Physical Allergy and Mental Obsession – Big Book Is Alive Workshop – Part 4 of 7 – Local AA Speakers

Hi, I'm a recovered alcoholic. My name is Mike Chase. And I'm recovered alcoholic, my name is Joe. So our spiritual duty is to put newcomers' hands in God's hands as quickly as possible. We found this to be the most effective by doing our part to make the Big Book come alive. So as a disclaimer, we're not experts. We are just a couple of recovered alcoholics that love the Big Book. However, we have made our utmost spiritual errand to become as familiar with the history and facts as we can so that we may transmit only the pure message of God to the next untreated alcoholic. In other words, if you see us reading from the Big Books, that means that we're sharing with you what we believe to be the divine solution for alcoholism. If we look up and talk, it means that мы sharing an opinion, an observation or an experience. And feel free to, if what we say up here makes you investigate the history of AA and go out and learn and investigate more, then we're certainly doing what we're supposed to do. So can everybody hear us good in the back and around and stuff like that? Good, thank you so much. Some helpful information has already been given in the format for those who may be unaccustomed to workshop-style study. We hope to educate, challenge, and invigorate your current experience with God. We'd like to encourage our audience to participate as much as possible. Tonight we're going to start with the forward to the second edition, and we aim to jump into the doctor's opinion. But we thank you for giving us spiritual consent to allow God to lead us. So let's do that after the two-minute meditation. Okay. Whenever we're moved to study the Big Book, we usually move into it by starting off with a meditation to allow us to get unhooked from our mind and get a connection with God. So please join us in a two-minute meditation. Don't worry, we have a timer for those of you that aren't accustomed to meditation. It will seem like ten minutes, but it's actually going to be two minutes. And what we're going to ask you to do is sit up straight, get comfortable, concentrate on your breathing, and for the next two minutes try to get a really good connection with God. So when we come out of this, we're focused on what we'll be talking and studying about tonight. So Joe, I want to start the timer. We'll see you guys in two minutes, Close your eyes, make yourself comfortable, concentrate on your breathing and enjoy this moment. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. God, let me lay aside everything I think I know about the Big Book, the 12 Steps, AA, my disease and you, God, for an open mind and a new experience Welcome everybody. Who was here last week? Wow, that's nice to see did. Who doesn't have highlighters? Who wants to have a highlighter, a ruler, and a pen because this is a workshop and we're going to be actively asking you guys to participate. So anybody who doesn't want a highlighter raise your hand. Anybody want a highlighter? Good. We're all set on that area. We are going to tee up a little bit. Last week was our first opportunity to bring ourselves a big sponsorship to you guys and we start out like we normally do. What we do is we have a prayer followed by the previous meditation which gets us centered and quieted and then we always break into prayer and then We Go Into This, a quick overall of what the book is about. Last week we discussed about the forward to the first and started getting the forward at the second. We talked about the great information that they brought to the world in the forward and first edition. We have Alcoholics Anonymous and more than 100 men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body to show other alcoholics precisely Alright, we got it To show other alcoholics precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book so that's a great announcement to the world introduction of the program quote the introduction of us anonymous to the world 16 years later we had to forward to the second edition which was 16 years late or did we bomb or there were successful well we started off with two alcoholics three meetings 16 years later we have 6,000 groups on 150,000 recovered alcoholics I think we've done pretty good in that time space. We talked a little bit about the early program before we had Alcoholics Anonymous and they were all involved in the Oxford style movement and the recovery process and the basic text of that was Bill had mentioned that he was convinced of the need for moral inventory, confession of personal defects, restitution of those harmed, helpfulness to others and necessity of belief and dependence upon God. That was the basis that these guys for work and I'm going to find out later on how Bill is able to expand upon that and, as they like to say, close the loopholes that we could have found but not get that specific vital experience that would be necessary for us. We're going to go to page XIX and why don't we start as we discovered the principles. What we're doing is we talked about the program, we talked About the Solution, this is Alcoholics Anonymous' opportunity to give a little bit of correction of what AA is and they slowly touch on the traditions here. So, page XIX, forward to the second edition. As we discovered the principles by which the individual alcoholic could live, so we had to evolve principles by which the AA groups and AA as a whole could survive and function effectively. It was thought that no alcoholic man or woman could be excluded from our society, that our leaders might serve but never govern, that each group was to be autonomous and there was to be no professional class of therapy. This is where we start actually touching on what the traditions are. There'll be no dues or fees. Our expenses were to be met by our own voluntary contributions. And in case you guys don't know the difference between a donation and a contribution, I was taught that a donation is here's some money, go away. A contribution is I've got $10 now, what are we going to do with it? It'll be part of the solution and part ofthe program. There was to be the least possible organization even in our service centers. Our public relations were to be based on attraction rather than promotion. It was decided that all members ought to be anonymous at the level of press, radio, TV and films. And in no circumstances should we give endorsements, make alliances or enter into public controversies. They had seen what previous organizations had shot themselves in the foot by getting involved in everything from women's suffrage to the temperance drinking. We had found a solution for alcoholism and we were going to stick to that. That was going to be our one thing and we got good at it. This is the substance of AA's 12 traditions which are stated in full on page 561 of this book. Though none of these principles have the force of rules or laws, they've become so widely accepted by 1950 that they were confirmed by our first international conference held at Cleveland. Today, the remarkable unity of AA is one of the greatest assets that our society has. I talked briefly last week about when you're sponsoring guys and you get them through the book and they've got this great relationship with God and they're on fire and they get that adolescent phase of recovery where they think They know everything and the sponsor sort of becomes like dumb and I know what to do, I'll leave you alone. Imagine what 100,000 