Sandy B. The Early Days of AA

Okay, actually today is a little bit informal, but that's alright, it's going to work out just fine.
Can you hear now? Yeah, now you can, because everybody's being quiet, now that we have your attention.
At this time, I would like to introduce Sandy, and God knows what's going to happen, so it's all going to be good.
Here's Sandy B.
there we go hi everybody my name is sandy beach and i'm an alcoholic
thank you this is very comfortable for me so i hope it's okay for you all but sitting down
and it is a lot easier on my knees than standing up,
so I appreciate the group arranging this little table set up.
I was, people asked me what the workshop's going to be on,
and I don't have any plans until I sit down,
and then whatever comes out, that's what comes out,
but I was doing some reminiscing because on Tuesday,
I'll have 40 years in AA, and it is...
And you do do a little reminiscing, and I know back in Tampa they're planning some parties
and some people are coming down from Washington, D.C., where I got sober,
and we'll be reminiscing and that kind of stuff.
And when you do that, you know, the magnitude of what has happened starts sinking in,
And you think back on the people that are gone who were so important in your life.
And, you know, they say principles above personalities.
And I agree with that.
But, boy, there's been some personalities in AA that I've sure hung my hat on.
And Bill Wilson is my favorite to listen to.
And everybody has their favorites.
And we understand that we're all human, but I have memories of people that are just extra special,
and I'm sure that you all have the same thing.
And so it caused me to do, you know, that kind of thinking.
And how lucky I am.
I mean, I don't know how I ended up traveling around all the time,
except when I got sober in Washington, there were probably seven speaker meetings for every discussion meeting.
and each speaker meeting had two speakers so everybody in aa had to talk about 10 times a year
in order to fill the quota you follow what i'm saying so you were just talking talking talking
and then that led to somebody over in the next town saying why don't you come over to our town
and talk and then i went to baltimore and then all of a sudden the phone is ringing and i'm just
going all around. And so I think sometime during this year, I got thinking about why is that so
much fun? The traveling is hard, but the talking is fun. And I realized that I've been given the
job of being the bearer of good news. That's my job. I mean, God, can you imagine? I was thinking
back in the military, like when somebody got killed, then we had to go to their house to talk
to the widow and you were the bearer of bad news and that was a very hard job whereas this is we
are permanent carriers of good news so whenever we're talking to the next alcoholic we're bringing
mighty wonderful news to them and so isn't that that's a great job to have if you think about it
you know knocking on the door hi i'm here to bring a lot of good news to you
they may not realize it but that's what you're doing and so I realized that that's my job and
it's not my news I didn't make this news up this is the message and the message was put together a
long time ago and we're just the messengers and so I sometimes realize you know that back in the
Roman days they don't kill the messenger you remember that the messenger would come in with
the bad news, and that shoot him, or I mean that shoot him, that stick a spear through him.
But I could say on the other side, we shouldn't give the messengers the credit for the message,
that we got to recognize that no matter who these personalities are, they didn't invent
the message, that this message is really a message from our higher power. And that's why it has all
that power, and it's such good news, because it affects every individual, and it reaches every
individual. I mean, I don't care. Isn't it funny? You know, we say this is a group of people that
wouldn't ordinarily mix. And we sit in these rooms with old and young and black and white and
Orientals and Hispanics and everything. And we send out this message and this story and it touches
every heart in the room exactly the same. It just reaches down inside. And we know that someone is
reading our mail, so to speak,
that they suddenly understand where we've been
and the way out.
You know, that was what they were thinking of calling the book,
The Way Out, which isn't a bad title.
Not as good as Alcoholics Anonymous,
but it kind of describes it,
although I think Chuck C.'s book, New Pair of Glasses,
says it's the best for me.
You know, what is this spiritual program?
It really is a new pair of glasses.
If you're not familiar with that, there's a book available that was taken from,
does everybody know who Chuck C. is?
Oh, okay.
He was doing a retreat, a men's retreat, and before he died, they asked him,
during the years that you gave talks, was there ever a time that you felt you were especially connected?
