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Source: Clancy I – 2011 Woodstock of the South @ Buford GA – Speaker Talk – Date Unknown.mp3 File: clancy-i-2011-woodstock-of-the-south-buford-ga-speaker-talk-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:03:30
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My name is Clancy I., and I'm an alcoholic. I have, over the years, through no fault of my own, gotten some bad imaging. One is that I'm sarcastic, or I'm kind of a brittle guy, or smart-aleck, and I'm not. Inside, I'm a softie. I really am. And I was just thinking tonight, you know, Bill, if they told me I had one day left to live, I'd fly here to Georgia. I'd ask you to get up on the podium and talk.
It would make that last day seem like forever. Never get smart with the person who has the microphone after you, Bill. I keep telling you that. But anyway, that is true. I sponsored a guy named John Frankenheim, a very famous director. He directed Days of Wine and Roses, among other things. And when he died, I went to the funeral, and I put my arm around his window, and I said, Evans, I'm sorry you've lost your lover, your friend, your companion, but God damn it, I've lost my career.
Anyway, enough of that. Anyway, I'm here tonight to talk a little bit about seconds and inches, which are the funny little things that have happened to put us here. You know, we have a remarkable weekend this weekend. Some great speakers and people who are authorities in the field of AA, if there are such things as authorities. Tonight, a little later, we'll hear from one of the, probably the prime historian of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Borchardt.
And this really is a, you look at that program, there's no program, no hour you want to miss tomorrow. I'm sorry, I missed the butterfly meeting this morning. I was lucky enough that my plane was late. No, I'm just kidding. Some of my best friends are albatross. I wouldn't want my daughter to marry one. But, at any rate, I'm here to tell you just a little about some of the things, not any much of great news, but maybe if you're new, I know when I was new, I didn't understand AA very well.
You know, you hear all these facts, and you hear what did this happen and some of this happened, but you really don't see how they fit in or how they play together. That's really what I'm just primarily to do. You know, first of all, the thing to think about, there seems to be types of alcoholics, although there really aren't. It seems like there are. There seems to be a type of alcoholic who drinks a great deal, maybe gets addicted to alcohol, and just has a terrible time, and something dreadful happens that threatens his security.
Maybe he loses a job or a family or a wife or something, and he quits, and he never drinks again. And I know several people like that who've done that. My mother's Uncle Leo was an example of it. It was always held up to me. Why can't you be like Uncle Leo? He would drink the way you did, but he stopped for his wife. And there's another type of alcoholic, which, I mean, these same people that are able to stop, they are the people for whom treatment centers were originally created, the physical addiction.
Physical addiction, you know, a great many alcoholics today are not and have not ever been physically addicted, but you're bad alcoholics. And there are people who are physically addicted who are not alcoholics of our type. They get it from drinking long enough to get that addiction in their system. And the first treatment centers were really created to get these people off alcohol without the side effects.
Things like DTs and hallucinations and all these things, they are withdrawal symptoms from alcohol addiction. And they did that. In fact, there's a famous hospital up in Seattle called Schick Shadel that advertises, we will cure your alcoholism in 30 days. And that includes follow-up meetings. And that's true, they do it. They have a long list of names of people they've helped. That's this type of alcoholic.
There's another type of alcoholic who seem to be exactly the same. Some are addicted, some aren't. They come down, something happens that threatens their security, they lose a job or a family or someone bereaves them, and they quit. But they always drink again.
[00:05:00]
And these type of people have baffled people for 4,000 years of written history. 4,000 years ago they were writing out these people. What's wrong with these people? They stop drinking and they promise they're going to stop? I bet there aren't very many people in this room tonight who haven't had the experience of looking in the face of someone who loves you and see that face of disappointment again.
Oh, how could you? You promised. And you were doing so well. And now you're drunk again. Why would you do that? And sometimes tears roll down their cheeks. And what's the answer to that? Leave me alone. Just leave me alone. Get off my back. Because I don't know why either. These are the types of alcoholics that have baffled people. They always go back to the treatment centers with tears of sincerity rolling down their cheeks.
I learned my lesson. And just pretty soon they're drunk again. They quit with their hands on Bibles. They quit with their hands on caskets of dead friends. And they always drink again. That's the type of alcoholic that winds up in rooms like this. People who cannot stop drinking. And that's why alcoholics and alcoholics is such a unique thing. When you see someone stop drinking and don't need any help, they're not the alcoholics of our type, I'll tell you.
Alcoholics of our type don't stop. We keep going. And there's never been any effective treatment for all these years. We've tried them with the law, legal things, and doctors, and psychiatrists, and export. England used to send them out of the colonies, send them to Australia, get them out of here. And everything they could think of to try. And nothing was ever successful. Even when I was a little boy.
Now I'm old, but I'm not 4,000 years old. When I was a little boy, I didn't know it, but growing up in Wisconsin, I didn't know it. Even by that time, the best treatment they had was the Keely cure, where they put drugs in your alcohol and you drink it and get sick. Eventually you wouldn't want it anymore. Do you want another drink? No, I don't think so. Good. Another cure. And there was no answer anywhere.
And that's why it's so remarkable that this organization ever occurred. And more importantly, it's really remarkable that it ever stayed, because it should have ended a number of times. And we all know the story in 1930 about this wealthy family in New York who had a son who they were grooming to take over their company. He was in his mid-30s. He was a boy. But he had a funny situation. He seemed to get terribly nervous, which would bring about a fit of drinking.
