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Source: DICOBE-00281 – Bill W – BILLS 30TH ANNIVERSARY – 1965-11-01.mp3 File: dicobe-00281-bill-w-bills-30th-anniversary-1965-11-01.mp3 Duration: 00:58:49
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…with alcohol, with booze, your program for recovery. You have had two distinctly different stories, and there's a captive audience here of over 2,000. I'm almost tempted to tell my own. However, I am sure that you would much prefer to hear our beloved friend and co-founder, Bill. …applause… …silence… Dearest friends, there was a day of my spiritual experience. There was a day when, for the first time, we realized that A&E was going to grow, and quote, I'd rather say, it's huge.
There have been a few other days of this dimension, to say it again, but life joins with me in saying to you that along these surges, this is one of our final hours. In the end, we have our little cliché, a paradox between thought and meaning. One, he does, lives and let lives move. And he says, put things first. And this latter one, put things first. Of an introduction I'd like to make, of a lady who lived with a drug until no one would have anything to do with it, until she and I were alone.
And finally, so near to death as I've said, that she was old. We had been told in the summer of 1934 that I could not live alone here. Then comes this miracle of a young, this great gift for which none can take credit. So after spending 20 years with me as a drug, she had spent 20 years with me as an AA, an AA of thought. There had been 6,000 people in our home. She had helped to form that wonderful society now less than 15 years old, to be honest.
Which as long as we drunks are beginning to realize, has started a magnificent repair of the awful damage we have done to those near and dear. I present you all. Thank you. Good evening everybody. I'm so thankful and grateful to be here tonight. I can't believe that 20 years have passed and there's more of us to die. And I want to thank you all, every one of you, for all you have done to make this, have been dying on me today.
I want to thank the AA for their wonderful program and for carrying a message that makes this, these folks's lives.
[00:05:00]
And I want to thank all those friends, non-alcoholic friends, that have been so helpful. And I want to thank the families of alcoholics. That wonderful teacher fellowship. For everything that you have done for me, and I have learned so much. There's really nothing more I could say except healthy more, amen. I want to introduce to you, my own mother, Susan. Good afternoon, everybody. As Susan said, this is really an experiment and we don't know exactly what we're doing.
And I thought it might be kind of interesting in the beginning to find out how many here are really alumni members or how many came with their husbands to the AA dinner. Just as a matter of interest, but I'm sure they thought they'd come to this meeting. Would you mind putting up your hand, those that are alumni members? Oh, practically everybody. Isn't that wonderful? You know, I had a feeling that this was a meeting where we'd have to throw alumni.
But I'm completely wrong about that. We're supposed to throw everybody in the beginning. So they may be the thing for me to talk about would be how I happened to come to the realization myself that I needed something. Okay, so that really is, I think, will explain all what the Al-Anon is in the process. Is there anybody here that doesn't belong to Al-Anon? Let's put it that way. Let's see. Five, seven.
About seven people, I guess. Yeah. Well, I think we should be interested to hear how it all got started. Let's suppose I tell a little bit about my story because Bill and I were very close because we hadn't any children. And as soon as Lincoln got worse and worse, we didn't have any friends either. And I had set myself up to straighten me out as I thought I could certainly do. About the first week of our marriage, he got drunk.
And we hadn't been drinking before while we were engaged. And that, of course, flabbergasted me. And I thought pretty soon that after living with me under my loving guidance, he'd have enough real purpose in life so that he wouldn't need the obstacles of alcohol. But as the years went on, he drank more and more instead of less and less. And he always got drunk. And in my beatific effect, whatever you want to call it, on him, that I thought I would certainly have because I was very much in love with my husband as all wives, I think, must be who sit and care the way they do.
And I thought that love could practically do anything. But if I loved him enough, I could change him. You see, I think that I had a romantic and not a realistic idea of love. I was going to do the job for him. I thought I could impress upon him my ideas of what I thought was right for him to do.
[00:10:04]
And that's really not… I don't think that falls under the definition of real love. I think so many of us are possessive in our love for our husbands or our dear ones, whoever it happens to be drinking. I know I was. I just wanted to get inside his head and change things in the way I thought they ought to go. I just, it seems as if I would have to be able to have some effect on him. But as I say, during all these years, seventeen, now years, he was extremely close, but he didn't stop drinking.
And I was frustrated and felt I had failed. And he was very definitely appalled at the situation. It wasn't until nearly ending his drinking that he really realized that he couldn't stop when he wanted to. He always thought he'd be able to stop. But he had an experience where he really had to stop for business reasons. Of course, he didn't have any business most of the time. But when this experience came about that showed him that he couldn't really stop when he wanted to, he got me back into business after a long time of being out.
