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Source: DICOBE-00611 – Bill W. & Bill D – GSO CONF – 1950-06-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00611-bill-w-and-bill-d-gso-conf-1950-06-15.mp3 Duration: 01:15:09
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We come to the moment that I look forward to very, very much, the privilege of introducing Bill. But now that the moment has arrived, I don't know how to do it. I would have to say, how does one introduce Bill? What does one say of this man, who is the instrument chosen by my higher power to give us this message of AA, and to having given it to us, given us back our lives again? I don't think I could find sufficient words in the English language to enable me to introduce Bill the way I would like to.
Because had it not been for him, none of us would be here tonight. So I guess, in the simplest way possible, all that I can say to you, here is Bill. Hi, folks. Today we have a principle, let's live one day at a time. Tomorrow is gone, today is here, the future is not yet with us. And in that trite little statement, there is a great deal of wisdom. But like so many of our familiar clichés, it doesn't cover all of the territory, and can still leave us rather cockeyed on the subject of time.
I make these few observations as a backdrop on talking a little about the traditions. For example, clearly, if a person is all the time in the past, whether with guilt, whether with remorse, or wishing for the good old days when he could drink like a gentleman, no progress at all is possible. And at best, he becomes a conservative who is against all change. On the other hand, if I live in today in a really absolute sense, and forget about yesterday, and think nothing about tomorrow, I become a creature of pure expediency.
And you get nowhere. On the contrary, if I'm always pondering the future, I'm out of the reality of today. So, that if you make these two thorough divisions of time, and label this one as good, the present, and the past is rather bad, and the future is not something to be concerned with, I think we're out of balance. Actually, time is a stream of consciousness, and we came on it out of the past, through today, and we go out into the future.
Now then, what bearing does this have on the AA tradition? You know, at times we're apt to congratulate ourselves upon those traditions as though it were a list of our collective virtues about which we wish to brag. We say, oh yes, we put the common welfare first. Oh yes, we're a pure democracy. Oh yes, we have no punishments, no rules, no regulations, a beautiful benign anarchy in that sense. And we don't get complicated with endorsements or alliances, and we keep ourselves as collectively poor as possible so as to not get messed up with dull, filthy lucre.
And we have no professional class. You know, plumbers can do as well as anybody with AA, only two troops. We just don't need that.
[00:05:07]
And so on, we go through this list as though we were reciting a list of virtues, very singular to us. Well, I submit that's a rather dangerous and childish thing. Actually, these twelve traditions, which are before me here, are in reality a codification of the lessons of past experience that we got out of the school of damned hard knocks in the early days of AA and which we continue to get. These are the lessons of experience, this list of hopeful do's and don'ts.
Now then, I think about the origins of some of these traditions. I believe the theme of our upcoming conference is really the common welfare comes first. Without AA unity, there can be no recovery. That's a frank recognition of the situation. But as you look at the traditions, one after another, you see that all of them are directly or indirectly related to this subject of the common welfare. And you see this idea in great strength in this last tradition. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.
Well, that, I think, is a spiritual statement of the idea of the common welfare. Take tradition two. In the early days of AA, we weren't placing principles ahead of personalities all the time. There wasn't any such thing as a group conscience. Dr. Bob and I were schoolteachers of sorts. And as our leadership gained in strength, we began to think very well of ourselves. And it was a very long time before we realized that those in position of leadership are biased by consideration of power, prestige, money, and the like. That's how we started off.
But the time came little by little, and through many better experiences. And I've undergone some, and Bob has, and any old timer has. The group conscience began to say to us, the common welfare comes first. We do not have these biases. Let us take thought for the general welfare, and after that, let's see where the leadership stands. So we turn up as leaders who have not power in the usual sense, not prestige in the usual sense.
We turn up as genuine servants with a discretion from the group conscience to act for them. And that's our state here. The general welfare comes first. Take another which may at first glance seem a little remote. At about year two of the Akron group, a poor devil came to Dr. Bob in a grievous state. He could qualify as an alcoholic all right. And then he said, Dr. Bob, I've got a real problem to pose you. I don't know if I could join AA because I'm a sex deviator.
Well, that had to go out to the group conscience, you know. Up to then, it was supposed that any society could say who was going to join it. And pretty soon, the group conscience began to seethe and boil, and it boiled over. And under no circumstances could we have such a peril and such a disgrace among a set of great men. And you know, right then, our destiny hung on a razor edge over this single case.
[00:10:07]
In other words, would there be rules that could exclude so-called undesirability? And that caused us in that time and for quite a time, respecting this single case, to ponder what is the more important? The reputation that we shall have? What people shall think? Or is it our character? And who are we, considering our records? Alcoholism is quite as unlovely. Who are we to deny a man his opportunity, any man or woman?
And finally, the day of resolution came. And a bunch were sitting in Dr. Bob's living room, arguing what to do. Whereupon dear old Bob looked around and blandly said, Isn't it time, folks, to ask ourselves, what would the Master do in a situation like this? Would he turn this man away? And that was the beginning of the AA tradition. That any man who has a drinking problem is a member of AA if he says so, not whether we say so.
Now, I think that the import of this on the common welfare has already been stagnant. Because it takes in even more territory than the confines of our fellowship, it takes in the whole world of alcoholism. Their charter to freedom, to join AA, is assured. Indeed, it was an act in the general welfare. Then we got into, very naturally, into this question of how we were going to relate ourselves to other people in the field of endeavor.
How are we going to relate ourselves to the public at large? And again, this same question of public welfare, or the AA welfare, the general welfare. And we came up with the view that we had better stick to our land. We could offer our principles to the whole world, and offer the whole world everything but AA's name, which we would like to have stand for certain principles. And this, you see, has served the general welfare. Now, there were a terrific amount of deviations, you see, all this time. Letters were pouring in after the Saturday Post piece entered the office.
And naturally, we were getting married, through the microphone, through broken anonymity, to all sorts of enterprises, some good, some bad, some indifferent. So, the lesson was borne in. We are not criticizing endorsements in society around us, but we dare not give them. Not that we're afraid, this is simple proof. It's good sense, and we've already seen what happens when we start to do this. And so it goes down through this whole list of traditions.
