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Source: DICOBE-00234 – Chuck C – GOPHER STATE RNDP V – 1978-07-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00234-chuck-c-gopher-state-rndp-v-1978-07-15.mp3 Duration: 01:24:44
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That I Give You One of the Greatest Friends That I've Ever Had, From Laguna Beach, Chatsy. Thank you. I am Chuck C., and I'm an alcoholic. I guess I'm the only mossback on this program. One of the greatest things about this weekend is that I've been able to look over all my replacements. I'm glad that we had a cop on. Before I forget it, this suit that she's got on is for sale. I was with him one time in Texas, Midland, Texas. And he was dressed from top to bottom in fur. Had a hat of fur. Fur, everything, you know.
Every time that he didn't sell the whole thing. Before he left there, he didn't have a bit of it, you know. So he wasn't kidding when he said he delivered a fur coat down there. I won't tell you, but this suit will cost just about as much as that fur coat, so be prepared to pay for it. But you can have it. I told Johnny a while ago that if she and the two judges had have been five percent better, I wouldn't have shown up this morning at all.
This has been a terrific, terrific session for me. Everybody has sort of surpassed themselves, and that's what this thing is all about. You know, if we could have fixed ourselves, if we could have gotten sober and stayed sober on our own, we would not be members of this leper colony. The first weekend of the year, I was talking at a birthday in Inglewood, California, and the first speaker, a fifteen-minute speaker, was a Scotsman with a patch over his eye, and he got up there and he said, I am sober today by choice. I am sober today by choice. And he said that several times. And when I got up, I said, I am not sober today by choice. As long as I had choice, my choice was never to come here, and I never came.
I never came until I ran out of the power of choice, and ran out of everything else. And so I think that's the reason I have been so slap-happy since I got here. Because I can't take credit even for coming, or living long enough to get here. Everything that's happened to me in the last thirty-two years and five months is lagniac. Now, you sweets here don't know what that means. That's a Louisiana Cajun word for velvet. That's something for nothing. And that's what this is for me.
[00:05:13]
Everything about it is a gift. I take credit for the first forty-three years of my life. I had forty-three years when I was the master of ceremonies and the star of the show. And at the rife old age of forty-three, I was portrayed as a husband, a father, a businessman, a man, and a drunk. And that's all the departments I had. If I'd had any more departments, I'd have failed in them, too. But that's all I had.
Now, I accomplished that on my own. And I take the credit for it. Everything that's happened since then, I thank you and God for it. I should take absolutely no credit for living long enough to get here, or getting here. Because if I could have survived with that coming, I would not be here yet. Therefore, all I can tell you is that I'm so grateful I can't see. I am so grateful I can't see. I know nothing about any other approach to the disease of alpha-11 but the alphalic synonymous approach.
I read a lot that I don't particularly enjoy from experts. We have more experts in my country on related disorders than we have related disorders. We have so many experts in related disorders that you can hardly find anybody to call on a wet one. But I haven't had any particular contact with them. Because I came here, done in, with only one hope, that I could find out how to live until I left, which was imminent, without taking a drink.
Because I had to use such time as I had left to rub out the record that I'd made in the first forty-three years. I didn't want my wife and our children to remember me as nothing but a tongue-chewing, babbling idiot drunk. I drank for twenty-five years. And there was no time in that twenty-five years that I didn't love my wife and my kids. I always loved them, but they didn't know it. I suppose Mrs. C. said to me five hundred times, Chuck, if you loved us, you wouldn't do these things. And how could I tell her? It was because I loved her that I did them. You don't get very far talking like that.
But that's the truth. I ran out of time ten years before I came here in 1946, January 1946. I ran out of time. On the tenth day of last month, June, we had our forty-third birthday in Alcoholics and Arms. The tenth day of June was the last drink that Dr. Bob had. So that was the birthday, forty-third birthday. And just about that time, I had run out of time. And it was in the Alcoholics and Arms. So, I had a session with me, because I wasn't drinking well. I'd been drinking for twenty-five years. I'd been drinking according to code. And I'd done pretty well with it, I thought.
[00:10:15]
As a matter of fact, every once in a while, I'd say I'd had fifteen years of good drinking. And then I'd think again. And I think the only reason I think that I had fifteen years of good drinking is in comparing it with the last ten. This is sure pretty good. But, I had a session with me, because I wasn't drinking well. And I came up with the conclusion that this was a personal weakness, something I had to overcome to get rid of.
And I started working on my problem, ten years before I came here. There was no Alcoholics Anonymous. And I worked on it very diligently, for ten years. 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 my obsession to win. So I was saying to myself, five years after everybody quit listening to me, I'll beat this thing if it's the last thing I ever do. And it came that close to being the last thing I ever did.
