I Couldn’t Even Manage a Fishbowl – AA Speaker – Jerry J.
AA speaker Jerry J. shares his 21-year drinking career, failed attempts to control his drinking, and how recognizing his powerlessness and self-centeredness led to spiritual awakening in recovery.
Jerry J., a recovering lawyer from Dallas, spent 21 years drinking a quarter bottle of whiskey daily while maintaining an outwardly successful life—until New Year’s Eve 1972 when he passed out at 5 p.m. and had to cancel plans with friends. In this AA speaker tape, he walks through his denial, his wife’s Alanon program, a failed year-and-a-half attempt at controlled drinking, and the moment he finally reached out to Alcoholics Anonymous with nowhere else to turn.
Jerry J. shares his story of being a high-functioning alcoholic lawyer who couldn’t stop drinking despite his success, his wife’s Alanon involvement, and a failed controlled drinking experiment. He describes how recognizing his powerlessness and self-centeredness—illustrated by an unforgettable fishbowl metaphor—became the foundation for his spiritual awakening in AA. Jerry emphasizes that recovery is fundamentally spiritual, requiring surrender to a power greater than oneself, and that the real work of sobriety is carrying the message to other alcoholics through sponsorship and service.
Episode Summary
Jerry J. opens with humor and humility, establishing himself as a lawyer, not the Cowboys owner, and as the spouse of an Alanon member. His story is one of paradox: material success masking complete spiritual and emotional bankruptcy. He had a thriving law practice, a wife, kids, a nice house, and money in the bank—yet his life was unmanageable in the way that mattered most.
Jerry spent years chasing what he calls “more, better, and different,” believing that each new achievement or acquisition would finally make him happy. Instead, he drank every evening, sometimes leaving work early because he couldn’t wait until 5 p.m. to get home and start drinking. Doctors showed him test results proving his liver was failing. He ignored them. By his own account, he was drinking a quarter bottle of whiskey a day, yet he convinced himself he had everything under control.
The turning point arrived when his wife went to Alanon—without telling him. When he discovered her involvement, he was furious. As a trial lawyer, he used every manipulation tactic he could devise: threats, logic, promises, attempts to reason with her. She remained unmoved. In one pivotal conversation, she planted a seed that would eventually crack his denial. When he asked how he could know if he was an alcoholic, she suggested a “controlled drinking test”: two drinks a day for six months. If he could do it, he wasn’t an alcoholic.
This is where Jerry’s story becomes a masterclass in self-deception. He tried. He failed spectacularly, running that test for a year and a half without passing it once. He’d pour two martinis before dinner, promise himself that was all, then find himself at the bottle anyway—sometimes because he “forgot” the test, sometimes because he’d had a bad day, sometimes because he decided the test wasn’t happening. He even began sneaking bottles into the house, lying to himself and his wife about how much he was drinking. The thing was, nobody knew about the test but him—which meant there was no one to stop him.
New Year’s Eve 1972, he made one last attempt. He was supposed to go out to dinner with friends and be home by midnight. His wife had even warned him. He woke up at 10:15 p.m., having passed out at 5 p.m., and realized he’d ruined the evening and forced his wife to call their friends with apologies. That night, he got a drink to find oblivion. He prayed it would be his last.
The next morning, sitting on the edge of the bed with no excuses left, Jerry told his wife he was going to try quitting drinking. She immediately offered him AA books. He threw them against the wall. He would handle this himself.
Two days sober, he was desperate—shaking, sweating, unable to sleep, his stomach in constant rebellion. He snuck into the kitchen and grabbed his wife’s 24-hour meditation book, opened it to January 2nd (his January, since he’d gotten sober on January 1st, 1973), and read: “Alcohol has ruined your life.” The meditation suggested giving the drinking problem to God. Jerry’s response was honest frustration: he’d been looking for God his whole life but couldn’t find him. He’d tried churches, been baptized, been dunked, even sprinkled—all searching for proof. Nothing had worked because his surrender was conditional: he would believe in God if God proved himself first.
That day, desperate and alone, he threw the little book on the table and prayed what he calls a real prayer—not a conditional one, but a genuine admission: “God, if you’re there, I’m going to give you this drinking problem. If you take it, I may do some more business with you.” The obsession didn’t lift immediately. He still wanted to drink. But the next morning, something had shifted. He knew he would drink that day unless he got help from a person—someone with skin on them. He called AA central office and got connected with a woman who cut through his resistance with blunt wisdom. When he said he was too busy to go to meetings every day, she pointed out that he’d been drinking every evening, so he’d actually have plenty of free time.
His first group, the Town and Country Group, felt too good to be true. These people had years and years of sobriety and seemed to have their lives together. Jerry felt like an imposter among them—surely they didn’t have real drinking problems like his. But one night a man named David came in from out of state with only six months sober. He’d been kept in a facility, “chained to the hydrant,” as he put it, until he did his Fourth Step. Jerry recognized himself in David: a real alcoholic dealing with real symptoms. David told him they needed to get serious, go to meetings every night, work the steps, sponsor people, do the work of AA. They found a meeting above a 7-Eleven and Jerry literally cased it like he was planning a robbery—checking for cameras, looking for an inconspicuous way in via the fire escape—before he committed.
The meeting changed his life. He was exposed to the program of attraction, not persuasion. People welcomed him without judgment. They told him it was okay to be himself. They worked the steps with him and taught him about the spiritual dimension of recovery—not recovery from drinking, but recovery of spiritual contact with a power greater than himself.
This is where the fishbowl comes in—perhaps the most memorable part of Jerry’s talk. While taking his failed controlled drinking test, he’d bought an aquarium. He spent time managing every detail: the gravel, the plants, the fish he selected, the lighting, the feeding schedule. He controlled when it was feast and when it was famine. One fish, though, wouldn’t follow the rules. It would nip at others, causing chaos in the bowl. Jerry would slap the side to remind them all who was in charge. He’d catch the rogue fish with a net, hold it in his lap while he had a drink, then put it back. After several warnings, if the fish didn’t learn its lesson, he’d flush it down the toilet and buy a new, better-trained one.
Then, sitting in a meeting, listening to someone talk about unmanageability and self-centeredness, Jerry had a sudden realization: *He was the God in that fishbowl.* He was running the whole operation, controlling everything, deciding who belonged and who didn’t. And it hit him—he couldn’t even manage a fishbowl, so what in the world made him think his life wasn’t unmanageable?
From that point forward, Jerry’s life began to change. Small miracles accumulated. People got sober who everyone thought were hopeless. Families were reunited. His parents, who had been hurt and disappointed by his drinking, came to AA meetings with him after he sent them a copy of the Big Book. His mother, who had 75 years of continuous sobriety herself, became his cheerleader. When she got cancer years later while he was sober, Jerry was present and available—completely different from the man who had hidden in vodka and coffee when she first got sick.
