A Quest for Decency Through Spirituality – Gene D.

Welcome, Duffy. My name is Gene and I, too, am an alcoholic. Before I get started, I don't want anybody to think in here that I'll try to impress you by saying I'm booked up for three years or anything like that. But it is true. There are so many things taking place in AA now that the competition to get certain people at their functions has to be done two and three years in advance. You take guys like Clancy, but Clancy got dates in 1995 already because he's in such a great demand. I'll give you an example of that because you mentioned a cruise retreat next Saturday night. I'll be speaking in French Martinique, which is down off the Venezuelan coast, you know. Isn't that tough? It's amazing what you've got to do to stay sober. But I'll bite the bullet and put on my bikini and go down there with my binoculars because this is at the Club Med. You don't know about that up here? You know about Sober Vacations International? Oh, I don't work for them, nothing like that, but you should know about them. That's two guys in Los Angeles that have a travel agency. For about the past maybe four years now, they cater to nothing but sober vacations. And they made a tie-up with the Club Med. and they rent the entire Club Med facilities at different places for a week and then it's nothing but sober people they're all members of AA from all over the United States and they fill them up so it's always anywhere from 500 to 750 of you at that place they're fantastic deals, you ought to check on it because the price is always right and it's a real AA experience, a fun experience and them Club Meds, I tell you They amazed me what the hell they do. If you've ever been in a Club Med, it's not what I thought it was. I always thought it were some place where dirty old men hang out, but it is a fantastic experience. So I've been fortunate enough to speak at a couple of them, and this one down in Martinique. Now Club Med is in love with these AA guys because they found out that the AA guys are better moneymakers than when the people who came down there to drink because the AA boys don't mind paying a buck for Coca-Cola if they have to or whatever the hell it is. But there's no fighting, there's no puking around, there' s no trouble. You know, and it's a great thing. And they really go overboard. And they're a French organization, the Club Med. They come out of Paris. And they really love the guys, the people in AA. And this one in Martinique is the first time we've gone down there, and that's where the nude beach is, so everybody's anxious to get down there and see that. So it's great. It's a green thing. You go for... Huh? You go by plane. Is that what you say? Oh no, you fly. We have to fly to Miami and then from Miami you fly to the South American coast, to French Martinique. But it's a great experience. But that isn't what I'm up here for. You know, I told you at the first meeting, you know, that I live in the Napa Valley, in the wine country of America, you now. And Now, something I sort of like with me down there, you know. I eat lunch when I'm home during the week at the same Italian restaurant that I've been eating at for about 25 years now. I love Italian food. That should be obvious to you with my belly. As a matter of fact, I love all food, all food. I gave up sex for food, you see. You know? We even have a mirror on a dining room ceiling in my house. you guys are dirty you're dirty you're real bad and this little restaurant I go to we sit at a round table that seats 12 guys and the 12 of us have been sitting at these tables with the exception of a few of the guys who passed on and died or something for all of these years and we're like little old ladies we have our own chairs and stuff like that and they'll sit in the same place it seems like we've had the same two waitresses for all of these years too you don't need to put the menus down anymore they just know you from habit and they know what you're going to order on Tuesday what you can order on Thursday it's a great hour and a half in the day for me I love going to lunch with these guys and I'm the only one there that doesn't drink all these other fellas are very active men in the wine industry, big names, you know, Krug's, Martini's, Mondavi's, and guys like that. Big men in the winemaking industry. And we have a lot of fun. And we do the same thing that 12 guys would do sitting around a table. We tell a couple of off-color jokes. We talk about the 49ers, the Raiders, and we race, tell jokes, and dine. And it's just a great time. And these guys being, you know, in the white industry, generally bring down their private blends, their estate wines and the different ones they're just experimenting with and they try them out on each other and we just enjoy this hour, hour and a half now they all know that I'm an alcoholic they all knows the nature of my business and stuff but it's no big deal to them and waitresses always got my wine glass turned upside down so nobody says nothing because I'm not drinking and these guys truthfully they don't drink like me and you drank You know, they just sort of sip around and fuck around And they leave half of a glass of wine on the table And they go home, you know Things that you and I would never do And on occasions, you now Well, quite often, to be frank about it They bring in guests with them from foreign countries You know A guy will