The Links in the Chain of Recovery – Don H.

Okay, we're going to go ahead and start. The Littleton Center is a non-smoking facility. We have been asked to confine our smoking to the designated area over by the bike racks. Your cooperation will be appreciated. This meeting and all meetings at this conference will be recorded. Tapes may be purchased after each meeting. If you wish to order a set of tapes, please order as soon as possible. Sets may be picked up Sunday at the conclusion of the conference. It is now my pleasure to introduce our speaker for this afternoon, Don H. from San Carlos. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Don. I am an alcoholic. I'd like to start this off by thanking Mary R. and the rest of the Northern California Hospitals and Institutions Committee for asking me to come up here and share with you guys this afternoon. It truly is a great honor for me to get to do this. I was walking back and forth just before the meeting, and I think it was Lou that grabbed me and pinned a boutonniere on me, And I thought, you know, I will assure you guys that I never showed up in the bar and they pinned a boutonniere on me and put a name tag on me and said, Don, will you share for us this afternoon? I can assure you that that never happened to me. What I've been asked to do for us This Afternoon is I've been asked to share on a topic, and that topic is a topic that's very dear to me, which is the history of Alcoholics Anonymous in the big book. And I've also been asked to tie something into that topic where it fits chronologically, and that's something that's a huge part of what it's like for me today, and that's the history of Hospitals and Institutions here in Northern California. And because this is a topic meeting or workshop, if you will, I felt like I had license to take some notes, so I wrote some things down and I'll be referring to my notes. I'll also be reading a few things to us this afternoon that are of interest. This is a little bit different to coming up here telling my story, what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now. What I'm going to be doing for us this afternoon is I'm going to talk a little bit about recovery from alcoholism which there was some, believe it or not, prior to Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm gonna be talking about the pre-AA days the early AA days, the pre Big Book days, whose idea the Big Book was wasn't Bill's, it was Hank P.'s, how the writing of the Big book went, and a little bit about what happened after that, including the starting of the Northern California Hospitals and Institutions Committee. I find it kind of difficult to come up here and talk about the history of recovery from alcoholism without talking first a littlebit about the History of Alcohol and the History of the Consumption of Alcohol, and as most of you know Alcoholics Anonymous was found out of the Oxford Group Principles, which was based on Christianity and moral rearmament and such things. And I grew up in a home where both my parents were Pentecostal preachers. And I drew up learning and reading the miracles in the Bible. And if you read the miracles In the Bible, there was a number of them. But the one miracle that impressed me the most, and probably still does to this day, was the one when he turned the water into wine. You know? I know that that was some good booze, man. And I think I missed it. You know what? Because I often thought about that. What I'm going to... I think we've been drinking for a long time, guys, is what I'm trying to get at here. What I'm going to be doing for us this afternoon is I'm going to creating the links in the chain of recovery from alcoholism that gave every one of us in the room this afternoon a place to come to recover from our own alcoholism and our own seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. And after having done the research that I've done, and studying the history and collecting of archives, it's become very apparent to me that every link in that chain up to and including every seat in the room this afternoon in the chain of recovery is a miracle. And I'm a guy that likes definitions, and I was listening to a friend of mine out of North Carolina speak one day, Tom Icke, and he was talking about miracles, and And he probably gave, for me, the best definition for a miracle that I think I've ever heard. What he said was a miracle is nothing more than what happens when preparation meets opportunity. And the two have to be divinely introduced, but the miracle happens when preparation meets opportunity. And I would venture to say that every one of us in the room this afternoon, we put a lot of preparation into our bottoms. Man, when we got here, we were prepared. We were ready. And when preparation met opportunity and the two were divinely introduced, the miracle happened and we're sober today. And a lot of miracles had to happen in order for us to all be sitting here this afternoon. The history of Alcoholics Anonymous is very well chronicled. The book Pass It On is about Bill Wilson and his life. The book Dr. Bob and the Good Old Timers is about Dr. Bob and your early Akron members. The book A.A. Comes of Age is a great history book on Alcoholics Anonymous. I think that A. A. Comes of Aged should be required reading for every newcomer coming into AlcoholicsAnonymous. One of the many things that I was told early on was that, Don, if your life depends on Alcoholic Anonymous, then you should try to learn as much about it as you possibly can. And I was told that early on. And one of the things that I'm not going to be doing so much today is talking about what's in those history books, but I'm going to Be Talking More about The Links in the Chain, The Links and the Chain of Recovery. Anyway, we'll get this thing started here. Back in the 1840s, in the early 1840S, there were six drunks. And these six drumps were sitting around a bar. The name of the bar was the Washington Inn. And the bar was in the city of Baltimore, Maryland. And these six drunks decided one day that they were going to swear off alcohol. They also agreed to get a higher power. And these Six Drunks did this. And one of the first things that these Six Trunks realized or discovered, if you will, one ofthe first thingsthat came about in the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous, But one of the first things that these six drunks realized was that they could stay sober together, but that they couldn't stay sober alone. And I'm going to read something to you this afternoon, just a short clip out of this book right here. The name of the book is Three Nights with the Washingtonians. It was written by T.S. Arthur. There's no printing date in this book. This book, our estimate is that this book was written in the mid-1840s. And it says this. Come, said a friend one evening in the winter of 1841. Let us look in upon the Washingtonians. The Washingtonians, I replied, and pray who and what are they? Have you not heard about them? No. Then you are ignorant of one of the most remarkable facts in the history of the times. Explain yourself with pleasure. About nine months ago, perhaps not quite so long, there were assembled in a drinking house in this city, Baltimore, six men well advanced in years who had for a long time been confirmed drunkards or at least so wedded to the love of strong drink as to found it almost impossible to live without a daily resort to its stimulating influences. They had met accidentally or rather without any other design in repairing to the bar room than that which had taken them there a hundred and a hundred times. But in the mind of each there was a feeling of sorrow for his enslaved and wretched condition, a strong desire to rise out of it, yet a painful hopeless sense of weakness. How