The Emotional Bottoms Are Absolutely Identical – Earl M.

Oh, it kind of covers it all, so that way it beats all the friction. You know, this is my fourth year at Cedar Glen, and it's changed my life. You know、 the first year I came, I didn't have enough money to pay my way into this place, and my sponsor, I did not want to tell him, and my sponsored came and made me come. He said, $50, no problem. he put me in his car and he fed me and he brought me here and I learned how to laugh there were a lot of these hell's angels here that first year at least that's what I thought they were when they come rolling down the hill that year I was going oh my god they're gonna rape the women you know and all this but you know the first thing I thought about was do I save my sponsor or run because someone would need to get help but they didn't rape anyone and they jumped off their motorcycle started hugging people and I was going I need a drink but you know every year I look forward to this place because it was real spiritual, and Jack told me it would be, and I had lost touch with God. And today I can feel God. You know, I feel him all the time. But, you know, when I get here, it's just special. I kind of get charged. And I can't believe I'm up here on this podium, but I'm glad I am. You know? Thank you, Don. And Dave here, Super Dave. I thought about him all year. You know. It's great. know he's invited me up to colorado to share his condo with him well okay honestly he told me say the hell out of colorado much better but that's enough about dave and i and there's a man here who wrote a chapter in a big book and I finally read it, Mom. Just kidding, but it's Physician Hill, myself, and Earl Lynn. My name is Earl, I'm an alcoholic. Do it again. My name was Earl, I'm a alcoholic. I was warned by several people that I'm in the, I'm trouble because people here are a little bit right of center and I'm too liberal and I better get the hell out of here as soon as I get a chance to talk. Whatever I say here that sounds too liberal to those who are conservative you know being in the Northeast Texas reminds me of the 1955 International Area Conference told the key a lot of story with St. Louis some of you were probably there and Icky Sheridan famous Texan so many old-timers here may remember Nicky close friend of mine and he was the he was first alcoholic he was the first alcoholic trustee on his dental service board and the night that Bill turned over AA to Alcoholics Anonymous, and he stepped away. Bob had since died. Icky introduced him. It was a very emotional evening. Bill's mother was on the stage, and Lois was there, and all of these shots were there. And Ickie told the following story about your heritage here. He said that, I can't even say this Texas twang, which I could. He said in northeast Texas we have a little town but they had no place to put a drunk if one showed up. So they decided that if one did show up, and of course one did, they'd put him in the ice house. This was the day when they had the big, the little green ice houses they handled from the door. So they put one in there. That evening the sheriff was sitting at his dinner table and all of a sudden he stood bolt upright And he said, oh, Emmy, I left old Joe down there in the ice house. I've got to go down and get him out. He'll freeze to death. So he put on his hat and he walked down the street, got to the icehouse and turned the big handle and a door creaked open like that and waning over in the corner, it's that little drunk all huddled up and he looked up at the sheriff and he said for God's sake, close that door. I'm freezing to death! And so am I, by the way. In Texas, I guess you've got a sobriety date. My sobriery date is June 15th, 1953. One day at a time. I started to drink. Alcoholism, let me speak as a physician. I am one. Let me speak of the position for a moment. alcoholism, all addictions by the way are the same. They're all the same all the neurotransmitters are all affected in the same way we have division in AA and I'm sure there is here in California where I come from that say that certain drug addicts should not be admitted to AA meetings and I am not getting into that you've got to settle that yourself anyway we do know from a scientific standpoint that the vast majority maybe not all but the vast majority of addiction, of all kinds, is a family inherited susceptibility. My own father was alcoholic, so was my mother. She wasn't as severe as my father, but she got, she was periodic. She got drunk two or three times a year when she did hug the wall if she was coming through. I mean, I had an uncle that died at the age of 47 from alcoholism. I had a cousin that died of the age 30 from alcohol. That's all on my mother's side. I have one cousin on my mother's side, who, by the way, has been in AA about, oh, I guess 13 or 14 years, 15 years. And then my father's side are all drunks and my father said a whole bunch of them. So I come by my alcoholism justifiably. And I also got addicted to amphetamines too. And yet not every member of an alcoholic's family become addicted. My brother, he's 18 months younger than I am. He's not addicted. He isn't an addict. They're not an addict I am. And we'd go out to dinner on Thanksgiving or Christmas, his wife and mine, my wife sitting right there, Mickey. We'd go up to dinner, and my brother would take a martini, and he would hold it up to the light, and he wouldn't let the light sift through it. I don't know what he's doing now. And then he would take the martini and put it under his nose to savor the bouquet. And then He would take the martinis and sip it, and then have the temerity to sit the damn thing down again. This used to drive me crazy. I'd say, why don't you knock it off? I mean, you know. Well, that doesn't bother me these days, but it did in those days. But you see, the joke was on me. He is a normal drinker. We're a bunch of slobs. The one thing we know how to do well is to drink booze badly. We're slickers. this is in the summer of 1926 i was 15 i was born in 1911 1926 we went