Jay Davidson: From Military Leadership and Alcohol Addiction to Lasting Sobriety and the Founding of The Healing Place

SPEAKER_03 0:04

Jay Davidson, thank you so much for being here. Uh, one of my mentors, the founder of the Healing Place, which has how many beds now?

SPEAKER_00 0:13

426 beds for men, uh, 274 beds for women, plus another hundred beds down in Campbellsville.

SPEAKER_03 0:20

Right.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Almost 800 beds.

SPEAKER_03 0:23

And uh so just so people know, also the place that saved my life in 2013 when a family member of mine Googled it or somebody told him about it or something, and pulled up on the corner and opened the door and said, Good luck.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Good luck.

SPEAKER_03 0:38

Yeah, and that’s a pre-Civil War building, right? That old detox, yeah. Yeah, the old detox.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Uh I on it was at 1017, 1019 Westmarket was built in 1893. Wow. Yeah. Triple brick walls, three by sixteen struts. I mean, when they finally, finally remodeled the inside of it, uh, they gutted it, and it was just unbelievable.

SPEAKER_03 1:01

Yeah. You told us that one day while I was in detox there. Yeah. At least when I went in, uh, I don’t know about today. It’s been uh it’s been 13 years ago that I checked into the healing place down there.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

That building is still there.

SPEAKER_03 1:13

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Now it now it houses operations staff. Yeah. And the dugout is still there. Yeah, I see the dugout when I cut.

SPEAKER_03 1:20

I came to your office not too long ago. That’s right. And the dugout’s right across there. So the the the Louisville Cardinal office. Right. And the one thing I always notice, you have that table, that Louisville Cardinal table right in the middle of your office. And when somebody stops by, you always take the time to get up from behind your desk, come over and sit down and have a meaningful conversation with them.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

That’s correct.

SPEAKER_03 1:39

Yeah, I admire that. And that’s what I that’s what I wanted to do here is have meaningful conversations. So I want to go back a little bit though. How long have you been sober now?

SPEAKER_00 1:48

43 years.

SPEAKER_03 1:49

43 years. I I had 35 in my head. I guess that’s the last time I heard you celebrating somewhere. 43 years sober. And um, I want to go back just a little bit. I wanted to know more about you today. Sure. What can you tell me about younger Jay? How you grew up, how the how it began.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Oh wow. Um I grew up uh both my mother and father were alcoholics. And early in my childhood, I was three, or my my sister was three, and I was seven, and my father left. And so uh the divorce was final, and I never saw my father again for probably 25 or 30 years. So I’m being the firstborn and taking care of my sister and mom working. This was 1950, so there wasn’t a whole lot of Social Security services and all that for women. So she had to work. We had to had to go to a babysitter. So I kind of took over taking care of my sister and assuming that responsibility. And that kind of continued on through elementary school and junior high and high school. This was all in Denver, Colorado. So uh my um my mother was smart in that she knew I needed a male role model uh in my life as I grew up, but there was, and she wasn’t gonna uh bring a male uh a man into the house, so she realized that Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts was the answer. So we joined the local church just so I could go to the Cub Scouts and then follow on to the Boy Scouts. And so it turns out that the scout master of my uh troop for four and a half years became a family friend for life. Uh he our troop would in Colorado, our troop every uh once a month would go on a weekend, long weekend high camp out up in the high country 12 months a year in in the winter in the snow, and you name it, we were up there to hiking, and you learn how to live off the land and really, really start developing self-awareness and self-confidence. And so that was pretty cool. Then very uh went through high school, did did well in high school, went to University of Denver for a couple of semesters. Was a candidate to uh go be a uh acceptance into West Point, and I was one of the one of the six students uh considered uh uh uh for the position of West Point. But you know how things go, and I kind of fell in love, and uh the the uh young lady that I was uh dating at the time didn’t think me going off to West Point right away was such a good idea. So we didn’t make it. Yeah, so um I uh went to work for General Motors Acceptance Corporation right away. And I as I had done that in my senior year in high school. The afternoons I was I didn’t have classes, so I was a mail clerk for GMAC there in Denver. Got they did so well that they hired me on full time when I graduated, and over the next uh uh uh uh see five years, four years, I went from mail clerk to cashier to uh payment poster to accounts to the accounting department, and then assistant accounting manager in in Cheyenne to the field branch they had in Cheyenne. I got married along the way, got married to the lady that wanted me not to go to West Point. Got we got married on November 22nd, 1963, the day President Kennedy was assassinated. So um I’m I’m in the basement with my mother and stepfather, drinking white lightning, trying to get enough courage to go through the wedding. We decided to go ahead and go through the wedding, which in hindsight probably was not the smartest thing to do over time. Uh had to make, got married, uh, moved up to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and worked for General Motors in the County Department, and then I got my love don’t from Selective Service. So realizing that I had a uh a sequence number to be drafted, um I was really in my alcoholic mode at this point. Uh I figured I can manipulate this whole deal. I can manipulate the Army. What I’m gonna do, her my wife’s dad was a senior master sergeant in the Air Force, stationed in Wiesbaden, Germany. And I figured, wow, Army has a station of choice option. I’m gonna enlist for station of choice, which means in a three-year enlistment, they would guarantee me 18 months in Germany. The other 18 months would be in Vietnam. So I can do that. So I enlisted for station of choice. And my ship out date was gonna be the day after Christmas in December of 1965. God has a sense of humor. November, first part of November, my wife tells me I’m pregnant. Well, James, my alcoholic ego kicked in and said, My pride said, I’ve made a commitment. I took an oath, I have sworn to the president of the United States that I will support and defend. There’s no way I can get out of this contract. At that point, though, uh LB Johnson was saying that if you had a dependent besides the wife, you could get out of any commitment. But I wouldn’t do that, I wouldn’t do it.

SPEAKER_03 7:44

Just an ego thing?

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Just an ego thing. Okay. Just I gotta, I gotta, I gotta see, see it through. So uh the day after Christmas, 1965, I shipped out to, I was supposed to go to Fort Gordon, Jr., Jordan, Fort Gordon, Georgia, for a radio telephone operator. But but um I shipped out to, well, actually, I my I picked uh December to go to uh basic training because I wouldn’t I was gonna go to someplace warm. Basic training was at Fort Bliss, Texas in January 1966. I did not know that Fort Bliss, Texas was a mile above sea level and it was in the desert, and it was colder than cold in the wintertime. It even snowed, and the water water barrels froze, and you’re out there in bivouac breaking the ice to shave. So that was a long, interesting event of basic training. However, during that basic training experience, I had been in junior, oh, back up going through school. I wasn’t tall enough to be basketball, I wasn’t big enough to be football, I wasn’t fast enough for track, but I could smoke and drink.

SPEAKER_03 8:57

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

So what’s left?

SPEAKER_03 8:59

I’m tall enough for basketball, but I can’t, I’m not coordinated. I can’t dribble and walk at the same time, still can’t to this day.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

I couldn’t do any of that, but I could smoke and I could drink. And junior ROTC was an option.

SPEAKER_04 9:12

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

I can do that. So I got into junior ROTC and really started to excel with it because of my Boy Scout experience and everything. And high in high school, in my senior year, I ended up being the cadet battalion commander of the corps in the high school, about 200 cadets. Really excelled. It was just like in my blood. And so when I got to basic training, I demonstrated that experience in the course, the drill sergeants. They they pumped you full of sunshine and said, Look, man, you’ve already had two years of college from Denver University. You did well on the tests, the your GT score and all was really high. You should volunteer for officer candidate school. Are you serious? Wow, that’s pretty cool. What what you mean I make it can become an officer? They said, yes, we think you can. You have to pick one of three uh branches, though. You have to pick infantry, armor, or artillery. And I said, Well, that’s no big deal. I’ll pick infantry.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

You go again?

SPEAKER_00 10:19

You go again. So I got I and I got accepted into officer candidate school. Well, there was one problem with that. I did not ask my wife or talk to my wife about it. And so when I had to call her, I mean, she was in Haskell, Oklahoma, pregnant, I said, um, I’m not going to Fort Gordon for after after basic training. I’m going to Fort Bliss, uh Fort uh Fort Ord, California for infant advanced infantry training. Because I’m going to go eventually to Fort Benning, Georgia for six months of officer candidate school. And she said, okay. And I did all this with that alcoholic ego of this is what I need to do. It’s all about selfish and self-centeredness. I’m just, it’s me. This is what I was so pumped full of the sunshine, they thought I thought I was doing such a great job that I just I had to do it. And so I’m out in Fort Gordon, Fort Ord, uh completed advanced individual training. And uh in the meantime, my wife’s getting into her eight-month of pregnancy. And it turns out that my old professor of military science from the high school was stationed at at Fort Benning. And he said, I’d be glad to provide housing for your wife. She can come down and stay with me and I’ll take care of her while you’re in Fort Orton. I said, Well, wow, what a deal. I didn’t know anything, I didn’t know what I was doing, so I asked my eight-month pregnant wife to drive 1500 miles in her eighth month down to Columbus, Georgia, from Haskell, Oklahoma. Wow. I want I’m thinking I wasn’t even thinking.

SPEAKER_02 12:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

You know? Just go do it.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

Self-centered.

