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Source: DICOBE-00238 – Chuck C – TARHEEL MIDWINTER CONF – 1978-01-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00238-chuck-c-tarheel-midwinter-conf-1978-01-15.mp3 Duration: 01:18:40
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Did I give you my friend and your friend, and help me to give him a warm Tar Heel Midwinter Conference welcome, our friend from Laguna Beach, California, Chuck C. Thank you, I am Chuck C., and I'm an alcoholic. Hi. Strange, but some other parts of the country don't think they have to get me to get her. She don't think a thing about leaving me home and going all over the country, you know, to yak. As near as I can calculate, this is very likely my 32nd A.A. birthday.
That's 11,688 days that I would not have had, had it not been for people like you, the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, and the grace of God. Lots of people are born and die without living 11,688 days, and I've had 11,688 days after I died, and every one of them have made me more grateful. I'm so grateful I can't see. Fortunately for me, I came to the program knowing that I couldn't drink and live, and that of myself I couldn't keep from drinking. I got here knowing that, and I've never forgotten it.
I can't anymore stay sober today on my own than I could 35 years ago, and I know that. And it's no big deal. It's no big deal. Because people like you, drunks who were not drunk, told me the first night I got here what they had done in order to be able to live one day at a time without drinking. They said, here are the steps we took. If you want what we have, do these things. Well, I didn't particularly want what they had. I got here not wanting anything for myself, not even sobriety.
But I had to have such days as I had left without drinking so I could rub out as much of the record as I could before I died. That's the only reason I found you, because I must live today without drinking so I could rub out as much of the record as I could before I died. I knew I was going to die, and it was all right. But I didn't want my wife and our kids to remember me as nothing but a tongue-chewing, babbling idiot drunk.
You know, there are many people in this audience who have lived with people like me, and who knew, you know, that we didn't love you. I bet you that lady you heard yesterday told me 500 times, Chuck, if you loved us, you wouldn't do these things. And how could I tell her that it was because I loved them that I did them?
[00:05:14]
You can't explain a thing like that, you know. I was a periodic the last 10 years that I drank, for a reason. I'd been drinking 15 years, and I decided that I wasn't drinking well. I'd had a code for drinking, as I'd had a code for everything else in life. And for the first 15 years, I had pretty well drunk according to my code. But after 15 years, the code sort of got lost, and I wasn't drinking well.
And I had a session with me, just about the same time that Abbey had his first session with Bill. I had a session with me. And I came to the conclusion that morning that this was a personal weakness, something that I had to overcome to be rid of. Now, alcoholics, the very nature of an alcoholic, is that we don't like personal weaknesses in anybody, and much more so in ourselves. And so I was going to have to beat this thing in order to get rid of it.
I became a periodic at that time. Because 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, you can't give up the fight. So I became a periodic. And I was sober as I am tonight, this afternoon, physically. Just as sober as I am this afternoon, physically. Between every two drunks for 10 years. And still I had to drink again every time.
Now, during totally sober periods, I would get, I'm talking about, without liquor. I wasn't sober. I wasn't drinking. But I would 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 loved them. And I couldn't stand it. The hurt was too bad, so I'd have to go get a bottle to get rid of the hurt and crucify them all over again. You know? You can't explain a thing like that. Nobody can. But I never got to the point in all my 25 years of drinking that I didn't love my wife and my kids.
And when I came to the middle of January, maybe 32 years ago today, for my last session, I still loved my wife and my kids. I had had a little experience that last trip out, which I'm going to tell you about. On the Friday before Christmas 1945, my boss called me in. And I knew it was curtains, because I knew I had it coming. But instead of shooting me, as he had every right to do, he started talking. He says, Charlie, I was Charlie in business. He says, you've had a lot of trouble this year. He didn't mention booze, but he knew that I knew what he meant when he said trouble.
And he says, I think, because he was a non-alcoholic, he says, I think I know what causes it. He says, I think it's because of the pressure you're under. And he says, I've decided to take a little pressure off of you, and maybe next year you won't have so much pressure and you won't have so much trouble.
[00:10:05]
And again, instead of shooting me, he gave me 3,000 bucks for a Christmas present to take the pressure off of me. Now, if you don't think he took the pressure off of me, you're nuts. There's one thing worse for an alcoholic than bad fortune, and that's good fortune. So I got drunk on the way home. Now, this was not par for the course for me at all, because periodics don't get drunk on the way home.