The biggest spiritual experience came when his mother was dying. She had fought cancer, gone into remission, then had a relapse. In the hospital, knowing she might not survive the surgery, she gathered the family and asked them to lean on Jerry. “He’ll be your strength,” she said. During those two weeks of her decline, Jerry never once thought about taking a drink. Same boy, same mother, same cancer, same suffering—but now he had contact with a power greater than himself that made all the difference.
Jerry closes his share by emphasizing that the purpose of sobriety isn’t just to stay sober—it’s to reach other drunks. He notes that many people in AA take cakes for their first few years, then disappear because they’re not involved in working with newcomers. “They’re manufacturing drunks faster than we can save them,” he says. Doctors can’t fix alcoholism. Ministers can’t fix it. Only people who have been exactly where the newcomer is, who have worked the steps and found a spiritual solution, can break that cycle. That’s the real power AA has been given.
Notable Quotes
Better than I deserve. And a lot of you could echo that.
The steps of AA are designed, I believe, to cause you and I to get in touch with reality, to find the great reality deep within ourselves, so that we can live a life that allows us to be happy, joyous, and free without any kind of chemical altering our minds.
I couldn’t understand what in the hell was wrong with my dog. Why was he getting hold of this thing he obviously couldn’t handle. Turned out it wasn’t hogs at all. Alcoholics are the same way. We can’t see it. That old dog that seemed to be the answer to his problem. But he had a deeper problem.
God, if you’re there, I’m going to give you this drinking problem. If you take it, I may do some more business with you.
They’re manufacturing drunks faster than we can save them. The landslide is going the other way and we’re the only hope most of those people have.
Self-Centeredness & Ego
Spiritual Awakening
Sponsorship
Step Work
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Powerlessness
- Self-Centeredness & Ego
- Spiritual Awakening
- Sponsorship
- Step Work
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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.
Welcome to Sober Sunrise, a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience, strength, and hope from around the world. We bring you several new speakers weekly, so be sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at sober-rise.com.
Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. >> Hi, I'm Jerry Jones and I'm an alcoholic.
>> I don't own the Dallas Cowboys. >> I don't have any football players at all. Uh, I am a not only an alcoholic, but I'm a uh recovering lawyer.
I've been able to refrain from practicing since January the 1st of 1998. Uh, I've been uh married to your Alanon speaker tomorrow almost almost 46 years, my wife Billy. that entitles me to tell you that I am the adult uh spouse of an Alanon.
Uh I want to thank the committee and everyone for having me here. Willie and I have been treated like royalty. We've got baskets of fruit and goodies of all kinds in our room.
We've been squired down here by Taylor who brought drove us his down in his car and we've uh we've just had a wonderful time thus far and I expect to continue. I think I'll enjoy this program in about an hour. Uh and the rest of it will be pretty good.
I think we um people ask me frequently, how are you? And my response has for many years since January 1st, 1973 been better than I deserve. And a lot of you could echo that.
I'm I'm sure we are entirely we're blessed beyond measure to be members of Alcoholics Anonymous to have this program to live in the country we live in to associate with the people we have around us uh going on a similar way. I want to thank each one of you for being here because you're being here is a celebration of the fact that AA works. And gosh, I don't know how many of you are here, but there's a bunch of you.
And u I hope I get to meet a lot of you and and uh and to celebrate with you the miracle of recovery. I u I don't know what happened to me or why I turned out to be alcoholic. I know I did my part in trying to be an alcoholic.
I drank every time I had a chance. Uh I uh came to Alcoholics Anonymous totally out of reality. You know, the steps of AA are designed, I believe, to cause you and I to get in touch with reality, to find the great reality deep within ourselves, so that we can live a life that allows us to be happy, joyous, and free without any kind of chemical altering our minds.
That's worked for millions of people since 1935. And to be a part of that is probably the one of the biggest miracles of the 20th century. Uh when I got here, I didn't uh particularly like the label alcoholic.
There were a lot of things I didn't like. I didn't like the fact that that book that everybody talked about all the time said that I was bodily and mentally different from my fellows. I did not want to be bodily and mentally different from my fellows.
I couldn't understand why I was and I still don't know why I was. But today I can very readily assure you that I am. Our book says that uh you can tell whether you're one or not by asking yourself a couple of questions.
You know says that alcoholics have a uh a bodily reaction to ethyl alcohol that has a phenomena of craving attached to it. Now, I tried to think that craving was uh like I craved a cigarette. It was a little different from that.
What happened to me was when I take a drink of whiskey or beer or aqua Velva or whatever the hell it was, you know, it would go down and hit the bottom and you get that, you know, the feeling that woo when it gets there spread warmly over your body and a a some kind of signal was sent to my brain. And the signal was, I think we'll have another one of those and another one and another one until we've had way too many. The other thing it says is that we have an obsession of the mind.
That alcoholism centers in our mind. I don't know what you know about obsessions. I didn't know much about them, but I've come to believe they're pretty simple.
They are a great big thought. It's so big it pushes all the other thoughts out of your mind. Memory goes, plans for the future go, everything goes except the thought.
And my thought was a drink would improve this situation. Whatever the situation was, a drink would make it a little better. So when you hook those two together, you have a very powerful enemy.
So powerful that most of us were imprisoned by it. We were not free. Our theme this weekend is freedom through action.
Well, first you have to recognize that you are imprisoned before you can really do anything about it. And I had to find that I was imprisoned. Looking back on my life today, I can't imagine how I missed it.
But the cunning nature of alcoholism is that the victim is the last person to know he's got it. And I'm sure a lot of you can identify with that. I didn't know it.
I thought I was drinking what I wanted to drink. Sometimes I wondered why I drank as much as I did, but I thought I was doing what I wanted to do. And I didn't realize how powerless I was over that commodity uh for a long time.
The next thing you got to recognize is that recovery has nothing to do with alcohol. Recovery from this condition, this disease, whatever you want to call it, is a spiritual recovery. You have to uh have a spiritual awakening and bring a power greater than yourself into recovery.
if you're really going to get the full full benefit of this program. I can illustrate this story I was told I had to tell about this. Um I uh I was raised on a farm out in West Texas.
My grandparents on both sides were homesteaders out in eastern New Mexico in West Texas and and I was raised out on that farm and grew up there. And I had a dog. My dog's name was Patches.
Patches had an experience one day that uh that illustrates the disease of alcoholism about as good as I can do it. Uh Patches was laying in our front yard. He didn't have a problem in the world.
In fact, he was right at the peak of his pace. He was popular and well known in the community because a few days before that, he had whipped a badger. Now, badgers are bad news for dogs.
And the badger weighed one pound more than patches. We know because we weighed them both after patches killed the badger. So he was people were dropping by to see this dog that could kill badgers.
And he was wellreceived in the community. He was popular. He had no competition.
