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Source: 1985 Montreal International Convention – Multi Speakers – AFFECTION LEARNING TO CARE Affection Learning to Care – RS 06372.mp3 File: 1985-montreal-international-convention-multi-speakers-affection-learning-to-care-affection-learning-to-care-rs-06372.mp3 Duration: 01:29:11
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Grant me the serenity to accept the things that cannot change, courage to change the things that can, and wisdom to know the difference. I'm Edward Jones and I'm an alcoholic. I'm from Mississippi and I have some problem with the language. And some ladies say, you didn't get that problem up here, you had it when you left home. For some of you that are not familiar, I'd like to explain the anonymity tradition.
There may be some here who are not familiar with our traditions of personal anonymity at the public level. Our public relation policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and film. Thus we respectfully ask that no AA speaker, or indeed any AA member, be identified by full name or photograph in published or broadcast reports of our meeting.
The assurance of anonymity is essential to our efforts to help other problem drinkers who may wish to share our recovery program with us. And our tradition of anonymity reminds us that AA principles come before personality. I am an alcoholic and that tells you a great deal about me already. That tells you I'm kind of mixed up, messed up, but I know where I am today. And for that I'm grateful. Being here at this great 50th celebration is a wonderful thing to me, and I'm sure to all of us.
You know, I'm sure everybody said that when they just realized how big it is, how fast we are growing. And I'm so glad that it was ready when I was ready. Oh, it was ready long before I was ready because my wife readily admitted that I was an alcoholic 15 years before I heard about AA. And for that I'm grateful. And you know, I know today that I don't know everything I should know today. And that's all right.
But it's when I didn't know, and I didn't know I didn't know, is when I was in a hell of a shape. And I've learned to ask now, and I've gotten some good information and some bad information. But I have learned to ask and listen by the people that seem to be successful. And we're great. We have a great opportunity to hear three successful people from different parts of our country tell us how they are staying sober.
And the subject of our meeting today is affection and learning to care. And I remember the first time a grown man looked me straight in the eye and said, I love you. And I said, hell you say. But I was drunk, and this man told me he wanted to help me. I'm grateful for that today. But I didn't know then that I didn't know straight up. Today we have a man from Honolulu, Greg M. Hi, everybody. My name is Greg Muth, and I'm an alcoholic.
Steps to Freedom is my home group. It's a step study group, meets every Tuesday night in Honolulu. If you're ever in our part of the country, we'll be sure to welcome you with open arms. And we hug people and tell them we love them too. That's one of the super things about this program of recovery. Those people did that very same thing for me when I was new, my very first meeting when I came to it.
Thank God they still do it today. I can't express how I felt when I opened my mail several months ago and got a letter from our general service office, a loving invitation to participate in this 50th anniversary of our fellowship.
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The feeling I felt and the honor I felt was beyond any scope of words that I can come up with. And the feelings that I'm feeling today, standing here before you, I feel those same types of feelings. The same feelings I get any time I'm asked to stand in front of sober members of Alcoholics Anonymous and share with them a little bit about myself and about my disease and about my recovery. If you're new in this room today, boy, I sure want to welcome you.
Without you, I wouldn't be alive. Without the sober members of Alcoholics Anonymous that came before me and made sure and guaranteed that our fellowship would continue to grow and that the doors would be open, I wouldn't have had a chance to recover. My recovery has just been a miracle, I'll tell you. My sobriety date is Valentine's Day, February 14th, 1978. Why it is that day? Wow. At the time, I didn't know why it was that day, but I came to find out later.
My wife is one year older than I am, and her sobriety date is Valentine's Day, 1977, I believe. So there is no miracle and no coincidences in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm one of those people that was totally touched by our big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I went to my first meeting and a gentleman took me up to the literature table and he pointed out to me the difference between conference-approved literature and non-conference-approved literature, and he told me to dig in my pocket and come up with the money.
He said, this is the basic text of Alcoholics Anonymous. If you want to recover, read the book. And ever since that day, I've continued to read that book. I've fallen in love with that book. I had a spiritual experience by reading those pages. When I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I totally lost everything. Thank God for my ex-wife that wouldn't let me back. She wasn't practicing Al-Anon at the time.
I don't believe she's found this program yet or Al-Anon. But under no conditions would she allow me to return this last time. My pattern had always been to go out there on those benders and come crawling back on my hands and knees and beg forgiveness and then behave for a while and patch things up, and she'd let me back in. And then a couple weeks later, the same tragic thing would happen over again.
But this one last time, she said, no, no, you can't come back. You have to go out on your own at this time. And from that day, it took me another couple weeks to find this fellowship. And when I found this fellowship and I got that book that very first meeting and I started reading those pages, lo and behold, they'd written a book about me. I just couldn't believe it. I knew that I had a problem with alcohol, and I knew I had a problem with drugs.
I was addicted to alcohol for some 18 years and about the same with drugs. And it was all right because I grew up in a generation in the 60s and the 70s where as far as my tunnel vision, everybody drank and used like I did. And it was acceptable, and that's what I wanted to do. I had no other desire in life but to be like everybody else because I didn't know who I was or what I was. But I knew inside I was very hollow, and I knew that alcohol was my answer, my solution to all my living problems.
And here, this is what they had written in this book in the first couple of chapters where they talk about the solution and then more about alcoholism. And they described the disease of alcoholism to a T. I can remember sitting on a beach on the island of Maui. At that time, I had nothing. I had a pickup truck that belonged to this now defunct contracting company that I had. And I had the possessions on my back in a bedroll, and I was living out of the back of this truck.
And I remember reading that book one morning on the beach and I remember starting to cry. I was so touched by the feelings that finally I'd identified with, that they described the disease of alcoholism being a threefold disease, one of the body and the mind and the spirit. And I never knew it was that way. I knew that when I picked up that drink, I knew that that feeling came over me, that feeling of wholeness and oneness.
