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Source: Bernard S – Little Rock, Arkansas (1956) – Date Unknown.mp3 File: bernard-s-little-rock-arkansas-1956-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:18:05
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One of the great things that have happened to me is that I, a so-called non-alcoholic or non-professional drinker, have been allowed to be regarded as one of you. Now you who have done this every day don't know what it means. To walk off a plane, to met by Dr. Sossum I've known for many years, and by Joe, who I never knew, and I feel as though I've known these men all my life. To walk in to a coffee room that night, with fifteen people sitting around, walking in never having met one of them before, and yet feeling as though I've known them all my life. That feeling that you get through to me, this feeling of being allowed to belong, that is so real, is a privilege that I must thank you for. Now, I was extremely busy in New York. My staff urged me to go on Sunday mornings, why don't you fly out Saturday? I said, I can't do that. They said, why? Yes, I said, they have invited me to talk, but I'm going out to be with them. Because what I learned in AA, which I used both for AA, for myself, as a way of life. So much of that is around coffee, so much in my sitting room here. The opportunity to talk with working AA is the richness of being. What Bill was always called, just an extra dividend. So why do I come out here to talk with your invitation for myself? It isn't the privilege of talking to you, it is indeed a privilege. It's the opportunity to be with you that I regard as a rare and wonderful opportunity to know and experience that togetherness which so symbolizes the fellowship of AA. And I've enjoyed my stay, and I'm grateful to all of you for the lessons you have, the feelings, the belongings.
And now that I've said these kind things about you, I've got some complaints. I looked at this program here, and it says, Peter Bernice Smith, non-AA member of the Board of Trustees. And I said, you are a bunch of snobs. It's the first time anybody said that to me, because he's kind of avoided that problem. The boys regard me as of AA, although perhaps not quite yet in it. Although, Bill will just hope to have me reach the bottom before I leave Arkansas. By the way, if you've ever seen Paul drink, he has a little dropper, and I asked him to give me some shots of water. But he's honest, just very carefully put in just that one drop of water. And so if I can get out of here until Lucas isn't looking, I still maintain my semi-professional status. At any rate, I looked at that thing on the program.
Non-AA member. Gee, nobody ever calls me that. Usually we avoid the issue, and in the six years I was chairman, until a few months ago, we don't say. Non-alcoholic chairman of the General Service Board. And when I had a little influence, he left out the word non-alcoholic. But this is something I always have trouble with. But this concept that you've got here, that I don't belong at all as a non-AA member, this is brand new. Now, I thought of why that was done, and I thought maybe because I resigned as chairman, they decided to read me out of the movement.
Had I known that, I wouldn't have resigned. Then I thought, well, maybe this was that diabolical character,
[00:05:02]
Joe Lucas, at work again. It just hit me, you know, knowing how much I think of AA as the way of life, that he figured he just had it standing out in broad daylight that I was a drinker who hadn't yet made the program, you know? And, uh, against having very skillfully supervised my drinking the night of my arrival, I was a little fearful maybe he spoke to the party. And then I, and I thought, well, maybe they just want to teach me humility, you know.
After all, I haven't made it. Therefore, I must accept that this is what I am. And until I make it, I can't become a member of this very exclusive family. Now, seriously enough, I have to tell you this little story about non-alcoholics. One year, and one of my daughters was about 14 and staying at what unfortunately they call an exclusive private school in New England. Things have, teachers come up, talk on different things.
And I had met her, I had met this, learned of my interest in AA. And thought it'd be a good idea if on Parents' Day I delivered a talk to the kids on Alcoholics Anonymous. And to know that this is something, you know, at the drop of a hat, I'll talk about, because it's coming to last. My wife's attitude of, we're entertaining a bunch of international bankers or something, and they start discussing for too long my views on the fluctuations in the serving dollar rates that's changed or the operations of the International Monetary Fund.
And she sees I'm getting horrific here. It's just going on with what I've been doing all day. She will very politely say, let's assume it happened last week. She said, she was very very, uh, a little on the little rock across the way edge, you know. And invariably there's somebody there who's, uh, has a brother or sister or partner or son or parents with an alcoholic problem. And then, you know, somebody will ask a question and have a joyful, wonderful, jubilating moment. At any rate, I was up giving this talk, and maybe I don't know much about AA, but I can certainly talk it, you know.
At any rate, when I got through and the kids loved it, you know, my daughter Allison, if you've met her, uh, she, uh, came up to me and said, now, daddy, do I have to tell everybody you're a non-alcoholic? I said, why, darling? She said, you know, a lot of kids here have parents who have been fathers who have been successful lawyers, but it's so much more romantic to say you're in the gutter and look where you are today. Now I have another observation about the program.
And you and AA talk about accidents in a way that I believe. But we don't in society, in the abnormal society in which I live and function, uh, we quite don't. Now, a certain experience of mine in March when I was in England this year, it relates to what you say in your program, and I just thought it's the first time I'm talking about it. It might be of interest to you. On the last page of your program, you recite the Serenity Prayer.
[00:10:00]
And underneath it, you say that the author is unknown. That the author is unknown. Well, I always thought the author was unknown. Now, while in England, I came on in the home of one of my friends, and I own it today, and he gave it to me, a thin little book entitled A Book of Uncommon Prayers. And there I found the Serenity Prayer attributed to Niebuhr, the person. I did some checking while there, and while it's attributed to him, I also found that he does not, he does not contend that it's original with him.
