The Hand of Higher Power – B. and Bob B. – There Is a Solution Workshop – Part 1 of 2 – Sandy B. and Bob B. – Sandy Beach and Bob Bisantz

Andy Beach, I'm an alcoholic. How y'all doing? We flipped a coin last night and I'm going to start and then we're going to go back and forth and we decided to take 10 or 15 minutes each and briefly describe our stories and how we got here and then talk a little bit about the hand of God in the origins of AA. Just very briefly, maybe each of our favorite stories that illustrates that. But I had some kind of miscommunication. I had all this stuff ready on the 10th tradition. So we're going to shift over to there is a solution. So that when you buy the CDs, it won't have the title on there and then you listen and it's all about the 10th tradition and that would maybe get somebody drunk. Anyway, very briefly, I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut in the 30's I have one sister she has 28 years in AA now and we're both brought up in the Catholic church sitting almost in the same pew she heard the most friendly things in the world still loves that church thought it was the nicest kindest the warm hearted nuns and I sat next to her and got terrified out of my skin. And at age eight, I was sitting on the front row. I'd studied that catechism and I had my ear yanked and what was going to happen to me? And I had a personal revelation. I was looking at the crucifix. It's about 20 feet high. Wooden cross. You couldn't miss it. It was hanging right there. And it was like I kept staring at it and staring at it, and it was almost like a light or a message came and it said, little boy, do you see this? And I went, yes. Well, this is what God did to his only son that he loved. Guess what he's going to do to you. And I actually fell faint. I mean, I lost consciousness with the shock of this new truth. And I just, you know, the idea of God, I just never wanted to die because I knew when you died, you're in for it. So it was hard for me to find any comfort with the concept of a higher power. And I needed that desperately because I was so uncomfortable in my own skin. I knew there was something missing in my life. I knew that I wasn't the same as other people. I never fit in anywhere. It was extremely awkward to do anything. I found it hard to meet people, and yet I was, you know, I'd be voted the best natured. I was funny and all that. So if you saw this outside, you said, look at that guy, look at dat guy. And inside, I'm just about to have a nervous breakdown. and I went to a little school. I was telling Don on the way over here, I went through a little tiny prep school in New Haven called Hopkins and it was founded in 1660 and just a little, tiny day school but it had been there for a long, long time and it's a wonderful little school and it has a pipeline right into the Ivy League and so I went right down to Yale and New Haven And when I got there, I was overpowered by all these people that came from all over the country and they're all wealthy and they all were just so much superior to me that I knew I didn't belong there. And I had this feeling during freshman year that the dean was going to call all thousand freshmen out onto the old campus and was going to say, gentlemen, we have discovered we have an imposter in our midst. He's right back there, and they were going to have guys come and get me out of there. So that was the comfort level that I had. And my roommates are going, you're in college. You ought to be drinking. And drinking was a sin. I don't know. There was something about it that I was trying to stay away from. But they kept telling me, it'll make you feel wonderful. Make you feel beautiful. And I was at this social event where you're supposed to go around and meet all these other guys, you know those type of things, mix and meet or whatever it is. It's just like going into combat as far as I'm concerned. That is terrifying. And I tried. I would try, and I couldn't pull it off. And that night I went over and walked up to a group, and they all were looking at me, and you could just see it. I mean, people talk with their eyes. You can see it there. And they were going, we don't want to know you. We have enough friends. stay the hell away from our little group. And it was just, I just picked my breath away. So I tried to go in another group and they gave me the same signal. It was so powerful. And so I never saw, couldn't get my hand out to actually say hello to anyone. And there was a bar there and I decided, God, it'd feel good. That would be nice. And maybe I'll have a drink and maybe it could feel good And I had a drink and nothing happened. I had another drink and nothing happened, and halfway through the third drink, I decided to leave. I said, I don't feel good. It's just astounding with the overrated stuff they're talking about. You know, what is this? And I turned as if to leave, and I looked back at these guys, and it was as if they were gone, and there were now 40 of the friendliest eyes I have ever seen. Everybody in that room wanted to know me. They were begging me to come join them. And I just went, my God, I can't believe this. And I, I just had a whole new view of the world. It was no longer a dangerous place. It was a wonderful place and people in it were marvelous. They all were smiling and, and I just had a spring in my step and I suddenly had a realization that they're going to be lucky to know me. And it was sort of a mutual admiration going on right there. And I just, my fears were removed so I could be creative. I could think of something to say. It wasn't stifled anymore. And I thought to myself, you should have started drinking in grammar school. This is remarkable how it takes you to a new place to live. I just was in a world that I thought was just, what? I just couldn't believe it. It was just the greatest. And I'd only been drinking 10 minutes. I now had the new favorite thing, and there wasn't