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Source: Will M – Ft Worth TX – Reel 0805-39A (1954) – 1954-06-13.mp3 File: will-m-ft-worth-tx-reel-0805-39a-1954-1954-06-13.mp3 Duration: 00:50:01
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Bill hardly needs any introduction. He's been all over Texas, probably in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Everyone that's heard him talk or met him knows that he deserves the title, the title that I don't think can be any higher to anyone. He's a good AA, Dr. Will. Chairman, my name is Will. I'm an alcoholic. By making my contract every morning, following the Twelve Steps to the best of my ability, and with the help of a lot of AAs and non-AAs, I've now enjoyed sobriety a little over two years. I am a general practitioner, whom I choose to call the missing link between the alcoholic and the scientific approach to his problem. I have a number of individuals who have much more sobriety than I have, due to the fact that I put them in AA long before I saw the light. It wasn't for me.
I, in fact, in my introduction, as I knew the people, it was a bunch of slap-at-the-individuals, most of them broke. I absolutely couldn't see it at all, the very idea of me, a physician, going to some bird that never has had the breath of science blown in his face, going to try to cure me of an illness. Everybody get up and talk, tell how bad they've been, how much they drink. Everybody clap hands and get well at the same time. It was ridiculous. It was absurd.
But I finally come to the end of my drinking career in a very terrible plight. I not only drank, I partook of the goofballs as well. The goofballs and the whiskey, of course, run the same route. I finally got so bad that I committed myself to the state institution at Ross, April 9, 1952. I'll just tell you enough of my story so you will know how grateful I am for anything to restore my sanity. When I entered the institution, I was unconscious the first two weeks, following nine major convulsions. The doctors were definitely thought that I would die.
About 16 or 17 days after I was there and began to realize where I was and what had happened, some of them asked me if I would mind going down to the end of the hall where some AA's were, an alcoholic ward. Well, any of you who have been in the insane asylum, the rest of the people there, their line of conversation is none too enlightening. So for the lack of something better, I belittled myself to associate with some ex-drunks.
When I went down there, I saw these individuals, rehabilitated drunks, talking to others, trying to give to them something that had been given to them before. Of course, the first few times I heard it, it meant absolutely nothing. It was silly. It was foolish. But finally, when my sanity was really restored, one afternoon they brought a boy in, in acute alcoholism, carried him bodily by two deputy sheriffs in his father.
It wasn't very long till two of these rehabilitated drunks, two members of AA, were talking to this individual. And it wasn't too long till the boy relaxed. A short time later, he had a bite to eat, drank a little fruit juice. In not too many hours, the boy was apparently all right. Now, that was something I had never seen done in the hospital through the realm of our medications and so forth. He had a different relaxation. He had a different outlook. Something he had gotten from what they said meant something.
[00:05:11]
So then I began to delve a little deeper. And it was the most miraculous thing I had ever seen. So it was then that I decided that maybe I could pay back some of the things that I had so foolishly done before. And I admitted myself. But it took me three months, after even being in the asylum, to admit. The first six or eight meetings I went to when I got up, I didn't know whether I was an alcoholic or not, showing you how ignorant the physicians can get. I didn't want to admit it. A man that couldn't handle his liquor, how foolish.
I quit a thousand times. But finally the light did come to me and I could see what the outfit was about, what they were doing, and that's when I started. One of the most revealing things to me is the utter ignorance that prevails over nearly everybody about AA. They seem to think it's a relatively new disease, this alcoholism, because it hasn't been in the print too long. There's very little that you can refer to in the libraries. But they seem to think that alcoholism, just since it's been brought out so much of late, has just become a disease. It's been a disease ever since time began.
We know that as far back as history goes, if we've had the alcoholics, we know that Noah, the first thing he did when he beat the ark was to build an altar. The second thing was to grow a vineyard, of which he later drank. We know that the king of Babylon, 2,250 years before Christ, tried to regiment this thing, tried to pass the king's laws to stop it, to no avail. The Hindus passed laws. If you bought, sold, or transported, or in any way handled alcohol, it was a capital offense. But that didn't work.
