Archive note: This complete tribute to Dr. Bob includes recorded passages also used in our “Early Days of AA in Akron” compilation. We retain the full recording here to preserve its context. Related compilation.
Audio
Transcript
Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Co-Founders Pioneer Source Review 18004 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: bill-w-bill-w-tribute-to-dr-bob-aa-1956-archive-18004.mp3 Duration: 01:08:36
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Our next member, our First Lady of AA, is with us this afternoon. Many of you know her, and I think everyone knows of her. I know when I first heard her lead a meeting, I realized that she could help the men as much as she could the women, and as much as the men can help the women. And I want to present Ethel M.. I'm going to let you in on a little secret. It isn't spicy, so don't get excited. I know many of you wonder why they keep asking me back and having me here year after year for Founders Day when I have some little worthwhile to say. But the lady that introduced Dr. Bob and Bill is a very good friend of mine, and she is an alcoholic. Of course, Bill will talk about her later, and you'll hear all about her. But she came to our King School group regularly, and she talked quite a bit on spiritual things. And sometimes, you know, when you have a terrific hangover, that's sort of hard to take. And the boys get a little bit nervous and jittery, and it seems my husband thought that she was an alcoholic. And one night, when she'd been talking quite a while, he whispered loud enough that I think they could have heard him all over the room and said, oh, if it keeps her sober, let her talk. So that's the explanation of why I'm sure that these gracious people in Akron ask me back here again and again to take part in Founders Day, because they think, well, if it keeps her sober, let her talk. But it gives me such a thrill when I look over this great crowd of happy faces. It's just such a thrill, and I'm so glad to see so many out-of-town people here to help us celebrate our Founders Day. And now what I really am up here for is to just say a few words, trying to say the words that if every alcoholic woman, or every wife of an alcoholic were up here, would probably be saying.
And I think these are some of the things that they probably would say, that we pay tribute to Dr. Bob and Bill Dotson, who have gone on, and to Bill, who we're so fortunate to have with us today, and to their fine wives that have played such an important part, because they had faith that this would work. We are here, I know, if you ladies were up here, I'm sure most of you would say this, we are so grateful, so deeply grateful to God for this new way of life we have found through Alcoholics Anonymous. God bless you all.
Thank you, Ethel. I have this car number here again, must be moved immediately, M803Y to Buick. Our next, one of the, on the stage today, is one of the early pioneers in Alcoholics Anonymous. He's worked hard and diligently all through the years, is still active, and I would like to present Wally G.. Whenever I am asked to appear before you, I feel quite humble about this deal for one reason. There are a number of others who were earlier than I, and there are a number of others that have been much more active for a much longer period. However, it does give me quite a kick to be able to see so many faces that I know, so many faces that are so much more pleasant than
[00:05:03]
they were a few weeks, or a few months, or a few years ago, by reason of their having found a way to attain a measure of serenity and peace of mind. This, of course, is primarily an observance of the anniversary of Dr. Swift's sobriety, which, as I understand it, was actually June 10th, 21 years ago, when Bill Wilson gave him his last bottle of beer. Through the years, it started as a party, dinner, or a dinner dance, and finally became an annual regional meeting of AA, and it certainly makes me very happy to see the great number of people who have come in since we did. I don't know exactly what my number was in Dr.
Swift's little black book, and the reason for that is that two or three slipped in without his knowing it. In other words, he had talked to them and felt that they were not taking it seriously, but one man, who is dead, went home, and he stayed sober for a couple of weeks during the period at which I came in, by braiding rugs, of all things. He just sat home and braided rugs. He has since died, but he was a very good and a very active member of our organization for a long time. He brought many people in, and then there were a couple of others. While the book says I was number 22, I'm actually probably about 26, which doesn't matter too much, because I think that the last man in, the fellow who came out of the hospital this morning, is just as important to this organization, or probably more so than I, by reasons of fact, that he'll have a great many more years to work at it, and there is a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction in working with AAs or potential AAs.
There are just a few things that Dr. Smith taught us that I would like to mention, for fear Bill may overlook them, but one is that the craving for a drink can be stopped by sugar in almost any form. A soft drink, some ice cream, some candy, or you could take Dr. Smith's method, which was to eat taro syrup at breakfast time. Another thing is that we have plenty of willpower when it comes to drinking, and frantically none when we do not. And if we will make a definite effort to learn God's will and follow it rather than our own, we'll have no more trouble.
