Jim P. Leads a Step 1 Study Through the 12 and 12

All right, we're going to crank back up here. And a couple of things on the break brought bunny trails back around. I love those bunny trails Charlie talks about. One of them was we were talking about the Bible outside. And when they didn't have the big book written yet, you will see pictures of the old-timers when they were leading meetings, they were using the Bible because they were coming from the Oxford group before they wrote the big books. They were using it. They were reading the Bible. and if you ever get a chance to visit Dr. Bob's house it's called A House Full of Miracles up in Akron there's a glass case in the living room where the Bible is opened up to the page that says faith without works is dead and so yes the Bible plays into this book but more than that I truly believe that the hand of God came down and just got into Bill's soul got into his spirit and got into all the rest of them who got sober and stayed sober um and they stayed sober because they did things like what we're doing right now we're studying hi I've got a question if that's okay yeah and say just save it until we get to the chapter where you did agnostic okay okay if you want to and that's fine with me alright because I can and I agree with you how fervent fervient you are about having God in your life and how important he was and Dr. Bob's soul and mind and everything else being part of this book do you have I mean I haven't experienced a sponsee yet that's agnostic or atheist do you know Do I have a problem with it? Not at all Because I'm just listening to you so far Not at All because I know today that absolutely in my life there is a God there is the God and it will tell you in the book that we should keep that God personal. Now, if people want to blurt out their God's Buddha or Allah or Jesus, I don't have a problem. Because I knew an Indian guy in the program that was just an amazing speaker because he talked about the God of the wind and spirit. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. There are some great speakers who are American Indians that use the Great Spirit. Yeah. And we'll talk about it. Okay. What it is is you can't do it on your own. And we'll learn that even no human power could relieve us of that obsession, that it has to come from a power greater than ourself. And that's in Chapter 2 of the Gnostic, and we'll get to that. So I'm on XIII, which is forward to the first edition. And it says, We. Now, right there, We is those first 100 that wrote this book. they're sharing with us what happened to them so it says we of Alcoholics Anonymous are more than 100 men and women who have recovered there's that word recovered again okay from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body to show other alcoholics alright to show other alcoholists not to tell other alcoholies to show other alcohols precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book. Okay, so this book has one main purpose. It's to show other alcoholics how this first 100 recovered from a hopeless state of mind and body. And I'm going to say it right now so I don't forget about it later on. Recovered, if you'll look it up, simply means to get well. Okay? The book will tell us later on that we are never cured of alcoholism. That what we have is a daily reprieve based on our spiritual condition, and that's later on in the book. But recovered simply means to get well. Now, I'm sick coming into Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't know it until I put the drink down and I start working the program and I learn that I've been sick for 30 years. And so I want to get Well. So I want you to recover. But I'm never going to be cured. And a lot of people in a lot of rooms get the hair up on the back of the neck when somebody introduces themselves as a recovered alcoholic. I'm a recovered alcoholic. I got well. I am not in a hopeless state of mind and body anymore. I am an alcoholic. I will always have alcoholism. I will never be cured, okay? I have a program that I don't have to drink and I don' t have to hurt anybody. And that's what the main purpose is of this book. Precisely how they recovered. For them, we hope these pages prove so convincing that no further altercation would be necessary. We think this account of our experience will help everyone to better understand the alcoholic. Many do not comprehend that an alcoholic is a very sick person. Now, I'd highlight the alcoholic is a Very Sick Person. And besides, we're sure that our way of living has its advantages for all. And the advantages for all were non-alcoholic wives, before Al-Anon ever came around, non- alcoholic wives, non-alkoholic husbands of alcoholic wives could get this book sent to them, read it, and understand better what they were dealing with. You know, I'm dealing with this drunk. Right there it tells me you're dealing with a sick person and not just a sick person an alcoholic is a very sick person okay and i think we'll all agree with that and at the time it says it's too it is important that we remain anonymous because we're too few at present to handle the overwhelming number of personal appeals which may result from this publication and that's what they were hoping is they published this book and that they would be overwhelmed well i can tell you from history's sake um they sent out this book to every medical doctor uh in the united states with a card in there saying please send this card back with how many orders you want and they waited they waited