The Three-Fold Illness – Big Book Workshop – Eufaula, AL – Part 4 of 11 – Jim P.

First, from an alcoholic, if you're like me, you know, you're going to be restless, irritable and discontent. Now, if You go into an AA meeting for your first time or your first week and You just have detoxed or You just came into an AAA meeting like me and You're dying and You'Re sitting there looking at all these people laughing and having fun and having a great life and You like, nah, they're really drinking on the side and then they're coming to meetings, you know. No, they're not. No,they're not They have found a way to deal with reality without killing themselves and that's what I had to do. I hadto find something to fill that hole in my gut. Now, he just walked us through a drinking spree. You know, after this it sums to the desire again. Step one The first drink comes from the mind the obsession and the phenomenon of craving develops and the allergy takes over. As important as it is to understand that the allergy of the body, my real problem, the book is going to tell me, centers in my mind rather than my body. I can never change the allergy but if I never put the first drink in, the allergy never develops. So even though I didn't try when it talks more about alcohol and countless vain attempts to attempt to drink like other people, I just never... I was different. I wasn't an alcoholic. You know, I drank every day. I drank for the effect produced by alcohol. I drank forever, 30 years. But because I got up every morning, I didn't have the jitters, I went to work, I made a good living, I couldn't possibly be an alcoholic until late-stage alcoholism started doing things to me that I couldn' t explain and I couldn''t control. And when I walked into an AA meeting, my first AA meeting and somebody said, well, just don't drink today and come back tomorrow. and when I came back the second day I realized I can't do it I can' t do this and it was 27 days of going to a meeting every day swearing I was not going to drink that night and by 7 o'clock that night I was blacked out and I swore I wasn't going to do it I prayed but I wasn' t doing anything else I wasn´t doing any action to try to keep me sober Okay, he told us what we were going to have to do. I forgot to tell everybody to turn off their cell phones, didn't I? Okay, that's all right. He tells us what we have to have an entire psychic change. We have to have a spiritual experience. And so on the top of page XXI, 31, it says, What is the solution? And he says, Perhaps I can best answer this by relating one of my experiences. Although one year prior to this experience, a man was brought up to be treated for chronic alcoholism. He had been partially recovered from gastric hemorrhage and seemed to be a case of pathological mental deterioration. He had lost everything worthwhile in life and of only living one might say to drink. He frankly admitted and believed that for him there was no hopelessness. Following the elimination of alcohol, drying him out, and finding that there was no permanent brain injury, he accepted the plan outlined in this book. He accepted the plans outlined in the book. Now, he followed the directions. He followed the specific instructions he followed the path thoroughly and a year later he called upon him to see him and I experienced a very strange sensation this is Dr. Silkworth still I knew the man by name and partly recognized his features but there was all resemblance ended from a trembling despairing nervous wreck had emerged a man brimming over with self confidence and contentment I talked with him for some time but was not able to bring myself to feel that I had known him before to me he was a stranger and so he left me. A long time has passed with no return to alcohol. That's one. And then he thinks of another guy that came to him. He says, when I need a mental uplift I often think of another case brought in by a physician prominent in New York. The patient had made his own diagnosis and decided his situation was hopeless. Had hidden in a deserted barn determined to die he was rescued by a searching party and in desperate condition brought to me following his physical rehabilitation he had a talk with me in which he frankly stated he thought the treatment was a waste of effort unless I could assure him which no one ever had that in the future he would have willpower my willpower to resist the impulse to drink you know I've got tremendous willpower And there are people that say, well, alcoholics are weak-willed people. We are not weak-willed people. We are strong people. I mean, we will knock over mountains to get a drink. You can't tell me I'm weak- willed. I was sick, and that's what he's explaining to me. I was sickness. I had an obsessive mind, and I had a physical allergy. His allergic problem was so complex, this is the bottom of the page, and his depression was so great that we felt his only hope would be through what we then called moral psychology spiritual awakening and we doubted if even that would have any effect alright however he did become sold on the ideas contained in this book he's not had a drink for a great many years I see him now and then and he's a fine specimen of manhood as one could wish to meet now Now, willpower and frothy emotional appeal didn't work for me. The 12 steps are designed to get rid of my conflict, tension, anxiety, guilt, remorse, all those things. That's exactly what they're for. It's to give me a course of action that I can use to be free of negative emotions and allow me to be happy choices free, like it says in the book. now that we understand what to expect from a psychic change they're going to tell me for the second time what won't work human power, willpower he just said unless you can tell me that my willpower will keep me from a drink it's a waste of time but what he did was he got sold on the idea that was contained in this book and then he never drank again this to me is pretty important because it's the last sentence of Dr. Silkworth's thing and it says I earnestly advise every alcoholic now remember this book was being mailed to alcoholics in 1939 when the book was published this was an original 12 step call people would write to GSO or the Alcoholic Foundation, whatever it was called at that time. They would send in $3.50 and they would send them a book. This was what they had to get sober. There weren't meetings. There were people to sponsor anybody. There was 40 people when they started thinking about the idea to write the book. There Was About 84 85 first 100 when they wrote the book and so there weren't a lot of places to go get recovery through this program. You got the book mailed to you You read the book from beginning to end and you implemented those steps into your life and you could recover. Nowadays, it takes meetings for a lot of people. It takes hearing something over and over from different people before I understand it. It takes meetings from me to find other people to work with which is what the 12-step tells me to do. I earnestly advise every alcoholic to read this book through And though perhaps he came to scoff, he may remain to pray. And that's exactly what we're getting ready to get into in a few minutes. That is the solution right there. Now, I just want to run through a couple of things that we're going to get into in just a few moments. But these are called founding moments of the big book. One, it's when Roland Hazard meets Dr. Carl Young and we're going to read about him on page 26-27 and what Young told Roland and we'll read it again is you have the mind of a chronic alcoholic. I have never seen one single case recover where that state of mind existed to the extent