Audio
Transcript
Source: Mike F – Traditions – April 2011 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: mike-f-traditions-april-2011-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:11:39
============================================================
I'm Mike and I'm an alcoholic. It's like my sponsor used to say, I'll steal your eye and convince you you look better without it. Just make sure I don't walk out with one of these watches. This you're not happy with this. Thank you, John. Can you hear me now? All right. Hey, thank you. I haven't said thank you enough for giving me the privilege to be here. I've really enjoyed my weekend. I haven't gotten a lot of rest, but I sure have had a great time.
And the fellowship that we've had and the people who have come up and, you know, extended the kindness to both Howard and myself. You know, we really do appreciate it. And the opportunity to do this kind of gives you a lot of energy, too. And I think you noticed that at my talk. I was more wound up at the end of it than I was. But man, then when I'm listening to Howard, I was like, you know, and I love to listen to him.
I just was really having some trouble because I was crashing so hard after that talk. So I'm going to try to give this one a little bit more balance as I share with you. Maybe not get quite as passionate. Yeah. You really believe that I'm going to talk a little bit about something. And, you know, again, and I I'm sure I shared this this morning, but when Scott called, one of the things that he really said is that we'd like you to talk on your experiences in the workshops.
You can select whatever topic that you want, but we want you to share your experiences. And Howard said to me, you know, I hope that maybe you'll do something on the traditions. Scott had said, I hope maybe I heard that you do a good job on the traditions. I don't worry. Heard that. And then while I'm here, someone else had said to me that one of one of the men that are very close in my life was here last week or last year.
His name's Tom. I and some of you know him. And apparently he had also said that. I knew a little bit about the traditions or had a good take on that. And I'll tell you, man, you know, to have Tom make that comment is just, again, an honor, you know, to know that. Because I believe he and Howard are two of the guys that really know these traditions and know them very, very well. The difference with me and the traditions are that they were beaten into my head when I was getting sober and I fell in love with them.
And I really did. I mean, I've been to traditions meeting and, you know, people say, oh, tonight we're going to talk about the first three traditions or the last three traditions or something. And then, you know, you see four people get up and leave. And it's like I like light up, you know, and and I'm not sure why. I think it had a lot to do with how I was brought into the program. I think it had a lot to do with the time that Bill and John spent with me helping me to understand where the program came from and how it came about.
And one of the things that, you know, I understood and I want you to know, I'm not Bill W. in nineteen fifty four spoken at the Texas State Convention in Fort Worth. He was Saturday night banquet speaker. Now, he had already talked probably three times at that convention and he got up behind the microphone and he said, well, I'm on the bill to talk about the traditions, but I'm not going to do that.
I'm going to talk about how the big book was written. And he gave a great talk that I believe was unplanned. I think he planned on talking about the traditions, but for some reason, the feel of the crowd that night caused him to to not go in that direction. So he talked about the book. I'm not going to do that tonight. I'm going to talk about the traditions. You know, the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous really evolved from the experiences of our first few members.
[00:05:01]
See, and if you look at the steps, you can see that they were written after they had taken them. Here's what we did. These were the experience of those members. And then they were shared with us so that we could follow what they did. The traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous were the experiences of those first few groups. Those experiences from those experiences, they were able to then come up with traditions that were to guide and govern our groups, our fellowship.
They weren't set up. These are you know, the traditions are for us. They're for our groups. And I got in a little bit today about talking about lifting Alcoholics Anonymous up. And when Howard speaks about the traditions, and sometime I'd love to, and we should have done this at this particular retreat. Howard and I probably should have done a traditions thing together. I didn't think of it until just now.
But Howard often talks about our culture and what's important in the society that we live in. As we grow up in these baby elephant beliefs that he spoke of last night that are imposed on us, and these become the limiting belief systems that we live under. And we begin to find and learn things like we have to be the best. We have to study harder and work harder and put our nose to the grindstone and get there earlier and stay there later and commit more and set high goals and reach these goals.
And if we do this, then we're going to be put in charge. We're going to be the manager. We're going to be the leader. We're going to be the one that people look up to. They're going to listen to us. And that's what our culture teaches us. And then our culture teaches us that we need to run the fastest so we can win the race or jump the highest or play better than the other guy. It's all about competition. It's all about winning. It's all about me being better than you.
And for the alcoholic with a sick ego like me, it's even worse. Because what happens to me is it's either one way or the other. It's either I'm better than you and I'm the best or I'm worse than you and I'm the worst. There is no middle of the road. It's either I'm way up here or I'm way down here. And that was the way I lived my life before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. It was either I am really good or I am really bad. In my case, most of the time it was I'm really bad.
I didn't fit in. I wasn't comfortable. I wasn't the best and I knew it. And I didn't deserve it and I was a disappointment. And so we come into Alcoholics Anonymous and we're presented with traditions. And the traditions evolved from the experiences of the groups and the things that had happened that caused Bill to document and draft what he presented as the original 12 points of tradition. And they were first published, started to be published in the grapevine through a series of articles in April 1946.
And then after he published them and he found out that most people were not interested in them. Now, you know, we chuckle at that. Let me give you a little background on that. They weren't interested in that because they didn't think that they needed New York to tell them how to run their group. Okay? Because the group was doing fine. So if you were in Scottsdale, Arizona or western New York and you had a group going and it had been going for seven years, okay, and you had membership and another group sprung off of that group and another group sprung off of that and you had your trusted servants, your leaders within that group, you thought I don't need New York to tell me what to do. We're doing fine here.
