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Source: Clancy I – 2013 Woodstock of the South @ Buford GA – Speaker Talk – Date Unknown.mp3 File: clancy-i-2013-woodstock-of-the-south-buford-ga-speaker-talk-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:56:17
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My name is Clancy Emerson and I'm an alcoholic. First of all, I want to welcome tomorrow's speaker who just chose to come in after the meeting started. It's been a very good weekend. I got here Thursday for some reason or other, and I was able to hear Bob's very thoughtful talk last night, and I went to the Al-Anon meeting this morning. I thought I was at a breakfast line, but I heard a very good and thoughtful presentation by Linda and Barbara, and this afternoon I heard the wonderful presentation of Polly and Dave.
They talked about the ongoing war between the sexes or the differences or whatever, I don't know. They got talking about their sex life, and we Lutherans were offended. All I know about the combination between people is this, this old guy told me this years ago, he said, when men and women get married, women figure they want to get the man changed, and he never does. And the guy figures he never wants his wife to change, and she always does.
Well, I'm glad to be here this evening. I was told the subject of my talk, the gift of AA, that can be taken a number of ways, but I was thinking to myself, what really is the, what sets AA apart from so many good organizations and good people who tried to help alcoholics? And you think, well, we're more spiritual. Not really. There have been a lot of spiritual works, two of the popes some years ago, many hundred years ago, were deposed because of their alcoholism, and they wept bitter tears because they loved God severely, and they just couldn't stop drinking.
And you think, well, we have a lot of information that wasn't available, we don't, everybody's had this information. Is that another speaker you got with us there? No, another goof from Georgia somewhere. Anyway, I know his sponsor must have died because he just comes drifting into meetings any time he wants to now. If anybody wants to know where Bill Rupp is, go out to the cemetery and listen to who's spinning in his grave.
But I think that there is an obvious difference here, and it's something we take for granted. I thought I'd talk about it tonight, I've never given this talk before, but so I might as well. I'm eager to see how it comes out. We really have to go back to a little bit of the history of alcoholism, and it's been there for written records of at least 4,000 years of people who drank and couldn't take care of themselves and couldn't control it.
And there's never been any answer, there's been all kinds of answers, or one particular one that worked for a little while until they got caught up in their emotions. But there's never been any, nothing like AA in the history of mankind. And in fact, when I was born, I may be the only one here tonight older than AA, and it's time for my nap, I'm sorry. But when I was a little boy, there was no answer yet.
And I didn't care that there wasn't, because I was too little, but it's an interesting thing. We all know the story about how this wealthy family in New York had a son who they were grooming to take over their company. But he'd get subject to occasional fits of nerves, and when he got his nerves, he would get drunk. And they didn't know what to do about it. They begged with him and pleaded with him and sent him to doctors.
They finally decided to send him to a good doctor once and for all, so they sent him to Dr. Jung in Zurich, Switzerland. I spoke there this January, and I went to Dr. Jung's hospital, and I snubbed it. But he went there, and there's a mixture of stories. There's a story that he spent a year there. There's another story that he only spent a couple months there, that he went to Africa. All sorts of stories.
But at any rate, Dr. Jung thought he'd helped him. And he came home, and he stopped in Paris.
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He was from a very wealthy family, and they had very wealthy friends in Paris.
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And they had a banquet in his honor of his recovery. And they toasted them all with a glass of wine, and he joined in. And a couple days later, he was drunk again, sick and drunk, and they took him back to Dr. Jung. And Dr. Jung refused to take him back to the hospital. They said, why? He didn't mean any harm, Roland was his name. He didn't mean any harm. He just seemed to have a tact of quick nerves.
The doctor said, I know that. I don't blame him. I thought perhaps I misdiagnosed his case. I thought I could help him psychologically with inner conflict. But I realized now that he is what is known as a chronic alcoholic. And to the best of my knowledge, there is no effective treatment for that condition today in the world at any cost. Now, that's 1931. That isn't all that long ago. And Roland, of course, was taken.
That's good news to hear in the morning. And he says, what does this mean, doctor? He said, what it means, Roland, is that you must keep yourself confined voluntarily or involuntarily as long as you live. Otherwise, you almost certainly will intermittently drink to excess until you die or go mad. And Roland says, is there any other possibility at all, doctor? He said, well, in my study of the literature, I've seen a couple of cases where they've had some involuntary psychic change.
I guess they call it a spiritual experience. But I've never seen one. I've never known anyone to have one personally. I would suggest that you do what I tell you. So Roland came home with this bad news. And he didn't stop in Paris for any banquets, this trip. He just got on the ship, came home. And I guess he did something on that ship that all of us have to do somewhere along the line, although we don't always know we're doing it.
He gave into the concept that he was helpless and hopeless. And he got off the ship. And as 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 he looked around. He was a vestryman, kind of an officer in the Presbyterian church. He was a nice guy. He wasn't a bad, dissolute old guy. Nice guy. He'd been in church. He'd been active in spiritual work.
