Mental Obsession and Physical Allergy – Big Book Workshop – Eufaula, AL – Part 3 of 11 – Jim P.

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 to 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 have an answer, I need to go somewhere, I need 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 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 he had an ulcer, and that was the only thing that wouldn't affect his ulcer. And so here we are in the very beginning. We're working with whatever we got. Whatever seems to be working, we're trying it. 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 hints to two men to set work about 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 a third one in Cleveland. And then there were other alcoholics, like i said, 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 it says by late 1937 the number of members having sustained sobriety time behind them substantial sobriery time behind them was sufficient to convince the membership that a new light had entered the dark world of the alcoholic alright ok And it talks about how we got our name. The membership had reached about 100 men and women by 1939. The Fledgley 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 Alcoholics Anonymous 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 ok alright, let's see ok 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 wires, inquiries poured in again, and many people went to the bookstores to get the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Now when John Rockefeller came to the United States, when John D., Rockefeller, 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. Now, 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 had 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 Ufala 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 UFALA 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 6 whenever this started 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 struggles for power and prestige? Hell yes! We're alcoholics. I mean, do we not have egos even, you know? Bill talks about ego deflation and death later on but what we found on the next page on the first paragraph that says but out of all this frightening out of out of out of out of out of all this frightening and at first disrupting experience the conviction grew that AA's had to hang together or die separately we had to unify our fellowship or pass off the scene okay um 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 would be 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 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 Alcoholics Anonymous 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 drag 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 uh america they wanted to have an aa hospital on one floor of 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 and that 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 age 12 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 and some people don't know what bill was writing these traditions and putting them in the grapevine there's a bunch of grapevines on the table they're meeting in print and that's what they were mailing out to people um that were wanting to get updates and things like that and so bill each month would be or he's not every month but on a continuous basis he was writing article after article after particle and 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 don't 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 um 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 little better a little little bit 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. Of 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 here 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 is the same program today but the last GSO survey that went out was in 2009 and there's so many groups it's almost like a random pick we're going to send this to the central around the 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 you know and they do that to large groups they do it to small groups I'm sure UFAL has filled one 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, I think it's Dr. Bob. I'm not sure if it's Dr. Bob and 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 to Be 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 you know 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 vital 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 when my friend Charlie Parker talked about 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 a 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 men of religion. 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 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 30 millionth printing of Alcoholics Anonymous. This book has been printed. It's one of the largest selling, if not the best selling book in the world. 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 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 highlight 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 in the world recovery begins all right i got about five minutes left um the forward to the fourth edition uh now we're talking about over a hundred thousand groups meeting in 150 countries we're 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. It was the third edition, and I didn't stay sober on the third addition until the fourth addition had 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. All right? One of em's Iran. North Korea. 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, ethnic, 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 are not normally mixed. 