I thank you for listening, and I wish you all the luck of the world. Thank you, Wally. And everybody, so many of you have met him here tonight, last night, and today, and other places before this. So, I will now present Bill W. from New York. I need not say that our mood of today is the mood of thanksgiving for all that transpired in this city of Akron 21 years ago, and all that has transpired since.
But for us who have grown old in AA, there is a great nostalgia, a desire to turn the clock back.
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And as I rode into town with my friend Dick, we passed the gatehouse where I first saw Dr. Bob and Ann and Henry Ellison. We passed 855 Ardmore Avenue, and I relived some of the scenes in that living room. So, I'm going to share this nostalgia with you who are younger in AA, and see if, for the moment, we can't impede the progress of time and turn the clock back. Before we do this, I have a little something I'd like to read to you.
In AA, there is no such thing as a eulogy, but there is such a thing as gratitude, there is such a thing as appreciation. So, now the clock has gone back to 1950, which is the year in which Dr. Bob left us. And when he had gone, I wrote my tributes in the grapevine, and it seems to me that it's altogether fitting on this occasion that I share it with you. I'm reading, by the way, from a historical sketch of Alcoholics Anonymous, which I hope will be ready sometime next year.
And the lead paragraph to what I have to say about Dr. Bob goes like this, Everyone remembers Dr. Bob's famous final admonition to Alcoholics Anonymous, let's not louse this thing up, let's keep it simple. And I recall my own tribute in the grapevine to his great simplicity and strength. Serenely remarking to his attendants, I think this is it, Dr. Bob passed out of our sight and hearing November 19th, 1950, at noonday.
And I think this is the best way to end the evening. So ended the consuming malady in the course of which he had shown us how high faith can rise over grievous distress. As he had lived, so he died, supremely aware that in his father's house are many mansions. Among all those he knew, memory was at flood time. But who could really say what was thought and felt by the 5,000 sick ones to whom he personally ministered and freely gave a physician's care?
Who could possibly record the reflections of his townsmen who had seen him sink almost into oblivion, then rise to anonymous world renown? Who could express the gratitude of those tens of thousands of AA families who had so often heard of him, but had never seen him face to face? Face to face. And what were the emotions of those nearest him as they thankfully pondered the mystery of his regeneration 15 years before, and all its sad consequence since?
Only the smallest fraction of this great blessing could be comprehended. We could only say what has God wrought. Never would Dr. Bob have us think him a saint or superman, Nor would he have us praise him or grieve his passing. We can almost hear him saying to us, it seems to me you folks are making heavy going of this. I am not to be taken so seriously as all that.
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I was only a first link in that chain of providential circumstances which is called AA. By grace and by good fortune, my life has been saved. my link did not break, though my faults and failures might have brought on that unhappy result. I was just another alcoholic trying to get along under the grace of God. Forget me, but go you, and do likewise. Add your link to our chain. With God's help, forge that chain well and truly. It was in this manner, if not in these exact words, that Dr. Bob actually did estimate himself and counsel us. May we have just a moment of silence. Amen.
As I said, this is the day of Thanksgiving, and there is a lot to be thankful for. And I must say that I am still in the business of turning the clock back. So although this is our 21st anniversary, I'd like everyone here to feel and act as though it were our 20th. That was the one you remember where in St. Louis, we declared that we had come of age, could manage our own affairs, would stand on our own feet. That was the time on behalf of AA's old-timers that I delivered this society into the hands of its named and elected conference and trustees. A step in our growth, something I think we shall look back upon as a great hour in AA's history.
At that time, I opened the proceedings with a kind of a list, which I promise you is not too dull, of things that we had to be thankful for. So if you will bear with me, I'll read you three or four more paragraphs out of this coming book, which has to do with the Thanksgiving that we felt at St. Louis and of which we have even a larger replica here. We are gathered here in St. Louis to celebrate AA's 20th anniversary. We have come to thank God that he has delivered such great numbers of us out of our bondage. We are here to tell AA's innumerable friends of our gratitude for all that they have done to help in this wholesale miracle of recovery and to share with them and each other the sure evidence of God's grace among us.