SPEAKER_00 12:14

You got it, then. So I was um, I had a start date of the first of June for my start date at Officer Candidate School, but I got an emergency phone call from Red Cross the third week in May, saying you need to get to Fort Benning, Georgia immediately. Your wife is giving in the process of giving premature premature birth, and you need to get to the hospital. So wow. What did I do? So I’m fly there. I get to the hospital. And uh she’s already given birth to Eric. Well, the problem is uh Eric’s lungs did not expand. Back then it was Highland membrane disease, and then uh the Kennedy family had a baby that died of the same thing. We they didn’t really have any knowledge or any uh instruments or any treatments for it. And he died at 36 hours.

SPEAKER_03 13:13

Your son. I’m sorry, I did not know that.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Died at 36 hours. Well, here I am. Two days later, I check into Officer Kennedy School. Fortunately, my uh professor of military science who was providing housing for my wife, he he donated a grave site for for my son in Columbus. And my wife was suffering from postpartum depression, and she was admitted to the hospital, and she was staying in the hospital. And so the next day I buried my buried my son, and the next day I checked into Fort Benning and was restricted to the property for 11 weeks. Went through uh went through the officers’ candidate school and excelled, survived. We had a class of about 250 candidates. A hundred of us graduated.

SPEAKER_03 14:03

So you you had mentioned a little while ago you were drinking white lightning at the time before all this started. Still on the white lightning at this time?

SPEAKER_00 14:09

No, no, I said no, I I switch I I switched to beer, it was easier to get. Okay. It was always beer. Right uh later on I I graduated to uh cavasier and I I why I got hooked on Scotch, I don’t know, but I couldn’t stand bourbon. I I focus on Scotch is in all the movies. Yeah, Scotch and Kavasier.

SPEAKER_03 14:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s distinguished. Yeah, it’s in all the movies, there’s always a bottle of Scotch, right? That’s that was me. Did any of this was any of this trauma that would fuel something in the future?

SPEAKER_00 14:39

Yes, it is, yeah. But I was using alcohol to medicate and hide. I was angry at my dad for leaving me at seven years old.

SPEAKER_03 14:47

So deep-seated resentment that’s still in it.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

And then really, really, really angry at God for taking my son at 36 hours. I mean, when you see that little casket, I mean, you you just I just can’t tell you what it’s like. So I finished officer candidate school, and so the Army sent me and my wife back to Fort Ore, California, uh, where I became a basic training unit officer, training basic trainees. I was a second lieutenant. My two my two company officers were both aviators, knew nothing about drilling ceremony, knew nothing about company organization or anything. And they stayed in the orderly room all the time. My job was to move the company every day, out to training, train them, move them back all day long. This is more detailed than I’d figured, but during that time, my wife came down with monoclosis. So for 90 days, she was bedridden. I’m doing 12 hours, 16 hours a day troop training. So am I building a relationship in a family? Not so much. Finished by June of 1966, I’d received orders for Vietnam. And interestingly, I don’t I I was still a second lieutenant at this point. My orders came for Washington, and I was assigned directly to the 1st Cavalry Division. So through the process of ending up going through Oakland and then shipping over, went through Guam, Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, and on into uh Vietnam. Got to the replacement depot, and uh there was a sign for the 1st Cavalry Division, the 4th Infantry Division, the 25th Infantry Division, and the 198th. And uh I was I could have gone to any one of those, even though I had orders for the first calf, and I figured, well, I’m not gonna go to the first calf. So I go through the process of replacing uh the uh repo depot, we call it replacement depot. And ended up I finally did yes get assigned to the first calf. I got assigned to the first brigade, I got assigned to uh Delta Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry, and shipped out a week later to uh Anke, Vietnam, and linked up with my uh my c my company.

SPEAKER_03 17:19

And you proceeded to participate in Vietnam?

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Yep. Yeah, I was I it’s interesting because uh again, God’s got a sense of humor. At that point, first brigade was all airborne status, everybody in the brigade was airborne. I was one of the few legs, non-airborne, assigned to that uh brigade, battalion, and company. My only salvation was my first sergeant was a leg, too. He was not airborne, right? Uh so my first initiation with the my platoon, we were on at On K, we were in kind of a palace guard uh situation protecting An K the company. And so my platoon was assigned a sector uh away from the main base to patrol during the day and then set up ambushes at night to keep the uh the division rear headquarters safe. But during the patrol days, we would patrol maybe two or three clicks in my in our area of operation. And um I’d only been uh in charge of the platoon, oh maybe two weeks, and a typical butter bar. But I was 24 years old. I got I was I was a lot older than all the men in my squad, in my company, really. One day we broke for lunch by this uh small river or stream that was going through the our AL, our area of operation. And on the other side of the river was this Vietnamese lady who proceeded to strip down nude and was dancing up and down the beach, uh the uh bank line, inviting the soldiers to come over and have a good time.

SPEAKER_03 19:12

Two weeks in.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

Two weeks in. And I’m kicking back to my OCS leadership and all this kind of good stuff, and I’ve said, that’s probably not a good thing for the guys to do. Probably not, in their best interests. So I said, okay, guys, you’re not crossing the river. As a matter of fact, saddle up and we’re heading on patrol this way.

SPEAKER_03 19:32

That was gonna be my next question, you know. Did you all cross the river?

SPEAKER_00 19:35

No, we settled, crossed, we went that way, away from the river. Two nights later, my four squad leaders called me over to their little hooch area, their tent. Told me to sit down and they said, Sir, you you you show you’ve proved to us that you care more about us than anything else. And we trust you. So if you will listen to us, we will help you learn how to survive this war and how we can survive this war together if you’ll just listen. And I said, sign me up. Absolutely. All ears. All ears. Right. And so for the next nine months, eight, almost nine months, I was I was in the in the jungle, uh fighting the Vietnamese fighting the Viet Cong in and in the Bong Son Plains and the NVA in North Vietnam or in Iacor. Uh and we were let me say that we were we got so good at working as a team that our platoon, because of not necessarily my leadership, but the guys that trusted me to do, I never volunteer never accepted a mission that I thought was asinine. But I the the the missing missions that we did take, um, they had all the faith and confidence in it, accomplishing that mission. So we got all the tough ones.

SPEAKER_03 21:13

So that uh you were in Vietnam how long?

SPEAKER_00 21:15

A year, uh 13 months.

SPEAKER_03 21:17

13 months living in the jungle in Vietnam, making your way.

SPEAKER_00 21:21

Yeah, you know, I got out of I got out of the jungle for one week to have a week a week renewal with my wife for R. Married men could do this. So for one one day I was in in the jungle, knee deep in mud and triple canopy. The very next day I was in Honolulu, Hawaii. Okay, still in fatigue practically. With seven days with my wife, and then flew back to uh Vietnam, back to the jungle.

SPEAKER_03 21:49

Back knee deep in mud in the jungle, fighting the Vietnam. Right, right. That’s amazing.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

Yeah, and when I was in we stayed at the Ilokai Hotel in Honolulu, Hawaii, and we on Like the 12th, 13th, or 14th floor, and at about midnight, I heard machine gun fire, and I jumped up and rolled under the bed. And I said, Oh my god, I gotta get out of here. And what it was was they had 24-hour construction on a hotel next door, and it was one of those jackhammers are going on.

SPEAKER_03 22:17

I was gonna say, was the TV still on or something? So it was a jackhammer. It was the jackhammer next door. Yeah. You know, our uh our chief clinical officer Brian, I’ll introduce you to him here in a minute. He he works with some bets in here. And one thing I heard him telling some guys before was like, Don’t confuse your training with uh your trauma. So, you know, and he explained it to me. He’s like, Some of these guys I’m working with over here, they will see a package on a porch and shy away. I’m not walking up there, I’m not going. He’s like, Man, that’s UPS, but you’ve been trained, that doesn’t look right. So uh confusing training with trauma is something that uh Brian deals with.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

Absolutely. So because what my platoon called White Skull, White Skull was so good that we got picked for all the tough missions. And so when it came time, I got promoted as first lieutenant, and I became executive officer for the company. And about the ninth month, uh there was a company commander shortage in the battalion. And the battalion commander came and asked me if I would accept a command, a company as a first lieutenant. Now that’s unique because the Vietnam War was a vehicle for rising officers to get their ticket punch for combat experience. And so captains commanded companies. And so there was always a waiting list of captains wanting to get a company for combat command time. And here the battalion commander was offering me command of a company as a first lieutenant.

SPEAKER_03 23:51

Ego again?

SPEAKER_00 23:52

Yeah, ego again. I said, sure, I couldn’t.

SPEAKER_03 23:55

You earned it, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:56

Yeah, I’d earned it, but yeah, I can do that. Well, I did it for two months. This was up in Way in I up in the in the northern part of uh South Vietnam. We’d already gone through Tet in January of 68 and so forth. And I had commanded the company for two months and it was successful, but it was just beating me to death. And we’d had some casualties, no pa no fatalities but casualties. And and you need to for me to get an officer’s efficiency report, I needed to be in command for a minimum of 90 days. Well, I’m I’m finishing 60 days. And the battalion commander comes to me and says, Well, I want you to make sure you’re gonna continue. My and my D roles, my time to leave Vietnam was at that 60 day point. And he he cut he says, Look, I want you to continue to command the company for another 30 days so you can get a official rating, official officer rating report for your combat command time as a company commander. I said, No, I’m done.