I became a periodic ten years before I got here. Because, you see, I was going to beat this rat. And you can't fight a very good battle when you're down on your back. You have to get well enough to get back in the ring for the next round, if you're going to win. And so I became a periodic. And periodics, in my day, didn't have any place to go to sober up. We had to die until we could get well. The way a periodic drinks. We start in, you know, and we keep on going. And we drink until we can't get it down and can't get it up and can't live and can't die.
And we have to quit. And we quit. And there's no way to get sober but just to shake your liver out. You know, walk and shake and die until you can live. And I did that after every drink for ten years. And then I had a sober spell, you see. And we have a regular routine for that, too. As soon as we get well enough, we get on a health kick. We drink a lot of milk. When we can eat, we eat. And we take a lot of vitamins. Thyme and fifties was what my doctor recommended. I ate them to the buckets.
And we get in pretty good shape. We even take a little exercising, you know. And when we get well enough, we analyze our last drink. And we see why we made our mistakes. And we decide not to do it that way anymore. And now we've got it all together. We are physically well and we are mentally in good shape. We've made our decisions. And we go along for a while and then we start sampling. And we sample away right on back to bed, you know. Periodics never taper off. We always taper on.
Now I can look at my record between every drink I've ever had. Now I could look at my record between every two drunks with physically sober eyes. I would be physically as dry as I am this morning between every two drunks. And I could look at that record. And every time up until the last time, I could convince myself that I had learned my lesson.
[00:15:26]
I've learned my lesson. Next time it's going to be different. Now, I can't understand that. I've been known my last drunk, and I told you I drank for twenty-five years. It was never my fault that I drank. Never. I never had one drunk in twenty-five years that was my fault. It was your fault. It was my wife's fault. There was a king-sized reason for getting drunk. But as good as she was, her mother was four times as good.
Her mother had only one kid. And I was married to her. And she was living with us. And she had a grandstand seat, watching me crucify her only daughter. And she didn't like me very good. And I didn't like her that good. Because, you see, if she hadn't have been living with us, I wouldn't have had to crucify her daughter. It was all her fault. We had a hating society that was a beautiful thing to behold.
But before I passed her up, because the last trip out, she burned out too. But she lived with us for five years after I sobered up. And I'm telling you something, you can't imagine what this program did for her. I'm sure if she had come in the last year that she lived and found me just slapping that daughter of hers all over the house, she would have turned to my wife and she'd say, Elsa, what have you done? By that time I could do no wrong at all. But now the funny part of it is that it would seem to me that one drunk in those twenty-five years would have been my fault by accident.
But they weren't. Up until my last one, it was never my fault. And on my last trip out, I came to see that if there be fault, it's mine. If there be fault, it is mine. And I've never had to drink anymore. It's a fantastic thing. Now again, I can't understand my conduct, because I was periodic. I can understand why an habitual drinker would keep on drinking. Because they never get well enough to get sick.
They're always half in the bag, you know. But me, I was physically as sober as I am today, between every two drunks. And I can look at my record with physically sober eyes, and I can't believe it. For instance, I never got to the point where I was comfortable in jail. Now, I don't like it in jail. My family thought I loved it. I spent so much time there. I had more trouble with fleas than you can imagine. I've only run into nine people in thirty-two years that had the trouble with fleas I did. My bedroom, I'd get billions of fleas in. And I'd lie there and try to get them off of me, you know, and they'd roll over my hands, and I'd wear myself out. And then I just had to lie there and breathe fleas.
[00:20:05]
Now, that ain't good living. Fleas finally turned into spiders, as big as this thing. They were coming down from the ceiling. I couldn't get out from under them. And that's low-ratio. Really. Fleas finally turned into elephants, too. Now, this I can say on pretty good authority. I'm one of the few, if not the only guy that ever lived in Beverly Hills that was charged by a herd of elephants. That almost never happens in Beverly. They damn near ran me out of the county. I was able to self-refuse it with no visible means of support. I think it was about seven years before I got here.
I had gone to the kitchen after a glass of buttermilk, which was my tonic coming off of a drunk. And the tea kettle was sitting on the stove. And out of the steam came the most beautiful symphony you ever heard. And I stepped back and I looked that situation over and I said to me, this is the greatest phenomenon of modern times. This old tea kettle has suddenly become a receiving cell. Then I made me a big mistake. I went out and herded the family in to listen to music.
