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Source: Cecil C – Those Golden Years Los Angeles – 1983-12-04.mp3 File: cecil-c-those-golden-years-los-angeles-1983-12-04.mp3 Duration: 00:56:12
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Hi, folks. My name is Keith Carl and I'm an alcoholic. It's an honest program. My real name's Cecil. How about that? But I never liked the name Cecil, so when I… Is that too loud? Am I booming through here? Anyway, the other night I took a cake, an AA birthday cake, and it was last Thursday, the last one I took, and it had 14 candles on it. And I tell you, I got a… You know, I used to didn't believe in miracles. I didn't think miracles existed. I thought they were something that you talked about and looked up in the Bible and related to. But I tell you, after I started coming to Alcoholics Anonymous, I believe in miracles. I came in at the age of 70, and my chances, my expectations of living another 14 years in Alcoholics Anonymous, but not much, I came in… Very fortunately, I came in with a sincere desire to quit drinking. I wanted to quit drinking worse than anything in the world. And I believe, I really believe, that Alcoholics Anonymous could help me. I often say that I came in with the blind faith, and I think that's probably what did it. I'll…
I got my initiation in miracles early in Alcoholics Anonymous. I used to say when I first came in, and it was true, that I was in Alcoholics Anonymous because of a series of incredible coincidences. And I kept saying that until a nice lady one time said to me, teacher, you're going to have to stop saying that because it's not true. And then she said something to me that has been said by an… I think most everybody here has heard it.
She said, you know, there are no miracles. There are no… There are no coincidences in Alcoholics Anonymous. What you think are coincidences are merely little miracles where God chooses to be anonymous. And I believed her because at the age of 68, I retired from the motion picture industry where I'd worked for 40 years as a press agent. And during the next two years, my alcoholism bloomed and blossomed into full bloom. And I became an alcoholic so that at the age of 70, I knew… I was in the third stage of drinking at that time. The first stage, of course, is when you live to drink, when everything is beautiful.
And the second stage is when you drink to live because you're addicted and you've got to have that drink or you know you're going to die. And the third stage is that you drink to die. And I think that's what I was doing. I was drinking to die. I figured that it was only a matter of time that I would pass out. And I hated to think of dying a drunken… a drunkard's death. So eventually when I did go to Alcoholics Anonymous, I merely went there thinking that…
wanting Alcoholics Anonymous to help me stop drinking so that I could die sober. But I used to wake up in the middle of the night always, no matter how many times I passed out during the daytime and revived myself. I always woke up about two or three o'clock every morning, you know, with the shakes and the jitters and the sweats. And I would make my way to a big red chair, which was my pride and joy, the one big thing that I had left that was my personal thing, in the living room. And I would flop myself into that, look up and say, you know, God help me. God help me. And I was praying. I didn't know I was praying. And I would say, nobody cares. Nobody gives a damn. I might just as well be dead as drinking the way I am.
And the trouble is when you are, when you're drinking, when you're drinking yourself to death, you think a lot about death. You hear a lot about death. And one of the things that you often hear, is there any life after death? And I used to say to myself, my God, there must be something life. I hope that, you know, that there's got to be something better than what I'm having now. And until one day I had, what I believe now, I guess, was a spiritual awakening. Because one night I heard myself say, wait a minute, old man, you shouldn't be asking, is there any life after death? Because what does that do you now? You better should ask, is there any life before death? Because I knew I wasn't having any life. And there must be a lot of 70 year old men out there and 80 year old people that were having a good time. And I wasn't having any part of it.
And I figured that I better do something about my looking to see if there was any life before death. And the best way to do it would be stop drinking. And I realized that there was a place called Alcoholics Anonymous. I've had some friends that had gone through AA. And I believe that maybe Alcoholics Anonymous could help me. Well, I didn't go the very next day, which, you know,
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would have been the perfect thing to do, you know, rush out there with all the blooming.
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But I waited a couple of, I went on drinking for two or three more days. And one Saturday night happened to be November the 22nd, 1969. One Saturday night, I was watching a football game and drinking my way through this football game, because it's very exciting. And you've got to have something to, you know, you've got to have something to calm you down while you're watching an exciting football game. And I passed out, evidently, during that football game. And I came to a little bit earlier, because I can remember sitting up with a start in that big red chair and wondering where I was, if I'd had dinner, if I'd helped prepare dinner, if my wife had got dinner, if I helped wash the dishes or what had happened. And I didn't know. And I said to myself, my God, I've had it. I just have had it.
You know, they say that probably the most primary reason for people coming to Alcoholics Anonymous is just being sick and tired of being sick and tired. And that night I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. And I was disgusted with myself. And I said to myself, my God, I have got to get to Alcoholics Anonymous. So I got up from the chair and immediately my knees gave out and I sunk down to the floor. And my sponsor, who's Dick W., often says, he's one time he said, you know, the best way to get to Alcoholics Anonymous is on your hands and knees.
And I crawled across the room to the into the to the dining room where the telephone was and that there was a telephone book there. And I made my way up there. And I've got a very bad vision. But I tell you, I could see that somebody had marked the Alcoholics Anonymous number in the telephone book. And it was a North Hollywood clubhouse that I the number. And I dialed the number. And I tell you, talk about coincidences. You know, if it had been busy, you know, I would have given up right now. If nobody had answered, I said, you know, they're too they're you know, they're too smug to answer calls.