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And in my later part of my drinking, it was the numbness that I sought. And it happened every single time. And I was so grateful for it. And I'd come to accept that way of life. But I never knew that there was this way of life that I'm experiencing today. I was so ignorant. And that's the only word I can really come to. Growing up in the 60s and 70s and being a hippie, and I had long hair back down to my waist, and I thought I knew everything about everything.
So if you wanted to talk to me about something, I could expound upon any subject. In fact, I used to be the great debater over bar rooms. I used to debate the existence of God or the nonexistence of God, and I never had any religious or any spiritual training whatsoever. But I would always be one that would spout off and let you know exactly my so-called great knowledge that I had. But I got here and I started reading that book.
And the meetings that I went to were small meetings on the island of Maui. That's where I did my last ten years of my hard drinking, the last two years of really the terrible, terrible drinking that we all go through. And that's where I found my sobriety. And I found my sobriety in some small meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. And they were practically all open meetings, and everybody got to share. One of the meetings that I took to right away was a step study meeting.
And in that meeting they wouldn't allow you to share unless you had experienced the steps. They talked about recovery and all they wanted to hear about recovery. And I started getting involved in our recovery program, the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, real early. I wanted what those people had. I desired what they had. And they were more than willing to tell me all the time exactly how to get it.
They told me to read the book, work the steps in order, and that I too could find this miracle called recovery. I think in the beginning, I need to digress a little bit into my disease a little more to let you know what it was really like for me as a practicing alcoholic. One of the things that I found out about myself, and the only way that I found out is through rigorous moral inventories. And usually they work best when they're fearless and they're honest.
And through the four step I've been able to paint a picture of Greg, that other Greg, what really he was like, and what really led to my inability to live life on life's terms. And that's really what this solution for me today is, is a new way to live. My alcoholism has been arrested. But during those inventory steps, I discovered that this Greg was emotionally handicapped long before I ever picked up that first drink.
A long, long time. In fact, I started doing jail time before I even picked up my first drink. I was one of those people that I discovered in my four step that needed, and I can underline need, I had to have more love and attention than was God given or granted to me. I can understand why now people had to reject me time and time again. And again, that's not a new idea. That's described in our book, too, about being overbearing and wanting more of something, being the director and people not doing what I wanted them to do.
But early on, me seeking this love and attention, people would reject me. And I could not handle that feeling of rejection. It tore me up. It tore me up so bad I used to manifest my behavior in a lot of very devious and very corrupt ways. And that's what got me in a lot of trouble before I even picked up that first drink. But when I picked up that first drink, boy, I had really found the solution to life then.
That very first drink, when I had that first drink with about eight or ten guys that were older than me, about six, seven years older, in fact, they were trying to get me drunk. And we were playing a game where you drink a shot glass of beer every 30 seconds. And I was the center of attention. And I remember that feeling. And I remember drinking that shot glass every minute. And I can, to this day, I can remember that warm, glorious feeling coming over me and feeling a part of those older guys.
And I knew that life was going to be all right. And that's the feeling that I sought for for the next 18 years, that same glorious feeling. That same glorious feeling, in our book, In the Doctor's Opinion, it describes that very thing, it says men and women drink primarily for the effect produced by alcohol, and that's the only reason I drank, I really didn't like the taste of alcohol, I learned to like the taste, but I loved the effect, I loved what it did to me, even in the very end of my drinking, I loved what alcohol did, and I'd grown so much accustomed to the
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downside of my drinking bouts, that it was comfortable living that way. I moved to Hawaii in the late 60's, and a lot of my bad drinking and using career was on the island of Maui, and I need to always share things about myself, and one of the things that I'll never forget, and I'm so grateful that I've been able to walk through it, through this fellowship, is that I'm one of those people in Alcoholics Anonymous that killed somebody in a blackout, on my, driving my vehicle on the road, and I don't want to ever forget that, and the tragic thing about that is that I continued to drink and use for another five years, and I continued to do the same type of behavior, but I couldn't get out of it, even when my marriage and my business and everything was falling away from me, I couldn't, and I wanted to get out, I had no way, until I found Alcoholics Anonymous. The things that have happened to me in recovery, the miracles, truly miracles that have happened to me in the short seven years that I've been around this program are truly amazing, and I've heard many, many times in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous if I would have made that list of things that I wanted when I first got here, and if I would have looked at that list today, I would have shortchanged myself tenfold. This program of Alcoholics Anonymous has reshaped me into the man that I've always wanted to be, that person that I always dreamed that I could grow into, that I always saw you people doing, that today I have a little bit of that in my life. As I mentioned earlier, I belong to a step-study group, and I'm totally committed to Alcoholics Anonymous, the 12 steps, the whole way of life. I also believe in our three legacies of recovery. I believe recovery, unity, and service. I believe we have a three-legged stool, and for me, my recovery is contingent upon having all three of those legacies in my life. Through the grace of God, I've been granted recovery today through the 12 steps, and once I've reached a state of my recovery, I have to start paying back what was so freely given to me. The best way that I've found to pay back is through our 12 step, through our traditions, through belonging to a home group, to making sure that that group's doors are open every night, every Tuesday night, making sure that that newcomer is welcomed as he comes into our meetings. I'm also involved in the third legacy of service, of general service. I believe that there's not too much, I mean, there's not enough that I can give back to Alcoholics Anonymous. In my early recovery, I just tried. I kept trying to give back. As I've got a little more knowledgeable in recovery about our service structure, I've become more responsible to that structure.
I believe totally that without a service structure, we can't go on, that we need to always practice the 12 traditions at our group level, and that our general service areas need to grow and to be strong. I think if, I've lost my train of thought, so that's all it means that it's time to be quiet, but I think if there's anything that I might leave you with today, it might be that if you are new, don't go away. Keep coming back to Alcoholics Anonymous. If it hasn't worked for you, it soon will. We need you, I need you, I need you a whole bunch. Without you, I'm another alcoholic that's lost.