He was wellfed, loved. Everything was going good for patches. He had no reason to do anything like he did.
Um he uh he was laying there with no problems. It was quiet and peaceful in the barnyard. And a neighbor's hog came strolling down the road and turned into our place.
Big ugly hog, long yellow tusk on either side. And Patches made a bulldog-like decision to get hold of the hog. and he was uh he went out and he and he got hold of the hog and it made quite a bit of noise when he did it because he was growling, barking, hog was squealing and he and bulldogs I don't know if you know this or not but when they get hold of something they're not likely to turn it loose very easily.
They just lock on. Well, he got hold and he had locked on and he was a dog of great conviction. Uh, for example, with the badger, after he killed him every day for a week, he went up there in the field and picked up the carcass and shook hell out of it just to let it know that if you want to come back through reincarnation or whatever, he was there and ready to play.
So, this is the same dog that's got hold of the hog and he is going to hang on to that. My dad comes running out of the barn to see what this commotion is and he gets in the middle of that right away kicking hogs and dogs and trying to get them to turn l getting patches turned loose. Everybody knew the solution.
Patches turn loose the damn hog. Turn him loose. You got hold of something you can't handle.
Turn him loose. Well, the hog drug him alongside the barn until he came loose. And then he wheeled around and cut him across the shoulder and neck with one of those tusk.
And dad was able to get hold of patches and he drug him out of that fight and uh sent me to the barn to get some pine tar to stop the bleeding. and we patched him up and things settled down and thank God that was over. You know, uh we could get back to our lives.
Uh mom had come out. She had seen me trying to get in the fight and she was trying to take care of her kid and I was trying to take protect my dog. You know, everybody was involved in this thing and we uh we turned him loose in a little bit and he went right back and got hold of that damn hog again.
And it's the same deal. It was barking and squealing and kicking and cussing and mother ringing her hands and trying to get me out of it. And dad matter in hell fighting the dog and the hog.
And finally he came off again. Everybody knew the solution. Hog knew it.
We knew it. Everybody knew it. Turn loose of that damn hog.
Patches. Turn him loose. Well, when he came off again, Dad recognized that Patches was not himself.
I mean, I think the psychiatrist among us would say that his emotions were in charge of his intellect. That means you're crazy as hell. That's what that means.
He was hooking up with something that was a lot tougher and bigger than he was. And he wasn't winning. So, dad decided when you get people that are crazy as hell, what you do is you, some of you know this, you get committed.
And we're not talking about making decisions here. We're talking about locking people up. And we uh took a chain and we tied patches to the water hydrant and we ran water on him to cool him off and stop the blood.
And uh dad got in the pickup and drove the hog off to remove temptation. You know, they've always been trying to do that. Uh, and I was given the job of being Patch's first counselor, I guess.
Um, I sat with him and asked him deep and penetrating questions like, you know, does your family enjoy it when you get hold of hogs? Have you ever ever had a good day getting hold of hogs? And in about 2 hours, uh, I had him cured.
You could tell he was cured. He was laying on the ground. He wasn't tugging at the chain anymore.
He, uh, his tongue was loled out and he had that little bulldog smile on his face. And he was wagging his little stub of a tail, you know, just back and forth. So I went see my father, the warden, and told him that uh, Patches was well.
Well, Dad didn't take my word for it. He'd had a little bad luck with patches that day. So he came walking around him and looked at him and scratched his ears and you know he said, "I think you're right.
Turn him loose." So I turned him loose. He had to go two miles to find that hog that time. Do can anybody out there identify with that dog?
I I I of course can identify with I was one of the first hoggonons in West Texas. Uh I couldn't understand what in the hell was wrong with my dog. Why was he getting hold of this thing he obviously couldn't handle.
Turned out it wasn't hogs at all. A little bit later he got hold of a cattle truck. Just one.
Just one. A lot of people who have our disease get hold of cattle trucks. A lot of people don't have anyone to back them off or tie them up and confine them.
Lots of people die from this condition. And it seems like the solution is so obvious. Turn loose of the hog.
Turn loose and stop doing that thing which is destroying you. But we can't see it. That old dog that seemed to be the answer to his problem.
But he had a deeper problem. You see, it was whatever sent him out there to get that hog in the first place. And what sent him back again and again and again in the face of overwhelming evidence that he could not handle that hog.
He was powerless over the hog. Alcoholics Anonymous makes no claim that it can stop that urge to keep you fixing you permanently so you can get hold of hogs. It doesn't make you any better able to handle whiskey than you ever were.
And matter of fact, all the evidence that we see is that if you have this condition, it's going to stay with you the rest of your life. not only going to stay with you, but it's going to make you more susceptible as time goes on to the effects of alcohol. We used to have a deal in my group at home that if anybody ever found a way to drink successfully, they had to promise to come back and post a notice on the bulletin board about how they did it.
We had a lot of people leave, but we never got any notes back. Never got no one ever successfully drank again that I knew of. We have to find a way to live comfortably and happily without chemically altering reality.
Isn't that what booze does for us? Don't we kind of chemically alter reality? Or boy, it seems like we do.
I used to like to take a drink and let the, you know, the problems of the day kind of slide off my shoulders and, you know, fuzzy up the world a little bit and make it a little nicer place to live. And I give me where I didn't give a damn. was what really helped a lot because I could have a few drinks and I didn't give a damn whether school kept or not.
I was no longer responsible. I was irresponsible and I like to practice irresponsibility when I'm drunk. I love drinking.
I was man from the first time I like the way I felt. And it wasn't long before I could get positively excited about the idea that we're going to get drunk a week from tonight. man, we're going to buy some booze and some gasoline for somebody's car and we're going to get in the car with the booze and there's no telling where we'll be tomorrow morning.
No telling. And there wasn't. Our first question most often was, "Where are we?" Followed closely by what did we do?
And we nobody had the complete answer. We had to piece things together. And I was the guy who always was looking for half can of beer or whatever I could find and saying, "Let's do it again.
Let's do that." That was good. Let's do that again. And I wasn't ever going to give that up.
I had no plans at all to ever give up drinking. I right away had problems with it. I was in the dean's office at college.
I was had problems with those people that drove those cars with those funny little lights on the top. And I I was, you know, I lost friends. I remember two of my friends from high school came up to me and told me after I've been drinking 6 months, Jerry, folks back home would not like what you're doing.
You're out of control. You're not you're not living the kind of life that we're supposed to be living. And I told those guys they just have to mind their own damn business.
That I was doing what I needed to do and what I like to do. And as they walked away from me, I wondered, why in the world wouldn't people want to do what I'm doing? Why wouldn't they want to do this?
This is fun. I liked it. And I kept on liking it.
And I was raised on that farm, taught a lot of responsibility, was always a very responsible person, except when I drank. And that took the pressure off of me. It was my way of taking a little vacation from responsibility.
