The Rule 62 That Said Don’t Take Yourself So Da*n Serious – James M.

Well, hi everybody. We're back here again. I want to thank whoever brought the cookies. They were wonderful. Thanks a lot. I needed those. I tend to get lost in the history of AA when I put on a workshop of this type because I just happen to think it's the most fascinating story of the 20th century. You know, a new light came into the world with the evolution of our 12 steps and our 12 traditions and a whole new way to serve with our 12 concepts of world service. I have a degree in history. I read history for pleasure. History, the story of men and women fascinate me. Most folks think of history as boring because they've been exposed to teachers who read off long series of facts and treaties between obscure principalities and expect you to remember the name of the Vice President of the United States in 1840 and things like that, which have nothing to do with nothing. History, if you break it down into two words, is his story. It's your story, and it's my story, and it' s our story, and it''s God's story. It''s simply a series of stories. And that''s what we do at AA. We share our stories with each other. We share our stories, and the story of A.A. is a story of how, through the divine alchemy of God's presence, a couple of drunks found a way for alcoholics to recover from a hopeless, seemingly hopeless state of mind and body for which they had existed since the dawn of recorded history. Men and women had not gotten sober before. And where we left off, Bill was absolutely unable to obtain money from the Rockefellers I have a magazine up here Life put out a few years ago this was the fall of 1990 where they listed the 100 most important Americans of the 20th century and they list John D. Rockefeller in this magazine it says a son of wealth he made a business of philanthropy and he talks about how he had literally spent his life giving away money and yet he said to Alcoholics Anonymous money will ruin you I'm not going to be the one responsible this is too important it is a work of goodwill it is one person speaking to another person to transmit a message I will not ruin it it's also interesting that the Life Magazine list of 100 most important Americans also list Bill W. List Bill W So Bill wasn't having any luck raising money but they did somehow or other and that's a story for another night managed by early 1939 to put a book together, and they didn't even have a name for their group at this time. I mean, you know, one of our traditions is about affiliation with other parties. In New York, probably by mid-1937, they had broken off from the Oxford Group and were meeting on their own. And Akron held on much longer into late 1938 or sometime in 1939. Actually, the break wasn't complete until early 39. They had broken off from it. The question was, what are we going to call ourselves? This is a wonderful story, and I want to pass it on to you for what it's worth. They had been called a number of things. They were called first the drunk squads of the Oxford Group. And then they split off from the Oxford group, so they didn't know what to call themselves. So they were calling it a nameless bunch of drunks. And they were bandying about names, if they might call it. Bill rather modestly at one point suggested the Bill W. Movement, but that kind of got laughed down, you know. You've got to remember, these are all guys with monstrous egos, just like you and I, you Know, that's what was going on. And they're almost ready to publish the book and they don't know what to call themselves. They don't even know what called the book. They've got several suggested titles. They've got one title suggested was The Way Out. In fact, you'll notice that phrase a couple of times in the book because they thought they were going to use that as a title. They had also suggested A Hundred Men because they figured coming and going they had about 100 men. And then Florence Rankin shows up. And at first they said, well, you can't be a member. She says, I'm a drunk. I can be a remember if I want to be a number. And she just muscled her way right in. And they were talking about calling it A HundredMen. And she says, damn if you do, you'll call it 100 Men and a Woman. They thought, well, maybe that title's just a little long, so they scratched that one. And shortly before the book was published, they'd been going out to the various nuthouses and dragging large groups of people who may or may not have an alcoholic problem, I hope they were, or anybody that kind of identified as sort of being an alcoholic, in from Bellevue and the other nuthhouses there in New York. And they had one night bused a group in, and it included a fellow named Joe Worth. Joe Worth was a very wealthy guy. He founded the New Yorker magazine, which is still being published to this day. He had drank himself into wet brain status by 1939. I mean, he was literally mumbling, bumbling. you know, we talk about alcoholic insanity and we think it's those crazy things that we do while drunk getting on an airplane and going to Mexico when we really had intended to go to work that morning but that isn't it at all alcoholic insanity is a state of mind where you recognize no one and nobody, you cannot make sense when you talk you kind of sit in a room and your brain is desiccated, it's dried out and somebody comes by three times a day and changes your diapers and feeds you. Come by the next day and changed your diapers and feed you. And Joe Worth was pretty much in that state. He was not lucid. It's called Korsakoff syndrome. And it's a deadly pitiful thing. You know, your family comes and visits you but you don't recognize them and they go home and cry a little bit and start putting more and more time in between visits. And Joe Work was in kind of that stage but occasionally mumbling something or other and And the main reason they brought him on to the meeting, although he was a wet brain, was they knew he had a lot of money and, of course, Bill was trying to get all the money he could get. He figured if we by some trick get this guy sober, maybe we could tap into some of those funds from the New Yorker magazine. And at that meeting that night, they were discussing the name of the — that they were going to name it or what they were going to call their movement, and they'd been talking about a nameless bunch of drunks. And they hear — all of a sudden one of them says, wait a minute, what's this guy over here? corner mumbling you know i mean he's drunk drooling over one mouth and he's saying they so he started listening to him he's seeing anonymous alcoholics anonymous alcoholic alcoholics anonymous they stopped and it's like catchy title and and so i leaned over to him and said alcoholics synonymous what he says alcoholics anonymous period hmm and then he lapsed back into his alcoholic insanity and another lucid word was never heard from that man till he died six years later. Now, God has used some strange instruments to weave our destiny. We were named by a wet brain, which was probably the last lucid words he had ever uttered. And that kind of caught on. They sent one of the guys to Washington to check at the Library of Congress to see how many books have been named the way out. And Fritz Mayhew cabled back that there were 12. Nobody he wanted to be 13, but he also telegrammed back that there was no book named Alcoholics Anonymous and that's how we came to be known as that. And this book was published in 39 and it was not an overnight sensation. You know, we had 5,000 of them sitting in a warehouse. We couldn't afford to buy them out. The first great growth was in Cleveland in late spring of 39. a series of articles were run in the Cleveland Plain Dealer a guy named Clarence Snyder had gotten sober and a guy name Archie had gotten sober and they'd brought some others in and they started in fact the first meeting to use the name Alcoholics Anonymous was held in Cleveland in probably May of 1939 where it was actually announced this is a meeting of AlcoholicsAnonymous and they took the meeting from the book because they had heard that the Catholics weren't allowed to join anything connected with the Oxford group So they wanted to make it plain at the start of their meeting that they were not Oxford Grouper. They were not part of the Oxford Group. Almost 1,000 people joined in Cleveland over the space of