The Washingtonians Lost Every Sober Drunk Because They Had No Traditions – Michael E.

About This Speaker Tape

Michael E., a female alcoholic from Georgia, delivers a personal tour of what she calls the Higher Power shots — the seconds and inches — that made Alcoholics Anonymous possible. She speaks at a women's retreat alongside her line of sponsorship (Vivian and Polly), arriving bruised from lifting her daughter's wheelchair and nursing a back held together by two rods and eight two-inch screws. Before she dives into the history she lays out the four things she believes define AA beyond the Twelve Steps: alcoholism is a disease, a vital spiritual experience is required once you pass into chronic, each drunk may choose their own conception of a Higher Power, and only one drunk can reach another.

The body of the talk traces four converging lives — Rowland Hazard, Ebby Thatcher, Bill Wilson, Dr. Bob Smith — all born within a small radius of Vermont, none fully known to the others. She walks through Rowland's year with Carl Jung in Switzerland, the shipboard relapse, and Jung's verdict that nothing but a vital spiritual experience could save him. She tells Ebby's drunken Vermont misadventures: the car through a neighbor's kitchen wall (the first drive-through), the airplane jag onto Manchester's new airstrip with three men face-down on the tarmac, and the shotgun barrage at pigeons that finally got him committed for alcoholic insanity.

She follows Bill through Ebby's visit and the line 'why don't you choose your own conception,' the spiritual experience at Towns Hospital under Dr. Silkworth, and the failed Akron proxy deal that left him pacing the Mayflower Hotel with ten dollars and a bar he could not walk into. The call to Reverend Tunks, Henrietta Seiberling's two weeks of prayer for Dr. Bob, Ann Smith's quiet role as the mother of AA, and the first drunks — Eddie and his belladonna escapes down the trellis and water spout, Bill Dotson in the hospital bed — lead to Bob's last drink on June 10, 1935, after a day of Akron amends.

She closes with the cautionary history of the Washingtonians collapsing from lost singleness of purpose, the Oxford Group leader's entanglement with Hitler, Clarence Snyder's Cleveland break, and Bill's fight for the Twelve Traditions with Bob's quiet backing. A reading of 'They Stopped in Time' makes her final point: AA's bottoms have risen, but the program still works on the newer drunk who can see the bottom before it comes up and hits them.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Michael opens at a women's retreat with Vivian and Polly, her line of sponsorship; mentions seducing a minister and stealing church money before AA
• 3:00 Lays out the four things beyond the Twelve Steps: disease, vital spiritual experience, choose your own conception of a Higher Power, one drunk to another
• 8:00 Norm Alpey's 'seconds and inches'; introduces the four men — Rowland Hazard, Ebby Thatcher, Bill W., Dr. Bob — all born within a small radius of Vermont
• 11:00 Rowland Hazard sails to Switzerland for a year with Carl Jung, relapses on the boat home, returns for Jung's verdict that only a vital spiritual experience can save him
• 17:00 Ebby Thatcher's Vermont offenses — the car into the kitchen wall, the airplane jag onto the Manchester airstrip, the shotgun at the pigeons
• 26:00 Ebby visits Bill in New York, refuses the drink, delivers 'why don't you choose your own conception' — the line that melts Bill's intellectual defenses
• 32:00 Bill's vital spiritual experience at Towns Hospital and Dr. Silkworth's advice to stop preaching and share about the disease
• 37:00 Bill pacing the Mayflower Hotel lobby with ten dollars, gripped by fear at the bar door, calls Reverend Tunks from the church directory
• 41:00 Henrietta Seiberling picks up the last number on Tunks' list; two weeks of her group's prayer for Dr. Bob meet Bill on the doorstep
• 50:00 Eddie's belladonna treatment, trellis and water-spout escapes, butcher knife raised over Ann Smith; Bill Dotson as the third to get sober
• 55:00 The Washingtonians' collapse, Oxford Group entanglement with Hitler, Clarence Snyder's Cleveland break, and the 1950 adoption of the Traditions
• 58:30 Reads 'They Stopped in Time' to show AA still works on the newer drunk who sees the bottom coming