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 have wanted to hang out with me. You know, I was a pretty bad, troublesome drunk. And so we probably weren't going to hang out together. But we'd get along great in the room. And we'd getting along great doing the deal together. And at the end of that forward, because I'm going to start the Dr. Spinion next week. Any meeting anywhere, AA shares experience, strength, and hope with each other in order to stay sober and help other alcoholics. Modem to modem 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 get back To the program 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. Women can't be alcoholics back in the early 40s, late 30s. They weren't alcoholics. They were ladies. They drank too much. 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 as 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. 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 the guy who came to the meeting and said 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 I do now 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 meeting and she didn't go out women didn't go out at night by themselves and so there's nothing going on a man just coming by to escort her to a 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 let other people come in and finally and bill admitted this in a book called A.A. Comes of Age, when he turned over the reins in 1955 to World Services, he admitted that when they sat down and said, you know, what are we so afraid of? You know, 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 are we going to let in who are not going to let in we're going to 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 alright that is the history and the forwards next week we're gunna 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 gunna 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 going to look at me like I've got four eyes just remember I'm going through the book and I'm gonna keep going through the book when you're here great if you're not I hope you're sober and I hope you're happy I know how to nine now I used to didn't know how to nine I know how to say yes yeah you know I got a real chance follow instructions in that case yeah All right, like I said last week, I'm going to try to start on time and end on time every week. So I'm gonna start right now. I'm an alcoholic. My name's Jim Powers. My sobriety date is February 18th, 2002. I'm a member of the Central Orlando Group and I am in love with the Ufala Group of Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's where I am today. Let's start this meeting like we normally do with a moment of silence and then we'll follow it with the serenity prayer. Prayer. God, grant me the serENITY to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the thing I can't and the wisdom to know the difference. All right, last week we went over some of the history and how these guys got together to stay sober one day at a time and then they decided they needed to write a book. And so they wrote the book Alcoholics Anonymous. It was named after a group that had started out in Cleveland and the book has a couple of things and I want to just go over them real quick. It's a book, a textbook, okay? And so we're supposed to do what with a textbook? We're supposed study it and refer back to it. And I'm going to go forward to the very first edition because it's going to tell us exactly what directions we're exposed to find. And it says right there that we of Alcoholics Anonymous are more than 100 men and women who have recovered from a seamless, hopeless state of mind and body. To show other alcoholics precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book. For them, we hope these pages will prove so convincing that no further proof would be necessary. There are some words I just can't get at sometimes. and on page 20 it says if you're an alcoholic who wants to get over it you may already be asking what do I have to do well it's the purpose of the book to answer such questions specifically we should tell you what we have done and then on page 29 it says further on clear cut directions are given showing how we recovered now they use that word recovered many times in the book and I said last week it simply means to get well and the purpose and the object of the book and I'm going to jump around a little bit before I start the doctor's opinion on page 20 it says if you're an alcoholic who wants to get over it you may be already asking myself what do I have to do it is the purpose of this book to answer such questions specifically we should tell you what we have done and on page 45 it says lack of power that was our dilemma we had to find a power by which we could live and it had to be a power greater than ourselves, obviously. But where and how are we to find this power? Well, that's exactly what this book is about. Its main object is to enable you to find a power bigger than yourself which will solve your problem. It does not say your alcohol problem. It says your problem The hope that this book gives everyone to recover is to get well. And on page 98, when you're working with others it says burn the idea into the consciousness of every man that he can get well regardless of anyone. The only condition is that he trusts in God and clean house. Now, Dr. Bob kept this program real simple and the simplicity that Dr. Rob used comes pretty much at the beginning of a vision for you where it says abandon yourself to God as you understand God, clear away the wreckage of your past, give freely what you find. That right there is trust God, clean house, help others. And that's how Bob wanted to keep the program as simple as possible for all of us. So we know it's a textbook and what we're going to find out from the doctor's opinion and when we get into Bill's story