Action in AA Is Medicine That Fits Every Circumstance — Not Understanding the Program but Doing It – Sybil W.

About This Speaker Tape

Sybil W. tells her story from a small Texas town where fear defined her childhood. She recalls finding an empty whiskey bottle on railroad tracks as a toddler and being captivated by its smell, later learning her beloved grandfather died of alcoholism. Her parents never allowed liquor in the house, which only deepened her curiosity. At 16, she took her first drink at a company picnic and passed out cold. Within days she was drunk again, beginning a 16-year pattern of drinking against her own will.

She married a young sailor during the Depression and the two drank their way through odd jobs picking fruit in Bakersfield. One drunken night they stumbled into a revival tent where Sybil got violently sick and had to be carried out while the congregation prayed for her all night. She carried that shame for 20 years of sobriety before telling anyone. She read about Alcoholics Anonymous in a magazine in 1939, and two years later found the Jack Alexander Saturday Evening Post article while taking a Turkish bath to sober up. She wrote a desperate letter to New York and Ruth Hock, Bill W.'s non-alcoholic secretary, wrote back with the address of a Friday night meeting in Los Angeles.

Sybil arrived at the Elks Temple rain-soaked and shaking, only to be asked to leave the room with the other women for the closed meeting. Convinced she had been thrown out, she fled to a bar and called Cliff Walker at 2 a.m. demanding the AA ambulance. She returned the next week with her brother Tex, a 300-pound Texan who arrived with 11 reluctant winos standing in his vegetable truck. She was immediately put in charge of all women's 12-step calls and began the painful process of overcoming her lifelong terror of speaking. Tex helped her take her first trembling turn at the podium, and the two became a 12-year brother-sister recovery team until his death from a heart attack at an AA meeting in 1952. With 21 years of sobriety, Sybil reflects that AA gave her the friendship and belonging she never had, and that every empty chair represents someone who will one day need what she found.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduction and childhood in small Texas town — born fearful and timid, grandfather's grocery store
• 3:00 Finding the empty whiskey bottle on the railroad tracks as a toddler and being captivated by the smell
• 6:00 Parents' total prohibition on alcohol and father's rattlesnake story — first drink at 16, immediate blackout
• 10:00 Depression-era marriage to alcoholic sailor, picking fruit in Bakersfield to escape drinking
• 14:00 Stumbling drunk into revival tent, getting sick at the altar, congregation praying all night
• 19:00 Brother Tex revealed as fellow alcoholic — drinking team begins, 89 bail-outs
• 24:00 Reading Jack Alexander Saturday Evening Post article at the Turkish bath, writing desperate letter to New York
• 30:00 First meeting at Elks Temple — women sent out of closed meeting, thinks she's been thrown out
• 36:00 Tex arrives at Friday meeting with 11 winos in his vegetable truck — Sybil put in charge of women's calls
• 44:00 Brother Tex helps her speak for the first time — overcoming lifelong fear at the podium