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Source: DICOBE-00008 – David A – STEPS 1, 2, AND 3.mp3 File: dicobe-00008-david-a-steps-1-2-and-3.mp3 Duration: 01:13:02
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And only because of God's grace and the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous, I have not found it necessary to, nor have I taken a drink of, an alcoholic nature since April the 20th of 1967, and for this I am so thankful. First of all, it's good to be here in Greenville with the traditional group. I didn't realize y'all were eight years old, and that's good. And in going through the steps, of course it depends on whatever the group desires, and I've always, I've been taught that ever since I've been in Alcoholics Anonymous, is you do whatever the group conscience asks one to do, and we're undisciplined people, and this is good for discipline.
And so we'll get started, and we'll just see how we go. I imagine it'll take about three or four weeks. If we're going to cover them in a manner in which AA suggests that we do, we can cover them basically shorter than that, but basically when you drive that much distance, you just might as well just get with it. And the twelve steps are the logical process by which an alcoholic, after one gets sober, can maintain sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous. Now anybody can get sober and stop drinking, or drive, but living sober, that's the name of the game, that's the toughest part for alcoholics, is not getting sober, but living sober once we get, and not go back to drinking.
And once we can maintain this sobriety, AA allows us to become rehabilitated as a human being. Now it's been the experience of Alcoholics Anonymous that any alcoholic who follows this program without deviation has been able to remain sober. And the nature of our illness and the nature of the kind of people that we are, and this is one of the hardest things to do, is to adhere to the line of Alcoholics Anonymous and the twelve steps. We try to drag everything else in that we think that'll help us, other than the steps. And these steps work. And this is the reason that Alcoholics Anonymous is the great recovery program that it is.
Now, those of us who have tried to cut corners, skip over steps, have usually found ourselves in trouble, unless we can come to see the nature that this is going to happen to us. And this has been the rule, rather than the exception, upon being asked which is the most important step, one of our early members of Alcoholics Anonymous replied, which is the most important spoke of a wheel? And if a wheel has twelve spokes and one is removed, the wheel will probably still continue to support the vehicle, but it will have lost strength.
Removal of another spoke weakens it even more and eventually the wheel will collapse. And so it is when a removal of any step will eventually result in a collapse, unless we can come to see the nature of it. Many, many alcoholics take a hit and lick here and there in the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and say, well, I haven't had a drink and I'm comfortably sober, but we're not dead yet. And then somewhere along the line, the not taking and using of the experience, up comes a situation to where maybe one sponsor is not available, maybe there's not a meeting, maybe it takes time to get to a meeting, or maybe an alcoholic finds himself, boom, looking right into that bottle.
And usually it is because once we get here, it is a refusal to grow along spiritual lines and perfect our spiritual life. And that's the name of the game in Alcoholics Anonymous, not to take that first drink. Many get carried away about quality of sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous. But nowhere in the big book 1212 or any of our conference approved books or literature is sobriety discussed as sobriety. We talk about a spiritual recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous and this is all that basically that we have. And as a result, so it is when a removal of any of the steps will eventually result in a collapse, as I've said before, unless we can come to see the nature that this will happen to us.
And I believe that it's important to new people and old people, all the members of Alcoholics Anonymous, and particularly the new ones, be introduced to the 12 steps as early as possible. That's all there is in Alcoholics Anonymous. That is Alcoholics Anonymous. Many alcoholics get drunk in AA after we get here as a result of this fellowshipping. And they mistake fellowshipping for recovery and this hugging and this kissing and all this other business that goes along, you know.
But basically the new members be introduced as soon as possible because only steps defend our full recovery. Now if one feels that the steps are a little complicated at first, they can be introduced to oneself in a similar manner. And I don't believe they take away from the meaning at all of any of the steps. Number one, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol that our lives had become unmanageable and we wanted to do something about it. Or in other words, we admitted we were whipped and we had a genuine and honest desire to stop drinking alcohol. Many of us do not understand what this honest desire is to stop drinking. But that we have a genuine desire to stop drinking.
[00:05:05]
And then we ask and receive help from a power greater than ourselves and AA now supplies the next ingredient, that no other recovery program for an alcoholic is supplied prior to AA and since AA. And this is the reason that Alcoholics Anonymous is the finest recovery program for an alcoholic that's ever hit the face of mankind. As I said, we receive help from a power greater than ourselves and here comes the thing, people. It is the people in Alcoholics Anonymous that are sober that supplies the great impetus. This is where the power of Alcoholics Anonymous lies.
Now if an alcoholic would come here tonight and there wouldn't be anybody in here and he walks through the door and he sees those signs up there, slogans, and he looks around and he sees the 12 steps and the 12 traditions, he picks up a big book, R-12-12, and he looks at it, he wouldn't understand anymore what it is in the man in the moon. It's strictly theory, but when you've got someone with flesh and bones and blood coursing through their veins and says, hi, my name is David and I am an alcoholic, we're glad to have you. And the new one says to you, how do you stop drinking? And we say, you don't take that first drink. And then the next question that every one of us asks is, how do you live without alcohol?
And David, or Joe, or Mary, or Sue, the sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous says to the new one, let me tell you what it used to be like with me and what happened and how it is today. And then the alcoholic says, you too? You mean that you were in jail or not in jail, or you mean that you lost your family or didn't lose your family, or you didn't want to live like you're living? Yes. Yes. What did you do about it?
And so there we start sharing the living experience. This is where the power of Alcoholics Anonymous lies. Because without the evidence of God's grace as a result of the miracle of the recovery program of Alcoholics Anonymous, another human being, another alcoholic would never understand what Alcoholics Anonymous is all about. And so it is the people, and usually, one of the tell-tale signs of an alcoholic, after they come to AA and stay dry or sober for a while, and they get ready to go back to drinking, they start cussing the members of AA. They start cussing the ones in the group. Oh, the same old drunk-a-log, same old list. Thank God they seldom tell the same old drunk-a-log. Because by God, if they tell another one, that means they got drunk again.
I bet you I come to meetings to hear that. Well, everybody knows in here about drinking. But it's just business of living sober. However, in all cases in Alcoholics Anonymous, now AA, I'm talking about AA, not individuals in AA, this power greater than ourselves, AA calls it God. It doesn't duck it. It doesn't say it's your God, my God, it, them, they, or theirs. It's just God. However, it is God as each of us have the freedom to understand Him.
Each of us have the understanding. And for the purpose of simplification, the word that I'm going to use myself, meaning whatever power greater than oneself that one chooses to accept, in the case of the agnostic and the atheist or any unbeliever, it is only necessary that he or she recognize some power in the universe greater than he or she is. And this is difficult for an alcoholic to do. And we can call it God, Allah, Jehovah, the sun, cosmic force, or whatever. Because you see, we have members of Alcoholics Anonymous all over the world. And if one travels in AA all over the world, we find that the serenity prayer is not used in some areas.
