I Wanted to Know How You Stopped Starting – AA Speaker – Jeff W.
AA speaker Jeff W. shares his story from the streets of Brooklyn to 27 years sober. He explains why staying off the first drink is the only problem that matters in recovery.
Jeff W., a Scotsman who spent years on the streets of Brooklyn, walked into his first AA meeting in 1938 with a single burning question: “How do you stop starting?” In this AA speaker tape, he traces his journey from living in gutters and detoxing in Belleview Hospital to finding a home group that showed him the power of the living example—and why keeping off that first drink remains the only problem worth solving.
Jeff W. shares 27 years of sobriety after hitting severe bottom on Brooklyn streets, in hospitals, and panhandling with other alcoholics. This AA speaker tape focuses on his early years in the program when he discovered that the disease could be arrested by staying off the first drink and finding community. He covers the power of sponsorship, the importance of two-person twelfth-step work, and how taking active interest in AA saved his life and his family.
Episode Summary
Jeff W. opens with an easy warmth—he’s just come from beating a shuffleboard team in Pasadena, and he’s still buzzing with that small happiness. But then he takes you back to Brooklyn in the 1930s, before AA, when he was a man lost in one of the worst versions of alcoholism.
He describes becoming increasingly irresponsible with money (no small thing for a Scotsman, he notes with dark humor), sacrificing his wife and family for the next drink. His wife dragged him to court; a judge threatened six months in jail if he went near the house. He had nowhere to go. That’s when he met the gang—eight or nine men as desperate as he was, panhandling together on Fourth Avenue, pooling 30 or 40 cents to buy rubbing alcohol from the hardware store, mixing it behind a garage like some mysterious ritual. They’d sit in the park and discuss what was wrong with the government while drinking that poison. He’d sleep in the Salvation Army when they’d let him, always having to be “saved” before getting a bed.
Then came the pattern that would repeat for years: picked up by cops, slapped into Belleview or King’s County Hospital for four or five weeks. Coming out with the same clothes he went in, brain clearing just enough to feel the full weight of shame. He’d get a dishwashing job, save a few dollars, beg his wife to let him come home. She’d take him back. Clean sheets, good food—”This is the life. No more drinking.” But within a month, at home, he’d get irritable and nervous. He didn’t understand it was the disease. He’d convince himself that just two drinks would settle him down. He’d go to the tavern at the top of the street with absolute certainty he’d have two and go home. But there were mirrors behind the bar, and after the second drink he’d feel better-looking. Then someone would recognize him, and one became two became many. He’d wake up in the doghouse, shoes still on, desperate for another drink to function.
The cycle repeated: court, homelessness, hospitals, the same question over and over: “Why? Why am I like this again?”
One morning on Third Avenue, coming out of a flophouse, filthy and shaking after a terrible tear, a man named Jean—someone he’d worked with years before—recognized him and asked what he was doing. Jeff was honest: “I’m sick.” Jean told him to get in the car. At Jean’s house, his wife opened the door and called him “Mr. Watson”—the first time anyone had called him that in years. Jean ran him a bath (which Jeff didn’t want), shaved him, gave him a shirt. Then he took Jeff across Brooklyn Bridge and told him about something called Alcoholics Anonymous, starting in a disused mission on 39th Street in New York.
Jeff couldn’t grasp what Jean was trying to tell him. All he knew was he needed a drink. They took him to Belleview. While he was there five or six weeks, his head cleared, and Jean visited him. Jeff began to understand what Jean had been saying. When Jeff got out, he had a place to go—that little mission on 39th Street. On New Year’s Eve 1938, he attended his first AA meeting.
After the meeting, there were about 24 people having coffee. Jean asked what he thought. Jeff said, “These guys all drink?” Jean said, “Every one of them can match any experience you’ve gone through. Some have gone through worse.”
Jeff responded: “What the hell are they all so happy about? You want me to be like these guys? I got no place to sleep. I can’t go back to my wife. I’ll never get my job back. I owe money all over Brooklyn.”
And here Jean said something that changed everything. He asked Jeff: “If you had $5 in your pocket right now, you’d go out and get drunk again, wouldn’t you?”
Yes. Absolutely.
“Then you want to hide behind your wall of alcoholism, kill your conscience, let the world go by? Listen, Jeff. You’ve only got one problem. One is one too many, and twenty is not enough.”
Here was the answer to the question Jeff had been asking: How do you stop starting?
The living example proved it could be done. And that night, Jean took him to the Salvation Army on 41st Street. They got him a bed and a job in the kitchen the next morning—dishwashing again, $2 a day. But every night he made for a meeting. And it began to work. He hung off the first drink.
Jeff spent time on what he admires in AA: people with time who take their own inventory, realize the disease is progressive, and come to meetings because they want to do something about it. He also admires people who slip, come back, and get to work. He’s made hospital calls on people with 10, 12, even 15 years who relapsed. The pattern is always the same: they missed a meeting, got in the habit of missing meetings, found themselves in a place where nobody knew they were in AA, thought they could handle one drink. But one drink in an alcoholic recreates the obsession instantly. In two or three days, they tear down what took 5, 10, or 15 years to build.
Jeff talks about early twelfth-step work, learning the hard way that it takes two people on a call. He remembers showing up alone at a house in Brooklyn. A big guy in a red robe answered, half-drunk, not expecting him. When Jeff explained he was from Alcoholics Anonymous, the guy went into another room and came back with a police badge and a gun. Jeff learned to get close, turned the man toward the door, and got the hell out of there. That was a lesson.
