The Idiotic Psychiatric Jargon of Getting in Touch With Feelings – Paul M.

Thank you, Charlie. Good evening. My name is Paul Martin and I'm an alcoholic. Hello, everybody. I appreciate the chance to be here and be part of this conference. It may help me overcome my shyness. Alcoholism is a disease. And AA is the answer. Can everybody in the back hear? Okay? Good. I hate to have traveled all the way from Riverside, Illinois, and nobody could hear me. Riverside, incidentally, is a suburb of Chicago. It's a kind of quiet community. And the reason it's quiet is we have some semi-retired Chicago hoodlums living there and they don't believe in crime in the streets. Although a few years ago one of them fell dead while being strangled. Riverside is not the end of the world, but you can see it from there. this is the one that you listen to and this is the one buddy Ross tapes from buddy said that I should be sure and talk in his if I had to make a choice before buddy came to AA he went to a psychiatrist and on his first visit the psychiatrist said well I don't know anything about you never seen you before tell me something about yourself start at the beginning buddy said well in the beginning I created the heavens and the earth. Eddie neglected to mention this morning that since he became a lawyer, he went on a Caribbean cruise, and he fell overboard one afternoon, and he fell into a school of particularly vicious sharks, and before they got the cruise ship stopped, they went a couple of miles, and they turned around, but somebody had thrown him a life preserver and they came back to where he had fallen overboard and they put a small boat over and some sailors rode over to where they thought some remains of him might be. And they saw that two of the sharks were holding Eddie up. Another one had brought the life presaver to him and another shark had caught a fish and was trying to feed him. So they pulled him into the small boat and took him back to the cruise ship and helped him up the ladder and the captain said, I don't understand that. Those are the most vicious sharks in the world. And he said, that's incredible. They actually saved your life. He said, I don' t know why this would be. He sa d, what kind of business are you in? And Eddie said, I'm a lawyer. And the captain sa dd, that explains it. It was professional courtesy. cherry was talking one time at an aa meeting and he showed up and the only people that were there was the chairman and one man in the audience and nobody else had come and 8 30 arrived and went up to the man inthe audience he said well do you think i ought to talk to such a small group And the man said, well, I'm a farmer. He said, there's a lot I don't know. I haven't been anywhere and many things I don' t understand. But if I went out to the field to feed my stock and only one cow showed up, I wouldn' t send her away hungry. So they started the meeting and Cherry got up and talked for two hours and 67 minutes. They ended it with the Lord's Prayer and he went down to see the man and he said, what would you think of it? The man said well, I'm not real well educated and there's alot I don''t know. but he said if I went out to the field to feed my stock and only one cow showed up I wouldn't dump the whole damn load on top of her incidentally the other day I learned how long it takes a psychiatrist to change a light bulb it takes them a long, long time and the light bulb has to really want to change Eddie was talking this morning. I belong to a step group. As of last August, I was sober 34 years, and I mention that only because I'm bragging. You probably think I joined AA when I was about three or four years old, but I was 25. I was 59 last May. I'm getting to be too old to take yes for an answer. But I belong to a step group because one of the things I came to realize as time passed was that I can't live on the food I ate 20 years ago, and I can' t live on the water I drank 10 years ago. And I can not live on the work I did in the AA program some years ago I have to eat and drink and I have continue to work and rework every one of the steps. Eddie talked about his view of feelings and I had the same view. I belong to a Step Group And the emphasis in this group is not theorizing about the steps or discussing them or philosophizing. The emphasis is on continuing work in every one of the 12 steps. And we don't talk about where our head is at or we need more space or where we're coming from or getting in touch with our feelings or all of that idiotic psychiatric jargon, which has gotten some play in AA. We talk about the AA program, and what we have found is that this continues to help us change and get saner, to get what we need one day at a time. I came into AA with what I feel in retrospect were a couple of major handicaps. One was too much religious education. I come from a long line of Lutheran ministers, and in spite of that fact, I believe in God today. And the other was too many people. much secular education i got educated way beyond my intelligence and that was not too much of a problem to do and by the time i came to aa i didn't believe in anything i was a fallen away atheist because the way i'd been brought up they said if you don't believe this way you're going to be part of an eternal marshmallow roast and you're liable to be one of the marshmallows and when i would say how come they would say that's because god loves you. And I gradually concluded that I could live better with less cosmic affection, and I flailed around on my own. And after I came to AA, I was very happy to see that nobody in AA argued about whose higher power was higher. I said, just approach God on the basis of your own understanding. And i had read many books at the time I came to AA looking for answers, and I made the mistake after I sobered up and had been through the steps once looking for advanced approaches because I thought there must be something in all of these marvelous books. And, of course, you can still find all those marvelous books – I'm Okay, You're Okay, I'm Screwed Up, Everybody's Screwed up, How to Be Your Own Worst Enemy. And I think all of those books are magnificent unless you really need help. And if you really need help and you're an AA, the answers lie in the big book. When I was drinking, a lot of people said that I was a smart young fellow, and if I sobered up, I'd go far, and I agreed with them. And when I was sober four years, I found myself working as a laborer on a rigging crew 850 miles