The Conviction of Hopelessness as the Cornerstone of Success – Bill S.

This is one in a series of classic talks produced by Dicode Tapes. For other equally interesting and moving talks, call Dicodetapes 1-800-999-3381. Let's say an invitation. In AA we do things together, and I wonder if you would stand and say with me the AA prayer. O God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things that I can't, and wisdom to know the difference. Amen. I merely want to say how much I personally appreciate the tremendous help that Cleveland AAs, Akron AAs have been to the committee that tried to send this conference together. The cooperation has been marvelous. and Cleveland AA, Akron AA want to welcome those people who have traveled from far places to be with us and help us express our gratitude for 15 years of AA. I think of nothing that I might add to that, and I will introduce one of our co-founders, Thank you, Dr. Muntz. Thank you. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 I would be very remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to welcome you here to Cleveland, not only to this meeting, but those that have already transpired. I hope very much that they have the presence of so many people and the words that you've heard will prove an inspiration to you, not only to you but may you be able to impart that inspiration to the boys and girls back home who are not fortunate enough to be able to come in other words we hope that your visit here has been both enjoyable and profitable I get a big thrill of looking over a vast sea of faces like this with the feeling that possibly some small thing that I did a number of years ago played a small part in making this meeting possible. I also get quite a thrill when I think that we all have the same problem, We all did the same thing. We all got the same results in proportion to our zeal and enthusiasm and stricture, didn't we? If you'll pardon the injection of a personal note at this time, let me say that I've been in bed for five of the last seven months and my strength hasn't returned as I'd like so my remarks will of necessity be very brief. But there are two or three things that flash into my mind on which it would be fitting to lay a little emphasis. One is the simplicity of our program. Let's not louse it all up with Freudian complexes and things that are interesting to the scientific mind but have very little to do with our actual AA work. Our 12 steps, when simmered down to the last, resolve themselves into the words love and service. we understand what love is and we understand what service is so let's bear those two things in mind let us also remember to guide that air you remember the tongue and if we must use it, let's use it with kindness and consideration and tolerance and one more thing none of us would be here today if somebody hadn't taken time to explain things to us to give us a little pat on the back to take us to a meeting or two to have done numerous little times and possible acts in our behalf past. So let us never guess the degree of smug complacency so that we're not willing to extend our attempt to that help that has been so beneficial to us, to our less fortunate brothers. Thank you very much. Dear folks, there's always something new in one's AA life. And what do you think it is with me this morning? It is that I am absolutely speechless. That is almost absolutely faceless. As I look out across this crowd, there floats back to me a mighty assurance, and this is is a mighty assurance for AA's future. That, indeed, it will go on for so long as God wants her. The other thing I would like to set on the record is my tremendous gratitude at being able to be with you in this finest hour of our closing meeting. So I can only say, may God bless and keep you and Alcoholics Anonymous forever. We clearly see AA in three dimensions. The dimension of recovery, the dimension of unity, and the dimension of service. Without any one of these, AA couldn't function. the individual must lose his obsession as groups and as a movement we must need to remain in unity and above all AA being a program of action we must function for without us for with us of AA faith without work is very dead indeed as we look out upon our destiny. Let us pause and mark those moments of realization and decision that have made AA what it is today. When you stop to think about it, AA is made up of a series of such realizations and decisions decisions by individuals and by groups. Let's see what some of those were. The first one is common to every alcoholic here tonight. It came to me one summer day in 1934 when When I lay in town's hospital and knew for the first time that I was utterly powerless to go on living, I knew that I had a grip of a power greater than myself, and he was like John Barleycorn, it is by a singular paradigm that that conviction of hopelessness is the cornerstone of our success. It is the essence of the first step of the AA program. So I came to that point on that summer day. day. But this realization was not only shared by me. It was shared by another. It was shared my Lord, my good wife, who sat downstairs talking to Dr. Silkworth. And And the good man went on to explain that my habit of drinking had become an obsession, almost