Audio
Transcript
Source: DICOBE-00650 – Paul O – BRIDGEHOUSE DINNER – 1988-01-23.mp3 File: dicobe-00650-paul-o-bridgehouse-dinner-1988-01-23.mp3 Duration: 00:59:47
============================================================
Paul Bridghouse, AA, AA, AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, AA, AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, AA, AA, Alcoholics If you haven't had a good time, it's your own darn fault. There's a line in the book that says, in fact, it's one of those lines in the book that really fascinates me, because it's on page 132, and it's not only on page 132, it's in the very middle of the page of 132, and I counted it. I never do this, but I counted it.
There's 16 lines above it, and 16 lines below it, and there's two extraneous words before it, and there's two extraneous words after it, and right in the middle of the page, right in the middle of page 132, it says, we absolutely insist, the steps are suggested, but on page 132, in the middle of the page, it says, we absolutely insist on enjoying life. So if you're not enjoying life, you better call your sponsor. I'm convinced if I'm not enjoying my sobriety, I'm not doing it right. If I'm not enjoying life, I'm not doing it right.
I'm glad to be here tonight. I'm glad to be an alcoholic, and I'm used to a meeting where we have a show of hands. I always have a show of hands of all the alcoholics first. Will all the alcoholics in the audience please raise your hand? We definitely have a quorum. We can go on. I know there's some Al-Anons in the room. I can feel the vibration. Don't be ashamed now. Let's all the Al-Anons raise your hand. Oh, yes. Let's give them a hand. That's enough. That's enough. Al-Anons are quickly addicted to compliments. Come to expect it.
Don't laugh, though. You shouldn't laugh at the Al-Anons. You really shouldn't. In fact, our book speaks very kindly of them. It says that they're not at fault. They seem to have been born that way. You shouldn't laugh. You really shouldn't laugh at the Al-Anons. I'm warning you. I understand there are a few people around here in New Orleans, even in New Orleans, with all the good meetings that are going on. I understand there are a few people still having trouble making the program. You might want to look into this Al-Anon. They've got our steps and our traditions. The other day I heard of one of them using our book. They've got our slogans. They've got our whole program. They've got the whole thing. And they can drink, too.
It might be just what some of you are looking for. You shouldn't make fun of the Al-Anons. One of the most common problems I see in the people I work with is some alcoholic getting all squirrely trying to have a relationship with another alcoholic. And I suggest, why don't you go to Al-Anon? And they get really insulted. We get some of our best customers from Al-Anon. And they come from Al-Anon and come to AA and feel like they've taken a step up in society. I've never understood that.
In case you don't know, when you come to AA, you have hit the bottom of the social barrel. If you're new here tonight, by any chance, you're at the bottom. The good news is that from now on it keeps getting better. If you are new, I'm glad you're here. In fact, I could say now that I'm actually glad to be an alcoholic. We were talking about a table tonight. I'm not only glad to have the program, but I'm glad to be an alcoholic. And it's interesting because not only was I not thrilled to death to come to AA, initially I wasn't even an alcoholic.
Ha, ha, ha yourself. I really wasn't. I wasn't an alcoholic. In fact, I didn't even come to Alcoholics Anonymous, as a matter of fact. And I wasn't sent either. It was just that getting a pass to come to AA was the only way I could get off the nut ward. I happened to be, by accident, I was a patient on the nut ward of the hospital I was on the staff of. It was through a series of mistakes and misunderstandings that I was there. And it's a boring place to be. You don't get any instructions in medical school on how to act on the nut ward when you're on the wrong end of the stethoscope.
[00:05:07]
I know how to be a doctor. In fact, I went around, I tried to help all the other patients as much as I could, and some of them acted like they didn't even want any help. And it's a boring place to be when you don't know how to act. I mean, they have a dumb philosophy, a real dumb philosophy at that nut ward. I spent a lot of time on it, trying to convince me that the quality of my life would somehow be improved if I learned how to make leather belts. That has never made any sense to me, that my life would be improved in any way for me to know how to make leather belts. And I didn't understand the philosophy, and besides, I didn't understand the instructions.
And the interesting thing about that is I've been to all kinds of AA functions since. I go to roundups and conventions and just everything I can. I want to have all the AA exposures and experiences that I can possibly get, and I've been to many different things. But I've never been to any AA function yet where they had an occupational therapy booth. So I don't understand why it worked. But somehow, coming to these AA meetings, I went back to that hospital, and I made the most beautiful pair of moccasins you've ever seen. I did, really nice pair of moccasins and a half a wallet.
Oh, the moccasins were nice, too. They looked good, and they fit good, and they wore good. They felt good. I used to wear them every chance I got. I'd wear them, the tongs would break, I'd repair them. Those things, they wore well. It took seven years. Seven years before those moccasins wore out to the point where I couldn't repair them anymore. And I felt bad. Not bad enough to go back and make another pair, but I felt bad.
And apparently Max was concerned that I might go back and make another pair. And for my seventh AA birthday, my dear Al-Non wife had my moccasins bronzed. And I just love my bronze moccasins. I keep one at the office and one at home, so as long as I remember where they came from, I won't have to go back and make another pair. I love my bronze moccasins, even though they're not nearly as comfortable anymore.
