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Source: DICOBE-00245 – Bob C – 1ST SPRING FLING – 1978-02-18.mp3 File: dicobe-00245-bob-c-1st-spring-fling-1978-02-18.mp3 Duration: 01:20:41
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This recording is part of the Northern California Tape Library about alcoholism and was recorded at the first annual Spring Fling of the Primary Purpose Group of Alcoholics Anonymous, held in Sacramento, California, on February the 17th through the 19th, 1978. This is the Saturday, February 18th banquet speaker meeting. The principal speaker, Bob C. of Los Angeles, California, followed by two ten-minute speakers.
Please observe the traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous and do not play this recording for entertainment or commercial purposes, and please do not break the anonymity of the speakers or any A.A. member at any public level. The original record and this copy were both made by Bart Daniel of 1332 Santa Ynez Way, Sacramento, California, zip 95816. Our longest tenure speaker. Now, we're really fortunate to have a double dose of the Corwins here with us this weekend. I would really have been grateful if we could have gotten either one of them to come and to have both of you here with the family is just fantastic. Our main speaker tonight, Bob C. from Los Angeles.
I'm stunned. Hi, my name is Bob C.. I'm an alcoholic. Oh, and I'm also a member of the Primary Purpose Group. I'm not, but that's probably the only hand I'll get all night. I thought I'd throw it in. I'm a little taken aback. You see, I've shared the podium before with Jack. And he usually goes on. And he tells about South Africa. And he takes us all through there. And I told him, I said, I'm timing you, man.
And God, he did it. Now that was marvelous. Marvelous. Let's give him another hand. Ten minutes. Now, did you notice he gave himself a hand, too? Now, I'll tell you what also was really, I was really stunned was Bob. Now, when Bob said he'd been sober 14 weeks, I don't know if you noticed, I kind of settled down in my chair for a long winter's nap. It's been my experience that usually a newcomer at a little deal like this will say, well, gee, I don't know what to say. And then he's good for 45 minutes. And he says, I'm sorry, I only spoke five. And they get all, it was, Bob, if I could have done that when I was 14 weeks still on the program, who knows where I'd be today.
Maybe I'd be going to Australia. Now we want to clear up a few things here before we get into the heart of this. Those of you who know Ben heard him lead the meeting this afternoon. Now, for Ben's benefit, it's controversy. Now, repeat after me. The reigns of Spain. Now, when you can say controversy, we'll make you a native son of California. The definition of a native son of California, Ben, is the guy who got here on a bus before you.
Oh, now, I tell you, you broke a tradition tonight. In AA banquets, which I have attended more than I can remember, it is traditional to serve the dinner one hour and a half late. They were on time tonight. Now, the regular chronic banquet goer was late this evening because we thought it would be 45 minutes at least late, and they served it on time. And so another congratulations to the committee and to the hotel. If I keep this up, I might get my room free. It was a wonderful banquet. It was really wonderful. Service was marvelous, but it really was. It really, really was.
Well, let me say to the new people whose hands went up and those whose hands did not go up, AA is a mass of confusion and contradictions and bewilderment.
[00:05:10]
First of all, let me request a few things of you new people. Do not, please, do not judge Alcoholics Anonymous by me. I am just me. Now, also, if you are making decisions about whether or not you are an alcoholic, there again, do not use me as the instrument by which you make your decision, because what happened to me happened to me, and what happened to you happened to you. So many times people will come to AA. Of course, most of the time when they first get here, they do not want to come to AA. They are trying to find a good reason for not coming to AA, and they hear these horror stories, and they say, well, that did not happen to me, and therefore, I must not be an alcoholic.
I would beg of you, do not fall into that trap. Just do not fall into that trap. Stick around a while and find out. I personally believe that if you are new, if you are new tonight, let us say that this is your, let us not say it is your first meeting, because if you are like me at your first meeting, you could not have got up here and talked if they had asked you to get up here and talk. Let us say it is your third meeting, and they said, OK, now here, Joe or Mary, come up here and tell us what you used to be like. In my opinion, you could not do it, although you would try.
Most people who come to AA when they first get here really do not know what they used to be like. This is a fact. They do not know what they used to be like. And it is by coming back, and coming, you are going to hear this all the time, keep coming back, and one of the things that happens by keep coming back is that you begin to learn what you used to be like by hearing other people tell you their stories, and you will get little tidbits of what you used to be like.
If you are like most of us, we were talking about this this evening, Bob, right here, we were talking about this, that Bob said, he said, I never realized what an alcoholic I was until I got to thinking about it. And this is true, because usually before we come to AA, we have not given it much thought at all. We can remember the last spender we bent or something like that. But it is a continuing process of learning what we used to be like, and it never stops.
Now here is Sybil, who has been sober longer than Methuselah. And when she goes to AA meetings, somebody will be talking about their drinking escapades, and they will tell some little story about something that happened to them, it happens to me, it happens to her, it happens to everyone, that will remind us of something that happened to us that we had totally forgotten about, and it never stops. So the picture of what we used to be like is a constantly changing story, ever changing.
So a lot of times people get locked into their talk, and I have heard people say, when I first came to AA, they said, never change your talk. Well, I can understand that, because if what I used to be like is a constantly changing story as a result of the things that you revealed to me, then what I used to be like is constantly changing, and I have to tell you, different things, different things. Well, I guess I'll tell you, to begin with, what I used to be like, now that I've told you, I don't know what I used to be like, but somebody else told me what I used to be like, and now I know a little bit about what I used to be like.
I was asked to tell this tonight, I usually don't tell this, I don't usually tell it, but I was asked to, so I was even asked to wear a necktie, and I made a vow at a meeting in North Carolina that I'd never strangle to death that night. You know, I'd look around and see the women with their nice, open, you know, and they're all comfortable, and us guys are choking to death, and I vowed never to wear another necktie, and here I am, so I have no control over my life anymore, I'm wearing a necktie, but I'll probably take it off before I sit down.
So, like I say, they tell you what to do, you do it, you wear a necktie, you wear a necktie. When the war was over, the Second World War, I resigned my commission as a major in the Marine Corps, I went back to Cornell University and finished my master's degree and came out here to California, and between Berkeley and UCLA and Caltech I matriculated for my Ph.D., without going into too much of it.
[00:10:19]
About that time, Dr. Hale, who was the founder of the Mount Wilson and later the Palomar Complex, died, and when he died, before the dedication of the instrument, I had the honor of being appointed Administrator Pro Tem of the Mount Wilson-Palomar Astrophysical Complex. I worked on a grant from the Carnegie Institute, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, I was one of the youngest men ever to join the Royal Astronomical Society of London, and when I joined Alcoholics Anonymous, my sponsor told me I had to quit telling those lies.