even a close second. And of course that night, if a little bit is good, then 25 drinks would be better. And of curse I got sick and room spinning and vomiting and dry heaving and waking up on the cold tile in the bathroom right near the toilet so you could dry heave and lie down and dry heav and liedown. My head hurt and my whole body ached and my hair hurt. You remember when just everything was dying. And I sat on my bed just thinking about this, and the thought came in, well, are you going to drink again tonight? And I went, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I said, this pain and throwing up and vomiting and absolute anguish is a small price to pay for what I had last night. So I made my deal right there that no matter what it took, it was worth it so alcohol did something for me that it doesn't do for average drinkers you wouldn't hear average drinker's talking like this that they would give up you know and so if the devil had come along and said all right all right before you go into this i want to just make sure you understand the deal that you're signing up for now are you willing to give up your high grades yeah yep yep i'd be willing to get that how about athletics you like that no i'd I'd be willing to give up athletics if I can keep this new power that I found. Well, how about getting your teeth knocked out? How about broken bones? Getting arrested? Almost flunking out? Your family will almost disown you. Yep, that'll be all right. Yeah, I think I can handle that. I can tackle that. With this new Power, I could handle just about anything as long as I have access to this. Now, see, I thought I was a social drinker. I thought everybody had this remarkable transformation and awakening and all of that. And so, you know, the rest of the story is sort of incidental. In other words, once you're an alcoholic, that's the main event. And then there's these side plots like getting married and joining the Marine Corps and becoming a fighter pilot like Creighton over there. and these things are like a hobby or some other thing that you do in addition to maintaining this relationship with alcohol. But I just thought I was having fun, you know, going about my way. And after about ten and a half years of flying in the Marine Corps, the end came. The disease just came and shut me down. I ended up flying where I didn't want to be in the plane. I didn't trust the pilot. He didn't know what he was doing. He was in bad shape and all these things. And I remember, no matter what your job is, if you're an alcoholic, you are encountering situations that aren't supposed to be encountered. You know what I'm talking about? In your job. Like I heard a doctor one time, and he came out of a blackout in the middle of surgery and didn't know the procedure that he was doing, and he was trying to talk to the people around him. They would give him a clue as to what he was going to do. And that type of situation was not covered in medical school. And I was going through withdrawals in the planes, And there was nothing in the F8U handbook about flying the Crusader during withdrawals, alcoholic withdrawals. So you have to make up your own solutions. That's my point, is that you are left creatively thinking your way out of things. And I remember going, what am I going to do? I'm going to pass out. I'm losing my vision. I'm sweating. And I'm flying this thing and I've got to finish this. And so I came up with flying the mission with one hand. It was a photo mission, and on the stick, and that controlled the cameras and everything, and then the other hand was on the ejection seat. And my theory was that if I passed out, I'd pull the curtain, and I would go out, the plane would crash, the chute would open automatically at 10,000 feet, and I Would Be Safe. And I remember, in spite of feeling panicky, I felt smug. You know what I mean? It was almost like, well, they almost had the old fox, but he got out of another one. And so you can see we're not doing too well. So I went to the doctors and they couldn't find out what was wrong and they diagnosed me after three weeks of observation as childhood fear of flying and I was retrained as an air traffic controller during my last year of drinking. And during that time, I lost about 50 pounds, malnutrition, stopped hanging around people, just drank alone, drank vodka. I put vodka in soup, and that was what I was trying to eat. I couldn't eat food. I was very sick, very sick. And I came back to the States and had a grand mal seizure, went into the hospital and six days later had the DTs and the room was there were people and the CIA was trying to break me and it was just remarkable all that and evidently I was screaming all over the place and they got me and put me in a straitjacket and locked me up in the nut ward for six months and so that was my crashing and burning and while in there an AA group talked their way in They said, you know, you have some alcoholics in that mental ward. Oh, we don't have alcoholics in the Navy and all that. We think there's a few in there. Why don't you let us bring a meeting in? And so a corpsman had three of us fall in on our little bathrobe as we went down. I heard about it. It sounded great, but I didn't think it was exactly for me. And so when I was let out and they told me if I ever drank again my career was over and I just had one drink here and one drink there. Now I'm smuggling booze back into the nut ward. And somehow I got out of there, was sent back. No, I knew I was going to get caught. And on December 7th, 1964, which is my anniversary, I called AA from the Marine base at Quantico and they sent another Marine captain over. He was the only other Marine member of AA. And he came my house and took over he was my sponsor he's still my sponsor I have the same sponsor for almost 40 years and he just took me in and took control of my life he just said this is a 12-step call I talked you listen boom get in