the next year or so with all this favorable publicity that was going on in the paper. But still, A's growth was very, very slow for that first year orso. Money was still a problem. Groups were springing up here and there. A few books were going out. It was frustrating to Bill and to Bob, because obviously it worked, and here and there, it worked very well, but he just simply hadn't caught on. And then in 1941, the great investigative reporter of the day, a fellow named Jack Alexander, he would be... He wrote for the Saturday Evening Post, he had just finished an article on the mafia rackets and political rackets in New Jersey, and he was the Mike Wallace of his day. I mean, he was a very famous muckraker. You know, he had the ability to look inside political dealings and figure out who was trying to steal from whom. So the Saturday Evening Post, partially to help alcoholics and arms, but partially out of a spirit of cynicism, like we're going to find out what kind of racket these folks are really running. You know? There's got to be some kind of scam here. It looks too good. We'll send Jack, the old cynic over there, and have him tear them apart. Well, Jack came to visit Bill Wilson, Bill said, I know your reputation. Don't judge us until you've gone to some of our meetings. You can go anonymously out in Akron because that's where we have the most members. Go to at least 20 of our meeting before you write your story. Will you do that for us? And Alexander said, you mean I can just go to those meetings without having to tell anybody? That's right. And he did that. He went out to Akron and then Akron in Cleveland went to about 20 meetings and he completely changed his life. He came back and wrote the most wonderful article on Alcoholics Anonymous we have you all may have the pamphlet in the pamplet rack back here which is the Jack Alexander article when it was published in April of March or April of 1941 AA received such favorable publicity that our membership which was probably about 1200 at at that point six years into it exploded to eight times that amount within just a few months people just started coming from everywhere letters were arriving from the west coast from the from florida from all across the country and the explosive growth of alcoholics anonymous started as a result of one of our friends jack alexander and the wonderful article he wrote because see coming to aa changed his whole opinion and his whole mind on the thing he saw that we really didn't have an angle in this thing, that we really were just one alcoholic trying to help another alcoholic with no thought of personal reward or gain. Alexander was later to serve Alcoholics Anonymous as one of our non-alcoholic trustees. We experienced a period of explosive growth and a lot of things happened during this period that we didn't have any traditions. We didn't have any rules or regulations that said drunks won't pay any attention to rules and regulations. We had some ideas, some ways that we did things but people were breaking them right and left. We're supposed to be anonymous. One of the first people to break anonymity was Bill Wilson. He thought that if some Cleveland baseball player named their catcher named Raleigh who was a bad drunk not only gotten sober but his anonymity gotten broken in the paper so Bill said, well, if Raleigh's anonymity will be broken, so can mine, and it'll help AA. And people started appearing in the paper. And for those next four or so, three or four years, a lot of craziness happened, a lot of craziness. Thank God for some of the conservatives, especially Bob and some of the others in Akron who said, you're going too fast. You know, slow down. This isn't a good idea. See, the group conscience still working, still working. and it worked because bill and others listened but in and here's how our traditions came about in about 1944 a a man named milton maxwell not an alcoholic but a great to become a great friend of alcoholics anonymous later one of our trustees wrote bill wilson a letter and said have you ever heard of the washingtonians bill had never heard of him and he told bill the same story i told you other uh a little earlier about how 100 years before some guys had found a way to stay sober for a while, but then they had collapsed because they got involved in everything in the world except what they knew how to do which was to help another drunk. So Bill started looking into it and in 1946 by that point we'd started a little monthly newspaper called The Grapevine. He started publishing a series of articles. Prior to publishing them he looked at the experience of AA over the previous decade. He looked at what hadn't worked, he looked at what had worked. He knew alcoholics would not go for rules, regulations or bylaws and at first he just called them 12 points to assure our future, for lack of a better name. If you'd like to read these articles there's a wonderful book that's published by The Grapevine It's called Language of the Heart. It's a collection of everything that Bill ever wrote and submitted to The Grapevine, and those series of articles that were published in 1946 on the Twelve Traditions are in this book. And it has some other wonderful articles and stories in it, and I really recommend this book. It's available through The Gravevine. It's $10, $11. I don't know. It's not expensive. Wonderful book. These traditions were originally written in the long form, which I have passed out to you and which, as I've said, now y'all all agree to keep the secret now that it's on page 565 of the big book. You know, that it is in there. It is in their. when Bill published these articles on the traditions everybody didn't just rush out and say oh Bill this is so wonderful thank you so much for contributing these traditions to our fellowship no they said Bill what are you talking about we don't like rules and regulations we don' t like to hear about all this as a great story Bill they were flying him into Amarillo Texas to speak at the top of Texas conference in about 1947 And as he got off the plane, Wino Joe and a couple of the others met him coming off the plane and said, now Bill, tell us about your hot flash in the hospital. Tell us about where you hid the bottles, but for God's sake, Bill, don't tell us about these traditions, you know? We don't want to hear about this stuff. And there was a lot of resistance, a lotof resistance, but Bill kept plugging away at it because they made sense. A lot of people started to take a look at them and say, these made sense, and our first International Conference was called in 1950 in Cleveland, Ohio. The reason it met in Cleveland is that the people in Akron were virtually not speaking to the people of New York and said if you hold the International Conference in New York, we're not coming. And the people at New York were saying, if you hold it in Akran, we are not coming So that's how well they were getting along at the time so they decided to hold it in Cleveland in 1950 and at that conference at the end of it And the 12 traditions in the short form were read from the podium, and they had a series of six people, five men and a woman, who each took two of the traditions and talked about them to the assembled members of Alcoholics Anonymous at our first international convention. And then they were adopted unanimously at that time in 1950. Bill was rather clever in the way he asked for the unanimous vote. He just asked for anybody who was against him to stand up, and nobody seemed to. So he said, well, let's all stand up and unanimously adopt them, you know, and it just kind of sailed right on through, ever the promoter. But so that's kind of how the traditions came to be. And like I say, they are a reflection of our experience. I've talked to some great extent about tradition number one and tradition number two. But tradition number three is a misunderstood tradition, you know, especially the day where we get a lot of social climbers come in here who are not alcoholics. And I'm not talking about the people who may have another problem in addition to alcohol. But we get grasses. We get a whole lot of people that come in and say, well, I can come to an AA meeting if I have a desire to stop drinking. Well, that's what the decision says in the shark form. but it's a desire to stop drinking from drinking not from just never drinking at all the third tradition