We find that in many meetings they do not close with the Lord's Prayer. They don't say the Lord's Prayer where the bulk of the members believe in Allah, and in the Mideast, and over in India, and China, and Japan, and certain areas of the Philippines, certain areas of western Canada, certain areas of Africa. And yet they're sober members of Alcoholics Anonymous. And this is God as they understand Him.
You may go to a meeting in far, far north Canada, maybe two or three loners, and they talk about the great spirits, because they are Indian in grain. To them, that's God as they understand Him. To them, that's a power greater than themselves. And so as a result of it, it is only necessary that we remember that we live in an orderly world, a world where night invariably follows day, where spring follows winter, and where the crops rightfully grow.
Where the crops ripen at a certain time in the season. We all know that the young are born on an invariable schedule. And where the planets and the other heavenly bodies maintain an orderly course. And if this be not the case, then we couldn't live on this earth if the planets didn't maintain an orderly course. Gravity would sling us off.
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And so it was here when we got here. Man did not invent it. Man did not put it here. It was put here by something greater than us. And God knows as alcoholics we try to untangle this world before we got here, and sometimes sober we do, and we are the ones that suffer. Not the world. Not the world. Man didn't even, you know, man, man didn't invent the ingredients to invent electricity. All of the elements were there. And if there's anyone in this room that's having trouble with a power greater than yourself, I have a simple example. Just wet your finger and stick it in an open light socket and holler and tell that electricity, whoa! And it won't stop until you pull that finger out. And so it is with that drink.
Until we stop. We don't stop. We don't stop. They were fought out. They were argued over. They were fought over. Many alcoholics in the early days got drunk, got filled up with resentments and didn't believe in them. But we come to find out that they are just as true and necessary to successful recovery from alcoholism today as they were when they were written. And so this brings us to that goody, step one. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives have become unmanageable.
Without the first step, I believe there is no chance to recover. And it's been demonstrated over and over and over and over again that an alcoholic becomes sober and stays sober only when he or she is doing so for himself and herself and himself and herself alone. Now we may become sober temporarily for the sake of another human being to get them off our back. We may come to Alcoholics Anonymous for the sake of a judge or a district attorney or a sheriff. We may come to Alcoholics Anonymous to get the banker off of our back.
We call fear of some sort. Afraid the family's going to leave us. Afraid they're not going to leave us. Afraid we're going to lose the job. Afraid we're not going to lose the job. But unless one is sincerely and genuinely determined to sober up for himself and herself and himself and herself alone, our days of sobriety are numbered unless we can come to see the nature that this will happen to us. And this is where meetings are important. And this is where sponsorship is important. And this is where listening to the experience of sober members of Alcoholics Anonymous will pay over and over and over again. This is the most difficult step to take in Alcoholics Anonymous. There is not another step as hard as this one.
All we have to do is ask ourselves, how long did it take us in training just to get ready to take this step? Now you just don't come down here and say, well I belong to the church and I belong to the country club and I belong to the Lions and Toastmasters and the Rotary. I think in the Chamber of Commerce I need to belong to something different. I think I'll just go down and join Alcoholics Anonymous.
Now it just don't quite work that way. You got to do something in order to get here. You got to do some drinking. You got to do not want to kill yourself. You got to get to the point to where you can't stay sober and you can't stay drunk and you can't kill yourself and you can't stay alive. You got to alienate your families and your boss and the whole society and everything else and go down the street and people call you nothing but a drunk.
Sorry at that some of us. And so you got to do some hurting. You got to do a lot of hurting. And so I drank for 37 years to get ready just to take the first step. Now if it takes me 37 years to take steps 2 through 12 I'm in trouble. Because it's a step in which no assistance from the outside source is possible. In other words nobody can stay sober for me. No one can stay sober for me and no human being can keep me sober. Other human beings. Because the prospect must do this alone.
Now an outside source such as a treatment facility or maybe a jailer or maybe someone or maybe another member of alcoholics and alcoholics can bring us to attention the nature of what's wrong with us. And we can agree with them all we want to but unless we say yes I'm in a trap and I can't spring and I need help. Unless the admission is made that we are the ones individually that need help. Yes I am one and I need you.
Because it's not easy to admit defeat. For years we said I can stop drinking any time I want to. And then some nosy idiot says but yeah but when do you want to. For years we believed that sobriety was just around the corner. But tragically enough it wasn't.
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We were just like those football fans here when the Cowboys played the Rams in the playoff, and there were 67,000 people out there at that stadium with a hole in the roof, and God knows how many millions watching it on television, and all those multitude of millions of people absolutely believed, absolutely, without a doubt, believed that the Dallas quarterback, Roger Staubach, was going to make it possible for the Cowboys to score 10 points in the last second and a half, and beat the Rams, and the Cowboys didn't even have the ball.
And they absolutely believed it. They believed that this miracle would happen. And then when it was over, when the Rams won, all the multitude of millions and everybody in that stand sat there dumb and numb. And you know what they said? What happened? And just like a bunch of drunks, looking for this miracle, looking for the miracle. And so we finally, when we get to AA, we come to the fork in the road where we either honestly admit that we had a problem, or we continued sinking deeper and deeper into the mire of active alcoholism, and this is old-timey AA. We don't hear it so much anymore in alcoholics and others. We hear a lot of things in AA today. I don't know where it comes from.
But this is old-timey AA. We used to hear it at every beginner's meeting. Stinking, thinking leads to stinking drinking. If we keep on drinking, we haven't got but three ways to go. You get drunk, die drunk, go crazy, and get locked up in the insane asylum the rest of your life. We used to hear it at every beginner's meeting, every closed meeting. And as a result of it, we continue to drink, we sink deeper and deeper into the mire of active alcoholism, resulting in loss of mind and death.
And so until the admission is made to ourselves that our alcoholic problem has gotten out of control, not our drinking problem. You know when you have a drinking problem? When you run out of whiskey when you're drinking. That's when you got a drinking problem. But in AA, we're talking about an alcoholic problem. An alcoholic problem. Nowhere in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, 1212, AA becomes of age.
Or the AA way of life, or any of our conference proof, does AA define alcoholism? We're not in the business of treating alcoholism. We're in the business of treating alcoholics. You know how we treat alcoholics in AA? Real good. That's how we treat them. And we treat a spiritual illness. And any idiot knows that when an alcoholic is drinking alcohol, he ain't growing spiritually. That is a condition to grow spiritually in Alcoholics Anonymous, is you gotta be not drinking alcohol.
Or taking any of them mood mind-changing bullets on our own diagnosis. Or smoking any of that non-habit farming cigarettes, you know, on our own diagnosis. That'll give us that ease and comfort and serenity and peace of mind, you know. And just float, you know. This is a living program. Right down to it. And it is a total program. And so until they admit that our alcoholic problem has gone out of control.