And they told him that they knew his reputation for getting drunk and that they would have to sign a contract saying that he would not touch a drop of liquor during the time of this investigation that he was on. He was investigating a company for some people in Wall Street. And he never for a minute doubted that he would be able to stick to this contract. The contract was a very sacred thing in his mind and he took it for granted that he'd be able to stick to it.
But after, maybe I'll tell you how it came about. One night, he was with several of the other people that were in on this job and it was over in Dalsey someplace where he had to go and stay for a week or so. And they were passing him… They were playing cards, they were playing poker. And Bill never was interested in poker or playing any kind of cards for that matter. I don't know if you can tell from seeing him here today but he was a person with a one-track mind.
If he had something on his mind, nothing else. He was interested in nothing else. And cards never was one of the one-track things he got interested in. But while they were playing cards, they were passing around the jug. And Bill sat on the sidelines, just kind of bored as you could see. And every time they passed the jug, he would say, no thank you. And they passed it around once together. And this time he said, what's in that jug anyway?
And they said, jazzy lightning. And he said, jazzy lightning? Why, I've never had any jazzy lightning. Isn't it awful? This is what he said to himself. Isn't it awful if I should go to my grave and never have any jazzy lightning? So he took up the jug. And that was the end of that, of course. And of course, what he's had with all of these, you know how he has been trying to, um, not take a drink, to stop drinking, and then just for such a really stupid reason, because he's never had a majority right in his life, this whole job and everything has flown up.
[00:15:21]
So, if you really need, you come to the very sad realization that he could not stop drinking when he wanted to himself, and after that, of course, he was just the most stupid human you've ever seen, he didn't do anything but stay home and drink, he didn't go out for any purpose except to get more liquor, he was afraid to go out. Maybe he'd be arrested, afraid he'd get into some kind of trouble. Just stay home and drink. So, as of course, as you can see, he's gotten down to these really miserable things.
And then one day, a friend came to him, a friend, by the way, who I think is supposed to be here today, I think he's sitting downstairs, but maybe he'll be here for dinner tomorrow, came to him, and this friend always, when they came to New York, was drunk, they had known him for a long, long time. And he was just the most obvious drunk that you'll ever meet. And his voice was very clear over the phone, and didn't sound, it was clear and didn't sound like a call, so Bill asked him to come over. And when he did come, Bill was with clear eyes and bright expression, and Bill couldn't get over it.
And he told him how he had found a relief from alcohol. Well, Bill was interested, very, very deeply interested, but not enough to stop drinking. He kept on drinking. But he couldn't get it out of his thoughts, he couldn't get this picture of this friend. So he went to the hospital and had that wonderful, spiritual experience that we didn't tell about, or we read about. And when I went to see him, I knew that he was a different man, that something terrific had happened to him. I didn't have to go through that long period of doubt that some of these folks do, where you wonder will he come home tonight drunk or not.
After he had gotten into LA. Because there was something about him that was just so different, so completely new. And when he got on with them, he sobered up all the drunks in the world. And I think he must have asked at least half of them to our house to come live with us on a common meeting, because we had our house just full of drunks in this top floor to the basement. And we were in all stages of sobriety and all types of people, everything you can imagine.
Well, I of course was terribly excited. He was this thing that I had been working for all my life. He was coming to town. I could hardly believe it, it was so thrilling. And after a while, I began to wonder just what was wrong, something was wrong somewhere. I was getting irritated, I was losing my temper over little things. I didn't recognize, I didn't want to recognize the fact, really, that my knowledge was pretty badly broken.
And I had tried to do this thing of sobering Bill up all these 17 years, and I hadn't done it. And a man had come along, and in a few minutes, a very, very short time, of talking with him, Bill's whole life had changed.
[00:20:18]
And then I had, before such thing needed, I felt I had a big responsibility, I had a big job to do, a very important thing. And then after Bill was sobered up, and he returned to his own, took his own responsibilities, I didn't have those responsibilities anymore. I didn't feel so needed. Bill was gasping here and gasping there, helping this drunk and helping the other drunk, and consulting with them, and we didn't have any time together anymore. We used to have lots of time together. We used to take all our problems to each other. Now we didn't have any time to talk things over.
