A mini-scandal I uncovered but never reported has probably benefitted Baton Rouge more than any of the “award-winning” exposés that elevated me from a gutter in New Orleans to semi-prominence as a network television  investigative correspondent.

The annual O’Brien House breakfast will be held tomorrow. The facility is among the finest in the country for treatment of indigent alcoholics and other addicts. And knowing the roots of O’Brien House, I marvel each year at its miraculous growth during the 39 years the facility has been in existence. 

In 1971, my broadcasting career was saved by a man named Lew Carter, then the manager of WXOK, Baton Rouge’s only black programmed radio station. In February of that year, the city’s most prominent station fired me as its News Director and host of a daily talk show. My boss lost his tolerance for me showing up drunk—if at all—and regularly delivering newscasts in unknown tongues. Nor did he appreciate the telephone call on the eve of my firing, telling him that I quit and he could cram the station up his derriere.

Three days later after a failed audition as a New Orleans skid row alcoholic, I was hauled back to Baton Rouge by a girlfriend, who had been summoned by a group of street people when I began showing symptoms of delirium tremens caused by an imbalance of blood and alcohol. That marked the end of my drinking and the beginning of a sober journey. Six weeks or so after the final bender, Lew Carter took a gamble and hired me to create WXOK’s first news department. I was not his first choice, but he had been unsuccessful in recruiting a black newsman.

In the early days of sobriety, Alcoholics Anonymous was my lifeline. I attended meetings six nights a week. It would have been seven, but there were no meetings scheduled on Saturday, although AA members got together socially to play poker. As I write in Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, staying sober trumped everything in my life and became a major factor in the founding of O’Brien House.

In my 1971 no-booze evangelical fervor, I tried to drag winos off the street to go to meetings. One night in my unofficial role as an AA recruiter, I picked up two guys named Tony and Bob at a halfway house operated by Baton Rouge’s federal anti-poverty agency. On the way to a meeting, they complained that all the food in the facility had been stolen and asked me to buy them hamburgers. The theft, they said, was not unusual. Thieves had also absconded with medications, television sets and everything else of value. 

Skeptical about the complaints of two street drunks, I did some research. A quick inventory and check of records revealed that the problems were worse than Tony and Bob indicated. Besides the pilfering, there was no discernible treatment program, nor any oversight by the agency running the halfway house.

Armed with these facts, I wrote an exposé. But before airing the story, I contacted the agency head, Charles Tapp. He pleaded ignorance of the boondoggle and asked me to delay the story until an in-house investigation could be conducted. We were longtime acquaintances and I trusted him to do the right thing. And it didn’t take long for Charlie to confirm the problems. The following day, he conceded that grant money was being thrown away. He also admitted that his staff was unqualified to run Baton’s Rouge’s only publicly funded program for indigent alcoholics. Fearful of losing federal grants, Charlie made a proposition that I couldn’t resist. He said his agency would bankroll a new halfway house if I recruited ex-drunks and civic leaders to run the program.

Fortunately, my six-month sober mind had cleared enough for me to seek the help of Eugene Snelling, then head of Baton Rouge’s Alcoholism Council. He was a good friend and among those who helped save me from myself.

In August 1971, we recruited a group of folks from inside and outside the recovery community to form a not-for-profit corporation. And in a matter of weeks, Baton Rouge’s first authentic treatment center for indigent alcoholics opened.

Although I was elected as Chairman of the initial Board of Directors, I don’t want to overstate my role. My biggest contribution was to my ego, which badly needed a boost. Indeed, I credit street drunks Tony and Bob with playing the key roles in establishing the facility. They were also the first clients. O’Brien House is their legacy, even though neither achieved long-term sobriety.

So tomorrow at the O’Brien House Breakfast, I will remember Tony, Bob and the hundreds of men and women who have come through the doors of O’Brien House—many of whom found longterm sobriety.

Coincidental to our annual breakfast, September is National Recovery Month. I have been selected as Louisiana’s delegate for a series of events sponsored by the A&E cable network. In connection with its weekly program titled Intervention, the network’s third annual National Recovery Project will be held on September 26th in Philadelphia to publicize the need for expanded treatment programs in the country. Because of my aversion to reality shows, I did not watch the A&E show until after my selection as a delegate. I highly recommend the program. It accurately depicts the ravages of addiction—and the solutions.

There are an estimated 22-million Americans who suffer from from alcohol or drug abuse. Less than 10% receive effective treatment. I feel privileged to be involved with O’Brien House, which provides hope for men and women who can’t afford treatment. The expansion and success of O’Brien House is one of many miracles I have witnessed since I stopped drinking more than in 39 years ago.

And on days when I want a ”miracle fix,” I only need to attend an AA meeting to see miracles in progress—or pause for a moment to consider all that has happened in my own life during the past four decades.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

Earlier this year, I was selected to represent Louisiana at an event in Philadelphia sponsored by

Since the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous 75 years ago and the beginning of Alanon for spouses and families of alcoholics shortly thereafter, the “anonymous” label has been attached to a multitude of 12-step recovery programs. Spin-offs are designed to deal with an array chemical, physical and emotional problems—gambling, sex, eating disorders, addictions to illegal and/or prescription drugs, and an array of struggles that part of the human condition.

Regardless of the ailments, the underlying principles of all the different 12-step programs are pretty much the same. The steps put into practice a value system that is unknown to many—the basics of which include universal tenets of faith, trust, honesty, courage and humility. In AA lingo, incorporating the principles in one’s life leads to a “spiritual awakening.” Not to be confused with a sudden epiphany that is often described as a ”spiritual experience.” Twelve step programs gradually bring about a level of self-honesty. That is why so-called tea partiers need to form a recovery program called, ”Deniers Anonymous.”