from the North Pole in Thule, Greenland, which was quite a bit farther than I had intended to go. But I used to read the big book every day. I worked at four contracts building the Air Force Base up in Thule in the 50s. I worked in Iceland and Keflavik for a year. I worked on the air force base and worked in Point Barrow, Alaska in 56 and 57 on the dew line. And my AA came out of the big books a lot of that time. We had an AA up in Barrow. Nick, whose father was Jewish and whose mother was Eskimo and Nick always used to say that as far as he knew, he was AA's only juskimo and I think that was correct. But I used to read the big book every day and went through it over and over and over, constantly finding things that I had never seen on a previous reading. And then I came back and I read all those advanced books and I developed what I think looking back was a metaphysical hernia. I strained myself spiritually and I finally came to understand that paragraph in one story in the big book it says I get everything I need in Alcoholics Anonymous everything I get and invariably when I get what I need I find that it was just what I wanted all the time and that's been my experience over and over and everything I need is in AA I believed in nothing when I came to AlcoholicsAnonymous I came today I believe in you and I believe in God and I believe in this program and I could not separate one from the other over and over and over you people have helped me because I believed in you before I believed on God and very often you've helped me in spite of myself the mind has very limited utility as far as experiencing spiritual growth it's long seemed interesting to me that when we look at our founders Bill a stockbroker and Dr. Bob a physician and we find that Dr. Bob, and I think it's an indication of what the higher power thinks of the keen alcoholic's intelligence, Dr. Bob was a proctologist. I ended up through a series of events writing for a living, and I do a lot of traveling in Latin America. A couple of years ago, I was in the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador. That's where Darwin got the idea for the theory of evolution from observing the finches and the giant tortoises. And the giant tortoises, I learned, which get to be 500 and 600 pounds, become so excited during mating season that the male tortoises try to mate with large rocks. It's pretty much like your average AA picnic. But they say you've got to give up your old ideas. And of course what happened to me after I'd been sober a while, I collected a whole new bunch of old ideas, which I then had to get rid of two. I've come to believe that everything is connected to everything else. Again and again, I've done something in the program here that has helped me over here, and I didn't expect it. Again and again, I've done something here like an amendment or a fifth step, and it's helped an apparently totally unconnected area. Very common are the ecologists says there are three laws of ecology. One, everything is connected to everything else. Two, everything has to go somewhere and three, there's no such thing as a free lunch. And I think all three of those hold true for me in AA. Everything is connected. Frequently in my life, I have found that the shortest distance between two points is another trip through the 12 steps. Why would making a critical amend enable somebody to get a job who's been unemployable? That's happened to me and a lot of other people that I have seen. In the 12 and 12 on page 15, it says AA's 12 steps are a group of principles spiritual in their nature which, if practiced as a way of life, can expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole. The steps are the program, and the message is a message from one amateur to another amateur. Willpower will not keep me sober. willpower will enable me to work the 12 steps myron cohen always tells the story about the lady who was berating her husband because he had no willpower she said you're disgusting she said goldberg has willpower jesus goldberg smoked three packs of cigarettes a day for 25 years one day goldberg said i quit and he hasn't smoked for five years she said goldenberg has willpower you don't have any willpower and she said ginsburg has will power ginsberg was drunk every day of his life for 30 years. Six years ago, Ginsburg said, I quit, and he hasn't had a drink since. She said, that's willpower? You don't have any willpower. Her husband said, I'll show you what willpower is. He said, from now on, I'm moving into the guest bedroom and I'm going to sleep there forever. Six months passed and he was awakened at 3 o'clock one morning by his wife shaking the bed and he opened his eyes. He said,"What do you want?" She said,"Goldberg is smoking." going to meetings and not drinking do not treat my alcoholism working the 12 steps treats my alcoholismo if all i do is go to meetings and not drink eventually i suffer from untreated alcoholism an untreated alcoholism comes out as depression, anxiety, fear, hostility, apathy, boredom, and all of those unpleasant symptoms that the 12 steps will relieve and remove. If all I do is go to meetings and not drink, I will not treat my alcoholism because working the 12 Steps treats my alcoholismo. And one of the things I have seen as I have stayed sober is some people who have suffered from fatal amounts of untreated alcoholism. A doctor I knew in AA from the Middle West killed himself a year ago sober 17 years, no booze, no pills, untreated alcoholism, another AA from the Middle East last year sober 17 years did the same thing. A friend of mine who sobered up a year after I did in 1948, in 1971 sober 23 years shot himself in the head attempting to commit suicide. He succeeded only in blowing out his right eye, and he lived a year and a half. A woman I know sober 13 years tried to kill herself last summer. And if you stay sober in AA, you see these kinds of things over and over and over. There is no free lunch, and the answer is in working and reworking every one of the 12 steps. There is no other message that I have ever found. I stay healthy by trying to eat the right kind of food getting adequate rest exercising and working the program because AA does have everything I need and that's why I continue to go to that step group every Tuesday night and continue to work and rework all of these steps when I joined AA everybody I knew said that you work the first nine steps once and then you get by on 10 11 and 12 the rest of your life