Helen at the 3rd International AA Convention – 1960 – Etter M.

Chairman for this meeting is Etta Mae Jay of Houston, Texas. Etta May Jay of Huston, Texas My name is Etter May and I'm an alcoholic I appreciate that nice friendly greeting that isn't a part of our way of doing down in Texas, so I'm glad to find out that you don't all have to do it the way Texas does. I'm not going to do a great deal of talking up here. I'm here to be your chairman, and I'm as anxious to hear the two speakers that we have on this program as you are. i've only met helen just in the last few minutes we haven't had an opportunity to get to know a great deal about each other but we both found out that we are alcoholics and we are both married to non-alcoholic husbands so we do have a lot in common and it is my privilege and pleasure at this time to introduce you to Helen W. of Baltimore, Maryland. Helen. Hi, everybody. I first heard that in the Hollywood group, and oh, I just loved it so much. Trying to take it back to Baltimore, but it's over. It's so big. Well, thank you very much for the encouragement you have given me by your generous applause. All of us in AA who stand here and give you our story will mention the very wonderful dividends and blessings that have come to us in addition to sobriety because we are trying to live the AA way of life. From my story, you will learn of many beautiful dividends that have come to me. Dividends in addition to the very real purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous sobriety always first in our lives. The wonderful invitation to talk at this 25th anniversary convention Long Beach is a most wonderful dividend and I am deeply grateful. I am Helen Walsinger, a member of the Monument Group in Baltimore, Maryland. I'm a very happy very grateful alcoholic. I''m grateful because by the grace of God I found AA and happy in the certain knowledge that if I am willing to abide by the principles of our AA program and if I try to seek and follow God's will for me I am constantly getting more of the worthwhile things in life more serenity, peace of mind and peace of soul those things that were forever out of my grasp when I was drinking. I attended my very first AA meeting in the Forest Hills Group of New York in May of 1948. I have not had a drink of alcohol in any form since that first meeting, 24 hours at a time. This has been possible only through a very close affiliation with Alcoholics Anonymous, and by a better knowledge of my God, which AA has given me. I started my social drinking at about 20 years of age. Now, by that I mean having a drink of alcohol served to me. As far back as I can remember, I would take a sip from my parents' drinks and I liked the taste of alcohol in all forms. I remember when I was very young, my dad made wine, and he taught me to siphon the wine from the barrel into the wine bottle, and I like the taste. And he and I were the only two in the family who could accomplish that, and I was proud of it, but I also liked the wine. In fact, I liked the taste, the smell, and the effect of alcohol on me for many years. Until after many years of drinking, the effect of alcohol in me took a bitter change. Instead of drinking for that glow that gave me a feeling of self-confidence and happiness, I was drinking under a compulsion, under a necessity, taking a drink when I didn't want to drink, when the occasion called for my total and complete sobriety. I continued that way into the depths of alcoholism, utter defeat, that feeling of futility. That was the condition I was in when I came to AA. Thank God AA was here for me when I needed it so desperately and when I wanted to stop drinking. During my years of what I believe were moderate or controlled drinking, shall I say, I had a lot of fun. I enjoyed drinking. It was moderate at first, gradually getting heavier. But I believe even back during those days and years, there were certain danger signals or inner warnings trying to get to me because very often I would limit the number of drinks that I would take. And then I'd have the feeling, watch what you're doing, Helen, or you'll make a mess of things and tomorrow you'll feel terrible. But I paid no attention to those warnings and continued drinking and drinking until I reached the depths of alcoholism. The last six years of my drinking were a nightmare. My husband traveled a great deal in business, and I went with him, and we were very happy. We would drink, like human beings drink, you know, non-alcoholics. And we were very, very happy. Till about 1941 when the gasoline was rationed and I was left behind, I guess I just couldn't take it. I didn't know what to do with myself. I hadn't matured, no doubt. At first I would invite friends in, give fine parties, get terribly tight but then I reached the point where I didn't want these people to see how drunk I would get and I preferred drinking alone when my husband was due home from this trip it was a horrible ordeal for me to cut off my liquor and sober up and many times he came home before he was supposed to and that would be very bad I used to think he did that purposely but I know since I've sobered up that it still happens. Well, when he was home, I had that awful big problem of getting to the extra drinks which I needed, hiding the bottles, trying to hide the terrible hangovers, losing things, forgetting blackouts, afraid to ask questions, wanting to know what I had done, the fear of what I would do. And then I had a terrible habit, as a lot of my friends tell me they've had, of repeating myself. And that was terrible. That was always a dead giveaway. I'd say something and I had never heard it come out of my mouth before and he'd look at me and say, yes, again dear, I'll tell you, yes. Well then you know you reach a point where you're afraid to open your mouth because you don't know what you've said or what you haven't. Well, this went on for quite a time, and I was most unhappy. I had become the person that I didn't like, that I despised, a person contrary to the way I had planned my life to be. I didn' t want to hurt my husband and humiliate him. I didn''t want to break up our marriage, which had been at one time so wonderful. the remorse just about killed me but there was a temporary break