The precise words he may believe are original. Well, the last, you know how the British worship their weekends. And the last weekend I'm in England before I systematically marry home, I spent a weekend with some friends of mine out in the country, and staying with them was this particular man's friend's father-in-law, a man in his late 80s. And he happened to be rather religious people, so I spoke with great enthusiasm over my find of his attributing to Niebuhr, the Serenity Prayer.
Well, this man, 85 years, or days or older, got a little book, you know, like little small diaries. And there he read to me with the same words, had the same impact, but with different words, not quite as mellifluous as these, the Serenity Prayer. Niebuhr attributed it to a sentence about 15, 20 years ago. This man was 85, and he said, I've had that prayer in my little book along with the serenity prayer.
He read me three other lovely prayers, he was five. Since I was 19 years of age, and he was 85, I said, where'd you get it? He said, I read it somewhere. Well, I said, I ought to be over in, but I don't know where. I said, I'll probably be over in late September or October if I can manage it. You do a bit of research and see what you can come up with. Not that it's important. Just my normal curiosity and guess.
But I just thought a serious experience of being in England far removed from you, and this experience without Serenity Prayer might be of interest to you. Now, I want to say this. I, as a so-called non-alcoholic, I can't help an alcoholic. Thank you. The best I've ever been able to do, except for one case that I would strive to use, if you'll permit me, is to get them into the arms of a member of AA.
The only thing I've been skilled to lad is boiling a guy's drink, which I'm good at. This I've learned how to do, and it helps to pair them when they're with. Well, recently, I'll go back to what I really want to talk about. It's just so sad. It's perhaps more difficult for me, because I know, than for those of my so-called non-alcoholic friends who don't know, and therefore they enjoy helping, and I, who know I can't help, feel all the worse about the wonderful people I know who are alcoholics, whom I can't help directly.
And I said to fathers about their sons and all my interest, I said, all I can do for you is be around to let them know.
[00:15:27]
That People Can Get Over This, If They Really Want To, That Was An Example, And It Has This Amusing Guide, That Must Be Set, Last Week, The President Of A Large Corporation, And I'm The Director, I Was Called In The Afternoon, Of My Identification With AA, And He Said, You're A Chef, One Of The Really Star, High-Priced Chefs, And As A Common Alcoholic To The Degree, That Their Principal Customers, Those Of You, Sir, Called Up And Said, Now Don't Send That Drunk Down Here, He Said, I've Given Him A Few Chances, But He's Got Nothing To Live In, Much As I Like Him, I'm Sorry For His Wife, I Think Fairly, I'll Just Have To Fire Him, But Before I Describe, He Said, He Is Joining, Or Has Joined, Rather, AA, And We Believe AA Will Work, Won't You See Him, So That If You Are Persuaded, We'll Hold On To Him And Give Him Another Chance, I Said To Him, The Only Thing I Asked You To Do, Is Don't Disclose To Him, He Doesn't Know, That I Know Anything About AA, So That I Could Formulate A Judgment, Well A Chef Came Up, And He Sat Down With Me, And I Said, So You're A Member Of AA, Are You Now, He Said, Oh No, I'm Not Yet A Member, Oh I Said, Well What Happened, He Said, Well He Was Down In Long Island, Oh I Went To Their Main Headquarters, It Was A Great Big Building Near The Station, And I Saw About A Three Page Questionnaire, And I Signed The Application, And They Told Me, The Membership Committee Will Meet In Three Weeks, And Then I Will Decide Whether I'm Qualified For Membership, And I Said, Well What Are You Going To Do These Next Three Weeks, Well Sir, I'll Wait Till That Membership Is Decided On Me, Well That's The Set, You Know, You've All Been Through It, You Know, Give Me A Few More Weeks Of This Hell, And It's Bad What You Can Do About It, And Then The Other Problem I Have Is, I Find So Many Of My Friends When They Reach The High Places Around, Say I Better Watch My Time, I've Been Speaking Too Much Of This, They Begin So Long To Become Alcoholics, When The Struggle For Life Begins To Dissolve, And Have Lived In Purely Materialistic Terms, And All The Materialistic Goals Have Been Achieved, Socialist Scheme, Economic Security, And Then Suddenly, This Comes On Them, Because They Haven't Been Faced, And Unfortunately, And I've Tried To Help So Many Of These Guys Who Are Friends Of Mine, But It All Ends Up With The Same Thing, What They Want Of Me Is To Teach Them How To Live With Liquor, Not How To Live Without It, And One Of My Problems Is That Most People Who Didn't Know Me For More Than Ten Years, When They Hear, Particularly These Last Years That I've Been Chairman Of The General Service Board Of The Conferences, They Assume That I Am An Alcoholic Who Doesn't Want To Contest, Which Also Hurts Me, Because They See I Can Drink, And They Say, You Drink, Teach Them How To Do It, You Know, So There's No Use If I Say To Them, No, I Am Not An Alcoholic, Or I Was A Happy Drinker, Or Anything, Because It Just Doesn't Ring True,
[00:20:03]
They Can't Understand What A Guy Who Drinks Is Doing In AA, Unless He Really Had A Problem. Well, I, During The Years Before I Would Like To Be Off Of Mission, They Joined AA, Which Was In 1942, For Some Reason, Most Of My Infamous Friends, During The Like Roaring Twenties, In The Years Of Depression, Were Either Hungry Drinkers Or Alcoholics. And I Found Myself Devoting A Great Deal Of Time To Trying To Help These Wonderful, Sensitive, Great Guys, My Friends, Who I Had Known In The Happy Days, Before Feeling Like The Laughing Peasants Of Italy, In The Early Stages.