that it does in you and it goes on Roland felt that the gates of hell had closed on him with a clang. When Bill W. meets with Dr. Silkworth at Towns Hospital and we're getting right into that in a minute, six or seven. He shares the details of a chronic alcoholic's illness in detail. Bill describes his bottom on page six, the remorse, horror, and hopelessness, and then he hits his bottom and he has his ego deflation at depth. A little bit further on in eight, nine, and ten, Bill meets with Evie T., Evie Thatcher, in November of 1934, and Bill talks about, he was sober, I was amazed, And that's the first record in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous of one alcoholic sharing with another alcoholic who hit bottom. And it takes Bill about another month for him to actually get it. He has one more visit to the hospital. Bill expands on Evie's spiritual experience in meetings with Dr. Sam Schumacher. He was with the Oxford Group. He was the American director of the Oxford group who assisted Bill in the formation of the 12 Steps of AA, And then we're going to find that when Bill W. 12-Steps Dr. Bob in Akron, Ohio in 1935, they both stayed sober for the rest of their life. And Bill said of Dr. Bobby, The man did not fully realize what it meant to be an alcoholic, and he was a medical doctor. One alcoholic sharing his spiritual experience with another alcoholic who has bottomed out or has deflation at depth. and that's going to be pretty much it. I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to read a couple of things, and we'll take a 10-minute break. The physical addiction, when Dr. Sook was sharing it with Bill, we believe and so suggested a few years ago that the action of alcohol on these chronic alcoholics is a manifestation of an allergy and it's limited to this class and never occurs in the average tempered drinker they chronic alcoholics are restless irritable and discontented unless they can experience this ease a sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks drinks that they've seen others taking with impunity and then the phenomenon of craving that physical craving developed these out allergic types could never safely use alcohol in any form at all and once Once having formed the habit and found they cannot break it, once having lost their self-confidence or reliance on human things, their problems pile up on them and they become astonishingly difficult to solve." What that's telling me is, once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. It'll say that in the book here in a little while too. It tells me why I drink, essentially because I like the effect produced by alcohol. I denial the cessation is so elusive that while I admit it's killing me, it's injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. So, you know, that's really the highlight of Dr. Silkworth and really without him explaining what he had seen and what he had worked with through all those years and with Bill three different times in the hospital that he realized that it was going to take something greater than the medical profession could provide. And he wasn't sure what it was. In a few minutes, we'll read Bill's story and we'll see where Ebi comes back into his life. Ebi is now going to the Oxford group. He's sober and he'll be carrying a message to Bill somewhere in the next few pages. So why don't we do this? Why don't you take a 10-minute break, and then we'll come back and we'll start on Bill's story. All right. Okay, get them all. Jonathan, I don't think this is even the face of the catalog yet. Can you go online? You can go online. You can order one from there. Yeah, Amazon.com. All right, let's go ahead and start. We're going to start on Bill's story, and that's page one. And I want you to remember that the first two chapters is to convince us of one thing. The first two chapter is to convince us what is the problem. Step one. And now that we've read Silkworth to explain the problem from a medical perspective, now we're going to have a textbook example of a person who is afflicted with the very conditions the doctor describes in the doctor's opinion. The purpose being that hopefully I can identify, you can identify we can identify with Bill's experience. As we go through Bill's story we'll see where Bill exhibits the obsession of the mind then where he exhibits the physical allergy and we'll also see the progression of alcoholism and where it leads. And through pages 1 through 8, let's see if we can relate to Bill's drinking experience at all. Bill's story. War fever ran high in the New England town to which new young officers from Plattsburgh were assigned and we were flattered when the first citizens took us to their home making us feel heroic. Here was love, applause, war, moments sublime with intervals hilarious. I was part of life at last and in the midst of the excitement I discovered liquor. I forgot the strong warnings and the prejudice of my people, his family, concerning drink. In time we sailed for over there, that was England. I was very lonely and again turned to alcohol. And he went to a Winchester Cathedral in England. And if you've ever seen it, it is a magnificent place. And outside, I've got a friend who sends out a daily talk down in South Florida, a guy named Tom, and I got a picture of him recently where he was over there visiting and he's standing next to this tombstone. And it says, Here lies a Hampshire Grenadier who caught his death drinking cold small beer. A good soldier has never forgot whether he died by musket or by pot. And Bill said, It's an ominous warning which I failed to heed. And, you know, they're over there. Bill's feeling great. He's in a leadership position. He's an officer, and he figured that when he got back home, he was going to be a leader. He was goingto be on top of the world. And so he took a page two. I took a night law course and obtained an appointment as an investigator for a surety company. The drive for success was on. I would prove to the world I was important. I would prove to the world I was important. Now, is that an ego statement? That's an ego. My work took me about Wall Street and little by little I've been interested in the market. Many people lost money but some became very rich. Why not I? So I studied economics and business as well as law. Potential alcoholic that I was he was 22 years old potential alcoholic that I was, I nearly failed my law course. At one of the finals I was too drunk to think or write. Though my drinking was not yet continuous, not yet continuous, it disturbed my wife. We had long talks where I would still her foreboding by telling her that men of genius conceive their best projects when drunk. Yeah, right. The most majestic construction of philosophy thoughts were so derived by people being intoxicated. Yeah, that really helped Lois a lot. Lois spent five years trying to help Bill get sober and stay sober and Lois couldn't do it for all the emotional appeal she couldn't I don't know how many of you know how important it is I'm in South Alabama right now I know you all know how important it is when you write in the family bible you know you write births you write deaths you write marriages things like that but if you write a solemn pledge never to drink again in the family bible and put your hand on that bible I know that religious people say that's it he will never drink again Bill did that twice Bill did that twice and and that's that's somebody who I would think was an alcoholic by the time I completed the course I knew that the law was not for me he never was a lawyer he completed and got a law degree and he wrote like a lawyer in this book he did not write like an 8th grade school