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Source: 1960 Long Beach International Convention – 1960 Long Beach Int. Marty M first Women in AA.mp3 File: 1960-long-beach-international-convention-1960-long-beach-int-marty-m-first-women-in-aa.mp3 Duration: 00:51:25
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I'm always getting up and introducing myself as a happy, grateful alcoholic. And I mean it. But tonight I'm terrifically happy and terrifically grateful that fate found it so that I could take part in this meeting. Louder? Oh boy, you asked for it. Anyway, I'm very happy to be here and I'm glad that you're all putting up with me. And I realize the lifelong ambition. You know, us alcoholics, at least me, let's speak for me, we got a lot of egotism.
And we have to do a little surrendering of it when we come to AA. But AA gives us a little chance to exercise it now and then. And I realize an ambition of ten years to read the Twelve Steps to a large audience. And I'm very grateful for that. Now, the reason I introduced Chuck first, I wanted to introduce the elder AA next. And I would like you to meet, and I met her the first time myself tonight, the first woman who made the AA program.
Number one. You know, Chuck says there's two kinds of drunks, and I agree with him, male and female. Let me now introduce our first gal, the Queen, Marty Mann. I don't know why they always give us gals the tough jobs in this life. It was hard enough having to follow a talk like that. And to have you greet me this way robs me of what little voice I have left after yakking all day long. For me, this is a very wonderful moment.
I wasn't able to get to the 20th anniversary in St. Louis, and for many months I've been planning to come to this one. I don't know which of the many things I have felt today has most made me feel that it alone would have been worth the trip. But I guess probably it was when we were all sitting out there at the stadium. And I looked around and saw nothing but a sea of faces on all sides. And overhead, the most beautiful sky I've ever seen.
And here we were, we people, who were greater prisoners than any people have ever been. Sitting out under the open sky, silently singing praises to our liberty. And hearing it described by the man who made it possible. For me, it was one of the greatest moments of my life. And I am deeply happy at being given the opportunity to participate in one of these meetings. But I wasn't given perfect freedom about it.
I was told in no uncertain terms, although they said they were asking, that what was wanted of me tonight was that I should tell my story. Well, I've been around quite a while, you know, and I'm awful sick of that story. And I'm awful sick of that story. But I will sacrifice myself nobly and do the very best I can with it. I'm not going to keep you here all night, so I'm not going into every horrible detail.
But I'll try and hit on enough high points or low points to make you realize that I have a perfect right to be here. And first I'm going to tell you of my own mistaken ideas, when I was first in AA, of the kind of a drunk I was. I used to get up at meetings and say, well, of course, I was a normal drinker for the first ten years. And then it began to change. Well, time passed, and a little more and a little more of the honesty part of the program
[00:05:01]
began to seep through my thick head. And I think also, as one practices this program, one begins to gain a little insight into oneself, and also to learn a little bit about alcoholism and the people who have it. And I began to look back at my early drinking with some suspicion, and to recognize that it was quite a stretch of the imagination to call it normal. Like most young Americans, I began to drink when I was about seventeen.
And the person who did this was a girl who had been inordinately shy. Not necessarily disliking people, as Chuck claims he did, I wonder if he really did, but afraid of them. Quite unable to communicate comfortably. Quite unable to feel a part of a group. Rather inclined, as a matter of fact, to either sit like a bump in a log or hog the whole show. Neither one makes you very popular, you know. Couldn't find that middle road.
Couldn't be comfortable. But I discovered immediately, when I first drank, that this did the trick. It made me comfortable. It dissolved the barriers. It loosened my tongue, but not too much. And it made me able to feel a part of the group and to participate in the group. Well, for a young girl whose major ambition, and I think this is universal and not just mine, is to be popular, this is the elixir of life.
This is God's greatest gift. But I also discovered, at that same time, that one small drink didn't do it. It took two or three or four. And then the miracle happened. This was right at the beginning. And so I also realized, being an unusually intelligent young woman, that there had to be a way found to shortcut this delay. Because when my date arrived to pick me up, I was a kind of zombie for a while, until he got his flask out.