Without you, I might take that drink again, and I don't want to ever, ever have to do that again. Thank you. Thank you, Greg. And see, you get a kiss from that pretty lady if you speak well, and I'm going to do good.
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We have a great, marvelous crowd here, and there are several people standing up, and if you have a spare chair next to you, hold your hand up. There are spare chairs around if you people will go pick you out somebody's got a good looking hand and go to it. You know, following directions has always been hard for me. I never did like following directions and constructive criticism. That was the worst thing in the world as far as I was concerned. You people that are standing up there are still a few more available chairs, and there's some nice looking people that are holding their hands up that would like for you to sit by them.
And you know one thing that I've noticed, almost everybody I've seen looks like they've had a bath lately. And I know that's an improvement for some of us. You know, seriously, I've gotten where I've bathed twice a week sometimes. Do you people that are coming in, the people holding their hands up, have a chair they'd like for you to sit by them? There's a pretty lady back there, there's a nice looking gentleman over here, and vice versa. Y'all know how to mix it up better than I do. And there's a lady over here doing all that laughing, she thought it was day after tomorrow.
But I told her where she was because I knew where I was and she was standing beside me. So that's the way it is, take directions, follow a successful guy. And that's what I told my wife when I met this doctor and he began to give me some instructions. And this was an AA doctor, I thought they just called him doctor, I didn't know he was really a doctor. But he started kind of telling me how to do, and you know I kind of liked the way he told me.
He said, come on, we'll go together, you know, and he was carrying me and I did some listening and I went home and told my wife that this doctor seemed to understand me better than the other doctor friends that I've had. And she asked me again, what's his name? And I told her his name and she said, well I understand that, he's a veterinarian. So maybe you people will find somebody here that understands you.
And that's part of our gratitude and learning what we need to know. And I had another self-appointed sponsor, you know I never did like the sponsors I had. You know in the group I went in, when they came and got me and carried me to this group, well I'll tell you the truth about it, they got me out of a drunk bed. I'd been in that drunk bed ten days and hadn't bathed or shaved and they said they wanted to help me and I said, man I don't need any help.
But anyway they saw that I got sober and saw that I got to AA and there was eleven of them and each one of them wanted to be my sponsor. And you know I didn't know any difference, I thought you had to do like they said do. And there's one man there that lived out of town and it wouldn't do him to tell me just at meetings what to do, he'd write to me and he'd write in red ink and he would underline and he'd write way up on top there, keep it simple.
And you know I thought that was a hell of a thing for a grown man to talk about keeping it simple and he'd write and he said he thought I was having some problems you know and he says the best way to get sober is to stop drinking and he'd underline stop drinking. And the best way to stay sober is don't drink and underline don't drink, don't drink. And I thought man this is the simplest, craziest bunch of people I ever saw. I thought they'd really have a formula for getting sober you know.
And they tried to make it so simple that I was missing a great deal of it. But today I'm glad I do understand the simplicity and the love and affection of AA. And now we have a speaker from Missouri, Richard B. Thank you Egbert. My name is Richard and I am an alcoholic. Hi everybody. Those of you who are still standing around the edges and didn't understand what Egbert was saying, it was spare chair.
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So if you want one there's still some left. I'm grateful to be here today to be asked to share a little bit. I think topic meetings are very interesting. I wonder how so many people might choose to go to a certain topic meeting. Well and Greg after only seven years in AA has already got kind of the picture of AA. You know the best thing about topic meetings is you don't have to pay any attention to them if you don't want to. You can just talk about whatever you want to.
I want to take one minute since he was a little bit quick here. I want to take one minute to demonstrate a little bit what we're talking about today. I know a lot of people just came in and sat down just now. And a lot of you came in and sat down but people you don't know. For one minute I'd like to make sure there's not a stranger in the room and I'd like you to look at and talk to and shake hands or hug or kiss the person next to you.
1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3. Y'all are real good at that. Okay. Right then and right now is what AA is all about. I see more smiles now than I did a minute ago. And you know, we can carry ourselves a long way with that. And what is that affection? That affection is so important in Alcoholics Anonymous. And you know, it wasn't so much always the, you know, the hug and the kiss or the touch or so much as that.
To me, it's the willingness to do something that could be embarrassing. You know, for it to hug a stranger. Have you ever been in a situation where somebody asks you to do the same thing, like in church or somewhere, and people just look at their neighbor and kind of, you know. Alcoholics Anonymous, it's not just doing it. It's the idea that we're willing. The idea that we're comfortable. The idea that we love each other enough to do just about anything.
And you know, most of you people probably have money in your pockets, and it's a pretty Friday afternoon in a beautiful city. And two or three hundred of us are sitting in an AA meeting. You know, it shows we haven't completely recovered yet. We're still looking for something. Now, for me to be affectionate and to love affection is one of the biggest miracles in my life. And I enjoy it. Now, I guarantee you, I never miss a chance to tell everybody I can that I am a person who wants to be hugged and wants to be loved.
I need it. I need everything that I get from the people of this fellowship. And I've heard a lot of ideas about affection. In fact, when I knew I was going to talk, Ideas about Affection. In fact, when I knew I was going to talk, I talked to little people around my area, you know, some of the things they thought about affection. And there are
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some different ideas about affection and what it means and everything. I guess that's one of the reasons we're talking about it a little bit today. I think of right off the top of my head, at a recent assembly there, we've got a beautiful black lady from Kansas City named Gloria. She said, you know, I just love all this hugging and kissing and A-A, as long as they keep their tongues in their mouth. I don't, the only part of my background that brought me to A-A that I wanted to share with you today was the fact that this means so much to me because I am a person who so built walls around myself that I was unable to share anything. I have two broken marriages in my background to show lack of affection being part of my life. I lost my children, and I was a person who abused my children.