In the early days, in public relations, the AA thought, well, I'll get myself on the radio. I've got connections. I'll get my name and picture in the paper. Well, that's what everybody else does. Nobody else does. But after a few had fallen on their faces after doing this, we began to see that it wasn't for us.
[00:15:09]
So as I've said, our tradition is a list of the lessons of yesterday. And I hope that as you read the traditions with a sense of history and information about it, you will relive our past and you will see how we have brought forth from the past on its time stream the lessons thereof, and tried to make estimates about the future. We are not absolutely fixed in all of our principles. There is room for change.
On the other hand, we shall not lightly cast away these hard-earned principles which bear on our unity, on our survival, on our growth under God's grace. As Herb left us, I think that we stepped out of one epoch into another. During his tenure, the last basic modification was made in our structure, the ratio change, in which we assumed full responsibility as a fact for the conduct of our world affairs. This, perhaps, was the last great change in basics.
And as I remarked this afternoon, or this afternoon session, I made the remark that now it is a question of preserving what we have, of improving its function. You can always improve a function. But I don't think I nailed that proposition down. I think I made it seem as though everything was going to be clear sailing from here on. And when Tommy Breen got up to keynote this thing, we have a keynoter now, you know, probably will ever after. I'm going to lose my job, I can see that.
Anyway, old Tom got up and he said, it's all very well that we have the steps, it's very well that we have the traditions, it's very well that our functional structure seems adequate. But let us be vigilant. The problems and the difficulties of the future can actually be greater than those we have already survived. Let's not be pessimistic, but let's be realistic. This, in effect, was what he said. And after all, we are living in a most dangerous world.
We are surrounded by behavior the exact opposite of that by which we must conform to survive. In other words, minorities are able to say, we are the most important. The general welfare has to wait upon us, and the world is going through the same cycle on what apparently, from a poor alcoholic's point of view, is one hell of a dry bender. A very, very dangerous one. So that life may, in the next ten or twenty years, be a very dangerous one for each of us. It may be dangerous for our whole society.
Certainly we have little to fear for religious schism. But let us never underestimate the vast forces which are tearing the world apart.
[00:20:15]
Have you ever sat down and seriously thought what we'd do if we were driven underground? Have you ever seriously thought how we would be affected by firing squads? These are common everywhere. Don't suppose I'm pessimistic. I'm hopeful. No, vigilance is going to be the price that we'll pay for unity. And the love among us, and for each other, that indeed everything considered, passes all understanding. These are the things that under God's grace, I am certain, will sustain us through all calamities, no matter how formidable.
Thank you. Let's bow here, Mr. Watercock. Almighty God, our gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you for this privilege of appearing before this group, we gather here to learn more about a better way of life. We ask that thou be in our midst, guide and direct our thoughts, guide and direct what I must say, and whatever is said or whatever is done, may it be done towards thy honor and glory. In Jesus' name we ask this. Amen.
First thing I want to invite you folks for, I want to thank you folks for inviting me down here. Next thing I want to congratulate you on having as many years you have on your first anniversary. I think it was on our ninth anniversary that we had over half an hour that I heard Doc get up and make this statement. I never paid much attention to statistics about any kind of statistics about AA, it never made any particular difference to me who was first, second, third, or fourth.
But our Doc got up and made this statement. He said that on our first anniversary we had six at the end of the year. Well, I didn't remember that. And he said that four of them are here tonight. That was on our ninth anniversary. He said four of them are here tonight, one of them dead, and one of them is out of town and couldn't be here. Well, I happen to know that a couple of them that were there had had a little trouble during those nine years, but they were there that night and were sober. So that's all we had on our first anniversary was six, and of course there were several times the sixth year.
And of course when we had that anniversary I certainly never expected to be down in North Canton talking to folks. And there were a lot of the other places where I have been and talking, we just had in mind that we'd get sober and stay sober, and to do that we had to go out and take this program to a few people, and not to get sober and stay sober ourselves, and that would be the end to it. Now that's all I had in mind, I know, and I'm pretty positive that there wasn't anything much else in the minds of the others except to stay sober ourselves. That early thought has been worth quite a little bit to me.
In two or three ways, I haven't felt any great responsibility about the movement being such a wonderful movement and all those great things that are going to be done. I even had a woman after one of the meetings I was through, she'd come around, oh she'd been a missionary in China for a long time, a very wonderful woman, oh she said this is wonderful. She said maybe this is the answer, this is the answer to world peace, and I said well I don't know. Anyhow I hope that the answer to peace in a lot of homes around America where you sit down and fight with each other, now if you can carry it on over and make the world peace out of it that's fine, but I have always had in mind that the main purpose of AA was to stay sober.
[00:25:22]
And now there's a lot to AA, in my opinion, that's worth a lot more, and a lot in there outside of staying sober, but actually and honestly I hope that we always keep sobriety as the main purpose of AA. I know positively that that's the thing that we started out with, was to stay sober. Certainly I've got a lot of things out of it further than that. One fellow even argued with me about not so long ago and said if sobriety had been the only thing he got it just wouldn't have been worthwhile, and I said well I don't know about you, but I know about me.
I said the first last six months I drank I was dragged into the hospital eight times, six months, and four or five times of those times I'd been tied down out of bed there too before I'd run too long like that. And I said my doctor told me I didn't have it for three more, and I know I knew as well as he knew that I didn't have. He said you get in such terrible shape that you're not going to make many more of them, and I knew it.
And that was 16 years ago and I'm still living and still feeling pretty good. In fact just about a year ago I had some sort of virus and I stayed in bed two days. My wife kept telling me go to the doctor, but I think this is sort of a call and I don't want to be bothered with doctors. But I did finally go home and he called me and he said you're sick, and I said yeah I know. But I came back and told my wife, she said well I kept her wanting me to go to the doctor, she said I knew you were sick, she said that's the first time I've seen you stay in bed all day since they used to tie you in bed 15 years ago.
Which was obviously true, I hadn't thought about it. But I said that that happened to me the last six months I drank, and I've had since that time, the day before yesterday, the fourth day of July was when I came out of the hospital. Of course I'd been sober some three or four days then, and that was 16 years ago that I came out of the hospital and I said I've had 80, 10 years actually of life I know that have been good with good health.
