The First Condition for Sobriety Is to Accept Yourself – Chuck C.

Thank you, I'm Chuck C., and I'm an alcoholic. Hi. My, what a bunch of people. I wonder how many of you are drunks. Wow! That's good. You know, Buttermilk says he hopes I don't louse this up, so he completely ruined my opening remarks. I was going to tell you that up until now I had heard all the hosts and all the masters of ceremony and all the speakers, and they'd all done a real good job. And I had talked with Talbot and straightened him out for tomorrow morning. So there wasn't any chance of anybody now lousing this thing up because it's a success already. But he messed me up here and I can't say that. So I won't. I come to Arkansas every 17 years. They sure liked me in Arkansas. I think they got me sort of mixed up with the Little Rock plan. I expect most of you here today never heard of the Little Rock plan, but they had a plan here a long time ago when this thing first started. And you had to leave your wife and your job and your kids, and I presume you had to give them all your money and then go to hospital. And then they gave you a course of sprouts, and if you passed they let you in to the society. When I was over seventeen years ago at Little Rock, they They called them, they and the old Ironside's group, there were just a few of them left. But I bet you a lot of them stayed sober. Reminds me of a little deal they got up in Canada. You know, they got a lot Indians up in canada. And some of them up there drank a little of that hooch, and uh, they have some groups amongst them, AA groups. And in the one area where I was up there, they would allow you one slip. They'd go to any length to get you sober, and they'd allow you one flip, and come get you and bring you back. But if you slipped twice, they'd beat the bejesus out of you. So they only slipped once up there. I'm glad to be here, and I want to thank the committee for allowing Mr. C and I to share this evening with you, this entire weekend, as a matter of fact. And I want to thank you all for coming. It's nice when you come a thousand or two miles to yak a little if somebody comes, isn't it? Buttermilk says, I hope to hell you thought up something pretty to say because I came a long ways to introduce you. Well, I don't guarantee anything. It so happens that I love this program and I love its people and that's the only reason I'm here. That is the only reason I'm there to share my experience strength and hope such as it is with anybody who wants it. It's the own reason I ever get up at a podium in Alcoholics Anonymous. I have now some 9,450 days that I would not have had were it not for the grace of God through the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I am most grateful. I have no doubt that the reason that I have been so slap-happy for 25 years and six months is because I didn't get here too early. long as I had choice, I couldn't come to Alcoholics Anonymous. And I didn't come as long as i had choice. My choice was never to come to AlcoholicsAnonymous and I didn' t come as long as I could keep from it. But in January 1946, I ran out of everything and there was no place else for me to come but here. What are you pointing that at me for. So I'd have one little piece of counsel for all of you who might be a little bit alcoholic And who might be still taking a few sniffes, be not discouraged. The time will come when there ain't no place else to go. And that time happened to me in January 1946. I couldn't even investigate this deal. I didn't want to know anything about it. Many of you have heard this, but I'll tell you again. My next to the last drunk was a little geographic. I drove 6,000 miles in a blackout. I drove from Beverly Hills to Louisville, Kentucky of North Michigan back to coast. And I don't remember 5% of it. I finally got back home and went to bed to finish my drunk, which was the place I finished them all in the last 10 years that I drank. Flat on my back in bed drinking clock around. And so there I was, finishing my drunk. I never quit as long as I could get up and get another supply. When I couldn't even lift my head off the pillow, I had to quit because my family did not understand me. They wouldn't bring me in anything to drink. They insisted that I get it myself if I was gonna drink it. Well this time came and I had sober up. Now I never knew how to sober up in any other way than to die until I could start living again. In my I knew nothing of any easy way to get sober. I never heard of a drying out place or going to the hospital or anything like that to get sober.I just died until I could live and so the time came when I had sober up And maybe it was 24, 36 hours after my last drink that I was able to go to the kitchen and get a glass of buttermilk. Pardon me, sir. And I did. Well, Mrs. P and Dick were sitting in the living room and they heard me let out a beller and heard me hit the floor. And they came trotting out there expecting to find me in a convulsion, which was my want. But I wasn't convulsing. I had used up all of my convulsions. And this time I was just lying there doing nothing. They tell me I was a very peculiar color. I was blue. And they couldn't wake me up, so they got all exercised and called for the oxygen squat from Beverly Hills Receiving Hospital to come down and wake me up. Well, I got to tell you something that I think is funny now. You know, the many, many times that I've come true after, say, just a lousy little 30-day drunk, to find all the people in town looking for me, 90% of them just tell me they never want to see me again. Now isn't that something? They dog you down just to tell you they never want to sing again. Why the hell don't they leave you alone in the first place? But no, they got to tell it. And I'm pretty sure my wife and kids have been praying for me to die for at least five years. And they come out and they didn't find me dead, and they get all exercised about it, yet the oxygen's quiet to wake me up. Well, they finally did, I think. And from the time I came through, I remember what happened. There was a young doctor with