Step 12 as the Drunk Squad of the Oxford Group – Sandy B.

to a depth he had never been able to do before, that he had a spiritual experience and he recovered from alcoholism too. Now this seemed to prove that one alcoholic could affect another as no non-alcoholic could. Through the sharing of our story with a new person, we can affect them as no not-alcoolic could because we have immediate identification about the physical allergy, about the obsession of the mind, about the way we think and the things that we do. It also indicated that strenuous work, one alcoholic with another, was vital to permanent recovery. Remember, Bill was about to get drunk, and he really didn't go see Dr. Bob to sober up Dr. Bobby. He went to see Dr., Bob, to keep Bill Wilson from drinking. So it proved that night that working with another alcoholic was vital for our own recovery too. now immediately one of the Oxford group tenants was you got to give it away if you're going to keep it so immediately they made a decision we're going to have to find us another alcoholic to talk to Dr. Bob called the Akron City Hospital where he was actually working at that time talked to the head nurse and said do you have an alcoholic down there that we can come and talk to we believe we found a way to help them overcome alcoholism And she said, oh yeah. Said, we've got a real one down here. Said he's just blacked both eyes and one of the nurses. Said we got him tied down in bed. And Dr. Bob said put him in a private room. We'll be down in the morning to see him. And she says, okay. And by the way, Dr. Bob, have you tried this on yourself? So the next morning they go down to see this fellow. He's named Bill Dotson. And you see the picture in AA rooms all over the world of the man on the bed. And this is Bill and Bob sitting there talking to Bill Dotson. Now, they didn't talk to Bill Dodson about Bill DodSON's drinking. They talked to him about their own drinking. And through the sharing of their stories, Bill Dodсон could immediately see what his problem was. You see, he had never known about the allergy and the obsession of the mind. He could accept the fact that he was absolutely powerless over alcohol, and he would have to have the aid of a power greater than himself in order to recover. They began to talk to him about the need for the spiritual experience, how they had found that necessary to apply those things in their lives in order to recover, they told him how they applied the little program of action and the results that they got. Two days later Bill Dotson said to his wife, get my clothes out of the closet, I'm going home. And he gets up and he dresses and he goes home and he starts applying the program of action. And lo and behold, he had a vital spiritual experience and he recovered from alcoholism also. Now this makes three of them. In the summer of 1935 in Akron, they all three know the problem. They all three knows the solution. They've all three applied the program of action, they've had a spiritual experience and they have recovered from alcoholism so this work continued this work at Akron continued through the summer of 1935 there were many failures but there was an occasional heartening success you know we always give credit to Bill and Bob in the first 100 which rightly we should but if we would go back and think about that summer of 1935 these guys really had much idea about what they were doing they had found a few simple things that had worked for them and they would try this on many many different people that summer and if it worked then they would keep it and if something didn't work they might discard that learning as they went through that summer working with people I know one of Dr. Bob's favorite things was to fill them up with sour kraut juice mixed with honey he knew that there was vitamins in that sauerkraut juice that would help the body and of course the honey was a form of energy and they tried that amongst many different things and every once in a while one of these guys would fall over dead and I can almost see Bill turn to Bob and say oh shit let's don't do that again I think maybe we ought to give credit to those they failed with that summer too they probably learned more from their failures than they did from their successes this. He said, when the broker returned to New York in the fall of 1935, the first AA group had actually been formed, though no one realized it at the time. You know, this little group of alcoholics that was going to the Oxford group, you know, they were having troubles with the Oxford group because the Oxford groups had four absolutes and the drunks were having trouble being absolutely anything, as we well know. They couldn't practice that. And it seemed like that these drunks like to stand off in a corner someplace and drink coffee and smoke cigarettes and tell stories, not necessarily mix in with the other Oxford group meeting members. So they begin to call them the drunk squad or the Oxford groups. And that's what they like, to separate themselves from the normal Oxford group members. The book says a second small group had promptly taken shape at New York. When Bill went back to New York City, he began to apply there what he had learned in Akron. Instead of talking about spirituality, he talked to the new people there about the exact nature