And when my second wife said that she was going to leave me and take those kids if I didn't do something about my drinking, my only ability to respond to her was, you know, just get the hell on out of here and take them with you, and I don't want to see you anymore. And I suppose the thing that's poignant about that to me today is that I realize now that I really meant it. You know, because that was all I was able to respond to because of my illness. That was the only way I knew how to respond. Because they interfered with my drinking, and I was dead set on that being the only course of action that I had left to protect. So affection was no part of my life. When I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I didn't come here to get your affection or get your love. I didn't come here to stop drinking even. I came because at that particular time I didn't feel like I had any choice. I had run out of money, and I had run out of two families, and I was about to lose my job. And of course you know that to an alcoholic, the job's the thing you've got to protect the longest if you can because you've got to have money for your habit. And I was about to get fired, and that's pretty hard to do when you work for your mother. And about that time I was starting to have a lot of high blood pressure problems. So I started going to hospitals and doctors trying to figure out what to do about my high blood pressure. And you know I'd always drank Chevus Regal, and but I wasn't drinking that anymore because I didn't have the ability to drink that. Not because scotch was getting to me physically as much as it was that I couldn't afford it anymore.
And I was drinking cheap wine by then, and when I had this high blood pressure problem because of
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all this things that were going on in my life, I got the Librium from the doctor. And when I started mixing this Librium and cheap wine, I started having blackouts. And of course this kind of interfered with the fact that I had to drive 20 miles every night to drink, and I'd have blackouts coming home. And being a loner like I was, I didn't have anybody else to drive for me. And one of these times during this blackout, driving down the highway, I had a wreck. And it was my fourth DWI that year. And see I'd run out of money to buy a lawyer with, and I'd run out of money to buy the judge with, and I'd run out of money to buy anything. And they were kind of trying to get at the fact that I might go to jail this time, or I might seek treatment. And I decided that getting away from all these blood pressure problems might be just the thing right then. So I agreed to go to the treatment, and typical of my attitude at the time, I said, but now I don't want just any treatment. I want you to find me the best treatment center in the whole world. And they directed me to a place. And my, you know, my kind of approach to life and to treatment kind of tells you a little bit about how affectionate I was. You know, after a while, I was there for a while, and nobody talked to me. And it took me about four days to realize I was in a detox cell, and all the people that were going by were not in detox, just me. And after a while, they let me out into the general population, and it wasn't long before they were telling me I had to take an inventory. So I went back to my room, and I spent two hours writing, and I came back and told them every damn thing that was wrong with their hospital. I was reminded of this period of my life today when I saw a young lady friend of mine from Kansas who I hadn't seen in a long time, and we were with another friend. And she got to telling him about how I never smiled, and I never talked when I came into AA. And it was a real strong reminder for me of my attitude. And I'm just telling you this much to tell you that when I talk about affection and love, it's something that I learned here. It's not something that came natural for me or that I even wanted.
And I could tell, as each of you could, a hundred stories of how affection reached me. You know, I'm perfectly aware today that people who didn't like me at all spent time loving me into this program when I couldn't love myself and certainly couldn't love them. They realized that I'd lied. They realized I was arrogant. They realized that I could not differentiate between the true and the false. They realized that I looked down upon them and that I didn't feel
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that I was truly an alcoholic of their caliber. But they didn't make one attempt to kick me out. And if I was talking and lying, they didn't tell me I was lying. They spent more time trying to show me how I could find the truth. Very non-accusatory. And they just literally pulled me out of my shell and tore down this wall that I'd spent my whole life building up, you know, brick by brick. And that's kind of the way AA works, isn't it? Brick by brick. And looking back on that period of my life and looking back on when I came into this program, I can understand it now when I hear people say about somebody, he's not very lovable, is he? Pretty hard to love that one. You know, even though AA has changed and many people come in through court programs or treatment centers and may even have a little sobriety by the time they get here, we still get some pretty shabby ones.
But even if we have difficulty as individuals sharing that affection part of us with the new ones, it almost always seems to work with a group of us. Because there seems to be some salving power in a group of Alcoholics Anonymous that's much bigger than all its component parts. And I suppose there are more than just me in this room who used that salve from the group members sitting around the table in our own hometown as their higher power until they got to the point where they could find a conscious contact with their God as they understood him. I know that's how I grew into a higher power. It was through the salve that was applied to me on an almost daily basis.
And I can't think of just all the individuals, but the individuals aren't so as important as was the group as a whole. Because it happened time after time after time for me. And it happened with different people in different locations. And if you're not to the point yet in the program where you feel this, maybe you'll feel it this weekend. I can't imagine going through this weekend with these people without having it demonstrated time and again.
It happens to me in my hometown when I see one of my group members downtown somewhere else. And there's a special thing that clicks and makes my day just like that. I used to think that it was going to the conventions all around the state and all around the area that charged my battery. In your home group, you've got winners and losers. You go out here and they're all winners, right? I always thought that, and it recharged my battery, and it's what it took at the time
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perhaps, but I know now that it's those six or seven people that sit around that table with me every week that were the ones who did it for me, who brought me back to life, who kept me even though I was a loser. Now, I still love the conventions, but I know in my heart now that the Big Book group on Wednesday night in Neosho, Missouri, for me, is the best group in the whole world. About something that somebody said, some nameless person at some nameless location said that has always stuck with me. The reason we're here, the reason we love each other, the reason we care, the reason we stay together, is not because Dr. Bob was drunk and sick and called somebody for help. It was because Bill W. was sober and needed to find a drunk to work with. That's what started it all. That's what formed what we do. We start these things and we do these things first because we need them and then we want somebody else to have them. It all works today the same way it did then. Not always because we need it, but because we need to give it to keep it. That goes with the message, that goes with ourselves, that goes with love and affection. And yes, it is natural for us to do this for the newcomer because we do this to help him and to help ourselves, to form this chain of love, reaching out one way for help and then the other way to help someone else. But I just want to take just a minute of my time before I go over and get my kiss. I want to sit down and listen to now. She's a beautiful lady.
