The Transmission of Hope and the Deflation of the Ego – James M.

Okay, everybody, let's start. Can I ask you to join me in a moment of silence? Let's get ourselves centered. Let's invite God into this deal. Let's have a moment with silence. Let us get centered and invite God in to this deal, okay? Hey, everybody. I am James. I'm an alcoholic. welcome back for the afternoon session we lost a few one of the jitter joints took their clients up for a hike someplace i think hiking's got a pretty poor record of keeping folks over but uh i guess maybe if somebody's talking about traditions this afternoon they want to go take a hike i want you to look you know i go to a lot of these events i got a lot of roundups and conventions uh i mean a lot i love these things i love these retreats and it's funny how on saturday night the crowd's always four times what it is on sunday morning same thing you know here we lost a lot of people but i tell you what if you want somebody that's going to save your life you don't look around at the saturday Night crowd that's got the body shoppers and the social climbers and whatever else you look around on sundAY morning and see who shows up on Sunday morning. It's the same thing this afternoon. Look around. Where are the people that are supposed to be here? Listen, I didn't go out there and expect to get half drunk. I was a mad dog alcoholic. I wanted everything that was out there and I wanted it in doubles. And when I got into this program, I wanted the same thing. I want the whole deal. I wanna be with you people. I had this hunger were in this thirst you know the carpenter said many years ago he said blessed are they who hunger and thirst for they shall be filled i'll tell you what he was talking about alcoholics you know he didn't seem to have much use for the lukewarm people and i don't either you know give me a man that's hungry and thirsty and that describes alcoholics describes alcoholic we had this thirst bill wilson writing some years afterwards and you remember we left him drunk down there on clinton street still we're gonna get back to him in just a second writing a few years later after he got a little clearer insight and he described us alcoholics as rebellious non-conformist unable or unwilling to conform to the laws of god or man now can anybody in this room identify with that yeah tell me you can't and I'll show you just in a second just out of pure perversity just the way we are it's the way were put together Phil was in exactly the same shape in late November 1934 as James was in in That's the first year and a half in AA. You've heard the expression of having a head full of AA and a belly full of booze. We were sitting at the boucherie bar trying to explain to Gus, the bartender, about the 12 steps and you're ordering doubles and he's looking at you like you're from another damn planet. You know? Huh? Tell me more about that? Give me a double, Gus. You know. And Bill was in exactly that same position that last week of November and the first week of December of 1934 because Ebby had carried a message to him. Ebby carried a messenger in two ways. First of all, Ebi was sober. Bill knew Ebi was a drunk. They had been drunk together since they were late teenage years. You know, Bill started drinking when he was about 19 or 20. Ebi had been drinking earlier than that. They'd had many drunks together. One time they even, and it's mentioned in the literature, they'd even charted an airplane. They heard that Manchester, Vermont was going to open its airport, and so they decided they wanted to be the first ones to fly in there. So they found a pilot, and the pilot was already having a few drinks. So they bribed him with a $20 bill and a fifth of whiskey to fly them in there so they could beat all the other airplanes and get in there and be the first plane to land there. Well, they drank the fifth of whisky on the way over there from Albany, New York. And by the time it had come time to land, the mayor was out there, the high school band was out there. They were rehearsing because they were going to have the formal landing of the first airplane the next day. So instead of here, this plane comes in, and it's going to be the first plane to land. And it lands, and the band's playing, and the mayor's cheering, and everybody said, we've got a plane today ahead of time. But Bill falls out of the cockpit, Eddie falls out OF the cockpit. The pilot falls out Of the cockpit hell, they're all drunk. They're all done. This is the kind of guys we're dealing with, you know? And talking about Amy Thatcher, we got a newcomer in here, Kevin. Where are you, Kevin? There you are. There you are. Who's from New York, who has been drunk in Thatcher Park in Albany, New the ark. Isn't that right? Yeah, it's just a good place to drink. Good place to drink. Yeah, you're in the right place, Kevin. So Eddie was sober. As it says in our book of experience, Bill had never seen him in that condition. Never seen him that way. Ever seen him that way. We've all had the experience, and it's a powerful experience, seeing somebody, maybe not all of us. You know, I didn't have that experience really until I'd been sober a couple of years running into somebody that I'd known drunk and then they were sober. And it's an incredible experience when you see it. I remember running into Mike, a guy who was behind, Lewis rather, who was a couple years behind me in school and I didn't recognize him. I literally didn't recognise him. Gone to high school and he was a few years behind me and I'd only known him for years. He looked like a completely different person and he had a couple of years of sobriety. So that was the first impact. The second impact was that Evie had carried to Bill a message that there's a way out. Bill had been trying to find a way out. He'd been going to the town's hospital. The town's Hospital was the fanciest drying-out joint in the country then. It was the Betty Ford Center of the 1930s. If you were rich, if you were famous, ifyou had a buck, you went to Town's Hospital. It's on Central Park West in New York, which is the toniest address you're going to find. I mean, that's expensive real estate right in there, you know? And the only way he could get in there—because Bill was broke—was his brother-in-law, Dr. Leonard Strong, who had married Bill's sister, happened to be a very successful doctor and happened to know Charlie Towns who had the hospital. So Towns was putting Bill on the cuff to put him in there because Dr. Strong was a good friend of his. Incidentally, I just found out the other day that Dr. strong is still alive today. Bill's brother-in-law. He's in a nursing home in New York. He's like 102 years old, but he's still alive. I didn't know that. But he played a very important part in our founding because he got Bill in the jitter joint, you know? And in there, Bill got a message carried to him. You know, we had talked earlier about Dr. Benjamin Rush saying alcoholism may be some kind of an illness. There may be something wrong with these people. They may not just be moral lepers. They might not just being essentially evil people. There may have been something wrong them. That idea kind of floated around and nobody had ever really been able to latch on to it. When the stock market crashed in 1929, sort of like what happened to our dot-com stocks here a year or two ago, you know, and everybody went broke, So there was a New York neurologist named Dr. William Silkworth who was very, very well-to-do. Lost every nickel he had in the stock market crash of 29. Had semi-retired so he didn't have a medical practice left. Went to work for Charlie Towns for something like $30 or $40 a week. You know, doctors weren't making a lot of money in those days. In fact, he had a job at all. A third of the country was unemployed. One-third of the people did not have any kind of a job whatsoever. It was tough times. Silkworth went to work for Charlie Towns there because it was a respectable job and he didn't have any experience in that field but he quickly gained some. He became, in A parlance, the little doctor who loved drunks. For some reason, he really attached to us. He wanted... But he kept treating us time after time after time and we all kept showing back up drunk again. He'd get somebody sober and keep them in there for a week or a couple of weeks and then they'd come back again. Dr. Silkworth was later to write a paper, he's a very prominent doctor, he was to later write a newspaper in the late 1940s where he described the 40,000 alcoholics that he had treated over the previous 20 years. 40, 000. His estimate was, do you remember that estimate before from public health services? That 1-2% of those drunks ever achieved any kind of sobriety except for alcoholic synonymous. But in the meanwhile, Dr. Silkworth was a bright guy smart guy he had observed these drunks and it finally was occurring to him because he'd see guys get drunk not just when things went bad but he'd seen them get drunk when things went good you know the only thing worse for an alcoholic than adversity is prosperity you know we get drunk in the good times we're drunk in the bad times doesn't much matter you know get drunk when nothing's going on it started to occur as he observed one drunk after another drunk after another drunk that there was some physical factor at work in alcoholics that wasn't at work in anybody else. Somehow they seemed to react differently to alcohol. Somehow alcohol seemed more important to them, seemed to do more to them more for them and he came up with a theory that and he called it an allergy discussed in the doctor's opinion in our big book and an allergy is nothing more than an abnormal reaction to a food or a drug. You know If 95% of the people on the face of the earth can eat cucumbers, and 5%, like myself, get acute, terrible indigestion immediately from even a cucumber that's part of a salad that I'm eating, and go into this horrible indigestion, then I'm allergic to cucumbers. The rest of the population is not allergic. I just have an abnormal reaction. Most of you out there can eat cucumber. I discovered that when I was in my late 20s. cucumbers