But as I say, I was coming to these AA meetings, and I wasn't even an alcoholic. And it's boring to come to AA when you're not an alcoholic. In fact, it's not only boring, it's embarrassing, because you have no idea who you're going to run into or who's going to see you going in that place. You have to be careful where you park your car, you have to be careful who sees you going in, and you have to be really careful who you run into in that place, because it can really ruin your reputation. You get caught in one of those places when you don't belong there.
And they say some of the dumbest things, a lot of trashy stuff. I remember one guy, big, husky, healthy guy, stood up there in the AA podium, and he says, for me, to drink is to die. And I thought, oh, come on, for God's sake. These people will go to any lengths to try to frighten you into joining their dumb organization. There I was, I'd had pancreatitis once, I'd had convulsions twice, I thought I was dying from a brain tumor, and I was on passion and nut board, and I thought you were trying to frighten me.
And I wasn't really an alcoholic, but I kept coming to these meetings. And you know, it's a funny thing. Actually, it turns out that alcoholism is a contagious disease. I mean, that's where you get it. You get it in meetings like this. That's why it's so common that you have a show of hands, so you know who the alcoholics are, and people can't talk. They won't let you talk at AA unless you say you're an alcoholic.
That's so that you can't claim that you weren't warned, that you're sitting next to an alcoholic. And you get alcoholism at meetings like this. People think you get alcoholism by what you put in your mouth. It's what they let go in your ears. In fact, if you're here tonight and you're not really, really, really an alcoholic, you want to be real careful what you listen to. You want to keep a real open mind, real open, so whatever goes in just goes right on through.
If anything stops there any length of time, just like that, your life will turn into an alcoholic. Once you got it, you can't get rid of it. Once you catch the disease, you got it. All you can do is run around trying to give it to other people. And that really doesn't work, because the more you give it away, the more you got it. You just got it. When you got it, you got it. The funny thing about that was, once I turned into an alcoholic, it took me seven months, but I came to one meeting too many.
[00:10:04]
I got the disease, couldn't get rid of it. I've been running around trying to get it away ever since, and it just won't go away. In fact, when I got it, I was just a very mild alcoholic, just bad enough to keep coming back. And that was a mistake, because my disease kept getting worse then, and much worse now than it was 20 years ago. 20 years and 7 or 8 months ago, and just bad enough to keep coming back.
And of course, once you get to be an alcoholic, then you really ought to quit drinking. They like that in AA. They're fussy. In fact, they're fussy even about this thing. I used to admit I was an alcoholic. They like that in AA. I said, my name is Paul, and I'm an alcoholic. They said, who said he was an alcoholic? I thought, God Almighty, these people are easily amused. Hell, I'd have said I was a chimpanzee if I had turned you on. Anything to make you like me.
So I admitted it, even though it wasn't true. But after seven months, it suddenly was true, and I became an alcoholic. And then I, as I say, a very mild one, but I thought it's better if you don't drink. They like that in AA. If you don't drink, you do better in AA. You kind of stand out if you keep on drinking. So I thought I'd better quit drinking, but I thought, this quitting drinking is no good, because every time, all my life, every time I quit drinking, I ended up drunk.
So I thought, you know, this quitting drinking is bad on my health. And I thought, geez, here, I'm an alcoholic, and I can't drink, and yet I'm an alcoholic, it means I can't not drink. So I can't drink, and I can't not drink. That means I have, that's a dilemma. That's a dilemma. What that means is, without AA, you're screwed. And I thought, I can't drink, but I can't quit. Then I remember the stuff you, I heard a lot of dumb things around AA.
Things like, it's the first drink that gets you drunk. Now that's the dumbest thing I ever heard. I've never gotten drunk on the first drink. But they say, we don't quit, we just don't drink today, or we just don't take the first drink. Or one drink is too many, and a thousand is not enough. They're all that simplistic stuff. Simplicity stuff, you tell dummies from Skid Row, you don't tell doctors things like that.
But I thought, I won't drink today and see what happens. And nothing happened. And so I decided to not drink another day. Nothing happened that day. And for 20 years, I just don't drink today. I drank many yesterday, many yesterday. I'm certainly going to drink tomorrow, but I don't drink today. In fact, I don't know that I would be able to keep from drinking today if I didn't know I was going to drink tomorrow.
And when tomorrow comes, I'll check the time. If it's today, I won't drink today. It isn't hard for me. I always lived in, I used to, there's a little variation on what I used to do. I used to never be happy today. I wasn't happy yesterday. I wasn't happy many yesterday. Not happy today, but I'm going to be happy tomorrow. I don't want to waste any of it today. I'm going to wait and be happy tomorrow.
When Max straightens up, kids straighten out, get another degree or get this or get that or get something else, I'm going to wait and be happy tomorrow. And I was always living in tomorrow. And when today came, I didn't recognize it because I thought when tomorrow came, I didn't realize it because I thought it was today. And so I've had to reverse the whole thing. Today is an important day for me. Today is a day I don't drink.
And somehow that seems to work for me. During that seven months of going to meetings before I became an alcoholic, I heard a lot of dumb things, as I said. A lot of boring meetings. As a matter of fact, one of the first things that happened with that was we went to those meetings and it turned out Max liked the meetings. She didn't know about Al-Anon thing, but she liked the meetings. Well, I picked that up right away.
As a matter of fact, that was one of my first impressions of AA. Certainly AA wasn't doing a darn thing for me, but it sure was helping Max. She was getting better. But I could see that. So when she'd act smart, by God, I'd show her I wouldn't go to AA. I'd punish her. You know what she did? That woman, I don't understand to this day, but that woman got in the car and she drove down to those meetings by herself.