in this rat race in 1946 when my husband started his own business and I became very very interested in the business we are extremists I didn't work three days a week I worked seven days a week in the office and I loved it and I got nice and tired. And for some reason, I was able to drink a cocktail or two in the evening and go to bed relaxed and tired and sleep. And I enjoyed it. And subconsciously, too, I felt the great relief that had come to me because I was away from the home, away from my daytime drinking and under my husband's precious eyes most of the time, but I was content. But this didn't last very long. I'd say in about a year, I slipped back into that old pattern, the old rat race, and I found that everything was much, much worse. My drink affected me more. I had to take more of my private stock to put me to sleep. I had a pay neighbors to buy the liquor for me during the day while I was at the office and fill my five or six little bottles and tuck them in the places I told them to. I had it get out of bed at night and slip down for the drink. I got into the habit of sitting up later pretending I wanted to see, read something, or listen to radio, we had no television, to get my husband off to bed so I could get the amount of liquor that I needed. And then, of course, you know, I had to go over through the hangover in the next morning and the shakes and not be able to get a drink during a day. Well, with working and drinking so hard and trying to hide my drinking and then suddenly be forced to shut the liquor off when I needed a drink so badly, was quickly beating me down to the bottom. I had put up a mighty tough battle to drink, but I knew that I had reached the end. I was beaten. On my very last binge in May of 1948, I didn't drink nearly as much alcohol really, if I remember correctly, as I had many times before. But there was a new disaster developed in the spinge, during the spinge. A very fine person got into trouble because he lied for me. And he was fired because he was caught. He was fired by my husband, who was his employer. Oh, no, he wasn't fired. Pardon me. I was fired. Now, I was fired, but he was in this too because he actually lied and my husband found out about it. He called long distance and Bernie said that I was in the office, you see. And my husband, knowing me, insisted on talking to me. And I couldn't be produced from the office. I was home in bed nursing a dilly of a hangover. So I felt very badly, honestly. To get as someone else, an innocent person, he didn't get me drunk. He never even drank with me. But to get into the serious trouble with his boss, he was a young man and he was of great asset to our company. And I felt, oh, the worst heel in the world because I had always bent over backwards to keep from implicating anyone into the many messes that I got myself into. I didn't want other people blamed for my drinking because I had sense enough to know that, that I was the one who got drunk. Nobody poured liquor down my throat. Well, he came home, cut the trip short and came home that night and we had quite a scene. I shall never forget that night as long as I live. I was, had cut my drinking off when I heard he was coming home and I needed a drink so very, very badly. And I couldn't get to my hidden liquor. I had a drink within two feet from my bed but I couldn' t get to the liquor. All I did was try to wait and wait it out until my husband would leave for work the next day. I'm not going into the details of that night but they were plenty horrible and I don't want to ever entirely forget them because that's why I'm here. But the next day came. My husband went to work. The fired wife stayed home, but it was as I wanted as far as I was concerned. So as soon as he pulled away from the house, I got to one of the bottles and I took a drink and I I took a lot of drinks, but I couldn't get drunk. I couldn' t reach the oblivion. I couldn''t black out or blank out this awful remorse and the worryment. I brooded all day about what was happening to Bernie at the office, and I had no way of finding out. I hadn' t given my good husband credit for being such an understanding person, such a good guy as he is, because nothing happened to Bernie. Bernie is now the top man in our company and our company has grown over these years so I am married to a good guy, thank God sometimes I forget to mention what happens to Bernie and people will come up after a meeting and say well what happened to that man in the office that lied for you Bernie is sitting in Chicago now and he's the general manager and probably a couple of more titles I'm the vice president but I don't get any salary and I don' t work well it was the next it was that very night I stayed home that day and couldn't get drunk and I thought what now my last, my good friend alcohol has let me down it won't do all of those things that it has done for me where do I turn now I got through the day my husband came home I don't believe there were any words passed between us that night I can't remember. I suppose I pretended I was asleep every time he came upstairs, but I was awfully sick. And after he got into bed, I thought of my life, how it had turned out. I thought about the mess I was in. I went back many years thinking of the wonderful relatives in our family who didn't drink. I also thought of a couple or more alcoholics in the family, the ones I didn't admire. I hated myself, but the most important part of that meditation and prayer that night, of the inventory taken, was the conclusion that I came to, that I had to stop drinking. I wanted to divorce alcohol from me for the rest of my life. i asked god to never let me take another drink again as long as i lived and i meant that with all my heart i prayed over and over again because that is exactly what i wanted i know that god knew that i was sincere in that prayer because within three days my good husband asked me if i wanted to go to alcoholics anonymous thank god again aa was here when I wanted it and I wanted to stop drinking. Well, naturally not knowing anything about AA but wanting to do this colossal thing in my life, stop drinking, I was anxious to know if AA could help me and I immediately accepted the invitation to go with my husband. And at