Big Book – Friday Night Recovery Workshop – Part 27 of 17 – 2020 – Dave M.

Right, everyone. Good evening. Good afternoon and good morning, I guess, in some cases as well. My name is David and I'm alcoholic. I'd like to welcome you to this OpenA recovery workshop with Q&A. And along with Stuart, I will serve as a co-host. Hello, I'm Stuart. I'm an alcoholic. I'll see you later for the Q&As towards the end of the meeting. Thank you, Stuart. Mike Mack, you're here, aren't you? And Mike Mack is going to record the audio of the speaker this evening, just to let you know it will be audio recording. I'll just give you the link for that shortly. So this is the 14th in a series of workshops inspired by recoveryspeakers.com and is hosted by the Saturday Night AA Group Camberwell London SC5. So in keeping with AA's traditions, in particular Tradition 5, which states each AA group has but one primary purpose to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers. So the main purpose of these workshops is to introduce and or develop ideas, concepts And hopefully encourage participants to do some further investigation on their own The common thread throughout has been a quote from Step 10 in the basic text Which states We have entered the world of the spirit And that our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness That's in Chapter 6 Into action so tonight the title of tonight's talk is the doctor's opinion and i'm presented by david mcd who i believe is his mother's favorite son is that right dave not according to my brothers we would like to point out that what i shared at these workshop meetings represents the experience strength and hope of a members and not not to be taken to represent aa as a whole The 12-step program of recovery can be found in the basic textbook titled Alcoholics Anonymous, which we fondly call the big book. And I've asked Stan, who I'm delighted to see is here this evening, Stan from the back porch meeting is going to read our preamble for us. Hi, I'm Stan, I am an alcoholic. Can you hear me okay? Yes, Stan. A preample. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is the desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for A membership. We are self-supported through our own contribution. AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics organization or institution does not wish to engage in any controversy neither endorses nor opposes any causes our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety thank you thank you Stan now if you'd like to unmute and join in we're just going to say a version of the a version of the set-aside prayer I put up on the screen. If you'd like to join in, we're obviously using God as we understand it, or you understand it. So if I start off by saying, God, please help me set aside everything I know for an open mind and a new experience. Amen. So we'll just have a few moments' silence to gather our thoughts to think of those who went before us and those alcoholics and the families are going to come after us. Thank you. Thank you, so as I said, the guest speakers will be audio recorded by Mike McKay at recoverytapers.com and I will put a link in the chat during the meeting for that okay so before we turn the meeting over to Dave I'm just going to have a couple of readings from the doctor's opinion for those who are unfamiliar with that and hopefully we all are but there might be some new people here tonight who haven't come across that chapter from the basic textbook and we're taking this from silkworth.net and I'm going to turn it over to Stuart first he's going to do the first part of that okay my name is Stuart I'm alcoholic this is from the doctor's opinion this is a letter that starts off the chapter to whom it may concern I have specialized in the treatment of alcoholism for many years in late 1934 I attended a patient who though he had been a competent businessman of good earning capacity was an alcoholic of a type I had come to regard is hopeless. In the course of his third treatment, he acquired certain ideas concerning a possible means of recovery. As part of his rehabilitation, he commenced to present his conceptions to other alcoholics, impressing upon them that they must do likewise with still others. This has become the basis of a rapidly growing fellowship of these men and their families. This man and over 100 others appear to have recovered. I personally know scores of cases who were of the type with whom other methods had failed completely. These facts appear to be of extreme medical importance because of the extraordinary possibilities of rapid growth inherent in this group, they may mark a new epoch in the annals of alcoholism. These men may well have a remedy for thousands of such situations. You may rely absolutely on anything they say about themselves. Very truly yours, William D. Silkworth, M.D. The physician who at our request gave us this letter has been kind enough to enlarge upon his views in another statement which follows. In this statement he confirms what we, who have suffered alcoholic torture, must believe, that the body of the alcoholic is quite as abnormal as his mind. it did not satisfy us to be told that we could not control our drinking just because we were maladjusted to life that we were in full flight from reality or were outright mental defectives these things were true to some extent in fact to a considerable extent with some of us but we are sure that our bodies were sickened as well in our belief that's AA's belief any picture of alcoholic which leaves out this physical factor is incomplete. The doctor's theory that we have an allergy to alcohol interests us. As laymen, our opinion as to its soundness may of course mean little but as ex-problem drinkers we can say that his explanation makes good sense. It explains many things for which we cannot otherwise account. Though we work out our solution on the spiritual as well as the altruistic plane we favor hospitalization for the