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Source: Chuck C – Eugene OR. -1976 – Speaker Talk – Date Unknown.mp3 File: chuck-c-eugene-or-1976-speaker-talk-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:17:33
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Thank you. I'm Chuck C., and I'm an alcoholic. Hi. You sure are a fine-looking bunch. I don't know why we couldn't take a collection tonight. Passing up an awful good chance, I think. It's impossible for anybody to get big in Alcoholics Anonymous. We hear about people being best known or the best speakers or the best this or the best that. It seems to me that there's no way that anybody can grow up in Alcoholics Anonymous. For instance, one guy listened to me and get drunk, and listened to your chairman and get sober. And he don't know nothing that I didn't teach him.
Many years ago, I was talking at Montebello, a suburb of Los Angeles, and it was a Sunday night meeting. And after the thing was over, a little lady came up to me, and I believe she was an non-alcoholic. Excuse me. And she said to me, Chuck, I've heard every speaker in the world of any consequence. She said, I've heard FDR, I've heard Churchill, I've heard the Pope, and just this morning I heard Bishop Oxman of Methodist Church preach sermon. And she said, this is the finest talk I've ever heard in my life. Speaking of me, of course.
Now for about 15 or 20 minutes, I was the finest speaker in the world, because she'd heard them all. And I was the best. But it came time eventually for me to go home. And I had to leave the room through the only door. And as I started to leave, there was a drunk standing there in the door. And he said to me, Chuck, when in the goddamn hell are you going to change your pitch? You're keeping me drunk. I'm in a drunk department. So you see, from the finest speaker in the world, nothing.
Some 15 minutes. Because there isn't another you in the entire universe. You're the only one. God don't make mistakes. And if he'd made two of us just like one of us, it'd be unnecessary. So we do our own thing. The only reason I'm standing here is to share me with anybody that wants to be in love. That's the only reason I'm here. I happen to love this program and I love its people. It's no chore for me to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I come merely for one reason, and that's to share me with anybody that wants to be in love.
And actually, you've already heard my sermon. Because those of you who can see have seen me. And that's it. Because whereas I was a tongue-chewing, babbling idiot drunk, tonight I'm sober.
[00:05:18]
And I have passed a test with a number of you here. The saliva test, that is. And nobody can accuse me of a drink or a pill. So that's meaningful to me. Whereas I was one of the most miserable amongst men, tonight I'm not miserable at all. I'm at peace with me and with you and with the living God that made us all. So that's the sermon. There is no way that I could have gotten from where I was to here. No way on my own. I said I'm an alcoholic, and this is what that means to me.
I cannot live and drink, and of myself I can't keep from drinking. Now that is a statement that's just as true tonight as it was thirty-five years ago. And yet I haven't had to take a drink or a sedative or tranquilizing pill for thirty years and eight months. But still that statement is just as true as it was thirty years ago. I cannot live and drink, and of myself I can't keep from drinking. Well why am I not drunk tonight? This is Saturday night. Thursday night's kick-off night.
You start oiling the machinery on Thursday. You get in high gear on Friday. You paint Saturday. And you taper off Sunday so you can go to work Monday. Now the time comes when you taper off some Sunday so you can go to work some Monday. So why am I not drunk tonight? There's only one reason. There's only one reason. I have the thing I was looking for in the bottle. I have the thing. Now what is the thing? It's the ability to live comfortably, peacefully, and joyously with me.
And in my book that's sobriety. And anything short of it is partial sobriety. When I came to the program thirty years and eight months ago, I think ninety-seven percent of us thought if we haven't had a drink today we're sober. We talked much about putting the plug in the jug. Put the plug in the jug! You know. Because if we haven't had a drink today we're sober. Now that wasn't very meaningful to me because I was a periodic the last ten years of a twenty-five year drinking career. And I put the plug in the jug after every drunk for ten years.
That was not my problem. I could easily put the plug in the jug. But my problem was taking the plug out of the jug. And I continued to do it for ten years. The last ten years. Now the funny part of it was that I could look at my record between every two drunks for ten years and come up with the profound conclusion that I'd learned my lesson.
[00:10:00]
This time it's going to be different. Right up until the last drunk. Now my record had gotten rather juicy by this time. I'm going to run through it quickly because I don't like too much to talk about what has been. I like to talk about what is. But my record was about the same as yours. First you get drunk and then you get drunker. Stay drunk a little longer. And then you get into a little trouble. Right around home. You know.