And somebody told him about this new thing that was taking the nation by storm called the Oxford Group. He'd never heard of it. And I'm sure most of you don't know the background of it. But in 1908, a Lutheran minister in Pennsylvania got the feeling that Christianity was getting too loose. People weren't dedicated the way it used to be. They wanted to be crucified, upside down and burned for their faith.
We couldn't even get them to come to church when it was raining. So he started an organization called the First Century Christian Association. And he didn't get a lot of people. Ah, no, no, thanks, Reverend. I don't want to be crucified this week. Thanks. And he didn't do much with it. And after the First World War, he went over to Europe, tried to talk it up a little bit. And not very many people were interested.
But one group of people really took an interest in it for some reason. The Oxford University students just thought that was just wonderful. And they got so involved in it that they eventually changed the name to the Oxford Group. And he came back here in the late 1920s. Now we had the ages of the Oxford University with them. So we had a little more clout. And they started to set up Oxford Group meetings throughout the country.
It took a little different form than he had visualized it. They really wound up to be kind of people meeting in one another's homes, very nice upper class people meeting in one another's homes and discussing how they could enhance their spiritual values. And somebody told him about, Roland, about that. And he said, that sounds good. And so he went to the Oxford Group and got caught up in it and really came to believe in it and did very well and stayed sober.
For years, he stayed sober. Couldn't believe his family was so thrilled he became president of the company. He did very well. And after a couple of years, his family said, you know, Roland, you've just been so good. Why don't you take a little vacation? Go to our summer home up in Vermont and relax for a while. You deserve it. You have no rest. He said, OK. But the interesting thing about this whole thing is that if he'd gone two weeks later, we would not be here.
He didn't have any arbitrary time to be there. But he got there. And one of his childhood friends that he remembered when he would go up there said, you know, can you help us? Our childhood friend, Ebby, is in trouble drinking.
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He's in bad shape. We know that you quit. Could you talk to him? He said, sure, bring him over. So they brought over Ebby and Roland and tried to get him the precepts of the Asher movement. Well, first, Ebby, you have to accept there's a power greater than yourself. I don't want to hear that crap. That doesn't work. Leave me alone. And away he went. Well, the next day, the young guy who had first come over came over again and said, well, I hate to bother you, Roland, but they're bringing Ebby into court this morning.
He got drunk and drove his car into somebody's house after we talked to him yesterday. And the judge is going to put him away for a long time. And I cannot convince the judge. He's my father, and he won't listen to me. But he may listen to you because he's a friend of your father. Would you go over to court? He said, I'll go over there since I'm here. Says, your honor, you know me, I used to have a drinking problem, too, but I found an answer in the Oxford group.
And if you release Ebby to me, I'll take him to New York and put him in the Oxford group. Maybe we can help him. The judge said, only because it's you, Roland. I wouldn't do this for anyone else, but I'll do it for you. So Roland, he said, but if he comes back to Vermont, he's going to the penitentiary. So we took him down there to New York and put him in the Oxford in a little mission on Broadway and got him in the Oxford group.
And Ebby wasn't quite as thrilled about as Roland was, but it sort of beat the Vermont penitentiary. And he got involved a little bit, stayed sober. And one day, Roland came by and said, well, Ebby, it's time to testify. Said, what does that mean? He said, well, when we get a certain amount of spiritual growth, the Oxford group wants us to find someone and tell about it, to testify. And now is your time.
And Ebby said, I don't want to testify. It's embarrassing. And Roland said, you want to go back to Vermont? Said, no, I believe I'll testify. So where could I testify? He thought for a while. Oh, of course. Another childhood friend of theirs had become a big shot, was now a dissolute, drunken bum living off his wife, a disgrace to everybody. He said, he's in New York somewhere. I'll find him. He won't even remember it the next day.
I can tell him anything. And so we found this, located this Bill Wilson. Now, Bill, in our book, of course, describes Ebby's visit. Came to the door, and clean cut, and looked sharp. And he's in that picture standing next to Bill on the end there, short little guy, and dapper, very dapper. I heard him speak at a convention. He was very dapper. And he said, Bill, I'm glad to see you. And Bill said, you're looking great, Ebby.
How do you do it? He said, well, I found religion. And Bill said, oh, shit. Come on in. They sat at the kitchen table. And Bill doesn't go into this in his story, but I heard Roland talk, I mean, Ebby talk, at the 1960 International Convention. And he goes a little deeper into it. He talks about, hey, you talking to Bill? Try and tell him about the Oxford group. And Bill just kept drinking as fast as he could.
Gee, that's really great, Ebby. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And so finally, he left in a fit of pique. But another thing that Bill never mentions is that he came back three days later, and he had the Oxford group closure with him. Ooh. Oh, that's true. I want to talk to you, Mr. Wilson, about the Oxford group. I want to talk to you about it. And Bill, like any one of us who were decent would do, got drunker than ever.