And they didn't know what it was causing. They could only cure this nervousness. They thought they could help him. So they contacted the best psychiatrist in the world, Dr. Freud. And Dr. Freud refused to take the case, which is the first break we ever got. So he's sitting here tonight drunk and saying, but I dreamt I was sober. So they got his colleague, Dr. Jung, his ex-patient, his ex-student. And the main arrangement was for Roland to come over and see him in Zurich.
And he took him to Zurich. Two guys brought him over to Zurich in 1930. I'm looking forward. I'm going to go speak in Zurich in January. I'm going to find Dr. Jung's hospital and pee on it. But I'm not judging him. I'm just going to have a pee right then. But Dr. Jung apparently put him in his hospital. There's some talk about whether or not that actually happened. But they put him in the hospital for a year.
And he worked with them to break through the psychic barriers that were keeping him in this bad mood. Finally got him done after a year. They said, Roland, I think you understand the gravity of the problem now. You may go back home. I think you won't be troubled again. And so he went home. He stopped in Paris. Some wealthy friends of his family had a dinner for him. They toasted him with a glass of wine.
And three days later, he was face down drunk again. And they couldn't understand why. He didn't have any fit of nerves. They said, he just got drunk. So they took him back to Dr. Jung. And Dr. Jung said, he can't come back in. They said, why? He didn't mean any harm, doctor. He said, I know that. But I realize now that I've misdiagnosed his case. I thought he had deep psychological problems I could help him with.
But I realize now that he's known as a chronic alcoholic. And to the best of my knowledge, there is no effective treatment for his condition today in the world at any price. That was 1931, not all that long ago. And Roland goes, what does this mean, doctor?
[00:10:01]
He said, what it means, Roland, is that you must either keep yourself confined voluntarily or involuntarily. Or you almost certainly will intermittently drink to excess until you die or go mad. Kind of bad news. And he said, are there any exceptions at all? And Dr. Jung said, what is my study of the literature? I've seen a couple of cases where they report some involuntary psychological reversion, which they describe sometimes as a spiritual experience.
But I've never seen one. And I've never known of anyone who's seen one. He said, I would think your chances of being better of being hit by lightning than having this involuntary spiritual reversion. So Roland came back this time and he he didn't stop for dinner in Paris. And he got on the ship. And I guess on the ship on the way home, he did something that all of us have to do somewhere along the line, whether we realize it or not.
He surrendered to the fact that he was helpless. And he came back and he knew he was going to die drunk. He didn't know what to do about it. And he wrote later, I wanted to stay sober as long as I could so my parents would have a pleasant memory of me when I died drunk. And there was he looked around and he was a Vesterman in the Presbyterian Church already. So he didn't wasn't looking for much. But there was something happening just by coincidence then.
In 1908, a Lutheran minister up in Pennsylvania came to the conclusion, we Lutherans know about these things, that Christianity was getting too loose. They were losing their drive. They're not like the people of the first century who were willing to be crucified for their faith and burned upside down. And so he started an organization called the First Century Christian Association. And he didn't get a lot of a lot of fellows coming in.
I don't want to be crucified quite yet, Reverend. I'll give you a call. But he didn't really want to be crucified. But after that, it kind of filtered along. Let me tell you an interesting story about Pennsylvania as long as I'm here. Before I got sober, I don't know if you ever heard of the Dunkards. They were part of the Amish in Pennsylvania, very strict part of the Amish. I was in Pittsburgh waiting for a bus and I was drunk.
And the bus stopped and I dropped my money and I picked it up and I accidentally got some leaves and sticks dropped in the fare box. I went to sit down. The only seat open was next to this very tall man with a black hat and a black coat and a white shirt, big beard. I sat down. I tried to be nice. I said, what are you supposed to be? He said, I am a Dunkard. I am a Dunkard pastor. I said, that's funny. That's what the bus driver just called me.
That may have happened. I don't remember exactly. But anyway, after the First World War, he went over to England and tried to peddle it over there. And oddly enough, the students at Oxford University just all took it. Oh, that's wonderful. That's just what we're looking for. They just enveloped it so much so it became known as the Oxford Group. And by the late 1920s, he brought it back to the United States.
It now had the appreciation, the approval of Oxford University. So little groups have set up all over the country. And it really evolved into groups of really the better types of people gathering in one another's homes to discuss how they could enhance their values to God and what God could do for the spiritual concepts. And in 1931, it was at the height of its power almost, or the height of its fame.
And Roland saw this. He thought, well, maybe I'll go there. I don't know what they've got, but maybe they'll help me. So we went to the Oxford movement, and he thought it was just great. He loved it. He did it, got along fine, just did wonderful. And his family was so pleased. They eventually made him president of the company. By 1933, 1934, his family said, Roland, you've done more than we ever dreamed you could do. We're so proud of you.
Why don't you have a little vacation? Go up to Vermont to our summer home we used to go to when we were a little boy. And spend a couple weeks and just relax. You certainly have it coming. He said, okay. So he arbitrarily took the time to go to Vermont. And that's another one of the many miracles here. If he would have gone two weeks later, we would not be here. He just happened to be there by coincidence.
to be there, by coincidence, when one of his childhood friends came over and said,
[00:15:02]
you know Roland, one of our childhood friends, Ebby, is in deep trouble drinking, I know you quit, would you want to talk to him? He said, sure, I'll talk to him. So he brought him over, he tried to describe the theory of the Oxford Movement, to find a power greater than yourself, Ebby, I don't want to hear that religious crap, Roland, come on, what's happened to you? And away he went. And the next day he got drunk again and got arrested for driving his car into somebody's house, and just a terrible scene, the kid came back, the friend came back and said, Roland, could you come to court, talk to the judge, he's my father, but he won't listen to me, but he'll listen to you because he knows your family.
