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Source: DICOBE-00587 – Earle M – BLACKBOARD TALK – 1965-11-07.mp3 File: dicobe-00587-earle-m-blackboard-talk-1965-11-07.mp3 Duration: 01:19:48
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I don't know what I really need this thing for. I guess we don't need this. Well, how are you? One of the finest speakers in the United States, he says. This reminds me of, do all of you here know Chuck Chamberlain? Oh, yeah. One time Chuck and I were going to rounds and speaking, and one night, can you hear me there in the back? Not very well. Oh, this is for that, huh? Can you hear me now? Huh? Can you hear now?
Yeah. Well, we were making the rounds, and one night, I would be chairman and Chuck would talk, and the next time it would be reversed. So we had a friend named Vic Maloney. Remember Vic in Sacramento? And Vic asked us up there, and we had been in Los Angeles, so we flew to Sacramento. Can you hear all right? Yeah. And when I had some of my clothes in Chuck's bag, when we got there, a bottle of shaving lotion had burst en route, so we had to put these clothes on with all this smell.
So Vic arrived at the hotel door, and he walked in the room, and he stopped, and he said, Are you sure you fellas want to talk tonight? And so Chuck said, Oh, ye of little faith, you know. And so that night, I was chairman and Chuck talked, and at the end of the talk, a woman, a little old woman, came up to the podium, and she looked up at Chuck and at me, and she grasped our hands, and she said, I've heard all of them.
I've heard Churchill, and I've heard Roosevelt, and I've heard Gandhi, but you two are the greatest. So Chuck and I floated down the aisle, you know, to the door. And as we got to the door, there was a little drunk there who was just wobbling from side to side, and he said, he looked up at Chuck, and he looked up at me, and he said, Say, why don't you two guys change your pitch? You're keeping me drunk.
Well, the greatest speaker of the United States is now here. You can all go out and get drunk. Well, I didn't really know what I was to talk on, but they drew straws here, and I have to give this blackboard talk again. God almighty. This is the nine millionth time I've given the blackboard talk, but anyway, here you are. Now, as long as we're going to talk about these aspects of alcoholism, let's say this, that we could talk on the psychological aspects of alcoholism, but I'm not going to talk on that aspect of alcoholism tonight, really.
Maybe I'll have a few words to say at the end. We'll see kind of how it comes out. Nonetheless, let's agree that the psychological aspects, the psychological maybe even causation of alcoholism, I'm not going to discuss. Then the spiritual aspects, I could talk about the spiritual aspects, on alcoholism, but I'm not going to talk about that. We could talk on the spiritual aspects of any disease. I don't care if it's an acute appendicitis.
We could speak about these aspects. So these two aspects, the spiritual and the psychological, allow me the privilege of not discussing in detail. Maybe we'll touch here and there, but that's all. But I am going to talk then on the physical aspects of alcoholism,
[00:05:02]
and that's all, the physical aspects. What occurs to you and to me, and what has occurred to you and to me, so that we have become victims of alcohol, be that victimization very little, be it a medium, or be it a lot. Now, before you can understand alcoholism, you have to realize that alcoholism is not predominantly an emotional disease. Now, the reason I say that is that we are just barely emerging from the era where it was felt that all of alcoholism was simply an emotional cover-up.
This is not true. As a matter of fact, there are many non-alcoholics who have emotional problems that would put the ordinary alcoholic to shame. And they can drink or not as they see fit. Now, this is not true of the alcoholic. So alcoholism is a physical disease. It's a disease of metabolism, an error in metabolism, so the authorities say. Now, we cannot understand alcoholism without a second point, and that is until we realize that the pain of staying sober, and I'm talking about our drinking years now, the pain of staying sober was far in excess of our pain of drinking until the last 15 percent or maybe even 25 percent of our drinking years, where everything was all a mess then.
It was all a mess. We hear amongst the non-alcoholics, and unfortunately we hear at many AA meetings people who say, the things that I did and the things that I thought when I was drinking were terrible, and then they enlarge on these. You see, this is really beside the point. It's the thoughts and the things that we do when we are undrunk, when we are sober, these are the things that fundamentally count, you see.
So the pain of staying sober is miserable, and I am now briefly speaking about the psychological aspects of alcoholism. Now, if we were not alcoholics and set up to become alcoholics, we could easily take a few drinks and get rid of that pain, but this didn't happen to us successfully. So there's an added factor, and that's the physical factor, and that's what I want to talk about. Now, if I were, what I'm going to say about alcoholism will sound as though it were pat, it were round, it were solid, and finished.
Now, if we have the authorities of alcoholism in this room, and incidentally I am not an authority on alcoholism. Yes, I'm a doctor, but I don't, I'm engaged in a surgical specialty. I don't treat alcoholics, and I'm not interested in treating alcoholics. But if we had all the authorities here, everything that I say, a certain percent of them would stand up and say, no, that's not true. And another percent would stand up and say, yes, it is.
And there would be a constant fight on every sentence that I say. So realize, then, that what I have to say is simply a cross-section of what seems to be current opinion. Now, most of the authorities agree that we are either born with, or indeed acquire over the course of time, a physical difference when compared to the non-alcoholic. And this has been described by the medical profession as what's known as the X factor.
Now, the X factor is nothing new. We used to talk about the X factor in diabetes. We didn't know why the diabetic could not handle sugar. In 1922 or three, two very famous physiologists, Banting and Best in Montreal, Canada, by a series of miraculous experiments, discovered that the disease of diabetes rests in an error in the function of the pancreas, a gland here that rests just below the stomach.
And then the X factor was dropped. So the X factor is a rather common thing to be used in medical science. It's certainly simple, but it's what we use. This really means we don't really know. About 35 to 40 percent, perhaps, of alcoholics are born with a tendency to develop alcoholism. We find this in family histories. So-and-so's mother, father, grandfather, and so on, seems to be an hereditary tendency.
Now, this doesn't mean that all of us who have children,
[00:10:02]
that they are going to grow up to be alcoholics at all. But maybe the odds are on their side that they might, but not very great, I suppose, because this is certainly disproven. Probably the rest, maybe 70 percent of alcoholics, acquire a certain physical difference as the time goes by. Let me just mention a few things. It's said the alcoholic's blood sugar frequently goes low. I'll kind of hurry over this, and I won't go into the experiments that have shown this.