And I miss that companionship, and I think I was just playing every day a villain of all his new friends that he had found. It never occurred to me that I needed anything myself at all, because I'd been brought up by a very good family, I'd been brought up in a religious background, and I thought I had all the answers. Bill and his friends had found a new way of life, and they were growing by leaps and bounds.
So it never occurred to me that I needed any appraisal or reappraisal of myself. I took myself for granted. I thought I was a pretty good person, and my ideas, I thought, were based on proper foundation. But when I did begin to think about myself in relation to Bill and in relation to all these people, I saw that I had genetic self-pity and resentment, and that we as Bill needed a good way of life because of his altruism.
I needed a new way of life because of all the things that had developed in me, not only because of his thinking, but because they were there anyway and needed to be seen. Perhaps the thinking had brought them out, but they couldn't have evolved from nothing. They must have been there in the beginning. So I started to live this AA way of life myself, and across from all these other wives around, in the little host that they had in New York, could see the same thing after a while.
Because they really needed something. And Adam Smith, Adam Antrim, Adam was a wonderful person. He was big and couldn't see very well, and motherly, and very wise. She seemed to know just the right thing to tell both alcoholics and non-alcoholics. The alcoholics would come to her with a lot of their troubles, and she would be able to calm them down and help them out.
[00:25:07]
And I know it showed a wife who came against Tom Hanks very, very much. And we all really felt that we needed something because it's the only reaction I think you have after a while. When you see your mate, or your son, or your father, whoever it may be that's in AA, your brother, leaping ahead by leaps and bounds, the person must be very blind not to see that they really need something too. So all along, it started really through spontaneous combustion I believe, just from this common need that we all had. And it started all over the country, little groups here and little groups there, gathered together to talk over their own side of the problem.
Of course, in the very beginning, before we could see ourselves very well at all, we just got together I think for companionship's sake, and to get relief from finding somebody else that had the same problem. And we discussed our husband's, I'm saying today, our husband's problem more than we did our own. And it's taken quite a long time, and the application of the 12 steps of AA to ourselves, to really see a lot of the things about ourselves.
Of course, alcoholism is so obvious, that it's very easy to see what a person has had to fear. But with us wives and husbands of alcoholic families, we've been put in the position of being on the right side of the ledger. It isn't obvious that there's anything wrong with us. To a lot of people, although it may be more obvious than we realize, I think it's awful. And for that reason, I think it's so much harder for us, so much harder for us to get right down to brass tacks and see our needs, and not to feel like that.
I think that's one of the biggest troubles with most of us, is that we are not honest with ourselves. I'm talking about myself. I'm sitting at my pillow because it's easier, but I suppose it applies to a lot of us. With myself, it was the hardest thing to be really honest and think why I did this and why I did the other, and not make myself think that it was for some fine purpose, and not just because I was selfish.
So, I don't know, it's come to be, to me, really, a completely new way of life. And I hope I'm getting more honest and honest with myself. But I think that's really the hardest thing of all, to be. I don't want to take up all of your time. So, before you pull up, I'll have to go now. Thank you. She was a member of Al-Anon long, long before there was ever a fellowship by that name.
[00:30:00]
That takes quite a woman to do that. So, my friends, it makes me feel very grateful to present the First Lady of both fellowships, AA and Al-Anon, our beloved Lois. Thank you. Good evening everybody. This is one of the most thrilling meetings I've ever been at. I don't know whether I'll be able to even say a few words because it's so very moving to see so many of you. Okay, thanks. In the beginning of AA, it was a family affair.
Parents, mates, and children accompanied the AAs to meetings, which often were held in homes. Anyone lucky enough to still have a home shared it with those without one, who were most of the people. Our house buzzed like a beehive. Such terrific excitement and enthusiasm existed about this wonderful program that no one considered carrying on any outside activities. When not 12-stepping or attending meetings, AA was the enthralling topic of conversation morning, night, and noon.
Any new prospect was treated like the find of a raw diamond, and all were anxious to help polish him and to see that he got the program. It wasn't too long, however, before some AAs felt that they needed meetings for alcoholics only. When the families were thus left to themselves, they sometimes met together, too, and eventually Alanon grew out of it. The mutuality of the old AAs seemed wonderful, but we mates now have something much deeper and more useful.
Then we thrilled with gratitude over the dramatic recovery of our dear ones, but we never thought about changing ourselves. Consequently, when the pink clouds faded, we woke up to find our alcoholics way ahead, often leaving behind in us hurt feelings, resentment, and self-pity. Now with Alanon coming into maturity and its members practicing the AA principles in all their affairs, home lives can be based solidly on real understanding and true partnership.