come from Spain or Italy or England or someplace And they bring him over to have lunch with us and generally they just reach to the table which is right behind me and grab an extra chair and they slide this chair up to the table and most of the time the guest always winds up alongside of me, which is fine you know it's alright like that and then inevitably after he's been sitting there for about 10 minutes he notices that I'm not drinking and he asks the obvious question the same question that all of us in this room have been asked don't you drink? and I give him the AA line of bullshit you know, I say well no not today I'm not drinking today and I'll tell one of them white lies I'm going to the dentist this afternoon I don't have alcohol on my breath but my mother-in-law is coming or some kind of shit gave it up for Lent you know and then I let it go and I wish to hell they'd let it go but they don't because about ten minutes later when you get your mouth half full a tortellini or something, they say, why? And I'm not about to stand up and say, well, my name is Dean and I'm bound by a moral obligation for the love of this program to tell you what it was like when it happened and what it's like now. I'm going to go through all of that crap. But down deep, you know, I want to tell them and I've always wanted to tell him. Now I can. But for a long period in my life, I didn't know how to tell people why I no longer put stuff in my arm or up my nose or drink, you know. I certainly wanted to tell them, and I knew inside of my gut why I didn't drink and why I don't use anymore. But due to, as I told you, the lack of my education, I just didn't know how to convey my thoughts, you knows, to other people. And it hurt a lot of times because it was almost like I want to tell you would be screaming out from inside of me but I couldn't put it in any kind of sensible vocabulary so that you'd understand. now I know how to do that and I just share this with you the reason I don't drink has nothing really to do with AA I don' t drink because I'm an alcoholic because I drank plenty when I was an alcoholic and I don''t drink because I can't drink because I certainly can drink that seems to be a nature of our problem is we can drink I know now why I don'T drink and I know how to tell you why I DON'T drink and that was a result of being part of an A.A. function in a little town called Stockton, California some years ago let's face it, Stockton is not the French Riviera you know, that's sort of a half-assed place Stockton isn't as exciting as an empty paint can for excitement in Stockton on Saturdays you go through the work clothes department of the J.C. Penney store or some shit like that, you know, and they think that's a big deal. And I'm holed up down there this day because it's going to be the anniversary of A.A. in Stanislaus County and they're having this big banquet that night. And so I'm trying to kill the time in the afternoon in the motel, and it's a hot place, and I'm watching the TV, watching one of them Saturday afternoon classics, you know? Shirley Temple makes it with Godzilla or some crap like that. when all of a sudden the beer commercial came on and I'm quite sure every one of you in this room has seen this beer commercial because it was a national award winning commercial it's been on for years at that time and ironically it advertised Schlitz beer it made such an impact on me that I researched that commercial and it was actually filmed in San Francisco Bay and it Was filmed on one of them beautiful October days that we have in san francisco those of you who may not be native of the bay area you know our summer is really october probably the same up here too come to think of it but that's our best month you know don't come in june you freeze to death in jane you know and but october the bay is just beautiful and the water is just placid and blue and and on this particular day they had all the little sailing boats were out there look like little white butterflies flitting around you And they zoomed in with the camera onto one of these sailing ships. And on the decks of the ship was a bunch of young lads and girls, 20, 21 years old, running around in cut-off blue jeans and weird T-shirts and funny little hats, doing all them kid things, shimmying up the mess, diving off the arm, swinging on the lines, dropping into the bay, just jackassin' around having a big ol' time. And then the punchline of the commercial comes on. And it says, you only go around once. Grab all of the gusto you can. And I didn't know what the hell gusto meant. And I went out to the desk and I asked to borrow a dictionary. They had a little apartment behind there that just the owners lived in and a manager. And the lady got me a dictionary and I looked up the word gusto. And it said, gusto, slang expression for living. You only go round once. and grab all of the living you can. And that's why early this morning, at about ten minutes to six, when I woke up, about the first thing I did was ask God as I understand him to help me get through today without taking a drink, without putting any other kind of drug into my body, because I want all of it. I want to have all of what I'm living I can get. I totally accept the fact that I'm only going to pass this way once, you know. Any of you in this room or any other room like this think that you're going to get more than one shot at life you're pretty