Why He Recommends the Alateen Book to Newcomers – Don N.

My name is Don, and I am an alcoholic. Hi, Don! And I'm sober tonight by the living grace of God. Terrific sponsorship, a lot of love and tolerance of the early members of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I haven't had a drink since the 19th of February, 1948. So in case you're new here, this program does work it worked and not because of me but in spite of me i should start off with a story and it's one of my favorite drinking stories i can still remember it from my drinking days i would never use it much in aa because my wife didn't approve of it she said she wouldn't allow me just to tell it in mixed company but uh tonight one of the members said be sure and tell that story so here goes if you didn't like it you'll have to blame one of the members of your own group. So this story is a drinking story, it's my favorite one, about a young playboy who met a young woman down in the bar one night and he got talking to her and so he invited her up to his room for a drink and to show her his etchings. Well when he got her up there he looked her up and down and she was well-groomed, chic, and seemingly quite intellectual. So he asked if she'd care for a drop of port or sherry wine why sherry by all means she replied because sherry to me is the nectar of all gods just looking at it here in its crystal clear decanter fills me with the anticipation of a heavenly thrill and when the starper is removed and the gorgeous liquid is poured into a glass i inhale the delicious tangy fumes and i am lifted on the wings of ecstasy. It seems I taste its magic potion, and my whole being seems to glow. A thousand violins throb in my ears, and I am sent into another world. On the other hand, she said, port makes me fart. so that's my drinking story I'm one of these people who got to AA I was finessed into going to my first meeting and I've been there ever since and so that has to be a miracle and i'm not going to dwell a great deal on my drinking story because i only drank for approximately 10 years but i would rather talk about recovery because i have been in recovery for some 38 years much more long much longer than i ever was drinking and sometimes i describe my drinking story, I say my drinking story is something like the tomcat who one night went out and made love to a skunk. And when he got back, the rest of the fellas said, well, how was it? And the tomcats said, Well, I didn't get all that I wanted, but I certainly had all I could stand. And that's the way it was with my drinking story. I didn' t get all I wanted but I certianly had all i could stand because the time i went to my first meeting on alcoholics anonymous i was 26 years of age and as a total failure in every department of living the house we lived in that's all it was it was a house it was a small apartment above a store it certainly wasn't a home i had a wife but she didn't have a husband i had two children but they certainly didn't have a father and just prior to my going to alcoholics anonymous my own father had died and the one time a mother and i think that how i was finessed into aa i didn't believe that i was an alcoholic i didn t want to associate with alcoholics and i figured that even if i were an alcoholic or a little bit alcoholic this aa wouldn't work for me anyway because you see i just knew that i was different and all my life i had felt different and this is the one thing i believe that all alcoholics have in common is the fact we think that we are different when i think of the sessions today how fortunate we were for us to be here today i could understand after listening all day today to this wonderful session and service I understand the meaning of the phrase that many are called but few are chosen. And I believe that I was privileged today to be amongst the chosen in Alcoholics Anonymous in this area because they were the ones that put a little extra effort into it to be with AA and be right in the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous, and they are dedicated to the program. We heard some wonderful things today when they talked about the 12 steps, which i believe are how it works and the 12 traditions of why it works and our 12 concepts of what keeps it working and it's a wonderful thing we had to share and i think these people are very privileged another thing i would like to say thank you to to john s who gave me a little thank you card and had made a keychain for me a a little tag and I started to think of how could you what is different about these people the ones I saw at the service function today and John and I realize now what they mean Khalil Gibran the Lebanese philosopher when he says that there are those who give little of the much that they have they give of their possessions and they give for recognition which makes their gifts unwholesome but there are those who give of themselves and these are the believers in life and the bounty of life and their coffers will never be empty and so to John and the other people in this district that were attending the service functions today I want to thank you for being part of that and I do believe that your coffers will never been empty simply because you give of yourself to Alcoholics Anonymous. And I think of some of the other things that we have. I had a problem with the English language when I came to Alcoholic Anonymous, and I had to learn a lot of definitions of a lot of different words. Now, we hear one word that came up today was that word criticism. And I know that I was very guilty of that for a great deal of time when I first came to Alcoholics Aanonymous. I was the chronic fault finder. and i could criticize everybody and everything and then i was told one day that i shouldn't do that that i should stop criticizing and start accepting and i couldn't understand how do you stop criticizing until again it was explained to me the definition of criticism and i was told that criticism is the unconscious tribute that mediocrity and stupidity pays to success Yes. So when you stop and think of it, it's quite true. Because if you were to say who is the most successful person politically in the United States of America today, I'm sure you'd all agree it would be the president. and who is it that does the criticizing the likes of me i couldn't even get elected dog catch in a local county but i can criticize the president's foreign policy i've learned now not to do that because i don't like to be pinpointed or pointed at as as as being one of those people about you know what do they say it's the unconscious tribute that mediocrity and stupidity pays to success when i first got involved in service i would get upset when somebody criticized me until I learned that definition and today