But they answered right away. It was a woman that answered the phone. And I said, I said, is there a she said, yeah. And I said, is there a meeting tonight, honey? And she said, yes, dearie, there is a meeting tonight. There's a meeting every night in the year at this clubhouse. And I said, gee, what time tonight, my dear? And she said, 830. I said, baby doll, I'll be there. And I hung up. And then I looked at the clock and the clock was 825. And I said, oh, my God, I'll never be able to get there in time to do me any good.
You know, I had surrendered here. I was taking the surrender back. I know no way for me to get there in time. So I might just as well wait until they certainly are not open on Sundays. So I've got to wait till Monday morning. So just then I looked up and my wife who had been, I found out later, had been in the bedroom where there's another extension of the phone. She'd been reading the paper and had picked up the phone at that very moment when I called and had had, I suppose, to call my daughter to tell her that Pops is that way again.
And she heard me the last of the conversation because she looked at me and said, who was the baby doll you were making a date with at 830 tonight? And I, with all the dignity that an old 70 year old drunk could muster, I said, that was Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm going there tonight regardless of what you say. She says, good. I said, don't try to stop me. It's about time, she said. So I went in the bathroom and threw some water in my face and came on out. And at that time, I got out. She had her coat on. She had the car keys. She said, I'm driving you over.
And our daughter, Dolores, is going to drive you to the AA meeting. And I said, I can go there myself. I know where it is. She said, you can't go. You can't drive. I said, why can't I drive? She said, wouldn't it be strange? Wouldn't it be ironic if you got your first drunk driving ticket on your way to your first AA meeting? And so I had to go and get in the car. And she drove back around to where my daughter's house was. And as she started to get out of the car, I grabbed a hold of her and said, now, wait a minute, let's don't be too hasty about all this stuff. And I've got to get my. So she said, what is it now?
I said, look, I know something about Alcoholics Anonymous. And I said, what's going to happen is that's a religious organization. And when we get down there, there's going to be a man standing at the door. And as I come up, he's going to say, do you put your trust and faith in God? And I'll have to say no, because I am an agnostic. And he'll say, you can't come in. And she said, oh, for heaven's sake, where'd you get that idea? I said, I know all about Alcoholics Anonymous. I see I'm trying to take back that surrender again.
What she had would have none of what she got out. My daughter got in the car. We drove. We got down to the to the Radford Clubhouse and went in. The meeting was in progress. And when I say in progress, it really was what I didn't know was Saturday night. It was young people's night at Radford Avenue and Clubhouse. And as I came into the door,
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the place was jammed with young people and they were hooping and hollering there. And I stood inside of that door and I looked at my daughter and I said, let's get the hell out of this place. And I started to turn and I turned in the wrong direction and bumped right into a guy who introduced himself as Frank. And he evidently had heard what I said, but he said, where are you going? And I said, I'm leaving. I'm in the wrong place.
And he leaned over and he said, from the way you smell, you're not in the wrong place. And I said, what I mean is that I'm here in the wrong time. It's the wrong meeting. I said, I happen to be 70 years old and this is a room full of children. And you've got to tell me that I can relate to a room full of children. And he said, look, my friend, why don't you come in and have a cup of coffee and sit down and listen? He said, I think you're going to find out there's no generation gap in Alcoholics Anonymous.
And, you know, what could I say to that? I had to see. So I went and he took me back to the place where the coffee wasn't as a young girl, but a machinist. And she was going, she was a college girl and she was behind the counter. And she poured me my first cup of coffee. And I looked down into it. I felt very smug for one moment. And I looked at the cup and I said, it must be hard up. And she said, what do you mean? I said, you think you can afford a half a cup of coffee?
And she said, pick it up and drink it. And I picked the cup up and it's placed all over me. And I looked at her and I said, you know more about my condition than I do, don't you? Well, I went in and I sat down. I looked up in the loop and I thought the girl, the leader was a young girl named Kathy. She was 14 years old. I was 70. She had six months sobriety and I had about two hours without a drink. But I related to that girl for some reason or other. You know, it's strange how your instincts will let you know something that many, many may take years or months or years later to realize what you what your instinct tells you.
I had an instinct to say to myself that that little girl of 14, if she if I got sober, that I had just as much chance of living and making it as she did. My 70 years old is her 14. But if she went back to drinking and I kept on drinking, that she at 14 had just as much a chance of dying from alcoholism as I did. And I looked around and there was a there was a sign over the over the podium and it said, we care. And I said, my God, somebody cared. And I remembered the guy that insisted on me coming, you know, coming to the meeting and sitting down and listening.
And for an old man that was sitting in that big red chair and said nobody cared. That was very impressive to me. Later, I saw the sign as I went out the door. It said, keep coming back. And I said, I'm going to do that. But the thing that I remembered that night was a young chap who was 19 years old, had a year's sobriety. Incidentally, Jeannie had just had a year's sobriety the week before I came in. And this chap, his name was Jim S., stood up at that podium and he said, today, because of today, I believe that because of Alcoholics Anonymous, I am the best me that I've ever been in my life. And I said to myself, my God, I wish I could say something like that, because tonight I am the worst me that I've ever been. And I figured that if I'm going to be the best me that I've ever been, or at least be a better me than I was today, I better do something about getting sober. You know, I've never had another drink since that night. Those young people inspired me tremendously. I went out, I got in with the people, into, started coming back, as the sign said, and I came to meeting after meeting.
