“You don’t have to go anywhere,” he said. “Someone will come to you.” He didn’t go into any detail, just told me that much and little more. I did some thinking that afternoon. Calling one of the nurses I asked her to get in touch with my wife and have her come to see me that evening.
She came during visiting hours. She expected, I know, to hear me plead for instant release from the place. I didn’t talk about that. In my lame way I told her my story. It made little impression.
“It doesn’t sound right,” she said. “If this plan—and for the life of me I don’t quite get it from what you’ve told me—if this plan is successful, why is this fellow back here himself?”
I was stumped. I was too ignorant about the thing myself to be capable of explaining it clearly to her. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll admit it sounds queer, the way this fellow is and all that, but somehow I feel there’s something to it. Anyhow, I want to know more about it.”
She went away skeptically. But the next day I had a visitor, a doctor who had himself been an alcoholic. He told me a little more about the plan. He was kindly, didn’t offer any cut and dried formula to overcome my life-long difficulty. He presented no religious nostrums, suggested no saving rituals. Later he sent some of the other ex-alcoholics to see me.
A few days later my fellow-alcoholic was released, and shortly afterward I was allowed to go home also. Through the man who first told me of the plan I was introduced to several other members of the group of former alcoholics. They told me their experiences. Many were men of former affluence and position. Some had hit even lower levels than I had.
The first Wednesday evening after my release found me a somewhat shame-faced but intensely curious attendant at a meeting in a private home in this city. Some forty others were present. For the first time I saw a fellowship I had never known in actual operation. I could actually feel it. I learned that this could be mine, that I could win my way to sobriety and sanity if I would follow a few precepts, simple in statement, but profound and far-reaching in their effect if followed. It penetrated to my inner consciousness that the mere offering of lip-service wasn’t enough. Still ignorant, still a little doubting, but deadly in earnest, I made up my mind to make an honest effort to try.
That was two years ago. The way has not been easy. The new way of life was strange at first, but all my thoughts were on it. The going was sometimes slow; halting were my steps among the difficulties of the path. But always, when troubles came, when doubts assailed and temptation was strong and the old desire returned, I knew where to go for aid. Helping others also strengthened me and helped me to grow.
Today I have achieved, through all these things, a measure of happiness and contentment I had never known before. Material success has mattered little. But I know that my wants will be taken care of.
I expect to have difficulties every day of my life; I expect to encounter stops and hindrances, but now there is a difference. I have a new and tried foundation for every new day.
The Salesman
I learned to drink in a workmanlike manner when the law of the land said I couldn’t, and what started out as a young man’s fun became a habit which in its later existence laid me by the heels many a time and almost finished my career.
’Teen years were uneventful with me. I was raised on a farm but saw little future in farming. I was going to be a businessman, took a business college course, acquired a truck and stand in the city market of a nearby town, and started off. I brought produce from my folks’ place and sold it to city customers and there were plenty of them with bulging pocketbooks.
Back of me was the normal life of a farmer’s son. My parents were unusually understanding people. My father was a life-long comrade till the day of his death. The business theory I had learned in college was now being practiced and I was equipped beyond many of my competitors to be materially successful. Soon I had expanded until I was represented in all the city markets and also in another city. In 1921 we had the forerunner of the later depression and my customers disappeared. Successively I had to close my stands and was finally wiped out altogether. Being a young man of affairs, I had begun to do a little business and social drinking and now with time on my hands, I seemed to do more of it.
Following a year of factory work, during which time I got married, I got a job with a grocer as clerk. My grocer-employer was an expert wine-maker and I had free access to his cellar. The work was monotonous in the extreme, behind a counter all day when I had been used to driving around attending to business, meeting people and building for what I thought was a great future. I mark, too, as a milestone, the death of my father, whom I missed greatly.
I kept hitting the wine, with just occasional use of liquor. Leaving the grocery I went back into the produce business and out among people, went back to liquor again and got my first warning to quit before it got me.
I was anxious to get with a concern which would give me an opportunity to build up again, and landed a job with a nationally known biscuit company. I was assigned to a good business region, covering several important towns, and almost at once began to earn real money. In a very short time I was the star salesman of the company, winning a reputation as a business-getter. Naturally I drank with my better customers, for on my route I had many stops where that was good business. But I had things rather well under control and the early days on this job I seldom wound up my day’s work with any visible effects of drinking.
I had a private brewery at home which was now producing 15 gallons a week, most of which I drank myself. It is typical of the attitude I had toward alcohol at that time that, when a fire threatened total destruction of my home and garage, I rushed to the cellar and rescued my most precious possessions—a keg of wine and all the beer I could carry, and got pretty indignant when my better half suggested that I had better get some of the needed effects out of the house before it burned down.
My home-brewing gradually became a bore and I began to carry home bottles of powerful bootleg whiskey, starting with half a pint every night and winding up with a quart as my daily after-supper allowance. For a time I kept on the job spacing my drinks en route and very little of them in the morning hours. I just couldn’t wait until I got home to drink. In a very short time I became an all-day drinker.
Chain-store managers and quantity buyers were both my guests and hosts and every now and then we had prodigious parties. Finally, in a re-organization shake-up resulting in new district managers with a pretty poor territory deal for me, I gave the company two weeks notice and quit. I had bought a home but in the year and a half following I had little income and finally lost that. I became satisfied with just enough to live on and buy the liquor I wanted. Then I landed in the hospital when my car was hit by a truck. My car was ruined entirely. That loss and my injuries plus the recriminations of my wife sort of sobered me up. When I got out of the hospital I stayed sober for six weeks and had made up my mind to quit.
I went back in the business where I had been a successful salesman, but with another company. When I started with this concern I talked things over with my wife and made her some very solemn promises. I wasn’t going to touch another drop of liquor.
By this time prohibition was a thing of the past and saloons and clubs where I was well known as a good customer and a good spender became my patrons. I rolled up business until I was again a star, but after the first four months on the new job I began to slip. It is not unusual in the drinking experience of any man that after a time of sobriety he comes to the conclusion that he “can handle it.” In no time at all liquor again became the most important thing in my life and every day became like another, steady drinking in every saloon and club on my route. I would get to headquarters every night in a top-heavy condition, just able to maintain equilibrium. I began to get warnings and was repeatedly fired and taken on again. My wife’s parents died about this time in unfortunate circumstances. All my troubles seemed to be piling up on me and liquor was the only refuge I knew.
Some nights I wouldn’t go home at all and when I did go home I was displeased when my wife had supper ready and equally angry when she didn’t. I didn’t want to eat at