Why the Big Book’s First Five Paragraphs Are the Foundation – Jack B.

I'm Jack Buford and I'm an alcoholic. Hi everybody. And I have about as much anonymity as a polecat. And I come by that honestly because when I came into AA in Tallahassee, the nearest AA to Tallahassie was either Pensacola or Jacksonville And so we North Florida tractors more or less participated in intergroup meetings and so forth with the South Georgians. And I found a real good friend up in Albany, most of you know him, Courtney M., and every time somebody come through Albany headed to Tallahassee, Courtney would be standing out on the corner and I think he'd flag them down. When you get to Tallahassee, if you have any trouble, call Jack Buford. And if he couldn't find Jack, call Jeff Farmer sitting over there. He don't have any anonymity either. Well, I want to thank Gary and all of you for inviting me down. I know it's going to be a great experience, the first trip down. and i want to ask your forgiveness for not having on a coat and tie and being dressed properly but i cleared that with uh my good friend west over there and he said i wouldn't have to go back to the room and put on a coating tie and you know the reason i cleared it with him was because i was at a meeting at one time and this teacher came down in the recreation room and He sat on his end of shirt, please, and Wes looked at him and he says, Are you the speaker tonight? And he says yes I am. He says go back to your room and put on a coat and tie. And he went back to his room and he put on the coat and ties. And so I was, yeah sure, I was going to clear it with Wes before I got up in the night. And Worf said he didn't want to listen to a drunkard log, so he just went heck out of my talk. But I'm going to get even with him because I don't want to tell it no one. know how to. Well, as I said, I am Jack Gifford and I am an alcoholic. And for 26 years, I think I fought the bottle as anybody. And during that period of time, I went through every phase of alcoholism that I've ever read about or heard about, some phases I don't think I'll ever talk about, except that phase of the wet brain and death. And that's the reason I know that I had learned in AA that alcoholism is a progressive disease, and if I ever go back to drinking, I know the only phase that I have left is a wet brain or death, and I've never heard anybody yet recovering from a wet brain. But I'm one of these AA's who flipped into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous through the back door. Because in December of 1955, I had lost all friends, my father's wife and children. We still existed under the same roof Wife and myself had reached that point where we weren't speaking in kissing time, but I would speak and she would tell me what I could kiss. And I think about a week before Christmas, I decided that that Christmas we should stay at home and have a big Christmas dinner at home, and not go to my wife's mother's, where We had gone practically every Christmas since we had been married, if we were in Tallahassee. And to this day I can't remember whether she agreed with me or not. But when I woke up Christmas morning, she had taken the children and they had gone to her mother's. and I was in no shape to go anywhere. I'll never forget Christmas Day of 1955 as long as I live because there at home all alone, all day long I crawled out of the bed to take another drink to lay back down and just watch the maggots fall out of my stomach. You know, I would wipe them off and put them down. And you know, that wasn't too bad until one stuck his head out and winked at me. I think during a period of my drinking days, I reached the point that I looked forward to and thoroughly enjoyed having hallucinations. That's the only time I got to talk to somebody. Well, the next day, December the 26th, I ran out of whiskey that afternoon and I called a bootlegger. At that time Leon County was dry, but after I quit drinking it went wet because I still had it dry. And I had told Jake and he brought me a bottle, and it was just about dusk and I had taken one drink out of that bottle and my wife's insurance came home. I don't remember too much about it but I'm sure if they hadn't been in the house more than five minutes before I began to curse and raise kin and do all of those things as praise his uncle do. And I remember picking up that bottle and stomping out of the house and getting in my car and starting the motor. And where in the world I thought I was going in that shape, thank God I'll never know. But for some reason I cut the motor off, picked up that model, walked back in the house and handed that bottle to my wife and said, take this bottle and put it up. I'm through drinking. She says, where do you want me to put it? I said, I don't care where you put it, but if I ever have to have another drink, what about me going and splitting the drink or going to buy some more? I'll ask you for that bottle. But if I never ask you before, I'll take it and leave. You and the kids have been through enough hell with me. And she took that bottle and threw it right inside the clotheslug in our bedroom. And in about 15 minutes, I realized I had made one heck of a mistake. I was having delirium tremors. I was getting hallucinations. Oh, I was sick as I could be. And for some reason or another, I began to think that for all of these years my father, my sister my brother, my wife my children everybody in the world that had loved me had tried their best to help me to know a bill and I thought to myself if there's any help the old boy has got to come from God if he is a God and