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Source: DICOBE-00272 – Lynn C – ATTITUDE FOR RECOVERY.mp3 File: dicobe-00272-lynn-c-attitude-for-recovery.mp3 Duration: 00:40:46
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The message on this tape and the others in this series is from Lin B. C., a man internationally known for his work with people who suffer from alcoholism and drug dependence. If you would accept these thoughts and ideas that Mr. C. has developed over his 30 years of work with addicted people, they can help you recover from your dependence on alcohol or drugs and to maintain that recovery.
Mr. C. gave up 27 years of successful law practice in 1947 to begin his work with addicted people. He is the founder of Hazelden Recovery Center in Minnesota and was the director of its alcohol program for 18 years. In 1967, he became program director at Rosary Hall, the alcoholic unit of St. Vincent's Charity Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio. In December 1968, he returned to Minnesota to direct the recovery program at Linville Center near Jordan, Minnesota.
In 30 years of work in the recovery field, Mr. C. has worked with over 15,000 people in the United States and Canada, and he's widely known in both countries for his lectures on alcohol and drug addiction. And now, on cassette tapes, his presentations may be conveniently used often and almost anywhere. The first cassette in the series is entitled, Attitude for Recovery. Mr. C.. What I'm going to speak about this morning is the attitudes that men bring in coming here, and I know that some form of compulsion brings every man here.
I have heard men, a number of them, and women say, well, I came here because I was forced to, or I was threatened with the loss of a job, and I think there is a motivating factor in everyone coming here. Some men say I came of my own volition, and I always question that, because there is some hidden form of compulsion that drives us to seek sobriety, and I think the success or failure of anyone coming here is determined by the attitudes that you bring when you come here.
The desire for survival is very strong in human beings. We all want to stay alive, and that's the last thing that we want to lose on the face of this earth, is our consciousness. Fears and anxieties, these nameless fears that almost drove me up the wall when I was drinking, and the anxieties concerning the future, and of course in AA we learn to take it a day at a time. The fear of your loss of your wife, your home, your job, and all the things that are worthwhile in life, we know that that has happened to other people, and we're afraid of it, and the lack of peace of mind, those are all compulsive things that bring a person here, yet we have many men that come here and say, well, I don't think I'm an alcoholic.
That's a catch-all phrase. It isn't how much you drink, and unfortunately, in the minds of most people, the alcoholic is a skid row character, and that isn't true. Ninety-five percent of your alcoholics are able and attached people. We've had them all, professors, doctors, lawyers, brain surgeons, politicians, in every walk of life, we find alcoholism. I don't think it makes much difference what brought you here if during the time that you are here, you develop an attitude of learning, and that's basic in life.
I think one of the healthiest frames of mind that anyone can have is always a curiosity about life. You hear in AA men talk about the adventures of every new day, certainly we have the ability to compare the past with the present, and I think you'll agree, or any reasonable person will agree, that a sober day is better than any day that you've been drinking, and actually, I think the recovered addict can enjoy life better than people who never had our trouble.
I used to tell a story about that, about T. Totler and an alcoholic were playing golf, and the alcoholic just came off a horrible, horrible drunk, and you know how he felt. They got along to the fourth hole, and there was a drinking fountain, and the alcoholic rushed to it and drank long and deep. The T. Totler went over and took a sip of the water, and it was sulfur water, and he spat it out, and he said, oh, that water tastes terrible.
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The alcoholic looked at him and he said, mister, have you ever gotten up after a horrible night
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of drinking? He says, you got a rock fight going on your skull, your throat is closed up, and you're spitting cotton, and you're taking a nice, cool glass of water. The T. Totler said, I've never had a drink in my entire life. He said, hell, man, you don't know what water tastes like. I think there's a lot of truth to that. We know the enjoyment of the simple things of life. But what we ask of you here is to keep an open mind, and withhold judgment until you hear all the things we have to say.
And I think the shortest advice that I can give to anyone coming to this program of recovery is learn to be a good brain picker. And that's the only thing I give myself credit for, because everything I know has come from other people. And I think I've developed some skill in picking up the things that are necessary to, that I have for my own survival. That only comes with an attitude of learning. And one of my definitions of education is a progressive discovery of how little we know.
