Audio
Transcript
Source: Dave B – Talk at Vancouver – Date Unknown – Date Unknown.mp3 File: dave-b-talk-at-vancouver-date-unknown-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:34:39
============================================================
You can work a horse to death. We've worked one here. We worked him right out of B.C. on the fastest TCA we have. But we're going to get him before he goes. Dave B. from Montreal. I really feel a little ashamed to stand up here again. I'm very happy to be here. And I would like to thank the B.C. Yukon Assembly for one of the nicest conferences that I have been to. There seems to be a wonderful, friendly feeling here. I don't know what it is. Perhaps it's in the atmosphere. But I do know that I feel very much at home and very grateful to be here.
And I'd like also to add a word of thanks to Jo for the tremendous job that she has done for general service in this province here and also in New York. We'll be sorry to see her go. But at the same time, we'll be very glad to welcome your new delegate who is an old and valued friend of mine. I'm not going to go into that long story again tonight. I'm going to say that I am an alcoholic, that my name is Dave B., and I'm going to qualify just a little bit.
But I think principally I'm going to try and say what the steps of AA mean to me. And it seems to me that it's very true what they say when they say no man lives alone. Because as I was looking down the steps again this afternoon, I didn't do any one of those myself. I had help from people, people in AA and outside of AA. And I know that I had it from a force or a power far greater than any of them here. Perhaps that's really the true meaning of that little phrase that Dr. Bob loved so much, the love and service.
I can look back to the year 1934. That was the year when AA was starting, when Bill was lying in Tom's Hospital. I was an alcoholic then. I'd been an alcoholic for some considerable time. And I was powerless over alcohol, but I certainly wouldn't admit it. I can remember driving down through New Hampshire where my uncle lived, and everybody knew I was drinking too much except me. My grandmother had died, and that was the only reason I had enough money to buy a car, and she had left me $5,000, and you would have thought it was $5 million, but anyway, I'd bought a car.
It was a couple of years old by this time, and when I got there, my uncle said to me, I have a brand new, shiny red, red wheels it had, Ford Roadster, and it was the first year of the V8 engine, and it was something I really wanted. And he said, I will give you this car if you don't drink for a year. You know, I said that I wouldn't drink for a year, and I had every intention in the world of keeping that promise.
[00:05:11]
But before I was up to the border, I was drunk, and I had quite a considerable difficulty getting through the customs. And we can look ahead now. I suppose it's the year 1942 or 43. It's after I got out of that Protestant hospital for the insane for the third time. I'm living on that small pension that the bank gave me. You know, that last two years of my drinking was a very hazy period. There are some things that I remember, and some things that are awfully vague, and they seem to be a fantasy.
I was talking to a man who's a very good friend of mine now. His name is Travis Dancy, and he's the chief psychiatrist for military district number four in Montreal. And this thing had come across my mind, and I asked him if it was true, and he said, brother, it sure is true. Because I had a vague memory of, during the war and during that period, of a girl coming to me, and things were getting pretty tense, and they were looking at people that were wearing civilian clothes, and this girl came and gave me a white feather.
And I can remember walking down St. Antoine Street to the place where they had a recruiting office. I had this paralyzed arm. I had the toes off the foot. But you know, there was a wonderful thing about drinking for me. All I had to do was have a couple of drinks, and the arm didn't shake anymore, and I was as good as anybody else, and that was one of the most wonderful excuses in the world. And so I went in there, and I signed up and answered a few questions, and that was it, and they told me to come to the other place on the top of Beaver Hall Hill in the morning.
And they'd take me over and give me the medical examination and the rest of it. And you know the grandiose kind of people we are, the big wheels and the big shots, and how, well, we have to be the actors, at least I did. And I phoned up Dory, who was living at her sister's, and I said, well, goodbye, Dory. You may never see me again. I'm going overseas now, and I'll probably be killed. You never can tell. Anyway, you'll probably be glad to be rid of me.
Poor Dory got all upset and all excited, and in the morning when I was down there signing up and all the rest of the things, they were loading us on a great big army truck to take us across the river to the place where the barracks, and she was there, and I waved goodbye, the great hero, off to the wars. And I got over there, and you stripped everything off, and for some reason you kept your shoes and socks on so they didn't see my foot.
My arm wasn't shaking because I'd had a few beers. And I managed to get through the thing, and I came to the place where they examined your feet, and the man said, take off your shoes, and I took them off, and he said, good God, man, you've only got half a foot. And then came this terrible vision. Good God, I can't go back now. I've told them all. What am I going to do? So I spoke to the man and told him I had to go, and, well, maybe we can use you down in Long Point in the army shops down there.