Periodics taper on, they never taper off. We have a regular routine. When we get to the place drinking that we can't get it down and can't get it up, and can't live and can't die, we have to get sober. And we do. And as soon as we're well enough, we go on a health kick. We drink a lot of milk, we eat as much as we can, we take vitamins, vitamin, thiamine fifties they gave me. I ate them with a bucket, you know. And we get physically feeling pretty good, and then we look at our last drunk, we take it apart, and we see where we made our mistakes.
And we decide not to do it that way anymore. And when we get everything in its place and a place for everything, we start sampling. And we sample our way right on back to being. So, I didn't usually get drunk on the way home. But my last one was different from all the rest of them, and I got drunk on the way home. And I never came to until the middle of January 1946. And when I did come to that morning, not knowing what had happened, but knowing what I had to do, I accepted myself exactly as I was where I was for the first time in my life.
For the first time in my life, I didn't have an excuse left for drinking. I drank for 25 years. And up until that last drunk, it was never my fault that I drank. It was your fault. It was that lady that you heard yesterday. It was her fault. She was a damn good reason for getting drunk. But as good as she was, she wasn't half as good as her mother. Her mother only had 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.
She hadn't been living with us, I wouldn't have had to crucify her daughter. So she was the best excuse I had right up until the last. But my last trip out, she burned out too. She was gone. And there was nothing between me and me. Saw me as I was, and accepted it. Saw my situation as it was, and accepted it. Mrs. C., after 20 years, was in the process of divorcing me. I might quickly say without cause.
I'd given her 20 of the best years of my life. I'd given her 20 of the best years of my life.
[00:15:03]
The year she was divorcing me. And I knew why. And I knew that she should have done it 10 years before. Our kids wouldn't even come home when I was around. And I knew why. And that same boss man that had given me the $3,000 to take the pressure off 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, which he had picked out, don't open.
I saw all of this. And accepted it. Just as it was. And it suddenly became very necessary for me to be sober until I died. Just to rub out the record. I remembered that morning. That Mrs. C. had found Jack Alexander's article in the Post. March 1st, 1941. About this budding society of Alcoholics Anonymous. And she had read it. And she had concluded that it might be of some benefit to me. I don't know how she came to that conclusion.
So she left it open at the right page on the left arm of the chair I sit in right now. And when I came in I sat down and there it was. And so I read it. Now I was four sheets in the wind when I read it. So that morning I only remembered two things. I remembered that drunks helped drunks and didn't drink. And they called it Alcoholics Anonymous. That's the only two things I remembered about the article.
And I said to myself, if I ever live to get out of this bed, I'll find AA. And immediately the curtain dropped. And I was sickened to death, drunk and insane. And I had a lot of dying to do. And I had a lot of dying to do. But from that moment until right now, I have never had to take a sedating or tranquilizing pill, or a drink of alcoholic beverage of any kind. Such is the great significance of this thing called surrender.
Surrender! The thing that makes it so difficult for you and I to get into this program and do these things is that we're not people who surrender on every other street corner. There's a very, very bunch of people on the face of the earth that has little regard for authority. It's the drunks of the world. We don't like authority, unless it's ours. They tell us, do this, we say, who said so? And they whip out the book and they read it and they say, see?
And we say, who said so? See? And we say, who wrote it? We don't surrender. And had I had to surrender consciously the first time, I would have died 32 years ago. So the greatest single event that has ever happened in my 75 years of life Huh. Not a damn one of you are even badder than I. You know damn well I don't look like I was 75 years old. The greatest single event that's happened to me in 75 years is when the bottle killed me in January 1946.
Greatest single event in my life. Because that last trip out surrendered me. Everything between me and me burned out. And only then could I come to find you, to find a way to live without drinking.
[00:20:03]
Now I had a little difficulty yet, because my keen alcoholic mind told me you would not be in the phone book. You were anonymous, weren't you? They don't anonymous in the phone book. And so knowing you weren't there, I never looked. And that's the story of my life. I knew so damn much that 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 it took a little while for me to find you people. But I persisted. And I finally got a guy's telephone number from a doctor in Beverly Hills, who was a member of this society and he was also a motion picture man. And I called him up. Talked with him a little bit and he said, have you had a drink today? And I said, no. But he says, don't take one. He says, I'm working nights and I can't take you to a meeting tonight, but maybe tomorrow I won't be working.
And I'll take you to a meeting. Call me again tomorrow. So I called him again tomorrow. We talked a little bit and he says, have you had a drink today? And I said, no. But he says, don't take one, I'm still working. Call me again tomorrow. So I called him again. And we started this same routine. And I said, I know you're still working. And he says, yes. I said, you don't need to take me to a meeting.
