Audio
Transcript
Source: Ben W – Speaker Talk at Seattle (1966) – Date Unknown.mp3 File: ben-w-speaker-talk-at-seattle-1966-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:50:08
============================================================
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present our featured speaker of this evening, from Los Angeles, California, Ben W. Ben? Thank you. Thank you very much. My name is Ben W. and I'm an alcoholic. You know, I've always, ever since I was a kid, I've always looked forward to coming to this beautiful city of Seattle. But of course, due to my drinking and other matters, I was never quite able to make it here.
And the latter years, especially during the war, the public relations people at Boeing Aircraft have been so successful that I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Seattle was still here and it wasn't a suburb of Boeing Aircraft. I consider it quite an honor and a privilege to be invited up here to speak to you tonight. Of course, for the benefit of those of you who are new here or are here for the first time, I'm just another drunk.
I am one drink away from being a drunk. And the only reason that I am sober tonight is because I did the best I could to follow those 12 steps that you heard read here earlier in the evening. Unlike most alcoholics, my life with alcohol, for the first 12 or 13 years, were the most wonderful, the most peaceful, the most happy years that I had ever known. I can't in good conscience stand here and tell you that I hate alcohol.
I can't in good conscience stand here and tell you that alcohol is evil. For the simple reason that all of the pleasure, all of the feeling of a sense of security, all of anything to resemble happiness that I ever knew for 27 years of my life, I got it when I was under the influence of alcohol. Had I figured that there was any way I could have kept on living and kept on drinking, I would have never given up alcohol.
It was a beautiful life. It was a wonderful life as long as it lasted. So to those of you who may be new here, who come here searching for a way out, and after you hear me and others tell you about the wonders of Alcoholics Anonymous, and then you go out and you go into the bar and you go out another drunk, I don't blame you. I won't condemn you because I know just how you feel. But I don't want you to think that you have let AA down or let me down or the other speakers down by not absorbing, not getting the message that Alcoholics Anonymous is trying to carry.
Because as far as I'm concerned, you have performed one worthwhile function as far as I'm concerned. You have done that by coming here and being kind enough to let me tell you what I was like, let me tell you what happened, and let me tell you what I am like today and what I must keep on being like to stay as I am. Because when you listen to me, when I can tell you my story, you see, this helps me stay the way I am.
I discovered the effects of alcohol when I was 14 years old. Up until that time, I always felt afraid. I felt uneasy. I felt inadequate. I felt inferior.
[00:05:24]
And then I took that first drink. And then all of a sudden, I was no longer afraid. All of a sudden, I felt at peace with the world. All of a sudden, I experienced all of those wonderful, serene, and secure feelings that I'd always wanted to experience. And to me, that was a wonderful experience. That experience was so wonderful that I got drunk when I was the age of 14, and I stayed drunk until I was 40. So you know I enjoyed it.
For the first 12 or 13 years of my drinking life, I lived in this beautiful, drunken, secure, and happy world. To me, this was a wonderful way of life. Although I knew that this world of alcoholism was a world of illusion, a world of unreality. I knew that. But it was the nearest thing to happiness that I knew. And so it was wonderful. It was a wonderful life. It was only after that first 12 or 13 years of so-called controlled drinking, when I moved from that thin line of a controlled to an uncontrolled drinker, when I had my first blackout, when I had to go to jail as a common drunk for the first time in my life, then I was disturbed.
Then I began to have a funny feeling that this wasn't the way. When my friend who was with me on the day that I had my first blackout, when he began to describe me in that drunken blackout as being the type of drinking person that I had always despised, the type of drinking person that I had always said, anyone who drinks and conducts themselves in that manner, there's something inherently bad. There's something morally low about a person who drinks that way. Because look at me. I drink all day, I drink all night, I've been drinking for years. I never conduct myself in that manner.
When alcohol gets to the point where it makes me that type of drinking person, then I will give it up. This is what I always said. For 13 years I said that. And then it happened to me. And then I heard myself being described as that type of person. And, of course, I was ashamed. Then I said to myself, I said, well, you know what you said, Ben. Whenever alcohol got the best of you that way, there was nothing else to do but give it up.
And so it was then, back in 1935, that I made the decision to do something about my alcoholism, about my problem. Of course, it took me until 1948, you know, till I found a way, but I was in there trying all the time. And so, naturally, my first step on my road to recovery was to give up alcohol entirely. And so I decided I wouldn't drink anymore. This decision lasted about five or six or maybe seven days. And then I came to that second realization that for an alcoholic to decide to give up alcohol is a very simple matter. It carried that decision into execution. This is something else.