And then you tell me, I said that certainly was worthwhile. If I had never gotten anything more out of a than that, the fact that I don't go to the hospital anymore and not go through all that hell and stuff that I went through with, and the fact that I've had that number of years of good life is certainly worthwhile if I had never gotten anything more. I did get a lot more out of it, there's a lot more in it.
And I hope that folks will get it. But I still hope that we keep that survival in the name of AA. And you know it's getting a little bit harder for me to be in a meeting right along. I think the reason for that is that I've been doing it for so long, and most of you fellas know that I've been doing it for so long, and so you begin to wonder why in the devil I don't get any better than what I am. It makes it a little bit tough on me. Well, that might be good too. Maybe then they'll sort of stop asking me, you know, I'm just talking. I think the first meeting that I went out of town to lead was over in Toledo and I expect that was better than 10 years ago. Because I think it was about 2 years ago I was over in Adrian, Michigan, and I was talking to a big fella there and I said the first time I was ever over here in Toledo, he was up there from Toledo, and I said that was about 7 or 8 years ago.
He said well I know exactly how long it's been. He said I haven't been sober but about 3 weeks. And I was at that meeting and I've been sober 8 years. So it's been better than 10 years the first time as far as I know that I went out of town. And I've been doing it and there's a lot of you fellas back there that can do just as good a job as I can and you ought to be up here leading this meeting instead of me because you can do it just as well and it will help you because in my opinion there isn't anything much that helps a person more than leading the meetings.
In fact that was one of the main things that they had in mind when we started out and when we went to a meeting. In the early days we didn't know when we went who was going to lead the meeting. We went and we had what we called quiet time and during that quiet time we used to open our minds with instruction as to who we thought ought to lead the meeting that night. And then after we did that and sat there in silence for 5 minutes while they started around who did you think and this fella said this one and this one that one and whoever happened to have the most. We turned and turned and said well it's you. So he got up there and said well it's you.
Well, it's you, so he got up there and took charge of the meeting, and went ahead, and we didn't know until we got there who was going to do it, and that wouldn't be a bad idea to try out, in my opinion, every once in a while here.
[00:30:11]
It'll help, fella. It might mush him up a little bit for a minute or two and get us, but we'll get over it, and I used to say when I started out that if no one was helped in the meeting except me, well, I certainly knew I would be by leading the meeting that would help. And this idea of these fine speakers and good speakers and so forth being called in, I never have been too much in favor of that, because I've seen some mighty good fellas take a licking on account of the fact that I'm very positive that that idea that they were in demand quite a bit as speakers sort of began to go up here to the top of their head a little bit, and they got a little proud of it.
And the fact is I watched two or three of them, and I was sort of wondering if that wasn't happening, and one or two of them it certainly happened terribly bad to them. Now, that might not have had anything to do with it, but they did fall off and introduce a girl, and I sort of wanted it. Now, I'm not saying what I've got up here to say. But it is a little hard, you know. I was lucky. I've been lucky all the way through. That's helped me out an awful lot.
I never could feel particularly complimented by the reason of the fact that they asked me because they happened to ask me just because I happened to be the person that Doc and Bill worked on and were successful with. I'm very positive that's the reason they asked me. Rather than what I happened to say. Well, I had no control over the fact that they happened to be the ones that they picked up first, so I never could feel that way about it. And that's been helpful to me. But I remember one time I came in there at home, and I'd been to a meeting.
You know, I think, so the meeting, you know, something's getting so wrong with these meetings. They're not hardly up to par. And I mean, just what's the matter? What's wrong? I ain't saying half an A or something. I just wasn't. I was rather low about how they were going. And so I picked up a little book there and opened it like this. I just saw it laying there. It was my wife's magazine. She, I never looked at it. But I picked it up that night and pulled it open. Just a matter of luck. I never looked. Pulled it open and I started to read. And well, I never even looked at the heading. I don't know yet what the heading of the article was, but the part I read was. I'm a little ashamed to tell you this, but it actually happened.
Someone said he went over to his neighbors and the fellow insisted on showing him about an hour or better of pictures, moving pictures that he'd taken of he and his family around the house there. Well, the man said, I had seen him day after day around there doing those same things, and I'd seen those rose bushes. And things on it really wasn't very interesting. It was rather boring to me to sit down and look at those pictures.
And I said, what part of the picture did you like the best? Well, she said the part I was in, of course. And that came to my mind. Now, do you reckon that's what started the matter? Maybe they sort of slipped up here. Maybe they haven't been paying you all this much attention. Maybe you haven't read many meetings. I wouldn't tell you this, I'm sort of ashamed of it, but it might help you. And I said to him, they haven't been paying as much attention to you as they should, or something like that. That's the reason you're fine and hurt. And when I analyzed it down and I found the fact, I had to come to the conclusion that possibly that might have had something to do with the fact that I thought those meetings weren't hardly as entertaining as they had been because I hadn't had the special attention that I maybe thought I ought to have.
Although I really never particularly wanted any special attention because, and I told him over and over again I don't because I'm very positive, and if anybody else begins to set me up there as somebody to go by and wean on and give me special attention, well, the old devil, he'll start giving me special attention too. And I've had about all the attention from that boy for the last 15 years in all my life, and I really won't.
Now, I don't say that in any self-religious way, I mean it, because he's already that extra fellow. And if he says, well, if I kick Bill out, I'll knock a half a dozen, well, he'll concentrate on me and I don't need any concentration. And that's neither here nor there, but I thought about that, that that might happen. But the fact, as I mentioned a while ago, that it's the idea of sobriety and it's the reason that we are primarily in AA and the fact that I never expected any great world movement or anything like that to go out of it has helped me because in that way I can go ahead and do AA and practice AA the same way it was taught to me, which I'm going to give it to you directly in about, you know, it'll take me about 10 minutes.
[00:35:23]
That's what I ought to do, of course, and quit, but I keep on talking a long time to get up to it. And it's helped me to go ahead and practice and talk AA just the way I learned it without feeling too much responsibility of what's going to happen to the movement and arguing with this bunch that wants to do it this way and arguing with this bunch that wants to do it that way. And now there's a little bit of that, you know, that's going on around now. And some of them want this way and some of them want the other way. And I told a fellow today, he came all the way down to Cleveland and bought my dinner to give me help with some of the things that he thought would sound so right and just told him, I said, no, wait, I'll learn this AA one way.