alcoholic who is very jittery or be fogged more often than not it is imperative that a man's brain be cleared before he is approached as he then has a better chance of understanding and accepting what we have to offer and with that it gives me great pleasure to turn to me in over to you Dave so David he's still here isn't he do I need to unmute you David all righty brilliant okay all right you're just going to have to bear with me a minute when you unmuted me for some reason the uh the powerpoint went away let me just bring that up so we are live aren't we really i love the anticipation on the people's faces it's lovely okay now we go for the screen share there we go great technology i always get uh stuck in things this is one of my favorite sayings on it there's a i love that picture it's a outside of a retreat house that i go to matt talbert retreats over the years and I've been a retreat director at that and just to be still and know that I am God so I'd just like to take a second or two to just to be still and invite my higher power into into this room I know he's in here and just take just a couple of seconds again I'd like to thank David for asking me to share a couple months ago when he asked me to to do a little presentation the first thing that popped into my mind It's one of my favorite parts of the book, Alcoholics Anonymous, is the doctor's opinion. And in order to get to the doctor'S opinion, we really have to know a little bit about Dr. Silkworth. So I'm going to be going through a few things about Dr.-Silkworth and put this in presentation view. This also reminds me of an old story about, you know, a speaker gets up and he's talking and talking. He's going on and on. And about an hour later, he's up to the third grade and people are starting to leave. And then an hour and a half, there's five or six people left in about two hours. He's just finishing college and there's only one person left. And he finally gets to AA and two and a halve hours later. And there's Only One Person Left. So he goes over to the fellow who's sitting in the audience and said, well, you know, I realized I might have gone on a little bit long, but thank you very much for staying. And the guy said, I had to stay. I'm the second speaker. So, David, do we have a second speaker? I just wanted to make sure before we go. We have some Q&A. Okay, no second speaker, so I can take my time now. This is a little bit of a bio made up of Dr. Silkworth. He was born on July 22nd, 1873. He wasborn in Brooklyn, New York. And I know for a fact that all good people were born in Brooklyn. Of course, I was born in Brooklyn, New York. After that, I moved to the Bronx, Newark, and then I got sober out on Long Island in June of 1977. In 1883, his family moves from Brooklyn, New York out to the suburbs, out to Long Branch, New Jersey, where he had gone to grammar school, high school. And in 1896, he had graduated from Princeton University, again, a New Jersey school, very prestigious school at the time. In 1899, he received his medical degree from Bellevue Medical School, which is no longer there. It's now part of New York University. His specialty was in psychology and interns at BellevUE. So we got – and that's a pretty good internship for someone coming out of a medical school in BellevIEU Hospital. Bellevieu Hospital still stands today. It's a major hospital on the east side of Manhattan. In 1902, he marries Marie Bennett, the love of his life. And they have no children. He served as an officer in World War I. And in the 1920s, he worked, among other places, in Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. And again, that still stands on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and it's a prestigious hospital. It was known for President Clinton's open-heart surgery in recent years and what have you. And in 1929, he starts to work at Towns Hospital. One of the problems there, I clipped out a few things that are patched on and a few other books, I have them. It's going to talk about how he lost his money. In 1930-70, he publishes his first article on alcoholism. A lot of that first article we're going to see in his second letter. In 1939, we all know the book Alcoholics Anonymous was published, and I'm going to show you a little differences in those first 16 printings. In 1945, he became a director of Knickerbocker Hospital. I have a little bit of history of that, some photographs of Knickerboxer Hospital that was our first New York attempt to have a hospital. We had a floor in that hospital and I'll tell you a few of the stories about that. 1950, the book Easy Does It was published and it was about the Alcoholics Anonymous and the goings on at Knickerbocker Hospital very interesting book, I'm going to do a little history on that he passed away of a heart attack in 1951 when he was 81 years old His biography is a great book. I just saw somebody on the call with their picture up of Dr. Silkworth, the cover of the book. And a lot of the information that I took from the bio and other places came from here. This is Dr. Silkworth in his military uniform. And then in the editions of the, the book that we have, I clipped this off the instant internet. It was really good. This one picture of Dr Silkworth is just about everywhere. the one all the way to the left. The one for the right is his Army uniform. The one in the middle is a young one. There's a little era on it. You know, it has 1010 rather than 1910. And then there's an advertisement for Charlestown's hospital. As I said, when I was putting this together, I wanted to get a little other information. So what I did is I have all the AA books. They're all in a digital format. I had it all on my iPad and my iPhone, and I tried to turn them over to the Kindle version, and I couldn't, so I had to repurchase the books. All of our books, by the way, and all of our literature is available at aa.org internationally, and it's a great, great site, but you can, any of our pamphlets, you