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Source: 1955 St. Louis International Convention – 1955 St. Louis AA Open Meeting Pat C., Ian, Esther E.mp3 File: 1955-st-louis-international-convention-1955-st-louis-aa-open-meeting-pat-c-ian-esther-e.mp3 Duration: 00:54:23
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First I would ask that any members of the press who are present should respect the anonymity of our speakers, and also the opinions that are expressed here are the opinions of the speakers themselves, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of AA as a whole. The Third Legacy buttons that you will see here on some of our lapels or dresses mean that those who are wearing these buttons will be very happy to answer any questions concerning the Third Legacy.
Lunches and dinners are going to be served in the cafeteria downstairs. Lunch counters and snack bars are on the promenade. They will open at 9 a.m. for juices and sweet rolls, and will close one hour after the last meeting at night. Tape recordings are being made of all the meetings, and if you will leave your orders for copies at Convention Headquarters in Room B, we will take care of them there. And we're very sorry that we couldn't arrange for individuals to bring their own tape recorders and take the tapes of any of the meetings.
It gives me great pleasure now to introduce the chairman of this meeting. He's Pat Cronin of Minneapolis. He's one of the earliest members in Minnesota, I believe, and he was the Minnesota delegate to the first General Service Conference. Very happy to introduce him now, Pat Cronin. Ladies and gentlemen, I've been in the audience, and I know that at times there's difficulty in distinguishing the words. So if you find that true this afternoon, let it be known so that we can correct it, please.
And looking at our panel this afternoon, we've got them from all over the country and from overseas. I remember a story about a little girl. Little girl, she said, Mama, you were born in New York, Papa was born in Los Angeles, and I was born in St. Louis. How did we all get together? Well, here we are, and I think the reason I'm here is because two men from Chicago, back in 1940, took time out to come up and look up a lone drunk in Minneapolis.
I shall be ever grateful to those men because I couldn't do it on the book. I ran across this big book, Alcoholics Anonymous, in the public library of Minneapolis in August of 1940. And there it was, staring at me from the bookshelves, I'm coming off a ten-day drunk. And I was afraid to take that book off the shelves for fear somebody would connect me with alcohol. That's the kind of screwy thinking, the dishonest thinking that we are all subject to. Nevertheless, I found courage to take it off and take the wrapper off, which is very, very vivid, as you know, and sit down and try to read.
I had no money, but a friend of mine sent away and bought the book, and that's how they got my address in New York, which they sent to Chicago, and these gentlemen came up. I got my copy of the book, and I stayed dry two whole weeks until I got a payday, and then I went off. I grabbed this book Sunday morning to read myself dry to get back to work Monday, so all I was looking for in this book was controlled drinking. I think that's what a lot of us are constantly looking for.
And it wasn't until I saw two men who had been dry since the previous January, I saw two men who had made it, that I was able to make the surrender to the fact that maybe, just maybe, I could follow this God stuff and make it myself. That was my stumbling block, as it was the stumbling block of so many of you, and I really did some thinking, some meditating. I had to figure out how any deity could have any faith in myself.
[00:05:01]
After all the promises and prayers of desperation that I'd sent up, how could he understand that this time I would try it under his care? What I started to pray, as they taught me, these Chicago men, both newspaper men, they typed it out and stuck it on the wall of my room. My old Irish landlady, she couldn't figure out what was wrong with Cronin. He was paying his rent, and he was sober. She told another old gal, and that old gal had her boy out in the workhouse.
Would I get him out and work on him? Sure. So I pulled a few wires and met him at the probation agent at his office. I took him home and told his mother to keep him until tonight. I'll be out with the book, and I'll give him the AA. So I went out at 7 o'clock. She says, well, Joe isn't back yet. Well, I says, where is he? Oh, she says, about 3 o'clock. He had to go down and get his watch and his pants out of hock, and I give him $15.
Well, Joe made the can that night and the workhouse the next morning. I didn't see him for 90 days. So whenever I get a little coffee, I think of Joe, and I get a little humble. Well, you're not interested in my story, folks. We have some wonderful speakers here this afternoon. They all have good stories to tell, and this is the first folks that I've met from AA from England. Our first speaker flew over, was fortunate enough to combine business with the convention to be with us, and of course, we're all anxious to hear how they do it in England, Mr. Ian Heath.