And different groups had different rules because what worked in one area they thought might not work in another. And the experience was most of the pioneering and founding members of the groups were the ones in charge. And they didn't want to let go. Imagine that. Well, Bill and this came from Lois when I recently did a lot of research on Lois. And Lois had said that Bill studied various societies and forms of government.
And then he created, these are not her words, these are my words, he created a government that would work within Alcoholics Anonymous. Or as close to that as you could have. And that does not look like any other society. It's completely different.
[00:10:04]
And he started it out by looking at the entire society of Alcoholics Anonymous worldwide. And by the time he wrote it, Alcoholics Anonymous was growing rapidly in the 40s. Now, rapidly is relative speaking, okay, but it really was. AA was getting a lot of positive press. It was growing. It was springing up in all kinds of cities. You know, by 1950, when Dr. Bob died, there was basically 100,000 members in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I mean, it no longer was in its infancy. As a matter of fact, the conference in Cleveland that year in 1950 was coming of age. Now, in 1955, it was AA comes of age. But in 50, they liked the theme coming of age because AA really was coming of age. So when he wrote the traditions in 46, there was a lot of really good things happening in Alcoholics Anonymous. There was a lot of people recovering. There was a lot of exciting things happening.
But they also had some problems and some challenges and some difficulty. And because Bill had taken the time to study these other societies and governments, he knew enough that if we didn't understand the history, we would be doomed to repeat it. And it may not be our history that we repeat. It may be the failures of another society. One that comes to mind is the Washingtonians. And, you know, a lot of you have heard about the Washingtonians.
And that's kind of an interesting little society that started in Baltimore. And it actually started in Chase's Tavern in a bar. And a few drunks sitting around. And they put together this idea and this concept of hanging together and being sober. And they did things very similar to what we do, except for our culture then was different than it is today. And that word culture, I want to share a few times, because as we pull the golden thread through where we're at today, you're going to see that our culture has changed a lot since 1946 when the traditions first appeared in the grapevine.
But they would pull their wagons into various towns and they would set up something probably similar to this in a tent. And people would gather and they would have a time where they could give testimony to the people that would listen. And a lot of those were the drunks on the streets and the people who couldn't handle alcohol. And a lot of them were signing up and they were not drinking. In a very short time, they had 400,000 members.
I mean, we're talking a couple years. 400,000 members. But they didn't have any traditions. They didn't have a single purpose. They tried to be all things to all people. That sounds inviting. And I know it did to Alcoholics Anonymous when it started. You know, it must have sounded inviting. Hey, we've got these 12 steps. Wouldn't these 12 steps work for everything? Some people believe that today. I happen to be one of them. I just don't believe that Alcoholics Anonymous will work for everything.
As Bill said, if you want to take our 12 steps, take them. Borrow them. Go use them. That's what they're there for. And as a result, since 1951 until now, well, actually until about three years ago, I didn't ask World Service for the records, for the numbers. And believe it or not, I'm not a numbers person. And somebody else said to me earlier, how do you have all that in your head? And it's like, I don't know. Well, you know, if somebody's at my house and they're just kind of sitting around and the kids and my wife are there and they ask a question about AA history, everybody gets up and leaves, because they know I'm not going to stop talking.
But at that time, there were 543 different organizations that had been granted permission from AAWS and the foundation office to use the 12 steps and 12 traditions of our loving program. And sometimes today when the prophets of doom talk about AA not working, I think, and I look at CA and NA and OA and GA and SA and all the other programs out there that are thriving today, I think our traditions are working great. Because, see, those people don't have to come to Alcoholics Anonymous and lie to have membership. See, because there's fellowships that are using our steps and our traditions where they can sit with Steps in our traditions where they can sit with someone who has the exact same problem
[00:15:02]
as them and they can share and have what we have and that's a common problem and a common solution and they can have a fellowship grow up among them like we have growing up among us. Our traditions are working today and they're working very, very well. It isn't a matter of, you know, in our groups today sometimes and I've seen it happen. I had an instance I was sharing it with Kevin last night. There was a girl who showed up at my home group and it was a closed meeting and I happened to be the door greeter that night and believe it or not, that's about the best job I know how to do in AA. It really is, you know, because I've never been a bad door greeter, you know. I've never been a bad door greeter. I've welcomed people and that works great. And this girl showed up and I said, hi, welcome. I've never seen you and are you visiting? And she said, oh, no. I'm here because the judge sent me and I said, oh, that's great. That's fantastic. Do you have a problem with alcohol? And she said, well, no. She said, actually what happened was I was cooking dinner for my boyfriend and I was using beer to cook the dinner. And I drank what was left, you know, a bottle or two of beer. And she said, well, my boyfriend was drinking and he got in a fight with the roommate and the police came. And when the police came, they talked to each of us and they said to me, have you been drinking? And she said, well, I cooked with a beer and I drank and she told them the story. And they said, how old are you? And she said, 19. And they took her to the police station and charged her. And she went before the judge and the judge or the plea bargain, however it happened, you know, there may have been two attorneys working out for all I know, but the end result was here she is at a closed Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. And I went in, I got a schedule and I came out and I said, you know, we have open meetings and kind of explain the difference between open and closed meetings. And she thanked me and she went on. Now, I'm glad I was greeting her that night because I know some people, I know nobody here would do it. I mean, I know that. But I know some people would say to her, listen, if you're called on or it comes to you, just tell them that you have a desire not to drink. See, the problem is, is if we're willing, as members of the Alcoholics Anonymous within our groups, to circumvent the traditions to make it possible for a non-alcoholic who clearly says, I don't have a desire not to drink because I don't have a problem and they shouldn't be there anyway. But if we're willing to circumvent the traditions to accommodate her, are we willing to circumvent the traditions for other reasons? See, when we do that, we damage Alcoholics Anonymous and we hurt those to come after us. And we have to learn enough about the traditions so that we can effectively communicate those not to that girl, but perhaps to the people at the court. Perhaps to the attorneys.