my very first meeting, as fogged up as I was, I left with a little feeling of hope, hope that maybe I, too, could learn to live without alcohol. I liked the people. They were my kind of people. I hadn't seen any of my kind of people for years. I liked what the people said. The case histories are the things that helped me tremendously. They helped me to know and to realize that I was an alcoholic and I was in the right place. I was surprised and a little shocked in the beginning at their frankness and speaking of hiding their bottles of the deception and the lies over their drinking and the fact that they drank because they had to drink with some force they are compelling them to you see these things were all true of myself but for so many years I had been striving to keep them secret from everyone my husband could never help me when I was drinking because if he even so much as hinted at my drinking, or drinking too much. Most of the time I'd fly off into a temper or a crying spell, which we females can pull on whenever we want. But I liked the AA folks and I liked what they told me. They told me to have faith in the program, faith that this program would work for me the way it had worked for thousands of others. And that gave me a little faith. I enjoyed their sharing with me their experiences. And this, in turn, helped me to bring out some of these hidden secrets that I had. And that gave me great relief and comfort to be able to tell another human being about myself. I went to a meeting in New York six nights a week. My dear husband took me, went with me. AA meetings for my medicine, and I certainly needed large and frequent doses of these AA meetings. The AA members told me to ask God each morning To help me to stay sober that day And to thank him at night I tried to do everything That they suggested to me Because I wanted to be like these people Happy, sober people Helping other people To find happy sobriety The physical compulsion left me before too long But I had a great deal of trouble with my thinking This old thought pattern of the cocktail hour, the celebration, the holidays, having a tooth filled and the many things. That all kept creeping up there and I didn't want to have to keep fighting all the time. So I used a little of my AA philosophy that I had learned and I asked God to kindly remove the thoughts of drinking from my mind. And in time this prayer too was answered And then I found that my sobriety was getting progressively better. I was in AA just 100 days when word came that we had to move out to Chicago. And I wasn't happy about the idea of leaving my wonderful New York friends, and I had many. I had them in five different groups in New York and, oh, many others. And I felt very close to them. They were such a big part of me because I was just doing and living their way. But they assured me when I got into Chicago, if I contacted AA, that I would soon find some more wonderful friends. Well, it didn't quite work that way. But in time, I did become very happy in Chicago. There may have been two months there where things were a little rocky and I started making excuses about not getting any group therapy. But there was my husband who has really served as a co-sponsor. He gave me that little extra push. oh, come on, you know that you always feel better after a meeting. So I got through that, thank God, without drinking. And in time, when I found my own group where I was comfortable, I became very happy. And it was in the Cleveland Convention that my husband was called to Baltimore. There's a member here, Mike, in the first row. We have an anniversary at this convention because ten years ago, Mike and I met in Cleveland. and he was from Baltimore and I was from Chicago I had no idea that day when I met him that within a couple of months I would be living in his fair city but that's the way our life has been these sudden jumps but my husband asked me about moving to Baltimore and oh I had been rehired after I sobered up I was working again I forgot to tell you because after my husband before my husband would put the okay on the move to Baltimore he said how will this affect your sobriety Helen because he says you know you're going to be kind of have time on your hands be at home again and I said don't you ever fear about that. I had about two and a half years of AA under my belt then. I said Don't you worry about that dear it'll give me more time to do 12 step work AA work, the work I love. And that's the way it was in Baltimore. My first four years from 1950 through 1954, boy, I was on the ball. I served on all the committees. I said no to nothing. And they kept me plenty busy. I was just, you find a worker in AA and boy, you always find work for them. My little typewriter was gone day and night. But I loved it. But we had quite a Well, quite a crisis or accident coming to our family in 1954. And then I had to think of first things first. I was needed at home by three people who were injured in an automobile accident. And that is when I kind of cut down on my AA activities. And there have been an accumulation of other things. But I am still an active AA member and I hope and pray I always will be. Our 12 steps to me are a guide to the way I have always wanted to live and didn't know how. And I know that my progress in AA is dependent on the sincerity with which I try to live the principles of AA. Our third step made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand him. It's certainly not an easy step, but a very, very important one. And when we sincerely try to adopt this step and use it, I think that is the way to the true happiness, the true serenity, and the true peace of mind. I thinkthat each and every one of our steps is equally important to a full, rich life of sobriety. But as time goes on, i find that at different times i lean on different steps very often our 11th step will give me a great deal of help and comfort sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with god as we understand him praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to follow it i think we know when we are following god's will we get that feeling we are taught in order to give the happiness we now have that we must share it with others to be able to help another person