Identification With Bill’s Story – Cass V From Big Book Workshop Bville Nj Winter – Part 1 of 2 – Cass V. and Stanhope Nj

Before I start, I just want to say something with Chris. I want to thank you, one, for starting this meeting. And I also would just like to tell the group that I've only known Chris for, I guess, about six months, something like that. And I understand what great humility it takes for him to turn over a meeting he started to somebody else. you know and thank you for being an example okay all right we are on Bill's story which is page one and this was something I learned only recently and it's worked but the story is 16 pages long and if when you're going we're going through this story, if you underline or highlight in the first eight pages everything you identify with, every feeling, every attitude, it will help you make an identification as an alcoholic. In the second eight pages, from page nine through page 16, in a different highlighter or some sort of indication that it's different if you highlight those things that you don't agree with you don t believe in attitudes that don't belong to you I was told that those things that are highlighted in that second eight pages would tell me what would take me out and recently I had an opportunity to do that was a woman i sponsored who went out and when she went through it despite the fact that this woman is trying to desperately be honest and she's redoubling her efforts so that she can come back there were things she picked out that she never would have found and i could not have spotted them there is no way um so i know from my own experience that that particular little technique works uh what we're going to be doing here is i'm going to be taking you through the first hundred and sixty four pages of the big book and we're gonna be doing it word by word page by page and when we get to the fourth step i spoke to chris about this to find out if it would be okay what i'mgoing to do because the fourthstep has all the tools for recovery that we use for the rest of our lives We're going to break it up so that we're going to do one night will just be resentment. One night will just be fear and one night is just going to be the sex inventory and the sex ideal and then we'll resume and we'll be doing it as we hit the fifth step that will be one, sixth step six and seven will be once and that's pretty much how I plan to do it and I hope it works for you. Okay War fever ran high in the New England town to which we knew young officers from Plattsburgh were assigned. And we were flattered when the first citizens took us to their homes, making us feel heroic. Here was love, applause, war, moments in blinds with intervals hilarious. I was part of life at last and in the midst of the excitement I discovered liquor. And I can really identify with that. I forgot the strong warnings and prejudices of my people concerning drink. In time we sailed for over there. I was very lonely and again turned to alcohol. We landed in England. I visited Winchester Cathedral. Much moved, I wandered outside. My attention was caught by a doggerel on an old tombstone. Here lies a Hampshire grenadier who caught his death drinking cold, small beer. A good soldier is ne'er forgot whether he dieth by musket or by pop. Ominous warning which I fail to heed. Okay, so he starts us off with him going to war, and then in the next paragraph we're back from the war. Twenty-two and a veteran of foreign wars, I went home at last. I fancied myself a leader or had not the man of my battery given me a special token of appreciation? My talent for leadership, I imagined, would place me at the head of vast enterprises which I would manage with the utmost of assurance. I don't know about you folks, but I've always felt this sense of greatness. you know, like I was destined to you know to marry the President of the United States and as I drank a little more to become President of the United states I took a night law course and attained employment as an investigator for a surety company the drive for success was ours I would prove to the world I was important. My work took me about Wall Street and little by little I became interested in the market. Many people lost money, but some became very rich. Why not I? I studied economics and business as well as law. Potential alcoholic that I was, I nearly failed my law course. At one of the finals, I was too drunk to think or write. Remember that too. Though my drinking was not yet continuous, it disturbed my wife. We had long talked when I would steal her forebodings by telling her that men of genius conceived their best projects when drunk, that the most majestic constructions of philosophical thought were so derived. By the time I had completed the course, I knew the law was not for me. The abiding maelstrom of Wall Street had me in its grip. Business and financial leaders were my heroes. Out of this alloy of drink and speculation, I commenced to forge the weapons that one day would turn in its flight like a boomerang and all but cut into ribbons. Living modestly, my wife and I saved $1,000. It went into certain securities, being cheap and rather unpopular. I rightly imagined that they would someday have a great rise. I failed to persuade my broker friends to send me out looking over factories and management, but my wife and I decided to go anyway. I had developed a theory that most people lost money in stocks through ignorance of markets. I discovered many more reasons later on. What happened here, and this was before the crash, Bill was not a stockbroker. What Bill was was a speculator. And he realized that the perspectives that were coming in for these brokers to invest in, nobody was investigating these companies. Nobody knew if there was any truth to what was in these prospectuses. They