you know they're on pins and needles for like three or four days before they went down to their post office box which is called box 453 which is something gso puts out right now um and they were just thinking it was going to be filled with envelopes and they had like 10 cards and eight of the cards back from the doctor were written in drunken handwriting and two of them were are you out of your mind who do you think you are and so there was an extreme disappointment when they first pushed this book this book took a while to catch on and i'll tell you how it caught on in a couple minutes being mostly business or professional folks we could not well carry on our occupations in such an event if they had to handle all the personal appeals that they were thinking were coming they couldn't keep doing their jobs we would like it understood that our alcoholic work is an avocation so an avocation is not a vocation a vocacion is a job an avication is something you do in addition to your regular work And we'll learn more about how we live this program, not just work it and then stop. When writing or speaking publicly about alcoholism, we urge each of our fellowship to admit his personal name, designating himself instead as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. So that right there in the very first forward, they're trying to stay anonymous. They're tryingto keep it a secret society. And, you know, the only way you're going to learn about it is word of mouth until we get some press and we don't get pressed for a little while. And they also ask the press to observe the request for otherwise you shall be greatly handicapped. Somewhere in there, it might be the 12 and 12. If you want me to raise my hand and keep my mouth shut or something, I'm going to look at this. Well, keep your mouth shut. Go ahead, 12 and what? Because I will reference that. This is one of the few times that the press really honored our request for this, and at the same time, though, helped in a great way. But that was after the 12th and 12th got written, and that's 13 years later. And I'll tell you, the biggest violator of the anonymity was Bill Wilson. GSO has two portfolios, one in 1942 and 1943, and they're from a clipping service that went to every newspaper in the United States and clipped out everything that Bill Wilson was on the front page of a paper talking about. Bill Wilson's magic cure, Bill Wilsonís 12-step, Bill Wilson this. And he was the one that realized that he was violating the tradition that should be in place. And that's why when he wrote those traditions, he never spoke publicly again. as far as in front of non-alcoholics. He never gave his last name. The reason I give my last name when I speak at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting is because what Dr. Bob says, and Dr. Bobby and the good old timers, it's a direct violation of the anonymity clause to not give your last name in an AA meeting as it is to give it in the press, radio, public. He felt, and I agree, that if I'm in an AA meeting, that you need to know who I am. You need to be able to tell me who I really am. You need know how to find me. And really the situation came about because somebody came down from Cleveland because they heard that there was a Dr. Bob in trouble in Akron and they were trying to find this Dr. Rob to do a 12-step call on him and it was Bob Smith. It was Dr. Bobs. And he realized that, you know, if you're in an AA meeting, there's nothing wrong with using your last name. He encouraged it. If you're out in the public, it is not encouraged, okay? And so when I speak and I do this down in Florida, and I've been blessed to be asked to do that, but I've Been Involved with the Public Information Committee. I've Been Involve to Jails and Institutions. is if I go talk before a group of, say, judges or something like that, my name's Jim P. I do not break it. And if I talk before an alcoholics where it's a large group, say at a state convention or something, I will say something like, My name is Jim Powers. I'm a recovered alcoholic. And if there's anybody here from the press, radio, or film, I'd appreciate it if you respect our tradition of anonymity and do not publish my last name at all. This recently happened over in Albany where two treatment centers got together to honor a man who had 32 years of sobriety and they put it on the front page of the Albany Herald that this man has saved millions of lives through carrying the message of the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and it violated about four different traditions. Now, the man was only quoted once, that they used his full name, they used this picture, but when he was quoted at the very end of the article, he said, I didn't get anybody sober. I don't keep anybody sober, it's all God. And that was the only quote from him. But these other people, the treatment centers, just violated the traditions all to hell by doing that. It's very nice to give the man a plaque. Don't get me wrong. But to put it on the front page of a newspaper they just threw the 12th tradition into the wind. And I don't believe they should have done that, but I don'T get to say anything about it. On the end of this forward, it says there are no fees or dues whatsoever. The only requirement... Now, there's going to be requirements in this book. It's a suggested program. My sponsor says it's suggested that you don't drink and do what it says in the book. And there's going to be a couple requirements. You've heard people say there's no must