A Tennis Coach's Inspiring Recovery Journey

What happens when a beloved tennis coach confronts his darkest demons and emerges as a beacon of hope for others struggling with addiction? Join us as Jerry Pickard shares his gripping journey from the depths of alcoholism to the transformative power of Recovery. With the unwavering support of his friend Victor and a newfound belief in a higher power, Jerry's story is one of resilience, faith, and the crucial steps that led him to sobriety. His heartfelt revelations not only spotlight the personal battles he faced but also the profound changes that faith and community support can evoke.

In an exploration of recovery and spirituality, we delve into the powerful transformations that occur when one embraces faith and relinquishes ego. Jerry's personal anecdotes reveal the spiritual awakening that the 12 steps can bring, showcasing how recovery impacts not just the individual but also those around them. Through stories of growth and the ripple effects of recovery, we emphasize the importance of finding meaning and purpose, highlighting how spirituality and community are vital components in overcoming addiction.

We also take a nostalgic trip back to the 1960s, reminiscing about Jerry's unexpected path to becoming a high school tennis coach and the challenges of competing against better-resourced private schools. From the evolution of tennis to the importance of making sports enjoy

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Transcript

Joe Van Wie: 0:47

Hello and thanks again for listening to another episode of All Better. I'm your host, joe Van Wee. Over the course of 30 years, jerry Pickard has coached tennis at Valley View with a sense of humor and a smile For as jovial as he's been, his experience the last two seasons has brought him that grit. He's been. His experience. The last two seasons has brought him that grit. Having helped save the program from extinction years ago. Influenced by his daughter Shannon's desire to play, who elevated to a star the Cougars, the affable Pickard is reveling in his opportunity to coach his granddaughter, kiana. This is awesome, pickard said in his identifiable raspy voice. She's a good athlete and being able to coach her is one of the main reasons why he stayed. In 1985, valley View School Board considered dropping girls' tennis Interest was waning. Nobody wanted to coach. Shannon was eager to start her career on the courts, so Pickard submitted an application with the caveat that only he'd be considered if nobody else came forward. They didn't. Pickard was hired and he hasn't left. He just retired not too long ago. Retired not too long ago.

Joe Van Wie: 2:15

This was an excerpt from the Scranton Times written by staff writer Joby Fawcett. It was from 2015. Jerry spent three decades also as a notable character in the recovery community, taking dozens and dozens of people under his wing and mentoring them in a life that produces recovery. You get to sit and talk to Jerry today about many things. I think you'll enjoy it. He's one of the most interesting people I've ever met in recovery and I think you'll agree. Let's meet Jerry, and we're here with Pick Pick, how you doing. Thanks for coming today.

Jerry Pickard : 2:58

Thanks, joe, I'm fine. How about you?

Joe Van Wie: 3:03

I've been waiting for me. I'm just glad to finally get here, sit and have a chat, and I had no plan on what we were going to talk about. Okay, and I'm not going to ask you to drink any magic mushroom tea while we're here. Okay, pick, how did you end up in AA?

Jerry Pickard : 3:37

end up in AA. Well, prior to coming in AA, I had a friend who I spent one summer with, who was a motorcycle guy, a pretty crazy guy, a drinker, drugger, and At the end of the summer he went to rehab. That was in 1981. It was a crazy time. But you know, in 1983, I continued to drink and I was a blackout drinker and every time I would come out of a blackout and at that time I wasn't driving I would call Victor and he would come and pick me up, drive me back to Jessup. As soon as we stopped at the stop sign, like on the way up there, I'd tell him I think I'm ready for AA. As soon as he stopped at the stop sign, I'd jump out of the car and tell him see you later, baby, and I'd run home, you know. So that went on and on, but he kept coming for me. He kept coming for me every time he called me and you know he wasn't pushy or anything about AA, but he was my attraction. I knew the way he was and I knew he was sober. So when I called him up the last time on March 8th 1983, he came and got me.

Jerry Pickard : 4:57

I didn't know where I was. I was down in Green Ridge. I didn't know what day it was. It was a Wednesday. The last thing I remember I went out on Friday. I went out on Friday, so he picked me up and took me up to St Joe's Hospital up in Carbondale and it just happened that day that they had an educational series going on and it was about blackouts and I had a friend that was a doctor at the time and she used to tell me all the time you know, you're going to die, you can't be drinking like that, especially, you know, and blacking out, and if you don't sleep and you continue to drink, your involuntary muscle centers are going to shut down. And so, excuse me, that happened. You know, I watched it and it scared me.

Jerry Pickard : 5:54

And that night I went to the Salvation Army with Victor the first time and I started going to meetings that night. I went to meetings for about a year. He picked me up right before my first anniversary, you know, going all over with Victor, his sponsor, aj, and you know the rehabs just opened up. At that time Marwit opened up and it was one, two, three. One, two, three, doing steps one, two and three. That's what they were talking about, but there was a lot of people in the rooms at that time, older guys, that had the solution, you know, and it seemed that their solution was belief in a higher power. So you know right.

Joe Van Wie: 6:43

So the first three steps. For anyone who's not familiar, it's this admission that you have a serious problem you can't solve yourself. Can you solve it like the other group of people you're just meeting, and will you surrender to the program or this idea of a higher power? It's kind of this generalization of the first three steps. What was your relationship with a higher power at that point? Were you an atheist? Were you an agnostic? How would you describe yourself then?

Jerry Pickard : 7:11

I was a believer because growing up I had an aunt that was a nun, two first cousins that were nuns and a priest. That was my first cousin. So I believed in God. I went to church. I remember going up one day to be an altar boy and we just went out to play baseball instead and we didn't join. But you know, I had a belief but I didn't know what it was. You know, I knew there was a God because of my upbringing and stuff like that. My belief in a higher power came in Alcoholics Anonymous and so right before my first year I quit coming. I was a bartender all my life, with your dad actually, oh yeah.

Joe Van Wie: 8:05

Where were?