told you about the company, how many employees, what their profits were, how well they operated. So his idea was to investigate them. And that's what he did. We gave up our positions and off we roared on a motorcycle, the sidebar stuffed with tent blankets and change of clothes and three used violins for financial reference service. Our friends thought a lunacy commission should be appointed. Perhaps they were right. I had had some success at speculation, so we had a little money. But we once worked on a farm for a month to avoid drawing on our small capital. That was the last honest manual labor on my part for many a day. We covered the whole eastern United States in a year. That was really quite a feat. At the end of it, my report to Wall Street procured me a position there and the use of a large expense account. The exercise of an option brought in more money, leaving us with a profit of several thousand dollars for that year. For the next few years, fortune threw money and applause my way. What he and Lois had done by covering the eastern states was Wall Street brokers were making a killing on the information. They knew which stocks, which companies were going to take off and which ones weren't. And as a result, Bill was a welcomed figure on Wall Street. for the next few years fortune through money and applause my way I had arrived and I remember when I'm a journalist by profession I remember when I got got my first job in New York City at United Press International and I was going up the elevator and this of course is an industry where drinking is part and parcel of the industry, I'm standing in the elevator and I press the 12th floor and I'm going, I have arrived. And I had that feeling. You know, and a few years later my journalism teacher would be phoning in a story because I was too drunk. I ran into him on assignment and I was to drunk to phone it in. My judgment and ideas were followed by many to the tune of paper millions. The great boom of the late 20s was seething and swelling. Drink was taking an important and exhilarating part of my life. There was loud talk in the jazz places uptown. Everyone spent in thousands and chatted in millions. Scoppers could scoff and be damned. I made a host of fair-weather friends. And now he's going to tell us that he is a social drinker at this point. I mean, he's having some problems, but they're not really interfering with him. Now, he's going to start describing the progression of the disease. And the first part that happens to him is he starts having problems with his personality. My drinking assumed more serious proportions, continuing all day and almost every night. The remonstrations, the criticisms of my friends terminated in a row and I became a lone wolf. I mean, people are telling him not to drink. There were many unhappy scenes in our sumptuous apartment. There had been no real infidelity, for loyalty to my wife helped at times by extreme drunkenness kept me out of those scrapes. I've never understood that line. If somebody can figure it out... Believe it. Fill me in. in 1929 I contracted golf fever we went at once to the country my wife to applaud while I started to overtake Walter Hagen liquor caught up with me much faster than I came up behind Walter I began to be jittery in the morning golf permitted drinking every day and every night it's amazing how we pick professions or sports or things to fool around with that just allow us to drink. It was fun to roam around the exclusive course which had inspired such awe in me as a lad. I acquired the impeccable coat of tan when seized upon the well-to-do. The local banker watched me whirl fat checks in and out of his till with a new skepticism. Abruptly, in October 1929, hell broke loose on the New York Stock Exchange. After one of those days of inferno, I wobbled from a hotel bar to a brokerage office. It was 8 o'clock, five hours after the market closed. The ticker still clattered. I was staring at an inch of tape which bore the inscription XYZ 32. It had been 52 that morning. I was finished, and so were many friends. The papers reported men jumping to death from the towers of high finance. And that actually happened with the crash in 1929. People who identified themselves with their money when they lost the money All right, jump out of windows. Bill, however, says I would not jump. That disgusted me. He goes back to the bar. My friend had dropped several million since 10 o'clock. So what? Tomorrow was another day. As I drank, the old fierce determination to win came back. Next morning, I telephoned a friend in Montreal. all. He had plenty of money left and thought I had better go to Canada. By the following spring, we were living in our accustomed style. I felt like Napoleon returning from Elba. No St. Helena for me. But drinking caught up with me again and my generous friend had let me go. This time we stayed broke. And now the progression of this disease is really going to take over. We went to live with my wife's parents. I found a job, then I lost it as a result of a brawl with a taxi driver. Mercifully, no one could guess that I was to have no real employment for five years or hardly draw a sober breath. My wife began to work in a department store, coming home exhausted to find me drunk. I became an unwelcome hanger-on at brokerage places. So the first thing that happens to him is he's having problems is holding a job. He's having problems with his wife because he's drunk and she's coming home. And now the people who had once respected him so much don't want to have anything to do with him. And in the next paragraph, he's going to talk about how he loses choice. Alcohol takes away the choice of whether or not he's gonna drink and how much he's gunna drink. and he's going to point out that the problem is in the mind liquor ceased to