The Psychiatrist Who Thought He Was Too Educated to Be Helped – Paul M.

material. And so I asked a few people and they said, well, he's a world traveler. He travels all over the world and speaks for AA as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I found out this morning that he's an ex-professional wrassler. He's an ex-construction man. And he's a lot of things I've heard. But I asked him this morning what I could use, and he was very modest, and said, well, I'm very handsome, I am very humble, and I'm very honest. And he gave me a whole list of things that I could use, but I choose not to. I'd like to introduce to you Paul M. Thank you, Pete. Good morning. My name is Paul Martin and I'm an alcoholic. Hello, everybody. I appreciate the chance to be here this morning because I think it may help me overcome my shyness. Alcoholism is a disease and AA is the answer. And as you noticed this morning, I've been sober 34 years as of last month. I'm glad they had to count down because then I didn't have to announce it myself. You probably think that I sobered up when I was three or four years old. However, I am a little older. I came into AHA when I was 25 and I was 59 last May, which is quite a bit older than I had planned to be. I'm getting to be too old to take yes for an answer. A is about change, and change comes through working the twelve steps. The steps are the program. There is no other program. Conferences are nice and banquets are nice and committee meetings are nice but the steps of the program without the program there is no other answer that's the message and what I have seen as I have stayed sober is people who either didn't understand that or forgot it and got drunk and got lost along the way or never could get sober AA is about change. I heard about one man who changed a great deal. He got to be 80 years old and he'd worked 90 hours a week all of his life, never had any fun, never enjoyed life. So he got his face lifted, got a new toupee, got some $900 suits and a new Mercedes. And the first day he put the whole thing together, he put on his toupee and new $900 suit. He gotten the Mercedes and he drove four blocks, and he got killed in an automobile wreck. And he went to heaven. He said, Lord, why did you let it happen? I never had any fun all of my life. I'm finally going to enjoy life, and I get killed. Why? The Lord said, To tell you the truth, Charlie, I didn't recognize you. Alcoholics are known for big egos. I heard about one alcoholic who finally decided to try psychotherapy, and he went to a psychiatrist. And on his first visit, the psychiatrist said, well, I don't know anything about you. He said, I've never seen you before. Tell me about yourself. Start at the beginning. And the alcoholic said, in the beginning, I created the heavens and the earth. Incidentally, I'd like to thank anybody who was involved in getting me invited to this, Lenny. Incidentally when Lenny was younger he studied to be an artist but he gave it up. He gave it because he wanted to paint this beautiful model in the nude and she wouldn't let him. She made him put on his bathrobe. I think it's an indication of the higher powers view of the alcoholic's keen intelligence when we look back on our beginnings and realize that of our co-founders, two of them, one was a medical doctor and he was a proctologist. Can you imagine the trouble we'd have been in if he'd have done this? He'd have never been a psychiatrist. As Pete mentioned, I've done a number of things since I sobered up. I was sober four years. When I drank, everybody told me I was a smart young fellow. And if I sober'd up, I'd go far, and I believed them. And when I was sober four years, I found myself working as a laborer on a rigging crew in northern Greenland, about 850 miles from the North Pole, which was a lot farther than I had planned to go. but through a variety of events I ended up writing for a living which is what I do now I was in the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador a couple of years ago and the Galopagos islands of course are where Darwin got the idea for his theory of evolution from the finches and the giant tortoises the giant tortoises there get to be 500 and 600 pounds and I learned that during mating season the giant tortoises become so excited they try to mate with large rocks. It's pretty much like your average AA picnic. You know, if you drink you've got two things to worry about. You're either an alcoholic or you're not an alcoholic. If you're an alcoholic, if you're a non-alcoholic, you don't have anything to worry about. If you continue to drink, you've either die or go insane. If you go insane, you don't have anything to worry about. If you die, you've got two things to worry about. You'll either go to heaven or you'll go to hell. If you go to heaven, you don't have anything to worry about. If you go to hell, you've got one thing to worry about. Where in hell can you get another drink? It says in the big book that some of us tried to hang on to our old ideas, and the results were nil until we let go completely. Well, I came into AA with a lot of lousy old ideas. I came in with what I look back on as two large handicaps. One was too much secular education. I got educated way beyond my intelligence, and it didn't take a lot of education to do that. And the other problem was too much religious education. I come from a long line of Lutheran ministers, And in spite of that fact, I believe in God today. At the time I came to AA, I was a fallen-away atheist. I didn't believe in anything. The way I was taught, they said that if you don't believe this way, you're going to be part of an eternal marshmallow roast and you're liable to be one of the marshmallows. And when I would ask why, they would say, that's because God loves you. and I gradually concluded that I could live better with less cosmic affection and I tried it on my own at the time I came to AA and that didn't work too well either I was very grateful after I sobered up to learn that nobody in AA argued about whose higher power was higher I found that a very refreshing approach but after I'd sobered UP a while I collected a whole new set of old ideas. I've had a continuing problem of trying to be smarter than I actually am. I have continually been confused by the simplicity of the AA program. When I was sober about, well, less than a year, I heard Paul Stanley talk in Chicago one Sunday morning in the spring of 1948. Stanley was the number 5AA. He was from Akron, and he said in the course of his talk over and over, AA is of itself sufficient. And he repeated this many times, and