Bill's Story (Continued)
C: Page four. (p. 4, par. 2) 'Abruptly in October 1929 hell broke loose on the New York stock exchange.
After one of those days of inferno, I wobbled from a hotel bar to a brokerage office. It was eight o'clock--five hours after the market closed. The ticker still clattered. I was staring at an inch of the tape which bore the inscription XYZ-32. It had been 52 that morning. I was finished and so were many friends. The papers reported men jumping to death from the towers of High Finance. That disgusted me. I would not Jump. I went back to the bar.' (laughter) (p. 4, par. 2)
'My friends had dropped several million since ten o'clock--so what? Tomorrow was another day. As I drank, the old fierce determination to win came back. ' How many of us have done the same thing. How many
of us have come out of the jailhouse, the hospital, the divorce court, we're low, sad, depressed? We stop in a bar and we have a drink or two. As we do that old fierce
determination to win comes back. We say, by God, we'll show them. They're not going to treat me that way. We get up, and we take off again in a different direction.
(p. 4, par. 3) 'Next morning I telephoned a friend in Montreal. He had plenty of money left and thought I had better go to Canada. By the following spring we were living in our accustomed style. I felt like Napoleon returning from Elba. No St. Helena for me' But drinking caught up with me again and my generous friend had to let me go. This time we stayed broke. '
We can see the progression of Bill's disease. Gradually getting worse and worse. (p. 4, par. 4; p. 5, par. 1) 'We went to live with my wife's parents. I found a job: then lost it as the result of a brawl with a taxi driver. Mercifully, no one could guess that I was to have no real employment for five years, or hardly draw a sober breath. My
wife began to work in a department store, coming home exhausted to find me drunk. (top of p. 5) I became an unwelcome hanger-on at brokerage places.'
Here was a guy that just a few months before this, people were following his advice to the tune of millions of dollars. Now he's an unwelcome hanger-on at brokerage places. Nobody wants anything to do with him now. His drinking has become so bad that nobody wants to follow his judgement at all.
(p. 5, par. 2) 'Liquor ceased to be a luxury; it became a necessity. ' Now we're no longer drinking for fun and excitement. We're now drinking to live, because we absolutely have to. (p. 5, par. 2)' "Bathtub" gin, two bottles a day, and often
three, got to be routine. Sometimes a small deal would net a few hundred dollars, and I would pay my bills at the bars and delicatessens. This went on endlessly, and I began to waken very early in the morning shaking violently. A tumbler full of gin followed by half a dozen bottles of beer would be required if I were to eat any breakfast. Nevertheless, I still thought I could control the situation, and there were periods of sobriety which renewed my wife's hope.'
Remember Dr. Silkworth tells us that we really cannot differentiate the true from the false. To us what we're doing is normal. We can see Bill's life going to hell in a hand basket already. Bill can't see that. Bill feels that he can control the situation. There were periods of time when he would sober up, put a few deals together, make a little money, and he thought everything was going okay. But: (p. 5, par. 3-4) 'Gradually things got worse. The house was taken over by the mortgage holder, my mother-in-law died, my wife and father-in-law became ill. 'Then I got a promising business
opportunity. Stocks were at the low point of 1932, and I had somehow formed a group to buy. I was to share generously in the profits. Then I went on a prodigious bender, and that chance vanished.'
This is a story within itself. See "Pass it On", pp. 91-92. Bill had put this deal together. He had sold it to the people( who) had
money. They bought into this idea on the provision that Bill didn't drink. They said, Bill, if you take as much as one drop of booze you're going to blow the whole deal. No drinking period. And Bill said, don't worry about it. I'm not ever going to drink again as long as I live. One night just before the deal was consummated, they were setting
around talking and somebody passed a bottle of applejack around. It came to Bill, and he said, no thank you, I'm not drinking. The second round it came to Bill, and Bill said, well, I don't believe one drink of applejack would hurt anybody. Bill took a drink, triggered his allergy, couldn't stop drinking, got drunk and blew the whole deal.