We know that the Roman emperors, hundreds of years after Christ, they tried to destroy the source, the vineyards, but none of this worked. They'd gone at it the wrong way. Alcoholism has been a problem since time began, long before Columbus was worried about whether the world was round or not. Alcohol was a problem. Now Columbus had an idea, though the angels had set on the four corners of the earth that it was round, that he could go east and return from the western route. The so-called learned men of his day thought he was nuts.
And while Columbus was in the process of sailing the Atlantic Ocean and returning, the courts of Spain pried Columbus for insanity, for having such an idea. But Columbus didn't give up. He carried it through. As late as 1885, Pasteur had a little idea that some of our illnesses were due to a little microscopic germ, germs that we couldn't see with our eye. The so-called learned physicians, the surgeons, the men of medicine in Pasteur's time thought Pasteur was nuts and practically run him out of the country. He was ostracized from society.
But Pasteur had an idea, and he didn't give it up. He lived to see the day that the so-called learned men of his time were the fools, not he. Because now the practice of medicine as it is is divided into two eras, as before Pasteur and after. He had an idea and carried it through. When the Wright brothers decided to fly their little plane, the so-called learned men of our day, the mathematicians, physicists, and so forth, proved beyond any shadow of a doubt, within the lifespan of some of we people here, that it was an absolute impossibility for anything heavier than air to fly at its own propulsion.
But the Wright brothers didn't quit. They had an idea to carry through. By aerodynamics, wind tunnels, and et cetera, it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that a bumblebee can't fly. His weight is in the wrong place, his wing spread is not enough, and et cetera. But unfortunately, the damn bumblebee don't know the difference, and he flies in air. He's been over 2,000 years of prejudice built up against alcoholism, prejudice, judgment, without any knowledge of the facts.
[00:10:13]
Now, our founders, our co-founders, Bob and Bill, had an idea that if they could maintain their sobriety long enough to where they could give something that had been given to them to somebody else, maybe that would work. Everything else had been tried for thousands of years to no avail. But this thing of giving of yourself to somebody else, maybe that would. That's the only thing that hadn't been tried to date, and nothing to date had been successful.
So with a determination that I will maintain my sobriety long enough to where we can give it to somebody else, naturally then, many people kind of poked fun at the idea, especially the physicians, the very idea. One doctor who had lost his practice and so forth, knew very little, and so on and so on, and another man didn't know anything about science. Now, these two ex-drunks are going to cure and rehabilitate a thing that all through centuries has been a failure by everybody.
These two ex-drunks are going to get together and solve the situation. Naturally, it was a long, hard pull, and few of us had the sense to realize it. But they didn't give up. They carried their idea through, and you and I today look where we might have been had it not been for those men. What if they had given up? Bill told us last night, what a time to get started. But you and I are the recipients of the greatest humanitarian movement to ever face this earth. You and I have been entrusted to something that's never been entrusted to man before. We are pioneers, and you and I will see it through.
We have been in the untouchable area so long that it's hard for some of us to get out of it, the untouchable attitude that's been hung upon the alcoholic. Many other diseases have gone through the untouchable atmosphere as well. Tuberculosis, in this century, many doctors who had diagnosed a patient as consumption, it was called several years ago, they changed doctors rather than have that diagnosis.
Why? They became an untouchable, a disgraceful person. Many of the tuberculous were put out in the backyard, in a tent, fed to a cubbyhole, and left to die. But what have we done with tuberculosis? We have educated the people that tuberculosis is not an untouchable disease, and they can be rehabilitated. So through the processes of education, the radio, the press, the schools, the churches, and et cetera, we have educated the people to come early with their signs and symptoms, and now we cure them in a matter of a few short months, completely rehabilitated. That's to live a normal life.
Psychiatry. It hadn't been but just a few years ago that even we doctors wouldn't think of sending anybody to a psychiatrist because they had to be practically hopeless before we would rely on them. And to this day, many people think that you've got to be nuts to go to a psychiatrist. You just have to be a little mixed up. So we have had to educate the people to go to people like the psychiatrists. And we physicians have to be educated, and there's still some who won't rely. It's that element of untouchable, disgraceful attitude that goes with those types of practices.