to a an area known as russian river you folks may not know that anyone's been in california northern californian may know russian rivers a great resort area and he and i went up there to take taste booze we had never done this before, never had to drink before. He had a little Ford car and we went up there and we ran out to a bootlegger, his name was Martinelli. And oh ma Martinelli, she was a big fat mamma mia, you know, big varicose veins in the legs, she had eight children and she was very gentle so later when the prohibition was rescinded, this is during prohibition, she became the Martinelli winery and they still make Martinelli wine out there, McMartin and the apple juice, those from Omaha, that we got four quarts of red wine. Now I suppose that the bootleg wine was not as strong as we have it today, I don't really know. We went back to our cabin, and my friend Art sat on one little cot, and I sat on the other. It didn't have buildings, it had tents, floors with tents over it. And so we started, we uncorked our bottle of this, and started to taste the libation. And I had a couple of drinks with this, and I thought, gee, where's this stuff been? This is pretty good stuff. So I paid attention to this, and I reasonably promptly drank that quart of wine. I looked at Art, and he had drunk about half of his, and is sitting in bed, bowled upright, eyes wide open, looking out like this, staring into space. I thought the guy had died. So I was frightened. We were only 15 away from home, you know, it was Prohibition days, and I said, all right. And it jiggled the air enough that he just plopped over on the bed. I went over and shook him and I could see he was drunk. I'd seen my own father drunk and so I knew what it was my mother took. And so wearily, I put his legs up on the bend and put a comfort over him and then I thought, what do I do? It never felt so lonely in my life. Then I spied his half-empty, half-full bottle. I said wow, that can't wait bad. So I drank it. Then I thought, what shall I do? Remember when I went outside and walked down with very light, starlit night, dark, beautiful. Came back in, sat down, and then I had to supply the other three quarts of wine. Believe it or not, no, the other two quarts were fine. I sat there and drank the other four quarts. The other two quarters of wine, now that's three plus quarts a wine in a kid of 15. I don't think it was as strong as we have it today. It's a wonder it didn't kill me, but I was an alcoholic, didn't know it. And my tolerance was very, very high. and that was true my whole drinking career. Now, from that time on, I didn't drink often in high school, in college, medical school. But when I drank, I drank just like that, large amounts. Either I didnít drink or I drank large amounts, thatís what I did. In 1939, it happened. What happened? They came out with little metal boxes with all kinds of drugs in it given to us as physicians. nimbutol, secondol, two-in-all and benzadrine and I tried them all if you would like and I tried Benny's and from then on a great love affair built between Benny's and me and alcohol for the rest of my drinking days well I'm not going to go into my drinking story but it's the same as yours there's no difference I must say this though I never endangered a patient I had a very thoughtful partner And when I drank, I was not on call. I never was in my office drunk, never once. But the patient's there. After the last patient left, I went into my office and poured a big drink that I had in the lower right-hand door of my desk. And I never went to the hospital drunk. I went in a couple of times and I just kind of whacked up, but I wasn't on call, I had no patient on the line. Now how long this would have lasted, I don't know. But I never endangered a patient, I'm happy to say. You know, I differ from many alcoholics. One is that I love the taste of alcohol. Now, I love sweet drinks as well as straight drinks. It wasn't the taste so much, it was the burning sensation. Going like this and then landing here, I liked that sensation. The next thing is, I never lost a thing. I never was arrested. I don't know how I avoided it, but I never was. I never had a, we call them DWI, driving while intoxicated, and now it's driving under the influence, DUI. Never had one of those. I don' t know how I avoided, but I did. I made more money in the last year of my drinking than I ever made before in my whole life. Success killed me. I had everything right by the knockers. I it was easy for me I even got the feeling and this is I remember this very well thinking all good must come from me I can't help but I apologize to you but that's the way I thought about it and because I'd had enormous amounts of success in my life and the skid row of success believe me is as bad as a skidrow in the street on the curb stone in the streets just as bad. As a matter of fact, all bottoms are the same. I'm not talking about physical bottoms now. Physical bottoms do vary. I know yours is prettier than mine, but that's all right. Some people go to Skid Row. Only 3% of alcoholics go on Skid row, 3%. All the rest are next door to you and me. But all the emotional bottoms are absolutely identical. Despair is despair is despair. For example, we all think our emotions are rather unique? Well, in a sense they are. But we're all the same, really. You know, your pain is the same as mine. Your despair is the same as my. Your pain is same as me. Your suffering is the name of mine. You're joy is the thing was mine. We're all saying baby, you see, we all have the same kinds of emotions. Well, let me get back to that story. On the last day of my drinking, 15th of June 1953 and so this coming and June 15th will be my birthday. I went to Sam's restaurant, and I ordered a wearing blender full of vodka fizzes and three double vodka martinis. Now, why I ordered this mess, I don't know. You see, I like sweet drinks. I also, I used to be ashamed to say I ate candy when I drank. I didn't eat other food. And now and again, I eat candy. I was kind of ashamed. I seemed kind of