The Difference Between the Fellowship and the Program: AA Speaker – John H. – Aberdeen, SD
AA speaker John H. from Aberdeen explains the crucial difference between AA fellowship and program. From hijacking trucks to working the steps after 17 years.
John H., an AA speaker from Aberdeen, SD, got sober in 1973 after 17 years of drinking that took him from teenage corner gangs to hijacking trucks and nearly dying in the Delaware River. In this AA speaker meeting, he walks through his bottom story and explains the life-changing difference between AA’s fellowship (the meetings) and the program (working the steps with a sponsor).
This AA speaker meeting features John H. explaining the crucial distinction between AA’s fellowship (meetings and social connection) and the program (working the 12 steps). John shares his story of hitting bottom after years of crime and drinking, including being shot and thrown in the Delaware River. He emphasizes that attending meetings alone isn’t enough – recovery requires action through step work with a sponsor.
Episode Summary
John H. opens with a stark reality: “You can stay just as sick sober as you can drunk.” This becomes the central theme of his talk as he distinguishes between what he calls AA’s “fellowship” and “program” – a difference that saved his life after his first relapse.
Growing up in an Irish Catholic household in Philadelphia, John lived in constant fear. His father and uncles would gather in the kitchen drinking Jameson whiskey and plotting against England, while the women knelt in the living room saying rosaries. Friday nights meant huddling around his mother, staring at the front door, never knowing if “Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde” would walk through. His father died at 48 weighing 64 pounds with wet brain, and John swore he’d never drink.
At 14, standing on a street corner with friends passing around Thunderbird wine, John took his first drink. Instantly, that lifelong fear disappeared – and so did God. “I wasn’t going to school anymore, listening to them nuns. I wasn’t praying anymore. I was to live the next 17 years of my life self-will run riot.” His mother asked him to leave at 14, telling him she’d endured 22 years of his father’s drinking and wouldn’t watch her son die the same death.
John’s drinking career escalated from teenage theft to truck hijacking. He describes being the type of employee who’d go to lunch, hit a bar for “a couple drinks,” and never return to work – sometimes forgetting where he even worked. After a disastrous Army stint with 387 days AWOL and 14 months stockade time, he married at 18 purely for convenience and had three children he was never home to raise.
The violence peaked on Christmas Eve when a fight with his brother left John with over 400 stitches, nearly losing his leg. His ex-wife nursed him back to health, and the day he could walk again, he walked out of her life. John bought bars with money from hijacking, including one where customers could order stolen merchandise from Sears catalogs. When he refused to pay back $16,000 to a loan shark, two men shot him and threw him in the Delaware River. He crawled out of the mud, walked into a nearby bar covered in blood, and ordered two shots of whiskey.
At 29, John hit his final bottom on a railroad siding with wine sores and body lice, sleeping in abandoned cars. His sister, a nurse and AA member, found him and brought him to her house. After a week of cat-and-mouse games around the program, five women picked him up for his first meeting. He met Tom S., a man so notorious that John wouldn’t let him in his bars, who gave him a phone number.
Five months later, sitting on a park bench after being thrown out of a bar, John found that crumpled paper in his pocket. “Why would an uncaring drunk save an old wrinkled up piece of paper for five months?” he asks. “If you believe in God, no explanation’s needed. If you don’t believe in God, none will satisfy you.” Tom picked him up and took him to what looked like “the daycare center of a mental institution” – bodies scattered on the floor of an abandoned storefront. When someone banged on the desk, these men rose simultaneously, set up chairs, and had a meeting until sunrise.
The hook wasn’t the message – John wasn’t even listening. It was that 35 men shook his hand and said “Keep coming back.” Nobody had ever asked him back anywhere twice. He slept on that floor for four months, making meetings around the clock, got a job, apartment, and girlfriend. Eight months later, he got drunk, staying loaded for 14 months without drawing a sober breath.
When the men from his home group found him again, an old-timer named Joe Brown told him something revolutionary: “It’s not your fault. You’re an alcoholic, and without help, there’s no hope.” Another member, Charlie Guitar, taught him he could “pray in disbelief” to a God he didn’t believe in. His group called it “fake it till you make it.”