Perhaps that's some of the services when we do our group inventories and we look at how well are our groups doing? How are we doing that? Are we talking about what we're doing in the community or are we relying on H&I to do that? Or some other division of our service structure? Maybe we need to start taking a little bit more action on some of these things at the group level. And I think that's what the traditions help us to do.
But that's the articles in the grapevine. So now Bill was finding out that people weren't all that excited about his traditions. And I don't think it was the traditions that they were rejecting. I really think what it was is they were hanging on to the success that they were already having in the groups. And I think that they knew that they had, it was working. And it was working successfully. And they had good things coming. And they were afraid that if New York got involved, and this again, a lot of this is opinion based on studying this stuff. It's not, you know, you're not going to find some of these things.
But if you look at AA history, I think you can see this. The groups were successful. They were growing. And they did have egos. And they did have fear. It wasn't because Bill was trying to jam it down their throats like I've heard people say. You know? When Bill was invited, he did talk about the traditions when it was appropriate. Okay? But in 1947, to get the word out, they came out with a pamphlet called AA Tradition. Amazing. For
[00:20:00]
ten cents. My understanding is they sent them to the groups for free. So that the groups would begin to circulate them to the members, so that the members who weren't getting the grapevine would have the opportunity to read and learn about the traditions. Now this was in 1947. And from 1947 to 1950, some changes were going on. And some of the pioneering members of these groups that were doing well came to Bill and called Bill and wrote letters to Bill. And they said, in short, man, we're having trouble getting people to sit through a meeting for an hour. How are we going to get them to sit through these traditions?
We're not interested. We don't need this. And one guy in Chicago named Earl T. was very influential with Bill. And he talked with Bill. And the end result was that through him and some other, Bill was a character who thought things out. He did not, Bill was not a spur of the moment, fly by the seat of your pants, this is what we're going to do kind of guy. If Bill was going to make a move, it was very, very well thought out. He sought counsel with many people before he made these decisions. And you'll hear of names like Father Ed Dowling and Sam Shoemaker and many, many people that were in Bill's life and the early pioneers of Alcoholics Anonymous, including Dr. Bob. And I think Dr. Bob's major contribution to Alcoholics Anonymous was the effect that he had of stability on Bill. And I think that that is seen in a lot of Bill's work. Dr. Bob had tremendous, Dr. Bob was older than Bill and he had a lot of influence on Bill. And Bill had tremendous love and respect for Dr. Bob and Ann, as did Lois. So I think that, you know, the idea that Bill wrote these things and then wanted to jam them down someone's throat, I think is just not reality. I think what happened was he presented them in the grapevine as a result of surveys and things that he had done and travels that he had done with the groups, from meeting with the early members and seeing the challenges, from the New York, and New York was a very populated area and there were a lot of groups there, and Bill went to the meetings and he saw what was happening, he saw the problems. They said, Bill, can we change these a little bit? Can we shorten them? And, you know, so Bill, they did some revision of the traditions and then they came out with the traditions in the short form, which is what was adopted in Cleveland in July 1950. Now, the long form of the traditions are printed in AA, printed in AA, printed in AA, published literature, AA approved literature, so in that sense, the long form of the traditions are approved literature. However, the traditions that were adopted in Cleveland were in the short form, and that are, you know, that became the traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous. The 12 points of tradition and the original long form of the traditions, I believe, are still important for us to use to have a better understanding of how the traditions were developed, but the traditions were as a result of those original writings.
Now the first tradition, our common welfare comes first. Personal recovery depends upon AA unity. And I covered that a little bit yesterday in my talk, and that is my gratitude that all of the time that I was coming in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous, you folks were there getting sober and staying sober and carrying a message and welcoming me. No one was saying, you can't come here, kid. They were saying, come on in. And I'm grateful that they did, because I met the only requirement, and that was the third tradition. But the first tradition, our common welfare, what that says to me is this, that every single one in here today is a member once you say you're a member. Okay? Now the tradition of unity says that our common welfare has to come first. In order for me to get sober, I have to check my ego at the door. I have to realize that the newest member of this group, of any group of Alcoholics Anonymous, is just as much a member as I am. They have one vote, and they have one voice, and that's at the group level. We're all the same. Now,
[00:25:00]
I love to tell stories, and I love to see pictures. And I was at a meeting, and we were lined up, and everybody was holding hands to say the Lord's Prayer. And I thought, traditions to me are like a line of us holding hands. And I could get above it, and I could see that line. And then I saw the line connect, and they were holding hands in a circle. And then I saw that that's the world of Alcoholics Anonymous. Okay? And I'm above it, and I'm above it, and I'm looking down. I'm looking down at the world of Alcoholics Anonymous, and every one of these members are holding hands, and they're connected. I couldn't tell who had the most sobriety and who had the least sobriety. I couldn't tell who came from Park Avenue or who came from the park bench. I couldn't tell who was this color or that religion or this sex or this religion or a Christian or a non-Christian. I couldn't tell.