We were living in Anaheim, California, and we were going to meetings in Laguna Beach. We went to Laguna Beach. It was about 45 minutes away. We drove down to Laguna Beach so we wouldn't run into anybody we know. Now, 20 years later, we've gone to Laguna Beach so long that we've run into everybody that goes to Laguna Beach so they won't run into anybody they know. When she'd get in the car, she'd drive down the freeway.
She'd go down the freeway. When she'd get in the car, she'd drive down the freeway, and she'd go to that meeting by herself, and I'd stay home and drink.
[00:15:02]
I don't know if you've ever tried that, staying home on a Saturday night, drinking while your non-alcoholic wife is off laughing it up at an AA meeting. It was boring, and I started going back to the meetings. I heard dumb things. I heard a couple of things. There were two things in particular that stick in my mind that were said close together, and I think there was significance to the fact they were said close together.
One was that some gal got up to an AA podium. She said, I was judging me by my intentions, and the world was judging me by my actions. I was real sorry she said that. I was real sorry she said that. It's none of her business to have had to say that. I will tell you in all sincerity, in all humility, I will tell you I'm one of the best intentioned people you'll ever meet. I have the best of intentions.
I always have, for me and you and everybody. Everybody I like that is. And I've always been proud of my good intentions. But when she said that, and I just set all my intentions aside, gave myself no credit for good intentions. Because even when I got drunk, it wasn't by my intention, it was by mistake. I never intended to get drunk. I never intended to do those things. And as a result, since I didn't intend to do it, I hadn't really done it in a sense.
So it seemed to me. In fact, my intentions have always been the best. It reminds me of the movie. I don't identify much with people in movies and stuff, but I did with the movie Amadeus. Remember Amadeus? Remember the guy? Salieri, I think his name was the guy. In the beginning of the film, he attempted suicide very dramatically. At the end of the movie, he was in an insane asylum and they were wheeling him out.
And he was giving his blessing to the other inmates in the insane asylum. I really identified with him. Not being an insane asylum, not me. I'm a little nut ward, but I was in an insane asylum. But I identified with his thoughts. All Salieri wanted was to be a famous musician. And he always talked to God about it. About how he wanted God to make him famous. He was a good musician. And he was going to tell the whole world that it was God that did it.
I identify with that. I hate to travel. Really, I hate to travel. But particularly, I don't like to travel to foreign countries. But I've always been willing to go to travel to Sweden or Norway or wherever it is. Where the king gives you the Nobel Prize in medicine. I was willing to do that. I would go there when I got the Nobel Prize in medicine. For discovering the cure for cancer, common cold, high blood pressure.
A few little things like that. All I had to do was discover those things. And I would go there and get the Nobel Prize. And when they gave me the prize, I was going to give God all the credit. I was going to make God famous. I was. And all sincere. All it required was for him to make me famous first. That wouldn't be hard for him to do. He could have done that. Very simple. I thought it was a real bargain.
And he never bought it. Not only did he not make me famous, he made me anonymous. But my intentions were good. I've always had good intentions. When I set all my intentions aside, and just set them aside and gave myself no credit for good intentions and looked at just my actions. All of a sudden I was a drunken neighbor, drunken husband, drunken father, drunken citizen, drunken doctor, for God's sake.
And I'd never, never intended to be a drunken doctor. Just in a weak moment there, somebody else stood up at an AA podium and they said, just blurted it right out. And he says, I'd rather be an AA by mistake than out there by mistake. You know, that phrase has affected my life to this day. It just amazes me. My background is in internal medicine. I've studied all the diseases of adult men and women.
Don't do surgery, can't stand the sight of blood. And no pediatrics, can't stand kids, for God's sake. All the diseases of adults. And there are lots of them. But none of them. I've studied a lot of diseases. Tutu-cumuchi fever and all kinds of stuff I haven't even seen. But of all the diseases I've studied, none is more exciting than this disease. This allergy to alcohol that we have.
[00:20:00]
This peculiar reaction we have to alcohol. The thing, it just fascinates me, what alcohol does to nice people like us. It not only makes us drink it, it makes us absolutely insane when we drink it, but it makes us think we decided to drink it. We think, by God, nobody's going to take away my right to drink. As if we knew what we were doing. My life was spent, I was either drinking, getting over drinking, or getting ready to drink.
I was under the influence of alcohol even when I wasn't drinking. Because I was building up to it or getting over it. And yet I felt that I hadn't lost control. And not only does it affect us, not only is it fascinating what it does to those of us who have the allergy to it, but how it affects those who love those of us who have the disease. The only thing more fascinating than this disease, the high cost of this disease, and the way it hides behind other diseases, the only thing more fascinating is the recovery.
I don't know of any disease wherein when people get well, they're weller than they were before they got sick. We get weller than well. We get over things that seem to have nothing to do with drinking. And there's no end to it. You just keep getting weller and weller. The whole point was the disease progressive, but the recovery is progressive. It always seems to be more ahead of us than it is behind us.
The only thing I can see is it's because it's a spiritual recovery. I've done a fair amount of reading in the history of AA. In fact, the nut ward I was in was called the Rush Center. Not because people were just rushing to get in. It was called the Rush Center after Benjamin Rush. Benjamin Rush was one of three doctors who signed the Declaration of Independence. That tells you when he lived. Benjamin Rush was a famous physician of his time, back in the time of General George Washington.