in the long form makes this real clear our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism we're one trick pony that's all we do is alcoholism hence we may refuse none who wish to recover none who wish to recovery you know how this tradition came about the genesis of this tradition well of course early on we were taking anybody to come in about 1940 on a on a uh bill was at this point his house had been repossessed he was living in the first day clubhouse there on i think it's 24th street in new york he and lois had a little room upstairs a little tiny cubicle probably not much bigger than that little small center room over there it wasn't a big clubhouse and um you know drunks would come by and they had a meeting going and whatever, and there was a cop on the beat who had heard about that they fixed drunks. And this cop had a particularly bad problem with a certain black transvestite who kept appearing drunk on the street, who was also a Broadway actor but was just out on the streets dressed in women's clothes and would just get drunk, drunk, drunk, who was aussi a drug addict. so he got tired of arresting him is what the cop did and he'd heard about these people that fix alcoholics so he takes this black transvestite actor in drag and pushes open the front door of the 24th street clubhouse and throws him in and says i'm tired of arrested this guy y'all fix him well the guys downstairs are going what are we going to do what are you going to they start talking to the guy and, you know, what are we going to do? What are we gonna do? Do you drink? Obviously he drank. He was drunk. He was drunk but the guy starts telling him his story. They find out he also used heroin. He he was obviously not a woman and he had on a blonde wig and makeup and all this kind of stuff. They said, what are we goin' to do here? Finally they went up and got Bill. I said, Bill come down here. We got a doozy downstairs right now. And Bill went down and says, does he want to stop drinking? Does he want to start drinking? Is he going to get sober? And they said, yeah, more than anything in the world. Bill remembers something Dr. Bob had said. He said, what would the master do? What would the Master do? They talked about it and they said well let's bring him on in and see if we can sober him up. That guy sobered up never to drink again until the day that he died. and he left his drag clothes and he'd left his heroin and then left everything at the door when he came into meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and to the best of my understanding he died a wonderful member of Alcoholic Anonymous so that's how we got our first black member and our first junkie and our transvestite right from the start but that set the precedent that the main thing that Bill asked him, he says, does this guy want to get sober? Does he want to get sober? He said, yeah, he wants to get sober more than anything in the world. Bring him on in. Bring them on in. Now, believe me, that message was not well received at a lot of other groups. They wanted to set rules and regulations. Some groups wouldn't allow women in there. Some wouldn't allowed Catholics. Some wouldn' t allow Protestants. They had rules. By the time Bill was writing the tradition, he looked up at all the rules and he says, my God. He's talking to Bob on the telephone. He says, if all these rules were in place from all these AA groups that I've gathered, neither you nor I could become members of Alcoholics Anonymous. We just wouldn't make it. The famous story in our 12 Steps and 12 Traditions book about the group up in Connecticut that had adopted 61 rules of membership and they were going to have a hospital on the top floor and a bank for alcoholics on the second floor and a and a restaurant and a social club and all this kind of stuff the whole thing just collapsed and everybody got drunk and then they got sober again and the guy wrote to bill and he said bill we've abolished the first 61 rules but i'm enclosing rule 62. and when bill opened the little card it said rule 62 don't take yourself so damn serious and so perhaps today we simply have but they had the right to be wrong and that was the independence is reflected in in our fourth tradition, we established that no one can be excluded from an AA meeting no matter what their sex, no matter their previous habits, no matter the manner of dress, no matter if they're even drinking. Now, if they are drinking and disturbing the meeting, you know, recently at my home group we had one guy, we'd had him drinking at two previous meetings. It's okay. But he came in drinking and throwing chairs one night so we threw him out first tradition we've got to have a meeting first he's back now got a chip got a tip but we gave him the old heave-ho boom you know and fortunately we got a couple of pretty big guys in the group you know i was just back there cheering you know you guys get him you know but uh some of those things uh you know one of the things that concerns me when we get into another tradition is is group setting special requirements for membership you know like we're an all-women group. Not in Alcoholics Anonymous, you're not. You may have a women's meeting. If a man shows up there and needs a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous you're not an AA group unless that person is admitted. If a men's group has a meeting now I'm not saying listen we hold a men'S meeting every Thursday night just an informal meeting. But I'm talking about a group excluding and if a woman showed up and that was the only meeting that that woman could get to then we have to admit that person otherwise we're not Alcoholics Anonymous we may be something else but we're NOT AlcoholicsAnonymous now I personally think like myself the guys I sponsor together with some guys from down the river in Port Sulphur we held a whole men's retreat for a weekend you know it was good for men to get together it's good for women to get zusammen but we can't exclude anybody who is desperate and shows up at our door ever ever and call ourselves a group of alcoholics anonymous because the third tradition goes on to say that nor AA membership ever depend upon money or conformity any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an AA group provided that as a group they have no other affiliation that's why we don't you know this is the 321 group but it meets in a clubhouse we'll get to that later but we're not affiliated with the Lions Club next door we just happen to be next door to the Lions Club this group to the best of my knowledge the 3-2-1 group is affiliated with no other entity not the Lions Club not anything else it's just a group of Alcoholics Anonymous a group of AA day. The third tradition makes it very, very clear in the long form that our recovery is from alcoholism. Those who come in and say, well, I've got a desire to stop drinking suggest they go to an Al-Anon meeting or something else. You know, all this thing about it's all one big disease and we'll get to that in the fifth tradition was started by a treatment center with only one van. You know they only had one place to drop everybody off. Now does this mean that people who have Other secondary problems can't come in here? Absolutely not. Most welcome to come, but we only do one thing here. We recover from alcoholism. We'll get in more on that on Tradition 5. We can't refuse anybody who comes in who has an alcoholic problem, no matter what their other problem. Witness the black transvestite heroin addict who appeared upon our doorstep in 1940. Just as good an example as I can think of. but the 3-2-1 group says tradition four and each of your own groups with respect to its own affair says the long form of the tradition because the short form talks about autonomy which is a good reason to give the traditions to some newcomer because they always mispronounce it you can giggle a little bit all autonomy means is that the group is independent it is self-governing is self-governing. But autonomous is different from sovereign. The United States is a sovereign nation. It runs all of its own affairs. An autonomous group would be like the state of Mississippi. You know, it runs its own affairs but it also has to consider the affairs of other states and the federal government. That's the difference. It says with respect to its own affairs each AA group should be responsible to no other