an insanity that guaranteed that I would go on against my will, drinking to the very end. And she said, what do you mean, doctor? By the end. Then the good man had to explain that since my obsession condemned me to drink, my increasing physical sensitivity or allergy would finally condemn me to madness or death, perhaps within a year. So as we alcoholics present tonight have shared the conviction of hopelessness, So I'll have our good wives And mothers and fathers and twins Well, leaving the hospital that time I'm kept sober by fear For a spell A few months But the obsession caught me Once more November 11th, 1934 four. And I fell to drinking again, this time alone in the kitchen at 182 Clinton Street, Brooklyn. I was alone because Lois was at work in a department store supporting me. Not long after that, a realization came to a friend of mine, himself a hopeless alcoholic. Holly. I had so branded him, but now he had been released and being released, he thought of me just as your friends in their turn have thought of you and bought this message. So presently, he's in the kitchen at Clinton Street, sober. I hadn't known of his being sober in New York for years. I said to him, what about a drink, Eddie? No, he said, I'm not drinking. I says, are you on the water wagon? No I'm just not drinking today. Very curious, I questioned. I say, what's got into you my friend? And looking at me, he He said simply and smilingly, I've got religion. Ah, what a jarring thought that was. I fancied that he had exchanged alcoholic insanity for religious insanity. Well, one had to be polite. I said, what brand of religion have you got? He said, I wouldn't call it a religion at all. all. The religion of common sense, perhaps. I met up with a group of people and I drew from them certain essential ideas, not peculiar at all to them, about a way of life that did the job for me. And here is what I did. I got honest with myself as never before. I I talked over my personality defects with another in confidence. I visited the people I had harmed and made restitution, thereby sweeping away the debris of the past. And then I had learned of a new kind of giving, a kind of given that demands no reward, either of money or prestige. seat. And he said, Bill, I know that you're a very skeptical one. This may jar you. But I found that I couldn't make that simple program of living work until I asked God, as I understood God, to help me. Such was my friend's story over the kitchen table. The impact on me was was terrific. Why? Well, you all know. One alcoholic was talking to another. One alcoholic was carrying this message where no other person on earth could. But like many of you since, I rebelled at his concept of God. Fortunately, he didn't try to evangelize me. He soon took his leave. He left me to think it over. And think it over I did. In no waking moment thereafter could I get the vision of his face and the sound of his voice out of my mind. Drinking on a couple of weeks I finally said what all alcoholics here have said in effect I said to myself, after all, who are beggars to be choosers? Who am I to say there is no God? And if there is a great physician, perhaps I had better seek him out. I will try my friend's simple formula. Well, I started for Towns Hospital and on the way I bought a bottle. You know, it is customary with us who are about to be cured for the last time to get terribly serious. Arrived there, I waved a bottle over my head and shouted drunkenly at good old Dr. Silkworth, this time, Doc, I've got something. So three or four days later, I'm not in bad shape, free now from alcohol and sedatives. I'm just depressed, terribly depressed. For you see, I still rebelled a little. Then one morning, something happened. It's happened to all the alcoholics and their families. My friend stood in the door. As you always thought, so did I. I said to myself, here is a man who practices what he preaches. You see, I hadn't seen him for years. What was he doing up there so early on this morning? Well, again, he's prudent. He said, well, I've just come to pay your visit, Bill. Saw you're up here. Thought I'd drop by. And he put me on such a spot that I finally had to ask him, What, my friend, is that neat little formula by which you got released, as you say, from your alcohol? Oh, yes. He said, why, it's very simple. You just get honest with yourself. Talk it out with another. Make amends to people you harm. Try to help somebody without any demand for reward. And pray to whatever God there is. For me, it was as simple as that. And when I had done these things wholeheartedly, I was relieved of my obsession. It seemed to me that it was taken away from me. I don't feel like I'm on the waterway. Soon after repeating this simple tale, he left. Then came to me the great realization of my life, the central one of it all, and the very same one which has come to each AA member here. Revelling a little still, I sunk into a deeper and deeper depression. And in the bottom of that pit, I suppose the last trace of my obstinacy was crushed out. I was, in fact, a child crying in the dark. And I said, as you have said, now I will do anything to get well. Anything to get Well. God knows this is more serious than cancer. And indeed, I have a