Well, gee, this was better. At least I'd get a uniform. And so I kept on going, and finally I came to a green base door, a green base curtain door. And it was eventually, after some waiting, my turn to come in. And I pulled back the curtain. The psychiatrist was sitting there, and it turned out to be my friend, Travis Dancy, who had just let me out of Verdun a few days before. And he says, good God, man, Travis, if you were the last man in Canada, I wouldn't take you into this kind of army.
So I had to come home the way it was. And that was my army experience. And I still have the rejection button at home.
[00:10:04]
I can look ahead from there a year or two to the Christmas of 1943. I'd gone out with my wife and son to my father's place. He'd retired by now out to the country in Knowlton. And we were the kind of a family, or he was the kind of a man that loved to have all his family in the old-fashioned Christmas tree and family and all the rest of it. The next thing I knew, I woke up and I was in a little country hospital.
And apparently I had had alcoholic poisoning and I'd fallen unconscious at the breakfast table on Christmas morning. And it was four days later. I made some kind of an excuse because little country hospitals aren't accustomed to dealing with alcoholics. And I saw on the bureau or washstand or something a bottle of rubbing alcohol. And I got the attendant out of there on some excuse and I drank the rubbing alcohol and I passed out for another two days.
And sometimes I used to question that part in the step which said, return us to sanity. And I can look ahead one year from that to the Christmas of 1944. I'd been worried, was I ever going to make it over Christmas? I know it's all very well to talk about the 24-hour plan and all the rest to me in those days, but was I going to be able to make it over Christmas? I can remember that Christmas so well and I hope I never forget it.
There was white snow all over the place and sun was shining and sparkling on it and there was the smell of the wood smoke there. My father was there and he was so happy and he was so proud. My little boy had one of those red river suits with a red sash around him. My wife was happy and smiling. Those were two Christmases before and after AA. You know I have a little prayer and I hope I never forget it and I hope I remember not only to say it but to try and have it.
And it says, God give me a grateful heart. I can look perhaps, oh to the very early days and the very early struggles in AA. I'd never seen a member of Alcoholics Anonymous before. I'd had a lot of correspondence with Bobbie. And one day I got a letter from Bobbie and she said, the first woman member of Alcoholics Anonymous is coming up to Montreal. You're going to meet her. She wants to see you. And oh boy, I had about half a dozen drunks and I got them all up to the house and there were great plans.
And Dory was working and I wasn't and I took, went down and met her and took her to Childs. I'd left Dory home all radiant and little Bill, he was fine. And we took a taxi home with the last of the money and I can remember opening the door and there was Dory crying. And I walked in and there was all my little group with a bottle on the table. And here was I with one of the big wheels of AA from New York.
I wondered what was going to happen. I'd probably be expelled. But I wasn't. Marty's a tremendous person. She's also got a tremendous temper. And she really gave those people a talking to and the ones who wanted to leave left. And all those people dwindled out of AA. But a couple of years ago I was at the London, Ontario conference. There was a man came up to me and he said, do you remember me, Dave?
And his name was Bud. And I said, yes, I remember you, Bud. And he said, what's your name?
[00:15:00]
He said, I've been in this thing five years now. I've got a wife and three children. And everything's working fine. And all because I never forgot the day that Marty M. came there in those meetings in your house. These are part of the tremendous rewards that Alcoholics Anonymous has given me. And I like to think of all the people that helped me. And as I looked at the steps, as I told you, I can see it.
Of course, I've always known it. And I think of the first step, when I admitted that I was powerless over alcohol and my life had become unmanageable. And that was a good many years before I came into Alcoholics Anonymous. It was in a hospital, a hospital in Montreal that I'd been in a good many times. I was in there again. And I was particularly hopeless feeling this time. And there was a nurse there who had always been very kind.
She seemed to have some kind of understanding. And she stood at the end of the bed. She said, Mr. B., why do you do this? You have a nice son. You have a wife, a wonderful wife. Why do you keep doing this time after time? And I said, Miss Culler, I just don't know. I just don't seem to be able to help it. I think that was the time really that I took the first step. Then when it came to the second step, came to believe that a power greater than myself would restore me to sanity.