always helps us a great deal whatever we give in AA comes back to us a hundredfold. When I stopped drinking, my paramount problem left me, as well as many other problems that were caused by my drinking. But we still have our everyday cares and sorrows, and I've had a goodly share of mine. But I would like to say that at no time, no matter how serious the crisis was that came to me, have I ever thought that a drink would make it better. Thank God for that and I hope it always remains that way. Our family has been blessed twice by this wonderful fellowship. I have a sister Leidy in the Philadelphia Northeast Group, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She attended her first meeting in July of 1949 and has enjoyed continuous sobriety to this day, 24 hours at a time. It was my privilege to carry the message to her and to accompany her to her first meeting. God has been very good to us, and I pray that we will always have grateful hearts. I wish I could tell you of the many, many wonderful things that have happened to me because I stopped drinking, because I asked for help and came to Alcoholics Anonymous for that help. As a scared, sick person with no desire to live, I am now very happy, very sober, having a lot of fun. AA has restored my faith in God, faith in mankind, and faith in myself. It has given me self-respect and self-confidence. And I like people now, and I enjoy meeting new people. We alcoholics, when drinking, are very lonely people. We believe everyone is against us. No one has the heartaches and the problems and the frustrations that we have. And the only answer we know is in the bottle. And after we once take that drink, we start on another vicious cycle of continued drinking and all our problems, whether real or imagined, become progressively worse. Then when all our sincere efforts to control our drinking have failed, when things look the blackest, we find AA. We may approach AA with doubt and fear and wonder, but after our first contact we find we are with people who understand us. They have had our same troubles, and by their example of sobriety we receive our first ray of hope. and then the miracle of AA begins for us we find we have stayed sober for 24 hours and then a series of 24 hours starts to pile on top of the first and our fogged minds clear and our sobriety gets progressively better and then we find the freedom from remorse, frustrations and happiness that's beyond our understanding We find the most wonderful, the truest, the loyal friends in Alcoholics Anonymous. We never, never have to be alone again. I have so much to be grateful for. It's a lifetime job for sure for me to prove worthy of the grace which God gave me in May of 1948 by answering my prayer and having my dear husband bring me to AlcoholicsAnonymous. us. I thank each and every one of you for listening to me today. I don't see the little light signal, but I think I've about run down myself. And I hope and pray that we all enjoy many, many, 24-hour periods of comfortable sobriety, and that we always have willing hearts to carry the message to those who follow. Thank you, and God bless you. My name is Earl, and I'm a drunk. In two ways, I differ from most drunks, And each alcoholic, I'm sure, differs in his own way. At many AA meetings, we hear rather endlessly about great loss of families, of money, prestige, community reputation, etc. None of these happened to me. I didn't lose anything when I came in or before I came into AA I made more money the last year of my drinking than ever made before in my whole life more than I hope to make again the other way that I differ and this is really not so much of a difference really many alcoholics say they didn't like the taste of booze rather the effect well, I like the effect but I also love the taste of booze. Now, I'm not going to regale you with what happened to me in my days of drinking. Some of you may wonder how I managed to practice and drink. Rest assured that I was never in my office drunk in my life. I was always drunk. I was ever in the hospital drunk. There are many times when I wasn't in my office or the hospital. But I would like to tell you just a little bit about the last day of my drinking. I had come home from breakfast with my daughter, and I'd had a great deal to drink because I love to drink in the morning. And I'd come home, and I was drinking Alexander's. I was ashamed for a long time after I came into AA to admit the fact that I like sweet mixed drinks. And I also ate candy when I drank. And I was very ashamed of this until I read Jack London's John Barleycorn, and he ate candy while he drank, and it was good enough for Jack, it's good enough from me. Well, I'd heard about a friend of mine, a fraternity brother in college, who had been in Alcoholics Anonymous for about seven months. And I have no idea to this day why I went up to see him, but I did. I was not especially interested in stopping my drinking on this particular day. The thought of stopping drinking had plagued me for a long, long time and I could see things closing in on me. But I don't know why I went up to see him, but I did. And I went out to see and I went there and incidentally I am a surgeon but I was also trained in the East in psychiatry. I don' t practice psychiatry I could if I wanted to I'm a member of the American Psychiatry psychiatric society. As someone once said when I first came into AA, what's worse than a confused psychiatrist? Well, I don't practice psychiatry, but I've had this background. And so I went up to see my friend and he gave me the 12 steps. And he asked me what I thought about them from a psychological standpoint, and I recall it going on endlessly about the steps. Then he gave me a piece of paper, and on this paper there were some thirty-odd things addressed to the active drinker. Well, I went home, and asked my wife if she would read them to me, and she did. and I forget what they said but a couple of them lingered in my memory and one was it said don't give up drinking for anybody else except yourself well if somebody had taken a beer towel and rolled it up and flapped me across the face it couldn't have made any more of an impact and I have no idea why because on this particular day I wasn't considering necessarily