teacher which I'd like to tell you that's as far as I ever got I really don't like to tell you that, I just tell you that's how far I ever get so some of these words like I did a minute ago I have to just go with what I know not what's there, because I can't read quite as good as Bill can write. But after he got a law degree, he thought it wasn't for him. He really thought Wall Street was the way to do it. And business and financial leaders were his heroes. Out of the allury of drink and speculation, I commenced to forge the weapon that one day would turn in its flight like a boomerang and all but cut me to ribbons. Living modestly, my wife and I saved $1,000. It went into certain securities, then cheap, rather unpopular. I rightly imagined they would someday have a great rise. I failed to persuade my broker friends to send me out looking over factories and management, but my wife and I decided to go anyway. I had developed a theory that most people lost money in stocks through ignorance of market, and I discovered many more reasons later on. So we gave up our position and we rode off on a motorcycle. I don't know if you've ever seen pictures of the little sidecar in the tent that Bill and Lois drove around to these different factories. And he would go, and he would meet the factory workers, and he Would go drink with them. And he Would find out what we now call insider information. And that's why when they talk about it in the book, they talk About stockbroker. Bill was a stockbrocer. He Was not a stock broker. He Was a stock speculator, which is an entirely different thing. A stock broker is somebody else. And a stock speculator is somebody who gets inside information, goes and tries to buy up the stock waiting for this takeover to happen or waiting for something else to happen that's going to improve the stock. And that's what Bill was doing. By the way, that's against the law now. Apparently it wasn't back when he was doing it. They drove around. They had a lot of success. Remember, he was still a potential alcoholic. We covered this on page three. We covered the whole eastern United States in a year and at the end of it my reports to Wall Street procured me a position there and the use of a large expense account. The exercise of an option brought in more money leaving us with a profit of $7,000 for that year. For the next few years, fortune threw money and applause my way. I had arrived. My judgment and ideas were followed by many to the tune of paper millions. The great boom of the late 20s was seething and swelling. Drink was taking an important and exhilarating part in my life. There was loud talk in the jazz places uptown. Everybody spent in thousands and chattered in millions. Scoffers could scoff and be damned. I made a host of fair-weather friends. Fair-weATHER friends. You might want to underline that because they're not there when you quit drinking. My drinking assumed more serious, and this is where he's starting to get the progression. My drinking consumed more serious proportions continuing all day and almost every night. The remonstrances of my friends terminated in a row and I became a lone wolf. He isolated and drank. He didn't have any friends because every time he got drunk, he got in a fight and he just ran all his friends off. So we became what they call a lone wolf drinker. And there's many of us out there. We isolate and we're not hurting anybody, we say. And there is a statistic somewhere, I don't know where it is, that every time that I say I don' t hurt anybody but myself, the average people that we hurt are 25. Our family and our friends, co-workers, people we run into, police officers, things like that. So when I'm telling myself I'm drinking, I'm just hurting myself. That's a lie. There are approximately 25 other people. With me there were more than 25, but that's about the average. Okay, he's drinking every night. He's a lone wolf drinker. There are many unhappy scenes in our sumptuous apartment. There had been no real infidelity for loyalty to my wife, helped at times by extreme drunkenness kept me out of those scrapes. Okay, Bill says there was no real infidelity and Bill writes a book called As Bill Sees It. Lois writes a books as Lois remembers it and they don't actually correspond on that infidelity between the two books but that's as far as I'm going to go with talking about that. In 1929 he contracted gall fever and went to the country to the country, my wife to applaud while I started out to overtake Walter Hagen, a great golfer. Liquor caught up with me much faster than I came up behind Walter. I began to be jittery in the morning, golf-permitted drinking every day and every night. It was fun to cram around at the exclusive course which had inspired such awe in me as a lad. I acquired an impeccable coat of tan one sees upon the well-to-do. the local banker watched me whirl fat checks in and out of the till with amused skepticism. All right, now, he's drinking an awful lot, but he's having the time of his life. He's making a ton of money, and he's Having the Time of His Life until this next paragraph. Abruptly, in October of 1929, hell broke loose on the New York Stock Exchange. After one of those days of inferno, I wove from a hotel bar to a brokerage office. It was 8 o'clock, five hours after the market closed. The ticker still clattered. I was staring at an inch of tape which bore the inscription XYZ32. It had been at 52 that morning. I was finished and so were many of his friends. The papers reported men were jumping to their deaths from the towers of the high finance. That disgusted Bill. He would not jump. He went back to the bar instead of jumping. My friends had dropped $7 million since 10 o' clock that morning So what? Tomorrow is another day. As I drank, the old fierce determination to win came back. Everybody's millions of dollars of paper money had just been lost by these people. And he's back at the bar saying, So what, tomorrow is another thing. I'm just going to drink and I'm going to get more determined than ever. And so he did a geographic change. The next morning I telephoned a friend in Montreal. He had plenty of money left and I thought I'd better go to Canada. I wonder why he wanted to get out of New York when hundreds of his friends had invested millions of their dollars in his stockable ideas. By the following spring, we were living in our custom style. I felt like Napoleon returning to Evelyn. No St. Helena for me. But drinking caught up with me again and my generous friend had to let me go. This time we stayed broke. We went to live with my parents. I found a job, then lost it as a result of a brawl with a taxi driver. Mercifully, no one could guess that I was to have no real employment for the next five years or hardly draw a sober breath. My wife began to work in a department store coming home exhausted to find me drunk and I became an unwelcome hanger-on at the brokerage places. Liquor ceased to be a luxury. These crossed the line. It became a necessity. bathtub gin remember the time right about then it was a prohibition so bathtub gin was around two bottles a day and off of three got to be a routine three bottles of gin a day seems like an awful lot of alcohol to be drinking at me but I guess Bill could handle it sometimes he'd make a small deal and net a few hundred dollars and he'd pay his bills at the bars at delicatesses and this went on endlessly and I began to wake in very early in the morning shaking violently. You know, a tumbler full of gin followed by half a dozen bottles of beer would be required if I was to eat breakfast. Now, you wake up and you're going to eat breakfast and you have to have a tumblr of gin and half a six-pack or