of the illness and sure enough he got their attention. Some of them began to respond and a second little group started in New York City and besides there were scattered alcoholics who'd picked up the basic ideas in Akran or New York and were trying to form AA groups in other cities. By late 1937, the number of members having substantial sobriety time behind them was sufficient to convince the membership that a new light had entered the dark world of the alcoholic. In the summer of 1937 Bill was back in Akron again on a business venture and he decided to go by and see Dr. Bob and see how things were going in Akran. And they sat down in Dr. Bob's Kitchen and they counted the number of people they knew that were staying sober based on these three little pieces of information. And they found approximately 40 people sober. And I think this is the first time that they really begin to realize maybe we really have found the answer to this thing called alcoholism. And if we've found the answer, then we need to get it to as many alcoholics as we possibly can. So the question immediately becomes well what's the best way to do that and maybe this is the beginning of the group conscience because bill and bob decided they didn't want to make that decision themselves it was too important and they called a meeting of the oxford group there in akron and at that meeting that night there was 18 people there some alcoholic some non-alcoholic and the topic of conversation was, how can we best carry this message of recovery to the greatest number of people? Now they decided that night to do three things. In those days you could hardly get an alcoholic in a hospital for detoxification. Any doctor that put one in there had to lie about their condition. Alcoholism wasn't very popular in the 1930s, that's for sure. So they decided, now remember this is in the midst of the depression now in 1932. Nobody has a dime, hardly at all. And they decided what they needed to do was to build a chain of hospitals stretching all the way across the United States where any alcoholic that needed it would be able to have detoxification. I would assume Dr. Bob was going to be the head doctor. They also felt that this little message of recovery they had was so vital that not everybody could be entrusted with carrying it correctly. So they decided they needed to hire a group of individuals, train them and then let them spread out across the United States more or less as missionaries to carry this message of recovery. I would assume Bill Wilson was going to be the head missionary too. Then they said, you know, the Oxford groups have written a lot of books, spiritual in nature and they've been very popular back in the 1930s people read a lot of books this was in the days before television there really was a time before television believe me there was and they felt that if they could come up with a book on alcoholism what it is and the solution to it and and a way to bring that about the first comprehensive book on alcoholism the world had ever seen, that then surely this book would become one of the world's greatest bestsellers and they can take the profits from the book and build the hospitals and train the missionaries. That was one reason behind the book. But I think the main reason behind the books was that they had already noticed carrying this message one-on-one, one person to another that it already had begun to be changed and you know how people are when we hear something good well we like to repeat it but we'll usually add just a little bit to it and then the next one will add a little more and a littlemore and after a while it doesn't resemble the first thing and they said what we really need to do is take these three pieces of information about the problem the solution and a program of action, put it down in their written form where it will no longer be changed, no longer be garbled. And any alcoholic anywhere in the world in the future would have this same information and it would be pure. And they made the decision that night to write the big book Alcoholics Anonymous. Now thank God only one of the three things they decided that night came true. They never did get to build the hospitals because the book didn't make very much money in the beginning. They didn't get to hire and train the missionaries, but they did get to write the book. So this determination bore fruit in the spring of 1939 by the publication of this volume. The membership had then reached about 100 men and women. And after they wrote the book, they sat down one night at a meeting and they were trying to determine what they were going to call the book and they needed a title for the book and someone said, well, let's call it The Way Out. That sounds like a pretty good name for a book. They did some research on that some later, and they found out there were some 10 or 12 other books called The Way Out, so they discarded that. Somebody else suggested, well, let's call it Comes the Dawn. Now, that sounds like pretty good title for abook. And they discussed that a while and kicked that around and decided not to do that. Somebody said, let'S call it A Hundred Men. Now,that really sounds likea good name ofabook. Well,thenawomanjoinedagroup. Well,theycouldntcallitahundredmenandawoman. So they discarded that idea. Bill suggested that, hey, let's