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Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Bill W Candidate Identity Review BW0069 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: bill-w-bill-w-18th-anniversary-and-family-groups-reflections-aa-date-unknown-archive-19004.mp3 Duration: 01:09:15
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My drinking, I went with a group of fellows who were amusing, in a nauseating sort of way. I had a partner who was like myself, both an alcoholic and a horse player. He used to say to me on occasion, he was always the one that got me in trouble, he used to say to me on occasion, come on in for a couple. And I was naive enough to think that he meant a couple of drinks, but I know now he meant a couple of days.
And I'd go with him, I'd go with him. I was a rather romantic sort of drunk in a way. A couple of drinks and I wanted to change the world. A couple of pints and I wouldn't change my shirt. I was always in rebellion against constituted authority. And there are certain areas of my acquaintance in which I am still known as the revolting Tom O.. As I look back upon my early life, I see that I had the mind of a gentleman and the emotions of a bum.
And as I drank, I lost the mind. There is a small group in Jackson Heights which doesn't think I've recovered it. But my own belief is, and of course this is only my own opinion, that the bum in me has been depressed. As a matter of fact, he's never had it so bad. And the bum in me has been depressed because of the tutoring and because of the affection that was given to me by the men and women in Forest Hills, in Flushing, in Bayside, and in Jackson Heights. And I shall never have the words to express to them how greatly I appreciate what they have done for me.
And they did what they did for me and for my dear wife and my family. They did what they had done, what they did for me, because someone had done it for them. And if you trace the chain back, it runs back to our final speaker, whose 18th anniversary of sobriety we are celebrating tonight. My recollection is that last year Lois said that they had 17 years of drunkenness and 17 years of sobriety. Now they've had one more year of sobriety than they had of drunkenness. Here's Bill.
APPLAUSE
[00:05:11]
It's in our good old AA tradition that nobody ever makes a speech. Each of us, in his turn, stands before the meeting and speaks out what is in his heart. So we don't make speeches. We make talks. And what wonderful talks these have been. We have heard the speakers talk about that fell disease, alcoholism, the mystery of the ages, how the dilemma has been solved. We have heard them speak of their gratitude to each other, to all our friends. But I think the deeper thing of what they speak, the deeper meaning of it all, is this.
They have been talking of love that demands no reward. They have been talking about the kind of giving that bears no price. And it is on that sort of giving and loving that I would like to dwell a little bit. The other day, the editor of the grapevine came up and said, well, Bill, I wish you'd write a six or eight hundred word piece about Christmas. The more I thought it over, the more I got buckled up. I said, gee, this society of ours has now moved into every corner of the earth.
Here, a great many of us are Christians. Good many are not. We have Jews who look to Jehovah. Out on the plains, we have Indians who look to the Great Spirit. And now that we have established beachheads in the Pacific Islands, in Asia, in India, in South Africa, we know that we have brothers and sisters who look to Allah and some of the ghosts. And I thought to myself, how could anybody possibly talk about Christmas to all these?
And then came this thought, well, by whatever name you call it, we may have Christmas every day in the sense that we give and in the sense that we receive. Yes, the kind of giving that demands no reward, the kind of love that bears no price tag. It is hard to imagine the scope and reach of our society. As I came up here on the platform, Al Steckman handed me a little clipping. It's a letter about a paragraph long from an A.A. member in northern Greenland to an A.A. member in northern Alaska.
[00:10:00]
And the fellow in Greenland says to the fellow in Alaska, in your letter to the mailbag, you made a statement that we wish to challenge about being the furthest north group. Brother, according to us, you should have a southern drawl. We are known as the north pole group and are located at the very top of Greenland, within walking distance of the pole, early on sunny days, of course. If it gets too round for you down there in Alaska, you can always come up here and visit us. Very coolly yours.
So the giving and receiving of the kind that we have in A.A. has really reached to the outermost ends of the earth. In most A.A. meetings, we like to talk about ourselves. I don't want to be any exception, but I am going to dwell especially on two who are non-alcoholics. And each of them founders in reality of this society, because they exemplify a kind of giving and loving that none of us have ever matched, and to which we can only aspire.
