My name is Chuck Steen, and I’m an alcoholic. Hi, Chuck. Hi. I don’t know, uh, when I have felt, uh, any more grateful than I do tonight. This gang that have come down here to hear me balk for about six sessions officially and sixteen unofficially is something else. And it’s a great tribute to me for those of you who came down here to listen. And for those of you who came down here to get away from your wives, I thank you for coming, too. But it’s a, a beautiful sight standing here and looking at you. You’re a great bunch, and I love you. This has been an eventful week so far. I had to give a, uh, funeral on Monday in Pasadena. Chap who was fifty-one and who was giving an AA pitch, and right in the middle of it, he went down and didn’t get up. Heart attack. And so that was Monday, and Tuesday, I had another one. This was one of the original me-members of the Compton group. Came in just after it was started. Old Tex Mullet. And Tex had been sober for twenty-one years. And, uh, he did it sort of the hard way because he was a compulsive gambler, too. He loved to gamble. And he won and lost once in a while. The last time I knew him to be in Las Vegas, he won seventeen thousand dollars on the crap table. Took it up to his wife and said, “Now you send this home.” And she didn’t. She put it in the safe in the hotel, and he lost the whole lot before he got out of the place. So it wasn’t too bad for him because he thought that was a great joke. He blamed his wife entirely because- … he told her to send it home. Well, this time he went up again, and, uh, he left with a heart attack. So I had to put him away on Tuesday. When here I got my twenty-ninth birthday cake, which is something for a tongue, chew, and babbling idiot drunk. Twenty-nine years without a drink or pill, and that was pretty nice. And here to finish the week out, I have you people to share with and to be shared with. And I’m, again, very grateful to you for coming. I thought tonight we might just, uh, think a little about the problem to get started. This retreat is supposed to be in all of our affairs. The Twelve Steps says, “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps,” meaning the first eleven, “we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and practice these principles in all of our affairs.” In all of our affairs. In thinking a little about the problem, I have to think a little about a Texan who, uh, was the first chap that sobered up in Houston. He has, I guess, close to, if not already, thirty-five years of sobriety. He’s, uh, half a Texan wide and, uh, a Texan a half tall. And he tells a good story. He said, “If you’re going to solve a problem, it helps if you know what the problem is.” “For instance,” says he, “I’ve always been afraid of dogs.” He says, uh, “Some little old girl come walking down the sidewalk with a Great Dane on a leash,” and says she’s not afraid of it at all. Says, “A poodle runs out, and I take off.” And he’s that high, you know. I can just see him running from a poodle. And he says this caused him a lot of embarrassment in his life, and it finally became necessary for him to look at the reason that he was afraid of dogs. And he, he looked and looked, and he started to turn the pages of his life back, and he got clear back to when he was seven years old. And he remembered that when he was seven, a little, uh, a dog bit him, and that was the reason he was afraid of dogs. But he said that didn’t completely satisfy him. And so he looked at it again, and he saw that the reason the dog bit him was that he was chasing a little girl at the time. Now, says he, all my life, I’ve been chasing women and getting in trouble and running from dogs, and dogs never were my problem in the first place. So he says it helps to know the problem. And I think it helps to know the problem, and I’m going to tell you what I think the problem is, and I’m going to tell you what I think the solution is. And there’ll be some of you that will not agree with my thinking, and that’s perfectly all right. That if I talk, I have to say it as I see it. So our immediate problem when we came here was booze. Alcohol. That’s the thing that ran us in here. It ran me in in a hurry after twenty-five years because I had used every resource I had, and I had lost the battle. So I got here at the ripe old age of forty-three. I failed in every department of life. Failed as a husband, a father, a businessman, a man, and a drunk. And I had run out of everything, including people, places, things, money, whiskey, home, and everything else. And there wasn’t any place else for me to go but here. However, on my last trip out, I had a very great, good fortune. The bottle killed me. The bottle beat me to death, beat me into total and absolute nothingness. And only then could I come to investigate Alcoholics Anonymous. Up until that time, there was no way that anybody could have talked me into coming here. As long as I had the power of choice, my choice was never to come to Alcoholics Anonymous, and never came, until I’d lost everything, including the power of choice. And so I would say to you right off the bat that the greatest single event that has ever happened in my life, and I am seventy-two years old, happened in January 1946, when the bottle beat me to death. Had it been necessary for me to consciously surrender the first time, I would have died without coming to this program. There was no way that I could surrender. I had never admitted defeat one time in forty-three years of life, not to God, man, woman, or the devil. The word “surrender” wasn’t in my vocabulary. It’s been bred out of me for generations. So, thank God, on my last trip out, the bottle did it for me. The roadblock was burned out, and I got to the program in a state of total ab-abandonment of self when I got here. And everything in the fifth chapter of this book was something I wanted to do the first time I ever heard it. The very first night when I heard this thing read, everything in it was something I wanted to do. And I’m certain it was because of the total state of abandonment of self in which I got here. Now, there