And that's evident. I have a lot to learn in life. One thing that I think is very vital is to lay aside any preconceived ideas of how you want to get well. We're great persons in setting the standards by which we get well. And if you do that, you're not going to get much out of this program. Perhaps the best attitude that anyone can have is to say to himself, I'm sick, and I want to get well. Just the same as you would if you had any other illness for which there, which can be arrested, but which there is no cure.
And that is a certainty in AA. I've seen men go back to drinking after 29 years, and it's one of the most appalling things I've ever seen, because you wouldn't think it was half an hour or an hour between the time that they left off and the time they resumed. I've seen it over the years, and yet we're great people in setting the standards by which we can recover. I'll do this, or I'll take this part of the program, but the rest of it I won't, the spiritual I don't like, or I don't like to go to meetings and all this tommyrot your hands yourself.
And with that frame of mind, you're going to dig the ditch deeper and deeper into which you're going to fall. I think it's so senseless if you look at it objectively. If I was in need of a belly operation, I'm not going to draw a line across my stomach and tell the surgeon, you can cut above it, but don't you dare go below. We're asking the divine surgeon to remove this desire for alcohol, and we can't set our own standards.
I didn't want to be an alcoholic any more than any of you people did. I saw the people that could drink normally always thinking that I was the same as they were and that I could drink without reviving the syndrome and without the penalty that's attached to it. But looking back on it, there are people that are diabetics, they're allergic to sugar. That would be a tough thing for me, I think very, very tough.
Yet if I was told that I was a diabetic by competent medical authorities, I think that I would have enough intelligence to work out in my mind some plan where I would find that sweets were wholly undesirable in my life, just like I found that alcohol is undesirable. I could go back to drinking, but I'm not willing to pay the price. I paid it for 22 years. And I eventually realized that I'd been desperately ill and I wanted to get well.
And you have to have that attitude. For years we've been in a negative attitude, what's the use, he's pushing me around, she's pushing me around, all that, bunk your hands yourself. Everything is within us. And we have nothing to offer you except our experience. We hope that you will accept this way of life and live it honestly and well and persevere in it. Because in my book, perseverance is the rarest quality in human nature.
And my period of sobriety or Paul's or any of the rest of the counselors here has been day after day, living according to certain principles. And I don't think any of us do it too well. I've never held myself out as any criterion of what AA should be. We have to have a sincere effort towards objective sobriety and have patience. We expect everything is going to come in a few days after we've wrecked a life, like I did, for 22 years of drinking.
Always with this idea that the next time it'll be different and it couldn't be different. And until I was convinced my own experience, which I think is the best judge of your need for this thing, that it was a wholly undesirable and impossible way to live, I never made the effort that this requires. One thing that I would like to stretch with you is recognize that the recovery will be
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slow. We're impatient people. We think we're going to get it in a few weeks. It doesn't work that way. The real test of your sobriety is going to be when you reach a point where you do not think about drinking or taking pills. Well, it's a foreign thing to you. You're occupied, as you should be, with the ordinary things of life and find enjoyment out of life because you have a clear, intelligent mind.
But always keep in mind that this way of life must be earned. We're great gimmick people thinking that we can get things for free and nothing is free in life. I often think about a rather catchy little song, the best things of life are free. The moon, the stars, the sun belongs to everyone. The best things of life are free. It's nonsense. If I'm to enjoy the beauty of a sunrise or a sunset, that presupposes that I have some sense of value and appreciation of the gifts of God to me.
And I certainly emphasize that because I'm grateful to God that I've got arms and eyes and legs that I can walk and talk and see when I see the halt, the lame and the blind all around me. Yet we're great on pitying ourselves. And this is going to require an honest and sustained effort. You don't get it at once. It's going to take seven months to a year. I think this is my own experience and that's the only thing I know well.
