Why the Alcoholic Cannot Make Deals With a Drug – Gene D.

This recording is part of the Northern California Tape Library about alcoholism and was recorded at Calistoga, California on July the 17th, 1975. The speaker, Gene Duffy of Calistuga, his subject, the third chapter of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Please observe the traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous and do not play this recording for entertainment or commercial purposes. and please do not break the anonymity of any speaker at any public level this copy was made by bart daniel a 1332 san janez way sacramento california zip 95816 today i'm going to talk about another chapter that's contained in the book alcoholics anonymous for those of you who weren't here last tuesday those of vous have arrived at this facility since tuesday there are two chapters in the book Alcoholics Anonymous that appear to carry a higher degree of importance than the rest of the book but this is only an appearance the reason they appear to be they appear not to carry a higher level of importance because they're generally referred to more often at AA meetings than any other particular parts of the books last Tuesday we discussed the fifth chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous which is the chapter that is generally read at most AA meetings. It's the chapter that tells us how our program works. Now there is another chapter called Chapter 3 which in the book is entitled More About Alcoholism but could very well be entitled The Gene Duffy Story, The Joe Jones Story, The Mary Smith Story or whoever you are out there your particular story because it's in my opinion that the third chapter defines most of us who seek help whether it's an aa or any other program it defines us almost through the letter almost to the letter and today i'd like with your permission of course to go through as i did tuesday with the fifth chapter just a portion of this chapter and to explain to you my opinions on just what is being said in this book what is being said to you and i by 100 men and women who 38 years ago saw fit to put these writings into book form and to pass them on today to you and i assumedly who seek this wisdom and this help now the very first sentence in the third chapter is one that just about encompasses all of us at least all of us at one time in our drinking careers it says this most of us have been unwilling to admit that we were real alcoholics and that's quite true what justifies the character of that sentence is the proof that through evidence amongst all of us even those of us in AA, who readily admit that long before we ever sought out the help from the most successful program of recovery, which is AA, as recognized by the medical profession, we tried countless other ways first. In most cases, all of us in this room have sought help from religious bodies, spiritual bodies we have sought help from the medical professions the psychiatric professions legal professions or whatever or whatever and i can only attribute that fact to this to that stigma that's attached to the word alcoholics for you see see, the program of AA makes no bones about what we are here for. Alcoholics Anonymous, where you and I could have in our prior days run to the clergy and camouflage the fact that we were seeking help from an alcoholic problem. We used a facade of emotional problems, problems, misunderstanding, misguided youth, broken homes, or again, whatever. But our basic problem was alcoholism. But the church didn't have out there St. Mary's Star of the Sea Church on Alcoholism. So it didn't appear that you were an alcoholic just because you were walking into a church. And the same thing in a doctor's office. You could be walking into a doctor's office or any number of problems without you know letting everybody exposing yourself for what your real problem is i hesitate to believe that there would many people be going to doctors for help with their alcoholism problem if the doctor had a big shingle out in front of his house joe jones md i handle only alcoholics i don't think too many of you'd be sitting around the waiting rooms there or going to visit the doctor in the daytime you might wait till the sun goes down so nobody'd see you going in and the same thing with shrinks and wig jockeys and guys like that if them shrinks had big signs up here we don't fool around with mentally ill people. We only want to talk to them drunks, the alcoholics. There's nobody sitting in them waiting rooms either because of this stigma. So it's only natural then that you and I seek out these other things because as it says here in this book, most of us were unwilling to admit that we were real alcoholics Now that's one reason we don't like to be alcoholic, and then the other reason is the fact called ignorance. Ignorance. And not only our own ignorance, you and I, the ignorance that abounds in the professionals in the field of alcoholism. Quite frankly, I think if we could take 20 of the most learned professionals who identify themselves as experts in the field of alcoholism I think if we can set 20 of them down here in a panel today and ask each of them to write down the definition of an alcoholic we come up with 20 different ideas as to what constitutes being an alcoholic and the proof of that ignorance is the fact some of you who have admitted to being alcoholic at the outset of this meeting have just as recently as yesterday told me that you have been told by psychiatrists and doctors that even though your alcoholic you can still go out and do a little social drinking now that contradicts the very statement that you made at the outset of this meeting when you said you had lost the ability to control your drinking and now a