often, alas, how often had each made resolutions of reform? How often had he renounced the cup of confusion only to seek again the bewildering drought and to sink still lower in the scale of human degradation. Thus they met, as they had often met before, but neither seemed inclined to call for the subtle poison that had so many times stolen away their reason. Soon the feelings of each became known to the other and they felt a sudden hope springing up in their minds, a hope in the power of association, in the Power of Association. Sad experience had proved to each of that little company that alone he could not stand. But together, shoulder to shoulder, hand to hand, and heart to heart, they felt that though the struggle would be hard, they could and they would conquer. And that's the Washingtonians. And those six trunks did this, and they grew to number, depending upon which news article you read from the time, within ten years they grew the number 500,000 people. That was 500,000 people here in the United States staying sober together. And one of the basis for our traditions in Alcoholics Anonymous is that we've learned from other people's mistakes. And what the Washingtonians did was the Washingtonian had no roots. The Washingtonians had no traditions. The Washingtonians had no rules, for lack of a better word. And money, property, prestige, and power started to interfere. They started getting involved in outside issues. They started taking opinions on different political issues. One of the political issues that they took an opinion on was alcohol reform. And the one that caused the factions to collapse was they took an opinion on slavery, and this divided the group. And within 20 years, within 20 years, the Washingtonians were gone. Now keep in mind that the Washingtonian's were a very similar society to Alcoholics Anonymous in that they started out with a singleness of purpose, and they also had the Martha Washington Society which was very similar to Al-Anon. I'm going to go now to 1895. 1895 is the year that Bill Wilson was born, so we're just prior to Bill Wilson's birth. In 1895 there was a fellow by the name of Sam Hadley and Sam Hadley was a chronic alcoholic who had gotten sober through a profound religious conversion experience, and it was notable. And in 1895, we didn't have the media that we have today. We certainly didn't Have the radio or the television or the newspapers that we have today, but I think that we can assume safely that if this was happening in one place here in the United States, it was probably happening in others as well. And Sam Hadley, who had gotten sober through this profound religious conversion experience, he was staying sober in a mission with 35 other people, Jerry McCauley's mission. And there was a young, brilliant psychiatrist back then by the name of William James. And William James was writing a book, a book about different types of religious conversion experiences, and he wanted to write about an alcoholic. And so he wrote about Sam Hadley's profound religious conversion experience in this book right here. The name of the book is A Varieties of Religious Experience. It was written by William James in 1902. This book happens to be the book, not this particular book, this book happens TO BE THE BOOK that Bill Wilson read when he was in Towns Hospital when he had what he called his white flash experience. And in this book, William James wanted to write about an alcoholic. And so he wrote about Sam Hadley's profound religious conversion experience. Now, Sam HadLEY also had a son and his son was named Harrison Hadley. And what I'm going to ask you to do for a few minutes is I'm going to asked you to log that name. I'll tie Harrison HadLEY into the links in the chain here in just a few minutes. I'm going to flash forward now to about 1927. Bill Wilson is in the throes of his alcoholism. He's still successful at this point, but he's starting to lose things. He's going to detox. Alcohol is becoming a major problem in Bill's life. And in 1927, Harrison Hadley, Sam Hadley's son, Harrison Hadley had grown up just like his dad. He was a chronic alcoholic. He couldn't get sober. But he knew that his dad had gotten sober in a mission, Jerry McCauley's mission. And he began to think one day that if possibly he could get to a mission that maybe he could get sober and stay sober as well. And in 1927 over in China there was a brilliant young minister by the name of Frank Buckman. And Frank Buckmon had these great new ideas on moral rearmament and Christianity and such things. And while he was over there in China, he met up with a brilliant American young minister by the names of Sam Shoemaker. And Frank Beckman convinced Sam Shoemaker of this message he was trying to get across in this new belief system and moral rearmament and these things. And they established what was to become the Oxford Group. And Sam Shoemaker came back here to the United States, and he was installed as the director of the Oxford group east of the Mississippi River. Now I say east ofthe Mississippi River, there wasn't much out here out west of the Missouri River in 1927. But Harrison Hadley, who had grown up just like his dad, chronic alcoholic, began to think that if he could get to a mission, possibly he could get sober and stay sober as well. And he had heard of Frank Buckman and he had hear of Sam Shoemaker and he heard of the Oxford group and he went and met with those guys. And what he told them was he said, down in the Bowery in New York, you guys own an old mission it's old it's dilapidated it's run down it's not usable how about if I go in there clean this place up make it usable and under the direction of the Oxford group we bring in drunks and we'll get and stay sober there and Frank Buckland and Sam Shoemaker told Harrison Hadley that that would be fine so Harrison HadLEY goes down to the Bowery in New York and he cleans this place up and he makes it usable and they start bringing in people. And under the direction of the Oxford group, he opens the Calvary Mission. Now, the CalVary Mission becomes very important to us in Alcoholics Anonymous. The Calvory Mission is where Bill Wilson went to his first Oxford group meetings. The CalVory Mission ist also one of the places that Bill Wilson went to drag drunks out of. So I'll add it up for us just a little bit here. What we have so far, guys, is we have the Washingtonians. From the Washingtonian, it went to Sam Hadley. And from Sam HadLEY, it went to William James, a psychiatrist. And from William James a psychiatrist, it went the Frank Buckman and Sam Shoemaker in the Oxford group. And from them guys that went to Harrison Hadley and now to the Calvary Mission. We're still in the late 1920s. There was a young, rich drunk here in America by the name of Roland Hazard. And Roland was a rich kid. He was very wealthy. He was the heir to the Allied Chemical Corporation, huge corporation here in American back then. And Roland had tried everything that a man could do on his own to get sober and stay sober, and he had no success. He had absolutely no success, And his dad one day decides that he's going to send Roland over to Europe, Zurich actually, to spend a year with the most renowned psychiatrist that we had in the world at that time. At that time, we had Freud and we had Jung, Carl Jung. So Roland Hazard goes over to Zurich to spend the year with Carl Jung, and he learns all of this stuff, man. And he learns everything that a man could learn about the thinking of the alcoholic, the psychiatry of the alcoholic, the behavior of the alcoholic. He learned all of this stuff, man. And he had it licked this time. And so he got back on the boat to come back here to America. And I can't remember if it was on theboat or there shortly after, but Roland got drunk