Step 3 and the Word of Higher Power That Keeps Changing – Don G.

Good evening everyone. My name is Don Gates, an alcoholic. I don't believe I've ever begun an address with any more trepidation than I do tonight. I've never been nervous speaking in AA. I mean, when you're addressing a group of people lucky to be out of an institution, your ego shouldn't really rise too high. But I have been extraordinarily impressed with the way this convention has been run right from the beginning. I think it's been a great experience. The way they treated the speakers, the hotel itself is nice. We have That isn't always the case. My wife and I were up in Lethbridge, Canada a while back and they showed us to our room and Tanya said that if she had ever awakened in a place like that when she was drinking she would have quit earlier. But I couldn't imagine why they would ask and old fool like me to be a speaker here. You know, I said, what is it they want from me? And my wife said, well, they just want you to be the man they've always known, cranky, arrogant, hostile, sarcastic. Just be yourself. And that's not easy since I've retired. I have become very gentle and sweet. it used to be that I would say something cruel about everyone who participated in the program and if they were left out you know they felt offended you didn't attack me what's the matter didn't like my talk you know but I don't believe I've ever said anything that was hostile or cruel to anyone that I didn't Like I mean if I get mad at somebody I cut them out of I talk. And as far as age goes, that is just something I can't do anything about. One of the curses, as it were, of the program is that if you work this program, you're going to grow older. You can avoid it by continuing to drink and use, but it isn't so bad, really, aging tanya mentioned that we're over in england a while back they still i don't know whether it's done here in this country anymore but they still had a part of town where there were people with the guys you know their heads shaved and these mohawks red green yellow i mean incredible and there was an older fellow standing there looking at them and finally one of the kids turned to him said what's the matter pop you never done anything wild and the old guy just kind of smiled said yeah actually i did once i had sex with a parrot and i was wondering if you might be my son. But not to get too serious, actually I I saw some young people around here, too. You know, youth is a fascinating thing. They must do something to rebel against their parents. We all did it. And yet, on the other hand, they must be wearing a uniform, as it were. They must all look alike. And they're into that Charlie Chaplin baggy look now, you know, where they're walking on their pants and so on. And I like that, but this self-mutilation that seems to be going on. You know, they've got holes stuck here and there and everywhere, and it's frightening. I think, my God, a person who would do that to himself, what might not they do to a stranger? But the convention itself, apart from doing a wonderful job of it, We got in a little bit late to the flag ceremony, and that was the most astonishing thing I think I have ever seen in Alcoholics Anonymous. The wild exuberance... You know, it was done so systematically that if it hadn't have looked and appeared to be spontaneous, I would have thought Clancy organized it. You know, I hadn't seen anything that dramatic since those 1936 movies of the Nuremberg Parade, you know, when the Nazis used to walk in with the... But we got in a little bit late, and so we were seated behind the people with the pennants and the flags, the first speaker, Diana, said that their eyes were impressive. Well, we couldn't see their eyes, but if their eyes weren't, they were gyrating like their rears. They'd have been picked up if they were out on the street. They're on meth, obviously. It was incredible. I guess I should say something about the speakers if I'm going to get them justice. Diana, if you haven't heard her talk, it was... Well, somebody down here, I just heard him make a remark about it. You, sir, look up. Yeah. He was impressed, as was I, about the angels flying around the room and angel dust falling on you. I have not been aware of that, but I have had vomit on my shoes. When it comes to working the program, I actually enjoyed her talk very much until she got to the point where she said God gave her a call to become an attorney. Well, I didn't convert to my atheism, but there was a brief moment of agnosticism, I'll tell you. Because my lovely wife, Tanya, here, she's an attorney too. She resumed her law school after we were married and passed the bar. And I had the honor of swearing her in as an attorney. And I really looked forward to it because that night when I took her to bed, I had always wanted to do that to a lawyer. I may never get to do it again. but uh we've been married in about 19 years now and i've been on a 19 year lucky streak really it has been a wonderful thing she has 31 years of sobriety isn't that hard to believe. I don't think she drank. Her mother did. She came in as a fetus, you know, but that isn't true because I actually saw her at one of her very first meetings. This was, oh, well, almost, well, 31 years ago, I guess. But that was the age of the miniskirts. And here was this young teeny bopper sitting in the front row while I was speaking in her miniskirt. And I had a view of AA I had never had before. Who else did I hear speak? Oh, last night there was a Sterling talk. And Sterling talked about quoting the scriptures and causing confusion among the elders. I used to do that. You know, I used to read the scriptures. No one else used to read them really except Chuck Chamberlain an atheist. And I didn't read them for a source of inspiration or help. I read them in order to have material with which to flagellate the Christians in those barroom discussions. But I found out after a time you didn't need to read the Bible in order to quote it, as did he. No one else reads it. You just make it up. You know, I would walk into a bar and sit down beside some young lady and say, blessed is she who welcomed the stranger unto her bed. Deuteronomy 9.17. what what does she know deuteronomy 9 17 but you've already got a spiritual leg up as it were the but i've had to cut that out here because as i mentioned before i don't think i've ever intentionally said anything cruel or offensive about anyone but no matter what you say you're going to