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Source: DICOBE-00516 – John R – WEST CENTRAL REGIONAL FORUM – 1980-03-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00516-john-r-west-central-regional-forum-1980-03-15.mp3 Duration: 01:06:54
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The last minute changes through no fault of their own, and we did have Ed Small listed as a speaker tonight and Tom Breen tomorrow. However, as things do happen in AA, we have two replacements, and tomorrow morning you'll hear Stan Cameron from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. And tonight we have another New Yorker with us, John Ryle. John was elected General Service Trustee in 1979 after 14 years of sobriety and three years as a grapevine director. Besides filling all group offices, John has been a conference delegate, Panel 21, and Assembly Treasurer. He has served in the Trustees' Literature and Correctional Facilities Committees and chaired the second Northeast Regional Delegates Conference. He is a member of the Westbury Group, is active in the local community theater, and is in the telephone business.
Will you please give a great big warm welcome to John Ryle from New York. Even I have to be impressed. My name is John, and I'm an alcoholic. I came into the world in 1928 crying and screaming for a bottle, and I came into AA 36 years later the same way. If I seem somewhat hesitant, I have just found out that Audrey, the lovely Al-Anon Trustee, that her term as delegate to the Normal Neurotics Conference overlapped that of my wife. Luckily, I do not believe that she is a spy, but my responses will be measured.
I must comment upon the Normal Neurotics, the Al-Anon side of the house. I must give advice to the male members who are married to them. One, never say that you are not worthy of your wife. Let her find this out for herself. Secondly, never criticize her judgment. She did pick you. She did pick me. You notice that the Al-Anon delegates take three years to accomplish what we keen alcoholic delegate minds accomplish in two on the AA side. They say that behind every successful man, there is a successful woman. I may be able to turn that around. My wife became an Al-Anon delegate. Without me, she never could have got into the program. I refer to her as my first wife. Please listen. She is my current wife, but this keeps her on her toes. She went to these people first. I thought that it was a very, very good move. She ignored me. I told her that I was king and that she was nothing.
She ignored me. I found that she was practicing something called detachment. They told her to color me the same color as the wall and to sing Que sera, sera. I make jokes about Al-Anon, but I am one who must honestly be eternally grateful for it because, you see, it saved my
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life and it saved my sobriety. When I say that it saved my life, there's a poem called The Hollowed Men by T.S. Eliot. It says, this is the end of the world, the end of the world, the end of the world. The world ends not with a bang, but with a whimper. This is the way that my drinking ended with a whimper. I was completely destroyed. My wife being an Al-Anon and being a member of their hostility committee, Don mentioned the Lady of Revenge Church. The group that met there was the Perpetual Aggregation group. But they told her that when I, quote, fell asleep, one must not think of the things he had done during the day and beat him to death. You know, at the end, I was really pitiful and I would make it a point to try to get into the bedroom, take the last drink and collapse. And until I heard my wife speak in Al-Anon, I thought I fell out of bed. She bought a nice little doggie. It was a Doberman Pinsa. She began beating it with my socks. She intended when it was fully grown to say, there he is, boy. But what it did for me, as I say, in this case, it saved my life. And very, very seriously, it saved my sanity and my marriage. Because you see, from two crazy kids who had gotten married madly in love at a very early age and had a love marriage and a happy marriage, I had managed to kill all of the feeling. I didn't come that close. I had destroyed it. And thank God, my wife waited until I was two years sober before she said, quote, when you finally went into AA, I didn't hate you, but any feeling I had towards you was dead. And I stayed out of a sense of loyalty. Now, if she had told this to a stumbling, bumbling drunk coming in through those doors, that could have been the one that just about finished it off. And so I am deeply, deeply grateful. Bill was asked, why is there an Al-Anon? He responded in a parable, as he usually did. And he told of a family that had gone into the woods and had gotten hopelessly lost. And one member of the family found a path out and walked out to safety and left the rest of the family hopelessly lost in the woods. For myself, well, let me say this. They say that the old Irish myth that things come in threes, and tonight you are listening to your third dummy. How I got here, well, I don't want to make excuses. I was breastfed. My parents loved me. I was a good student. I got along with my peers. And Audrey mentioned only children. Well, I was an only child. And I may not look it up here, but I was delicate. You smile, but my mother told me that I was delicate. And until the age of 18, she used to
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cut my meat when she served it. Now, when I married this shanty Irish girl from the wrong side of the tracks, she displayed her hostility by refusing to cut the meat. Now, mind you, I did not say, I want to play, you know, close the eyes and open the mouth and in flies Mr. Potato. I didn't ask for that. This may have caused a trauma. I am not sure. But basically, I come from an Irish-American background. And my family had what is pretty well known as a we and them syndrome. We had closet relatives. The we's drank at sundown. The them's drank at sunup. My family believed that if I had alcohol at an early age, quite possibly I would not try to prove my manhood, quite possibly I would not try to show off, and quite possibly I would not join the funny side of the family. And so I was introduced to alcohol at a very early age. And if there is such a thing as having a healthy attitude towards alcohol, I had it. I could accept it as something that was there.
