Richard K. AA Male

Richard (0:08)

My name is Richard, I'm an alcoholic.

My watch stopped this morning. I told Joy that I just have to talk until I got tired, and she gave me her watch.

She's still managing, she's still taking care of me.

I am Richard, I'm an alcoholic, but since I came to this program, I'm some other things besides an alcoholic. There was a time in my life when I was an alcoholic, and that was just about it. I drank and got drunk and blacked out. Today I'm an alcoholic, but some other things. Today I'm a husband again. I have the same wife that I've had for 31 years, but there was a time when I was not a husband. I'm a father again. I have the same three children I've had for 22, and 25, and 29 years, and there was a time when I wasn't a father. I am again. I'm a productive member of my firm and my community again. There was a time when I was a hanger owner. I was just there. I love what Frank said last night. I miss so much of my life. I find out a lot about it at these meetings with George talking. I miss a lot of my life. I am now living life because of you. I didn't intend to be an alcoholic, not at all. I grew up in a, as George told you, in Silas, Alabama. Silas is a rather small town. If you don't know where Silas is, it's halfway between Sir Wilp and Turkey Creek. I'm sure that will do it for you.

In Silas, my first recollection of drinking, if I remembered or if I've just been told about it, when I was five years old, I had a job. My uncle, this was during the Second World War, and Silas is 95 miles north of Mobile. And my uncle hired me, I understand, to ride with him in a hearse to Mobile, Alabama and ride back. My job was to look sad, those five-year-old kids, look sad, wear their soldiers cap and sit up in the hearse, and we would go through towns going down to Mobile, and the police would stop the traffic. People were very patriotic during the war. Stop the traffic, let the hearse go through. People would take their hats off and stand with their hearts and let the hearse go through. And we would go to Mobile and drop something off and pick up something and come back to Sowers. I found out years later that what we were doing, the idea was that I was supposed to be the son of the soldier we were going to pick up the body of, and everybody would look sad and let us go through. What we were doing was holding bootleg whiskey to Mobile and picking up black market sugar and bringing it back to Sowers to make more bootleg whiskey. And as a reward or as my pay for doing this job, my uncle would give me a drink of whiskey and a nickel.

As a result of that, my uncle became a damn millionaire and I became an alcoholic. Doesn't seem fair, but that's the way it was. I doubt very much that had anything at all to do with my alcoholism. Doubt very much. He's just a part of my life. It's something that did happen. I saw drinking around my family. I grew up in a home with an alcoholic father. We didn't know that. We thought he was a drunk. We didn't know he was an alcoholic. My father died with 25 years sobriety, but when I grew up up there, he was drunk, a drunk. And if he wasn't home by 6 o'clock that night, we knew he was going to come home drunk. We knew it. My sisters and I would lie in bed and wait in terror and in horror for him to come home, because when he came in, all hell was going to break loose. My mother would not leave him alone either, and I don't know whose fault and don't care. But things bad did happen around our house, and we would lay in the bed and cry and cover up and try to hide from it. Horrible to grow up as a child in an alcoholic family, an alcoholic home. And I swore to my God as I knew him then and to anything that I knew that was right, I will never do this to my family. If I ever grow up and have kids, I will not do what my dad is doing. Some 20 years later, I grew up and had kids and did exactly the same thing he did. My father didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know until I got here. I saw people drinking there, but I had such a horror of alcohol in my family. I didn't drink all through my teenage years. So I saw people drink, and it was illegal to buy alcohol in Trials. It was illegal. But the thing was, if you were caught drunk, they would take you home. The law would take you home if you were drunk. If you were caught with alcohol in your possessions, they'd take you to jail. It was illegal. So I saw what my father, my uncles, and everybody did. They would buy this whiskey and make some fruit jars, had pints, and pints, and quarts, and whatever. And the idea was drink it quick and throw the Bible away. If you got caught, they'd just take you home. Don't get caught with it. Drink it quick and throw the Bible away. And I think that's why I never learned to sip. Sipping is not in my vocabulary. Drink it quick and throw the bottle away. Classic alcoholic. I drank for the effect. I like the taste of it, but I drank for the effect when I did start drinking. But anyway, I didn't drink in high school. I didn't drink in college. But something different happened when I went off to school at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Alcohol was legal there. I saw college professors and people in suits and nice dressed sitting in restaurants, drinking alcoholic drinks out of nice stem glasses, and laughing and having a nice time. I had never seen that. I had seen people drink quick and throw the bottle away and get drunk and fight and touch and rose up. I saw these people drinking nicely. My attitudes toward drinking didn't change a little bit. I saw television, on TV, drinking. Those commercials are powerful for Madison Avenue. That's one where the two people are standing in this penthouse apartment and the blinds are open, overlooking the city and the moon is coming up, and they're both dressed to the nines, and they have these nice stem glasses, and they're pouring the bottle of wine, and you know something good is about to happen. You just know it. Powerful. My mind began to change about alcohol. It wasn't quite so bad. It could be handled. People could drink it and enjoy it. I still didn't drink until I was at the school, at the fence. I came for a sent down to New Orleans. New Orleans, Louisiana, from Silas, Alabama. What a change. Cultural shock. I walked in Swagman's one day, and when I first got here, I will never forget that day. I looked down the aisle of Swagman Brothers' grocery store, and they must have six hours as long as this hotel full of alcohol. I had never seen anything like that in my life. I wonder, how would my dad and my uncle drink up all this and throw all these bottles away?