The World Thinks Everyone Knows About Alcoholism – Billy N.

And without further ado, I'll give you Billy. It's so good to be where there's a Dunkin' Donuts like every five blocks, you know? I'm Billy, I'm an alcoholic and I'm glad to be here. You know, I have had this agenda for a couple hours and so you know the question how 12-step work has impacted your life I could answer that a million different ways but I will tell you this that I think the longer you stay in a like I have a very insular look at recovery and a because I've been in it for so long now I came in when I was 14 didn't get sober till I was 23 but I have this view of the world like everybody knows knows about alcoholism, everybody knows about AA. That's just not the truth. But my judgment can get clouded because I'm so, the way I look at the world and I'm just gonna tell you, you know in honor of John Q who lived right around here, you know he used to always talk about you know that personal ability we have and people we see in our daily lives doctors other people you know to let them know about a service or about alcoholics anonymous and i'm going to tell you a true story that i switched doctors i moved from south palm beach county the north palm beach county and so like four years ago three and a half years ago i had to find a new doctor and it was kind of hard because it's during COVID and I was tired of waiting for three hours in urgent care so I really needed the new doctor but anyway they had this form for me to fill out about my past medical history and I got to this question about drinking and honestly it said how many drinks a week do you have and then it had a sliding scale below it like like a timeline that used to make before there were computers like when you drew a line with like lines going up and down like this is the year it started like just a little line and on the end of the left side of the line was a zero and on the end right side of line was at 10 and I And I remember looking at that that day, like 10 was the max in a week. And I remembered just kind of shaking my head a little bit and I just did what people had told me that it was important to do. I wrote zero. And I just wrote sober since... I don't even know if I wrote my whole sobriety. I think I just wrote sober since January in 1990. And I just put that there. Then like three weeks later, I had to go in and see the doctor about my blood tests and my blood work and get that report. And she was going through my medical history and she got to that and she said, oh, she said you don't drink at all, all sober since 1990. I said, yeah. She said, not even one? and I was like no she's like not at all huh I said no I said I'm an alcoholic I can't safely drink in you know I say that because you know this doctor she you know came from NYU Medical School a residency at Mount Sinai she had all the right things on the wall and yet she doesn't know about alcoholism she She doesn't know what separates me from a heavy drinker or a binge drinker, whatever. She has no idea about alcoholism. And sometimes we think that the world all knows, but the world does not know. Some of the world knows some bad things because shortly after that, another thing that kind of impacted my view of life a little bit was I was out at this resort in California to go to a work conference and I walked out to like the outdoor bar area looking over this golf green and I went to get a Diet Coke and I ran, I walked past a guy I know. Now I don't know him well. I I know he's very smart. I know people watch what he does whatever it's very smart and so but he said hello he said hey Billy I said how you doing and as I was getting my Diet Coke he said what's going on in the insurance in the commercial insurance world because that's the world I live in big commercial construction insurance and we'd had some bad years with some storms and so I started telling him what was going on and just like because maybe I learned this in service everything can't be about me so I said what's going on in your life at work like what's up in your industry now he knows me at a distance at events like this maybe a couple of times a year we have no other interaction and I just simply said to him hey what's going on your world now he's a big-time private equity venture capitalist and he He looks at me and says, I'm doubling down on recovery. I was like frozen in time there. I was, like, what is this guy talking about? So then I had to stay. I had ask him, I said, like what do you mean? He said, well, you won't believe this. He said there, imagine you had the worst McDonald's in the world that served the worst Big Macs in the world and every day there was a car line of cars blocking the street 10 blocks away waiting to get in that drive-in that just keep coming back he's like do you realize how many times people go to treatment he's like they go four and five and six times and insurance and their families pay for it and people take home equity loans he's that business is booming and I said and then he says his last comment was and really their only competition are like these volunteer people who get together who also have that problem and I'm sitting there like just like like wanting to blow my brains out listening to this guy, like wow. Because not too many months ago, I was about two hours south of here on the beach in the Jersey Shore and you know a plane went by as they do on the Beach in the summer and it wasn't an ad for the tiki bar. It was an ad treatment center and you now I have nothing against treatment centers If Bill W. didn't go to Towns Hospital, I wouldn't be here. But, you know, in the last 20 or 30 years, there's no doubt that we all know AA has shrunk the last four or five years. I mean, you can't deny that. It's shrunk. I travel for work all the time. I mean 50% of the meetings in the places that I go to are gone. They are not there. there. And we have a responsibility to be out there, and AA is such an important part