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Source: 1965 Toronto International Convention – 1965 Toronto IC Allies In The Field, Cora Louise, Bruce M, Ralph_D.mp3 File: 1965-toronto-international-convention-1965-toronto-ic-allies-in-the-field-cora-louise-bruce-m-ralphd.mp3 Duration: 00:11:52
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I'm an alcoholic, and I'm the newest member of your General Service staff in New York City. Before we begin the meeting, I wonder if we could have a moment of silent prayer in gratitude for the past 30 years of sobriety in AA. And at the end of that, we will recite the serenity prayer together. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
First, I'd like to welcome all of you and welcome our speakers this morning. And before we begin, for the benefit of any non-AA members who may be here, I would like to read something about the anonymity tradition. There may be some of you who are not familiar with our tradition of personal anonymity at the public level. If so, we respectfully ask that no AA speaker or member be identified by full name in published or broadcast reports of our meetings.
The assurance of anonymity is essential to our efforts to help other alcoholics. And our tradition of anonymity reminds us that AA principles come before personality. I would also like to remind you that we request that no pictures be taken. I have a few announcements. Please mail it to us at the General Service Office, and we will ask him to do this. All AA meetings, except for the midnight one, will be held in the roof garden.
Pictures and tapes may be obtained in the Toronto room. We are running out of programs, so if you have any extras, please give them to the information or registration booth. Perhaps in the case of husbands and wives, you may have two, and you'd be willing to turn in one of those. It's my pleasure today to introduce the chairman of the meeting, whose name is Bruce M. He was elected to the Board of Trustees of General Service in April 1964, following nomination at a conference electoral session where he was Ohio's candidate for the East Central Region.
He is presently president of Ohio Edison Company, Akron, Ohio, with which he became associated as general counsel in 1948. He has been an active member of Ohio Group since 1945. His current group is the King School Group of Akron. Now I'll give you Bruce. Hi, everybody. It's a great pleasure for me to be able to be chairman of this meeting this morning. Those of you who have read the program, and I'm sure all of you have or you wouldn't be here, will realize and recognize the title of this morning's discussion is Helpful Allies in the Field of Alcoholism.
When I first read this title, it seemed to me that it was somewhat anomalous, because as we all know, AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, creed, and so forth. AA takes no positions on any public problems and engages in no controversial issues. And so it seemed to me that the word ally connoted something perhaps a little stronger than may have been intended. Also, when I read this title, I was reminded of the era, if I may call it that, when I first came to AA, which was in 1945.
And after I'd had a couple of years of association with AA, I was asked to participate on a panel discussion which was sponsored by the Ohio Department of Public Health.
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And on the panel, among others, was a doctor, a psychiatrist from Western Reserve University Medical School. Part of his talk dealt with the relationship with the doctors to AA. And I may say that the good doctor was very critical in one aspect. He said that it seemed to him that many of the AAs, and I think he put it most, really, played as though they were God. And this upset him no end. Those of you who were associated with AA back in those days, I think will well recall that the attitude of AAs generally was that there wasn't any remedy for the disease of alcoholism except Alcoholics Anonymous.
And therefore, our attitude seemed to be the doctors, both internal medicine and those doctors of psychiatry, couldn't help us. The ministers couldn't help us. The social workers couldn't help us. Nobody could help us except Alcoholics Anonymous. And accordingly, we became pretty smug. And I think over the years we have come to change that position very dramatically. I think some of us forget that prior to the time that AA was founded, a great deal of research was being done in the field of alcoholism at the Yale School of Applied Physiology, for example, among others.
It seems to me that during the early years of AA, there seemed to be, and I use this word which has become very popular among statisticians these days, it seems to me there was an explosion in the field of alcoholism and what can be done about it. In any event, I think you will all recognize the fact that during the past 20 years, not only because of AA and the very fine, favorable publicity that AA has received over this period of time, but also because of the good work of other agencies, alcoholism has been accepted as being a disease of the body, of the mind, or both, in the same light that other diseases have been accepted as such.
And today the stigma attached to an alcoholic isn't quite the same as it was 20 years ago, thanks to these people. Now, of course, even though AA wants to and does cooperate with a number of these other agencies, and I'm speaking not only of such groups as Al-Anon Groups, which is very close to AA, but also some of the tax-supported agencies and other interested people from universities and so on, we want to cooperate with them, and yet we have to do this in the light of the 12 traditions of AA, particularly the four traditions.
The fifth one, which, as you recall, states in substance that each group has but one primary purpose, to try to carry our message to alcoholics. The seventh tradition, which says that we are self-supporting and that we decline outside contributions. The 10th, which says we hold no opinions on outside issues. And finally, the 11th, which covers our tradition of anonymity. Within the limitations of these restrictions, we are delighted to cooperate with all of these people who have a common interest with us, and that is to try to help the alcoholic who is still suffering from alcoholism.
And perhaps some of you will remember that in 1959, the General Service Conference adopted a resolution in which it expressed appreciation to the various agencies dealing with alcoholism, as well as a willingness to cooperate with such agencies, but short of actual affiliation.
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Now, we are very privileged this morning to have three persons on our panel discussion. The first of these is Mr. Ralph W. Daniel, who is Executive Director of the Michigan State Board of Alcoholism. Prior to Mr. Daniel's appointment as Executive Director of the Michigan State Board of Alcoholism, he had worked as an educational consultant with the State Department of Mental Health, as Chief Probation Officer of Muskegon County Juvenile Court, as psychiatric social worker in child guidance clinics in Lansing and Muskegon, Michigan, as a clinical social worker at Du Bois Vocational School, as a social worker in Gratiot County Bureau of Social Aid.
He is a graduate of Alma College, was awarded a Master of Social Work degree by the University of Michigan. He has also been awarded certificates by the Yale University Summer School of Alcohol Studies and by the University of Wisconsin Conference on Alcohol Studies, and has served on the faculties of both of these courses. Mr. Daniel is a past officer of the North American Association of Alcoholism Programs, past president of the Association for the Advancement of Instruction of Alcohol and Narcotics, a past chairman of the Jackson-Lansing Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, and secretary for the Michigan Institute of Alcoholism Programs.
He's been the author of a number of articles that have been published in professional journals in the field of alcoholism.