offend someone. It is simply impossible not to. One time I was talking and marveling at the fact that as far as I know, we are about the only spiritual organization that isn't killing each other. You know, you look at Ireland and the different branches of the Protestants and the Catholics killing each other in India with the Sikhs and the Hindus and the Muslims slaughtering each other and i was sometime back when i was doing this bit i mentioned how about poor bleeding beirut you know with its many factions and sects that were blowing each other to pieces guy came up afterwards and said what do you got against us lebanese we got as much right to be here as you have i hadn't said anything about that so you're going to a friend's another time I think I was talking about how our country is in a state of flux. The ladies are finally beginning to demand equality, and the gays are asking for their rights and so on. Afterwards, a guy came up and said, What you got against faggots, huh? What's wrong? We can come in here too. I hadn't meant that. In fact, I sponsored the first openly gay guy in Los Angeles many years ago and made him the secretary of a meeting. There were always gays in AA, of course, but none of them had ever been out in the open, even the ones who wrote the pamphlets. But he did, and we made him a secretary, and one night he mentioned that he was gay. You know, and the floor didn't open, he didn't drop through purgatory, or the sky didn't crack. And then once that had been done, he set out and he started to drag them in out of the bars and the baths, ready or not, alcoholic or not. You know, and Hollywood just exploded. And now I can speak in some of those meetings in Hollywood where there's five, six hundred people. And I tell them, you are all my descendants. And they're great groups too. I, wherever you speak, you try in some way to get across a message that being sober is not so bad. You know, ours is not an intellectual problem. We're not trying to convey information. We're trying to get, get across an emotion that people can identify and say, you know what? Not so bad being sober, crazy guy. And so if I'm speaking out in the San Gabriel Valley, I try to identify, and I may work in the word manure fork or something like that. So they'll say, oh, he's a country boy, and talk kind of big, but he's country boy. When I'm speaking in the Palisades, I'll say that Alcoholics Anonymous is essentially an aleo-masonary organization, and our traditions are our 12 incorporeal hereditaments. They have no idea what you're saying, but there is a group of people that think if you don't understand something, it must be profound. And I think I was speaking to a large gay group one time and my wife and I had been in the run for gay pride that morning. We were into our running mode at that time. And we had, I had a singlet that was the most exquisitely sexy thing I've ever seen. It was chartreuse, I think, and pink and orange and red and so on. And I put it on with a white shirt over it. And during the course of my talk, like Superman, I ripped off my white shirt and stood there in my Run for Gay Pride singlet, the closest I ever came to a standing ovation in a regular AA meeting. I mean, it was beautiful. Let's There must be somebody else I haven't gotten around to here. I didn't make the STEP study meetings, but I'm certain that their message was the same as Dr. Bob's. Keep it simple. My mentor, Chuck Chamberlain, you know, used to say that our steps are not to be studied, analyzed, talked about. they're to be took and what we should do is took them and i i found that that's true you know alcoholism to me is the simplest disorder ever to have afflicted mankind i now believe when i came around i thought it was a strange mysterious malady for which science not only had no cure they didn't even have an adequate definition and now it seems to me an extraordinarily simple disorder. I mean, alcoholism. The very name gives you a marked clue as to what the problem is. In fact, so marked that if you didn't... Well, if you weren't handicapped with a degree in psychology and someone were to say to you, what do you think causes alcoholism? I warrant you would come up with the correct response instantly. Alcohol? Alcohol had never been invented. There wouldn't be any of us so classified on the face of the earth. As far as I know, we have no different emotions than other people. I've never known an alcoholic to suffer from an emotion that non-alcoholics don't. But we do have a difference, and it is a physical difference. And if alcoholism is simple, I think our steps are just as simple. I sometimes think, you know, my son, of my children, And those whose lives I ruined by my drinking, they went to the right colleges, married the right people, never had a bit of trouble in their life. They're out picketing adult children of alcoholic meetings. They've done all the right things. On the other hand, I have one son who never saw me take a drink, came along late in life. And I just talked to him today. He's got 10 years on the program. I kept waiting for the others to fall so I could help them, and they wouldn't out of sheer spite. But I told them, you know, I said, you've got ten years now. You've been sober three times as long as Bill was when he wrote the book. Now most of us wouldn't pay any attention to what a guy with that little sobriety thinks about anything. But you've Got Three Times What Bill Had, and he said that we know only a little. God is going to reveal more, so then I'm going to expect you to start revealing some more here. i don't think if bill had any idea that we were going to study him and parse his words when he was paraphrasing the oxford movement and bill james in order to make money writing a book to get lois out of the department store i don t think you'd have had the courage to do it you know because our program it is i found nothing unique in our program in the sense of what is the foundation for honesty You know, that isn't a unique thought. Down at Chino Prison, there's a scroll work over one of the gates that says, The truth shall set ye free. When I have spoken there, I have pointed out that means ultimately. No, not immediately. Not immediately. The idea of living a day at a time, isn't there something in one of our books about sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof? or our poets one of my favorites bobby burns you know and that to a mouse that we hear quoted you know the fellow plowing the