And the vacations ran together until I was almost in perpetual vacation for a long time. Then I got in the service and I got got married and I had a kid and I went to law school and the responsibility of raising families and trying to make a living for my my wife and children kind of took over for a while and but I always drank some. Always took a little vacation from time to time.
And when I took a vacation, when I started drinking, I didn't stop until I was till I was drunk. That continued for a long time. And I'm one of the one of the a lot of people, I guess, can't say this, but I'm evidence of the fact that success does not does not enter into this equation of whether or not you're an alcoholic or not.
I had good success. I advanced in my law firm. I uh got good clients.
I had a wife, couple of kids, nice house, good cars, money in the bank, and my life went to hell. My life was not worth living. I had everything I had ever thought would make you happy.
And I'd gone for a long time chasing what I call more, better, and different. I kept thinking if I had just a little more money or cars or whatever or a little different kind, a little better one or a little different kind, I would be happy and I would get those things and the happiness would last maybe 15 minutes sometimes and then I'd know again that I needed more, better or different. And so I'm off chasing it again.
And I made more money every year I drank. I can't say I practice law as well as I did when I got sober, but I kept moving along and everything just quit meaning to me. I was out of control.
Did not know I was out of control. Doctors talked to me. Doctors showed me tests that showed my liver function was shot to hell.
Doctor showed me tests the next year that showed it was even worse than it was the year before. The doctor told me, "Stop drinking for 10 days and come back in here and let us check this again to see what alcohol does to your liver." Well, I'm smart enough to know that if my liver is off the chart and I stopped drinking and it go stays off the chart, he's not going to tell me to start drinking again. So, I never went back.
Just didn't go back. Can you imagine that? It's goofy as hell.
Probably you all understand that better than most people would. The civilians out there don't understand this. Anyway, things rocked along there and and my wife messed up pretty bad about this time.
Uh she'd had a lot of problems through the years. Uh she had sort of a unreasonable sensitivity to drinking. It got so bad I finally sent her to a psychiatrist because she just, you know, she just didn't approach this rationally at all.
She wouldn't drink. She didn't want me to drink. She didn't even want me to hang around people who drank.
So, we sent her to the psychiatrist and he he kind of agreed with me for a while, but then he asked to see me and, you know, everything kind of went to hell there. And uh then then she uh she did another really uh terrible thing. She went to Alanon.
Uh, she went to Alanon and didn't tell me she was going. I had to find this out almost by accident. I asked my daughter one time, "Where's your mother?" Uh, and she said, "I don't know, Daddy.
She may be at one of those meetings." And I said, "What kind of meeting is that, Karen?" and she said, "Oh, daddy, I don't know. It's some kind of a family meeting." Well, that doesn't sound like much, but at that point in time, we were we had made a decision that if our marriage didn't improve in the next 6 months, we'd terminated. And it occurred to me as a lawyer that if she was going to family meetings under those circumstances, I probably needed a representative present at those meetings.
So, I decided I would find out about the meeting and she came in and my wife my wife is I I practiced trial lawyer for almost 40 years. She's the most difficult witness I've ever cross-examined. When she doesn't want to answer your question or give you information, she'll never lie to you.
But it's like hitting a snake with an ice pick. You know, it's really difficult to do to get her to tell you what you want. She came in and I said, "Where have you been?" She said, "Out.
Out where?" To a shopping center. Which one? Preston.
What did you do there? Met some friends. Who were they?
You wouldn't know them. What did you and your friends do? Oh, we just shared our experience.
strength and hope. So I recognized I'm dealing with a I'm going to have to dig this information out of her. So I just bore in.
Close the door, narrow the field. Close the door, narrow the field. Finally, I get this word out of her.
A word I had never heard in my life, and it was alanon. Now, things were pretty heated about this time and I uh I didn't want to appear ignorant. So, I had to guess at what would be an alanine.
So, I I made a guess and as near as I could guess, it was probably an aluminum kitchen utensil of some kind. I'd been trying to get her to go to work for a long time and I thought maybe she'd buy God going to sell kitchen utensils. It all with me.
So she told me it wasn't that. And now while she'd been real closed mouththed, not willing to tell me anything at all, suddenly she man I just opened the floodgate. She began to tell me about Alanon.
What a wonderful program it was. How it saved lives and families. How everyone was welcome there.
How God was just marvelous. People would pay $500 for a seat in that place if they just knew how good it was. And I heard her say that it was a public meeting.
Anybody was welcome. And I sobered up almost instantly because I had just made senior partner in my law firm. And I knew they didn't want any more alcoholics.
They had two already. And I knew they were talking about getting rid of them just as soon as they could. I'm just getting started.
And when they find out I'm an alcoholic, I'm out. So I sat her down and I said, "Billy, listen closely to this. Do you understand that I'm the only one who makes money at this house?
She said,"I understand." I said, "Do you know that if I lose my job with that law firm, the money stops?" That sounded reasonable to her. I said, "There won't be any more money coming. And if we don't have money, do you know what will happen?" "No, what will happen?" Well, we're talking about foreclosure on the house.
We're talking about re taking back all the stuff we've got loaned out here. I said, we're not talking about college education for our kids now. We're talking about financial crisis.
We're talking about standing naked in the streets of Dallas in the middle of the winter with our children. That's what we're talking about. This is a major damn problem.
You can't go to any more of those meetings. And she looked at me with those steely blue Allenon eyes and said, "I think I need to go." And I said, "Billy, please do not go to any more of those meetings." She said, "Jerry, I think I'm going to keep going." Then I said something loving like, "You know, if you go to another one, I'll kill you as sure as hell. She said, she said, "I'm going to go." And I didn't kill her.
But she drove me crazy. Every day I went to work, I expected them to knock on my office door and come in and tell me, "We hear that your wife is going to public meetings because you're a drunk. We don't need you here." out.
It wouldn't happen that day and I'd go home and I'd try another tactic of some kind to get the woman out of Avalon. We fought incessantly about this one subject. I tried everything.
I tried frontal attacks. I tried sneaking around the back. I tried to woo her out of it.
I blew in her ear. I did everything I could think of to get her out of there. One night, I was going to start an argument.
I knew I was going to start an argument on this subject, but I needed to get her to agree to certain facts before I got into the thing real heavy. You know, I kind of sneaking up on her. And so I went in the kitchen and I put my arm around her and I said, "You have a nice day." And she said she did.
And I said, "Dinner smells good. Thank you." She said, I said, "The children all right?" "Oh, yeah. Children are good.
How are the dogs?" "Oh, the dogs are good. It's been a wonderful day for the dogs." And I said, "Billy, I've been thinking. You think I'm an alcoholic?" And she said, "I don't know whether you are or not." I said, "Well, that's damn funny.