be a luxury it became a necessity bathtub gin, two bottles a day an orphan three got to be routine sometimes a small deal would net a few hundred dollars and I would pay my bills at the bar we always do that and delicatessen this went on endlessly and I began to waken very early in the morning shaking violently a tumbler full of gin followed by a half dozen bottles of beer would be required if I were to eat any breakfast nevertheless I still thought I could control the situation and there were periods of sobriety which renewed my wife's hope he still has the ability to stop on his own he has not crossed that magical line where he cannot stop on His own but But he's got the obsession to drink so intensely that no matter how injurious he knows it is, he will be picking up that next drink. Gradually things got worse. The house was taken over by the mortgage holders. My mother-in-law died. My wife and father-in law became ill. Then I got a promising business opportunity. and if you remember in the doctor's opinion Dr. Silkworth talks about the fact that we don't drink to escape we're drinking to overcome a craving beyond our control and he says that he talked about the fact that he knew many alcoholics who would drink a day or so prior to an important date and then never make that important date and listen to what bill says i got a promising business opportunity stocks were at a low point of 1932 and i had somehow formed a group to buy i was to share generously in the profit then i went on a prodigious bender and that chance vanished i woke up this had to be stopped I saw I could not take so much as one drink. One of the things that Bill does come to grips with is the fact that the first drink will get him drunk. I was through for Heather. Now, he's doing this with willpower. Before then, I had written lots of sweet promises, but my wife hardly observed, happily observed, that this time I met business, and so I did. Shortly afterward, I came home drunk. So willpower doesn't work. There had been no fight. Where had been my high resolve? I simply didn't know. It hadn't even come to mind. Someone had pushed a drink my way and I had taken it. Was I crazy? And he's starting to question his sanity now. I began to wonder, but such an appalling lack of perspective seemed near being just that. Renewing my resolve, I tried again. Sometimes time passed, and confidence began to be replaced by cockiness. I could laugh at the gym mills. He was actually putting together some more sobriety. Now I had what it takes. And then one day I walked into a cafe to telephone. In no time I was beating on the bar asking myself how it happened. As the whiskey rose to my head, I told myself I would manage better next time. But I might as well get good and drunk then. And I did. The remorse, the horror, the hopelessness of the next morning are unforgettable. The courage to do battle was nothing. My brain raced uncontrollably. And there was a terrible sense of impending doom. And it's those kind of feelings, the sense of impending calamity and not being able to hold my thoughts together. That's what brought me into the realms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I hardly dared cross the street, lest I collapse and be run down by an early morning truck, for it was scarcely daylight. An all-night plate supplied me with a dozen glasses of ale. My writhing nerves were still dead last. A morning paper told me the market had gone to hell again. Well, so had I. The market would recover, but I wouldn't. That was a hard thought. Should I kill myself? No, not now. Then a mental fog settled down. Gin would fix that. So two bottles and oblivion. i mean he's considering suicide the depression is starting to hit him so badly um and he just can't go through with it the mind and body are marvelous mechanisms the mind endured this agony two more years sometimes i stole from my wife's lens of purse when when the morning terror and madness were on me again i swayed dizzily before an open window or the medicine cabinet where there was poison, cursing myself for a weakling. There were flights from city to country and back as my wife and I sought escape. Then came the night when the physical and mental torture was so hellish I feared I would burst through my window in fashion all. Somehow I managed to drag my mattress to a lower floor at least I suddenly leaped. I mean he was, in the throes of drunkenness, he was so hopeless that he just wanted to end it all. A doctor came with a heavy sedative. Next day found me drinking both gin and sedatives. So we have duly addicted bills. This combination soon landed me on the rocks. rocks. People feared for my sanity, so did I. I could eat little or nothing when drinking and I was 40 pounds underweight. My brother-in-law is a physician and through his kindness and that of my mother, I was placed in a nationally known hospital for the mental and physical rehabilitation of alcoholics. That was Town Hospital in New York and that's where he needs Dr. Silkworth. Under the so-called Belladonna treatment, my brain cleared. Hydrotherapy and mild exercise helped much. Best of all, I met a kind doctor who explained that though certainly selfish and foolish, I had been seriously ill bodily and mentally. So Bill for the first time learns that he has a physical allergy and a mental obsession to alcohol. and he now has two parts of the answer for recovery. It relieved me somewhat to learn that in alcoholics the will is amazingly weakened when it comes to combating liquor though it often remains strong in other respects. My incredible behavior in the face of a desperate desire to stop was explained. Understanding myself now, I fared forth in high hopes. For three or four months, the goose hung high. I went to town and found no answer but the answer, self-knowledge. But