AA Speaker – Tom I. – Vancouver, Canada – 2010
AA speaker Tom I. shares his story from a maximum-security prison in Michigan, working the steps in recovery, and building a life of service and purpose after release.
Tom I. walked into his first AA meeting in a maximum-security penitentiary in Michigan in 1957, convicted of manslaughter and facing 5 to 15 years. In this AA speaker tape, he describes working the steps while incarcerated, the spiritual transformation that followed, and how the principles of the program shaped a career in corrections and a life of genuine recovery.
Tom I. shares his experience as an AA speaker from a maximum-security prison where he was convicted of two deaths while driving drunk and spent years working the steps. He describes how step work gave him dignity, integrity, and a spiritual foundation that allowed him to function in a predatory environment and ultimately rebuild his life. He emphasizes the importance of full recovery through the complete program—not just abstinence—and warns about the danger of surviving on the surface level of sobriety without addressing the spiritual malady.
Episode Summary
Tom I. opens by emphasizing that real communication in AA comes through identification, not theories or credentials. He spent his first AA meeting in Jackson State Penitentiary in Michigan, convicted of killing two people while driving drunk. Before that conviction, he had lived on the streets of Detroit and Flint, surviving through petty crime and constant drunkenness—not out of criminal intent, but as a survival mechanism in those environments.
The turning point came when Tom woke up in jail with no memory of what he’d done. A guard told him he’d struck and killed two pedestrians crossing the street. Tom couldn’t process it at first—his mind defended itself against the reality. He spent the rest of his time in that cell not wanting to get out, ashamed to breathe. A policeman noticed his condition and called his family in North Carolina. They came, got an attorney, and had him bonded out, though Tom didn’t want release.
Within a month of his release, Tom started drinking again—heavily—trying to drink himself to death, he believes now. On November 19th, he finished a bottle of gin and went to court. He was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to five to fifteen years in Jackson State Penitentiary. Walking in chained with five other men, Tom had two clear thoughts: he wouldn’t hurt anybody else, and he would never come out alive.
An officer noticed Tom’s record—three inches thick with drunk charges—and suggested AA. Tom didn’t know what AA was. A few days later, he got a slip saying his first meeting was February 2, 1957. He had no idea what to expect but went.
At that first meeting, Tom didn’t identify with anyone. He was 24 and the youngest person there by years. He didn’t believe he was an alcoholic. He didn’t understand why anyone would voluntarily talk about their worst moments. But something kept him coming back. The second week, the speaker—a former boxer with a rough past—wasn’t impressive by the story, but his enthusiasm was magnetic. That energy, that spirit, is what drew Tom back.
Over time, Tom worked the steps with minimal guidance but maximum willingness. He did inventory. He did his fifth step sitting on a prison yard bench in the middle of 6,300 people, opening up to another inmate about who he really was. When he finished that fifth step, he felt freed—more known by that man than by his own mother. He came back and reviewed what he’d done. It was good enough.
The steps transformed Tom. For the first time in his life, he learned to care about other people. He learned dignity, integrity, how to treat people with respect. He learned that if he said something, it would be done. These weren’t abstract ideas—he practiced them daily in an environment of fear, predatory behavior, and constant tension. In that prison, Tom became somebody respected, trusted, and functional.
Tom later shares a story about a man in his home group who came in crying, dead inside, though joking on the surface. Tom learned he’d lost a son to suicide and hadn’t spoken to another son in 25 years. Tom told him not drinking and hanging out with the fellowship wouldn’t touch that. He had to make direct amends. The man did, and for the first time in 25 years, his family took a vacation together.
Tom then reads a powerful piece about a man named David who had 20 years sober but never truly recovered. David remained rigid, isolated, cold—plagued by the spiritual malady untreated. Eventually, David took his own life. The passage describes how alcoholism doesn’t need us to drink to kill us. It needs us to ignore the spiritual malady, the fundamental insecurity at the root of the disease. Recovery requires the complete three-fold process: working the steps, belonging to a group of people, and carrying the message through service. Survival alone—just not drinking—won’t heal the hole inside.
When Tom was released after serving his time, he found himself in a small town with almost no AA infrastructure. He could have gone to the city, but responsibility called. He stayed and built that group from the ground up. He gave people haircuts before they went home, asking where they’d go and what they’d do. Watching releasees return, he learned what happens to people who don’t anchor into the program deeply enough.
Tom’s recovery led to work in prison rehabilitation—something that had never been done before. He became the first person employed as a professional in the state prison system. He served in that role for years without ever applying for a job, believing AA principles guided him to give his best to whatever he was assigned. Walls opened, opportunities came, and a life of service unfolded—not because Tom pursued it, but because he stayed willing and let his higher power direct the work.
Notable Quotes
When you look at what makes communication effective, if you do one-way communication like a lecture, at the end of two weeks you’ll be lucky to remember 2% of it. But if you get involved, it goes up to 80%.
The purest form of Alcoholics Anonymous is when somebody shares their experience, strength, and hope where they were broken and healed.
I became literally a free man in every way that counted except physically, probably the least important. I became somebody who was functional, who cared about other people.
Not drinking and hanging out with a new crowd won’t even touch it. You have to get down to those basic causes and conditions. And that’s the thing about amends.
I believe without any question: when God has work for me to do, the way will open up. I know that. And if anything is blocking, my higher power will take care of it.
Our disease doesn’t need us to drink in order to kill us. It’s the spiritual malady. Recovery must be a three-fold process: working the steps, belonging to a group of people, and carrying the message through service.
Step 5 – Admission
Steps 8 & 9 – Making Amends
Hitting Bottom
Sponsorship
Spiritual Awakening
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Step 4 – Resentments & Inventory
- Step 5 – Admission
- Steps 8 & 9 – Making Amends
- Hitting Bottom
- Sponsorship
- Spiritual Awakening
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Full AA Speaker Transcript
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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. We hope to always remain an ad-free podcast, so if you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at sober-onrise.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. >> You got me wired for sound here now.
Uh I'm Tom Ivester, an alcoholic. >> I'm a member of the primary purpose group in Southern Pines, North Carolina. I think I'm about to lose my voice.
I'll be totally disabled if I do that. >> Who did it, Peter? I mean, >> God, you'd think he'd sober up by now.
>> Well, it's good to be back uh be be back up in this little piece of Vancouver and uh typically good weather. I told him I said I'm going to wear rain gear the whole weekend because I looked at the computer and said this place is going to look awful and it's beautiful. It's just absolutely beautiful.
And you guys look well now not beautiful now, but you're looking better than you did. I bet you that. And it's good to see everybody.
We'll be uh we'll be here till noon Sunday. And uh God only knows what we'll do. The uh I don't have any real really really hard outline.
I'm not somebody who has canned stuff. I have a lot of notes here, but I don't know where they came from. I just sort of pick up stuff and bring it with me so I'm not lonely on the airplane.
And it is good to be here. Good to be back. Thoroughly appreciate it when I've been here before.
And uh and and think we will this time as well. Uh I tell tell you what I what I would would like to do is uh number one, I really like for things to be interactive. And what I mean by that is two-way communication.
I learned long ago is in a college speech class a guy said something that I've never forgotten and I've believed it ever since is that when you look at what makes communication effective simple little stuff that that I've never had really thought of. And what he said was when you do one one-way communication like a lecture or a speech that at the end of two weeks you'll be lucky to remember 2% of it. 2%.
That it just isn't an effective way to communicate. And then if you get if you get involved in the presentation, it'll go up to 35 or 40%. And then if you uh if you uh get involved in putting it together and putting it out, it'll go well over 80%.
So I like interacting because I just think it's a lot more effective and I think it's more useful and and so what I mean by that is I'd like for us to just sort of sort of talk with each other as we go along here through the week. Now if you if you just leave it up to me, I'll do it. But you may not like it.
It'd be but it it I'll I'll fill it up. You can count on that. Uh but I'd much much rather it it be something that's going to going to fall into to where you are where you what you're what you're thinking about right now.
And uh what what I what I basically would would like to get done some a little bit of tonight would be to one I'm going to let you know who I am. Yeah, the strange thing about about uh speakers and alcoholics, you you probably have noticed this. If somebody gets up to speak to an AA group and they don't do what we call qualify, we don't listen to them.
If if somebody just starts making a speech to a group of AA members, that's an exercise in futility because the SK screen will just drop. You don't listen to theories and and and all this kind of stuff. You what what what what really works for us is is identification.
And uh that's the reason we do what we do. I tell you the worst I I think probably the worst time I have ever had trying to get going in in making an AA talk in a group. a guy.
He was an old attorney. What somebody said going through a cemetery and saw a gravestone of an attorney there in that town said, "Here lies a a a an honest an honest I forgot what they said. Oh, he said an attorney and an honest man.
And the guy that was looking said, "My god, they're burying them two to a grave." So So I had an attorney like that that had invited me to speak in Charlotte, our biggest town, and he had gotten hold of my professional resume somewhere. And he introduced me with a resume. Yeah.
Where he went to school, where he worked, all this kind of stuff. And I swear to God, I was just wanting to sink under the chair. And uh it took at least 15 minutes to start communication because it just puts a wall between folk.
