Audio
Transcript
Source: Pat O – Speaker Talk (1966) – 1966-05-14.mp3 File: pat-o-speaker-talk-1966-1966-05-14.mp3 Duration: 00:43:43
============================================================
The original and copy of this tape were both made by Hugh T. of Sacramento, California. This is a Central California Fellowship speaker meeting held on May 14, 1966. The principal speaker from Los Angeles, Pat O.. The running time, approximately 43 minutes. I'm an alcoholic and my name is Patrick O.. I can't really tell you how much being here means to me tonight. I've grown to love many, many of you here.
And though I have been away for two years, I've always been in touch. These are the things that make AA what it is. I don't come from America. I come, believe it or not, from Ireland. I come from Dublin. And that is a part of the country which is predominantly Catholic. And I, as you probably have noticed, I speak with a more predominant English accent than I do Irish. And coming from a part of Ireland that is predominant to Catholic, and I am not Catholic, I have finally found out why I'm an alcoholic.
And I think that's it. We, in Ireland, we don't use harsh terms. We have a soft way with the speech. And you'll never hear anybody referred to as an alcoholic in Ireland. They do over here with the Irish-Americans. But over in Ireland, we don't. We have different, softer terms. If a man is pretty drunk just for one day or so, we'd say, Ah, bless him, he has the softness on him today. And then if he is drunk about six days out of a week, we'd say, Ah, the wretched creature, he's got the weakness.
And then if he was like I was, I drank every hour of the day and night, and every day of the week, and every week of the month, and month of the year, they'd say, Ah, the poor fellow, he has the failing. So, I'm Pat O., and I have the failing. Before I get into my talk, I don't know whether there are any new people here tonight, or whether there are any old people who feel new. But if there are any new people, I'd like to say welcome home.
Here you'll find a place where people understand you. If there is a newcomer here tonight, you won't quite understand what I say now, but when I say that I know more about you right now, and you know more about me than my mother and father did, because you're an alcoholic, if you've admitted it, and so am I. And we have a knowledge of each other which no one else has. We have an understanding. And in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, you will find a way of life that's not new.
It's been with us way down through the years. It's been with us since the time of Christ, since the time of Buddha, before that. But it's been put into a form of understanding that we alcoholics can understand. The twelve steps which you understand and go to understand and love, they were in the Beatitudes. It's all been done before, but not for people like us. And to me, this is the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous, is that it's come in our time.
Because already, since Alcoholics Anonymous has been in existence, the sneering that would go on about a drunk has begun to cease. The same way that tuberculosis, not too long ago, was spoken of in rather hushed tones. Mental illness is still rather spoken about in hushed tones. Social diseases are still spoken about in rather hushed tones. Epilepsy, spoken about rather quietly. So was alcoholism, but it's not spoken about so quietly now.
It's coming out in the open.
[00:05:00]
And a lot of you, I'm sure, will disagree when I say one day, I don't think Alcoholics Anonymous will be known as Alcoholics Anonymous. You cannot keep a light under a bushel forever. There is too much good going on, and people walk tall, and they look you in the eye suddenly, after many years of not, and people say, what happened? And they say, he joined Alcoholics Anonymous. He did? Well, this is wonderful.
We people who talk, and I haven't purposely talked for quite a long time. I have gone into the back and sat and listened and learned and rethought and re-evaluated. I've been in the fellowship without a break for a long time. To me it's a long time. To others it's not so long. It's about 17, 18 years. And we have a way of caring in the fellowship, which no other group anywhere has. You'll hear the word used, I love, I love, I love, I love you.
You're my people. I'm at home. This is not so. Now anything I say is mine, in my opinion. I'm not saying this for AA, I speak for me. Love is a thing that is earned. And when it is earned, it's there. But to just get up and say, I love you. How can I love you? I can understand you, and I can care. I'll go across town, I'll go across the state, anywhere, to help a brother alcoholic. But until I get to know him, and until he works and I work, I cannot love.
We have this one word in the English language, love. For everything. I love my breakfast. I love the dog. I love my wife. I love the car. I love you. I love this. It's silly. The Greeks had three words. They had a word, agave, for a love of everything. Sunrises, sunsets, beer, everything. They had another word for an exciting, adventurous love. And then there was another word, eros, for the love that you give without any question, without any knowledge of maybe the person.