Come on. Roland said, I'll give it a shot. And he went over there and Roland said, you know, I used to drink too and I found help in the Oxford group, and if you would release him to my custody, I'll take him to New York and help him, and the judge said, only because it's you, Roland, I would not do this for anyone else, but I know your family. You take Ebby to New York, but if he comes back here, he's going to go to the penitentiary.
So away Ebby and Roland went to New York, and Roland put them in a mission on Lower Broadway and he went to Oxford meetings, and he wasn't quite thrilled by them as Roland had been, but they were better than the Vermont penitentiary. And after a few months, Roland popped by and said, Ebby, you know, it's time to testify. What do you mean, testify? Well, when we find a new faith here, we find someone else and tell them about it, we testify to our belief.
Ebby said, I'm not going to testify. That's embarrassing. He said, you want to go back to Vermont? No, I believe I'll testify. He said, who can I testify to? And he happened to think this other drunken puke that he knew as a kid, used to be a big shot in New York, now a drunken bum living off his wife, the last he'd heard, just a no good nothing, he said, I'll testify to him. He won't even remember it the next day.
So he got a hold of Bill Wilson in Brooklyn, made arrangements to go see him. Our book picks up the story, and now for the rest of the story, Bill goes to the door, there's Ebby, sober, clean cut, he said, Ebby, you look wonderful, I've got religion. So he came in, sat down, I heard Ebby talk, the only talk he ever gave at a big convention that I know of was the 1960th International Convention, because he never stayed sober.
That's just an interesting little story. Ebby never stayed sober. A year after, time after he got drunk, and finally, Bill took him to an old guy down in Dallas, who has theoretically had a great deal to do with helping drunken newcomers. And he kept him sober for seven years. And Bill was so happy, he had him speak in the International Convention in Long Beach in 1960. And he spoke at that convention, and everybody loved him, but he went back to Texas, he told his friends, he told me about it, I mean, he didn't, the friend told me, that he was really upset.
He said, that damn Bill got all the attention over there, and I'm his sponsor, I should have gotten more attention. And he brooded about that, took a few pills to tide himself over, was drunk again. Bill came down and got him, took him to New York, put him in a home, where he died. But you know, here's the man that carried the message, never could stay sober himself. And I don't know if Roland ever stayed sober or not, there's a lot of talk about whether or not he died drunk in 1944.
But anyway, I heard him talk in San Diego, and he talked a little bit further, he took it a little further. He said, he sat at the kitchen table, talking to Bill, and Bill just drank as fast as he could all the time he talked to him. That's really great, Ebi. And that made Ebi cross. So the thing Bill never mentioned in the book, Ebi came back three days later, and he had the Oxford group closer with him.
Mr. Wilson, I want to talk to you about the Oxford group. Bill Wilson did what any decent person would do, got drunker than ever. Oh, that's great, God damn you. That was the end of that testimony. Then in November, or in October, I suppose, the late October, I don't know the exact dates, but Bill got thinking about, he really treated Ebi badly. Ebi was trying to help him, and he didn't, you know, he should have at least acted better.
So he determined to go over and see Ebi and his mission and apologize. So he went over there to see Ebi.
[00:20:02]
He had to build up his courage along the way, got a little drunky poo, and got to the mission, and Bill, Ebi wasn't there. So he gave a short sermon anyway, just to help the people, staggered on down the street, and shortly thereafter, he was back in the hospital again. And this time, it was a serious thing. Dr. Silkworth, his doctor, called Lois and said, Mrs. Wilson, you know, I have, I'm sorry to tell you this, but your husband's back in the hospital, and I'm afraid this may be his last time here.
I don't believe he'll survive another one. And she was panicking, and she said, oh, oh my gosh. She called Ebi at the mission and said, could you go up and see Bill? He may be dying. So Ebi took a couple guys and went up there and saw him, saw him a couple times, I guess. Try to tell him about the oxford group and finding a power within yourself. But Bill wasn't very responsive to that. Then one night, in the middle of the night, as most of we all know from that story, Bill woke up afraid, terrified, thought he might be dying, cried out, if there's a God there, show yourself.
And he said, suddenly the lights came on in the room, without anybody turning them on, and the wind blew through closed windows. He said, I'm going crazy. I've snapped. I'm crazy. Oh my God. And pretty soon the lights went down and the wind stopped. He told the doctor about the next morning, he said, doctor, did I go crazy? And the guy looked right in the eye and said, no, you didn't, Bill. I don't know what has happened to you, but whatever you got, hang on to it.
And you know, the interesting thing about that, there's always naysayers and doom criers. Some years after that, some of the people who couldn't believe a success found out that Bill had been treated in the hospital for detoxed with a drug that sometimes brought about hallucinations. So they spread the word that the spiritual experience was really a hallucination. But thank God nobody, but even if it were, what do I care?
Because it changed Bill's life and that's not a bad hallucination to have. Well, I'm sorry, Bill had a hallucination, I'm going to go get drunk. But anyway, Bill believed it and I believe it. And you're going to believe it, you hear me? So he got out of there, got out of the hospital, went to the Oxford group, he associated that, that's what it is, the Oxford group. He knew he had a calling to help drunkards like Ebi had helped him.
