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Source: 1985 Montreal International Convention – Unknown Speaker – AA AND TREATMENT FACILITIES – RS 06316.mp3 File: 1985-montreal-international-convention-unknown-speaker-aa-and-treatment-facilities-rs-06316.mp3 Duration: 01:25:21
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It's an honor to welcome you all this morning to AA and Treatment Facilities. My name is Cheryl Ann Burke. I'm an alcoholic, GSO staff, New York. Hi. I'd like to ask for a moment of silence and gratitude for the AA recoveries of the past 50 years. Would you all please join me in the serenity prayer? God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
I'd like to read to you what AA is and what AA is not. It's also called a preamble, and I think it's very appropriate for AA and Treatment Facilities. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership.
We are self-supporting through our own contributions. AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution, does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. I'd like to explain the anonymity tradition. There may be someone here who are not familiar with our tradition of personal anonymity at the public level.
Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, TV, and films. 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 meetings. The assurance of anonymity is essential in our effort 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 personalities.
We have an announcement to read about the fire laws here at the convention. In accordance with the municipal by-law, the security service of the…this is my French, everybody. Place des congrès de Montréal. Bonjour. Comment allez-vous? We'd like to draw your attention to the evacuation procedure for this hall. Staircases marked with the word sauté are located at the end of the corridors outside each conference hall. Thank you for your attention.
This is AA in treatment facilities, and this has been my assignment for the past year and a half at the General Service Office. I've been on board there for exactly a year and a half. This is my bag. The first speaker I would like to present to you this morning, his name is Brian Camp. He's from Hearst, Texas. He's a POS delegate. Now, how I got to know Brian is because last year we had a letter from Northeast Texas suggesting that we write a treatment facilities workbook. And not only with the letter came a lot of good suggestions and the do's and the don'ts. And from that letter, we took that as we do things in AA through the committee system. And this POS conference, we had a workbook completed and the conference accepted it, and it is a terrific workbook because it's the input from every single person in the United States and Canada who wanted to contribute to this special way of 12-stepping people that are suffering from the disease of alcoholism.
The book will come off the presses in the Lottapot of December. It will be sent to delegates and area chairs free of charge. And if you write in to me, I'll see what I can do for you. So I'd like to present this morning our first speaker, and his name is Brian Camp. Hi, everybody. My name is Brian Camp and I'm an alcoholic. Before I get started, there's
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something I'd like to share with you. I have been to many, many, many AA conventions, and this is the first one that I have ever attended, where there is a bar in my hotel room. They have this thing in there and it's got every kind of booze in it that you can think of. And I have to confess that I peep in there once in a while. I think there is a message in there somewhere, but I haven't found it yet. God, this is the greatest birthday party I've ever been to, and I really hope everyone is having as much fun as I am.
My topic is the influx of people into Alcoholics Anonymous and treatment centers. Or now that we've got them, what do we do with them? When I first came to Alcoholics Anonymous, there weren't very many treatment facilities in the area where I live. Now they are like gas stations. We have one on almost every corner. And I really see more commercials on television for treatment facilities than I do for beer. When I was a newcomer to our program, I didn't know anyone that had come out of a treatment facility and stayed sober. I knew some people who had been to treatment centers, but they hadn't stayed sober. I had one friend who was at one so many times they asked him not to come back that he was giving the outfit a bad reputation. I was also influenced by the opinions of some other older AA members, so I have a confession to make. When I was the first few years sober, I didn't have a very good opinion of treatment centers. I used to think that people from treatment centers were somehow second-class AA members. When they started coming to my group, they were sober, clean, most of them smelled good. None of them had to sit on their hands.
They could hold a cup of coffee without spilling it. And none of them talked about, at least I heard, things like getting their tongues sunburned. We'd lay out there on the sidewalk with our tongues hanging out and feeling superior to all those people that are looking down at us. They didn't talk about things like that. So there really couldn't be an alcoholic like I was. Now in the past five or six years, almost every newcomer to my home group has been in some sort of a treatment facility. As a matter of fact, we had one girl that was sober over two years, then went to one for 28 days and checked into it. So I guess it's becoming some kind of a status symbol. Times have really changed. A few weeks ago we had a guy show up at our group drunk, and they didn't know what to do with him.
They actually scheduled a group conscious meeting and talked about the problem. In A Comes of Age, Fr. Dowling quoted an old German saying which goes like this, Very few of us know how much we have to know in order to know how little we know. And I can certainly identify with that. When I was sober one year, the angel of alcoholism came over me and I knew all there was to know. When I was sober two years, I realized I had a little more to learn.
When I was sober three years, I realized I had a lot more to learn. And I was sober four years, and I realized I didn't know nothing. This is the strangest program in the world. The longer you stay here, the dumber you get. So I'm not an expert on this subject. But this isn't a new topic. While serving as a panel 33 delegate and a member of the conference committee on cooperation with the professional community, the trustee CPC committee asked us for, and I quote, suggestions on how I can deal most effectively with the influx of people coming to us from court programs and treatment facilities.
And I remember a comment that if it was a problem, we created it. Our local committees go to the treatment centers and ask them to send their patients to us. And when they do, it seems to cause us some problems. We have to remember that nearly all treatment facilities are dual purpose,
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the treatment of alcohol and drug abuse or chemical dependency. And as we know, AA has only one purpose, to carry our message to the alcoholic who still suffers. Patients, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic, are introduced to AA by being taken to local meetings and encouraged to attend AA on the outside when they leave. And this has caused some confusion both among groups and the patients of the treatment centers.
And large numbers of them are coming to us from treatment centers. In the 1982 membership survey, 26 percent of us in the United States and Canada were the products of a treatment facility. In a 1984 membership survey, this increased to 31 percent. So what this means is that almost one out of three of us in Alcoholics Anonymous are products of some sort of an outside program. And this is a staggering number of people.
And I think it is largely responsible, or in a great deal responsible, for our unbelievable growth. So are these large numbers of people causing us problems? And if they are, what's the solution? And last, what's our responsibility and opportunity? To begin, I'll share some experiences with you all that I've seen in my own area and in my own group. And incidentally, I found that groups are a lot like individuals. We get lonesome for a crisis.
And if we're not having a crisis, we're looking for one. Think about that one for a while. We have the small groups that are being overwhelmed by large numbers of visitors and treatment facilities. I was in a little group, appropriately called a country group, south of the country. Seven or eight members in a treatment facility 31 miles away, one night shows up with 30 patients. At least 20 of them were non-alcoholic, drug or pill addicts.
And the conversation switched around to that. Now, small groups like that, when they get a newcomer, and they had one that night, cherish that newcomer. God, they want to sober that guy up fast, you know. And the conversation and the topic during the discussion was more on recovery from drug abuse than alcohol. And this newcomer was confused, and they didn't know what to do about this. And we have to realize that some of the patients that will be attending our meetings and treatment facilities will be on some kind of medication, anti-abuse, or something. I walked into a group one day to go to a meeting, and there was a real young fellow in his late 20s, sprawled out on the sofa. And I said, How are you? He said, Mellow. And he was. He didn't know who he was, where he was, or why he was there. But I can identify with him. Several months before I came into this program, before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I was unemployed and unemployable. I had been fired from my sixth job, and I couldn't find a job, so I'd be sitting around the house drinking.