It is hard, impossible, for me to take in the contrast between what I see before me tonight and which magnified two hundred times would be the A.A.'s of the world and their friends. It is hard for me to contrast that with my own state in the summer of 1934 on a lay-up here in Towns Hospital, knowing for the first time that I was utterly hopeless and condemned by my obsession to go mad or die. And my mind reigns back over my life. And I ask myself, is drinking the only thing that ailed me? I began to wonder.
I thought of that little Vermont town where my grandfather had raised me because my mother and father were divorced. And believe me, in those Yankee towns in the early part of this century, divorce was something. I remembered the gossip of the neighbors, how I was made to feel different. I remembered my physical awkwardness, how kids pushed me around and fought. I remember how very depressed and ashamed and fearful I had been as a kid.
But after a while, that wore out. And a fierce ambition to succeed, to prove to myself and other people that I was as good as they, yes, better. That's what seized me. The neighbors said, this boy is going to go far. They knew not how far down, though. My grandfather thought I was persistent. He used to spur me on. He came to me one day and said, will nobody but the Australians make him throw a boomerang?
Oh, I thought, I will be the first bright man ever to make him throw a boomerang. Childish whimsy, you say? Nothing of the kind. I worked on those damn boomerangs for six solid months. I sawed the head out of the bed to get the right kind of wood to make a boomerang. Meanwhile, I never filled a wood box, I didn't do any schoolwork, but at last I did make and throw a boomerang, and when it came around the churchyard, it nearly cut Grandpappy's head off.
Next thing, I go to boarding school. I'm still so physically awkward that the first ball thrown to me on the playing field hit me on the head, and it knocked me down.
[00:15:10]
I wasn't much hurt physically, but when I looked up and saw the circle of grinning kids standing around me laughing at my awkwardness, I was hurt. And again, that old fierce desire to show somebody and to show myself asserted itself, and I shook my fist and I said, I will be captain of your ball team, and there was a great laugh. Well, I have a crooked arm here. I haven't been able to straighten it since those days because I threw so many rocks at telephone poles to be the pitcher of that team, and I was.
Grandfather one day said, well, I guess you haven't got much ear for music really. Your uncle Clarence was good at it, but I don't believe it's for you. Right up in the trunk, I've got to be a violinist now. No interest in music before, no talent. So I fiddled my way through high school, drove everybody absolutely wild and said I was going to be leader of the orchestra, which I did become, and it was a damn bad band too. And so it went.
And in those days I was terrifically happy because, you see, this fear, this guilt, this inferiority that I had was being matched by achievement. But you'll notice there was a little something very queer about it, and the story gets a little queerer as we go along. What's the next thing? Well, as I said, I'm pretty physically awkward and pretty homely, and the gals, I felt, didn't think much of me. But finally, the minister's daughter became interested in me. You know it is that way around.
So I'm very happy now. I have succeeded in the society of my fellows. I am even succeeding in romance, if you will pardon this little intimacy. But one morning the principal stood up in chapel and he said with a very grim face, I am very sorry to say that Bertha B. died last night, the first I'd heard of her. I fell into a depression that lasted months. It even ran into a couple of years. Was there anything normal about that? No. Any kid would have been awful blue, but it wouldn't have lasted too long at that age.
No, I'm depressed for a couple of years. I don't want to live either. Why? What was the matter? This time I couldn't win. My adversary was death and I was utterly licked and I couldn't take it and I wanted to run out. And this was still years before I even had a drink. I think of one more incident. The World War is done. Lois and I were engaged. The goose hung high again. But then the goose began to hang a little bit low. Because at Plattsburg, in officer's training, I had determined to go into the artillery, the heavy artillery, the kind way behind the line.
Well, in good old Vermont they have a military tradition that says you go to the large and you like it. And I was afraid to go and I didn't want to get killed. So we're on the old steamship Lancashire. We're just entering the Irish Sea. Officers were set on watch at each deck. My post that morning was virtually on the keel of the ship and I could look up through the spiral staircase and see light breaking through the hatch above.
And we had orders that if we were struck, that we officers would have to shoot anybody who panicked. And I sat there and I shivered and I reviled myself for my cowardice. The guilt was something horrific.