a six pack. I'm thinking that you've got a problem. I'm thinkin' you've gotta problem. I still thought I could control the situation. and there were periods of sobriety which renewed my wife's hope. He would stop every now and then. He would drink until he couldn't drink anymore. He would stopped for a short period of time, and then the next paragraph it says gradually things got worse. The house was taken over by the mortgage holder. My mother-in-law died. My wife and my father-in law became ill. Then I got a promising business opportunity. Stocks were at their lower point of 1932, and I had somehow managed to form a group to buy. I was to share generously in the profits. Then, I went on a prodigious bender and the chance vanished. And he has it all set up. He has all these people ready to invest in him. They're believing in him again and he gets drunk and the Chance to make all this money vanishes. And it says, I woke up, I've got in my little notes, came to, this had to be stopped. I saw, I saw I could not so much as take one drink. I was through forever. Before then, I had written lots of sweet promises, but my wife happily observed that this time I meant business, and so did I. And you can write next to that, self-will avails us nothing, because that's exactly what he's saying. By myself, I am going to stop doing this. He's wrote those promises in the Bible. Lois is believing. I mean, she wanted to believe so bad, you know. You probably wasn't lying at that time, at that exact moment. At that exact point. And shortly afterward, I came home drunk, you now. There had been no fight where it had been his high resolve. I simply didn't know. It didn't even come to mind. Somebody had pushed a drink my way and I had taken it. Was I crazy? I began to wonder for such an appealing, appalling lack of perspective seemed near being just that. Renewing my resolve, I tried again. For some time past, confidence began to be replaced by cocksureness. I could laugh at the gin mills. Now I had what it takes. One day I walked into a cafe to telephone somebody. in no time I was beating on the bar asking myself how it happened. As the whiskey rose to my head I told myself I would manage better the next time but I might as well get good and drunk then and I did. So, you know, he walks into this bar he's got no interest in alcohol he's laughing cockily at the gin mills and he walks in there and in no Time at All he's beating at the bar saying what the hell happened. You know? Now, this is a great paragraph here because it talks about a bottom. It talks about the bottom and you would think this is it. The remorse, horror, and hopelessness of the next morning are unforgettable. I'm going to read that again. The remourse, horror and hopelessnes of the nex morning are unforgivable. The courage to do battle was not there. My brain raced uncontrollably and there was a terrible sense of impending calamity. I hardly dare cross the street, lest I collapse and be run down by an early morning truck for it was scarcely daylight. An all-night place supplied me with a dozen glasses of ale. My writhing nerves were stilled at last. A morning paper told me the market had gone to hell again. Well, so had I. The market would recover, but I wouldn't. That was a hard thought. Should I kill myself? No, not now. Then a mental fog settled down. Mental fog is described as depression, okay? And so he got depressed. At the beginning of that paragraph, remorse, horror, and hopelessness were unforgettable. By the end of that paragraphe, Jim would fix that. So two bottles and off to oblivion. You know, so in the same paragraph, he has hit a bottom. And by the end OF the paragraph, he's drinking again. and he goes on to say that the mind and the body are marvelous mechanisms for mine endured this agony two more years. Morning, noon, and night he drank for two more years after swearing off, after laughing at the gin mills after knowing that he was never going to drink again based on self-will he spent another two years drinking. Sometimes I stole from my wife's cylinder purse when the morning terror and madness were on me. Again, I swayed dizzily before the open window or the medicine cabinet where there was cursing myself for being a weakling. He was chicken to throw himself out a window. That's why he was cursING. And he was too chicken to take the poison that was in the medicine cabin to just commit suicide quickly. He was killing himself slowly. Many people do. Many people do. There were flights from the city to the country, geographical change and back as my wife and I sought escape. Then came the night when the physical and mental torture was so hellish I fear I would burst through my window sash and all. Somehow I managed to drag my mattress to the lower floor lest I suddenly leap. Alright, now here's something real important. because it's in both Bill's story and Dr. Bob's story, all right? And it's called Dual Addiction. We have a singleness of purpose in Alcoholics Anonymous and we have stayed and survived because of that singleness of purpose. But don't let anybody tell you that they won't, both our co-founders weren't dual addicted because it says right there, a doctor came with a heavy sedative. The next day found me drinking both gin and sedative This combination soon landed me on the rocks. Okay? Dr. Bob, if you read his book, he talks about drinking and then to steady his nerves in the morning to do his proctology operation he had to take sedatives. If I ever have to have an operation I want that doctor not to be jittery. You know what I mean? There's a part of me that does not want anybody with a sharp instrument to be Jittery around and that's the region right there. People fear for my sanity so did I. I could eat little or nothing when drinking and I was 40 pounds underweight. We see so many people come into Alcoholics Anonymous and they're just skin and bones. And what it is, is the body stops wanting to metabolize food that we eat. We might eat, but our body doesn't want to metabolized it. It wants to metabolizes the sugar that's in the alcohol. And it's become so good at doing that that the body would rather drink than eat. And that's why we see so may people when they first come in looking horribly thin and we're the only group of people that the worse you look like when you come in, the more we love you. Because you're probably right at that point. You're probably at that jumping off point if you look miserable when you comes in. It's keeping you in. That's what we need to do. We need to keep you in and that's what were trying to do because I want to say that his brother-in-law is a physician and through his kindness and that of his mother he was placed in a nationally known hospital for the mental and physical rehabilitation of Alcoholics. It's Towns Hospital. Under the so-called Belladonna treatment, Belladona comes from the Angel Trumpet plant, and that's what they used to give alcoholics to taper them off. It is similar to methadone being given to a heroin addict. It tapers them down to where they can then get off the methadones. That's what the thought back in 1934. They He thought that Belladonna and all these other things that they were trying would clear his brain. Under the so-called Belladona treatment, my brain cleared. Hydrotherapy and mild exercise helped much. Best of all, I met a kind doctor who explained that though certainly selfish and foolish, he's telling Bill he's certainly selfish or foolish, that he had been seriously ill both bodily and mentally. Bodily, the allergy. Mentally, the obsession. It relieved me to somewhat learn that in alcoholics, the will is amazingly weakened when it comes to combating liquor. It's