I've got to tell you that I grew up, as a great many people in alcoholics grew up, by feeling less than other people. I felt inadequate. I always felt that I didn't deserve the little things that I got, and that I was less, that I was inferior to other people. But I wanted some things. I saw affluence around me. My best friends lived in a beautiful big home. I wanted some of it myself. And I figured out very carefully that the best thing for me to do would be to become a people pleaser, and put on an image, and get people that like me very much.
Then they would do things for me, and that way maybe I succeed. So I tell you, I was a people pleaser all my life. I went on through the whole thing, and I never got in any trouble, even my drinking. I made myself a people pleaser. I never let anybody who could do anything, with a few exceptions now and then when I got careless, but mostly I never let anybody who could do anything for me see me drunk. So when I retired, a lot of people, and when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, a lot of people were very surprised. But I tried to carry this people pleasing into Alcoholics Anonymous myself. I looked around the room, and I said, I'm going to need the help, all the help I can get. So I'm going to have to get these people to like me.
I'm going to have to make them like me. So I laid back and didn't I laid back and didn't try to participate for a long time.
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I admired the people that had things to say, but I couldn't think of anything. My memory was horrible. The first person in AA that I ever related to was a woman who one day said, when do we get our memories back? And I stood up and said, I'm with you, lady. But I had gotten a sponsor, Nick W., and at a Tuesday meeting one night, he said, I'm going to lead this meeting next week, and it's about time you participated, and I'm going to call on you to read the fifth chapter.
And I said, fine. So I went home and got the big book out, and I studied the big book for a whole week, the third chapter. I went over and over and over, you know, rehearsing the thing aloud and to myself so that when I would be perfect, and I went there that night, everything was going to be perfect. I could just see vision of myself getting up there, you know, with my white hair glistening and doing a perfect, and I could just picture some lady said, where does that old man come from?
I have never heard the third chapter read so beautifully in my life, you know. I was finally going to please people. So I was sitting already prepared, and Dick opened the meeting, and he said, we do some reading in Alcoholics Anonymous. Keith, come up and read the fifth chapter. The fifth chapter. I went up there, and I started in the fifth chapter. I hadn't rehearsed it at all, and I bobbled and boobled and so forth, and finally I came to the twelve steps, and all of a sudden I heard myself saying that we had considered our wives unmanageable, and everybody laughed in the room, and I said, oh, my God, I booted it, and they'll know that I'm a fumbling old idiot.
When I got through and sat down, Dick laughed and said, well, now, Keith, you belong to the bumble part of Alcoholics Anonymous. You have made a booble like a lot of other people. He said, I myself have very frequently said that we have thought through prayer and medication, and I suddenly found out that people came up afterwards, and they said, you know, they started sharing the things with me. One girl said that she had once, in reading one of the traditions, said, our lovers are but trusted service, and another person had read it where it said that AA can create a service broads for the other people to take care of.
There was a woman, a wonderful woman by the name of Gertie, who had one night, she had trouble with anonymity, so she just didn't bother one night. She said, animosity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, so I found that other people did those things, and I heard one of the girls said to me, you know, the first meeting I ever led, she said, I said, may we now see the hands of all of those in their first thirsty days of sobriety.
And I was told this story out at the Veterans Hospital, and one of the chaps came up afterwards and said, I've got a good one. He said, you know, I was so anxious to identify myself as a recovering alcoholic that I bounced up on the program one day, and I said, my name is Sam, and I'm a retarded alcoholic. So I found that I belonged. I found that I didn't have to impress these people, that they were going to help me whether they liked me or not, and I suddenly decided to say these people were, I could learn from these people.
You know, I used to say, when I was drinking, I used to say that the most beautiful days of my life were the days when I was in high school and college, and how wonderful those meetings were, and they'd never be repeated again. God, how I wish they would have been. And I suddenly found that I come to Alcoholics Anonymous, and if I open my mind and listen and pay attention to what people are doing, I'm back in school again.
I have been back in school again for 14 years, and an old man who's 70 going on 84. All these times I have been going to school, I've been going to school with beautiful people who know what to tell you. There's a saying in Alcoholics Anonymous that has never failed, and that is, when the pupil is ready, the teacher will appear. And I tell you, teachers began appearing on all sides of me when I wanted to know something they said.
And they didn't have to wait. They were saying beautiful, wonderful things like, alcohol gave me wings to fly, and then it took away the sky. And there's all the difference in the world between accepting something and being resigned to it. And all these wonderful things. And a woman by the name of Barbara one time said, when alcoholism is beating you down to your knees, the best thing to do is stay right there on those knees and start praying.
And when I asked her later, I said, do you have to be on your knees to pray? She said, no, you don't have to. But when you're on your knees, it's awful hard to be arrogant, isn't it? So I listened, and there's also an old, old, old proverb that said, find yourself a teacher and you'll find yourself a new friend. And that's what I found in Alcoholics Anonymous. I found teachers that are my friends.
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And these people began teaching me these things. I also realized that I should become a listener. And I listened. I listened to what they said. And for a while, I couldn't remember anything that they were saying later, and it made me so mad. So I finally started bringing a little slip of paper and writing down key things so that I would remember these things. One day, I went to a meeting, and our Indian friend, Chuck W., who's now gone, bless him, led a meeting.
And he said, after he'd asked for the hands of those people in the first 30 days of sobriety, he said, welcome to our world. Welcome to our world. And that struck me. And I said, my God, you know, there are times I never used to meditate. I didn't know what the hell to meditate about. It was a very lonely time when I was alone. But you don't have to be lonely if you find yourself alone or if you find yourself not being able to go to sleep.
