The Genetic Disorder and the Threefold Disease of Alcoholism – Don N.

Madam Chairman, honored guests, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Don and I am an alcoholic. sober this morning by the living grace of God and the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous since my very first meeting of AA on the 19th of February 1948 and I've been asked to start by telling a drinking story and there's only one drinking story I can remember from the Second World War, and it goes something like this. It's a story of a young playboy who met a young woman down in the bar one night. And he invited her up to his room to show her his etchings. They did that in those days. And when he got her up there, she was well-groomed, chic, and seemingly quite intellectual. So he asked her if she cared for a drop of port or sherry wine. Why, Sherry, by all means, she replied, because Sherry to me is the nectar of all gods. Just looking at it here in its crystal-clear decanter fills me with the anticipation of a heavenly thrill. And when the stopper is removed and the gorgeous liquor is poured into a glass, I inhale the delicious tangy fumes and I am lifted on the wings of ecstasy. It seems I taste its magic potion and my whole being seems to glow, a thousand violins throb in my ears and I'm sent into another world on the other hand she said port makes me fart I'm sorry that's the only drinking story I can still remember I suppose you've all heard now the latest thing the psychiatric hotline that they're instituting and you call the number and it's answered by a recording. It says, Hello, welcome to the psychiatric hotline. If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly. If you are codependent, please ask someone to press 2. If you have multiple personalities, please press 3, 4, 5, and 6. If you are paranoid delusional, we know who you are and what you want. Just stay on the line until we can trace the call. If you're schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell you which number to press. And if you are manic depressive, it doesn't matter which number you press, no one will answer. And we have a judge in our group at home in Moorhead. And one day after a meeting, he came over to me and he said, You know, Don, I really envy you and your job. And I said, You envy me, my job? I said. You've got the easiest job in the world. He says. Oh, no. He said. I have a terrible job. And I asked him, What's bad about your job? He said, Do you realize that every morning I come to work, I have to face the scum of the earth and some of them even have the nerve to bring their clients in with them now I've been told that I shouldn't tell that story in Alcoholics Anonymous because you have a lot of lawyers in the groups and the lawyers don't think it's funny and the rest of people don't know what they're doing they don't believe it's a joke so you know you're in a no-win situation Of course, as time has changed and so has our knowledge of alcoholism. It's changed a great deal. We now know we don't have to see how much a person drinks or what they drink or anything else. We can just tell by the behavior. And once we know the symptoms of alcohol, we can go back in history and start picking out the drunks. And, of course, my favorite is Christopher Columbus. Now, I know beyond any shadow of doubt that Christopher Columbus had to be an alcoholic. The reason I say that is when he left home, he had no idea where he was going. When he got to America, he didn't know where he was. When he came back home, when he got back home he didnít know where ìheíd beenî and to top it off, some woman paid for the whole shot. now i don't know about anyone else but that sounds remarkably like my drinking story we have learned of course that alcoholism is a threefold disease in the beginning we just thought people just drank too much but uh in 1980 the geneticists announced that the physical sensitivity to alcohol is a biochemical genetic disorder That simply means that it is inherited And so they can also tell us the odds If one parent of a child is alcoholic There's a 35 times greater chance The offspring will be alcoholic But if both parents are alcoholic There's 400 times greater chances The offspring would be alcoholic And so I know in my family There's no doubt about that Our family was loaded with drunks And so I accept that fact that it is a genetic disorder, and so I have to accept that. Of course, it's a strange thing that we complain sometimes of being alcoholic, and I think how fortunate we are that this is our disease because so many people have a real problem with it, and they say they don't like going to meetings and all that sort of thing. But when you consider all the other diseases, I'm sure that if there's any alcoholic in this room who doesn't like having the disease, we could say, look, we'll throw your disease on the table here. We've got a few others you can have, and then pick the one that you think you can live with. It's sort of like there's AIDS and there's heart problems and so on and so forth. And we'd grab that alcoholism back so fast it would make your head swim. Now, I attend meetings regularly, and it's almost 50 years since I started coming to Alcoholics Anonymous. and I still attend meetings on a regular basis. I average about three meetings a week. Now, people think that's unbelievable, but it's true because the thing is I discovered very