is that they're going to continually tell us about the problem and the solution. The problem andthe solution. Okay? Problem is step one, solution is step two. And they're going to do that for 60 pages because Bill talks more about step one than he talks about any other step in the book. And the reason he does that is because it goes against every one of us, especially me, Grain, to admit that I am powerless. That's why so many people die because they just won't admit to their powerlessness and then accept that there's a solution to their problem. all right we'll start uh with the doctor's opinion now in there was a gentleman who brought a first edition big book last week and it was really cool to see that um but what happened in the first edition when dr silkworth gave this letter they started it on page one with dr silkwood and he didn't sign the letter because it's an opinion it wasn't proven by facts by 1955 when they printed the second edition of the big book GSO moved the doctor's opinion to the Roman numerals and all the other editions because most people start reading a book on page one and they didn't want a non-alcoholic to start on page 1 they wanted Bill Story to start in page 1 so every other book after that starts on page 2 but we know as a textbook you've got to read it from the front cover to the back cover and especially the doctor's opinion through the first 164 pages. That's where we're going to find the program of recovery as outlined by the first hundred and then you know if I don't agree with it I can say you know I don' t agree with it and my sponsor is really quick to say well two and a half million people have recovered because of it and you don't disagree with it which do you think is stronger? And I would think that the two and half million is much stronger than me he didn't even put his name in the first edition because like I said it was just his opinion but when they printed the second edition and the American Medical Society at that time finally agreed that it was a disease it was an illness the Psychiatric Society agreed it was an illness Dr. Silkworth said yes you can use my name now and you know it had been proven in that 13 year period okay let's see you see me I'm going to be using notes all afternoon alright the doctor's opinion starts off with and remember that the big writing is alcoholics the small writing is going to be the doctors it says we of Alcoholics Adonis believe that the reader will be interested in the medical estimate of the plan of recovery described in this book. Now, the plan of the recovery is a program of Alcoholics Anonymous. That is what the plan of recovery is. And it's described inthis book in great detail. Convincing testimony must surely come from the medical men who had experience with the sufferings of our members and have witnessed our return to health. A well-known doctor, chief physician at a nationally prominent hospital specializing in alcohol and drug addiction gave AlcoholicsAnonymous this letter. This was the first letter he gave and it said to whom it may concern he specialized in the treatment of alcoholism for many years in 1934 i attended a patient who though he had been a competent businessman of good earning capacity was an alcoholic of the type i had come to regard as hopeless no hope that's hopeless there is just you know helpless and hopeless and that's what we're hoping to recover from and he goes on and that's bill wilson he's talking about um let me see if i have it marked and he talks about hopeless again on page 43 it says uh the doctor's talking again and it says two of you men whose stories i have heard there is no doubt in my mind that you were a hundred percent hopeless apart from divine help which is going to be step two it says in the course of his third treatment, he acquired certain ideas. And you all are going to just have to bear with me. I'm going to jump ahead and I'm going to come back because that's the only way I know how to do this. In the course of the third treatment he acquired certain ideas concerning a possible means of recovery. As part of his rehabilitation he commenced to present his conceptions to other alcoholics impressing upon them that they must do likewise with still others. Now I don't know if anybody has ever told you there are no musts in Alcoholics Anonymous You're going to find the word must over 100 times in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. It's a suggested program, I was told when I came in. Now, it's suggested you pull the ripcord if you jump out of an airplane with a parachute, right? So, I'm either going to do this or I'm going to die. So, what they're saying right there is impressing upon them, the ones he's working with, that they have to do likewise with still others. They must. This has become the basis of a rapidly growing fellowship of these men and their families. The man and over 100 others appear to have recovered, fourth time it's used so far in the book. And he goes on to say that he's known scores of cases with whom other methods had failed completely. Dr. Silkworth worked with over 50,000 alcoholics and he had worked with about 25,000 before this program started and he had about a 3% or 4% success rate. People just were able to quit. But after that, the success rate was, we went through it earlier, it was somewhere around 75%. That was in one of the fours. On the next page right before his signature, it says, you may rely absolutely on anything they say about themselves. Not about Jonathan, not about you, not about him, not about her, about me. You can rely on when I tell you what I've done. Now the alcoholics go on to say that the physician who at our request gave us this letter has been kind enough to enlarge