Ladies and gentlemen, I sincerely hope that you are not expecting from me an annotation similar to which Winston Churchill would give. But I would like to say how very delighted I am to be here amongst you all and to try and express my gratitude and thanks to AA and all that it has done for me. It's just nine years since I was chucked out of the family business, and they thought that I should crawl back after I'd had a fairly good beating.
But like all alcoholics, I think we have a grain of stubbornness. So I started on my own in a small way in the very poor part of Birmingham. A toolmaker came with me, and for 18 months I stayed a dry drunk. Then one day I met the doctor, and I asked him if he thought that shandies would hurt me, which consist of half a pint of beer and the rest of lemonade. And he said no, but it wasn't long before I had ten pints of beer and just one shandy lined up just to put a dash into it.
Well, strangely enough, I'm happy to relate. I love work. And I chucked it, and then I'd start again. I'd try something else. Sherry. Well, one sherry didn't hurt me, but by God, a bottle did. Two bottles. Then various things started to happen in my little business, and I chucked it again for another 12 months.
[00:10:14]
Things went very well for me, and I thought, well, I've got round this corner. I still didn't realize I was an alcoholic, and I'd never been told I was. Finally, after going on like this for another three or four years, on and off, I changed my doctor, and I went to a Scot fellow who now is one of my greatest friends, and he said, well, Ian, you're so bad now that you'll have to go into hospital. Well, I got into this hospital on a bottle and a half of brandy and thought the doctor there was a hell of a good fellow. And the next morning when I woke up with a shake to hear various people screaming and one thing and another, I thought I was completely round the bend.
But luck was on my side. I'd only been in there 48 hours when the most charming individual came along, also an inmate, and said, what are you in here for? So I said, I think it's drink. And he burst out laughing. I said, well, I don't see what there is to laugh about at the present moment. He said, well, chap, I've been in here four times for the same thing. He said that but at last I found the answer. And he dashed off and brought me the book on AA.
Shaking as I was and trying to concentrate on the book, I last realized that I was an alcoholic, and this was what I had been looking for for so long. I immediately rode up to London headquarters and said, I should like to become a member, and I sincerely wanted a chuck drinking. When I came out, I was met by Steve, who has come with me on this wonderful trip. It's just three years since I've been in AA. I believe you call them pigeons over here.
And I met Steve, and we went to luncheon together at one of the biggest hotels in Birmingham, where I was well known for being able to consume a lot of liquor and make a general fool of myself. Anyway, we sat down and had a couple of ginger ales, and he started to talk to me. I then went to my first AA meeting, where there were three people. I was the fourth. I'm happy to tell you now, that from those four, there are 40.
And as we didn't start this wonderful thing until 1947, we have now 80 groups in England. Oh, 80 groups in England and 5,000 members.
[00:15:14]
But I must say, the old country has certainly learnt something very miraculous and wonderful from the new. And I look forward to the time when we shall be as up to date as you are here. I can't let this opportunity pass without thanking Marian of New York for her wonderful letters and assistance when this journey was first mooted. And it seemed from the very first of the correspondence that we were great friends.
I can't tell you how overwhelmed we both are with the kindness that we have received from you all. Your hospitality and kindness in America is known throughout the world. And we very reserved Britishers find it more than difficult to know how to return such hospitality. Nevertheless, I would like to say that if at any time you should have the misfortune to visit Birmingham, England, I shall be more than delighted to see you.
And so with these few words, I will conclude my speech with thanks and gratitude to AA. God bless you all. I've always been impressed by the speedy maturity in AA of our Canadian cousins. And I assure you the same maturity seems to be prevalent among our British cousins. You've heard of Damon and Phythias. Well, another combination of Damon and Phythias was formed three years ago. And Damon has brought Phythias, Elias Steve, along. So Steve is going to give us a little song too.
