she blurted out what they had told her to say.

She said, "Jack, you're sick." Well, I knew that. Me, you've been through the three days I've been through, you'd be sick, too. I just got out of jail.

And she said, "Let me get your help." And I said, "Go ahead." I didn't ask what kind. Who cares? Now, that morning, I had exhibited a good deal of willpower and strength of character.

Any real alcoholic in the room will will know when I tell you that I had reserved a half a glass of white wine out of that bottle for when I wake up. That takes real power. I didn't drink it.

She went to call for help. I didn't know what kind. I didn't care.

And I didn't drink it. I don't know why. Instead, I followed her to the telephone.

And by then, she had a kind of confused look on her face and she handed the phone to me and she said, "Who wants to talk to you?" Well, that surprised me, too. Nobody wanted to talk to me in those days. I grabbed that phone and this guy said, "Hi, my name is Bud.

I'm an alcoholic. Can I help you?" And I haven't had a drink since that day. That was 11 years ago.

Last Sunday. That's it began for me then. He asked me to come see him.

And my wife and I did. And he sat us down and told us what it used to be like, what happened, and what it was like then for him. He was a year and a half sober then.

He's still sober because he's still trying to share this program. And that day, he shared it with me. and I bought it and I tried it and it works.

I have to tell you and time is running close on me here a little about what it's like now. I guess the best way I can tell you some of the many beautiful things that have happened to us has to do with my son and I. There are stories for each of my three girls, but I'll just tell you this one because it's current.

When I got sober, my son was 12 and he's not an alcoholic, but my disease had damaged him a lot. He was a seclusive, reclusive, compulsive thief. He used to lock himself in his bedroom and then lock himself in his closet and then climb up on a shelf and cover himself with a blanket when he was 12.

The night before I got sober, he hid in the front room of our house in the dark for 2 hours with a ball bat in his hands in the dark waiting for me to come home. Fortunately for me, I got arrested that night. I was a year and a half sober before he could stay in the same room with me comfortably.

When Jean went to Alamon and I went to AA, we became a team for the first time in our lives. And one of the first things we ever did as a team was send our kids to Alatine whether they liked it or not. And John didn't like it.

But we made him go and then he came to like it. And after I had been sober a little better than eight years, John who had some trouble in school, he was under the while he finished high school after some difficulty and then he wanted to go to college and he went to Glendale Community College and he flunked out and then he got a job at at Pickwork Bookstore and worked himself up to assistant manager and then tried school again and he went there at Los Angeles Community College and then he finally got completed those two years and it was then eight years of of his work in Alakine and and me working in AA and as a gift to me my son came to me and said you know I know it's not possible but if it were I would go to Notre Dame the way you did and there are things that happen in our sobriety that newcomers call coincidence and some of the more elegant writers are calling synchronicity most of us call it miracle One of those coincidences, my mother still lives in South Bend and she had sent me a little clipping about my friend, my best friend in the seminary when I was 14. And he had gone on to become a priest.

And this little newspaper clipping announced that he had been made assistant provincial of the Holy Cross order. That's number two man in the organization that owns and runs Notre Dame. So after 33 years of not talking to him, I called him His name happens to be Jack, too.

And he was delighted to hear from me. He said, "Gee, what have you been up to all these years?" Well, I didn't go into a lot of detail. What I said to him, I is, I guess the most significant thing is that I've been sober in Alcoholics Anonymous 8 years.

And he said, "Gee, that's great. I've been sober 10 years. He said, "Remember, Father John used to take care of us in seminary.

He's got nine years. He's doing pretty good." And those two men got together and made recommendations for my son. I have one of the letters at home that is according to the principle principles of our program rigorously honest.

It says, "You may find that this boy's grades are not what we would normally expect of a junior transfer, but we believe he has since found himself, and I am recommending that you accept him for transfer." And then, being a good elk, he knows how to put a little pressure on, he signed it with his full title, fellow and trustee of the university. And three weeks ago, Sunday, my wife and I went to Notre Dame to watch him graduate. 30 years after I had graduated from there, my friend Jack and I went to an AA meeting and Father John led it and John introduced Jean and I proudly to his professors.

And I remembered when he was in middle league denying that I was his father by the grace of God and this program gifts like that have come to me. I got to tell you one last thing. When I came here, there were two things when I was new that I absolutely could not get over.

One of them I liked. One of them were the huge and gentle eyes that I saw. See, I couldn't listen to any of the intellectuals that I met in this fellowship because I figured I was smarter than them.

The only people I could pay any attention to were the ones who had not been to the right universities, but the ones who had been to the right prisons. And three of those guys adopted me, Sam and Johnny and and Fred, my sponsor. And each of them had huge and gentle eyes.

And they would walk up to me and they'd say, "Everything's going to be all right." And it felt like I had taken a drink. They had to tell me pretty often because I drank a lot, you know, but it worked for me. Those huge and gentle eyes.

The other thing that I really didn't like was that when I was new, you just couldn't seem to keep your hands off of me and I'm a very private person and you were always hugging me and patting me and putting your arm around me and kissing me. And God, it made me nervous. I'd sit next to my sponsor and he'd put his army on me and I'd be sure everybody got the wrong idea.

And and I now know that that is the beginning of the healing process. When a sober member puts their hands on one who wants to be, it is the beginning. I love to watch it when somebody brings their new one in with their arms.

You got a good hold on them and they sit them down and everybody in the neighborhood touches them, you know, and they push them and pat them. Somebody goes and gets them a half a cup of coffee because we've been there and and I know they hate it. And I know that that's the beginning of the healing process.

And one night when I was sitting in a meeting, Bill Allison, who has 35 years God loving, found some words that describe for me my beginnings in AA, those huge and gentle eyes and those soft and loving hands. And I just want to leave you with those. They are through the hands of such as these.

God speaks and behind their eyes he smiles upon the earth. Thank you. >> Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise.

If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message. Until next time, have a great day.