SPEAKER_02 25:02

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:03

I I’ve I’ve had I’m I’ve had I’ve had enough.

SPEAKER_02 25:06

You had enough, and I came back. Yeah? Back to the wife.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

Back to the wife, and okay, so let’s summarize here. Uh we lost a son, uh, 36 months old 36 old days, 36 days.

SPEAKER_03 25:23

Hours.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

36 hours uh I lost a son, didn’t really bond during my training time uh pre-Vietnam, a year in Vietnam, and coming back, I came back, I I’ll tell you uh truly, James, I can’t I came back, didn’t drink at all in Vietnam. This was a time when soldiers didn’t drink, they didn’t use drugs, nothing. Whatever you hear about Vietnam, there were times where there was none of that because of the pressure that the combat, you didn’t want your brothers zoned out. Okay. And so you That’s not what you hear, though. I know that’s not what you hear. I know, but that’s uh we had what they call 24-hour stand downs, which meant they would bring in uh 15 helicopters, load us all up, take us to uh uh Danang, because you’re an air base or Tuiwa or wherever, and they had a compound set aside for us. It was surrounded by Constantina wire, and they just loaded us all in there. There were tents in there, and they bring in pallets of beer and pallets of beer, steaks and lobster and all that. So we had we could drink ourselves silly, eat steak and lobster, and the very next day board the helicopters and fly back to the jungle. We did that, I did that three times in a year. Yeah, and so that’s the extent of the drinking.

SPEAKER_03 26:43

Yeah, I don’t miss hangovers at all. Did one of those hangovers last three or four days? Probably, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Well, smok and actually, though, there weren’t many hangovers because we didn’t drink that much. Right. Because we knew we were going back.

SPEAKER_03 26:57

Yeah, just bounce back. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

But it was just a just a break and uh and a monotony of war, and then back in the jungle. So when I came back from Vietnam, what I from what I’d seen, there were at least two occasions where the good Lord saved my life.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

I ended up with a bronze star and the silver star with that, but that’s immaterial. So I came back and I saw a lot of death. Not ours, not our death, the enemy. And I decided that life is so short and so fragile. I’m gonna come back and I’m gonna be the best husband, the best father, the best uh uh uh uh second uh first lieutenant that the army’s ever had.

SPEAKER_03 27:45

So tell me bronze star and a silver star? What are those?

SPEAKER_00 27:51

Two bronze stars and one silver star.

SPEAKER_03 27:53

What are those for?

SPEAKER_00 27:53

Valor.

SPEAKER_03 27:54

Valor for combat. Yeah, combat valor. Okay. So you receive those, you decide I’m gonna be the best husband anybody’s ever seen. Absolutely. What happened?

SPEAKER_00 28:05

30 days in, I was back in my addiction so bad it was unbelievable. And it continued.

SPEAKER_03 28:11

We get worse, never better.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

That’s right, it did. Got worse. So finally, after nine months, nine years, at this point, I was stationed at Fort Knox, Kentucky, as an infantry instructor. And we had had some really tough times, and and uh I was physically present, but not emotionally or psychologically present, thinking that was being a good provider. I know I was providing all the bills and all the bills, bring the food. I was fit, I was there, but I was emotionally and psychologically gone, and I have four kids, or three kids, or two kids, two boys. So I come home at five o’clock one day, and there was a note on my front door that said, I’ll tell you where to send the furniture.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

She had left with the kids, packed them up, and went to Oklahoma, and then eventually into California. And a year later, we uh and I invoked the Soldiers and Sailors Relief Act, waving my right for an attorney and signed the daughter line for a divorce.

SPEAKER_03 29:16

So, this uh this assignment that landed you in Kentucky, is that why you’re here now? Is that what brought you to Kentucky?

SPEAKER_00 29:23

That’s uh the the first time. Oh, first time yeah. Well, I ended up coming back to Kentucky three different times on different assignments and stuff.

SPEAKER_03 29:30

So how uh what happened with the drinking? I I mean it didn’t stop, it kept going. For how long?

SPEAKER_00 29:37

Oh, uh let’s see, uh from 19. Well, I started drinking when I was 14. And uh let’s go to um 1983. Still drinking uh heavily, I was uh assigned to the second ROTC uh div detachment at Fort Knox, and I was um in charge of the ROTC basic camp. That is a camp that’s runs like basic training, eight weeks of basic training, and it’s for college students who do not did not take ROTC in their freshman or sophomore year, but decided that ROTC was an option for them and they wanted to take it in their junior and senior year, but in order to be eligible, they had to come to Fort Knox and go through eight weeks of training. And so I was uh the chief of staff in charge of all those uh 6,000 cadets that came through the training over this May, June, July, August timeframe.

SPEAKER_03 30:47

So what happened to cause the drinking to stop then? What’s your sobriety day? Let’s start there.

SPEAKER_00 30:53

February 9th, 1983.

SPEAKER_03 30:55

February 9th, so you were just talking about 83. Something surrounding those cadets has happened.

SPEAKER_00 31:00

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 31:01

That brought along the sobriety day. Okay, February 9th, 1983.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

Before that, um, I’m a typical alcoholic. I’m drinking, I’d switch from uh Scotch and Kavasier to beer because I didn’t want to be considered an alcoholic. And so I switched to beer. And I would only and I and also when I ever went out to any function that I had to go to, I played the game of drinking two or three drinks before I got there. Oh, yeah. When I got there, I only drank one drink the whole night. One. Then when I got home, I finished it off.

SPEAKER_03 31:36

Oh, you’re better than me. I always prompt myself before I went to the party, you got to get a few in you before you go, but I couldn’t stop.

SPEAKER_00 31:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:42

Well, I stopped today because I’m surrounded by military, so you know, I I I I gotta show them I’m not an alcoholic.

SPEAKER_03 31:49

Right. So I like ego again. Ego again.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

So I said, no, no, I can drink one drink.

SPEAKER_03 31:54

So you know, I made I made a post the other day said uh the ego is so powerful that you think your car runs better after you clean it.

SPEAKER_00 32:00

Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 32:01

It’s so true. When you go through a car wash and they vacuum it all out and put the spray, you swear it has more power, it feels better. We’re good now. I thought I was driving junk before, but now I’m good.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

I I have that same experience all the time.

SPEAKER_03 32:14

Yeah, yeah. Everybody, especially the ones that liked or laughed at it. I was like, it’s funny because it’s true. Because it happened to me. I pulled through the car wash and I pulled out. I needed an oil change, and after it was clean, I was like, I’m probably good, you know? Yeah, the ego.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

So the interesting thing is through my entire military career, the during the eight hours, 10 hours, 12 hours, 18 hours, whatever the commitment was for military time, I was the best soldier you ever saw. Quote, a functioning drunk, but a best soldier you ever saw. And I was excelling. I was getting promoted ahead of my peers, from first lieutenant to captain, captain to uh to major, and so on. Okay. So I’m I don’t have a problem. Right. Man, I’m excellent. I’m I’m I’ve got great reports, and I’m having, and I became a fixer. I always got assigned to it something that needed to be fixed. A unit that was not doing right, and I was assigned there to figure out what was wrong and fix it. So here I am at uh second ROTC running this basic camp six from six in the morning till at least six at night or even longer. And then my general required that all and the ROTC department had mostly officers, lieutenant colonels, majors, and captains. And we did PT with the general. Well, uh, I was getting to my alcoholism was getting so bad that I was starting to lose motor control. Minor, but still losing motor control. Uh I 6 o’clock in the morning, I’m in my sweatsuit, park in the parking lot, and I’m charging to the gymnasium that has several slots of parking before I can get to the gymnasium. And they have these stupid islands separating the parking lots.

SPEAKER_02 34:06

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:07

I trip, hit the asphalt, skin my knees, blood my hands, and I sneak into the PT formation and sneak into the back of the formation just in time for them to start and go through my PT, thinking that nobody says nobody noticed it.

SPEAKER_03 34:25

That’s all of us, right? Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

So fast forward another couple of weeks or so, and um I walk into my office. I’m always in my office at 6:30 in the mor six in the morning, just to get my day started and get it, make sure I got everything lined up, what company was doing, what training for the cadets, and that sort of stuff. And my immediate supervisor, who happens to be a lieutenant colonel, is sitting there waiting for me. But he’s never in the office before 10. What’s he doing here at six o’clock in the morning?

SPEAKER_02 34:59

Looking for you.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

Looking for me. I walk in, he says, sit down. Sit down, he says, General Smith has a message for you. I said, Uh-oh. This doesn’t sound good. General Smith said, if you do not get a handle on your alcoholism, he’s kicking you out of the army in 45 days. Well, that was significant in several ways. One was that I was a major already approved on the promotion list for lieutenant colonel. I’d already passed the promotion board. I had a sequence number. That number, all that number had to do was be put on a bill in Congress that got passed, and that would be my data rank. Okay. That’s how locked in it was. And he could stop it. Secondly, I would have been kicked out of the army in disgrace. And what no we alcoholics always have these secrets, right? The secret that I had at that point was that while I was in high school, R O T C, I had this crazy dream that if I ever got into the army, I’d like to retire as lieutenant colonel. Oh my god. James, I’d already lost a wife and two kids to divorce, lost all material things in my life, was driving a Ford Falcon with a heater didn’t working, not working, living in a substandard bachelor officer’s quarters. And now this general is gonna take away my promotion to lieutenant colonel. I had subsequently remarried to this angel uh named Shirley, and uh we’ve been married uh that was 83, about nine years at that point. I still drinking all the time, but she didn’t think I was an alcoholic. Uh so I told her, Shirley, call these places and see if I can get into the treatment program. And after three calls, she came back to me and said, You gotta call yourself. They want to talk to you. They don’t want to talk to me, they want to talk to you. Well, long story short, I ended up going through extensive IOP at Fort Knox on active duty in the community counseling center with all the enlisted men, and I was the only officer in uniform going through treatment with them. Talk about experiencing humility humility.

