Emotional Sobriety in the Increments of Now – Earl M.

For years, he wrote the big book, and he knew nothing about long-term sobriety, and often said that. So I thought I'd, when I was 35 years sober, I'm now 39, or 35 years sober, that I would write a book on my experiences, because we're all roughly the same. You know, we have some differences, but not much. And Mickey, did Did any of you hear my wife talk this morning, Mickey? You notice she was down about like here, you know. So I dedicated the book to her, to Mickey, my wife, the little giant. That's what she is. You know, I often, whenever they say this thing, we aren't saints, the devil inside of me wants to perk up and say, we aren'T? Let me tell you a story which is kind of typical of the alcoholic. In 1955, and some of the old-timers I'm sure will remember that conference in St. Louis. It was the second international AA conference. And at that conference, Bill turned over AA to the drunks. He had set up with some troubles the General Service Conference, the General Service Board, and he turned over AAA to the drunk. There wasn't a dry eye in the house. I was sitting next to Ebi Thatcher, the guy who brought the message to Bill, and he cried throughout the whole thing, and so did I. We exchanged handkerchiefs. He was a great guy. At that conference, Bill was introduced on the night that he turned over A.A. to the drunks by a guy named Icky Sheridan, which some of the old-timers here may know, long since deceased. He was in East Texas, and he told the following story, which is so typical of the alcoholic. He said, down in East Kansas we had a little town where you had no place to put a drunk if one showed up. so the decision was made that we would put the drunk in the ice house if one showed up and sure enough one did show up and they put him in the Ice House that night the sheriff at his dinner table stood bolt upright and he said oh Emmy his wife I forgot old Joe he's down there in theice house he'll freeze put on his hat and walked down the street and got to this little green house that had ice and didn't have refrigerators he opened up the big handle opened up a great big door and a ray of light sneaked in And over in this corner, here was a drunk all huddled up. We looked up at the sheriff and said, For God's sake, close that door. I'm freezing to death. That's the drunk. Let me tell you just a little bit about my own particular story. It's not very unique. As a matter of fact, it's not sehr severe. Many people lost a lot of things when they came to AA and they were in the down of the low bottoms, I didn't lose a thing. I made more money the last year of my drinking than I ever made before in my whole life. More than I've made since, too. That's all right. I remember talking to Brinkley Smithers, who was the one that gave money so that Marty Mann, an old friend of ours, could start the National Council on Alcoholism. And he said to me early, you know, he's a millionaire, multi-millionaire, long since dead. he said the drunker I got the more millions I made so extreme loss is not necessary for the alcoholic it's what happens to the alcoholic I am a physician and I was always disciplined but inside my life was a shambles when I drank I didn't endanger patients when I drink I had a good nice partner we finally split over my drinking but he was nice for a long time I would leave town for several days or a week Ten days and then come back and I'd be all right. Never was drunk in my office, never was drunk in the operating room, never drunk in the hospital. As a matter of fact, if I went to the hospital at night, I seemed to be protected, didn't have to drink. I don't know why that is. I guess it was kind of the maternal feeling the way doctors feel about the hospital that they're in. Well, we feel, those of us in the scientific professions, feel that all the addictions are roughly the same. That is, that alcoholism and cocaineism and heroinism and morphinism and marijuanaism and you go on down to all the isms, that they are all roughly the same. They affect the neurotransmitters in the brain the same and so we feel that they're all the same disease fundamentally. It's like you've got a great big room with different doors that come in one marked alcohol, one marked heroin, one marked cocaine, one mark and so forth. Now in AA throughout the country there's a growing feeling in some of the minority feeling that people in AA should not talk about anything except alcohol and should not talk about the other drugs. Well, if you think I'm going to get in the middle of that fight, you're crazy. I have no idea. But I can say that from a strict scientific standpoint, all the addictions are the same. That doesn't mean these people who say they shouldn't speak at AA meetings because they haven't got they have some other drugs besides alcohol and that's their business. we also feel that we went to a phase where we thought that alcoholism addiction of all kind was a sin this is kind of unscientific and not true one went through an era where he said that all the addicts particularly alcoholism because alcoholism is by far the worst disease and it's by far the biggest disease it puts heroin cocaine and valium and all the rest of them to shame in terms of size but all the people who are addicted have roughly the same thing in common, that is an intolerance to a drug. That's the point. And we feel that it's a genetically inherited susceptibility. We don't feel it's a psychological disease. Even the big book implies and says actually that it is a psychological disease. Bill thought that and we all thought that in the 30s. Alcoholism was a psychological way that we were deficient psychologically. We were born that way and that's why we had to drink and use drugs and so forth. We now know this is not correct. This is not right. We are just as stable as the non-alcoholic until we get in trouble with our drug and then we get into psychological problems. The psychological problems follow the excess intake of alcohol or drugs and they do not precede it. Now, we have people who are psychologically upset who are also alcoholics. We call them a dual diagnosis. Schizophrenia, manic depression, and so on. We feel that it's a biogenetic inherited susceptibility. Most people, about 85% of people in AA, can discover heavy drinking or addiction to some other drug in their immediate family. In my own case, my father was alcoholic, so was my mother. My mother was less severe than my father. She was a periodic. She would get drunk two or three times a year for two or four days. And she was ordinarily a very sweet, gentle person. But when she got drunk during those two or five days, hugged the wall as she was coming through. That's the way it was. And on my mother's side, I have an uncle that died at the age of 47 from alcoholism. I have a cousin that died when