Jerry Pickard : 8:06

you guys at. I was down in the Strip and he was at Jim Egan's. I was in the El Dorado and he was at Jim Egan's. I was in the El Dorado and he was in Jim Egan's. You know, my bartending shift while I was teaching was 10 at night to 6 in the morning Crazy.

Joe Van Wie: 8:21

Did you guys hang?

Jerry Pickard : 8:22

out. Yeah Well, I was a good friend of yours. Actually we had the same girlfriend one time. Oh my God, yeah, yeah, it was funny. I used to knock on his door at 3 o'clock in the morning and he'd be in there and he'd go Pickard, get the hell out of here. But we were good friends, sure, even then in the rooms we were good friends.

Jerry Pickard : 8:45

So you know, I left for a year, not a year. I quit right before my first year went around to August and in August I hadn't gone to a meeting. I went back to attending bar for a week only and I hated it because I wasn't high and I wasn't drinking. I couldn't stand being around the people like that. So my son had a football injury and lost his vision in one of his eyes and this doctor came in from Chicago. That was a friend of my ex-wife's brother who went to Dartmouth with him, and he came in and examined him and so I was in the chapel at the Mercy Hospital and I said to God, I said in a prayer of desperation please let his vision come back, and I'll go to church every day for six years. Three weeks later his vision comes back and my first thought was why didn't I say six weeks?

Joe Van Wie: 9:53

You know, so you felt, heard, you felt like a relationship was now happening with some divinity.

Jerry Pickard : 10:02

Yeah, you know, I could have believed it was a conversionary reaction. I could have believed that it was just swelling in his neck and the swelling went down and the optic nerve started to work. I could have believed those things. But I was desperate to believe in something because I was afraid of dying at that time and these guys that were in AA were always talking higher power, higher power, you know. So that was in August.

Jerry Pickard : 10:36

So I started to go to church and my cousin, the priest. I called him up one day and I said geez, bill, I think I need an exorcism here. And he said what do you mean? I said I'm in church and I'm looking up at the crucifix and I'm looking over at the girls in church and the old ladies and everybody having all these thoughts and they're just driving me crazy. I can't concentrate.

Jerry Pickard : 11:05

So at that time I mentioned that at a meeting and my spiritual advisor that I use today, art, came up to me and said you have to empty the bowl. So I couldn't think to pray that way. So I got something tangible and I went to the cupboard for one year, got a bowl of water and dumped it into the drain while I was saying God, please direct my thinking, take away all my negative thoughts. After a year of doing that, you know, half like three or four months into it, I was standing there and I'd say, say to myself what am I out of my mind here? You know, just thinking it was so crazy. But I kept doing it because it was suggested and we were told back then follow suggestions.

Joe Van Wie: 12:48

Well, this is real, it interrupts. I think the primary symptom you can point to that there's a mental health crisis for someone in early recovery is if they are honest with you and tell you what they're experiencing. What you just described is rumination and it's resentment. Resentment, now, how they're different. Rumination's the thoughts of repetitive thoughts, usually negative in its connotation, of conversations that weren't finished. I wish I didn't say that. What are other people thinking? Repetitively, repetitively. And then resentment would be the emotions.

Joe Van Wie: 13:26

This thought life has so much dimension. You're experiencing the emotions of your thoughts as if it's an actual reality, as if it's actually happening. So you're having a second life which is causing just suffering, and this is happening now, a year into recovery. You interrupt this, you're saying, with this ritual of filling a bowl and dumping it. What happens is that you see that, let's just say, for an exaggeration, 80% of your cognition through the day is dedicated to things that aren't happening and you're having an emotional life from it. By emptying that bowl, by taking a suggestion, a suggestion that puts you deeper into a community, because now you're doing the same things they're doing. You're now alleviating. Holy shit, none of the thoughts are happening. This isn't real. And you're getting alleviating, holy shit, none of the thoughts are happening. This isn't real, and you're getting the bowl empty with it with it. Is that a way? Am I summarizing your experience? Oh yeah, exactly so.

Jerry Pickard : 14:27

So that goes. So now you're, you get better at that. So so now I'm, I'm still going to church every day, right? So now, the one day I walk in, those thoughts are gone. So what's my thought? Yo, what happened here? You know what happened. So now something's working. The higher power, which I chose to believe, was doing that at that time. So awareness, followed by choice, I choose, I made the choice to believe that. So then, all of a sudden, right after that, I'm up in a meeting up in Glenburn. This guy comes out of nowhere, never saw him before anything and he says to me hey, richard Harris.

Joe Van Wie: 15:14

Richard.

Jerry Pickard : 15:15

Harris, yeah, I said what do you mean, Richard Harris? He said, boy, you're putting on quite an act here, aren't you? And I said what do you mean? And he said, well, you never did the steps, did you? And I said no, he just put you out in front straight like that. Yeah, and he said no. And I said no, I never did the steps. And he said do you want me to teach you the steps? And I said sure, and he said, well, come down to. And it just happened, he was at the University of Scranton, he was a Jesuit, and I went down and I sat with them. I mean, nobody did the book back then, Joe, no, no, no, but like like we do now you know they did this.

Jerry Pickard : 16:01

Bruce brought that, our friend, yeah, and that was in what the night, early nineties or 1991.

Joe Van Wie: 16:06

Right 1991.

Jerry Pickard : 16:08

And and so this guy. Now, this is 1984, right In August of 80.

Joe Van Wie: 16:14

you're right in october of 84 and you're on a retreat doing this I know I'm meeting him every tuesday down at the?

Jerry Pickard : 16:22

u? Oh, okay, right. And so he says to me, after you know the unmanageability thing in the first step and all that and and he said all I want you to do is just be honest with me. And so when we got to the second step, he said these are the three most important words you're ever going to read Came to believe. And he taught me and convinced me that I was meant to be in AA, that that was my mission. How did he do that? Like what was the pitch? His pitch was, you know, he said, your higher power, the God. He was God, he said, after telling me that he learned more about God in AA than he did in his. Like now, jesuits went to school for a long time 12 years, yeah, so he over his time, his 12 years in the seminary and so on. So he taught me. He said look. He said you want to make this easy. I said yeah, man, I, you know, I really do. I want to make this easy. He said all you have to do is believe. Just try this. Believe you're meant to be here. That was his pitch. Believe, you're meant to be here to help somebody that didn't get here Right.