Experiments, but nonetheless, they're there. It's said that our blood pressures are very low at a period of time. For instance, a person awakens in the morning, and I'm talking about the sober alcoholic. His blood pressure is low, his blood sugar is low. He feels irritable, tense, nervous, irascible, fullness in the head, not quite with it, and he gets out the big book and tries to read it or gets out some A.A. literature and tries to read it, doesn't make any sense.
He throws the book in the corner. He wants to tear up the literature, and he says, I'm off the program. Well, he actually isn't off the program. He's just a little hungry, and his blood pressure is still a little low. And if he only would do it, if he could get himself to eat and exercise, he'd feel a little better, the very reverse of what he wants to do. But nonetheless, this is true. Then it's said that the alcoholic's fluid requirements are high.
The nonalcoholic looks on in dumb amazement at our injudicious slurping of fluid. You know, coffee and water and orange juice and tea, and we just put things into our great fat mouths constantly. The incidence of baldness, oddly. Baldness is less amongst alcoholics. We have bald alcoholics, of course. This statistic, every time I get up in the morning and look in the mirror, I tend to doubt this statistic.
But it's said that the incidence of baldness is less amongst alcoholics. The incidence of obesity, fatness, is less amongst alcoholics. We have fat alcoholics, but on the other hand, the incidence is lower. I recall some years ago I stepped outside of my surgical specialty and addressed, oh, I don't know, four or five thousand general practitioners at the Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles on alcoholism and told them what I'm telling you now, but in, you know, words this long, you know, that sort of thing.
And I told them about these rather humorous observations that the alcoholic was usually thin and heavy-headed hair and so on. The next morning, the only thing that was quoted in every radio in the country and in every newspaper was that I had said that if you're thin and have a heavy head of hair and you're thirsty, look out. Muscle tension. Muscle tension in alcoholics at rest is higher than in non-alcoholics.
The alcoholic is also given to kind of a black and white way of living. You know, the non-alcoholic goes out and cuts his lawn and then he sees a bird and he looks at the beautiful way the feathers lay, one upon the other and the colors. And his wife comes out and says, dear, won't you please cut the lawn? And he cuts a little while longer. And then he sees a flower and he looks at it and savors its beauty and the way it opens up and its loveliness.
And then his wife comes out and says, the lawn. So he cuts a little farther and then he goes to a hedge and he sees his friend across the hedge and they engage about the World Series or whatnot. And finally he gets the lawn cut and very well. But it's a rather easy going sort of a maneuver. Next door are you and I flat on our back doing nothing. And all of a sudden we decide to cut the lawn and it's cut just like that and we're back on our, flat on our backs again.
So the oscillations of motivation tend to vary in the alcoholic a little bit. So there are many things here that this act, we could go on to a variety of other things about metabolism and sugars and whatnot, but just forget it. Now, the X factor then, which either, either born in a person or he inquires it, when added to alcohol, create alcoholism. Now, lest you get the idea that I am stating that alcohol creates alcoholism, I don't mean to say this.
Alcohol does not create alcoholism any more than gasoline creates habitual auto accidents. Yes, it's a necessary ingredient, but it takes a unique body in order to develop this remarkable disease. So the X factor is what we're going to talk about. Now, because alcohol, you see, alcohol… You see, alcohol, inhibitions are alcohol soluble.
[00:15:04]
People that are non-alcoholics go to cocktail parties and they drink and their inhibitions subside and tongues loosen up and they become loquacious and friendly and talk and it's a great libation, perhaps one of the saviors of the human race, except for us. Well, inhibitions drop off, tensions drop off, the person feels better, but the alcoholic takes a drink, he's never had a drink before in his life, and he takes a drink and his drop off in tension is fabulous.
It's as though suddenly the sky had opened up and God had reached down and said, here is some golden fluid for my son of whom I am justly proud, and life becomes grand and glorious. Well, it gets a little better for the non-alcoholic too, but not this much. As a result, the alcoholic, because of this X factor, if this theory makes any sense, returns to alcohol more often and the reason he does is that alcohol does something for him, it really makes life grand.
It is the one thing that takes away the horrible misery and the pain of sobriety. Suddenly life is all right, suddenly life is great, suddenly life is glorious, but it wears off, that's the trouble. So he's got to go back and get some more. Well, over the course of time, the alcoholic becomes dependent on alcohol and anyone who becomes dependent on a substance builds up a tolerance to it, meaning that the body can tolerate more.
When you hear about the hollow leg of the alcoholic, it's true. The alcoholic literally can stand more, can drink more. This is true of all alcoholics. There are some alcoholics whose tolerance is always low. They get drunk on a few drinks, but it's what the alcohol does to them nonetheless. Well, and in the very end of alcoholism, the tolerance drops off, but for most of the duration of the disease of alcoholism, every time the alcoholic drinks, his tolerance increases until on, let's say, that given day he needs that much alcohol to give him the same effect that this much alcohol used to give him.
Same is true of the morphine addict. He may start off on an eighth of a grain and finally require three or four grains a day to get the same effect because his tolerance has built up, his need for it. So make no bones about it. Every day that the alcoholic continues to drink, the next day he requires just a little bit more to get the same effect. Now this progression may be slow or indeed it may be rapid.
Now, this reminded me when I said late in the game that the tolerance dropped off. Now let me say this, that we in AA do not represent the alcoholic population in any sense of the word. We are people, many of us, who have had a good deal of trouble. Not all of us, but many of us. The vast majority of alcoholics do not have great trouble. As a matter of fact, 97 percent of alcoholics are alcoholics with assets.
We had an old story in AA some years ago that we drank and thought we fooled our friends, and all of a sudden we realized we hadn't been fooling people at all. Now for some in this room this may be true, but for the vast majority of current-day alcoholics, they do fool their friends. They are successful in fooling their friends, and here's where AA is falling flat on its face these days because the texture of the drunk that's coming to AA is different than we used to be.
He is having less trouble. It's hard for him to lay back and to follow the 12 steps. He has questions. He wants to question all these things, and it's up to us to slowly keep up with the times, which we are not doing. We must do so in order for us to continue to build, but I won't get off on that tangent. Only 3 percent of alcoholics are on skid row. Ninety-seven percent of alcoholics are alcoholics with incomes, homes, families, money, and taking the alcoholics as a whole.
Now this is a big thing to do, but well over half of the alcoholics' friends and acquaintances have no concept that he has any trouble with booze. I just wanted to get that point across because this is changing, you see. This didn't used to be true, but this is really indeed changing these days. Well, let's go on here about this progression of alcoholism. So the alcoholic then, he builds up a tolerance to alcohol, and this continues to go all the time as long as he continues to drink.