he was 30. I have another cousin who has been in AA for about, oh, 19, 20 years. And on My Father's Side, they're all over the place. Excuse me. So I come by my addiction to alcohol. I also got addicted to amphetamine bennies. You gave me a cough drop, didn't you? Maybe you predicted I was going to have a cough. Thank you. God told him. God tells him everything. I did not tell you. I mean... And yet, not everybody in an addictable family has an addiction. My brother, who is 18 months younger than I, he's not an alcoholic or an addict, he takes a drink. He and my wife and his wife, I would go out to Christmas dinner, Thanksgiving dinner. My brother would take a martini and look at it through the light like this. Then he would take the martini and run it under his nose and savor the bouquet, and then look at it again, and then he would sip it and have the temerity to sit it down again. During my drinking days, this just drove me crazy. I'd say, why don't you knock that thing off? You know, that's what I do. And for years I said he was a very poor drinker. It's not true. He is a perfectly normal drinker. You see, we as alcoholics know how to drink alcohol badly. We're slobs. My brother knows how to enjoy a single drink. It's totally foreign to me. I don't understand this. But he does. He's not an alcoholic. So not everybody in an addictable family becomes addicted. In 1926, I was then 15. I am now 81. I tried to discover what alcohol was about. Now, when my father and mother drank, we had alcohol around the place, but we were so busy, my brother and I, staying out of their way, that we didn't ever get a chance to try alcohol. And when they were sober, they were the other way around. None in the house at all. After all, alcoholics don't stay drunk all the time. When I was 15, I went up to a little summer resort known as Russian River outside of San Francisco, about 50 miles, 35 miles, to try alcohol with a friend of mine. We got up there and we found a bootlegger whose name was Ma Martinelli. And Ma Martinelly, when Prohibition was repealed in the early 1930s, she opened a winery and made apple juice. And everyone in California buys Martinelli apple juice because it's from old Ma Martinellis. Art and I asked my friend, went over and got four quarts of wine. took them to our tent they didn't have cabins in those days just a platform with a tent over it and two cots he sat in his and I sat in mine and we unplugged our bollock and then we started drinking from the bottle I took a couple of swigs of this stuff and I thought hey this is really something this is this is good so I paid attention to the bottle and drank it down drink by drink until it was gone Then I looked up. I looked over at Art, and his bottle was about two-thirds down. But he was staring straight forward like this. I didn't know what was the matter with him. I said, Art! Art! And that jiggled the air, and also the plop. He plopped over on the bed. I went over and shook him. And I could see that he was drunk, that's the point. So I put his feet up on the table or the bed and covered him with a blanket. Fifteen years old. I was against the drink prohibition, against the law. What did I do? I'm all alone. Went out, I remember walking down the row of tents and it was a very starlit night. Very beautiful. And I remember looking up and the night was just gorgeous and I've been very attracted and addicted to nights ever since. That kind of night. I came back in and I sat down on my bed and I almost cried. What do I do? Then I discovered his bottle and the other two bottles. Believe it or not, I drank all three of them. Now that's three quarts of wine for a kid of 15 is one who didn't kill me. But I, like many alcoholics, was born with a very high tolerance. And I could tolerate large amounts of alcohol. Many alcoholics can. Not all, but many can. That's the way I drank the rest of my life. Well, let's don't go through my career of drinking. It's the same as yours except I took off and went off when my partner carried to practice and so on. But in 1939, it happened and what happened the drug companies put out little packets and little metal boxes oh there'd be six tablets of Nembutol or Seconal or Tuonol and Benny's I tried them all and they tasted pretty good about like this alright but the Benny's took me right up through the ceiling from then on until I sobered up on the 15th of June in 1953 Benny's and alcohol were my drugs of choice and I played them back and forth. Let me skip to my last day of drinking. I had never called myself an alcoholic. In those days, we always thought that all alcoholics were on Skid Row. At least in my area this was true. This isn't correct at all. Just 3% of alcoholics are on Skид Row. 97% of all alcoholists are living next door to you and me. Anyway, I had Never Called Myself an Alcoholic. Someone said to me, Are you a drunk? I'd say, well, yeah, I don't like the word much but I am. That's what I am Aren't you drinking more than you used to, Earl? And I'd said, yes, I am They'd say well, why don't you stop? And I said, well I do stop But I can't stay that way I remember one time on Sunday This has happened many times I got very worried about my drinking Didn't call myself an alcoholic But I was worried about it I was afraid about my drink And I remember on Sunday night I said I'm going to stop drinking forever I'm going on a wagon for good. That's a very dangerous statement for an alcoholic to make. Dangerous. Nonetheless, on Monday I was okay, Tuesday okay, Wednesday okay, Thursday okay, or reasonably okay, but I didn't drink. On Friday I came home, poured out a large glass of vodka. That's what I drank the last ten years of my drinking. You know, it's not supposed to smell your breath. It just reeks through your pores, that's all. You know. and I drank this vodka down and as I drank it I said Earl I was talking to myself I thought you said you were going to stop drinking I just couldn't stay stopped and that's the way it went off and on off and On on this last day of my drinking I had found a combination well not a combination really in a sense it was I found that if I poured vodka over ice I thought I would be all right. Imagine. Didn't put anything else, just vodka over ice. So I thought it had the problem licked. Well, I went out to a restaurant known as Sam's in Tiburon in California. It's across the bay from San Francisco. And I ordered for myself a wearing blender full of vodka fizzes and three double vodka martinis. Now why I ordered this mess, I don't know, but I did. Drank them down. and I don't recall I wasn't totally blacked out on this particular day I was kind of browned out but I remember a few events I don' t recall leaving Sam's but I do recall early in the afternoon one or two I guess I was up the side of the mountain I lived in a place known as Mill Valley on the sideof a