giving up drinking, let alone for somebody else, but it made the impact nonetheless. And the other one said, don't consider yourself a martyr because you stopped drinking. And once again, this made a fantastic impact on me, which I will never to this day understand, because I once again wasn't going to give up drinking as far as I on this particular day, let alone feeling a martyr about it. Well, I broke down and cried, and this was kind of par for the course in those days. I would ride along in my auto and I would hear Bing Crosby sing and I Would Cry. Or I would listen to Bing Cresby sing or I would here a lecture on something and I WOULD CRY. So this wasn't so unusual. And my wife, who was a very good-natured soul, put her arm around my shoulders and she said well I don't think I'd worry something will happen and you'll be all right and she comforted me as only she can do then she went in the house where I live we have a little barbecue area up the side of the hill and I went up the site of the Hill to make the barbecue fire and as I got to the top of the stairs I looked at my glass and I had a very small amount left in it. And I decided I would go down to the kitchen and refill the glass and go back up and make the fire, and then I would have a drink with me during that interval. And as I turned around on the stairs to come back down to The Kitchen, a thought suddenly pierced me. It's indescribable. It didn't simply occur to me, but the only word that I can think of was that it pierced me. And it said to me, this is your last drink. And the craving to take a drink disappeared from me at that instant and has never occurred. It was just as though someone had reached down at this highly unsuspected drunken moment and had picked a wet, hot overcoat off my shoulders and had dropped it on the ground beside me. It was a very sunny day, just like today, and visually it seemed to get brighter. Well, to most people in AA, or to many, sobriety and the need for AA comes to them in the remorse of a hangover or some such. But it didn't to me. It came to me when I was drunk. Well, it took me seven or eight hours to sober up. And then it was about seven or eight days before I finally went to my first meeting. And I recall well going to my first meeting, incidentally after I had gone, I came to see the first man that talked this afternoon, Jack Irving, and he is our central secretary in San Francisco. and I went to see Jack, and I wasn't quite sure that Alcoholics Anonymous would accept me because I hadn't lost anything. So I went up to Jack, and the first time I met him, I said, I haven't lost a thing, but I need to be here. Will you accept me? He said, will we? So I was in. I recall the first meeting that I went to. Some of you have heard me tell this, but I'm going to tell it again. It was in Mill Valley, California, and there was a banquet table, one of these four-by-eight banquet tables. This was a group that I understood was about to fade because there were so few members. It hasn't faded and has grown to great proportions, but nonetheless on this particular evening The following people were there. Here was the table. And on this end of the table, there was a man named Clark who was a community butcher. And on that end of the table was a little short ball-headed bird who was aptly called Shorty. And he was a community carpenter. And on that edge of the table was a man named Vern who was a baker or had been. and on this side of the table was my friend, my college classmate who was kind of a mechanic or self-style inventor and then there was myself. Well good God, I looked around at this bunch of low lifers and I wonder what are you doing here? Maybe you're making too much of this. You shouldn't get mixed up with this bunch and I asked to be excused And I went outside and I stood under an oak tree that's there And I took counsel with myself And I hope you'll pardon some personal, professional references But this is the way the conversation with myself went Here you are, a physician licensed to practice in this great state of California and here you are a diplomat of one of the great surgical boards in the United States and here you are an assistant professor of the same specialty at one of our California medical schools and here you are a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and a fellow of the International National College of Surgeons, and so on, and even a member of the American Psychiatric Society. And do you mean to tell me that you've got to go back in and have a butcher and a carpenter and a baker make a man out of you? And the answer came to me clearly, and it was, yes, you do. And so I went back in and said very little, but I listened. Well, needless to say, never was a doctor so grateful for a damn butcher and carpenter and baker and mechanic. And if I spent the rest of my life attempting to repay these four men and others that have done so much for me, it would be literally impossible to break even. And I'm sure you know that so well. Well, you know, in 1935, when this great organization of ours was getting its initial start, I was a doctor at the time and I went to a psychiatrist. And I spent five and a half years, an hour a day, five days a week. Now, this is an experience on the psychoanalytic couch, which I would repeat, actually. But then I perceived it to become a drug. Now, you know, just to digress for a minute, it always makes good sense to me. And please don't feel that I have anything but the deepest regard for psychiatry. After all, I happen to be, incidentally, a member of the organization. But it always made sense to me that if you were to go to a psychiatrist and discover the origin—and this is possible—of your difficulties, that they then fade. You no longer then have them. It makes good sense to be that if go to psychiatrist and you discover why it is that you have become a drunk, that then you are no longer a drunk and that you can become a social drinker. Now this makes very good sense to me, except that it doesn't work. That's the only handicap is that it does not work. Well I tell you that story to show that there had been a good number of years of investigation as to why and how I functioned. But one thing had never occurred to me with any degree