And that was the end of that chapter of his life. Ebby testified and went back and told him he testified. And later that autumn, in November, Bill was thinking, I really was rude to Ebby. He tried to help me. He's a dumbbell, but he tried to help me. I should have been more gracious. I'll go over to that mission where he's staying. He left his address. I'll tell him I appreciate it. So he went over to Brooklyn, or over to New York, to Manhattan.
And on the way, he stopped for a few drinks to build up his courage and got there a little bit drunk. Ebby wasn't there, so he gave a short sermon to everyone, anyway, to help them. And staggered on down the street and wound up back in the hospital shortly thereafter. The hospital he'd been to several times already. But this time, it was a little different. The doctor looked at him and talked to him and felt, this man is not going to live much longer.
And he called up his wife and said, Mrs. Wilson, your husband is back at the hospital. But I must tell you, I don't think he has any more of these experiences.
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And she just wept bitter tears and called up Ebi and said, Ebi, could you go over and see him? And Ebi brought a couple of guys over to see him in the hospital and Bill, you've got to find a power greater than yourself. And Bill said, I don't want to hear that. Tell me something real. Okay. And they went home. And in the middle of that night, this dissolute, drunken loser woke up, his heart beating, thought he was going to die soon.
And he just desperately, if there's a God there, show yourself. And he wrote later, all of a sudden, a light came out of the room like somebody had flipped a light switch, but there's no light switch. And the wind started blowing through a closed window. I am really having a psychiatric experience here. I'm going insane. But he felt good and went on for a few minutes and then all of a sudden, the wind stopped and the lights went out.
He couldn't wait till the next morning to tell the doctor, he said, Doctor, did I have a, let me tell you what happened. He said, do you think I had a psychiatric breakdown? The doctor said, I don't think so, looking at you, you don't seem to be, but I'll tell you one thing. Whatever has happened to you, whatever you found last night, you hang on to it. He said, okay. And he came out of there and he thought of Ebby, you know, maybe I'll go to that damn Oxford group.
And he went to the Oxford group and he got involved in it and liked it. And he experienced that people were treating him nicely and he felt good and felt a little bit of hope. And he lived in Brooklyn with his wife, Lois, who was working to support him. And he'd go to Oxford groups almost every day and he'd pick some street drunk and take him along to see if we could get him sober at the Oxford group.
And of course, these street drunks, these nice people, I think you're vomiting on my shoe, sir. And he would take him home and give him a stay at his house. One guy committed suicide there even. And he tried to help people again and again and again. Every day he's living with this, I've got that experience of God to help people. And one morning he got up and the guy that he brought home the night before was gone and so was the coffee pot.
Somebody had probably taken it to ponder to get a little wine. He looked at his wife, who'd been a chic society girl when he met her, now getting old before her time, salt and pepper hair and kind of blousy a little bit, putting on her clothes, putting on her jacket with a patch on the sleeve to go to work in a cheap department store basement so she could make the rent money for them so Bill could go to the Oxford group every day.
And Bill had a terrible wave of remorse. He said, Lois, I thought I had some divine mandate to help people, but I guess I can't. I've been working with people every day for six months, not one person stayed sober and I'm done doing it. I'm going to get a job tomorrow shoveling dirt. I'm going to get you out of that damn cheap apartment through that department store. And right there, your life and mine hung by a thread about that big.
And she turned to him and said something that just changed the course of history. I had lunch with her about 45 years ago up in Connecticut somewhere, and I was having lunch with her. I had a chance to ask her, I said, gee, Lois, I'm kind of new, but how would you ever get enough wisdom to give that answer to Bill that saved our lives? She said, I don't know, it just seemed obvious. And he said, not one person stayed sober.
She said, you did? He said, oh, yeah, that's why old timers don't have much hair in front, you just go through life going, oh, yeah. You should have seen me before I became mature. And so he, he decided to keep trying, but he went down, he knew something he was doing was wrong. He went down to see Dr. Silkworth, who is over there somewhere. Good guy I know. I know what he looks like, I just can't find him.
I looked for him yesterday, too, all over the hotel. Anyway, Dr. Silkworth, he said, Doc, I don't know what it is.
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I've been sober. We've got this Oxford group thing, I've been sober, but I can't seem to help anybody. They all get drunk. He said, well, what did you tell them, Bill? Well, I'm trying to teach them to have a spiritual experience. I said, oh, big deal. Good luck, Bill. That isn't going to help anybody, ever. He said, you know, there's no answer for those people, people like you. You're lucky that you got something, but he wrote later his feelings, I don't know how much he told Bill, but alcoholics are like people who live in a glass, a glass container or a clear container.
They're there, but you can't get to them. Advice bounces off. Here's what I think you ought to do. Thanks a lot. Thanks very much. Never thought of that, good. He said, they live in a shield of, but you don't understand. My case is different. And no one can get through it. He said, I can't get through to it. Guys like you come to our hospital again and again and again, and we give you the best we got, but you come back again drunk.