[00:20:02]
Now, if we can just digress for a minute, we'll say this is a bucket, and let's compare that to the body, and let's pour into this bucket a half ounce of whiskey per hour or eight ounces of beer per hour. If one did this, one would not get drunk. Now anyone in this room who is an alcoholic who is stupid enough to go out and try this will find himself saying, what good is eight ounces of beer per hour?
Indeed, what good is a half ounce of whiskey per hour? This is ridiculous. So pretty soon, any one of you who try this, if you're nutty enough, do it, you will finally find that perhaps you're drinking four ounces of whiskey per hour, but if you do, I guarantee you that only three and a half ounces of that four will be involved in getting you drunk. The other half ounce is burned up and so on. So what good then?
The non-alcoholic can do this fine. He can continually take a half ounce of whiskey per hour, burn it up, and not get drunk at all, you see. Not the alcoholic. His tolerance is high. It's going up and up and up, and his absolute physical need for alcoholism increases each day. He's got to have a fluid balance into his body. He's got to get a lot of booze in here to satisfy his ever-increasing tolerance before alcohol has its desired effect.
Well, as he pours more of this delicious slop into his body, he develops a series of symptoms, and I'm going to put them down on the board. The first one is gulping. Gulping. Now, nothing drives the alcoholic more to distraction than go to a cocktail party and see a non-alcoholic who really knows how to drink. You see, the one thing that we know how to do well is how to drink booze badly. The non-alcoholic will take a martini to his or her lips and have the temerity to sip it, you know.
And then this drives the alcoholic to distraction because his immediate reaction as the non-alcoholic, who really knows how to drink, sips it, he says to himself, why in God's name don't you knock that thing off, you know. And then the non-alcoholic has the temerity to sip the sipped drink down again and let it sit there. Well, this is not in the kin of the alcoholic. He must gulp his drinks. He's got to get enough into his body so he'll feel something.
He becomes victimized by this ever-increasing tolerance. I recall one time my daughter and I, this was some years ago, we were going back east and we were going to see a play in New York, and this was part of a business trip I was making, and I happened to read in the newspaper about two months before we left that there was an actor going to New York to rehearse for a play in which he was to play the part of an alcoholic.
And he said in the article, he was interviewed by Payne Knickerbocker, I know somebody in one of the papers, and he said that he himself had a problem with alcohol but no longer drank. Didn't say he was a member of AA, just said that he no longer drank. So I thought, well, I'm going to see how this fellow acts on the stage as an alcoholic. So I went back and two months had passed, we were finally in the audience, the opening of the play, and I couldn't wait to see how this fellow handled his stage booze.
He first came out on the set and he poured a big slug of booze and opened his great big gullet and knocked it down. I said, that's my boy. I could tell this fellow really understood and knew how to go. Now, the next thing is sneaking drinks, sneaking drinks. This is, the alcoholic is always around the source of supply, and as I have said, 97% of alcoholics are alcoholics with assets, so they are around the source of supply.
The alcoholic's out here in the kitchen and he makes the drinks on a tray. His, of course, is much stronger with a couple extra belts in it because he has to have it. He doesn't realize that he's drinking more, he just is drinking more. He just somehow slops a little extra into his glass until it gets more and more and more because he has to have it, or else why drink? That's why people go to a cocktail party and the amount of alcohol that's supplied is unsatisfying.
The alcoholic can't stay there. He's got to leave and get off and go someplace. He'd otherwise die, or why drink, you know? Well, so he makes the drinks and his is stronger and then he takes these into the people in the living room and serves them. And one day when his tolerance is increasing enough, he discovers a little glass about, oh, it holds about three ounces. It's very thick. You drop it on the floor and it won't break.
He keeps it up behind some plates on a shelf.
[00:25:02]
He's mixing the drinks. His, by this time, is much stronger. On another night, he reaches up and gets his glass, pours out a big slug and knocks it off, and then he takes the tray of drinks into the people in the living room. Well, this is fine until one day he's doing it again. Pours out his extra drink. His is already on the tray and is much stronger. Pours out an extra drink and is about to knock it off when a non-alcoholic walks in and says, what are you doing that for?
And the alcoholic says, well, I don't know. It just somehow seemed like a good idea. Somehow to take that extra drink. And the non-alcoholic says, well, you've got one on the tray. What are you doing that kind of business for? Well, I don't really know actually why I do this. The non-alcoholic walks out and he quickly belts off the drink and he decides that this is something that's frowned on. He's doing something that isn't supposed to be done.
So gloomily he takes the drinks into the company and he starts to worry. The next time he's mixing drinks, he's here at the tray, at the counter with the tray on it making his own drink and this one much stronger. He reaches for the glass and thinks, oh my God, someone might come in. So he looks out quick, comes back in, fills the glass, knocks it off and then takes the tray out like this. The trick is to do this and not get caught.
This is a sneaking drink. Well, if we put the following formula on the board, we might be able to understand another factor. Let's say this E standing for surgical ether. If you added to surgical ether under appropriate chemical conditions, a molecule of water, you know, H2O, one would then have alcohol. So alcohol and ether are identical, except for this very minor difference. Well, as a result, the alcoholic whose tolerance is high, going up, he is taking into his body a great deal of ether, fundamentally.
Of course, it's now alcohol, but it's fundamentally ether. So he puts to sleep the frontal lobes of his brain where consciousness is located, as we think about it, and he goes into what are known as blackouts. Now, why doesn't he pass out? Well, the reason he doesn't pass out is that his tolerance is so high that he can tolerate this vast amount of alcohol. His tolerance has increased and increased, and this is the crux of the situation of ever-increasing tolerance all the time.
The ever-increasing tolerance on the one hand, and social disapproval on the other. The alcoholic always tries to bring these two together, but he never succeeds. It's a lost cause. The non-alcoholic, were he to attempt to do this, because his tolerance is not high, he gets sick and vomits and goes home and, you know, wakes up the next morning feeling like death warmed over. And, you know, alcoholics rarely have hangovers early in the game.
I'm not talking about the dry heaves now. I'm talking about the typical syndrome of awakening with headaches and not being able to go to work early in the game. The alcoholic has a high tolerance to chemicals. Even to start with, he is born with this. In the history of alcoholics, we find that often as children, they could tolerate a great deal of anesthetics while they're having their tonsils taken out.
