The Inability to Control Drinking – Big Book Workshop – Eufaula, AL – Part 6 of 11 – Jim P.

to our innermost self that we are alcoholic. The delusion that we are like other people or presently maybe has to be smashed and I have been taught that smashed is to be broke beyond all repair. It has to Be Smashed. The thought that I can drink like normal people I never drank like normal People. How do I even think like I can Drink like that? There's no way. we alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking we know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control all of us have felt at times that we were gaining control I never felt that but these people did but such intervals usually brief were invariably followed by still less control which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization we are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grips of a progressive illness over any considerable period we get worse never better and I use my brother again on that not drinking for over a year picking up a glass of wine at lunch wanting a bottle that afternoon three weeks later he's dead ok we are in a grip of a aggressive illness we are like men who have lost their legs they never grow new ones neither does there appear to be any kind of treatment which will make alcoholics of our kind like other men we've tried every manageable remedy in some instances there's been brief recovery brief recovery followed always by a still worse relapse physicians who are familiar with alcoholism agree there's no such thing as making a normal drinker out of an alcoholic science may one day accomplish this but it hasn't done so yet that's in 1939 and right now in 2013 science has not done it yet now I hear about this guy who's got this pill in California that will make you never want to drink again I don't know what it is I don' t believe it and you know what if they came up with something today that said here's a pill you're now able to drink a couple of drinks and you won't want any more you know why you know how I would say I'm not trading this way of life for anything I'm NOT giving away anything for what I've got right now. What they got in your drive is $50,000 that costs you for six weeks. Yeah, well, yeah. Yeah. Go to Betty Ford and spend $20,000 to come out and get a big book for $850 and then you'd be sober. It's anabuse. Yeah. Anabuse? Yeah, anabuses. I know people who drink on anabases. All you've got to do is take a bunch of vitamins. Yeah. Don't tell me about anabase. I've seen what anabse does to people. I mean, their face gets so bright red they blow it up and they die. Drink it on anti-abuse, you can very well die. That's right. Despite all we can say, many who are real alcoholics are not going to believe they're in that class. I didn't at first. By every form of self-deception and experimentation, they will try to prove themselves exceptions to the rule, therefore non-alcoholic. Mine was just ego. That's all mine was. If anyone who's shown the inability to control his drinking can do the right about face and drink like a gentleman, and our hats are off to them. That's a heavy drinker. That's somebody who has a sufficiently good reason to quit drinking. That's not an alcoholic. Heaven knows we have tried hard enough and long enough to drink like other people. Now it goes on to give us some of the ways and in all honesty I can look at this and say I didn't do any of it, okay? But here are some of the methods that they have tried. Drinking beer only, limiting the number of drinks, never drinking alone, I always drink alone, never drinking in the morning, I started drinking in morning at the end, drinking only at home, was it me, never having it in the house, that definitely wasn't me, never drinking during business hours, I didn t for many years until late stage alcoholism and then I was drinking at lunch and then not going back to the office and then going to get drunk and going home. I had that type of job. In real estate, you don't have business hours. You have to be there. And so I had a job that was perfect for an alcoholic. I could drink and not show up. And I'd drink and não show up and guess what happens? I don't make any money. I don' t make any mone at all. Drinking only at parties well talking to somebody before you know on the way to the party I would be drinking at home before I got to the part because I didn't want to be drunk at the party and then when I started drinking at the part I was already drunk when I got there I got really drunk and then when I left the party it was a big fight on theway home with the wife and so I drank until I passed out when I get home that's just me that's not everybody switching from scotch to brandy I don't think so drinking only natural wines don't know what they are agreeing to resign if ever drunk on the job, well never did that taking a trip, not taking a trip, I thought that was about LSD at first but it's not, it's about geographical change swearing off forever with and without a solemn oath, now I told you last week that twice Bill wrote a solemn oath in the family bible, I said I'm never going to do this again Lois I'm writing it in the Bible hand on the Bible and in a short period of time he was drunk taking more physical exercise reading inspirational books going to health farms and sanitariums accepting voluntary commitments to asylum we can increase the list ad infinitum meaning just a few you're just going to increase it and then they go on to say that they don't want to tell me I'm an alcoholic they don't want to tell anybody because I have to concede to my innermost self if I'm going to recover that's the first step of recovery so it goes on to say we don't pronounce any individual an alcoholic but you, me can quickly diagnose yourself step over to the nearest bar room and try some controlled drinking tried it, hated it, got drunk try to drink and stop abruptly sure, ok try it I'm not encouraging anybody to try this This is the book I'm reading It's not a loophole Try it more than once I did And it won't take long for you to decide If you're honest with yourself about it There's that word Honest with yourself Concede to my innermost self It may be worth the case of a bad jitters If you get a full knowledge Of your condition it may not be worth the case of the bad jitters if you've already had enough you don't need to go out and try some more but this is what i'm telling you is that when they they sent the book out they just sent it out and hoped that people would read this and if they didn't really think they were an alcoholic then they were telling them all right go try this go trythis to see if this works and if you're a real alcoholic then you're going to come back and you're going to say i can't control and enjoy my drinking okay though there's no way of proving it we believe that early in our drinking careers most of us could have stopped drinking i don't know if i could have stop drinking once i started drinking because all i thought about was drinking i just all i felt about was drink so i don t think i could stop if there had been an intervention if somebody said you know you're going to jail all the time cuz your drinking you go better treatment maybe maybe that's a big maybe and that's in the past and I can't change babies are in the pass okay but the difficulty is that few alcoholics have enough desire to stop while there is yet time we have heard of a few instances where people who showed definite signs of alcoholism were able to stop for a long period because of an overpowering desire to do so and they're getting ready to go into the story of a A guy who quit drinking for a long period of time and he wound up dead. So what we're going to do is I am going to stop the meeting right here and we're