But years later, at a meeting in Bay Ridge, a man approached him. It was that same cop. He was in trouble with the department, facing a commissioner, still drinking. He didn’t remember Jeff from that visit, but he’d come because he was desperate. Jeff welcomed him, they followed him up, he got through his trial. That man—George—carried the message. He eventually worked with the department to start an AA group in the Metropolitan Police Department. By the time Jeff last spoke there, the group had 125 members. All of them people who’d been in serious trouble, now doing service work, advancing into higher positions. All of it began because Jean planted a seed in Jeff’s brain when he ordered him out the house.
Jeff shares another story about a man on a bed, out of the world, while his pregnant wife sat in the kitchen with an empty refrigerator and two kids. A doctor who wasn’t even an alcoholic but believed in AA helped. They got the man into King’s County Hospital, then to a job at Bethlehem Steel Works. He started coming to meetings. He got his money back on track, bringing it home every Friday. His wife had their baby. A few months later, he made his first talk. His wife came to hear him. Jeff sat at the back and thought about how much peace and contentment had come into that home—something no liquor in the world could give.
Jeff talks about the history of AA, the Saturday Evening Post article in 1941 by Jack Alexander that brought letters from all over the country asking for help. He mentions Bill W. and Dr. Bob—the power of the living example that founded it all. The doc wanted to know how Bill stopped drinking. Bill said, “If you stop drinking, doc, it’ll help me a lot.” The doc said, “Well, if you can do it, maybe I can do it.” That was one of the foundation stones.
He’s now semi-retired in Pasadena with his wife, seven grandchildren, a home, a car, and the respect of his family. Two of his daughters are married well—one overseas, one to an educator in California. Last year, he and his wife visited Scotland for the first time in 40 years. They spoke in Edinburgh, Glasgow, London. He’s 83, his sister is 84. No matter what country you go to, he says, you’ll find groups, and no matter how strange you are, you walk into a meeting and you’ve got friends.
Before he closes, he takes a moment to ask everyone a quiet question: “Where would you and I be tonight if by the grace of God we hadn’t found AA?” The answer to that, he says, must fill hearts with appreciation.
He tells a story about finding God through AA—how, in desperation early on, he knocked on a pastor’s door and asked him to come pray, thinking it might get him back in his wife’s good graces. It didn’t work the second time. But after a couple of years in AA, he realized God had never deserted him, even though Jeff had deserted God. He got on his knees one night and thanked God for guiding him to AA.
He closes by saying that life is too precious now to risk that first drink. The only way to stay away from it is to associate with the fellowship, take an active interest in the program, and in his own humble way, carry the message. Young people will carry it on. And his only hope is that when his days are over, he’ll hear St. Peter shout, “Open up those Golden Gates. Here comes a good member of AA.”
Notable Quotes
I wanted to find out how the hell you stop starting. Here was the answer coming right and left.
One is one too many and twenty is not enough.
If you had $5 in your pocket right now, you’d go out and get drunk again, wouldn’t you? You want to hide yourself behind your wall of alcoholism, kill your own conscience and let the rest of the world go by? Where’s it ever got you, Jeff?
Never get that in your head—you might not be made for twelfth-step work. Never get discouraged on a twelfth-step call. You never know just when it’s going to bloom forth and bring forth fruit.
Life has become too precious now to me. I have too much at stake to ever again take the chance of taking that first drink.
Sponsorship
Hitting Bottom
Twelfth-Step & Carrying the Message
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Step 1 – Powerlessness
- Sponsorship
- Hitting Bottom
- Twelfth-Step & Carrying the Message
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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. Well, it's a real pleasure to be here tonight. I kind of had a hell of a day today.
You know, I woke up this morning. I woke up this morning and uh I kind of taken interest in shuffleboard. I'm kind of semi-retired.
I'm over here in a capacity advisory capacity with a company I work for in New York. Came down about seven, eight years ago. And during that time, I I kind of joined a shovelboard in Pasadena where my home is now.
And uh I the wife and I have become pretty good at it. So they invited a uh a team to come in from Long Beach and play us. So I got up early this morning and the wife and I went down.
We knocked the hell out of them. And then I rushed home and changed. And then I rushed in the car and rushed over to the international airport through all the fog and smoggets down Los Angeles.
And when I got to the airport, they told me the plane wouldn't be pulling out for another 40 minutes because it was having a hell of a time getting into the airport. So after sitting there a while, I eventually caught the jet and I arrived here at West 12 and a good friend of mine, Mattie, was there to meet me and another good friend laying me out for dinner. And uh here I am after a real busy day and I think it was worthwhile when I look around the nice people here tonight.
You know, I'm a Scotsman and uh my name, of course, I'm an alcoholic and my name is Jeff Watson. Now, all of us say, "Hello, Jeff." That's the boys. And uh I was born.
The wife was born in Scotland, too. God bless her. And you know, I found as I kind of progressed through the different stages of becoming an acute alcoholic, I I kind of become more and more irresponsible with my money.
And uh when a Scotsman tells you that, you can rest assured his life has become unmanageable. You know this drinking I was quite willing to sacrifice the love of a good wife and family as long as I could keep on drinking. It had reached the stage of course where she had to go out of work and try and keep the house together.
