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Source: Bill C., Al K., and Jason – SENY Convention Session (Excerpt; Source Label 1961).mp3 File: bill-c-al-k-and-jason-seny-convention-session-excerpt-source-1961.mp3 Duration: 00:41:07
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In AA, they come from all parts of the country, Michigan, Florida, Baltimore. Now we have one from the far west, Bill from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Better change that name with Bill, it's kind of hard to pronounce. Albuquerque. Good morning. I was wandering around the streets of New York last night and I noticed they have cocktail lounges and this, that, and the other. Out in our part of the country they have bars or saloons.
And they looked rather inviting. Not that I'm about to take a drink except [unclear] water, but I never got to enjoy any of that [unclear] carpet drinking. Kind of reminded me of the fellow standing in the saloon one day and he was drinking scotch and chasing it with bourbon. He had done this for some five or six times and finally one of the social drinkers down at the end just couldn't understand it any longer and he walked down and he said, My good man, how in the world can you drink like that? The fellow said, It's real simple. I just got paid. I was that kind of a drinker. When I had money I drank good whiskey. When I didn't have money I drank what I could get.
I think it's a friend of Tom's and mine, Mike up in Baltimore, who says he was the type of drunk that would drink anything that was too thin to chew. And I think that was the kind of drunk I was. My name is Bill C.. I am an alcoholic. By the grace of God and attempting to follow the 12 steps of this program and the help of folks like you, I am sober today. In AA we have, as the chairman said, all kinds of people from all parts of the country. We have AA speakers. We have AA talkers. We have AA readers. And out in the far west coast in California they give what they call a pitch.
Well, I am sort of an AA rambler. And to keep some sort of sequence in this little talk this morning, I'm going to use a few notes and I hope you will bear with me in this. I was known as a drunken druggist for so long that when I found out I was an alcoholic I thought I had had a promotion. I was arrested 27 times for hit and run, that's hitting the bottle and running off at the mouth. I was also arrested 26 times for DWI, that's drinking while intoxicated.
I did that pretty well, incidentally. Seriously, however, to clear up a few matters, I will tell you this. I know nothing about alcoholism except as it affects me. I know nothing about spirituality except as it affects me. And anything I say about the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is strictly my own interpretation. I do not quote the book verbatim, nor do I represent the entire AA structure. What caused my alcoholism, I will probably never know, nor do I care. Early in my AA career, however, I made a little study into this, thinking maybe I could find the answer.
I think what I was really looking for was a way to drink socially again and I knew damn well there wasn't. I found that I had had a normal upbringing. I made good grades in school. I got along well with my family and friends. I had never been dropped on my head, nor did I have unsympathetic toilet training. Seriously, I don't feel that I progressed into alcoholism. I had my first drink at age 14 and got drunk. And from that day henceforth, I never tasted alcohol in any form without eventually getting drunk.
[00:05:11]
Unlike our chairman, I drank my way through high school, I drank my way through college, and I lost my first job as a registered pharmacist at the age of 21 for drinking. I spent six years in the Army, where I drank my way from private to captain. I had no interest in a commission whatsoever, except that I couldn't drink the way I wanted to drink on $21 a month. The year 1947, I lost my license to practice pharmacy, and those people didn't even have the decency enough to call me an alcoholic. They revoked my license with a clause that said, habitual drunkard.
I was going to get even with those fellows, and I'll tell you about it in a minute. 1947 started my last drunk. It lasted three years. I wound up in Skid Row in Amarillo, Texas, a town where my mother and father lived, a town where I had four or five brothers and sisters. I was welcome at their homes any time, sober, which meant I was never welcome. We hear a lot about Skid Row in Alcoholics Anonymous. To me, Skid Row is not necessarily a geographic location. To me, Skid Row is a state of mind.
I think we have people in the swank penthouses, in the nice moderate homes, that are mentally on Skid Row. I was on Skid Row physically, mentally, spiritually, morally, and I was damn sure there financially. I want everybody to know that I didn't start down there, though. It was the economic system that got me down there. Sometimes I think that it isn't necessary for us to go to Skid Row mentally, physically, or any other way before we get this program.