And this, this is the love that you will eventually find here. There was an old Chinese thing I read somewhere, and it was a little fish in the sea, and it said to its mother, what is the sea? And the mother said, before you were, the sea was, and when you are gone, the sea will be. You are in the sea, and the sea is in you, and thus it will forever be. In, outside, around, and about. And that's what we have.
We have this wonderful understanding, this passion, this caring, this caring. More than the love, this caring and this understanding. We who are privileged to be asked to speak should be very careful. We may be the only copy of Alcoholics Anonymous that some people ever see. And we should walk like we talk. I'm very careful about this. I don't say much about me. All I can say is this. I found a God-given way to stop drinking.
I have tried to practice the principles of AA in all my affairs, and I'm sober after a long time. I'm still sober. But I went away to places where I would hear people talk who I didn't know, so that if maybe they were carried away a little bit and weren't quite saying what maybe they should have said, I didn't know. We're inclined, when we've been around a while, and it's very easy to do this, and hard not to, to suddenly develop, or gradually develop, a form of AA of one's own.
If you look very carefully, it's not in the book. But one takes this and one forces it on somebody that's new or forces it on somebody that's having trouble. And you do it my way or else. And this ain't right.
[00:10:02]
It's in the book how it goes. In the olden days, I was going to say, in the older days, we were a little tougher, and we would say, put the cork in the bottle, get the book, read it, and listen. But be careful who you listen to. Grab yourself one of the old rocks and hang on. And it's still damn good advice. It's still damn good advice. You hear people say or write that AA is becoming a cult. It's becoming a religion.
I know a lot of people who say AA is their religion. This is fine, providing they don't become religious fanatics. Providing, again, they don't force it down your throats. Because AA actually is a gentle way of life, at last. The 12 steps are like stepping stones, and they're there for us, not us for them. Like the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The steps are made for us and not us for the steps.
So when somebody says, you have got to do such and such a step, show me where you have got to do such and such a step now. Do it as it comes easier to you. Take it gently. Do your inventory when? I've heard people say, do it now. The moment you get in, do your inventory. What do you remember? God has given us this wonderful thing of forgetfulness. When we come into AA, we have forgotten a great deal of the things we have done.
And this is why psychiatry and psychology, at the start in AA, can be very harmful. You go into an attic and there are these walls that are a little dirty, and you tear them down and you look and see what's behind, and it's pretty bad. So you try to put the walls back again, and you cannot. They don't ever go back quite right. But in God's time, not in ours, in God's time, he gives us back these memories.
So when we have been in a little longer, and we have settled and stopped bouncing a little bit, then, when it is comfortable, then we can start to take our inventory. Actually, we take an inventory every day of our lives, most of us do, without even knowing it. We check up on things during the end of the day, what we've done, how we've done it, maybe we can do a little better. People say, how do you pray, how do you meditate?
You can do this anywhere. It's just thinking. There's always talk going on about God's dead. I don't remember who said it, it wasn't me, but somebody said this to a man. He said, well, God's dead. And this man said, he is? Which God? And the fellow said, well, God's dead. He said, well, I don't know about your God, but mine isn't. I talked to him this morning. These are the little things that keep us together, because we've all come one hell of a long road to get here.
We laugh a little easier, we cry a little easier, because we've all been a little further into the valley of the shadow. And we have a fantastic understanding of each other. Loneliness is something that I don't think any other group of people anywhere in the world, as a group, know the meaning of like we do. It doesn't matter how many times during the day when we're creeping towards the end, somebody tries to be nice to you, somebody who loves you, and I mean love, they try to understand, they try to put their arm around you, they shake your hand, they give you a little kiss, any kind of way of saying, I want to help you.
And when you get home at night, to your little room or to your little house, and you're alone, you are absolutely alone if there's nobody there who does not understand, and nobody does understand unless they are one of us. And that is what we get when we come in here. We get the understanding of people who have been through the same thing. But what is AA for? Is it for us to come here and say, these are my people, I love them, I understand them, I'm not going to go out, I'm going to stay here for the rest of my life?
This isn't what Bill W. and the rest meant AA for. It was we who were marching out a step for the outside world. And AA is a clinic, a school, it's not a social society, though sometimes they try to make it so. Though sometimes they try to make it so.
[00:15:01]
It's a clinic where we learn how to walk and work with the people outside where we couldn't do it before. It's not a mixed retreat. God knows we have fun together, we have our meetings, but it does teach us how to be comfortable and how to go back out there where we couldn't before. And I'm very grateful for it. I get many, many laughs. You go to cocktail parties and you see these so-called social drinkers.
