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Source: DICOBE-00439 – Vaughan Q – 34TH INTERGROUP – 1977-09-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00439-vaughan-q-34th-intergroup-1977-09-15.mp3 Duration: 00:59:12
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I just want everybody to stand up, everybody, you know, just get up, and just put your hands over your head and go, ahhh, kind of whip the tired blood into shape, okay, now you can sit down. Don told me, some of you have been sitting here since about six o'clock, we had a flat tire in Chicago and that's what kept us waiting, kept us there for two hours and twenty minutes. I first of all want to express my gratitude for the privilege to be here for the thirty-fourth anniversary of the local AA groups in Omaha, and to share with you some of the strengths and experiences and joys that I've received as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous for the past twelve years, and certainly to all the members of Al-Anon, I extend my heartfelt congratulations to you.
As I always say, you know, it takes a very smart woman to see through her husband, but it takes a good woman to see her husband through her husband, that's part of the problem. Just before I left Detroit, there were three guys, two guys walking down the street, and they were discussing what Easter was all about, and I as a Catholic priest, you know, that's supposed to be the whole point of the whole kerygma of our Lord's coming on this earth, was the resurrection, and they're saying, what Easter is, and the other guy says, let me, you know, I'll tell you what Easter is, he says, Easter's that time of year when all the peasants came over into this country many, many long years ago, and they had to plant their crops, and they did, and they received a hundredfold under the grace of God, and they were very grateful for all the things they received, so, in the fall of the year, after harvest time, and they reaped their harvest, they got together, and they decided they would give some type of meaningful significance to what they had received, and so they went out and they killed a bunch of turkeys, and they had a hoard of plenty, and they sat down and they had a great big banquet, and soon, you know, that's what Easter is, that's Thanksgiving, and he says, I'll tell you what Easter is, Easter's that time of year, when that great big fat man in the red suit and the white sash is on his tummy, comes and visits all the homes, and he comes down through the chimney, and spreads presents around under the tree, and then goes back up to the chimney, and gets in his sled, and the reindeers dance, and prance, and pull him away, and that's what, the other guy looks at him and says, that's not Easter, that's Christmas, he says, I'm going to tell you what Easter is, Easter is that time of year, in the spring of the year, when the suffering servant from the Old Testament makes all of the prophecies come true of his kerygma, which is the death and resurrection of our suffering Lord, who died on the cross for our sins, and on the third day, after he was two nights dead, and on the third day, the skies opened up, and the sun shone for the first time, and the suffering servant from the Old Testament brought all the four thousand years of prophecies true at that time, when he walked to the door of the tomb, and stuck his head out, and if he saw his shadow, there were six more weeks of winter.
Now, we're running a bit late, as they tell me, and I have a horrible, untrue reputation of sometimes speaking too long, because my philosophy is, when you go out to feed the sheep, even though there's only two sheep out there, you give them the whole load of hay, and since this is my first time in Omaha, I didn't even know where I was, they had to tell me in the car, because I just know, I got an idea where Chicago is, if I'd spoken long enough to you, or if I'd said the word out about our house, you'll know very well that my home is not Detroit, it's Montreal, Canada, the Great Barrier of the North American Continent, and the Great Land of Expo, and the 21st Olympiad, and all those goofy things, and that's also where I qualified, unbeknownst to me, as a member of this organization, Ex-Leaders of America, but at that time, I was manifesting all of the early signs of alcoholism, which I knew nothing about, it was just the capacity to outdrink everybody and anybody right under the table, I never woke up with a thousand atoms running through my tummy and their bare feet, my head never felt like it was nine feet across, nor did my tongue feel like the 79th Cavalry ran all over it, but, it was all dejoyed, and all of the good things were happening at that time, you know, you talk to ordinary people, earth people, and you say, what happens to you when you take nine drinks in a night?
And they say, oh my God, what happens, what a horrifying experience, and the whole room starts going around, it's a nightmarish type of experience, I just don't want anybody to see me, I remember absolutely everybody who was there, the clothes they had on, the names, the faces, and everything, I began a little bit woozy, and I walked outside, and I went around the block nine times, I came in, I drank seventeen cups of coffee, and on, it was time to go home, and I asked somebody to drive me home, because I didn't want to dare drive the car home, and I couldn't find anybody to drive me home, so I drove home, at four miles an hour, with the door open, and my hand on the curb, so I wouldn't get out of the traffic, and I finally got to bed, I don't know how, and the whole room started going around, and around, and around, and around, and I got up, and I had four philosophical discussions with the toilet bowl that night, and I woke up at ten o'clock in the morning, and prayed to God that I'd die, and get the agony over with, and wish the heck that I would, but you talk to one of us, and you say, hey John or Mary, you know, the alcoholic, what happened to you in your early drinking stages, the first couple of years when you took nine drinks a night, and we say, let me tell you what happened, Father, never had a dance lesson in my life, but that night I made Gene Kelly in front of the stair, looked like I had multiple sclerosis, and I'm very shy with the girls, but two more drinks, and I threw more passes than Joe Namath ever threw in a football career, and I can't sing worth a dime, but we got down to Father's mustache, and we just had a marvelous time, I was the hit of the party, and you know, Father, a very funny thing, I drove four people home, because they had too much to drink, and I got up at eight o'clock, and showed up at
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the golf course, nobody else showed up, we showed up at work, and that was the type of experience that I had, even after I was ordained, if I had a bottle of Hagen-Hagen when I was writing these fantastic sermons about God's cosmological love for the manifestation of his creatures on this earth, I'd make Fulton Sheen look like a speech impediment, and I'm not going to bore you now with the drink by drink, event by event thing that's happened to me when I was ingesting beverage alcohol, because I wouldn't tell you the whole truth anyway, I'd just tell you the funny ha-has, but in order to identify what I see alcoholism is, it's a conflict between behavior and values in the person who's drinking, and at 24 years old, I gave up, well I didn't give up, it wasn't working, nothing was working at that time, so I decided, what am I really going to do, how am I really going to stand the world on its head, I think I know what I'll do, I'll go and join the offering process, so I made an application, I was in Europe, and I could do this, I was a plain boy, a plain instructor, and the funds accepted me, and so on, I think it was, I know it was August the 10th, 1956, I flew home from London, I got in my brand new Cadillac convertible and drove to the novitiate and said, here I am God, threw the keys to my brother and said get thee behind me Satan, where rust and dust and moth will take thee apart, I'm going to go give my life to God, I didn't know what I was doing, and a year later I finally found out what the novitiate was all about, that's where you separate the men from the boys, the men left, and the little boys stayed, and for the next eight years I never touched alcohol, and it wasn't because of any virtue or any strength or any type of control, it was just in the society in which I was living, there was no booze, nobody drank, so there were no problems, and I did magnificently well, because I was doing the same with the priesthood and the studies that I had done in every other area of my life, just get in there and work excessively compulsively and show everybody that you're number one, and everything's going to be great, and about 1960, four years later I took final vows, and that was a very, very egotistical, self inflating, self divinizing experience, I can remember the church was still speaking Latin, in fact you know, that's what really got me in trouble was when I started saying mass in English, before nobody ever knew I had a problem with it, but the final vows was very, everybody was there, my family was there, my own father had passed away in 1955, but my mother was there and everybody was crying and girlfriends were committing suicide, and all kinds of things like that, and I got through that and was ready to walk on water, and five years later I was called to ordination, I went back to Montreal as God's gift of Christendom, as an ordained priest with seven more degrees behind my name, now I really believed that our Lord had done a pretty adequate job, for when he walked on the face of this earth, but really friends, the promised Messiah had just appeared, and for the first time I started using alcohol again, and what I didn't realize is that I was eight years older, and I was about 40 pounds lighter, and I think it was about three hours before the Montreal police knew I was back for some type of minor infraction, and the second day I was back I was called to St. Mary's Hospital, St. Matthew's, where my father was, where I used to go every Sunday as a little boy, and sometimes I was about 13, and I don't know what those are, but he used to pour you in, and I had a nurse who had many awards, he used to pour you in a great long pants with a tail, a great blouse, a cane, a top hat, with a Saint Bernard dog, and I used to go there, and of course everybody knew me, I was the son of Father Jack Quinn, and Doctor Jack Quinn, my father wasn't a priest, what's he tellin' ya?