I'm a prohibition baby. And I could get those two or three or four until we arrived where we were going and they were served. And this was too long a wait. So, as I said before, being unusually intelligent and belonging to a home where my father had what it needed to get himself a very good cellar before prohibition went into effect, I immediately went to that cellar and had my two or three or four before I went out.
Seventeen or eighteen, mind you. Now, I didn't tell everybody I did this, because it seemed to me such a normal thing for anyone with any sense that I assumed everybody else did it too. And I had no idea that this was different. I also had no idea that it didn't take two or three or four rather than one for everybody. You know, you don't sit around discussing these details with your friends. Very shortly something else became apparent.
Not quite at the beginning, but after a year or two. I gained a reputation, very enviable in those times, of being able to drink more than anybody else and carry it, not show it. I was awfully proud of this, but I wasn't half as proud as my bows were. They boasted about it all the time. Do you know that it wasn't until I'd been in AA for a number of years that it dawned on me that if you had the reputation of being able to drink more than anybody else, then you had to have drunk more than anybody else all the time?
Do you call that normal? Well, here were three signs, quite clear signs, of something that wasn't quite right, that wasn't like everybody else, that was different.
[00:10:00]
But I didn't recognize them or know they were there. I wouldn't have known what they were if I had realized they were different. And I didn't actually realize until a long while after I had recovered from alcoholism that I was showing the early signs of alcoholism the moment I began to drink. Oh, it's true. I had ten years without getting into any trouble, any particular trouble, any serious trouble.
But then people who are young and healthy and strong, I think, can get away with considerable excess, which they might not do twenty years later so easily. And I think the fact that I didn't get into any particular trouble is no indication that I was not at least an incipient alcoholic from the word go. But ten years passed and then in the course of one year a number of things happened. I started having blackouts.
Curiously enough, the first one came very shortly after I'd had a concussion, so it was awfully easy to attribute it to that. But when the doctor told me that that was completely healed and there should be no effects from it and I went on having the blackouts, it became rather mysterious and very disturbing. And the next thing that happened was that hangovers set in. I hadn't had any particularly before that.
And I didn't work up to them gradually through normal hangovers to bad hangovers to the kind we have that deserve a different name altogether. I went whoops from none to the horrors. I arrived at the point where I couldn't function in the morning until I had a drink. And I mean function. Couldn't brush my teeth. Couldn't comb my hair. Couldn't manage to put lipstick on, which takes a fairly steady hand, you gents.
This is something you don't have to worry about. You can go to a barber and get shaved. We can't go to a cosmetician to have our lipstick put on before we go out. We've got to do it. And if you can't do it, well, it's pretty rough. So the morning drink became a physical necessity in order to function. And finally, for the first time, I began to show the signs of my drinking. I had been able for years to out-drink anyone else, to be the one to drive the car, to show no signs of thickened speech or wavering steps or rubber legs or any of the outward signs.
This was why I had my reputation. And in the course of this year, my 27th year, I developed rubber legs. I never did get the thick speech, even to the very end. And very obvious physical signs of being drunk, and I didn't like it. As a matter of fact, I didn't like any of these things. I didn't like the blackouts the least bit. And there was something else that began to happen that I didn't like, and that was passing out at the beginning of the evening just when the fun was beginning.
Why people think that alcoholics have fun being alcoholics, I'll never know. You ruin all your own fun. I can remember party after party that I'd look forward to for weeks with everybody else. Determined that, as Chuck said, this time it was going to be different. And, of course, having to prepare for the party because, in the first place, I had to get going that morning, and then I had to keep a level all day, and then I had to have a few more to get myself together to go to the party, and I would arrive at it and pass out ten minutes later and spend the evening under the coats.