learned professional in the field is telling you no you haven't you can go out and drink a little bit more because of all of these definitions we are unwilling fear of the unknown i don't want to say i'm an alcoholic until somebody tells me just what in the hell the guidelines are of being an alcoholic i might say i am an alcoholic and find out that that means i carry a venereal disease so i'm very reluctant to say I'm an alcoholic and we were all like that and it tells us that in the second sentence of this chapter it says that because no person likes to think that he or she is bodily and mentally different from itself and that's a very correct statement for you and I as alcoholics are bodily and mentally different from our fellows but only when we drink only when we drink and we're not drinking, we're no different than the average screwball walking up and down the street or just as screwy as them or just insane or just intelligent as them just as dumb or just smart as them but when you and I drink something happens to people like you and I which science can't explain so I don't have to be ashamed of being ignorant either something happens to us that doesn't happen to other people we act or react differently to this chemical called alcohol you know I have to point out before I go any further for those of you who may not know most of the guests here might as well know this because it's thought here constantly. Let there be no doubt in anybody's mind in this room right now as to exactly what takes place when you drink. Now the medical profession will substantiate the fact that alcohol is a narcotic, that alcohol isn't a drug. that will substantiate the fact that it is the number one drug known to man. Now, regardless of whether you are alcoholic, periodic, social drinker, occasional drinker wine drinker shot and beer drinker martini drinker scotch and soda drinker regardless of what whether you take one drink a year or five gallons a day this process has to take place in everyone who drinks the normal way to drink is to raise a drink to your mouth you are going now with this drink in your hand to take a narcotic orally you are doing you are not going to use drugs orally There are many ways to use drugs, you know that. You can pop them with pills, you can shoot them with a needle, you can smoke them, lots of ways to take drugs. The alcoholic takes his orally. Anytime you enter a drug or a narcotic or a mood-altering agent, whatever you want to call it, this is what takes place in all people. talking about alcohol will stick to orally it goes in your mouth and just as soon as it goes into your mouth it goes the only place that drugs or narcotics can go to the only places there's no sense in rubbing your tummy unless your fly is open because there's no drug down there. That drug, that narcotic goes straight to your brain whether you're having one drink or 10,000, whether you're having light dinner wines or a double shot of V.O. and a small Budweiser. Same thing takes place. Just as soon as it hits your brain, whether you are rich, poor, black, white, Jewish, Catholic, Baptist, Protestant, he-man, fairy, queer, tough guy. It don't make no difference. It does the only thing that narcotics can do. it anesthetizes a portion of your power of reasoning that the very fine medical explanation that means it takes away your marbles the more you drink the more marbles go even social drinkers Even non-alcoholics, even periodic drinkers do some rather insane, stupid things when they too have lost a portion of their common sense. Now that's what takes place when you and I drink. the chapter goes on in its next sentence saying of course that we're different where are we different then from the social drinker why do we define ourselves differently only because of the fact that we recognize that we have lost that control social drinkers still have control let me show you how and why that is true you could take an alcoholic take me somebody here I've done a young lady from Texas here, she's a non-alcoholic she and I and I guess she takes a drink once in a while she says not too often but occasionally she told me she and i could go into a cocktail lounge after work we'll say common expression today at 4 30 i guess all over the country will be let's go in and have a couple to relax i guess that's how this whole thing gets started go in to relax we walk up to the bar we're tired from a hard day's work maybe it's been nasty out or hot out in the back aches and the hands heard have been laying a thousand bricks today and i'm just beat night bed night sleep last night and i've tired so i want to drink to relax so i walk into the bar and of course i look for a stool to sit down i've been standing up all day and i take out an air-conditioned bar because it's hot outside and I order a drink a little double shot of B.O. and a little water on the side and maybe Gloria orders whatever the hell she wants to relax now you're not going to believe this you alcoholics you're really not going to believe that but a test has been made and I guess it's true do you do you know how long it takes the average social drinker to drink his drink? 17 minutes. Can you imagine screwing around with a drink for 17 minutes? That's right. 