So we have had to educate the people. Now you and I must educate the people about alcoholism so they will know what to do with us and what to do for that new man that's never heard of us. And especially educate the doctor. And when he goes to them and tells them I'm an alcoholic, the doctor will know what to do. The only thing the doctor can do is to sober him up, which in so many instances only takes 48 to 72 hours just to sober him. But then instill in that man's mind that medicine will not keep him sober. That's the problem. And don't belittle it.
I dare say there's an alcoholic here, that he or some of his friends, or she if the case may be, their mother, their father, brother, or who, go to the doctor. My God, doctor, what can be done for my loved one? Drink moderately. Drink moderately, stay with light wines and beer, don't make an ass out of yourself and etc.
[00:15:05]
Totally ignorant about what to do. If we could just educate the doctors, I dare say many of us would go so far. The doctor would refer. The doctor doesn't hesitate if he's a general practitioner and has surgery. If he doesn't do that type of work, he knows where to get help. Ask for consultation. There's no belittling of your intellect to ask for consultation. It shows wisdom. If you don't know, ask somebody.
That's what we want them to do. Sober them up and then refer them to somebody that does know something about it. Don't think it's belittling to refer a patient to AA. It's the greatest job you've ever done. Unfortunately, too many physicians are still trying to treat this thing and it doesn't work. The untouchable attitude with a lot of them, we've got to remove it from alcoholics. We are human beings just like everybody else and now we can do more for the alcoholic than you can do for any other chronic disease known.
Four out of five that come in conscientiously want to get sober, get sober and not only do they, but they hand it on to somebody else. From one recovery, many more will follow. It's the only disease of its kind. It's the only disease of its kind. One gets well and many others prosper. Theories and so forth that the doctors have handed down, the scientists and so forth about why you and I are alcoholics.
I so well remember a paper that was just written last summer. And this paper was written by, one was an endocrinologist. Blames everything on the glands of internal secretion. Another was a physiologist. Of course, our blood sugar is out of kelp. Then the anthropologist comes along. Of course, the anthropologist has always got to go back into your family tree. Well, brother, you get in any family tree and stay very long, you're going to find you're drunk.
The psychiatrist tells us we're immature emotionally and so forth. All of us must be at times or we'll get aged very quick. They go into all these, delve into the scientific part of our glands of internal secretion of which we're not too sure of anyhow. Our blood sugar and et cetera. Our family tree. Our emotional disturbance. Now, this paper was 20 some odd pages long of fine print about what makes you and I alcoholics.
And the damn thing didn't even mention whiskey. Now, I want to tell you, whiskey had a whole lot more to do with it than the glands of internal secretion, our blood sugar, or anything else. We want to get to the meat of the thing and quit battling on the surfaces we have so long and get to the meat of the thing. Alcohol is the reason we are alcoholics. All these other things have the same kind of troubles as we do.
But we want to quit fooling around with the scientific part. AA is really and truly, and everybody knows, it's the only way out where the man is happy with his cure or with the remission of his symptoms. We don't want to be cured. So many other diseases run the same way. Diabetes. Diabetes, a man knows what to do with diabetics. Very little trouble with them. The man's told what to eat, what not to eat, how much insulin to take.
He's given the exact thing to do. His doctor knows, his wife knows, everybody does. But what does a diabetic do? Pretty soon he gets on the routine, does pretty well. He goes out of town on a convention or some little restaurant. First thing you know, he tries a little sugar. Carbohydrates. Makes a pie, a piece of cake, candy, etc. He keeps that little routine dabbling on the side. First thing you know, he winds up in diabetic coma.
But what happens to him? He's rushed to the hospital. And there the doctor does a wonderful job. In a matter of hours, he brings that man from absolute unconscious back to reality. The doctor does a good job. The technicians, the nurses, the attendants and everybody know how to wait on him and how to handle him. Then comes along the alcoholic. He doesn't want to get drunk either. He wants to pamper around a little.
