My name is Gene, and I, too, am an alcoholic. Hi, Gene. Some years ago, when I was relatively new to this program, I was experiencing, uh, a lot of difficulty in accepting the basic concepts of Alcoholics Anonymous. I, I guess I was no different than many young people who came to AA and still come to AA, for I was only twenty-four years old, and I wasn’t quite sure, you know, that, that I, I wanted this way of life. Uh, as I said at some of the previous meetings here, I approached Alcoholics Anonymous as though it was some sort of a punishment or a penance, you know, and, uh, and I was getting the wrong end of the stick for all of the drinking I had done. And so with, with that kind of an attitude, I found this program rather difficult. And, uh, I sat at many meetings, you know, full of that bitter denial, looking for the loopholes, looking for the reasons to get out, get out.

And, and I found a lot of them because I stayed drunk for the first six years that I was in Alcoholics Anonymous. I managed to put periods of sobriety together, about thirty days, ninety days, and then I’d get elected secretary, and I’d go out and get drunk, or I’d- .. become this or that, you know? And, and, uh, I just never could, uh, seem to put it together. Uh, I realized later on in my sobriety what I’d been doing wrong because I had been looking at all of the things that had been told me and taught me, I had been looking at them through the wrong eyes, and I certainly had the wrong conception about what the hell they meant. You see, I believed some of them idiots that run around in Alcoholics Anonymous who say that this program is free, and that, that was attractive to me right off the bat because being an alcoholic, I’m a taker, you know? And, and anything that’s free was, uh, very alluring to me. But, uh, you and I know now that this program is not free.

And I used to wonder when the group would get up and recite the Serenity Prayer what the hell they was talking about because they’d say, right off the bat, they start a meeting. You know, you come into a meeting, it takes a lot of courage to come in here. You come walking in here because you think you got a booze problem, and all they’re talking about in the beginning of the meeting is something called serenity. It says, “God, grant me the serenity…” I thought I was in the wrong place because I didn’t come in here looking for serenity. I came in here looking to do something about my drinking problem because I was convinced that if I could handle my drinking problem, I’d get all of the serenity I wanted- .. if I wanted it. I’m still not too sure to this day. A-a-and I say- Hey, I say this in total honesty. I, I don’t, I don’t think I want serenity, really, uh, the way I interpret serenity.