Close by us are wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters. Those who lived through the dark night of alcoholism with us. Those who waited with devotion and hope for a brighter morning to come. Their faith and fidelity at last has been justified. Indeed, it has made this occasion possible. Our gratitude is something that none can put in words, but we hope that all those near and dear ones will feel the full measure of thanksgiving that is in our hearts. We wish to pay tribute to our friends of medicine and religion whose knowledge, faith, and health without stint was invested in the formation of our society and its growth in the 20 years just concluded. And we can never forget those couriers of AA, the men and women of the press and of all kinds of communications who have carried AA's message to alcoholic sufferers and their families. Only God knows the immense amount of misery and of death itself that they have averted by telling the story of AA to the world. We are gathered here at St. Louis for yet another purpose, which is to declare that AA has come of age. Mind you, we are not claiming that we have grown up, but we are here to consider what our 20 years of experience have taught us, what are the legacies of this experience, and what are our responsibilities in the preservation of
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this treasured inheritance. This knowledge of how to recover from our illness, how to stay together in unity, and how to serve by carrying the AA message to all those who still suffer that strange and deadly malady of alcoholics. A letter came into the New York office a while back, not too long ago. It came from a Jesuit priest who was in a distant outpost in India. I fancy somewhere out near the base of the Himalayas, as we used to call it when I was a kid. It was a wonderful letter. He said that he had translated the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous into Hindu, that he had in tow a Hindu schoolteacher who was on the magnificent salary of 50 cents a day.
The schoolteacher's other assets were a cow and a small plot of land. The Hindu had one semi-liability and another 100% liability. His wife was a death muse. His sister was domineering and a drunk. She was a 100% liability, and he was a 200% liability because he was a stew bum himself. And the priest had translated AA's 12 steps into Hindustani, and had shown them to the schoolteacher, who had instantly sobered up. Now, way out there on that distant pioneering front, those people are reenacting the story that began in this town. We know they have the same fears, the same alarms. Is it going to work? Can we spread the message? What can I do about mama and this drunken sister? They will have the same fear. They will ask themselves these questions.
But they won't be flying flies. We know that there will be many AA groups in India, and maybe this one is going to be the pioneer for that reason. All this pioneering never stops. We hope it never will. I think of another letter that came almost in the same mail, this time from a Presbyterian missionary in nearby Siam, or as up-to-date people call it, Thailand. He got hold of a young Thai who spoke fluent English, highly educated, but a terrific alcoholic. He showed the Thai the AA book. The Thai took fox, and he said, I'd love to translate all of AA's literature into Thai, into Siamese. And he sobered up instantly, so the missionary said, let's hope he stayed that way. But now comes a very significant and moving thing in the letter. The letter went on to say that before they started translation, they thought they'd better check it up with the Buddhists, because around them, most of the alcoholics were Buddhists. Not working at it too much, Buddhists they were. So wouldn't it be a good idea to go over to the authorities and see what the Buddhist authorities thought about AA's 12 steps? And they went to the largest monastery near Bangkok, and got hold of the top brass, and the monk looked at the 12 steps, and he said, why, these are fine. They will be accepted by the Buddhists around here. True, our particular branch of Buddhism calls God good, and if you would insert the word good in the steps instead of God, it might go a little better. But still, these steps are all right, because they say, God, as you understand it. Yes, AA's 12 steps will be welcomed by the Buddhists here.
[00:25:03]
So moves this incredible tale, the Epic of Alcoholic Conscience, out on its distant reaches, where pioneering still goes on. Now let me give you a sort of hop, step, and jump account of how it got from here to there. Indeed, how it began here. It was here that the first AA group really started, where all of the essentials were first enfolded. It was here that God prepared a table in the presence of our enemy John Barlachorn, and it was here that the candles upon the table were lighted. But candles had been in preparation for some time, though none had come alight. And the important candles had not been poured by alcoholics. As is so often true in Alcoholics Anonymous, the people who gave us these candles were really non-alcoholics. And probably the first man to pass one along was Carl Jung, the celebrated psychiatrist in New York.
Carl Jung had an American drunk on his hands, had him there a year. The man thought he was cured, wanted to stop, went out, immediately drunk, came back to Carl Jung. And that very humble, really spiritually centered man said, no, Roland, or such was the alcoholic's name, no, there is nothing that my science or my art can do for you. But, said Roland, you are the court of last resort, doctor. Is there no hope for people like me? And Dr. Jung said, yes, but it's only occasional. The lightning strikes only here and there. He said, a sort of spiritual experiment, a conversion, if you like, sometimes does stop desperate cases of alcoholism. And said, Roland, how do I get such an experience? And the doctor said, I don't know. You could just expose yourself to religious people and hope that the lightning will strike. But, ah, Roland said, but I used to be an Episcopal vestryman. I believe in God. And Jung said, but that's not enough. I am talking about a transforming experience that can expel this obsession. This man's name was Roland. He joined up with an evangelical movement in those days called the Oxford Group. He came to New York back home, went to a summer place up in Vermont, heard about my schoolmate Ebbets, who was raising cane up there in my hometown. I mean, he was raising cane too. He just got into his father's new Packard one evening, went ripping down the roadway, off into a field, right into a house. He pushed in the wall of the kitchen. The stove was jammed clear to the other side. And Ebbets blithely stepped out of the bent-up Packard and said to the shaking woman in the kitchen, how about a cup of coffee? So the neighbors figured that they'd bug Ebbets and put him away. Roland and some Oxford Group groupers heard of it, took him in tow, sold him on the Oxford Group ideas of absolute honesty, purity, unselfishness, and love, the idea of moral inventory and some of the principles we now use.