authority than its own conscience. But when its plans concern the welfare of neighboring groups also those groups ought to be consulted if you're having a an anniversary on a saturday night for example and you think well uh maybe the chip in group down the way is also planning to have an anniversary that time just a little comedy a little uh good neighborliness to consult with them say well maybe we could have the anniversary another night you could have it another night because our plans are going to affect you because we're going to going to be drawn from the same people. So we're independent. We can go ahead and have it that night if we want to, but it might affect you. So, we're going to consult with you. And it says a no group, regional committee, or individual should ever take action which might greatly affect AA as a whole without conferring with the trustees of the General Service Board. On such issues, our common welfare is paramount. Suppose this club decided that it It didn't want to meet in this room. It wanted to meet on a barge, and it's going to park that barge in the back bay. And since it's now a barged, it's gonna get a gambling license from the state of Mississippi. I mean, after all, it was hard to raise funds for a group. A few slots in there, couple of little deal of the blackjack, you know? Sounds like a good plan, doesn't it? I mean after all that's just, I didn't have eight people coming in. We're just gonna, now that starts to affect AA as a whole. in ways that are just so obvious. And at that point, the group's no longer being autonomous. It's self-will run riot. The group, a simpler example, and I've seen groups do this, going out and selling raffle tickets to the general public. You know, we don't do that in AA. That's outside solicitation of funds. If our group's gonna do that, we're independent, but we have to take it. it's just plain good manners that's why we have district meetings that's why we uh have area assemblies so all the groups can get together and and talk about what they're doing and seeing if what we're doing is affecting another group now this group's independent in the sense that in his own group conscious he can decide to have speaker meetings decide to have discussion meetings it can decide all the things that have to do with how it's going to carry the message of Alcoholics Anonymous you decide to have a party and have an A speaker at it or whatever wants to do until it starts to concern other groups tradition number five each Alcoholics Anonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity having but one primary purpose that of carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers I suppose that no other tradition is so under attack today and perhaps for the past decade as this fifth tradition it has a lot to do with what I was saying earlier AA was founded upon the principle that one alcoholic could reach another alcoholic the way that no other human being can and I'm sure that there's no one sitting in this room with any degree of sobriety at all, whether it's six days or 16 years or 26 years, who isn't here because some other alcoholic reached them at depth, penetrated the feelings of isolation and difference and persuaded them to take some actions they didn't believe in. No? We can only reach each other I know there are those who say oh it's all one big disease again it's not it's just our experience amply confirms that the AA has loaned its 12 steps to hundreds of other organizations we freely loaned the organization almost all of them have to change some word in the first step as to what they consider themselves powerless with respect to Narcotics Anonymous is very and cocaine anonymous very insistent that their great tin strike in their great success was due to the fact that they identify with people who consider themselves powerless over their addiction once a year I tape an overeaters anonymous retreat just held right here on the Gulf Coast wonderful event wonderful event they use our big book, and they just verbally substitute food for alcohol and compulsive overeating for alcoholism. And their first step reads, we admitted we were powerless over compulsive overeating, that our lives have become unmanageable. By so admitting, they have a level of identification, one with the other. The person who is addicted to cocaine in Cocaine Anonymous has the identification of one cocaine addict talking to another. And there are many, many other groups. There's Prostitutes Anonymous. I was reading in the Akron newsletter from a few years back, there was even one group that was trying to register up there called Masturbators Anonymous, and I thought to myself, now that's a real self-help group. You know? But with each of these, The engine that drives the rest of their steps is that initial identification or depth. We only handle alcoholism. That's the only thing that we can possibly do anything about in here. If somebody is an alcoholic, we don't care what your other problems are. What we suggest is we can only help your alcoholism." You come in here, you take the 12 steps of AA, you bring your alcoholismo in here and one or two things are going to happen to your other problems either they're going to turn out not to be much of a problem at all and disappear or that problem is going to persist in which case perhaps you should seek another fellowship which more directly addresses your problem which more directly addresses it and first tradition common welfare if you truly think you have two problems don't separate yourself from us by identifying yourself as I'm an alcoholic and an addict I'm a alcoholic and a compulsive overreacted I'm in alcohol and emotionally imbalanced well of course you are I met one that isn't yet respect alcoholics anonymous don't seperate yourself from us call yourself an alcoholic come here for your recovery there and then should your problem persist go to cocaine anonymous Charlie sponsors guys that go to CA I sponsor guys that go to CA at an AA meeting they're alcoholics at a CA meeting they respect cocaine anonymous enough to not be an and to anything there because when you tell me when I hear you say I'm an addict and an alcoholic or I'm an alcoholic and an addict you have immediately erected a wall between me and you you're immediately saying with it just said and this is such a typical alcoholic attitude i'm different i'm special there's something there's something else wrong with me and i i'm not preaching i did this when i was two years sober i've been hearing a lot about alcoholic in an attic i will trade drug stories with virtually anybody in this room except for using intravenous needles if you were the kind of guy i was went to doctors like i went to they'd all put you on it then you had people that wanted to get you on all these different street drugs, all in an attempt to control and enjoy my drinking I can see now. But I'll tell you drug stories with anybody, and so two years sober, I was hearing all this coming out of the treatment centers, I'm an alcoholic and an addict, so I started identifying myself with that. And it got a long time clean and NA says, you better come to some of our NA meetings. Three months in the fall of 1982, I went to NA, several meetings a week. I realized at the end of those three months that I was not powerless over any addiction. I felt like a social drinker at an AA meeting. My solution to drugs was always, at some point or other, I'd say, man, this stuff's eating me up. I better stop doing it. And I would. I wasn't powerless over it. They were. I came out of there with an absolute knowledge of the truth about myself that I use drugs alcoholically. Like it's described on page 21 and 22 of the big book Alcoholics Anonymous. In an attempt to control and enjoy my drinking and in an attempt to function, attempt to function. So I came out of there not only with the knowledge about myself but I came Out of There with a love and respect for the program of Narcotics Anonymous and later on as it came to being the program Of Cocaine Anonymous a great respect for what these people must be going through who are truly powerless over their addiction and who have found a way to recovery through the steps we have loaned to them and I might mention that those particular groups are also adhered to our twelve traditions many of the so-called 12 step groups that have been founded do