I was not quite sure that this was correct. I believe that today. AA is, of itself, sufficient. You and I have, within this fellowship, within these 12 steps, working these 12 step because the program is not meetings, it's not conferences, it' s not banquets. The program is working and reworking every one of these 12 steps. If we do that, we have everything we need to live not just soberly but sanely, joyously, and usefully. On page 15 in the 12 and 12, it says AA's 12 steps are a group of principles spiritual in their nature which if practiced as a way of life can expel the obsession to drink can enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole. And in my experience, that is totally, completely, and 100% correct. If you and I work the steps... Well, when things get dull this morning, I'll just repeat that. But I collected all these new old ideas because it startled me that anything as simple as this program could have everything that I needed. And I spent a number of years, as a retarded mystic, I read everything you could find on the subject of spiritual growth because I knew that some of us in AA were destined for greater spiritual growth than others. And I knew that I was one of those. My definition of humility has always been the art of looking ashamed while you say beautiful things about yourself. So I read all these marvelous books that told you how to leap into the spiritual stratosphere, and I could talk about Jung, and I Could Talk About St. John of the Cross, and the Bhagavad Gita and frequently bored my friends into terminal fatigue. And as time passed, I came to the realization that what happened was I developed a metaphysical hernia and I had strained myself spiritually. And I went back and took some new looks at the big book. Now, I've read that big book many times. I made four contracts up in Thule, Greenland. I worked on overseas construction from 1951 until 1958. I made four contracts up in northern Greenland, over in Iceland. I worked in Alaska on the Dew Line and Point Barrow. And a lot of that time there was no AA group. So my AA came out of the big book, and I've been through it again and again and again. I write for a living, as I say. That is the most incredible volume I have ever seen in my life. It's the only thing I have ever found in my life, the truth and the power in that big book that has held out for me throughout my life. It's The Only Thing that has continued to work. Everything that you and I need is contained in that volume and in working and reworking all of these 12 steps. Again and again, I have read in there a paragraph that says I get everything I need in Alcoholics Anonymous. Everything I need, I get, and invariably when I get what I need it was just what I wanted all the time. And that's what I have found over and over and ever. Everything is connected to everything else, which is something else I have trouble understanding. Barry Commoner, the ecologist, says that there are three laws of ecology. One, everything has to go somewhere. Two, everything is connected with everything else. else, and three, there is no such thing as a free lunch. And again and again I have found that if I do something in the program here in a step, it straightens out something in my life over there that was apparently not connected. Or if I start to lie, steal, and cheat over here, it corrupts something in my life ever there. Over and over and over I've had tremendous problem with my alcoholic ego. Somebody said that the ego is like a maybe. It has a tremendous appetite on one end and no sense of responsibility on the other, and that's my experience. And the steps have again and again been the answer. Work the steps and we get what we need. Everything is connected to everything else. Again and again I have seen that in my life and the lives of many other alcoholics, the shortest distance from one place to another is through the 12 steps, because they are all connected. There's no reason in the world that I can explain why if a person makes an important amend, suddenly someone who has been unemployable can get a job, and yet that's happened to me and it's happened to other people. The steps are the answer at any level of sobriety. It's all hear. The AA message is a message from one amateur to another amateur. AA didn't start as one of many, many ways to help alcoholics get straightened out. AA started because there was nothing else that worked for alcoholics and it has continued because there is still nothing else which works for alcoholists. Going to meetings and not drinking do not treat my alcoholism. Working the 12 steps treats my alcoholisim. If all I do is go to meetings and not drink, eventually I suffer from untreated alcoholism and that comes out as depression, anxiety, fear, hostility, apathy, boredom, sometimes drunkenness, and sometimes sometimes drunkenness, and sometimes suicide. One of the things that has impressed me as I have stayed sober is the fact that there are many, many musts in the AA program. Another thing that has impressed me is the deterioration I have seen in AA members with a lot of sobriety who fail to continue to work the 12 steps. None of us would expect that we could live on the food we ate 20 years ago, the water we drank 10 years ago or the air we breathed 5 years ago. It makes no more sense to suppose that I could live on the work I did in these steps 5 or 10 or 20 years ago. I came into an area which said you worked the first 9 steps once and then you spend the rest of your life on 10, 11 and 12 and I suffered from that familiar misconception for the first 16 years I was sober. And in 1963, I ran into the view that by working and reworking every one of these 12 steps, 1 through 12, there were tremendous benefits which I could not understand because I had never tried it. It says in the big book, the only guarantee of everlasting ignorance is contempt prior to investigation. And I thought the only way I can understand this is to try it. And as I tried it, I found that this was absolutely correct. A friend of mine who sobered up a year after I did, in 1948, in 1971 with 23 years of sobriety, never took a drink, never took a pill, shot himself in the head trying to commit suicide. He succeeded only in shooting out his right eye. He died a year or two later. A doctor from the Middle West, sober 17 years, killed himself last fall. Another AA, sober 16 years, killed himself in the summer. A woman I know, sober 13 years, tried to commit suicide last summer. So those are the odds. And that's what we're talking about. Untreated alcoholism. How do I treat my alcoholism? I treat my