him and he was telling me that to all intents and purposes I've been dead. That they'd had a hell of a time waking me up, that they were quite sure that nobody would ever wake me up under those conditions again, and he told me if they were me they wouldn't do that anymore. I got the impression they were a guinness. Well, it might have been another 24 or 36 hours when I was able to get the old dirty bathrobe on and start walking up and down the living room floor. Sweating, freezing, shaking, dying, and walking. That's the only way I knew how to sober up. And I was doing just that, and Mrs. C. was standing over by the fireplace. We had a corner fireplace in the living room there. And she was standing there watching me. And as I was walking away from her, she said, Chuck, don't you think you might get a little help if you'd read the book Alcoholics Anonymous? I turned on her like a lion. And I said, you, my very own wife, suggesting that I read a book written by a bunch of gunks. I who have read all the good books with the good authors. And you want me to... Why? I says, you wound me deeply. Mind you, I'd just been dead 48 hours before. And she wounds me deeply and I polished it off completely by saying, and besides, I can write a better book than that myself. Now that was just 90 days before I came crawling in to Alcoholics Anonymous. Now isn't it strange that a guy like me could drink for 25 years and up until the very last drunk always have a perfectly legitimate reason for every drunk I was ever on and it was never my fault. Up until my very last drink it was Never My Fault. It was your fault, you stupid mean people. If you muggies had lived like I knew you should and like I told you how, I wouldn't have had to drink. But you wouldn't do it, so I got drunk at you. my wife was a real good reason for me to get drunk. She got me drunk many times, but her mother was a much better one. Her mother lasted for five years after all the rest of the excuses it burned up. She was a king-size excuse or reason. See, she only had one kid and I was married to her and she was living with us and she had a grandstand feet watching me crucify her only daughter. And she didn't like me very good. And I didn't like her that good. Because, you see, if she had to have been there, I wouldn't have had to crucify a daughter. But just in passing, she lived with us for five years after I came program. And it is remarkably astonishing what this program did for her. I'm quite sure that if she'd have come in the year that she passed away and had found me slapping her daughter all over the living room, she would have turned to Mrs. C., and she would have said, Why, Elsa, what have you done? Because by that time I could do no wrong in her sight, God rest her soul. To have been able to drink for twenty-five years and never to be able to see, if there be fault, it's mine." You know? Now that happened to me on my last drunk. I came to see that if there be fault it's Mine. And you know something? I've never had to have a drink since then. Since I said to myself, If there be fault, it's mine. I have never had to take a drink." So I'm very much in accord with our book when he says the first condition for sobriety is to accept ourselves exactly as we are where we are right now. This is the first condition. You'll find it, the first sentence in the second paragraph of chapter 3. We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholic. This is the first step in recovery. We learn that we had to fully conceive to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. Now, why is that so necessary? Because we have gotten ourselves caught in a trap that we cannot spring alone. We have to have help, and it is impossible for the likes of us to get help until we recognize the need for help. There's no way that even God can help us when we won't let him. And so the first condition for sobriety is that we accept ourselves exactly as we are where we are right now. The second condition is that sobrietry must come first. Now this is not only difficult for the alcoholic to come to see, but it's almost impossible for the non-alcoholic to come and see. That sobriety must come first, and I'm one who believes that unless and or until sobriete comes first we can't have it, unless it remains first, we cannot keep it. The book says that like this. If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, then you're ready to take certain steps. Any length puts a top man on the totem pole. Because unless and or until it comes first, you and I are not going to do the things necessary to obtain and maintain our sobriety. We're not going to do it. It is necessary, in my opinion, that if we be alcoholic, we either drink the last dregs out of the bottom of the cup, as I did, or we must come to see that the only thing ahead of us is permanent insanity or an alcoholic death, or we will not do the things necessary to bring it about and to maintain it. I remember Mrs. Fee spoke of this today. I attended meetings every night for six months with the great fear for a minute I couldn't have this thing. didn't think I had enough left either mentally or physically to get it. But I wanted it more than life, and so I was in a meeting every night. I never talked to Mrs. C about this at all, as she said this afternoon, because I wasn't talking her about much of anything. We were not, at that time, communicating. She was getting rid of me legally. Well, after six months of a meeting every night, I woke up to the fact that I was sober and had been for six months. And it was then I started talking, and I hadn't shut up yet twenty years ago, twenty-five years ago. And I haven't shutup yet. So when I discovered this, I came home and I talked to Mrs. C about the program. Couldn't help it. And as she said, I learned that she'd already read the book three times, and she asked me if I'd take her to a meeting. And I told her I would, and I did. She's been coming with me ever since. Well it might have been three months after that, I suppose that I was nine or ten months sober when I was asked to do the 10-minute