And he went to the Oxford group every day for months. Take the bus, subway over from Brooklyn to sometimes Manhattan. He'd pick up street drunks along the way to help them. Here's these nice people sitting in their nice little circle talking about Jesus. I believe you're vomiting out of my shoes, sir. And sometimes you'd take them home at night when they had no place to stay and it was all very wonderful.
And he just gave them all, he just, God had appointed him a spokesman to help drunkards. And he got up one morning about six months afterwards and he realized the guy he brought home the night before had left early and probably stolen the coffee pot to sell for wine. He watched his wife Lois get up, who had been a pert little society girl when he married her and was now old before her time, getting gray, a young lady, putting on her old clothes, putting on her sweater with a patch on the sleeve to go to work in a cheap department store all day long so she could get enough money to pay the rent so he could run over the Oxford group and do no good whatsoever.
And he had a terrible wave of remorse apparently and he said, Lois, I want to apologize to you. I thought I had some calling to help drunkards but I've been helping people every day for six months and not one person has stayed sober and I'm done doing it and I'm going to get a job somehow. I'm going to get you out of that damn apartment store and I'm going to make it up to you honey, if it's just shoveling dirt, I'm going to make it up to you honey and I'm not going to try to help anybody anymore to hell with them, it doesn't work.
Not one person has stayed sober. And right then your life and mine hung by a thread about that big. And she turned to him and said something that changed the course of history. I had lunch with her about 40 years ago in Connecticut at a convention and I said, Lois,
[00:25:02]
how did you ever think of that answer? My God, you changed the course of history. She said, I don't know, it seemed obvious to me. She said, not one person has stayed sober and I said, you did, oh yeah. That's why old timers don't have much hair in front, you just go through, oh yeah. So he decided to keep going but he wanted to see what he was doing wrong. He went down to see Dr. Silkworth at the hospital, he said, Doctor, I'm really doing all I can to help these people.
I've helped teach them, taking them to the Oxford group, we're talking about God. And Dr. Silkworth said, that's where you're making a mistake. No drunkard, no decent drunkard ever got sober listening to God. He said, you going to tell him that, you going to make him drink? He said, what you got? You can, why don't you try this? Try to tell him how you felt and what drinking did for you and how it made you feel and why when you don't drink, how bad you feel sometimes.
He says, I can't tell him that, I don't know, but I've heard enough of you guys talking about it, maybe he'll understand. And he stumbled on to something that's the secret of alcoholics anonymous. You know, most of us would be aware that alcoholics as a breed are covered with an invisible cloak and it just repels good advice. Thank you very much, that's really, well, thanks a lot for telling me that.
And Dr. Silkworth took a stab at finding a way to get through that cloak, to get through that invisible shield somehow, because the information here is not secret information. We talk about the book having other materials in it, of course, there's a lot of books that have what aids to hazard it, but the difference is getting through that shield to promote it. So he said, okay, I'll try it. Doesn't seem like it worked, it seems kind of silly.
And he got an offer of a job, as we all know, people have been watching. They said, gee, Bill, you've been sober six months, I got a chance for you to really, you could get back on your feet, get back on Wall Street. We've got this machine tool company out in Akron, we've got to buy up some proxies, we've got to get some people out of the way, and I'm going to send you out there to get them, and you'll be president of the company, and you'll be on your way to Easy Street.
He says, if you fail, don't come back, because you'll never have work around here again. Don't blow this one, because this is your one chance. Bill, yeah. Off he went to Akron. Of course, the deal blew up, and he stood in the lobby of the hotel, Saturday morning, hot Saturday morning in May, reached into his pocket, he had a $10 bill, he could either pay for his room or buy a train ticket home. He hated to go home and face this failure again, blow as he'd failed, and these people all jeering at him, telling him he's no good.
And as he stood there, he said, I stood in that same lobby, in that same spot some years ago, because I'm kind of a romantic, I wanted to see if I could recreate the feelings, and I was feeling bad, just by being surrounded by Akron people. And over there, don't let that out of this room. Over there was a door, it had a curved sign over it, orange, it said cocktails, and you heard the sounds of clinking glasses and the jukebox coming out, and he couldn't.
And he had this reaction that, I swear to God, is the most understandable reaction I can think of. He said, if I just have a couple drinks, I can think of an answer. Boy, I'll tell you, doesn't that make clear sense? And he started to walk. Every step he took put you and I closer to the insane asylum, I'll tell you. Oh, scary. Now, in the corner of his eye, he saw over there some pay phones on a wall, and he remembered he told his friends in the Oxford group, he had called someone in the Oxford group before he got drunk or anything.
So he went over there, and you know in small town hotels, over the phones they have, they're used to anyway, named the biggest churches, and their ministers, and their phone numbers, and he called up the top one, the guy answered, hello, he said, my name is Bill Wilson, I'm a rum hound from New York, I've got to find someone in the Oxford group, could you help me? The man said, I really don't know what you're talking about, I'm trying to write a sermon, please don't bother me.
Hung up. Next one didn't answer. Next one didn't answer.
[00:30:03]
what's the natural reaction for people like you and me? Well, I did what I said I'd do. Jesus. You notice the last name on there is a funny name, Walter Tung. I bet Walter Tung has got something to tell me. He's put a nickel. Hello, Walter Tung. My name is Bill Wilson. I'm a rum hunk in New York. He said, funny you should call. Turned out to be the only man in Akron that could have helped him. Just a funny coincidence. It's funny you should call. One of my parishioners told me just yesterday that last week in her Oxford group meeting, their doctor had admitted to being a drunkard. And they all felt very bad about it because there was no help for him.
