The Working Hypothesis of the Toxin and the Antitoxin – Don B.

And at one time he found himself shipwrecked on a desert island, and he kept making notches in sticks to see the passage of time. And every day he'd set along the shore and look out over the ocean looking for a ship. And one day out of the ocean here came a diver just walking in. And Jim was so pleased, he thought he'd be saved. The diver walked up, removed the helmet, and here it was a beautiful young lady. And she said, how long have you been here, sailor and he said almost 10 months she said well i bet you longed for a lot of things during the 10 months didn't you he says there's times i would have given my back pay for a good drink of whiskey she reached in her diver suit and pulled out a pint of whiskey and said help yourself well fine he said and i haven't had a smoke for eight months she reached and got a bag of cigarettes and threw it to him reached in got her lighter and flicked her back and lit his cigarette and she says you've been here almost 10 months sailor he said yeah she says uh how would you like to play around my god he said yes did you bring golf clubs too most of you know winston moore and i want to tell you about winston when he was a little boy his family lived in a three-story house that had an attic and he played up there a great deal and looking down at the neighbor's house which had a flat roof he noticed the young lady come out there and exercise and then strip off and sunbathe and he'd come up every day and look down there and take a lesson in anatomy and he noticed that there were some physical differences between her body and his but he thought it was the difference between protestants and catholics and he would go up there every day finally his mother wondered what he was doing and she went up there and here he was looking off the glass said winston you're 13 years old you should be ashamed to be looking at a naked woman something terrible could happen to you while your body might just harden into stone so he stayed away for a while but one day she was shopping and he thought he'd take another anatomy lesson so he climbed up and looked down at that nude woman and his mother's words came back to his mind and he felt that little body starting to harden into stone. The problem of alcoholism and its cause and its cure has baffled the best minds that have grappled with it all ever since biblical days man has approached it from three standpoints the physical and the religious and the mental and it is an obvious fact that if one or two or all three of those approaches had solved the problem there wouldn't have been any problem and no necessity for the fellowship which we call alcoholics anonymous and certainly if anything was ever born of necessity and fathered by despair it is alcoholics anonymous i used to ask when i first came in asked different words what you find in a that enables you to retain and regain regain and retain your sobriety and your sanity and i found that all those answers could be put into one of three categories some said it's a higher power and i said is that something that just came into being when you got sober no it always existed why didn't it get you sober then if it does now i don't understand others says well it's group therapy now therapy is a system of treatment of disease to say it's a group system of treat of disease doesn't tell me what the treatment is and the third said well i'll tell you we speak each other's language i well didn't you speak each others language when you were drinking together yeah that's right I don't know just what it is. So I thought, well, I'm going to try to figure this thing out and find out what it is in Alcoholics Anonymous that got us from a bunch of drunken bums of one bottom or another into normal, honorable, tax-paying, job-holding human beings. I wanted to find out for my own satisfaction, and I thought if I get the answer to this, it will help keep the program simple. now man has approached it from three standpoints the physical that is a medicine physical medicine and from the religious and fromthe mental or psychiatric and i want to talk to you a little bit about those approaches and see if together we can figure out why it does work since though it didn't work under any of those attempts And I think you will agree with me that we've got something unique in Alcoholics Anonymous. But before I talk about those, I want to show you a working hypothesis which will explain why it is that I take a drink and I can't stop and my brother takes a drinkand goes about his business. Why is it? You know, the body has defense mechanisms. Whenever there's an invasion, the body attempts to overcome that. And you know too that there are poisons, one which will counteract or neutralize the other. If you were poisoned on an acid, which are burning you, you would take an alkali to counteract that. That would be an antidote. Ifyou were poisoned on an alkoli, you wouldtake an acid to counter act that. Act as an antidot. Now alcohol is a poison. Technically, we say toxin. Now perhaps when you take this toxin of alcohol into your body, your body makes a toxin anti-toxin, a poison against that. You take this alcohol into your body and your body makes another poison to counteract or neutralize that so if the normal individual who's not alcoholic takes into his system one ounce of alcohol his body then makes this poison to contraact it and it makes the improper amount and the non-alcoholic has his drink or two and goes about his business but because of some metabolic or chemical idiosyncrasy some little quirk if the alcoholic takes this much alcohol into his body his system begins to make this poison this toxin antitoxin like a phonograph with the governor broken it just makes more and more and more of it and he becomes poisoned with this poison which his body made to counteract