That's not what we're about. We're about people who share experience. And uh I honestly believe the purest form of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I thought you coming at me, I guess. But you never know about Canadians. I married one.
I know how I know how they behave. She But the purest form of of communication of the purest form of AA meeting is when somebody does exactly that. We share the experience, strength, and hope where they were broken and healed.
And I, you know, what I base that on is uh somewhere Pete know what page it's on at the end of of of Bob's story when he's writing for the big book. Yeah. What is that Pet 80?
>> The land of Bob story 181. >> That's right. And man knows every word in the book.
Ignores at least half of them. But he he knows them. go.
But it's that it's that page right before the last page of Bob's story. And he put a little paragraph in there that I think has a lot of a lot of meaning about a lot of things. And he basically what he basically said, my words pretty close to his but not exactly that.
He's talking about his meeting when he and uh and and Bill Wilson met in that cybering estate at the gate house. And most of you have heard of that. You know that it was actually the birth of Alcoholics Anonymous that that happened that day.
Nobody announced it, but that's when it really happened. And Bob, the busy physician, Bill was the sober guy. He was the guy that was trying to get a going.
He was trying to work with other alcoholics cuz he found out that helped him. And and and in his desperation in Akran, Ohio, he put out a plea for somebody to to to get him an alcoholic to work with. and somebody gave him Dr.
Bob. And so him and Bob had this meeting at the Cyberling Gate House at their their mansion. And if you if you haven't been to AA, you get a chance to go, by all means take a look because it's just like walking into our history and it's very easy to visualize what happened that night and what happened.
But they they met over there. Bob said he didn't have much time. He only had about 15 minutes and about six hours later they quit.
And later on, Bob said, and he is the way he said it in in what he wrote in the book, what was it about this man? You know, here's a learned physician, a highly trained scientist, and here's a guy that's marveling. What was it about this guy, a broken down, decrepit stock broker from New York that was different than all the other people with whom I talked?
And then he answered his own question. And he said essentially this that he was the first person I had ever spoken with who talked in terms of his own experience. Didn't try to teach him anything.
Didn't try to explain theories of the illness or any of the science or causation. He talked about his own experience and said he talked my language. And that really set the basic what I think is the basic tenate of alcohol economics is what you know we're a diverse bunch of people here tonight.
But there's one thing that makes us all one and that's the fact that we are all broken and healed at the same place and that has no respect for our differences. That's the thing that that gives us commonality. And so that that's what important about that thing of uh of sharing our experience instead of our ideas and philosophy and knowledge that we have.
It's about sharing that experience of what it's like to be broken and healed. And uh so it's been part and parcel of our uh of our fellowship. I also think uh just just allude to this and we talk about later if you want to but I also think it's the the fundamental reason why singleness of purpose is such an important thing that that if you don't have singles of purpose so that people can have that that available opportunity to identify then what we've done is abdicated on our responsibility to pass it on to the next one.
And so I think it's the basic tenant that no matter how much we may sympathize with each other, if when we identify it's at the level of how we were broken and how we were healed, you know, and therefore makes it strong. So anyway, there's a lot of grow a lot of stuff grows out of that. But but let let me tell you I I I tell you some version of of my experience and then be thinking if if if I'm not saying anything that just lights your life up, be thinking in the little time that you might have available about things you would like to to to to to get in discussion about here this weekend.
Yeah. We're going to be spending some time here up on a it's not a mountain, is it? This is a little hill.
>> Little a hill. We We up We up here. I don't want to fall off off of it if you can.
But we're up here a little ways and we're sitting by a beautiful lake. We got a lot of time. No phones are ringing much and we got a little time and and what I'd like to see us do is to make this time worthwhile.
Use it, you know, to get things done that we want to get done. And so be thinking about things that and toward the end of the session, uh we'll just ask you just call it out. You know, some anything that you'd like to see that we covered this weekend, uh just bring it up and we we'll weigh into it.
And I don't mean just me, you know, I don't want to be the expert answer, but I'll take a shot at it and uh and then invite invite you to do the same. We won't make a discussion meeting out of it, but make it an interactive session, you know. So that if you got something, raise it up.
You probably be speaking on behalf of 80% of the group. And so anyway, that's what what I'd like to get done a little bit tonight. Uh yeah, I'm a guy give you a kind of a a little bit of a scale down version, but but the uh the story is basically the same, just comes out a lot different.
Yeah. I walked in to my first AA meeting on the second day of February in 19 1957 at 1:00 in the afternoon. And uh I don't believe I have ever felt more out of place anywhere in my life than I did in Alcoholics Anonymous.
You I was 24 years old. This was 1957 and AA was just coming out of the shadows in 1957. was not wellnown.
There were just a a select few people around the country that were aware of AA and uh so it was a it was sort of a a b just sort of a blooming reality in our society. The day I walked in best I can tell we had 125,000 members and I guess I became 125,000 in one. You know that's the way it's worked and just that chain reaction from one alcoholic to another.
And uh but when I walked into that meeting, I didn't a bit more believe I was an alcoholic than a man in the moon. I didn't identify with anybody in the room. Yeah.
I was the youngest guy in every meeting we were waiting on. Fast as we could. I was the youngest person in every meeting I attended for years.
I mean, a lot of years when we finally got somebody in North Carolina younger than me, if he hadn't been so ugly, I'd have kissed him. Man, I was glad to see that. You know, people been beating on me and telling me how proud they were of me.
A young fella like you. My god, that's great to see. Didn't look all that great to me.
And uh so I remember one time a guy was patting me on the head and telling me how lucky I was. and uh I thought my head was going to look like yours when we got through. He's patting them and and uh he said, "Do you know that you could actually look forward to 50 years in this program at your age?" And when he said it, he looked like that guy that hits you on the forehead, you fall out, your eyes kind of rolled back in his head.
And uh you could tell he was enraptured. I I wasn't all that carried away with that. I I was I wasn't sure I had it and I wasn't sure I was interested in the cure.
I didn't mind getting better, but I didn't want to get good. I was I was scared to death, man. They're going to grab me and they're going to have me chanting the scripture here before you know it.
And so I was a little antsy about that. So I didn't identify with anybody. I was the youngest guy in the group I went into by by a long shot.
Most of the people in the group group had drunk more years than I was years old. I was 24 and there weren't any 24 year olds that I could find anywhere that I ever went. And uh I tell you what, when you oddball the crowd, that's not a not a comfortable kind of a feeling.
And uh I really didn't I mean I'd listen to people tell their stories and uh I don't think we particularly lie in a but you know sometimes if you're telling a story it doesn't come out right you know and you just got to you just got to fill in a little something to make it balance out. You know that's not lying. That's just good good uh good good way to make a statement.
Yeah. Yeah. That's as good as it.
Uh, but I'd listen to people tell their stories and and it sounded so god awful to me that I could have. So, some guy talk about I stayed solid drunk, never sobered up one day for 40 years. That probably has some truth in it, but not much.
Not much. Been married seven times to the same woman. One year.
Come on now. But yeah, I mean folks just making a point, you know, it's got some humor in it, whatever. It may even be the way they remember it, you know, if they remember like me.
And uh so I I listened to that kind of stuff. And and I didn't identify it. I I didn't believe I was alcoholic.
You know, when I first heard the notion that alcoholism was an illness or a disease, I found that a an awkward almost embarrassing concept. I thought, "What on earth is an illness about getting drunk? Illness is what happens after, you know, that not what happens during." And uh that didn't make any sense to me.
And I'd hear people giving it lofty explanations and that meant less to me. And and uh I guess that's why it's so important to me what Bob said is that we identified where we were broken and healed. You know, we identified and what we experienced together.
It's but I went for a long time and then uh tell you the the one thing that well one of the things that kept me coming back to a was I heard just enough to keep me in the seat. And now some of you know not everybody here here knows but some of you know that that that my first meeting was in finishing school. It's It wasn't refined, but I was in school because I was finished is about what it was.
Yeah, I was in in a maximum custody penitentiary and uh and most of the folk in there were were had had a pretty radically different lifestyle than mine. Anyway, yeah, I was not a criminal. Yeah, I was a I never was a criminal.
I did some things that could have been mistakenly identified as crime, but they weren't really. They were they were just sort of the survival mechanism. When you live in places like I did, uh you going to do some stuff that's criminal or else you going to have to get out of town if you make it.
And uh I was I spent a good many years in uh couple of our more beautiful cities in in the United States. uh Detroit, Michigan, which is a real stellar place. We're going to do our 20th our 20th uh international convention in Detroit.
Yeah. I happened to run into Well, it was pure happen stance, but I was at an airport. I' been at a conference and there was a guy from the office who worked on the international desk.
you know, the one and part of what they do is help out with the committee working on identifying sites for the next convention. And uh Detroit, by the way, the second competition to Detroit was Vancouver, British Columbia. If you've been both to both cities, there is no competition.
I promise you that. Now, that is a fact. And uh so I had a good chance to to to to corner that boy.