if someone criticizes me I can say thank you very much and not worry the least bit about it because if you're going if you want to be criticized or anything or talked about if you want to be talked about in Alcoholics Anonymous just do something and you will be I'll guarantee that when I think of my behavior I have people who say to me people I sponsor newcomers especially the young ones, and they'll say to me, what's the first book I should get? I don't tell them the big book. I tell them get the Alateen book because to me it's a tremendous book. It describes alcoholism so well. It puts it in words that I can understand myself. And in that Alatean book, it says that many of the symptoms of alcoholism are in the behavior of the alcoholic, and I realize how true that is. then one day i was reading something in the paper and i thought here is something that might apply to me and what it was is you often hear people say oh he's neurotic when what the observer probably means is that the person is high strung or someone says oh he is just paranoid to explain his friend's fears about losing his job but neurosis and paranoia are real mental disorders with identifiable symptoms. And here are some mental health terms that are commonly misused, and some of these terms I was very familiar with prior to coming to Alcoholics Anonymous. The first one is anxiety, anxiety and fear. Anxiety is when you are paralyzed with fright but you don't know what you're afraid of. Many emotional disturbances begin with anxiety. Fear, on the other hand, is the dread of some specific thing. Well, I was always filled with anxiety. And I could be sitting in a cold sweat and my wife would say, what's the matter? And I'd say, I just know something dreadful is going to happen. And she says, how do you know that? And I said, well, I have this sixth sense. And she used to tell me in those days that it's a good thing I had a sixth sense because I certainly had lacked the other five you know and she was quite right but I was always filled with anxiety and fear psychosis this order is characterized by defective or lost contact with reality psychotics often see things and hear voices well I was psychotic because I'm I could sit in a bar have a few drinks and watch the smoke curling up and then I could think about winning the irish sweepstakes first prize and in those days they didn't have pull tabs or things like that to be only gambling was the iris sweepstaks and first prize was forty thousand dollars and i could sit there and then as the smoke was curling up i could it's just as clear as if it was on television i could see this beautiful stone house but if i won first prize i would build and then i could install this wife and these two children in that house and i could have a car and a chauffeur and the maid. And then I could leave for Europe and become a playboy. And everybody would say, oh, isn't he wonderful? Look at what he's doing for that wife and kids of his. And I had all this spent right down that $40,000 right down to the last penny. You know, I didn't even have a ticket in the Irish state. And so you see on that basis, you could call me psychotic also. Neurosis. This emotional disorder is caused by a conflict of which a person is unaware for example you want sex but you also want to please your mother who said sex was bad this unconscious conflict produces a neurosis that could affect your sex life well you know they tell us that sex is very very important it's extremely important and i look back and i think how important was it because i can vividly recall every thing surrounding the very first drink I took. Every detail, who was there, what, where, and everything. I can't recall my first sexual experience that well, though. I, you know, vaguely, I remember I was all alone at the time, but that's about all. And so on that basis, I could be called a neurotic as well. So, you see, I was anxious, fearful, psychotic, and neurotic. Well, then here's another dandy, paranoia. This is a severe but rare personality disorder in which a patient feels persecuted or has ambitions of grandeur. A paranoid person may believe that spies are out to get him, or that God has picked him to lead the world. They call that, the experts call that a rare personality disordered. In 38 years in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I have never yet met an alcoholic who was not paranoid. never once and so that's some sort of record i'm wondering about the experts though then here's another dandy manic depressive syndrome this condition is marked by mood swings of uncontrollable elation and hence the name mania elation on activity gives the name mania and withdrawal and depression well my emotional level you know the normal person has just a gentle emotional level. They feel good, they feel bad, they feel good they feel that. I as an alcoholic never had a nice pleasant flow. Mine were way up here or away down there. My emotions were either over or under amplified at all times. When I started to feel good it was absolute sheer ecstasy. I was away up here and then something would happen and I'd come down and I didn't feel bad i would feel terrible i would become suicidal i wanted to commit suicide and then something would happen i'll be right back way up here again and then way back down up and down like a toilet seat at a mixed party and that's the story of my emotional life prior to coming to alcoholics anonymous so a person like that they have a label for them and it's called manic depressive syndrome that's me here's another one schizophrenia this group of disorders can cause delusions hallucinations or aggressive and antisocial behavior i had all sorts of delusions when i i had a problem growing up and it's a perception problem i could never hear what other people said i always interpreted what they said and if somebody said isn't that a you know a nice suit that john is wearing i'd say what's the matter with my suit and you'd say well wait a minute don we weren't talking about your suit we just thought john had a nice suit i'd say why doesn't he have a nice shoot if i had his money i'd buy those kind of clothes too and they said we're not talking about your suit and i said well you must have thought there's something funny about mine or you wouldn't brought his suit up and then i got very upset and mad and would walk out in a snit i was always like that my perception was a way off and so you see they have a label for that it was schizophrenia so there i was in 1948 in february i went into my first meeting of alcoholics anonymous i was not an alcoholic i'll have you know that was a bad word but i was anxious fearful psychotic neurotic paranoid manic depressive and schizophrenic and now i also understand why does psychiatrists