And while I she was out, I'd be desperate for to get a dollar and I'd take anything out the house and sell it to get a drink and stuff like that. And it eventually reached the stage of course that the wife couldn't see anything in the future for her the family. This life couldn't go on.
We lived in Brooklyn then in New York. and she dragged me to court better and 4th Avenue 64th Street there in Brooklyn and the little Italian judge in those early years be sitting up on the bench and he'd listen to the wife how I used to bring smokeies in drink smoke and all this kind of stuff and then he'd ask me if I had anything to say and of course I couldn't say anything against what she had said and then he'd tell me well if you go near that house when you leave this court I'll put you away for 6 months. >> I'd have no money.
I'd have nowhere to turn. I didn't know what to do. She'd go out one door of the courtroom and I'd got the other.
And that it didn't happen before, of course. And at a time like that, I used to mate for the Smokies. What we call New York Smokies.
There was about eight or nine of us when we're all down and out up against out of the house. We'd get together and we'd get along Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn at the subways there and we'd panhandle a little while. So, we get about 30 or 40 cents between us and then we'd make for the hardware store and get to the nature alcohol.
It's used for removing, you know, paint off furniture. And then we'd get behind a garage and go through the mysterious ritual of making the mix. And then if it was in the summer would get into leafs and park down there and there the eight or nine of us would be sitting on the grass and interrupted only by invigorating snorts of this smoke.
We discussed at great length what the hell was the matter with the government and when were they going to do something for the working man? I'd hang out with that gang. We'd hang out.
We get down the bar. We get around to Sally's. We get around the mission.
We'd dispose of anything we had on that we could sell. Eventually, I'd have an old shirt, an old pair of pants, old shoes on. We'd sleep any place we could.
We'd get in a salary once in a while. God bless the Salvation Army. They give us a good night's sleep once in a while.
The only trouble was you had to be saved every night before you could get asleep. And I'd hang out with that gang for a number of days till eventually I'd reach a stage of just on the edge of going nuts. I'd be sitting in the gutter on the curb talking to myself, old shirt pants, ridiculed by a kid, pedestrians passing me in disdain kind of idea.
Those early years, that's what the alcoholic got when he reached a stage like that. And I'd be sitting there eventually I'd be picked up by the cops and what had happened in Brooklyn that slapped me into the King's County and what had happened in New York. I'd be slapped into Belleview would draw veil over the hospital the jacket for four or five days and being there for four or five weeks but they're coming out the hospital and they all they'll always give you the old stuff that they pick you up in.
I'd start old pants, old shirt, another feeling of loneliness. Feeling of self- condemnation, full of remorse. My brain was cleared up a little bit.
I didn't know which way to turn. Didn't know what to do, where to go, or what to do. And I had one question in my mind.
Why the hell am I in this predicament again? When I swore last time, I'd never get like this. Why?
Why? I had no answer, ladies and gentlemen. I had no answer.
I'd start thinking of the wife and home. How can I get home? God, how can I get home?
God, I'll never touch the stuff again. I'm through this time. God help me.
I meant it. And >> with that thought in mind and the hope that somehow I'd be able to get home somehow, >> I'd shovel off and get a job around the diners dishwashing. And my god, it was any profession should be marked unfinished business.
It's lousy dishwashing. And I'd say a few dollars a day are made in this half mind of mine that I'd never get home if I quit drinking. And I'd save those few dollars until I got on a decent front.
>> And the company I wor for I was a salesman and it had been always their habit to start drinking it. Tell me to get the hell out of there and come back when I was sobered up and I'd get back to the company and tell them never again. Never again.
and I'd get started in and I don't know we alcoholics some other if we're on the beam we have certain gifts but in a very short time I'd be producing with the best of them and then I'd contact the wife be let me come home let me give me a chance to be responsible for you and the kids and the home you don't know what audio I've gone through this last few months Give me a chance to come home. Be that good wife would listen to me. And then God help me.
I'd have to listen to her. And then All right, Jeff. We'll try it again.
We'll try it again. And I'd get home. Oh, damn.
Clean white sheets. Good food. This is the life.
No more goddamn drinking for me. This is the life. But I found I found ladies and gentlemen what many of us experienced those first year or two were in AA.
Some of us experienced this feeling the first four or five years were in AA. I found when I was home for a month or so began to get irritable and nervous. I didn't know what the hell was wrong with me.
I did not realize that this was the symptoms of this darn dogic disease. again. I'd get home out of the subway and get home and Rudy Valley was in great form those days on the radio.
The kids would be doing their homework and he'd be hauling his brains out. I'd be walking around and I'd go over the kids, will you tell me how you're able to concentrate on this homework stuff? And this guy hauling his brains out and then the wife, why don't you leave the kids alone, Jeff?
And why the hell don't you shut up? I know what I wanted. I could get a couple of drinks.
I could steady down. That's just two drinks. Steady down.
Get over this damn nervousness. There's no way of those days. With that in mind, I'd get out the hall.
The tavern was at the top of the street in Brooklyn. I'm not going to talk to nobody. I see these guys coming in the tavern every night from the subway there when I'm drinking.
They come in there, they get the one or two drinks and they go home and that's it. That's the way I'm going to be. Yeah, right.
I'm not going to talk to nobody. When I had money, I always took a bottle of a whiskey and a beer chaser. I'm going to have two out.
And I'd get in there and I'd get the first one and always have the big mirrors at the back of the counters and those Brooklyn cabins just looking at the mirror and I take the second one. God damn it, I was getting better looking. And then I'd walk out.