I said, "You you were on the committee to pick the international date." He said, "Yeah." I said, "Let me just ask you one question. Were you guys drinking when you picked?" He He kind of insulted. He said, "No, my god, no, we weren't drink." I said, "Well, why did you do it?" I mean, if you was drinking, I could understand it to folk.
Anyway, it's it's uh that's where it'll be at 20. I told him that there's a good chance I might not go to that one. I'll only be 97 years old.
So, good chance I may not go to that one. If I'm here, I probably will. But anyway, that Detroit is not exactly Mayberry.
I mean, it's you could call it that. It's it tends to be the murder capital of the world. and uh and you know and Flint, Michigan was the other the other town.
It's just north of Detroit ways. And uh so those two cities were where I lived. My primary base was in Flint.
And when I got through trying to work in polite society, uh I just sort of scuffled around those towns and uh and I basically just it's not exactly wits. I I think I did I' I'd survive by my lack of character. And then in that environment, it really wasn't considered crime by the guys there.
I mean, it was a matter of it was like reciprocal trade. You know what? You get me one night and I'll get you the next night.
And that it's just the way it worked. That was the economy. It didn't work that way.
And uh nobody ever called the police. I got if they called the police, they'd arrest the whole crowd. you know, where you going to put anybody worse than the streets in Flint or Detroit?
You going to jail be a promotion? So anyway, it it was uh it it was just now that wasn't you that I really don't consider that crime the society might but I I do. And uh and I'd been in jail, god knows most of my life, in and out, just a typical drunken stuff, you know, just into jail for always lightweight uh social nuisance type stuff, you know, just drunk on the street or whatever, you know, or scrapping on the street or stuff like that.
It always been that kind of thing. And nothing ever serious. Not a criminal.
I didn't steal. Now, if you happen to leave a bottle unprotected, that's that's just carelessness. That's not you're not a victim.
You're a volunteer when you do that. But that's not like plotting and deliberately having premeditated intent. Yeah.
I never had Yeah. You what what uh what I was was just a guy that lived in that kind of an environment and just just just do what you do in that environment. And uh but you know what really what finally brought me down was uh just like on the way over here we in the car we saw a girl.
I didn't see it but uh the other guys did saw some girl darting across in the traffic and uh one of these streets with people just buzzing every direction. She made it, but it certainly wasn't her fault, you know, that that but I wound up in in a situation like that and woke up one morning in Flint in in in Flint, one of my regular places. And uh assumed I was in there for the same as always, you either just drunk or hustling or scuffling on the street.
And after I was awake a little while, I mean, it was normal for me. I knew the routine very well. 10:00 the guy would come by and he'd walk down in front of the bars and he'd see if anybody wanted to try to make bond or get out or whatever.
And so he walked down and I and I called out to him and I said, "Hey guy, when can I get out?" And he just looked at me with just utter scorn and said, "I hope never." He walked off. Yeah. I had no clue what he was talking about.
The hell of blackouts. The hell of blackouts. And probably a good many of you had it.
You know what I'm talking about. It's a total blank. It's not memory loss.
It's a total blank. And uh and so when he said that, I didn't know what was I knew he was serious. There was no question about that.
And he walked on down the hall and I went back into the tank and one of the guys in there told me, he said said, "Man, you know what you in here for?" And I said, "No." And so he told me that the night before some guy had been driving drunk down the main street of that city and struck and killed two people who were trying to cross the street just like that girl on that bike was were trying to do. But but was trying to cross the street and uh and was was hit and and and that I had been arrested for the crime. I had no clue what he's talking about.
My you but my mind it's it's it defends itself. And when I was given that, I I just simply couldn't handle the information, you know, that I couldn't I mean, I could believe it, but I just couldn't handle the information, if you know what I mean. I and I just refused to accept that.
And then gradually gradually accepted the the the the what seemed to be the truth that that apparently I had done more damage than any alcoholic ever ought to be allowed to do. And uh and I didn't handle that well. Even though I was a character, I'd been thrown out of the military for alcoholism when I was 20 years old.
Uh even though I was a guy that had been just a real screw ball everywhere I'd been, I was not a subhuman. I I was not somebody who was insensitive to human life or other people's difficulties. I was not that.
And so when I was greeted with that, my my defense was I just couldn't accept the fact. I couldn't accept what appeared to be a fact. And uh it's the only time I'd ever been in jail.
Didn't try to get out. I didn't want out. I was I was ashamed to get out.
I was ashamed to breathe. Never never mind getting out of jail. Ashamed to look anybody in the eye.
And And all I wanted to do was just disappear. That's all. I didn't have any plans, no schemes, no nothing, no defense.
Yeah. I'm just a I'm just a dead man walking is what what it was. And I don't know why, but there was some policeman.
I'll never know because I'm not going to try to find out, but there was a policeman there who apparently I don't know. I guess he saw the shape I was in or something. And and and what they said was that that that I was confessing anything they wanted to confess to.
They just said, "Did you do that?" Yeah, sure. Whatever. I mean, I was just done.
So, this policeman took it on himself to learn that I had family in North Carolina. made a call, told my folks what the situation was. That you got to get up here in a lot of trouble and if you want to do anything for him, you better come on because he's talking himself into more because if they had asked me about something, I'd say, "Yeah, sure.
Sure. I bet I did that, too." And cuz I was just just dumb. And uh and my family did.
I you I may not say that if we had family here and now I would too. But but I honestly believe that families of alcoholics are punished more than alcoholics are punished because they have to deal with it sober. They don't have the narcotic of of blacking it out and and erasing the the memories and realities that you have to face.
Our our family, the one has to explain unexplainable behavior and pretend it's not theirs. Yeah. And so my family was no different.
Yeah. They they got that word and they worked in in a mill in North Carolina, a cotton mill. Made next to nothing.
It was a very low play pay, low paid job, but they did what families have done all all through the years. Came up to get me out of jail one more time. Wasn't their first one, but thank God it was their last one up until today.
And u I didn't I didn't want out of jail, but I didn't know how to say that. I mean, how do you explain to somebody you don't want out of jail? I I just couldn't do it.
And so they came up, got an attorney they couldn't afford to give a defense for a guy that couldn't even defend himself, you know, and uh and so they did that. They arranged me to get out on bond. And uh when I got out, I knew I would not drink.
I knew that it had nothing to do with alcoholism. You know, when I was kicked out of the military for alcoholism at 20, that didn't mean a thing to me. I didn't in a bit more think I was alcoholic than a caveman.
That that it it was just a word. It didn't mean a thing to me. And so my resolve had nothing to do with alcoholism.
It had to do with just the utter guilt and shame that that that ate me alive 24 hours a day. I didn't think it would be possible for me to pick up another drink. I mean, how could you pick up a drink after having done something like that?
The better question is, how would you not pick up a drink? But I didn't know that. I didn't understand anything about alcoholism.
I know that I got out, didn't know what to do with myself. Walked streets all day, all night till about noon the next day. Got out on the 17th of July, 56.
And then on the 18th of July, that next day, I started to drink. from from the 18th of July till the 19th of November. I drank literally like nobody I've ever seen.
That's not some macho wild west story. That's a fact. I have worked with thousands of alcoholics.
Not a few. I've worked with thousands of alcoholics. I'm talking about hands-on back in the old days when we did 12step work every day.
Held an alcoholic in my arms while he died. And even as he died, he was protesting that he wasn't like us. And then went that.
Yeah. And so I understand alcoholism, but but the uh that but I had no absolutely no notion of any of that. I just knew that that I just automatically just just started to drink.
And during that period, I don't think there's any question that I was trying to drink myself to death. I I think it was just a a polite form of suicide that I never did analyze it, but I suspect that the reason I didn't just overtly commit suicide and didn't want to leave a family with another burden of could we have done something to prevent it. I think it's the only reason.
I guess I thought if I just woke up hit by a train or OD or whatever that at least it'd be a question. I guess that would be the twisted logic. Then on the 19th November, I had what I hope and pray will be my last drink.
Has been so far. And that's not my it's not my sobriety date. It's the date of my last drink.
And I don't know about you, but I know that I believe there is an enormous difference between my last drink and where my recovery started. It weren't even related other than the fact that if I'd have been drinking, I never would have got started. But otherwise, you know that that was not surprising.
It just I was locked up. And if I'd have been left to my own devices, I have no doubt I would have I would have gone right back to it just as a natural reflex. But that's what it was.
But that day, I finished off a bottle of gin. Had probably that much in in a bottle of gin. And I finished it off, went to court, and and so far that's been my last strike.
I knew it was going to be the last one for a long time because I was going to be tried that day. I was charged with manslaughter and uh had no defense. They had had absolutely no fence.
No defense. And and uh so I listened to the trial as if I were on the jury. I'm listening to stuff that I never heard before.
I heard the police officer testify to what he saw. And I'd never heard that before. Yeah.
He said he was investigating the crime scene and saw this guy kind of staggering down the street that he identified as me and uh and so I listened to the to the evidence. I listened to the witnesses and and and I would have voted exactly the same way the jury did as guilty and I would have had no question about it. Yeah.