this poison. Now he'll lie, cheat, and steal pawn his wristwatch write bad checks or anything else to get enough alcohol to balance that out well of course he doesn't get the right amount and it goes on and on and on days weeks or months but someday you've all experienced this if you're alcoholic by the grace of god and it just happens pure happen chance that one balances out the other and that's the day that you got up and you said oh man i believe i'm going to make it i believe I'm going gonna make it and you quit for a while you see your body had become poisoned by what your system made to counteract this poison but when you had one balanced the other one proper antidote then you could quit for time now i didn't get this from any textbook and it may not be right it's merely a working hypothesis that i created because it answers some questions you know i was searching for the answers now don't tell anybody that this is what happens you can just tell them it is a working hypothesis that might not work at all now from the standpoint of the physical there's medicine you know what medicine can do we used to say dry out now they say detoxify and you can have hydrotherapy water you know and warm baths and vitamins and minerals to build you up and sedatives to let you rest and get you dry or detoxified but that doesn't have anything to do with the cause that isn't the answer now from the religious standpoint i think too seldom was they're a meeting of minds between the priest or the minister and the alcoholic. Now let's just act out a little play here and see if you agree with me. Here is Joe Blow, an alcoholic. He's lying in bed. He has got a week's growth of whiskers. The melodious aroma of his perspiration and fetid breath has permeated everything. The sheets are damp. He is alternately cursing and trying to pray is contemplated suicide in every conceivable form and finally he calls his wife and he says anthracite come in here hi this time we're going crazy i've got to do something i've tried everything i don't know what the hell i'm going to do go over and get the reverend mr peabody and have him come and talk to me maybe he can help me she said do you think for one minute that i go get the minister that married us and let him see what kind of a thing he tied me up to you think for one minutes and i bring him in and see a dirty skunk like you laying in that bed and let our little daughter as a pedigree go back to cradle roll i should say not bing out she goes you see there's no meeting of minds there between the minister and the alcoholic or maybe she's a different type of woman she comes in and sets down and with a bedside manner that any physician would envy she takes his hand and she says joe i've tried everything i know i put those secret golden elixir powders in your coffee and i've had the doctor for you and i prayed and i'd done everything that I know how to do, I'm going to go get the Reverend Mr. Peabody and have him come in and take a look at you and talk with you. Maybe he can get you back on the straight and narrow. Oh my God, don't get him in the kind of shape I'm in. Can't you see I'm sick and damn near dying here? And you want to put something else on me? No! Well, I am going. Out she goes. Now if you're an alcoholic or if you know anything about the alcoholic, you take a book in that bedroom and There's just his big butt sticking out from under the bed. He's trying to find his socks, and if he ever gets them on, you will find him at the last chance saloon or up in Maisie's cozy room where he can write a bad check or pawn his wristwatch and get a few drinks. Well, now maybe it's a different story. Maybe she goes to the minister and she says, I've got to have some help for Joe. he's just drinking himself to death and it's ruining our family life and I don't know what to do. He says, is he drinking now? Yes, he's drunk as an old billy goat the son of a bitch. He says there's no use of me going on talking to a drunk man. He's crazy. You tell him to get straightened up and sobered up and bathed and cleaned up and then come up and talk to me. Well you're alcoholic you know when you got straightened up and bathed up and your hair cut and your whiskers off and out on the street you weren't looking for any help you were as good as anybody there's no meeting of minds they never get together they just never make it now psychiatry teaches us that the behavior pattern of the alcoholic parallels that means it runs similar to that of the alcoholic namely the manic depressive and the schizophrenic. Now, we'll get around to those in just a little bit. When the psychiatrist illustrates the pattern of a normal individual, he says he has a well-integrated personality, and he'll often illustrate it like this. He means that in such a person, reason and emotion are closely interwoven. We say reason runs in a straight line. Let that be the straight line of reason now for emotion to be closely interwoven it must run like that that might be the pattern of a normal individual if you when you're sober you notice that sometimes emotion takes you a little bit above the straight line of reason those are the days when you get up and say boy i believe i could whip the world today this is simply wonderful i just feel great emotion has taken you just a little tiny bit above reason. And then there are days when you say, I don't know why it is, but I'm just a little blue today. That's when emotion takes you just a little bit below reason. There are times in every normal individual's life when emotion makes him feel real good, he feels fine. And there are times in a woman's life when emotion has her feeling blue and that's when she goes buy a new hat or something to kind of pick her up. Now, the behavior pattern of the manic that isn't manic, it isn't maniacal, it's manic depressive would be like this. Here is the straight