I promised myself right there that if there was a God I would find him or I would die before I would take another drink. And for the next week, I went through mortal hell. I didn't know about Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn' t know if you could go to a doctor or the hospital or get help. All I had ever known was just take another drinking and get over it, get out of it. I would catch myself at night going up the road to a little church and parking in the back of that church and just sitting there and asking God to keep me free. Just a brain of cobwebs. But Sunday morning, January 1st of 1956, for some reason or other, that morning I shaved and took a bath and put on what clothes I had and I went to that little church. And I'll never forget walking in there I am knowing that all of the eyes in that church were on the old town drunk. They all knew me. But for the first time in my life, it made no difference. I sat down and I looked up in front of the church and I saw a table with a linen on it and I remember thinking there must be communion Sunday. And if I had ever taken communion before in my wife, I didn't remember it. I did remember that when they were touring, they had communion in the church, but touring didn't take communion. But somebody just told me that when time came, I had to go up to that altar and try to make peace with my God. And when that time came I went up to that altar. And I've often wondered how in the world anybody could promise God so much in the short period of time that it takes to have communion. At that altar I remember that when I was 13 years old I had joined the Presbyterian Church. Of course, that made no difference because up until that time my mama had me in the Baptist church every time that the front door was open. And then when I was thirteen I joined the Presbyterian and when I sobered up after twenty-six years I found out my wife was Methodist. So this was a Methodist church I was in. I remember at that altar, when I was 13 years old, we had to memorize a catechism to join the church. And that whole catechesis came back to me, I remember. And I remember in that catechetism it said, Whatsoever ye ask in my name shall be given. And I know that for the first time in my life, I asked God to take that desire to drink away from me or let me die whenever. I checked it over and I didn't feel any better and I left and I was just as sick as I was when I got there. And I went home, and I couldn't eat, I couldn' sleep, couldn't do anything. Shaking, sweating, about to burn up, about the face of death. Seeing things every now and then that really weren't there. about three o'clock that afternoon I got in my car for another and I drove up to the drive-in known as Mutt & Jeff. Her girl brought me a big limeade and I managed to drink about half of it and I just didn't make it to the little boy's room for that to come back. I got back into my car and I was shaking so and all, I didn't think I'd live to get in my car. But finally I got in my toy and I started home. And I got entirely out there at the corner of Meridian and Thorpe Street, right on the corner where that little church was that I had been in that morning. And i didn't see any lights, and I didn' hear any bells, and i didn' hear any voices. But all of a sudden my whole life changed. I was no longer shaken, I was no longer sick. And the first thought that came in my mind was that two years prior to this time my oldest sister had come to my house on Christmas morning and she brought me a Bible. She had told my brother-in-law that that Christmas she was going to give her brother a Bible if it was the last thing he ever did on this earth. And I remember her bringing it and giving it to me in my house that morning, and I remember plumbing through it and telling her how pretty it was. And as soon as they left, I put it back in the box and took it into the bedroom and put it up on the closet shelf. And I couldn't wait to get out of my sister's house and thank her for that Bible. When I got home, I took that book off of that shelf, and believe you me, it's never been back on that shelf since. So I said, I don't know anything about Alcoholics Anonymous. So I started back to church. Now, if you want to really be confused, You find yourself the old town drunk, dry for six months, and find yourself chairman of the membership and evangelism commission in the Baptist church. On the board of stewards, bigwig man, I was going to convert all those good Christians that had been going to church for twenty-six years I had been drunk. I was going to show them how to run that deal, and I thought I was making a pretty good progress. Until the Sunday evening before Labor Day, September of 1956, I went out to the church to see what the MYF was doing. It wasn't none of my business, but I was gonna make it my business. I had to go see what those children were doing out there in that church. Well, they all knew. They all knew where I had come from. And this little girl came to me and said, Mr. Dupin, my mom and dad have been over to Panama City and they're having problems. Will you go talk to them? I said, yeah, honey, as soon as the church is over, I'll go talk with them. and I did and I walked into that house and I knew that I was looking at two people that were going through the same things that I had been going through for those 26 years and I didn't know what to do about it they had their talk term about 2 o'clock in the morning and I started home and I knew that they didn't want to have anything to do with the church I knew they were just exactly the way I had been I