But you see, that is what I used to be like. The first thing I wrote in my inventory was, I am a liar. When I got there, if a mouth was moving, I was lying. And that's a fact. And many of us are that way. Many of us are that way. I'll tell you what happened. A funny thing happened to me in August of 1949. I was sitting in a bar minding my own business, and I wasn't mad at anybody or anything. I was just having a nice time. What I had said to a guy, his name was Lawrence Reedy.
Oh, Lawrence is dead. You never know in AA, it's the same old thing, a poem, oh God, you know, I shot an arrow into the air thing. You don't know where it's going to fall to the ground. Well, this guy Lawrence had gone on an AA meeting somewhere along in his past, and what I had said to Lawrence was, I wish I could get off of this stuff. What I meant was for today. I was dirty and I needed to shave. I wanted to go home, put on some clean socks, and then start up again when I got feeling better. But I had been on this thing for about three days, and I thought it was time to knock it off. Somehow I couldn't get out of the bar. It was a story of mine.
And, well, so I had mentioned that just casually, I wish I could get off this stuff. And it seems like, like that, he says, hey, you see that guy who just came through the door? He's one of them AA's. Yeah, and so I thought, oh my God, look at this. Isn't he something? With a business suit on and a business hat and a shirt and a necktie and a briefcase. And I, oh God, I don't want to see him, you know. And he, so he calls this guy over. He says, hey Pete, come over here and see Bob. He wants to talk drinking. He wants to stop drinking. And I could have killed him. I didn't want to stop drinking. I had no intentions of, never in my whole mind, all my life, never in my head to stop drinking. Never.
And so here comes this nice man. And so the first thing he said to me was, can I buy you a drink? Well, then I knew he couldn't be all bad, you know. And I figured, well, yeah, for that you can talk about whatever you want to talk about. And so he began to talk, and he was a nice guy. And I was impressed. He said, you know, he said, you see out there, those windows out there? He says, you see those boxcars? Yeah.
He says, I used to sleep in those boxcars. Now, this is this guy with a necktie on and a business suit and a briefcase and a hat. Now, if you wonder, new people, if you're wondering what he was doing in the bar, let me clarify that right away. He was an accountant, and he was doing the books of this place. Now, you may say, well, gee, a member of Alcoholics Anonymous shouldn't go into a bar. Well, it says here in our book that we do not hide from booze, that if we have a legitimate reason to go where booze is served, we go. We just don't go sit around and play the jukebox and drink Coca-Colas and try to soak up old times. But who wants firm spiritual ground, as the book says, and that will mean something probably different to each of us, but then we can go.
Well, that's why this guy Pete was in there, and I was so impressed. Then he told me something. He said he'd been sober three years, and he had told me about his drinking. My God, that was fantastic. So then he said, can I, I'd like to take you to a meeting. You want to go to an AA meeting? And I thought that's the least I can do for him after he bought me a drink, you know, and everything. And I said, sure. I thought they had a meeting once a month somewhere, and by then, he says, good, there's a meeting tonight right upstairs. Now I'm trapped, and I don't want to go, have to go to this lousy AA meeting. And so I went, and there's a room full of old people. I was 27 years old, and they were old people.
About as old as Sybil is now. About as old as Sybil is now, they all sat there, you know, they had false teeth, bald
[00:15:15]
headed, gray hair, they wore glasses, and, uh, they, uh, I noticed a lot of the guys were sitting on little round donut shaped cushions, and then they said, if you want what we have, be a good boy. Because obviously most of them had a prostate disorder, and I didn't want that, and I'm trying to figure this all out. Now, they didn't announce that this is the regular AAA meeting, this was in the days when they did all that kind of stuff, they just started talking.
And the first thing they said is, tonight is Jo's birthday, or Sam, or somebody's, and that really made a big hit with me, you know, and who cares? I'm going to do something about my drinking, and you tell me about Jo's birthday. Well, they brought out a little cupcake with one candle on it, and old Jo got up, and he's about 65 years old. And I'm trying to figure all this out. And they started to sing Happy Birthday.
Horrible singing, out of tune, too high, too low. You know, I'm a trained singer, I know good singing when I hear it, I sang in a choir at San Quentin, and I know good singing when I hear it. And this was horrible, and I couldn't figure it out. Now here comes this guy, who looks like he used to be an ex-wrestler, he comes up to the thing, and when he blows this candle out, you'd have thought he said, I'm a member of the Primary Purpose Group, because they all went nuts.
Now I'm already, I had talked to them before the meeting, you know, and they all tell me they're alcoholics, and how horrible it is, and they drank 25th a day for 40 years, you know. I never did that, I just did the best I could. And I'm thinking now, so this is what they do for a good time. Every Saturday night, they get together and sing Happy Birthday, and eat this gooey cake, and they're really not having a good time, but what else can the poor old folks do?
Then, this guy, it being his birthday, they didn't explain to me he'd been sober a year, it was his, Joe's birthday. And so, one year Joe, who looked like he was 65, began to tell a story, and I don't remember the exact story, but it was something like, he beat up his old grandmother, and took ten bucks out of her purse to get drunk, and then they gave him a hand for that. And I know I'm in the wrong place, because none of this bears anything at all into my problem, which I didn't really think I had anyway.
Now, there's a little interesting thing, this, about me not thinking I had a drinking problem. Interesting, sounds like a trick, but do you know that that's one of the symptoms? Thinking you don't have a drinking problem is a symptom of having a drinking problem, it's all screwed up. For example, let's say you're sitting here tonight as a newcomer, and you're wondering if you're an alcoholic. Naturally, natural, I wondered, I'm sure you've wondered, Sybil told you about a guy who'd been sober 28 years, and got wondering if he was an alcoholic again, so it's very normal for us to wonder if we're alcoholic.
But in my unscientific approach to AA, in the years that I've been looking this funny farm over, I've noticed an interesting thing about this wondering whether you're an alcoholic. And maybe I can make it easier for you. If you're wondering, did you know that only alcoholics wonder that they're alcoholics? No, I now pronounce you alcoholic.
[00:20:01]
By the power vested in me by absolutely no one. Now the sad thing there is it isn't going to do me any good to pronounce you, it may do me some good, but it ain't going to do you any good. If you're new, you're wondering, what's the hardest thing about AA? Sure, I guess you're one of that. What's the hardest thing about AA? I guess you can sing Happy Birthday, I think that's one of our tolerance tests, really.