It became something that was as normal to me as eating and as sleeping. I thought nothing about it. I guess as most of the guys of my era, I began going into bars at the age of 16. And I was active in athletics. But it was fun to be with the older people. And one thing stood out. I had a capacity for alcohol. And yet I did not try to show off. I did not try to exploit this capacity. And for many years, I was the guy who took the keys away from the drunk. I was the one who patched up the fights. And I was that solid guy drinker that you all envied. A signpost? Yes. Because, you see, the one thing that I was, I was a dead serious drinker. I liked it. I loved it. I liked the taste. I liked the bouquet. I loved what it did for me. And if you were going to be one of the clowns who put the lampshade on the head and who danced with the girls only when drunk and who showed his manhood by fighting, please go someplace else. I wanted no part of you. But a dead serious drinker I was. My capacity for alcohol, the medical profession refers to as developing a tolerance for a mind-changing drug. Let me move it along. I married young, as I said. It was a love marriage. It was a very, very happy marriage. Now, we hear of alcohol being a disease of the attitudes. And my attitude was healthy. However, if you drank the capacity and the quantities that I drank, funny things could happen at times. One night, in coming from a wedding, I was looking for a tunnel going to Long Island. A tunnel, to me, in the state I was in, was a large hole in the ground. I found it. It was Grand Central Station loading platform. I had a pretty good line then. An Irish cop appeared. I don't know whether we sang Irish Soldier Boy or Mother Macree together, but he patted me on the head, told me to be But he patted me on the head, told me to be careful, and escorted me back to the middle of 42nd Street and stopped traffic.
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But you see, I could call up the next morning. I wasn't trying to hide anything. I'd say I shouldn't have shifted to the Scotch, or I should have got off the martinis because something happened. There was no hiding of things. If you listen to the normal neurotic, she will tell you that she picked up a personality change. I didn't pick it up. But my background on coming out of the service, and I'll mention this, I was in submarines. I say this not out of any kind of braggadocio or bravado.
It plays a part in my story. I went into industrial relations. I took to it very, very well. I liked it. Again, it was the bright lights, it was people, it was drinking. And I progressed very, very rapidly. I came from an executive board of a large local onto the international staff of that union, and I wound up heading up their education department. I went on to become a presidential aide. For those of you who are impressed, I had it.
The marriage was happy. The drinking was heavy. The pressures were there. My attitude was lovely. If I had drink on my breath at eight o'clock in the morning, and you did not like it, you could get yourself someone else to do the job. I functioned, and I functioned well. I did as I damned pleased. One of the assignments that I had was to find out what to do with the alcoholics. You smile. It really isn't an easy assignment.
You know, nobody wants them. I hear them say, you know, the doctors don't like us. The medical profession does not want to cooperate. As one who has urinated in doctors' waiting rooms, thrown up on other patients, and then cursed out doctors, I wonder why. When I went back and said, Doctor, I'm an alcoholic. I want to talk to you. But the problem was that in those days, there were no discharges for, quote, alcoholism.