cancer of the mind, of the emotions, and of the soul. Yes, I will be well. I will give anything to Get Well. else. And then, with no hope, no face at all, I cried out, if there is a God, will he show himself? My experience was granted to me very suddenly. It seemed to me that place lit up in a great white light. In the mind's eye, I seemed to be on a mountaintop. A great wind is blowing. And I know it is not of air, but of spirit. There are no words to describe those minutes. At length I find myself on the bed, but now I lie in a different world. I am at one with the whole universe a sense of presence is around and through me and I say to myself so this is the God of the preacher thank God that I'm a free man I lay there a long time in this new state state. Presently, however, my modern education got busy. They began to say to me, you're hallucinating. You've had one of these emotional conversion experiences. Maybe it isn't so. Better call in the doctor. So comes that drazen good old man, Dr. Stouffer. I tell him this story. How many skeptical men of science would have said to me, oh Bill, you'll feel better tomorrow. Don't be worried about this little hallucinosis. But he didn't say that. He listened carefully, sympathetically, because he was a great human being. At length he said, no No, my boy, you're not crazy. There is some subtle difference in you. I can't put my finger on it. Some great psychic event has happened here. I have never witnessed one of these convergent experiences, but once in a blue moon, they do sober up drunk. I've read about them in the books. No, no, my boys, said the great man. You are not crazy, and whatever it is you've found, you'd better hold on to it. It's so much better than what had you only a brief hour ago. Some here will say, but I didn't have an experience like that. My answer is, yes, you did. And yes, you have had an identical experience in that you too have been enabled to do the impossible by a power greater than your own. And I fancy that had your experiences come in six minutes instead of six months or six weeks, you too would have seen the skies at once. So? But there is another cornerstone principle in A.S. well I was terribly impressed by the impact of this experience wondered why such simple principles in the hands of my friend could have produced such a powerful effect it must have been that he somehow struck me at a deep level to unhook this effect That was it, one alcoholic talking to another. Then I did just what you would have done. I began frantically working with other alcoholics. Nothing happened for six months. I was preaching. When I talked about that hot flash, the drunks just tapped their heads and said, well, you know. Meanwhile, Dr. Silkworth kept insisting on emphasis upon the medical side of the picture. He said, why don't you pound it into them that this is a fatal progressive malady, an obsession that condemns them against their will to drink and so to die? And I had just begun to do this. Things were looking up a little bit. when some of my relatives and friends began to say, when is this guy Bill going to go back to work and get Lois out of that damn department store? Goaded by these remarks, I began to go over to Wall Street where I had no friend. I began a search for him and began to sit in brokerage shops hoping, like McCobber, that something would turn up. And sure enough, it did. A chance acquaintance with a stranger, a business deal, I'm taken to Akron, Ohio, looks very promising, I may even become president of a small company. Then the deal falls through with a crash. I'm alone in the hotel. hotel. My fairweather friends had gone home. Then, for the first time in months, I thought about drinking. I got spiked. I said to myself, look out, this is it. I'm walking between a church directory and a bar room at the other end of the lobby. Then another essential idea idea put in its appearance. I realized how much working with these other alcoholics had meant to me, though it had meant nothing to them yet. How when I worked with others, those waves of self-pity, anxiety, and the like would magically disappear. And I thought to myself, now I need an alcoholic just as bad as he could possibly need me. I'm in danger of getting drunk. I must find another alcoholic in this town and right now. I called a preacher. He was a little puzzled that I was a drunk from New York who wished to find some drunks to work on. Drunk one at a time seemed enough to him, but he finally caught on and through a series of confidential circumstances, I'm face-to-face with Dr. Bob in the home of a non-alcoholic, one who understood and one who cared enough. Dr. Bob and Ann had entered that room at about 5 o'clock in the afternoon. It was in June 1935. Bob couldn't stay but a minute. But we talked for five hours. And this time, there was real mutuality. I told him at once, please stay. I need you as much as you could possibly need me. And so I told my simple tale of drinking, of recovery, and pounded home the medical nature of the malice. Of course, Dr. Bob was a medical man But this was the first time He had ever heard alcoholism Described as a disease And he too was struck deep As all of us have since been And right there I think the spark That was to become