[00:10:00]
After that fourth or fifth day, I became nervous. I had an upset stomach. I couldn't keep water, even water on my stomach, you know. I had abnormal perspiration. I had migraine headaches that seemed to increase in intensity as the days wore on. And so then I stopped and I reflected. I said, now, wait a minute. There must be an easier, softer way, as we say in the book. I said, now, you're not really that type of person. This only happened to you once. Maybe it was something you ate, you know. Why take such a drastic step, you know, at this early stage of the game?
And so that was the first and the last time that I tried to solve my alcoholic problem through complete abstinence from alcohol, although I tried a million other things. I started inquiring around my drinking buddies, trying to find another way. And after I'd inquired around for about ten days, I ran across a drinking buddy of mine, and I said to him, I says, you know, funny thing happened to me down in Binghamton a few days ago.
I was sitting around having a couple of beers with the boys. You know, it's always just a couple, you know. And there's about fifteen minutes that I can't account for. That gave me a funny feeling, you know. The truth of the matter was from about two o'clock in the afternoon until ten thirty of that next morning. But we don't say that, you know. I said, I wonder what that was. He said, well, you had a blackout. I said, well, how do you know? He said, well, I used to have them all the time.
But I don't anymore. I haven't had one in two years. I said, what did you do? He said, well, what do you drink? I said, well, I drink straight whiskey. He said, uh-huh. Now, that's your problem. Now, this has been the million, this is one of the millions of different advice I got. You know how it is. And you listen to these drunks, you listen to anybody, you know, like he's some great authority. He says, now, you look at yourself and you look at me. We're about the same size, aren't we? I said, yes. We're little men, I said, yes. Now, that is why you have blackouts when you drink straight whiskey.
He said, now, you see, little men like you and I, we have small bones. And because we have small bones, when we drink whiskey, it drives us crazy and makes us blackout. So you'll have to give up straight whiskey. I said, well, what about you? I've seen you around here for a couple of years and you're drinking all the time. He said, yes, but you notice I want to drink wine, that's all. Now, as a matter of fact, when I first started drinking as a youngster around Los Angeles, I started drinking wine. That was my favorite drink and it was my favorite drink up until I stopped drinking.
But at that time in Los Angeles, good wine actually cost more than whiskey because they only had good wines in Los Angeles during bootleg days. But after Prohibition and it got to the point where they manufactured so cheaply that anybody could get it, you know, there was a certain stigma grew up about drinking wine. So, you know, I didn't want to spoil the image of the great Ben W., you know, by letting people see me drink wine out in public, you see. And so I said to him, well, isn't there anything else that you could drink? He said, well, anything, just don't drink straight whiskey. I said, what about beer? Beer will be all right.
So then I took my second step. On my road to recovery, I decided to drink only beer.
[00:15:03]
And this went on for about eight months. I had no problems, no blackouts. I came on back home to Los Angeles. Everything was wonderful. And one Easter Sunday, I got up about nine o'clock in the morning and started drinking my beer. I drank straight through until about nine o'clock that night. You see, the tragic thing about a practicing alcoholic, he lives in a world of illusions. He lives in a world of unreality.
But to him, that world is very real. I didn't realize long after I was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous that there was anything abnormal about getting up in the morning and start drinking from nine o'clock in the morning until nine or ten o'clock that night. I thought everybody did it, you know. I was a member of AA for six months before I realized that 95% of the people, if they take three drinks, that's a whole lot for them to drink all evening.
I didn't know that. I thought everybody did this because I was in my world, you know. And so I was doing wonderful. After I had drank all day that day, I decided to go on home to my family. I said, well, I had a wonderful day, no problem, no trouble, so I'll go on and quit while I'm at it. On my way home, I decided to stop by my favorite bar and have me a bottle of beer. I walked into the bar, ordered a bottle of beer, feeling perfectly sober, perfectly in control of all my mental facilities, ordered a beer.