of seriousness, and that is something about God. Oh, I'd gone to Sunday school as a child, and I had a lot of fun in Sunday school, actually. But I don't suppose it penetrated. But all of a sudden, I heard about God, wow! And I gulped concepts of God as much as I gulp booze. And I recall that I got myself a Bible and I put it on my nightstand. It's still there, on my bed. I got another Bible and i put it in the locker of the surgery at the hospital, at the main hospital that I attend. I got other one and put in the second right-hand door of my desk in my office. Then as a kid, in 1917, I won a Bible because I knew all of the books for the Old and New Testaments. And this one is in the glove compartment of my car, and it's still there. Then I heard about Emmett Fox, and I bought every one of his books, and there are 58 of them. If you want them, I'll give them to you. And I read them, and I got all of them by Kelly and by Norman Vincent Peale and endless numbers of books. And I red them and devoured them. And I went to go to friends of mine, and they would say, now look, have you read such-and-such a sentence in such-an-such book? And I'd say, no, I haven't. And I would go home, and then I'd go back to my room, and I would read this sentence in that book and become filled. and then I would we finally met in little groups in the homes and this is kind of a spiritual bunch I suppose and we read a variety of things and we exchanged these deep philosophical, spiritual principles and I couldn't wait to get home to read something that had been suggested to me and I found myself floating way up into the sky and sitting on a cloud, and I felt like hell. And I went to my friend Clark, the butcher. And I said, Clark, what is wrong with me? I might just as well be drunk as be like this. Well, Clark is a very benevolent, soft-spoken, easygoing butcher. and he took me over to the side, and he got me a cup of coffee and some cookies or a donut, and then he paused for a while, and then he looked at me and he said, Earl, I'm very proud of you. It must be difficult. Here you are, a physician coming into AA, and I assured him that in the beginning this was, but I felt so much at home, but i felt terrible. Well, he said nonetheless, I am proud of you, and he said, but we have an organization here in Mill Valley. And this organization is known as Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, why in the hell don't you join it? And I said, Clark, what do you mean, why don't I join it, I said. He said, I know you've been here for four months and you've sober and I'm proud of you. But he said, whatever you're doing, it doesn't have very much to do with alcoholic synonyms. Well, I said, what do you do? Well, he said, I don't know what you would do, but he said I know what I would do and I hung on every word that he said. He said I would go home and I would get a hold of the big book and I was going to I would open it to page 70. Now it's page 58 and I would read what it said. He said, have you read the big book? And I said, yes, I've read it twice. Well, he said, go home and listen to what it says. Well, all right, I did. So I went home and I opened the big book to page 70 and this, because it has meant so much to me, I partially committed to memory and let me say to you what it said to me if I can recall it. Rarely have we seen a person's fate 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 there are such unfortunates they are not at fault they seem to have been born this way they are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty there are those two i said the these people have don't have much of a chance 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. Our stories disclose what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now. If you have decided that you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, then you are ready to take certain steps. 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. Well, you know, it started to ring through my thick head, thoroughly give oneself to this simple program. Any length, avoiding old ideas, giving in somewhere, thoroughly give oneself to this simple program. Remember that we deal with alcohol, cunning, baffling, powerful. As far as I'm concerned, this program is cunning, faffling powerful. I just simply don't understand really without help it is too much for us but there is one who has all power and that one is god may you find him now half measures it said to me half measures availed as nothing i didn't say half measure bill is half or half measure availed at 10 percent or 90 percent it said clearly and succinctly and to the point. Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked his protection and care with complete abandon. Well, this kind of rung through my head. But I wasn't sure at this time that I was going to thoroughly give myself to this program because this had been kind of a shock to me that I had spent four months and all of this blissful nonsense. Well, I went up to San Rafael one Sunday morning to a breakfast club to hand in my resignation. And there I met the most miserable, despicable, great guy that I've ever known. He hasn't got a brain in his head and his name is Chuck Chamberlain. And I'm not sure he'll ever amount to a damn. That's all right. But I'd never seen him before, and he was talking that morning at the breakfast club. Well, I kind of liked the yak that this big blowhard showed. And that morning it so happened that my number got drawn, I who was going to resign, and I won the big book. Well, I just meant I had to carry the damn thing home again. Then I went up later after people had slowly filtered away and I said to this guy, Chuck, Chuck, I said one thing disturbs me and I'm not sure that I can stick around this outfit. Can you tell me what God's will is? Because I've been looking around for this for four months and I haven't done very well. Oh yes, I've Been Sober, but I don't feel very good. well he looked at me and in his great big oaky way he laughed at me you know you know how he laughs ha ha ha you know he said what's your work and I said oh so happens that I'm a physician well he looked at me and studied me for a while and he said doc he said I'll tell you what God's will is