SPEAKER_02 37:27

Humility, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

Successfully completing the intensive IOP, and General Smith promoted me to lieutenant colonel.

SPEAKER_03 37:38

Congratulations. Is that where you’re lieutenant colonel now? Yep. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

February 9th, 1983 was my last drink.

SPEAKER_03 37:47

So you uh it sounds like you had this great military career, but like you highlighted wasn’t exactly the family man had got divorced, the kids went away, you were driving a beat-up truck, you were living wherever you could. We’re not getting into that that much of that, you know, that deep detail, but that’s you weren’t in good shape.

SPEAKER_00 38:05

That’s it.

SPEAKER_03 38:06

You weren’t in good shape. So the general straightened you out.

SPEAKER_00 38:09

He did. I went to during before the uh IOP, the intensive IOP. I thought I knew something was wrong. So I went to an army psychiatrist and told him what I was doing and how I was working and everything. He says, uh, well, uh there’s not much I can do for you. It’s your choice. You can either participate in life successfully or you can check out. Well, okay.

SPEAKER_03 38:32

I had a similar experience at the uh the healing place, detox building, the one we were talking about.

SPEAKER_00 38:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:41

And I was in the I used to smoke at the time. I’ve quit that, but uh years ago. But I was in the dugout having a cigarette, and they walked outside and said, Hey, you, if y’all have been here over 24 hours, you got to go across the street and go to a meeting, right? And I’ll never forget. I threw the cigarette out and I was like, I’ll get out of here. I just want to walk somewhere else besides this dugout, right? And I’m walking out the front door, and Miss Pam grabbed me and she said, She called me 123, my bed number. She said, 123, sweezy. She said, Go make your bed. And I thought, and I looked around and I was like, that guy’s throwing up. He’s naked. He came in in a hospital gown. What do I need to make my bed for? And I asked her that. And she said, one of the most powerful things I’ve ever heard. She said, What are you here for? And I said, uh, well, I’d like to have my car back, my house back, my job back, my company, maybe, maybe a beach house one day. I don’t know. And she says, So you want all that responsibility, but you won’t make your own bed. And knocked me down cold. You couldn’t tell because I froze in position, right? Knocked me down cold. Then she said the coldest piece I’ve ever heard in my life. She said, if you don’t like it, you can leave. And pointed at the door. And I went and made that bed. I’ve been sober since that day.

SPEAKER_00 39:54

Amen.

SPEAKER_03 39:54

You know, at your at your facility that you came in. You said you had mentioned that you wanted to talk about why you became a Christian. And also I do want to talk about the place that saved my life, your place, the healing place. Uh, so tell me about that. What did you want to you wanted to touch on?

SPEAKER_00 40:10

Well, because it’s tied into the whole story.

SPEAKER_03 40:12

Oh, sure.

SPEAKER_00 40:13

Uh so we’re in Fort Benning, Georgia. Um, doing infantry training again for we’re doing uh infantry, combat infantry tactics for Laotians and Cambodians. That we we do that all the time in the military. And uh my wife and I were struggling something terrible. She was angry and bitter, so was I. One of my co one of my captain co-workers kept bugging me. He said, I want you to come to this evening Bible study that I’m going to. He really would get something out of it. He bugged me and every week he bugged me about it. I kept telling him, No, no, no, no. I don’t want to have anything to do with spirituality or God or anything. And finally, uh, after about six months, I finally said, Okay, I’ll go. And it was purely random the day I picked to go. My wife was so bitter she wouldn’t have any part of it. So I went by myself and we went to the officer’s house, and uh they had there were four couples there and me. And they had a couple uh that was uh that are members of an organization called the Navigators, and the Navigators were Christian-trained disciple-making people that would work from military base to military base, opening up Bible studies and that sort of thing. They were on their way down to uh Florida and they stopped off in uh at Fort For Benning to reconnect with the gentleman that was hosting the Bible study. And halfway through the study, we were reading scripture and all that, and I’m just mad at nail, why and nail am I here? And but but I don’t see any purpose in this. And so then the leader, the leader says uh to the couple, why don’t you share your t your testimony? They were they during the evening, they were happy, just really um happened to me yesterday while we were phoning. Really, really happy, joyous, and free, and really irritating the hell out of me. They were so happy. That’s gotta be phony. I couldn’t believe it. So they go to start to share their testimony. Halfway through their testimony, they said, Yes, we lost our firstborn son after about 20 hours. And we just didn’t know what to do with it. And finally we realized um we needed we needed to accept Jesus. I said, Wow. What do I have to do to accept Jesus? And my group leader says, Come with me, we’re gonna go into the bedroom, and you’re gonna say the sinner’s prayer, and we’re gonna start getting you connected to Jesus. And that’s when that happened.

SPEAKER_03 42:46

Yeah. Because so you had a connection to them because of their testimony, their role modeling and their testimony convinced me that that’s what I needed.

SPEAKER_00 42:57

And so I went into the bedroom and surrendered.

SPEAKER_02 43:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:00

I became, oh boy, I became a part-time Christian because I really understood salvation, and I to this day I understand salvation to the max. But the second part to that whole thing, and that’s lordship. And that means having the Lord, your Lord, over your entire life. And so, again, that darn alcoholic ego and my mistress, alcohol, she always was president, she always gave me everything I wanted all the time, was always faithful, and I wouldn’t give her up. So I was a Christian that drank. I was a Christian on Wednesday night, taught Sunday school, uh, went to church on Sunday, and all that sort of thing. My wife was the organist, so I was with her on Saturdays practicing the organ and all that good stuff. And so it was crazy how I had I but through that my spiritual experience drinking all the time, I was still had some uh Um uh fruit of my labors in the church, but not anything like it could be. So I was a Christian and I understood that, but I wouldn’t let go of that mistress.

SPEAKER_03 44:11

It’s that that relationship, and that mistress is a great way to put it. Oh, what’s like being in a relationship?

SPEAKER_00 44:16

Exactly. It was I wouldn’t let go of it until February 9th, 1983, when I finally realized that my mistress had to die. And I need to hit my knees and pray to God and say, I can’t do it. I need your help. And I am so totally surrendering completely. And you are completely that you are complete, Lord, completely over all of my life now.

SPEAKER_03 44:47

I think that similar experience happened to me into as far as recovery goes in uh the healing place. Um I was maybe 60 days in, something like that, and we were trudging, walking past all the old Louisville homes. Right. And there’s uh you might know, remember Cortez Cunningham, walking with him, and he had come out of the DOC program. He had come out of prison, right? He’s a friend of mine, he don’t mind me saying that. But he had come out of there and we ran into each other in the program. And I’m walking past those balconies, and I said, Man, one of these days, I’m gonna own one of those, a nice balcony with a hammock like that. And I said, I’m gonna just hang out out there and smoke weed all morning. And that was 60 days into the healing place. I had a plan. Yeah. And he said, Why? He just said, Why? He’s like, You haven’t given up yet, have you? And I was like, I don’t know. It just sounded like a good idea. He’s like, I’m not doing anything. He’s like, We’re this far along, I’m not doing anything. And I he changed my mind. Just a simple conversation with one of my healing place brothers walking down the street, and then all of those little conversations that take place uh all around the city when you’re in there, and people are making plans to have a beer with the game, all of a sudden they all sounded different to me.

SPEAKER_00 46:00

Right.

SPEAKER_03 46:00

I gave up. I absolutely I think I tapped out and detox, and then I was romanticizing the idea of having one of those, having money in one of those balconies or something like that.

unknown 46:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:09

And I I tell you, James, there was just a a feeling just came over me. I don’t say this very often because a lot of people won’t really understand it, but I felt delivered at that very moment from alcohol. Now that didn’t alleviate the my responsibility to do all the work. Still going through all the things, all the things that I needed to do to change to work on my character defects and shortcomings. I still had to do all of that, but I also knew that I was never gonna ever, ever um relapse because of that deliverance.

SPEAKER_03 46:41

Sounds like you did step one through three in 30 seconds. Burns used to say that. Yep you can do it in 30 seconds. You admitted you were powerless, you came to believe and you made a decision. Absolutely, just like that.

SPEAKER_00 46:52

A real decision. That first decision was just for some happy, joyous, and free because of the my son. But this was a real decision because I was in emotional and physical pain at this point. Yeah, I’m I was just in emotional pain before. But this was the this was the real deal, fine. And I I realized that at this point. That it was this was my last chance. If I didn’t surrender now, I’d be dead. That’s right. I knew that.