Have you ever watched them? They're wild. And they say we're insane. They, they, uh… They order drinks and they don't finish them. They eat, which is a frightening thing. I never ate and I did everything in my power to see that nobody else did. One word I would like to say to Mr. A.. Having been around and in medicine for many years, I think it would be a good idea, sir, if instead of checking the alcoholics and screening them, you screened the doctors.
Now, I was at a gathering of the Society and Chapter of the Los Angeles Medical Association not too long ago, and there'd be about eight, seven other couples. And I said to my wife, who I hope the next time we come, she will come with me. I met her at her first meeting. We were married three and a half months later, something one isn't supposed to do. And that was seven years ago and it's the best seven years I've ever had.
But before we went to this dinner, I said to Maggie, look, now, let's get this straight. No talk about AA, no talk about alcoholism, nothing. We'll call up Dr. Komar. He's a doctor from India and he's very excited about AA. And he always says, oh yes, my friend Pat, he's a very, very happy, very wonderful man. He doesn't drink at all. He's a member of the Alcoholics Anonymous. And I said, shut up. So I called him up and I said, now Dave, listen, there's some new doctors around and let's just keep it down to a dull thud and I'll get the drinks and nobody will be any the wiser.
We'll get our ginger ale, etc. So sure enough, the evening started off fine. I was introduced to a doctor, Dr. C. And we hadn't been talking five minutes when it got on to, what do you think? Alcoholism. And I'm playing it very dumb. And he tells me that he has a lot to do with alcoholics. And he cures a lot of them. And my eyes, my ears. And I said, really, do tell. Do tell. I said, how do you do it?
He said, well, we recommend that they attend a recognized religion. Recognized religion? Who recognizes it? How do you know? And he said, then with the administration of certain drugs. And I said, finally, what happens? He said, well, we have a great many cures. And I said, what about that thing called AA? He said, oh, stay away from that, God help you. I said, why? He said, well, it's like a religion.
It's like a religion. He said, it's a cult. They do a lot of harm. They don't recognize the progress of the MD. And they really do a lot of harm. He said, I had a case the other day. A girl I was treating. And he told me about her. And he told me where he was treating her. And I came up with her name. He said, do you know her? I said, yes, obviously I do. He said, why? I said, because my wife and I happened to put her into a place called Friendly House.
She was suffering from too much drugs. And he said, well, what have you got to do with Friendly House? And I said, I, and my wife looked around. I said, I happen to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and Good Standing for the last 17 years. So, I had lunch with this man about a week later. And at lunch, he, before lunch, he had four vodka straight over the rocks. At lunch, he had two more. And after lunch, he had two more.
And this is gospel truth. This man is the head of the medical clinic of alcoholism in Los Angeles.
[00:20:03]
And I said, are you going home now? He said, no. I said, are you going to the clinic? And he said, no, I don't go there until this evening. So, I said, as a patient or a doctor? I'll tell you his name afterwards. I'll tell you his name afterwards. And they're very free and fancy with their handing out of drugs, you know. The pill is the answer to so much. Librium, phenobarbital, and on down the line.
And I've seen people come into Alcoholics Anonymous. Alcoholics. I, by the grace of God, am just a plain, ordinary alcoholic. I never got interested in pills. I hardly knew that there were pills. There were, but I didn't really think about them. I could never see this business of taking pills. Taking a drink, yes. But you hear of social drinkers, but you never hear of social pill takers. You know, going to a nice, quiet bar and put a pill in your mouth and take a drink.
There was no sort of kick to it. But more and more, where I come from, the pill is the problem. The addict is the problem. More and more and more so, so that sometimes you can go to meetings and hardly hear the word alcohol mentioned. And this is pretty frightening because I don't understand, not having been one, I don't know how to help. So I have to turn them over to another pill person. But this addiction of pills, if it could be just explained to the new people or to the people that are still playing with them, that they are more deadly and more dangerous than any alcohol you've ever put in your system.
The withdrawals from even Milltown can be excruciating. The pill is worse than the alcohol. Now I've got some of that little stuff off my chest, I'll tell you a little bit about myself. When I came into AA, I was only promised one thing. That if I followed the precepts of AA, I need never take another drink. I had stopped drinking before, I think we all have. I think we all have. There are people now all over the United States who've stopped drinking.
