Audio
Transcript
Source: Mike F – AA History – SCYPAA – 2007 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: mike-f-aa-history-scypaa-2007-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:04:23
============================================================
They put me on this, I got a phone call a little over a year ago and asked if I wanted to do something on the history and I said well that would be great and then I said what would you like me to do and they said well do whatever you want and that was where they made the mistake and because I love to talk about the history that's how I came into Alcoholics Anonymous by some guys that were really interested in the history so it's always been very dear to me. I've got a good friend, Tom, I don't live too far from here and Tom often shares that how we come into the program always becomes what we intensely pursue and I didn't know until Tom said that why I was so involved in the history and it's seemingly other people didn't have nearly as much interest and I can tell by the amount of people in this room there's a tremendous amount of interest in the history but it would also be unfair for me to ever speak at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and not share a little bit about my story so that the people who are here at least know that I qualify as an alcoholic and this is my first Young People's Conference so this has been a real trip for me to be exposed to a little bit different level of energy than I'm normally used to going to my AA meetings and it's been great for me. I loved it. Last night when that young lady was reading how it works I didn't know if I could get through it. It was really moving for me to see people have that degree of intensity and enthusiasm for Alcoholics Anonymous and I like to feel that I'm enthusiastic over AA and very passionate about my sobriety and that's how I try to be because when I came to AA I was one of these guys that would cheer up a whole room by leaving and I was not a really happy guy and my dad was in Alcoholics Anonymous so when I was about six years old he started going to AA meetings and he was real active. His sponsor got sober in 1946 and they would, the New York State Police, we grew up in a little town outside of Buffalo, New York and the New York State Police would drop drunks off on our sun porch and they'd go to sleep and the next morning we would get up and be getting ready for school and there might be a drunk sitting at the kitchen table shaking and my mom would fix meals and my dad and his sponsor would take him to meetings or my dad and his sponsor would go bail somebody out of jail or go in front of a judge and I would see people come into Alcoholics Anonymous that were ruined and I would see them get their lives back and we had picnics that we went to and so growing up AA to me was really a good thing and I saw all kinds of good things happening as the result of Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon. My mother just celebrated 41 years in Al-Anon so I could see that there was goodness here but all that I was able to see and all that I was able to learn very young didn't help me once I discovered alcohol because what happened for me was at a very early age and I don't remember my first drink, I remember what happened after I drank my first drink and that was very significant in my story because my first drink was at my older brother's first communion and we took some beer out of the cooler and we snuck away and we drank it and I didn't remember this great feeling and I didn't dance with all the girls or anything like that but I went back and I took some more and I hid it in the woods so I could have it the next day and that was how I drank alcohol. By the time I was 15 years old I got to have my first detox in Children's Hospital in Buffalo, New York and I spent 8 days in intensive care detoxing from barbiturates and alcohol addiction and while I was in that hospital I agreed that I would go to AA meetings when I got out and that I would go to counseling. So I got out of the hospital and I went to my first AA meeting in the bottom of a police station in Orchard Park, New York and it was on a Friday night at 9 o'clock and I went with my dad and his sponsor and we would go down these stairs, I'm 15 years old, we go down the stairs, there's a room full of men, old men, low ceilings, smoke filled room, old wooden tables and they go around the room
[00:04:59]
just like we do today at meetings and this one says I'm Bob and I'm an alcoholic and
[00:05:03]
I'm Art and I'm an alcoholic and I'm Dave and I'm an alcoholic and I'm Dorsey and I'm an alcoholic and it came to me and I said I'm Mike and I'm a problem drinker with alcoholic tendencies because I didn't want to be an alcoholic. There's one thing I knew that I didn't want from growing up in my home was to be an alcoholic and to me I believe the reason I didn't want to be an alcoholic is because I felt that you folks didn't drink anymore and I just didn't want any part of that. So for the next 10 years I went to AA meetings and never got sober. I kept drinking, I would come to meetings and I think this is important when we think about the history of Alcoholics Anonymous too because I was a young person, that was 1975 and I was young coming into AA and I didn't feel like I belonged there and the people at AA they were fine, they said kid keep coming back, you're welcome here, they didn't throw me out because of my age or the other things I did or any of this, they made me feel welcome but inside I was hearing my interpretation of what I was hearing AA was, don't drink and go to a meeting. I'm real careful today that I don't say that to people coming in because I do think that's part of our fellowship but it's not really going to do enough for a real alcoholic, at least it didn't for me and anything that I share is my opinion of how I interpret the program as of today and I don't, that's one of the fears about talking about history is that somebody is going to think I'm some kind of authority and I am not an authority on Alcoholics Anonymous at all. The only thing I'm an authority on is my story and sometimes I'm not so sure about that because if you talk to my mother she'll give you a different version, you know, and it's like that's not how I remember it at all. But you know that not drink and go to meetings didn't work for me so I would not drink, I'd go to a meeting, I'd sit there, I'd look at you and you seemed as though you were having a good time, you're happy, you're comfortable, you're hugging each other, I could never do that, you know, people were going out to dances and they were sharing things, I couldn't do that. I'd go home and I'd be so miserable that I'd want to die and the only answer for me was to drink because when I drank those feelings went away, I got better and I know, you know, the alcoholics in the room know what I'm talking about, you know, it's like magic once we start