The uh and so I I was convicted and sentenced that day to a max of 15 years, five to 15 years sentence in in the state prison of southern Michigan, which was in a place called Jackson. And that's where I was when I went into uh to that institution. I remember the day I walked walked in.
Well, walked is a little bit of a a little bit of a a little more upbeat description. that I was I was led into that prison on a on a on a chain with five other guys. And when I walked through that wall into that in institution, I'd never been in a prison.
I'd been in jails and stockades and beef farms and all that kind of stuff, but I'd never been in a penitentiary. I'd never even seen one to know what I was looking at. I knew they existed because a lot of my buddies went and uh so when I walked in I had two thoughts in my mind was one just clear thought you won't hurt anybody else second was that I would never come out of there alive and both of those were very real and uh and and I didn't believe you know normally they didn't keep a guy of you know a crime like mine certainly is serious crime It's so serious that there is no adequate punishment.
How do you adequately punish somebody for two human lives? You can't. You have an imbalance no matter what you do.
And so there isn't any way to punish it appropriately. And but normally that kind of an offense that they don't put in maximum custody. That normally is not needed because it's not predatory behavior.
and uh and and and my age, you know, a 24 year old guy normally didn't go into that level of of of penitentiary, but they made an exception. My I think they looked at my and mine was not a I mean, I had a lot of arrest, but they're all lightweight things and nuance things and uh it wasn't a single everything in my I had a 3-in thick record. Guy showed it to me and uh the uh wasn't a single thing.
Everything in there was drunk and whatever. You name it, it's in there. And and so he got through that thing, showed me that record, and he said, "Man, you've had a lot of trouble with booze." And I said, "Yeah, I mean, that was pretty apparent." And uh he said, "I never heard this before." He said, "We have an AA group here at the institution.
I think you ought to go." Now, we were far removed from the way we tend to do it now, you know, with sort of sort of lassoing people and dragging them into a and mandating and all that kind of stuff. We we hadn't gotten that sophisticated back then. Uh we were still just saying, "Man, you need to go." And and that's what this guy said.
And and I didn't even know what he's talking about. I'd never heard of AA. Had no clue what he was talking about.
He didn't explain it. And uh I didn't ask any questions and uh finish what he had to say and I I I walked out. Then a few days later I got a little slip of paper said you can go to your first meeting 2nd of February 57th.
I didn't have to go. That was just a followup to the suggestion. You you can go.
I didn't understand till I got in the group but they had 300 members in the group and you had to have a chair before you could get in. They didn't you couldn't didn't have a standing room with 6,300 people. That's what was locked up there.
Everything's crowded, including A8. And so I understood that after I got in it. And and so the day I went in, u I had no earthly idea what to expect.
I thought it was going to be some kind of a religious hoot nanny of some sort, but I only thing I'd ever associated with with people working with alcoholics was those every once in a while in jails. There'd be some clean old folks that come in there and they'd get into some testimonies and stuff like that and sing and cry and so forth. I'd get converted every time they came in to whatever they were selling.
Didn't matter what it was. And it would probably last about 30 minutes and then then it was gone. And uh I figured it'd be something like that.
But I sat down in my first meeting. Only guy spoke to me had an officer on the door. He read my name, Ivister.
Yes. Sit down. So I sat down and listened to my first meeting.
First thing they did was pray. Same one we do at so many of our meetings. You know that serenity prayer.
And while they were praying, I'm thinking to myself, "Yep, just what I thought, man. They'll be in here in just no time. shake, rattle, and roll and leaping and jumping snakes and God knows what going on.
He's got and I I sort of brace for that. Then they opened the meeting and they started reading. We didn't read much here tonight.
We didn't read hardly anything. They just made up stuff. Yeah.
He he didn't read a thing and uh recited something. So, but we they read a ton of stuff and uh that looked churchy to me. Then they introduced the speaker that did not look churchy.
And this guy got up to tell his story. And uh now I'd heard a lot of drunks tell stories, but not their own. Yeah, it normally is a good one they just made up.
But I this guy had to be telling the truth. Nobody going to make that up. I mean, my god, I could have done better than that in DT.
That guy told that story. And I'm sitting there in the mirror said, why is he doing this? Why on earth was a decent look?
He did he didn't look bad if you didn't get close but if you got close he was not a handsome beast. He been a professional boxer and not a good one I don't think he that boy was chopped up something fierce. So anyway he told that story and I sat there and made I'd never heard that kind of stuff.
I didn't identify with one sound he made. I mean nothing nothing. Next week I was back.
Couldn't have told anybody why I was back. Nobody cared. They wouldn't have missed me if I hadn't been there.
Nobody would have cared, including me. Yeah. I'm just another face in a crowd of 300 people.
Yeah. What brought me back to my second meeting was the It wasn't the story of that guy. It was the magical enthusiasm that lit up his life.
He was one of the most enthusiastic people I have ever known. And uh the day I met him, he was the delegate to the general service conference in New York for the state of Michigan. I thought he was a nutcase.
I really did. I said, "Why why would a guy come in there and bury himself to 300 hairy convicts? It makes no sense." And so, but that enthusiasm, you know, that spirit, you know, people just like I do.
When they walk in a room, the room changes. They don't have to do anything. They just walk in and it changes.
And he was that kind of guy. When he walked in, it lit up. And so that was who spoke at my first meeting and brought me back to my second.
He became my first real sponsor when I was about a a year in the program and I'd learned what a sponsor was. I'd had one other guy in the group that I'd that I he was a good guy, you know, and I trusted him. He was a wise fellow.
He considerably older than me. He wasn't a counselor, but he was one of the wisest counselors I ever saw in my life. is a really good guy.
He basically stuck up service stations and convenient art was his profession, but he was an excellent counselor. And so he he and I worked together a little bit. And back then we didn't take people through the steps like we so often do now, but didn't do that.
Uh you just kind of fumble way through. And that's exactly what I did. I fumbled my way through the steps and did the actions that were laid out.
I'll tell you a thing that had compelling value to me in in in that setting. Yeah. We didn't have 300 superstars in there just like any group.
Any group there there's always a solid core of people who take care of business. Then you got people in all phases of development. You know, almost every meet.
You got people just in the starting blocks and others like me that's old that may not make it through the meeting. But you got some of both in there. And what the guys did in that in that in that group made had a value to me.
They would basically do just an introductory thing of tell you what a was. You know, nothing like a beginner's meeting or trying to get into steps or anything like just basically information. What's an alcoholic?
What's anonymous? What's a sponsor? What's the home?
Just simple stuff like that. And a guy one day, another guy locked up just like me was talking about the steps. You know how we all put them on the wall and we had them on the wall.
He pointed out, he said, "There are 200 words in those steps." And if you'll take the action that are laid out in those steps as honestly and thoroughly as you know how to do it, when you get through, you'll be a different guy. And it doesn't even matter what your motives are. Well, that caught my attention.
Come on, man. You got You got to be kidding. You got to be straight up.
You're not going to get something back if you don't put something in. I mean, I I wrote that off. But, you know, the guy told the truth is absolutely true because that's what I did.
I fumbled my way through the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Little guidance or leadership except for that one old guy that I would just chat with some as we went along. But I did the actions as well as I could, as well as I could.
And when I got through, I'll tell you today more certainly than I would have then. When I got through, I was a different guy. I mean, I was still the same guy.
I'm still 6 feet tall and ugly. You that but I was but I was a different guy. I had a whole different outlook on life.
I was a man transformed. Transformed simply by the actions of those steps. I was a guy that for the first time in my life I learned to have concern for other people.
Yeah. I never did. I mean I may feel sorry for somebody but in terms of having concern, taking time, investing time, trying to give support and encouragement.
Yeah. That was not my in my uh in my bag of tricks. But I was a guy.
I learned how to live with dignity. I didn't even know the word. But I learned how to live with dignity, to carry myself like a gentleman, to pe treat people with consideration.
I learned what integrity means. And I practiced integrity. If you told if I told you something, you could count on it.
It would be done. Those were all brand new qualities for me. I'd never known anything about it.
And I'm practicing these things in an environment that defies imagination. If people talk about having to have conditions, right, that's a bunch of bull. You could not have had a worse environment to work in than the one I was working in.
An environment where the predatory nature of man was omnipresent. where the every day was filled with tension, fear, anxiety, anger, disgust. Yeah.
Every day where you learn how to talk with people and don't look at them. You listen but don't hear. You you you you've got to stay in your own cube.
You just a bizarre way of living. And in an environment like that, this program was powerful enough to give me a new life, a brand new life. And when I got through that inventory and and uh and and did that fifth step, I remember, you know, they they say we ought to be careful about doing the step, who we do it with and all that kind of stuff.
Well, there's some truth in that, but it's not exactly the gospel. It's just there's some truth in it. But you don't have to have the cyine chapel to do a good fifth step.
I promise you that. I did mine on a prison yard in a maximum custody penitentiary with 6,330 something people wandering around all around me. I sat down with another guy, a guy locked up just like me on what looked like a park bench right in the middle of all that.