And although Ebbets didn't have much religion, he just swallowed hard, tried to do these things. And to his surprise, he found for a time that he was released. He came immediately to see me when they brought brought him to New York, and this was sometime in November 1934. I never will forget that day when over the kitchen table in 182 Fenton Street, Abby sat there talking to me. I was half-stewed, crock of gin on the table, awkward to Abby.
No, I'm not drinking.
[00:30:00]
What? You on the water wagon, Abby? No, no, I'm just not drinking today. What got into you? What? I'd be polite. What brand have you got, Abbey? Well, I wouldn't think it's got a brand name. Wouldn't think it's got a brand name, this group of people. I certainly don't agree with all their stuff. I think they're too evangelistic and too aggressive. But bless their hearts. They have sold me some ideas that has released me from the desire to drink.
No longer am I toiling up this spring on the water wagon. I feel like it was lifted out of me. Well, I said, what's the brand? I'm looking. Well, it's like this, you admit you're beat, can't manage your own life, you get honest with yourself, you get honest with somebody else, you make restitution for harms done, you try to give to somebody else with the kind of giving that has no price tag on it. Now, he said, Bill, I know you're an atheist, agnostic maybe, you're going to gag on this.
But he said, this doesn't work unless you make an appeal to a higher power, as I call it. I don't understand him, maybe. Even as an experiment, he said, I had to do it as an experiment, I didn't believe. But when I asked whatever God there was to help me apply these principles, suddenly I felt this release, weight went up. That was the essence of the story across the kitchen table on a November day in Clinton Street, Brooklyn, 1934.
In no waking hour afterward could I get that thought of Ebby out of my mind. You see, the essentials had begun to fall into place. The great scientist had said that his art couldn't do it. He had said that spiritual experience could do it. And that seed had lodged in a couple of drums, and one had talked to another, and now my friend, an alcoholic, was talking to me. He was talking very ancient truths.
They could have been found in lots of places, those same truths. But they hit me deep, but I still gagged on guts, still went on drinking. And at last, I said, well, if you're a cancer patient, would you fool around and rub cold cream on it? Or would you go to whatever doctor could exercise that deadly malice, cut out those consuming cells? Sure, you would. So after the hospital, you go. Well, there I met dear old Dr. Silkworth, who will certainly be rated among the many founders of alcoholics and alcoholics.
And the old man put me to bed. He was discouraged. He was hurt. I realize now how he loved me. I'm sober in two or three days, pretty good shape. I hadn't waited the full month for the D.T. All of a sudden, Ebby's in the door. I thought, this is wonderful. He does practice what he preaches. He certainly has got nothing to gain from me. Old friend, but I hadn't seen him in years. What's he doing up here this time of month?
Or maybe he's going to evangelize. But now, Ebby was not aggressive. He was prudent. He waited for me to ask him. Said, what's this neat little formula of yours, Ebby? Oh, he said, you've got to be honest with yourself. You talk it out with somebody else in confidence. You make amends for the harm you've done. You try to help somebody without any gimme to it, and pray to whatever God you think is right.
It was just as simple, yet just as mysterious as that. And pretty soon he was gone. And still struggling with the idea of God, I dropped into a terrible depression. It had been bad enough, but this was the bottom. This was the acme of misery, humiliation, hopelessness. And I suppose momentarily, the last of my prideful obstinacy was crushed out. And like a little child crying in the dark, I said, if there is a God, will he show himself?
And then, as you have heard me say this before, you've read in the A book, I had a very sudden spiritual release. It seemed like the place was up. I'm again on the bed, a great peace deal, though. I lay there a while. Then I get scared. Then I call the doctor. Am I hallucinating? And it turns out, again, comes another founder of alcoholic phenomena. I emphasize, there are many. He said, I have read about these things in the book, Bill, and you are not crazy.
Some great psychic event has happened here. Whatever it is, you'd better hang on to.