gonna pick up, not next week, but the week after on page 32 and we are going to start with a man of 30. So that's where we are gonna be in the book. Alright, y'all ready to start? Ready. Alright. I'm an alcoholic. My name is Jim Powers. How are you? Good, Jim. And let's start this meeting with a moment of silent meditation. If you see fit, we'll follow it with the serenity prayer. Serenity Prayer God, grant me the serENITY to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. All right. Glad you all are here and have come back. Usually I run them off by this time. Last week, or the last time we were here, we had gotten into more about alcoholism and we had also talked about a couple of different types of drinkers who could either moderate or stop if they had sufficient reason. The moderate drinker, if the wife, the job, finances, health, or something like that, could stop altogether. the heavy drinker could moderate or stop altogether if they had sufficient reasons i had sufficient reason to stop drinking you know my ex-wife was going to take my son away and move three states away that's a pretty good reason to start drinking but i wasn't a heavy drinker and i wasn' t a moderate drinker i'm an alcoholic so even though i might have great reasons to stop i couldn't stop and what bill is going to do and like i said before he continues for the first 60 pages to tell you about the problem and the solution. The problem, step one, the solution, step two, and then how we get there. And so today what we're going to do is page 32, about halfway down, we're gonna go through four different types of alcoholics and we're to see how each one of them has a different way of either stopping or actually stopping and then starting again or doing crazy ass things. I thought one of the stories in here was just as crazy as could be until I stopped drinking and I started understanding it. We'll get to that in a minute, but we're going to start with this guy right here. This is a man of 30, and he's doing a great deal of spree drinking. He's very nervous in the morning after these bouts and quieted himself with more liquor. So now he's drinking in the mornin', right? He was ambitious to succeed in business but saw that he could get nowhere if he drank at all. Once he started, he had no control whatever. However, he made up his mind that until he had been successful in business and had retired, he would not touch another drop. Now, that's pretty cool. I'm going to maintain my business, so I'm just going to stop drinking. Boop! Stop! An exceptional man, he remained bone dry for 25 years and retired at the age of 55 after a successful and happy business career. Then he fell victim to the belief which practically every alcoholic has that his long period of sobriety and self-discipline had qualified him to drink as other men. He fell victim to that belief which practically every alcoholic has, self-knowledge. Al came in his carpet slippers and bottle. In two months he was in a hospital, puzzled and humiliated. He tried to regulate his drinking for a while, making several trips to the hospital. Meantime, then gathering all his forces, he attempted to stop altogether and found he could not. Every means of solving his problem, which money could buy, was at his disposal. Every attempt failed. Though a robust man at retirement, he went to pieces quickly and was dead within four years. Now, during these four stories, I'm going to bring both my brothers into it. This first one is my older brother. My older brother was a very successful calculus teacher at Winter Park High School, a very prestigious high school in the Orlando area. Somewhere along the line in that teaching, his drinking overtook him. And he was told that he was going to lose his job if he didn't quit drinking. So my brother quit drinking and he stopped drinking until he retired. He retired after 30 years of teaching calculus. He moved up here to Randolph County with me. he would occasionally buy a bottle and when he bought the bottle, he would drink it. Okay? Does that make him an alcoholic? Not necessarily. But he was an alcoholic. And untreated alcoholism is as deadly as active alcoholism. I just want you to know that. And I believe he was dying from untreated alcoolism because within five years of his retirement, last November, I came up to George and I found him dead. He's been dead three days. Okay? now that this case the one they're talking about contains a powerful lesson most of us have believed that if we remained sober on page 33 for a long stretch we could thereafter drink normally but here's a man who at 55 years found that just where he had left off at 30 he was back there again and this is what it is we have seen the truth that it's Bill writing on behalf of the first 100 We have seen the truth demonstrated again and again. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. Commencing to drink after a period of sobriety where in short time is as bad as ever. If we are planning to stop drinking, there must be no reservations of any kind nor any lurking notion that someday we will be immune to alcohol. I was told that if I have a reservation, I'm going someplace. So if I have a preservation in my mind about whether or not I can pick up a drink, I'm gonna pick up the drink. Alright? That's step one right there. If we're planning to stop drinking, there must be no reservation of any kind or any lurking notion that someday we'll be immune to alcohol. Cool. Actually true. Young people may be encouraged by this man's experience to think that they can stop as he did on their own willpower we doubt if many of them can do it because none will really want to stop and hardly one of them because of the peculiar mental twist already acquired will find that he or she can win out several several of our crowd men of 30 or less had been drinking only a few years but they found themselves as helpless as those who'd been drinking 20 years. So it doesn't matter how long you've been drinking. What matters is what alcohol is doing to you when you're drinking it. To be gravely affected, one does not necessarily have to drink a long time nor take the quantity some of us have. I had to drink a lot of time. I didn't have to. I just did because I didn' t know about the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And this is particularly true of women. Bill is not picking on women. This is experience. Potential female alcoholics often turn into the real thing and are gone beyond recall in a few years. Certain drinkers who would be greatly insulted if called alcoholics are astonished at their inability to stop. And if you remember on the second paragraph on page 30 more about alcoholism, we learned we had to fully concede to our innermost self that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. we who are familiar with the symptoms see large number of potential alcoholics among young people everywhere but try and get them to see it and then there's that little snowflake asterisk and what we do, we go down to the bottom and this is true when this book was first published but in 2004 U.S. and Canada membership survey showed about 1 twelfth of AAs were 30 or under now that's 2004, this is 2013 and where I come from there are a bunch of people getting sober at 19 and 20. They're not even legally able to drink and they're already in sobriety and I think that's fantastic. As we look back we feel we had gone on drinking many years beyond the point where we could quit on our own willpower. There's that word willpower again. If anyone questions whether he has entered this dangerous area let him try leaving liquor alone for one year. If he's a real alcoholic and very far advanced, there is scant chance of success. There is absolutely no chance of success with me. In the