He said, there's got to be some other way. He said, I've got an idea. Maybe, maybe if you could communicate to these guys that you used to be a drunk, that you know how they feel, why they drink, and how it feels when they stay sober. And Bill said, I can't imagine that would help anybody. He said, well, I know, but I'll try. I'll try it. And then he got a letter, an offer of a job from some honchos, and he'd been a pretty good guy in his stock market days, and they said, we noticed you've been sober six months now, Bill, and acting pretty straight.
And we have a little deal. We're going to build, we're trying to buy up a rubber machine tool factory out in Akron, but we need some proxies. We need the guy to go out there and get those proxies. Now, you're a good proxy man, but you go out there, and if you, you know, you bring this off and you'll be president of that company. But if you blow it, if you get goofy and blow it, don't even bother coming back on Wall Street.
You'll never get another job around here. So Bill, ha, a chance, he went out there to Akron. Through no fault of his own, I guess, the whole deal suddenly blew up. And all of a sudden, it's a hot Saturday morning. He's standing in a hotel lobby in Akron, got $10 in his pocket. He can either pay the hotel bill or buy a train ticket home. To go home and fail again, be told what a failure he is to live in like a gigolo, like a mooch.
And the interesting thing, as he wrote, as he stood there, I went there some years ago and stood there trying to recreate that, what that emotion must be like, but you have to, you really have to have the emotion. But over there in the lobby, there's a door with a sign over it that says cocktails. And he said he heard the music coming out of the jukebox, and the clinking of glasses and the laughter.
And he had realized he could think of an answer to this problem if he just had one or two drinks, something all of us know exactly how that feeling is. One or two drinks, I'll be in business. And he started to walk, and every step he took, you and I were closer to the insatiable, everyone. But out of the corner of his eye, over there, some payphones on the wall. You don't see much around anymore, everybody's got their own cell phone, but there used to be a lot of payphones.
And over the payphones in small town hotels, there'd be a list of all the major churches and their ministers and their phone numbers. And he remembered he'd promised some of his well-wishing Oxford group members that he'd call somebody before he got anything drastic. So he went over there, took the first name and called it. The guy says, hello, hi, he says, my name is Bill Wilson, I'm from New York, I've got to find somebody in the Oxford group.
The man said, I don't know what you're talking about, sir, but I'm trying to write a sermon. Please don't bother me. Called the next number, no answer. Next number, no answer. Next number, the man said, I understand what you're saying, sir, but I don't know anyone that fits that description. And he turned away. What would you do?
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What would I do? I don't know what you would do, but I would say, I did what I said I would. I tried, God damn it, but they just, but he saw one last name on there, funny name. He thought I should be rejected by this goof before I leave. So he called him up, who turned out to be the only man in Akron that could have helped him. Of all the surprises, that's the whole AA history is made up of things like that.
Oh, oh. And the guy said, funny you should call. I've got a woman in my congregation, wealthy woman in West Akron, who's a member of the Oxford group, and she was telling me just the other day, they have a doctor in their movement who is, can't stay sober, and he admitted he was an alcoholic, and they've all prayed for him, but he keeps drinking. He said, why don't you stay there, let's see if I can get a hold of you, and he called up this wealthy woman in West Akron, and she said, yes, oh, I would like to have this man from New York talk to him, maybe it'll help him, Dr. Bob is such a nice man.
Give me his number. So she got Bill's number in that phone booth where he was waiting, but first she called Mr. Smith and said, hi, is the doctor home? There's a man here from New York, we think we can help him. He said, well, let me tell you, I heard this in Akron, I don't know if it's true or not, but it sounds true. She called, he called, the minister called, or she called Mrs. Smith, and the phone rang and rang and rang and rang.
Just hanging up as you're, hello, I'm sorry, I was out in the yard. Two seconds away from death for all of us. And she said, yes, I'd like to have the doctor talk to someone. He can't talk today because he's drunk on the floor and can't get up, but maybe we could do something tomorrow. And the wealthy woman said, bring your husband out here, we'll have a bite to eat, and let him talk to the man. And she called back Bill then in the lobby.
Now Bill had been waiting there a long time, and he was nervous and edgy, and I don't know if I would have waited that long in that hot telephone booth, but he did. And he told her, she told him how to take a streetcar to their house. And the next morning, which was Mother's Day in 1935, he took the streetcar out. And Dr. Bob, this drunken doctor, and his wife and son and daughter came out in their car.
They had to bring the children along because the doctor was too sick to drive, he had a 16-year-old son drive. And he sat in the driver's seat and his sister sat there and the mother and father in the back. You know, it was a great moment in the International Convention in New Orleans. On Sunday morning, they said, we have a special surprise guest, Dr. Bob's son. Nobody even knew he had a son. We all, ah, cheered.