It's true in my own case and many other cases where we've gotten satisfactory histories. This is long before they ever had a drink, you understand. They were born with a high tolerance to chemicals. Well, the alcoholic can drink a great deal early in his drinking game and get up and shake his head and go off to work, while the non-alcoholic has flattened his back because he hasn't got this built-in tendency, whatever it is.
So anyway, we have then blackouts that occur. You know, nothing is worse than awakening and driving down the highway and being sufficiently removed from the source of alcoholic supply and suddenly having the anesthetic wear off and you're behind the wheel of a moving automobile having no idea how you got there. Or waking up in strange towns or strange beds or so forth. So, toxic dependent drinking, this is known as, with slipping control.
Slipping control. Now, slipping control means that… Means that once the alcoholic starts to drink, it's not guaranteed that he will remember to stop, that his, uh, he may forget to stop, that something happens to him.
[00:30:14]
Now there are those who say that the alcoholic in this early stage might stay sober all by himself and not come to such an organization as AA. The Big Book, on the other hand, says on about page 42 in this second edition that the potential alcoholic or the real alcoholic, with rarely an exception, cannot stay sober without spiritual help. So it's likely that the person who has these early symptoms might have some difficulty, or at least not be as amiable about his sobriety as he would if he came to an organization such as AA.
Now we get into another dangerous symptom, and this is inappropriate drunkenness. Inapprope-D, I'll put down. Inapprope-D. This is where there's a boss coming, you know, for the night, or some important personage, or they go into a banquet where it's vital that proper decorum be maintained. And suddenly the alcoholic says, I guess I won't drink tonight. I tend to sometimes overdo it. But then he inevitably says, oh well, I'll have just two.
And then he wakens the next morning from a blackout, you see. I remember a friend of mine named Clark Billingsley. I remember Clark. And he was a butcher, great help to me in the early days of AA. Never missed a day's of work, but he was just drunk all day long. And his wife was worried about this business. He would go home, he'd buy a half pint of whiskey, he'd uncork it, get to the bottom of his stairs and take a couple of drinks out of it and put the cork in and put it back in his pocket.
Then he'd go up the stairs and start to go in the door, and Jane, his wife, would be waiting. She would open the door and reach out and grab him by the coat and pull him in and smell his breath and say, oh Clark, you've been drinking again. And he would say, oh no, Jane, I've just had two drinks. And he was right, he had just had two drinks. So I'll just have two drinks. And then he awakens from a blackout.
He's insulted the boss. He's made a fool of himself. He's getting drunk. He's forgotten to stop, you see. I remember this was about five or six years ago. I was at the family, the family club on Powell Street in San Francisco with a doctor friend of mine. And they were playing dominoes. I never understood why people played dominoes. But he did, and he liked these dominoes. And so I sat and watched.
I was his guest. And they fed him three Old Fashioned. You know, these glasses that are, you can almost take a bath in them. You know, that kind of a glass. And I could see that he was getting just a little bit tipsy by his talk and the way he. And so the bartender came to him and said, doctor, wouldn't you like another drink? And he said, oh no, no, no. No, I've had enough. This is enough for me. And I had the strangest sensation.
My God, I'd have been out of there long ago. And here I've been sober for years. But I thought, all of a sudden I was carried along in what was happening, you see. And to see this fellow suddenly come to a perfectly fine non-alcoholic. He knew when he had had enough. We don't remember this, you see. That's the point. So inappropriate drunkenness. Then about this time, the alcoholic has the beginning of an emotional symptom, which is destined to plague him forevermore.
It has nothing that describes this symptom. Dread doesn't describe it, or terror doesn't describe it, or awe doesn't describe it. It's the most penetrating, the most exasperating, this is all understatement, feeling that is unimaginable. And this is the gruesome feeling of remorse. Remorse fills the alcoholic more than, it's absolutely indescribable. Remorse. And then about this time, the alcoholic develops the shakes and sweats, you know, the whips and jingles.
We call it the S plus S, we'll put down here. Which reminds me of a story of a very famous jazz guitar player and a jazz clarinetist who were in a bar, both alcoholics, and trying to get a drink up to their lips, you know, and they were spilling it and it was all over the bar and the glass would fall out of their hands. And the bartender, you know, their gracious souls, very patiently wiping it up and filling the glass again,
[00:35:00]
and they tried to get it up their lips and it would spill and all the glass was down again. And after this delightful physical maneuver had been going on for some time, a non-alcoholic walked in and was stopped dead in his tracks as he saw this. And he watched them spill several glasses. And then he withdrew for a bit and he said, the gentleman, he said, I don't mean to interrupt here, but he said, I'm kind of interested.
He said, what profession are you two engaged in? And in typical resentful fashion, the banjo or the guitar player looked up at him and studied him for a minute and he said, well, he said, I'm a brain surgeon. My friend here is a watchmaker, you know. Filling the drink. No one knows why the shakes and sweats occur. Maybe it's an upset in fluid balance. Maybe it's due to certain enzyme systems being upset.
There's a vast number of theories. But all the authorities are agreed that at least half of the reason that the alcoholic had the shakes and sweats is he's scared half to death of what's happening to him. So shakes and sweats. Then the alcoholic makes a glorious discovery. He says, oh, if I just had a little bit of the hair of the dog that bit me, I would be fine. So he takes a drink and up it comes like this.
Right back up again. And he goes through a period. But nonetheless, he keeps this down finally. And all of the shakes and sweats disappear. All of the remorse disappears. And he feels absolutely at one with God again. The morning drink. The only trouble is he can't function very well. So he has the A.M. drink. And this becomes his constant companion. Now, by the way, there are many alcoholics who never had a morning drink in their lives.
Never had a drink before 5 p.m. in their lives. And incidentally, they put down these symptoms. As you might say to yourself, well, I haven't had trouble like you were describing all along this line. I just think I drink a little bit too much. I haven't had much trouble with booze. I say to you, have hope you will. Because the more that the alcoholic continues to drink and the more his tolerance increases and the more he must drink and make no bones about it, the more he must drink, he has to in order to maintain himself, the more symptoms he develops.
Then he develops rationalization. Someone says, aren't you drinking more than you used to? And he says, well, yes, I'm strong, but I can stand it. Or the woman says, I may be small, brother, but I'm potent. So rationalization occurs. And then the alcoholic develops malnutrition. Malnutrition. Malnutrition. For instance, now, if we were to take this formula up here, this, well, let's move this. Remember I said ether plus water equals alcohol.