Where is there a meeting I can go to? And I'll go myself. And it was a Sunday, just like this. And there was a meeting in the Veterans of Foreign Wars Hall, the corner of Wilshire and Santa Monica in Beverly Hills, where we lived at that time. And I decided to go there that night. And when it became time for me to get ready to go, I got to wondering. I got to wondering about it because I was beginning to feel that maybe I shouldn't be seen with people like you.
You know? I don't know what to think about you. I don't know what to think about you. And maybe I should be a little careful about it. And I don't know why that ever occurred to me, because I'd spent more time in the Beverly Hills jail than the jailing. But I did. I got concerned about it. So I disguised myself a little. You know? And went to the meeting. And when I got there, my keen alcoholic mind got busy again.
Because there were only about 35, 40 people in the room. You see, this was prior to 31 years ago. 32 years ago. There weren't many people in Alcoholics Anonymous then in our country. AA is only 37 years old in Los Angeles. 42 years old over here. So there weren't very many people. There were maybe 35 or 40. And they were standing in the middle of the room and all of them talking and nobody listening.
Every one of them. Yak, yak, yak, yak, yak. Nobody listening. But it was all happy talk. You couldn't discern a word they said, but it was happy talk. And of course, my keen alcoholic mind says, they've given you the wrong information. These are the veterans and their wives and they're here for party. And I'm going to have to leave and come back the night the drunks are here. And if you don't think I was a living dead man when I turned to leave, you should.
You should. At long last I'd come and it was the wrong night. You see. Now here's Alcoholics Anonymous in a capsule. The reason that I'm here right now and the reason that you're here.
[00:25:00]
Somebody in the middle of that room had been watching me. And when I turned to leave he came trotting over to the door and he yelled at me. He says, Mister, were you looking for somebody? And I said, No, sir. Well, he says, What were you looking for then? And thinking he was a veteran, I said, Well, if it would interest you, sir, I was looking for sobriety. And everything about that man changed in the twinkling of an eye.
He lit up just like a Christmas tree. Everything about him changed. And it was obvious to me that he was glad I was there. And nobody was glad that I was anyplace. You know. But he was and I was no bargain. I'd just come off a four-week blackout but to him I was a bargain because he lit up. And I was hooked before he ever opened his mouth again. And when he did, this is what he said, Why take off your hat and coat?
You're in the right place. And he took me in and rocked me to sleep. This is Alcoholics Anonymous. Without this, no recoveries at all. None. The most fortunate thing about you and I is that we love each other. And I is that we love each other. Did it ever occur to you how very fortunate we are? Because, you see, a wet drunk is not easy to love. But we love each other. Enough so that this man lit up and says, Why take off your hat and coat?
You're in the right place. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share. Who share. Caring and sharing is the reason our program works. And without it, no recoveries at all. None. I am convinced that no alcoholic can obtain and maintain sobriety on intellectual knowledge. I do not believe it's possible. I don't know anything about any other approaches to the disease of alcoholism because it's never been necessary for me to get involved because when I came to you and stayed with you, I got the answers that I needed and so I didn't have to investigate anything else.
And so I might be just a little bit prejudiced. But I think that no alcoholic ever got sober on principles or on profundity. We are people who have known principles and profundity intellectually for a lifetime. I was in the forefront of that brigade. I wasn't known as a drunken deacon for ten years for nothing. I'll tell you that. So we don't get sober on principles. We don't get sober on profundity.
We are allowed to get sober by the spirit of Alcoholics Anonymous. The spirit. The spirit that caused that gentleman to light up the spirit that causes you to get up at two o'clock in the morning and go clear across town. and go clear across town to sit with somebody in trouble.
[00:30:03]
That's the thing that allows us to get sober. And it's spelled L-O-V-E, love. And they say that God is love. So I do not believe that we can know enough intellectually to obtain and maintain sobriety. I knew when I was ten years old better than to drink whiskey, intellectually. But I had to drink twenty-five years for my hair and my toenails to know better. Than to drink whiskey, you see. So I don't take much store in all the millions of words that are written about us.
I think it's nice that people now are studying us. The only thing that gives me a little bit of trouble, they're using our money to study us. Getting grants, you know. And they're coming up with some remarkable information. For instance, I don't know how I ever stayed sober without knowing this. That rats get drunker on scots than they do on bourbon. I don't know how we ever lived through that. I don't know how we ever lived through that.