The singing hasn't improved any, by the way, at all. But what's the hardest thing? I would say you've already done it. You know, like the guy says, how much does it cost to join AA? The answer is, man, you can't afford it. You haven't got that much money. You've already done the hardest thing, and the hardest thing, in my opinion, is getting here. Getting here. We come from some long ways around the horn to get here.
So if you're here, you do not have to ever again, as long as you live, drink again, unless you want to. Whatever you have been told, if you've been sober 14 minutes, 14 days, 14 weeks, 14 months, or 14 years, you know all that you need to know for this moment to keep you sober. You do not have to suddenly get 10 years of sobriety before you know what's going on, because you're never going to get it that way.
You know enough right now. If we can impress you tonight that we are people who drank like you did, or who felt like you did, about your drinking, and we've done something about it, and we can impress you with the idea that we're happy with ours. See, I was sober five years in San Quentin, and I was not happy with it. But now we're happy. And if you can go away with that idea tonight, we can pique your curiosity enough to have you come back tomorrow and find out how we're doing it.
That's all. Now these guys said to me, you know, see I, here I am 27, they said, now 27 years old today is nothing. You're an old man, you get to AA at 27 now, but in those days you were a young chicken, because in those days we used to say the only guys that joined AA were the last gaspers, and that's true. So these old codgers would come up to me and they'd say, well we're so glad that a young man like you has come to AA before you've gone as far as we have gone.
And I had just got out of San Quentin and Folsom, and I wondered how far these guys go. You see, again I fell into the trap that I'm trying to warn you new people this evening not to fall into, by judging your alcoholism by my alcoholism. But I can give you some hints. Let me give you, you take the word social drinker. I was a social drinker. Well I heard that word when I, I had never heard the word social drinker before I came to AA.
Right? Never heard it before. I was a social drinker. I was as sociable as you could get. I never drank alone. I never, I wasn't the kind to hold myself up in a room and, no, and I wanted to go where the action was. I wasn't, I thought that's what a social drinker was, where the people were, where the fun was. Now in AA that, now that may be a definition of a social drinker, it was mine before I got here, but AA's definition is a little different.
And I have in my family two people that I use as my yardstick for what social drinkers are. One is my brother and the other is my father. And I always compare them with me or any alcoholic I know. For example, during the war my brother and I had the pleasure of meeting. I was in the Marine Corps. He was in the Navy. There were millions of guys in the service and the chances of meeting under those conditions were astronomical.
Bill and I run into one another and, my God, wasn't that wonderful? So Bill and I go ashore in San Diego and we hit some little bar and we have a few drinks, you know, and as far as I, the way I felt about it, the sun hadn't even set when my brother said, let's go. I said, let's go where? He said, let's go back to the base. I said, why? And then he said this strange thing. He said, because we've had enough.
Well, now, I had not thrown up on anyone. I hadn't gotten a fight. I hadn't spent all my money. The police hadn't, you know, why should we go home?
[00:25:01]
What do you mean we've had enough? And I said to him, no, let's stay. He got mad and he says, Bob, why don't you drink like I do? And I got mad and I said, why don't you drink like I do? And I meant it then and I mean it now. I will never understand why he even bothers. Why does a social drinker conclude that he's had enough when he begins to feel it? My father, on his 70th birthday, I watched him.
He had a can and a half of beer. Sybil and I were there. He had a can and a half of beer and he said, Bob, get me a cup of coffee, I'm beginning to feel it. I told him, I said, Dad, you're an embarrassment to me. Why do they bother? Now you and I know what they don't know. You see, they think it has something to do with the label, bottled and bond, full bodied aroma, baloney. You and I know that booze is for feeling.
Now we'll drink the bottled and bond and you can describe the full body. We don't know what the full body aroma is anyway, but you can describe it to us and we'll drink it if it'll do the trick up here because that, and I'm not kidding, that's what booze is for, for what it does to the head and any social drinker that tells me that's not so, there's no what he's talking about. Booze is for effect. Otherwise, well, really, I think social drinkers, I don't know why they don't drink cocoa or something like that if you don't, if you don't want to feel it.
So that's a social drinker, a person who doesn't want to feel it. I can't understand them at all. My father and brother. Well, now I told you, I mentioned the word San Quentin and I am going to take my tie off because it's warm up here and the rest of you guys, I suggest if you want to take your tie off, take your tie off. You know, I fulfilled the obligation. I wore the tie, uh, Jack, you wear this to Australia, will you?
And give me back my coat. You know, he wears that, he wears that yellow coat around with the, with the easy does it on it. It's mine. He tells everybody it's his. Uh, I wonder where I was, oh, San Quentin, yeah, I was going to tell you about why I went to San Quentin. The reason I'm going to tell you about why I went to San Quentin is because I know that everybody wants to know why a guy goes to San Quentin.
Even in San Quentin, we want to know why a guy went to San Quentin. First thing we say is what he in for. That's the first thing we say. I was talking in Pasadena one night many years ago when I learned, I have to tell you why I went to San Quentin because I've just mentioned, uh, something about, and Georgiana, a gal sitting next to Sybil, nudged Sybil in the ribs and says, what do you do? What do you do?
Now, so I'll tell you why, uh, first I want to preface that because although I didn't understand or like or approve of anything they said at my first AA meeting, I did approve of one thing. I agreed with one thing, had nothing to do with alcohol or anything like that, except they used to talk a lot in those days about the keen alcoholic mind. Now, of course I agreed there. I knew I had a keen alcoholic mind, a keen mind, that I knew.
And we talked a lot about that in those days. We don't too much anymore. We know better now. But they used to say that if you're an alcoholic, you're a better worker. I'd agree. Yes. You're smarter. Yes. You work better than the guy sitting next to you. Yes. I didn't say I wasn't working at all, but I agreed with them. I knew that if I was working, I would be a better worker because, now, I got the impression in those days that God kind of skimmed the top 10% of the cream of humanity off and made alcoholics out of them, and so did most of the membership.
We don't talk about it at all anymore because it hasn't got anything to do with alcoholism. You may be intelligent, and you may be dumb, and you may be tall, fat, short, skinny, male, female, and you're going to ignore it. If you're a human being, that's the only requirement to be an alcoholic, a human being. But I did like the idea of the keen alcoholic mind, and I have to give it up now by telling you why I went to prison.
I've always maintained if you're going to go to prison, you should go for a good reason. And like the story I told at first about being the director of Mount Palomar, in the old days, before I came to AA, people asked me, I'd tell them a story that would curl their hair. But now I have to tell you why I really went. But now I have to tell you where I really went, and I can't beat around the bush too much.
