Why No Two People Operate the 12 Steps Alike – Dick B.

If I were asked to describe the gentleman who is to speak to us next, in all sincerity and very briefly, I would say he's without a doubt one of the sweetest, most charming gentlemen that I have ever met. He has a grand command of the English language. Again, I might say that he is also a Maineite. Now, that would only happen in Ripley, that we have an open, round-robin meeting and both speakers, having been born and bred and raised in Maine and now living in Texas. I've had the pleasure of only knowing this gentleman for a short period of time, also the pleasure of hearing him speak only one time. He has a marvelous trend of thought, and without any further to do, I give you Dick Breen of Springfield, Illinois. And it's too bad that I have to go back. And it's too bad that I have to go back. My name is Dick Breen, and I'm an alcoholic. Through the grace of God and people just like you, my sobriety date is still September 1st, 1941. that doesn't mean a damn thing to you except that you can do it too I wouldn't give you 15 minutes of my sobriety because it wouldn't do you any good they claim there are about 300,000 of us now and if there are 300, 000 there's 300, 00 different ways of operating these 12 steps because no two of us are alike and no two of us operate these 12 steps alike. But aren't you awfully glad that in my roaming and so forth that I met another May night and insulted him? My younger brother knew Johnny a little bit better than I did and I really didn't get acquainted with him until he found A.A. but like he told you well you're liable to believe me and you're able not to don't let these old gray hairs fool you and figure well he's too old to take a drink anyway I've been accused of that by some of the younger ones and remember when I speak of the younger ones I speak in respect because without the lifeblood of you younger ones we couldn't survive. It's you that keeps us going, you that gives us the new blood, you that give us the hope that yes, we are continuing to grow and get somewhere. And while I describe my alcoholism, please don't judge your alcoholism from my story, Johnny's story, or anyone else. Because if you have a drinking problem and you only drank a half a pint a day. It isn't what you drank, it's what it did to you. And because I might have a tough story, you'd say, well, I didn't do that. Well, of course you didn't. Or maybe you'll say, well, ice did most of my drinking in the back room. I never went out. I never worked. I never got into jail. I never pushed my mother-in-law down the stairs. Who the hell cares whether you did or not? you came in here to get sober you have a drinking problem don't let it worry you take 10 or 15 years to look the deal over stay sober and it'll adjust itself so if you don't want to believe me it's perfectly alright and I have an old corny story that only 90% of you have heard before but there are the other 10% And it's a question of not believing. And it is the story of a bullfrog and a young lady. The young lady went into a long bar one time, about as long as this room, and boy, she needed a drink and needed it bad. And she rushed in and went right to the other end of the room, screamed at the bartender on the way by, Bring me a double hella. They are the only two in the bar. And he accommodated her, ran down, gave her that drink just as fast as he could. and she got it down, and as she got it down she ordered another one. He brought it back to her. But before she could raise the second one to her lips, a voice said, pick me up and put me on the table, will you? She looked around. There was no one there. A little bit excited she got that second one down fast and screamed for another one, another double. But before that one was delivered, the bartender was getting a little bow-legged by this time and the voice said again, please look down here. And she looked down and there's a big green bullfrog sitting right next to her. And he said, please put me up on the table there. She did. And he says, listen to me, now please. I've been put in this position oh many, many years ago. How I was cursed and how I was put in this position doesn't make any difference at all. But the idea is simply this. If you'll take me home and put me on your pillow, that's all you have to do because I will be practically reincarnated. You don't have to believe it at all, but it can happen. I'm a guy of six foot two eyes of blue with lovely big brown hair, lovely brown hair. And he said, I want to get back in that position again. so she killed the other double bought herself of course a pint and she went home worked on the pint pretty well took the frog, put it on the pillow and she went to sleep and in the morning she heard a terrible scream it was her poor darling mother and the mother was bringing in as mothers will do a lovely breakfast to her charming daughter and she threw the dishes in the air that was the noise that was made and screamed because in that bed is a guy six foot two eyes of blue with lovely wavy brown hair now the moral