early on that alcoholism is something like, it could be compared to body odor. And the reason I say alcoholism's like body odor, I was the last person in town to find out that I had it. Now, isn't that like BO? You're always the last to know you've got it. Everybody's known it for a long time. And so, like body odor, you can't just have a bath and just carry on from there. To remain clean, you must bathe on a regular, consistent basis. And so it is with Alcoholics Anonymous. The successful treatment for body odor is regular bathing with soap and water, and successful treatment für Alkoholism ist regular, konsistent meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous." Times have changed a great deal since I first came to AA. Back in 1948, it was very small, the groups here and there. The group I joined had four members in it. I was number five. And they laid a trap. They'd go around and they had to go and find drunks and lure them into this fellowship. And I had a drinking buddy, Hal Fleming, who I used to drink with on a regular basis, and he wound up in 1948, New Year's Day, in the hospital with DTs. And while he was in the hospital, a pastor came to visit him and asked him what he was there for and Hal said, well, I'm an alcoholic. And so the pastor says, why don't you stop drinking? And Hal said I would like to but I don't know how. And he said, Well, I know a member of Alcoholics Anonymous who may be able to help you. And he got Hal in touch with a member of AA. And Hal got out of that hospital bed. I never took another drink again until he died some 25 years later. So what happened was he got sober in AA. He asked him, what do you do? And they said, well, you have to go and find another drunk. And Hal said, oh, I know one, my drinking buddy. I'll go and get him. So Hal had nothing better to do than January to come down and visit me. In those days, I had a little grocery store up in northern Ontario. And the reason I'd gotten up there It was because I was on a cure, you know, a moving-around cure, trying to relocate and figure out the reason I drank was because of the company I kept and so on and so forth. But I figured if I could have my own business, typically alcoholic, everything would be fine. And, of course, it didn't take long to get right on the edge of bankruptcy. But Hal Fleming used to come down after he got sober and he came into the store to see me one morning and he was telling me about this wonderful organization that he had joined, Alcoholics Anonymous. And I said, well, that's fine, Howard, you're getting pretty bad anyway. And so, of course, I should know, I was with him all the time. And, uh, I told him he was getting pretty good. And he said, yeah, I'm getting pretty bad anyway, but I wasn't interested and thanked him very much. But in November previous to this, we'd had a pastoral visit. And this pastor, when he left, he handed me a parcel and I opened it and it was a book entitled Alcoholics Anonymous. It had a red-yellow cover on it, you know the words Alcoholics Anonymous just almost, you know, jumping out at you. And I said, looked at the book and I said to my wife, why do you think he left a book like that with me? And she said, oh, he probably thinks you need it. And that did it. I threw the book in the corner and I swore I would never read that book again ever as long as I lived. And I said furthermore, if that bird ever sets foot inside of this house again bodily pick them up and throw them out because i think these priests administer a bunch of racketeers who prey on the emotions of old women and young children and this religion is a form of primitive superstition anyway and anybody with any sense knows it that's the end of it well my poor wife our two children two babies she says well donald i'm a nurse and she said we have people in the hospital who are called alcoholics, and they're not nearly as bad as you get sometimes. I said, well, what do I have to do to prove I am not an alcoholic? And she said, Well, if you just go on the wagon for one year, not take a drink, then I'll never bring it up again. And I said one year. Okay, I'll prove that to you. So I went on the wagon in November of 1947 and went all through Christmas and New Year and never took a drink, you know. And I had my supply in and somebody came over and I'd say, would you like a drink? And I'd pour them a drink. And they'd say aren't you going to join me? And i'd say no, I can't. And then say well why not? And point to the kitchen and I said her? And she said what's the matter with her? Well her mother started the Temperance Organization and she's a chip off the old block, and they're not happy unless everybody else is miserable. But that's one of these crosses we men must bear for the sake of our children, I suppose. As I say, very sanctimoniously and self-righteously, I went through Christmas without taking a drink at New Year's. And all the month of January I was sober, and come early February, I said I was going to go up to Kirkland Lake, which is a town 60 miles north of where we were, to a Legion meeting one night, an Asari night. My wife says, I don't think you should go. And I said, well, why not? She said, Well, they all drink so much and you've been doing so well that I think you should just skip going there and stick with what you're doing. And of course, then that was challenging me, throwing the glove down. So I thought, I got to show her