alcoholism by working and reworking every one of the 12 steps on a continuing basis. I belong to a step group, and it's a group where we work the steps. We have a commitment not to talk about the steps, not to philosophize about them. We don't read about them, we go there and discuss our current experience with a commitment to continue to work and rework every one if the steps and what that does is create a power and a vitality where you get a person who comes in we had as an example a man who was sober 10 years in lousy condition he had gone through a treatment center and taken a 4th and 5th step 10 years ago never done much else went to a lot of meetings babysat at the treatment center Lutheran General up near Chicago and felt worse and worse and worst depressed, anxious, afraid, hostile about half out of his mind with untreated alcoholism and there are an awful lot of A's who suffer from that at varying stages of sobriety and he started coming to our meeting and the way he started to come to our meetings was I had talked at a meeting last spring and I had talk about these things and a couple of weeks later he called me up and he said I've got three names in my pocket he said one is a priest who leads retreats where I go and I thought maybe I could talk to him he said the second is a prostitute I thought Maybe I could go see her and he said The Third was yours so I thought I'd call you I said well that's much better company than I usually associate with now he started coming to our meeting about 15 weeks ago about three quarters out of his mind And he took a fourth step, he took a fifth step, took a number of fifth steps because one of the things we have found through the years is that the continuing opening up with other people frees us in ways that we could not be free otherwise. I had an act that I had put together by the time I came to AA and an act that I have continued to try to keep glued together since I came to AA and the only way to find out who I really am is through this continuing work with the steps so that as he continued to open up with other AAs and one of the things we believe and I certainly believe is that if somebody comes to me to take a fifth step with me I have an obligation to be equally honest about myself and take a complete thorough fifth step for that person and when we get done, we're even i spent a lot of time in a looking for a guru and a lot more time trying to convince people that i had already become a guru and what that does is prevent that i don't try to function as a therapist or counselor or spiritual guide but simply as one beggar showing another beggar where there is bread incidentally in our group we believe that men should take fifth steps with men and women should take sixth steps with women We find that working on that basis, there is less tendency to generate new material. It requires additional fourth and fifth steps. So Jerry began to work the steps, ten years sober, almost totally out of his mind. he began to work the steps he lost his symptoms of untreated alcoholism he lost His depression, His fear He's made direct amends, the whole thing and it does work very simple, that's the message somebody has said that if you want to hide something from an alcoholic the best place to put it is in the big book and I suspect that might be true willpower won't keep me sober willpower will help me work the steps, it's kind of like that Myron Cohen story about the lady who was chiding her husband for no willpower and she said you don't have any willpower. She said you're disgusting. She says Goldberg has willpower, Goldberg smoked three packs of cigarettes a day for 25 years, five years ago he says I quit, Goldburg hasn't smoked since, that's willpower She said Ginsburg has will power, Ginsburg was drunk 25 years of his life, Six years ago, Ginsburg says, I quit. He hasn't had a drink since. She said, that's willpower. You don't have any willpower, her husband became incensed. He said, I'll show you what willpower is. He said from now on, I'm going to sleep in the guest bedroom forever. Six months passed and he was awakened at 3.30 one morning by his wife shaking the bed and he opened his eyes, looked at her, he said, what do you want? She said Goldberg is smoking. About a year ago, I was writing an article on the high-profit alcoholism treatment industry, and I was talking with Dr. Robert DeVito, who at that time was director of the Illinois Department of Mental Health and also in charge of alcoholism in the state of Illinois. DeVito is a psychiatrist who's treated 1,300 alcoholics in private practice and knows a lot about alcoholism. And I said, do you think it's possible to harm an alcoholic by too much treatment? And Dr. DeVitio says, no, I don't think so. He said, that implies that we know what we're doing when we treat him. And he said, we don't know enough to harm him or help him. so I said what do you think of confrontation for raising the bottom that's kind of a popular marketing concept these days I said do you think it works he says no I don't think so he said I've seen it tried many times and I can never say that it has worked he says I really don't understand what makes an alcoholic decide to quit drinking Harry Thiebaud called hitting bottom hearing the sweet voice of reality and I really don't know how that happened to me. I just know that I reached a point in August of 1947 where I was no longer able to lie. I saw the truth in a way I never had seen before and perhaps have never seen since. But I don't now how it happened. That was the first gift I got. I think the problem with psychotherapy is not that its practitioners don't know anything, but simply that they know so many things that are untrue. You and I have what we need here in Alcoholics Anonymous. If an alcoholic cannot stay sober, or if he's sober from untreated alcoholism, he needs a sponsor, not a therapist. We hear a great deal about Bill Wilson's spiritual experience within the first week he was sober. Unfortunately, we hear much less about what Bill did that preceded that spiritual experience. And what Bill Wilson did within the first week he was sober, with the help of Ebi Thatcher, was take the first eight steps of this program. Step four, step five, three, six, seven. He listed the people he'd harmed and said he was willing to make amends to them. Then he had a spiritual experience, Earl Treat, who started AA in Chicago and you can find his story in the big book was sponsored by Dr. Bob it's called The Man Who Sold Himself Short and with Dr. Bobs help in the late 30s Earl Treat went through the first 8 steps of this