The Illness of the Body and the Moral Malady – 1966 – Bill W.

Well, I like the informal discussion type of approach. It seems to me that on a table like this questions are something of infinitely more value than a lecture or a story. But But Ripp suggested that I make some remarks here tonight, and I'm only too glad to do that. And coming down on the plane, I got speculating with myself about the early days of the AA and about the meaning of them in terms of the grace of God. I've read somewhere that if a grain of wheat, which has been stored for centuries in a dry place, is exposed to the right soil and the right climate and to enough light from above, It will manifest to us, and it will unfold, and it will draw. But this presupposes the right soil, the right climate, and above all, a much Well, I think it's that way with AA. I remember years back when we first began to get publicity, and the first very large occasion was a future piece done in the Saturday Evening Post, which all at once produced us about 6,000 members. This was in 1941, and by then a number of medics had become close friends, some of them psychiatrists. And these fellows allowed their names to be used, a rather audacious step in those days, I assure you. Their names were used in post articles. I make this point because when later asked to testify on another occasion, they refused to do it. And these were the circumstances. The first gal who lived out sober in AA is one known to many of you as Marty. Still very much of a growing concern in the education field. Marty was the most difficult case. God knows we're all complex, but Marty was really a champ. And she had been under the care of a Dr. Foster Kennedy, a man of very wide repute in that town, or wide renown, a neurologist. And he watched Marty as she was planted in the new soil. He watched her receive this light. Well, he was tremendously impressed. He came to some meetings and soon And soon he said to me, Bill, would it be possible to have two or three of the psychiatrists in institutions who have seen recoveries of very grim cases? People that you say are friends of yours and who have testified for you in the post-paids. Couldn't we get a group of just four to come to the Academy of Medicine and explain what they had seen? Well, we thought this was just great because in those days there were a few signs indeed. So, showing by these people, by reason of Dr. Kennedy, well, what could be better? So one day one we went to them and we said, would they come to the academy? And we supposed they would. After all, some of the Kennedy lawyers had butchered off them. You know, they were friends anyhow, and they proved it, so why not? And not a one would do it. And when pressed for their reasons for not doing it, each one of them separately said the same thing. In effect, each said, look, Bill, you folks have added up in one column more of the resources which have been separately applied to alchemists than anyone else. For example, you will have this kinship in suffering. You'll have possibilities of communication that others don't have. You have accrued form, or self-examination, or anarchy, and orthodoxy. You have a great new outgoing interest. You reduce guilt by restitution. And you have this great compelling interest in helping others. And then there is the religious side. And then, there is this factor of the hopelessness so far as the resources of the individual are concerned, of the melancholy. Now, this is a formidable list of forces But we still can't come to the Italian. Well, why not? Well, said they, we see in any... sometimes in weeks, in a few months, shifts in motivation that even the sum of these forces couldn't begin to account for because we all too well understand the difficulties of this culture, this set of cultures. And that some of them won't add up to the speed of these transformations in these very grim cases. So, for us, there is an unknown factor at work in any area. And among ourselves, inside us, we call it the extractor. We believe you people call it The Greatest God. And who shall go to the academy to explain the grace of God to that fellow? No one can, and we simply aren't wrong. So I think it is just as futile as ever for any of us to presume to explain this matter of grace, around which our entire jealousy of principles and activities gathers in trust. We can't do that, but we can examine this matter of the soul and this matter of Christ, and this manner of illumination, which for some reason or other we have made ourselves rich. Clearly God's grace begins in true awe. So 90%? Why haven't alcoholics sobered many times more often through grapes in their head? It's available. Why hasn't religion been more perceptual, numerically at least? has its medicine on itself. How is it that laymen seem to be doing this stuff? So I would like to tell a story depicting, at least as it seems to me, what the style is, what the climate is and what the life is. These things are which we have been placed in such treasured possession. There is no doubt that in an ordinary sense of time, A