Jerry Pickard : 17:56

25 years later, my cousins walked down the steps, right, yeah, heroin addicts recovering, right, just got out of rehab and today they're 16 years sober.

Jerry Pickard : 18:13

You know, his prophecy was answered right there and you know so all little things kept happening along the way that kept me believing, you know. And so as we went through the steps and he told me, you know, like when I was going through the fourth step and I'm writing it down and I discover I was a lousy father, so you know, and he said you don't have to be that anymore, that's already happened. That's already happened. We just have to, you know, deal with that now and give it to God. Yeah, you know, let go, let God, which, as you find out along the way, when you're in Alcoholics Anonymous, sometimes that's the hardest thing to do is to let go and let God because of your ego and so on. But then at the end, when you finally do it, you say, geez, why didn't I listen to these guys in AA before, you know, from just trying to do it your own way, and so on, like that.

Joe Van Wie: 19:23

I think you said it earlier and you know, you know me, I'm a secular. I was pretty resistant, I was pretty pissed off, even though I desperately needed help. The word faith in itself, I resist. Like it was like oh, I know what's next after that, the pitch, and you know, if you go to the core idea of what faith is, you were saying belief. It's a Latin word for trust. It just means trust. It doesn't mean you have to believe anything supernatural.

Joe Van Wie: 19:51

And what I could not do and what you just described is trust that what worked for someone else could work for me. I already knew it wouldn't work without doing it. And until I did it and you just described until you do it you're like what did I miss? It's because I didn't have, I wasn't, trust, because I wasn't honest. And that's kind of the description you just described even of your idea of God. Being a Catholic background, You're now having an experience of God that's an immersion or almost fundamental to reality, that if you got sober, the connection of you is not separate from your cousins years later. That your life now, this story of having some conscious choice, eventually to choose recovery, has cascaded and affecting people you weren't even aware of and that spirituality, I think, to anyone Catholic, non-Catholic. Your life is now affecting people, without your permission, in a really honest and truthful way, because you accepted saying yes to working the steps, or you could have just told that guy I don't know what you're talking about, Fuck off.

Jerry Pickard : 21:03

Like you're ruining my gig. Yeah, see, the thing is, though, when you're you, though, when you're you know you're suffering all those years of suffering, when we become aware of that, that we suffered, you know. And then, especially, when you're reading, like in we Agnostic, you're reading in that one sentence where it says you're faced with the self-imposed crisis. Right, whoever thought of that? You know, I never thought I had a self-imposed crisis in those years. No, I thought I was having fun because, you know, I'm doing what I always did Self-imposed crisis, you know. And then it asks you are you willing to believe, you know? So I had that willingness only because that guy popped up. Where did he come from? Why me? You know what I mean, yeah, so then you just think like, wow, if he's telling me, like maybe this is meant to be, you know, maybe this is meant to be for me to go this way so think of what solved your problem, and I think you and I always agree that meaning is spirituality.

Joe Van Wie: 22:23

You have a shared meaning now he. He laid out an idea of meaning and purpose that defeats addiction, because authenticity can rise from there. Prior to that, you're just. You're kind of just buying time until you can figure, find meaning. And the steps are really cool because they could give everyone meaning if they work them exactly right.

Jerry Pickard : 22:46

So what does it tell us? It tells us that, having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, you know, and they ask us in there, you know. They say, you know two choices go on to the bitter end or accept spiritual help. We get spiritual spirituality through other people. That's that we learn. That I, you know, I learned, I learned that from other people, just being aware of your surroundings and so on and see what people do. That's how I think that.

Jerry Pickard : 23:22

But the meaning that you get out of it is inherently. That comes because it says that this power has always been inside of you. So just by you know, they say the attraction rather than the promotion or anything like that, the daily reprieve that we get, based on our spiritual condition, is what drives us to be spiritual, you know. But sometimes we're not spiritual because we're not making contact with the higher power. I mean, that's what I've learned. Yeah, you know. Like if I'm fighting with my granddaughter when my granddaughter was nine, if I take her to school, if I'm arguing with her at eight o'clock in the morning, like how spiritual am I? She's eight.

Joe Van Wie: 24:12

Yeah, you know what I mean. Well, I hope you're winning the argument.

Jerry Pickard : 24:15

No, I don't know she's a woman, so I never want too many of those.

Joe Van Wie: 24:22

How did your experience now transform? Because we've had I've had this conversation. Bruce, our friend, always had this conversation. That just puts it into this framework. The steps are all written in past tense in N-A-A-A and there's a reason. First off, it was 90 years ago and they're dead.

Joe Van Wie: 24:44

The we isn't there, but they're all plural. We admit it. We came to believe we made a decision, right, made a decision. So you see, we made a decision, right, made a decision. So, you see, having had a spiritual awakening, this is a group they're describing and Bruce used to always say you can't be part of the we until you work all 12 steps, like at least get through the first round of practice in the steps. Now, like traditions in AA say, you can attend meetings if you have an honest desire to stop drinking. Well, that's fine. That doesn't mean you're part of the we yet, like the we are awake and I've been in AA multiple times where I was not awake and you're describing. Now you're a couple years into this and you're going to have the second half of the experience is working the steps, which was missing. How did that change your experience with feeling like you're a member of AA?

Jerry Pickard : 25:43

By the fellowship, by allowing myself to become into the fellowship and into service.

