Page 25 - The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

4 ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

every day and every night. It was fun to carom around
the exclusive course which had inspired such awe in
me as a lad. I acquired the impeccable coat of tan
one sees upon the well-to-do. The local banker
watched me whirl fat checks in and out of his till with
amused skepticism.
Abruptly in October 1929 hell broke loose on the
New York stock exchange. After one of those days of
inferno, I wobbled from a hotel bar to a brokerage
office. It was eight o’clock—five hours after the market
closed. The ticker still clattered. I was staring at an
inch of the tape which bore the inscription XYZ-32. It
had been 52 that morning. I was finished and so were
many friends. The papers reported men jumping to
death from the towers of High Finance. That dis-
gusted me. I would not jump. I went back to the bar.
My friends had dropped several million since ten
o’clock—so what? Tomorrow was another day. As I
drank, the old fierce determination to win came back.
Next morning I telephoned a friend in Montreal.
He had plenty of money left and thought I had better
go to Canada. By the following spring we were living
in our accustomed style. I felt like Napoleon returning
from Elba. No St. Helena for me! But drinking caught
up with me again and my generous friend had to let
me go. This time we stayed broke.
We went to live with my wife’s parents. I found a
job; then lost it as the result of a brawl with a taxi
driver. Mercifully, no one could guess that I was to
have no real employment for five years, or hardly draw
a sober breath. My wife began to work in a depart-
ment store, coming home exhausted to find me drunk.