alcoholics would be like with no traditions and nobody telling us how to behave. It got pretty crazy. While the internal difficulties of our adolescent period were being ironed out, public acceptance of AA grew by leaps and bounds. For this there were two principal reasons. The large numbers of recoveries and reunited homes. These made their impressions everywhere. Of alcoholics who came to AA and really tried, 50% got sober at once and remained that way. 25% sobered up after some relapses, and among the remainder, those who stayed on with AA showed improvement. Now, the specific statistics they're talking about are taken from the Cleveland groups where Clarence Snyder was doing big book sponsorship. He had taken the book and was actually just reading the book with sponsees, and the sponsees even before they got through the steps they had such an influx of new people coming to AA that they were reading the book with new sponsee, well they didn't call them sponseese back then newcomers and they were letting the book do all the work and the success rates when all they had was the big book one alcoholic, one recovered alcoholic working with an unrecovered alcoholic in God. The success rates were amazing and we were making the press was amazed with us we were kicking butt, we were doing really good So we're looking at a 75% success rate and we also mentioned last time that around forward one and two the fellowship used to resemble the program it was solution-based fellowship that used to put emphasis on god and helping others and we've already heard so many references back even in the roman numerals as we start to see this textbook which is going to be our teaching tool as others came to a few meetings and first decided they didn't want the program but great numbers of these about two out three began to return as time passed. They come to AA, they're not ready, they're nicht interested, it's just a little too much for them. They'll be back. You know, hopefully they'll be able to make it back. Another reason for the wide acceptance of AA was the misadministration of friends, friends in medicine, religion, and the press, together with innumerable others who became our able and persistent advocates. Without such support, AA could have only made the slowest progress. Some of the recommendations of AA's early medical and religious friends can be found further in the back of the book. In other words, the book is not controversial about matters medical and religious. It wants to stay out of that controversy. And later on we see that the authors say that they've done their utmost to achieve that ideal. So people are getting a little misunderstood of what Alcoholics Anonymous was at this time. We were sort of like this secret organization. There wasn't much information about us out there. They just saw us sort of meeting and disappearing and coming out. It says right here, AlcoholicsAnonymous is not a religious organization. A lot of people are getting the misconception that we were going to be this religious organization, and we're not. We're just a spiritual-based organization that tells our guys to get involved in any religion that they're currently involved in, and we are not a religion. Neither does AA take any particular medical point of view, though we cooperate widely with the men of medicine as well as with themenofreligion. Alcohol being no respecter of persons, we are an accurate cross-section of America in distant lands, But the same democratic evening up process is now going on by personal religious affiliation. We include Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Hindus, and a sprinkling of Muslims and Buddhists. More than 15% of us are women. I think it's a little better today. Look around the room. At present, our membership is pyramiding at the rate of about 20% a year. 20% to you? I think that's more than... I think they're having more than one sponsor at a time back in those days. You know, they've grown a lot faster. So far, upon the total problem of several million actual and potential alcoholics in the world, we have made only a scratch. In all probability, we shall never be able to touch more than a fair fraction of the alcohol problem in all its ramifications. Upon therapy for the alcoholic himself, we surely have no monopoly. Yet it is our great hope that all those who have as yet found no answer may begin to find one in the pages of this book and will presently join us on the high road to a new career. Mike, can you just turn this down a tad? I'm getting a little echo in the air. Appreciate that. So that was what happened. 16 years later, we're rocking. We have success rates through the roof, getting people happy, joyous, and free, getting connected to God. And we go into the forward to the third edition. Basically, what they're going to talk about there is we've added some stories. We've moved some stories around. We changed some names to the stories. That's cool stuff. Forward to the fourth edition, more general service information. We've added so many stories. What they're trying to do is make the stories in the back more relatable to the general population of today. The guys back in the 40s aren't really like what we have today in the 80s and the 90s when the book got revised a little bit. So that's just basically housekeeping of general service, saying what they've been up to, keeping busy fixing the book up a little before us. Are we ready? I think we're set. Good. So we got this information in the 41st about these guys that stumbled accidentally onto the solution for alcoholism, one of mankind's greatest problems, you know, just stumbled upon it by certain situations that made it lead up. In the second, forward to the second edition, we learned that we had some great success. I hear people say that back in those days, the alcoholics were sort of fanatics, you know, they were out there really just, you know, out there, really beating down the bars trying to get people sober. It really wasn't like that. There was drunks everywhere who were needing help. They had this urgency to get out there and help people because they knew that it was a serious disease. So we're leaving the first and fourth and the second with this little idea that, boy, these guys are just a little fanatic. Well, we're going to get in the doctor's opinion and find out why they're a little fnatic. This isn't a little drinking problem we have. I remember this one guy who was this raging alcoholic, and his mom said, oh, he's just got a little drink problem. He's drinking himself to death. She just never really got it. So we'RE going to go into the doctors and find OUT what this disease is. You know, we just told the world that we've had 160,000 recovered alcoholics. In the first, forward to the first We told how we've come, stumbled across The solution for this We're just a bunch of drunks You know, tooting our own horn We needed to get a doctor By the way, a really renowned doctor To give us some backing To give it some street credit As it is said today So we're going to jump into The things that I get from the doctor's opinion First of all, I'm going to find out That it's a three-fold disease You know I'm gonna learn The first fold of the disease Is spiritual malady Which to me is a disconnection from God The second fold Is the obsession in the mind which is the insanity from a stone, sober brain. I'm going to pick up a drink even though I know what it's going to do to me. And that phenomenon of craving that kicks in that if you're a real