Why the Big Book Says ‘Must’ Seventy-Four Times – Franklin W.

I guess that cat's been sober long enough to introduce me. Everywhere I go, I get insulted. The mouse over here had something to say about anonymity. It It took him five years, I believe, to find out how to pronounce it, what it meant or something like that. Well, in 20 years, 22 years, I haven't found out what it means yet and still can't pronounce it. And Bill over here hurt my feelings getting up here saying that AA is for people that think they're God. I think he had something personal in that but but that's been the story of my life I've been picked on all of my life even my roommate comes up and tells me not to scratch my ass There is a mirror behind y'all. I remember as a little kid, I'd play hide-and-go-seek and go hide and nobody ever come look for me. And that didn't just happen to me in childhood. It followed me on into adulthood. I know my first wife. Now, I'll have to distinguish between them. Eloise is my second wife. Of course, I lost a lot of lighthouse people along the way. But my first life sent me to the store for a loaf of bread. and I came back and she'd moved but I had the loaf of bread I always was dependable if I can get serious you out there it's just great to look out there see about 2200 white eyeballs staring back at you. It's a beautiful sight and I can't begin to express my gratitude to the committee, to Jackie and the others for having my roommates Eloise and I here for your first corn husker roundup i don't know whether you realize it or not but this is the beginning of something really great and i can see in a couple of years where you're going to have to get a larger facility and you may have turned people away and i think this is going to really spread in this area and i'm just tickled to death to be a small part in this thing and be able to say that i was at the first corn husker roundup it's really tremendous and i appreciate the red carpet treatment that we've had here but i also want to state that it's not a darn bit better than we deserve You know, I learned something in AA everywhere I go. And they told me if I'd keep an open mind, I would. And I learned this from a Catholic priest. So I guess it's all right to tell at a spiritual meeting. But he said way back there when God created Adam, He created man. He said, now I'm going to give you 20 years of sex life. So then the next thing he created was a monkey. He said I'm gonna give you twenty years of sex life and the monkey said no I don't need but ten so man said give me the other ten. So the next he created was a lion. He said i'm gonna give you twenty years of sex life. Lion said don't need but ten. Man said give me the other 10. So then he created a donkey. Said, I'm going to give you 20 years of sex life. Donkey said, don't need but 10. Man said, give it to me. So as a result, man has had 20 years or normal sex. He's had 10 years of monkeying around. He said 10 years the line and 10 years of making a place of gas out in town. So Eloise told you yesterday afternoon that I've reached the age where I can't accept yes for an answer, so you know what stage I'm in. I probably shouldn't say this at a spiritual meeting, but if I'd attempt to commit sex, they could arrest me for assault with a dead weapon. Well, you're a great-looking bunch of sick people. I'm an alcoholic and my name is Franklin Williams. By the grace of God, to fellowship with men and women like you and because this program does work, it hadn't been necessary for me to take a drink today and for this I am most grateful. I'm as grateful as I know how to be. I'm not as grateful as I should be but as grateful as I'm grateful as I am know how to be now I'm I'm what I call a pure alcoholic now you heard someone mention yesterday the real alcoholic and the book refers to the real alcohol well I'm not only a real alcoholic but I'm a pure alcoholic you mentioned You heard mention tablets, pills, capsules, those mind-altering chemicals. I never did get off on any of those because I didn't know anything about them. Had I known, I'm sure that I would have taken them, used them just as I did alcohol. So this is what I mean by a pure alcoholic. Now, I heard them talking about uppers and downers, but I'm still the type of fellow that if I don't know something, I'm not going to ask you. I'm never going to let you know that I don' t know. So when I heard you talking about downers I thought you were talking about saltpeters. Peter. And when I heard you talking about uppers, I thought you were talking about Spanish flies. So I never did get off on those things. I used to be real bad to drink. And I mean bad to drink while I was intoxicated and get put in jail for drinking while intoxicated. I don't know how many times I've been in jail. I hear people get up and say they've been in jail 130 times, heard Don say something about having 70-something arrests there. I hear others 20 times, 30 times, so on. I didn't keep up with how many times out in jail. I wish I had, because I didn't know it was going to be a thing of social prestige when I got to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Who knows? AA may come up with a pension plan. And I might miss out on some of my benefits by not knowing how many times I've been in jail. The text of my sermon this morning will be keep it simple and follow direction. And these are things that have been and still are hard for me to do. It's hard for me to simplify anything, and it's almost impossible for me to follow direction, and you know I darn near killed myself in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous before I could get this thing down simple enough the way I could understand it, and to follow directions. So I want