We have no inspiration to stop drinking. So what does AA do? It has two descriptions of an alcoholic. And who says they're an alcoholic in AA? Only the member can say I'm one. I don't know if there are any other alcoholics in this room. You say you are fine. But I know I am by my own admission. I know this. But AA has got two descriptions of an alcoholic. The first description we'll find in chapter three, more about alcoholism.
There were men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. It doesn't say you're an alcoholic because you write a hot check to get whiskey. It doesn't say you're an alcoholic because you've been in jail as a result of your drinking, gotten DWIs, lost your family, job, self-respect, money. No. We're men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. The second description of an alcoholic we'll find in chapter four, which basically is the second step.
If you notice in the book of Alcoholics Anonymous, the first two steps are not discussed as steps three through twelve are, beginning with chapter five and six and seven. And so they're picked up in chapter one, Bill's story. There's a solution, second chapter. More about alcoholism, the third chapter. The chapter of the agnostic in the fourth. And here's where we pick up the first two steps. And though years ago there was another book that was written about the twelve steps by a member of Alcoholics Anonymous who was sober and put a book out, but it was religiously orientated according to this one particular religion.
And it was orientated. And if there's anything Alcoholics Anonymous does not want to do is to force somebody else's belief down a member's throat.
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This is the great freedom that we have in Alcoholics Anonymous. Ours is non-denominational, non-religion. It's spiritual in nature. And spiritual living is not religion and dogma and creed. It's just living the truth as we are and who we are. And we come to see the nature of it in the first step because the first step is nothing more than the diagnosis of what's wrong with us as we understand in Alcoholics Anonymous.
And A, we believe that we suffer from a two-fold illness of mind and body, but we recover from the granddaddy of all granddaddies of illnesses, spiritual illness. And so the two-fold illness of mind and body is what? We believe that the mind, number one, that we have a mental obsession so powerful that it condemns us to drink, living the lifestyle on our own, regardless of whatever our intentions are, regardless of our promises and everything else.
We have no mental defense against that drink, living the lifestyle on our own. And then the physical compulsion. Once we drink, it condemns us to die, continue to drink, living the lifestyle on our own. And so we're in a trap where we can't stay sober and we can't stay drunk. But once this admission is made that our alcoholic problem has gone out of control, then the way is cleared. And it is at this point that Alcoholics Anonymous can step in and lend a helping hand with the remainder of the program.
And now the remaining steps are automatically made simpler, easier to understand, because what are the alternatives? This is the last house on the block, baby. Where are we going to go? If you can't stay sober and you can't stay drunk, what is the inevitable end unless one finds a way to live sober? The answer is rather obvious, to die drunk. And so the symptoms of an alcoholic are rather clearly defined.
And there are many of them. But here are some of the major ones. Number one, the inability to stop drinking after taking one drink. I don't know about anybody in here, when I was drinking, I'd get up in the morning and I'd look in the mirror. And I'd look at myself and my face would look just like a big center-cut piece of bologna. And them two gimlet eyes, my hair be running out all over, and I'd look at myself and I'd say, God, I hope you strike me dead if I take a drink of alcohol this day.
And I'd no sooner finish than I'd reach under that sink and grab that long-neck bottle and pull me a drink. And then I'd take me and pull me another drink. And I'd rub my face. You ever see an alcoholic when he drinks? Altogether different than so-called normal social drinkers. An alcoholic, he'll take him a drink, and God, he wants to drink so bad, and when he wipes his mouth, he starts wiping his elbow right on down to his toe, everything.
I've been in a lot of saloons, and I've seen a lot of little friends, little ladies in the yard, and, you know, let me have a martini, and they bring it, and they sit it down, and they get their napkin. But you ever see a woman that's an alkie? She'll snatch that thing and drink. Bring me a double real quick, you know. You know. Yeah. Yeah. We have certain patterns. Certain things. Certain things. I was flying back from California Sunday, and I'm sitting next to a man and his wife, and they order something to drink.
Liquor. Social drinker. Normal drinker. I was a social drinker. I drank with anybody. And I watch him, and he says, bring me this, and she said, bring me that, and then he says, bring me two glasses of soda with plenty of ice in both of them. And she says, bring me two glasses of soda with plenty of ice in both of them. And I said, I got to watch this. And so they bring them, and they both do the same thing.
They take that little bottle, take the cap off, and they take one ice cube out and put it in the other one and put about that much whiskey in it and put the cap on the rest of it. And he looks at it, she looks at it, and they stir it, and I'm saying to myself, drink it. And then he drinks some of it, and then he doesn't add any more to it, and they add some more of that soda to the thing. And finally the stewardess comes around and says, well, we have a choice today, beef brochette or cold plate.
And he asked her, what do you want? She said, well, what do you want? And they take their time, and if I'd have been drinking, I'd have told the woman, don't bring me no food, bring me some more whiskey. And they order, and she brings the food,
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and she says, now you can put your unfinished drinks on the tray. And he says, no thank you, I'm through. And she says, I'm through. And they gave her back that half-filled bottle of whiskey apiece and the rest of that drink that was left undrinked and the ice cream. Now that is a normal drink. That is someone that can take it or leave it alone. That's someone that doesn't cuss at them, I'm not ready to eat yet, leave me alone.
You can always tell a normal drinker to saloon. His wife comes in and says, honey, let's leave. And he leaves, doesn't give her an argument or nothing. And so to go back about me reaching down there and taking that drink, God, I felt good, and I looked in that mirror and I said, now God, we'll talk about you killing me tomorrow. And I done promised the banker I'd be down there at 8 o'clock if he'd hire me up to poke.
And so I've got to shave and while the hot water's running, take me another drink. And then I start hiding the bottle, putting it under there. That's good about hiding it, but I'm hiding it. I'm doing the one that's hiding so I know where I'm putting it. And then I've got to run the hot water, take a shower and take me another drink. And finally I get out and I run down the hall, but once I drink, there's something in me that says, you need another, you need another, you need another, you need another.
And I'd run back there and get me another drink. And I finally, it's cold, so I've got to run the heater in the car. I run back and take another drink. Finally get the car out of the driveway and go around the corner. And the head says, to heck with that banker. By God, I'll see him tomorrow. And I go back in, I use the phone and I call that banker and say, I'm sick. Don't even get a hold of the banker and hang up.
And I go get that whiskey bottle. And the next thing I know, there's daylight between top and the bottom and I've got me an empty soldier when all in the world I did was to take that one drink. So God wouldn't kill me that day. I was feeling bad. Getting drunk at the wrong time, that is getting drunk when every instinct tells us the occasion wasn't calling us to be sober. I'll share an experience with you that in my life sums up the whole degradation of someone who had the inability to control his drinking, didn't realize it.