Joe Van Wie: 25:57

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Jerry Pickard : 26:46

You know they stress service and so on. And when I was 30 years, sober, I asked Bruce to take me through the steps again and I sat with him and the price chopper down in Taylor for five months and the reason I did that was because he asked me to take smoothie for the steps, because he said he took them through them three times. He said he said, well, how about you giving it a shot? And I said, okay, bruce, you gotta, you have to, you have to refresh me. Yeah, because up to that point I didn't take any anybody through the steps, but I I was going to, I was retired from teaching and so on, so I had time and I do that now, I do that at.

Jerry Pickard : 27:31

You know, I've taken four guys. I take four guys through right now, but I do it at 7 in the morning or 8 in the morning. So we discussed all that you know, showing as an example you know, set up the meeting, get it ready, get somebody to help and so on. So the fellowship itself, I think that the one-on-one, like you were talking about before, is the key. You know well, this is what someone told me or suggested to me and it worked for me. So you pass that on.

Joe Van Wie: 28:17

Yeah.

Joe Van Wie: 28:18

So I think, knowing you and going back to the experience. This guy tells you you're meant to be sober, you're meant to be in a life of recovery and you just described okay, two cousins show up later and now they're celebrating 16 years. That's your recovery kind of lane. The other reason you have recovery is your career, and what you dedicate your life to is education being a teacher, being an athletic mentor and a coach, which, if I'm not mistaken, you just ended your 78th season as a tennis coach. So that's got to be thousands and thousands of lives that got to be around a man who practiced the principles of honesty, integrity, humor, love, tolerance. How do you describe that? What is the meaning there? We just described the meaning of AA. What's the meaning in the other portions that you call your life, that you brought recovery to?

Jerry Pickard : 29:29

Well, the thing is, I spoke at my daughter's or my granddaughter's memories in 2018, when she graduated, and my topic to the kids was it's okay to be you. That's what I learned here in AA. It's okay to be you, and I talked about being aware of your surroundings and being aware of your friends, that it's our responsibility to be helpful if we see they need help. It's our responsibility to be a friend and to converse with people and to show your empathy and your compassion, and so on. So I never cut a kid from my team. I never did that. I have, right now, 48 girls on my tennis team and we only play seven. Everybody's happy because I spend extra time in like two extra months before the season starts in the summer, and so on, and they're they're learning something. They're learning like getting along with people, camaraderie, learning how to play tennis, having fun, being sociable, you know, especially coming after COVID. I mean, the kids were locked in the house for a year and a half.

Joe Van Wie: 30:56

Yeah.

Jerry Pickard : 30:57

You know. So how could you say, oh, you didn't make the team.

Joe Van Wie: 31:00

How did you experience seeing the lingering effects? Of that when the kids started coming back to school and sports.

Jerry Pickard : 31:08

Yeah, well, they were more self-centered, yeah, you know, uh, less less aggressive, uh less competitive in a bad way, yeah, and and on their phones all the time the phone just dominated by the.

Joe Van Wie: 31:27

Yeah, the phone man is. What does that look like to you? What year were you born, dear, 47. So you're born in 47. The Nazis just got extinguished. We're going into our heyday as Americana and now you see, the extension of your frontal lobe is a device in someone's hand. And it's the lowest form? I think no, it's a fact. And it's the lowest form? I think no, it's a fact. Social thought is becoming like I don't want to be dramatic and say a sewer, but it's a really shallow form of critical thinking. And instead of having critical thought, we're constantly just magnetized to this social pool of thinking, this social pool of thinking. Do you see this affecting not to be, you know, whiners, but value virtue? Or you just described that it affected drive or competition, or do you see it affecting values and virtues yeah, but not for everybody.

Jerry Pickard : 32:28

Not for everybody Not for everybody, not for everybody, not for everybody. You know. Like I just had a boy on my tennis team that is such a nice guy, he's driven, he was valedictorian of the class, you know. I told him. I said Connor, I said you know, I've coached thousands of kids. I said you're the only one, you're the one that likes school the most out of a thousand. You know, but like it's as our generations are different, like I graduated from high school in 1964, and I went to college from so 64 and graduated in 68. Then the 70s came and I don't even remember them. You know what I mean. You were really a part of them. Yeah, that's what they say. If you remember the 70s, you weren't there.

Joe Van Wie: 33:23

Yeah, you voted for Nixon yeah.

Jerry Pickard : 33:26

But now you know, kids today, they're not interested in politics, they're not interested in what's going on in the country.

Joe Van Wie: 33:34

They don't have that awareness Not to get political, but it scares me because to not have any civic obligations, that's frightening because of what could be lost. But then I pay attention to the news. It seems like a cartoon and I could see why you could be just exhausted, and I think a lot of people are exhausted with politics now. But to see a generation below us not understand the civics or that the idea of liberty, or your interest to keep and maintain liberty, it's just I don't know what other apparatus besides the. You know what you could call our broken one, but it's. It's not violent, and so we are enough people going to pay attention to this. Or maybe we just leave it to AI to be in charge of all of it.

Jerry Pickard : 34:29

That's a comment. You know what? They don't teach it, though, joe. They don't teach it. They teach civics in eighth grade. So what do you remember by the time you're? So, when you're in eighth grade, you're 13 or 14. Now, when you're 18, 19, 20, and 21, it's a different game. So what do you remember from from from when you were in eighth grade? No so that should be something, probably that that we teach all the time.

Jerry Pickard : 34:57

Yeah, you know except in high school. You will get a government AP course but but 10% of the kids in school take the AP courses. You know what I mean. So stuff like that happens. But the main thing is that becomes the responsibility of the parents. So if the parents are two, parents are always working.

Joe Van Wie: 35:25

Or the sad fact is we have a if I want to overgeneralize it, say an overpolarized population. Now, unlike anything in quite some time, you're getting two different narratives of what government is if it's left to the home is, if it's left to the home Now, granted, that's part of liberty. But this seems to be having a serious effect, not only to our maps or voting districts. But I don't want us to fall down a complete rabbit hole. The one question I had I wanted to go back to the 60s. You go to college right after high school, did all your friends?

Jerry Pickard : 36:09

Not all of them, you know.

Joe Van Wie: 36:11

Was it common that most of the class, even in 64, from up Valley would go to college?