and I thought that was correct for the first 16 years I was sober because I didn't know any better and then I ran into the view that there's benefit in redoing all of the steps and in 1963, sober 16 years I began to redo the steps including written inventories, fifth steps taking step three aloud with other members as it says in the big book which I hadn't known for a long time I took some new looks at my amends and the whole thing And what I began to find was that everything here will continue to work for me. Somebody has said that the ego is like a baby. It has a tremendous appetite on one end and no sense of responsibility on the other, and that certainly is true of mine. And the only way I can do anything about my ego is to work and rework the 12 steps. I did an article about a year and a half ago on the high-profit alcoholism treatment industry, and researching it, I talked with Dr. Robert DeVito who at that time was director of mental health in the state of Illinois he's now in charge of the Department of Psychiatry at Loyola University DeVita was a psychiatrist who has treated 1300 alcoholics in private practice and I said, do you think it's possible to harm an alcoholic by too much treatment? And DeVite said, no, I don't think that's possible because that implies that we know what we're doing when we treat the alcoholic, and he said, We don't know enough to harm him or help him. And then I said, What do you think of this popular marketing concept of confrontation that supposedly makes the alcoholic quit sooner? And he said I don't think it works. I think the problem with psychotherapy is not that its practitioners don't now anything, but simply that they know so many things that are not true. If the quality of my life is not what it should be, The best place for me to go for counseling or therapy is to the big book or to an AA member who has done enough continuing work with the 12 steps to understand that how it works means that this is how it worked. I heard about a lady who went to a psychiatrist for five years. Finally, she said, Doctor, tell me the truth. What's wrong with me? He said, Madam, you are crazy. You're nuts. You are insane. She was a little taken aback. She said, I think I want a second opinion. He said, all right, you're ugly too. I have a longtime friend, Dr. Hobert Maurer, who is recently research professor of psychology at the University of Illinois. Hobert knows a lot about alcoholism and AA. He made his name in learning theory. He taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for eight years, wrote three books on learning theory that are still considered classics. I was talking with him a few years ago I said what do you think of psychotherapy for the sober alcoholic in AA and Dr. Maurer said if the alcoholic will use the 12 steps develop the possibilities the fellowship within the program this will be far more effective than any psychotherapy I know anything about over and over and over I have seen AAs who were in rotten shape sober and as soon as they began to work and rework all of the 12 steps, they began to get better. You sometimes hear it said that alcoholics are smarter than other people. I don't know where that came from. I know that it was not started by anybody in Al-Anon because when I came back from working out of the country about 1958, I had been gone most of the time, and while I was gone, I started having conferences and banquets and all of these kinds of things. and as I started going to the committee meetings I began to see that there was a clique that ran things so I got my own clique and I began to run things because I thought anybody who is as advanced spiritually as I am should become a conference speaker and should become a delegate and run banquets and all that stuff and I gradually got involved in everything and I became the delegate to New York and became a legend in my own mind And I had a few problems with unenlightened members who didn't want to do things my way. Incidentally, if you ever ask anybody who's heavily involved in that stuff like I've been why they do it, and they give you any other reason except ego, pride, recognition, and importance, you want to watch them because they'll lie to you about other things too. I ended up with a lot of rotten relationships with people around AA in Chicago, about 12 of them and sober 21 years in 1968 I was not feeling as good as I ought to and I went to a meeting one night that's one of the many reasons to continue to go to meetings and listen to people I was talking with a couple of members after the meeting and I said I'm here I am so for 21 years and I really feel rotten and there was a man one of them was a man sober three years whom I sponsored and I'd really worked him out on the steps. He'd done a great job with particularly the cleanup steps, four or five, made a lot of important amends. I said, I really feel lousy. What do you think I ought to do? Well, this guy said, you ought to make out a new list of people you've harmed and go around and make amends to them. I thought that's kind of strange advice to give to one of AA's leaders. But I figured if you ask for advice, you want to follow it. So I made out a New List of People I'd Harmed. And there were 12 AAs in there. One of the depressing lessons I've learned sober is that I can cause a lot more harm sober than I ever did drunk, and sometimes I have, which is another reason I have to continue to go to meetings where people will tell me the truth and have to continue to work the steps. So I made out a list of people I'd harmed and went and made amends to all 12 of these people, most of whom received them as I thought they should, and two of them said I was no good, never had been any good, and never would be any good. Which didn't bother me because I didn't really believe them. My father was a Lutheran minister who was an alcoholic. He became a fundraiser and ultimately got sober on his own. And after I'd been sober, I could make... His drinking was a very unpleasant part of my growing up years. and I could make an honest evaluation and logically say that 99% of the harm in that relationship was on his side and I think that's true as I stayed sober I came to understand that if there's a relationship that important in my life and it's sick it's going to make me sick and I used to call him up after I'd been sober a good while and suggest we get together I grew up in a little town down in southern Georgia the town was so dull that if you took