can download one copy of them. You can read the big book and the 12 and 12 online. without any cost at all. And here's one of the little clips that came from Pass It On. A graduate of Princeton, William Silkworth had a medical degree from NYU Bellevue Medical School. Silkworth became a specialist in neurology, a domain sometimes overlaps with psychiatry. As a private practitioner, he acquired a small competence or a small inheritance, when I looked up the word, in the 1920s and invested it in a stock market subscription for a new private hospital. Then that was a dynamite opportunity for him, so he took that inheritance money and now he's investing it. He's going to be a partner in this private hospital and he's going probably be close to the head of it. The investment carried with a promise of a fine staff post for himself, but everything including his savings was swept away in the 1929 collapse. And that was the stock market crash, and it was the beginning of our depression, our Great Depression in the United States. In desperation, he made a connection with Towns Hospital. The pay was a pitiful something like $40 a week, and boy, this is Bill Wilson quoting it, and he says, I think that's what it was. But Bill said Silkworth's arrival at Towns hospital in the 1930s, was the turning point of the doctor's life. He told me how he was seeing the miserable wreckage that floated through the place. He had resolved to try to do something about it. Even to me, he admitted the great hopelessness of the situation so far as most of those afflicted went. But there were certain cases that showed hope of recovery and Silkworth glowed as he told Bill about them. The little doctor had gotten all about fame and fortune. So he wasn't out for fame and fortune and Bill listened to him as Silkworth explained his theory. For the first time in his life, Bill was hearing about alcoholism not as a lack of willpower, not as a moral defect, but as a legitimate illness It was Dr. Silkworth's theory, unique at the time, that alcoholism was a combination of this mysterious physical allergy and the compulsion to drink that alcoholisim could no more be defeated by willpower than could tuberculosis. Those reliefs were immense. It was not only the doctor's usual theory that impressed him, it was also his obvious love for people, his special way of caring. In his lifetime, the doctor was to talk to 50,000 cases of alcoholism, but not one was a case. They were all human beings. Each one was something very special. I instantly perceived this. He had a way of making me feel that my recovery meant everything to him. And it mattered so much. Isn't that powerful? Later on, Bill wrote this about Dr. Silkworth. He said, Silkworth supplied us with the tools which were to puncture the toughest alcoholic ego. Those shattering phrases by which he described our illness. The obsession of the mind that compels us to drink. The allergy of the body that condemns us to go mad or die. Without these indispensable passwords, AA could never have worked. Powerful. This is an older photograph of Towns Hospital. It's located at Central Park, Western 89th Street. I've been at the building a number of times. Bill was treated there four times. Dr. Silkworth was the medical superintendent at Towns hospital. It is no longer a hospital. I have another slide that's going to talk about that just a little bit. In 1965, it was closed. And today, it's a cooperative apartment building. There are all apartments in there. Now let's get a littlebit to the book. You know, April 10th was a historic day for Alcoholics Anonymous. On April 10, 4,650 copies of the big book, AlcoholicsAnonymous, became available for distribution. They were printed. Cuomo Press had them, was ready to deliver them, and we didn't have the money for them, not for all of them. And they stayed there for a while until we raised some money. And those copies that we did pay for went to Works Publishing Company and the office was out of Hank Parker's Honored Dealers on William Street in Newark, New Jersey. The grant bill for the print was $1,783. Powerful. And if you divide that into 4,650, it's somewhere around 38 cents a copy. Copies were also delivered directly to the friends of the fellowship, including associates of John D. Rockefeller, who added significantly to the publishing venture. uh today over 40 million and it's uh updated today will be uh this past july we presented the 45th millionth copy of the book alcoholics anonymous which we do that every year at our international convention this one that was supposed to be in detroit but we did it virtually and a couple of other things a clip from Pass It On by this time Dr. Silkworth had defined alcoholism as the sickness of the emotions coupled with the sickness of the body which he loosely described as an allergy so that's what he was talking about the allergy these words of his were seen in the foreword of the big book Alcoholics Anonymous entitled The Doctor's Opinion and over the intervening years they had been incorporated into a consensus that is AA. As Young had told Rowland that his case was hopeless and that medicine and psychiatry could do nothing more for him, so Silkworth told Lois on that fateful day in the summer of 1934 quote, I am afraid that Bill will have to be committed. There is nothing I could do for him or anything else that I know of. These are words of great humility from a professional. They scared me into sobriety for two months, though I soon resumed my drinking. But the message that Ebi had brought me from Dr. Young and from Oxford groups in the sentence that Dr. Silkworth pronounced over me continued to occupy my mind in every waking hour thereafter I began to be very resentful here was Dr. silkworth who had defined alcoholism the obsession that condemns you to drink against your will and true instance even unto destruction and the bodily sensitivity that guarantees madness and death if you drink at all. Here came Dr. Young