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Source: Chuck C – Chuck C – 1974-05-01 – Palm Springs CA – Speaker Talk – Date Unknown.mp3 File: chuck-c-chuck-c-1974-05-01-palm-springs-ca-speaker-talk-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:07:17
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Hello, I am Chuck Sue, and I'm an alcoholic. It's a goodly throng tonight. My chair is available for any good-looking woman that wants it. It's a lot of women here tonight. I think I counted about ten. And that's the best kind. I have committed myself to Joe, Joe K., I mustn't, uh, unlimited him. T.J. would say Joe Kirk, but I wouldn't say that. Because I can't bust his anonymity. But I've committed myself to Joe to talk about the Twelve Steps tonight, because he has had an order for about a year from Germany for a table mine on the Twelve Steps.
They're all over the world, but he hasn't found one yet. So I'm going to make him one tonight. But before I do, I want to have a little fun. I don't know how long it's been since you had our Texan down here. Roy, he's half a Texan wide and two Texans high. He's the first guy that sobered up in Houston, Texas. I guess Roy has about thirty-four years now. Continuous sobriety. And he says that the only time he can tell whether or not his stories are acceptable is if I steal them.
If I steal them, they're all, he's all done, because he's always following me around, and he knows that I've already used his stories, so he can't, uh, he can't use them anymore. But he says that if you're going to solve a problem, it's rather nice if you know what the problem is. If you're going to solve a problem, it's rather nice if you know what the problem is. He says it helps in the solution, if you know what the problem is.
And he says, for instance, that he's always been afraid of dogs. He says a little old girl can walk down the street with a great dame on the loose, you know, and she's not bothered by the talking. And he says a little old poodle runs out and he takes off. Scared of the dogs. And I can just see that old boy running from the poodle. That's the funniest thing you ever saw. He stands about six-seven or something like that.
And he says this always embarrassed him, and he finally found it necessary to look into his life and see why it was that he was afraid of dogs. And he got clear back to when he was seven years old, and he remembered that when he was seven years old, a dog bit him. And he says, well, that's why I'm afraid of dogs. But he said it didn't satisfy him, and he looked again at this old boy. It didn't satisfy him, and he looked again at this thing.
And he realized that the reason the dog bit him was that he was chasing a little girl at the time. And he says, all of my life, I've been chasing women and running from dogs, and dogs never was my problem in the first place. So it does something for us if we know what the problem is. We're going to try to solve it. Now, if we be alcoholic, we are caught in a trap that we can't spring. And it's necessary that we have help.
And we can't get help until we recognize the need for it.
[00:05:01]
We are a peculiar breed of cats. We can't hear till we can hear, and we can't see till we can see. And it don't make any difference who's talking. The first condition for sobriety is found in the third chapter of our book Alcoholics Anonymous. And it's in the beginning of the third chapter of that. The first line in the second paragraph, chapter three. And it says we learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholic.
This is the first step in recovery. To fully concede to our innermost selves means not only the admission, but the acceptance of the fact. So, for those who are new, if tonight somehow you can come to see the need for help to accept yourself exactly as you are where you are tonight. Regardless of where that place is. It is the beginning of recovery. We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholic.
This is the first step in recovery. Now, it's my opinion that there's an easy and a hard way to do this thing. The hard way is to try to do it yourself. The hard way is to try to do it yourself. And the easy way is to know that you can't. This is the easy way. I suspect that the greatest single incident in my entire life happened in January 1946. When the bottle destroyed me completely. Into total and absolute nothingness.
And it was only then that I could come to this program and investigate it. And I've never had any difficulty with where my sobriety came from and where the credit went for it. I can't stay sober. And I can't live and drink. I've had 10,300 and some odd days without a drink or a pill. And yet there's nothing in me that even wants to believe that I can stay sober. But I can do what our program tells me to do.
And when I do that, I don't have to drink. Now, we were talking this afternoon, some of us, and I was making the statement that so many of our people who have been sober a while, we have at least one man tonight at this meeting that has his twelfth birthday. This very night. I'm going to give him a cake. I don't know where the cake is, but I'm going to give him one. We were saying that we hear so many people now around the meetings who have been sober for a while saying that they have no drinking problem now, that their problem is a living problem.