Or let's say alcohol plus carbon dioxide. That's the air we exhale. Two molecules of carbon dioxide, CO2, equals table sugar. So table sugar and alcohol and ether are identical except for these very minor chemical differences. As a result, the alcoholic who is drinking more and more and more and more because he has to, is getting lots of calories, no protein, no vitamins, no mineral equivalents, no fat, so he goes into malnutrition and all of those symptoms that can occur.
And then he develops insomnia. Insomnia. You know, for a long time the alcoholic awakens in the morning, or at night he's sleepless, he takes a drink and back to sleep he goes. And he awakens, takes another drink, and back to sleep he goes. And on and off this tends to go over the course of time. But like all sedatives, they usually reverse their action so that one night he takes a drink and he's wider awake.
And in desperation he takes two or three more and he's wider awake yet. It stimulates him. It's like some people who take a warm bath and are stimulated. It's like some people who take phenobarbital. And by the way, sedatives are dynamite for us. We should avoid them like the plague. Now there are certain exceptions. You see, we have drilled up our right for chemical peace of mind. We have a right for chemical peace of mind.
That's all right. Now there are exceptions. We, after all, have epileptic alcoholics who need certain kinds of medications. And we have certain alcoholics who have high blood pressure. And there are certain exceptions to this. But if you are looking for a release from the tensions of life, you're out of luck.
[00:40:04]
You just have to take them on the nose. Only the non-alcoholic can have the benefit of release of tensions with sedatives. We have drunk up our right for this if we want to stay sober or if we don't want to get hooked on pills. Now I don't mean to upset people here who might be taking pills for one reason or another, but I still say that if you're taking pills so that you'll feel more glorious, you're on the wrong track, I promise you.
Well, we might go on here. There's one symptom that develops, and that is the symptom of resentment. Nothing gets us into trouble more than this resentment. Now all people feel resentment, but the resentment I'm talking about has a different texture than the usual resentment. There's nothing that's more vicious. This is why we get ourselves into trouble with the world. We're so vicious. We're so totally unreasonable.
Now these are symptoms which are produced because of the intake of alcohol. We become toxic, just like we had the flu or pneumonia. You know, I operate on people every day, and I notice that the first day or two or three after surgery, their personalities are different. They're toxic. They're getting well. A day or two or three, they're on their way towards recovery, and the old personality returns.
They have developed a toxic personality, different. So this resentment, the texture of this resentment, the viciousness of it defies description. We aren't to be blamed for this. This is what happens to the alcoholic, you know. And then there's a symptom that we develop which fascinates the alcoholic. It literally, it fascinates him. It's akin to the symptom of when you see a live wire, you think, what would it be like if I just touched it once, you know.
Or you're on the top of a building and you think, I might jump, you know, just might go. Well, there's a fascination about these various dangers, and this symptom fascinates the alcoholic. He becomes addicted to it. He loves to pour buckets over his body and rub it in his hair, and this is self-pity. Self-respect. So the alcoholic does the reverse, as do all people. Rather than feeling that he's worse than, he develops a complex that he's better than.
He develops his own cult. And this gets him into lots of trouble. You know, he walks into a bar and he comes in, he sits down on the stool in all of his glory, as though he's traveling with a spotlight on him, and he looks at the man next to him, he says, well, he must be just a beginning plumber. And this fellow must be just a beginning carpenter. Just apprentices, that's all. But as he looks in the mirror between the two, he sees Einstein sitting.
Einstein sitting. Then as he falls off the stool with his head in the cuspidor and the plumber and carpenter say, well, there goes old Joe again, you know. This feeling kind of God-like, you know. Kind of a God-like, egotistical sort of a business. You know, the alcoholic has often said, I understand there's going to be a second coming of Christ, and I wonder. Well, you see what's happening. Here's the alcoholic, the constant victim of an ever-increasing tolerance and requirement for booze all the time, drinking more and more and more and more, because he has to.
Well, we've got a fellow here who's gulping and sneaking drinks and blacked out half the time and getting drunk at the wrong time and filled full of remorse and shaking and sweating and slugging down drinks in the morning, only half of them keeping them down, and rationalizing, and he's in malnutrition, he can't sleep at night and filled full of resentment and filled full of self-pity and thinks he's Jesus Christ.
Now, you really got yourself kind of a myth, you know, as a thing. But this fellow's becoming victimized by an ever-increasing tolerance for booze. Now, I took this X factor to begin with to start this whole thing off. Why doesn't the non-alcoholic do this? The non-alcoholic doesn't have this X factor. He gets sick way early in the game. He gets sick way early in the game, way down there, and he says, well, that's enough for me, I don't, I don't, I, this makes no sense.
And it also doesn't glorify him as he drinks early in the game.
[00:45:03]
You see, alcohol is the savior of the alcoholic's life for a few years. It becomes his greatest friend until finally it backfires on him. And then he says, well, who wouldn't drink if you lived in Santa Rosa? So what I'll do, I'll move to Denver. Up there, it's high and dry, and I'll be all right, so he moves to Denver, but he takes Santa Rosa with him. And he says, well, I made a mistake, I should go to Long Beach, where it's down at the sea level, and I'll be all right.
So he goes down to Long Beach, but he takes Santa Rosa and Denver with him, and so. This is known as the geographical cure, you know. The last person in the world to recognize that he himself is causing his own problem is the alcoholic. It doesn't occur to him, you know. It seems like other people around make him drink, and he doesn't, you know. Well, he thinks he's Jesus Christ anyway. Now, this is toxic, dependent drinking without control.
Now, actually this isn't true. The alcoholic still has some control left, as we can show. But now let's go on, and we'll show this in a few minutes. Now let's get on to the stage of addiction. Now this is the stage of utter addiction. And only three percent of alcoholics are in skid row. Well, maybe the addictive process starts up in here more or less, but it's certainly down in here in the skid row alcoholic.
Only three percent of drunks are in skid row. There are many people in AA who have been on skid row, but they're amateurs. They may have gone to skid row for a month or three months or even a year or two sometimes, but this is a resentful visit to skid row. They are not skid row habituated in the true sense of the word. Now, we might then say that the alcoholic, I'll put down here ROH. ROH is the chemical radical for alcohol, and the alcoholic is all he wants at this stage is alcohol, nothing else.
