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Folks, thanks very much. Tom Iver, an alcoholic.

>> Helped her up. She's younger than me. I had to get up here by myself.

[laughter]

Great to see everybody. I'm a member of the Primary Purpose group of AA in Southern Pines. Delighted to be here. My sobriety today is Groundhog Day, 1957. And thank you very much. I really appreciate Lorraine being here with 46 years, keeping me from being the oldest rat in the barn. And that's a good feeling. It feels like a security blanket having somebody here. I am delighted to be here, and congratulations on a good conference. Thanks for the great work that's been done.

This is a kind of conference that I like a great deal because it gets right down to the fundamentals of Alcoholics Anonymous. The theme with the steps, traditions, and the concept is very much at the heart and soul of what we're about. I like that. I like the fact that it's been a conference with a lot of content. We had workshops and panels on just about every area of service. We could have covered a couple more areas, but most areas of service had active panels going on. I had a chance to get into two of them and they were really good.

And it's a good, loose, warm bunch of folk. I went out kind of working the crowd a little bit while ago. I just wanted to feel like who was here. Sometimes when you get up in front of one of these crowds, it looks like a bunch of enemies. You say, "Well, what have I done to these folk?" I like to just get out and mix it up a little bit and feel at home and feel connected. And I surely do. And I'm just happy to be here.

I want to tell you as much as I can of my story. I would tell it all, but I'm afraid you all will quit. I have a kind of system I've developed in trying to talk to folks in AA. I like to quit just a few minutes before you do.

[laughter]

You ever been talking and you just sort of see the curtain drop? You keep on talking if you want to, but you're done now.

[laughter]

So I kind of look for signs. The first sign of a glaze, man, I say, "Whoa, let's get out of dodge." So I'll be looking for that and I'll quit. I don't care if it's midstroke. I mean, I'll head out for the airplane.

So I am just delighted to be here, and I've appreciated very much being here and getting a good look at you. I thought Chicago was made up of an airport and a hotel. That's all I'd ever seen of it. This time I came in on Friday, and Mike put work over me and turned me over to Julia. So I spent the afternoon Friday on the way to the hotel with a good-looking woman in her husband's convertible, with his permission, touring Chicago. And what a beautiful thing. I'd never really taken the time to just look at the things that make up this city. And I think I'm going to move up here next week. Of course my wife won't come, but I'm coming anyway.

So thanks for all of the courtesy and consideration. I met a lot of folks and got to see a bunch of old friends.

Now I'm going to talk about drinking whiskey and stuff.

[laughter]

I really want to talk about some stuff tonight. So I'm going to hurry. It won't sound like it to you. I'm from North Carolina, but I'm going to be going as hard as I can go. And it'll sound like slow motion, but it ain't.

I'm a guy that I don't know. I'm no expert on anything. Certainly no expert on alcoholism or AA. Much of anything else. If you leave here tonight any smarter than you came in, it won't be my fault. It'll be thanks to your dinner companions or something.

So what I want to do is just share with you a little bit. I want to share one thing that I've come to believe in AA that sort of forms the foundation for what we do in AA. And what I like to think about when I'm talking. I like to keep it fresh in my mind what we're dealing with here, and that's alcoholism.

Alcoholism is a killer illness. Absolutely a killer illness. I understand and I believe that 95% of folks who have alcoholism die of that condition, never effectively knowing that there's a way out. Most folks die at a fairly early age. Fifty-two is the average life expectancy of a still-practicing alcoholic.

It's interesting to me that when I came into the program all those years ago, the life expectancy was 52 years. And now with all the research and advanced training and development of stuff that we've done over the years, it's still 52. We're dealing with a tough, tough illness. It doesn't yield readily. Those of us, I believe, who are fortunate enough to grab this brass ring called recovery and hang on to it are among the luckiest people on God's green earth because it is a tremendously difficult illness.

It's a predatory type of illness. It's an illness that can knock you out in a heartbeat. And I know that when I say I'm an alcoholic, I'm also acknowledging that I have the mind of a chronic alcoholic, and it isn't going to change from that. That's what it is. And the only defense that I have from the fatal nature of this illness is the practice of spiritual principles that keep my defenses in place. And all I have to do to revisit alcoholism is let up on that and let my spiritual condition deteriorate. And what at this point would seem unthinkable to me would become very normal.