upon his views in another statement which follows. In this statement he confirms that we who have suffered alcoholic torture must believe that the body of the alcoholic is quite as abnormal as his mind. It did not satisfy us to be told that we could not control our drinking just because we were maladjusted to life, that we were in full flight from reality or outright mental defectives. These things were true to some extent, in fact, to a considerable extent with some of us, but we are sure that our bodies were sickened as well. In our belief, any picture of the alcoholic which leaves out the physical factor is incomplete. Now, through the first 40-something pages, You're going to hear that this is a two-fold illness, an obsession of the mind and an allergy of the body. And then it's going to take you to a three-fold illness a little bit later on. And the two- fold illness right now is the obsession of the mind and the allergy of the body. The doctor's theory that we have an allergy to alcohol interests us. As laymen, our opinion to a soundness may of course mean little, but as ex-problem drinkers, we can say that his explanation makes good sense. It explains many things for which we cannot otherwise account. Though we work out our solution on the spiritual as well as an altruistic plain. Altruistic is other-centered. We favor hospitalization for the alcoholic who is very jittery or befogged. More often than not, it is imperative that a man's brain be cleared before he is approached as he has then a better chance of understanding and accepting what we have to offer. What did he just say? He just said, Bill just said that before you can really understand anything you need to detox. And detox centers back in his time were not hospitals and there weren't one on every corner. They were sanitariums. That's where you went to detox. Hospitals didn't want alcoholics. They didn't think we were sick. They just thought we were drunks and they didn't wanna have anything to do with this and so we were put in sanitarium and that's where Bill was. He was in the sanitarum part of the town's hospital up there. Now, the doctor's getting ready to write a second letter where he goes on to explain more. And where this letter comes into play, it's my understanding. And a lot of this is my understanding, and if you can prove me wrong, tell me afterwards. Please don't shout it out. But they had written a book. They had written an manuscript. And Bill felt it imperative to send that manuscript out to about 200, 250 people, clergymen, psychiatrists, medical doctors, church elders, because he didn't want to publish anything that he thought might be offensive to religion or medicine. And so he sent out all these copies and one of his friends was a medical doctor and he said, you need to start the book with somebody who has a knowledge in the medical field. And so we went back to Dr. Silkworth who had been treating him for these three different times he had been in there and he asked him to write a letter to go to the front of the book. Because if you all remember the history when Bill got sober and he started running around to the bars in the Bowerys, what was he doing? He was preaching. He was talking about his spiritual awakening, his spiritual experience, and after six months not one person stayed sober and he went back to Silkworth and Silkworth said you've got to hit them with the medical facts first about the obsession of the mind and the allergy of the body before you bring in the spirituality or you're going to chase everybody off. And so that's why they have the doctor's opinion first, explaining the two-fold disease, and then Bill's talking about the problem and the solution, the problem in the solution. It says a couple lines down, we doctors, now it's Dr. Silk, we're talking about medical experts, have realized for a long time that some form of moral psychology was of urgent importance to alcoholics, but its application presented difficulties beyond our conception. He's talking about doctors and psychiatrists. What with our ultra-modern standards, this is 1939, our scientific approach to everything, we are perhaps not well equipped to apply the powers of good that lie outside our synthetic knowledge. And what's he talking about? He's taking about God. He's taken about God, The doctors have a way of cutting you and taking out a problem or giving you a pill to fix a problem. But they are not schooled or skilled in spirituality. And what he was just saying, what he's trying not to say, but what he just said was that they aren't equipped to apply the powers of good that lie outside their synthetic knowledge. So many years ago one of the leading contributors to this book came under our care in the hospital. He was talking about Bill. And while here, he acquired some ideas which he put into a practical application at once. You all have heard me talk about last week the words immediate, following, don't delay, at once This is not a program to be danced around with This is a program of action And so when you get done with one step you don't just sit on it and hang around for a while and think about it you move on to the next step because the whole goal of this book is to get us to that 12th step to get into a spiritual experience and to get up to carry the message that's the goal later he requested the privilege of being allowed to tell his story to other patients here and with some misgivings we consented the cases we have followed though have been most interesting. In fact, many of them are amazing. The unselfishness of these men that we come to know them, the entire absence of profit motive and their community spirit is indeed inspiring to one who has labored long and wearily in this