it was not, for the frightful day came when I drank once more. And now we're going to hear about the second hospitalization. The curve of my declining moral and bodily health fell off like a ski jump. You know, if a set of standards could have kept me sober, I would not have come into AA. And my self-esteem would not Have been in the gutter if I could have maintained any kind of standards that I had set for myself. but alcohol takes away choice. I couldn't abide by anything. I would say I wouldn't do something, and I'm not talking about drinking. I would Say, I'll never do that, and the next thing I know, I was doing it. I just had absolutely no ability to really have any kind of moral standards. After a time, I returned to the hospital. This was the finish, the curtain, it seemed to me. My weary and despairing wife was informed that it would all end with heart failure during delirium tremens, or I would develop wet brain, perhaps within a year. She would soon have to give me over to the undertaker or the asylum. And this was the fate of all chronic alcoholics before AA was founded. they did not need to tell me I knew and almost welcomed the idea it was a devastating blow to my pride I who had thought so well of myself and my ability of my capacity to surmount obstacles was cornered at last now I was to plunge into the dark joining that endless procession of thoughts who had gone on before I thought of my poor wife there had been much happiness after all what would I not give to make amends? But that was over now. Up until now, Bill is trying to treat the symptoms of the disease and he's trying to teach two parts of it. He's trying the physical and he is trying the mental. He doesn't have the last part which is the spiritual, which is The Answer. no words can tell of the loneliness and despair i found in that bitter morass of self-pity quicksand stretched around me in all directions i had met my match i had been overwhelmed alcohol was my master and in every sense right here bill has taken the first step trembling i stepped from the hospital a broken man fear sobered me for a bit then came the insidious insanity of that first drink and on armistice day 1934 i was off again everyone became resigned to the certainty that i would have to be shut up somewhere or would stumble along to a miserable end how dark it is before the dawn in reality that was to be the beginning of my last abort. I was soon to be catapulted into what I like to call the fourth dimension of existence. I wish to know happiness, peace and usefulness in a way of life that is incredibly more wonderful as time passes. And that is a nice place to live. Near the end of that bleak November, I sat drinking in my kitchen with a certain satisfaction, I reflected there was enough gin concealed about the house to carry me through that night and the next day. My wife was at work. I wondered whether I dared hide a full bottle of gin near the head of our bed. I would need it before daylight. My musings were interrupted by the telephone. The cheery voice of an old school friend asked if he might come over. He was sober. Now, that is Ebby Thatcher. And Ebby Thatcher was sobered up by Roland Hazard from the Oxford Group. Ebby was about to be locked in jail and Roland Hazerd and another guy from the Oxford group stood before the judge and said, look, we have a solution. Why don't you release him to us? Let's see if we can do something for him. It was years since I could remember his coming to New York in that condition. I was amazed. Rumor had it that he had been committed for alcoholic insanity. I wondered how he had escaped. Of course, he would have dinner and then I could drink openly with him. Unmindful of his welfare, I thought only of recapturing the spirit of the other day. You know, the constant thing with the alcoholic. This time it's going to be different. This time I'm going to have that feeling I had when I was first drinking. When alcohol worked for me. There was that time we had charted an airplane to plead a jack. His coming was an oasis in this dreary desert of futility. The very thing, an oesis. Drinkers are like that. The door opened and he stood there, fresh-skinned and glowing. There was something different about... I'm sorry. There was Something About His Eyes. He was inexplicably different. What had happened? I pushed a drink across the table. He refused it. Disappointed but curious, I wondered what had gotten into the fellow. He wasn't himself. Come, what's all this about, I queried. He looked straight at me, simply but smilingly. He said, I've got religion. I was aghast that that was it. Last summer an alcoholic crackpot, now I suspected a little cracks about religion. He had that starry-eyed look. Yes, the old boy was on fire all right, but bless his heart, let him rant. Besides, my gin would last longer than his preaching. But he did no ranting. in a matter of fact way he told how two men had appeared in court persuading the judge to suspend his commitment they have told of a simple religious idea and a practical program of action if you go to page 292 those of you who have workbooks don't have it ok and there in this particular story he sold himself short right at the top of the page it lists the three steps of the Oxford group step one complete deflation step two dependency and guidance from a higher power three moral inventory four confession Five, restitution. Six, continued work with other alcoholics. And now back to nine. And that's the practical program of action. That was two months ago and the result was self-evident. It worked. He had come to pass his experience along to me if I cared to have it. I was shocked but interested. Certainly I was interested. I had to be, for I was hopeless. He talked for hours. Childhood memory rose before me. I could almost