That ain't the way it is with me. As long as I live, I will have a drinking problem. Because, you see, I can't drink and live. And of myself, I can't keep from drinking. So I'll be doing what this program tells me to do in step twelve, until you all pat me in the face with a scooper. And I'll be doing it so that I might stay sober one day at a time. One day at a time. One day at a time. The only way I can stay sober is to be comfortable right here.
And the only way I can be comfortable right here is to do the things my program tells me to do. I've heard much argument on this. I've heard many people who have been sober a long time say that if we've been in the program for a while, we have to think to drink. As far as I'm able to perceive,
[00:10:02]
we don't have to think nothing. All we have to do is to quit doing the things that keep us comfortable right here. And we wake up drunk. We wake up drunk. We don't have to think about anything. Because you and I know a way to stop that big hurt. And if it's there, we stop it. And my only chance is not to have it there. My only chance is not to have it there. It's to do these things. One day at a time to the best of my ability.
The things that my program tells me to do. And when I do that, I don't have to drink because I'm comfortable with me. Now I want to build a little on this thing because we're going to talk about 12 steps directly. That may be the second hour, but it's all right. Y'all ain't going anyplace tonight anyway. The desert round happens until two weeks. Three weeks from right now. So, long time ago, before Alcoholics Anonymous was born, and Alcoholics Anonymous will be 39 years old this year.
Before it was born, there was a man by the name of Roland. Before it was born, there was a man by the name of Roland who was an out. And he was doctoring with Dr. Carl Jung. One of my favorites of all psychologists up until now. Up until now. Dr. Jung might have been the greatest psychological mind that the world has produced up until now. And so Roland was coming to him for some help. And every time he'd come back to Dr. Jung, he was worse off.
And he finally came and he was in awful bad shape. And Dr. Jung says, Roland, medical science has done everything in its power for you and it can do no more. Psychiatry has done everything in its power for you and it can do no more. And it's now my duty to tell you that the only hope for the likes of you is a spiritual awakening. Now this was before Alcoholics Anonymous was born. Sometime later, Alcoholics Anonymous was born.
Two men talking to each other about drinking and about an answer. And they worked out a program and proved that it would work if we worked it and wrote it down and gave it to us in our book Alcoholics Anonymous. And it's been working for many of us for a long time because we work it. Now after this thing had been worked out and written down, Bill heard about Roland and about what Dr. Jung had told him.
And so he wrote Dr. Jung a letter. At this time he lived in Zurich, Switzerland and he was a pretty old man. And Bill asked him how come he had known enough to tell Roland that his only chance was a spiritual awakening. Many of you have read this. It's been in the grapevine a time or two. And Dr. Jung wrote back and said that he had always known that the alcoholic's basic problem was his search for unity.
His search for unity. To join the human race. To live with people. And maybe with God. And he couldn't make it. And when he found alcohol, it came the nearest to unity of anything he'd ever known. And he latched on to it as a sort of a chemical unity. Because it let him live a little bit easier with himself and took the rough edges off the people around him. Dr. Jung quoted one of my favorite verses in the good book.
As the heart. H-A-R-T. As the heart panteth after the water brook, so panteth my soul. The Waterbrook, So Painted My Soul After Thee, O God, A Search for Unity, And We Thought
[00:15:10]
We'd Found It When We Found the Bottle, Now, Let's Go Back a Little Bit, Because This Thing of ours is so fraught with miracles, it is so easy to see the finger of God all through our beginnings, and up until now, as a matter of fact, if we look. And here's a little series of events. Roland went to the Oxford Movement, hunting for a way to have a spiritual awakening, and I guess he found one. And he got sober. And he ran into Hebby Thatcher. And Hebby was a chap who had drunk a great deal with our beloved Bill in days gone by, and so up may Hebby got sober. And on that particular sober period, he had 18 months without drinking.
And Hebby went to see Bill, and told Bill about what he had found in the Oxford Movement. And Bill listened pretty good until he got to talking about a God of our very own. And that turned him off, because he thought he was an agnostic. And he just drank a little bit more of that flick. And then he used to listen to Thatcher, because he had gone soft, you know. He'd hit the sawdust trail, and that wasn't for Bill. But he kept on drinking until he didn't feel good. You see, the wonder about this drinking, we get sober and we feel so damn good that we drink a little to feel better so we can feel worse. That's the way it works with an outlet. And so Bill finally was in bad shape. And he was back in Tom's hospital again. He spent a good deal of time in Tom's hospital. And he was in a little worse shape than usual this time. And he heard Dr. Silkworth telling his wife, Bill's wife, Lois, that the only chance for him was gone, that he was beyond help, that maybe he had six more months to live until he would either die or have to be put into an institution as a vegetable.