So, now I was called back to St. Matt's, but now you'll know that I'm mature, you can tell because when you're mature you speak slow, I used to speak fast before I was mature, and everything is well now, because I don't have one St. Bernard, I have five St. Bernard dogs, and usually there's one with me all the time, but I kind of left them at home this trip, because I have to fly again tomorrow to Montreal, and now I'm invited back to St.
Matt's with Paul, who's the son of my father, and of course everybody shows up, all the sisters, all the doctors, the whole staff, there's about 500 people there, and in those days you used to kiss the hands of a newly ordained priest. The next afternoon, I was out playing golf, and I hadn't played golf for eight full years, and I found myself to be in a very precarious situation of to be an unhappy hooker.
And I reflected back on my youth of how you get the hook out of the bonnet, you try a little Mother Molson's Cure All, which is the big brewery in Montreal, and so I tried and that worked very well, and that night there was a party for me, given by my young sister Martha, and I can remember how irritated I got, my glass was always empty, and everybody's golf glasses was about three quarters full, and my sister would say, is it time for another round?
And she'd say, oh no, I see George hasn't finished yet, and I'd say, my God, what the heck does George cover these things for anyway? What a misuse of God's good-given booze, no? But being an oblate father, which is a missionary father, trained in adaptability to every type of human circumstance and situation, I volunteered to be bartender, to look after my sister's friends, of course, and I drove my mother home, who was by that time a widow by about 12 years, and she said, son, aren't you coming in?
And I said, my God, Mother, a priest is never ordained for his own sanctification, but to fulfill the kingdom of God and to be about the Father's business, and I must preach the bonne nouvelle and the good news, and I was thirsty, and I knew where there was a party, and so I was taking off to go to that party in a borrowed car that someone had just given me, and I came to Ruby Foo's Nightclub along the strip in Montreal, and I saw all these cars there, and that's the place I used to hang out when I was 22 or 23, and I got terrific feelings of rejection, and I said, well now, there must be some type of satanical powers going on in there, and I must get in there and exercise the devil out of the place, I was thirsty again, and I figured I'll take one fast drink before I get to this party, and I was dressed like this in my Petey the Priest uniform, and I was in a Catholic province,
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but it's still very anti-clerical, and I said, well, they certainly won't appreciate me going in like this, but being an oblate father, and trained to adapt to every type of human circumstance and situation on the face of this earth, I was able to do that, you take one hook here in the back of the neck, and down comes a shirt, and a loose wool and a line of shirt appears, and in I went, and being a very shy guy, it took me about 14 seconds to get something going, and the next thing I knew, it was the daylight, and the nurse was saying to me, Bobby, don't swear, and I said, oh, spit, they know I'm a priest, and I had 18 stitches in the back of my head, which I didn't know how they got there, and I said to the nurse, now, the last church I was in was Ruby Foose, can you call her and see if there's an automobile there, and she said yes, and there was an automobile there, and there was some funny clothes in it, and it was this bib, and so I went, immediately I had the action part of the program and split, and went out to Ruby Foose, to Laval, to relax where the party was, and then by the end of the evening, the tongues got pretty loose, and we'd started rebuilding the night before, and somebody had called to find out exactly what had happened, and what had happened was that I had performed one of the Winnipeg ballet company's most difficult pirouette steps down the front staircase and out the front door head first, and I finally mustered up, while I was in the hospital, I mustered up enough courage to say to the nurse, what hospital am I in, because I knew Ruby Foose, I knew the nearest hospital was Notre Dame de Droz, and she looked at me, and she said, St. Mary's Hospital, Father, and that's where I was, less than 48 hours before, you know, pontificating and zapping everybody with grace, and doing all these marvelous things, and there I was now lying with 18 stitches in the back of my head, and I didn't know how they got there, and this was the second day of my ordination, and for the next 363 days, it really picked up, really, I had a lot of fun, I really did a magnificent job, just that the people kind of overreacted to my apostolic zeal, I got to my first parish in Ottawa, where I had been a medical student, where I had played hockey, and I was appointed there as the youngest priest in the parish, with five priests, and I was to study pastoral psychology, and my third day there, I lost the car for the first time, uh, 41 times, and I appeared, uh, you know, at a party for the priests, for 67 priests, and I was the youngest ordained priest there, now are there times in your life when you know you should be sober as a judge because of other extenuating circumstances, but because of something you ate, you got a little bit tipsy, well there my Father Provincial was, and all of the superiors that I had, and told them we're going to write the tickets, and we're going to go to Istanbul, or Istanbul, they're all there, and I proceeded to get totally plastered out of my mind, and it was after the rectory, and I said to myself, my son, that's racist, what's happening, maybe I'm working too hard, and I said, no Bob, you've only worked three days, it can't be that, you're not relaxing enough, you're not relaxing enough, so I went to a golf course, and of course they found out I was a priest, and at the golf course I had no green fees, the bartender found out I was a priest, and I had no bar fees, and I said, see, it's true, seek first the kingdom of God, and everything else will be given to you, and I had a marvelous life, and I had to be back to the rectory every night at 5.30 to say Mass, until one day in July they said, don't bother coming back, someone's here to take your place, and they said that to me at 8 o'clock in the morning, and the party started at about 6 minutes after 8, because you see, I was a poor, humble oblate, my father was about poverty, I got paid $10 a month, and for the next 363 days I was loaded, every day except for the two weeks they put me on the pledge, because everybody wants Father to have something, and the guys just love me, you know, I used to be in university with all these guys, and they know, but they're married now about seven years, and they're getting to seven year-ish, and they're saying, well, you know, they were telling their wives, gee, we can't go home, because you have to look after the priest, and, you know, I was with the priest last night, you know, and the priest would be out all night long, doing all kinds of, you know, things which the parishioners thought was not exactly in keeping with the Holy Rule, and a few other things, and so they brought me on the carpet, and they would tell me all kinds of things, and the provincial would say, well, now you better stop drinking, and all of this, and I'd just say, yes, yes, yes, and the pastor would bring me in his office and say, now we can't let the sun go down until we talk about this, and I'd walk right out of his office and say, poor Father Hurley, has he ever got a problem?
And things just progressively got worse, you know, there are times when they really need you, like at Christmas time, in the castle church then, and not so much now, but it was like fire insurance time, you know, everybody shows up for confession, they take a drink, they hit it at Christmas, and these churches, they can skip through to the next Christmas, you know, there's 90 people outside your confession box, and you're in there for 8 hours, you know, and they keep coming in, saying, let me apologize, it's been 2 weeks since my last confession, I missed morning prayer 11 times, how the heck do you do that?
Well, I got up twice, 4 days in a row. That's the time they sent me out to buy the booze for all the fathers that were coming back, and I had my first spiritual awakening on the way back to the rectory, I realized, now, what's the real meaning of Christmas, you know, the real meaning of why Christ, you know, was assumed in a human nature, in a divine person, on the face of the church, was to preach the gospel to those who needed it most, and certainly not all those people around the church that are going to be there for midnight mass, but it's those people that are not going to be at church, and I had a case full of booze in the back of the car, so I started really doing some missionary work, and by the time I got back to the rectory, the case was half gone, and I was in no shape, and so they had to kind of put me away, and they did, and so someone else, again, had to take all of my confession time and fill in the eight hours, and kind of a story of our life was how to win friends and influence people, and it got considerably worse, until in February, they said, take the pledge, and I said, wow, my goodness, I'll always remember this, because I did, and, you know, I said, it was February the 7th, 1965, and I said, my God, I can't have a drink until February the 7th, 1966, I'd taken it for one year, and for you people to know, that wasn't even worth the paper that it was written on, but I didn't know that!