He doesn't care a damn for that sugar and pie and cake either. What he does, gets him a half pint. He starts home with his half pint. Well, you and I know he doesn't get two blocks until he drinks half of it. Just before he gets home, why, he's a little bit upset and drinks the rest of it. Then he's got to go back to town to get a fifth to make the night on. He winds up, not in diabetic coma, but in alcoholic coma.
[00:20:02]
Identical. Both of them knew they couldn't do it. Both of them knew what to do and not to do, but they just didn't obey the laws of nature. One winds up in diabetic coma. The other in alcoholic coma. The alcoholic is rushed to the hospital. They go over him very thoroughly. And if they can't prove he's a diabetic or had stroke, and if they can't prove he's a diabetic or had cerebral hemorrhage or heart attack or some other condition that would render him unconscious, and they smell of liquor, in all too many cases, that individual is called that hoosewagon.
Here comes two burly cops and he shakes it out in jail. The difference in treatment. Both did exactly the same thing, the diabetic. The person who is a little overweight does exactly the same thing. Food is their problem. They get a certain amount of gratification out of food that you and I do have to drink. If they get a little anxious, frustrated, etc., they go to the cookie jar or the ice box. These lot of you individuals can eat all you please any time you get ready and can't gain an ounce.
But eating to some people is a definite problem. And what happens? They get too fat. Ninety-nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand. Too fat is just from overeating. But nobody belittles or bedamns them for eating too much. They pity each other. He loves to eat so well. Isn't it a pity that he gets so fat? But there's that damned old alcoholic. He's back on the bottle again. These lot of other people have problems with their everyday life just like we did.
They have problems. They go to different ways to get results. You and I, the bottle released us, blotted out all of our troubles and distress. It's a different viewpoint. The asthmatics, the hay fevers, the allergic. I have seen hay fevers and all of them go right back to the original source. Not over three months ago, I saw, not that long, maybe three weeks, I forget exactly, but a fellow with tarsinitis who just exactly almost a year ago got tarsinitis from going fishing on a little creek near home.
He'd be damned if this year he didn't go back and sit on the same stump and get it again. Well, we don't eat him out for going back and doing the same thing over and over. Many people with many other diseases do the same thing. We tell him how he can solve it and he doesn't have to get drunk anymore. Do you know that sixty to seventy percent of people that go to the doctor today are not sick organically?
Sixty to seventy percent of them. They have trouble all right, but not illness. They go to the doctor from nervousness, anxiety, emotional distress. They go to the doctor with this ill, that ill. Bill says here's what's wrong with some of them. Lumbago, pains in the back of the head. All kinds of it. What do they go for? Sixty to seventy percent of them have a problem that they can't take. And whiskey doesn't relieve them.
They don't want it. They want sedation. Why? So they can play the hand that's been dealt. They've been dealt an unkind hand and can't play it. Whether it's an environmental thing or not, we don't know. It may be around the office. It may be at home. It may be their job, their business associated to what. But whatever is bothering them, they can't tolerate the hand that's been dealt. So what do they get?
They get sedation so at night they can get sleep. They get a little sedation before noon. They get a little sedation in mid-afternoon. So they can tolerate their cells and their environment. You and I have one remedy for all of it. They have another. These barbitrates were a very minor thing. Just 25 or 30 years ago. It was only a few pounds of that stuff. And very few doctors used it. When they did, it was ultimate care.
Now they're handled so promiscuously it's pathetic. Just a few pounds of it 25 or 30 years ago. Since 1948, we have now used around 672,000 barbitrates. 672,000 pounds. That's 3 billion doses. It is a problem of the greatest magnitude. And so many of we, unfortunately. I was one who fell victim to the same thing. But let's not. The goofball addicts is pathetic. Now they take them in all sizes, shapes, and fashions.
You don't have to rely on those little old white female barbitrates now. They've got it every color of the rainbow.
[00:25:00]
I don't care what vitamin you're taking, they've got one that's just exactly like your vitamin capsules. Now they also give you some little plastic boxes. So you can get boxes to match your goofballs, if you so like. You can drop them in your compact, you can put them in your pocket, and nobody is the wiser. Such a shame they didn't ever hide that fizz and pank some way that we could get by with it.