going to tell us later on in the book that it's going to go away. You know, we're trying to fight liquor when we first come in here. We are trying not to drink one day at a time. But in doing these steps in order and applying these principles in our life, we'll read in about page 84 or 87 and somewhere up there where the thought of drinking has just been removed. It just goes away. Alright? You relieve me, someone alerted the alcoholics will... Oh, no. My incredible behavior in the face of a desperate desire to stop was explained. Understanding myself now, I fared forth in high hope. For three or four months, the goose hung high. He was sober. He went to town regularly and even made a little money. Surely this was the answer, self-knowledge. We started off a minute ago with self-will. Now it's self- knowledge. I can cure myself. I can sponsor myself through this program. I drank for three and a half years sponsoring myself. So self-knownledge gains us nothing. But it was not, for the frightful day came when I drank once more. One drink. The curve of my declining moral and bodily health fell off like a ski jump. After a time, I returned to the hospital. This was the finish, the curtain it seemed to me. My weary and despairing wife was informed that it would all end in heart failure during delirious tremors or I would develop a wet brain, perhaps within a year, psychosis. She would soon have to give me over to the undertaker or the asylum. I don't know how many of you all have ever been to an asylum. I don't know how many of you ever have seen a person who has a wet brain, but let me tell you something. It's a really sad sight. The best I can describe it is in the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Jack Nicholson winds up having a frontal lobotomy and he just walks around not knowing he's even walking around, and that's what a wet brain looks like. It's horrible. They did not need to tell me, I knew, and almost welcomed the idea. It was a devastating blow going to the top of page 8. To my pride, I who had thought so well of myself and my abilities and my capacity to surmount obstacles, was cornered at last. Now I was to plunge into the dark, joining the endless procession of sots who had gone on before me i thought of my poor wife there had been much happiness after all what would i not give to make amends but that was but that over now no words and here it is and this is really you know when when you when you read this if you can't associate with it you might not be done no words can tell the loneliness and despair i found in that bitter morass of self-pity Quick sand stretched all around me in all directions. I had met my match. I had been overwhelmed. Alcohol was my master. My one-on-nine master, because it was for me. Now, this is his second visit. And once he got sobered up, it says, Trembling, I stepped from the hospital a broken man. Fear sobered me for a bit. Fear sobering him for a little bit. It didn't keep him sober. He was afraid to get drunk because he knew he was going to get the wet brain, but that only lasted a short period of time because then came the insidious insanity of that first drink. And that's what we're going to learn about step two is the insanity before the first drink, what we were thinking before we take that first Drink. On Armistice Day 1934, I was off again. Everyone became resigned to the certainty that I would have to be shut up somewhere or would stumble along to a miserable end. How dark it is before the dawn. How true that statement is, how dark it ist before the dawn. In reality, that was the beginning of his last debauch. I was soon to be catapulted, that's a promise there, into what I like to call the fourth dimension of existence. I was to know happiness, peace and usefulness in a way of life that is incredibly more wonderful as time passes now up to this point I hope everyone in this room has been able to say ok, yeah, I've felt that I've dealt with it I've done it more than once because if you can't relate to what's going on in Bill's story it's going to be hard to relate to anything else coming up So if you haven't had the despair, if you haven't have the loneliness, if you haven' t had the heartaches and I'm looking around here and I am saying to myself yep everybody here has been there you know what are we going to do about it? Up to this point I'm going to stop and go to some of my notes and just go over some of the things we've gone up to page eight. On page one it talks about about Bill drinks when times are good and when times are bad. On page two, it says drinking was not yet continuous. He was a potential alcoholic. That was in 1921. In 1921, he was a potential alcoholic. He becomes an inside trader, a visionary. On page three, starts with more serious proportions, continuing all day and night, hard drinking. That's in 1926. That's the progression started for him. Things start to go bad for Bill. Social problems, marital problems, and the onset of withdrawal symptoms, the jitteriness in the morning. On page four, he talks about his determination, you know? And then the progression where the job problems, the financial problems, he loses his jobs, and it just boomerangs on him. Throw a little history piece out here. Bill Wilson was the first person to actually carve and make a boomerang in the United States of America. He did it out of the headboard of one of the old beds at his house, and he tried many times to make a boomerang, and eventually one day he was able to make it work and come all the way back around and almost kill his grandfather. But that's why he used the word boomerrang, and I just thought the little history wouldn't hurt there. on page 5 he's in full alcoholism he's crossed the line no longer a potential alcoholic no longer hard drinking in page 5 it says see the doctor's opinion bottom of page 5 he realizes he can't drink safely I was through forever this time he means business this time he's using willpower and 1930 in Loris' diary she's been trying for 5 years to help him get over his drinking problem and he wants to know where has been his high resolve. He can't explain it to himself why he drinks. I couldn't explain to myself why I picked up that drink that last time. There was just no reason at all other than I looked back and I realized I had not done anything for my recovery. I had stopped drinking for nine months. I had gone to meetings every day. I had prayed every day I had not done one step I was lying to people in the room by telling them I had a sponsor I was sponsoring myself they'd ask me what step I was on I was always on step four it didn't matter what month it was I was still on step 4 I was a liar, a cheater and a thief and I picked up a drink because I didn't ever do anything for my problem and my problem wasn't alcohol it'll tell me later on the problem centers in my mind it's already said it once My problem centers in my mind. He's grinding away with his resolve. He doesn't understand the nature of his illness yet, and then on his own he's powerless. He has an obsession, and then he's off to the races again. Bottom of page six, they talk about weak-willed. Like I said a minute ago, Alcoholics and drug addicts are not weak-willed people. We will move mountains to get that drink when we want that drink. When somebody says, well, it's a bad storm out tonight, I'm not going to a meeting, I always laugh and say, did you ever go drinking in a badstorm? People will say, yeah, I drove drunk in a Badstorm, so why wouldn't you go to a meetings and try to help somebody? Because just being in a meeting sometimes will help somebody. I can attest to the fact that just being in a meeting is doing 12-step work. Not