alcoholic field. They believe in themselves and still more in the power which pulls chronic alcoholics back from the gates of death. Now, they talk about chronic alcoholists. not everybody in Alcoholics Anonymous is a real alcoholic they talk about real alcoholics and they talk about chronic alcoholics chronic is a condition that never goes away okay we have a lot of heavy drinkers that come into AA we have people that come in just to get a paper signed we have people that come in they read the book and then they have a program and they talk about their program and what they're doing is watering down the program of action the recovery program that's in this big book right here. Now, like I said, chronic and hopeless, those are two words that I really didn't like, but I'm one. Oh, I was going to turn the page, but I am not now. Let me go back to that page. Of course an alcoholic ought to be freed from his physical craving for liquor and this often requires a definite hospital procedure before psychological measures can be of maximum benefit. Now, Dr. Bob went to six drying out farms, and every time he came out of a drying out farm, he was in the Oxford group going there with Ann for two and a half years drinking. He went to sixth drying out farms, and ever time he come out, he drank. And he never stopped drinking until Bill finally carried the message out to him, and we'll get to that in a little bit. Now, we go to the problem, and then we'll go to solution. All right, so the problem, as Dr. Silkworth is going to lay it out, is we believe, doctors, and so suggested a few years ago, that the action of alcohol on these chronic alcoholics is a manifestation of an allergy, that this phenomenon of cramps is limited to this class and never occurs in the average tempered drinker. These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all, and once having formed the habit and found they cannot break it, Once having lost their self-confidence, their reliance upon things human, their problems pile up on them and become astonishingly difficult to solve. Now, that right there is step one. Problem one. He just described it. He just prescribed the powerlessness over that first drink and then when he talks about their loss of self-confidence, their reliancy on a human thing, their problems piled up, he's talking about unmanageability. My life's unmanageable. So step one is right there. That's the problem, okay? And then solution one. Frothy emotional appeal seldom suffices. You know what frothy emotional peel is? Please, honey, just don't drink anymore. Please, dad, don't go to the liquor store. Please, mom, please don't do that anymore. That's frothy emotion appeal, you know? And for me, it never worked. It didn't work at all. Why don't you just quit drinking? why don't you just go away and that's what happened in my case she went away the solution the message which can hold the message which can interest and hold these alcoholic people must have depth and weight in nearly all cases our ideals must be grounded in a power greater than themselves if they are to recreate their lives that's solution one that's step two a power great greater than ourselves drop down to the bottom we're going to go to problem 2 bottom of that page it says men and women talking about chronic alcoholics here talking about me not talking about Mr. Smith who can have one or two drinks and he gets tingly and he get's dizzy and he wants to go home go to bed. When I have one or two drinks, I want to get up and go to the bar. I want to get out and go drive. I don't want one or two drinks. I know for a fact that as my first drink was being poured towards the end of my drinking career, I was thinking of my second drink. Normal people don't do that. It will tell me in a minute that I'm an abnormal person as far as alcohol comes, and I agree. I am. Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. This is problem two. The cessation is so elusive that while they admit it's injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable, and discontented unless they can again experience the ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks. drinks which they see others taking with impunity that means that the other people drinking aren't getting injured but I'm an alcoholic I'm killing myself and I still can't not do it after they have succumbed to the desire again as so many do and the phenomenon of craving develops they pass through the well-known stages of a spree emerging remorseful with a firm resolution not to drink again this is repeated over and over and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change, there is very little hope of his recovery. All right, Dr. Silkworth is talking about a psychic change. Bill Wilson calls it a spiritual experience. It's the same thing. Okay? It's exactly the same. And unless you experience an entirely psychic change there is little hope for recovery. and then we go from the problem to a solution on the other hand and strange as this may seem to those who do not understand once this psychic change spiritual experience has occurred the very same person who seemed doomed who had so many problems he despaired of ever solving them suddenly finds himself easily able to control his desire for alcohol the only effort necessary being that required to follow a few simple rules now this is Dr. Silk where he's talking about requirements, musts and rules you know what the rules are? 12 steps to Alcoholics Anonymous that's what he's talking about to follow a few simple rules now ok we'll just carry on men have cried after me in sincere despairing appeal doctor I cannot go on like this I have everything to live for I must stop But I cannot. You must help me. Faced with this