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Source: Chuck C – Chuck C – Last Recorded Talk ~ Nov 2, 1983 – Speaker Talk – Date Unknown.mp3 File: chuck-c-chuck-c-last-recorded-talk-nov-2-1983-speaker-talk-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:42:36
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To ask you if you can hear me. I couldn't hear me myself, so I didn't see how you could. My name is Seth Sweet and I'm an alcoholic. I'm awfully glad to be here tonight. I presume that this is the only society in the world where two of the principles could be Joe P. and Clancy I. If there aren't a couple of far away separate resources, I never saw one. Can you imagine that? Joe P. and Clancy, both very popular members of this particular group of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I think Joe's got on a red shirt tonight. Where are you Joe? Can't see you. But I think he's got on a red shirt. Had I known that, I'd have worn a red shirt. Clancy hasn't got a red shirt because he don't own one. It's Clancy's birthday. Clancy has no right to ever have a birthday in Alcoholics Anonymous. My God Almighty, what a change in 25 years' time. I knew 25 years ago that there was no way in the world that Clancy could ever get sober, let alone remain sober and become a world figure in Alcoholics Anonymous.
But he's done that, and he's done one hell of a lot of other things that I congratulate him for. He's high on my list, and there's no doubt about it. I congratulate him for. He's high on my list, and there's one time that I'd have bet you all the tea in China that he'd never even get sober. Never even get sober. He didn't have it. First, he's got everything, but it's not his fault. You see, he had a great deal of good fortune in marriage.
What a gal he's got there to work with him. Which reminds me that I'd better say something about mine, or she won't let me go home. My good lady's with me again tonight, thank God. It's been a little bit difficult lately for us to live together, because I've been feeling good. And I guess I'm not as easy to live with as I should be, if I were feeling better. But nevertheless, we're here, and we're here together.
And I'm pretty sure that like Clancy and his lady, my lady and I are pretty much in love after a lot of, lot of, lot of years. In this fellowship, too, in this fellowship of alcoholics and non-alcoholics, I have now 37 and a half years without one conscious desire for a drink,
[00:05:13]
or sedating, or tranquilizing pill of any kind. It's quite a while, but it's not long enough. It's not long enough. 37 and a half years. I've had two lives in that length of time. I had one life, the first 41 years of my activity in Alcoholics Anonymous. I had a life, and I woke up to the fact at about 41, 42 years, that I was a failure in every department of life. Failure in every department of life.
And I didn't want to be a failure in every department of life. I don't want to be a failure in any department in life. But I was. And my last little trip to the well lasted 28 days. I got drunk the 10th of December, 1941 or 2, someplace in there. The 10th day of December. And I came to the 18th day of January. Now, according to my count, that's 18 and 10, or 28 days. That's four. Four months. I think it is, isn't it? 28 days.
Four weeks, I mean, that's four weeks. God, I was getting old fast there for a minute. I got drunk the Friday before Christmas, 1945, and came to the 18th day of January, 1946. And I don't remember anything that happened in between. So, I'm very fortunate to be here, and very fortunate to be alive, and very fortunate to have been able to live now for all this last 37 and a half years without one conscious desire for a drink.
Without one conscious desire for a pill, a mind-changing pill of any kind. That's what we have in Alcoholics Anonymous. We have, I presume, at least in my opinion,
[00:10:01]
we have the finest formula for obtaining and maintaining sobriety for obtaining and maintaining sobriety that has ever been discovered. In all time, we've got it. How fortunate can we be? How very fortunate can we be that we can live and love and spend time in rooms like this together without killing each other and without having to go get a bottle. This is an amazing, amazing thing to me. I'll finish up my little four weeks last sojourn out there in the outside world outside world by telling you that I came to, as I did a minute ago, on the 18th day of January, 1946.
And from that day until right now, I've not had a drink nor have I had a desire for a drink. I looked at me that morning, the 18th day of January, 1946, and I was a failure in every department of life. Failure as a husband, father, businessman, man and drunk. And I knew it. And I said to myself, if I ever live to get out of this bed, I'll find AA. And I lived, and I found AA, and I've had it, and I've been with people like you now for the entire time, without one conscious desire for a drink.
And this, this is the miracle to me. It's not that I haven't had a drink, but it's that I haven't wanted one. And I'm a tongue-chewing, babbling idiot. Drunk, that's what I am. But I haven't had to have a drink or pill for all this time. That would be astounding enough if we didn't have Clancy here. Here we've got Clancy with a birthday tonight, 25 years. 25 years. No thanks, brother. No way. No way could that happen.
