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Source: 1955 St. Louis International Convention – 1955 St. Louis Wynn L of LA.mp3 File: 1955-st-louis-international-convention-1955-st-louis-wynn-l-of-la.mp3 Duration: 00:33:00
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We have a woman speaker on our program this afternoon. I haven't heard her talk before, and I'm suddenly looking forward to it. I know that as women talk, I probably, like every other woman alcoholic in the room, will share the same feelings, emotions, and thoughts that she expresses, and will mentally be saying, good work, Wynn, and I'm sure that's just what we'll get, a good message of how AA can help not only the man who has a drinking problem, but also the woman.
She's traveled a long ways to get here, and it gives me great pleasure to present Wynn Laws of North Hollywood, California. Wynn. Thank you, Helen, and thank you, Dick Green, for a wonderful message. We have a custom in my part of the country that I like very much, and I'm going to ask another favor of all of you this afternoon. When I say hi to you, will you say hi, Wynn, back to me? Hi, everybody. You see, this has a great deal of meaning for me, not only because we do it in California, but it seems to me that I'm rather completing a circle in some way.
For I'm a Missourian, and I graduated from St. Elizabeth's Academy in St. Louis, so I've come home another way. I'm one of those who very seriously believe that alcoholism is a sickness, and I stand before you convinced that my drinking was but a symptom of my sickness. I believe that the drinking was a symptom, the bottle symbol, like the book says, because I know that all my life I thought like a practicing alcoholic long before I ever took a drink of anything with alcohol in it, for I am an out-and-out neurotic.
I started drinking when I was 23 years old, and it seems to me on reflection that I deliberately turned to alcohol at that time. I felt very superior to people who drank up to then, and I feel now that I had avoided it because of fear of it, for I come from a long line of alcoholic and neurotic people, and I've seen what alcohol could do to people that I had known, how their personalities would change and how they would become people that I didn't know at all.
And then I'm sure, too, that my egocentricity had something to do with this, because, you see, I didn't want to ever lose command of the situation, and I was afraid that alcohol would make it impossible for me to run the lives of everybody around me and have utter and complete control of every given situation, and I didn't want that to happen. But I turned to it because I couldn't go on living sober any longer, because at 23 I was just as sick and just as desperate as I was at 33-and-a-half when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous.
But at 23 I had no place to go with my sickness. You see, if I had gone to a psychiatrist at that time and had I been able to be honest with him, I'm sure that he could not have told me that this pain that I lived with all the time was a spiritual lack, but UNAA told me this right from the beginning. And if I had been able to go to the church and tell them how I felt, I'm sure that they could not have pointed out to me that my sickness was within myself, nor could they have shown me the need for the self-analysis that UNAA had taught me is vital if I'm going to survive. And so it seems to me that I turned to alcohol to run away.
[00:05:12]
I found courage with alcohol. I found courage for emotions and feelings that I'd never allowed myself before in my life. I'd always been afraid to love, afraid of rejection, for I'd known rejection. But I found the courage for love with alcohol. I found the love for darn near anything. I could feel and love and emote all over the place. Because if I got in danger of any pain, I could always get me a crock and run away to that little private world that was all my own and nobody could get to me and near to touch me.
And I could be all the things that I'd always wanted to be with a crock. All my daydreams became the reality with a crock. And I got married to an alcoholic. We had some fun for a while with our drinking. Maybe it's the insidiousness of alcohol. We blacked out in our crowd, too, from drinking now and again. But we always had a real good excuse when this happened to us. I didn't have any dinner last night, you know. Nice gals always had one that was even better than the cell.
And then there's the old, my system's out of order. I always loved this one. We gave any reason in the world except the real one that we'd had too much to drink and we'd got drunk and we'd blacked out. And my husband was in the Navy Reserve. And when the war came along, he was one of the first to go overseas. And you see, I had not matured emotionally in all these years I'd lived. And I reacted to his going away exactly as I had reacted to my parents' divorce when I was seven. I was rejected.
This was a very personal scene with me. And why wouldn't this be so? You see, my sickness of alcoholism is self-obsession, self-absorption. Why wouldn't I be only concerned with what happened to when? I had no knowledge of the fact that all over the world thousands of women were losing their husbands to war. I was only concerned with my own problems, full of self-pity, full of resentment. I began to drink alone nights and weekends in my home, and I said, I'll only drink in my home alone. For I knew what happened to women in bars. I'd read it in the paper. That wouldn't happen to me, I said.