People know that wasn't even worth the paper that it was written on, but I didn't know that at that time, and of course, everybody was saying, well, we finally straightened out the little kid, boy, that's what you gotta do with those young guys, give them a little muscle, give them a little bit of the old school treatment, and I waited till all their egos got totally inflated, and I was coming home from a skiing instructing lesson with about 40 kids once, and they said, father, let's stop and have a beer, and I said, oh my gosh, you know, if I tell these people I can't stop and have a beer with them, it's because I'm telling them that they've chosen the way of tradition, and certainly I'm not supposed to judge people because they apologize, it's gotta be all things to all people, and Garrett, he certainly is the queen of all conversions, and if I try to send any form, any opinions to an FBI agent,
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and right now, right now, God wants me to drink, so I did, and you know what happened, the worst possible thing that could happen, absolutely nothing, and I said, see, really, I'm okay, it's all them, they're all wrong, and I finally found out what those long pockets were for in my dress, you know, the pants used to where I could put two pints of Mother Molson's down this side, two pints of Mother Molson's down the other side, and I could waddle back to my room and start the party, and so that lasted about two weeks that I was off, you know, and then everything came submersive, I just, you know, I was a great moral theologian, and they were asking me, are you drinking?
And of course, if they are unjust aggressors in the internal forum, and I really don't have to answer them, I can give them some type of mental reservation, like say, no, to you, I was in AA two years before I found out that's lying, and I was supposed to be in this parish one year, and the man who had all the pressure on me finally went into the hospital, I said, ooh, hey, this is great, now I can make up for all the times I've lost, and I can have a little party, and on this night, and I went out to have a little party, it was after confessions, I'm supposed to be back in the rectory by 11 o'clock, I never made it once, and so I'm, you know, things are going very well, I'm saying goodbye to all my friends, because I'm ready to get my first appointment to British Columbia and get a boat and just travel up and down the Pacific Ocean, and it came to about one o'clock, and I said, oh, well, I haven't made it back yet, so nothing's worrying, nothing can be too wrong, and I had a couple of more drinks, it was two o'clock, and by three o'clock, I was saying, if those guys are waiting for me, I'll really give them something to wait for, and I was scheduled for the nine o'clock mass the next morning in this very plumb parish with 1,200 families, people in the church were waiting for mass, and I arrived home at 11.15 in the morning, dead drunk, saying, I've been on a sick call.
Well, they say alcoholics seek a lot of attention, well, if you really want to see the pit hit the shan, try that one first, I got an awful lot of attention, and I stayed drunk for a couple of days, and I was playing tennis at the tennis club, and they finally lassoed me, brought me in front of the provincial, said, you are going away, and I said, oh, thank God, I'm finally getting out of the salt mine, where am I going, and they said, Chicago, I said, that's great, that's a swinging city, I'm really gonna love it there, and he said, Father Schrader flies with you, I said, oh, my God, no party.
And I did, and I walked into the beautiful place in Chicago, it was actually 38 miles out, Dyer, Indiana, and the sisters were there to greet me, and a couple of big people were there to greet me, and they said, welcome, Father, and show you to your room, and I walked down the carpets, and onto the linoleum floor, and then we walked down a few more doors closed, onto the concrete floor, and I, as a priest, had been visiting jails for about a year, and I began to hear some familiar sounds, you know, clinkety-clink, clink-clash, and the door closed, and then I'm in a little room, seven by 14, and this magnificent nurse is there, one of the most talented people I've ever met, she played defensive end with the Chicago Bears.
And she said to me, watch wallet, belt, shoes, brie-brie, and I said, it's getting warm here, can we open the window, she said, I'll go get the crank, I said, my God, I'm locked up, she said, right. And I spent the next six months of my life locked up in a nuthouse, and it was really, absolutely fantastic, I mean, I made wallets, and I made belts, and I made baskets, and I used to be a pro-athlete with a lot of bizarres around me, I ended up playing on a baseball team, and the ball was that big, made out of cotton, so if you hit it, you wouldn't get hurt, and the half of them would run to third base, and they'd never know the difference.
I remember once, I hit the ball, and I ran around second base, and I met my own teammate coming the other way, hi, hi, whoo, whoo, whoo, great, you know, it was really great. I remember the first Sunday I was there, I'm a Catholic priest, I gotta go to church tonight, and I lost the right to say mass, I was suspended, I couldn't function as a priest, and I was in my little paper suit with the numbers on the shoes, and a little paper hat, and one of those honeymoon jackets that never closes in the back.
I had to go to chapel this way, now, you know, I'm God's gift of Christendom, and I got seven degrees after my name, and I'm the next pro hockey player, and I'm known as Father Broadway, and I have to go into chapel this way, you know, and I'm going into chapel, and I sneak in there, and everybody's there with their socks rolled down over their tennis shoes, going, yay, Jesus, oh, yeah. Listen, I'm sitting there saying, my God, what brought me here? Booze brought me there.
They told me, you better go to an AA meeting, and I said, the doctor wants you to go to an AA meeting. I said, what, me, with the holy grails of ordination, heart would be dry in my hands, with seven degrees after my name, you expect me to go to those bunch of drunks and get help? I said, nurse, go on upstairs and get some shock treatment, I think you've had a psychiatric break, but then being a con artist, I said, will that help me get out of the hospital?
She said, yes, I said, I'll go. I would have gone to child molesters, anonymous, only that time, because I thought that was to take me out of the hospital, so I went, and I didn't know the first thing about it. It was a closed meeting, this guy's an alcoholic, I'm an alcoholic, and I said, oh, jeez, everybody's an alcoholic here, so me too, I'm an alcoholic, that's what I gotta say. And now they had this young little priest who spoke funny and said funny words out about the house, and so they used to cart me all over the place and stand me up, and it was the only way I could get out of the nut house, was to go out to AA meetings, and the AA people would sign me out and bring me back, sign me in, and the nurse would go, yeah, he's okay, let him go back, you know, and I'd just stand there, you know.
And so I started giving talks all over the place, and I never knew what was happening, you know. I never knew anything about AA, but I was still talking, I gave 30 talks, and somebody gave me the big book. But I said, that's what's common, you know, the alcoholics, because I've got a degree in oncology, and a systemology, and medicine, and psychiatry, and you won't understand any of this. And so it goes, the alcoholics in that hospital stayed there 14 days, and five months later, I'm still there, and the guys are coming back in.
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The drunks are coming back in, they're saying, oh, Jesus, when are you ever sick, you're still here, right? So, I finally picked up the book, and all I said, how do you get out of the nut house? You know, discharge from the psychiatric nut house, and I started reading it, right? And in November the 10th, 1965, I was called to the guest house. Austin Ripley called me to be here by 6 o'clock, and I was.
And he just, I said, how am I going to get here? He said, don't worry, you'll get here if you want to get here, and I did, and that's in Lake Orea, Michigan. And I sat down, by that time, I'm Mr. AA. I'm about to rewrite the big book, because I'd read about three pages of it. And I rewrote the steps, and he says, father, you go back into the hospital tomorrow. I said, what do you mean, the hospital? I've been six months in the hospital, I'm in terrific shape.
You know, high protein, carbohydrates, everything else. He says, I don't even believe when you had your last drink. I said, who's this? You know, Mr. Ripley was the founder of the guest house, my counselor there, and a magnificent person, and really just a dynamic man. And so that I did have to go back into the hospital, and I went in for five more days of checks, and they took samples of everything they could possibly take samples of.
My goodness gracious, every hour on the hour, someone was there. You know, vampires take the blood out of you. And the last morning I was there, the most moving experience in my entire life. Four animals in one room. And I said to the doctor, my God, you're trying to get my soul. Went back, and for the next seven months, and I was 20 years younger than any man that had ever been in a guest house yet, because my drinking pattern was rather obvious to people.
I just never stayed in the rectory and sipped, sipped. I was always out smashing up cars and all kinds of other gory things, which I'm not going into. Because, you know, I thought it was just a lot of fun, and I was very, a lot of apostolic zeal. Like, I'd never come home. And so I used to, the brother used to wake us up, and I used to meet him coming in. I'd say, nothing like a little walk before breakfast, eh, brother?
Seven more months, and I really was taught what the gut-level internalization of AA is. And I graduated, or at least terminated, the first portion of my treatment there after 57 weeks of being away. And went to Edmonton, Alberta, and started, you know, working in a parish and becoming involved in AA. And they asked me whether I'd like to, you know, do some work in alcohol. And I said, I'm not even sober two years. I don't know anything about it.
Get me a year off, and I'll go and work and, you know, find out what's really going on. And Mr. Austin Ripley had then devised a plan for me to follow. And for that next year, I worked in 22 different buckets. Flying tanks, tuna joints, money farms, Latin Academy, Bureau of Divisions and Foundations of Boozology. And then I went back to Guest House, because I had to go there twice a year for my first two years of recovery.