He does not want, he's not trying to save face, he's not trying to save his money, his family's gone, the only thing he wants is alcohol. And then he may develop, get into jails and hospitals. Well, he may get into jails and hospitals here too. Or up in this stage he may get into jails and hospitals. But it's for sure that he gets into jails and hospitals down here with repetitive arrests for drunkenness.
And then he develops some of the end stages of alcoholism such as cirrhosis of the liver, I'll put COL, and finally Korsakoff syndrome, and finally death. And this is the course of the alcoholic down this way. I'll put a big arrow there. From the early stages of alcoholism to death. This is what happens. Now we can put this in a different way to make it more understandable, and I'll attempt to do that, just to put this whole thing that I've said here in a different fashion.
Let's just suppose you had this kind of a business here, kind of a parallelogram. And let's divide this into two triangles, and let's put all of the symptoms of alcoholism that you see there on one of these triangles. Helping, sneaking, blackout, inappropriate drunkenness, remorse, shakes and sweats, morning drink, all the way down to and including death. Those are all the symptoms. And let's say this is abnormal drinking, this triangle up here, and this is normal drinking, this triangle down here.
Now you see the alcoholic may be here, where let's say 15 percent of his drinking is abnormal, but still 85 percent of his drinking is still normal. Who knows he's an alcoholic? Very few. Even he doesn't, even his close friends may not know it. Or you may get down, now this first line may, oh, let's say put the alcoholic right about in that phase on that scale. Let's say here, where half of the alcoholic's drinking is abnormal, and 50 percent is still normal.
Oh, this may put him way down in here someplace. Or let's put him down on skid row, where 95 percent of his drinking is abnormal and 5 percent is normal. In other words, even the skid row bum has enough control left to bum a dime to get a jug of muscatel wine. Now, what is this part of the parallelogram over here? This is a graphic way of stating that by and large, or usually, it takes about 15 years for the disease of alcoholism to develop from the first drink.
Now this may not be true of some people here. There are some alcoholics, probably about 15 percent of alcoholics, develop the symptoms of alcoholism during the first year of drinking.
[00:50:03]
There are some who do not develop the symptoms of alcoholism until they have had, I mean, even their early symptoms, until they've been drinking for 25 years or 20. But the average alcoholic takes about 15 years from his first drink until he develops the first symptoms of alcoholism. So that the incidence of alcoholism today in 1965 reflects that drinking, more or less, of the drinking that started in 1950.
But the point is, once the alcoholic oversteps this line and develops the first symptom of alcoholism, any one of those, gulping, sneaking, blackouts, anything like that, this person is hooked. As far as we know today, barring rare exceptions, there is no going back to becoming a social drinker, if indeed the alcoholic ever was a social drinker. I recall in my own instance, there are many, many years where I only had, now and again, under duress, a single drink.
But it made me kind of sick. If someone said to me, let's go have a drink, I'd get kind of ill. For what? What's the point, you know? And I turn these down all the time. But if I had the anticipation of an evening or a night or several days of an interminable era of drinking, let's go. This was fine. So you see, I don't think that we ever were really social drinkers. You know, where you can have a drink and say, ah, that hits the spot, like you can with a piece of cake and ice cream.
You can say, well, that's enough, that's fine. You know, there are some people who are addicted to food. You think a piece of cake and ice cream stops them? They're addicted, you see. They go right on to nothing. And the same with us with alcohol. Now, alcoholism, then, is like any disease. It has its early stages, its middle stages, and its late stages, you see. Pardon this physiological reference, but alcoholism is like pregnancy.
Either you are or you're not. Now, one might be in early pregnancy and not show, or one might bulge in all of one's maternal delightfulness. You see, both women are pregnant. It's just a matter of degree. Now, alcoholism is the same way. One can be up here or here or here or here or here or here, or on this scale, here, here, here, here, here, here, and each one is an alcoholic. Maybe an early alcoholic or a middle-stage alcoholic or indeed a late-stage alcoholic.
We used to have an AA. Maybe some of the old-timers here remember. We would say, we had what we called low-bottom snobs, those who said, well, what do you know about drinking? And then we developed the high-bottom snobs who looked down at the low-bottom snobs and said, well, at least I didn't have to go that far. Now, these ridiculous comparisons are odious. These ridiculous comparisons are odious.
Both persons are alcoholics, and that's why I say that if you have the early symptoms of alcoholism and tend to say, well, I'm not an alcoholic, I haven't had all that trouble, I say, again, have hope you will have because due to the ever-increasing need for alcohol all the time, alcoholism becomes a progressive disease in this direction until it stops, and then it stops. There's an old gag that even in AA that people who stop drinking that the progression of the disease carries on anyway.
This is just an AA myth. We don't know that this is true. It may be, but we have no physiological evidence to indicate this. We think once a person stops that probably his disease halts at that particular time, but he must stay permanently stopped. There's no toying about this business. So distributed along this line of descent, you see, we have 350,000 or more or less people in AA who have come to their own bottom.
There, maybe here, maybe here, maybe here. If you ever find yourself stating or thinking, well, that person's not an alcoholic, may someone slap you in the face hard as they can with a bat.
[00:55:02]
Nothing is more vicious than to say to a person who thinks he's an alcoholic that he's not. Give him the benefit of the doubt and at least say to him, tell me more, something like that. Now, what do you do with somebody who has alcohol suddenly taken out of their lives? They realize they can't drink anymore. They cannot keep themselves together psychologically. They cannot keep their integrity together and still drink.
They have to stop. They have come to their bottom. What are you going to do? All of a sudden this person, you and I know this story very well, we come to AA and all of a sudden alcohol is jerked out of our lives. Well, this is a great big problem. How are you going to fill this hole? Well, as you know, we fill this, in this organization, with the principles of AA, the principles of AA. We develop a way of living which makes possible, which makes sobriety possible.
That's what it is. So that the pain of sobriety may become less hurtful, less back-breaking than the pain of drinking. We then have to fill our lives with something. That's why it's so hard to stay on the wagon, because the void is still there. The emptiness is still there. The awfulness is still there. We need to be around people of our own kind, you see. So we band together, and we have kind of a tight little organization, sometimes a little too tight, I think.
But we say to one another, we admitted that we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. And isn't it true, those symptoms I put there? Number two, came to believe. Came to believe. Came to believe. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. I'll make it there with what you call this power. If you're an atheist, believe it with all of your heart and soul.