They turned you in to nothing, and I thought you were in bed. Well, I lived to hear a dozen bands at once. All of them with different announcers. All of them different tunes. Lots of good music, but no knobs. You couldn't turn it off. Then I began meeting the people and having a good time with them, you know. And they weren't there. I think perhaps that one of the most heart-rending experiences my family had was oftentimes we'd all be in the same living room and I'd have company and they wouldn't have any. I'm not sure that the family don't have more problems than we do, because I was enjoying that company and they were wondering what the hell was going on. And then I began coming to with cuts and bruises all over me. Black eyes, a tongue that thick, all full of holes.
They called that an alcoholic convulsion. And I had to run out of convulsions before I could even look you people up. So I didn't learn very easy. Now during that whole time between drunks, I could get to thinking about what I was doing to my wife and my kids. And I knew I was crucifying them. And I knew I was going to do it again because I couldn't help it. And I'd get to feeling so damn bad when I was sober. Dry, I mean, not sober. I'd get to feeling so bad I'd have to go right out and get me a bottle and stop that hurt, you know.
Many of the time during those days, my bed was just that far from hers and it might as well have been in Siberia. And I'd lie there in my bed without any liquor in me at all.
[00:25:01]
And I'd listen until I knew she was asleep by her breathing. And then I'd cry me a river. Because I knew what I was doing. I didn't know why and I didn't know how not to do it. So I'd just cry me up a river. And so when I came to in January 1946, after a four-week blackout, I'd gotten drunk on this Friday before Christmas 1945, and I came to sometime after the middle of January 1946. And strange as it might be, I came to with the clearest head I've ever known in my entire lifetime. And I had nothing in my body but booze. Mr. Speed would tell you that during that whole four weeks, I had done nothing but lie in bed an empty bottle.
Every time I opened my eyes, I drank. And I had nothing in my body but booze because I didn't eat when I drank. And yet I came to with the clearest head I've ever known. And I knew for the first time in my life that I had lost the battle of life. I knew it. I didn't know why. But I knew that I had lost. And it was the first time in forty-three years of life that I had ever admitted defeat. That was the first time.
And I knew why my wife, after twenty years, was divorcing me. And I knew she should have done it ten years before. And I knew why our kids wouldn't come home when I was around. And I knew why my bossman had sent word to the house that if I ever stepped foot in the plant again, he was going to throw me through the window. And the window to which he referred don't open. I accepted the fact that morning, and I want to make this point very clear. I 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.
And it suddenly became very necessary for me to be sober to die. Now, I knew I was going to die, because the next to the last time I'd come so close to it, there wasn't any room to spare. I had gone to the kitchen in my withdrawal period to get a glass of buttermilk again. Mrs. C. and Richard were sitting in the living room. They heard me let out a bellow and heard me hit the floor, and they came running out there thinking they'd find in an alcoholic convulsion, which was my wont. And maybe they could keep me from swallowing my tongue. And I wasn't convulsed. I was just lying there on the kitchen floor as peaceful as anybody you ever saw. I wasn't doing nothing.
They told me I was a peculiar color. I was blue. And they couldn't wake me up. And they got all exorcised and called the oxygen squad from Beverly Hill to Stephen Hospital. Now, this is serious as this. This tickles the hell out of me from this vantage point. Because she and those children of ours had been praying for five years for me to die. And they came out of the kitchen and found me dead. And they called the oxygen squad.
Now, to show you that isn't a figment of my imagination, many of you have heard Mrs. Lee talk, and she'll get up here and without even stutter, she will say, I found myself on many occasions trying to dream up a way to do away with this son of a bitch and not get caught.
[00:30:16]
And she finally dared and told the oxygen squad. And I have reason to believe they brought me around. All right, I got to share this with you. There was a young doctor with him, and he told me, he says to me, to all intents and purposes, you were dead. He says, we've had a hell of a time bringing you to. And nobody will ever bring you to again under these conditions. And then he gave me the finest piece of counsel I will ever hear.
He looked me right in the eye and he said, if I were you, I wouldn't do that anymore. I want to pass that on. If I were you, I wouldn't do that anymore. But I did it again. And the last time was worse than the next to the last time. So I knew I was going to die, and it was all right. But I didn't want to die with a record. I must rub out as much as I could so that Mrs. C. and the kids wouldn't remember me as nothing but a tongue-chewing babbling idiot drunk.
And I remember that morning that she had found and read Jack Alexander's article in the Post five years before. And she put it on the left arm of the chair that I sit in right now, opened it to right page. And when I came in, I saw it, and I read it. And I remembered that I had read it that morning, in January 1946. And I only remembered two things about it, because I wasn't well when I read it. I was puny.
I remembered that drunks helped drunks and didn't drink. And they called it Alcoholics Anonymous. And I said to myself, if I ever live to get out of this bed, I'll find a aid. And immediately the curtain dropped. My sanity was gone. And I was sick unto death, drunk and insane. And I had a lot of dying to do. But from the moment of commitment until right now, I have never had a drink of liquor or a sedating or tranquilizing pill of any kind. Such is the great significance of this thing called surrender.