Alcoholics Anonymous was also struck. Ann then said to me, Bill, why don't you come and live at our house? You could keep an eye on Dr. Bob. He could keep a look at you. on you. Soon I go to stay in that really hallowed household. Presently, Dr. Bob said, don't you think we'd better be working on some drunk? I'll call up the city hospital. He got hold of the nurse on the receiving ward. Said to her that I had come from New York as a friend, an alcoholic, who had a cure for alcoholism. She retorted, well, doctor, why don't you try it on yourself? But he already had. Then she went on to say, well, we've got a wonderful case for you here. Has just arrived. Been here six times in the last four months, a member of the city council in this town, or was, is in a terrible state. He can't even get home from here without getting drunk. He's just blacked the eyes of one of the nurses. We've now got him strapped down and full of paraldehyde. How would that one do you, doctor? So Smithy said fine. Medicate him. and we'll be down by and by. A little later, Dr. Bob and I saw a sight that tens of thousands have since seen and, God willing, hundreds of thousands of us shall still see. It was the sight of the man on the bed who didn't know that he could get well. The man onthe bed was no optimist. We told him our stories We told him how he had been released. We told him the nature of his ailment, but he still shook his head. Said he, you fellas understand this business all right? You've been in the ringer, but you're in only up to your knee. I'm in up to my neck. It's too late. I don't dare go out of here. We said, may we come back tomorrow? Oh Oh, sure, he said. Please do. Please do, you know how lonely this business can be. And you really do understand. Back we come on tomorrow, and there we see the now familiar sight. The man's wife is at the foot of the bed. She is saying, Husband, what has got into you? You seem so different. Excitedly, he pointed to us and said, said, yes, there they are. They're the ones who understand. Then he told how during the night a little hope had come, and then more. And when he had resolved to follow this simple formula, it seemed as though great weights were lifted off him, and he felt that curious sense of freedom that we all know so well. And by now, hope was swelling. into a great confidence. So much so that he said, Wife, fetch me my clothes. We're going to get up and go out of here. So A.A. number three rose from his bed never to drink again. That was the beginning of the first group. Though, of course, we knew it not. The three of us worked on a lot of Alkies that summer in Akron. One or two clung, but the failure was immense. I returned to New York more humble now, more chastened, more expert. A group started here. Little by little, we grew, though failure was our daily companion. Then three years later, there came another tremendous realization. Dr. Bob and I sat talking together in his living room. It is the fall of 1937. We have got together for the first time to count up the results. Not how many failures, they were legion, but how many successes. How much dry time had elapsed on how many individuals? We added it up, and then it burst on us that something new had come into the world. A new light could be seen clearly shining upon our children of the dark. That realization brought with it a terrific responsibility. It had taken up almost three years to sober less than two sore people. How could what we few knew be carried to the million who didn't know? Even there in Akron, people were dying within gunshot of us. How could we transmit this thing? Dare we wait for it to spread painfully, slowly by word of mouth? Dare we risk it being garbled, distorted? Didn't we need hospitals? For we had discovered the hospitals that didn't want us. Didn't we need to send some of our old-timers To distant cities On a temporary subsidy To start other centers And above all, didn't we Need some kind of literature Some kind of book In other words, we realized For the first time The need of some Sort of organized Service effort Well, we presented these ideas ideas to a little meeting there in Akron. Many said, let's keep it simple. If you have books, if you have missionaries, if your have hospitals, you're going to create a professional class. You're going bring in money. We're going quarrel. It'll break it up. Let's not do any of these things. Let keep it simply, said the orthodox people of that day. But But the promoter element in that meeting, plus the indifferent ones who didn't care too much, voted to send me back to New York to raise a lot of money for this mighty enterprise to be undertaken by the 40 drunks. I thought raising money here would be a thing, that the race would gladly invest in the future of 40 drunks and those to come, but apparently the race had already had too much experience was drunk. They were not interested. Neither was the Rockefeller Foundation. One day, after a period of frustration which always brought on an imaginary alter attack in me, I went to my brother-in-law. He's a doctor. He reassured me about my alters. I commenced to gripe about our lack of money. Said he, why don't you see Shirley Wynn? He shares an office with with me here. He used to be health