So it's a tough feeling. I'll tell you a quick story about what happens in terms of that mental obsession. Our book says that the mind of a guy like me can and does turn at times irresistibly to the thought of a drink. When I first started hearing that in AA, that sounded like some pretty strong language. I didn't know how strong it was till I experienced it.

The first time I ever ran into a real, life, barking obsession, I'd been sober three and a half years. I was very active in the program, as active as I know how to be. And I had to make a trip on a plane. Nothing radically different about that. It was a jet. I'd never been on a jet. They'd just invented those things while I was drunk. I didn't know a plane could fly without a propeller. Here we went. I might have been a little excited about that, but not much. Nothing radically different.

We took off, and you know how it is, man. You don't even get leveled off where they start hustling that hooch. So that day I was sitting near the front of the plane. They got the buggy out and they started pushing it up the aisle, announcing what they had on it. Now I'd heard that lots of times. But you know what I mean when I say I heard it? I heard it.

And all at once, the spiritual giant was absolutely overwhelmed with an obsession to drink. Now I'm not talking about goofy thinking like, "Well, maybe you're not really an alcoholic. Maybe you overreacted and came here too quickly." That didn't enter my mind. No goofy stuff like "You're 30,000 feet in the air. Who would know?" That didn't enter my mind. Or, "Wouldn't a drink be nice?" Never entered my mind.

I sat there and went from spiritual giant to an absolute shivering wreck of an alcoholic. I knew I was going to drink. And fellow alcoholics, I didn't want to drink. I didn't want to drink. I knew I was going to.

I took a dollar bill out of my pocket, stuck it in my shirt pocket, and I'm sitting there sweating bullets. And I thought, "My God, what do you do?" Well, what do you do in a situation like this? Call your sponsor? Good luck. Catch a meeting, drop by the club? I tell you what I believe you do: you're either prepared or dead meat. One or the other. Because that's alcoholism. That's the dilemma of alcoholism.

What I did was get through it. I'll tell you that now. But what I did was what I'd heard: remember your last drunk. That helped a little. But bad memories aren't enough. Bad memories won't do it. And then I remembered what folks said: "When you're right up against it and you don't know what to do, pray."

When I walked into Alcoholics Anonymous, I didn't even know the Our Father, but I'd learned to pray and believe with all my heart that the prayer would work. So I said the simplest, most profound prayer man's ever uttered. I said, "God, help me." It was gone as quickly as it came.

Now that wasn't the last one, but that's the dilemma of alcoholism. It requires very little provocation. It just seems to happen sometimes. All I have to do is let that little bit of a defense down and here we go.

So I believe very much what John said when he finished that countdown. And I'd say it to all of us: we are dealing with a tremendously formidable illness, but thank God this program is stronger. It's stronger in every possible way. Thank you very much.

Was that good? Is that good enough to get a drink of water? You reckon?

[laughter]

>> Thank you very much, Jack. Thank you. I used to be very bad to drink. So that's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a condition, and even though it's been a long, long time, I have absolutely no illusions. I've gone to funerals of folks senior to me for whom this illness came knocking. So I take absolutely nothing for granted.

I don't know exactly why I'm an alcoholic. I think the most important thing that I know about alcoholism is the fact that I have it. I have absolutely no question in my mind I have it. And where it came from, I couldn't care less.

I've read a lot of stuff, heard a lot of stuff, all kinds of theories about alcoholism. Some I like better than others. There's one that says we tend to be alcoholic because we seem to be overly endowed with skills and abilities far beyond average people. That's a nice theory, you know. There's something about the alcoholic mind, that the brain's just too big for the head, and all kinds of theories about that fantastic alcoholic mind. And I've heard them discussed for years, but only in Alcoholics Anonymous. Ain't nobody at UI studying that incredible mind. But that's a good one. Yeah, I kind of like that. That we're just sort of creative people. We just burst and want to explode. Be like Vincent van Gogh and cut off your ear with that creativity. Well, I don't know about all that. It's nice.

Fact is, I don't know. I know this: I believe that I was a sitting duck for alcoholism. I was a sitting duck for using alcohol more than the average person. I won't go into a whole bunch of causation, but what I mean when I say I was a sitting duck is I think I was a guy that was just set up so that when booze came, I didn't need to learn to use it. It just fit my life as naturally as breathing because that stuff did something for me.