SPEAKER_03 47:18

Yeah, I felt I feel the same. Then I don’t know whether it was 60 days in or whenever uh uh Miss Pam had that conversation with me. I know when she had that conversation with me uh and asked me, Why are you here? What are you even doing here? I looked around, I was like, even at that, even as my brain was that foggy, I was like, Am I wasting my time and their time? Why am I here? What am I standing here for right now? And I made a decision while I was in there. Uh, they sent the 12-steppers over wearing their gowns, and I thought they were uh psych patients. I did not know what to think. I was like, I’m gonna stay on this side of the room. There was five of them with uh with the hospital uh gowns on.

SPEAKER_00 47:58

We still do that, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:59

And they I I wore one uh proudly for a week, and uh they explained to me who they were, and I got to hanging out with those guys a little bit, and uh they looked uh after I figured out who they were, I remember sitting in detox. I said, Well, I’m gonna wear that robe. And of course, somebody goes, slow down one day at a time, man, calm down. You’re gonna be, I said, Okay, there’s nothing to you. You can’t you can’t do anything to me inside of these walls that I haven’t done to myself already. So I’m just gonna do whatever you all say, and I’m wearing that damn gown. And I did not, I was not removed from the healing place. I had a couple of setbacks, yeah. You know where they make you go sleep on the floor? You know, move from up uh make you go back downstairs, or was it upstairs? Yeah, you go from upstairs, or you’re living downstairs at six months in. And you’re going to the corner, you go back upstairs, yes, 10 city, and threw a mattress on the floor. And uh, I forget how many thousands of words I was made to write, but I was held accountable uh for my actions. But I I knew in that in that detox right there, I knew at least enough to say I’m gonna wear that freaking gown right there. And then that conversation I had with a friend of mine that just it wiped that. I don’t know if it’s resentment or um if it was romantic or reservation, I mean, or like romanticizing, like one of these days I’ll have enough money to own a house like that, and then I’ll be able to do what I want. And that came out of my mouth in the form of smoking weed on the balcony for whatever reason. And he called me straight out on it. Somebody that was barely fresh out of prison and barely 60 days sober called me out, you know?

SPEAKER_00 49:28

That’s what it’s all about. That’s how it works.

SPEAKER_03 49:30

What else? What led you to uh what after that, or what led you out of the healing place?

SPEAKER_00 49:35

So I finished my tour at uh uh second ROTC. Well, no, uh for then uh okay. Here’s my I still had um remnants of my alcoholic thinking. It didn’t not about drinking or anything, but that uh I have a history of alcoholism in the military. So I was not sure the military is gonna give me the best assignments in my future. I was a lieutenant colonel now, and so um being promoted as lieutenant colonel, in order to retire at that grade, you had to serve three years as a lieutenant colonel, and then I could re retire at that grade. So I’m waiting for my next assignment. And lo and behold, I get an assignment to Washington, D.C. I got an alert that I was gonna get an assignment to Washington, D.C. Oh boy, I’m gonna go to the Pentagon. Wow, awesome.

SPEAKER_02 50:36

Uh no. It wasn’t the Pentagon, wasn’t it?

SPEAKER_00 50:38

No, it was not the Pentagon. It was the Army Materiel Command, AMC, commanded by a four-star. And Army Material Command is exactly what you might think it is. It does everything for the Army except fi uh fire fire weapons.

SPEAKER_02 50:56

Right.

SPEAKER_00 50:57

Food, transportation, uh training, you name it, AMC does it. And I was assigned to uh um to uh uh I was assigned to manage the anything for the individual soldier.

SPEAKER_03 51:13

Hold that thought for one second, Jay. Sure. Let me check and make sure we have enough. Sure. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:27

Okay. So it comes to uniforms, weapons, and then AMC. Anything there, then it was uh that that was a billion dollar budget. Then I was in charge of all anything that had wheels, or any any army thing that had wheels on it. So like logistics, making sure everybody gets it. Okay. Right. You know, you may not know this, but the army was responsible for developing uh uh UPS and FedEx because uh they developed uh the order ship time overseas was you order it from Venezuela to United States, you you may get that part in 30 to 45 days. If it’s a weapon system that’s down, you can’t allow it to be down 45 days. So the Army devised an electronic order, an electronic warehouse fill the order, put it on a plane and fly it the next day. An army plane flying it down. That became direct supply, direct DSS.

SPEAKER_03 52:30

So that became UPS?

SPEAKER_00 52:32

The concept.

SPEAKER_03 52:32

The concept, okay. I get it.

SPEAKER_00 52:35

So uh because I didn’t get the Pentagon, I my feelings were hurt. My ego was hurt. I thought, well, okay, Army, you’ve told me what you think of me. Uh I’m gonna I’m gonna uh resign after uh retire after 20 years. Because I’m not I’m just saying what people advise me of, and that is because of my combat hit record, I could have gone to Fulborough full full colonel or higher. I didn’t believe him. And I didn’t trust him. And so I retired at 20 to join the carnival.

SPEAKER_01 53:18

Okay, I’m learning new stuff about you every day.

SPEAKER_00 53:21

A traveling carnival. All right, not your stationary carnival or rides.

SPEAKER_03 53:27

On the train?

SPEAKER_00 53:28

No, these are all vehicle mounted.

SPEAKER_03 53:30

Oh, vehicle and rides and all of that. Yeah, so not the circus.

SPEAKER_00 53:34

It’s just the well we we hired the circus to come with us sometimes. Okay, but the idea, my wife uh was uh friends of the owner that had United Shows that operated out of Nashville, Tennessee. And all the money in a in a carnival is made in your small county fairs. The profit margin in a in a state fair is like about two to three percent.

SPEAKER_03 53:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 53:56

Profit margin in a county fair is like 25%.

SPEAKER_03 53:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 54:00

And everybody comes and spends a lot of money at a small county fair. Okay. Because it’s an annual event that they had, you know.

SPEAKER_03 54:07

Logistics again. I assume you were running logistics for the company.

SPEAKER_00 54:10

Okay. They wanted me to learn the j job from the bound or the ground up with the idea of eventually me running up, splitting the show into two shows, me running one show, the owner running the other show, hitting all the small county fairs, coming together for the state fairs to have, because you needed about 35 adult rides for a state fair, smaller for a uh small county fair. And so, in order to be able to do that, I didn’t need to learn how to uh operate a carnival. Well, uh, it involves everything from learning how to spot the rides. There’s a psychological, there’s a psychology in where you place each of the rides. There’s a psychology where you put the food joints and the gaming tables, kind of lead people around, make sure they spend money, exactly, exactly put them into a funnel. Exactly. Okay, where you putie kitty rides and where you put the best adult rides and all that. So you learn how to spot that. Uh then uh you’ll you take care of the uh uh ride jocks. At that point, I was uh driving a one-ton dually pulling a 40-foot fifth wheel uh trailer uh RV. And during the day I’d be playing AA tapes and AA music and my loudspeaker out of my uh fifth wheel and walking up and down the midway because you always start setting up your show on Monday and you don’t open till uh Friday night. So you have all that downtime. So I’m getting to know all the ride jocks really well, and they’re all saying hi, and I’m that because they sleep under their rides.

SPEAKER_01 55:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 55:43

So uh they started calling uh after a few months, they started calling me boss. Well, there’s only one boss on the midway, and it’s oh, it wasn’t me. And the boss didn’t take too kindly to it, so oh no, yeah. Because I also was running, uh ran the office, did all the payroll, did all the books, and in convoy, I ran the chase vehicle to make sure that any ride ride dropped off. I figured out why. Usually they were tired and they were sleeping, to get back on the road so we they’d all hit the the the end point of it. Yeah, yeah. Doing all of that, doing great. But he he was mad, angry. Needed everything he could to make me want to quit. And you know how we still have that ego, even though we’re sober. Oh, yeah, we still have that ego, and I said, I’ll be damned. I’ve never quit in my life, I’m not quitting now. So he gave me the in addition to all that I was doing in the uh already, he assigned me to a job to set it up and take it down, set it up, run it, and then take it down. The ride was Raiders of the Lost Ark. If you’ve ever seen that any similar type, it’s a jungle ride with nets and ropes and tunnels, and and you can only let 15 kids on it at the same time. You can’t see all 15 of them at the same time. It’s a horrible ride to manage safety-wise, and it has more cotter keys in it than any other ride. It takes longer to set up and take down. So I so my ego got got to I started getting angry, and I got to the point where I could get that ride up first before any of the other rides up, and I could get it down before any of the other rides got down, and I could run it during the during the show and make sure the kids were all safe. So we pull into Huntsville, Alabama, getting ready to start a show, and he pulls up alongside. I get out and he says, uh, you’re fired. That’s it. You’re done. You can take your one tondule and RV over to this motel and uh figure out how you’re gonna get back to Kentucky.

SPEAKER_03 57:54

That was it. That was it. That was it.

SPEAKER_00 57:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:56

So uh I’d never know you worked for the carnival. I’m so glad we did this. I’m learning so much today. So, what happens after that? How do we land it?

SPEAKER_00 58:05

Well, then, so you you find out the good Lord gives you ways to solve problems. I found out there is a dis there is an RV distributor in Florida that would sell my RV contract to sell it. He’d come up, pick it up, and take it back to Florida and sell it for me. He sold it and I got exactly what I paid for it.