And I opened up to the first human being who ever had a look at who I was. And when I got through with that, I guarantee you I was a man freed. You know in the book tell you I paid some but in the book right at the at the end of that fifth step it says now we go back to our place and then we review these first five proposals those first five steps I tell you how am I doing and that's what I did I went back I was almost float I was I so so relieved when I got through that experience that fella knew me better than my mother knew me literally better than my My mother knew me.
He knew me like no other human ever had. And I was a man freed. I was absolutely freed.
And went back, took a look at the first five proposals and said, "Well, that's about the best I can do." And it was good enough. And so I was off and running. And and so power in in those.
That's just the first five steps of power in that. And uh then I moved on into uh we'll get we'll probably get into this some more later on. But they you know I'm going to share something with you before the night's over though.
I want to be sure that I that I get communicate that effectively. that uh I mean people can practice it any way they want to and do but there's a in fact let let me let me veer off and just share this right now because it's it's where I was now fortunately I turned the right way but I brought this along it's a story of something and I know some of you that have been around a uh seen the same thing I have. Strange thing, but we have almost as many suicides in early recovery as we do in active alcoholism.
And when you think about what happens if all you do is stop drinking, you can see why alcoholism is alive and well and continuing and will flat eat your lunch. I've known many people and you know we do it you each one of us has got to find our own value with this thing and nobody going to say pass fail you it just it's a matter of what the results speak for themselves but an awful lot of people come in and try to get by with just not drinking and hanging out with other members you know just just not drinking and fellowship and that's all right for survival but it didn't get doesn't get down to those basic causes es and conditions. And uh I'll give you one example and then share this example here.
You probably seen the same thing I have. If you've been around here very long is uh you can spot it when somebody is just just getting eaten alive. I he may walk around joking and smoking and all this kind of stuff, but you can spot it when when something just eating on him.
And there was a guy the example I use of one of many guys came into my own group and u yeah I kind of stationed myself so I can see the door you know when we hanging out cuz I like to kind of look out for fresh meat you know and if I see somebody don't know I'm going to cure that situation cuz I'm going to go over there and and handle them if they'll let me and uh well if they won't let me for a while till they break away but the uh Sometimes they do. But I I'm looking for people that look like dead man walking. You know what I mean?
I mean, there's no no description of that, but you spot it. You know it when you see it. And I saw this guy walk in one night and he was dead man walking.
I knew him casually, you know, like you'll know people around just floating floating around town. I I knew him casually. I knew he wasn't the founder.
I knew that. But he wasn't much of a member, you know. He was just a guy that floated and just went from one place to another.
Never really sunk roots anywhere. And uh so he came in and so I went over and you know you got to use a little sense about it. You can't just charge into everybody the same way.
Some people you can go at and push them around and laugh, joke a little, but others you got to got to sneak up on them, you know. And he was one of the ladder. So, I went over and just kind of kind of welcomed him and and gooed him a little bit and and uh bought him a cup of free coffee.
Told told him he could pay me back at Starbucks. He has a jet out there, but but you see what I'm talking about. I just got to kind of get something going with him.
Well, he's a standoffish fell, you know. He's not somebody that's going to shake hands and say, "Man, great to see you." He won't do that. But he started following me.
Now I sit on the front row because I can't hear. Yeah. That's why I'm not all that dedicated.
I just can't hear. So I sit there. Plus I can tell if they're lying better if I'm sitting close to them.
And so he he came up and sat with me on the front row. He'd never been there. And uh I noticed this boy would cry in a boy.
He's 50 60 years old. Old boy. He He He would cry.
You could read the steps and he'd cry. Yeah. Read the purpose and he'd cry.
With me, if you read the concepts, I'll cry. But but with him. And as I just was intrigued by that, you know, so he go with me and and finally he started to open up a little bit and he said, "Will you show me how I can get active this thing?" I said, "Yeah, sure." I said, 'I'm going to prison tomorrow night.
Go with me. He said, looked startled. He said, "Can I go?" I said, 'Well, I just told you.
Yeah, come on. We'll go. So, I took him to prison.
He's pretty pretty well healed guy. Had a Mercedes about as long as this building. And uh came by, had a little Honda about the size of the fireplace over there about just about that big.
And he chose not to ride in mine. So, I rode in his big old Mercedes. Went over to prison.
We were sitting in the group and the officer came over. They tapped me on the show. I said, "What is it?" He said, "Do you have a Mercedes?" I said, "Well, yeah, I do." And I said, "Why?" He said, "I the lights." I said, "Well, it's not mine.
Mine's home on blocks. I can't get it to run." He said, "No, it's not that one. This is a show enough Mercedes." He said, and uh I said, "Well, it's his saying that." And uh so he told him the lights are on.
And I said, "Come on, we got to get the lights out." He It's in the middle of the meeting. He said, "I don't want to leave the meeting." I said, "Well, we're doing this in front of the guys, you know." I said, "I don't want to walk home." And he he said, "I'm not leaving." I said, "Yes, you are. You're getting out of here." So, we're about to get into a scrap in the middle of the meeting.
And real's example to those guys. And uh finally, he said, "I got a good battery." and you better hope you do. So, finally we broke it up and get got back there.
Hey, but that's who he was. And he he got something out of that. Then he started talking to me a little bit.
But a little bit, you know, and I started to understand why he was crying. And this was a guy and his story would be repeated a million times. He he was a guy his family had been chaos from confusion from day one.
He had a wife and uh I swear to God if he's telling me the truth that marriage was like the third world war. I mean that was a real real deal. I didn't hear her side yet.
I heard his but anyway it sounded gross. And uh he had two sons. One of them had already committed suicide and he had another that he hadn't spoken with for 25 years.
You see what I'm getting at? Yeah. Now, just not drinking and hanging out with a new crowd won't even touch that.
Won't even touch it. It won't even reveal it. And what do you do is ignore it, but it won't go away.
It will eat your lunch on a regular basis. And that's the thing about amends. You know, it's about making amends.
Not because we're good guys, but because if we don't get rid of that stuff, we drag it forever. Forever. And that's what was going on with him.
He said, "Will you help me with that?" I said, "Well, I'll try." And uh he he told me the situation in more detail. I said, "Well, let me think about it." And uh his his son lived way out in the west, not too closer to here than to where we were. And uh and I said, I tell you what I'm I'm going to lay out that I think you need to do.
Buy a ticket to that town going out one day and coming back the next. Call that son and tell him you want two hours of his time. And then you make direct amends to that boy, to your son.
And uh don't get anybody else involved. Don't have a family reunion. Don't go kill a buffalo or something.
You go out there. You're a man on a mission. You go do that.
Get back on the plane. Well, he called me from out there. He said, "I'm coming back." Well, I knew what that meant.
And I said, "Why?" He said, "He doesn't want to see me." Well, by now I knew him a little bit. I said, "How do you know he doesn't want to see you?" He said, "Well, I just know." I said, "No, doesn't work that way. You call that boy, tell him you want two hours and you make those amends or don't come back to North Carolina.
I don't care where you go, but don't come back to this state. You know, you go somewhere else." said there. So he stayed and and that summer the the reunion occurred and and that summer that family vacation with him in North Carolina.
First time they've done anything family like for 25 years. That that's what I'm talking about. You know that when we slide by and we think that not drinking is going to heal everything.
Doesn't touch it. Doesn't touch it. And those things go on and they go on and then people wind up doing something you wouldn't expect them to do and wind up either shooting themselves or hanging a rope or whatever, you know, but but it it it it happens.
And this thing here I was going to share with you. I I'll slide it in now since we're just talking along that line. This this is something a guy wrote.
He was working with fellow just like I was working with this guy. Here's what he what he wrote. Now, this is a little bit grim, but so is the reality.
We buried him yesterday. The county coroner had published the required notices for next to Ken, and nobody had claimed the body. It was just myself and his sponsor, no preacher even.
The county doesn't pay for those. Not much of a sendoff. And not the one David had asked for.
That was the guy that that died. Not the one David had asked for. a cheap coffin, a backhoe, dug a hole, and that was it.
Just another old AA gone. He had been sober over 20 years and first tried AA over 30 years ago. A stern and rigid man who tried to soften his edges but never could.
He was a loner, a fringer, an isolated man at the edge of life's good things. He hung in there and in the end hung himself. I don't know why.
I can't know. I know there had been a a diagnosis of scenile dementia and I know that the doctors had added cancer to the list, but I've seen a deal with such things before. I don't know why David decided he couldn't.
It wasn't the first time I've been through that that this in Alcoholics Anonymous. I've known several men over the years who just just up and walked out life's door one day. Sober but not happy.
Sober but not at peace. Sober, but they died of alcoholism. Our disease doesn't need us to drink in order to kill us.
I wish more folks knew that and appreciated it. Alcoholism is the only disease that entirely capable of fighting back, of taking care of itself and of emerging in new places and new forms when it isn't properly treated. That's because of the spiritual malady.
Many and most people think that has something to do with prayer with God. It doesn't. It has to do with our spirit.
That force which animates, motivates, and propels us. As an alcoholic, my spirit is ill. It's flawed.
My character or basic nature doesn't work right. At its root, it is a fundamental and unresolvable insecurity, a hole that can never be filled. It's an instinct run rampant, a desperate need for acceptance and love that can't be met.