drinking. Well, ten years later, April 21st, 1985, I broke into a house and my goal was to commit suicide, the person that lived there had a gun, I broke in, I couldn't find the gun, they were target shooting, you know, I finally got the courage and couldn't do it and I go up to the top floor of this home and I'm going to jump out the window and I really was sick of being in pain so I wanted to make sure if I jumped out this window I really could kill myself so I'm looking out the window and I see two ladies walking down the street wearing these funny hats and they must have been going to church or I was hallucinating and I'm not sure which but when I saw them I remembered my grandmother from when I was younger on Sundays, she used to come over to our house and they would do church and then come over to the house and they were always wearing these funny hats and, you know, it made me remember my grandmother. Her last words to me were, please stop drinking. That was the words that everybody said to me, you know, please stop drinking and so that morning I saw these women, I thought of my grandmother and I got down on my knees and I said, you know, the AA prayer, God help me, you know, and the lights didn't light up and the wind didn't blow and I didn't feel a breeze but I do believe that God started working in my life right then and maybe before then certainly because I was still there but I didn't recognize it and I didn't recognize it then but that prayer began a series of events that were happening without my knowledge that things were lining up and a couple of weeks later, because they didn't know what to do with me, my dad thought of a friend of his in Texas and this guy's name was John C., Big John, and John got sober October 28th of 1951 and my dad called John and said, John, I've got Mike here, I don't know what to do with him, they won't take him in the hospital, he's been to too many and he's been to the psychiatric ward and they don't want him there and we got to get him out of town and John said, stick him on an airplane and send him down here to see me and on May 5th, 1985, I arrived in Abilene, Texas and John lived in Brownwood
[00:10:06]
and he took me to a meeting that night and we got back to his house and there's a little bit of the condition I arrived to you folks in after ten years and John was a big man, he looks at me and he says, how long you been around the deal, kid? And I said, oh, about ten years with as much ego as you can have, you know, when you weigh 90 pounds and you're wearing somebody else's pants and he looked at me and he said, I don't know if you got the guts it takes to make it but if you do, we can show you by living proof how you never have to live that way again and he said, I'll go to hell and back with you if you want to get sober but if you want to drink, you can go to hell alone and I didn't think that was particularly nice, you know, and I wasn't so sure that I wanted to be there and I was waiting for, you know, welcome to Texas but that wasn't happening and I'm sitting there and this guy looked at me, he's 80 years old, biting on his cigar and he said, you're nothing but a thief because you stole from those that you love the most their right to happiness.
I don't like that, I'm going to repeat that, he said, you're nothing but a thief because you stole from those that you love the most their right to happiness and for the ten years that I was coming to AA and didn't stop drinking, you know, I'd see people get a 30 day chip, I'd get a resentment, you know, because I couldn't do that, I didn't have the power to do that and here this guy is telling me I was a thief of the worst kind, he said, maybe not the kind of guy that would steal money from your mother's purse, you know, you were worse than that, well I had done all those things. When he said that I was faced with the truth about myself because for ten years I'd gone out saying, I'm not hurting anybody but me, if you help me out, get me out of this jam, help me get a job, take care of this, I'm going to be alright and I didn't realize the disappointment I had become. I mean I made it through high school on a resentment, I never went, very very little, you know, back then you could manipulate your way through school, you could pull it off, I don't think you can today but I remember walking across the stage and I had stopped at a bar, we called it Rapples Chapel and I stopped there and did some shots of wild turkey on my way to the graduation and we get to the graduation, my nickname in school, I don't know how I ever got it but my nickname was Drugs. So, they announced, you know, Mike F. and my mom and dad and my grandma and a few relatives are sitting in the audience and I start across the stage and one of the guys in the back yell out as loud as he can, Drugs, and everybody starts yelling and I'm thinking, mom and dad are proud of me, you know. You know, those were the things, you know, the moments that I had in my life, you know, where I was a disappointment. I'm sure my parents wanted to be proud of me but, you know, my alcoholism was in control, you know, and I didn't wake up that morning wanting to disappoint my parents. I didn't wake up any morning wanting to disappoint anyone. I wanted, all those times I went to AA meetings, I was sincere, I wanted to get sober. I was so sick and tired of living the way I was living. I come in here and I wanted it so bad but I thought, you know, I was so messed up that I thought it was you don't drink and you go to a meeting. Well, here I am with this guy in Brownwood, Texas, he's sober 30 something years and he lets me come to his house. He starts talking to me that night about AA and he knew Abby and he knew Bill W and he knew Bill D, AA number 3. So he starts telling me stories and, you know, to be honest with you, at the time I didn't really care, okay. I mean, all I'm trying to think is can I get through this day without taking a drink, you know, and without thinking about taking a drink and I was so sick, you know. I was getting up every morning, I'm puking every time I eat, I just couldn't do it. Well, the very next morning, John says, come on kid, we're going for a ride. And he came in and this is the kind of sponsorship, I love to talk about sponsorship, this is the kind of sponsorship I had. This guy had a one bedroom apartment, okay. He took the couch, I got the bedroom. He's 80 years old. I went down there for two weeks and left two-and-a-half years later.
[00:15:04]
He took me to AA conferences all over the place. And that's why it's so important at these conventions that we meet with people and embrace people and help them to feel welcome because what an opportunity for people to see that AA is not just the group. AA is bigger than just the group. That first morning he took me over to his best friend's house. This guy's name was Bill O. And Bill had a tape library. It was a Midwest tape library. It was the largest AA tape library in the world at the time.
