The Only Way to Remain Happy with Sobriety – 1952 – Searcy W.

I'm glad of it. With the help of people like you and the AA program attempting to follow 12 steps of AA, and the help from God certainly, I've been sober since May 10th 1946. I'm not going to talk long and couldn't say much if I wanted to talk for a long time. I could take a lot of time but that still didn't say much we do have some wonderful talkers yet as buck said and nita thinks also i do uh that macon is one of our great fellows in aa can always bring us a spiritual message on sunday morning that's good for all of us i always enjoy hearing making i always enjoyed hearing every a talk i've never been to a bad aa meeting yet i've never heard an aa talk regardless how long they'd been sober how short a period of time they'd been sober that wasn't good and oftentimes i think we in our groups uh we talk about uh maybe we don't like to hear some fella talk but i look upon people and certainly i want people to sympathize with me trying to talk that all of we who get up uh if we just get up and state our name and our dry date or and that we're glad to be sober, we're grateful, and sit down. It's wonderful because in that person we see someone who is attempting to get well. We see a person who is making an effort at least to stay well. And I believe it's necessary for all of we alcoholics to have recognition in our group or in an AA group someplace. I don't believe any alcoholic will remain sober over a long period of time unless they receive recognition within their group, or among people who understand them. It isn't very hard for Buck or myself to get recognition. If we don't get recognition, we'll take notoriety. Hell, we will pull some kind of deal and get on somehow. So we as alcoholics may accept notoriety if we don' t get recognition but you can notice any member, any new member of AA coming in, and if they come in these doors two or three or four times, and nobody pats them on the back, nobody says anything to them, nobody says, oh boy, I'm glad to see you out this morning or tonight. We're glad to have you. We're happy that you're with us. You can watch him three or four time, and he'll come to meetings, and then if he doesn't get some recognition, you'll finally say, well, I wonder what happened to Joe or Jim or John or whoever it may be. I think it's necessary that we spend some time with the new members, that we make them feel that they're important to us and they are the most important person in our group, the new member. I quickly in AA place principles before personalities. We may mention a lot of names, and we talk about a lot people most of us here are AAs or families of AAs. I don't know of anyone one. I'm as glad to see in AA as I am Alfred. He was a hell of a guy to get a check cash from. He, he was tough as a boot. I used to think if an alcoholic had a problem drinking maybe I could get a pint this morning, but he was pretty hard-hearted and pretty tough. The guy Buck was talking about who saved a lot of people, including Nita, he's a great guy in AA. Most of you know who Buck was talkin' about. He's the guy that I went over one Sunday morning and drunk, been drunk all night before, and went over in Mexicantown tryin' to find some bootleg whiskey and couldn't find any, and I ran into a bunch of dogs, and the market had always wanted the dogs. So this Mexican and I crawled under his house over there and pulled out these collie puppies, and I got two or three of them and loaded them in the car, and I was thinking like the devil from whiskey and all that other stuff. By the time I got out from under that Mexican's house with all those puppies, I was thinkin' a little worse as possible. and I went over to this sort of drug store Buck was talking about and I got in there and I told him I said, I've got to have a pint of whiskey. Of course on the cup, you know I was working up to it and he said I'm going to give you a half a pint but I want you to get the hell out of here with those dog fleas and all for no business. He says, I flees all over. So I had to go get dipped and cleaned up. Got that half-pint on my belt. I didn't care what happened. He hadn't flees or anything. Seriously, in AA, this program to me means our lives, we who are alcoholics. It's the only known way for the alcoholic, for we who are really problem drinkers, to remain happy with our sobriety. I know a lot of fellows and a lot men and women who stay sober, and stay sober over a long period of time. You don't see them around AA much. Maybe they go to church some, maybe this and that and the other. That's all right. Each individual has to stay sober however they see fit, but for me I know that the only way I can remain sober with any degree of peace of mind is in AA because I know the The only way I can remain sober is to work with others who are sick just like I was when I came into AA. Certainly we have all improved and we should improve as we go along. If we don't improve, we'll certainly go backwards. This program is a program of recovery. It's a program improvement. It's the program of growth. It's a program we need to put a lot into if we get anything out of it. But who am I to tell the other fellow how he must do, or what he must do in order to stay sober, in order be happy, in order to have the things that we need and are looking for in AA? I know a lot of fellows who never attend an AA meeting yet they're sober today. I know men and women, both, who maybe have found a place in church or this and that. That's