Maybe he will talk to you. Maybe I can arrange for you to talk to him. He's in the Oxford group, but he has the same problem. So he said, just wait there in the phone booth. And he called the parishioner who turned out to be a very wealthy woman in West Akron. Her husband had been the heir to the U.S. Rubber Company fortune. And she said, yes, yes, the doctor, we feel so bad about him. We can't reach him. Let me see if I can get a hold of him. I'll call you back, Dr. Tung.
And she called the Smith home. And now an old, in 1971, I talked at Founders Day. That's a long time ago. And an old timer then told me this story. I don't know if it's true or not. I have to go to the prime historian here and ask him. But he said the word around was this. When she called the Smith home, it rang and rang and rang and rang. And she's just hanging it up when the voice said, hello, sorry, I was out in the yard. And he explained to Mrs. Smith what had happened. She said, well, I'd like to have the doctor talk to this man, but he's drunk on the floor. He can't get up right now. Maybe we could do it tomorrow. I can get him in shape for that. So they made arrangements for Mrs. Smith to bring her drunken husband out to the parishioner's house. So the parishioner called back Dr. Tung, who still was there, who then called back Bill Wilson, who had been there too long in that phone booth and was about ready to leave any second and just happened to get there in time. So they made arrangements. The next day, Bill Wilson rode the streetcar out to get, followed the instructions.
These two guys, Bill went out there and Dr. Bob, as most of us know, he went out with his family. He brought his family along with him. He was too hungover to drive, so he had his 16-year-old son drive, young Bob, who later became a member of Al-Anon, introduced him at the 1980 International Convention. But anyway, they called him young Bob, but he died of old age recently. But he always talked about, he got to be, and I got to be pretty good friends. And, you know, whenever he talked, he talked about that trip out there. His sister's sitting in the front seat with him, in the back seat his mother and his father talking, and the father saying, Ann, I've talked to this man, but I'm not going to listen to any more damn lectures about men drinking. I've heard all the lectures about men drinking. I can stand. I'll give him 10 minutes and that's who I'm going to give him. And I'm doing it because today is Mother's Day and I've ruined Mother's Day for you, but I'll give it a shot. And so they got out there, they went in, they sat down, had a bite to eat, and then these two guys went into a room for their 10 minutes and came out several hours later. And the doctor said to his wife, my God, Ann, that's the first man I ever heard who seems to know how I feel and what a drink does for me.
My God. He said, Bill, I know that you're a very busy man, but could you spend a couple weeks with us? We could talk about some of these things. Bill thought, let's see. I have no way to leave town. Yes, I can stay with you. So they talked for two weeks. They discussed the spiritual values of the Oxford group and the values of God's intervention and God's love and Jesus love. And the doctor just flowered. And at the end of two weeks, he said, Bill, I haven't felt as well in 20 years. I want you to stay here this weekend with my wife and kids. I'm going to Atlantic City National Convention, the American Medical Association. I was there last year and I was so drunk, they all ridiculed me and made fun of me. This year, I'm going to show what we found.
I'll be back Tuesday morning. And away he went. Everybody was happy all weekend. Tuesday morning the phone rang about six, seven o'clock in the morning. Yes, this is Dr. Bob's office nurse. I'm
[00:35:00]
so sorry to tell you this, but they carried the doctor off the train this morning so drunk he couldn't walk. And the station agent knew that I worked for him, so he called me and I go down there and the cab driver and I have put him on the floor of his office here. I'm so sorry. I know that you were hoping so much. And he's feeling so bad, too. He's crying. Worst thing in the world is a crying drunk. Jesus, they're sickening. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.
Boom! Now you're sorry, you son of a bitch. Anyway, so they went down and got him and took him home and put him to bed. One morning, he suddenly sat up and bolted. What day is it today? Thursday, Bill. Bob? Thursday. Oh, my God. I've got to do a cancer surgery today. And look at my hands. I can't hold a knife. They'll take my license. What can I do? Oh, my God. And Bill and Ann got him up and bathed him and Bill gave him a little beer to steady his hand. And he went off to the hospital. He said, I'll be back about two o'clock if all goes well. Okay, Bob. Two o'clock came, he didn't come back.
Three o'clock, he didn't come back. Four o'clock, he didn't come back. Five o'clock, son of a bitch is drunk again. Six o'clock, the door burst open. Hi, I'm home. Cold sober. He said, where you been, Bob? He said, well, I was doing that surgery. It suddenly struck me, you know, in the Oxford group, they want you to make amends to people. But I wouldn't think a doctor should have to make amends. But as I was doing that surgery, you suddenly realize I'm a human being first, then a doctor. So I've been all afternoon, all over town making amends to people. And I feel wonderful. That was June 10th, 1935, which we consider the birthday of AA, because neither one of those guys drank again.
But they had learned one master thing that we have to remember today. You don't stay sober by discussing spiritual matters. You try to help people. And so they had to talk to somebody. That's how Bill had done it. So the doctor had his nuns who's lurking over there, working in the hospital. And by the way, I don't, I hate to brag, but the 1960 convention, I kissed Sister Ignatia on the cheek. And I was going to ask her, is it okay to kiss a nun?
I was afraid she'd say, as long as you don't get in the habit. How could I remember everything from 51 years ago, for Christ's sake? I pleased me to hell with you. But anyway, then, so she said, yes, they had someone in the hospital. At that time, you couldn't get in the hospital for alcoholism at all. You had to have, because they wouldn't treat alcoholics. You had to have some gastrointestinal problem.
