Audio
About this recording
- Topic
- Past Trustee and Past Chair Benefit for Dr. Bob's Home
- Speaker
- Billy N
- Date
- 2018-01-20
Transcript
Source: Billy N – Past Trustee and Past Chair Benefit for Dr. Bob's Home – 2018-01-20.mp3 File: billy-n-past-trustee-and-past-chair-benefit-for-dr-bobs-home-2018-01-20.mp3 Duration: 01:07:01
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Good afternoon, I'm Billy. I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is January the 5th of 1990. My home group is the early morning AA literature discussion group at 7:30 a.m. every day. We study a different piece of AA literature every day in Atlanta. If you're ever there, come on by. Glad to be out here today for any AA reason, and glad to be doing anything to support the important work of Dr. Bob's House, for sure. So a couple of things, I guess, you know, to get out of the way. I use PowerPoint every day of the week, Monday to Friday, so I hate wearing suits on the weekend and I hate using PowerPoint on the weekend.
So no PowerPoint for me today. I wasn't even given an assigned topic, and those that know me know that can be dangerous, because what we're here talking about today, I mean, where did Gail move to? Where is she actually sitting right now? Oh, restroom. Okay. But she'll know. She knows a couple of my pet peeves around this whole subject of AA history and AA historians, which I'll use with quotes around it, because it's a subject we have to be very careful with.
You know, I'm a real alcoholic, and I'll get into that a little bit and what I believe that means. I did, I recently rotated out as a Class B trustee and the chair of the AA World Services Board. In April, and it was the second time I served as chair. And, you know, a lot of times I'll get asked when I travel, you know, I served as a delegate in '99. So I love Sandy B because one of the things he said that really caught my attention a long time ago, I didn't get sober at five. I wish I did.
It would have solved a lot of problems that were to come at a very early age. But Sandy B used to say that, you know, he was one of those children, you know, that when the nurse comes in the delivery room, should have said to my mom, Mrs. Noonan, we're going to take him right over to another section of the hospital called the detox, right? Because I'm a real alcoholic, and that's going to tie into a lot of things that I'm going to talk about today.
But as I talk about AA history, which is near and dear to my heart, because I know looking forward is more important than looking backward. However, if we do not know where we came from, and more importantly, do not know the mistakes we've already made, it makes moving forward a lot tougher. So on the subject of AA history, I can, you know, if I had a couple of PowerPoint slides, which at least it's not in writing, so you have to listen to it to use it against me. At least someone can't be emailing my slides.
You know, I would have a slide, and the first slide would say, Just because you wrote a book does not mean you're an AA historian. Period. End of sentence. There are a lot of books out there that are ridiculous, that are nothing more than profit-making schemes by some AA members who had no business writing them whatsoever. And if they would have probably just been a member of a home group and got a regular job, they wouldn't have had to find a way to write some catchy AA story to sell to a very uninformed fellowship.
And if you want to know who those are, I'll be glad to tell you over coffee. I have no problem. But I mean, it's scary sometimes. Some of you might know Mari from Canada. And I remember one time, me and her were speaking at a convention, and we show up, and the other third speaker—this is in old-fashioned AA, when there was a Friday night speaker, a Saturday night speaker, a Sunday morning speaker, and a Saturday afternoon Al-Anon speaker, not the 20-speaker events we have of today. But we were the three AA speakers, and me and Mari showed up, and our third speaker showed up, and I'm not exaggerating the story
[00:05:03]
at all, showed up with two newcomers with him. Both those newcomers were wearing T-shirts with screenshots or silk screens of his book, carrying copies of his books to sell. And I remember when we was sitting on stage, because at this particular convention, the speakers all sit on the dais the whole weekend. And I remember, I could see it, you know, I was here, Mari was here, I was here, and this so-called author is at the microphone.
And I remember when Mari hit my leg and said, Listen carefully, Billy. He won't have a drunk story. And I never really understood what she meant by that until that day. It gets me so scared today when I'm in an AA meeting and someone tells people not to talk about their drinking. Or when they say something like, I'm not going to tell you my drunkalog. Well, that makes me believe you might not have a drunkalog.
I also am a big fan of an old Al-Anon speaker who doesn't speak too much anymore because I guess she's up there in age and traveling. But there was an Al-Anon speaker named Mary Pearl T. And Mary Pearl used to say from the microphone about the steps, How is a newcomer going to be willing to take your solution if they do not know you have their problem? And I am definitely from that camp. I tell my sponsees today, someone tells you that they don't have a drunkalog or is not going to tell you a drunkalog, they should run as fast as possible.