But he wasn't an alcoholic. He was an Al-Anon. But mostly he was all right. No, he was a good man. He married one alcoholic and she died and he married another one. They don't learn quick. But anyway, I got to know him, a lot of people got to know him because he's very, after that he's active speaking at conventions all over with the Al-Anon speaker, talking about the experiences in that house with Dr. Bob.
And he talks about that morning especially, he was driving and the mother and father in the back and the father saying, Ann, I'm going to go out and talk to this guy. I'm going to give him 10 minutes because I know I've ruined Mother's Day for you. But I'm not going to listen to any more damn lectures. I'm sick and tired of all the lectures, I'm doing the best I can, but I'll give him 10 minutes. And they got there and they had a bite to eat and then the doctor and this guy from New York went to a room and stayed there four hours and came out and the doctor said, my God, Ann, that's the first man I ever met who knows how I feel and why I drink, I can't believe it.
He said, Bill, I hate to ask you this, but could you stay with us a couple of weeks? We could do a little more talking. And Bill thought, let's see, I have nowhere to get out of town. Yes, I can stay here. Magna Manus. And they stayed and for two weeks they talked about the Oxford group and how they could increase their divine contact and their spiritual growth. And Dr. Bob just blossomed. And the second week he said, Bill, I never thought this would happen this year.
But this weekend there's an internet. Medical Association in Atlantic City, and I'm going to go. I was there last year and I was
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so drunk they ridiculed me and laughed at me and made fun of me, but I'm going this year and show them what I found. You stay here with my wife and kids and I'll be back Tuesday morning, and away he went. Tuesday morning the phone rang, Mrs. Smith answered it and the woman's voice said, I'm so sorry, this is Dr. Bob's office nurse. They carried him off the train today so drunk he couldn't walk. And the doctor, the station agent knew that I worked for him, so he called me and I got a cab driver. We have him on the floor of the office and he's crying and very sorry. And I'm so sorry too because I know he's trying so hard and he's trying this experiment to stop drinking. Mrs. Smith said, okay, just stay, we'll come down and get him. So she and Dr., she and Bill drove downtown, got him and brought this crying, sorry drunk home. Of all the things I know in the world, that in the top, bottom five is a crying, sorry drunk. Geez, they're nauseating. I'm so sorry.
I didn't mean to. Boom, now all you're sorry. But they got him home and put him to bed. And a couple of days later apparently he says, what day is it? It's Thursday, Bob. Oh my God, I've got to do a cancer surgery today. I put it off twice. Look at my hand, I can't hold a knife. My God, what do I do? I'll lose my license. What do I do? So Bill and his wife got him up and bathed him, dressed him. His new friend, Bill, got him some beer to steady his hand. He went off. He said, I'll be back about two o'clock. Off he went.
Two o'clock came, didn't come back. Three o'clock, didn't come back. Four o'clock, didn't come back. Five o'clock, didn't come back. Son of a bitch was drunk, apparently. Six o'clock, the door opened. Here's Bill, here's Dr. Bob, cold sober. Boy, do I feel good. I said, where have you been, Bob? You remember doing that surgery? It suddenly struck me. The Oxford group wants you to make amends when you made errors, when you hurt people.
And I never thought that should happen to a doctor. A doctor shouldn't have to do that. But really, I'm a human being first. So I've been all afternoon, all over Akron, making amends to people. And I feel wonderful. That was June 10th, 1935, which is considered the birthday of Alcoholics Anonymous. Neither one of them ever drank again. They didn't know it was the birthday of Alcoholics Anonymous. They were just two more pukes staying sober for another day, you know. But they realized one thing, that the spiritual conversations, as wonderful as they were, hadn't kept Dr. Bob sober. But they hadn't kept Bill Wilson sober either. What had kept Bill Wilson sober was trying to help people. So they find someone.
At that time, you couldn't get into a hospital that's drunk. You had to have some plumbing problem or something. But the doctor called up his friend at the hospital, a nun named Sister Ignatia, to see if there was anybody up there who, in addition to their other physical problem, was a known drunk. She said, yes. A man named Bill Dee, who was an attorney from Louisville, moved here a few years ago. And he's been getting drunk ever since.
I heard her tell the story in 1960. It was amazing to hear Sister Ignatia tell the story. She can't tell it quite as well as I do, but I mean, she did. I went up afterwards. I was kind of callow and new. And I think I shook her hand and gave her a kiss on the cheek. There's a long time I don't remember. But I think I said, oh, is it OK to kiss a nun? And I think she said, as long as you don't get in the habit. I don't remember exactly.
I can't remember every detail from 60 years ago, for Christ's sake. But anyway, she made arrangements. She said, I'll talk to this man's wife to see if you can come and see him. And I heard him talk many years ago, 50 years ago, I guess. She said, I was laying in that bed in Akron, Ohio. My wife came in and said, there's two fellows who want to talk to you about your drinking. I said, absolutely not. I've got all the lectures I can stand about my drinking. I don't want to hear anybody else help me. I'm sick of all of them.