I took a drink. This is the last thing that I remember. It was ten o'clock the next morning. It was then that I had the most shocking experience, an experience that became an obsession to me for the last 14 years of my drinking life. I came to and realized that I had been operating a motor vehicle in a total blackout. I don't know whether any of you have ever had that frightening experience of awakening from a drunken stupor and realizing that you've been operating a motor vehicle about the crowded streets of a large city like Los Angeles or Seattle, and realizing that you have been operating a motor vehicle in that condition for six or seven days, without having the slightest idea where you'd been or what you'd done or whom you'd harmed.
If you've ever had this frightening experience, then you know what I mean when I tell you that for the last 13 or 14 years of my drinking life, I lived in constant fear of violence and sudden death. I don't know whether I maimed or crippled or killed a human being during those 13 or 14 years of my critical drinking, but every time I picked up a newspaper during those years and read where some fellow human being had been maimed, crippled, or killed as a result of a drunk driver, I would say there but by the grace of God, do I.
So you see, the need was urgent. My situation was desperate. When I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I was thoroughly convinced that any drink now would be my last drink. For me to drink was to die. And yet I kept on drinking. About two years before I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, I was working out at a country club as a waiter. I got now into my usual drunks, excused myself, went out and stayed drunk for about seven days, came back, recuperated three days and came back.
I was downstairs changing my uniform, and I saw the same old solemn looks and the shakings of the head that I had seen from people who knew me since alcohol had become a problem. And I heard the old admonition that I'd been hearing from people who knew me, Ben, if you don't do something about your drinking and do it soon, something very serious is going to happen to you. What is it this time? What did I do this time?
So one of my fellow workers said, oh, nothing. Only when you left the club on your last drunk, you almost ran down Mr. So-and-so's wife, a member of the club, when you were going out of the parking lot. I said to myself, it almost happened this time. It will happen the next time. Then the horrible tale unfolded. It seemed that this was a bright sunshine day, about 2 o'clock in the afternoon. There was an exit from the parking lot that was the width of this building.
[00:20:01]
But it seemed that this lady said that she stepped out of her car, and just as she stepped out of her car, she saw an erratic driver that seemed like he was coming right down on her, and he just didn't miss it. And he kept going around and around the parking lot. And he was driving at such a speed that just when she decided to jump out of the way, I'd be down on her again. Apparently, I was trying to find my way out of this exit, you see.
And I went around and around the parking lot, and after I did that about six times, I finally trembled out of the exit. And so she came in the club and fainted, went in the lady's room and fainted. And so all the officials were upset and disturbed, and they wanted to know who was the culprit. So the lady said, I don't know. He looked like a crazy man. I had never seen the man before. I said to myself, well, at least she was protecting me.
At least she knows I need my job. Because as a matter of fact, I had waited on that lady and her husband for a couple of years, and they knew me very well, and they thought very highly of me. But I didn't realize what the lady really meant until after they told me this horrible story. I rushed upstairs to the locker room where I knew a very famous doctor who played golf about that time of morning, and I rushed up to him and I said, Dr. Rainey, I am in deep and serious trouble.
Alcohol is interfering with my home life. Alcohol is interfering with my ability to earn my livelihood. I seem to be caught in the grips of this mysterious thing that seems to be slowly but surely destroying me. If I don't find a way to save my life and find it quick, I know I will surely die. So this great medical man said to me, you are afflicted with a form of insanity, a form of insanity induced by the excessive use of alcohol.
You are afflicted with an incurable and malignant and incurable disease known as acute alcoholism. There's nothing in our medical experience that has thus far found an answer to your problem. You know Mr. So-and-so-and-so, he's a prominent member of this club. You know how much money that man is worth? That man is worth over $20 million. And yet you know what happened last year during the holidays?
He ran over that elderly couple and he killed them in his automobile because he has a problem. He wants to do something about his problem too. Do you think if there was any answer in medical science that this man with all of his wealth and power and prestige would go on suffering? And he picked up his golf club and he went out on the course. He was telling me in effect, Ben W., you are doomed. You will die a violent and a sudden death one of these days when you're sunk behind the steering wheel of the automobile because there's no cure.
And I believe him absolutely. And then I thought about the reaction that this lady had had. I realized then that an alcoholic is not one personality but two. A form of insanity induced by the excessive use of alcohol. This lady wasn't covering up for me. She wasn't trying to protect my job. The lady was telling the truth. This lady had seen Ben W. cold sober for a period of two years. This was the first time that she'd ever seen Ben W. insanely drunk.