mountain and I went up to see a friend of mine named Harry I'd gone to the university with him we were fraternity brothers and he'd been in lots of trouble with alcohol now I didn't go to see him looking for help with alcohol. I had no idea about this in mind. I was not concerned on this particular day with my drinking because I thought I had it licked, one of those ways. But I went up to see Harry anyway. Maybe it was God's plan. I don't know. I went upstairs and I said, I went there and Harry said, you know, I've been in lots of trouble with alcohol, and I says, yes, I've read the papers. I know you have. You've been to jail several times. He said, my wife has divorced me, and I say, yes I've heard that too. But he said, do you want to know something? I haven't had a drink for seven months. And I said you haven't? What happened to you? Well, he said, have you heard of Alcoholics Anonymous? And I said, well, not really. But I do recall reading an article by Jack Alexander, who later became part of the General Service Board. Article in the Saturday Evening Post in 1941 talking about AlcoholicsAnonymous. And in there he said that AA was started by a stockbroker named Bill, who later became a very close friend of mine, and a doctor named Bob. And the fact that there was a doctor and I was a Doctor, that's all I knew about, identified with that. That's all he knew about AA. Well, Harry said, here's a piece of paper. He gave me a piece de paper like this with two of them folded together like this. And he said, this is from Akron. And it had on there, on one side, about 12 or 13 statements about alcoholism. And over here, 12 or13 statements about those people that are concerned about their drinking and want to stop. This is advice to what to do. Well, the scene changes and I'm now back in my home in Mill Valley, down the mountain from Harry and I am sitting on the deck but I am so drunk I just can't make out what it says. So I ask my then wife to read it to me. I've had about a hundred of them by the way. Mickey and I have got seven marriages between us. I mean, we've got a great one now. It took us a long time to get here, but here we are. So she did. She read it to me and she read all the statements and I'd forgotten all except two. One said, don't stop drinking for anybody else except yourself. And on to say in a subparagraph that, after all, if you want to stop for your wife or your children, they'll be better and your wife will be better and your marriage will be greater and so forth, but you won't stay sober. Make staying sober the main thing in your life stop drinking just for you. The next thing she read was, don't consider yourself a martyr because you stopped drinking. Strange statements. Don't stop drinking for anybody else except you and don't think don't you consider yourself a martyr because you do so. Now for some very strange mystical reason these two statements made a very deep impact on me. I don't know why. It was like somebody taking a big wet beer towel and just slapped me in the mouth with it. And I broke down and cried. Well, you know, emotional alcoholic. You know, crying was par for the course in those days. I'd drive in my car. Bing Crosby was very popular then. I loved Bing. And I'd hear Bing sing a song and I'd cry. I'd look up in the sky and see a lovely cloud and I would cry. Or I'd go up and not see a cloud and cry. I looked at my wife and my daughter, and I'd cry. I suppose they looked at me and cried too. I don't know. Finally, my wife said, well, you'll be all right, and patted me in the back and went in the house. And I sat there in the deepest funk, deepest depression I think I've ever had. I'm pretty much an up guy. I have my down periods like everybody does, but I'm a pretty much radiant above the line, oscillate above the lines. And I Sat There for a Long Time. How long? I don' t really know. in a very deep depression, if I could call it that. Well, finally I realized it was time to make the... It was on Saturday. Saturday, barbecuing, looking at my watch and it was trying to do so about 4.30 or 5 or so, daylight saving time, beautiful California sun. I ascended about 15 stairs that I'd put in myself actually and I got to the top. Remember, I'd walk up those stairs and I was afraid I'd fall out of there. We had no banister on the stairs going up to the barbecue area, which is an area about twice the size of this platform up here. I got to the top stair and I looked at my glass and I had just about one finger left in the bottom. And I thought, now that'll never do. If I'm going to make that fire, I better have a tall glass or something. So I turned around on the stairs to go down the stairs onto the deck into the kitchen to make a drink and take it back up there. As I turned round on the stares, an absolutely remarkable thing happened to me. I have no idea how to describe it, but I'll do the best I can. It was as though an explosion occurred inside of me that ripped me apart. Now, of course, it wasn't an explosion, but I felt pain in every cell of my body. To this day, I haveno idea why, but I did. And then I heard the words, this is your last drink. I couldn't believe it. I paused, looked at my glass. I poured out what was in there. I had already had, in essence, my last drink and never felt so relieved in my life. God, I felt like somebody taking a big, wet, heavy overcoat off my shoulder. The sun even seemed to get brighter and like for the California and his son can't get much brighter. But I felt that way. Then, instantly, a second thing happened. And that has occurred to me suddenly. Earl, you are an alcoholic. That's your trouble. That's why you went to see that psychiatrist. It didn't do any good. They didn't talk about alcohol. That's what you did. That's the way you went to see the psychiatrist. That's it. You are an alcoholic. I wasn't afraid of calling myself an alcoholic because it never occurred to Me. Drunk, yes. You are alcoholic. At that instant, the craving to take another drink disappeared from me and hasn't returned once in over 39 years. Now, baby, something strange was happening. I had later realized this, somebody told us it was a spiritual experience. Bill and I became very friendly. He had a similar kind of experience. We often shared what happened in his experience and in mine. Now, most alcoholics don't stay sober that way. They get sober the hard way, if you read Appendix 2, and they have craving on and off. Dr. Bob did. If you've read the last paragraph of Dr. Bobs' story, he says, The craving to take a drink was almost with me constantly for the first two and a half years of my sobriety. Two and a halve years. Now, that's not common. That's uncommon, too. But nonetheless, Bob had that craving. But he never was close to taking a drink, he said. You can read it. It's in the big book. well I just could not understand this