don't work well with me guess what i did i stopped eating cucumbers i have never had to go to cucumbers and olives i did not have to get a cucumber sponsor i have ever obsessed over cucumbers in the middle of the night i just didn't do any more cucumbers so first on the other hand notice the alcoholics kept going back to it time and time and again he says i know there's something physically wrong with these guys it isn't just a middle failing when they take a drink they develop what's called phenomenon of craving there's something in their body that's demanding more alcohol and it doesn't happen with the rest of the drinking populace when they say they've had enough they really mean they've been drinking they've got enough when they said they're out of control they're feeling uncomfortable and out of controlled they stop they really are they don't know about that what we talked about earlier that promised land on the other side of out of patrol which is yeah I never had that feeling in my life no matter how drunk I was if I couldn't get up off the floor I still felt I was in control of the situation so physical abnormality and then he said they had something he called a mental obsession but they were absolutely an obsession is an idea that's so powerful that it crowds out every other idea every other idea think back to your first great lust Susie or Mary or whatever her name was you just can't think about anything else you just can't think God just got you all the time you know and he said it was something like that it was an idea that crowded out every other idea so he got the idea that there was an obsession of the mind he didn't know where it came from but he said these people are obsessed and when they take any alcohol at all and he'd they have to drink more and they drink and drink until they get drunk he had conveyed these ideas to Bill Bill understood him intellectually he understood him intellectually He understood he wasn't supposed to drink. Bill's last drunk started when he was on a bus and he's explaining all this to a guy that was on the bus with him. The bus had an accident. Stopped, they went into a bar, he's still explaining to the guy he'd been explaining to, he says, you must be crazy. You told me you were going to go crazy or die if you drank. Are you crazy? And Bill said, yeah, I must be. Yeah, I muss be. Everybody have that feeling? James had that feeling. So here's Bill with a... He has the knowledge, he knows what's wrong with him, Dr. Silkworth has described the illness, described the illness, but he doesn't have a plan of recovery. He doesn't know any way out of it. He shows up and says, I got religion. Hill said, oh shit. You got what? I got religious. Bill, you figure out your own concept of God. Mainly I've just done these simple things. And what he was doing was giving him a head full of AA. Oh, they wouldn't call that at the time. But he had a belly full of booze. Bill was in torment for the next two weeks. And A.B. came back to see him. Bill kept drinking, kept drinking. Finally, it occurred to Bill that he had to try this thing. He had to tried this thing and on December the 11th of 1934, Bill managed to get three bottles of beer on credit at the local grocery store and the only reason he got three is that's all the guy would give him. That was the limit of his credit. He got on a subway and he went back to Towns Hospital and he showed up there drinking the last beer, waving the beer bottle and telling Dr. Silkworth, Doc, I found something. Doc said, yeah, it sure looks like you have. Go upstairs and go to bed. Silkworth's thinking, oh, here's that poor guy back again. You know, this is the guy that I'd hoped so much for but he ain't gonna make it. He ain't gon' make it and Bill goes up there and they sober him up over the next day or so. Ebby shows up. Ebby hears he's in there. Lois called Ebby and told him this and Bill says would you repeat that simple little formula to me and Abby tells him once again he says well we just try we just admit we're licked we try to get honest with ourselves in a way that we never have before and we find that the only way we can do that is by talking our case over in confidence with somebody else and we try to make restitutions for any harms we've done and we go try to help somebody without any hope of any reward or payment and we pray to whatever God there might be for helping in doing this Bill's turning this over in his head, and he's thinking, I can do all this, but I can't pray. I just don't believe in a personal God. I just Don't Believe In It. You know, you've offered me a way out that I can get, and I can identify with Bill on this. You know? I could believe in an remote God, a God that started the universe off, that it sort of like General Motors, you know? It made my Chevrolet. It shipped it down to Louisiana, but they weren't going to honor the warranty. It was out of warranty. You know?, Don't expect any help from up there. and A.B. was talking to him about a personal God and Bill lay in torment in his hospital room midday December 14, 1934 and you can read the story in our book Alcoholics Anonymous you can listen to it on tapes he tells it especially well in that talk back there at Georgia in 1951 that Virgil has you can find it in the book Pass It On wonderful biography of Bill Wilson wonderful biography that Bill lay there in torment and finally he was so depressed he had reached the absolute bottom because he saw no way out of it and he cried I've got it if you're there show yourself to me and Bill recounts that the room lit up that he felt a presence a spirit he felt he'd been lifted to a mountaintop and that a clean wind not of wind but of spirit was blowing through him He made this remarkable statement then, and every other time he made the talk. He said, I felt I was a free man at last. I felt a freeman at last, and he thought, this must be the God of the preachers. He has what is called a true spiritual experience. God came and visited Bill in that hospital room. Bill never knew how long that lasted. It could have lasted a few minutes or 30 minutes or however long it lasted. I don't know, but it eventually subsided. And this is how quickly the ego comes back, you know, and he's laying there and he's thinking, my God, maybe I went crazy. Maybe I had an hallucination. And he sent for Dr. Silkworth who came in to visit him. And Dr. silkworth came in and Bill said, look, this is what happened. Am I crazy, doctor? Am I Crazy? Our faith held to the balance at this point. It was hung in the balance because most of the doctors I'd have known were slapped your ass full of Thorazine and said, you know, don't worry about it. You'll feel better tomorrow. But Dr. Silkworth, the little doctor that loved drunks, looked deeply into Bill's eyes and said, Bill, I don't know what happened to you, but I do know that I see something in you that I have never seen before. And whatever it is, it's so much better than you had just a few hours ago. Whatever it is. Hang on to it. Hang on for the rest of your life. Hang on. Dr. Silkworth validated Bill's experience because he was a wise and good and loving man who cared for this Bill Wilson who was on the bed in front of him. He cared for him. He cared and much as we care one for the other, one for another. Well, this thing happened the next day. Abbie shows up again because he knows Bill's still in the hospital. Doesn't know Bill's had this experience and Abbie's carrying a book with him. In the Oxford group at the time they had a number of books that they were reading that were being written around that time and some that had been being written earlier. But one of their favorite books was this book right here, The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. This is the only book which is mentioned in our big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's mentioned in chapter two. It's the only other book that's mentioned in our book. Ebi had this book because Roland Hazard, who was sort of his quasi-sponsor in the Oxford group, had made Ebi get it, made him go down to the public library think about it guys just like your sponsor has done to you go get that book and read it well he told Evie go get the book go get this book and read just been grinding him about reading so Evie finally goes and gets the book Evie does not want to read this book Evie's on a visit to Bill Evie got this book in his hand he's thinking and he gets this thought talking to Bill well maybe if I got Bill to read it it would be sort of like me reading it here Bill read this book well I mean you can understand that thought process can't you Well, Bill doesn't have much better else to do, so he starts reading this book. And I want to tell you, this is one of the truly extraordinary books of all time. William James, just as Freud and Adler and Carl Jung are considered the founders of psychiatry, William James is considered one ofthe founders of the science of psychology. He was a professor from the late 1900s. He was one ofthetruly great men. He came up with a school of psychology or philosophy called pragmatism. In other words, look at something and see whether it works or not, which is really an American viewpoint approaching it. That's the test that we use in America. Does it work or not? That was his idea. And in 1899, William James was invited to give this Gifford series of lectures in the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, which was virtually the equivalent in 1889 of receiving the Nobel Prize. It was the most prestigious thing you could get a hold of. It carried a big chunk of money with it, and once a year they had awarded this prize to somebody. They'd come in and give a series of lectures. And the series of lecturers that William James chose to give was a different way of looking at religious experiences, a differentway of looking it. Before William James, any book you get on religion usually starts from a point of view. It may start from a Catholic point of vue, it may start form the Baptist point of vu, It may start from a Mohammedan point of view, but it all starts from a point of view, looks at man's religious experience according