I'm afraid I'm very much in the same position as the young Greenhorn who was told to get up at a ranch called Sit and Sing. He couldn't sing, but he was doing his best until he saw an old man stand up at the back and pull out a six-shooter. Then he really got frightened. The old boy said, go on, sonny, you're doing your best. I'm looking for the bugger that put you on the belt. Well, I'm doing my best. I can't point out the so-and-so that put me on the belt, but of course I'm very delighted to be here.
Now, I'm an alcoholic. It isn't terribly important that you should know that. What really matters is that I know it. I found out the hard way. I come from a small town in the northwest of England, from a very happy home with a very religious background. Up to the time of being sent away to school, my mother read the chapter of the Bible to me every night. At school, I knew nothing but success. I was head boy of the school and captain of school games.
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From there I went to the university, and again I knew nothing but success. I was president of the university union, captain of games, and captain of the combined English universities football team. I had an amazing time. Nothing but success. I was doing marvelously. I didn't drink. I very rarely smoked. Strangely enough, my halo didn't give me any headaches either. But when I left the university, I went to take a job with a mining company.
Went on for many years, took my technical qualifications, and eventually landed a job at an extraordinary early age with the government department. Another success. I must have been coming a terribly big shot. How big, I just didn't know. And then, over this period, up to the age of thirty, I had drunk very little. What I didn't know, what I can see now, was the pattern was there even on those very odd occasions when I drank.
Even at dinners at the end of football tours, at twenty-first birthday parties, I was always the bloke to put the other fellows in a taxi when I went to look for another drink. But even so, it was no problem. Until about the year 1937, I left the very promising job I had with the department and went to a private company. That was even more promising still. There were no fields that I couldn't have conquered.
And when, eventually, I met John Barleycorn, well, even the heavens were not unconquerable. Well, I'm not going to bore you with the following pattern of alcoholism. I've heard people say what they lost through drinking, loss of wife, homes, cars, and all that sort of thing, are purely material losses. Materially, I didn't lose a lot. But I lost everything. Because by the time, four years ago, I had lost myself.
Now, I have since heard people talk about people having to hit the bottom before they come into AA. And just before this particular period, everybody else had decided that I was an alcoholic. My doctor, my wife, my friends, priests, everybody knew that I was an alcoholic. And everybody thought that AA would be a good thing for me. Well, of course, this was just becoming a darn nuisance I couldn't get on with my drinking for keeping these folks quiet.
And always being a little gentleman, I said, well, I'll go and have a look at this thing they call AA. Mark you, just to keep them quiet. So I went and had a look at AA. And what I saw didn't appeal to me very much. I saw some people that didn't look as though they knew anything about drink at all. And it struck me afterwards, you know, that that was a very wrong thing, because in England we used to advertise a certain patent baby food.
And they used to display two photographs, one before and one after. And I thought that was what they should have had at these AA meetings. However, things went from bad to worse. And Ian was lucky. Ian went into hospital under his own steam. I went in on the shutter. And it wasn't very nice. But I came out of that. I had a car smash. I appeared before the magistrate. I got out of that. I was fined heavily, and I had a very nasty restriction put on me.
But all…
[00:25:00]
All that really happened, of course, was that I got out of it. Again, I'd been the big shot. I'd got very nicely round this. And now, one day, in an English court, there appeared a right dilapidated gentleman. And the judge looked at him and said, You are drunk. And the judge looked at him and said, You are drunk. Oh, aye, I was drunk. He said, Did you have to get drunk? Oh, aye. What did you drink?
I drank a bottle of whiskey. But you didn't have to drink a bottle of whiskey. Oh, aye, I had to. He said, Why? He says, I lost the court. But, of course, if you, if that old benign judge had known as much about alcoholics as you good people do, he'd have known that the right dilapidated gentleman didn't sue the court, he sued the damn thing away. And, of course, that's just what I'd been doing for fifteen years, selling the cork, oh, aye, and as many corks as I could get hold of.
But things became terribly sticky. People were being really awkward about this drinking business, and I didn't like it. Until eventually, one day, I went on a business trip into the south of England. And when I came back, there was a message saying that I was suspended, and that my department had no further use for me. I went down to London, and I sat on the seat on the embankment, which is so well known in literature and history, and I watched the River Thames flowing by.
