The Symptom of Early Alcoholism She Warns Young People About – 1965 – Marty M.

in Arkansas. And I've always remembered that session in 1953, the great pleasure I had out of it and the great amount that I received from the other speakers just as I have this time. When I came in Friday night and yesterday as I was circulating and attending the sessions, I found there were a considerable number of people here whom I already knew, whom I had met before when I was here and whom I have met at other AA meetings in other parts of this general area. But I also found there were a great many people I didn't know, a great many people whom I met for the first time and some of you whom I have not yet met. And so it seemed to me that I ought to hew to the regular line and give you just a little bit of my qualifications for being here. I don't want any misunderstanding about it. I have earned the right to stand here. As a matter of fact, when I first learned of AA, which was in early 1939, I had come to the end of my road. I had been looking for help of some sort for five long years. But back in the 1930s, the word alcoholism was not in use. I had the vaguest idea of what it was that had gone wrong. I couldn't understand why someone who had started out along with her friends and become an unusually good drinker—for in my early drinking days, I carried away all the honors. I could drink more than anybody else, and I'd been in AA several years before it dawned on me that if I gained that reputation of being able to drink more than anybody why I must have been drinking more than anybody else. It didn't occur to me at the time. And when I was growing up, Prohibition being still in force and drinking having become the great American activity. This was something to be very proud of. People looked with respect on the person that could carry their liquor well. As a matter of fact, people boasted about it. And when I was still in my late teens, that boasting on the part of a couple of both of mine led to a series of bets because somebody else put up another candidate, also female, as being able to drink better than I could. And my particular followers couldn't accept that. And so during the course of an evening when this argument was going on, it ended with over $5,000 being put up in bets as to which of us could drink more and better. And naturally, something had to be done to let these debts be paid off. What was done was to set up a party. The other girl was a young married woman, and her in-laws were away in Europe, so there was a great big house available full of servants. And this is chosen as the scene of the contest, partly because that house had a good cellar. The arrangements were very carefully made. The supper was buffet and the servants were all sent away so there'd be a clear path for anything we might choose to do. And in the basement of that house there was the kitchen and a big living room for the servants, a lot of space. And it was down there that not only the food was set out but also the bar was set up. Now they wanted this to be a fair contest. And so three men were chosen to be the judges and they were not permitted to drink at all because their job was to keep a very close eye on the two of us and see that neither of us threw anything into the Potted Palms or otherwise cheated. The drink for the evening, at least for us, other people could drink what they pleased, but we were supposed to have exactly the same drink so there'd be no hanky-panky about that, and the drink chosen was something known as a French 75. I don't know if any of you have ever had a French 75, and I wouldn't suggest you're going back to drinking just in order to try it. This being prohibition, whiskey was not safe. At that particular period in Chicago where this happened—this is where I was born and grew up—everybody was making their own gin in the bathtub. There had been a very tragic event the year before, when some bad whiskey had got in and a number of people had lost their eyesight and some had been paralyzed. And so no one was trusting what they got from bootleggers, and they were getting pure alcohol and turning it into gin in the bathtub. So gin was the basis of this French 75, our own fine homemade gin, practically pure alcohol. And what made it into a highball was champagne. The drink was gin and champagne. And part of the reason why this affair was taking place in this particular house was that there was an ample supply of good champagne available. Our drinks were made by the three sober judges and given to us so that it was certain that each of us had one at the same time. Party began about six o'clock. Well we'll skip over a lot of it, it was a very good party. I'll give you just two episodes during the evening, it will give you some idea what kind of a party it was. was a dumb waiter in this house which was a great big old affair and somebody wanted to know how high up it went so I jumped into the dumb waiter and rode it up to the attic and down again and on one other occasion we had one of our members who was a very good pianist but we couldn't keep him at the piano because he liked the bar better and remember I told you the bar was set up in the basement and on 1 occasion I picked him up and carried him up plunked him down at the piano. That strength, I can assure you, came out of a bottle. It was not normal to me to be able to hoist a man up a flight of stairs. About three o'clock in the morning the party began to dwindle in numbers. There were quite a few bodies lying around the house. There were a number of people that had somehow by hook or crook managed to leave. But it wasn't until five in the morning that it had settled down to the two contestants and the three judges. And at that point, we five went out and had a big breakfast. It was a draw. She and I were still on our feet. We had had well over twenty of these drinks over the