NOTE: The N-word is used several times during this historic 1968 talk.
Pierce's father very rarely drank and never had it at home. Alcohol was not a big deal in Pierce's early life. The progression was very gradual.
After getting married, they moved in with her sickly parents. He worked for a finance company that kept him on the road with a big expense account for lots of years. His drinking escalated.
He got transferred to a store as a manager and started drinking during the day to help him work. He was asked to resign and got a government job in Macon, GA. He got in a terrible condition and moved back to Augusta and tried to straighten up but could not.
He started having blackouts and doing crazy things, He blamed all his drinking on his wife and her family getting kicked out of the house regularity.
He hired a moving van and emptied her 11 room house while she was gone and moved to a place under an assumed name. He got locked up everywhere he went.
He lost automobiles and his false teeth many times.
He and his wife started the first concrete block plant in the Augusta region.
Towards the end of his drinking he stayed drunk many days with a kind black woman just hiding, sleeping and drinking.
He came in through treatment. It was the second step which finally brought him in.
He describes how in 1960, with many years sober, the Program helped him get his son's bladder cancer treated at the Mayo clinic.
He was able through that to come to accept God's Plan.
(1 hr 2 min) (14.2 MB) (id#1046)