The Progressive Disease Roland H. Demonstrated to the World – Paul K.

I'm intimidated to beat hell after listening to the thing up here, and I've been every one of those things, so I'm familiar with what they were talking about. And I think I had better identify myself as Paul Keebler. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Paul. Last night I put you through a baptism of fire, andI know some of you get calluses, and l'll do a little better this evening because I know the banquet's coming up here shortly. in standing up here the panel and the things that have been said and the interpretation of the traditions and so on it merely brings home to me the amazing and I think almost illusion that we are here because I think we're here in spite of ourselves I think that if we look back, we'll see the hand of God in this thing from the very beginning. No question about it. I was told one time that you can't prove that a rudder will steer a ship until the ship is moving. And I think the way that I feel today, the gratitude I feel Today about those early people and then the beginning is because when I look back and see the things that they were concerned with and how little they knew and what they had to work with and to pass this on is almost an illusion. It seems to me like the other shoe is going to drop one of these days. But here we are with hundreds of thousands of people around the world involved in the gift of sobriety and a second life and it's a fantastic story. Fantastic. And I was told one time by my sponsor, and I think this guy, I hate to use the term, but he was a visionary almost. And he told me that one of the things that he knew about an alcoholic, himself and others that he was intimately acquainted with, was the fact that all alcoholics were seekers. We were constantly looking for something and it was a union with God and we didn't know it. And I look back at my own experience and I was always looking. The new job, the new girl, the new car, and when I got there, there wasn't there. And so when I look back at some of the things that went on in AA and it seems to me that they jump into my consciousness whenever I think about my friends around the country and the way this thing has been put together and the ways it's operating. And if you will, I'd like to mention a few things that I think were outstanding. Not so much from I'm not a historian. I was merely a fortunate person to be there at the time that this thing was in place and in moving and having gone through some of the things that we were talking about here today before the traditions, before the conditions. And so really what I'm trying to say is that it seems to me that in looking back the salient things and some of these spiritual concepts and the spiritual events and the spirit of time in place of people at time. It's a whole series of unrelated events that came into being and we are here today because of those things. Now I suppose you could start in the beginning and talk about, I guess Noah was the first drunk of record. The Bible people tell me that in the big book it says something about Noah getting drunk and God called him to task for getting drunk and he said he didn't know the strength of the grapes. and he put in the denial system I guess we've been working with ever since but anyhow as we go down through the years and it was mentioned by Orvin and other people that the alcoholic was written off we were untouchable second, we weren't even citizens so nothing could be done for us and someone tonight mentioned the Washingtonians with their efforts and so the drunks working with one another could acquire sobriety but without spiritual concepts they fell apart And so down through the years, there has been various experiments and people trying to find a way to maintain sobriety and live a decent life. Now I'm going to look back and talk to you a little bit about something that I think from my own viewpoint is not talked about too much, but I believed that the first thing, the light of day for the alcoholic, happened when there was a young man in New York by the name of Roland Hazard He came from a very wealthy family, socially connected. And this kid was a hell of an alcoholic, completely unmanageable. He'd been all over the world. No way could he manage his booze. So they sent him over to Europe with the burn system to see the great Dr. Young. Now here was a man that had been world-renowned, a psychiatrist, a psychologist. He knew, wrote papers. He'd Been Successful in This Field for Many, Many Years. And so Roland put himself in Dr. Young's hands. He stayed there for a year in psychoanalysis, and he stayed in treatment, and after the year he left in beautiful shape physically, mentally, knowing that he was cured. He got back to New York. He tested his newfound information. In a matter of weeks, he was in the gutter. So it looked as though that he had demonstrated to us that not at that time, but we know now that this is a progressive disease. And so he was despondent and ready to give up, but he went back to see the doctor. And he talked to the doctor about his experience and here's what the doctor said. He said, Roland, you must equate your alcoholism with a disease and a need for oneness. He said I can't help you. Medical science can't, psychiatry can't help you, you are in need of a religious experience you are in need of a pathway to a higher understanding so I think for the first time in history spiritual concepts were mentioned as a method for addressing these addictions so Roland came back to New York and he heard through the fine and wonderful Dr. Schumacher who was at that time an Anglican priest who was instrumental in bringing the fellowship of the Oxford group from England over to New York. And Roland joined the chapter there and I didn't know this man first hand but I do know that he went through what you and I would call a spiritual awakening and he got sober. And he was told