all right. It doesn't make any difference how you stay sober if you stay sober. And it doesn't matter how you understand these 12 steps and how you apply them, apply them the way you understand them. thank God for that guy who held out time and time again when they were putting these 12 steps together. I've heard Bill talk about it many times. This one fellow held out for this one phrase in one of the steps and says, as you understand it, as he personally understands it, not anybody else, not what the other folks have said to him, but he held out to that one thing and thank God he did. Because each of us as individuals can take this program. And I can't do it like Megan, I can' t do it like Buck or maybe a lot of others. But I can take these 12 steps and as I understand them, my own self, I ca n apply them to my life and apply them to my daily living to remain sober the way I want to do them. Nobody tells me that i have to do anything in aaa nobody says these steps you have to leo not even bill not even the the ones who wrote these 12 steps up at the top and all of them that says these are suggestive and i think if we alcoholics had been told when we came into aa that you have to do this. You have to take these 12 steps and you have to apply them, you have to go to AA meetings, you have attend every meeting, you have do this and that and the other. I don't believe a darn one of us is not a darn thing. But as they are, they're as you understand them. As you apply them to your life and your everyday living. As you see them. So thank God for that. In 1949, at the Yale School, we had a Mexican boy named Andrew Hernandez from the Free Port Louisiana Group, an AA. And he talked pretty good English, but he couldn't understand a lot of phrases and a lot of things, because he didn't understand English very well. But during that school, we had an AA meeting, and in this meeting you had this Mexican boy, Andrew, talk. And it meant a great deal to me. He didn't say a lot, but I could apply that to my own self. This The Mexican boy got up and he said, you know, this AA program and the whole thing, to me, I have to keep simple. He said, You know, I have a simple mind and this is a simple program and I have to keep AA simple. Well that made more sense than all of the other scientific analysis and all the other stuff we heard in the entire meeting, to me. And I remember in 19-I think it was about three years ago when they were having the Tri-State Conference in Amarillo and I was working with Albert Randall on some of the program things and this and that and the other. And we had written Dr. Bob Nance-Smith, the co-founder today, Dr. Bob, all of you know, asking him to come to that meeting. And time rocked along and about 10 days before this meeting, we received a wire from Ann, Dr Bob's wife. And she said this, and it made a lot of sense. She said, we can't be with you. Dr. Bob had had a stroke or something that happened, some heart trouble. And she said in this wire, very short wire, we can'T be with ye because Dr. Rob has had a heart attack. But if we could be with yOu, if we COULD be there with ye, the greatest thing we could say to you would be very simple, very sure, and it would be this. Remember, AA started in our kitchen, Lois and Ann and Bob and Bill and myself, just over a little percolator of coffee, and talking AA, talking our problems over, understanding each other and things like that remember a started like this let's keep it like that simple and I is there's nothing nothing hard about a day in my way of thinking I think those words were very well but I think so long as we remember to keep the program of AA simple. It's a program of action, yes. It requires some footwork. You know, we just can't in the morning get up and say, God, I'm turning my life over to you this 24 hours. I'm just living 24 hours at a time, so you take my life over and I'll sit back in the rocking chair and let it go. And I made a hell of a mistake i came into a they told me to take it easy and and i thought they meant from now on so i've been in that rocking chair all along i thought maybe i'd do staying so uh we can do that too uh mental laziness uh just just pure damn laziness and mental laziness those things i don't believe get us any place and hey i think if we the more we as was said last evening and you hear it many times the more that we put into this program the more of it we give away the more we make ourselves available the more we understand this program so we have something to give away then the more we're going to receive from the program you know uh this is one place big spring where i do not have to qualify myself as an alcoholic i lived here drunk 10 years so i mean i existed so uh all of you and the all of this bunch in the local group i i do not have to quantify myself as a mouth of heart most of them have seen me on the streets there many times drunk and while we're talking along the lines of what aa will do for you and what it does for our families i don't know of anybody who has improved as much of course i've improved some but my wife has improved more than anybody i know of she is not here as mean as she used to be and we seemed to get along better than we did, and I was drinking and drunk all the time. So this program has helped her a great deal, and I'm grateful for that. Heihei to me, these twelve steps of heihei, these 12 traditions weaved together, means to me the difference between life and death. Uh, I know that I could have not continued on as I was any