to the story is just simply this to this day no one will believe a damn word that that girl tells us If you have sat in an A.A. Club room, as I have, and as you have, and have heard some bleeding deacons like myself get up, you'd say, huh, sober so long, what a lot of bunk that is. Oh, what the hell, he's too old to drink now anyway, and he's going to get up and give us a lot of philosophies and so forth and you'd think they'd retire. Well, you'd Think we would too once in a while. So if you don't want to believe it, it's perfectly all right. But if you look around you, maybe the guy next to you or the gal next to your and get better acquainted with them someday when you hit your foxhole and wants somebody to pull you out, maybe that'll be the guy or the gal and you'll believe him then. Or you'll stay around with an open mind and listen and use this great word called tolerance and try to absorb some of this. Yeah, I'm a mainite just like Johnny. we both went to different prep schools all the difference is that Johnny finished in the same prep school it took me three of them and I was thrown out of all of them but that's perfectly alright because I found my drinking career early and it was a horrible one I know a drunk-a-log isn't so hot but you're in here to hear a drunk a-log aren't you you want to find out if a guy was ever drunk before whether I got this wavy brown gray hair, excuse me, through moderation and prayer? Hell no. No, no, I didn't. I found it early. My dad was in the liquor business. My dad didn't drink. My mother didn't drank. My brothers and sisters at the time didn't drunk. I took care of that whole problem for the family. and after being thrown out of about the last school and trying to get an education I settled up a little bit and went into service now that's not the Spanish-American War that was the First World War in that service I found out that I was a little but free there wasn't a dad or a mother sister, brother, friends, and so forth to tell me how to do it. And I found out a way to do it by myself. And boy, I did a good job, I thought, because I thought I could drink as much as anyone that lived. What a great achievement. And I came out of the service a rank alcoholic, and I wasn't 21 years old. And I came back to my hometown that Johnny knows well, intending to go on to college, which I did, and was thrown out of that one and had to come back home again shortly after I tried for manslaughter. I beat that one because I was right. I didn't do it. It was an automobile accident. And by that time I'd acquired a pretty good reputation in the dear old state of Maine and figured it was about time for a guy like myself to make one of those famous geological or geophysical, whatever it is, change. I was married. I marry a chamois young girl from my hometown. Thank God she had sense enough sooner or later to take off, but nevertheless she had a tough deal. And I bought a couple of tickets for St. Petersburg, Florida. Why? For the simple reason that maybe you've made a change. I'm sick and tired of men and women, mother, father, brothers, sisters telling me what to do. Perhaps I was about the smartest guy in the world. But I was taken a beating even then, and I knew unless I could get away and get with new friends, new people, new ideas, things were not going to change for me. And I found new friends and I found a new country and I find some new ideas. But the only trouble was when I left Maine, I took Dick Breen with me. If I could have just left him behind, Sure, I had a good bringing up. Sure, my dad and mother were good Christian folks. So what? That was the end of my Christian so-called bringing up or the endof churches or anything else for me because my story goes on and on like that. It goes on to the day that I'm up in Tulsa, Oklahoma and I'm with the Wilcox Oil and Gas Company and I'd had the hell beat out of me. I'd seen man's inhumanity to man. I'd been dragged around, drunken up and down, and I'm getting sick and tired of it because I'm doing the same thing over and over again. I mean, St. Louis, Missouri has managed that office up there, and somehow or another they didn't like what I was doing, and I thought I'd wrecked the company, and I left them by request. Somehow or another, they've done all right for themselves over the years. But I know one thing that I made my mind up to, I'd reached the end of my rope. You know, you go from a kid till you're about 38, 39 years old, and after that time, you're starting to believe a lot of these things, and perhaps they're true. I am going to die a drunken bum. Oh, maybe no guts, maybe know anything, I don't know, but I made up my mind I was going I'm gonna die a drunken bum I'll live like one and I hit the bowries I gave up I took every identification that God ever gave me or ever had and I thought I'd destroyed it and I made for only one place then that's one place where guys and gals don't ask you questions where you can drink to your hearts content lay in the gutter freeze to death and die if you wish to I don't feel sorry for me don't have to play