SPEAKER_01 58:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 58:25

So I drove the one-ton dually back to Radcliffe, Kentucky. My wife took the little Corvair, and we got back to Kentucky, and I was able to sell the one-ton dually for what I paid for it. And so now we’re back to my wife’s hometown of Radcliffe. My daughter uh is dating this young man that is buying a real estate company. Now I’m not working right now, I’ve got retirement pay, and he needs a property manager. So he asked me to be his property manager. I didn’t know anything about property management. So, sure, I’ll I’ll go ahead and do it. That was the worst mistake I ever made. Yeah, I managed two mobile home parks and 300 apartments or houses.

SPEAKER_03 59:08

Managed or maintenance manned?

SPEAKER_00 59:10

Both.

SPEAKER_03 59:10

Yeah. Both.

SPEAKER_00 59:12

Both. I had a maintenance team and all of that. And uh I did it only as a favor for my daughter. And after two years of that, I said, that’s enough. I’m I’m I’m finished. I I get I spent 50% of my time with owners that wanted too much. The other 50% of my time I spent with renters that destroyed property and didn’t pay the rent. And didn’t pay the rent. And I’m saying, I’m done with this. In the meantime, but when I retired, I had volunteered to be a uh an uh an advisor, a military advisor, anywhere in the world as a civilian, but uh uh to be a military advisor. We have over 250 military installations around the world uh that need that kind of support. I said, Well, I’m bound to get somewhere after a year, nothing. Crickets. I said, okay. I guess they don’t want me. Six months later, I got a call from uh the company called Raytheon in Andover, Massachusetts. They do the Patriot Missile, they do the Hawk missile system uh for air defense and all that kind of stuff. They said, we have a contract with Saudi Arabia and we provide logistics support and maintenance to the missiles in Saudi Arabia, and their level of their Department of Defense level needs a logistics officer to advise them and help them. Would you be interested in the job? I said, Well, I’ll come up with an interview. Well, I flew up to Andover and met with a Saudi major, and he was the most obnoxious, arrogant individual I’ve ever met, and realized I could never work for him or anybody like him. So I said no. Also, my mother was uh in her end day, she was not doing well. So I said, No, timing’s not right. So I said no and came back. Waited. My mother, six months later, uh, passed away. Got a call again from Raytheon saying, Would you please reconsider this logistics position? Uh obviously we’re having trouble filling it, right? Would you please reconsider? I said, okay, I’ll come up again. So this time I went up and it was a different major, and we kind of got along all right and so forth. And I thought, well, okay, I’ll try it. Because at that point, they weren’t paying these horrendous salaries anymore. They were paying your act the highest active duty pay. But it was tax-free. So that was the benefit.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:39

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:39

I just sock away all that money without taxes. So, okay, I can, I can, I can probably save enough money to make it worthwhile. I was gonna be paid as a lieutenant colonel, okay. So I get over to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, link up with another uh colonel logistics advisor. He’s a full colonel. The two of us every day went to the air base and worked for the equivalent of a Department of Defense uh officers. Uh I was writing logistics war plans for them, uh, how to move their uh missile batteries and and battalions around the area, the desert to get them engaged in a safe way to combat and all that kind of good stuff. And I had two Sudanese translators who were translate my English into Arabic. But they only worked about three hours a day between prayer calls and meet tea time and lunchtime, and so we moved kind of slow. So uh I actually at this point I was spiritually dying because uh Christianity is against the law in Saudi Arabia, and you can end up dead uh practicing it. But I knew that the U.S. Air Force had a base on Briyad, uh adjacent with the uh uh Saudi Air Force. But I knew that the Air Force always had a chaplain at least once a quarter come to their base, wherever it’s in the middle of the jungle or anywhere, and have church services. So I found out when the next church service was going to be for that uh Air Force chaplain, and I got permission to get on base and go to that church service. In that church service, there was another civilian who was a pastor for our church in Southern California, and he was teaching the Saudis English, and the money he was uh earning was going to help his church back in Southern California. And so we kind of hit a built a Paul Timothy relationship of disciple making, and we knew that in Riyadh, all of the expatriates were housed in compounds, surrounded by a wall with one way in and out, and that’s where all the housing was. They were excuse me, three bedroom branches, and there were at least six of those compounds. We knew that at least one family maybe would be willing to have a secret evening Bible study and a Friday morning worship service. So the uh the two of us That’s insane. It is. Sorry, I kind of tuned out for a second, but so with the we would uh sneak into the compound um and yeah, you uh uh uh for the evening Bible study, it would be you know two or three couples at their house, but on a Friday morning, the the Saturday uh weekend was Thursday and Friday, Friday being the religious day. So on Friday, uh you can imagine a three-bedroom ranch house, 1800 square feet, 100 people in there, praising and worshiping Jesus, singing praises and songs, and have a lay-led message every Friday morning. Go out go out into the into the desert on Easter morning, having a sunrise service. Sneaking out there. We had to go in different convoys and different routes and yeah, break it up a little bit so you couldn’t. Yeah, when you when you had your when you had your meeting on the compound, nobody all the cars had to park everywhere. They couldn’t park in front of the house. Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:26

Yeah, I’m catching up now to that because they know when they know when Sunday rolls around.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:31

Yep, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:32

And they know what time of day.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:34

And the neat thing about it was though, James, the Saudi military is very sharp. They’re a lot smarter than everybody give them credit for, and they had a lot of secret police. They knew what we were doing. But as long as we stayed behind the wall and didn’t embarrass them and didn’t publicly do it, they left us alone.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:55

Yeah, the minute we stepped outside, all bets are off. To wit. Fift five hundred Filipinos, five hundred thousand Filipinos were in Briyad, Saudi Arabia doing scut work. Because mil the Saudis don’t get their hands dirty.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:11

Filipinos are very faithful Catholics. Very faithful Catholics. And they would have a house church and a pastor, and they would have Catholic services on Friday morning. And when the Saudi religious police found him, they’d go in and arrest the pastor and lock him up.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:30

Just the pastor?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:31

Just the pastor. If he cut his head of the snake off.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:35

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:35

Okay. They lock up the pastor. That pastor would stay locked up until someone, anyone, could pay his flight back to Manila. So guess what we did?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:48

The church under persecution thrives unbelievably. We have more money that we needed to know what to do with. We bought a Xerox copier from a Palestinian Christian in Riyadh that worked for Xerox, disassembled it, and reassembled it in a basement and photocopied the Bible. That’s the only way we could get it done.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:13

Wow. That is insane. I can’t, you so you drove off, you’re telling me, Secret Services, driving off into the desert, different routes to show up there. Yeah. And y’all could have been killed if you would have been. Or locked up or whatever, yeah. That’s a lot. I have a word for that, but I won’t use it right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:31

And then um, so uh like I said, it was just that was my literally, that was my spiritual time in the desert. I grew more spiritually in that two years than um unbelievable. So I came back from that experience realizing that the Lord wanted me to be involved with people, to be connected with people somehow, somehow. It proved to me in the military that I was only as good as the soldiers that I took care of. And if I took care of the soldiers, they took care of me. And I learned in Vietnam, or in Vietnam was the same thing, and the same thing that I learned in the Christian community in Saudi Arabia. It was all about taking care of each other and helping each other and and doing what you could, selflessly, humbly, without expectations of repair repayment or anything. So I I decided I needed to come back to the states. And I told my wife uh about my experience. Because I’d written, I I sent her letters every day with all my scripture research and everything.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:41

So she through the mail in Saudi Arabia?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:43

Yeah, they say well, no, no, it wasn’t through the mail in Saudi Arabia. Oh, it was your okay, it’s US Aaron. U.S. Air Force. It was U.S. Air Force Mail.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:51

U.S. Air Force Mail. Diplomatic pouch.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:54

Right, the diplomat.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:55

So she said, okay, fine. Because because it I wanted, I want to get a job, and again, I was always overqualified. You mean you want to come work in a factory? How come? Well, I have to pay bills. Well, no, you you you you just won’t work out here.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:12

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:13

So I decided I guess I’ll go to school and learn how to be a social worker and become become a clinical social worker and do psychotherapy. And my goal would be to do counseling to veterans in Radcliffe and Elizabethtown, uh, based on my experiences and everything. And so I went to Kent School, got my degree, um, and I graduated and uh needed uh look, needed a job to pay back the tuition, and these doctors from the Jefferson County Medical Society had taken over ownership of this homeless shelter for men that Father Morgan had operated from 1971 to 1985.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:58

The Morgan Center. Was it called the Morgan? Morgan Center. I remember that education at the healing place.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:03

Yeah, and so in 1989, the doctors took over ownership and operation of the of 1020 Westmarket and 1017, 1019 West Market. And uh Father Morgan gave the doctors $90,000 for the first annual operating, and the doctors went out and did a campaign to raise money. And shortly that two years into it, in 1991, uh they uh they’d already realized right away they needed social workers to run it because they were they didn’t really know how to do it. So they hired two social workers from a seminary, one for an executive director, one for case management. And they did a pretty good job. The executive director got business practices in place and uh food commodities from USDA and all that kind of good stuff. And the social worker did case management and did what what we would refer to in the in the field as creamed the the most likable guys that could be quickly placed into housing. Out of the 80, she placed 30 of them back into housing, and then decided when I came on board that because the other executive director executive director found another job, when I came on board, she quit. So here I am. And I realized that uh the 30 men that she had got housing for were all back in the shelter.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:25