again. And he couldn't get back in. He couldn't gets sober again. and so his dad gathers him up sends him back over to Carl Jung and Carl Jung told him this time the first time that this was said the next time it was said would be from Dr. Silkworth to Bill Wilson what Carl Jung told him was with all my information and all my medical experience and everything I know about psychiatry and everything that I know about psychology I cannot help you You are beyond human aid. No human power can relieve your alcoholism. But he told him, Roland, that doesn't mean that you can't be helped. That doesn't means that you're hopeless. He said there has been rare instances of profound conversion experience. You may be one of those that can do that. And so Roland, he got back on the boat. He came back here to America, and Roland had heard of Frank Buckman, and he had heard about Sam Shoemaker and Harrison Hadley and the Calvary Mission. And Roland went there, and he went to the CalVary Mission, and Ronald got sober. And he remained sober. And one of the first things that Roland realized or discovered, if you will, was that he had to pass this thing on. He had to be talking to another alcoholic. He had the ability to talk to another person. He had a ability to be talking to drunks. And what Roland Hazard did was Roland HazARD summered in Vermont. Now, Vermont is a very interesting place. Vermont is very important to us in Alcoholics Anonymous. Vermont is where Bill Wilson was born. Vermont is где Dr. Bob был роден. Vermont is where the links in the chain that started to create Alcoholics Anonymous came together. But remember, Vermont is not known for anything other than there's more cows and there are people there. But Roland Hazard summered in Vermont. And another fellow that summered Invermont was a fellow by the name of Ebi Thatcher. And what happened was Roland Hazard went to Vermont in the summer of 1934 To spend the summer up there And he gets up there and he's got to find himself someone to talk to about alcoholism He's gotto find himself a couple of drunks So he goes out and he finds himself two drunks And these two guys are named Siebert Graves and Shep Cornell Siebert Groves and Schep Cornell And there's another fellow that spent the summer of 1934 in Vermont, and this guy's name is Ebi Thatcher. And I'm sure that most of you have either read his story or have heard his story. Ebi Thatcher is the man that Bill Wilson credited for being his sponsor up until the day that he died. But Ebi Thecher had all kinds of trouble with alcohol. He was always either being arrested or he was in jail or he was going to court. He just had all kinds of trouble with alcohol, and a judge had pronounced Ebi Thatcher as insane, and the judge had told Ebi Thatcher, he said, Ebi, one more beer, one more beer. And I'm going to commit you to the state mental institution for an undetermined amount of time. If that's not a reason to give up the booze, I don't know what is. But what Ebi Thatcher did was his dad sent him up to Vermont to get the summer home ready for the family to come up. And I can identify with Ebi's thinking. He's in this great big house, and he goes down in the basement of this great Big House, and he sees this case of unopened beer. And his alcoholic mind, he sits there, and he looks at the beer, and he looked at the bear, and he looks at the beer and he said, this was a dangerous thing. It was summer up here in Vermont and it was warm. And those kids were going to be coming up to spend the summer in this house. And if this beer sat here and fermented and if those kids happened to be down here in the basement playing and if this bear sat here and fermented to the point that it could explode, someone could get hurt. And so what was an alcoholic to do? You couldn't dump the beer. So Ebi Thatcher drank the beer and he got drunk. And I'm sure that most of you have either heard his story or read his story. But he drank the bear and he was drunk and he drank and he fell asleep. He got drunk and he caught in his car. I know you can identify with that. He got in his car, and he drove directly in through the front window of the neighbor lady's house, and she was standing there all freaked out, and he rolled out of his car and asked her if she had the coffee on. That's Abby Thatcher. Sorry I have to interrupt this, but some people are parked, and the council members and mayor's spot, and they're going to have the cars towed. It's a Blue Dodge Intrepid. No, there's one of them out there. Blue Dodge Interpid, a plate number 4XB2969 or 1. Buick Rendezvous, plate number SBVM110, a white Nissan Maxima 450G608 and a red Tahoe RATRZFN. I don't know who wrote this. Anyway, so they're going to give you a... This is for real. I'm saying that the councilman's out there raising hats. They're going over to the chambers. The council chambers are right here. The council chamber's are right in front of me. They're right here, right across from this hall. And you're in the spaces. Thank you, Mary. Thanks, Mary? So let's see, where were we? Let me kind of regroup here. Was Evie drunk? He wasn't sober yet, was he? He was drunk. Okay. But anyway. Oh, he's still down in the basement drinking a beer. Yeah, that's what he said. Oh, yeah. Okay. Anyway, so he rolled out of his car. She was standing there all freaked out. And he asked her if she had the coffee on it. And Evie continued to drink for a short period of time after that. He got arrested again. He was out hunting streetlights is what he was doing. And he got arrested for shooting off a firearm in city limits. And here he is in front of the judge again. And the judge looked down at Evie and he said, Evie, he said I told you if you ever showed up in my courtroom again and I was going to sentence you to the state mental institution for an undetermined amount of time. But if you read the history books, there were three guys that showed up with Ebi Thatcher in court that morning. Roland Hazard, Seabrook Graves, and Shep Cornell. A lot of people say the court orders are new to Alcoholics Anonymous. Court orders were going around before AlcoholicsAnonymous. Bill Sponsor was court ordered to Alcoholic Anonymous, basically. There was no AA at the time. But there were those three guys that showed up with Evie Thatcher in court that morning, Roland Hazard, Seabrook Graves, and Shep Cornell. And the judge looked down at Evie and he said, Evie, I told you if you ever showed up in my courtroom again, I was going to sentence you. And he said but there's a man in this courtroom this morning that's sober, a man that I've been trying to get sober for his whole adult life and I've had no success. And that man is sober today, and I don't know what's happened. And that men is my son, Seabrook Graves. The judge was the father of Seabbrook Grave, who Roland Hazard had gotten sober. And the judge looked down at Ebby, and he said, Ebby I sentence you to go with that man, which was Roland Hazerd. I sentence to do what he does, and go where he goes, and do what tells you to do, and I'll withhold sentencing to the state mental institution. So, so far what we got, guys, is we got the Washingtonians. From the Washingtonian, it went to Sam Hadley. From Sam Hadsey, it's going to be a lot of people. From Sam hadley, it was to William James, the psychiatrist who wrote the book. It went to Frank Buckman and Sam Shoemaker in the Oxford group. It went Harrison Hadley to the Calvary mission. and went to Roland Hazard, to Carl Jung, back to Roland Hazard to Siebert Graves to Shep Cornell and now to Ebi Thatcher. And so they took Ebi Thatcher back to New York to the Calvary Mission is what they did and what they put him out on the street to convert people and to preach and one of the first people that Ebi Thatcher started to think