They got a large grant to determine that, you see. You paid for it. But see, it's information that we need. But see, it's information that we need. They had one large grant to study pigs. Now this does me a lot of good because I'm an old pig man myself, you know. I think I could have been the champion hog caller in the state of Kentucky when I was a kid. Now that's what they were doing this time. They were studying pigs' sexual habits with and without alcohol.
Now this experiment, they had a fence, you know, like this, nice big chain link fence. And they had the mama pig on this side. And they had the papa pig over on this side, you see. And when the moon was in the right position, the papa pig would tear down that fence to get over here on the same side of the fence that she was on. But when they got him drunk, he didn't give a damn what she was doing over on that side.
He never even looked over there. Now all they needed to do was to ask me about that. And they could have saved all that money, you see. Without the spirit, no recovery. You know, and this is not said in criticism, because I can look at my 25 years of drinking with 32 years now without a drink. I can look at it. And I cannot believe my conduct. I can't believe that anybody could get drunk over a 25-year period and not believe that one drunk was his fault.
In 25 years, certainly one of them was my fault by accident, you know. But up until my last one, it was never my fault. At that time, I came to see that if there be fault, it's mine. I never got to the place where I was comfortable in jail.
[00:35:03]
I don't like it in jail. My family thought I loved it. I spent so much time there. And mind you, I could look at that, And mind you, I could look at that record between every two drunks with physically sober eyes. And yet I got drunk again, you know. And I had to go through the gates of insanity and death before I could even come here to investigate this thing. And so what I'm about to say is not in criticism to the non-alcoholic world.
Certainly not. Because if I can't understand my performance, why should I believe that they could understand it? If they see one of us in the gutter, they give us a wide berth. You know? They think we deserve it. They think we might like it there, I guess. But at least we've got it coming. Because of our conduct, you know. So they give us a wide berth. But we don't. We don't, you see. Because when we see one of us in the gutter, we know that he hates that gutter more than anybody on the face of the earth.
Because he knows that gutter. And he don't want to be there. And he's there because he has to be there. And we know it. So we can go over and get him and put him on our laps and rock him to sleep. This is what we're talking about. And this is our greatest good fortune. I came here this morning for one reason and one reason only. It's the only reason I ever go to one of these things. And that's to share me with you.
In love. Thank God I didn't come down here to save anybody's soul. If any of your souls were lost, I wouldn't have the slightest idea where to look for them. And I didn't come down here to educate any of you. I came just to share me with you. And I'm here because I love you. I love you to death. My gratitude starts with you. Because it was the people first. And I love you to death. Because it was the people first that took me on their laps and rocked me to sleep.
So my gratitude starts with you, drunks who were not drunk. And then it goes to the program, because it was next. And then to God. Because that's the way it happened to me. Again, fortunately, I didn't come here to find God. I had been looking for God for 30 years before I got here. And I couldn't find him. And I didn't come here to find him. I didn't come here to take care of any of my related disorders.
There's another thing that I get a little bit hot under the collar about. We have so many experts now on related disorders that it's difficult to get anybody to go call on a common drunk. If you ain't got problems deeper than alcoholism, they don't want to even talk to you. You know. Related disorders. Well, I think when your wife's divorcing you after 20 years, that's a pretty good related disorder.
I don't think it's just the best thing in the world when your kids won't even come home when you're there. That's no way to treat your dear old father. I don't think it's cricket for your boss to throw you through the window, you know, if you step foot in the plant again. I believe those are all good related disorders. I had no home, no job, no health, no money, and no sanity.
[00:40:00]
And I didn't come here to change any part of that. I came here just to rub out a record. If I could. As much of it as I could before I died. And I did the things that are suggested from step one, two, and including 12. Because I saw people like you who were not drinking. And I knew you were drunks because in those days nobody had been sober over five years in my country. And most of them were five weeks or five days.
And they still looked something like me. They had headlights right here, you know. They had bags under bags. Their wiring was all exposed. So you knew they were drunks. But you knew they weren't drunk because you saw their eyes, you know. You saw their eyes. And so, you said to me, these are the things we did. Do them. And I did them for sobriety. And I never have done them for anything else. Neither have I had to add another program to the one I have in order to feel comfortable with me.
All the same formula. One through 12 inclusive. I think our problems are created mainly because of conditions on our sobriety. Like getting your wife back, or your job back, or your health back. You know. Or what does the world think of me, you know. Other things. Conditions on sobriety. I've never had a condition on my sobriety. Because my wife was gone and should be gone, and I knew it. And my kids were gone and should be gone, and I knew it.