You don't have to count sheep anymore. Just say to myself, hey, wait, why don't I think about the world of Alcoholics Anonymous? What kind of a world is the world of Alcoholics Anonymous that we're in? I think the number one thing you'll find out is the world of love. When I was a press agent, a sophisticated, what I thought was a sophisticated Hollywood press agent, if I had ever dreamed, thought that at any time I could stand on a podium or be in any group of men and women and talk about love, I would have wanted to vomit.
You know, I really wouldn't, because it was abhorrent to me. But here I am talking about love. You know, it's wonderful, the love that fills it. The first time early in my career that I heard, in a STAG meeting, and I heard a man say, one of the chaps say, you know, it's amazing, this room is just full of love. And I said to my sponsor, I've got to get out of here and go outside and vomit. And he said, you better stay here to eat and learn something.
But I tell you, the love, they tell you a lot of things about it. Of course, they tell you, you know, that let us love you until you can learn to love yourself. That's the very first thing that they tell you. They also tell you that you try to do one act of love every day without anybody finding out about it. And for people that wanted credit all of our lives for things that we did and things that we didn't do, that's a good start toward humility.
And they also tell us that it's very easy to love the lovable people. And if you really want to know how to love people, try your best to love the unlovable people. And love somebody that you think is unlovable until, in your eyes, that person becomes lovable. And if you can do that, you won't have so many resentments when they come up. I found it in Alcoholics Anonymous that the AA love is merely wishing somebody well.
And when you wish somebody well, you never would wish them another drunk. And if somebody does go out there and slip, we welcome them back with all the love in the world. With telling them that they are like, very often, that they are like the cat that had become crippled and was learning to walk all over again and who discovered that there was no shame in falling down, that the only disgrace was not getting up on your feet and making another try.
And so when you do fall down in Alcoholics Anonymous, you do the right thing by coming back. I found, I sincerely believe today that with the love in Alcoholics Anonymous, you can do anything. I think you can even do the unpardonable thing of taking somebody else's inventory. I heard somebody one time that had made a slip and a friend at the meeting said, you know, I could see this coming on, Joe. And Joe said, for Christ's sake, why didn't you tell me about it?
And he said, well, I couldn't take your inventory. And Joe said, you might have saved me from having to slip anyway. I found in Alcoholics Anonymous that you can even do a con job. In our racket of publicity, we always figured on having what they call a con job of selling, you know, selling somebody something that was phony. My sponsor had told me to call him when I was in trouble. So I called him the first time I ever called him and told him all about how I was feeling, how I was loused up, and the messed up thoughts that I was having, and I poured it all out on his ears.
And he listened to me very carefully. And when I got through, he said, how long have you had on the program now, Teet? And I said, I've had 10 weeks, Nick. He said, aha. I said, what do you mean by that? He said, Teet, this is a very critical period in Alcoholics Anonymous for us. I said, it is? He said, yeah. He said, anywhere from the 10th to the 12th week, it happens. Everybody, everybody has to go through the same thing.
It's a very critical period. He said, we know what to do. He said, we keep reading the big book. We go to meetings. We don't drink. And you just live the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I said, thanks very much, Nick. That's what I'll do. So I prepared myself. The next time I had to call him, I really had a lot of things to say because everybody was wrong and they weren't promptly admitting it. And I wanted to tell him all about this, and I did tell him.
And when I got through, he said, how long have you had on the program now, Teet?
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And I said, I have had five months. And he said, aha. I said, you mean this? He said, you better believe this is another critical period. I said, my God, I know what to do, don't I? He said, yes, you do. You do it. And I must have done that two or three times. And he finally got to the point where I got to my first birthday cake. I stood up on the podium at Radford there, and I have found myself looking down at the cake with one silly little candle on it and thinking to myself, you know, this may look awful silly there.
But for as far as I'm concerned, this one candle is lighting up this whole room. And Dick had gotten me through this the whole year. And there were a couple of cards. One of them was from Jeannie, who said, congratulations, Teet, how about having a half a cup of coffee with me? And she's the one who gave me the half cup of coffee. And the other one is from Dick. It said, congratulations. He said, the one year is beautiful, but I must reward you that one year is a very critical period in alcoholic anonymous.
So I realized that's what he had done. You know, in alcoholics anonymous, you people in alcoholics anonymous taught me to laugh again. I was a sad, sad drunk. I cried an awful lot. And I was a music lover at the same time. And a lot of people in alcoholics anonymous are sad drunks and they're music lovers. I had my own pet recordings. And I would I will put these on in line and the van and listen to these sad songs and cry.
Oh, God, born to lose, you know, I'll never smile again, you know, dancing with tears in my eyes. Oh, God. And I think the most wonderful ones were those country music songs. How sad they were. You know, I'm so lonesome, I could cry watching the bubbles in my beer. Oh, God. And there was there was one called Here I Go Down That Wrong Road Again. That was my theme song. How many, many, many times when I was drinking did I get up in the morning?
I was determined that today I was going to go down the right road. It was not going to be like it was before. Today I was going to make it all the way to the end of that day and another drink. But I always somehow or other, it didn't happen. I used to say that there was no insanity in my drinking till I remembered that I used to talk to the bottle. I would get up in the morning. My wife was still sleeping.