He was a psychiatrist, and of all things, Benjamin Rush wrote a treatise on alcoholism as a disease. He was a prominent physician authority of his time, and he wrote a treatise saying that alcoholism was a treatable disease and that doctors should recognize it and treat it. He advocated total, strict, permanent abstinence as part of the treatment. But anyway, that goes way back. The thing that I find interesting is that Dr. Bill Silkworth, who was Bill W.'s physician in the hospital, was a neurologist.
He also believed that alcoholism was a disease, and he convinced Bill W. of that. It's a medical problem. He convinced Bill of that. I think we might not be sitting here tonight if Silkworth hadn't convinced Bill of that. It was Eby, part of the Oxford Movement, that convinced Bill that it required a spiritual recovery. The medical problem is spiritual recovery. The problem is medical, the answer is spiritual.
It was Bill then who decided that the way for him to keep this would be to give it to other alcoholics, which was part of the Oxford Movement thing. He had the idea that if he gave this thing away, he'd be able to keep it. Maybe if he told other alcoholics about the medical problem and spiritual recovery, they could both stay sober. He ran around talking to drunks, trying to get them sober, telling them all about his spiritual recovery.
I understand he talked to about 73 or 75 of them, none of whom got sober. He was very discouraged. He went and told his wife, Lois. He was saying, my idea didn't work. It's no good, it doesn't work. None of them stand sober. She said something to the effect that it does work. Stupid, you're sober. And he said, oh. As a matter of fact, he was about to go to Akron, and he was talking to Bill Silkworth and saying that this idea of carrying the message to other alcoholics wasn't working.
And Dr. Silkworth said, don't push the spiritual recovery first, push the medical problem first. You'll see that it's a medical problem with a spiritual answer. He says, okay, I'll try it. He went to Akron, first drunk he tried it on, it worked. And AA was born. There was now two of them. And they spent the rest of their life running around telling other alcoholics about it's a medical problem, a spiritual answer, and the two is gone, what is it, getting close to two million.
It's interesting, I think, that the first drunk that Bill talked to, the one that worked on, was a doctor. It was a proctologist, a specialist in rectal distress. We might not be sitting here tonight if that weren't true. It's a medical thing. You have to give it away to keep it. It's that communication thing.
[00:25:02]
As a result of trying to give it away, that's what I see so much here about the Bridge House, about what's going on here today. It's more people give it away, the more they've got it. And you don't give it away, you don't get it no more. And it's a basic part of this whole thing. It's not only surprising to me that I've gone from where I was not an alcoholic, but I admitted it just to satisfy people, and then once I accepted it, I haven't had a drink since.
It's not only interesting to me that I haven't had a drink since, it's interesting to me how easy it is for me to not have a drink since. I don't fight not having a drink anymore, I just don't drink. It isn't even an option for me today. To drink is not an option. So I don't even discuss it with me. It doesn't even come up. In fact, I know that drinking is my number one problem, but to not drink is not a daily problem for me today.
I don't have a problem with not drinking. My problems today are all my thinking. In fact, I don't even have a problem unless I think I do. On the other hand, I've never ever thought I had a problem and been wrong. Well, just think about it for a minute. My sponsor says to me, well, don't drink and don't think. My mind, I'm convinced, is a funny thing. It's like an energy factory. It's manufacturing energy.
And it has to get poured out. And what it pours it out on is whatever I'm thinking about. Whatever I think about. If I think about what's good, it gets good. Or if I think about what's bad, it gets bad. If I think about the problem, the problem gets bigger. If I think about the answer, the answer gets bigger. And I tend to focus on problems. I can take any problem and just think about it a little bit and watch it get bigger.
In fact, I don't even have to have a problem. I can have a non-problem. Well, that's no problem, for God's sake. Well, but if you think about it a minute, I guess it could be. No, just think about it for a minute. Look, it is kind of a problem. And pretty soon I'm thinking, by God, it's a good thing I'm looking at this. Everybody else is missing it. And I watch it and think, my God, this really is a problem.
And you get a big problem like that and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. And people can't even help you much with a problem like that. They tell you dumb things like, well, don't think about it. How are you going to not think about it? You look over there and there it is. Look over there and there it is. I've got this overwhelming problem and I'm obsessed with it. I can't not think about something you're obsessed with.
And why bother with a problem that isn't worth getting obsessed over? I even have trouble with my sponsor with things like that. Jack, Jack, he's a wonderful guy. He's a wonderful guy. The best thing about Jack as a sponsor is he's a great role model. He's just a wonderful guy. Except he has this dumb expression. He says, well, whatever. Well, you know, when Jack is, when his life is falling apart and everything's going to pot and just awful, the things that are happening to Jack and Jack can say, well, whatever.
I think, wow, doesn't he have a, I tell Max, doesn't Jack have a wonderful program? But when I've got one of these problems and he gives me that, well, whatever crap, you know, what are you going to do with that? What are you going to do with that? You know, the same, this business, an example, an example. This is a business of good intention. I've always intended to do much more with my life than I did.
Ha, ha, ha yourself. Not only did I intend it, but I would have too, by God. I would have if it hadn't been for the circumstances. If I hadn't been born in that crummy little town in Ohio, if my father hadn't been a druggist, had been a doctor, if Max had acted different, if we had other kids, if the kids had shaped up, you know, the things that have, well, I would have done more with my life. And the point was that I had the feeling I needed to explain to somebody that I would have done more with my life if it hadn't been for these things.