to talk a good deal about that. And in talking about simplicity and following directions, I have to talk about sponsorship. And I think if there's a weak link in Alcoholics Anonymous in my area, it's in sponsorship. Don mentioned one out of 40 or something like that. We're catching alcoholics down in our area a lot faster than we string them. And we're losing a lot of them. And I think maybe the reason that we're loosing so many and so many are not sticking is because of lack of sponsorship. with take a fellow we don't have treatment centers in our area like you do here but we have halfway houses and it seems to be the opinion of many that if they take them to the halfway house why that's their end of their responsibility and things are not explained in my area to new people like my sponsor explained to me. And I like to talk about this. I talked about it for some a little while at a place not long ago, and two or three people afterwards came up and said, where do you find a sponsor like that? I said, honey, you're missing the whole boat. There are few of that old breed left, but there are not many. But my reason for talking about it is hopefully I will be the type of sponsor that my sponsor was to me, and hopefully you will try to be that type of sponsor to the new people. So I want to talk a good deal about this. And incidentally, Clancy talking last night, I know a lot about Clancy that he didn't say some of it i won't say from up here but i know people that clancy has sponsored and you know that cat today he'll resent me saying this but one of his pigeons told me today he's sponsoring 128 people now do you know anybody in the program with alcoholics anonymous that's sponsoring that many people and he's tough and that's the type sponsorship that i understand is the type of sponsorship that i want to talk about for fun that they never got me sober no profound statement that somebody made from one of these checks like pictures ever got through to me. And I'm a type AA that calls myself a big book AA. And they call me a fanatic on the book in my group, and I like for them to say that. Because I'm just simple enough to believe that the simple program of Alcoholics Anonymous comes from a book called Alcoholics Anonymous. And if you tell me something about staying sober or living, and you can't point out to me in the big book i'll say the devil will because you didn't know any more about this when you came here than i did and what i've learned has come from a book so this thing of profundity i can back it up by what the big books says the big bug says that the spirit of aa will get us sober and the principles of our holly synonymous will keep us sober and i'm simple enough to believe that the spirit of a you spell that spirit l-o-v-e the people in my group love this old drunk sober and we alcoholics radiate love we don't think we feel that's my opinion and i could feel this love and finally i didn't know what it was to begin with but i finally wanted somebody And I'll try to tell you in the next two or three hours how I was able to get some of this. But let me back up a minute. Al-Anon is real close to me. You can tell that by what Eloise said yesterday. al-anon i think where any couple where both of them are alcoholics i think they both need al-anan and that's the reason that eloise came in the program of al-alan about seven years ago approximately seven years though she says to learn to live with me and as you related yesterday it. Things were real rough. If Eloise and I made it for ten years, anybody can make it. Because we had a civil war going every day. And both of us were managing, and that little girl she was talking about was caught in the middle. And it was really rough around our house blanche knows about it there's several others in this room that know about it i think that the program of alcoholics anonymous will take care of the abstraction to alcohol but i think that the problem of alanine will take share of the obsession to the alcoholic and as a result of eloise coming into the program and then bringing all this literature home and having me to read it to her and explain it to I've been able to digest some of this program and the two programs have changed our home our house into a home and that little old girl that a number of years ago that despised me and told me I didn't have thing to do with it i wasn't her daddy today she calls me her daddy and introduces me as her daddy and her real father's living but i'm her daddy and she gave me a damn chain the way around my neck for for my birthday here a week or so ago paid forty dollars for that thing and i'd a whole lot rather had some cigars but i can't let her know it she gave me a bracelet she gave me a robe oh that kid's always eloise that's bringing us something and we have a real good communication and it couldn't have happened had it not been for the programs of AA and Al-Anon. So my head is off to Al-A-Non. But I want to say this, unless you Al-Al-Anons feel too smugly, you'll remember that we darned drunks got you where you are today. And don't you ever forget it. I can call my sponsor's name now because he's gone on to the big meeting with Ray. I knew Ray real well. I was with him at a number of places. We knew each other by name and always spent some time together when we were at the same places. But I can call my little sponsor's name now David Gates. And I hated that little fellow with a passion to begin with. But he was the only fellow that would fool with me. Now, I didn't pick David as a sponsor. I know that's what you're supposed to do. But they drew straws and David lost. and they farmed me out to several of them but the ones i didn't fire they didn't quit they just gave out but david hung in there he