I think that's an amazing thing about this program is that we, through information and education to the general public, these radio and TV programs, are getting over to the people that this isn't necessary and that you do not have to be a Skid Row delegate to come into the AA program. That's the reason we see so many, many younger people coming into AA all the time. One morning in 1950, I was sick. Of course, I was always sick. But I was sick of living that kind of life. I decided I would do something about it. And I knew about AA, as we all did down there.
I called out to what was then known as the AA clubhouse. A fellow was just opening up, and he said, I'm the only one here. We'd be glad to talk to you. Can you come out? And I said, yes. It was only 24 blocks out there, and I walked that far many a morning trying to get a drink, so I figured I could walk that far. On the way out there, I was arrested for vagrancy. The cops picked me up, and they all knew me by my first name.
They said, Bill, what are you doing in this area? You don't belong in this part of town. You better get back where you're going. I said, fellas, I have decided to quit drinking. I am going to quit drinking. I am headed now out to the AA club. They said, well, Bill, if that's true, then we'll drive you. And as far as I know, I'm one of the few AAs that came into AA with a police escort that stayed any period of time.
I stayed sober a year and a half on what I like to term as the first step. We have all heard of the two-steppers, those people who come in and take the first step and immediately jump down to the twelfth step. I stayed sober, I believe, on, I was probably a one- and one-third-stepper. I stayed sober on the first step and the third of the twelfth step, which has tried to carry this message. I would go anywhere with anybody, any time, to see a sick alcoholic.
[00:10:00]
One day I got on the program. After about a year and a half of sobriety, I got on the program. How did I get on the program? I took the fifth step. I admitted to God, to myself, and another human being, the exact nature of my wrongs. And the fifth step brings us to one of the oldest truisms in the world. A burden shared is a burden cut in half. And in this instance, we cut it in a third. We give God a third of it, we give another human being a third of it, and we only have to retain the remaining third.
If anybody here is having trouble with the fifth step, or with the program, rather, I suggest you take the fifth step. Who you take it with I don't think makes any difference, your minister, your doctor, a friend, or another AA member. But if it's another AA member you take it with, I'd suggest that you make damn sure he has taken the fifth step. Once you take the fifth step, then a great load is lifted off your shoulders, and you're ready for some permanent, happy sobriety.
After having taken the fifth step, I started over. I went back to the first step, and I not only admitted that I was powerless over alcohol, but I accepted the fact. And I think we people who take the first step with any degree of sincerity and honesty will want to take and work the other eleven. Sometimes I think we overcomplicate the second step. Actually, all we have to do is come to believe that there is a power greater than ourselves, which we know all the time, and that this power can lead us to a happy and normal life.
I believe the third step, and I believe that it is a very, very necessary step, I think the third step separates the men from the boys in this program, where you make a decision to turn your will and your life over to the care of God as you understand it. There can be no ifs ands or buts when you get ready to take the third step. As far as the fourth step is concerned, I'd like to go along with the book, and I think we should take the fourth step on paper. That gives us a true picture of our assets and our liabilities.
As far as the sixth step was concerned, I actually never gave it much thought. In fact, I don't believe I even thought I had any character defects. It's been so long, I just figured I was a defective character. I was a good deal like the old man who was about to be evicted from his home. He had a little Social Security check coming in, and that was all he had. They were about to evict him. He had two sons, one quite prominent doctor and one an up-and-coming attorney. He called these two boys to his home one day, and he said, boys, I'm about to be evicted. I need some help.
He looked at the oldest one, the doctor, and he said, John, how about you? John said, well, father, I'd love to help you. You know how it is, though. We just joined the country club, and we just built this new house. We have to entertain a lot to keep the practice going. He said, I'd love to help you, but I just don't have the money. He looked at Junior, the attorney, and said, Junior, how about you? Junior said, well, dad, you know, I just got married sometime back. We're expecting a baby. I'm trying to set up this attorney practice.
He said, we would just love to help you, but I just don't have the money. The old man thought a minute, and he said, well, boys, I'm going to tell you something that I promised your mother on her deathbed that I would never reveal. Your mother and I worked so hard and so long trying to give you boys an education, trying to keep you clothed, and this, that, and the other, that we never had time to get married.