Who was unable to guarantee his behavior after taking a drink. And to see the whole thing flash in front of my eyes in the period of about an hour and a half. I was a little liberal in town out in west Texas. Town was good to us. They moved us there. And I was practicing. I had my little dental shop and here was the lawyer's office, dental shop, and here was a man who owned the insurance company, title and abstract and everything else.
And he owned the bank. He owned everything in that old town, practically. Man loved me dearly. He passed away. His son asked me to be a pauper, which is quite an honor. And it was a Thursday morning and it was raining and cold and not quite cold enough to sleep. And as I was getting dressed and I was putting on my Paul Barron suit, I had to take me a drink to take the chill out of the system. Take another one and another one.
I threw the rest of it in the back end of that station wagon and went to the church. And I went to the man. He was a big leader in the Methodist church. He was on the board of stewards. One of them old-fashioned two-storey, looks like two-storey, stuck on the outside remodeled Methodist church beggars. It's where you walk up the steps like climbing the pyramid. And then when you start down that aisle, if you could ski down it, it's the steepest.
And I go down on Hopeless Row. That's the front row, you know, in the pew with all the Paul Barrons and God. And they got the balconies and all them old pews and that place was just full. And they augmented the choir and they had flowers everywhere hanging from the ceiling and every place else. And they had steam radiators in that place and with all them bodies in there. And everybody come from miles around.
It was just hotter than the devil in there. And when I was drinking, my seasons were out of whack. I'd freeze to death in the summertime. I'd run around with a sweater and an overcoat and thermal underwear and flannel breeches. And in the wintertime, I'd burn up. I'd run around and I'd be sweating and everywhere else. And I'm in there and God, it's hot and I'm wanting a drink and I can't. And everybody's got to say, get up and eulogize that old man.
And then finally, after about 30 minutes, then the choir's got to sing. And they start singing at the foot of the cross. And Jesus loves you and bringing in the sheaves. I love to tell the story and amazing grace. And I hate that hymn because I'm married to a gal and her name is Grace and she ain't amazing. I don't want to tell you. And God, and I'm wanting a drink. And God, and I'm wantin' a drink, and then after the services were over with, the pallbearers got to wheel that coffin up that big hill, and you gotta stand there while everybody bows out and looks at it, and then the pallbearers got to carry the casket down another, those, that pyramids, back down them steps, and put it in the hearse and go out to the cemetery, and I knew that I could not hold that northeast corner of that coffin without fallin' down, and I needed a drink, so I turned to one of the funeral house assistants and said, I'm sick, would you
[00:30:24]
take my place, and he says, okay, and I ducked out the side door, and I got in my station wagon, and I drove away from that church, and I got down about two blocks away, and I got that whiskey bottle out, and I took me a drink, and God, I smoothed out, and I quit perspiring, and I quit bein' restless, and irritable, and discontented, my hair laid back down, and I took another drink, and another one, and I had sense enough to realize that I dare not get back in that funeral procession drinkin' at ten miles an hour, nor did I try to go back and climb in with the rest of the pallbearers, the pallbearers' car, so I started goin' on the outskirts of the town to get there to the cemetery at the right time, and I, and I, and I, so I'm drinkin', and I turn on my favorite radio station, Del Rio, Texas, where they sell Bibles, and trusses, and chains, and crosses, and rejuvenation powders, and potions, and they play all those good tunes, you know, one's too many, and a thousand's not enough, don't wink them bloodshot eyes at me, here's one that's good for four hours of cryin', and eight quarts of whiskey, only God made honky-tonk angels, you know, and I'm drivin' around, and singin', and meditatin', and prayin', and cryin' for that old man, and I get out to the cemetery, and I'm the only one there, and it's rainin', and it's cold, and I take another drink, and I trudge up the hill, and the only thing there is the tent, and the chairs, and the false grass, and the grave had been dug, and the four stanchions at each end of the grave, and the sling to put the coffin on, and I walk up, and bein' a real good, smart, nosy drunk, I've got to look around to see if all the arrangements are in proper order, and I change a chair or two, I even give about a four-minute eulogy, Now, I don't know if anybody in here has had any experience with that false grass, it's like outdoor, indoor carpet, and when it gets wet, it gets slick, and it had a seam in it, and I was changin' the chair, and one of my feet caught in that seam, and bein' unsteady of balance, the next thing I know, I'm slidin', and the next thing I know, I'm in the bottom of that grave, and I'm thrashin' around down in the bottom of that thing, tryin' to get out, and you know, the most helpless feeling is when you're drinkin', and you're drunk, and you're flat on your back, and you can't get up, and here comes the preacher, and here comes my wife, and here comes the pallbearers with the deceased, and here comes my best friend, the deceased son.
Now, non-alcoholics, and I'm not talkin' about Al-Anon, because Al-Anon and non-alcoholics are about to say in my book, non-alcoholics will ask you the dumbest questions at the wrong time that you ever heard, and he hears all this thrashin', and he finally, and he looks down, and he sees me at the bottom of that grave, and he sticks that long turkey neck down there, and he asks me this brilliant question, what are you doin' down there?
And I gave him the most logical answer, I'm tryin' to get out, that's what I'm doin' down there. And they haul me out, and I stand there cold and wet and muddy, and I knew that every eye was on me while that fine minister was finishing the final rites of that fine man. Now, that's what's called gettin' drunk at the wrong time, when the occasion calls for one to be sober. But while I'm standin' there, I'm lookin' into the eyes of my wife, and all of those fine people that loved us dearly.
And I could see the utter disgust, and I could see the shame, and I could see the degradation, and the utter confusion, and I couldn't stand it. And I couldn't wait to get out of there. You see, one of the most difficult things in the world for families to understand, that an alcoholic drinks because he loves the family so much. An alcoholic doesn't want to do what we do to families. No alcoholic wants to torture their mother, and their father, and their husband, and their wife, and their children, and their pets, or anybody else.
We can't stand to see what we're doin' to them. And the only way when we're drinkin' to escape from our own selves, take another drink. But it's just like puttin' our shoes on backwards, we keep walkin' into ourselves all the time, and we don't like ourselves. And we've got to eliminate ourselves from each other, and the only way we know is to block that out of our mind is to take another drink. And it's the most difficult thing in the world for families to understand this.
They think we're drinkin' because we're sorry and we're no good. It's all part of the nature of the illness. The inability to sleep without takin' a drink, use of alcohol.
[00:35:00]
I don't know about anybody here, I'd lay there, my God, if I could sleep 12 minutes, 10 minutes, 8 minutes, 5 minutes, 4 minutes. And you finally doze off. And you come up like a shot, and you look at the clock, and you only been sleepin' a minute. And it starts it again. And you promised, I won't drink, I won't drink. You promised yourself, you promised God, you promised the family, you promised everything and everybody.