[00:35:00]
It's better than what had you only an hour ago. Ah, those were great words for the AA to be. There was a man with a candle. Not yet lighted, but a candle. Well, after this, I had a wonderful feeling about working on alcoholics. I knew that's what I wanted to do. In fact, I think I thought there's a little divine appointment in the idea. I'm going to sober up all the drunks in the world. I should be talking about that.
And I worked like the deuce for about six months, and no drunks sobered up, and Abby kind of lost interest in me. One day I was up talking with Dr. Soforth. He said, look, Bill, you've forgotten all about that book that you had in here by William James on varieties of religious experience. You pointed out to me that a lot of those cases had tremendous deflation at depth. So, said he, don't start in with these drunks who just want to get sober by talking about getting absolutely honest, pure, unselfish, all this sort of business.
Give them the medical story of hopelessness. And then over this bridge of identification that you can get with them, maybe that will strike them deep and crack these deep lying egos and lay them open for this singular experience of release. Shortly after that, people began to think I ought to go to work. Well, I even thought it was a good idea, too. So I used to sit around in brokerage shops over in Wall Street, and, you know, you come home at night working.
But I did scrape an acquaintance. It led to getting into a proxy route. The proxy route brought me to Akron with some newfound companions. It was a company that dear old T. Henry Williams used to work for here. Cost him his job, in fact. So I got out, and we had the row, and the other side won. And I'm down here in the Mayflower Hotel. Ten bucks in my pocket. Other fellas disappointed. They'd gone off to New York.
How was I going to get home? You know, I'd seen myself as president of that company. I always had to be one of those number one fellas. I'm downstairs. It's a Saturday afternoon. I'm walking up and down. I begin to look in the bar. There was a buzz in there that people were getting a little tired. And then I would walk to the other end of the lobby, where there still stands a church director. And I thought, maybe one of these preachers could help.
Or better still, maybe, maybe some one of these preachers could put me in touch with some of the Oxford group people, or could put me in touch with somebody who could find a drunk for me to work with. I suddenly realized for the first time that it wasn't a case of preaching anymore, as I had been preaching. It wasn't a case of talking to people about my experiences. It was a case of my finding a drunk because I needed it.
For the first time. And I ran my finger at random down that directory, and it fell on the name of our great friend, Walter Thompson. I called him up. I said, I'm a drunk from New York. I'm looking for a drunk to work on. Well, that was a little disconcerting. He thought that meant two drunks drunk. But he got the pitch. He gave me a list of about 10 people, some of them in the Oxford group, some not, who just might be in touch with a drunk.
And so I'm relieved, and I go upstairs and start calling up these people. Gee, I begin to think. One, two, three, four, seven, eight, nine. They were all busy. They weren't interested. They'd see me in church Sundays. One name only left. And that name was Henrietta Scarbell. Oh, I said, I couldn't call her asking for a drunk to work on. Because I thought that she must be Frank Scarbell's wife. Years before, I had met him in Wall Street.
He was the founder of the company in whose hall we are now gathered. I couldn't go to his one. Saturday afternoon, something said, you better. So I rang the number. And a wonderful stubborn voice came over that wire.
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And she said, no, I'm Scarbell's daughter-in-law. I think I understand what you're talking about. I'm no drunk. I just had problems. I think I found a release. Why don't you come out of here? I live in the gatehouse up at the side of the place. Why did I get out of there? And Henrietta stood there on the porch and took me inside and I told my story. And before I got too far, she said, I know. I think I know just the person.
We call him Dr. Foss. His wife, Anne, is wonderful. I know he wants to stop. He's been busted out of the city of Montclair. Anne is a nervous wreck. He's tried religious approaches. He's tried medical cures. I know he wants to stop, but he can't seem to stop. So soon, Henrietta's on the phone and she called up Anne. She said, Anne, there's a man here from New York who seems to be a terrible drinker, but he found out how to stop.
Wouldn't it be nice if he and Dr. Bob got together? Well, Anne said, I don't think it's going to be today. This is Mother's Day and Bob makes a great deal of Mother's Day. And he has brought me a great big potted plant, but he is so potted, he's under the dining room table and I can't get him up. Well, said Henri very brightly, what about tomorrow? Why don't you come over for dinner? Well, Anne said, we'll talk.
So I'm out there like a shot next afternoon. And at five o'clock, that beloved pair, Dr. Bob and Anne, stood in Henrietta's open door. This was the man who was to be my partner. This was the man with whom I was never to have a hard word. This was the man who in that partnership was Sister Ignatia. Hospitalized, medically treated free and brought AA to 5,000 people when AA was very young over here in St. Thomas.