LSD you'd have had visions of Lawrence Welk but I left there when I was 19 and I hadn't seen my father for many years I heard that he got sober on his own I used to suggest we get together and he always said no and finally after making those 12 amends to those people around Chicago in October of 68 I had a business meeting in Miami and on the way back I stopped in this little town in South Georgia about 50 miles from the Okefenokee Swamp. And a man that was the secretary of the AA group there I'd played baseball with when I was a kid, he was a judge in the town, and I called him up from Miami and told him what I wanted to do and he said, how can I help? I said, I don't know, but I'll see you. And I went to see Jimmy and then I went out to see my father unannounced and I rang the doorbell and he was 81. I hadn't seen him for 27 years. And I made an amend to him and then I said who I was and I said I'd like to come in and talk with you and I went in and we talked for maybe 25 minutes and then i went home and in march of 1969 i went back again unannounced and visited with him for another 25 minutes and i went home and everything is connected to everything else because i was not able to do that until i had straightened out those bad relationships with those 12 people around chicago and after that second visit I was home having a quiet time, and it was as if a layer of my life had peeled away, and I saw another ten names that went on my list of people I'd harmed from before I sobered up that were somehow or other locked up in that relationship. Over and over, I've seen only one thing I could do in the program, and when I did it, it instantly led me to something else. Two weeks after that second visit, my father died, and I went to his funeral, Acutely aware that if I hadn't gone to see him when I did I would have missed a critically important opportunity in my life Because of those unpleasant things that happened to me when I was growing up I could think about them and I could talk about them And I could complain about them And I should pray about them I could never get a handle on them to be free of them And healing that relationship healed me in some ways That I would've never gotten to any other way It is all connected and it all works. We hear a lot about Bill Wilson's spiritual experience. We don't hear so much about what he did that laid the groundwork for it. And within the first week Bill was sober, with the help of Ebi Thatcher, he worked the first eight steps of the program. He worked the First Eight Steps of the Program and then he had that spiritual experience and I think anybody who will work the program, because the promises follow the first nine steps, Nothing happens unless I work them. As I say, I grew up in that little town down in southern Georgia. I didn't start out to be an alcoholic. I started out to being a clean-living American youth and something went wrong. But I found, you probably find this a little hard to believe, but I was shy and withdrawn and confused when I was a small boy and alcohol changed something in me. It wasn't the problem. It solved the problem for a while. when I was eight or nine and there was something to drink in a glass that somebody had left around the house and nobody was looking I'd take a drink of it and when I was 12 I used to pick the lock on my aunt's liquor closet and when i was 14 I got drunk for the first time and something registered within me and I knew that I didn't have to get smart I didn'T have to get educated all I needed was the price in that bottle and I would have what I needed for a while. When I was sober, it was as if the world was a little out of focus and I'd run short on oxygen and I get drunk and things would be all right for a While and I could breathe for a Weil and then I'd have to go back again and again and again. I think it was Aldous Huxley that said the definition of addiction is something for which there is an increasing desire that gives less and less satisfaction. but with all of us even when it turned sour we went back because within us somewhere ground inside of us we remembered what this stuff had done for us before it turned sour and I needed alcohol and I think maybe alcohol enabled me to survive until I found you and you showed me how to live. But I drank my way through a couple of colleges, I finished high school and I went from a good student to a marginal student. More and more of my energy went into sports. I had immense hostility, great deal of fear, a great deal bewilderment. I never could make sense out of anything. One of the things I'm grateful for in AA is that with your help and through this program, my life makes sense today, but it doesn't do it on my terms. I finished high school and I started a college near Atlanta lasted there a year and a half and I wanted to be middleweight champion of the world and I would have been except I had a severe handicap I couldn't whip anybody but I was boxing for a club on the west side of Chicago World War II had come along and I decided to be a pilot and I went into service and that was part of the act I never knew who I was. One of the great breaks of working the steps, always before my identity always existed in somebody else's mind or eyes. I always felt that I had to be better than you to be your equal. As I have continued to work the steps I have a better knowledge of who I am and who I'm not and I realize that I don't have to be anybody else. This is good enough but I had an act that I wanted to glue together, and it was the fighter and the drinker and the lover and the pilot and the athlete. And of course, I'd have great trouble keeping it glued together. And sometimes I wasn't sure which part of the act I was in. But I wanted a service to be a pilot. And while I was a cadet, I only got drunk on weekends because that's the only time we got out. I had kind of an undistinguished record in World War II. I destroyed two aircraft, both of which belonged to the United States Navy. A friend of mine pointed out that if I'd gotten three more, I would have been a Japanese ace. I got one decoration, which was a linoleum rug I won on a radio quiz show one night. I flew seaplanes that were catapulted off cruisers and battleships. You went from zero to 60 miles an hour in the space of about 40 feet. It wouldn't cure a hangover, but it really took your mind off of it for a little while. And I had a regular routine after I got commissioned. I'd get up in the morning and take my gagging