It hurts. It fills one with fear. The selfishness and self-centeredness of the alcoholic lives here.
We're totally preoccupied with what is going on with ourselves on the inside. The slings and arrows of life experience are warped by this need in ourselves and drives us to the fringe and the voices of the committee in our head keep us there. We're obsessed both with self and from the condition of mind.
The insanity of feelings gone haywire wire. We become self-medicators. Eventually we discover alcohol or something else.
And the stuff quiets the voices, provides the relief we've never been able to find in any other way. Is is it any wonder we drink or drug the way we do? And some of us don't develop an addiction.
In attempting to meet these crying demands of our spirit, we become ill and we develop other foul mal formations of behavior and suffer in a hundred different ways. God broke David's obsession to drink. But I don't think David ever truly understood his disease.
I say that because I watched him struggle with those old unresolved issues of his heart for years. His rigidity, coldness, aloofness, isolation, and difficulty with other people were a reflection of the pain in his heart, of the disease of alcoholism gone deep inside and still active. Alcoholism didn't need David to drink in order to continue trying to kill him.
And in the end, it's he it succeeded. In the end, instead of self-abandoned, David abandoned hope and discovered a better end. Our recovery from alcoholism through the steps must be a three-fold process.
It's not one-dimensional. When we say in a that we have a triangle, recovering, unity, and service, we mean it. In working the steps, I clear a pathway for two purposes.
First, to come to into a group of human people and away from the fringe of society where I spend most of my emotional life. Secondly, discover belonging through service to the people within that group. It is only this entire three-fold process that heals.
It is especially true for those of us who suffer from the spiritual malady to a greater degree. Perhaps the 12 steps says says it best. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps recovery which is recovery, we tried to carry this message to other alcoholics which is service and practice these principles in all our affairs which is unity.
You see, I cannot hold back. I must not continue to suffer that shyness, aloneeness, that overwhelming sense of of self in my affairs. I must get involved in a group of people to practice these principles in all my affairs.
Only the total approach is healing. Anything less is little more than driving my disease deep. And if I do that, it will continue to eat away trying to destroy me.
It destroyed David. This is a memorial to an old AA who gave his best shot. And I think David ended up on the plus side.
It wasn't his fault. He seemed to have been born that way. There were a lot of old ideas about self that David could never muster the willingness let go of.
He's at rest now. But it says somewhere that no matter how far down the scale we've gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. David cannot speak to his experience any longer.
I'm speaking in his memory. And I think that if David could talk to us today, he'd say, "Understand your disease thoroughly and work the complete program of recovery." That I get a lot of stuff, you know, through emails, you know, coming in computer. That's the most galvanizing thing I've ever read.
It's it's particularly galvanizing for me because I've seen it so many times personally, you know, not just once or twice, but I've seen that repeatedly over the years. And uh and it's always a sad thing to see. uh when when you see that go down that way, you know, had a good friend who was a method Methodist minister, fine guy, you know, he had a had a nice church up in the state of Virginia and uh was a good guy with a family, very respected in his in his uh community and and a real good guy and uh but you just never know what's going on in on the inside that he's uh he did just not exactly the same thing.
He didn't take a rope. But here he was, a very successful minister in a large town. One day it got to the point that the best thing he could think of, drive out in the woods and shoot himself.
And so so it happened. My god. Just just just over and over and over.
I tell you one other one that I could tell you a hundred, but I just tell you one other one that uh I had had watching the door one night. saw a guy come in that I knew a little bit and he never really gotten into a he he visited an awful lot but never had really gotten in. Didn't belong to a group or anything like that.
I'm going to start dressing. Yeah. But he he just just one of those guys that you see around.
And I saw him come in one night and so I started over there to catch him, you know, and and I was just going to going to just howdy do and welcome him into the fold and he saw me coming and he bolted out the door. Well, I don't know. That just brought out the hunter instinct in me and so so I I took off after him and and so but I swear to God the boy was fast on his feet and so I'm chasing him around the church where we met and uh later afterward I thought my god suppose some news folks been filming this is the way they do it.
Oh Jesus. But same thing happened to him. Yeah, he he he got away and uh and then wound up shooting himself in front of his family and uh so it's just just it just happens, you know.
A lot of times we deal with this sort of thing at the nuisance level, you know, where it gets well, you're not really serious about it. You're not getting in very deep. You're not doing anything.
And uh but I tell you those cases bring home to me very vividly that if I really want good solid recovery I have to do the things that make good good solid recovery happen. And u and so you what I just alluded to it a little bit. You know when I was getting introduced to the program there and it started to work for me.
I did those steps the best I know how. And uh and lo and behold, if if there's ever been a human on on the face of this planet that hates a a prison worse than me, I'd like to see them because I don't think I've ever met anybody that I could see hated that kind of an existence as much as I did. I mean, I flat despised it every second that I was there.
and uh ju just just the kind of environment is not supportive of anything positive or anything like that just a predatory envir environment where man's inhumity man's routine behavior and and and uh you know I I said to myself one night helpless to do anything about it and listen to a young fellow get his head beat in with a hammer over a package of cigarettes a package of cigarettes and what goes behind that you know insulting me or something, you know, did just goofy stuff here and listen to that and do nothing about it. Hey, and and so even in that kind of an environment, you know, that I became literally a free man in every way that counted except physically, probably the least important, but I became a free man. I became somebody who was functional, who cared about other people.
I became a leader. I was respected in a in a an environment like that where you usually don't respect anybody that's not the toughest guy on the on the yard. I was respected because I was stood up for what I believed in and I was trusted by people that didn't even know me, you know, just because the program wasn't me.
It just gave me the ability to live. And uh I tell you the uh the the thing that if in case you you're in the fog, I don't want to give you a sales job with this, but I just want to tell you the truth of of of you know what happened with me. You know, I believe without I don't believe I know that this program will will produce genuine joy.
Genuine joy that never ends unless you want it to end. Yeah. You people ask me how long you stay on a pink cloud.
We call it a pink cloud or a honeymoon phase or something. People ask me how long that last. You what I'll say because it's what I believe is that some people will tell you that it'll run a span and it'll tail off.
That's just flat wrong. That is wrong. You know, it'll last as long as I do the things that make it happen.
not a minute longer but not a minute less because it doesn't run its course. It's a way of life and just like this guy's talking about there that he didn't get into the whole program. He just got into survival level at the superficial level instead of becoming a free man.
And and that's what happened to that institution. Now I guarantee you I never learned to like it. I mean I I hated the day I left but I was a good citizen.
I was a good citizen. And I tell you the the kind the kind of thing that can happen. This emotion I'm gonna talk the whole weekend now.
I'll get it done in this y'all's time. Y'all means all of you. I mean maybe a language barrier the uh but but what happened with me now you know all I'm trying to do is do my time you and uh and uh so but I became a pretty functional guy you I was a barber in there and uh it's a good job I wasn't very good at it but I mean I was persistent I wouldn't give up and could have guy's ear off one time.
But but it wasn't a whole ear. I mean, it was nothing to get excited about. It was just the top of it was all but he took real exception to that.
He He want to fight all that kind of But I'm the only guy in there that could legally have a straight razor. He looked at that and changed his mind. He didn't want to fight.
He just he wanted to back off and cut. So, I let him do that. But any anyway, the uh I did that.
I made it a practice. I made it a practice in the in the group to, but I would give people their going home haircut. And you know, you want to do the best you can when somebody's going home.
They want to look good as they as they can. And so I'd always take a little time with them and try to get them. And when I'd get a guy in the chair, it was amazing how many times I saw this.
I'd get a guy in the chair that had been active in the group, you know, that I thought would look like a pretty decent member. And I'd get him in the chair and and and and say, 'Well, you're getting out. Hey, where you going?
Detroit. What are you going to do? Going to work at Ford, you know, or General Motors somewhere.
Okay. And I said, "Where you would say, where you going to?" And I can't tell you how many guys I've had that would just just jump back the chair and they'd look at me and say, "Man, you serious about this stuff?" I said, "You better believe I'm serious about it." Serious as a heart attack. And uh I also had the job of giving the welcome back haircut.
And I guarantee you I took time with that one because I very frankly I learn as much from losers as I do from winners. I'm kind of a coldblooded dude that way. I mean I will flat capitalize on losers because I want to learn from folks who who teach me how not to do it.
And so I get guys in sheriff and they come come back and say I I want you to tell me something. No junk. Tell me what happened.
Why did you leave here and then turn right around and come back and it nearly always be the same thing. Well, I meant to do something and I meant to get there and then you've heard the story yourself. I don't need to recite it.
And then but that taught me something. I learned a lot from losers when I when it was time. Yeah, I've had a lot of remarkable things happen in in my recovery that that really defy imagination that I had a guy I was not a guy, but I had I was called in when I'd been in there about 3 years or so, something like that, for for el on a 15-year maximum sentence, the the parole eligibility would be 1/4th of the uh of the maximum.
when I only had two years in, uh, I I was this the parole commission sent for me, the state parole commission sent for me to come over to some office building. So, I went over and, uh, the chairman of of the board met me at the door and he introduced himself and he said, "You probably wonder why you're here." And I said, "Well, it had occurred to me." and uh he said about once every 10,000 cases we'll pick out a case that we think is a remarkable example of of restoration or rehabilitation or something like that. And he said, "We decided to take a look at your case." And I said, "Well, I appreciate that.