And my job was gone and should be gone, and I knew it. And my health was something awful. It took me three and a half years to get over falling on my face after my last drink. And I never even went to a doctor. Because, you see, I wasn't interested. I'm going to die. What the hell does it make any difference whether it's tomorrow or the day after tomorrow if I've had time to rub out as much of the record as I could.
And I've gotten a lot of fun out of this because I got me a pigeon out there as a doctor. He'd already gone twice up into Minnesota. What's the name of that place? It's for live viewers only. He'd gone twice up there to get sober. And he was drunk when he got home. And we got to playing around with this program a little, and I got to telling him I was going to come to his office and get a a physical examination after he got sober.
Because I wanted to keep him coming to the meetings. Every time I'd see him I'd say, Gordon, I'll be up pretty soon for a physical examination. And six months went by, and I thought, by God, I'm going to have to go up there and take a physical examination whether I want it or not. Because he'd get drunk now because I didn't come. And I went up there, and he gave me a GI series. And when he got a hold of the x-ray of my belly, he was very, very much exercised.
It looked like he was going to die. Like the Rocky Mountains. And he was reading it to me. And he got over here and he said, now I think this one's still active. And I said, wouldn't that be a hell of a note if it was? I said, they were all active a few months back. That I just threw in. To show you that I didn't have any conditions on sobriety. Now, I've got to tell you the discoveries. Because I'm convinced that this program of ours is nothing in the world but uncovering, discovering, and discarding.
I do not believe that there's anything I do not believe that there's anything to be added from any place. I think it's entirely an inside job. It's uncovering, discovering, and discarding.
[00:45:11]
Now, I didn't know what was happening to me. I didn't know what had happened when I said to myself, if I ever live to get out of this bed, I'll find AA. I didn't know what happened. But the first time I was able to talk, I talked a little with my wife. And I don't want you to think I was magnanimous in what I said, because she was divorced from me anyhow, you know. But I told her, I said, now, 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 but one. If I can ever add anything to your life, let me give it to you. And we closed the book, and it's never been reopened. Now, I didn't know what had happened there. But she knew the first time I talked to her that something had happened. I went to the office before I found you, because I knew where the office was, and I had to find you people.
And I went down there knowing the man was going to throw me through the window. And I knew I had it coming. But he had paid me for something I hadn't done. And I went down there. And he saw my old car. And he knew I was on the premises, and he knew I wasn't going to stay. So he came hunting for me. And he busted in my office like a bull in a china closet. And I couldn't have defended myself with a shotgun, because I didn't have the shakes, I had the leaps. And I just sat there at my desk, and I said, Victor, leave me alone. I don't work for you anymore.
I'm down here to clean up this desk. I'm here to do the things you paid me for last year that I didn't do. And as soon as I get even with you, I'll get the hell out of here on my own power. You won't have to throw me out. And you'll never owe me a penny as long as you live, but for God's sake, leave me alone. I've got to get even with you. And he stopped in his tracks. And he says, what the hell's happened to you, Charlie? And I says, don't know. And I didn't. But he knew something had happened. And he didn't throw me through the window.
When I got back in the business world, maybe six months, maybe a year, maybe two years, I'd be sitting with people, talking, maybe over lunch about a business deal. And a guy had stopped me in the middle of a sentence. And he'd say to me, what the hell's happened to you, Charlie? I've been knowing you for 25 years, and I don't know you. And I'd say, I don't know. And I didn't. But they did. Now, I found out a few things, sort of in this wise and this time category. Six months after I got here, attending one meeting every night of the week, I discovered that I was sober. And I had been for six months.
Now, that was the first discovery. And that ain't a bad discovery for a tongue-chewing, babbling idiot drunk. Hadn't had a drink or a pill for six months. That was the first discovery. The second came sometime between the first six months and the second six months. I discovered I had a family. And they were living like kittens. And I got to tell you this little thing, because it tickles me. During those early days, there was a lady in Beverly Hills that used to go with me to meetings all the time. She's a little bitty thing. Maybe 25 years my senior. And she was delicate. She walked like she was walking on eggs. And she was very wealthy.
She lived up above the tracks. I lived between Wilshire and Olympic, down on the flatlands where the poor people lived. But she was up in the big numbers. And she had big numbers. And why she ever went with me to meetings, I don't know, except she was an alcoholic.