field and he rips up a little mouse's furrow at the mouth through when he many a weary nibble had prepared for the winter now he's out there in the cold we slick it cower in timorous beastie you know, and he says to him those lines that we always hear about but mousy thou art no thy lane and proving foresight may be vain the best laid schemes of mice and men gang off to glory and leave us not but grief and pain for promised joy well but it's the part that follows that that is part for my bit the program what he said was but mousey blessed thou art compared with me the present only bothers thee while ooch I backward cast my eye on prospects drear and forward, though I cannot see, I look and fear. In other words, society has always recommended, every saint, sage, elder of the village who ever thought about how to live has recommended exactly what it is that we do. The only difference between us and the others who've heard the message is we have to do it. Not that we want to. we're just like the non-alcoholic we're not going to give up a lifetime of failure without a struggle we wouldn't cross the street if we thought it would make us feel better I'll stay right here I can take it as long as you can, you bitch but we have to do it the non alcoholic doesn't all they get is locked jaw ulcers and live lives of quiet desperation nothing significant happens to them they've never been arrested no one's ever been arrested for driving while pissed off you don't get booked for being a common mope whining and disorderly we have to do it frightening as it is we have the right we have live in a way that will guarantee in large measure happiness and we don't do it at least I didn't do because I had any choice i why there was one other person i left out i guess a while back when i was on with the court i got a an envelope letter addressed to me through the court and opened it up and then it was a five dollar bill and it said don here's the five dollars i borrowed from you in 1944 when we were in pre-flight training in amarillo texas this was almost 50 years ago 50 i mean half a century a quarter of this nation's history and here's a guy sending me a five dollar build i didn't remember ever giving him a a five dollar bill, but I knew something. I knew he was in AA. He was making amends. And I knew that he had been to one of Vince and Pat's discussion meetings because there There is no interest. I should say something about alcohol, I suppose, since we're gathered for that purpose. And I have been naturally—you know, it doesn't matter how many insights you give, many glittering jewels you assemble all the people remember is some story where you've made a boobie yourself and those of us who have spoken a bit more than is good for more mortals we become identified with it and so naturally a number of people who said the committee people who talked about how the room was going to be paid for they have asked that I tell this one incident and so I shall I usually preface it by indicating that until this moment though I had been an alcoholic since I began drinking you know sometimes people ask why did you begin drinking I remember why I began drinking someone offered me a drink and when you're a teenager you must be in rebellion you must do whatever the big grown-up people do that's why we start that's why we started smoking you know no one ever asked the smoker the same thing they ask the alcoholic I smoked for 35 years which is strange when you think about it. I come from the backwoods of Oregon where we used to shoot deer and hang the venison in the smoke shed behind the house. So I know what smoke does to raw meat, but for 35 years I made long jerky. But no one ever said to me, Don, why did you start smoking? Was it lack of self-esteem was it traumatic bowel training are you the adult child of smoking parents you know why I started smoking when you're 14 or 15 and you want to look grown up you want a lot macho smoke and if you want to know why look at any when I grew up look at an emotion picture made in the 30s and 40s. Everybody smoked. I mean everybody. I remember Paul Onreid, he lit two at once, gave one to a lady, and got laid just like that. Betty Davis, I think. You asked me why I started smoking. They don't ask smokers the dumb questions they ask alcoholics. Why just stop drinking you know or they don't say the things during all the years that i smoked no one ever said to me don what are you doing it's 10 in the morning you're already smoking do you take a smoke when you get out of bed in the morning you smoke when you're alone see because nine people out of ten are not going to be alcoholics try as they will but everybody who smokes more than a few weeks is going to be hooked and smoke until he quits or dies so we're presented with those dumb questions and i i had been an alcoholic from the time i started drinking i remember my very first night's drinking we sent the eldest into a bar i mean into a liquor store and he came out with a probably not more than the pint doesn't take much when you're young but a pint of 10 high now you never felt cheated when you drank 10 high You know, it ripped and tore. God! It cleared the larynx, you know, it hit your stomach with a nauseating splash that just made you shudder involuntarily, like a dog or like a man leaving the urinal, you know that ooh or twitch that you get. Got it vile. But I gagged it down because I was a man. but by the time the bottle came back it had performed its magic. It had done what alcohol does to the alcoholic and they had to tear it out of my hand. And I had all of the full-blown symptoms of drunkenness that night. I got drunk, got into a fight, went to a dance even though I couldn't dance, vomited on myself or at somebody did. And I woke up the next morning thinking, oh, this is that philosopher's stone that is going to turn this evil leaden life to gold. I couldn't wait to do it again. But despite this, I was always, until this incident, able to explain the things that happened to me by looking at whoever i was involved with it is almost impossible to get into an anti-social situation to come into conflict with society without another member of society being involved in other words if he hadn't made a left turn i wouldn't have hit him which is true but if i hadn't been an unguided missile coming down the street I might have seen he was making the left turn a block earlier but I could rationalize it until this particular incident which I am going to describe I might