longer. I had come to the end of the rope and had tied a knot in it and that was all there was to it. There was no other way for me to go. I no other place to go i had no alternative but to accept some way to get well and to me this is just a simple program of recovery i believe that that we can get maybe two wrapped up in aa and i did for a long while i i just didn't do anything but hey i didn't want to do anything but because i had found the very thing that had made me happy and it made me grateful for even being drunk all those years and a program that would make you be grateful for going through all the suffering that we have to go through with and still be grateful for that being sick then that's something and we have to even be grateful because we we're the only people in the world who have to get so doggone sick to get well and we have to get very very very sick very very sick before we're willing to get wealth if uh people don't understand and it's not uh not hard uh to understand why they wouldn't uh and explain to people something about drinking well about the alcoholic compulsive drinking why we say that that we drink uh to get away from the effects of drinking that doesn't make sense for them you keep drinking to get away from your effect certainly when we start we have to keep on there's nothing we can't stop there's no stopping the flood. We're forced, we're compelled to drink against our own will and our own better judgment. So I don't know. Slips and returning to our active illness in AA I know nothing about. The only thing I know is that I want to continue sober as I have in the past worse than anything in the world i i so terribly much want to remain sober regardless of what condition i may get into uh regards to what may happen to me today or tomorrow down the line i don't care how bad it may seem uh no matter what could happen nothing could happen to me that taking a drink wouldn't make it work i've tried that so many times just just very few things happened to me and the only way i knew to recuperate to forget about this thing was to take a drink But to me today, nothing in the world could happen. I don't care how bad it may seem or how bad it might be, I know that a drink couldn't help it any at all. So to me, in the first step where we admit we're a palace over alcohol and our lives have become unmanageable, certainly I realized that my life was unmanagable to begin with. I know that my life will never be manageable, and I turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand it. So if I do that then I don't have to worry about the other thing. But many times going down the road along with God in this deal we made, I'm prone to going around these sharp curves and things that happen to upset me emotionally, I'm prone to grab the wheel and try to take over again. Take things back in my hands and handle them like I want them. No, I can't do that. I have to think then, no, we made a deal. I said would turn this uh over to god that i would get completely out from under the driver's seat and i would turn the whole mess over to him i tried to handle it for many many years and i made a mess of it so i promised to turn it all over to hand so then i must remember when i want to take my life back over when i want things to go my way i have to remember that know I promised to turn those things over to God, as I understand it. So this morning, every Sunday morning, I think I'm more grateful than any other time. Nine thousand different mornings I wake up right here in Big Spring and no matter how much whiskey I brought on Saturday night and stashed away i was always out sunday morning hardly ever sunday mornings past that i wasn't up looking for a drink uh all over the backyard if you know what i mean some of these drunks under the mattresses in the bathroom and i had some damn good places to hide it too but But just the terrible fear of, and can you imagine, they were talking about this being a disease. No, AA doesn't say it's a disease, science and medicine and those things, that's a diseased. But AA doesn'T get into that because it's controversial. But anybody who couldn't understand that a person is ill who can't live without a clear substance called ethyl alcohol and has to have that clear substance in order to survive. We have to have it. We can't do without it. Once we take one drink, then that's all there is. have to have alcohol in order to survive. We don't drink it to have fun. Our fun's all gone, we know we're not going to have any pleasure, but we have to have that drink in order live. So I think the greatest time in all of our lives is when we draw up the divorce proceedings to Ethyl Alcohol. We completely divorce her and we forget about her and do something about it. And the only way I know to do anything about this problem we have over all period of time, the only people I know who have stayed sober and remain happy with any tranquility and peace of mind are people who are working, and I mean working at the AA program and with the AA program, and are trying to give away what has been given to them. So indeed this morning on Sunday morning I'm especially grateful. I'm grateful to each one of you here. I don't care whether I know you or not, you've helped me in some way. You're interested in AA you wouldn't beat me. You either have a problem or you're interested in our problem so I'm grateful to all of you and the only thing I can say is my prayer and my thoughts shall ever be thanks to God and to you who have helped me stay sober.