course of the evening each, and we were still going strong. And I've been saying this for a good many years and I still say it if she's still alive one of these days I'm gonna meet her at an event like this I don't think anyone but an alcoholic in the early stages as I was and as she clearly was could have consumed that amount of liquor and still been on their feet something that very few people realize, and that I often tell when I'm talking to groups of young people in colleges or high schools, is that this capacity of which new drinkers are so proud of being able to carry their liquor better than anybody else is actually one of the symptoms of early alcoholism. It is not anything of which anybody should be proud rather it should frighten them a bit and make them want to look into what the other symptoms are that are either ahead of them or that they're already showing that are going to lead them inevitably down the same path that most of us in this room have trodden at any rate that was one of the episodes in the early days of my drinking and if I had known then what I I know today, I would have known that I was a marked woman—that I was doomed for trouble. But it was a good many years after that before the signs began to come along that are visible to other people—the bad signs. I was twenty-seven before I had my first blackout and I didn't know what a blackout was. And I thought that I must have had some brain injury that had made me lose my memory for the events of the night before. And I went immediately to the doctor, well, I had had a concussion. I'd had a fall and hit my head, not drunk. I had missed my footing on a stair and gone down a half flight of stairs and hit my head on the newel post. He said, indeed, I had had a concussion and it would pass and I needn't worry about it. The trouble was it didn't pass. Instead of this period of amnesia being a unique occasion, it kept happening more and more frequently. I would wake up in the morning and I would be home in bed but I wouldn't have any idea of what had happened from 9 or 10 o'clock on the night before. and yet people began telling me some of the things I had done during that period which were a considerable disturbance to me for apparently when I was in a blackout my tongue was unloosed and I often said things I didn't mean and would have much preferred not to have said and my behavior began getting out of hand and the next thing that occurred and all of this took place in the course of one year the year that I was 27 was that this great capacity of mine for drinking more than anyone else and remaining apparently quite sober being the one that drove the car home and that took care of everybody else and that remembered everything that happened I began to discover that if I had been sitting drinking with my friends and got up very suddenly I was apt to fall flat in my face and I found this very humiliating this too instead of passing increased i developed what is known as rubber legs now for someone who'd had the name of hollow legs it was very humiliating to have rubber legs i didn't like that change one bit and the third thing that occurred during that year all of those years and it had been about 10 when my drinking was so splendid when I could be so proud of it I had never known what a hangover was I never had a headache I always felt perfectly all right in the morning I was always able to get up and go to work for I had a job at that time It just didn't bother me And it seemed to me that all of a sudden I lost that ability to shake off the effects of the night before as I was washing my face and discovered that in the morning I was literally too sick to get up I couldn't function I had to shake so badly that I couldnít manage to get the lipstick on where it belonged It was likely to get off here or at any part of my face excepting on my lips and then I discovered at the same time I don't remember the details but I'm sure somebody gave me a hand at this and told me that the hair of the dog would help that that if I had a drink or two my hands steadied I could stand on my legs this terrible seasickness subsided and I was able to function and at this point, I don' t have to tell you I was really hooked because I discovered also that after those first few drinks that enabled me to get up and get dressed and get myself together in one piece that after about a half or three quarters of an hour it began to wear off and the shakes began to come back and I had to have a little more to keep my equilibrium and I discovered that this lasted all day and that therefore I had to find ways and means of keeping that liquor coming all day long just in order to look and act like everybody else. This, I think, is the point at which we have really become enslaved to what used to be our great friend, the bottle. Let me go back a minute and say that When I discovered alcohol, when I first had a drink I discovered a great friend For this answered a great many problems for me I was extremely shy And like any other girl growing up I wanted to be popular and to be able to mix with other people And I had never been able to do this very comfortably Until I discovered drinks So for me, it was a kind of magic right from the beginning. It solved some very important problems. It made me feel comfortable with other people. It loosed my tongue so I wasn't a bump on a log. It allowed me to feel a part of the group that I was with. It allowed to enjoy myself in comfort. right from the beginning I was dependent on it to do this. Now, I think that what was happening to me is not unusual for someone growing up. I think a great many kids go through that period both male and female but most of them have to work it out unaided. They do not find magic in a bottle. That isn't what alcohol does to them, and so they don't become dependent on it. But it's my personal conviction that most of us are