[00:30:00]
They told me to talk as long as I wanted to, but I asked Bart how much tape he's got, so I can't talk that long. But I'll just tell you that what I did is, I held up the hotel that I lived in. And so much for the keen alcoholic mind. Well, it wasn't funny, it was a big day in my life. I was sitting there, and it was Memorial Day of 1946. And I was living in this hotel, it was not a slop shoot, it was a nice hotel, middle class hotel, and they had a bar off the lobby out there called the Zimba Room.
And I was in the Zimba Room, having a good time, and everything was just fine. Now you new guys, we don't talk too much about the good times we had while drinking, because that's not what got us here. But we all had good times, or we wouldn't have stayed at it so long trying to recapture those good times. And this was one of those good times, and the music was right, and the booze was right, and the girls were right, or whatever, and I didn't want to stop.
And then I ran out of money. And I got a keen idea to go hold up the desk clerk, to whom I'd been paying rent for about six months. I didn't have a gun or anything, I wasn't watching Humphrey Bogart movies though, so I put my hand on my pocket, and I walked up to this guy at the desk outside in the lobby, and I said, put on a big mean face, and I said, give me all your money. And he says, oh Bob, you can't do that.
I said something like, yeah, I think I can. So we each of us got the money, and I probably thanked him. And then I went back into the Zimba Room in there, and I ordered drinks for the house. I was a big man for a few minutes, seven minutes exactly, and then I was on my way to San Quentin. And I hope you were impressed with my horror story. Oh God, you know, going to San Quentin, they took us up on a train from Los Angeles, and is all this necessary?
They took us up on a train to Los Angeles, and God, it was a slow train. Of course, we weren't in any hurry. I remember talking that night going up, and this is a fact. We got to talking about, we really did. Here we are handcuffed, with the handcuff going through here, and a great big leather, like a corset on, with two padlocks in the back, and steel inside the leather, with a loop coming out here, and the chain running through there, you know.
And the same thing on your feet, and it's bolted to the floor. And you're sitting there trying to be like the man of distinction, you know, smoking cigarettes, and discussing these philosophical things. And so we were philosophizing as to why and what had happened in our relatively young lives to have this set of circumstances come along to where now we find ourselves going to San Quentin. Nobody came up with a good answer.
I latched onto this, and I said, I think it was because of the war. If the war hadn't come along and interrupted my education, this probably wouldn't have happened. Now, of course, the fact that I got kicked out of high school before the war started never entered my brain, because I believed it at the time. I really believed it. It sounded good, and it made me feel good. And they all latched onto it, and they agreed, it didn't occur to us that there were eight million other guys in the United States service that didn't go to San Quentin because of the war, but that was all right.
It was because of the war. Now, I have since come to know that that's another very typical trait of an alcoholic, to put the blame somewhere else. Our book says, if there be fault, the fault is mine. And this is one of the greatest things I ever learned in AA, that if there be fault, the fault is mine. I spent my entire life blaming everything and everybody that I could come in contact with for the difficulties that I got into.
I heard this from a guy, his name is Duke, and I never forgot it. If there be fault, the fault is yours, Bob. You don't have to blame anybody else anymore, and you know it's a comfortable thing. It's a very comfortable thing now in life to never have to go around blaming anybody. I used to spend an awful lot of time blaming people. I don't have to anymore, but I did then. Now, that reminds me of what the psychologists or whatever those guys, they call it projection.
Put the blame somewhere else.
[00:35:01]
Perfectly normal human behavior, not exclusively the unique property of alcoholics. I'll admit we have it in spades. But to blame other people is a very natural thing. Sybil and I, after we first got married, lived near a tennis court. We used to watch people play tennis. And I showed Sybil, I said, watch this, Sybil, I'll show you something. And here are these guys, they'd be playing tennis. I saw Billie Jean King do this on TV.
Looked good. All of a sudden, they'd missed the ball. And you know what they all most invariably do when they miss the ball? They look at the tennis racket to see what went wrong. It's okay if you're playing tennis. It may not improve your game, but it won't kill you. But if you're an alcoholic, like I was an alcoholic, and you're blaming it figuratively on the tennis racket, it will kill you. And it nearly killed me.
While I was in San Quentin, I had some good times, as a matter of fact. It may sound strange. Before I came to AA, I would say since my early childhood, the only peace of mind I had on rare occasions were a few quiet moments in my cell now and then when I had a good book or something and my mind was turned off. A little peace of mind. That's what I wanted. And when I finally came to AA and got the understanding of if you want what we have, included in this what you have was peace of mind.
And that's what I wanted. I got my start in the show business there in San Quentin. It ended there, too. Some of you older heads that are my age or thereabout will remember a radio program we used to have come out of there. It was called San Quentin on the Air. It went over the 14 western states. It went up into Canada. We had a little personnel problem there, too. We had different announcers, and I got to be the announcer.
I'd come on like this. I'd say, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is inmate number 4127. This program is emanating to you from within the walls of one of northern California's most exclusive resorts, San Quentin by the Sea. And the choir would play Time on My Hands. It was a beautiful thing. Kind of made you want to go. We did all kinds of things. We sang funny songs that didn't seem funny to us at the time.
I remember, and this is a fact, I'm not making this up, I wish they had tapes of those things. What a showstopper we put on one night. We sang a song. It was a very beautiful song, but the inappropriateness of it hit me after I left. The name of the song was Bless This House. You ever heard it? You know the song. Bless these walls so firm and stout, keeping warmth and hunger out. And bless the folks who dwell within, and keep them pure and free from sin.
And we sang that song. That's what we did. We're just as serious about that as they are about singing Happy Birthday in AA. Well, it can't be all fun and games, and of course I got out eventually, and that's when I met this guy Pete. Now, let me tell you what really was the problem at my first meeting. It wasn't the fact that they were old and gray-haired, because they weren't all that old and some were young, but you only see what you want to see in an AA meeting.
I saw the old guys. And what gals were there were over the hill anyway. I didn't meet Sybil until 1952. When I bumped into Sybil, I was in a shock. She had long, auburn hair, and she's leading the meeting, and she kept talking about, now you want to get on the program. Everybody's got to get on the program. And I thought it was going to be like today's equivalent of the Gong Show. I thought we had to perform.
I thought, you know, we'd do a little song and dance or something, and I thought she was a Sunday school teacher or something. It never occurred to me that she could be a drunk, fall into that trap again of judging people by, you know, you don't look like an alcoholic. Jack and Ben are the only two in the place that look like an alcoholic tonight. But the rest of you don't, you know. Now, there's Sybil, sweet little thing, who I wouldn't listen to at all.