And they had some, there's, masking is gastritis. And he, she said, here's a lawyer from Louisville, Kentucky, moved here a few years ago to cure his drinking. And his drinking got worse, of course. And I'll tell you, I'll talk to his wife and see if perhaps he'll, you can talk to him. I heard him talk, Bill Dee, years and years ago, 45 years ago. He said, I was laying on that bed in Akron. And my wife came to me and said, there's two men want to talk to you about your drinking, Bill. And I said, absolutely not. I'm not going to get any more lectures about my drinking from anybody. I'm sick of it. Absolutely not. Do not ask me again.
But my wife's a rather strong woman. So I talked to those two fellas. And they never talked about my drinking once. They talked about their drinking and how they felt and what drinking did for them. I never heard anybody describe me so clearly. I couldn't believe it. So I, I stuck with them fellas. He became number three in the chain. And they got, they worked around Akron trying to find drunks from the Oxford group. You know, remember, there's no meetings, just the Oxford group. They have to get in there and they talk for an hour about Jesus and take them outside and don't ignore that. Just listen to how you stay sober. And they got a few guys, not very many, not very many people want to go religious route.
One of the sidelights, it's just a sidebars, we call it kind of a funny thing. They got a young
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guy named Ernie who was 29 and he wanted to be with them. He said, Ernie, you're too young. You know, 29, you can't be an alcoholic at 29, but you do drink terribly. Well, come on with us. So he joined him in their pursuit and he fell in love with Dr. Bob's daughter. And although he did not know it, he did something tremendously argumentative about it. He brought AA, it wasn't AA yet. He brought us our first relationship.
I don't know a word that sends a chill down a sponsor's spine worse than that word. I want to talk to you about my new relationship. You have to think on your desk, he says, uh-huh, uh-huh. Okay. The calls I've gotten say things like, gee, Clancy, I know that I thought the last one was the one, but when I saw Darlene walking out of detox today, I just. Now, that happened in my family. My youngest daughter, Susan, fell in love with a guy I sponsored five years over. I was not in favor of it, but I have a lot of daughters, all who know much more than I do about life. So they overruled me and Susan got married to him.
I want to tell you the absolute tops of mixed emotions. It's watching your daughter go down the aisle to marry a man whose fifth step you've heard. You can't really say anything because you're bound by the secrecy of the, but you can give hints. You say, let me know if he ever brings a sheep home, honey. But they got married, very nice. And they said, you know, you should be running around with this. You should be home taking care of your new wife now. You take care of your new wife and after a while you can come back out and we'll go to the meetings. So he stayed home with his new wife and got drunk and that's the end of that and turned her against AA for 50 years. But anyway, as we all know, Bill finally went back to New York and started a little group there and had a little group in Akron and then they want to help drunkards, but drunkards can't get in the hospital. We have to find a hospital for drunkards. We'll build a hospital for drunkards. That's what we'll do, where they can come from all over the world. How are we going to buy it? How are we going to pay for it? Well, we'll write a book about how we do it.
So they wrote the book, which we read from today, and they introduced it. There's a book out now, I don't know if you've seen it. It's a big book, red book, can't think of the name of it, but it has every page of the original big book with the corrections they've gone in to make. It's just fascinating. Somebody in Akron says, would you change that word to this? And somebody over here says, change this phrase. It really is fascinating, but it wound up in its present form. And they introduced it. They sent a postcard to every doctor in the East Coast. Doctor, at last you can treat your alcoholic patients without any fear.
Here's an answer. They got one answer back. That said no. So they had a lot of books that had nothing to do with them. But you know, the book, if you're kind of new, you'll sometimes hear around, as I used to hear when I was new, this book is really a miracle. You know, the word miracle seems to me always to be used, overused. Everything's a miracle. I got to the meeting on time. It's a miracle. But this book is a miracle. Why is it a miracle, a book? You know, I'm a writer, and the first time I read it, they said it was badly written. It isn't badly written at all.
It's written all right. It's just, it's fault is it's terminally dull. It's just dull. Oh, Jesus. Many years later, when I got sober, finally, my new sponsor had me read it again. I said, I've read it. I'll read it again. And I read it. I realized I had misremembered it. It was much duller than I remembered. I wrote things that, buy this product, take this action, blah, blah, blah. I wrote things that, buy this product, take this action, blah, blah, blah, blah, you read that book looking for inspiration, if you are thorough at this stage of your development,
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you will… So apparently it isn't the writing of it that's the miracle. Now the guy that wrote it, he was sober three years. If you're new you might think, well, you should know how to write a book by the time you're three years sober. By the time you're three years sober, you'll realize you don't know enough to write a book. By the time you're five years sober, you just try to be nice to people three years sober.
By the time you're ten years sober, you hate to send people three years sober to get your coffee. Was that two sugars and one cream or two creams and one sugar? I'll do it. By the time you're twenty years sober, you hate to have people three years sober unattended on your property. And this boob, three years sober, surrounded by failure incidentally, we always think of them as the Christians in the catacombs just adding one sober person to another.
Most of them all drank again. They had very little success ratio, despite what the numbers said. And even when they put out the book, the stories in the back, several of those guys drank again. I mean, it was a tough time. And why would this be a miracle? And it turns out that that book has one remarkable factor. If you stay sober, it gets sober, it gets smarter, year after year after year. That wasn't in there last year.
And the miracle of the book Alcoholics Anonymous is that that book, that strange little book, has changed the lives of more alcoholics of our type in the last sixty-nine years than all other therapies combined in the history of mankind. That is a miracle. So the last big thing that happened to A.F. Carson, somebody gave him an article in a magazine called Liberty in 1939, made it sound like a religion, so nobody wanted to hear about it or know more about it.