to give it away if you want to keep it so he took it to Abby Thresher. Abby had been a boyhood friend of his and so they got together. And between the two of them they took this thing to Bill Wilson. And so Bill went to the Oxford Fellowship for a couple of months Now, there's no record that Bill went through a spiritual awakening or anything, but he did pick up some information, and I think this is so damn important because Orv mentioned it. Here, Bill, Ebby, and Roland were all together sharing and working in this experience and staying sober. Bill Wilson found himself in the unpleasant position of having a lot of economic problems. So he decided to go out to Akron on some kind of a business deal in which he was going to capture some kind of a finder's fee and something. And he decided that he was not going to do that. He decided to come out there, and he was armed and given six or seven names of Oxford people in Akron to call when he got out there. And so all of you know about the historical meeting. He got out There. And I stood in the Mayflower Hotel in the exact spot where Bill stood. The telephones were over here, and the cocktail lounge is up here. I could hear the glasses tinkling and the girls giggling and the good thing was Bill and not me or we wouldn't be here, I'll tell you. So he made a few phone calls and every one he made there was no one to answer the phone, no one there. Finally, at his last phone call he got in touch with this minister and he blurted out what he was trying to find and the minister said call Henry at a cyber lane. Now, what I'm trying to say is this. Nick the Greek wouldn't give you the odds of 10 million to 1 if this would have worked in that way. And when he talked to Henrietta and told her that he wanted to find a drunk or somebody, an alcoholic, in the Oxford Fellowship, she said, I've got a pistol. My doctor is... Dr. Bob Smith is there. And she called Ann, who I think is really the godmother of our fellowship, and Gant assured Henrietta to have Bill come over that Bob would be available. Now, Bob was a mean son of a bitch when he was drinking and he was in bad shape and he Was nasty as hell and he certainly wasn't going to talk to some Yankee from New York. But they cleaned him up and between Henrietta and Ann they said, you're going to listen to this guy. So together they got together in what turned out to be a 15-minute meeting. Bill moved in, stayed there for the next three to four months. But that isn't so important as the fact that they left that kitchen table. And incidentally, the bull you heard about, they wrote these 12 steps in 5 seconds and all that. Forget that. They went from there down to the Oxford Fellowship. At that time, there were 61 people meeting in Henry T. Williams' home. Henry T., Williams, and his wife Clarice were just beautiful people. A lot of the people on the Oxford fellowship were non-alcoholics. alcoholics. They were people who had addictions of various kinds and aberrations that they dealt with on spiritual concepts. And this Oxford Fellowship was put together because they wanted to get away from religion, and they wanted to implement spiritual concepts, but they didn't know how to handle this thing as far as alcoholics were concerned. And so as the people who met there, Bob Smith had been going for two years and was well grounded in information religious and spiritual. And so he was in a position to help Bill along these lines. And so they put together this fellowship and Henry T. Williams told both of them, we think you, Bill Davis and some others who were there, we think your people have a unique problem you can share together and we think ought to transfer, if that's a word, or get your own group started and move into a fellowship of your own. And I think here's the genius of AA, and I look back without this move, I think we would have missed the boat. The Oxford Fellowship were an evangelistic society involved in using the four absolutes which they had picked up from a Lutheran priest. They had a system for public admission, inventory and catharsis, adjustment of personal relationships, prayer and meditation, and working with others. Our fifth chapter came out of the Oxford Manual almost word for word. So the boys took this procedure, they had six steps and the four absolutes, and that was welded into this new fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. But the genius of the AlcoholicsAnonymous thing was God as you understand him. God as you understand him The Oxford people, it was a Christian movement. You had to become a Christian. And this, of course, was pretty rough for some alcoholics. Some of us had never been in a church. Some of use couldn't find our ass with both hands on the back of us. How are we going to be rededicated to something we couldn't even spell? So there we were. But when AA was started, it's God as you understand him. And this was a beautiful thing. I think if you look back and you see how these people put together this fellowship, how they implemented this thing, it was a family deal. There was no such thing as elitism. There were no women, men or any of the kids, dogs, cats, everybody went to the meeting. That was the way it was. It was a family disease and it was a disease. And Bob Smith and Dr. Young were the first ones that brought this to the attention of the suffering alcoholics that this was a desease. The insanity of alcoholism. and the only way that you could find this release from this insanity and the grip of alcoholism was to embrace these spiritual concepts so for the first time perhaps in history spiritual concepts were used to deal with this awful cunning baffling problem and disease of alcohol it went into work and it began to work amazing now Bob Smith with his background in the fellowship of Oxford Fellowship Bill went back to New York got on the promotion train. In Akron, they were interested in saving lives. No one wanted to publish. No one