And Mr. Ripley would check it all over. And then I went back to the medical school, Hans Selye's Institute of Experimental Surgery, and studied Valley of the Dolls. That means all of the tranquilizers and mood-altering chemicals and the synergistic effects when they're mixed with alcohol. And he said, go down to Sacred Heart Center. Well, there was a school called Sacred Heart in the skid row of Detroit, Eastern Market, and tell me what's going on.
And I walked in there that night, and there was about 20 men, and half of them were plastered. And one guy was watching the baseball game on the television set, and there was no television set. And the three guys were watching pink polka-dotted alligators and turkeys with straw hats. And I found all that very exciting. And I, three months later, wrote my superior, and just said, dear Father Superior, humble servant of our Lord Jesus Christ.
A very funny thing happened on the way to Chicago. I never got there. And I'm in Detroit. And now, what I would like to start talking about is, you know, some of the experiences and what I see as the internalization of AA and sticking with the winners. Now, what I'm really here for is not entertainment, you know, because I'm talking about life. And I talk about it sometimes in funny ways and in numerous ways, because if I really had to tell you what the story is really like, you know what it is, and you've been through it, and it's very sad.
But the ability, as Don says, to be able to laugh at ourselves and to be able to see the joy of life and to experience what the real guarantees of AA are on page 83, freedom, peace, happiness, and serenity. You see, I have so many people coming to me and saying, Father, I don't understand what happened. I was in AA for eight years, and I had a slip. And I was one of the best 12-steppers in my group.
And I say, what's a 12-stepper? He says, work with other drunks. I say, no, it's not. Well, save another alcoholic. I say, no, it's not. I say, well, he says, well, help another alcoholic. I say, no, it's not. He says, carry on. I say, well, that's a third of it. But there's other things. I said, what is? Where's your big book? Oh, my big book? Gee whiz, you know, I gave that to my first pigeon after I got out of the hospital eight years ago, because he needed it more than I did.
And so I say, get it. Let's read it. So we read the 12-stepper. And we start, you know, having had a spiritual experience. He's half in the back. He says, well, what do you expect the alcoholic to do? What do you expect the priest to say to me? Anyway, I knew he was going to start Bible-thumping me anyway, you know? And I say, well, what is it? You know, what is it? Well, I don't know. I was in AA for eight years, and I looked all over for God.
Boy, I looked here, and I did this, and I couldn't see anything. And I was drinking. I saw a few things myself, pink polka-dotted alligators, little green men, a few things like that. There weren't exactly any spiritual awakenings. So we go, and I say, well, look in the book, in the back of the book, page 569. That happens to be the address of Sacred Heart Center in Detroit. 569 East Elizabeth. It took me about two days to rearrange the city to get it that way, but we were able to pull it off.
And it talks about what it really is, is the experience, is the educational process. It really is a part of medicine. It's a health relationship. It's an educational process. In the Latin word, educare, means to move out of a person, a hierarchy of values which was once there, but which has gone dormant and asleep because of the progression of a symptomatology of a primary illness, which is alcoholism.
And that's really what it is. But it just doesn't say, go and look and expect this to happen. It says, having had a spiritual awakening as the. It doesn't say as a, which would be a one-time, catastrophic, world-shattering, bone-crushing event, like we all expect to happen, you know. Angel Gabriel come down, big seven-foot prophet, and say, don't worry, Bon, you'll never drink again.
[00:25:03]
We think that should happen to us. It doesn't say that. It says the, T-H-E. And that's a big word, because what it means is continuous action. Continuous action must be taken as the result of these steps. All other 11 steps must be taken. You know, it's not just, I see a lot of people in AA think their commitment at AA is I go to a meeting once a week, I listen to a drunk-a-log, I drink cold coffee, eat hard donuts, sit in a smoke-full room, and that's it.
Boy, I've got to get well. And I don't think we join AA. I think we have to live it. You must live AA. We're great joiners. When the heat was on, I joined. I joined AA because I thought I was going to get out of the nuthouse, but I didn't. And it's beginning to learn how to live it. Nope. If I went to the American Medical Association and to the Cancer Foundation and said, I have 45 pages, which will absolutely guarantee that anybody living by what is prescribed in these 45 pages will be free from any of the deleterious effects of cancer, and plus all of their collaterals, their loved ones, their wives, spouses, children, will never have to go through the human carnage and waste that's been brought about by that disease.
How much do you think I could sell those 45 pages for? Most probably a zillion dollars. And there's 45 pages in this big book which spell exactly that. For any alcoholic, member of the alcoholic's family, allanon, allotine, if they live by what's prescribed in these 45 pages, the absolute guarantees are their freedom, peace, serenity, and happiness. You know, living by these, and what I find is that it's, you know, maybe a very small percentage of the people are really, you know, internalizing what the philosophy of AA is about in their own selves, and joining, not joining the program, but really trying to live it so that they can express some type of freedom and happiness.
I keep going, I give AA retreats all over the country, I talk a lot, I go in and I say, well, how's everybody here tonight? Isn't it a beautiful day and it's so great to be here? Yeah, it's all right, it's lots of fun. Well, aren't you glad you're an AA and you're sober? Yeah, sure, boy, it's really nice being sober. Well, what's happening at Omaha? Nothing. You know, well, aren't you, well, what do you do?
Well, I go to AA, what else do you do? Nothing. Well, why don't you do something? I'm an alcoholic. And I'm saying, my God, they're robbing themselves of so much freedom and happiness, you know, and what the real joys are of this program and the internalization of the steps, you know, as all of these steps, all of these other steps must be taken. In my area, or as I travel around, I keep seeing things like, you know, people seem to read how it works this way.
Rarely have we seen a person fail who does whatever the heck they want with this program, only taking to heart those things which would be convenient, fitting, and pleasurable for them to do, but passing aside anything that might be contrary to their natural desires or demand a little growth from them. Do it your own way, because it's an individual program, and just do it whatever way you want, and you're sure to succeed.
It doesn't say that. You know, it says rarely. I never talked to Bill Wilson, but I was told that that's the one word that he would change it to. Never have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. I hear that so many times. It's my program. Husband is in white. You practice your program, I'll practice my program. Don't tell me I say so. It's your program. I'll do it my way. It is a selfish program.
And it is an individual program. And you know what that means? That means that if Von Quinn continues to do the things that are prescribed in these pages and continues to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings on a weekly basis, the facts are that I should stay sober, and at least I'll be sober tonight. And all my experience has been for the past 12 years, I've done those things because, you know, I'm a great scientist.
I've had over 10,000, I think it's 12,000 people in treatment. I ask them, were you going to AA? They say, no, I got drunk. And I ask, were you practicing the principles? And they say, no. So they got drunk. So I said, well, if you want to stay sober, you go to AA and you practice the principles. You know, it doesn't take any genius to figure that one out. And so this is what we have been doing. And the whole center, which I am the director and the starter of, you know, there's something like 96 people who are working there, and they all must go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting every week for their own sobriety.
It doesn't make any difference if they're the doctors, the psychiatrists, the psychologists, or the PhDs, or whatever they are. And if they don't go, there's no paycheck. That is because I had a man say to me, Father, I don't have to go to AA because I'm counseling alcoholics all day long. This was a man who worked for me for a year in 1968. When I found him, he was nine days dead in an apartment that was 85 degrees.
And I'm the one who had to carry him out of there. And it wasn't much fun. And that hurt a lot. And I didn't want to go through that type of pain anymore. So I instituted those rules. If I institute the rules, and I do, then I have to live by them. Because I don't believe you can ever tell an alcoholic to do something unless you are doing it yourself and internalizing it and living it. And so when we talk about what the spiritual awakening is, it's the reawakening of the values in life.
And I can talk about the funny ones, you know. The guy who used to be the car boss in all the cars always looked like he was a 100-point winner in any car show. And eight years later, he looks like a 1928 wicket. Or the guy who used to be the gardener, and all of a sudden, the weeds are up to about your waist. And those are just the externals and the situations and circumstances. But that's not where life is lived, you know.
And we get to the insides about loved ones, on what about spouses and families and children. And then we get into the real internal, you know, dignity and self-respect and freedom that should be going on in people as children of God. And being able to accept themselves as lovable human beings. And to develop that degree of excellence which God has given in each one of us so that we can be happy. The whole purpose, I'm a Catholic priest, and the whole purpose of why Christ came on the face of this earth.