was one thing that I didn’t think I could do, and that was step three. And it wasn’t because I didn’t want to. I had no objection to step three. I would have turned my will and my life over to a jackass if I could have gotten rid of me. But where it says, “We made a decision to turn our will and lives over to the care of God as we understood Him,” I didn’t think that this was possible for anybody like me because I did-didn’t think it was cricket to believe that I could give the mess that was me to anybody, let alone to God. I wouldn’t have taken me with a large dowry, and I didn’t figure God liked me any better than I did, and I hated my guts. So I let it lay. I just let it lay. Picked up the last third of step 12 and practiced these principles in all of our affairs. Now, after attending a meeting every night for six months, I discovered that I was sober and had been without a drink or a pill for six months, which was quite a discovery because I had attended every one of those meetings with a great fear upon me that I couldn’t have this thing, that I didn’t have enough left physically or mentally to get it. And after six months of a meeting every night, I discover that I am sober and have been all the time. And at that time, I started giving a little attention to step three because I was thinking, well, maybe there’s some way that, uh, I could come to feel that God would take a package like mine. And I couldn’t, I couldn’t, uh, get any solution to the thing. I was messing with it for quite a little while. And finally, it occurred to me, your Father. And then I started conjuring up the most heinous crimes I could imagine and laying them on these two boys of mine. And I let my imagination go crazy, building the worst possible kind of crimes that anybody could perpetrate. And when I got that done, I would say to myself, “Now, would this keep me from wanting to see my boys? Would these things make me want to cast them into perdition to burn for eternity?” And I had to say, “No. No, I couldn’t do it. No way could I, regardless of what they did, no way could I assign them to hell.” And so I came to believe that maybe, uh, the Heavenly Father, being a good guy, you know, and me an evil one, maybe He would, uh, forgive me. And I, uh, got comfortable that it had to come through that kind of procedure with me. Now, the funny part of it is that when I got… When I discovered that I’d been sober for six months, I had to get lost in trying to give this thing to alcoholics because they had given it to me. Drunks had given it to me. And I lost myself working with drunks. And after a while, I had another discovery, and that was that something had happened in our household. A year before, Mrs. C. was divorced from me. The kids wouldn’t come home when I was around. The boss man was gonna throw me through the window if I ever stepped foot in the plant again. Had no health, no sanity, no home, no job, no nothing. And it appeared that the war was over. The household was living like kittens. And that was a good discovery. That was about a year after I got here. And another six to eight months went by, and I made another discovery, and that was that I was still trying to clean up my desk at the office. We’ll talk a lot, a little about this when we talk about AA in business or practicing these principles in business. But here I was, still trying to clean up my desk at the office. And business was good. It was plum good. And that was a pretty good discovery. Maybe another year went by, and I had discovered that the state of my being was better than anything that I had ever dreamed of in my life. My, uh, livingness, being itself, was better than anything that I ever dreamed of. And that was a good discovery. And now five, maybe six years have passed, and I made another discovery, which I believe to be the great discovery. When one makes this discovery, the search is over and life begins. Life isn’t over. Life just begins, really. And this discovery was that I was never alone anymore. I, who had walked alone for 43 years, totally alone, I was never alone anymore. I had a God of my very own. And where I am, He is. I’m often by myself, but never alone. And this has been the way it’s been ever since the discovery, and it’s the way it was before the discovery because I hadn’t been, been alone since my first meeting. Now, I believe that this program of ours, the Alcoholics Anonymous program, is a program of uncovering, discovering, and discarding. That’s the AA program to me. Uncovering, discovering, and discarding. The first nine steps of the program are the uncovering steps, clearing away the wreckage of the past, squeezing us out of ourselves ego-wise to get rid of the human ego. Temporarily. Because we never get rid of it totally, in my opinion. I am convinced that nobody can honestly take the first nine steps in this program without making the discovery that something has happened, and it’s, it’s very, very terrific. Because when you honestly apply the, apply the first nine steps of this program to me, I apply it to me. At number ten, the ego is temporarily gone. Now, I am convinced in my own mind, totally and completely convinced from the toenails to the top of my longest hair, that there’s only one problem in this life. One problem that includes all problems, and one answer that includes all answers. Now, that’s oversimplification, isn’t it? One problem that includes all problems and one answer that includes all answers. I am totally convinced that the only roadblock between me and you and me and my God is the human ego. The only roadblock there is. I firmly believe that the best definition you’ll ever hear of the human ego is the feeling of conscious separation from. The feeling of conscious separation from. From what? From everything. From God. I like to use three words: life, good, God, which to me are synonymous words. Conscious separation from God, from each other, and eventually from ourselves. That is the thing that says to me, “Here am I, big me, little me, smart me, dumb me, rich me, poor me, against the whole world. I’ve got to outthink, outperform, and