via Roland and Ebi, confirming that there was no way out known to the doctors. My God, science, the only God I had then, had declared me hopeless. And Ebi had also brought hope. Not much later, I was back in the hospital. In Dr. Silkworth's care, he had to wear proof to be my last drunk. This is December 11, 1934. He's winding up his fourth visit in Towns Hospital and his last one as a drunk. Ebi came to visit me again. I asked him to repeat once more what he had said over my kitchen table in Brooklyn that first time he told me how he had gotten sober. Well, he said, you know, you get honest with yourself. You make a self-survey. You talk it out with another guy. You quit living alone and begin to get straight with the world around by making restitution. You try the kind of giving that demands no rewards either in approval, prestige, or money. Good description of Alcoholics Anonymous, isn't it? And you ask whatever higher power there is, even if it is just an experiment, to help you find the grace to be released from alcoholism. As Zebby put it, it was quite simple, quite a matter of fact, and he said with a smile. I don't think Bill liked the smile. When Bill Wilson was writing the book Alcoholics Anonymous, most of the writing took place in 1938. In the late fall of, the late summer, let's try that again, the late spring of 1938, he had approached John Hopkins Hospital, and he had two chapters of the book written, and they got their opinion on it, which was very, very positive. And they suggested they get a number one person in the field of alcoholism to write the beginning of the book that was to be published. And this is the letter. Unfortunately, you can't really see it that close. It's kind of back and forth on the internet and copying it. But this is almost word for word what's in the doctor's opinion that we just read. This is the first letter. Now we get back to the book itself. The book was published, as we know, in April 1939. It went through 16 printings of the book. And in 1955, they decided they wanted to do a second edition of the book. They hired a fellow by the name of Ed B., who was an author. He wrote a number of books on the penal system in the United States. He was also an editor of some sort. And AA hired him to do the revision of the work, to add take out stories and bring stories up to date. And he felt that the doctor's opinion, being an opinion by a medical doctor, should not be page number one in the book. It should be a forward. It should move to the Roman numerals. And you can see this is from the first edition anniversary copy. Page number one. In the book, Doctor's Opinion. So that's where they moved it. In 1955, they took the doctor's opinion from page number one and put it into the Roman numerals. They never realized that alcoholics don't read Roman numerials. They didn't realize that alcoholists don't read their freaking book, never mind Roman numerables. But what that did, it took a whole lot of punch away from it. Now, if you look at your current edition of the big book, page number 1 is what? Build a story. So most people, if they're going to start a book, start with the first page of it. So it kind of lost a lot of punch, and I'm going to hit a few of the things that David didn't talk about. I thought he was going to read the whole doctor's opinion, and then I was ready to go home. The second fact, too, if you look at any of those 16 printings, it says just like it's posted there in the highlight, very truly yours, blank line MD. It says signed. now there was always different AA folklore about why that happened you know the letter I just posted up there had his signature and that was in July 1938 so he wasn't afraid that he didn't want to put his name to it there was some thought that you know possibly he didnít want it signed because the things that he was talking about that are going to come in the next couple of pages were radical. A spiritual answer to a physical disease was one of them, and he thought he might be ostracized by the medical community. Eh, AA folklore. The second one, which probably makes more sense, is Bill Wilson was extremely cautious of giving any kind of a hint of putting AA with anything, with a hospital especially, or with a religion especially. So by not identifying Silkworth and not identifying Towns Hospital, he had taken care of that. And that sounds like a more logical thing today, but we don't know everybody's dead. Okay. And then the next paragraph coming up that David read is real important too. I always say it did not satisfy us to be told that we could not control our drinking just because we were maladjusted to life. Was anybody here maladjusted to life? I was. That was in full fight from reality. I could kind of identify with that yesterday. Or an outright mental defective. Well, I didn't like that one, you know. But these things were true to some extent, in fact, a considerable extent in some of the other groups, but certainly not in this group tonight. First time in history. he talks about why we drink. Listen to what he says about it. Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. What does that mean? It means I drink and it changes the way I think, changes theway I feel, it changes my perception of life. You know, I like the affect produced by alchohol. Then he goes on, the sensation is so elusive while I think it is injurious, and I knew it was screwing me up. There was no question about it. They cannot, after a time, differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. I was in the bar business when I got here. I was tending the bar for somebody else. I had lost my previous business, and now I was full of self-pity. I used to be a banker. Anyway, I was a daily drinker. Alcohol reeked out of my pores. I poured whiskey for a living. I stunk of alcohol. Today, I could walk over in a local supermarket and smell somebody who had a cocktail on Tuesday afternoon for lunch. You know, I have such a sensitive smell of