[00:50:07]
And every time I'd call her and say, Louise, how'd you like to go to North Hollywood meeting tonight? She'd say, come get me. And sometime between the first six months and the second six months, she called my house to get me. And she got Mrs. C. on the line. And that was quite a surprise to her. And she said, who the hell are you? Mrs. C. says, well, I'm Chuck's wife. Didn't know he had a wife. Mrs. C. says, well, he doesn't either. And I didn't. But sometime in that second six months, I discovered I had a family. And they were living like kittens.
And another six months went by. And I discovered I was still trying to clean up that desk. And business was good. Business was good. And that ain't a bad discovery. Now another year went by. And I discovered that my own state of being was better than anything I'd ever dreamed of in my lifetime. Life was just a good job. It was good. And that is not a bad discovery. Now maybe five years have gone by, maybe six, I don't know. And I made the great discovery. I discovered I was never alone anymore. That 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. Life is not over. Life just begins. But the search is over. And it all came about by uncovering and discovering. It's an inside job. You see, you can't discover you've been sober for six months until you've been sober six months. That's necessary, isn't it? And all these other discoveries had to happen before I could discover them. And it's a fabulous thing because it's all inside. Every bit of it's inside job.
The first nine steps of our program will surrender any alcoholic that will honestly take them if he's doing it for only one reason. Sobriety. That's the purpose of the first nine steps. To squeeze this out of ourselves. To get rid of what I believe to be the only roadblock between me and you and me and God. Which is the human ego. The human ego. I think there's only one problem in life that includes all problems. And one answer that includes all answers.
And the problem is conscious separation. The feeling of conscious separation from. And you know what that is. And the answer is just the reverse of that. The feeling of unity with living in a part of this great thing called life, good, God. That's pretty simple. But as I see it, we of the human race have many problems. The problems are many. And many of them are a little different from other problems. But the answer is all the same. The answer is all the same.
And I do not believe that there is an answer to this thing called life that does not include a personally acceptable conscious partnership with the living God that made us in the entire business of living. I think that's it and I don't believe there's any other. A personally acceptable conscious partnership with the living God that made us in the entire business of living. Now the bottle had to kill me to get me out of the way before I made these discoveries. But that didn't have to happen to Mrs. C in the way that it happened to me.
[00:55:06]
Because you see, she's a non-alcoholic. But she came to the point where she couldn't keep from seeing that life as she was calling the shots was not paying off. And as she told you yesterday, she got busy applying these same principles of ours to her own life to find answers for herself. And so she's found the same answers that I did. And many of you have done the same thing, you see. And it's all an inside job. And how in the world we got so far removed from these little simple truths. I have difficulty finding out satisfactorily for myself.
Because from the beginning of time, people in all ages have proclaimed these same things, you know. The carpenter man two thousand years ago said the Father and I are one. That's pretty close. He says I am in the Father and he in me and I in you. Now that ain't a distant relationship at all. That has to be pretty close. It's an inside job. He says the kingdom of heaven is within you. Within you. Now how in the world we got so far away from those little simple things. And they've been announced since the earliest writings that we have. By certain peoples in all stages of the so-called civilization that we live in.
And we got so far away from it. We got a gal that many of you know. Her name's Mary. Mary R. She is a beautiful a-a. And she said it sort of like this. You know they've told us that this getting kicked out of the garden was because we were messing around with an apple or something. And Mary says in her opinion it wasn't the apple on the tree, it was the pear on the ground that got us into all this trouble.
You see. Now that ain't bad. But I don't hardly think that's what it was. I think that we ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Which is duality. Duality. Conscious separation. And it automatically kicked us out of the garden of Eden. God didn't kick us out at all. I don't know how many of you have seen Oh God. Yet. The movie. When you get a chance look at it. Because they stole it all from us.
This guy Denver you know he says to God. He says when are you going to come down here and straighten us out. He says we're in an awful mess down here. He says I ain't. He says I'm not going to interfere with you. He says I gave you everything that there is and it's up to you what you do with it. You see. So it's up to us. It's an inside job. So we uncover and discover all these goodies that we thought were not ours.
Because we were taught that they weren't. For instance now I'm going to hurry up and quit. Now I'm going to hurry up and quit. I've just got started, but, uh, I want to come back sometime.
[01:00:05]
You know, I was born in a family too poor to paint and too proud to whitewash. We didn't have nothing. And we had to get it. And in order to get it, you had to get a good education. Because you had to get out there in the battlefield and out-think, out-perform, and out-maneuver in order to eke out a miserable living out of an unfriendly universe. The very cliches of life set us up for the salt mine. The early bird gets the worm, the devil takes the hindermost.