Jerry Pickard : 36:16

Well, I think that we only graduated. We had Jessup High School. We didn't even have a gym, no basketball team. We had two sports, football and baseball, and for the girls they had cheerleading. Wow, but so.

Joe Van Wie: 36:27

I went to.

Jerry Pickard : 36:28

Mansfield team. We had two sports, football and baseball, and for the girls they had cheerleading, wow. So I went to Mansfield. And how about this? The tuition $125 a year semester. What are you? Wow. And you could take 18 credits. Oh my God, $125.

Joe Van Wie: 36:46

That's just awesome. It's probably that cost now If you really bored down value and cost they just have, you know, just exorbitant fees.

Jerry Pickard : 37:00

Yeah, but it was so. That's how easy living was back then, though you know it was. Everything was easy.

Joe Van Wie: 37:07

Did you play sports in college? Like how did your relationship with tennis begin? Like why?

Jerry Pickard : 37:13

tennis. I took and and I was a track coach at valley view and, uh, my daughter was a good tennis player my daughter shannon and so they were going to drop tennis. So I put an application in. Please accept this as application for the head girls coach only if no one else applies. No one applied. I got the job and went 0-13 my first year. You know it's pretty cool, though Since that first season I haven't had a losing season for all those years.

Joe Van Wie: 37:50

What do you attribute that to?

Jerry Pickard : 37:52

To just being able to get along with kids and having athletes come out and, you know, just making it fun for them. When it's fun, it's easy to learn.

Joe Van Wie: 38:08

Did you have to learn how to play tennis to coach, or did you already know the basics?

Jerry Pickard : 38:12

No, I didn't know anything. I used to ask Shannon what should we do here? You know, but I got you know. From then on, I learned it. I read yeah, what year was that? 1986.

Joe Van Wie: 38:28

So we got McEnroe. Was just finishing his career.

Jerry Pickard : 38:31

Yeah, I watched all those guys yeah.

Joe Van Wie: 38:34

Pete Sampras, there's a great documentary on McEnroe a couple years ago. Did you see that? No, I got to send that too. Oh, it's wild.

Jerry Pickard : 38:43

Wild. Well, he was wild, oh madman.

Joe Van Wie: 38:46

Yeah, and he's great now I was listening to him last week when the French Open was on. Just looking at the basics of tennis, of what it came from, like just people lobbying, like a couple you know countryside gentlemen in Sussex County just lobbying balls at each other to see it go to 120-mile-an-hour serve and the likes of McEnroe Agassi. These guys are lunatics. Like it doesn't look like like at first glance, these would be the leads of this entire sport. These guys are insane.

Jerry Pickard : 39:23

Well, yeah, now they're 6'10". You know, now, look at Agassi where he was 5'6" right or something like that, or 5'10". You know, now, look at Agassi where he was 5'6" right or something like that, or 5'7". But it's a. You know, the tennis culture here is the private schools are hard. Yeah, you know, they have. They're out there to take lessons and so it's very difficult to win district titles and so on, because you have to play Wyoming seminary. Do you make speeches?

Joe Van Wie: 39:54

Like, listen guys, it's us versus the rich kids.

Jerry Pickard : 40:07

I want you to take dead aim on the that are like my success has to be attributed to girls and boys that played other sports. Yeah, you know, like softball players and basketball players and so on. So they want to be competitive. Yeah, and just being a lot of times being athletic is enough to win. We've been very, very successful, I think, as a AA school, a public school with the exception of Abington, I would say that we probably, at Valley View, have the best record over the last 38 years for a public school.

Jerry Pickard : 40:54

Yeah, you know, but it's you know it's pretty prolific, yeah, but like you can't go, a lot of the kids like can't pay the $90 a lesson to go to Birchwood, yeah, $90 an hour, you know.

Joe Van Wie: 41:11

And that's 90 bucks an hour to get a private lesson in tennis.

Jerry Pickard : 41:15

Yeah, and who's?

Joe Van Wie: 41:16

given the lesson, or like how old? Are the, the, the trainers? Are these young guys or?

Jerry Pickard : 41:20

some of them are like uh, up in, or or they have like nowadays there's a lot of foreign people up that are up in Birchwood doing it. A girl from Dunmore who's 25, anastasia, she's up there, I think.

Joe Van Wie: 41:40

Does tennis have pros, like golf Like? Is there like a club pro teaching or are these? Just how does that work?

Jerry Pickard : 41:48

Yeah, well, the guys that own it, like Bill Stege and his daughter, they they run Birchwood. Okay, you know they've been around. Joel McNulty from Scranton runs the Scranton tennis club. You know he w he was a coach for many, many years but he's the pro up there and you know they run a nice program at the Scranton Tennis Club. That's pretty affordable for the local tennis players and they have three clay courts up there and they run a nice summer program. So if anybody's interested in learning how to play tennis, you know they should go up there. They have men's women's, they have tennis and you know they should go up there. They have a. They have men's women's.

Joe Van Wie: 42:31

They have tournaments, you know 78 seasons jr, and I want to do a thought exercise. This could have been a life that never was. Oh yeah, in 1983 that could have, and then even in 1984, being around for a year and making one decision to not go further in real recovery, what you described as the awakening you could have working steps. None of this would have happened.

Jerry Pickard : 42:55

Oh no, I wouldn't have been probably around past 86 or 87.

Joe Van Wie: 43:01

So this is just phenomenal the lives that could be touched by one person being in recovery, that could be touched by one person being in recovery and when you were talking earlier about shame emptying the bowl, just this overwhelming intrusion of thoughts that we call negative. This is the real curiosity for me in my meditation. These thoughts are rarely chosen, they arrive, and what we do choose where I would say a person has agency is where attention can be drawn onto thoughts. But you can't pick thoughts, they just kind of emerge and then you either get hypnotized by them, start telling yourself a story, Start telling yourself a story, Some of those thoughts when the words should, could have, this would have happened.