early days of our drinking, we occasionally remained sober for a year or more. That was not my case. Becoming serious drinkers again later. Though you may be able to stop for a considerable period, you may yet be a potential alcoholic. We think few to whom this book will appeal can stay dry anything like a year. Okay, so what he's saying is that this book is going to appeal to those people of my variety that want to stop and don't know how to stop. And there's no way I should have ever stopped for a week, a month, a day. When I first came in here, I couldn't stop for 28 days. Some will be drunk the day after making their resolution, most of them within a few weeks. That's over and over again. for those who are unable to drink moderately the question is how to stop altogether all together we are assuming those people who wrote this book this is Bill writing right now we are assuming of course that the reader desires to stop and above stop I've got the word quit same thing and if you don't have the desire to stop then what's the point of being here what's the point whether such a person can quit on a non-spiritual basis depends upon the extent to which he's already lost the power to choose whether he will drink or not many of us felt that we had plenty of character there was a tremendous urge to cease forever and I had that when I came in here I wanted to cease forever but I didn't want to do what y'all were doing I didn'T want to study the program I didnT want to implement the program I didn't want to do certain steps, and I continued to get drunk for three and a half years. Over and over and over. Yet we found it impossible. This is the baffling feature of alcoholism as we know it. The utter inability to leave it alone no matter how great the necessity or the wish. This utter ability, inability, to leave It Alone no matter How Great the Necessity or the Wish. How then shall we help our readers, me, determine to their own satisfaction whether they are one of us? The experiment of quitting for a period of time will be helpful. Not for me, but for some. But we think we can render an even greater service to the alcoholic sufferers and perhaps to the medical fraternity so that we shall describe some of the mental states that's insanity. The mental states that precede the relapse into drinking for obviously this is the crux of the problem. The problem isn't stopping drinking. The problem is how do I stay sober once I stop drinking? What sort of thinking dominates an alcoholic who repeats time after time the desperate experiment of the first drink? Friends who have reasoned with him after a spree that has brought him to the point of bankruptcy or divorce are mystified when he walks directly into the saloon. why does he do it what is he thinking well if we remember dr silkworth we've got an obsession of the mind and once we start drinking we develop a phenomenal craving an allergy of the body so what is she thinking he's not thinking he thought thinking at all he just walks into a saloon and starts all over for me it was everything's going good everything's gone bad i'm on the way home from a meeting i stop and pick up a bottle for no reason whatsoever. No reason whatsoever and here's number two and it's going to say our first example is a friend we shall call him Jim. They knew I was coming. This man has a charming wife and family he inherited a lucrative automobile agency he had a commendable world war record he was a good salesman everybody likes him he's an intelligent man normal so far as we can see all the way up to there that's me They're explaining me. I'm a great guy. I'm an ice guy. I'm normal guy. Everybody likes me. Except for a nervous disposition. I'm little bit nervous. You know, I'm little bit nerve. They call it the jitters. It's different from the DTs. The jitters that only ease and comfort can come from a few drinks. Drinks we see others take with impunity. Alright. He did no drinking until he was 35. The guy went until he was 35 until he started drinking. Amazing. In a few years, he became so violent when intoxicated that he had to be committed. On leaving the asylum, he came into contact with us, with AA. We told him what we knew of alcoholism and the answers we had found. He made a beginning. His family was reestablished. He began to work as a salesman for the business he had lost through drinking. All went well for a time. And here's the big thing. but he failed to enlarge his spiritual life. To his consternation, he found himself drunk a half dozen times in rapid succession. On each of these occasions, we worked with him. Every time he relapsed, AA was there for him. So I have been guilty of this and I try not to do it anymore. When I see people coming in and out, in and now, in and then, in and that, I used to think there's just no hope for that person and that's not what they were doing back in 1939 they were not giving up hope on anybody no matter how many times you relapsed if you were alive and you came back they were willing to work with you to his consternation he found himself drunk half the time He agreed he was a real alcoholic and in serious condition. He knew he faced another trip to the asylum if he kept on. Moreover, and here's a real good reason to quit, moreover, he would lose his family for whom he had deep affection. Now, I always say I never lost anything. I gave it all away. Because if I lost something, I've got a pickup truck, I'll go find it and I'll get it back. But I gave everything I had away, including my son. Top of page 36. Yet he got drunk again. He knew he was going to lose everything, and yet he got drunk again, kind of like Bill, doesn't he? We asked him to tell us exactly how it happened. This is his story. I came to work on a Tuesday morning. I remember I felt irritated. Now, I've got the word resentment next to irritated. I felt irritated that I had to be a salesman for a concern I once owned I had a few words with the boss but nothing serious then I decided to drive in the country and see one of my prospects for a car on the way I felt hungry so I stopped at a roadside place where they have a bar I had no intention of drinking I just thought I'd get a sandwich I also had the notion that I might find a customer for a card at this place which was familiar before I'd been going to it for years. Well, he'd been gone to it for years to drink. But now he's just going to stop in and get a sandwich, right? Okay. I'd eat there many times during the month. I was sober. I sat down at a table ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk. Still no thought of drinking. I ordered another sandwich and decided to have another glass of Milk. Alright, you remember squiggly lines? Italics? Very important. Suddenly the thought crossed my mind all action is born in thought. Okay, always remember that. That every action is born in the thought. You think about something before you do it. So before you take a drink, you think about it. Crossed my mind that if I were to put an ounce of whiskey in my milk it couldn't hurt me on a full stomach. I ordered whiskey and poured it into the milk. I vaguely sensed I was not being any too smart but felt reassured that I was taking the whiskey on a full stomach. The experiment went so well that I ordered another whiskey and poured it into more milk. That didn't seem to bother me so much, so I tried another. Okay, now what's this guy doing? Is that a definition of insanity right there? He knows he's going to lose his wife and family and he loves them a lot. He's got a resentment against his boss because he used to own the place. He stops in a place that he stopped in hundreds of times before to eat. He had no intention of taking a drink but he had nothing to stop him from pouring that whiskey and that milk. He had not no