I won't drink, but you finally at 2.30 in the morning can't stand it any longer. And you get up out of the bed, and you don't want anybody in that house to know you drinkin'. And you know, we're not very smart. We hide our whiskey to where nobody will know where it is, our alcohol. Alcoholics not very smart. He hides a round bottle in the empty dresser drawer, and he can't understand why it rolls like a bowling ball when he opens it 2 o'clock in the morning.
And I remember one time, I promised my wife, my God, I wasn't gonna drink under any and all conditions. I'm through forever, through forever, through forever. And she cried for six weeks, threatened me with a butcher knife and everything else. Alcoholic can promise anything when the heat's on him. And so I couldn't stand it any longer, and I pushy put it out of the bed, and I didn't want her to catch me, and I hid it in the third shelf in the pantry, in the kitchen.
I've opened that pantry 500 times, and it just swings good. But 2.30 in the morning, when you don't want nobody to know, you touch that thing, and you open it up, and you squeak, squeak, you look around, and everybody's there. Now starts the hardest thing in the world. You wanna drink so bad, you gotta get a chair, and it's up on the third shelf, and you gotta start taking everything down. Have you ever dropped a sack of sugar?
When you walk on it, it's just like sand, like skin on sandpaper. And you gotta get the flour down, and you hope you don't bust nothing, and everything's got to set down individually back on the chair. And God, you finally reach up there, and you know the next thing is that whiskey bottle in that sack. Have you ever touched a sack of whiskey at 2.30 in the morning, and you don't want nobody to hear it?
When you touch it, it sounds like firecrackers going on. And nobody's around, and you finally get the thing, and you peel that sack like a banana. And you take your good drink, oh, you take it, oh, God, oh, it's great. And then another one, and oh, you've accomplished. And then all of a sudden, right as you get ready to put it back, you have a feeling that somebody's watching you. Now you know they're over there, so you look over here.
Finally, you cut them eyes over there, and he or she, and there my wife stood. And this is what she said. Do you have to? Well, it never bothered me, my wife catching me drinking. But what bothered the dickens out of me, she found another one of my hiding places. And hiding places begin to get scarce. Have you ever hidden your whiskey in the water closet behind the toilet seat? You ever lift that lid up at 2 o'clock in the morning, you drop it every time?
I remember I hid one one time right when old Crow went from the little long neck down to the little short neck. And I made the mistake of putting it and the sack in the water. And I brought that lid off, and I reached down there to grab that sack, and what I did is just flew out. And we were living in a house that had that eight-sided-shaped octagon white tile in the bathroom floor. And it hit that floor, and it busted everywhere.
And I'm down on my hands and knees and licking it up like a dog, you know. My wife comes in and she looks at me and says, what are you doing? I said, I'm looking for one of my contacts. She said, what, your tongue? I said, that's what the doctor said. Anything, anything. The loss of memory during the drunk, and the deadening of the memory even when sober. Now, you'll probably recognize many symptoms as one of their own when we listen to the stories of members of our group at any meeting.
And I'm one of these that believes that when we're asked to make an AA talk that we tell our story. What it used to be like, what happened, what it is like now. So that the new one and the older member once again identifies with the nature of the illness. The illness is not ending up in jail. The illness is not losing the family or anything else. The illness is the inability to keep from taking that first drink, fully realizing what's happened to us on our previous drunks, yet the head rationalizes, this time it will not burn me as bad.
This time it will be different. This time instead of drinking whiskey, alcohol, or liquor, I'm going to drink beer. It wasn't the whiskey that made me sick the last time. It was the Italian food that I drank with it. I'll just drink beer, or I'll drink this, or I'll go Chinese food, or soul food, or anything. But we still get just as sick, just as sick. It's the continuation of the denial that our drinking has gone out of control.
That our inability to stop drinking, our inability to control it. This is what leads to the other things. But the nature of the illness is such.
[00:40:01]
And so our dependency now in staying sober in Alcoholics Anonymous is not for us to control the desire, but to allow Alcoholics Anonymous to eliminate the desire one day at a time. And so we just simply arrest our illness one day at a time. The removal of the obsession to drink with a lifestyle. Now my friend over there who just celebrated his 22nd birthday the other night, said it just beautifully a while ago, that it was harder for anyone today to get him to take a drink than it was for him to get sober 22 years ago.
That is AA in action. That is dependency upon a higher grade interceptor. That just sums the whole program up in one sentence. It is harder for anything or anyone to get him to take a drink today than it was for him to sober up 22 years ago and to get sober. And so therefore when we recognize these things in our story, once again, Mr. President, yes, we're alcoholics. Have been, are, and will always be.
And if you're new and if you think you're not an out-and-out alcoholic, you're probably studying hard to be one, and the time will come when you'll probably be in serious trouble. And it could be it's not too far away. Now, there's no known cure for alcoholism. Once a person becomes an alcoholic, and sadly we usually do not recognize it, when we cross over this so-called invisible line, borderline, weird alcoholic for life.
Now, one may go years and years without touching alcohol, yet when we drink again, we'll be right back in that same old squirrel cage. And strangely enough, case histories prove that it'll be worse than it was before. In AA, we call it the progressiveness of the illness of alcoholism. So it's not only important that we admit that we were powerless over alcohol, but that we continue to bear in mind at all times that we're alcoholics, and only total sobriety can keep us reasonably normal.
And so if one is new, if one's older and has been having trouble, and we can honestly say, yes, I have an alcoholic problem, I'm certain that I'm an alcoholic and I want to do something about it, then half the battle is won. Then the mind is open to listening to some of the things. To some of the things in Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, that our lives have become unmanageable. Many alcoholics think that their lives have become unmanageable only when drinking.
Uh-uh, it's in between drunks. It's in between drunks. If we could have managed our life, we could have managed to control our drinking, we could have managed our sobriety, we could have managed not to have to come to Alcoholics Anonymous. The unmanageable life is not when drinking. It's when not drinking. It's when not drinking. All the problems that David has today, living sober, is not because of living problems.
No, no. It is an unmanageable life trying to manage a lifestyle my own way. And the only 100% thing that one who has an unmanageable life and is powerless over alcohol will be able to do 100% is to manage to take that first drink. That will be a sure thing. There's no way in any method to live and drink normally. Many of us tried medicine, psychiatry, drying out parlors, institutions, hospitals, caves, tents, witch doctors, horoscope readers, biorhythm charts.
We even went to one of them bump doctors that feel your bumps. Institutions. Nothing seemed to work. So now we come to the point where in the managing of our lives we admit that we didn't do too good, that we could not manage to live sober. Again, honesty and humility, then there's a reason we're alcoholic and it's the only route we have to go. And so sincerity and honesty in the first step is half of it.
And then now AA says, well, if you're powerless over alcohol and your life has become unmanageable, you're in a tough spot, now what are you going to do about it? And so if one looks at the 12 steps of alcoholic synonymous, and so what is the first step? It is the diagnosis of what's wrong with us. We admit we're powerless over alcohol physically, that our lives have become unmanageable mentally. And so the first step is the diagnosis.
