Good ole country boy, funny and grateful, his Al-Anon wife is back home recovering from surgery.
Raised in Nashville, TN, one of 10 children from hard working parents all living in a two bedroom home, what he became versus how he was raised created self-hatred.
Teachers passed him because he was great at sports. His drinking kept him from going further. He joined the Navy in a blackout.
Beer joints became more important than sports or anything. He achieved nothing in the service going out the same rank he came in with.
He spent college on a bar stool getting a government check but not going to school.
He got a great job but DWI's started coming. At first he was ashamed and later looked forward to who he was going to see in jail.
He felt so rotten about himself he started looking down on everybody else.
Unable to work, he was hospitalized, near death, internal bleeding, got out and started drinking again. In 1957 he was in a sanitarium getting shock treatment and was moved to the VA hospital where they put him on thorazine and showed him how to make leather wallets.
He still drank. His family committed him to the real asylum. He escaped. He began trying AA to get everybody off his back. He wound up back in the asylum.
Out again and finally in the emergency room pleading with God to please help him, he went into AA and found a real teacher and others who gave him unconditional love.