It took a year before I realized that I never needed or ever wanted liquor in my life again, but it was done on a daily basis. Your recovery is going to come when you lose the sickness of life and find out how wonderful life can be in living AA. It requires a change from the negation of drinking, and drinking is always negative. It's a depressant and it's an anesthetic. You're not in full possession of your faculties, yet it gives the impression of being a stimulant.
It isn't. If you know the anesthetic effect of alcohol, you know that it simply dulls your mind so you think you're freer and gives the illusion of relaxation where it's simply a depressant or an anesthetic. A recovery, too, is going to come when we turn away from selfishness and self-centeredness and look out on the world with a proper attitude. We have a life to live. This may be the last day of my life.
It should be my best if that is true, and I try to develop that attitude each day. I don't know what tomorrow will bring and I'm not worried about it. I'll take care of today, but we have to turn away from this selfishness and self-centeredness. The book on page 62 tells us that we're an extreme example of self-will run riot, only we usually don't think so, that we must rid ourselves of this selfishness.
We must or it will kill us. God can help us do this, and that answers this idiotic thing that you hear sometimes in AA. There are no musts in AA. There happen to be 156 musts in that book. Sure, it's not in the 12 steps. There's no must in the 12 steps, but it certainly is an indication that we have to put some discipline and order into our life. Now, I'd like to explain our job here as a staff, member of the staff, and the other men here, is to present to the best of our ability this way of life, and you may disagree with what we say.
You can say that to anyone, but at least give us credit for what we're trying to do. We're trying to point out to you a way of life that's going to bring you the satisfactions that none of us have the words to describe, and our attitude should be not only in AA, but outside of AA, to concede that other people have a right to their own thinking. It may be wrong in our eyes, but it's right in theirs.
I think we ought to have the attitude of Aristotle, who said, I disagree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. We don't concede that to other people. Give us credit for what we're trying to do, and we, in turn, will give you credit for your sincerity. We're not so anxious, any of us, to hear that you hear all the wise words we're trying to say or that you listen to them, but I do hope that you hear the things that you need to hear to solve your particular problem.
We're going to use some terms that you all know, and yet they've lost deep meaning. You have to think in AA. They have, at first, three slogans when I came to AA. First things first, which is to take care of the procrastination of the alcoholic, live and let live, which is to correct the resentment that we have towards other people, and easy does it at the best known one. It isn't an invitation to loathe.
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What's the most advisable way to handle it? How would an intelligent, educated person, calm and well-adjusted, handle this particular problem? Are you going to take a pill or a drink to solve any problem? I don't think so. That takes time. Honesty is one of the terms, and we always associate that with financial matters, and that isn't what we're referring to at all. We're referring to honesty in the light of truth about yourself.
To see ourselves, we may appear in the eyes of the people that love us, through our spouses, through our friends and children and others. And we all have to seek truth, honestly seek truth. So I want to stress that the character of truth is its capacity to stand the test of universal experience and come out unchanged from any honest, reasonable form of discussion. Now, if you can, in your mind, visualize your behavioral pattern over a period of years, how you may appear in the eyes of other people who look at you objectively, and then the excessive use of drugs of any kind, and an honest and open discussion with people that you admire for their integrity and honesty of your behavioral pattern, I think you'll arrive at the right conclusion.
But that takes time, and it takes a great deal of study. Then we talk about immaturity, and boy, when I first heard that, I didn't like it. Because what do you mean I'm immature? I'm a businessman, I'm an attorney, and all that bunk. That isn't what we're referring to at all. We're talking about emotional immaturity, and you can be 90 years old and still be immature emotionally. Now, to illustrate that point, I imagine you've all watched children, and they're playing out in the backyard, having a fine time.
God's in his high heaven, and the sun is shining, until someone slaps them, they're hurt, or they crawl, or someone throws sand in their eyes, which creates an unhappy state of mind, in the mind of a child. And he's not equipped for the give and take of life, that's a learned process. So he does the only thing he's capable of doing, he screams, his mother will hear him, she'll go out and get him, or the mother or father, carry him into the house, and as she's carrying him in, he hates these kids, he never wants to see them again.