Joe Van Wie: 43:53

This creates shame and torment and they're only words that exist in kind of like language. They don't exist in reality. There's no such thing as would or could or should have happened. It never has happened. There's only exactly what happens, and your description earlier was that you got aligned spiritually, emotionally, with only one life. I saw I was a lousy father. I just said this is true, but doesn't have to be true of moving forward. You can't get to what exactly is happening without admitting honestly what exactly happened.

Jerry Pickard : 44:32

Right. So that's the importance of confessing yeah, okay, of doing your fifth step, of doing your complete moral inventory in your fourth. So when you're doing the fourth and fifth, you know, it tells us after the fifth step that as we became okay with ourselves, now we move out towards God and others. You know, because we're satisfied with what we have done in the complete moral inventory and so on. But as far as the mind goes, I think that when we develop the ability to observe what we're thinking and to look at it, to separate our mind from it because I've learned that I'm not my mind, yeah, I'm not what I'm thinking, you know.

Jerry Pickard : 45:22

And so, like guilt, you know, I don't feel, I don't do guilt, you know, because guilt is only a thought I create. If I'm feeling guilt, I'm creating all that and then that's my self-imposed crisis becomes guilt. So I don't have to do that, so I can look at something and look at my thoughts and say, wow, I'm still nuts and let it go. But you have to have something to let it go to. And that's where, that's where my belief in, in, in god comes and and that I could do that. But but I under.

Joe Van Wie: 46:05

You're right about shame and stuff like that yeah, there's a language to shame and it has to. It's a language of regret and you have to use those words. I could have. I should have. This should have happened. This should have been my life if, if only something else happened. There's no place where other things happen. There's only only one thing happening, right, exactly.

Jerry Pickard : 46:29

So that's where the blame comes in. Yeah, it's crazy, you know. That's why, in the fourth step, right where the dishonesty part of the fourth step tells us that you know we're being dishonest. You know people think that when they're going through this, well, dishonesty is lying and all that kind of stuff. It's not that. It's us giving power to someone else to affect our security, our ambitions, our self-esteem and our personal relationships. That's what it teaches us. So if I'm giving someone power to do that, I'm being dishonest to myself because I should be okay with me. If I'm okay with me, what someone else says shouldn't affect me and I should allow them to be who they are.

Joe Van Wie: 47:19

When you're taking someone through the steps and just a note like a base. Here we're talking about four character defects AA likes to outline four selfishnessness, and they tackle this idea of resentment, and then this idea of fear, and then the last one's, dishonesty, and at first glance it could just easily be chalked up to a line cheating and you described it in a more meaningful contextual way.

Joe Van Wie: 47:47

Do you think it's? Do you? Do you see people struggle with trying to understand AA's meaning of dishonesty? That you are believing the world is to blame for how you feel and what your life is?

Jerry Pickard : 47:59

No, because that goes back to the one-on-one that you were talking about before. It goes back to that. It goes back to that. When you're doing the one-on-one, you're using your experiences to explain what that means. You know, so that's easier for someone to understand, and then it clicks.

Joe Van Wie: 48:20

It's better than the room of 30 people admitting you don't know what.

Jerry Pickard : 48:23

I'm not sure what you're all talking about.

Joe Van Wie: 48:25

They're words I understand. I just don't know if we all sometimes you know when a newcomer doesn't understand contextually, the dishonesty is. You said it earlier. I am not my thoughts.

Jerry Pickard : 48:37

Right, right. So you're not. So how about when you think you know what someone else is thinking about you?

Joe Van Wie: 48:46

Oh yeah, it's called mental illness anywhere else, but I've been saying right, but.

Jerry Pickard : 48:51

but we're convinced that that's what they're thinking.

Joe Van Wie: 48:54

I'm convinced of it, if, even if I haven't seen them in 10 years, like there's almost a childlike quality to my alcoholism, substance use disorder, that my relationships are frozen in my memories and I still, if I go back to these relationships, I never evaluate it like oh my God, that's crazy to think that way. This person's even considered and we don't notice it when it's making us sick. But when you finally wake up or you're writing it and you talk to another person, you realize, holy God, this is what really happens in my mind. This is insanity.

Jerry Pickard : 49:29

Right. So that's why it's so important to observe what you're thinking. You know, if you could get that, take that step back and do it. But sometimes we dive right in there and then it's wow, what's going on. You know, but you just think of all the behaviors that those thoughts precipitate behaviors. So how many times have you said, you know, like say, you had a girlfriend or something like that, and in your mind you believe she's cheating on you and she's not?

Jerry Pickard : 50:01

Yeah, but you do that right and it's so nuts. It is what follows that, like you know it's so nuts. It is what, what? What follows that? Like you know it's. It's just crazy. But and when you talk to guys and you're sharing this with them, they get it because they've done it. Yeah, you know, and that's why it's so important that you know if you want to like you were saying before what Bruce said you do the 12 steps right and you have to experience that. So if you're sitting down with someone and as you go through that, it says as the result of the steps, we had that spiritual awakening, which is a change in personality, so we change, we automatically change.

Joe Van Wie: 50:51

Yeah, yeah, it's almost effortless. If you do it that way, If you do it in order, the change is effortless, it happens.

Jerry Pickard : 50:58

Right, it's guaranteed.

Joe Van Wie: 51:01

It's the base education. I think what most good therapy outside of AA is that thoughts like to put them in this order. Thoughts create emotions, emotions drive behaviors and action. And by the time people end up in treatment or the crisis that would push them towards recovery, all they could see is the behaviors and there's just this world of misunderstanding. Why can't I change my behaviors? Because by the time you notice them, you're already doing something, it's too late. So it almost looks like free will doesn't exist Like this.

Joe Van Wie: 51:34

This hypnosis is taken over an individual, and this can happen with behaviors even in recovery, that you're not aware of second behaviors. But if you early on, through the act of emptying that bowl, interrupt it to the base of where these things begin Thoughts, thoughts. You're not picking, thoughts pop in the head, but if they stay there long enough, you tell a story to yourself and that story will become emotional and exciting. And if it's exciting enough, I better do something about this. They are cheating, they are thinking about me, they are talking about me, let me go do something. And then the action looks insane because it's all Right.