They're in prison or they're in hospitals or somewhere. And when they come out, they'll start again. But in AA we found a way where we don't, we don't have to start drinking again. And the only thing that I was told I had to do was I had to stop doing some of the things that I had been doing. And stop talking about some of the things I had been doing and stop living the way I had been living. I was born in Dublin and I was in Europe for a while and I went back to Dublin and studied medicine and took my degree at a place called Guy's in London and went back, practiced in Ireland.
And then I went over to Germany and I was mixed up in biochemistry and the war was declared and I was a citizen of the Republic of Ireland. And I was sort of interned and then the next thing I knew was I was in the German Navy. And from the German Navy I was shoved into the Wundersee Bolton, which is the submarines. And eventually I couldn't practice medicine. I ended up as a commandant. At the end of the war we got a few of us over to China and I became a medical missionary.
Medical missionary in China on down into India and eventually the United States where I came into Alcoholics Anonymous. And it was when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous that I had to stop telling all these interesting facts that I have just told you because not one of them is true. Not one of them is true. I'd like to have been a doctor. And I so nearly was. When I was a very young man, there's always a little germ of truth in these statements that the alcoholic makes.
Why does he make them? I tell you these things. Sometimes people don't laugh at that. I do, thank God. But sometimes they don't because it has its pathetic side.
[00:25:01]
Why did I do it? Why did I tell these stories? Actually it was because I was lonely. I wanted some attention. I was insecure. I was shaky. I was nothing. I wanted to be something but I didn't want to work at it. And I went to a fortune teller once when I was very young. And this fortune teller who happened to be a new biologist but for some reason looked at my hands. There was something wrong with him, you know.
And he looked at my hands and he said, you have magnificent hands. And I said, I have? He said, yes. He said, you have the hands of a surgeon. And it was the most wonderful thing I'd ever heard. I went around like this for days, you know. Already, you know, scrubbed. Um, I didn't get my degree until one day I walked into a bar in London and they're a bit more polite over there. They give you a full rank.
They don't say, hi doc. They say, and he did say, good morning doctor. And I looked around and I was the first person in there. I was always the first person in there. And I said, good morning. And I practiced there for about two years. And you'd be surprised how much I learned about medicine. I know a lot about medicine. My wife, when she was very, very drunk, which I never saw her because I met her on her first meeting, she was saving to have a lobotomy because she thought she was a complete nut.
And if I'd met her in a bar at that time, I would have done it. So now I'll tell you what I say from now on is true. I still find it hard to be completely honest. Not in the big ways of robbing banks and things like that, but in the little things. Not long ago, the phone rang and an old lady said, her voice said, are you Patrick O.? And I said, yes. She said, from Ireland? I said, yes. She said, well, we have a little group down in Santa Monica and we would be so delighted if you would come and talk for us.
And I said, well, when? And she said, about half past two on Thursday. And I said, bless your heart, I didn't even know what she wanted me to talk about. She didn't say anything about AA. I'd talk about anything, you know. So I said, well, on Thursday at 2.30, I'd love to, but I can't because I have a very important meeting. I have to be with some officials of the State Department and I've got to be there.
And she said, I'm sorry, and that was that. I didn't lie, but I sort of dragged it out a bit. I would have been more honest if I'd said, I'm going to pick up my unemployment check. These are the little things that we do, you know, we slide around corners. At least, I don't say we do, I do. I do. I'm better now. I don't get an unemployment check, so it's easier. And I have to catch myself in many little ways like this.
Put the reins on. Anyway, I was born in Dublin and I went to school over in England. And before I went to school there, like kids do, I wondered where I came from. And I asked my parents, my father was a professional soldier. And I remember asking my mother, where did I come from? I was, I don't know, three, four, something. And like they tell kids, oh, you were found under a gooseberry tree, or you were found under a cherry bush or a cabbage or something.
They told me I was found in a sack in the streets of Dublin. And I thought no more about it, but as I grew older, I began to wonder. Because I didn't seem to fit in with any of the family. I didn't really seem to look like any of them. And I felt odd. I felt out. And I had two brothers and a very, very happy childhood. The only thing wrong with my childhood was that it went on for 39 years. But when I went over to England, I didn't fit in at all.