You get into a little trouble. And then your trouble starts to spread. And it covers everything you cover. For instance, I started having trouble with the gendarmes. They would capture me and detain me without my permission. Now this is one of the things I can't well understand. Because I never got to the point where I was comfortable in jail. I simply don't like it in jail. And yet my family thought I must love it because I spent much time there.
Many of you have heard this but you're going to hear it again because I started on the wrong track. I had more trouble with fleas than anybody I've ever known. I've only run into five people in thirty years that had trouble with fleas as I did. My bedroom would get billions of fleas in. And I'd lie there trying to get those fleas off of me. And they'd roll over my hands. And I'd wear myself out. And then I just had to lie there and breathe fleas.
Now that ain't good living. Spatuling to breathe those fleas. And then the fleas became spiders big as this. Coming down from the ceiling. And that's nerve wracking. They were not even moved to get out of their way. The spiders finally turned into elephants. I may be the only person that ever lived in Beverly Hills that was charged by a herd of elephants. That almost never happens in Beverly Hills.
And they almost ran me out of the county. I had considerable trouble with music with no visible means of support. I'll never forget the first time I heard the music. I would say it was about seven years before I got the program. And I was coming off of a bad one and I went to the kitchen for a glass of buttermilk. And the tea kettle was sitting on the stove. And out of the steam came the most beautiful symphony I ever heard in my life.
And I backed up and I looked at that thing and, you know, it was astounding. I said to me, isn't this something? This old tea kettle suddenly become a receiving set. Greatest phenomenon of modern times. And I went out and herded the family in.
[00:15:22]
know, and there was lots of good music, but you couldn't turn it off, and it came out of peculiar places, it would come out of the lights, out of the shower, out of the toilet, no knobs, and then I started meeting the people, and talking to them, and they talked to me, and they weren't there, you know. I think perhaps the most difficult thing my family had to put up with. Many times we'd all be in the same living room and I'd have company and they wouldn't have any. They still shake their heads a little.
Then I'd come to and I'd have cuts and bruises all over me, tongue that thick, all full of holes, and I wouldn't know how I got it. They called that an alcoholic convulsion. And I had to run out of convulsions before I could come to this program. I had to run out. And I did, in January 1946. I want to tell you a little bit about it. I had called on me for the first time. I called on me. I'd been drinking 15 years, and I'd drunk pretty well according to a code for 15 years. And here I found myself not drinking according to my own code. I didn't like the way I was drinking, so I had a session with me, and I came up with a profound conclusion that it was a personal weakness, something I had to overcome to get rid of. Alcoholics don't like personal weaknesses in anybody, and much less in ourselves.
And so I started working on my problem 10 years before I got here. And I worked on it very diligently and very hard. The harder I worked, the worse it got. And the worse it got, the harder I worked. And the farther backwards I went, the greater was the obsession that I had to win. And I was saying to myself, five years after everybody quit listening to me, I beat this thing, and it's the last thing I ever do. It's getting that close to me, it's the last thing I ever do. Now, I wrote her what the bookie says someplace, in the gates of insanity and death. And that's what I did. My last drunk today started the Friday before Christmas, 1945. My boss called me in, and I knew that it was curtains, because I knew I had it coming. Friday before Christmas, nice place to get thrown out, you know, nice time. And I went in, and instead of throwing me out, he started talking to me, which was a good sign. And this is what he said to me. He says, Charlie, you've had a lot of trouble this year. Being a non-alcoholic, you had it all figured out. He says, I think I know the reason. I think it's because of the pressure you're under. And so see, I'm going to take a
[00:20:06]
little of the pressure off of you, and maybe next year you won't have so much pressure, and you won't have so much trouble. And instead of shooting me, as you had every right to do, he gave me three thousand bucks for a Christmas present, to take the pressure off of me. The Friday before Christmas, 1945. And if y'all don't think he took the pressure off of me, you're nuts. There's one thing worse for an alcoholic than bad fortune, and that's good fortune. So I got drunk on the way home. I remember nothing from the Friday before Christmas till after the middle of January, 1946. Best I can figure out, it was a four-week blackout, during which time I lay in bed drinking Cock around. Every time I'd open my eyes, I drank.
So I had nothing in my body but whiskey. And yet sometime after the middle of January, 1946, I came to with the clearest head I've ever known. Now, my body had nothing in it but booze, because I never ate when I drank. I drank when I drank. And I had nothing in me but booze. But I came to with the clearest head I've ever known. And without knowing why, because I knew nothing of alcoholism. Nothing. Nobody did thirty years ago. But I knew that I'd lost the battle of life.