knew they didn'y want to do anything I knew they didn''t want to have anything to do with the Bible I knew that if they saw a little thought for the day in the paper they were going to turn that page and then some reason or another I remember that in 1953 Tom Morgan and I'm not breaking the anonymity because I was passed away, but Tom Morgan from Tallahassee and Hugh Laylor from Miami had asked me to help them with a bill in the legislature that had something to do with alcohol or alcoholism. I didn't ask them about it. They told me a little bit, and I just asked them what the number of the bill was, and they told me. and I decided well I'll call Tom and see if he knows anything that will help these people so the day before I called Tom and he told me about Alcoholics Anonymous he also told me that that bill that passed that year was a bill that created and appropriated the money for an alcoholic rehabilitation front of Avon Park and I said well Tom do you all have a meeting he said yes because I was thinking about going to a meeting see if I could get these other people to go looking for something that would help them Tom said yes we have a meet tonight Jack but it's a closed meeting it seems as though he thought a little while ago and he said but you come on We've been counting you one of us a long time. Well, that night I attended my first AA meeting. And I'll never forget that meeting as long as I live. I remember walking in that room and seeing the 12 steps on the wall. I heard part of the chapter read. I heard the traditions read. I heard people talking about God. and they closed that meeting with the Lord's Prayer. And I remember thinking to myself, my Lord, what is a church mission? Here is a program that anybody in the world, if they would only try, only try to live by this program, it couldn't help but have a change in their life. Well, it just so happened that that night there was an old drinking buddy of mine there Gordon had come to Tallahassee in 1948 He had just rolled out an independent oil business And he came to Tlahassee and he deposited $255,000 into Lewis State Bank That was in 1948 Between 1948 and 1955 I helped him crank up that quarter of a million dollars In December of 1955 his check wasn't any better than mine We had quit drinking within ten days of each other, and Gordon had come to AA, and I had gone to church. And I always will believe that the good Lord in all of his wisdom sent Gordon to AA and sent me to church because neither one of them was big enough to hold both of us at the same time. And it just so happened that my friend Gordon was the program chairman. And he said, Jack, how about coming back and talking to us for a Saturday night? Well, I said, sure. I didn't know anything about AA. So I had been doing a little lay speaking and teaching a little Bible class. I went home and I prepared a sermon. And I went back the next Saturday night and I proceeded to deliver that sermon. And when I got through, this young man got up and let me know in no uncertain terms that Alcoholics Anonymous was not a religious program. And this young lady wanted to know where in hell he found that old broke-down preacher and what church they'd kicked him out of. But I'll never forget though the fellow Albert G., and I heard him whisper to somebody who said, don't worry about it Jack, he's searching for something, he'll find it. I've often thought about those words, because he was so right. I don't know what kept me sober the first three years I was in A.E., except for one thing. I had seven days a week filled up with work, church, AA, teaching the Bible class once a week out at the Federal Presidents or responsible group out there at that time every other Sunday. I just didn't have any temptation to put in front of me. And I was hard-headed. And it's hard to be hard-head around people like Norman Stonewater, West, two others. first three years. I don't remember that bunch up there ever asking me to do anything. They told me what to do. And I argued with them. The period of time I had been in the church before I came to AA, I thought I had become a pretty fair student of the Bible. I had had that experience on January the 1st of 1956, except 12th was having had a spiritual awakening. I had had one. Those first three years if anybody had told me that I hadn't taken the 12 steps, I would have gladly bought them a one-way ticket to San Jose. Finally one day, I looked up there at step two and it says, came to believe. And I asked myself the question, Jack, what do you believe? And I couldn't answer. Oh yes, I had admitted I was an alcoholic, my life had become unmanageable, and I had come to believe that if I was greater myself could restore me to sanity. I had turned my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood him, but I didn't know what I believed. Then is when I realized that I hadn't even touched the surface. I have read the big books, and I had read the big book and I had read the big book but I hadn't studied the big one. I had read the Bible and I have read the bible and I read the bottle but I haven't studied the Bible. And it finally dawned on me, old buddy, a time to start over. That's step 12 says we practice these principles in all of our affairs and I was trying to make the 12 Steps a principle. What in the world is a principle without admitting I'm powerless over alcohol because I'm allergic to it and my life's unmanageable? Do I want to go through life practicing with my life being unmanable? Is that a principle? It took me a long time to know that these people had wrote today's book put five paragraphs before