[00:20:01]
And all of a sudden there was a crash as though you stuck your head in a church bell and somebody had hit it with a sledgehammer. And I knew the jig was up. And the men rushed out of their bunks. And I did have to offer to shoot some, but didn't have to. And we knew our goose was cooked. Here we were right on the keel. And then suddenly a great wave of exultation swept over me, compensating once more. Wasn't scared to die after all. I'm rather ashamed to say I rather enjoyed the war after that.
Does this make a normal picture? No. Everything is set in terms of victory or defeat. Well, when alcohol got in the picture during that war, prior to that sort of a personality, what began to happen? If I was frustrated, well, I could, you know, feel better by drinking. Also, if I wished to dream still greater dreams of accomplishment and dream of greater triumph, I could also drink. And that drinking presently becomes a habit and it becomes an obsession.
I'm back in New York now. Lois and I have a great marriage. But the drinking goes on and on and on. And over there sits an old business friend of mine who got me going in business. And he saw me sink under the water. And I couldn't stop. I was drinking to cure frustration or to dream still greater dreams. And finally, I'm lying in town hospital, as I said, and the jig is up. And downstairs, a little doctor with china blue eyes and bright hair and very pink cheeks and usually a half smile, but this evening grave, was talking to Lois.
Well, she already knew a great deal about the kind of love that had no price tag on it, the kind of giving that demands no reward and gets no reward. She was still living on hope that maybe I'd pull through. And the good little doctor that we all recognize as our beloved, beloved Silky, was obliged to say, no, I'm afraid he's like nearly all past his flesh. Perhaps within a year you'll have to confine him somewhere else, he go mad or die.
So it seems to me that as a symbol of all those great women who have seen us through in AA and will still see us through and whose love and giving has no price tag, I ought to introduce Lois for a second and let her say a word to you of what she feels and thinks. Thank you so much. And I want to thank the interview and the dinner committee for this grand affair we're having here and for my beautiful orchid.
And I also want to tell you how grateful, and I'm sure you all feel the same way, how grateful as a wife I am for this wonderful thing that is AA. It is one year over the halfway mark of the balance sheet 17 years of sobriety against the 17 years of drinking. And that one year has been a wonderful year.
[00:25:13]
It's made possible for so many wives to know how to gain serenity and happiness. And again, I want to thank you. I went out of that place in fear and trembling. Fear kept me sober a while. But on Armistice Day, 18 years come tomorrow, I was drunk again. You know, there's a funny thing about these anniversaries. This is the 10th, and Armistice Day is the 11th. So this must be the celebration of the time that I determined to get drunk once more.
And soon I'm back in the hospital, but not before a friend had come to me saying, well, I got a release from this thing. I got honest with myself. I talked it out with somebody else. I straightened out my jams with other people. I tried some of this giving that demands no reward. I prayed to a higher power, God as I understand Him. He'd come with that simple message, one alcoholic talking to another. And that was inside me, I think, deep when I went into the hospital that time.
And after two or three days, I remember falling into a terrific depression. This time I knew it was over. I could not go on. I couldn't swallow this God stuff anyway. Yet I found myself crying out, if there is a God, will He show Himself? And then the place lit up, and I was in an ecstasy and was released from this obsession and have been ever since. Then comes the little doctor with the China blue eyes and the half smile on his mouth, and I say, doctor, am I crazy? He talks to me a while. He says, well, I'm a man of science.
He said, I don't know what's happened to you, but I can see that something has. Whatever it is that you've got, you'd better hold on to it. Ah, let's stop and think. Supposing the little doctor who loved drugs had been a quarrelly scientific gentleman and had tapped his head and said, my boy, you will feel better in a few days. We might not be sitting together here tonight. But no, he gave me hope. He gave me encouragement. I finally could start working with other alcoholics. I come back up to him and say, won't you supply me with some, doc?
Well, now, talking God to drunks in town hospital in those days just wasn't done. It took immense courage on this little man's part. He risked his reputation for us. He let me come. I worked fanatically with drunks, telling them all about this hot flash and all about how they should get more moral. Well, the drunks tapped their heads and they walked off. Nothing happened at all for six months. And then the little doctor who loved drunks made a contribution to this society that should name him a founder in anybody's book.
