Recognition for the Newcomer – Searcy W.

My name is Searcy, and I'm an alcoholic, and glad of it. With the help of people like you in the AA program attempting to follow the 12 steps of AA, and the help from God certainly, I've been sober since May 10th, 1946. I'm not going to talk long and couldn't say much. If I wanted to talk a long time, I could take a lot of time, but I still couldn't see much. We do have some wonderful talkers yet, as Buck said, and neither thinks, also I do, that Macon is one of our great fellows in AA. He can always bring us a spiritual message on Sunday morning that's good for all of us. I always enjoy hearing Macon. I always enjoyed hearing every AA talk. I've never been to a bad AA meeting yet. I've heard an AA talk, regardless how long they'd been sober, how short a period of time they'd be sober that it wasn't good. And oftentimes I think we in our groups, we talk about maybe we don't like to hear some fellow talk. But I look upon people and certainly I want people to sympathize with me trying to talk that all of we who get up, if we just get up and state our name and our dry date or and that we're glad to be sober, we're grateful, and sit down. It's wonderful because in that person we see someone who is attempting to get well. We see a person who is making an effort at least to stay well. And I believe it's necessary for all of we alcoholics to have recognition in our group or in an AA group someplace. I don't believe any alcoholic will remain sober over a long period of time unless they receive recognition within their group or among people who understand them. It isn't very hard for Buck or myself to get recognition. If we don't get recognition, we will take notoriety. We'll pull some kind of deal and get on somehow. So we as alcoholics may accept notoriety if we don' t get recognition but you can notice any member, any new member of AA coming in, and if they come in these doors two or three or four times, and nobody pats them on the back, nobody says anything to them, nobody says, oh boy, I'm glad to see you out this morning or tonight. We're glad to have you. We're happy that you're with us. You can watch him three or four time, and he'll come to meetings. And if he doesn't get some recognition, you'll finally say, well, I wonder what happened to Joe or Jim or John or whoever it may be, I think it's necessary that we spend some time with the new members, that we make them feel that they're important to us and they are the most important person in our group, the new member. I, of course we in AA place principles before personalities. We may mention a lot of names and we talk about a lot people, most of us here are AAs or families of AA. I don't know of anyone I'm as glad to see in AA as I am Alford. He was a hell of a guy to get a check cash from. He was tough as a boot. I used to think if an alcoholic had a problem drinking, maybe I could get a pint this morning, but he was pretty hard-hearted and pretty tough. The guy Buck was talking about who saved a lot of people, including Nita, he's a great guy in AA. Most of you know who Buck was taking care of. He's the guy that I went over one Sunday morning and drunk, been drunk all night before, and went over in Mexicantown trying to find some bootleg whiskey and couldn't find any I ran into a bunch of dogs, and Margaret had always wanted a dog. So this Mexican and I crawled under his house over there and pulled out these collie puppies, and I got two or three of them and loaded them in the car, and I was stinking like the devil from whiskey and all that other stuff. By the time I got out from under that Mexican's house with all those puppies, I was thinking a little worse if possible. And I went over to this fellow's drugstore. Buck was talking about. And I got in there and I told him, I said, I've got to have a pint of whiskey. Of course, on the cup, you know, I was working up to it. And he said, I'm going to give you a half a pint of whisky, but I want you to get the hell out of here with those dog fleas and all. The whole business. He said, um, I had fleas all over me. So, So I had to go get dipped and cleaned up. I got that half-pint on my belt. I didn't care what happened, the unpleased or anything. Seriously, in AA, this program to me means our lives, we who are alcoholics. It's the only known way for the alcoholic, for we who are really problem drinkers, to remain happy with our sobriety. I know a lot of fellows and a lot men and women who stay sober, and stay sober over a long period of time. You don't see them around AA much. Maybe they go to church some, maybe this and that and the other. That's all right. Each individual has to stay sober however they see fit, but for me I know that the only way I can remain sober with any degree of peace of mind is in AA because I know the The only way I can remain sober is to work with others who are sick just like I was when I came into AA. Certainly we have all improved and we should improve as we go along. If we don't improve, we'll certainly go backward. This program is a program of recovery. It's a program improvement. It's the program of growth. It's a program we need to put a lot into if we get anything out of it. But who am I to tell the other fellow how he must do or what he must do in order to stay sober, in order be happy, in order to have the things that we need and are looking for in AA? I know a lot of fellows who never attend an AA meeting yet they're sober today. I know a lot of men and women, both, who maybe have found a place in church or this