add by the way that I drank almost exclusively to relax and on this occasion, I'd been relaxed maybe a week. And I awoke from a fitful tormented sleep. There had been visions of Dante's Inferno. I could smell the fire brimstone. Imps were poking at me and I staggered to my feet. And indeed, I was actually drenched with perspiration. and I thought what's wrong it even occurred to me alcohol might play a role but I quickly saw that that wasn't the case because I looked about the room and I saw that I was in the front room my family having retired wherever it was they used to go at night and I apparently had passed I nodded off on a couch because from this couch there was a little hole that emanated a spire of smoke and so i knew what had happened i had i had knotted off with a cigarette either in my hand or mouth and it had fallen onto this covering that isn't on a couch and burnt through into the matting into the tacking we're lacking enough oxygen to take flame the coals had gradually spread over the course of the night and so so I knew there was nothing wrong with my drinking. I'd simply been barbecued. So commending myself for my perspicacity, I went into the kitchen, got a pitcher of water, came back and tried to pour it into that little hole. Produced a rather spectacular cascade on the carpet, but nothing more. And so I new more dramatic measures were required. I went in the kitchen and got a butcher knife, came back, and slashed the couch open from one end to the other, opened it up, exposing the embers and then was able to subdue them with the cooling balm of the water now that too has been 50 years ago a quarter of the nation's history and yet I can still remember standing there looking down at that slashed and sodden mass and knowing almost to a certainty my wife was going to notice it she was a very keen-eyed woman There was a little that passed her kin around that house, I'll tell you. And though it was pre-Alanon, she nonetheless was a good woman who would never say anything to attack the head of the household, emasculate her husband through caustic commentary. But there were times of stress when she would say things to me that were unkind, cruel even. And she might say, you drunken son of a bitch, you did it again, didn't you? This would inevitably, when she had relaxed, make her suffer from guilt at having spoken in this way to her husband. She had terrible remorse and I wanted to spare her this. but i didn't know what to do until it dawned on me it's simple get it out of the house you know she might vaguely remember there'd been something on that side of the room you know but out of sight out of mind the only thing is it isn't easy to be moving a bed couch when you should be checking into a sanitarium. But with that Herculean strength that comes only to the youthful panic-stricken alcoholic, I managed to heft that brute onto my shoulder and lurch out the front door. At that time we were living on the second floor of an apartment that had a very small little balcony. It had columns. I remember I virtually beat myself to death, caroming off the post, you know, trying to make a turn. But eventually I succeeded and when I descended into the patio, I saw indeed like Bobby Burns' mouse, foresight had not been my long suit. There is virtually no place to conceal a couch in a typical apartment patio. So I'm standing there, legs trembling. I should be in a hospital but i'm moving furniture and i remember the creek about five miles away so i staggered and lurched to my car and i hefted that monstrous brute up on top of it and got in to drive to my selected place of repose now all i have ever wanted in life was dignity See, I have not caviled a disaster when I could face it with dignity. But by this time, it was daylight, the sun was out, there were people standing at the bus stops with lunch pail briefcases, and as I drove down the street, I noticed that their heads turned, followed my progress, eyes wide, jaws agape. Thank you. publishing this volume. So in two years later, the book was published. The membership had reached 100 men and women at a time when it was 40 people. At the time this book was published, there was 100 people in the fellowship. The fledgling society had been nameless. Now it began to be called Alcoholics Anonymous from the title of its own book. And this is what's a little, you know, tricky to us. Today we talk about Alcoholics Anonymous and we say Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women and we hear our preamble. That might be true. But originally AlcoholicsAnonymous, the first thing on the face of this earth named AlcoholicsAnenomous was this book. This book was named Alcoholics Anenomious. there was a nameless bunch of people they didn't have a name most of them considered themselves members of the Oxford groups until the group in New York was the first group to pull away from the Oxford group and actually the Akron group pulled away way much later but you know these people were Oxford group members are, they call themselves the drunk squads of the Oxford groups. There was a lot of non-alcoholic people mostly in the Oxford group and they weren't too crazy about the drunks. You know how drunks do, they burn holes in your flow and drop cigarette butts and do stuff. And some of the drucks didn't like some ofthe Oxford group so we finally pulled away from those people. But we didn't have a name. Now, once we wrote our book, we called the book Alcoholics Anonymous. There were a lot of different names came up in arguments about what to call the book. Some people wanted to call it The Way Out, and once Bill wanted to call it the B.O.W. Movement. So we had a lot, but they finally decided to call the book We Are Alcoholics and We Want to Remain Anonymous, therefore the book was entitled Alcoholics Anecdotes. So the 100 people put their program in a book, and they called the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Now once the book, AlcoholicsAnonymous, was published, then these nameless people took their name off the book and called themselves AlcoholicsAnalymous. So there are really two Alcoholics Analymus. One is a fellowship, and one is a book that contains a program of recovery. Now, in 1939, in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, in the fellowship, they practiced a program in this book. The program in the book was the same as the program in the fellowship. This was their program. But over the years, now, the program in the books has not been