Because we all know the steps can help everyone. But we're not everyone. We're a very peculiar, small part of society. A very small part of society. That are not heavy drinkers. That are not binge drinkers. That are not drug addicts who happen to drink. We are alcoholics, and we suffer from alcoholism. And when you suffer from alcoholism, you know, imagine I tell people all the time, you're in a hospital and you suffer from an illness that there is no cure for. And you're in a hospital where the rest of the hospital is being cured, except they tell you that you have this one thing that there's no cure for. Make it whatever disease you want, types of cancer that there's no cure for, anything that there's no cure for.
If someone comes to your bed one day and says, Guess what? Timeline of history worked out for you. We have a cure. We're going to send you to another place, and there's a cure. And I talk about that because only if you're a real alcoholic are you going to dedicate your life to Alcoholics Anonymous. We ask a lot of people. If the 12 steps are natural and you're wired in your DNA, well, I've never met somebody like that yet. I've never met somebody who tells me, Oh, these 12 things, they're perfect. They fit right in with how I was designed to live.
I meet the opposite. I meet people who tell me there couldn't be 12 more opposite things in their life than what we are asking them to do. And you go back to just because somebody collects AA archives does not make them an AA archivist, or God forbid, historian. They're a collector. Now, there's nothing wrong with having a couple of books. I have an office at home in my house, and I have a couple of books.
But if your primary source of income is selling things on eBay that are part of this organization's history, well, then there's a big difference between you and I. You are profiting off of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I am not. And maybe it's none of my business that you're profiting, but don't use your business as a disguise for being an AA historian or an AA archivist, because the two are so far apart from each other.
[00:10:00]
I love the early speakers, obviously, Gail and James, and I've known both of them a long time. It's interesting that they've both prompted me to talk about certain things. There is a picture—Gail's probably familiar with it. I want to say it's in 1957 of Bill at Bob's grave, right around Founders Day. I believe, I've been told it was taken by Mel B. It was, okay. That picture is very important to me.
It's one of the few that I keep out in my office. Because the look on Bill's face is one that I don't see in any other pictures. And the sense that I get from that picture is much like when I run into somebody I know from Midnight Madness in New York City, somebody that I know was there when it all started for me. And we have a bond that is so strong. I mean, I'm sure you all know it. You get sober, life changes, people move. But for the group you got sober with, when it's five years later, seven years later, you're someplace you're not usually, and you sit in a meeting and you look across the room and you see somebody that you know from the war. There's a sense that I get, like, thank God you're still here, I'm still here, because that bond is so strong.
And that's why places like the Stepping Stones Foundation and Dr. Bob's house and even the General Service Office are so important, because, again, it goes back to being a real alcoholic. I could talk about anonymity a little bit, because if I was talking about anonymity, I would tell you I don't care about all the technical reasons to not break your anonymity. But real alcoholics are not wired to be famous for being sober.
Like, forget all the technical reasons for anonymity. People like me, I can't survive that kind of fame. My alcoholic ego is so out of control and always every day having to fight it that I don't need to be famous for being sober. But that applies to our archives as well, and the things that are important to our organization's history. There is no alcoholic that exists or has ever existed, including myself.
I have no problem putting myself at the top of the list, who have no business individually being responsible for any part of our history. It is super important that anything that is super important to our history always be part of a real AA group or some kind of board or foundation made up of AA members whose job it is to be above the individual and preserve our history, which is why I'm so committed to the cause at Stepping Stones and Dr. Bob's and GSO, because I don't want somebody like me being the end-all, be-all.
I want to know that there's a group of people watching out for Alcoholics Anonymous and for all our membership. You know, AA is so important. I tell people all the time that, you know, in 1998, which I used to—I mean, it's hard. I mean, I haven't seen James in a while, but, you know, I feel like, God, time flies by. When things are going good, we all know that, right? When I was in a correctional facility, I never felt like time was flying by.
When I was homeless, I never felt like time was flying by. But today, I feel like time flies by. And in 1998, Time Magazine, the editors of Time Magazine knew that AA—or not AA—that the world was approaching an important date, January 1st, 2000, the end of First, the 2000. The end of a century was coming, which up until
[00:15:03]
that point, 20 centuries in. And so the editors of Time magazine, and again, if you're an AA historian or AA archivist in the audience, my comments are not against you. But Time magazine wanted to, they searched and put together a committee of the most important and the most influential history professors in the world alive at that time. And they asked them a simple question, this committee of these history professors: We need you to start with January 1st of 1900 up until today, and we need you to identify the 80 most important days of the 20th century.