in Alcoholics Anonymous. There's goingto be like 77 musts in this book. And there is even going tobe a demand. Okay? There's gonna be a demand of me and of you. The only requirement for membership is an honest desire to stop drinking. Now they dropped that when they did the 12 traditions. They dropped the word honest. Okay? Why would you think they dropped the Word Honest? How many alcoholics coming in to Alcoholics Anonymous or reading this book for the first time are going to be honest? None. None. We don't know anything about honesty when we get here. We're drunks. Okay? So, we're not allied with any particular faith, sect, or denomination, nor do we oppose anyone. We simply wish to be helpful to those who are afflicted. And they should be interested to hear from those who are getting results from this book, particularly from those who have commenced work with other alcoholics. Which is the whole goal of this book is to get me sober, to keep me sober to get my life going to get to me living a life beyond my wildest dreams but to carry the message to somebody else. Because when I stop carrying the message I've stopped practicing Alcoholics Anonymous and then I started practicing Jim's Recovery Program and Jim's recovery program I'll tell you later on will get you drunk if you follow Jim's recovery program alright alright forward to the second edition it's going to it's got a little bit of talk about how they jumped right there our earliest printing voice the hope that every alcoholic journeys will find the fellowship of the AlcoholicsAnonymous at his destination already continues the early text twos and threes and fives have sprung up in other communities people were going from Akron from New York and from Cleveland they were carrying the book around with them and so they were starting little groups of twos or threes in different communities all over and what they're hoping is that you find the fellowship but the fellowship won't keep you sober there is fellowship recovery and there's the AA program of recovery. And they are two different things. The program of discovery is what gets me sober, keeps me sober and keeps me doing what I'm doing. The fellowship is a byproduct. But without the fellowship, I would have never gotten here. I would never have gotten a chance to get sober. Okay, so the fellowship is very important and that's the unity on the triangle. You know, the fellowship is extremely important. But I can't stay sober on just not drinking and going to meetings. I'll kill myself if I don't drink and go to meetings and don't do anything else, and it happens to a lot of people. It talks about in 1955 when the second edition was printed that Alcoholics Anonymous had nearly 6,000 groups whose members had far above 150,000 recovered alcoholics. Okay, there's the fourth time it's been used. And then there were groups going all over the United States. They went to Canada, and then it started going all over the world. I'm thinking right now, if I have my most recent statistics right, that there are about 165,000 Alcoholics Anonymous groups worldwide, and there are a little over 2 million members in recovery or recovered in Alcoholics Anonymous active right now worldwide. Now, this book has got to be something if that's where it all started from. I mean, it's got to be something. So in the 16 years, you know, between the first and the second, it had jumped to that many and the same book is now available in 2013 and there's millions. The first, down at the bottom of the page, the spark that was to flare into the first AA group was struck in Akron when the stockbroker, which really was the stock speculator, Bill Wilson, and an Akron physician, Dr. Bob, had a talk. And it says six months earlier, the broker had been relieved of his drink obsession by a sudden spiritual experience following the meeting with an alcoholic friend who had been in contact with the Oxford group that day. He had also been greatly helped by the late Dr. William D. Silkworth, a New York specialist in alcoholism, and he's now accounted no less as a medical saint by AA members in whose story of the early days of our society appears in the next pages. From this doctor, the broker had learned the grave nature of alcoholism. That's step one, the grave nature. The reason I like doing the history is, and I think I might have said is that if we don't learn from history, we're doomed to repeat it, right? If we don'T learn from mystery, we're doomED to repeat IT. That word doomED is not a good word for me. If I don'T leARN from Alcoholics Anonymous, I'M doomED TO REPEAT WHAT I DID WHEN I GOT IN HERE, which was just keep going in and out, in and OUT. Though he COULD NOT accept all the tenets of the Oxford Group, he was convinced of the need for a moral inventory, convention of personal defects, restitution of those he harmed, helpfulness to others, and the necessity of belief in and dependence upon God. He's talking about Bill here. Prior to his journey to Akron, the broker had worked hard with many alcoholics on the theory that only an alcoholic could help an alcoholic, but he had succeeded with only keeping himself sober. He'd gone to Akran on a business venture, we talked about that, it collapsed, And he suddenly realized that in order to save himself, he must carry the message to other alcoholics. There's the must right there. There's The First Must. And when Bill gave Dr. Bob, when the broker gave Dr., Silkworth's description of alcoholism and his hopelessness, the physician began to pursue the spiritual