program within the first 3 weeks of sobriety I've never seen anybody in AA harmed from working the steps too soon seen an awful lot of people harmed I've seen an awful lot of people harmed from working them too late and some of them are dead it's a very simple program got a guy who's been a friend of mine for years Dr. Hobart Maurer recently retired as research professor of psychology at the University of Illinois and a few years ago I was doing an alcoholism article for the Christian Century Hobart knows a great deal about AA he's not a member but he knows a Great Deal about AA and about the working of the 12 steps the fact that anybody who does these things who will be honest who will clean up the past will start to be healthy depression, anxiety, fear come from guilt no other reason And the answer is not to say I'm not going to let somebody put me on a guilt trip. You know, that's idiocy. I came into AA feeling very guilty, and the reason I did was because I had lived in a way that would make anybody with a conscience feel guilty. And if I hadn't felt guilty, I would have been a sociopath, and I'd have really been in trouble. But I asked Hobart what he thought about psychotherapy for the sober alcoholic in AA, And Dr. Maurer, who has impeccable professional credentials, he taught for eight years at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He did seminal work on learning theory. Dr. Mauer said if the alcoholic will work the 12 steps and develop the friendship within AA, this will be far more effective than any psychotherapy I know anything about. and of course what he points out is that AA enables drunks to stay sober but also the 12 steps are designed to deal with what's wrong with you and me when we don't drink and that's the answer it's always useful for me to remember that AA is where the clergymen come to find God's help to stay silver and AA is where psychologists and psychiatrists come to find the kind of group therapy that will bring sobriety in order to their lives. If the quality of my life is not what it should be, the best place for me to go for counseling or therapy is to the big book or to a member who has done enough continuing work with these 12 steps to understand that how it works means that this is how it worked. I heard about one lady who went to a psychiatrist for five years and finally she said, Doctor, tell me the truth, what's wrong with you? with me. He said, lady, you're nuts. You're crazy. You are insane. She was somewhat taken aback and she said, I think I want a second opinion. He says, all right, you are ugly too. Most of what I have learned since I have been sober, this hair didn't fall out, it was beaten out. And part of it was lost from reading all those books that are going to tell you how to straighten your life out, both before AA and since. I'm screwed up, everybody's screwed up. How to be your own worst enemy and all the rest of them. I read them drunk and I read them sober, and I think those books are tremendous. I think they're really magnificent, unless you really need help. And if you really need help and you're an AA, the answer's in Alcoholics Anonymous. Pretty much of what I've learned, I've like the Marine who flattened the little old man in the saloon with a karate chop. He let out a shout and he said, I'm a United States Marine and that's karate from Japan. The little old Man got back on his stool and he started to drink again and suddenly the Marine whacked him again and flattened him and let out his shout. And he said I'm a United States Marine and that's karate from Japan. The little old man wandered out. Pretty soon the bartender looked up and the little old was walking back in but the bartend was busy mixing drunk drinks and he didn't pay attention and he heard this thud and he turned around and the Marine was unconscious on the floor and as the little man left the saloon he stopped in front of the bartending, he said when that so-and-so comes to you tell him that was a hammer from Sears and Roebuck. And whatever I've learned, I've learned pretty much the same way. You sometimes hear it said that alcoholics are smarter than other people. I don't know where that came from. I know it was never started by anybody in Al-Anon. But after I'd been working out of the country, we had one guy up in Point Barrow, Alaska, Nick Gray, who was on the program. His father was Jewish and his mother was Eskimo, and Nick said he always thought that he was probably his only juskimo, and I think that was correct. But after I came back around Chicago, I'd been gone for a number of years, and during the time I'd be gone they started having delegates to New York and they started have conferences and banquets and all of these things, and that was all new to me. And I looked around, and when I got back there at fifty-nine and I saw that there was a clique that ran this thing and so I got my own clique and entered my leadership phase and gradually I became a legend in my own mind. And I started running everything I could find, banquets, conferences, and I became delegate to New York and I started talking at conferences and running all over the country and people would compliment me on my service and I would mumble something about how this was the least I could do. I I really hated all this, but I just needed to do it because A.A. had done so much for me. Of course, if you ever ask anybody who's doing this stuff why he does it, and he gives you any other reason than pride, ego, self-importance, you want to watch him because he'll lie to you about other things too. I ran into a strange phenomenon, however, because there were some people around AA who did not appreciate my insight and didn't like the way I ran things. And I ended up with a lot of really lousy relationships. And I found myself in 1968, sober 21 years, in really rotten condition. A lot of resentments, and I couldn't work too well. Well, one of the things I learned a long time ago and have forgotten from time to time is that if I don't deal with the past, it keeps affecting me in the present, and it burns up vitality among other things. We can change the past. And I went to a meeting one night, sober 21 years, and I was talking with a couple of members after the meeting, and one of them was a man I sponsor who was sober three years at that time and I had really worked him out on the steps and he'd done a great job and I described my not feeling so good and said what do you think I ought to do and this guy said why don't you write out a new list of people you have harmed and go around and make amends to them I thought that was pretty poor