alcoholic, you're the only person who's goingto know what that's like. A non-alcoholic will never understand that phenomenon or craving that we go through, which is why they look at us like we're aliens. So carrying through some context that we were going through in our last session, we've got these alcoholics in time before this solution was available. would either die or go permanently insane and become locked up. Alcoholism dates back about 3,000 years on record that we know about. So imagine in the wake of all what was happening, people dying and going insane and being locked up and there being no solution. This is the first time in written history that we know of that the physical factor is documented. We saw from the forewoods that when we got problem, solution, and program of action, these key components to the table of contents that we were enlarging upon, There were two consecutive successes. So we saw the importance of the information in the correct order. Now we're going to get into a little bit more about the phenomenon of craving and the problem, the definition of the problem of what we suffer from. Go for it. Thank you. We of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now when you see we in the Bay Book, especially in this first part of the book, when you say the word we, it's not referring to all of us and this wonderful fellowship we have. We're referring to the first 42, 67, whatever the first hundred number actually is of alcoholics. Their experience, their knowledge and what they went through. So we have Alcoholics Anonymous believe that the reader will be interested in the medical estimate of the plan of recovery described in this book. Convincing testimony must surely come from medical men who have had experience with the sufferings of our members and have witnessed our return to health. A well-known doctor, chief physician at a nationally prominent hospital specializing in alcoholic and drug addiction gave Alcoholics Anonymous this letter. This is basically a letter of endorsement. This is coming from Dr. Silkworth. When the book first came out, it was his opinion and he wasn't really sure about this and he didn't let us use his name in the first few prints because he didn' t want to lose the business that he had and get discredited by the community. after a few quinties he said yeah put my name back in this is good we're going to go with this this is where I usually make my sponsors come up with some unusual accent to make it a little bit more exciting and fun to read we're not going to do that tonight unless there's somebody with a really good Brooklyn accent to whom it may concern I have specialized in the treatment of alcoholism for many years In late 1934, he attended a patient. Although he had been a competent businessman of great learning capacity, yellow underline, I love this part, was an alcoholic of the type I had come to regard as hopeless. Just like today, he was treating alcoholics, heavy drinkers, problem drinkers and he was starting to notice a little bit of difference where these chronic alcoholics and these other alcoholics. He really wasn't able to draw the line yet. I think we can do a little bit more of that today. And Dr. Silkworth is a guy that works with over 40,000 of our type. And like Mike Chase just said, we see the difference in certain people getting sober and others not. And he focuses in on this type that really whatever he tried, they couldn't get it. It sets him up really well. A well-known doctor, chief physician at a nationally prominent hospital specializing in alcoholic and drug addiction. Kind of difficult to argue with a title like that. This guy knows his stuff. So continuing on, in the course of his third treatment, he acquired certain ideas concerning a possible means of recovery. Now, the guy he's talking about is Bill W. Bill W had been in his hospital as a four-time return guy, which would have been a four time white chipper. And if we had AA back then, he probably had a few of those too. As part of his rehabilitation, now I like this part because this is setting up a theme that's going to be recurring throughout the book. as part of his rehabilitation he commenced to present his conceptions to other alcoholics i.e. he got sober through the Oxford group through Ebby Thatcher and he realized that in order for him to stay sober I have to go do the same thing to other Alcoholics who are still struggling as part of his rehabilitation he commensed to present his conception to other Alcoholics impressing upon them they must do likewise with still others so he's bringing them through those Oxford things we talked about here. He was convinced of the need for moral inventory, confession of personal defects, restitution of those harmed, helpfulness to others and necessity of belief and dependence upon God. That's what Bill was bringing to patients. And when he first got there he's saying, Doc, can I work with your guys? And he's like, I don't know, you know You probably can deal with my charity cases but my patients that are paying bills why don't you leave those, don't touch them yet This has become the basis of a rapidly growing fellowship of these men and their families. So, who knows what the basis of that rapidly growing fellowship was back then? Anybody want to guess? Hands? What was it? God, yeah. But it was also impressive that part of his real invitation was to commence the President's Conception to other alcoholics. They had to use the Oxford style to get people to have sufficient spiritual awakening to get that relationship with God. And that was going to be what you're going to be doing for a long time as a recovered alcoholic. So it wasn't like, let's just get sober and get on with our lives. It was like, now that you've got sober, bring it to somebody who's still suffering. This man and over 100 others appear to have recovered. Once again, there's that word that I'd just love to highlight and underline, have recovered, you know? They're not promising us one day of struggling. This is a recovered... I'm recovered today, you Know? I haven't obsessed or thought about drinking in a little over seven years, you Now? For the many years. I personally know scores of cases who were of the type with whom other methods had failed completely now mind you before we came along what they did is you checked into Dr. Silke's hospital and they would do all types of therapy and nutrition and lots of stuff and you were there months, years however long it took and all of a sudden we come along with this spiritual experience thing that they were getting done in a weekend so he's been working on these guys for years And we come, and we take him away for the weekend. And we go back on Monday, and he's changed, and he's recovered, and the doctor's just like, wow, what did you guys do to this guy? These facts appear to be of extreme medical importance because of the extraordinary possibilities of rapid growth inherent in this group. Has anybody ever taken a book of matches, spread them out a little bit, and lit the first match? And how you notice how it just bursts across? Imagine that's what the doctor was seeing. He gets one alcoholic sober. That alcoholic goes and gets two more alcoholics sober those two alcoholics get four alcoholics sober it's not months and years of therapy it's a weekend of this thing that getting connected to god he loved because it was a simple solution it was and he's actually seeing people get sober they may mark a new epoch in the annals of alcoholism these men