Tom O. at the Memphis Area Meeting – 1986

Just keep it up I could put up with that all afternoon. Hi everybody my name is Tom and I'm an alcoholic. My name is Tom, I'm alcoholic and a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and if you're going to be an alcoholic that's the best kind of alcoholic to be as a member of the fellowship because just being an alcoholic on the outside it gets kind of frigid every once in a while. You may have noticed me going around hugging different women. But how many of you saw me go over and kiss Rudy Little on the cheek? I'll get Rudy to explain that to you after I've gone. That doesn't have a thing to do with anything but for something like 20 years, Rudy and I have had a deal going whereby when I talk, I mention his name. And when he talks, he mentions mine. And I just kissed him for the hell of it. there's a lot of grant money going around studying how people get to be alcoholics and i'd like to get some of the grant money i don't really need it but i could use it and the thing i like about grant money is then you get it with no strings attached You don't have to put up any matching funds. A grant is just something that's flat out given to you. You see, that's what we're dealing with in this serenity prayer. We're asking for a grant. God grant me. You see I got no matching funds to put up. I'm busted in all directions and you grant me just for the heck of it all these things that I'm asking you for like serenity and courage and all that other good stuff. So I'm an old hand at dealing with grants and looking forward to them, and I'm just enough of the person that I am that I like this idea of getting something for nothing. So that's why I'd like to get a hold of some of this grant money that people are passing out to find out how people become alcoholics. As I say, I don't need the money, but I could use it. And then there's another reason I'd like to get a hold of it is because I already know how one becomes an alcoholic. I got to be an alcoholic by drinking. and that's the only way I know how a person can become an alcoholic is by drinking so that's all I've got to tell you this afternoon and you know I've already said it to you directly and now I'll try to spend a little time confusing you by saying it in an indirect manner because some of us don't catch on to things when they're said in a direct manner. Like I have people ask me all the time, for example, the other side of the picture, how do you stay sober? By not drinking. And I hear people say frequently that Tom has a terrific message. Yes, I have. I have a terrific messag. And the message is, I haven't had anything to drink all day that got booze in it. You know, God knows I've had enough of this other crap. and that's the message I mean that's all I've got to say and I'm not going to take more than an hour to say that really I'm standing in a position that is a desirable position for me I got my plane ticket back home already it's in my pocket, it's paid for I know no matter what happens Wanda would take me out to the airport and you have already put your money in the kitty. And I like this kind of stuff for picking up the collection before the guy talks. And I have no idea why I started to drink. I mean, they tell me that people drink because of peer pressure. Well, I'm not even sure I know what peer pressure is. To get to Sunday newspaper, I have to go down to a drugstore about three blocks from home. And I went down to get to the Sunday newspaper some weeks back. And coming back, I passed by the Episcopal Church just as they were letting out. And every single woman in the whole group had on white stockings. Well, I looked there, you know, and it's a lawn full of white stocking. and I wondered to myself if this is peer pressure some gal is bound to reach for a fishnet that morning and at the last minute said no, better go with white And for all I know, that could be peer pressure. And if it is, I had some of that, you know. Because one of the reasons I—you see, I wanted to be like the big boys. I wanted To be grown up. That's the reason I got this damn mustache. I started growing it as soon as I got hair under my arm, because I wanted people to think I was older and more in the know than I was. And the big boys were drinking. And they said that the reason they were drinking was because it made them feel good. That's what they all said. I said, man, you know, you drink that stuff and gee whiz, you really feel good. And so maybe that's why I drank because back in those days, I didn't always feel so good. And I thought, well, maybe if I drink this stuff, I might feel good and it didn't work out exactly that way for me because I had trouble learning how to drink. You see, I've often thought, not seriously, but I've thought, I think a lot of stuff that ain't serious, you know. I don't think you necessarily got to go through life with every thought that you have being a deep, profound thought. And I've often thought, though not seriously, that if someone had taught me how to drink, I might not have turned out to be an alcoholic. But I never had any instruction in drinking. I'm a self-educated drunk. And just by pure observation, since I've been in Alcoholics Anonymous, I'm aware that I didn't drink like other people did to a large extent. And one of the troubles I had was I had trouble getting my stomach straight in relationship to what my hands