problem, if a doctor is honest with himself, he must sometimes feel his own inadequacy. Although he gives all that is in him, it is often not enough. One feels that something more than human power is needed to produce the essential psychic change. Something more thanhumanpower. That's what we're looking for. he goes on in the next paragraph to say I do not hold with those who believe that alcoholism is entirely a problem of mental control I've had many men who had for example worked a period of months on some problem or a business deal which was to be settled on a certain date favorably to them they took a drink a day or so prior to that date and then the phenomenon of craving that once became paramount to all other interests so that important appointment was never met. These men were not drinking to escape, they were drinking to overcome a craving beyond their mental control. When we talk about the allergy, everybody here knows about allergy, it's an abnormal reaction to any food, beverage or substance. right and sometimes I use an analogy of I don't have a lot of allergies I don' t know of any but my doctor says I am allergic to pollen and my eyes swell and I don''t believe it but it's probably true because my eyes swell but it''s an abnormal reaction so you know you eat strawberries let's use strawberry green beans you're allergic to green beans your mouth swells up you You get a rash. I'm allergic to alcohol, and my allergy, what happens is it kicks off a phenomenon of craving, and it says to me, you need more alcohol, and you need mehr alkohol until I'm either in jail. I don't break out in hives. I don' t break out on rash. I break out handcuffs is what I like to say. You're either in j al or your body physically shuts itself down to prevent you from poisoning yourself, and that's what's called a blackout. When you pass that or black out, your body is physically trying to stop you from killing it. And that's exactly what it is. Now, that is the definition of the allergy, the obsession that he's talking about. It is a thought or an idea that overrides all contrary thoughts or ideas. An obsession is an idea that overrides everything else you know. So you know, I know, that if I drink, I'm going to keep drinking and I'm gonna get drunk and I'll probably hurt somebody. But when I was in my active alcoholism, that obsession was so strong that it overrode all those other thoughts that this is not going to be a good idea. You are going to hurt somebody today. Don't do it. My mind would say, it's going to different. it's going to be different this time I can take one drink this time and it's gonna be different and you know what it was never different it was always the same result which was not pretty okay we're going on FXX that's page 30 there are many situations which arise out of the phenomenon of craving which cause men to make the supreme sacrifice rather than continue to fight. They kill themselves. The classification of alcoholics seems most difficult and in much detail is outside the scope of this book. But he's going to list five right here. There are, of course, the psychopaths who are emotionally unstable. We're all familiar with this type. They're always going on the wagon for keeps. They are over-remorseful and make many resolutions, but they never make a decision. And when we get to the third step, that's when we're first going to be asked to make a decisions. Number two, there are types of men who are unwilling to admit that he cannot take a drink. He plans various ways of drinking. He changes his brand or his environment. When you change your environment, what do we call that? We call it trying to be geographically cured. I'm going to move to Dothan and I'm gonna stay sober. Well, I take an obsessive, allergic alcoholic, chronic alcoholic to Dothan. I'm not saying it's over. I'm finding it in the nearest liquor store. So me moving somewhere is not going to change anything at all. I have to do something about my condition. There are the types who will always believe that after being entirely free from alcohol for a period of time, he can take a drink without danger. We'll read later on about a guy named Fred who didn't drink for 25 years. He retired. Out comes the slippers, out comes the bottle and within four years a rich man died because he didn't do anything. He thought that I didn't Drink for 25 Years, I can take a drink. He was an alcoholic of my variety. There are the manic depressive type who is perhaps the least understood by friends and about whom a whole chapter could be written. Now, the manic-depressive probably wants the whole book written about him. If you know manic-depressives like I do. And then, here's the one I described as me. Then there are the types that are entirely normal in every respect except in the effect alcohol has upon them. They are often able, intelligent, and friendly people. And there I am. You know, I am an able, intelligent, and friendly person until you put that first drop of alcohol in me and I become somebody else entirely. All these and many others have one symptom in common. All theseand many othershave but one symptomin common. They cannot start drinkingwithout developing the phenomenonof craving. The phenomenon, as we have suggested, may be a manifestation of an allergy which differentiates these people and sets them apart as a distinct entity. It has never been, by any treatment with which we are familiar, permanently eradicated. And here's the thing that scares a lot of people when they first come in this next sentence. The only relief we have to suggest is entire abstinence. Well, that's going to meetings and not drinking. Okay? And I can tell you, meeting makers do not make it. Just not drinking and going