Now, my doctor, who I'd seen some years before, because I went to him because I was real nervous, I thought I had a Valium deficiency. He prescribed Valium and another pill that had phenobarbital and something in it. So I was sitting around the house all day drinking and taking my pills, because the doctor told me to take them. And I got real weird. I fell in love with a Yvonne Leigh on a television commercial.
She was real pretty. I used to stand in my living room window and watch for her, because I knew she was coming. She never came. Thank God, no one ever came. But, you know, even today, that's over 10 years ago, and even today when I see that commercial on television, you know, ding dong, Yvonne calling, I have this urge to run to the window and see if she's coming. So I know what it feels like to get weird.
In another group, the patients were coming so high on whatever they were giving them, they were disrupting the meeting. Another group that I've been to, they adopted the philosophy of come one, come all. Alcoholics Anonymous is good for everyone, regardless of the addiction. And before very long, the non-alcoholics outnumbered the alcoholics, and they opened all the meetings. And the alcoholics complained, we want a closed meeting. So the group gave them one, 7 o'clock on Wednesday morning.
In another group, I was leading a meeting on traditions. Remember, that group is here today. And I got to the third My group is here today, and I got to the third one, the only requirement for AA membership
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is the desire to stop drinking, and I was quoting from the pamphlet, Problems Other Than Alcohol, written by our founder, co-founder, Bill Wilson, and I got to the question in our Reddit, can a non-alcoholic, pill or drug addict become an AA member? And the answer in the pamphlet is no, and the damnedest Donnie Brooke you ever saw started. I mean, they were shouting and yelling and fighting and it was something else.
One guy in the back of the room yelled at me, he said, who in the hell is this Bill Wilson you keep talking about? A few months ago that group split, the come one, come alls went and started their own deal. Sadly, this kind of thing has happened in a lot of groups. They say the traditions are okay for you, but we're going to do it our way. I tried it my way for a lot of years, and it didn't work, so when all else fails, I tend to follow directions.
One treatment facility in town tells their non-alcoholic patients to come to AA and say they're alcoholics, and those people don't last long in a program of rigorous honesty. Then we have the opinionated old-timers who suffer from terminal trivia, and me too sometimes. One night at my own group, a girl that was new to our group and looking for a group to settle in, came up to me after the meeting and said, I'll never come back to this group.
If it's the last AA group in the world, I will never come back because of one of these opinionated old-timers. Y'all have seen them, they're the guys with the goddamn thin blue lips, and say AA is a serious program. That's right, it is a serious program. You know, our lives depend upon it, but I'll tell you something, if it can't be fun, and if it ever stops being fun, I'm going to stop coming to AA.
Our program is one of joy and happiness. We have a hospital not too far from where I live that shops for groups that will allow their non-alcoholic patients to attend closed meetings. They came to our group, they brought ten, seven were non-alcoholics. So we asked the treatment facility to don't bring your non-alcoholic patients to closed meetings. We did invite them to open meetings, but they got mad and went to another group.
And this kind of thing is prompted in my area, in a lot of groups, a statement that they read at the opening of the meeting, and it says a closed meeting is a meeting for members of Alcoholics Anonymous or for anyone with a drinking problem, and we respectfully ask all others to leave. The men and women coming to us from treatment facilities are different than someone off the street. They already have some idea of the nature of their illness.
I have another major national treatment facility just less than a mile from my house, and I've been in there seeing some of our members. And they have this room, and they've got all these glass jars there, just rows of them, full of old livers and shrunken brains, and it's awful looking stuff, you know. And so they know something about alcoholism. And here's another difference. We had a newcomer to the group just a few weeks ago.
A guy walked in the door and said, the central office told me to come here. So I got him a cup of coffee and I was talking to him, and I was telling him about Alcoholics Anonymous and our program. And he was looking around the room, and he finally said, where are the alcoholics? And I said, that's them. There were about 30 of us there. That's them. He said, no. I said, yeah. Really? That's them. He said, they don't look like alcoholics.
So these people from treatment centers know something about alcoholism. And sometimes the people from treatment centers have some preconceived and erroneous ideas about us. One of the most priceless I've ever heard was a gal announced at a meeting one night that my counselor says 28 days of treatment is equal to two years in Alcoholics Anonymous. We said, honey, there's only one thing equal to two years in Alcoholics Anonymous, and that's being here sober for two years.
But I learned that they regard their counselors in much the same way that we regard our sponsors. So we have to meet them where they are and talk to them on the level that they're at. Sometimes, though, they do give me a chance to practice my program, to practice patience and tolerance and understanding, in that I must not judge them or criticize them or take their inventories. Now, we really don't take each other's inventories in Alcoholics Anonymous.
We do make a lot of loving appraisals of each other.
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Maybe we ought to take our own inventory. Maybe our group ought to take an inventory. Or are we being intolerant or afraid? I have to remember that our co-founder, Bill Wilson, was a product of a treatment facility, Towns Hospital in New York. And what if somebody like him showed up at our group, or your group, full of the spiritual experience, preaching to us, and ready to save all the drunks in the world?
How would we treat some character like that? Think about that. Our literature and tradition say we cannot discriminate against any prospective A member even if he or she comes to us under pressure. We have no right to withhold the A message from anyone. Anything that works towards recovery for the alcoholic is good, and this includes hospitals, rehabilitation centers, state or provincial centers. And any time there is a conflict between a group and the treatment center, the loser is invariably the newcomer.
Our third tradition guarantees that anyone with a drinking problem is an A member if they say they are. And I love what Bill Wilson wrote about that in the 12 and 12, in the third tradition. You know, now don't misunderstand, we have a lot of geniuses in Alcoholics Anonymous. But Bill wrote about all these other people, the beggars and the tramps, the asylum inmates, the prisoners, the queers, and the plain crackpots, and fallen women.
Now we don't have fallen women in my group. We have a lot of women, but you listen to them and they're all saints, you know. And every time a new one comes in, I look at it, you know, I wonder if that's a fallen woman. I haven't found one yet in Alcoholics Anonymous. What can we do when our group has problems? I believe most of our answers lie in our literature, our pamphlets, How A Members Cooperate, Problems Other Than Alcohol, and our papers that we can get from the General Service Office, Information on Alcoholics Anonymous, and sharing experience on coping with the influx of new members.
And certainly closer cooperation with Narcotics Anonymous, and we can work through our local treatment facilities committees, and our traditions, and not just knowing about our traditions but understanding our traditions. We should make our program attractive to any alcoholic, regardless of any other addictions. We must envelop these people in a warm, loving group experience. We must share with them our experience and our strength and our hope, and we must give them our program.