And I learned AA, that the main purpose that I was in AA was not to save the world and not to save a lot of people, but to keep Bill Dotson sober. That's the main reason I'm in it. To do that, I have to take this message to people. Now, from now on, they have to take over. I can't keep them sober. I couldn't keep them sober. I couldn't save the world. I don't think I was expected to save the world.
And the fact is, I can't think that you can find any place in the Bible, any place, where anybody was supposed to save anybody. If you go back and read the 4th and 8th general gospels, you'll find just before Jesus ascended, he said, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel. He never told you to save anybody. I even read in the paper today where that fellow ministered up there with the wrong so-and-so so he could save a lot of people.
I don't think we do that. And I don't think we keep them sober. We can't give them a message. But from now on, it's between them and it's our power as to what happens. And that's what I've been doing, is when they ask me to go around and tell folks about the AA program, as they gave it to me and sometimes a few other little things, I've noticed that I heard a fellow get up and say, I'm going to school away tonight. And that's the first time I've heard him admit it that way.
He said he stayed sober seven and a half years and then he got drunk and it took him about 15 months to get sober again. Well, that was true. And I knew it. He'd been sober ten. And he admitted that I was a terribly intolerant son of a gun. He said I just didn't have no damn use for these fellows that came into AA and slipped. He said I just couldn't see it coming. Well, thank goodness I never had that kind of experience. When he comes around and tells me, he said, I always said I had a slip. I said to him, you had a slip. You just went out and got drunk. Just exactly the same way I did hundreds of times. That's right. I knew I shouldn't. I went out and did it. You know, that's just what you did. No slipping or anything else. It's gone right over again.
Of course, maybe AA would look better to the outside world if we say we have a bad fellow that came around and said he belongs to AA. I don't know how in the world he belongs to AA. There wasn't any joining or anything like that when I came in. And now I'll ramble on and talk to you. It was, as I mentioned a while ago, it was 16 years ago, about the 26th of June that I came to Oakland City Hospital in Akron, Ohio. One Thursday morning, that's the only way in the world that I knew what particular day it was. I knew it was Wednesday and I went in there. And the only way in the world I remembered a year or two later that it was Wednesday was that I knew I started on Saturday.
And the last time before that, that I had come out of the hospital, I told my wife, I said, for goodness sakes, don't let me get in such terrible shape anymore before I get into the hospital. I said, that's been hell the last few times, I'll tell you. She said, you can't get me to go in the hospital. It took me about 10, 12 days from the time I took that first drink until I ended up over there in the hospital tied down for 10 or 12 days. A week of it out, round and round like that, in and out.
And the last week I was up there on the third floor in my home, so I was supposed to be out of town and if anybody comes in, they wouldn't hear me up there. And I just laid up there on the third floor by myself, which wasn't my bedroom, it was on the second. But I'd go up there and hide and every time I'd wake up, I'd just reach over and get the bottle and take another drink and go back to sleep. And keep that up for about four or five days or a week. And by the time the day, you know, you've heard folks talk about blowing them up, you know, couldn't get them down no more, and well, I'd blow them up, up, up, up like that, but that never made any particular difference to me, because I knew that if I kept on swallowing them, I'd finally get one that would stay down, roughly.
[00:40:09]
And, uh, but, if you do like what I've talked to you, just about going, you know, spend about a week, drink, drink, drink, and then the last week up there on the floor, just nothing, no eating, just reach over and take a bottle and go back to sleep. Finally, you wake up some day and look at it and you say, now, it wouldn't do any good. It just wouldn't do any good. Are you fooling with that now? Well, it's going to do any good.
Another day or so of this and he'd be dead. So I told all of them why I should get a hold of a doctor. I didn't go to the hospital only for the six weeks, but for the last two or three years I drank, I never got over one without having to call a doctor. By and by, by and by, when you look at it and you know it isn't going to do any good. You know, the drink isn't going to do any good. You're just so full and sick of it. You wouldn't do anything about filling it up, but you didn't know it wasn't going to do any good.
One day you're so full and tired, then you have to do something about it. And, uh, so I told him not to let me get so bad the next time, so I started on Saturday. Now, isn't that odd? I remember just how I took that first drink on Saturday. I went home early from the office, thinking that, uh, to stay sober. And then I got home, got up there to the house, and it was June, it was hot, and I got drier and drier.
And I wanted to drink whiskey, and there was a place over there where they sold only liquor and no wine and no whiskey. And, uh, so I pooled, shook, bottled food around there. I hadn't had a drink probably for a couple weeks then, that long, but I was so nervous and I wanted a drink. And I finally sold myself, and I guess, I mean, I sold my wife. Well, I don't guess I sold either one of us, I don't know, but I tried to sell her on the idea that I'd just run over there and have a couple cups, a couple glasses of beer and come back. It was time for dinner or supper, whatever you call it, about five o'clock in the afternoon.
And it was about time to eat, and she had the Bible ready, and I'd just run over there, and I'd have a couple cold bottles of beer, and I'd run right back and eat myself, and I wouldn't get drunk. Now I know if I'm going to drink a couple cold bottles of beer, damn if I'm going to eat like that, too, because that'd just waste it. But I really thought that that could be done, see. And I guess, I mean, I even told her I'd take the boy, he was about eight or nine years, I'd take the boy along, to ensure the fact that I wasn't going to come back. And, well, I don't guess I made her believe it, but she didn't. Anyhow, I went. And, of course, about eleven o'clock she'd come over and got the boy, and took him home, and she didn't bother me. Of course, I stayed all night.
As soon as it was all tied up, I went looking for a bootleg junk. Well, we sold them after hours. And found her. And stayed there, and went home sometime the next day. And I told her, for goodness sakes, don't let me get that bad anymore. So somewhere on Wednesday, she coaxed me into the hospital, and I went into the hospital. That's the reason I know it was Wednesday. I hadn't been drinking so long. And I wasn't so bad that morning.
And so I came through there on Thursday morning, and my mind was spiraling further, because I'd only been drinking since Saturday. And so I looked around, and I realized where I am again. And I said, well, here you are again. And you've been here, either here or over in the Peoples. This makes eight times now in six months. And every time you woke up, because you went out of this hospital in this last six months, you went out of here fully determined in your own mind that you wasn't going to get drunk for something like six or eight months. I don't think I said I was going to quit. But I went out there fully determined that I wasn't going to be drunk for six or eight months, because I couldn't afford it. I was broke.