I was a kind of miserable kid. I was a guy who was a study in conflict. What you see wasn't what you got. I was studying conflict. I was one guy on the inside, quite another on the outside. On the inside, I was a guy who was fearful, anxious, extremely isolated. I was not somebody who could readily connect with other people.

On the outside, I looked like a loud, leader-type guy who was always starting something. That wasn't that kind of guy. I was a guy who, on the outside, in my good moments, looked like a winner. On the inside, I was a loser because I had a remarkable ability to screw up stuff on a regular basis, no matter how good. So I was a guy who was a study in contrast and a lot of conflict.

And so when I started to drink, the magic happened for me. No mystery about it. That stuff did something important. I loved it. I would have needed examination if I had not continued to drink. Man, that stuff was wonderful. I never had anything worked as well for me as booze. Sure beat psychiatry and was a lot cheaper.

And so I just took to it. I was not an instant alcoholic, not a born alcoholic, not an alcoholic at all. I was a guy who found marvelous freedom and release and relief to the kind of uncomfortable life that I had. And I just fell in love with that way of life. Fell in love with booze.

Silk Work said we drink essentially because of the effect produced by alcohol. Amen. Silk Work. That's exactly what I loved. That feeling. I loved what it did for me, and I loved the places people drank. I just love. I've been just itching to get to that jazz. There's jazz going on somewhere in Chicago right now. And now when I was drinking, I would have been there. That was like a magnet to me. Still is. I still want to get down there because that kind of environment just sort of has a seductive quality to me.

And so I just loved that. I loved the place. I loved the people who drank. And so I just fell into that. It became a way of life to me. And I was a guy who wanted the endless party. I never wanted to quit. I was always the last guy to give it up.

And I'll let you in on a little secret: as ugly as it might have looked to an observer, it looked awfully good to me. And if I had been able to continue it, no matter how bad it looked, I would be doing it tonight. Now I don't mean that I'm yearning because I've learned you can listen to jazz sober and hear it. Actually hear what's going on. So if I went or go, it'll be sober. But that thing just had that kind of magic appeal.

And so that's all it was. And the only reason I stopped drinking is because I couldn't stop drinking. I developed alcoholism. And why? I don't know. I understand that if ten people take a drink, nine of them go about their business with no appreciable difficulty. They drink if they want to and don't if they don't want to. I don't understand those nine. They don't understand me because I was the odd man out. There was something that happened to me that didn't happen to other folk. I don't know why. Don't care why. I just know that it did.

And something happened in my 18th year where we refer to it in the program as crossing a line. A line from whatever kind of drinking—whether it's wild, celebrational, recreational, party drinking, heavy drinking, whatever—I crossed a line into uncontrolled drinking or alcoholism. And that's what happened to me when I was 18 years old. I had not a clue that it had happened. Had not a clue till I was sober for a good while and looked back. Then I could see that the undeniable fact was that it was as if the curtain closed on act one, opened on act two, and it was a different deal.

Now I had no awareness whatsoever. I don't think anything changed so much in how much I drank. I drank about as much as I could before I was alcoholic. I've been so drunk I couldn't lay on the floor, man. And you can't do much better than that, alcoholic or not. So nothing happened in those terms about getting drunk or even getting into moderate trouble.

But the thing that happened was I got so that I could not predict how much I drank or when I would stop. Now I didn't analyze that at the time. Never really seriously thought about that till I was sober. But that clearly was my pattern. I had no clue what would happen. I knew what I intended to happen. I intended to have a couple of drinks, loosen up, shoot some pool, go on home, do my chores. And then I'd wind up almost invariably closing the joint and winding up in bizarre situations.

I was a guy who had rather chronic difficulties with blackouts. I had a remarkable ability to wake up in strange places, often with strange people. And it gets a little testy if you do that on a regular basis. Yeah, I got so I used to wake up, come to, and I wouldn't open my eyes immediately. You know, because a lot of times if you open your eyes too quick, there'll be some yo-yo standing there asking you tremendously difficult questions. Like, "Who are you?"

[laughter]

I said, "Well, I'm not sure what I might have told him. You have to think about that." Or about as bad: "What are you doing here?" And you don't even know where you are. You know?

