Matt Talbot
1856-1925 19th century
Starting again one day at a time; a deliverance not told but held.
Who was Matt Talbot?
A labourer on the Dublin docks, he was drinking by twelve and spent fifteen years selling his boots for a glass. At twenty-eight, on a day when no one would stand him a drink any longer, he pledged abstinence for three months, then for life, and kept it for forty-one years. He worked, paid back his debts, gave away his wages, slept on a plank, and collapsed in the street one Sunday morning on his way to Mass.
In their own words
Never be too hard on the man who can't give up drink. It is as hard to give up the drink as it is to raise the dead to life again. But both are possible, and even easy, for Our Lord.