And it was the first time in forty-three years that I had ever admitted defeat. But I knew that I'd lost the battle of life. I also knew why my good wife, after twenty years, was divorcing me. I might quickly add, without cause. I'd given her twenty of the best years of my life, hadn't I? And she'd divorced me. Our kids wouldn't even come home when I was around, if they could help it, in any way, shape, form, or manner. They wouldn't even come home. This same boss at Zedward's house, that if I ever stepped foot in the plant again, he was going to throw me through the window.
And the window to which he referred, don't open. It was plain glass. I totally and completely accepted the fact that morning that everything dear to me in life was gone and should be gone, and that I was not entitled to have it back. Now, I want to say that again, because that's what my life was based on for the last thirty years. I totally and completely 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. And it became very necessary to me that morning to be sober to the time. I also accepted death, because on the next to the last time out, I had had a little experience that I figured and the doctors figured would never duplicate itself. I had gone to the kitchen again after a glass of buttermilk in a withdrawal period. Mrs. C. and Richard were sitting in the living room. They heard me let out a beller and heard me hit the floor, and they figured I was in another convulsion. And they came running out there to keep me from swallowing my tongue if they could. But I wasn't convulsing. I was just lying there on the kitchen floor as peaceful as anybody you ever saw. They tell me I was a peculiar color. I was blue. And they couldn't wake me up. And they got all exercised with one of the oxygen squads in Beverly Hills receiving hospital. And they came
[00:25:02]
down, and I have reason to believe they brought me around. I remember what happened after I came to. There was a young doctor with him. And he said to me, to all intents and purposes you were dead. We've had a hell of a time bringing you to. Nobody will ever bring you to again under these circumstances. And then he gave me the finest piece of counsel I've ever heard in my entire life. He looked me right in the eye, and he said, if I were you, I wouldn't do that anymore. Now I want to quickly pass that on to you new people tonight. If I were you, I wouldn't do it anymore. But I'd do it again.
And the last time was worse than the next and the last time. So I knew I was going to die. And that was all right. But I didn't want to die with the record. I didn't want my wife and those kids to remember me as nothing but a tongue-chewing babbling idiot drunk. Now I want to say just a word to those of you who have lived with us. You know, many of you think that if we'd loved you, we couldn't do the things we did. I'll bet you my wife said to me, not less than 500, maybe a thousand times, Chuck, if you loved us, you'd do the things. Now how could I tell her it was because I loved them that I did it? No, you can't tell them anything like that. You can't tell them.
Many a time in those last years that I'd lie there on my bed, and it was just that far from hers, and it might as well have been in Siberia. And I'd lie there and listen till I knew that she was asleep by her breathing. And then I'd cry me up a river. I'd cry me up a river. I wanted to take her in my arms and say, honey, I love you. I'll never do this again. But I couldn't. I'd already done it a hundred times. You see? So we never, I never got to the point when I didn't have my wife and my kids. Some of the worst drunks I ever got on in my life was because I knew that I was crucifying my wife and my kids. And I couldn't help it. And I knew I was going to do it again. And the hurt was so great I'd have to get drunk and stay drunk to get rid of the hurt.
And so it became very necessary for me that morning to be sober to the day because I didn't want them to remember me as nothing but a tongue-chewing, babbling idiot drunk. I must spend the time before I kicked off in trying to rub out a little of the record. And I remembered that morning that Mrs. C had found Jack Alexander's article in the Saturday Evening Post in March 1941. And she had read it. And she thought it might be of some benefit to me. And she opened it at the right page and laid it on the left arm of the big chair that I sit in right now.
1941. And when I came in I read it. And I remembered that morning that I'd read it. But I was four seats in the wind when I read it. And I only remember two things about it. That drunks stopped drunks and didn't drink. And they called it Alcoholics Anonymous. And I said to me, if I ever live to get out of this bed I'll find AA. And immediately the curtain dropped. And immediately the curtain dropped. The sanity was gone. I was sickened to death, drunk and insane. And I had a lot of dying to do. But from the second of commitment until right now, I've never had a drink of liquor or a sedating or tranquilizing pill.