And never know what had happened at the party. And this is fun? Well, it wasn't for me. After that rapid change in that year, I hit the skids very fast. They tell me, the experts, some of whom I work with, that the downward progression of women is actually faster than for men. It was in my case and in many of my friends. And it wasn't very long before everyone that knew me was beginning… Everyone that knew me was beginning to speak to me about my drinking.
[00:15:02]
I was living abroad at this time, in London. It's a very large city. In fact, it's the largest city in the world. And the nature of my work was such that I knew many different groups of people. And so when the particular group I spent most of my time with began to speak to me about my drinking and wonder why I didn't drink like I used to and why didn't I do something about it and why didn't I cut it down and I was turning into a drunk, naturally I had to move on. I couldn't be around those people anymore.
So it was quite easy to transfer to another group that didn't know the details and greeted me warmly. And after a short time began saying the same things and once again I had to move on. Well, London may be the largest city in the world, but it didn't take me very long to go through it like a dose of salt. I ran out of people too. That's not so tough for an alcoholic. You still have geography. And I began that.
At this point, I was beginning to be convinced that there was something dreadfully, seriously, appallingly wrong. But I didn't know what it was. In all these years, by now I was approaching 30, I had never once heard the word alcoholism or the word alcoholic. Oh, I heard the word drunk and worse words describing that condition. And usually the final blow that made me leave a group was when they used the word drunkard to me.
But I had never heard that there was a condition called alcoholism from which people suffered. I'd never heard it put in terminology that indicated it was an illness. I didn't know there was such a thing. And since my own behavior was utterly incomprehensible to me in any logical, sensible, sane terms, I concluded that it must be insane. And I started going to doctors to ask what it was. I received no satisfactory answers.
I was told I was having a nervous breakdown. I was told I had an anxiety neurosis. I was told I was merely working too hard and burning the candle at both ends. God knows that was true. Burning the candle at both ends, I mean. I was told that the life that I led must be broken off. Well, I did that. I found another life. I moved to another part of the country. I gave up my business and I went to a small town, a village in England to run a hotel.
And I decided that I would stop drinking, at least for a period of time. It never occurred to me that I'd have to stop forever. And so when I arrived in this country town, I did stop. We all know, of course, that even at the bitter end of alcoholism, it is possible for an alcoholic to stop altogether. What is not possible is to cut your drinking down and to drink moderately. So I did stop. Well, the most appalling things happened.
I had the chills and the sweats. I had the shakes and the horrors. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. I couldn't even speak. This was serious. I went at once to the local doctor and told him my symptoms, and he said, Well, I think you must have some tropical disease. You'd better go to bed and take this medicine. So I went to bed and took the medicine, and in three days I was just as right as rain. And he was convinced he was a genius.
I had never stopped before, so I didn't know what happened when you suddenly stopped. I learned later what it was. Nowadays they give it a very fancy name. It's called withdrawal symptoms. They're pretty rough, too. I say these things to tell you how little I knew. And I wasn't alone in this utter lack of knowledge. Very few people knew anything at all about alcoholism in the mid-1930s when this was.
It was a little after this that I did my first suicide attempt.
[00:20:03]
It didn't work. And a few years later, another. Smashed me up pretty badly, but I lived through that one, too. Thank God. Meanwhile, the dissent became speedier and speedier. I couldn't work. I stayed with friends here and there until they found reasons to tell me they needed the room. And finally I came to the conclusion that my insanity was so hopeless and so deep-seated that I was probably going to be locked up forever anyway, and if that was going to happen, I'd like it to be in my own country, and I came home to America.
I came home seeking help, desperately hoping that there might be an answer for my kind of insanity, not knowing what kind it was, not knowing where to turn. But I still had friends, mainly because I'd been away for seven years and they didn't know what had happened in the interim. And I got names of doctors, and in the course of the next year, during which I never drew a sober breath, I visited a number of psychiatrists and psychoanalysts for my insanity.