And he said, yeah, this retreat.
so they went and got the tapes from the retreat
so the book wasn't really written
it was just transcribed from the tapes
and it's just called A New Pair of Glasses
and I really think that's what happens
that even today
when I have a problem
normally when I think of problems
we think of getting a solution
and that's really not what happens
when I have a problem
I call somebody else up
I describe it to them
and then they describe how it looks to them
and then I see it differently
and when I see it differently
a lot of times it isn't a problem anymore
so in a sense it never was solved
if you follow what I'm saying
I just see it differently
and I see, wow, maybe I was at fault
maybe I do owe an amend
yeah, when you look at it that way
oh yeah
Well, it's impossible for me to see it that way
because I can only see it from where I'm sitting.
So you see how much we need each other?
You can't see other perspectives by yourself.
So that's why we run it by other people.
You know, in the 12 and 12, people of very high spiritual development
always insist on checking with others the guidance they feel they got from God.
People of very high spiritual development.
Ooh, I don't know what that is, but we're not there.
And so we better be checking with each other all the time.
And it's funny.
This year I've had more insights than all the years I've been in the AA.
I've seen more things differently.
it's been the most exciting year
to think about the book
and the literature
and I'll read stuff
and I'll just
I go wow
never saw that before
and I spend a lot of time
I like my own brain
it's weird
you know what I mean
and some people don't like
to hang out alone
I love hanging out alone
I'm just sitting there
whoop whoop whoop
and I'm going oh yeah yeah
and I will come up with
all these great things and generally they're pretty good but every so often they'll be terrible
i was out in california and i had this dream not a dream but it was just i was coming up with this
talk and so i got up and made some notes it was so it was so i tell you you guys you would have
been transformed like that and i started through it and clancy and johnny harris were sitting out
there and they were looking at me like what i mean you could just see and the whole room was
starting to turn hostile and I slowly folded the notes up and said I guess I should have run that
by somebody and it was awful it was awful but at the time it seemed brilliant but anyway one of the
thoughts that occurred to me was that what is being, if we were trying to get to a state
of peace and quiet and serenity and happiness, what does that really mean? And to me, what
it means is to be in a state of constantly receiving help. You know what, you see, that's
just the opposite of what the material world would tell you. They would tell you, you've got to get
and do it on your own. You've got to grow up and be responsible and get out there. And here I'm
having this picture of, here's how I'm going through life. I'm walking down the street holding
God's hand. You follow what I'm saying? I'm just going, what do we do next, God? Oh, we just go
over there. Okay. You know, like, what do we do now, God? Well, just go over and help that guy.
Okay. You know, and of course, if we did that, it would be heaven. It would be just the, we would
be happy and useful and whole and complete the whole time. So then I'm saying to myself, well,
why don't you do that all the time? And now here comes the bizarre mind. Well, what if somebody
saw me. Look at that wimp walking down there holding somebody's hand. You know, when are you
going to let go and be a real man and get out there and do it on your own? When are you going
to grow up? What is this walking down there holding on hands asking what you're supposed
to do next? That doesn't sound like you've made much progress. How long you've been sober?
you're still relying on help
when are you going to get your act together
I don't know if your mind works like that
but that's what will go on my mind
that's what you were doing the first week you came in
you're asking your sponsor what to do
here you are 40 years later
what should I do next
you've got to move beyond that
there is no beyond that
follow what I'm saying
there is no beyond that
Getting beyond is getting beyond the ego, which does not want that to be the answer.
You know what I mean?
There's part of us that's not satisfactory.
And yet, in the 12 and 12, in the third step, it talks about that the way to become truly independent
is to become totally dependent on a higher power.
It's a paradox.
So if we're not dependent on a higher power, we're going to be independent.
Guess what's in charge then?
Our character defects, right?
Because we're really not independent of our character defects.
So you are, well, I'm just going to be, I have my values, I have my principles, and I'm going to live by them.
This is what we do without a higher power.
I'm going to live by them.
And my attendance record hasn't been that good, so I'm going to really show up every day this week.
Boy, I'm going to show up.
My boss is going to be happy.
And so we show up Monday, we show up Tuesday, and on Wednesday, Lust says, you know that girl over in Missoula?
Yeah, well, she's off today.
Yeah, but I said I was going to show up all week.
Oh, who cares?