[00:30:20]
Such is the great significance of this thing called surrender. Surrender. This is the most misunderstood word in the English language. Would to God it was possible just to tell one audience what it means to surrender before I die. But it cannot be done. It cannot be done. Suffice it to say that surrender for the alcoholic is victory. We win by losing. It's a fantastic thing. Now this is most meaningful to me because had I had to consciously surrender the first time, I would have died without coming to this program. There is no way that I could surrender.
I have been conditioned for generations to believe that surrender is for the weak. The strong man wins, the weak man surrenders. No way could I surrender. And besides that, I've got a slug of Cherokee blood in me. I want to tell you the drinking companion that I had. You're not going any place tonight, are you? We're comfortable here, aren't we? So I'm going to talk for about three hours. Don't encourage me.
I want to show you a little bit of my drinking companion. For the entire duration of my drinking, I had my drinking companion right in my pocket. Carried it in my wallet. It was the poem Invictus, or Invictus, whichever one it was. And most of you know it, I'm sure. It goes out of the night, it covers us black as the pit from pole to pole. I thank whatever gods there be for my unconquerable soul. Let's have a drink.
In the foul clutches of circumstance, I have not winced or cried aloud. Beneath the bludgeonings of chance, my head is bloody, yet unbowed. You can't beat me. We start crying right here, see. You hear of it? You know. I'll give you one more. It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishment the scroll. I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul. Now you ask a monkey like that to surrender, you're liable to get scalped. You don't talk surrender to a guy like me. You let him die. Man, if he's lucky, he gets here. No way could I have surrendered consciously.
So I thank God that the bottle did it for me. My last trip out, the bottle did it for me. Beat me to death. Beat me into total and absolute nothingness. And it allowed me to come to this program not even looking for sobriety for me. I didn't want anything for me. Nothing. I just wanted to rub out as much of the record as I could. Now you can't rub out a record thinking, I want or don't want, I like or don't like, I, ya, ya, ya, ya. You can't make it. If you're going to rub out a record, you got to do something for somebody without a price tag on it.
And I started doing that the last of January 1946. And I never quit. Now I have got to make this a little shorter than it ought to be. We'll be here all night.
[00:35:20]
We hear an awful lot nowadays about related disorders. I don't know about you people up here. But we've got more experts in related disorders in our country than you can shake a stick at. It's pretty difficult now to get anybody to go on a twelve-step crawl, if it's just a strange twelve-step crawl, unless they can treat a few related disorders. Now I told you a few related disorders. My wife has divorced me after twenty years. Now I think that's a related disorder. Our kids wouldn't spit on me. And that's no way to treat your dear old dad.
I think that's a related disorder. The boss man was going to throw me through the window if I ever stepped foot in the plant again. And I believe that to be a related disorder. I had no health, no sanity, no home, no job, and no money, which I believe to be king-size related disorders. And I have never spent five seconds on any one of them. Not five seconds on any one of those related disorders. Because as I told you, I had accepted the fact that everything dear to me was gone and should be gone, and that I was not entitled to have it back.
Now, I'm going to tell you the series of discoveries that happened and approximately what time they happened. I attended a meeting every night for six months. It was a great fear upon me that I couldn't have this thing, that I didn't have enough physically or mentally to get it, because I didn't get here too quick. I fell on my face for three and a half years after my last drunk. I never even went to a doctor, which was rather silly, but I thought it was part of the course.
I thought that anybody that had treated themselves like I did fell on their face. And I fell on my face for three and a half years. It took me over six months to put the Serenity Prayer together in English. Not spiritually. I couldn't make those words make sense. So physically and mentally both, I was not so sharp when I got here. But I was here every night for six months. And after six months of a meeting every night, I discovered that I was sober, without a drink or a pill, for six months.
And that was the first discovery. And that ain't bad. Now, you will understand with me that you can't discover that you've been sober six months until you've been sober six months. You don't discover before the fact. You discover after the fact. And that was a pretty good discovery. And immediately I got lost trying to give it back to the people that had given it to me. And another six months went by. And I discovered something had happened in the household.
Something had happened. They were living like kittens. And I got treated as little as a side. In my early days, a lady in Beverly Hills was going to meetings with me all the time. She was a little delicate, old lace sort of person, you know. Lavender and old lace or something they call them, don't they? And she lived up above the tracks. I lived down in the flat country. She was up in the high numbers.
[00:40:08]
She was very wealthy. And how in the world we ever got together, I don't know. But she used to go, I could call her any time, and she'd go over the hill to North Hollywood or any place with me to meet me. And between the first six months and the first year, she called my house to get me. And she got Mrs. C on the line. And I think that she was probably at least 20 if not 25 years older than I was. And she walked like she was walking on eggs. She was a very delicate person.