and my gullet was going to do. because I'd drink that stuff and it wouldn't always stay down. I'd drank it and sometimes it would come right straight back up. Well, I figured that was part of the game, see? You don't go to somebody and say, look, what do you do if you're drinking and then throw it up? I didn't do it. One reason you don't ever ask questions is because if you ask questions, people might find out that you don' t know them. so you see i'd drink it and throw up and and i wouldn't tell anybody about it and and and uh they would say well how did it make you feel i said oh man made me feel real good and and then at night just before you're getting ready to go to sleep you know you wonder to yourself is this what they mean about feeling good so you go out and you try it again and again and again, and again. You keep throwing up and throwing up and throwing it up and you know after a while it gets kind of you take it for granted that you drink and you throw up. And you know who was it? Peggy Lee had a song. Is this all there is? You know and I used to think to myself, is this all there is to feeling good from drinking? Is it just the case of drinking and throwing up. But I stuck with it, and eventually I discovered that if you didn't drink it so fast, then if you tried not to be too nervous about it, that it was actually a fact that in between the time you drank it and the time you threw up there was a brief interval in which you felt good. Now, here's the thing I can't understand. That's the part I remember. It's the way it made me feel good. You see, I've forgotten all this drinking and throwing up stuff. And this is what I can remember. I mean, you would think that a guy as intelligent as I am would have remembered most of all the agony and the horror of trying to drink it. But no, I remember how good it made me feel. Now, I hear people, for example, say, I must never forget my last drunk. And I understand what these people are saying. I have no intention of being controversial nor trying to tell you to say something else. I understand and agree completely with what you're saying except it has no application to me whatsoever. For one thing, in the last part of my drinking, you know, for the last three or four years of my drinking, I was just a continuous drunk. So there's no such thing as my last drunk. I don't know what it is. So for me to try to remember my last drunk really, as I said, is meaningless because the last one lasted for so long and it was just one long kind of unconscious, half-sleeping situation. But the thing that I have to guard against is this, you see, that I am inside me a time bomb that is constantly ticking away and could go off at any instant and totally destroy me. and that time bomb is the memory of what alcohol did for me now I've been sober and Alcoholics Anonymous for a long time but stand before you right this minute I can feel as clearly as ever I felt in my whole life what the stuff did for me, what it can do for me and what it has done for me. When the pressure tightens up, when the pain begins to bear down, I know how to get relief. I have experienced getting relief. I lived with getting instantaneous relief and forget all this puking and other good stuff I remember what it did for me and this is the time bomb you see that ticks away in here and could come up into reality at any moment and tear me into tiny pieces and I had a good friend down in Mississippi who was a great guy for making up endings for AA Talks And I never will forget he ended one by saying this. He said, for those of us who are alcoholic, it is so much later than we think it is. For we are children of tragedy and we live on the edge of life on the brink of time. And eternal vigilance is the price of our sobriety. And this is one of the reasons that I stay active in Alcoholics Anonymous because I am a child of tragedy, and I do live on the edge of life and on the brink of time. And I have to be constantly aware of the big problem in my life lest it surface and destroy me. And so this, as I said, is one of the reasons that I stay active in Alcoholics Anonymous. Another reason is I want to see what they're going to drag in next. Well, we really get some dillies here in Alcoholics Anonymous and I was one of them. Sometimes it looks like we all come here the same way, you know, no problem. I can handle it by myself. Don't waste your time with me. You know, how are you getting along? Never ask an alcoholic how he's getting along. It's always either one or two things. Everything's all right, or usually, I've been sick. Man, we are naturals for the illness thing. How you getting along? Joe ain't seeing you in a good time. I've been sick." Yeah, you're damn right you've been sick. And nobody knows you've been sick like I know you've been sick, buddy. And we come into Alcoholics Anonymous with clenched teeth, you know. Try to sit in the back. The hell with all this sitting up in the front. And, we sit back there with your teeth clenched like this, you know, and talk to our teeth. Nobody, we don't shake hands with anybody. We don't look at anybody. Got our eyes down on the floor. There's always something important going on right down there. And all these other idiots going around, you know shaking hands saying hi, I'm Tom, hello Joe, hello Marion, hugging each other and all that stuff. Clenched teeth, you now, looking at whatever the hell there is out