Page 274 - The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

Alco_1893007162_6p_01_r5.qxd 4/4/03 11:17 AM Page 259

HE SOLD HIMSELF SHORT 259
deal of spare time and that a little drink in the morn­
ing helped. By 1932, I was going on two- or three-day
benders. That same year, my wife became fed up
with my drinking around the house and called my dad
in Akron to come and pick me up. She asked him to
do something about me because she couldn’t. She was
thoroughly disgusted.
This was the beginning of five years of bouncing
back and forth between my home in Chicago and
Akron to sober up. It was a period of binges coming
closer and closer together and being of longer dura­
tion. Once Dad came all the way to Florida to sober
me up after a hotel manager called him and said that
if he wanted to see me alive he’d better get there fast.
My wife could not understand why I would sober up
for Dad but not for her. They went into a huddle, and
Dad explained that he simply took my pants, shoes,
and money away so that I could get no liquor and had
to sober up.
One time my wife decided to try this too. After
finding every bottle that I had hidden around the
apartment, she took away my pants, my shoes, my
money, and my keys, threw them under the bed in the
back bedroom, and slip-locked our door. By one a.m.
I was desperate. I found some wool stockings, some
white flannels that had shrunk to my knees, and an old
jacket. I jimmied the front door so that I could get
back in, and walked out. I was hit by an icy blast. It
was February with snow and ice on the ground, and
I had a four-block walk to the nearest cab stand, but
I made it. On my ride to the nearest bar, I sold the
driver on how misunderstood I was by my wife and
what an unreasonable person she was. By the time we