And so she said, I don't know the man. I've never seen him before. He looked like a crazy man. Alcoholism, a form of insanity induced by the excessive use of alcohol. I should have given up. But this old will to live, this old will to live when you figured that all odds are against you. I kept on hoping against hope, trying first one thing and then the other. Hoping against hope that somehow, some way I would save my life before it was too late in spite of what the great medical man had said.
And this is what kept me fighting and kept me struggling until I found this wonderful program. About a year before I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, I was over having a drink with a lawyer friend of mine who also had a problem. Now, he had been suspended from his practice for about the tenth time because of excessive drinking. His family had left him for about the fourth or fifth time. And my dear wife, the lady there that you see over there, she had divorced me again for getting drunk and losing my job.
And so I went over to sympathize with my friend and I brought him a half a pint of whiskey, of course, you know. And I told him I'd heard about his misfortune and what a wonderful man he was and how ungrateful his family was for leaving him in this lurch after all he'd done for them.
[00:25:11]
So he said he'd heard about my misfortune and told me how wonderful I was and how ungrateful my wife and my son was for leaving me just when I needed them most. And as we drank this half a pint of whiskey and made each other feel good, we finally got around to discussing the alcoholic problem. So I said to him, I said, Counselor, it seems to me that medical science should have advanced to the point where it can help people like you and I who seem to have a little problem with alcohol every now and then.
He said, you know, Ben, I've given that a good deal of thought because I've been having a little problem with alcohol since 1926 when I was a senior at law school. And since I've been out of law school and in my practice, you know, down through the years, you know all the problems I've had. Then he began to tell me of all the different cures that he'd taken. He finally winded up by saying nothing seems to help.
Now back in 1935 when I had my first blackout, I realized I had a problem. But because it was something that I was ashamed of, I began to then read everything I could get my hands on about alcohol and its effects on the human mind in an effort to effect a self-cure before the world found out what type of drinking person I had become. And during that time, I must have read something about Alcoholics Anonymous.
Because I remember among other suggestions that I'd made to the council, I said to him, I said, you know, I've been reading something about an outfit called Alcoholics Anonymous. They tell me it helps people. What do you think of it? Much to my surprise, my friend said, why, it is very good. I said, well, how do you know? He said, why, I was one of the original members in the Los Angeles area. For six months.
He said, now do you remember when the rumor was floating around that I had been up in my office drinking with a client. And after my drinking client left, $500 belonging to another client had also disappeared. And that this client that owned that $500 was threatening not only to get me disbarred, but to send me to prison. I said, oh yes, I heard that rumor. He said, Ben, that wasn't a rumor, that was a fact.
He said that my brother and my father, and one of my fellow lawyers who was a member of AA. Incidentally, that member of AA, he is in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals now. He's a judge, he's one of the big men, he's right next to the Supreme Court. A member of AA, incidentally. They got together, persuaded the lady not to prosecute me and not to get me disbarred and pay her money back upon the condition that I go to AA with him.
And I went to AA with him and I was there for six months. He said, you remember that my business picked up so that I had to hire those three lawyers to help me. I put the new addition to my house, my wife came back to me, I bought the new Buick. Then he started telling me about all these economic gains. You see, I never was one of these people who subscribed to the philosophy that there was anything wonderful and noble about being poor, you know.
I always thought, and I still think, that everybody should be rich, and especially me. And so you can always sell me a proposition where you can show me where there's some economic advantage in it for me. And so momentarily I'd forgotten about my alcoholic problem and began to think of the economic gains that I could make as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, you know. And I said to myself, now I can kill two birds with one stone.
I can straighten myself out financially. All alcoholics have a financial problem too, you know. And I take care of my alcoholic problem at the same time. And so we went on drinking. And finally he said to me, now Ben, this is about the millionth time I've heard this, I know what the problem is. What is it, Counselor? You drink too fast. Now let me show you how to drink. Now you pour your jigger whiskey, I pour the jigger whiskey.
Now you look at your watch, I look at my watch. Now you take at least a half hour before you finish that drink. [unclear], always a half hour to a jigger whiskey. Your problem is solved. You never black out, you never have any trouble. This is the way, he says, we do it in Alcoholics Anonymous.
[00:30:01]
And so for a year before I met you wonderful people, I thought I was working your program. Of course, alcoholics, alcoholics, alcoholism being a progressive disease, you know your condition always gets a little worse, never better, and so it was no different with me. Instead of me going to jail on an average of once a month, once a month, in that last year I was going twice a month, you see. And my wife took me to divorce court five times in the last five years of my drinking.