Surrender! Surrender is victory for the alcoholic. And that's why it's so tough for us, so very tough for us. Because we weren't born to surrender. We were born to win. And you know something we almost did? I call us the almost people, you know. Almost was our President of the United States, but I got this little bit alcoholic. And that's all, brother. But how we fight to maintain ourselves. Ten long years I fought that battle. And I fought it through the gates of insanity and death.
And my story is different only in this way, that had I had to consciously surrender the first time, I would have died without coming here. I couldn't any more surrender than I could fly. The word was not even in my vocabulary. And so, thank God, my last trip out, the bottle did it for me. The bottle killed me. Everything between me and me burned out. And there was nothing left. And I came to this program wanting nothing for me, not even survival.
[00:35:18]
Because it was going to die. I didn't need it. But just that I might live such time as I had, rubbing out the record. And that's all I've done for 32 years. And that's all I've done. When it came time for me to find you, I didn't know where to look. I didn't know where to look. My keen alcoholic mind told me you wouldn't be in the phone book. You were anonymous, weren't you? They don't anonymous in the phone book. So knowing you weren't there, I never looked. Which is the story of my life. I knew so damn much it wasn'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 Alcoholics Anonymous. And I finally got a hold of a guy. Got his number from a doctor in Beverly Hills. And I called him. He was a picture man. And he was working nights, so he couldn't take me to meetings that night. So he says, call me again tomorrow. And I did. We talked a little while longer, and he says, you had a drink today? And I says, no. But he says, don't take one, I'm still working. Call me again tomorrow. And so I called him again tomorrow, and we got going, and I says, I know you're still working. And he says, yeah.
I says, you don't have to take me to meetings. Where is there a meeting? I'll go. And he told me. And I went. Now he might have been my sponsor, but he was working nights. Just see what he missed. And I had my first meeting. I met another guy. He lived over the mountain in the valley. And his name was Rusty Thomas. He's gone, so I can use his name. Rusty had more freckles than any poor people I ever saw. He had freckles on freckles, that guy. That's why they called him Rusty.
And he told me that first night that he would be happy to take me to my next meeting. He says, now you come over to my house tomorrow night, and I'll take you to my meeting, and we'll have a little time together. So when the time came, I went over the hill, and I found his house on Riverside Drive in the valley. But he had forgotten all about it, and he'd gone to his meeting. And I had to find the next meeting by myself, alone.
Now, Rusty might have been my sponsor, but he forgot. And I've never had a sponsor. Now, I'm not saying that bagging. I'm just telling you that's the way it is with me. I have never had a sponsor. Because when I learned what a sponsor was, I didn't feel that I had any right to ask anybody to spend that kind of time with me. I didn't think I was entitled to any consideration from anybody. And I couldn't ask anybody to be my sponsor.
And when I might have been able to ask somebody to be my sponsor, I already had five hundred, and a guy of my very own. Now, that does not mean that I've never had sponsors. That means I've never had a sponsor. Because everybody in this room, everybody that I know is my sponsor. Non-alcoholics and alcoholics as well. Some of them teaching me what to do, and some of them teaching me what not to do. And who says the one that teaches me what not to do isn't as great a teacher as the one that teaches me what to do, you know?
[00:40:13]
So I haven't been without sponsors, and I'm not now. All of you are my sponsors. Now, it took me a little while to find you guys, and I knew I had to go to the office. Although the boss had sent word that I was set foot in the plant again, he was going to throw me through the window. He'd done something very nice for me the Friday before Christmas, 1945. He'd called me in, and I knew it was Christmas, because I knew I had it coming.
And instead of firing me, he had me analyzed. And he said to me, Charlie, you've had a lot of trouble this year. He didn't mention booze, but he knew that I knew what he was talking about. And he said further, I think I know why you've had trouble. I think it's because of the pressure you're under. And I'm going to take a 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 so instead of shooting me, as he had every right to do, he gave me three thousand bucks for a Christmas present, to take the pressure off of me. And if you don't think he took the pressure off of me, you're nuts.
There's one thing that's worse for an alcoholic than bad fortune, and that's good fortune. So I got drunk on the way home. And I showed up after, or between the middle and the last of January. And he'd missed me, and as I told you, he was going to throw me through the window. And I knew it, and I knew I had it coming, but I had to go back down there, because he paid me for something I hadn't done. And I went. 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.
So he busted in my office like a bull in the china closet. And I couldn't have defended myself with a shotgun. I didn't have the shakes, I had the leaps. And all I could do was say to him, Victor, leave me alone. I don't work for you anymore. I'm down here to clean up this desk, and as soon as I get even with you, I'll get out of here on my own power, and you won't have to throw me out. And you won't ever owe me another penny as long as you live, but for God's sake, leave me alone. I've got to get even with you.