He said to me one day, look Bill, he said, you're preaching to these guys. You've got something you aren't able to transmit. He says, you're always talking to me about that book you read back some months ago called James on Variety's Religious Experience. And said that the common denominator of all those experiences was calamity, wasn't it?
[00:30:04]
Helpless people. He said, why don't you throw it into them how hopeless you are. It doesn't, they are, it doesn't do any good for me to tell them that. But supposing you, an alcoholic, tells them that, why don't you tell them that they've got an obsession of the mind that condemns them to go on drinking against their will, an allergy of the body that ensures they'll go mad or die if they do. Put that over your transmission bell and quit the preaching. Then maybe you'll puncture those egos so some of the stuff will run out and your stuff can get in there.
Ah, what a bad contribution that was. Things began to look upright away. Soon I'm on my way to Akron, and dear old Dr. Bob was the first guy I really tried it on. And if you hear his recording made at Detroit and you'll read his story, you'll notice that he wasn't so impressed with me as a man of great morals and spirituality. He was impressed with me as a drunk who knew what he was talking about on the subject of alcoholism.
And Dr. Bob accepted that from me, and he never drank afterward. Such was little Doc's early contribution. I'm told that that man talked in his lifetime with something like 50,000 alcoholics. Five thousand up here in Knickerbocker Hospital. And until the very end of his years, before he left us a year and a half ago, his scientific associates didn't rate him very high as a doctor. But my God, what a great human being. And you know he was the first one to symbolize that wonderful fusion that is taking place today between the men of science and the men of religion. In those days we stood in a kind of a no-man's land. Here was a rampart of science and here was another rampart of religion.
Well, there we were. But so he had it both ways. He said, yes, they got a physical allergy. Yes, they got all sorts of maladjustments. But the cure is moral and the cure is spiritual. So he could come into the no-man's land where we were and be with us. Ah, yes. That little man told us the truth about ourselves, and he dispelled error. And when he had done that, he gave us the beginning of hope, where there had been despair.
And with hope came faith in ourselves and in the God who has delivered us. There came light where there had been darkness, and he brought us joy where there had been despair. Such was the little doctor who loved us. Such was he of the China blue eyes and the white hair and the pink face and that half-smile that 50,000 of us have seen. I suppose some might say it would be presumptuous to compare a man of medicine with the saint of the church. But for us who knew him, I doubt if anyone would deem it that.
I doubt if anyone would deem it that. I'm thinking of a man, also one of the founders of this society, born in Italy centuries ago,
[00:35:03]
a gay blade, a rounder, could clatter his wine flagon with the best of them, romance as gaily as any, shake the dice with dame fortune, ultimately he's sick, he's fed up, he's through. And don't know half a headache, he hit bottom just like the rest of us did. And in that agony, he said to himself, supposing I make one rule only for my life, supposing I try to do literally every day just as my master would have done.
So, he walked down into the woods and fields and commenced to do just that. He never tried to preach to people or harm people. He just was a man who gave a man who gave without any demand for reward. He was a man whose love had no price tag on it. Therefore he attracted multitudes of people to him, who saw in him that was what we've all seen and felt. And each one, and they ran into thousands upon thousands, began to try that kind of giving, which demands no reward.
Well, to make the comparison, I'll read what somebody read, wrote in the grapevine about Soakie, and then we'll read something that Francis of Assisi wrote. Somebody said in the grapevine we should remember him as one of the architects of our well-loved society. The first doctor ever to befriend us, he described the true nature of our strange malady. At peril to his career, he filled us with high hope in our pioneering time.
Though a man of science, he boldly set his approval on the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Thus prescribing a spiritual remedy for our sinister illness. Over the years that followed, he stood by the bedside of uncounted thousands, the healing art in his hands and compelling love in his eyes. We, the children of the night, knew that he understood, and we followed him out into the light of day. Now then, let us turn back to Francis, and remember that much of the humanity of this movement, its tradition of corporate power, its idea of giving without demand for reward, stemmed also from him. And he was a man, so history says, that in later life became able to practice such a principle almost under perfection.