already made, that we are the perfect prepared soil for the seed of alcoholism, and the first time we take a drink, that seed begins to germinate. this may not be true of a hundred percent of us but I know it's true for an awful lot of us because I've compared notes with so many but you know at that point in life when you're just beginning to go out into the world and to meet new people and to mix with them and to grow up you don't compare notes on this kind of thing it never occurred to me that I was any different from anybody else. I thought everyone found this same magic in the bottle that I had discovered. I thought that everyone needed the drinks they were all having, the same way I did. It never occurred to me that I was different. But looking back, I believe that I am different from the word go. I believe I was the perfectly prepared bed in which to plant that seed, that all it needed was the watering out of the bottle to grow. It took ten years to grow, and I must confess that I had an awful good time a lot of that time. So long as I wasn't paying any price, so long as it wasn't giving me these hideous results—the hangover and the blackouts and the terrible need for a drink in the morning—I could enjoy it, and idea. But from that time on, the pleasure turned to pain. And as soon as I was hooked on it, I really was in internal misery most of the time. And I was very concerned as to what had happened. Why had this thing changed? Why had someone who had been such a fine drinker turned into someone that people now began to talk to and say you ought to watch it? you realize that you're drinking too much. In fact, they did everything except call me some of the nasty names. That didn't come for a couple of years more. And I was concerned, and I started going to doctors to try to find out what had happened. Well, this was in the mid-1930s. I happened to be living abroad in London, England, and I went to a good many doctors and none of them could tell me anything at all. The kind of thing they told me was of no use whatsoever. They told me I was working too hard. I had my own business and you work harder at your own business usually than you do for someone else. They told мне that I was both working and playing too hard, that I Was burning the candle at both ends, that I Ought to slow down. No one told me that I ought to stop drinking I don't suppose that I really told them how much I was drinking but I did tell them what it was doing to me and how it had changed and this important piece of information meant absolutely nothing to those trained medical and psychiatric people that I saw gradually I became convinced that I was insane I became confused convinced that something had happened in my mind since nothing physical seemed to be found that was wrong that clearly something had broken up here and changed the whole pattern of my living and my drinking. And I began to seek ways out as many of us do My first effort to escape from this was right in London which is a very big city and the kind of business I was in had brought me in contact with many different groups and I simply began changing my companions I moved from group to group well there was very good reason for this because as soon as people began talking to me about the way I was drinking I had to find somebody else to be with there wasn't much good that that was doing me I couldn't bear it and I can tell you that in less than a year I'd gone through London like a dose of salt. Metrophical disease without even knowing what it was. I had never stopped drinking before, so I didn't know what happened when you stopped drinking. If you'd been drinking as much as I had over that long a time. That was my first experience with what today we call the withdrawal symptoms of alcoholism. Boy, I had them. At any rate, I decided to stay off the stuff. Actually, it happened to be the beginning of Lent, so I decided I just wouldn't drink during Lent. Now, that's 40 days. But at the end of about three weeks, I discovered that there was a little pub around the corner from this inn that served only beer, and I just figured that wasn't really liquor. So I started drinking beer. The only thing about it was that in this part of England, they're very famous for something they call old beer. It's aged in the wood. It has about 80% alcohol. So I did rather well on beer. There had been another reason why I had taken this particular job. This little hotel did not have a license. That meant it didn't have a cellar and it couldn't serve liquor. But there were two pubs right near, one right across the street and this other little one around the corner. And the butler would take orders and go out with a tray and bring back the drinks for our guests. Well, this butler was a great friend of mine. And I had learned somehow or other, at least I had a very strong feeling, I shouldn't keep a bottle in my room. I'd already discovered if I did it was all gone in the morning when I needed it most and I didn't even remember drinking it this was a terrible waste so I decided not to keep anything in my room but the old butler would go across the street and get me three or four or five or six pink gins which is plain gin with a drop or two of vermouth in it and this was an old Jacobean building a very beautiful old white building with black beams and in all of the downstairs rooms there were little cupboards in the wall with little doors I was managing the hotel so of course I had to go around and see that it had been properly cleaned and I always looked in those cupboards and there was always a pink gin in the cupboard waiting for me and while I had the door open I could take it and put the empty glass back and go about my business and the people sitting in the living room didn't notice I didn't think I don't know whether they did or not The butler's job was to follow me around And take out the empties And