sissified, you know. I read a book by Jack London entitled John Barleycorn. Jack London was an alcoholic and died from booze, and he's the one that popularized the name John Barneycorn. And in there, he said when he drank, he ate candy, and I said, well, hell, it was good enough for Jack, it was enough for me, so I forgot it. Well, I drank these down. Now, on this day, I was not completely blacked out. I was kind of browned out so i'll tell you a few instances i don't recall leaving sam's restaurant in tiburon little city near i live in mill valley california north end of the golden gate bridge and i don'T recall even when i call uh somewhere in the early afternoon being up on the side of the mountain we live inside the mountain visiting a friend of mine named harry harry i'd gone to the university with and i knew him rather well fraternity brother of mine and he had been in trouble with booze. Now, I didn't go there seeking sobriety. I had been worried about my drinking. I could not seem to stop. I never considered myself alcoholic. In those days, the word alcoholism, alcoholic, was not as popular as it is now. And we all thought, I did anyway, that alcoholics were on Skid Row. Three percent only were on skid row, but I thought all alcoholics worked. So I never called myself an alcoholic. Somebody said to me, are you a drunk? I'd I'd say, well, I don't like the word, but yeah, I am, yeah. Aren't you drinking too much? And I'd said, yes, I do. And they'd say why don't you stop? But I'd go, I dunno. I try to. I remember one time on a Sunday I said, I'm not going to drink again. I'm going in the wagon. I've tried this many times. I'm gonna go in the waggon. So I didn't drink anymore that day. On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I did not drink. But I came home Friday afternoon, late Friday evening and I poured out a big glass of vodka and drank it down. As I did it, I said, Earl, as I said to myself, I always talk to myself. I said Earl, I thought you said you were going to stop drinking and here I drank it now. I could not stop. I didn't know why. Well anyway, I didn' t go up. On this particular day I was not concerned. It was one of the good days and I went up to see Harry and we talked and he said, You know, I've been in trouble with booze and I said yes, I know that. He'd made the newspapers, and he'd been in jail, and his wife had left him, and I knew all this. But he said, you know, I haven't had a drink for seven months. And I said, You have? What happened to you? Well, he said... Do you know of Alcoholics Anonymous? And I thought, well, not really. I said... I read an article by Jack Alexander. I remembered the name. Later, by the way, I met Jack Alexander, and he and I became very close friends. But at this time, he was only a name, a writer. In the Saturday Evening Post in 1941, and he talked about AA, and in there, one of the founders was a doctor. And I, being a doctor, identified with that. And that's all I knew. Well, he said, he gave me a piece of paper like this. And he said... It was folded together. You open it up. And on one side and on this side, there were statements directed towards the active drinker who was planning on stopping drinking. I wasn't planning on stoping drinking on this day. But he gave it to me. I later said to him, when I learned what this word meant, were you 12-stepping me? He said, no, I wasnít. No, I knew you were a little drunk. I could tell that. but he said, I just gave it to you as a matter of information. Well, the scene changes and I got home to my house in Mill Valley and I was sitting on the deck, beautiful sunny day in June, daylight saving time and I WAS TRYING TO MAKE THIS THING OUT AND I WAS SO DRUNK I JUST COULDN'T FEED THE WORDS. So I asked my wife if she would come out and read it to me and she did and she read one thing that said, Don't stop drinking for anybody else except yourself, except you. Don't stop drinking for anybody else except yourself. Another thing she read was, don't consider yourself a martyr because you stopped drinking. Don't start drinking for anyone else except you. Don't quit drinking for everybody else except yourself. And don't think of yourself as a martyr because you do so. Now these two very beautiful statements made a very deep impact on me. As though somebody had taken a wet beer towel and just popped me in the mouth with it. It just shook me. And I broke down and cried. Well, crying was par for the course in those days. You know, I didn't know it then, but do know it very much now that emotional instability is the result of excess using and drinking. We used to think that emotional instability caused addiction. We now know that's probably untrue. Here I was, I'd drive along. Bing Crosby was very popular in those day. I'd drive along in my car and listen to Bing sing, and I'd cry. Or I'd look up in the sky. I was noticing, I told you my wife yesterday, there were beautiful clouds here. I'd see a beautiful cloud, and it would touch me, and I'D cry. Or Iíd look up and not see a cloud, and Iíd cry too. Iíd looked at my wife and daughter, and Iíll cry, and Iím sure they looked at me and cried too. I donít know. But anyway, my wife patted me on the back and said, ìDonít worry, youíll be all right,î and went in the house. And I sat there, and I don't think I ever felt so dejected, so down, so depressed, so abject in my life. I'm kind of an up guy, and it never felt this way. Well, it soon passed a little bit, and it was about time, maybe it was four in the afternoon, five, time to build the barbecue fire. We made a barbecue on Saturdays and Sundays, and we lived in the barbecue areas up on the side of the hill from the house. And I recall sloshing up the stone stairs. I can recall this very well, getting to the top stair. It must have been 14 or 15 steps. Got to the Top Stair, looked at my glass, and I had just about a finger left from the bottom of the glass. And I said, now, that will never do. If I'm going to be up there making that fire, I should have a full glass. So I'll turn around the stairs