have problems with us drunks because when they come for your session with a psychiatrist if you're an alcoholic he'll talk to you for a little while and he the half hour is up and you leave and he writes down his little book that you're psychotic he suspects and the next time you're in for your next session he scratched his head and that seems strange so he writes maybe neurotic or paranoid and the next time it's manic depressive or schizophrenic then he says there's nobody can be all these things and so he says to you i think you're wasting your time and money coming to see me There's nothing we can do for you. And so we leave in a snit and say, you know, these psychiatrists are dumb. They don't understand anyway. Mind you, we have never told him the truth. It's like going to a doctor if I trip and I hurt my knee and I go in to see the doctor and say my friend says I should come and see you. And the doctor says, why? I said, I have a pain. He said, where is it? It's in the left elbow. The doctor examines my left elbow he says I can't see anything wrong with it. I says, good. And so I'd leave, limp out of the office. And so this is the way we are when we go to doctors and psychiatrist we don't tell the truth and so it's no wonder that psychiatrists have problems with alcoholics i think that if they really wanted to know the psychiatrist if they see somebody with all of those symptoms they should simply say oh this is no problem you're simply an alcoholic why don't you go to alcoholics anonymous and it'll be a lot easier and of course i used to hate that word alcoholic until i started comparing it to these other words and you know after a little while alcoholic didn't sound so bad i'd rather be an alcoholic than all those other crazy things and so it was a lot easier to swallow that pill when they sugar-coated it a little bit so those are the things and when the uh when the psychiatrist would see us instead of saying how are you today he should have said who are you Today and we're doing a lot better rod. When I think of Alcoholics Anonymous and my alcoholism, I always look at another condition I was very familiar with at the time I came to AlcoholicsAnonymous. And this is the condition known as BO, body odor. And the reason I say my alcoholismo is like BO is because I was the last person in town to find out that i had it everybody knew it but me now isn't that true if you have bo you're always the last to know you've got it everybody has known about it for a long time and so so it is with alcoholism another thing is i resented any reference to it by my family or friends if somebody ever came to me and says you smell bad why don't you take a bath i wouldn't say oh thanks very much i wasn't aware i'd want to punch them right in the the mouth they get very defensive and uptight and so i resented any reference to it just like people who have bo get resentful if you refer to it another thing i was only comfortable with other people like myself is not just like vo if we it's warm in this room now tonight but if we could get this temperature turned up about another 20 degrees a little more humidity and decide to have some cake and coffee and there's a half a dozen in thisroom with bo i'll guarantee in no time at all, they would all be clustered together over in one corner of the room away from the rest of the people. And as long as they're in that group, they didn't smell so bad because they always thought that the rest of them were responsible for the strange odor in the air. And so it is that I, as an alcoholic, anytime I went to a party, I would always wind up with the other drunks in the place, the other alcoholics. At every drinking party, you'll always see the small cluster of a half a dozen or so all clustered together, drinking in between drinks, feeling sorry for the other people. And so you see, I was only comfortable with other people like myself. Now, the other thing about it, of course, and this is a very important thing, and this ist very important if you're in treatment, I believe, because many people get a little confused sometimes about the treatment programs. And really, to me, it's quite simple. Treatment is discovery. You can discover you're an alcoholic in treatment, but recovery is in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. The reason I say that, that medical science, as great as it is, has not yet come up with a cure. There's no known cure in the world today for either alcoholism or for body odor. but there is successful treatment for both conditions now if it's body odor you have successful treatment is regular bathing with soap and water but the key to that treatment of course is regularity i cannot have four showers today or five showers and then decide to go out and live in my car for the next week to save money on hotel rooms it just doesn't work that way and anybody knows that it's plain common sense it's the same thing with meetings of alcoholics anonymous it must be done on a regular basis i bathe an irregular basis so i don't have bo and i attend meetings of alcoholic synonymous on a irregular basis and that cleanses me emotionally and spiritually because when i got to this program i was an emotional and spiritual cripple i was handicapped i was retarded that's really what it was emotionally and spiritually when i got here i grew up physically and mentally but emotionally and spiritually i was like a child today when people say to me don are you still going to those meetings and i said yeah and they say how often i said about four a week and they said well why do you keep going to those meetings you haven't had a drink for 38 years well you know i figured that one out all by myself. It's the same thing as when they say to me, Don, are you still bathing on a regular basis? And I say, yes, every day. And they say, but you haven't smelled bad for 38 years. Why do you bathe every day? Well, it's self-explanatory. The reason I don't smell bad is because I bathe every day and so it is a reason I have a positive attitude towards life and living and I love life and living, is because I attend meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous on a regular basis. And that's the key to recovery, believe me. And I think of so many things. When I got to, as I say, I was emotionally handicapped when I got to AlcoholicsAnonymous, and my development had stopped sometime early in my life. I grew up in a home, of course, it was an alcoholic home. My father and my older brother were both practicing alcoholics. I was the baby of the family. And I never did learn how to grow up emotionally until after I got to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And you know, when you stop and think of it, how important it is to have some emotional growth and