spirituality and no program for an active alcoholic. And I've got to tell you this I am I heard about HALT all the time in my AA group. I can't find it in my AAA book. It wasn't until I came to an NA meeting in this room on a night that I wasn't planning on coming here and they read out of the NA book hungry, angry lonely, tired. So apparently that's where HALt came from. Who knew? I didn't until I moved up here. But let me ask you something. Did you ever drink when you were hungry? Did you every drink when you were full? Did you never drink when you're angry? Ever drink when you were happy? Ever drink when you are lonely? Ever drink in a crowd? Ever drink when you retired? Ever drink when you had full energy? I drank on all of those. So, Halt! Halt just doesn't get it for me. You know? it doesn't get it for me. So it says, Thus started one more journey to the asylum for Jim. Here was the threat of commitment, the loss of family and position, to say nothing of the intense mental and physical suffering which drinking always caused him. Now I'm going to jump back and I'm gonna jump back to Page Six in Bill's story. And right there it says The remorse, horror, and hopelessness of the next morning are unforgettable in that paragraph. And at the end of that paragraph it says should I kill myself no not now then a mental fog settled down insanity gin would fix that so two bottles in oblivion so there he is right there saying that the mental and physical suffering with drinking always caused him and here it is he had much knowledge about himself as an alcoholic yet all reasons for not drinking were easily pushed aside in favor of the foolish idea insanity that he could take whiskey if only he mixed it with milk. And there it says it, whatever the precise definition of the word may be, we call this plain insanity. How can such a lack of proportion, whatever the word is, proportion of the ability, and I am going to do this, I am not going to skip words that I can't pronounce because I get tongue tied up here and I don't like that, of the Ability to Think Straight be called anything else but insanity. You may think this is an extreme case. To us, it's not far-fetched, for this kind of thinking has been characterized of every single one of us. We have sometimes reflected more than Jim did upon the consequences, but there was always the curious mental phenomenon, the obsession, that parallel with our sound reasoning there inevitably ran some insanely trivial excuse for taking the first drink. Our sound reasoning failed to hold us in check The insane idea won out. Next day we would ask ourselves in all earnestness and sincerity how, and I got why, it could have happened. In some circumstances we've gone out deliberately to get drunk feeling ourselves justified by nervousness, anger, worry, depression, jealousy or the like. Just went out to get drugged. But even in this type of beginning we are obliged to admit that our justification for a spree was insanely insufficient in the light of what always happened. Now, if I always know that when I drink something bad is going to happen, why am I going to drink? Right? Because I have an obsessive mind. We now see that when we began to drink deliberately instead of casually there was little serious or effective thought during the period of premeditation of what the consequences might be. Did I pray? No. Did I call anybody? No, I just wanted to get drunk. Had a guy we buried a couple years ago, 32 years old. 32 years old, he was in the program for about 9 months, he called his sponsor on a Friday afternoon and said I'm going to go out and get drunk tonight and then I'll come back in tomorrow and pick up a white chip and we'll get this thing going. And he went out and got a bottle of vodka and some Xanax I guess, and his dad found him sitting at his desk and he died in his own vomit. 32 years old, two beautiful children, a beautiful wife, a great job, all the money in the world and yet he had no effective defense. Alright, now this is one I thought was kind of weird until I put alcohol instead of what this guy's doing. Our behavior is absurd and incomprehensible with respect to the first drink as that of an individual with a passion save for jaywalking. He gets a thrill out of skipping in front of fast-moving vehicles. He enjoys himself for a few years in spite of friendly warnings. Up to this point, you'd label him as the foolish chap having queer ideas of fun. Luck then deserts him and he is slightly injured several times in succession. You would expect him, if he were normal, to cut it out. Just put alcohol in front of jaywalker. Presently he's hit again And this time he has a fractured skull Alright, now it's getting worse Percy gets a couple of scrapes Not going to do it anymore Now he's got a fractored skull Within a week of leaving the hospital A fast moving trolley car Breaks his arm Has anybody ever been to San Francisco Or up to Philadelphia Anywhere where there's trolley cars They do not move that fast They really don't. You have to want to get hit, to get hitting by a trolley car. They're just not that fast moving. So he breaks his arm. He tells you he decided to stop jaywalking for good. But in a few weeks, he breaks both legs. I've decided to stop drinking for good and in a couple weeks, I run into a car and I hurt somebody. And I break both legs on through the years his conduct continues years accompanied by his continual promise to be careful or to keep off the streets altogether if he just wasn't on the street he wouldn't get hit by a car right just stay out of the street stay on the sidewalk you can't do it it's too much of a thrill finally he could no longer work his wife gets a divorce he's held up to ridicule he tries every known means to get the jaywalking idea out of his head every known means to get the alcohol out of his head. He shuts himself up in an asylum hoping to mend his ways. But the day he comes out, he races in front of a fire engine which breaks his back. Such a man would be crazy, wouldn't he? Yeah, he would. Now it goes on, you may think our illustration is too ridiculous and I did think that. I thought that when I was first reading the book I thought, how crazy is that? And then when I was reading the book with a glass of whiskey in my hand, I thought, how crazy is this guy? You know, I have a big book that I don't show anybody because the cover of it has so many round rings on it it's hard for me to explain what those rings are. It was a hell of a coaster for about a year and a half. Hell of a coaster. And if you've ever heard that AA will screw up your drinking, a little girl just spoke in Orlando last night. I was there last weekend she picked up 25 years first person I met when I walked into the room of Alcoholics Anonymous for my first meeting in October of 1998 and I didn't get sober until 2002 and she sat next to me and the first I was bawling my eyes out I didn' t know what was going on and she said it's going to be alright that's all she said now the second day I went in there I was balling my eyes out and she was she sat next to me again and she goes AA is going to screw up your drink and I thought to myself what an intelligent blonde you are you go to AA, you quit drinking AA screws up your drinking I didn't hear what she was meaning so every time I went out drinking even with a fierce determination that I'm going to drink and I'm gonna enjoy it I would put ice in a glass I'd pour the whiskey over it and there Julie was in my ice cubes there the old man Leo that told me to drink arsenic was there there was Ashley there was Kat there was all these people from my group in my glass they screwed up my drinking I can no longer drink and not think I'm killing myself alright such a man would be crazy wouldn't he we have been through