And he stopped in his tracks, and he says, What the hell's happened to you, Charlie? And I says, Don't know. But he didn't throw me through the window. Now, the first time I talked to my wife after I'd gotten over my bad sickness, after I'd said to myself, If I ever live to get out of this bed, I'll find AA, and then went into the relapse. When I got well enough, I called my wife in, and she was divorcing me, so don't think that this was magnanimous. It wasn't. She was getting rid of me legally anyhow. But I said to her, Honey, it's no longer of any consequence to me whether or not I live under this roof. It is of absolutely no importance to me at all. I'll never ask a thing of you as long as the two of us live as one.
If I ever have anything that will add to your life, let me give it to you. And we closed the book, and it's never been reopened. Now, she would tell you that that morning, she knew something had happened to me. But she didn't know what it was. And I didn't know what it was. And I just kept trying to rub out the record. And down the road, maybe a year, maybe a year
[00:45:04]
and a half, I'd be sitting talking to a client in business, and he'd stop me right in the middle of a sentence, and he'd say, Charlie, I was Charlie in business, what the hell's happened to you? I've been knowing you for twenty-five years, and I don't know you. And I'd say, I don't know. Because I didn't. But they did. Now, this is what I think happened. And I'm going to tell you that, and quit. You've already had about all you can stand, anyway. God, what a meeting this has been. How I have loved it. I am convinced not only because of the many, many, many books that I've read, but because of what has happened in my own life. That there's only one problem in life. That includes all problems. And one answer in life that includes all answers. The problem is the feeling of conscious separation from. Which is the best definition of the human ego you'll ever hear. Now, that is not the definition in the dictionary, and it's not the definition that the psychiatrist would give you. That's my definition. And it's right. I've got to tell you this little story, too, in a hurry, because I've got to catch a plane.
That came to me about, oh, thirty years ago. I was talking to a men's club in a church, and I'd given them the right to ask questions after I got through. And the first question that they asked, one guy got up and he said, You've talked a lot about the human ego. What is it? And I said to him, Well, I really expected an intelligent question. I didn't think I'd get a question like this. I said, Anybody knows what the human ego is? I don't know.
Let's play with it a while, and see if we can come up with the definition. And that's what I came up with. The feeling of conscious separation from. And I said, That's it. You'll never hear better of it. And I went home and woke up my wife. I said, Listen to what came out of me tonight. And I gave her my definition. And everybody that listened to me for the next six months, I was telling them my definition of the human ego. And at that time I was reading the book, The Divine Life, or The Life Divine, or something like that, by Sri Aurobindo.
I don't recommend it. It's that thick. And there ain't no pictures. And it's five quid. And the sentences are that long. When you get from the beginning to the period, you forgot where you started. But I was just reading it for fun, and so I enjoyed it. And I got about two-thirds of the way through it, and Mr. C. was sitting over in the dining hall, and I'm sitting reading, and I start cackling like an old man that's laid a square egg.
She says, What now, Socrates? I said, Listen to my definition of the human ego. And I read out that book, and it was a thousand years older than Jesus. I thought it was mine. That's the last time I've ever claimed anything. But anyway, I think that's it. The feeling of conscious separation from. For instance, I walked alone for forty-three years of my life, wanting, just like you did, to be a part of the life around me. Oh, how I wanted to be a part of the life around me, and I couldn't make it. Walked alone for
[00:50:09]
forty-three years, consciously separated. Now, in thirty of those years, I had gone through all the great religions and all the great philosophies that I could find, trying to find out why I didn't get saved at thirteen. Because the outcrop that I was born in believed that you were struck out when you were born. You didn't have to sin yourself, you were born in sin. And you had to get saved even if you didn't sin, yourself. And so at thirteen, I tried to do it. Half of my family, incidentally, were hard-shelled Baptists, the other half was Methodist Truth South. Dan Wood say, Nothing witcher. Now, I'm not against them, they're all right. But I couldn't make it. We had a revival meeting, and I went down when they made the altar call. Prayed like hell. And the preacher finally joined me, and we both prayed like hell.