And I used to have Jack to tell him what I would have done if it hadn't. Somebody needed to know what I had to put up with. Somebody ought to know what I needed to put up with. And I would call Jack up and tell him these things that I had to put up with so that he could understand why I wasn't doing more. I had to put up with him so that he could understand why I wasn't doing more with my life. I would call him up, and one day I called him up to tell him something that Max had really done, something really horrendous that she had done, that I can't recall at the moment.
[00:30:08]
And I had hardly even gotten started yet. I hadn't even gotten started yet, and he interrupted me, just interrupted me. He says, well, why don't you put it out of your mind a couple of days and see what happens? And I said, Jack, a couple of days and I'll forget all about it. You can't neglect problems. You can't lay them aside like that. Problems have a high infant mortality. They die in infancy if you neglect them.
There was something in the LA Times just a short time back about the high cost of medical care, especially certain kinds of medical care. And it was talking about the care of preemie infants, that they're keeping preemies alive. They're born earlier and earlier, and it said something about it. In some cases the cost can run as high as $400,000 a day. And I thought, problems are like that. You have to put a lot of energy, a lot of, you have to pay.
Problems are like plants, like delicate plants. You know, plants, you have to talk to them. You have to nurture them. You have to care for them. You have to nurture and care and talk to them. A lot of water, a lot of fertilizer, a lot of fertilizer. You have to stay right there with your problems and just pay a lot of attention to it. Have you ever had a problem? Have you ever had a problem that's so dainty, so delicate, such a beautiful work of art, that you don't dare leave it long enough to go to a meeting that night?
Haven't you ever had one like that, where somebody says, you going to the meeting tonight? Oh no, I can't go to the meeting, I've got to stay home and work on this problem. You go off to one of those dumb meetings, geez, it likely dragged you into helping to clean up or talk to somebody or may even drag you off to a restaurant after the meeting. You get home, by the time you get home, that problem site will be wielded down to the point where you can't even bring it back.
You can't neglect problems, they're very dainty. It's all a matter of thinking, you just have to keep thinking. In fact, I don't know how you think, but I think by somebody talking. Somebody talking to me. A little voice is in my head, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. All the time somebody's talking. You talk to me, you think I'm not paying attention? I'm paying attention, talk, talk, talk, talk.
They're telling me what to say as soon as you shut up. They always say, give me comments on what they think about what you're saying, how you look and all that. Talk, talk, talk, talk. When I was born, they held me up, put me on their back, and they knocked on a radio talk show. Just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Sometimes it drifts over and picks up two of them. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.
I'm sitting there watching Ed drink coffee tonight. I think, my God, if I drink all that caffeine, they all get wild. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. In fact, a lot of times I go to a meeting, I drink too much caffeine, I go and lie down at night. My body says, let's lie down and go to sleep. My brain says, no, let's lay here and talk about it. I get to sleep, and right in the middle of the night, they say, hey, wake up, we need to talk to you.
I've got all these people living in my head, and they all talk. Sometimes they all talk at once. I used to feel sorry for schizophrenics. Two personalities, two, two, I could handle easy. I've got personalities I haven't even used yet. And they all talk, all the time, talking, talking, talking. If I'm awake, they're talking. Each one has their own pet thing they talk about. One of them up there, one of them doesn't like Max.
Never has, never has. Always saying things to me like, did you hear what she just said? How long are you going to put up with this crap from her? Always saying things like that. There's another one up there that had a softer voice, but the more I listen to the softer voice, the louder it becomes, and the other one faints, and the other one thinks she's terrific. She says, isn't she terrific? Doesn't she have a great sense of humor?
Aren't you lucky that she kept going to AA meetings when you stopped going? Aren't you lucky to have her? Aren't you glad she still comes to the meetings?
[00:35:00]
As a matter of fact, last month Max and I celebrated our 48th wedding anniversary. And we've been… Actually, we've been emotionally involved with each other for over 60 years. As I've often said many times, I make a lot of people angry, but it's the truth. The young people today, like Joe here, they just don't have what it takes to put together a relationship like that, like Max and I have. They just don't have what it takes.
For one thing, you've got to be very, very old. It's kind of like my friend Angie says, it's like becoming an old timer in AA. There's only two rules for being an old timer in AA. There's two rules, don't drink, don't die. So hang in there, Joe, you might make it. Anyway, I have all these people. And then there's another person up in my head that says, is afraid. No matter what it is, he says, oh my God, don't do that, you'll screw it up, and they'll all laugh at you.
Don't do it, don't do it, you'll screw it up, they'll all laugh at you, you'll make a fool of yourself. But there's another voice up there that says, man, with this program, you can go anywhere, anytime, face anybody, and do anything, and nothing can happen to you. Nothing can happen to you. Because there's only one way anybody can really harm you, only one way anybody can harm you, and that's by getting you drunk.
And with this program, nobody, nobody can get you drunk. There are no limits to my sobriety. There's nothing, there's no situation, no problem, no combination of problems that I can't make worse by taking a drink. So there's no limits to what I'm willing to go in order to stay sober. So with this program, I have great confidence that I can do whatever I need to do. And I, just even like this business of having problems and being involved with them, one of the things that happens to me a lot of times is I don't know how to get rid of a problem, and then the phone rings, and it'll be some dummy with some real stupid little problem.