And we pull in the driveway and John says, gives me a little quick briefing of what we're going into. Kid, he always called me Kid. He had another name for me and my current sponsor asked me not to use that so I won't. But he said, Kid, this is the largest AA tape library in the world. And I said, so what? And we go inside and he introduces me to Bill and Arbutus. And Bill had one eye and one arm. And immediately, I had a nickname for Bill and that was Grumpy, but I never used it.
I could just tell Bill was kind of one of these guys that was hard to warm up to. And I must have said something while I was there because at the time, I could get about a seven word sentence out and three of them started with F. And Bill pounded his finger down on the table and he said, young man, the first thing we clean up in here is our mouth. I thought that was a little odd. I remember driving back that day with John and I said, what's up with that guy?
He's going to start telling me how I got to talk. And he said, listen, Kid, this program saved our lives. Bill got sober October 21st of 1951 and John got sober October 28th. So Bill had one week more than John and he never let him forget it. And I'd watch these two old guys kind of going at it. Well, John's explaining to me that the program saved their lives and that I might be the only big book that some new guy or gal ever sees.
That I got to be a good example of the program. And when I'm at an AA meeting, I should be a good example and that I should read and study the big book. And he's sharing this stuff with me and I'm thinking, OK, yeah, I can handle that. And that was why he was telling me not to use language. And I thought, all right, well, I can do that, too, because they explained to me I needed to change. So I started to listen to him. I'm grateful. And Joe said that last night about being beaten into a condition.
I'm using my words, but beaten to a condition of reasonableness. That's where the desperation gives us the willingness to do this thing. To me, today, I think that we're motivated by either inspiration or desperation. And I'd much rather be motivated by inspiration today than desperation. Because that's what I was motivated by when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous. I was into a condition of desperateness.
And when I started reading a book, it said the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. Somehow, someway, he'll control and enjoy his drinking. That the persistence of this illusion is astonishing and many pursue it to the gates of insanity or death. And all this time I was going to AA, I didn't understand why I kept drinking. Now I'm reading a page in the big book and it makes all the sense in the world to me.
And I thought that it was go to meetings and don't drink. And they show me that lack of power is my dilemma. I thought drinking was. Then they showed me that the main object of this book is to enable me to find a power greater than myself that will solve my problem. Well, now they got my attention because now I understand there's something I have to do. Every day, John would bring me over to Bill's house and they would put in tapes of Sam Shoemaker and early AAs.
The reason I wanted to share some of my story is it bridges right into the history. And here's kind of where I want to do that. I had the privilege of meeting Smitty, Dr. Bob's son. This is sometime around my second month of sobriety. And Smitty was sponsored by Arbutus. And he's sitting in the library one day and he said, Mike, now I had already been listening to the tapes with John and listening to the stories.
And he said, did John or Bill talk to you about the first guy that my dad, being Dr. Bob, and Bill tried to work with? And I, you know, I'm enthusiastic. Oh, yeah, A number three, Bill D, Akron City Hospital. And he says, no. He says, there's another guy that they worked with before that. His name was Eddie R.
[00:20:01]
And he said they moved Eddie and his family into Dr. Bob's house. And they put Eddie up in the attic. And Eddie would, you know, in one of the bedrooms and he would climb out the window and down the drain pipe and he'd go get drunk. And Dr. Bob and Bill would go round Eddie up. And they'd bring him back. And they tried to get him sober. And then Eddie would do the same thing. And they would do the same thing.
Because they knew they had to carry the message. And they'd get Eddie and they'd bring him back and try to get him sober. And one day Eddie was chasing Ann S. around the house with a butcher knife. And they had to have Eddie committed. So the first guy that Dr. Bob and Bill worked with, for all purposes at the time, was a complete failure. See? And Smitty kind of had this smile on his face and he said, the story doesn't stop there.
He said, 15 years later at my dad's funeral, a guy came up to me and said, do you know who I am? And Smitty said, well, you're Eddie. And he said, and I've been sober for two and a half years. And I'm a member of the Youngstown group. And I've got to tell you that a spiritual experience started to happen for this alcoholic that day. Because for the first time in more than 10 years, I knew I was home in AA.
I knew that AA wasn't built on success. AA was built on failure. And it was guys like Eddie and guys like me that made AA happen. So I then could have a different intensity in Alcoholics Anonymous because now I belonged. And I go to groups today and I see people try to say that there's, like, different classes of AA. We're going to teach you how to do it when you know how to do it. When you get here, we're going to grade your steps, make sure you did this.
And that wasn't the AA that I was taught. These guys welcomed me when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous. And they shared those stories with me. And I am so grateful today that they did. As a result of that, I started to study, you know, history of Alcoholics Anonymous. And a lot of the studying I did, and before I go there, the library that Bill had, the Midwest Ape Library, 4,000 reel to reel, are now in my living room.
And it's a little service project that my wife and I have been committed to getting these digitized so that we can make them available for all generations of AA and Al-Anon people because there's just so much information there. And, you know, I'm grateful that that's happened. I'm grateful that these people were there to extend the hand of kindness and consideration to me that Abby extended to Bill in November 1934.
You know, that's really, you know, before Abby went to Bill, and when we read the history and learn about the history, we hear of Roland, Roland H.. And Roland was treated by Carl Jung in Switzerland. You know, I'm not going to go through the whole little details of every little AA historical thing. I will recommend that you get AA Comes of Age. Bill wrote that, and it's a great book. Pass It On, which is a fantastic book.