And every once in a while he'd get a little tired, and he'd say, How are you doing? And I'd say, No good. So he'd start over. And finally he got worn out. And he says to me, When you're baptized, it'll happen. And when the ice went out, I went in. And he ducked me, and he brought me up, and he says, How are you doing? I said, No good. I'm all wet. And he says, Well, when you're officially taken into church, it'll happen. And I was, and it didn't. And from then until I came to you, I was going through all the great religions and philosophies of the world to find out why I got zipped. I knew something should have happened. And I learned an awful lot about it. I was not known as the drunken beacon for ten years for nothing, I'll tell you that. I could tell you exactly how to live. And one of the great disappointments in my life was that you wouldn't do it. So I got goofy at you. I learned a lot about, but I didn't learn anything. And I had always thought all my life that when I knew enough, everything was going to be all right. And when I knew everything there was to know, a terrible thing happened to me. I couldn't even get out of bed and come and tell you how much I knew. And that is bad for a philosopher of my ability. It took two men and a boy to hold me up. So I can tell you this morning without fear of successful contradiction, that you can live yourself in the right thinking, but you can't think yourself in the right living. Because, you see, I could not fulfill the first condition. I could not surrender. And therefore, I was consciously separated until the bottle did it for me. The bottle killed me. And everything between me and me burned out. And that's the greatest single event that's ever happened in my life in 75 years. Now, I want to say to you that you're the most insensitive audience I ever appeared before. You know that I don't look like I was 75 years old.
Now, I want to say that again, and when I do, I want everyone to say, oh, the greatest single event that ever happened to me in 75 years. That's better. That's better.
[00:55:07]
That was when the bottle killed me in January 1946. Because, you see, that roadblock was gone. And I started trying to rub out a record. I came to you, people just like you, drunks who were not drunk. And you told me what you'd done. And he says, if you want what we have, do these things. And I didn't have any more sense than to do them. So I was back in a meeting every night, every night of the world, with the great fear upon me that he couldn't have this thing. But it wasn't that much of a fear.
It was just a desperate thing. Because I didn't have anything left to get it, you know. I didn't have any body or any mind even. And to emphasize that, I fell on my face for three and a half years after my last drunk. And I never even went to a doctor. Because, you see, I wasn't concerned. I was going to die anyhow, and it was all right. And it took me a long time to think. It was a long time. But I was in a meeting every night with you guys. Number one, it was the only place I had to go. And number two, it was comfortable with you. And after six months, I discovered that I hadn't had a drink or a pill for six months. And it was the greatest discovery I'd made up until that time. That was terrific.
Hadn't had a drink or a pill for six months. And I immediately got lost in trying to give it back. I had to. Because people like you had given it to me, and I started trying to give it back. And I just kept it up. Now, a year went by, and I discovered I had a family. And I got to say a little something about that, too. I had me a girl. I didn't have a wife, so I had me a girl. And Beverly Ellis had went to meetings with me. She was maybe twenty-five years older than I was. Her name was Louise. Little bitty thing. Walked like she was walking on eggs. Dressed to the guards every time we came to a meeting. She had a hat on, you know. And everything else that went with it. Because she lived up above the cracks, up in the big numbers in Beverly. I lived between Wilshire and Olympic, down on the flatlands where the poor people lived. But she was up in the rich country, and she was loaded. And she went with me to meetings, time and time and time. I'd just call Louise and say, let's go to a meeting, and she'd go with me. And sometime between the first year and the first six months in the first year, she called my house thinking to get me. And she got Mrs. C. on the line. And Mrs. C. says, who are you? And Mrs. C. says, I'm Chuck's wife. Didn't I have a wife? And Mrs. C. says, well, he doesn't either.
And I didn't. But a year went by, and I discovered I had a wife and kids. And they were living like kittens. And that was a great discovery. Another six months went by, and I discovered I was still at the office, trying to clean up my desk. And business was good. Business was good. And that wasn't a bad discovery. Another year went by, and I discovered that my own state of being was better than anything that I'd ever known in my lifetime. It was just good. It was good to be alive.
that I was never alone anymore. I, who had walked alone for a lifetime, and I was never
[01:00:04]
alone anymore. I had a God of my very own. And wherever I am, He is. Now this is the great discovery. When we make this discovery, the search is over, and life begins. And this is what I think it is. I think that Alcoholics Anonymous is nothing in the world but uncovering, discovering, and discarding. Uncovering, discovering, and discarding. I am convinced from the top of my longest head to my toenails, that the first two words of the Lord's Prayer mean what they say. Living with people like you for thirty-two years, I have to believe that every one of us are God's kids. Whether we like it or not, whether we believe it or not, even if we deny it, we can't change it. Because, you see, God is life. But for God, we would not be because God is life. And we are. And that's always been the case. You see. But we have to find it where it is. Now I was looking yonder, yonder, yonder. I was looking at everybody's religion, and to the exponents or proponents of everybody's religion.