You've called me an alcoholic for months and years." She said, "Yes, but I was wrong. It She said, "It doesn't matter what I think. It doesn't matter what the doctor thinks.
It doesn't matter what your partners think. It doesn't matter what your parents think. It just doesn't matter.
There's only one person in the world who can make use of in the information of whether or not you have a drinking problem or an alcoholic, and that's you. Because if you don't think you got one, you will never do anything about it. It's real hard to get a fight going when they're acting like this.
I'll just tell you that. And I'm totally off balance here. I don't know.
I don't know how to deal with this thing. And I make a mistake. A good trial lawyer never ever in the middle of a cross-examination ask a question when he doesn't know the answer.
But I did. I said, "Well, if I wanted to find out if I was an alcoholic, how would I do it?" And the jaws of the Alanon trap close just like that. She said, "Well, Jerry, they tell me that there's a number of ways you can find out.
One, you could just stop drinking, but I don't think you want to do that." I said, "You're right. I don't want to do that." She said, "The other thing you can do is try some control drinking." And I said, "What is controlled drinking?" She said, "Well, it's like they suggest that you take two drinks a day, no more, no less, every day, and if you can do that without exceeding two drinks for 6 months, you're not an alcoholic." I said, "That's the dumbest damn test I ever heard of in my life. Are you telling me you've been trying to get me to quit drinking forever, and now you're trying to tell me that you want me to drink for another 6 months?
and she said yes. And I realized I was out being a pretty sick woman and I better get the hell out of there. This conversation wasn't going my way at all.
So I I went and sat in my green chair and drank whiskey for about two weeks and thought about this thing. I had to get her out of that damn gallon. I mean, it was serious to get her out of there.
Just I'm on borrowed time. They're going to find out soon. Somebody's going to call in and say, "We saw your partner's wife at an Alanon meeting." What's an Alanon meeting?
Oh, that's for drunks. You know that that's for families who've got a drunk in there. And I'm the key to Alanon for Billy Jones.
That's what I am. So, I decided somebody's got to make a sacrifice. I've been meaning to cut back.
Actually, I I was drinking a little over a quarter a day. And uh I didn't know anybody else that was drinking that way. And I was going to work every day, but I I was uh had to leave early sometimes because I couldn't wait to go home and at 5:00 and drink then.
And I drank my my bottle of whiskey in the evening and uh she'd put me to bed and we'd we'd go on from there. we had. So, I uh I decided to do this.
And I uh I had to change that test a little bit. And I wasn't going to tell anybody I'm taking the damn test cuz she's watching me. She knows how much I drink.
She counts them. And I'm just going to drink three drinks a day. I got a pretty big glass.
And uh I'm going to have two martinis before dinner, which is just beefers gin. Sometimes with ice, sometimes not. Just And I'm going to have a big brandy and a little bit of soda after dinner.
I'm going to switch to coffee. And nobody nobody except a prohibitionist could fault me for drinking that way. And they couldn't.
And then I I got my first dose of reality about my disease. I uh I would drink that first drink and begin to loosen up a little bit in my shoulders and neck, you know, and uh then I'd get about through with the second one and the thought would come to me, alcoholism centers in the mind, you know. The thought would come to me, well, that's about all the martinis today.
And then another thought would drift in out of center field and it would be, "What are you doing? What are you doing? Are you over 21?
Are you a man? Who supports all these damn people around here? Who has to go down and fight all those other judges and jurors and lawyers?
Are you going to let a bunch of little old ladies in tennis shoes tell you how to drink whiskey for God's sake? The answer was no. No, I'm not going to do that.
I'd go to the bottle and drink the damn bottle. Or or when I walked in from work, I'd walk up to the bar and I'd think, "You had a bad day today. A bad day.
Ain't going to be no damn test today. I'll tell you for damn sure." And I drink the bottle. Or some days I could forget it.
It's called conscious forgetfulness. I'd forget to take the damn test. Those days I drank the bottle, too.
So whether I took it, didn't take it, forgot it, I drank the bottle. But I'd always wake up and I'd always remember I was supposed to take it. And it was illogical to assume I had a lot of willpower.
I had a lot of willpower in my life. Why couldn't a man with a lot of willpower decide he's going to drink three drinks and just drink three drinks? What's wrong with me?
Oh, that's a good question. What's wrong with me? Cuz see, nobody knew I'm taking this damn test.
I'm the only one that knows it. I'm the only one that knows I'm plunking it. I gave it a fair chance.
I ran it a year and a half. I never passed it one time. Not once did I ever pass that time.
And at the end of that time, nobody knew what was going on in my head, but I was all I thought about was drinking or not drinking or wishing I had a drink. I even began to sneak it in the house. Hell, I just carried it in before by the crate because I'm just by God going to drink what I'm going to drink and I just defy anybody to talk to me about drinking, particularly my wife.
But now I've got to I don't know. I begin to sneak it in and try to get to I was drinking so much she she got upset with me one time. Somebody told her that you could make iced tea glasses out of brandy bottles.
And she said, "Well, Jerry drinks some brandy. I'll just save up a few of them and and you'll show me how to cut them off and I'll I'll make them. Well, she had about six bottles in about six days and uh I know she she was kind of disappointed in the amount I drank with that and she talked about it some.
In any event, I wound up on December 31st, 1972 at a real low point in my life. I had worn out 1972 completely. I needed a new year, man.
And all I had to do to bring in the new year and make things better was to go out to dinner with our friends and to come back to our house and spend the rest of the evening and bring in the new year. That's all I had to do that day. I wasn't mad at anybody.
I didn't have any great pressures on me. All I had to do was just that simple thing. And I knew why we were doing it that way.
It was unspoken, but I had gone out a few days earlier with to a party. And it had been very difficult to get me back home after I had been out for a while. So, we're going to go out early and have dinner and going to bring me home.
And and you know, they all expected me to get drunk and I just needed to be on my feet and functioning a little at midnight. That's all I had to do. So, I started off the day and I was pacing myself carefully and Billy warned me about us going out to dinner and I knew, I know, I know.
And uh then I woke up and I looked out the window. I was in my green chair and it was pitch dark outside and I looked over to my wife's chair and she was there in her robe reading a little book. They read lots of old books, you know.
And I said, "Billy, shouldn't we be getting dressed to go to dinner?" And she said, "Oh, Jerry, don't you know what time it is?" It was 10:00 at night, 10:15. I'd passed out at 5:00 in the afternoon. And I had no one to blame for that.
Not a soul in the world. And I was sick of me. I knew that she had had to call those people and tell them we are not going to dinner.
I knew she had told those same people you can't come to our house tonight and she being a good Alanon had probably told him because Jerry's drunker and Cooty Brown in his chair and I didn't like that. I didn't like me or what I had become or what I was. It was just another day.