remedy for his malady with a willingness he had never before been able to muster. Now, when Bill explained to Bob the spiritual malady, we have a two-fold disease. It's of the body and it's ofthe mind. Now later on we're going to find out that we're gonna have to get over our spiritual malty before we get over obsession or compulsion and the physical allergy that comes from taking that first drink. So he knew that he had to pursue the spiritual remedy. And so this right here, the physician had repeatedly tried spiritual means to resolve his alcoholic dilemma but it failed. And once he had pursued the spiritual remedy for this malady with a willingness he had never before been able to muster, he sobered never to drink again until the moment of his death in 1950. That's 15 years later. This seemed to prove that one alcoholic could affect another as no alcoholic could. It also indicated the strenuous work, there's a word to underline right there, strenious work, one alcoholic with another was vital to permanent recovery. All right, stop right there. Strenuous Work is not just, you know, call me every couple days, It was in your face, we're doing these steps, and then you're carrying this message. Dr. Bob had a way of working the 12 steps within a day or two days with new people. Now, when they were originally working with these people, the people that would come to him and say, I can't stop drinking, you've got a cure, you're going to get better. You've got an answer, I need to go somewhere, I needs your help. And Bob had a philosophy that the best way to help an alcoholic first was getting them away from liquor. So they started getting some rooms at the local hospital in Akron. Sister Ignatia was a big, big part of this, and I'll talk more about her later on, because she got the first actual room for an alcoholic. Alcoholics weren't allowed to go to hospitals back then. They went to sanitariums. Hospitals didn't have room and didn't have anything to do. They couldn't fix an alcoholic. All they could do was tie him down and let him... So what Bob did was he would take him into the hospital. You were fed for seven days. Karo syrup, tomatoes, and sauerkraut. That was your meal for seven days while you detoxed. Karo soup was for sugar and the craving for sweets. The sauerkraut was nutritious. I still haven't figured out what the tomatoes and tomato paste was for, but that was your meal. Now, how many of you all would voluntarily check into a detox and say, feed me that for the next seven days? I don't think anybody would. It has 300% more vitamin C than an orange. Probably was for the antioxidant. Yeah. It was also, there's a theory that the only thing that Bill could hold down whenever he went to the hospital was carob syrup and sauerkraut and tomatoes. And so that's, he had an ulcer and that was the only thing that wouldn't affect his ulcer. And so they just, they were, here we are in the very beginning and we're working with whatever we got. Whatever seems to be working, we're trying it, okay? You know, Bob had, in the two and a half years that he was going to the Oxford group, he had gone to drying out farms six different times. and he did hydrotherapy, he did all this other stuff and couldn't stay sober you know, other than when he was locked up. Alright, next paragraph. Hence the two men to work almost frantically upon alcoholics arriving in the ward of the Akron City Hospital. Their very first case, a desperate one recovered immediately. Now that right now is the fifth time the word recover has been used and we haven't even got to page one and it became AA number three that's Bill Dotson the man on the bed and he never had another drink they continued working at the hospital a second group started up in New York like I said after that in 1937 with the third one in Cleveland and then there were other alcoholics like I mentioned that would grab the book go from one of these Oxford group meetings and move somewhere and then would form a group there and at the end of that sentence By late 1937, the number of members having sustained substantial sobriety time behind them was sufficient to convince the membership that a new light had entered the dark world of the alcoholic. Okay, and it talks about how we got our name. The membership had reached about 100 men and women by 1939. The Fledgling Society, which had been nameless up to then, now began to be called Alcoholics Anonymous from the title of its own book. Now, it's either the titleofitsownbook, which they decided on themselves, but the Cleveland group had already started using the name AlcoholicsAnonymous prior to the book being published. So I think Clarence thought the book was named after his group. Let's see where I'm at with time. Okay. All right, let's see. Okay. This is where we're going to start getting some of our influx of people. In the next page, XVIII. In the fall of 1939, when the books were published, Fulton Ulster, then editor of the Liberty, printed a piece in the magazine called Alcoholics and God. And this brought a rush of 800 frantic inquiries into the little New York office, which meanwhile had been established. Each inquiry was painstakingly answered. Pamphlets of books were sent out. Businessmen traveling out of existing groups referred to these prospective newcomers and new groups started up. Bill, for the first number of years, answered every letter that was written to New York. And finally, Bill and Ruth were answering every letter. before they started hiring people. In the spring of 1940, John