said he was gonna fight that thing out to the bitter end and he really did and we we fought not physically but we we we thought i didn t agree with anything that david said and of course david didn't agree with anything that i said but he got through to me i was a type fella that was always afraid that somebody was going to speak through me and see me as i really was and i had to drink up or use up all of my excuses and david brought this about in as quick an order as was possible to do i had another sponsor named man hill he's at the big meeting too and man is always telling me you must do so and so you must do so-and-so and so i'd run to david with everything that i didn't like and hoping that he'd disagree. I said, David, old man says I must do this and I must do that. Allen, now Allen was a fellow that had more degrees than a thermometer, but he couldn't stay sober. I said, Allen says there ain't nothing I must do. He said, I can do this thing just like I want to. I can take it cafeteria style. And David said, son, he always called me son and I called him son too but part of it I said under my breath he said son for your information the word must is in the big book 74 times and I'll tell you this much if you want to stay sober you must become willing to do anything, even if it means quitting drinking. And said, it has been our experience and our observation that alcohol never causes any of us any trouble till we swallow some of it. And he says, rarely have we seen a person stay sober who continues to drink. And I said, David, that makes sense. Why hadn't you told me that before? And I says, David this thing is fine for you religious fanatics, but like Bob I prefer to be not an atheist, but an agnostic. i didn't know what an agnostic was but it sounded good and it gave me an excuse to drink so i said david you know i'm an agno he says i don't make a damn so you just got to make up your mind whether you want to be a sober agnostic or a drunk agnóstic. He said, now what next? I said, David, I ain't got no faith. He said no, I don't guess you have. And said, you're not going to have any faith until you apply these steps to your daily life. And when you do that some things are going to happen. you're going to have some experiences and you'll know where they came from then you'll have some faith I said David you always talk about God's will I don't know what God's will is he said no I don' t guess you do but said you know what it ain't and said you just follow that and if you do that long enough maybe people will get to where they'll associate with so that's the kind of profundity that he threw at me I said David you're always talking about how to get close to God and I asked him one day like old Bob said I said, David how do you find God he looked at me and said he ain't lost so i said david how do you get to know god he said well i said i'm gonna tell you said you're not gonna pay attention to you but i'm gonna tell him he said to get to no god better you get to know people better and if you want to get to love god better you get to loving people but said the only way you're going to be able to do that the only we know of to do that is apply these steps to your life and said then when these things happen you're gonna get to where you even love yourself, you're gon' love the people at AA, you's gon' love other people and when you do that God is gon' slip in the back door and he'll be there before you ever know it that I've never found anything that David told me that wasn't true. I'll say this about a sponsor. If after 60 days you still like that sponsor, you've got the wrong sponsor. That sponsor ain't telling you the truth. And not knowing the truth can kill an alcoholic. and I believe this also about a sponsor if you got a sponsor that tells you something you go check it out in your big book and if you can't find it in the big book, you better get you another sponsor because this type of sponsor can kill you now you get you a sponsor that's wiped yourself hiring the devil is somebody who hadn't taken his fourth self or written inventory going to tell me how to write an inventory So old boy at home said, you can't no more teach what you ain't learned and you can come back from where you ainít been. So this is what I believe about sponsorship. I said, David, Iím unemployed, Iím unemployable, which is true. and I said you always I could ask David what time it was and he'd say don't drink, go to meet read the big book he's a very illiterate person now he knew what page in the big book everything in there was on and I'd ask him something and he said turn the page so and so and I turned to that page he said now read that to me I read to David for five years before I knew he could read and I was always having to explain things to him and I said David how can I read the big book I ain't got no big book he said buy you one I said Dave I can't get a job I ainít got no money I'm unemployable won't anybody loan me anything he looked at me a minute and said go steal your damn big book said we got to step in this program before you get too honest and you get on the itchies make amends for stealing that bitch that my big book tells me to go to any length and said that may be the link that you have to go through so these are the profound things that that my sponsor told me he used to take me to a meeting every night and I don't think that we should take a person too long because finally he told me said you could get to the liquor store now you can get to me walking we find help i'd always tell him how nervous i was and i couldn't sleep i needed some wine so i could go to sleep and he said we find walking help so he'd take me there for a long time to a meeting he'd talk about open meeting closed