Now, if you multiply 365 by, at that time, 98 and a half, you know it's a rather large number of days, and a lot of things happened in the 20th century. And so it is amazing to me that inside that book, 13 stories in, you land on Mother's Day of 1935, where it says, On this day, a broken stockbroker from New York met a broken surgeon from Akron, and from that formed the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, which has saved millions.
And not only has it saved millions of alcoholics, but they have shared their solution with people who suffer from other problems. I always ask myself. Am I really treating AA like it was one of the 20 most, 80 most important days of the 20th century? Days when I think I want to go to the gym more, or golf more, or ride my motorcycle more, hit a baseball game. I'm sure some of you are familiar with a speaker named Peg M., one of my favorites when I was a kid in AA, and Peg always talked about that for people like us, for the real alcoholic, our issue will always be that whenever we feel like we don't get to do enough of something, first of all, we never get that feeling about AA. And whenever we get that feeling, the first thing our brain tells us is, Well, we need to cut something out of our life so I can ride my motorcycle more, so I can golf more.
And usually, people like us, the first thing we think about is, I'm doing too much AA. I'm going to cut away the very thing that has saved my life. And that's why I stress, to me, there's such a connection between our history, singleness of purpose, and being a real alcoholic. Because if you're not a real alcoholic, none of this is really that important. It's really not. If your life does not depend on Alcoholics Anonymous, you're not the same as me.
And I think about that book, and they published another one, 100 Heroes of the 20th Century, where you'll find Bill and Bob inside that. And our history is so important. You know, I recently met a man that I had never met before, Clarence B. You won't find him in any AA history book. Clarence B. from South Dakota. But Clarence B. was on a submarine, a nuclear submarine, in 1964, '65, '66, during some very difficult times in this country's history.
And Clarence B. is one of those people that I'd always heard about who got sober in the Loners International program, back when there were no computers and no anything. And I met Clarence B. He recently just celebrated 53 years of sobriety. But I met Clarence, and the talk to him when he told me about he had some shore leave in New York City, and he got to meet the woman who wrote to him from the General Service Office, because that was his home group. He was on this nuclear submarine with no AA available to him.
And I think about that because when we talk about AA as a whole, or Dr. Bob's stepping stones, we eventually have to talk about money to support it. And, you know, there are some people, not me, who will say, We need you
[00:20:05]
more than your money. I can't find that in any AA literature. I can't find it in anything that talks about the Seventh Tradition. If you have no money, we want you to come here and we don't care. However, if your life has been blessed by this thing we call the fellowship or society of Alcoholics Anonymous, we do need your money. We absolutely need your money. And one of those reasons is, the reason we've been able to stay the course for so long is we don't take other people's money.
It's just not something we do. I was coming back from Asia not too many years ago for business, and the guy sitting next to me—it was a long flight—three hours in, I knew that he was the chairman of the board of a very large nonprofit, one that if I said the name, you would immediately recognize, one that does immense good work. Universally, people accept that what that organization does and their mission is critical to the world.
He told me that he spends 90 percent of his time as chair of the board raising money. Ninety percent of his time. Now I know when I was interviewed to be on the AWS board and then on the General Service Board, unlike other boards I serve on, they didn't ask me how many seats could I sell at their banquet, or other nonprofits that ask me, Hey, we have a golf tournament every year. How many foursomes do you think you could put out with your business connections? At AA, we don't care about any of that.
The downside of that means we can only get money from our own members. Same with, you know, Dr. Bob and Stepping Stones do such good work, but it requires money, especially if we want to do it the right way, especially if we don't want one person looking like they're in charge. James talked about something that I always talk about. I was fascinated with his presentation because there's so many miracles involved in this thing we call Alcoholics Anonymous and how we're all actually sitting here today. I have my pet peeve miracles.
I mean, we heard James talk about, and let's just set the setting straight, in a courtroom in Vermont, again did something dumb is a man named Ebby Thatcher. Not the first time he did something dumb, would not be the last time he did something dumb, no different than me. In a courtroom, in front of a judge, a judge who sees two men there from this thing called the Oxford Group, which we can all look back at history now, but let's talk about that judge that day.
Two lunatics from some new thing called the Oxford Group, who look like some Kool-Aid-drinking cult living on a farm in Vermont, tell the judge, Don't send this man to jail. Let him go with us. Now, if that judge did the logical thing that day, we all know what that judge should have done. He should have said, Back to Vermont jail for you. But he did not. It is basically the first court reference, the first person sent by a court to AA, but AA didn't exist yet.
And yet today we want to argue about courts sending alcoholics to AA. No, I don't want them to send others to AA, just alcoholics. But how do we argue about that if not for a judge who sent Ebby to the Oxford Group, none of us would be in this room today. A lot of us would be dead. The other miracle that I think is so important that we don't talk about, because let's face it, history is documented by human beings.