The second step, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity, is the prescription. The third step, made a decision to turn our will into a lie of old care of God as we understood Him, is what? Is taking the medicine. That's all. The first step is the diagnosis. The second step is the prescription. And the third step is just simply taking the medicine. And so step two, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Many alcoholics confuse, I believe, Many alcoholics confuse, I believe, what kind of sanity we talk about in Alcoholics Anonymous. We're not talking about it as the fact that you've been to the goonie roost and they put wires around your head,
[00:45:01]
gave you shock treatment, or you've been legally declared insane, ain't got a thing to do with it. Ain't got a thing to do with it. That it restores to have sense enough one day at a time not to take that first drink. That it restores to have sense enough one day at a time to stay in Alcoholics Anonymous. And the only way you can stay in Alcoholics Anonymous one day at a time but continuously is you can't take that first drink.
To have sense enough to realize that once an alcoholic always an alcoholic. To have sense enough to realize that we're powerless over alcohol, that our lives have become unmanageable. That we'll never be able to drink again normally, socially, any other way. But we can live sober one day at a time. Now if we've taken the first step naturally we ponder how we're going to receive assistance. If we look into our past and our own lives, our attempts and other attempts to get us sober, to give up alcohol through our own way, our own willpower has always failed.
And it's comforting to know that great minds, many minds now agree that trying to use willpower in the business of living sober is like trying to lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Now sincere efforts of friends, families, and friends to help us have been unsuccessful. Many fancied ourselves as rugged individuals. You know we used to like to think I'm the master of my fate and I'm the captain of my soul.
And that's real good when you're sitting around the VFW or the American Legion or a bar somewhere and you're screaming to everybody I'm the master of my fate and I'm the captain of my soul. Bartender, buy another round of drinks and that's real good until you run out of money. Or you're home and you're lazy boy and you got them slippers on and you change down the belly button and they're gnawing on you for about four days because you ain't been to work, you been drunk and you look up I'm the master of my fate and I'm the captain of my soul.
When we do a little honest drinking convinces us we've been miserable failures, failures as captain, masters, private, sergeant, but above all in the business of living sober. Many of us tried physicians and hospitals. Many of us tried religion. We found deep sympathy. They took our money, but we could not find continuous survival. The results were always the same, we got drunk again. So Willpower Health and friends from family medicine and pharma and religion having failed, a group of alcoholics such as us, and it'll be 45 years, come June the 10th, Mother's Day 1935, a group of fine sober members of Alcoholics Anonymous who had exhausted all the alternatives that we have exhausted, found there was not but one place to turn to in the business of living sober and that is a power greater than himself to restore us to have sense enough not to take that first drink under any and all conditions.
And this is not as difficult as it might seem because in AA we're not asked to go. Now drunk always looks ahead, he sees God in the third step, neatly trying to avoid it. And the reason that we neatly try to avoid it because we know we haven't been living according to God's dictates, I mean the dictates of God's will, we know that we've drifted away somewhere along the line from the teachings that we had as early kids.
You know what is an amazing thing when we get to Alcoholics Anonymous? Everything that our families and the people that loved us most tried to ingrain and instill in us are the same principles they tried to when they grew up except what makes AA the great thing? If we don't stay here and give it to another drunk, then we can't keep it. Then we can't keep it. You see in Alcoholics Anonymous, you can't talk this talk till you've walked the walk.
This is the reason many, many ministers have asked David, David, why is it Alcoholics Anonymous? Then Alcoholics Anonymous got to have this great spirit, this fun and they love AA so genuinely, not all but most of them. If we can just instill that spirit and that love for the church as y'all have in Alcoholics Anonymous, the churches would be the strongest influence in the world everywhere. And I said it never will happen.
And they said why? I said I'll tell you the reason. Because you see your members haven't exhausted all of their alternatives. We have. We either do or we die. Your members haven't exhausted all those alternatives. I said and furthermore, a drunk will come to Alcoholics Anonymous, to the church. And I said I'm talking about my own experience. I've been rededicated, recycled, reclaimed, reborn. And I got drunk.
I said because the church can't stop everything and everybody tends to the drunk. You've got the scared and you've got the this and that. You got to tend to the whole flock.
[00:50:02]
But I said with us it's different. That's all we got to do. That's the only purpose we got. That's the reason why we're unified. We're not all things for all men. That is the only purpose we got, is to help other alcoholics to achieve. But the thing is to stay sober first. And then we can help other alcoholics to achieve. And I said if all your members of the church would live, the tenants of the church, as we try to live in Alcoholics Anonymous, then you will attract more members to you.
Because then you won't have the alternatives that your members are trying to exhaust before they get right down to it. And as a result of it, the churches are our great friends today in sending us alcoholics. And I hope we never forget it. And so we're not asked to go to church. We're not even asked to seek the advice of a clergyman. I sponsor five or six members of the flock. One is an abbot. One's a monsignor in the Catholic church.
I sponsor a dingy evangelist Baptist preacher that travels all over the country giving sermons on how other people ought to live. The baddest drunk that's ever come across the pipe. He's sober eight years now. Yeah. Oh yeah. A Methodist superintendent. No big deal. It's just the way it is. You work with a lot of drunks, they're going to ask you, you know, would you work with them? So we're not asked.
We've got a lot of clergymen that are sober that know more about clergy than there's clergy. We've got a lot of psychiatrists that know more about psychiatry than psychiatry. Are sober members of alcoholics? No. Because alcohol is no respecter of religion, creed, brains, or anything else. You got it, you got it. You know, we're only asked to quit trying to run our own life our own way and keep an open mind and that's hard to do for a drunk to do.
Of course, when I got here, it wasn't too hard because I didn't have no mind. It was just clean through, you know. We're only asked to accept experience from a group of alcoholics who have ironed out the same problem that has brought us or is bringing on any of us today. And I believe one of the easiest approaches to the second step is remember when we were a little kid and we'd run out here and we'd stomp our toe or we'd fall out of the tree or somebody would steal our rope or a ball in Jackson.
We'd run in our house and guess our ball in the way and we always had a favorite nanny or an older sister or neighbor or a parent or someone and we'd put our little heads in their laps and just cry away, you know. And Johnny did this or Susie did this and there's some of our nannies that always have a handkerchief in their bosom and they'd pull out and blow your nose or somebody blowin' your nose. And then they'd start, now tell me what's wrong and God, we'd just pour our little hearts out and they'd rub our little backs in the back of our head and they'd hug us and kiss us and they'd say, that's alright, everything's gonna be okay.
Everything's gonna be fine. And we believed them because we trusted them. We knew that when that particular party or person whom we trusted said it was gonna be alright, we knew in our little hearts it was gonna be alright. And then they'd pat us on the rump and they'd say, go to the icebox now, that dates me, and get some sweet milk or go get some cookies or give us a few pennies to go get some pop.