But the breakthrough came eight months into his second attempt when he was pacing his apartment, ready to drink again. Cold reality hit: he was still hijacking trucks, three years behind in child support, with body warrants out for his arrest. “It’s kind of hard to blame a bottle of beer for that when you ain’t had one in eight months.”
Frank, an old-timer who’d told him six months sober that “nobody here likes you” and people were praying he’d get drunk, finally introduced him to “the program.” Frank guided John through the steps, taking him into the men’s room to read the Third Step prayer and explaining, “The rest of your life is none of your business. You had your days and you ruined them. These are God’s days.”
John initially hated the Big Book – “it didn’t have no pictures” – and the steps contradicted everything he’d learned. Lawyers had told him “don’t admit to anything,” but Step 1 says “we admit.” They said “don’t put anything on paper,” but Step 4 requires writing. He was so paranoid about his Fifth Step that he’d visit dying patients at the hospital, figuring they’d “take it to the grave.”
The transformation came through understanding that recovery requires action. Frank told him about a man who cleaned up a vacant lot, planted flowers, and put up a fence. When a priest commented on “what a beautiful job you and God did,” the man replied, “You should have seen it when God had it to himself.” This illustrated a core Big Book principle: “Faith without works is dead.”
John closes with his famous circus story about a farm boy who walked three miles to see the circus, watched the parade pass by, threw his 50 cents to a clown, and walked home thinking he’d seen the circus. “Don’t be fooled by the passing parade,” John warns. “It’s good to have the fellowship, but the program is more important.”
John’s message resonates with many who’ve experienced similar bottoms – that meetings provide crucial fellowship and belonging, but recovery happens through working the steps with a sponsor. His story, similar to Peter M.’s experience of street-level addiction and Big Book recovery, demonstrates that action, not just attendance, creates lasting sobriety.
At the time of this recording, John had maintained continuous sobriety since May 19th, 1973, as a member of Philadelphia’s Young Men’s Group – proving that understanding the difference between fellowship and program can literally mean the difference between life and death.
Notable Quotes
You can stay just as sick sober as you can drunk.
One’s too many, a thousand’s not enough.
The rest of your life is none of your business. You had your days and you ruined them. These are God’s days.
If you believe in God, no explanation’s needed. If you don’t believe in God, none will satisfy you.
Don’t be fooled by the passing parade. It’s good to have the fellowship, but the program is more important.
Big Book Study
Step 3 – Surrender
Fellowship & Meetings
Long-Term Sobriety
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Full Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors. For the best experience, listen to the audio above.
Thank you everybody. My name's John. I'm an alcoholic.
I haven't had a drink since May 19th, 1973. I'm a member of the Young Men's group of Philadelphia. That's probably the three most important things I'll say here tonight. That tells you who I am, what I am, and where I belong.
Before I start, I'd like to thank you, the group, for having me here tonight. It's always an honor and a privilege to be asked to participate in your own sobriety. I'd like to especially thank John for being such a gracious host, and Matt for taking me around to meetings. That's an example of what service is all about.
I've heard it said that the door to the sick mind opens from the inside, and laughter is a key to that door. When you laugh, you relax. When you relax, the door opens, and that's when we stick the message in.
So I'd like to tell you a little story about another guy before I start my story that lived down my way. I live on an island in Wildwood, New Jersey. This guy lived on the beach. He was homeless and he was a drunk like me. He woke up one morning with that cotton in his mouth taste and he needed a drink real bad. So he started walking down the beach and he seen a bottle floating in the ocean and he thought, "Well, maybe there's a mouthful in there enough to hold me till I can get a drink."
He walked over and picked up the bottle and pulled the cork out. A big puff of smoke came out of it, and the next thing you know, there was a genie standing there beside him. The guy said, "I'm the genie of the lamp, and I'll grant you any two wishes for letting me out of this bottle."