to whoever the author's idea of how it ought to be in the first place. William James took a different thing. He said, wait a minute, let's look at what's actually happened to people who have reported that they've had vital spiritual experiences or religious experiences, and he uses spirit religious here in the same sense we use spiritual. He says, let'S look at What Happened To Them. Let's see what they reported. Let's see whether it did anything in their lives afterwards to see if these spiritual experiences were real. He goes through this book and examines spiritual experiences that have been recorded throughout history. You know, he talks about what happened to St. Augustine, what happened with St. Teresa of Avila, what happened Tooth who founded the Salvation Army, Wesley who founded The Methodist Movement, St. Paul. You know I personally, I kind of identify with St Paul. I think he was one of us. I mean look at it this way. He was taking a geographic cure to Damascus. He fell off his ass, or donkey, or whatever he was riding. He heard voices. He saw visions. He was struck blind, you know. And so maybe he was one of us. I don't know. But it changed his life. Changed his life? He took a whole different course. And that was the point that William James made. William James said these spiritual experiences are two different varieties. Two different varieties... Some of them happen very suddenly, like Paul on the road to Damasco or Bill in the hospital room. But some of these spiritual experiences develop slowly over a period of time and he called those the educational variety that they develop over a периod of time. But he said there's a common denominator in all of these experiences. You have to have some preconditions. You're not going to have a spiritual experience unless you have a lot of pain in your life, unless some calamities happen to you, unless you're in a blind alley. You've reached a point where you can't seem to get out of where you are under your own resources. And he called that deflation at depth. He called it deflation of the ego at depth and that had to be one of the vital things. There had to been a simultaneous transmission of hope at the same time. Now, would you reach the point where you couldn't get out if you were in terrible shape but you're not going to surrender at that point? You can get despairing and you can kill yourself or you can die or you can drink yourself to death. And we've all seen people do that. There has to be simultaneously the transmission of hope. Abby coming to Bill, me going to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. That's why the steps one and two are so intimately related. I, James, could not take step one until I had come to and come to believe that maybe y'all believed in something, that I saw a way out. You see? There hasと be a way ou. deflation at depth plus some transmission of hope and that's what happened Bill read that and Bill said and listen this guy William James had an understanding of alcoholics now this book wasn't really about alcoholics although a couple of the people who reported in here were alcoholics who had this experience see if you can identify with this varieties of religious experience this is William James talking the sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober owl. Think about that. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no. Drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It is in fact the great exciter of the yes function in man. It brings its votary from the chill periphery of things to the radiant core. it makes him for the moment one with truth not through mere perversity do men run after it to the poor and the unlettered it stands in the place of the symphony concerts and of literature and it is part of the deeper mystery and tragedy of life that whiffs and gleams of something that we immediately recognize as excellent and he goes on to say should be granted to us only in the earlier phases of what in effect becomes a poisoning he understood what this he talks about what alcohol did for us for some people those that it did the thing for doesn't do it for everybody you know but it seems to do it for alcoholics the world is full of crazy people I've been in some nut houses after I get sober for a little while I want to run the joint I'm an alcoholic I get questions asking they're like what are you doing in here what are you doing in here you know because after a couple of days we seem very very normal it's easy to tell what's wrong with them they may not know where they are or what day it is or something like that but alcohol doesn't get them out of their problem got me out of my problem like that got me right out of you know that's the difference between this regular intense neurotic or emotionally crazy person the alcoholic you know the difference between a neurotic and a psychotic psychotic you know completely out touch reality psychotic thinks two plus two equals five the neurotic the alcoholic knows that two plus three equals four but it just worries us a great deal just don't like it fitting together like that you know comfortable with it have a drink and think about it so this is where we are and this is what bill was and he finds in this book a validation of his spiritual experience everybody else in this boat virtually who had had that spiritual experience connected it with religion. Paul went off and in effect found Christianity to the Gentiles. St. Augustine left the hookers and the ballrooms and everything and became one of the great saints of the Catholic Church. Booth became the founder of the Salvation Army. Wesley started the Methodist Church. You know, they identified it with religion Bill identified it with Evie the drunk coming to talk to him. and his thought that day that next afternoon as he's reading this book is maybe I can help other alcoholics maybe I could take this thing to others you know this has been brought to me I'm a free man I feel free for the first time in my life I'm going to go help other alcoholists that was his thought P. Chase gets out of the hospital and most of us have had this experience when we finally get sober God we just want to go out and sober up the world you know we just want to go grab people and say hey look i found it you know but bill was worse than any of them i mean he got out of there and he started going these oxford group meetings and telling about this great white flash that happened oh the room lit up you know and everything and they were saying oh that's really nice bill that's very nice so bill starts going around the ballrooms around in new york city and pulling drunks off the stool and saying you know you gotta get sober but the room lit up. And they started saying, oh man, go away, go way. For the next five months, Bill would drag drunks home, try to sober them up. They'd get drunk again. God, he just had the worst time. Not one of them got sober. Not one. And Bill is just preaching for everything. He's just doing everything he can. And finally, right at the end of April of 1935, Bill's about four and a half, five months sober. He comes home one day And he's really, really discouraged. And he says, I thought this thing was going to work. Tells this to Lloyd. Says, why? Says, I thought this thing wasn't going to be going to go to work? He says, God visited me and I've been out and not one single person is sober right now. This thing doesn't work. And Lloyd says, why Bill, you are so ungrateful. Don't you realize that it does work? Bill says, what do you mean it doesn't work? Nobody's sober. He says Bill, you're sober. We've been married for 17 years since the first time you've ever been sober. it's kept you sober. Bill gives the alcoholic answer like, oh, oh, okay. Bill goes and talks to Dr. Silkworth and tells him his problem. You know, the lawyers won't listen to his whinings. You know we all do that. You know our sponsor won't list our whinies. We'll go find somebody else to whine to. So he goes and whines to Dr., Dr. Silkworth saying, I thought this thing was going to work. Dr. Silkworth says, Bill, you've been preaching to these guys. You've been going in there and telling them the room lit up. Go in and talk to them about your own experience. Tell them about your drinking. Talk to them about the fact that alcoholism is a disease. Tell them they're going to die, Bill. Don't tell them the room lit up. Hit them with the God stuff later. Bill says, oh, okay. Well, Bill didn't have a chance to do much about that because about this time, you know, he's broke. Wife's working. Been sober four or five months. Everybody, Leonard Strong, all the rest of them are putting the pressure on him. Go to work, go to work. Go to go to go. And so here's this opportunity to go out to Akron, Ohio. There's a proxy fight going on. They're trying to get enough shares together for a rebel group to take over the National Tire Equipment Manufacturing Company in Akron. They made molds that made tires, and they had a couple of patents that way to press tires together in a certain way or something like that. So Bill says, well, I got a chance to do this, plus his ego starts returning at this point because they're saying, Bill, you get the proxies on this deal, we're going to make you president of the company. You're goingto run this company. Bill starts thinking, wow, I'll make some money. I'll be all right. So he goes out there, first week of May, 1935, and it's a very bitter proxy fight. And it seems as though the entrenched management was able to overcome all the objections, and they beat him. They beat him, and all of a sudden it's Saturday. It's May the 11th, 1936. The guys that brought him out there have left town. His hotel bill is paid through Monday. He has $10 in his pocket. That's all. He's in the Mayflower Hotel in Akron, Ohio. Nice hotel. Been there. Went to Akron for Founders Day five years ago. And once a year they let you back in there. It's now Senior Citizen Center. But in 1935, it was only about a year or so old. It was one of the few buildings built in the town during the Depression. Beautiful Art Deco time. So he's in a nice hotel in town, but he ain't got no