And there was nothing further that medical science could do for him. And Bill wasn't feeling too good anyway. He might have been in a little depression. And this sort of speeded up his depression a little bit. And he got to thinking, well, and he got to thinking, well, this isn't a very bright outlook, is it? And then he got to thinking again about what Ebby had told him. And he thought maybe, just maybe, there might be something to this thing. He knew that he had lost the battle. And he cried out in total abandonment of self, God, if there be a God, reveal yourself to me now. And something happened to Bill.
He called it in his many years that I knew him, his hot flash. The, uh, the room lit up. He had no weight to his body, no, no, no. It was just a thing that happened. It's quite a deal. And when he came out of it, he didn't know what had happened. And the first time Dr. Silkworth came in, he told him about this experience that he had.
[00:20:02]
And he said to him, Doc, do you think that I have gone completely off my rocker? Dr. Silkworth says to him, Bill, he says, I don't know whether you have or not, but if you have, stay off. This is the first sense you've made to me in a long time. And Bill immediately started trying to, uh, carry the message to the other alcoholics in the hospital. And it was out of this that our program developed. Now, many of you know that Bill worked with many alcoholics without anybody getting sober. He took them to his house. He had a lot of them living right there in the house with him. Lois was cooking for him. He'd get them off a bar stool, go down to the bowery and get them, bring them into the house. And, uh, as soon as he got his back turned, they'd steal a piece of his furniture and go out and hock it for him. Jug of muskadoodle.
One guy even committed suicide in his bathroom. And nobody stayed sober but Bill. Bill stayed sober. And after six months of this, he had been, uh, quite a sensation on Wall Street, Bill Att. And Wall Street took note of the fact that he was sober and gave him a little assignment to go down to, uh, Akron and get some proxies on a certain company. And he went after him, and he went after him, but somebody had beaten him to it.
But prior to the time that he went to Akron, he was talking to Dr. Silkworth again. He's one of the few men that had something to do with this society in the early days that I didn't get to meet. Nearly all of them I met, but I didn't meet Dr. Silkworth, and I'm very sorry about it. Because he had so much to do with our society. And when he found that Bill was going down to Akron, he told Bill, he says, maybe that the, uh, poor record, the poor track record that you've got is because you're trying to sell all these people your spiritual experience. And drunks don't sell that easy on a spiritual experience. Maybe you should start telling them about the physical side of the disease, twofold nature of the disease, the allergy of the body and the obsession of the mind, and identify with them physically first. And if you get over that, then tell them about your spiritual awakening, and maybe they'll buy that. And Dr. Bob's the first guy that he worked that on. First the physical part of the disease, and then the answer. Dr. Bob bought it, and he became the second member of our society.
And so it started. And they worked out a program of recovery, and worked it, and proved that it would work if we work it. And he wrote it down in a book. And you heard it read tonight. Started rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our paths. And it goes ahead and talks a little bit about, about if you've decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length, any length to get it, then you're ready to take certain steps.
And it talks about half measures availing us nothing. And it talks a little about rigorous honesty, rigorous honesty. And it talks about letting go absolutely, abandoning ourselves completely to this simple program. Why? Because we can't get out alone. We gotta have help. And in order to get help, we have to see that there's nothing ahead of us but permanent insanity or an alcoholic death. Otherwise, we will not take the steps.
And it finally gets down to the point where it says, here are the steps we took. Here are the steps we took, which I suggested is a program of recovery. Here are the steps we took. CWOK took. CWOK took. Now that's the line that fools all of us.
[00:25:06]
You know, we're alcoholics and we don't like little old lines like here, the steps we took. There's just one word in it, just five letters. We don't like little words. We don't like anything little. We like big things. We're big operators. And they've had a few psychedelics or, you know, traumatic or something like that. I don't know what those words mean, but they're good words. We like words like that. But here are the steps we took. Don't mean nothing except life.