advice to give to one of AA's leaders but I figured if you ask for it you better try it so I had 12 names on the list of people I had harmed sober one of the things I have learned too is that I can create a lot more damage sober than I ever did drunk that my character defects really had nothing to do with drinking they had something to do with me and the answer Sobriety is obviously going to only give me the opportunity to deal with what was wrong with me all the time. So I made a list of people I'd harmed sober, and I had 12 names on there, and I made direct amends to them. And a couple of them, everybody received the thing, the amends well, except for two who said I was no good, never had been any good, and never would be any good. Which didn't bother me because I didn't really believe them. but again everything is connected to everything else my father was a Lutheran minister as I've said who became a fundraiser he was a very badly behaved drunk and I ended up growing up in a little town down in southern Georgia about 50 miles from the Okefenokee Swamp it was too small to have a village idiot we all just used to take turns but I haven't seen him for many years and I could make an honest case that 99% of the harm in that relationship had been done by him and that is an honest evaluation and yet as I stayed sober I realized that there are times when logic is not enough and if there's a critical relationship in my life that's sick then I'm sick and I'm going to stay sick until I do something about it through the steps. So after I'd sobered up, I used to call him and suggest that we get together, and by then he was sober on his own, and he always said no. And after I made those amends to those 12 people around Chicago in the summer and fall of 1968, suddenly a trip to Miami opened up in October of 68, and I stopped to see my father unannounced on the way back. And I looked in the World Service directory, and there was a man in there as secretary of the AA group in that little town, which had 4,000 people when I left. When I came back 27 years later, it had mushroomed to 5,000. And then I called him up and said what I wanted to do, and he said, how can I help? I said, I don't know. But I went over to see him. And Then I went to see my father unannounced in October of 68, sober 21 years. And I rang the doorbell and he came to the door. And not knowing how to proceed, I made an amend to him. And then I told him who I was and I said, I would like to come in and talk with you. And he said, come in. And we talked for maybe 25 minutes. And I went home. And in March of 1969, I got the feeling I ought to go back and visit again. And I did. And I was having a quiet time a couple of days after that second visit and I saw perhaps ten names that went on my list of people I'd harmed from before I sobered up that somehow or other were connected to that amend to my father. Two weeks after that first visit that second visitor died and I went to his funeral. Time runs out. Easy does not always do it. If you've got something like that in your life, all I can say is do it now. Because a week from now the opportunity might be gone forever. But everything was connected. As soon as I straightened things out around Chicago with those 12 people I pushed around in my leadership phase, I was able to get at a critical part of my life. And after I straighted that out, I saw another 10 names that went on that list of people I'd harmed. I didn't start out in those years down in South Georgia to be an alcoholic I started out to be an athlete and a clean living American youth and I got sidetracked somewhere growing up was confusing for me I don't know when I became an alcoholic Paul, I believe, said he became an alcoholic at 12 there was some guy in Texas who said that he was a premature baby and he was born at 6 months and the doctor told his mother to put a little whiskey in his milk so he became an alcoholic three months before the rest of you people were born. But alcohol glued me together in some very critical ways. When I was eight or nine and there was some beer or wine left in a glass around the house, I used to snap it up when nobody was looking. And when I was 12, I usedto pick the lock on my aunt's liquor closet And when I was 14, I got drunk for the first time. And I knew that what happened when I got drunk, somewhere it registered that this is what I needed. I didn't need to get smart. I didn'T need to get educated. All I needed was the price in that bottle to survive because it patched up holes in me that I could never get at otherwise. And I drank my way through high school and I started what was to be the first of several colleges near Atlanta. I lasted a year and a half. I became increasingly interested in sports, and that was about it, and a decreasingly good student. I started a college near Chicago and lasted there a year-and-a-half. I was boxing for a club on the west side of Chicago. I wanted to be middleweight champion of the world, and I would have, except for a bad handicap, I couldn't whip anybody. World War II had come along and I decided to be a pilot. I've always been afraid of airplanes, but that was part of the act. It was the athlete, the drinker, the lover, the pilot, the general sophisticate. Sometimes I didn't realize which role I was in in the act and I had a great deal of trouble keeping it pasted together. But I worked at it because if I didn' t have that, I had nothing at all. One of the many things I've found from working the steps is that continued working the steps and attempting to practice rigorous honesty enables me to know who I am and who I am not. No longer does my identity exist in the eyes or the thoughts of somebody else, and that's the only way I ever found to experience it. I had an undistinguished record in World War II. I destroyed two airplanes both of which belonged to the United States Navy a friend of mine pointed out that if I'd gotten three more I would have been a Japanese ace I got one decoration it was a linoleum rug I won on a radio quiz show one night but I finally got commissioned which meant that I could get drunk every night of the week, which was pretty good. But I'd get drunk nine nights and then I'd have to go to bed about 6 o'clock and sleep for 12 hours and then i'd start out again. I flew single-engine seaplanes that were catapulted off cruisers and battleships. You went from zero to 60 miles an hour in the space of about 40 feet. It wouldn't cure a hangover but it really took your mind off of it for a little while. A lot of strange things were happening, and I found a lot of evil and lower