money. Room paid through Monday. And he's depressed. And he said, business has collapsed. He doesn't know anybody in Akron. Knows nobody. It's about later on in the afternoon on Saturday and he hears the people start to go into the Merry Man Lounge. That was the name of their bar. And he hears the tinkling of the ice being in the glasses and he hear the laughter of people and he sees a few good looking women in there. Bill always had an eye for a good looking woman. And he gets this crazy idea and says, maybe I can go in there and have a ginger ale. Maybe I can come and go in here and have ginger ale I mean this guy you got to remember now Bill Wilson has had God Almighty himself in his hospital room five months before and this is how quickly our ego returns how quickly the illness returns five months later he's standing outside this bar thinking I could go in there and have a ginger ale well as Brownie an old timer in my area who's gone to her reward and gone to the big meeting used to say if you go into a whorehouse don't expect to just get kissed no Bill's thinking about going in there And then it occurs to him what Loyce had told him. You know, you've stayed sober this period of time by working with another alcoholic. He thinks, where can I find another alcoholic? I don't know anybody in this town. He's wandering around the lobby and he's going back and forth and back and forward and he notices a church directory there and a name catches his attention. Bill always likes strange names for some reason. And it was a Reverend Walter Tunks and he thought Tunks rhymes with drunks. I'm going to call Tunks to see if he knows any drunks so he calls Tunks and says do you know any drunks and Tunks says I don't know any drunks but then Bill explains to him he's a member of the Oxford group and he says why don't you call Norman Shepard he's local Oxford group man he's not a drunk himself but maybe he can give you some names so he calls this guy Norman Shepherd and Shephard says well I'll give you the names of some people who might be able to put you in touch with some people so he gives him a list of ten names of somebody that might help him find the drunk and Bill goes down the list now here's at the point up to this point before my visit there at 97 I've identified intellectually with Bill I read his story many many times I've you know I finally got around to where I could see myself in his story but I've never identified on a gut level basis with it they're in 97 Charlie B and I were there to make flower hotel and then this stories coming through because you know here he's gone and looked at the hotel director he's finally decided he's going to make these calls. He needs some change. And I start looking around. Now, the lobby of the hotel is about the same size or smaller than this room. Here's the church director over here. Here is the registration desk right here. Bill could have gotten changed right there. There's the door for the entrance to the main restaurant over there. Now Bill could've gotten changed there. There's a magazine stand over there that Bill coulda gotten changed. There is a little pharmacy drugstore and ocean shop right over here he could have gotten changed there then you go up a couple of steps there's a cigar and cigarette stand bill could have got changed there now what does bill a good alcoholic do though he passes all those places up and goes into the bar slaps a buck on the table says give me 20 nickels he does exactly want any good alcohol i thought my god i would have done the same thing you know bill is a real alcoholic you know he had to have that last little taste of of the deal in there and he called the first nine people and oh they didn't know anybody or they said, well, we'll talk to you another time or we'll see you in church on Sunday. And it blew them off is what happened. Then he looked at the 10th name and it said Henrietta Seiberling. He thought, my God, I can't call the wife of the owner of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Frank Seiberlin was the owner of the Goodyear Tire. He thought Henrietta seiberling was his wife. And he agonized over it and he thought, I might get drunk if I don't. I'm going to have to call her. and when he called her up he said I'm a rum hound from which is a term of the time I was a rum Hound from New York and I'm looking for another drunk to work with and I need another drunk to talk to and Henrietta gave him the damnedest response she says well of course you do and I have just the man and Bill goes huh and Henriette said I've been expecting your call Bill you could have knocked him over with a feather here's what had happened in the local Oxford group there was a doctor there and his name was Dr. Robert Holbrook Smith. Dr. Smith was, Bill at that time was 39. Dr. Schmidt was about 55. He had at one point been an extremely prominent doctor in the town but he had become a drunk. You know, he's the guy that Prohibition started. He figured he couldn't get drunk during Prohibision so he turned into an absolute drunk drinking during Prohibition. He had lost almost all of his practice. He was exactly the right kind of doctor to be found Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, throughout history, men have speculated on where the seat of a man's soul is. You know the Catholics think it's in the sacred heart of Jesus and the Buddhists think it is in the... That's the reason Buddha has a big belly. You know they say the soul is in his belly. Well Dr. Smith was a butt doctor. He was a proctologist and I've come to believe in Alcoholics Anonymous that the soul is in your ass because we save your ass and somehow your soul comes along with it. He knew exactly where alcoholics brains were located. and he couldn't get sober he'd been going to the Oxford group for three years he'd fall asleep drunk reading his Bible at night he sensed something in him sensed that it was a spiritual solution but he couldn' t get it he couldn''t get it and finally two weeks before he was operating on the same principle that most of us operate on nobody knows about when drinking having an Oxford group meeting at T. Henry Williams house and he finally fesses up says I'm a secret drinker I know y'all don't know anything about Of course, they all knew about it. Hell, they could smell him. You know, if you can smell him, you can tell them. And he says, I am a secret drinker and I can't stop. And would y'all pray for me? And they all got down on their knees and prayed for a solution, including Henrietta Cyberman. Henrietta Cyberman was one of these women of immense faith. You know these kind of people you just kind of stand in awe of. You know they aren't in our program but somehow they got a connection. You know like my little grandmother in East Texas. Boy, I knew she had a connection I never could get it but I knew Granny had it. Well, Henrietta had it And when she had prayed for somebody to come help Dr. Smith, she expected an answer to her prayer. So when Bill called up and said, I'm here because I need to talk to a drunk, she said, of course you are. You come right on out to my house. So he goes out to the gatehouse at the Cyberling Estate. And the Cyberlings Estate is one of the grand estates in the United States. When A&E did that series on castles in America, it was one of those estates. It's one of these deals that they show. You know, it's just a midst thing. But Henrietta was not the wife of Seiberling, who owned it. She was the daughter-in-law. And she and Seiberlings' son had become divorced, but Seiberlingen still liked her a lot, thought his son was a jerk for divorcing her, and had her living in the gatehouse at the entrance to the estate. Now, the gate house itself is a really nice two or three bedroom house, pretty large, beautiful place. So she was living there with the grandchildren. And Bill came out there, and she immediately gets on the phone, calls up Ann Smith and says, bring Dr. Bob over. I've found somebody who's got a solution for alcoholism. Ann says, well, I can't really bring him over right now. Tomorrow is Mother's Day, and he knows how much I like potted plants, and he has a potted plant for me. Unfortunately, he is more potted than the plant, and he is passed out underneath it. So I said, maybe we can bring him home. Maybe we can get him over tomorrow. and uh so the next day at five o'clock in the afternoon uh smitty who's dr bob's son who i've had the privilege of meeting on a number of occasions and hearing him talk he's still very much alive today was a 16 year old boy at the time he drove uh dr bob and ann over to henrietta's gatehouse and dr bob did not want to go he had said i'll give this turkey 15 minutes tops and he gets in there and lets Bill know that I've really got to go I'll give you about 15 minutes and Bill says the magic words he says you look a little shaky you look like you probably could need a drink Dr. Baum kind of relapsed at that point hey maybe this guy does understand but his defense mechanism was still up they go in the library and they start talking and here's the magic thing that saved us that saved Dr. Bohm and saved Bonds Dr. Bonds immediately defends who says, look, I'm a medical doctor. I've read up on all this stuff. What can you possibly tell me that would help me with my drinking? Phil says, oh, you misunderstand. He says, I don't know. I'm not here to help you. I'm here because I'm about to get drunk and I found that if I tell my story to another alcoholic it helps me to stay sober. He says now, I hope it'll be helpful to you but he says you're doing me a great favor by just allowing me to talk so that I can stay sober you see and that's the 12th step that's Alcoholics Anonymous that was Bill seeking out someone to tell his story to and Dr. Bob relaxed and Bill started sharing his stories there he wasn't preaching to Dr. Bond he was sharing his story which is what we do in AlcoholicsAnonymous it's what you guys were doing there Thursday night at the Robber's Roost meeting that I was privileged to attend at we were sharing our stories we were talking about our drinking that 15 minutes turned into five hours. Turned into five hours. Dr. Bob