I didn't know enough about this to lie about it. When in the course of an interview they asked me about my drinking, I told the truth. I told them the way I drank and how frightened it made me. I told them about the blackouts. I told them how I loathed behaving this way, how I didn't want to do it and couldn't seem to help it. And in each case they gave me the same advice, for I was broke, incidentally.
They said the only thing they could suggest was that I commit myself to a state institution. And when I asked for how long, they wouldn't answer, or if they did, they said, indefinitely. This confirmed my worst fears. I was sure that I was hopelessly insane. And so I would leave their offices and head for the nearest bar and order as many doubles as I had money in my purse to pay for and drink them as fast as I could lift them to my lips to forget what I had been told.
These responses to my need are not, in my opinion, an indictment of psychiatry. I think, on the contrary, that I was exceedingly lucky. I hit seven or eight completely honest, decent men who would not take me on under false pretensions. They didn't know what to do about alcoholics in the mid-1930s. They didn't even use the term in talking about the problem. And they told me honestly that there was nothing they could do.
Finally, one, the eighth, said that I wanted so desperately to get well that he thought perhaps I had a chance. He also told me that, in his opinion, only one in a hundred had such a chance. But maybe I was that one. And he put me in a hospital. So I spent seven months relieved to be undercover, relieved to be unable to be on the streets, relieved to be safe. It didn't matter much to me where I was, for I wasn't in this world anymore anyway.
Something had been happening in these years, something that it was a more complete cutting off from communication even than I had naturally had in the beginning. This was more than a barrier. Later, in trying to describe it, I said it was like being inside a glass box. You could see through it. You could hear through it. People could see you and hear you. But you couldn't touch or feel anything, and nothing could really touch you.
You were a prisoner. I was a prisoner, locked up, incommunicado. There is no greater loneliness in the world than this kind of prison that we and our alcoholism create for ourselves. And that's where I was. I'm not going to dwell on these except to say that because I wanted so desperately
[00:25:00]
to have more than just the incarceration I was getting in this first hospital, it was made possible for me to go to a sanitarium where I got what I wanted so desperately, which was psychiatric help, intensive treatment over many months. Remember, I had sought this desperately for some years. It was my last hope. It was my only hope. I knew that my drinking had something to do with it. I didn't know what or how or why.
I also had landed in the lap of a psychiatrist who was far ahead of his time, for he said, you are the kind of person who can't drink at all. Well, he was the only psychiatrist there that said that. All my friends were being taught how to drink normally who were going to the other doctors, so I just figured I had the wrong one. Always unlucky. Besides, I questioned him quite closely on his own drinking, and it seemed he didn't like it.
Naturally, he wanted to stop me. I could not accept this statement that I could never drink at all. I couldn't accept any of the reasons that were given to me, and I couldn't accept the possibility of a gray, gray, gray future. I had never known people who didn't drink. I knew I didn't like teetotalers. With whom would I spend the rest of my life? What would I do? Where would I go? I knew no other way of life.
This was an impossible sentence, a sentence of death. And so I could not accept it. And despite the fact that this was my last hope, my only hope, I occasionally drank. And, of course, it was always disastrous, and I always drank too much, and there was always terrible trouble. And yet my doctor would take me back, and with me we would try, he would try to find why. We never did find why. We never did find the answer.
He was a patient man. He kept on trying for almost a year. And then after a particularly bad drunk, he said, this is the last. I'm afraid I can't help you. If it happens again, you might as well leave. And so my last hope looked as if it might disappear. But before this happened, something else happened. He was given a manuscript of a book to read, because the people who had written it were seeking comments from both clergymen and doctors.
It seemed that they hoped to get new people from these two sources, and they wanted nothing in the book that would be offensive. And my doctor read that manuscript, and he called me in, and he said, I have something here that I think may help you. There is a group of people like you, and they seem to have found an answer, and I want you to take this and read it. I was wildly excited, and I took it, and I rushed to my room, and I began to read.