and go down onto the deck and go into the kitchen, make a drink, come out on the deck, up the stairs, out of the barbecue pit, and I'll have one there. as I turned around on the stairs an absolutely phenomenal thing happened to me I had no concept that this was going to happen and it did now I really can't describe it but I'm going to try as I turn around it was as though an explosion occurred inside of me it just ripped me apart I felt pain in every cell of my body now I have no idea why I'm a physician, I can't account for it but I did. I felt acute pain, and then I heard the words, this is your last drink. It was a surprise to me. It got to me, I took what little I had in the glass and poured it out, and then a second thing happened to me that I felt enormously relieved. That a second thing happened as I suddenly became as clear as I am right this instant. Now how you come from being a sloppy drunk to total clarity, I have no idea. I can't account for this, but I did. And then for the first time, I said, oh, you are an alcoholic. That's your trouble. You're addicted to these amphetamines. You are addicted to this booze. That is it. That is why you went to see that psychiatrist and he didn't help you a bit. You were a booze artist. That was what you are. Well, I felt enormously relieved. I was joyful. Thank God I got the seat of all this thing. At that instant, the craving to take another drink disappeared from me, or a pill, disappeared from me and has not returned for 37 years, even once. Now that's kind of remarkable. I didn't know what to make of this. I realized that I should go to AA, so the next day I went up to see Harry, and Harry took me to an AA meeting. In those days, in this county where live there are only three meetings my god we have 300 now and i went to the meeting and harry took me and uh i realized as alcoholic let me tell you about the first meeting i went in the meeting and there was like a banquet table four by eight table on this side sat a guy named clark billingsley long since dead and this side had a little guy named named shorty i won't give his last name because he's still alive. Shorty. And Clark was a butcher. Shorty, a little short, irritable, bald-headed guy, was a carpenter. On that end of the edge of the table, on the other side of the tablet, sat a guy named Vern Weir, along to his death, who was a baker. And on this side sat my friend Harry, who was kind of a self-styled inventor, and me. That's all. We had very small meetings in those days. Well, Vern was a banker and Shorty was a carpenter and Clark was a butcher. And now, if there's any carpenter, butcher, baker here, please, I'm not slurring them. But let me say what happened to me then. My idea is totally different now. The great doctor pulled himself up to his greatest height and said, What am I doing with a butcher and a carpeter and a baker and my friend the mechanic here? What's this? So I asked Clark if I could be excused. He said, By all means, doctor. so I walked out of the hall stood underneath a linden tree and I took stock I said Earl you need to tell me all the things you have I won't go into all my professional things they're remarkable I won' t go into them you mean to tell that this you have got to go in there to have a butcher and a carpenter and a baker and a mechanic make a man out of you and the words came to me you damn right you do get in there so I went in there and I want to tell you never has a doctor become so grateful to a carpenter and to a butcher and to an electrician and to the baker and the mechanic as this one these guys were master clinicians they knew exactly what to say to me they knew exatamente what not to say to me they knew how to treat me and when to not treat me they knew how to sit next to me and when not to say they were just remarkable people they just knew how to soothe me and I don't know how they got this clinical sense, but they did. They were just beautiful. After several weeks, I heard of another meeting, which I thought was an AA meeting. I found out later it was not, but many AA people went to it, mainly AA, I thought. It was known as Jesus as Teacher and it talked about the teaching statements of Jesus, not his divinity so-called, but his statements and it was copied after a book written by a man named Sharman Maybe some of you know the book, Jesus as Teacher. Well, this was really in one upsmanship group is what it was. It wasn't an AA group, but I thought it was, you know, I didn't know any different. They would come in and someone would say, by the way, have you read what's on page 93, page paragraph 2? And we'd say, oh no, we haven't read that. We'd go home and read it. We'd think, oh, that guy was putting us on. We'd come back and say, no, but he read us on such and such a book on page 122. No, he hadn't. And back and forth, this thing went of showing off and proving that you knew more and you were more spiritual. So a lot of other garbage, you know. Well, at the end of four months, I felt terrible. Just felt awful. So I went to Clark and I said, Clark, you now, I might just as well be drunk and see like I do. I thought I saw a faint smile go across his face and he said, Earl, let me get you a cup of coffee in a donut. We served donuts in those days. And I watched him like a child. So I watched Shorty and Vern and Clark just like I was a child, hanging on every word they said. So he got this cup of coffee for me and took me over to the corner of the hall of the Methodist church there. And he sat down, crossed his legs, looked way off into space, and I sat there in eager anticipation. What was he going to say? He said, you know, Earl, I'm very proud of you. You're a doctor and it must not be easy for you to come down with us, after all. We are in our schools like you are. But he said, he said you know and you've done well for four months, done well. He said you're going to this other group which is perfectly fine but he said I've got a statement to say to you. Why don't you join Alcoholics Anonymous? And I said well Clark what do you think I'm