about was our founder, Bill Wilson, his old friend Bill. So Ebi decides that he's going to go over and visit his friend Bill, and Bill's drunk at the time, and he's sitting across the kitchen table, but he could see that something was different about his friend. And Ebi Thatcher sat there and told Bill, he says, man, I got religion. And Bill sat there and thought to himself, man I'm glad you got religion because I got more gin, buddy. But it says it in the book that Ebi Thatcher flatly proclaimed to Bill Wilson what came to be our twelfth promise that we read in a lot of meetings today. What Ebi Thatcher said was that God was doing for him what he could not do for himself. God was going for him, what he did not do. What he could now do for his self. And even though Bill was drunk at the time, he decided that he was going to go back one more time. So he goes back to Towns Hospital where he claims he was four times. Ray O., a friend of mine and archivist and history buff in Alcoholics Anonymous out of Florida, claims that he got to see the records for Towns hospital and he claims that Bill Wilson was in there 14 times. So I really don't know exactly how many times Bill Wilson was in Towns' hospital. I know that it was a number of times. So Bill goes back to Towns Hospital, and he has his white-flash experience, and he gets sober. And he's going down to the Calvary Mission, and he's gone down to The Bowery in New York, and he is going down the bars, and he was dragging drunks off of bar stools and trying to get them sober for some reason. For some reason, Bill knew. He had the information. Dr. Silkworth had pronounced him to his wife Lois the same thing. that Carl Yu had said to Roland Hazard. The last time that Bill was in Towns Hospital, Dr. Silkworth, the doctor who had worked with thousands of alcoholics, thousands of alcoholic, took him and Lois aside, and he was talking to Lois, and he said, you know, with all our medical experience and all the work we've done with alcoholics we cannot help your husband. He is beyond human aid. No human power can relieve his alcoholism. And he's either going to die in a short period of time, or he's going to be committed to the state mental institution for an undetermined amount of time. So Bill had what was required in this program, which is a bottom. A bottom at depth is the first condition of sobriety in the program at Alcoholics Anonymous. And so Bill, he's sober now, and he's gone down to the Bowery, and he's dragging people off bar stools, and he is bringing them home, and his good wife Lois is giving them coffee and feeding them, and they are letting them stay there. And they are not having any success. He is not having anything. He is having no success at all. And a time came during that first six months before Bill met Dr. Bob in May of 1935. Bill's sobriety date is the first part of December, December 11th, 1934. We celebrate June 10th, 1935 as Founders Day because that's when Dr. Bob had his last drink and then there were two. But a time came during that first six months before you met Dr. Bob, they were dragging people off of bar stools and getting them sober or trying to get them sober. And Bill was frustrated. He became very frustrated. Nobody had stayed sober. And I'm here to tell you that three most important words in all of Alcoholics Anonymous were about to be uttered, and they weren't even uttered by an alcoholic because Bill went home, and he was tired. He was beat down. He was frustrated, and He was talking to his wife, Lois. And He said, You know, we've done everything. We've drugged drunks home. We've let them stay here. We've fed them. We've given them coffee. We've giving them money with your meager earnings, and not one of them has stayed sober. And I'm here to tell you that everybody in the room this afternoon, sobriety was hinging on what was about to be said because she looked him in the eye and she said, You did, Bill. You did. You did it, Bill." And that's important, guys. That's damn important. So anyway, Bill's sober now. He's dabbling back in Wall Street. He's six months sober. He gets acquainted with this company that sends him to Akron on a business trip. And he goes to Akron, and he meets Dr. Bob. Dr. Rob gets drunk one more time, and then he gets sober, and Alcoholics Anonymous is formed. They go out, and they 12-step Bill Dotson. They didn't really know what they were doing at the time, but they got a couple other people sober as well. And after six months, Bill went back to New York, and he got a few people sober. So now there's a group in New York. There's a Group in Akron. And a faction broke off and went out to Cleveland. and those are more links in the chain. One of the people that Bill got to work with when he went back to New York was a fellow by the name of Hank P., Hank Parkhurst. If you read the big book, Alcoholics Anonymous, I think it's Dr. Silkworth that's talking, and he talks in there. He says, I met a man that a year later I did not recognize. That's Hank P. that he's talking about, Hank Parkurst. And Hank P.' was a big shot. He was a bigwig. Hank P. could not get sober. The big book was actually Hank P.'s idea. He figured that they had to pass this thing on through literature, and he told Bill one day to write a story and write there was a solution. So the big book Was Actually Hank P's Idea. But what they did in late 1937, the first part of 1938, They were sitting around a table in Akron, and they took a head count, and they counted 40 people. Forty people had gotten sober and had maintained sobriety from 1935 to 1938, and they knew they were on to something. They knew they Were on to Something. And they were sitting Around talking about how are we going to pass this thing on. If we keep doing it the way we're doing it, it's going to be ten years before it gets out of Akron. And Bill, he's the stockbroker. He's the big shot. And so he had all these good ideas. Bill wanted to have a group of paid emissaries to go across the country. Bill also wanted to be a member of the New York Times. He wanted to name it the Bill Wilson Movement. But he also wanted to write a book which was Hank P.'s brainchild. And the group conscience is starting to be formed or take effect anyway, and they nixed the idea of the string of hospitals and they nixedthe idea of the paid emissaries, but they gave Bill the okay to write this book. And I'm a man that I believe that God answers our prayers, but that we don't always get the answer we want. And after having done the research and studying the history in Alcoholics Anonymous that I've done in collecting of archives. I believe that this program and our big book is a gift to us of answered prayers, but not all of them God was saying yes to. I believe the God said no through the group conscience to the Stringer Hospitals, and I believe God said No through the Group Conscience to the Paid Emissaries. But Dr. Silkworth had a friend at Reader's Digest and they decide that they're going to go to Reader'S Digest and Bill had written his story by now, that's the first thing we do as alcoholics is talk about ourselves first. Bill hadwritten his story and they took his story to Readers' Digest. And Readers'Digest said, man, this is great stuff. We'd love to print a condensed version of this once you get the book written. And so they left Reader's Digest with great hope. They had great hope this was going to be a nationally publicized book. They had it going on. And so, they go back and Bill starts writing the book. And everything that Bill's writing is being edited and being critiqued and being changed by the membership itself. And this was becoming frustrating to Bill. And if you read the big book, Alcoholics Anonymous, there's a lot of yous and there's a lot we's and ours and it's a we