sick. The rules are the same for everybody one time through whether you're rich, poor smart, dumb, white, black yellow, green, whether you come from a Christian family or a heathen family it don't make a damn bit of difference the ticket says one time though that's all you're going to get and that's what life is a one shot deal and life isn't a VCR you know you can't put it on rewind, pause, slow or anything like that. Life starts at its pace and it continues on at its pace until it expires and you have no control over that. There are some very cold facts about life that perhaps we don't think about too often, but maybe we should. The older you get, the more prominent they become in your thinking, though I'll tell you that. Here's one that can ruin a good night's sleep. The moment your life starts it begins to get shorter. Every unit of time that goes by whether it be an hour, a day or a week or whatever it is every unit of times every unit that goes away is a part of your life that is over done finished you will never experience it again in a much colder vein every unit of time that goes by brings you that much closer to the end of your life. The end of this great adventure called living. Now, I can't speak for nobody else but myself in this room. But I don't think I'm that unique. I want every bit of life that I can get. I want to go every place there is to go. I want to see everything there is to see I want to hear everything there is to hear son of a gun I want it all I want it all and there's really nothing wrong with wanting it all as long as I have enough sense to realize I'm not going to get it all but that's what makes you and I a little bit more fortunate than them so-called normal people out there because we're one up on them you see we know something about life already that they don't know. See, you and I know or should know that we can get more out of life clean and sober than we'll ever get out of it using and abusing because we've already experienced that. There are people out there that don't even know that yet. But you and I know that, know that. That if I'm clean and sober I've got a better chance at living than I have if I am using or abusing. And it's that kind of thought that makes me have a desire on a daily basis to not want to drink or put anything else into my system because that's what I want. Let me show you something odd. not odd but I do this a lot at a newcomer's meeting or a beginner's meeting we call them that proves that you and I are probably in the right direction or in the Right Place if you ever want to prove anything they always say the best thing to do is to go to the horse's mouth we're in here and the thing that we share in common is addiction in this room the reason I say addiction is because some of you identify yourself as addicts others alcoholics but we're addicted people i don't know you all that well but i dare say that there's probably more knowledge in this room right now about addiction alcoholism drugs drugging more knowledge right in this room rightnow than the entire counseling services of the state of oregon I think in this room right now it's probably represented every aspect of addiction high bottom drunks, low bottom drucks periodics, chronics pushers, sellers, makers, users I don't think there's a question that you could ask in this world in this group now about addiction that at least one of you couldn't get up and give a qualified legitimate answer to because you're the horse's mouth God Almighty if you guys in here don't know who the hell does know you're it and so let's just see for the hell of it if we're on the right path I'm going to ask you a question all we have to do is answer it honestly is there anyone in this room who would believe that his life would be better if you drink and use as opposed to not drinking and using. In other words, if you think things would be better by drinking or using drugs, please raise your hand. Now I've done this all over hell and I've never seen a hand go up. Never seen a handshake go up so you would think that we could all look around now and say, well, that's all we got to know. Let's go no more using and drinking. because apparently that's what normal people can do. They would accept that dictate from you and I, because here's my, what does the sophisticate say? Here's my peer group telling me it's better to be clean, so I might as well go along with them. But it just doesn't seem to work that way. That self-centered, egotistical nature of most of us says inside, but perhaps I'm different perhaps I'm different maybe I'm the one guy as I said last night that can really work this program and still drink and use and the cemetery is full of people that entertain them thoughts but why why don't I drink today I'll tell you how that happened I had been in San Francisco one night at an AA meeting, and it takes me about an hour and a half to get back from San Francisco after the meeting. So I would generally get home around midnight or 1230, and I have two faithful dogs, and they climb in bed with me, and I had my little snack of ice cream in those days. And a snack of ice cream amongst alcoholics, of course, is a soup bowl with a tablespoon and a halfway can of Hershey's syrup. Do you know anybody else that eats ice cream with soup spoons? And there I am, propped up in the bed with the two dogs. And in order to come down, I turn on the late show on TV, Channel 36, San