doing? He said, well, I'm not quite sure what you're doing. But he said, this other group you go to is perfectly fine. Don't give it up. It's all right, you know. But it's not Alcoholics Anonymous. Maybe right now it might be wise if you paid attention to Alcoholics Anonymous." I said, I thought I was doing that. He said,"Well, I know you did. I know your did. I'm no blaming you at all." I said,"Clark, if you were in my shoes, what would you do?" He said--"Well, I don't know what to tell you." But he said,"This occurs to me. Have you read the big book?" And I said--"Yes, I've read it three times." He said, you don't learn very well, do you? And I said, well, I guess maybe I don't. He said why don't you go home and open up to page 70. Now in the first edition of the book we didn't call it chapter 5 or how it works we called it page 70 that was the affectionate name some of the old timers here will remember that page 70 now why don'T you get up and read it? So I said Clark, I'll do it I left, went home, opened the big book and it said rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path Those who do not recover, or people who can not or will not, completely give themselves to this simple program. Usually men and women went on and on. Well, I memorized the fifth chapter and many other parts of the big book that day and later on, and it kept saying go to any lengths. And it said half measures availed us nothing. It didn't say half measures available is half. It said half measure is available is nothing. We stood at the turning point. we asked for protection and care, with complete abandon, with complete abandoned giving yourself, go to any length, finally sunk through this thick skull. And at that instant I became more a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and I have had a joyful-slash-horrible trip in AA. I loved every pain that I have ever had. Now, let me tell you a few things that occurred to me in sobriety. Now, some of you folks will not like what occurred to me, but I can't help it is what occurred to me. And if it steps on your toes, I bow to you and say, pardon me. When I was about oh, I don't know how far, a few years sober, I got up every morning, operated every morning very early and I got up at 4 o'clock and did some exercise which I still do, still exercise every morning. Here I am close to 80 and I'd get up every morning and exercise for an hour and a half. What I did then, as I stood there that morning, the dawn was just barely breaking summertime and I started to cry softly. I didn't know why. I just felt terrible. I went over and sat down on a chair and I continued to cry. Now, I'm the kind of person when I have discomfort, I don't escape it. I don' t turn on the radio, turn on TV to get rid of it. I don''t do that. I walk right through it. I want to understand it. I'm interested in understanding it and still am today. I wantto know what goes on inside of me just to understand that's all. I thought, What's going on with me? And then I realized that I'd never felt that I had a home. I'd ever felt I had an owner. I was in my forties. Never felt I'd had a homo. Then, a thing happened to me and change occurred. Change occurred in this mutation just like that. And all of a sudden it occurred to me that I was incorrect. The only home I could ever have, really, was inside of me. Therefore, I've been home my whole life. I just didn't know it. Oh yes, I'd had houses, apartments, condominiums, whatever you want to call them. But I'd been home My whole life I never have been any place but home since that time, as far as my consciousness is concerned. I'm home right this instant. It's inside of me, whatever that may mean. That's it. So I realized that I was home all the time. Loneliness has never struck me since that times, not at all. I realize we all live in solitude. We're all in solitud. You're in solitudes. So are you. So are yo. You're all solitude, but we're in Solitude together. That's kind of a great thing. Well, a couple of years later, I was in Texas. There was a very great man named Chuck C., a very close friend of mine, and he's been up here at this conference and talked, I think, in 1967, like you and I noticed in the program. He knew him very well. And Chuck C. was another guy I followed. I aped him. I worshipped him. I copied. I tried to talk the way he did. I didn't make it. But I tried after I apied him. I was always reading books, and they'd say, well, do this, and so I would do that. I remember one time I read a book entitled The Power of Positive Thinking. I'm not criticizing the author, by the way, or the book. And I went around for a whole year smiling all the time, just smiling like that. And I felt like hell. It just felt terrible, you know. At the end of the year, I said, I'm going to write a book titled The Power of Negative Thinking. Well, so Norman Vincent Peale, I love you to death, and I'm glad it's been a great help to some people. But I didn't know how to use the book, and it didn't help me at all. I couldn't fake it. I was down, so I've been trying to copy everybody. Oh, God, I was really a second-class citizen. I was a secondary person trying to ape you and you and You and You. Didn't work. And Chuck and I had done lots of public speaking in my medical career, and so my AA career I started. By the way, I got to talking so much. Someone said, you know, we haven't heard of you for years. Where have you been? And I said, I got tired of my own voice. And I quit talking. Now and again, I'd come to here or some other place. But then I was out of the country for many years. I was in Southeast Asia for a long time. Well, Chuck was talking. I was next. And I looked up at Chuck, and I said... Chuck, I love you to death. You are fabulous. You've been an enormous help to me. I'll never forget you. But Chuck, you've got to go. I've got leave. I can no longer be a follower. I've got to be my person. I've Got to Develop My AA Program. See, as far as I'm concerned, there is no hard line in AA. And I know there are many here who think there is. And I