You got to be there firstest with the mostest. Now I went out at 13. I was on my own at 13. And I worked hard to get what I thought I was born without. I beat my brains out to get. I was not a confidence man and I wasn't a fast buck artist. I worked hard to get. And I ended up at the ripe old age of 43. A failure as a husband, a father, a businessman, a man, and a drunk. Every department of life, a failure.
And I started trying to rub out a record 32 years ago. Now you can't rub out a record thinking I want, I don't want, I like, I don't like. If you're going to rub out a record, you got to do something for somebody without a price tag on it. And without even knowing what I was doing, my motivation flipped from getting to adding to. I didn't even know that had happened. I discovered it long, long after that.
And you know something? 11 years after I got sober, I bought that business that they were throwing me out at. And I sold it a few years back. And if I don't live too long, I'll never be hungry. You know. And I never did anything in that last 25 years in the business world to get anything. My life has been one 12-step call for 32 years. At home, at play, at business, at church if you got one. In AA, in life. One 12-step call.
All I have done for 32 years was to try to help God's kids do things they need to have done because I wanted to. Starting out just merely to rub out a record. And ended up doing the same thing because I want to, because I love it. And of course, in doing that, I proved to myself that St. Francis knew exactly what he was talking about. When he says, for it is in giving that we receive. Now nobody will ever know that until they do it. And prove it. And I know it, because that's what I did.
And I got rich at the same desk doing the same job that I hated. In January and December 1945, I hated it. Hated the boss. Hated everybody that worked for him. But I started trying to rub out a record. And when I sold that business, the 60 guys that were working for me with an eighth of an inch of skin on the inside of their hand. Mechanics, mill men, cabinet makers, metal men, painters, installers.
Tough, rough, old boys. Mechanics, good ones. And every one of them cried like babies when I sold, and so did I. Because, you see, I learned to love the thing that I hated and love the people that I hated, just by change of attitude. Of attitude. Now they also taught me as a kid that we had to earn, be worthy of merit, the grace of God. Had that been correct, no one of us would be here this morning. We wouldn't have a program of Alcoholics Anonymous. If Bill Wilson had had to earn anything 42 years ago, he couldn't have done it.
[01:05:01]
You see, when Ebby tried to talk to him about a power gradient himself, he turned off his urinate. He thought he was an agnostic. And he drank gin. And that gin is not so bad as a leveler. Because after a while, Bill found himself back in the hospital, where he'd been many, many times. And he heard Dr. Silkworth telling Lois, Bill's wife, be as nice to him as you can. Because in six months, you're going to have to either bury him or lock him up forever. He'll be a raven maniac. Now that isn't good information when you're feeling good.
But if you're sweating out a hangover, it ain't good at all. And that's what Bill was doing. And he said to himself, uh-oh. He says, I've done everything that anybody ever told me to do, but one. Maybe, maybe there's something in what Ebby was talking about. Maybe there's something in this God stuff. And he yells out, God, if there be a God, reveal yourself to me now. And wham-bo, it happened. And we got Alcoholics Anonymous. And here we are. Had I had to earn anything 32 years ago, I would not be here. I'd have died without coming. So it took me 60 years of life to learn that the very word grace means a free gift.
Look it up in your dictionary. No way can you earn a free gift. And my experience for 32 years has proven to me conclusively, beyond all shadow of a doubt, that the gift of God was made at the foundations of the earth. The universe is mine. The universe is yours. The gift of God to his kids. And he's always known it. But you and I have to discover it for ourselves. We have to make the discovery for ourselves. And if we be alcoholic, we have to do it in our own way and in our own time. And how long it takes, it takes, and what it takes, it takes.
I didn't spend one second in hell. That wasn't absolutely necessary. I thank God for hell. Because that's what got me here, you see. That's what brought me here. So, you can't earn a free gift. You fulfill the conditions and there it is, you see. There it is. And another thing that I was, was drilled into me real hard, was that the two great needs of the individual are to be needed and to be loved.
You know, to be needed and to be loved. I hear a lot of people get up here at the podium and they say, we've got to learn to love ourselves before we can love anybody else. I read in the grapevine and hear people up here talking about rebuilding our self-confidence. I have never spent five seconds trying to learn how to love me. I haven't the slightest idea of how to go about learning how to love me.
As a matter of fact, I don't want to. I haven't got time. I don't know, maybe Julian had something last night when he said he liked women better. And I maybe even noticed that I sort of like women better. So, I've never spent a second trying to learn how to love me. And if there's one thing I don't want any part of, it's self-confidence. I was born with enough self-confidence for everybody west of the Mississippi River.