hear the sounds of the preacher's voice as I sat on still Sundays, way over there on the hillside. There was that prophet temperance pledge I never signed, my grandfather's good-natured contempt of some church folk and their doings, his insistence that the spheres really have their music, but his denial of the preacher's right to tell him how he must listen. His fearlessness as he spoke of these things just before he died. These recollections welled up from the past and made me swallow hard. That wartime day in old Winchester Cathedral came back again. and in the next paragraph he's going to talk about how in some respects he had a faith and a power greater than himself but he talks about how it didn't work for him and that it really was grounded in proof which you can't really have with faith I had always believed in a power greater than myself I had often pondered these things I was not an atheist few people really are for that means blind faith in a strange proposition that this universe originated in a cipher and aimlessly rushes nowhere my intellectual heroes the chemists, the astronomers even the evolutionists suggested vast laws and forces at work despite contrary indications I had little doubt but a mighty purpose and rhythm underlay it all How could there be so much of precise and immutable law and no intelligence? I simply had to believe in the spirit of the universe, who knew neither time nor limitation. But that was as far as I had gone. With ministers in the world's religions, I parted right there. And I mentioned this last week. religions who cite the Bible and interpret it and in this day it was very, very common the alcoholic is specifically mentioned in the Bible and the alcoholic is called a sinner and that's pure and simple and I believed in God when I came into this program and I had been brought up Catholic and I have a lot of Catholic education behind me and that wasn't my problem my problem was a lot of what Bill is going to be talking about here the way the world existed but it was also I had faith I just didn't I didn't trust it and I didn' t know how to pray to it when they talked of God personal to me who has loved superhuman strength and direction I became irritated and my mind snapped shut against such a theory. To Christ, I conceded the certainty of a great man, not too closely followed by those who claimed him, his moral teaching most excellent. For myself, I had adopted those parts which seemed convenient and not too difficult. The rest I disregarded. The wars which have been fought, the burnings and chicanery that religious disputes have facilitated made me sick. I honestly doubted whether, on balance, the religions of mankind had done any good. Judging from what I had seen in Europe and since, the power of God in human affairs was negligible, the brotherhood of man a grim jest. If there was a devil, he seemed the boss universal, and he certainly had me. um i took my attitude towards god to my first sponsor when i was real new and i pointed out things like that and one of the things i said was i said i said I don't understand how cod could allow somebody like hitler or stalin to exist and i'll pass this on to you she said to me And she said, God does not interfere with our free will. And he also does not interferes with the laws of the universe or the laws of man. If you lean out a window too far and you start screaming, God save me, God save me, when you hit the ground, the heavens are going to open up and God's going to say, but I gave you a law of gravity. Why didn't you pay attention to it? and she pointed out to me that man created Hitler man put Hitler in power and God does not interfere with our choices and I had a look at myself and the choices I made God never interfered in the choices I made if I wanted to do something I was allowed to do it and that was when I was drunk and it's true for me today if I want to do it I can do it and today I know I have to be prepared to take the consequences and that helped me with that but my friend sat before me and he made the point blank declaration that God had done for him what he could not do for himself his human will had failed which Bill understood because Bill used his willpower on a number of occasions and actually put together periods of sobriety. Doctors had pronounced him incurable. Society was about to lock him up. Like myself, he had admitted complete defeat. Then he had, in effect, been raised from the dead, suddenly taking from the scrap heap to a level of life better than the best he had ever known. Had this power originated in him? Obviously it had not. There had been no more power in him than there was in me at that moment, and this was none at all. And this was one drunk looking at another drunk. And there's no way anybody can bullshit us. I mean, Bill had put together sobriety. He had those periods, and he's looking at Ebby, and there's something different about the way this man looks. That floored me. It began to look as though religious people were right after all. Here was something at work in a human heart which had done the impossible. My ideas about miracles were drastically revised right then. never mind the musty pebs, here sat a miracle directly across the kitchen table he shouted great things I saw that my friend was much more than inwardly reorganized he was on a different footing his roots grasped a new soil despite the living example of my friend there remained in me the vestiges of my old prejudice. The word God still aroused a certain antipathy or hatred. When the thought was expressed that there might be a God personal to me, this feeling was intensified. I didn't like the idea. I could go for such conceptions as creative intelligence, universal mind the spirit of nature but I resisted the thought of the czar of the heavens, however