the ringer have to admit if we substitute alcoholism for jaywalking which I tried to get you to do just a second the illustration would fit us exactly however intelligent we may have been in other respects where alcohol had been involved we had been strangely insane it's strong language but isn't it true some of you are thinking yes what you tell us is true but it doesn't fully apply we admit we have some of these symptoms but we've not gone to the extreme you fellas did nor we likely to. For we understand ourselves so well self-knowledge we understand ourselves so well after what you told us that such things cannot happen again. We have not lost everything in life through drinking and we certainly do not intend to. Thanks for the information appreciate your help but I'm not one of you right? And then I'm drunk. And that may be true of certain non-alcoholic People who, though drinking foolishly and heavily at the present time, are able to stop or moderate because their brains and bodies have not been damaged as ours were. They keep telling me that I've got problems, and they're right. But the actual or potential alcoholic, with hardly an exception, will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge. will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge. This is a point we wish to emphasize and reemphasize to smash home upon our alcoholic readers as it has been revealed to us out of bitter experience. Now we're going to take the fourth one. Let's take another illustration. Now, there's a guy who does these things, has been doing them for 20 years. His name is California Rob M. and he does it with another guy. Right now they're doing one for about 150 people down at the Winter Park Group and his name is Vic. And both of them, 25 plus years sobriety. Vic does a tremendous job with traditions. He hosts a tradition workshop every year at a boathouse. I've been privileged to do some of those with him. I've being privileged to be with California Rob and do some of this with him and And Vic's an accountant. And so Vic usually does this part of the reading and explains it. Because this really, you know, I could take Fred out and put Vic in there because I know him pretty well. But Fred is a partner at a well-known accounting firm. His income is good. He has a fine home, happily married, the father of promising children of college age. He has so attractive a personality that he makes friends with everyone. Now they're talking about me again. if ever there was a successful businessman it is Fred now all that time I was drinking I was a success got up every morning went to my real estate company and made good money how can I be an alcoholic because every night on the way home I would stop and pick up a small liquor until I got home and I'd start drinking whiskey and I couldn't stop when the day came I had crossed that line if ever there was a successful businessman Fred, to all appearances he is a stable, well-balanced individual. Yet he is an alcoholic. We first saw Fred about a year ago in a hospital when he had gone to recover from a bad case of the jitters. Again, the jiggers. It was his first experience of this kind and he was much ashamed of it. Far from admitting he was an alcoholic, he told himself he came to the hospital to rest his nerves. Boy, do we have excuses. The doctor strongly, intimated strongly that he might be worse than he realized. For a few days, he was depressed about his condition. He made up his mind to quit drinking altogether. It never occurred to him that perhaps he could not do so in spite of his character and standing. Fred would not believe himself an alcoholic, much less accept a spiritual remedy for his problem, which is where we're going. We're going for a spiritual remedy. We told him what we knew about alcoholism. He was interested and conceded that he had some of the symptoms, but he was a long way from admitting that he could do nothing about it himself. Self-will, self-knowledge. He was positive that this humiliating experience, plus the knowledge he had acquired, would keep him sober the rest of his life. Self-knowlege would fix it. We heard no more from Fred for a while. One day we were told that he was back in the hospital. This time he was quite shaky. He wasn't jittery, he was shaky. He soon indicated he was anxious to see us. The story he told us is most instructive for here was a chap absolutely convinced he had to stop drinking who had no excuse for drinking who exhibited splendid judgment and determination in all other concerns yet was flat on his back nevertheless. And let him tell you about it. Fred says I was much impressed with you fellows what you fellows said about alcoholism and I frankly did not believe it would be possible for me to drink again. I rather appreciated your ideas about the subtle insanity which precedes the first drink, but I was confident it could not happen to me after what I had learned. Self-knowledge. I reasoned that I was not so far advanced as most of you fellows, that I had been unusually successful in looking at my other personal problems and that I would therefore be successful where you men failed. I felt I have every right to be self-confident that it would only be a matter of exercising my willpower and keeping on guard. Exercising my will power. In this frame of mind, I went about my business and for a time all was well. I had no trouble refusing drinks and began to wonder if I had not been making too hard work of a simple matter. You know, I would get sober for 45 days. I'd get sober voor 60 days, 90 days And then I would think, you know, maybe I overstated this alcohol problem just a little bit too much. Maybe I'll just stop by and have a couple drinks with the guys and be hammered and be drunk. And the next day buy a bottle to stop my shaking nerves. You know? That's what he's saying right there. He was just, you don't know, had no trouble refusing drinks. So maybe I'm really not that bad. One day I went to Washington to present some accounting evidence to a government bureau. I'd been out of town before during this particular dry spell. Notice how it says dry spell this time instead of sobriety. So there was nothing new about that. Physically, I felt fine. Neither did I have any present problems or worries. My business came off well. I was pleased and knew my partners would be too. Now listen to this. It was the end of a perfect day not a cloud on the horizon the end of a perfect day I went to my hotel and leisurely dressed for dinner as I crossed the threshold into the dining room and we're in italics again the thought came to mind that it would be nice to have a couple of cocktails with dinner cocktails we were just going to have a couple cocktails that was all, nothing more I ordered a cocktail and my meal then I ordered another cocktail After dinner, I decided to take a walk. I'll walk off dinner and I'll walk off the effects of a couple cocktails, right? When I returned to the hotel, it struck me a highball would be fine before going to bed. A highball would be fine. Now, I've already set off the phenomenon of craving with the two cocktails at dinner. Now I'm coming back to the hotel. I think I'll have a highball before I go to bed, so I stepped into the bar and had one. I remember having several more that night and plenty the next morning I have a shadowy recollection of being in an airplane bound for New York and finding a friendly taxi cab driver at the landing field instead of my wife now getting off the plane he finds him a friendly taxicab driver because he don't want to face his wife because he's still drunk he's not done now this guy is a pretty brilliant guy I mean, you've got to, you know, an accountant is a pretty smart person in my mind. Okay? And about everything else in his life, he