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Source: Gil L – Gen Serv Conf NYC 1954 – Reel 0805-32 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: gil-l-gen-serv-conf-nyc-1954-reel-0805-32-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:13:31
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These people come from great towns. I'll bet some of them you never heard of, and some of them you did. So for my first speaker, I give you a freshman at the General Service Conference, a fellow from that colossal state, Texas, I give you Gil L. of Tohoka, Texas. I hurried as fast as I could, afraid he might change his mind and get somebody else. I guess it works about the same down there as it does anywhere else, one day at a time, one problem at a time.
Easy does it, live and let live. I had a lady ask me, said, what would you, how would you define an alcoholic? What is an alcoholic? Well, I said, an alcoholic could be an old boy that goes to a play and he sits there and watches it and imagines he's the hero. He goes to a funeral and he imagines he's the corpse, everybody's crying over him. He goes to a wedding and he imagines that he's the groom.
He sits down to the table to eat and wants to make love and he goes to bed and gets hungry. Everything backwards. I'm going to tell this little incident in the hopes that it may help someone who is like myself. This is a little unusual for a person to be down here that hasn't been sober maybe any longer than I have. But 18 months ago over in a town, Joplin, Missouri, I was shoved into a room and an iron door clanged shut behind me.
There wasn't any cot or bed or chair in this room and there wasn't any drinking water in this room and there wasn't any windows in this room. I didn't know where my clothes were or if I had any and I didn't know where my car, which was just barely making the payments on, was or if I still had it. I lay there shaking and sick, naturally hungry, jangled nerves and a tormented mind. I started taking a little inventory of myself.
Oh, if only I had some money I could get out of this deal all right. It's too sick to think about that long. I'd been seven years in AA, trying AA, seven years and hadn't had a year's sobriety, hadn't had three good months of sobriety, bouncing back. I couldn't go back out in that country and try this again. That was part of my decision. I could never go back to my wife and say, well, I want to go back to AA and try it again.
That was an impossibility. For so long I had tried and I had read and I had reread in this book, there are those who will not and those who cannot. And I tried to figure which that I was and I couldn't find out. They say the hand of God is in this whole program, the making of it and the working of it. Two days later I was in a hotel lobby, a cheap hotel, and I was still shaking and I was still hungry.
And I didn't know which way to turn and I started talking to a man. And I told him a little bit, I said I got down here and got drunk and clipped and everything in the world and I'm so muddled up in my thinking, my nerves are so shot and my body's so shot, I don't know which way to turn. And he said, just a minute, there's a man I believe that you should talk to. And this man came down and he was quite a wealthy, quite a successful undertaker in this town.
[00:05:00]
And he said, you must be an alcoholic. And I said, yes, sir, I am. He said, I've read about you people. Do you know anything about the program of Alcoholics Anonymous? And I said, yes, sir. I have tried to follow that program but it seems that I can't. Well, he said, maybe, according to that book, some people are sicker than others. This is a non-alcoholic talking, mind you, that had read this book and had a lot of respect for the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And a little while later, unbeknownst to me, he called way out there to West Texas. And he talked to some old boy out there that didn't believe in judging other people. He believed in letting God do the judging. And this old boy said about me, help him if you can. We believe that he's worth it. He came back and told me that. And I lit up on the inside. If he had given me a thousand dollars, I'd probably been dead now.
First, I started thinking about money. But those words of encouragement, that little spark rekindled in me to try this program of Alcoholics Anonymous just one more time. I went back to that group in West Texas. And I can say, I hope, with humility and conviction, that it's by the grace of God and this program of Alcoholics Anonymous and a lot, a lot of help from the good people in this program. For those reasons, I'm able to be here sober tonight.
This book showed up seven years before that to a man who walked in an institution to see me. On a letter that was written to New York City out to another little town in West Texas that gave a box number in Austin, Texas. No groups out there then. This man had read this book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And the story of the writing of that book is one adversity after another overcome by the group conscience of Alcoholics Anonymous and with the help of God.
I believe this, and I have to believe it, that there is no such thing as a hopeless alcoholic. I believe this, and I had to believe it, that if God lets you live and you keep coming back to Alcoholics Anonymous, you will get sober and like it. I believe this, that if you will keep coming, you will meet someone in Alcoholics Anonymous you desperately need to know. You will hear something from some speaker that you desperately need to hear.
And you will come to know God as you need to know him and understand him if you will just keep coming back. You know, I was selling farm machinery and I was standing in a farm machinery house one day. And there was a little orphan's home magazine lying there and it had a little poem on the front of it. It seemed like some drunk sober-up want to do one thing and one do another. And all these little things like that, that you AA them right quick and I kind of try to memorize them.
But this fit in so with the way I thought that AA worked, the individual and the group, and then one group to the other. Because we got a good group out there in Tohoka and Lubbock, Texas, because there's a good group in New York City. If you all ever falter up there, we'll feel it out there. This thing is going to be turned back to us, the AA movement, one individual to the other. There's no succession to Dr. Bob and Bill.
No succession to power. That responsibility is being thrown on you and I.
[00:10:04]
Arkansas, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Kansas, California, Alcoholics Anonymous. No creed or dogma or religion where a man can come in of any faith or any color and find God as he understands him, not as somebody else wants him to understand him. Alcoholics Anonymous, where a sick man or woman, regardless of their condition or circumstances, can turn to and not have to do anything. Just have a desire to get well.
This little poem went like this. I met a stranger in the night whose lamp had ceased to shine. I paused and let him light his lamp from mine. A storm came up in the night and it shook the world about. And when it finally had calmed down, my lamp was out. But back to me this stranger came, his lamp still glowing fine. He had retained that precious flame, and this time his lamp lighted mine. Thank you.
And now a personal message to Herbert Stevens. In the minute or so of tape yet left, several things should be commented on. Under no circumstances should the A.A. tapes I am now sending you, or may send you in the future, under no circumstances should they be broadcast over any radio station. All the speakers in my tape collection have agreed to allow their talks to be replayed at a regular A.A. meeting or used on 12-step work, but not for any other purpose.
Playback of the tapes in a public hall should always be made only under A.A. auspices. On the playback through a public address system, I have found that a talk loses much of its crispness at 3 3⁄4 speed. I have also found that 7 1⁄2 speed gives much better listening effect, and in recent years all my recordings have been at that speed. Finally, a long talk, no matter how good, loses much of its potency through sheer length.
Dr. Bob's talk and that by Bill are too long for 12-step work, their prime interest being for those members who have been around a while. In my own 12-step work, I find it more effective to use two or three short talks rather than one long talk. In the final analysis, the group contact for a newcomer is the best therapy, and all my 12-step work is done with only one aim, get the guy to a meeting and let the higher power as manifest through the group take over.
All the best wishes to you and the boys and gals in Waterloo. This is Guild B signing off.