What I saw was links in a chain connected by love and hope. They were all connected. They were all exactly the same as the one on this side and the one on that side. And to me, that's the unity of Alcoholics Anonymous. The design of this fellowship is so critically important because each one of us are exactly the same as that one next to us, that one before us, and that one behind us. And I think we need to remember that as we go forward.
And Alcoholics Anonymous has to adjust to our culture. Now, that doesn't mean we change. What we do is we adjust. Now, I'm going to get a little bit into that hopefully and not get on any kind of like passionate plea, but I'm not naive, okay? Well, I'm naive, but I'm not that naive to believe, okay, that Alcoholics Anonymous is not working today. I know it's working and it's working really, really well today, okay?
Now, I have some theories on some of the issues I hear about. You know, there's things being circulated today that want to put fear in me about the condition of Alcoholics Anonymous and the future of Alcoholics Anonymous, that there are sections of members of Alcoholics Anonymous that are concerned about changes within AA, that it's going to hurt and bring down our fellowship. When I talk to these people, I want to just go crawl under the bed, okay? Well, that's silly, because you know, things really aren't, that's not the condition of Alcoholics Anonymous today. Do you know there's more people coming into Alcoholics Anonymous today and finding sobriety than at any other time in the history of this fellowship?
There's more groups out there today where people are going and finding a new way of life as a result of our traditions and our steps than at any other time in the history of this world, that the 12-step movement today is in so many countries and in so many different languages that so many people are being affected in a good way by the 12 steps, that it is absolutely amazing what it's doing to our world in a positive way. And the families that are benefiting from the steps and the traditions, it's incredible.
So I truly have a hard time listening to the prophets of doom. At the same time I know there's some things that can be concerning. And I addressed one of them this morning, and that is the talk I gave this morning could already be on the internet. It's not like we've got to, as Alcoholics Anonymous members, look at that and say, what are we going to do about it? It's there. We're not going to stop it, okay? What we can do is we can begin to look at that and do our best to make sure that we conform to the traditions and principles of the program as we meet our changes in our culture. For example, the Recovery Speakers website. When I was putting that website together, I can't tell you how many conversations I had with my sponsor and with Tom I. and several other people that I respect within the program, so that I would make sure that I was doing the right thing as I was moving forward with this project. You won't find last names on that website. We don't break anonymity on that website. One of the things we're working on now is to go in and take the last names off of the speaker talks where the speaker gave their last name. That's a tremendous amount of work and that's going to take time, but that's the direction we're moving in so that we can conform to the traditions. Now the traditions weren't written to govern me as a private citizen who happens to want to do this as a hobby and fun for the good of AA and mankind.
[00:30:24]
But as a decent, respecting member of Alcoholics Anonymous who'd probably get my butt kicked by a senior member or one of my friends, I want to set an example that we can use the traditions and adhere to the traditions in our homes, in our business, in our private life, and not just within our groups. So when they looked at tradition one, our common welfare comes first. Personal recovery depends upon AA unity. What that's really saying is it's the group. That's where the power. Now, it doesn't say that our individual recovery is not important. As a matter of fact, it says that we guard that very closely.
But without the group unity, the individual can't survive. That's what Howard talks about when he talks about the competition in our culture and our society. See, that could not create for me a sense of well-being because I couldn't function within that culture sober effectively. And here I come into Alcoholics Anonymous and I have a new guideline for living, new principles that teach me how I can communicate effectively and live within this culture sober. And this is the culture I live in.
Now, how is it? I don't live in my AA group. I bring that and the experience of Alcoholics Anonymous into all of my affairs. So if I'm learning and trying to live by the principles that are contained in the steps and the traditions, then I'm bringing these things into my life and it's my common welfare that has to come first. That my personal recovery depends upon it and I've got to move my ego out of the way and realize that there are no bosses. And that's where we get to Tradition 2 when it says in Tradition 2, and I'm going here because they're recording me. I don't want to give misinformation.
Isn't it good that we don't have any bosses in AA? I mean, you've never met a boss in AA, have you? You know, Bill talked about the elder statesmen and the bleeding deacons. And again, this was at a sensitive time in Alcoholics Anonymous where the pioneering members that were founders of these groups, like they're founders of our groups today and maybe you're a founder of your group, and that's great.
He starts talking about a spirit of rotation. He starts talking about allowing the other members of the group to participate and to have a collective group conscience. An informed group conscience. And that's where each one of us get to have our say, our vote. And what we're doing within the groups is we're giving each member of Alcoholics Anonymous an opportunity to not only cast a vote on a particular issue at the group level, but also share their experience, their thoughts, their support or their fear of this.
And they can do it in a group setting, and that's when we have our group conscience meetings, our business meetings. Now, Bill got sober and had a spiritual experience in Towns Hospital. And as I said, that was a leading hospital in narcotics and alcohol recovery or relief or therapy at that time in the nation. And Charlie Towns was the owner and director of the hospital, and he called Bill into his office. And if you read this book or any history that's there, and Charlie said to Bill, Bill, you know, someday, this is 1938, someday this movement of yours, this fellowship of yours is going to fill Madison Square Garden.
I wonder if they called Charlie Towns a promoter. What vision that he had? Remember how many people were sober then? Forty. Someday, this fellowship of yours is going to fill Madison Square Garden. Bill, our hospital used to be a very, very profitable institution.
[00:35:15]
This thing that you're doing with these alcoholics, this thing that I've watched you do over the last couple of years is very interesting to us. We would like to put you on staff as a partner in the hospital and pay you handsomely to do that and give you a portion of our profits. And all you need to do is set up a little office here and run your headquarters from here, and you can be a lay therapist. And here's what Bill did. He didn't respond to Charlie, although he was excited about it. He took the subway home, and on the way home, he thought of a Bible verse that said that the laborer is worthy of his hire.