is very normal. But now the driver escorted me about for several days. I know little of where I went or what I said and did. I mean how can you drive around for several day with a taxi cab driver? How much money does that cost? I'm sure the taxi cab drivers were thrilled. He was probably drinking with him. Then came the hospital with the unbearable mental and physical suffering. Again, unbearably mental and physically suffering. As soon as I regained my ability to think, I went carefully over that evening in Washington. Not only had I been off guard, I had made no fight whatever against the first drink. This time I had not thought of the consequences at all. I had commenced to drink as carelessly as though the cocktails were ginger ale. I now remembered what my alcoholic friends had told me, how they prophesied that if I had an alcoholic mind, the time and place would come. If I had a alcoholic mind the time and place would come I would drink again. They had said that though I did raise a defense it would one day give way before some trivial reasons for having a drink. And remember, it was the end of a perfect day when he decided to have a cocktail. So he didn't have any problems. He wasn't angry, hungry, lonely, tired. It was a perfect date. And out of nowhere, thought of a drink hitting. Well, just that did happen and more. For what I had learned about alcoholism did not occur to me at all. I knew from the moment that I had an alcoholic mind. I knew form that moment that i had an alcoholic mind. I saw that willpower and self-knowledge would not help in those strange mental blank spots. I had never been able to understand people who said that a problem that had them hopelessly defeated I knew then it was a crushing blow. I'd never been unable to understand people who had said that a problema had them helplessly defeated and then he knew he had that same problem. Now, some people don't like this, but two members of Alcoholics Anonymous came to see me. They grinned. I hate it when people come to see us. They come to me and I'm drunk and they're grinning. Or I'm suffering terribly from a hangover and two guys show up and go, Hey Jim, how you doing? I didn't have a concealed weapons permit then. And it's a good thing too because I didn' t like it. Which he didn' T like so much either. And then they asked me if I thought myself alcoholic and if I were really lit this time. I had to concede both propositions, that he was alcoholic and he was really lit. They piled on me heaps of evidence to the effect that an alcoholic mentality such as I had exhibited in Washington was a hopeless condition. They cited cases out of their own experience by the dozens. This process snuffed out the last flicker of conviction that I could do the job myself. When we get calls down in Orlando, there's 129, 130 groups right now. My group has over 500 members. I can't tell you how many thousands of people are down there. We have a hotline that if somebody calls and wants to go to detox or during the day if there's a meeting and they want to goto a meeting, two alcoholics go pick them up. It's always two alcoholists, never one. The reason being you always want to have a second person there to be a witness if the guy jumps out of the car while you drive him. Okay? You also want somebody to sit behind the alcoholic so he doesn't decide all of a sudden to grab the steering wheel and kill all three of you because he doesn' t really want to go to detox he just wants to die but he wants to take somebody with him. And it's happened. and we also have a saying that you've never done a real 12 step call until you cleaned up somebody's vomit out of your car that's true that's truth I've cleaned up much and it ain't fun but I've seen people get hope and I've see people recover and that's worth every minute of time I've ever spent going out on 12 step calls then they outline the spiritual answer alright step 3 we're finally getting somewhere We're still in step two, but they're talking about step three here. They outlined the spiritual answer and program of action at steps four through nine. The program of Action in Alcoholics Anonymous is steps four through nine, which a hundred of them had followed successfully. Though I'd been only a nominal churchman, their proposals were not intellectually hard to swallow. But the program of action, though entirely sensible, was pretty drastic. You think? I'm going to write down all my defects of character and I'm gonna share them with somebody and then I'm gunna be willing to have God remove them and I'll humbly ask him to take them away and then I'm gon' make a list of people I had harmed. Then I'm goin' go make a minstrel. I would say he was right. That program of action sounds pretty drastic but I have to do it if I'm going to survive it meant i'd have to throw out several lifelong conceptions out the window throw several lifelong perceptions out the windows and that was not easy we talk about this program being a simple program i've never told anybody it's an easy program it's much easier to stay sober than to get sober and it is a simple problem but destroying my ego was one of the hardest things for me and that's what he's talking about that was not easy but the moment i made up my mind to go through with the process once again steps four through nine the process program of action i had the curious feeling that my alcoholic condition was relieved as in fact it proved to be quite as important was the discovery that spiritual principles if you've got a highlighter, highlight this quite as importan was the discover that spiritual principles would solve all my problems now many times when I first read this book I added words not intentionally I added words to the first step I admitted I was powerless over alcohol that my life had become unmanageable when I drank that's not what it said and I added would solve all my alcohol problems that'snotwhatitsaid it says spiritual principles will solve all of my problems but I have to apply them I have since been brought into a way of living infinitely more satisfying and I hope more useful than the life I lived before My own manner of life would by no means be a bad one, but I would not exchange its best moments for the worst I have now. I would NOT go back to it, even if I could. You know, they talk about, you know, science may one day invent a pill that'll let me drink like normal people. And if they do, I don't want the pill. Because what'll happen is, I'll go back drinking like normal people and I'll lose all my spiritual contact with God. and I like this life so much better than I like my old life. I really do. Fred's story speaks for itself. We hope it strikes home to thousands like him. He had felt only the first nip of the ringer. Most alcoholics have to be pretty badly bangled before they really commence to solve their problem. I told you I was going to use both my brothers. The Jay Walker a minute ago was my little brother. he was the one who continued to drink and drive lost his license drove on a suspended license lost his licence for 15 years got it back in 8 years got a third DUI came to talk to me about it knew I was sober told him let's go to AA he went to a meeting picked up a white chip got a big book and said this ain't for me I'm not into this God stuff I'm no religion I'm out into this religious program and I said ain't religion it's a spiritual way of life I said what's going to happen based on my knowledge and experience in the program is you not only are going to get another DUI you're going to hurt somebody so the next DUI he got which he did his fourth one he didn't hurt anybody ok and somehow or another through some money that we loaned him his attorney was able to get the charges dismissed. You ever hear that? Good attorneys get