And we're off going against our own better judgment because we're not independent.
we really are being jerked around
I'm going to tell the truth
honesty is the best policy
and then they come in and they just go
some question at work
and if we answer it wrong we might not get the promotion
so we just fizzle it a little bit
and then we feel bad about that
and then we swore to give up gossiping
but all we gave up was originating gossip
because just being a messenger really is
it's not my gossip
I'm just passing on
sort of a conduit
I don't know if that's a character defect
so you can see if you get thinking about it
you're really not independent at all without a higher power.
And so this dependence on a higher power is one of the great paradoxes.
So anyway, these are just the stuff that runs around in my head that are kind of fun.
And then I have some stories that I've read about that I want to share.
You can see it's going to be a potpourri.
That'll be the name of this thing, a potpourri.
Here's another expression I've been thinking about.
this too shall pass
now we use that a lot
but I'm going to give you
a thought on that okay
how about if we said
this too can be let go of
now just think about that
for a second
because a lot of times
the reason it isn't passing
when is this going to go away
because I'm not going to let go of it
because it was too big an offense against me
and so I have a resentment that lasts for six months
and what am I attributing that to
some celestial time schedule
or my own stupidity
and so you know we can look at that
you know I've been in this a long time
you know, but don't worry, this will pass. Well, it's not going to pass until I let go of it.
And so I may be the main reasoning that this too isn't passing. And so it's something that I can
look at and I can go, you know, I can get rid of things a lot quicker than I thought I could.
I thought there were minimum requirements, you know, like the sentencing guidelines that they
have. If somebody does this to you, you have to stay upset about a month. That's the minimum
amount of time. Otherwise, you'll look bad and somebody will come up, you're letting
him off the hook this soon? Do you ever have these kind of thoughts? You're going to let
him off the hook that soon? You should stay miserable about six more weeks, then let him
off the hook. Now, I don't know where we get these concepts, but I'm just throwing that
one out, then it all happens in God's time. Is that the expression, happens in God's time?
Something like that. Well, let's take a look at that one, too. These are just different ways of
looking at these things. Let's say that you're lonely. You know what I mean? You've just been
living on your own you just split up about six months ago and now you're lonely so you decide
to involve your higher power you go god i'm lonely um could you help me with this thing i'd really
like to meet somebody and i would like to um have a close relationship and then i won't be lonely
anymore and so we pray for that and we find that in about eight nine ten months we've met somebody
and it's working out pretty good
and our loneliness was taken care of
in God's time in six to eight months.
And we just go, there it is.
These things just happen in God's time.
What if we had said at the very beginning,
God, could you take away this loneliness?
Could you just take away this loneliness?
It could have gone that night.
But we didn't ask for that.
We ask for it on our terms.
So we establish the six months ourselves when we said, would you send someone?
I don't want you, God, to remove this loneliness and have me be close to you and not be lonely.
I have laid out this plan.
And then when it takes six to eight months, then I go, well, it happened in God's time, but it really happened in my time.
It happened just the way that I asked for it.
And the same thing could be said of financial insecurity.
God, please get me a job so I can save up some money so that then my financial insecurity will go away.
Why didn't we ask, would you please take away my financial insecurity tonight?
See, we just give God hardly any power at all.
You don't think he could take away your financial insecurity without giving you any money?
He can.
No, that's what we ask for, but we just have our plan as to how things have to turn out.
I had no concept that financial insecurity could be solved without money.
I don't know if any of you have thought of that, but I...
What is financial insecurity? It's me worrying about money.
So all I need to do is have the worry disappear.
And then I'm sitting there, I don't have the money, but I'm not worried about it.
I'm living a day at a time.
I mean, it's, and once you're there,
then you realize you're being taken care of,
that somebody will let you stay at their house,
the meeting's over here, somebody will give you a ride.
Oh, I know, I got some food, come on, I'll share it with you.
I mean, it's all there.
We're being taken care of.
And so a lot of these things is we just have a way
that we see the solution should be,
and then we ask for help in having that solution take place,
which is hardly what the third step is talking about or the 11th step when you think about it.
I'm going to turn my will and my life over to the care.
Then I don't have a plan.
I'm simply going, what should I do next?
Which is, if you're brand new, that's the one question that you just should ask.
That's all you need to do is ask, what should I do next?