Now, for years, I'd been going around. And I was one of these kind of people who in a tavern would be able to tell you the exact difference between the atheist and the agnostic. And I was an agnostic. And there is still a good deal of pride, you know. No matter how hard you get beaten down, it seems to me there's a certain amount of pride left. How was I going to now go crawling back to a God that I said I didn't know if he existed for so many years?
And if he did exist, what did he ever do to me? And what did I mean to him? And I had a vision of a God sitting on a cloud ready to crack down on me the minute I did wrong. It was all wrong. I know that now. But the pride, I guess it was, what would people say? What would people say? And perhaps there was a little shame attached to it. How could I go crawling back after all these years of saying these things?
And I remembered, I don't know who wrote it, but he helped me tremendously, a man who wrote a thing that was given to me when I was confirmed. And that's a picture. It's a picture of the Lord going to a gate that has no key or keyhole in it. And it says, lo, I stand at the door and knock. If any man will hear my voice and will open the door unto me, I will come in. And that was another one of the things.
And Bobby wrote me and said to keep an open mind. And there were two more people that helped me. And the third step, made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood him. I remember when I came to that. And I remember how I came. There was a big, tough, hard-boiled character came up to Montreal from Cleveland one time. And I was giving him a long song and dance and story about this agnostic business and the higher power and so on and so forth.
And he just took one look at me, and there wasn't too much sympathy there. And he said, if they tell you to stand on your head in Dominion Square twice a day, boy, you better do it, because you don't have any other choice. And he was right. And that started me thinking. And then when it came to make a moral inventory, to look at myself as I really was, it was very hard for me to be honest with myself, to look at myself in a poor light.
And I suppose this is another kind of pride. We don't want to see ourselves as we really and honestly
[00:20:02]
are and to make this inventory, or I didn't want to, and compare myself with it. It was a letter I got from Bill, who wrote me from New York at that time. And he used a little phrase that I've never forgotten. I've heard him use many times since. He said, get honest with yourself as never before. And so that was another person that has helped me. And then when it came to the part where it said to admit to God, to myself, and to another human being the exact nature of my wrongs, that wasn't too easy.
And I suppose it's a kind of a pride that we have here again. How could I go down and tell some person about myself? Some of the things on my conscience at that time were pretty bad. At least they seemed terribly bad to me. Despicable things, as I understand them. And I didn't want to tell another human being. By this time, I'd come to the point where I didn't mind admitting it to God. And in a way, I would admit it to myself, but not to tell another person.
How could I? They told me from New York that if I wanted to get sober, I'd better follow these things, like the man said to stand on my head. And so I went down, and I went to that same man that I told you of last night, that Fred Wilkinson, the minister who had tried so hard to help me and had been in on my interdiction. And I told him the story as honestly as I could at that time. I told him everything, and I waited for him to look at me.
I waited for the look of shame. I waited for the look of scorn. The feeling of shame that was going to come over me, I knew it. There wasn't any such thing. He looked, and he said, Dave, that's a tremendous thing. It's a tremendous thing. It's like original Christianity. And whatever it is, boy, it's so much better than anything you've ever had. You better keep it. And that gave me a tremendous lift, a tremendous lift.
And then they said to make restitution to the people that I had wronged and hurt, and to make a list of them. I did to the best of my ability. I wonder somehow how you can make restitution to a wife, for instance, that you've given 15 years of hell on earth. I don't know how you can, really. She seems to think I have. But I hope that I always feel that I owe her a considerable lot. I think perhaps the hardest person we have to learn to forgive is ourselves.
I can remember going around to all the loan companies and all the people and the people in the banks that I had hurt, and trying to tell them what I was doing. And I can remember some of them weren't so nice, and some of them were. Some of them are tremendously good. It always reminds me there of a little quotation I got from somewhere. I don't know where they come from. And it says, man stoops to pride.
Man stoops to forgiveness. But God lays it at your feet. And I like that. It's a nice little phrase. And then we come to the steps that I call the maintenance steps of AA. I don't think I can ever forget any of them, I guess. But these I particularly got to remember. And I think the longer I'm in AA, I better remember that I mustn't ever forget them. There are the steps which say, continue to take moral inventory.
Day by day as I go along, make sure none of these things are starting to come back and get rid of the new ones that I find, or the old ones that I never found before. And when I'm wrong, to promptly admit it.
[00:25:01]
And then the step I love the most of them all. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact. And I like that word conscious in there. The feeling that God is here and now and with us as we understand him. And seeking only for his will for us and the power to carry it out. It seems to me, and of course, anything I say up here is my own personal opinion. There is only one really valid prayer in life.