of the history of the 20th century of the United States. I mean, how has 12-step work impacted my life? In the most unusual places, I have had 12- step related activities that that would just blow your mind. And when we talk about service, you know, which is kind of my subtopic that I was given, you know service sometimes becomes like a code word like that you're on the inside, right? Like that you are in general service which is something that I like to get rid of. Like Bill W. was very clear, service is anything that helps another alcoholic, anything. anything. But sometimes, you know, when I'm traveling, I'll run into someone and they'll be like, Oh, are you in service? And what they mean is, are a GSR? Are you a DCM? Are you past delegate? Are this, but like the one thing I know for sure, a hundred percent is that everybody in AA has a gift. Really the only crime is not figuring out what your gift is, like what part of the chain you should be on, like what should you be doing and there's probably multiple parts but when I think about the world then I thought about a world without alcoholics anonymous you know because sometimes I'll run into some of those people they hate the district they hate the area they can't stand the traditions they think anything beyond a group is politics or super control but you know I I often say to those people, like, where would you be if on your sobriety date AA didn't exist? Would your life still be where it is today? Because I doubt that's my story. If AA didn'T exist the day I last came, I'm not sure I would still, I would be here. That, and, you know, when the meeting was opened, it was mentioned, like there comes a time, I think, when you have to cross over in your life staying sober is important i'm not saying it's not important but my sobriety is not important it might be important to me but if i believe what it says in the literature it's not important to aa like aaa does not need me I am a simple cog in the wheel like AA will go on without any of us there is there is absolutely you know no doubt about that and because when you finally cross over that line I think you have to realize that besides your responsibility to stay sober today there is a greater responsibility and that is to make sure that aa is here tomorrow and then am i doing something today to ensure a is here tomorrow or am i going something to maybe take it in the other direction i mean those are you know the two questions and you know sometimes we don't realize how important aa is like in the world i sometimes forget i mean i come in and out of the palm beach airport a lot and I can tell you from where I always park I kind of park in the same spot all the time that it's like two and a half minutes for me to blow through the credit card machine and go up onto this ramp where I see a sign that says 95 north and 95 south and I tell you by the time I go under that ramp I have already had three conversations with myself in the rear view mirror and none of them are about what service more do I need to be doing none of them are about that they're usually about I have not golfed enough this week someone just said the who is playing tonight is who playing tonight yeah I just saw the who the other night like I have not seen the who or Metallica or last week I saw Joe Perry whatever like I haven't gone to concerts enough I haven't seen golfed enough I you know that's like the first thoughts in my rearview mirror wherever I'm coming back from especially if it's work And I have to remember, and I try to tell this story so that other people in AA know it, because we're really good at documenting our history, particularly between 1934, 1960, 1970 when Bill died. But after Bill died, we're not really very good at documenting our history or things that have gone on in AA. and I wish we were better at that because certain things happen in the world that fall through the cracks and one of those things that I know fell through the tracks that I run into a lot of people that don't know is that back in 1998 which at one time didn't seem like that long ago but now depending on my view of the day can seem long ago but in 1998 the editors of Time Magazine they got together because they knew two things were going to happen in two years. They knew that Time magazine would turn 80 years old, that was number one, and they knew that the 20th century would end, the 21st would start. A lot of people at that time if you were alive you just heard this term Y2K right? The ball was gonna drop and the world was gonna end right? No one knew what was going to happen all the computers were going to crash world floods whatever nothing happened right nothing happened but they knew this that time would turn 80 years old and the world would go into a new century and as a result of this and there may be an aa archivist or historian in here and i don't mean to cast any dispersion your way but time magazine hired 20 of the most preeminent experts on history in the world at the various institutions around the world. Not AA historians, not AA archivists. I mean, you know how AA archrivists are and historians. Like, I can give a tour of New York City AA sites. Like, I can go from GSO to Towns Hospital to Calvary Church over to 182 Clinton. If I'm with the right people who are subway efficient, I can get that tour done in a couple of hours. unless there's one AA archivist or historian in the group, because they have to examine with a microscope like every step we're going. Like they're gonna find something that Bill W left behind. But they didn't hire those people. They just hired the best and the brightest in all the universities around the world. And they sent them away for two weeks And they locked them in a room, like at a mountain retreat. And they said, you have one job. Your job is to start on January the 1st of 1900 and end on today's date in 1998. And your job isto identify the 80 most important days of the 20th century. now if you multiply 365 