That's all it means if you're an alcoholic. Life. Here are the steps we took, which I suggested is a program of recovery. Now, the first step says we admitted we were powerless over alcohol. That our lives had become unmanageable. That's a twofold admission of defeat. Powerless over alcohol, physical. Unmanageable, life, mental. I've lost the battle twice over. Now, no alcoholic can walk up to that and take it without a little preparation.
I doubt very much if there's a person in this room that analyzed himself and decided to turn himself in to alcoholics and alcoholics. It just don't work that way. We're not the kind of people that run around surrendering on every other street corner. Something's got to happen before we'll take step one. And that is to see that we've lost the battle. We have lost the battle of life. We need help. A twofold admission of defeat in the first step. The second step says we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Now, there's an implication here. It isn't necessary to restore a sane person to sanity. If you and I need to be restored to sanity, we are nuts. So step one, we've lost the battle of life. Step two, we're nuts. Now, that's pretty fast going for an outlier, isn't it? Pretty fast going. Third step's worse than both of them. Because the third step says we got to give up the keys. Now, I can see you monkeys giving up your keys.
The only way anybody ever got my keys was to wait till I passed out. I can come out of a pub at three o'clock in the morning with my wife or yours. She'd say, honey, give him the keys. I'll drive. You say, whose car? Whose car are you going to drive? This is my car. If you're going with me, get in. You see? Number three says you got to give up the keys. Get a new driver. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God.
Now, this is absolutely contrary to our entire thinking and action pattern in life up until now. It's just exactly like I walked straight north for 43 years, made a 180 degree turn and walked south for 28. It's a total reversal of motivation and action in my life. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God. Now, this is quite a deal. We need help, and we're going to headquarters.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God. A. The Decision to Turn Your Will and Your Life Over to the Care of God, Now there's no sense in turning your will and your life over to the care of God, a God that you can't trust, if I'd ask you all how many of you believe in God, I'd probably get at least 90%, you know, but if I ask you how many of you trust God, I might get an entirely different percentage,
[00:30:21]
Has it ever occurred to you, if I turn my will and my life over to the care of God, self-concern has no further place in my life? This is something, isn't it? If I turn my will and my life over to the care of God, self-concern has no further place in my life. If I have self-concern, it's nothing in the world but saying, look, Dad, I don't believe you're quite as familiar with this situation as I am. I've got to get you a little help, you know?
They have a saying in Australia that's absolutely beautiful. It's in all their literature, and they talk about it much in their meetings. They say, the measure of your anxiety is the measure of your distance from God. Think about that. That's beautiful. The measure of your anxiety is the measure of your distance from God. If we turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, we are no longer dependent on men.
Now, men, people, don't go out of our lives. They become more meaningful than they ever did, but we're not dependent on them. Our priorities, we should get straight, and for the new ones, if you could just get them straight in the beginning, it would save a lot of trouble. I've turned my will and my life over to the care of God, so there is where my dependency is. There is only one security in this life, and it's for the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic alike.
And that's in my own relationship with my own God. I want to tell you about a couple of people lately that have done me in. There was a gal that came to the program the same time I did, twenty years ago. And she worked a good program, and she worked hard. She carried the message to the women's federal prison on Terminal Island for years, almost single-handedly. She was a hell of a gal. And a while back, something got between her and her program and her God. She forgot her priorities. It was necessary for her to commit suicide, just because she forgot her priorities.
There was a kid in San Francisco, a kid I loved just like my own son. He said he married my son. He was forty-seven years old, my oldest son. He came to the program at twenty-two, and I was in on it. And he had twenty-five straight years. I went up every once in a while and talked at his birthday. I loved him very, very much, and he spent much time with me a few years back. He was a very devout Catholic. He had an uncle who was a priest. Many of you know him. And a while back, he made a change in his connection in business. He was in the securities business in San Francisco.
Incidentally, up until he made his change, he was working for a man that was in my wedding party forty-nine years ago. Hell of a guy. And this chap thought he had a better offer, and he quit and went to the new firm.
[00:35:02]
And immediately he knew that he'd made a mistake. And he went back and tried to get back into the firm that he'd left, and for some reason he wouldn't take it. And he got to brooding over this. And his image was gone to hell in the financial world in San Francisco, and he couldn't take it. And he called me and wanted me to okay a little Librium so he could sleep. He couldn't sleep. He was walking the floor all night. And I said, I'm not a doctor. I don't prescribe pills.