And it wasn't going to be long before the wife and boy were going to be on charity, which would be terribly humiliating. And not only that, I was going to have to start panhandling the drink, and boy, that would be hell. I always fell for a panhandling. Because when I wanted a drink, I wanted it. I didn't want to have to go out and try to beg somebody and spend a half an hour trying to get a hold of a drink.
I wanted the right thing. And I didn't want to have to. And I could picture myself out there on the street trying to get a hold of enough money to go and buy me a drink, and have to wait maybe an hour or two when I'd be wanting it like I would like that. And I just knew it would be terrible. But anyway, I came through there, and I said, here you are. And you didn't intend to be here. But time after time, you've been doing this now here, and here. Going out of here fully determined that you weren't going to get drunk anymore for six months, at least six or eight months, until you got a little money and got back a little selfish.
Little money came, got back a little self-respect. Uh, if you're on and know the worst people, show that you can, do something about it.
[00:45:00]
What are you going to do about it? And I didn't know, so I didn't know what to do. And that was on. Right then, the boy comes along and says, Get on this old copper going upstairs. Well, I didn't want to argue with him, I didn't want to mess with him. He said, Get on, I don't want to argue. I never seen him before, but he told me, I said, I ain't funny. I asked him, How do you know me? He called me all the time.
I never saw you before in my life. He said, Well, you haven't, but I'd rather work with you over there on that emergency warden night after night. And they let you over there, and they wouldn't take you up to the hospital. And they let you over there to meter out to me. And then, I said, I don't know you either. Well, I'd never seen him before, I wasn't going to. But I'd been over there, but I didn't see him.
And, uh, so I went, and I got up there. My wife was sitting down, getting kind of drunk. Well, I really didn't know what was happening. My wife would always come to the hospital and visit me. I don't know why she would, but she did. I remember she come walking in there one morning with the doctor. I said, Good morning, Doc. Good morning, honey. I'd been awake just a few little while, you know. I come out 11 o'clock in the daylight.
I was with 11 o'clock in the day. I kept looking around at my wife, and I said, Why don't you go to Sunday school, honey? She said, Sunday school? Yeah, I said, Sunday school, church, why don't you go to Sunday school and church? I was a sad one about noon when I went in, you know. And, uh, she said, What time do you think it is? 11 o'clock. I knew right off because I just found out. Well, I know, but she said, What day?
Oh, I said, She said, This Monday. This ain't Sunday. Well, I didn't know where I'd been all day from Saturday noon to Monday morning, 11 o'clock. Well, I didn't know nothing. I still died down, but I had no remembrance of it. The only thing that I remember, I thought it was still Sunday, and she ought to be in church. So she was sitting there, and I said hello, and she said hello. And I let her do the talking.
I didn't have anything to say. I was late, see. I just didn't have any answers. And, uh, I didn't have any answers that morning. She said, I've been talking to a couple of fellas about your parents. Well, I thought, That is odd. There's been a lot of talk around in our house about drinking. I knew some church families have been down there. I knew two or three preachers have been down there praying with the wives about me.
I wasn't one of those guys. I said, I don't want to listen to them. I didn't want to listen to them. I went to church to listen to what they had to say. They didn't want to listen to me about drinking. They never got drunk. What would I listen to them? They tell me how to quit. Huh. Oh, my. I knew so much more about how to quit than you. I knew about how bad my finances were. I knew there were hours of hell that I went through with night after night.
They didn't tell me how to quit. Well, I don't usually. If they could have, they would have told me how. But, uh, they told me how to, you know. And, uh, also tell me how that I could, which I guess I knew probably was right. But, uh, it was so tough that way. I just couldn't make it. I just had to be, the day had gone much better than I, than I, I just knew I couldn't be that good. And, uh, of course, I was pretty much like the woman that the, uh, minister was trying to get to join the church.
And finally she said, well, minister, she said, I'll join. But she said, you'll have to borrow with me. You'll have to be easy. She said, I'm going to have a tough time. She said, you know, it seems strange, but it seems like everything I like to do is either illegal, immoral, or frightening. She said, she said, she said, she said. So I guess I knew that was the answer, but, uh, I didn't know how to get it.
That way I, I didn't know how I could make it. I've done a lot of praying about it, but as soon as I stopped praying about it, well, the idea had come up about cigarettes and a little penny antipoker. And going to church shows, my church frowns on all those, and they wouldn't even permit me to smoke if I was up there in their basement tonight. I couldn't smoke there. I can get up and go out like we always do when we have a social.
Get up and go outside and outside and go and smoke. Well, I don't know whether, and it would be hard to smoke down there in the basement as it would be outside there, just outside the door or not, I don't know. But all those things would bob up there, and I said, I don't know. I couldn't, I just can't, I just can't. I know I won't be able to be that good. I've done a lot of praying about it, and all those little things will come up.
And I said, yeah, yeah, Lord, I'll do that for sure. I'll, I'll do everything. But I'm a liar, and I know it. Finally, I said, well, there's no use in me lying to the Lord. You'll be praying for help when you know you're lying, but you're not ready to do them things. So I quit praying, and that's when I sure did start sliding in because I didn't have anything to hold on to then, and I certainly started, started hitting the ground in a very tough way.
But I said, I've been, you know, I said, I've been talking a couple of times about you drinking. And I thought, that's funny. That's the way I got, hey, that's the way I'm coming.
[00:50:02]
Of course, it isn't all that way. I'm going to sort you along that line, my friend. And just telling you little things that happened to pop into my mind that helped me. The next thing she said to me, she said, you're going to quit. And I think, well, where in the devil did you ever get any assurance like that? You must have hit a couple of daggone good salesmen. It makes you think, it makes you think, because she said a couple of men, and it makes you think that I'm going to quit.
She said, I haven't heard you say that for a long, long time. She just didn't say anything about it. And she didn't hear me say I was going to quit. I would always say, I'll have to cut this out. I'll have to quit this. I'll have to cut this out, you know. I guess I knew I couldn't quit, so I didn't want to go back on the word, and I'd just go around to help her, and maybe help myself to saying that I'll have to cut it out.