meeting I didn't know the difference but I wasn't going to ask David so he's going to take me out to my first closed meeting that was away from my group and incidentally I belong to the Quonset group in Memphis and uh Eloise and I also attend the Olive Branch group in Olive Branch Mississippi but David had taken me in and he said now tonight I said they got a speaker tonight the other meeting he was taking me to he was speaking and I said David don't anybody else talk he said nobody that you need to hear so he said we go into this meeting it's not a speaker meeting And I said, what they going to do? He said, they're going to call on everybody to say a few words. I said. They going to Call on me? He said. Yeah. And so I beamed. I did like to talk. I wanted to get up and tell them what was wrong with this outfit. And he said. Now when they call on you, you stand up. He believed in us. He said, you stand up and say that you're an alcoholic, you're a member of the Quonset group, and your name's Franklin Williams, and sit your ass down. He said you done told them people all you know. I said, David, I thought. He said, oh no, don't do that. Said, that's the worst mistake a new person can make. Said, your thinking is what got you here. Said, don'T you attempt to think for a year. We'll think for you. Said, if you go home tonight and wake up and think you've got to go to the bathroom, call me first. Said, you'll make the wrong decision. I said, David, they've got them think signs all around in our group, and every group you've taken me to. He said, that's for us. He said don't ever during this first year let me hear you say anything about think. He said we'll do all of this thinking for you. he really believed that this was a program of action and he says that thinking is the worst thing in the world that you can attempt to do said this is not a thinking program this is an action program and two or three have brought that out here he said it is impossible for you to think yourself into proper action but we've got a program that if you'll do the things that i point out to you in the big book called Alcoholics Anonymous, which incidentally says the basic text. And it's a textbook and a textbook is something in my opinion you study and then after you study it you apply it to your life. He said if you'll apply these 12 steps to your flight, you will act yourself in the proper thinking. And he believed in that action and he got me to doing things and he's got me doing things in a hurry i didn't mention that i'm real glad that eloise could come up here with me you don't get to go to as many places as i do because you wait and i i try not to do anything the interview with that gal's work I wanted to bring that check in But I wanted understood That that gal don't have to wait Donnie she can starve And go naked if she wants to That's a decision she has to make Decisions are rough on me I had to make a decision Before I came up here tonight whether to go to the bathroom or not. And right now I made the wrong decision. So I don't like to make them decisions. As far as I'm concerned, and this is some moral simplicity as far as the way I look at it, and getting back to simplicity, i had to tell a story and it ain't much of a story but i just like the way i tell it and i hadn't heard it this morning and i want to hear it again so for my benefit i'll ask that you endure it with me this old boy couldn't follow in stuff and he'd gotten in trouble all over Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, all down in there, and he decided he'd leave this country and go to a foreign country on what we know as the geographical cure. And he gets over to this foreign country and he takes himself with him, of course, and gets in trouble. So the king had him before him and sentenced him to die the next morning, to be shot at sunrise. But he said, I'm going to give you a chance and I'm gonna give you three tasks and if you can do these three tasks in an allotted length of time, I'll turn you free. So the old wino had no choice but to say that he'd do it. He says, out here I've got three tents. In the first tent, there's about a half a gallon of wine. If you can go in that tent and drink that half gallon of wine in 15 minutes and come out, then in the second tent I've got a tigress there with an abscessed tooth. If you could go in there and pull that tigresses' tooth in 15 months and then come out in the third tent, we've got to blow on it just never has been taken care of. And said if you can perform this duty in 15 years in 15 days and come back, well, we'll turn you through. So the old wino goes in the first tent and then seven minutes and 48 seconds he staggers out of there with that jug of wine an empty jug in his hand coughing and sitting and walks up and puts it at the feet of the king then turns and goes in the second tent and immediately you never heard so much growling and parts of clothes flying a little while the middle tent pole fell and in 14 minutes and 59 seconds that old wino staggered out of there and all you could hear from the inside was a quiet peaceful pub and he walked up to the king and bowed to him and said your honor where did you say that blonde is with the abscess tooth Now, that old boy couldn't follow the direction. Now, this is my problem. So I told David, I said, David, I think I'm one of these 25% that's mentally incapable of becoming honest with himself. He said, we won't argue that point. But he said, if you're honest enough to admit you've got a problem, you are honest enough and make this program. And he said if you got sense enough to tell water from whiskey, you got sense for us to say so. So David broke down all of those excuses and got me to a point where I knew that