And I Turned Into The Sense Of Dread Escalation, That Happens When We Cross That Shadow Line, And Of Course, It's Hard To Accept, If You Are Exposed To This, To Accept The Fact That Something Happened Along The Line, That Takes You Over To The Other Side. Well, AA Didn't Exist, I Never Heard Of It, Even After It Existed, Well, I Wouldn't Try To Say That, I Knew Of It Within A Year, As I Was Called It After It Existed, But I'm Thinking The Period After 1935, And I Thought, I Tried Everything, I'd Get An Alcoholic Into Town, Very Often, If You Know An Alcoholic Is A Serious Guy, He Can Be As Drunk As A Lord, And He Gets Into That Town's Drying Up Joint, Walks Around, And Gets As Sober As A Junk, Well, Here's A Friend, Who Was Drinking, And I Never Could Keep A Guy From Drinking, Unless In Those Stations, Where It Was So Far Down, That He Didn't Know Where He Was.
Well, I Tried Everything, I'd Put A Guy In A Port, I'd Get A Guy In A White Uniform To Stay With Him In Our Hotel, Stupidly, And I Didn't Know, I Agree That They Could Dry Up On A Case Of Beer, You Know, And, But, You Know, Even That Wasn't Enough, And Somehow Managed To Surprise Somebody, You Know, That He Fell Boy, Watching This Time, The Guy Who Was With Him, I'd Go To The Bathroom, And I'd Get Enough Liquor To Spice The Beer, And I Think, Often Of So Many Of The Guys, I Think Of One, A Man Who Had Had A D.T. In Boston, And For Seven Years, Never Touched A Drop, He Was A Scotch Bachelor, And Right Through The Depression, Reached The Very High Places, Economically, Socially, Never Touched A Drop, But Remember, He Had No Program, This Was A Self-Imposed Thing, I Was His Friend, I Was His Lawyer, I Was His Executor, I Was Everything To Him, And Then, In The Year 1934, He Decided To Go On A Cruise, And As He Told It To Me Later, He Was Now A Very Distinguished Citizen, And As Is The Practice On These Big Ships, He Captured The First Night Out, And Invited Him With A Lot Of Group Of So-Called Important People To His Cabin To Drink, Got On His Dinner Jacket, Went Up There, And There Were All These Fine Social People Around, And Stopped There To Be Offered, And The Guy Thought, Now, It's All Right, I Want To Be One Of These People, And He Had A Drink, He Never Got Off That Ship, Till He Came Back To New York, He Was Never In A Condition To Walk Off That Ship If It Stopped At This Point, Came Back, And He Came Into My Office To Turn, I'm Glad This Happened, I Now Know I Can't Drink, I Was Very Good,
[00:25:06]
Six Months Later, I'm Sawed Up At My Home At One O'Clock In The Morning, We Had No Relatives, I Was The Only Name That's Fine In This Book, To Identify This Guy As A Murderer, And I Got The Story, He Was Gone To Chicago, I Used The Expression, Drunk As A Lord, Had Drunk The Chicago Prosthesis, Flew Home To New York With Her, Took Her To A Nightclub In New York, She Drunk, Blood And Drunk, She Actually Choked To Death On A Piece Of Steak, Didn't Even Know How Large It Was, And I Think, When I Thought Of That Later, That The Year Later, I Was Born, And Let Me Just Think, I Began To Be Exposed To My Age, After Generations Of Human Beings, Fine, Sensitive Persons, Who Died Because Their Age Did Not Finish Good, And How Grateful We Must Be To God As We Say Him, And Bob, And Gerald, And Ollie, And Melanie, And Christopher, And Akron, And We Must Always Remember, It Is Just A Little Thing, To Survive This Way Of Life, Which Has Provided Me The Opportunity To Talk To A Wonderful Group Of Happy People, Who Exist In Every Area And Town Throughout Our Country, And So Much In The Rest Of The World, And I Think Of Another Man, I Know, One Of Our Great Hero Painters, Now Unknown, He Was An Alcoholic In Those Days, But A Great Painter, And He Took A Job Of Building A Giant Bureau On The Wall In A Bank Building, A Bank Office There, And I Asked These Questions, They Were Given Until The Job Was Finished, And Then Given Back To Me, Just Enough To Feed Them, No More, The Contract Price By Contract Was Not To Be Paid Them, There Were Ten Days After The Acceptance, And I Was Going To Delay That, When The Job Was Finished, And It Was A Magnificent Work Of Art, Somebody Was There With An Uninstructed, And He Asked A Man For A Couple Hundred Dollars On A Pound, And He Knew How Much Money He Was Going To Get For It, He Gave It To Him, Well, Before He Got To That Two Hundred Dollars, He Was Dead, And Banks Tried To Get A Hold Of Every Mural Artist That Consequently Finished That Bureau, And All Said That None Had The Ability To Complete It, And Yet These People Felt It Was So Wonderful, That They Couldn't Take It Upon Themselves To Destroy It, And That Bureau Still Stands There, Three-Quarters Finished, The Three-Quarters Finished Is A Monument To A Great Artist, The Unchanged Artist, That's The Order Of The Life-Taking Statement, It Couldn't Be Done With An Alcoholic, Well, One Of My Very Closest Friends Had Been An Alcoholic For Many Years, And I Used To Try Desperately To Get Him Well, I Even Devised A Method That You Now Call Nickel Therapy With Him, Back In The Thirties, And I Said To Him, Look, Whenever You Feel Like A Drink, Call Me Up, But It Didn't Work, I Was A Non-Alcoholic, He Wanted A Drink, He Didn't Call Me, So It Couldn't Work, Well, He Was One Of The Early Members Of AA, One Of The Artists, He Had Good Contributions To It, And So Here I Had Living Evidence That Something Worked, And Then In Early Nineteen Forties, Early in 1942, uh, the boys decided, you know, to form a corporation known as the Alcoholics
[00:30:07]
Foundation. And, uh, they had no money then, so, had to see if they could find a guy who would do it for the joy of doing something. So, I was elected. And, uh, so they came in, uh, Bill and Bert and the staff, Dr. Hilton came wearing robes and clothes, looking like nothing at all. It was late in the afternoon, I recall it so vividly now. And, uh, Bill said, uh, you gotta set it up with, uh, we'd like to start with 11 sub-teams. We'd like to have six non-alcoholics and five alcoholics. I said, you mean next alcoholic sub-team?