there. And we sit out there in the meetings and we listen to all this stuff that's going on up here and there ain't nothing funny about all this stuff. Everybody else is laughing, you know. I come to AA and I heard all this shit. I heard all this crap. I hear guys getting up and telling stuff that no sane human being would tell his priest or his lawyer. And everybody's just laughing like mad, you know, and clapping and going home and getting well. And I made up my mind I wasn't going to laugh, by God. That's one thing I wasn'T going to do. I may have to come here and I may have to listen to all this stuff that I don't believe to begin with, but you ain't going to make me laugh. Because there ain't nothing to laugh about. If I'd have had anything to laugh About, I wouldn't have had to drink. And that's another reason that I like to drink, because when I drank and it worked out right, i was a joyful type person i was a happy person and i was a charming guy and i could laugh and i did laugh and i participated in life when i had a drink or two under my belt but sober i couldn't do that sober i was an nerd and the further along I went the worse nerd I got and then when I come to Alcoholics Anonymous and I see all this laughter I mean I know it's phony and so I'm sitting out there with clenched teeth and I ain't going to laugh and I like to stay active in Alcoholics Anonymous and watch these people that are mirror images of me come in and they do the same thing see they ain't gonna laugh either but they keep coming back and they keep going back and you see one day it gets too much it just is too much input and one day or one night somebody says something and all of a sudden you go ha ha and and you look around who did that it's like as if you had got caught breaking wind And what I believe is this I just believe this based on my own experience and observation that possibly beauty is spirit made manifest in matter. Beauty is spirit. Beauty is made manifest and matter. And one reason I believe that is because you watch these people that come in and they stay here for a little while and they have their clenched teeth and their eyes are drawn tight together, you know, in the crow's feet, even where there's not anything to make crow's feets. they're there and the whole thing is as tight as a drum skin and you watch them and gradually the face begins to soften up first around the eyes and the eyes open up and the lines soften and the face right in here and you can tell by watching And watch the neck and the forehead, you know. God, the forehead is looking, you know, looks like Aristotle or something. The forehead is always furrowed and wrinkled and it begins to loosen up and get smooth. And the face begins to grow into some kind of a smile. And then one day, and if you ever see this, you're hooked the scale falls off the eyes and a light comes on a light comes on in the eyes and once you've seen that once you see the light come on in the eye of an alcoholic in Alcoholics Anonymous you don't ever need to have anybody get up and talk to you about a spiritual awakening or spiritual experience from then on You may learn more about it, but you've seen it. You've seen spirit become manifest in matter and suddenly you are aware that beauty is staring you right there in the face of Rudy Little, for Christ's sake. And I had wanted to go off and be a success and get out of this dumb town that I come from down there in Louisiana. A little hick town. And I went off and I got educated. I got two college degrees. And I used to talk a lot about that when I first got into AA except I had a rough sponsor. He was a mean son of a gun. I used to call him a gorsob. G-O-R stands for greatly overrated and you know what SOB stands for. But Gorsad's is the best kind of sponsors to have. Anybody can get a sponsor that'll tell you that everything you're doing is right and what a wonderful guy you are, but hell, I already knew that before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. and what i needed was somebody to tell me what a rotten bum i was you know there's another thing i'm going to say and in order not to offend people because i offend people when i say this and i know it because they tell me this so i'm just talking about me me and only me that as far as i personally am concerned alcoholics anonymous is not a place for nice people. Alcoholics Anonymous is a place for people who basically are no damn good. It's a place the people, for me only, who are total failures at the business of living and who can't make it anywhere. I've been in Alcoholics Anonymous a good while, and I've run across very few people who, when they tell the truth, can say that they were sitting down in their living room one day listening to a sonata on the stereo, and suddenly they thought to themselves, by golly, I believe I'll go to Alcoholics Anonymous. I came to Alcoholics Anonymous because there was no place else to go nobody else would have me but I was all hooked up on this education of mine two college degrees and I can't think of anything that is a greater hold back to any kind of meaningful sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous than two college degrees. High school is bad enough. But this Gorsab pointed out to me that rectal thermometers have degrees. And everybody knows what to do with them. And so that ended me and my college talk, and hey! But I did leave, and I