the car that was the basic message and I haven't had drinks sent and I was indoctrinated indoctrinated into this incredible program that we're going to talk about today that has been the most exciting thing. I thought flying those planes was exciting, but this is much more exciting. It's a much bigger deal. It is absolutely, there's no comparison. And if you're new, we hope to impart to you today the tremendous excitement of spirituality. This is the major leap. When we move into this level, we're going up at the epic level. This is why we're alive, is to have the opportunity to experience what's available here. Thanks. Now turn it over to Bob. I'm Bob DeZondz and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Bob. It's over to the grace of God in the age of December 10th, 1967. You want to take this one? No, I got... Okay. That's all right. Isn't Sandy wonderful? Yes, he is. He is. I think he's better on tape than he is in person. But I, he has been one of my heroes in AA. I think he is one of the most gifted communicators we have. Many of you know my story. I started drinking when I was 13. I was, when I entered high school, I was 4'11", 95 pounds. He kind of told my Catholic, you know, experience. There was a lot of pain and guilt. I never escaped, but I experienced the pain of guilt. But doesn't he put into words the experiences that almost all of us have? I mean, so word pictures, you can just see it and experience it. And what I find fascinating is a lot of those old ideas are still bedevilous. Ideas we've made up about ourselves, about how good we are at certain things and how bad we are in certain things. We're 60 years old and still some of those things crop up you know, that we made up of rhymes about when we were 8, 9, 10, and 11 years old. When I entered high school, I was 95 pounds, 4 foot 11, insecure, almost all mouth. I was the class clown. I just had these constant eyes looking for what I thought you wanted, you know? Trying to fit in, trying to be a member of the in-group. Had my experience with alcohol. It was much like Sandy's. It wasn't like a change. It was like a sex change operation. You know, I mean, it literally was a transformation, which is interesting because I think that's what recovery does is give us a transformation. And I felt like I wasn't part of the group. I felt Like I owned it. You know what I mean? It literally allowed me to move around with a sense of ease and comfort that I had never had in my life. And when you find something that's great, you just chase it. And I chased it pretty hard. And by the time I finished high school, I was in a lot of trouble for drinking. and I had false ID cards, been arrested, car accidents. Went away to school, thought I'd get away from them. I thought the problem was I was underage. And, you know, the police nor my parents thought that was a good idea that I drank. I went away, and I drank my way to the University of Notre Dame middle of my senior year. And you just, you now, there's a lot of stories that went on. I was due to be commissioned as an officer. I had to get a medical release. The medical release I got was for alcoholism. I was diagnosed an alcoholic when I was 19. I thought that was nuts. I mean, I thought, you know, how can a 19-year-old be an alcoholic? Kind of unusual you'd run into a psychiatrist that knew enough about alcoholism that he was willing and able to diagnose a 19 year old as an alcoholic. Wanted me to go either to treatment or AA. I was not prepared for that. And I was just confused. I couldn't give up alcohol. It was the only thing that made sense to me. I think it kept me alive during that period. Suicide, for whatever reason, was a regular thought for me. And I don't know if it was just the kind of suicide where we feel sorry for ourselves or how serious that would have gotten, but alcohol relieved. You know, when the rest of the guys would go on semester break up to New York for the city, I'd go buy three bottles and I'd get an overstuffed chair from the lounge, put it in my room, and I had, you know, I'd read and drink for the weekend. That was my trip. And when I walked out of Notre Dame, I came back. I finished school at St. Thomas University. When I finished high school there, my father said, Bob, you've got to leave the house. I'm one of seven kids with great parents, great brothers and sisters. He said, we love you. We don't know what to do with you. He said you're just a mess. You're a bad example for everybody else in the family. And you've Got to go. So I, you know, took a job at a liquor store and have to use your gifts. And Vietnam's on. I'm kind of doing this part-time thing trying to figure out what branch of the service I'm going to, you know, try to get into. And the third time they lost my physical after I was accepted into officer candidate school. They lost my fiscal. The fourth time I took the fiscal, they failed me. You know, they said take it again. So I took it again, and they failed me. And I got a job as an executive trainee. All I wanted to do was grow up. It seemed like adults were okay. Kids had these awkward moments. All I want to do is get to be kind of like my father and his friends, and they'd make you vice president someplace, and you'd be okay. And I didn't know there was a process involved in that. I thought you just kind of happened automatically. And I went to work at a local corporation, and I was a basket case. I had no idea what I was doing. And, you know, they put them behind a desk. You know, I didn't know what I was doing behind a desk. I can't stop drinking. Now I'm the company drunk. You know? They used to use my room in Notre Dame for a study hall. You know Rudy, you see that movie Rudy? He went to Notre Dame. I passed through. You know what I mean? He actually had the experience. When you're an alcoholic, you don't get to have a life. You know what you give up is yourself in that process. And I gave up myself in that