exercises. I began to eat food that threw up easy so I wouldn't hurt myself. And I never drank in the morning because if you go to bed blind drunk at 3 a.m. and you get up at 6 to fly, you don't need a drink, you need a seeing eye dog. And various strange things began to happen. I beganto find lower companions and I became a lower companion. And in the summer of 1945 at the age of 23, I went into a Navy hospital with pneumonia which went into DTs. And that really didn't occur to me that there was something wrong here. Of course, you know that if you drink, you've got two things to worry about. You're either an alcoholic or you're not an alcoholic. If you're not an alcoholic, you don't have anything to worry about. But if you're an alcoholic, you'll either continue to drinker, you'll stop. If you stop drinking, you don't have anything to worry about. But if you continue to drink, you've got two things to worry About. You'll either die or you'll go insane. If you go insane, you Don't have Anything to Worry About. If You Die, You've Got Two Things to Wary About.You'll Either Go to Heaven or You Go to Hell. IfYou Go toHaven, You Don't Have Anything to Worry About.If You Go To Hell, You'Ve Got One Thing to Wory About. Where In Hell Can you get another drink. I was in the hospital for a month, and I got drunk nine out of the last ten nights in the Hospital, and we had two other drinkers in the room. One was a pilot in the photo squadron who'd been brought in at three o'clock in the morning with a lady that we thought was his wife, but the next day his wife showed up, and it was somebody else. He'd cut his big toe open swimming, and the rest of the time I was on the hospital, his wife and his girlfriend never met and we figured that just proves that if you live right, the Lord will take care of you. I'd been sober a while and I met a man who was celebrating a few years of sobriety and he said when I came into AA, I had a drinking problem and a marriage problem. He said AA straightened out my drinking problem and my sponsor ran off with my wife which straightened out my marriage problem and he said his program will work if you let it. Well, I continued to drink and I continued sliding down the razor blade of life. I've never learned anything the easy way. It's a lot like that farmer that came into this small Texas town and he hitched his mule up in front of the general store and there was a cowboy in the saloon and he said, well, I'm going to have a little fun with him. And he came out and he says, farmer, did you ever learn to dance? And the farmer said no sir and the cowboy said well you're going to learn now when he pulled out his six shooter and he began to shoot at the farmer's feet and the farmer learned to dance the farmer also knew how to count and when six shots had been fired he reached behind the saddle of his mule got a shotgun pointed it at the cowboy's head he said now cowboy i have a question for you the cowboy said yes sir he said cowboy did you ever kiss a mule and the cowboys said no sure but i've always wanted to. And that's pretty much how I've learned whatever I have learned in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I continued to drink, and I ended up at the air station at Norfolk. A lot of weird things happened. I won't go into all of them. But I showed up at the Naval Air Station at Norpoke. I had enough points to get out, and they said, do you want to get ou or stay in? I said, I'd like to think it over for a couple of days. And the personnel officer said, well, come back in a couple of days, and And two and a half weeks later, they sent for me. I had gotten lost, and we decided I'd get out. But while I was there, I recall this later when I heard all this talk about alcoholics being sensitive people because some friends of mine got me a blind date there, and in her honor, I got blind. And as we were taking her home, we had to stop the car so I could throw up. As I was walking her to the door, I had to go behind a bush and throw up, and then I was very hurt because she wouldn't kiss me goodnight. But we decided that it was time I got out of service, and I went to Great Lakes. I got separated in December of 1945, and I traveled for three days and three nights and got home to Oak Park where I was living about 50 miles away. And New Year's, I decided to go to Cincinnati and have a few drinks, and I ended up drunk in Milwaukee for three years. I was born in Milwaukee, andI guess I just thought I'd go back and see what went wrong. When I ended up with what had to be one of the worst-looking women in the Middle West, she frightened me into six weeks of sobriety. She looked like a million dollars, and the only reason I say that is because I've never seen a million dollars, and she looked like something I never saw before. Which I guess proves that beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes right to the bone. So I decided to do a little boxing to stay sober. I can't say I was making a comeback because I had never been anywhere. A friend of mine and I went up to Glenview to fly at the air station, about six weeks sober for me, and the field closed in with a snowstorm, so we went out to have a few drinks. And he passed out, and he lived out west about 35 miles from Chicago, and he couldn't give me the directions, and I wasn't quite sure how to get there, so I used to stop in these saloons along North Avenue, and it was a pretty hard snowstorm. I'd get a bottle of beer and ask directions And when the beer was gone, I would have forgotten the directions So I went in another place and got more directions In one of these places, I got bitten by a large dog That was lying on the floor and didn't think much of it And I got my friend home, and eventually I got home Somewhere that night, I had gotten my nose broken So I sent him to a doctor a couple of days later To see if he could do anything with my nose And pretty much by accident mentioned that I had been bitten by this dog And he got very upset. He said, find the dog So I went back to these saloons along North Avenue, and I said, have you got a dog that bit me the other night? They said no. So I ended up taking rabies shots for a couple of weeks after that. Just to be on the safe side, I made out a list of people to bite in case they didn't work. When I began to make all of those experiments, I liked to drink in sophisticated places. One night a friend of mine and I were in a place called the Backstage Bar on the north side of