everybody sponsors people, but being in an alcoholics anonymous meeting is an actual form of 12-stepped work. Making the coffee is service work. But sitting in the chair day after day, week after week, staying sober, working this program, going to meetings, and being there when that newcomer comes in the first day and then he comes in a second day and you're still there and he comes into the third day and you are still there and he is looking at you and he's not saying anything but he is like man that person is here every day they must be as sick as me and then you you got Margaret over here with 45 years sitting here today and you know she is here at a meeting she is doing 12 step work so we are not weak willed we will we will do what we can to get our drink he is trying to escape he's not jumping because he wants to he has to know how bad it's getting because he's thinking about jumping that's why he moves to bed downstairs now he's gone to page 7, he's in Towns Hospital he does the Belladonna treatment and it says that he really didn't hit his bottom until we read that part where the doctor came over with a heavy sedative and the next day found me drinking both gin and sedative and that combination soon landed me on the rocks now that talks about his bottom right there in step one Silk Horse is given Silk Horse tells Bill the problem that's step one and what we'll see and I can know everything about my illness the fact that I can't drink safely I know the consequences that's going to happen, but somehow that wasn't enough to keep me from drinking. Because I still had the obsession in my mind. I had never been relieved of that obsession. I had stopped drinking for that long period of time. I thought nine months was a long period de time. For me it was. But I never got over the obsession. And that next morning after I picked up a nine-month chip, I went and bought a half gallon of whiskey and I was off to the races. because I still had that obsession. I still have that obsession, and once I put that first drink in me, I don't know what's going to happen. The bottom of page seven, Bill feels that self-knowledge is enough. Man, you know, self-knownledge will kill you. And then at Bill's bottom, every alcoholic understands is that feeling of pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. Bill has taken step one right there. He is hopeless. He wants to stop, but he doesn't know how. There are people who say relapses is part of the program. It's not. But we ought to cut some of them slack. I do because I was a chronic relapser for three and a half years. I had not hit my bottom until that morning when I knew that it was over for me. And Bob, after Bill talked with him for those hours, Bob relapsed. He didn't stay sober at their first meeting. It was not until June 10th that he had his last drink. In the middle of page 8, we just described insanity. less insane or less whole, okay? And it's going to come up in page 384092 and 150. Dr. Silkworth calls it obsession. Bill calls it the insanity. They mean the same thing. My insanity, my obsession was the thought that I could pick up a bottle after nine months and take a drink. And I'm a chronic alcoholic. There's no way I could take a Drink. so we're going to Bill's going to keep referring to it as insanity and then it'll tell us that you know finally sanity will return on page 85 I think we're gonna do that um you know there are certain things um that I have to do um and what I had to do is I had to let go of the thought that self-will or self-knowledge could help me in any way. I saw the emotional peel. That couldn't keep me sober. Human power, fear, couldn't keeps me sober so nothing in my life and nothing of this world could keep me sober and we're going to find out what I do keeps over and stays over here in a few minutes or maybe we won't find that out now. We might find that out next week. Okay, and I usually stop right about here but I'm not because I'm ahead of myself. I'm going to go on to where Evie comes over. Near the end of the bleak November I sat drinking in my kitchen. With certain satisfaction I reflected there was enough gin concealed about my house to carry me through the night and the next day. He had hidden enough gin around his house to care him through a couple days. My wife was at work. I wondered whether I dare hide a full bottle of gin near the head of our bed. I would need it before daylight. My musings were interrupted by the telephone. The cheery voice of an old school friend asked if he might come over. He was sober, and this was somebody who Bill drank with for years. They drank so much one time they took a plane trip, they landed in a little airplane at the grand opening of an airport up in Rochester or somewhere up there. They were both plastered and they landed the plane safely on this runway with the mayor and the whole town there. And they all came running over to give them great hugs and welcome to be the first airplane to land. Bill and Ebby just tumbled out of the plane onto the ground drunk, you know. And there was a lot of apologies that had to be made after that. But Ebby was a real drunk, and I told you last week in the history that he had driven a car into somebody's house and he was getting ready to be sentenced to jail when Rowan Hazard, who had come back from Dr. Young and been given the word that every now and then people with chronic alcoholism have recovered by a spiritual remedy. and he had joined the Oxford group and another man was in the Oxford group which was a predecessor to Alcoholics Anonymous named Shep and they went before the judge, I think the judge was Shep's uncle or something and they asked if Ebby could be put in their care and the Oxford groups care and the judge said yes and Ebby got sober. Now Ebby learned from the Oxford group that one of the ways that he's got to stay sober is he's gotta carry the message of sobriety to somebody else and so he thinks about Bill and he calls him up and he says can I come over and it was years since I could remember his coming to New York in that condition sober I was amazed rumor had it he'd been committed for alcoholic insanity I wonder how he had escaped he thought he was already in the insane asylum of course he'd have dinner and then we could drink openly then I could drink openly with him unmindful of his welfare I thought only of recapturing the spirit of other days he wanted some joy again there was no joy in Bill's life now I thought only of recapturing the spirit of other days there was that time that we had chartered an airplane to complete a JAG his coming was an oasis in this dreary desert of futility that airplane was the was a trip when you read some of the history the very thing, an oesis drinkers are like that he thought he had a drinking buddy coming over Somebody who drank like him. And the door opened and he stood there, fresh skinned and glowing. There was something about his eyes. He was inexplicit. He was different. He was really different. And what had happened? Now that paragraph right there means so much. Because Evie hasn't said a word. Evie haven't said one word yet to Bill. and Bill sees there's something different about him. He sees this fresh skin, there was something about his eyes. He was really different. What had happened? He pushed a drink across the table. Debbie refused it. Disappointed but curious, I wondered what had gotten into this fellow. It wasn't himself. Come on, what's this all about, I queried. He looked straight at me, simply but smilingly. He said, I've got religion. And that's what Debbie said because that's who the Oxford group was. it was a religious program and Bill said I was aghast so that was it last