And human beings have failings and faults. And human beings, when they document it, can't help but maybe have their feeling about
[00:25:02]
what they wanted to happen happen. It happens all the time. James talked about the importance of Dr. Jung, and Dr. Jung is one of my passions. And he talked about how about in 1912, there's this split between him and Freud. And that's interested me for years, because it's so phenomenal to me that in 1909, At Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. You know, I used to always joke around because I'm a New Yorker.
I've been to Akron many times. I've given the people there a little bit of mouth a few times, you know, because you go there and they're all with their welcome home thing, you know, welcome home, welcome home. Birthplace of Alcoholics Anonymous, that a New Yorker went, right? That it's the birthplace because a New Yorker went there and happened to be in this small town in Ohio, right? But the truth is, for me, I consider the birthplace of Alcoholics Anonymous Worcester, Massachusetts, for me.
Because in 1909, Clark University would celebrate the 20th anniversary of being only the second college or university in the United States that had a graduate program. And if you Google Sigmund Freud, you will find that he made some of his most famous talks at that event. But if you dig down into the details, you will find out that Sigmund Freud had a protégé at that time who came to Clark University with him to basically carry his bags, named a young Dr.
Carl Jung. And Carl Jung, while there waiting for Sigmund Freud a lot, would meet a person that would change him forever, because that's where he ran into William James. Who wrote The Varieties of Religious Experience. And in their conversations, while he was killing time waiting for Dr. Freud, William James explained to Dr. Jung that there were things that have plagued humanity for thousands of years, and that every once in a while, as rare as being struck by lightning, something would happen to one of these people that would cause a complete spiritual shifting, upheaval, transformation.
But William James explained to Dr. Jung they were as rare as getting struck by lightning. And then, obviously, as James talked about, only a short two and a half years after that does he break with Freud, because his whole mindset changes. Now you can dig down deeper as to how important was that meeting. William James died nine months later in 1910. By some miracle, Carl Jung meets William James in his last ten months of life. And something happens that if it didn't happen, because you saw what James said, Carl Jung winds to go treat Roland Hazard.
We all know Roland Hazard, the important American businessman. But without William James intersecting with Carl Jung, again, a lot of us would not be here. AA today is filled with so many clicks. Right? I mean, it's crazy, right? We have our service people, our Big Book people. We have so many different… And one of the things I love about the early founders of Alcoholics Anonymous is it seemed they were able to build friendships that were not based on believing exactly as I do.
They were able to respect other people, even if they didn't do AA exactly the same way as I do it. Two of the best examples are Jimmy Burwell and Fitz Mayhew. And Fitz Mayo. Jimmy's story, A Vicious Cycle, is still in the Big Book today.
[00:30:02]
It's been there since the first edition. Fitz's story, same thing, our Southern friend. Jimmy Burwell, famous for being like the most famous atheist in Alcoholics Anonymous at one point. Fitz, famous for his story being accused of being so Christian that they took the last two paragraphs out of it when they published the second edition. But yet those two men are buried a few feet from each other in a graveyard in Maryland. Those two men had a bond that seemed to intersect everything else, which again, I go back to my theme of being a real alcoholic.
When you're a real alcoholic, nothing else matters. It doesn't matter what color the person is. It doesn't matter where they live. It doesn't matter what their religion is. Nothing matters. What matters for us is that we know how to help other alcoholics. And we get into trouble when we try to be anything more than that. The minute we try to do anything else except arrest disease of alcoholism, we cause ourselves a lot of trouble.
And the other thing that's important, I think, about Dr. Bob's house and other places like that is because people have to witness and acknowledge. That certain miracles happened in the past. It makes them examine their own life. Because any view of AA that believes that the last miracle that happened was in a gatehouse on Mother's Day of 1935 is an inaccurate view. There are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of miracles happening every day around the world in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I said sometimes people ask me, since I've been off the board, a common question I'll get is, What did you learn while serving on the board? Or, How did it change you? And I have the same answer to that question no matter where I am or where I go, and whether I'm at a microphone or whether I'm in a hospitality room or a diner or a clubhouse. It changed me in the following way: my discovery. Today's date is what? Remind me.
Twentieth. So what I know after serving and traveling a lot is that this morning and today, there are people around the world that will attend their first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous ever. And what I know, based on my past experience, is that give or take a year from now, at some home group somewhere around the world, probably the last Monday of January or the last Friday of January, whatever that group does, Some of those people that are going to their first meeting today will celebrate one year of sobriety.