later reported, you see it in the story, grand story, Dr. Boz Martin and the big book, that Bill was the first guy that ever talked to him from his own experience. And Bob had gone in there shaky and nervous and scared. Bill had gone in there shaky and nervous and scared and they came out there five hours later and they were laughing. They had their arms around each other and said hey let's get together again tomorrow. Bill stayed on in the town and Bill and Bob got together every day and they talked about spiritual deals and going to the Oxford Group and all this kind of stuff and got this program of action and Bob said, I can go through all of that except I can't make amends. If I go tell anybody I'm a drunk, nobody's going to allow you to cut on their rear end if they think you're a drunk. Then as Bob reported, he developed a great thirst for knowledge. He decided he had to go to the American Medical Association conference which he always went to and he left to go to Atlantic City on that and Ann Smith was very nervous about him going said he's going to get drunk Bill says well we can't stop he's a grown man you know he's got to find out when he stays sober he was drunk before the train left Akron three or four days later doesn't even remember the trip comes back nurse has to come down to the station to pick him up Bill and Ann sober him up over the next two days because he's gonna have to do an operation on Monday because they were broke doctors in those days did not make the money they make today. His mortgage was about to be foreclosed. There was literally no food on the table. He had to do that operation to put food onthe table, period. In the morning of June 10th, 1935, Bill got him up early and fed him a beer to quiet his nerves down and Bob looked at him and says, I'm ready to go through with this thing. He says, the operation? Bob says, no, that thing you've been telling me about. He says I realize now that I have to do the whole deal. And Bill gave him another beer on the way to the hospital. Then Bill went back to the house and they waited and they waited. He went by and pretty soon it was five o'clock in the afternoon and Bill and Ann were certain that Dr. Bob had gotten drunk because they hadn't heard from him. You know, this is the day poor cell phones can't just call him up. Bob appeared and he had a big smile on his face and said, where you been Bob? He says, I've been out mending fences. I've not talked to the people that I've harmed and let them know that I have a problem with my drinking but I'm willing to make restitution. He was willing to go through with the deal. And we did our founding moment, our founding from that date, June the 10th, 1935. See, we don't date it from the date of Bill's last drink on December the 11th, 1933. When Bill got sober, we don'T date it on the date of Bill'S spiritual experience December 14th, 1938. We date it from the day that one alcoholic working with another alcoholic resulted in two people being sober. And the first aid group was founded at that point even though they didn't realize it. The next day or perhaps the day afterwards Dr. Bob said you know we better get to working with some other with some of the drunks. We get to pass this thing on or we're not going to stay sober. I mean he had just gotten sober himself. Within another week they found Bill Dotson in the hospital Another guy gets sober. They had a couple of guys that they worked with that didn't get sober. They got their first young newcomer in, a guy named Ernie. Ernie was the first relationship in Alcoholics Anonymous. He ended up marrying Dr. Bob's daughter, Sue. Then he got divorced later. Bill stayed on for the summer and pretty soon the beginnings of Alcoholics Anonymous had started. And you see, we had this thing in place. and they were really kind of flying blind. They had these Oxford Group principles, they had these principles of recovery but they sensed right from the start that it was absolutely essential to work with other alcoholics to maintain their own sobriety. They knew they must gather some others about them or they could not stay sober themselves. They had to carry the message and they didn't have a clue of how to do this except just trial and error. They went out looking for drunks, went down to hospitals. You know, Bob had gone to the hospital there to get Bill D. Went up to the nurse, said, Do you have a drunk we work with? We've got a new cure for alcoholism. The nurse said, Doctor, have you tried it on yourself? You know we think nobody's ever noticed about these deals but they notice. They notice. Okay. We see in place now the principles of our recovery program, and we were developing these things over the next couple of years, but now we're getting into a different area. We're getting to the area of one alcoholic absolutely needing another alcoholic. We're starting to get into the fellowship now. We're trying to get in to... And I love this. You know, I started the meeting off just the other night that when y'all asked me to chair that meeting, one of my favorite statements out of the big book. Page 163. Read it again. Some of you may not have been there. Besides, I don't even need to hear it again because I like to hear this one all the time. It says, When a few men in the city have found themselves, have found ourselves, isn't that what happened when we came to Alcoa Synonymous, we found ourselves. I met a stranger when I came to Alcoа Synonymous and that stranger was myself. I was lost and I found myself here. You know there's a box up here that says lost and found? I guess it's for the kids here at this school. AA is the biggest lost and find in the world. I came here lost and I'm here and I've found myself here since when a few men in this city have found themselves and have discovered the joy of helping others to face life again there will be no stopping until everyone in that town has had his opportunity to recover if he can and will and that's what Bill and Bob started out on there in Akron still you may say but I will not have the benefit of contact with you who write this book we cannot be sure God will determine that so you must remember that your real reliance is always upon him we do have benefit of contact with people who wrote this book because they wrote the book and they carry the message to somebody else who carried the message to somebody else who carried the message to us and God willing we'll stay sober and carry it to generations yet unborn Yet I'm born. And then this paragraph finishes up with, What is for me? One of the great promises of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. One of those promises. One of my most profound promises. And it becomes more so and more precious to me the longer I stay sober. The next sentence says, He, that means God, will show you how to create the fellowship you crave. So he thought I was craving the alcohol out there. Oh, he thought he was cravingthe alcohol. But we've been through Carl Hume's letter and William Jameses and the message that Abby carried to Bill. I thought I was craving alcohol, but what I was craving was something to fill this big hole inside. Something to get rid of this loneliness that is surrounding me. I always felt lonely and apart and different and separate. And I especially felt that way in a crowd. And no matter what costume I'd put on or no matter who I was, no matter how much I would attempt to fill the hole with, you know, I set out to fill it with success It was always going to be the next honor, the next prize that came my way. And I would get the prize and that wouldn't be enough and I had to go to the next one. There would always be more money and I'd go out and try to make that. There was always gonna be the new one. The next woman. The next honor. The next thing. Yet I never felt like I fit and belonged. And I was always willing to change the costume. You know? I didn't know where I fit, where I belonged. And I felt my loneliness in the crowd. Crowd. That was never enough. You know, I remember one day in 1975 when I was still with that big law firm. I had cocktails with the President of the United States at noon at Antoine's Restaurant for the President OF the United State. And by midnight that night I was drinking shots and beers with the president of the Galloping Goose's Motorcycle Club. You know? And I didn't feel like I fit and belonged to either plus. I was too good to be with the bad people and too bad to be with the good people, and I didn't fit here and I didn't sit there, and where do I fit and where do I belong? It was a fellowship that I craved. And I couldn't find it because I had this alcoholic emptiness and loneliness. I wanted to be a partner with both of them. I liked both of them. But I couldn' And Bill and Bob set out to create this fellowship without really knowing it, without knowing that they were going to have to create the fellowship. You see, this is where we're going to start getting into how A developed and how our traditions, the glue that holds us together. The reason that we're here together is Cuyamaca? How do you pronounce the name of it? Cuyamarca. Cuymarca Camp in California this weekend. We're all hanging together here. How did all this get started? How did All This Get Started? What happened to create this growth of Alcoholics Anonymous from two guys, from two trunks on June 10, 1935 until today And worldwide, we have approximately 3 million members worldwide and over 100,000 groups scattered all across the world. What has created this fellowship? Some of you have been to international conventions. I know you all had one here in San Diego in 1995. I attended the one in Seattle in 1990. I wasn't able to make the one here back in 1995 because my mother had a stroke shortly before it. We had some serious problems in the family. But there's a remarkable story that some people who were there related to me that happened at the 95 event. You know, at the Olympics they have a flag ceremony where the athletes march in with the flags and the countries and they have an hell of a time figuring out what order they're going to march in because, you know, the South Koreans won't march