was successful. When I was a young man, 30 years old, I had everything I guessed that you could possibly want. I'm a dentist by profession that has absolutely nothing in the world to do except with me making a living. My basic fundamental identity consists of the fact that I'm an alcoholic. That's what I am. This is me, Tom the alcoholic, not Tom the doctor. Everybody's got to make a living and being a dentist ain't a bad way to make a living if you want to know the truth of it. You get good pay, you have to put up with a bunch of bastards, but you've got to do that in any line of work. And that's just all being a dentist is, you see. It's the way I make a living. It has nothing to do me as a person. The only significant thing about me as a person is that I'm an alcoholic. I am an alcoholic, I always will be an alcoholic.I will be and alcoholic on the day that I die, you see? And the people who know me and love me won't say, I hope for God's sake you won't say that, oh pity, oh sad, sad day, we have lost a nice dentist. No, those of you who know me will say we've lost a brother, a fellow alcoholic, one who was one of us because that's what I am. I'm an alcoholic and therefore I'm one of you. But when I was 30 years old, I had conquered the world. I had my dental degree, some postgraduate training. I was married, had a beautiful family. Overseas in the regular army on a sensitive diplomatic mission, on the general staff. All these things that they say that we alcoholics like. Money, power, prestige. I had them all right there in the grasp of my hand. There was a time when I numbered amongst my patients the president of a nation, not just as a casual drop-in patient, but as a regular ongoing patient. You say, what's that mean? Big deal. Well, who's had a president for a patient in the room? Damn right it was a big deal to me then, and it is today in memory. And I had achieved all these things, and it all began to fall apart right in front of my very eyes. And I never could put together the fact that the tragedy that was beginning to happen in my life had anything to do with me drinking. There was a Catholic priest that I knew that had escaped from the Chinese communists on the Chinese mainland. And I was extremely fond of this man, both as a person and as a priest. And he spent a lot of time in my home. And in those days, I was drinking a fifth a day. I used to buy all my liquor at the commissary. And every Monday morning, I'd go down to the commisary and buy eight-fifths. Now, I recognize that there are only seven days in a week. but you've got to allow for evaporation. And so one day I was at home and this priest was there and I was complaining about the way the colonel was acting and this prince said to me, he said don't you think if you were to cut down on your drinking that your life would be better well I never had given that any thought but I thought enough of him that I decided I'd try it so the next Monday instead of buying eight fifths I bought seven and nothing changed at all I mean I had done what this man suggested I had cut out on my drinking and it was just useless and then when I got back to the United States I knew that something was wrong with me and I went to an army doctor that was well thought of and I told him that I thought I might be an alcoholic I was a captain in the dental corps at the time and he said to me he said I'm glad you came to me just last week I cured a major general so they put me in a hospital and stuck a lot of needles in me and out me and up me and the cure didn't take and for a long time i thought that it might be because i was just a captain and i'm not trying to be funny i can remember walking down the street and saying to myself, man, if I was just somebody else, all this wouldn't be happening to me. But I was caught in a whirlpool. And I remember one time walking down the streets in Tokyo on one November evening about five o'clock, and out of a joint someplace, a loudspeaker was playing a tune that was popular at that time. And I only mention this because I remember it, and I think it's significant to me. And in that particular incident, I seemed to recognize that I was going to always be this way, that it was never going to be any different for me. And I think I accepted that. I heard a guy say that he felt that maybe when God was making people, he made them on an assembly line belt. And that just as he got in front of God, somebody on the other side of the room said, Hey, God, and he looked up and he passed by. And he didn't get something he's supposed to get. And I just about decided that maybe this is the way I was, you see. And I had resigned myself to the fact that it was going to always be this way. And perhaps I began to live out this for all I know. I don't really know what happened. But I lost everything that I had. I lost a wife, home, job, money, car, everything I had! and I was reduced to the level of a street bum on the streets of the city of San Antonio, Texas because there was nothing else left to do I came back to this stupid town that I had left years before to be a success and a hero and I hitchhiked into Lake Providence one Labor Day weekend on a tasty bird poultry truck And I said that in Hope, Arkansas on the 3rd of May at a group anniversary they had there. And I don't know whether this guy owned a poultry company or was a manager of one, but he came up to me after the meeting and he