program, that type of stuff. But that's not the way that the big books are written. The big book was originally written in the original manuscript. In the original manuscripts, there was a lot o yous, and you must, and better do this, And if you get to this part in the book and don't believe what we're saying, throw the book away. And there's that type of stuff in there. But they were editing him. They were making him change everything that he was writing. And I want to read you something just out of chapter 5 out of the big book that we read at every meeting. And it's interesting. It's about the style of the writing. And it says this. At some of these, we balked. We thought we. could find an easier, softer way, but we could not. With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas, and the result was nil until we let go absolutely. That was the style. That was a style of the writing because they were editing him and critiquing him and making him change everything, and it was becoming frustrating to Bill. It became very frustrating to him. And after he wrote that, and after he wrote the 12 steps, Bill, in his frustration, went back to the group. And he said, I will not be passing this in front of every one of you to edit this whole book. Either I write it or you write it. And so they got together. And they made the decision, OK, Bill. Go ahead and write the book. And I want to read you something out of that very same chapter after that decision was made. We hope that you are convinced now that God can remove whatever self-will has blocked you from Him. If you have already made a decision in an inventory of your grosser handicaps, you have made a good beginning. That being so, you have swallowed and digested some big chunks of truth about yourself. That's the difference. That's the difference in the writing style from the first five chapters of the big book and the rest of the book. So we have the book being written. They've gone to Reader's Digest, but they need some money. They need some Money. And Bill Wilson and Hank Parkhurst are both great salesmen. Man, these guys could sell Playboy to a blind man. So they decide that they're going to form the Hundred Men Corporation, and they're gonna sell stock. This is a copy of the stock certificate, a stock perspective that they were selling $25 a share par value in Alcoholics Anonymous in a corporation that never existed. It's true. So they sold all this stuff and they got some money together and they Got the Book completed And they went back to Reader's Digest and they said, here it is. We're ready to go. We've sold stock in a corporation that didn't exist. We borrowed money from here and there. We published the book ourselves. We formed our own publishing company and published the books ourselves. Cornwell Press were into them for however much money. And this is the book that came out. This is a red book. This is a first printing of the first edition of Alcoholics Anonymous. It was printed in April of 1939. This is what the big book looked like, the first big book look like in April of 1939 This is what the big book looks like today. It's a fourth edition big book and I know that most of you in here aren't wondering but just in case you are This is what the big book looks like open. That's important. What I want to do now is, what I'd like to do is I'd Like to Regress just a little bit and I'd LIKE to talk about what went into that book. Does anyone ever wonder about the story in the big book of The Man of Thirty? It's a neat story. It's an interesting story. There's a man of thirty who knew at thirty years old that if he drank, he wouldn't be successful in business. Alcohol would become a problem in his life. So he stopped. He stopped drinking. Twenty years later, he retires successfully. Out come the slippers. Out come The Bottle. and within a short period of time, he was dead. Four years as a matter of fact. That's an interesting story. It's a neat story. But consider the fact that Bill Wilson was only three and a half years sober when he wrote the book. Where did the story of The Man of Thirty come from? I'll tell you where it came from. It came out of this book right here. The name of the book is The Common Sense of Drinking. It was written by Richard Peabody and was published in 1934. A lot of the big book came from other people. I'm going to be reading a few things to us here this afternoon about the big book and get to what the contents of the big book are and where it came from. What are the sources of the principles of the recovery program of Alcoholics Anonymous? Bill Wilson answered that question in an address delivered to the medical profession of New York on May 9th, 1944. Bill also did an address to the medical profession at Yale University, and the medical professional at Yale University asked Bill this question, just how does AA work? And Bill's answer was this, and I quote, I cannot fully answer that question, many AA techniques have been adopted after a 10-year period of trial and error, which has led to some interesting results. But as laymen, we doubt our own ability to explain them. We can only tell you what we do and what seems from our point of view to happen to us. At the very outset, we should like to make it ever so clear that AA is a synthetic gadget, as it were, drawing upon the resources of medicine, psychiatry, religion, and our own experience of drinking and recovery. You will search in vain for a single new fundamental. We have merely streamlined old and proven principles of psychiatry and religion into such forms that the alcoholic will accept them. And then we have created a society of his own kind where he can enthusiastically put these principles to work on himself and other sufferers. Alcoholics Anonymous has made two major contributions to the program of psychiatry and religion. These are, it seems to us, the long-missing links in the chain of recovery. Number one, our ability as ex-drinkers to secure the confidence of the new man, to build a transmission line into him. And number two, the provisions of an understanding society of ex-problem drinkers in which the newcomer can successfully apply the principles of medicine and religion to himself and others. So what Bill was saying here, guys, is very little in our big book is original. There are some things. Our big book came from many, many different people and many, money different books. But where did the big book come from? This book right here is called Man, the Unknown. It was written by Alex Corral in 1935. What Bill wrote about this book was he said this, On reading this book, Man, The Unknown, some of us have realized that was just what we had been groping for. We had begun to build a program out of our own experiences. experiences at this point we thought let's reach into other people's experiences let's go back to our friends the preachers the social workers all those who have been concerned with us and again review what they have and bring it into synthesis and let us where we can bring them in where they fit so our process of trial and error began and at the end of four years the material was cast in the form of a book known as Alcoholics Anonymous. So the big book was actually cast out of this book right here, Man the Unknown by Alex Corral. There are other books. This book right hier is called The Sermon on the Mount. It was written by Emmett Fox. Emmett Foxt was a preacher in the 1920s and 1930s and he did talks around the New York area, inspirational studies and talks on his literature and all the early AAs would go listen to Emmett. We've already talked about the varieties of religious experience written by William James in 1902. Another book that was an integral part of the big book is this one right here. It's called As Man Thinketh. It was written