And here this female voice came over the phone to her. She said, who in the hell are you? My wife says, well, I'm Chuck's wife. She said, didn't know he had a wife. And Mrs. C says, well, he doesn't either. And I didn't. But a year went by and I made that discovery. The family were living like kittens. And that was a good discovery. And another six months went by. And I discovered I was still trying to clean up my desk at the office.
I had gone down to the office before I found you people. Because, you see, I didn't know how to find you. My keen alcoholic mind told me that you wouldn't be in the phone book. You were anonymous, weren't you? Well, they don't anonymous in the phone book. And so knowing that you weren't there, I never looked. Now that happens to be the story of my life. I knew so many things that weren't true, I couldn't learn anything that was.
So I had to call people and ask them if they knew anybody that knew anybody in AA. So I had gone to the office before I ever went to an AA meeting. Because I knew where the office was. And I knew what the old boy was going to do to me. But he paid me for something I hadn't done. And I had to go down there. I had to go. And I went, and he saw my old car in the parking lot. And he knew I was on the premises.
And he knew I wasn't going to stay. And he came hunting for me. And he busted into my office like a bull in a china case. Fortunately, I was on his telephone. And it was his phone, and he was a sugar man. He didn't want to throw the phone through the window. So he busied himself getting my drafting boards and stuff out of the way. So he'd have a straight shot at the window. And I hung up the phone and he started after me.
Now I couldn't have defended myself with a shotgun. Because I didn't have the shakes, I had the leaps. And all I could do was sit there. And I said, Victor, leave me alone. I don't work for you anymore. I'm not here to clean up this desk. I'm here to do the things you paid me for last year that it didn't do. And as soon as I get even with you, I'll get the hell out of that door on my own. And you won't have to throw me out.
And you'll never owe me a penny as long as you live. But for God's sake, leave me alone. I've had enough. But for God's sake, leave me alone. I've got to get even with you. And he stopped in his tracks. And he says, what the hell's happened to you, Charlie? And I says, don't know. And I didn't. But he knew something had happened and he didn't throw me through the window. And after 18 months, I discovered I'm still trying to clean up the desk.
And business is good. Business has come good. And it was beautiful. It was a nice discovery. Another year perhaps went by. And I discovered that my own state of being was better than anything I'd ever known in my lifetime. Life was just good all the way through. Life was just good, all the way through, and that was a pretty good discovery, and now five years, maybe six years have gone by.
[00:45:01]
Six years, I have gotten rich, in the same business, at the same desk, doing the same thing, that I hated on the Thursday before Christmas 1945. When I was eleven years sober, I bought the business. Absolutely impossible, but it happened. So, if every authority on earth, and every book on earth said this was a getting life, I'd laugh out loud. It never was a getting life. It has forever been a getting life, and the more you pour out without a price tag on it, the more you have.
Nobody will ever know that until they do it and prove it. I knew it intellectually fifty years ago, but I didn't do it. This has never been a getting life. It has forever been a giving life. The more we pour out without a price tag on it, the more we have. Now, the next thing I was told, and this carried a little authority, but because part of the time it was the business end of a black sake whip. They taught us, in my day, that you had to earn, be worthy of, merit, the grace of God.
Now, if that were true, we would not have an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. We wouldn't be here tonight, because we wouldn't have any AA. If our beloved Bill had had to earn anything, we wouldn't have a society of Alcoholics Anonymous. See, Bill listened to Abbey for a little while, when Abbey came to talk to him, and Abbey then started telling him a little bit about getting a God of his very own. Power graded himself, and old Bill turned off his hearing aid, because he thought he was an agnostic, and he continued to drink gin.
Abbey left finally, and Bill continued to drink gin, and he eventually got back into town hospital, and he was pretty bad. This cunning, baffling, and powerful disease is progressive, you know, and so Billy was pretty bad shape. And he heard Dr. Silkworth tell Lois, his wife, that she should be as nice to him as she could, make life as easy on him as she could. Because within six months, she was either going to have to bury him, or lock him up forever, as a imbecile.
Totally insane. Now, that isn't a good thing to hear when you're feeling good. And he was in a withdrawal period, and he didn't feel very good. So that was a double blow. And he lay there, and he looked at himself, and he said to himself, I've done everything anybody ever told me. But what? To no avail. Maybe there's something in what old Abbey was talking about. And in total and complete abandonment of himself, he yelled out, God, if there be a God, reveal yourself to me now.