Jerry Pickard : 52:12

Because it became real. Yeah, you actualized madness yeah.

Joe Van Wie: 52:17

I. I think that's what people feel. They that's the first part of an awakening. It's okay. The drugs are gone. You know this weird solution I thought I found an alcohol, cocaine, heroin. That's gone. Why am I still suffering? Or if because I, these thoughts are just dominating the person now.

Jerry Pickard : 52:41

Right, that's because that's their conditioning, though. Right, that's why he got high and drunk. That's because of your condition to do that. You know, even like with, say, self-pity. Right, it's so easy to think yourself into self-pity, but the scary thing about it is it gets comfortable real quick. Yeah a romantic.

Jerry Pickard : 53:10

And then when you're there, you know it's like, wow, like I used to think in early sobriety. You know I'd say, boy, like two bottles of the golden nectar would be nice and just sit in the couch and chill out, you know and would you put the allman brothers on?

Joe Van Wie: 53:25

yeah, what would you put?

Jerry Pickard : 53:29

yeah the out. What's their sign with? Uh, sweet melissa, yeah, or carrying the cross, that was them right. Yeah, yeah, or suffering with the cross, or whatever. But so that happens, but it's the way we think.

Joe Van Wie: 53:46

We're blinded down a bit. I want to maybe just probe one thing. You got to meet BF Skinner right. Yep, who's?

Jerry Pickard : 53:55

BF Skinner. Bf Skinner is a behaviorist, a well-known behaviorist.

Joe Van Wie: 54:00

And he's kind of basically, you meet him, psych you have positive reinforcement and so on, to change your behavior, and this is Psych 101. He's kind of fundamental with classic research. You mentioned conditioning earlier. That's why it popped in my head how the hell did you meet BF Skinner and get involved? You were involved in some of the capturing of this data and research of some of the experiments.

Jerry Pickard : 54:26

Right, I was teaching in Dover, new Jersey, in special ed and Dr Carlo Richel was a behaviorist who was also teaching with me and he was doing a study for a psychology magazine, and BF Skinner was our mentor. And what we were doing, we used to have to ride the bus home with our students. So then they were unruly, and so on. Then they were unruly and so on. So we were trying a program with eight-track tape players that had just come out. Then this was like in the early 70s. So we had a tape player in the bus and what we would do we would play the music, but as a negative behavior happened, we would pull the tape out. Yeah, and we would hit. I used to wear six golf watches right To time To count the behaviors like girl standing up right, girl screaming out right and girl boy, girl, boy, girl leaving their seat and so on. So we would count those and we did that for a year, a year, one year.

Joe Van Wie: 55:49

For the school year and B of Skinner came. Did he do the preparation? No, no.

Jerry Pickard : 55:55

He came. He would come in and see what data we had and so on, and show us how to set it up and like for the article and all that.

Jerry Pickard : 56:05

But he would come to our house. You know, he would come to our house on the weekends and what was he like? He was a good guy. He was a little like I used to think he was weird, but he had, he sees him Right. But everything, everything, one thing about everything was a behavior to him. Yeah, you know, oh, yeah, you know. It was like, like, say, one day I was, I bought Capoletti's back here and I was cooking the Capoletti's in the chicken soup, right, and he was going well, why did how come the water was boiling? Was it boiling enough? And so you know what I mean. So when do you put them in? Why did you put them in at that time? Everything, every behavior was. Why did you do that? Why did you do that?

Joe Van Wie: 56:53

You know what his real name was? Burris Burris Frederick Skinner. Yeah, yeah, yeah, really strange guy. Harvard.

Jerry Pickard : 57:01

He was good, though you know he was a nice guy. He's fundamental to yeah, but he was a nice guy, but he was out there you know, he was out there, I used to ask him about, like, what he thought about LSD and what did he think, Things like that you know. He said, well, those were just theories you know, he was an atheist. The change of the mind from taking the chemical you know.

Joe Van Wie: 57:31

Well, that's the funny thing, he didn't have access. There wasn't good data then. But, you know it's not a hallucination, it's just a change of perception and timing. You know, if I have a fever, I'm having hallucinations and my brain's getting detoxified that I'm creating a manifestation.

Joe Van Wie: 57:47

But BF Skinner it's interesting, one of my favorite people that study not behavioralism but AI and cognition would go back and look at Skinner who's saying the environment conditions most behaviors. So he looks at it almost as software. You, this is um yosha bach and your brain is this hard drive. It cultures the software you download, the conditioning and out churns behaviors. Where is the will in this? Where is volition? You know, and I think the steps are still relevant in that kind of dreadful outlook, which has a ton of accuracy, that humans could wake up. You could wake up.

Joe Van Wie: 58:33

The real sense of self is the same self you have and that's why I feel connected to you. Anytime I see in a room is that we're aware of an idea of Jerry Pickard, I'm aware of an idea of Joe Van Wee, but it's not me. Who I am is connected to you. We got a spirit or this idea of awareness that is almost universal, like it's. It's, it's accessible to all of us. And I don't want to sound like I'm not a religious person, I'm not part of any, but I know I share that with you. Sound like I'm not a religious person, I'm not part of any, but I know I share that with you every time I see you and I always look forward to running into you.

Jerry Pickard : 59:11

And the basis of all that is, joe, that you're okay with yourself. You know what I mean. If you're not okay with yourself, you don't have that spirit no, you don't, because you can't give it away then you know Well, jerry, you're an asset to this community and I personally want to thank you.

Joe Van Wie: 59:30

I had a really demoralizing relapse after some period of sobriety. When I came back that first year, I was really anxious, I was really toxic, but I was really desperate. I really wanted help and I didn't know how to even talk at meetings or make friends anymore people I even knew. You were very kind to me down at that 9 am morning meeting and it meant the world to me and I never get to thank you enough. You made me feel really welcome coming back. Thanks, buddy. Well, I'd like to have you on again. Man, you want to grab some pizza? I just saw pizza go by the window.