not adhere to our traditions but those are two specific ones that do overeaters anonymous does of course our sister fellowship alanon does does also that's a close very special sort of different relationship because we're both powerless over alcohol we got sick doing it they got sick watching us do it you know, it's virtually the same thing. Just as the Washingtonians disappeared from trying to treat everything, we must not disappear by assuming that when we get all things to all people, we're able to do one thing. In fact, you might ask yourself, why have all the treatment centers disappeared? I mean, I'm not giving you any news that most of them have closed. Surely anybody in here who's been sober for a little while has noticed the fact there used to be one on every street corner that you couldn't turn your TV on without seeing an ad for the treatment centers. I suggest to you one of the reasons that they closed was they tried to be all things to all people. They said, we don't care what your problem is. You come in here and we're going to fix you. We're going to fix you. And it didn't work, and eventually the insurance companies cut on, and they've cut off all the funding. I know from someone who works in the field that something like 70 of the, or 80 of the treatment centers in Louisiana have closed over the past year or so. You know, there are virtually none open. Does that mean there are bad treatment centers? Uh-uh. There's some very, very good ones. Those that will sober you up and introduce Alcoholics Anonymous. We detox you, we need to detox places not any treatment center get to that in just a minute but I suggest to you that the secret of Alcoholics anonymous is that we live in the solution we don't work on the problem and we identify ourselves as anything other than alcoholic we're working on the problem. We're not living in the solution. Tradition six addresses the great drives of the alcoholic. I heard a woman alcoholic say that her problem was PMS, power money and sex. I heard that talk on a tape on the way up to Alabama and I just laughed. I thought that's it. That's it! Tradition 6 addresses that. Problems of money, property, and authority. The old alcoholic drive to be number one, to get more, to have more, and to run other folks lives may easily divert us from our primary spiritual aim. What's that aim? Just to carry the message to other alcoholics. And here where we're getting into this relationship of this group to this meeting place. We think that any considerable property of genuine use to may be separately incorporated and managed. Thus, and this is the reason, dividing the material from the spiritual. We found it necessary to divide the material for the spiritual We say, okay, the organization which rents this building owns all the material stuff. I just rinse from them. So we don't have any material stuff that we have to worry about so we can freely discard it. I mean, I think the only thing Strange Camels Group owns is we have some literature which we purchased and we sell at our own cost. We have an easel that we set our bulletin board on. And I think that's about it. That's about It. That's not considerable property. That's trivial property. When you're talking about considerable property, you're not talking about real estate, furniture, bank accounts because you have fights over those things. right? Everybody wants to run them and manage them. An aid group as such should never go into business, secondary aids to aid such as clubs or hospitals which require property administration ought to be incorporated and so set apart that if necessary they can be freely discarded by the groups at any time the 3-2-1 group could discard the corporation or entity which owns this or releases this building and the 321 group would continue to survive. Hence such facilities ought not to use the AA name. I know sometimes casually we call it the AA club but the name of the club should never be have the words AA in it. We can use a lot of the shorthands Rebo's Club, Alano Club, Little Yellow House. We use There's a lot of different names for things, but we don't put AA in there because we have to discard that building. We don't want to have to discard AA along with it. Well, an AA group may cooperate with anyone. Such cooperation never ought to go so far as affiliation or endorsement actually implied and any group can bind itself to no one. We don't bind ourselves to churches, to treatment centers, to I mean we cooperate with people. We have an open meeting on Friday night about once a month we got a bunch of student nurses that come in there because they want to observe an open AA meeting and they're certainly welcome. We welcome them. We're glad there. We'll cooperate with them. They're not allowed to share at the meeting because they're not AA members but they come there and we're glad to see them that's why we have open meetings so the general public come and find out about alcoholics and us we don't affiliate or bind ourselves with them money property and authority were the things that i sought all my life in my drinking and i got a great deal of property money and authority and it was never enough and i lost the property money in authority and that wasn't enough the solution is spiritual in my own life in my A-life I have to place first things first and there's a great deal of freedom in letting go of these things we do things totally differently seven self-support imagine a bunch of alcoholics supporting themselves were any of y'all self-suporting truly self-supporting when you got here uh-uh There were notes floating at the bank and credit card balances and balance checks and go back and live with Mama and let her take care of you, and God knows what else. But we learned early on, and John D. Rockefeller helped teach us this, and then we just simply learned that this worked. They groups themselves ought to be fully supported by the voluntary contributions of their own members. We think that each group should soon achieve this ideal, that any public solicitation of funds used the name Alcoholics Anonymous is highly dangerous. We don't go out and shake cans on street corners or indeed even accept money. When I was sober about five months, I was so impressed. The Friday meeting at the Texaco building was having an argument about how to pay Texaco rent. Texaco wanted to give them the room to meet in. I was saying to myself, y'all are crazy. Why not take it? They're giving it to you. and all these people were arguing about no we got to find some way to uh to pay them rent and we've talked to them and they won't accept any money because they said screw up their accounting system if we give them five dollars a week they don't know where to fit it in finally somebody came up with that he said well why don't we bring up this is a coffee room after all we're meeting in we use about a pound of coffee a week why don'T we come up here and donate an extra pound of coffee a week to their coffee room. Then we're paying them some rent and they don't ever have to put it on their books. Sent somebody down to talk to the controller in New Orleans? He said, well yeah, you can do that because it's not on the books. And to this day the Lunch Bunch group still meets Friday, although it's moved to the Amoco building now, but still does the same thing. Leaves a pound of coffee each week. They're self-supporting. My own group had a 4th July picnic over here. A number of y'all attended. We had a wonderful talk from Marsha over there at our picnic. The St. Tammany Levee Board said and is now the parish of St. Tammony, said you can have this free of charge just like the Boy Scouts free of charges. No we've got to be self-supporting. They said well we don't have any provision for taking contributions. I said well I'll tell you what we'll do. The place really needs cleaning up. A lot of trash has accumulated. What if we do this? Suppose we pressure wash the pavilion and we mow the three or four acres of ground and we haul all that trash that's accumulated behind it. Would that be, they said, well, it's not expected, but go ahead and do it. Well, the day before, a number of us got together out there, including Jim, our newcomer sitting back there who's got a little over 30 days sobriety, and several others. We hauled away about three pickup trucks loads worth of trash. we sprayed the thing down and we all did it