Poor devil was discharged for failure to live up to terms and conditions of employment. Namely, a book was that thick, and it said lateness, and it said reporting aren't fit for duty, and it said that there was a pattern of Monday and Friday absences. But since you paid your dues, you were entitled to arbitration, and this arbitration in a lawless cause, and this is going back 17, 18, 20 years, was costing the international $10,000.
And they said, forget it. They said, for God's sake, find something. And so I began with my own doctor. I interviewed several physicians. I became acquainted with the Yale and Cornell and Rutgers reports. And guess what I found? AA. Not only did it have the best track record of recovery, and as Bob pointed out this afternoon, even back there, it was not known as a program of treatment. It was specifically known as a program of recovery.
People not only stopped drinking, but they went to church basements and lived happily ever after. It wasn't that nice. I brought this back. I got my gold star, and I wished you bon voyage. And I wished you bon voyage. But you see, if you continue to drink, and one of the observations that I've made after going to many alcoholic seminars and listening to experiments on teaching drunks to drink again, and this involves giving alcohol to cats and dogs and monkeys, and they found that they have drunken cats and dogs and cross-addicted monkeys at this time, I have come to the conclusion that my alcoholism was caused by my drinking of alcohol.
I thrived on pressure. I didn't give a damn for anything or anybody. If, as we are told in the big book, this is a disease of loss of spirituality,
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I was dead. Because there was no spirituality. And I speak not only of God. I speak of spirituality in contact with the human race. I had become smug. I had become self-sufficient. And I had become my own higher power. And the record said I was good and I could go on. I began to receive warnings from people I respected at this time that the pace was killing, that the load was killing, and I should slow down.
One was a Jesuit philosopher, one was my family physician, and I laughed at them. When I got to success, I would go back to my God. I never had the audacity to stop believing. I just had no time for worship. So I left him. But now you see, the beautiful, self-confident, well-oiled machine began to show a few cracks. I collapsed after 36 hours on my feet, and this was the first time that this had ever happened to me.
And now I was no longer sure of myself. And when you are not a spiritual person, and you begin to come apart, there is nothing in front of you but a black hole of abysmal darkness, a seigial blackness out there. I kept going. My wife tells the story that we were expecting our second child. Now, in the morning, for those of you who are identifying, I used to have improved orange juice. I used to have improved coffee.
We had a pattern designed for the second child's nursery. It was rocking horses. Since I was the card-carrying member and she was the flunky, I did the work. It was a tough wall. And as the first two panels went up, in all due modesty, you could have taken these two panels, you could have put them directly in any… well, any… the Louvre would have been the place for them. They were magnificent. As the improved orange juice went on, when we got to the last panel, she had the nerve to tell me that the one rocking horse's nose was running up the anal canal of the one in front.
Hostility. You see it. Now, whether or not you are alcoholic, and I was alcoholic, the problem that you run into is if you are known as a heavy hitter and things begin to go wrong, people will point and say, he drinks. And so the guy who drank for the bouquet and the pleasure and didn't give a damn switched to vodka. And I began hiding when I drank from other people. And I began hiding how much I drank.
And now things were beginning to go seriously wrong. And now things were beginning to go seriously wrong. Assignments were getting muffed. Reports were late. I was late. One thing that got me as far as I was on the road to success was objectivity. And coming into New York one night, I sat down and I realized that my drinking pattern had changed, had changed drastically. It was no longer the convertible, a summer night, the roof down, coming in from a big band roadhouse with Manhattan at my feet.
I was now drinking to blot out responsibility. I was passing up meals and using the alcohol for a quick hitter to keep going. A little light went on and said, buddy, if you don't want to wind up with the funny people in the Protestant church basements, be careful. You have, you have the symptoms of alcoholism. And it was probably the last rational thought I was to have. I went to my doctor, the man who had put me onto A.A. on the assignment, and I asked that big question.
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I told him just what was happening. And I said, am I alcoholic? And he said, no. Not as I understand it, not as A.A. understands it, but I've told you for ten years you drink too damn much. Your schedule is insane. You've got a compulsive drive. Slow down. Live a normal life and cut back on the drinking. Now, if you're paying this man good money and you have objectivity, you do as you are told. And so I cut back on the insane hours.