But I'm an alcoholic, and of course I had to go to bars. And I got drunk in bars, and I let my inhibitions down, as they say. And all kinds of things happened to me in bars. I can believe that girl's story. And if any of you girls out there don't know what happens to women in bars, you see me after the meeting, and I'll bring you up to date. And whatever fun there'd been, and my drinking was gone. I was ashamed and humiliated and sick at heart. And my life became one of rationalizing, kidding myself, trying to keep a picture of myself as I wanted to be in my sober moments.
And then drinking as hard and fast as I could for utter oblivion, to relax a little bit from it, the effort of that phony front. And all the fun was gone. And my husband came back from overseas, and we were divorced. And then I went into very serious drinking. And with good excuse, I thought. For you see, I was such a past master at kidding myself by this time, that I could convince myself I'd sat out a war and waited for this man to come home, and what had happened to these wasted years.
[00:10:00]
And I'd never known self-pity and resentment like I knew then. And I was drinking on my job. I'd learned to sustain myself but shut through that eight hours, living for the moment that I could get off the job and to the crock and black out. And inside, I was scared to death. For you see, I was so aware that I couldn't stop drinking. In those flashes of reality that I guess maybe we all had to face from time to time, I'd had to face the fact that I could not stop drinking.
And I knew that I might lose my job any time. Maybe I wouldn't be able to hold any job any longer. Or maybe, and this was worse for me, maybe I wouldn't care whether I had a job or not. And this scared me. And about that time, I met an engineer who had three children. And I thought if I married this man and I took the responsibility of these children, it would keep me sober. And I got married for the fourth time.
This goes to a rather cryptic comment from one of my better AA friends at home. They say I've always been a cinch for this program, for I've always been interested in mankind. But I was just taking them one man at a time. And the kids did keep me sober for three weeks. And I went on, at least, there's no reason why it shouldn't be if I'm willing to do these simple things, my last drink. I've heard it said many times in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I believe it. There's one good drunk in every alcoholic's life, and that's the one that brings us into Alcoholics Anonymous.
And so I can tell you with full knowledge that eight years ago today I was drunk. How do I know? I came on the program in July, and I'd been drunk for 60 days around the clock before I attended my first meeting. So I was a cinch to have been drunk eight years ago today. I was drinking to die. Everything had closed in on me, the sense of futility, the loneliness, the lack of meaning, the lack of purpose, the failure to find the answer to why, why here at all.
The pain closed in on me. Because in the end, alcohol failed me too. And I was drinking to die. But my mother interfered after I went to bed, and she said something had to be done about this, that I must be sent to an institution, or I must be sent for a cure, or what would you suggest? And my husband at that time called a doctor in San Diego whose opinion I value highly and asked for his advice, and he suggested Alcoholics Anonymous.
And that night two AAs came to see me. They came knowing I was drunk, knowing I had not asked for it. And I'm not here to add a word to AAPAs. But I shall be grateful all my life for the people who took this program so seriously, that they were thinking in terms only of the spiritual benefits that they might derive from calling on a sick alcoholic, and not whether or not they'd get somebody so. I was nasty to those people. And they went away that night saying it's too bad, but obviously she isn't ready.
And yet the next night two more came. I was still drunk, and I was still obnoxious. The woman often refers to me in her pitch. She calls me that witch. She calls me that witch. This isn't a word she uses when we're by herself. But I'll give her credit, it rhymes. But this man that came, this little mick, God rest his soul, he talked a language that I could understand. He took a look at my bottle by the side of my bed, and there was about that much in a pint. And he said,
[00:15:26]
Bill, is that all the whiskey she's got? And when he said yes, he said, it's ten minutes to eight, you better get down and get her another crock, because that isn't going to last her all night. Now maybe this doesn't mean much to you, but to me this man spoke volumes with that simple thing, literally. This was the first time that I had ever known anybody who knew how I felt. He knew what it was like to wake up at four o'clock in the morning with a whiskey gone out of your body, getting sober and shaky and not a drop in the house to drink.