Apple that he was, you know, cunning, baffling, and powerful. He said, "I thought it was three wishes." Alcoholics always want more. He said, "It's my bottle. I'll make the rules. It's two wishes."
So the guy said, "Well, when I found you, I was looking for a drink. I needed a drink bad. Could you give me a bottle of wine, a good bottle of wine that no matter how much I drink, I'll always have something there, a mouthful or two for the morning?"
The genie said, "That's no problem." Another puff of smoke, and the next thing you know, the guy's standing there with a bottle of wine in his hand. The genie says, "Well, that's it. What's your second wish? Let's go."
The guy said, "Wait a minute. I want to make sure this works." So he took that bottle and held it up to his mouth. It seemed like forever. When he let it down, he looked at it and the bottle was full. He said, "This is all right."
The genie said, "See, it works. What's your second wish?"
The guy said, "Wait a minute. I want to make sure that this thing really works." So he took another big swig, another big swig, and he put it down and he looked at it and the bottle was still full.
The genie says, "Well, let's go. What's your second wish?"
The guy looked at that bottle and he looked at that genie and he looked at that bottle. He said, "You got another bottle of this wine?"
Now, see, I don't want to alarm you, but if you laughed at that joke, you just might have a problem with alcohol. Because I've told that joke to people that aren't alcoholics or don't have a problem with it, and they look at you like you're crazy. Like why would a guy want two bottles? But we know, don't we? One's too many, a thousand's not enough.
So before I get into my story, I've heard it said in Alcoholics Anonymous that if you don't put a drink inside you, it can hurt you. Well, I'm here to tell you that's a lie. Alcohol doesn't just hurt the carrier. It hurts everybody the carrier comes in contact with.
I had a problem with alcohol long before I ever drank it. I had a problem with it when I drank it, and I still have a problem with it today.
I come from an Irish Catholic background in Philadelphia. First generation born here in this country. My father and all my uncles were from the old country. I was always a frightened child. I never knew why I was frightened. I went to Catholic school. I was afraid of nuns. I was afraid of my older sisters who used to beat me up. I was the last one born in my family, which made me a mommy's boy. The last one born's always mom's favorite.
But I lived in this constant fear. We never used the front door of our house and the shades were always drawn. We always went up the back alley. I could stay over other kids' houses and eat supper, but they could never come to my house and eat supper. I could stay over their house and sleep overnight, but they could never come to sleep over my house.
I remember coming home from school and I would go up that back alley and I'd open that back door and I'd yell to my mother, and if I didn't hear my mother's voice, I didn't go in that house. I knew the horror that waited for me inside that house.
A typical Friday or Saturday night in my house would be my father and all my uncles and my cousins sitting in the kitchen drinking Jamison whiskey and stout beer and plotting to overthrow the government of England. My mother, my aunts, my sisters, they would all be in the living room in a circle kneeling down saying the rosary for the guys in the kitchen.
So you got to understand, not only was I a frightened child, I was a confused child. I didn't know where I belonged. I didn't know if I belonged in the kitchen or in the living room.
What I just described to you is an alcoholic house. You don't need alcohol inside you for it to hurt you. It affected my whole childhood. It changed the way I seen things or thought about things. I lived in constant fear. We always kept a bag packed under the bed. Friday nights we would all sit there in the kitchen huddle around my mother staring at the front door because we never knew who was coming through the front door. We didn't know if it was going to be Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde.
I say my father drank alcoholically because he was 48 years old when he died. My father was 6'3", weighed 160 pounds. He picked up a drink one day and got what they call a wet brain. He never regained consciousness of who he was. This was back in the 50s. So the only thing they did for drunks at that time is they put you in a hospital and just keep you in a bed until you died.
I swore up and down that that was never going to happen to me. I was never going to drink. But I was a product of the 50s. I was a teenage kid on the corner. In those days, what we used to do in my neighborhood, we would get a 55-gallon drum and fill it full of wood and paper and light it on fire and we'd stand around and try to harmonize, like the Platters. If you can imagine five white guys trying to sound like four black guys, you know.