He said, but my wife's a rather strong woman. So I saw those fellows. And they came in and they didn't tell me about, talked about my drinking once. They talked about their drinking and how they felt. And I couldn't believe my ears. My God, I thought I'm not the only one in the world. And I've been with them fellows ever since. I remember he became number
[00:35:04]
three in the chain. And they got a, they worked around town, got a few guys, not very many, to go to the Oxford group with them. Because, you know, the Oxford group was a religious organization. And they were trying to, with identification, make people feel, I'm an alcoholic. And we could do it by going to the Oxford group where you'd hear about religion, Jesus, and so on. Which there's nothing wrong with that, but he didn't seem to get through to alcoholics very well. And, but they finally, they got a few people. And they had an alcoholic wing, the drunken wing of the Oxford group. And they were pleased with themselves.
In fact, the first friction came, they had some guys coming down from Cleveland to the meetings every week. And they were all Catholic guys. And the Bishop of Cleveland said, we don't want you going down there to that Protestant religious crap. You cannot, you are forbidden to go to their meetings. So they started a meeting in Cleveland. And used, was the first name, first use of the name, Alcoholics Anonymous. It had never been known before. It had been the Oxford group. But they still kind of practiced the way they did the Oxford group. I, it had to be pretty tough days in those days, those early days. In 1963, I was sober about five years. And I went to New York to work on a project briefly. And I got done in the morning. And I thought, what do I do today? I'll go over and talk to Bill Wilson.
That's what I'll do. I heard him talking. And I'll tell him I heard him talk in Long Beach and how much I enjoyed his talk. I said, I'd like to talk to Bill Wilson. She said, well, he's booked up for three weeks. I can get you in about three weeks if you want to go. I said, no, I won't be here. Never mind. Now I wandered over to the archives. I was looking through old stuff. And here comes Bill Wilson. And he said, are you the young man who wanted to see me?
I said, yes, sir. He said, my love didn't show up. Come on in. So I went in and sat down and talked to Bill Wilson for an hour. And do you know what he said? I don't remember. I was more concerned what he thought about me than what he was saying. But the one thing I remember asking him that touched my heart, I said, you know, Bill, in our group in Los Angeles, our book study last month, last month, week, we were talking about working with others. And you talk so well in that book about how to talk to others and what to say to them, how to treat them. But you ever once talk about taking them to meetings? Didn't you people ever take them to meetings? He said, young man, when I wrote that, there were no meetings. You just had to go to the Oxford group. And they had to talk hard in between Oxford group meetings so they wouldn't be swayed off. I don't need that anymore. I need Jesus. I'd go get drunk. But little by little as they grew, and pretty soon they had a few people. And Lois came out and visited them and thought what a good thing this was. And Bill went back to New York and they got a little group started in New York. And as we all know, it's not secret information. They just little by little they grew and they had a great idea. Let's let's build a hospital. Drunks are dying because they can't get the hospital because they don't have gastritis or something. If they're just drunk, dying of alcoholism, let's build a hospital. They said, good deal. Let's do that.
Who's going to pay for it? Oh, that's right. So they decided to write a book that would sell so magnificently they could build a hospital, which was the motivation for the book Alcoholics Anonymous. And they wrote it. And there's a book out that's most fascinating. I don't know if you ever see it. What's the name of it, Bob? A big red book. The book that started it all. It takes the big book page by page and shows all the editing done on it to make the flow as well as it does. But they wrote this book and he sent out a bunch of galley proofs to people that mark up what they thought was important and send it back. It's an interesting thing. One of these galley proofs surfaced a few years ago and they were trying to hype it as the original manuscript for the big book. They're going to get a million dollars for it, they thought. But it turned out just one of the 60s, not so much. And they got the book and he mostly wrote it and dictated it at the home, at the office of a guy in
[00:40:03]
New Jersey that was one of his first members and who incidentally later on didn't like Bill Wilson, got drunk and spent his declining years going to all the meetings he could find to see what a son of a bitch Bill Wilson was. There's no question about it, no good deed goes unpunished. But they got the book out finally and they sent a postcard to every physician on the East Coast. There's an answer to alcoholism, you can now do without. And they got one answer back and that said no. So they realized it was not going to be an easy sell. So Bill and his wife, we read about it, hop, take his motorcycle, put her in the sidecar and go up and down the East Coast trying to talk to people about the big book.
That it was not a cult book, it was a great thing. But it didn't get very far, they helped a little bit. By 19, late 1940s, it was, he could not do anything about it because all this misinformation about mis-questioning. And Bill and Bob got together, they said maybe what we should do is have a meeting somewhere where we get people from all these meetings around the country and tell them about this, what we're trying to do. And that it's not a cult thing, it's a program of action. So people in Akron said, we'll go to a meeting, we won't go to New York. People in New York, not to be outdone in spirituality, said, we'll go to a meeting, we wouldn't go to Akron. Okay, Cleveland, we'll go there.