Another defeat at the hands of alcohol that was inexplicable, irrational. It just made no sense at all. And I went to the bar and got a big drink because I wanted oblivion.
And I knocked myself out with that drink. I pray to God that that's the last drink I'll ever have. that ended a 21-year drinking career.
I uh I got up the next morning to the sorryest looking world I'd ever seen and I had no solutions. I sat there on the edge of the bed and thought about that night and and thought about what I could say to those people and my wife and I couldn't think of anything to say. I didn't have any excuses.
There was no I deserved whatever they thought. And I considered my options and I thought about what I'd tried to do, the test I'd tried to take. Nobody knew I took the test, but I I knew I'd taken the test.
And so I got to the uh end of my thoughts and and the only thing I could think of that I hadn't tried was to stop drinking, something I promised I'd never do. But that day, that didn't seem like such a bad idea. So, I got up and I went in the kitchen and I told Billy that I was sorry about the night before and she wasn't impressed with my apology.
I said, "I think I'm going I'm I'm going to try to quit drinking." And she was impressed. She ran over to the bookcase and got happened to have a copy of the book Alcoholics Anonymous, copied the little book, 24-hour Day Meditation Book. She came running back to me with those two books and thrust them into my hands and said, "Would you like for me to call somebody from Alcoholics Anonymous?" And I threw the books against the wall, pretty close to where she was standing, and told her, "Hell no." I got myself in this deal and I'm going to get myself out.
And she said something loving like, "You got it." And walked off. And I had my problem with no solution. And I started trying to not drink.
Should be easy. If it's bad for you and you're not and you stop doing it, it should get better, shouldn't it? Well, it'd surprise you to know it didn't get any better.
I couldn't sleep. All night long, I rolled and tossed and sweated. I sweated on the inside, on the outside.
I shook. I had the yippies, you know. I moved around like I looked at people and I saw that they weren't doing that.
And all I could think about was having a drink and my stomach was helping out. It was sending a signal to my brain on a very regular basis. Hey, Clyde, you forgot something.
Get it down here. This we're in an emergency situation down here. You know, we're cramping.
We don't feel good at all. bad things are going to happen if you don't get this down here. Well, I uh I lasted two days and I was not doing well.
So, I caught Billy out of the kitchen and I decided I'd run in there and find those books. I knew she'd leave them laying there somewhere. Uh and do a little sneak reading to see what the A&As did about this damn drinking problem.
Now, I wish I'd had time to read the big book, but I didn't. I did not want to be caught in that kitchen reading that stuff that she told me ought to read. So, I just grabbed that little 24-hour day book and I opened that thing up to Janu.
It had dates up in the corner and that keen alcoholic mind, I knew I ought to read January 2nd. So, I read January 2nd and it uh said, "Alcohol has ruined your life." And I said, "Yes, by God you got it." And then it said, "Well, this year we're going to give our drinking problem to God and leave it there." I cannot tell you how disappointed I was in other I've been looking for God all my life. How you going to give somebody something when you can't find him?
And I couldn't find him. I'd look for him in all kinds of churches and I'd read books. I'd talked to preachers and rabbis and priests.
always looking and always demanding that God prove himself to me and then I would do what he told me to do. But I did not want to be conned. I did not want to, you know, sign up for something I didn't I didn't know was working.
Well, I I'd actually even gone down and been sprinkled and I'd been down and dunked and I've been, you know, I did all them things several times just to see if they work. And people came up to me afterwards and hugged my neck and said, "Isn't it wonderful, Jerry? Don't you feel better?
Don't you feel different?" And I'd say, "Yeah, yeah, I do. I felt worse than ever cuz nothing happened. God didn't show up and the bushes didn't talk to me and catch on fire and I couldn't walk on water.
And you know, I'm not I'm not critical of the conversion experience. I think a lot of people have one and I wanted one, but I didn't know how to have one. I hadn't reached the stage of surrender, unconditional surrender.
My surrender was conditional. I will if you show me yourself. and you're playing by the rules of the creator of the universe and he's not going to make any exceptions for me.
I'm going to have to do it his way or it's not going to happen at all. And I didn't know that. But that day I read that little book and I don't actually know why I did what I did, but I threw that little book out in the middle of the table and I said, "God, if you're there, I'm going to give you this drinking problem.
And if you take it, I may do some more business with you. Real sincere prayer. I meant every word of it.
And it nothing. I still wanted to drink. I still had the heeie-jeebies and all those good things.
And I u I got went to bed and I got up the next morning and something had changed. I knew something I had never known before. I knew that I was going to drink that day unless I got some help some somebody who had skin on them.
And I called Alcoholics Anonymous. Couldn't call my wife, the bunch that my wife was associated with because she'd poisoned the well over there. You know, I told them all those she had told him the truth about me and I did not want to face the truth.
Uh so I got a lady to help me. Uh, I called central office and I reached a very unsophisticated, uncooperative lady. Uh, I told her that I was a big-time lawyer and uh that I was having a little problem with drinking and I needed to know what to do.
And she said, "Well, you need to go to a meeting every day." And I said, "That's obviously impossible. I'm very busy. I couldn't possibly go every day to anything." And she said, 'Well, what do you do in what have you been doing in the evening?
And I said, 'Well, I've been drinking in the evening.' She said, 'Well, we're going to stop that, so you're going to have a lot of free time, aren't you? Well, I didn't have answers for that. So, we began talking about where I might go, and she said, "What kind of group would you like?" And I said, "Well, I'd like a group of, you know, I'd prefer college graduates.
Uh, I'd like to go to some place near a country club." So, you know, wouldn't have to leave my neighborhood or anything. And she said, "We ain't got none of them." And it just went that way. And I finally selected a little home group called the Town and Country Group.
It sound kind of woodsy and I thought I could drive a station wagon or something over there and looked pretty normal. And so I went to that little group and they they were nice people. Uh but they had so much sobriety.
I mean, I'm hanging on here and their baby's got a year and a half and then the next guy's got five and then they get serious about it. It's 15 and 20 and 25 about eight or 10 of them and they they just didn't like to do the busy groups and had little home group met once a week whether you needed it or not. And I didn't really think they had much of a drinking problem.
You couldn't feel like I was feeling and stayed sober for a year and a half, let alone 20 years or whatever the hell it was. And then one night a guy came in to Dallas from Hart View, South Dakota. He'd been kept there for quite a long time.
Been chained to the hydrant because he wouldn't do a fourth step on finally he had done one and he came in. He had literature in every pocket and he knew more about alcoholics and alcoholics anonymous than anybody I had ever heard in my life. And I followed him out and he just had six months sobriety.
He was still quick and I was quick. And we sat there in that meeting and looked at each other and we knew that we were dealing with real alcoholics. And I followed him outside and I said, "David, what do you think about this AA thing?" He said, "You mean this little group?" He said, "That's that's not for us." He said, "We are going to have to change the way we think and react to life.