D. Rockefeller gave a dinner for many of his friends to which he invited AA members to tell their stories. New business got on the world wire as inquiries poured in again and many people went to the bookstores to get the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Now when John Rockefeller came to the bookstore and gave that dinner, Bill Wilson thought he was going to be a millionaire. Now Rockefeller was one of the richest men in the world. He invited like 400 of the richest men in the world to come to this dinner to hear about this great thing. He had sent a man out to Akron to investigate this group of people calling themselves Alcoholics Anonymous, and he thought it was the greatest thing. And so he was going to put this dinner on, and Bill thought, you know, I'm going to collect $1 million, $2 million from book sales, and I'm gonna get rich. And what Rockefeller told him was money will ruin this thing, Bill. You've got a great thing, but if you mix money and spirituality, it'll ruin it. And Bill's heart dropped because Bill wasn't making any money. Lois was working at a department store. And Rockefeller gave Bob and Bill like $25 a week stipend, which was a lot of money back then, and the book started to sell. And John also, Rockefeller also, gave a copy of every one of the books to every one of the people there. All 400 people got a copyof the book. And so those people started passing it around and, you know, I'm sure there were quite a few drunks with a lot of money there that started seeing they had a way out too. um in 1941 um right before 41 1940 i think uh the cleveland plains dealer did a three-part article on clarence snyder's group called alcoholics anonymous in cleveland and it brought in about 8 000 members to that group and they had to form some separate groups but Clarence kind of manipulated the newspaper and like Bill was manipulating the newspaper and what happened was Jack Alexander was a real famous writer for the Saturday Evening Post and he wrote an article that was so compelling and so well received that 8,000 members joined by the end of 1941. Now when Jack Alexander went to write that piece he didn't go to write a glowing recommendation. He went to kill and trash Alcoholics Anonymous. He had just written an expose on the longshoremen up in Jersey and New York working for the mafia and he'd gotten a lot of publicity for writing that expose on these longshoremen and all the crookedness behind it. And he thought that Alcoholics Anonymous was a scam and he was going to expose it. And he met with Bill, and Bill and Bob said, if you would go to just a certain number of meetings, it's either between 10 and 20, and don't tell them who you are, go to different groups, listen to different people, hear the story, and then if you want to write an article, write it any way you want and what he found by going to those 10 or 20 meetings was there was a program that was working and people were getting and staying sober by following the simple directions and so he wrote this very glowing article and thousands of people started wanting to book alcoholics anonymous you know i feel privileged to be sitting in the euphoric group of alcoholics Anonymous, because this group got started because of Jack Alexander's article. The lady who sponsors is a woman named Margaret, who we all know, who has been celebrating 45 years this month. Her sponsor was the one that started the Euphala Group, and she read the Jack Alexander article, and got on a bus, and went to the nearest AA location, and at the time it was in montgomery alabama now back in 1945 or six whenever this started um that was a hike one of us and when she got up there this woman was committed to the mental institution in prattville just a little bit north of montgomery and every day two alcoholics would come and talk to her and after seven days of being there and going through the alcoholic regime she got out She went to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings with them for a while there, stayed up in Montgomery and then came back and started the Euphala group of AlcoholicsAnonymous. And so the history behind this group goes all the way back to the Jack Alexander article which is a trip for me to be sitting here today doing this here because I am really a history buff. Alright now we've got a bunch of people and it says at the bottom of that page our society then entered a fearsome and exciting adolescent period The test that it faced was this. Could these large number of erstwhile erratic alcoholics successfully meet and work together? Would there be quarrels over membership, leadership, and money? Would there been strivings for power and prestige? Hell yes. We're alcoholics. I mean, do we not have egos even, you know? Bill talks about ego deflation at death later on. But what we found on the next page, on the first paragraph that says, but out of all this frightening and at first disrupting experience, the conviction grew that AAs had to hang together or die separately. We had to unify our fellowship or pass off the scene. It was thought that no, next paragraph down about four or five lines, It was thought that no alcoholic man or woman could be excluded from our society, that our leaders must serve but never govern, that each group was to be autonomous, there is to be no professional class of therapy. There were no fees or dues. Our expenses were met by our own alcoholic, own voluntary contributions. That's why when we have an open speaker meeting here on Saturday night and Mac