said, Tom, I want you to know that you can always ride on my poultry truck. and I went back to Lake Providence and I became the town drunk we don't have town drunks so much anymore but that's because the culture has shifted we don' t have a downtown to have town drunk in everybody's moved out to the suburbs so we have suburban drunks really what we have we have condominium drunks we have shopping mall drunks, we have supermarket drunks. They've replaced the old stereotype town drunk that I was. And I'm amazed when I see alcoholics nowadays, now that I'm sober. For one thing, I never have in my whole life met or seen an anonymous alcoholic. Now, you can almost diagnose an alcoholic by certain things. If a drunk sees a cop coming, the drunk will go hide. But if an alcoholic sees a cup coming and there's a chance that the cop won't see him, he'll go get around in front of him so he can't miss him. and we go out and we pass out and throw up in these shopping malls and parking lots and supermarkets and condominiums and it don't faze us one bit and then we decide to come to Alcoholics Anonymous and stop drinking and straighten our lives out and the very first thing we do is say Shh, don't tell nobody. Getting ready to lead a decent, honorable life? I don't want nobody to know about that. And so you're safe with us. We're not going to tell. Well, what happened to me was I quit drinking. And that was no big deal because I used to quit drinking two, three, four times a day. Quitting drinking never was a problem to me. Staying quit was my problem. I quit drinking through a whole series of events that I'd like to tell you, but if I tell you everything, you may not ever ask me back. So I'll just tell you that I stopped drinking. And while I had stopped drinking, a guy came by and asked me if I'd go to Alcoholics Anonymous. Now what had happened to me was at the end of my drinking, I ran out of friends and enemies at the same time. And a lot of people think, you know, if you've got enemies that you're in bad shape, but not really. You see, many of us think that the opposite of love is hate, but it's not. Really, love and hate have a lot in common. For one thing, you're bound to the object of your feeling equally as much with hate as you are with love. That's how I sponsor people. I can't get them to love me, so I get them to hate me. And that way they can't get me off their mind, you see? Which is what I want in the first place. But the opposite of love is indifference. You know, I don't know anything except about being an alcoholic and me and a little bit about alcoholism and non-alcoholism. And that's all I try to talk about because I just would rather stick to the things that I know something about. And I don't doubt, for example, that cocaine is a major problem in the country. Don't doubt that for a minute. But I look at what goes on in the world around me in the newspapers and on television and the sports world and the entertainment industry and the political field and all this stuff and you want to know something I'm convinced down to the marrow of my bones that nobody gives a good tinker's damn what happens to those people they got their tails in the crack one day and then the next day they're up on television telling how they beat it and how everything's going to be alright and in the next minute or the next thing or the very next day or whatever these celebrities that have been up there again, they're back again in the same old rat race and the truth of the business is that nobody really cares. They are victims of indifference is what they are, which is true opposite of love. And I never will forget towards the end of my drinking I went into a grocery store that's now a supermarket and I tried to charge a package of cigarettes to my mother's account and the clerk asked the boss about it and he said no, that she'd left word that nobody was to charge anything to her account. So I said, well, charge them to me. And he framed the words with his lips. He was about 10 feet away from me. He framed the word, give them to him, which he did. And I knew quite clearly what was going on in that guy's mind. You see, for 35 cents, he didn't want to enter into any kind of personal relationship with me. It just flat wasn't worth it. And so I had run out of friends and enemies at the same time. And when this guy came by and asked me to come to Alcoholics Anonymous, I would have gone anyplace. and i hear people saying you know we're going to call on this person or sometimes they say there's nobody to call them they say what are we going to tell them you know a big conference the group gets together there's a big discussion about what we're gonna tell them or ask them or suggest them all this guy did was ask me if i'd like to go to a And it's a good thing that he didn't say anything else because look, this guy didn't have nothing going for him. I don't believe this guy had finished grammar school to tell you the truth of that. God, he used to speak horrible English. It would drive me crazy. He didn't know anything. He didn' t have nothing goin' for him except that he was sober. That's all he had goin' forth. And all he did was ask me if I'd like to go. And I was ready, I was ready to go any place and so I came down probably to Anonymous and I came to AA doing all the wrong things. I was in Dallas not long ago in a motel waiting for somebody to come pick me up and there was