alcohol, what did I smell like? I smelled like an old bar rag, but what do I think? Perfectly normal, that's what I am, so here's the absolute key for me. this whole next paragraph. These are the things that tells me I have to watch for when I'm not drinking, and it's as much today after 43 years as it was at the 43 days that I have to watch for. And here's his observation. They are restless, irritable, and discontented. So those are red flags today. Unless they can experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks. So I know if I put a couple of drinks in me, it's going to take that uneased feeling, that discontented feeling. I'm not going to be restless. I won't be irritable. It's going to work for me. And it works until it stops working. Then he says, which they see others drinking with impunity. Now I'm out mowing my grass out in the front yard and I see the guy next door to me sitting on his porch, you know, popping a couple of cold beers. And I'm saying, that guy just got locked up for drunk driving a week ago and he's sitting there drinking beer. I can't have a couple of beers? I never got locked up For that, you Know. And then what do I say? I'll just have a couple. Yeah. And when I put alcohol in my system, here's the key now. After they've succumbed to the desire again, as so many do. Once I pick up that first drink, the phenomena of craving develops. The phenomena of craving. They pass through well-known stages of a spree. What would you call that today? A run, a tear, a mission, whatever. I'm out to get drunk. So now I'm on a tear. I're on a run. I swear to God I'll be back in an hour. Two hours later, I'm knocking on the door, you know, or I'm sleeping on the front lawn. My neighbors just thought I liked to sleep on front lawns. And what happens? I'm emerging remorseful. Anybody come off a junk, drunk, emerging remorseful, you know lower than whale shit, you know, with a firm resolution to do what? Not to drink again. Anybody identify with that? It takes me to a T. I come off of bed drunk, full of guilt, full remorse, full of shame, swear to God, never do it again. You know, I swear to my wife, just let me back in the house and I'm not going to do this anymore. You know? A couple of days later, for me, it's always a short time. I become that restless, irritable, discontented. I start picking a fight, you know? And I say something like, I'll go out for milk or I'm going to go get a pack of cigarettes. You know what do I do? I hit the gym hall. I pick up the first drink, second drink. That ease and comfort comes. and now my ass is on the barstool. Next thing I know, they're calling the last call, you know, and I swore I was going to go home. I swored I was gonna take the kids to the game or do whatever. So now I'm coming off the drunk. I'm full of guilt, full of remorse, full ashamed. Swear to God, I'll never do it again. And what does Silkworth say about that? Silkworth said this is repeated over and over and over and ever and over and there was, there was me to a tee And here's the key to the whole doctor's opinion and to the whole book, in my humble opinion. Unless this person can experience an entire psychic change, there's very little hope of recovery. Now what does he mean by that? Entire psychic change. Well if you look up the word psychic in the dictionary there are many different definitions. One of them is a soul change, spiritual change. What do we call it? Well if we go back to our 12th step, it says what? Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps. In the text of the book, it talks about having had an entire spiritual experience. That's the only word that's changed in the 12-step experience to awakening. If Silkworth was writing the 12 steps, which he did not, our 12-stepped probably would have read having had an entire static change as a result of these steps. So what he's telling us there, I have to take the drunk who has to drink and turn him into a drunk that doesn't have to drink. You know, I have take a drunk and I have dry him out, you know? There is very little hope of his recovery unless he does that. Powerful, powerful stuff. On the other hand, and this may seem to those who don't understand, once the psychic change has occurred, once I follow the directions in this book for the first nine steps and start to live in a 10th, 11th, and 12th step, something has occurred. The very same person, me, who seemed doomed, who had so many problems he despaired of ever solving them, suddenly finds himself easily able to control his desire for alcohol. The only effort necessary being that required to follow a few simple rules. A few simple roles, you know, he called them rules, we call them our 12 steps. First time in history. Here we go again. There's going to be five classifications of alcoholics never done before. Now, he said it's really outside the scope of the book, but then he gives us five. Here's number one, and they're not numbered. There are, of course, the psychopaths who are emotionally unstable. We are all familiar with this type. They're always going on for the wagon for keeps. They're over-remorseful, make many resolutions, but never a decision. I looked at that and said, psychopath. I'm no psychopath. Emotionally unstable? Maybe last week. Always going on the wagon for keeps? That's it. I'm off this shit. Can you say shit here, David? Yeah, too late. They are over- remorseful and make many solutions. That was me. Resolution, resolution, never made a decision is number one. Number two, there's a type of man who is unwilling to admit that he cannot take a drink. He plans various ways of drinking. He changes his brand or his environment. There we go. That kind of was getting close to me when I first read that. You know, I was unwilling to omit that I can't. What do you mean I can drink? Of course I can Drink. I'm just drinking the wrong stuff. So what do I have to do? I changed my brand. I got to stay off gin. Every time I drank gin, I would sin. Jack