who wears the pants in this house. So, I said I'm going whether you like it or not. And up to that point, I hadn't really cared whether I went or not but the minute she says you shouldn't, I was going to do it. That was a challenge so saturday rolled around and uh they came over to pick me up and we're no sooner pulled out of town and one of them pulled out a bottle of sandy mcdonald's scotch whiskey i can remember it can see it as vividly today as i did then almost 50 years ago and they came around it came to me and i thought can you imagine her not trusting me she'd go up with those he said you know i could have a drink and she'd never know anything about it because we're going to spend the night in kirkland lake and we'll come back tomorrow and she'll never know so i took a drink nothing happened and then it dawned on me well maybe the problem reason i was having problems before was because the result of the war and all this other sort of nonsense you know and so the bottle came around i had another one and another one we got to kirkton lake the four of us two went to the meeting and two of us stayed there and went bought some bootleg liquor and we stayed drinking all night. Then it was Sunday morning, and I got back home, and of course this was different. I embarrassed her and the children once more, and then it was Monday morning, and this Monday was different, there's no more finger waving, there is no more just shaking the head, nothing. My wife was in the kitchen and totally incommunicado, She was not even speaking to me. I knew, I just knew. You see, I felt I'd had a sixth sense. I used to tell her I had a fifth sense, and she said, I'm so glad you do, my dear, because you obviously lack the other five. And I knew I was in hot water, and I didn't know how I'm going to get out of this. So I went in the kitchen and tried to make conversation with her, but every time I came near her, she turned her back and refused to look at me. And I learned later that that was the morning that she had decided she was going to take the children and leave. And looking back now, I couldn't blame her one bit for that. But I didn't realize that at the time. But I just knew, intuitively knew, that I was in deep trouble. And so I decided we lived in a little apartment above the store. And so, I decided to go downstairs to the store to open the store and I figured, boy, this is really a bad day. I don't know how I'm going to get talking to her, because as I was going down the stairs, I was thinking, this is the day I have to see the banker. And you know, any time I went over to see him, he used to talk about my drinking. But if she went to see The Banker, he'd give us anything she asked for. And I thought that she won't go today because she's not talking to me. So there's her and now The Bankers. That's problem number two. And I said, this can't get much worse. and I went and opened the door and who comes walking across the street but Hal Fleming from the ANA and I said there you go I know trouble comes in threes it's her, the banker now this bird from the A&A and I say that's the last person I want to talk to but Hal came in with a big smile on his face and he says well how are things going and I'm chewing a huge wad of dentine gum because in those days any time I was drinking I had to chew gum because customers I didn't want them to smell my breath and drinking. And so Hal had been waiting to see when I was chewing gum, because he would know that I'd been on a bender. So he wanted to talk about Alcoholics Anonymous. And I said, oh, no, Hal, I'm really not interested. I'm on the wagon. And he was very persistent, though. He talked some more. I said... Well, when did they have these meetings? He said, the Friday nights. AndI said, what do you do? He said nothing. We just sit around and talk I said how much does it cost he says it's free I said it's free you just sit around and talk which religion is behind it he said there's no religion and I said what's the catch there has to be a catch because there's no such thing as a free lunch in this world and I know that no he says just a bunch of fellows who sit around and talk and I say then I got this brilliant idea so I said can I talk to you in confidence Al he said oh yeah I said you know I've got a brother who drinks quite a bit. Do you think I could go to one of those meetings with you and possibly find out what it is that you do to stop drinking and maybe help this brother of mine? He said, oh yes, you can be my guest. You can come with me to the meeting on Friday night. And I said, well, that's good. Wait right here. And so I ran upstairs, and of course she was still in the kitchen. And that was the morning she decided she was going to take the children and leave because she felt she was in a hopeless marriage, and I don't blame her for that now but and i told her i said hal fleming's downstairs nothing and then i said the magic words i said i'm going to one of those a and a meetings with him on friday night and that did it she turned and threw her arms around me says oh donald i'm so glad to hear you're finally going to do something about your drinking i thought nice going i got her now so i said will you go to the bank for me and she says yes what should i tell them So I told her what to say to the banker. And then I thought, isn't this great? You know, 30 minutes ago, three major crises in my life. Her, the banker, and