outmaneuver in order to eke out a miserable living out of an unfriendly universe.” That’s what they laid on me as a kid. The various cliches of life. The early bird gets the worm. The devil takes the hindmost. You gotta be very firstest with mostest builds on that premise. Here am I against the whole world. Gotta outthink, out-perform, and outmaneuver. Consciously separated from each other and from God. Now, I think that’s the greatest roadblock there is. The only one, as a matter of fact. The only roadblock there is between me, you, and me and my God. And that’s the human ego. The seat of all the obsessions of the mind. That’s where they come from. Now, it is also my total conviction that there is no possibility under heaven to satisfy the human ego. It is a divine impossibility. I like to sit up there in my big chair. Many of you have seen it. Some of you have sat in it for a minute, but I won’t let you sit in it much longer. And I look down on top of that little town, Lagunita Beach, beautiful shoreline. The channel right straight in front of my chair is Avalon on Catalina Island. It’s about… Or maybe it’s from where I live, it might be thirty-four, thirty-five miles to the island. And I look down at that water, that channel, and that’s going for about miles just the top of it. It’s deep too. And I say to myself, “Suppose that entire channel was bourbon whiskey.” Now, that’s quite a few drinks. Would that satisfy my obsession for whiskey? And I have to say no. The whole damn thing could not satisfy my obsession to drink. Because when I get started drinking, before long, I am flat on my back in bed drinking the clock around, and every time I open my eyes, I drink And there’s no way to satisfy that obsession. No way. Now suppose my obsession had have been for money instead of drinking. How about that? It’s totally impossible to satisfy an obsession for, for dough. Now, I had a client for many years, eleven, twelve. He was a Syrian, and the Syrians taught the Jews and the Armenians about business. Syrian can starve an Armenian to death. And I had this chap, and he’d gone from one head of lettuce to thirty-five million bucks. And he was, uh, one of the poorest men I ever saw because unfortunately, he had a partner in one of his business enterprises, which happened to be oil. And this old boy was worth one hundred and fifty million. Made a suite at the Jonathan Club. Most beautiful thing you ever looked at in your life, all paneled with the finest wood in the world. Gun racks, elephant tusks all over it, and feet, and gazelles, and everything else, you know. And one night we’re sitting there, the two of them. Eddie was trying to get under the diving board. Poor thing, he had only thirty-five million. This here was old Steel with a hundred and fifty million. Poor man. Eddie used to say to me, “Charlie,” I was Charlie in business, “How can I be like you?” And I’d say, “Eddie, you can’t.” And he’d say, “Why?” I’d say, “Eddie, who needs God if he’s got thirty-five million bucks?” Don’t be silly. You can buy anything you want, including women, and you do. And that’s one of the Syrian’s great, uh, illusions. They think they’ve got just women, and maybe they are. I don’t know. Got to be with a woman. But anyhow, who needs God when you got thirty-five million bucks? And I said, “You go ahead and make a hundred and fifty million, and you will if you live,” because everything that old boy touched turned to gold. “And when you’ve made a hundred and fifty million, you will have then found that it won’t do for you what you have to have done right here. Then you come to me and says, ‘Charlie, how can I be like you?’ And I’ll tell you, and you can do it, but not until.” And he said, “Well, talk to me about it anyway.” And we’d drive all over the state of Arizona talking just like we’ll be talking here, you know. But poor Eddie didn’t make his hundred and fifty. He got so many things in his head that it exploded. He was 10 years younger than I, and he’s been gone, what, five, six years. He died. It’s impossible to satisfy an obsession for money. Suppose my obsession had have been for power. How about that? No possibility. Witness Watergate. There was a nice power struggle, you know. It’s absolutely impossible to satisfy an obsession for power. If you were president of the United States, no good, because every dictator in the world has more power than our president. Old Genghis Khan had more than all of them. So no way. What about women? Started to say sex, but that brings up a bad connotation. I’ve been getting invitations lately to go up and talk to the, uh, deviants. And God bless me, I can’t hardly make it. I have so, so far I’ve been able to, to sort of have some other thing to do or get something else. Excuse me. Couldn’t see. So let’s say women. Suppose my obsession had been for women, and supposing, thank you, that I had been the greatest Lothario of all times. And supposing I had captured every pretty chick I set out to catch but one. Now, my ego would be a pretty fine army, don’t you think? Would they satisfy my obsession for women? Uh-uh. This one kills me. The one I can’t get kills me dead. So if you can’t beat them, join them. We gotta get rid of the obsessions of the mind. And in order to get rid of the obsessions of the mind, we have to be rid of the ego because that’s where they come from. I want, I don’t want, I like, I don’t like. Ai-yi-yi-yi-yi. That’s it. Now, that’s the reason that the wording in this book is like it is. There’s four hundred and fifty-two pitches in the first page in two paragraphs in our chapter five. Boy, there’s a lot of things said in that deal. Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Now, I get– I hear people get up here and say that they have heard Bill Wilson say that there’s one word in the book that he would change if he was doing it again. And that would be to take out the “rarely” and put in, “Never have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.” Well, Bill didn’t say that to anybody because he knew why he put “rarely” in there. If he had have said, “Never have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path,” I see, uh, about four people here at the front table looking out at me that would have said, “Oh, they’ve never seen a failure. Well, by God, I’ll show them one.” Yeah. That’s the reason that’s rarely. And Bill did tell me that himself. I happen to know him pretty good. Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Now, I had that read one time, mmm, which I think maybe is even better than it’s written. Some guy got up here, and he read it, “Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly enjoyed our path.” I think that’s terrific. I put in a blanks in that sentence, you know. It’s very good. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program. Usually, men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being rigorously honest with themselves, being honest with themselves. Honesty and following the path. There’s two pitches right there. To be honest and to follow the path, thoroughly follow the path. They’re naturally incapable of develo– uh, grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Now, there’s a pitch. Grasping and developing. You see, we’re people who never were able to settle for status quo. Never in our lives, long before we ever had a drink, we were unable to settle for status quo. Nothing that was normal ever merited our attention for more than a split second. If it wasn’t better than normal, we didn’t like it. And that’s before we ever had a drink. So we had better jolly well grasp and develop because a happy sobriety will turn into a drunk unless we develop. We’ve got to walk. We’ve got to keep going. All we need to do is get fat and complacent and quit walking, and we’re in trouble. So grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty is, is a whole new end. They are such unfortunates. They’re not at fault. They seem to have been born that way. That’s a line that I’d get the hell out of there. I don’t like that line because in twenty-nine years, I have had, I don’t know, probably five hundred people tell me that they’re sure that they’re naturally incapable of being honest with themselves, naturally incapable of it. Well, I’m sure that if you’re still breathing, there’s, uh, and you don’t have a two or three of those wheels missing entirely, there’s no way that you can hide behind that. But it’s, it’s sort of a thing that we use once in a while. Their chances are less than average. Th-those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders. But many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest. I gotta tell you a little story. Many of you have heard it, I’m sure. But in the early days in Los Angeles, we didn’t have anybody out here that had ever done his name. And, uh, a Jewish gentleman came out here with a book. He didn’t know I had it. We, uh, came to in Palm Springs. They started looking through his luggage, which was whiskey, and he found this book. That’s the first edition I read then. And he didn’t know how it got into his suitcase. But he didn’t have any whiskey, and so he read it. And he just kept reading it, and he, uh, liked it. He liked what he read. And he came into Los Angeles with this book, and he got ahold of some people, and they started to meet. And, uh, they didn’t know how to start a meeting. And so the custom that has spread pretty well all over the world was established right here in Los Angeles. First meeting, that’s reading the portion in chapter five. This Jewish boy says, “I don’t know why I started a meeting,” but he says, “There’s a chapter in this book entitled How It Works, and it gives us a thing, and let’s read it.” And they read this portion in chapter five. And you’d be surprised how much of the world that’s covered up until now. They do it in Australia. They do it in New Zealand. They do it in Canada. They do it in Texas. It’s bad for them down there. We were at a, a, a conference in, uh, Oklahoma City, and there’s a lot of Texans up there, you know. One of these Texans says, uh, Oklahoma is just an outlying portion of Texas. He says, outlying hell, he says you’re the worst liars in the world. So they read this all over, and it’s beautiful. Every time I read it, it reminds me that my survival depends on this thing right here. Now, a little bit later, this bunch, maybe there were half a dozen of them at this time, got a hold of an old boy off Skid Row. His name was Whitey. And Whitey had been a little bit too close and too long with the vino. And he babbled all through the meeting. He’d just sit there and babble, and he was bothering. So they decided they ought to take him to the doctor and see what was the matter with him. So they did. They took Whitey to the doctor, and this doctor took a few quick passes at him, and he says, boys, give him up. This one you can’t help. Spend your time on somebody that’s got a chance. But he has such bad brain damage that you’re just wasting your time. And so the next meeting, of course, they had a discussion about Whitey. And the whole gang of them wanted to dump Whitey. They would keep him from interrupting the procedure with his babbling. And, of course, there was one guy there that had read something in the book. And he said, wait a minute, boys. He says, it says right here that the only requirement for sobriety is a desire to stop drinking. And Whitey wants to get sober. And we can take him out. And they said, that’s right. That’s what it says. And they didn’t kick Whitey out. And it’s a matter of medical record and A record that one year later Whitey was accepted in the United States Marines. There’s a miracle here. There are those who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of these do recover if they have the capacity to be honest. Our story discloses in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we’re like now. If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, any length to get it, then you’re ready to take certain steps. Why are those phrases in there? Why do we go clear back here in the first line of the second paragraph, chapter three? And we read a line that says, we learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. Why? Why