he said if you did something fine for one of your patients with the idea that that patient would send you another patient, that's you talking. But if you did something fine for one of your patients because you wanted to do something fine for oneofyourpatients, that's the old man talking. Well, it sounded kind of simple to me, but it somehow made sense. Sometime after that, I was sitting in my office. I had operated on a woman who had a very early cancer and this is the kind that we have now tacked a name on it's neither here nor there but it's known as carcinoma in situ and in those days this was just a beginning concept of finding cancer of a certain kind that we know in advance pretty much is thoroughly curable and I had operate on her I had taken out the suture that morning it was her 10th post-operative day this had been a major procedure and she was well i had given her post-op instructions and she used to go home the next day one of my nurses called me to the phone and i answered it and was the husband of this patient and he said doctor i want to thank you very much for curing my wife he said you have no idea what this means to me now this is a kind of a dramatic silly story in a sense but maybe you could put this in its proper context where somebody is finding out something that may mean something to him for the first time a certain degree of clarity was about to come to me and he went on as husband of his gratitude and we exchanged then the doctor patient relationship and i thanked him very much for the opportunity and so on. Finally, he hung up, and then I leaned back in my desk, and once again a thought occurred to me what he had said, and it was, thank you, doctor, for curing my wife. Well, there I was behind my quite beautiful mahogany desk, you know, and there she was out at the hospital. well yes i knew what i had done and i didn't i don't mean to underestimate that but do you know that i had seen her twice a day uh maybe more in the first day or two or three for a few minutes each day and i hadn't done anything mechanically except change a dressing or two after that last second of surgery when I closed the abdomen. Now, I know that if I had cut out those sutures right after I had put them in, the wound would have gaped. Well, I had taken out those sutures this very morning and the wound was tightly healed together. Well I had to say to myself, this woman has healed somewhere. Now I know the microscopic anatomy of the healing of tissues, but I had to say to myself, even though you know the catastrophic anatomy of the healing of tissues, what was it that made these tissues heal together and instigated this marvelous process? Well, I was unable to answer the question, but I was able to answer one other question, and that was that I knew that I had not done it. Oh yes, I'd put in the initial sutures, I understood that, but i had not healed it together. This then came to me to be a very practical, very workable, very tangible, physical aspect of what, in my own way, I call God. Now all physicians, I'm sure, or most, they may not like the way I say this right now, many of them would incidentally, but we all know that there is a great physician that augments the little things that we do oh yes these little things we do as far as we know are necessary and they augment what the greater position has to do well about this time i was driving across the bridge from san francisco to mill valley in the golden gate bridge and i was thinking about these things that suddenly occurred to me since reading the fifth chapter and talking to old chuck in this experience behind my desk and suddenly a man cut in front of me going across the bridge and i was forced to swerve the next lane and luckily no car was there but then i thought suppose a car had been there and i had turned over into this lane which i couldn't help doing without obviously being injured and suppose that my right hand or both hands, but primarily my right hand had been cut off. This is the way I make my living. In that hand are the talents that I have received from greater physicians than I will ever be. And it occurred to me that I had a great number of talents, but these talents were simply loaned to me to use for the rest of my life but they didn't belong to me now this is obvious I'm sure to you but it wasn't so obvious to me in those days I thought I had created these things don't you know that all good must have sprung from me well this was something well about this time I thought well I guess maybe that I had better make some amends so I went to my wife and I said and say, now look here, I want to talk to you. Why don't you sit right down here? I want tell you something about this thing. You know, alcoholics are a funny bunch, you know. If you have... We don't talk with people, we talk at them, you know. If you have seven or eight alcoholics around here in a row, you've got seven or eight conversations all beginning with a hi, right? Like this. Well, my wife is a wise bird and she turned to me and looked at me and she said, you know, you don't really care anything about this family well here i was attempting to make this eighth step well i could have smashed her one she turned on her heels and she walked in and i clasped my hands together and as i was not used to doing but it was gradually getting used to doing incidentally i'd never gotten down on the floor much my whole life to pray. We'll do it right here if you want. We're kind of used to it by now. But at any rate, I clasped my hands together and I said, help me. Well, after a few seconds, an answer pierced me and it said, you know what? She's right. Well, I took counsel and I realized this is true that I, oh, I'd been a good financial support to the family, but somehow it wasn't my temperament to be the kind of a father who does all of the kind-of-fatherly things and the husbandly things. I wasn't too hot of this, you know, somewhere. I was a good checkbook, that's about it. So I thought maybe that I could do something, and I realized that I must start then to dedicate my life to this great woman and my family. And I went to her and I said, one of the things I would like from you for the rest of your life, and maybe the only thing, is the opportunity to do whatever