My self-confidence kept me fighting the battle that I had to fight. My self-confidence kept me fighting the battle that I'd lost 10 years after I'd lost it. And 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.
[01:10:02]
And it came that close to being the last thing I ever did. I don't want any self-confidence. And I don't need it. Because the two great needs of the individual are not to be needed and to be loved. The two great needs of the individual are to love and to do. To love and to do. If you love something or somebody, you do something for them. And that's what does it to you in here. That's what pays off.
It's what you do. You do something for them. We got a doctor at home. Many of you have heard him. He's a good boy. He's a good member of this leper colony. He called me at midnight one night. He says, Chuck, what's your definition of love? I said, you damn fool. It's the same at 10 o'clock in the morning as it is at 12 midnight. Hang up the phone. Call me at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning. He says, what's your definition of love?
I said, you won't like it. He says, what is it? I says, action. He says, what? What are you talking about? I says, action. If you love somebody or something, you do something for them. And that's the payoff. Something for them without a price tag on it. So, out of total failure came an action pattern that has allowed me to find a life that is so good that I can't even come close to describing it. Thirty-two years without even one conscious desire for a drink, not one.
I've been called a liar in open meeting for saying that, because lots of people can't even imagine a situation like that, but it's the way it is. And I'm tickled to death that I never had a conscious desire for a drink in 32 years. Because when I had conscious desires for a drink, I got drunk. You see, and I haven't had to do that for 32 years. Now, this is my total and complete creed for living. Now, this is my total and complete creed for living.
I'm either going to run my life and take the consequences thereof, or I'm not going to run it and take the consequences thereof. And I can't run my life. I can't run yours. I can't run nothing. I can't even run my wife, you know. So, I'm not going to try. I'm not going to try. I can't run my business, and I'm not going to try. When I was trying to buy that business and didn't have much money, I went to a banker, knew me backwards, told him what I wanted to do.
And when I got through telling him, he says to me, he says, he says, Chuck, he says, can you run that business? And I said, Chet, I don't know. I never ran a business in my life, but I've got me a pretty good partner. So, I think we'll get along all right. And he says, I think you will too. And I says, what do you need? And I said, I need $75,000 open credit and a quarter of a million dollar secured credit, just like that.
And he says, you've got it. Get the show on the road. And he knew my record better than I did, you know. You got it. Get the show on the road, you see. So, I don't have to run anything, and I don't try. Now, the next thing is either God is sufficient into all of my needs or is not sufficient into all of my needs. One of those things is true. They both can't be true. So, let's say that God is not sufficient into all of my needs.
And if that's true, we've got nothing to worry about. We got nothing to worry about. We might as well knock off this meeting and go fill the
[01:15:01]
car up full of booze and take off to the mountains and orgy until we die. Because if God is not sufficient unto all our needs, life is a cosmic mistake. It's not worth the candle. So if God is not sufficient unto all our needs, there's nothing to worry about. Now if He is sufficient unto all of our needs, there's nothing to worry about. Nothing. Because all I've got to do is to act as if He is and prove that He is.
I act like my father's kid and prove that I am. And that's the only way I'll ever know. It's the only way I'll ever know. So this is our great good fortune. Now don't think you've got to go a thousand different ways to find this answer. I've got nothing against any other approach, but I think this is the best one. Because it's worked for me, you see. And I think that even though you have a half a dozen other approaches, if you be alcoholic, or alcoholic, don't make any difference, and life is not satisfactory, if you do these simple things one day at a time for the answer to that problem, you'll get the answer to all problems. Now all of my related disorders disappeared with the obsession to drink. I haven't got any of them. They're gone. And I woke up to the fact that the universe is mine. God is mine and all that He has is mine. And I'm so grateful I can't see. And again and again and again. You people started the whole deal by loving me when I hated myself.
You see? You love me. You said, why take off your hat and coat? You're in the right place. And you took me on your laps and rocked me to sleep. And so I love you all for good. Can't tell you how much I love you. All of you. And no one of you has to change one particle for me to love you. You don't have to change nothing. If you're drunk, you don't even have to get sober for me to love you. If you're a thief, you don't have to quit thievin'.
If you're a liar like Juliet, you don't even have to quit lyin'. Because I love you. And for a guy that spent thirty years trying to make the world over so it'd be a fit place for him to live in, you can tell without even looking how much easier it is when you don't have to make anybody overtalk. You just share your experience, strength, and hope. One with another in love. And thank God for the privilege of doing it. God bless you. Thank you very