From inception, Tea Party members and its candidates have been in a state of denial in responding to any and all criticism. The most recent instance of self-deception is the refusal to acknowledge the NAACP’s claim that the loosely formed organization have been invaded by racists, bigots and hate groups. The denials must be coming from blind and deaf spokespersons. How could they miss an inflammatory road sign in Iowa comparing the President to Hitler and Lenin, or fail to see placards at rallies that are clearly racist, or not accept the word of credible sources that epithets were directed at black congressmen as they walked through a crowd of Tea Party demonstrators? That is the equivalent of my years of denial that alcoholism caused my drunken episodes, delirum tremens, nights in jail, an emotionally abused broken family and eventually led me a failed skid-row audition. 

Vice President Biden refused yesterday to label the Tea Party as racist. And I agree. However, that does not mean the absence of racism among many of its members—a subtle form of which is sometimes more sinister than outward bigotry. Indeed, it is often difficult for people—me included—to detect underlying prejudices. Our failure to see deep-rooted personal bias is troublesome for African Americans. At least they know where they stand with the Klan mentality.

Deniers Anonymous would be particularly helpful for Tea Party candidates, some of whom have denied saying or believing they made statements in radio, television and newspaper interviews. Sharron Angle is an exception. The Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Nevada simply avoids mainstream media interviews. She answers only to God, Fox “News” and right-wing reporters in her home state. God apparently is not satisfied with her answers. Senate Majority leader Harry Reid has been resurrected from the graveyard of politically dead incumbents.

Meantime, God has smiled down on Democrats in Kentucky by delivering a Tea Party-supported candidate whose mouth has gotten him in so much trouble that he is no longer a a sure-fire Republican successor to slightly deranged incumbent Jim Bunning. Dr. Rand Paul stumbled in the race coming out of the gate by making 1960’s era comments about civil rights. Like Sharron Angle, he now avoids interviews that could expose him as under-qualified to occupy Bunning’s Senate seat—a level of incompetence that is probably impossible to achieve. Nonetheless, Dr. Paul’s gaffes have made the Kentucky race competitive. Given his explanations that previous statements are not a real reflection of his position on civil rights, Deniers Anonymous would be helpful in allowing Paul to get in touch with his true views.

Former Presidential candidate Ross Perot is the best example of my own experience of encountering political candidates living in a state of denial. Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger provides all of the gritty details. If interested, buy the book and be entertained by my journey to a vast fantasy land. In short, my one hour in-depth confrontation with Perot during the 1992 Presidential campaign was his final sit-down interview with an investigative reporter .

I had flashbacks of the Perot debacle sixteen years later while watching Katie Couric interview Sarah Palin—another political figure who defines accountability as being a personal attack. She has become a role model for refusing to do interviews with anyone but the Fox “News” bunch and their ilk. She and all her cohorts at the Republican propaganda networks are excellent candidates for Deniers Anonymous. Especially Glenn Beck.

In AA, we sometimes classify a category of alcoholics as “low bottom drunks.” Having spent time with my feet planted in a gutter, I fit the label. Glenn Beck is a low bottom denier. In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he consistently denies his racially charged and anti-semitic rants. Washington Post poltical reporter Dana Milbank wrote a column last week that provided astonishing statistics about Beck’s hate-filled lunacy and his influence as a self-proclaimed leader of the Tea Party movement.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/16/AR2010071602855.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

If the day comes that someone decides to start a Deniers Anonymous program, Glenn Beck should be among the first recruits. He should have some vague knowledge of recovery based on his past disclosure that he joined AA many years ago. I presume he is still sober today. Outwardly, though, he does not fulfill AA’s promise of restoring its members to sanity. 

That is not surprising. Anyone listening to Beck can easily discern that he knows nothing about the principles that form the basis of 12-step recovery.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

I already knew in advance what the coroner’s toxicology report would reveal as the cause of death of my friend, Ed Buggs. A mutual friend told me shortly after his body was found two weeks ago that cocaine and drug paraphenalia were found near the body. Knowing of Ed’s struggles, I am not shocked. The sad fact is that most alcoholics and addicts do not attain long term sobriety.

I am one of the lucky people, having plugged the jug 39+ years ago. In order to stop drinking, I endured pain and humiliation, though not nearly as much as my family. Even with years in recovery, I don’t take my sobriety for granted. I have remained active in the most successful successful program for alcoholics ever devised. And it is free. The 12 Step program also works for other addictions. Cocaine was not a drug of choice in my my boozing era. Thankfully so, because from all I know about its effect, I would have been attracted to the drug.

Ed and I had many conversations about his addiction and recovery. He talked a good game. Walking the walk is different altogether. Consequently, he fell prey to a deadly event—success. I’m told that he and a partner were on the brink of earning a sizeable chunk of change in a company they founded. I was warned throughout my early years of sobriety to be cautious when good things begin to accrue. Alcoholics often forget from whence the success came.

I lived two lives—one of incredible failure in which I sunk to the gutter both physically and emotionally. Sober, I achieved more in my career than I ever hoped for. More important than professional success was my growth emotionally and spiritually. As I have written in my book, I don’t know why I have been so fortunate while others I’ve known died from the disease of addiction. I thank God on a daily basis. And I give thanks for those who tried, but failed. They taught me gratitude.

There is a saying around AA that some people die to keep others sober. I think that is rather harsh. Nonetheless, as we consider Ed’s death, I hope alcoholics and other addicts will take note.

I will remember you, Ed.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. It is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.