And the only thing I can tell you is that my book doesn't say we turn our will and our lives over to the care of God and Librium. No, I dare you, please. But I loved the guy, so I went up there, and I spent a few hours with him. And I knew that I'd done nothing. I knew that it was just, he couldn't hear. Because, you see, his image was between him and his program and his God. And being a good Catholic, he told me, he says, I'm going to Mass every morning.
And I'm going to confession. And I'm taking the sacrament. And God's turned his back on me. He won't listen. He won't answer me. And I tried to show him, you know, that he had allowed something to get between him and his program and his God. His priorities were wrong. Nothing happened the first time, and a little later I went back. And this time I thought that he was going to be all right. Because I dwelt on the fact that if we'd be alcoholic, life, our home, our jobs, our money, our automobiles, everything in life, including life itself, depends on our spirit.
Spiritual fitness. On keeping our priorities where they belong. And I thought he had it. But he didn't. And he had to leave. This is a wicked, wicked lesson. But it sure is a deadly. It sure is a deadly. I'd better jolly well do these things, and I'd better keep my priorities where they belong. Because I'm an alcoholic. And I can't live and drink. And of myself I can't keep from drinking. And I need that same help, much worse today than I did when I got here twenty-eight years ago. Because now I love life, and then I would have loved to die. You see? So we made a decision to turn our will to life over to the care of God.
Now, the fourth step is worse than all three of them. The fourth step says we made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Now, this is the first action step. The first three are decisions. The fourth one is an action step. And we are told to write it down. To get a thick pad and a long pencil and start writing. And we write down an inventory. The plus and the minus. And there told me, the boys that I was talking to, that I was supposed to put down anything that I could find that might go in the plus column. And the only thing I could get down there was that I was still warm.
So we made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Now, I don't believe this means that we have to write down everything we ever did wrong in our lives. I don't believe that. It's a moral inventory. We ought to write enough to know our motivations. It makes us tick. Why we do what we do. And it's not ever a lie that we're ever told. Or every time we ever turn left when we should have turned right. Particularly, must we write something that we don't want to.
[00:40:08]
If you got something there that you don't want to put down on paper, put it down. That you don't have to put down everything. And when we put it down, we're to share it. And here's step five. And step five is the worst thing that any alcoholic will ever have to do if he lives to be ten thousand years old. Because we've written this junk down and now we have to share it. And there's a sneaker in there. Five says we admitted to God, to ourselves. And if it stopped there, we're a cinch. We can get out here in the alley and do that and nobody knows but me and God.
But they put a sleeper in there. And another human being. That's bad. Somebody's going to be walking the streets knowing what's inside of me. When we get through with that, if we've got any ego left, we ain't done it. We'd better do it again. That's an ego buster king size. We admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. And having written it down and having shared it, we become willing to give it away and we give it away.
I got to spend a minute on this too. All over these United States, I find people beating their brains out over their defects of character. People that have been sober a long time are beating their brains out over their defects of character. I rode from Shreveport, Louisiana to Big D in a car with some of the town north people who had taken already 23 inventories since January. And this was October.
23 inventories. And fifth steps. There's some biddy down there someplace that they'd go and pay to take their fifth steps. Isn't that awful? Seriously. I don't believe that's the thing we're supposed to do. My book don't tell me that. My book says I write it, I share it, I become willing to give it away and give it away. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Humbly ask him to remove a shortcoming. Now don't sound to me like I've got to beat my brains out. If I had gotten rid of my defects of character, I wouldn't be a member of this leper colony.
I would have done away with it. Then I wouldn't have had to come here. He's got the flu, so I let him go. But if I'd have known he was leaving, I'd have made him leave a dollar on this table, I tell you that. He sneaked out before the collection. Anyhow, we became willing to give these things away and we give them away. If I'd have had to work out my defects of character one at a time, I'd have died 28 years ago. I like to do it the way it says. Become willing to give them away and give them away. That's his business now, it's none of mine. Right?
Now we've got two more in the first nine. And these two steps are the most immediately satisfying steps in the whole program. If you haven't done them, do them. They're beautiful. We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except one to do so with injuries on their others. You take these two steps and you feel satisfied.
You take these two steps and you feel like the weight of the world's rolled off your back. You feel clean inside, like you're in an inside shower.
