Chuck C. at the 2nd International AA Convention – 1955

Thank you, Pat, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I think this would be an awful good time for us to take the other 28 minutes of Ann's period of silence. In the last few days, I have heard everything that I would like to say said so much better than I can say it. that the only thing I feel reasonably sure of right now is that I think I know how a spare tire feels. You know? And in the very short time that we have together, that I can't get warmed up in 20 minutes. I don't even get in high gear until about 35. I think about all I'll be able to say is to express my eternal gratitude to this program of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's pretty wonderful when people get into the conditions that I was in ten years ago, that there is a place to come, that there's a program by which we can gain and maintain our surprise. Had this not been true, I would have deported four other areas about nine years ago. And I'm so grateful I can't see. And when I think that drunks like ourselves, with no program of recovery, worked out this wonderful program of ours, by trial and error, with no precedent, and came up with a foolproof program such as was here when I needed it. I am so grateful that I can't see. I'm sure that it hadn't been left to me, all of you that came after me would have been dead too. I have two or three admirers out on the coast, and every once in a while they get up and eulogize me quite highly, you know, in an introduction. And there's nothing that tickles me so much. I just sit back there and laugh way down deep because I read Jack Alexander's article in 1941, and I was already going down for the third time. And it took me until January nineteen point six to get here. I knew it was here too. And since I could not get sober and stay sober, try as I might, There is nothing within me that even wants to believe that I might maintain sobriety by myself. I believe that the most meaningful words to me in Alcoholics Anonymous are these, AA is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other. Share their experience strength and hope with each other that they might solve their common problem and help other people recover Oh, how terrific those woods are. And I'm mindful of that day, that night rather, in January, nine and a half years ago, when I walked into my first meeting alone. I had a damaged hair coat and latched it, we don't wear them very often out there, so I had it left and it had a big collar on it and I had the collar pulled up around my face and my hat pulled over. And I walked into this meeting alone, and a very fine looking gentleman walked up to me and stuck out his hand and he says are you looking for somebody and I said no sir. he says, what are you doing here? And I said, I'm looking for sobriety. And he said, brother, you're in the right place. He didn't ask me for a letter of recommendation. He doesn't ask me where I've been last night. He just says, you're In the right Place. Take off your hat and coat and come in. And they shared their experience, strength, and hope with me, and they were total strangers to me. And here they were sharing their experience, strength, and hope when the people that knew me didn't. And these are wonderful words in my book, that we share our experience, strengths, and hope with each other. I love Bill's little definition of this fellowship. That any is just one alcoholic helping another, and the two of them helping somebody else. I never had the privilege of having a sponsor on this program except that every one of them responses whether you know it or not, or whether you like it or not. And so I think the thing that I took away from me from that first meeting more than anything else was that spirit of fellowship. I think we have two things in AA. We have spirit and principle and I And I think it's by the spirit that we get sober, and by the practice of the Frenchman. Reminds me of a little thing that happened to me in San Diego. I had been the speaker down there one evening, and it was a rather large meeting, and I talked from a high stage. After the meeting was over, I was last in the coffee line, and there was a pretty long line, then I was standing back there commiserating with myself when an old boy walked up to me and he had a thing in his ear and a battery hanging on him, and he said, you were the speaker, weren't you? And I said, the speaker was. And he says, eh. I said yes. And he says he's got a question he'd like to ask you. And I says, what is it? He says, eh. He says what is this? He just asked me a question of a panel a while back and they couldn't answer it. And then I yelled at him to go ahead. And he says can you tell me how a man can come to this program and get sober and and stay sober when he came here, Goddamn Wicked Man! And after I found my voice, I yelled at him and I told him, no, I couldn't answer it. And he says, well, there is a spirit here. Now, he says I couldn t hear anything that was said tonight, but I think I know everything that was said. And certainly there is a spirit here, and it's this spirit that we must maintain forever. You see other people have got these principles. These principles of ours are not new. They are in every great religion that there is. And so the principles are not new to us, but the Spirit is new in our lives. And it must be that we dedicate ourselves and there's no better time than this twentieth anniversary, that we must rededicate ourselves that it is sure of keeping this spirit, in alcoholics and others, this spirit of sharing our experience, strength, and hope one with another. I believe that there is nothing in life that is quite so wonderful in my own livingness as to see a man or a woman as sick as I was ten years ago and watch them over a period of a few months come back to normalcy and through normalcy to a happy, peaceful, and joyous way of life. I liken it to an inside shower. It does something to us that nothing else ever will. And so this is one of the great dividends of sharing our experience, strength and hope with each other. This is one thing that shoves the past way back, so pretty soon we can laugh with it and attitude. This is one of the things that make life for us so much different and so much better. I often hear said from a podium that this is a simple program, but it isn't easy. And I have to laugh again way