And some of those people will celebrate and have their family members present when they celebrate. And their family members will witness that all the love and all the money couldn't put Johnny and Jane together again, but this ragtag group of odd-looking characters and strange people that is somewhere across between the Star Wars bar and, in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the Island of Misfit Toys, that somehow this group of people was able to transmit something to somebody they love that all the money and all the love could not do.
I know that after serving. Worse than that, I also know that there's also a group of people who woke up this morning all around the world, and some of them did not wake up. People who yesterday, on January 19th of this year, were still alive, who suffered and do suffer from the same disease as me, today are no longer with us. There are other people who yesterday, who suffered from the same disease as me, woke up today, and they'll never be a free person again.
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They might be free spiritually, but physically they will never have liberty again. I also know today that there are families who are devastated by something that happened yesterday or last night. As a direct result of this disease of alcoholism, and those things can't be changed. I mean, in a nutshell, that's what I've learned traveling and serving the fellowship. I also want to go back to my topic of money, especially in relation to the things I talked about that mean most to me: Dr.
Bob's house, stepping stones, and the General Service Office. It's amazing, a little fact that some of you might not know. If you trace the roots of Alcoholics Anonymous in other countries outside the United States—now, I know we have people from Ireland, and we happen to actually know someone in common. In Ireland, they love their founder from Philadelphia, don't you? And Philadelphia loves that a Philadelphian brought AA to Ireland.
They will let you know that too. In Philadelphia, there's two important parts of Philadelphia AA history. They claim ownership of Jimmy Burwell, and they put AA in Ireland. But the truth is, 80 percent of the countries in this world that have Alcoholics Anonymous today, you can directly draw a line back to a Canadian or U.S. soldier, sailor, Marine, airman, or woman. 80 percent. So when we talk about, like, how does money change the world?
In AA, I can tell you a simple story. In 1983, there was a young man named Jay who was a Marine. And in 1983, Jay received orders to go to a place called Beirut, Lebanon. And in 1983, that was a very, very dangerous place. Dangerous today, but back then, very hostile. Jay wrote the General Service Office, much like the guy I met on the submarine who wrote the office. He wrote in June of '83 because he had no literature, because they were on a combat mission and he was stripped down of all his personal belongings, and he was just living in the Beirut airport in barracks.
And he wrote asking for literature, and through the U.S. military mail, they sent him a letter and a book right away. And in July, Jay wrote back, and he thanked them, and he said, Could you please send more literature? And in August of '83, the office got another letter thanking them again for all this literature, and he used actually one of Bill Wilson's phrases out of the Big Book. He said, I have good news to report.
I've started the Peacekeepers Group of Alcoholics Anonymous, and we have some military and some civilians, and we meet in between the shelling and the bombing, but we need more literature. So they sent him more literature, and he wrote back again in September and thanked them. And then I didn't hear from Jay for a couple of months until December of '83, they get a letter. Except it's from another member of that group, who says, I have the heartbreaking job of letting you know that the young Marine you were writing to, AA member, was killed in the barracks bombing at the end of October '83 with the other 274 U.S.
military personnel. But we wanted to let you know that the group is still going on. And I could tell you two things right now. One, if you took out your phone and Googled AA in Lebanon, you would see that on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturday nights at 8:30 p.m., there is a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, the gentleman from Ireland, who I've never met before, we happen to know a young man named Noli.
Noli is a member of the Irish Defense Forces. I was washing my motorcycle in my driveway, I want to say back in August, and I saw a phone call coming through Facebook, which I had never had before. I didn't even know you could call people on Facebook.
[00:40:03]
But my phone said, In Facebook, you have a call. So I answered it, and it was Noli. Noli, I had known, had been in the Sinai Peninsula and in the desert on a NATO peacekeeping force for a couple of months. But he called me and said, Billy, two weeks ago, we got some leave, and I went to Jay's meeting. I went to the Beirut meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I shared with people how I heard the story.
Of how that meeting came from a barracks, which came from a single U.S. Marine. And I say that because in 1983, when that woman at GSO got that letter, thank God people had been putting money in the baskets, and it was no big deal to send out a Big Book. You know, for me, and I drive used to, now they're free of me, but I used to drive the board crazy because for me, I would equate every spending of a dollar with the price of a softcover Big Book.
We want to spend $50,000 to do this? Well, you better tell me how it's going to serve the still-suffering alcoholic, because I know I could buy this many Big Books, and I could send them to this many correctional facilities. But we can't do that without money. If we want Dr. Bob's house to continue for generations to come, Gail would be the first one to say it's not about Gail, it's not about Kent, it's not about Harmon. It's about 50 years from now, will Dr.