[00:45:02]
And I gotta tell you a little story on that in real hurry along. Many of you have heard this, but it makes a lot of sense to me every time I think about it. Ten or a dozen years ago a guy called me on a Friday night, and he says, Chuck, I'm sitting here with my six gun in my lap, and I'm gonna blow my brains out. But he says, Jim told me not to shoot myself until I talk to you. And he says, now what do you got to say?
And I said, well, you called me on a bad night. I said, I'm talking tonight, tomorrow night, and Sunday night. He said, Monday night's open. Now if you want to come down and see me Monday night, come on down, and if you don't, go ahead and blow your brains out. And we hung up. 7.30 Monday night the doorbell rang. I went to the door and there was my man. And he came in, and he not only was an out, he was a compulsive gambler, and he'd lost a lot of money to professional gamblers that he didn't have.
And we were talking about this, and at 2 o'clock in the morning we were at the exact point where we are right now, steps eight and nine. And I'm sitting there telling this monkey, you've got to go to these people, and you've got to tell them that you're not the big shot you would have had them believe, that you're an alcoholic, and that you've found a way to live that might let you live the rest of your life without a drink.
And there's a condition in it that says we've got to make amends. And that's exactly why you're here, to make amends. Now you tell these monkeys you admit to debt, it's your debt, and you'll pay it as soon as you can. But you ain't got no money. And he says, my God Chuck, I can't do that, they'll kill me. I says, that's so, you won't have suicide on your mind? You're out of that, bitch. And the old boy started laughing, and he never quit.
He never quit, he's still laughing. He's walked the street from that night to this, a free man. Nobody ever killed him, and he did exactly that. Don't be afraid of these two steps. The Lord of the world goes right off your back when you do them. And you don't think about what's going to happen to you, you do them. Now that's nine steps. And if you and I have done these nine steps honestly, we are now surrendered.
Perhaps the one question I get more than any other is, how do you surrender? Well thank God, the bottle did it for me the first time. The bottle killed me in January 1946. And I got to the program surrendered, and everything in the fifth chapter was something I wanted to do. The first time I ever read it, or heard it read. But if you get to the program not surrendered, and you do the first nine steps honestly, you're now surrendered.
Because that's what those first nine steps are for, to squeeze us right out of ourselves. It's just like you had your head in a vice, and every step somebody takes a turn on that lever. Squeezes us right out of ourselves. That's the way you surrender. If you didn't get here surrendered. Do these things. Now we stay level with ten. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we're wrong promptly admitted it.
That keeps us level. Now that isn't going back, that's a daily thing. How have I done today with these steps? How have I done practicing these principles in all of my affairs today? So we stay level with this. And we come into the AA way of life with 11 and 12. Had it not been for step 11, I would have died 28 years ago. Because you see I can't run my life. I had 43 years to run my life. And I gave it everything I had, and I lost.
[00:50:02]
In my last ten years I gave it the worst. I gave it my wife, our kids, our home, my job, my health, my sanity, and my money. And I lost. So I can't run my life, I can't run yours, I can't run business, I can't run nothing. And I know it, but it's of no consequence to me. Because I've got step 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand it. Praying only for knowledge of his will for us, and if I had to carry it out.
I've lived for 28 years in total expectancy of guidance and direction. And I get it. And you might say, how do you know? I've got a very simple little yardstick. I never had it so good. I never had it so good. This is the only easy life I've ever known, the only good life that's ever been mine in my entire lifetime. Now I've changed that step a little for me. I get up in the morning and I say, look dad, I'm reporting for duty.
Now I'm going to move it around, I'm going to do the best I can with what I've got. And all I want out of you is a little guidance and direction prior to carrying it out. Sure thing, can't go back to business. Doing my thing in total expectancy of guidance and direction. And again, I get it. And without that step, I would never be with you tonight. I love this step. It's one of the best in the book.
And we still have one more. Step 12. And it says, having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps. We tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all of our affairs. Now there's also an implication here. This thing says, having had a spiritual awakening as the result of the first 11 steps. Now if it so happens, we ain't took them. It's not very realistic to figure that we've got a spiritual awakening coming, is it?
You don't get a spiritual awakening as a result of 11 steps you ain't took. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps. And it's my opinion that no man and no woman can take them. Honestly, without having a spiritual awakening. That's the way to get a spiritual awakening. And you never know it till you do them. Now I think it's entirely possible that we have spiritual awakenings and don't know it.