But I want to just take a minute of my time to talk about something else that maybe we're not so good at in the way of love and affection. Our 12th step allows us, if we work these steps and if we find this spiritual awakening that it talks about, to try and carry this message to other alcoholics. There are other parts of our literature that talk about the need for us to keep ourselves focused on a primary purpose of helping suffering alcoholics. And as I was thinking about all this idea of love and affection in AA, this 12th step kept coming back to me. An idea kept coming back to me about something that maybe we can think about or work on. I know I'm going to. Our trustee at a meeting this morning talked about, let's all try to go out and keep carrying the message just the best way we can. I want to maybe put out a little challenge to think about trying to help
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alcoholics the best way we can. Sometimes I feel my attention gets diverted from our primary purpose. And that really what it's all about is to see that this fellowship, these newcomers that we welcome so gladly, these younger people who are coming in so much now, are the future of AA. And we need to do all we can to share all that we know about our traditions and about our history, what kept AA alive, what helped it grow, why it was there when we needed it, and to ask ourselves, what are we doing today to make sure that it will be there for those yet to come? And when it comes to being affectionate and loving to individuals, and when we think about the 12th step and carrying the message to suffering alcoholics, I hope finally that we won't think ever that that applies only to being able to talk at a convention or something like that. Or that it means only that we need to welcome newcomers when they come through the door. The suffering alcoholic that it talks about on any given day might be your sponsor. It might be that guy that's been sitting around that table for 15 years.
I try to tell my friends often that it might be me. I go back for more, time and time again every week, because that salve that they gave me when I came in still works. And it's those people that keep me going, keep me wanting, keep me growing. And if I have any resentment for any of those people, it's one of the most important and alarming distortions of my program that can happen to me. And I need to remember that it's not just the newcomer who's important. It's the old timer. And we need to love each and every one, because as we all know, as we sit here together in this room, there weren't very many of us that were very lovable. But we've got another chance.
And I hope that we'll never miss an opportunity to take a chance with each other. Thank you. Applause That was great. That was part of the good news. Now you people, hold your hand up again that have a spare chair. And the people in the back, if you see any people that you would like to sit by, these people have a chair. The people that are holding up their hands with the extra chair. I think the people that are standing up are standing there by choice, and that's great. I'm glad we have a choice today.
You know, I like the way Richard opened this meeting, you know, talking about having around love and affection, affection and caring,
[00:55:06]
and having you to get acquainted and hug and love the fellow or the lady next to you. But, you know, I saw some lusting going on. You know, there's a preacher that came to Mississippi one time from Texas, and he started that stuff, and he'd like to not got it stopped. I have some good news for a young lady by the name of Donna E. Smith from New Jersey. Does anybody know Donna? Ma'am, you won a prize. Would you come to the podium?
This is her wallet. I don't know why she lost it. Are you Donna Smith from, what's the name of your town? That's what it says right here. Did you lose your wallet? You want some money? Right. That might not happen anyway else, but somebody turned that in, some very honest fellow turned the lady's wallet in, and I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to carry the good news. And what was that I was talking about, that lusting business? Oh, that's the part we don't want to get messed up with here.
Love and affection. The fellow said, I do, and I heard one of you say, I will. And that's the way it goes if you just follow instructions. You know, this is a great convention, and it seems to get greater and greater. And you know, sometimes I look around this great crowd, I think maybe all of y'all have read the book and found out I was going to chair this meeting. And then the lady told me this morning, she said, don't get carried away with that.
They drew your name out of a hat. And it may be some of you people in here that are going to get to carry a flag tonight if you're from a foreign country. And I heard Susan, the overseas GSO lady, tell them, you know, not to get carried away with carrying the flag. Don't belong to them. They're not the most important person from that country. They got drawn out of the hat also. You know, there's one thing about this AA, it helps us with our humility.
And you know, I'm proud of my humility. It was announced this morning at one of the meetings that the registration was exceeding 42,200 people. And I think that's great and wonderful. And Susan said that AA was in 114 countries now, and that it was growing faster overseas than it is domestically. And also there were about 50 or 60 countries that were represented that were going to be carrying the flags tonight.
They haven't gotten that complete. But I just wanted all of you to understand that, you know, what a part of a great thing is going on, and you're one of us. I'm one of y'all. We've done it together. That's the way it works. And you know, the man said that with that Valentine baby, you know, he said he was proud the date was on Valentine Day. He didn't exactly know why, but I know mine was on May the 17th, 1971, and I quit drinking the day before that.
That's the reason I was sober that first day. We have our honored guest speaker, the best-looking one among us. We saved her to last for her beauty, her charm, and she will tell us about this affection and learning to care. Thank you. Thank you, Edward. I'm an alcoholic.
[01:00:15]
My home group is Drake Road, Indian Hill, Cincinnati, Ohio. This Affection Learning to Care up here is just so nice. Thank you, fellas, and thank you for your sharing. When I received the loving invitation from New York that Affection Learning to Care was to be my topic for this dockethon, I thought to myself, that, in a way, is part of AA and what it's all about. So what you're going to get is part of a fourth and fifth step and a short lead.
Back in the beginning of my AA life, my negative side included lack of affection and caring for self and others. I had reached the point of instead of living to drink, I drank to live. The only thing I cared about was not the drink in hand, but where was the next one. That was a 24-hour day job, and nothing else seemed to matter. In my family, there are six children living. Five of us are alcoholics. Four of us are active members of Alcoholics Anonymous. One brother and two sister-in-laws are members of Al-Anon. My husband, Dale, is also a member of AA.