They always had a brown paper bag and they would pass the bag around. Now, I really didn't know what was in the bag that day. I knew it was alcohol, but I didn't know what the name of it was. I come to find out later it was a bottle of Thunderbird wine.
But I wanted to be accepted by my peers. I wanted to be one of the boys. So when the bottle came my way that day, I took a mouthful. No sooner that bottle of wine left my lips and something amazing happened to me. That fear that I carried around inside me all my life left me like that instantly. I wasn't afraid of anything or anybody. Nobody was ever going to tell me what to do again.
The other thing I lost that day with that one mouthful of wine, and I didn't know it until I was sober five years in AA—God went right out the window. I wasn't going to school anymore and listening to them nuns. I wasn't praying anymore. I wasn't doing the things that good kids did.
I was going to live the next 17 years of my life in self-will run riot.
I remember I was 14 years old and my mother asked me to leave the house. I was her favorite. I was the pride of the fleet. I remember her standing me on the steps and saying, "Look, I put up with 22 years of that from your father. I'm not going to watch my son die the same death."
I didn't understand that then. I understand now that is tough love. That was the hardest thing in the world that woman ever did because I was her favorite. But that's the way alcohol affects the drinker and everybody around them.
But at 14 years old and I'm on my own, I thought I was super cool. I got an apartment and I got a job and I would let the kids bum school over my apartment and I'd con them out of their recess money and give them a bottle of beer and send them on their way.
Alcohol always told me I was smarter, a notch above. When I was 14, I was hanging with guys 20, 21 years old. By the time I was 21, I was flagged in every bar in my neighborhood.
It wasn't long. I tried working for a living, but that didn't work for me. For some reason, I just couldn't catch on to that working thing. I get amazed when I come to AA and I hear guys say that they retire with 20 years at the same place. I said, "How do you do that?" I couldn't make 20 days.
I was the type of alcoholic. I would get a job and they would have what they call lunch hour halfway through the day and they would all go outside in my neighborhood and they would have the brown bags and they'd sit up against the wall and they'd eat their sandwiches. I would go down to the nearest watering hole and I'd have a couple drinks and I'd never go back to work.
I remember one time I worked for this company, Spangler Sign Company, and I drank my way out of it. About six months later, I'm on a load and I walk into this Spangler Sign Company and I'm looking around and a guy said, "What are you looking for?" I said, "I'm looking for my time card." He said, "We fired you six months ago."
See, that's the way I drank.
But it was very shortly after that when I found I suffered from another disease and that was called entitlement. If you had something I wanted, I thought I was entitled to it and I was going to get it. So I went from being a worker to a thief, and that's how I supported myself most of my life.
But I was about 17 years old when I started to experience what Alcoholics Anonymous calls blackouts. I used to call them lapses of memory. I just couldn't remember from time to time where I was at or what I was doing.
I woke up on a train one day going to Fort Jackson, South Carolina. When I got out there, I found out I had signed some papers in Philadelphia to join the army. I told the guy out there that there's a mistake. If they just give me carfare back, we'll call it even. That's basically what they did. They laughed.
Me and this guy got into a fight right in the company street. I spent my first seven days in the army in a stockade. I wasn't to become a stranger to that.
There's no army story here. There's no war story. It took me three and a half years to complete two years active duty. When it was all said and done, I had 387 days AWOL time, 14 months stockade time, and the rest of the time I would be shipped from one camp to another.
I went AWOL from the army. I was home on leave and I never went back. I knew the army would be looking for me, but I figured they wouldn't be looking for a married man. So I grabbed one of the girls from the corner that I had dated before I went in the service, and we got married. We went down to the local church and we got married.
It wasn't out of love. I had no feelings or emotions at this time. Alcohol had robbed me of that. It was out of convenience. She was 16 and wanted to get out of the house. I was 18 and wanted to hide out.
It was like a marriage made in Kensington. That's where I'm from. The rocks in my head fit the holes in hers.
The marriage lasted like six or seven years to produce three children, none of which I was home to raise. I tried a couple times, but alcohol wouldn't let me be a father or a husband.