And in 1940, the Saturday Post had a writer who specialized in uncovering corruption. He had just won an award for uncovering the corruption in the Philadelphia dock labor movement. So his new assignment, work your way into this Alcoholics Anonymous thing and blow the whistle on these boobs. Okay. So he got in there and pretty soon he wrote back and said, God, they're doing exactly what they say they're doing.
No one's making any money. They're helping each other for nothing. It's the damnedest thing you ever saw. He said, well, write it anyway. So he wrote it. And in March of 1941, this article appeared in the Saturday Post, which we have copies of, folders of it and so on, and took the nation by storm, took the nation by storm. At last, there was some place where we could send Uncle Charlie or my son who's drinking or my cousin who's dying, on and on.
So they flooded New York and Bill sent them a book. He had a lot of books to send and little stories about maybe how you can start a meeting and so on. And they really did very well, had thousands of meetings all of a sudden. By 1942, AA was just humming all over. By early 1943, Bill was concerned. He was starting to get letters saying, don't send us any more mailings. Our group is dissolved. Our people kept fighting and they dissolved.
And as the year went by, more and more, some of them even sent the book back. By 1944, it was almost every day someone was quitting. And Bill was just, he thought, my God, how can I keep people together? So he started the grapevine. He thought that would make people understand it. It was a big tabloid and we'll have people write their stories in and it'll help people. And it helped a little bit, but not much.
By the end of 1944, AA was on the way to extinction. And early 1945, a doctor in North Carolina sent Bill the story about the Oxford for the grapevine. He said, maybe you don't know about this, Bill, but here's a group just like ours. And Bill read this story, there had been six guys in Baltimore, Ohio, in 1840, just a hundred years before. And one of them had just gotten out of jail and he was back talking to his friends.
He said, you know, that chaplain says he knows how I feel. He doesn't know how I feel. You guys are the only guys who know how I feel and you're all drunk too. What good is that? He said, we've got to stop drinking. So they swore, they all swore off together. They were a formidable group, they all promised people, when I start to drink or want a drink, I'll go and talk to you.
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They elected officers, five of the six became officers. One didn't. And people laugh, you know, you drunkard fools can't keep yourself sober for God's sakes. That's ridiculous. But they stayed sober somehow and they got a few other people. Some guys came down from Philadelphia and were so amazed, they went back started a group in Philadelphia. Started a little group in Washington. They called themselves after the president of the United States, they want to make it significant.
The George Washington Society became known as the Washingtonians. At the end of the year, they had several hundred people sober. And at the end of the second year, they had several thousand people sober. So much so that they took Washington's birthday as their birthday, they started somewhere near it. They sent a letter to all their chapters saying, on Washington's, on our anniversary, February 22nd, get somebody from your community to come in and talk.
We don't care what they say, we don't care, we're not interested in that. We want them to see what we're doing, that we're sober and good citizens. So all over the country, February 22nd, 1842, somebody came in and talked. In Springfield, Illinois, they had a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln. When you read a book of Lincoln's speeches, you read a book to the Washingtonians, a speech to the Washingtonians, and most of the talk is just boilerplate.
But near the end, he says something touching, he says, I know you men, and I work with you men, and I understand you men, but I don't understand your thirst. Your thirst has always baffled me, but you're getting over it now, and there's a way to do this, and I'm so proud of it, and so on. And it continued. And there was no entertainment in the 1840s, obviously, no TV, no music, no movies. What they would have was traveling speakers who'd go out and speak and hold a big crowd, entertain them.
And they got a couple of these guys into the Oxford group, because they were drinkers too, into the Washingtonians, I mean. And so they start turning the crowd into the Washingtonians. By the time they were five years sober, five years in service, they had what they estimated to be 100,000 members. Can you imagine that? AA, after five years, didn't have 1,000. We had telephones and movies and everything else.
And the leaders then got together, and they did something, they talked about it. And it sounds right, because there are people in AA who will tell you the same thing today. They said, we're doing a good job, but maybe we're cutting our efforts short. Maybe we should do more than just try to help drunkards. Maybe we should help people who have narcotic problems, not heroin and cocaine like today, but laudanum and opium, they did then, who aren't drinkers.
Maybe we should get involved in politics. Maybe we should try to help Texas become a state. Bad move. Maybe we should get rid of slavery, but have a different speaker to borrow. Maybe we do all these things. And so they all got involved in doing all these things, and exciting and fun. And they all got and started helping so many people. By 1848, the Washingtonians were extinct. They all died drunk, except for a very few.
I had a book home written in 1861 by one of the founders, or one of the survivors, who said, I don't know what happened. We were doing so well, and then people got too busy to talk to drunkards, and they were talking to all kinds of people and getting involved in politics. Just one by one, they left. And Bill Wilson read that and thought, and he read how the groups are dying. They were fighting about things, fighting, arguing about things, money, property, prestige.
And so in the last gasp effort in 1945 to save AA, to save us, he sat down and wrote the Twelve Traditions, based on the Washingtonian experience and what he had just read. And he introduced them in the long form. If you're not familiar with the long form, that's the back of the book on the other side. The long form, it takes it a little more complete. And he introduced them one by one in the grapevine.
And AA in 1945 and 46 had a problem that has been with it ever since, and we don't know how to overcome it. It's full of alcoholics. And more, we don't want your rules. We're here to find love, goddammit. A lot of people did not want to accept the traditions. We didn't want to take them. And so we read the books about Bill Wilson getting on his motorcycle and putting Lois in the sidecar and going to meetings all up on the East Coast.