companions. And in the summer of 1945, when I was 23, I ended up at a Navy hospital with pneumonia, which went into DTs. And it didn't really make any impression on me. I got drunk about the last week and a half I was in the hospital, but I got out and started doing what I was doing again. and we had a man in there who was brought in at about 3 o'clock in the morning, drunk. He was a pilot in the photo squadron and he'd gone swimming with a lady who came in with him that we thought was his wife and next day his wife showed up and it was somebody else. But he cut his foot open on a piece of submerged metal. But the rest of the time I was in the hospital, his wife and his girlfriend used to come visit him and they never met. We figured that just goes to show that if you live right, the Lord will take care of you. When I'd been sober a while, I ran into a man who was celebrating two years of sobriety. And he said, when I came out on this program, I had a drinking problem and a marriage problem. AA straightened out my drinking problem. My sponsor ran off with my wife, which straightened up my marriage problem, and he said this program will work if you let it. So I got out and I continued to drink, and a lot of weird things happened, and the alcohol was starting not to work so well. I never drank in the morning because I had a regular routine. I'd get up in the mornin', take my gagging exercises, go down to the flight line, wobble out over the gulf and then wobble back, and then get drunk that night. And if you go to bed at 3 o'clock drunk, you don't need to drink at 6 o' clock. When you fly, you just need a seeing-eye dog. And the war ground to a halt, and I ended up at the Naval Air Station at Norfolk. I was out in Sacramento on a leave for a couple of weeks and reported to a base in northern California with a terrible, terrible hangover. My stomach was causing me to be bent over at about a 45-degree angle. One side of my face was a network of scratches that had been provided by a lady in Sacramento I had been sponsoring. But a lot of strange things kept happening, and when I got to Norfolk, to the Naval Air Station at Norfolk where they asked me if I wanted to get out or stay in, this was in the fall after the war had ended, I said, well, I'd like to think it over. And they said, we'll come back in a couple of days. And two and a half weeks later the officer sent for me. I'd gotten lost with some friends, and they decided I ought I get out. But I read after I sobered up the 20 questions, and then I heard talk about how sensitive you and I are, and I began to realize that. And I remembered that when I had been at the air station at Norfolk, some friends had fixed me up with a blind date, and in her honor, I had gotten blind. And as we were taking her home, we had to stop the car so I could get out and throw up. And if I was walking into the door, I I had to go behind a bush and throw up. And then I was very hurt because she refused to kiss me goodnight. But I went over to Great Lakes and got separated in December of 1945. And I traveled for three days and three nights and got home to a park where I was living about 50 miles away. And I thought it's probably time I did something about my drinking. and I went over for New Year's. I started out for Cincinnati and ended up drunk in Milwaukee for three days and I drank myself sober on New Yearís morning and I had a kind of terrifying experience. I went up with what was perhaps the worst looking woman in the Middle West. She frightened me into six weeks of sobriety. She looked like a million dollars and the only reason I say that is because I've never seen a million dollars, and she looked like something I never saw before. Which I guess proves that beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes right to the bone. So I decided to quit drinking, and I was going to do a little boxing. I can't say I was gonna make a comeback, because I'd never been anywhere. but I went up to Glenview to the air station to fly with a friend of mine in February of 46 and the field closed in with a snowstorm and we decided to have a few drinks well we had a few and he passed out and he lived in St. Charles which was about 35 miles west of Chicago and I started driving him home and I would ask directions in this snowstorm from various saloons. I'd buy a bottle of beer, ask directions, get back in the car and drive west and about the time the beer was gone, I would have forgotten the directions and I went in one of these places to ask directions and there was this large friendly looking dog on the floor and I said hello and the dog bit me on the leg and I really thought nothing of it. And I got my... I had a party one night on about the 12th floor of the old Sheraton in Chicago. And we ran out of booze and they sent me out for some more because I was the soberest, which can tell you what kind of shape the rest of them were in. And I started out and I got lost in a sunken lobby downstairs and I was wandering around and I finally decided to go up to the mezzanine and reconnoiter. and I went in the men's room and went out on the exit and there was a fire escape one floor up and I walked down this swinging ladder that swings down to the sidewalk and I got to the bottom of the sidewalk and I was still about 12 feet above the sidewalk I was drunk so I crawled back up the ladder and the door had locked behind me to the men'S room so I beat on the door and kicked and screamed and hollered and some startled citizen finally let me in but I was talking in tongues It was many years before anybody ever heard of the Pentecostal movement. So I continued to make all of these experiences, and I ran all over the place. I experimented here, and in the early part of 1947, I went on the wagon. I stayed sober for three months. I knew I was an alcoholic, andI couldn't drink. and I still ran in all directions because I had no peace and ease within myself you probably heard about the farmer who came in to see the doctor and he said doctor my wife and I really have a terrible problem he said that's a little embarrassing but he said our sex life has collapsed he said she's too tired in the morning and I'm too sleepy at night and the doctor said well that is unfortunate he said when are you most in the mood And the farmer said, actually, about 11 o'clock in the morning when I'm plowing in my tractor and the sun comes up and the air is clear. And he said, several times I have run home, but by then I'm so tired it's a waste of time. The doctor said, why don't you bring your shotgun with you and when the mood strikes you, fire the shotgun. Your