changed. Nothing in thebook has been changed since it was published in 1939. nine. But, you know, the program in the fellowship in our meetings has constantly changed as people erode it, bringing in new things, new ideas. You know how we humans change things with time. So we're not going to be talking about the program and the fellowship this weekend. We're going to talk about the problem in the book, the original problem of alcoholics And I challenge myself and in my group the same way with every individual I talk to in Alcoholics Anonymous. I think it's very, very essential. I like to go back to my group and listen at my meetings and see how far we have gotten away from what really created our fellowship because it was this book that created the fellowship. you know there's a book was sold it went across the world Bruce began to form because of the program in the book and so this is what we'll be talking about this weekend not the program in the fellowship but the program in The Book Alcoholics Anonymous our original program in 1939 you know originally back in 1939 whenever they met together in groups they would talk about recovery from alcoholism and how do you apply these steps in your life in order to be able to recover. And then slowly, slowly, over a period of time as the fellowship got bigger and bigger and people began to find out that maybe they could stay sober without having to do all the things that the program required. And they begin to develop such sayings as all you have to do is come to meetings and you'll be okay. And they begin to say, you can treat it like a cafeteria, take what you want, leave what you wants, and everything will be all right. And then some years later, probably due to treatment center influence, they begin to say if you go to 90 meetings in 90 days, everything will be okay, and then we had one in the States that almost killed me. It said if you come long enough, you'll soak it up by osmosis and you will be all right, and I damn near died trying to do that. Those of you who heard me talk last night realize that's what happened to me. And today in so many of the meetings we talk about everything except the steps in recovery from alcoholism. We talk about chemical dependency and we talk about sexual dysfunction and we talked about significant others and we talk about meaningful relationships, and we talk about what our therapists have to say and what our therapist is going to say. And we call those group depression meetings. You know, you go in there feeling good, and halfway through the meeting, hell, you might as well just commit suicide. There's no sensing going on. And what we're really going to try to do this weekend is talk about the unchanged program in the big book rather than the changed program in the fellowship. On Roman numeral 20, it tells us how effective this program used to be back in the days when everybody talked program. At the top of the page, it says public acceptance of AA grew by leaps and bounds. For this, there were two principal reasons. The large numbers of recoveries and reunited homes. These made their impressions everywhere. Of alcoholics who came to AA and really tried, 50% got sober at once and remained that way, 25% sobered up after some relapses, and among the remainder, those who stayed on with AA showed improvement. Now it's quite easy to see that back in the late 1930s and early 1940s, When the program in the fellowship and the program in the book was the same, at least 75% of the people who came to AA and really tried the program recovered from alcoholism. I wonder what our recovery rate is today. I don't know what it is here, but in the States it's certainly not 75%. It's probably not 50%. It's very doubtful if it's 25%. It's probably 10% or less, because people are coming to the fellowship today, treating it as a social activity and really doing nothing about working a program. And they find there's enough power within the fellowship to help them stay sober for a period of time. But then after a while, they go back to drinking and they say, well, AA doesn't work for me. And I think what really happened is that they didn't do the work required in the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Therefore, even though they were staying sober, they were doing nothing about recovery. And our book will deal all the way through about this thing called recovery, recovering from a hopeless condition of the mind and of the body Finding a way to live where not only can we be sober, but we can be peaceful and happy and free. And if we're that way, then we don't have to go back to drinking. And I think today if we could get our fellowship back into the basic program, I think we'd see that recovery rate shoot up, not maybe to 75 percent, but surely much better than it is today. Joe? Okay. We need to tell you now, you were given a booklet when you registered and came in. And in that booklet, you're going to find a series of pictures. And each time we put a picture up here on the screen, you'll have a picture in your booklet to match it. And I think they're numbered. And the first one we're going look at is called The Big Book Goals. Now that we know a little something about the history of the book, let's begin to look at the layout of it. Okay, as we look at the goals, throughout the book and where the word goals come from, we see the book speaks of purposes. What is the purpose of the book? The book has certain purposes. We will interpret those purposes as goals. the simplicity of the big book, I think probably the thing that really has most of this is the simplicity of the whole thing. As we look at the problem of alcoholism, this book is laid out on what we can, is on the basic ways of problem solving. You know, there are a lot of problems in human life. You getting that, Charles? There are a lot of problem in life. In fact, you know, this is what it's all about. Successful living is solving. That's as far as you can go. Solving problems. And we're looking at the problem of alcoholism. Now, there are many different problems in our lives, but there is one simple procedure that will apply to all problems. It don't make any difference whether it's your marriage, your finance, your roof, or money. If we have a problem, there is a procedure of solving the problem, and it applies to all problems. Now, the first step in solving a problem is to find out what is the problem. You know, it was the same way when we go to the doctor. The first thing he does is make