You have a sponsor, you have a home group, and eventually you have a higher power, eventually you have a network of friends, and this is, to me, what spirituality is all about, is using our higher power and others in order to see the world in a different way.
And then we intuitively know how to handle situations because we're able to see them differently.
And I find it very comforting to realize that that is the point of the whole program.
a sentence that jumped out at me this year
that I don't think I've seen or focused on that much
and there is a solution on page 25
when it says the great fact
you know that sentence
the great fact for us
in other words what is the solution
what is the jackpot
I was in Las Vegas last weekend
and the, you know, what is it, jackpot is when the three sevens are there.
You know, that is the fact.
And so the fact, the great fact is the absolute certainty
that the creator of the universe has entered our hearts and our lives
and is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Absolute certainty.
Absolute certainty.
And so this is the fact that is the gift of the AA program.
So if that hasn't happened, we're not there yet.
It's not that it only happens to this half of the room and it doesn't happen to this half of the room.
This is what the deal is, is to have that.
That enables us to be joyful during sadness.
That's why, you see, people say to me, well, you're always happy.
Why are you always happy?
And I go, it's my job.
That's my job.
in other words it would be
I feel it would be
almost cutting off the program
to not maintain some connection
to the joy of a higher power
even in the midst of the death of your parents
or some big tragedy
it is
this is what's available
is this much comfort and this much connectivity
to a higher power, so that as all these other things happen, we just don't label them
as these great tragedies. You know, things that happen are just events. How many events are going
on? You know what I mean? These fans are going, and the lights are on, and the clock is moving, and
this is happening, and the dog is barking, and this is happening, and so then we just all see
them as events until one of them bothers you. It doesn't bother anybody else in the room,
but maybe someone's voice back there reminds you of your mother-in-law or something.
And instead of just being an event back there with the clinking of dishes and this and that,
it's a problem. It wasn't a problem until you labeled it a problem. You follow what I'm saying?
And things aren't problems until you label them as a problem.
And one way to get rid of problems is to unlabel them as problems, to recategorize it.
Actually, that's not a problem.
And it's gone.
And so that's what happens when we talk to other people about our problems a lot of times,
is they will say, well, did you ever look at it this way?
And then they just start sharing their perspective on it.
You know, your boss, who maybe just gave you a stern lecture and you feel bad about it,
you know, your boss has just found out he has this terminal illness and his son has just got arrested.
He's probably in really bad shape.
And then you go, see, your ego doesn't want to hear any of that.
You just are insulted that you were made to look bad in front of your buddies.
But now you have a chance and you go, you know, that's right, he was.
hey, God, well, I'll just try to do a better job.
Problem gone.
We didn't solve it.
We just saw it differently.
We were able through our friends
to see things differently.
So it's nice to have this type of closeness
that you all have here.
And lots of groups are close,
but you guys have that enthusiasm
that really makes it special.
So don't lose that.
Then it's a we program, okay?
I don't know where these things are coming from.
I'm just sitting here.
I mean, it's a we program up to a point.
You understand what I'm saying?
The we program part, it brings us together,
and it pushes us, and it cajoles us,
and it takes us up to the brink.
Just like you can lead a horse to water.
Well, the we program can bring you up to the water, but you got to drink it.
If everybody else in the group is drinking it and you don't, you're going to die of thirst.
And so the point of the we-ness is to get us as individuals to take the spiritual actions
so that we as an individual will have the transformation.
So in other words, if ten of you just came in this year and nine of you really get into the steps and set as a spiritual goal to reduce your ego and to have happen what these people claim can happen,
and one of you doesn't, the fact that the other nine did it isn't going to help you at all.
You're still unchanged.
changed. So what we hope that we will all do is, as individuals, go, well, I'm going to do this
work. I'm going to do this effort. And so that leads me into some stories. I came across a book
that a guy gave me. It's called How It Worked, and it's probably out of print by now,
but it's about Clarence. Does everybody know who Clarence Snyder is, the brewmaster in the
big book. And this guy was a very close friend with him. And when Clarence was dying, he gave
him all of his materials. And he sat down with a tape recorder and talked with him.
And it's, you know, talk about controversial figures in AA. This is one of them. It's Clarence.