loving his sway might be I have since talked with scores of men who felt the same way. My friend suggested what then seemed a novel idea. He said, why don't you choose your own conception of God? That statement hit me hard. It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years. I stood in the sunlight at last. it was only a matter of being willing to believe in a power greater than myself nothing more was required of me to make my beginning I saw that growth could start from that point upon a foundation of complete willingness I might build what I saw in my friend would I have it? Of course I would and as most of you know the squiggly the italicized writing in the book is stuff that we really need to pay attention to. And one of the things that has always fascinated me with Bill's story, actually it's only recently fascinated me because in the beginning when I came into the program I could not identify with Bill Stewart and I hated reading it and it was only until somebody took me through this book that I really understood what was going on here, that I started appreciating it. And the fact that the only thing I need is a willingness. Well, I know in my case, I walked into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous because I wouldn't be able to see my boyfriend who was in a rehab unless I was sober. I had no intentions of staying. and I wasn't willing to do anything except put the drink down for two weeks because that was a requirement for me to see him and something happened and I became willing to let a woman God help me take me through this program and I had no use for women and I look at that point in my own sobriety and I can say truthfully that at that point, God removed that prejudice because there was no reason for that prejudice to be removed. And when I say I hated women, I hated them. I had nothing to do with it. And that prejudice was just simply removed. And when i read this about how at this moment, abby simply says why don't you choose your own conception of god i mean right before this he's saying he didn't like the he didn'T like the idea of people saying to him there might be a god personal to me that's a paragraph before well what's the difference between a god personal to me and your own conception of God. And I read that and I can see, I can identify with what happened to me. This is where God was removing the thought. That's my interpretation. Thus I was convinced that God is concerned with us humans when we want him enough. As long as I saw, I felt, I believed. Scales of pride and prejudice fell from my eyes. A new world came into view the real significance of my experience in the cathedral burst upon me for a brief moment i had needed and wanted god there had been a humble willingness to have him with me and he came and this is the second step he's taken the second steps here but soon the presence had been blotted out by worldly clamors mostly those within myself and so it had been ever since, how blind I had been. At the hospital, I was separated from alcohol for the last time. Treatment seemed wise, for it showed signs of delirium tremors. And one of the things I want to add here is Bill did not go from his meeting with Abby into the hospital. Bill went from his meeting to Abby, with Abby, to getting drunk again, showing up at an Oxford group meeting not thinking much of it and then deciding he did indeed want the Oxford program and he gets himself hospitalized because there was no way he could do it on his own and in the next three paragraphs Bill will take steps 3 through 11 after this paragraph at the hospital I was separated from alcohol for the last time treatment seemed wise for I showed signs of delirium tremor there I humbly offered myself to God as I then understood him to do with me as he would step three I placed myself unreservedly under his care and direction I admitted for the first time that of myself I was nothing that without him I was lost. I ruthlessly faced my sins, the fourth step, and became willing to have my newfound friends take them away root and branch, steps six and seven. I have not had a drink since. My schoolmate visited me and I fully acquainted him with my problems and deficiencies, step five. We made a list of people I had hurt, step eight, and toward whom I felt resentment. I expressed my entire willingness to approach these individuals admitting my wrongs, step nine. Never was I to be critical of them. I was to write all such matters to the utmost of my ability. And that's ten. I was test my thinking by the new God consciousness within. And this next part, the rest of this paragraph is all step 11. Common sense would thus become uncommon sense. And the 11th step will promise we get our brains back. I was to sit quietly when in doubt, which is the exact words in step 11, asking only for direction and strength to meet my problems as he would have me. never was I to pray for myself except as my request bore on my usefulness to others then only might I expect to receive but that would be in great measure my friend promised that when these things were done I would enter upon a new relationship with my creator that I would have the elements of a way of living which answered all my problems belief in the power of God plus enough willingness, honesty, humility to establish and maintain the new order of things were the essential requirements. Simple but not easy, a price had to be paid. It meant destruction of self-centeredness. I must turn in all things to the Father of Light who presides over me. These were revolutionary and drastic proposals but the moment I fully accepted them the effect was electric. and this is the experience of bill was in the hospital room and he starts thinking about god and what happens is the room fills with light and when bill would go