And there, for the first time, I saw a name for what ailed me. It was called alcoholism, and the book said it was a disease. And the book said, as Chuck told you, that it was a disease that was an allergy of the body coupled with an obsession of the mind. And the book said they'd found a way to do something about the obsession of the mind, but nobody could do anything about this bodily difference because they didn't know what it was.
And here, for the first time, I saw a reason why I could not drink and could never drink again. My body wouldn't let me. It had nothing to do with my thinking or my mind. My body wouldn't let me. And this I could believe, and this I could accept. And so I was wildly excited. And then my hopes came tumbling down, for I ran smack into the word God. Not once, but a hundred times. It was all over that darn book.
Every other one. was all over that darn book. Every other word had a capital letter in front of it. And this
[00:30:00]
was not for me. Intellectually proud and arrogant, self-sufficient, I had always thought, well free of the opiate of the people, and other similar phrases that were in vogue in the twenties and thirties. I thought this was self-hypnosis and a lot of nonsense, and I rushed to tell my doctor so. He said, never mind, just go on reading the book. Well, I dragged my heels and I read very slowly. I read just enough to have good material to argue with him about. We had some fine sessions. He was a patient man, I repeat. He always said, just go back and read some more. Well, I didn't have much choice. I couldn't do anything else, so I read some more. But weeks passed, and I hadn't got very far into this book, when one of those things happened that I don't think we planned, and I don't think come from human sources. A crisis arose in my family, and I felt responsible. I felt it was because I was where I was, and certainly there wasn't a thing in the world I could do about it. And in this crisis, I felt an anger such as I had never felt. And I was in my room, and on my bed was this drab manuscript that I had to read, open. I wasn't paying any attention. I was seething with rage. Well, you know about alcoholics. An alcoholic plus anger equals a drunk. So I was thinking about going into the village and getting two bottles, and getting good and drunk, and showing them. I don't know why it is that we are so determined to hurt ourselves. When we get angry at somebody else, we pick up a hammer and bash our own heads in. Is this sane? Perhaps I was right all the time about insanity. But in any case, in my anger, in which I was not seeing anything in particular, my eye did fall on the book. And in the middle of the page, it seemed to me, a sentence stood out as if it were carved in black, raised letters. And that sentence read, We cannot live with anger. And I cannot tell you or anyone else to this day why that particular sentence was the battering ram that broke the barriers in me against surrender and against acceptance of God. But it was. The next thing I knew, I was on my knees beside the bed, and I must have been there quite a while, for the bedspread was wet with my tears. And I presumed that I had been prayed, although I hadn't done that for many, many, many years. But mainly what I felt was an incredible and extraordinary sense of freedom. It wasn't exactly a presence, and it wasn't a wind such as Bill had. It was a sense of freedom so great that there weren't any walls on that room, that nothing could touch me.
Nothing could hold me down, or nothing could hold me in. Nothing could imprison me. I suppose that glass box I'd lived in for so many years had dissolved or shivered into a million pieces. It wasn't there anymore. And I looked out the little window in that room, which was on the third floor, and I knew I could walk out that window and keep on walking. The sky was bluer, the grass was greener, everything looked different. It was an extraordinary sensation. But the old mind was still there, too. And I also thought, this is it. Now I am not.
And I rushed downstairs where the doctor's offices were and battered on my doctor's door, and he let me in. And when he saw me, he said, come in and sit down. Tell me what's happened. And he asked me many questions, and I answered. And when I was through, he said, in effect, I believe you have had an authentic spiritual experience. You needn't be afraid of it. This is a good thing. And finally he said, now go back and read that book.
So meekly I went upstairs and I took the book and I started at the beginning again. And you know, somebody switched that damn thing while I was gone. This was a different book. I didn't have any quarrel with this one. I sopped it up as if I were a dry sponge.
[00:35:05]
I read it through so fast I had to start over again. I read it through time after time. I knew chunks of it by heart. I walked around during those days and weeks, I am told, looking as if I had come from another world, radiant. I was walking on air. I was sitting on one of those pink clouds that many of us know. The A.A. Honeymoon. But that was sufficient. Why should this be spoiled by people? I'd always been afraid of people I didn't know, strangers, groups. Only alcohol made it possible for me to mix with people I didn't know intimately or even to be comfortable with those I did know intimately.