I was still quite confident that I would get a job. I'd always had a job. I'd always had a job that gave me the sort of things that I wanted. And then it suddenly hit me between the eyes, how long will it be before you're looking for the next one? And how long before the one after that? And I went in to the head of this particular department, and I pleaded with him to let me go back to my home station, and start off where I'd left.
And bless his kindly heart, I put his hand on my shoulder, and he said, I don't know what you've got at the back of your mind, but you've got something that you didn't have before. And I went back to Birmingham, and I went back to an AA meeting. But this time there was a difference. Formerly I had been in an AA group. This time I was of an AA group. I was very upset, very mixed, very muddled. I'd solved the physical part of drinking.
I'd accepted the fact that I had a disease. I could follow that. My brain, my technical brain could follow it. But it wasn't until I met my first baby, Ian, that I really got on to the AA program. Now, you will notice that I didn't say to you, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm putting the calf before the horse, because when we proposed coming here, I looked up St. Louis on an atlas, and it said St. Louis was named after a crusader king of France.
Thank you, and goodbye, fellow crusaders. Thank you, Steve. Our next speaker is a lady. I'll let no one discount that she's a lady. She's a lady. She's a lady. She's a lady. She's a lady. She's a lady. She's a lady. She's a lady. She's a lady. I'll let no one discount the tremendous effect on AA that our ladies bring, both our lady alcoholics and the wives of our male members. It's tremendous. Those of you who had occasion to write to New York back in 1940, early part of 41, remember that all the letters I heard that all the letters from New York were signed R. Hawk, H-O-C-K was the last name.
[00:30:04]
After I received my first one, I wrote back, Dear Mr. Hawk. And it wasn't until these two chaps came up from Chicago that I found out that R meant Ruth, Ruth Hawk. She was the correspondent and I was writing to Mr. Hawk. I met Ruth years later in Cleveland. She was very happily married at that time. I recall, too, that my sponsors, my Chicago sponsors, impressed on me the necessity for getting hospitalizations for our new babies.
And so after the Saturday Evening Post article hit the streets, I'm down at our general hospital with my book under one arm and a lot of zeal. And I want to talk to the doctor of some ward that could take care of the drunks. And I find that the doctor in charge of that particular ward, Ward H, was a woman, Dr. Charlotte Moore. And so I go to work on her. And she said, yes, she'd heard vaguely of it from the East.
But she had a gal whom she had tried with for years. And if I could help her, I could have a hospital. I said, look, I only got one guy and I'm not sure of him. And I don't want to tackle women until I've got about 20 guys. Because I'd had plenty of experience with women of all ages. I got shy of them. You know, you get shy of the plate after a while, too, when you get beamed. So I was in a row to meet them.
So I said, all right. I took the address. I called the girl. She said she'd meet us on the front porch. I took Freddie along for protection. For a witness. Well, anyway, we meet this gal on the front porch. And she was a very tall gal. She had on a pair of very big black glasses. And it developed that she had a sprained ankle. We were going to be big sports and take her to a movie. But this ankle prevented it, so we settled for a cup of coffee.
And she took these glasses off. She had two big black eyes. Somebody had sucked her, I guess. But she believed it. And the next day we got ahold of $5 and rented a club room. Because neither one of us had a home, and we had to have a club room. We got a chair with a pillow, and we put our foot up on this pillow. And I went up and talked the telephone company out of a telephone. Private line. And we put the phone number in the paper under Cedric's column there.
We were in business. And in a couple of weeks I took this doctor from the hospital out to see her. And she was a transformed woman, and she gave us the hospital. And we didn't lock it up for two whole years. Our next speaker started her AA, was exposed to AA in the beginning in Houston, Texas. And she moved from there to Dallas in 1943. And she was instrumental in the start of the Dallas group. I give you Esther Elizardi.
I never get enough to try to talk about AA and what AA has done for me. But I don't always hope that I can say something in marvel. I've been here for a long time, so don't hold your breath while I walk. I had to laugh when Pat was talking about going to see the woman with the black eyes. At least you could hide that. If you tried to come see me, take me to a picture show, my life was just one series of bangs after another.