by 98 that is a lot of days and you know I keep that book on my coffee table in my living room you know if you leave here tonight and you order it the 80 days that changed the world you know, if you go 15 pages in into the section on the 1930s there is a picture of bill and bob where it says you know on june 10 1935 as a result of a meeting on mother's day a few weeks before between a broken stock broker in new york and a broken surgeon in akron led to the birth of alcoholics anonymous which has saved millions of alcoholic's lives and they've shared their recipe for success with other people who have other problems and other organizations and you know i always say that like do i need to do i need to like remind myself like do i treat aa like it's one of the 80 most important things that happened in the 20th century because if you turn a couple of pages before or a couple pages after and you see what it's being compared to it's been compared to jackie robinson being the first black baseball player it's bein compared to the wall coming down. It's being compared to women getting the right to vote, it's being compared to Martin Luther King's I had a dream speech like that's what this is being compared too and I'm guilty myself of probably not treating AA every day like it's one of the 80 most important days and you know when we talk about 12 step work there's so many stories that get lost sometimes we act like miracles only happened in a gatehouse in Akron on Mother's Day in 1935 but the real truth is that miracles happened in Alcoholics Anonymous every day by the thousands all over the world that's just a fact you know one of my favorite you know heroes in Alcoholic Anonymous is somebody I never met but you know a kid named John John Oh who got sober young and was in the Marines as a teenager and in his early 20s and he got sent to Beirut in 1983 and he wrote it's a famous letter a bunch of his letters are famous you know he wrote to the general service office us. He just saw their address in the back of a pamphlet, P.O. Box 459, Grand Central Station. And by the way, let me make a little public service announcement. I know there are a lot of fancy places to go visit AA history, especially if you live around here. You can go to Stepping Stones. You Can Go to the Motherlode right there and get it all out of the way. Right? You can Go to GSO. Youcan Go to Calvary Church down on 23rd and Park. YouCan Go to 182 Clinton Street where Bill and Lois lived. YouCan Go to St. John the Divine where Bill W's funeral was but I'm telling you to me from a 12-step point of view the most important thing to see in New York City is if you're anywhere near Grand Central Station is to walk a little bit east to Lexington and at Lexington make a left turn going north and go about because Grand Central Churchill Station is they're missing a block between 42 and 44. So there's no real 43 there. But when you're walking up Lexington on the left-hand side, you will see a sign that says the Grand Central Post Office Annex. It's right there. And if you walk in that door and you turn right and walk directly into the wall you will run into P.O. Box 459 like our P.o. Box like it's right there the box that letters have been coming in that still come in from prisoners who are in places that don't have electronic but the amount of miracles that have started as a result of that mailbox is just astronomical and this young Marine wrote that mailbox and said hey I've been deployed on a combat mission to the airport in Beirut it's really bad here I was not allowed to bring anything extra I have no literature I have nothing and I'm having a real hard time and so a lady at the general service office sent him a letter like we do with a book with a big book and said dear private or corporal whatever nice to meet you here's a book hope you're doing okay and then puts in what we always put in if you happen to get to New York City when you're back in the country please stop by and come see us we write that to to everybody some of the people I'm not sure we really mean it based on the tone of their letter but we write that right but anyway you know this isn't a best of the grapevine article you can read it too is you know he wrote back a month later thanks for the book it's really helping me you know if you could send some more literature please do and they did and then he wrote wrote back again using some of Bill W's language from the big book saying I have good news to report and his good news was that he started a group called the peacekeepers group and he said in between the shelling and the bullets and everything else that him and some other people in service and in not a service but in the other service branches mostly Marines that were sober and some civilians locals from Beirut Lebanon would get together in between the shelling and the bombing and the shooting and everything else whenever they could get together and have a meeting and then he wrote like a PS but now I really need a lot of literature because I have a group right so what is the lady at GSO do he's writing to sends him another letter through the military mail with a box of literature for his new group and pamphlets and everything else. And this goes back and forth for a while until they didn't hear from him for a couple of months, and then in December of 1983 the lady at GSO who had been writing to him got a letter from another group member who said she had the heartbreaking job of letting the woman at Gso know that had been writing to them that the young AA member she'd been corresponding with was killed in the barracks blast of October 1983 where just about I think it's somewhere around 275 US personnel were killed but that person ended their letter by saying but we want you to know the group is still going on and you know if you leave here tonight and Google a a in Lebanon you will see that but there is now I've done a lot of research on John right he's buried in Minnesota there is now a