And he summed up what he felt and what he believed in one of the most famous prayers of all time. Which I think it would be wonderful if we would now share it with each other. And the prayer of Francis was this, Lord, make me a channel of thy peace. That where there is hatred, I may bring love. That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness. Of forgiveness. That where there is discard, I may bring harmony.
[00:40:04]
That where there is error, I may bring truth. That where there is doubt, I may bring faith. That where there is despair, I may bring hope. That where there are shadows, I may bring light. That where there is sadness, I may bring joy. Now, what did Francis ask for himself? Well, nobody can recall that Silky ever asked for anything, excepting what Francis asked for. And this was it. And the prayer continues.
Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted. To understand rather than to be understood. To love rather than to be loved. For it is by self-forgetting that one finds forgiveness. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. And it is by dying that one reckons to eternal life. Thanks, Bill. Thanks for everything. I'd now like to call on our good friend, Canon Peters, to lead us in the Lord's Prayer.
Let us pray. Teach us, good Lord, to serve Thee as Thou deservest, to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor and not to ask for any reward save that of knowing that we fulfill Thy will and grant to us each one the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference of the Father who art in heaven.
Amen. Gee, folks, you make me want to clap, too, because I feel so happy, grateful to be here. I guess there's no spot like this part of our good-aimed world, and never anywhere have I felt the warmth and hospitality I do down in this country. I'm here, as a matter of fact, because I feel a special debt of gratitude to all you folks for your exceeding generosity to me and Lois, and latterly to the fellow who sponsors me.
You know, I think we make a lot of fuss about somebody called a founder.
[00:45:03]
You must remember that to bring AA together, God apparently worked through a great many people. people, and I'm just one. And we all, in our turn, do help to found a new life for someone else. And my part in it is greatly overrated. And there's another founder here, my own sponsor. And you've been so awful damn good and kind to him, and you're affording him an opportunity, the life of which I'm sure he's never had. And that's my special reason for coming by here.
So again, my thanks to each and every one of you, to all who have made this occasion possible. Thank you, and God bless you. During these sessions, I would like to lead you back into our past. AA really began long before I appeared on the scene. I would like to show you these streams of inflow that were brought together to form the, first the brook and then the river, and now the mighty ocean, that is AA. I would like to show you where our ideas for recovery really came from, through whom they were channeled to us. I would like to show you just how we learned and lived to work together. I would like to show you just how we learned and lived to work together, how the tradition of ophthalmology was generated and became the great reality it is. And little by little, of course, we have been learning how to function, as individuals, as groups, as areas, and now as AA as a whole. We are on the edge of maturity, I think we can confidently say. And for that, I am deeply grateful. In fact, this society is now so sure and confident of itself, of its program for recovery, of its unity, of its function, its ability to carry the message, that actually it is out of danger, even from people like me. And that, of course, is the sum of the gratitude of all of us. And I bring thanks from all parts of the world and from every area to you here of Texas and hereabouts. Thanks.
We are going to start our program. I want you all to feel at ease. In order for us to not delay the next meeting while we will get ours underway. On behalf of our state chairman, Brad, the other ladies on the program and myself, I want to express our appreciation and happiness in having all of you with us this afternoon. I am Hay Green, a non-alcoholic, but I have, in my way, tried to apply the AA principles to my way of life since 1947.
Jack has asked me to act as your master of ceremonies this afternoon, and while I feel there are a number of others better qualified than I for this occasion, I do have a feeling of pride and honor of being asked to do my bit to carry the AA message to other lives. I've often heard the alcoholics say that AA has meant so much to them. And each time I hear that, I wonder, has it meant any more to them than it has to the wives? I doubt it. Looking over the crowd this afternoon, I see nothing but happiness. A happiness I'm sure has been gained through applying the AA program to your own lives. The AA has definitely meant a
[00:50:11]
better way of life for all of us. And just to name a few of the blessings we have and the benefits we've received from this program, we now have an understanding of the problems which once caused us so much worry. We have a confidence now instead of that formidable fear. It has given us a strength through the association of other AAs and their wives. And it has replaced the feeling of loneliness with that wonderful feeling of belonging. We have peace of mind. We have learned to live one way at a time. As wives of alcoholics, we have learned that first things first means AA. So in our lives, the AA program comes first. And speaking of programs, Jack has arranged a wonderful program for you folks this afternoon. While it's in its turn, the rest of the program is super. It would take top rating on any AA program. So I'm very glad to introduce our first speaker, Eleanor, who will give us the intro.