I stopped the traveling. And I cut way, way back on the drinking. Do you know what happened? My entire life collapsed. And it didn't come down like dominoes. It came down like a house of cards or like an arch when you pull the keystone. It fell in around my ears. I didn't know what to do. Go to a guard? I hadn't gone to a guard when I was on tap and I couldn't crawl to him now when it was coming down.
And I've heard alcohol called cunning and baffling and puzzling. And it was called insidious. And in my case here, it took the objectivity. And I no longer chose to see what was happening to me or what I was becoming. And so for a guy who drank for fun and games in bright lights for 18 years of my adult life, I suddenly turned into hell. When you told me it was the first drink that did it, that it was not because I drank too much or drank at the wrong times, but it was simply that I could not guarantee my behavior.
I could believe you because I lived it. And I was falling apart. And I had to drink in the morning. I couldn't get up without a drink. I was rattling. I was in the horrors. I was afraid. I had a drink to live. And if I took that drink, I could be gone for four hours, eight hours or two days and not know what the hell happened. Hell, that was it. Never a blackout for 18 years. And now to move this along, in the next 18 months, we didn't have Happy Dell farms.
We didn't have the rest homes. We had the locked psycho wards. Now after the first horror of waking up there, it's not bad. It's progressive. You'll meet some intelligent people. Some old friends. Your horizon is gone. Your whole way of life is gone. You know too much about the Union. They cannot fire you. But then you find out someone is saying, how about ready-aim fire? How about ready-aim fire? I was in six locked wards in that 18-month period.
I was straightjacketed for violence three times. And it didn't make a damn bit of difference. Come into AA, I knew about it. Intellectually, I heard everything at those open meetings. And now in my horror, you offered me a beautiful, beautiful life. I didn't blame my wife. I didn't blame my job. I know I had done it, but it was still terrible. And you said I could come in, and I could sober up, and I could face the shambles I had made of a life.
A Washington appointment gone, a career in shambles, and a wife seeing the lawyer. I didn't become violent. I had deteriorated to the point where this crack athlete attempted to To the point where this crack athlete attempted to throw his wife down the stairs one night. She's a tiny little girl.
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And only the grace of God kept her from killing me. Laughter. Applause. When I first came in, I said that I was afraid, afraid to commit suicide, because I was in despair. You see, but I've come to believe that that was not quite the case. I just choose today to believe that God did not give me enough despair, because I fully believe that any alcoholic given enough despair will end it. Progressive, I think Rutgers calls it the D's.
Delusion, disillusion, disappointment, desperation, and despair. And we've all lived it. Mental, physical, and spiritual. The state of New York and the psycho wards can attest to the mental state. Spiritually, I was dead. Physically, I had some idea that I just might, in some way, shape, or form, come out the other side of this hell by gritting my teeth and trying to go on. But finally, it reached the point where I could not put one leg in front of the other.
I was finished. And so you see, when I came through those doors, I did not come in here to, quote, identify. I came in here because I was a drunk, and I was dying, and I had an instinct to live. And you said, look at the record. And in coming in, I must say I was impressed. I met a gentleman in the doorway, and he said, in six months, you'll be running through the grass and you'll be smiling. And I said, my God, it's come to this.
He was one of the winners. I looked at him. He said, you have a threefold disease. I said, what the hell is a threefold? But I came in, and I had grim determination. I would live. If nothing else, I would live. I didn't like it. And I heard people say, I'm a grateful alcoholic. I said, there's one who's loosely wound. But you see, I smiled. I smiled. I had it. I did. I shook hands. I did. I did just what you told me.
And just watch this adjective, I. I went to 90 meetings in 90 days. I read the big book. I read all of your literature. I went to closed meetings. Now, those closed meetings. I looked up the words obsession and compulsion in the dictionary so that we could have intelligent discussion at these meetings. I honestly felt, it tells me in one of those books, that it is very hard for any alcoholic to get humility.