a Newsweek magazine there and I picked it up and read it. He'd tear paper. And every place he went, you know, he'd tear paper. I mean, that's the first thing, he was tearing paper all the time. Well, you can imagine what it did to his family. You know, he and his wife and daughter go visit, come go visit the neighbors, and there's a newspaper on the coffee table, you know, and the mother says to the daughter, quick, get the newspaper, get out of sight, you know. Before he starts tearing paper. I can understand that exactly. And they took him to doctors, They took him to doctor after doctor after Doctor after doctor and he'd go Through extensive treatment procedures Come home, get that Paper and start tearing the damn paper And finally In desperation they took him To one doctor they had heard about And they were all in the doctor's room And the doctor put his arm around the guy's Shoulder and walked down to the other end of the office With him, took his arm from around his shoulder Leaned over and whispered Something in his ear Put his arm back around his shoulders who walked back up to where the family was, said, take him home. He's cured. Well, they took him home and sure enough he was cured. Never tore paper again as long as he lived. And a year after this had happened they went back to the doctor's office, the family and the man did. And the family were extremely grateful. But one of the family members just couldn't stand it. Her curiosity got the better of her. And she said, Doctor, when you took him and walked down to the other end of your office with him and leaned over and whispered something in his ear, what did you say? He said, I told him, don't tear paper. Well, by God, that's a miracle right there. You know, I come to Alcoholics Anonymous and that's what they told me. They said, we don't drink. Well, I had suspected that all the way along. But now it was out in the open and nobody said anything about cutting down or changing brands or any of that other stuff. they just said don't drink and I said you see because you got to remember now I got no friends, got no enemies and I aim to please I said well I'm your man I said I quit drinking forever right now and they said no that ain't the way we do it well that kind of hurt my feelings I mean here I am trying to go along with them and not just half way I'm going all the way forever. And they tell me that ain't the way to do it, so I ask, how do you do it? And they say, well, we don't quit. Well, what the hell kind of noise is this? We don't quit. They said, we just don't drink, you see. There's a difference between quitting and not drinking. They said we just don't drink. Well, I said, how about the forever part? They said, no. We don't not drink forever. We just don't drank a day at a time. Well, I decided I'd go along with that. But I had trouble with that, I must tell you. I mean, because it took me a long time to distinguish between living a day at a times and being shiftless. I woke up this morning. I'm coming up here on an airplane. I've got to drive 60 miles to get to the airplane. No big deal. The plane didn't leave until 1030. And I wake up in a real bright mood. I'm just as happy as if I had good sense. My wife is off on a trip, and I find out I've Got a Water Leak in the house. Well, I call the plumber up. he said what if I come tomorrow morning you ain't going to be there all day I said that's fine he said do you want me to come turn the water off for you I said no indeed I don't I'll turn it off myself and so I cut the water off and he's coming tomorrow and going to fix the leak and you know I really haven't thought about it since then that's the way it is but I really didn't understand that when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous I thought that I had to really be worried about that water leak. About whether somebody come along behind me and turn it back on after I turned it off. Or whether that guy really going to come tomorrow or not, you know. But I don't have to do that, you see. I've done all I can do about the water leak today. and so I'm released from the water living for the day. And this is the thing I finally came to understand about living a day at a time, and I think for those of you who read the 24-hour book, that you may have noticed that today it talks essentially about living moments in the presence of God and giving thanks during these moments for who we are and what we are and what's taking place in our life. And I do this often during the day. You see, it's more important to me to be grateful for this power greater than myself in whatever moment I have this day than it is to worry about the stupid water leak. Because the water leak is minor league stuff. But me being sober is big league stuff and so it's important for me to remember to be great. I know a fellow one time who said he remembered to be grateful every time he heard a bell ring. Try that sometime. You'll be surprised at the number of bells that you hear ringing. And every time you hear a bell ringing, if you just remember to be thankful for who you are and what you are today. And I try to do this kind of a thing. But I didn't understand that at first when they were telling me all this stuff about the day at a time. But I told him, I said, well, you know, I'll go along with it a day at a time in spite of the fact that I was convinced that there was an element of shiftlessness