you would like for the rest of Your life. Now, I won't be very good at this, I'll slip at this and I won' t do this so well, but at least I can start. No, she said, You're all right. She always says this, You are all right, you know. And I said, now what I'd like to do is, if I can, is I'd Like to Start Doing the Dishes because I noticed you do this each night. She said, no, that's the woman's job. No, I said let me do it. Well, the upshot is I'm doing the damn dishes every night. Well, you know, this isn't quite true because now I've graduated on to other things. But that's where I started anyway. See, that is where I've started. Well, you know, as far as I'm concerned, we talk about the spiritual side of this program. As far as i am concerned, the alcoholic is a spiritual entity, I am sure, from the day that he's born. And I think that it's throughout the early years of his life that his heart gets broken, as do many hearts non-alcoholic alike but this coupled with a physical difference now the medical profession is not sure but slowly is beginning to believe that there is a physical different in the alcohol for years and years and it's been said that the alcoholic simply is the reflection of a distorted emotional complex. Well, perhaps this is true, but it's not wholly true by a long shot. We also have some physical differences in us, but the only thing we can do is what the fifth tradition says. Each group has but one primary purpose to carry its message to the alcoholic that still suffers. I think it's possible for us to put our first names in those great traditions where it mentions the group. Earl has but one purpose in his life, and that's to carry the message to the alcoholic that still suffers. Now this doesn't mean that I don't have endless series of other purposes, but the core, the very center of each of these purposes is my purpose of carrying the message to the drunk. Now the reason that this is true is not that my non-alcoholic activities are not of vital importance to me, they are. And it isn't that I don't spend more time in my non-alcoholic activities than I do in my AA activities, I do. But nonetheless, without the opportunity of carrying the message to the drum as the core of each of the things that I do, all the others would then fade. so that's why to me and this is I'm sure redundant to you because you know this so well I often think about how our program first got started and I was thrilled to hear Bill this morning talk in the early days about things for a few minutes and I anticipate so much hearing him talk once again tonight in the morning and I think about our program how it got started and how much we owe people who have made our program possible I think about the doctor how much half of our program after all has come from the medical profession I don't say this because I'm a doctor now I'm speaking simply as an AA member as a drunk it's come from the physician in this series of books I wish you could see and maybe you have the book that physicians have written on the likes of you and me and yet the physician as much as we owe him and can never repay him The physician has been unable to give you and to give me, as drunks, the kind of sobriety that we need, that we must have, that we cannot exist without, that's like our very breath that we breathe. And then I've thought so much about the psychiatrists, And after all, so much of our program has come from that. Half of it, actually. And my God, the psychologists, you know, they have put it on an endless series of couches and they have talked to us and sort of tried to figure out why we do what we do. What makes, what manner of person is this? This rocky sort of a jerk. And yet, barring rare exceptions, the psychologists and psychiatrists, and I say this in the deepest of deference, have not been able to give you and me the kind of sobriety that we have to have, that we cannot exist without. And the clergy, my gosh, the men of the cloth they have given of their lives, and they have prayed over us and about us and to us and in front of us and all sorts of businesses, you know, and given their lives to try to bring us sobriety. And they have given the other half, psychiatry and medicine, the first half, and the clergy have given the other Half to our program. And yet the clergy, barring rare exception, has been unable to give us the kind of sobriete that in the depths of our hearts we have to have. And yet it amazes me how you can take a bunch of arrogant, self-centered, egotistical nobodies who aren't worth a damn if they were blown off the face of the earth and get them all together in a room and God knows we wouldn't be caught in a dream like this and our drinking days would be dead and get him all together in a ring each one carrying on of conversation that begins with I. Each one that's able to get up about ten feet off the ground, and they sit and they chop their chops at one another, and I'll be darned if they stay sober. Now, this I just don't understand. How a bunch of no-goods, egotistical no-good, idealistic perfectionists can get together and do something that these great men are unable to do well one might say to oneself what is it what is that you possess what is it that you possessed and I can see it right now look out here as I see face I can speak that I can feel shining right up this way as I shake your hand as I get a grip I feel exactly something it's like electricity it shoots through you somewhere and I said myself what in the devil is it that those people have that they have given to me and others before me and others that will come that came in later or whatnot. What is this power? Well, scientifically I say well, I suppose that the doctor would call what you have psychosomatic medicine perhaps and I suppose that the psychiatrist and the psychologist would call what is there And what I see this minute might call benevolent interpersonal relations, or they might call it group psychotherapy. And I suppose that there are those who would call what you have and have given to me so unselfishly a spree to call. but the essence of what you have and what I see this very instant and which has meant so much to upwards to 300,000 drunks is the very essence of God. God bless you all. Thank you.