commissioner in New York. So I'm soon talking to Shirley. He said, well, you certainly have got something. If you've got 30 or 40 of these fellas with real time behind them, that's something. Those fellas are tough. I really ought to know. Besides, he said, you surely need a lot of money. What about the Rockefeller Foundation? And I said, no, we've tried them. Then he said, I got a better idea. What about Mr. John D. Rockefeller himself? This hits his every interest. Has a social aspect, medical aspect, alcohol aspect, religious aspect. You couldn't miss. You ought to see Mr. Johnny D. Rockefeller. Well, I said Dr. Wynn, how about seeing the Prince of Wales? How do you get this introduction? Then and there, our destiny hung on a very slender and tenuous thread. And the thread seemed to be attached around my brother-in-law's mouth. He commenced to scratch his head. He said, when I was a young fellow, I used to go to high school. I knew a girl. I think the girl had an uncle, an old man. He may be dead. and as I remember it, he was somehow connected with the Rockefeller family or their charitable enterprise. Don't you think I might call up the Rockefellow offices and find out if there is such a man? If he is alive? Well, I said it's a long shot, my friend, but try it. He called up. Dear Willard Richardson, one of the greatest friends this society will ever have, immediately came on the wire. My brother-in-law told him that he had a relative working on alcoholics. There had been some success. Could we come over for a chat? And the old man said, yes, come over. And we walked right straight into Mr. John D. Rockefeller's private office and were soon talking with one of the closest friends that family has ever had. Well, as a fellow promoting money, I felt kind of good. It looked like we were getting close. both. I told the story. He was immediately interested. I had lunch with him the next week, and this eventuated in the late winter of 1937 in a meeting between some of the Akron alcoholics, some of New York crowd, Dr. Bob, and me. And where do you think we met? In Mr. Rockefeller's private boardroom. I felt that we were really getting warm now. In fact, somebody said that I was sitting in a chair just left by Mr. Rockefeller himself. So it looked like we were going to get next to the big money. Again, the alcoholics told their story. Again, these friends listened and were deeply impressed, though one of them drew our attention to the perils of property ownership and to the peril of professionalism and asked, isn't this a work of goodwill, one carrying the message to another? Well, our argument was that it was still more dangerous to do nothing. That something must be done. At length, one of them, Frank Amos, still on our board of trustees, went out to Akron to see Dr. Bob and his group there, AA Group No. 1 at Akron, Ohio. He came back with a glowing report. report. The report was put before Mr. Rockefeller. And again, Providence intervened. Mr. Rockefeller read and re-read that report, and turning to his old friend Dick, he said, Dick, this impresses me deeply and strangely. It may be the beginning of something great, but something tells me not to give this thing money I'm afraid Dick that money in any quantity would spoil it don't ask me for money and right then and there John D. Rockefeller Jr. took a decision that probably saved Alcoholics Anonymous one which surely did save from professionalism and great property ownership relationship. Well, we drunks were terribly disappointed. The mortgage was high on Smithy's house. Lois was still in that damn department store. A lot of the drunks thought job fixing other drunks would be good, so did I. Well we commenced having more meetings with these friends, we almost convinced them that Mr. Rockefeller was mistaken. We convinced them to such an extent that they created for us something known then and today as the Alcoholic Foundation. At the close of the summer, at a trustees meeting, Frank Amos said, Bill, Bill, why don't you take the two chapters of that perspective book down to Harper's? I think they'll be interested. I know the religious editor, Gene Exman. Soon I'm in this gentleman's office. He reads what are now the first two chapters of the book Alcoholics Anonymous, showed immediate interest, inferred that Harper's would advance me $1,500 in advance royalties, which by then, after our deflation, seemed like a huge sum. well I'm elated I never tried to write anything before he said Mr. Wilson could you finish a whole book like that and I lied valiantly and said why of course coming away from Harper's Doe my spirit fell I realized that if I used up eight up this fifteen hundred dollars while the book was being prepared that we'd still be out of money for a long time because these were advanced royalties. Besides, if the papers and magazines printed accounts of A.A., and we had a lot of inquiries, there'd be no money to answer those. The final thought was, should a private publisher own this book? Shouldn't this book become the property of our society? society. And then the idea of publishing the book ourselves burst on us. So a friend and I went to a stationery store, bought a pad of stock certificates, began to offer them to drunks an investment