So in the summer of 1950, the first major group of alcoholics, outside of something called the Washingtonians 100 years before, met. And I have the tapes of that weekend, isn't that something? Terrible condition, but you can hear it. And most of the speakers at that convention were non-alcoholics. The warden of Sing Sing, the warden of San Quentin, government people, because they felt so sensitive about being treated as goofy that they wanted regular people to talk about how good they were, how straight they were. And Bill talked on Friday night and told his story. On Sunday afternoon, Dr. Bob was not going to have a talk because he was dying at that time, dying of cancer. He said, oh, I've got to talk, I've got 15 years sober. I'm the second oldest sobriety in the world. So that day, son on one side and a friend on the other, old, tall, tattered, dying man, went to the podium and he gave a short talk, which has come down in history as the Gettysburg Address of Alcoholics Anonymous. He said, first, it didn't seem that way. He said, I want to welcome you all to Cleveland. I hope you'll go back and tell the boys and girls in your group that we all are on the same path, doing the same things. He said, I want to apologize for my health. I've been in bed most of the first last few months. I haven't gotten better as much as I thought I would. It's just not much. And there's ho-hum stuff. It's nice to see a poor old man talking. But then he said, but there are two or three things that I want to call to your attention. And that was so important because he always was a better 12-stepper than Bill Wilson by far. He had better authority on the book, even better than anything. And he knew he was dying. He knew this would probably be the last chance he'd ever have to talk. And in a short, condensed version, he was trying to communicate what he thought were so serious things. He said, first, let us remember to keep our program simple. Let's not louse it all up with spiritual or psychological things that may be of interest to the philosophical scientist, but has nothing to do with our work here. Our work here, when reduced to the last, consists of love and service. And we all know what love is, and we all know what service is. And secondly, he said, let us guard that airing member, the tongue, and use it with kindness and understanding. There isn't anybody in this room or any room like it or any place like it that doesn't know exactly what he's talking about. We're all wonderful when things are going our way.
When Things Are Going Our Way, Love Is the Answer, Baby, Unless Somebody Thwarted Us
[00:45:00]
or Hurt Our Feeling, One of the Funny Things, I Don't Suppose There's A Person In This Room Who's an Alcoholic, Who Didn't Fight the Label As Long As They Could, I'm Not an Alcoholic, You Don't Understand, I Have Emotional Problems, But You're Finding, Okay, I'm an Alcoholic, So What, But After You're In A, Well, The Worst Curse You Could Put On Anybody, I Don't Even Think That Son of a Bitch Is Alcoholic, Worst Curse, And He Said, Finally, None of Us Would Be Here Today If Someone Hadn't Taken the Time to Explain Things to Us, To Maybe Take Us to a Few Meetings, Give Us a Pat on the Back, Who Needed It, Let Us Never Reach that Stage of Smug Complacency, Where We Are Too Busy to Help Our Brother, Who Still Suffers in Alcoholic Despair, And He Sat Down and Was Dead, Not Too Long After That, But That Was Such a Great Talk, When You Get Off the Elevator in the World Service Office, New York, They Have the Whole Talk Right on the Wall in Front of You, It's Such a, Because it really is as true today as it was in 1950, And then they ran across one other problem, I'm going to get much longer into this, But all of a sudden, A was in trouble, because they were starting to get letters in, Don't send us, they'd had the Saturday Post article, I've got meetings everywhere, send out books, all sorts of things, The end of the 1930s, 1940, but in the late 1940s, they start getting letters in, don't send us any more material, our group has quit, we failed, such loggerheads, we've had to quit our meeting, and at first, just a little bit, then there's a flood of them, and they're explaining why, just can't get along with each other, with so many arguments, so many fights, and Bill Wilson, trying to get some unity here, so he founded the Grapevine, he thought if we had a national magazine, people could read about each other, that'd help, that didn't help much, and he finally, somebody told him, he said, you know, about a hundred years ago, there's a group just like ours, they stayed sober more than we did, something called the Washingtonians, Bill had never heard of them, so he looked it up in the library, and found there had been a group founded in 1840, six guys in a Baltimore bar, one was just out of jail again, he said, you know, I was out of jail all week, and the damn chaplain kept telling me he knew how I feel, but he didn't know how I feel, you have five guys, you already know how I feel, and you're all drunks too, but they thought maybe we could help each other, so they signed a pact, they elected five officers and one member, who do you identify with, Bunky?
And they stayed sober, because when one of them wanted a drink, the other five would pounce on him and talk to him, and some people in Philadelphia heard about that, came down, and they got a group started in Philadelphia, had a group started in Washington, had a group that just took off in Boston, group in New York, and they just couldn't believe it, these drunken bums who can't keep themselves sober, are now keeping other people sober.