in with the North Koreans and the Iraqis won't mark in with Iranians and nobody wants to be next to Israel and, you now, you just get right on down the line. Everybody's got their own little politics and stuff. LA, we just do it alphabetically. We just do alphabetically so Iran, Iraq and Israel all come in at the same time and from what I'm told as soon as the flag ceremony was over they break their three flags down together and they all got in a circle together and said the Lord's Prayer that's alcoholics and us that's something that isn't found in the rest of the world you know that's out there currently very much in the news today trying to destroy each other. We found a different way to do it. Let's look and see what happens, see how our traditions develop, how this way of holding together develops. Because you can't stay sober in a vacuum. You know, I talked earlier about the fact that we get sober on the spirit of Alcoholics Anonymous. We remain sober by practicing the principles to taking the steps of the program of recovery that I'm talking about. We have a place to make that program of recovery our way of life. If we don't, we're going to drink again. You know, we saw that at the meeting Thursday night there was a guy in there complaining he's been getting drunk time and time again. You know? He's been hanging away from the deal, you know? We've seen that time and times and time and time again You know I've seen the symbol of AA circle and the triangle Phil Wilson said in 1955 at the 55th International Convention where that symbol the circle and the triangle was introduced he says above us this is page 139 of A comes of age above us floats a banner on which is inscribed the new symbol for Alcoholics Anonymous the circle within the triangle the circle stands for the whole world of Alcoholics Anonymous and the triangle stands for A's three legacies of recovery unity and service within our wonderful new world we have found freedom from our fatal obsession that we have chosen this particular symbol as perhaps no accident the priest and seers of antiquity regarded the circle and closing the triangle as a means of warding off the spirits of evil an A circle and triangle of recovery unit in service has certainly meant that to all of us and more actually Bill had been on a visit to Norway a couple of years before and had seen that in a stained glass window in a Lutheran church in Norway No. And it struck him and he asked about it. And it meant more than just a symbol to ward off evil. It's an ancient spiritual symbol that actually goes back to the Greek Pythagoras, the guy who invented the science of geometry. Some of you had to suffer through along with me the geometry in high school and you learned about the Pythagarian theorem, you know, A squared plus B squared equals C squared. You know, well, back in those days they attached a lot of mysticism to their geometry and mathematics and stuff and their symbol for body, mind, and spirit united as one was a triangle within a circle because the triangle is the strongest geometric figure known because if an equal lateral triangle none of the sides can bend so it's uniting of body mind and spirit as one which is recovery unity and service we have to have all three of those things or we simply don't make them we have to have a program of recovery a fellowship to share it in and we have to be able to give back what we've gotten through service through helping each other through making the coffee back here and picking up the cigarette butts and setting up the chairs and taking them down and going to the counter and picking out the pizza you know have to find a way of service here well let's see how let's do this let's figure out how our deal develops we got Bill and Bob there in in Akron and they've added one or two guys you know several more got drunk A guy named Paul Stanley comes in, and his brother comes in. And pretty soon they got a new place. By the time Bill left here in the summer, they had four or five guys there. Bill goes on back to New York. This time was a whole new way of looking at things because he's actually seen it work. He's seen that it's possible to gather some people around him. And they weren't having any meetings. They didn't even know what to call themselves. They thought maybe they were in the Oxford group. They weren't real sure about it. They were going to an Oxford group meeting every Wednesday night at T. Henry and Clarice Williams who were not at themselves alcoholic's home the irony yet is that T. Henry Williams was in effect the inventor and owner of the company that Bill had just tried to take over in that failed proxy fight but whoever that was a great guy just welcomed Bill on into the home you know and A we have no monopoly on bigness of spirit and Bill gets back to New York he starts working and he doesn't have quite the success that Bob does evidently Dr. Bob was called the prince of 12-steppers and he really had a talent for working with wet drunks. And Bill never quite developed that same talent, but Bill hung in there and plugged in there and Bill's strategy was to go down to Towns Hospital and sort through the various drunks and nutsoes and whatever there and try to bring a few around. He'd start bringing them around to Clinton Street and trying to sober them up there and most of them would get drunk. But a couple of significant things happened. The publicity man for Standard Oil of New Jersey, which later became Exxon, A real power driver named Hank Parkhurst got sober in New York. Then a guy from Washington, D.C. named Fitz Mayhew gets sober. And all of a sudden they've got a little nucleus there. They've got three guys instead of just one guy. You see how it grows? That's the way my group grew. You know, me and Dave, they're reading the big book one week and Charlie B. comes the next and Buddy comes and I'm sure Robert Roos started this much the same way. No. One, two, identification. You start doing the deal, pretty soon we're starting to hang together. See, tradition one, we're trying to hang it together. We're finding it necessary to hang togther. Well, they started developing this little group there. Didn't have really a program for recovery. Just talking Oxford group principles. Going to the Oxford group. They did have some literature that they were reading. You know, when I went to my first convention, I'll just throw this in here for what it's worth. A speaker was speaking and he touched a little bit on a history. I was four months sober. His name was Eddie L. He got sober out in California and now been in New Jersey for many years. I went up to him afterwards and said, Eddie, what did Bill and Bob read? I mean, they didn't have a big book. They hadn't written it yet. They didn't Have any of this or other stuff. What did they read? Where did they get all this stuff from? And Eddie said, and I've confirmed this then from all of these other sources and books that I've recommended to you up here, mostly conference-approved literature and some that aren't conference-approved, but neither are they conference-disapproved. and he said well they primarily had this they had the variety of religious experience which I've shown to you up here and that's dammit this book these lectures in 1899 were published as book form in 1902 it's 100 years later and you can still walk into any respectable bookstore in the country the Dalton books so any of those big booksellers you can buy this book 100 years later it's still in print he said they were also reading a book called Sermon on the Mount SermON ON THE MOUNT was written by a guy named Emmett Fox who was a you can't really call him a preacher although he spoke a great deal of Christianity but he spoke of it in a very spiritual sense and he was an extremely popular man in the 30's as popular as Billy Graham was in the 80's or 90's you know sometimes thousands several times he filled Madison Square Garden with people coming to hear his lectures he was really an electrical chemical engineer from England who had made a lot of money and he'd written this book, Sermon on the Mount. And it was very popular. It was published in 1934. And he said the other two sources were the Book of James and the Bible which talks about faith without works being dead and the necessity of actually taking action and the 13th chapter of Paul to the Corinthians which talks about love. And he says that's basically the sources that they use. So I looked out of there and I went and got some morning to read those. You can imagine with my ego which when I read first I thought Book of Jane had catchy titles You like that title? Oh, well. I'm still trying to get well, you know. I don't read Sermon on the Mount. I recommend it to everybody. It was an eye-opener for me. One that came in here with horrible resentments and confusion about religion. And Emmett Fox says in the preface to the thing, some of us guys were talking about this yesterday, he says in The Preface to this thing, Jesus Christ taught no theology. All of his teachings were entirely spiritual and metaphysical and all the theology was added later. and then it goes through the Sermon on the Mount which is a lot of our program talks about don't bring your gift to the altar go get reconciled with your brother go make amends with your Brother before you bring the gift you know talks about whatever going around comes around pertains to Lord's Prayer you know I got something out just gave me a new viewpoint what if they but altered attitudes you know I had to alter my attitudes to find my own concept of a higher power which was simply AA when I first got here and I started having to look for something that's what they looked in I'm just throwing it out It may float your boat. It may not. But this is what these guys were doing. They were searching for a way to put this program together. It grew slowly in New York. Everybody was broke. Nobody had a job. It grew a little bit faster in Akron. A couple of years went by, and the first couple of significant things started happening in the fellowship. Now, during this period of time, Loyce had still got a job, Bill spending all his time working with drunks. Every