That's quite an honor." And it really is. I if you're one out of 10,000 cases that says this is worth taking a look. and and he told me right away he said, "But I'll tell you upfront, we're not going to parole you because the crime is too serious and the uh time served is too short." And I told him very honestly what I believed.
I said, "I agree with you 100%." Because even though a crime like mine is what they call a casual offense, you can't get any more serious than two lives. And there is no adequate punishment. I mean, you can stay there forever or be executed over and over.
there is no adequate punishment and but there is such a thing as a just a reasonable a reasonable kind of a balance in in in in that thing and and so I knew that it was just premature and and and so sure enough exactly what he said when the eligibility time came I walked out he told me I'd walk out that gate and I did fully prepared to go went to the street what I had was a strong program good thing I did. Good thing I did because I tell you, everything that calls itself AA and flies the flag ain't it. I I tell you that.
We got an awful lot of stuff that flies the flag that doesn't even look like AA on its worst day. And uh when I got out, I'm looking forward to uh being right in the the heart of all the good stuff. You know, we're going to be doing it just like the general service office, all that.
The first meeting I went to when I got out of that institution was the worst meeting I'd ever been to. I'd never been. If we'd have had a meeting that bad in prison, somebody would have got hurt.
I mean, ain't nobody going to get away with that. And but it going on just like it was good. And uh the group that I was planning to go to had one member.
The one that had written me a letter got got hired back by a company and he moved away about the time I got out. And the only thing left was one old man. I mean, he was old.
I'm I'm not talking about like us. This was an old dude. And uh he was the treasure.
Well, it wasn't nobody else. I say he was the treasurer and he literally kept the money in a coffee can. And with him, the biggest problem with him would have been putting money in it, not taking it out.
Anyway, he was the only sign of life. Great old fella. Great old fella.
But I mean, he was pretty much over the hill. And so I hit the street and I'm coming out of a livewire group, you know. I'm coming out of a strong group where we're hustling and moving and doing stuff.
And uh hit the street that looked like death zone somewhere. I mean, good god. And my first thought was the city is 25 miles away.
The biggest city in the state was 25 milesi from where I live. I said, "Shoot, I'm not staying here in this rinky date Mayberry looking thing. I'm going over to the city and get some action." Then a troubling thought occurred to me.
When do you become responsible? When do you step up to the plate? When do you take some responsibility?
When do you have some ownership over the lack of of a good solid group? Well, the answers were obvious and troubling. And I didn't go anywhere.
I stayed right there and had a marvelous marvelous experience of developing Alcoholics Anonymous in a town. Wonderful experience. Yeah, that's if he could tell you what page it's on.
But in I think it's I think it's 164 where he talks about you know the thing of when you get to town and you don't know who's there and whatever this stuff. Start it. Start something.
Get something going. What a marvelous experience. And I had that experience.
the uh I'll give you one example because the uh CPC your cooperation with professional community where we where we work with people who capture alcoholics is basically what it is and uh I don't think you'd ever heard of that in that town. I didn't know what I was doing but back then we did an awful lot of 12step calls. you know, where' somebody get make a call for help and then somebody go see him and work on.
That was what existed before treatment came into the world. And I got a call one night from a a guy that he's the first kind of a highlevel manager type person that I'd ever gotten hold of. And I Yeah, I learned that that people usually make 12step call either because they want to get sober or they wanted to get away from their husband or wife so they get a drink.
He was of the latter variety. And so I messed with him. I always made it a rule on 12step calls that I wouldn't let him drink till I was convinced I couldn't help him.
And then if I got convinced couldn't help him, I might even buy him a drink. You know, then uh if you can't make a sale, make a friend. Hey.
And so so that's a good investment in the future. So one night I had this call with this guy and he was obviously one that was escaping his wife. So I rode him around, messed with him about 3:00 in the morning.
Finally, I said, "Where's your favorite bootleger?" I thought I knew everyone in that county. He knew one I didn't know. So he named it.
We went over there and I swear it looked like an opium den in Kolkata. It was a I mean, you talk about a mess. Drunks laying everywhere.
And there never been a raid in the history of that county, but they decided to have one. So I looked out here and here come police cars from everywhere surrounded that house. You would have thought, by God, they had a riot going on and all it is is just a bunch of crumbled up drunks on the floor.
But here they came, stormtroopers charging in and they're hauling these drunks. And I noticed one cop kept looking at me. You he cut his eyes over at me.
Finally, he couldn't stand it anymore. He came over there and he said, "Mister, what are you doing here?" I said, "You wouldn't believe it." And he said, "Well, try me." And so I told him what I'm doing. He said, "You're right." That's the damnest thing I've ever heard.
And and so we visited a visit. He gave me the drunk. Didn't lock him up.
Gave me the drunk and gave me that old rotten gut. Whatever it was, it had never seen a liquor store. I promise you that.
I tell someone built that thing. And and gave me that. And from then on gave me help.
You talk about cooperation with professional community. From then on, I I think he wrote my name on the jail house wall. If you got a problem with one, call this guy.
Call this guy. And then and that's how the group got started there. It was just that kind of stuff just rolling.
And uh when I left there two years later, we had 60 people in that group. It's all it takes is just one person with a little fire, a little bit of imagination, a whole lot of willingness to jump in and do the work. And stuff happens.
Stuff happened. You know who the winner was. you know who the winner was.
>> This guy right here cuz I grew enormously from that experience. Did things that I never done. I have been trained to do stuff like that, you know, but but I just jumped in and just follow the instincts.
I got a higher power. I got a boss here. Real good boss.
Usually keeps me from getting in trouble. So So really really really got moving. And so that's who I was.
And you you you never know what's going to happen. When I hit the street, the only thing I wanted I just wanted to be a citizen. I never had, you know, I lived in towns, but I never been a citizen.
I'd never paid taxes. Never voted. I never had any concern about anything in our neighborhood or anything like that.
I wanted to do stuff like that. I wanted to vote. I I never had voted in my life.
never paid taxes unless they took it away from me because I never did give it to anybody. They just take it if they wanted. And so I want to do stuff like that.
And uh when I had been I I want to just tell you about a few things that that happened that I mean this is not not not Disneyland or something where just remarkable stuff happens every day. But I really believe that that when God has work for me to do, the way will open up. I believe I don't believe that.
I know that. I know that without any question. And if there's anything blocking, my higher power will take care of.
And what I'm talking about was the uh when I hit the street, for obvious reasons, I had on my parole papers, this man to never operate a motor vehicle. never. And that was fully understandable.
Fully understandable. And uh I never even considered I accepted that as fact of life. And when I'd only been out about two months, I'm on parole from a maximum custody facility.
I'm stationed in the state of North Carolina. My parole officer came to me one day and he said, "Tom, you really active. Didn't say anything." And I said, "Yes, sir." I and I thought he was going to say I needed to slow down.
I knew I wouldn't. And he said, "Wouldn't it help you if you could drive?" And I said, "Yes, sir, but I can't." As if he didn't know. I mean, my god.
He had the parole papers and he knew what the verdict was. And he said, "Well, let me check it out." And he did. And then he called me just a short while later and said, "Can you meet me at the Sears store uptown?" Now this this really does sound country but what it is but but Sears store was where the license counter was not the didn't have an ages they had a counter and so I my sister drove me up I could see my guy standing back there I walked up to him and uh he introduced me to the fell I didn't know who was the license examiner and uh so we howed and uh the guy said to me that I didn't know Mr.
Logan, my pro guy, says that you might be interested in having your driver's license. And and uh I said, "Well, yes, it would be helpful." And uh now don't ask me to explain it because I can't I can't. What I do know is that my boss has a different rule book than than what most people have and just stuff happens, you know, that I don't need to understand it and I'll never understand it.
But the guy asked me that and he handed me a driver's license. Didn't even ask me if I knew how to drive. I mean, nothing.
No test, no nothing. I mean, nothing. Didn't even pay for it.
Only cost $4. I think could have paid that. Ain't legal, is it?
But I've been driving ever since. it. It's what I'm talking about when God has word for me to I can't explain that.
Any lawyer could tell you that isn't supposed to happen. But I've been driving now over 50 years with that not the same license. They changed it a few times.
But amazing thing, hey, and uh I was you stuff happening. I went to prison the second week I was out to visit an a group. Two months later, I was a Southside sponsor.
I'm trusted to be the trusted servant to give the leadership in that in that facility and a marvelous thing. I was a DCM five months after I was out was DCM for my my district and state. So things were going very well for me and really good.
And one day I I'd been out about just about two years, not quite two years and I got a phone call one day and a few of you in here know this. It's it's an unbelievable story but you can believe it. the uh phone phone ranging.
I stayed at my mother's house. So I got on there and the guy on the phone was somebody I had met once. He was one of those that came from the headquarters and would go out and visit facilities around the state and he apparently was a vis was visiting a facility where I sponsored the a group and I think somebody told him go by and give me a little encouragement or something and so he came by and we probably spoke for two minutes and that was a guy on the phone.