is that clear back here? First line of the second paragraph, chapter three. Program of recovery is only in five. It’s there because if we be alcoholic, we are caught in a trap we cannot spring. We have to have help. And we can’t get help until we recognize the need for it. It’s impossible. We’re a peculiar breed of cats. We can’t hear what we can hear and we can’t see what we can see. And don’t make a bit of difference who’s talking. For instance, a number of years back in the state of Virginia, I spent a good deal of time with a great celebrity, films and TV. And he and his wife were both outies. And I was very fond of them and I was very hopeful that something was going to happen. And we sat for almost all day in Richmond, Virginia, yakking. And this guy and his wife, everything I said, she’d say, why? That’s the way I live. I’ve known that forever. And I’d talk a little while longer. But she says, that’s the way we raised our kids. This is not new to us. We’ve known it all the same. And it was that way all morning. Well, they didn’t know that I knew that they’d just gotten out of menagers. Both of them. Menagers, for those of you who don’t know, is a booby hatch. That means that they did this all backwards and forwards and through the middle. But they never heard it. And they didn’t hear it when I said it either. And you’re going to hear a lot of things that you think you know this weekend. Maybe you do. You may hear a lot of things that you disagree with. That’s all right with me too. If you disagree with them and know why you disagree with them, maybe you should be up here and me back there. But that’s the way it’s going to be. The second condition, of course, is that sobriety has to come first. If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, that’s top man on the totem pole. And I’m one who believes that unless and or until sobriety comes first, we can’t have it. And unless it remains first, we cannot keep it. That’s why it says here, this is very, very positive stuff. And are willing to go to any length to get us in, you’re ready to take certain steps. Some of these we balked. We thought we’d try an easier, softer way, but we could not. With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be thorough and thorough from the very start. This isn’t a headache we’re talking about. We’re talking about a terminal illness. The disease of alcoholism is a terminal illness. That’s why these things are here. Because we have to have help. And we got to recognize the need for it before we can get it, and it’s got to be tops. Top man on the totem pole. Some of us just tried to hold on to old ideas and results were nil until we let go absolutely. Doesn’t say half measures avail us fifty percent. Ten percent measures avail us ten percent. It says half measures avail us nothing. Not a thing. We stood at the turning point. We asked His protection and care of complete abandon. We let go absolutely. Says up here without help, it’s too much for us. But there is one who had all power. That one is God. May you find Him out. It’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful thing. Now, this is our prob- problem. We’re caught in a trap we cannot spring. We’ve already been to human help. The first time I heard these steps, one and two were a cinch. I knew that I’d lost the battle of life. I didn’t know anything about alcoholism, but I knew I’d lost the battle of life. And I knew that my life was unmanageable by me, and I still know it, and it’s never changed. It’s still unmanageable by me. It’s no problem to me. Twofold admission of defeat in the first one. An admission that we’re nuts in the second. And there are two big steps for an alcoholic. The first two. Lost the battle of life, number one. We’re nuts, number two. So you need help, and you need it bad. And if you’re like me, you’ve been to the preachers, priests, the doctors, the guys who knows more psychiatry than the Ritz before you ever got to this place, to step three. And so you know you need help. And you can’t get it from human power. So we make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God. Now, this is one of the things that we’re going to be spending some time on. It’s the most fantastic thing on the face of the earth. There’s nothing that will compare with this. The thing that happens to us when we do this, not when we read it, when we do it, to abandon ourselves completely to this simple program. Going out. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Welcome, gentlemen. Bring a note to my room. Talk to me when you’re ready. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God. Now, I don’t suppose that there’s a man in this room that analyzed himself and decided to turn himself in to Alcoholics Anonymous. I don’t believe there’s one of you, the whole bunch, that did that. If there had been any way under heaven for me to remain in left field, I’d still be out there. We are not the kind of people that run around surrendering on every other street corner. That isn’t our, uh, way of doing things. And here we, we’ve lost the battle of life, and we’re nuts, and we have to have help. Now, I told you a little bit ago that the greatest single event in my life up until now, and I’m seventy-two years old, was when the bottle killed me in January of ’41. Forty– January of ’46. I was forty-three. I had read Jack Eldridge’s article in the Post. In March of ’41, Mrs. C found it, read it, opened the right place, and put it on the arm of the chair I sit in right now. And when I got home, I read it. I was four sheets to the wind when I read it, and I suspect I thought that was r-r-real good for you people that need it. I imagine I did. But five years later, when I came to after a four weeks blackout, my last drunk started on the Friday before Christmas, nineteen hundred and forty-five. And I came to sometime after the middle of January ’46. And I don’t remember that the time was, but the calendar said it had been. And during that four weeks, the thing that had stopped me was burned out, and I accepted the fact that everything dear to me in life