wife can run out to the tractor and maybe that will solve everything. And two weeks later, the farmer went into the doctor's office and he said that was a tremendous idea. Yeah, he said, we're getting along better than ever. Thank you. A year later, the farmer and the doctor met in town and the director said, how's your wife? And the farmer said, I guess you didn't hear she's dead. The doctor said, I'm sorry to hear that. What happened? The farmer said she ran herself to death during hunting season. Well, I almost ran myself to death trying to figure out how to stay sober without AA. And I finally got drunk. And I got drunk after three months of sobriety knowing that I was an alcoholic, knowing I couldn't take one drink. But I got drank anyhow and I was drunk for the next few months. And I learned the other half of the lesson. I learned that the knowledge of my inability to drink was insufficient, that if I were to stay sober, I needed some help. I needed som e resources which I did not have within myself. And in August of 1947, I got drunk once more, and I've been drunker and I'm sicker. I wasn't in trouble, but I could no longer lie about what happened. And I called AA and I began going to these meetings, and I began to stay sober. And I began to feel good and then I began to feel not so good. I didn't work a step but nobody told me what to do when I didn' t know what to d o. In our group we don' t wait for people to ask questions because a lot of people die because they don' t know what questions to ask. They come to our group looking for answers and we give them the answers. Many, many times if they knew the questions they could figure out the answers. And I think sponsorship is sitting down with somebody and showing him exactly what to do in the program, how to write an inventory, how to take fifth steps, helping him to list the people he's harmed and encouraging him to do these things on a continuing basis. Working with others is work. It takes time and it takes energy. As you sit there listening to somebody talk about himself, when I want to talk about myself. But after a year of sobriety, I got in a great deal of trouble from some very dishonest business activities. And I went to some friends and I said, maybe I've missed something in this program. They said, son, you missed the whole program. I said, oh. They say, you kept such an open mind that the whole problem just blew right through. So I wrote an inventory, and then I took a very honest fifth step with another person. He was sober six weeks longer than I was. He never took a fifth step, and he got drunk after 10 years of sobriety and never sobered up again, and I think that's perhaps the main reason. But after that first fifth step I had an understanding of myself and And God and you and this program, which I never had before and never would have had, if by some strange miracle I could have stayed sober for 34 years without working the steps, I still would never know what the AA program is about or what the AAA message is. Because the AA message and the steps speaks to our condition wherever we are in sobriety. And what it says is that if you and I have problems within ourselves living, If we work these steps, we're going to get rid of them and function on a much better and more effective level. Well, after that fifth step, I started to make amends, and then I started working on construction and became a mystic and a leader, and gradually all of that stuff wore out. And I finally came to understand that what the program means is what the programme says. do these things and you get well you live with greater joy greater happiness greater effectiveness and usefulness I began to understand what living right now means the only way I can live in the present is if I have taken care of the past there's no way I could live one day at a time if I still have things from the past that cloud my perception and awareness of God So when I work with another person, it is purely on the basis of getting that person to work the twelve steps. And we start at one and we go right through to twelve. One, recognizing that we have a lifetime illness and our lives will only be manageable if we work the 12 steps. Two, recognizingthat God will restore us to sanity if we do certain things. it says God could and would if he were sought the way I seek and find God is in working and reworking the steps and then when we come to step three we take it aloud like it says on page 63 in the big book God I offer myself to you to do with me and build with me and do with мне as you will relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do your will take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help with your power, your love, and your way of life. And I do your will always. And then I suggest that he start writing his fourth step. We don't use the Hazelden Guide. If I ever used the Hazeldon Guide, the rest of my hair would come plunging to the floor. It's so confusing. There's a very good guide in a book called Alcoholics Anonymous. And it talks about listing things like resentments, dishonesty, sex, selfishness. The 12 and 12 suggests using the seven cardinal sins with such things as pride, anger, greed, sloth, gluttony, envy, and I think all of these are useful. I suggest that he do just as thorough a job as he can. Don't worry about making it perfect because you can spend the rest of your time rest of your life reworking these steps. And as I said, if he wants to take a fifth step with me I take one with him at the same time and a thorough one. And when we get done we're even. And then right then I suggest, or rather we take six and seven aloud and then I suggest that he list the people he had harmed and begin making direct amends to these people and continue to take written inventory work the 10th step, work the 11th step and at that point somebody has a real message it's not just a message of go to meetings and don't drink it's no matter how lousy you feel grit your teeth and struggle through it's a message that here in AA AA is of itself sufficient and we have everything we need. Now what will that do? Well I know a man who was drunk around AA for 15 years, never could stay sober in January of 1972 he went to many meetings, never worked a step January of 72 he came back, this time with a difference he began to take inventories fifth steps He made all of his direct amends, and he hasn't had a drink since. I know another man who was drunk around AA for 12 years. He went to meetings where they got in touch with their feelings rather than the 12 steps. And he got drunk once again in November