Dr. Bob and the Good Old Timers is really an excellent book. I hope I remember to tell you a story about that, too. But Roland got – Jung said to Roland, look, you need to have a spiritual experience or you're going to die. That's pretty much what he said to him. Roland didn't know how to get this spiritual experience, and Jung didn't know how to give it to him. Roland came back to the United States.
He picks up a book called Varieties of Spiritual Experience, Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. He reads in there, under the conversion part of that book, a story, a conversion story about a guy named Samuel H. H.. This guy, Samuel H., was a bad drunk. And this is like in the 1880s. This is after the Washingtonian movement and all of this. I'm not going back to that part of AA history because, to me, at some point we've got to get to the point.
But he reads this story about Samuel H.. Samuel H. got sober in 1880, I think it was. And he found his way to a mission in New York, and the mission was called the Water Street Mission. The guy that was running the Water Street Mission was a guy who spent his life trying to help people get converted. This guy's name was Jerry M., and they labeled Jerry M. as the apostle to the lost.
[00:25:07]
So Samuel H. goes in there. He gets his conversion, and he stops drinking. Then he goes to work and spends the rest of his life working at the Water Street Mission. Nolan reads about his conversion and begins to have a conversion of his own. Now, I look back at that, and I think the reason why is he was identifying with another alcoholic. That's why Alcoholics Anonymous is so powerful. All the doctors that tried to help me, all the shrinks that tried to help me, all these people that tried to help me and you, were ineffective until we had an alcoholic tell us the truth about themselves.
We could identify with them, and then they said, Mike, you don't have to do it alone. You don't ever have to be alone again. And boy, what comforting words that are to an alcoholic, because I could be in a room with a thousand people, and I was always lonely. I was always unhappy. I had so much anger. I was one of these guys that somebody licked all the red off their candy. I just wasn't happy. When I came into AA, I was in the debating society.
I argued everything. But I think Roland read that story, and he could identify. Then he went to the Oxford group in Calvary Church in New York. He shows up there, and God's hand is in all of this. And what happened there was he goes in, and who does he meet when he gets to Calvary Mission? He meets a guy named Henry H., Samuel H.'s son. Samuel H.'s son, Henry, was taking care of the mission for Sam Shoemaker.
I mean, how Roland must have felt walking in there. He's actually found hope because of this guy's father, who had already been dead for years. And then he meets his son, who's in there working in the mission. There, Roland was introduced to the principals of the Oxford group, to the four absolutes. And he gets a couple guys, and they go hook up with his friend, Ebby. And Ebby's a bad drunk, and they get Ebby sober.
And Ebby starts to buy into this Oxford group. And Ebby thinks, you know, I need to go see this friend of mine, Bill. And he goes over, and he sees Bill W. And he talks to Bill, and he says, Bill, I don't have to drink today. And Bill says, why not? He says, I found religion. And Bill thought he was a religious crackpot. Ebby didn't know how else to say it to Bill. So he just said, I found religion.
And Bill says, well, what brand? And Ebby says, well, it's not really any brand at all. It's kind of pick your own conception of God. Well, that was new to Bill. Well, Bill thought about that. He didn't stop drinking, but he thought about it. And he even said he couldn't get that out of his head. He couldn't get the clearness of Ebby's eyes and the vision of what Ebby was showing him out of his head.
And, you know, I'm sure that Bill didn't have a whole lot of fun left in his drinking. And for the next couple of weeks, that went on. And on December 11, 1934, Bill was admitted into Towns Hospital for what turned out to be his last time there for alcohol. And that was at 2-11 in the afternoon, I think they signed him in. Now, that's one thing. When you study the history, you get real weird about certain little facts, you know.
And I don't know why. I really don't, because I'm not that way with anything. It's like they've got all these groups. There's N.A. and O.A. and C.A. and P.A. and G.A. And I saw there's Clutterers Anonymous. I really belong to that, you know. And if you've been in my home, you'd say, man, I don't know what you've got to do to qualify. But I told my wife, and she's like, you bet. My wife is a wonderful person.
But she did not have the same disease as me, you know. And heck, what the heck, I've got a lot of time. I want to share that. I left John at two and a half years sober, and I go to Arizona. And I'm out by the swimming pool one day, and this girl dives in the water. So I dove in after her. I was telling Joe last night. And I swam up to her, and I started talking to her about the only thing I know, and that was Alcoholics Anonymous, you know.
I don't think she could care, you know. But she was being really nice to me. You know, we talked a little bit. I asked her out on a date, and she said no. You know, I had pretty well anticipated she'd say no anyway. And so I was disappointed, like I always was disappointed. Yeah, any relationship I ever had before I came into Alcoholics Anonymous was pathetic, okay? And, you know, and I heard people do fifth steps from the podium about their relationships, and, you know, to me, I can do it in one word, pathetic.
[00:30:07]
And there's nobody here that doesn't understand that, you know? They were not good. Well, I asked her out on a date, she said no. A couple days later, she sees me again, and she says, my plan's changed. My dad has some tickets to a baseball game, and if you'd like to go, you could be my guest. Well, I'm like, yeah, that'd be great. And I said, if you'll go to dinner with me. And she said, well, sure. So I picked her up that evening, it's in August, in Phoenix, okay?