summer an alcoholic crackpot now I suspected a little crack about religion he had that starry eyed look yes the old boy was on fire alright, bless his heart let him rant my gin would last longer than his preaching and it did but he did no ranting Debbie did no rant in a matter of fact way he told how two men had appeared in court persuading the judge to suspend his commitment that told him of this simple religious idea step three and a practical program of action which became steps four through nine for us. That was two months ago and the result was self-evident. It worked. He'd come to pass his experience on to me and if I cared to have it, I was shocked but interested. Certainly I was interested. I had to be for I was hopeless. Okay? And skipping down, Ebby's talking about, you know, through the next paragraph about the preachers telling him he's got to listen and he just didn't want to hear it. But he goes on to say, I had always believed in a power greater than myself. I had often pondered these things. I was not an atheist. Few people really are. That means blind faith in the strange propositions of the universe originated in a cipher and aimlessly rushes nowhere. My intellectual heroes, the chemists, the astronomers, even the evolutionists suggested vast laws and forces at work. Despite contrary indications, I had little doubt that mighty purpose and rhythm underlay all. How could be there so much precise and immutable law and no intelligence? I simply had to believe in the spirit of the universe who knew neither time nor limitation, but that was as far as I had gone. I want to stop there because I'm going to pick up from there next week. now so far what Bill has talked about and what Dr. Silkworth has talked abou is a two-fold illness an obsession of the mind and an allergy of the body now we're going to find out maybe next week that it's really a three-fold illness and all the way through the doctor's opinion in the first four chapters of the big book, as well as the 12 and 12, it only talks about a two-fold illness. A seemingly hopeless state of mind and body, mental and physical, allergy, physical, obsession, mental. It's when we come to chapter 5, and I'm going to jump ahead, you don't need to, on chapter 5, on page 64. Let me just read what it says. It says, and it's talking about resentment. From it stems all forms of spiritual disease for we have been not only mentally and spiritually ill. No. For we have not, for we are not mentally We have been mentally and physically ill but we have also been spiritually sick. When the spiritual malady is overcome We straighten out mentally and physically. So we have to remember that it's a two-fold illness to a point, and that's what Bill is trying to teach us and the First 100 is tryingto teach us, the obsession and the allergy. But what it's going to show us once we get up there, once we getting into how it works, once we get into step four it's going to tell us that when the spiritual malady is overcome we'll straighten out physically and mentally and you really I really had to get that part of the program before I could really get well before I could recover I had to get well spiritually and that was hard for me because I had no religious upbringing I didn't have a God of somebody else's understanding and next week, because we're going to go faster than I have these past few weeks, we should be in week Gnostics by next week where it gives me the opportunity. Bill will have the opportunity given to him shortly when he stops drinking to choose a god of my own conception. Nobody in Alcoholics Anonymous ever said, I have to believe in Buddha, Allah, Muhammad, Jesus, whoever. Nobody ever said that to me. They said, you can't do this on your own and we can't do it for you. You've got to find a power greater than yourself. And we'll pick up with that next week. This is an AA meeting. I almost forgot. Margaret would have hit me. So we're going to pass the basket. And if you've got a dollar, put it in. If you don't, there's a basket going around right there. Thank you. So We're going to get All the way to page 60 And we're still only going to be talking about The problem and the solution Okay We're gonna be talking About this problem And the solution Steps one and step two All the ways All the first Through the first Sixty pages At page sixty We're gunna make a decision We're guanna be asked To make a decission And then chapters five Six and seven Is what we call the program of recovery alright so why don't we go ahead and we'll close this meeting alright I'm an alcoholic my name is Jim Powers thank you and I'd like to welcome everybody to the third week of the big book study here at the Ufala group of Alcoholics Anonymous and if we would let's take a moment of silent meditation to be used as you see fit and we will open this with serenity prayer serenety prayer God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference alright what we've done so far is we're up to about page 11 in Bill's story and to recap a little bit from last week you know we went through the doctor's opinion and Dr. Silkworth was talking about the obsession of the mind and the allergy of the body and all the way up like I said last week until page 64 it talks about mental and physical allergy the obsession of the mind and the allergy of the body but really when you get to page 64 it says right there for we have been not only mentally and physically ill but we've been spiritually sick when the spiritual malady is overcome we straighten out physically and mentally so what we really have to do is to get well We really have a three-fold disease And we have to get past that mental part And we don't get past That mental part Until we get past the spiritual part Because this is a spiritual program And I want to read something Out of A.A. Comes of Age Because it was something That was important About why the doctor In A. A. Comes Of Age Is when Bill turns over The reins in 1955 And he wrote this book To the Alcoholic Foundation At the time It's now called GSO. But one of the reasons that they wanted to have the doctor start the book was as we look back over the early scenes in New York, we saw often in the midst of them the benign little doctor who loved drunks, William Duncan Silkworth, the chief physician in charge of the Charles B. Towns Hospital in Newark, a man who was very much a founder of AA. From him we learned the nature of our illness. He supplied us with the tools with which to puncture the toughest alcoholic ego, those shattering phrases by which he described our illness, the obsession of the mind that compels us to drink and the allergy of the body that condemns us to go mad or die. And that was why Bill really wanted him to start it off. And up to this point what Bill's been telling us And the way he's writing the book is he's telling us about the problem and then he's tell them about the solution. And he's going to do that over and over again. The problem, the solution, problem, step one, the solutions, step two. And then how do we get to the solution? And so on page 11, it's one of the only times this is mentioned in the book, Bill's saying, now Ebi's there and Ebi was talking to him about religion and he's shocked because he'd never seen Ebi sober in his life and now Ebi's got this look about him and Bill's already said on page 10 that he believed in a power greater than himself he had often pondered these things and he wasn't an atheist and then on page 11 on the top it says to Christ I conceded the certainty of a great man not too closely followed by those who claimed him his moral teachings most excellent for myself I had adopted that those parts would seem convenient and