I was the type of drunk who would go out on a Monday morning to go down to the bar for a drink and she would see me six months later when I got locked up. My lawyer would say to me, "John, go home, get the wife, get the kids, show up in court. It looks good. Judges like to see that. Get a job." I would do all that and then I'd beat the rap, and on the way out the courtroom steps I'd give her some money and say I'll be home later. She might see me six months from now.
That's the way that marriage went.
I think she got a divorce. I think it was about three months after my divorce, on a Christmas Eve, I decided I have three children. I got a right to see them. I hadn't seen them all that time, but now I got it right.
The truth of that story was I was in a bar on a Christmas Eve. I don't know if you ever been in a bar on Christmas Eve, but the only ones in a bar was me and the bartender. I had about two bucks in my pocket. So I figured if I go around to my ex-wife's house, she would either give me a bottle or some money to get rid of me.
I went around and I did what most alcoholics do. We cause confusion. That's what we do best. I wasn't there 10 minutes and I kicked the toys across the kitchen floor and the tree went through the front window. My brother was there and me and him got into an argument and he broke a whiskey bottle and put over 400 stitches in me, cut me from head to toe like a piece of meat.
I remember them rushing me to the hospital that night. My left leg was cut at the kneecap. My toes were on my chest. The funny thing about that, for years, I thought I won the fight.
They took me in there and they said they were going to have to amputate the leg and I told them they weren't allowed to. Just sew it back on. I'll drag it around with me. They did, and they put me in a body cast.
This woman that I caused all that problems to, my ex-wife, she came and took me back in her house and nursed me back to health. She fed me and she ran for my bottles of whiskey every day and my six-packs. She bought me a wheelchair and she encouraged me to go to therapy to learn how to walk.
The day I walked, the very day I took my first steps, I walked out of her life again.
See, that's the way I repay people that were kind to me. I went back to them upholstered sewers that I lived in.
Now, I don't know if I told you or not, but I used to drive a truck for a living. I was a night truck driver. I drove other people's trucks. Of course, they didn't know I was driving them. I think they call it hijacking.
But anyhow, I made a couple scores in hijacking. I was getting into my mid-20s now. I said to a friend of mine, "You know, like I'm getting a little older now. It's time I become responsible to myself. I think I'm going to buy a business."
I had a pocket full of money, about 35,000, and I said I'm going to buy a business. So I bought a business. I bought a bar. What else would a drunk buy?
I'll tell you the kind of bar I had. Four doors from my bar was the Iron Workers Union. Around the corner was the Roofers Union and right up the street was a Teamsters Union. That was the kind of nuts I attracted to my bar.
I thought I had the sharpest nightclub in the city of Philadelphia. The abnormal became normal. I got crazy. It would be a Friday night. I had a go-go girl dancing, a three-piece band playing, the front door locked, and I was the only one in there. People would be banging on the door trying to get in and I'm in there drinking by myself.
Then I would break into my own jukebox, take the money, and call the cops and say I was robbed. I got crazy. I started to do crazy things.
I remember I went up to an after-hours club one night and I told a friend of mine up there, "You know what my problem is? It's this bar. I have to get rid of this bar. It's taking up too much of my drinking time. They want me there in the morning to open the place up and then they want me to come back at night and close it up."
So I went down and gave the bar away. I went on like an 11-month tear, constantly drunk.
A good friend of mine came. I wound up down to Skid Row. I liked Skid Row. They don't care where you're from as long as you put the money on the table, they'll serve you.
A friend of mine came down and got me. He said, "You don't belong up here," and he took me back up into my neighborhood.
Make a long story short, I made a couple scores again and I was back on top. I bought another bar.
The second bar I owned—as you walked in the door, the first stool right on the bar was two Sears and Roebuck catalogs. People would come in there, have a drink, go through the catalog, make out an order of what they wanted, and give it to the bartender, and you stop back in a couple days, it'll be there. That's the kind of guys I hung with. They're all hijackers or thieves or whatever.
Matter of fact, they just wrote a book about my guys, the guys I hung with. It's called "Confessions of a Second Story Man," if you ever get around to reading it.