But it did. It did. No way could Clancy become, and you'll pardon me for talking a little bit, and crying a little, at the same time. Because I knew there wasn't a way under heaven that Clancy could get sober, let alone stay sober. He didn't have it. God did not have it. But he, But he's had it for all this time now. And furthermore, he's damn near touched the perimeters of the world.
[00:15:26]
I used to think I had him beat like hell in time, and also in intelligence, and also in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't think that anymore. Get back to the first thing I said tonight, that we have Joe P. And that isn't old Gideon Joe. I'm not talking about Gideon Joe. I'm talking about a very, very fine member, an erudite member. What does that mean? Ha! God, I got me a good word there. I don't want to forget that.
A couple of giants amongst men in Alcoholics Anonymous would be Joe P. and Fancy High. And there are a few hundred more of them right here in this room. I thank God that I'm one of you. And I hope that nothing ever happens that gets me any further from you people than I am right now. I happen to love this program. And I love its people. And I don't care. I don't care who knows it. This is the first time in four months that I've tried to make a little talk. I was grounded by my doctor. He wouldn't let me talk even though I wanted to.
Did you ever see an alcoholic that didn't want to talk? Even when he didn't have anything to say, he wanted to talk. But we've got it. We've got it here. And again and again and again, I love it. I've been going pretty fast lately with the Jews. I believe we are occupying their quarters tonight. They might come in any time and scatter us. Because there are a lot of them around here. But we've got some awfully good members of the Jewish race who are members of our society.
As many of you know, the name of God in Hebrew is Yahweh. Yahweh. That translates into English as that which is. That which is Yahweh.
[00:20:16]
And you is and I am. And God is what you are and what I am. And that's the reason that we have what we have. Yahweh. That which is. I don't believe that it's any easier to be a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous when you're a Jew than it is when you're not a Jew. I tried to make a pun a while ago on Joe P., who's one of your local members, and he's here tonight with a red shirt on, I think. I believe I noticed that. But we have a Joe P. down on Central Avenue. And he's a little dark around the edges.
And Joe P. said the cops used to just drive up alongside of him, you know, in the paddy wagon and say, get in Joe. They didn't even put him in. Get in Joe. And they'd wheel him off to the pokey. Well Joe's been a good member of this society for a long time now. Good member. I wish he were here tonight. Because I love the old rascal. He's almost as dark as I am. I mean, deviously dark. So what I would like to do for a few moments is to again tell you how great I treasure my relationship with you people and with people like Clancy and Joe P.
Now I don't think it's any better for you to be named Joe P. than it is to be named from Joe Smole, you know. But it's good to have a name that you're proud of and that you can use as your calling card in all politics tonight. Now for a little diversion. Long time ago there was a chap who lived in Bronx, New York. And his name was Roland. And Roland was a bad old drunk. And Roland got sober. And he got sober mainly, I think, because somebody said, told him and many of the rest of us, if you happen to be an alcoholic, something has to happen to you or you're never going to get out of it. And that something has to be a personally acceptable, conscious relationship with a God of your very own.
[00:25:25]
They said in the early days that if you were an alcoholic, you just couldn't even think about getting sober and staying sober without help from a power greater than yourself. You know, I believe this and I believed it all the time and I still believe it. And I have great confidence that we're going to keep what we've got. Because while I was in the hospital here a little while back, I had a kid come over and read to me. Every night he just showed up with a book. And he sat there and read.
And when he ran out of time, he put the book under his arm and left. And I never even knew his name. But he read to me for quite a while. And I noticed so many, many, many, many places during the chapters, say, from 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, where it kept telling us that we must have a power greater than ourselves. If we're going to, if we be alcoholic and if we want to stay sober, remain sober, we've got to have a, we've got to have help from a power greater than ourselves.
And I have no quarrel, I can find no quarrel with that at all. Because the only reason I'm not drunk right now, the only reason as far as I'm able to perceive that I'm not drunk right now is that there's nothing in a bottle or a pill or pot or acid that can do anything for me but tear me down. It can tear me down, but it can't build me up. And here's a point I want to make very long. I hear much now in our meetings about self-improvement.
Self-improvement. I get to thinking every once in a while that this thing's turned into a nothing in the world but a self-improvement society. And here they told me all the time that we weren't going to be able to make it without a power greater than ourselves. And I believe that to be true. I believe that to be true. And I like it that way. Because I like to think that I am a member of God's family of drunks.
And he's got a pretty big family. He's got a pretty big family. And they're meaningful, meaningful members of the human race. They're a credit to the human race, in my way of thinking. And I could sit up here and cry for the next 45 minutes about just one of you. And that's that 25-year birthday tonight. And I don't want it to be otherwise. Because, but for the fact that there's nothing in me that wants to drink, I would be drunk tonight.