Now, my humility tonight may seem, well, my group refers to it as militant humility. One person called it aggressive humility. But that book tells me that it is very hard for any drunk to get humility who has not suffered repeated and complete humiliation. And I qualified. Because I had become poor devil sitting at the end of the bar falling apart. People no longer had the right to say, sitting at the end of the bar falling apart.
People no longer hated me. They pitied me. I had become an object of pity. And I could have cut your heart out for it, but I couldn't do much about it. But I sat out there and I plodded. And I smiled.
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And I ran for AA Rookie of the Year. Now, I became obsessed with seeing what had finally stopped me. Because, you see, I had lost many, many battles in my life. But I had never lost a complete war. And this was final. And this was absolute. And I didn't like it. And so I went to the Yale and the Cornell and the Rutgers reports. And whether you told me in here or those books told me out there, I got the same answer.
I was addicted to a mind-changing substance. And I would never again drink safely. It was said if I practiced this program, I might get some smarts back. I might get some spirituality. But physically, I was a drunk. And I would die a drunk. The only choice was would I die sober or drunk. There was no way out. However, I met another gifted young genius that I identified with. He had the same background, industrial relations, engineering.
And he ran an experiment. You smile, but you didn't hear. Now wait. Do not prejudge. He changed his way of life, as you suggested. He changed where he drank. He changed when he drank. He changed what he drank. The entire pattern. He kept notes. He began a graph, a scientific approach. You smile, but I stand here tonight and I tell you that in nine months, he had successfully proven that he was not alcoholic.
He came to this realization in a straight jacket in Knickerbocker Hospital. No way. But I listened at these meetings. You said let go and let God. You said have spirituality. And I found it. I found my answer. Now I did not want to drink again and have one and wouldn't that be nice and thank you. No, no. I knew enough that if I could not drink in my usual suave, debonair, piggy way, I did not want to touch it.
And so what I did, I prayed to God on my 90th day for a miracle. I said three Our Fathers. I said three Hail Marys. And I asked God to restore my former drinking powers. You smile, but if anyone has a better way of beating this thing, would you please see me after the meeting? Now, many things did not stop me. Intellect, intelligence, the example of others, and fear did not stop me. Because on that last drunk, I had experienced a 55-minute convulsion.
And in reading those reports, it told me that if I drank again, it would be worse. And the odds were that I would be dead or I would suffer more brain damage than I am exhibiting here this evening. But you see, I didn't have to worry. Because after all, God was on my side. Now, for anyone who was thinking of doing this, may I tell you and share that after three months, don't make that first drink an eight-ounce tumbler of Smirnoff 100-proof vodka.
It started down. And at that point, I knew it was not going to work. But Smarty, the angles, the sharp guy, other damn fools had tried the experiment. And I could go back to my group that night. And I could say, look, it didn't work. But here I am, the plan. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
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What I had not heard at those meetings was that the drunk who made the plan was not the drunk who picked up that drink. And so I did not come back to Westbury that night. I did not come back the next night. I went on a 13-day drunk that ended them all. And this one was bad because now I knew. And there's such a thing as more terror. It was there because I knew the convulsion was at the end of it. And I was scared.
The smart ass who looked up obsession and compassion was now privileged to live them. And the drink became no more than a transfusion for a dying man, some fluid to hold body and soul together. I went back to my group. How? I can only say the grace of God. And I got there. And I was greeted with the tender words of God. How was your spiritual awakening? Have you had enough? You were a phony bastard.
I said, where is the love? Where is the compassion? There was an expression that I haven't heard in a long time. This person said to me, you are hearing tough love. He said, I am your sponsor. I said, why are you my sponsor? He said, because I have you by 35 pounds and 3 inches. I got a little humble at that point. And I came back in, you see, and as insane as that attempt to drink again was, it was the best I had.
I, I again, the best I had. And I had tried, and I was drunk again. And so I came back in, and I said I would sit out there on my hands, and I would play out the cards. But it wasn't to be. I could not help but be impressed by what Bill refers to as nonverbal communication. People were living this program. And I watched like a hawk. I wanted to see if they stood up here and moused platitudes, or if they were living the kind of life that they were talking about, and they were living this life.