on speaking commitment um he would talk about this as his hot flash there was a sense of victory followed by such a peace and serenity i had never known there was utter confidence i felt lifted up as though the great clean wind of a mountaintop blew through and through. God comes to most men gradually, but his impact on me was sudden and profound. For a moment I was alarmed and called my friend. But you had better hang on to it. Anything is better than the way you were. The good doctor now sees many men who have such experiences. He knows they are real. While I lay in the hospital, the thought came that there were thousands of hopeless alcoholics who might be glad to have what had been so freely given me. Perhaps I could help some of them. They, in turn, might work with others. My friends had emphasized the absolute necessity of demonstrating these principles in all my affairs. And that's a key line. And that felt well-stepped, to practice these principles and all our affairs. particularly was it imperative to work with others as he had worked with me I mean, I read those two sentences and there's no question in my mind that if I'm to recover I have to practice absolutely these principles in all my affairs otherwise I'm not going to get any results and it's imperative that I work with other Faith without works was dead, he said. And how appallingly true for the alcoholic. For if an alcoholic fails to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others, he could not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead. If you want to know why people with time drink, that sentence explains it. For if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others, he could not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead. Next week when we get into there is a solution on the top of page 20. And when I read this, I nearly threw the book away. It said our very lives as ex-problem drinkers depends upon our constant thought of others and how we will help meet their needs. And this is the first indication that this program of recovery is not an easy one. If he did not work, he would surely drink again. And if he drank, he Would surely die. Then faith would be dead indeed. With us it is just like that. My wife and I abandon ourselves with enthusiasm and to the idea of helping other alcoholics to a solution of their problems. Now, Bill's way of doing this was to preach at them. I mean, this was a time when he was eventually going to create with Dr. Bob the program Alcoholics Anonymous. But at this point, he thought all he had to do was preach and that's all he would do. And he used to turn people off ad nauseam. it was fortunate for my old business associates remained skeptical for a year and a half during which i found little work i was not too well at the time and was plagued by waves of self-pity and resentment he's talking about early sobriety this is his early sobrietty plagued by waves of self-pity and resentment, yes, very definitely, first three months especially, that sometimes nearly drove me back to drink. But I soon found that when all other measures failed, work with another alcoholic would save the day. This is the first reference to work with Another Alcoholic if you can't solve your problem. I don't care what your problem is. When we get to the fourth step, it's going to say having problems with sex? Go work with another alcoholic. That's your answer. Never the answer I want to hear, but... Okay. Many times I have gone to my whole old hospital in despair. On talking to a man there, I would be amazingly lifted up and set on my feet. It is a design for living that works in rough going. We commence to make many fast friends and a fellowship has grown up among us, of which it is a wonderful thing to feel a part. The joy of living we really have, even under pressure and difficulty. I have seen hundreds of families set their feet in the path that really goes somewhere, have seen the most impossible domestic situations righted, views and bitterness of all sorts wiped out. I have seen men come out of asylums and resume a vital place in the lives of their families and communities. Business and professional men have regained their standing. There is scarcely any form of trouble and misery which has not been overcome among us. That is a hell of a statement. In one western city and its environment, there are 1,000 of us and our families. We meet frequently so that newcomers may find the fellowship they seek. At these informal gatherings, one may often see from 50 to 200 persons. We are growing in numbers and power. An alcoholic in his cup is an unlovely creature. That's really kind of nice, considering the sins of the world are in the rooms of alcoholic synonymous. our struggles with them are variously strenuous comic and tragic one poor chap committed suicide in my home he could not or would not see our way of life and it may be elsewhere but this is the first time i ever found it one of the things i noticed about the book alcoholics anonymous this, but they'll never judge you. You never make the judgment about anybody. If you can't get the program, you either could not or would not subscribe to the rigorous, honestly required. Why did you slip? God either has or has not removed the problem. And throughout the book, That's what he says. He just doesn't judge. There is, however, a vast amount of fun about it all. I suppose some would be shocked at our seeming worldliness and levity. But just underneath there is deadly earnestness. Faith has to work 24 hours a day in and through us or we perish. And once again, it's constant. Most of us feel we look no further for utopia. We have it with us right here and now. Each day, my friends, simple talk in our kitchen multiplies itself in a widening circle of peace on earth and goodwill to men.