The affection and caring has always been there because we are related, but over the years, as each of us have grown in our individual programs, there is affection and true learning to care that goes way beyond. My children, David, Michael, Colleen, Kevin, and Ellen, all know me today as an affectionate and loving mother. Should any of them ever feel they have a problem with alcohol, which would be for them to decide, I pray they won't have to be in denial as long as I was, for, in my opinion, in my family, the tendency towards alcoholism is there.
We hold our family reunion in one of the halls at the University of Notre Dame, and when one of the cousins arrived from Utah, it was about 2 a.m., the campus security guard asked him what was going on with Father M's family, with all the noise and laughter. The cousin's answer was, probably one half are members of Alcoholics Anonymous, and the other one half should be. I was not an instant member of AA. I wish I could say I was like my brother Tom, who quite a few years ago made a New Year's resolution to stop drinking and go to AA, which is what he did on January 2nd.
I call him the 90-day wonder, as he did the 90 meetings in 90 days and leads a good sober life today. He and my brother Pat, a member of Al-Anon and a priest at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, confronted me about my drinking and popping pills back in 1970. This occurred four times in the next eight years, as I went willingly to keep the family off my back, continued with my denial, and when I did get to some AA meetings, I only wanted you to teach me how to drink like a lady, which you never did.
Finally, my brother Pat met Father Martin and friends out in California, who contacted a Francis X in Cincinnati, who 12-stepped me every day for a solid six weeks. I was informed that he was a very caring fellow. I didn't like him and his tough love. I didn't like my brothers for their interference with my first love drinking, and I certainly didn't care for Father Martin. I think every detoxification center in the United States shows Chalk Talk, and I never could stand seeing a movie twice.
I do not recommend that families do interventions without help, because I can remember my brother's anger always seemed to increase with each intervention, and to me their affection seemed to decrease. An interesting side note, which Pat shared with my husband Dale, he was in contact with Francis X during these six weeks, and he asked Francis if Mel was hopeless. His answer was, of course not, she's not dead.
After I was in the program for nearly six months, I was downtown in Cincinnati having lunch at the Round Table, a businessman's AA meeting with Francis X.
[01:05:04]
Along comes Dale, who asks me to a New Year's Eve function where there was a dance, and he had asked me to save him a dance. He was a widower, and I was a widow. I was at the point in time where you had told me, you fake it till you make it, and I was barely keeping body and soul together. I thought, doesn't he know I haven't even learned to care for myself, much less another human being, how the alcoholic mind can instantly project.
Through a series of coincidences, which I choose to call minor miracles, I did get to the dance, and about two and a half years later, we were married. I hadn't given Dale an answer about the dance. During the following week, I'd see him at meetings, in the coffee and food meetings after the meetings, and I'd give him all sorts of excuses why I couldn't go to the dance, etc. This one night, Dale said, life is for the living. I remember flying out the door with tears in my eyes, leaned on my car door and looked at the sky and said, Bert, what do I do now? God help me.
Bert was my husband who had died. I was still very angry with him for dying, and I was angry with God for taking him. I walked back in where Dale was, apologized and said, I'd be proud to save you a dance if I come. At that time, I always left room for an ouch. A few months later, I asked Dale, what made him say life was for the living? He says he has no idea that the words just came out. What's that promise about we will intuitively know what to say? We have a good, comfortable marriage. He is a perfectionist and I am a slob as a housekeeper.
Today, as we have both gotten better, he is less rigid and I a lot neater. He was always very positive about things and I used to always see the dark side. For example, by profession, I am a nurse who works nights. I can remember getting home late from work from the hospital this one particular morning and Dale had overslept. I panicked and thought the worst. What are they going to say at work? He's going to lose his job and so on.
He in turn slowly gets out of bed, stretches and grins and says, isn't this nice? I got two whole extra hours of sleep. He has his program, which includes a lot of general service work, and I have mine, which includes going to meetings. It also includes the Impaired Nurses Committee in Cincinnati, Ohio, which is also known as the Nurses Helping Nurses Committee. I don't know about the rest of the countries that are represented here, but in the United States a survey was done about three or four years ago and they figured that at least one entire school of medicine and four schools of nursing are lost to the disease of alcoholism and drugs.
Our committee has been in existence for two and a half years, and in the Cincinnati area, which has a population of close to a million, those two and a half years we have been working with over 48 nurses, so I feel that it's really only the tip of the iceberg. Another part of my program in reality is a dream come true, or as I call it, a fringe benefit. It's called SAMI. SAMI stands for Substance Abuse and Mental Illness.
I worked in a psychiatric institution back in Cincinnati. Back on April the 8th of this past year, the state of Ohio in the year previous had done a study and decided it was much cheaper to treat an alcoholic than it was to treat somebody mentally ill. So on April the 8th, we opened, and as I said, it stands for Substance Abuse and Mentally Ill. The majority of our patients are schizophrenics and manic-depressive.
Their primary diagnosis has to be one or the other. The secondary diagnosis is that they are mentally ill. Their primary diagnosis has to be one or the other. The secondary diagnosis is substance abuse. Interesting enough, we are finding that some of our schizos are not truly schizophrenic, and the majority of the major depressions are only depressed because of the alcohol and the drugs.
[01:10:06]
The response from the AA fellowship has been overwhelming. At the moment, there are five AA meetings a week held on the unit. About eight months ago, when we knew for certain that SAMI was going to exist, it was necessary to do a lot of teaching about the disease of alcoholism to the psychiatric staff. Things did not start off too well. When a psychiatrist got up and asked the visiting speaker, who was another MD, are you insinuating that we psychiatrists are misdiagnosing some of our patients?
He was simply told, yes. The repercussions from that question and answer are still being felt. However, time and patience has a few of the psychiatrists already beginning to transfer some of their patients over to SAMI. There is a center two squares away from the hospital where a lot of AA meetings are held. It is a pleasure for me to watch the change in attitude of a lot of the AA members toward our state mental institutions.