may well have a remedy for thousands of such situations you may rely absolutely on anything they say about themselves i like that say about themself they're not doctors they're not psychiatrists, they're not therapists. We share our experience when I'm speaking to guys, we share my experience you know, that's the importance of one alcoholic working to another. I don't pretend I'm a therapist No speculation Right. The physician at our request gave us this letter and has been kind enough to enlarge on the views which later follows. In the statement he confirms we who have suffered the alcoholic torture must believe that the body of the alcoholic is quite as abnormal as the mind Yeah, my mind was out there you know I'm out there with this obsession that it's going to be different this time with all the information and all the facts show me it's not going to be and then I take that one drink and I'm just off to the races definitely back then it was a behavioral problem we thought you know it did not satisfy us to be told that we could not control our drinking just because we were maladjusted to life that we were in full flight from reality or were outright mental defectives who can relate to that statement we got some honesty I love it tonight these things are true to some extent but in fact a considerable spent with some of us but we are sure that our bodies were sickened as well our belief I like this part in our belief any picture of the alcoholic which leaves out the physical factor is incomplete I heard somebody once say you know they went into therapy or they went in to rehab and they're getting checked in and the person across the desk looks at him and says you're not a bad person You're a sick person. We're going to get you well. And then they spent the next 30 days dealing with his behaviors rather than his actual alcoholism. Sort of confused the guy a little bit. I got this underlined in green and underlined also. The doctor's theory that we have an allergy to alcohol interests us. As laymen, our opinion as to his soundness may, of course, mean little. But as ex-problem drinkers, we can say that his explanation makes good sense. it explains many things for which we cannot otherwise account though we work out our solution on a spiritual as well as an altruistic plane who wants to be the dictionist tonight who wants a read from the dictionary great look up altruistically does anybody else want to do this we have a competition thanks first one wins altruistic I thought I didn't know what that word meant I thought he knew what it meant and then I read this thing and was like wow that was not me when I was out there drinking and using who thinks they know the spiritual thing it's just off the top of your head yeah altruist tell me whether you're showing concern in the welfare works yeah was that you before you got sober no absolutely not now this is there's about two or three times in the book where it actually says whoa slow down don't go so fast you know these guys they don't hurry through this and this is one of those times it's actually where we talk detox for those of you who are just getting the sponsorship I highly recommend you take your guys to a detox we don't want people detoxing on your couch paperwork would be a mess we favor hospitalization for the alcoholic who's still jittery for five we're not doctors you know do you think you might be able to break somebody through detox if you can get somebody in a medical facility dude that was dr bob's greatest asset you know he got these guys into the hospital detoxed him properly and got him through the step through the process early on right up to the more often than not it is imperative that a man's brain be cleared before his approach as he has then a better chance of understanding and accepting what we have to offer that's got to be taking a little bit of grain of salt you know because bill w he He was on a pretty good three- or four-day drunk when Evie showed up to him, and he planted the seed. Was he in a position to go through the process and through steps? Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, Roland Hassert suggested that Bill go through detox because he kept showing up to the Oxford group drunk, and it wasn't working. We're not talking 60, 90, two months, three months. As soon as they're able to hold a conversation, that's when you can start bringing a solution to these guys. By reading the book with them, that pretty much is a good way to gauge where they're at, That is picking this stuff up and taking something from it. So we've got this great letter of endorsement. Now the doctor is going to enlarge upon what he said in the previous letter. And the doctor writes, The subject presented in this book seems to me to be of paramount importance to those afflicted with alcoholic addiction. Paramount importance. That sounds really important to me. Sounds like an emphasis. Yeah. I say this after many years' experience as a metal director of one of the oldest hospitals in the country treating alcohol and drug addiction. Some people like to refer to it as probably like Barrett. Other people say it was like Hazleton. It was just a really successful place. The Tom's Hospital is for the guys with money. You didn't go there, really, if you were poor. But he did do some of that, I guess, apparently, too. There was therefore a sense of real... Let's get this... What's going on here? Dr. Silkwood has been working years on us, right? With no success. The occasional problem heavy drinker, you know, they wouldn't return. But those chronic us kept coming back and coming back. It was a revolving door. It was the death sentence. Once you realize somebody was a real alcoholic, it was just a slow show to watch these guys die. And it had to rip them apart emotionally. There was therefore a sense of real satisfaction when I was asked to contribute a few words on a subject which is covered in such monsterly detail in these pages. I just love that masterly detail in these pages. Everything you need to get somebody to have a sufficient spiritual experience is going to be found in this book. We doctors have realized for a long time that some form of moral psychology was of urgent importance to alcoholics, but its application presents difficulties beyond our conception. Now, mind you, this is 1935, and for those of you that took alcohol through the veins and stuff, imagine what the size of the needles were back then. And imagine the technology they had back then. You know, they didn't have the stuff that we have, you know, the saws and the ether. So this guy is sort of a humorous paragraph here. What with our ultra-modern standards and scientific approach to everything. Now this I got underlined. This is one of those things that stand out. We are perhaps not well equipped to apply the powers of good which lie outside our synthetic knowledge. What humility. when I'm working with a newcomer and we're reading through the book this is our second set we're at about 5 hours now sitting reading the books 2 or 3 sit downs you're not going to get your doctor to do this your therapist isn't going to sit here for hours for some reason one alcoholic has got the ability to bring God that a doctor a therapist is not capable of doing they can try their best but that's the key to Alcoholics Anonymous that one alcoholic bringing God to another alcoholic many years ago one of the leading contributors to this book came under our care in this hospital and while here he acquired some ideas which he put