Hal Fleming. Now she's fixed. She's talking to me. She's going to see the banker all I have to do is get rid of Hal Flemming and everything will be fine. So I went downstairs and told Hal I said, now I'm very busy, Hal you'll have to leave but I'll see you Friday night. And Hal left. So I stayed sober Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday that's five days straight so if you went five days without a drink why would you have to go to the a and a and so friday i closed the store a little early because hal hadn't shown up and i thought good he's forgotten and so i went upstairs for dinner no center at the table and the telephone rings it's hal fleming and so I'm starting to make my excuses why this is not a good night for me to come because of this and that and one thing after another and with that my wife tapped me on the shoulder and she said you promised and I don't mind you breaking your word with the children and with me, but at least you keep your word with other people. And I thought this idiot, why would he call now? Because she knows everything goes on. So I said, well, what time is the meeting in hell? And he says, well it's at eight o'clock. And he said, uh, and I says, good. Well we can go up in one bus and back in the next. And He said, we don't have to go in the bus. One of the members is down here with his car. We'll come over and pick you up. I said don't you dare come over here and pick me up. I could just see that big white station wagon with Alcoholics Anonymous written on the side of it. You know, to be one of those loudspeakers, you know, blaring music and some of these characters with long robes and bald heads and pigtails handing out flowers and pamphlets and all that crap. And I didn't want to be saved or any of that stuff. So I said, you stay where you are. I'll come over to your place. And so I went outside the back door and up the back alley because I had my hat down, my coat collar up. It was February and up in northern Canada it was very cold at that time of the year and I thought, I hope I don't meet anybody because if they say, where are you going? What can you say? You can't tell them to go to the A&A because they'll think there's something wrong with you. So I finally got over to Hal's place and right away I was suspicious. I met Harry and Harry was wearing a suit. He had horn-rimmed glasses and he was neatly dressed and everything and I said to Hal what does who's this guy he says oh he's a member of Alcoholics Anonymous I said where does he live I think I've seen him before and he says oh yes he lives in Haleybury the next town and that's where the meeting is it's five miles from here and he's the court clerk and I say oh the courts are behind this and he said no no Harry is a member so we got in the car and drove up to Haleyberry and I'm very suspicious and we get to Terry Smith's house Now, Terry was manager of the lumber company. I knew he didn't drink and went in to see him and then Ernie came over. Then I knew Ernie was a drunk. He's another businessman in that town and I knew ernie was drunk because every time I was over at the bootleg I used to see Ernie there and Hal so I figured three of them are real drunks but I didn't know about this Terry. So what they did back in those days is they each in turn started telling much like we do today what we used to be like what happened and what they were like now. And as they're talking, I'm nodding my head and I'm beginning to see through this story. I've got this deal all figured out. What these birds do, they phone your wife, she tells them all about you, then they say they did those things, that's how they suck people into this deal. But I'm not that stupid. So when I get home, I'll straighten her out because some of those things are pretty personally talked about. Until, of course, they got into that area she didn't know anything about And I knew she didn't. If she knew half of it when they're on, she'd have taken the kids and left long ago. And I finally blurted out, I says, how come you guys know so much about me? And they said, oh, we're not talking about you. I said, well, what are you talking about? They said, Oh, this is just a projection of the basic symptoms of alcoholism. So not only was I alcoholic, I was very stupid in those days. I said Well, I've done all those things and I'm not an alcoholic. Oh, that did. it's like waving a red flag at a bull. Then they really poured the pressure on. They wouldn't let me go, and in those days, a meeting lasted as long as it took them to convince the newcomer to come back to the next meeting. And I was there, bright, sharp, on time, and I never got home until half past two in the morning, my first day evening. But I said I would come back. And my wife was still awake when I came in, and she said, well, how did it go? And I said, Well, I don't know, but the way these guys lay it out, I'll give it a try and see what happens. And she said that's fine, that's wonderful. And so that's how I started off, and I got into Alcoholics Anonymous on that basis. My wife then joined an organization called, it wasn't Al-Anon because there's no Al-A-Non in those days, but they had an organization for wives because in those day there were no women alcoholics either. And so the alcoholics had a group for their wives to meet. And the other thing is the anonymity was very, very important in the early days. And they couldn't