Those that used to walk or drive by our hospital with fear are the very ones that come visit our patients, give leads, and are a strong support for SAMI. The most interesting comment I heard came from one of the members of the mental health board and who has a lot to say about how the money coming from the state was to be spent was how cooperative the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and Intergroup have been and can you imagine, they don't even charge.
So for me, this is a big fringe benefit to be working on SAMI, watching the patients come alive, watching them learn to care and growing in their new AA life. In the past two years, I've been fortunate as the spouse of your delegate to go to New York City where the GS General Service Conference is held. The hostess to the spouses was Margaret. This one evening, she took us to an AA meeting in midtown Manhattan.
During the meeting, a member shared that she had a slip that day. She had just put both of her parents into a nursing home and also had been informed the same day that she had cancer. When the meeting was over, the AA members flocked around her and Margaret said, Nell, just look at that circle of love. The final example of affection and caring I'd like to share with you was shared with me by my brother Pat, the one who's the priest at Notre Dame and in Al-Anon.
He was saying Mass at the Grotto at Notre Dame for a group of students. Across the street was a group of Al-Anons who had just completed a retreat and decided to tour the Notre Dame campus. As Pat was finishing Mass, they were walking by and recognized him, ran over, hugged, and kissed him. They knew he was single, but had no idea he was a priest. Well, Pat loved it, and he could hardly wait to share it with me.
And to me, this, in reality, is what the sharing, the affection, and learning to love is all about. Now I intend to relax and enjoy the 50th anniversary of AA here at Notre Dame. Here in Montreal. And as has been said to me, I say to you, has anybody told you today they love you? Because I do. Thank you. Thank you. That was great. I don't want to see anybody leave, because this ain't over until the fat lady sings.
Those were beautiful thoughts of affection and learning to care and AA love. You know down in Mississippi sometimes they get that AA love mixed up with just coming in heat. Mixed up with just coming in heat. But, but that's a sign of life for some people that are just beginning to live again, and we're grateful for that also.
[01:15:02]
In one of the meetings this morning, well, it was a meeting of the overseas people and there's a man there from Finland, and he said it was 100 people there from Finland at this convention, and I thought that was great. I think that's probably more people than there's from Mississippi and Tennessee, both, I think. Is anybody here from California? I'm always impressed by the people, California, you know, somebody was trying to explain to me what this autonomy business was, you know, and this lady from California said they had it out there.
And I asked her, you know, what it was, she said, well, it's Birds of a Feather, and they had different committees of this, that, and the other, or the, I don't know, I start calling names of groups, because some of them are kind of funny. But one of them, she said, the Bear Facts Group, and I said, well, what about that? She said, well, the clothes are optional. So it's great that we do have our choices in AA.
And you know, one of the things that surprised me and kind of set me back, and the first thing my wife said was, you know, they gave me the key to the room, and I went up to the room, and they had two keys on this little old key ring there, you know, and I wondered what this deal was all about. Well, I found out it was a key to the mini bar. Well, I had to open that thing, I swear I did, I didn't want to, but I had to, the devil made me do it, and I peeped in there.
And you know, the only thing I saw in there that I wanted were peanuts. I like to monkey around a little, and peanuts just seemed to be appropriate for me. This has been a great meeting, and we've got a few more minutes. I know there's somebody in here that's got something on their mind that they just need to say, and if you would back up to that microphone over there, we'll let you say it, and if any of you other folks can think of something that needs to be said, we'll let you say it.
My name is Bob Massachusetts, I'm a grateful alcoholic. Stand in front of the mic, please. I left Massachusetts yesterday, I wasn't quite sure I was going to make it, I've got another part of the season, this program does work, you know. Thank God my group got me together, you know. I've been making meetings, I've been making meetings for four weeks, off and on, I've been shuttling back and forth. Like the young lady says, I work with adult people, and it has to be a handy house in my hometown.
I work with alcoholics, I work with drug addicts. I haven't had time to make my meetings, and my meetings, I cut them out. I stopped it this morning, and my group says, what are you going to do? I said, I'm going downtown, sitting on the sidewalk, not making any meetings, nothing. I was sitting in a meeting today, I met my friend Dave from my hometown, we got together going to a meeting together. That's what keeps me sober.
Anyone in this hall today, I don't care where you're from, what town you're from, what country you're from, meetings are most important to anyone that wants them. I am grateful that I've got another day of sobriety, you know. My sobriety hinges on how much the other part of the day hurts me. That's what I said, it's very bad for drinking and drugging, but I know, as long as God's on my side and with me.
You know, I don't get on my hands and knees as I always do, as everyone else does, but I reach to the sky and say, God, thank you. When I first came in, I never had a feeling. Everyone laughed at me and my group. I have a fear I can't keep myself sober in my group for seven years, and that's how I keep myself sober. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Speak into the mic so we can hear you, please.
Hi. I'm Mark Lenahan. I'm an alcoholic. I'm from Johnson City, New York. Kate, stand up. This woman standing up here is my wife. We're up here to celebrate Montreal, the 50th anniversary of AA, and our first wedding anniversary. Hey, hallelujah. That'll remind me. I spent the night over at Niagara Falls, and I'd been telling my wife about 37 years I was going to take her over there. So I took her over there the other night, and we were signing in, and I asked the lady about the honeymoon suite, you know, and I said, I want to see your citizen rate also.
We have a gentleman here. How you doing? My name's Alan. I'm a grateful alcoholic. I'm sober today by the grace of God through this program,
[01:20:00]
and I enjoyed what everybody had to say. You know, I was thinking that what's kept me sober for as long as I've been sober is that I've shared at every meeting I've ever attended. Of course, that's what my sponsor taught me. You know, get your hand up and let people know you, because if you don't let them know you, you know, you're not helping yourself. And the only way I can completely give myself to this simple program, like it says in how it works, is to completely give myself, and that's share myself with you guys.