appreciate that. And you're correct as far As You're Concerned. But don't tell me how to work a hard line program because I don't think there is one. You work yours and I'll work mine. I've Gotta Work My Own AA Program I Can No Longer Be A Follower I never would have followed anyone since that time. I walk my own way. Now, you know, it takes a fair amount of courage to walk your own way in solitude with others, to not be influenced by what others say. They may give you sometimes something to think about, and that's fine, okay. Of course, thinking is the thing that kills you anyway, you know. Turn off our think box, we'll be all right, you know. So I've never followed anyone since that time, and I've gone my own way. Now many people don't like the way I've grown. That's too bad. It's the way you've done it. So since that moment, I've always been at home inside of myself. Now I've got to tell you a thing. It occurred to me in my sobriety. Oh, these are things that occurred to be in my subriety, maybe not yours but mine. It occurred to me that we have it all mixed up as regards time. T-I-M-E, time. And I was able to see that we needed to divide time into emotional or spiritual time and physical time, that is the material world. It became clear to me that in the material worldview there is such a thing as time. For instance, it took you folks and me and my wife a certain number of hours or minutes to get here. We've been here a certain length of time and soon we'll be on our way to where we're going. So there is a past and a present and a future in the material, physical world. I could see that. Even there we kind of mess it up, but that's all right. Now how does that work in the emotional world? Emotionally speaking, it's always now. There is no time. Physically, there is. Emotionally, there is no time. Now that being true, you and I are not allotted any time in which to change our emotions. We are out of luck. It's just like alcoholism or drug addiction. There's no way you can change your drug addiction or your alcoholism addiction until you become aware that that's what you are. You're a drunk. Oh, I don't have to control that stuff because I can't. Oh, i see. That's when physical sobriety starts. It's absolutely the same as far as I'm concerned with emotions. Recognize your emotions. For God's sake, don't try to change them. Recognize them. Live with them. Understand them. That's who you are. At that instant, emotional sobriery starts. God, most people say I'm resentful and I shouldn't be. Or I'm jealous and I sure shouldn't be this way. I'm going to change that. And we're taught in this culture we can change our emotions. It's all wet. It's just cockeyed. You can't. It's wrong. You Can't Do It. We just struggle and struggle to change our emotion. I'm gonna become happy for the rest of my life. I'm goin' to AA meeting and get happy. You come to AA to get happy? You're crazy! AA meeting is a place you come to get sober. Now maybe you get happy too. That's fine too. Well, as far as I'm concerned, emotional sobriety only comes after accepting the emotions that you have. You see, be who you are. There's nothing wrong with you emotionally. I don't care what mood you're in right this instant, there's nothing right with you either. It just is what you is. You is what your is. Be it, and if you do, and you accept it, just like we accept alcoholism, machinery is set in motion which will bring about emotional change and it happens in no other way on a durable basis. You can fake emotional change for a while. I did it for a year. Other ways too. You can make yourself say, I'm going to be happy today and you'll be happy for a little bit but the same old business will come back again. Accept what's there. If it's terrible, feel terrible. Don't wallow in it. That's not the idea. Accept it. What's it about? What's going on? Every time you feel terrible and I feel terrible, change is about to happen. Whoo! I wrote a paper once for the Grapevine. I had an awful hard time sending it in. I was so worried that people would criticize me and hate me. I don't give a damn if they hate me at all. No, but I did. And I sent it in and it was, Thank God for Despair. Why, it's been reprinted seven times in the AA Grapevine, so somebody agreed. Now what I meant was, I'm not selling despair, not selling pain, not selling discomfort, but I'm saying every time there is discomfort, change is going to happen out to happen. Believe me. If you're feeling terrible this morning, happy days. You're about to change into something that will be kind of good. Be who you are and the movement of change will happen. God, be who you are if you don't do anything else. You know, I went to Asia. They got me from the medical school in San Francisco where I was a professor to go to the Medical College of Georgia. They offered me a professorship if I would go to Saigon. Saigon? on. The war was still on. It was tapering down. If I'd go there as a visiting professor and help the University of Saigon Medical School develop its own, a new program in my surgical specialty. So I accepted. And I decided to go back to New York. And Bill was a close friend of mine. He and I had the same kind of a great big blasting spiritual hot flash recovery. So we became very close friends. I went there and spent several days with him and Lois up at their place at Bedford Hills. Finally, he got time to go to the airport and Bill drove me down to the Airport. And on the way down, he said, Earl, you know, I've been sober longer than anybody else in our organization. Nobody else has been sober as long as I have. He said, I don't feel very serene. I don' t have much peace of mind. I said, I don''t either, Bill. I don ''t have much peace of mine either. So we cogitated on this for a while. Then we got to the Airport. We hugged one another, shook hands. I got in the plane and flew to Saigon. well on the way out there I thought you know Bill's right I wonder how come I'm not so serene all the time because we had many members in AA you probably have them here today who say if you