replace them with full glasses I think it's not very surprising That when the owners came back They didn't want me there anymore There was one other episode That I'm not very proud of But it will indicate just how far this had progressed with me and why I really was convinced that I was insane because I was behaving in ways that were so foreign to my true nature and to what I felt I was really like and what I wanted to be like that I just couldn't understand it at all. Since we did not have a license and since we had a number of people that stayed there by the week, it was the middle of the hunting country and a lot of people came up there for the hunting and didn't have houses and stayed in our hotel and they would have their own liquor which was kept on the sideboard in the dining room and placed on their table when they came in to meals and curiously enough that liquor kept disappearing and they wouldn't drink it and they'd complain to me about it and I would say oh, that's that new kitchen boy and I'd fire another kitchen boy But you know, when you're in that state, stealing doesn't mean stealing to you. You do what you have to do and you get what you have to get, and the implications of it are never very clear to you, and yet I don't think I have to tell any alcoholic in this room, what happens at a certain stage in your alcoholism. You don't sleep properly anymore, you just pass out. And this doesn't last too long. And when the effects have worn off a little bit, you wake up and it's almost always three o'clock in the morning. And that is a great terrible time to be awake, to be conscious, to aware as you usually are of what's happening. And this was the time of day when I knew that I must be insane. And so I decided that I must go somewhere and get some treatment for this. And I was very much afraid that I would be locked up somewhere, and that I might never get out. I hadn't had very much luck with the doctors in London. Also I was afraid of being locked up in a strange country. It wasn't strange. I'd been living there seven years, but I figured if I was going to be locked up, it better be in my own country. And so I set about trying to get home. And I finally managed to collect the funds to go back to the United States. And I had one firm idea in mind, and that was that when I got on that boat, I wasn't going to drink. Now, you see, I discovered I could do this for a period. And And I was going to stop drinking. But time had passed, and I no longer could do this. And I remembered very little of that voyage back, and I never saw the skyline of New York, and I was the last person off the boat and I was carried off. And that was the beginning of the last year of my drinking. I had come home looking for help, and I sought out some of the friends that I hadn't seen for so many years. And I'm sure they were shocked—they didn't tell me so necessarily. But I gathered a list of names of doctors, and since I thought I was insane, I was only interested in doctors that dealt with the head. was looking for psychiatrists or psychoanalysts or people that dealt with insanity. And I went to these men one after the other. In a way, I was unfortunate that the people I had learned of through my friends were all honest men. And when I told them why I was there and what it was that made me think I was insane. They all told me the same thing. They said, we don't know what to do for you. You had better commit yourself to a state mental institution, about which I knew very little, but was frightened to death. And I would always say the same thing, for how long? And they would never tell me. Some of them actually came out with it and said indefinitely. What they were saying to me, in my words, was you are hopelessly insane, you're going to have to be locked up, you might as well go in yourself, and you're never going to get out. And I would leave each doctor's office and I would head for the nearest bar and I would order three or four double martinis, because those worked the fastest, and I'd pour them down as fast as I could to forget what the doctor had said. And then I would go on as long as I could before trying another one. One year passed this way, and seven doctors. And when I came to the eighth, I had with the help of friends not had a drink for five weeks. So I was in possession of my faculties, and I was talking sense, and I told him what I'd told the others, that I was convinced I was insane, that I wanted help. And I didn't know if there was any, but I was still looking for it. And he said, you want to get well so badly that I'm going to try to help you. But he said in my experience people like you have one chance in a hundred. This was in 1938. One chance in a hundred. Maybe you're that one, I'll take a chance on you. And he took me on as a patient. That was the beginning of my recovery. Now, I didn't recover bang just because this doctor took me up. I spent seven months in the hospital and another fifteen months in the sanitarium in the country, getting what I had been seeking so patiently, so persistently, so determinedly—psychiatric treatment for what I thought was my insanity. The fact that the doctors said you are not insane didn't mean a thing to me. I thought they were just trying to cheer me up. I was still convinced that I was insane. The interesting thing about this is that the seven months in the hospital, I had no opportunity to drink because I never got out. And I was in a neurological ward, in any case, so the machinery wasn't set up to get drinks anyway. It usually is, you know, in hospitals where we land. And as soon as we get in, we find our light. The people who have been there longer than we and they have it all rigged. And I don't know very many places that you can put alcoholics where they can't get a drink if they're determined to get one. The sanitarium where I went fitted that pattern. And so despite