have a meeting in a church or in a place like this because people would find out about it. And we had to take turns meeting in each other's home, and our wife had to leave before the other guys got there. And leaves and sandwiches and coffee, you know, that sort of thing. And so that's what they had to do. And they formed a little meeting in Ontario, in Canada, for the wives. Of course, things have changed a great deal since then. But fortunately, as we grow, we learn a lot more about the disease of alcoholism. And one time I was reading, and they'd say, you know, our lives have become unmanageable from that first step. We admit we're powerless over alcohol, our life has become un manageable. And I said, that's not me. I don't have an unmanable life. But as time went on, I began to see more and more and understand more and more about the disease of alcoholism. One time I Was reading in a newspaper on a Sunday, the Parade Magazine, it had a list of some mental health terms. And I was confused, so I started reading them. And I Was Amazed at What I Read About because they started talking about anxiety and fear. Anxiety is when you are paralyzed with fright but you don't know what you're afraid of. And many emotional disturbances begin with anxiety. Fear, on the other hand, is a dread of some specific thing. Well, I used to have tremendous fears. One of my big fears was a fear of failure. And I wouldn't do things in case I failed. And they'd say, well, why wouldn't you do it? And I'd say. Well, what if I failed? And what would people think if I had failed? But after coming to Alcoholics Anonymous for a little while. I learned a great deal about failure. And I found out that people will never notice if you fail. If you want to be noticed. Be successful. And I'll give you a little analogy of this. About fear of failure. In the early 1900s. There's a ship. A brand new ship left England. on its voyage to America, and the name of the ship was Titanic. Has anybody heard of the Titanic? Raise your hand if you've heard of Titanic. Oh, y'all have heard. Now, the captain of that ship made an error in navigation. The ship struck an iceberg and sank, and there's some 1,500 lives lost. The captain ofthat ship was guilty of the most colossal human failure of the era. Now, those of you who remember the name of the failure, raise your hand. John Smith. You can remember the Titanic, but you can't remember John Smith, the failure. So let's talk about the same era and talk about success instead. In the same area, in the early 1900s, there was an airplane, and they called them ships too. And it was called the Spirit of St. Louis. Have you ever heard of the Spirit or the Spirit? The Spirit of Saint Louis? Oh, you all have. Okay. And it flew solo across the Atlantic Ocean and landed in Paris. Now, the captain of that ship was a success. Does anyone happen to remember the name of the captain OF that ship? Charles Lindbergh. We can remember a difficult name like that because he was successful. A simple name like Smith, we can't remember because he's a failure. From that point on, I've never been afraid of failing anymore because people never notice failure. And we have to get that through our heads as alcoholics. Another one of these terms is psychosis. Oh, this is dandy. This disorder is characterized by defective or lost contact with reality. Psychotics often see things and hear voices. Ah, that's me. I could sit there and I can remember sitting in the pub and the smoke would be curling up and I'd be drinking and I could see just as clear as anything my problem in life. I only had one problem, and that is I didn't have enough money. If I could just win the Irish sweepstakes because that was the only gambling in those days, and we had to buy the tickets bootleg because they're illegal in Canada and the United States in those days, but I think it was $40,000 for the first prize. And I figured if I could just win them, if I can just win the Irish sheepstakes, I could build this house over on a hill over there and it would look like a state capital, you know. And I could put her and the kids there and they'd have a maid and a chauffeur and a car. And then I could go over and be a playboy in Riviera and everybody say, isn't he a wonderful husband and father to what he's done for that family? I didn't even have a ticket in the Irish sheep state. So that made me not only anxious and fearful but also psychotic. Neurosis. Here's another dandy one. This emotional disorder is caused by a conflict of which a person is unaware. For example, you want sex but also want to please your mother who said sex was bad and this unconscious conflict produces a neurosis that could affect your sex life. Well, sex life, when I came to Alcoholics and Onsets, my life is not unmanageable. But then when I'm talking about this thing, I began to realize, you know, the sex drive is very, very important in a person's life. And I can remember my first drink. The first drink I took, I was about 16 years of age. It was a Sunday afternoon. There's two girls present. If you said, that's fine, Don. What was your first sexual experience? I'd say, well, I'm very vague right now. The only thing I can remeber today about it is I was all alone at the time. So, you know, so... That tell told me then that I certainly had an unmanageable life, period. Here's another dandy, this paranoia. This is a severe but rare personality disorder