people off sometimes. So then my little brother gets his fifth DUI, and he gets it sitting next to an Orange County deputy sheriff because his foot slipped off the clutch at a red light and he rammed into the truck in front of him and he's sitting right next to a cop. And he is maxed out. I mean, he is maxed out. When the cop asked him to step out of the car, he fell out of the car. Just tumbled out. When he tried to explain the wine bottles in his car, those are all brand new. I just bought them. And the cop looked at him and said, do you buy your bottles of wine half full? He didn't even know. He'd been playing poker at a poker tournament, drank a bunch there, and then was drinking bottles of wine on his way home when he did this and he didn't even remember that he had a half empty bottle half full bottle right there fifth felony dui all right so he doesn't drink he can't drink they put a bracelet on his ankle that monitors his sweat gland he gets five years in prison if he's caught drinking alcohol for the next five years so he does it drink for a year and a half and five years ago this month i got a call from orlando and somebody said your brother's in a coma and i went down there and he had 10 tumors from untreated alcoholism hadn't had a drink for over a year and so we went to the probation department after his radiation got the bracelet cut off got him off of probation got him free to do whatever he wanted to do they gave him six months to two years based on his tumors six months minimum two years maximum if he you know did right on the way home we stopped by a meeting he could only make it about half of the meeting before he said he's hungry some of you heard my story here this and on the Way Home we stopped to get something to eat he wanted a glass of wine just Jim don't don't say anything I just haven't had a drink in over a year just want a glass the one the bad idea Donnie but okay so on the home i want a bottle of wine that's just so i can you know drink a little bit each night before i go to bed 30 days later i get a call he's in intensive care i go down there he dies in my hands that's the progression of alcoholism less than 30 days when he started picking up a drink he was back right where he was when he got his 50 ui and he killed himself he blew an ulcer out Alcoholism doesn't go away in my body, and it doesn't go away with most alcoholics either. And right there it says most alcoholists have to be pretty bangled before they really commence to solve their problem. Many doctors and psychiatrists agree with our conclusion. One of these men is a staff member of a world-renowned hospital, Dr. Silkworth, recently made this statement to some of us. What you say about the general hopelessness of the average alcoholic's plight is in my opinion correct as to the two of you men whose stories i've heard there is no doubt in my mind that you were a hundred percent hopeless apart from divine help now hopeless apart from divine health step two had you offered yourself as patients at this hospital i would not have taken you if i had been able to avoid it people like you are too heartbreaking though not a religious person, he's a medical doctor, though not a religious person. I have a profound respect for the spiritual approach in such cases as yours. For most cases there is virtually no other solution. Now Dr. Silkworth had the mental and the physical, the obsession of the mind, the allergy of the body. Dr. Carl Jung some years before had told Roland Hazard in Switzerland that he was hopeless apart from spiritual health. An entire psychic change. And so, Dr. Silkworth gave Bill two parts. Dr. Young brought in the third part. That when you talk about we have a two-fold disease, a mental and a physical, we have an three-fold disease. We have a spiritual, mental, and physical. And it'll say it in a few minutes until we get over the spiritual malady only then will we recover from the mental and the physical you might want to just highlight this whole last paragraph because they told you more than once already and they're saying it again once more the alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink I'm going on 12 years sober I at some time do not have an effective mental defense. My sponsor is going on 29 years. Sometimes he does not have an effective mental defense except in a few rare cases neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense must come from a higher power. It has to come from a high power. Alright before we start chapter 4 we agnostics we're going to take a ten minute break alright chapter four okay um we agnostics that's right they have a whole chapter about that and in the beginning I told you there's a purpose and an object of the book alright the purpose is in the foreword of the first edition and the very beginning and what it says and I'll get to it real quick here I should have already read any to show other alcoholics Precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of the book. It starts, In the preceding chapters you've learned something about alcoholism. We hope you've made a clear distinction between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic. If, when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely. If you honestly wants to, and you can't quit entirely, or if when drinking you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably alcoholic. That's one of the first times when they're giving you an idea of you are an alcoholic if you can't control the amount or you want to quit honestly and you can't. If that be the case you may be suffering from an illness only a spiritual experience will conquer. That is the entire program of Alcoholics Anonymous. is a spiritual experience to conquer what we came in here for and that was to quit drinking. And pretty soon we're going to find out that that's not our real problem. To one who feels he's an atheist or agnostic, such an experience seems impossible but to continue as he is means disaster especially if he is an alcoholic of the hopeless variety, mine. Hopeless and hopeless. Here's a promise. now promises in this book aren't always rosy and you know pretty sometimes a promise is what it says right here to be doomed that's a promise to be tuned to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face A or B doomed to an alcoholic death or live on the spiritual basis where door 3 I want door three. Give me another option. They did, or else. That's your door three, or else. That's it. To be doomed. But it isn't so difficult. About half our original fellowship, and right now we're still with the first 100, about half our initial fellowship were exactly of that type. At first some of us tried to avoid the issue, hoping against hope. We were not true alcoholics. but after a while we had to face the fact that we must anybody ever tell you there's no must in Alcoholics Anonymous must is going to be used about 113 times but we must find a spiritual basis of life or else there it is the or else perhaps it's going to be that way with you but cheer up something like half of us thought we were atheists or agnostic our experience shows that you need not be disconcerted if a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism many of us would have recovered long ago. Code of morals or a Better Philosophy of Life But we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us no matter how much we tried. We could wish to be moral. We could Wish to be Philosophically Comfortive. In fact, we could will these things with all our might. But the needed power wasn't there. Our human resources as marshaled by the will by our will were not sufficient they failed utterly and here it comes what is my problem my problem is lack of power that was our dilemma we had to find a power by which we could