a diagnosis to find OUT what is a problem. Now, he can't write the prescription until he finds out what is the problem. He can't identify the solution until he identifies the problem, so the procedure is real simple. Number one, what is The Problem? Then the second goal is then what is a solution to that problem? We're going to identify the Solution, and then we can take a plan of action to find that Solution. so these are the three basic simplest simple goals of the big book there's a program to treat alcoholism and as we say alcoholism is probably the only disease in the world uh that tells the patient he ain't got it so you can tell the ones who've got it the one that swears they ain't got it's got it right uh and the first thing you gotta do to recover from an illness is is to find out you got it and to find out what it is. That's what the doctor does. And it's the only illness that takes a self-diagnosis. Usually, a professional will diagnose you, but this takes a cell diagnosis. This is why it's so difficult. So with the big book, we're starting off with The Doctor's Opinion and Bill's story. This is the foundation of the book. This section of the books will deal totally and explain to us the exact nature of the problem. And step one is a problem statement. The problem is we are powerless over alcohol and our lives have become unmanageable. That is a statement of the problem. I thought, by golly, it doesn't take much to draw a crowd in California. I'll say that. I don't know. Until I passed in front of an auto dealership that had a very dusty window. that acted exactly like a mirror, and I got a picture of what they were looking at. Here's a guy, Natalie attired in a bathrobe. He's got a week's growth of whiskers, and on top of his car rests a couch which previously had lacked oxygen enough to take flame, but going down the street, the wind was going through it like a billow, and the flames were 30, 40 feet in the air. Now, when I ultimately returned, I could not find a single way to blame my sleeping wife and children for having imperiled their lives as they obviously had. but that's enough about drinking let's just say subsequently I was to move beyond social drinking I wasn't coming into conflict with society at the end of my drinking how much trouble can you get into in a hotel room with a bottle of wine and a copy of Playboy if the maid doesn't step on you you're reasonably safe And, of course, it was at that point that I decided to try the program. You know, it's odd. All of my life I felt I had been crucified by potential. You know when I was young, teachers would say to me if I pulled some stunt, I can understand the others doing this, Donald, but you with your potential and all the time it was like that and i would think if they would get off my back they would just stop demanding if they'd leave me alone i would be all right and at the final stages of my drinking they were leaving me alone living on skid row west in la nobody was chasing me anymore nobody cared if i lived or died if they thought about me at all they would probably hope I'd die and at that point I think I realized for me happiness could not exist I wasn't suited to be a happy person but I had seen what loneliness truly was and what unhappiness truly was and I made up my mind as a reason to live I will try to make others feel better and so in these passing years I have got up and told crazy stories and I don't care whether you laugh at me or with me I just want people to feel better that's why that was such an incredible talk that we heard at the Al-Anon luncheon where we got living proof that non-alcoholics are not normal i am not so sure about the story of creation but i know that god created dogs and it created laughter and in our household we have them both you know we wanted unconditional love and so we bought a dog and we have laughed and we've had a good time it has been a happy two decades we have done as far as I know I used to talk about all of the things that I did while sober under the guise of living to the utmost a boolean living enthusiastic living and I hadn't realized quite what it was I would just I would describe how I learned to fly after I got sober and fact took three hours of training rented the plane that weekend flew to San Francisco it didn't have any instruments I didn't know anything about navigation this flew over highway 101 ha ha work those steps got through the male menopause racing motorcycle steve mcqueen out in the desert took my first free fall parachute jump just before i became a grandfather about twenty years ago took up scuba diving and i know you're supposed to study you don't get into pool with snorkels and practice but i i'd not hum a couple of bars i'll pick it up i mean that's way i am toward life beside when i came around they used to tell us everything you need to know is in the big book. I'm probably full of snorkels. I mean, jumped in off Catalina Island with all of the gear on and it was so beautiful down there I stayed down so long I ran out of air. I give my higher power a true test. This is the nice thing about a higher power. We have the greatest scapegoat known to man. I haven't made a mistake in decades. No errors, no deviation from the path of valor or rectitude have I been guilty of. On the other hand, God has seen fit to do through me some of the dumbest, most petty, egomaniacal, lewd, self-aggrandizing things you can conceive of. But if it gives him pleasure to make me look like a horse's ass, who are you to criticize? Take it up with him. I mean, as other speakers come in, they say, what I tell you is just my own opinion. That's not true with me. I've taken the third step. What I tell You is the Word of God. you better listen up the only trouble is he keeps changing his message about once a month making me look like an idiot for having misconstrued it in my last talk but I was watching a show on PBS one time it was about the brain and nothing to do with alcoholism It was just about the brain, you know, how they have the wonderful things. They're talking about the synapses or however you pronounce it, you know that millions of little circuits in there that are shooting electrical and chemical things through and there are different parts of the brain they can now touch and produce any emotion that we know and they happened to show a guy driving a car fast and they said yes he's taking a risk as a sport like this because he's an alcoholic. Alcoholics do not produce endorphins like