In the other meetings, I wouldn't listen to any women. I figured, what do they know? When I first saw Sybil, I said, well, she probably got drunk and burnt the toast and joined AA. But that wasn't my problem either. The real cruncher was, I'm in that first meeting, not very long,
[00:40:01]
when up popped a very bad word. God. Oh, not that. God. You know, I mean, I'd been hearing that word for a long time. In the county jail, they'd come up there clanging their tambourines, you know, and they'd say, church on the line, and I'd go down to the other end of the bars. I wouldn't let them anywhere near them. Now, the reason I wouldn't want to go near them, I wasn't like Sybil or so many of you who came in with some kind of a faith, although they usually are altered a little bit after you come to AA.
I had none. I was an atheist. Past tense, was an atheist. Now, I hope you got that, that I was. But I was. My father was an atheist. My father raised me as an atheist. And I used to say, when they'd say, what's your religion? I'd say, I was baptized atheist. And that would shut them up. Now, I run into this thing of God in AA. Now, I'm not going to go on too long, because I can't stand here too long myself.
You see, my proctologist and I are on a first-name basis now, and so I don't want to stand up here too long either anymore. But in the little time that I have left, I'm going to tell you, if I possibly can, how I made this transition from a hard-core atheist into a guy who tonight can stand here and say that I have a God that sustains me daily. And this is a fact. It's not the God that you know about, I'm sure, but it's mine, because the book said that's the way it could be.
Without which I could not survive. I tried very hard. I gave it the best shot I could. And I could not stay away from booze. And it has been years and years and years, and I have not had a drink. Only through the help of this higher power, me, the atheist. So how did this happen? How did an atheist come to that? Well, first of all, when I say I decided I wanted what you had, I knew what you had, and I wanted it.
Because I got here with no socks in my shoes, no underwear on, homeless, wife gone, kids gone, nothing, no job, no nothing, living in the back of an old bar, mopping up the floor when somebody gets sick and throw up all over the place. And I didn't want that anymore. Walked down the street and I'd hear my mother's voice say, Bobby, Bobby. And that bugged me. And I was tired and I was very sick, and the old guys seemed to look pretty good, those old guys.
They were sober and laughing and eating cake and applauding and singing, and I wanted to go back. So I did, not because I thought it would do me any good, because I was a total failure, but I needed the rest. But one difference now, now the alcoholic sneer is gone. I'm not so smart anymore. I don't know all the answers. I don't know anything. All I know now is that the one thing I want in the world I can't have.
I want sobriety. I know I can't stay sober now. Please turn to side two of this cassette to continue the program. The answers, I don't know anything. All I know now is that the one thing I want in the world I can't have. I want sobriety. I know I can't stay sober now. I've tried your funny little program, and I can't do it. But I'll go back and I'll listen, and I'll try to find some good ideas on how to keep from taking that first drink, and I'll stay sober a week or a month maybe, and then I'll be gone again.
And this time I'll be gone for good because I know I cannot take another defeat. And I feel that way tonight. I cannot live through another defeat. But fortunately and thank God, I know, like I told you, that it's not necessary. I never again have to take another drink again as long as I live unless I want to, and I don't want to. So, everybody that I loved in AA, everybody I wanted to be like, everybody that I wanted to imitate, because I had to have my heroes and my idols, and you will too, that's okay.
We have to have something that this is a program of attraction, and there's the people that attract us, and we find that we want to be like them. So I began to imitate these people as best I could, but all of them said, in one way or another, they believed in God, and here I am, the atheist. Well, of course, I'm sweetly reasonable now. No shorts in your pants will do it. Of course, I'm sweetly reasonable now. No shorts in your pants will do that for you in a hurry.
And, you want to know what's spiritual? Clean socks!
[00:45:01]
You better believe it. Boy, I'm only up here for overnight and I got three pairs of clean socks in my little old suitcase. Everything's relative, you know. Now, I began to listen with a different ear, because I really now wanted, more than anything else in the world, this thing that I couldn't have. And while it says in our traditions that the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking, for me, and many people like me, until that desire to stop drinking became greater than my desire to drink, or my desire to live, I didn't have a chance.
But finally, my desire to stop drinking was actually greater than my desire to live, because I did not care about living. Now I had a chance. I didn't know it. So I began to think, well, I sit in a meeting, what can I do? I don't believe in God, what can I do? And I looked around and found that I could do some funny things that I used to sneer at. I thought I could do this. Big deal. I thought I could do it, though.
I could applaud in an AA meeting. Now, you beat your grandmother up, and you take ten bucks out of her purse, and I'll give you a hand. Now, in fact, you get up and go to John, I'll give you a hand. Because it's what I could do. Now, you sing happy birthday. I sing happy birthday, because that's what they do in AA meetings. And it's what I could do in AA meetings. One thing I've learned, though, is I always try to start the singing, at least get it in my key.
But I sing. And I can mumble these prayers with you that you mumble. I'd have to believe them or like them, but I could. It was a narrow matter of what could I do. It was no longer a case of what did I want to do. And I could, and that's where I started. I began to listen. I became a man who was seeking God, seeking this thing. Let me just lay a few of these things up here on how this happened. I had read a lot of books on God now, and I'd get squirrely in the head and get drunk when I read all these crazy things.
I read books on every religion in the world, and I wanted to know all about it. And one night a man was talking, and this is why we say it's important to listen, because you never know who's going to drop what in your lap. You never know. You've got to keep listening, because some guy's going to drop something in your lap. Some guy, some gal, you don't know. And he said, you know, he said, in our pursuit of God, we're like little children chasing butterflies.
Now, you notice the butterfly on our program tonight, and the butterfly we've got on some of us have on our little boutonnieres. Very significant. He said, in our pursuit of God, we're like little children chasing butterflies. I said, oh, God. You know, the guy's going to say, give us a poem now or something. But all of a sudden I knew where he was going, because he said, you see, as children, we see this pretty butterfly, and we want to examine it more closely.
Now, that's how we are in our pursuit of God. So as children, we grab this butterfly in our hand to examine it more closely. But in so doing, the butterfly loses its glitter, and it dies. Now, that is the way it is with butterflies. I had that experience as a child. I wasn't the type who wanted to pull the wings off them. I really wanted to examine them closely, because they were pretty. And then I would let go of them, and they would fall to the ground and just lay there, break my heart.
He said, that's the way it is in our pursuit of God. We feel we have to know this thing so intimately before we can do anything about it. Well, well, well. That's the way it was with me. I read all these books, and I figured you guys all knew all about God. But what it meant to me, this butterfly thing, was easy does it. Easy does it. Look at here tonight, in this room right now, all the happy, sober people.