Chicago. Entertainment at the backstage bar was provided by ladies who danced on the bar while they removed various articles of clothing and performed a variety of stimulating movements. And if you were worthy, they drank with you. And my friend and I were worthy so a couple of them drank with us and then our money ran out and we weren't worthy and they ran out. But from that and some similar situations, I've come to the conclusion that if a lady who dances with no clothes on sits at your table drinks with you and says that she loves you beware because she might not be sincere the choreography was clumsy and the dance steps were not very skillful but there's no question in my mind that many members of that audience experienced physical awakenings as a result of those steps we were having a party in the old Continental Hotel on North Michigan one evening and we ran out of booze and I was the soberest in the bunch so they sent me out for some more and I got lost in the hotel sunken lobby I wandered around there a while and I finally went up to the mezzanine to reconnoiter and I went in the men's room and there was a sign that said exit so I went out the exit on this fire escape which was one story above the street and had this swinging ladder and I walked down the ladder and still about ten feet above the sidewalk at the bottom of the ladder and I knew that would give me some very fallen arches if I jumped, so I walked back up, and the door to the men's room had locked behind me. So I started beating on it and kicking and screaming, and finally some startled citizen let me back in. I was talking in tongues years before anybody ever heard of the charismatic movement. And I made the various experiments, and I drank only on weekends, and I began to read those books that I mentioned earlier. and I read Rabbi Liebman's Peace of Mind and I was inspired by this and I thought this is going to transform my life and then somebody told me that Liebmann had committed suicide and I said, well, I'm not going to do that and I think that's quite a bit of change all at once so I got another book and I got Dorothea Brandy's Wake Up and Live and she said, act as if it's impossible to fail did you ever try that with the dry heaves? and I red seal and peel and link and fink and you name it, I read it And, of course, they're marvelous books, but they really don't do anything for anybody. They tell you how you're supposed to be. The big difference I found after I'd been sober a while in AA was that AA tells me how to be, the 12th step leads to a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, and that's the goal. But the big difference between AA and anything else I ever found was it tells me how to get there, step by step by steppe. Step one defines the problem. Step 12 defines the goal And the 10 steps in between Will take you and me from the problem to the goal Sanity, joy, usefulness All of the things that I always wanted And were always somewhere else And I always had those smart answers all of the time My life was falling apart When I worked if I took more than half an hour for lunch They had to retrain me And I finally decided that I'll quit on my own You know, they say education is great for alcoholism. I don't believe it. I had the world's greatest education on alcoholism from observing my father. I knew firsthand what alcoholism does to people, to children, to families, to homes. And yet I drank always with the view that I was going to be smart enough to handle it. Finally, and I don' t know why, in August of 1947, I got drunk. And I've been drunker and I've Been sicker and i wasn't in real trouble But i got the first gift Which was perhaps the most important gift I was no longer Able to lie Drunk and sober in my life Again and again i've gotten into trouble From lying stealing cheating Over drunk and sober Before aa since aa For about a week i couldn't lie And i would try to And i finally called AA, not at all sure that AA would do anything for me, but with no place else to go. And I began to go to those meetings and I began to stay sober and I could eat breakfast and I begin to feel good. And then I began realize that these people had been absolutely correct. The only thing that was wrong with me was that I drank too much. Now I didn't drink and I was on the verge of perfection. And then with a year of sobriety, I got in a great deal of trouble from some extremely dishonest business activities, and I thought I might go to jail. Well, that really got my attention. And I went to some friends and I said, I think maybe I've missed something in this program. They said, son, you missed the whole program. I said you kept such an open mind the whole program just blew right through. And I made an incisive comment. I said, oh. And I picked up the big book and I read it and it said take an inventory. And then a little while later I took the most honest fifth step I was capable of taking. Terror has always increased my desire for spiritual growth. And after that fifth step, I knew something about you and me and God and this program that I did not know before I had experienced a change. And I knew some thing that I would never have known no matter how long I stayed sober without working the steps. I went on and I made amends and I began to work with prayer and meditation, and I spent those years as a mystic. And then I spent those years is a leader, and what I'm trying to be now is an AA member. But I do believe that everything I need is right here. I don't have to go somewhere else. I was always looking somewhere else. I spent a lot of time in AA looking for a guru, and i spent a lot more time trying to convince people that I had already become a guru. It's a big guru market around still. When I work with somebody, I believe something and I have for a long time. If somebody comes to me to take a fifth step with him, I take a sixth step with... If he comes to me to make a fifth-step, I'll take a first step with HIM at the same time. And when we get done, we're even. I don't try to function as a counselor or therapist or spiritual guide, but simply as one beggar showing another beggar where there is bread. Incidentally, in our group we believe that men should take fifth steps with men and women should take sixth steps with women. We find that working on that basis there is less tendency to generate new material it requires additional fourth and fifth steps. My definition of humility has always been that it's the art of looking ashamed while