And that is, show me what to do and give me strength to do it. I think, as I say, that is my own opinion and other people have others. And then we come to the last step. Having had a spiritual experience or spiritual awakening. Some people say, but I don't really seem to have had any kind of a spiritual awakening. I'm not any different than I was before. There doesn't seem to be any change. Not too many people have these sudden experiences.
A hot flash, as Bill calls it, that he had. But I don't really believe that anybody can take the first step and in all sincerity work on that in the second and the third and the fourth and down to the 11th. And can really say that they're the same person that took that first step. Because it isn't humanly possible if we've been sincere. That's the way I look at it from my perspective. That's the way I look at it for myself.
So I believe that change that's come over me from at least trying to work the other 11 steps is what is the spiritual awakening. The change that has come over me. And then we try to carry this message to other alcoholics. And that's an expression of the love and the service. It's the beginning of thinking of other people more than we think of ourselves. And we're the people, or I was the person who's everything in the world centered around me.
I can remember in connection with that when the war ended, and I'd been in AA for a while, the Second World War. I was working out at Canadair in an aircraft plant. And I can remember when the war ended, my first thought was, my God, I'm going to lose my job. Now that's a pretty self-centered way to look at things. I didn't think of all the people that weren't going to be killed and that were going to come home and all the misery and pain and everything else that was going to happen in this world if this war kept going.
I thought of one individual, Dave B., who was a pretty small one. And I was thinking, what's going to happen to me? I'm going to lose my job. And that's the self-centeredness or the kind that I mean as I'm speaking of. And I think we learn a great deal to get rid of that by trying to help other people, whether they be alcoholics or whether they're not, but particularly because we are especially fitted to carry this message of hope to other people, to other suffering alcoholics.
Perhaps that is our job, but it's also our job to give help to, as human beings, to give help to anybody who may need it. And then again, the part, the smallest little part of the 12 steps, which seems to me to be the most important, to practice these principles in all our affairs. And that doesn't mean to me just on meeting nights or when I'm with people or any other time. It doesn't say anything like that.
It says in all our affairs, and that means all the time. As I told you last night, I've had some of the most tremendous rewards in Alcoholics Anonymous.
[00:30:03]
And that's one of the reasons I hope I remember the prayer that I may always have a grateful heart. And that's another thought that I've often had. If one could really be truly a hundred percent grateful, you wouldn't have to wonder or worry about the other things that alcoholics have. You can't really be selfish if you're grateful for what's being given to you. You can't have resentments against people to whom you're grateful.
And the dishonesty and the other things, you can't really have them. Not if we're grateful. My little boy, a couple of years ago, came to me and said, Are we rich, Daddy? And I said, in a hurry, No, we're a long way from that, let me tell you. Because it wasn't a very good time in the family finances. And then I began to think. I thought about all the things that I've been talking about tonight. I thought of my wife upstairs that stayed with me all through all these years.
I thought of that son that, thank God, has turned out so well. I thought of the two little youngsters. I thought of the house that the overtime at Canadair helped me to get. I thought of the means and ability to make a living that's able to support these things. I thought of the tremendous friendships and the feeling of security that AA, and God through AA, has given me. And I called him back and I said, Yes, Paul, we're rich.
We're certainly rich. I think we're probably the richest people in all this world. There's an expression which seems to me, I don't know where it came from again, which seems to me to express what I, for one, would like to have, and in some measure I think we get it from Alcoholics Anonymous, or the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's that I might have a calm exterior, a quiet heart, and a simple faith in God.
And I'm going to close again with another one of my favorite prayers. It's a very special one to me and it seems, they always seem to have been written just particularly for us. Now I'm in the land where I've heard a great many Scottish names and this was a prayer of Mary Stewart, Queen of Scots. And it still seems to apply. And I suppose it always will as long as humanity is humanity and as long as people have weaknesses and all the rest.
It says, Keep us, O God, from all pettiness. Let us be large in thought and word and deed. Let us be done with fault-finding and leave off all self-seeking. May we put away all pretense and meet each other face to face without self-pity and without prejudice. May we never be hasty in judgment and always generous. Let us take time for all things and make us to grow calm, serene, and gentle. Teach us to put into action our better impulses, straightforward and unafraid.
Grant that we may realize that it is the little things of life that create differences, that in the big things of life we are as one. And O Lord God, let us not forget to be kind.