into practical application at once I thought you had to have a year not true practical application at once in order for a real alcoholic to stay sober you have to actively be working with unrecovered alcoholics to help your relationship with God grow and to give you that fourth dimension they talk about. You know, it's like get off the sidelines and start working with people because that's how they had success rates back in the old days. They weren't sitting around waiting. They got through the steps rapidly and thoroughly, got connected to God, and then got to work. Later he requested the privilege of being allowed to tell his story to other patients here, and with some misgiving we consented. The cases we have followed through have been most interesting. In fact, many of them are amazing. So a lot of times people like to say, remember the 24 hours before you got sober. I want you to go back like a week, well, the whole time before you get sober and think of the lying, cheating, stealing, lowlife, self-centered, inconsiderate, self serving, backstabbing person I was that you might have been similar to. You know, we weren't getting awards for greatness. We weren't really wonderful people. So for him to see those people coming in and out, in and out, alcoholics in his cups is an unlovely creature. Look how he describes his first interaction with recovered alcoholics. The unselfishness of these men as we have come to know them, the entire absence of profit motive and their community spirit is indeed inspiring to one who has labored long and wearily in this alcoholic field. They believe in themselves and still more in the power which pulls chronic alcoholics' backs from the gates of death. That's one of my first highlight boxes, and we call that the God Box. Therapy couldn't do that for me I had to have the power of God come in And make that drastic change for me Once again he tells us To slow down a little bit Of course an alcoholic ought to be free From his physical craving for liquor And this often requires A definite hospital procedure Before psychological measures Can be of maximum benefit Let's face it, when you've got the cravings And you're kicked in You don't really pay attention to anything As a matter of fact Joe Let's do a little experiment here I'm going to be in the throes of craving. You know, the phenomenon is just in me. And I want you to throw me some of your best AA spiritual lines. And this is what's going on in the little guy's head. You need to surrender. Gotta drink, gotta drink, drink, got a drink, get a drink. Gotta drink. It's like talking to a wolf. Maybe he's gonna like say something that sneaks in the corner. But come on, it's like, gotta get, gotta cop, gotta cap, gotta cup, cop, cop. seriously who's who's done a 12-step call and tried to talk to somebody on the way to bark around to a detox you know right even the first couple visits you know let them dry out a little bit you know doesn't mean you can't try but to build up your greatest great example of that but I think the reason Bill was so willing to listen to everyone he showed up is he realized he wasn't drinking his booze and he could sit and drink with somebody you know, he's happy but he picked up some information there now this whole paragraph I got boxed because this is extremely major information Joe we believe, and so suggested a few years ago that the action of alcohol on these chronic alcoholics is a manifestation of an allergy that the phenomenon of craving is limited to this class and never occurs in the average temperate drinker. So I got this friend her name's Susie, she is hypoallergic to peanuts. She comes to my house and I've been making peanut butter sandwiches she walks in the house and she gets close to the kitchen immediately her esophagus starts to close and she looks at me like why didn't you tell me and she's on the floor pounding her heart and we got the EpiPen and we're getting her to the hospital trying to get she's extremely allergic to alcohol. I have another friend, Bob he's allergic to peanuts also but he can roll them around, he can put them in his ears She can eat one or two without any problem. He has a few too many, and he's on the floor with Susie, you know, choking because he is not as allergic, but he's still allergic to this. So if you want to order vodka pasta, it cooks out. Okay, it doesn't cook out. Wine is going to cook out, doesn't. The waiter says, oh, don't worry. It's going to cook out. Oh, thank you. So if you're allergic to alcohol, which will cause you... You can have like 10 years of kicked butt connected to God recovery, right? And somebody slips you some vodka pasta with some vodka paste in it, right ? And let's say you're allergic to alcohol like Susie was allergic to peanuts. Your phenomena are craving and you're out getting drunk, you know? If you're Bob, maybe you eat, but I'm not going to risk it. I'm not going to risk having any alcohol in my body because I don't want that phenomenon of craving to kick in. Because once it kicks in, I'm hopeless. I'm out the door. So the best way to tell if alcohol has been cooked out of your sauce, the pan has to be completely dry, which means you're not going to be eating any sauce. But seriously, if we're allergic, so you get the idea, don't risk it. You know, you can have a wonderful program and be highly connected to God. and if your phenomenon of craving kicks in accidentally, you're a mess. So we're looking at this word allergy here and if we look up allergy and define it, it simply means an abnormal reaction to a food, a beverage or a substance. It doesn't make you a less than normal person. That's right. These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form and we're not talking about marijuana and other drugs. We're talking alcohol in every form. Another thing, you guys with that alcohol sanitizer you're doing the meetings, you know. You don't know how sensitive some guy who's just coming in off the street, he gets a little whiff of that and all of a sudden he gets a psychosomatic phenomenon craving kick in. Don't bring that stuff into meetings, please, because you don't want to risk somebody else's recovery. He may have gotten 48 hours sober when he's shaking and all the things, all that stuff. And he's like, whoa, out the door. Treat this stuff seriously. These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form and once having formed the habit and found they cannot break it, And once having lost their self-confidence, their reliance on things human, their problems pile up and they're becoming astonishingly difficult to solve. The unmanageability of alcoholism, the twofold unmanagability. Unmanageable to be able to make a decision around alcohol, whether it's in me or not in me. And then the management of life just building up and that emotional, I got to get drunk, look at my life. Frosty emotional appeal seldom suffices. So get to know the book, right? What does that look like? That means like, well, who's been yelled at by partners and wives and gets over, I'm going to leave you, you know? Which is why we're sort of like obsessed with getting to know the book. So when you're talking to the guy, you have a solution, a bumper sticker, right? Yeah. That stuff doesn't work to an alcoholic, you want to have some information this guy's going to snap on to. Frothy emotional appeal is just not going to work. The message which can interest and hold these alcoholic people must have depth and weight. Where do you find that? our story and our solution