I felt better. I cooled down. I'd apologize to wife when I got home.
Apologize to the kids. Now that's the way to drink. Then that night lying in bed, I think to myself, but tomorrow night instead of coming home irritable, I'll make for the gin milk first and get cooled down and come home nice and get in there right off the subway at 5 or 5:30, have the first one.
I'm only going to take two, then order the second one, and then the sneaky look along the counter. and the recognition of a neighbor or somebody. Hello, Jeff.
Hello, Bob. What the hell his name was? You have a drink, Bob?
Yeah, he'll have a drink. Give him a drink. Yeah, I'm still on my second one.
So, he gets his drink and I'll finish mine. I'm walking going to walk out. This happens so many times.
And just I'm walking out by what his name is. Hey Jeff, what the hell's the matter? Can't you have a drink with me?
I had one with you. What are you rushing home for? whenever one was mean.
If it's anything, a Scotsman can refuse something for nothing. God damn it. And I'd get the other drink.
Well, you know the story. The waking up in the morning. I'm in the doghouse.
I'm sleeping alone. I still got my shoes on. Who the hell brought me home?
What time is it? What time did I get home? >> God, I got to have a drink.
I'm dying. Jesus Christ. I got to have a drink.
What time is it? Is he open yet? No thought of the wife and the kids.
The knowledge here is all over again. A drink. I got to get straightened out.
Rushing up to the tavern to get straightened out. The lemon sours and junk. Another day and another day.
And then the old stuff again. Again the court. Again the ordering out the house.
Again the smoky. Again the picking up with the cops are slapping in hospital. again outside the hospital with the same question.
Why? Why am I again like this? I had no answer.
No answer, ladies and gentlemen. And one morning on Third Avenue in Brooklyn coming out of a free bag. You know what a free bag is?
Wherever the chicken wire ly they are too. I'm unshaved and filthy. I'd been on a terrific tear and I had no money.
I'm coming out of this place. Wonder what the hell I'm going to do. I'm dying.
I've been drinking. And I heard a voice say to me, "Hello, Jeff." And looking up, I recognized a guy who worked in a different department when I worked, Jean. And he said to me, "What are you doing with yourself, Jeff?" I don't shaved or spooky right down and out.
I said, "I don't know, Dean. I'm sick." I was like this. I was all shaking.
He said, "Come on, get in the car. I'll take you down the house with me." Oh, thank God. Here's a man.
Oh, he's going to give me a drink. God, thank God. And anyway, if I don't get a drink, I'll touch him up for $2.
He get me in the car. He takes me down to his house and his wife opened the door and he said, "Do I want you to meet Mr. Watson, my dad?
You put a hand out." and she said, "I'm awfully glad to know you, Mr. Watson." I hadn't been calling Mr. Watson for quite a time, and I didn't understand it then, but I understood it later that here was sympathetic understanding.
And we got in the house, and we sat down, and I'm waiting at Jean coming out with a bottle. What the hell do you think Jean said to me? Jeff, would you like a bath?
If there was anything I didn't want to see in shape or form was water, but ask me to sit in it. Jesus. And you know when you're in a state of knows like that, you can't put your leg over the pretty bathtub.
On one leg, you'd break your neck. You're all nose. And that man, he got me in the bathtub.
And he he b me, that guy, the socks were sticking to my feet. Then he had me sit on the side of the tub in the noob and try and shave me. And then he g me one of his shirts.
Poor Jean, God rest his soul. He was 6'1. And when he give me a shirt, you think I had on a kimono, but jeez.
And he said, "Jeff, I want you to get back in the car." I I don't want I don't I'm going to get I was sick when I went in, but I'm a hell of a lot sicker now after going through all this. I said, Gina, I can't go back in that car. I'm too sick.
I'm too nervous. I had an over. She said, we're just going over the bridge in New York.
It won't take long. He said, I want to take you to some place, right? Again, you know, with the wife always balling me out, whatever she told me, drinking, I figured, well, he wants to drink outside.
She's scared, I guess. I got back in the car. As we're going over Brooklyn Bridge, he started to talk about some little thing that had just started by the name of Alcoholics Anonymous.
They had a disused mission over at 39th Street in New York. And that was where he was taking me. And he started trying to tell me that one time he he was in a pretty bad state and he'd been thrown out the house.
And I couldn't grasp what he was trying to get at my head. I knew I knew if I didn't get a drink pretty soon, I'm going to arrest. Anyway, he got me hold of this little disute mission we're using and he said there'll be a couple of guys there and he'd have to get back to the office.
He'd be back there at 5:00 that night to see me again. And sure enough, when I got up there, there were a couple of guys sitting around and they started talking to me and they knew I was going to rest. I couldn't figure what the hell I was saying.
I was answering at random, I guess. And they took me down to Belleview. I was in there five or six weeks during which time Jean visited me and while my head began to clear up I began to grasp one or two of the things that Jean was trying to convey to me and this time when I come out I had a place to go to little disuse mission on 39th Street in New York and I made for there and that night was the end of 1930 38 I attended my first meeting and after the meeting one night a few cup with the rest of the boys about 24 of us or so there and Jean said what do you think of the mean what do you think of the meeting Jeff I says listen Jean does these guys all drink he says every one of these guys can match any experience you've gone through and some of them have gone through worse Jeff.