down deep inside. This the only easy life I've ever It wasn't easy for me to stay drunk. It wasn t easy at all. It was pretty rough. And so I believe that the program is simple and easy in direct proportion to how badly we want it. If we want sobriety more than life itself, we find this about the easiest thing that we've ever done. And I liked Gwen's little remark yesterday afternoon about how the thing works. Every once in a while I hear somebody say they don't know how it works and I get a great kick out of that too because we have a chapter, Chapter 5 in our book that says how it works. You know, that's the title of it. And I'm just simple enough to believe that's the way it works! Just simple enough. I think that's it. I didn't come here to investigate. I didn t come here to find out how to drink socially. I didn't even come here hoping for physical help. I came here hoping against hope that I might find a way to stay sober until I die, and I didn t think I was very long because I wasn t in what one of the good doctors this morning would have called a state of robust health. I didn't think I had very long, but it was important to me to be sober for such time as I had left because I'd had that rare period of insight a few days previous to this when I'd been able to see myself as I was. And I knew that I was licked. I knew I was all done, and I knew that I couldn't get out of this thing alone. And I know that my good wife couldn't do anything other than what she was doing, and that was getting rid of me. And I mean that the boys couldn't feel any differently than they did, and not why that they couldn't wait until she got rid of them. And I knew that the boss couldn't do anything other than what he was going to do. And I was to throw me through the plate glass window out into Alameda Street if I ever showed up down there again. And that's not good because Alamedas Street is very heavily traveled and it's all trucks out there, big trucks. And I knew something else that was very much more important to me. I knew why, and it was me. And so it was important to be that I'd be sober for such time as I had. to do what I could to rub out what I'd already written on the blackboard of life. And that's the only reason that I wanted to be sober. I hadn't the slightest thought that these myriad problems that I had might be solved. And as I told you, I wasn't even expecting physical health. I just wanted to be sober so that I might erase as much as I could of what I had already written. And so one day, I read that chapter, How It Works, and I believed it. And I just started trying to fulfill those conditions—just trying to fulfil those conditions. And I had no ability, but I had a great desire to do what I could to fulfill those conditions. And I want to say to you that I do not believe that it takes any ability because I had none. And again, that if we want this thing more than life, then we find it pretty easy. Because I just started in trying one day at a time to do what I could to fulfill the conditions of this program. And the conditions are not so rough when they become important. what are the conditions? Number one, surrender. Both physical and mental surrender, because this is a physical and a mental disease. We admit that we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable, physical and mentally. Surrender to get out of our own way. To see that a life lived by self-will can hardly be satisfactory. To see that life as we are living is worthless, and to see that we, as we are, are not worth the powder to blow us to hell. Surrender, complete enough, both physical and mental. Secondly, the recognition of the need for health from a power greater than ourselves. And I think that's all we need in the first place, just the recognition of the need for help. And number three, an honest desire and an honest effort to do what we can with what we have today, to live according to these principles. And that's all, in my opinion, material to us. Just that little deal, surrender the recognition of the need for help and an honest effort to do the best we can with what we have today. And again, I don't think it takes any ability. Just whatever ability that we have, that's that it takes all of it. I heard a little remark that I loved so much the other night, that it doesn't take much of a man to make this program, but it takes all of him. It takes all us. And so it is that when we fulfill these conditions to the best of our ability, we get sober. And we remain sober. And so after six months of attending a meeting every night, I woke up to the fact that I was sober. It took me six months even to wake up to the fact that it was so. So you see, I wasn't very bright. Wasn't very bright. And it took me three and a half years to get over falling on my face. So I wasn' t very strong. But I woke up to the fact that it were so. And that's nine years ago. And everything that's happened in my life since then has just happened. And I've awakened to the fact that it's happened, and it's all been good. And, I sort of look back over this, my life, after, to figure out why it happened and how it happened. And this seems to me to be the problem, and this seems, to me, to be the answer. I'm just as sure as that I stand here that I became an alcoholic because of my inability to integrate myself into a society of which I did not approve. I have never liked so-called normal society, and, uh, I don't like it enough. Thank God I don' t have to live in it! They didn't perform according to my pattern for some reason or another, And I couldn't perform according to theirs because of my own makeup. And so I found alcohol, and it made it a little easier for me to get along in a society that I didn't like. But there was a kick in it, because when I drank, I didn' t perform very well either. And I didn't like me for my performance, and when I didn t like me, I had to drink a little bit more, and perform a little bit less, and like me a little less. And finally the time came when I was caught in the snow ball, and I couldn't get out, couldn't live with me, and I couldn't die. And so I had to come here. Now all of this time, like all the rest of you, I had had a set of ideals that were way up yonder, but I couldn' perform according those ideals because my conditioning wouldn't let me. Because of a lot of things that I learned that weren't true. One amongst them was that there is no such