I don't know if you've ever been to Phoenix in August, but let me tell you, I drive in a black Ford Fairmont, okay, with no air conditioning. It's probably 111 degrees. We're going to go sit at a baseball game. Talk about insanity. I picked her up. We go to a Chinese food restaurant. She opens her fortune cookie, and it says, you can trust the man, you can, the man you're with's love is true. Something like that. You can count on the man you're with, his love is true.
Well, I knew I had her then. Four months later, we were married. And this December, it'll be 20 years. I'm grateful for that. Because, you see, I don't tell people, don't get in relationships. What I try to do is take people through the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, because that's what they did with me. And my sponsor, he traveled a lot. He got back from one of his trips. And I said, I did it. And he said, what? And I said, I read it.
I'm an excited kid. It was the first book I ever read. 25 years old. And when I say it's the first book I ever read, it was the first book I ever read. But I still only read the first 164 pages, because that's what they referred to. So that was a book. And I said, I did it. And he said, you did what, kid? And I said, I read it. And he said, what's that? And I said, the big book. And he said, I read Moby Dick, and I don't remember a damn bit of it.
You got to study that book. And the next day, we were sitting out with highlighters in our hand. And we're reading the big book. And we get to the doctor's opinion. And it talked about a psychic change. And I said, I want one of those. That's cool. See? I want one. And I started having some identity. And then it told me, the only thing necessary to bring this about was that I would be willing to follow a few simple rules.
Then later in there, it said that the guys who were getting sober had become sold on the ideas contained in the book. And I knew that I had to have a different attitude if I was going to stay sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. So those were things that had happened to me. It works so well for me now, when I get to talk at groups. At my home group, they get sick of me. Really, they do. Because every time I talk, I want to talk about the traditions or the history.
Things that some of them aren't all that excited about. But to me, if we don't know the traditions, if we don't understand that the traditions are vital for the future of Alcoholics Anonymous, and we don't make them fun, the traditions were first written and first published in April 1946. Now, AA had only been going on for 11 years when the traditions were published. When Bill wrote the steps in 1938, he was writing the steps as a result of the sobriety of the first few members of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And he expanded on the six steps that they were originally using. And he wrote the 12. Well, when he wrote the traditions, what he was doing was taking the experience of the first few groups, and he was documenting that and putting it down so that he could expand on it and AA could survive. They didn't call them rules, they called them guidelines. I think that Bill knew by 1946 that the verbiage that we use with alcoholics was important.
He wasn't trying to water anything down, he was trying to get it across so that people would accept it and understand it. And when he published the traditions, he published them in the long form. And the grapevine is 12 points of tradition. And people started reading this, and then in 1947 they did a pamphlet and they sent it out to the groups. I think it was a nickel. I have a feeling they sent it out for free.
Bill really wanted people to start reading about these traditions because nobody seemed to care. And then those old timers at the time
[00:35:01]
that were reading about the traditions were getting upset because they felt, no, you can't do this to us, we don't need these rules and we can handle things just fine the way that they are. Everything's going good. Bill had the vision to know that we needed to keep AA together for future generations or it was going to destroy itself. And Bill had done enough research to know about the Washingtonians.
The Washingtonians started within seven years. They had 400,000 members. It took alcoholics… I think only 100,000 of the 400,000 were alcoholic. They'd take anybody. But Bill was able to look at the historical facts and make some decisions about the traditions with the guidance of the people that were around him at the time to put the traditions together. They came to him, they stressed their point.
Some of the old timers, a guy from Chicago and another from Detroit, Earl T. from Chicago and Archie T. from Detroit. These two fellas got sober in Dr. Bob's house. So they had this little kind of club, if you will, of people that were the Akronites. They got sober through Dr. Bob and they were concerned, you know, Bill being a big city guy up in New York was going to do some things that were going to hurt AA.
They started getting real loud about this. As a compromise, what Bill did was he revised the traditions from the long form to what we have today, which is the short form. The short form were then introduced to the fellowship at our first international convention in Cleveland in 1950. That's where they were accepted as part of AA in 1950. So that was kind of what happened with the traditions. But in 1935, Bill and Dr. Bob in Akron went to see Bill D. at Akron City Hospital.
He got sober and AA really started at that point in time, in June of 1935. I'm going to put my glasses on. I actually did a couple of notes here. Because I called Amy. You know, if you're interested in the history of Alcoholics Anonymous too, there's a tremendous amount of information available on the Internet. The books that I mentioned. Amy is our archivist in New York and she is really a wonderful person.
If you ever send her an email. Go on to the website for AA World Service. There's an archive section in there. There's a lot of great information. If you have questions, you can email her. You can call her. She's kind of hard to get a hold of. But she's certainly willing to answer anybody's questions. So I wanted to share that. Don't always believe what you read either. A lot of information on the Internet doesn't make it true.
A lot of people, and that's why I kind of give a generic history talk. Because I want to be real careful about facts and things. Because then somebody is going to come up to me and say, well, that wasn't really the way it happened. Recently somebody said, well, you know, June 10th really wasn't the day that Dr. Bob had his last drink. Well, you know what? It's good enough for me. It's good enough for me.
It worked. It's worked for this length of time. There seems to be a segment of people today who want to come around to our groups. I don't know if they come to yours. They want to come around to our groups and tell me things like, AA doesn't work today. AA is not as good as it used to be. We've got to go back to the good old days. We need to go back to some magical time when AA worked better. And I'm here to tell you that there is no better time to be sober than today.