And though I speak like English, and maybe I look, I don't know, but we're very different to the English. We're a little quicker. I didn't, I wasn't happy at school in England and I didn't fit. And for years… and I didn't fit, and for years, until talking this over just recently with my wife, I put
[00:30:01]
it down to the fact that I came from Ireland and went back to Ireland at the end of every semester, and I realize now it was nothing to do with that at all, there were many other boys from Ireland there, but it was the beginning of the alcoholic personality, the beginning of the not fitting. I wanted to be recognized, I wanted to be invited to do things, but I didn't want to join, I don't think alcoholics are joiners, drunks are joiners, they'll join anything, they'll join funeral quarters, they'll walk behind funerals, they'll go anywhere, do anything, but the alcoholic is usually a loner, and I was a loner.
I went into, from there I went into the army, I had a commission, and I did a thing that is pretty hard to do in the British army, or it was then, I drank my way out. The English do some things very well, one of them is they drink very hard and they drink very well, and I at that time drank very hard and I drank very badly, and I was pushed out. I wasn't exactly drummed out, I was sort of quietly tambourined away one afternoon, and I was gone, and I had to find some other thing to do.
Now looking back now, I know that my father was an alcoholic, he died of hardening of the blood vessels and alcoholism, and I can remember as a child, my mother, long before medicine this was, and long before AA, she knew about alcoholism, and I used to hear her say, oh God it's a disease, it's a cursed disease, and this is what she was talking about, and she was right, it's a disease, thank God it's a disease, I know what's wrong with me.
After I left the army, I still drank heavily, but by now I had acquired what most of us do in, who have come into AA, there's a period of our life when we drink like, we can drink anybody under the table, and I had this period. I came over to the United States before World War II, and I worked in New York, and drank harder and harder and harder and harder. I worked at night, so I had the day to drink, and it was while I was there that I began to start doing the things which I despised in other people, who drank, the falling around, the forgetting, the hearing the phone ring, I always, I still hear phones ring, I hear the phone ring and I pick it up, and there'd be nobody there, and then I thought I'd try and surprise it, it wouldn't ring and I'd pick it up and there'd be somebody there.
That was worse. I thought if I got away from New York, I never drove a car, from the moment I landed in America, I figured out that gasoline and alcohol don't mix, so we're very intelligent people, alcoholics. I made the great sacrifice, I decided I'd never drive. Now anybody else would have just said, well I won't drink, but it never entered my head. I just never drove. I saved a lot of lives, but I never drove, and the drinking got to the point where I thought I've got to get out of here, and somebody said well why don't you go to California and work there, there's blue skies and there's not much drinking, ha ha ha.
So I went down to California and the drinking got worse and worse and worse. I thought if I go to sea, maybe that'll stop it. So I went to sea in my own way, I had my own fishing boat, and I think that saved my life because I drank so much more on the fishing boat that it brought me to AA much quicker. Now all the time that I'm doing this, I know there's something wrong. I never lost a belief in a higher power, and I used to pray to God, if the phone would ring, I'd say God don't let it be another job, don't let it be a job, because I wasn't capable of doing any work.
I could work on the boat, because I had a skipper and we went to sea. But I knew there was something wrong, and I knew sooner or later it was going to hit me and I was going to die. One day I was in a little practical joke shop in Santa Ana. I don't know why I was in there, I don't particularly like practical jokes. And I saw a pin on the man's lapel and I asked him what it was. And he said it's an AA pin, and I said what's that?
And he said well when you've been a member of Alcoholics Anonymous for a year, down there they give you a pin with a little stone in it. And I said that's wonderful. And there was a strange look in his eye, because he must have known, because I wasn't feeling any pain, but he must have known then, you know, here's one, because a glint came in
[00:35:00]
his eye and he started to give me his full pitch, and he told me about losing his business and his family and his wife and his children. And eventually he put his hand in his pocket and he said now this is an imaginary little seed and I want you to take it, and he said one day you're going to meet somebody who is an alcoholic, and not that you can help them, or that you ever probably need help, but take this little seed and tell them that there is a place called Alcoholics Anonymous and that they can go there.
When I got outside, I thought this is for me. Not now, in twenty years time maybe, but I'll remember this. And it's strange how things hurry up suddenly. And this is what I call the time when God really took a hand in things. I went back to Newport, where the boat was, and I had a call to meet some people up in Los Angeles. I got up there, and it was a trick to get me up there to meet some people from AA.
And this man told me that he wanted me to read the book, that he had a drinking problem, and would I take the book with me. And I said no, but I know all about AA, I heard about it the other day. And I said maybe in two years time, and I'd shopped from twenty years to two years in about twenty-four hours. I got back to Newport, and I found that my ex-wife had been taken to hospital and was dying, and I wasn't allowed to go and see her, so I got on the boat and just holed up and drank.