She was a heart patient. And I would reach up to the high cabinet. Heart patients are not allowed to reach. So I had my bottle up there where she couldn't get to it. And I would get it down and watch to see any signs of her getting up. I'd fill a great big slug of vodka and down it. And I'd say to the bottle before I did, now listen, now don't do what you did yesterday. Now, today's going to be different for you and yesterday, yesterday you enticed me into taking another drink.
And you know, I'm only taking this one because I've got to get started today. I've got to write that great American novel and I can't do it with you the way you're doing it. Just be careful and don't try to get, now you hear me and I put the bottle back and I would drink the drink. And then I would say to myself, I wonder if the goddamn bottle heard me and I would take the bottle down. And as long as you got it down, you might as well, there it went.
Day after day. There were some days when I almost made it, you know, and I would say to myself, well, I almost made it. And I guess sometimes what, you know, we people are alcoholics now is when we're drinking and we people, when we were drinking, we were the almost people, but we come in alcoholics now and we find that, that, that being almost people isn't quite enough, isn't good enough of a thing.
So I learned about that and I learned about honesty, as I said, I was a press agent for 40 years and I knew all about dishonesty because that's, that's, that's the, the, the, that's the hallmark of our trade being dishonest. And I knew that when people told stories, what had happened to them when they decided that maybe they weren't an alcoholic and maybe they could have another drink. And what had happened, I knew that they were telling me the truth and I didn't have to go out and prove them right or wrong and I could take their word for it.
And I also learned that alcoholism, that honesty begins at home because I went to my friend Frank and I said, Frank, I haven't signed the roster. And he said, what roster are you talking about? I said, I've been 10 days around here and I haven't signed it. He said, we don't have any roster. I said, don't you have a roster where every day that what you remember comes in every week once a week on his day and checks off, show that he's been drunk that, I mean, he's been sober that week.
And he said, no, we don't have anything like that. I said, you mean to say that if I get drunk, nobody will know what he said? Oh yeah. Somebody will know it. You will know it, buddy. You'll know it. And this is true. Honesty begins at home. Uh, so they, they also taught me to, they also taught me to, uh, to get involved in either the people that were around me, uh, that were, got, got me involved and got me involved in a lot, you know, in a great many things.
And one of them was writing for grapevine grapevine is the magazine and the alcoholics anonymous a, a, a monthly magazine that comes out. And I started sending a little articles and after a couple of bold attempts that didn't get over and they sent me.
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a man, a person, whose alcoholism really blossomed in his retirement year, and whose sobriety started in the same year, we know there are a lot of people in there, but you're the only one that I know, and can you write such an article, and she gave me some hits, and write my own story, et cetera, et cetera, and I wrote it, and I was very, and it ran some length, and it appeared in November, I think in January 1975, copy of grapevine, and I was kept like that, and I was very grateful to Paula, when I found out a little later on that she was going to retire, I wrote her a letter, and said, you know, I'm going to miss these beautiful letters that we're writing back and forth, because you're going to go, and she wrote back, and said, I have your home number, your home address, obviously, and here is mine, and we will not be separated, we can keep on corresponding, and we did for a couple of years, because she said, you know, in Alcoholics Anonymous, there are no goodbyes, T, and she was so right accepting, I did have to say goodbye, because Paula died suddenly, and I'll always remember her, because she did, she was responsible for probably the greatest thing that ever happened to me in Alcoholics Anonymous, because one year, 1976, I got a letter from the head offices back in New York, of AA, and he started out by saying, the third edition, copies of the third edition of the big book are now rolling off the press, and we have neglected to tell you, as we have 13, 12 other people, that we have some new stories in the big book, and one of the stories is a story you wrote for grapevine, and we have got it in the big book, and it's titled, Those Golden Years, and there you are in the big book, and I said, my God, I looked at myself, I said, why me, you know, why am I having, and I began to get jittery, and I grabbed this letter and started, because I had to get to my sponsor, because you know, I'd heard that sometimes it's even harder to cope with success than it is with failure, and in a way, this was success, because all my life, I wanted to do something, I always wanted to write something that would be in the bestseller, and by God, at the age of 76, I was in the bestseller, and if you don't believe I was in the bestseller of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, they're in two or three million copies now, so I took the letter and showed it to my friend, my friend Dick Webb, and he looked at me, and I said, you know, I'm very grateful for this, but I said, I'm a little bit worried, because I said, I'm proud of the fact, and he said, what's wrong with that, and I said, well pride is a dirty word in Alcoholics Anonymous, he said, oh, he said, unjustified pride is, the kind of sick pride is, that gets us into trouble, he said, there's nothing wrong with the kind of pride when you realize that the thing that you've accomplished, you did not do alone, you didn't do this alone, you did it with the help of a lot of other people, and I said, yeah, you're right, and then he looked at me and he said, this is a very critical period in your life, you know, Chief, and I said, yeah, now what, he said, you said that you felt grateful, but he said, now you've got to do more than that, you've got to express your gratitude, and I said, how, he said, I don't know, but he said, it's going to happen, and when it happens, he said, you've got to glom on to it and grab it, and he said, and go, because he said, remember, we do not walk alone in alcoholics' knowledge, and within three weeks, pardon me, three weeks of that time, a couple of friends that I had at the central office downtown in Los Angeles called me and said that the chore of being chairman of the public information committee was then open, and they wanted to know if I would fill the spot, and I found myself down there at the central office, and it started two and a half years of the most wonderful years I've ever had in my life of working down at the office down there, at the central office downtown.