about it. And I told them, but if I'm going to do that, it's going to take an awful amount of willpower, but I'm up to the challenge and I'll throw all my willpower into doing just exactly what you said do. And they said that's not what we do. But this is getting kind of monotonous now. I mean, I come in here with this dumb hick country boy that They asked me to go, and I'm trying to go along with every suggestion that they make. And every time I open my mouth, they say, that's not the way we do it. Well, if you don't use willpower, what do you do? And they said, well, we ask for power greater than ourselves to help us stay sober for a day or two. Well, I was glad this had been flushed out and open because I had also secretly suspected that Alcoholics Anonymous was some kind of underground church. And I knew that sooner or later I was going to have to subject it to some kind of acid test to determine whether or not it met my theological standards. They nipped that right in the bud right on day one, you see. They said, when we talk to you about God, we're talking about God as you understand him. We're talking a power greater than yourself. And they told me, they said, you know, if you don't know anything about this power greater then yourself and you want to ask him for help, put your doubt in your prayer. Well, I said, no, no. You're talking to the wrong guy. I said I know all about God. you see well I did I knew all about God in the same sense that I knew all about Portland, Oregon somebody had told me about Portland, Oregon one time and and then the clincher you see I heard somebody else mention Portland, Oregon so there's two people, I mean. And an intellectual guy like me, you know, I say, well, here's two people talking about Portland. There must be a place called Portland, Oregon. So I'm going around talking to people about Portland, Ireland. You know, you ought to go to Portland, Oregon. View the Atlantic Ocean, you're right. This is the kind of knowledge I had about any part greater than myself. But like I said, I had this Gorsab for a sponsor, and he told me you're going to have to pray. And I said who's going to pray? He said you're going to prayer. I said well, I don't know whether that's so or not. He said well I do. is what you call a suggested program. Now, some time back I made a talk and that's what I'm making. It kind of ticks me off to have somebody come up after one of these things and say, I sure did enjoy your speeches. I ain't making no speech. I'm trying to share and things that have happened with me. That's all. And that's all I know how to do. But this guy came up after the meeting and he said, well, I really enjoyed the sermon. And I know why he said that. He said it because I talked about prayer. But I can't talk about Alcoholics Anonymous in the program of Alcoholics and Honors without talking about prayer. I simply don't know how to do it. So, you know, if you object to me talking about prayer, get up and go take a break or something. It doesn't matter to me. I mean, you wouldn't hurt my feelings at all. I'm simply trying to say the things that have happened in my life and that's all. Whether it makes any sense to you or not really is irrelevant to me But I'll tell you one thing that does astound me It absolutely astounds me The length of suffering to which a human being will go Before he or she will ask for help From the power that made them in the first place This never ceases to amaze me The actual pain That we will undergo before we will condescend to do such a simple thing as saying, help me to whatever power there may be in the universe that's greater than I am. So when they told me I was going to have to use prayer to stay sober and I said, well, don't worry about that, I'll take care of that and this little gorsab that I'm talking about, he said to me I'm going to teach you how to pray because you're the only guy I have ever known in my whole life that could screw prayer up so what he told me was this we're not going to have any great demonstrations for the family's benefit. We're not going to have anything on our knees and shouting and raising the hands out in the living room or the dining room. He said, when you get up in the morning, you go in the bathroom. And he said, I don't care whether you kneel, stand, or sit. But whichever you do while you're in there, you say please and nothing else. And then he said at the end of the day you go back in the bathroom and say thanks and nothing more. And then He told me something that I think everyone should know because there's a terrific principle that's involved in what He told Me. He said if you will do this on a continuing basis in time the right words for you will come. That's what He called me. Now, I've been doing this all these years and let me tell you how far I've gotten in this particular line. Now, don't go in the bathroom anymore. I don't mean I don' t go in a bathroom, but I mean I don't get up and go to the bathroom. Well, that ain't what I mean either, because that's one of the distinct benefits of being Sober is getting up and going to the bathroom. But I've gotten this far in all these years that when I first awaken, I say, please, dear God, with your help, I'll not take a drink today. And at the end of the day, I say thank you for this sober day. Now, that's a big deal, isn't it? please dear God with your help I'll not take a drink today and thank you