And wham-bo, it happened, just like that. And Bill never had to drink anymore. Do you know? I've heard him tell about it many, many times. I had the good fortune of knowing him for better than 20 years. He in my house, and I in his. He didn't have to drink anymore, and Alcoholics Anonymous was born. Right there. Now, he didn't have time to earn anything or merit or be worthy of. Neither did I. If there had been anything for me to do but throw in the towel, totally and completely dump me, I couldn't have done it.
I didn't have anything left to do it with.
[00:50:02]
And so, I personally do not believe that you have to earn merit or be worthy of it. I had to live 60 years before I came to see that the very word grace means a free gift. A free gift. When you and I fulfill the conditions, we find that the gift was already made. My way of thinking, it's foundations of the earth. So that had to be changed. And the next thing they taught me was that the two great needs of the individual were to be needed and to be loved.
And this is backwards than the rest of it. Totally backwards. The two great needs of the individual are to love and to do. To love and to do. If you love something or somebody, you do something for them. And it's the doing something that makes the difference in here. It isn't what happens to them, it's what happens to us. To love and to do. I want to tell you this little story. Some of you know this guy because he's been up in this country.
He's a doctor. His name's Paul. He's an internist. And a drunk. And a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And a couple of years ago, he called me at midnight. And he says, Chuck, what's your definition of love? And I says, you damn fool, it's the same at ten o'clock in the morning as it is at midnight. Hang up the phone and call me tomorrow morning. He says, what's your definition of love? And I says, you won't like it.
And he says, what is it? I says, action. He says, what are you talking about? This is action. If you love somebody or something, you do something for them. And that's what does something for us. When we do something for somebody without a price tag on it. It's a fantastic thing. All of those things were just backwards to my living experience at Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, quickly, I think that one of our great troubles as alcoholics is that we get sidetracked in the program.
We get off on tangents. For instance, we get down to step three, and it says we made a decision to turn the ruler of lies over to the care of God, and we understood him. We say, oh, don't understand him. I got to get me another book. We have guys down at home that get an armload of books. And, you know, start with the sermon on the mountain. And they go out to see a drunk. And they got everything but the big book.
They forgot the big book. Uh-oh, don't understand him. I got to get me another book. I got to get me a tutor. And we get sidetracked off on a tangent trying to find God. Now, if you have my experience, I hunted for him for 30 years in all the great philosophies and religions of the world. And unfortunately for me, not because of the philosophies and the religions, but the more I knew, the drunk I got.
I've only gotten two men and a boy to hold me up. I get to preach to you the finest sermon you ever heard on hunting. When virtue recognizes itself as virtue, it immediately becomes vice. Now, there's a goody. One of the greatest misfortunes in my life was here I was with all this great learning.
[00:55:08]
And I couldn't get out of bed to come and pray. Isn't that awful? Back in the program, not looking for God. Not even trying to get my wife back or my kids back. Not even trying to get my health back. Just trying to rub out a record. So I say that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, the formula that we're given, that we heard right here tonight, is the finest formula for an alcoholic to find himself that was ever created or conceived in the mind of man through the grace of God.
I don't believe there's a finer formula under heaven than this, for the likes of me, alcoholics. And I think all we have to do is to do these things as honestly as we know how, one day at a time, for the purpose that they were put down, that we might be sober today. Not have to drink that flick today. And that's all. Because that's all I ever did them for. I never worked one day for tomorrow's sobriety in thirty years.
I never worked for a birthday. Because people just like you, drunks who were not drunk, told me the first night, this is the day we don't drink. Now if a day's too long, how about an hour? Can you live an hour without drinking? Make that the length of your life, and then do it again. But don't drink today. And said day, regardless of how long you live in Alcoholics Anonymous, never expand that time more than twenty-four hours.
And I bought it, and I've still got it. It's the second greatest lesson I ever learned. And I have a plea tonight, from the bottom of my heart, for those of you who haven't done so. If it's possible at all, leave every yesterday and every tomorrow in this room when you go home tonight. Every yesterday and every tomorrow. And you'll leave ninety-five percent of your trouble right in this room. Ninety-five percent of our troubles are yesterday's burdens and tomorrow's fears.