I said, "What the hell are they all so happy about? You want me to be like these guys, Jean? You know, I got no place to sleep tonight.
I doesn't go back to the wife of the family. I don't think I'll ever get back star company again. I owe money all over Brooklyn.
I don't know which way to do or what to do. And you want me to be like these guys? Ah, Jeffy.
Nice. If you had $5 in your pocket now, you'd go out and get drunk again, huh? Again?
You want to hide yourself behind your wall of alcoholism, kill your own conscience and let the rest of the world go by? Where's it ever got you, Jeff? Listen.
Listen, Jeff. Come on along with us. Put your arm in ours and we'll try and show you the new way of life we're beginning to find.
Listen, you've only got one problem, Jeff. All these problems that you see ahead of you that you think are unsurmountable in time. In time, Jeff, they'll fade away.
You've only got one problem. Keep off the first drink. One is one too many and 20 is not enough.
God darn here was something I've been looking for for years. How many times I had taken one and 20 hadn't been enough. And he here with a living example sitting around me having coffee proven it could be done that this disease of alcoholism could be kept at bay by the power of the living example.
And boy, I wasn't interested about how to stop drinking. Jesus is when you're in a psycho ward and you're tied up in a jacket there with bars on the window. You got to stop.
I didn't want to find out how the hell you stop start stop drinking, but I wanted to find how the hell do you stop starting? And here was the answers coming right and left. And that night, Jean took me down to the sally at 41st at 41st at 39th Street.
It's 41st Street where the mission was. Took me down to the Sally at 39th Street. And I got in he got in touch with the brigadier and we got got in the dometry with a man there that night.
The next morning, the brigadier gave me a job in the kitchen. You know, the trucks going out, the der's coming in and whatnot. And again, I'm right back with the dishes.
$2 a day. But every night I made for a and it began to work. It began to work.
I hung off that first drink. >> Ah yeah. There's anything I admire in Alcoholics Anonymous.
>> When a man or a woman gets up and says, "My name is so and so and I'm an alcoholic. I haven't lost my home. >> I haven't lost my job.
But I'm an alcoholic. >> I admire those people. They're smart.
They've had the King's Cardi in the Belleview in their own bedroom and they've taken their own inventory. Inventory. Inventory.
God damn. I got to get educated again. They've taken their own inventor.
What is it, John? Inventory. Good.
And having realize that this drinking instead of them handling the drinking, the drinkings begin to handle them. And then life as a result is becoming a kind of unmanageable. It's interfering with their home life and their job and realizing it's becoming a serious problem.
And if by the grace of God they've been directed AA to AA and in listening to the speakers the realization of the progressiveness of this disease brought to them a realization to do something about it. Now we have thousands of those kind of people in AA doing a wonderful job today carrying a message. I admire those people and I also admire the people whom come up on a platform and tell you that they a little time and then had these so-called slips but they come back the kids guts to come back and they commenced to do a wonderful job in AA and have a wonderful story to convey to us.
Yes, I made calls in hospitals on people whom have been in AA 10, 12 and even up to 15 years >> and it always been the same answer to the question why. They found that maybe after a while they knew who was going to speak that night they didn't go to a meeting and then they began to get a habit with them to a mis meeting and then they got in with company somewhere where they didn't nobody knew that belonged to AA probably where cocktails were going and they thought well what if what they know that try it they'd probably be able to beat it but it never works that way cuz one sure an alcoholic, ladies and gentlemen. And this is actual statistics that these people can tell us.
Once they take that first one and get that create that compulsion to carry on drinking, they can tear down in two or three days that which they may have built up in the last 5, 10 or 15 years. They revert right back to where they were before they came into. These people have a wonderful story and I always like to be the first to shake the hand when they come back because it is through these people that conveys to me the fact that by taking an active interest in the AA program and the realization of the many blessings I've received since coming into this program, the ability to bring a little happiness and contentment to those whom are nearest and dearest to me, to bring a little peace of mind and contentment to myself.
These are things that all the money in the world can't buy for us. But he gives it all free and only ask one thing in return. A little effort.
A little effort. Keep off the first drink. And by attending these meetings and taking an act of interest in the program, here we have the power of the living example.
Yeah, those early years. >> I remember 19 41, I think it was, Jack Alexander brought out a an article in the Saturday Evening Post. It had quite an impact throughout the country.
The Saturday Evening Post had quite a big circulation at that time. And he brought out an article on a And as a result of that, we were smothered with letters in New York that our group from all over the country. Some of these letters would break your heart asking for help.
They were from villages, hamlets, ranches, towns, cities to help them. We didn't have the literature, but we did try to the best of our ability >> to cover as many calls as we could around New York and Brooklyn and so on. We were very enthusiastic.
We had a lot to learn in 12step work. We'd go out individually. We had to learn through experience that it takes two to make a 12step call.
We have to learn it when a wife phons in >> and she says her husband's drinking come along and save him and you go there and he you don't he doesn't know you're coming. You're in a hell of a mess. We have to learn to get the man the phone, not us.
I remember I remember one calling those early years in Brooklyn a call coming in from 86. I thought I'd go over and make a call full of ambition like we all doing individually. This where we had to learn to take two of us.
And I got to this house, nice house, nice little home. I knocked at the door and the big guy in a red robe answered the door. He was unshaved and so on.
And one look at him. I was I knew he was on a terrific tea. And I said, "How do you do?" He's about half shot.
