ALCOHOL + AUTO = ARRAIGNMENT

[Music] albert graham age 18 unmarried occupation student charged driving while intoxicated graham was arrested after neighbors complained about him racing a motorcycle up and down the streets at 2 am trying to elude the officers he spilled the motorcycle and his passenger he said it was the first time he'd ever been drunk charles buddy vogel 39 married one child occupation salesman charge dwi driving while intoxicated logo was arrested after police spotted him weaving in and out of traffic logo told police that he was urgently trying to get somewhere but when they asked him where he couldn't remember agnes ella larkin 55 married two children occupation housewife charged dwi driving while intoxicated mrs larkin swerved into a parked car to avoid hitting a child she hadn't even seen her until it was almost too late [Music] each of them was found guilty of misdemeanor drunk driving then offered a suspended sentence if they would attend a series of special classes the purpose of these classes wasn't to teach driving skills it was to help the students realize that they all had at least the beginnings of a serious drinking problem then to help them discover why they did and what they could do about it the first step in this was to have them write down all the things that live up to their arrests i've been planning to have this party for a couple of weeks ever since my mom and dad decided to spend that weekend with my aunt and uncle who lived way upstate everybody was supposed to ring their own liquor but since the party wasn't my place everybody was giving me drinks i'd had beer before but never a mixture of hard stuff like i had that night [Music] it really made me feel great that everyone was so friendly to me even popular guys like chris morgan and girls like gloria not that they were snobs it's just that i was never part of their crowd before [Music] so when chris let me use his motorcycle to take gloria for a ride i was really floating [Music] when i look back on it though i still don't know what made me do a crazy thing like that even if i was drunk i'd never really ridden a bike much before but i didn't want to admit it and i sure didn't want to look like i was chicken gloria was having a ball she was too smashed to know better pretty soon i really thought i knew what i was doing with the bike but all we did was to get a bunch of the neighbors so mad they called the cops [Music] [Applause] [Music] by this time i thought i was a good enough rider to shake them off [Applause] but i was wrong it was a saturday morning i brought a mountain of work home from the office that was going to take me all that day and most of sunday to get through naturally i needed the results yesterday but then my wife reminded me that i'd promised to take her and our son billy on a picnic that day when i told her i couldn't she reminded me that was the third time i'd had to call off a picnic because of work [Music] so then i started reminding her of a few things well one reminder led to another and i ended up going down to the office to finish my work but all i could think about was the fight we'd had [Music] so after a while i dropped into this bar where a lot of us go after work and i met this friend of mine george he'd been catching up on some paperwork too anyway we had a couple of drinks [Music] pretty soon i ended up telling him the whole story george was divorced about a year ago so he was pretty sympathetic he said what i needed was to unwind [Music] but after a few more drinks i started thinking about how i disappointed my wife and son feeling sorry for them even sorrier for myself all i could think of was that if i got home at a decent hour maybe i could take them out to dinner and kind of make it up to them i sort of remember driving down the street but it was the wrong street and i don't know how i got there and then the police stopped me i guess things really began at our weekly club meeting we'd been getting together every friday afternoon for years whose ever turn it was always made a few little sandwiches and of course we always had a couple of drinks we had to break up early that friday because two of the girls had to leave i persuaded ann rogers to stay for a while for just one more drink [Music] but pretty soon she had to go too and i thought there i was left alone again with nothing to do of course there really was plenty to do but i just didn't feel like doing it so i tried to read but i couldn't keep my mind on it then i saw what time it was my husband harry was coming in on a five o'clock flight and i was supposed to pick him up harry had been out of town all week on business i'd forgotten to get anything for dinner the house was a mess and i was going to keep him waiting at the airport [Music] all i could think of was that if i wasn't too late maybe he wouldn't be too angry i just wanted to do something right that day but it turned out all wrong but not as wrong as it could have been a little girl wasn't even scratched thank god [Music] but i just couldn't believe i've gotten to the point where i could almost kill another human being just because i'd been drinking nobody gets to that point overnight it's usually a pretty slow process it creeps up on you little by little and most people can't or won't understand what's happening to them to help these people overcome this barrier they were next asked to write about why they drank not just the time they were caught but anytime it's hard to know where to begin i guess that's because i'm not used to talking to people and telling them things i've always been kind of a loner not because i wanted to be you understand i just had a hard time making friends it seemed like i was always on the outside watching trying to look in of course i never really put myself out i mean i never tried to do much of anything and when i flunked chemistry my father wanted me to take it over in summer school and pass it so i could get into college but i was afraid i might flunk it again so i didn't want to try [Music] and when i did go to parties once in a while i'd always do something like play the records see i'd never learned how to dance so i didn't want to make myself look ridiculous by trying i figured why give people a chance to laugh at you at least that's the way it seemed to me then when i look back on it i guess that's why i gave the party and why i got drunk and wrecked chris's motorcycle i just wanted to prove that i was somebody and for a while i was but now i'm not too sure i want to be that person anymore at first i didn't believe i had a drinking problem sometimes i still don't but other times i know i'm at least starting on one i've always been a moderate social drinker i guess you'd call it anyway it helped relieve a lot of the pressure after a hard week and after i got promoted it seemed like the hard weeks started coming closer and closer together pretty soon they started lasting all month long between the longer hours and the booze i was spending less and less time with my wife and son and when i did spend time with him it wasn't exactly sweetness and light time and there i was trying to wash all my troubles away instead of facing them and making some decisions it began a few years ago but it seems much longer now both of our children were married and lived quite far away and my husband's business was taking more and more of his time he had done quite well in business so i didn't have to worry or work either but i guess even if i'd wanted to work harry wouldn't have liked the idea most of my girlfriends were in the same boat whether we were married whittled or divorced we were all looking for something to fill in the time and whatever that something was it was usually accompanied by a few drinks by me at least then i began having physical problems because of excessive drinking my doctor said i should stop immediately but by that time i was physically addicted to alcohol i couldn't stop [Music] at first i thought i was hiding my drinking from my husband but after our liquor bill started running almost fifty dollars a month more than usual he couldn't possibly miss it he told me my problem was that i didn't have anything constructive to do with my time and he said his problem right then was to catch a plane i promised him i'd be in shape to pick him up when he got back and i meant to be i really did the next thing these people will be asked is to do something about the underlying causes which make them drink too much that something doesn't have to be earth shaking just a first step a first step toward controlling their own lives instead of letting alcohol control them [Music] the physical and chemical properties of the drug alcohol can all be measured scientifically its characteristics and actions on the human body and brain are well known use or abuse the choice is ours [Music] [Applause] [Music] you