absolutely in nearly all cases their ideas must be grounded in a power greater than themselves if they are to recreate their lives once again we're touching to the God aspect of this if any feel that is psychiatrist directing a hospital for alcoholics we appear somewhat sentimental let them stand with us a while on the firing line see the tragedies the despairing wives the little children let the solving of these problems become a part of their daily work and even of their sleeping moments and the most cynical will not wonder that we have accepted and encouraged this movement. That is like the longest Ron sentence so far, isn't it? It was. Now, mind you, you're reading this. You know, you're not an alcoholic. You may be an employer. You're a wife. You know? And you're trying to understand these alcoholic things and you think about this. Come on, Doc. You're just getting soft. These guys, they got you. They're junking you. You've softened to these guys. But no, he has seen the misery firsthand what we bring to people, the families, the wives, the death. He understands it, you know? We feel after many years of experience that we have found nothing which has contributed more to the rehabilitation of these men than the altruistic movement now growing up among them. Highlight and repeat that, Joe. We feel, after many year's of experience, that we've found nothing, which has contribute more to rehabilitation of these man than the Altruistic Movement now growing among them It was God back then. It wasn't social psychoanalysis and process groups and feelings. It was like, let's let you connect it to God. Underline. Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. If they don't like the effects, what don't they do? They can take it or leave it. They don't drink. This is where he's not talking about pure alcoholics. He's just talking about people in general. People drink essentially because they liked the effect produced by the alcohol. that and when they start getting a little dizzy they stop. The sensation is so elusive that while they admit it is injurious they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. That's where he's talking about us the real alcoholics you know we see the damage but we have this delusion ah it's not that bad and then we start hanging out with people of the same like and you know oh my friends drink like this to them their alcoholic life seems the only normal one get ready they are restless, irritable discontented unless they can again experience the ease of sense and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks. We're not thinking about what alcohol did to us, we're thinking about what alcohol is going to do to us I went to my garage three or four times with the intention of suicide you know because my life was miserable you can't kill yourself without a nice strong drink you know and some good music so I got the carpenters playing and I'm sipping on my drink just, oh, you know, the whole misery thing going on. In the insanity of that first drink, we can only access what it did for us. In other words, not what it is to us. So luckily the phenomenon of craving kicks in and I turn the car off, roll the window back up and go out in the house and get myself drunk, you now? Alcohol worked for me. So don't tell me alcohol doesn't work for me early on. It did. Drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, and let's get clear, the desire here in this context is talking about the obsession of the mind. If I'm going through an urge, a thought, a feeling, it's separate from the phenomenon of craving that we're talking about here. Alcohol has to be present in our system for us to experience this phenomenon of grieving that the doctor's talking about. So we give in to the obsession of the minds. We take a drink as so many do and the phenomenon of craving develops. They pause through the well-known stages of a spree emerging remorseful with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is one of those parts where an alcoholic synonymous does not get involved in the medical aspect of the allergy, the metabolism, the process. But what we can talk about is the fact that we come out of a run just like, oh my God, I'm never doing it again. Remorseful, never going to pick up, never goingto do that stuff again. And I'm getting by a day or two, you know, and then I start getting restless, irritable, discontent. Life starts showing up. The bills are showing up, life is getting... I'm really emotionally unstable that I'm not going to drink because I promise not to drink and I'm going on to maybe and different other sprees. But what eventually happens is that emotional barometer busts and I say, I'm going to get a drink. So I'll just have one this time. I'm gone out with these people. They're not my problem. I'lljusthaveonedrink. And the phenomenon of craving kicks in after we drink. This is repeated over and over and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change, there's very little hope of his recovery. This is repeatedly repeated over and over and unless the person can experience an entire psychic change, there is very little hope of his recovery. That's the solution, the entire psychic chance that's brought about by a relationship with God. That's The Greatest Thing about the Oxford Group and what they've been able to put together in the book. It's not a casual relationship with god. It's finding my inner child and experiencing my feelings. It's this vital experience that shocks you into a relationship with god, I don't know if shocks is the greatest word but that happened to me and this is a medical professional bearing witness to that great fact and later on he's going to talk about he doesn't have a faintest idea of what we did and how it works he just sees the results drunk you know and then they come back from a weekend with us and he's like hi can I go work with one of the guys and I'm like hey he is like wow on the other hand and strange as this may seem to those who do not understand once a psychic change has occurred the very same person who seemed doomed, who had so many problems he despaired of ever solving them, finds himself easily able to control his desire for alcohol. Disclaimer, the only effort necessary being that required to follow a few simple rules. So we're all going to say, yeah, those are the steps. Well, we didn't have the steps back then, did we? This is the Oxford Group. The Oxford Group had the four absolutes as guideposts of ways to live your life. You implement the four absolutes in your life, which is absolute love, absolute purity, absolute honesty and absolute selfishness, it's really hard to be a dork. That's the way that's going to keep you spiritually fit, by implementing those in a relationship with God. Men have cried out to me in sincere and despairing appeal. Doctor, I cannot go on like this. I have everything to live for. I must stop, but I cannot. You must help me. Wow. Faced with this problem, if a doctor is honest with himself, he must sometimes feel his own inadequacy. although he gives all that is in him and it's often not enough yellow underline this is a great part read that one feels that something more than human power is needed to produce the essential psychic change he saw the results that we were doing and it changed his opinion a repeatable solution that he stood behind and again imagine the humility if a doctor feels if he's honest with himself he must sometimes feel his own inadequacy And doctors have got bigger egos than pilots, right? So