So I got so I would wake up and not show any evidence of it. I'd just listen for the clues. If I heard metal clanging, I knew it's okay. I've never been put in one of those places by accident. I thought it was, but I never heard anybody say, "I made a mistake. Man, we shouldn't have put you in here." They always put me. I can spot one a mile away. I don't know what it looks like, but they put a policeman right on the front row.

[laughter]

But that was the kind of stuff that happened. And so that's the way my life became. And I had absolutely no awareness of what was going on.

I don't know. I've never heard anybody else describe this very much, but it was certainly true with me: I don't think until I got into Alcoholics Anonymous I ever made a direct connection between the first drink and what happened. I've never woke up in jail and said, "Geez, I should not have started drinking." Never. I never had that thought consciously.

To me, when I would come to in some bizarre circumstance, my response would always be remarkably similar. It would be something like coming to, taking a look at the latest wreckage of the past, and experiencing what Bill wrote about. I used to think it was a little exaggerated, the way he described pitiful, incomprehensible demoralization, until I saw clearly what my life had become. And that's exactly what I would experience when I would wake up. There I am, failed again and on the rocks again.

And so what would follow would be that kind of moral whipping. "You've done it again. You've done it again. You're no good. You're worthless. You have no responsibility. You have no discipline. You have no character." And that is honest to God what I believed. I did not believe it had to do with alcohol doing something different with me than it did with other people. Never remember having that thought.

And then would follow the options. Some of you may have experienced some of this. I'm sure you have. It's think of the options. You look at that thing. I look at this life that looks like a worthless sack of nothing. And then I look at: well, what do I do first? Always. But why don't you just end it? Why don't you just end it? Everybody would be better off, including you. Or if not that, why don't you just keep going? Just disappear. Just ride off into the sunset and don't bother people anymore. Just go away. Or do I suck it up and make up another bunch of lies and go back and try to start again?

Pitiful, incomprehensible demoralization. And that was characteristic of my drinking.

What alcoholism started—my alcoholism started in a compact sort of a thing, in a way. My serious drinking, let's see, it's 9:00 and I started at 10 minutes till. That was close, you know.

My alcoholism, in order to see it in a real clear, panoramic view, was a short period of time, relatively speaking. I started serious drinking at 16. Had what I hope and pray was my last drink eight years later at 24. And in those ensuing eight years between those two points, I absolutely destroyed everything I ever touched.

At the end of that period, I couldn't think of one human being who wouldn't have been better off if they'd never seen me. Not one. Could not think of one worthy thing that I had done that I could point to with pride. Never had a job for as much as a year in my life except the Army. And I didn't want to keep that one. Every time I'd quit, they'd come get me and put me in jail, you know.

[laughter]

And then they got tired of that game and threw me out when I wouldn't let me quit. But they threw me out with an undesirable discharge. Twenty-year-old guy.

And so when I looked at that life, it was—I mean, I was not just somebody who had intermittent difficulties. I was a guy whose life went down the tube in a hurry. Some of us are just that kind. We tend to be basket cases from day one and get worse. And that's what I was.

And in eight years I went through a whole bunch of stuff with constant kinds of difficulties: jails, hospitals, psych wards, just stuff. And then I wound up just north of here, just up the lake from here. When I got thrown out of the military, I just kind of migrated up there like a wild goose or something. I just didn't mean to go. I just wound up up there.

And so I hit some of my roughest going in Detroit and a beautiful little resort just north of Detroit called Flint. And if you haven't been, you just owe it to yourself to go one time. If you can't go there, you might try the mountains of Afghanistan.

[laughter]

Well, that's where I wound up. Yeah. And at one point, Flint was named the worst city in the United States in which to live. And you know, when you don't have much to be proud of, you always look for something. And when I saw that rating, I felt a little sense of pride, you know?

[laughter]

At least I made them put it on the list a little bit. I contributed that.

Well, that's just where I wound down. And so I wound up. I went up there. I started working at General Motors till my reputation got in front of me. And if anybody bought a '53 or '54 Buick, I'm sorry.

[laughter]

I was not well at the time.

[laughter]

And that—but I bombed there. My reputation did get in front of me. I wound up in Flint, Michigan, of all things, unemployed, darn near unemployable. And I wish I could tell you there was some real nice end to this story. There isn't.