You know, and that's what love and affection was for me. You know, what rang a bell with me is when a gentleman was sharing, and he mentioned love and affection, and love and affection to me was going into the bar and saying, give everybody a drink, you know, and, you know, the picture's on the wall. You know, everybody gets a drink from me. And I thought that was love and affection. And when the phone would ring at 1 o'clock in the morning, it would be one of my friends that got in a battle down a bar down the street, I would run out of my house and leave my family, and that was love and affection.
You know, because I cared more about those outside of me than I did myself and my family. And AA gave me back myself. You know, it gave me back my family. You know, it gave me back a lot of things that I never had. You know, but what it really gave me was me, and that's what's most important today, is that if I feel comfortable in love and care for myself, that I have the ability to do that with you people.
You know, and I genuinely feel that way. You know, I really care about you, and that's something that's changed, you know, because I could only care about the guys in the bar that were holding the stool for me. And now that I've been sober for a while, I've learned that somebody else is sitting in my chair, and it doesn't even piss me off anymore. Thanks a lot. Thank you. We have a lady. She's moving on.
Hi, I'm Carol, and I'm a grateful alcoholic. Hello, Carol. I had to share with you, being that we had a chance, I didn't think I'd get this opportunity, a million opportunities that I don't think should have ever happened. You know, if anybody doubts their higher power, I definitely believe that everything that has been said to me is a fact. The higher power has been pushing me. There's no reason that I should be alive today.
All the years I was self-destructive. There's no way I should have been here. I celebrate my 90 days tomorrow, this Saturday. Hello, hello. Hallelujah. And I live with an active alcoholic, and he objects to me going down the street, just down the block to a meeting, and things that were just pushing me. I was just meant to be here. My back is out, my leg is out, and there was no real reason why I should make it, but I consider myself so fortunate because I am alive, I am sober today, and I have hope for the future.
I am here, and thank you very much. Thank you, Ken. I'm Hank, I'm an alcoholic from Amsterdam, Holland, and I'm very grateful to be here because, you know, when I heard Richard speak, I had to cry, you know, because I thought I had forgotten who I was, you know, and I'm exactly the same guy as you are, and I'm extremely grateful, you know, for reminding me that, and I really like it to be here, and I'm having a great time.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Everybody having a good time? Excuse me, the lady in red. My name's Jan, and I'm an alcoholic from California. Hello, Jan. And I'm just absolutely delighted to be here. We're celebrating a year on our wedding, and with all the people here, we were looking for someone that we would know, and on the Metro this morning we met my husband's sponsor of all these people, and I guess there's just really miracles going on.
Thank you for being here. Is that the husband or the sponsor? I'm Jim, an alcoholic, and I never heard of that Fairfax group, but we're going to look for it when we get back. We're here celebrating the 50th anniversary of AA and my fifth birthday. This program works. Thank you. The lady in yellow. Hi. Hi. Hey there. I'm grateful.
[01:25:00]
My name is June, and I'm an alcoholic. Hello, Jane. I want to thank you all up there. This has been beautiful, and Valentine's Day, 82, was the date of my last drink. It took a brick in my face, my mouth to be wired to get me into these rooms to listen. I started to follow suggestions, and I'm here today. And I tell you, I had to see this in order to believe it. This is actually beautiful, and I, too, love all of you, and thank you for my sobriety.
Thank you. Tell your friend that she can speak after this gentleman over here speaks, if she'd like to speak. Hi, my name's Terry, and I'm a recovering alcoholic. Hello, Terry. I'm extremely grateful to be here. On love and affection, when I was listening to everybody share, it reminded me of back in my 89th day when I was asked to speak at my very first meeting, and I was afraid to say no. And I did say yes, and I had all this knowledge from a treatment facility, had all the right answers, all the right words, but I didn't know what the hell I was doing there.
But a young fellow came over to me after the meeting and asked me to be his sponsor on my 89th day. And he must have missed the beginning of the qualifications, I guess. But it worked out. This fellow, who had a few months more than me, is my sponsor. And talking about love and affection, that's what love and affection was, because when I said, Will you be my sponsor? He said, A sponsor is nothing more than a friend with a commitment.
And that's what this man has been to me. And thank you all, and I love you. Thank you. My name is Laura, and I'm an alcoholic. Hello, Laura. Stand up closer to the mic. Get that man to hold you up. My name is Laura, and I'm an alcoholic. Hello, Laura. And the date of my last drink was March the 8th, 1977. And I belong to the southernmost group of the United States, and that's in Key West, Florida. And the reason I'm sober is because my first sponsor told me to shake hands with a newcomer because they could be my sponsor next year.
Thank you. All right. Is this Donna? I'm Donna, and I'm definitely an alcoholic. And with love and affection, I want to thank whoever turned in my wallet with the money. And I'm here from Newark, New Jersey, with the Step 10 group, amongst others, and this is my first convention. I have, like, celebrated nine months on the 26th, and I just have lots of gratitude and love for being here. And for whoever turned in my wallet, I love you especially.
Thank you, Donna. I'm an alcoholic. My name is Dave Crone. I'm from Kansas City, Missouri. Hello, Dave. Hi, everybody. I have a lot of gratitude, I guess, today. My wife, Carolyn, is with me. She's also an alcoholic. We've been on an extended vacation, and it's just great. This is the wind-up of it. And how can you wind up a vacation any better than this? But the thing I think back in gratitude in this meeting and hearing Richard up here today, he's a friend of mine from Missouri.
Fifteen years ago today, of course, the convention was going on in Miami, and I was not able to attend that convention even though I was sober. And the reason I couldn't attend it was because 15 years ago today I was released from Missouri State Penitentiary, and I found Alcoholics Anonymous in prison, and for that I'll be forever grateful. And I can always remember the warmth and the things that were given to me when I came out of prison.
You people agreed with me with open arms, and for that I'll be forever grateful. Thank you. Great. Isn't that great?