process. And now I'm at this company, and I'm just, you know, I use up my sick leave in the first four months of work. I am falling asleep at my desk. I'm sleeping my hangovers off in room closets and dark rooms. And, you Know, I quit the job, took a job as a salesman, thought it would give me more flexibility. And, again, I can't shut down my drinking. I don't know what I, youknow, I just can't get the rhythm. and I can't drink and work, so therein lies the problem. And I finally just out of desperation, one of my buddies got married and I went on about a five-day drunk and I woke up, not five day, three-day drank. I wokeup on Thursday and I didn't know if I had a job, a fiancé or a place to live and I called AA. That had been recommended to me and I didn't think it was a good idea, but that day I was out of ideas. And two men came and talked to me and I had maybe the most important day sometime in July 1967 and they came out and they talked to my wife and they told me about their drinking problem and told me they found a solution and hoped that it might have some interest to me but for some reason they found that talking to people like me helped them stay sober. And in their sharing of their lives with me, they changed my life. I had talked to all sorts of experts that tried to help me, but I'd never talked to another person with a drinking problem. And these two guys, one was six years and one was 6 months, altered me and dropped me off at the first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I drank twice after that, once on a business trip after 30 days and once on my honeymoon after three months. But it was never the same. I mean, with the information they gave me and the experience I had in the meetings, you know, it wasn't the same. And I had my last drink December 10th on the last day of my honeymoon on the way back. And it's just been a trip that is just unexplainable. I think the most profound thing for me when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I have the same sponsor since I walked in the front door of A.A. Warren. I've had the same sponsored for almost 37 years. And I think the most profound thing for me is that they told me it was a disease that affected me physically but also mentally and spiritually. I knew I had been sober a couple of times. I went back to my senior year, I was almost killed. I was beaten up, robbed, rolled pistol whipped, shot at, thrown out of the second story of a hotel, ended up in the psych ward of a hospital and they were going to not let me go back for my senior school. And I went black and I didn't drink. Not drinking was not an answer for me. It was horrible. It was as bad as anything I've ever experienced. And so when people would say, Bob, what's wrong with you? It was a drinking problem. I mean, it would seem obvious that stopping would be the resolution of a drinking problem. Stopping did not solve my issue. And I said, there's something else wrong with me. I mean it's deep, dark, dirty, unattractive. I've got a built-in failure mechanism. I seem like I'm talented. I interview well. I just can't work. And I wish they gave prizes for interviewing. Well, I interviewed well until I interviewed for the job at AA. But other than that, I didn't. And, you know, when they told me that it was physical, but I remember my sponsor told me that the physical part was like 10% of the deal. I can't tell you how shocked they were. I thought we'd spend a lot of time talking about how not to drink. He said, no, once we're in AA, we use the 12 steps to change you said we used the 12 sets of the recovery program to find a different way to live to be different if you don't find a different way if you're going to go back because you don't know how to live without drinking so what they gave me the idea and then I said after the meeting we go to the meetings like at 730 the meeting started at 8 I'd go home about 1130 and you listen to these guys talk to their sponsors and they weren't almost none of it was about drinking it was a putt fights with her wife problems at work doing bills doing amends how to do it You know, I mean, it was talking about how to live. It was a very, you know, different sort of thing. And I really got hope. You know? I really get a sense that there was a solution. And you can't describe the trip. I mean you couldn't draw a straight line from where I was, you know, to where I am today. Our meeting Friday was on, you know, hope you don't get what you deserve. You know that's one thing. If any of you are out there praying for justice, I recommend you stop it. Mercy is a better approach to the thing. So it's just been a hell of a ride. It has been a solution. I found in sobriety what I was looking for in a bottle. Who would have thunk? Huh? Who would have thought that I found everything I was looking for in a bottle and more in these rooms. So I'm going to be pleased to share this with Sandy and you this afternoon, and Sandy's going to now talk to us a little bit about our history and God's role in that, and I will try to play off that. Thank you, Bob. Great job. Good job. Now, if you knew there's going to come a day in your AA life when history will grab you. In the beginning, I wasn't remotely interested in it. And as time has gone by, it just becomes more and more fascinating. And I love our archivists, and I'm so grateful for all the work they've done. But one of the things that I see in there that makes me just feel so wonderful is the hand of God. You just see that this thing did not just happen. I'll tell you something that did just happen without the hand of God. That was the Washingtonian Society, which was incredibly successful for a certain period of time and then it just collapsed. And that thing got started by just six guys at a bar who saw that their lives were coming apart And they were pretty, you know, guys in their 20s that businessmen and professionals. And they said, if we don't get