And if you haven't got either one of them, you've only got five percent to operate with. Live it one day at a time. It's the simplest funny. You can't even starve to death in twenty-four hours. I'll tell you this one little story in a hurry along. Twenty-five years ago, I talked in Fresno. And after the meeting, we had a meeting. We went out to a guy's house. He was from Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Much younger than I. He had a nice wife and three or four beautiful kids. And about two o'clock in the morning, we were standing out, the two of us, standing in his kitchen. And he says to me, he says, Chuck, every so often I have to get drunk. And I says, that's interesting. Tell me about it. He says, I get to thinking about what I did to my wife and my kids. And I get to hurting so bad, I have to get drunk.
And I says, don't blame you. I said, if I got started thinking about what I have done to my wife and my kids, I'd be drunk before I get to Bakersfield. Now, you think that there wouldn't be a liquor store open at this time of the night. But there would be when I ran this car of mine through the front end of one of those stores. You see, I don't think about what I did to my wife and my kids.
[01:00:08]
That kept me drunk before getting here. But since I got here, my whole endeavor has been just to add a little to their lives today, if I can. Because there's nothing I can do about the other things. But I can add a little to their lives today, maybe. At least that's my intent. And I don't have to drink. You see, yesterday is nothing in the world but guilt. And tomorrow is nothing in the world but fear.
Don't live in yesterday and tomorrow. This is my day. I have no past. I want no future. And I highly recommend it. It's terrific. There's an easy way and a hard way to do our program. The hard way is to try to do it yourself. The easy way is to know that you can't. Did it ever occur to you that we wouldn't be at this great banquet tonight if we were as hot as we sometimes think that we are? We didn't come in here because of the great success we've made.
At the ripe old age of 43, I was a failure as a husband, a father, a businessman, a man, and a drunk. And that's all the departments I had. If I'd had another department, I'd have failed there too. And it's no big deal. It's no big deal. Don't bother me a bit. And I got through to this. How much time we got? Two minutes. So, I have a lot of fun with this because I get to talk sometimes to some pretty large audiences who at least haven't admitted to being alcoholics.
Terrible people. And sometimes I'd get up like this and I'd take a look at them, maybe 2,000 of them, and I could just read in their eyes, every bloomin' one of them. They're scared to death of failure. You know, scared. You can see it. You know? Scared to death of failure. And I got a little… I got a little too much pixie in me, I guess. Because I look at them and I said, Look, I've got every one of you but the short hair.
Every one of you. I said, Here I stand and I can see just by looking at you that you're all scared to death of failure. I said, I'm not afraid of failure. I am a failure. Step on out of this seat. Now, isn't that awful? I have lived because of the accident of total failure for 30 years and total expectancy of guidance and direction. You see, I can't run nothing. I can't run my life, can't run yours, can't run my wife or my kids.
I do believe I could run AA but you bums won't let me. But I can't run nothing and know it. That is no big deal. Because I have lived by step 11. For long before I got through with step 3, which I'm not through with yet.
[01:05:04]
Step 11 I've had to have. Now, there's too many words in step 11. It says we 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 prayer carried out. Now, that's entirely too much for me. Too many words. I get up in the morning and I say, look dad, I'm reporting for duty. I say, now I'm going to move it around.
I'm going to do the very best I can with what I got. And all I want out of you is a little guidance and direction and power to carry it out. Sure, thank you. I don't know about my business. In total expectancy of guidance and direction. And I get it. And you might say, how do you know? I got the simplest little yardstick in the world. I never had it so good. This is the only good life I've ever known.
The only easy life that has ever been mine. And I'm 74 years old. What? Nobody even blinked an eye. Let's hear it again. I'm 74 years old. That's better. That's better. The only easy life I've ever known. The only good life that's ever been mine. And so, in closing. When I discovered what had happened to me. And how beautiful life was. I said to myself, how in the world am I going to show my gratitude?
What am I going to do? And we were in the woodworking business. For years and years and years. I loved the woodworking business. I loved wood. And you people know what wood is up here. And I like to smell it. And I like to pet it. And I like to work with it. And finish it. And all those sort of things. And we had some very excellent wood carvers. And just in dreaming a little, I decided that I was going to make him a plaque.
We were going to make him a beautiful plaque. And then I got to thinking, well, who am I going to give it to? You know, and it looked like a sort of a feudal deal. And then I got to thinking, well, maybe I should be a hermit. Go up into the mountains and pray for you bums the rest of my life. And I didn't think that would be a very good action. And I even considered being a Catholic monk. Now, I'm not even a Catholic.