but I felt absolutely elated well I don't know quite what happened I must have gone up finally gone to bed the next day I went up to see Harry and I said Harry I've got to go to that AA of yours will you take me he said sure well I've gotta tell you about my first meeting in those days we only had three meetings in this county where I live we now have 350 I guess and he took me to this meeting and there were five people there including me there was a table much like this The table here. And at that far end sat a very wonderful guy named Clark Billingsley, long since dead, who was one of the community butchers. And on this side of the table, that side over there on the table sat a short, irritable, bald-headed guy named Aptly called Shorty, only 5 feet 1, who was a carpenter. And on that side of table sat a nice guy named Vern Weir, who was baker. And on this side, next to me, sat my friend who was kind of a self-styled inventor or something. Well, I want you to know the doctor put himself up at his greatest height. Now, if anybody here is a butcher or a carpenter or a baker, please don't be insulted. And I said to myself, what am I doing in a meeting with a butcher and a carpeter and a baker and a mechanic? Me? So I asked to be excused, and Clark said, by all means, doctor. I went outside Wesley Hall and I said to myself you mean to tell me that you with all that you have your professorial status and all the memberships in society I won't go into all just so you know this and that you mean to tell you that you have got to go in there to get those guys Butcher Carpenter Baker to make a man out of you and I paused then the words came to me clearly You're damn right you do. Get in there. So I went in there well, never has a doctor been so grateful to a butcher and to a carpenter and to an expert and to Baker as this one. These guys were master clinicians. They know just what to say to me. They know what not to say to me they know how to handle me you know they looked like they had years of experience in clinical medicine they were just wonderful these fellas. Well, you know I became I just was turned on When I came into AA, I still am. Like a Christmas tree. God, I was turned on by AA. And I just thought it was wonderful. I called people. I was around going to all kinds of meetings. There weren't many meetings. There weren' t all of them. And finally, I heard about it. I was invited to come to another meeting that was called Jesus as Teacher. Now this was not an AA meeting, but I didn' t know this. This was copied after a man named Sharman who had written a book, Jesus as teacher. And what they did, they talked about the teaching aspects, not the so-called divinity aspects of Jesus, but the teaching aspect. I didn't mind to go, so I went. It was really a one-upmanship meeting. You know, some guy came in with an arched eyebrow and he said, have you read what's on page 92 of such and such a book? We'd all faint. No, we hadn't read that in that hole. We'd go home and read it and we'd say, that guy's putting us on. We'd come back and say, no, but have you heard what's written on page 45 of such-and-such a book and back and forth it went vying with one another about who was the most spiritual. And I thought, this is what you're supposed to do. So I did it too. At the end of about four months, I was floated way up in the air above a cloud where I guess God sits and I felt terrible. I went to Clark and I said, Clark the butcher, great guy. He said, Clark, there's something wrong with me. I might just as well be drunk as feel like I do right now. I thought I saw a faint smile go over his face. And he said, Earl, let me get you a cup of coffee. So he did. He walked way over to the far side of Wesley Hall and my eyes by this time were on Clark all the time and on Shorty and Vern all of them I fought him off the side over there like a child wondering what he was going to say you know he walked over and we served donuts in those days coffee and donuts and I watched him and watched him he crossed his leg and looked way off into space and he said Earl, you know I'm very proud of you you're the only doctor we have They're in AA and these are parched. We now have them hanging on every tree, but there you are. He said, You've done very well. It must be hard for you. Your intellectual status by this time, these statements made me kind of sick. But anyway, he said this. And he said, But we have an organization here in Mill Valley, that's the name of the town, known as Alcoholics Anonymous. Why don't you join it? I said, Well, Clark, what do you think I'm doing? Well, he said, I don't know. He said, that other group you go to is perfectly all right. Continue to go to it, but it's not an AA group. And I said, it's Not? He said no, it is not. He said why don't you do this? Why don't pay attention to what we have in AA for a while. Go to the other group too if you wish, but realize it's not an AAA group. Well, this was news to me. I said Clark, how would you start off? Well, He said I'd go home. You got a big book? and I said, yes, I read three of them. He said, have you read? And I said yeah, I've read them three times. He said you don't learn very well do you? And I says well, I don't know that I don' t. Go home and open it to page 70. Now the first edition we didn't call this chapter 5 or how it works we called it page 70 in our area. That's the affectionate term. We now call this how it worked or chapter 5. We didn't in those days. And it's now page 58 or something it isn't 70. Go home an read it. I said thanks a lot Clark and I got in my car and raced home and got out the big book. Here it is right here. And I read, rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program. Usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. You know, when I say that maybe they're born this way in a variety of things, their chances are less than average. I said there are those two who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest. Honesty, follow the program carefully, thoroughly, rang through my head. Our stories reveal what we used to be like, what happened, and what we're like now. If you've decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any lengths, any lengths to get it, then you're ready to take certain steps. And some of these we bought. We thought we could find an easier, softer way but we could not. With all of the earnestness at our command we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely. Let go absolutely Any lengths. Thoroughly followed our path. Rang through my head. Remember, we deal with alcohol. Cunning, baffling, powerful. Without help, it's too much for us. But there is one who has all power. That one is God. May you find him now. Half measures availed is nothing. It didn't say half measures avail as half. Or 90% measures avail is 90%. It succinctly and clearly