And what's more attractive to anyone than a group of happy, smiling, laughing, joyous people? I think back when our founders were considering farming groups of depressed and paranoid people. We don't need to farm groups of depressed and paranoid people, we've already got them. I don't know how anybody could get sober in a place like that. I was very uncomfortable at my first few meetings. The first five months I came to A, I drank, and I was sober three months before I was even sure I was an alcoholic.
I had a little problem with several of them. And all the group did was smile at me and love me and say, come back, we care. If they had done anything less, there's no question in my mind that I would have died drunk. They were patient and tolerant and understanding of me. They knew I was an alcoholic even if I didn't. You know, if you walk like a duck and you act like a duck and you quack like a duck, then you're probably a duck.
The big book of alcoholic synonyms tells me that we are not different. Whether we come from Skid Row, a prison, an insane asylum, a penthouse, a treatment facility, or the way that I came into A, we all have a common problem and we have a common solution. Freedom from alcohol through A's program of recovery. So when anyone with a drinking problem comes through the door of my group, regardless of where they come from, I just have to ask myself one short question, what would God want me to do?
And sometimes at the end of the day, with a little prayer, it goes something like this, God treat me tomorrow the way I treated people today. May God bless you and me and all of us and thank you very much. Thank you very much, Brian. Our next speaker is a woman and her name is Toni, T-O-N-I, Toni A. Now when I was setting up this workshop, I know I wanted a woman. And I was looking and looking for a woman.
And I saw all these papers through the year come through with Toni A on it, Toni A on it. So all of a sudden, it didn't even dawn on me and I thought, well, I can't find the woman that's been really involved in treatment facilities and done a lot of 12-step work and set up an area and done et cetera, et cetera. So one morning I said, it was at night, 5 o'clock in my office and I had made up my
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mind that I was going to ask somebody else, it was a gentleman. And that morning I got on my knees, the next morning I got on my knees and I said, God, I really want a woman. And when I went into my office, all of a sudden the name again came across my desk, Toni A. And I don't know, I can't tell you today what happened. I just called and a man answered. And I said, hi, Toni? And he said, no, let me give you my wife.
Toni is from Ferguson, Missouri. And she's been very active as a treatment facility chairperson and I'm going to let Toni share her experience, strength and hope with you. Toni A. Toni A. Good morning. I am Toni and I am an alcoholic. The thing that Cheryl Ann asked me when she called was, do you get nervous when you talk in front of groups, large groups? And I thought about that for a minute and I said, well, not really, but she didn't tell me how large.
And I walked in this room yesterday and I said, oh my God. And I couldn't believe it. And Cheryl told me she was nervous too. So then it was okay. And I really, I have to give you what I am. I'm chairperson for the Eastern Area of Missouri Treatment Facility Committee. Now I found out something the hard way, and I'm here to tell you that the longer title you have, the more work you have. And it's kind of an ego deflator.
You know, I thought, oh, isn't this a beautiful title? And then it was very deflating when you start to form a committee. I must tell you that I was working on the CPC, the cooperation with the professional community committee in Eastern Area. And I was asked to go call on the counselors, mainly because I had opened my mouth after a trip back from California and said, I think that the counselors here need a little attention.
And so they handed me that job. Well, then I had to, of course, take other people's or other problems other than my own, and I did a little inventory. And I made the remark to our delegate at that time that I did not see a lot of work being done with the H&I in treatment facilities. And about two months later, our area divided the old H&I committee and formed the new treatment facility committee and the correctional treatment, or the correctional facility, yes.
And I was handed the job of forming a new committee for the Eastern Area. So immediately I thought, well, that's kind of important. And I found out later that I didn't have any guidelines. I didn't know where to begin. And the thing that I started was just going to district meetings and talking to all of the GSRs and asking for help. I said, we need a lot of help in this area. I need quality sobriety.
I need people that are going to be responsible to come and help me. And it was beautiful. In our area, we formed committees in almost every district, and we have 18 districts in the Eastern Area of Missouri. The only thing I hadn't counted on was that there wasn't really that much for them to do and they got bored and left. So then I had to find a different way, and I'm really grateful to a friend of mine, an who had suggested when I was working with CPC that I get involved with the National Council of Alcoholism, and also we have an alcoholism coalition of Greater St. Louis.
And I was exposed to a lot of the professionals in that period of time, and it opened a lot of doors for me. So I started going to the, calling on the program directors and asking if I could sit in on their in-staff meeting whenever that happened with them. And through that, I learned what their needs were. I said, we do cooperate, we do not affiliate. And I really had to educate a lot of the counselors to tell them what our goals and our purposes and our aims for this committee was about.
They had no idea who we were. They knew we were AA, but they didn't know what the committee was going to do. So they told me what they needed. And for once, I was half smart. I didn't promise anything. I said, let me go and see what I can find. And I again went back to the district meeting and to the committee people that had agreed to work with me. And I said, the one thing we have to do is find people that want to go and speak, that know traditions.
If they don't know traditions, we're lost, because we have to remember that we're dealing in the treatment facilities with very sick people, and we have to be good examples for those people. We have to know traditions. We have to behave ourselves. We have to respect our elders. We have to respect our elders.
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How they conduct their program is of no regard to us. We're only there to carry the message. I say we're there to bridge the gap from treatment into AA. And fortunately, this was in 1982, and we're supposed to rotate every two years. Now, Cheryl's lucky. She's only had it a year and a half, and I've had it three. I'm not quite sure why, but I do have a young man that has agreed to be my alternate now, and hopefully he will stay long enough to take over. If not, I'm sure I have other capable people.
But it has given me the opportunity to meet so many people. It's just beautiful the way it has worked. But through these people and finding what they wanted, and the main thing they wanted was, what is AA? What do you do? What don't you do? So we took the pamphlet called Information on AA, and that basically tells us what we do and what we don't do, and who we are. And that was the only guidelines that I had at that time.
Somebody did hand me a yellow sheet one day, and it started the ball rolling, is that we had a little more organization. We did a survey. There were a few committee members that we had. We did a survey. We went to find out what type of literature was available in the treatment facilities. What types of meetings? What were they doing when they left? Were they making contact with the groups? Were the groups involved?
And amazingly, we found out that there was a lot of work being done. We just didn't have the communication going. Groups, as we know, people, individuals, have always carried the message from the very beginning of our founders. But we didn't know what was being done. So the first thing that we did was try and find out how we can best approach the whole situation. From this survey, we learned that we also had to educate the committee people.
There was all sorts of literature in many of these facilities. So we had to tell them we only wanted conference-approved literature. And one person said, well, I buy it all at Central. Well, that's fine, but our Central office happens to carry everything. And so we have set up our own guidelines. What we do is we have a network. And from the GSRs to the groups. And from the groups, we try and get our committees.