John looked at the older one, and they looked at each other, and they looked at the old man, and finally Junior said, dad, you mean we're a couple of bastards? And the old man said, yes, and a couple of damn cheap ones, too. That's the way I was prior to coming into the AA program. I remember one time I had
[00:15:08]
I guess what you might term the walking DTs. I hadn't been sober in I don't know how long. I was supposed to be working in a small town up in New Mexico. The terms of this agreement was that if I would hang my certificate to practice pharmacy down in that store and never come in the store, the fellow would pay me $50 a week. And I even drank that up. But I must have had hallucinations or something along that line and I thought that I had had a call from my mother. And she told me that one of my sisters had died.
This was quite a shock to me. I finagled, begged, and borrowed enough money to catch a little chartered plane. We were going to fly down to Odessa, Texas. About three-fourths of the way down there we got weathered in. This pilot, who incidentally was a friend of mine, a pretty good Alki himself, but he never did fly drunk. He knew my condition. He set the plane down and he stayed with me until I could catch a bus.
I took the bus on over to Odessa and checked in the hotel and immediately brought me a fifth of whiskey to kind of straighten myself out. And I thought now there's no sense in me going out there tonight. My mother will be there, my father will be there, all the family will be there, and everybody will be upset and nervous and if I come in drinking, it's not going to be good, I better wait until morning. In the morning I was in pretty good shape, you know how you can get a couple of drinks in the morning, and I called out there to see what the score was and my sister answered the phone. It made me so damn mad that I had gone to all this trouble to come to her funeral.
And she didn't even have the decency enough to be dead. I just hung up and finished my drink and left town without ever seeing her. Those are amends, ladies and gentlemen, that are real, real hard to make. And it took me a long time to where I could look that little sister in the eye. So that's the kind of character I was before I came into the AA program. The seventh step is a very, very important step to me because we have to get humble.
Staying sober is something we cannot do alone. We have all tried it. We have to have God's help. And as far as the eighth step is concerned, there again I think we should make a list. And in fact it says, make a list of all persons we have harmed and become willing to make amends to them all. This list is necessary because once you see this picture of what you are in black and white, it will make a pretty definite impression on your mind.
The ninth step just gives us a further opportunity to practice this humility when we make these amends. Step number ten is a continuation as far as I'm concerned. And as I say, it gives us a chance to look at ourselves as what we really are rather than how much progress we think we're making. I think the eleventh step was the hardest step of all for me. I had gotten so far away from anything spiritually or religiously inclined that I didn't know how to pray, let alone meditate.
I knew nothing about either one of them. But through what I have learned, what I have learned through the AA program, I have learned how to pray and I have learned how to meditate. And I have me a little quiet time each night after I go to bed. And it serves me a great purpose. It does me a great benefit. I call the eleventh step my 3S step, for from it I get a sane, serene sobriety. That's the best 3S tonic I know of.
I don't want you folks out there to think that I am the perfect AA, that I have completed all of these steps. I have worked some on each of them, yes. And I have a lot more work to do. I do not want to become complacent on the AA program. And to keep from becoming complacent is one reason I work the program as I do.
[00:20:06]
I have been through every phase or stage of the AA program I think possible, except the Bleeding Deacon stage. And back home they even think I've reached that. I've had my own taxi service, loan agency, and I even dealt for a while in matrimonial advice. But those things were a necessary part of AA for me. I don't know what will happen when I get back. I had two alcoholics out at the house, one working in the front yard and one working in the backyard.
And if they ever meet, I don't know. My wife and the dog are there to keep them apart I think, I hope anyway. Not long ago somebody said there in Albuquerque, what we need in Albuquerque is a halfway house, a 12-step house. Somebody said, hell, Bill's got one out at his place. And that's true. I have never refrained from taking an alcoholic into my home. It may not be wise, and I don't recommend that you folks do it, but it is the way I work the program.
I have to work with the drunks. I was a lowly skid row drunk, and that's the kind that helped keep me sober. As I say, I don't want you folks to think that I am the perfect AA. I have lots of faults, and I think one of my biggest faults is lying. But that's one I think I'll keep because it's just sort of habit with me. I lied so long, and it's one of those things that you just can't break overnight.
To me, the 12 steps of this program has several aspects, several different facets. Number one, as Tom mentioned a moment ago, is attendance at meetings. That is very, very important. Attendance at meetings. Just the fact that you are there may be what that new man needs to latch on to. I think we should all chair meetings when we are asked, and I think we should speak when we are asked. Because it is a very, very essential part of the program.