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These aren't rules. These are just efforts to save AA. And it helped a little, not much. And the people, so he and Dr. Bob, the people in Akron never got along with the people in New York. People in New York didn't like the people in Akron. But Bob and Bill got along well. And so Bill said, Bob, let's have a meeting somewhere where we can describe these traditions and show that they're not problems.
OK. The people in Akron said, we'll go to a meeting. We won't go to New York. And the people in New York, not to be outdone in spirituality, said, we'll go to a meeting. We won't go to Akron. So Bill and Dr. Bob got together. Cleveland. All right. On Cleveland in 1950, the first large group of sober alcoholics since the death of the Washingtonians got together in Cleveland, Ohio. And I have the tapes of that weekend.
I have a picture of it. And the tapes are very poor quality, but they're remarkable to listen to. And even then, they weren't quite sure they were being accepted. So they did what they had done before. Many of the speakers were non-alcoholics. I mean, the warden of Sing Sing, the warden of San Quentin, people in the government to enhance our stability. And Bill and Dr. Bob talked. Dr. Bob was dying of cancer.
They said, you probably don't want to talk, Bob. I've got to. I'm 15 years sober. That's the second longest sobriety in the world. And he always was a better 12-stepper than Bill was. So on that day, his son on one side and a friend, this tall, gaunt, dying man, brought him to the podium. And he gave a short talk, which at first didn't seem to be much. He said, I want to welcome you all to Cleveland, and I hope you go back and tell the boys and girls in your group that we're all going to get out of here, what we put into it.
We're all here to do the same thing. He says, I look over at this vast group. I'm glad that some small thing I did 15 years ago helped bring this about. I want to apologize for my health. I've been in bed most of the past few months, and I hope to get better soon. It was just nice, but ho-hum. But then he said, but I would like to call your attention to two or three things that I think are very important.
Then he gave the next two or three minutes for many people to be at the Gettysburg Address of Alcoholics Anonymous. He knew it was kind of a death, that he wanted to get this out before he died. He said, first, let us remember to keep our program simple. Let's not louse it all up with Freudian complexes, which may be of interest to the scientific mind, but has nothing to do with our work here. Our work here, when reduced to the last, consists of love and service.
We all know what love is, and we all know what service is. And secondly, he said, let us guard that erring member, the tongue, and try to use it with kindness and understanding. And there isn't a person in this world, in this room certainly, or in the world like us, who doesn't know exactly what he meant. We're all very wonderful with things that are going our way. Love is the answer, baby. But let somebody hurt our feelings or thwart us.
We give them the ultimate curse. One of the great funny things about alcoholics that I know, everybody in this room, I'm sure, fought the term alcoholic. Nobody ever came to me and said, I think I'm an alcoholic. I'm not. I'm not. And eventually, OK, I'm an alcoholic. Then after you're sober a while, the worst thing you can say about somebody, I don't we'd think that son of a bitch is an alcoholic.
He said, let's use our tongue with kindness and tolerance and understanding. And finally, he said, none of us would be here today if someone hadn't taken the time to explain things to us, to show us how to do it, to give us a pat on the back if we needed it, to keep us going. Let us never reach that stage of smug complacency where we are too busy to help our fellow alcoholic. And he sat down and was dead shortly thereafter.
But then they had six young guys get up, each took two traditions in the long form and tried to explain. Traditions in the Long Form, and Try to Explain They Weren't Rules, and What They Would Do, These Are Not Rules, These Are, Stop Pacing Around Bill, I'll Let You Know What I'm Doing,
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Like Watching a Lion in the Zoo, And they read them, and I don't know who they were, but you just hear their tales, psychologically, and they said, these are not rules, these are suggestions to save AA, and that's one thing that some of us old timers take an exception to, I think. In my area, although it's untrue, I am known as a dictator type sponsor, my own sponsor, bless him, accused me of telling people, not sharing, and being a dictator, but what nobody ever realizes, to be a dictator requires 100% permission of the dictatee, all he ever has to say is, screw you, and the dictatorship is over.
I think it would be nice if we had rules in place, so we could put, did you say screw you to your sponsor, come with us to the camp, that would help them for their own good, but anyway, they voted, they voted, they didn't vote it, he had them read the traditions, and here's the final emblem of Alcoholics Anonymous that is best, Bill Wilson looked over this sorry assemblage, and realized he didn't know if he had the votes for the, I'm sure he, he said, we have heard the 12 traditions read, seeing no objections, they're accepted, and it was saved, although we didn't know it, and sends them through various vicissitudes, it's grown into be 100 and some, almost 150 countries, I've traveled a lot, many AA countries, and the same thing, it's an amazing thing about AA, you think it would be different, last month I was in Rio de Janeiro, and next week in Belfast, and the next week in Oslo, you think AA would be different, but except for the accents, you hear the same thing, every meeting, and just think, just think, if Bill Wilson, if Mrs. Smith hadn't got that phone, if he didn't choose to call Walter Tunk, there's about a dozen things along the way, everything had to fall right into place, any one of them didn't work, we wouldn't be here, I know it would be a bad place, and so we're very grateful, tomorrow, as we hear these outstanding members of Alcoholics Anonymous discuss the steps that Bill encapsulated in the book for the first time, and remember what a blessing we are, just to be sitting here, safe and sane and sober, and it's worth everything it takes, thank you.
Thank you.