Jose. And I watch the movies. And I'm always turning it on in the middle of the movie. and this one particular night was the same night of a week that I'd been having a little bit of difficulty in I had filled out an insurance application sometime during the week and there came a question that says religion and I automatically started to write down Catholics because I'm a baptized Catholic I went to parochial school as a kid but I haven't been inside a church for services since I was 16 years old I'm neither proud of that or ashamed of that I just don't attend church I don't really practice any kind of specific religion but as I was filling out that application I figured, Jesus Christ, you can't write down Catholic it's a bunch of crap you're no more of a Catholic than Willie Mays and so I erased it and I wrote down N.A., non-applicable but I didn't like that either I wanted to be something I didn't want to have to say I'm nothing anymore If somebody asked me what religion you were I didn' t want to say none I wanted them to say something And so I started investigating religions I tried, I guess, all of them Methodists, Lutherans I sponsor a Jewish rabbi and I talked to him for a long time I spent nine days with the late Chuck Chamberlain down on Laguna Beach because Chuck was an elder in the Church of the Science of the Mind. I thought maybe that's what I had to get up on some intellectual plane or something. But I went for a year looking all over hell for some kind of thing to belong to, and nothing helped me. People used to say, well, what's the matter with being a Catholic again? And one of the dearest friends I got was the Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Santa Rosa. He's now a teacher over in the Vatican, Bishop Mark Hurley, who was a very personal friend of mine, a non-alcoholic. And he was about the only priest that ever understood why I sort of lost faith in my particular religion, because he said, Duff, maybe you sobered up too many priests. And that might be. Maybe I've heard things that are best that I shouldn't have heard, you know. I've had a lot of fun. I've read things that have taken away a little bit of the sincerity in my beliefs, you now. So I've stayed away from the Catholic Church. Not that I'm putting it down. It's just me. So there I was that night, you known, turning on the TV and watching the movie, petting the dogs, eating my ice cream. And the movie was about the fall of the Roman Empire. it must have been made in about 1929 because Frederick March and Elisa Landy were the stars in the movie I'm sitting there watching it and Frederick March was sort of the Caesar, I guess or whatever the hell the head guy is here's this big coliseum with panthers and tigers and lions running all over the goddamn place these other people all in behind this big cage and, Jesus, it looked like a bad scene, you know. And all of a sudden Frederick March put up his big wand, you know, and he says, to the arena with the Christians. Christian. That's a nice-sounding word. I study words, and that's how I've educated myself in the last 25 years. I take two words a day out of the newspaper, two words that I don't really understand or can comprehend, and I looked them up in about four or five different dictionaries because many of our dictionaries have different definitions. And then after I get all of the definitions, I use a thesaurus to see how I can use that particular word and for the rest of the day I use those two words as often as I can in my conversation. Usually by the end of the week at the end today I understand the words and I've added a couple of new words to my vocabulary and that's how I've been doing it for almost 25 years. oh i don't do it every day some days i forget and some days they can't get a newspaper or something like that and i get fascinated by words the most interesting book and probably the only book that i've ever read cover to cover is the dictionary and before you laugh i assure you that'll be the most interest interesting book that anybody in this room could ever read the dictionary now when i see a fascinating word i research it to find out what it was And there was this word, Christian. Now, Christian is one of them words that sounds nice, you know. The only other time I'd ever heard the word Christian was, you Know, Fletcher Christian and Mutiny on the Bounty, you know. And then I said, who are Christians? What church do Christians go to? That's what I would like to be. You know, you'll be a Methodist, you'd be a Presbyterian, you'd Be a Lutheran. I'll be a Christian so where do I go to be the Christian and I couldn't think of you know a denomination that was Christian or what kind of churches Christians went to so I figured I'll look that up in the dictionary and maybe it will tell me in there and I got out of bed and I get my dictionary and I looked up the word Christian and the definition in that particular dictionary that night said this Christian a good and decent person and then in parentheses it said see spiritual man, that word spiritual just about leaped out you know, that's an AA word spiritual and so I shuffled through to spiritual and said spiritual a good and decent person place or thing see Christian I had always associated the word spiritual with a formal religion I thought spiritual meant candles robes incense you know churches but no good and decent a spiritual person is a good and decent