But anyhow, at this bar again, I'm out on a tear. I'm one of them kind of guys. I go out on like three, four week tears at a time. I'm with this friend of mine and we're in another bar drinking and this friend says, "John, if you ever need any money, this guy here will loan you whatever you want."
I said, "Oh yeah, give me a thousand bucks." The guy whipped out a thousand.
Now, this guy don't know me from a can of paint. He gives me a thousand. I said to the guy with me, "This guy nuts."
So I drink up the thousand. I'm back there next week. I said, "You got another thousand?" and he give me another thousand.
Make a long story short, I owe this guy like 16 grand.
Now, I didn't need that money. I had that much in my pocket or in my car because I'm hijacking three, four trucks a week. But I thought it was crazy. This guy just handed me money and don't even know me.
I walk in his bar one day and I said to him, "I hope there's no hard feelings, but I ain't going to pay you that money." He didn't like that too well. I said, "Well, you got to be crazy to give me that kind of money."
I don't know if they have any loan sharks here or not. I don't know if they had loan sharks here or not, but they're not like a finance company, you know, or a bank. They don't put a lien against your house or come in the middle of the night and steal your car. They have their own way of doing things.
He sent two guys over to my bar one day and they put me in a car, drove me down to the Delaware River, put a .32 slug in my chest, and threw me in the Delaware River.
Lucky for me, I don't know if you know anything about the Delaware River, but at low tide, it's about one foot of water and five foot of mud. That's what it was that day. They threw me in the river that day and I crawled out of that river.
About a block and a half down from where they threw me in was a bar. I walked down—if you can imagine—I walk into this bar. I got mud from here down and blood running down the front of me and soaking wet. I said to the barmaid, "Give me two shots of whiskey."
The next thing I know, I wake up in one of these plastic tents in a hospital with tubes all over me—in my nose and my arms.
I got a friend of mine. I don't know how long I was there. I don't know—a week, ten days, something like that. I got a friend of mine to go get me some clean clothes. He helped me pull the tubes out of my arms and my nose. I got dressed and me and him walked down the back steps of the hospital.
We left the hospital, went over to this bar where this loan shark was. I sat down beside this guy and I said, "Look, there's no hard feelings. Loan me a couple hundred bucks. I'll buy the bar a drink."
See, that's where alcohol would take me.
I spent the next 18 months of my life working for that guy to work off the 16,000 I owed him. I was going out and doing to people what he tried to do to me.
But then it came to a point where I could no longer work. I could no longer hijack trucks. The guys I hung with that I stole with all my life, they would have a job going and they would say, "John, look, here's some money. Wait here. We'll be back to pick you up. We got something going." They'd never come back.
Or they'd give me an address to where a party was, where there was no party. Nobody lived at that address.
My friends didn't want nothing to do with me. The thieves I stole with didn't want nothing to do with me.
The big money was gone. The bar was gone. I found myself filling the beer cases in the morning for some bartender so he'd give me a shot and a beer or running for a cup of coffee for him so I'd get a shot.
I was sleeping wherever I could sleep. Abandoned houses, empty cars.
Make a long story short, I wound up on a railroad siding in an abandoned car with wine sores and body lice all over me.
I was 29 years old and I was shot out. That fear that I lost when I was 14—now it's back tenfold. I'm afraid of everything. I'm afraid of the wind blowing in the middle of the night. Scared to death of people.
I had long lost contact with my family, but somehow my one sister, my one sister who was a nurse—she came and got me off that railroad siding and she brought me back to her house and she nursed me back to health.
Now, my sister was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I knew nothing about Alcoholics Anonymous. Never heard of it. All the prisons and joints I was in, nobody ever mentioned Alcoholics Anonymous.
But I knew there was something wrong with my sister Ray as I came into her house because she didn't have a drink. And for a member of my family not to drink, it was something different.
She had these signs on her kitchen wall. "Easy does it." "First things first." "Let go. Let God."
They would play these tapes, this Bill Wilson guy, and her sponsor would pick her up every night. I thought it was her girlfriend picking her up every night.