The first religious institution to ever offer us haven. And Anne, along with my wife Lois, they were to be the prototypes of all that women have suffered from alcoholism and of all that wives have since found in AA. But I tell you, Bob didn't look much like a founder that afternoon. He was shaken real bad. And he said, well, I guess I can stay about five minutes. I said, you look to me like you need a drink.
At which he brightened right up. Unfortunately, I didn't have any with me. Henrietta discreetly put us in her little library. The door was closed. This was after a dinner which he did not eat. For reasons you will well understand. And Dr. Bob and I talked for hours. And I remembered what Dr. Silkworth had said. And you will infer this in Dr. Bob's story in the AA book. You will hear it again more clearly spelled out in that last full-length talk he made at Detroit not long before he died.
I wasn't bringing Dr. Bob any spiritual message. He was better versed in all those things than I. But what I was bringing him, one alcoholic talking to another, was the news of the most utter fatality of this malady alcohol. This obsession that condemns us to drink. This physical sensitivity that condemns us to go mad or die if we keep on drinking. And though a physician, he'd never had it spelled out that way.
And of course, he'd never had it spelled out by another alcoholic. So again, the Brooklyn kitchen table is connected. One alcoholic is talking to another. But this time, there isn't any evangelism. And I say frankly to Dr. Bob, you know why I looked you up? I was going to get drunk myself. I need you as much as you need me." So there was mutuality for the first time. So for the first time, we led with what Stiltworth called the medical business.
He said, Stilkey, give him the medical business.
[00:45:01]
Give it to him and give it to him hard, and maybe you'll feel better. crack those tough egos to dust, so they'll be made ready. Well, Ann wasn't too sure about the cure, so she invited me to come and live over there while I revived this proxy route. How well I remember those wonderful days in that house up on 855 Arden, Ann sitting by the fireplace. We used to read Corinthians. I loved James, that phrase, faith without works is dead.
But being drunks, we mostly yacked and drank coffee when Bob didn't have to do a little work. And one day, about two weeks after I met him, he said, you know, I have to go down to Atlantic City to a medical convention. I've been down every year for 20 years, and Ann said, oh, no, no, no, no. Well, I said, Bob, we got to live in a world where there was liquor. In fact, I had staggered poor Ann by buying two bottles of whiskey and putting them right up on the chiffonier, as I remembered there, or the sideboard.
That was overdoing it. I'm also the guy who recommended corn syrup, canned tomatoes, and sauerkraut. That's how that got started out here. So Bob was on corn syrup, sauerkraut, tomatoes, the two bottles of whiskey was there, and the Atlantic City Convention was coming up. So off he goes. Five days, we don't hear a thing. One morning early, his office nurse called up, and she says, husband and I just scraped him off the platform down here at the station, he's in awful shape, come over and see what you can do.
Then a terrible dilemma developed. We got him home, and we learned that in three days flat, he has got to perform a surgical operation, something that he'd started and had to finish. He couldn't push it off on anybody. He was shaking terribly. How could we get him sober enough to hit that deadline? So Ann and I started right around the clock, tapering him down. Well, unlike most drunks who get tapered up instead of down, we did work him down and down and down.
Got him down to the beer stage. The morning of the operation, I woke up about four o'clock, slept in the same room, glanced across, saw he was wide awake, still shaking a little. And he looked at me steadily and said, Bill, I'm going to go through with it. I said, well, you mean the operation? Oh, no, he said, what you and I were talking about. At nine o'clock, we drove down here to City Hospital, I think it was.
I handed him a bottle of beer so he could hold a knife. He went in, and we went back home to wait. And after an interminable wait, he called up. Everything had been all right. But he couldn't get home quite yet. And it later fell out that he'd torn off his apron, and in spite of the strain, he'd gone out to start making restitutions and apologies to people that he had harmed, something that was quite often neglected.
And he came home, and that was the end of Dr. Bob's drink. But his recovery was not an easy one. And my desire was chopped off like that. Bob continued to have a terrible itch to drink, the physical thing seemed. Bob was not any screwball like I am, there weren't any emotional difficulties. He said, I just love my grog. And the only thing that could cause him to forget it was working with other alcohol, 12-step work.
And I suppose that even that craving had its great uses here in the early days. In a little while, Bob said, don't you think we'd be safer if you and I went to work on
[00:50:00]
some drunks? Well, I said, that's fine, but where are you going to get them? Oh, he said they have batches of them down there at the city hospital. They told him, and they're all wild. Let's call up and see if we can find one. So he called up and excitedly told some nurse on the receiving ward who he knew about this guy from New York who had the cure for alcoholism. She was on to Dr. Bob. She said, well, Bob, I suppose you've taken this yourself already.