sober living house just for veterans outside of Minneapolis that was just it's either almost opened or is open but John's parents live there he was mentioned in the paper like John was the AA lunatic right like his sister talked talked about him getting in trouble because he had some guys in a helicopter in the Marines dropping pamphlets out like over houses, right? Like John was over the top, right? And I'm sure if he was here he would be driving us crazy, right. But when you think about that, when you're thinking about 12-step work and all the different versions it comes in, if people didn't put money in a basket in 1981 or 82 there'd be no money to send a big book in 1983. There'd be no money for somebody to answer and open his letter. There would be no money to ship a free box of literature through the military mail, and you know that I think is the big problem between what I would call frontlines AA service and institutional service. Frontline's AA service is incredible. Frontlines AA service, when you meet someone on day zero and you are then there a year later on their anniversary it's like the person went through like a flux capacitor on Back to the Future right? Like it's barely remotely resembles the person you met 365 days ago right like you get to see that progress in your face all the time that's the beauty of one-on-one working with people it's not the beauty unfortunately of institutional service because a lot of of times we don't see the results of the work that we're doing but a story like Jay's is the perfect example of the results that we see you know I uh I went to this workshop at why can't I think of the name of this prison now Angola it it was so horrible I can't believe I forgot the name but Angola prison is in a swamp in Louisiana it has more property than Manhattan as far as geographic size it's surrounded on three sides by swamp it's basically a lot of prisons inside a gate but a lot of different buildings almost like its own city but it's a city of warehousing inmates inmates um and that's believe me i have the greatest respect for no politics in aa but they've been warehousing inmates there for years you get sentenced when you're 17 you don't leave and you know inside that correctional facility they had some of the best aa i've ever seen like some of most incredible aa including and you You know, this is another thing that I like to talk about, you know, because all of us, maybe I can't judge everybody. Right. But some of us might go through what we would consider sometimes when we're a little bit rigid or a little bit dogmatic or a Little bit my ways better than everyone else's instead of this is what I do. and you know I have as you know this was I don't know 2019 but you know I have a sponsee who is on death row in Angola and I met him there and this is going to become you know a difficult part of my life soon because Louisiana had a stay on execution since 2011 but they removed that stay this year so things are moving forward and there was 73 people or 74 there but anyway my story about James is this that when we went into that when they said they were going to let us in to meet there were a couple AA members in death row like this building was horrible I'm just saying it was horrible to the middle of a swamp there's no air conditioning there's huge fans the cells are super small they would not let anyone out of their cells when we were there but they said that we could walk down the tier and if one of those members wanted to talk to us they could and you know I was with a couple other people and we walked past this one cell and it was clear that he didn't care that he was sober and we were sober he did not want to be bothered like it was just very clear to me so as the two people walked past his cell and I was walking past I just happened to look in in his cell and he had an article about the Knicks from Sports Illustrated taped on his wall, I kid you not. And I just turned around and said to him, are you a long suffering Knicks fan as well? That's all I said. That was my opening 12 step line, right? The only thing that could have been worse is if he had a jet sting up there, right. Then you know that's a real test of your sobriety but I just said, are you a long-suffering Knicks fans as well Well, and I will tell you that that led to a 45-minute discussion between him and I. That has led to our relationship for many years now. And, you know, I think about that because we all want to talk about the perfect way to talk to somebody the first time because we want to play God. Or I think God does a better job at 12-step work or arranging the players than any of us could do you know and the other thing I want to say about 12-step work and I think you know maybe there is listen there are all kinds of people who come to a a and there are some people who come to AA who were really good people before they got here they are that I've met them you know it's incredible they've always thought of other people they I mean they just stay they can't drink, but I look at that line in Bill's story of the only way to survive the certain trials and low spots ahead is through work and self-sacrifice. That's what it says. Work and self sacrifice were definitely not my code when I showed up here. Like I did not go to high school every day thinking, today, work and sacrifice, you know? That is how I was raised to be. It's just not. And for me and for a lot of people that I know, because I think service in AA is just a door opening to a life of service in the world, is most of the people that I know in AA who are really good servants of the world. Like the big book says, you know, to the community about you, um, they learned how to do that in Alcoholics Anonymous. us like this is where they learned and i think it's because the book talks about selfishness and self-centeredness and you know um you know there used to be a past trustee his name was don you know he used to always say my life is a life of