the twelve steps. And that first paragraph told me that this program demanded rigorous honesty, principle number one. Honesty is a principle. And I didn't know what the word meant. I thought I was being honest. That second paragraph told me if I was willing to go to any length to get it, then I was ready to take these steps. And I took willingness as a principle. It told me that I tried to hold on to my old ideas and they were nil until I let go absolutely, until I became open-minded and accepted this as a principle. That very fourth paragraph told me that there was one who had all power, and that one was God. But I find him now the principal of acceptance of that power greater than myself. And that fifth paragraph told Me that I stood at a turning point Without help it was too much for me, but I asked his protection and care with complete abandonment. I learned to pray, to need prayer as a person, and to start off with accepting honesty, willingness, open-mindedness, acceptance and prayer, as the principle that I thought Step 12 was telling me to practice these principles in all of my affairs. To do it we would be saints, and the Pope tells me, we're not saints, we only claim None of us have been able to maintain such a, such an appearance as he's done. We never will be. And I think then was when I quit fighting the pogroms. But when I realized that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous begins with a doctor's opinion, and there's a real reason for it. As much as I had read it, I had never realized that I had a physical allergy that there was no treatment for. And that's the reason why I was powerless over alcohol because so many people come in They don't want to admit they're powerless over alcohol or anything else. They're just telling me I'm not powerless over anything but alcohol because I have a physical allergy to alcohol and there is no treatment for it. and it will progress as long as I live. Maybe one reason I began to understand this was because in 1959 I found out I was a diabetic, that there is no cure for it. I'm powerless over sugar, sweets, and so forth. And to me it's no different. But the joker was, they told me that I had a mental obsession coupled with this physical attitude. And for so long I thought and restricted this mental obsession with alcohol, only with alcohol. But they tell me that this program of recovery treats this mental obsession for alcohol. And as long as I looked at this mental obsession just being for alcohol, then I couldn't see any way that I could make any progress. Until I realized that my life up or down was controlled by mental obsessions. Mostly my wants and my don't wants. If I wanted a new automobile and I couldn't afford one and I didn't have one, this mental obsession of not getting what I wanted would drive me back to a mental obsession for alcohol. If I didn t want something that I was going to have to accept this would be another mental obsession and it would drive me back to that mental obsession powerful heart and I found in my whole life what's been told from these different mental obsessions and I find out the answer or the solution for every one of these mental obscessions And right there in the big book, the same program that would remove that mental obsession with alcohol would remove my ups and downs, those other mental obsessions it was hard for me to go back to them. Whenever we talk about resentment as a killer, anger, fear, what are these but mental obscessions? This answer to all of them is the same, the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. If we practice those first five principles in applying this religion, we will find the result. And then we look at us old alcoholics. We think we're different. Well, like I said, I thought I had studied the Bible. I didn't really know what was in it until I began to understand what was in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. A disease that is physical, mental, and spiritual. The oldest disease in the world known to man. We can go right back to the beginning And if we know the story of God creating man, we find that he puts him in this garden, gives him a free source, says all of this is yours. You can have it, you can walk in my sight, so long as you don't eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge. But nobody ever told us what that fruit was. Because of the same temptations that we all have today, that man and woman were tempted. And what happened? First their eyes were opened, and then they saw things that they hadn't seen before. And then they saw that they were naked, they began to realize physical men. And what happened? They lost their spiritual contact. they lost their spiritual contact this old disease three-fourth physical mental and spiritual has been going on ever since then and we will find all through history that some of the greatest alcoholics I'm convinced that old Noah was one of the best alcoholics ever walked on a piece of dirt because he takes a day most any alcoholic you give him a job to do and he'll stay sober long enough to do that job and he will do one of the best jobs in the world. So long as he knows when he gets through doing that job, he'll get him a drink. Now can't you imagine I'm looking down over north and say there's going to be a flood, old buddy. I want you to build an ark. Well, there ain't nothing but an old drunkard who started building an ark a thousand miles from water. everybody laughing at him what in the world are you going to do with him he did a good job he felt it all and he rode out the flood and what did he do the first thing he would