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:26

And uh I’ve spent the first two weeks in that Morgan Center with Frank Percy, the resident manager, and a goon squad of uh staff helping him run that place. And I got to all the men up by the n by their first name, and I really got to know them. And I realized I was eight years sober at that point, and I looked at them and I thought they’d never get off the street unless they got sober. And I looked around and said, obviously, this is 1991, 92, and whatever was working in the city right now wasn’t working for them. It wasn’t helping them, so we had to do something totally different, out of the box, and I knew that the only thing that worked for me was 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I said, it’s gotta be 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, whatever it is, however we put it together, that’s what it’s gotta be. And so I’d convinced the board of directors to get risky. And at that point, uh, there was no uh uh digressing here, but uh seven counties had operated a uh a sobering up center for three years. It was a demonstration grant of 20 beds they were to call Project Connect, they were to attract the drunk men off the street into this 20-bed facility and then get them um detoxed and then connect them to resources in the communities. That’s why it’s called Project Connect. And so they operated it for 30 years, uh, three years, and they had a 10% success rate of connection. And you know why? Alcoholics don’t refer, they just don’t. Yeah, so they shut it down. Well, I convinced the doctors that we needed to do that. We needed a we needed a wet drunk tank, is what we needed. Yeah, and so they said, okay, so the one I went to. Yeah, so we said, okay, so I got doctor or not, I got Jesse Bollinger to come back and renovate 1017, 1019 so that we could uh put in the detox on 10 on on the west end of 1019 and with the concrete petitions and all that kind of good stuff. And we opened that up on September 21st, 1992. And I with my three staff, James McCord and Mike Gatewood and uh uh one other, Bill Chisholm, waiting for our first client to come in to the front door, and nobody came. I was so upset. My bad. And then no, no, nobody came the second day or the third day. I said, What’s wrong here? There was a vacant lot and a broken down truck in the vacant lot, and there was a guy sleeping in that truck. And I told him, James, to go over and get Bernard and bring him over here. He came in drunker than drunk, and I talked to him. He was about six foot two, and what I’m just a little bitty. And I’m talking to that drunk, and I’m telling him, Look, we’re gonna give let you get a nice hot shower and some good meals, and we’re gonna take and wash your clothes. And he said, You’re not taking my clothes off. You know, I’m not taking my clothes off. Yeah, I’m I’m not staying in this way. You turn around and left. Yeah, couldn’t even recruit him in it. But eventually we got credit over the street, and it started, it took off.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:47

I’m just having the realization that uh you put those little partitions in uh that I slept next to and sobered up before I started drinking. Yeah. It was before I started drinking when you put those in. That’s amazing. I didn’t know you had you’d had those put. I don’t know. I guess in my head I thought the building already had those for whatever reason. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:04

So we got to we got the so we got now. We got we got our outreach to the street, the sobering up center. Later we called it detox or whatever. And now we need to have a recovery program. So this is October uh uh 92, uh uh and the election in November, uh November 4th or whatever. And so Monday, uh the first week in October, I decided to do check-in. Oh, I forgot to tell you, way back uh when I was in there for two weeks, I fired all the staff because they were abusing the clients. Oh and so I ran the place for two weeks uh all by myself with my three the three cooks. I had to have the food, I had to keep the cooks, but I did I did it. I did check-in and check-out, I solved problems, I went to the grocery store for food, whatever. And that’s like I said, that’s when I really got to know the guys really, really well. Um so I decided, okay, uh what the my clinical training from Kent School says you don’t mix drinking with non-drinking, because if you mix them, they’re gonna cause relapses. Okay. So Monday morning evening at 3:30 check-in time, I did that, checked in all 80 guys, and I did the sniff tests. If they smell like alcohol, I said, Hey, don’t bother coming here tomorrow, because this is gonna be an alcohol-free drug, alcohol-free center, and we’re gonna have an alcohol recovery program. And they said, Okay. So I checked in all 80 guys. Tuesday night at 3:30, I get ready to check in the 80 guys. There’s only 50. I said, Well, where’s the other guys? And they said, Well, you said if you smell like alcohol, don’t bother coming here. They’re going everywhere else. I said, Okay, fine. Check the 50 guys in. That night, I got a call from all four night managers at Wayside Salvation Number, same as a default in a VOA, calling me, saying, What in the hell’s going on down to the Morgan Center? These guys are telling me that you kicked them out and they can’t come back, and they’re trying to get into our place, and we’re not going to take them either. But what’s going on down there? You guys don’t have you guys gotta stop doing that. You gotta take those guys back. And I said, Listen, we’re trying to start a recovery program, an alcohol and drug-free recovery program. So Wednesday morning, and the very next day at nine o’clock in the morning, I’m looking out the front of Market Street, and there’s homeless guys carrying placards. It says, Doctor’s shelters rules unfair, shut out the homeless. They’re even standing in the street passing out, stopping cars, and passing out handbills. By 10:30 that morning, I had all four TV stations, the courier and the Times, coming down saying, What are these doctors doing? How the how could these doctors be so cruel in kicking these guys out of the shelter? And I said, Well, all we’re trying to do is develop an alcohol recovery and drug recovery program and have the shelter be alcohol free. So, you know how doctors love publicity. They not at all. So the next day, Thursday evening, they call an emergency meeting of the executive committee, four doctors, and Dr. Ward, the chair. Well, all members of the board showed up, 18 of them. And they argue for, and I’m there, and they argue for an hour and a half to two hours, wet versus dry, dry versus wet. Dr. Ward decides, okay, we’ll take a vote. Nine voted wet, nine voted dry. So Dr. Ward looks at me and he says, Well, what are you gonna do?

SPEAKER_02 1:18:38

Oh, the deciding vote here.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:40

I said, Well, I guess we’re gonna do both. He said, Well, how are you gonna do that? I said, Well, I uh I guess I I I don’t know. Um, I’m gonna need some more staff and I’m gonna have to hire some more people. And he said, Well, how much money do you need? Well, I’d make a silly wild ass guess. I didn’t know any idea. I said, Well, I guess $100,000 is probably a good start. They said, Okay, we’ll get it. So I said, Okay, what’ll happen is the top floor will be wet and the bottom floor will be the recovery program. And that’s the way it is today.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:11

That’s the way it is when I lived there.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:13

That’s the way it’s that’s the way it is, and that’s the way it’s gonna stay.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:15

One one second, then let me check the tag again. Sorry, these uh make sure that I’m not missing anything. Okay, we got a great shot here. We got 30 minutes left on this card, so if we go over that, I’ll have to switch cards, but that’s okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:37

I don’t think we’ll go over it.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:38

Oh, no worries.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:39

No worries. So the doctor said, okay, uh, so that became the the core foundation of the whole model that we will have the second floor as a wet shelter always, and the downstairs would be the beginning of the recovery program. And I started with uh, and I still didn’t know how to put a program together. I didn’t know anything about programs or developing programs, but I was under the supervision of LCSW for my own licensure. And I talked to my super uh my supervisor and I said, Hey, do you know anybody that could come down come down here and help me put together a drug and alcohol recovery program just as a consultant, just to get me started so we can figure out how to do this? He said, Oh, sure. Do you know the name Dave Harmon? Mm-hmm. Dave was my supervisor. Okay. Dave says, I know this guy down in Shreveport, Louisiana. He’s been in the field for probably 20, 25 years, doing every kind of model you can imagine. I know he’ll be happy to come up and and help be a consultant for you for a couple of months. He’s looking for a job, so he won’t he won’t stay longer than a couple of months. But give him a call and invite him up. I’ll tell him about you, and you give him a call and invite him up. And so I called him, and this was uh middle of November. Remember, we had just opened up the Silvering Up Center in September 21st. Now it’s November, and I’m still trying to figure out what to do with the shelter. So I call him and tell him my concept of the wet shelter on top and the recovery program on the floor. And he said, Well, my experience was it doesn’t really work out so well to mix like that, but uh, I don’t know, it sounds kind of intriguing. I’ll come up and see what it take a look and see what it looks like. So Chris Fajardo comes up and he comes up the day after Thanksgiving, uh November 27th, in 1992. Comes up in a three-piece suit. First thing I told him was uh, well, that’s later, but I told him there’s only one person that wears a suit around here, that’s me. You can come in, whatever else you want to wear. So he came back the next day with a do-rag earring and riding his motorcycle. We sat down and just started talking about therapeutic community models, all this kind of stuff, uh, how the clients could fit into working and all this kind of stuff. And I’d already started the program with some curriculum because uh I was paying the clients for uh for their first week of work, I’d pay them five dollars a week. Their second week it would go to ten dollars, third week it’d go to fifteen dollars, and then I would pay them a dollar for every lesson they completed. And I keep on going, thinking that was the that was the incentive for them to do that. And so Chris comes up and takes a look at it, and we we couldn’t have we never had 10 minutes uh uh speaking time without a crisis. We had butcher paper all around the all around the room and everything. And finally we got it sorted out about uh how a therapeutic community would could run if it was based on strengths, based on unconditional love and trust, and how it would be run by the clients and not the facilitator, and how to put that together. And then then we got realized that, and Chris says, You’re paying these guys for all this work and and homework is not. He says, you know, I’ll bet you they’ll do all this for nothing, just by the privilege of being able to go to classes and get all this information. I said, No, I don’t think so. He says, You let’s tell everybody that next date you’re no longer gonna pay for the c uh work and you’re no longer gonna pay for the uh work assignment, uh the homework assignments. When that day came, there wasn’t an opposition raise at all. Everybody continued going to classes, doing their work and having a great time.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:52

Yeah. Because they had felt connected to something. I know that feeling because I remember being in the healing place, and it was sure it was nice once in a while to have something to hit the vending machine, but that wasn’t a yeah, no, no, it wasn’t Steve probably uh Steve had to make me leave whenever it was time to leave the peer mentor’s office. I know that feeling. I was like, oh, you gotta be kidding me, you know?