He said, no, I mean alcoholics. Well, anyway, I had to use the definition next anyway. So, what do you want me to do? He said, well, we don't trust ourselves. We're gonna be drunk all our lives. Well, you know, it's a strange language. A very strange language. Uh, I saw a guy who was arrested for the problem of drinking, but he's proud as a devil, of course. A guy who was like anybody else. Uh, I said, once we're drunk, we don't trust our money or our affairs unless we have a majority of non-alcoholics. It was kind of intriguing to me, and, uh, and the guy was this very strange appearance, looking like not much out of the field in the wind. And I planned to work that night anyway, and I said, uh, Mr. Wilson, uh, you don't have anything for dinner? He said, no. Did you mind having dinner with me? I said, it'd love to. Well, he wasn't dressed well enough for me to take him to any of his evening drinks because I felt it might embarrass him. So, I remember we went to Starbucks in New York. Well, you know, I've been exposed to so many of my friends in the writers' society, and, you know, $20,000 in fees later, you learn that you're over taking your old brother in the teeth at the age of six, but now you know you can get better.
But here's a guy I talked to for 15 or 20 minutes, and that friend said, good thing all that fell, I got in 15 minutes. And Bill really has amazing ability to communicate It's a great idea. He got it from me when I was drunk. But the next step was, when I formed this thing, uh, Bill said quietly, you know, in his way, Bernie, you know, a little shorting on alcoholic stuff. He said, you don't have to come for more than one million years, rounds, names, and thoughts. You know, the way he does that is say no, I just feel guilty as hell. Well, here I am now. Um, well, when I set about forming this thing, I got in trouble with the Secretary of State. I sent up a charter, and it said, uh, majority of the non-alcoholic, majority of the board must be non-alcoholic, and a minority, ex-alcoholic.
So they got a hold of me, and they said, look, we can't accept this charter. I said, why? Well, he said, we have nothing in our statute that distinguishes a right to hold office by the degree of alcoholism. It's class legislation. And then the attorney general says, uh, the board has got to fight. That's the qualification. They said, how do you decide it? I said, well, they call the eleven guys up to Albany. We'll set six charges before them, and the six guys will each get rid of the non-alcoholic.
You know, it's a strange thing. In 19, I therefore theoretically, until I read this program today, joined AA in 1942. And, uh, I remember, I was about 17, and you thought the world was your oyster.
[00:35:11]
You knew all about everything, life, religion. They'd give me even women. Uh, I remember hearing those days recited so frequently, those lines of Henry's Inviction, you know. I am the master of my faith, the captain of my soul. I thought this was really great. Well, in the winter of 1943, about a year and a half after I'm in AA, I have to go on a mission to England. Cold, wintry period. I went up to Labrador, and I was to go on a ferry promise to England.
I was too young to get in the First World War, and too old for the Second. Except I have a general's commission, and we'll sit at a desk in Washington. It's in the field of my idea of a contribution. But I was delighted with the opportunity to serve. And so when I got to Labrador, and it was a very distinguished group, all British, except myself, the general's British officer, Major George Burney, the general's, admiral, brigadier, head of the air force, all in uniform except myself and Malcolm McDonnell, the British high commissioner, the captain, the captain I know.
Well, things started out over the ocean. On the ground, early January, we were unheated. They blew 12,000 more feet up. It just lies in the bottom of the Pompeii, and it's so cold. And if you had a cup of coffee and it spilled, it would freeze instantly. But we had to be well-cold not to lose our fighting spirit. Well, about as tired as we get now, three or four hours over the Atlantic, one of the engines went bad, and we had to return to our base in Labrador.
About seven hours later, the pilot came to us. We were on hiding a bit of the nectar of the Scottish realm. And he came to us and he said, the plane was ready to leave, but we've now lost our weather over England. I suggest we stay here. Well, things got stuck together for me, and from what I implied, the war would be lost if they weren't in London the next day, you know. So I decided to go along for the ride, you know.
I thought it was a decision that no one else would like to do, and I didn't even know the way back. This guy was right. We were supposed to have landed in Scotland. And I don't know if those of you who've been in Britain, if you've ever seen a thick British fog at its worst, it's just incredible. It is completely impenetrable. And so we drifted over Northern Ireland, over Scotland, over England, desperately trying to find a place in the clouds, and none could be found.