anonymously i mean we our name is not going to be in the papers or anything but we left there feeling like we were self-supporting it was our place now we'd earned that place it's just like those of you who stay and help clean up this room are self-supporting through your own contribution isn't just the buck in the basket are you helping clean up after the meeting are you helping set up before the meeting that's being self-reporting that's being self-supporting, and AA does that. And when I do that, I feel good inside. When I left there on Friday, I was tired and I was hot. You remember how hot it was here a couple of weeks ago? But I felt good inside I looked around at these other men of Alcoholics Anonymous and thought, these are brothers. It's been a good day with them. We've done a good thing here. the parish government absolutely couldn't believe what we had done to that place they'd never had anybody do something like that before but it'll never make the papers and we don't want it to the acceptance of large gifts from any source or contributions carrying any obligation whatsoever is unwise a part of our freedom is that you can't give an individual can only give $1,000 to AA it was decided early on a woman had left $10,000 in their will and that was about 1946 and they needed it they needed at the time but the good is the enemy of the best it was suggested and they talked and the group conscience came up with the idea amongst our trustees at the times that we must return this otherwise people will be owning us through these wills instead of us being self-supporting we're going to start depending upon bequests and wills. And so AA routinely returns all bequets and will even to this present day. It says, Then too we view with much concern those AA treasuries which continue beyond prudent reserves to accumulate funds for no stated AA purpose. Experiences warn us that nothing can surely destroy our spiritual heritage as futile disputes over money, property, and authority. And I've seen AA groups that do this. Our group keeps a prudent reserve of $100 we give away every cent otherwise that we have not paid either for coffee, for rent, for literature. After our 4th of July picnic we totaled everything up through our raffle and through the other activities would raise four hundred forty-one dollars. We divided it into thirds sent one third to GSO, one third of the area assembly, and one third a central office and we do that immediately afterwards. There aren't a half a dozen groups in the state right now that contribute more to the area assembly than we do, and yet we're a small group. We publish a treasurer's report once a month. We tell the folks where their money is going. We say this money is all going to AA, and we constantly tell them where the money's going, where the money's gone, and the more we tell them where it's going, the more they contribute. The more they contribute. So we don't have to have any futile disputes over property, money, and authority because we have no property. We give away all our money and we won't let each other have any authority. We found early on, the first example was Bill Wilson's having to turn that job down at Towns Hospital that AA itself should remain forever non-professional. We define professionalism as the occupation of counseling alcoholics for fees or higher. Now, someone working for a treatment center does not violate this tradition as long as they don't themselves during their employment time of work hold an AA meeting or attempt to hold it. then they're violating the tradition. But otherwise, if they simply work for a treatment center, fine. There's lots and lots of good AAs who work in the field of alcoholism. But it's important to have this definition because there are a lot of people that misunderstand this and they say, oh, the secretary that works at central office is a professional, you know, violates his tradition. Wrong. The long form specifically states we may employ alcoholics where they're going to perform those services where we might have to engage non-alcoholics. We might have the secretary from anywhere. It does not violate their tradition. It does NOT violate their traditions. And actually, AA for an organization that has well over a million people in this country probably has the fewest paid employees of any conceivable organization. You know, a few central office secretaries scattered here and there, one in Gulfport, one in New Orleans. I think there's one in Shreveport. You really have to look far and wide to find employees of AA. And AA occasionally hires other people to perform services, such as distributing the literature. Well, that's actually done by AA, but we hire UPS to carry it. Each AA group needs the least possible organization. Rotating leadership is the best. What we found in AA is that power is one of our chief character defects. We love to hang on to things. We just love to hang on to things. I mean, why somebody wants to hang on to a title in AA is absolutely beyond me. Does that mean that you're the head of the six? You know, I mean but there are certain people that just won't let go of chairman or some other office because by God they may all be insane but I'm going to be the insane of the insane. I'm going to run them, you know. I what we found in a we have made a virtue out of rotation and with some of our offices we have even established a precedent that once you have held this position like once Charlie B has been served as delegate once Gary has served as delegate. They can never be delegate again. Because the virtue here in rotation is that somebody else needs to come in and have that experience. Nobody owns AA. Nobody has the right to hang on to AA offices, and we've found that as we rotate, whether it's secretary of the group or treasurer or chairman or coffee chairman or cleanup man, doesn't matter, gives everybody a chance to participate and resentments don't build. The additional thing, now that's looking at the negative side, from the positive side, AA has done something that no other political organization in the country has done. We have created a huge class of elder statesmen who are sometimes bleeding deacons but most the time elder statesman of past chairman and past delegates and past GSRs and past DCMs who had that experience and can pass it on to those who have rotated into these positions. It says all such representatives talking about at whatever level are to be guided in the spirit of service for true leaders in AA are but trusted servants of the whole. See, in the long form that's where the trusted servants came in in the night tradition. Trusted servants of the hope they derive no real authority from their titles. I mean, if you're chairman of this group, try to go up and tell somebody not to park in a certain spot out there or something. I'm chairman of the group. There ain't no AA police. Sometimes I think they secretly think inside there ought to be. But there's just no AA police. You may have a title but you don't get any authority from it. You're strictly a trusted servant of the home. it says universal respect is the key to their usefulness if you're doing the deal and they get respect and you become useful if you not doing the deal nobody respects you doesn't matter what kind of office title you got anyway nobody's gonna pay any attention to because this is all volunteer you know it's like sponsorship you know people say I'm a dictator sponsor any guy sponsor can come up to me and say screw you and turn around leave you know and So there's no dictatorship involved there. Anybody's free to get up and walk out the door right now. Walk back in whenever they want to walk in. We can't tell them to not go. We can'T tell them TO NOT come back. It'S all voluntary. Number 10, no AA group or member should ever in such a way as to implicate AA express any opinion on outside controversial issues, particularly those of politics, alcohol reform, or sectarian religions. The Alcoholics Anonymous group opposed no one concerning such matters. They can express no views whatsoever. You know, I related to you earlier about having no opinion on outside issues. We didn't have the opinion on drinking. That's an outside issue. It's drinking, religion, politics. We don't get involved with any political parties. Something today that's absolutely tearing some groups of AA apart is the smoking issue. You