drive around he planted him a vineyard he made him some wine and he got drunk and when his son came in and saw him naked on the couch of course we don't do that this day and time He didn't say, son, I'm sorry and apologize. No, he put a curse on his son. He took your old alcoholic. And we find that all through every generation of time. And we want to think that alcohol is you and that we are different. And in the way I have heard it said so often, we are the chosen few. I don't ever believe we are the few that chose, and there is a big difference. Because no one will ever make me believe that God, in our understanding, is a respecter of patience. I would never believe that he'd take me out of all of the alcoholics in this world today And let me have the experience that I had on January the 1st of 1956, and allowed me to have the life that I have had since then. Because he chose me over some other person's alcoholic. And when that time came to make that choice, he would take this desire away from me or let me die. He said, oh, buddy, you have saved me. But you know at the same time, he told me that I always had the right. And he said, oh, buddy, you have to save me. But, you know, at the same time, he told me that I always had the right to choose to go back where I came from, too. And if I did, I couldn't blame it on him. So I don't think that he would choose for me to find what I have had any more than he would choose to meet with Dr. Alcindor, and that's the reason I believe that each and every one of us were given a freedom of thought. Here's something easy to focus on. there are times that each and every one of us will have to fight and fight hard to hold on to what we have we will have a fight these different mental objections that you will have and this is one reason in a i dare you remember don't take your time don't take it easy while we are driving those fights are absorbing all of it we can possibly as fast as we can because no one of us knows what day we're going to face a crisis that we've never faced before and if we don't have what this program has to offer the most spiritual program in the world today to me barring none the only program I know of in the whole world today where we see when and when in their lives change and not only their lives but the whole family and if we don't find that if we do not have that change the big book tells us we must have that psychic change from within and if you do not have it when we have to face these unexpected crises if we dont have that power greater than ourselves to cling to we are going right back to the only God I ever knew was that bucket some people will call it a ship And the fact of the matter is, we didn't take advantage of what we had when we had the tent. I left out there in the door when they said you can't take the twelve steps off the wall because there are no instructions on the wall. The instructions are in the big book. To me, the 12 steps are merely a small portion of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. The program of the Alcoholics of Manos to me is from the doctor's opinion, to Bill's story, and more about alcoholism, and river pollution, and we have not seen it. And on page 25 there's a little asterisk that gives you a reference down at the bottom. tells you to go back in the back of the book with your appendix and read about spiritual awakening or spiritual experience so we'll know what you're looking for and it takes an hour to find what they're supposed to have to offer if this book told me i thought i could find an easier cost away when i knew the first three years i was in there i looked back and that was what i was looking for really an easier thought away rather than doing the best i could with what the program of recovery in the book told me to do there is no easy assault away we can come in and we can get up on a pink cloud and feel good to have a job rattling little men in our pockets and so forth And one day I think it is possible in any way to get up on a pink cloud of stability and stay there. But if that isn't the pink cloud you're on, don't let that other little pink cloud fool you. Because if you don't hit it, that pink cloud will break, and you'll come falling down. I wish that there was some way that a human being could explain to another human being what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now. The joker is trying to find a way to tell another human being what happened, where they will understand it. But I firmly believe that God has never given us the vocabulary for one human being to explain to another human thing a spiritual awakening or a spiritual experience where they will understand it and can come about having one by being told by another. They can't explain it because it's never meant to be explained because if you could hand it to another on a silver platter it wouldn't be worth having. Then to me there would be no higher power, we would have no need for a higher power. But when we heard that change from within and a man told me in 1935, I had pulled a little stunt down here at St. Peter's Bridge and I was in bad trouble and that man told me he says, Jack, I've never seen a person pull a stunt like you just pulled. that sooner or later he didn't turn right around and do the same thing over again unless his life changed from within. And to me, that is the whole story of the alcoholic. We will continue to do those same old things over and over and over again until something happens to change our lives from within then we no longer have to do those things again. I'm in your living room. Thank you and God bless you.