David saw through me. And I figured if David saw true me, then other people saw through me. And he did to me what an old boy at home had done to him. A boy came in our clubhouse one night with his head all bandaged up and bill asked him what's wrong he said well joe caught me in bed with his wife and he hit me over the head with a two before joe says did it knock you unconscious he said no but it sure scattered my ideas and that's that's what old david did to me he scattered my ideas. As far as I'm concerned, I can sum up in the matter of getting this thing simple, this whole program in six ways. Now this suits me. And I like to have something that I can remember each day. And it's not very long but I just think of this. Trust God clean house and help others now i say everything i know comes from the big book and i'll tell you where i got this it's been read here several times the last portion of chapter 11 which in my opinion is as beautiful a series of words and sentences as i've ever heard abandon yourself to god as you understand god admit your faults to him and to your fellows clear away the wreckage you fast give freely of what you have found and join us and surely you will meet some of us as you tread the road of happy destiny trust god clean house and help others and then didn't bill say let us instill in the hearts and minds of or burn into the consciousness of every person that they too can get well if trust God and clean house. And then Bill also said that the purest immunity against not drinking is working with others. So trust God and clean health and help others. And I like to remember that each day because this is something that I could think of every morning. You know, people are really not interested in what my faith is or what your faith is. But people are greatly interested in what my face and your face has done for us. So all that I have to share with you up here this morning is my experience as a result of applying these 12 steps to my daily life. And these things I must share with you. And this is all that I have to share with me. It's what has happened to me as a results of applying the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous to my daily life. Now, why did I come to the program of Alcoholic Anonymous? That, to me, was important. I certainly didn't come here to get sober. I certainly Didn't come Here to Stop Drinking. This is a suggested program, a judge suggested that I come to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous now he gave me an alternate plan I could go to the penal farm for a period of nine months so being an intelligent person I weighed the situation very carefully and I came to the decision that I had more to offer you people than I did the penal firm So that was the motivating factor that sent me to the program for Alcoholics Anonymous. I had some other reasons. My bride of 22 years had left me, and I thought maybe if I came to this program she might come back. I'd run out of people that I could find, and I thought maybe if I came here I could find some of you people that i could put a touch on. Then certainly I think I wanted to stop hurting. I know I want to stop hurtin'. So these are the reasons that I came. So I might say that all of these things materialized in the programs of Alcoholics Anonymous except getting my first wife back. But as Eloise told you, we met in the program of Alcoholic Anonymous and got married. So if you're having marital problems and afraid your mate's going to leave you, that ain't no problem. You can get you another one here in the programs of alcoholics anonymous. And if you a man and you can't find the wife, heck, I'll give you Eloise. This is a program of sharing. I didn't know what alcoholism or wasm or whatever they were calling it back then was. And I'd ask David, I said, what is this thing? And so he had me to read that it was a two-fold illness, mental and physical, and he told me also his spiritual thing. Well, I didn't know what the mental obsession was. So David had me to read from the big book that we are possessed of an obsession that someday, someway, we're going to find a way to drink the supper. Now, he had asked me why I would switch from bourbon to stripes to various things, and I'd tell him that I was having trouble with that, so I put you know here. He said, that's what we're talking about, an obsession. He said now I'm not going to ask you why you went to wine. I know you went there for material reasons, which was right. But I had to get this thing done even simpler than that. So I thought about when I was in college, and I'll bring that in to let you know I'm educated. Now, Eloise says I'm executed way beyond my intelligence. But we were going out for freshman football, and we had a big old boy, about 6'3 or 4'. He gets bigger every time I tell it. But as I remember it now, he weighed about 230 or 40 pounds, six feet three or four, and his arms came way down below his knees. And his wrists were way up there about halfway of my arm. He had the biggest hands I ever saw. That old red, bushy, curly hair that stood out like barbed wire. What Red McGinnis said was law. And I learned it as everything else I've learned, but a hard way. Pain has been the motivating force that has taught me everything. I didn't quit drinking because of the moral issue, because of pain. Red McGinnis taught me something about pain. So I smarted off in the grill there one day to old Red, and the next thing I knew, I was getting up off the floor. every time I'd get up Red knocked me back down and had it not been for some compassionate people that didn't want to see one fella kill another one and pull him off of me I think he'd have killed me now you know that was nearly 50 years ago and I heard