Bob's house be operating in a manner that it'll be here for Alcoholics Anonymous forever? And the only way to guarantee that is to make sure that people in AA are sending a couple of dollars, two dollars a month, whatever, whatever it is. In AA, we're one of the few places where it costs more money usually to send a thank you for your contribution. Then you actually sent in. It makes absolutely no sense.
I mean, there's been a lot of business people who've been on the board at GSO, but I can tell you, if you asked any of us, how could we immediately increase the bottom line? That would be very simple. A note would go out tomorrow that would say, We will no longer accept any contribution less than $10 via mail. That's what my proclamation would be. But thank God, no one gets to make individual proclamations.
Because I can tell you, every once in a while when I would be at a board meeting, I would love to go by the desk that receives the contributions. And I've seen a card like that with change scotch taped to it. That's all the person had. Well, that's all the group had. But in our world, we don't measure money by amount. We measure it by we're glad you participated. And our spiritual thanks to you with your 77 cents here is exactly equal to someone who sends in a maximum of $3,000.
We don't care. But the only way we can not care about individuals having too much authority or power inside anywhere in Alcoholics Anonymous is if the whole of AA does their part and supports these, you know, awesome organizations. And I try to always remember, I mean, I know that. It's 2018 now, but really AA's not been here that long a time. Not in the history of the world, not in the history of how long people have been dying of alcoholism.
Between the time I met Fergie and now, I actually communicated with Nolly and let him know I met Fergie. You know, and he told me Fergie was one of the leaders to bring over Joe and Charlie to Ireland back in the day. And I think about that and, you know, all of that. All of that requires some effort and some money. But why is it so important?
[00:45:01]
Why is this AA thing so important? I have found what has helped me realize why it's so important is to look what was going on in the world between like 1875 and 1940 regarding treatment for alcoholism and alcoholics. You would think that you were reading about a torture camp. You would think you were reading about some God-forsaken— I mean, it's incredible. I mean, how is it possible in the same century that I was born, I was born in 1966, how is it possible that just 40 years before I was born, women in the United States of America in certain places were given an option to be released from asylums if they agreed to be sterilized? I mean, that sounds barbaric today, but that's the same century I was born.
How is it possible that men and women received lobotomies to cure alcoholism? I have the medical records at home of one in Chicago of a man who wakes up after his lobotomy, and the first thing he says to the person who's unwrapping his bandages, When can I get a drink? Right? It's in the chart. But that's how critical Alcoholics Anonymous is to people like me. Who are real alcoholics. The… I don't worship relics in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I don't believe that if I get to touch some book, I can get some better sobriety. But that doesn't mean I don't respect our history. I just want our history in the hands of Alcoholics Anonymous and not individuals. That's all I want. I want to make sure that this life-saving thing called Alcoholics Anonymous continues to go on. I'm a huge supporter of Al-Anon. You'll never hear an Al-Anon joke come out of my mouth whatsoever.
And that's because my mom, God rest her soul, was an Al-Anon member. You know, when you hear things in AA like there's nothing worse than a belly full of booze and a head full of AA, that's not my story. But then again, that's not in the Big Book. My story is there's nothing worse than a belly full of booze and your mom's head full of Al-Anon, right? That's my story. As a chronic teenage alcoholic, that is a much worse thing.
But I want to let you know that in December of 1999, my mother was in her last couple of weeks of life in a hospital and then a hospice. And Christmas Eve 1999, I remember well. Because I remember I was with my other three siblings in my mom's house. It was horrible. I remember wrapping her last gift that I would ever give her, as was my siblings doing. I remember them drinking a lot. And the next morning, I got up and I went to Dunkin' Donuts like I love to do and get a Dunkin' Donuts coffee, except that day I got two, one for her and one for me. I got her wig, her Charlie perfume, her pictures of her cat, a boombox with some of her crazy Irish music, and headed over to where she was, and her eye shadow and her makeup. And that would be the last day most of our extended family—I come from a large Irish Catholic family, 42 first cousins, lots of aunts and uncles—and that would be the last holiday that most of our family would ever see her. And I remember that day putting on, trying to put on her eye shadow and, you know, whatever.
But I remember when we propped up the back of her bed and I jumped up in there with her and we were throwing down two large Dunkin' Donuts coffees like we would drink in Budweiser. And, you know, if you've ever dealt with a person who's in
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that stage of life, sometimes they hallucinate. One minute they're with you, another minute they're not. And— I remember when she looked at me and said, Billy, don't ever leave AA. AA gave me the ability to get a quart of milk. And I said to her, Mom, what does AA have to do with buying milk? I just thought that she was hallucinating. And she said, You don't know what it's like to be the wife or the mother or the brother or the sister of an active alcoholic.