I think we should contribute to our group. We should contribute of time, of self, and money. I think we should offer sponsorship wherever possible. And I think we should visit other groups. We should definitely visit those groups in the penal, in the hospital institutions. They need our help, and we know we need theirs. As for me, I do all of those things wherever possible. But just the fact that I can walk down the streets of my hometown with my voice pitched low and my pants zipped up, that's 12-step work.
We have an expression in AA we hear quite often. It goes like this. AA works. I don't know why, but it works. Ladies and gentlemen, I know why AA works. AA works because some 20-odd years ago right here in this city, God inspired a group of men and women to write the 12 steps of this program. I believe in the 12 steps of this program. I believe in the 12 steps of this program. To me, they are the program.
Without them, I don't think we would have any program. AA is not a hush-hush word at our house. I have a wife, four children, one dog, and they all know what AA is. AA goes, conversations about AA goes hand in glove with church, school, swimming, and bop parties. Because I owe everything I have to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.
[00:25:02]
I owe my life, my wife, my business, and everything, my sobriety, to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Some several years ago, I made a 12-step call on a man and wound up marrying his daughter. So I definitely owe my wife to the AA program. I made that statement one time, and I followed it by saying that from now on, I am screening my 12-step calls a little closer. And somebody couldn't wait until they got to the phone and called my wife.
She already knows about it, so save your money. We people who are sober in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I feel, have three great obligations. And I want you to think about them. Because to me, they are important, and I'm sure they are of equal importance to you. We have an obligation to our family and our friends, those people who stood by us during our time of sickness. We have an obligation to the alcoholic who still suffers, and there are many of them.
We have to keep the door open. We have to keep the hand out. Someone kept the door open. Someone kept the hand out for me. That is the second obligation we have, to carry this message to the alcoholic who still suffers. And further, we have an obligation to God, as we understand it, for having gotten us this far down the road to sobriety. Thank you, and God bless you. Thank you, Bill, for a very fine talk.
Would those people in the back please take a seat, please. For those people who aren't here at the beginning of the meeting, my name is Al K., and I'm an alcoholic. Just saw a friend of Al's back there. I'm filling in for a woman from Far Rockaway. My time is supposedly from 10 to 11 now. If there's anybody here who is supposed to have from 11 to 12, all right. If not, I'll continue on because I want to do part of the talking. I can very happily listen to the rest of you people.
But you know, regardless of where you come from in this country, the AA is about the same. And Bill said out in California, when you get up and speak, you say you've made a pitch. Around Michigan and Ohio, out there you make a good lead. Here in the East, they say, well, you made a good talk. But the principles are the same, the 12 steps, and the traditions are all the same, whether you come from Albuquerque, Garden City, Long Island, Rockville, Long Island, Michigan, or any place.
You know, everything in this world is built around a plan. The world was built around a plan. I'm a salesman. We used to have a plan to go in, [unclear], and buying life insurance or planning an estate. We had a set way by which we did that. We first went in, we got a man's confidence, and we got interest, and we got our information. And we had this so perfected that when I went out and got the information on a man's estate, that sale was 60% made.
And we further had it so systematized that out of every two cases that I brought into the office, we sold one half of those cases. So it goes with AA. There are certain rules. They say there are no musts in AA, but there are certain things that you've got to do. You've got to follow our Twelve Steps here.
[00:30:08]
And for you people who were in the room a little while ago and saw this young man help me to pack up these Twelve Steps, that's a friend of mine that I met one night at his first meeting. I'm very proud of this young man because he's made about a meeting every night for the last two months. And you say, well, two months isn't a long time, but boy, two months when you first came into this program is a long time.
The first two days is a long while. The first two weeks and the first two months. I'm sorry because of the fact that Bud hasn't had enough time that I can't get him up here to talk because he could give us the picture from the younger side. As I said before, I came into AA at the age of 62. And I found out when I came into AA, it doesn't make a difference how long you drink or what you drink, but what it does to you.