a handle on this drinking, we're going to lose everything. And yeah, you're right. And they drink to that and all that kind of stuff. And what was big at this time in the 1840s were temperance movements and pledges and all this kind of stuff. So they said we'll make up our own pledge. Maybe the six of us can keep each other sober. So let's get a pledge. Yeah, yeah, I'm getting a pledge, another pledge. And they got this pledge and it didn't have anything to do with God. It just had to do with saying in front of other people, I swear to never touch this evil stuff and blah, blah, bla. And then they found that the six of them, they would meet once a week and talk about how they didn't drink and they said, this is great, we ought to go out and promote it And so they had great promotions, and they tried to get people of high stature to join so that other people would join. And it became an incredibly exciting event. And at the end of the first year, they had something like 6,000 people in a parade in Baltimore, Maryland, celebrating this wonderful thing that they had discovered. And they allowed no politics, no religion, no nothing. You just don't drink. You say this pledge, and then you share about how you're doing without this evil alcohol. And within a relatively few years, six or seven years, they had gone to other cities, and the estimates are between 300,000 and 400,000 members, which is a bigger percentage of the population than AA is today. That's how big it was. and it disappeared like that they took positions on outside issues started dividing amongst themselves and there was no spiritual basis it was almost like a pyramid club you just keep it gonna keep the generating this excitement and it just disappeared it disappeared so far from the radar that when Bill Wilson was working on the traditions and someone said to him, you know, you ought to look at the experience of the Washingtonians because they could teach you a few lessons about how an organization can fail and fall apart. And Bill Wilson had never heard of the Washingtonians. Never heard of them. You know what I mean? He's supposed to be learning everything about this. In our case, it's nothing like that. Nobody sat around and dreamed up anything. They just were instruments in the grand scheme of things, and we see that in the 1920s when, as Ray O'Keefe put it, a cast of characters was being assembled in Vermont, in Manchester, Vermont, and there was Bill Wilson over from East Dorset. There was Evie Thatcher over from Albany. There was Roland Hazard up from Rhode Island where They had summer homes. There was a beautiful young lady whose father was a doctor in Brooklyn, Dr. Burnham, named Lois. And she summered there. And these teenagers got to know each other. And as the events unfolded, each one of them played a critical role all the way down to the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon. And the first one was Roland, and he went to see Dr. Young. He was supposed to inherit the family business, many millions and millions of dollars. And he knew his alcoholism was going to prevent him. His father knew it. They had him go to all the best doctors in the United States. And as a last resort, they went to Dr. Young. He spent a year with them as Dr. Young worked on him to cause the transformation that is necessary to be set free from this terrible disease. And at the end of the year, Dr. Young explained if he ever drank again, he may end up in a sanatorium, which is where people went. He said, I understand. He got as far as Paris. Somebody asked him the wrong question. They said, would you like a drink? And he said, yes, I would. Very short order, he's back to Dr. Jung. Dr. Chung, Dr., I'm all messed up again. Blah, blah, blah. And if you think about this moment in time, It is as if it's being explained to him that he's an alcoholic and you cannot manage your own life. And then Dr. Young, when he said, Dr. young, what can you do for me? Dr. Young, with all the humility of a world famous psychiatrist said, there's nothing I can do for you, which set the stage for no human power could have relieved our alcoholism. There it was. This was the court of last resort of human power. And what it did, it did the secret thing that is necessary in recovery. It took all hope away from Roland. It left him desperate. It left them so that he had nothing to cling on to. And then Dr. Young said, now I have heard of some cases like yours where people have found a spiritual power and they have recovered. If I was you, I would go look for a spiritual program. Now until he told them there was nothing he could do, I don't think he could have talked Roland into looking for a special program. He wasn't interested in the spiritual program, he wasn't spiritual, I'm not into that stuff. But once he found out there was nowhere else to go, he eagerly went after a spiritual program. Where can I find a spiritual problem? He was just on a search and that God could and would if he were sought. And he found the Oxford Group, which is real in. They were all over the place and it was a great place and he got sober and the next cast, Bill's sponsor, Ebby, He was the next to crash and burn in front of the judge, Roland Hazard and Shep. And one other guy was there, and they said, would you release him in our custody? And the judge said, sure, I'd be glad to. And they took him to the Oxford. And Ebi got sober. And Evi, once he got sober and realized how exciting it was, he thought of his old buddy Bill Wilson, and he said, maybe Bill would like to do it. And we all know he went to Bill's on that Saturday morning, and Bill's dying, he's at the bottom of everything. And he just can't deny how good Ebi looks. You talk about a program of attraction. He couldn't believe any of the ideas, but he saw what was happening. He saw his friend, and he just couldn't leave it. And Ebi was telling him, you just need a higher power. And Bill had the same