They never did. The pill boys is pitiful. And unfortunately some of the biggest manufacturers make them. There's one now of dandy. One pill a day, 24-hour merry-go-round. All you have to do is at night take one. It's three layers to the tablet. The first layer dissolves very rapidly and you drop off to sleep. Lovely. The second layer is dissolved a little later and it holds you four or five hours more.
Then the very center of this thing is Benzedrine or Dexedrine and it knocks hell out of you. You don't need an alarm clock the next morning. That Benzedrine carries you on the rest of the day as a rule. Then by night time the Benzedrine fell out and you're back in that misery again. But it's time for another tablet and you're gone again. We don't want any tablet. We don't want any types of them. Unfortunately the American Medical Association not too many weeks ago published an article.
It's the greatest thing that the doctors have offered the alcoholic today is antibiotics. That ain't something. When they admit that's their greatest offer, antibiotics. You take that and then you're scared to drink is all. You don't sober up. You haven't been released from your trouble. You're not happy. You just have to take a tablet every morning because you haven't got the guts to quit. That's all.
And you're taking it for somebody else, not yourself. You'd rather stop it. We talk to them. The most unhappy people I know are these on antibiotics. They say, Doctor, I've got to take this tablet every morning. I know if I don't take it I'll drink. And if I do drink after I take it I'll have convulsions. But if any of y'all are on antibiotics now and want some, I'll leave some fruit juices out now.
It'll counteract it and you can go on drinking as you damn please. The vitamins. The vitamin racket, it's in the ball now. Just recently, this article appeared I believe this month or the last week of last. A vitamin capsule that you can take that will restore all of the elements, vitamins and minerals and so forth of your body that whiskey destroys, so on and so forth. And if you will take enough of these things, well, you can go on and be pretty good.
Well, I was very interested in that experiment, that vitamin capsule, because when it first came out I was detailed. Naturally, I'd be one of the first ones the doctors and detailed men would see because I need them, I guess. But nevertheless, this vitamin pill. I've been very astounded at the wonderful results. I have noticed those who take this vitamin pill and stay away from alcohol, they're sober.
Those that take all the vitamin pills they want and drink get drunk. Well, we could have told them that a long time ago, you didn't have to worry about it. We just don't want to get any medication, that's all. We want to be free of it. We want to instill, instead of a tablet, we want to instill within us the instinct of association. We want to instill within us the instinct of association, the thing that makes you and I feel good here.
You and I getting together. If you're religious and come to Fort Worth, it's not long until you find the people who worship as they like. And they'll mix and mingle with people who they like. That's what we want. If you're a banker and come here, you find the man, the capital, and so forth, and you find your kind, your species pretty quick. It's been proven that if you put two wild animals in the woods, and if they're the same kind and the same species, but the only ones in that wood, though there's a swollen stream between them, they'll walk the banks of that stream just so long, and then one of them is going to risk his life to swim that stream together with the like kind of species.
That association, this is our therapy here. Where we get together, we discuss our problems, and we get well together. You and I understand. A.A. going to meetings is the greatest thing in the world to some of us who have troubles. Maybe we're a little bit upset when we start to the meeting, but before we get there, our troubles seem to leave us. What do we do? Before we even get to the meeting, we begin to wonder about this issue.
Before we even get to the meeting, we begin to wonder about this guy and that gal, how's John, how's Nell, how's Jack and how's Sue.
[00:30:02]
Our sympathy, our love and our affection go out for our fellow man rather than ourself. I becomes insignificant. We take on the word humility with two vowels, has you and I in it, and it's so essential that you comes before I. That is AA, where we give to somebody else what's been given to us so they can go. It's the only way out. And it doesn't make any difference if your troubles do bother you, take them to AA.
I can so well remember one time that I was pretty well upset, I only had a few months. Something bothered me terribly, and used to, of course, when anything got mad or upset or anything, that whiskey would cover it all. I'd been taught, whenever you have trouble, go with AA. As soon as the office, just a minute this bird left, I went out the back door and it was about four or five blocks from my office, I knew there'd be some AAs around there.