this is monumental. Right. And he was a psychiatrist, right ? We're not talking about some GP or general practice type guy. This guy was a specialist in the brain, you know, and he saw that he was incapable of that certain chronic punch. Imagine he's got ten guys in his hospital, right, eight or nine of them, the therapy, the nutrition, the life coach. That seems to work with these guys, and they don't come back, you now. two or three of the guys that keep returning no matter what he's doing it doesn't work though the aggregate of recoveries resulting from psychiatric effort is considerable non-alcoholics we physicians must admit we have made little impression upon the problem as a whole many types alcoholics real alcoholics do not respond to the ordinary psychological approach we come out better you know obviously we get some therapy we get to nutrition we get life coaching If we find some information, we're going to come out there and rehab really good. They weren't able to do the God thing. They didn't have guys going into this place with big books taking those guys through the steps. It was just therapy and nothing else. I do not hold for those who believe that alcoholism is entirely a problem of mental control. My mom did. My dad did. When my roommate called up my boss and said, We're having an intervention for Mike next week. You want to participate? He's like, he comes to me the next day. I show up to work the next morning and he points his finger at me and he says, you get your together. It's like okay, what do I do? Do you think I could just pull myself together from him? I had many men who had for example worked a period of months on some problem or business deal which should be settled on a certain date favorably to them. I love this part. So here's the deal. You're an alcoholic. You haven't got sober yet. You're out there drinking. And all of a sudden, this guy who has this yacht, who's been staying on his parents' yacht, and his parents are coming on Friday. So he's got to de-party the yacht. And this guy's rolling in money. He tells Joe, I'll give you $15,000 to clean this boat up because if my parents find the slightest thing here, I'm kicked out of the family. So you're like, okay, I can handle that, you know, $15.000. So he shows up on Thursday, and Joe's just chugging along with things looking great. And he says, Joe, this is amazing. As a matter of fact, I'm giving you $20,000. But here's the deal. Tomorrow, I've got to catch an airplane at 945. So from the hotel on the way to the airport, I'm going to stop here at 920 for a five-minute window. And I'm just going to give you your money and off. And if you're not there, hey, I'll see you in a year when I come back to town. You go, okay. You'll be there, right? Absolutely. So he goes home, right, telling his buddies, dude, I've got $20,000. This is great, you know. And they go, well, good. Let's go buy you some beers. He says, no, because he senses. I had a good idea. Better not go out and get drunk because I might miss the five-minute window. Come on, one beer. Come on. You got money. I'll let you go. Okay, I'll have one beer." Where were you tomorrow morning at 920? Not there. Not there? Was it because he had a fear of completion? No. No. Was he scared of losing the intimacy of his friendship? No. The phenomenon of craving kicked in. It had nothing to do with our intentions. It was like that physical allergy that causes everything that we want to do to just get out of the way and we've got to drink, we've gotta drink. So back to the book. They took a drink a day or so prior to the date, and then the phenomenon of craving at once became paramount to all other interests so that the important appointment was not met. Yellow underline. These men are not drinking to escape. They were drinking to overcome a craving beyond their mental control. We cannot stop. Now we're driving up and down Fort Lauderdale. We see the guys on the corners day in, day out. We know they're real alcoholics. They're drinking themselves to death. They got the little signs, you know, please feed me and then they flip it over and say why lie I need a beer these guys are chronic alcoholics in the final days of chronic alcoholism it's not it's sad you know they never have an opportunity to break that phenomenon of craving cycle they may go into jail for a day or two but most times the cops just pick them up and take them to another part of the city so they are in that 24-7 phenomenon of craving they're gonna drink themselves to death that was a very powerful line for me these men were not drinking to escape I thought I was drinking to escape, but until I read this line, they were drinking to overcome a craving beyond their mental control. That held some power with me. That was essentially when I was receiving the definition of what was truly wrong with me." There are many situations which arise out of the phenomenon of craving which caused men to make a supreme sacrifice rather than continue to fight. That supreme sacrifice is death, drinking ourselves to death. No one steps in. We don't have a loving father or mother or someone's going to pull us aside and help us get help. They just die on the side of the road, drink themselves to death. Death is the final result of active alcoholism. And it's not like this evil spirit that wants to come and destroy us because we've done bad things. It's just a chemical reaction that causes our brain to go with this phenomenon of craving that's unstoppable. And that's the true definition of step one. I'm powerless over alcohol because when I put it in me, I can't stop. and my life is unmanageable because I'm unable to manage my decision not to drink. So he's going to show us some information about some classic types of alcoholics. The guy who's reading this, the guy in Broken Town, New Mexico who's read this book trying to figure out if he's an alcoholic or not, he's gonna give us five generalities of what some basic alcoholics are like. So for the non-alcoholic, remember this book was written by people who weren't alcoholic too. So he was talking to me, the alcoholic, he was also talking to the nonalcoholics trying to inform the world of what it is to be alcoholic and what alcoholism is because like today there was a lot of misunderstanding of alcoholism so he's trying to put some facts out to everybody. So the classification of alcoholics seems most difficult and in such detail outside the scope of this book. So he's going to talk about type 1 now. If you guys want to put some slashes or numbers on the side, that's cool. Want to read type 1? There are of course the psychopaths who are emotionally unstable. We are all familiar with this type. They are always going on the wagon for keeps they are over remorseful and make many resolutions but never a decision there is a type of man who is unwilling to admit that he cannot take a drink he plans various ways of drinking he changes his brand or his environment it's my friends I need new friends I need no booze I shouldn't drink tequila I should only drink rum there is the type who always believes that after being entirely free from alcohol for a period of time he can take a drinks without danger We call us ice fishermen back in Minnesota. They go the whole summer without drinking, and they just drink themselves all through winter in an ice house. There is a manic depressive type who was perhaps the least understood by his friends and about a whole chapter could be written. And we've got everyone in the room is type 