I knocked out my two front teeth. I broke my toe, and my dress caught on fire, and I didn't sit down for four months. And I just never got to go anywhere. Well, I think in all AA meetings we usually say we are alcoholics, and I'm from Texas, so we have a little longer introduction. We have sort of bigger and better things, as you all know. I am Esther, and I'm an alcoholic. According to the program of AA, to the best of my ability, I have been dry since May 1941.
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It's rather hard, I guess, for all of you to see me clean and sober tonight, this afternoon, to ever think that I was in the condition that I was when I came into AA. I had a very happy younger life. I was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. We had wine and liqueurs in the house all the time. It was never anything that was taboo. And, in fact, for dinner I would have claret with ice and sugar in it when I was a little girl.
And on state occasions every now and then we'd have creme de menthe poured over ice with a little straw, and it was like a snowball. I don't know if you all know what snowballs are. But never did I ever know what the effect really was. It was wine with dinner and this sort of watery creme de menthe and things like that. And the first time that I think I realized what alcohol could do to me was the night that I married.
All my life I had been an extremely sensitive person. I had been hard-headed with meals and so self-conscious that it hurt all over. And I was having this big church wedding. And all that day I was frightened to death that I wasn't going to be what I wanted to be. I was afraid my dress wouldn't fit right, the church wouldn't be crowded, that I would stumble maybe and fall. And I was just in a panic.
And in those days, you know, I'm not young. I was married so long ago. And in that day and time you didn't have a little orchid when you walk up the aisle and you didn't have your picture taken two or three days before. The photographer came to the house two hours before the ceremony and posed with this huge bouquet, like a gangster funeral thing, you know. And being as self-conscious as I was, it is still today, just agony for me to have a picture made.
So I posed this way and that way and the headdress I had on was made of pearls and it felt so heavy I know it was locked. And I just was about to faint when it was time to go to the church. And my daddy looked at me and realized how nervous and upset I was. So he turned to this old servant of ours and he said, Miss Esther is about to faint. He said, well, get her a drink. So this little cook of ours was a dim head.
And so when she knew what a drink meant she brought me a half a glass of bourbon. And down it went. And the church was just three blocks from the house and I got into the car. It was February. It was cold as it could be. And then we arrived at the church and as soon as I got there they saw the music and I walked up that aisle. And that bourbon went all through me. And I walked up there just like Mae West.
And you got to do it all over again. So anyhow, you know, I just didn't kind of hardly remember it. I was just up and down. So I don't think that I ever thought too much of it consciously. But subconsciously it must have registered, gee, this is good, you know. So after I married, I grew up, it was during the Prohibition era, and I started to drink with all the crowd. I did not drink hardly at all, in fact, not at all up until the time I married.
Then I could hold an awful lot. I brought everybody home. And so just when I passed the line from social into pathological drinking, I do not know. It's a very subtle and a very vicious thing. But pass it I did. And I was married in 1924. And around 31, when I was living in Tulsa, it began to cause comment in my particular group of friends. All of us were drinking too much at the time. You know how it was.
You bought moonshine in half a gallon. It's like going on a picnic. You don't leave until all the sandwiches are gone. Well, you never left until all the half gallons were gone. You didn't want to drag the half gallon back, and you'd hate it to leave any in it. But I know my husband drank too much. So when it started interfering with the way he felt the next day, he'd tape it off. But I didn't. And I thought at the time that I was just with a bunch of sissies, that they just didn't know how to live.
And anyhow, I was in Tulsa, and I was in New Orleans, and they didn't do things quite like I thought they should do.
[00:40:03]
So when we moved back to Dallas, it got pretty bad. And my husband became very worried about it. And one morning after coming home and finally passed out, he asked me why I drank. Well, isn't that a question to ask an alcoholic? Why? Why? Well, if I only knew why, I wouldn't have been in the condition I was in. But anyhow, I thought maybe if I talked to a psychiatrist it would help. So he said he would find out who to go to.