Well, it wasn't, I hardly got to the place on the corner, there was Tom, leaning up against the P&S farm through the wall. I circled the block, go into a place there where we all meet once or twice a day, go downtown, there was Tubby and Buck. I didn't say a word to them, I don't know what I would have said, but I just mixed and mingled a moment. It wasn't very long till all my troubles were gone. It's the most realistic thing that we can take to each other our troubles and have no embarrassment whatsoever.
Not too long ago I was in a nearby state and a gentleman stepped on my toes pretty hard and I got a little bit resentful. I didn't like it. Fortunately, Icky from Dallas was there and I went and told him what had happened. Icky says, M., you don't have to worry about that, forget it. Easy does it. Says, big men will never hurt you and little men can't. So I could have harbored these resentments a long time before I got rid of them and I might have been in a hell of a shape.
But thanks to the power upstairs, I had sense enough to go to somebody that understood me and my troubles, understood why I used to do those things, to get a relief from pressure, tension, and uncertainty. I went to somebody that knew the problems. And it's such a wonderful thing when we can go to each other and have such a perfect understanding. Nothing on this side of heaven is like it. We want no medication of any kind, feature of medicine that would get us well but wouldn't let us have this fellowship.
Can you imagine anything more deplorable? This is a thing that we get into and after we begin to work, we feel that we are paying back to society a debt that we know we owe. We've caused lots of hardships and sorrow. Imagine taking that damn pill to get rid of our hardships and sorrow that we've caused somebody else. No, no. Get this A.A. Fellowship in Philosophy of Living where you can give a part of yourself to somebody else so he can walk alone.
That's A.A. Then every day you live in happiness. You have no regrets to look back over. It's a beautiful day every day. Give to somebody else what's been given to you so he may walk alone. And it works. Don't ever let anybody try to displace this with anything else. Just last year in one of the biggest papers in Texas, there appeared an article written by a man who's supposed to know that if we A.A. would blend all of our best parts with the medicine, with the social welfare worker, and with this civic organization and blend all the good features of everything else with A.A.
wouldn't it make a magnificent society? Damn if it wouldn't. We are the only people that can come and talk and understand our problem. The social welfare or the doctor or the clergy who's never been drunk just don't know a damn thing about it. You and I know what to do. We don't. We are so delighted that everybody is trying to help us. But you and I have by far the greatest part to play. And in doing it we feel like we're helping somebody else and it relieves that weight that's been hung on us.
Just about, just a matter of two or three weeks, not now, it's been longer than that now, but anyhow a man called me one night. I think it was one of the greatest compliments I've had in a long time.
[00:35:03]
This man called me about 1.30 in the morning and told me that he had a drunk. He understood I'd get drunk out of jail. I said, well, okay, come by. And he come by and I met him at the walk and we went down and talked to the knife sergeant and went in, saw this fellow. Wasn't long, we had him out and he was gone. Well, and four or five days later or something like that, this man saw me on the street.
Says, M., what in the world do you people have? If I had called my family physician at 1.30 in the morning and told him my child was sick, he would have had to get a history. How long has he been sick? How much fever has he got? Be darn sure no other doctor has seen him and all those things. Or he wouldn't have come. And some of them don't even answer their phone. I know if it was my wife sick, hell, he'd see her next week.
But there you are. I was not your patient. And you didn't even know the man in jail. At 1.30 in the morning, without hesitation, you get up and go with me and back, just like it's a normal, everyday affair. What have you got? What is it? I said, my friend, if I could but tell you. What makes us do that? It would be simple. But you've got to live it. It's long suffering and understanding that makes us know what we can do.
I can't tell you, and you not being an alcoholic would never understand it if I did. It's a way of life, different from anything else. Because we are people of distinction and of character, who having admitted our troubles, our weaknesses, and been made strong by doing so, we offer a better way of life, a better world to live in. We make our own inventory. We know that the other man can't, and we don't try.
We don't tell him he shall and shall not do this and that. So many people have misunderstood, especially some of the so-called learned seem to think that they know the solution. They misunderstood the Savior when he was here on earth. When the Savior was here on earth and he told them, his prophets, to go, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel, that whosoever believeth and baptize shall be saved, he that believeth not shall be damned.