And Bill's convincing himself that God's talking to him and telling him he ought to take this job. And Bill didn't take the job. He had a meeting that night in his home. He had a meeting every night in his home because his home was full of drunks that were living there for free. Lois was working in a department store and paying the bills and cooking the meals, and they were taking care of the drunks. And the drunks were stealing their clothes and burning their place, and one guy committed suicide in their home. And they got to see what alcoholism does to people when they don't make it, because not all of them made it.
And Bill met with that little group that night, and he said, hey guys, Charlie offered me an opportunity, a position at the hospital. Lois and I haven't been able to pay our mortgage for years. They had a deal with a mortgage company where they could pay like 25 bucks a month, and they could stay in their house, and that was about to end. The guys that were staying there weren't paying any money. Lois' income was all. And Bill says, guys, listen, Charlie wants to give me a job, and I can go down to the hospital, and we can grow this thing from there, and I'll be in charge of it, and we can work with the drunks right there. That's a good deal, and I'll be able to get paid, and Lois and I can keep our house.
And they talked about it in the drunks. One of the guys spoke up and said, Bill, we know you're having a rough time. We understand that, Bill, but you can't do this to us. Now, I want you to know something. That's Bill saying that. I have a feeling that it didn't happen exactly that way. I have a feeling that it went around the room, and each of the guys there talked about their feelings about it and what they thought about making Alcoholics Anonymous professional, and at the end of that, Bill decided with the help of the group conscience and his higher power, the voice of God, spoke through the group.
And I believe that Bill saw that and had the wisdom to see it and said, no, I can't sell out Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, every decision that Bill made had a price that went with it. They were evicted from their home. For the next two years, him and Lois lived in 50 different houses for the next year, 50 different places. Here's a guy that could have had a job, but he knew he couldn't make Alcoholics Anonymous professional, so he turned it down so that he could do this for fun and for free, so it would be here for us. And then when he wrote about it, he gave that group the credit.
That doesn't sound like a promoter that would sell out Alcoholics Anonymous to me. If he wanted to sell out Alcoholics Anonymous, he could have done it. No, that sounds like a guy that wanted to give credit to other people. See, I learned early in my sobriety that God will do great things through those of us who don't care who get the credit. I have a feeling Bill learned the same thing. That God would do wonderful things through Bill as long as he didn't think he needed to take the credit.
Are we away? I told you I wouldn't be quite as… Tradition three, the only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking. This tradition is packed with meaning, for AA is really saying to every serious drinker, you're an AA member if you say so.
[00:40:00]
You can declare yourself in, nobody can keep you out. No matter who you are, no matter how low you've gone, no matter how many drugs you've taken, no matter how many… oh, it doesn't say that. Every serious drinker, if we have a drinking history and we come to Alcoholics Anonymous, alcoholism is an illness and I'm not going to get into the biochemistry of alcoholism because it's so far over my head.
I understand it as a progressive illness and I understand that it manifests itself in many different ways. Bill gives an example in the big book of the jaywalker and we kind of laugh at that and it's kind of silly and then he kind of says, well, you know, isn't that really very characteristic of the behaviors that we've had as alcoholics? See, my drinking was characterized by various attempts at getting to that condition by using something other than alcohol that would get me there quicker. Didn't make me any less of an alcoholic. That's just how it manifests itself.
Someone else would drink and rob banks and someone else would drink and beat their wife and someone else would drink and not feed the dog. What Tradition 3 is telling me is, listen, let's not close the door to any alcoholic, no matter what their other issues are. Period. Let's welcome them. Let's extend that hand of kindness. Let them say they're in. We don't have any bosses. No one's going to throw them out. A loving God is the only authority in Alcoholics Anonymous and John Barleycorn, Bill always liked to mention that, that we had two authorities, a loving God and alcohol.
And if we didn't conform to one, we'd conform to the other. And Tradition 3 is critical. And it's no more than it was when they wrote it. You know, we think that, you know, it's like when I come to the AA meetings and I would listen to you guys and I'd walk out and I'd say, I'm different. I'm different than you. I can't identify with you. You don't get it. You know, and not only that, I'm younger than you are and I'm smarter than you are. Or you're successful and I'm a failure. Whatever it was where I was looking at the differences instead of identifying with the similarities.
When people were coming to Alcoholics Anonymous at the time that this tradition was written, Bill had surveyed the groups and asked them what their membership rules were. And he said that if you would have taken those membership rules and laid them out and got all the pioneers of Alcoholics Anonymous to come in and read those rules, and if they tried to implement the membership rules that they had in the groups, at that time, not a single person would have qualified.
to be in Alcoholics Anonymous. Because they had all these other issues. And we look at it today and we think, oh, these are special cases. Things are different. You know, people tell me, do you know that we barely have any pure alcoholics? What is that? Really, what is that? What does that look like? Because if the book says drinking is but a symptom, aren't we being a little rigid there? That's a question. Maybe we should ponder it a little bit. I hope that we keep our doors open to all alcoholics that come to Alcoholics Anonymous.
I hope that we have the wisdom to share what alcoholism is as we understand it, as it is outlined in the book, as it is defined, and as Dr. Silkworth wrote in the doctor's opinion. I hope that we'll take time to help some people who aren't sure if they're alcoholic, and we'll be patient and tolerant and loving to those people so that they can stay with us long enough to identify whether they're alcoholic or not.