We try and get our speakers list going. And also it's between the treatment facility and those committees that we have formed contacts, a contact list that the GSRs took to their groups, simply asking, would you be willing to take a patient coming out of treatment to their first home, to your home community group? You know, patients are kind of like homing pigeons. They flock back to the facilities.
And we needed to farm them out because really what it was was just sick people with sick people. They weren't going anyplace. They didn't even know what a home group was. All they knew that they had a counselor and that they had a place to go, which they call aftercare. And they couldn't distinguish between what we were talking about in the communities. And what we have tried to stress is the necessity for a home group and in your own community so that you might get to know people that live around you.
And I think it's so important. I walk in the grocery store, and I'll meet someone that lives in my neighborhood that's in AA, and we can stop and share for a moment. And it makes me feel like I'm not alone in that community where I live. But what we tried to do also was to get a lot of people involved because we do burn out. We burn out very rapidly when you have to go week after week and basically say the same thing.
So we try and send one person a week, and that means just an obligation for once a month that you go and speak. And also what we have done is that we found that in the respect of anonymity, that's so important with our committee. That's one thing that we do stress. When you're in a facility, please do not learn last names. If they want to give you their phone number and their first name only so we can contact you, that's fine.
But we have to educate our committee members as well as the counselors. I have found, too, that many of our recovering alcoholics are counselors, but they do not know traditions. So it's up to us to tell them what we can and cannot do. But we also have different needs for different facilities. I can briefly tell you that when I first came to the committee and formed the committee, we had about 44 programs going in the eastern area, and some of them I didn't even know where they were.
I didn't even know the towns. I'm a transplant to Missouri and had never been outside of the metropolitan area at that time. So it was an education, geographical change, but I was sober enough to do it.
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I found that out of those 44 programs, we now have almost 70. I brought up the list for the GSO office the first of the year, and we had 66, I think, and now we've added four or five more. But we have, like on a Sunday morning before the regular meeting in a facility, they will have an information-type meeting where the patients are asked to attend. And usually it's the speaker that tells a little bit about himself or identification or herself, and then we go through the information-type thing, what we do, what we don't do, why it's important to go to AA, how we bridge the gap, why we need AA for the support system.
And then we might have in that same facility on another weeknight an hours wrap session where a man and a woman go and talk to the patients. And we tell a little bit of our story. We introduce them to the literature. We tell them about the big book. Normally everybody has the big book, but if they're like I was, they were so sick that they didn't know how to open it or what to find in it. It was too heavy for me to read.
I couldn't hold it, we'll be honest. I was too sick. I couldn't hold even the newspaper for a long time. But through that wrap session, it's beautiful because I have met so many women, and that's one of the benefits that I have gotten from being in this type of a position. I run into those women at different meetings now, and some of them are like three years sober. Some are on my committee. They're beautiful women now.
We do clean up well. Fallen woman. I don't know what Byron meant about that. But then with these information meetings, what we're doing basically is just introducing ourselves and telling them what we have found. And that it is a joy. It's a program of joy. It's a living program. And that there's many things outside of meetings. You don't just go and sit in the meetings. We have fun outside of meetings.
We do things together. And we also have a new type of group that we started. It's almost a year old now. It's in one facility only, and I understand that there are a number around the country, but it was new to the St. Louis area. And it's called a bridge group. And there are the different self-support groups that meet at this facility once a week. They meet with the patients and the family of the patients.
We'll have N.A., A.A., F.A., which is Family Anonymous, and we have Al-Anon, and sometimes an Alateen will show up. But what we do, we spend just a few minutes telling about our support system, and then we ask the patients and their families for questions. And it turned out beautifully because the families find out why it's a necessity for their member to go to whatever support system they need. It also later solves a lot of our problems about the N.A.'s coming to A.A.
when they really don't need A.A. if they're strictly on dry drugs. We also try and tell them about the open and closed meetings. We try and solve a lot of the problems within the facility before they are released. But this is a beautiful thing, and I think it's going to catch on more in our community. I hope so. We also at one facility have a men's meeting on a Monday night. So there was no place for the women to go.
And on that particular night we send in two women that sit and just have a conversation with the women. And I've heard just really fine reports back on that. It gives the women a chance to ask questions that they would not ask perhaps in an open meeting or a closed meeting, but in a mixed meeting. They've also found sometimes that they've formed relationships with another woman to be a temporary sponsor from that one meeting.
And there again is rotation. It's two women going only once a month so that they see the time that they're in that facility. They're seeing eight women and hearing all different types of talks. And then we have another type of a series of meetings. They take a different lecture on a Sunday morning for the four weeks. The tools, the history, the spiritual aspect of our program. And basically they start, the first one is the information type in the meeting.
But this introduces them to a little more of AA. I go there quite often. I like to be brought up to date on what's going on. But it also reminds me where I came from. On another one we have a couple that goes in. An Al-Anon and an AA. And they talk to the families and to the patients again. No, sorry, they talk only to the families. But it shows the two programs working in the same house, a man and a woman.
[00:40:01]
And that to me is one thing that's very difficult to find. Our marriages sometimes are not that smooth. Mine isn't. I get angry and I get mad and I stomp and I romp. And he looks at me and says, yes, dear. But he's an alcoholic. And I don't have the Al-Anon to deal with, you know. But to find a married couple, Al-Anon and AA, that are both working real strong programs, that are willing to go and share with patients is very difficult in our area.
And also we have a lot of adolescent units now. So we have to find young people that can go so that they can talk. So that they can talk in a rapsation type and try and give a little more identity for the young people. We know it's all the same. And we know that the only thing we're doing is carrying the message of alcoholism, of our AA recovery. But still, when you're in treatment, you like to see a young face and not an old one around.
And then also another one we have just for anyone that wants to go on open Sunday afternoon. And we'll get all types of people at that meeting talking. They share. Basically from identifying with the speaker and his or her problems. We also have had our problems with the young one adolescent unit, which is quite large. And they did not realize that when they were taking a bus load to a meeting, that they were overpowering that meeting.
And sometimes I don't hear from my district chair people except when they have a problem. And they called me one day and asked that I do something about the people coming into their meetings. That they just couldn't handle them. And the one thing I've learned in this job for the last three years is that if I don't do anything sometimes, it solves itself. And fortunately, the time I got back to calling the chairperson of that district and asking who I should contact.
And who the person he had been talking with. Oh, he said it resolved itself. And I said, well, that's fine. Then thank you. And this happens quite often, you know. So I'm learning to be more patient. The one thing our committee is doing this year, because we have had more outpatient programs starting up. This influx I found, or increase rather, of programs in our eastern area is basically outpatient programs.
And we're finding that they need maybe even more attention because they don't have the protective atmosphere. They leave at the end of their day or the end of their evening. And they go back home. They're out in the community, out in reality. They don't have the same protection. Can I speak louder? Yes. You can't hear me back there? All right. Okay. And they need also the support that we would give anyone brand new walking into our meeting.