We're going to have to get in the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous." Said, "This is fine for them, I guess, but you and I are going to have to go to meetings every night." Now, it sounded better this time. We're going to have to sponsor people. We're going to have to have sponsors.
We're going to have to work the steps. We're going to have to make coffee for whatever good that does. I don't have any idea, but clean ashtrays and make coffee anyway.
And I said, "Where are we going to go?" And he said, "Well, I heard a little bit about a place out north, which is a good thing cuz I don't know anybody lives out there." And he said, "Will you meet me there tomorrow night?" And I said, "Uh, I'll give it serious consideration." Because, you see, I just couldn't go out there and make a commitment to be there. I needed to look the place over. So, I cased it just like I was going to rob it.
I drove down the street in front of it is over the top of a 7-Eleven store. And the first time I drove by, I went down the street about 55 60 mph. Just glanced at it, you know.
Did not did not want to appear overly interested in it. Made a U-turn and came back down and pulled into the 7-Eleven and went in. As I went in, I looked up the second story to see if they had surveillance cameras or anything like that up there.
They didn't. Nobody was standing at the window. I went inside, got me a slurpee or whatever else I could think of to buy.
And I walked back out, checked the cameras again. There was nobody up there again. Got in the car and noticed that there was a driveway over here.
So, I drove around behind the 7-Eleven store and there it was. Six parking places in the alley. I could park in the alley and climb the fire escape and go to Alcoholics Anonymous.
And that's the way you got me. And in a little while, I began to experience the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous, the program of attraction rather than persuasion. I met people that did things I didn't like at all.
I thought they were just as corny as a person could be. I'd stand up and say, "My name is Jerry." And everybody say, "Hi, Jerry." Ah, just sound like a some kind of high school fraternity or something like that. You know, they said the slowest Lord's Prayer I'd ever heard in my life.
And you won't believe this, but they held hands while they did it. They told terrible stories about themselves. Just terrible damn stories.
And the worse the story was, the more they laughed. And I, you know, I'm competitive if I'm nothing else. And I got to thinking, you know, I did a couple things that are kind of cute.
I think I'll tell them. So, I told them. And you know what they did?
They laughed with me. They put their arms around me and told me that it was all right to be myself. That they were glad to see me being who I was without pretense, without a facade of any kind.
just Jerry Jones. And they said, "If I lived inside my own values and was myself, it would be the greatest freedom that I could ever experience." And I have found that to be true. I found that I had to make contact with a power greater than myself.
And to do that, our book says I got to find what was blocking me. Our book also promises that every man, woman, no matter what his race, color, or creed, can form a meaningful relationship with his creator if he has the willingness and the honesty to try. And I began to try.
And the way I had to try was to third step to make a commitment to turn my will, what I wanted in my life, what was happening to me over to God as I understand him. and to search for this thing called self-centerness which was said to block me from the power. They told me that I did not need to do anything except get rid of self-centerness and then I would have an experience with the power they I said I don't know what I believe.
I don't have faith. I've tried to have faith before and I've sat in chairs and decided I'm going to have faith. Going to have faith.
Only I didn't have any faith. They said, "We don't care whether you got any faith or not. We don't care whether you like what we tell you to do or not.
We don't care whether you believe it works or not. Just do it. Take the action.
And we promise you a given result." And that's a form of proof which is irrefutable. When you tell somebody that there is something that's going to work if you do A, B, and C, and they do it, the proof is in the pudding. What happened?
This power we seek can't be seen. Not directly, but it's like gravity. If you jump off of this tower here, gravity will deliver your can right down here at a exactly the same speed every time you jump.
You can't see it, but you begin to suspect there might be something there. That's you didn't float a single time. And they told me to find this thing called self-centerness.
Well, when I read the book, which I read so that people wouldn't think I was dumb. They were trying to tell me what was in the book. And I want I didn't want them to tell me.
I I'd find out for myself. And so I did. But they they told me that uh you know I needed that this self-centered thing was was prevalent in all alcoholics.
It doesn't cause alcoholism. Most of the world is self-centerness. It's full of self-centerness.
You just any day you want to look around all your neighbors and you'll find self-centerness. But it is a it is an attribute of our ego which blocks us from God. And if we need God as bad as we do because without it, we haven't got a heck of a lot of chance, then we need to see if we got it.
I skipped all about self-centeredness the first time I read it because it was your problem. I didn't have it. And then I began to find out I might have it after all.
I don't know about you, but I have a lane of traffic on the freeway. It's called my lane. And you don't casually pull in front of me in my lane because I know you did that to me.
And I uh feel some obligation to punish those who do that sort of thing. And I can change my lane anytime I want to. I just pop over in the next lane and that's my lane.
and you pull up beside them and you run them off the road and then you get back and forth whichever lane you want. That's that's not self-centeredness. That's just, you know, common sense.
I felt a little superior when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. They talked about unmanageability and I wasn't my life wasn't unmanageable of course except for drinking. a little bit of problem there, but really I'd managed pretty well.
And they talked about this thing self-centerness a lot. And I kind of felt sorry for people. And then one night I was sitting there and something drifted into my head.
It was about my fishbowl. I had a I got tired when I was taking the test. I got tired of watching television.
And one day I was in in a in a shop that sold fish. And I uh I saw thought how much I'd like to watch those fish. So, I bought myself an aquarium.
Got the size I wanted, color gravel I wanted, the bottom, selected the kind of plants that I liked, pretty leafy plants that reached up to the surface and and I bought the kind of fish I wanted. I wanted pretty slow swimming fish and they sold me those kind of fish and I put them in my bowl and I had a light on top of it. I could make it daylight or I could make it dark just as I chose.
And I fed my fish. I put the aquarium between my chair and the wall and I fed my fish if they were to be fed. Sometimes it was a land of plenty and sometimes there was a famine upon the land as I chose.
And as I was sitting there that night thinking about the fish and what the topic it was about unmanageability and self-centerness, I remembered there was always always one damn fish. A rogue fish. a fish who would not comply with the slow slow swimming rule who would go up and nip another fish on the tail and that fish would begin to swim fast and he would encounter other fish and they begin to dodge him and the first thing you know the whole damn bowl was just going back and forth like that and it just drove me crazy and I'd reach out and slap the side of that bowl and let them know that there's a power greater than they are that is un unhappy with this deal.
I gave them three chances. I knew if I gave them three claps of thunder and they didn't catch on, they needed a handon experience with the power. So I bought a little dip net and I would catch the bad fish and I'd hold him in my lap until he got real still.
Have a drink and think about those folks out there that I needed to get my dip net on, you know. and then I would flop them back in the tank. It's uh timing is pretty important here.
Uh if they float, you kept them out too long. Most of the time I got them back in time and and they would uh I give them three hands-on experiences with the power and then you would know that there are some unfortunates. They seem to have been born that way.