Daniels is always the problem. If I stay away from Jack Daniels, you know, then it was the damn Irish whiskeys. And then it Was all brown whiskeys if I'd get off the brown whisky's, you Know, I'm going to be okay and then I'd go to wine became a wino for a while. I was drinking red Portuguese wine and I became an expert on red Portuguese wine. I mean, it's some good stuff. You know, there was probably about 89 cents a gallon these things never even saw a grape. It was just straight alcohol and a little red coloring, you know, or the environment. It was always those guys. If I didn't drink with those guys, it would have been all right. If I Didn't Go to That Time, I Would Have Been All Right. If i didn't go to that same gym mill again, i wouldn't have got jammed up again over and over and again. Here's number three. There's a type who always believes that after being entirely free from alcohol for a period of time, You can take a drink without danger. I've been to approximately 16,000 meetings over the last 43 years, probably a lot more with Zoom. And my personal observation is that the most common slip date is probably 91 days. Get your 90, get your 90. Unless you've done any work on yourself, it's probably, you know, you're out the door. The second most common flip date, again, in my observation, is 366 days. get a year, get a year, and again if the only thing you did is try to drunk out there's a good shot you might be on your way out the door here's number four there's the manic depressive type who is perhaps least understood by his friends about whom a whole chapter could be written now what is that? he's talking about the extreme highs or the extreme lows. I'm either a hero or I'm a zero I'm nowhere in between then number five and this looks like most of us right here, then there are types entirely normal in every respect except in the effect that alcohol is upon them. They are able, intelligent, and friendly people. And I saw most of those London people are able and intelligent and very, very friendly. I don't know about the people from the Bronx, but there's number five. First time in history, five different classifications of alcoholics. This is our first step is that identification and they moved it to the Roman numerals. So a lot of people miss that, and it's kind of hidden. All of these and many others have one symptom in common. They cannot start drinking without developing the phenomenon of craving. This phenomenon is suggested may be the manifestation of an allergy which differentiates these people, and we know pretty much what it is on it. It has never been by any treatment with which we are familiar, permanently eradicated. So the only relief we have to suggest is don't pick up the first drink. And if you don't pickup the first drank, you're not going to get to the second drink, and it's going to be called entire abstinence. Powerful, powerful stuff. My next slide was something else I clipped out of Pass It On when Bill was trying to work and preach with other people. It was Dr. Silkworth who helped straighten him out. Bill was preaching, said the doctor, and his preaching was driving his prospects away. He was talking too much about the Oxford Group principles and about his own spiritual experience, the hot flash, he called it a lot. Why not talk instead about the illness of alcoholism? Why not tell his alcoholics about the wellness that condemns them to go mad or die if they continue to drink? Coming from another alcoholic, one alcoholic talking to another, maybe that will crack those tough egos deep down, Sue Quirt said. Only then can you begin to try out your other medicine, the ethical principles you have picked up from the Oxford group. Isn't that powerful? Okay, I've got a bunch of other slides. Again, Townshend, back to towns in 1965. This five-story yellow brick building with 50 beds where alcoholics and addicts have been treated for more than 50 years, closed their stores. As I said, the building was renovated. It's a co-op apartment building now. The interesting thing, I've never been able to get inside the building. I know a few people who have. It's all in New York City. Everything's secured. But the top floor was the penthouse And that was the home of not so much Dr. Silkworth, but Charlie Towns, which I always found interesting. That's something Gary will talk about probably next week. I'm going to talk a little bit about Nicabaca Hospital. I did a little research on Nicaba and how that came about. uh alice an advertising and a film man in new york had joined the fellowship in march of 1944 he helped structure the new yorg intergroup which he served as a secretary and a director while they're here another minute while he and another member george b were instrumental in persuading knickerbocker hospital to set aside a ward just for alcoholics under the sponsorship of AA. The first such general hospital in New York to do that. And the picture on the right is Duff Beast Tavern, which I have another one coming up on it. Who was Al S? In March of 1944, a special kind of link was established between Emmett Fox and the AA movement when the son of Fox's secretary joined AA, Al S. Isn't that amazing? This was a man named Harold A. Al Steckman. He became very active in AA. Within four and a half years, he was the editor of The Grapevine during the period of Ann and Bob's death and the first international convention and the First General Service Conference. so we where the i always wonder where the connection came from uh emmett fox in aa well it came from al's mother who was the secretary uh to emmott fox now emmitt fox would lecture at different places uh carnegie hall was one of them and according hall was an upper place and people would pay, actually, to get in to see and hear Emmett Fox preach. And Al's mother would give him a handful of free tickets to give to the AA members to go hear Emmet Fox speak. So you always got to get a kick out of that. But Al was instrumental in