once in a while he comes upon a little stock deal, but he ain't making no money. Dr. Bob isn't making any money. In 1937, Charlie Towns at Towns Hospital... Now, Towns had been making fortune back in the 20s and early 30s, but now it's absolute deficit expression. He's not making any more money. He gets the idea that if he hires Bill Wilson, who started this deal as a lay therapist, he can really make some money. So he offers Bill a job and a share of the profits. and Bill just, wow, I'm home free, you know. Most newcomers want to be a counselor, you know, God gets built with no difference. He gets all enthusiastic because he's saying, man, well, I saw this department store, we're going to make a lot of money at this hospital and everything and he's just thinking this is wonderful and he just can't wait to tell the guys at the group, you now there's six or eight guys in the group now on Tuesday night at the meeting and he goes in there and starts telling them about it. I'm going to work for Charlie Towns and by God, we are going to do this and he He's telling them and he looks around and all of a sudden he realizes that they're not too happy with this. They're kind of downcast. They aren't as excited as he's excited. Even Lois, when he told her, wasn't all that excited. And finally one of them speaks up and says, Bill, Bill, we've been giving this thing away. If we start charging for it, we're going to ruin the deal, Bill. Bill, We can't get professional. If we do that, think of all the drugs we're gonna die on. Bill, you've been telling us that the good is sometimes the enemy of the best. Now, Bill, we know you're broke, we're broke. We know you ain't got any money. But Bill, this could ruin the whole deal if you go out and start advertising your services and charging for it. And slowly Bill came to realize as they went around the room that this idea would not float. And he came to accept the group's decision. And this is the first great example of an alcoholic listening to the group conscience. Listening to the group conscience and Bill changed his actions and regarded him. You know, he couldn't lose the group. The group was the most important thing and somehow the group had spoken to him and said, Bill, we just can't do this deal. We can't sell what we've got. They didn't call it that hay day. A couple of months later Bill went out and visited Dr. Bob out in Akron and they got together in their room in the living room at the little house there on Audemars Avenue. I visited that house when I was out at Founders Day. It's not a very large house, nice little house but it's small. Like I say, doctors didn't have a lot of money in those days and they started counting noses and you know, this one had gotten drunk, that one hadn't and all of a sudden they realized they had almost 40 people that had substantial sobriety and this has never happened before. You know, no alcoholic stayed sober for a fair time. They had a couple of guys that stayed sober more than a year. Bill was sober at that point almost three years Dr. Bob was sober two and a half and a couple other guys Paul and the other Stanley guy were sober a year and a halve they had some others that had 90 days or 120 days or something man this thing is going to work and Bill and Mom both said well yeah but gosh it's taken us two and half years to get 37 people how much longer is it going to take we've got to do something you know we need to get some literature together. We need to get some literature together. Maybe we ought to write a book. Maybe we need to get, and we can't get anybody into hospitals. This is back in the day before hospitals discovered insurance, you know, and they didn't want drunks in there. Drunks did not pay the bills. You know, Dr. Bob was sobering up some people at St. Thomas Hospital there through the good officers of Sister Ignatia who was letting him come in there, but they were really kind of sneaking them in under other diagnoses, and it It was only through the tolerance of the good Catholics there at St. Thomas Hospital that we were able to sneak what drunks in there that we could. So they said, well, we need a chain of hospitals to sober up drunks. We're too few to go out and carry the message, so what we need is some paid missionaries, and of course we'd be getting our salary too, to go outside and carry it. We need a book. So they called a meeting. Second example of the group conscience. They called a meet with people there in Akron. Approximately 19 or 20 people showed up for that meeting. Maybe a couple more, maybe a couple less. And they talked, and they talked. By the slimmest margin, because the conservative advocates... You know, I've heard it said that if Dr. Bob had been the only founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, he was so conservative that you had to go to Akron, Ohio to find him. If Bill Wilson had been sole founder of alcoholics anonymous, he'd have franchised it like Burger King. There'd be little stands on every corner in the nation. That was the difference. Bill was the promoter, Dr. Bob, solid, solid man, solid as a rock, very cautious, very cautious. They played perfectly together. These were the two men that at the end of their lives said, he and I never had an argument. We needed both times. They had that discussion that night, and by a margin of barely two, the group said, all right, we'll approve writing the book. will approve the hospitals and all this money you want to raise, but Bill, since you're in New York and all the money's in Newark, if you think you can go raise the money, you go raise it. Which is kind of an easy out. Bill goes back to New York and thinks, well, I know all these people that are worth millions, I'll be able to get some money and he goes out and starts trying to raise money. Doesn't raise a dime. Doesn't rise a dime I mean, he'll go talk to these rich people and they'll say, yeah, but isn't saving drunks kind of like sweeping up the shavings on the shop floor? You know, he said, wouldn't it be better to give the money to the Red Cross or the Polio Association? And he just kind of blew him off and sent him out of there. We were just not that popular back in those days. Hell, we're not that populous today. Think about it. Phil was expressing his dismay to Dr. Leonard Strong, his brother-in-law. and I said to him, well, all these rich people are blowing me off and we can't get any money to get this started. We've got to get some money so we can get this book written. Another one of these little wonderful coincidences that's so much the Alcoholics Anonymous feedback. Strong said, you know, there was a gal I used to date when I was in high school and her father was Dick Richardson and Dick Richardson is one of John D. Rockefeller's right-hand men. And maybe I'll call him up and find out if there's any way to get into that. And Strong called up Richland, who he hadn't seen in a decade or more, maybe 10, 15 years. And Richland remembered him right away. Richland was one of those grand men. He later became one of the greatest friends Alcoholics Anonymous had, became oneof our non-alcoholic crusties. He said, oh yeah, I remember you. And Strong said, well, my brother-in-law has come up with a way to sober up drunks and I knew that John B. Rockefeller was interested in alcoholism and that sort of thing and I'd just like to see if y'all would be interested in talking. Rich said, come right over. Come right over Bill gets all excited my God we're getting next to the Rockefeller money. Now in those days Rockefeller was the richest man in the world it'd be like going over to Bill Gates' house today. I mean Rockefeller had the money and he was making a profession of giving it away he had established the first super great foundations to give away money he was just making a career of endowing this and paying for that and giving the money away. Bill heads on over there, a couple other guys head on over here, they go up to the Rockefeller boardroom, meet with Richardson who met him very kindly, brought a couple of other Rockefeller people in and said, Mr. Rockefeller was just here and he wants to hear about all this. So Bill tells them about the whole deal, tells them they need to raise some money to write the book, they need to raise some money to pay off, get some hospital deals, do all this kind of stuff and these men around Rockefeller just, you know these are his top lieutenants these are very wealthy men in their own right all get really excited and say yeah this is a wonderful deal this is an amazing this is wonderful deal and they sent a delegation over to Akron to see how this thing is really working and a guy named Frank Amos and some others went over to Akron checked it around checked out Dr. Bob Pulley and said God alcohol is phenomenal they didn't call it that at that time they didn'y know what the thing was called this deal is working we're going to recommend to Mr. Rockefeller that he had given an initial grant of $50,000 now in today's prices that would be like dropping a couple million on you at least maybe I mean $50.000 in 1937 late 37 was a lot of money and it was at that point that our bacon really got saved because when they came back and presented that report to John D. Rockefeller now this is the man who has made a profession out of giving away as much money as he possibly can who has helped every worthy cause in the country he reads their report about the guys getting sober and what's happening over there and the deal and he says wow I am really moved by this this is fabulous this is wonderful but I think money is ruined I think if I put some money into this deal I would professionalize it I'm not going to be the one to ruin this deal I'm never going to give them any money Bill was really crestfallen. He says, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to make an exception to this extent. Dr. Bob's mortgage is about to be foreclosed on. They owe $3,000 on that. I want to put $5,000 in the treasury of the Riverside Church with instructions to pay off Dr. Rob's mortgage so his house doesn't get forecloset and the other $2,000, don't let out $20 or $30 a week to Bill and Bob until it