And every airport in all of Northern Ireland, Scotland, England, was shut down. So when the guy was running out, the pilot decided that the only possible way of any of us coming out alive at that point where he was, there was a secret flight of agents on a little island off the coast of Wales, and he said, what I'm supposed to do is fly low over that area, so they can hear our engines, and then I'll keep our plane off Hollyhead, so they may come and rescue us.
Again, you know, you think of the government. None of us were concerned, or didn't appear to be concerned, except the guy from the Australian airport. He kind of knew what was going to happen to him. I was only a little concerned. I had a little light, icy water, and I, well, this was it. So what the hell were we to do? We were safe.
[00:40:01]
So we're flying low over this area, and the secret flight of agents were in a box, and believe it or not, for three full minutes, a gasp of light breaks through those clouds at that particular moment, and the pilot sees the box, he sees the flight of agents run away. He was quickly enough to notify the tower that he had seen it, and although it soon disappeared, he decided he should take it out with the help of the tower.
Well, I don't think it allowed them to land. This was a very secret flight of agents. It might very well have been a precious cargo outside of myself. It was, people. It would be very disappointing for a person to lose. So we got permission to try to make that landing, and as we got the permission, the light disappeared. By the time we landed, I still remember him going up to the tower, the person in charge was a young woman who had died at that moment, virtually, and at that time, you couldn't get citrus fruit in England, and this pilot had brought three lemons home from Canada, it was.
I was so clear with his shaking hands and his girl. Well, as we left the tower and walked over to the officers' place to have a bit of whiskey, I saw that Henry was infected, and like something comes back to you, I remember reading, when I was 17, how when someone got up and recited those words, I am the master of my faith, the captain of my soul, someone in the audience got up and said, Yes, I had your wife.
And funny how things change with you, about anyone who feels this. And all of us have had experiences of life, in part, but we must recognize inevitably that there is a power greater than ourselves, such as Christ, and only in the act of humility and surrender. It matters not whether you die or don't die, it's not for us to decide. And then, I remember as I was going to the conference and I was walking over to announce my resignation as chairman, I remember that the one thought that I came there with was the magic of the 24-hour principle.
Somehow that was in my mind. And if you will cooperate, keeping with our 12 steps, then the 24 hours are a miracle. And I thought then of that line of the Lord's Prayer which says, Give us this day our daily bread. And I thought of the symbolism of the word bread. And it doesn't say tomorrow, the next day, the next year, but this day, give us our daily bread. Isn't that really a simple statement in the shortest few words of the 24-hour principle of our lives?
And then I thought of the other things that, after all, so much of my life in AA has been directed toward the preservation of the message of the 12 steps for all time, or rather, the method of delivering the message in keeping with our 12 steps to die as a non-alcoholic has to seem perhaps in broader perspective than simply you, the sponsor, coming to the alcoholic and helping bring them back to life.
And I thought really that what is most significant about the 12 steps, that it's not so much what we do for others in keeping with that 12 steps that is important. In keeping with that twelve step that is important, it's rather what happens to our own character in the process of doing it, that is the important factor for our own recovery, I don't deny that it's a wonderful thing to serve, but the magic of the twelve steps, let alone what we do for others, it's more important what happens to ourselves,
[00:45:20]
and to our own character in the process of doing it, and you know, I've often said that the important thing for me about our twelve steps is not to know too much why they work, but the fact that they do work, and therefore are not to be tampered with, and I know that one of the really great truths that I personally have absorbed in Alcoholics Anonymous, is the truth of life without faith, is an aimless journey in an empty labyrinth, we know that when recovery is based on faith, we can only maintain that recovery through the maintenance of this faith, and so I say these twelve steps, as we know, will never be changed, in fact they can't be changed, and yet they'll remain forever new, they'll be nurtured by the emotional experiences of those here now, and those of those who will be here long after we are gone, and the rich and long life that lies ahead, new lives, will reach into these twelve steps and render them increasingly vivid, for they are no imperatives, they are not commands, they are the basis of a spiritual approach to life, for the use of those who through the suffering of alcoholism are prepared of themselves and without coercion to embrace them.
Although history man has sought the material security, and yet, although history, the energizing force has been the insistent and sometimes uncomfortable haunting search for a spiritual basis for existence, the effectiveness of the twelve steps represents, in my view, the triumph of this energizing force of faith in our own generation, and yet, we must always recognize that this right to continue to be relieved of the disease of alcoholism is not a private right, like going to the doctor and paying him for the administration of a pageant, it's a human right conditioned in keeping with our twelve steps on the common enjoyment of that right with other alcoholics.
If we don't enjoy the sharing of this right, we're losers, and that's what makes us free to enjoy it, for without any sense of enjoyment in serving others, we suffer from that which shall nearly destroy us, we can't really function within the philosophy of the twelve steps. One of the miracles of AA is that it works effectively without leadership. Society, since the beginning of civilization, has always assumed the need for leadership in any movement.
We have eschewed the concept of leadership. We have substituted for the concept of loyalty to a leader, loyalty to each other, and we have substituted for personal leadership, loyalty to a set of traditions, and with it, a loyalty to the groups of which we work. In fact, I have been so long identified that the general service thought must be said, that our groups are infinitely more important than the general service thought. General service headquarters serve and exist simply to serve the group, to help new groups when help is needed, to help create new groups, but in the last analysis, it is through the group which AA will find itself in the years of life ahead, and yet the general service thought must remain the finding thought between the past, the present, and the future of alcoholic synonymous.