So I was very reluctant to make any move about this and quite a bit of time passed when my good doctor, who was not only patient but canny, picked up the phone when I was in his office one day and called New York and made a date for me. And he said, you're going to such and such an address tomorrow night at seven o'clock and meet so and so and so and so and they're going to take you to meet the rest of these people. Well, this was horrible. But there was no way out. At least I couldn't see any. So in I went.
And for the first time I met some of these people. It was quite startling. I don't know what I'd expected, but I didn't expect what I found. A charming couple with a very good looking extra man for me. Very nice dinner. Cocktails with no alcohol in them served before dinner to make me feel comfortable, I suppose. That was all dandy. But then I was told we were going on a subway to Brooklyn. For a long time I hadn't liked subways or heights. I'd had a kind of claustrophobia anyway. And I always thought that Brooklyn was a place you got lost in. However, we got on the subway and we went to Brooklyn and I was more terrified every minute. We met another member of AA on the subway and he said afterwards he'd never seen such a wild eyed woman. I don't blame him. I felt that way.
We arrived at a brownstone house in Brooklyn and as the door opened it seemed to me there were more people in there than are in this room. Must have been all of 30 people. And I ran upstairs and stayed there. A charming woman came up and put her arm around me and said, we want you downstairs. Her name was Lois. And I went down. And instantly men surrounded me asking me questions about my drinking. The amount and how long since I'd had a drink. All kinds of things. And to my own amazement I was answering them easily, comfortably, and absolutely truthfully. And I'd never seen them before. This couldn't be.
And we went on to discuss other things about drinking. And I also discovered that I practically didn't have to finish a sentence in my answer. They could finish it for me. And then I discovered I could finish their sentences. What was this? I'd never communicated like this with human beings before in my life. And I didn't even know their names. This was my introduction into the fellowship that we find in AA.
The companionship. The kind of communication that we have that most people never find in their whole lives with anyone. And this was the first great dividend that I had from AA. There was someone else in the sanitarium, a young man that I knew well, to whom I had passed on the book and whom I had tried to persuade to come with me to this meeting so I'd be supported. But he lost his nerve. He said, you go first and tell me what it's like. So that night I stayed in town and very early, much too early the next morning, he called from the country where the sanitarium was and he said, what was it like?
And I could only say one thing. Granny, I said, we aren't alone anymore. I have never felt really alone since. I feel quite frankly that I owe my sobriety and my happiness in AA as much to Dr. Harry Thiebaud, my psychiatrist, whom you will hear tomorrow, as to anyone in the world.
[00:40:09]
I hope he's here tonight. Sometimes we in AA are a little rough on psychiatrists. Some of us have had rather unpleasant experiences with some of them. But remember, they are like drunks. They're not all exactly alike. Some of us, you know, remain heels for quite a long time. In fact, some of us never get over it. Some of us are bright and some of us are dull. Some of us are charming and some of us are not so charming.
Some of us are very good and some of us are very bad. We are all kinds because we're people. So are psychiatrists. And when they're good people, when they want to help us, they can be of tremendous help. We owe them a great deal in many ways. And I, for one, feel that without the very careful grounding and guiding that I had at the hands of a good psychiatrist, I would not be here. And so I found my way back to the human race that night in Brooklyn when I met AA face-to-face for the first time.
And as time went on, I felt more and more comfortable. I didn't have it as easy as I might have. I haven't got a clean record. I had three relapses in my first year and a half. One very bad one, two very mild ones. I don't recommend them as a way to learn, but I did manage to learn from them and to come back and to stay with it. And here, too, I had the help both of my, all my sponsors, all those very wonderful men that I met that first night, and especially Bill and also Lois.