hear people just getting absolutely vehement on both sides and people saying, well, this is a question of health. I wonder how many of those people ever left a smoky bar and saying, no bartender, I don't think I'll take any more. It's a little too smoky in here for me. I don' t know the first one that ever did, but it happened at area assembly in Montgomery, Alabama another vicious skirmish up there of those who want to bring other issues into Alcoholics Anonymous. Now this has nothing to do with the fact that if we go into a building which is non-smoking the church says don't smoke here. That's not an opinion or an outside issue, that's simply conforming with the rules of the church. The college says don't smoking. But Tradition 10 very much states that AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, as a whole or group level has no opinion at all on controversial issues and by God, that is a controversial issue. Alcoholics groups oppose no one. Concerning such matters, they can express no views whatsoever. Eleven. Our relationship and incidentally this is one of the things that's held us in good stead throughout 60 some odd years of history. Unlike the Washingtonians we didn't get involved in politics. We didn't get involved pro or anti-slavery. We didn'T get involved in temperance, whether everybody should drink or not drink. We DIDN'T get involved in in religion, which religions people should go to. We've avoided all of that. As a result, there's almost no public criticism of AA whatsoever. Eleven, our relations with the general public should be characterized by... Well, hey, before I leave that on the spot, let me show you one example of how to stir things up. One thing to put up a sign saying, no smoking. It's quite another one, it's quite another one and expressing opinion on outside issue to put up signs like this which I found in one clubhouse which says our hearts and lungs thank you for not smoking. For God's sakes if you're going to do something about smoking just simply say no smoking or smoking. But the minute you start saying think of our hearts, you're talking about an outside issue you're talking about smoke free as an outside issue not smoking is simply a fact smoking is simply a fact consider that if there's anything tearing apart AA today it's a controversy because I've seen a lot of smug people press issues through and then never show up again at the group our relations with the general public should be characterized by personal anonymity and an empty means without name it means that without the use of the name does that mean I shouldn't identify myself by my full name in a day a meeting no by no means I'm breaking the tradition on anonymity unless I let you fellow recovering alcoholics know who I am so that you can get in touch with me if you need to that's not at the public level on the other hand believe me and i had to do this at first myself i have absolutely no quarrel nor does a with any alcoholic who wishes to come in here and be identified by their first name only we must offer them a place of safety and of haven because you offered it to me i needed that the first month or two some needed much longer some needed what's wrong some because of their public position need it on a regular basis otherwise they'll be just harassed death sometimes the press takes it uh takes it away from them i'll show you an example a guy who tried to uh i'll call him john l he used to be on on night court here the tv focus magazine they've got him on here on the top the john l i won't say his last name show clean sober and funny and they identify him in here as a member of alcoholics anonymous and yet i happen to know that he did not want to be so identified that he has Charlie B's been to a meeting with him where he asked people not to identify him by any other way other than John L so that's the press breaking his anonymity not him when we see somebody famous at a meeting or somebody that's well known we owe them the respect of treating them just as John, Fred, Sue or Jane and not as the celebrity we see in politics or on TV. The tradition goes on to state we think AA ought to avoid sensational advertising. Our names and pictures of AA members ought not to be broadcast, filmed, or publicly printed. I mean, look what happened with... Well, you see it all the time, the TV evangelists, you know, and then they get in trouble and then all the bad repute comes about their name and they've got all these problems. Same thing happened to the Washingtonians when their two original main members and big speakers got drunk, the whole movement collapsed. We found that the principle of anonymity is necessary to protect AA and also to protect the individual. I'll show you another example. Remember Miami Vice? Remember a guy named Don who was on there, trumpeting the fact that he was sober? Whatever. Well, the problem with that is that somewhere down the line then comes a headline that says, after months of boozing and partying, Don checks into rehab. But it may be too late. Those who break their anonymity seem to get drunk. those who do not those who do not and I'll give you an example because he's dead now was the academy award winning actor James Mason never broke his anonymity for many many years of sobriety and he's death now so I can mention his name he protected his anonymality and he died sober respected both in his profession and in Alcoholics Anonymous a good man a good man because what after all is our problem but this enormous ego that we have which A needs to deflate on a constant basis and we start putting our names in the papers we hurt AA and we hurt ourselves we fall victim to the idea well if my name is in the paper I'm going to attract a lot of people to AA well it does until you get drunk and then it runs them off then it turns them off our public relations should be guided by the principle attraction rather than promotion there's never need to praise ourselves we feel it better to let our friends recommend us what a procedure i represent an advertising agency i'm very familiar with advertising and public relations my father was in that field also i know a lot about that and this is a whole new way different way to run things now does that mean we're a secret society absolutely not at the new orleans airport aa in new orlands has a big welcoming sign with our 12-step number just as you're coming into it. But does it mean that we don't publish our names and the identities of our members on a public level? Yes, it means that. We're not a secret society but we are an anonymous anonymous society. And it's been one of the great secrets of our fantastic success. the world at large says get your name in the paper for God's sakes get on TV get a book published about you hire a press agent and A we say no no we'll carry the message but we'll do so anonymously and we keep growing and we keeps growing to the point now where two two and a half million people worldwide approaching a hundred thousand groups worldwide the growth is constant we're mushrooming into other sections of the world at the 1995 international convention in San Diego we had what 126 countries represented Charlie 26 countries I point out to you that that was more countries carried their flags into the stadium in San D.A. San Diego each country designates a representative to carry the flag of its country into the international convention I was president at the one in Seattle in 1990 is truly a stirring experience. So 126 countries had representatives of Alcoholics Anonymous there, members of Alcoholic Anonymous. I point out to you that that was significantly more than it participated in the Olympics the following summer. You know, we're in Russia now. The 1990 convention when the Russian flag came in, I've never heard such cheering. You know? It's just like there was a feeling of that the whole world is coming together there. That the principles we have started have perhaps brought down not just the intangible walls that seem to separate us from human beings, but that the principles we have launched have perhaps brought on other walls. But that will only work if we stick to our own business and let our friends recommend us, says a tradition. We just never need to praise ourselves. And our friends do recommend us. They think highly of us. AA is almost universally respected. Occasionally you'll see an article in the