Now, you know, I was thinking the other day about an experience of mine on this concept of the twelve steps of help thy neighbor, and how wonderful it is for us to have general service headquarters and our own group relations with each other.
[00:50:24]
You know, before AA existed, and a friend of mine came in and said, look, my brother-in-law in Little Rock is an alcoholic, and if there were to be any suggestion of what I could do for him, I'd have to say nothing, not a thing I could do. But today, seriously, through this binding thought that binds all the groups, we have one of the most unique concepts of neighborhood that ever existed. Our neighborhood is the world. Wherever a man stumbles into darkness, suffering from alcoholism, he is our neighbor and our brother.
And what's more important is that we have developed a structure that makes it possible for us to help that unknown drunk, struggling in the darkness, maybe in Manila, maybe in London, maybe in Stockholm. I have this experience which is wonderful for me. About a year ago, one of my great British friends was in the office, and as you know, and perhaps I'm not forgiven for it, I make no secret of my identification with AA.
And he said to me, Dennis, you know, something terrible has happened in my life. My own son, age 26, has become an alcoholic. He's tried everything and nothing will help. I never met this boy, except the general director gave him a name, telephone number, placed 3,000 miles away. In March, I'm in England, and this great friend of mine comes down there for breakfast with me. He told me the long tale of his son's discovery. He not only had joined AA and stopped drinking, he was so bloody active that he was becoming a forest knight.
But think of my feelings. Just where, in what kind of human society, in such a short period of time, has a structure been created where our neighborhood is the world? Now where we, who maintain our general headquarters, can have a wonderful feeling that there's no alcoholic anywhere who wants help that we can't help and are helping. The rest of us who are not alcoholics help my neighbor. It's a very uncomfortable feeling. Who's our neighbor? What do we do?
Every single one of the millions of alcoholics who walk the earth today and who walk it in the future long after we've gone are our neighbors. Who we can help? It starts with a structure we've created. And I think it's a great and tremendous privilege for the group and their support of general headquarters that makes it possible that that one experience of mine can sit in my office and feed a young man from a discovery who I haven't known, don't know, and may never know.
You know, as a result of my identification with AA, I did a little mix-up with psychiatrists. I addressed them on the subject of AA, had a lot of fun with them. I won't go into that now. Well, just a few weeks ago, I was spending a weekend out at East Hampton in New York, and one of the houseguests was a psychiatrist who treats alcoholics, one of the few dedicated men in the prison society. So naturally, we talked about AA. And he said to me, he said, you know, Bernie, the psychiatrist who treats alcoholics, if he's honest, has no other function to perform but to prepare his patients to receive the message of AA.
[00:55:02]
So we talked some more and talked about this as an empirical disease. And he said to me, the man who finds the magic capsule that will make it possible for an alcoholic to drink without being initiated ought to get the Nobel Prize. I don't know if it will ever happen. And I said to him, you know, I don't know about that, because if there's any Nobel Prize that's being given around this year, the ones who get it are the alcoholics themselves.
And I said to him, you know, I think if I get these horror groups of AA's and said to them, I have great news for you. Some guy has invented a pill. If you take this every day, you can drink all you want and not get drunk. And I don't know, but I think they say to me, they don't want any part of that pill. And I say that to a recovered alcoholic, much as he may look back with a feeling of dread of those dark, desolate days, now that he's recovered and has found a way of life, it has so much more meaning to him than simply living without alcohol.
But I would say, and I really don't know, but I'd tell you what I told them, and I would say most of them would say, keep that pill. In fact, they would oppose giving the Nobel Prize to the discoverer, because in terms of our personal life, what do you get for it? You get the right to live a materialistic, mechanistic life without any awareness of what life's about. That's the price they would have to pay for this magic pill.
But, go ahead, I don't ask for your opinion, that happened to be mine. And seriously enough, that very evening, or a day or two later, I was reading a review of a book in the New York World Telegram, and titled, and discussing, a new drug being gotten out by Letterloo Laboratory for the resolution of the problem of alcoholism, not to drink, but to make it impossible to drink, perhaps. An aggravated antidote.
And, um, it's called Tempest Jill. But the kind of wonderful acceptance to what any of you lose in the minds of our newspapers of the United States, the job you've done, by your example, I couldn't help bringing this along, Thursday, July 16th is the date line. I just want to read you the closing paragraph of this review, of this new scientific thing. The new drug, like the old one, is a trust, to help us self-reform to heavy drinkers.
But psychologically, we must still be rehabilitated. No pill will ever put alcoholics anonymous out of business. You know, you get a thrill when you've seen in a handful of years the impact it's made on these characters. And I'd just like to return for a moment to the importance of our group. In all states, and for that matter, all religions, there's a historicity. Someone was there to restore the birth and the growth of that state, and thereby to preserve it for the use of the generations thereafter.
At the time of birth, when I received the third experiment, I found myself thinking of many things. Of those exciting early struggling days when AA was taking its form. Of the many friendships that AA has made possible for me. By the way, they stuck in these words, the non-alcoholics, those aren't mine. But they always throw that at me, and that's just funny. Colleagues, you're a little pissed out.