the fact that I was there for help and that the doctor there had told me that he was willing to give me all the help he could because I wanted so badly to get well, every once in a while I got drunk. Now, he didn't use the word alcoholism anymore in the first doctor head. It simply wasn't in use then. He did not tell me that I was an alcoholic, that my problem was drinking. he did tell me that I was the kind of person who should never drink but he was the only doctor in that institution that was saying that all the other people I knew in there like myself were being taught how to drink by their doctors so I thought I had the wrong doctor in fact I questioned him about his own drinking and discovered he didn't like this stuff so I just thought he was an old spoilsport He didn't like it. He didn' t want anybody else to have it. But I think the major thing that distressed me, that made it impossible for me to accept this from him, in the first place he couldn' t give me any reason for it. Why was I different? Why was a person who could never drink? I used to be able to drink so well. What had gone wrong? Why couldn' d I return to that? He had no answers for these questions. all of the other doctors were telling their patients oh well something has happened underneath and we'll straighten that out and then you'll be right back where you were and able to drink the way you used to and this made sense to me as a matter of fact it still makes sense only it doesn't work it's perfectly logical if alcoholism comes from an underlying emotional disturbance as too many psychiatrists still say that if you can straighten out that underlying emotional disturbance the drinking should revert to normal but something else has happened and they don't talk about that this is one of the things that those doctors who are working with alcoholics have now learned and do talk about that the only answer for an alcoholic is precisely what my doctor was telling me in 1938, never to touch the stuff again. And the more he told me that, the more appalled I became, for I could look ahead to a flat, gray future. It sure looked like the desert. There wasn't a thing grew on it. There were no people there. I was just going to walk along all by myself in this flat gray desert forever because I used to say to him I said you know I don't like teetotalers they're not my kind of people those good gray faces and those pure white teeth what have I got to do with them you know never smoked a cigarette haven't got a single stain anywhere Pure they are. What have I got to do with them or they with me? How can you have any fun with those people? All the people I've ever liked drink. And if I can't drink, how can I be with them? And if i can't be with him, who else can I find to be with? And my poor doctor had no answers whatsoever to any of these questions of mine. he just kept doggedly saying but you can't drink and in effect he was condemning me to a living death well that's the way it was for a good year while I was under treatment there and then one day he called me and he said you know I've about given up on you I've done all I could do for you and you still get drunk every now and then which was true but he said I just received something and read it that I think may help you apparently there are a group of people like you who have banded together and they've been able to help each other and they written a book and they gave me the manuscript for comments and I'm very excited about it and I think it might help you and I want you to read it and he handed me a manuscript bound in red cardboard covers, you know, with those rings in it. And he said, take this and read it. And I took it. The title was Alcoholics Anonymous. And I began to read. And my excitement mounted and mounted because here for the first time I discovered what was wrong with me. For the first times, whatever it was that was wrong had a name, alcoholism. Nobody ever loved that name like I did. I had been convinced during that year in an institution that the kind of insanity I had was so bad they couldn't name it. I had good reason to believe this. The place was divided, sort of. It was a great big place, 500 acres, private sanitarium. And there was a house near the gate where they brought people when they first came in. It was down near the road, and very often they'd arrive in a straitjacket screaming. And they'd stay down there in what we called the violent house for a while. And then there was a sort of middle house, which was very carefully watched. There was a nurse at the end of every corridor, and that's where the common rooms were. And after a while, the people would be brought up from the violent House when they'd calmed down a bit, and they'd go to the middle house. Then there was a big house right by the gate with no nurses on duty, and that was where the doctor's offices were, and that's where people went when they were about to leave. For the last few weeks of their stay, they had really complete freedom. They could go in or out without anybody being able to observe it. And I saw people brought in screaming in straitjackets to the violent house and come up to the middle house where I was and move on to the house for the road and go home. But I stayed. And I used to think that I sure had the wrong kind of insanity. If I'd been a little more violent, maybe I could have got well. So that when I discovered that what I had was called alcoholism and that there were a lot of other people like me, and when I read in that book the definition of alcoholism, an allergy of the body coupled with an obsession of the mind and that they didn't know what this allergy was or even if it was a real allergy but there was some bodily difference. That since nobody knew what it was, nobody could change it. Once you had it, you had it for life. But the obsession of the mind which made you drink when you had decided