and that. That's all right. It doesn't make any difference how you stay sober if you stay sober. And it doesn't making a difference how you understand these 12 steps and how you apply them the way you understand them. And thank God for that guy who held out time and time again when they were putting these 12 Steps together. I've heard Bill talk about it many times. This one fellow held out for this one phrase in one of the steps that says, as you understand, as you personally understand, not anybody else, not what the other saw as conception, but he held out for that one thing and thank God he did. Because each of us as individuals can take this program. And I can't do it like Megan. i can't do it like book or maybe a lot of others but i can take these 12 steps and as i understand them my own self i can apply them to my life and apply them through my daily living to remain sober the way i want to do them nobody tells me that i have to do anything in aaa nobody says these steps you have to leo not even bill not even the the ones who wrote these 12 steps up at the top in all of them it says these are suggested steps and i think if we alcoholics had been told when we came into aa that you have to do this you have detect these 12 staff and you have to apply them you have to go to a a meeting you have to attend every meeting you have to do this and that and the other i don't believe a darn one of us is not a darn thing but as they are there as you understand them as you apply them to your life and your everyday living as you see them so thank god for that i uh in 1949 at the yale school we had a a mexican boy named andrew hernandez from three port louisiana group an aa and he talked pretty good english but he couldn't understand a lot of phrases and a lot because he didn't understand english very well but during that school we had an aa meeting and in this meeting they had uh this mexican boy, Andrew, talk. And it meant a great deal to me. He didn't say a lot, but I could apply that to my own self. This Mexican boy got up and he said, you know, this AA program and the whole thing, to me, I have to keep simple. He said, You know, I don't have have a simple mind, and this is a simple program, and I have to keep it simple." Well, that made more sense than all of the other scientific analysis and all the other stuff we heard in the entire meeting. And I remember in 19- I think it was about three years ago When they were having the Tri-State Conference in Amarillo, and I was working with Albert Randall on some of the program things and this and that and the other. And we had written Dr. Bob Nance Smith, the co-founders of A.A., Dr. Bob, all of you know, asking them to come to that meeting. And time rocked along, and about ten days before this meeting, we received a wire from Ann, Dr. Bob's wife. And she said this, and it made a lot of sense. She said, We can't be with you. Dr. Bobby had had a stroke or something that happened, some heart trouble. And she said in this wire, very short wire, we can't be with you because Dr. Bob has had a heart attack. But if we could be with, if we would be there with you, the greatest thing we could say to you would be very simple, very And it would be this. Remember, AA started in our kitchen, Lois and Ann and Bob and Bill and myself, just over a little percolator of coffee and talking AA, talking our problems over, understanding each other, and things like I said, remember AA started like this. Let's keep it like that. It's simple. And AA isn't – there's nothing hard about AA in my way of thinking. I think those words were very well put. I think so long as we remember to keep this program of age simple. It's a program of action, yes. It requires some footwork. You know, we just can't in the morning get up and say, God, I'm turning my life over to you for just 24 hours. I'm just living 24 hours at a time, so you take my life over, and I'll sit back in the rocking chair and let it go. And I made a hell of a mistake, and when I came into AA, they told me to take it easy, and I thought they meant from now on, so I've just been in that rocking chair all along. I thought maybe I'd just stay in it, so we can do that too. Mental laziness, just pure damn laziness and mental laziness and those things i don't believe get us any place in a hey i think if we the more we as was said last evening you hear it many times the more that we put into this program the more of it we give away the more make ourselves available the more we understand this program so we have something to give away then the more we're going to receive from the program you know uh this is one place big spring where i do not have to qualify myself as an alcoholic i lived here drunk 10 years so i mean i existed so all of you in the all of this bunch in the local group i i do not have to quantify myself as a mouthful most of them have seen me on the streets here many times drunk And while we're talking along the lines of what AA will do for you and what it does for our families, I don't know of anybody who has improved as much. Of course, I've improved some, but my wife has improved more than anybody I know of. She is not near as mean as she used to be. And we seem to get along better than we did when I was drinking and drunk all the time. So this program has helped her a great deal, and I'm grateful for that. AA to me, these 12 steps of AA, these twelve traditions weaved together mean to me the difference between life and death uh i know that i could have not continued on as i was any longer i had come to the