live and it had to be a power greater than ourselves obviously but where and how did we define this power Here comes the object of the book Well that's exactly what this book is about It's main object Is to enable you to find a power Greater than yourself Which will solve your problem Remember earlier it said solve all your problems Will solve your Problem Not your alcohol problem Your problem What is your problem today If it's not alcohol A spiritual solution a spiritual principle will solve it that means we've written a book which we believe to be spiritual as well as moral and it means of course that we are going to talk about God here difficulty arises with agnostic many times we talk to a blue man and watch his hopes rise and we discuss his alcoholism or his alcoholic problems and explain our fellowship but his face falls when we speak of spiritual matters especially when we mention God for we have reopened a subject which our man thought he had neatly evaded or entirely ignored. We know how he feels. We have shared his honest doubt and prejudice. Some of us have been violently anti-religious. To others, the word God brought up a particular idea of him with which someone had tried to impress them during their childhood. Someone tried to cram a certain type of God down somebody's throat during childhood. Perhaps we rejected this particular conception because it seemed inadequate. With that rejection, we imagined we had abandoned the God idea entirely. We were bothered with the thought that faith and dependence on a power beyond ourselves was somewhat weak, even cowardly. We looked upon this world of warring individuals, warring theological systems in inexplainable calamity with deep skepticism. We looked askew at many individuals who claimed to be godly. How could a supreme being have anything to do with it all? And who could comprehend a supreme being anyway? Yet in other moments we found ourselves thinking when enchanted by a starlight night, who then made all this? There was a feeling of awe and wonder but it was fleeting and soon lost. Especially when I was drinking You know up here in Georgia and Alabama and, man, you have just the clearest skies at night when there's no clouds. It seems like the Milky Way is sitting right on top of my house. You know, I don't see that down in Orlando, too many lights in the city. You look up there and just think to yourself, this is all just, you know, random existence. We're just randomly here. We crawled out of the primordial ooze, it'll tell us, right? I lost my tail somewhere along the line. and I stood up and walked. Explain to me how, right now, you're traveling at 17,000 miles an hour. Can you do it? You're a teacher. Can you doing it? No. Do you know you're travelling at 17 thousand miles an hours? No. Do you the earth rotates at 17 thousands miles an hr? No. So right now we're standing still on terra firma ground, but we're spinning at 17 000 miles an r. Think that's just a random act of the universe? there is a feeling of awe and wonder. Yes, we of agnostic temperament have had these thoughts and experiences. Let us make haste to reassure you. We found that as soon as we were able to lay aside prejudice and express, remember those words I told you in the beginning, express even a willingness to believe in a power greater than ourselves, we commenced to get results even though it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend in that power which is God. And this is what Ebby told Bill. Much to our relief, we discovered we did not need to consider another's conception of God. I don't have to believe in your God. You don't Have to believe in mine. You don' t even know whose mine is because it tells me in here that that' s a personal matter. I don' T discuss it. Not even with my sponsees. Out of all the men I've sponsored, I don'T think I've ever shared who my God is. I just told them they need to find something greater than me in the beginning it was a group of drunks then it was sponsor and then finally when they get to this chapter they realized they really got to find a power greater than human age much for our relief we discovered that you consider another conceptions of God our own conception however inadequate was sufficient to make the approach and and to affect a contact with him or her. As soon as we admitted the possible existence of a creative intelligence, a spirit of the universe underlying the totality of things, we began to be possessed of a new sense of power and direction provided we took other simple steps, four through nine. We found that God does not make too hard of terms with those who seek him. to us the realm of the spirit is broad, roomy, all inclusive never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek earnestly seek it is open we believe to all men and women I tell my guys my God's a gentleman he does not go where he's not invited so if you have a God make him a gentleman or a gentle woman and invite Him into your life. So on top of page 47 it goes on, When therefore we speak to you of God, we mean your own conception of God. This applies to other spiritual expressions which you find in this book. Had I walked in the room and looked at the steps and said, Turn my lives over to Allah as I understand Him. I'm out the door. I'm drunk. I'm dead. If it had said Jesus, I'm not the door, I'm drunk I'm dead if it said Buddha I'm out the door what it said was find your own whatever you believe in find your home and then rely on him in seeking don't let any prejudice you may have against spiritual terms deter you from honestly asking yourself what they mean to you at the start this was all we needed to commence spiritual growth to affect our first conscious relations with God as we understood it Afterward, we found ourselves accepting many things which then seemed entirely out of reach. That was growth. But if we wished to grow, we had to begin somewhere. You can't start where you ain't. So we used our own conception, however limited it was. We needed to ask ourselves but one short question. We're going to ask ourself a question. Do I now believe or am I even willing to believe that there is a power greater than myself. As soon as a man can say that he does believe or is willing to believe, step two, we emphatically assure him that he is on his way. It has been repeatedly proven among us that upon this simple cornerstone a wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built. Now I'm not real good on architect but I do know the cornerstone of the foundation is where you start from. And so the willingness to believe in a power greater than myself was my cornerstone to start my growth in Alcoholics Anonymous. And again, we see the snowflake or the asterisk. And for the third time in the first 47 pages, the third times it asks us to go to the back of the book and read the spiritual appendix. the first time it was on page 25. The second time it Was on page 27. Now on page 47. First it says go back to read it and then it says further amplified and then It says please be sure to read the appendix on spiritual experience. One, you need to understand you don't have to have a bright light experience like Bill Wilson did. That most of us come to an understanding like William James talks about as an educational experience. We learn about God. We don't have God come... You know, I used to say if there's a God why didn't he just throw those tablets down and burn those things? You know what? If I'm holding two pieces of rock and God starts writing on them I'm going to freak out. I can't handle that. But I'm good with the God I got. I'm real good with The God I Got because he doesn't throw me out under the bus like I throw myself out, like the jaywalker. And that was great news for us for we assumed we could not make it