you say beautiful things about yourself. When I work with somebody, I don't try to tell him how to run his life or raise his kids or run his job or anything else. What I have found is that if I will help somebody work the steps, he will find his own answers. Help him work the stops, he'll find out what he should do and that's what sponsorship is. Working with others is work. It takes time and it takes energy. You've got to sit there and listen to somebody talk about himself when you want to talk about yourself. Alcoholics are very boring people, unless I'm talking about myself. But when I work with somebody, I simply work with them on the basis of helping him go through the steps. And a lot of people we get in our group are sober 10, 15, 20 years, suffering severely from untreated alcoholism. Many of them have been in therapy with psychiatrists and counselors of all kinds, and they got everything but what they needed to get well, the AA program. So when I work with somebody, we start with step one. This is a lifetime disease. My life will only become manageable to the degree that I work the 12 steps. On step two, I believe that honesty and sanity are synonymous. Sanity means to see and report things as they are. And that's what honesty is. If I lie about anything. I destroy my ability to see the truth about everything. Daytap Village is a therapeutic community for drug addicts in New York. They work very heavily with principles of honesty, openness, integrity, responsibility. A few years ago, I was talking with Monsignor O'Brien, who was president of the board. He was telling me about a man that had come up there to see his son. He hadn't seen him for nine months. and he said to O'Brien it's a miracle you've given us our boy back he said when I came up the path I put out my hand to shake hands with him and he brushed it aside and he threw his arms around me and he loved me he hasn't done that for years but the father said there's one thing that bothers me he said he can't work for me because I cheat and the father was a butcher with a shop on the east side of New York and in order to compete with the A&P he used to keep his thumb on the scale He was the man with a golden thumb. And the father said, I don't know what to do about that. And O'Brien said, why don't you throw it out in your parents' group, which is like Al-Anon? And the Father did, and he came out with two commitments. Number one, he would no longer cheat. He would go out of business first. Number two, for the first three days, he was back in his shop. He would tell everybody who came in that he had been cheating and wasn't going to do it anymore, that in order to stay in business, he Would have to raise his prices a little bit, but he would not longer cheat, And a couple of weeks later, O'Brien saw the father up at daytop and he said, what happened when you told your people the truth? The father said, it's a miracle. He said, they threw their arms around me. They cried with me. They said, such an honest man in New York they've never seen. And he said today my business is better than ever. But I think that's what it means that I try to be honest in every facet of my life, even with the Internal Revenue Service. and when we come to step three most of us take it aloud with the other person with that prayer on step 63 that goes something like god i offer myself to you to build with me and do with me as you will relieve me of the bondage of self that i may better do your will take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those i would help of your power your love and your way way of life may i do you will always and then right away we get into step four i have never ever seen any aa get into trouble from working the steps too soon i've never seen anybody get drunk get sick get depressed have a nervous breakdown from working the stops too soon i've seen many many aas get drunk some of them kill themselves from working them too little and too late. And on the inventory we use headings like resentment, dishonesty, selfishness, sex, self-pity, fear, pride, envy, greed, anger and we work with a it's sometimes said if you want to hire or hide something from an AA member the best place to put it is in the big book. I've never used the Hazelden guide for the fourth step if I did the rest of my hair would go plunging to the floor, because there are some very good guides in the big book in the 12 and 12. And then, as I said, if he wants to take his fifth step with me, I take mine with him at the same time. Then we take six and seven aloud together. Right then, I suggest that he list the people he'd harmed, all of them, alive or dead, whether he could find them or not, whether he could make direct amends to them or not, write the list, and then start making direct amends because time runs out. I was in Longview in April of 76 talking about some of these things and a man from Tulsa was there and we talked and he said, I heard from him a few weeks later and he sat on his way home from Longview to Tulsa. He stopped to see his mother for the second time in 17 years and made an amend to her and he says she died two weeks after that. This works and I've never seen anything else that does work because AA didn't start as one of many ways for drunks to get well. AA began because there was nothing else that worked, and there's still nothing else. You and I have everything we need here to be sober, sane, useful, and happy. What does it do? Well, I know a guy that was around AA for 15 years and he never could stay sober. Many, many meetings, never worked a step. You know why he didn't work the steps? Because nobody showed him how, and he couldn't figure it out for himself. We don't wait for people to ask questions because in that first year I was sober, if I'd known what the questions were, I probably could have figured out the answer. Working with others, I think, is telling somebody that this works for me and I think it'll work for you. In January of 1972, this man who'd been around AA drunk for 15 years sobered up once more, this time with a difference. He ran into some AAs who explained to him that how it works means that this is how it works, took inventories, fifth steps, made direct amends. He's been sober ever since. In January, coming up, he'll have 10 years of sobriety after being around 15 years drunk. Another man was around AA for 12 years drunk, many, many meetings, never stayed sober over more than six or eight weeks. He went to meetings where they got