chairs the meeting, He always says, if you're here at an open speaker meeting and you're not an alcoholic, please do not put any money in the basket. It is from our own voluntary contributions that our expenses are met. And AA is self-correcting. If there's not enough money to keep an AA group going, the AA group will fold. Happens all the time. Happening currently over in my county in Georgia. There's been a meeting there for about 30-something years, and that meeting is closing because there's not any participation anymore. And you can't drag people in there. They have to come on their own. And it's sad to see, but I've been blessed to start meetings, and this will be the first one that I actually say that I'm going to help them dispose of their property in the proper way because it has to go. It can't be an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting when two Al-Anon women are paying the bills. It just can't. And what you're reading, what we're reading right here is a whole bunch of what the traditions are saying. Our public relations were to be based on attraction rather than promotion. Bill realized that him going around getting all that public relations exposure was not good for AlcoholicsAnonymous because if he could do it, why couldn't somebody else do it? And then what happens when that person got out in public and was drunk? People would think alcoholic anonymous doesn't work. Just like all these people you see in magazines like National Enquirer and things like that, they go to AA and then they talk about, I'm clean and sober because I've been in AA, and then two weeks later the paparazzi's got pictures of them smoking coke with a beer in one hand. That does not do anything good for us to have them running around publicly saying They can say they went to a 12-step program, that's fine. But when they've dragged the name Alcoholics Anonymous into the press, that's a direct violation and that is the reason why we did not want people to be out there on press, radio, TV, films. And in no circumstance should we give our endorsements or make alliances or enter into public controversies. They wanted to make sure that they did not associate with any certain facility because they were starting to do that in the early 40s. There were going to be AA hospitals in certain towns, Middleburg, America. They wanted an AA hospital on one floor, a clubhouse on the second floor, a beginner's meeting on the third floor, and a detox on the fourth floor. And they were going charge people to come in. and the whole thing fell apart. And the guy realized he was trying to be grandiose about the whole thing. And that's a tradition seminar that I give, so I'm not going to get into that. Well, we just read that paragraph right there. It goes on to say this was a substance of 8812 traditions, which is now stated in full on page 561 of this book. And though none of these principles had the force of rules or laws, they had become so widely acceptable by 1950 that they were confirmed by our first international conference held at Cleveland. And some people don't know it, Bill was writing these traditions and putting them in the grapevine. There's a bunch of grapevines on the table there, meeting in print. And that's what they were mailing out to people that were wanting to get updates and things like that. And so Bill each month would be not every month but on a continuous basis he would write an article after article after article in publishing it and he was publishing these these different traditions and all the way up to 1950 he was trying to get dr bob to agree and bob was just i just don't think we need those i just dont think we need this and before he died in 1950 bob told bill we need us go ahead and publish them and so the 12 until was published a couple years after dr bob died it did replace a book that I have and I carry with me and that Dr. Bob used it was called The Little Red Book and that was kind of like what the 12 in 12 is it gave a little bit larger explanation to the steps if you just read them on the board there but it also helped learn a little more out of the big book helped me learn a lot a littlebit more alright I don't want to run out of time. But I do want to, okay, we're going to go to the next page, XX. Because I do think a lot of people say, oh, I don' t care about statistics. Well, I do. AA grew by leaps and bounds for the two principal reasons, large number of recoveries and reunited homes. This made their impressions everywhere. The alcoholics who came to AA and really tried, you want to underline that or highlight, really tried. 50% got sober at once and remained that way, and 25% sobered up after some relapses and among the remainder of those who stayed on in AA showed improvement. So there we've got 50% get recovered because they really try. 25% try and finally get recovered. So that's 75% right there. That's pretty good statistics. and that program this is the same program today but the last GSO survey that went out was in 2009 and there's so many groups that they just have to it's almost like a random pick we're going to send this to the central group and we're gonna ask them to fill out the survey and the group conscience gets together and fills out the best they can and they do that to large groups they do it to small groups I'm sure you follow Phil going out before but the last one they did was in 2009 when they asked how many people had stayed sober for longer than a year I want to know what it is 8% 8% what happened well in, I think it's