stability in our lives, because probably the most powerful force in this world today is human emotion. Because you know it's not bombs and guns that starts wars it's some human emotion somebody gets mad at somebody else or gets afraid of somebody else or something but there's always some emotion enters into it which triggers off a war and when you look at these emotions or realize how come we have these emotions and how are they supposed to be controlled and i believe these emotions are a phenomena like so many other things in this life It's like wind and water and fire, for instance. They're wonderful servants but terrible masters. You know, water, for example, is a wonderful asset to mankind. We can use water for washing and drinking and bathing. We can grow fish in it and everything else, provided we keep that water under control as long as it's in rivers and ditches and lakes and behind dams. But the moment we let that water run loose and it becomes a flood, it destroys everything in its path. And it's the same thing with fire. It's a wonderful servant as long as we have controls on it. But once we let it out of control, it becomes an inferno and is destructive to anything around it. And so wind is the same things. We have a gentle breeze, and it's a Wonderful Thing for us. The farmers need it for the crops and everything else. It keeps the flies away and so on and so forth. but once it gets out of control and that wind becomes a tornado, it's destructive to everything it touches. And so it is, I believe, with human emotion that under proper control it's a wonderful asset and a wonderful servant to mankind but out of controlled it is terribly destructive. And I believe that the control for the emotion was given each and every one of us and it's called intellect. We're given an intellect and we're also given emotion And we should learn how to control our emotion with our intellect. I never did that. I allowed my emotions to run loose at all times. And what are these emotions? And some of them are very common, as we know. Love is a wonderful emotion. And I think of that and I look back in my life and it's no wonder I had problems because I never knew what the meaning of love was. And you know, there's not many alcoholics that I've met an alcoholic synonymous when they first come who know what the meaning of love is. We don't know how to give nor receive love in the, quote, properly acceptable manner. I think of some of the things I was like. Well, it was quite simple. I never knew whether I was in love or in heat. It was that simple. I could fall in love a half a dozen times a night and I didn't know there's anything wrong with that. I honestly, God, didn't no. I never new what love was and it wasn't until I'd been an AA for some time that I found a definition that seemed to suit me, and it was in Anne Morrow Lindbergh on The Force of Love in her book Locked Rooms and Open Doors. And she says, quote, people talk about love as though it were something you could give, like an armful of flowers. And a lot of people give love like that. Just dump it down on top of you, a useless, strong-scented burden. I don't think it is anything you can give. Love is a force in you that enables you to give other things. It is the motivating power. It enables you to give strength and power and freedom and peace to another person. It is not a result, it is a cause. It has not a product, it produces. It It is a power like money or steam or electricity. It is valueless unless you can give something else by means of it." When I learned about that, that started to pave the way for me to learn how to live in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous because, you see, I didn't know how to live. It was a living problem I had, not a drinking problem. I think of, I look at ordinary people and we say it's quite normal for a child to be dependent. We're very dependent when we're babies. We reach teenage and we become very independent. And then we reach adulthood at 18 years of age or 20 years of aged, you reach adulthood and we've become interdependent. I as an alcoholic never did that. I was very dependent as a child. Then I became independent and that's how I remained. I came, 18 came and passed and 21 came and passed and I still thought I was independent. I had no earthly idea what that meaning of interdependence meant and so I had to learn all that and once I learned these things it made a big difference in my life. I was very fortunate when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous when Al-Anon started there was no Al-A-Non in those early days either and I like to pay tribute to Al-Al-An because to me that's the greatest single force that's a good thing that has happened since Alcoholics Anonymous. And the reason I say that is because I often refer to this and tell them that before Al-Anon, my wife, I never used her given name. I always had a nickname for her and I'd always referred to her as Angel. And people said, why do you call your wife Angel? And it was because she was always up in the air, never had a thing to wear and was always harping on something. but the the alanon program got a hold of her and they worked wonders a miracle in her life too and so today i call her norma and that's just fine and i think that alanon and alateen are the two greatest things that have ever happened to alcoholics anonymous my sponsor spent a great deal of time with my family when i first came into aa they had to explain certain things they told my wife when I first sobered up, be sure you have lots of sweets. My wife says, but he never eats sweets. And they said, no, we know. But for some strange reason, when an alcoholic sobers up, he develops a sweet tooth and he'll want desserts with his meals and so on and so forth. And to this day, I'll go through a meal just to get to the dessert. That's the best part of the whole meal. Of course, I never understood what that was and nor did any of the members of AA in those early days. It's only when the past five or six years, the geneticists have now discovered the malfunction in our system. And it's called a biochemical genetic disorder. And that's a physical symptom of alcoholism and what it simply means that it is hereditary. It is heredditary. Not that it may be, but it definitely is. The geneticists Have now gone further than that, and they can even give some of the odds. And they say if a person who is alcoholic marries or has a child, and the other partner is non-alcoholic, there's a 35 times greater chance the offspring will be alcoholic than if both parents were non-alkoholic. If both parents are alcoholic and have an offspring, there is a 400 times greater chances that the child will have this genetic disorder and so there's the odds and it doesn't