for this sober day ain't that a big deal but I wouldn't think of starting the day without saying that nor of ending one without saying it and the principle that's involved in it that I say is so important is this that all anyone needs to know about prayer are two simple things. All anyone ever needs to know about pray, about prayer, are two simple things, one to begin and two to keep on. That's all you need to know. Because I'm convinced that for one who will begin and then keep on there is something within me which as the minutes and hours and days go on will teach me how it is that I have to pray in a manner that's necessary for me. Now, I hear a lot of people say I came to AA and I asked God to remove the desire to drink And he did, and I haven't had anything to drink since. And that's fine. And again, I don't have any argument with these people. I understand what they're saying, and I hardly approve of it. But I also know people who have come to Alcoholics Anonymous and have said, I asked God to remove the desire to drink, and he did. And I don' t drink anymore, and I've seen these people go out and drink again. Now, it just so happens that I never did this. I never have asked God to remove the desire to drink. Because what if he didn't? Or what if He did and then didn't, you see? But we got a step in the program that says we made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. And I took that step, and let me just tell you one little simple thing that I have experienced concerning this step and then after I finish with that I ought to be able to wind it up in another half hour. If the object is to move this from here to here obviously I first have to go pick it up. But that's not it. After I have picked it up, I have to walk over to here and lay it down. And that's still not it! I then have to turn my back on it walk off and do something else how many times we see people who have picked it up brought it over here and still like a baby playing with his manure still running their fingers through it instead of turning their back on it and walking off and that's what i did this is my idea of what it means to turn my will my life over to the care of god to make this decision to put it there in his hands, in his care and then walk off and do something else even if it's worrying about leaking water and I don't know about the drink problem my drink problem is in God's hands and I dont have a drink problem anymore he's got it and I Dont Know Whether He Can Drink Or Not but but I Know I Cant and so I turned it over and slapped the hen and so I've been in Alcoholics Anonymous and I keep coming back for a lot of reasons and they say this is a spiritual program now let me just tell you one thing again this is just me talking when I say this program is spiritual I only mean one thing I simply mean by the word spiritual, a source of power. That's all I mean. Some of us get hung up on this spiritual business and I get the idea sometimes that many of us think of something spiritual as a fog that slips in when you leave the windows up and it settles out over the room and then finally precipitates in little drops and you can get all wet with spirituality. And it may be that for all I know, but to me, to say that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is a spiritual program, by spiritual I only mean one thing, a source of power. You see, I came to AlcoholicsAnonymous under the provision that I suspect is necessary for anyone to come here. I admitted that I was powerless over alcohol. So what I needed more than anything in my life was a source of power. That's all. And that's what I have discovered in Alcoholics Anonymous, is a source OF power to enable me to live my life a day at a time as it's meted out to me, as it is given to me moment by moment. And these aren't necessarily some ideas that I made up. Actually, at the bottom of page 569 in the big book, I think it's page 568, I don't know. At the bottom of the page it's got spiritual two, I mean appendix two spiritual awakening. Whichever one it is I think it's 569 One time I said 596 And a guy from Chicago Called me up long distance And told me it was the other So I mean I think its 569 And I'd be delighted to take anybody's call If I'm wrong it says this with few exceptions our members discover that they have tapped an unsuspected inner resource which they presently come to identify with their own concept of a power greater than ourselves many of us believe that the awareness of this power is the essence of a spiritual experience our more religious members call it God consciousness let me just say that one more time because the words are so meaningful with few exceptions our members discover that they have tapped an unsuspected inner resource which they presently come to identify with their own concept of a power greater than themselves many of us believe that the awareness of this power is the essence of a spiritual experience this is what's happened in my life thanks to you who were kind enough and gracious enough and tolerant enough and loving enough to take a dirty, smelly, stinking obnoxious, hostile arrogant, hopeless no good drunk bum off the streets and slowly a day at a time teach him the simple things that he needed to know and needs to know in order to possibly someday become that which God from all eternity he may have meant him to be. For this, I thank you very much. Thank you.