were not happy all the same all the damn you're not in the AA program oh nonsense but that's what they'll tell you and I felt I wasn't happy all the town but I should be well got out to Saigon took me a couple months to get established and finally I thought to myself here I had a big book that Bill had given me and the patrol steps and twelve traditions had given me and I subscribed to the grapevine came to me through an APO number and so I was well indoctrinated with AA literature and went to AA meetings I've been in AA meetings on every continent except Australia all over the place I even went to AA meetings in Iran now there you get shot if you get drunk you know but I went I went to a meeting in Iran this one is Shah was the big shot there I've met in AA meetings all over India and Bombay and Madras and Hong Kong and Singapore and Taipei and Kathmandu and all over Finland and Italy and Near East. All over the place. And amen is all over the places. A lot of time in temples, the Buddhist temples and Hindu temples and all over the place, sitting as close as I could to the lotus position with my legs all crossed up like that. I couldn't quite make it, you know. Attempting to meditate. Now, meditation is a traditional way of hands together, thumbs together, saying, oh money, put me in, oh my name is man, over and over again. It didn't do a damn thing for me. I just couldn't make it. Maybe it does a lot for you folks, and I'm glad if it does, but to me it didn't doing a damn things. Well, after two or three years, I got more and more frantic. I was searching and searching and researching through these religions. I was going to AA meetings every place. Singapore, I went to a great AA meeting, Bombay, great AA meetings. And I wanted to get into that community. and I just got more and more frantic and I was searching for it. Finally one day, maybe three years it elapsed. I wasn't doing this all the time of course but it's the rest of my life I came to my little apartment in Saigon. I came in I just sagged to the floor. I was just beaten emotionally and I lay on the floor there and all of a sudden I said to myself oh to hell with serenity. I don't care if I ever get it. And when I gave that up, you know what happened? I was totally serene. Searching is the trouble. If any of you are searching for serenity, for God's sake, stop it. Be un-serene. Know it. Then surrender will happen. But only when you accept it with your heart that you're not feeling good. This is who you are. They say don't get resentful, you get drunk. Nonsense. The thing will get you drunk. Don't get drunk, is not recognizing that you are resentful. That's where you've got to start, faking it. I'm not resentful, not resentable one bit, you know. I don't hate anybody at all. I love everybody, you Know. I'll get you drunk quick, you Now. I've never searched for anything since that time. The hell with it. Passed away. Now, the talk at AA about surrender. How long am I talking? I'm talking too long. everybody shut up am I talking too long no I'm not oh uh should I tell you how I found God yeah no I'll say it anyway um I I'm I'm not religious I never have been and not religious today to speak of I'm I like the idea that they're religious but I don't I'm not there and I was searching for God as I understood him early in my sobriety I operated on a woman taking out a very large uterine tumor and and I had done this a good number days before and on this particular day i had taken out her sutures and given her instructions on what you should do when she went home gave her an appointment to see me six weeks hence and then i went back to my office or two miles that afternoon her husband called me and he said dr marsh i said yes he did that my name was so-and-so yes how do you do glad to talk to you he said i want to thank you very much for curing my wife i have you have no idea how how much we feel grateful we are to that. And so he and I passed the doctor patient amenities. I said, well, thank you very much. It's a great pleasure to be of assistance. So forth. And then he hung up. Then it rang through my heart what he had said. Thank you, doctor, for curing my wife. And I said did I cure her? Did I? Now, I didn't underestimate my diagnostic ability. I have good diagnostic ability, still have. Did I underestimate my surgical ability? No. But did that cure her. I knew that if I'd cut those stitches out, 48 to 72 hours after I put them in, the wound would have just gaped apart. And yet, I had taken the sutures out that morning and the wound was tightly healed together. How come? What had happened? Well, I didn't know. Well, maybe the nurses do it. You know, so I said, well, they have to spend more time than I do with the patients, you know, except in the operating room. But I couldn't account, they didn't do it either. You know. I couldn'T account for that. Finally, it became clear to me that inside of you and in me there is a healing power. I had seen it a thousand, thousand times in my patients. I cut my own hand and seemed to think it will in a few days. Something heals together. This to me became God. Why not? A healing power You know, the word higher power is very appealing to many people. It makes no sense to me because it gives me this is my own bias by the way It makes me feel separate. Something's out there higher than I'm down here. To me, everything is God. That means there's nothing that isn't God. So hello, God. I say, hello, Dios. Hello, God, hello to you. Hello, Dios, hello God, it's all God to me. It may not be to you, but it is to me, it is God to you." So that's what I did with my higher power, surrender. Now how do you surrender and to what do you surrender? What do you surrender? Well, the idea of surrender is to give up your ego. But what is your ego? Can you find your ego and try to find it sometime? You can't find it. There is no such thing as ego. It's a bunch of damn ideas. We think you should be, you ought to be, you have to be. You must be. That's what your ego is. And I'm right and you're wrong. That your ego on you. Some