I'll have to cut it out. Knowing that I couldn't. I remember way back in 1969, I don't know what year it was, because it was my junior year in university, and of course a certain boy was rooming with me at that time, and I had been terrible. I was a terrible one the night before. Still was that morning, but sick. And I was sitting there on the bed, and I was a heaving, and a caving, and a heaving, and going off.
And this little mountaineer, he was the worst drunk that I was, he looked over at me, and he said, why don't you quit? I don't know what year it was, all I knew to be here was boy, it was the South-East corner, and I looked at him as funny as sick as I was, and I said, quit? Well, yeah, he said, see, there's no trouble, I've got a thousand dollars. And I said, you're going to quit? Well, now that helped.
That assurance that she had there, I couldn't, I didn't have that assurance, but the fact that she still could believe in me, and believe in this program, or believe that she had found something whereby I could quit, well, that helped. And she told me there were a couple of drunks, she said, like you are, and they have trouble too, and said, they get drunk, and they're trying to quit. And they're poor weak-sinners, maybe she didn't say it that way, but that's what came to my mind.
Well, now that's better. All these other people have been coming around here, they come around here to help this poor weak-sinner, me. They're all right, but they want to help me. But there's nothing wrong with them, but now here's a couple of poor weak-sinners that's come to talk to me. Well, now that helped my egotism quite a little bit. They admitted that they were just, had the same licking as I had.
Well, then, you people ought to look down on me. Why don't you use your willpower? Yeah. You know, I've used my willpower, and you have too. Because when you get sober, you have a hell of a fight to put on, I can tell you. And if I'd had sense enough, I could have bought that first drink, easier than I could have fought it out there after I'd been drinking it for a week or two, but finally knew that I hadn't quit, and sat there and fighted it out.
Now, that's when you really got real tough fights to put out, and I knew my preacher had never gone through that, sitting there for a day or two, shaking a hole, and fighting that out to get sober, get back in. Now, that's a tough job. I used to tell them all the time, I said, you know, it always was kind of fun to get drunk, but hell to get sober. That's when I got in trouble. When I started trying to get sober, that was when my trouble started.
And these fellows, well, they'd had the same weakness that I had. Therefore, I wasn't going to hurt myself too much by listening to them. That kind of put them down on my level. And so, then there was one other thing. He said, if you're going to quit, that helps. A lot. And I didn't forget it. And I thanked him for the confidence. It took him a long time without saying something. Because I didn't have much confidence.
But, you know, I talked about the key to curing all that stuff. I had with my doctor, I had a regular doctor that had been helping me for two or three years. And he was a mighty nice fellow, and he was a minister too. And my wife and I talked to him about taking a cure. And he said, you know, it won't do Bill any good. He said he's a confirmed drunkard, I believe that's what he calls it. And he said, I'll prove it from the heart.
And he said, I'm a minister, and I'm a doctor. He said, I ought to have some extra, but I don't have any extra. All in the world I can do is to help him through this pain so he can get sober enough to get back and try to stay sober a few days. Without a little work, it won't be long and he'll be calling me again. I know, because I've had him before, but I pretty soon tell him to hell with him. I don't want to be fooled by him, and he's good to me, but he's a good friend of mine.
Like my wife, he and his wife, they did more for their, for her, than they did for me. And, so, I think, well,
[00:55:00]
and I said to my wife, the next question I said, well, why are they going to charge me? And I never forgot that answer. She said, you know, that's the strange thing about it. She said that to me. We've both been church members for a long time now. I'm not, I'm not in church. I'm not, I'm not doing that. But we have been, and have been constantly going, well, I didn't go too regularly because I'd get drunk too often.
But, when I was sober enough, now I went pretty drunk sometimes to church. But, so I said, why are they going to charge me? She said, you know, that's the strange thing about it. She said, she said, not only, they said not only were they going to, you know, they weren't going to charge anything, but they said you couldn't pay them a cent if you had a million dollars. And I think that's what they're looking for.
I think they ain't going to get no place that way. But there's another thing, and I'm not going to preach to you. You go out and handle your wife. See, I'm not going to tell you because if you don't get it right and you get drunk, it's going to be you that's going to be sick, not me. I'll sympathize with you, but I'd rather it be you because I don't want to cry anymore. I had enough. They wouldn't take a cent for that work if you had a million dollars.
You couldn't pay them for it. And that's the way AA started out. I take no pain for it. I'm not trying to fall for anybody else, but that's the thing, that was one of the main things that helped me to believe that these fellas had something. There was two fellas that I'd never seen in a hotel. It was four week centers, just like I was. And they were willing to come over there and take their time and talk to me to show me a program whereby I could stay sober and not only would they not charge me anything, but I couldn't pay them if I wanted to.
And that was really the first thing that interested me in AA. And I told my wife to come over, and they came over and I could give me this program a long time ago. You see, there wasn't any book then, there wasn't any trial steps, there wasn't any of this other nice literature that we have, some good and some not so good, that we have around. And we didn't have any of those things. It was just those two fellas there that said they wanted to get sober.
And they thought they'd hit on a program whereby they could stay sober, and part of that program was that they had to bring it up to me. And I sort of forgot that last thing because they told me that was part of the program, that they had to bring the thing to me. And here was the program. So I say, no trial steps, the trial steps are all right, they're fine. But I learned it the other way, they told me that I had to really want to quit.
They said, if you don't want to quit, well, that's your problem, you just go ahead and get drunk, that's all right, we're not for kicking liquor. We want to stay sober. And to stay sober, we have a program, and to stay sober, we think we have to take that program to somebody else. Now, if you want to go out and get drunk and get sick and die down in this hospital like this, well, all right, we'll just go on out, we won't argue with you, that's your free beverage.
Well, I said, them fellas, they're pretty obvious about this thing, all these other fellas want to plead with me, you know. And they said, if you want to get drunk, okay, get drunk. But they said, we want to quit, and we'd like to see you quit, but we'll leave it to you if you want to quit. And then they asked me, they said, do you think you can quit by yourself? Well, that's pretty hard to answer.
I'd always been pretty self-sufficient. Thought I was going to run things, insisted I was. And I had told a lot of fellas, I saw my cousin die before he was 27 years old, from liquor that I used to run with. I held him bed night after night with CTs. And I saw him die. But I was smart. I wasn't going to let him do that. And he told me, he said, Bill, I don't want to get drunk like this. But he said, I can't help it.