Calling Bill O'Keefe, The Alcoholic, Of the countless heartwarming experiences that have been mined within the fellowship of A.A.s. Of the wonder that in so short a time,
[01:00:02]
A race could have produced a general service conference with so large a part of our society represented by children delegates. More than anything else, perhaps, I thought of the miracle of timing in A.A.s. How things seemed to get started in A.A. only when the time was right. How we may resent at things delayed only to realize in a few years later that they were delayed only because the time to bring them had not yet arrived.
And I thought of the finger of God directing our thoughts as individuals of the fellowship and in relation to the world about us. Clearly, I thought the process of A.A. must have been spiritually conceived. It means a serious and growing challenge for all of us, non-alcoholics as well as alcoholics. What is that challenge? It is a challenge to deny the spiritual basis of our great social concept and to obstruct in its place the basis that is mechanistic and materialistic.
It is a challenge to which A.A.s. never yielded and to which, so long as it keeps faith in its purposes, it will never yield. I suspect that when I was first exposed to A.A.s., I didn't think broadly or deeply enough of the large social concept or the application of a great spiritual truth to the problems all men share in their pursuit of what is generally regarded as happiness. It was after I met Bill that I learned a cardinal lesson of alcoholics' phenomenon.
That the real secret of A.A. is not that we seek to drink, but that in the process of seeking to drink, we learn to live on a true spiritual basis. And so, in all the years since that first meeting with Bill, wonderful years when it has been my privilege to serve as a member and as chairman of the General Service Board, I have never lost this initial feeling that A.A. is more than a fellowship for recovered alcoholics, that it is indeed a way of life for all who have lost their way in a troubled world.
I have frequently attempted to confine the fellowship of A.A. to little success. And so, one day while in England, I listened to a broadcast delivered by Sam and Steve Egan, a noted British religious leader. In the course of this broadcast, Sam and Ralph Ratham, I got them later to send me a copy, that's no good if it's not sent, defined the conditions of a true fellowship in these words. Three conditions are necessary for true fellowship.
The possession of a common ideal involving a complete release from selfishness and division. The discharge of a common past, big enough to capture the imagination and give expression to loyalty. And a comradeship that has been competitive, thus involved as we find out, the joy and power of belonging to an organic society and engaging in a whole time service. We can find it at its fullest extent where the ideal is the highest and most exact.
Where the past extends and integrates every ounce of our strength and every element of our being. Where the comradeship is so solid and deep that we respond to one another without trying to sell it. Realize the unspoken need and react to it spontaneously and at once. Under such conditions, all the vitality that we usually waste upon our jealousy and our vanity, upon keeping up appearances and putting other people in their proper place, become available for creative use.
Gee, I wish I'd said that. These words have great meaning for AA, I believe. Not only as a definition of the true fellowship and of our goals and attitudes, but as reminders that AA is not a static passive social organism. But in its largest sense, a dynamic creative force that releases our latent power to live and act constructively. Not long ago, I was flying high over the deserts of our great Southwest.
Here and there, almost out of nowhere, were tiny patches of lush green growth,
[01:05:04]
surrounded by great expanses of brown, lichenous deserts. My mom was turning to the great springs of water lying under this desert expanse. This expanse would cause the entire desert to flower. And I thought, God provides the water and we've got to dig the well. Those green, lush patches I likened to our group. With the faith derived from the 12 steps we dug the well, it caused a patch of desert and lichen to flower.
And I reflected how we have learned that we alone could not transform the desert in which we live. We couldn't dig that well alone. For in AA, the whole is truly greater than the sum of all its parts. The infusing power of this group, of our fellowship, draws such a lot out of each of us than any of us by himself can supply. Each of us in turn draws out of the spiritual reservoir of our fellowship the added courage and will that makes each of us stronger and our fellowship the greatest.
What we draw or can draw by living according to the tenets of AA is something more and deeper than what the materialists regard as happiness. Recently, I have taken to examine the definition of happiness in a new and abridged dictionary. To my surprise, the first definition listed was good luck, misfortune, or uncertainty. This materialistic definition is manifestly the antithesis of the concept of happiness to be found in AA.
The second definition of that dictionary, however, I found directly applicable to the kind of happiness we seek in AA and believe can be sustained by living in accordance with the 12 steps. This definition reads, a state of well-being characterized by relative permanence, by dominantly agreeable emotion, raising in value from mere content to positive felicity and by a natural desire for its continuation.
It is noted in terms of this definition that I believe that those who live by the principles of AA enjoy a greater measure of happiness than in fact a group of people to a giant of individual have ever been exposed. After reading it, I gave a great deal of thought to this second definition. I reflected, for example, that dictionary definitions follow current socially accepted uses, and I was disturbed by the fact that the first definition of happiness had been couched in such mere materialistic parody as good luck, good fortune, prosperity.
Though I examined a number of dictionaries published in the 1890s, I found the word prosperity, good luck, good fortune, appeared in none of these reference marks books under the definition of happiness. I then happened upon a standard dictionary published in 1927. By this time, the definition good luck, good fortune, prosperity had not only appeared, but had reached second place. And by 1943, it had reached first place, supplanting that definition of happiness by which we prefer to be blessed.
An especially material conception of happiness has now been accepted as the definition of the goal of men and women in modern society. One might say, therefore, that our twelve steps, just by the socially accepted standards of happiness of this age, are stepped backward. But to me, they are stepped backward into the universal heart of man, back into the spirit of man. Paradoxically, I believe that when the world, the world will have moved forward only when this dictionary definition of happiness is advised backward.