line of reason and here is the emotional pattern. the old textbooks called this circular insanity. If they were completed, they would make circles. Now there are times when the individual is at a height of emotion, euphoria, and they will go so fast they just make a word salad. They just can't catch up with themselves. If they're not too bad, they make wonderful salesmen. If they'RE NOT TOO BAD because they're just overcome with all the ambition in the world, and there are times when they're in the depth of depression. And I'm not kidding you. This is one type of psychotic who will suicide. They have to be watched. They think they've committed the unpardonable sin or something of that nature. Now, let's see how that runs similar to the behavior pattern of the alcoholic. Here's Joe Blow. He picks up the telephone. Hello, this is KICD. CD. Tell me who wrote the members of Ulysses P. Grant and we'll give you $10,000. He says, Ulyssa's P. grant. That's right. You've got to check for 10,000, come and get it. Now what's the first thing he's going to do now? He's way up here. See on cloud nine before you all jumped up and feeling great. You know what he's gonna do. He grabs the phone burrows, get Elsie and Grace and Fred and come over. I'm going to throw a party that Sue said he'll never forget so he's going to get drunk because emotion has taken him this great distance from the straight line of reason that's a dangerous if you sponsor somebody now in alcoholics anonymous watch them when they get just too high when they gets up on cloud nine things are going too good we don't take prosperity too well alcoholics don't take prosperity to wealth and when they're in the depth of despair again they're the greatest distance from the straight line of reason now supposing that joe blow goes and buys a new cadillac seville and with typical alcoholic thinking he hasn't time to get it insured he starts down the road runs into a telephone pole and he totals it he gets out of there oh my god why did this happen to him oh i tell you now he's clear down here in the depth of despair do you think he's going to church or the library you know where he's gone don't you he's gonna get drunk so when you sponsor somebody in aa watch them when they're get too high or when they get too depressed we had a very nice couple who met at an AA meeting in our town. In a few months, they got married. Everything was going lovely. In less than two years, she gave birth to triplets. A guy phoned me and said, would you believe it? It's triplets! I said, wonderful, but go see him because he'll be up here in euphoric cloud nine, and that's the greatest distance from the straight line of reason. He'll probably get drunk. They phoned and said you better get over here. He's in the depth of depression. I said, how could he be? Well, you better get here. So I went in and he sat there crying. I says, what in the world is the matter with you? Well he says, they're not my children. She's been playing around on me a lot too. I say, well what ever gave you that idea? The doctor did. He told me that triplets occur only once in 9,300 times and I haven't done it to her that often. These true stories are the best, you know it? Now, they also tell us that the behavior pattern of the alcoholic parallels that of the schizophrenic. In the movies and television nowadays, they're saying schizo, schizophrenic, but that's not right. It comes from the Greek, and it can be pronounced either schizo or schizophrenia. It's a split, schizo meaning split. Here's the pattern of The Split Personality. Reason is repressed, clear down here, underfoot. and there's just nothing up here where he lives but emotion in cloud nine now this is the truth the dean had a private mental hospital and i attended the psychiatry classes under him and i would go out there and learn to classify learn to to classify these various there are five different types of schizophrenic simple mixed hyperphonic catatonic and paranoid but i would go out there and they liked me they told me many times you fit right in here just like one of us now here's it here he left up here where there's nothing but emotion i went out there one time and there's a man standing going like this and i had on a clinic jacket but i didn't want to disturb his reverie and i walked up and i said well what are you doing arthur she says i'm just moving those clouds away let a little sunshine through see he thought he could do that because there was no reason he had withdrawn here you've all heard of grant wood who painted american gothic lived in cedar rapids he had a student one time who wanted to be a great artist so strongly that he split his personality by power of will repressed his reason and he withdrew into a dream world a world of fantasy where he could be the greatest because it they can be anything they want up here he was in there and he said to me one day come with me i'm the greatest the greatest artist in the world went up to his room and here was a canvas it just looked like you'd thrown a bucket of barn paint on it just splattered there he said you see i have arrived and i guess he had because he was the greatest where there was no reason now they say that the pattern of our pattern runs similar to that of the schizophrenic. What did we do that's similar to this? Well, take our friend Joe Blow. He gets through work at the end of the week. He starts home with his paycheck. He's got the car payment and the house payment and the insurance and the kids need school books and shoes and mother doesn't have a single thing to wear and hasn't for years. And he stops at the bar. He says, cash my check, will you? The bartender says, sure. Well, Joe wants to buy something. He said, give me a shot. I'm just going to have one. Give me a double. So the bartender gives him the double shot, puts his money out on the bar, and then the