And I went to one, and I asked that fatal question. How did you get there? And he said, son, stop the intellectual baloney. I think that was the word he used. And believe with the simple faith of a child. You know, for years I thought that was a momentous decision. But what the hell choice did I have? You know, and I thought back, and I was a romantic. And so I believed in my Santa Claus and my tooth fairy.
And here I try to believe in AA. And they said, that's not quite enough. They said, there's something called chapter five. And I said, look, don't talk to me about the nonsense. I tried this, and it doesn't work. They said, no, no, no, no. Go slow. Do you know anything at all about the steps? I was told that they were not an end in themselves. They said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
And they were the road and not the destination. I was given a brief history that Bill said when he took them from the Oxford movement, they are the building blocks of sobriety. And there were only six. And we will have 12 because the drunks might fall between the cracks if there were only six. And I said, isn't that lovely?
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that you put knowledge into. I took this with about as much belief as I did as when my mother told me, don't wear your rubbers in the movies or you will go blind. But I would live. I would live. And so I said, I did one. They said, no, no, no, no, no, no. I said, I accepted. No, you didn't accept. You did not accept anything. You were resigned to your alcoholism because if you accept it, you are bound to do something about it. And it didn't say that your life was unmanageable only when you were drunk. And we say unmanageable, but if you look at your record, your life was unbelievable.
I nodded. I was given a passing grade. They said, go to step two. Now many people tell me that they have stepped, that they have trouble with that second step. Not me. It was a cop-out. The con merchant was there again. If I could go to a group of people such as you, and as Audrey said, you could tell me that I was off the norm when I committed these deeds, this garbage pile that had become my life, I could buy it. But I didn't realize what you handed me. You took away guilt on that second step. It took a long time to see it, but it was there that you handed it to me. You said I wasn't bad. You said I was not a sinner. You said I was sick and I could get well. It was beautiful. Three was a complete disaster. You said God again, and I had no use for this God. And finally I was told, son, there's a practical side of this if you can't take God.
You have to admit that you're no longer the captain of your ship. You'll have to pick something that has more power than you. I said, what are thoughts? What are you talking life and will? Nebulous ideas. They said be practical. Can you take your thoughts and actions and put them over to a code of ethics? Substitute. And there's a practical side. There's action. There's reaction and there's motivation. Do something with it. They said make a decision. That's all that the step says. You see, I was given the step again by being told what it did not say. It does not say to define a God. Looking back on it, what did I do?
One, two and three, mental, physical and spiritual. Today I look at it. One, I could not stop drinking. Two, God could stop me from drinking. And three, I allowed him to. It said do four. I told you I was one of the bright young men. I did four up here, just like that. You smile. No, no. I did find that there were a few minor things that needed adjustment. But all in all, I was a diamond in the rough. There was nothing seriously wrong with my life. And I had the nerve to go back to this ogre of the three inches and the thirty-five pounds and tell him this. He surprised everybody. He said, well, John, I'm really impressed that you did this. But just for me, would you take a pencil and paper and just go back and do it like it says in the book? Would you just write a little bit and maybe you'll find one and we'll call it quits. That was a bad mistake.
I was told what to look for. Heather mentioned it last night. It didn't matter if I robbed a bank or slept with a gal fourteen times. That was not step four. It said what drove me? What made me go? Meet myself. Who am I and what am I? And I found the fear and I found the self-centeredness and I found the egotism that Bill speaks of as ego and false pride, the opposite sides of the same coin. And it was all there. Strangely enough, I found one that sort of surprised me. I found vindictiveness. Now, not having
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found a God, I went to the higher power that I had, that I was married to, and I said, hon, do you think that I am a vindictive person? And she said, no. You have lived by the golden rule of don't get mad, get even. And do unto others first. She said, you thought you were Thor standing up on the mountain in mythology and throwing thunderbolts at people. And so, you see, at the end of four, I knew who I was and what made me tick.