spot before the regular speaker at the Beverly Hills Group. That was my home group for my first 11 years. And I got up there and talked a little, and I ended up this deal by saying if it were necessary tonight for me to go to Tibet in order to maintain what I found here, I would go home pack my little grip come through the living room kiss my wife and say honey it's too bad I've got to go now I didn't think that was bad but it wasn't long after we got home until the house was rocking and I look over and this lady is practically in convulsion and I said well honey what's the matter with you And she says, oh what you said. She says for the first time in her life we have an opportunity for a little happiness and a little peace and a bit of joy in this household and you'd go to Tibet. She said don't I mean anything to you? Don't the kids mean anything to you, don't the home mean anything, mean anything to your boo-hoo. So I let her cry a little bit, and when she calmed down a little, I said, well, honey, do I mean anything to your drunk? And she says, no. Do I mean anything to the kid that's drunk? She says, No. Do i mean anything for the home drunk? and she says no. And I said, Well can't you see that this has to be first? and she couldn't. But if you would ask her now, or any time in the last many years, she would tell you whatever I have to do to maintain myself in this way, she is all for it and of course so am I now there's a little verse and I use some verses once in a while not because I'm too much of a verse man but simply because they express what I'm thinking more than I can better than I think than I say myself but there's another verse in a good book that I was very much opposed to for 30 years before I got here. I would have argued with the Pope in Rome and all the College of Cardinals that this was either a mistranslation or a deliberate attempt to deceive. Because the verse went like this. it says lest the man be willing to leave his mother and his father and his wife and his kids sell all he has and give it to the poor and take up his cross and follow me he's not worthy of me and it was attributed to the carpenter and I knew he didn't say it because you see he was a good man and I was an evil man and I couldn't say it myself so I knew he couldn't have said it But I wasn't sober very long until I knew that if he didn't say it, he should have. Because there's a word in that that I had never conjured with. It says, let the man be willing. And if he's willing, you don't have to. You see, I've been willing to go to Tibet for 25 years and 6 months, and I never even had to go there once. So, it's necessary I believe that sobriety come first and remain first. Now the reason for this, I presume, is because we do have to have help. And our book tells us that maybe it's got to be helped from a power greater than we are. The book says lack of power was our dilemma, and if we lack the power we have to find it. And it has to be a power greather than we are, obviously, says the book, obviously I I believe that. Totally do I believe it. The book says under certain conditions, certain circumstances, it seems that there's only one defense against that first slug, the drink I must not take. And that's help from a power greater than we are. And I believe just as I believe I'm standing here and for just a simple reason. If I could have remained sober, I would not believe that. I could not remain sober, therefore I believe it. Because something happened to me twenty-five years and six months ago, and I haven't had to have a drink or a sedating or tranquilizing pill since. And I didn't do it. So I'm quite sure that it's necessary that we get help from Power Grid in ourselves. I am just as sure that perhaps one of the greatest roadblocks we have is that we get mixed up in why we are here. Why we are here. I think some of us get sidetracked into trying to get help from a power greater than ourselves, instead of following the directions on the formula, you know. They might read that third step or hear somebody talk about it a little. It says we made a decision to turn our will and our lives over in the care of God as we understood him. And we say, uh-oh, don't understand him, I got to get me another book. I've got to get me a tutor." So we get on a tangent trying to get some help from a power grader than we are, instead of doing the things the book tells us to do. Because that second condition says, if you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length, any any length to get it, then you're ready to take certain steps. And then it says here are the steps we took. Here are the steps we TOOK which are suggested as a program of recovery. We're sober. The implication is we're sober. Here's the things we did. If you want this thing, do these things. And of course, the first condition is a two-fold admission of defeat. And we're not going to two- fold admit that we're defeated unless we have taken the first two conditions, unless we've come to see and to accept ourselves as we are where we are right now, and unless sobriety is number one on our hit parade. Because it is not alcoholic thinking to admit that we are powerless over alcohol, that our lives have become unmanageable. This is not alcoholic thinking. Powerless over alcohol, physical, unmanageable life, mental. So it's necessary that we come up to this step having already taken the first two, accepted the first two conditions. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our lives had become unmanageable. That's about as different from our former thinking and action pattern as you can get. I don't believe there's anybody in this room that ever ran into a bar and says, look, Joe, I'm powerless over alcohol. My life's unmanageable. Give me a double quick. Joe's the last guy that best know we're powerless over alcohol. We got to keep him buttered up a little, you know. We've got to tell him about the merger we just put through, the railroad we just sold, because after three or four drinks we got to discover we forgot our pocketbook. We had to have it in shape. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol that our lives had become unmanageable. Two-fold admission of defeat and it don't say unmanagable whilst drunk. Many of us read it that way but that's not what it says. It says that our lives have become unmanageable, period. Stopped right there. Now the second step is worse than first. Because the second step is a left-handed admission that we're insane. it says we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity well you don't need to restore a sane person to sanity right there is an implication here where nutty is a fruitcake. And that don't say why it's drunk. Now that's another one we're not going to admit to Joe, are we? Look, Joe, I'm nuts! No. And the third That's worse than all three of them. All two of them, I mean. Because the third one, you've got to give up the keys. And this just kills me because the only way anybody ever got my keys was to wait till I passed out. I can jump out of a pub at 3 o'clock in the morning with my wife or yours. and you get over to the parking lot and she says honey give me the key I'll drive and you say whose car this is my car if you're going with me get in I'm driving but it might be that daylight you ain't going no place but you still got the keys step three says you gotta give up the keys you gotta get a new driver we made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God this is not alcoholic thinking it's just exactly like I had walked straight north for 43 years made a 180-degree turn and walked south for 25. Life is just that different. And something has to happen, Don Alkey, before these things are possible. Strange thing when you look at us. Probably two of the things that we dislike the most are dirt and weakness and how dirty can you get and how weak can you be and how bad can you get don't answer those because I know exactly one of the most vital memories I have of my drinking past is how hard I tried to get clean after a drunk. Oh, God. As quick as you can walk, you get in the shower and you wear out two cakes of soap trying to get cleaned, trying to make sure that you're trying to get rid of that stench. And then you go to the barbershop and you get your ears set out and your beard scraped off. then you put on the nicest clothes you got we hate dirt and how dirty can you get and the next thing is weakness God how we hate weakness we hate weaknesses in anybody and much more so in ourselves and again something has to happen before we can admit defeat before we can surrender something has to happen to us if any one of you had called me an alcoholic thirty years ago and I could have gotten up off the floor I'd have kicked you right in the teeth if I could've seen you this is something nobody must know not even me You see, something has to happen before these things are possible. Fourth and fifth steps are worse than all three that have just preceded them. The fourth step says we've made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Now, this is a switch. I'm the kind of a guy that had inventoried everybody I ever knew in my entire life and many people that were just walking by. One of our great accomplishments in this thing called life prior to coming here was the fact that we knew exactly what was wrong with everybody around us and we didn't mind telling them and that's what endeared us to the non-alcoholic world here I've got to take a searching and fearless moral inventory of me and if you think that's an ego builder get a thick pad and a long pencil and start writing and I'm one who thinks that it's real good to write it write it down we made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves and having made it then we have to share it and if it is just that we admitted to God and to ourselves the exact nature of our wrongs, it would have been a pretty easy deal. But they flipped in a sleeper there. We admitted to our God and to ourselves and to another human being. Probably the toughest thing you and I will ever have to do in her entire lifetime, is that to another human being. We've got to spread this dirty linen out before a flesh-and-blood person. And somebody's going to be walking the streets knowing what's inside of me. This is a killer, an ego killer. And that's why it's there, to surrender us a debt. To surrender us a debt Now having written this down and shared it we become willing to give it away and we give it away. Miss C touched on that a little this afternoon and it's something I'd love to spend just a minute on because many of my people continuously try to pull these old chestnuts out of the fire and beat themselves to death with it. And I don't find that my book even suggests a thing like that. My book says we write it down, we share it, then we become willing to give it away, and we give it way. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character, humbly asking to remove our shortcomings. Had it been necessary for me to get rid of my defects one at a time on my own, I would have died drunk. Because if I could have done that, I wouldn't have come to this leper colony. I tried every way in the world to stay out of here. And if I could have done this, I wouldn't have had to come. I couldn't do it. And so I'm delighted to become willing to give it away and give it a way. And I'm a simple man. How do I know whether or not I gave it away? If I haven't got it, I gave him away. Now isn't that silly? Isn't that silly? But that's the way it is with me. If I've still got it, I didn't give it away. So I get busy on that one again. Now there are two more steps in the first nine. Eight and nine. And they are two of the most beautiful things that will ever happen to anybody in their entire lifetime. If you haven't taken these steps, take them. We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends for them all. We made direct amends to such people wherever possible. Except one to do so would injure them or others. You take these steps and you feel like you've had an inside shower. feel clean clear through. Don't delay it, do them. I got to tell you a little thing, probably said it around here before, but some years back I got a call one Friday night from a guy in Whittier and he says Chuck I'm sitting here with a six-gun in my lap. I'm going to blow my brains out. But Jim said for me not to shoot myself until I talked to you. Now he says, what have you got to say? And I says, well, you called me on a bad night. I said, I'm talking tonight, tomorrow night and Sunday night. But Monday night's open. Now, if you want to see me come down here Monday night, and if you don't, go ahead and blow your brains out. And Monday night about 7 30 the doorbell rang, and it was this guy. And he came in, and at 2 30 in the morning we're right where we are right now. We made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends for the loss. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Now this chap was also a gambler. He'd lost a bunch of money he didn't have, and he had lost it to professional gamblers. and I was sitting there telling the guy, now you've got to go to these people. And you've Got to tell them that you're not the big shot you would have had them believe, that you are an alcoholic, that you have found a way to live that might let you live the rest of your life one day at a time without drinking. And one of the conditions of the program is that you make amends, and that's why you're here. Now you've GOT to tell these people I admit the debt. It's mine, and I'll pay you when I can, but I ain't got no money." And he says, uh-oh. He says, I can't do that. Why? He says they'd kill me. And I says, so what? You won't have suicide on your mind. And the old boy started laughing. And he's still laughing. He's walking in the streets, a free man, and he don't owe anybody anything. What a deal it is to get rid of that burden with eight and nine. Now we got three more steps, but they have, I think, a little different function. The first nine steps are the surrender steps. Those steps are designed to squeeze us right out of ourselves, to get rid of that ego that has ridden us like a Simon Legree for a lifetime in total and abject surrender. And I am one who believes that if you and I honestly take these first nine steps to best of our ability, we will at number ten be surrendered. I don't think it's possible for us to go through this honestly and not be surrendered, and we stay surrendered with ten. We continued to take personal inventory, and when were wrong promptly admitted it. This does not mean that we go back and redo steps four and five in my book. Now, many people tell me, look, when I took step four and step five in the first place, there was much that I couldn't admit that I didn't even remember. and so I gotta do it over I don't believe this I think that anybody that takes step five twice is bragging now if you and I are working with wet drunks we are continuously sharing these things. Every 12-step call we go on brings up something that we'd forgotten about and we share it with this new guy. We're continuously dumping garbage if we're busy doing the things that our program tells us to do, which is carrying the message to the alcoholic who still suffers. one more little trillion past me some guy said to me not too long ago had been in programs longer a little longer than I have and he says Chuck he says I've quit working with the wet drunks he says I got tired of them puking on me we heard that word last night or I wouldn't have used it I think it's a lousy word but it sure is expressive and I said you're quitting huh and he says yeah well I said I'm not I'm gonna keep right on going just like I'm going because I'd much rather be the pukey than the puke on Then every once in a while, some guy tells me, he says, you've been sober 25 years. How do you know how a drunk feels? You've lost touch. I say, is that so? You can't lose touch when you're working with wet drunks. You're just as old in this program as your last go-round with a wet drunk. because you see yourself always when you're out there doing that work. And that's the wonderful thing about carrying the message. You can't get old in the program, and you can't forget. Step 10 says I look at my day and see how nearly I lived according to my principles of recovery, and write myself. Two things that Step 10 has done for me that are beautiful. first one, I can now say I don't know. In all my drinking career, I could not say I don't know. You could have asked me anything and I would have told you. Einstein's theory was very simple to me. You're going to ask me how God created the earth and I would have told you. And I very likely would have said now on the third day, we did thus and so. I could not say I don't know. And now I can say I don't know. In my last 25 years in business, I could say, I don't know. But if it was important, I would say to my people, I'll find out. Tomorrow, no. But today, I don't know. And it's beautiful. How easy it is to say, I don' t know! And the next thing is, I was wrong. God, this is a switch. You saw that lady up here talking this afternoon? She mentioned the fact, I believe, that we'd been working in double harness for 46 years. And I catch myself saying to her, well, honey, I was wrong. Now, that is a downright shame to your own wife after 46 years. You say, I'm wrong. I thought sure I was right, but you were right all the time. I was wrong. And how easy this makes life. It's a cinch. If I'm wrong, I don't mind telling you. So that's number 10 and now we got 11. If it weren't for leaven. I wouldn't be here and I wouldn' t be any place else where free men assemble. I would be dead long, long ago. I would have been pushing up daisies. Because you see, I can't run my life. I can' t run my wife, my kids, my business, me or anything else. I had 46 years to run my life, and I ran it right into the bottom of the snake pit. And I gave it one hell of a good college try. I gave my wife, our kids, our home, my job, my health, my sanity, and my money. if I'd had anything else, I'd have put it in. And I lost. So there's nothing in me that even wants to believe that I can run anything. And thank God I don't have to, because I got