I'm a Catholic priest, and the whole purpose of why Christ came on the face of this earth was to give us life, and to give us life more abundantly, and what strips us of all our spiritual and every other aspiration we have in life is the alcoholism, you know, the alcoholism to the alcohol just robs us of all of that, and as we look at the steps then, you know, we are, in my area, of course, nothing's no must in AA, and I say that's a bunch of nonsense, you know, there's all kinds of musts in AA, on page 62, we must, you know, above everything else we alcoholics must rid ourselves of this selfishness, we must, or it kills us, there's two musts in two lines, you know, and I have a few others marked,
[00:30:24]
you know, here, because I was reading this book for about two hours as I sat on the runway in Chicago this afternoon, and it says on page 66, you know, how could we escape when it's talking about redemptions, we thought that these redemptions must be mastered, but how? We could not wish them away any more than we could wish the alcohol away, on page 69, whatever our ideals turn out to be, we must be willing to grow towards it, we must be willing to make amends where we have done harm, there's two more musts in two lines, and on page 73, we must be entirely honest with somebody if we expect to live longer happy lives, those of us belonging to whatever religions we come from must, of course, go to the right and properly appointed person, and the rule is we must be hard on ourselves, but always considerate of others, and on page 75, when we're talking about the fifth step, it says we must not use this as a mere excuse to postpone if we can't find somebody appropriately to take our fifth step immediately, and on page 78, it says we must lose our fears of predators no matter how far we have to go, on page 75, we must not shrink at anything, and on page 80, we must not shrink in front of God or any of the drastic steps that we have to take in order to get sober, here's a very important one on page 82, certainly we must keep sober, I get people coming out of treatment centers, they say, oh my God, they didn't tell me that, there's all kinds of goofy therapies going on here, I really learned a lot about myself, now I know what's wrong with me, so I should be okay, you know, a lot of people think alcohol is some type of a character manifestation of a deeper, more profound disorder, rejection of love and prenatal care, which means your mommy didn't want you, and once you get all of that concrete straightened out, you should be able to drink all of the Stern, O-10, Heat, Aquabella, Vitalis, Yardens, David Griggs, Nail Polish Remover, Karnei, Breeze, Solax, Paint Thinner, A1, Orange River, What's the Word, Thunderbird, What's the Price, and so on, and so on, and so on, and so on, and so on, and so on, and so on, and so on, and so on So we have to stay sober, in other words, don't drink and go to AA, that's the bottom line, that's all we try to do in our treatment center, right?
On page 83 we have more musts, you know, there's 127 musts in this book, and I'm just trying to point out, you know, the 45 pages, you know, if we can live by these pages, we learn how to live freely, and certainly what I say now is of course attributed, you know, to all of the alcoholics, but just as much so to the Al-Anons and to the Al-Ateens, because sometimes I give AA talks and I'm running through this stuff and wifey's sitting there going, you got it, you didn't do that, you didn't do that yet, you know, everybody does it, you know, the same steps being internalized by everybody, and on page 83, there's a long road of construction ahead and we must be willing to take the lead, you know, we must remember that after 10 or 20 years of drunkenness, you know, would make a skeptic out of anyone, and on page 85, listen to this one, every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities. These are thoughts which must go with us constantly, and we must go further, and that means more action.
And then on page 86, you know, we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse, morbid reflection, and page 89, when we're talking about working with others, this is an experience we must not miss. You know, the Ten Commandments are pretty direct, you know, they're not really all that direct, you know, they say you shouldn't do this and you shouldn't do that, you shouldn't be killing anybody, and a few other things like that, but this is even more direct than this, this is even more demanding, you know, it's not a matter of just coming in and staying on the peripheries, you know, and saying, well, I'm a two-stepper, you know, a two-stepper is a contradiction in terms, people who just kind of put the cork in the jug and then frantically run all over the state or the city trying to help other alcoholics, I know people who go to 19 AA meetings a week just to get out of the house, you know, because it's easier that way.
You want me to work, my sobriety comes first, let the wife work, right, you know, it doesn't say that in here, you know, it doesn't say that at all, this is a responsible way of life, and what the big book is talking about is, you know, it's not a course on alcoholism, you know, I could stand here for seven hours and tell you what happens when a monoamine oxidized inhibitor gets ingested into a liver that has an extraordinary amount of a compound called alcohol dehydrogenase, and because of the mitochondria between the cells in the liver, which are quite bigger, it causes the oxidation of alcohol into acetaldehyde, acetic acid, carbon dioxide, and water, causing the noradrenaline epinephrine and the nocerotone in the brain levels to cause the euphoric and I could die drunk tomorrow, because that's not how we stay sober, it's not what we know, you know, because life is not just an intellectual ascent to doctrine, dogma, and definition, life is an emotional response to situations in which we find ourselves, and as we look at the steps, they're all written in the past tense, and that's not because, you know, some grammatician said, well, that's the proper way to write it, it's there for a purpose, and the purpose is, unless we have internalized the steps at gut level, have moved the legs, and have done the adequate and appropriate action, the steps…
When you look at the first step, and you know, what the first step is, is to surrender, surrender is not a giving up, surrender has to be a positive one, and it's not something of looking at poor me, that, you know, all the other fathers are drinking, and I can't drink, poor me, I can't do this, poor me, I can't do that, we'll end up saying poor me another drink, and it's got to be something which is a very positive, positive, creative, acceptance of our human condition, you see, I went through we were drinking, we had fun, at the very, very beginning, right, and then the funny ha-ha's turned into funny peculiars, then the funny peculiars turned into darn tragedies, now we have, by the grace of God, sobriety, and that sobriety must be more meaningful, more fun, more bizarre, more stimulation, more satisfaction, with a more meaningful and purposeful life than any time when we were drinking, or else we're going to get bored, and those four negative emotions will start, you know, surmounting in us, and that is worry, anger, self-pity, and depression, and when those things come, they totally immobilize us, and then we start turning to looking to something else to change the way we feel,
[00:35:26]
and we, of course, we've educated ourselves, at one time in our lives to change the way we feel is to put something in your mouth, and kind of we're educated that way in our society, and so now we have to learn different ways, and that's really what this book is all about, that's really what AA is about, is a way of life, and we look at the first step, and it really calls for a defeat, you know, a defeat with only one area of our lives, and that is the use of beverage alcohol, you know, I see so many people come in, and they just say, well, I'm going to lick this problem, today, you know, I'm a, what, 12 years sober, but I'm just as powerless over alcohol as I was in June the 16th, 1965, when I had my last drink, and all I know is I drank for one year, and I got locked up for 57 weeks, it's a progressive illness, if I drink again, you will not see me until the year 2086, and I ain't giving up that much time, you know, that's the toughest part of the program, and it's worked very well up until this time, I'm still crazy, but I'm having a lot of fun, you know, and it doesn't really bother me, so that, you know, what we talk about is the defeat, and it's only the defeat with regards to the use of alcohol, and there cannot be any type of fight going on, I see a lot of people coming in, and they're getting sober, but they don't change the other values in their life, right, and they're still hanging around the watering holes, and saying, boy, I had a good time, I went and watched the football game down at the local gin mill, and I drank seven bottles of 7-Up, show me one drunk that has a good time drinking seven bottles of 7-Up, it's like telling me that a compulsive gambler goes to the racetrack to look at nice horses, you know, and they just stand in the railroad track, saying, see, I got my problem licked, and they walk out of there, and they say, see, I spent four hours in the bar, and I didn't take a drink, and what are they really saying?