experience with God as a child. He said, oh, no, no. I'm not into that. And Evi said, choose your own concept of God. You just need something. And in his next hospitalization, Bill cried out, if there is a God, let him show himself to me. And the room lit up and he had this great experience. And he went out and he tried to help other alcoholics to no avail. Couldn't help a single one because he was telling them about the spiritual experience. He was telling him about the bright lights and the mountaintop and the voice of God and all that and the drunks at the bars are going, oh, that happens to me when I drink rum. Oh, yeah. And Dr. Silkworth said, Bill, you're talking about the wrong thing. You have to do the same thing that Dr. Young did. You have tell them about the disease. You have told them there is no hope. You have make them desperate. You have show there's nothing that can help them except the higher power. And then they will reach out. And so that started the whole thing. And as we follow, the one other thing I'll throw in is a name you don't hear too often, Jim Newton. Everybody familiar with Jim Newton? I'm sure some people are, but it's probably one that isn't. Jim Newton was a real estate guy in Fort Myer. And he also knew Thomas Edison, who had his laboratories and everything down there. And he became kind of an assistant to Thomas Edison. He's a pretty good organizer, but he's in real estate. That was his thing. And he had been in New York and had found the Oxford Group and was a big, just loved it. Loved the way it transformed his life and he had a spiritual basis to it. And, boy, I'm throwing a blank on the guy with the Firestone. Harvey Firestone was a close friend of Thomas Edison and was visiting there, and he said, I'm looking for a special administrative assistant to come out to Akron. I've got some plants out there, and I need this guy to be my special advisor. And Thomas Edison, I've Got the Guy for you, Jim Newton. This guy is awesome. So he interviewed him, and He liked him, and he Said, Come on out. And he went to Akran. And while he was there, he got to know the family. He was kind of an in-guy and one of Firestone's sons. Bud was an alcoholic, bad alcoholic, and his father was real worried. And Jim had seen a few alcoholics recover in the Oxford group. And he said to Harvey Firestone, he said, let me take Bud with me on my next business trip. I'm going to take him to a little group that I belong to. They could help him. So he took them with him on the business trip, and while they were there, they went to a couple of Oxford meetings, and Bud had this transformation while he was there and came back a changed person. And his father was so happy. He said, what is this organization? He says, the Oxford Group. And Frank Buckman was the head of the, you know, it started the Oxford group and, of course, Harvey Fireson goes, Oxford Group? We better get one in Akron. This is awesome. And so with his power, the next thing, the newspapers, It's all over town, and celebrities, and Frank Buckman, and all these personalities are going to be here. Come to the churches and see the Oxford Group, and everybody saw it, including Ann Smith and Henrietta Seiberling. And they went to Oxford, and they saw the power of it. And T. Henry and Clarice Williams, who opened their home to the Oxford group and early AA members. And as a result of that, Dr. Bob was brought, kicking and screaming by Ann, to the Oxford group, and he got all of the spiritual part of the group except the not drinking part. and so we had Henrietta we had Ann and it was a custom in the group when a person confessed a problem that the rest of the group prayed for a solution and Dr. everybody knew he was an alcoholic but he hadn't confessed it yet at an Oxford group meeting one night he said I want to confess something probably none of you know Well, I have this terrible drinking problem. There's nothing I can do about it. I'm trying desperately to get help and et cetera, et cetera. And it wasn't that many weeks later that Henrietta Seiberling received a call that had been transferred from the Reverend Tunks who hosted the Oxford meeting, the thing with Harvey Firestone, that Bill had called from the Mayflower Hotel and gave him Henrietta was one of the ten names that he got. And when he got a hold of her, she said, I have just the perfect... He said, I'm a drunk from New York and I think I have the answer to alcoholism and I need to work with another alcoholic. And she said I've been expecting your call. and it's hard to look at I don't know this guy from hell he's probably from the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel yeah, to the gatehouse of the estate so when the drunks go to Akron to tour all the sites and one of the things on tour is the Firestone Estate they only go to the Gatehouse they don't go to The Mansion They just go there where Bill and Bob met. Those are the stories that I wanted to share that you can see nobody was doing anything. They were just being guided. It was just being handed. They were Just put in desperate situations, and events were just transpiring. Bob, pick it up. Thank you. But surrender, I mean when you look at what Jung gave Rowland and you look at what Silkworth gave Bill when he said you're carrying the wrong message, you know, you're talking about this blind light experience on top of a mountain. You have to talk about the disease. And interestingly enough, Bill carries the message of the disease to the doctor. If Bill would've tried to trade spiritual experience with Dr. Bob, Dr. Bob was enormously, I went through with Dr. Bob's daughter, I went to Bob's library. Bob was a very well-read, searching guy, as was Bill. I'm glad our founders didn't believe that you couldn't read anything other than the big book. You know, we might not have had it. I mean, it really is. I mean Jung wrote a book called Man in Search of His Soul, and I happen to have