Well, he said, we're looking for a drunk to work on. He explained, well, she said, we got a dandy, just been wheeled in on here on his stretcher. They've been in here six times in the last four months and blacked the eyes of some of the nurses. How would that one do? Fine. Put him upstairs. Put him to bed. We'll be down. Well, it was three days before the man on the bed was lucid, but he turned out to be old Bill, whose wonderful widow, Henrietta, is with us this afternoon.
Never forget how old Bill laid on that bed. And Bob and I, and now we had the medical business backed up by a doctor, we poured it all into him about this horrible allergy, this obsession, these twin ogres of madness and death. And Bill sat there shimmying. And he said, yeah, he said, that's it. All right. You got the idea. You people understand. Let me bring around this, you know, the spiritual approach.
Oh, Bill said, well, he said, I guess there's much hope for me. Too late. I'm scared to even go out of here. I'll get drunk on the way home. I still believe in God. Used to be a deacon in the church, but I guess he doesn't believe in me. Ah, boy, it's too late, says Bill. Well, he said, Bill, can we come and see you? Wow. Oh, yeah. He said, I'd like to talk with you. You fellas really understand. So we're down there.
And Bill is telling his wife, Henrietta, how during the night a new hope came to him. If they can do it, maybe God will let me do it. And maybe all of us together can do what we can't do separately. And a couple of days later, when Henrietta was there, Bill said, Henrietta, will you fetch me my clothes? We're going to get up and get out of here. And Bill got up and got and became AA number three. And never drank again so long as he lived.
All of the factors were now put. We had a way to deflate these people, which came from Silkworth and William James, not from me. We had the idea of one alcoholic talking to another on a mutual basis, not a preaching basis. And now we had the idea of a group. So there, that third man on the bed completed that biblical picture when two or three are gathered together. So two or three of us, three of us to be accurate, were gathered in this city of Athens.
A biblical name, which means a city on a hill. And now the candles were on the table. And now the candles were all lighted. We had learned to get well, but we didn't yet know. For two or three years more, we flew blind. We started counting notes. And we found that 20 very grim cases had been sober two and three years and unheard of. And there were 20 more who were bone dry. You gathered a little of the sequel of all of this when I told you about Buddhists and the Hindu and the cow.
And here's a little more sequel. It comes out of this little historical sketch I'm writing up about AA.
[00:55:03]
And it has to do with some of my remarks, pardon me, made at the closing session of our great conference there, where this society, now declared grown up, had taken its affairs into its own hands. So now I was a parent about to retire to the sidelines. So I began to think, as a parent, as I stood before that great assembly on July 3rd, 1955 at four o'clock. And this is what I thought and felt then, as I think and feel it now, on these things in closing I would like to share with you.
Our three great days here together have seen their climax and are drawing to a close. We shall soon bid each other Godspeed as we return to the task appointed for each of us. From this hour, we know that the beloved fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous can gladly and confidently accept whatever destiny God may have in store for us all. I do not think that any of us should presume that Alcoholics Anonymous, in its present form, will necessarily last forever.
We can only hope that it will lead to better things for those who suffer from alcoholism, that the lessons and examples of our experience may in some measure bring comfort and assurance to the suffering and confused world about us. This world in which it is our great privilege to be alive in this exciting and perilous time, this century in which spiritual rebirth may be the only alternative to extinction.
In the years ahead, we shall, of course, make many mistakes. Experience has taught us that we need have no fear of doing this, provided that we always remain willing to confess our faults and to correct them promptly. Our growth as individuals has completely depended upon this healthy process of trial and error. So will our group as a fellowship. Let us always remember that any society of men and women that cannot freely correct its own faults must surely fall into decay, if not into collapse.
Such is the universal penalty for failures to go on growing. Just as each AA must continue to take his moral inventory and act upon it, so must our whole society do if we are to survive and if we are to serve usefully and well. I have a mighty faith that we shall never embrace and persist in a fatal error. Yet we might do so, talented human beings that we are. This is the area in the future life of AA where we can never be too prudent or too vigilant.
Let us not suppose, just because AA as a whole has never yet had a grievous problem, that it can never have one. If such difficulties ever come, I feel sure that they will cluster about false pride and anger, the two most destructive defects that we alcoholics have. Therefore, as a society, we must never become so vain as to suppose that we have been the authors and inventors of a new religion. We will humbly reflect that each of AA's principles, every one of them, has been borrowed from the old religion.