They're saying I'm powerful over alcohol, I got the problem licked, Charlie, stand in the railroad track long enough, and bingo, the choo-choo comes along and says, I wonder what happened, you know, I can't understand what happened, and so that we have to, you know, and try to give up, you know, and give in, and try to make more out of our lives because of the fact that we can't drink, and, you know, that doesn't mean just going through a whole bunch of motions externally as some type of a, what would we call that, compliance, you know, where we're going through it all, and deep down inside, His Majesty the Baby, the little six-year-old in our guts, saying, ah-ha, there will come a time in the game when I'll be able to have my little itsy-bitsy cocktail again, no, and the way I learned this was quite drastic to me, I was sober about 11 months, I was still in very intense therapy, and they were working me very hard because they knew if they didn't get to me the first time, I'd be like, I'll pick up a drink again, and they'll probably know it when they see me again, and they'll probably be dead, and so the doctor sat me down, after 11 months, he said, Father, do you want a drink? I said, drink, by God, drink, don't bother me, I didn't even bother to drink, I wouldn't take a drink, and he mentioned it three times in half a sentence, and then I gave him 18 reasons why I didn't want a drink, I received my faculty back again as a priest, which means I could say Mass every day, I was working at St. Peter's, and every weekend while I was at the guest house, I would go out and I'd hear confessions on Saturdays and say two Masses and preach at both of them on Sundays, and I was working at St. Aloysius, I, every one of these reasons started with a great big perpendicular eye, I was playing in two hockey leagues, one in Windsor, Canada, and one in Troy, Michigan, I had gone back to the parish that I had been thrown out of in Ottawa, Canada, and I had gone back to my own family, my mother was alive, still is, very much alive, she's so much alive that she got married at 70 years old, and again, for the second time, gang, and tomorrow I will fly all the way to Montreal to be with her on her 80th birthday, she's just back from six weeks in Europe, and she's just a fantastic lady, and I went back and saw her, and I was giving lectures in Detroit, I, I, I, I, I, and the doctor said to me, Father, what you're telling me is you're powerful over alcohol, what's going to happen when the day comes that you want to drink and you cannot drink?
And I said, what do you mean you can't drink? He says, I just did 11 months of therapy at $1,250 a month, and you blow on the whole thing, you haven't even taken the first step to go back and start all over, and you see, what I've really done with my experience in AA in those first 11 months was exactly the same thing that I did in high school, or I did in hockey, or I did in medical school, or I did in, in the priesthood, was, you know, just compete against people, I, my story of life, like a football game, is to move the football over the goal line, you know, to score a touchdown, I never reacted that way to life at all, it was just beat the son of a gun, no matter what happens, and come out number one, and as you know, in things that alcoholics get involved in, you know, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't get involved in, we usually come out number one, and, you know, it was the same type of thing, and so then I had to go back, and after that amount of sobriety and internalization of these steps, really, reality started speaking to me at gut level, in a way which I was able to say, Bon, you just cannot keep doing the things you have been doing.
One of those things is the ingestion of beverage alcohol, but there's a whole bunch of other things, too, in the way we respond to people, in our own responsibilities in life, to God, to society, to our jobs, to all kinds of things. And so that, working through that, and it takes about, you know, four or five months to really get into a way of teaching ourselves, you know, to respond differently to situations, because the drinking experience, we learned that, you know, I drank at football games to warm up, and at baseball games to cool off, I drank at night time to put me to sleep, and at day time to wake me up, I drank at weddings to celebrate, and at wakes to mourn, I drank when my friend came to see me, when my friend didn't come to see me, I drank the first Sunday of the week, that was a great one, I couldn't, any excuse at all, and now we have to kind of re-educate ourselves, you know, and it's kind of a, what we call unconscious motivation, behavior pattern, by that I mean, if you're driving a car down the street, and the traffic light goes from green to red, you don't go, oh, pursuit, the traffic light's gone from green to red, I must lift my foot off the accelerator pedal, move it over a quarter of an inch, and apply pressure on the brake pedal at 15 pounds per square inch, until I de-accelerate the velocity of this vehicle to zero, you're dead, if you try that once, it's an automatic thing, and so how do we respond positively to life, you know, and by that, I mean, answering to life, and the capacity to life is to say yes to life, and that's what the AA philosophy teaches us, and it's through the action of the steps, and the first step being the positive, creative acceptance of our human nature.
[00:40:24]
The creative acceptance of our human condition, to work out our destiny, and this plot of tall, which has been given us to tell, and that's here on this earth, you know, everybody wants to get, you know, figure that out, if we're really going to do something, let's start praying very hard, I know what prayer is, I'm a Catholic priest, I've studied it, I've received a lot of grace through ordination, I've received the grace of recovery, there's nothing I ever did in my life to deserve recovery, I know that grace is real, and it's this podium that I'm in front of, but I also know what it's supposed to do, and it's supposed to give people the capacity to answer to life, you know, and to have the capacity to love, and to be loved, and to respond.
And I know it's not there to do anything else, it's not there to cure toothaches, if I get a toothache, I'll have it until I go to a dentist, you know, and I still play a lot of hockey, and if I bust a leg playing hockey, I don't go to jail and say maybe Jesus fixed my broken leg. But I'll walk around Maine the rest of my life, I did that great thing once, I was at a very large function in Montreal, Canada, called in to a function to celebrate a priest, and it was a great thing, the church was full, and I said, Lord, Lord, can you hear me? Don't let me get too drunk tonight, just a little bit.
And of course, you know what happened, I got zapped right out of my mind, blitzed, you know, and I had to be carried back to the rectory at 2 o'clock in the morning by people who are usually scared to go to the rectory anyway, because they might disturb somebody and get their head bitten off, and now it's 2 o'clock in the morning and people are saying, we think Father's a little bit ill. Yeah, sure, Father was a little bit ill, you know, and to wake up the next morning with shoes and pants on in bed, wondering, my God, where have I been, you know, who did I scandalize, what did I do, and then get up and blame God, and say, God, how could you do this to me, your priest, after I've given you my life with the vows of poverty, and chastity, and obedience, and oh my God, it was beautiful.
Talk about self-pity, it was great, you just wallow in the morass, and the only thing I could do was drink to get out of it, and things just got progressively worse. And so it's not that, you know, there's nothing that is self-denying about it, there's nothing that's an abnegation, it's not penance, it's learning how to live fully and creatively and be able to, you know, enjoy life and to be able to have a significant and meaningful life, and that's what's brought about through these steps.
And then the first step is acceptance of that, and it means there can't be any alcohol taken whatsoever, and this book tells us the adoption of attitudes and actions which no drinking person can possibly take, even if it's only one drink a month. If I was to take one drink a month, if I was to take one drink now, you know, I don't think I'd go into DTs immediately, but, you know, the thinking would have to change, because then I'd say, see, I got it under control, you know, but I know what would happen after that drink was finished, because it's been happened before, oh my gosh, now one's finished, and it didn't hurt me, so two's not going to hurt me, and then in time, we definitely know what's going to happen, because what we're talking about is an illness, we're in a disease, and we're not talking about any some type of just, you know, character defect or whatever, the symptomatology of that disease has to end up in death or brain damage, and I've seen that happen just too many times, you know, hundreds of times in the past 12 years that I've been working in this thing.
And so in the first step, if you're going to be accepted for that, the action of the first step is found in the second step, and the action of the second step is found in the third step, and the action of the third step is found in the fourth step, and there's four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. Now I hear this a lot of times, the suggested steps of day eight, I don't read that, you know, here on page 59 it says, here are the steps we took, past tense, it doesn't say, here are the steps that we are putting in front of you, that you should maybe at some future time take under advisement, and if perhaps you could find them to be helpful to you, that maybe you should be a little more serious, it doesn't say that.
It says, here are the steps we took, it doesn't say anything about suggested steps, you know, and this is what the first hundred hopeless alcoholics did, and it got them sober, and they're living very meaningful lives, and there are over a million people in AA now, and they're living very meaningful and purposeful lives, and that's what I was told, stick with the winners, and I stick with the winners, and I'm having fun.
And so we start to take the steps, and then we go down into the second step, and everybody starts thinking, oh my gosh, you know, we've come to believe in the power of God, let's look up to God, you know, and we start praying to God with his long white beard on a pinky cloud, and a lot of flaky angels strumming hosanna, hosanna, hosanna, and we keep serving hot tongue and cold shoulder to each other, you know, I'm acting, you know, I wonder why we're not getting well, let's know what the second step is about.