to meetings, you will die of untreated alcoholism. If you don't do something to change the way you're living, if you're a chronic alcoholic like me and you don' t find some way to change my way of living, not just going to meets and not drinking, I've got to have something greater than that that sustains my sobriety. And that's what I'm going to find later on in the book. But I don't have a chance of finding anything later on In The Book if I'm drinking. I can tell you those three and a half years that I went in and out of the program, I was never in, but I went into and out meetings I would go home sometimes from a meeting, pick up a bottle, pour a drink, and be sitting here reading this book while I'm drinkin'. And then I'd have to read the page again because I couldn't understand what they meant. And then then I take another drink and I'd read the bit and by then I was drunk and I put the book down it was a good coaster for a while one of my big books has a whole bunch of circles on the top of it and I've got many big books right now this immediately precipitates into a seething cauldron of debate much has been written pro and con but among physicians the general opinion seems to be that most chronic alcoholics are doomed now he's writing this back in 1939 or no, 1938 because this is right when the book's being written. And there was no cure for alcoholism in 1938. This is 2013. There is no cure for alcohol today. I don't care about that guy in California who says he's got a pill that will make him... I don' t believe it. There is not cure for alcholism. we can get well from a hopeless state of mind and body we can recover but we don't get cured I just want to make that clear to everybody that we don' t get cured the book tells us later on that all we have is a daily reprieve based on our spiritual condition so now last week we talked about the guy who went over and spent a year with Dr. Carl Young Roland Hazard he went an entire year without drinking when he left Dr. Young in Switzerland and he was making his way back to England to get on the boat he was drunk and later on we're going to read where he comes back into the book in a paragraph in Bill's story and the doctor is going to give him an idea but he can't give him a solution because the doctor can't give him a spiritual remedy and that is what it's going to take and that's going to be on page 26 when we get to that now I come into Alcoholics Anonymous and I stop drinking I'm restless irritable and discontent I mean I need my baba you know that's the easiest way for me to say it to you who have children and I need my ba-ba, you know, if I don't have something to fill it. And we talk about having this hole inside of us when we come to Alcoholics Anonymous and if we don't fill that hole with something we're probably going to go back to drink. We're probably gonna want that instant relief that we get from taking one or two drinks but then I know I can't take one or 2 drinks. I'm not going to take 1 or 2 drinks. I'm off to the races and I don' t know if I'm ever coming back. and I wasn't sure when I got back the last time that I was going to stay but something happened I had something happen to me so if if stopping drinking was the only thing that I needed to do and my life was wonderful I would stop drinking my life would be wonderful but my life's not wonderful when I stop drinking my life is restless irritable and discontent until I find a solution for why I feel that way. And really and truly, what it is, is I don't deal with life. I didn't, for over 30 years, deal with Life's terms. I dealt with Life and the ups and downs by pouring alcohol on it. that's why I drank because I couldn't stand being in reality and I do not have the experience of going to a detox center I do NOT have the experience of going into rehab I am so glad there are detox centers I'm so glad there are rehab centers but almost every one of them when you leave tells you to get a sponsor and go to AA what they've done is separated you from alcohol for that period of time to defog your mind. And then they send you home hoping that you'll continue your recovery based on what they've either taught you or what they're telling you as you're going out the door, that you need to go get a sponsor and you need work some steps. And then you get out the drawer. Most of my friends who have been to rehab have been more than once and they said all they were doing was playing in a drunk while they were sitting in rehab. They were thinking about it. they were obsessing about it because they had the mind of a chronic alcoholic. So by the time alcohol is doing something to me way down the line after I start drinking, that is by the times that alcohol is my solution to my problems. why I drink. My ability to deal with conflict and negative emotions have eroded to the point that staying in reality is simply unbearable, and that's why I have this dilemma. I can't stay sober because of reality. It's unbearably. Nor can I continue to drink because it's killing me, and I'm dying. So I've got this problem. I've got to find a solution that fills that hole. It talks about the ease and comfort and relief. The reason they talk about that is because alcoholics like me, I don't remember what alcohol did to me. All I remember is what it was doing for me. It was making me not have to live in reality. No matter how bad I felt, no matter what I did, it just took me out of reality. Reality is not a bad thing. I have had great times sober. I've been bankrupt sober. I've lost people. I've seen people give well. Ups and downs. Life! It's just life. But for so many years, I drank life until the point where I couldn't not drink. And that's why Alcoholics Anonymous works for me.