word as surrender. I learned that very early, that there wasn't any such word. About 75% of my people are still fighting the Civil War, you know! There was no surrender in my vocabulary. And so until I was 43 years It was impossible for me to surrender. I didn't get these scars on me by agreeing with my advisor quickly, I'll tell you that. it's a pretty wonderful thing that we can look back on all the experience in those 43 years and thank God for them because no man knows how freeing surrender is until he has to surrender. It's a terrific thing when we wake up to the fact that all these years spent to keep from surrendering ends up in the knowledge that the only thing that we give up in surrender is our trouble. That's all we give us! Let's let it go! That's all we give up. Just let go. And so I couldn't fulfill the very first condition, which is to rent. And I didn't until everything that I held dear in life was gone. And then the time came when I could. and so the problem in my way of thinking is that feeling of conscious separation from perhaps the best definition we'll ever hear of Dr. Thiebaud's ego the feeling of unconscious separation from the thing that made us feel so different than everybody else. The thing that said to me that I had to out-think, out-perform and out-maneuver everybody else in the world in order to eke out a miserable existence out of an unfriendly universe. The thing which said here am I, poor little me or great big me or smart me or dumb me or whatever it is against everybody the feeling of conscious separation is the problem. think it's the one problem that includes all problems. And the one answer that includes all answers is just the reverse of this, the feeling of conscious unity with living in a part of us. And that's what we find in this great program of ours. Because we come here for sobriety and sobriete only. Forgetting all the rest of these problems. We come here for sobriety, we do these things for sobriet in sobriete only. And in the very doing of them we find the answer to life itself. We find that the conditions for sobrierty and the conditions of the good life and the condition of God are one and the same answer. We find out why it is that a belief in God is good but not good enough, that for people like us to live in God as the only answer that there is. And this by accident because we didn't do these things for these answers, we did them for surprise. And lo and behold, we find that the answer to the disease of alcoholism and the answer of the riddle of life is one in the second. And it's just a moving out of the feeling of conscious separation from that feeling of aloneness that eventually is the the only feeling that we have. That we're ten million miles from nothing, even in our own room. That feeling of aloneness is wiped out. And a feeling of unity with living in a part of takes its place. And this to my mind is the great miracle of Alcoholics United. I think we're the most fortunate peoples on the face of the earth. We are caught. Because, you see, we did this thing backwards as long as we could. Just as long as we good. And it was only when we'd run completely out of gas and then not by choice but by necessity, because we couldn't live and we couldn t die. Then we did it right and found the answer, the living answer to the living problem. We moved back into the circle. And when we got honest enough to practice these principles in all of our affairs, and When we got honest enough to sit with ourselves in the quiet and spend a little time on step letters, sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him. Praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. We came to see that feeling of conscious separation was all wrong. We came to see that everyone amongst us is our father's child. Everyone amongst us, our father is child. We came to see that this was true even when we were way out there in left field, consciously separated from it. Still, we were our father's children, but we were away from home. And we came to see that all we had to do was to come back home, fulfill these simple conditions, do these simple things. And that we'd find that our Father had always been there, but it was ourselves that were awake. And I'm going to close with just a couple of little simple illustrations that have become so very meaningful to me. After many years, I ran onto the television last night from whom I got this little thing and I won't quote it exactly, but it's been so meaningful in my life and I've used it much. It was Big Smith from up in Michigan who brought it to us out there, and he said he had found it in a plaque on a wall in an alcoholic ward down in Texas, in the hospital. And the little plaque read like this, If you are not as close to God as you once were or as you would like to be, make no mistake, you're the one that moved. And I thought I one of the finest sermons I've ever heard. And Smitty went ahead and said, all we have to do is come back home, do these simple things, and we find that God's always been there. And then again, Mr. Eppert came up to me one time after one of these meetings, and I was out of shorts. And I didn't want to talk to him or listen to him, and he asked me this question. He says, Chuck, you know why it's hard for us to find God? I thought, Oh, this is all night, you know. And I didn't want to get in a conversation with him at all, but he had me trapped and I had to say, No, why is it so hard for us to find God? the kid says, because he ain't lost. Why is this? We're the ones that have been lost. All we have to do is come back home, do these simple things, and we find that God's always business. And so again, I am so grateful that I can't speak. So grateful to this fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and to its founders, those who went ahead of us, and to you people all of us, because you helped me come back home. I am so grateful that I decided I wanted what you had that first night and was willing to go to any lengths to get it. So grateful that I decided to take certain steps. Because you told me, here are the steps we took, we're sober, which I suggested as a program of defense. And I decided to take those steps, the 12 steps. So grateful because in my own experience I have found that those 12 steps lead all the way from hell to heaven. I know because that's the way it happened to me. Thank you very much. Thanks for watching!