any violin there are a lot of other guys and gals that have done the same thing and they didn't even have to hit a bowery you know there comes a time and I know so many alcoholics that have thought of the same thing but I thought that the day would come when I would finally just say this is it and I could find a gun or a high building or something and ended just like that because I thought I had plenty of that intestinal fortitude. I took a tanker out of Baltimore in the fall of 1940, going down into Aruba in the Caribbean. And I only took it for one reason. I'd taken my last drink because I'm going overboard some place, some moonlight night or dark night whatever it might be I'm gonna go over that tanker and that's the end of it oh poor little me as if anybody had missed me but I'm the guy that's living it and I got that foot over that rail and I tried to go into the ocean And I failed just like you or somebody else has failed And I went below that night And I lay on that floor and I cried that night I cried like I've never cried before or cried since You put a knife in me and see if you can make me cry today I might maybe shed a tear as some of us do emotionally at times and so forth But it's pretty tough to be a drunken bum that could have been somebody, and then you have the guts to even end it. And my wanderings brought me back to Washington, D.C., in March of 1941. I met guys and gals there that I couldn't believe it, that other people were in the same position that I was in. I saw them on the Bowery, of course I did. I saw man's inhumanity to man. I've seen men killed, I've seen men left for dead and I've been left for death myself. But I didn't think some of the guys and the gals that I knew in that town were in that position but they were. And I'm going to tell how I found AA because I get sick and tired of people trying to tell me how they make an AA call, what you should do. Did the wife call? Did the husband call? Does he have $40,000? Does he live up on the hill or down in the gutter? The right way to make an AA call. There's one right way and I know it and you know it. If in your heart, if in your hot, you want to help another alcoholic and you're willing to go out and do everything that you know how to do, a power greater than yourself will accomplish the rest of it. And no matter what you say, it's the right thing because you don't have the power to sober anybody up. You don't have the right words. It's a message that you deliver from a power greater than yourself. Because men have been thrown in here, women have been thrown in there, dragged in by the years. There's no such a thing as the way to bring them in. Because I was standing on a corner not half a block from an AA club when a pal of mine, God bless his soul, that's dead in garden, running his head against a wall one night till he mashed it. A year after the night, he said to me, I know where there's a mission house halfway up this block, and there's a guy up there that used to be a director in a building loan association you were manager of in Washington years ago, and he's up preaching to drunks. They're singing hymns and telling them they're going to stay sober. I don't know how they get by, he said, because the guys they're hollering to don't have anything. But I suppose he wants to satisfy his own ego and do a lot of this preaching. I didn't like preaching to drumps. I did not like it then. And by God, I don' t like it now. Because I don't know of preaching a drunk into sobriety. But I went up there, not to get sober. I'm a drunken bum that's going to die that way. I have malnutrition and very, very, and I can't find my way out. And I went out there. It was a small place. There were 10 or 15 people there. I walked in looking for the guy I was trying to find with a chip on my shoulder, and I accomplished a hundred percent of what I went up to that mission house for that night because I got three dollars from it. When I faced that man, as he told me later, his chin dropped right to his chest when he realized there's the guy that I knew not seven or eight years ago in the shape that I was in from then till eight years later. And he said, I just handed it to you, and I just seemed like I was paralyzed. I wanted to say something, and then I couldn't. And of course, when I got the three dollars, he couldn't have caught me anyway because I was out that door before he could say scat. What I didn't know was that I'd been up to an Alcoholics Anonymous club room. I accomplished the same thing that night That I've accomplished for thousands of nights in back of it Get a quart, get drunk Find some place to lie down To get up in the morning To take another drink To find out another alley to sleep in That vicious circle that I had been in For lo these twenty-some odd years And I found it that night And the next morning, I hope I threw my last convulsion. And sometime in the evening, around 5 or 6 o'clock, who knows? I don't. What happened during the day? I don'T know. I know when I'm covered with blood. I know what happened. I know that when my tongue is chewed