Dr. Bob, I'm not sure if it's Dr. Bobby or the good old timers or someplace else. They said that outside influences were starting. They were saying that people were coming to Alcoholics Anonymous, they were getting a taste of spirituality, they went back to church and they couldn't stay sober. They were going to treatment centers and coming out of treatment centers and they were coming out with non-alcoholic counselors telling them things, group hugs, group therapy, all this other stuff. And it's just gotten watered down. And that's why I really love doing a big book study because I'm only going to be reading from what these guys read. I'm not going tobe reading from any outside books. There's thousands of them out there and the book also tells me later on to see where religious people are right and use what they use, and I do. If I don't go to church every Sunday, do I think I'm going to hell? No. My God's a loving God, but it's a personal God. So from the beginning when people came in desperate, the definitive comment in that whole thing is really tried. They really tried I mean, it was vital a minute ago. I skipped over the word vital, but it was vitals to their life, life or death to them, to get recovered. And so that's what happened. Now we have all these other therapies, and I think there's something like 250 12-step programs right now that are based on the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I didn't believe it when my friend Charlie Parker talked about it. He thinks there's a lip balm anonymous program out there, and then I went to a meeting about a week later and I saw some lady there. She had this lip balm and she was putting it on about every five seconds and I'm like, I think they have a program for that woman somewhere. I don't know where, but I bet you they have their program for doing that. He goes on to say down at the end, because I'm running out of time, I know, Alcoholics Anonymous is not a religious organization, neither does AA take any particular medical point of view, though we cooperate widely with the men of medicine as well as the menofreligion. we cooperate and it talks about the membership right then was pyramiding at about 20% a year so several million actual and potential alcoholics have made only a scratch in all probability we shall never be able to touch more than a fair fraction of the alcohol problem in all its ramifications Upon therapy for the alcoholic himself, we surely have no monopoly. And that's what they're wanting you to know. They don't have the answer to everything. Yet it is our great hope that all of those who have yet found no answer may begin to find one in the pages of this book and will presently join us on the high road to new freedom. That's the second edition. I'm going to go over the third edition real quick. It's talking about they've got more than a million people and 28,000 groups, 90 countries. By then I think there was 20,000 editions of the big book printed. I know when I went to the San Antonio International Convention in 2010 they gave the 30 millionth edition to the American Medical Society. The first printing of the 30th 30 million printing of Alcoholics Anonymous so this book has been printed you know it's one of the largest selling if not the best selling book in the world you know maybe the Bible is the only one that sells more I'm not sure and I should be sure of something it's gone into, you know it's been translated into all these different languages and I'll go back into some of who translated it where at another meeting but the biggest thing is at the bottom of the third edition and I use this when I talk. It's in spite of the great increase in the size and the span of this fellowship at its core it remains simple and personal. I like the rest of this. Each day somewhere in the world, recovery begins when one alcoholic talks with another alcoholic sharing experience, strength and hope. Every day, somewhere inthe world, recovery begins. Alright, I've got about five minutes left. The forward to the fourth edition. Now we're talking about over 100,000 groups meeting in 150 countries. We're growing and that's 2001. when this book came out, the fourth edition. And it wound up being the second book I bought because the first book was given to me, was the third edition, and I didn't stay sober on the third addition until the fourth addition that got printed because 2002 is when my sobriety date is and this came out in 2001. But I used the third addiction. It's just the book I like to read. The one I mark up and work with my guys with is the fourth edition because that's the one most everybody gets now. In country after country, I'm just going to skip around a couple of places. In country After Country where the AA seed was planted, it has taken root slowly at first, then growing by leaps and bounds when literature has become available. Currently, Alcoholics Anonymous has been translated into 43 languages. That's in 2001. I think it now is in 60 or 65 different languages. there are places where you just would not believe Alcoholics Anonymous meet one of them is China one of em is Iran North Korea those places AlcoholicsAnonymous is still really a secret society because they are being watched and so they have a meeting where the watchers are and then they have another meeting underground where they can talk about the God of their understanding without fear of being taken off and hauled off. It's getting accepted a little bit more, but there are certain countries that are still really against