She says, Because when you run out of milk in the house at night, you don't go to the supermarket. Because when you go to the supermarket at night, it's usually not crowded, and you might run into somebody you know. And if you run into somebody you know when the supermarket's not crowded, they usually talk to you. And usually the first thing they'll ask you is, How are your children? How's Billy? And she said, So I'd much rather wait to when the supermarket's crowded than to have to answer for what most people is a very simple question that for her was the most difficult question in the world.
And she said, What AA gave her is that after I got sober, she couldn't wait to run out of milk and go to the supermarket at night. She couldn't wait for people to ask her what used to be the most difficult question. So that she could report the miracle of what Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon had done for her family. I don't think I can describe AA better than my mom. I think she describes it perfectly.
When my mom died, I was nine years sober. I was a delegate from Chicago. I'll tell you that it was funny because a couple of thoughts I have as I wrap up here. You get to know that AA is the greatest underground mafia in the world, right? I mean, it's just unbelievable. But anyway, my mom was a set-in-her-ways kind of person, very proud, didn't have a lot of money, single parent. So when she passed away, and my comments are, please, I'm just reporting.
I'm not trying to make any comments about the church I was raised in. But my brother and my sister went to meet with the priest to work out the funeral arrangements. It did not go well. It went very badly. My mom, in most Catholic funeral masses, there is always something of a Christian symbol on the casket. It is usually a cross. My mom had left instructions. She wanted it to be her coupon box. Now, you're talking to, like, her son that has—I can just picture this.
Five o'clock in the morning, many nights hammered out of my mind that I had just used her car and spilt that stupid box in alphabetical order with perfect dividers, like at her kitchen table, filing those stupid coupons, like. But for my mom, that was her Christian symbol. She also, you know, if you go to New York, back in the day, 80 percent of the funerals ended with Danny Boy, right, if you were Irish Catholic. My mom, although very proud of her heritage, would have no part of it.
She felt that the United States of America had given her place and her children something that she could never pay back, and so she left instructions for a black gospel singer to sing God Bless America. So let's just start with those requests, right? And then she wanted all four children to give a
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eulogy of shorter time rather than just one person being chosen. The church said, No, no, no, and we have Friday morning at 10 o'clock available. So after hearing about this, I called the church and made an appointment to meet a priest. And it was a different priest that they met, and I sat down with him, and we had this long conversation. And I said, you know, I said, I owe my mom a lot. I said, I was not a good son for a long time.
In fact, my age that I am today, I was a bad son much, much longer than I was even close to a decent son. And he said, What changed? And I said, Well, I said, I got sober. And at the end of this meeting where I asked for all this stuff—oh, and of course we have a cousin in Ireland who's a deacon, and we want him to say most of the Mass, right? Like, we have this long list. And so at the end of it, he looked at me and said, Billy, I don't see a problem with any of your requests.
He said, The night before your mom's funeral Mass, I just won't be able to say the prayer at the funeral home. I'll have to have someone else doing it because I'll be celebrating 35 years of sobriety at my home group. And I remember when I came home and I told my sister this story, and she still thinks that AA is like the most underground mafia in the history of the world, right? But I want to end by saying that AA has its challenges.
Let's not be afraid to talk about them. We have a lot of challenges in front of us today and tomorrow, and we had them yesterday. There's a few of them out there. I'm not a singleness of purpose guy because I want to kick anyone out of Alcoholics Anonymous. I believe in singleness of purpose because I'm tired of watching alcoholics kill people. Inside AA who don't suffer from alcoholism. I'm tired of having to have a separate folder on my iPhone of pictures of Rest in Peace notices of young men that I've met in AA who told me they never drank, because someone in AA thought that just because there was an expert in the steps that they could share the solution with them. Now I sponsor lots of people who are—I mean, maybe Tampa is the first place I'll meet somebody.
Is there anybody here who's just an alcoholic and has no other problem in their life? Okay. So Tampa lines up with the other 200 places I've been to. But the only thing that matters to us here is your alcoholism, not any other problem that you have. We don't care about them. It's none of our business. We deal with alcoholism. Now I've had to change my way because there's an epidemic going around this country.
First of all, I don't talk bad about other 12-step fellowships inside AA. How am I going to expect somebody to go there and get help if I'm putting it down? Secondly, I have to keep other 12-step fellowship meeting directories in my car. Third, and this is something I had to do a couple of years ago, I have to make an effort to meet other people in other fellowships who are doing the deal and are active just like me in AA, so that when I run across somebody because— My life changed by Joe and Charlie.