was gone and should be gone and that I was not entitled to have it back. That was including my wife and my kids and my home and my job and my health and my sanity and my money. It was all gone. And I wasn’t entitled to have it back. I knew I was gonna die because I’d come within an ace of it the next to the last time out. I’d fallen over on my face on the floor in the kitchen, turned blue. And they’d had to get the oxygen squad to wake me up. And the doctor that was with them told me after I came to, that to all intents and purposes, I was dead, that they’d had a hell of a time bringing me back and that they would– nobody would ever be able to bring me back again under those circumstances. And says he, “If I were you, I wouldn’t do that anymore.” Said that right to me. But I did it again. So I knew I was gonna die, and I accepted that, too. But I didn’t want to die with a record. Now, I want you to listen to this because this is a little bit different than a lot of things that happened. I didn’t even want sobriety for myself because I knew I was gonna die. I didn’t want nothing for me. But I didn’t want to die with a record. I didn’t want necessarily the kids to remember me as nothing but a tongue-chewing, babbling, idiot drunk. And in the depths of this thing, I remembered that I’d read the article in the Saturday Evening Post. And the only two things I remembered about it was that drunks helped drunks and didn’t drink, and they called it Alcoholics Anonymous. And I said to myself, “If I ever live to get out of this bed, I will find Alcoholics Anonymous.” And immediately, the cur-curtain dropped. Just like that. Bang, it dropped. There was no more sanity. I was sickened to death, drunk, and insane. And I had a lot of dying to do. But from the moment of commitment until right now, I’ve never had a drink or a pill. Now, this is one of the reasons that I believe so completely and totally that there’s only one bu-roadblock between me and you and me and God. That’s the human ego. The only roadblock there is. Because, you see, I sit in the same chair today that I sat in for ten years in hell. The same chair. And I sat in it for twenty-nine years in heaven. Nothing happened to the chair. Nothing happened to my wife. Nothing happened to the kids. Something happened to me. And it proves that heaven was always in that chair. I was in hell, but heaven was always in that chair. But nothing happened to the chair, and I’m still in it. Still in heaven. So, that’s the reason th-these, these statements are so very, very positive. To abandon ourselves completely. To let go absolutely, it says, and to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God. Now, this is the problem. Something has to happen that we get rid of the obsessions of the mind, and that’s what this program of ours is all about. The American Medical Society, we have some of its most illumined members right here. American Medical Society says alcoholism is a disease. It has symptoms. It is treatable, but not curable. And the only way an alcoholic can successfully live is not to take the next slug. But they cannot tell us how not to take the next slug. They can’t tell us how. That’s what this book is all about, to tell us how to get rid of the obsessions of the mind that cause us to drink. That’s what this whole program is all about, to rid us of the obsessions of the mind that cause us to drink. Now, why am I not drunk tonight? It’s a good question. I’m a tongue-chewing, babbling, idiot drunk. Why am I not drunk tonight? This is Friday. Payoff night, right? You start on the machinery Thursday, you get it in high gear on Friday, you’re paid Saturday, right? Sober up Sunday, taper off so you can go to work Monday. Some Sunday you taper off so you can go to work some Monday. Why am I not drunk tonight? Because I have the thing I was looking for in the bottle, and that’s the only reason I’m not drunk. That’s the only reason I’m not drunk. I have the thing I was looking for in the bottle. Now, what is the thing? That king-size hurt is gone. You know the king-size hurt. The kids, uh, call it that hole in their guts when they’re standing on the street corner and the wind’s blowing through. That’s what the kids call it. When I first heard them say that, I said, they don’t, they, they, they’re making some of this. They heard that. They stole it from somebody that knew what he was talking about. But that ain’t right. I learned that ain’t right. They’re the guys that coined it. Standing on the street corner with a big hole in their guts and the wind blowing through. Big hurt, that’s gone. I’m not fighting me or you or life or God or the devil. I am at peace with me and with you and with my very own God, and that’s the only reason I’m not drunk. When I say I am an alcoholic, it means this: that I cannot live and drink, and of myself I cannot keep from drinking. And that’s just as true right now as it was 30 years ago. That step one says, “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable by us.” And I’ve looked all the way through this and through the manuscript from which this was written and through, through the most recent book that we printed, and there’s nothing in any one of them that says that if I’m sober 10 or 12 or 29 years, my life will become manageable by me. It don’t say that. I looked. It’s not in there. And furthermore, there’s nothing in my experience in 29 years that would indicate that my life will ever be manageable by me again. But thank God it is no problem to me because I have step 11. I have lived by step 11 for 29 years. “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and power to carry it out.” I have lived in total expectancy of answers and directions for 29 years, and I get it. And you might say, “How do you know?” I’ve got the simplest rule in the world. I never had it so good. It’s the only good life I’ve ever known, the only easy life that’s ever been mine in my entire lifetime. And I’ve got 29 years to look over sober without a drink or pill, 25 years drunk or drinking, and 19 years before that. And this is the only good life I’ve ever known, the