And we'd skip out just singing like a new goose born in a new world, you know, just out we go again and everything's fine. Because you see, our little minds were relieved. If we can picture them, this power greater than ourselves, as a universal father, ready to listen to our troubles, ready to give us the same understanding and faith and assurance that we received from someone whom we trusted when we were kids.
And if one's faith is not too strong at first, just look around and see it our new friends in Alcoholics Anonymous, the program is working for them. Our troubles were just as great as anybody. Many of us were down and outers, some morally, not all, and in many cases physically. Yet by following the same principles, we have managed to stay sober. And it's just a matter of living the suggestions of our new friends, living the program as it's laid out for us, have faith in the program, it's working for them, and it can work for each and every one of us.
And so when we get to the program, and then this step rather, now, now here is where we find what's wrong with us in the second step, the reason for the diagnosis, and the reason for the prescription. We find that lack of power was our dilemma. And now we ask this question, but how do we live sober? And they say, well, we had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a power greater than ourselves, obviously.
[00:55:00]
And we say, but where and how do we find this power? Well, they've got a great line in the book of Alcoholics Anonymous that said we believe that we have written a book that is both spiritual and moral. When I read those lines, that's the greatest lines that I ever read sober. It meant that if I live this program as it is laid out for me, that no longer need I ever worry anymore if I'm going to be, have a way to live spiritually and morally.
That used to eat me up alive because I wasn't raised to end up like I end up. And I keep hearing the voice of my mother, and I keep hearing the voice of my father and my wife and my children. Not those bums. Not them honky-tonk hangouts. No. No. No. I got with them to obliterate the things that I couldn't stand. And I didn't want to live anymore because everything good in life was gone. To have a good night's sleep.
To have the ones that love you the most welcome at home. And sit down and have a family meeting and hold hands and thank God that we're all together with good health and good food. And to miss the things that everybody wants to be a part of. And lonesomeness and loneliness and when you're drinking it'll just drive you out of your mind. And I didn't think, I thought that that was all over with for me.
Because I'd condemned in my mind that I was going to die drunk and I didn't want to live anymore. Because I condemned myself that I was hopeless and helpless. And then you tell me that we believe that we've written a book that is both spiritual and moral. A book that'll solve my problem. And no one can tell me that I'm living the wrong kind of life anymore. Thank God. Thank God. And so when we get to this question, this particular step, it's just a matter of one willing to believe in a power greater than ourselves.
And upon this simple cornerstone, we start a very wonderful and effective spiritual life. And so we need to ask ourselves one question, do I now believe or am I even willing to believe that there's a power greater than myself? And as soon as a man or woman can say that he or she believes or is even willing to believe, we emphatically assure and it's been repeatedly proven among us that upon this simple cornerstone a very wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built.
And if one does read the book of alcohol, it's anonymous. In Bill's story, it was just a matter of Bill being willing to believe in a power greater than himself. No further requirement was necessary for him to make a beginning. And so now this brings us to step three and then we'll finish. Made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God as we understood it. I made the decision in my own life.
I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood Him because I understood that this God that you're talking about, that if I'll make that decision and turn the thing that's running David's life over to God, there's nothing more than making the decision to go on with the remaining nine steps of the program in completeness. And then if I'm willing to do that, make that decision and go on with the remaining program, then I am automatically turning the thing that's running David's life over to Him and that this God, if I'll seek Him, will do for me what I could not possibly do for myself.
That's the God that I understood in the third step. And thank God by following the steps four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, when I got to the eleventh step and I realized that halfway through the ninth step that God was doing for me what I couldn't possibly do for myself. And the eleventh step today means that I just continue to pay for power to carry out His will because God is doing for me what I can't do for myself and I continue to pray to let Him do it one day at a time.
And that's the God that I understand. And I found it through the twelve steps as a result of the people in Alcoholics Now once we have come to believe that there's power greater than ourselves, it's not too difficult to turn the thing that runs our life over to that power and that's us. Will and wants are the same thing. You know, our life goes along no matter what we do. If we drink, we have a drunken life.
If we stay sober, we have a sober life. The life goes on regardless. If we die, we've got a dead life. That's all. Life goes on. That's all. Life goes on. Life follows us no matter where we go. As I said in the second step, as rugged individualists, we're rank failures, forever looking into the future, forever disappointed because the promises that we made never came through.
[01:00:04]
And so it is at this point now that AA has the greatest time frame that there is for an alcoholic to live, and that's today. The day-by-day or the 24-hour plan comes to our assistance. I don't know if many of y'all know this, but in the book it says daily maintenance. It doesn't say the 24-hour plan, and the 24-hour plan originated in Oklahoma. And Bill didn't know this until he came through in 1948 when he was trying to get the members of Alcoholics Anonymous to adopt our traditions in 1950 of Cleveland, the first international.
And so we found out by this day-by-day living that sure we make plans for tomorrow. Sure we make plans to go to work, we make plans to go to the, you make plans to have the tradition group anniversary on the 21st. But if something happens and it doesn't happen, it's not the end of the day. That's out there. Today we're just making the plan. If it doesn't, and it hasn't got there yet, and it takes care of itself.
By letting each day take care of itself, you know each day took care of itself when we were drinking. We didn't set the calendar back or the clock back, we just set ourselves back. And it always will, we've been able to stay sober one day at a time. We start, I didn't start this morning by deciding to stay sober. I lost that choice long ago. Yeah. I woke up this morning and the first thing I said, only with your help, Heavenly Father.
And I don't call him Herman or all them other gimmicks that they do, I call him Heavenly Father. God. I said, Heavenly Father, my name is David A. and I'm an alcoholic and I'm reporting in. And only with your help can I stay sober this day. Now you say, well yeah, well God knows you're an alcoholic, David. And I said, yeah, that's right, but I want him to know that I know that he knows that I know that he knows that I know who I am and what I am.
And I want him to be sure that he knows who's boss and that I know who's boss. And then I say, here is my jug and you keep it for me. And I've been doing it now for over 13 years. And you know, ever since I've been giving him my jug one day at a time, he has not suggested nor has he poured me a drink of alcohol. Now if it gets more complicated than that, I might go get me another deal. And then we ask him to keep us sober this day.
And then when the day ends, we thank him for allowing us to stay sober. And the next, and the next, and the next. And then it's one day, and then it's two days, and then it's a week, and then it's a month. And the next thing you know it's a year, two years. But it's one day at a time. This is the first step in turning our will and our lives over to the care of God's will and standing. It's the natural inclination for an alcoholic is what?
Is willing to take that first drink, living the lifestyle on our own. So we turn our will over to him. And that's the first thing. Every alcoholic who comes to Alcoholics Anonymous stays sober 30 days, 60 days, 90 days a year, two weeks, comes to meetings, stays sober, has already done it. Because if you take God out of AA and God out of our program, then there's no AA, is there? There's no Alcoholics Anonymous.