That's when I was able to drive back and forth, and once more, I was working with young people, young people that had helped me get into alcoholics' knowledge, because much of the chore that's being done there and that's done by the valley office, too, are filling requests from schools that they want young people to come out and talk to their classes in high school and in junior high school and colleges about alcoholics' anonymous,
[00:35:03]
and here I was sending these people out and working with them, and I tell you, I have never seen such enthusiasm in my life. Calling up a girl in west Los Angeles one day and saying, look, honey, you know, something's bottled up on this thing, and I said, can you be in Upton, California at eight o'clock in the morning to talk to a high school, and she said, you bet I can. What time she had to get up to get out there on the freeway, I don't know, but about 1130 I had a call from her.
She's back home, and she said, this is the most wonderful thing I ever did, and these are the kind of people, I hear a lot now and then people say, I wonder about, we're a little worried about the future of alcoholics' anonymous. Well, I tell you, from what I've seen of the young people in alcoholics' anonymous, I can answer them, I think that the future of alcoholics' anonymous is in very, very good hands.
But I worked on that, and the thing, I was back in school again. I was watching people that are involved. I became a tub-thumper for people involved. I saw what it means to be involved. I saw what it means to be caring and sharing. What Dr. Bob said in the last talk that he ever gave, when he said, our 12 steps when simmered down to the very last resolve themselves into only two words, love and service.
And he said, don't ever forget it. And that's what the people who are involved in alcoholics' anonymous are doing. They're in love and service. When I was down there, I could see the rewards of this from the people that were being involved. You could see the rewards by looking at their faces. You could see it in their faces. You could hear it in their voices. I tell you, I would look at somebody talking to a sick person on the telephone, and the earnestness with which they're talking, and I would say to myself, I'll never have to ask God to bless that person because he's already doing it, from all the calls that he's giving people on the phone.
I'll tell you one thing. There's something about people, and I'm not talking about big, big things. I'm talking about just any kind of involvement, such as sticking out your hand and saying hi, or greeting people like that, or picking up coffee cups, or distributing ice trays, or doing all this. I have a friend that kept sober for one whole year because all he did was put the sign out in front of an AA meeting, and he had the most important job in the world because he said, if there's no sign out there, how can a newcomer know where the meeting is?
And this is the kind of thing, the involvement. And the people that are involved, you can see what they call an outer show of an inner glow. I'll tell you one thing. I've never heard a person involved in alcoholics' town say that he's bored. And there's a dedication that is unbelievable. You know, I'm not a religious person, but not too long ago I did take occasion to look at the original Sermon on the Mount given by Jesus to his disciples.
And there's a lot of things that he said in that that we say in Alcoholics Anonymous, such as live one day at a time. He tells you, you know, don't think about only today. Tomorrow will take care of itself. He even says that if somebody does harm at you, if somebody harms you, pray for the SOB. He doesn't use those kind of words, but he says, you know, pray for them. And he also has one thing which he says, if you are compelled to go one mile with somebody, then continue on and go another mile.
Which means that we never give up on somebody that we're trying to help. In Alcoholics Anonymous, we always do more than is expected for us. And by doing so, we grow in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm a firm believer in the fact that in Alcoholics Anonymous, and if we don't believe that we grow, all you have to do is anytime you take a birthday, your second birthday or your third or whatever it is, think back and say, are the things that kept me sober this last year, are they the same things that kept me sober my first year, my second year, my third, and they won't be.
Because those things change. I heard a young girl express at one time, very beautifully, when she said, the things that I am most grateful for today, I will take for granted tomorrow. And these are signs of growth. And we change. We change in Alcoholics Anonymous. I hear a lot of people say, that sounds like a big change. It's never changed since he came in here. That's not true. He has changed. And a lot of people don't believe that they have changed.
But Alcoholics Anonymous tells you we have to believe. It tells you that in the promises. You read the promises. It tells you all these things are going to happen to you. But then it has a whipper on the end. It says, these things will materialize if we work for them. So that these things aren't, I made the mistake when, early in my, when I walked into the clubhouse one day, I almost felt like throwing my hands up and saying, tell him, A.L., change me.
I want to be changed.
[00:40:00]
Well, A.A. doesn't change us. We have to change ourselves. A.A. gives us the tools to change ourselves with. We cannot change anybody else, and for that matter, nobody else can change us. But we do change. There is a story that a good friend of mine, Matt, told me, damn it, in which he said, it's a story of a young, there's a story of a young, a newcomer who said to his sponsors, there ought to be a book in which it tells, this book could very personally explain to him how to solve all the problems that come to us.
And the sponsor said, there is such a book, and I can get it for you. It'll take a little while, but on Saturday morning, you meet me at Griffith Park, and I'll have the book. And they met that day, and he had this big book under his arm. And he said, now you take this book and go up to the top of that hill and get on that bench, and you open this book, and when you open it, you will find in there your answer to how you can solve all the problems that come to you.
And the young boy took it up, and he opened the book, and he looked inside, and he knew that the sponsor was right because inside was nothing but a mirror. And we're the person that can do all that. You know, the things that come to us, the little rewards that come to us, we get to learn the values of things in Alcoholics Anonymous. We get to learn the things that count. And we know that the things that count are not what we can hold in our hands, but if you want to be corny, they're the things that you hold in your heart.