Please bow your heads to me. Our gracious heavenly father, from whom all blessings flow, we praise and magnify thy holy name for all the loving kindness and tender mercy thou hast bestowed upon us. Thou hast revealed the ways, the truth, the life. Help us to be strong and of good courage. Give us faith in thy forgiveness, Lord. And as we come to the end of this day, may peace fill our hearts through companionship with thee. In the name of the heavenly father, we ask thee, amen.
Thank you, Eleanor. That was lovely. And now I think I am very happy to introduce our next speaker from Amarillo. I am a Fort Worth group number one and have the pleasure to see a layman a little playmonger like you, because… I'm not going to cut that next speaker down very much because she's much more a part of you than I am. But I came in here to teach this to Lois and not alcoholics, let alone me, could possibly do such a job. As you know, she is a symbol of all you people. So tell her you want a more better health. The attack wasn't bad. It's getting better. She can't quite sustain the rate of activity she used to, but she sends you all her warmest love and is really desolated.
She can't be here. If you'll bear with me a couple minutes, I'd like to review what we've had since the beginning. We're the instructors, we're the effective youth people who have stuck by in our faith where none other has come until we saw the light. I now realize, after years, that the part you've played in this thing has been infinitely more difficult than that of the part of the alcoholics. Your sufferings you had to take standing up. And you had to take them sober. And in a sense, your difficulties and sufferings are not started just because we drunk and sobered up.
[00:55:09]
Lois often tells how overjoyed she was whenever my friends came along, precipitated the experience that set me free. And then Lois began to realize that this very new thing had come in my life. And that little girl, I had been her star and rather fragile and dubious possession, but that I had been all hers. Then she realized that I was becoming the possession of other people, too. And that realization was a little tough to take, I'm sure. It must be for all of you. And as this thing grew, you now became, as many of you people have, part of an AA grass whip.
In my case, I think that psychologically speaking, the bribe became alcohol to Lois. So, we drunk, me included, went about taking the bag, and you people crowded on, doing the work, sharing responsibility, still making all this thing possible. Now it is only in recent years that we have realized what an immense duplication drinking produced in the family. Not only on the surface, but underneath, and often invisible.
Because of our drinking, we force you people to become our parents, instead of our partners. Very often, we force you to become head of the house. We force you all to go out to work. We force you to become the mother and nurses of bad boys. And sometimes, in the case of non-alcoholic husbands, a very bad girl. So that there was a profound psychological duplication that took place through no fault of yours.
As I now see it, I can't imagine a more brainwashed lot of people than you were. Any time that a drunk complains to me about how his wife is his mother, or how she marries himself, or how she tries to run his business, I say, listen mister, you are the guy that made her this way. Well, some of this began to appear quite early in my life. And as I said, love had her first change, and then she compensated for the fact that the honeymoon didn't resume immediately by beginning to take alcoholics in the house.
Well, we just ran a laboratory on drunks for years. And then as the group grew down our way, and it was the same in Akron and Cleveland, of course you people began to come to open meetings, of course you began to exchange experience, but still, even back there, I'm sure that many of you didn't feel that you quite belonged. You found that these drunks were sort of explosives, sort of snobbish, sort of passionate.
They would have the nerve, after batting you around for years, to say, mono, I got the 12 steps, what about it for you? Well, that's a pretty tough dose to take. It's a tough dose to take, too, when you lavish love on a man for years, when you feel, and often rightly, that you are more to him than anyone else, that still you can't cure this thing alcoholic. So up comes the local plumber with his overalls still on,
[01:00:02]
and in 30 minutes flat he's got this guy farted on the way to his car that you couldn't do in 30 years. Now I should admit that that is an ungodly, merciless deflation, and the manner in which you people have taken it has been superb. Well, as time wore on, of course, in half of the cases, there was a wonderful family reconciliation, family reunions, life began to go on at last. You people saw that the drunk would have to get married to A.A. if he were to stay sober, and in half of the cases, after a while, things worked around all right.