17 minutes they play with their martinis they sail the olive back and forth and they shoot arrows and they talk in between you know and they don't gulp and they go play jukeboxes and shit like that and let that thing stand there you know and they have no fear that somebody's going to take it away from them either so they don't gulp it down like you and I why hell in 17 minutes an alcoholic could get drunk go into DT recover do three things in the drunk tank and be back for a second drink in 17 months in 17 days but here we are Gloria and I now are in there for 17 minutes having that drink to relax all right maybe at the end of the 17 minutes the pain hasn't gone out of my shoulders and my hands still ache from handling all them brooks but not as much my feet don't hurt as much now I don't feel the weight on my feet so much but that's normal I'm sitting down so I say to Gloria let's have one more I'm not quite there yet she might say the same thing so we have another 17 minute period that's going to go by now during that 17 minutes maybe the pain starts to leave the shoulders a little bit the heat has removed itself I feel cool and comfortable now but my hands still ache a little so I say to Gloria one more, one more then I'll really be relaxed so another 17 minutes has to go by and I've had three drinks now so I've been in there for 51 minutes three drinks Gloria's had three too all of a sudden I say well come on let's have another she'll say no this is what social drinkers do control she'll see me she'll know I feel fine now I feel good besides I've got to get home and I've gotta fix dinner and I got an appointment with the PTA or I'm going to the show tonight or gonna fix my hair or whatever the hell people have to do that comes under the heading of manageability and that's what normal social drinkers do they say I don't want it anymore but the alcoholics that's where we differ and again I repeat science don't know why either but something happens to our thinking process which leads us to insanely believe that Jesus if three got me feeling this good four will get me better five will make me far better relaxed and six will be the epitome and we start to drink ourselves away from the original goal that we intended. We start to un-relax ourselves and it would happen this way with me as an example. I've had my three. The pains are gone. The legs don't ache and the hands feel good and I'm cool. I have now received exactly what I went in there for. Gloria leaves. but I want more so I had the fourth drink and now the unrelaxing start 15 minutes 17 minutes or whatever is going to go by and I look at the clock shit I'm 17 minutes later than I expected to be probably missed my god damn bus I'm upset well I missed a god damn thing might as well have one more and i have the fifth to drink and another 17 minutes goes by now i'm not only missing my butt but i know i'm going to be late getting home now and i begin to do other people's thinking for them at this point i began to imagine what the wife is going to say when i get home she's going to be pissed off how come you're late son of a she doesn't appreciate the fact that i've been out there busting my back all day i'll show her give me another one and have the six and i'm calling myself further and further away now i'm beginning to magnify the problem and alcoholics are beautiful at that well i suppose the goddamn dinner was cooked at six o'clock and that dumb ass had to put it on the table at six i'm not entitled to stay out a little bit longer once in a while just because i've been coming home at six for 11 straight years there's no reason she can put it on the table tonight at six it'll probably be cold when i get there lousy cook Give me another drink, she can stick them porkchops in her ass! I've had seven drinks now and you see what I've done? I pulled myself away from that point where Glory walked off with. And that's where we differ. Now don't waste any time, don't be running all over visiting libraries trying to find out why that happens. Because we don't know, and neither does science know. Perhaps, as it says in this book, in this very chapter, science may one day discover this. But they have not done so yet. So until they do, we have to accept it. And it's easy to accept it if you can honestly accept the wisdoms and the truths and the accounts of the experiences of others who have gone before you, who will attest to the truth in what I have just told you. I said last night in a meeting, this would be the most ridiculous level in life, to lie. Why I would lie to you at this point in my life is unthinkable. We're surely not here to impress each other. The next sentence, which is the fourth one, says, Therefore, it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove that we could drink like other people. Surely that's true with all of us, right? Tonight I'm only going to have three and that's it! I'm going to switch just to be it. I'll only take the drinks that they serve. I won't go out to the car and take the mickey out of the glove department and have a couple of belts in between. I'll try to drink like other people. Now, only you can answer within yourself as to whether or not you have ever succeeded in an attempt at trying to drink like other people. And quite frankly, I think you'll all honestly admit to yourself that you failed. The evidence of that fact is that you sit here in attendance today. And then it says the idea that somehow, someday, we will control and enjoy our drinking is the greatest obsession of every abnormal drinker. How true, how true. All of us wanted to drink like normal drinkers. Is that what those words say? How many of you in this room would like to be a normal drinker? Honestly. Willing to follow the rules of a normal drinker? Are you willing to follow the rules or a normal drinker. How about that, Chief? Normal drinkers leave half of their drink on the bar sometimes. You gonna do that? You gonna do that. You know Normal drinkers are those people who say, let's go in and have a drink. And they go in and have one drink. Are you going to waste your time going there for one drink? You know what all you people wanted to do? You wanted to suffer like the normal drinker suffers, but you wanted to drink