Jerry Pickard : 1:00:08

They dropped off some pizza. You know it's a pleasure being here and you know, just thank God for those people that helped me. And you know, Bruce, and I have all the pictures from Bruce. I said to him one time, just this last Bruce story right here is I was taking a smoothie and this guy, Dave, and a guy, Sam, through the book, and the three of them went to jail. We were all on fourth steps and the three of them went to jail. We were all on fourth steps and the three of them went to jail. On friday, same friday, they got, they were all dirty and they had their blood tests through drug court and everything. And I said to bruce I said boy, I said he said all you could do is, and he gave me my anniversary was coming up. He gave me a picture and on the back it said that line in the book don't be discouraged, there's someone out there desperate enough that wants what you have to offer. And he couldn't stop laughing. You could see him right. Well, he was a great man.

Joe Van Wie: 1:01:23

Yeah, he was. I miss him often. I think about him a lot here.

Jerry Pickard : 1:01:26

When he came here right when he came here people didn't like him because he did the big book, yeah, and that's because none of them knew anything about the steps.

Joe Van Wie: 1:01:40

Let me tell you something. I was 16 when I came to AA. I was in the nativity group. I meet Bruce. I was floundering. After a year I had a sponsor great guy called him every day. I couldn't tell him that Bruce was taking me through the steps. Right, yeah, I know, or I'd get in trouble I'd be like ostracized and Bruce saved my life or I'd get in trouble, I'd be like ostracized and Bruce saved my life. Bruce was the only reason AA made sense to me and Bruce was, I think, the most formational person I've ever met.

Jerry Pickard : 1:02:14

He was like a father to me since I was 16. I told him when we were. I said I was explaining. I said, bruce, the connection between the second, third, sixth, seventh and tenth step right and we were talking about that. And the next day he comes into the 7 am meeting and he gives me a coffee cup. That was his right, With the third step printed on one side and the seventh on the other.

Joe Van Wie: 1:02:44

Yeah, he was a beautiful guy, right, he was part of every like substantial point in my life. I don't think there was ever a time I wasn't talking to him. Even when I relapsed, I talked to him every week at the house.

Jerry Pickard : 1:03:02

Well, sure.

Joe Van Wie: 1:03:02

He was my friend.

Jerry Pickard : 1:03:03

The same thing happened here with Smoothie. You know what I mean. I learned that from Bruce. I've been with Smoothie 20 years now.

Joe Van Wie: 1:03:12

I love Smooth. He's doing great.

Jerry Pickard : 1:03:14

Yeah, so you know, the main thing is that the example that he set for us, you know it was real.

Joe Van Wie: 1:03:25

Yeah.

Jerry Pickard : 1:03:25

You know, and it was meant for him to be in Scranton, to come to Scranton, I believe that I remember when he was up in the nursing home and Eric told me. Eric said don't bring him, like he was dying. Then he said don't bring him any munchkins. So I only bought 60. Oh man, and I sat there and ate the 60 with him. But that was cool, he was a good guy.

Joe Van Wie: 1:04:02

Yeah, I think about him a lot, since I've had kids, and I would just want to make him proud that I was drinking when he died. He knew that and we were talking about it on his deathbed.

Jerry Pickard : 1:04:14

Up at our meeting, right, we have a big celebration in October, right, that we have to go up into the church, like we have 14 guys that celebrate and we have every year we have everybody in the group in our group stand up. Who has, like, how many people were taken through the book by Bruce, right, wow. And then how many people so those the Bruce through the book by Bruce, right, wow. And then how many people? So those guys would stand up and then how many people were taken through the book by any one of these guys? And they would stand up, and then all of a sudden it's like the whole room's up, you know, besides the parents and stuff like that, but everybody, everybody has gone through the steps because of him, bruce. Yeah, you know we talked the tree. You know the tree.

Joe Van Wie: 1:05:10

I was on his wall on a tree. I don't know if you've been in his living room.

Jerry Pickard : 1:05:15

Yeah, up at the Hotel German.

Joe Van Wie: 1:05:17

There's a picture that he kept in his living room of a guy on a cross hanging from a. That was my Easter card to him. Right, it was me. Yeah, it was still friend, but that's what I keep in my office there. Right there, I'll kind of end with this Bruce who we're talking about. Anyone who's not familiar now. And Bruce was a really instrumental person in helping people go through the steps in Scranton for a couple of decades in a way that was just foreign here. That was more about fundamental AA and going through the steps.

Joe Van Wie: 1:05:54

But Bruce, his career. He was a pretty remarkable, notable architect and some of his designs include Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, fordham Law School, the Boulder and Denver Colorado Museum, multiple ski chalets all over the West Coast. He was a highly desired architect and what I have on my wall in my office I'm pointing to, which you can't see, is the original draft to redo the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. And that's one of Bruce's jobs, which he did, you know, a really unbelievable job that's notable all over the world in the field. But it was the Bob's Tisch School, cbs Broadcast School. When Bruce redesigned it it became Tisch School of the Arts at NYU that's the first draft of it and he just scribbles all over it to give it to me.

Joe Van Wie: 1:06:49

On one of my anniversaries Break a leg, you're back on Broadway, and that was when I moved back to New York. He gave that to me as a gift. I think of him a lot, so we'll miss him. So, jerry, do you want to get some pizza? It's getting late. I got some pizza. Well, that's another episode of All Better, all right, man, thank you for having me.

Joe Van Wie: 1:07:17

I'd like to thank you for listening to another episode of All Better. Thank you for listening to another episode of All Better. You can find us on allbetterfm or listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, iHeartRadio and Alexa. Special thanks to our producer, John Edwards, and engineering company 570 Drone. Please like or subscribe to us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter and, if you're not, on social media, you're awesome. Looking forward to seeing you again. And remember, just because you're sober doesn't mean you're right.