I got to tell you one more little thing. I'm about to quit too. I've been quit for a half an hour. And I didn't know it. And I didn't know it. And I didn't know it. And I didn't know it. And I didn't know it. I told you in the first place, the second hour, huh? It's, oh, well, hell, then I've got plenty time. I thought it was 11 o'clock. I was just going to congratulate you people for sitting still this long.
Long time ago at the old Broadway group which met in Townsend Hall. On South Broadway. And the meeting I was talking in was Tuesday noon and it was raining pitchforks. Oh, it was raining hard. And we were having a meeting there at noon. And after the talk was over, a guy came up to me who was well-dressed and looked quite affluent. And he says to me, Chuck, when in the hell am I going to have this spiritual awakening?
He says, people keep saying, keep coming back, keep coming back, keep coming back, and it'll happen. But he says, don't. Well, I says, how long have you been coming back? And he says, eight years. Well, this is pretty exciting to me, you know. And I says to him, well, have you had any trouble? No, he says, I've never had a drink since my first meeting. And being looking so good, I says, what else has happened to you?
And he started it. And hell, everything good has happened to that man. And before he got through telling me about it, I'm laughing like a hyena, you know. And he gets mad as hell.
[00:55:00]
He thinks I'm making fun of him. And so he tells me about it. And I said to him, let's just look at this thing a minute. Could you stay sober before you came here? And he said, no. You came here, and you've lived eight years without a drink. He says, that's right. I says, did these good things happen to you before you came? And he says, no, they didn't. But you came here, and these things happened to you.
And everything good has been coming into your life. And he says, yes. I says, man, you've had it for eight years and don't know it. What is the spiritual way? It's the good life. What is the spiritual way? It's the good life, isn't it? The good life. Now all he had to do was start thanking God, and he's got the whole package. Having had a spiritual awakening is the result of these steps. We tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all of our affairs.
Now that's a lifetime job. That's my job from now on. It has been for 28 years. Hell, I've been retrogressing here eight years now. Twenty-eight years and four months, as a matter of fact, huh? And that's all I do. That's my job. I carry this message to the alcoholic who still suffers to the best of my ability. And I practice these principles in all of my affairs. That's home, business, play, Alcoholics Anonymous, church, if God wants.
Everything in life. That's what it means if you practice these principles in all of your affairs. Every place. Everything you do, you practice the same principles so it makes everything just alike. There is nothing more or less important than another, and there's nothing more or less spiritual than another. If you're practicing these principles in business, is it any less spiritual than in Alcoholics Anonymous?
Huh? Not if you're practicing the same principles. If you're practicing these principles at home, is it any less spiritual than in Alcoholics Anonymous? No. Is it any less spiritual than in Alcoholics Anonymous? No. It tickles the hell out of me when we say Sunday morning Alcoholics Anonymous meeting is the spiritual meeting. Can one Alcoholics Anonymous meeting be more spiritual than another? If you're practicing the same principles in both of them?
Not as I see it. As I see it. In all of our affairs. Now that's all I've done for 28 years. That's all I've done. And it's been pretty good, and now in quitting I'm going to tell you what happened to me fast. And this is the best part of it, and I hate to do it fast. I came to meetings every night of the week for six months with a great fear upon me that he couldn't have this thing. I didn't think I had enough left spiritually, mentally, or physically to get it.
I didn't get here with anything left. I fell on my face for three and a half years after my last drunk. That's the kind of a body I brought. Took me over six months to put the serenity prayer together in English. I couldn't make that thing make sense. People would get up here and talk about it, and I knew it was meaningful to them. And I tried my damnedest to make those words fit, and I couldn't do it.
And that's the kind of a mind I brought. But after six months of a meeting every night, I discovered that I was sober. Had not had a drink or a pill for six months. Now that's quite a discovery. Incidentally, it was then I started talking, and I haven't shut up since. Incidentally, it was then I started talking, and I haven't shut up since. And I'm not going to. It was a good start. I discovered I was sober.
Another six months went by, and I discovered something had happened in the household. Seemed like the war was over. They'd quit chasing me with a blue paper. And that ain't a bad discovery. Another six months went by, or maybe… Another six months went by, or maybe a year, and I discovered I was still trying to clean up my desk. You see, the boss had sent word to the house that if I ever stepped foot in the plant again, he was going to throw me through the window.