said, half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. And we asked God's protection with complete abandon. Complete abandon. Asked for protection. And all these things ran through my head. And finally it sunk into my thick egocentric skull what this program was really about. And I just thought about this for days. And I went on to other things, other meetings, and I read the book more. And I finally went back to New York, and we finally met Bill. We became good friends. We talked about this. And this was a godsend to me because it brought me to this great and marvelous program. Now, let me tell you a few things that happened to me in my sobriety. Let's talk about what we're like now. I was sober about two years and I had to operate every morning at 7 o'clock so I got up very early I got out early in the morning and I did some exercises which I still do still do the exercises and I was up there that morning starting to exercise and suddenly I started to cry softly I don't know why but I did now when I have an emotion that occurs to me I don't do anything to get rid of it. I don' t turn on the radio to get ride of it I don''t turn on TV to get read of it I want to live with it and know what it's all about this is what I do I'm interested in knowing what it''s all about all the philosophies all the religions say know the truth and it shall set you free and I don ''t want to know the truth about myself so I sat down I was crying I went over and sat down in a chair by the barbecue area and I said what is this all about crying, crying all of a sudden this is the way change happens like that change happens that way All of a sudden it occurred to me that I had never been home. I had ever felt at home. You know, I would be at one place and I thought, well now this isn't quite it. I should be at some other place. And sometimes if I could, I went to that other place and that was fine for a short time and then sure enough it occurred again. This is not home. And I'd done this over and over again. Even maybe inside of myself without moving physically sometimes it occurred. Well, suddenly it occurred to me that the only home I could ever have was inside of myself. That being true, I had been home my whole life. I just didn't know it. And I've never been lonely since that time because I'm always home. Right this instant, as I look at you beautiful people out there, I'm at home. I don't know whether you are or not, but I am. I look out there and then, as I stood up there early dawn that morning, realized the home was inside of myself. I looked out all the trees, the beautiful landscape, and I realized that all that was also a part of me because I was looking at it and it was looking back at me. So look at two folks here. I'm looking at you. You're looking back. Look at me, you are my life in essence, all of you and loneliness disappeared from me and has never come back since that time another thing happened to me I was about four years sober and the first few years of my sobriety in spite of the education I've had which didn't help me at all in AA I I might did me harm I guess I had followed everybody I read books and I tried to copy what it said I saw people who talked in a certain way, and I tried to talk the way they did. A very famous guy that some of you may know, Chuck C., from Laguna Beach, California, became a very close friend of mine. I worshipped this guy. Chuck and I were born the same day. He was nine years old. He's long since dead. Chuck Chamberlain, Richard Chamberlaine's father, the actor. Great guy. I wonder if I just listened to this guy, everything he said. I tried talking like how he did. Remember how some of the old-timers know how Chuck used to laugh? I tried to do it, and it just sounded terrible. So I was copying everybody, trying to find my place where I'd fit. Well, one time, Chuck and I, I finally got on the AA circuit. Oh, God, don't get on the AAA circuit. I got onthe AA circuit, remember, and I was in Shreveport, Louisiana, and I'd been talking for several years, every weekend. And all of a sudden, I was standing up there talking, and I heard my own voice, almost vomited. I've been saying the same thing, all of it true, but the same thing in the same way for years. So I withdrew and seldom talk at AA meetings these days. I'm like this and sometimes I do and sometimes they don't, but not like I did. Well, I was at this place in Midlands, Odessa, Texas. And Chuck and I were the main speakers. I was about four or five years sober. And I listened to this magnificent guy talk. Oh, he was wonderful. And as I listened to him, for the first time I realized that I was copying him. I had not really realized that before. Though I was kind of rehearsing, that's all. But I was copycating him. And then I realized with full force, this is the way change happens by serendipity like that. You can't make it happen at all. I realized in full force that I had become a copier. I had becomes a second class citizen. At that instant, the urge to become a second-class citizen and follow anybody disappeared and has never returned. I decided it takes courage now to stand up on your own two feet, go your own way in your own fashion, because many people will disagree with you. So what? For instance, I'm talking here today. If you want people to love you, you're in trouble. It's nice to be loved, of course. That's fine. That's all right. As I'm talking here today, some of you are thinking, gosh, what I'm saying is wonderful. Other ones are saying, what's he talking about? When's he going to get through? And the rest of you are sound asleep. I mean, that's the way it goes. But that doesn't make any difference. I keep going on anyway. This is my thing. This is what I do. This is why I shoot off my mouth. At this age, I've grown around shooting off my mouse. That's what's my occupation these days. I've followed no one since that time. Now, I say to you, don't follow anybody or fend it. then things will change. Become your own person. Now, what I'm about to say, there's some members of AA who will not agree with, and that's all right with me. I'm for whatever, all the people in AA I'm For. You see, there are as many ways to practice, if you want to use that word, the AA program as there are people in it. There are some people who will say, and they have a right to say this, no, there's only one way to do the AA Program and this is it. Well, it's all right. This is it for them, but not maybe for us. We must do it in our own particular way and if you want to do it in a different way, do it. We all use it. The only thing we do absolutely the same is the first step, we stay sober. That's all. And clean from drugs. We all used the 12 steps in our way, interpret them in our one way and establish our own AA program. Do it. Your way. I speak to new people here. Listen to the old timers but