Well, the home is a child's escape from any emotional upheaval. Whether it's joyousness, or tragedy in their mind, and he gets in the house, he's quieted down, his mother probably gives him a cookie, sits there for 10 or 15 minutes, and she takes him out again, he's playing with these kids, everything is lovely. Now, can't you see the similarities between that and the alcoholic? Who, when he reaches a state of mind where he is unhappy, it may look to other people that we have everything in the world to live for, they say, what goes with this fellow? Here he's got all the equipment, got a beautiful home, a nice family and all that, and here he's drinking.
But we're not happy in our own mind, and certainly we're too old to bawl, so what do we do? Run to the escape of alcohol or pills. Very, very immature. And one of my definitions of alcoholism is that it's a learned, inadequate, immature response to life's problems and personality difficulties. And being a learned process, the only way you can recover is through unlearning and re-education. Unlearning the responses that you and I had to anger, fear, hatred, resentment, self-pity, and all these things that are part of the commonality of man and cause so much trouble in life.
Until we recognize those things and take an adult attitude towards life, we're going to have trouble with ourselves. Oh, another illustration of that is little Tom Sawyer, when he stood on his head in front of Becky's house, and she didn't look out and acknowledge his great deed that he did, and he was right sick at heart and wished that he could die temporarily. There's your alcoholic. We'd like to get out of all this mess and the tension and the stress of life because it's painful.
I happen to be one person that knows what Dr. Bacon meant when he said, at the extreme of drinking, you live in a constant state of psychic pain. Everything I did in life was painful. The dread of waking up in the morning and having to face people, to get out from the business world, the fears and anxieties that almost drove me crazy at night. What do you do? You go to the anesthesia of pills or bottle or the bottle to ease the pain of living.
What kind of a way to live is that? How much fun is it living with yourself when you know that you can merit and earn the respect of other people? Not much fun. I don't care what you call it. They use a term for the purpose of world's work, the problem drinker. That's anyone who's drinking causes a continuing and growing problem in any important department of their life.
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If it's causing you trouble with your family, your reputation, your work or whatever it is, then you're a problem drinker or an alcoholic. You name it. Doesn't make much difference what I call myself. I can't change the effect of alcohol over the 22 years. We talk about sincerity and that's within knowledge itself and the willingness to correct what is wrong. And until there is that willingness, that desire, I don't think you're ever going to recover.
We say in AA that AA is the most important thing of you in your life. You may think your job, your family, your church, whatever it is, is more important. But if you haven't got sobriety, and when I mention sobriety, I mean absence from any form of avoidance of the problems of life, pills, booze or anything else. It's a broad term. But if we're going to continue on drinking, there isn't much or taking pills.
There isn't much hope for us. And you have to have this desire. Put it ahead of everything else. I've seen so many men die from alcoholism, there's no question in my mind what's going to happen to me. They died horrible, avoidable deaths. I thought one time of making up a talk telling about the splendid, able, capable men and women that died from pills or booze. How did they die? They shot themselves, jumped out of windows, hang themselves, died from overdose of pills, burned to death.
I don't want to die that way. But that's a decision that you have to make, and it's a serious decision. That has been one of the most difficult things we've had in this field, is to get the addicted person to accept with finality their illness. And certainly there's an illness. There's an approach today by some of these bird brains of cursing out the alcoholics. You don't curse sick people, you treat them.
And I know how desperately sick the pill addict or the alcoholic is. And what he needs is encouragement. We've abused ourself in our own mind and degraded ourself enough. We don't need to have someone else put us on a hot seat or anything else. Those halfwits that do that, I don't know where it came in. We need encouragement. And what we hope that you'll find here is hope. There is a hope of a better way of life than you've been living.
And certainly we hope that you'll see it. Talk about humility. Well, none of us are big enough to be humble people. We're arrogant people. It takes the stature of men like Lincoln and Gandhi, and of course the perfect illustration was Christ. And people do not understand humility. They think it's the obsequious bowing before people in high places that curse. That's false. You give respect to people, like the president, the people that are our leaders, but you don't worship them.