And so Frank left, and I got drunk because I had given him my problem. There wasn't anything else to do. And the next morning I awakened in the asylum. Well, I didn't know what a crazy house was. And in my drunkenness, I had, I thought, consented to go to a private hospital. So I awaken in this bathroom, and I want a cigarette. My purse isn't there. I was so drunk I didn't even put a robe on. I just had my coat, no bedding, nothing, and just a bathroom, not a cigarette or anything.
I look for a bell, and there's no bell. So I get up and open the door on this hall. And a nurse comes and pushes me back in. Well, I couldn't get out of there. I stayed for 17 days. And I would not even talk to the doctor because he wouldn't let me smoke. And I said that I wouldn't talk to him as long as he kept me there. Well, I know now that I couldn't identify myself with these horrible people. And I thought, well, I was really very scared underneath, but I really was nuts.
There was a tree right outside my window, and there was a squirrel going up and down, and I was afraid he was going to catch me. Anyhow, on the 17th day, this psychiatrist let me go home. I had hysterics for the first and only time in my life. I just couldn't stand it any longer. So I went home, and I had a trained nurse, and he came out to see me every day for about two weeks. And I thought that I cooperated with that man 100 percent after I came home.
But I know now that I didn't. I told him the truth up to a certain point, and then I told him what I wanted to believe about myself. And it went on from bad to worse. My husband was going to New York, and he didn't want to leave me alone. I had just gotten a dog, and I wanted a house. I was living in an apartment. He thought I was better off in a building with people. But I didn't think that an apartment was any place to raise a dog.
So I wanted a house. And he said, well, he had to go to New York. He couldn't get a house for me and leave me alone unless my father came to see me. So I got the dog. I got the house. I got a new fur coat. My daddy came out to stay with me. And my husband went to New York, and I got drunk. And so it was just one of those things that I just woke up drunk. I wanted to be good. But anyhow, my father didn't.
He had known about this other experience I'd had in this bottle. He talked me into taking the Samaritan treatment. Well, I know there are so many graduates of the Samaritan treatment here. I've taken it three times. And as I say, there's no easy way to sober up, but that's the most excruciating. And it doesn't help because you can leave and drink, and it doesn't make you sick. It only makes you sick when they shoot you for all that stuff.
So my husband had been talking to the minister at our church, and there was a doctor in the congregation that thought he could help me with vitamins. Well, I'd go down and get shot all full of vitamins, and then I'd stop and get my pint. And the vitamins don't eat you sober either. And then we moved down to Houston in 1940. There was nothing else much to try. My minister had worn himself out. We had tried the psychiatrist.
And so it was a series of getting a doctor in to sober me up. I started off by telling you the bangs I got out of life. Frank didn't know what condition I would be in when he'd come home. As I say, the three months I couldn't sit down, or another, almost that long, my foot was in a cast because the doctor was there. that long, my foot was in a cast, because the doctor was waiting to find me sober to take it off, he was afraid I'd break my toe, I won't forget, he left it on weeks longer than he should have, so one afternoon, I was taking my dog for a walk, in fact, I had been down to New Orleans, and since Easter, my husband had to go to New York again, so he took me home to my family, and left me there for the month that he was away, and that month, for some reason or other, I didn't take a
[00:45:21]
walk down the street, and I got back to Houston, the week following Easter, you know, so darn proud of myself, I didn't know what to do, and Frank went to work that day, and I started in drinking, and about three o'clock in the afternoon, I had to take my dog for a walk, and I don't walk straight sober, but you'll see me when I'm drunk, so we weaved down the street, and a cruising car passed, and I guess they wanted to take me home, and I got a little bit sassy, so they had me in the car, and the dog, and we brought the dogs home, and they took me to jail, just plain drunk, nothing else, not a second seat, so I was completely, I was furious, and I was as drunk as I could be, and I think I must have gone and just saw a haywire on the inside, when I realized where I was, I know now later, they called my husband right away, and told him that the new jail wasn't any place for me, but they were afraid to leave me in this house by myself, and that I was in such foul shape, that they thought if he left me for a couple hours to cool off, it would be all right, so Frank came down for me, and during that time that I was in the jail, I remember going back home drunk, and just crying, and oh, just sobbing my heart out, and I now know that I just was so completely baffled by myself, my behavior, getting in situations like that, I just didn't know which way to turn, but when the policeman came to get me out of the cell, there was this bar gate, and my husband was signing this ticket, you know, he paid the five dollar drunk sign, and I was still mad, and I looked at him, and I said, don't you sign anything in this place, you see, I was going to sue the city of Houston for doing that to Mrs. Ellis, sorry, but Frank looked around at me, and he said, Esther, he said, remember, you're in jail, you're not at home, and I never, ever want anybody to look at me like that again, it was just about two or three days after that, that he came in my room one morning, I know I didn't dry sober breath until then, I was frightened to death, and it was all this subconscious fear, I didn't know what was wrong, but I just couldn't stay sober, and Frank came in this morning, and he threw a magazine on the bed, and he had held on to it before, because I had resented everything he had ever done to try to help, but he was afraid to let me read this article, he was afraid maybe I wouldn't want what the article had to offer me.