person A spiritual program is a good and decent program. This is a spiritual place because it's a good and decent place. And our quest, your quest and my quest as a result of our selection for sobriety and a change in our life is a quest for decency. That's what we are all trying to do. The sophisticates may call it self-improvement, but you and I have embarked on a quest for decency through spirituality, through spirituality. And I was overwhelmed that night, almost flushed, you know, and God, I found what I want to be. And this is right because that's what I wanted to be when I drank. I wanted to be a good father. I want it to be good husband. I'm going to be decent guy. I never wanted to do what I became in my drinking madness. I always thought I was a good father. I thought all kids loved me, and my wife loved me. And that just as soon as we get on our feet, honey, we'll send the kids off to camp. We'll build a six-room home. You'll have a new car. Just as soon as this happens, honey. But right now, I got a drink. See, I always meant well. Always meant well, always wanted all of the best things for everybody around me. All of the decent things. But I didn't know how to do it. And so now I have found this thing, spiritual, and boy, I got down to my place of business the next day and I'm going to embark on being spiritual. And then I realized I didn't know how. I didn' t know how to be good and decent. I had walked in that slime for so long and lived in that slime and had trusted that slime for so long. That's all I knew. And for about maybe four months I walked around as mixed up as you can ever get and still be sober, looking for this thing called decency. You know, how the hell do you find decency? And one afternoon I wandered into a little Alano club because there was a meeting there at one o'clock. I had no desire to take a drink. It wasn't anything like that, probably just more to kill time than anything else. One of those days I had nothing to do and I happened to be near the club. I think I'll go into the meeting and see who's there, one of them kind of attitudes. And I walked into that meeting room and I had sat in that meetingroom thousands of other times and I'm sitting there and I've got a cup of coffee and I look up at the wall and I'm looking at one of them window shades that we have with the 12 steps on them, you've seen them around and there it is, you know, hanging down there and while the meeting was on somebody was talking about something I probably wasn't interested in and I was looking at them steps now I don't know how often I have read the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous you know in 40 years now probably thousands and thousands of times, you know. But that was the first time that I ever really knew what they meant because I looked at those steps with different eyes that day. I sort of jumped past the first step because the first tip is the only one that you know that mentions alcohol and alcohol to me and you is death. so the first step is all about dying it's all about death the next eleven are all about living all about living and as I looked at them steps and I read them slowly and I would suggest that for a moment sometime before you leave here you look at them too and take your time and take each word for what it is and maybe you'll discover what I discovered that if you wanted to put a name on the 11 steps you could call it a code of decency a code of decancy and I began to imagine my God you know, what would it be like if I could live like that if I lived right to the letter of those steps what a wonderful place this would be I'd be able to handle anything and I tried it I went out and tried it and of course like it said none of us was able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles but I tried and it got better I began to put a little decency and a little dignity back into my life and that decency and that dignity that came into my wife gave birth to a lot of other things. A lot of other things that happened to people like me and you, like me and you. People like me and you who at one time and probably still in other places at this time are often referred to as social outcasts, you know, the unwanted, the sort of the scum of the earth. There are still a lot of people who don't think too highly of alcoholics. They just assume we'd be shuttled away and put away, locked up someplace And yet now, now who are we? Now who are we as a result of a couple of guys getting together 55 years ago? What have we become? Well, let me tell you what I think we have become, if I may. You know, down in my area, and probably up here too, it's just that I'm not familiar with your area that well, we have great, great places of medical science. At Stanford University, they transplant hearts there on a daily basis. Take hearts out of bodies and put them into other people and they live. That's a phenomenal thing. And they banner that news all over the world every time they do it. New heart transplant at Stanford. Then further on down south at UCLA in Los Angeles, you know, they transplant kidneys and they keep people alive down there by giving them other people's kidneys two year old kids they operate on two day old kids do things like that fantastic and in the Michael Reese hospital in Chicago, Illinois which is the federal eye bank where they have thousands of eyes stored taken from dead bodies and now through