His wife wasn't in. and she had done the phone. He didn't know I was coming.
So I said, "How'd it do?" I said, "Uh, I'm uh my name is Watson. I'm from an organization we have here in New York, Alcoholics Anonymous, and I understand you're having a little trouble with your drinking, and I thought maybe I could come over and help you. This guy's about 6 foot with this long red robe on, you know." He says, "What?" And I repeated it again.
Yeah. Come here. So I got inside and he got tradition chair and I go home there and I sat in one of the chairs and he stand over me.
Where do you see you from? I said I'm from Alcoholics Anonymous, an organization. I said there's a movement that we have here that's helping each other keep off drinking.
Yeah. >> Where's your identification? I says, "I have no identification.
Where? Where? Where am I?" He said, "Where am I?
out. out." He said, "And he went through a door and I heard him struggling. I don't know what the hell he was doing in the next room." But in about 3 minutes or four minutes, he come in.
And when he come in, he had a pre priest badge on this big red rope. And then he had his belt and the gun hanging right in front of his spectation. down in between his leg.
Now he said, "You see who I am? We've got a lot of people getting raped around here." He says, "You got no identification. Who the hell do I know who you are?" So I stood up as close as I could to him.
I didn't want that hand to get down. Here was a guy half nut and he had a gun. This is this where I learned to take two on these steps.
And I stood as close as I could to him and so he couldn't get a hand down and I started talk and I really talked and while I was talking to him close right up to him I kind of swung him around a little bit and I got my hand on that door that I came in and when I got a hand on that handle out of that door like a shut out of hell. You know some of us feel that we're not made for 12step work. No, no, no, no.
Never get that in your head, ladies and gentlemen. You might know some people that seems to be bringing in, I think, what you call here in California, you call them pigeons. I don't know why, but never get discouraged on a 12step call.
We started one of two groups in New York, Flood, Bush, Bronx, one St. George want Bay Ridge about two years later I was due to talk at this meeting at Bay Ridge and then walk this guy and I kind of recognize him and I went up to him. I said, "Uh, how are you?
Do you remember me?" No. I says, I see you're at the meeting tonight. Have you been here before?
No. He said, "I've never been at a meeting." or some, "Oh, you're the fellow come to my" I said, "You live on 860, D." Yeah, you're the guy that talk about alcoholics anonymous. Yeah.
He said, "You know, I'm in trouble with the department just now." He says, "I'm up for in front of the commissioner." And he said, "Uh, I was still drinking. I don't know which way to turn." He says, "I I intend to cut it out. So, I've come down here to learn something about a I welcomed him and so on like that." And he sat through the meeting.
He seemed to be very much impressed. We kind of followed him up on his trial and he got through all right. We spoke to the commissioner there and so on.
This man seemed to be sincere and he carried on in AA. George turned out to be a very good man. He started that idea today throughout these this this country and other countries and these big syndicates Jupon and all these big auto manufacturing companies and so on.
They've started their own group. There was one time they had no other alternative than to fire a good mechanic or a good man if he was drinking or was under the was an alcoholic. They didn't know what the hell to do with him and they lose a good man.
But George Gandota, the commissioner of New York after being an AA for a year or so, suggested to him that they try and form a group in the Metropolitan Police Department of New York City. The commissioner were very much in favor of it and they rented a room beside St. Pat there and they started a meeting on a Tuesday night just with policemen.
I had the pleasure throughout the years of talking to that group three or four or five times. Last time I spoke, I think there was about 125 of them membership on the men of Palm Peace. All those boys that have been in serious trouble, but they're now doing swearing to work and many of them advanced themselves into higher positions all through the seed of AA being set in this guy's brain at the time he ordered me out the house.
So never get discouraged if you leave a little seed of AA. You never know just when it's going to bloom forth and bring forth fruit. George has passed on now.
God rest his soul. But they do have a memorial in their meeting room. The priest do in memory of him of the splendid work he done and how many helped in the Metropol Police Department.
This is great the way they say he has worked. A guy when you walk into a house recalling one more incident and you see a guy lying on the bed. He's out of this world.
He You can't talk to him. The His bed is all upset. There's filth and dirt all over the floor.
He's sick. He He's out of this world. He can't talk to Tom.
>> His little wife is in the kitchen. There's not a thing in the ice box. She's seven months pregnant.
There's two kids. She don't know what to do. You get in touch with a little doctor in Bay Ridge who was very interested in AA although he wasn't an alcoholic.
He comes up and tells her he'll see her through a confinement not to worry. You eventually get into the King's County. You visit him while he's in there.
He's a river down to Bethlehem Steel Works on Third Avenue. When he comes out, he comes to a meeting or two. He begins to get a hold of the AA program.
He gets back on his job and he's bringing his money home every Friday night. This little one has brought into the world. He's got three kids now.
And when Tom's been in about four or five months, he gets up to make his first talk in his own humble way to try and carry the message. And that night, his little wife comes down to hear Tom make his first talk. She's so proud.
And you look at the peace of mind and contentment on that wife's face. And you see Tom up there in his own humble way trying to convey the message of AA and realizing the predicament had come and that little womb was in only a few months ago. And as you sit at the back there and you think to yourself, maybe you had a little to do with bringing that happiness and contentment into that home, you get a feeling within you that all the liquor in the world couldn't give you.