But in that last year, she took me two times, you see. But I never lost faith in the program. When I'd wake up and find myself lost at another job or in jail, or my wife take me to court again because of excessive drinking, I would try to say, now, try to remember, now, whereabouts was it along the line that I failed to take that required half hour when I finished my [unclear]. And one year later, when I awoke from the drunken stupor and found myself prostrated in the back of a strange automobile, my pockets turned inside out, all my valuables gone.
Now this had been happening to me with such monotonous regularity during the last 13 or 14 years of my drinking life, I should have gotten used to it. But there are two things that in all my critical years of drinking I never got used to. That is to wake up in a drunk tank and to wake up and find [unclear] my pocket, and I didn't know who did it. I guess I'm just sensitive, that's all. It would always renew my determination to do something about my drinking problems.
And as I lay there in that condition that morning, I said to myself, where shall I go now? What shall I try next? And I thought of the advice of my friend of a year before, a man whose opinions I always respected very highly, and I still do. Alcoholics Anonymous, it is very good. And so I decided then and there that I would try AA. Now I didn't know anything about the central office. I didn't know anything about sponsors.
I didn't know that all I had to do was make a simple telephone call, and that there were thousands upon thousands of you people who had gone through that valley of shadow of death that I had then gone through and had recovered, who would go to any length to help me if I was honest and sincere in my desire. I didn't know these things, ladies and gentlemen. I only knew and was convinced in my own mind that for me to drink was to die, and I didn't want to die that way.
So I found out where there was a meeting, and I came to my first meeting unsponsored and alone. And as I walked into the door of my first AA meeting, I got the most wonderful feeling, the most wonderful and satisfying feeling that I'd had in many years. There was a smiling, well-dressed, sober gentleman who met me at the door and said, My name is Justin, so I am an alcoholic. If you have an alcoholic problem, you've come to the right place.
Why did I feel so good? I felt so good because this was the first time in the whole 14 years of my problem drinking that any human being had looked at me with eyes of understanding rather than eyes of condemnation and criticism. This man made me feel like a human being with a problem, and he gave me a wonderful feeling. And then he began to tell me a little about himself. And then I realized for the first time in my life that my problem wasn't peculiar, that somebody else had gone through this valley of death and had recovered.
And then he said, and then I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I have been sober for so many, and so many months and so many weeks. And then I talked to other people, and then I realized that these people had suffered as I was then suffering, and somehow through 12 steps they had effectively recovered. But being that most alcoholics are people who, this is the only group of people that I've ever met in my life, who seemed to get a [unclear] delight out of telling anybody who would listen to them what revolting characters they used to be before they became members of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And so my problem at my first meeting, everybody wanted to tell me what they were like, you see. I wanted to get cured. I said, well, now how do you get cured, you know? Well, you follow 12 steps. And that's about all they told me about the 12 steps. They said, now let me tell you about the escape route.
[00:35:02]
So by the time the meeting started, the only thing I knew, I knew that these people had recovered from what I was then suffering with, and somehow through 12 steps they had effectively cured. So when they started the meeting and they read those 12 steps as they were read here tonight, I was all ears. Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not give themselves completely to this program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves.
This prelude gave me hope. I said, I've had it. I'll do anything to save my life. And then they said, here are the steps we took, that we suggested the program of recovery. Step one, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol. Our lives had become unmanageable. I thought, this is easy. This is easy for me. I've known this for 14 years. But then it said, come to believe a power greater than myself would restore me to sanity.
This kind of confused me. And then it said, made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God, and I was a little more confused. And as it went on, got this and got that, by the time it got to the 11th step, it was only out of respect for people's religious convictions that kept me from walking out in the middle of the Lord's prayer. I was so nauseated. I was so angry. I said, these people have misrepresented themselves to me.
They knew how desperate I was. They knew it was a matter of life and death, and yet they assured me that they had a way to save my life. So I find myself not in a place to cure disease, but I find myself in a church. They tell me on the one hand, I've got to be absolutely honest with myself, and on the other hand, I must follow not 10, not 11, but 12 steps if I will obtain and maintain my sobriety.
So they have put me in an impossible position. An impossible position. How can I, on the one hand, turn my will and my life over to the care of something that I don't honestly believe exists? Sure, I was born in a church [unclear]. My father was a very distinguished minister. I had been subjected to the most rigorous orthodox religious training all of my life, and I checked God and called on God in distress.