not to, and boy, I understood that. I'd done that plenty of times. This they could do something about. And if you got rid of that obsession of the mind, you need never drink again. So you wouldn't trigger this bodily difference into action. Now this was an explanation I could understand. This explained to me why the doctor said I could never drink again. I was different. There was something different in my physical makeup. I could never go back to normal drinking. And for the first time, I accepted that. But then came the Joker. That darn book had more capital letters in it than any book I'd ever read, and they were all G. it was full of God now I'd outgrown that when I was 17 but that was nonsense childish nonsense I went to the doctor and I said you know this is fine this book for other people but it's exactly counter to what you've been teaching me you've done a great job you've always been trying to tell me that I'm led around by the nose by my emotions I only think that my intellect, my mind is running my life and here you tell me that this can help me and this is really emotional hypnosis You're suggesting that I take a purely emotional way out of this I said religion is nothing but self-hypnosis I'm not about to accept this I just can't buy it I've learned a lot from this book. I've discovered what it is I have. I've recovered I can never drink again. But I can't follow this. And he said, well, never mind about that. Go back up and read that book. Day after day, I dragged my feet and I read that books just enough so I could come down and tell him how lousy it was. Everything in the world was wrong with that book It was poorly written. Very unintelligent people must have written it. It had a lot of illogical things in it that I could pick apart. Well, I had a ball. This went on for two months. And then one day, something occurred in my private life that constituted a crisis of major proportions. And there was not one single thing I could do about it. I was in a state of anger such as I have never felt before or since. I really know what it means to see red. I saw red. I felt murderous. I was on my way home. I was sitting in my room, which was a little tiny room up at the top of the house, under the eaves, the little bitty window. Lying on the bed was this darn book. I wasn't reading it I was thinking in a way that every alcoholic in the room will understand I was so darn mad and there was somebody I wanted to kill I really wanted to kill I was going down to the town and get two bottles and get drunker than I'd ever been and bust that place up you know it's a very curious thing about alcoholics who by and large are pretty intelligent people. But when we get angry at somebody else, we pick up a hammer and bash our own brains in. And I don't think that's very intelligent. But we all do it. We've all done it for years and you know exactly what I mean. And while I was feeling this way and thinking about going down to the village and getting the liquor, my eye fell on the book, which was open on the bed. And I wasn't really looking at it, so it was kind of a blur. But in the center of the page something stood out, just a few words. But they were as clear and black as if they had been in raised letters. And what they said was, we cannot live with anger. Well that did it. I haven't the vaguest idea why that was the particular thing that did it, but it was like a battering ram that beat that wall of resistance right down. And the next thing I knew, I was on my knees beside the bed and I don't know how long I'd been there, but the bedspread was wet with my tears. And I presume I'd been praying. I hadn't prayed for so many years. I didn't really know how. Let's say I'd been in a praying state of mind and I lifted my head to freedom. I had never felt so completely free in my entire life. The hand of God was on me, I knew that. The presence of God within that room, I knew that. And I knew one other thing, I could walk out of that third-story window and keep right on walking. I think the only reason I didn't try it was because it was such a little tiny window under the eave, I might have had trouble getting through it. But I knew perfectly well I could do this, and it suddenly dawned on me, well, of course now you are insane. Now even Dr. Thiebaud can't deny it. So I ran downstairs. I'd made it by this time up to the house by the gate where the doctor's offices were and I beat on his door and when he saw my face he got rid of the patient he had in there and he took me in and he said what's happened and I told him and he asked me a great many questions and I said doctor I'm now I'm insane he said no you're not said I believe you've had an authentic spiritual experience you hang on to it he said there have been a lot of them in the world and there's a whole book about them by William James called Varieties of Religious Experience get that book and read it don't be frightened of it now he said go back upstairs and read that book well I went back upstairs and I picked the book up and you know somebody switched books on me It was a brand new book It was the most beautiful book I'd ever read I didn't have a single quarrel with it I read it through in one gulp And when I finished, I started at the beginning and I read through again When I looked out the window after I had lifted my head from being on my knees by my bed before I went down to see Dr. Thiebaud I had looked out on a world I had never seen before the sky was bluer than any sky I'd ever seen the green was greener and later as I moved about in that sanitarium everybody looked beautiful I was on such a pink cloud I was in such a high state of mind that the whole world was bathed in beauty and this lasted for about three months but almost immediately Dr. Thiebaud began pressing me to go into New York and meet these people and this I did not want to do. I had what I wanted. I