If God wanted us to be up in heaven, he would have created us as angels, because angels really exist, and they help him in the governing of the universe, but he put us on the face of this earth, and ever since the coming of Christ on this earth, man's way to God is through man, through the human nature of Christ, you know, that's the way it is. We've got to work out our destiny here on the face of this earth, and you know, for those of us who are alcoholics, and those of us in Al-Anon, you know, that means that, you know, it's through the fellowship of this organization, and this is where we work out our destiny, and it's not trying to use it as an escapism, or saying I'm going to, you know, call it something else, you know, it says come to believe in a power greater than ourselves, and we have to do that, because Bill Wilson wrote in 1934 that, you know, the alcoholic's God is the bottle, and the way that he was able to transcend all of the common, ordinary, hum-drum-mish institutes of daily living was take a drink, or two, or three, or four, or five, or six, or seven, or eight, or nine, or ten, or eleven, or twelve, or thirteen, or fourteen, or fifteen, or sixteen, or seventeen, or eighteen, or nineteen, or twenty, or twenty-one, or twenty-two, and he'd have an immediate union with the infinite being, and solve all of the world's problems in delirious circuits of apes, titillations, and olympic circles.
Thank you, gentlemen, for a good evening. Mr. Tom Fox, I wonder, what does it mean, actually, that you're getting in, you know, getting out of the driver's seat? The best way that I can explain this, when I'm talking about internalizing the philosophy of AA,
[00:45:03]
is like when the Barnum & Paley Circus comes to East Podunk, and it's the 4th of July, 1976, and it's the 200th anniversary of this country, and the tightrope walker is really gonna do something to stand people on their ear. He's gonna push the wheelbarrow across the tightrope, 150 feet up in the air, for 200 feet, without using the life net. And Scoopman Luke, the reporter for the East Podunk Chronicle, comes up, he's gonna do an article on this, and he comes, and he sees, oh my God, there's no life net, and he talks to the tightrope walker's friend, the alky, on the ground, and he says, you better get a life net, there's a 20 mile an hour wind, and boy, we better do something, because that man's gonna kill himself, you know, and he says, no, no, he's not, don't worry, we do this all the time, the alky's down there, you know, popping a cigar, well, he's on the ground, the other guy's up there, and he says, no, he's gonna kill himself, so the guy starts pushing the wheelbarrow across, you know, and he gets to the middle of the road, and he jiggles it, and he lets the front wheel fall off, and 5,000 people faint, 50,000, you know, 5,000 people scream, 50 people faint, oh my God, and the guy says, get, call the fire department, do something.
Well, the alky's getting a little bit irritated, he says, look, knock it off, Scoopman Luke, that's enough out of you, you know, I know he's gonna make it, do you think he's gonna make it? Yeah, I see this ham do it twice every Wednesdays, and every Saturdays, matinees, nights, and every other night of the week, I know he's gonna make it, and Scoopman Luke says to him, do you believe he's gonna make it?
He says, yes, I believe he's gonna make it, he says, would you get in the wheelbarrow? And it's the same thing about AA, you know, I see a lot of people two-steppers, you know, well, you don't have to write the four-step, and there's no must in AA, and do whatever you want, and it's a selfish program, and everybody practices it differently, and they wonder why they're really not getting the joy, and the happiness, and the peace, and the freedom, you know, and the serenity out of the program, so, you know, it's not half measures, you know, it's not a matter of being a visitor, and just kind of, you know, going around the peripheries, and kind of dropping in, and drinking the coffee, and dropping out, it means work, you know, it means joining, it means living the AA program, it means attending meetings, and it means, you know, internalizing the program, and what's going on inside me in between the meetings?
You know, what about the brutal honesty with self? You know, what about the responsibility, the capacity to answer to life, and whatever our calling is in life, and what about those responsibilities, you know? Because if we do not do that, and do not start believing in something outside of ourselves, what alcoholism is, you know, it will strip us of everything, and end up in brain damage and death, because, you know, those people who do not believe in anything, and do not have the capacity to believe in anything, they continue to drink, and you know the end results of that.
I personally know some friends who I knew dearly, and love dearly, who are now in institutes, and no longer make any type of human sounds, defecate in public, bite other human beings, and this was alcohol that's brought them to that end, and it would bring me to that exact same end. But, you know, through the grace of God and this program, I'm given freedom, I'm given an opportunity to do something constructive in life, and what the second step is, is, you know, get into the wheelbarrow, and start looking at these steps.
I read this book, this is my book, I have two of them, one in each of the facilities I have, and it's all torn to bits, and I read it this afternoon while I was sitting there for about two hours, and I'm saying to myself, my God, Von, how are you still sober? I haven't done that in a long time. And in the facility which I run, there are 93 lectures on these 45 pages of the big book in AA. And that's the guts of the program, and if you know, that's how we stay sober, and alcoholics, and for the members of Al-Anon just also.
And so we come to believe in a power greater than ourself, and what is that power? It's the power right in AA, and it's the group, and it's the people, and it's the sponsors, and it's the philosophy of AA. And we see that working. You can go to any AA table in any city in this country, in any other country in the world, put your legs under that table, and count up the hours, the days, the weeks, the months, the years, and the decades of sobriety, and you've got irrefutable proof that it does work.
And that's what I mean sticking with the winners. I hear a lot of criticism, you know, oh, you go to AA, and it's this, and it's that, the other thing. No, really go down and listen, you know, God gave us two ears, that means listen twice as much as you talk, you know, and that's what, you know, our place, we all have to go at least once a week. And we get into, we finish the second step, and we start beginning to, you know, get rid of the defiance and getting out of the driver's seat and start saying, hey, maybe these people got something which I want, maybe these people have got the freedom which I'm looking for, maybe these people have what I was looking for through my drinking.
And we come to the third step, and everybody says, oh, the will of God, oh my gosh, the will of God, I can't understand the will of God. And they miss the first three words, made a decision. The toughest thing we have to do in life is making decisions, and the worst thing for the alcoholic is the indecisiveness, you know, made a decision. Now, did I like what was happening to me when I was drinking?
You know, I never took a vow that I was going to be the youngest whiskey priest that Canada ever produced to get deported from my country for 57 weeks. You know, I did take vows, you know, to do what God wanted me to do, and the alcohol got in the picture and definitely stripped me of every one of those things. So the decision I make is yes, do I want to stay sober and live a meaningful life? Yes. So in order to do that, I must do what the winner's doing, that means go to an AA meeting minimum once a week, and I go to a closed meeting, and that means on Wednesday night at 6 o'clock, I'm heck or high water, I'm going to be there, and that's all there is to it, that's the top priority.
I was at a board of directors meeting, my place wasn't, I said, well, I'll see you guys, I've got to go for about an hour and a half and I'll be back. They said, what do you mean? I said, what the heck, you know. If I don't stay sober, what's all this thing about? You know, the whole, you know, it just contradicts you to everything that we're talking about, and so it's the priority, making that decision.
I make a decision, I'm going to be at that group on Wednesday night at 6 o'clock, and if I'm in town, I'm going to be there, and that's all there is to it, plus some other meetings, and I do a lot of speaking in AA, which is very, very dangerous because it's headier than wine, you know, and I don't think that being on the speaking circuit really helps the ego, you know, and it takes an ego deflation to death, you know, because the alcoholic has a very big ego, you know, he's very narcissistic.
[00:50:00]
That's the word the psychiatrist used on us, you know what I mean? A guy having a love affair with himself and he can't stand the object of his affection. Right. Yes. I made a decision. Is there one alcoholic in here who was doing God's will for him when he was blind, clasped, or drunk? Is there one member of Al-Anon who was doing God's will when that spouse was responding to the uncontrolled drinking with all worry, anger, self-pity, and depression?
Is that what people wanted in marriage? Is that what we really started out life for? You know, if you love me, you stop drinking, and why me, and all of that type of thing. Is that really what it's all about? No. So the decision is we want to get, you know, live a meaningful and purposeful life. And what God wants us to do is very simply, God wants me to stay sober. And how do I stay sober? I stay sober by going to AA.
And in Al-Anon I stay, you know, living a healthy and a free life, you know, by internalizing the steps exactly the same way as the members of AA have to, and go through exactly the same procedures. And you don't have to go to priests and ministers and rabbis to find out what the will of God is. You just have to ask yourself, does God approve of what I am doing right now? And any time I'm at that AA meeting between 6 and about 7.30 on a Wednesday night, I can ask myself that question and I come up with the answer, yes.