I thought I believed in God, until my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous when I had that moment of truth that said you've got to be absolutely honest with yourself. You've got to follow not 8, not 10, but 12 steps. Then I realized that although I'd gone through life saying God this and God that and saying my prayer, in my heart I never really believed there was any such thing as a God. Hence my frustration. Hence my anger.
Hence my determination never to come back to Alcoholics Anonymous because I didn't think it was the answer. I left there that night, determined never to come back. I said, now where shall I go now? What shall I try next? But I found myself that next week reluctantly coming back to my second meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Not with any faith, not with any hope, not with any belief that you had an answer to my problem.
I came back, ladies and gentlemen, because I realized that week that I had been everywhere. I had tried everything. I came back to my second meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous like a drowning man grasping for a straw. I came back simply because I had no place else to go. And I bought the book and I read the book and I read those stories and I said this is ridiculous. I came to AA like that for nearly three months.
Not feeling anything, not understanding anything. After I'd attended meetings that way for about three months, the lady who led the meeting one night came over to me and said to me, what is your name? I said, my name is Ben W.. Now to you old-timers, I guess you'd wonder, how could a guy come to a meeting of about 13 people for three months and they not know what his name is? Well, you know, I told you I didn't have a very high opinion of you people in the first place.
And when I came to my first meeting of AA and heard you guys talking about what terrible people you were, this didn't increase my respect for you. And at that first meeting, they were crowding around me singing the praises of AA. You know, I'd just come off a drunk. [unclear]. I want to go, you know. And the minute I turned this way, somebody else would be [unclear]. It seemed like a thousand guys were around me. There's only four or five people.
Apparently they feel they're on the same social level as I am. They're following me all out in the streets. I'm embarrassed, you know. Now these are the type of people, they'll get so funny with you, you know, when you know anything, they'll be inviting themselves in your house, you know.
[00:40:00]
And then what will my neighbors think? They'll think I have a problem, you see. A practicing alcoholic lives in a world of illusion, a world of unreality. It had never occurred to me that I'd live in the same neighborhood for 12 years. And for 12 years, my neighbors had seen the police come and drive me out of bed in my shorts for drunk and disturbing the neighborhood. And I said, I don't want these AAs to come to my house, you know.
What will my neighbors think, you know? They'll think I have a problem. So when I found out I had to come to AA, I noticed they tried to get friendly with you after they said the Lord's Prayer, you know, during coffee time. So the minute they'd say the Lord's Prayer, I would get out of there and go on home. So that's why they did not know me well enough to know what my name was. And I told them my name was Ben W..
She said, well, we noticed you're interested in what we're doing here. We see you have not missed a meeting, she says. We have watched you grow, she says. I said to myself, is she kidding? My wife's still going through with the divorce. Everybody still hates me. I still can't get my job back. Nothing happened to me. What does your character mean to you? You watch me grow. But this isn't what I said to her.
I said, oh yes, madam, AA has been so good to me. And I'd begin to tell success stories. I'd heard others say, I'd say it happened to me. You know why I did that? I did that because I like to talk. I'm just that type of guy. Now, I know there's people back there that would rather have their throats cut than to be standing up talking to a group of people like this. I'd rather have my throats cut than to sit back there and listen to you.
I'm just that type of guy. I just like to talk. So I said, at least I had sat there for three months looking forward to the day when AA thought I would be worth it and was going to ask me to talk. And I knew by the questions she asked me, they thought I was about ready, and I wasn't going to lose this opportunity by telling them, lady, you're seeing an illusion. You better wait. I haven't seen the light yet.
No, I said, AA has been so good to me. She says, well, we've been discussing you, and we think you're about ready to tell the newcomers what the program has done for you. So I'm going to put you on my program in three weeks where I'm going to conduct a meeting and a marathon. I want you to get together about a five-minute talk. And so the next day I went down to the public library and I went into the Department of Philosophy and Religion and I said to the librarian, Madam, I got my tie on and everything.
I'm a professor now. You know how drunk he is. He wants to be anything on earth but himself, you know. I'm a professor. Madam, I'm going to deliver a lecture on alcoholism. And I'm doing some research. And he gave me a couple of pamphlets by Dr. So-and-so, Dr. So-and-so. Of course, me not being familiar with medical terms, I couldn't get this great message that these great medical men were trying to convey to me.