I would have much rather been a drug addict when I was trying to avoid being an alcoholic. Because if they wouldn't let me come to AA, and I'd say, see, they won't let me come. But I couldn't deny the reality of my illness, and that was that I was an alcoholic, you know.
[00:45:04]
And I just hope that we help people, because there are people who come that don't know. You know, they started drinking when they were four. They had 90 UIs by the time they were 18, and then they started using cocaine. They come into the AA meeting, and somebody says, well, what's your primary drug of choice? And they say, oh, cocaine. Oh, listen, there's a CA meeting. They started drinking at four and had, you know, we need to, what is their drinking history?
Let's give them an opportunity. And this is, again, you know, I'm sharing with you my opinions, okay, based on my interpretation of this program. I'm not telling you how it is or what Bill W. thought. I'm giving you Mike's interpretation only. Tradition 4 says each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or AA as a whole. Okay. Well, we could stay with Tradition 3 and see how that affects Tradition 4, because if my group says this is, we're going to let anybody come into our group that we want, Tradition 4 gives us the right to do that.
Well, does it? Because it affects other groups and AA as a whole. And you see, I think that we need to pay attention to our brother and sister groups, to the groups down the street that meet on Tuesday night when we break off and we think we're going to have a meeting four miles away that meet on Tuesday night at the same time. See, what that is is a resentment. See, we have to stop fighting. What we have to do is cooperate with the other groups, okay, not compete with them.
That's our culture. Alcoholics Anonymous, remember, our common welfare. That's this group and this group and this group. That's not just the members of a group. That's the members of Alcoholics Anonymous. Our common welfare comes first. Let's look at that and try to experience that in a loving, tolerant way, like we would someone who's coming in to Alcoholics Anonymous that's struggling. Let's give that the same consideration.
Let's look at the traditions. You know, Bill says that if an alcoholic doesn't adhere to the steps, that we know what happens to them, that alcohol will take over and they'll die, okay? If a group doesn't adhere to the traditions, we know what happens to that group. Disunity will take over and the group will die. Now, I take it another step, and I look at it and say, if I, Mike, don't adhere to the best of my ability to the traditions, maybe alcohol's going to take over.
Because, you see, if my common welfare comes first, the personal recovery depends upon me adhering to these traditions, and I refuse to do that at any level, am I not going to pay the consequence for that? It may not come in the form of the drink. It may come in the form of a resentment. It may come in the form of a marriage that won't work. It may come in the form of a child that won't talk to me, or a lost job, or whatever the consequences are for the actions that I take.
But I believe if I conform to the best that I can today to these traditions, I'll be able to avoid a lot of these things happening that may be negative in my life. Certainly it'll keep me away from a drink, and I do believe that. Now, I don't think I'm going to go through all the traditions, but I'm going to cover at least a few more. Tradition five, each group has but one primary purpose, to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.
Well, what's its message? I've heard people give various versions of what they think its message is, and they say, well, our group's got a different message than that group. Because tradition four says we're autonomous, so we can have whatever message we want. Well, whenever two or three meet together for sobriety, they can call themselves a group, provided they have no other affiliation.
[00:50:00]
So now we're talking about their meeting together for sobriety. When the traditions were adopted in Cleveland in 1950, there were six men selected. Each of the six talked on two traditions, and then Bill gave a short two-hour talk, wrapping it up. And then they voted. And one of the gentlemen said, when they got to this tradition, that its message was the 12 steps. Whenever two or more meet for sobriety, where do we get sobriety?
The 12 steps says, having had a spiritual experience as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others. Something like that. But it's as the result of these steps. Again, my interpretation, I could be wrong, but I think that the primary purpose, that the single purpose that we have is to carry the steps to the alcoholic who still suffers. I don't know what other message I can carry to the alcoholic that still suffers.
If the big book and my friend back here read a little piece last night, yesterday, when you guys read the book and read your favorite little things, I love that, man. I was like hoping that you'd do that more and I didn't have to talk. But he said, lack of power is our dilemma. Then he went in and he said, the main object of this book is to enable you to find a power greater than yourself that will solve your problem.
Where do we do that? In the steps. As a sponsor, when I sponsor men, I try to look at that and recognize the fact that if the book Alcoholics Anonymous' main object is to enable you to find a power greater than yourself that will solve your problem, and that includes me, then maybe my job is to help that new person get in contact with that God that's going to solve their problem, not with the sponsor to solve their problem.
I don't know how to solve their problem. What I know is to give them the experience that I have with the 12 steps, because that's what solves the problem. That's where they get this contact with the God of their understanding. I had a guy come to me, you know, a year or so ago and and he came in and he's complaining about his sponsor. He just got rid of it. He says, man, I had to fire my sponsor. And I said, really? Why? Oh, well, he just doesn't have time for me.
Yeah, I just never had time for myself. That's too bad. So I hung around that night. I was actually working with one of my sponsors who brought brought this guy to my house. And as he was leaving, he waited until he was leaving and he said, hey, would you sponsor me? And I said, well, let's talk about that on the way to the car. I walked him out to his car and I said, you know, the book says that the main object of this book is to enable you to find a power greater than yourself.
This is about a relationship with your God, not a relationship with your sponsor. And if you think your last sponsor was too busy for you, you don't want me, because if you're going to put that kind of dependency upon me, it isn't going to work. He never called me. I don't know why. It wasn't that I didn't want to sponsor him either. I want you to know that I'll go to hell and back with him if he wanted to get sober.