of you are saying right now that guy's crazy up there. You know, that's your ego talking. And what am I doing? I'm saying you're long, and that's my ego talking. We're ego-drenched. We have ego-drinked. The idea to surrender that ego because it stands in the way of unity, andthat's, of course, what we desperately need. Well, surrender. How do you do it? You can't do it. You can take the third step, made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. You can do that because the entity that would turn over your life and your will to something else is the ego, and that's the trouble to begin with. So what do you do? Well, I'll tell you what I'll tell you. There are several ways that you can surrender. Let me tell you one that appeals to me the most. And that is, let's suppose I went to Don. Where's Don the Pope? There's Don. Suppose I went down. Oh, the old man's Pope Joy. Suppose I went to him, throw the hair out of your eyes, Don. You can say that to me, by the way, too. Well, they went to Don to tell him all of my troubles. And suppose Don, being an old-timer, just listened to me in order to understand, just to understand what I'm trying to say. I mean, his whole effort, whole heart and soul, whole devotion, energy, interest and listening to what I'm saying in an attempt to understand what I was trying to say. He would ask me many questions and I'd give him many answers and so forth. And as he did this, what would happen to me? I would say, that's the guy I've been looking for my whole life. I wanted somebody who would hear me, not advise me, not pat me on the back, not scold me, just hear me. And Don is doing this. So I get revved up and I said, I'm going to tell this guy more. So I tell him more of my troubles and all of a sudden what happens to Don? He says, you know, I've done this so many times before, being an old-timer, and I now see that if I listen to somebody just to understand them, that they get turned on. And they tell me more. And I feel elated, and I tell him more. Now most of us, by the way, let me just make a parenthetical statement here. Most of us listen to people, and as we listen, we look at them kind of dull-eyed, attempting, saying, acting as though we're listening when we aren't. We're saying to ourselves, where'd you get that crazy idea? What kind of a nut are you? you know. Now, this is not listening. This is declaring war. So monsters go around declaring war. Oh, you're crazy. But I won't tell you. You're crazy? You're a nut. I can't help with you. So we don't listen. But Don isn't listening. And my heart and soul gets bubbled up in his due. And the first thing you know, we're talking back and forth. And he's finally telling me things. And I'm listening. I'm taking it from him. I'M LISTENING TO HIM. And finally, our interest, our attention, our energy, and our devotion—they're all the same thing, by the way, become identical. They may start out separate, but slowly as we talk more and more, we're drawn closer together, as Bill and Bob were to begin with, and you're drawn together and zip! At that point, there is no ego. There's only listening and understanding. It's at that point that healing happens. AA is very inviting, and when you do that, there's a feeling of growing up and you both transcend and you feel, wow, thank God I've been here. How many times have you gone to a meeting you didn't want to go to, and you went there and you shared with somebody, talked with somebody who came away feeling pretty good? You've zapped like that. AA is very aware of this. Alcoholics Anonymous, the Fellowship of Men and Women. Bill didn't write this, by the way. The first editor of the Grapevine wrote this preamble. Alcoholic Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. And Don is doing this to me, and we zapped. There is no ego then. Surrenders happen without your knowing. If you try to surrender it, you're going to hang on to it. What you resist will persist. If You say, I'm not going to have an ego, I am going to give up my ego. I'm resisting my ego, you know what? Your ego gets stronger. It gets larger. Give it up, baby. You know, that's the point. You see, surrender is what it's about. Being who you are is what it's a about. Developing your own program is what it's all about as far as I'm concerned. Maybe not as far as you're concerned. You have your own ideas. That's all right. Now isn't that a glorious and a strange thing? How you and I can go to doctors who have helped us enormously in our recovery. Really the doctors do a lot. And I'm not bragging about doctors because I one. It is true. But they can't give you and me the kind of sobriety that we demand. They can't do it. And psychiatrists, God rest their soul, you know, you can go to a psychiatrist and put you on couches and talk to you all around, and they help us, but they don't give us the kindof sobriete we've got to have. And the men of the cloth, the minister, the rabbis, the priests, and so forth, they're wonderful. And barring very few exceptions, they cannot give you and me the kind of surprises that we've got to have and what do you do here we collect a bunch of idealistic perfectionistic irritable demanding egocentric people get them into a room together if you have ten alcoholics out here in a circle you've got ten people all beginning sentences with the word I and yet with this very broken situation, we stay sober in the way we have to. What's going on? What kind of nonsense is this that these great men can't do it and we get together here and shoot off our big fat yaps and we stay silver in the ways we have to? What's going on what well I suppose the doctor say well but you folks have a very fine brand of psychosomatic medicine or some other gibberish Or the psychiatrist might say, what you have is a special brand of interpersonal benevolent relations. Well, maybe we do have. Or the men of the cloths, the rabbis, the ministers, the priests would say, you have an esprit de corps that keeps you sober. But to me, it's the very essence of God. God bless you all. I don't know what else to say.