Too many people today have the idea that the Savior said, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel, and whoever you think is all right shall be saved, and whoever you think not shall be damned. He didn't say that. God in his infinite wisdom didn't give you the wisdom to pass on my judgment or destiny, nor did he give me the right to pass on yours. So knock them. Let us never be guilty of saying, oh, so-and-so is not worthy, is not capable, and so on and so forth.
That's not your place nor mine. Mine and your place is to live this noble life, carry the message, and let the man upstairs do the judging. He didn't mean it. The will to get well. The will to get well was told about Babe Ruth. Babe Ruth had come into a little plight of one. He had always known to help children, because he, too, I think, came up a little rough. But there was a little fellow in a hospital who had been sick a long time.
But he had gotten well physically. But in his torment and in his trials and tribulations he had undergone so much, he had no desire to come back. He had nothing to live for, as he thought. He just quit eating. Everything was leaving. He was dwindling away fast. The doctors told him, you can eat whatever you please. You're perfectly all right. His mother begged him, father, brothers and sisters, and playmates, but to no avail.
The child just wouldn't eat. Finally, Babe Ruth come to town, and they asked him, said, this boy is 14 years of age, and he used to be a pretty good ball player. But he's been sick. Now, organically, he's all right. But he'd just give up. He suffered so long, he'd give up. Maybe you could hit the spark. Maybe you could light a light. Babe said, if there's anything I can do, I'd be delighted. So they said, go out and talk to him.
Babe goes out to the hospital and talks to this little child. Says, son, I understand you're not playing the game today. You quit. You're giving up. I want to let you know, son, that you're playing that game with me today. And if you are playing it, just assure his faith. I'm going to hit a home run. I'm going to bring you the ball.
[00:40:02]
Babe did. And faith must have been working pretty strong, because he did hit the home run, and he did carry the boy the little ball. In two or three days, when Babe first told him, says, son, I can now see you're on your way back. You're playing the game today. And it wasn't but two or three days till that little fella started to eat him. It wasn't but a week till he's back home. Less than a month was in school.
Now, the doctors in the hospital admitted it was the most miraculous, the most miraculous thing and dramatic that they'd ever seen. Without one bit of medicine, without one bit of therapy, that little child was rejuvenated and brought back just by a kind word from somebody. So let's don't worry who's to take the message. You don't know who will. You may have a month or two months or six months. You may have ten years, but you don't know who will hit the spark to bring back.
How many of us got to the place that we all but give up? Many of us, if we'd have had the guts, would have blown ourselves in the extermination. Your humble speaker at one time went to bed with a pistol. And to think, if I'd have had the guts, I wouldn't have been here. So the thing about it, people, we have come back a far piece. You and I can give this thing to somebody else if we will. That's all it takes.
You and I can pass this on to another brother, to another gal, and we'll all profit by it. So let's don't any of us… Well, I can so well remember so many stories, but I can't quite go through them somehow. I don't know what it is. But you and I, as I say, have been entrusted with something that nothing else can take its place. Don't let us muffle. Keep it simple. Don't let anything interfere or come in between us.
We must be a close-knit organization, and without outside influences. Keep it just like we got it here. There's not a pastor today in his congregation has the audience that I do. Not one. We've got something that practically no people on earth have got. The will and determination to help our fellow man services our thing. We are servants of our people. I'm going to tell you my little story about what makes going so easy.
I had only been in AA just a matter of a few years, a few months, I mean. Of course you know a little girl, 13 years of age, whose father had been more or less tied all of his life. Or her life, rather. She didn't know what a father meant. She didn't know what it was. She had read. She had heard. She knew something about a father, but that was all. Just from what she'd observed in the neighborhood.
But to actually know what a father can dispense with, the vital part that a father plays in a little girl's life. She had no conception or whatever. But when I got into AA and finally wised up that way of life, I started back to living. And I learned what children were. I was trying so hard to build back and restore in that little girl some peace and love. And it wasn't but a short time until she caught on.
She thought her father was the greatest person on earth. She wanted everybody to know her daddy. I had never been to other places with her. Of course not. And when they'd come to our house, she didn't know what to do with them. She'd run away and hide or leave. But now since Papa had been in AA and had come back, a revelation had appeared to that child of nothing else. The happiest little creature on earth.