Even your idols have feet of clay. And humility knows its weaknesses, the admission that you're a weak character, and we all are, but it doesn't build up any barriers against success. And the narrative that I can come to describing humility, you could talk for an hour on it. It's a false thing with a lot of people. It's just like someone that's a master on the piano, and you say, would you mind playing?
Oh, I can't play. You see, that's looking for approbation. The person that has any degree of humility, he acknowledges his own skill and strength, and we all have a right to that. Say, certainly I'd be glad to. I play well. So humility isn't what people think it is. I think the nearest that we can come to it, may be, is here's a job to do. I don't know how to do it, but I'm willing to learn, and that attitude of learning is so important.
The idea that we can transmit to you this feeling of security that comes after a period of time, that's an impossibility. What I know, I know well, as far as my own self is concerned. I know what I have to do, and I'm willing to do it. And I don't think there's any choice for us. We have to give up our freedom to be free. What looks like restriction, is simply the old cardinal rules and laws of life, and that's all AA is.
This thing is old as time itself. It's written in the marble halls of time, the basic truths of life. And until we recognize that the laws only have one purpose, I've stressed that so many times, and people do not understand it. People are, you hear them breaking the law. The laws never are broken. The old cardinal moral laws and the civil laws are inexorable. Their operation is inexorable. And we're all bound by them, but they only have one purpose,
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to make men free. If you live within the framework of the moral and civil laws, you're as free as the ocean. But accept these words without rejection. Approach, and another thing, do not approach this thing with a clenched fist attitude. By God, I've got it. It doesn't work that way. It's a long, slow process of understanding yourself, your needs in life, your hopes, your aspirations, and to set a goal, and then, like a good sailor, don't deviate one inch from the goal that you set for yourself, which is to have a sober and intelligent life.
Don't say, I'll never take another drink. You'll notice that none of the counselors here say that. Never is a very, very long time. And whenever we see a person leaving here with a clenched fist, by God, I've got it. I'll never take another drink. We know it's going to be flat in his face within two months. I don't have to drink today. And like the old Chinese proverb that the longest journey is started with one step, the longest period of sobriety of the founder of AA who died here about six months ago started with one day.
And there was a time I was sitting like last week, you people here with a day or two behind me. I never thought that I would ever arrive at a point where I could be around liquor, see it. I don't like the smell of it anymore. I get nauseated. Because I train myself away from any stimulating viewpoint towards alcohol. All I think is how sick it used to make me. Every time I see a bottle, every time I see an ad for liquor, I think of these dry heaves which I imagine some of you have had and, brother, I don't want them.
But have an attitude of curiosity in learning about yourself and this thing will unfold in time. It's like any other learning process. You learn a little at a time. In time you have an understanding of what this is. I know it's confusing. We have too short a time here. I think basically we only have two weeks. Because the first week or ten days, your brains are in hock. Even though the men that come in dry.
We've been thinking so wrongly for a long period of time that it takes time to adjust to it. The second week of massive ideas are thrown at you. Doesn't seem that they're ever going to make any kind of a pattern. But as long about the third week, you begin to see the continuity of recovery. I've compared it many times to a jigsaw puzzle because I'm very inept with those. And you dump a thousand word puzzle in front of me and it looks like an impossible task.
Yet my intelligence tells me if you will try to fit these pieces together, ultimately they will all fit and the key figure will fall in place and you'll see the picture that that puzzle is supposed to represent. And I don't think you're going to know and have any conviction about this way of life until you've lived it in sufficient degree over a sufficient period of time which may be weeks or months.
I've had some men say, well, I never wanted a drink after I left Linville. That was my experience. After I came to the AA, I wanted a drink that took almost, well, a little over a year before I realized that I never needed or ever wanted liquor in my life again. I can see a pail of paint and a bottle of liquor and neither of them are fit for me to drink. And if you know anything about my drinking history, you'd say that's the greatest miracle that AA ever performed.