not too difficult, and the rest I disregard. Now, how often do you hear that in Alcoholics Anonymous? You know, I'll do this step, I'm going to do that step, but I'm not doing this step. You know? Piecemeal. This program cannot be taken piecemeal. You take the whole thing or you're going to get drunk. And that's not me making a judgment. That's me reading the book and what the book tells me over and over again. It tells me if I don't do certain things, I'm gonna drink again. Okay, jump down a paragraph. But my friend sat before me and he made the point-blank declaration that God had done for him what he could not do for himself. His human will had failed, right? So, willpower. Human will had failing him completely. And so, Ebi had gone to the Oxford group and had done the six steps of the Oxford Group which wound up turning into our 12-step program. and one of those, the last one of the six steps was to carry the message to others and that's what he's doing with Bill right now. He's sitting there talking to his friend Bill. Doctors had pronounced him incurable. Society was about to lock him up. Like myself, he had admitted complete defeat. Now, the steps as written on the boards just like the traditions as written on the board are condensed from the actual steps in the book. Okay, so emitting complete defeat is powerlessness. But we haven't even got to step one yet. We're still working on problem one and solution one. Had his power originated in him? Obviously it had not. There had been no more power in him than there was in me at that minute. And this was none at all. It began to look as though religious people were right. After all, here was something at work in the human heart which had done the impossible. Now, human heart we're going to learn later on where people have been searching for God in churches and searching in cathedrals and searching wherever they were searching. And it will tell us later on in the book where we're gonna find our God. And so keep in mind the human heart has a lot to do with it. It might be the place where we are going to find our god. My ideas about miracles were drastically revised right then. Never mind the messy past. here sat a miracle directly across the kitchen table he shouted great tidings now you know he's calling Ebi a miracle because Ebi's sitting there clear faced clear eyed sober and he'd been sober for two months and he's carrying the message to Bill after being sober two months anybody ever hear in a room of Alcoholics Anonymous just take your time with the steps you know take one step a month don't go in a hurry that's not the way this program works. This program talks about immediately, right after, words like that. And so in two months, Ebby's carrying the message of recovery to Bill. You know, Dr. Bob did his ninth step on the day he got sober. We didn't have steps at the time, but he made the amends on the date he had his last drink. And so standing around and waiting to do this kills more alcoholics. because they die of untreated alcoholism because they're just waiting and waiting and this is not a waiting or thinking program it's a program of action I saw that my friend was much more than inwardly reorganized he was on a different footing, his roots grasped new soil and in the next paragraph he still talks about how he's still prejudiced about God and he didn't like the idea It's about halfway down. I could go for such conceptions, and anybody can go for these conceptions. It's creative intelligence, universal mind, spirit of nature. But Bill resisted the thought of a czar of the heavens, however loving his sway might be. I have since talked with scores of men who felt the same way. So he wasn't really certain about this God thing. But he could understand the spirit of Nature or creative intelligence. but he just wasn't sure about that. And then this is where it really starts. This is where Ebi says, My friend suggested what seemed a novel idea. And always remember the squiggly lines. Remember I have an 8th grade education coming out of a chain gang. I got a GED. So I call them squigglylines. They're italics. And I call things little snowflakes. Those are called asterisks. And when we get to those, we're going to do that. so bear with me because this was supposed to be written in an 8th grade level and so I'm going to read it as an 8TH grade level in the squiggly lines it says why don't you choose your own conception of God your own perception of God and Bill says that statement hit me hard it melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered for many years I stood in the sunlight at last again squiggly line It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a power greater than myself. Nothing more was required to make my beginning. So willingness was the only thing that was required to make a beginning. And I told you I'm going to talk a lot about three words, honesty, willingness, and surrender when I do this thing. I saw that growth could start from that point. Upon a foundation of complete willingness, again, I might build what I saw in my friend. Would I have it? Of course I would. All right, so he wants us safe, right? And the next paragraph is really talking about step two. Thus I was convinced that God is concerned with us humans when we want him enough. At long last I saw, I felt, I believed scales of pride and prejudice fell from my eyes. A new world came into view. And then he talks about the experience that he had at the cathedral over in England and then he says for a brief moment I had needed and wanted God there had been a humble willingness to have him with me and he came so that willingness to have Him with you He'll come that's what Bill is telling you right there He will come if you ask I've heard people say God's a gentleman He never goes anywhere He's not invited so you need to invite God into your life whatever your conception is and I'm going to really hammer that home that whatever your conception is because it's none of my business. But soon, here he is again. He just admitted complete defeat. He just was convinced that God is with him. But soon his sense of presence had been blotted out by worldly clamors mostly within myself. And so I've admitted defeat. I believe in God. And then I get all tangled up in this obsessive mind and what am I going to do? because I don't have any answers yet. He drank, and so I've been ever since, how blind I've Been. At the hospital, this is the third time he's at the hospital. At the Hospital, I was separated from alcohol for the last time. Treatment was wise, for I showed signs of the delirium tremors. In the next three paragraphs, I'm going to highlight steps 3 through 11 as I see them. There I humbly offered myself to God as I then understood Him. And what's that? Step three. To do with me as He would. I placed myself unreservedly under His care and direction. I admitted for the first time that of myself I was nothing and that without Him I was lost. I ruthlessly faced my sins and became willing to have my newfound friend got the letter F means God right there friend take them away root and branch i have not had a drink since that's steps six and seven right there willing to have him remove my defects of character and humbly ask him my schoolmate ebby visited me in the hospital and he brought him a book and it'll talk about it in a minute and we'll go read some of what's in that book but it's varieties of religious experience and it's a very detailed book and uh you really you really need to study it if you want to read it My schoolmate, Debbie, visited me and I fully acquainted him with my problems and deficiencies. Step five, we made a list of people I had hurt and towards...