And if he doesn't, he can go to hell alone. But I've learned in this program of Alcoholics Anonymous, it is God reliance, not self reliance. And my ego isn't there to tell him I've got your answer. I've got the answer and it's in the book and it's in the steps. It's not in Mike. It's in this. All right, it's getting a little wound up. Now, Howard said to me, you know, it kind of gives me energy when I do that.
At some point, I'm going to crash. All right. Oh, tradition seven. Well, I can't skip six. Now, well, if I do that, then, you know, somebody is going to come up to me and say, hey, you know, I really wish you would have said something. Tradition six, an AA group ought never endorse, finance or lend the AA name to any related facility or outside enterprise. Less problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
[00:55:02]
Well, again, here's a time when they were writing this historically that, you know, who would have been some of the best supporters of Alcoholics Anonymous? Who wanted to get in on the action? The beer companies. You know, if you don't drink, go to AA. But if you're going to drink, drink Milwaukee's best. And then they wanted to parade AA members on TV commercials and all kinds of things. And they wanted us to get tied in with these organizations.
And at that time, within the AA culture, there were a lot of clubhouses. A lot of clubhouses in AA then, okay? And a lot of halfway houses. A lot of home guest houses. See, treatment centers hadn't yet gotten going, okay? And these were during the formative years. These were the growing years, the pain and trial years when these groups were doing it. And Cleveland's a great example. And Clarence S., one of the founders of AA in Cleveland.
I mean, he thinks he was the founder of AA worldwide. But Clarence made some tremendous contributions to Alcoholics Anonymous in sponsorship. And he really did a tremendous job. When the Cleveland Plain Dealer articles came out, a lot of inquiries came into the Cleveland area and into New York from families and spouses and alcoholics in Cleveland. And those were channeled down to Clarence and to that cluster of people in Cleveland that were sober.
And they were using the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. But they had, and when I did the book on 1,000 Years of Sobriety, I learned more. Because a lot of people with over 50 years live in Cleveland. Go figure, you know. Some of these guys have just lived that long. One guy, Steve, has got 65 years sober. Amazing. But anyway, what they would do is they would buy houses, and then they would get a nurse, and they would rent rooms, and they'd have a doctor that would come in.
You know, one of the local doctors would come in and make sure the guys had their medication. You know, whatever they needed so they didn't die when they were coming off the alcohol. And then they would indoctrinate them into Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, what some people want to do is they want to skip that part of it and tell you that what they did is they grabbed you and within three little classes of 12 hours or four hours or something, you'd go through this and then you'd be in the hospital sponsoring someone the next day.
Well, it really wasn't quite that simple. One, these people had to come off the alcohol, the fog had to clear, and then they had to be somewhat indoctrinated into the program. And, you know, so that's what happened. But when Bill was doing the traditions, these kind of places had been all over the country, as did the clubhouses, as were the advertisers. There was a whole bunch of different things going on where people wanted to get cut in on Alcoholics Anonymous.
And, thankfully, they had the wisdom to say, no, we can't affiliate with any of these, that we can't. Now, we'll support your clubhouse if it's made up of AA members. You know, we're all for it. That's great. Just don't use the AA name. You can become the 12 Step House, and that's what they started calling them, 12 Step Houses. And I've got articles from magazines in the 40s and 50s, you know, 12 Step House, and they wrote a whole article about Alcoholics Anonymous, but it's the 12 Step House.
So we did not affiliate with these, and that was the reason. And the reason was is because if you affiliate with one, what are you going to do with the others? Bill and Dr. Bob, Marty M., was the founder of the National Committee on Alcoholism and Alcohol Education, okay? And it was great, because what she wanted to do is go out into the community and educate people about alcoholism and the family.
Excuse me, and what was going on. Al-Anon hadn't started yet. This was like 1946, I think, that Marty started that. Forty-six, or it might even have been a little right after the Yale school. So somewhere between 44 and 46. Dr. Bob and Bill were selected to be on the original. All were selected to be on the original board of the National Committee of Alcoholism and on their letterhead they had Bill W. and Dr. Robert S.. It wasn't long that they
[01:00:03]
recognized that that was an affiliation. They couldn't do that. So they talked to Martin and said, you know, we love what you're doing, and we can't, we can't, it's not that they, we can cooperate, Marty, but we cannot endorse. We cannot allow Alcoholics Anonymous or Bill W. or Dr. Bob to be affiliated with it. But we will cooperate with it. And we still cooperate with the National Council on Alcoholism. And I'm glad that they have the wisdom to do that. The thing about Bill that amazes me is all of these, you know, when you read the traditions out of here or any of the history on the tradition, you'll see every opportunity that Bill had to use himself as an example, he did. See, Raleigh H., a baseball player, broke his anonymity nationally, okay, in a newspaper. And they had a great article about him in the Sporting News and a couple other magazines picked up on it. And Marty M. broke her anonymity nationally. And there were several other Hollywood people that broke their anonymity nationally. And Bill used himself.
Bill recognized the mistakes that others made, but instead of pointing the finger at someone else, he used himself. I think that that was an example of the man's spirituality and his humility. I think Bill knew he needed to lift people up, not point the finger at them. He needed to point the finger at himself. By doing that, it's kind of fed some of the stuff that's gone on. You know, here Bill says that he was a promoter. Well, he was a speculator. There's a difference between a promoter and a speculator. Hank P., who helped Bill get the big book published, was a promoter. He was a promoter. Hank was a promoter. Bill? No, I'm not going to say he wasn't a promoter, but again, you're not going to read the literature and see Bill say, Hank, my partner, was a promoter. You're going to see Bill say, I was a promoter. This is what I did. I wanted this thing to go. I wanted it to be the Bill W. Society, right?