They come in little things. I was driving down Laurel Canyon Boulevard one time in North Hollywood, and as I came to a boulevard stop, came to a riverside, I guess, stop, and I'm mulling to myself, and I suddenly am aware that there's a car alongside, and somebody's honking the horn. And I look over there, and there's a very vibrant young girl of about 22, I guess, leaning out and saying, Hi there, hi, hi, hi, hi.
And I looked at her, and I never saw her before in my life. And I'm looking around, and she's going, Oh, you, hi, how are you? And I said, My God, honey, if you were only 50 years older, wow. And then I thought, Wait a minute, I've heard that some women prefer older men, but this is disgusting, you know. And then she said, Just then she said, I see we both belong to the same group. And I realized that I had a bumper sticker on the back of my car that said, Easy Does It.
And she said, My name is Debbie. And I said, My name is Gene. And she said, I'll see you sometime, Pete. And away she went, and I sat there, and they had to honk to get me going behind these irritable guys. And what I was thinking was, Where else in the whole damn world is there an organization, like Alcoholics Anonymous, where a vibrant, young, pretty girl can see a bumper sticker on the back of a car and feel perfectly safe in calling out and saying hi and waving to a total stranger that might well be a dirty old man, you know.
And then I realized that she knew more than I did, that she knew that in Alcoholics Anonymous there are no strangers in Alcoholics Anonymous. And these are the things that happen. And the things of the value. I met a woman in AA who was a television actress by the name of Jean H. I didn't know her very well, but with another mutual friend of mine. She was an alcoholic, and we went to a number of meetings with her.
She also had another disease. She had cancer. She had cancer to the throat, and she was having an awful time with it. And my friend Ben introduced me to her. We went to see her at the motion picture home a couple of times. And she used to talk to me about things that were happening in the public information show, and I told her some things. And so we went out there to see her one day, and she said, I'm going to have surgery next month, whatever it is.
I'm going to have surgery, and they tell me that even if this surgery is successful, which it may not be, but if it's successful, I'll never be able to speak again. I'll never be able to talk again as long as I live. And we said, oh. She said, oh, no, that's not too bad. All my life I've used my voice to speak, but maybe I can use my ears now. She said, I hear that Alcoholics Anonymous is very much in need of people that can take deaf persons to meetings and interpret to those deaf people by learning the sign language what is being said at the meetings, and this is what I would like to do.
And Ben and I cried. We cried. June didn't have a chance to make it. She didn't make it. And I've told that story only a couple of times. I've told it at Radford one time. And after the meeting, three young girls came up and said, where can we learn the sign language? And at that time I knew where it was, and I suppose those girls went ahead, and maybe they're out taking deaf people to meetings right now.
But it's the people in Alcoholics Anonymous that have been the great help. They've been all a great help. uh… the great help, they've been all a great help. You hear the most wonderful, no matter how big it is, no matter how small it is, you always get your answer from them. I can remember, I can remember when I
[00:45:02]
talked to a chap by the name of Herman and said to him, Herman, I'm having a lot of trouble with the spiritual side of this program. There is no spiritual side, it's all spiritual. And I said, I'm having trouble because I'm an agnostic. And he said, huh. He said, that's all right, you still have a choice. I said, what choice have I got? He said, you can be a drunk agnostic or you can be a sober agnostic, it's that simple.
And he was so right. And I remember going to another chap one time and saying, saying to him, I'm having a lot of trouble with, you know, I was a beer drinker, I loved, the only booze that I really was palatable was beer. And I said, these, these, there ought to be a lot, they ought to take those damn commercials off the air. And I sat there and watched them and he said, and those wonderful commercials they've got on there, what am I supposed to do when I look at those beautiful commercials about beer and think of the cold beer going down.
He said, very simple, just keep on watching and think of hot beer coming right up. And these, this is the kind of advice you get. There was another, another chap of mine said, told me one time that the easiest, the easiest and simplest way to get to Alcoholics Anonymous is to go all the way to hell and make a U-turn. I can remember a gal by the name of Vi that said to me one day, we said, you know, Alcoholics Anonymous, we've had a long, we've got a long way to go to impress the public about alcoholism, haven't we?
She said, yeah, we have at that, but she said, why don't you, she said, I prefer to use the attitude of a mountain climber that is skilled in mountain climbing. He said, rather than keep looking up all the time to see what a horrible distance he's still got to go, every once in a while when he rests, he looks down and gets a kick out of looking at the wide vista to show you how far he's come. And she said, you know, we've come a long, long way since Alcoholics Anonymous was formed.
And we have come a long way. I remember talking to a girl, a woman one time, she was one of the younger women. She was only in her, in her middle sixties. And that's supposed to be a joke for a 70 year old man. Anyway, I said, Jerry, you know, Alcoholics Anonymous didn't promise you a rose garden. And she said, oh yes, it did. And she said, it gave me a rose garden teeth. But she said, what it also taught me was that if I'm going to get any roses out of that beautiful garden, I'm going to have to bush and I'm going to have to hoe.
I'm going to have to weed. I'm going to have to fertilize. I'm going to have to spray and I'm going to have to prune. Only then will I be, will I get any beautiful blossoms in those rose bushes. And God, the beautiful thing, I can remember, I don't know how many of you people remember beautiful Moray over at Radford, Moray Silver was his name. And he, he used to sit in the same place at Radford all the time.
And he, and wherever he went, he had the same. He, Moray had a, Moray had a way of, when you ask him, how are things today, Moray? How are you going today? How are you today? He always said the same thing, never better. And I used to say, you know, that's a good French catchphrase to say. Then I realized that there weren't as catchphrase. But what Moray was saying was the exact truth. That any day when he was sober, there was never any better day in his life than the days when he was sober.