When we see everything sober happens to us before we realize it happens to us, just like when we're drinking, everything happens to us before we realize it happens to us. And so the first step, this is the first step in turning our will and our lives over to the care of God's will and standing. And then from this small beginning, we develop until we find that we're no longer headstrong, we're no longer trying to run our own way, our life our own way.
We come to find out the reason that selfishness and self-centeredness, this seems to be the root of our trouble while sober. So our great need now is the loss of selfishness and self-centeredness, and above all our alcoholic obsession. And so we just simply turn ourselves over to God as we understood him. And so our founders discovered through trial and error that spiritual contact with God as he understood him was the alcoholic's only assurance of a normal sober life.
And spiritual sickness now loses its mystery when we honestly admit how the deadly effects of alcohol messed up our lives. We come to know how self-pity, fear, intolerance, resentment, dishonesty, and belligerence have totally insulated us. They've made us tough. They've made us callous, thus breeding spiritual illness. And so this is one step. If we're not willing to take this step unconditionally, then we are suggested big, but we should pray that God will make us willing, praying for the will to do and the strength to accomplish, and this for a time may be necessary.
Now as we understood him, we are above all everything searching for the truth, not only about ourselves, but our relationship with our creator
[01:05:02]
and how to live with people. And this is where that great breakdown was when we were drinking. We couldn't live with people. Couldn't live with ourselves. So we don't make up a God to fit us, but we search for a God according to our honest convictions. We want a God that will restore us to have sense enough to stay sober and have sense enough to allow this God to do for us what we couldn't possibly do for ourselves.
Not just a figment of our own imagination or product. And it comes about in action. It comes about in living, not in the head, because here's where the pattern is in here. If we have no clear-cut idea of God, we ask that he be given to us. Now if you ever want to know where God is, all you got to do is come to an AA meeting and look at the people, and you're looking where it is. In us. In us. Because he wouldn't be in us.
This wouldn't be the… Well, there wouldn't be no light fixtures here. We'd have done tour of this place up long ago because we'd be drunk. So any plan that making a God to suit us to our own selfish needs is a contradiction to the mission that we made, that we're not only powerless, but that our lives have become unmanageable. So in a common, sensible way is a God that I may seek. When I got sober, I didn't know how to pray the way you folks do.
Because the religion that I was raised in is… We sent all the prayer makers, but they didn't use them prayers. And so I went to my sponsor and I said, I can't pray like y'all do. He says there are three prayers in the big book, dummy. Read them to him. He had devious ways of getting me to read that book. And I found the first prayer in the fifth chapter when it says if you're ready, once you make a decision, then how do you implement the decision?
And it's got, here's where the first prayer is. And it says you better be ready and mean business when you make this decision. Because if you don't, nothing will ever happen. And he said many of us said to our maker as we understood him, and this is one of the most beautiful prayers that I've ever read in my life, and have come to love and come to believe and use on a daily basis. God, I offer myself to thee to build with me and to do with me as I will.
Relieve me of bondage of self that I may better do thy will. Take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of thy power, thy love, and thy way of life. May I do thy will always. Little do we realize it's getting us ready, what? To try to carry this message of having had a spiritual awakening to alcoholics in the 12th step. He said God, I offer myself to thee to do with me and to build with me as I will.
And it says relieve me of bondage of self that I may better do thy will. Take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those that I would help of thy power, thy love, and thy way of life. It doesn't say take away my difficulties so I can get my wife back to stay sober. It doesn't say take away my difficulties so I can go borrow money again at the bank and get my credit card back.
It doesn't say take away my difficulties so I can get my boat out of hock and get me a new car and get some of them new unborn linoleum shoes and get me a diamond ring and take me a trip to Europe somewhere. Or get a better job or another car. Uh-uh. It says take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help. That's another growth. And also families. We help families by staying sober.
We help our employer by staying sober. We help society by staying sober. And it bears witness to those. As what God's doing for us that we couldn't possibly do for ourselves. The true reason for our being in all the other synonyms. May I do thy will always. We thought well before taking this step and making sure we were ready that we could at last abandon ourselves utterly to it. And you don't have to hold too many study groups on utterly.
That's all the way. Now we found it very desirable, the book, and I love this part of it, and I'll tell you the reason for it. Very desirable to take this spiritual step with an understanding person such as our wife, best friend, or spiritual advisor. But they always leave that door where it never corners you. But it is better to meet God alone than with one who might misunderstand. I asked our co-founder Bill before he got so sick by asking this around about 69 or 70, 69, right before he went to hospital.
I said, Bill, I'd like to ask you a question. I was privileged to be up in a group with him. And I happened to be the youngest sober one. And at that time I was gung-ho in another way.
[01:10:02]
And I said, I noticed that when you're wrote in a book that it's better to meet God alone than with one who might misunderstand. And he said, son, he said, there are many who you take a spiritual step with and they say, and many alcoholics will take it with non-alcoholics and non-Alanons. And they say, well, why do you need AA? God is in the church. God is, what do you need to be down there with them drunks?
I've been to a couple of AA meetings to where they use four-letter words and God at the same time. That's not really nice, they say. Why don't you come over here where the real McCoy is? And he says, David, that's what you call getting good before you get well. He says, you just stick with the drunks. And he said, it's better to meet God alone than with one who might misunderstand what the nature of our deal is.
He says, the essence of keeping it is giving it away and giving it away to drunks. And then we give it away to society as the evidence of God's love and grace, what he's doing for us. Now, I don't know about you, but society is so glad that I ain't out there messing in their business, drunk or sober. They're thankful I'm in AA. And of course, now the wording was, of course, quite optional so long as we expressed the idea of voicing it without reservation.
And this is the reason that AA does not put out a prayer book or a meditation in a prayer book. The 24-hour book, which many of us use, or use, I used to use it all the time and I don't for a personal reason now, but that's just me. And everyone's free to do it. It's the fact that, and it's not put out by us, it's because we don't like to suggest to anyone how to pray or meditate. Each of us have to find it our own way.
It allows those of, let's say, the Catholic faith to continue into the dogma, of the Protestant to continue into the dogma. And it allows it that way, and the Jew or Hindu, and this is good. This is as it should be. And because as long as we voice this without reservation, in other words, we don't put any alternatives on it. This was only a beginning, though it honestly and unblemishingly affects sometimes a very great one itself at once.
I want to thank you for your attention and for your attendance. And then if you'd like to continue the formula next Wednesday night, why, I'll come and we'll get into them goodies, the fourth step and the fifth step and the sixth step and the seventh step and, you know, taking those inventories and we'll talk about, well, money and resentment and sex and all those good things, you know. Are there any other announcements that need to be made?
Okay. Whoever wants to close it can come up and close it.