Drunk Tonight, Because I Wasn't Any Good on My Own in Obtaining and Maintaining Sobriety.
[00:30:08]
I Was a Tongue-Chewing, Babbling Idiot Drunk, That's What I Was, Tongue-Chewing, Babbling Idiot Drunk. And by walking with, and talking with, and sharing with people like you, it hasn't been necessary for me to drink for a long time. And I am, again, eternally grateful for it. And I'm going to do what I can do to keep it that way. And I believe that I then have to maintain a working partnership with a power greater than I am. I believe that. And I don't find it something I don't want to believe. I want to believe it. Because I was never any good as a drunk. I never was any good as a drunk. I was a fainter as a drunk. Because I could not obtain and maintain sobriety until I was open for, and a part of, the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. So, I'm high on it. I think it's the greatest single thing that's happening in the world today. And that is the Alcoholics Anonymous program.
I'm proud to be here tonight, to help Fancy celebrate his birthday. I'm proud to be here. And hell, I wouldn't have gone around the block with that guy some years back. I wouldn't have gone around the block with him. He wasn't my kind of person. He was a bad boy. But he's something else now. He's something else. And I'm glad to be here to sort of help whatever way I can with his celebration of his 25th anniversary. Won't be very long now till I'll have my 37th.
Which I'm glad about. But I'm not, I'm not proud about it at all. Because the way it has happened to me is the way you people have taught me. To live. And to do the things that are suggested in our books that we might better get busy doing. Lest we don't make this thing at all. And I find it entirely, it's consuming in its interest to me. It's consuming. And I was so pleased to have the kid come in and sit down and read to me.
And so quick to see how many times it's mentioned in the chapters that he was reading to me about the necessity for us to have a car greater than ourselves. It says it so, so many times in chapters 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.
[00:35:00]
Between the lines, in the lines, behind the lines. It's all there. And there's no reason that any of us who are here tonight cannot look forward to a long period of survival. And it's not self-improvement. It's a personally acceptable conscious partnership with the Living God that made us in the entire business of living. Now the wonder of this thing is that it's one thing. It's one thing. We said a while ago that the Jewish word for God was Yahweh, which means that which is. That which is. So God is that which is.
And I don't find anything wrong with that. As a matter of fact, the proudest thing that I have, if I had anything to be proud of, would be that I love to think in terms of my father's God, our father's God. I love to think in those terms. I don't think, I don't think there's anything wrong with being in partnership with God. I think we're stepping up into a pretty, pretty high-class society when we are consciously aware of a relationship to a power greater than we are.
And I'm looking forward to a lot more days like this. I'm better than I was. I'm better today than I have been in several weeks. I guess it was four or five weeks ago they had me buried. Thank God it didn't take. That is as close as I want to get. Let them talk about it, but don't get me in there. And to tell you that I am so grateful tonight that I can't see, that I do have a personal contact with my very own God, and with you, the members of Alcoholics Unknowns.
A personal contact with you. I love you. I love you. That's what I do. And I find that it's a growing love, and it gets better all the time. Now that's all along that line. I don't want to talk much longer because I want to listen to Clancy for a little while. I don't even mind listening to old Bill Blake. He just told me tonight he got me back there off the, off of the runway, because he's got asthma, and emphysema, and oh, I don't know, I think he had about six other things that he's got.
Well, enough for me would be just this one. I'll sell mine cheap tonight. But I am glad, very glad, that Clancy asked me to say a few words over here. I wasn't going to talk.
[00:40:09]
As a matter of fact, I'm still, I'm still on a I have, I have a list. My doctor says it's not yet time for me to talk. I'm supposed to listen for a while longer, and maybe get back around to it after a while. But here I am, and I counted a great privilege and pleasure to count Clancy as one of my dear, dear friends, and his wife, Charlotte, as one of my dear, dear friends, and one of my wife's dear, dear friends.
And I don't know right now how well little Clancy's doing, but I suspect he could take his old man and stand him up and shake him down. But better yet, I know that we have a leader in Clancy, a guy that's pretty near touched all, well, all the states in the union. I don't guess there's one any place that he hasn't, that he hasn't had a part of. And many, many, many of the world's areas that Clancy has been able to serve, and serve well.
And again, I love the guy, and I love you. And I want you to keep coming back, and I want you to keep looking to see if I'm there. And if I'm not there, I want you to think and get me back in here wherever I am. God bless you. Thank you very, very much.