getting Knickerbocker Hospital up and running as our first AA ward. This is a photograph I had taken of Knickerbocker Hospital. It's now an assisted living place. It is no longer a hospital for many years. A couple of interesting things. In order to get into the alcoholic ward, which is basically kind of a detox, you had to be sponsored by an AA member. And sponsorship meant paying the fee of $75, which is a lot of money in 1945-67 for a five-day treatment. So that's where the term got a little bit more popular of sponsorship. So it was a lot more than just helping somebody take them through the steps. It was paying for their detox if the guy didn't have money. But they also had a fund at the intergroup in Manhattan where people didn't have the money to get into Knickerbocker Hospital. People who were a little on the wealthy side would donate and sponsor them into the hospital. The picture on the left you can see is Duffy's Tavern, and this was kind of a rec hall where after people were detoxed for the first couple of days, were allowed to go in there and they would play cards, they would socialize, they would have AA meetings in there also. And then they allow women into the part of that ward that was separated at one end but they could mix together in Duffy's Tavern. I love that. I tried to get a little bit more information in general service. I really couldn't pick up much when they added like four short pages in it. There are very few people that were around today when Dr. Silkworth was still around. Here's one of them. Hopefully, I don't have to stop it. Could you hear that sound clip? I don' t think so. No, Dev. No. Okay, Ruth. I still got time, so what I have to do is go out and come back in. I'm going to skip that. I'll play it at the end. The book Easy Does It was written, his family thought it was written by Dr. Silkworth. When Lois passed away in the fall of 1988, a little time after that, I was allowed to go through their library on the second floor, and I tried to catalog it with a tape recorder, which is a monumental task. I only got through about four or five bookcases out of numerous bookcases. But one of the books that got me, and there were books on Eastern religions, on Western religions, on every spiritual movement that was around, and there was searches, both Lois and Bill. you know bill never associated himself with any formal religion you know he studied he had a father red dowling as a spiritual advisor he was a little jesuit from st louis real world special guy he studied under bishop fulton j sheen in manhattan in 1947 for a little over year over here thought about you know converting to catholicism dr sam shoemaker protestant minister who was in charge of the oxford group in the states uh also we broke off in the Oxford Group in 1937, so we had no connection with him. But then Sam Shoemaker was certainly a powerful influence on Bill. But that's what I saw up in his library. And when I opened this book, here's what the quote was. It said from Hugh Riley, and I feel easy does it, the story of Mack, to Bill Wilson, who had heard the breathing of the Holy Spirit, made it his own and gave his breath of life to alcoholics everywhere from his friend U. Riley Hewitt now the book says the author was U. Reilly the signature on the in the book says U.Reilly Hewett so I tried to find out who he was and sent me down a rabbit hole so I'm still looking for in that Silkworth had the reason I believe Silkworth wrote most of it, it was a ghost written I believe, was that he had asked Jack Alexander to edit the book for him. If he wasn't the author to it, I doubt if he would ask somebody like Jack Alexander. Also in the there was another Jack Alexander article too about Teddy Rowan. Teddy was the red-headed nurse and she's And the main character in the book, along with the other character, his last name is McDermott. So I really got a kick out of that one. And it might have been one of my distant uncles. He was certainly a drunk. A little bit towards the end of Silk Road's life. We're coming up now. In 19, this is the Alcoholic Foundation. These are the list of the trustees. Silkworth was asked to be a trustee in 1949, along with Fulton Ausler, who was the senior editor at Reader's Digest, who also helped get the grapevine started for us. A lot of really good stuff. But Silkworth was asked to be a trustee, and he was on the board of trustees for two years until he passed away. Some of the other ones that were on there, Leonard Strong was Bill Wilson's brother-in-law, who without him we never would have gotten the Rockefeller connection. Frank Amos, Leroy Chipman, and Leonard Harrison were all from the Rockefella Foundation. You know, without them, we really wouldn't be here either. And then Austin McCormick was the former commissioner of corrections of the city of New York. And then the AA, we have two different types of trustees today in the Alcoholic General Service. The name has changed. But we have a Class A trustees, which are these gentlemen up top who are non-alcoholic. and then we have Class B trustees, and these are the ones here. You can see that Dr. Bob was asked on the board. Tom Y., who started the grapevine, was on theboard. Bill Wilson was ontheboard. Dick Stanley from Akron was onheboard. There were a couple here, Tom B., Tom K., and Jonas. I don't know who they were off the top of my head on it. So we're getting close to the end, and this is the obituary in The Grapevine that Bill wrote. Again, Silkworth died in 1951. He died of a heart attack. And here's what Bill says again. Dr. William Silkworth had a heartattack in his home in New York Thursday morning on March 22nd. second. Thus we of AA have lost the physical presence of the great doctor who was our first friend. He gave a deep understanding, great encouragement to the infant society in the days when a lack of understanding or word of discouragement might easily have killed it. He freely risked his professional reputation to