There has never been a better time in the history of Alcoholics Anonymous to be a member of AA than right now. There has never been as much information available, as much help, as much sponsorship, as many pamphlets, as many meetings, as many opportunities for sobriety, for good sobriety, than right now. And if somebody comes to your group and they start telling you that, just, well, do whatever you want, but I know what I do.
I'm going to tell you, I just don't want to hear it. Because, you see, the first tradition says our common welfare comes first, that personal recovery depends upon AA unity.
[00:40:03]
And if I come into your group and start telling you, you're not doing it right, I'm not doing anything for the unity of this program. Now I get a little passionate. But I've got to tell you, some of those guys, they're ticking me off. It's like they get up and they think they wrote the book. Come on, man. That's not the way. I asked Tom, I, some of you know Tom, and I've got a lot of friends that have got a lot of time in AA, and I've been around a lot of people with a lot of time, and I always ask them, what were people like when you came into AA?
Because, you know, I hear people say, when I came into AA, they told me to take the cotton out of my ears and stick it in my mouth and shut up. I said, Tom, what were they like? And he said, oh, Mike, they were wonderful people. They welcomed me. They made me feel great. I asked Howard, my sponsor, how were they? He says, oh, Chuck C and these guys, they were beautiful. They loved me. They made me feel good.
My sponsor, my first sponsor, John, what he did for me was he'd say, hey, kid, will you make me breakfast this morning? I'd make a couple eggs. He'd say, hey, can you make the eggs with the yolk? I'm still shaking. I'd make him these eggs. God knows what they looked like. The rest of the day he'd run around telling people, oh, the kid made me breakfast. He's such a good cook. What happened to me? What happened to me?
I felt good. Then he'd say, hey, could you make spaghetti and meatballs? Sure, why not? Yeah, take some hamburger and make it look round and fry it up and we'd eat it. He'd run around for a week and tell them, oh, man, the kid learned to cook from his mother. And he could make the best spaghetti and meatballs. He makes these meatballs so they don't fall apart. He was giving me a lift. He was bringing me up.
He was bringing me up. See, I needed to be brought up. And when you get somebody new in this program, let's start bringing them up. Let's start finding. They found reasons to make me feel good. Bill was going to Wyoming to tape a convention. And John said to me, hey, kid, Bill wants you to go with him. He's not feeling real good. And I said, oh, I'd love to. And he said, kid, nobody has ever driven Bill anywhere.
He doesn't let anybody drive him. You get to drive most of the time. And I'm like, I'm thrilled, man. I'm going to drive Bill to a conference. And I'm doing it. I drive him. And I'm just so happy. It wasn't until like three years ago his daughter told me, oh, people always drive. Don't tell me that. Please. Please. I don't want to hear it. I don't believe it. You don't know. And the fun these guys had, you know, they taught me to laugh, taught me to have a good time.
I remember we're driving through Denver. It's snowing. Bill's driving one eye, one arm, right? He smoked a pipe. He's smoking a pipe. He's lighting his pipe with his one arm. He's looking at me with his one eye. I'm like having a new relationship with my higher power gun. That was AA, you know? And John, I'd be driving with John. We'd go to conferences and he'd be looking at me and he'd go, kid, what's Dr. Bob's address?
See, it was AA school on wheels, okay? They were teaching me AA. They were getting me excited about AA history. That's why my house is a museum, okay? I mean, my kids are like, dad, would you get these boxes out of the living room, you know? And Brendan's like going, yeah. It's amazing, okay? And it's fun. And I love to share it. And I love to be excited. And I love to be passionate about Alcoholics Anonymous.
And I love to see people get their one-year chip today and two-year and five-year and 57-year. You know, Mel was at my house when he got his 57th-year medallion. And he gave me his 56-year medallion, man. I cried, you know? What a neat thing that somebody would think enough of me to think that's important. Here, kid, I want you to have this. I was the kind of guy that I wouldn't even give a guy like that the time of day when I came into AA.
I wanted nothing to do with you people until I met this guy, AJ. AJ was one of these guys who was always happy, okay? I said, how are you doing, AJ? He said, I'm doing wonderful. I said, AJ, do you really mean that? He said, yeah, and every day it keeps getting better. And I said, really? And he said, yeah, he'd been sober a long time. My little group, there were six people with over 30 years, and I was an 85.
[00:45:00]
That was pretty good for Brownwood, Texas, you know, not a real big place, right? Well, I discovered something about A.J. that night, and that was that A.J. had a mindset that was different than anything that I'd ever experienced. And what that was is he had an attitude that he was going to have a good day. I told you that my sponsor, John, got to know Bill D., Bill D., A number three. And he was new in sobriety when he met Bill, and he said to Bill, Bill, what's this thing all about?
And Bill said, John, have you ever stopped to think of what your life is made of? And John said, no, I've been kind of busy. And Bill said, John, your life and mine are made up of four things, thoughts, actions, habits, and character, okay? Thoughts, actions, habits, and character. You can go on thinking like a drunk. You'll have the actions of a drunk. You'll develop the habits of a drunk. And you can live the life of a drunk.