You ever notice the little dumb little things that people get upset about? Distract you from your problems with those dumb things? And then you go to talk to these people, and you can't just brush them off. You can't give them a quick answer. If you do, they'll go around AA and talk about you. Or worse than that, they'll change sponsors and then they'll stay sober and ruin your reputation. And so what you do is you have to talk to them.
When people call, you have to active listening, active listening. That's the latest thing. That's the newest thing. You do active listening. In other words, you don't just listen, you actively listen. You ask them questions. You say, oh, how did you feel about that? Oh, and then how did you feel about that? Oh, tell me more about that. Oh, oh, oh, you lead them on, lead them on. Neither one of you can stand any more of the damn problem.
Then you give them the answer. Then you give them the answer. What's the answer? You pick a number from 1 to 12. And you say, work that stuff. And they come back later, and they say, oh, isn't he wonderful? People say to me that they were asked to be a sponsor. I said, well, you did it? They say, no, I didn't do it. I didn't think I'd been on the program long enough. I said, well, you don't have to be on the program long enough.
All you have to do is know the numbers from 1 to 12. And you just tell them, work that stuff. In fact, when I do get something creative, some creative idea of something they might do, and I tell them to do that, I say, call me back and let me know if it works. I may try it myself. It's a real confidence builder. I used to, these voices in my head that have really been, and all the personalities in my head and all the talking, a lot of times, as they say, they'll wake me up in the middle of the night and remind me of something that I was doing during the day.
And I'll say something about it. You know how that thing happened today and you thought it went so well? It wasn't like that at all. They're really ticked off at you, wait till morning. And in fact, they'll remember you did the same thing several months ago. In fact, you've done that a number of times. In fact, you've done a lot of dumb things. In fact, you don't want to write your fourth? Well, lay here and take it tonight.
And then they'll take my inventory through the night. And they'll spend the rest of the night asking me questions that have no answers. And so I live with the voices. But I find that the more I focus on the ones I like, the less intense the others are. In fact, life is like that.
[00:40:01]
I'm convinced that every person, place, thing, situation, institution, law, situation or combination thereof, everything on this earth, everything and everybody has both good and bad in it. I haven't seen anybody in AA that's so bad that there isn't an awful lot of good in them. And I haven't seen anybody so good that there isn't some bad in them. It extends beyond people into everything else. There's both good and bad in it.
What I found is that whatever I focus on, that gets greater. If I focus on how good AA is, AA gets better and better for me. I can take any AA meeting. If I focus on what's bad about that meeting, it gets to where I don't like that meeting. I can take any person and I can see what's good about them or what's bad about them. I can take any situation. I can see the good or I can see the bad. I was talking earlier in the meeting about having a choice.
I didn't know I had a choice. And since I didn't know I had a choice, I didn't have a choice. You don't have a choice unless you know you have it. And I couldn't see anything but the bad. I was a professional fault finder. I had a knack for seeing the flaw, the defect, the thing that was wrong. And the more I focused on it, the worse it got. I was very good at doing that in our marriage. To see what was wrong with Max.
And I would point it out to her because I think she wanted to know. And every time I did it, she faded a little bit more into the background, into the wallpaper. And yet, if I focus on what's beautiful and great and wonderful about our relationship, it keeps getting better and better. I can focus on what's good and watch it get better. I can focus on what's bad and watch it get worse. I can either focus on the problem and watch the problem grow, or I can focus on the answer and watch the answer grow.
I went to a meeting last night. We were talking about it. Bill Pooley took me to the meeting and I appreciate that. Last night at that meeting, they stay in the answer. They talk about the answer and the answer just keeps getting better and better and better. Instead of talking about, not that you don't share problems, but that they don't live in the problem. So it just keeps getting better and better for me.
And I do the same thing with my higher power. The more I focus on my higher power, the greater he becomes in my life. And today, not only do I have a better relationship with myself, and a better relationship with Max, and a better relationship with people, but my relationship with my higher power is entirely different than it was. Entirely different. We have an entirely different concept of a higher power.
He and I are good friends today. He writes to work with me every day. Except on the days when he forgets. And I tell him what a good job he's doing. And I tell him, I'll pedal and you steer. And for God's sake, watch where you're going. But I'm sick of some of the places we've been. In fact, I have a good relationship, a good communication with him. Communication is not only important between the people in my head, and the people of Max, and the people out there, but my communication with God.
In fact, to me, I was thinking the other day about how worry is thinking about a problem. Worried about a problem, thinking about a problem, that's worry, thinking about God, and that's getting into the answer and getting more comfortable. One of the things I've been doing lately is ways of doing the third step. Of intensifying the third step. I've done the third step, but I need to know that he knows what his job is.
In fact, because I have no trouble living the third step, the truth is that I haven't made a single mistake since I've done the third step. I haven't made a single mistake. My higher power has done some really stupid things, but I haven't made any mistakes. I've even gotten all the papers for a limited partnership agreement drawn up between him being the general partner in my life and me being the limited partner.
He's in charge of the… I'm in charge of the work, and he's in charge of the worry. He never helps me with my work, and he doesn't like for me to help him with the worry. I've gotten to where lately I've been writing him letters. I love to write God letters. He loves to receive letters in case you didn't know that. He loves to receive letters in case you didn't know that. I used to do automatic writing. I used to do it with a pen and pencil and then I got, I bought an electric typewriter and taught myself to type and I love to type. I type real fast
[00:45:03]
and I love to see words come out where my fingers are moving and now I do it with a computer. And I get up in the morning and I type a letter to God. I say, Dear God, here we go again. Let's see what you can do with this one. You've been doing a good job. Just keep it up. Keep this one up. And I type as fast as I can. Don't stop to think about what I'm going to say. Don't worry about punctuation. It's amazing, the intuitive answers and the thoughts and the spiritual ideas that come to mind while I'm typing as fast as I can.