We played a cat and mouse game for about a week. They would tease me about going to a meeting and I would get back at them by borrowing 20 bucks or going down the bar and getting drunk.
I did. I'd get up in the morning to go down to the kitchen and they'd have the 12 and 12 on a toilet seat and I'd throw that down. Then I'd go down to get a cup of coffee. They had the big book beside my coffee cup.
My sister conned me one day. She said, "John, I made arrangements for five girls to come and pick you up and take you to a meeting."
I really didn't know what AA was about, but I was a product of the 50s. I remember watching the James Cagney movies and the Humphrey Bogart movies and they always had some kind of a waterfront scene. They would always have one of these brotherhood missions where the guy stood at the door and they handed out hymnals and Bibles and then they would go in and they would sing and then they would feed him a bowl of soup or something.
I kind of thought that's what AA was like, like the Salvation Army or something.
I remember telling her, "Look, Carol, I'll go to your meeting, but I ain't singing."
Carol said, "You don't have to sing."
She had five girls come pick me up and take me to a meeting.
On the way in the meeting that night, there was a guy there named Tom S. I could tell his name now. Tom Sharkey. Yeah, I knew for sure this guy was a drunk because when I owned the bars, I wouldn't let him in my bars. That's how bad he was. He was one of them—8:00 in the morning, you'd be walking in the door, you'd say, "Yo, Tom, take it somewhere else. Don't come in here."
But anyhow, Tom said, "Are you new, John?" I said, "Yeah."
He said, "Well, it's important you get phone numbers." He wrote his name and phone number down.
I'm an uncaring alcoholic. I'm in acute stages of alcoholism. I have no feelings or emotions for anything or anybody. I took that piece of paper and crumbled it up and put it in my pocket. I said, "Yeah, I'll catch you later, Tom."
I don't remember anything about the meeting, but I'll tell you this—I'm a fast study. You could put me in any room with any kind of people and within a half hour, I'm going to be talking their language.
So on the way home, I made sure I got five more phone numbers.
The next day I called one of them numbers and the girl hung up and my sister called me back and said, "John, it's not that kind of program."
Me and my sister got into an argument. I said, "Look, this is a crazy world you live in."
My sister was 13 years sober at that time. She started the first woman's group in Philadelphia, very dedicated alcoholic. She said, "It's not that kind of program."
I said, "Well, you know, like I'd rather be back down in the neighborhood than live under these crazy rules."
So she convinced me that if I was going to go back to drinking, at least leave my gun with her because I always carried a gun.
I don't know if I said I was on the major crime list in Philadelphia for a lot of years. But I said to her, "Yeah, I'll leave my gun with you."
Because I knew I could get down my neighborhood and get a gun as fast as I can get a drink. And I did. I went down the neighborhood. I got a gun and I went and I got a drink.
I was about four hours into my load and I got a phone call saying that my sister had just shot herself with my gun.
I'm an uncaring alcoholic. The first thing I did was left town. The cops would not like anything better than to find out that that was my gun. I figured if they find out it's my gun, I'm going back to prison for the rest of my life.
But Carol didn't die. I got word she didn't die.
I came back to Sarah and I asked her. I went to the hospital. I asked her why she shot herself. She said she had a desire to drink that day and would rather be dead.
Now, I don't want to confuse or hurt anybody in this room tonight. That is not what Alcoholics Anonymous is about. This is not about dying. This is about living.
But you got to understand, I was attracted to people like that. I thought, boy, this AA must really have something if you have to commit that. That's dedication.
But I stayed drunk for another four months.
It was a Friday night. I had just hijacked a truckload of Botany 500 suits off a place called Daryls. That's what I did for a living. Stole trucks.
It was a Friday night. I had a brand new sharkskin suit on. Pocket full of money could choke a horse. I'm in a bar. I'm in one of the watering holes that I hung in—them upholstered sewers—and I got the crying drunks.