And I remembered him and so he told me was he said he said said Mr. Iverister uh we are expanding the rehabilitation program in our prison system and we were wondering if you would consider accepting a position. That still sounds ludicrous to me still to this day.
You know, the day of that phone call, there had never been one person on the face of this earth who had ever been employed as a professional employee in a prison system. And I knew that. I was well aware of that and I knew they were going to start with me.
But I said to the guy number first thing I said was, "Do you know who you're talking to?" And he said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have checked you out." Of course they had. Now I'm on parole from a maximum custody institution in the state of Michigan.
And uh well they obviously knew that and uh I told them I good God I'd rather do that than anything I could imagine whatever it is. And uh but I knew knew it wouldn't happen. But sure enough you know when God has work for us to do walls come down.
I didn't say when I want to do something. when God has work for me to do, walls come down. I don't care what they are.
They do come down. I know it. I don't believe it.
I know it. And uh so this guy told me that and I I thought nothing would ever happen. My state, the little redneck state of North Carolina, I we are not the liberal capital of the world.
We are not known for bold new innovations. No, I could understand the Dominion of Canada doing something like that, but North Carolina, good God, but it did. And so I was employed this as a rehabilitation officer and I'm just out.
I mean, my god, I've just barely got my uniform off and I'm going to work as an official. I had to do some, you know, one of the things we're going to talk about a little bit this weekend is, you know, how we fit into this world. how we fit in and make this world work around us.
You know, it's some of that this weekend. But here I'm walking in in a place where where no man has ever stood. No man.
It's a lonely place. E it's a lonely place. I had I had a sandwich one day a while back with a fellow who walked on the moon.
One of the astronauts who who walked on the moon and I was just intrigued with that. Tell me about it. I wanted to hear it.
So he told me about it and uh it's fascinating to me to be walking where man had never walked and I've done the same thing. Didn't think about it till afterward that I my planet was a little lower than his and by the way uh in in talking with him I he was telling me about his ongoing projects. you know, he's still in aerospace and he was telling me about the project and I listened to him about just fascinated with didn't understand it but I was just fascinated with how much he knew and so he's telling me all about it when he got through he looked at me expect you know how people do in a conversation look at you now so what do you got to say what am I going to say well I saw the moon come up last night the best I can do and and uh so he looked at me and I said, "Have you ever thought about using AA traditions and what you do?" Well, you'd have thought I'd smacked him in the face with a wet salmon or something.
He said, "A tradition?" I said, "Yeah." I said, "I've listened to you. I've listened to you explain in great detail that you guys know how to shoot a rocket." My god, man. You can shoot it million miles away and make come within two inches of where you're pointing.
You know how to do that. your problem is trying to get a team of people that can get it done without killing each other. And he said, you know, you're right.
Well, it is. It's never the technology as much as it is the technicians that don't fit, you know. And so he said, now there the rocket scientist said, you know, I'm going to go home and get I've got that book at home.
I'm going to go home and take a look at that. He says he's going to let me know how he's doing with it, but we'll find out. We we may have the AA flag planted on the next but you know I say we see them in a meeting and then you see how it fits into life you know in so so so so kind in many ways and and and I say that because when I went to work and I'm standing where man in every moment who do you talk to about problems of concern nobody nobody you got to have somebody to share just like Bill and Bob they shared the experience nobody to share it with.
And so I had to rely on my higher power. I relied on AA traditions. I later finished up in university in correctional administration.
But that's not what what gave me a great career. What gave me a great career, the principles I live by here. I I went to work on the first job I was given and I would have kept that job forever.
I I never I would have been happy to to keep it forever. Now, I'm going to tell you this and and tell you, you can go to the bank on it, but it sounds unbelievable. From the day I got my first job in recovery after I got recover from my first job till the last one when I retired, I hope it's my last one that I've never applied for one single job.
I have never applied for a single job. promotion, transfer, pay raise, nothing. Now, I'm no I'm no prince charming, you know, wonder boy in hiding.
I I'll tell you why. I think that career has been like that for me. For some reason, I think AA principles guide me to give my very best to what I do.
And so, that's what I did. I treated every job I had as if it were the most important job on earth. He gave it my best because that's what tells you who I am.
If what I do is sloppy work where I just got to get by instead of get quality work done, that's who I am. And so what I did was give my every job I had, not my very best. And somebody I guess somebody just be kind of watching you.
I know I've hired hundreds and hundreds of people. And I hire people who want to do something. I hire people who want to work in behalf of an organization.
You let somebody tell me how dissatisfied where they were with their last job. I'm going to be hardressed to hire them, but I don't want to hire soreheads. My god, you can produce enough of those.
You don't need to hunt more. So, but that's what I did. I just gave my best to every job.
Never applied for a different one and went to the top of my profession. My profession was the most unlikely one you could imagine. I'm going into corrections.
Can Can you imagine a guy sitting in a sale in a penitentiary and he's thinking about what he's going to do if he ever gets out? You know, I think I'll go into corrections. I'll just I'll show him how to do this stuff.
Man, I'm going to be a warden that they put a net on you. I mean, they went flat. Put a net on.
And uh but that's exactly what happened. I went into corrections. I started working.
Then I got recruited into supervision management to directing some programs and then finally warden of a prison and uh and several you know I was warden of several prisons and it's it's a weird place to be but the program prepared me for it better than anything I'd ever done and so I had an absolutely great career a great career and uh put put it 39 years found out I was the oldest rat in the barn said shoot man it's time also learned they pay me about as much to not work cuz it didn't work. And I said, "Hey, man. I'm going to take that and go play." So that's why I'm going here.
That's why I'm here tonight. So anyway, it's just a I tell you that because every recovery doesn't end with a noose around you. Yeah.
I still got time to do that, but I don't have any plans, no any any concerns that that's going to happen. Yeah. I've been given a life that's truly beyond anything I could imagine.
married that little girl from Saskatchewan a little over 42 years ago. And she's still she doesn't speak very good English, but she's still she's we got to speak in southern a little bit. And and we have a couple of little canicans, Canadian Americans.
And uh life's pretty good. Kids have done well. The daughter's a psych graduate and she'll get back to this planet in time.
and psych majors will do that to you. And and my son is a physician. He's a he specializes in high-risisk maternal fetal medicine.
He deals only with cases that other doctors have got too much sense to deal with. So they turn them over to him and let him take all the risk. I told her, I said, "Boy, you better get a law degree to go with that." And uh he's leaving next week to go over.
He does uh he does service work in in his field. You know, he just wants to do something where he gets the payoff that nobody can buy. And so he goes over to Africa.
And for the last few years, he's been going over to Ghana for a couple of weeks every two years. And he's trying to hand trying to help young Ganian physicians learn how to move into the high-risk category. Great work.
Great work. Well, you obviously you know I'm very proud of those that boy and that girl. They they're fine kids.
Well, they're old folks now. You but they giving me grandchildren. So there there's hope for them.
Okay. And and so I guess the point is guys, I just thought I'd spend a little a little time tonight just just just just talking about this this just just one case, but it's anybody's case, you know, and and so what I did was give a broken and wasted life to this simple program. And this given me back a life that literally is beyond my wildest dreams.
I could not imagine drunk or sober thinking of a life like I've had. It's been absolutely great. And it's just started, man.
I I've got a lot to do. I got have people tell me all the time, I need to slow down. And every time they tell me they're gonna slow down, I look them over and say, "If I slow down, will I get like you?" You know what I said a little earlier is true.
It's not party line, but it's certainly true. In my view, this this this honeymoon or whatever you want to call it, this thing of of the fourth dimension is what we call it in the group. this fourth dimension of recovery where we start operating on the spiritual rather than the material that that is absolutely available.
All I got to do is do the things that bring it alive. So I'm looking forward to Oh, and by the way, just quick before we close here, we've gone a long time for a short session. the uh before we do uh let's just take just a few minutes and then anybody that's got a particular area that you'd like to see us just as a group get into and and spend some time on while we got it out of the traffic without the horn blowing and hopefully no phones ringing much.
Anybody anything that you would like to touch but touch on for sure. Yeah. >> Yeah.
um people's experience with and how to do the steps with newcomers. >> I have found that there's a lack in it and when we started doing step groups in my area, everybody went you know, thank God they can send responses to a step group and maybe that's the way to do it. I don't know how it was done in the past how people people's experience in it how to get people to do those steps which I wish I had done right away.
at a at a minimum we could get some good examples of that. >> Yeah. So that you know like just like I indicated you I funnel my way through.
There's no perfect way to do it obviously but if you do what's laid out in those steps but it sure helps to be accountable to some other people. So yeah that's very good. Yeah we'll make a point of that thing that uh is anybody going to write this down?
>> I don't trust >> it's recorded. Well, yeah, but listen to that. >> He's a president.
He >> told me he was in charge of everything. >> Any other relationships? >> Looks like we should finish this about Tuesday, I think.
>> I think at this point, Thank you, Tommy. close. >> Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise.
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