That it's two hours before the bar's open or the liquor store's open if you're able to get there, or if you've got the money to buy it, if you can get there. He knew that, he told me with that statement. He knew what it was like, too, he was saying to me, to have nightmares that were so bad that you were afraid to go to sleep. That you were afraid of that dream, that one particularly that came over and over and often brought you out into the middle of the floor before you knew what had happened and it made you so sore you could hardly walk for days. He knew what it was like to leave the light on all night.
Or to have your legs cramp, your toes feel like they're going to reach your heels in spite of all you can do and you have to get up and walk. He knew all that, he would say. But he knew, too, that I couldn't observe anything about this program and he suggested that I be sent to a sanitarium to be defogged, that I might come in time to make a sober decision about this for myself. And I attended my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting on the 25th of July, 1947, the Motion Picture Group in Hollywood, and thank God I've not had a drink since that time.
And because it's an ever-increasing problem in our vicinity anywhere, I'd like to say, too, that I take no sedation, nor do I take any narcotics. For this is a program that will equip me if I will use these principles in my daily living to walk through each day, face-to-face with whatever it may bring, without the need of an escape mechanism of this kind. To me, it's a program of total and absolute sobriety.
They told me when I went into that meeting that night that there were three things, in their opinion, I should remember. And I didn't know it then, but I came to know it. That they were giving me what our book calls the three essentials to the recovery from alcoholism. Honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness. But our book says that these three things are indefensible if we would recover. I know that somebody read something from a book that night. I didn't know what book. I know that two people spoke. I don't know what they said.
How can you hear? How can you learn from what's said to you when you've been drunk for 60 days around the clock? But it didn't make any difference that I didn't hear anything. You see, I took something away from me, with me anyway. Something that was enough to make me get through the balance of that night without having to take a drink. Something that was enough to make me get through the entire next day without having to take a drink of anything.
And this was something that I had sensed. Something that I had felt was present in the room. I had no name for it, and I've heard as many names as I suppose could be found in any copy of Webster. I don't think it matters what we call this thing that's present at an alcoholic synonymous meeting.
[00:20:05]
I just know that I sensed you had something that I'd like. And I had little quivers go through me the next day of anticipation. I could get back to another meeting. Maybe I would find that thing again in the room. And I walked into that second meeting by myself. It took the longest walk I'll ever take. And a woman rushed up to me with her hands extended and a beautiful smile on her face, and she said, Hi, my name's Myrtle. Are you new here, or are you visiting from another group?
And then she hastened on, it doesn't really matter, she said, we're happy to have you. Somehow I felt she meant it. She took me down and introduced me to other friends of hers, she said, and they made me feel wanted and a part of that meeting and a part of the group. And they included me, and it was my first sense of belonging anyplace for many, many years. And a man got up that night to talk, and he was shaking all over, never seen anybody shake like he did.
He had a rhythm to it that fascinated me, and I couldn't keep my eyes off him. I remember thinking he must be a palsy victim, but he wasn't, thank God. He said he was on a dry drunk, and I didn't know anything about a dry drunk. But you've never left anything up to me to figure out. You've taught me all the way, and this was no exception, for he went on to tell me what a dry drunk was. He said that a great emotional experience had come into his life, a tragedy, and that he had reacted exactly as a practicing alcoholic would, even to the shaking, except that he hadn't taken a drink.
He said he hadn't been around very long, but at every meeting that he had been to and everybody that he had talked with had told him this one all-important thing, they said, that at any time he was upset, if he would get to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting or if he would talk with another member of AA, that he could always depend on somebody being on the beam and helping him get his thinking straightened out.
And so he had weathered this thing, he said, without having to take a drink. And you were giving me real great news now, for you were saying you don't have to drink anymore. And in time you sent me to the Alcoholics Anonymous book, and I believe everything that's written in that book. I believe it when it says chapter five, how it works. I believe that it's the application of these principles into our daily lives to the best of our personal ability, just a day at a time, that get us sober and keep us sober.
And I believe with equal conviction that it is impossible to practice these principles to the best of our ability and still drink, because I don't think the two things are compatible at all. And so you gave me a God, for I am. Through the simple expedient of telling me you believed it necessary for me to find a power greater than myself, you put me to work at the business of practicing. And it seemed logical to me that I should take this word quite literally, for if I wanted to do anything at all, I'd have to learn how to do.