bartenders, they're smart. Wise in the way of the alcoholic, he sets up a shot! Well, Joes got to buy another one back, and pretty soon somebody comes in, and he's buying drinks. His money is all out in the bar! He says, see what the boys will have. It's just dirty old money. You can't eat it. He's forgotten all of these responsibilities because for that time he has repressed his reason. He has knocked it underfoot and he has withdrawn into a little dream world where he really thinks he's got plenty of money during that time. You see the alcoholic when he represses his reason and thinks he can fight. If you've seen guys that couldn't fight a lick and they get full of booze and they think they're fighters. So that shows you that the alcoholic pattern does run similar to that of the schizophrenic. I wish I had something to wipe this with. Hi. can I keep it you know everything that God made has within it a higher power did you know that everything the smallest particle of physical matter is the atom within the atom there's a positive center the higher power surrounded by the neutrons and it is the power of this positive center that causes the neutron to fly around there at such an astronomical space that if you get enough of them together they appear to be a solid if this Center this higher power would be removed the body of the atom would disintegrate your body is made of cells very much as a brick building is made of brick and every cell in your body has a higher power within it surrounded by a body of protoplasm which is governed by this positive center. It is this positive center, this higher power, within the atom that causes the body of the cell to assimilate nourishment, to excrete waste, and to multiply you could jump from there clear to our solar system the sun is the higher power there could be no life on earth without the heat from the sun there would be no light because there'd be no photosynthesis if you take that power out of the atom the body of the atom disintegrates take it out of the cell and the cell disintegrates If you could take the sun, the positive center of our solar system out, the solar system would disintegrate. All these planets would just fly off into space. They'd be colder than anything and there'd be no life on them. Man himself has within himself a positive center which is not the mind nor the heart. And when I say heart, I mean the emotional nature, the feeling nature. emotional realm and man instead of remaining under this control as everything else in the universe is through his mind and emotions has usurped the control and he is subject to all sorts of spirits now this is spirit you can't see spirit any more than you can see the wind but you can see things moving under the influence of the wind and you can see things moving under the influence of the spirit how often have you seen somebody under the influencer anger moving under influence of anger or hatred or jealousy or greed or fear yes we're not being controlled by that which we're supposed to let control us the old testament has one name for this the new testament another the ancient naac all sages called it the master self so that's what we'll use the masterself it is spirit now let me tell you something about spirit spirit has no meaning whatsoever in this physical realm unless someone gives it a body to work through the spirit of anger is here present nobody's feeling it because nobody has let it enter in and control. But Doris could let the spirit of anger take control of her mind and her feeling nature, and she could grab that chair and hit me over the head and hurt me. But if she doesn't let it control, it has no meaning here whatsoever. Same with the spirit of fear or hatred or greed—any spirit. And this spirit has no meaning whatsoever in this realm unless you voluntarily let it control. And when any spirit enters, it causes you to think certain thoughts. Now take the spirit of anger. If you let it enter into your mind and your emotional realm, it cause you to thank certain thoughts, doesn't it? It causes you speak certain words. It causes you take certain action. Spirit of greed, if you let that enter in and control causes you to think certain thoughts, speak certain words, and take certain action. Spirit of hatred or fear or any of them have got no meaning unless you give it a body to work through, and that's very true of this. While we with the aid of alcohol were subject to every destructive spirit possible, through AA, a 12-step program, and the acknowledgement of a higher power have, to a small extent, begun to allow this spirit which is within man to get back the control which the mind and the emotional realm have usurped. When you come to an AA meeting, you feel spirit, don't you? If you come and you don't feel the spirit of helpfulness, of sharing, of friendship, of love, then I'm sorry for you because I feel it. I feel it here now. I feel at the minute I walk into an AA meeting, somebody comes up and says, hi, where are you from? Who are you? You can feel the spirit and that's the thing that makes Alcoholics Anonymous work. We're given the control back where it belonged in the original and with the economy the way it is, we're standing on the edge of a precipice. Mankind doesn't seem to know it. We'd better let this control get established in us and through us. This is one of the most marvelous, wonderful fellowships that was ever on the face of the earth. Don't let it bother you if somebody looks askance at you or adopts a holier-than-thou attitude because you're alcoholic. Remember this. There is no nobility in being superior to someone else. true nobility lies only in being superior to your former self and every guy and gal that's letting this control go back in the spirit within the master self the higher power is superior to his or her former self and thanks for being such a nice audience Thank you.