I mean, he had Bill Wilson about as close to a drink as you can get Bill Wilson.
and a lot of times all we hear about is the controversy we don't understand the magnificence
of this man and so i'm going to tell you some clarence stories okay and uh and help you to
understand him a little bit he is um the guy from cleveland who was a very he was a super salesman
but he was out you know a terrible alcoholic and his wife was just going to get rid of him
at all times, and somehow she got him on this one thing, I'm shortening the whole story to the very
end, where a relative of hers was driving a truck to New York City, and she put Clarence in the cab,
and his job was to be the assistant to this guy, because she knew he couldn't drink
while sitting in the cab of the truck, and that was going to keep him sober.
well it didn't keep him sober he just he was able to when the guy would
go off somewhere and have Clarence guard the truck Clarence set up all kinds of little
marketing tricks around the truck and he was getting drinking money and he just he was just
an amazing character but anyways in New York and
ends up calling a friend of his sister's in New York City, trying to get money to go back.
And his wife had heard about Dr. Bob in Akron and the Oxford group. And she told this
sister in New York. And so when Clarence talked to her, she said, well, I want you to talk to
this other doctor here in New York and the doctor turned out to be Leonard Strong who was Bill
Wilson's brother-in-law he was the guy that introduced Bill to John D Rockefeller and started
that whole part of the story so I mean boy you talk about a coincidence that Clarence would be
in New York and end up talking to Bill's brother-in-law way before AA was officially AA
and so they said if you go to Akron and go see this Dr. Bob you can get sober and so Clarence
went all the way back to Cleveland and got the money to go down to Akron he and his wife back
in the Oxford group you went as couples you know what I mean the husband and wife they went to all
the meetings together and so he went down there and he went through the five days of hospitalization
and then he was allowed to go to an Oxford group meeting.
So if you're new, can you imagine if we were still doing this?
We come to your first meeting.
Now you've been through five days of detox in the hospital
and now you're going over to the Williams home in Akron,
which is where they held the meeting, the Oxford group meeting.
And there's the couples all sitting around the living room
and they're having some coffee and little cakes and everything
and we're reading a few things out of the Bible
and finally two other guys stand up
and they grab you like they grab Clarence
and they said come on upstairs with us
and you go upstairs into one of the bedrooms
and then the two of them turn to you
and eyeball to eyeball they go
do you believe in God?
and if you said no then they would say
well, you better change your mind. Okay, I'll change my mind. Good. Then get on your knees.
We're going to pray to get you sober. I don't know. They had some little prayer about getting
sober. And then now you repeat that. And then they repeat, okay, come on downstairs and you're in.
And so then for two weeks, there was only one meeting a week. Clarence would go back to
Akron, and then at the end of two weeks, they told him, the next step for you, now imagine this
today. Now you've got two weeks. You've been to two meetings. The next step for you is to find
another person to get sober and bring him back down here to Akron. So now you're 12-stepping,
and you've been to two meetings. So Clarence went out to find people, and he was looking in the bars
and on Skid Row and all that.
And he actually was quite successful.
And on one occasion, he described in here,
this author wrote in great detail about how he,
because until you brought someone
and that person stayed sober,
you weren't really a member.
You follow what I'm saying?
That was what qualified you as getting in.
You went out and got another drunk and brought him in.
And so he was searching all over the place
and he came upon a guy on Skid Row
who had something you don't see anymore.
Alcoholic paralysis.
Alcoholic paralysis is when you can't move, but you're conscious.
You know what I mean?
You can talk, but you can't move,
which means he couldn't get away from Clarence.
They had to listen to him forever.
So Clarence is going on and on about how you're an alcoholic
like, and you got to get sober, and we're going to do this, and we're going to do that, and the guy
can't move. He's just lying there. Well, Clarence was persuasive enough that the guy finally said,
okay, I'd like to do it, and he said, well, it costs $50 to spend a week in the hospital. Is there
anybody that could give you $50? And he says, I don't have any money, but my mother would do
anything to get me sober. I know she'd give you the $50 if you could go see her. Well, where does
she live well she lives way out in the country and in the farms and everything outside of cleveland
so clarence borrowed a car got the directions from this guy talk about going to any length
drives out the roads end and now he's on trails that the car won't go on and hunting season has
started and people are shooting all around him and he keeps on going he keeps on going he gets
to the farmhouse, knocks on the door, and this grandmotherly lady comes, and he starts explaining
about this guy lying there, and she's looking at him. Turns out she's Polish and doesn't speak one
word of English, but she has a granddaughter who's in the second grade who is learning English,
so they get the granddaughter out. Now, Clarence is explaining to the granddaughter about the guy
and the alcoholic paralysis lying on the skid row in Cleveland.