call it the Bill W. Movement. They discussed that about five minutes and kicked that out. And then one evening someone suggested that we're alcoholics and we want to remain anonymous. How about Anonymous Alcoholics? Alcoholics Anonymous, that caught on. So that's what they called the book, AlcoholicsAnonymous. And the first Alcoholics Анonymous that the world has ever seen was a book called Alcoholics Anonymous. And it says here, this fledgling society, this drunk squad of the Oxford group, which had been nameless now, began to be called Alcoholic Anonymous from the title of its own book. So we have two AlcoholicsAnonymouses, don't we? We have a book entitled AlcoholicsAnalymous and then we have a fellowship entitled AlcoholicAnonymous. Two AAs, and we still have that today. Yeah, I think this is very important for us to think about this group of people who had been nameless or had been known as the drunk squad of the oxford groups wrote a book and in that book they put their program of recovery and they called the book alcoholics anonymous then after the book was published they then decided to call themselves was Alcoholics Anonymous. Now in 1939, the program in the book Alcoholics Anonymous and the program in the fellowship AlcoholicsAnonymous were exactly the same. The book then began to go out across the United States. And the first person out here in California got a copy of this book. Read it, studied it, did what it said, recovered from alcoholism, started a group called Alcoholics Anonymous. The first person in Arkansas got a copy of this book, read it, studied it, did what it said, recovered, started a group called Alcoholic Anonymous Now the growth of the fellowship began to come from the book Alcoholics Anonymous Now as the fellowship began to grow and get bigger and bigger they began to notice something that the first 100 didn't have they begin to notice the great power of a fellowship of people who have escaped from a common problem now the first 100 didn't have that they only had 100 people period but the fellowship as it grew and got bigger and bigger and better and they began to experience the power of fellowship they then begin to question the need for the severity of the program in the book and they said do you mean we really have to turn all of our will and our life over to the care of God as we understand him can we give him the drinking and keep the rest do you means we're going to have to share all of our life story with another human being hell God already knows about it we know about it. Why tell somebody else? They begin to say, you mean we have to have God remove all of our character defects? Hell, we won't have any personality left if he does. And they begin to talk about, do you mean мы have to make amends to all those people we've harmed? And they began to say such things as, well, maybe we don't need to do every bit of that. Maybe we could take some of it and leave some of it. Maybe we can do it cafeteria style. Pick what we want and leave that that we don't want. And then along about that time came the great advent of the treatment centers. Now, please don't get us wrong. We have nothing against the treatment center. They serve a worthwhile purpose. But in the treatment centers, people begin to hear some other type of words in some other languages. They begin to go into a group therapy thing and they begin to sit around the tables and talk about their problems and they begin to develop such terms as the dysfunctional family and they began to use such words as chemical dependency and they begun to talk about significant others and they They begin to discuss meaningful relationships. And they begin to talk about dysfunctional sex. And they began to talk about this and they began to talk abut that. And the program in a treatment center wasn't like the program in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Well, naturally the new people from the treatment centers coming into AA wanted to talk about what they knew to talk about is what they had learned in other places. And slowly, slowly, slowly, the program and the fellowship began to change. And as the years went by, it began to change more and more and they began to talk about significant others. And they began to discuss meaningful relationships. And then begin to talk about dysfunctional sex. And to begin to talk about this and they begin to talk about that. And the program in a treatment center wasn't like the program in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Well, naturally, the new people from the treatment centers coming into AA wanted to talk about what they knew to talk about is what they had learned in other places. And slowly, slowly, slowly, the program and the fellowship began to change. And as the years went by, it began to changed more and more and more. We like to refer to those meetings as group depression meetings. you go in there feeling pretty good halfway through the meeting you might as well just go ahead and blow your brains out hell it's not even worth living any longer so what we're going to talk about this weekend is not the program and the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous today we're gonna talk about the program and the book AlcoholicsAnonymous that the first 100 used which has never been changed Thanks for watching.