began in the office on a surprise. And we might be mindful of this when we criticize people in this profession. Of course, for most of us, the origin is 2,000 years old. For some of us perhaps older. But I'm speaking as a situation of an immediate sense. How was it precipitated, you see? This too is a matter of conjecture. But here's how it seems to me. There was a certain businessman of great attainment. He's cut down by the ground. He runs the gamut of treatments in this country. And this would be in the year about 1932, when he was just about at the end of his tether. So he went abroad and became a patient of Dr. Carl Jung. And as all of you know, Jung was one of the founding fathers Of the I, I prefer that instead of science, are psychiatry. And Jung, Adler, Freud were in the three founding fathers. But of these, only Jung seemed to think that man is something more than $2 worth of chemicals, a bundle of instincts, and an uncertain intellect. Jung said man has something beyond this that man has sought. So, our traveler had found a truly great human being. Great indeed, as events fell out. He placed himself under that dear man's tutelage for a whole year because becoming more and more confident that the hidden springs of this baleful compulsion to drink were being understood. And removed, and catched the water. He began to feel more free. There was no drinking while he was under treatment. At the end of the year, he left Kwa-yung and in one month he was cut. And November was terrific. So, in infinite despair, he came back to Kalyung and said, Is there anything now for me? You were my court of last resort. And this great man said, Rowan, I thought for a time after you first came that you might be one of those rare cases in which my art has been helpful. Otherwise, I should not have encouraged you to stay. But alas, I am obliged to conclude that you are not, and that there is nothing that I have to offer you. My art has failed you. I need not say that coming from a man of his eminence, this was the statement. How beautiful to know it. The whole destiny of the earth, you and me, and all this, has since hung on that sentence. So then has it found that agony was added to this record, And he cried out, but is there nothing of this? And this was the answer he got. Rowan, time out of mind, out of courage, had recovered, here and there, now and then, through religious experiences, spiritual experiences, let us say, or very truly, through conversion. A naughty word for a phase we don't use it for obvious reasons. But, said the bachelors, this benign lightning seldom strikes. And no one can say where or when it went, or for the resuscitation of food. So I simply would advise you to place yourself in a religious atmosphere, remembering the hopelessness of your doing anything about it on your own remaining resources alone, and cooperating with your associates and casting yourself upon whatever god their name is. So Rowan aligned himself with the Oxford Roots of that time, a rather evangelical movement, rather aggressive, so easy it is to criticize. It was non-denominational, however, and it used simple common denominators of religions. Simple moral principles. It called upon its members to admit that they could not solve the life problem on their own. It called them for self-examination. It called on them for restitution. We call upon them for a kind of giving in the Franciscan manner, the kind of getting that demands no return in money, power, prestige, and the like. The losing of oneself in the lives of others. Such was the nature of the crowd with which it became associated. Unaccountably to him, the obsession to drink left and for some years he had no more trouble. At the time in the groups there were a few alcoholic suburbs. There is one now at Ann Arbor that goes back to that time. an old friend who never became an A.A., settled up in the artsy groups. So Rowan returned to America, and the groups here in those days were headed by an Episcopal clergyman called Sam Schumacher. And in his congregation and among the groups were two or three other alcoholics set for the non-sporting same guy. Hazard had a summer place near Benton, Vermont. And two friends, one of them son of a local judge and himself an alcoholic described the plight of a boy who was a school-time charmer mom, Ebby Fancher. And Ebby had been deteriorating horribly. There were summer folks in the town above Manchester. Ebby Ebby had run his car into the side of the farmer's house, pushed it out of the kitchen, and the door would still be open to the car. Ebby stuck his head out, and to the poor woman carrying him a corner who hadn't been hit, he said, Hey, what about a cup of coffee? Well, the Found Fathers had had it. They were going to commit Andy for alcoholic insanity. So the judge's son and hazard picked up the man who was to become my sponsor. Meanwhile, I had gone the route with which you're all familiar. I had served Dr. Sommer before, scared to death by the verdict of my doctor, Dr. Silkwood, the one we have since named the little doctor who loved