really matter whether we agree or not I mean alcoholics they say well I don't believe in that crap anyway but of course I'm not a geneticist and now what I do is I leave genetics to the geneticists and they're much more educated than I am I know a lot more about these things and when they come out and state this is a fact I simply have learned to accept it and so that's all it means and it's To those who want to know a little bit more about it, it's really not anything to worry about because we have a lot of people today that have some of these genetic disorders. Another thing is I like to use the analogy of the oil in an automobile. We all have an oil tank in our cars, we all drive cars today and we know how important it is to maintain a certain level we use a dipstick to make sure that that oil level is right in the safe area now every so often if you decided to change the oil yourself from your car and got it up too high put too much oil in and you put the dipstick in you found your oil was high what you would have to do is let some of that oil out because if you drove your car with too much soil in it it would blow a seal isn't that right and so we'd manually let some of it out because the car is a mechanical thing on the other hand when we drive along the oil level gets a way down low uh we check it and it's barely shows in the dipstick and we say well i'm going to drive it anyway the first thing you know we're going to get a red light on our dashboard and if we ignore that we're gonna have a pressure drop the temperature is going to go up somebody in the car will say you know it's beginning to get warm in here and say oh yeah it's just the sun don't worry about it and then say but i can smell something burning and say don't worry we must be passing the city dump and the next thing you know there's a loud thunk and the engine seizes up completely through oil starvation and so what they we do is we've ignored the warning signs now with a person a human being has something called a blood sugar level that is very similar to the oil level in the car the only difference is with the human being that blood sugar level fluctuates up and down automatically. It automatically raises and lowers depending on the situation, but every so often we meet people, and it does not matter whether they are young or old, rich or poor, male or female. It doesn't matter what race, color, creed, or anything else. There is a malfunction in the upward level of the blood sugar, and when it goes up, it doesn't automatically stop and come back down. It keeps on going up until that person will faint, pass out, go into a coma. They're carted off to hospital and they're diagnosed as diabetics. And once they've been diagnosed as a diabetic, they must learn to manually control that blood sugar level, the upward end of it, simply because the automatic system is malfunctioning. The doctors don't know what it is yet. They haven't found out, but they know there's a malfunction and so they must control that upward level of the blood sugar by either insulin by injection or special diet and i had a father-in-law who was a diabetic and he had to give himself a needle in the thigh every day and so i can accept that and understand that he had to control that manually he was not responsible for his diabetes but he was responsible for his recovery and that makes sense to me or so it is with alcoholism now when the oil level gets down in a car, it's like the blood sugar level. Again, there are certain people, and it doesn't matter whether you're young, old, rich, poor, male, female, race, color, creed has nothing to do with it. Because of this malfunction, the blood Sugar level keeps going down. And that person is called an alcoholic. It's that simple. And when we say, but in the car, you get lots of warnings from the blood sugars going down, I as an alcoholic have had lots of warning for my blood sugar levels starts to drop. And the warnings of this type of thing start getting sweaty palms, getting restless, pacing up and down. I don't know if any of you have ever done this. Open a cupboard door and look inside and close it. My wife says, what are you looking for? Nothing. I open the cupboard door. She said, can I help you find what you're looking for and say, for God's sake, woman, leave me alone. Can't I look in the cupboard if I want? I live in this place, you know, and I'll open another cupboard and close that. And they say, well, is there anything I can do for you i said yes leave me alone and i said besides i've had a terrible day at work it's absolutely yeah i'm just come home and all this stuff and you and these kids are just driving me crazy can't you do anything about them she says well just a minute she grabs the kids and says let's go for a little walk and give daddy a break so out they go and i'll pick up a paper and look at it put that down i think there's nothing there and then i think over the day i think god what a lousy job I have and what a lousie boss I have in a lousey place I live in. And this family, where the hell are they? There's nobody here. She's gone. Even the kids, they don't care. You see here I'm hurting and they're out running around the country somewhere and they couldn't care less than nobody loves me. Oh, poor me. Isn't it terrible? I think I'll go and commit suicide or something. And all that is, is the blood sugar level keeps dropping. If I had any sensital, all I have to do is eat a jelly bean or a piece of chocolate, pop it in my mouth and zip, bring my blood sugar level back right up. Before anybody runs out and says some old goat in AA said that I can eat all the candy I want, that's not what I'm saying. We used to have to get a medical examination. That's the first thing our sponsors did in those early days, trotted us off to the local doctor to get a physical to make sure that if we got down and uptight that we could eat some sugar some candy to get a quick fix and they'd tell us yes it was okay now we also have people we find that have a malfunction at both sides of that and they're called alcoholic diabetics and we have some of them in our group and moorhead and thursday night and they have to of course they can't take candy but they do have another fix for it and and i believe it's a high protein diet they get because their function quite well with it and so that's the physical part And those are the things that I have to accept. I am not responsible for my alcoholism, but I am responsible for my recovery. And of course, the recovery for alcoholism is in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And then I think of the spiritual part. To me, of course there isn't a spiritual part, the AA program is a spiritual program and I found that very difficult to handle when I first