Eventually I got to the state where I couldn't make the run, I could hardly walk. I was taken off that boat by some non-alcoholics and put in their home. And I woke up, or came to, I didn't know, I hoped to, and I saw the form of a woman in my room. And I thought in a strange kind of hallucinatory way that it was death. And she said, would you like to talk to some people from Alcoholics Anonymous? And I said I can't talk, my lips were all gone.
She said well would you listen if somebody comes to see you? And I said yes. And later on in the day a man I knew very well came to see me, who I used to do a little business with, and I said no, not now. And he said I thought you might like to hear about AA. And I said you? And he said yeah. And I couldn't believe it. And he started to talk, and I knew that this was what I'd been looking for always.
In all the books, and in all the conversations, and all the things, very simple, very easy, instead of being the end of the road, here was the beginning of a whole brand new one. He said you should really go to hospital. I didn't tell you, I was in hospital twice, not sanitary, but I was in hospital twice with alcoholism. And this time they took me to hospital for a little while, and I weighed 115 pounds.
And good luck. I was in there for a little while, and eventually I couldn't walk. By the time I could walk I went up to Los Angeles, and I called my friend who had tried to get me to join. And I told him, I said you know I'm no longer a civilian. And he said it was about time, you going to a meeting? And I said I don't know, will you come and get me? And he said no, why the hell should I? He said there's a good one down on Sunset near Gower and Beachwood, if you can get there, I'll see you there.
And I slammed down the receiver. And then I thought of all the people that had come to see me down on the boat and on this other house, and I thought you're mad, here's a chance. So I found the meeting, I sort of tottered there, I still had a sort of wino totter. But I got there and there was a wonderful woman with white hair, and one eye which kind of looked like me. And I couldn't believe that these were the people of Alcoholics Anonymous who were going in.
They were so squeaky clean, and their eyes were shiny, and they looked so nice. And I thought these are the watchers, these aren't the alcoholics, these are the people who come to watch, so I'll pretend I'm a watcher. And eventually I crept up to this woman and I said, is this where the people of Alcoholics Anonymous come? And she said, hey, come on in boy, you're home. And God bless her soul, she died the other day, 86 years old.
And she put a great big bowl in my hands and she said, take it. And I thought, what in the name of God do I do with this? It's either to collect money in, or to be sick in.
[00:40:06]
So I stuck it in here, and went in doubt, go to the boys room, and I did, and the fellow said, you look worried son, what's the matter? I said, this. He said, well what about it? I said, well what is it? He said, it's an ashtray. And that, that was my life, right then, everything I would build up, it would be an ashtray. And it still is, you know, I worry about things that aren't really there. I wave to somebody and they walk right by me and don't take any notice, and I think, what have I done?
They haven't got their glasses on, you know. It's these things you build up, you know, you worry, you worry, you worry, people are going to like me, people are going to like me. It's pathetic. But I went in and that was my first meeting, and I remember there was a girl who spoke, I don't remember what she said, but she was shiny, she was shiny. And then there was another, a man spoke. And he had been a great lawyer, and he went right down Skid Row, and he climbed up again.
And he had Arabian horses, and I thought, Arabian horses, I'll have Arabian horses, I don't ride, but I'll have Arabian horses. And then I heard what I hear tonight, and it's the greatest gift that an alcoholic can have apart from his sobriety. And that's the gift of the sound of laughter. When I heard it, I realized I hadn't heard laughter for a long, long time. And I knew I hadn't laughed myself for a very, very long time.
And there it was, and I thought, I don't know what these people have, but whatever they have, I want it. If they can laugh like that, and not at people, but with people, I want it. And I went back to Newport, and started, and I've been with it ever since. We mustn't let this thing get away from us. Bill W. said, the only way AA can be destroyed is from within. So we must watch ourselves, and not become too big.
And when I see a meeting like this, I remember a meeting not too long ago, a year ago, I spoke at in Santa Monica, and I went in and started to speak, including myself, there were five. And when I finished, there were four, and one was strumming a guitar. And that kind of whittles me down to size. But for the newcomer, it's all here for you. You have to work, there are those twelve steps, and the principles, and try to practice them in all your affairs, every day.
Sometimes you'll be fine, and other days you'll slide back a little bit, but the next day you'll come forward. Always try, and it's there. And you'll find your sobriety, and you'll find your God, and you'll find yourself. And God love you all. Thank you. Thank you.