I don't know how to find God's will for me on the long haul specifically. I don't, I envy, fuzzy his sense of direction. I have it but I don't think in the sense that he does but I can get it for a day at a time because I'll write God a letter in the morning. I'll tell God, I'll say, Dear God, you take this day and you do anything you want with it. Now you may think that's strange but it's not strange because our relationship always was that I gave him two lists. A list of things I wanted him to do that day in the order in which I wanted him done and a list of things I didn't want him to let happen that day for God's sake.
Today I don't give him those lists so he has a lot of free time. And he doesn't handle it particularly well. He doesn't handle it well so I have to tell him how to do it. So I tell you, you take this day and you have a good day today. You have fun today. If you have a fun day today, I'll probably have a fun day today. You just take this day and you do whatever you want with it. And you have come into my life today, whoever you want to come into my life today and you have him say whatever you want him to say, do whatever you want him to do and you have happened today whatever you want to have happen today.
And I'll know that whatever happens today and whoever comes into my life today and whatever they say and do, that's exactly what you want to happen today. And you know I've never done that. And I always tell him, you sure didn't have a good day. And I often end up signing it, I love you, which struck me odd when I first started saying it. But I've never done that where I've given him permission to just do whatever he wanted with that day.
I've never had a day in which it seemed like anything happened by mistake. And the first time I did it, I was scared to death. I thought, my God, I wonder what he's going to do. I thought he'd zing me, but he didn't. And I've become more and more comfortable with doing that. And I love you. I've learned a lot about love in the program. I don't talk about it much. I even feel a little embarrassed using the word love because it seems too strong, too icky or something.
And yet to me love is wishing another person well and doing something to bring it about. It's not just the intention of loving, it's action of loving. And I'll go ahead and talk about this. I don't know what alcoholism is. I don't even know what an alcoholic is. And I don't even need to know what one is as long as I know that I is one. But I have my own theory of what an alcoholic is. And I'll just tell you and then I'm going to sit down, believe it or not.
To me, alcoholics, they are born with a tremendous energy to generate love. In other words, alcoholics, chemically dependent people, are very loving. They generate a great deal of love. The defect is they don't know how to express it. They generate love, but they don't know how to express it. As a result, the pressure of love builds up like pressure in a tea kettle. And it can't be expressed. But it has to be expressed.
So it comes out in anger, frustration, resentment, hostility, all kinds of negative emotions. Drugs, alcohol, seem to suppress it, the energy, but it doesn't. It worsens the communication problem and it worsens the problem. They not only can't express love, they can't receive it. So the person, people that love us, live with us, can't express their love either. And they join in the disease. And the pressure of love keeps building up and it can't be expressed.
There's no answer to that. They can't express love and they can't receive it. But there's no answer to it. What happens? They end up in AA or Al-Anon. What do we do with the newcomer? We take them in. We don't say, I love you, but we love them. We love them. We don't care where they've been, what they've done, what they haven't done, who they are. We don't care any of that. We just care about the fact that they're…
Now what do we do with them? We love the hell out of them.
[00:50:01]
We just love the hell out of their lives. We love the hell out of their hellish situations. AA is outstanding to me as an illustration of the tremendous healing power of love. Tremendous healing power of love. We just love the hell out of people. And what do they do? They begin to act loving. They don't even know they're doing it. But just sitting still in an AA meeting, just sitting and listening to somebody else trying to stay sober by talking, it's an act of love, just as you're doing.
You're sitting there quietly, attentively listening, helping me stay sober. And I'm taking whatever risk there is of standing up here talking, trying to help you stay sober. So we're loving each other to help. And pretty soon the newcomer's doing that. Pretty soon he may even put his hand out to somebody, may even get a cup of coffee with somebody. He starts acting loving. And he's staying sober. Wakes months later, he's sober, he doesn't even know what happened.
Doesn't even know what happened. And then he learns that the more he gives it away, the more he's got it. The more he gives it away, the more he's got it. And that's why things like the Bridge House just grow and grow and grow. And you feel that intense love. You can feel it in this room. You can feel it here all evening. You can feel it over there. You can see it in Buzzy and the board members and the alumni and the staff and in the people over there.
It's a tremendous place to be. This feel of love energy. To me that's the way this whole thing works. It's a matter of giving love. And I have found it interesting to try to convey that love home. To be as attentive and listening at home as it is at meetings. I would love to be able to treat everybody I know, everybody I run into, the way I see you treat newcomers. Wouldn't the world be a different thing if everybody related the way A's and L's relate to their newcomers?
It's action. It's action that counts. Speaking of action, I tried to show Max my love for her by action. One of the worst things I ever heard in my life was that marriage was a 50-50 proposition. That's the dumbest thing I ever heard. That kept me drunk for years. A lot of times I wanted to put something on the balance scale of marriage and I couldn't because Max hadn't put anything on for a long time.
And I finally put something on and I couldn't put anything on again until she put something on. I had to wait and see what she was going to do. Finally she put something on and I said, was that 50%? I don't think that was 50% and I take some of mine back. Today I try to act loving to Max. In fact I do that in the mornings. I definitely won't force myself to sit down. I get up in the morning and I'll type my letter to God and I'll decide it's time for Max to wake up.