I wish to goodness I could tell you that every other area of my life I come up with the answers, but sometimes it's a little shaky, you know, and I'm kind of belting people around or doing something. And we just have to ask ourselves. You know, people are always running to priests saying, I wonder what God's will is. God's will is very simple. God wills good and only good, and he wills good for you.
That's the only thing God's will can tend to, you know, is the good and to love you. And what we have to do as individuals is become mature and be able to respond. Because the cry of the alcoholic when we're drinking is, leave me alone. Get out of my life. I can do it my way. Da-da, da-da, da-da. Everybody else is wrong but me. The whole parade's out of step. I'm the only one that's in step. And that type of thing, and that's what we have to break.
Making the decision to turn our life and our wills over to the care of God. And that for us means sober. And living a life of dignity and self-respect and responsible to other people. There's no mystery to that. Everybody keeps saying, I wonder what God wants me to do. I think I had a lady in my office about a year ago, and there were four kids around the living room. And she's crying and saying, oh, I should have been a nun.
You know, open your eyes. You know, I'm a Roman Catholic priest, and I sometimes get in a band because I have a lot of fun. You know, I choreo a lot, fire trucks, I play hockey, I play banjo. Oh, it would be great to be a ski bum, that's my, you know. We'll be a ski bum and a banjo player. But that's, you know, that's just the fun of it. God wants me to do other things. You know, I just have to open my eyes, see where I am, and respond in a positive and creative way.
And how we learn about those things is through the steps. There's no mystery to God's will. You know, but it's indecisiveness. It's what it kills us. You know, we say, oh, I don't really want to do that. I don't want to give up that relationship, or I don't want to give up this because I'll become less and I might lose something. And so we stay on the fence. And we just kind of hem and haw. And never really get in the wheelbarrow and give it our best shot.
You know, it's the only thing we can do in life, give it our best shot. God doesn't want success from me. He doesn't need my success anymore, and I need a hole in the head. You know, but all he needs is a little attempt. I don't have to worry about, you know, how it's going to turn out. When I was drinking, I was always so concerned about what other people were going to be saying. I used to work excessively compulsively about sermons so that I could turn out to be the best preacher.
I'll never forget the time of the first Sunday after Easter. It's the second Sunday when our Lord comes. The people, you know, were all hiding as apostles because they were scared. And it means peace. You know, he said, peace be with you. And I gave this most magnificent sermon on peace. My God, it was just great. It was right out of St. Thomas, the tranquility of order between man and his fellow man, between man and his society, man and himself, man and God.
It was just great. Everybody thought it was a marvelous sermon. That night I got drunk. And I was trying to get back into the rectory using my pipe cleaner because I left the keys in the ashtray where I was sitting. And I turned the whole place into utter turmoil. You know, the superiors and the five other priests. There was almost war going on, you know. Diametrically opposed to all of those things which I was verbalizing.
Not really giving a darn what the people in church heard about as long as I came out looking good and looking like number one. And that was great. You know, and there was conflict going on all of the time. Then we get into the fourth step. And everybody starts dying the fourth step away because there's a lot of blind fear. And it says that fearless. I think they fear both. Everybody looks at the fourth step and it should be something like a fearful thing.
All the guys, you know, they close the windows and they pull down the shades and they lock the door. And they get the asbestos pad out. And they start writing about the good old conquest in 1942 back at Simply Rock University, Yahoo, you know. And if Playboy could get this script it would make Deep Throat look like a fairy tale, you know. You talk to his wife, him? Never. And all the ladies are saying, oh my gosh, I can't understand.
I did the things that I did in front of my children. You had half a jug of gin in you, you know. And everybody looks at the fourth step as that, you know, it should be some type of an itemized list. A laundry list of event by event of everything I did that was wrong. And that's not what it is at all. It talks about the nature of our wrongs, you know. Fearless. Moral inventory. And of course everybody looks at moral and they think it's got to do with sex.
I mean, that's the only moral thing there is, right? I often say this, Father, excuse me, but if they took the 6th and the 9th commandments out of the confession box, we wouldn't know what the heck to do. That's not it at all. Everybody thinks, oh my God, you know, that type of thing. That's not it. The purpose of the fourth step. You know, this isn't some type of a Jansenistic heresy.
[00:55:01]
Jansenism was a heresy in the year 1505. It came out of Port Royal in France and it meant this. The more miserable you are, the more God loves you. And boy, am I ever suffering. So God really must love me because I'm miserable. That's not what it is at all. This is no type of self-abnegation, penance, you know, do all this and the more miserable you are. It's the way to live a more meaningful life.
And what the fourth step is about is to bring out the goodness in you. You know, the degree of excellence that's in you. You know, so that you can respond, you know, with the love which God has given you and respond with other people in love. And I do that all the time when I give retreats. The first thing I always do is I bring a pencil and paper. I give it to everybody and I write. They write me endless things about Jesus.
Nobody can understand what I'm saying. They learn and they holler. If I did it tonight, there'd be somebody here at the daylight tomorrow morning, right? And they'd be saying, they'd be hollering, oh God, I got three, I got three, three wins, I got three. Does making my bed count yet? Four, three, two, three, two. I say, my God, how are you going to get sober? How are you going to stay sober? How are you going to be me?
You're going to be the only big book that a lot of people are going to read. I live in a county, the third largest county in the United States of America, .88%. Less than 1% of the alcoholics are receiving any help whatsoever, whatsoever. We're called, we're chosen, we're given the gift of sobriety. It's a gift. I never did anything in my life, anything I ever did in my life I achieved magnificently, except for one thing, to stay sober.
I could not do that. I went and got ordained and I gave all the money. I had a lot of money when I was a kid. I had a perfectly normal childhood for 31 years. It still didn't work. What the fourth step is about is bringing out the degree of excellence that's in us. That everybody in this room has a degree of excellence. Everybody in this room is a lovable human being. I ask people that, do you believe that God loves you, that you're a lovable human being?
No! Don't say that. You'll have to change. You'll have to grow up. It's much easier, I can tell the people who have gone through the positive fourth and fifth step than the people who have not. The people who have not keep saying this, I must be the dumbest, I must be the ugliest, I must be the slowest, I must be the negative, negative, negative. Can't do this, can't do that, can't do the other thing.
I'm God and I'm not going to join the human race because there is no greater being than me that can forgive me and I'm unforgivable. And so I can stay locked up in this, I don't have to change. It's an infantile way of reacting to life instead of responding, but it's kind of comfortable because it means we don't have to do anything. You ask me, do you want to do this? No, I can't do that. Do you want to do this?
No, I can't do that. I'll mess that up. I don't give a darn what I mess up. I just keep trying, keep giving my best shot. I have a lot of fun. I have a lot of great friends. They're all in AA and the people I travel with are in AA. We just have a magnificent time all the time. Even the crazy hockey team. I'm a member, I'm the goaltender now for Flying Fathers Hockey Team. It's the Harlem Globetrotters of hockey.
It's a world famous team, plays all over the world. There's other AA members on that team. There's 19 priests who are all professional hockey players and all play on that hockey team. We travel all winter long, at least 40 games a year, and just have a magnificent time. But when we get into the four step, it's not an itemized thing of no, this is what I did wrong, this is what I did wrong, this is what I did wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
I have people in front of me daily saying I'm unforgivable. It's a revenge for God and he can never forgive me. God loves you. And that we don't like because it means we have to respond. And it also means write it down. I hear people say, well I take my four step every time I give an AA talk. Tell that to the Marines. I won't believe that one at all. Because that's not what it's about. We have to write it down.
And that's not me speaking on page 64. It says, in dealing with resentments, we set them on paper. And on page 65, we are on our grudge list. There's another one, twice. And on page 67, referring to our list again. And you know, it says, and also we placed them before us. When we saw our faults, we listed them. We placed them before us in black and white. I had a guy drinking one night tell me that didn't mean write it down.
I said, what? And for 13 minutes he talked and said, that doesn't mean write it down. Let me really tell you what happens, Father. So I just, you know, did nothing and, you know, listened to him. I said, are you finished? Yeah. I said, okay, turn the page. Turn the next page. We set them on paper. And tell me that doesn't mean write it down. This isn't me speaking. This is the book. This is, you know, how the alcoholics stay sober.
And on page 69, we got this all down on paper and looked at it. You know, we have listed and analyzed our resentments. And on page 70, we have written down a lot.