drugs, and he mustered them because in his lifetime, he dealt with some 40,000 of them, as an act doctor in a drying-out place. And he had an idea that this thing was an illness having several components. a spiritual illness, a moral illness, and also a physical illness. And perhaps oversimplifying, he was apt to describe an alcoholic as a person condemned by a compulsion to drink against his own interests, to drink in spite of his perfect willingness to stop. And that this drinking was coupled to an increasing sensitivity to the body, which if the drinking went on guaranteed his insanity and one day his death. So this sort of a sentence had been spoken to Lois at long last by my doctor, Dr. Silkwood. So, you see, so there was under-separation. We were beginning to learn a little more about China. Andy and my other friend Roland had received a considerable amount of light. Well, I got drunk in about two months, even in spite of the sentence that I would have to be locked up or go nuts, as you were going to hear. And then my friend Ebby, who had been brought to New York and Vermont, who had unaccountably sold the debts, as is ongoing in the actual books, came to visit me when I too was in great despair. Despair is a primary ingredient of the reader's thought. In the medical jargon we might call it deflation of debts, So, as he came to see me, and he texted me this list of moral, you might say, cliches. Nothing so new about that. I was in favor of honesty. I was favor of helping other people. I was in favor of practically everything he had to say, except one thing. I was not in favor with God. For I had received one of those magnificent modern schoolings, scientific schoolings that assured me. That by a series of stages, taking up influence from somewhere, as they went along, I could be traced back to a single piece of ooze in prehistoric seas. And this was my faith. And science was my gun. So along comes Abbott, and along comes Newton, for whom I had respect. And here was my reaction. Science can't do it. Medicine can't do it, psychology can't, religion sometimes. That was his voice. But how could I find religion? So, I felt trapped. In other words, I was gripped in the trap which we every day construct for the drunk who opposes us, saying, well, I think the group lives must be great, helping other people in the forest. But I couldn't get the spiritual angle as I said. Now, as you know, this gentleman is a newcomer like me who's been caught in this trap. When you and I talk to another alcoholic, and we identify ourselves as having been denizens of this strange world, and having emerged, and we describe this malady in the terms of our God's silence, and that God renounces the sense of hopelessness on us. It happens. We are deflated at depths, and then we learn that now we have accepted our personal hopelessness. There still isn't any hope because we cannot cannot go to the God book. And this was the awful doing into which I was kept by my friend Ebby, bringing on the one side all of the scared news but on the other side the spectacle over his own release and that was the words he used. He couldn't say he was on the waterway. The obsession had just left him as soon as he became willing to trust on the basis of these principles. And indeed, as he said, he became ready to appeal to whatever god there might be. And this was reducing the theological requirements an awful lot. Then I went on drinking about three weeks, and in no waking hour could I forget the face of my friend as text for release, as I looked out through a haze of gin into his face, as he pitched his synthesis at me. A conversion experience is not for me. I'm an obstinate reminder besides I can't, I can try. People say to me, have faith. And I believe I'd have faith if I could have it, but I can't. But anyhow, I'll go and get brought up. So I went with the Hanske. I must have had a little optimism because I came in with a bag of beer. I tried to share it on the subway up. I was waving a bottle. A little Dr. Silkworth came out. And I yelled at him this time down, but I got it. He said, I'm afraid you have Bill, you better get upstairs or you're dead. And he looked very sad. Thought he loved me. So I went upstairs and went to bed. I was there a while ahead of the DTs, so in about three days I was all in the clear. But the more sober I got, the more awkward the despair and depression. So, I think it was the morning of the third or fourth day that my friend Evie showed up in the doorway. And my feeling was ambivalent at once. I said, well, this is the time he's going to pour on the evangelist. And on the other hand, I was saying, well he could be looking for a job. Why is he up here at 11 o'clock in the morning seeing me? He does practice what he preaches. So, as he knew my prejudices, so he waited for me to ask him again for that neat little formula to which he had achieved relief And Judith Lee went through, and to be honest with yourself, with another person in confidence, you made restitution. You walked out of it, and you paid for that as you understood