Because my own doctor told my brother that I would die insane or destroy myself or I'll end up in an institution. But God in AA willed otherwise. I also know this fear, many fears that come to the alcoholic. I have tried everything possible to get away from liquor. Nothing was available until I struck AA. I had a great many psychiatrists. I've been in several institutions. They had nothing to offer me.
They brought me to good health. But it took AA to give me… I struck AA. I had a great many psychiatrists. I've been in several institutions. They had nothing to offer me. They brought me to good health. But it took AA to give me the insight and enlightenment that I needed to solve my problem. And that's what we hope that you will all get here. The insight that you need. Not what we're advocating particularly.
I suppose every one of us has reached our sobriety in a different way and by a different course. But we all ultimately see the same picture that this puzzle is supposed to represent. The sense of futility, of life without our crutch. What am I going to do? A lot of people now are worrying about March 17th because they've all celebrated. March 17th isn't here. Because they've always celebrated, March 17th isn't here, this is today, I can live today, I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, I may never see Christmas, I'm not concerned about that, I'm concerned about living today, and yet we're inclined to build these barriers ahead of ourselves, and they're absolutely futile, the things that you fear the most will never happen, it's the unexpected that catches you, and people say, well if you lived a day at a time you couldn't plan, you can plan for 20 years, I can plan for
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5 or 10 years, I haven't any assurance that I'll live that long, and yet we build up these barriers in our minds, what's going to happen when I get out of here, I don't know, I think we'd all like to have a blueprint of the thing, but there isn't any blueprint, but I know it'll be good if you will live this program within the framework of your own mind, and that's where life begins and finishes, and it's on this journey that we're on that determines, and your attitude determines whether it's going to be a good journey or a poor one, one of the great discoveries of life is the things that you can do without, because we do clutter up our life with a lot of extraneous things that have a great deal of value.
The fear of giving up, Spencer calls that the profoundest of all infidelities, that the truth will be bad, we hate to find out the truth about ourselves, and we deceive ourselves to our own destruction, we create this image of ourselves way back in our adolescent years, and it's completely false, to take an objective view of yourself is appalling, and it takes a lot of study, a lot of re-education, because just physical sobriety won't do it, that's evident if you stop to think, you haven't all been drunk or taking pills all the time, why does an intelligent person have to resort to any kind of escape in this life, the answer is to face it, and what are problems become challenges, what's the best solution to this particular problem? One thing that I would like to recommend to you is cultivate the habit of prayer. A lot of people don't pray, and I don't think any of us do. I was thinking about that coming down this morning, how weak I am in that particular field, although I do use prayer quite a lot, that serenity prayer, that great prayer on page 63, which I'm very fond of, I use that serenity prayer perhaps 30 to 50 times a day in the first few months of sobriety, but the one that seems to give me the greatest comfort now is that prayer on page 63, God I offer myself to thee, to build with me and do with me as thou wilt, relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do thy will, take away my difficulties, that victory over them may be evidence to those that I would help with thy love, thy power, thy way of life, let me do thy will always. I repeat that many times some days when I'm disturbed. You're going to find in age that the years go very quickly, it's only the days that go so wrong and hang in our hands so heavily. You learn to handle the days, you don't have to worry about the years. But we all need prayer, and every night on my knees I pray for all alcoholics and addicted persons, living and dead, and all who need help at this moment. That's an obligation, a responsibility of mine. I have gotten a lot out of it, eh? I'm trying to pay back a little of what I have received, and certainly I know the efficacy of prayer better than anyone in this room, and I'm not stupid or naive enough to believe that any great effort of mine led to sobriety. The prayers of many people that were interested in me, I found that out after I died out. But until you acknowledge that you have a problem, be willing to make this effort that AA requires. It isn't just giving up liquor or pills, get that out of your mind. It's the most obvious thing and the most important, because you have to keep your brains out of hock if you're ever going to live in this life, and you'll have to watch every day of your life the same thing that I have to watch the erosion that takes place out in the world today with a false value.