They need perhaps a little more because they're fighting their way. They're fighting a job at the same time that they're trying to get sober. They're also trying to digest everything that's thrown at them in the classroom for perhaps six hours a day. And we've furnished speakers for them. We've found a number of series of the same lectures that we would give to an in-bed patient facility. And a lot of people that are willing to go and take these people to meetings.
But we still try and keep it simple. I mean, I think that's the basic thing. I have learned so much in the last three years. It's been a very rewarding job for me. I've met people that I would not have had the opportunity to meet. I've gone to many more conferences and forums trying to learn. It introduced me to one thing, which I hope all of you are familiar with, are the concepts. It's taught me a little more about service work, what I can and cannot do, or what I have the right to do decision-wise.
But I find that I'm helping. I'm helping my program by doing this work in the facilities. I also would like to thank all of you for going back and taking this message to your committees that they do need help. I don't care where you're from. Get active if you aren't already in the treatment facility. And I want to thank you for asking me, Cheryl. Now everybody knows that Missouri is well and alive.
That's right. Thank you. I see one of the reasons why I asked Tony, because the piece of paper that I saw, several
[00:45:00]
through the past year and a half, and the last one that ended up on my desk that morning was so organized, and it had, you know, like she was saying, sixty-something people in treatment facilities, and I thought, my God, this woman is a worker, and she is. Thank you so much for sharing with us. Our next speaker, I had the opportunity to meet when I was up in Sault Ste. Marie, at the forum that we put on up there, the General Service Office goes out, and we put on forums throughout the United States and Canada.
And we do this so that we can share with you what we do, and also we'd like to hear from you what you do. And while we were up there, I was responsible for a couple of panels and workshops, and again my shtick is treatment facilities, and while I was in there, I had the opportunity to hear this fellow speak and share, and I liked what he had to say, and also that he went to a treatment facility. And so I thought that he would be terrific here, and his name is Roger Saenz, and he's from Ontario.
Toronto. I'm an alcoholic, my name is Roger Saenz. Happy birthday. I have a strong, strong sense of birthday here. Last night, sitting at the stadium, with all of you around, looking down, I was right at the very top of the stadium, and I looked down, and as everybody was cheering, and the wave was going around, and the podium was gathering, I had a strong, strong, strong sense of family. Just being part of that was very, very beautiful.
Just knowing that all those people in that stadium were the same as me. I guess I'm doubly lucky here today, in as much as I found the program in Montreal, found the program in Montreal, and I celebrated ten years of sobriety just this past January in Ontario. But I had found the program here in Montreal. That's always a funny expression to me, found, because it sounds as though I had been on a search.
I really had not been searching, but I was consciously aware of it anyway. I found it in Montreal, and then five years ago I moved to Ontario, and I've been there for five years. So when the conference is here, there's just that additional sense of warmth and love, because I see a lot of faces around that are family to me, that were there when I walked in these doors, that loved me then, and have loved me sort of sober, and that's very special.
Also special for me, because this is hometown, is the fact that my blood family are here today, and that makes it even more special, because they've shared this with me from both sides of the coin. So they're part of this celebration of our 50 years, and my sobriety, and me sharing that with you, and that's special too. And my loved ones, my daughter, my mother, my wife, my niece, everybody's here, everybody's here.
And I got people from my home group in Ontario, and from that Moulton district that I'm DCM of down there. So you see, I look up, and I'm surrounded by you people that love me, very, very nice, very nice. Also, somebody sort of special to me, Tommy Hills in the audience, and as I got into service in Ontario, he's delegate there, and he's committed a lot of his life to service, and it's people like Tommy, and those people that I look around and see, that are the example to me of what service is all about, the giving, giving back, that's what it is to me.
Today Cheryl Anne had asked me to talk on my experiences from both sides of that treatment facility coin, and I'm very qualified to do that, because certainly on the one side at least, as the patient, Brian said about status symbols, and it's becoming sort of the in thing almost to be in a treatment facility. Well, believe me, when I, in 1974, when I fell, when I fell into Beaver House, which was a rehab place in this area, which is well known in this area, for doing very, very good work with alcoholics, I really wasn't thinking of status, I tell you that, status had long gone.
Life was sort of more of a priority with me at that time, and I wasn't doing very good
[00:50:04]
in that area, I tell you that. I was almost dead, and, and Brian also said about Mellow, well I was gone past Mellow into yellow, I was, I was jaundiced and I was finished, okay, so that, that's enough to qualify, I was absolutely finished, bankrupt in every area, that we all know, all those areas that we talk about being bankrupt in, that's where I was. Life was ebbing away and it was ebbing away very, very fast.
I find the program, I'm in the program, I'm drinking, and I move into Beaver House. And it appealed because I was at that stage where I couldn't come off of it without convulsing, and I had that terror and that horror, the spiders and the rats and everything else. And I thought, if I can get in a centre where there's some medical attention, I'll be better. And through the program, I was directed to Beaver House.
And the magic, the magic started then, probably the magic started when I found Alcoholics Anonymous, there's no doubt about it, but my direction was in that way to Beaver House. And just before I go any further, there's a friend of mine in the audience today who's going into Beaver House on Monday, and I wish you Godspeed Ian, I know he's in the audience, I saw him come in, and I wish you good luck, and maybe everybody here will be thinking about you come Monday if they, if it comes to mind.
You're going to be fine, it's going to be great. I spent six weeks at Beaver, Beaver House, you go in as a resident for the first couple of weeks, you're not allowed to come out on weekends, there are things that are mandatory in there, you have to eat with the people, you sleep at a certain time, there's a fair amount of structure there. And as I say, I was in bad, bad, bad shape. I couldn't hold the coffee, and I couldn't sleep, and I couldn't keep any food down, and I struggled.
And you held my coffees for me, and you sat next to me in the dining rooms there, and you said, it's going to be okay, Roger, it's going to be okay. And I started maybe to believe a little bit, after a couple of weeks, I started to straighten up a little bit. A lot of air, a lot of sunshine, some straight food, no booze, some sleep after a while, and that magic of that first recovery. Things were happening in Beaver House, and I was in a terrible, terrible cloud.
I know some of us come in, and we're not, we're not as bad. We are more lucid, we're more able to accept, we're more able to absorb the things that are going on in these places, and I really wasn't. But the magic, nonetheless, was working. AA came in to Beaver House on a Wednesday evening and put on a meeting there, and that was mandatory attendance too. I had found the program before, people were coming up, and I was seeing them on a regular basis.
I learned things in Beaver House that I did not utilize right away, but they were there. They were into the storehouse. I learned things like risk, risking to show myself, to share myself with other people around me, to share myself with alcoholics. I often say that all of my life I'd been a good listener, and I have been a good listener, a good confidant. People knew that when they told me things, I wouldn't be talking about it all over the country.
But I'd never been a good risker. I'd never been able to say to other people, I'm hurting, I don't think I can cope, I'm not up to this, I can't handle it. I'd never been able to say that, mixture of pride and ego and everything else. And I learned that in this program. I learned that when I was able to start risking, so the magic started. And I started to learn that in Beaver House. They talked about it.