And being of the Catholic faith, I had an idea that five would be with a confessor. But you see, it was not to be. My wife had a kid sister that I carried on my shoulders when she was a baby. And now at the age of eighteen, she had blown a marriage, she was on drugs, she was the baby of eight, and she had broken daddy's heart. And I took her in. I couldn't wish him back on daddy again. I guess I had approximately eighteen months of sobriety at this time. We took in Peg. Lo and behold, Peg, the drug addict, found alcohol. And this was beautiful.
There was no stigma involved, and she got her high. But you see, you cannot cure an addiction with an addiction. And her life became very, very unmanageable. An old self-righteous here left one morning for work and said, there is nothing I can do. She is a hopeless drunk. I will commit her this evening. Very, very God-like decision. I could not see putting her back into her father's hands. And so I came home that night fully intending to commit this hopeless alcoholic.
And as I started for her room, it dawned upon me that who in the hell was I to call anyone a hopeless alcoholic? And that whether or not Peggy got this program or did not get this program, I would share with her. And so Peggy heard my story as no other human being has heard it before or since. And I did not proselytize. I did not preach. I did not talk down to. I spoke as one drunken soul in torment to another.
And Peg identified. And Peg came into Alcoholics Anonymous. And again, thank God for Al-Anon, because you see, as Heather said last night, she was a kid. She had plenty of time left. She could come back in after she had finished the good years. But for anyone who was thinking of a drink this evening, let me share with you. Peggy got one shot at AA, and Peggy is dead. The support of Al-Anon to my wife, how could she sit there and see a drunken bum like me come in and go out and see other drunken bums go in and go out five and six times and see a beautiful kid get one chance?
And so again, she will tell you she owes her sanity to the Al-Anon program. For me, it allowed me to strip away the veneer, to stand before another human being as myself, for better or for worse. Six, there was no problem. Six simply said to get rid of the bad things that were bothering me, character defects. No problem at all. The only thing I was having trouble with was that the ones that I wanted to keep, little protection in case anything went wrong, you wanted me to get rid of.
And I just couldn't see this. And again, this ogre said, look, if you believe that alcoholism comes in people and not in bottles, I saluted. If you believe this, and if you believe that you must change or you will drink again, you better do something.
[00:55:00]
Or else you belong back on step two with the insanity part of this program. And so I again took his advice. And I gave up short-temperedness. I gave up self-centeredness. I gave up conceit. I gave up vindictiveness. I was highly successful in periods ranging from three seconds to four minutes. You know, now just what the hell do you do here? I tried it again and it just didn't work. And I was all smarty and I was standing there. The word I think someone said he didn't want to use was smirk. He smirked. He smirked twice.
He said, if all else fails, have you tried following directions? It was very simple. It said became ready and I became ready very, very simply. I couldn't do a damn thing by myself. He said, what about a higher power? I said, I want nothing to do with it. He said, John, if you believe that someone lifted the obsession to drink from you from without, if you believe you are a miracle, what else can this God do if you will only ask?
I still hesitated. He said, you've read the big book? I said, yes, yes, twice. He said, have you read the spiritual index? I said, of course, it's in the front. He said, no, no, no. I said, the index is in the front. He said, the spiritual index is in the back. I went home and I looked it up. It's one paragraph. And it says that there is one rule that is a blockage to all growth and will destroy all learning. And that rule is simply ridicule without investigation.
Now, I said I was a retarded drunk and a brain damaged one. Here I had been living the 24 hours for drink for two and a half years. And now I found the 24 hour or the 24 minute or the 24 second program for living. Please, God, help me and lift this defect just for now. Just for now. Eight was a very, very serious problem. Again, I have to go back to Heather last night. She was a rather advanced alcoholic. She was not bothered by little things like resentment.
She hated people. A good hate. And I could identify. I hated those who I should hate and I still hated those that I shouldn't have hated. And I said, I can't do it. And he said, now wait. Look, would you just read, just read. You know what I found? Eight really didn't ask me to do much. It didn't ask me to be a lawyer or a judge or a juror. It simply said be a scribe. Right. Right. Answer the question. Have you ever hurt anyone in your entire life and do you wish to do something about it? It didn't say run out. It said if someone is willing to come to you and let bygones be bygones, you must be ready. You must be in a frame of mind to accept.