The original Works Publishing stock certificate portfolio that they used to sell the prospects on giving them $25 a share to buy into Alcoholics Anonymous printing of the book, so the book could get published, had Hank P. as president, not Bill W. So again, I think Bill used, you know, he was a promoter. He was a promoter. He was a promoter. He used his wisdom of pointing the finger at himself instead of someone else. Every opportunity he could.
And, you know, maybe that's sometimes why I, you know, I'm a little sensitive towards some of the negativity that sometimes is thrown out there. Tradition 7 says every AA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions. I got a great story for that. Believe it or not. So I always thought that was about the money in the basket and paying the rent, okay? And it is in part about each of us contributing as we can. And in the last four years, I've had more and more people that I sponsor because I encourage the people I work with to, in new and sobriety, go to a meeting every day. And if they're unemployable like I was, I encouraged them to go to more than a meeting a day.
Because Alcoholics Anonymous meetings should be a safe place for them to be. And I believe that they belong in the safe place and deserve to be in a safe place. But I had several of them call me and say, man, I'm really uncomfortable because they passed that basket and I just don't have any money. I didn't have a job for two years. If I had to put money in the basket, I wouldn't be here. Somebody else put the money in the basket for Mike. And today, I'm going to be here. If I'm able, I put the money in the basket for someone else. That's what we do in the Seventh Tradition.
There was a girl that came into a Traditions meeting I sat in. And she said, I was at a meeting in my home group in
[01:05:09]
another state. And she said there was a couple in that meeting that night. And we went around the room. And as we do in our group, she said, we identified ourselves as alcoholics. And it came to this lady. And she said, my name's Peggy. And I'm here to support my husband, Dan. And Dan said, I'm an alcoholic. And it went around the rest of the way. And the chairperson said, Dan and Peggy, we're glad you're here tonight. But this is a closed meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And the chairperson talked a little bit about what that meant. And with as much love as the chairperson could do, asked Peggy to leave. And Dan and Peggy left. What the chairperson didn't know, and I don't think it should have changed anything that they did, that Dan and Peggy belonged to that church. And they happened to be the greatest financial contributor in that church's history.
And the next day they went into their minister's office and they said, there's a problem here. And the minister said, what's the problem? Dan's an alcoholic. And there's an AA meeting here. And we attended it last night. And because I was there to support Dan, they wouldn't let me be there. And the minister said, I'm going to look into that. And the minister contacted his contact within the group of Alcoholics Anonymous. I am so grateful that that person knew our traditions. And the minister said, listen, this guy is our biggest financial contributor. We can't have this. Somehow you're going to have to make it so they can come. And they said, listen, we pay our rent. And we don't affiliate with anyone. You're a landlord and we're a tenant.
Now, we're trying to help people that have an alcohol problem. We've got traditions. One of our traditions is the seventh tradition. One's the third tradition. And we've got one on anonymity. And this person explained the traditions to the minister. And the minister said, thank you very much. And was able to go back to Dan and Peggy and say, these people rent a room from us. They're not part of our church. They're not affiliated in any way with our church. They're a tenant. These are their traditions. This is what makes their fellowship work. There are other groups. And here's a meeting schedule they gave me to give to you. And there's some open meetings. And if Peggy would like to join you, Dan, she's welcome to do it. And I understand that he did stay in AA and became a good member. Boy, how important that was. But, you know, I never thought of the seventh tradition that way. Did you? Isn't that amazing how these traditions work?
See, that first tradition, that unity, that common welfare, okay, of all of us is that golden thread that's pulled through each and every one of our traditions. And I look at that today, and I'm grateful that we have the experiences that we have today. The twelfth tradition, I'm running out of time, so I'm not going through them all. Twelfth tradition, anonymity is a spiritual foundation of all of our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities. I want to share a story that Big John shared with me. He had way more stories than me. And he was speaking at a conference in Tulsa. And before the conference, this lady came up. And she said, John? And he said, you could tell she was a very affluent lady. And she says, John? And he says, yes. Now, John was an attorney, a big man. And she said, John, I'm a lawyer. And he said, well, I hope that you'll talk tonight about this idea of placing principles ahead of personalities, because we really have a problem with that in our groups here. And just about the time that she got that out, this beautiful girl walked down, walked by, kind of walked around, and Big John kind of followed her. And he said, she had a very nice set of wheels on her.
And the woman said, John, do you know her? And John said, no, but she's an attractive-looking woman, isn't she? And she says, John, her problem's not alcohol. And John said, oh, what's her problem? Her problem's sex. And John said, I wish the hell that was my problem. This is the same lady that's telling him principles ahead of personalities. The wisdom of our elders, I got sober at the
[01:10:22]
feet of giants. I think you figured that out. I love to hang around with people and alcoholics and all that stuff. And John said, they're giants to me, and that's the men and women I get to be with all the time. And I'm just truly, truly grateful for that. You know, as we look at AA and some of the things that are happening today, I hope and I pray that we won't become so rigid that we allow our fear to begin to make the traditions something that we need to circumvent. Let's look in a different direction.
Let's embrace the things like Facebook and online meetings and some of the things that are going on, and let's figure out a way to adhere to the traditions. Let's figure out a way, like I'm doing with my project, to where I can conform to those traditions instead of finding ways to circumvent them. I don't want to approach the future with fear. I want to approach the future with faith, knowing that my life is in divine order, as is all of ours, and our common welfare comes first.
Personal recovery depends upon it. Thank you.