She was going to give a big party, coming out party, for no other reason than just to introduce her daddy to all of her friends. Daddy, To All of Her Friends, She Wanted Everybody to Know Who Her Daddy Was, What He Was, What a Wonderful Guy, Because I Had Been Trying to Take a Fish and Take a This and That, Now
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She Was Just Bubbling Over, Going to Have a Big Party and to Introduce Daddy to Everybody, She Made All Kinds of Preparations, She Told Me What to Wear and How to Eat, Lord Only Knows I Needed Some Instructions After So Many Years, But I'd Say Two or Three Weeks Maybe After This Date Was Set, It Was Set for November the Fourteenth, Morris from Tyler Called Me to Come and Speak to an Open Meeting, Just Like This, I Keep a Calendar Up on the Wall and the Only Thing that Rates that Calendar is My AA Appointments, I Don't Know if I Have it, So He Asked Me about November the Fourteenth, Was on a Friday Night and I Look Up There, It Was Circled, So I Said Sure I Can Be There, It Went On for Another Week or So Before I Realized What I Had Done, On the Very Night My Little Girl Was Having This Thing When She Wanted to Show Everybody, Show Her Dad Off, She Was So Happy and Just Doing Everything, That Very Night I Had Made an Appointment to Go Out of Town, Now You Talk About Torn Between Two Loves, I Had Only Few Months of This Program Then, But I Had Something, I Had Been Searching For So Long, That Instinct of Association with People of My Like Kind and Species, It Understood, I Just Had a Few Months of It, But It Had Certainly Taken Hold, I Didn't Want to Lose It and I Certainly Didn't Want to Hurt My Little Girl Either, But I Knew If I, That First Excuse I Thought Was Very Legitimate and Justified, But That First Excuse Would Be, But What Would Have Been to the Second Excuse and Third, Then I Would Start Slipping, Making Lots of Good Excuses, I Didn't Want That, I Didn't Have Very Much to Stand On, Lord Only Knows I Didn't Want to Give It Up, But I Taught With The I.D. Back and Forth, I Thought All Shucks, She Would Break Out with the Measles, She Would Have to Take Something, It's Got to Happen, I, To That Date I Had Never Turned Down Any A.A. In Any Way, If I Didn't Have an Appointment I Went, And I Was So Happy in Doing So and Everybody I Knew Was So Happy that I Had Recovered, But Now It Was Just Whether to Make the A.A. and Preserve Myself or Whether to Miss or Go to the Party and Maybe Upset My Little Girl, I Didn't Know What to Do, I Tried Backwards and Forwards and I Couldn't Solve It and I Was Getting Messed Up More Every Day, I Just Didn't Know What to Do. So Finally, On Wednesday, Two Days Before This Event, My Wife Said, Will, You Are Fixing to Break Your Little Girl's Heart, As You Have Never Broke It Before, She Has Told Her Sunday School Teacher, Everybody, She Knows What's Going to Happen, You Are Going to Be in the Spotlight, She's Going to Introduce Your Daddy and All This to All of Her Lovers. Now on the Very Night that She's Made All These Preparations and So Forth, You Fixing to Go Some 70-Odd Miles Out of Town to an A.A., You've Got to Do Something.
Well, I Said, Since All This Seems to Be About a Little Girl, Why Not Just Let Her Settle It? I Called Her into My Room and I Said, Honey, What If on the Night of Your Big Coming Out Party, What If on that Night, Daddy Could Go Somewhere and Talk to a Man or Woman and They Wouldn't Get Drunk for 24 Hours? But Still, Father, Honey, What If on the Night of Your Big Dance and Coming Out Party and So Forth, What If on that Night, Daddy Could Go Somewhere and Talk to a Man or Woman and They Would Never Get Drunk Again? She Didn't Say a Word, but in a Moment, She Leaped Out of Her Chair, She Grabbed Her Daddy Around the Neck and Said, Daddy, You Go and Keep Going and Here I Am.
Perhaps those of you who haven't heard Dr. Will before understand that Dr. Will's