But I know a great deal about the Trappist monks, and they're very interesting to me. So I thought maybe I could be a Trappist monk. And then I thought, well, there probably won't be too many drunks here for me to work with. And then I remembered a little thing that pleases me mighty, mighty good. I happen to like old Pete pretty well. Now, many of you people call him St. Peter. But to me, he's old Pete.
And when the carpenter was about ready to leave, he called Pete in. And he says, Peter, do you love me? And Peter says, yea, Lord. And he says, tend my sheep. Now, why did he call Peter in? He was a maverick. He just might have been a little bit alcoholic, if you ask me. Because when he got caught, you know, with the right in the act, he lied out of it. Now, that sounds a whole lot like me. I don't know about you.
[01:10:00]
But he was pretty much of a maverick, and for that reason I love him pretty good. So I call him old Pete. And the carpenter man says, Peter, do you love me? And he says, yea, Lord. And he says, tend my sheep. And he turned right around, and he asked him again, Peter, do you love me? And he said, yea, Lord. He says, tend my sheep. And then he did it again. Peter, do you love me? Yea, Lord, tend my sheep.
And I said to me, he must have meant, tend my sheep. He said it three times. And I said to me, that's what I'm going to do. For the rest of my life, this is my job. I'm going to try to the best of my ability to help God's kids do the things they need to have done, because I want to, for free and for fun. And that's all I've done. And it must be pretty close to right. It must be pretty close to right.
Because all the good things that I ever dreamed about have come to pass in my own life. And they've just come out of walking in this way. And I am totally convinced now that it's my business to go about his business. And it's his business to take care of me. That's not my business at all. That's his business. My business is to go about his business. And that's exactly why I'm here. That's exactly why I'm here.
To share me with anybody that wants me in love. To tell you that of myself, I failed in every department of life. And with this great thing, which we call, I'll call it synonymous. With this great power, which we call a power greater than ourselves. God, as we understand it, all these great things have come to pass in my life. And I'm so grateful I can't see. Left to myself, I'd have never made my first beating.
Because I couldn't come until the bottle had killed me. So I thank God for health. I thank God that my last trip out killed me. And I could come to you. I don't even look at it as a bad thing. I look at it as a good thing. Because out of the worst possible life came the best. And again, I'm so grateful I can't see. Because of myself, I'd have missed this whole deal. I'd have missed it all. Now my gratitude starts with you.
Not with the program or not with God. Because I came here as alone as anybody ever walked. I never had a sponsor. I didn't know what a sponsor was. And I came here all alone. And you are the people that took me on your lap and locked me to sleep. The only thing the man said to me when I was leaving, thinking it was the wrong night, because you didn't look like me, and you weren't dressed like me, and you most certainly weren't talking like me.
You were all standing in the middle of that room, yak, yak, yak, yak. Nobody listening. Everybody talking. And it was happy talking. And I knew that this was the wrong night. They'd given me the wrong dope. So I started to leave. And here's the miracle of AA in a nutshell. Some guy had been watching me. And he came running to the door. And he yelled at me. He says, He says, And he yelled at me, he says, Mr., were you looking for somebody? And I said, no sir. Well, he says, what were you looking for? And I said, if it would interest you, sir, I was looking for sobriety. And everything about that man lit up instantly. He just lit up like a Christmas tree. And it was obvious that he was glad I was there.
[01:15:14]
Now, everybody that knew me was glad I was there, because if I was there, I couldn't be here. But that wasn't this guy. He was glad I was there. To me, him, I was a bargain. And I'd just come off of a four-week blackout. So, it's to you that my gratitude starts. With you that my gratitude starts. And then with the program. And then with God. Because I don't find that too hard to accept. Because now, having lived for thirty years with people like you, I have come to believe that God is you. And God is the program. And God is me. Now, don't get me wrong, I didn't say I'm God. I said God is me. And God is you. God is life, and we're alive.
And so my gratitude starts with you. And the greatest freedom I have, because I spent thirty years trying to make the world over so it'd be a fit place to be living. And I got news for you, it ain't ready. Don't try it. And now I can stand here without any qualms at all, and tell you that no one amongst you has to change anything for me to love you. If you're drunk, you don't even have to get sober. If you're a liar, you don't have to quit lying. If you're a thief, you don't have to quit stealing for me to love you.
In total freedom, I can tell you I love you to pieces. Because now I know who you are, whether you do or not. And for that reason I love you. But for another that's much more personal. Because first, you love me. God bless you. Thank you very much.