I wound up. I used to say that in the last couple of years I lived by my wits, but that's a little bit euphemistic for what I was doing. Wits was not exactly it. I lived by my lack of character. You can believe that I'm not proud of it by any stretch of the imagination. But I started to live a way of life that I honestly didn't know existed when I grew up in Mayberry down in North Carolina. Yeah, I did not know people did like that.

But it's amazing what happens when you incrementally fall apart, eh? When you just sort of go a notch at a time. Because what happened every time I would hit the wall and crash and start over, I would ratchet down a notch. Ratchet down a notch. And what at one time would have been unthinkable became the only normal thing for me.

Took me a long time when I got sober to start thinking in something less than substandard terms. Took me a long time to relate to first class. And so that's how I wound up.

That thing of just wits—I lived by using people, taking advantage of folks, hustling, bumming. In Flint, if you've ever been there, it's not really criminal activity. It's the food chain. To do things that some folks call criminal, it's a case of either roll or be rolled. One or the other. And whoever's friskiest on a given day is the one that drinks. And so sometimes I was frisky and sometimes I was the one being frisky. But that's just the way it worked.

I wasn't reared to do that. I'm not proud of that. I'm not proud of conniving and hustling and using people. I'm not proud of selling my blood for five bucks a throat. But that's what guys like me did.

I never want to forget that period of my life when I wandered the face of this earth with no place I could comfortably call home. Don't want to forget that. Somebody mentioned today about the loneliness of this condition. God, is that ever true? That has little to do with the nearness or distance of other people. It isn't about other people. It's about an extreme isolation and inability to connect with the world around. Living in that great pit of despair, and in my early twenties, looking at myself in the mirror, I'd want to gag at what I saw. When the only thing I could think was, "Geez, you'd be better off if it were just done." Those are thrilling thoughts for a guy on the way to the party. But that's what it was.

And I never want to forget that grim reality. And it would be nice if I could tell you that one fine day I had enough and called for help. Somebody threw a rope. But it didn't work that way.

Good many of you in here are well aware that mine was to be one of those stories that contains what I know practically every person in this room for sure has feared doing. I never met many alcoholics, particularly those who've had blackouts or even not, who hasn't lived in fear of doing something that couldn't be undone to somebody else.

Most alcoholics don't want to hurt folk. It's hard to tell that, but deep down, most alcoholics are pretty decent folk and don't want to hurt people. And I was no different. I knew I was capable of anything. But I was not a predatory person. I wasn't somebody who wanted to hurt folk. And I always had a fear that I would do something horrible that couldn't be undone.

And like everybody else, I was the kind of guy that would wake up and panic. I'd go look outside if I had a car, to see if it was there, to see if it was in one piece, or if there's blood on it. And then breathe a sigh of relief and go do it again. And that was my life. That was just routine.

And one morning, I woke up in jail. Novelty there? I mean, that was a routine deal. As I woke up, the jailer came by and I knew him quite well. And I said, "Hey, when can I get out?" He would normally say 10:00. That day he said, "I hope never."

And I had not a clue what he was talking about. And then not him, but some of the other guys in there told me: the night before, I'd been driving somebody's car down the main street of the city and had run down and killed two people in a blackout, blind drunk, right down the main street. And absolutely no awareness of that then, now, or ever. But no doubt that that's what happened.

You know, with a guy like me, me driving down or even walking down a street was a dangerous act because it was like firing a loaded weapon down the street. It was just a matter of whether it hit or not.

And so when I learned that, you know, my response was—you heard Bo describe the other side of that. The mind won't take in what it can't handle. That explains a lot of behavior to me. It won't take it in if it can't handle it. And my response was just to push that away and then gradually accept the truth.

The only time I'd ever been in jail I didn't try to get out. And then somebody—contact with one of the policemen there. I think they learned that I had family in North Carolina. I don't know how. They didn't ask me. I wouldn't have told them. I don't think I didn't want to get out of jail. I was afraid to get out. It wasn't afraid to drink. I just was afraid to face anybody. I couldn't face anybody. I was deeply ashamed to be breathing when two fine young folks no longer were because of me.

And so somebody learned about the family. They contacted him, told him I had a guy up there in a lot of trouble. And my folks had a mother and sister in North Carolina. They came and got me. I didn't know how to tell them I didn't want to get out. And so they got an attorney. I was charged with manslaughter. They got me released on bond.