wondered to write books. They were interested in saving their own lives and they were doing it. But the way it had to be done was on a 12-step call. If I made a 12 step call on you and I described the disease concept and if you thought that you could handle your booze or your lifestyle was something you thought you could manage we decided to go drink some more. We didn't ask you to come to meetings and bring your desire to stop drinking. You came to our meetings when you had an honest and sincere desire. And we said that you didn't join AA until you took the third step, and I feel that way today. What the hell good does mental understanding of alcoholism if you don't do anything about it? So the third steps was built around what the Oxford people said, public admission. so when we talk about anonymity you know I've laid it on you there is no such thing as a secret society when we withhold our relationship with another person in AA we are denying that person and ourselves a spiritual experience of sharing this is our first spiritual experience and so within the fellowship it was decided that you came to the meeting only when you gave us a commitment and the commitment was that you understood the disease concept. You understood that the compulsion-obsessive nature of this disease had to be addressed with a sponsor and with a meeting and with the people in the group and learn how to be a 12-stepper and how to sponsor and give it away. And so we grew in this. Now, we had no guidelines of any kind. And I say that in all sincerity. AA did not grow out of unity. It grew out of disunity. we had no way of getting together with anybody or getting any general agreements about anything we had a kid by the name of Tommy Brown he was glib, he was smart he was a salesman and he was pain in the butt he was probably the most antagonistic kid I ever knew in my life all I know is that Tommy had a resentment every week and he'd take his coffee pot and his resentment and go down the street and open up a new group. He started more groups than anybody ever knew in AA. He never stayed sober, but he sure started a lot of drugs, a lot to drink. So anyhow, we had that kind of a character. So that kind of thing prevailed. Now there were no traditions, no guidelines or anything else. But the amazing thing about this, and I want to emphasize this, was that we were held together without the benefit of the traditions or any guidelines except those spiritual concepts. Love, unselfishness, purity and honesty. Those were the spiritual concepts that held each of us in our relationships to each other, the groups to the groups and taking the message to the man on the street. And it's amazing to think that with working with these absolutes that we could be in harmony with God and his will. So when we look back and see the disunity and the opportunities we had to get into some real trouble And we didn't. We couldn't get into hospitals, you couldn't do anything. So what did we do? We did the best we could. We used Bravide and booze, and we took on our own detox units. We didn't kill anybody, I don't know why, but we did, and this is how we did it. Now, as far as having the public involved, we were not interested. Bob Smith and the boys wouldn't walk across the street to talk about alcoholism to anybody. If you were an alcoholic, fine. If you weren't, they wanted nothing to do with it. And there was a good reason for it. There was a hell of a lot of stigma in those days. You don't have that today. People are enlightened today. Industry is enlightened. But they didn't get that way because of education. They got that way because you people and the people that followed these old-timers stayed sober and it was through attraction. Through attraction. So our acceptance on the part of the market, industry, religion and everything has been on the basis of being successful and staying sober and becoming responsible people. You can do all the education you want but the spiritual experience of one drunk sharing with another began in Akron and it's been carried on ever since. An act of love will never be destroyed and that's what's been going on and that'S the reason we're here today. to give love, accept love, and to share love to know that a loving God brought us here. Now I think that there were a lot of mistakes were made but somehow they were always rectified. We somehow were able to maintain these groups each group in each area operated on some of the seat of their pants and they did it pretty well. I think the little skit said something about the Catholics Up in New England, if you weren't a Catholic, you just didn't get well, that's all. They said if you took the Catholics out of AA up there, you could hold a meeting in a phone booth if either gets brought right. And down south, you better thump that Bible a little bit too. And that was not beyond the pale. On the West Coast, as it is today, they put on dog and pony shows and you've got to have a one-liner and an entertainer and stem whiner, but one day they'll grow up too. now around New York and I say this in all sincerity and I hope it's accepted in a way I'm trying to say it there was a great deal of intellectuals elitists and people were concerned the captives of industry were touched and the leaders and their religion and so on and AA was tried was promoted around that area and then the promotion and the book was not quite down to where it was acceptable yet and the big book was put together as a sales tool not as a textbook it was a sales deal we never thought there'd be enough people to make 12 step calls and that's what the book was about but in New York AA was to be sold and so we developed two cults this is before the traditions now we had the Bill Wilson cult and we had the Bob Smith cult and those two cults are alive today as long as I'm alive there will be an A.A. Akron cult and I think one of the best kept secrets in the United States is that A.E. was born in