don't believe one word they tell you. Because what they may say will not fit for you. On the other hand, what they say may arouse something in you that is wonderful. So listen to them intently but don' t believe what they said. Do it in your own way. Become your own person. Now, I went through So I got my physical sobriety on a golden platter, just a golden platter. But emotional sobriery was a horse of a different color. This came with great difficulty as it does in most people. Let me tell you the few events that have occurred to me where emotional sobrietty came to me in increments. You see, I'll have to say something kind of technical for a minute. It's a matter of time, T-I-M-E. in the physical material world that such a thing as time is very valuable we overdo it sometimes it took you folks a certain amount of time to collect yourself and get to this auditorium we'll be here for a certain length of time and then we'll all leave and it'll take a certain amount of times to go wherever we're going so time in the physical world is very variable now what I'm about to say has nothing to do with physical time I'm talking about emotional or spiritual or psychological time. And all those three are the same. Emotions, spiritual and psychological are roughly the same You can have your own definition of each but they're roughly the samething. Time. You see, emotionally speaking there is no such thing as time. It's always now. There is no there and then. There's only here and now. This afternoon and tomorrow when you're going along seeing yourself every once in a while where am I and what time is it? And you'll have to say I'm here and it's now. Travel a little further, where am I and what time is it? Well, I'm hier and it' s now. A little bit further, where am i and what times is it. Oh, I am here and its now. It's always here and always now. But you may have traveled several miles in your car from this city to that city to the other city. So I'm only talking about physical things. Emotional things. But we have short memories. We forget the fact, it seems to me, if I can use my own case, that when we got sober, it was all of a sudden a flash sometimes the flash is very meager sometimes it was enormous like it was with me and Bill and others we were fortunate most of the time it's a meager little flash oh it's happened to all of you you wouldn't be here a flash oh I'm alcoholic oh I see that's why I'm here now there being no time and being no future from a psychological standpoint there's nothing you can do to change your own emotions except one thing and that is to acknowledge and accept absolutely the psychological or emotional state or spiritual state that you are in nothing wrong with it may hurt may not hurt start there once you do that and accept what's there because it's always now strange things happen machinery is set into motion set into emotion so that change automatically happens and ideas come to you about what to do. Now, if you get into an emotional state and say I'm going to change it you're in trouble. We all do this all the time. It won't work. For a while you can fake it. You can fake for a while but in general it does not work. You've got to accept the state you're is and you say well it hurts. Well, what's wrong with hurting? What's wrong pain? What's right? What's what's right What's not wrong with pain? I don't like it. Well, let's and so on accept what's there. Once you do then the machinery is set in motion so that change will occur and ideas will occur to you about what to do with yourself the second step says it clearly AA is very aware of this came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity doesn't say you restore yourself to sanity that's what I'm talking about you accept what's there we accept the fact that we're alcoholics finally or drug addicts finally When that happens, sobriety occurs naturally. If we try to make ourselves stay sober, try to making ourselves get into a new psychological state, we increase the tension and feel terrible. Most people say, well, I don't like feeling resentful. Well, it's too damn bad. You are resentful I'm not selling resentment, by the way. If you're resentful, you're resentmentful. You're jealous, you'RE jealous. You're envious, you'Re envious. You're happy, youRe happy. You're joyful, youRE joyful. accept what's there and at that instant new ideas will come to you about what you should do about your emotional state where you should go what you shouldn't do but if you try to skip that step you'll stay in the same bind that's it he doesn't agree with me or she you see what you resist will persist if you resist the fact that you're resentful I'm not saying resentment by the way or you resist the fact that you are jealous it will persist oh finally over the course of time and much argument it wears itself out that's perfectly true so accept yourself as you are not as you think you should be but as you are there is no time to do anything else there is no time allotted to you to change your emotions you start up by accepting where you are. I've said this too much, haven't I? And then ideas will occur about what you should do. Now, you know I had a very great thing happen to me. I went out to I was asked to join the faculty of medicine at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. And I was on the faculty at the University of California in San Francisco and they asked me to come out there and offer me a professorship if I do one strange thing. I'd go to Saigon. Saigon? The war was going on, but they said yes to go out there, not as a soldier, but out there as a visiting professor at the University of Saigon Medical School to help them set up a new department in my surgical specialty. By that time, I was in between marriages. I'm always in between marriages. And so I said, why not? So I went out. Before I did, I went to spend a couple weeks with Bill and Lois and some other Sam Shoemaker and some others back there in New York. By the day he arrived, I had to go to the airport and fly to Saigon. Bill took me to the Airport, and on the way, he said, You know, Earl, I've been sober longer than anyone else in this organization. I was six months sober when I found Bob. He said, I don't have very much peace of mind. And I said, I don' t have much serenity either. We kind of cogitated about this for a while. Then we left. What to do about this? And I said, Well, I do not know, Bill. I do no know. You have been around longer than I have by a long shot. So I flew out to Saigou and all the way I got to thinking about this. No serenities. What's up? What'sup? What's Up? How come? How come we feel so miserable? And I decided that I was going to search for serenity out there in Asia by investigating, of all things, the Eastern religions. I was doing my AA work, an AA meeting in Saigon. I've been to AA meetings on every