this. As the message of recovery has reached larger numbers of people, it's also touched the lives of a vastly greater variety of suffering alcoholics. When the phrase, we are people who normally would not mix, that's on page 17, was written in 1939, it referred to a fellowship composed largely of men and a few women who were quite similar social ethic and economic backgrounds like so many of AA's basic texts those words have proved to be far more visionary than the founding members could ever have imagined we are people who not normally mix I'm looking around this room and I'm saying to myself I doubt that I would have hung out with any of you I'm sorry I know that none of you would wanted to hang out with me you know i was i was a pretty bad troublesome drunk and so we probably weren't going to hang up together but we get along great in the room and we get a long rate doing doing the deal together um and at the end of that uh forward because i'm gonna i'm gonna start the doctor's opinion next week uh any meeting anywhere aa shares experience strength and hope with each other in order to stay sober and help other alcoholics. Motive to motive or face-to-face, AA speaks the language of the heart in all its power and simplicity. Now I agree with that. There are big book studies on Skype. There are big book meetings. Most of you know that my sponsor has a website that now has over 25,000 speakers on it that are available for free. That's what he has done to give back to the program's Alcoholics Anonymous. He is, currently right now, he is finishing doing about 400 cassettes that Margaret from this group gave us from her husband and her collection. And out of that set that we got from Margaret, he only had about 20 on his website already. And so all these other ones that we were given to put on the website, we never had before. and I can tell you this man he's 28 years sober he's a little Scotsman but he has nothing but a thirst for sharing this book this work of recovery one last historical tidbit Judy you're the only woman in here tonight I should be excused you are not excused you are welcome but in 1940 when the first woman came to Akron she was not allowed in Dr. Bob was panicked of what you all would do to our society yeah how women can't be alcoholics back in the early 40s late 30s they weren't alcoholics they were ladies they drank too much but he was worried about two things one women coming in and distracting the men trying to get sober cutie cutie and two the men who were getting sober wives what would they think about women coming in and so the first sponsors of the first women were the wives lois and ann wilson lois wilson and ann smith were sponsoring the first woman coming in okay the first woman that came into the meeting in New York was a man. Her name was Marty Mann. And she came into The Meeting right when they weren't letting women in, and she wasn't leaving. And if you've ever seen a picture of Marty Mann, I wasn't going to be the one to ask her to leave The Meeting either. But she got sober working the program. Bill was her sponsor, I think. And for the next 18 months, every woman who came into the New York group, Marty Mann sponsored them. Eventually, they started letting everybody in because in the book, in the 12 and 12 it talks about, they were so afraid of letting other people in that, you know, the guy who came to the meeting and said, you now, I'm an alcoholic and I need help, but I have another handicap. A lot of people want to say it's a black man in a wig who's a hooker and a transvestite shooting heroin. Chet Fee tells me, if you weren't there, you don't know. I do know that blacks had to start their own meeting in Cleveland because of segregation when they first came in. Ido know that in 1941, the first killing of a man picking up a woman to take her to a meeting happened in cleveland this woman's husband did not know that she was going to alcoholics anonymous and he would go to work and she would go to a meet-up and she didn't go out women didn't come out at night by themselves and so there's nothing going on a man just coming by to escort her to the meeting so she could get recovery the husband found out about it from a neighbor he hid in the bushes he killed the guy so there was a little consternation with Dr. Bob letting women come in letting blacks come in letting other people come in and finally, and Bill admitted this in a book called AA Comes of Age when he turned over the reins in 1955 to World Services he admitted that when they sat down and said what are we so afraid of we're afraid that our pure alcoholics are going to be ruined by these other people. And five words came out of Dr. Bob's mouth. What would the master do? And that solved the issue of who we're going to let in, who we are not going to letting in. We're going let anybody in, no matter who they are, no matter what they are. If they're an alcoholic and they're seeking recovery, we're gonna let them in. All right, that is the history and the forwards. Next week, we're gong to start on the doctor's opinion and we'll get a little bit into Bill's story if you can make it next week that would be great I'm going to do these things in a row each week I'm gonna refer back to something that I talked about the week before and when I do that you weren't here the week before you're gonna look at me like I got four eyes just remember I'm goin' through the book and I'm gunna keep goin' through the books when you're here great if you're not I hope you're sober and I hope your happy