Well, I used to always like the freezer. I thought, well, you ain't using good sand. I told him, I said, gee, you're drinking too much too often. A lot of men. And he said, all these years, about the way you get the alcoholics. And I said, I don't know after hearing all those stories. I finally come to the conclusion the reason I became an alcoholic was that I drank too much whiskey too often over too long a period.
I think that's what happened. And my father said, if I could have avoided just one of those, maybe I wouldn't have become an alcoholic. And I thought I was going to avoid them. But I kept on until I was, as bad as he was. And, but I kept on as I saw fit. I said, now when it starts doing me like that, well, I'm going to quit. Well, when I got out of there, it didn't look hardly as bad. And I said, well, that's pretty tough.
But I do know when it starts doing me like that. Now, I just went right on, fur down the bottom, I just kept lowering the standards. Year after year, as all my standards got worse, well, I lowered it, too, and so I was fur down to the bottom.
[01:00:04]
And as far as liquor was concerned, I hadn't been down any jungles, because I'd had a little money left, me and I'd had some a few nights before I got so bad, and so I had run out, and I kept fleeing the banks, I was pretty slick at that. And so it had run me out longer, I would have been down there before. So they told me I had to have an honest desire, and we used to quit. Well, I don't guess I wanted to quit, but oh my goodness, I'd have had enough of this kind of getting drunk.
There wasn't anything in that anymore, I'm sure, but I certainly, if I didn't want to quit drinking, I wanted to quit getting drunk and getting taken over to the hospital and tied down and put in jail and things like that, I didn't like that. And so they asked me then the next question, whether I thought I could quit by myself, and that was pretty hard to answer. I needed to admit that I had a problem that I couldn't handle, a little shit of a thing like that.
Anyhow, I was eager to have done that, I was going to do it all my life. They said, now, if you can handle it by yourself, all right, then we'll go around and we'll do it at the same time. And they said, we want to quit, and to do that, we've got to take this problem to somebody that wants to quit and knows that he can quit, and we're just wasting time. If you don't want to quit, we're wasting time.
If you think you can quit by yourself, that's fine, just go ahead and quit. And they let me go to stay these things over, and then they asked me another question. They said, do you believe in a higher power? I said, yes, I believe in God, and I believe in the Bible. I know I've lost my faith, I know that's the answer, but how in the hell am I going to get it? Because I just can't be that good, I just can't.
I said, I believe those things. What can I do about that? Well, they gave me some very good sense, sir. They said, well, now, don't you think that this drink problem is causing you more trouble than anything else now? And don't you think that you're going to have about all that you can do to get rid of this drink problem? Don't you think it's going to use about all your time now getting rid of this?
Well, I said, I wouldn't be surprised. I certainly haven't been doing very good at it. Well, they said, now, let's concentrate on the drink, and we'll forget cigarettes and the antipoker, and the other little things like that for a while. You concentrate on this thing, and you work on that. And then after we get sort of straightened out on that, then you can start thinking about some other things, and if you still think you're going to get rid of that, well, then you start working on those.
Well, now, I said, that's pretty good sense. Pretty good sense. So I said, I believe in the Bible. I believe in God. I know that's the answer, but I haven't been able to get it. And the next question they asked me was, would I be willing in the presence of somebody else? We sort of slipped that. We don't use that exactly that way anymore, but they said, would you be willing in the presence of somebody else to go to this higher power, which to me was God, and admit that you have a problem that you can't handle and that you want help?
And they left me there studying on. I had to want to quit. I had to realize that I couldn't do it by myself. I had to believe in some higher power that could help me, and I had to be willing to humble myself enough to go to that higher power and admit that I was, oh, I had a problem that I couldn't handle and ask for help. And I stayed there on that old hospital bed and got over into July, and I put up a fight.
I thought about all the things that I was going to have to give up if I made this surrender. Boy, the old road looked pretty damn dark. I say, that straight and narrow road sure looked really narrow. I said, boy, I ain't never going to have no more fun. Yeah, that's right. I'm telling you the truth. I said, this ain't going to be no fun this life long. Oh, I know now. The devil, he was fooling me, you know.
He had them things. That's what was holding me back. And he was using them things, you know. And I was still pretty worried. I love worrying things yet. So I went over all those things that they'd said to me, and I went over them back over my life, things that I'd thrown away, material things and other things that I'd thrown away. The material things didn't worry me too much, and although I certainly didn't have any of them left, and the opportunities I had didn't worry me too much.
But I then began to think about the humiliation and sorrow and things that I had caused some other mighty fine people. My mother and my wife. My boy was getting old enough to know. And I just went back over what kind of a heel I'd been. And I can tell you the thing didn't look very nice. It certainly didn't. I'd had an awful lot of people that'd been awful nice to me. My dad and mother sent me to school and paid money.
They didn't have to go without something to eat to do it. But I remember I knew that I was drunk back in 1917. My dad got killed in that year, and I was over in school,
[01:05:01]
and I was drunk when they called on the telephone over there. I was pretty drunk, but I was handling it pretty good in those days. They brought him over there and left me, and he died. Well, I had to take him home. I had to take my barbers along with me. But I didn't get real drunk. I was drunk and whisky then, and bossy. And then I, with my senior year in university in Mars, the first time I started around.
I knew I was a drunk. I said, well, now here's a chance. You're a drunk, and you know it. Now, your dad left your mom here with two little kids and a 300-acre farm. Now, you'd better stay at home and help your mother. And I'd look after this farm. It was a strange little town that was in February. I was going to stay around and help her. She didn't need me. We had some hard hands, and this farm could have been gone.
I wasn't very far away. But I made that as an excuse, and I'll go back to the university in the summer time. And I'm thinking that if I got away from school and stayed down on the farm, because through the summer I went home, I had to stay pretty. I did get drunk some, but I had to be pretty careful about Dad because he'd throw me out, and I wouldn't get no more money down at school, and I knew it.
So when I got drunk around home on the farm, I had to be very careful about him. And so I stayed around there. Then Mom said, well, all right, she'd rather go back to school. So I took that as an excuse, and I stayed around there. Well, up in April, I had a part of April, and one day I'm talking to her in the room, and I wanted a drink, and I had my pocket. So I just stepped in the other room. Of course, I wore a headband or something, and I closed the door right in her face.