5, right? Yeah. Then there are the types entirely normal in every respect except in the effect alcohol has upon them. They are often able, intelligent, friendly people. I was one of those people at different stages of my alcoholism. So, you know, it started out as, yeah, I popped around a lot. Dependent of what day it was, I guess. Next paragraph, if you guys want to highlight underlying boxes. It's got some cool stuff in here. All these and many others have one symptom in common. All these, many others, have one syndrome in common, they cannot start drinking without developing the phenomenon of craving. So imagine I've got spiritual, well, I had spiritual disconnect, spiritual malady, I have this obsession that my dad's not alcoholic, right? but he works hard and he comes home and he has to have his martini every day when my dad doesn't get his martinis, he gets a little cranky now that's not an obsession, that's a habit you know, matter of fact, he won't go to a restaurant and he won' t even finish that one martini but he's got to have that one that doesn't make him an alcoholic what makes someone an alcoholic is when that phenomenon of craving kicks in and you just drink yourself to the races this phenomenon as we have suggested may be the manifestation of an allergy which differentiates these people and sets them apart as a distinct entity. It has never been, by any treatment with which we are familiar, permanently eradicated. The only relief we have to suggest is entire abstinence. Thank you, Nancy Reagan. Don't pick up. Just don't drink my chase and everything's going to be fine, all right? But here's the deal. Instead of what Nancy Reagan offered us, just don't pick it up, don't do the first one type stuff, he's going actually follow up with a solution to it. You know, it's like, yeah, sure, I won't drink. And next thing you know, I'm drinking. We're going to touch on that later on, but that's the cool thing with an unusual thing about alcoholism. This immediately precipitates us into a seething cauldron of debate. Much has been written pro and con, but among physicians, the general opinion seems to be that most chronic alcoholics are doomed. Most chronic alcoholists are doomed, and there's a couple other words to describe that one. There was no solution back in those days. So, he's watching what's going on. He's seeing these guys grab his sickest of patients, right? And doing this reading with them and this praying and this... What's going On? He's busy doing his rounds and stuff like that. We're taking his best and worst out and they're coming back like, Hi, guys, nice to see you. He said, Wow, what's Going On here? What is the solution? Perhaps I can best answer this by relating one of my experiences. See, he is not going to sit down and tell us what the solution is. He is not capable of that. He's an outsider. He's not an alcoholic. He's going to tell us what he saw in a general way. He's gonna see, show us the miracle in his eyes of how great that is. So the first guy we're going to talk about is Hank P. He's the guy who helped Bill get the stocks and get the whole big book process started. That's right. If it wasn't for him, we might not be sitting here right now. Or maybe somebody else would have come on and we'd still be sitting there. You never know. About a year prior to this experience, a man was brought to me to be treated for chronic alcoholism he had but partially recovered from gastric hemorrhage and seemed to be a case of pathological mental deterioration that's a problem that's not that's the way I was when I brought him to Fort Lauderdale Hospital you know he had lost everything worthwhile in life and was only living one might say to dream he frankly admitted and believed that for him there was no hope following the elimination of alcohol there was found to be no permanent brain injury so they did their thing they washed and waxed, got him cleaned up got him healthy and then turned him over to us now this is he accepted the plan outlined in this book it's not like well people do some work this is a guy who did exactly what they were telling him to back in the Oxford group get connected to God and take this message to other sick and suffering alcoholics and you too can stay sober. So he accepted the plan outlined in this book. I highlight and underline that because it's going to tell us later on, those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program. He did. For many years, he stayed sober. One year later, he called to see me. I experienced a strange sensation. I knew the man by name and partially recognized his features, but they're all resemblance ended. Has anybody ever like spoken of a detox and a few months later, a year later some guy comes up to you and says, Hey, you spoke of my detox I was in and you don't have a thing to say who this person is because they've had that spiritual experience. They've recovered. Imagine this. From a trembling, despairing, nervous wreck had emerged a man brimming over in self-reliance and contentment. I underline that. From a troubling, despairING, nervous wreCK had emerged the man brimming over with reliance, self-reliance, and content. That's evidence of that psychic change that we were talking about before and the entire psychic change that Dr. Silkworth was previously referring to, a spiritual experience, a spiritual awakening. When somebody walks into the room, you can spot somebody. And we're going to wrap up on that one. Ooh, got to do. Read really quick. No, that's fine. We'll just find him. I talked with him for a while, but he was not able to bring himself to feel that I'd known him before. He is but a stranger, and so he left. A long time has passed with no return to alcohol. We talked about pain, carcass. Now we're going to wrap up this one. This guy's amazing. This is Fritz Mayo. He's also the southern friend. You can find him in the back of the book. This is the doctor again talking. 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, which is I'm going to drink and die so I may as well, and deciding the situation hopeless, had hidden in a deserted barn determined to die. He was rescued by a searching party in desperate condition, brought to me following the physical rehabilitation he had a talk with me which he frankly stated he thought this treatment a waste of time unless I could assure him which no one ever had that in the future he would have the willpower to resist the impulse to drink. You guys might want to highlight that one that's an important part in his process. His alcoholic problem was so complex and his depression so great that we felt his only hope would be through what we then called moral psychology Which was the new stuff ticking off at that time. That was the New Modern stuff going on. And we doubted if even that would have any effect. When I first heard that moral psychology thing, I think of, oh, he's talking about the stuff we do. I researched it. It's not. That was The Trendy Therapeutic stuff at the time. However, he did become sold on the ideas contained in this book. He has not had a drink for a great many years. I see him now and then and he is as fine a specimen of manhood as one could wish to me. I earnestly advise every alcoholic to read the book through, and though perhaps you came to scoff, you may remain to pray. William is that? Yeah, William B. Silkworth. A doctor prescribing prayer. Doctor prescribing. A doctor proscribing us. I love that. Okay, now we go back to the question. Next week, Bill's story. Woo-hoo!