that book right now. And Bill autographs it, you know, to Bob Smith at Christmas. He says, hey, Smitty, read this. Great stuff, you now. And those men were searchers. And there was something happening in the 30s. There was a spiritual revolution that was happening. The Unity Movement, Science of the Mind Church, the Oxford Group. There was just Emmett Fox. I mean, there was this revolution that was going on in spirituality. I don't know if it had to do with the depression or whether it was just, you know, it seems like spiritual openings come at different periods of time. But what I do know is that if you've got someone who's really locked into a serious problem like alcoholism or any other kind of serious problem that none of us have in this room, we've been in relationship with that for a long time trying to change it, trying to alter it and unsuccessful. But we are like locked in. It's like a tar baby. We have our arms wrapped around that sucker, and we're doing everything. There's no opening. You know, one of the great Zen masters said you need the mind of a beginner, not the mind of an expert. The mind of an expertise, there is no opening, there's no space. But what happens with surrender is your ego gets destroyed. When your ego get destroyed, there' s an opening. You aren't there. And when you aren't here, you have like a clean slate that someone can come in and say, try this. Would you be willing to look at this? And what happened to Bill and what happened to Bob and what happens to Roland is that they got knocked on their buns. They had a surrender experience and they were, at that moment, open, clear, and empty. I think the story of the book is one of the next great stories in Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, Bill stayed for six months in Akron. You know what I mean? You talk about the depression. What better time could we have had to incubate Alcoholics Anonymous in the Depression. He didn't have a job. He was down there working on a proxy deal down there that had kind of fallen through. He still thought it might do it, so he hangs out and they go get Bill Dodson and then they get Ernie and they start building this thing and they've got a bunch of guys going. Bill goes back home to New York and starts... ...as soon as they've gotten these two little pockets of groups going. Sometime in 1937, I forget exactly when, he goes back down to Akron and he's sitting on the front porch of Bob's house. And in the conversation it came to both of those men that there were enough recoveries now, let's say there were 20, that they really had stumbled on something that was bigger than themselves. I mean, they weren't looking to start Alcoholics Anonymous. They were looking for a way out. I mean they weren'T trying to start an organization. They were trying to save themselves from this horrible grips of the disease. And somehow they knew that working, you know, when Silkworth talked to Bill and Bill made the other connection in the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel was Bill discovered at that moment that he needed to talk to another drunk not to help the other drunk but to maintain his own sobriety. That was not a small revelation that he made. So when he went to that man, it wasn't to inform the man. It was also to maintain his own sobriety. There was a humility in that approach that might not have been there when you were trying to tell someone about your spiritual revelation. So at that moment, Bill said, we've got to get this message out. There's just lots of people who need this message and they made a decision to write the book. And over the next year and a half, they wrote the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, primarily authored by Bill, but the first three or four chapters were roughed out by Bill, sent to both groups in New York and Akron, and kind of jostled back and forth. And then when the project kind of bogged down, Bill kind of took it by the horns, as I understand it, I don't know if that, and wrote most of the rest of the book. And then they sent out the manuscripts. I don' t know how many they sent uto people. And many of you have probably seen the original manuscript where the steps are in the I form. And after you get done, when you read how it works And you get down and it says, you know, that probably no human power could have believed that God couldn't. What if he were sad? And I said, if you read so far and don't agree with us, please throw this away. You know, throw it away or else reread it. And but there were a lot of comments, maybe the greatest of which is that the we got put into the steps rather than I. And so here this book, you Know, they didn't have enough money to publish it. They got a loan from Rockefeller and a loan for Bert, the guy who was, you don't have the clothing store. And they, you know, got enough money to get the 5000 volumes of the book. And the publisher kept most of the volumes. They broke free from some of those. So, you Know, then they had the article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and they got, you know, 800 members come in. Then Rockefeller has a dinner, you Know, and they give all the books out to the big shots and they hope they're going to raise money. And they got about fifteen hundred bucks from those dinners for a number of years that they eventually paid back on. But if we know more about that story, it is just at the last moment. I mean, they didn't have the money and somehow it came and they just, you know, couldn't get the books. And, you Know, I mean it was, it was just, and for a man to have written that book with three and a half years of sobriety, or four and a Half years of Sobriety. You know, he got, Bill got sober in December 11th, 1934. So I guess, you Now, and the book got published in April of 1939. So there was, you know, five years between. You know, I mean, most people with five-year sobriety wouldn't let them cut your