had what I needed and I still wasn't sure of what kind of people they might be. I had a feeling they might be real pious you know and pray over me publicly or something be very embarrassed I also had a feeling they might all be mission stiff, the kind of people I'd never met in my life and didn't want to. So I kept putting it off, and it was two months after that experience before Dr. Thiebaud took matters into his own hands, picked up the phone one day when I was in his office, made a date for me in New York that night, and said, go get ready and get on the train and go into New York go to such and such an address and I did this and I was my first startlement were the three people I met at this address a man and wife and an extra man for me most attractive guy I'd seen in years handsome black haired Irishman pity he couldn't make it But he sure was attractive My ideas began to change radically And we got on a subway and we went over to Brooklyn to a brownstone house belonging to Bill and Lois But when we got in there I'd never seen so many people in my life There were at least 30 And I ran upstairs to leave my coat and I didn't come down Remember, I was the one who needed the magic of alcohol to meet strangers i was the one who had always felt on the outside looking in when i was with a group of people i didn't know intimately and even sometimes i felt on the outside looking in with people i had known intimately for years i never belonged and i was scared to death to go downstairs to that room full of people i didn't know The woman came up and put her arm around me And she said, you know, we're waiting for you We want you down there Her name was Lois And she took me down by the hand I didn't know what I was going to say to these people Or whether I'd be able to open my mouth at all But of course the first questions they asked me Were when did you have your last drink And without even thinking I told them the truth this I'd never done before well that kind of broke the ice and we began talking and the first thing I knew it seemed to me they were finishing my sentences and I was finishing theirs I was in communication with strangers in a way I had never been with other human beings in my whole life and I looked around that room and it was not a room full of strangers these were my people I had come home that was my first experience with what today we call the fellowship of AA I've never lost that sensation it's a feeling you can get no matter where you go in 1951 In 1951, the government of South Africa took me to South Africa for their first national conference on alcoholism. And one night in a town in South Africa—they shuttled me all over that country—in six weeks I visited thirteen cities. And I was sitting in the hotel lobby and a man and his wife came in that I had met in Johannesburg when I first arrived in AA there. AA had not spread all over South Africa, and this particular town didn't have any. He and his wife came in. He was a salesman, and they were travelers. But I had met one man in this town where I was, a judge who was deeply interested and wanted to start an AA group. He was not an alcoholic, but he wanted to do something. And I was sitting talking with him in the lobby of the hotel when this couple walked in. They were Afrikaners. That meant they spoke a different language. Now, they didn't speak English because most South Africans speak both languages. They spoke it with an accent and I had just met them for a few minutes at a meeting but we went across the street to a place where we could get coffee and the judge and I and this AA and his wife sat up till three o'clock in the morning and you know it was just like home. we were talking about the same things we were using the same language we were as close friends as if we had grown up together and I found this in New Zealand and I find this in Australia and I've found it in England and in Ireland wherever AAs get together there is this almost instant communication at a deeper level than most people ever know This is one of the reasons why I say and mean it, that I am glad I am an alcoholic. For if I were not, I would never have had the opportunity to experience this. Thank God I was permitted to live, for I'm one of those who tried suicide twice during my drinking days and might very well not have lived long enough to find AA. But I did and I found it, and my introduction to it that very first night showed me what was there for this wonderful fellowship, wonderful companionship, wonderful communication of understanding one AA has for another. We offer to new people who have never experienced anything like that in their whole life. I never had. It was the first time I ever felt I belonged. I never lost that feeling. For a long while, this was the main and most important thing for me. It was what AA meant. Oh, of course it worked on the 12-6, but I didn't know that before I ever met any of them. It was a long time before I realized that there was any more to AA than just the fellowship. That it was a way of life, a path which I had to keep on doing. I realized my first steps were only a beginning. beginning, before I realized that I had something that had been freely given to me, that lay upon me a heavy responsibility. Through several years, after I came into AA, it became clear to me that since I have so freely received this incredible gift, I have no more responsibility. You know, this year, the 3rd of April, as I speak at the first big opening meeting on Friday night with the speakers. I had never I was I was scared to death in that form 30,000 in that that's an awful especially mentally as with and all of what it had done for me that I don't have any idea about. On the 30th anniversary, there was a scene. There was a statement that was up on every pillar in the various headquarters and it was on every piece of material about this anniversary And it