They talked about opening up. I spent six weeks in Beaver, and a lot of things happened. I won't go into the detailed structure of what Beaver House was, but certainly there was magic there. And there were people, and there were drunks, getting sober together. The magic that exists there. And certainly there is that, there is that magic that happens there, in seeing somebody coming along with you and getting better in front of your eyes.
I came out of Beaver House six weeks later. I was in no quandary, I was in no dilemma about how bad my state had been when I went in there. I know, I hear a lot of my brothers and sisters sharing in the program, saying that they really never knew how bad they were, or it was some years later before they realized just how bad they were in the program, or how bad they were into alcoholism. But there was no doubt in my mind, I knew that I had come very close to the finish, and I was very, very glad.
And I came out of there, but I'm not going to take you through the story, but I didn't do the things that they had taught me in there.
[00:55:01]
I didn't get a group. I didn't get a home group. I didn't get a sponsor. I didn't do all of the basics that you shared with me, of the things to do if I want to stay sober. I made my reappearances back at Beaver. Here I am, I'm still sober, you know, that sort of game. And I went around saying, man, fantastic, you know, great to be sober, yeah, shaking hands all over the place. And after a little while, the magic started to wear off.
And I started to think about booze, and I didn't share that. I didn't risk to share, to tell anybody about that. And of course, I wasn't involved. I wasn't involved with you because I really wasn't a member. I hadn't joined, so to speak. I was just appearing. And I drank again. And I won't take you through that story either. But I nearly died again. And if I thought I'd had it bad before, of course, this time was the absolute murder.
I'd had all of the warning signs, all of the semi-miracles that happened prior to that happened, but I drank again, and I'm out. And now everything falls apart. Job finishes, the world collapses around me, and I'm dying, and I know I'm dying. I'm going to come back to Beaver House again in a moment, because I want to tell you about the miracles in service and in this program. But now I'm drinking, and I can't stop drinking, and the desperation's there, and I can't turn anywhere.
I can't get to meetings because I'm that bad. I can't shave. I can't talk. I can't listen. I can't sleep. I can't do anything. I'm just drinking, and knock myself out, and I'm dying. I'm bleeding from every orifice, and here it is, I'm finishing, and I'm terrified. I can't go back into Beaver because that's one of their ground rules. You can't just reappear there. You can't keep going in and out, and it's probably a very good rule.
You can't hear me at the back? Okay. I phoned a fellow that I'd been in Beaver House with, and I said, Leo, I can't stop drinking. What can I do? He said, I'll take you to Maple Leaf Farm. He had spent some time there. That's in Vermont, just about an hour's journey down the road from here, and by this time I wasn't lucid. I wasn't thinking very, very much, but I said, please, Leo, I want to go there.
It was my last chance because I knew that literally I was dying. On the morning I left, by the way, I want to share this with you, on the morning that I left to go down, it was the 8th of January, 1975, and I got on my knees with everything gone and finished, total darkness, and I said, God, please help me to stop drinking. I can't stop drinking. And I got up and I went down there drunk, and I came off of it and I convulsed, massive convulsions down at the farm, I nearly died, I didn't die, and I spent three and a half weeks down at the farm.
At the farm, the set up there is a little different. It was not as structured at the time as Beaver House had been, but there was magic there. Every day, if you wanted to, you went to a meeting. There was a little van that drove people to a meeting out of there every night. And I went. I went every night to a meeting, not because any bells were ringing, and not because something said it's magic, it's magic, but because I was out of options and I had no other choice.
I went there because I'd seen you people, I'd seen you people, and I'd heard these things in Beaver House, in the treatment facility, I'd heard that it could work. I didn't think it could work for me, but I saw, I saw the evidence of it in you people. And I went to meetings down there. I stayed there three and a half weeks, and I came back to Montreal. And this time, I started to try and do the things that they told me about in Beaver House and at Maple Leaf Farm.
I joined a group, and I did the basics. I did just what you told me. I was out of options, I'd stopped asking the questions, I'd stopped saying yes but, and I got into the program, out of, out of demand, simply that. Not a case of saying, hey, I've had enough of this life, I think I'll turn over a new leaf. You're probably with me, I, certainly not, I, there was nothing, nothing choice about it with me.
It was, there was no, no case of saying, I want to do the right thing. You took me when I was dying, you took me out of that death, and you turned it around, you see. So now I'm back in Montreal, and I'm now in the program, and I'm going to the program regularly. And that's, that's really all I was doing, in a terrible haze, a terrible fog, that was starting to clear up as I went to the meetings. And then I got into service, as time went by, that sort of magic of alternate GSR and, and just getting involved.
And time went by, and the magic of our program started to work. No bells, no burning bushes, but it started to work. I became aware of the magic that was around me. You cannot. of the magic that was around me. You cannot, as you know, people in this room today, you cannot be around our program for very long without sensing that things are happening in those halls. You cannot be around and not know that the miracle is working. It's as
[01:00:03]
simple as that. We walk in, you see them walking in, and you become part of that. I was in awe of the program. I was still saying that prayer every day, God please don't let me drink today, please keep me here. And it kept on going. And I got into service and I started to get active in the program in a very, very straightforward way. No magic, nothing clever about me. This program, this program just gave me everything. And because I had come in at the point where it was just to the letter, here's what you suggested and here's what I did, it was very easy for me. It was sort of a total love thing. I learnt all of these things. I learnt things in service about not being the Roger, one in his way, not wanting to act the way in service that I did at meetings at work where I wanted my point to come across.
I saw the magic working in all elements. I started to go back to that place that I had been in as a patient or as a resident, be the house, started go attending the meetings there on the Wednesdays. And here's the sort of thing where the miracle, where the miracle comes in. After a couple of years, and I don't know how many years, two, three maybe, I was asked to go back there and talk with the people on this bridge the gap concept that's been talked about here today. On a night other than when the meeting was held, I went in there and spoke to the people that were resident there about the things that they were likely to see when they came out and what AA could mean to them. In fact, what it had meant to me. And I think probably of the single, the single sort of seeing service work and seeing the evidence of it, that's probably one of the most rewarding things that I've to date come up against in this beautiful program. Sitting with those people that I could tune into that were so lost, as lost as I was in there, out of hope, played all the cards, no cards left. And there's somebody in there that is saying, I've been there, I know exactly how you feel, and sharing that with them and telling them that when it comes out, it can be different. It can be different. And saying, and I understand all those doubts you've got. And if the bells aren't ringing at these AA meetings, don't worry about that. Don't think that you're not going to be a winner because of that.
Because I was able to tell them at that point that I'd sat up meetings for a long time, and after coming back from Maple Leaf Farm, and still not really wanting to be there, still felt awkward, still at times felt out of place. All of those feelings that I found were very necessary to tell people. Because it's one thing to say we identify, and one thing for me to keep saying to you, I know how you feel. Don't worry about it, I know how you feel. But we feel unique, different. Not better certainly, but unique. I kept thinking they don't know exactly how I feel. And I always say the same thing. I'd sit in meetings.