And she's translating for the grandmother.
And when it gets all through, the grandmother's so happy,
the mother of the guy, and she went and gets the money
and gives it to Clarence, and he comes down and gets him down to Akron.
And after a while, Clarence gets sober, and he is a car salesman.
and he's such a good salesman
they gave him two demos
which is very unusual
anybody's a car salesman
you don't get two demos
very often to take home
and he used those two cars
to bring the Cleveland contingent
down to Akron
to the weekly meeting
there was just one meeting
the rest of the time
they would get together
and have lunch or something
and talk about staying sober
but there was only one meeting
to go to
and this was right at the time
that the big book is coming out. So we're in that transition between the Oxford group meetings and
AA itself, where we are now calling it Alcoholics Anonymous. And one of the things that Clarence
got in such a big controversy over was that he would run around, I mean, even in the 90s before
he died, he would be telling newspapers. He did not believe in anonymity. That was, forget that.
That drove Bill crazy.
So he would tell newspapers that he started AA.
And this is what he was hanging his hat on,
is the story that I'm telling you here.
And that is that the big book has come out,
but they're still meeting in the Oxford groups.
Bill has an alcoholic squad meeting in his house in Brooklyn,
but he hasn't called it AA.
They're still connected to the Oxford group.
See, what happened was the Oxford groups were people who just simply wanted to better their lives
and to contribute more to society.
They weren't people down at Skid Row like us drunks, you know what I mean?
And once in a while, a drunk would get scooped in the net by the wife of somebody,
like Dr. Bob's wife, and she'd go, I'm going to get my husband in here.
You know, she found it for herself.
And she, I'm going to get my husband in here.
So there'd be like one drunk in the middle of all the others.
Well, once one drunk got going, pretty soon the drunks are elbowing everybody else out of the way at the Oxford groups.
They're starting to outnumber.
So the other people are going, hey, this isn't a drunk meeting.
This is a Oxford group meeting.
How are these guys taking over?
You know how we are.
So you could see the split was going to come, and it was going to be mutual at some point,
but it hadn't happened yet. So anyway, of all coincidences, as Clarence is getting guys sober
in Cleveland and driving them down to Akron, 80% of them are Catholics, just by coincidence.
Now, the Catholic guys are suddenly getting sober, and they're going back to their parishes,
and the parish priest is looking at them, and they're wondering what happened, because they're
looking so good. And they're going, Pat, what happened to you? Oh, Father, it's a miracle. I'm
sober. Well, how'd you do it, Pat? I'm attending the Oxford group in Akron. Well, the Oxford group
is not approved by the Catholic Church. That's the wrong version of the Bible. Oh, this was a
big no-no. So now comes the pressure from the parish priests on the drunks to stop going to
the Oxford group. And they start leaning on him. You don't go down there, son. That's a sin to be
going there. Well, he's going. Eventually, they were going to be excommunicated. They kept going
down. So as Clarence saw it, as he's driving in the car, he's going, geez, these guys, they have
to choose between getting drunk or excommunicated, because if they don't keep going there.
So it started occurring to him that he ought to start a little meeting
of just these guys.
We'll do the same thing they're doing there.
We'll have our little praying and our little stuff,
but we won't call it Oxford,
and that way I could save these Catholics.
So he brings the idea to Dr. Bob
because the last guy he took down there
when he was bringing his wife back from the hospital,
he was talking about they need a meeting place in Cleveland.
She said, you can use our house.
So now he has a place for a meeting.
So he announces to Dr. Bob that they're going to start a meeting at this lady's house for the Catholics
because they can't keep going to the Oxford, which means they're going to break away from Oxford.
And Dr. Bob and the Akron guys, no, you can't do that.
You can't do that.
Well, we're starting next week.
And the Akron guys came to Cleveland and tried to stop the meeting, but it took place.