it. I think he might have even used that trade. And without much more ado, he was gone. No question. And again, I couldn't have touched the concert. And again the despair deepened until the last of this prideful absentee momentarily was apparently crushed up. And then like a child crying out in the dark, I said if there is a Father, if there that God will show himself. And the place lit up in a great glare, a wondrous white light. And then I began to have images in my mind's eye, so to speak, and one came in which I seemed I saw myself standing on a mountain, and a great clean wind was blowing. And this blowing at first went around and then it seemed to go through. And then the ecstasy redoubled, and I found myself exclaiming, I am fully there. So this is the God of the Preacher. And little by little, the ecstasy subsided and I found myself in a new world of consciousness. And one of the only reflections in this world of great peace is still over me. Why, for all that's well and is done, I am a part of his cosmos at play. even evil in these hands can be transmuted into growth. So I have been befriended at death by a self-suffering who used the scientific verdict to deflate me, who used his ability to communicate with me through our kinship of common sense, and who made the example of a person who practiced living creatures. So then, for me, here indeed was the source. Here lies the sun, and God knows the light of His presence. Now, I ventured into session this afternoon on A.S. as a spiritual awakening or experience of exactly this self. Certainly it is not for me to differ with theologians, but let me say I prefer to think that there is no essential difference between what happened to me and what happens to each sound I add, excepting the time element. Going back to those psychiatrists who said we can't understand this tremendous shift in motivation despite all your resources. Well, in my case, it's a shift, but the fruits have been the same. And one of the most terrible compulsions and obsessions known has been expelled from us almost wholesale through this epic synthesis of medicine, religion, and our own experience in suffering than in poverty, and sharing the grace of this, one with the next. So far, there is much speech. I know there will be some questions, John. So if you have any time to shoot, now you've got the chance. I don't know if you have any light relatives in the country, um, in the nation? Must be. Not every one of us has gone through the experience of ecstasy or any light shining in for us. Okay. Maybe, uh, now this is a curbstone opinion, but here's how I look at it. And somebody gets up, and this happens time after time, and he says, Now, folks, I ain't got the spiritual angle yet. If I'm making the grief my higher power, there's no better than I was. So I've got a higher power. But I ain' got the Spiritual Angle the way you told it. And as for Bill's thing, well, he looks sane in other respects, but you know. Now this guy will get up there and tell a story of losing this compulsion and of its being turned out again and it being re-motivated in many other ways Just like those psychiatrists said, in a matter of months or six months or a year. Now just take one of those fellows and try to imagine all of those shifts in motivation taking place within six months or within six minutes instead of six months. I think had this happened to that fellow he too would have had ecstasy. So I think it's a time-out moment. I personally see no great advantage in these tremendous experiences, save in my case only one. It did give me an instant conviction of the presence of God which has never left me from that moment, in spite of the worst I can go, and it's often been a damned day. And no matter what question, I feel that that extra dividend may have made the difference whether I would have persisted with AA in the early years or not. Actually, it makes them nobler than I've seen it in others who have had these experiences in LA and outside Iraq. And this is a tendency, and I think you feel I'll give us some excuse for it too, of beginning to think that because we have these tremendous illuminations that we are something special. So you begin to develop a kind of a paranoia alongside of a person who is out in the street, and that's just what happens to me. I then there botched up the whole woods by coming out of this working furiously with guns, And before anybody had been sobered up, I got so far off base that so loudly declared one time to an audience by no means fell down, that I was going to sober up all the goddamn drunks in the world. Now that is still paranoia if you will. So, uh, don't long for the illumination. Uh, I think you have to have the experiences appropriate. What am I longing for? Well, some people do, you know. Oh, my God, if I could only have one life as well. Now, actually, this suit may be fed very sincerely because this may be a guy who's flipping around. But it may be flipping around on account of the fact that he's a little skippy and needs someone to ride him in B3, so now we're talking.