step 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious awareness of the living presence of the Almighty. That's the way I like it. The book says, it's up to prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him. Praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry it out. Now, I've lived by this step for twenty-five years and six months. I totally depend on guidance and direction. Without it, I could not live. And how easy it is when we depend on on guidance and direction. How easy it is! And I have a little simple deal on this, too. I get up in the morning and I say, look Dad, I'm reporting for duty. Now I'm going to move it around. I'm gonna do the best I can with what I got today. And all I want out of you is a little guidance and directions before I carry it out. Sure, thank you. And I go about in business. Doing what's indicated, totally by ear. You play everything by ear because you can't build a roof over your head and get guidance and direction. So you play it by ear expecting guidance and direction and I get it. You might say, how do you know? I got the best reason that I can imagine. I never had it so good. Pretty good, isn't it? Never had it so good! This is the only easy life I ever knew, the only good life that's ever been mine in 69 years of life. And that's a pretty good indicator. I love step 11, and I live by it. Now we got one more. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps. And there's an implication here, too. I don't believe that it's quite crooked to believe that I can have a spiritual awakening as the result of eleven steps that they took. And I further believe that it's impossible to take the first eleven and not have a spiritual awakening, because this is the way to get a spiritual awakening in my way of thinking. Now many times we have a a spiritual awakening and we don't know what it is. For instance, many years ago I was yakking at a noon meeting on South Broadway in Los Angeles. I remembered very well it was raining very hot and we had a nice little group in there, luncheon meeting or a noon meeting. And after the thing was over, a man came up to me, just about my own age, beautifully dressed man, looked good. And he says to me Chuck, when in the hell am I going to have this spiritual awakening? He says people keep saying keep coming back, keep coming back, keep coming back, and it'll happen. But he says, don't. And I said, well, how long until you're coming back? And he says eight years. And he looked real good, you know. And then I said to him, well I've had any trouble with drinking in the last eight years? He said, no, I haven't had a drink since my first meeting. Oh, I says, you haven't been drinking since your first meeting? And he says, no. And seeing how good he was looking and how well he was dressed, I said, well, what else has happened to you? And he started reeling them off. And everything good has happened that old boy. The only thing he hadn't done, he hadn''t shot a horse. And by this time I'm laughing like a hyena and he got very mad at me because this was very serious with him. And he started to tell me about it. And as this man, wake up. Could you face over before you came here? And he says, no. He said, of the good of the one that comes. But you came and you haven't had to have a drink since your first meeting. And he said, yes. And I said, did all these things happen to you, these good things happened to you before you come here? No. But You came here and all these good things have happened in your life. He says, yes."I said, man, you've had it for years. All you gotta do is to see where, from whence it came now and start thanking God with every breath you draw and you'll be home free. See so many of us think a spiritual awakening is something mysterious or ethereal or something that might light on us or might miss us. Again, I'm a very simple guy. I think spiritual things are good things. What about eating? Now many of you say, oh, that's a very physical thing. You get hungry and eat. And I'd say, oh, you get hungry and eat? Well, now I'm about a guy that don't eat. You're looking at a guy that has gone for two weeks trying to get to a chili joint at the exact seconds when I could swallow. And it has to be a dead heat. If you get there half block too soon, you don't stop. And if you overshoot, you come back tomorrow. One of the great experiences of my life. I went to talk in San Fernando, a little old town out in the north end of San Fernando Valley, many years back. And the old boy got up here. He, I think, was one of Buttermilk's relatives. And he got up there at this podium and he says, I came here, at first he said his name, and he says, I came here in a $14 suit with $35 worth of chili down the front of it. And I almost jumped up and kissed him. I was his brother, you know. Now, I've been eating for 25 years, and I believe that I have the same experience every time I smell, eat, taste, and enjoy food that they devout have when they take the Blessed Sacrament. This is a tremendous thing for me because I've gone long periods of time without a solid meal in my body. What about sleeping? Ah, you say that's physical. You get sleepy and you go to sleep. Is that so? How about going to bed and getting up and getting up and going to bed and going to bed, getting up getting up, and going to bed never sleep. And every joy is coming unglued. You're dying. And you yell out in total despair, God please let me sleep for 20 minutes. Just 20 minutes and there's no sleep. Oh, what a deal to lie down and go to sleep. This is very spiritual to me because it's good living. It's good live. What about people? I came here without a people in the world. I was fresh out of people, including my own blood. Nobody left but me and I hated my insides. And now I got one of the biggest families on the face of the earth. I got people all over this globe who love me and share with me, and people whom I love and with whom I share. And this is the difference between a full and an empty life. And particularly is it beautiful when you come to see that God is people. What a thing this is, and how richly blessed am I who came here with nobody and have all of you. It's beautiful. So to me, the spiritual life is the good life. And again, I think it's impossible for you and me to honestly take the first eleven steps and not have a spiritual awakening, even though we don't know what to call it. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps. We tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all of our affairs. Now, this gives me a lifetime job. I've got it spelled out for a lifetime to carry the message to other alcoholics, and to practise these principles in all of my affairs. And this is all I've done for twenty-five years and six months. This has been my life for twenty five years and six months, and it's fantastic. What an amazingly wonderful thing it is that by doing the thing learned that St. Francis knew what he was talking about when he said, For it is in giving that we receive. For it in giving that we received. And we never know it until we do do it. Now, how long have I been up here? How long have we got? Huh? What time is it? Twenty to nine. Oh, what? Well, I got all evening. I'm just getting underway. Has that got a line to me? That's right. It's quartered or something. Yeah. But I'm going to talk yourself. Now I want to tell you what I mean by that last remark. In January 1946, I totally and completely accepted the fact that everything dear to me in life was gone, and that I was not entitled to have it back. Now I'm going to say that again, because it's most important to me, and it's more meaningful to me. I totally and completely accept the fact that everything dear to me in life was gone and that I was not entitled to have it back including my own wife and our own kids and my job and my health and everything else. And it became very necessary that I be sober till I died not because I wanted sobriety for me because I didn't want anything for me my life was over. I knew I was going to die I'd come that close to it the time before, when the oxygen squad brought me back. So I knew I was going to die and I didn't care. But I didn' t want to die with the record. I didn''t want my wife and the kids to remember me as nothing but a tongue-chewing, babbling idiot drunk. and I said to myself that morning having just come to from a full week blackout laying dead drunk drinking the clock around and having seen myself as I was I said to myself if I ever live to get out of this bed I will find alcoholics and nuns strange as it might seem from that moment of commitment until right now I've never had a drink or a pill now again I had a lot of time to do every one of you who have done a little drinking knows that every nerve center in my body was yelling for booze. They say there are a few billion of them. But everything in me was how long can I live without a drink? And for some reason I didn't have to take one, although I had to die and die and died. Many times in the past my mind had come and gone in a withdrawal period like turning the light on and off. But this time it went and it didn't come. And I would sit there for days seemingly knowing that the cord was broken. This time I'd never be sane again. I was just going to remain insane until I died. But again, for some reason I didn't have to drink. And I eventually started getting better, and I went out and found this program, and been here ever since. Now knowing that my wife and children were gone and should be gone, and that I wasn't entitled to have them back, I never made any attempt to get them back. But in trying to rub out the record, I had to do things for them that I could do. Just because I wanted to, for free and for fun. No strings at all, just doing things. Because you can't rub out trading. You rub out doing things without a price tag on it. And that's what he did. So at home, without even knowing it, I started right in, fulfilling one of the greatest conditions in life—trying to do something for somebody without a price tag on it. The same thing was true in business. My boss had sent word to the house that if I ever stepped foot in the plant again he was going to throw me through the window because, you see, on the Friday before Christmas 1945 had done a very fine thing for me. Instead of shooting me as he had ever right to do, he gave me 3,000 bucks for Christmas presents, telling me first that he was going to take a little pressure off of me and maybe I wouldn't have so much trouble next year. And of course I got drunk on the way home. The one thing that's worse for an alcoholic than bad fortune is good fortune. And I never showed up till last January, and the old boy missed me. And I had to go back there because he'd paid me for something I didn't do. And I went down there knowing that he was going to throw me through the window, but I had to go. And he came in to do it, like a bull in the china closet. And he could have done it because I wasn't healthy. I was right puny. And when he started asking me, I said, Vic, leave me alone. I don't work for you anymore. I'm down here to clean up this desk. I'm here to do the things that you paid me for last year that it didn't do. And as soon as I get even with you, I'll get the hell out of here on my own power. You'll never owe me a penny as long as you live, but for God's sake, leave me alone. I got to get even với you." And he stopped in his tracks and he says, what the hell's happened to you, Charlie? And I says, don't know. And it didn't. Because I hadn't even been to a meeting yet. All I'd done was make up my mind that I was going to do it. But I had to get well enough before I could even find a place. I didn't even know where to look for it. So I had the same job on hands in my business that I had at home. And I started trying to do things for people that they needed to have done because they wanted to. And that's all I did in business. My business and my 12-step work was one and the same for 25 years. I spent just about equal time in one and the other. And it never made any difference then. Because, you see, without sobriety I would have no business. and without the