champion an unprecedented spiritual answer to the medical enigma and the human tragedy of alcoholism. Without his blessings, our faith might well have died in its birth. He was a luminous exception to the rule that only an alcoholic understands an alcoholic. He knew us better than we knew ourselves, better than we know each other. Many of us felt that his medical skill, great as that was, was not at all measure of his stature. Dr. Silkworth was something that it is difficult even to mention these days. He was a saintly man. He stood in an unusual relationship to truth. He was able to see the truth of a man when the truth was deeply hidden from the man himself and from everybody else. He was able to save lives, and that were otherwise beyond help of any kind. Such a man cannot really die. Our friend has only left us for a while. This is the gravestone Dr. Silkworth buried over in Glenwood Cemetery in West Long Branch, in Jersey, and local AAs gather on his birthday in July of each year, and they hold a mini-AA meeting. They originally were trying to do it in the winter, but snow and the other weather held off, so they do it the summer of each ear. And here's one of the old bits for Dr. Silkworth. now here's a little clip from Bill I really love Bill Wilson first of all he was a character just like I am, he was a guy full of character defects full of faults, just like me screwed up in a lot of areas and thank God this is not Perfect Synonymous you know who would be here if it was Perfect Synonymus probably just me and David Kennedy and I don't know about David lately only joking but uh you know thank god for that but what bill wilson did uh silkworth got sick and he was unable to work uh he never had any money never amassed any kind of large money so wilson wanted to put together a bunch of people who had some had some funds who were sober in aa and he wanted to raise twenty five thousand dollars for uh for silkworth and but he had passed away right uh let me just read this. He's trying to assist the doctor. This time, his plan was to raise $25,000 for the Silkworth Memorial, fund expressly for the purpose of supplementing Mrs. Silkworth's small income, which he estimated to be about $150 a month. He also planned to propose an AA General Service conference that Mrs. silkworth be granted a small royalty from the AA big book. In the meantime, even while these plans are being considered, Bill obtained two gifts of $500 each from two other friends and supplemented with $200 of his own money to present $1,200. And again, that's in 1950 money, so it's pretty substantial in today's money, to Mrs. Silkworth for her living expenses. Using his influence and his considerable powers of persuasion, Bill the Fixer solved Mrs. Silkworth's immediate financial woes and assured her that he was dealing with her long-term needs as well. There's little doubt that Bill believed AA owed Mrs. Silkworth that much and more as a as a result of the doctor's great service to the fellowship. And I'm sure at that time they asked Mrs. Silkworth whether we could put his name in the second edition and future editions of the book, and I honestly believe that's where it came from. She passed away a couple of years after that, prior to the second addition of the books, never seeing her husband's name appear in the doctor opinion or being pushed to the Roman numerals. That's pretty much the end of the presentation with the one thing I wanted to do was that video clip but I have to stop sharing and then bring it back again to do that and it's a cute little story since we have a couple of minutes. About to get out of it again. To play your audio sounds, you have to optimize them on the little button down here, which I just did. And this should give us the audio sound that I wanted. My friend Pat got a car and... Could you hear that, David? Put us down to Knickerbocker Hospital. And I came up to this gentleman and I said to him, my name is Ruth, what's yours? Well, he came over to me, he took both my hands in his and he looked down at me and he said, how long have you been sober? And I said, 50 days today. I said my name is Ruth. What's yours. And he said Silkworth. And when he said that, I knew that was the man who was in our big book who said we had a disease. And so the tears came to my eyes and I said, 50 days today. And he said, that's a wonderful beginning. Wow, Tiff. Beautiful way to finish. I love that. A little back story with Ruth. Now, Ruth spoke at the International Convention. Our International Convention is the once every five years. In 1995, we had it in San Diego, California, and they have an old-time conference over there. And they invite old-timers to come up at that time over 40 years, 45 years or so, whatever it was. And she was picked as one of the old-timer speakers and only given two minutes to share. And they had the delegate from New York, a friend of mine, like I say her name, and they had a big gong on the stage. So if they went over the two minutes, they hit the big gongs. This thing was huge. So Ruth gets up there, and you've got to love her. I mean, she was beautiful. And she was like 60-something years sober, I guess, at the time. And she just gets in talking just two minutes. and Isadora comes over and it hits the gong and the whole place erupts and let Ruth speak. Let Ruth speak and then just the whole place went crazy. The whole theme of the rest of the thing was let Ruth speak. A guy had an old Volkswagen van on the side of it. He painted a big thing. Let Ruth speak. So that was Ruth Osher. She got sober in the Bronx and then moved to New Jersey unfortunately. I shouldn't kid New Jersey. Thank you David. Thank you very much for having me I really enjoyed thank you David and what a pleasure to have you here on Thanksgiving weekend which are United States of America beautiful tie on you God bless you alright please come back and give some thanks to Dave thank you everyone thank you thank you thank you thank you yeah