It's a quarter after nine. Right now, at a quarter after nine, in California, there are thousands of AA meetings going on. Right now. Thousands of them. Down into Mexico, to California, to Oregon, to Washington, to British Columbia, the Yukon, and all up to the Arctic. And I know because I've been there at AA meetings, 300 miles north of the Arctic. A meeting going on right now. Thousands of people sitting in rooms just like this, happy, comfortable.
And this higher power is flitting around the room like a butterfly. We don't have to know all about it. Just look at it flit around the room. Just look at it work, Bob. Easy does it. So that made me comfortable to know that I didn't have to know all about God. In fact, the butterfly thing was so important to me, that after I had been sober ten years,
[00:50:00]
Sybil bought me a butterfly. Do you see my pretty butterfly? It's got a whistle. She bought it in a women's store. It's intended for something else. I couldn't get along without a whistle, and I keep hoping, but it's all right. The whistle is kind of, I'll tell you what the whistle is. The whistle, this butterfly whistle, is kind of the short version of the serenity prayer. Sure, I'll be driving down a freeway.
Some guy tried to cut me out, you know. I'd cuss and swear and holler and chase him in my Volkswagen. I don't know what I'd do with him if I ever caught him, but I finally realized that that was getting me nowhere, the profanity, you know, so I got it down to obscene sign languages. So finally, what I have it down to now is like this. I drive down a freeway, and some guy pulls some dummy on me, you know, and I just reach down and get my butterfly and go, easy does it, you know.
And it works. It's okay, and I'm happy. I have a lot of little tricks that aren't in the book. I have a friend who's visiting us now, by the way, from Canada. He's down in Los Angeles. He couldn't come up, but he's a locomotive engineer. And for him, he's a member of AA, I have in my backyard a locomotive bell, under which I have a serenity prayer in the form of a bronze plaque. Now, you know, on our tenth step, it says, when wrong, promptly you'll admit it. Huh?
Which is what we promptly do most of the time, until sanity returns. When sanity returns, we admit it. But I have said that prompt is a relative term, see. Now, when, it's like with Sybil. I'm mostly wrong with Sybil, and I'll have to admit she's mostly wrong with me. But we'll have some little fight, and I will walk out into the backyard, you know, and I'll kick a few rocks around, and then I'll see the serenity prayer there, and I'll read the old serenity prayer, and that puts me back, brings me back where I am, reminds me of AA, that when you're wrong, you ought to admit it, Bob.
The reason you ought to admit it, Bob, if you don't, you're going to take a brick out of this wall of sobriety that you've built, and ten years from now, if you don't put that brick back, you're going to get drunk, or maybe tomorrow, but probably not tomorrow. It's a slow process. And I don't want to drink again, so I have to do what the book tells me I have to do. So I now, I want to apologize to Sybil, and so I read the serenity prayer, so I reach up and I pull this locomotive bell, I give it three clangs, one for each thought in the serenity prayer.
Now, Sybil's in the house, and she hears that bell ringing, you know, and she says, well, that's old Bob making his amends, and it works okay. I put a bell in the house for her, but she never rings back. But I, you know, I go through life blowing the whistle and ringing the bell and staying sober. Now, I know it's kind of weird, I know that, but so are you. So are you. Now, this is the beauty. The beauty of the whole thing is that I am at home at last.
Can you imagine me at the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce telling them about blowing my whistle and ringing my bell? You don't care. I mean, heck, if it's working right on, it's all right, blow your whistle, man. A.A., this is my home, this is my first love, and it is my most important love. And you will find that most people of A.A. will tell you the same thing. We have an ongoing love affair with A.A., that it gets better and better, as all love affairs should.
And the longer we're around, the more beautiful it is, as all love affairs should be. When a young person first gets married, he has no idea what he's getting into. But anyway, neither do young people or anybody who first comes to A.A. And after we're married or after we're members of A.A. for a long time, that which we thought we were getting into was nothing compared to what we've got. Far more beautiful than anything we could ever imagine.
And that's the way it is with A.A. A lady one night saved my life, and after this I never again had trouble with the word God. I don't know how long I'm going, but I'm going to knock it off real quick now. After this, I never had any trouble with the word God. This woman said a thing. Well, she got my attention because I wasn't listening to women. As I told you, I didn't used to listen to women talk.
And so I wasn't listening. I was happy. Everything was all right. And then she got stuck in the middle of her talk at the North Hollywood Clubhouse. They've got about 300 people there every night. All of a sudden she got stuck. She's not saying a word. She's just standing here like this. Now, everybody's listening. She's not talking, but everybody's listening now. And I'm listening. The leader went and got her a drink of water and came back.
She's still not talking. Awkward, awkward pose. Awkward.
[00:55:01]
About 45 seconds, which can be an eternity under those situations. Now, I was sitting right about there somewhere, and I said to myself inwardly, I said, come on, baby, start talking. Start talking. I'll trade you my radio announcer tongue if you'll just start talking. Now, what I was really doing, I was feeling sorry for this girl. Now, somebody told me later on that I was praying for her. And I said, no, no, no, that can't be so.
Prayer is now how I lay me down to sleep. They said, no, no, prayer can be just as simple as having a good thought for the guy or gal sitting next to you. Well, she began to talk, and I began to listen. And here's what she said. So I must share this with you. She said she read a book, and she doesn't know who wrote the book, or the author's name, or anything else. All she could recall were the concluding remarks with which he summed up whatever it was he was talking about.
And here's what he said. He said, in all probability, in all probability, the closest that you or I or anybody else will ever come to finding God will be in the seeking. Well, that may not mean much to you, but it hit me right between the eyes. That maybe the closest I would ever come to finding God would be in the seeking. And it all fell into place for me. And then my mind flipped back, you know, to those first days in AA.
And I said, those old guys with their keen alcoholic minds, why didn't they tell me that at my first meeting? Why didn't they put it in the book? Well, you know, my friend Chuck and your friend Chuck have been saying this for years. You can't see until you can see, and you can't hear until you can hear. And I used to wonder, I see him, I hear him, what's he saying? Because he was absolutely right, you know.
Because they did put it in the book, in essence. Maybe the closest you'd ever come to finding God would be in the seeking. They put it in the book so much better than the way I just said it, because what they said in the book was, God could and would if he were sought. But I always used to hear, God would and could if he were found. And it doesn't say that at all. And I will admit, it does say that there is one who has all power, that one is God, may you find him now.
May you. Lots of luck. But it says you don't have to. If he were sought, as I've been seeking, I've been home free ever since. I had a cell partner who tattooed his fist, L-O-V-E. Wasn't that sweet of my cell partner to do that? He tattooed his fist, love, and when love got well after tattooing love on his fist, he hit me right in the mouth with love. Well, I didn't think anything about it, I didn't give him love back, I guess.