At the end of the first year, they had quite a few people sober, and near the end of the second year, they established, they got sober, they started their group in March, but they took Washington's birthday as their anniversary, because they named themselves the George Washington Society, for the Washingtonians, and they wrote to all their groups everywhere and said, on February 22nd, it's going to be our second anniversary, get somebody from your town, that is not an alcoholic, but who can help us overcome the perception that people have of us, that we're some kind of weirdos in the cult.
And so, all over the country, they did that. In Springfield, they had a young lawyer came, Abraham Lincoln came in, gave him a long talk, there's, if you ever read a book of long, it's the longest speech Lincoln ever gave, and most of it was just boilerplate, but near the end, he said, I know you men, and I worked with you, and I have great admiration for you, but I don't understand your thirst. I never have, and I'm so glad that you're able to overcome it, and so on.
And it took off, it took off more and more and more. And some guys, at that time, there was no television, not much of anything, but entertainment consisted of having mass meetings, and they'd bring in a good speaker and he'd hold them at bay. And they got two or three of these speakers into the Oxford, I mean, into the Washingtonians. So they were out recruiting all the time. By the time they were five years long, they estimated they had maybe a hundred thousand sober drunkards.
That's pretty good, no radio, no television, no nothing, no telephones. After five years, they'd have one thousand.
[00:50:01]
And they were unlike anything ever seen. And their leaders got together and said, you know, we really can help drunks, but maybe we have got a different calling. Maybe we should help other people as well. Maybe we should help people who have a narcotic problem, not cocaine and heroin like today, but lithium or lithium. Huh? I would have thought of that in a minute, leave me alone. Laudanum, you spoke yesterday, don't ever interrupt me again.
And maybe we should help people with emotional problems. They need help. And maybe we should help get Texas into the Union. They're fighting to get in the Union. Maybe we should help the anti-slavery movement. And they all were wonderful causes and the people got into them and everybody did the best they could. And by 1848, the Washingtonians were extinct and with very few exceptions. They all died drunk. I had a book home written by one of the survivors some years ago.
Some newcomer took it. And what he talked about, we were doing so well and it was so enthusiastic. But after some people probably have been drinking, nobody talked too much anymore. We were so active doing so many things, just one by one we quit. And Bill read that and saw the reasons they were fighting in their group. He said, my God, that's the same thing I'm hearing in the letters every day. Same things. Argument over who's in charge, what are you going to do with the money and on and on.
So in the last gasp effort to save Alcoholics Anonymous, he sat down and wrote the Twelve Traditions. They weren't over there all along. And in the long form, if you've never seen them, they're in the back of the book across from the short form. And a lot of people liked them very much. In our group, we read them once a month. So the newcomers will know what that's about. Usually some people just have people read the traditions, see if they can pronounce autonomous. But these Twelve Traditions were not quickly accepted.
And they didn't. One of the things they did at that first meeting was to accept the traditions. And I got a little out of line there, but that's 1950. And they talked to Dr. Bob Gibbs at that meeting. And after all the speakers got done, they had six young guys get up and each took two long forms of the traditions and described them. I don't know who they were, but you just hear their tail wagging.
They were enthusiastic. Then they decided, Bill Wilson was a practical person, apparently. He thought, maybe I still don't have the votes. So he said, you have heard the Twelve Traditions read? Seeing no objections, they're accepted. Poor government, but saved AA. And then AA has grown, and now it's in all kinds of countries all over the world. The marvelous thing about alcoholism, you know, because I've been sober a long time, but I had a chance to go to a lot of places in Bangkok and Bali and Rio de Janeiro, which is further than most places, and Europe and so on.
And except for the, you think AA would be kind of different in all these places, but except for the accent, you're the same self-pitying crap you hear in your home group. That woman did it to me. It wasn't my fault. But you look at the whole history of AA, what in the world was the difference? What was the gift of AA that enabled all of a sudden people to stay sober, that could never stay sober before? And I'll tell you what I think it is.
The gift is identification. Because people had all the information we had before that, and people couldn't stay sober. Afterwards, they could stay sober. There's been great moments. Our big book has a lot of stuff. He's pirated other places. We're not the first ones that preach do unto others as we should do to do unto you, and are pretty good and honest and straight. But we are the first one ever that said, this is how I feel.
This is why I drink. Now do you understand? Yes. And so one of the things we also remember is the gift of alcoholics is identification. And that's why they put such a stress on singleness of purpose. Because if you're not talking about what you know about,
[00:55:01]
you're preaching somebody out who needs to hear it. This should always include, apparently, the story of alcoholism in your life, so that whosoever listening might be helped. Singleness of purpose merely means, remember, we are alcoholic talking to alcoholic, not do-gooder talking to do-gooder. So on that basis, it's quite simple. We have a lot of gifts. I was sitting, talking dinner with Marie tonight, and I asked her, what do you think the gift is? Sober life. That's right. It's true.
But sober life is not the gift. That is the product of the gift. The gift is, I know how you feel, and you know how I feel. I'm not okay. You're not okay. And it's okay. Thank you.