off and I know when I can't hardly walk. And I remembered that mission house that I was in the night before because it was only two blocks from the park bench that I was sitting on, and through some luck or some strength that I don't know, I made it to that door. And that door was open, open door for a guy named Dick Green, a canopy that God put on earth for men and women like me, a place for a drunken bum. What an open club room! Oh, dear God, am I a clubroom guy. Don't think because you have a little group and you meet here and meet there, I'm condemning anyone. I want to see a guy or a gal that has this disease get sober. But I found a guy with his hand out in a club room in Washington, D.C., September 1st, 1941. And by the grace of God and people just like you, I haven't had a drink since. You don't have to go through that. Because my first six months was trying to get the scabs off the back of my back from my neck to my toes. it was walking the streets and finding that club room during the evening and the night where I could hang around and talk with people just like you disbelieving practically everything I'd gone too far and finally when I was able to get to a doctor and get the necessary things that I needed I started to get well physically and I found some of the things that you found But don't be like me. Don't plug your ears up. Don't believe that just because you've been someplace that it's impossible to come back. Because I started to get drunk again ten months later. I was up in Virginia. I'd bought a case of whiskey, I'd brought a couple of cases of beer, and I went up with some friends of mine up there. And Ruth, who you all know well, was with me. I shut off the water in that house, threw the groceries out the back door because I was visiting drunks. Did they love to drink? God help them, do they still love to drank? And I provided the entertainment for the evening. I made up my mind tomorrow, when they're all good and stiff, I'll catch up with them. And the morrow came. And here's where you non-alcoholics might take a long breath because don't tell me that non-alkoholics, you guys and gals that are stuck with the boys or married the boys or have come in here and are with them today, anybody that tells you you don't play a great part in this fellowship is just a damn fool because I'll go back to the first two girls Ann and Lois Ann bless her soul is passed on Lois is still with us that's Lois Wilson and had they not been there to pat those two guys on the back to buy the coffee and supply the few little dollars that they so sorely needed, I doubt very much if you'd be here tonight because Doc and Bill were beat-out drunks. Thank God for that fact. And in the morning, I walked down to this kitchen table, and there were seven or eight beautiful-looking people around that table, especially the gals. each one of them looked about 800 years old and the men didn't make much difference what they looked like anyway and I moved the one girl over pushed her aside so I could pull out a drawer she knew me and knew me well she had seen me in my drunkenness she and her husband and their family and here it was she heard of this Dick Breen joining a club called Alcoholics in London Oh, I was a little crazy, they thought. Yeah, sure. Of course, I'd been crazy a long time. But I'd gone insane completely. I was running around with a bunch of mission house people trying to sober up drunks. But she was very grateful for the fact that we did think a lot of each other, all of us, and she was so glad to see the shape that I was in. And there's a girl that realized what one drink would do, and she's an alcoholic and has never been in an Alcoholics Anonymous club room or read the 12 steps. Because when I pulled out this cockscrew to open this bottle of scotch of teachers, going to start big, you know, and go down. I'd end up drinking smoke or big rum, but I was going to star on teachers. And she said, what are you going to do? I said, I'm going to take a drink. You're going to, you're going to take it, right? You can't do that. And I said, why in the hell not? Well, she said, you don't drink anymore. You belong to that thing in Washington. You shouldn't. I thought to myself, if this isn't a pip, a lousy drunk sitting there going to tell me not to take a drink. It's my whiskey she's talking about too. My life, my whiskey, my money, I can do what I want with it. How often have you heard that? and I said listen mind your own business and she grabbed my hand and started to cry and said I've seen you in your drunkenness Dick I've been I've see the fool you've made of yourself just like I have and the rest of the family have and you found something but you're gonna take a drink and so she called me a son of a bee and said go ahead go ahead and take it and you'll be just like us again and I said what did you say and she said you heard me you must be take it and you will be just like us again I opened the bottle of scotch and presented it to him and said here you pigs here's some dessert and for the first time in AA my ears were opened a little