in this new book. $25 prior, works publishing, has some alcoholics, it's going to be be wonderful. Well, that was my first experience in trying to pry any real money out of drunks. And you know what they said? They said, well, you fellas have got a fine nerve. Trying to sell us stock in a book not yet written? Well, the upset of it was that we got the Reader's Digest to promise a fee, and that convinced the alcoholics that we could sell these books by the Carls. And so the shares in works publishing began to be sold. Some sellers contributed as little as $5 a month. Between the fall of 1938 and the spring of 1939, the very few alcoholics in this area and their friends put $4,500 into that thing. Besides that, we hooked the proprietor of Towns Hospital for $2,500 more and then went to the Reader's Digest only to be told they decided not to print anything about it. Well that meant that the book was broke Lois and I were broke all right the bank foreclosed Clinton Street and that was the state of Alcoholics Anonymous after four years. We had 100 members and we had this book books, and we were all both. Well, Liberty Magazine in the fall of 39 printed a piece that moved some of the books, enabled us to keep our little office open. Next spring, Mr. Rockefeller, who we hadn't heard of for three years, suddenly decided to give a dinner for A.S., called in a lot of his important friends. Dr. Fosdick was there. Dr.-Foster were planted at each table with the banshees, and we thought, now our money troubles are all over. But no, at the conclusion of the dinner, Mr. Nelson Rockefeller, who came in place of his father, who was sick, rose and said, nothing more affecting has ever touched my father's life. He is so glad that his friends could witness the beginning of this great and promising thing. But fortunately, gentlemen, this is a work that requires no money. Well, I find about $2 billion worth of bankers got up and walked right out. Soon after, Mr. Rockefeller wrote each of them a letter, sent them a book. We sold those books to Mr. Mr. Rockefeller, very cheap, too, only a dollar apiece as promotion material. And he also gave them a letter in which again he reiterated his interest, again stated that this work required little or no money. And then he said, I am giving this society $1,000, which was something like his father giving a dime to the folks in Sunday school. and the other bankers kind of figured it up on the cuff quickly and they said well if Mr. Rockefeller is giving a thousand dollars how much would that mean for me so one very rich banker sent us ten dollars look at that the result of that dinner was three thousand dollars and each year for five years we raised three thousand dollars in that fashion and that three thousand dollars was divided equally between Smithy and me so we could keep going and praise God this movement was saved from professionalism big property ownership and perhaps complete dissolution as I have described it to you then the great 10 strike came in 1941 somebody else not an alcoholic either took a decision and that was no less person than the owner of the Saturday Evening Post the editors down there had been thinking of a piece about Alcoholics Anonymous. They had almost decided against it. Too controversial, medically and religiously. Might turn out to be a cult. The drunk soul might get drunk after all. Ridiculous. I believe it was Mr. Curtis Bach who was present at that meeting and he said, Gentlemen, I don't like to interfere with editorial policy But I myself know two of these miracles. And I am positive this thing works, and I'm positive it's going to spread. I do hope the piece is published by the Post." Ah, what a decision for how many of us! And instantly Jack Alexander's piece appeared. appeared, thousands of frantic inquiries began to descend upon our little New York office. We had become a national institution. Our word-of-mouth program had been translated into 12 steps, fenced into a book, and now our friends had begun to rally around us—friends friends of medicine, friends of religion, and now this great friend of the press. At that moment, Alcoholics Anonymous stepped out of its influence. AlcoholicsAnonymous entered a new phase, the phase of its adolescence. Adolescence is a fearsome, exciting time, and ours was no exception. After all of those inquiries formed into our little office from the post article, groups began to form. You see, we had lists of alcoholics and their families in hundreds of cities. Consequently, we were able to supply traveling AAs with lists of prospects. And then we found, to our great joy, that groups could actually be formed in the mail, the so-called mail order group. It was not long, for example, before we reached out to Hawaii and Australia, a protest that has since carried us into more than 30 countries. But as these groups took shape, without any old-time guidance, only by the counsel of the office and an occasional traveler, group trouble started in a big way. way. Then the clubs began to spring up, and their peculiar brand of trouble began to roll back on our office. Well, you know what those troubles were. Money trouble, prestige trouble, committee trouble, secretary trouble, panhandler trouble, the big bad wolves