came because I was the agnostic, rampant agnostic when I got to AA. I did not believe in God, church, or anything else. I had thrown everything out by the time I went to my first meeting and I got very resentful when they mentioned it. And so I used to think, and I told my wife one day that this religion is a bunch of bologna anyway, and all these stories are a lot of nonsense and I don't believe in it and I'm not going to have any more to do with church or anything. And she would say, but I think that's terrible thing you know with children and i'd say well it's reality and uh i'd say do you believe all that stuff in the bible and she said yes i do and i would say well they did read that story about the carpenter who a couple of thousand years ago rode around the country in a donkey and i said the stories they tell they told me in sunday school was the reason he did that and he performed a couple of miracles he made a blind man see and he made a lame man walk and the purpose of these miracles was to prove to the people of that day that there was a god his father and so i said if this god is so smart and so all-knowing he would know of course that there are a lot of people like me in this world today who don't believe and of course if he was that smart he'd perform a miracle that i'd be able to witness with my own eyes and of coarse i'd say no miracles so there can't be any god and that's all there is to it and when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous and they started talking about the spiritual program they talked about a higher power and I went and looked at those steps and in those days as I say some love and tolerance of those early members because a lot of groups wouldn't allow a young person in they wouldn't allowed women into the groups and all those things it was just out of ignorance there were some though that were fortunate and they did allow us in and they would talk to us and they'd adapt those things to us. And you say, the first step, you know, powerless over alcohol, my life had become unmanageable. What do we mean by that? Well, the American Management Association defines good management does not solve problems. That's mismanagement. Good management prevents problems. And so we learn how to live our lives by managing our lives to prevent a lot of problems. The second step came to believe that a power could restore us to sanity. Well, I had problems with that because restore was a word I couldn't comprehend because I had never been sane my whole life. So how could you restore something that had never Been in the first place? And so they said, well, just act as if that you were a little crazy and that you can be restored. We make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. I said, I can't do that. I'm not religious. I don't believe in that. And they said, you don't have to be religious. I said, well, I don't understand God. They said, that's fine, Don. For you, we'll just change that step a little bit and say we make a decision to turn your will and your life over to the care of God whether you understand him or not. Just do it. And I said that's ridiculous. How do you do that? And they said, just act as if. And i said how can you act as there's a god? They said for years you've acted as if there wasn't one it's very simple it's up to you you just act as if it was so that was one of the first lessons i learned in alcoholics anonymous i could not think my way into right living i had to live my way and to write thinking and that was the thing they taught me i had a start doing certain things whether i liked it or not start doing these things and gradually my life would change. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, and I said, oh, I don't think I could do that. They said, that's the simplest step of them all. And I said what do you mean? They said there must be some people you absolutely loathe and hate. I said you betcha I do. They said you go home and put his name on the top of the list and write every rotten thing down there that you know about him. And I said, yes. And he said, when you're finished, cross his name off and put your own at the top. You've got a perfect inventory, step four, and it's all okay. You know, that works. Again, that's living your way into right thinking. And so it is through the rest of these steps. They had to change them slightly for me as I went along so I could comprehend them. Because I didn't have very much comprehension when I got here. But it wasn't all bad, because I think now when I look back, the two greatest advantages I had on coming to Alcoholics Anonymous is I was dumb and I was broke. And the reason I say those were two advantages is because all the time I've been in AA, I have never met anyone yet that was too dumb to get this program, nor have I ever met anyone that was too broke to get it. But I have met many who were far too well educated to get this program, and there's some who have had far too much money to get them. And unfortunately, they have died drunk. And so I think it's not a liability but more of an asset, in my case, coming in dumb and broke because I had to start right at ground zero and start going from there. When I told them I had all this problem with their religion, they said, stop calling it religion. And I said, well, that's what it is. And they said no, it isn't. they said it's a spiritual program not a religious program and I said what's the difference they just smiled and they said religion as an organized form of worship and beliefs spiritual is pertaining to a state of mind and that's what they mean in the 12th step was having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps we tried to carry this message to alcoholics it doesn't say we do carry it but we try and we try to carry the Smiths to alcoholix and to practice these principles in all our affairs. And so I said, well, what do you mean a state of mind? And they said, for years, you as an alcoholic have had a negative outlook upon life. All you have ever looked at were the backs and the bottoms of everything. And all you have to do is turn yourself around 180 degrees and start looking for the good. And then I found in an AA pamphlet and an Al-Anon pamphlet, the definition of maturity, emotional maturity. And one of the things there that they had in their pamphelet was saying that emotional maturity is when a person recognizes that no one person or one situation is wholly good or wholly bad, but that there is good and bad in every person and in every situation. And so if we start to look for the good instead of continually looking for fault, because I was a chronic fault finder and had been all my life and so they taught me to start looking for the other side and as time went on things gradually began