But the point I'm trying to make is that love never meant anything to me. Now I know something that you have always, always known, apparently. Paul, this guy in the Bible, if you'll forgive me for mentioning that, but he, this guy Paul, who had this hot flash on the road to Damascus about 2,000 years ago, he said, God is love. And then he said what it was, and he described A.A. to a T. He said that love is made up of little things that we do all the time.
You're doing one of those things right now. For example, I know that all of you know what time it is. And I know that all of you hope to God I know what time it is. But so far I haven't seen any of you snap your wristwatch band at me to remind me, Oh, I should take it off and wave it at the speaker, you know. Move along, fella, move along. Closest I came tonight was when Jack was talking. But you're being patient, and Paul said love is patient.
So you're doing one of those things. He said love is kind. Love is courteous. Little Boy Scout Oath stuff. But he's talking about God. God is love, and he's saying this is what God is. God is humble. God is slow to anger. Love is slow to anger. Unselfish. My goodness. Love does not behave itself unseemly. Love is honest. Well, now, if this is somebody's definition of God, here's something I can understand.
Now, when in the third step I want to turn my will and my life over to the care of God, as I understand it, this is what it is. Life over the care of God as I understand it, this is what I want to turn my will of my life over to the care of, these things that I just said, I'd like to be a little more patient, a little kinder, a little more honest, a little slower to anger, a little
[01:00:00]
less, you know, a little less selfish, and all those little attributes, now if this be so, and for me it is, then where it says that love does not behave itself unseemly, love does not offend, and in the eleventh step where I want to prove my conscious contact with God as I understand it, then for me, for me, I do not want to offend you. Now there is one area wherein I can, not all of you, but when I first came to AA, I thought everybody came from the side of the tracks that I came from. And I have met people who have lived relatively sheltered lives by my standards, and they do not even know the profanity with which I am fluent. Now I've heard guys say, it doesn't matter, swear all you want, if they want this program bad enough, they'll come back. No. No, there are those who would not. There are those who would never come back if they could hear the stuff that could spew out of my mouth. But love does not behave itself unseemly. And besides, I have come to know that the lack of profanity never offended anyone. So I've tried to purge that from my vocabulary in an AA meeting. Not because I'm a goody two-shoes. I'm an ex-Marine, an ex-convict, I'm a construction worker. There's no language in profanity that I don't know. But I won't use it here. Not because I'm a phony, but because I don't want to offend you. I want to give you the same chance that I got. I don't want to do anything to run you off into the night. So here I am, the confirmed old atheist, standing up here, a happy man tonight.
What am I doing here? I'm here because they asked me to come up, not because I thought I got a great message to lay on you. I got a free trip and an airplane. Somebody says, you want a free trip and an airplane? I say, sure! And so here I am. And I'm a happy man. A happy man. What does that mean, you new people? You hear all these AAs talk about being happy all the time. You know perfectly well it doesn't mean we don't have troubles.
People who never took a dream in their life have troubles all the time. What it means for me is that back here in my head, I have a little reservoir of contentment that tells me no matter what happens to me, no matter how bad things get in this life, I'm not going to make them worse by getting drunk at them. And that keeps me happy right in the middle of very serious troubles. I am a contented, happy man. And you know what? I would have missed this whole life if that man hadn't walked into that bar in August of 1949 and had asked me to my first meeting. And without you, I would have missed this whole life altogether.
And thank you very much for listening to me tonight. I'll send the applause of that tape to my ex-wife. Thank you, Bob. And for our first ten-minute speaker tonight, we have Gopher Bob. Bob Gould. Thank you. My name is Bob, and I'm an alcoholic. And I'm a member of the Primary Purpose Group. About two hours ago, I was trying to get inspired for the night. I was out on a high school recreation field. I was watching the sunset and searching for some sort of message I could deliver.
As I watched the sun slowly set and asked for God's help, he showed me by having me step into a hole full of mud. It seems that God sided with my sponsor once again, because last week I approached my sponsor with the same problem. And in his fatherly way, he said, listen, stupid. Tell him a little bit about the way it was and a little bit about the way it is, and no poems. So I'll tell you a little bit about the way it was. Fourteen weeks ago tonight, at 11.05,
[01:05:03]
I was attempting to sign the intake sheet at a detoxification center on I Street in Sacramento. I had to practice my last name before I got it right. The next morning I was trying to recover a little bit, and a young man approached me in street clothes. He said his name was Robert, and he said, do you mind if I talk to you a little bit? And I said, no. He said, Bob, has it ever occurred to you that you might have a drinking problem? Well, I wanted Robert to understand.
See, he jumped to an assumption. You see, I wasn't alone in the room. There were a lot of drunks there, and they were all wearing blue pajamas, and I was wearing blue pajamas, and they all needed to shave, and I needed to shave, and they all smelled bad, and I didn't smell so good either. And I told Robert, I said, well, Robert, the reason I'm here is, you see, I hurt my leg and I can't run. And so, doing a little bit of thinking about the way it was, and I, you know, I thought at the time I told him that, I thought, you know, you can't even buy that lie. You've been lying to yourself for twelve years, giving yourself hundreds of excuses for getting drunk, and this one you can't buy. And I thought about that a couple days ago, and I realized that that was absolutely the truth. The reason I was in that detoxification center was that I couldn't run, that I had injured my right leg. You see, about a month before, I had decided it was time for me to do something about my drinking. For about a year, I had existed on a little bit, nothing, nothing else really, except alcohol, a little food now and then, and my body was giving me a simple message, and that was that I was dying.
So I resolved that I would stop drinking and start running. And so for three weeks, I ran. I started two minutes a day, and by the end of the third week, I was running for the better part of an hour, twenty-one days straight, and I hadn't had a drink in twenty-one days. That's the first time in twelve years. And I was running on a bridle trail, and I rounded a turn and came face to face with a horse that was going in the opposite direction.
So I quickly stepped to the side right into a fresh batch of road apples. I say road apples because he just got finished with a banquet, and I guess most people don't know that word. I twisted my knee, but I kept running, and I finished my four miles. And I couldn't walk that night because my knee was so badly twisted, but the next morning I got up and I ran four miles again. And I couldn't walk that night, but the next morning I got up and ran four miles again, and I did that for five days because I had to, because I was a man on the run.