service like if i am not at least thinking 51 percent of the time of my life to help other people not only in aa but just help other people that I'm a candidate for I'll be in a lot of trouble and you know sometimes that sounds a little drastic like it's over the top or anything else but for most of the people that i know in Alcoholics Anonymous who wind up staying here a long time and it doesn't mean that they have fancy titles it doesn't me anything like that it just means that that they have found out, like I have found out, that my life has to be dedicated to a lot more than just myself. And, you know, I think today, you know, on the chair of the board of a really large non-profit and that serves a million meals a year and we deal with homeless people who suffer the homeless condition. And, um, you know, and I think about when I go there and when I, cause I have to fly to go there. And I think About when I chair those board meetings or I think about when the CEO calls me because there's some problem. And I think about, you know, like I'm only there because I learned a lot of those skills in Alcoholics Anonymous service. But what I learned most is like, I always have to find somewhere else to focus my energy that has nothing to do with me and I think that really is the beauty of 12-step work and you know when I speak again I'll talk about you know reflections of the role of service and recovery I think this is almost like a joke line it should have just stopped it could have just stop here reflections on the role service and Recovery because then it says end spiritual growth you can't meet someone in a service who has not like I had a lot of spiritual growth as a result of AA service. Like, this is such an incredible place to learn about spiritual growth. But, you know, the other thing I want to tell you and close with this is that you never know what's going to win over somebody when you're trying to help them. You just you just really have no idea. And we get to live a life that a lot of other people don't get to live. A lot of other people, you know, I was on a subway in New York City in a suit and tie with four other people. We had got on the subway at the Astor PlayStation and we were getting off downtown to go to a meeting near the seaport and when we were coming back I heard the middle of the doors of the subway open and I heard this voice that I recognized and he's screaming at the top of his lungs with a megaphone whose battery is not working by the way that if you could help him he would really appreciate it that he was trying to do the best he can now the problem was is I knew that voice from a meeting I went to where he used to have that same megaphone with no battery in the back of this meeting in New York City and what I loved about that meeting is he would walk back and forth in this fake fur coat that hadn't been cleaned in like 10 years with a boombox that had no batteries with the megaphone that had no batteries and what i loved is people just let him be no one was scared they just let him be the problem is when he comes through the middle of the subway door during the day and everybody is in suits and ties and everybody's looking at him and then he stops and says hey Billy and everybody you work with is looking at you like what matrix are we in right now like what universe is going on you know but like we we get those opportunities and sometimes we don't know it and we sometimes get so busy in our lives we don' see God's work. There's a guy who served as a delegate in the UK and a delegate United States when he was at NATO headquarters in Brussels he got to be a UK delegate also his name is Roger and Roger is an expert on military history of AA and a lot of people don't know this about 12-step history 80% I just want to repeat that 80% of the countries that have Alcoholics Anonymous you can trace a member number one back to a man or woman serving in the Canadian or U.S. military, 80%. Just one AA member who got sent there. Now Roger, and this is the last story I'll leave you with, Roger was in Afghanistan in the middle of nowhere and he hadn't been to a meeting in a long time. And he saw a convoy notice go up where they needed extra security personnel now at the time he was like a chief warrant officer three or four but but he volunteered because the this this uh convoy was going to a place that had a meeting in it every night on that base and he was like i'm going i don't care how dangerous it is i'm going so he went on the convoy and that night he went to the place in the chaplain's office or tent where they had the meeting and it was him a navy chaplain and like two other guys who were sober and none of them had been to a meeting in a long time fast forward a couple years it's 2010 the international convention is in san antonio there is a meeting for military and veterans a panel roger is one of the speakers there's there's microphones in the middle because they're sharing from the audience after the three panelists and roger like let's you know talks from his heart about like how much that meeting meant to him like he didn't care that it was 11 hours in a convoy that was a little dangerous like he hadn't been to a meeting in months and he talked about the beauty of those other three AA members there and almost like it was scripted in Hollywood but it wasn't scripted when the panelists were done who walks up to the microphone but the Navy chaplain that was in that meeting who Roger had no idea was in San Antonio who then also shares about how that meeting so you know God whatever faith you believe in has a big role here in 12-step work and my message is is that miracles have not stopped happening after the gatehouse in 1935 they're happening every single day if we keep our eyes open the reason I believe in in God is because I've witnessed miracles in other people's lives in Alcoholics Anonymous. It's just that simple. So, I look forward to hearing from everybody else. Thank you very much.