After you told me you knew how I felt, and at a certain point in the meeting, somebody up here would say something, and everybody would laugh. But I wasn't laughing. And I'd look around, and I'd say, I'd said, I'm different. Not going to work for me. But I kept coming. I just kept coming. I kept coming. And I came to see all of this. I came to walk with people. I came to share with people. As I said, I'd never been a good sharer. I'd never been a good risker. I came to learn that in this program through love, and through seeing these things happen. And here I was now at Beaver, and really getting a sense of it happening.
I've been very, very lucky in this program, because I'm in such awe of the magic that has taken place in my life, and in those that I see around me. I've had no trouble with humility in this program. I really haven't. Because it's just a sense of magic with me. It's absolutely a sense of seeing it and wanting to tell people about it. Not in an evangelical way. Not in a sort of a thing where I take a soapbox out on a street corner and start saying, come and listen to me. But it's the one thing that I've come across in my life that is perfect. Letter perfect. I'm sure we all know and feel the inspiration that came through Bill and those first people writing that book, that magic of that book.
I feel we could drive trucks down St. Catherine Street, you know, shoveling out the big books. Just keep throwing them out there, and it'll work. It'll work. It would work. Anyway, so here I was at Beaver. And of course, the ultimate magic of that, and I can say it because I just told you about this humility thing, and the miracle of this. A year or so later, I was asked to become a director of that place. And they had certain program and alcoholic directors in that house. I mean, that's the sort of miracle in this program. And it wasn't anything special in me. It was the specialness of the program that did it. I love it, you know. I just love it because it saved my life and turned it around. And I see it working.
And obviously, they sensed that somebody loved this program, and they wanted that to be told
[01:05:03]
to these people in Beaver House. Then I moved to Ontario five years ago, and I ran into all my loved ones down there. I have no trouble. I have absolutely no trouble moving around in this program. And I know a lot of people say up here, and I understand it, you know, my group is the Streetsville Group in Moulton, in Toronto, in Mississauga. And it's a beautiful group. It's one of many, many beautiful groups. I love it. And I love the people in it. And I love the people in Moulton that are all so close. Some are sponsees, and some are not sponsees, but I love it. But, but, but, but, but, but, I'm in Alcoholics Anonymous, you know. I'm in Alcoholics Anonymous, and therein is the beauty for me. That says the magic. This weekend, you know, for people from Germany, people from South Africa, and people from Guatemala, and Mexico, and everywhere all around the world. And I look, and we touch hands, and we say, I'm in Alcoholics Anonymous. And that says it all. They don't know about Mississauga, will they? Mississauga. But they see that blue badge, and our eyes meet, and our eyes twinkle, because we know things about each other that nobody else knows in this world. And you know things about me, with that badge on there, that the loved one's over there, and we're a close family that they don't know about. And they love me very, very dearly, and always did. But you know things, and that's why I talk about a sense of family, because I've got it all here today. So I'm down in Mississauga, and of course, I'm going to the program. And I had thought when I went down there, well, there'd be a chance to take it easy for a little while, and sort of cruise. You know, you get very active here, and I thought it'll be lovely to sort of take it easy. And it didn't work out that way, and I got involved in service again down there. And that's very beautiful.
And I just want to tell you a couple of sort of things about treatment facilities that are happening down there now, as the miracle continues. We're very, very lucky, and I always talk about that at district. We're very, very lucky in the particular district that we're in, with about 24 groups in the Moulton district. We have a lot of treatment facilities within our area. We have a lot of penitentiaries, but we have a lot of hospitals, five I guess, in our area. And that's a lot of chance to serve. That's a lot of chance to be examples and to serve. And there are all sorts of problems with structure. And Brian and Tony touched on that today, and we keep hearing it, you know, about the problem of being inundated with buses coming down to our meetings and that. And I know that there are real problems.
I know because I've shared with these people, and I've shared at regional forums, and I understand that. I mean, it's very easy for me to say, love them. You've got to love them. Just bring them in and love them. And that's very, very true, and I do believe that. But what I say is this, that we've got to solve those problems. It's as simple as that. We're going to solve those problems, you know. There's a way to solve it. And our program represents a beacon of hope and of love. And those people touch on that. Whether they come in masquerading as alcoholics, I don't think it matters one iota. And that's not to say that it's not a problem. We've got to find a way around that. We've got to be, and we are, the example to those people. Down there, as I say, we're very, very lucky. A lot of dedicated people in the Moreton District that put a lot of time, put a lot of time and that energy, and that slug time, that slug out time. Not up here, not standing up on podium, but being around, going regularly into the hospitals, doing their rounds with the people, talking with the people in the hospital, being part of that community, but putting on a meeting there. Putting on a meeting there. And trying to be the link when those people come out. That's the gap. That's bridging this gap. And they celebrate things down there, and they get those tingles. And we've got our treatment facilities chairperson in the crowd, and he's part of all that. The people that have come in through those treatment facilities, and are a year later, taking those medallions, and taking those cakes, and taking those chips, and people being there around them. And they look to that treatment facility as their home base. And there's a certain warmth, and a certain love associated with it. It's the magic. We go into those places. We spread the magic. We take our big books in there, and we are there to say, here's the program. And I'm going to finish in a moment by reading a little part of, that was in one of Cheryl Ann's bulletins, you know, that she's been doing. And of course, Cheryl Ann is just so typical of the people that you run into in service, like the Tommies, and like so many people around, that are dedicated to what they're doing, who love what they're doing, because it's part of our program. I
[01:10:01]
mean, that's a very, very lovely thing. But we've got to solve those problems, you know. We have to solve those problems in hospitals, and there's a way around it. We've got guidelines. You know, all of you here who are involved in service, I'm sure you must know about that. There's guidelines, and it's like the beauty of the big book. If we do them, it's going to be okay, you know, because that's the beauty of this program, the miracle of this program.
With love, with our love for the program, and with our love for the still-suffering alcoholic, we'll go in there and we'll solve those problems. We'll solve those problems when they come to our groups. With a smile. I was walking down St. Catherine Street last night after I came back from the Big O, and it was funny. I was alone, and I'm not often alone in this city or in this program. It was nice. I was just walking along. I went and I looked in the window of an old tavern where I spent a lot of time, the Stanley Tavern, and I just looked through there just to recapture, just to recapture those feelings of the loneliness and everything else that was associated with those days. I was walking along the street, and some youngsters, young people came out, a lot of young people in town, and a lot of us in town. That's beautiful, eh? Love it. They're waving, and hello, and the fellowship was there. The young people stopped me and said, excuse me, I wonder if you could help us. I said, certainly. I'd like to know something. What is the difference between the red tag and the blue tag and everything else? And I told them. And somebody said, wow, fantastic.