continent except Australia. I even went to an AA meet in Iran. That's when the Shah was the big shot. You'd get your head cut off if you drank there. But then we had some Iranians. I've been to AA meetings all over the world, didn't know what they were even talking about, didn't Know the language. But I knew exactly what they Were saying as I was there. Well, I decided, so I was getting a grapevine, I had the big book and the 12x12, the bill they'd given me, an autograph and so forth. And I was doing my AA things and I didn't desert my work. But on rest and relaxation periods, I traveled to India, to Indonesia, to Nepal, attempting to find out something about Buddhism, Hinduism. I don't know why, but I did. Taoism, Confucianism, ancestral worship, the whole bang. And I wrote Bill about it. He said, that's a good idea. Investigate all those damn things and let me know how it goes. So I did and I went on a three-year or so, maybe more, search for serenity. God, I sat in more temples in Indonesia and in India were trying to get into the lotus position. You know the lotus position? I couldn't quite make it, you know. I thought I was kind of nuts, and I guess I was. But on the other hand, I did all this stuff, and I was looking for the serenity. And I kept writing, building, but I said, keep going, keep going. That's good. Keep going. So in India, I do this kind of a silly thing. I don't know if I was silly or not. Out there, they wear dotis. You know dotis? It's gandy warm. It's a skirt that goes around your lower middle from your waist down, and you pull it up between your legs and make it into a diaper. You know how gandy used to work? That's a doti. I put on a doty and walked around in a dotie. You know, and I had just a towel over my shoulder. And you consider well-dressed but don't need a towel on your shoulder. Why a towel? Because they don't have knives and forks. They eat on banana leaves with the right hand. They crunch up the food and throw it in their mouth. But this hand they use to clean their rear end. So you don't do that. So I walked around with a towel above my shoulder and I went to several ashrams, one by Sri Aurobindo and one by one Ramana Maharshi. Ramana... At Ramana Maharishi's place I was there and I was the only white-faced person with about 150 people. I was here during the season of Duvali. Duvalis is like our Easter, the sign of renewal. We were awakened about two o'clock on one of the main days of Duvalli, I've forgotten which. Oh, this is the ashram. It's like an American commune. This is the bottom of a mountain known as Aruncala which means sun in Hindi. And we were awakened at two o´clock in the morning taken into a big room about this size, a tremendous room with big platforms and on it were big cauldrons of warm oil. And the little guy up there scooping out oil into buckets that we were given, we took these buckets into little rooms, took off our old dhoti, washed our bodies off. Well, that's the idea. Make yourself into a new person physiologically and get a psychological relief from it. Put on a new dhotti. Then we're supposed to walk around a nine or ten mile walk around the base of Aruncilla, the mountain. Oh, God. They all went barefoot. No, no. I wore my shoes. And here I was with this dhoti wearing big broken shoes walking around and we were supposed to say inside the mountain lived Rama who was one of the Hindu gods. I've forgotten where there got a million of them. And we were suppose to say Rama, Rama, Roma so we did Rama,rama,rama Rama, rama,rama It's not kind of nutty to me but I did it. Rama,Rama and it said that if you do this enough with enough feeling Rama will come up out of the mountain and wave to you and bless you. Well, worthwhile. Well, I'll try. I'm trying everything. So Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama searching for this elusive serenity and I got to about the ninth mile or eighth or whatever it was and I was just so tired I could hardly walk and I think I saw Rama come up three times and wave at me like this. I don't know. I wrote to Bill and Bill said you are kind of nutty but keep going. Finally after three years now I did this only on a rest and relax and relaxation period I didn't desert my work or desert AA meetings at all I was doing those two but we go on a two or three week rest and relaxation period and I did this for about three years or so maybe more and I came home one day just beaten from searching searching looking driving driving and trying to do the lotus position read all these books and you know it was driving me crazy and I got into my little apartment in Saigon I just kind of collapsed before I was just tired I lay on the floor for a period of time and all of a sudden I said to myself the hell with serenity I don't care if I ever get it and you know what happened there it was the search was the trouble now search for things physically if you want a new auto a new spouse if you wanted or a new house but emotionally it does no good because there's no future there is no future it's always now and I was searching out there, there, there, and there when all of the sudden And I pulled in and said, the hell with it. There it was. I never have searched for a thing emotionally since that time. Thank God. Now, when I was out there, I had 50 residents, surgical residents under my tutelage. They were mostly women because the men were at war. And one day, I was in my little office in a hospital known as Tuzoo. And I was there, and I was beating my gums because the notes weren't being made in the chart and their laboratory reports weren't there. What's wrong with these Vietnamese? Why don't they get these things done? Talking to myself and beating my guns, and all of a sudden I felt a presence behind me. I turned around, and there was a woman named Tran Thi Minh Cho. I learned more from Tran Thi Ming Cho than I have any place else in the world. And here's what happened. She was looking at me in absolutely open eyes. She wasn't playing a man-woman game, she wasn't flirting with me, she wasn'T criticizing me, she was simply open. Her eyes met and fixed on one another. I looked at this beautiful woman, his open eyes, I almost fell into these lovely eyes of hers, and she was doing the same for me. And all of a sudden I said, Joe, she could speak a little English, are you trying to tell me that it's all right a smile came across her face and she shook her head yes she didn't say it but she just shook her hand then her eyes locked again open I never had a woman look at this in my life until I met Mickey well I put that in in the right time I mean that's pretty good I'm a smart guy you didn't know that but I am Finally, after another period of time, I said, Cho, are you trying to tell me that it's all alright? Faint smile across her face. And she shook her head, yes. Now look, loved ones. When you're