But you ask me what this deal is all about? In the fellowship of the second chance, that's what Bill D. called A.A. In the fellowship of the second chance, we can show you how you can begin to live. Think like a useful and a decent person. From your thoughts, you'll have the actions of a useful and a decent person. From your actions, you'll develop the habits, and you can be restored to a life where you can have the character of a useful and a decent person.
See, the history of A.A., the guys that helped to make A.A. what A.A. is today are the guys that passed these things on for us to have. You know, I think I hear these people that go around saying things like, well, back in the old days, they did classes. And you had to go through this class before you could come to the meeting. Well, you know, there were different things happening in different groups.
There was even a group, I think it was in St. Louis in the early days, that was serving just beer. Obviously, that didn't work. So there were things going on in different groups. So were there classes in some groups? Did they use certain introductory things to Alcoholics Anonymous in the first six or seven years before A.A. started really coming out with some publications and things like that? It certainly is possible.
There's no question about it. But they make claims that there was success rates of people coming into A.A. who, you know, 90% of the people that came into A.A. in the olden days were getting sober and staying sober. Now, I don't think that that's true. And here I've got a little information. 1935. I probably give the people in New York a headache, too, with some of my questions. But in 1935, there were three members.
We know who they were. Three years later, 1938, there were 40 members. There were 40 members in 1938. That's when Bill was writing a big book. And I've got a recording, if you can believe that, of Bill saying that he went to Akron and he and Dr. Bob sat down and they counted heads. And they came up with 40 sober guys. Now, when they talk about conversion of people staying sober, I want you to think about this.
How were they getting people sober in 35, 36, 37, and 38? They were pulling them off of bar stools. They were dragging them out of alleys. They were getting them into hospitals. They were getting them into police stations and taking them out of courts. They were taking anybody they could get, and they were trying to get them sober. And the reason they were doing it is their survival depended upon it.
They knew if they were going to stay sober, they had to do this. And these guys had a mission. After three years, there were 40. Now, I don't know how many they worked with, but I'll bet it was hundreds or maybe even thousands. But there were 40 sober after three years. 1939, at the close of 1939, after the Big Book had been out, there were 150 members of AA, and there were three groups. So most of those were in Cleveland because they had done articles in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
The Big Book was out. Now, 1941.
[00:50:01]
Bill was a great visionary, and he was a wonderful person. And Bill knew that he had to communicate a message, and it had to sound good. So every now and then, Bill might have exaggerated a little bit. Like in 1938, when he was writing and there was 40, he put 100. He figured he would round it off to a number that sounded good. When the book was published, there was 77, and the 78th member of AA was a guy named Ernie G.
Not A number 4 was also an Ernie G. But this Ernie G was from Toledo, Ohio. Actually, yeah, he was at Toledo then, but he moved to Jackson, and he had some things with Jackson, Michigan. After I got married, I had the opportunity to go and live in Adrian, Michigan for a little while, and that's where Ernie and his wife lived. He had since died, but somebody wanted to introduce me to this lady. So they brought me to this.
I couldn't get away from the history. They brought me to see this lady. I go up on an afternoon, and they introduced me to this lady. Her name is Ruth G., Ruth G.. She was the wife of Ernie. He came in, and she said, we came in, in Dr. Bob's house. We went to meetings at Dr. Bob's house. We went to meetings at T. Henry and Clarice W.' house. She said, if you want to come and visit me, you can come any time you want.
Well, every Friday afternoon, I went to see Ruth, and I would sit down, and I would talk with her. She would tell me things that they did in the Oxford group. She talked to me about Ann S. and the things that Ann S. used to do. And the effect and the impact that Ann S. had on the early members of AA, because they brought them into their home. And Dr. Bob, he would go to work. I mean, it might only be a couple hours a day, but he'd go to work.
I showed Brendan a letter I have from Dr. Bob, and his office hours were 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. daily. I love that. But, you know, Ann S. would spend time with the alcoholics and their family, and she would do morning meditation with them, and she would read to them, and they would have discussions. And, you know, Al-Anon didn't start until 1951, and Ann S. died in 1949. She never had the opportunity to be involved in Al-Anon, but she certainly had an impact on the families of Alcoholics Anonymous.
In 1951, Al-Anon started, and they started using, well, Al-Anon actually started before 1951, but officially took the name Al-Anon in 1951. And they got permission to use the 12 steps and 12 traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous. From that time to now, there is 542 different fellowships have been granted permission to use the 12 steps and 12 traditions by AA World Services, 542. That 542, I don't know how many fellowships actually got going or how many are still in existence, but I do know this, that the 12 steps and 12 traditions that originated in Alcoholics Anonymous that Bill wrote in the big book and the groups put together and put out and adopted in 1950 at our convention have literally had an effect on many millions of people worldwide.
AA membership today is 2 million. But when we take into consideration all of the other organizations that are using the 12 steps, it's amazing to just even begin to think about the impact that that's had on the world and the goodness that has followed as a result of that. So when people tell me today they want to go back to the good old days, I just scratch my head and think, you just don't get it.
There were no other groups, no other fellowships using AA, and then somebody will come into our group and they're not, what do they call them, pure alcoholic. Every now and then somebody will get real upset over that. Oh, they're going to ruin AA, look at this. This person, not a pure alcoholic. And I'm not going to get into the issue. What I'm trying to say is this, that our traditions, if we work with someone and bring them through the steps,
[00:55:00]
introduce them and give them some real sponsorship, by the time they get to the fifth step, chances are if they're not really qualified to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, they're going to acknowledge that. And there's so many other organizations, they're going to find the one that's right for them. So why don't we have a little more patience and tolerance with people, a little more love and understanding, and help them find the organization that's best for them if their alcoholism is a question.