And I knew I would never drink again. My God, how could you? How could you after something like that? Anybody will tell you: if it gets bad enough, you won't drink. Well, don't you believe that? If you're talking about alcoholism, the more logical question is: how would you not drink after something like that? I didn't have a clue.

I just know that a day and a half later, I got out. I walked the streets and was doing whatever I could try to do to just wander. And then about middle of the day, I started to drink. From July to November of '56, I drank truly like nobody I've ever seen. And there was no mystery about what I was doing. I was doing what they call pathological drinking, you know. Just I was trying to drink myself to death, and anybody could have seen that.

And then the 19th of November of '56 was actually the date of my last drink. And I hope it was my last drink. I pray that it was my last drink. It has been so far. I finished a bottle of gin. Had about that much in a bottle of gin and I finished it. Went down to court. I knew that I wouldn't be back. And I had no absolutely no illusions about it.

And when I went into court, my attorney—I had never heard the plea. I'd always been in the drunk line and just pled guilty to whatever they said. And my attorney said, "Stand. There's a plea called stand mute." And I thought, "My God, what an eloquent plea." Hey, stand mute. Because what else could you say? I'm not even a witness. Somebody had to tell me what I'd done. And it was obvious that I had.

And so that was a plea I entered. I was found guilty, of course, and sentenced to 5 to 15 years in the Michigan State Penitentiary.

Now I knew what that meant. I was, as you gather, I wasn't a hot house flower. But I had never done any serious—you know, I'd always been in drunk tanks or county jails or pea farms or stockades in the military, something like that. It all just sort of lightweight, you know? Thirty-day sentences or whatever.

And this I knew was a different ball game. I'd been on the street with a lot of guys that were in and out of that joint, and I knew if there were guys like that in there, it was no place to be. And so when they passed that sentence, I think it was really telling to me that I had an instinctive reaction of fear. I guess anybody would. But at the same time, the most real sense of relief I'd ever known because I knew it was over. It was over.

And I'm not talking about optimism or hope or "there'll be a new day." I'm talking about "it's over. It's done."

And I walked into that prison the next day. I was led into that prison on a chain with five other guys. And I knew absolutely without any question I'd never come back out. I knew that. And I'm absolutely convinced that had it not been for the program that you and I celebrate tonight, I would not have walked back out.

If I'd have gone in there and tried to live in that jungle with my street behavior, it would have eaten me alive. I don't have any illusions about that. And so I walked into that place and didn't care. I was absolutely resigned to that fate and had absolutely no concern about walking out. All I wanted to do was disappear.

I snapped back into isolation as severely as I've ever known. And I didn't engage in conversation with people. I sat like a guy in a catatonic state almost. I just never engaged in any kind of dialogue with people. I just sat and read anything to keep from thinking.

And one day—amazing to me about how the turning point comes that starts to make—I've had many turning points. Most of them I've turned the wrong way. But I've had a lot of them in shaping the new life. Those have been monumentally important. But while they might have seemed petty at the time, like the thing that started the ball rolling in a new direction for me—although I had no clue about that—one day a guy called me out for an interview that worked there. A fellow named Martin. And he called me out and he did—I know now it was a standard social work interview with a lot of crazy questions. And I'm sure I gave him a lot of alcoholic answers and probably lied like a dog.

But it's a funny thing about that. They—I've never had but one diagnosis in my life. It sounded different. Sometimes folks say, "You're a drunk or you're no good or you're a bum or you're an alcoholic or whatever." I'd heard that all my life. And from there, people would say like, "Why don't you quit drinking?" You know? Or something like that. I never could think of a good reason to quit drinking. I mean, drunk was bad enough. Sober was unbearable. I never saw anybody that didn't drink that didn't look like they didn't drink. They just looked miserable. Looked like they were just in pain or something. And I never had any burning desire to be sober.

Well, this guy made the same diagnosis. Said, "Man, you've had a lot of trouble with booze." Then he said something I'd never heard before. He said, "We have an AA group here." I don't know if he said Alcoholics Anonymous or not, but he said, "We have an AA group here. I think you ought to go." And it was just conversational like that. It wasn't putting a noose on me and dragging me and capturing me or anything like we do so much now. Just sort of like, "Say, you