For I had as much help from Lois, who is a non-alcoholic, as I did from the alcoholics. Everyone helped everyone. This seemed for a long while to be enough. And then I began to realize, particularly, I think, because of my own difficulties and my own relapses, that it wasn't enough, that the fellowship and the things I thought I had done about the Twelve Steps were not enough. I found that much of what I had been doing had not gone deep enough into me.
I began to look at the Twelve Steps with a different eye. I came to see, for instance, that only one of them mentions drinking. But first, that all the others were about me and what kind of a person I was and what I was going to do about it. And I began to see that sobriety alone was not what AA was all about. But in fact, you might say, I'd been got into this in false pretenses. I'd come here to find out how not to drink again. And I suddenly discovered that I had to stay away from drinking in order to practice the Twelve Steps backwards.
That the Twelve Steps were not about drinking, but about me, deep into the heart of me, deep into the depths of me. What had I started out to be? What had God intended me to be? Could I get back through the distortions and find that spot where my growth had stopped? Could I unstick the needle that had been stuck in a groove from the time I started drinking and let it begin to turn again so that growth could take place? And so I started to work on me.
And I found that working with other people was the best mirror I could use. Particularly if I found a quality in someone that I couldn't stand, that irritated me out of my life, that I thought, how can this person be like this when it makes people so mad? That would be what was wrong with me. That's why it irritated me so much. And I discovered that through these other people, I was able to be myself.
to see. And I discovered also that it was possible to love even those you didn't like,
[00:45:09]
and to try to help people whom you might once have turned away from, not in disgust but in boredom or annoyance or what have you. And I began to learn that life was a constant and fascinating business of trying to grow, and that we who have come into AA have been given one of the finest set of tools that have ever been devised for this purpose. And furthermore, we have been set into a school, a kindergarten if you like, where we learn by doing what have been some of our worst problems. Interpersonal relations, getting along with other people, being liked for ourselves, not because we've bought approval, and liking in return.
These have been some of our deepest problems. So where are we placed to solve them? Right in the middle of a lot of other people who have the very same problems. Of course we have difficulties in our groups. Of course we have rows and fights and business meetings are enough to drive you to drink. We're learning on each other, but we're also learning with each other, together. And finally I found that the faith that came to me so suddenly and so startlingly that day was something I could use because I had discovered my relationship to my Creator, that I was indeed an instrument, that I was a part of this plan, a small part but a part, that I belonged indeed. I had rejoined the human race and the human race is a divine plan. And I had a hand that I could hold when things were rough and they still are. This isn't a fairy story you know. It doesn't end happily ever after just because you cross a threshold marked AA.
You run into the same problems the rest of the world has. The only difference between you now and you then is that now you can face them. Now you can grapple with them. Now you can cope with them. And now you've learned to be flexible and roll with the punches. You aren't knocked out every time the least little problem comes up. You have helped in meeting them. And finally I found what love really was. That it wasn't the profane love and being in love which was all that I'd ever known about. That it was a great welling up of gratitude, a great welling up of affection, a great welling up of compassion, of understanding, of warmth, and somehow a feeling of being together and belonging. This is the kind of thing love means to me now. And I discovered that you have to give it to get anything from it. You have to give it without any thought of getting any back.
And the more you do the better you feel. These when you add them up are to me the greatest gifts that life can give. If we had only these and nothing else we would be rich beyond telling. But on top of all that we have been given a gift that few people have. The gift of really helping our suffering brothers and sisters. We can do it. We can do it better than anyone else can do it. And so we have been blessed above men and given something so wonderful that I for one thank God every day a hundred times that I am an alcoholic recovered in AA. Thank you.
Let's give Eddie a hand for taking the show over too.
[00:50:04]
Thank you. Well I thank the God that I know come to know for allowing me to be in the position to be here tonight to take part in this meeting. And Dick H. from Denver it's too late now. We've had it. There's another meeting right after this. Just as good. And I'll ask you all to repeat with me the prayer that we all love so well to close this meeting. Thank you everybody I love all of you. Our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.