in which a patient feels persecuted or has ambitions of grandeur. A paranoid person may believe that spies wrote to get him or that God has picked him to lead the world. And, you know, all drunks are egomaniacs. We're egominiacs with inferiority complexes. Now, no sane person could say that doesn't make sense because you can't be both those things. They're direct opposite. But every alcoholic, I mean, says, yeah, that's right. We're egomaniacs with inferiority complexes. And so that says, you know, we're paranoid as well. Another one is manic depressive syndrome. That's a dandy. This condition is marked by mood swings of uncontrollable elation activity and followed by withdrawal and depression. That means that our emotions are under-amplified at all times. We never feel a little good or a little bad, a little Good, a little Bad. We're way up here, it's sheer ecstasy, or it's way down here, depression. I mean, if you drew a straight line, the emotional control is an absolute. And there aren't 15% of the population capable of practicing absolute emotional control. An example I can still remember is Nadja Kamenici a few years ago, the gymnast who got a perfect score and won all the gold medals. And that was one person who had total emotional control if she did her exercise and she missed one point, she'd stand there, they'd put her score up and she never batted an eyelash, went over, hugged her coach. Then there's a tear or two of disappointment because she'd lost a point. If she got a perfect score, she never batted an eye. She walked off the stage, hugged your coach, and then there was a few tears of happiness, but she never showed to spread any emotion. The average human being has an emotional level that goes like this. You feel a little good and you have a disappointment. You're feeling a little bad. You free a little bit, feel a little bad. And I, as an alcoholic, never felt a little good or a little bad, my emotional control is way up here, sheer ecstasy, I see this girl and suddenly met this girl, and this is the woman for me, and she says, have you met my husband? And I go from sheer ecostasy down here, depression, I'll never meet a girl, the story of my life, I mean, up here ecstacy, depression up and down like a toilet seat at a mixed party that's the emotional level of the alcoholic and so that's it the problem ahead and uh that's that's over and under amplification of emotions and that's one of the big things we have to learn in alcoholics anonymous is how to control the emotion now with most people this up and down is normal but for us we have to be conscious of it and not get overly or under emotionally emotional control because one of these things that can lead to a lot of trouble you know they think about some of the paradoxes in life and a paradox is something that can mean two different things depending on the quantity for instance if we we talk about fire uh fire properly controlled and contained as a wonderful asset to mankind but once the fire gets out of control and becomes an inferno, it destroys everything around it. And so we want fire, but we don't want an infernal. And it's the same thing with water. It's another paradox. If you water behind dams and streams and rivers and swimming pools, under control water is a great asset to us. When it gets out of control, as we had last year in Fargo-Moorhead, and it became a flood that was totally destructive to everything in its path. And all a flood is, is too much water and it's destructive. A wind is another one of these paradoxes. A nice gentle breeze is a wonderful thing. It keeps the flies and mosquitoes away. It dries the crops and everything else, turns propellers for windmills. But once that wind gets out of control and becomes a tornado or a hurricane, it just destroys everything in its path. And so we have to be very careful. The only other thing that's worse than wind, water, or fire is human emotion. Properly controlled and contained, emotion is a wonderful thing. But when it gets out of control, it becomes emotionalism, and that's totally destructive. And we have a great problem as alcoholics, wallowing in emotionalism rather than just emotion. So we have to learn to control that emotion so it can be a benefit to us instead of wallowing an emotionalism which is destructive to all of us. And so these are some of these things. One of the other things that they had on this list of things was it was schizophrenia. And this group of disorders can cause delusions and hallucinations or aggressive and antisocial behavior. Well, I used to be insanely jealous of my wife. And I discovered in Alcoholics Anonymous, and this is a wonderful organization because it taught me a great deal. Unfortunately, I didn't get much education. I don't even have a high school diploma. So any education I have is I've gotten it through the program of AlcoholicsAnonymous and associating with other alcoholics and reading the books and things like that. But I used to be terribly jealous until I discovered in AA another word for jealousy is inferiority complex. So why do I want to display my inferiority to other people by being jealous? Once I've learned that, there's no need to be jealous. And my wife was never jealous of me, and I have not been jealous of her. And that's one of those things that we have to learn in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. One of the great things that I had when I