bit and I run back to Washington like I run now to an AA club room where I could find gals and girls guys and gals just like you that I don't have to tell them my problem just sit next to them Just have them talk Just have the understanding And that love and that warmth That's something that they've got That's indefinable Nevertheless you can define it It's there It's in this All over this room Understanding Warmth Love Knowing what kind of a road I've been down Knowing what type of a world Knowing what time of a row You've been done pulling the same oars in the same boat. Of course we know each other. And I went back to that club room and I missed for the first and, I hope, last time up till tonight it's my last time of reaching out and grabbing a bottle. Now I don't think in the meantime over this time I haven't seen the time that I've wanted to take a drink but you've taught me now that I don' t have to take the drink You've taught me now that I can measure this deal. Now I can weigh yesterday, and I can weight today. I can wait 20 years now against the 20 years being back on me. And if I want to take a drink, I can. And if i do, I'll be just like that guy that was sitting on the wall outside of the insane asylum when a guy drove by and had a flat tire, got out, changed it, and when he went to put the tire back on, the lugs had gone down the sewer and he couldn't put it back on. There's a guy sitting up in the wall up there and he said, live here? He said, yep. Where's the telephone? He said back that way. How far? Oh, a mile and a half, two miles. Was there a filling station down the road? How far about four miles? Shh. Followed the patient on the wall said to him, hey, why don't you take a lug off each wheel, put it on that wheel that you've got there on the side and just drive to the filling station, buy a new set of lugs and you're all right. The guy looked up and he said, are you a patient here? I said, uh-huh. You crazy? He said, mm-hmm, but I'm not stupid. I was smart drinking, and I was smart sober. I had a year in A.A. Sometimes I didn't like the spittoons they had in the club rooms or the ashtrays. You were wearing a red tie, you should have a blue one. ought to make the call this way, you ought to make it that way. Very tolerant of people. You know what I mean. You don't have it in Lubbock, but other places I'm talking about, say. When nothing is right, you're trying to get yourself back up. It takes time. But I was still pure as the driven snow. A year sober, nothing ailed me. Oh, you drank too much, sure, but I'm an awfully good guy. No more wine, women, song. And of course, 90% of them here have only heard this one too, which is too bad. There's still another 10%. So I decide to take a trip to the coast. I have some money. No more of this wine, woman, and song. I'm not going to get off the ball again. Everything's going to be right. you're not going to tempt me coming back from the clubroom to my stateroom after having a nice dinner in my room were two beautiful blondes ha I just said to them girls you've made mistakes perfectly all right anybody will make a mistake you know but this is my statoroom and I showed them my ticket and they said yeah we realize that we know that I said you don't belong they said oh no we know it's your stateroor And I said, uh-oh, just a minute. I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. The time has come for me. No wine, no women, no song. I'm on the program. One of you girls will have to leave. It hasn't been easy, yet it's never been as tough as yesterday though. But above all, may I ask you guys and gals who are here today visiting? You might be thirty miles away, you might be three hundred miles away. Don't stop. Go three hundred the other way, four hundred that way. You'll never know the joy and experience of coming back again, unless you do. You'll find guys and gals that you never knew before that will be as close to you as any brother and sister you ever had. And maybe you'll get the same break that I did of traveling here and there as I did, And finally, some day a guy says, come on out to Lubbock. And I did. And I spent four beautiful years banging around here. Of course, I had an awful lot of frantic sobriety or serenity, I might say. Sometimes I didn't know there was Tuesday or Wednesday, but that goes along with the deal sometimes when you get upset a little bit. But I met the grandest guys and gals in the world. And when I was down, they picked me up. And when i was up, I run and laughed like we do and kidded and had that levity and fun that we all enjoy. We don't go around with a long push, you know, just because we're sober. We enjoy ourselves. And I found that out on the plane. and I've missed it because I'm not around it so much now. But you did more for me than I will ever come close to doing for you. I lived in Midland, and I lived at Lubbock, and I roamed up and down the country to the greatest enjoyment I've ever had in my life or ever expect to have. I don't know. I wish that somebody someday could explain a lot of things to me. But I guess they