by James Allen in 1910. This is the one that basically the concept for the entire four-step comes from that book right there. James Allen writes in that book right there our problems are basically of our own making the book basically says that we are what we think it says in this book that we must learn to crucify ourselves on a daily basis thus the core A.A. ideas that we need to be that we get down to causes and conditions so our troubles we think are basically our own comes out of that book some of us tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go, absolutely. All of those profound sayings in the big book came from this book right here, As Man Thinketh. Another book that was vital to the big books is this one right here. The name of the book is What is the Oxford Group? It was written by the layman with the notebook in 1933. This book talks about actually the Oxford group's big book. It talks about the four absolutes, and it was a four-step program, I believe. They had to have absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love. And the four steps of the program were they shared their sins with other people, which is step five in our program. restitution to all they had harmed which is steps 8 and 9 in our program and listening to and accepting and relying on God's guidance in all their affairs which is the rest of the spiritual steps in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. So the Oxford group was huge in the formation of the thought process in AlcoholicsAnonymous. Another book is this book right here. It's called Twice Born Men. It was written by Harold Bigby in 1909. This is all stories of drunks who had gotten sober through conversion experience. See if these titles sound familiar. The Criminal, The Copper Basher, Lowest of the Lows, Rags and Bones, Apparent Failure. This is the book that gave Bill Wilson the idea for us to put our own stories of our own personal experience in the back of the book. another book is this one right here the name of the book is A Way of Life it was written by William Osler in 1937 I don't think that it's a coincidence guys that the book that we read today as Bill sees it in its original form was called The AA Way of life this is the book that gave Bill Wilson the idea for us to live our lives one day at a time One of the quotes in this book, and this is interesting. See if this sounds familiar. Our lives are like a great ocean liner. I don't want to use the word plagiarized, guys, but on the first page of chapter 2, there is a solution. It says we are passengers in a great freight liner. So there's a few other books as well. I don'T have time to talk about all of them, but Bill had read all of these books. Bill was a sponge for knowledge on alcoholism, and he had read all of these books. And what Bill was saying here was our program and our big book was taken from many, many different people in many, Many Different Books. It was taken From Carl Jung, the psychiatrist. It was Taken From William Silkworth, the doctor who loved drunks. It was Take From the Oxford Group and the people and the different tenants of the Oxford group. So we have the book written at this point. We're sitting on 4,650 copies of that red book, and we can't do anything with them. And Reader's Digest has already said no, that they weren't going to print the article. But some things began to happen. In late September of 1939, September 30th of 1939 actually, An article came out in a nationally publicized magazine. The name of the magazine was the Liberty Magazine. It was this magazine right here. The title of the article was Alcoholics and God. It was written by Morris Markey. That's the first nationally publicised article about Alcoholics Anonymous. And what that caused was that caused about 500 of our big books to sell. But we still didn't have enough money to keep this thing going. In February of 1940, Bill, through relatives, had a connection with the Rockefellers. And the Rockefeller's hosted this dinner, and I believe that this is another time of God saying no, but the RockefELLers hosted this diner, and the drunks went to this dinner, And the drunks told their stories. And according to Bill Wilson, it was time to put the touch on the big money for the dough. Bill was going to put The Touch on the Rockefellers for the Dough. And so the drucks go to this dinner and they tell their stories and Mr. Rockefeller Sr. is not there but his son Nelson is. And the Rockefeller sent back this message. They sent back this message that I think basically saved Alcoholics Anonymous. If it hadn't have been for this, we might not be sitting here this afternoon either, guys, because Bill was going to go out and sell this thing. There's the stock certificates to prove it. But the Rockefellers sent backthis message, and the message was, won't money spoil this? Won't money soil this? And the Rockefellers pledged $5,000 for Dr. Bob to pay off his mortgage, for Bill and Dr. Bobby to get a stipend to carry on their work. And they carried it on. And they were just absolutely broke when something else broke through. And I want to talk for a minute this afternoon about an event that happened in between this magazine and in betweenthismagazine. It doesn't get talked about very often, but I think that it was just as important as either one of those articles. There was a young baseball pitcher back then who could throw a fastball. He was a pitching phenomenon. He could throw the fastball faster than any other pitcher in the league. And there was an old catcher, his name was Bob Feller, and there was this old catch that caught for Bob Filler who had gone from team to team and team-to-team, he was a drunk. Raleigh H., RaleIGHemsley. And Raleig just happened to be on the team in Cleveland when Bob Feller threw two no-hitters. And if you're the catcher that catches the pitcher that throws two no hitters, you get a little bit of pressure yourself. And Raley caught those two games and he was being interviewed by the sports reporter and the sports report said to him, Ralee, something's a little different about you. What is it? And he said, I just want you fellas to know that I've been sober in Alcoholics Anonymous for a year. And that headlined the sports page of the Cleveland Plains dealer April 17th, 1940. Big headlines, a year without a drink. And the Associated Press picked the story up from there and it made it to other newspapers across the country. But that did several things, I believe, for AlcoholicsAnonymous. Number one was it went public. Another thing it did was it let people know that successful people could get sober and stay sober. You didn't have to be a skid row wino. Raleigh Hemsley was a catcher for a professional baseball team. It let people knows that young people could gets sober and stays sober. Raleig Hemsleys was fairly young, and for you old timers that are going to argue with me about that, There was no traditions back then, so it was okay to do that. Jack Alexander was a journalist reporter for the Saturday Evening Post. And Jack Alexander, his intent was that he was going to expose Alcoholics Anonymous as the fraud that he thought it was. And Jack Alexander went to Akron, and he went to some meetings in Akron. And he met the membership, and He met the fellowship. And what happened was Jack Alexander fell in love with Alcoholics Anonymous. He fell in Love With The People In Alcoholics, Anonymous, In The Work In Alcoholic, Anonymous. And He Wrote An Article, And It Came Out In This Magazine Right Here, March 1st, 1941. And it was a glowing article. It was about the success of Alcoholics Anonymous. It was About the Big Book and different things. And out of that article came 10,000 members of Alcoholic Anonymous, 10,00 members of alcoholics anonymous. And it without a