in emotional trouble, it's alright, baby. It's alright. Be it. Do it. Live it. The trouble is we get into an emotional state and we try to change it right away and we cut ourselves short and change doesn't happen as readily. Accept it. Be who you are. It's different than the person next to you and the person Next to You is different than you are, but you're all here in AA. You're following the first step 100% and that's fine. Now, it's all, all, all right. Believe me. And from this little 28-year-old with Tranty Ming Cho, I learned the third step. It's all alright. Made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God, as you understand it. He's doing the trip. You're just walking it. He's giving you the energy. You're not doing it. You're still just living it. It's fabulous. Now, let me tell you one other thing that happened to me and then I'll sit down. You hear about surrender in AA. And it's a very confusing word. Physically, we know what surrender is. I'm not talking about physical things at all today. Nothing whatsoever. Surrender. Now, what do you surrender? And to whom do you surrender? Well, what we surrender is the ego. Well, What's the ego? The ego is everything that we've been taught that we must do from our mothers, our fathers, our aunts, our uncles, our schools, our churches, our government. We've all been conditioned to think that there's only one way to look at things. And the ego thinks it's right. There is nothing that's right, emotionally speaking. There only is. Is-ness. Nothing else. There's nothing right or wrong. For example, there's not one thing wrong with any of you or me, psychologically speaking. Nothing. You may think there is, but there's none. There's not. It's alright to be the way you are. There's something wrong. I think that we use in AA some words that are kind of, I think, poorly used. They're a bad choice of words. Defects of character. I don't think we have defects of character at all. I think we're just at different stages of learning about ourselves. Now, I'll call it a defect of character if you want, but to me, defect of characters means something you're born with. This isn't true, I don' t think. Go ahead and use defects of characters if you wanted. I don''t listen to those words too much. It's okay to be the way you are. We're all at different states of learning abut life. What are we learning? that we're all one. We're one unit and we're slowly learning this. You see, we in essence are the favored few. To the degree you really believe that you're going to get drunk, but just listen to it and then forget it. You see we are the favorite few In essence we have become a little bit enlightened enough to come here. Think of the thousands and millions of people who will never get into this room. But we have. We're sitting next to people that we slowly and arduously learn to be tender to and with. We hold one another's hands when we say this prayer. Why? Because we're all one big fat unit. That's the idea. Now, surrender. The entity that does the surrendering happens to be the ego, and that's the trouble to begin with. So what do you do? Forget it. Well, how can surrender occur? Let me tell you one way. There may be other answers to this. Suppose I were to go to Ed here, my old friend Ed, and suppose I were to tell Ed all my troubles and Ed being an old-timer would listen to me with an open heart. He only wants to understand what I'm trying to tell him. That's all. He isn't trying to understand me so he'll get patted on the back or so he'd get a seat in heaven or so that I will love him. He only wants to listen and understand what I'm trying to say to him. Now, he may have to ask me all kinds of questions, and he does. And I answer them the best I can. But his sole interest is understanding what I am trying to do. What I'm saying to say. And listen to me. Now, what happens to me? Well, I say, gosh, I've never found a guy like Ed. This guy listens to me all my life. I wanted somebody who would hear me, and Ed hears me. He isn't trying to advise me. Advice is nonsense. he's only trying to hear me and it helps me a lot so I can decide to tell him more and I tell him and I rub up and finally he says to himself you know I've done this before as I listen to somebody like I'm listening to Earl I see they get all excited and rub up and tell me more so I'm going to tell him something so he starts to tell me something and the further we're fighting back and forth we yell back and forward and share one another back and four that's the way we do it and we start out psychologically separate like this and as we talk and share back and fourth we get to a place where now our psychological states are like my two fingers they touch at that instant there is no ego surrender has happened without our knowing it healing has happened and then we transcend and go up just like that right through the ceiling the two of us and we feel glorious because we shared something with one another that's what it's about surrender you can't make happen it must happen to you by listening What would happen to you and to me if we spent our whole lives listening to those around us? There'd be no sexism, no racism, no wars. We're all around listening to one another. What could be better? Now, this little old organization of ours, kind of a dumb organization, kind of childish at times, it maintains a milieu in which we stay, a milieu on which we say, sober. How come? you know the doctors have helped us tremendously they've helped us and bring us back to a good physical condition that's fine but they are unable to give you and me the kind of sobriety that we've got to have and the psychiatrists God rest their souls they put us on a series of couches and chairs and talk to us and back and forth and back and even these great persons were not able to give me the kind of sobriet that we got to have and the men of the cloth the priests the rabbis the minister have prayed on us and over us and about us behind us in front of us and so forth and even these great men have not been able to keep us sober as we do and yet you take a bunch of drunks and a bunch of druggies and you throw them together you know if you have ten drunks down here in a circle like this ten drucks all talking you've got ten people with a different conversation all beginning with the word I and yet we stay sober a series of perfectionistic idealistic demanding resentful irritable people get together and yak in rooms like these and we stay sober how come well the doctor might say what you've got is psychosomatic medicine or what the psychiatrist might say is you've got benevolent interpersonal relations Well, perhaps we do. Or the ministers and the rabbis and the priests and so forth might say what you have is esprit de corps. But the thing that's here that keeps us sober is the very essence of God. God bless you all.