And my drinking was causing a lot of unhappiness in my family. I was making my wife unhappy, my wife was making my son unhappy, and she was making my daughter unhappy, all because I was selfish and wanted to drink. Since I have stopped drinking, three years ago, we have a very happy family. My son was sent to England just recently to represent the Standard Oil Company in New Jersey. Before he left, he said to me, now Pop, I can go to England with the confidence knowing that you'll take good care of Mom.
That was the greatest reward I've ever had since I've come into AA. A second great reward is the fact that my son allowed my grandson to come in and go to the ball game with me because he knew I wasn't drinking. So the little things in life, the free things in life, that really count. They say this is a selfish program. Too many people take that literally. They try to keep it to themselves and they don't try to give out.
Bill just said here, Al said, John, Tom said, you've got to give this program away to get it to return to you. There's an old saying, cast your bread upon the water, it'll come back tenfold. Which reminds me of a little story that a friend of mine lived up in Pennsylvania. He lived right on the Susquehanna River. In those days they had the old outhouse, you know, and the Susquehanna River overflowed one night.
They thought, well, this is one good thing it'll do. So it washed about a half a dozen of those down the river. They woke up in the morning, there was 50 there in a place where there was only [unclear number]. The river had taken them down. When we think of people coming to this group from all over the country and giving their services, so that we may benefit by that, I think it is a God-given privilege to be in it.
And God has given us, through himself, the power to give out to somebody else. We're supposed to talk here for 15 minutes. I have another man here now, Jason. Well, the first time in these close to 11 years I've been there, I am a little self-conscious. It so happens that I am having all my teeth drawn. And I talked with my mother down south last night, and we have a very, very close relationship. And she said to me, how's my little snaggletooth boy today?
So, this little snaggletooth boy is doing very well, but it's an unfortunate situation. If my words seem to sort of hiss to you, you'll understand that very quickly.
[00:35:01]
My name is Jason. I am a very, very fortunate alcoholic. I am always pleased to talk to an audience. I was very, very happy to see one of my southern cohorts up here. Alcoholism, of course, knows no bounds. It's all over. I'm from down that way, a little above you. I'm from Alabama. I suppose you can tell that at the outset by my very Bostonian accent. I was born and raised in the south. And as most of us, we come from good families.
I have found that out in these years that I have been listening to people talk, that most of us come from good families. I don't think that any one family could stand two of us. And so, fortunately, it's distributed perfectly, that one out of a family. Sometimes you find two. People talk about their kinfolk who are in, but that's very, very seldom. This family of mine was, as most families, very religious.
Not overly religious, but the usual type. And we were brought up with all the advantages that any youngster could or should have. I don't know why, as some of us try to tell ourselves later on, why we became what we did finally end up as, but that is relatively unimportant. The fact that we did end up as an alcoholic is the thing that concerns us at this moment. I am loathe to go into a long history of my drinking.
Suffice to say that I have it. I am not one of those fortunate alcoholics who caught it easy. I imagine that of all the horror stories that I have had, and this is going to eleven years that I am sober in AA, that I have heard none, I pride myself on this, any more horrible than the life I led. I did everything in the books. It's one of those things that we have to finally confess. I don't believe that I was ever accused of murder, knowingly.
But everything else in the book I had. And the most horrible aspect of my drinking back in those days was the fact that I ended up in a laughing academy. In other words, the insane asylum. And if you have never been confined to the insane asylum at Alabama, you have lived. That is the very end. I thought that, I have been here in New York for the last fourteen or fifteen years, and I have visited all of the laughing academies in this vicinity, but I have seen nothing to compare to where I was confined for thirteen months.
You know, in thinking back about that, we wonder how we get confused and all mixed up, and have to be taken away from a decent society. Why this happens to us, and doesn't happen to other people around us. People with good upbringing. People with good training. And I did have formal training. I did have the advantage of having a high school and a college education, but as I say to people now, that will never give me a rise to any sort of egotism on my part,
[00:40:02]
because I ended up in an insane asylum. Whenever I see some people come in here, and sort of get the big head about their accomplishment, their material accomplishment, I get a little afraid for them. Because there is nothing to show off. And the only thing that we can say to people who come in as what we say we call old-timers, and I'm one of those monstrosities, is what we have seen people do, and how they react to certain situations.
And most certainly, as my friend here said, and pointed out most vividly, that we should come in here in the spirit of humility, a spirit that we are here to do a service.