only easy life that’s ever been mine. So I highly recommend it. This is the way to get rid of the obsessions of mine. Here are the steps we took. We’re sober. Now, don’t say, “Here are the steps we read or heard read or learned by heart.” Don’t say that. Don’t say, “Here are the steps we interpreted.” You can, can’t find that in here. Don’t say that. Don’t say, “Here are the steps we conned God into taking for us.” There have been a few people around this neck of the woods that, uh, were experts on interpreting the steps. There’s one guy out in the valley there for a while that was selling interpretations of the steps and teaching interpretations of the steps, and then he got drunk. His business went down the rathole. Don’t say that. It says, “Here are the steps we took.” And the reason we have to take them is because we’re caught in a trap we can’t spring. We have to have help and can’t get help until we recognize the need for it. Now, going on down to, to step nine, and I’ve just got time, uh, Mr… I won’t mention his name, but his initials are Johnny Green Senior. He said he was sleepy when he came in, and if I talk a second after 9:30, that he was gonna sleep right on the table there and start snoring. So I gotta quit. Very quickly, the first three steps are decisions. The fourth and fifth are action steps. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. We write it. The book says very, very specifically that it’s good to write, write the thing down. We’re more apt to do it right if we write it. Takes a little longer, and it’s good for us, so we write it. And that’s a moral inventory, so we don’t have to write every time we turned left when we should, should have turned right. It don’t mean that we have to put down everything we ever stole or every lie we ever told or every time we ever got drunk. That don’t– That is not what it means. It means to write down enough that we can see the motivation for what we have done up until now, the motivation, motivating force in our lives. And of course, if we want to get real simple, the whole thing will boil down to obsessions of the mind, which is ego. Every one of them will boil down to trying to satisfy the human ego, which cannot be done. So we write it down, then we share it. Share it with God, ourselves, and another human being. Another human being is the, uh, thing that really, uh, sets us up for the kill. I can admit to God and to myself hid in the privy, you know. Nobody knows but me and God. But if I have to spread this dirty linen out before another human being, man, if you got any ego left after that, you ain’t done it. That’s an ego buster. And so we’ve written it and shared it, and now we’ve become willing to give it away, and we give it away. Again, we got two action steps in there. These, these, these next two are not action steps. They are, again, decisions. Now, I find people all over the world beating their brains out trying to get rid of their obsessions of the mind, their defects of character, and I bet you there have been a million hours spent in arguing over why step six has, “We’re entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character,” and step seven says, “Humbly ask Him to remove our shortcomings.” And there have been a million hours spent on what’s the difference between shortcomings and defects of character. You know? There’s supposed to be a difference. I asked Bill, and he says, “I don’t know.” He says, “I think I didn’t want to have two lines right next to each other with the same words.” He says they mean the same thing. So that’s gonna knock a lot of arguments out, isn’t it? But the main thing is that we become willing to give them away, and we give them away. We don’t do these things. If we could have done away with our defects of character, we would have done it before we came here. I wasn’t just jumping up and kicking my heels together saying, “Goody, goody, I get to go to Alcoholics Anonymous.” I’m sure my mother didn’t raise me to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. She’s ninety-six, and she don’t believe it yet. She’s still around. I think I’ve had twenty-nine years of Alcoholics– uh, drinking. She’s never had nine weeks of juice. What’s so hard about that? So we become willing to give them away, and we give them away. And then we’ve got two more in the first ten. Two of the greatest ones left yet. The most immediately effective steps in the whole program are eight and nine. We made a list of all persons we harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. If you haven’t done that, do it. Do it. Do it. Do it quick. The weight of the world is removed from your shoulders when you honestly take care of eight and nine. And I’m going to tell you this little story, and, uh, it won’t take that long. I’ll still get down on time. Many of you have heard it, but it, it curls my hair yet. About ten years ago, I got a call on a Friday night just like this from a guy in Whittier. And he says, “Chuck, I’m sitting here with six gun in my lap, and I’m gonna blow my brains out.” But he says, “Jim says don’t shoot yourself until you’ve talked to Chu-Chuck Steve. And he gave me your number, and I’m called, and I’m ready to talk. So what do you got to say?” And I says, “You called on a bad night.” I says, “I’m talking tonight, tomorrow night, and Sunday night, but Monday night’s open.” You want to see me, come down Monday night. And if you don’t, blow your brains out. And that’s exactly what it told me. And at four-thirty Monday evening, the doorbell rang, and in came my boy. Now let me tell you a little story here within a story. This Jim was Jim Willis, and Jim Willis was Sybil’s husband for many years. Sybil was fourteen years in our central office. And Jim was a compulsive gambler. And Jim started the Gamblers Anonymous thing and wrote their book. And he’d already done that, and then he became an alcoholic. And he called me one time, said, “Come get me.” And I says, “Where are you?” And he was in his office on Pico. And I went and got him. And he got sober. Now, Jim is losing his eyesight. He’s shooting, and he’s sort of a sick