But I didn't give up. I said, well, what do those characters do in AA? All they do is make a speech. So if you're going to make a speech, where do you go? You go to the speech department. So I went over to the speech department. I picked out a book called Famous Orations. And I looked through the introduction to those speeches. Well, I found what I considered an appropriate introduction for my debut in AA.
I can remember it verbatim. First, ladies and gentlemen, let me acknowledge your kind invitation. And express the deep appreciation I feel at being asked to come and discuss with you on this most serious and solemn subject. What did you think of a new guy come up and talk to you like that? To me, it was brilliant. I didn't know. I didn't know. But then I said, now, what did I hear one of those drunks say in AA?
I was sick and tired. [unclear] You know how they do. [unclear] And so I'm [unclear]. And the most unfortunate thing happened to me ladies and gentlemen. I forgot my speech. I knew the thing backwards, you know. I couldn't even think of the words, ladies and gentlemen. This is the most miserable experience I've ever had in my life, either
[00:45:05]
in AA or out of AA. But it was in the midst of this panic and in the midst of this fright, speaking at my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, that I found this program. I heard my voice saying to me, not what was on my written manuscript, but attempting to tell myself, as I was telling those people, a personal experience of mine as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I can remember saying, I know that this program works because I am sober and I have been for nearly three months. And when the impact of that statement reached my consciousness, my mind flashed back to what the great medical man had said just two years ago, it is impossible, incurable. And yet, in spite of what that great medical man had said, there I stood. I was sane. I was sober. I was happy. I was peaceful. I was free from the compulsion to drink alcohol. After 27 years of my whole life being revolted on alcohol, it was a wonderful feeling. It was a thing of indescribable beauty. I said many other things that night. But among other things, I said the whole concept of this program is a miracle. When I finished, they crowded around me. They congratulated me and they said, you're on the right track. You're going to be all right. Finally, some lady said to me, you certainly have a nice spiritual grasp of the program. It was as if she had spat in my face. I said, what does she mean? I don't believe in God. I'm trying to be honest.
What did I say about God? Well, pretty soon somebody else said, you have a spiritual grasp of the program. And I am confused. And on our way home, I was worried. How did I misrepresent myself to those people? What did I say? Then I remember using the word miracle to explain the concept of AA, but I was using it just in a descriptive sense because I didn't believe in miracles really. And so I went home. I went not to the Bible, but to the dictionary.
Under the heading of miracles, I found these words, miracles, anything that is amazing, anything that is wonderful, any act or happening that is beyond all human understanding. It was then, ladies and gentlemen, that I knew. It was then that I moved from complete disbelief into absolute knowledge. I knew for the first time in my life that there was something above and beyond human perception. And how did I know this? I knew it simply because I was sober and I had been for nearly three months. Then it was like I woke up and everything was positive nature that anybody had ever tried to teach me, including the Twelve Steps, came back to me and made sense. I understood what the lady meant when she said I was living a spiritual life. She simply meant, Ben W., you have learned to know yourself, to really know yourself and to be good to yourself. And as long as you do what is best for Ben W. at all times, you will of necessity do what is best for all mankind, and hence you are living a spiritual life. And that is all it is to me. You may not believe anything that I have said here tonight, but you can't deny what you see. Here stands a man who is sane. Here stands a man who is happy. Here stands a man who is peaceful. Here stands a man who has become all of those things in reality that I imagined I was under the illusion of alcohol. If you don't believe that I was an alcoholic, there's a lady that lived with me for thirty-five years. She'll tell you what I was like. I paid no dues.
I paid no fees. I made no pledges. I simply came among a group of you people, desperate, friendless and alone, trying to save my life. And you said to me, I don't care how long you're blank, I don't care how much trouble you've had, if you are as true an alcoholic as we are, here is a path, twelve simple principles. If you will take those and just do the best you can to follow them, then you will get sober. As long as you follow them, you will stay sober. You will find yourself. And when you find yourself, you will find God as you understand God. And when you find that, you will find that thing that is rather to be chosen [unclear]. You will find a real sense of peace. You will find a real sense of security, a real sense of direction that you never thought existed on this earth before.
And I didn't believe it. I said, this is an incredible thing. This is an impossible thing. And to those of you who may be new here tonight, it may seem the same way to you. I know just how you feel. Because I was one of those who came here to mock, but remained
[00:50:02]
to pray. Thank you. Applause