lasts and then don't ask me for any more. So he gave him a little help. Kept Dr. Robert's house from being foreclosure. The big bucks they were expecting weren't there. Bill starts promoting he starts trying to organize these other guys around Rockefeller into an alcoholic foundation which is a precursor to our Alcoholics Anonymous board today and they get around they start trying to raise money because they're going to write this book and they don't raise any money and nobody wants to give them any money and so Hank Parker says well let's form our own company and sell stock in it to finance the book so they go get a set of stock certificates and they write on their works publishing company and this company was never incorporated under the laws of New York or anything else and they go out and start selling stock certificates mostly to the drunk mostly on credit for $25 a share in a company that doesn't exist. If you all like to see it I got a copy of one of those stock certificates up here somebody I'm probably with you and but slowly they could raise a few bucks here and a few buck there and the big book began to be written the big books began to rewritten in 1938 so we're already seeing some beginnings in ways that we had to be different. We had to be different and God was working in these deals. Because here's the guy that makes a business out of giving away money, he says no money would ruin this deal, I'm not going to give him any money. We see the opportunity for Bill and others to become professionals in the deal and they say no, no, you can't be professional. they were learning that they had to start listening to each other and growth in this period was hard they started putting the book together you know it took most of 1938 to put the book together they finally got down to December of 38 the 12 steps hadn't been written the other parts of the book had been written Bill sat down on a cold December day in 1938 and asked for God's help and on that night wrote 12 steps to Provo's Alcoholic Synod which marked significant departure from the sort of formula of the Oxford Group, which was never written down in any sequence. I know sometimes in history you say, well the Oxford group had six steps, what Abbey took to build. That's really not correct. Nowhere in Oxford Group literature will you find those things written down as six steps. These are some concepts that Roland Hazard had gotten and he kind of passed on to Abbey. They seem to be circulating more among the drunks in the Oxford Group than anybody else, and the Oxford Group didn't like drunks very much. we were noisy we were disreputable we were apt to show up drunk at one of their meetings and they did not like that they were very much an upper middle class very proper sort of movement and they didn't like that very much they liked us very much we slowly had to start pulling away from them you know it's not to say that they were bad people but they were very different people they were out to save the world and we were out to save drunks we had a primary purpose we had a singleness of purpose we had almost a monomania a monomaniac is where you just got manic about one thing and that was help another alcoholic and to this day 66 years later that's our monomanic it's helping another alcoholic somehow or other though these steps got written these steps gotten written Bill said he wanted to plug up the holes in the little formula that they had used and to some extent he did but he added two things in there they were very significant that really aren't found you know there's a lot of good historians on this deal it's got any big burns out in Hawaii that's written book after book after book showing the biblical sources of alcoholic anonymous and how it all came from the Oxford group and other people were willing to show that it came from here and came from there it came form a lot of different places but it's very different from all of that best analogy I can think of is this I mean cause yeah a lot of our stuff fishing in our 12 step came directly from the Bulletin for Christian Readings. A couple of things, though. Even Dick Burns is a good guy. He's as much an advocate as he is. It all came to the Bible. He himself has to admit that you won't find Steps 6 and 7 formulated that way in any literature anywhere. I prefer to think that these steps, which are the linchpins of our program, these are the steps where it's not enough to go and talk to your sponsor or your counselor or anything else about all the things that you've done and whatever unless you're willing to start making some changes in your life and calling upon some power outside of yourself because you know you can't change. To change? Evidently, it just occurred to Bill. I prefer to think they were divine inspiration. I prefer the thought that a hand greater than Bill's was guiding Bill that night when he wrote those steps. But one way or another, that book got published. Incredible chain of circumstances. I mean, just more BS. It's a wonderful story. We don't have time for it today. I could spend an hour and a half up here telling you the story of the big books. It's fascinating. But somehow or other, in April 1939, the book came together. At that time, Bill says, and here you can already see the beginnings at that point of the tradition. The foreword to the first edition says, We of Alcoholics Anonymous are more than 100 men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. To show this precisely how we were recovered is the purpose of this book. it shows already at that point that AA was starting to realize that it had to be different before traditions were written or anything the foreword goes on to say and you can read this in your big book it is important that we remain anonymous because we are too few at present to handle the overwhelming number of personal peers which may result in publication this is an early form of traditional leaven it says being mostly business professional folk we could not carry on well our occupations in such an event like it understood that our alcoholic work is an avocation something an avocation just something simply something you do on the side that's the beginning of tradition 8 it says when writing or speaking publicly about alcoholism we urge each to the fellowship to omit his personal name desegning himself instead as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous again tradition 11 it says we ask the press to observe it says we're not an organization in the conventional sense of the word tradition 9 it says there are no dues whatsoever tradition 7 the only requirement for membership is an honest desire to stop drinking and that's Tradition 3. Now, we had to change that when we finally decided that there just weren't any honest newcomers, you know? Honest desire to stop drinking, you know. We decided to settle for any kind of desire to stop drinkin'. You know, Billy says in an article on Grapevine that we'll even settle for a suspicion that you have a drinking problem. In fact, my group uses that phrase when we're announcing our closed meeting. We say, if you know or even suspect that you've got a problem with your drinking, you know, we're willing to settle for any type of desire. But then they were talking about an honest desire. and so we see it says we're not allied with any particular faith, sector, denomination or to oppose any one of the traditions 6 and 10 simply we wish to be helpful tradition 5 we can see in 1939 when this book was published that we were already doing some things differently from other organizations because and I'm going to wrap this up in just a minute or two we're going to take a break and then we're going to come back and go through the actual 12 traditions you need to know where they came from You know where it came from? The Oxford groups of the day had tried to do things differently. We saw earlier our mission in that first publication, that Harold Bigby book, where they omitted all their names. But then Frank Bookman said, no, this isn't right. We need to publicize ourselves. We need go and get famous people to join. We need give our names out so that we can, using his phrase, change a man, change a nation, change the world. We're going to go out and get key people to do this. We're gonna seek all the public... And it worked well for a while. They had one meeting in the Hollywood Bowl in, I think it was 1938 where they attracted 30,000 people. They filled Madison Square Garden several times. We're talking about a significant spiritual movement. It was well known. But pretty soon the problems of money, property and prestige and who was running what came into the forefront. The anonymity. They didn't have rotational leadership. Frank Buckman was running it. And in 1938 Hitler was running a muck in the world. And Frank Buckland got the grand idea that he was going to go try to convert Hitler. Well, nobody saw that too well. You know, Buckman visits Hitler. Folks didn't like that too much. Adverse publicity started happening. Oxford University, which is of course in England, did not like Buckman visiting Hitler and they said stop using the name Oxford Group or we will sue you. Boy, that would have been great. You know Oxford University You're using that? No, we don't want you to use it. You see, all these things started happening and the Oxford group started imploding. I've listened to a tape by a guy named Jimmy Howe who's about four or five years old. Jimmy Howell came into the Oxford Group in 1932. He's still alive today. He's not an alcoholic and he talks about the fact that he loves alcoholics and I said, y'all are too limited in your viewpoint. You're too limited in the way you look at things. All you're trying to do is save drugs. You should be like the Oxford Group. We're out to save the world. Well, here it is 66 years later. We set out just to save drugs and there are 3 million of us in this world today. The Oxford Group set out to save the World. Has anybody in this room ever met anybody or heard of anybody who's in it today? I haven't. I haven'T. Let's take a break and we'll come back and go through the 12 traditions. Thank you. Thanks for watching!