People are worried about the state of the world and all the wars and everything. I'm concerned but not worried. I know that this is a repetition of history. These times that come before, they'll come again perhaps, and they'll only be solved in God's good time, not ours. Sure, you don't like to see these things? What can I do about them? I can maintain my own way of life in the hope that someone else will be led to a sane and sensible approach to their life and enjoy the things that I have found enjoyable since I died out. It doesn't mean any Pollyannish existence. Life isn't supposed to be that way. It's a journey.
Sometimes it's tough, very tough. But if you take it a day at a time, you'll find that you can work out a very acceptable way of living. If you're looking for definitions, I could give you 20 of them at least. There's 156 definitions of addiction. But alcoholism,
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which I've been concerned with mostly, because when I first started in this field in 1949 when I opened Hazelnut, we got the old time drunk like myself who would hang on a terrific binge and then you could talk to them, or the steady drinker. Now we're up against this dual addiction of pills that are created by prescription in 90% of the cases. I'll change the word of this. I use the term alcoholism because it's a thing I made up years ago.
Addiction is characterized by mutual disorder in general, the confused life that we live, eccentricity, the odd behavior of the addicted person, emotional instability, poor judgment, perverse conduct, contrary to the rules of good living, lack of common sense and social feelings, lack of self-control, discipline, and perseverance. Those are the things that we lack. And until a person is willing to control themselves and discipline themselves and persevere in this thing, you're never going to recover. You may have periods of laying off of pills or booze, but that isn't sufficient. And I haven't the words to describe this surrender process. Here are some of the known characteristics of the alcoholic. He is dependent, we're very dependent upon other people. Of course, that's true of all people.
You hear about the self-made man. Now, I think when I hear that that someone did a wretched job. We're dependent upon many people for our survival. He is idealistic. We're bankrupt idealists. We're the people that started out with high ideals in life, met a world that isn't idealistic. It's sometimes very pleasant, sometimes cruel, sometimes vicious. But you have to take it as it is and face reality. You'll never perhaps live up to the idealism that you had at one time. He's impulsive. We do things without thinking. And I remember when I was a kid, they used to stress all the time prudence. And I've only seen that word in print once in 10 years. Still a valid word. Be prudent in your conduct, which is a considered judgment of the consequence of your act. Does anyone of you think when you take the last pill or drink that you were going to end up here? No. Or your experience should have told you that. He is intolerant and arrogant. We're very intolerant of other people. And actually, I think the alcoholic is the most intolerant person of any about other alcoholics or addicts. And we're all in the same boat. We're using some drug to ease the pain of living, and you can't ease the pain of living that way. You have to do it by your intelligence, which is the best part of everyone in this room. He indulges in wishful thinking. Well, all of us do that to some extent. There's a great deal of Mr.
Mitty in all of us. But that is fantastic for the alcoholic. Making commitments in your mind that the body cannot keep. And having these ideals that meet fulfillment only in words, not by actions. And this is a program of action. He lacks perseverance. That's in every study I've ever read about the alcoholic. To persevere day after day, I think, reflects the never-ending perfection of the eternal. Easy to do for a short period of time, but very difficult to sustain yourself over a protracted period of sobriety. He is impatient.
We're the most impatient people in the world. Get it done right away. I know this thing now, so everything is subtle. That isn't true. Life is not only growing up, education, all those things. It's completing a journey. And if you keep that in mind, I think you'll find many interesting things on the way up. Now, all these things are basic. I knew them from the time that I was a child. Know thyself, control thyself, improve thyself, and accept thyself. That's a thing that I could never do until A.A. taught me how to accept me for what I am, and I have no illusion of what I am. And I know that the indispensable man has never been born, and this world forgets you in a matter of a few days. I know if I died tonight, I'd be a memory even with my family. But in six months, I have an importance to myself, to Almighty God, and to my fellow man as an individual. I have many responsibilities in life, but in my personhood, I have a responsibility to God and to myself.
So give that a little thought this morning, and perhaps the whole thing is basic honesty. Shakespeare said it years ago, this above all, unto thine own self be true, and it shall
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follow as night follows day, that thou cannot be false to any man. I think you'll find it's true in A.A. We'll close with the Lord's Prayer. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever.
Amen.