yard. And, you Know, I Mean, He Has, You Know, And Here Is This Guy Who, You Know, That's A Joke, Not Five Years, Maybe Five Months. But I Mean Here's This Guy, I Asked The Guy To Paint My Porch, You Know, He Came Back And After He Painted It And Said, That Wasn't A Porsche. That was a Mercedes, you know. But Rockefeller throws a dinner. Bill wanted to get the Reader's Digest to review the book and Bill wanted Rockefeller to give him a big endorsement and Bill wanting to make a lot of money. They sold stock. You know, they raised the stock to go do the book. And then at the dinner, Rockefeller said, you know, that money was going to ruin this thing by accident. By accident, what he said is This is a work of, you know, I mean, we've got some of the greatest principles that have helped us stay alive over a period of time. And then the Jack Alexander article in 1941. But the book, the codification of the principles, spiritual principles that we have, first of all, for a man with four years of sobriety to have written a book that has stood the test of time unbelievably well. I mean, this is a time when people specialize in tearing apart things of God. Very difficult. And there is, I mean... Almost all of us, when we read that book, you might argue with pronouns and think, you know... But you read that books and you just go, Oh, yeah. Oh, oh, yeah! I mean it is really... And the nature of spiritual books is that they don't inform. The nature of a spiritual book is when you read it, you have an experience. And that is why it is new when you're reading it. because you're not getting information. Your mind isn't engaged, your soul and your heart is engaged, and when that's engaged, it's always new. So when you read the book and you happen to be really plugged into it, but what happened to our society is from April of 1934 when the book, I'm sorry, 1939 when the books were written to March of 1941, we went from 100 people to 8,000. and that's what made that possible there would have been no other way we could have kick-started our society without having the book and they really thought that you could send people the book they'd read the book they'd have the experience and they themselves they never really thought that we were going to be necessarily in the form that we are today but you can just see to me the hand of God everywhere in our fellowship One of the great differences that I see today is our society is very different today in 2004 than it was in 1934. You could talk about things that were spiritual, you could talk About things that we're religious people expected them they were normal they were they were there was general agreement about the principles and values of that sort of thing. You might argue about, you know, which particular branch that you should do. But by and large, most people were churched today. You know, we can't have a cross on a state seal. You know? We can't the commandments out in front of a state capitol. Okay? So, I mean, we are a society today that is very different than the society we are, the cult of self. We are the cult individual. individual. We do not, you know, so there's just a lot of us today that are not church that are given all the encouragement for our society. Poor baby, you're suffering. Things shouldn't be tough. Go take a pill. We'll get you something, you don't calm down. It'll be OK. And you should need the answer now. Immediate gratification. You know, and then we have all these wonderful gambling casinos and porn on the Internet and credit cards being mailed to you. I mean, there's just, I mean there are, there is a vortex and a wind blowing out there today I mean there's always been issues but I really believe that our society today has somewhat the form of addiction that actually pushes us to instability when our society, Alcoholics Anonymous was founded I believe society supported stability and so some of us if we're sitting out there wondering why our thinking always isn't very good, wondering why we're having trouble, if you're not kind of centering yourself in some of the messages that we have and you're unaware that the wind's blowing and you wonder why your golf ball is going left. I mean, there's a 40 mile an hour wind out there, Tiger, and if you aren't hanging on to something, you're going to go left. And I really think that that is one of the great differences today is that I think those men and women in the early days that got sober really wanted to conform. They really felt the pain of nonconformity and wanted to take on the responsibilities of their life. Today, the message of the world is your responsibility is to you. Just do your own thing. Take care of yourself. You're the most important person in the world. And as we will get into spiritual principles, our book says serving others is important. Having God be the center of your life. And I really think that message is not out there in society today and it is hard for us to grab a hold of and hang on to. And that's part of what happened when Jung says, you know, there's been spiritual transformations. The central idea, what he said to Roland, there are people that the very central ideas and values of their lives are transformed. That's not an alteration. That's Not an Improvement. That is a transformation. And when those are changed around, when you have an altercation in how you be, everything you do changes. That's a transformation, and that's what I think when Sandy talks about we've got a solution I mean it's really a solution it is a change of heart as they talk about in the you know chapter working for others it is a change of heart and that is what we are looking for it doesn't have you know it needs to be encouraged and I think our book the history of how our book came to be and the role that our book has played over a period of time is one of the great stories and God's stories in the end. Wow, what a great message. We're going to take ten minutes.