My life changed in 1993. I was already out of a correctional facility. I was sober a couple of years. But in 1993, I found out what my problem was. I found out what alcoholism was. I heard two men specifically talk about the doctor's opinion and more about alcoholism in a way that I had never heard before. And I want, when I run into people today, When I run into people today, sometimes I'll ask a young man.
I moved a couple of years ago, and I got anonymity back, which was awesome, awesome. But I would meet a lot of people, and I noticed for a
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while that I'd ask young kids, Hey, why are you here? And I'd ask them, Do you think you're an alcoholic? And then I'd say, Why do you think you're an alcoholic? And I would get answers like, I have the ism, which is interesting, but it doesn't make you alcoholic. Like, I know today in my life, and I don't say this, who cares what I do for a living, but just to be accurate, like, I have a lot of people that report to me.
And you know what? They all have problems, and they all have an ism. What they don't have is two things in particular. They do not have a physical compulsion that makes them have to keep drinking once they drink, and they do not have a mental obsession that, regardless of the consequences of the night before or the week before, tells them that the only way to be comfortable in their own skin is to light the fuse and start the crazy process over again.
And so I see those things, and open meetings have become like meetings of all addictions anonymous. And I love, if it was up to me, again, if I was in charge for the day. We would not sell Big Books without a copy of the AA Group pamphlet inside the front cover. Everybody would get a Big Book with the AA pamphlet, because it says there, What's a closed meeting? Because I run into other kids who tell me, Well, I'm going to that meeting because so-and-so told me to just say I have a desire to stop drinking.
That might be what it says on a shade, but the shade is not conference approved. The pamphlet is conference approved. And in the pamphlet, where it says, What is a closed meeting? it says these are for alcoholics or people who have a drinking problem and the desire to stop drinking. You have to have both the desire and the drinking problem. And for open meetings, it says these are for all to attend.
However, non-alcoholics only attend as observers. And I've looked up the word observer. It's not—listen, I am a bad observer, so just use me as an example. You know, when I look forward to retiring, which I do, I hear that universities now will let retired people—they have this thing called auditing. So I grew up hating school, but now I want to go back again after I've gone three times now in sobriety.
But, like, I would be a bad auditor, right? Like, if auditing a class means I'm supposed to observe, I know that doesn't work well for me. I'll want to participate. I'll want to share my knowledge. I'll want to do a million things. But I hope that as we move forward in Alcoholics Anonymous, we embrace our history and our literature. And I'll close by just saying this. I would not say something that I don't do.
I know that currently I make a couple of automatic payments a month: New York Intergroup, because it saved my life; the Chicago Central Service Office, because it means so much to me; the General Service Office, Dr. Bob's House, and Stepping Stones. That's just what I do. And if you look back at my history, those have been very small amounts each month, but painstakingly every month. And maybe as life has changed, I might have increased them, but it doesn't matter.
But I'm thankful to the man who told me, I can't pay back a hundred dollars if I'm waiting to get a hundred dollars. I'm going to have to check my ego and buy a money order and do it five dollars at a time. Very unalcoholic, that is, but that's how I'm going to have to do it. Same way when we give to the entities that are preserving our past. No one wants you to wait until you might have a big windfall.
I get a card every month from Dr. Bob's House. Every month I see that envelope with a little acknowledgement for my contribution. And if you took one of my envelopes, it wouldn't be a lot of money.
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But if I add up the last seven years, and what I've learned is, for people like me. It doesn't. There's a lot of things that don't make spiritual math. AA is math that does not make logical sense. When you told me that working the steps and having a home group and having a sponsor and doing service would solve the kind of complicated legal problems that I had, I thought that it looked like bad math.
You want me to solve all of this by doing this? But yet it worked. Same way, you know, an old-timer told me a long time ago, You want to get rid of your financial problems? Don't keep all your money for yourself, you know, and don't announce to the world how much money you give away. But maybe you'll run into a kid who can't afford going to a conference. Maybe you have an extra seat in the car, an extra bed at an AA roundup.
You can take somebody. But that math didn't make sense to me when I heard it. I'm a guy who lights cigarettes after you got on the subway and stepped on it before you got on the subway. Like I'm a guy who lights the cigarettes in the sand ashtrays from the rich people's hotels, because those are easier to relight than the ones you step on. When I have to smoke a cigarette that someone else already smoked.
So it doesn't make sense to me that you're going to tell me now that I'm making a little bit of money, that if I share it, my life will get better. But like most other things in AA, they're paradoxical. They don't make logical sense, but they make perfect spiritual sense. So I'm very thankful to Dr. Bob's house for asking me to come out today, and, you know, I wish you all a great 2018. Thank you.