in the little Red Riding Hood situation. Then all sorts of strange people, alcoholics with complications began to show up. Up to that moment, we had always talked about something called the pure alcoholic. We were looking for alcoholics with no other complications. Alcoholics began to appear out of asylums and out of jails and very queer specimens indeed turned up. And there was a long period in which we were literally fighting to death. All of the forces that bear on modern society to render the park settled down on us. Those forces which cluster around prestige and security and money and sex and the like. and we were afraid that we could not function as a movement, that our groups would be torn apart, that the forces which held us together would not be great enough to contain the terrific anarchy that was developing. In fact, we thought that we would actually present every community in America with a group of alcoholics who did not wish to get well And that would really be something. Alcoholics singly are bad enough, but organized into regiments and platoons of those who did not want to get well. And we used to sit over here in the foundation office and shimmy and shiver as those mounting problems poured in, group problems of every kind. Now, well, those forces didn't tear Alcoholics Anonymous apart. The forces that contain us are immensely superior to any that have yet shown up. But in this time of adolescence, we began, of course, to apply the spirit of the 12 Steps of Recovery to the problem of living and working together, to the problems of functioning, to the problemas of service. And this experience, beat out on thousands of anvils, began to take definite shape after a time in a fresh set of principles. The 12 Points of A.A. Tradition those principles that we A's trust, with God's help, will contain us in unity for so long as he may need it. We began to develop many principles which were entirely contrary to custom in the modern world. We ran counter to society in many, many respects. aspects. Many of our traditions are almost paradoxical. Of course, the very first one is just plain horse sense. In effect, our common welfare should come first, for personal recovery depends upon unity. We knew that we had to hang together or hang separately. then the next one has to do with the idea of a group conscience and looking back a few years I couldn't imagine such a thing as a group conscience I thought I was the conscience for this group how well I can remember the first time the group conscience spoke to me and began to teach me things. Things had been going pretty rough. We were awful broke over at Clinton Street. It was about the third year of AA. One day, old Charlie Towns up there at the hospital called me in his office and he said, Bill, you're helping sober up all these drunks. They're getting good jobs. They're getting on, but you and Lois are broke. Why don't you come in here? Let me give you an offer. Let me put you on my staff as a lay therapist. This thing actually began here in Townsville. You had this funny experience of yours. I think this society will someday fill Madison Square Garden. And Bill, I'll go further. or I'll give you a third interest in the place. Oh, that sounded awful good to Lois and me. Better to me than it did to her. I told her that night when, after a hard day's work, she was cooking supper for the drunks at Clinton Street. The house was full of them, you remember. It sounded awful just. And I stilled the last of my fears by saying to myself, well, even the Bible says that the laborer is worthy of his hire. Then comes a little meeting down in that front parlor over at 23rd Street. I tell the meeting of this new opportunity. sooner. Finally, someone begins to speak. I now realize that he spoke for the group conscience. And he said, but Bill, that will be the beginning of a professional class. That will tie us up to a particular institution. Bill, you can't do this thing to us. You say it's ethical? Of course it's ethical. Perfectly ethical for you to be a lay therapist. But Bill, you can't do this thing to us. It isn't good enough. Aren't you the fellow who has often told us that sometimes the good is the enemy of the best? So spoke the group conscience to me saying, Bill, it isn't good enough. You can't do this twice. And thank God I listened and I obeyed. Since that time, I have been a pupil of AA and not its teacher. Then we came to have very clear ideas about membership in AA. At the beginning, scared to death, we made all sorts of membership rules excluding undesirables. We couldn't have the... Well, we were scared. We were afraid of these people. They might tear us apart. We had so many membership rules at one time that when all listed on one piece of paper would have kept us all out if they'd been in effect at once. I remember one case in particular. At Clinton Street, a fellow sober six months, allowed to speak in a meeting for the first time, got up and said, this is all wonderful, all except this God business. And as for this God business, to hell with it. We don't need it. And we deacons took him in a corner and and said, look, Jimmy, you can't talk that way around here. He said, is that so? Is that so. I don't have to believe in God to belong to