other people Endorphins are that endogenous morphine that the body supplies to deal with stress, tension. And alcoholics don't get it, therefore he engages in a risk sport which produces endorphins. And I thought everything I had thought about as zestful living was a risk support. Airplane jumping, motorcycle racing, even got into marathon running when I had to quit smoking, and at the runner's high. and it by the way it may or may not be true i don't know anything about medicine but it answered a great deal to me because we hear it said in fact it's in the book that between drunks were nervous restless irritable and we were that way as children and clancy stresses this as if it were all psychological but that isn't an answer to me why are we nervous restless irritable discontented we're not doing it out of perversity hearing this i realized It's because we don't get that relaxing calm that other people get when they get into tense situations. And it's also why, when we take a drink, the alcohol or any other, the better living through chemistry today, it doesn't in itself do anything, but it hits into those areas of the brain and produces that euphoria that you would get from a runner's high. You know, and it was so helpful to me to learn that. It was a physical thing that I could treat with. but now Tanya and I, since we have been married as far as I know we have done everything that we ever thought about or fantasized about doing you can do it sober some of it I wouldn't do anymore my back no I but we have hiked through Haleakala crater we've hiked in the Alps went down the length of the Grand Canyon in a raft you know we decided we wanted to try river rafting well moderation of course is a rumor we thought we'd do a day trip but we found out that if you would sign up for I think it was 10 days you could go the whole length of the Grand Canyon and so naturally we decided to do that and we got to Flagstaff they had a get together to explain what was going to happen and we'd quit smoking and there were people there smoking and they were talking about beer and some guy said he's not bringing any beer can I take two cases what have we done what have we done we're going to be down the bottom of a hole for two weeks on a tiny little raft with people who are smoking and drinking we just thought maybe we should cut our losses get out of there anyway then well we've come this far you know we've got so much money and time invested let's go down We got down there, and we were assigned to a raft in which there are 11 Jehovah's Witnesses and two Mormons. Nobody smoked, nobody drank. We were there to have fun. Fun, fun, fun as it were, your theme song. Somebody said, when I told that story at our home group, we moved up to this little Cal County town where everybody is sweet and gentle. And we had a tough time finding a group where we'd identify. But we finally found one where I get no respect at all. I just love it. I mean, their motto is, It takes a big man to cry and a bigger man to laugh at him. But when I happened to mention the story about the Grand Canyon, the guy said, I don't know if I'd call that an improvement to be down in the bottom of a hole with 11 Jehovah's Witnesses. And I said, well, they didn't bother me at all. I mean, they tried to proselytize the young boat people, but they didn'T say a word to me. And I thought, well maybe that's because the first day out. I remember looking up at a rock formation on a cliff and I said see yonder rock formation looks much to me like a watchtower. I hope nobody is going to give me a pamphlet. But it has been an incredible life. You've heard, I'm sure some of you, the stories about when I was trying to get back into my profession and I couldn't do it, the law firms would tell me they wouldn't even consider me for hiring, let alone do it because, according to them, no attorney in the history of this nation had ever done what I had done or had happened to him, the things that had happened to me. They said, you know, when members of our law firm go into a courtroom, they represent strength in the face of adversity, determination, grit, steadfastness. Send you never. And I was crushed, I'll tell you. I was not ready for that. I'd been in AA long enough to know that our stories could be the source of innocent merriment, but I didn't realize non-alcoholics would fail to see the humor in them. And I had told him little anecdotes, you know, about getting drunk and throwing my mother down the steps or something like that. He didn't giggle a gig tit or tit. He just kind of stared. And I thought, well, I guess I'm too subtle. So I told him about the time I was in four-point restraint and vomited straight up. And I got a reaction. And when he told me he wouldn't even offer my name for consideration, I was crushed. I wanted to run to the nearest bar to drown the shame of that in that bottomless bottle like I always had, but I thought if I do, he'll be right and I won't give him the satisfaction. Went out and drank coffee at him. About 10 years later, he flipped out, took a check protector. The secretary ran to Paris, disgraced himself, disgraced his law firm, disgraced the legal profession, the city of Pasadena. One of the most beautiful pyrotechnic displays of misconduct I ever saw and he did it cold sober. on the other hand 16 or 17 years ago the governor of our state called me and told me he was going to appoint me to the appellate bench as far as I know the highest judicial office ever held by a sober alcoholic at least in the state of California you know what happened during the years that I was there when members of that law firm would enter a courtroom where I was they would stand up and they would remain standing until I told them they could be seated all power to the powerless and yet i really had not changed all that much i mean i didn't drink which of course the greatest change that can come into the life of an alcoholic i'd learn to laugh at myself which should you fail to do it will cause you to miss the greatest joke in your generation but i really hadn't changed all that much. 43 years ago, the Supreme Court of California was meeting, trying to decide what to do with me. And now I've sat on the California Supreme Court. Seven of us in our black robes. Six deadly serious both outwardly and inwardly. One serious outwardly but inwardly thinking, oh God, if they could see me at the clubhouse tonight. And AA takes over our whole life, as you know. Even our vocabulary changes. It's