doubt article according to Bill Wilson that AA became a national pastime. And it was out of that article that AA exploded all over the country. But there was something else going on out here in Northern California right around the same time that that Saturday Evening Post magazine article came out. Clinton T. Duffy, who was the warden of San Quentin Prison from 1940 to 1952, who made a huge discovery that opened the door for Alcoholics Anonymous to carry the message inside prison walls. And I'm going to be taking a few minutes, and I'm gonna talk about that a little bit. What I'd like to do with that is I'd to talk about what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now for the Northern California Hospitals and Institutions Committee. In 1942, world-famous warden Clinton T. Duffy looked over San Quentin prison files and determined that most of the inmates were there because of alcoholism. Duffy made the rehabilitation of prisoners a priority, but he also believed that no amount of education, vocational training, or rehabilitation could help a prisoner if his alcoholism wasn't dealt with. But what caused, we all know that Clinton T. Duffy looked over those files But what cause Clinton T Duffy to look over those Files? What was going on out at San Quentin Prison at the time? What wasn't like? And what I'd Like to do now is I'd like to read a couple of Pages for you in a book that I've researched. The name of the book Is The San Quinton Story. It was written by Clinton T. Duffy has told to Dean Jennings, and he answers that question for us in here. And this is kind of interesting. We found it very, very interesting. And this is what happened and a little bit of what it was like. It's kind of a long reading, so I hope you guys bear with me here. It says this, and this is Clinton T.Duffy, and I quote, There are the homebrew artists, too, who attempt to convert stolen sugar, raisins, candy, fruit juice, talking about pruno here for you guys, sum it up, okay, or other materials into liquor often with disastrous effects. Two years ago as a case in point two prisoners who had been in San Quentin for years succeeded in making some raisin wine in a tool shed. One of the officers smelled the mesh reported to me and guards were sent down to bring them in to the captain's office. Meanwhile, panicky over the discovery of their alcoholic cash, the two men escaped from their assignment outside the walls. Three days later they showed up in Klamath Falls, Oregon driving a stolen car and armed with stolen guns. They held up a service station man but were spotted almost immediately afterward by police in a prowl car. In the gun battle that followed, one of them surrendered, but the other, wounded, crawled away in the darkness and got as far as Arkansas before he was caught. I knew him well. A man who had come to San Quentin with a death sentence, and who had worked his way to a position of trust after Governor Merriam saved him from the gallows. There wasn't a black mark against his record in more than 12 years, and he had been to Harvest Camps and Forest Camp five times without making a move to escape. What happened, Al? I asked him when he was brought back, why did you do this? I don't know exactly, warden, he said. For no reason at all, I just decided I had to have a drink. We made that wine, and when I heard it was discovered, I just went to pieces and took off. That one drink cost this man all his credits, a conviction on a new robbery charge and at least an additional five years for escape. The other men in San Quentin are all familiar with this case, but the big price Al paid does not seem to deter the few confirmed alcoholics from occasionally trying to manufacture intoxicants. Alcohol, indeed, has been the silent instigator in an appalling number of crimes. And in one of our surveys at San Quentin some years ago, 68% of the men admitted or their records revealed that liquor had played some part in their downfall. I was discussing this one day with Archie Lyons, then a member of the parole board, and he said he too was disturbed by the increasing number of cases in which men were drunk when they committed a crime or had drinking trouble while on parole. Archie, I said, what's wrong with San Quentin having an Alcoholics Anonymous chapter? Not a thing, Clint, he said. If you want to start it, I'll help you. The AlcoholicsAnonymous movement was in its infancy then, but I communicated with some of the organizers in San Francisco and they agreed to come to San Quinton, no other prison, had ever tried AA within the walls, and there was some official apprehension because we would have to bring in civilians to work closely with our men. Nevertheless, we took the chance, and we got our first 20 members by announcing the AA program and its purpose in the San Quentin News and over the Gray Network. The men who founded the prison AA chapter sacrificed many of their pleasures and much of their time to recruit new members and keep them in line. Later, when there was a real tragedy involving 14 known alcoholics, the AA men dispelled all doubts about their sincerity and the value of the program. The emergency began shortly before 4 a.m. one October morning in one of the old Spanish prison cells. An officer, hearing someone crying for help, found inmate Joseph Davis buckled up on the floor of his cell. He was gasping for breath and seemed to be in great pain, but there was no evidence of any injury. At almost the same hour in the North Lock, guards on the night shift found two other men, John Genesee and Robert Henderson, writhing in agony. All three men were taken to the hospital and before dawn were joined by four others. The first three couldn't talk coherently, but the others admitted they had all been drinking the fluid used in our duplicating machines. This preparation contains both grain and wood alcohol plus other commercial solvents, and they could not have picked a more virulent cocktail. Warden, Henderson gasped when I tried to talk with him at the hospital. You better get the others. A bunch of us drank that stuff. Who are they? I don't know their names. I can't remember anything. I feel like I'm on fire. It's getting dark. Henderson and Davis went blind and died very quickly. And the doctors worked frantically to save the rest. I went to the microphone in my office and broadcast a warning message into the cells. Two men have just died in the hospital from drinking printing fluid. I said two others are very ill and may die. Somewhere in the prison there are other men who drank this same stuff. I urge you to report to the hospital immediately. Don't worry about any punishment. Your lives are at stake. I repeat, all those who drank printing fluid last night report to the hospital immediately. Your lives are at stake. AA men who heard this broadcast promptly volunteered to help and before long the other drinkers began straggling into the hospital, white with fear in the strain of having tried to conceal the burning pains they felt. There has never been such a grim night in the hospital with two men already dead, two more dying, and ten others in various stages of agony. With 19 AA men helping the overworked doctors administer glucose, oxygen, penicillin, ice packs, digitalis, blood transfusion, and other emergency treatment, Genesee and Otis Clark, both young men, fought death for two days before they succumbed, but the others were saved. I think the lucky 10 owe their recovery not only to Dr. Alex Miller and his staff, but also to the AA members who worked with them day and night, donating blood, foregoing meals, and giving up their few pleasures so that these unfortunate drinkers might live. The Alcoholics Anonymous movement has been in full swing for the past seven years with an average membership of 200 men, and