One of the obstacles to recovering from addictions is a belief that life will be no fun without alcohol and other drugs.
As for the fun part, for me drinking started out as a blast—champagne at a classy wedding on Long Island when I was sixteen and had never had a drink. I thought I had found a solution to my living problems. It almost killed me.
I hung out with two guys in my fraternity (Chi Psi–Hamilton College) who drank too much. We invariably got hammered at house parties and occasional trips with dates to New York City where one of the guys lived in decidedly upscale digs.
World War II had ended a couple of years earlier and the sailor kissing the girl in Times Square was still on everyone’s mind. And, for a time, the celebration continued.
A couple of days ago, I ran across a clipping I had saved about Eddie Condon and his Dixieland band in New York City’s Greenwich Village. No question about it, it brought back lots of happy memories.
My roommate from New York City knew Condon, and his place was a regular stop on our night clubbing circuit. We always got front row seats because of my roommate’s connections.
Condon played guitar and banjo and his band at that time included Wild Bill Davidson, George Wettling or Buzzy Drooten on drums, Ralph Sutton on piano, Pee Wee Russell on clarinet and trombonist George Brunis, whose solo on “Sister Kate” blew the lights out.
Condon, who died in 1973, was the product of the Chicago area and a group of musicians known as the Austin High gang. He came to New York in the late 20’s, bringing with him Chicago jazz to which I also became addicted along with, I might ad, the brand of swing contributed by Glen Miller, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and Count Basie.
Condon, who had his hair parted just about down the middle, wore a coat and tie and always looked collegiate and sober.
Greenwich Village, which is located on the west side of lower Manhattan, has always been an interesting place. I visited for the first time in 1943, when a friend and I, ninth grade students from suburban Summit, N.J., took dates to Café Society to hear jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams. Café Society was unique, in that it had been integrated since just before the war, in 1938.
Headliners included Nat “King” Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Pearl Bailey, Count Basie and Kay Starr and many more.
After Condon’s we might visit the nearby Village Vanguard or Café Society downtown a block or two away before calling it a night no earlier than 2 a.m.
Graduation
After my two roommates and I graduated from Hamilton, the three of us went on to graduate schools. They both went to medical school, and I went to Business School at Harvard followed by three years in the Navy.
They became doctors, and I became an advertising agency executive on Madison Avenue in New York. My first job was with Young & Rubicam, one of the top two or three ad agencies in the nation. It was there that I worked for General Foods and their new Birdseye frozen foods, Lipton Tea and a new beverage, Tang. And I learned about the two Martini lunch.
Eventually, our continued use of alcohol did some real damage. One of my two ex-roommates, a doctor, died at age 50 in 1979 from the effects of his alcoholism. The other, also a doctor, quit drinking that year, as I did, and was still practicing medicine when last we talked a couple of years ago. It was a close call for both of us.
I attended my first AA meeting on December 2, 1978, at a Pearl Street storefront in Boulder Colorado. It was snowing, and when I walked in, the people seemed to be enjoying themselves. There was no president, no board, no dues to pay, and no band playing, and I said to myself, “I think this is what God had in mind.”
I went in looking for a fix, not a religion, and what I ultimately found in my journey was my Christian faith. I became a Christian in 1986 when a friend, a member of my church and, like me, a recovering alcoholic and founder of the Born Free ministry, brought me to my knees. I was baptized in the Arkansas River.
My dilemma
My dilemma during the last days of my drinking in the late seventies was that I couldn’t drink, I couldn’t not drink, and on my own I couldn’t change.”
My pastor at Fellowship Bible Church, Robert Lewis explained what had happened to me. “Sin always starts out great,” he said. “In the end it leads to brokenness.”
There is a notion in some quarters that getting sober is terribly serious, and the end of all the fun in life (such as losing your family and your job). So for a few laughs I turn to guys like Kinky Friedman. Rodney Dangerfield, WC Fields and others.
Regarding the hereafter, I sometimes refer to Kinky Friedman’s Guide to Texas Etiquette or How to get to heaven or hell without going through Dallas-Fort Worth. As for deportment, he avoids (as I do) singing, noting, “It’s not unusual for people to walk out on my performances—or even to start praying.”
Rodney Dangerfield reports, “My wife is such a bad cook, in my house we pray after the meal,” and from W.C. Fields, “Reminds me of my safari in Africa. Somebody forgot the corkscrew and for several days we had to live on nothing but food and water.”
Fields also said, “Inflation has gone up over a dollar a quart.”
Jean Kerr chipped in with “Even though a number of people have tried, no one has yet found a way to drink for a living” and also noted that Malachi McCourt once said, “I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol since the invention of the funnel.”
“The less I behave like Whistler’s mother the night before,” Tallulah Bankhead said, “the more I look like her the morning after.”
St. Basil who lived in the fourth century once said, “Drunkenness is the ruin of reason. It is premature old age. It is temporary death.”
And then there was Hunter Thompson who said, “I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or sin to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.”
Editor’s note: Mr. Thompson shot and killed himself in 2005 at age 67.
Leave a Reply