And I'd catch them the seventh time or the with the dip net the fourth time and and I'd take them in the commode and in the toilet and flush them down the commode. buy new, better trained fish. No one knew I was taking that test or was doing that.
No one knew that. And occurred to me that night that maybe there weren't too many 40-year-old men that were got offended by what their fish did in the fishbowl. That may be some form of self-centeredness.
I'm not sure just what kind it was. And then right behind that came the thought, well, hell, you can't even manage a fishbowl. What do you mean your life is in an odd manner?
And a little at a time, my life turned around. A little at a time, things begin to happen to me that let me see the power at work in Alcoholics Anonymous. I saw people get well that no one thought would get well.
I saw families reunited when there was no hope at all that they would be reunited. Those things came to me. I had my mother was one my great little Irish mom.
She she and my dad and I worked on that farm hard during the World War II and for years after that. And she was always on my side. I always knew there's one place I could go by God and that's home.
and they'd have to take me. They would take me. She didn't like what I did.
She told me many times that I was ruining my family. And she wanted me to stop drinking. She died with 75 years of continuous sobriety.
She never had a drink. And she didn't see much reason for me to have one either. But I had to tell her to mind her own business.
And my dad as well. She got cancer while I was still drinking. And I went up to see her on one of her operations.
and uh she wanted me to come up there and be with her. And I decided I wouldn't take any whiskey with me on this trip because she never had any in the house. And I wouldn't drink.
And I went up there and they operated. And I was sober and shaky, but I was sober. And the old family doctor came out in just no time at all.
It seemed like just a few minutes after the surgery was supposed to start, he came out and walked over to my dad and I and said, "Boys, it's no good. that cancer is everywhere. It's on her liver.
It's on her kidneys. It's everywhere. She won't last a year.
And when he said that, it was as though somebody flipped a switch inside me. And I just turned and walked out of the hospital, got in a car, and drove to a liquor store and bought some booze. And for two or three days, I hung around there while she was in recovery.
And and played like I was sober and drank vodka and coffee or whatever I could. And I was of no use to anyone. And finally they told me I could go home and I should go home.
And then I got in Alcoholics Anonymous and I got sober. And the first thing I ever did by way of amends was to mail a copy of the book Alcoholics Anonymous to my mother and father and told them that this is the way I'm going to try to live my life from this point forward. And mother read that book to dad.
His eyesight was gone by that time. And and they thought this was the best thing that they had ever heard of. man.
They liked alcoholics anonymous. They went to every AA meeting they could go to with me. They heard me speak.
They enjoyed the fellowship of AA. And every time they passed the plate, my dad would reach for his hip pocket. He's going to put some money in that plate.
And I'd say, "We're self-supporting through our own contributions, Dad." And he said, "Damn, Jerry, it ain't right. Man ought to be able to give money to something like this." And I said, "We've been given too much too long that we don't deserve. we need to stand on our feet now.
So, he'd put it up until the next time they passed the plate and I'd have to take his wallet away from him again. Mom uh looked like she beat cancer. She was on chemotherapy for quite a time and she became up cancerree, they they said, and everybody thought it was all over.
And then one day when I was about 5 years sober, she uh called me again and said, "Jerry, they found another lump in my abdomen and they're going to do some more surgery." And uh I would like for you to come up. So I went up and we sat in the hospital room there and talked and it was easy and comfortable and I uh we were we were at peace. And she said, "Jerry, this going to be hard on me.
I'm older and all that chemotherapy has really knocked it out of me some." She said, "I guess uh" I said, "I'm certainly going to try to make this, but I don't know whether I will or not." And said, "This going to be hard on the family, too, and I want you to get them in here." So, I got the family in the room, and she said, "Folks, this, like I told Jerry, it's going to be hard on me. I don't know whether I'm going to make it or not, but it's going to be hard on you, too. And while this is going on, lean on Jerry.
He'll be your strength. And I was. She uh she lived about two weeks.
And it was a horrible death. It was uh it was just hell to watch. And uh finally, I prayed that to God that if it was his will that he ought to just let her go.
She'd had enough hard times. My dad did the same thing and about that time he blew a big ulcer in his stomach and they had to take out his stomach or most of him. You know the miracle was that not one time during that whole period of time did I ever think about taking a drink.
Not once, same boy, same mother, same cancer, same situation. The difference from one time to the other was that Alcoholics Anonymous had enabled me to make contact with a power that allowed me to know that whatever the hell comes down the pike tomorrow or today, there's nothing that God and I can't handle, we'll just have to do the best we can with it and it will be all right. I have no greater proof today that this thing works than that.
It's happened to me in many different context over quite a long period of time. It's convinced me that there is a power greater than me. That if I lend myself to that power, there's not much I can't do.
I will have freedom. Freedom from what? Freedom from the desire to drink.
Freedom from the the embarrassment and the degradation of alcoholism. Freedom from living a life that's bounded with fear and anger and resentment. All forms of self-centerness.
Freedom from wondering what is my purpose in life? What is my purpose? Why am I floating around in this cloud called Earth where people kill each other and all kinds of bad things happen?
What in the world is this all about? I don't have to worry about that anymore cuz I don't know why the world is the way it is. But I know this.
I have a purpose in life that is unique to me. I can reach drunks. I can talk to drunks.
I'm good working with a drunk one on one. And it's added a meaning to my life that I never had before. I see a lot of people that go to AA and we have birthday parties and I'm sure you had have people take cakes and a lot of people don't take any more than five and then they just one day you look around and they're not there anymore.
Most of those people who are not there anymore are people who are not involved with working with newcomers. It's terribly important that you and I work with newcomers. They're manufacturing drunks faster than we can save them.
The landslide is going the other way and we're the only hope most of those people have. Doctors can't fix them. Doctors, bright, brilliant doctors have tried repeatedly to do it.
They can't do it. They just don't know what to do. They ministers may save a few but not many.
It's the ability of a person to say what man has done man can do. Listen to me and I will convince you that I have been exactly where you are and I took certain action and it resulted in a radical change in my outlook on life so that today I am happy, joyous and free. I don't have to live like that anymore and you can do it too.
Come with me and let's save your life and the life of other alcoholics that come down the path. I hope next year you have to sit on the beach because every one of you has got a brand new drunk with you. You know what they're like.
They're unloly folks. They generally have about a three-day beard on their face and a rusty zipper. you know, uh, and they talk about being perfectionist, you know, that that's, you know, the ones.
And brilliant. They talk about being brilliant, too. And it's always somebody else's fault.
But we can break that. We can break that cycle. We have the power.
God has given us that power when we work the steps. The power to reach other alcoholics. our book says has been given to us.
I want to thank you again for having me here. I want to thank you for your presence. I want to thank the good Lord for Alcoholics Anonymous.
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.