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And the window to which he referred don't open. And I was there before I got here, because I didn't know how to find you people. You see, my keen alcoholic mind told me that you couldn't possibly be in the phone book. You see, they don't anonymous in a phone book, do they? So I had a look, and that's the story of my life. So here you got it, as far as I'm concerned. So I had to call people and ask them if they knew anybody that knew anybody in alcoholic anonymous.
Because I knew you weren't in the phone book. And so I had gone to the office before I got to my first day of meeting. And I knew the old boy was going to throw me through the window, because, you see, it done me a big favor. The Friday before Christmas, 1945. He called me in, and he said, Chuck, you've had a lot of trouble this year. Now, he didn't mention alcohol, but he knew that I knew what he meant when he said trouble.
And he said, I think I know the reason for it. You see, he was non-alcoholic, so he knew why. And he said to me, I think it's because of the pressure you're under. And I'm going to take a little pressure off of you. Maybe next year there won't be so much pressure and there won't be so much trouble. And instead of shooting me, as he had every right to do, he gave me $3,000 for a Christmas present. And if any of you have ever drunk any liquor, you know that the one thing that's worse for an alcoholic than bad fortune is good fortune.
So I got drunk on the way home. And I don't show until last January. And he'd missed me. And he sent word to the house that if I ever set foot in the flat again, out the window I went, see. And I knew that, but I had to go down there. And I went. And he came in and threw me out. And fortunately for me, I was on the phone. And it was his phone and he was a frugal man. And so as I'm talking over the telephone, he gets my equipment all out of the way so he'd have a straight shot to the window.
He moves my drafting boards and gets a clear path right to the window. And I hung up the phone and he started at me. And I couldn't have defended myself with a shotgun. You can't hit anybody, you know, when you're jumping like I was. I'd just come off a four-week blackout. And all I could do was say, Victor, leave me alone. I don't work for you anymore. I'm down here to clean up this desk. I'm here to do the things you paid me for last year that I didn't do.
And as soon as I get even with you, I'll get the hell out of here on my own power. And you'll never owe me a penny as long as you live. But for God's sake, leave me alone. I've got to get even with you. And he stopped in his tracks. He says, what the hell's happened to you, Charlie? And I says, don't know. And I didn't. I didn't know. But he knew something had happened. And I said to him, if you want to hear what I do know, sit down and I'll tell you.
And he sat down at my desk and he got up an hour later. And he was crying like a baby. And he stuck out his hand and he said, Charlie, if you're going to live like that, I want to live with you. A couple of years later, I discovered I was still trying to clean up my desk. And business was good. Business was plumb good. Another year went by and I discovered that my own state of being, my life was better than anything I'd ever dreamed of.
And now maybe five, maybe six years have gone by. And I discovered I was never alone anymore. I had walked alone all my life. I was never alone anymore. I had a God of my very own and wherever I am, he is. And it all came out of doing these simple little things for Chebrak, one day at a time. And I think when we make the great discovery, the search is over and life begins. And I submit to you that it's an inside job.
Every bit of it's an inside job. We uncover the thing we've been looking for all our lives and discover ourselves, which includes our relationship to each other and to God.
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It's fabulous. It's absolutely fabulous. And it comes right out of doing these simple things for sobriety and sobriety only. I never spent five seconds on any related disorder. And I had them all. Let's see, divorced me, the kids wouldn't spit on me, the boss throwing me through the window. No health, no sanity, no money, no home, no job, no nothing. But I didn't have a condition of any kind on my stride.
I came here so that I could get sober, stay sober one day at a time. To rub out what I could of my record before I kicked off. And that's the only reason I wanted sobriety. I didn't want sobriety for myself. My life was over and I knew it. And it was all right with me. But such time as I had left, I must spend changing the record. Because I didn't want the kids and their mother and the boss to remember me as nothing but a tongue-chewing babbling idiot drunk.
And I did these things for sobriety. And everything came with it. Everything came with it. We are the most fortunate peoples on the face of the earth. You're not. Why? Because we have a terminal illness. And because our illness is progressive. And because the time comes when it's impossible to survive without an action. And we come here willing to settle for the meanest old unhappy sobriety on the face of the earth.
Just so we don't have to drink anymore. And we do these things and we find sobriety. And we find each other. And together we find God. God bless you. Thank you very much.