embodies me about every single thing that I've been talking about ever since. So I'm sure you've all seen it in the photo. It's on every hotel and on every room in the hotel, very close quarters. Every room is still about the third standard. and it embodies me as real but strong about everything not all I should have you may not have seen the book this anniversary book even if you do think I think we should see our meeting I think you may not know this, but I do think it is something that we should make a material of this year's anniversary, it embodied this few years to realize which I've held strong about ever since. All of you could have been out of season for this anniversary, but let me tell you this I do think we should see it on every level, not just in the whole world, but at various headquarters. And it was on every scale of the planet. And this is me realizing what I have felt about ever since. All of you are good at Toronto. You may see every pill for the Red Corp. It was on the material of the 30th century. I say that it's a few years ago, which I strongly about everything. And I'm not sure about Toronto. You may not have seen the third video, but I do think it is repeating. I think you should make sure you try this bill and look at three of these pieces. I had never seen that platform. There were 13,000 people. That's an awful lot of people. Especially someone who's a scientist. That's had me shocked and nervous about it. It was a picture of what AA has done to me that opened my mouth. The sound came out. But I was a fan of the city. There was a state that was up every pillar of the hotel, which is here. And it was all a piece of material about the anniversary. I'm not saying that it's a futile act, but I know strongly about your sin. Not all of you, I'm sure, have been in it. And some of you have seen the book, the anniversary book, and you might not know this. You probably don't know this, but you don't have to know this at all. But I don't think there was a statement that was on every one of his headquarters and it It was on a radio show about the 13th anniversary, and it's not this thing, it's me, it wasn't real, but which I'm going to tell you only about every day. Now, not only do I believe in it, but there are people who may see it as a book, maybe it's a book yet, but even if they do, I think it's something else. but I have about every of you work around so you may see the second stand of the revolution all I was saying is come out don't come out that 30th particularly in my case how are we going to reach these women who are so protected who have someone else that'll pay the bills who don't have to go out to work every day who can hide out how are we going to reach them and I felt responsible for this I felt that it was my responsibility to do everything I could to try to reach to get the message through to carry the message that there was hope that there would be there was a way out that they could get well, they could get out of this living hell where they were imprisoned. And alcoholism is a prison. Everyone who's been in it knows it. It's the loneliest prison in the world. In my own way, in every way I could think of. I have accepted that responsibility and I'm doing everything I can to carry the message to those alcoholics out there. And I know I can't do it alone. I know that I alone am not enough. And so my life's work has been to recruit other people to help. Most alcoholics live in a non-alcoholic world. They don't all live together. They're not all in one apartment building or one house or even one part of town. They are scattered everywhere. Somebody once said, Alcoholics are everywhere, but they seem to belong nowhere. They' re everywhere. know they're at all echelons of life. They're up at the very top, they're in the middle, and they're right at the bottom. Wherever there are people, there are alcoholics. And we who have been fortunate enough to be the chosen if you like, we who had been plucked out of this living hell and given a second chance because that's what we've had a second chance I don't think there's a single alcoholic who isn't living on borrowed time we should all be dead 50 years ago we would have all been dead because there was no answer for us today there is AA and there are other things too that will help. If it hadn't been for an understanding psychiatrist with an open mind who forced me, I would never have found AA. There are lots of psychiatrists like that. If they knew more about us they'd get their patients in here too and I feel it's our responsibility to let them know it's a responsibility to let the doctors know and the hospitals and the jailers and the court and everybody else in the non-alcoholic world where those millions of alcoholics are still suffering. I do not believe that because we have been granted a reprieve from a living death, that we can sit on our hands and clutch it to ourselves and not do anything about it. Bill expresses it by saying let's be friendly with our friends. I think we must go at least 50% of the way toward letting them know what we have, what we're really like, what is there for alcoholics if they will get them to us. We need, we must have, the help of the non-alcoholic world in which all of those alcoholics live because many of them are unable to make a decision by themselves, unable to even get themselves to us. They're like somebody marooned on an island who doesn't know how to swim and hasn't got a boat. And we have boats and can swim, too. And also we've got people who can build bridges. And I for one feel responsible about using every conceivable method that exists to reach those people. So really, all I have to say to you is what we were saying to ourselves at our 30th anniversary. I am responsible. When anyone anywhere reaches out for help. I want the hand of AA always to be there. And for that, I am responsible. Thank you.