Pulled my bottle out and started taking a drink, you know. Well, she just opened the door and looked in the house. She stood there like that for a minute and come out crying. She said, are you a drunkard? I said, yes, I guess I am. She said, well, I believe you're a bad girl. You already knew you wasn't going to live because the doctor told you. She said, I believe you're as bad as he is. Well, I said, almost, Mom.
She said, what are we going to do about it? I said, I don't know. Well, she said, I don't either. She said, well, your Dad and I went to the old school and hung out for four years. All you were going to retire was to be a drunkard. I said, I guess that's right. I said, I'll go down and join the army and get sober. Well, I won't go into that story. That was a long time ago. Mom left 13 years after I got sober.
And I was awful glad. But I went back over, and I'm going to make, I should have quit already. I went back over all those things that I had treated those people and I said, boy, you sure have been a hero. And you don't have very much left now. The rest of the time, you better start trying to do something about it and make up for some of those things that you've done towards people. So I said, well, Lord, I've had enough of this.
I don't want to get drunk anymore. I've had enough. According to what the doctor says and according to what I say, I don't have for him anymore. Days around here, I'm pretty well wrecked from every standpoint in the world. I'm wrecked. I don't have very much left to turn over to you, but whatever I, what I have left, I'm going to turn it over to you from now on. I'm not going to be the captain of the boat from now on because, boy, I've been running this boat now for a long time.
And I sure have made a wreck out of it. From now on, I'm going to try to find out each day instructions from you. I'm not going to get, when I do even pray, tell you what all the things that I want. You know, there's another thing that I ought to quit. Some awful lot of these prayers are almost sacrilegious that we do. For an hour sometimes, they'll tell the Lord what he ought to do, what they think the Lord ought to do down here in this world.
They'll just try it over and over again, tell the Lord what he ought to do all the time. He knows what to do. I'd like to spend a little more time asking the Lord that we might be worthy that we get some of these things that we're asking for. Like the woman told the little boy, he sat down and said his prayer. He said, Mother, don't you like that? Well, she said that was pretty good, but she said, why don't you spend a little less time telling the Lord what to do and a little, just the Lord for duty.
He'll let him tell you what to do. So I said, now instead of going ahead and running this thing telling you to come on and help me put this on and this over, I'm going to try to find out what you want me to do. I'm going to try to do it. I'm going to try to find out what your will is for me and I'll do the best that I can to carry it out. I know I'm human and I won't be able to do it all the time, but I'll keep on trying.
If I fall down, I'll go back, ask you again, because I don't want to drink anymore. I've had all this, I'm off. I've just had all I want and I won't quit. I've had enough. And I'm going to rely entirely upon you. When that old talk about drink starts coming on, I ain't going to care on that argument. Every time I started thinking about a drink when I was fine it stayed behind arguments. I shoulda, I shoulda.
And I could get more excuses somewhere other than why I should. Anyhow, whoever was carrying on the other side of that argument about I should was sure a winner
[01:10:00]
because he nearly always liked me. I said, Lord, when that argument comes up from now on I'm going to turn that argument over to you because that's one argument I always lost. And I'm going to let you handle that job and I ain't going to even start on the argument about it. I'll just say, well now, here, you take this problem over. And I've had enough. I don't want to do this anymore. Anything that I have to give up or anything I have to do, I'm willing to do and I'm in it.
I've said that before but I didn't mean it. Not that long. So when these fellas come back, I said, well, I've had enough. I don't want to get drunk and sick anyhow. And as I need to do it, I'll have to admit that I can't do anything about it because I know I couldn't or I wouldn't have gone through this. I do believe in that higher power and I already have gone to that higher power and asked for help and I'm willing to do it again here or any place in the world.
It doesn't make any difference. I'll never be ashamed to admit that I have to go and ask for that help any place where it might be. I've done that and I'll do it again. I don't know whether I did it or not but I told them I was willing to. They said, that's fine. Now there's one other thing you've got to do. You've got to go out and take that change off of somebody else. And that's what I'm doing here tonight.
I could have made it a lot shorter and quit. And I've kept you folks. And, but you know, these AAs get started talking. I went over to Adrian Meekins not so long ago and as I went along they told me this story. It's called I forget it every once in a while. Said there was one of these fellas up top going on and on. The crowd got restless and he pounded on the desk with a hammer and they're climbing, climbing down and got restless again.
This fella went on and on and he pounded again, not climbing, climbing down. They got restless again and he got sort of angry and he hit the desk real hard. Walked over here and said hit me again. Now, that was the AAs I invited and that's the way I've been going out and telling it. I haven't had much to it because I'm sort of afraid to. It's been worth too much to me. It's meant those 8 or 10 years of my life.
I know these last 8 or 10 years and they've been in good health and so on. And so I certainly think an awful lot of it because I've heard so many people say that they were happy and bereaved of following that program. Of the 12 steps they were added in as we went along and sort of learned. You can take those 5 that I gave you and pretty much spread them out and make 12 out of them. And that was what was done and I've heard so many people say that they were happy and bereaved of following that program.
And I know that there's a lot of people out that are happy and in homes and happy homes and I certainly hope we keep it simple along that line. And if you'll read this last reader grapevine you'll see the first article in there by Paul DeGree for whatever his name is. He said he was an atheist. He wasn't a drunkard but he learned. He said he was an absolute atheist. But he said by his association with AA he had become to believe in God and pray.
Now that's worth an awful lot to that man. That's worth an awful lot to him. And he said with the simplicity and the way that we went after it that brought him from complete atheism back to a place where he could pray to God. And I've heard so many people so many places all around over the country say this. I came in through AA solely for the purpose of sobriety but it's been through AA that I have come to know and most of you know how worthwhile that is.
That's the reason I hope we keep our AA program. I don't get angry because I particularly I because I don't feel too much responsibility myself. The only thing in this program that I have that's worthwhile that I can take the program on that somebody gave to me and whereby I have had the benefit to that I can take it on to them and give it to them but from now on it's between them and their higher power whether they make it or not.
There isn't any question about that. It's between them and their higher power whether they are able to make it or not. And so I and for that reason I don't get too much disturbed when I see these things breaking around because I'm very positive the foundation is that the program is on a good firm foundation and it's doing an awful pretty much good for it to disintegrate and