business I couldn't do the things I was doing and I'll call it synonymous and so things were that way with me for 25 years now in my 11th year I bought the business that he came in to throw me out of and I owned it for the last 13 years that I was in business and that's impossible it's totally impossible because I didn't try to do that I didn' t do anything for 25 years for any reason but just to do something for somebody because I wanted to it was an amazing thing because things happen to me that can't happen. Businessmen would sit across the desk from me and look at me right in the eye and say, Chuck, you're a damn liar. Business cannot be done this way and I just laughed because I didn't know it. Now, a year ago, last October, I showed out. And if I don't live too long, I'll never be hungry again. And that's impossible. But it's the way it is. Now, in closing, I am totally convinced, after 25 years and six month, that the first two words of the Lord's Prayer mean exactly what they say. From the top of my longest hair to the soles of my feet, I believe that the first two worlds of the lord's prayer mean exactly what they're saying. Our Father. You remember when they said the carpenter's Master teach us to pray, he didn't say well get yourself a red rug and point it east and say abba dabba a few times and my father and I might help you a little. They said master teach us pray and he says after this manner pray ye. Our father. His father, your father and mine. Now if God is our Father we're his kids. And this is the most meaningful thing that could happen to anybody, if it be true. And I totally believe that it's true. Now, there's a little verse some place that says, fear not little flock, it's the Father's good pleasure to give us the kingdom. And I believe this, just as I believe I'm standing here, but there's catch in it. It's not on my terms, it is on His. And again, his terms are so simple that the world don't know anything about them. His terms are that I go about his business, that I act like his kid, that I help his children do things they need to have done because they want to. That's the terms. How do I know? Because that's all I've done for twenty-five years and six months. And again, I never had it so good. I never HAD it so GOOD. I didn't come here to find all these things. I came here for sobriety. The first discovery was after six months that I was sober, and had been for six months. The second was that something had happened in the household. Now these are discoveries, and discoveries always come after the fact—not before but after the facts. And I discovered that something happened in a household. The whole place had changed. Seemed like the war was over, you know. And that was quite a discovery. And the third was down at the office when I discovered that I was still down there trying to clean up that desk and everything was going good. And the fourth was that something had happened to my being. Not only was I not drinking, and I might say to you—and I've been called a liar in open meeting for this too—because I have lived for twenty-five years and six months without one conscious desire to drink. Thank God! Because always when I had a conscious desire, I got drunk, and so I think it's pretty nice when I don't have to have a conscious desire to drink. And I've had twenty-five years and six months without it. So, the next discovery was that something had happened in business, and things were going good, and the next one was that my life was good. My state of being—there's about it that was altogether different. Life was good in body and in spirit. And that was a pretty good discovery. And maybe after five or six years, I discovered that I was never alone anymore. And for a guy that had walked alone to the end of the line and then crawled down the road to peace. This isn't bad. Never alone anymore, I had a God of my very own. And wherever I am, He is. And this is fantastic. And I have one more little thing I'll share and then sit down. I share everything in life with my partner in the business, Linda. I've to believe that there's no such thing as an answer to this thing called life, that does not include a personally acceptable conscious partnership of the living God that made us in the entire business of living. I think we're only ten percent alive until we make this discovery. And then things get good. And so I discovered that I had a God at my very own. I share everything in life with him. I shared the bad and the good, and I do it like a kid. I said, look dad, look what I did yesterday. Now isn't this a lousy thing for a monkey like me to do. I know better. I even know why I did it. It was so necessary that I make an impression, you know. And I don't like it and you don't lack it. And, I'm gonna do better and with your help I'll do a lot better I sure thank you. And i dump it and I never pick it up again. It's gone. I never picked it up against. And when the good thing happens I do the same thing, listen. I share it with my father. I say, look, Father, isn't this terrific? It couldn't happen to a bum like me, but it did, and I know where it came from. I sure thank you. And I dump that, and never pick it up again. I think it's just as damaging to you and to me to try to carry the things that are so-called good, as the things that our so called bad. And I get so many things, so many beautiful beautiful things in my life, such as for instance letters, things of that kind, and I read them and cry a little, and I give it to my wife and she reads it, and she says, Chuck, don't you think we ought to keep this for the kids? And I said, put it in the wastebasket. Because you see, this program to me is life. It's by the grace of God. And it's through you. And it's one day at a time. And I don't want to be cluttered up with a of stuff, because I've got to be able to hear this thing when I pray for guidance and direction. And I don't want a load on my back when I go out there to see that monkey that needs help. And so I want to be free, and freedom is an inside job, and freedom as alcoholics anonymous. God bless you.