Max loves to sleep. I don't even know where she stores all the sleep she gets. But when she wakes up, she likes to turn to the left and she likes to see a hot cup of coffee on her bedside stand. She doesn't like hot, hot coffee. And she certainly doesn't like cold, hot coffee. What she likes is hot coffee, a cup of hot coffee with three ice cubes in it. She likes to see the ice cubes in it. Which is not strange because if you can't see the ice cubes in it, it starts her day off with a problem right there.
Right there, she looks over there and there's the problem. Did you put the ice cubes in this coffee? But if she can see them there, then she knows they're there. I decide it's time for her to wake up. I type my letter to God and I decide it's time for Max to get her coffee and I go to make it for her. She doesn't like brewed coffee. She likes instant coffee. Any kind of instant coffee, as long as it's Yuban.
She likes a level teaspoonful of Yuban in the cup. She likes a particular cup, kind of. Lots of cream. She doesn't like milk. It makes it too cold. In fact, she likes powdered milk, like cream oil. Lots of that. Two heaping teaspoonsful of cream oil. Level teaspoonful of Yuban. Two heaping teaspoonsful of cream oil in the cup. Then you fill the cup with hot water. Don't boil the water. You fill the hot water from the hot water dispenser.
Hot water dispenser is a little tank that goes under the sink. You have to hire a man to come and install it. In fact, he had to come and drill a hole in the stainless steel sink that replaced the perfectly good white porcelain sink that was there. And you fill the cup with hot water from the hot water dispenser,
[00:55:01]
dispenses hot water at just the right temperature for putting the three ice cubes in it. And you fill the cup with hot water. You put the three ice cubes in it. Then you walk in the darkened bedroom, and you don't step on any high-heeled shoes or magazines or newspaper or stuff. Then you get to the bedside stand without waking her up. And you don't look for a bare spot. You just look for a level spot.
You set the cup down, and you turn around You set the cup down, and you turn around and sneak out of the room and hope that she wakes up before the ice cubes melt. Now, we've been away a long time the night before. I went to a meeting some distance. Maybe she may sleep a little later. You can't be sure she's going to wake up. Then you can put the ice cubes in the little cheese glass, the one I used to drink out of.
And you can put the cup, if you can find a place, you can put a cup in the glass there. Then if she wakes up and the ice cubes haven't melted, she pours them in the cup herself. She doesn't mind doing that once in a while. The trick is, see, that's the easy part. That's the easy part. The trick is, the hard part is, you have to have her not appreciate it. If you expect anything in return for what you do, it's not love, it's barter.
Anything at all. You can't expect anything at all when you do something as an act of love. Have you ever heard anybody bargain with a newcomer, for instance? Nobody ever says, well, yeah, I'll take you to a meeting, but you've got to promise to quit drinking. I mean, I'm sick of the people I bring to AA and they don't get sober. Or I'll be your sponsor if you stay sober and become a convention speaker and tell them who your sponsor is.
Nobody bargains with a newcomer. You're just glad to do it for them. For free and for fun. For free and for fun. Expecting nothing in return. Expecting nothing in return. Not even appreciation. So you have to do that for Max and not expect her even to appreciate it. And I have to, right off, I have to admit, Max is very cooperative. She never appreciates it. She never appreciates it. She never appreciates it.
So anyway. I'm just delighted to have been here tonight. Just delighted to have been here. I'm just delighted to be an alcoholic. Even though I became an alcoholic by mistake. And I'm glad that I accepted alcoholism so I could not only make it easy to stay sober, but it makes life easier. It's the law of non-resistance. The idea is go with the flow. And another thing that I learned from it is you don't have to approve of something to accept it.
Acceptance is not approval. Acceptance is not approval. I didn't approve of being an alcoholic because I thought it was the dumbest thing in the world. I've always convinced all my life that the worst possible thing that could happen to a nice guy like me would be that I turn out to be an alcoholic. And when it happened, I didn't think, oh, goody, goody, I'm an alcoholic. I thought it was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard.
But I accepted the challenge of being an alcoholic. I accepted the challenge of the fact that I'm going to live life as successfully and as fully as I can in spite of the fact I can't drink. And the only way I could do that was by going to a lot of meetings, having a sponsor, doing these steps, reading the book, doing the things that the winners do, the happy people do. Today I've gone from admitting I was an alcoholic to approving I was an alcoholic to the day I approve.
The day I approve of the fact that I'm an alcoholic, I think it's the best thing that ever happened to me. I've never had it so good. I just love it. I don't say that I'm proud to be an alcoholic. I don't say I'm proud to be an alcoholic. Why would I be proud to be an alcoholic? I didn't have anything to do with it. I didn't ever decide, oh, today I think I'll start being an alcoholic. You might say, well, I became an alcoholic by drinking too much.
A lot of people say that. I don't necessarily bind that. I think maybe I drank too much because I was an alcoholic. I understand alcoholics have a tendency to do that. I don't know that I'm not proud to be an alcoholic, but I'm certainly not ashamed of being an alcoholic. I'm neither proud nor ashamed of being an alcoholic. But I am proud. I am mighty proud indeed. I am mighty proud indeed to be a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I think that's absolutely fantastic. I thank God for AA, and I thank you for my sobriety. Thank you and good night.