SPEAKER_00 1:24:14

They really because they were invested with their own personal time, and it was valuable to them. And so we continue to operate uh and we went from 80-bed facility to like within less than a year and a half to almost two years ago, almost 150, 150 guys in that building, getting bigger and bigger and bigger, double, double bunking everything and everywhere. So another god thing was that was November 27th, 1992. Christmas, December, the first, the second week in December, Joe McQueenie from Little Rock, Arkansas, uh president and CEO of uh Serenity Park, a 30-day treatment program for alcoholics and addicts, came to Louisville to teach a curriculum that he had written called Recovery Dynamics. Recovery Dynamics, Joe and Joe was a member of the Joe and Charlie team that would go around the country and do A talks on a Saturday night, everywhere in the country. They were very, very visible, highly touted, and uh really uh sought after. And what would happen is Joe and Charlie would fly into their city on a Friday afternoon, get ready for their talk on Saturday, do their talk on Saturday, and leave Sunday. They had a lot of downtime. Finally, they decided what they needed to do was hold a big book study. So they start their big book study Friday afternoon, and they go into the Louis hours of Friday night, and continue on Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon, quit in time so that Joe and Johnny could go do their talk, and then on Sunday finish up with the uh appendix and then fly off to back to Little Rock and wherever. They did that for year after year after year, and after about 10 years, somebody went to Joe and said, Joe, you would reach a lot more people. You’ve got a tremendous experience of ethnicity and culture diversity and all these different things that you’ve observed and experienced from AA across the country. If you just put this into writing, you would reach an awful lot more people. And so Joe took a sabbatical and wrote Recovery Dynamics, broke it down into 28 lessons, which incidentally was divisible by seven. One week or two weeks, three weeks, or four weeks.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:41

Yeah, I went through it. Yeah. We were on Recovery Dynamics when I went there.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:45

And so Joe McQueenie, we found out that Joe McQueenie was coming to Louisville the second week in December. So we signed up for the class. So I asked Chris at this point, uh, Chris, well, how much do you think you really know about Alcoholics Anonymous and all of that, it, all that all that stuff? He said, Well, you know, Chris. He said, Well, I’ll be humble and I’ll say 90%. I said, Well, okay, I’m about, I don’t know, I’m I’m about 10% maybe. We spent three days in that workshop. It was a long workshop, hard workshop. We did all 28 lessons. We did all the lessons, we did all the writing in that three days. I mean, it was arduous. And at the end of that, we walked away thinking, I said, okay, Chris, now how much did you think you knew about Alcoholics Anonymous before you went through this course? He said, you know, actually, I only knew about 15%.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:42

Yeah, that was a good tool. I really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:46

Yeah. So that became our curriculum. We now have our structure in place where the clients are going to do the work. We have the we have the work as an opportunity for them to assume responsibility and then be the other. Accountable for it. And then the on-site meetings and the off-site meetings. And that and then and the detox feeding the program.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:10

Yeah, the wet shelter. Well, wet shelter. Wet shelter. Upstairs. Upstairs, where people can sleep overnight. Yep. And then there’s a trick to it. You sleep there that night. You’re not guaranteed a bed the next night when it’s full. There’s a lottery. I had my name drawn a couple times, and a couple times I did not. We uh there was a guy that was there with us that had a truck parked in the parking lot, and he would be like, You got we can go lay in the bed of my truck. And he would lay in the cabin there, and he’d say, Some guys can lay in the bed of the truck here. But you got to think that’s powerful, and that somebody wants off bad enough that sleeping outside in the bed of the truck was like, Okay, I’ll wait here because they wanted to not just get into the lottery, but once the once you had a bed in the wet shelter, okay, then you’re allowed to start going to classes because obviously there’s no charge to go here of any kind at the only place, right? Right. And then we start going to the classes and trudging with them every day. And if I remember correctly, they would feed us, right? If you’re trying, yeah, so we were allowed to eat, but you weren’t in the program yet. And I gotta tell you, Jay, uh, I remember when my name uh I’m at the the classroom at St. Catharines, right? Yeah, and I’m at the classroom and they call guys’ names, and finally, I think I was in overnight for 11 days. It was like a January. It was there was this much snow on the ground, so it filled up, right? And they called my name and I walked back down. And I remember being so I had a mat on the floor. I was given a blanket and a pillow, and the mat was laying on the floor next to the bathrooms, which those doors opened and shut and sleep did not care. I was so happy that I was able to sit my backpack down, put a pillow there, and I believe you could see a TV around the corner. You could stand up and walk to it anyway. But I remember thinking, okay, I have a place to lay down now. I don’t have to use the truck bed or the bench outside.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:03

That’s right.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:03

I was so grateful and happy for that spot for like two days, right? And then bed moves start happening. And for people out there that don’t know, you know, the longer you’re there, you move into this section, then you go around a horseshoe, and then you might end you end up going downstairs and then to another building. Yep, bed moves happen. Big thing and my alcoholic ego and all that is so much that I would watch a bed move happen, and somebody that got to the floor one day after me got moved to a bed before me. And very quickly, the healing place became the enemy. I said, they’re out to get me. They don’t like me because this guy came in and was laying next to the toilet or whatever, and they moved him to that bunk bed and not me. It took me nine months before I got to the peer mentor’s office to realize that there was another alcoholic doing the bed moves. There was no real, there’s a big board full of names in there, and they’re doing the best they can to shift names along the way. And then you look over and go, okay, who’s in the dry shelter? Let’s move that guy here, move that guy here. They didn’t know who James Sweezy was, but I sure thought they should have.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:10

And then at a certain point, uh, you had to get signatures for every meeting and every class you attended, and then you had to do extra meetings when you could on the weekends from eight to four on Saturday and Sunday. And uh what the peer mentors did is they looked at the guy with the most meetings in class, say most signatures was one one for first consideration for a bid move. Then they then they put in some subjective value evaluations, like did he raise his hand in class, did he participate in class? Did he volunteer to help unload the truck? I they got a bid move.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:42

I forget the bed count, like what a number was once you’ve been in phase, which is another part of the program there. But phase members typically had to hit this certain number. I blew it away, I almost doubled it because but you’re on 124, 125. Yeah, I think I had over the 200, you know, maybe the 250 mark somewhere in there. Because uh, I’ll be straight out. But you know, my wife Elena, I went to all the meetings I was supposed to, and I went to every meeting that she went to. I followed her everywhere I could. So that I don’t recommend that. That that was uh that’s what I mean.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:12

And you kept your distance though.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:13

I did. Yes, that’s true. That that’s very true. Anything else you want to say to your staff or to the recovery community or just anything in general, Jay?

SPEAKER_00 1:32:22

Well, the power of role modeling is the secret to the model. Role modeling positive recovery is an attraction for somebody who’s in the bot in the pits of addiction. Because they’ve tried to change, they’ve tried to change and tried to change, and they couldn’t change. And they walk into the healing place and they see one person that’s making a change, and then they leave, and it’s no longer I can’t quit. It’s I don’t want to. So now they have to decide. Since I don’t want to, how long is it gonna be before I I’m finally sick and tired of being sick and tired? And that’s the key. And you never turn anybody away because you never know when that’s gonna happen.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:03

That’s right. You know, I was told to uh at the healing place, and I say, I can’t do that. They say you need to change the word can’t with won’t right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:11

That’s it.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:11

Sounds like that came from you all this time. I’ve used it for years. Say, I won’t go get help, I won’t sit down in that meeting, I won’t go get a sponsor. Right. Even you change it to that, it kind of makes it your fault, don’t it? That’s it. That’s it.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:25

And we your your your your lit life, your drinking life, your drug life is messed up forever because it’s never gonna be fun anymore.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:33

Jay, I appreciate you coming on here. It’s a great honor. I’m I’m so glad you came out. You’re one of my mentors. I appreciate you. It’s uh thehealingplace.org and the healing place on all the social channels. If you or someone you love needs that type of help, uh but you’re my inspiration.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:49

I tell you, James, you are. I am you are you’re my inspiration. Um I see you on Facebook and TikTok and X and LinkedIn and everywhere. And and what you have done, your commitment to helping another suffering alcoholic and addict is monumental. And the the way you have been able to organize and scale your original idea of helping an alcoholic and expanding it to make such an outreach across the nation is just over uh it’s just uh astounding. I’m speechless at the at the at the at the uh the the reach that you’ve been able to establish. It’s unre it’s wonderful.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:32

That’s humbling coming from you. It’s unreal. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:35

It’s beautiful, and and and you’re not through.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:39

You told me that before the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:41

I did.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:41

You did. You’re not gonna I love you, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:43

I love you too, yeah.

unknown 1:34:48

All right. Appreciate you, brother.