But in the hours there was still this mysterious lag for which nobody could account. Why didn't the honeymoon start again? Why was it that we couldn't turn the clock back twenty for all this terrible thing to start? And in later years, we have been getting wise to why that is. And as we have got wise, both alcoholics and you dear partners of ours, we have begun to see the remedy. In fact, you have begun to see the remedy yourself. It is quite useless, and it would be really brutal for an alcoholic to go home and say, Look, you've got to be my mother. I love you as my mother, but not as my wife. Now, why don't you change over? We can't say those things to you. We who have been so much at fault.
No. But you can say these things to each other. Now, the early family groups, there was some conversation of this sort. There was also a great deal of conversation on how to understand the alcoholics, very important. There was also conversation on how to manage the alcoholic family. In fact, in one of the revisions that you folks made of the Twelve Steps, the first step was changed to read, We found ourselves powerless over our alcoholic husband, as much as to say that power to be regained would be an excellent thing.
But in recent years, notably the last three or four years, you people who have never quite been able to belong, you people who have wondered why the old ties couldn't be fully restored, in your distress and in your desire to inform the new ones coming in, have begun to band themselves together in these so-called family or associate groups. And instead of asking, what is alcoholism like? You've heard that for years. That soft talk is running out your ears. Instead of asking that, you are asking, what does this drinking problem do to me?
I, who have done the best I can, nevertheless, am now very much in the wrong, because without knowing it, I got destroyed. So what does this thing do to me? What does it do to our children? Not just what do you do to us. Now as you ask those questions of yourselves, and you take the Twelve Steps to yourselves, and you begin to do Twelve Steps work with your incoming wife or husband or an alcoholic, when you came to that conclusion, these associate groups and family groups began to spring up like wonderful flowerbeds everywhere.
And the movement has been so fast that in the last three or four years, the number of those groups has jumped from 70 to something like 700. Characteristically, the alcoholics were heard to say in many quarters, well, now here come these gals again. They're going to buy a lot of pieces of plum. They're going to divert AA from its main purpose. All sorts of terrible things are going to happen.
[01:05:09]
But the more thoughtful ones of us knew better than this. We could see that this was to be the beginning of a movement within a movement, which might indeed one day become larger and greater and more powerful than even AA itself. Because what this movement spells is not alcoholic surprise. What this movement spells for you and your families and for many people in the world outside is emotional surprise, an ability to cope with a whole life's problems.
So, as you look inward upon yourself, as you appropriated the 12 steps to yourself, as you made your own inventory, as you made your restitution, as you did your 12-step work, well, at that point, you cease being also a, and you commence to belong in the sense that you have always wanted to. Your place in this thing became established. And I personally think that this is one of the greatest things that has happened to AA almost since the beginning.
Now, as I said, about four years ago, the foundation began to get lifted, the family group. And there were all kinds of family groups going under many different names. There were many versions of the 12 steps. This movement that started really as such was beginning to get publicity. Where were the inquiries going? Who was the former suitable literature for? The same questions arose with respect to you, dear people, four years ago, that came to us about the foundation 14 years ago.
And it was very obvious that there had to be a little bit of head or tail to it. So I asked Lewis, already overburdened, if he would assume a symbol of this thing, and in a sense he is. Lewis, he saw the front for this thing for a little while until it could have a service center. It could have a directory. It could have a service similar to the foundation. Later to be taken over by you in the way that the AA services are.
Well, the literature is underway. You decided to adopt the 12 steps as is. The traditions was quite variations. Inquiries are flowing in. National publicity is beginning to appear. Inquiries are being distributed. Group problems are being solved by retaining of information. And so the denying process is well underway and at this prodigious rate. Well, I think that speaking to some, we can do much more than to welcome you to our AA meeting.
We can now say to you, girls, you've joined up. We're damn glad. Thank you.