this. Right in the front of that book you're putting together, it says the only requirement is an honest desire to stop drinking. I've got that honest desire. I have stopped. I got the family together. I got a job. I'm working with drunks. So am I a member or am I not? Well, he had the decency where the hair was short. So we grudgingly admitted that he was a member. But we waited in high hopes that he would soon get drunk. trunk. By and by, he accommodated it. Not a soul went to see him. And in his agony in that hotel room, he hit bottom and hit it right, and hasn't had a drink to this day and became founder of our Philadelphia group. And now we look back and say, suppose we had closed the door of the court of last resort to Jimmy. Where would he be? And all those he helped. And all they have helped since. So today, you're a member of AA if you say so. Putting the ordinary social custom exactly in reverse. Nobody can keep you out. You declare yourself in. Then you remember I told you about the episode with Mr. Rockefeller? Well, we've come to adopt his view that this society should have no professional class, that we ought to pay our own bills, and God knows we can. The members of this society are earning $600 million a year. We have something to give to the community. Of course we'll pay our on bills. We had a bad time with that professional business, though. The time they hired old Tom Mulhall down to the clubhouse for janitor. We were just going to give him a free room, you know. And Tom said, ain't you going to pay me nothing? Oh, he said, no, this is Alcoholics Anonymous, Tom. You can't make any money out of it. Tom says, listen. He said, I think you guys have got a nerve. You want me to do seven days a week, 24 hours a day, a job that you guys can't or won't do. What you want is a janitor. And you ain't willing to pay for it, and if you don't pay me, I don't work. See? And what has that got to do with the 12 steps that come? So, very painfully, we discovered that we could hire a caretaker we could hire a secretary we could even hire an author like me incidentally folks I got a raise recently every time you buy one of them books I got you for 52 cents how do you like it Well, then came other problems When that foundation was set up It took in a terrific territory We could research, we could educate We could do anything but lobby for pro-victim But in late years We see that AA should stick to its single purpose That of carrying the message face-to-face To that other alcoholic home. The purpose for which we are so well suited, the thing nobody else can do, that thing we should do and do supremely well instead of many things badly, so that we have decided that AA shall have only one sole aim. We cannot make alliances. We We cannot give endorsements. We cannot loan out the AA name, even to the best of enterprises, so that they may have publicity and raise money on our credit. That would be to divert us from our aim, to confuse it, and finally to make it possible to attach the name Alcoholics Anonymous to all sorts of controversial situations. wait. I know a fella came in the office one time, said he got a job working for one of the liquor associations. I can be an educator. I said, what kind of education? Well, he said they want to teach people that too much grog is bad for everybody and that these drunks shouldn't drink at all. I says, fine, why don't you hire out? Much surprised, he He said, I thought you were against education. I said, on the contrary, I'm very much for it. But what I want to know is this. Do they just want to hire you? He said what do you mean? Well, I said do they want something else? Or do they just want you because you're a good publisher? Because you had the drinking experience? Well, come to find out, they wanted to be able to state in all their publicity that Mr. Mr. Joe Bloke of Alcoholics Anonymous heads up our program of education, which would mean that in a subtle way, the AA name would be transferred over into a controversial area. I said to my friend, are you going to take the job? You know, in AA we have no rules, laws, regulations. We only have a tradition. He said, of course I'm not going to do it. I'm going to go and take the jobs. If I took a job like that, pretty soon some screwball would hire out to the anti-saloon league for their brand of education and then the fat would be in the fire and Alcoholics Anonymous would be right in the middle of that controversy. Of course I'm not going to. And that's why, as much as we would like, we cannot loan out the AA name, give endorsements, or finance other causes. it. Like shoemakers, we had better stick to our last. So that much is decided. We are also certain that as much as we quarrel about things that don't matter too much, we may never quarrel above religion, politics, or reform, because those are the issues that that are dividing the modern world. And thank God, ever since this thing began, I haven't heard a really angry religious or political argument. Today in Ireland, where politics and religion are terrific issues, Alcoholics Anonymous is the only friendly, really friendly roof on which people of those opposing parties can meet. So it must always be with us, or else we may really perish one day. Thank you.