We thank you, dear AAs, for showing us the way. Thank you all. I'd like to do the honors. Thank you. Good evening, everybody. You know, I think this conference has younger faces than any conference we have seen, younger and gayer and happier, and let's hope we'll accomplish just as much and more than any other conference has. I do ask you if I'd say a few words on sponsorship. Sponsorship is something that I think you and Alanon have more or less neglected, and it is a very, very important thing because the newcomer, if he's taken under the wing of C or C, taken under the wing of an old-timer, can really gain the knowledge of Alanon
[00:35:05]
and become a real member so much faster and better than they can if they kind of try to flounder around. At least they don't try to flounder, but they do flounder around without any real help from any one individual. In the early days of A.A. that I'm always hopping back to, they used to, of course, sponsor people by taking them into their own homes and giving them full treatment. They would try to help them in every possible way, giving them car fare and giving them clothes and feeding them and doing all kinds of things.
Of course, that was never really feasible in Alanon, and I don't know that it was such a good practice except for the people who were booing them, sponsoring or taking in. It was good for them. But I think if we in Alanon tried to practice some of the present-day A.A. practices about sponsorship, it would be very, very good. You might appoint committees, I think some groups do. Committees to look after the newcomer, not only to see that the newcomer is greeted and welcomed, but to see that he has a sponsor, somebody that can give a lot of time to her, somebody that's a new member, somebody that would appeal to the new member.
I'm sure that would be a very, very helpful thing. We often have beginners' committees, but they're not, I think they're a more general thing. I don't think they usually appoint a special sponsor for a special newcomer. And of course, very often, though, it's the initial contact that is the sponsor, that develops into the sponsor of a newcomer. And this sponsor, whether she be the new, the initial contact or one appointed by the committee, of course, helps the newcomer understand about Alanon.
She brings her to the meetings. She calls her in between. She lets her talk. One of the main and prime purposes, I would think, of a sponsor would be to listen. This place where he's been holding back her feelings and pin her up has a sounding board where she can express her emotions. This is a very great help, of course, to her, and also does something to the group. It keeps her from wanting to go over to meetings, which, as we all know, is a very undesirable thing.
And I think if we all could understand this a little better, I don't know how many of your groups, I think that would be kind of fun to have you raise your hands to see if any of your groups do practice this sponsorship in your group. Is there anybody who does practice? There must be 15 hands, I would think, at least, or maybe more.
[00:40:04]
And I think that's a very intelligent thing because so many newcomers are lost, I think, to Alanon because they haven't been welcomed sufficiently and really taught the program in a personal, friendly way. So this sponsorship business, I really think, is a very, very important thing because it not only hastens the newcomer, hastens her knowledge of Alanon, but it does so much for the person also who is doing the sponsoring.
So I have some notes, and I noticed something I'm skipping that I wanted to say. So I'll have to look and see. So often, there's a phrase that so often people use to, in opposition, rather, to the service structure, and that is, keep it simple. Now, a sponsor, that's another thing that I wanted to tell you about, is that when the newcomer is ready, the sponsor should tell her about service. She should tell her that that is a way that she can express her gratitude is in service.
And this phrase, keep it simple, that is so often used in opposition to the service structure, really doesn't mean that at all because order in the service, order in the service structure, order in so many things helps simplicity instead of preventing it. It really makes the helping the next person very much easier and makes it more efficient. So keep it simple really means not to elaborate in a lot of fancy ways, but it doesn't really apply to the service structure because we need order in order to be efficient.
And particularly the headquarters of a World Service office, we need order there and efficiency in order to spread the message throughout the whole world. There's another phrase that I hear quite often in AA and Al-Anon, which I don't really take to at all. In fact, it annoys me very much. And that is, this is a selfish program. And of course what the person who says that really means is that it's a program for self-development and self-improvement, but our program is really not a selfish program.
So, once more I have to look. So I think when we try to sponsor somebody and help them to live by the Al-Anon program, we are not only helping them, but we are helping ourselves. Thank you very much. ________________ The man that I think that was, that we should always remember in our prayers, and ask God that he can win us for the many, many years to come, and it's with faith and loyalty that I introduce Bill Wilkinson.
[00:45:12]
Applause Will this set me up here? I just want to be able to stand down and give a report. Dear folks, it was with equal humility that I stand here and see the marvelous evidence of the wondrous work that God is performing through you. I always like to question any almanac of God. With the emphatic statement, this is the best thing that has happened since AA began. I think that we ask it, our all together home, to imagine that AA is something for just pride. Well, we have seen a great many people, and most of us have failed, and I'm one, in which our sole virtue is just pride.