first came into Alcoholics Anonymous and why it was I was down on religion is because I used to say to my wife, you know, I don't believe there's really a God because I didn't want to call myself an atheist because atheists don't get holidays. But I did call myself an agnostic and an agnostic because I just didn't believe. And I said, if this God was half as smart as people say he is, he would perform a miracle that I could witness with my own eyes. But have you ever noticed where the miracles are? You read about them in Eater's Digest. They're never in America or Canada, never. It's over in Yugoslavia, Italy, France, Spain, everywhere where they don't speak English. So you've got to take their word for it. But if this God was half smart, he'd know the country's full of people like me and they'd perform a miracle right here in America that I could witness with my own eyes. But you see, no miracle. But there's an amazing thing that's happened to us in Alcoholics Anonymous if we just keep coming to meetings, just coming on a regular, consistent basis. As we grow older, we begin to see things and hear things and see things that we never heard or saw before. And we begin notice them and think there's many, many things that are miracles that are happening every day in every way. And I think of one of the things I just flew back the day before yesterday from Bangkok on a Boeing 747. And to me, that's one of the modern-day miracles of Boeing 747 airplane. When you see it going down that runway, say in Chicago, and the nose lifts off the ground, they call that when they rotate, it looks as if it's just lumbering down there going very, very slow. That airplane is traveling at 165 miles per hour when that nose lifts. It lifts off and climbs. You've got to bear in mind And that airplane has probably 350 passengers, 22 crew, all their luggage, and also freight. Another thing about it, it contains 60,000 gallons of fuel. And on the climb up to altitude to 39,000 feet, they burn off 6,000 gowns of fuel just in the climb. And then when we flew in from Tokyo, we were on board that airplane for 10 1⁄2 hours from Tokyo to Minneapolis. And so this is a modern-day miracle that they can design a thing like that. And when they say, well, how did that happen? And they said, well the aeronautical engineers designed that airplane because you see they looked at the birds a few years, some 35, 40 years ago the aeronautical engineers started studying the geese, because the goose is the heaviest bird that flies. And they noticed that geese always fly in a sort of a V formation. And they couldn't figure out why until these aeronauutical engineers started studying them closely. And they discovered that the lead goose flaps its wings and when it does that it burbles the air. And the other geese fly along in the and the next one flaps his wings, and so on. And they all fly in a line like that because it requires 25% less energy to remain airborne and burbled air than it does smooth air. Well, you say, well, how do they know that? Well, the aeronautical engineers learned that from the geese. My question is, who taught the geESE? Nobody's answered that question yet. So that's just one of the modern-day miracles. And I think we have to thank the geese, and that's just one of them. And then there's another one talking about birds that swallows in Capistrano. Every year they used to flock on a certain day and head south. And nobody knew where they ever went, for sure. So one day some ornithologists in the southern coast of California saw the swallows as they came down, and they all came down and landed and they walked around the ground till each one picked up a little stick like that in his feet and then they flocked and headed out across the water and when they got tired they'd land and drop the little twig and they'd bob up and down on the twig until they rested then they closed their feet in the little Twig and they head on south and they always wound up in Buenos Aires in South America and they left the same way and came back and again, who taught the birds to do that? And that is another one of these miracles. My favorite one of all, of course, all the miracles, I think of when you can take a tiny brown seed and stick it down in some black soil and you give it some moisture and light and the next thing you know you get a dark green plant. How can you get an earthworm? How can we get a darker green plant out of black soil from a tiny ground seed until you pull that dark green plant out of the ground and it has a bright red root. And if you cut that bright red fruit in half, it has a pure white art. My question is how can you have a pure white art and a bright read root from a dark green plant out a black soil from a tiny brown seed? So every day today when I go by the salad bar, I always pick up a radish and I know that as long as God is alive and well we have radishes because they are a modern-day miracle. But, you know, we have a lot of funny people in the United States. A lot of people think God is dead and Elvis is alive. I'm not one of those people. I think Elvis is long gone and God is very much alive. And we see this so many, many times. Now, what is the whole thing about Alcoholics Anonymous, really? All it is is we go to meetings on a regular, consistent basis. We keep going to the meetings and begin to get a change of attitude. And all that is is a change of attitude towards life