I was running from people who didn't understand me, I was running from a God that didn't like me, and most of all I was running from a shadow of alcoholism. And on the sixth day I got up, got out of bed, and realized that the race was over and I'd lost. And I didn't think about it, I just got dressed, hobbled down to my car and got into the car and went to the nearest liquor store, and for eight days and eight nights I drank until I got to the detox station. Well, that evening I went to my first AA meeting. I didn't think about much else but the half a bottle I'd left behind. I did notice that the people smiled as if they meant it, shook hands as if they meant it. They were happy and I wasn't, and they were sober and I was still drunk, and they seemed to know something I did not know, and it seemed to me that it was worth knowing. That'll be 14 weeks ago tomorrow. And I've learned a little bit in those 14 weeks. I learned, first of all, that I'm not alone, that I'm like you, that my God does like me, and I've learned to live with my shadow.
But I haven't changed completely. I still run. I ran today, as a matter of fact, and I was running half the time towards the sun, and the other half the time I was running and my shadow was out in front of me. And I thought to myself, that could possibly,
[01:10:03]
with the grace of God, be the shadow of the thing or the person I will be. And that sounds awful poetic, so I think I'll sit down. Thank you. Smart-aleck newcomers that we've got. Thank you, Bob. Okay, our second 10-minute speaker this evening is a guy that I got to know since I got to Sacramento a year and a half ago, and has, I think, got one whole lot to say, and his life speaks as much as what he has to say, and that's Jack Peay. Jack?
Thank you. You are a clock. I'm waiting for the big hand to get up to… My name is Jack Peterson, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, everybody. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm glad you're all here, all you members of Alcoholics Anonymous and all you members of Al-Anon. Hello, Cindy, and all the rest of you out there. I had to straighten this committee out. They came to me and asked me if I would speak at this banquet, and I said that I'd come over and help to lead them. And then their spokesman said it was for 10 minutes.
And that's when we had to get together and have a little conversation. I said, you've got this all wrong. I'm kind of a big shot. Shot. I've spoke at conventions in various parts of the United States, in England and Scotland, South Africa, New Zealand, leaving on Tuesday to speak at the banquet at the convention in Canberra, Australia, 10 minutes. They always give me 45 minutes to an hour and a half.
In this country, they always seem to, almost in every case, pay transportation. So I said, you know, rethink this a little bit. And they did, and they came back a day later, and I'm here tonight. It's still 10 minutes, but I did get a Sacramento Transit Authority bus. And a transfer. You know, I'm willing to compromise. It's all right. I talked to my spiritual advisor down there, Walter, and he said, yeah, go ahead and accept the deal. Sign it up.
So here I am. You know, there was a time in my life when I could not have renegotiated a deal like that. I would just crumble. I would never have come out on top as I did tonight. Everything was just terrible. My life was just a mess, and it had been for years. Everything I did went wrong. I was asked one time if I'd consider taking a lady that I did not know to a gay 90s party. And I said, sure. And they said, well, you know, there's one thing we think we should tell you.
She's going to be topless. And I said, well, it's all right. And she was. She had lost her upper plate. We got to the party, and it was a gay 90s party. All right, all the men were gay, and all the women were 90s. But then I suppose those are the sorts of things that you have to expect when you think that you're a test pilot for seabrooms, and that's what I have been for years. I'm happy that I counted at least four hands.
I think four and a half. I counted at least four hands, I think four and a half hands, uh, tonight as newcomers, so that, as Georgie said last night, there's probably a dozen or so in the room. And, uh, we need you, and we certainly hope that you need us.
[01:15:00]
This program is a program of attraction, and it's a program that does work. Anybody, anybody at all can get sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. Anybody. If they need it, and if they want it, and if they earn it, if they earn it, you must earn it a day at a time. This took me a long time to understand. I came here in September of 1955, and I was much too smart for this program. I continued to attend these meetings, and I continued to be taken drunk, always surprised me, but I was taken drunk time and time again.
Never found any sobriety, never was dry more than 92 days. That was my high water mark. I thought that, uh, my problem would be solved when I walked in here, because my problem was obviously alcohol, that's what everyone had told me. I didn't quite agree with them. I thought you were my problem. Turned out we were both wrong. My problem was a disease, a killer, a curable, progressive whether I drink or not, frequently fatal, alcoholism.
The ism made all the difference in the world. My inability to ingest ethylene alcohol successfully was just the tip of the iceberg. My disease was within me. I was the carrier. It didn't come in a bottle. It came in Jack. Jack was Jack's problem. I had to do something about me if I wanted what you had, and you told me that when I first came in here. You said, if you want what we have, do what we've done, a day at a time, and I didn't, so I didn't have it.
When I finally got to the point of my current sobriety, my most recent drink was on the 2nd of January in 1962. I recognized that my basic problem was self, and if I wanted what you had, I wanted sobriety. There was a large gap between the two, and I was stuck at the time with self. The only way I was able to bridge the gap from self over to sobriety was through surrender and through service. To me, those were the avenues of success in this program.
Surrender encompassed many things. I had to recognize that I had to change my personality. I had to depend upon a power outside of myself that happened to be greater than myself that I choose to call God tonight, and I had to carry the message of Alcoholics Anonymous to those who were willing to listen to it. What they did with it was between them and their God, but my carrying that message was necessary for me to maintain the sobriety that I then obtained, and it's been working that way ever since.
It's been working well to the degree that I work it, to the degree that I work it. We're a strange lot. As Georgia said last night, it's not a matter of getting well, it's a matter of getting weller. You meet strange people in every walk of life. You're main speaker tonight, and I mean that only in the sense of length or duration of time. Now, there is a strange cat, and I don't want to tell a story because it's a very unique one.
Believe me, you'll find that out, but his sobriety has to do with things that I think is unique unto him. Whistles and bells, and he's also got a fetish on jackets and coats. Look out because he steals them, and I know of once I speak. I've been there, and I'm glad I'm here. To you new people, welcome. And as Sybil so often says, although she didn't this afternoon in her marvelous talk, give this the best shot you've ever given anything.
If you need what we have, it's available to you. It will work, and it can save your life, and it can make your life worth saving a day at a time. You have to continue to earn it a day at a time. That's why we're all sitting in this room tonight. That's why we're all here. We're a union or a congregation of the spirit, and I heartily recommend that you give yourself a break. Give yourself a break. We did.
We're better for it. We're far better for it than when we came in here. You will learn that if you stick around for a while. Trust us. Trust yourself. Trust your higher power as you get to know them. This program will help you to do that too. It's a program of action. You have to act your way to sober thinking. You cannot think your way to sober acting.
[01:20:00]
We were discussing that here last night. It's a program where you act yourself well a day at a time. You keep acting yourself better, and it does work. As Little Laguna says, it's a terrific way to live. And as Big Laguna says, I know of no other way to live that is finer in God's world in my observations. So to each of you, welcome, and God bless you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.