Laughter Our conference is themed on the practice of these principles in all our faiths. Now, I think it is the experience of most of us out in the world, as we set out on the recovery highway, and try to resume the process of growing up, that the easy relation for us, first, is the relation with the AA. This is the kindred structure. This is the one who understands. So that is a thing for most of us. Then there are our friends, our business acquaintances, and most of us can quite promptly renew our relations with them.
And we enjoy being spoiled by them when they say, isn't it wonderful what you've done. But the rub comes, and this is not for blame to anyone. The rub comes with the close interlace, and this, plainly enough, is where the greatest distortion and scarring and damage can occur. As you remember, I made the remark the other night at the opening dinner, that sometimes I find the exercise of trying to put myself in Lois' place.
I, a non-alcoholic, am a serious drunk. Well, if the hard thing to do with one's death, and about all that you can come up with, is the reflection that the only worse thing than being an alcoholic, is being the wife of a hunter. Because you people have to take the gambling-type life of this mountain without any anesthetic. So there, oddly enough, sadly enough, in this relation with each other, which is the half of the bed, here is the most difficult area of repair.
[00:50:23]
I realize I am not saying one word that is new to any of you. I am merely proving that a true less drunk has some idea of what you've gone through and what the problem is. Now then, the drunk's idea of repair is to rush home and say, look, my, what I've got. And the one who's got a load will say, hey, you come down to the meeting and we'll let you sit in on the open meetings, and you can make a coffee.
Well, we can warm our hands at this wonderful spot, but of course you don't exactly belong in the club. We'll put you out on the outer fringes, you know, and you can run in and get warm temporarily, and you don't fight too long. So we proceed to put you, at least some of you, consciously or unconsciously, in a state of greater isolation than before. And what wonders is that some of you say, my God, he was much better when he was drunk.
Now then, since this is the slope and the most important of the list, since this is the relation that bears upon the rest of the family and all these growing kids, this is where the great repair effort needs to be focused. And it's one that gives me more than the alcohol. See what the problem is. You see very clearly that it isn't only the problem of the alcoholic and understanding him. It is understanding what life with an alcoholic has done to warp Europe.
And I congratulate you on the breadth and depth of this understanding that has been so well achieved in so many thousands and thousands of families. You see, if you are drunk, and you have previously stigmatized, disgraced, jailed, wronged, sexed, all those six years of counseling, you can come up with the conclusion that there's a little something matter with you. But if you're on the receiving end of it, and you have done your damage badly, it's pretty hard to imagine that anything happened to you.
So that you have penetrated this wall that has been erected, first by one party and then by the other this morning. And we've got some visibility going both ways. And we've got some salary force and in-going agency. This is a great thing. One of the greatest things AA can do. I think, too, it is appropriate for me to bring from all areas whether they understand this great thing here or not. The congratulations of our whole society.
I also would like to dwell a little bit upon the deep satisfaction that some of us have who have been engaged in world services. I suppose that half of my own aging life has been devoted to this overall functioning of AA.
[00:55:05]
Just as now, you people are devoting yourselves to the overall functioning of counseling. I'm glad, too, that you have been able to benefit by a lot of previous experiences that we had in forming these services. That you people aren't that. Partly because I think you are more stable, but you have been willing to borrow the lessons of our experience. For example, it was a very difficult thing indeed to form this first general service conference in AA, of which you are the Al-Aman Council.
A number of us, together with friends, had formed a board of trustees. And we had gotten our literature and we had taken all the public relations, and we had begun to do things for the overall service that you understand so well. Now those of us who have become accustomed to this sort of authority have become guardians. Privately, we've gone rather insensible guardians of AA. And the idea of bringing in a council of drunks who hadn't yet proved they could even operate a house was something of great concern and of harm.
Now you folks never seriously went through that stage, even around the headquarters. The folks in headquarters and malls were so damn glad that you people got here. They never heard of it. It's just right because you understand the need for the linkage, the need for the commonality. You can't rest the future on people now in existence who are going to move off the scene. You are going to be those subjects.
What is the linkage they're going to have with your society? You, in a sense, in coming here to do what, in particular, is a globby line of work, are really underwriting a proficient insurance policy on the future of your society. I'm so glad you're here. Lord, I'm so glad you're here. And I hope that there will be a pleasing number in your society and in our fellowship who will be equally blessed.
So again, on behalf of us drunks, I wish you God's blessings. And may God give you an abundant world.