I mean, I'd have to practice. When I took up a musical instrument, I certainly would expect to practice. So I began the practice of believing, the practice of praying, the practice of turning my life and my world over to the care of God. Now I would say that I was acting as if he was and so he was. But I couldn't have said that then. I simply know that through this simple method that you prescribed for me,
[00:25:02]
I came to believe. And so I found my purpose. I found my meaning, all of it in alcoholics and I. Our book says that we practice these principles in order to equip ourselves to fulfill our purpose and that our purpose is to be of maximum service to God and to the people all around us. And so you see, you've given me everything that I've needed. Everything that I've needed I've got in alcoholics and I.
And it's mine to have and to hold. So long as I stay willing to strive continuously to improve my conscious contact with God as I understand him, and as long as I keep a constant contact with you, my fellow AA members, and as long as I practice these principles in all my affairs to the very best of my personal ability. And so you've given me everything I need. And when I get what I need in AA, I invariably find it was what I wanted all the time.
Thank you. Thank you, Wynne. You made me remember many things about my own alcoholic career, and you made me also remember many of the wonderful feelings and emotions I went through when I came into AA. You also reminded me of the fact, since you spoke so frequently of the book Alcoholics Anonymous, that there is a new and revised edition of that book, not of the text part but of the story part, which I am told is being sold outside.
Now, I wasn't asked to do that. I don't work for general service headquarters anymore, and it's not part of my job to plug the book. But I had a chance to look at it this morning, and I think it's a terrific job. And new book or old book, I know how very, very much it has meant to me. Here it is. That's my girl, Ann. You see, she always did help me out. It's meant the answer to the whole problem of my drinking.
Sure, you people have helped too. But there have been times when there was no one of you available, and I could pick up the book and read it. I think that it is one of the most important things we can do in the line of sponsorship is to see that the newcomer, somehow or other, gets a new book or gets a book, rather. In that connection, people sometimes say, well, gee, a guy coming into AA, he can't afford the price of a book.
Brother, he could always afford the price of a cord. So he can get it up on time, if no other way. And in there, he'll find the solution to all of his problems. I think you were awfully lucky, Winn, in the fact that it was your family who brought AA or suggested that AA come and contact you, because it was quite the contrary in my case. As a matter of fact, the very first time I ever heard of AA was in 1940, and it was long before anything had been published, like the Jack Alexander article which came out in 1941 telling the story of this movement.
I was married at the time, not to my present husband, who was a member of AA, incidentally. My husband, who is a member of AA, incidentally, and living in Washington, and this doctor down there was trying desperately to help me, but he didn't know what to do, he sent me to sanitarium, and sure, they'd dry me out, and they'd build me up physically, make me strong and well again, so that I could go out and eventually take that first drink,
[00:30:23]
which would start me off on that compulsive drinking that would end up, end me up back in the sanitarium, but at any rate, the doctor in desperation said to Bill, well nothing is working, why don't you send her to AA, and my husband asked and said, well what is it, what's AA, never heard of that thing, and the doctor said, well I haven't heard much about it, I wish I was taller, this annoys me, I haven't heard much about it, and he said I understand that there are a bunch of drunks who get together and keep each other sober, and remember, that's 15 years ago, nothing was known about it, and Bill said, uh-uh, she can't go there, she's bad enough now without getting mixed up with a bunch of drunks, and so you were indeed fortunate in having come in at a time, or having it brought to your attention at a time, when alcoholism was beginning to be known as a disease, and to be no longer considered just a moral stigma, and that the person who was so afflicted was no good and a bum, because that's the way it was back in those days, at least in my particular little circle.
Incidentally, I think that drinking with women alcoholics progresses very much more rapidly even than with men, because I know that a couple of years after this incident, in early 1942, my husband wouldn't have cared if I joined Alcoholics Anonymous, and I've often said that I'm sure he would have paid my way to join the Foreign Legion just as long as I'd get out of his life. It went, I got so bad, and so completely out of control.
It took me four years then before I came to AA for that help which I've had extended to me ever since, and like Wynn, I too found people who wanted to help, who'd been through the same thing, and above all, people who understood.