If you're an agnostic, believe it with all of your heart and soul. Or if you are a religionist who believes in a cosmic sanity clause, believe it with your heart and soul. The point is to learn to believe in something. That's the point. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Number three, made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.
Not as you understand him, but as we understood him. Now, this doesn't mean that this is religion. This is kind of sidewalk, penny-ante spirituality, but with a wallop behind it, because we learn to believe in our own unique ways, in things that work for us. If all AA asks is that we have two things. One, believing in a power greater than ourselves, and two, following the 12 steps. A lot of people spend a lot of time trying to define what this power that's greater than themselves is.
This is a waste of time. If all you do is to follow the 12 steps, the rest of it will be taken care of for you. Number four, made a fearless and searching moral inventory of ourselves. Now, this doesn't mean that we're bad people. This means maybe an inventory, change the word moral to morale, if you like that better. A morale. Where had our morale slipped? And what do we do to make it slip in this progressive process?
Five, admit it to God, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs, or our rights, but we don't usually have much trouble stating when we're right. We often, so we say, are wrong. Find someone you can trust. Trust is the great thing. You see, the horrible part of sobering up is to learn once again to trust. Our trust had been broken out of us. Our hearts had been broken at one time, both emotionally and by booze, and to learn to trust again is not easy.
The process of sobriety is miserable at times. Eddie is miserable at times. On the other hand, it's a glorious progression also, because we get to various levels as time goes by. Number six, we're entirely ready to have God
[01:00:02]
remove all these defects of character. God knows we've tried unsuccessfully. So, we're entirely ready, brother. Anytime you want to take away these defects, give us a hand. Number seven, humbly ask him to remove our shortcomings, which means we have a lot of shortcomings and when the time is ripe, all right, take them away, and I'll be willing to let them go to the best I can. There are lots of shortcomings we like. We don't want to give them up. And by the way, when you say all these things and you pray and so on, don't make a federal project of it. You know, you just kind of talk a little bit and say, well, I hope these defects get straightened out, if indeed they are defects. As one fellow said who came into AA, what defects? Eight, made a list of all persons that we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. Now, this doesn't say you do it. It means that you become willing to do so, and under the appropriate circumstances, you do so.
If the willingness to do so is 99% of the battle, then the ninth step is made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so might injure them or others. And ten, continue to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. This is very difficult to do, to all of a sudden say, oh my God, I've been wrong, and to do something about it. Now, for goodness sake, don't do something wrong and go around and in a mealy way apologize, hoping people are going to grasp you in their arms. If when you apologize, you're willing to be slugged in the jaw and kicked downstairs because you did what you did, then you're in. But if you expect someone to grasp you and hold you close to their breast, as though you were a nursing child, you're all wet. This is, once again, going back to this fascinating, delightful self-pity that we love so much. And then, we say, sought to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for the knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. In other words, what is it you want me to do today, and give me the stuff to do it? That's all it means.
You kind of pretend that you're a knotty-headed kid walking down the corridors of time with your hand and your father's. Just that sort of nonsensical sort of a vision. And then, having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, if you do a little sprinkling of all these steps, you've got a spiritual awakening. That's certainly different than you used to do, that's for sure. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, the past 11, we've tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and that's the opportunity.
And then to practice these principles in all of our affairs. And then, as the big book says, oh my God, I can't go through with it. Then the big book reassuringly says, don't worry, no one amongst us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We aren't saints. The point is we're willing to grow. And so slowly, slowly, slowly, with these steps, we gradually grow. Now, we aren't saints, you know. We are people.
We are creative people. Now, some of us have a low ebb of creativity, some have a rather high vest for creativity. But I'm going to talk a little bit about this other side of the alcoholic. The creative person has a high degree of energy, boundless energy, does things to a great degree. Often doesn't realize it. People come to the alcoholic and say, the sober alcoholic, not even knowing he is a sober alcoholic, and say, my God, how do you do all those things? How do you find the time to do all those things? And we say to ourselves, well, I don't know that I was doing so much. Doesn't everybody? The point is everybody doesn't. Now, there are many non-alcoholics who put us to shame with their energy. That's true. But by and large, the alcoholic has boundless energy. His intelligence is high.
Now, he may not be well-educated. There are many alcoholics who aren't very well-educated. But the keenness, notice as you walk down Skid Row sometime, notice the sharpness and the keenness in the eye of the fellow who bums a dime from you. He's sharp. He's no
[01:05:05]
dummy. He's got an I.Q. of God knows what. Now, the thing is that the alcoholic must, the creative alcoholic, and this becomes, depends on how vital this is in his life, he must cram into his thought process the whole divergent set of ideas, all disrelated. He has the courage to cram divergent ideas into his mind, sometimes literally driving him, I'm talking about the sober alcoholic now, sometimes literally driving himself to the point of utter insanity. And then he returns and makes a decision. He cannot stand for long a convergent idea. Boredom is high in the alcoholic, very high. The alcoholic has the courage of challenge. He must have challenges in his life, else he becomes a nothing, you see. He is the kind of a person who is never a part of the mainstream of life. I don't care if he's been sober for five million years, he is not a member, he is not in the mainstream of life. In AA, we find a little mainstream where we belong with others of our kind. We spend the vast majority of our time with non-alcoholics, actually, but we are not a member of the mainstream and don't think you're ever going to get it. I don't think you will. You will get it with people of your own kind. The alcoholic is forever isolated. He is forever lonely. This is relieved some by gathering around people of his own kind. The alcoholic dares to dress differently. He dares to entertain challenges. He must do a vast variety of things. He cannot converge on a single thing for long because boredom is high. But with all, with all, there's a certain discipline that the creative person has. He has a certain discipline in which he, excuse me, a certain discipline in which he recognizes that training is essential. Look at the hours that many of us have spent getting ourselves trained in certain fields. I was talking to a person tonight who was entertaining the idea of a new field. He recognizes the necessity of training. You see, this is a maturity, you see, above all, that is necessary. And now I'm going to tell you a story. There was once a fish named Mal, and this fish was completely dissatisfied. Irritable, irascible, tense, nervous. He didn't like where he was, and suddenly one day as he was lolling back and forth in the water, a while away at a time, he saw the shore. And he saw the sun out there, and he saw the trees out there, and he saw the rocks out there, and he could see the leaves coming from side to side, and suddenly he realized he had to be there. So he swam back amongst the group, and he got back to the group, and he said, I found it.