newspaper or one of the news magazines attempting to attack AA and AA has a wonderful response to it. We ignore it.We just absolutely ignore it they can't stand being ignored but it's uh it's like the 10th tradition i remember i had an ex-mother-in-law who was a drunk this was at a previous sobriety marriage my god she'd get drunk started want to argue about the democratic party or or uh the state of the economy or something and i just look at her and say gene i have no opinion on outside issues what do you mean you don't have an opinion outside issues she'd come after me and i'd say gene have no opinion on outsiders well somebody can't get into a fight with you when you have no opinion on outside issues they just can't do it he has no opinion on outside issues we don't get into a fight with those people we just simply suggest that if they think they've got something called rational recovery or one of those other things at work well good luck to you go for it we hope you're successful i haven't noticed any great successes in that direction and finally to wrap it up we of Alcoholics Anonymous believe that the principle of anonymity has an immense spiritual significance and we've been talking about that a little bit it's the idea of the same that Ebby brought to Bill on that cold dark drunk November day in 1934 he says we have to take this thing that we found and we have to give it away and we have to give it away with no thought of reward with no hope of gain from it we simply have to give it a way and that's the principle of anonymity of doing something for someone else without expecting to get paid for it either in money or recognition and I submit to you that any group of Alcoholics Anonymous does that on a daily basis certainly the successful groups do it more than others and you can tell how they're successful because they attract people people come in and people stay sober and people have fun and when you go to their meetings they're laughing and smiling and happy and their eyes are open and they're participants in life at last those great invisible walls of alcoholism and of loneliness those crystal walls that you can see through and you Can't quite describe to other people but you know we're there that separate me from you and me from God crumble under the power of God through the 12 steps And once having crumbled the traditions allow me to then live with you, an erratic alcoholic living with other alcoholics in reasonable harmony, getting along, getting alone. and then to feel happily and usefully whole as it's suggested in the preface to the twelve and twelve I have to be of service and we have some differing concepts of service which I don't have time to go into tonight but they're real simple things you know we run our service differently we say things like one of the concepts is participation is the key to harmony you want harmony go participate don't bitch about it unless you showed up participating once you participate then usually you don't have any beef with it anymore that's just an example we do things very very very differently in alcoholics we don't run it like any other government in the world we don'T run it LIKE any civic organization we DON'T run IT LIKE ANY commercial organization you know we have to do things differently the day after Bill's spiritual experience Ebby Thatcher brought him a book and this book was called Varieties of Religious Experience it's the only book mentioned in the big book it's mentioned about page 26 or 27 it's a book by the founder of science and psychology William James a great 19th century philosopher psychologist, writer in which he delineated the various spiritual experiences that he could observe that men and women had experienced over time, like St. Paul on the road to Damascus or St. Teresa of Avila, just all these different things. And he said out of each of these came people trying to get this same spiritual experience that St. Theresa had had. So they started a religious order. And Paul had all these followers and they started branches of the Christian church. And John Wesley had one and started Methodism and people wanted to follow him so they started doing churches like that. And he said, well, what happens to all these things? He says the followers can't produce the spiritual experience because they get tied up and I'll show you the book right here. This book is still available in any B. Dalton or Walden books. It was published in 1901 and it's still available today. It's a tough book but it's a good book to read. And he says what happened to all of these things all of this spiritual movements is that their followers got tied up in questions of money, property and authority and that eventually led to their downfall although some continue on but with a lot of problems Bill read this book and I think Bob read thisbook and many of the early founders read thisbook and Ithinkthatprinciplestuckwithin that we have to be different we havetobedifferent we don't get involved in public controversy we don' sue people Well, we did once. We don't take any contributions from outside sources. Well,we did once." There's still some problems in there and it requires vigilance on the part of our GSRs who go to area assembly. You know,there's a big question right now because San Diego contributed $250,000 to AA, part of the convention funds, and Minneapolis is getting ready to contribute. And some of us see this as a contribution from outside sources. Others of us say, oh, that's just a normal thing for a convention. So you see, it requires continuing vigilance. I'm not telling you that everything is 100% all right. I'm just saying that for an organization 63 years ago, we took the spiritual experience of Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith and found a way by applying certain actions, certain spiritual actions to recreate this spiritual awakening in tens of thousands and now millions of drunks those who never survived before all of us are dead men and women but for Alcoholics Anonymous and yet we live today and we thrive we're here in harmony and a part of the reason that we still survive today 63 years down the road is that we have found a way to live together where problems of money, property and authority power and prestige control of others are able to be put aside most of the time so that we can feel happily and usefully whole and that's why the principle of anonymity is an immense spiritual experience it reminds us we are to place principles before personalities and what are those principles I submit to you each one of those steps is a principle now sometimes you can ditch it down and say well the principle of the first step is honesty well maybe it is but the principle of the third step is that we are powerless over alcohol and our lives will become unmanageable that in itself is a principal you know we can always just read the black print and leave the white print to those who want to talk about it, those who wish to read between the lines. But those are principles to live by. Our twelve traditions are principles to liveby. Our concepts of service are principles to livebye. For a person who never had any principles in his life worth living by before, I have principles to live bye. That we are to actually practice a genuine humility and the humility is knowing that I'm just simply one AA member but I am part as the tradition says part of a great whole and that my welfare follows real close after yours but our welfare comes first that I'll never had a place in life have a place today and why do we do all this it says so right here at the end of the twelfth tradition this is to the end that our great blessings may never spoil us and that we may forever live in thankful contemplation of him who presides over us all. That's why we do this. Thank you for listening to me. You've been a wonderful audience. I hope I've shared something that will help you and if any of you have any questions or wish to make any comments, No. Thank you. Thank you for coming over and taking your time and sharing your experience with us. I know I got a lot out of it, and I'm sure others did. Does anybody have any announcements for the good of AA? If not, we'll close with the Lord's Prayer. Whose father? Our Father, who art in heaven. I ought to be in thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen. Keep me coming back in worship of your word. Yeah.