A friend of ours had sent it to him, and it was the Saturday Evening Post article of AA, he said, I'm not going to let you, but when I leave, read this article, and he said, if you want to try this, I'll go with you all the way, but he said, if you don't, you're going to have to go home, because I cannot sit by and watch you destroy yourself any longer. So when he left, I had to shake, and I can't see very good, even with my glasses on, and when I have a hangover, I can't see at all, I just can't read, I can't do anything.
These people could read detective stories to sober up, but I'm not me. I had to look at pictures, and they had to be great big pictures, but I thought, well, I just have to have a cup of drinks for my eyes to focus. So I got a cup of drinks inside, underneath my belt, and put on my specs, and started reading, and from the moment that I read what AA had to say, I wanted it. I don't know if something happened. To me, after a little over 14 years in AA, there is so much awe about it, I would love to be able to say, tell you all how and why it works.
I would like to be able to define it, but to me, it's a growing life, and it escapes definition. It is something that, it can't be taught, it has to be taught.
[00:50:05]
It's believing spirits setting other believing spirits afire, and I think the most wonderful thing about it is, it can be achieved in any walk of life, because the achievement is not ours, it is God's. And I believe that there is no situation too desperate, none too difficult, not any unhappiness too great, to be overcome in this life-saving venture, Alcoholics United. Ann wishes me to inform you that she forgot to mention that due to the lease we have on the property here, we agreed to no smoking in the opera house, so please conform.
You know, we're 20 years old now, and some of us are frustrated that we haven't got a million members. Well, some 65 or 70 years ago, my friends, there was a certain Dr. Trudeau in New York City, who contracted what was then called consumption. And when you contracted consumption in those days, you made out your will, and you prepared to die. That was it. He had it, I think he got it from his brother.
He made out his will, he sold his practice, and he moved up to Saranac Lake in a little red cottage, fishing cottage. That little cottage is still there, it's a shrine. Trudeau was a man of deep spiritual nature, out of courage, a man of detail. He kept a daily diary of what he did, and he worked out a therapy of rest, relaxation, freedom from worry and diet and so on. And he arrested successfully his disease and knew how he did it. And from that humble beginning, we have the tremendous TB associations of today. I don't know how many TB hospitals in your state have been closed, but we've had a lot of them closed up in our state.
It's rapidly shrinking as a problem. Now that's 65 or 70 years ago, my friends. And nowadays when somebody goes before the portable x-ray and he finds a spot, they send him somewhere else to confirm it. And when they tell him he's got it, he goes out and he does what they tell him. That day will come for us, my friends. As you and I live, we will pass the word along by our example that here is how to arrest alcoholism and be happy about it. You are the living example, and we are the pioneers in this business. A hundred years from now, they will bless you.
Remember, you have a message to carry. We've got a man here from Beverly Hills, California today with a message. He's carried it in lots of places. He originated in the Midwest, Kentucky-Indiana border. He did his preliminary drinking out here in the Midwest. He took his post-graduate course in alcoholism out in California. He graduated out there, and he also had his disease arrested out there. He's been a very popular speaker at many states and regional conventions, and I'm sure I want to sit over there in his seat now because this is a blind spot here and I haven't been able to hear the speakers myself, but I understand you can hear them over in Chuck's chair.