won't be able to while you walk away from something like that. But circumstances change a lot of things for us. But you on the planes are awfully lucky people. You have a kind of AA that's your own. You're the same 12 steps. But But you enjoy each other. You can kid with each other, you have a lot of fun together. And life is different for you. And there's only one thing that will ever destroy it and that's intolerance. Also that lack of spirit to forget something. And that something is this, that you have an awful lot of guys and gals you've left behind you. And you who are here tonight, they say, no, the new man today is the man for me, the hell he is. He's a lucky guy, he's in here today. He's found out what it's all about, he has walked through the door. C-Same, he's on his way if he wants it. But the guy and the gal like myself that was staggered around those gutters, and the guys and the gals in the silk sheets and up on the hill and across the railroad tracks are out there by the minions. There are no musts in AA, huh? You've got a wrong opinion from mine. You bet there are musts. If you think you can keep it and sit in a corner, you'll see the day you lay drunk in that corner. Unless you give it away, you will find nothing. You've gut nothing. And should you, if you get time enough, come to the time that Johnny was talking about, that you're too busy or too tired or too wealthy or too broke to go out and find one of the guys and the gals you've left behind you, then you have the same opinion of a power greater than myself that I have. Because I believe they can put their foot out and trip you just as easy as they can putting their hand out and lift you up. I found what you have found here, no different. I have found a life that I wouldn't take all the tea in China for. And I've found that it comes first. Whether I go to church or whether I don't is nobody's business. I come in here to get sober, not to get saved. If I stay sober, I'll find my plateau, and it will be mine and the understanding of what I want. But if I stay sober and turn my back on you, then God help me. But I don't know why he should, because he gave me something that you have in the palm of your hand, every one of you. By the grace of God, you have something in the palm of your hand that you can give to another sick alcoholic. You can show a guy or a gal the open door. You can show him the love, the companionship, the warmth, and hold him up until he can get his head clear enough to understand a little bit about it, and then we carry on together. A gift that no man can complain about. Let me close, and they've heard this one before too. And I'm not a preacher, and I don't ever want to be. God bless all the preachers. God bless all the religions, it's fine. Men and women like you have made the world sit up and take notice. Every one of you walking up and down the streets of your hometown are doing the greatest twelve-step work in the world by proving to people that alcoholics can be helped, and then when they are helped, can turn into as fine a citizen as there is in the community. And they'll say that nothing in AA is new. No, I suppose not. Those lights are not new. But the guy that put them together, it took him a long time before you could turn a button. And he took stuff that was in the ground for millions of years. It's been there, nothing new. But it took a guy to put them together where you could snap that light. And it took two good old drunks, that later became the fine word of alcoholics, to put this together and give it its start. Where did it start from? I don't know. I only have my own opinion. And we speak of a man, Jesus, that was crucified on a cross. To the left of him, one thief. To the right of him another thief. To the Left of Him a guy screaming at him saying, If you're that God you claim to be, stop the clouds, do this, do that and take us out of here. And the guy to his right though turned and said, I believe you. No different than what you say to an alcoholic that comes in here a new guy or an old guy. He said, I believe you because the guy in the middle is suffering no more than he is. They're both in the same boat. But the guy on the right turned to him and smiled a smile as much as you can with a bunch of nails in you and said, I believe You. And it's the only religion in the world that I know of, the only story in any religion that I know of where he turned to him, and I guess he must have smiled because he found a guy that understood him, because he said, this day thou shalt be in paradise. And if you want the happiness and the paradise of sobriety, put out the same hand, the same smile. If you want hell on earth, that's your business. I'm sorry from the bottom of my heart that I'm leaving this afternoon. Johnny and I are taking a ride down country. I am I'm going back to Dallas, and from Dallas, back into the Arctic. For the many years, and for the many fine things you all up and down the plains have done for me and mine, for the heartfelt warmth and love that you've bestowed on me, what else can I say but God bless you.