in touch with their feelings rather than the 12 steps. In November of 1971, he got drunk once again, and a member of our group went to see him. And he said, you have a copy of the big book? And surprisingly, the man did. He probably wanted it a raffle. And they took step three aloud together, and then he said here's how you write an inventory. I'll be back tomorrow, and we'll swap a fifth step. The man from our group when back the next day, they swapped a fifth up. and he showed him, had him list the people he'd harmed and suggested he could start by making amends to his wife who was in the kitchen, and he did. He continued to take fourth steps, fifth steps, third step allowed. He made all of his amends. Now, he'd been around AA 12 years drunk. As soon as he started to work the steps in November of 1971, he's been sober ever since. I know a woman who was around AA two and a half years, drunk all the time she finally took an inventory took a fifth step took another one with six months of sobriety she went into a deep depression so bad that she couldn't leave her apartment and always before when this happened she got drunk this time a woman went over to her apartment she took a fist up with her in the afternoon that night her depression was completely gone She continued to work the steps. She's sober more than 14 years. I know a man who was sober about 10 1⁄2 years and never worked the steps, he went through a treatment center, went up to the treatment center found a therapist, went to a lot of retreats, didn't work the steps, felt worse all the time and last April I was talking at a meeting near Chicago on a Sunday morning and I talked about these things And a week or two later, I got a call from him. He said, I've got three names in my pocket. He said one is Father So-and-So from Bellarmine, where I go to retreats. I thought maybe I could go talk to him. He said the second is a prostitute I thought I might go see. And he said the third is yours, so I thought I'd give you a call. I said, well, that's better company than I usually have. What's the problem? And he set how rotten he was feeling. So we started coming to our meeting, and he started writing inventories, and he's swapped many fifth steps with the members of our group. He's made his amends, and you know what happened? All of those symptoms of untreated alcoholism disappeared. He doesn't want to kill himself anymore. He's not depressed. He's starting to enjoy life. It's all here, and that's all you and I have to do. All the answers are here in the AA program. If I were on a plane flying at 30,000 feet and it caught on fire, somebody came up to me with a parachute, said, put this on, go through that escape hatch, pull the ripcord and save your life. What do you think I would do? Would I say, let's discuss the philosophy of falling through space? Or would I say nobody's going to tell me what to do? Or what I go through the hatch without a shoot hollering, this is an individual program. Well, you know what I'd do? I'd follow the directions and hope that the shoot worked. And that's the way I try to follow the AA program. I think the message is very clear, very powerful, and very specific. And I spent a lot of time working with prayer and meditation when I was out of the country, putting in maybe 90 minutes a day on top of working 10 hours a day, 7 days a week. And I found after a few years what prayer and medication will do. And then as I continued to do this, I found what prayer and meditation will not do. I thought at that time that step 11 is more important than some of the other steps. I don't believe that anymore. I ran into all of that literature that turns God into a kind of cosmic candy machine. You find the right combination of positive thoughts and affirmations and prayers, and you pull the lever and you get what you want. And I've gotten what I've wanted on occasion and wish to Christ I could get rid of it. And I believe that what it says is what it means, thy will be done. And what I have found is there was a quote in the October grapevine by Meister Eckhart. It says, when I pray for something, I do not pray. When I pray für nothing, I really pray. And my experience has been with Step 11, if I spend enough time each day simply turning my thoughts to God, not telling him what he should do for me, not telling Him what He should do for you, but simply trying to harmonize my thoughts and myself with God and the river of God's will, then I go where I'm supposed to be and I get those things, not just that I need, but all of those things that I really wanted. The message, I think, is very powerful and very clear and very specific. And unless I work and rework all of these steps, I'm not going to have any message. But I think it's summed up by a man that I've known for years who finally came back to AA about 10 years ago. And he'd been around for 10 years before that, never stayed sober, never worked a step. And he came back in 1971 in January and he began to go to our meeting and he became a man of his word. He began to work the steps and he begun to change. And when he drank, he was a very vicious, mean human being. And his youngest boy 10 years old was 8 years old and was in a class for retarded children because the boy couldn't learn, just totally incapable of learning. And he had been diagnosed as retarded. And as the father stayed sober and began to work the steps, the boy went from this special class for the retarded to a regular class doing average work. And as The Father continued to work The Steps and change for the better, the boy continued to get smarter. And when he graduated from high school about a year ago, I was talking with his father. I said, hi, it's your son. And the father said he was a varsity football player. He said in high school he made the honor roll every grade period but one. And the Father said he wasn't retarded, I was retarded. And the Fathers said if all I had done is stay sober and not work the steps, none of these things would have happened. Sobriety is the beginning, not the end, and everything you and I need is available to us in this fellowship and in working and reworking every one of these 12 steps. And that's the message that I perceive today. If you and I will work this program and continue to do it, we'll change, and that change will be reflected in the lives of everyone with whom we come in contact. I learned it from you, and I'm still with you because without your reminder, I'd forget it. Thank you very much.