But let's not throw them out and let them figure it out on their own. Let's at least take some time with them. I've had people that I've sponsored that have figured out that they're not alcoholic. I didn't even have to tell them that. I ask them questions about their drinking, about their history, and this kind of thing. They figure it out. But that's why the traditions are written. Not so that we can police AA, but so we can help people.
AA will stay together as long as we continue to carry the message to the still-suffering alcoholic. And continue to support and love the families. And continue to offer encouragement to anyone that comes here. And I think in 1965, when they did the convention in Toronto, the international, Bill threw out the responsibility pledge, when anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand to AA to always be there, and for that I am responsible.
Maybe he was talking about some of that. Maybe that's what they were thinking. That we need to be responsible enough to have the hand to AA to be there. People are leaving, so that must mean it's time for me to finish. I'm being careful. Some people on the west coast would say, you don't leave when I'm talking. First edition big books, they did 16 printings from 1939 to 1954. They printed 300,000. Second editions, they did 16 printings.
One million books. One million ninety. The third edition was printed from 1976 to 2000. You ready for this? 20 million. At the convention, at the last international, they gave away the 25th millionth copy ever printed of the big book to one of the people there. Now, I've heard people tell me, that Bill W. guy, he made a lot of money off of AA. Bill died in 1971. The second edition, they printed that through 1974.
By 1971, they hadn't even printed a million copies. From 1939 to 1971. If you take what his royalty was, and you figure it out, Bill didn't make a lot of money off of AA. Bill was never paid for 12-step work. Bill was paid as an author. Bill made sure that when they did the traditions, that he said, it's alright for you to be paid as an author too. If you want to be paid as a custodian, or you want to be a secretary, you can do that within AA and be paid for that.
We just don't pay people for 12-step work. I think that's a great tradition. It's fantastic that the AA tradition tells us that we don't need to become professional AAs. That's why I was very clear when I stood up here to tell you that I'm not an authority. We don't have authorities in AA. We don't have this class and that class. We're all the same. The newest person in here that has a desire to stop drinking is just as much a member of Alcoholics Anonymous as anyone else.
Thank God for that. That's a wonderful thing. I want to run through these numbers, and I'm going to wrap it up. This, I think, is really cool. 1941, Jack Alexander article came out. Another article came out in Harper Magazine. We had already had the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The groups jumped all the way up to 3,500. There were 161 groups. There were 3,500 members and 161 groups. Now, I know some people have heard that it was 8,000.
This number came from GSO. So I have a feeling that 8,000 may have been slightly enlarged. By 1944, this went up. By 44, this is when the grapevine came out, there were 10,000 members in AA, by 44.
[01:00:00]
1946. No, 1950. That's the first international in Cleveland, 1950, there were 96,000 AA members worldwide, in 3,500 groups. By 55 in St. Louis, when AA became of age, there were 135,000 members in 6,000 groups. 1960, the international was in Long Beach, it was a wonderful international, some great talks from there, a lot of great things were happening in Alcoholics Anonymous in 1960, because a lot of hippies were getting involved.
There were 8,600 groups in 162,000. The reason I'm doing this, I'm trying to get you up to watch what happened in AA. 65, there were 230,000 members, 12,000 groups. 1970, Miami, Bill's last convention, 311,000 members, 16,000 groups. 1975, the international was in Denver, there were 533,000 members, 26,000 groups. 1980, 900,000, 42,000 groups. 1935 to 1980, we hadn't hit a million members. We hadn't hit a million members.
1985, they went over. 1.4 million members at Montreal, that was when they did the Montreal Convention. And right now in 2005, or 2006, they had over 2 million members right now. AA works today better than it's ever worked. Dr. Bob in his last talk said that if you took Alcoholics Anonymous and you simmered it down to just two things, you'd have love and you'd have service. You know, I think that's so important for us to remember the simple messages that these guys gave.
Love and service. And love being an unbiased attitude of goodwill toward everyone. That's what my sponsor said. And I said, huh, what does that mean? He said, an unbiased attitude of goodwill toward everyone. And I said, what does it mean, John? He says, well, that just means you don't wish that guy get hit by a car. See, what he was doing for me was he was lowering the bar to a level that could work for me.
He didn't give me all this Freudian complex that I couldn't understand. He kept it real simple, you know. He just wished that person didn't get hit by a car. So my definition, my interpretation, understanding of love today has changed and it's grown because of the steps of this program. Dr. Bob, when he said that, I think he had tremendous foresight and wisdom. My sponsor's sponsor, John's sponsor, and I believe in sponsorship.
I think I'm grateful today to have a sponsor. I love him. He's a great guy, you know. And he's taught me some things. He always says that my life is in divine order and unfolding into goodness. And I believe that today. And when I trust God today, my life unfolds into goodness and stays in divine order. John's sponsor, Dick, closed one of his talks with a poem. And I loved it. And any time I get to this part, you know, I'm done.
And it goes like this. It says, a bell is not a bell until we ring it. And a song is not a song until we sing it. And love wasn't put in our hearts to stay. Love is only love when we give it away. And to me, Alcoholics Anonymous will only be here as long as we will give it away. Thank you. Thank you.