to change in my life. And they told me that if I went with them one day at a time and I said but I don't really understand they said you don't have to understand just come and do the things you're told to do and we'll they'll suggest things to you. I began to feel clean inside and good things began to happen in my Life and as Time went by I began To see what they meant by a spiritual awakening, a change of attitude towards life and living, and what it meant to come to believe in a power greater than myself. Because I had a great deal of problem with that higher power. And I said, how can I have faith when I don't even believe in God? And they said, well first of all you've got to get level, get honest with yourself, and get honest others. taught me the definition of honesty was the total absence of any intent to deceive and so they said if you do your fifth step and be honest with that to another person and i said yeah what my life's been like because in the book the book i had it had all your life story in italics all and i says you mean all that stuff in between drinking boats and they said everything and i thought how could you trust somebody with all that information and of course then I discovered in Alcoholics Anonymous the value of that step because trust is simply the beginning of faith we have to learn to trust another human being before we could possibly have faith and a power greater than ourselves and so that was a turning point for me and my life and Alcoholics anonymous when I did a fifth step with my sponsor because that trust was a beginning of faith and i started to get a little bit of faith and started to go along and as things began to grow in my life i could see so many things and i used to think isn't that amazing here's the guy he used to claim that if there was a god he would perform a miracle and i'm surrounded by miracles every day and i was just too dumb to know it i often think of the one and my favorite of course is that i would think we talk about a miracle and you think there aren't any miracles today and yet i know that there are because i look at nature and when you can take a brown seed and plant that brown seed in black soil and after a little while of little warmth and water that seed will germinate and grow. And a little green plant will come up. And so you get a green plant from a brown seed out of black soil. That's amazing. And then the plant matures and you pull it out of the ground, and lo and behold, it has a bright red root. And you think, how can there be a bright read root and a green plant that comes out of black soil from a Brown seed? And when I cut that root in half, it had a pure white heart. and I think isn't that amazing a white heart in a red root from a green plant out of black soil from a brown seed and today every time I eat a radish I smile and think there's one of God's miracles for dummies like me it's been around radishes have been around as long as I have and it's only a short time ago that I realized what a miracle it was a radish a simple thing like that. And then as time went by, there were some other things happened. And as I say, when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I was a complete and total failure in every department of living, every single department. And I didn't know what I was going to do. And so I went along with these people one day at a time, and things began to change. And they weren't big changes. They came little by little. And it wasn't until I started to look back, I could realize another miracle had occurred. Because I looked at the home we live in today, and I looked at the house we lived in before I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. And it turned that house into a home. And I gave a woman back a husband, and I gave two children a father. And they gave back a woman not one son, but two sons, because you see, shortly after I got sober, we conned my big brother into coming to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And he went back home and got 16 years of sobriety in the AA program before he died of natural causes. And so this program gave a woman back not one but two sons and five sisters got two brothers instead of one back. And then we think of today of how wonderful mankind is and how wonderful our computers are and we talk about a microchip and how small it is and how much it can do. And yet all we have to do is talk to somebody that knows a little bit more. And I was reading an article written by the president of the New York Academy of Sciences and he was a geneticist. And the title of the story was Why It Is That Men of Science Believe in God. And he was talking about the genes and he said how tiny these genes are. And he said the source of all human behavior in the world stem from those genes. And yet these genes are so tiny, he said if they took all the genes from every human being in the word today, they would only fill a thimble. But when you stop and think about a thing like that, there's no other word for that than miracle. And the other thing we hear of and there's so many, many, but there's examples every day. And just recently I was reading in the paper where the swallows came back to Capistrano because every year these swallows leave this town in California on a certain date, and they fly down to Argentina. And on a uncertain date, they all come back. And for years, no one could understand how could they cross that huge expanse of water without getting tired and without falling and no place to land. And it was only a few years ago that one of the ornithologists down on the seashore, just as they left, the last spot they left in this country before heading south, each of these swallows stopped and picked up a small branch and held it in their feet, and then they flew off. And when they got flying so far and they got tired, They would come down to the water, open their claws and drop the little branch in the water. Then they would land on the branch and sit and rest. And when they're ready to have the little rest, they'd pick up the branch and fly off of it. And they carry this branch back and forth. Again, who taught the swallows to do these things? This has to be a miracle. There's miracles all around us every day. And we have to recognize them as such. and I think how fortunate we are and that's why I like to say that Alcoholics Anonymous is the modern day miracle because to me that's exactly what it is a modern day miracle and then when I think of all the things that have happened in the past I was reading another article in the Reader's Digest and this was written over a hundred years ago by an anonymous soul of the confederacy and he this is another miracle because as i read that article it suddenly dawned on me he was describing my