“I Am a Failure and It Makes Absolutely No Ripple in My Serenity” – Chuck C.

About This Speaker Tape

Chuck C. from Laguna Beach speaks at the Portland 30th Anniversary celebration in 1973. He opens by saying birthdays are special because we have so little to do with them — they are only possible because of a miracle. He turns the clock back thirty-eight years to Bill W. and Dr. Bob and asks the room to rededicate to the spirit and principles that made this thing possible.

Chuck shares the paradox of his life with characteristic humor and depth. At seventy, the greatest single event of his existence was in January 1946 when the bottle beat him into total and absolute nothingness. He could not surrender — generations of conditioning told him surrender was for the weak. So the bottle did it for him. Everything in Chapter 5 became acceptable because he arrived totally beaten. He describes trying to take the Third Step but not believing anyone would accept the wreck that was him — he would have turned his will over to a jackass if he could have gotten rid of himself.

The spiritual heart of the talk draws on Brother Lawrence and Meister Eckhart: if you would find a Higher Power, look deep within yourself because that is the place you will find him. Nature abhors a vacuum — get empty of self and you are automatically full of a Higher Power. Chuck describes the first nine steps as uncovering steps that squeezed him out of himself. He spent thirty years in religions and philosophies searching for an answer, and the more spiritual he became, the drunker he got. What saved him was not theology but doing the things sober drunks told him to do. His closing vision is of an infinite father, an infinite child, and an infinite journey with no destination — and a tongue-chewing, babbling drunk walking down the corridors of life with a Higher Power of his very own.

Topics

Timestamps

• 00:00 Birthdays are special because we have so little to do with them
• 08:00 Turning the clock back to Bill W. and Dr. Bob and rededicating to the spirit
• 16:00 January 1946 — the bottle beat him into total and absolute nothingness
• 24:00 Could not surrender because generations of conditioning said it was for the weak
• 32:00 Trying to take the Third Step but not believing anyone would accept the wreck
• 40:00 Brother Lawrence and Meister Eckhart — look deep within to find God
• 48:00 The first nine steps as uncovering steps that squeezed him out of himself
• 56:00 An infinite father, an infinite child, and a babbling drunk with a Higher Power of his own