scientific you know, knowledge they can put these eyes into people who can't see and give them the benefit of sight. Fantastic things, fantastic things done by great men and women of science. And they banner that news all over hell. Well, what about you? What about you ? What can you do ? Well, I don't think any of you in here are capable of transplanting hearts, eyes, or kidneys. But do you know what you do and you have done and you can do? By a simple, a simple little invitation. As I told you was presented to me last night by a little bricklayer who walked up to me and said, hey, Boomer, I'm an alcoholic and I belong to AA. Would you like to go to a meeting? Have you ever said that to anybody? Would you like to go to a meeting? Did anybody ever say that to you? Would you want to go? Would you love to go to a meet-in? Do you realize what transpires when you say that? You're not just giving him his heart, his kidneys and his eyes. Eddie Friel gave me back my whole damn life by saying, would you like to go do a meeting and through a simple little process of you and I sharing the only knowledge we have with each other. We perform the greatest miracle of all. We perform things that the greatest minds in medicine fail at. And yet you and I can do this. The gift, they call it. The gift of helping other alcoholics. It even goes as far as to say in some of our literature healing other alcoholcs, but that's a sort of shaky little word there. Helping is good enough. And who's responsible for all of this? And you've seen that in writing, that little card that says if God could talk to AA. And it's true, I believe it to this very moment, but it took a long process called sobriety for me to come to this point where it is not a probable, it is a belief that we are divinely guided people and that as that literature said into our hands has been trusted a power a power that has been denied by a lot of other people and that's the power to help other alcoholics and it goes on to tell us why specifically it's me and you it says that we go to you not because you're a great speaker because if we wanted speakers there are far more greater orators throughout these lands than you and this is and we didn't go to him we didn' t go to your because you' re a great scholar because throughout these lands are people who are a lot more smarter than you it says know that we went to you because of who you are because you are an alcoholic and that if anyone should be alert to the distressing calls for help that come from sick alcoholics everywhere it should be me and you because we can hear what others can't and that's what me and I and you are That's what me and you are. Instruments of a power, a power greater than ourselves who most of us apparently choose to call God. And I want to share something with you tonight that is very personal, very personal. But I feel good in here. I feel great in here, and you're a great bunch of guys. and I hold no shame, you know to share this with you it's a strong, strong belief now that's just welling up inside of me tell you a little bit about Bill Wilson that maybe some of you don't know some of us do some of them should because it's documented you know, Bill was probably the greatest dreamer that ever came into AA. Bill was as human as any one of us in this room. He had his defects of character right up until the time he was dead. He was no different than me and you. I'll tell you the first words I ever heard Bill Wilson say, or maybe I told you that the other night, I don't know. But that's when he was sitting in the front of the car with my sponsor right in a business rush in Chicago, Illinois and a couple of ladies passed in front of him in front on the car and I'm sitting in the back with all the luggage and Bill says to my sponsor, hey Bob, look at the ass on that one. I'm expecting, you know, this is Moses, you know. I thought he had a big cane or something like that. And I had the pleasure of the company of Nell Wing who was Bill's secretary all during his life and I accompanied her on a cruise once, and she, because we were the only two single people at the table, we were sort of put together as a pair. And Nell, of course, much older than me, and not telling any secrets out of school, common knowledge that most people believed that Nell Wing was madly in love with Bill, but just sat by out of respect for Bill's wife, Lois. But she was faithful to Bill's any wish, you know, right up until Bill died, a lovely woman. And so she told me many things about Bill, about his temper, and about how he had an eye for a good-looking chick and he had a vocabulary like a drunken sailor on Pearl Harbor Day, you know. And he could really let it out. He was a great guy. But he was a dreamer most of all. And early in the history of AA he got in a little trouble over that dreaming, you now. We all know how Bill sort of went overboard in everything he did. Thank God for Dr. Bob because Dr. Bob was the balancing thing that would always, sit down, Bill, take it easy, you know. Easy does it, you now. Because Bill had all sorts of great ideas being the promoter he was. Boy, he was going to promote AA and do every damn thing. And there was even a time, you know, in our history where he was gonna kick a lot of us out of AA because he was looking for the pure alcoholic, you know? He didn't want ex-convicts in AA. He didn'T want prostitutes in AA, you know ? And if we had