I found it. And he ran from one to the other, I found the shore, the shore. We must go to the shore. And some big fish came over and slapped him, and he rolled over in the water a couple of times. And the big fish said, what's the matter with you, Mal? He said, don't you know that down here, that it's warm, there's plenty of food, this is a place, we don't have a difficult life, this is a life for you. Don't you know that out there on that shore, you would die. The sun would part you. The wind would dry you. But this didn't satisfy Mal. So the big fish slapped him over again, and then swam away, and pretty soon other fish came up and gave him their shoulder and swam away, leaving Mal alone in the water. And as they swam away, the water got dark and it got cold. And little tears came to Mal's eyes, but he knew he had to be on that shore. But he had been deserted.
So he swam over to a rock, and he found a little ledge, and the ledge kind of hurt him, but as he lay there in the darkness, some leaves, blades of moth came down and kind of embraced him, and soon he fell asleep. And then he awakened the next morning, and the sun was out, and all of its bloom, all of its glory. And Mal was on a rock right next
[01:10:08]
to the shore, and he saw it again. And he had to be on that shore. He couldn't stand it not to be on that shore. But he had been told he must not go there, he would die. So he backed away towards the group that he could hear swashing and wallowing in the warm water behind. And he thought if he just swam backwards to them, he could at least keep his eye on the shore. But the farther away from the shore he got, the more intense came the desire to get on that shore.
And suddenly he stopped, and with a explosion, his muscles tended to get larger, he grew somewhat, his fins became stronger, and without knowing it, and with fear and trepidation, he swam towards the shore as fast as he could and shot out of the water onto the rock. And he seared his abdomen as he went across the rocks, and he lost consciousness. Not long after he awakened, and the sun made him hot, and the wind dried him, and he felt uncomfortable, but with all, there was a newness that he liked.
And he took his first breath that he was conscious of, and he said, this is air. And then he felt the ground, he said, and this is ground. And he slowly squirmed over to a rock and said, and this is shade. And as long as he was in the shadow of the rock, he looked around and said, oh, and this is a tree, and that is the sun. And at that instant, an amphibian was born. And one day, as he was lying in this rock, he suddenly thought about his friend back in the drink, in the water. And he thought he would go back, and he easily turned around and walked back to the shore on all fours, and he looked down, and that was the first time he had noticed it. He had grown He had grown hands, and he had grown feet, and he was larger. A new person had been born.
And he walked to the water's edge, and sticking up at the water's, at the level of the water, were little noses of fish with an entrancing look in their eyes, but nonetheless bewildered, bedazzled. And Mal yelled to them and said, would you like to come up? At that instant, nine out of the ten fish swam away to their comfortable position, but a few stayed. And he reached down and pulled one of them out of the water, and this person's name he knew to be Elder. And he pulled Elder out of the water, and he spent the whole day pulling out this person and putting them on his back, and on his forefeet, like an amphibian, he walked them over to the rock and laid them gently into the shade.
And then the thought occurred to him, a thought that was destined to come back and plague him forever, if only I could stand up. What a job I could do in getting these fish out of the drink. But he had to go on all fours, and so he did. And so slowly, slowly, more and more fish came, and they formed a society known as the Amphibians. And they wrote a book, and they gathered in groups, and they decided to love one another. And they decided to take it easy, an easy debit, doesn't it? And they allowed other ones to live just exactly as they wanted to live.
And they met in groups that lasted for an hour, and love and glory and replenishment was the mode of the day. And then it happened. Elder became dissatisfied, but he didn't dare tell the group because there were certain rules that should be followed. And if he followed these rules, he would be forever satisfied. And so Elder had to slither away into the dark forest, and the pitch and the muck dropped on his back, and his belly scraped along the mud.
And so finally he came to a hiding place, and he slopped into the mud, and tears came to his eyes. And he said, I can't stand it. I've got to… And he said, I can't stand it. I've got to stand up. Suddenly he said, maybe I could tell the group. Maybe they would understand. So he hurried back to the group, and that night he went to the meeting.
[01:15:02]
And he said to the chairman, I would like to talk. And the chairman gave him permission. An elder in all fear and trepidation called before the group and he said, I am unhappy. And they said, what? I don't feel satisfied. They said, what? I am miserable most of the time. They said, what? You are not following our precepts. Have you read our big book? Have you been going to the meetings? And he said, yes, I love them.
I follow them. Believe me, I do. They are the things that make it worthwhile for me to be an amphibian so I will not go back into the drink. They said, beware. You may well go back into the drink. And Elder was crushed. But way in the back of the room was Mal, the first amphibian. And he said, let me talk. And he walked up to the front of the group and he said, since the first day that I took Elder out of the water, I myself have felt I must stand up.
I have got to. I must. I don't know why, but I have to. It's something that I'm compelled to do, but I have been afraid to mention it for fear that you might think I was dissatisfied with the group. I'm not. I just must stand up. The chairman of the meeting was known as Deacon. And Deacon looked at Mal, and Deacon looked at Elder, and he said to them, the trouble with you is that you are filled with unrest.
You are filled with discontent. You are filled with despair. You have but not following our precepts. An intense hatred soared through Mal and Elder, and in one glorious burst above them, a light occurred, and suddenly Mal started to paw the ground, and his muscles strained and strained, and finally he stood up. And the group backed away. And as Mal looked down, there was Elder looking up at him with one hand saying, Me too.
And Mal reached down and slowly pulled Elder up to his side, and then there was a burst of light above. And in one torturous movement, Mal and Elder grew and grew and grew and grew, and were stable in the upright position. And then Mal turned to Deacon, the chairman of the meeting, and he said, My name is Mal Content, and I am an amphibian. It may well be that you have learned the precepts of the amphibian organization better than I, though I was the first amphibian.
It may well be that you are at constant peace and you are at constant rest with yourself, but I am not, and neither is Elder. Discontent is the very food on which I grow. I drive myself at times to the very fringe of insanity and come back and make a decision, but it's the going towards the insanity and the unrest and the discontent that literally makes me grow. I need it like the very air I breathe and the food that I eat.
And there was great stirring of unrest amongst the amphibian society at that meeting, and suddenly Mal looked out at the meadow and he ran towards a tree, and Elder came to him, and they could see in the distance a bluebird that was flying over the meadow and noticed how it took the air current back and forth, and suddenly Mal and Elder were electrified, and as though the voice came from the two of them at the same time, they looked deeply into one another's eyes as they pointed to the bluebird and said, Do you think we could someday?
God bless you all. Thank you.