like an alcoholic. Nobody in this room wants to be a normal drinkers. Because normal drinking never did anything for me and you. You know how normal drinkers do, Chief? They say, why don't you come over to house tonight, Chief, and we'll play pinochle and have a couple of drinks. And when you get there, I break out a half a pint, and you see that's what we got for the whole night, you about shit. You want come to my house and sweat a half a pipe? No way! No way. But it says that the persistence, our persistence, me and you, in that illusion that someway someday we can be normal drinkers is astonishing this persistence because many of us pursue it into the gates of insanity or death. In other words, we go crazy and die trying to be something that we don't really want to be. That's right. We go crazy and die trying to be something that we don't really want to be trying to do trying to become a normal drinker when that's the last thing we want to do it says we learn we say we were talking about the men and women who wrote this book 100 men and women just like you who said that we learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. Remember what we said. A person who has lost the ability to control his or her drinking accepts the fact that he or she will never again regain that ability to control their drinking. you have to concede that to your innermost self doesn't mean you're going to stop drinking but that is the first step towards your recovery only the first step it's not as simple as just being willing to stop and knowing you have to stop if it was that simple I'll ask my friends from St. Helena something right now and those of you who are guests of this facility let these people answer any of you who are up in St. Helena if I told you right now that I could solve your drinking problem right here today before you leave here and that if you do one little thing for me i guarantee you that you'll never again have a problem with alcohol would you be willing to do that one little thing for me and i assure you it's a very little thing and it doesn't require any amount of money brains or intelligence how about the gentleman sitting right there in a gray shirt would yoube willing to if right now if i asked you to do one thing for the rest of your life for me and for you doing that for me i guarantee you that you'll never have another problem with alcohol i would like to know what it is would you do it for me not unless i'm not honest i know what it is i'm going to solve your drinking problem and you're not satisfied you still want to know that's great well that's why you returned here anybody in this room want me to solve it for you and I mean exactly what I say I can do that right here today you will never drink again no guts in this room alright there's no big thing I'm going to ask you to do don't ever put into your mouth alcohol There it is. Now, is that such a big deal, Armand? No. Is that such an earth-shattering deal? That's going to solve all your problems with booze by doing me a favor, by never putting alcohol in your mouth again. That's how simple it is! But it doesn't work that way, though. It doesn't work that simple. It's not that easy. And because it's not that easy, that's why we need programs like AA. That's why need facilities. That's we need education. That's what we need each other. Because it's none of easier saying I'm never going to drink again. If it was that easy there'd be no AA, there'd no places like this, problem with alcoholism because all you have to do, you know you don't have to be an alcoholic to quit drinking. Rail light around your head tonight when you lay down and go to bed. You don't happen to be an alcoholic to quit drinkin'. All you got to do to quit drinking is to have enough common sense, enough intelligence and enough humility to recognize that alcohol is and has been interfering in your life and in other people's lives whom you assumedly love. And all you've got to do is take that intelligence and recognize that and then use a little bit of them things called guts and say well hell i don't want to keep my life uncomfortable and other people's lives uncomfortable i think i'll stop drinking you know more people stop drinking that way than in AA? You know, there are only 750,000 people in AA who have stopped drinking. Surely you don't think that constitutes all of the people in the world who have stop drinking after recognizing a problem with drinking. There are countless millions of people who have applied that intelligence and said, Christ, if that's what's going to happen when I drink, I'm quitting. And they quit. They never do put alcohol in their mouths again. Why we can't, I don't know. Why we cannot, I do not know. But I do know this, that with help from people like you, the people like me don't find it necessary to put alcohol into our mouths anymore. So it's wise for me then to apply my indulgence to that knowledge stick around people just like you. It goes on to give us the definition of the word alcoholic and prior to giving us the definition that tells us one of the musts in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be like other the people must be smashed. You and I, as alcoholics, will never drink socially again. and I have had it. That's not so astonishing, not being able to do today what I used to be able to at one other time in my life. Nothing astonishing about that. There are a lot of things that I can't do today that I used to be able to do in other periods of my life. In high school, I used be able run the 100-yard dash in less than 10. Right now it would probably take me three hours to go a hundred yards. I could participate in a lot of things in high school or when I was younger, and I can't do now. Here. I