Truth emerging in a materialistic society has found its time to be paradoxical. Consider, for example, the simple statement, I am an alcoholic. The first time a man or woman stands before us and says, I am an alcoholic, he speaks those words when he no longer drinks alcohol. But when the time comes that members describe themselves as alcoholics, society ceases to regard them as such. And yet, it is only at the moment when a member ceases to drink that he has faced the right to describe himself as an alcoholic.
[01:10:03]
I'm trying to find some parts I can skip here, so I won't take your time on this. There's another paradox in AA that stems directly from the 12th step, and yet is related to the moment of contact with the still-suffering alcoholic. All of us recall the well-known Warthog slogan, Give till it hurts. In AA, paradoxically, the phrase becomes, Don't give till it hurts. For the member of AA knows that he can't pass along the gift of surprise unless he experiences the joy of giving, a giving that's a taking as well, a giving in which the sense of giving up anything, the sense of sacrifice, is stable.
For the AA member has found that when there is no joy in the giving and sharing of the message that brought him his discovery, he loses the power to give. Society, in referring to the alcoholics, employs the expression, the enslavement of alcohol. But the real member knows that this statement in a very special sense is paradoxical to us all. In sober facts, a member was never enslaved by alcohol. Alcohol simply serves as an escape from personal enslavement to the false ideals of a materialistic society.
And yet, if we accept society's definition of the alcoholic fairly as state of enslavement by alcohol, the AA member can no longer invent it, for it has served to set him free from all the materialistic traps with which to pass through the jungle of our society outset. All we first have to face materialism as a disease of society before we can free ourselves of the illness of alcoholism and therefore be free of the social ill that's intrinsic to our becoming alcoholics.
Our men and women who use alcohol as an escape are not the only ones who are afraid of life, hostile to the world, fleeing from it into loneliness. Millions who are not alcoholics are living today in the illusory world, nurturing their basic anxieties and insecurities rather than face themselves with courage and humility. To these people we should offer as a cure no magic potion, no chemical formula, no powerful drug.
AA can only demonstrate to them at last how to use the primitive tools of humility, honesty, devotion, and love which indeed are the heart of our 12 steps. We may not need, forgive me for skipping the last time to read this, just want to go right to the end now. We may not need a general service conference to ensure our own recovery. We do need it to ensure the recovery of the alcoholics which still stumbles in the darkness seeking the light.
We need it to ensure the recovery of the newborn child inexplicably destined to alcoholism. We need it to provide in keeping with the 12 steps a permanent haven for all alcoholics who in the ages ahead can find an AA, the rebirth which brought its first members back to life. We need it because we are conscious of the devastating effects of the human urge to power and prestige which we must ensure never invade AA.
We need a conference to ensure AA against government while insulating it against energy. We need it to protect the fellowship against disintegration while preventing over-integration. We need it so that Alcoholics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous alone may be the ultimate repository of its own 12 steps, 12 traditions, and all of its purposes. I have considered serving as chairman a priceless privilege and a great inspiration of experience.
While being chairman of the General Service Board, as a native he was chairman of the first General Service Conference. When I retired as chairman following the sixth conference in April 1956, I didn't feel I was stepping out of AA. No one who was a part of AA as I feel I have been steps out. I Feel I Have Barely Stepped Out, He Steps Up to Size, He Continues to Serve in the Rank, Living with Himself, As Unbelieved and As Able as He Can, I Did Not Tend to My Resignation
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as Chairman because I No Longer Wanted to be Chairman, I Have Enjoyed the Responsibility, I Have Found as a Non-Alcoholic Great Self-Fulfillment in the Trust So Many Have Granted Me, To State One More Paradox, I Am Resigning as Chairman out of My Love for and Devotion to A.A. For I Declared in the Opening Conference and Have Continued to Believe that A.A. Must Insulate Itself Against the Proprietary Rights of Service.
No Man has the Right to Serve Indefinitely. The Very Fact that No One Sought My Resignation, and In Fact, the Contagion Happily Should, Is All the More Reason to Reaffirm the Tradition of Rotation in All A.A. Service Positions. Someday this Tradition, that No One Succeeded as Chairman for an Indefinite Period, May Prove More Valuable than We Appreciate Today. Certainly in its Receiving with the Expanding Unwritten Body of Such a Tradition, That is Being Accepted Throughout A.A.
A.A. is Important to the Existence of the Individual. No Individual must be Vital to the Existence of A.A. It is A.A. that is Important. Important to those to whom Society has Rejected, and to those who have Rejected Society. Important indeed to all of Human Society as a Symbol of the Power of the Great Spiritual Resources upon which all may draw or aspire to a True Way of Life. As a Non-Alcoholic, and as a Student of those Great Social and Spiritual Movements from which we derive the best of our Heritage today, I regard the Fellowship of Alcoholics of Honor as the Outstanding Spiritual Achievement of our Century.
I see the Concept of Living Within 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous the Glorious Role of Mankind. For the Members of this Fellowship are Truly Wishing that we can Live the Life of this Spirit and Still Function Effectively in a Materialistic World. And so this First Generation in the Life of A.A. draws to a Close. It is Rich in its Space, Large in its Numbers, and Benefited to its Purpose. I am Grateful indeed that I have been Privileged to Explore this Immersion in our Society.
And now stepping aside as Chairman of A.A.'s Two Movement-Wise Service Agencies, I confess to only One Regret. And that is that I did not have the Skill or the Gift that would have enabled me to do more than the little I try to do to further the Purposes of this Great and Enduring Fellowship. Thank you very much.