end of the rope and had tied a knot in it and that was all there was to it there was no other way for me to go i had no other place to go I had no alternative but to accept some way to get well. And to me, this is just a simple program of recovery. I believe that we can get maybe too wrapped up in AA, and I did for a long while. I just didn't do anything but AA. I didn't want to do anything but AA because I had found the very thing that had made me happy and it made me grateful for even being drunk all those years. And a program that would make you be grateful for going through all the suffering that we have to go through with and still be grateful for that being sick, then that's something. And we have to even be grateful because we're the only people in the world who have to get so doggone sick to get well. And we Have to get very, very, Very sick, very very sick before we are willing to get Well. People don't understand it and it's not hard to understand why they wouldn't. and explain to people something about drinking, well, about the alcoholic and the compulsive drinking. Why, we say that we drink to get away from the effects of drinking. That doesn't make sense to them. You keep drinking to getaway from the effect, certainly. When we start, we have to keep on. There's nothing we can't stop. there's no stopping place. We're forced, we're compelled to drink against our own will and our own better judgment. So I don't know. Slips and returning to our active illness in AA, I know nothing about. The only thing I know is that I want to continue sober as I have in the past worse than anything in the world. I so terribly much want to remain sober, regardless of what condition I may get into, regardless of what may happen to me today or tomorrow down the line. I don't care how bad it may seem, no matter what could happen, nothing could happen to me that taking a drink wouldn't make it worse i've tried that so many times just just various little things happened to me and the only uh way i knew to recuperate to forget about this thing was take a drink but to me today nothing in the world could happen i don't care how bad it may seem or how bad it might be, I know that a drink couldn't help it any at all. So to me in the first step where we admit we're a palace over alcohol and our lives have become unmanageable, certainly I realized that my life was unmanagable to begin with. I know my life will never be manageable and I turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand him so if I do that then I don't have to worry about the other thing but many times going down the road along with God in this deal we made I'm prone to going around these sharp curves and things that happen and to upset me emotionally I'm prone to grab the wheel and try to take over a game. Take things back in my hands and handle them like I want them. No, I can't do that. I have to thank me and Nall. We made a deal. I said that I would turn this over to God, that I will get completely out from under the driver's seat, that would turn the whole mess over to him. i tried to handle it for many many years and i made a mess of it so i promised to turn it all over to him so then i must remember when i want to take my life back over when i want things to go my way i have to remember that no i promise to turn those things over to god as I understand it. So this morning, every Sunday morning, I think I'm more grateful than any other time. Nine thousand different mornings I've waked up right here in Big Spring and no matter how much whiskey I bought on Saturday night and stashed away, I was always out Sunday morning. Hardly Sunday morning passed that I wasn't up looking for a drink. All over the backyard, if you know what I mean, some of you drunks. Under the mattresses, in the bathroom, and I had some damn good places to hide it too. But just the terrible fear of, and can you imagine, And they were talking about this being a disease. No, AA doesn't say it's a disease, science and medicine and those things, they say it is a disease but AA doesn' t get into that because it's controversial substance. But anybody who couldn't understand that a person is ill who can't live without a clear substance called ethyl alcohol and has to have that clear substance in order to survive. We have to have it. We can't do without it. Once we take one drink, then that's all there is. We have alcohol in order for it to survive! We don't drink it to have fun. Our fun is all gone. know we're not going to have any pleasure but we have to have that drink in order to live so i think the greatest time in all of our lives is when we we we draw up the divorce proceedings to ethyl alcohol we completely divorce her and we forget about her and and do something about it and the only way i know to do anything about this problem we have over a long period of time the only people i know who have stayed sober and remain happy with any tranquility and peace of mind are people who are working and i mean working at the aa program and with the a program and are trying to give away what has been given to them so indeed this morning on sunday morning i'm especially grateful i'm grateful to each one of you here i don't care what i know you're not you've helped me in somewhat uh you're interested in a or you wouldn't beat you you either have a problem or you're interesting in our problem so i'm great for all of you and the only thing i can say is my prayer and my thoughts shall ever be The thanks to God and to you who have helped me stay sober. Thank you very much, Cersei.