and living. And people say, well, how can you change your attitude? Well, it's very easy. I think of the story of a woman who went in to see her doctor in New York and she was a fairly well-to-do woman and she thought what she should do is go down to Florida for a month by herself for a rest and she told the doctor she's all worked up and you know stressed out and didn't he think that she should go for a rest down to Florida and that sort of thing without her husband and the kids and the dog just by herself and instead of saying yes you should he told her the story of another woman in Boston, Massachusetts and who checked into a very fashionable hotel and she got into this hotel and she went up to her room and as she's unpacking she noticed there's a piano playing in the next room. And this piano was getting on her nerves, it kept playing, and so she finally went over to the phone and she called the desk clerk and she said, you'll have to change my room. And the clerk says, I can't change your room. She says, well, there's some idiot hammering on a piano next door. You'll haveと stop him doing that because I'm here for a rest. And if you don't stop him or her playing that piano and I have a nervous breakdown, I will hold this hotel responsible for my hospital bill. And so he said, I'm sorry, the hotel is filled to capacity. We can't change your room. But a few minutes later, and then so she hung up and started calling her friends. About an hour or so later, the manager got a cancellation and the desk clerk had told the manager about this woman on the verge of a nervous break down. So he said, we'd better go up and change her room. And so when she had told him, by the way, she said, why couldn't you stop this man playing? And they said, because it's a great Paderewski and he's practicing for his concert in Symphony Hall tonight. So the manager got the bell, Captain, and they thought when he remembered this woman they didn't want her to have a nervous breakdown so he said we'll go up and move her to a different room. They listened at the door and there's no noise, couldn't hear anything in the room. They assumed she'd gone out. So they used a pass key to open the door and when they looked in theroom, here was this woman and all her friends sitting in rapt attention listening to the great master play and all that had happened was simply a change of attitude towards life and living and that's all we do in Alcoholics Anonymous is we have a change of attitude towards life and living. And this goes on and on And sometimes the first chairman of our board, General Service Board, for the first six years was Bernard Smith. He was a well-known lawyer in New York City and he helped Bill Wilson get this whole thing together and set it all up legally. And he was at a legal meeting in Newark, quite a gathering, and he was asked by one of the attendees, what is this thing called Alcoholics Anonymous and what is AA's message to the world? And Burns Smith got up and said, AA's messaged to the word is not they have succeeded in ceasing to drink but in so ceasing to drink they have succeeded in learning to live. And I think that's a message of AlcoholicsAnonymous not only beginning but as it is today. And when I think how AA has grown, it took 32 years to sell the first million copies of the big book. And today they're going out of our general service office over a million a year. And the 16th, 17th million was sold just last year. It's second only to the Holy Bible in the number of books being printed. It's in 146 countries of the world today and 36 different languages that the big Book is printed. And so you can see how AA has grown. It's been a tremendous growth, and we're so fortunate this has happened in our day and age. They were able to take advantage of this great thing. Another thing I used to have problems with was praying. I usedと say, you know, it's no sense praying because what good does it do? My prayers are never answered. I've prayed since I was a little kid. But then I realized as time went by, the problem wasn't with God. The problem was with me. I just didn't know how to pray. And I think I could sum this whole thing up easily by saying I think of the prayer that describes my life in Alcoholics Anonymous was written just a little over 100 years ago by an anonymous soldier of the Confederacy. And when I read that prayer, I took it in and I said to my wife, I can't believe. Here's another miracle. This fellow wrote this prayer, and that's exactly what has happened to me since I came into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And it goes called The Ways of the Lord, and it goes something like this. I asked God for strength that I might achieve, but I was made weak that I Might learn humbly to obey. I Asked for health that I might do greater things, I was given infirmity that I might do better things. I asked for riches that I may be happy. I was Given poverty that I Might Be Wise. I Asked for all things that I might enjoy life. Instead, I've been given life that I might enjoy all things. I got nothing that I asked for, but everything I had hoped for. So despite myself, my prayers were answered and I feel I am among all men most richly blessed. And all I can say to this wonderful audience in Omaha, Nebraska this morning is may God bless every one of you in exactly the same way. Thank you ever so much for having me this weekend. Thank you. Thank you.