And since the book came out, Clarence called it, the Cleveland group, whatever the name of the street was, of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And he's claiming that up until that moment, there wasn't a group that was called Alcoholics Anonymous.
So he could technically be right.
Well, that went on and remained a controversy forever, you know, because Phil would read in the newspapers,
Clarence Snyder, founder of AA, you know.
But I wanted to read something.
He was the organizer.
He was the first guy to write pamphlets on sponsorship,
first guy to set up an intergroup.
His vision of how AA should have unfolded
was that each major region in the country
set up their own central office.
There was no New York central office.
We'll write our own publications, and we'll do all that.
And California can do it,
and we'll do it in Cleveland and Chicago can do it
and you know what I mean, that that was his vision
and we'll tailor it to the AA in each one of those regions
whereas Bill's vision was we've got to cover the whole world
and we need standardization.
No, no, no, he saw that as Bill Wilson achieving power.
That was the big struggle was who's going to be in charge.
So you can see the growing pains in AA were really something.
So I found in here, and this is what tickled me,
He has written, I'm going to read you just so you can see how to do this.
He wrote a sponsorship pamphlet, and it's kind of long, but let's see.
First you present the plan, then you suggest the steps,
Then you qualify him as an alcoholic, you tell your story, you inspire confidence in AA, talk about the plus values, show the importance of reading the book, qualities required for success in AA, introduce faith, listen to his story, take him to several meetings, explain AA to the prospect's family, and help the prospect anticipate his hospital experience.
because they still had this five-day thing over in Akron with Dr. Bob.
So they would try to encourage the five-day hospital experience
because that seemed to really clinch the deal in terms of these new people.
And then consult with older members in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Then he wrote the hospital rules.
And he consulted with sanitarians and hospitals,
and then he would hand these out to the hospitals and to the AA group.
These are the rules, and this was the one that I really got a kick out of.
Definition of retrovert or slipper.
This is 1944.
A man or woman who has been sponsored and has attended at least one AA meeting
and then takes a drink is considered a retrovert or slipper.
rules governing retroverts
when a retro
we even have a little
shortened of retrovert
when a retro is placed
in a hospital
the procedure followed
shall be the same
as that for the new patients
however
retroverts may not be placed
in a hospital
unless arrangements can be made for their complete isolation from the other new patients.
Except for visitation by sponsor,
retroverts will be left completely alone for two days and two nights.
So aren't you glad we got rid of the retrovert provisions?
One other story that came out of that time frame was,
and it involved going down to Dr. Bob's,
The hospital was another anonymity break.
You see, Clarence, remember, if you read the A.A. history,
it talks about the Cleveland Plain Dealer stories.
They were the first newspaper stories about A.A.
Well, that was Clarence.
He got a newspaper guy sober, and then he just worked on him.
Part of your recovery is writing about A.A. and the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
And so he practically fed the whole story in there,
and that brought a lot of calls in.
It brought a lot of calls.
And then he had a minister who gave a sermon on AA, which Clarence wrote.
And then Clarence's wife called the newspaper to go attend the sermon,
and then the newspaper picked up the sermon and put it in the paper.
And that led to lots of calls coming in from people who wanted to get sober.
And the Liberty Magazine article is one of the main ones that you hear in the AA history
that got the first burst of calls before the Saturday Evening Post story came out.
But there was another story that came out right at the Liberty Magazine time,
and that was about the baseball player.
Anybody remember Bob Feller for the Cleveland Indians?
He was a pretty famous pitcher.
If you're old like I am, you remember he was the man.
And he had a catcher named Raleigh Helmsley who was an all-star player also.
Also an alcoholic.
Bad, bad alcoholic.
And when you go and you see the archives at the conventions,
they generally have something on Raleigh H. in there, the baseball player.
But they don't have the full story.
Anyway, the manager would give anything if he could get him sober
because he was that good, and his drinking was starting to really hurt his playing.
And someone told the manager about the Oxford group,
And they said, there are drunks getting sober in the Oxford group.
So he looked up Oxford group in Cleveland and found a listing, and it was down in Akron.
And he called them up and he said, how much would you charge to get a person sober?
And they said, we'll get them sober for nothing.
Just has to join our Oxford group.
Well, how did we do that?
Well, you go to the hospital for five days.
that was the standard procedure
you just had to do that