of 1971. And he called somebody in our group who went over to see him, and he said, you have a big book, and the guy did. He must have won it in a raffle. and they took step three aloud and this man from our group showed him how to write his inventory and he said, I'm going to come back tomorrow and we'll swap a fifth step. He came back the next day, they swapped fifth steps, they prayed to have their defects removed and then this man from our crew helped him to list the people he had harmed and suggested that he start making direct amends right then. Now this is a man who was sober about 24 hours at that time and he started by making a direct amend to his wife who was in the kitchen continued to do that, he started going to our group continued to take inventories fifth steps, made all his amends drunk around AA for 12 years up until November of 71, he's been sober ever since I know a woman who was drunk around AA for two and a half years many meetings, never worked a step never stayed sober She finally wrote an inventory, took a fifth step, began to stay sober, took another fifth step. With six months of sobriety, she went into a paralyzing depression. Now this is what happens to drunks who don't work the steps enough. Always before, when she got this depressed, she got drunk. This time she called an AA woman who went over to her apartment. She took a sixth step with this woman in the afternoon. By that night, her depression was completely gone. She's sober more than for 14 years, and that's how it works. We've got promises in AA that we're familiar with. We also have warnings. It says if you don't do these things, you're going to die. I believe that. I've seen a lot of people die who refuse to do these. I know a man who sobered up in 62, and in 64 he was talking with some of us, and he said there's something that really bothers me, and I don't know how to deal with it. He said when I was going to prep school, a couple of friends of mine and I framed a kid we didn't like to make it look as if he had stolen and he was expelled from school and that night he hung himself and he said I don't know what to do about it and I said well I don' t know either but I think you've got to start finding out what to go about it or it's going to kill you and others in the group that was discussing this with him said you've gotta make amends to yourself or easy does it or all of those kinds of things. Nowhere in the big book does it say put myself on the list. Nowhere in the Big Book does it say I should make amends to myself. Everywhere in the Big Book it says straighten out where I have been wrong anywhere in my life. I heard a lot about forgiveness in the religion of my youth. Nobody ever showed me how to feel forgiven. You people did. Work the steps, clean up the past, get rid of the guilt that I developed deservedly, and I'll feel forgiven and free in the present. Well, this man who sobered up in 1962 never took care of that critical amend, and in 1976 he got drunk and he's still drunk, and he says he's a controlled drinker and he isn't. And I think there's a one-to-one connection between the two. during my years as a mystic I spent a lot of time at prayer and meditation and I used to think that step 11 was more important than some of the other steps I don't think that anymore I think it's important but no more important than the rest of them and what I believe today is that it means exactly what it says after I've been sober for a while well, I read all those books to tell you how to use God as kind of a cosmic candy machine. You find the right collection of prayers and affirmations and positive thoughts and you get what you want. Well, that's all right, except I've generally been a really poor judge of what's good for me. And I gradually came to understand that Step 11 says praying only for knowledge of His will and the power to carry it out and that'll give me exactly what I need. just spend some time as much as I can each day turning my thoughts to God again and again, and it purifies my desires, and I gradually go in the direction that I should be. If I were in a plane flying at 30,000 feet and it caught on fire and somebody rushed up to me with a parachute and said, put this on, go through that escape hatch, pull the ripcord and save your life, what do you think I would do? would I say let's discuss the philosophical implications of falling through space or would I say nobody is going to tell me what to do or would I go through the hatch without a chute hollering this is an individual program well you know what I'd do, I'd pull the ripcord and hope the chute worked. And I think that's what the message is. The 12 steps are a parachute that will save you and me from those things that would destroy us otherwise. Because alcohol was a symptom of many other things which I carried with me into sobriety and have no way of dealing with except by repetitive work with every one of the 12 steps. Now I may have mentioned that once or twice this morning, but I have seen so many people in AA that I have worked with who never learned that in many, many years of sobriety and many, many years at meetings. The message I perceive is perhaps summed up in the experience of a man that I've known in AA for a number of years, who was around AA for years drunk, and finally in 1971 in January he came back again, but this time with a difference. He began to work the 12 steps. He was a very badly behaved alcoholic who created great havoc at home, and at that time his youngest son was eight, and the boy was in a class for retarded children because he couldn't learn. And as the father began to walk the steps in January of 1971, the boy went from a class of retarded children to a regular class doing average work. And as the father continued to reflect the change from work with the steps, the boy continued to do better in school. And he graduated from high school a year or two ago and I asked his father how he had done. He was a varsity football player. He had missed the honor roll only one grade period in high school and the father said he wasn't retarded I was retarded he said if all I had done is not drink and hadn't worked the steps none of these things would have happened and that's what I understand to be the AA message wherever you and I are in sobriety if you and i will work and rework every one of these 12 steps we will change and this change will be reflected in the lives of everybody with whom we come in contact. That's what I've learned from all of you through the years, and I'm here because I'd forget it without your reminder. Thank you very much. Thank you.