Akron and not New York I'm not trying to be facetious when I say this I have been to meetings where people did nothing but talk about Bill Wilson in the hand of God sitting down and writing these 12 steps in 5 minutes and deifying the man and I think it's a damn shame Because one of the strengths that we have in this fellowship is we do not have any great spiritual leaders. We don't have people, as the skit said, that are experts. We don' t have gurus. We have people with feet of clay. And the reason I think AA exists today in such beautiful shape as we're in, in spite of some of the things that we're not, is because we are human beings. And I think in times, and looking back there will be a time, and I heard it said today, where they think that perhaps AA would be the major impact on society and the social areas in the next century as much as putting a man on the moon. Think of this thing we have. It came alive because of spiritual concepts. It came live because of people giving love. It came life, and it's well and alive because we give love, and we do not depart from those spiritual concepts." We can't even destroy ourselves. and sometimes we try to do this. So here we are today after 50 years say pass it on and I'm standing up here and I have no credentials of any kind except to tell you that I am a willing witness at any time to stand up here as a I suppose in a testament of the love of God and the efficacy of this program. I don't have any other credentials but I'm willing to do this why? because of the power of attraction I think that I love this man over here because he knew even as a medical scientist he knew something about primitive basic elements that were spiritual and I think the moment of truth came to me and I'll close with my little efforts here this afternoon we were planning on the international conference in Cleveland in 50 and a lot of us decided to boycott it we thought anybody who had a conscience that this was contrary to the spiritual principles we thought maybe this was a platform for people to get up and go through their exhibitionism we thought that this is not the way that you demonstrated your interest in your understanding of alcoholic principles you did this with another alcoholic you didn't get up and beat your breast in the front of a microphone. But to make a long story short, some of us decided to go. We knew that this was a very, very difficult thing for Bob to do. He had contracted cancer. He was dying. And it was a pretty sad affair. He asked us to meet at the Bobby Square building. and at that time we gathered about 600 people around and we came in and Bill and Lois and all the supernumeraries were there but Bob was wheeled in in a wheelchair and he got up as I am standing here today to address us and he couldn't make it and he sat down and his opening shot was something like this and I think it's etched in my mind and he said how grateful he was that he could attend this meeting and he said as he looked over to people in the meeting to think that he had had a small part that he'd played in their recovery. And he had a message and he wanted to deliver the message. And the message was please keep the program simple. His exact words. Don't louse it up. beware the Freudian complexes that are of interest only to the scientific mind beware that errant member of the tongue that has caused us so much trouble in the past and if we use it let us use it with forbearance and tolerance always remembering that new people need a pat on the back even as we did and when we go about these affairs remember that our steps are not the traditions but our steps in the absolute simmer down, come up with two ideas, love and service. And he said, keep those two things in mind. And he sent you as a group, AA as a whole, we'll go forward. And he sat down, and he died several weeks later. Now it seems to me that this is the essence and the inner thoughts that I think are alive and well today. when you look back at the things that went on the ambitions the alcoholic temperaments the egos and all of the things that went one we could have been easily led into the AMA as Bill Wilson was talked about T. Baldwin a lot of the doctors said that alcoholism would never fly because you couldn't get a group of alcoholics to agree on anything he was pretty well right except that he didn't know that we would die if we walked away from these spiritual concepts. Take those spiritual concepts away from us or any one of us tonight within months won't find ourselves in this cunning, baffling disease back in the throes and the hammerlock of the disease of alcoholism. As it is now we can stand up here and say I am recovering or I am a recovered up Mahali. I can share with you you have given me these spiritual concepts. I have had a spiritual regeneration. I now know a God of my understanding who now is a God of love and you brought that to me. It didn't come from the cathedral tower. It didn' t come from books and it didn' d come from people writing and it did' n't come from treatment centers or anything else. It came from one drunk working with another. And down through these years, and I think I look back, I cherish this fellowship. And I have a greater understanding of the philosophical, the psychological, and, I think, the spiritual values that I've been handed because I brought nothing to AA, not a damn thing. Whatever I got has been a gift. And I'd like to keep those simple tools alive. And I think as long as we keep it alive, we not only can be save some lives out there but we can live successfully too and so I think today that AA the people that are in it the implementation if we look back we'll find that the hand of God was in this thing from the beginning not only with the fellowship but with us and there's somebody out there that your life you're going to be able to save his life when you leave here with the reinforcement that we have in this fellowship. Thank you very much.