listened to Bill, we'd all be meeting in phone booths someplace, you know. He's going to kick everybody out. There's no such a thing as a pure alcoholic. But that's how he was. That's how it was. And his dream was, and you've read about this because it's responsible for one of our concepts now. Bill used to say, suppose, just suppose that our movement would grow to such a magnitude that the entire world could encompass our concepts. And people said, slow down, Bill. Never mind that bullshit. We got enough trouble just taking care of the drunks. Never mind trying to take care of the whole goddamn world. And that's where the singleness of purpose was put into our program. Well, we're here just for the alcoholics. But that didn't take away Bill's dream. Oh, if only the world can adapt to our program. Well, Bill's gone now and has been gone for quite some time. But is his dream over? Let me tell you something funny. No, that's not funny. Six years ago a group of people in Southern California with no sanction from the World Service Office took it upon themselves to go over to Russia to introduce AA to Russia. The man who welcomed them to Russia is named Gorbachev and he wasn't the Prime Minister then and he sanctioned their visit and he allowed them to bring AA to Russia whereas you know from the international convention we were represented by the USSR in the flag ceremony from that group two men went to Czechoslovakia and one to Romania where AA now exists all at that time, communist-dominated countries who have since changed. And from Lithuania, one went to East Berlin, and now there is no wall in Germany. We have a relationship with the USSR now that we have never experienced in the history of time, that Irish and Protestant can meet in the same room without shooting at each other in the longest war in the history of mankind and that's at meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous I don't know what you think could it be could it be that that we here the new kids on the block we who can only be 55 years old at some time in future history we will be the ones who they look back on and say well that's where it started because you see something has to start soon damn soon I live and work in this field on a daily basis and have for a long, long period of time. And if any of you in this room sit here thinking we are doing better, you are wrong. Addiction and alcoholism now has gone beyond the epidemic stage. It is totally out of control. And our governments and foreign governments have spent more money and more effort in the last 10 years to overcome this problem than at any other time in history and have failed miserably. You know that, and I know that. We don't worry about high school kids now. Now we have to worry about kids in the 5th and 6th grades. We've got to worry about 10-year-olds leading gangs in Harlem. We've Got to talk to kids who say, what do you mean you're going to train me to be a manager of a McDonald's stand? I can sell five balloons at noontime and make $300 a day that's what we're up against so something is going to have to happen through history we have overcome other great obstacles usually through some kind of a period referred to as a renaissance a big renaisance a complete change not just done by this country oh no we're not that big a world renaissance the world is going to have to want to do this and could it be that that we have started this imagine how this world would be today and we're in a very terrifying state today we're on the verge of possibly a nuclear war certainly a chemical war a war that could end all wars what are we going to do? what are you going to say? what are they going to tell us? are we the answer? are we and you are we the answer and I'm beginning to think we are I don't say that egotistical because I won't be here for the award ceremony and neither will you but it has to start somewhere it has to start somewhere and I don' t know who of you was at the international convention in New Orleans 15 years ago you know what the theme for the convention was let it begin with me let it begin with me and I believe that all that this loving God expects of you and I is to maintain our sobriety so that we can be those instruments that we claim to be the bearers of that message the proof that this way works if the world situation today was being handled with our steps people would sleep in peace in Tel Aviv tonight soldiers wouldn't be cold in the desert tonight a madman like Hussein wouldn't been thinking of blowing up the world there'd be no famine in Ethiopia the world would live in the same kind of peace and harmony that we find right here in our small gathering of 108. Here we live as a community, people with strange backgrounds, different personalities from all walks of life. We are a little world right here who for three days are living in harmony. And why not the whole world? Why not the whole world? So think before you sleep that we may be a lot more than what we think we are. And certainly that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is far more than just a place to go get sober. Far more than that. We're not a group of men and women running into little church basements now at 8.30 at night. we're no longer and you've heard this many times but it's worth repeating you and I are no longer part of the problem of addiction we're probably the answer to the problem of addiction thank you very much