man, but he’s sober. And I talked with him on the phone just the other day, and he’s pretty happy. But anyway, it was this Jim that had told this guy, because he not only was an alcoholic, but he was a compulsive gambler. And Jim had told him, “Talk to me before you blew your brains out.” Well, here he was, and we started talking. Now, at two-thirty in the morning, we were right where we are now, at eight and nine. And I was telling this monkey, “Now, here’s what you got to do.” You see, he lost a lot of money that he didn’t have, and he had lost it to professional gamblers. And that ain’t a very healthy situation. It don’t, it don’t do much for longevity. So, here he sits, and I’m saying, “Now, listen, here’s what you got to do. You got to go to these people and say, ‘Look, I am not the big shot I would have had you believe. I’m an alcoholic, and I found a way to live, to live that might let me live one day at a time without a drink for the rest of my life. And one of its conditions is we got to make amends, and that’s why I’m here.’ Now, to me, I admit the debt.” I said to the other one, “You know, this is what he had to do. You go to them and say to them, ‘I admit the debt. I owe you the money, and I’ll pay you as soon as I can. But I ain’t got no money now.'” “Why, it’s a trick. They can’t do that. They’ll kill me.” And I said, “So what? You won’t have suicide on your mind.” And the old boy starts laughing. He’s still laughing. And he’s walking the streets a free man ever since. He was laughing right over the hill, you know, when he left me. And he never quit. And he paid them off. Nobody killed him. So, one of these things. So, if you haven’t done eight and nine, do them. The weight of the world goes right off your back when you do them. Now, to finish up. Alcoholism cuts across our society from the highest to the lowest. We are peoples of all professions, all states of poverty and riches, priests and preachers from all denominations we have in this field. We have world scholars amongst us, bankers, no one of whom would have come here if they could have stayed out. So, we have a problem that you and I cannot solve. We have to have help. And those first nine steps will roll away the stone because those are the surrender steps. The surrender steps. Surrender is the thing that opens the door, that allows us to get the help, because God Himself cannot help us until we will allow it. The recognition of the need for help and the turning of our will and our lives over to the care of God and the clearing away of the wreckage of the past is the beginning of victory. It’s fantastic. Don’t be afraid of it. Now, I’m convinced that you and I have to do this without getting too serious about it. We get too serious, and nothing happens. If we look too hard, we’ll never find. I looked for this thing for thirty years before I got here, and I couldn’t find it. I came here not looking for it, and it found me, or we found each other or something. Wasn’t even looking for anything but a way to live one day at a time without drinking, so I could rub out as much of the record as I could. So, I want us to have a lot of fun this weekend. Don’t be too serious. You know Rule sixty-two. Some people put it on their license plate. Rule sixty-two. It’s a good rule. It’s a little book about that tall and about that wide, and it’s green, the covers. And on the front cover, it says, “Rule sixty-two.” And you open it up, and you look, and every page in the book is vacant except the double truck in the middle. And it says, “Don’t take yourself so goddamn seriously.” And that’s what we want to do here this weekend. Have a lot of fun. Not get too serious. But realize the problem that we have that we cannot handle on our own, and to come to see totally before this weekend is over that what I can’t do, we can do with the grace of God. God bless you. Thank you very much. So, if you haven’t done eight and nine, do them. The weight of the world goes right off your back when you do them. Now, to finish up. Alcoholism cuts across our society from the highest to the lowest. We are peoples of all professions, all states of poverty and riches, priests and preachers from all denominations we have in this field. We have world scholars amongst us, bankers, no one of whom would have come here if they could have stayed out. So, we have a problem that you and I cannot solve. We have to have help. And those first nine steps will roll away the stone because those are the surrender steps. The surrender steps. Surrender is the thing that opens the door, that allows us to get the help, because God Himself cannot help us until we will allow it. The recognition of the need for help and the turning of our will and our lives over to the care of God and the clearing away of the wreckage of the past is the beginning of victory. It’s fantastic. Don’t be afraid of it. Now, I’m convinced that you and I have to do this without getting too serious about it. We get too serious, and nothing happens. If we look too hard, we’ll never find. I looked for this thing for thirty years before I got here, and I couldn’t find it. I came here not looking for it, and it found me, or we found each other or something. Wasn’t even looking for anything but a way to live one day at a time without drinking, so I could rub out as much of the record as I could. So, I want us to have a lot of fun this weekend. Don’t be too serious. You know Rule sixty-two. Some people put it on their license plate. Rule sixty-two. It’s a good rule. It’s a little book about that tall and about that wide, and it’s green, the covers. And on the front cover, it says, “Rule sixty-two.” And you open it up, and you look, and every page in the book is vacant except the double truck in the middle. And it says, “Don’t take yourself so goddamn seriously.” And that’s what we want to do here this weekend. Have a lot of fun. Not get too serious. But realize the problem that we have that we cannot handle on our own, and to come to see totally before this weekend is over that what I can’t do, we can do with the grace of God. God bless you. Thank you very much.