used to be able to see better, but I canít now. So whatís so astonishing here? Of an admittance on my part that I can no longer drink like I appear to have been able to do at one other time in my life. I have outgrown that ability and that's all that's happened to you and i we haven't become social outcasts we haven's done anything really earth shattering i guess we've just grown a little older a little older some of us grow older earlier than others that's all we've lost an ability many people lose abilities as a matter of fact it would be safe to say that all people lose abilities during a period of time and if that's the only ability that i ever lose the ability to control my drinking, I'd come out pretty damn good. Pretty damn good." The definition says that we alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. And again, we it says. We. Some 100 men and women just like you and I. We know that no real alcoholic can ever again recover that control. control. It is true that all of us felt at times that we were redeeming that ability to control our drinking. You see, I come from the school of thought that sort of laughs people who stand up and shake their heads in despair and make that funny sound with their tongue in their teeth and go, the poor alcoholic, he's the last one to know it. Like hell, he'll be the last ones to know us. You see, you and I knew long before anybody that something was different in the way we drank. That's why we hid our bottles. That's Why we hid Our drinking. And that's Why We tried different ways of trying to regain that control. And when we tried to regain that control, there were times, as it says in this book, that we actually believed we were. Might have even gone out and had a few and didn't get drunk, didn't go to the hospital, didn't give any shit any place, didn't wind up in a hospital, went home and rather had a good evening, a good time, which of course justifiably would lead anyone to believe that yes, I regained that control. Look, I drank and nothing happened. But something did happen. Something did happen Your thinking has changed now Your thinking has changed to where it's beginning to defy you It's beginning to tell you you were wrong when you said you lost that control Look, you can drink a little You have the ability to control it so that you and I start making deals with booze You know how I can prove that i could prove it by using all of you right here right now if you'd like to take part in that kind of an experiment we could knock off the meeting right now and i could say i tell you what let's do let's burn all of these aa books and take all this aa crap down off the wall it's a bunch of crap i think if we stick together all of us in this room we can learn how to control our drinking but we'll all have to watch each other so here's what we'll do right after the meeting everybody get cleaned up and we'll go down to the shamrock bar here in calistoga and i'll buy you all a drink then after the drink will come back here off we go right after the meeting we'd all go down for the sham rock and i assure you we get served in there The guy might think it's a little strange, but he'd serve us because there's nobody here. Looks like they're going to cause any trouble. And we'd have our drink. You could have whatever the hell you wanted. And then we'd come back in and we'd feel good about it. We'd talk about it, we'd laugh about it... We'd sit down and we would eat dinner. We'd finish watching the moon shot. See TV tonight, go to bed and get a good night's sleep. Nobody would go into D.C. as a result of that one drink. But their thinking would have started to change already. because you know what would take place tomorrow afternoon at 20 minutes after two which is 24 hours from now bob murray's would probably say ain't we going down for our drink today we had one yesterday and nothing happened so let's take a vote on it everybody if they were going back down today to raise their hands and all our hands would go up and we'd go back down for another one now we might get away with that for about a week and then maybe a week from today it'd be raining the Bible said Jesus Christ is supposed to rain all week when we get down there today why don't we have five that way we won't have to come down for the rest of the week and get wet and we go down and have five we might even get away with that until the following week and it wouldn't be raining might be a rather hot nice day it'd all be up around the pool at twenty minutes after two somebody might say Jesus I don't think they'll let us in the bar in our bathing suits why don't we just send somebody down there to buy a bottle and then we can have the drink up here by the pool and if there's any left over in the bottle we'll save it till tomorrow now can't you see us all sitting up around the pool there and we're pouring the drinks out of the bottle and we don't have to use the whole bottle to get everybody a drink there's about that much left over in it so we'll just lay that down and leave it up at the pool for tomorrow you know right away what a couple of guys would say well I tell you what Bill says leave me an empty bottle every now and then why don't you give me two today and then I'll skip tomorrow or give me six now and I won't have none for the rest of the week or give me a fifth now and I won't drink for a month. And that's what we've all tried to do. And those are the deals that we try to make. And that is where we continually, over and over again, fool ourselves. We cannot make deals with a drug. We cannot made deals with an narcotic. We cannot forecast or predict the outcome of a drug We cannot predetermine a mood-altering change. This is why it says in this book, alcohol coming.