We shall remember that we are laymen, holding ourselves in readiness to cooperate with all men of goodwill, whatever their creed or nationality. Equally a product of false pride would be the conviction that Alcoholics Anonymous is a cure-all, even for alcoholics. Here we must remember our debt to the men of medicine. Here we must be friendly.
[01:00:00]
above all, open-minded toward every new development in the medical or psychiatric art that promises to be helpful to sick people. This implies, too, that we shall always be friendly to the fields of alcohol research, rehabilitation, and education. We should endorse non-specialty, but yet hold ourselves in readiness to cooperate so far as we can with them all. Let us constantly remind ourselves that the experts in religion are the clergymen, that the practice of medicine is for physicians, and that we, the recovered alcoholics, are their assistants. We are only the long-missing link in that chain of recovery which has now begun to circle the whole earth.
There are those who predict that Alcoholics Anonymous may well become a new spearhead for a spiritual awakening throughout the world. When our friends say these things, they are both generous and sincere. But we of AA must reflect that such a tribute and such a prophecy could well prove to be a heady drink for most of us. That is, if we really came to believe this to be the real purpose of AA, and if we commenced to behave accordingly. Our society, therefore, will prudently cleave to its single purpose, the carrying of the message to the alcoholic who still suffers. Let us resist the proud assumption that since God has enabled us to do well in one area, we are destined to be a saving grace for everybody. Let us do our one task supremely well, rather than risk doing many things badly. On the other hand, let us never be a closed corporation, denying our experience for whatever it may be worth to the world around us. Let our individual members heed the call to every field of human endeavor. Let them carry the experience and spirit of AA into all of these affairs, for whatever good they may accomplish. For not only has God saved us from alcoholism, the world has received us back into its citizenship. Yet, believing in paradoxes as we do, we must still realize that the more the society of Alcoholics Anonymous, as such, tends to its own affairs, minds its own business, the wider will be the circle in which we, as a fellowship, will be likely to enjoy the confidence and respect of men.
Having thus examined the perils of pride, let's look briefly now at how anger, even self-righteous indignation, could do us in. With an AA, I suppose we shall always quarrel a good bit. Mostly, I think about how to do the greatest good for the greatest number of drunks. We shall have our childish spats and snits over small questions of money management and who's going to run our group for the next six months.
Any bunch of growing children, and that's what we are, would hardly be in character if they did less. These are the growing pains of infancy, and we actually thrive on them. Surmounting such problems in AA's rather rugged school of life is a healthy exercise. But there are, nevertheless, certain areas where anger and contention could prove our undoing. We know this, because stronger societies than ours have been undone.
The whole modern world is, in fact, coming apart as never before, just because men insist on political and religious strife, because men blindly pursue wealth, fame, and personal power, regardless of the consequences to anyone, even to themselves. These are the fearsome drives that are inevitably spurred by self-justification, and in all their disastrous collisions, they are powered by righteous indignation, so-called, and finally, by unreasoning anger and blind fury.
With the most heartfelt gratitude, I can report that we have never yet had to endure such trials
[01:05:04]
by fire in AA. In all these 20 marvelous years, no such thing as religious or political dissension has touched us. Practically nobody has even tried to exploit AA for wealth or fame or power. We have had great problems, but they have always been readily composed. Never, though, has a grave issue cut across and scarred the face of this worldwide fellowship. But, again, this is no earned virtue of ours. Too many of us in our drinking days have suffered the terrible penalty of proud and angry pursuits not to remember them not, and this pain has been the beginning of such wisdom as we have since incorporated in AA's wealth tradition.
I am confident that the forces of destruction will never rule among us. We are prepared gladly to pay the price of peace. We will make every personal sacrifice necessary to ensure the unity of alcoholics and non-alcoholics. We will do this because God has taught us how to love him and how to love each other enough. As these meetings began on a theme of gratitude, so should they end. We give thanks to God who, through so many friends, through so many means and channels, has constructed this wonderful edifice of the spirit in which we are now dwelling. It seems as though he had directed us to construct a cathedral of the spirit whose foundations already rest upon the corners of the earth.
On this cathedral's great floor, 150,000 of us are gathered in peace. And thereon we have long since inscribed our 12 steps of recovery. The older ones among us have seen the sidewalls of this cathedral going up, and one by one the buttresses of AA's 12 traditions set in place, containing us, we hope, in unity for so long as God may will it so. And now eager hearts and hands have lifted this spire of our cathedral into its place.
That spire bears the name of service, and may it ever point upwards, straight towards God.