on Sundays our men have worked with as many as 100 AA visitors from, this is you guys, Berkeley, San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond, Vallejo, San Anselmo, and other Bay County cities. The free men and women in this remarkable organization have contributed much time and money to help the prisoners. The program has been such a spectacular success that more than 50 other prisons and institutions in the United States, Canada, and Australia have since adopted the San Quentin Plan. I believe that AA men on parole have a consistently better record than other parolees who do not have such unselfish and devoted moral support from a civilian group. It's too bad, I think, that we cannot have a Forgers Anonymous or a Sex Offenders Anonymous, among others, to help those whose crimes have a repetitive and seemingly incurable pattern. And that's from Clinton Duffy. I was very fortunate to get that. I wanted to find out what was going on at San Quentin Prison. And that pretty well sums it up. A Saturday night after dinner cocktail of printing fluid. And I take a meeting in to San Quentin Prison, and it killed them. It killed four of them. From addressing the first international conference of Alcoholics Anonymous in Cleveland in 1950, Duffy said that only an alcoholic could truly understand the problems of alcoholism. He said that they and they alone would know the road back because they had made the hectic journey themselves both ways. From that first meeting in San Quentin Prison in 1942, hospitals and institutions became a vital part of Alcoholics Anonymous in carrying the message. Today here in Northern California we bring in between 700 and 750 meetings a week to the different facilities here in Southern California. This takes approximately 3,500 to 4,500 of us volunteers. We here in Northern California truly do carry the message of Alcoholics Anonymous and this big book. I'm going to start wrapping this thing up here pretty quick. The rest is all history, guys. The foreword to the second edition is probably the greatest condensed written history of Alcoholics Anonymous that there is. What's happened over the years was there was just the first printing of the first edition, that red book. From that book, there were 16 printings of the First Edition. People say that nothing in the big book has changed and that's simply not true. Every printing of the 1st 16 printINGS is different. Words are different. Statistics are different things changed in the Big Book. So there were sixteen printings of the FIrst Edition. In 1955, the second edition came. There were 16 printings of the second addition. In 1976, the third edition came There were 76 printings of the third addition. In 2001, the fourth edition came I talked to Eva S., our literature chair last week in New York on the phone. We're now on the 15th printing of the fourth addition. To date, the big book is printed in 55 different languages. 55 different langauges. Yeah. The Spanish manuscript was the first foreign language that the big book was translated into and that was in 1959. And as of today, guys, there has been 37,019,226 copies of the big book printed in 55 different languages. And I love that book. And where that takes us guys is back to the links in the chain and something that I believe is as true today as it was the day that it was written And Ann Smith, Dr. Bob's wife, has a quote handwritten on the front page of her diary, of her journal. And it's a quote by Carl Sandburg. And what that quote says is whenever a society or civilization perishes, there is always one condition present. They forgot where they came from. And I believe that's as true today as it was back then. After having done the research that I've done and collecting of archives and studying the history, I don't think, guys, that we're all that much different than the Washingtonians who simply lost their way. I think we have more experience, and our experience has taught us. But I also think if we're not careful and take care of our singleness of purpose and take care of our traditions, that we could lose our way as well. I'd like to close with something that really doesn't have anything to do with Alcoholics Anonymous, but yet I think it has everything to do mit Alcoholics Aononymous. In one of the archival magazines that I've collected, there's a prize fighter of the time, And he's getting ready to get in the ring for a prize fight, and he's being interviewed by a sports reporter, Jack Dempsey. And the sports reporter asks him, he says, Okay, Jack, what's it going to take to win this fight? And again, this doesn't have anything to do with Alcoholics Anonymous, but I think it has everything to do avec it as well. Jack Dempssey answered that question like this. He said, When we get to this level, and I relate that to us in Alcoholics Anonymous. When we get to this level and we're in AA, He said we all have pretty much equal ability. He said whoever's the hungriest is going to come out the winner. So my hope for us that are here today, if you're not hungry, you get hungry. If you are hungry, you stay hungry and you take care of our singleness of purpose and you take care of our traditions and you pass this thing on. Again, I'd like to thank the Northern California Hospitals and Institutions Committee for asking me to come and share with you. Truly it is a great honor for me to get to do this. I need to take a couple minutes here and say some real special thank yous. I'm at home. I'm an HNI guy and there's a lot of people in the crowd. I know I won't get all of your names, But you guys have been very instrumental to me. I need to say a real special thank you to Annie. She comes out here with me, and she... Man, that girl's a real gift. She really is. And I want to say, and I know I won't get everybody, excuse me if I don't, Don and Marcel, Diane and Perry, Richard and Tony, Mary, you guys, all of you. I just want to thank all of you guys for everything that you've done for me and all of the help. And I want to thanks all of your guys for coming this afternoon. And where, guys, did the links in the chain end up? And we'll just close it with this. It started in the 1840s with the Washingtonians. It went to 1895 to Sam Hadley. From Sam Hadly it went to William James, the psychiatrist who wrote the book. It went to Frank Buckman and Sam Shoemaker in the Oxford group. It wentto Harrison Hadley in the Calvary Mission. It wenttol Roland Hazard, Carl Yu, backtolRolandHazard, outto Vermont, to Siebert Graves, to Shep Cornell, to Ebby Thatcher. AndfromEbbyThatcher it went to Bill Wilson,and fromBill it wentto Bob. And from Bill and Bob, it went to Bill Dotson and Ernie G. and Phil S. and Florence Rankin, the early members out in Akron. It went from New York to Akron, back to New York, out to Cleveland, out to Chicago. It came out west. First place was down in Long Beach, Southern California. And from Long Beach the message came up to San Francisco, The first shadow of Alcoholics Anonymous fell on the home of Mrs. Elpha Orem in the upper Fillmore District in the fall of 1938 in San Francisco. And from there, it went to meetings all over the Bay Area and Northern California and behind the walls of San Quentin Prison and the starting of the Northern California Council of Hospitals and Institutions And all those links in the chain got up this morning, Saturday morning, April 23rd, 2005. And we all came here to Galt, California. We came to the Littleton Civic Center. And we came in here an hour ago. And everyone, we took our seats. And every one of us in the room this afternoon is a miracle in the Chain of Recovery. and we're all connected from here to way back there. May God continue to bless Alcoholics Anonymous and hospitals and institutions in Northern California. Thank you.