I think it was Sam Johnson that said, "If you live right and do right, there's very little of go wrong. >> But if you live wrong and do wrong, there's very little of go right. My god, he he's right.
>> There's none of us will be perfect. >> I just got over 27 years n I'm not perfect by a long way. There's no differentiation between my problem and the problem of the newcomer in here tonight.
Maybe for his first time. I may have a little longer soriety, but the problem is exactly the same. There's no seniority in AA.
>> It is only four weeks ago that I addressed the Young People's Hollywood Group. They call themselves to meet on a Sunday morning about 11:30 on Wilshire Boulevard. I went down there to speak to them.
There's about a hund of them. I think the average age would be around about 22 to 23. Some of them in there 15 and 16.
go girls and I don't know what and what they could tell you boy would knock you for a go but here they were trying to get aa as I said to them I said it makes me proud a will be here I think as long as United States is here you young people are left to carry the message we may be what we phrase as old-timers but many of us are passing along You people will carry the message, you've got something in life to look forward to, a life of good. As I say, we'll never be perfect. I still like to go to the racetrack.
God damn, I like to see Hollywood and the waterfalls and Santaita with its palm trees and those lousy horses. I'll let you do some 12step walk amongst them suckers. And so we go along.
>> Yeah. I got seven grandchildren now. Two girls are married very well.
One of them is in Holland at present with her husband. He's a big shot of some of the corny company having he's an architectural engineer or something. Sets up these refineries or something.
He's over there now for three or four years with handling about 4 or 500 men. I understand. The other girl is married to one of the leading education men you have here in California.
We've done awfully well. Last year, the wife and I made a trip to Scotland. First time in 40 years.
Sister over there, she's 84, the last of the family. She's the eldest. >> And darling, I'm 83.
Someone like that. None of you go girls. I'm not 83 yet.
And we visited the people in Scotland. I spoke in Edinburgh and Glasgow, London. God damn.
And they're wonderful. No matter it seems to me, no matter what country you go to, Australia, any place at all, you'll find groups. And no matter how strange you are in a strange city, you just go to a meeting and you've got friends.
Let me stop talking for about 10 or 15 seconds while you and I ask ourselves a question tonight. Here we are sitting together on a Saturday night. We're contented.
We're with good people. People that speak our language and know what problem we have. And by knowing we are assisting each other by the fact of being here shown that we can live this way of life and enjoy it.
But let us ask ourselves one question. >> Where would you and I be tonight? What would our life be like tonight if by the grace we had grace of God we hadn't found a >> Yeah.
Surely the answer to that must fill our hearts with appreciation of this great program. And those two men, Bill and old doc, Bill and Bro in New York, they get a kind what he call a spiritual experience. He's a little office stuff five or six weeks.
The old doc up got wise to it. They were great friends. And the duck's wife wrote to Bill and asked him and his wife to come up and visit him.
They wanted to know how he stopped drinking because the duck was on a terrific drunk. And Bill went up the background. And the dog wanted to know how he stopped drinking.
And Bill said, "You know, if you stop drinking, doc, it'll help me a lot." The doc said, "Well, if you can do it, maybe Bill, maybe I can do it." >> Here was one of the foundation stones of the alcoholic synonymous program being laid. The power of the living example, and it began to work. And along came the second God-given inspiration of these two men carry the message.
and him and her sister, the two of them and assisted nature went around the hospitals of Akran picking up the derelcts and the first group of alcoholics anonymous was started in Akan. Then Bill came down to the Brooklyn was thrown out of a room and I was there. So the derelct he was driving in there and then they opened up our place up at 39 41st Street New York is extended.
Yeah, we have a lot to be thankful for as we sit here tonight. >> I think one of the greatest things that I appreciate so much in aa I'm now kind of semi-retired. I'm out here kind of an advisor capacity for the company.
We bought a little home in Pasadena. >> We have our own home. We're going over to visit the daughter this coming summer.
There's been great happiness in my home. Very proud of grandchildren. I think they like the grandpa.
>> I want to take you back to that gutter sitting there a lonely unhappy lost soul held in contempt by his fellow man. The very said, "You see that Mut sitting there talking to himself? Someday he'll be a respected citizen.
Someday he may have the respect of his fellow man. Someday his own home, his own car, and the respect of his family." Yeah. >> Yeah.
Works. You bet it does. If you want it, it'll work.
>> It'll work. And this is a serious disease. Don't kid yourself.
>> You have any doubts, my friend. You You get to New York City, get into Chicago, LA, Frisco, any of these big cities. I know from personal experiences in New York City at Belleview there, the barge pulls up every Tuesday morning at 10:30.
Every Tuesday morning, it pulls up and they take anywhere from 25 to 30 boxes out of the ice house. people picked up in that big city. They don't know where they come from.
They don't know who they are. >> Yeah, I lived with those. I lived with those kind of people at one time.
In some god-given way, they know they're on the last last drive or something. And at one time in their life, I presume they were respected and loved by someone in their younger days. And rather than let them know how they died, they remove every piece of identification from them and when they're picked up, nobody knows who they are, where they come from.
And I put on that barge every Tuesday morning and taken up the island and put in the poorest grave. I don't care how much money you have once you've lost control of drinking and you persist and carry on drinking. If you have plenty of money, you'll finish in a nut house.
nut house. And if you have no money, you'll finish, as many of us did, down the g. It has been a pleasure being here tonight about time.