how we identify each other. We don't think about it, but we do. You're in a grocery store and you bump into somebody the checkout line. No, no, no. First thing first. Oh, you're a friend of Bill. You know, and I found these things coming into my decisions that I write. When I write a decision, wrote, I'm now retired. I'm still judgmental, but I don't get paid. When I wrote a decision it became binding law not only on 33 million people in California which is frightening in and of itself, but it appeared in every law library in the United States. And I would find AA things coming in there. You know, in the law we say things like his complaint sound in tort or it sounded in contract. I don't know why we say it sounded like that. I suppose Blackstone said it 300 years ago and somebody had to grab her. I wrote a decision once that said appellate's complaint sounds and self-pity and resentment but states no cause of action known to the law I even wrote one in which I said in law as in life half measures avail us nothing my colleagues say where do you get those expressions I don't know they just pop pop pop and we have oral argument once a month where the attorneys come in to engage in sound and fury, signifying nothing. And I remember one guy was arguing to us his client had killed a number of people and he wanted us not to look too harshly upon him even though he hadn't been entirely truthful when he had been apprehended. And I heard myself say, or at least somebody from where I was seated said, do not worry, consular, we all understand that murder often leads to lying. fortunately I didn't follow it up and say if he keeps it up he's going to be in serious trouble he'll be drinking again but it has been an incredible life and by the way I don't mean to suggest that it has all been fun and frolic anybody who tells you that he gets through this world without tragedy is misleading you. The world is not going to rise up on its tippy toes to avoid upsetting my tender psyche just because I stopped sucking on a jug. All the things that flesh are heir to are going to happen to us. People that we love are going to die, we're going to become ill, we're not going to be appreciated as we should. All the things that can happen are going to happen to us. Why shouldn't they? I guess it's been seven or eight years ago now, my wife came home, a burglar was there, smashed her in the face, broke the bones in her face, had three plastic surgeries to put her back together. He wasn't there to get me as a police first thought, he was just some guy loaded on crack and he picked our house. And you might say, why should that happen to someone who at that time had a quarter century of trying to work with people with alcohol and drug problems. Why should it happen? Well, the question isn't that. The question is why shouldn't it happen. The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. Maybe we're even in a better position to understand it. You know, most of our stories are tragic. They would tear tears from the heart of a stone, but in AA we laugh at them. We roll in laughter. You know I drank and then I got the jig late and couldn't walk this guy will have a funny story he'll say yeah you know I came out of San Fernando Valley needed a fix just picked out a house at random you know my luck got the house of a judge not only a judge but an appellate justice of the court and then in came his wife pow I put her in the hospital I don't know if I'll laugh but I'm not going to sponsor him less than a year after that my then i guess 85 year old stepmother up in northern town the burglar came into her house raped her grabbed her by the face hurt her cataract surgery less than the year afterthat in an even smaller quieter town someone burglarized the house of my mother and murdered her. The world, it is the old world yet there's tragedy here. That's why I never truly want to hurt anybody. I don't want to get even. I do not want to pay back. There is enough sorrow in this world without my adding a single drop to it. These things happen not because I am sober or not sober. They just happen because they are life. And oddly enough even in the worst of these things there's always a little twist somehow that makes it bearable one of my colleagues a woman on the court when she heard about all these things that had happened to the women in my life she marched into my chamber and said donald any thought i had of having an affair with you is off but the main thing I think I would like to recommend to everyone alcoholic non-alcoholic is the brevity of life you know we're here such a short length of time Fifty years, everybody in this room is going to be gone. The wink of a celestial eye and it's all over. We rise like bubbles and champagne and pop, it's gone. Isn't it awful to think that we may die without ever having lived? You know, when the Olympic torchlight parade was coming through Los Angeles a number of years ago, at a meeting where I was, somebody said, let's go up to Figueroa Street because the torchlight trade is going to come through and we should see it. It's a once-in-a-lifetime event. I told them, everything is a once in a lifetime event. Every single moment is a once in the lifetime event and we don't get that many days. What are we allotted? 70 years? I'm already in overtime of course but multiply 70 by 365 you get a relatively small number, $25,000 or so. You wouldn't take $25 thousand if you were given and told you had to make it last and throw it by the handful into the toilet and yet that's what I did when I was drinking. I think I hate most about the days, the weeks I lost in sodden drunkenness or locked up. I don't want to miss those things anymore. A poet said, by the way, I know you, there are young people here, you think you're immortal. One of my sons, when he was going through the testosterone rush, he said, you know, Dad, if I should ever die, i what do you mean if punk uh it's not a hypothesis it's i'm staring at it i mean and by the way that's true i've given up the thought of suicide how much time would i really save when you get right down to it i want to do and experience everything i am physically capable of doing while i am here to do it. A poet said, the bird of time has but a little way to flutter and the bird is on the wing. My bird doesn't have very much longer to fly. I don't want to miss a single beat of those wings and I just hope everyone, including the young ones, will fly with me and we'll do it together. Thank you.