And it ain't out there for me. It's in here. And I came to you. So I tried to rub out a record, and you can't rub out a record thinking I want or don't want or like or don't like You rub out a record doing something for somebody without a price tag on it. And without even knowing what was going on, my motivation flipped from trying to get what I thought I was born without to trying to add to life. I didn't know it. But it happened automatically. It had to, because I was rubbing out, you see. And I learned that St. Francis knew what he was talking about when he said, For it is in giving that we receive. I learned it because it happened in my own life.
Now, there's a trick to it, because there's no batter in it. You know, we were taught to believe that the two great needs of the individual are to be needed and to be loved. And that's just as backwards as everything else he taught me. The two great needs aren't to be needed and to be loved. The two great needs are to love and to do. And this is AA. You see, if we love something or somebody, we do something for it. And that's what does something right here. It's not what happens out there. It's what happens here. So to love and to do, that's it. I was taught that we have to earn God's grace. To merit, to be worthy of, to earn. And, of course, I was pretty well along in life before it hit me that the very word grace means a free gift. A free gift! You can't earn a free gift. If Bill had had to earn this thing, we wouldn't be here this morning. We wouldn't have any Alcoholics Anonymous, because Bill didn't have time to earn anything. You know, when Ebby was talking to Bill, he got down to the place where he said, we have to find a power grid in ourselves. And Bill thought he was an agnostic, so he turned off his hearing aid. And he went right ahead drinking that gin. And that ain't bad. That ain't bad. Because he drank enough of that gin that it put him back in the hospital again.
[01:05:09]
And he heard Silkworth tell Lois, Bill's wife, to be as good to him as she could. Because within six months, she was either going to have to bury him or lock him up forever. And he heard that. Now, that isn't a good piece of news when you're feeling good. He wasn't feeling good. And he heard that. And he says, uh-oh. He says, I've done everything that anybody ever told me to, but one. Maybe there's something in what Ebby was telling me. Maybe there's something to this God stuff. And he yelled out, God, if there be a God, reveal Yourself to me now.
And it happened. It happened. And we got Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's why we're here. I didn't have time to earn anything. If I'd have had to earn anything, it would have been impossible. And I found out later on that you don't earn it at all. You can't earn it. You can't be good enough to earn it, and you can't be bad enough to lose it. The carpenter man told us, he said to, he says, who by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature? Who by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature? Which means to me, you can't change the reality of your own being. You can only change your experience in reality.
I sat in the same chair I sit right now for ten years in hell, and now thirty-two years in heaven. Now that's the sermon longer than from here to Morris and back. And it shouts, heaven was always in that chair. I was in hell. You see, we can't change the reality of our own being. We can only change our experience in reality. And this is what happens to us when we do these simple things one day at a time.
The great good fortune of we alcoholics is that the formula for sobriety and the formula for the good life and the formula for self-discovery is the same formula, one through twelve inclusive. I know because that's all I've done. You see, the only way anybody will ever know that the twelve steps work is to work them. You can't take my word for it. There's nobody in here but my wife that ever saw me drunk. And she won't tell. So you don't know whether I'm a drunk or not. I might just have joined this leper colony because I'm queer for doughnuts and coffee.
So you can't take my word for it. You've got to do it yourself. And the only way that anybody will ever know that God is sufficient unto all of our needs is to totally abandon ourselves to him and find out. Now, in closing, when I discovered that I had a God of my own and that it was such a great good fortune, I tried to figure out how I was going to show my gratitude. And the first thing I was going to do was make him a plaque, because I had a woodworking plant. And some of the finest mechanics you ever saw, we could have made a beautiful plaque. And that's what I was going to do. And when I played with it a little bit, I said to myself, who am I going to give it to?
[01:10:20]
And that went down the line. The next thing I decided to do was to become a Trappist monk. Now, I'm not even a Catholic. But I figured I was going to become a Trappist monk and pray for you monkeys the rest of my life. And that wasn't bad. But then it hit me that if I have any value to the human race, it's to the drunk who still suffers. Because I know his problem and I know his answer. And there wouldn't be very many drunks with the Trappist monks, so I wasn't going to have much to do. And I had to discard that. And then, in one of my periods of looking at this, because I wanted so much to be able to show my gratitude.
And I was thinking about this thing, and I remembered that when the carpenter was about ready to leave, he called old Pete in. Now, a lot of you people call him St. Peter. I don't. I call him old Pete because he's a friend of mine. We were kids together. And I'm not sure that he wasn't a little bit alcoholic himself. Because when he got caught, you know, he lied out of it. You remember? That sounds an awful lot like me.
So, I got to thinking about that, and the carpenter seemed to like him a little bit better than some of the rest of them. And he called him in. And he said to him, Peter, do you love me? And Peter said, yea, Lord. He says, tend my sheep. And he turned around and asked him again, Peter, do you love me? He says, yea, Lord. He says, tend my sheep. And then he asked him again, Peter, do you love me? Yea, Lord. Tend my sheep. And I said to me, you must have meant tend my sheep. He said it three times. He must have meant tend my sheep.