And I got to nine and there were more problems. See, I wasn't kidding when I said people were trying to go bang. And I was trying to go bang back. We hated each other. The one thing I knew I was not going to do was to do nine with a district attorney. That was not suggested. But when you came right down to it, what had I done? I had completely destroyed a family. I had torn it into shreds. And through the grace of God and those who came before, I was told, quote, try to put the family back together again.
Now, I had a relationship with my children and a relationship with my wife. But you know that there was no family. And so you shared with me again. And I said, how do I start? They said very simply. How do I start? They said, very simply, try having a meal together. Try having the meal without giving your youngest the mashed potatoes on the head when you are displeased.
[01:00:03]
And so nine basically was just putting a family back together again. Now the way that these people shared with me, they said, when you have arrived at nine, you will notice that it is written in the past tense. For what you have learned and what you have grown, now you can put it into action on ten, eleven, and twelve. Ten, our Al-Anon trustee spoke of building a house. You see, I had moved into that house and I was sober and I had to be very careful here with the spies.
I was going to say that you house wives, but I'll say you house persons. There is no sexism. You house persons will identify with me. If I don't take the garbage daily and if I don't put it out, the garbage is going to begin to stink. And if it's left there long enough without being cleared away, it's going to begin to rot. And so will I if I do not do that tenth step. Eleven was beautiful. Beautiful. I looked at it.
My field was communication and I read it and it said, quote, thought through prayer and meditation to make God aware of your will. Beautiful, just beautiful. This didn't last too long, but basically it was a living step. You see, my introduction to service was in handling a situation that I did not want to touch. It was felt that money was being creamed off the top of conferences such as this. And someone knowing my background asked me to take a look.
I thought it was a compliment. I think what they were saying was it takes a thief to catch a thief. Well, I looked and I found. And you see, for a guy who had come off the garbage heap, I had found Santa Claus and I had found that tooth fairy and I had found my world of never never land, Tinkerbell. And now the stars were coming out of my eyes. And I saw hatred and I saw vindictiveness and I got very scared.
And people's good names were at stake. And the good name of A.A. was at stake. And I wanted to quit and bolt. Luckily, I met a gentleman who was Bill's next door neighbor, Burr Smith, one of the early trustees, and he led me by the hand and he held my hand and he said, just pray to get through one meeting one day of this at a time. And God led me through the minefield and no one got hurt. Reputations were left intact and so was A.A.'s name.
Three months later, I was presented with a minor problem. And since I had solved the riddle of the ages, since I had saved A.A., I again could handle this. We drunks have pretty good forgetters and pretty short memories. And by handling this one by myself, I took a minor incident and made a full-blown catastrophe out of it. We come to twelve. What else can you say but the icing on the cake? Three parts.
Having had a spiritual awakening, it gave me a self that I could live with, carry the message to the suffering alcoholic, a cause that I could live for, practice these principles in all of our affairs, a code to live by. When I came in, I heard the old saying, man takes drink, drink takes drink, and drink takes man.
[01:05:00]
And this drunk has come to believe that man takes steps, steps take steps, and steps take man. Now, when I asked Don for the format, he said, you're going to talk a little bit. We hope they're going to listen a little bit and try like hell to finish before they do. I was privileged to be very, very close to a gentleman who has given almost his entire sobriety to service. I could be off by a year, but I believe he's coming up on forty years sober.
And this is Bob Hitchens, the past manager of the General Service Office. And when Bob said goodbye, he shared with us that at an opening conference dinner, Bill had asked a rhetorical question. Bill said, could we survive in a hostile and perilous world should such a world someday confront us? Could we, for example, continue to function in a dictatorship? And Bob closed it in these words. I think we might have no fear.
Let the cold winds blow if they must and the night darken. You and I know a land where the light is bright and there's a stillness for the spirit. A land we can live in for as long as we wish, for it exists really only in our hearts. It is a magical land called AA. God bless. Good night.