And he could keep on having every never better day as long as he lived. I was at Odyssey House one time. God, it was a long time ago, seemed to me. And a young girl participated out there. And she said, you know, we were talking about making amends. And she said, I always hated my father. My father was an alcoholic. And he said he was mean to me. He treated me horribly. And I loathed him. I loathed him so much that when he died an alcoholic death, I didn't go to his funeral.
And she said, finally, I've come into Alcoholics Anonymous. And I realized what he went through and what it was that prompted him to do it. And she said, I regretted that I didn't go. And she said, and I wondered how I could make amends to him. So she said, what I did was last week, I went off to myself and I went clear out to a park and I sat there all alone. And she said, I visioned, I fantasized myself at his funeral, at his burial place.
And I could see my father's casket being lowered into the ground. And I stood there and I figuratively tossed a flower in and said to my daddy, I'm sorry, daddy. She has, it's a horrible life. And I forgive you for all the cruel things that I've done to you. And I forgive you for all the cruel things you did to me. And I want you to forgive me for the way I've acted to you. And she said, today, I feel great.
It's wonderful. What time is that? Okay, well. But this is the thing that we have. This is what we have in Alcoholics Anonymous. Being an elderly man, I've got to wind this up by saying that one of the interests that naturally that I could get was,
[00:50:01]
it became aware that one of the hidden problems, not the young people, not the hidden housewives. Are the elderly people, they are the really the, they are the really hidden alcoholics, the secret hidden alcoholics in the world. I once said that to a wonderful woman whose name was Joanne. And I said to her, we are the most hidden segment of alcoholism. And she said, except one, Pete, the one I belong to.
And then I said, I'm sorry, sister. She was a Catholic nun. And I must say that they probably are far more hidden than the senior citizens. But anyway, we got interested in what was going on. And one day when I was still, I was near the end of my chore down at the central office. And I got a call from a woman who was down in a hospital. She had a rap group down in South Laguna. You know how far that away is.
And she said, I have this rap group of elderly people. They all live in leisure world out here. And these people are having a tough time. And I wonder if there's any elderly alcoholics up there with good sobriety that can come down and talk to them. And I said, well, lady, you're talking to one right now. And I said, yes, we can come down. And we made a date on the phone. And I have a dear friend. The name is Sam Gee, who's got 32 years sobriety.
Sam is 88 years old now. He's been going to school. He's taken every alcoholism course you can possibly think of, a very bright guy. And I got ahold of him and said, you should we go down there? We made the date. We got in the car. I was driving at that time. I didn't see very well, but Sam could see pretty well. So I did the driving and he did the seeing. And we got in my car and we drove, took the San Diego freeway.
It took us an hour and a half to drive all the way down there. And what we got there, we talked to eight people. There were seven women and one man. The one man was Bill. And Bill was 70 years old. Same time I was when I came in, Alcoholics Anonymous. And he had never had a drink in his life until after he retired. And he had a retirement party and they fed him booze. And within six months, he was an alcoholic.
And these eight people were sitting around. They had all had slips and Sam and I talked to him and talked to him and talked to him and talked to him. You know, told him what had happened to us and other people like that. And we got out and it was all through and we got started in the car. And I got in behind the wheel. And we knew when we started back that our lives were gonna be a little bit changed in there because we were gonna have to get very much into the whole business of helping on the senior citizen things.
And we have through some heckling that we did. And we started a group of senior citizens. And there's a senior citizen meeting. The meeting every day has been going for six years now, I guess, over at the Senior Citizen Multipurpose Center in North Hollywood. Another one started later than us at Pasadena. There are two in Santa Monica. There's one in Hemet. And there's a couple of them in other places in California.
And we also, through some heckling, to New York. We got New York to get out a pamphlet. And the pamphlet is called Time to Start Living. And we were actually responsible for, there are nine stories in it, we were responsible for five of those stories in the thing. So we've done a lot of stuff. Sam and I have been to so many places, some very plush places and some very horrible places where the senior citizens are having trouble with alcoholism.
So this was the start of it. So we knew that day would be start because when I got in that car, I said to Sam, you know, Sam, there's a lot of people in this world that would think that we two old goats ought to have our heads examined. For driving a total of three hours on this horrible San Diego freeway to talk to only eight people, Sam said, yeah, you're right, Pete. Of course, there are people that are not members of Alcoholics Anonymous.
They'll never have the privilege of knowing that if just one of those persons makes it, that the whole trip and the whole effort is worthwhile. And I said, Sam, you've said a mouthful. I said, I'm gonna do something now that if you ever tell anybody I did this, I'm gonna, I'll punch you in the mouth because I'm gonna recite poetry. And I never always, I hated people who recited poetry, much less something by a woman poet.
But I said, I've got to tell you,
[00:55:00]
what you remind me of is a few little words by a woman named Emily Dickinson. And what those words were, as I remember them, was if I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain. If I could ease one life from aching, or cool just one pain, I shall not live in vain. And Sam and I wrote along for silence for a little while because we were both thinking the same thing. We were thinking that those very words could come right from probably the most useful book that any of us will ever know, ever read about love and service, caring and sharing, gratitude, humility, honesty, open-mindedness, willingness, and all of the other good things that the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I agree, don't you? Thank you very much. Thank you.