And that's what I've been doing ever since. And that's the way I show my gratitude. Why am I here? I couldn't be anyplace else. You ask me and I tell you. Now, if I took my calendar and I started with day one, on every month of the year, and I say to myself, do you want to do that? I'd say no. Do you want to do this? No. And I'd go right through it to the 27th. And I'd say, Minneapolis, do you want to do this? No. I've been to Minneapolis. I was there. It's your first goofer state.
I won't come back. You hear what I told you. So I just burned my passport. You take it next time. But I never ask myself a question. If it's on the calendar, I do it. And invariably the compensations are a hundred times greater than the hardships. What a deal this has been to spend with you guys. And what a wonderful thing is that I'm the only old timer on the program. All of my kids, including Johnny down here. And I tell you, we're in good hands.
In Good Hands. We're in good hands. I've had the privilege of having many single sessions,
[01:15:02]
and I've had two big ones, with kids sitting all over the floors, listening. Bunch of kids. Two of them. Two sessions. One after the meeting last night, and one sometime yesterday. And I love these kids. I love them to death. And I love you. And you don't have to change anything, even the kids. Don't have to change anything. If you're drunk, you don't even have to get sober for me to love you. If you're a liar, you don't have to quit lying for me to love you. If you're a thief, you don't have to quit thievin' for me to love you. Because, you see, I know who you are, whether you do or not. And I love you. And I look back at me, and I see that God loved me just as much when I was in the gutter as he does now. Just the same. But he never kept me from making mistakes. He loved me enough to allow me to make my own mistakes, that I might sooner run out of my own resources and come back home where I belong. And I have to see that all through life. I have to see that. And Mrs. C. and I, since we saw you last, we needed that very much. Because we had only one girl in the family. We had a couple of not-headed boys, and one of them got married, and he had a couple of not-headed boys, but he had one girl. And this girl, I might not even have to tell you, was the apple of my eye. I was promising her boots, and red suits, and Cadillacs, before she'd pull up, you know. She's the only one. And here she got lost in the cocaine scene. And she cut her arms, and they called me. And I had to go get her, and hospitalize her. But she, her problem is a little bit different. The answer's the same, but the problem is a little bit different.
The psychology is a little bit different to me from the psychology of alcoholism. Alcoholism, we hate our guts. We hate our guts. And it seems that with the dope scene, it's not quite like that. It seems that they always think they're a couple or three cuts above us, you know. The highest society in all the prisons of the world is the mainliners, you know. They're sorry that we're mad at them, but they're not sorry for what they did that made us mad at them.
It's a little bit different. So I took her where I thought she could get better help than I could give her. And she went through the place, and went back. And if I hadn't known that God loved me just as much when I was in the gutter as he does now, and if I hadn't known that he allowed me to make my own mistakes and learn in my own way, and in my own dying, I believe this would have killed me, you know.
[01:20:03]
But I knew, and Mrs. C. knew, that we had to give her the right to make her own mistakes. And it seems like maybe she's coming out of it. And so again, we're the most fortunate peoples on the face of the earth, because we have a terminal illness, and because our illness is progressive, and because the time comes when it's no longer possible to survive without an answer. And we come here willing to settle for anything, just so we don't have to drink today. And we find this wonderful, wonderful fellowship of alcoholics and nuns.
We don't get sober on profundities. We don't get sober on principles. We get sober by the spirit of it. The spirit that makes you get up out of bed at two o'clock in the morning and go clear across town to sit with a drunk. We have to, you see. That's the spirit of alcoholics and nuns. And it's spelled L-O-V-E, love. And they tell us that God is love. And I believe it. And I love you. It's been no chore for me to be here. I love you to death. And may God go with you when you leave this place, and see you safe home. And keep you until we meet again.
God bless you. Thank you very much. Praise your main standing. And what a beautiful ending to a beautiful weekend. There's a story I'd just like to tell about a young couple who were out in a great wheat field and they had their little boy with them. And the little boy crawled away and he became lost. And his mom and dad looked for him and they couldn't find him. And they went and got the neighbors and they crawled around and looked around all over the place and they couldn't find the little boy. And they called the army in and this army sergeant said the next morning, let's join hands and walk across this wheat field and this way we can't miss him.
And they joined hands and they walked across the wheat field and they found the little boy. He had died during the night from exposure. And his daddy picked him up in his arms and he said, why didn't we join hands before? Let's join hands to sing, to say our greatest prayer of all times. And to walk in unity and love and in service as we go to our respective homes. I love you and God bless you. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.