It's been a pleasure, Don. It's been a pleasure seeing you and Betty here on our feet again. I had the pleasure of addressing I think your second meeting of this fellowship meeting at Don Don invited me up from Los Angeles.
It was raining that night and god damn it, it's raining again tonight. It was nice of a little girl Louise to ask us up ask me up here and it was very very nice of Marty to meet me and take me down to that wala who only runs that restaurant. Got a free dinner there.
Boy, that was worth a trip alone. And I can't figure how a guy with five bars in his place is able to keep sober. You got to hand it to him.
I was saying to Marty there, God's sake, our trouble was trying to get the money to get more drink. Can you imagine, Marty, if we had five bars would have been dead years ago, he's got to be handed a lot of credit. And in closing, ladies and gentlemen, I'm catching a friend back in the morning.
I'm staying at the senator if any of you girls want to know where I'm living. The wife's not with me tonight. She was with me last time.
We have about four people visiting us just now and she's busy with them. That's why I got to get her away back in the early in the morning. I wish she had been here tonight cuz couple of years after here I got back home as as you realize and she's done a tremendous amount of fine a works and started up the Alan groups in New York.
She's been a great worker and it would have been a I'd been very proud if she'd been able to make it here tonight. We're getting along fine. God, when I think of getting over those drunks, I used to lie in bed there swearing that Jesus was going to die.
I'd be in the dark house, of course, nobody in the house would be talking to me and not here in the kitchen, you know, doing the dishes, not swearing, I'm going to die. B, will you squeeze me in? And then that beautiful romantic voice coming back about coming squeeze your goddamn neck.
Jesus. Now that's all changed. And talking about our fine minister over there that spoke so wonderfully well to Matt.
I thought he had a wonderful message for us. >> You know, I never went to church for many years previous to AA. The wife would take the kids to Sunday school.
Of course, she's a good Presbyterian, but I never bothered church some other I didn't disbelieve that there must be some body in supreme command. The stars, the sun, the flowers, a thousand another one things a man will never be able to understand. But I feel that God does, I guess.
But I never attended church or anything. But at the end of these drunks, I was continuously alabine to the wife as you've heard me about. I'd never drink again.
God give me another chance. and I'll never drink again. And I had never worked that way.
And I was reaching the stage now where she was going to take me to court several times. You know, that'll bring it to that stage. And this morning I I woke up and hell I was in the doghouse.
I didn't know which way to turn to do. And I walked out the house. I was in the How can I get back in the good books of the wife, you know, and the kids?
I want to want somebody to talk to. Hell, nobody talk to me in the house. And I'm walking up there and I come to 56th Street and there's a little church there, the little home next to where the minister lived.
And a new idea struck me. I thought, I never tried this on her before. Maybe she'll go for this cuz I knew she went to church with the kids.
And I knocked at this door, this little parson, and a young fellow come to the door about 30 or 35. And I and I was shaking and sick. I wanted sympathy and I didn't know where the hell to get it.
And I said to him, I said, "Uh, I'm having a lot of trouble down my house." I said, "I've been drinking pretty heavy." And I said, "I'd like you to come down to my house with me and maybe we can pray." This is a new angle. See? And he listened to me and he he said, "Yeah, all right.
We'll go down." So I take him down the house and anything I dragged in, of course, she ignores. But the man opened his mind. I I be this is a man from the church.
As you know, I haven't got a church for years. Maybe this is the cause of me drinking. This is a new stunt.
I was trying to get in a good book. But really, he started talk. She realized was a man of the church.
And then he suggested after a little talking that we go in the kitchen and we kneel at the kitchen table and pray for God's help. >> So the three of us went in the kitchen. The three of us kneel down at the table and the two of them were praying like hell there.
And and then when we get up she said to the pastor, she said, "Would you like a cup of coffee?" And then she looked at me and she said, "Would you like a cup, too?" It's the first time she spoke to me for about four weeks and I was in Jesus. Nine weeks later, I'm in the same predicament and like all crazy alcoholics, if it worked before, it'll work again. So, up back to the down pastor's house again.
And I knock at the door and sure enough, this about 10:00 in the morning came to the door, the same guy. And I'm say, "Do you remember me? He says, "Yes, but I want you to come down and pray." >> And as my name is Jeff Watson, I don't know to this night, ladies and gentlemen, whether he said I was on the road to hell or to go to hell.
But he didn't come down. He didn't come down afraid. Yeah.
So, this is the kind of life. What a life. What a life.
What a life. And after a couple of years in AA, in realization of the many blessings that seem to be coming my way, although I may have deserted God, I began to feel that he had never deserted me. And I in my own solitude one night got on my knees and started thanking him for having guided me to AA and to try and help and guide me to keep with it that he has done.
As our minister said tonight, we just ask for guidance and if we have faith, we will receive it. And I have found with a sincere faith in God and a belief in his program that life has become too precious now to me. I have too much at stake to ever again take the chance of taking that first drink.
And the only way I can keep away from that first drink and continue on the life that I've been leading these last few years is to associate and take an active interest in the program and in my own humble way try and carry the message because we we're getting kind of old now. Not many young people in this room tonight, fine people. >> You will carry it on.
I know. >> And I only hope, ladies and gentlemen, that when my days are over and if I'm fortunate enough to come to St. Peter at the Golden Gate, I only hope I'll hear him shout at the top of his voice, "Open up those Golden Gates.
Here comes a good member of AA." Thank you very much. >> >> 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.