I don't know if there's any real alcoholics in the room tonight, but every real alcoholic knows what the crying drunks are. We all get them. I don't know what I'm crying about. I can't stop crying. I'll tell my sad tale to anybody who'll listen, and I don't even know what the sad tale is.
I'm telling this barmaid, I'm crying in my beer and I'm telling this barmaid my whole sad tale of woe, how life dealt me a bad hand.
She listened for a while and she took my drink and my money and put me down with some of the roofers that I used to drink with. They listened for a while and they got tired of it and they picked me up bodily and put me out on a park bench outside the bar and they locked the doors to the bar.
Now it's late at night and I got the crying drunks, a pocket full of money, and I'm sitting on this park bench. I'll tell my sad tale to anybody and there's this little nurse standing there waiting for a bus.
I start telling her my whole sad story.
I remember when the bus came that night, the doors opened. She ran in and ran to the back of the bus and said to the bus driver, "Take off. Take off."
I mean, I guess she was never so happy to see that bus come, you know.
Anyhow, I'm sitting there feeling sorry for myself and I reach in the pocket of this suit that I just stole not five hours ago and I pull out an old wrinkled up piece of paper. It says Tom S.
Now, why would an uncaring drunk save an old wrinkled up piece of paper for five months?
I used to try to explain that at AA meetings. I know today—if you believe in God, no explanation's needed. If you don't believe in God, none will satisfy you. You can call it odds, you can call it God. I don't care what you call it.
I didn't know what it was then. I know today it was divine intervention. It was God working in my life when I didn't even believe in God.
I called that number and a guy answered, "Young Men's AA." I said, "I got the wrong number. I'm looking for Tom S."
He said, "Oh, he's here."
Tom got on the phone and he says, "You want to get sober?"
I said, "What else would I call you for?" I got the crying drunks. I just want to talk to somebody till I can get a drink again. That's what I want. I'll tell you anything you want to hear.
He says, "I'll be right over."
He came over to get me. I'll tell you, I really don't remember too much of what Tom said that night. I'll tell you what I'll remember for the rest of my life what he didn't say.
He didn't say to me, "How much money you got in your pocket?"
He didn't say to me, "Do you have any medical coverage?"
He didn't say, "Where do you want to go?"
He said, "Get in a car. I'll take you someplace beyond your wildest dreams."
He did. He took me to this place. It looked like an old store with big storefront windows and double doors. I took three steps in and I immediately knew I made a mistake.
It was like an abandoned room, an abandoned building. There were bodies all over the floor. There was no furniture in the place. There was a desk over in one corner. In another corner there was a guy I later found out his name was Depression Tom and he had his wallet and he was talking to himself saying, "Spock beam me up."
There was another guy they called Jimmy One Eye. He was in the middle of the floor. He had one glass eye and he had a football trying to bounce it like a basketball.
The only thing missing out of this room was a big Indian and Nurse Ratchet. It looked like the daycare center of a mental institution.
I backed against the wall. I said, "You know, like just stay away. I got a pocket full of money and new suit on. You'll take my hair and roll me. That's what these bodies are, you know."
So I backed against the wall, told them to stay away from me.
Somebody came out and banged on that desk and it was like Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. These bodies all got up simultaneously. They started setting up these five-dollar Kmart chairs and they had what they call a meeting.
I really don't remember much about the meeting. I wasn't listening to what they were saying. I figured I was trying to get out of there. I kept looking out the window.
I do remember this. The sun was coming up when the meeting was over. That's the kind of meetings these guys had.
But I do remember this. After the meeting was over, there was about 35 guys in the room and they all walked over and shook my hand and said, "Keep coming back."
That was the hook that got me into Alcoholics Anonymous.
You see, nobody but nobody—once you caught my act, they never asked me to come back anywhere twice. These guys were willing to accept me just the way I was.
That was my first conscious try at stopping drinking. I said, "That's it. I'm not going to drink anymore. I'm going to make meetings like these guys. I'm going to do what these guys do. I'm going to be all right. I know what I have to do now."
See, that's a joke. When an alcoholic says he ain't going to drink anymore, that's a joke.
If I had the power to say I