life i was never able to put it into words or tell anybody what had happened in my story and how it is that i came to believe and and what happened about this and all the things and he said that goes something like this that he called it the ways of the lord i call it the higher power it doesn't make much difference i asked god for strength that i might achieve i was made weak that i might learn how to obey i asked for help that i might do greater things i was given infirmity that i might do better things i asked for riches that i might be happy i was given poverty that i might be wise i asked for all things that I might enjoy life. I was given life that I might enjoy all things. I got nothing that I asked for, but everything I had hoped for. So despite myself my prayers were answered and I feel I am among all men most richly blessed. And then when I think of how negative I used to be about religion, and of course my favorite thing was to talk about the differences in religion just to disprove the the validity of them. And in AA, you taught me to do the opposite. Look at the things they have in common. Look for the good. And when I look at the good and I look for the things they have en common in many of these great religions, there's a number of things they have în common. One of the things they have én common is they all claim that there is only one God. And I think, isn't that amazing? Another thing that most of them claim is that all forms of life on this earth function either by instinct or by climate, save one. And the one form of life that is different is human life. And human life is different to all other forms of life simply because we were given a free will. And that simply means that I have learned that whatever I will, the power is added. It's that simple. Whatever I will the power is added and that sounds like a hard thing to believe but i know that if i went over to that light switch and i said to you does anybody believe if i flick this switch the lights will go out i'm sure you'd all say oh yes because you'll have faith in a 10 cent piece of plastic but then you wonder about the power behind that piece of elastic that power is there for light or dark and as long as I exercise my will I'm the one who decides whether it's going to be light or dark so if I went over and flicked the switch and the lights went out I could say well look at that but I don't like this kind of darkness and dreariness I'd rather have some light and I flick the switch again and the light comes on the power is there for light or black and so it is this higher power and I don' t wish to sound sacrilegious and if you don't agree, this is fine. But I believe this higher power had a sense of humor. And so he doesn't bother running around on a daily basis checking up on me. He gave me that power to do that myself, to check up on myself. And he gave me the power to either reward or punish myself. And he just sits and chuckles because I believe it's true. He built a self-monitor into me. Some people call it a conscience. Other people call itself monitor. I know whether I'm doing right or wrong. Nobody has to tell me. And so I do know that this power is there. And whatever I will, the power is there. And you know, for years I willed it to be all these weird things. Anxious, fearful, psychotic, neurotic, paranoid, manic depressive, schizophrenic. I will'd it. By golly, that's what I was. I could wallow in the fit of depression. I was considering suicide on many occasions, and that was simply because I willed it that way. I used to feel inferior, inadequate, lonely, anxious. I will it that way. That's what I was. I felt that way because I was that way, but that was my will. That was not God punishing me. That was my Will. I defiant. I would do things my way. When When I discovered that whatever I willed, the power was added, and in the big book it told me I could be happy, joyous, and free, that's what I have been for years and years and years. I have always been happy, joyful, and happy. I don't have depressions, psychosis, neuroses, paranoia, or any of those things today. A little less than a year ago, I had open-heart surgery and had five bypasses. I had that on a Wednesday morning. I was home the following Wednesday, and they started walking me, and in two weeks, I was back at work full time. And then the cardiologist talked to my wife and I one day, and he said, there's one thing we have to warn you about. And I said, what's that? He said, well, you know, after that type of operation and a few months in the recovery, he said you're apt to get into quite a depression. A great many of our patients go into depression. My wife just laughed, and he looked at her, and she says, Doctor, he doesn't believe in depression. And I don't. To this day, I don' t believe in it. That's self-will run riot. I have to will it to get into depression. And I hated those depressions I was in. Honest to God, I loathed them. When I discovered that I had the power to do something about them, my will, exercise my will. Then I knew it was wonderful. And this program tells us that. And the promises that were read today, every single one of those promises have been fulfilled in my life. And I think how very fortunate I am that I got finessed into going to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I wonder how I can close the meeting or the talk tonight. And I was thinking that the sessions today have been concerned with service. And so I would like to close my talk tonight with Bill W.'s remarks at the end of his talk at the International Convention in St. Louis in 1955. It says, quote, We will make every personal sacrifice necessary to ensure the unity of Alcoholics Anonymous. We will do this because we have learned to love God and one another. as these meetings began on a theme of gratitude so should they end we give thanks to our Heavenly Father who through so many friends and through so much love through so may means and channels has allowed us to construct this wonderful edifice of the Spirit in which we are now dwelling it seems as though he had directed us to construct this cathedral whose foundations already rest upon the corners of the earth. On its great floor, 200,000 of us are now sustained in peace and long since we have inscribed thereon our 12 steps of recovery. The older ones among us have seen the sidewalls of this cathedral going up and one by one they have seen the buttresses of the AA tradition set in place to contain us in unity for so long as God may will it so. And now eager hearts and hands have lifted the spire of our cathedral into its place. That spire bears the name of service. May it ever point straight upward toward God and may he bless every one of us at this meeting tonight. Thank you. Thank you.