Good for you. More power to you. And I thought, wow, that's beautiful, you know? And it's true. More power to you. More power. And I never think of that, because in my case, it wasn't a case of more power to you, Roger. And I go, you did it. But it's this program. More power to you for being in it. And I really, that's lovely. And we're examples. And I walked down the street after that, and I don't know what my face looked like before, but I thought, hey, you better be smiling, Rog.
Sometimes, I walk, and I've got a set face, and it's not that I'm down. I'm just, I'm very, very happy. But I thought, you better be smiling, because they say that's how, if they look at somebody, and they're walking along miserably, they say, look at that poor devil. Look at him dragging himself around, you know? But no, so I smiled after that, and it was nice. It was really nice. A strong feeling of being the example on those streets.
People say, what was it? Alcoholics Anonymous. You're their alcoholics? They were all smiling. They were all laughing. And that's the way it works, too. So in those facilities where we go, and when we bring those people, that's the example that we are. That they can't get away from. They see us smiling. They see us loving. They can't cope with it anymore. At the beginning, I could cope with all this shaking hands, and kissing, and loving, and everything fine, and eating sandwiches, and drinking coffee. But they come to love it.
They come to love it, because we share it. Because we share it. I'm just going to read this last little part. This was a fellow by the name of Jim Dee, from Panel 27, delegate from Nevada, talking in 1978 at the General Service Conference. And he talked about treatment facilities, and what we're doing, and everything else. And he talks about the problems that we're all looking at. And he says here, after going through it all, I will do what I can to let them know the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous is ready to come to them. Not to tell them what to do, but to cooperate with them in helping the alcoholic who still suffers. And I will let them know what we cannot do. I must impress upon the professionals that there is only one thing that I have for the alcoholic, and that is a message of hope. I will not go to them to tell them what they should do with their books. If asked what to do, I will share experiences of mine and the Fellowship of AA. But I will remind them that I'm not a professional. I am a drunk that has found a way to live, one day at a time, through a program of 12 steps, taken from a book called Alcoholics Anonymous. My activities in this Fellowship are guided by 12 traditions that apply to me, and not to the professional. I am grateful to God, as I understand him, for giving me this chance to serve, to help to carry the message of AA to the alcoholic who still suffers, through cooperating with, or working with, the professional. And that really sums it up for me. That just sums it up perfectly. I'm just one, you know, an American.
I'm just one, you know, some, an American, and it was probably the president of your American United States, where our beautiful program happened to be founded, he said once, I'm only one, I cannot do everything, but I am one, I can do something,
[01:15:02]
and that's, that's, that's the way I see it, you know, we're all just one off, we're all just one, in service, maybe a lot of you are there, and I too, join with Tony in imploring you, not to give you any instructions, other than saying the guidelines are there, but I say, let's go back, after this 50th celebration birthday, to our districts around the world, with that sort of renewed thing that says, we're going to solve all the problems, we're going to get people to help, we're growing all the time, and we're going to love them, we're going to love them the way you love me, I, I thank you, I thank you dearly for my life, I love the program very, very dearly, I love you all individually, God bless you all, and thank you very, very much.
Thank you. We did good this morning, huh? I want to thank very much, Brian, thank you for sharing, Tony, thank you, Roger, thank you very much for a very powerful message from all three of you, and I certainly appreciate your, your love for the fellowship, and for all the service that you've given. We have 10 minutes. Would anybody like to get up to a mic and ask a question, keeping in mind that we have 10 minutes? Okay, who would like to get up first?
My name is George Aitchin, I'm from Tennessee, I live 38.3 miles from Jack Daniel's Distillery. I would like to congratulate Cheryl on the fine program she put together there, and I want to say to you as a drunk, and in all of my 63 years of living, getting down on my knees never got me a woman. But you did get a fine one, and Tony did a beautiful job. Now my question is, I liked what Tony said about if you leave this problem alone, maybe it'll come to a head.
However, it is very serious in that the drug addict and the alcoholic meeting in the same group as recently as three or four months ago broke up my group real bad. I had to deal with it, a lot of us had to deal with it. Us old people, and I'm not really old, we can't carry on all of this program. The young people are coming in, and they are addicted either to drugs or alcohol. I have been meeting with these young people, they can't afford drugs no more, they're drinking cheap wine, and they're becoming alcoholics as well as drug addicts.
And so I am finding this problem. I found, I like what Brian said about the thin-lipped blue old-timers sitting there with that pieted word of AA saying only alcoholics will get here, but that same person will get up and say, alcohol is an addiction, so is drugs. And we're finding, I came into Alcoholics Anonymous some ten years ago, I never did tell anybody that I was drug addicted. I told them I was an alcoholic, I was treated for alcoholism. The doctor that was treating me thought I had a valium deficiency.
You know, after he found out my liver had turned into stone, I had triple vision, and my blood pressure was near the stroke level, he decided, well, we'll give him drugs. So I find that we will have to deal with this problem, whether we have guidelines now, or whether we're going to get them in the future. I do hate to see us drive out these young people. They're coming there for hope. I was always hoping that maybe they'd have Drug Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous set up something, but I am finding a great, a lot of conflict in my district in Tennessee where it is splitting groups. They are actually driving. We did busloads that come to our meetings, and they have a group conscience meeting, and they voted them out. That's all I wanted to say. I think I used too much time.
[01:20:03]
Hi. Hi. Hi, I'm Jerry Gee, and I'm from Battle Creek, Michigan, and I am an alcoholic. Three years ago, we got a concept for an Alano Club, a place to hold meetings. The place we'd held our meetings for 35 years was worn out, second floor, and what have you. So the first thing we did was form a corporation, and the articles of incorporation said that the facility would be used for alcoholism and substance abuse, and mentioned drugs as well.
So our beautiful community supported us and gave us enough to buy a building and remodel it, and we're really sitting pretty. So the first thing almost that happened was that some people came and said, we would like to start a narcotics anonymous group in your facility, and I've been privileged to be the president since the inception of the Alano Club, and so I thought, sure, the articles of incorporation say we should. So I brought it to the meeting, and what happened was that they came and voted down the use of that facility by narcotics anonymous, and I'm still a bit bothered since the state has created our corporation.
What's your opinion? Should an Alano Club that is basically grown out of the efforts of Alcoholics Anonymous, should it rent space to Narcotics Anonymous? Well, first of all, a club is an outside issue. It's not AA. And as such, the club is entitled by, as you said, your own bylaws to do whatever you choose to do. After the meeting, I'd like to take your name, and maybe I can share some experience, strength, and hope with you through some of our literature and write you a nice letter, okay? Yeah, except you say it's not AA, but it is in the sense that what we of AA say really goes.
I'm sorry. According to tradition, we are not affiliated with any outside organizations or institutions. Alcoholics Anonymous carries the message, and we do that one-on-one by meetings, and a club is an outside issue. But I do have experience from other people that have shared about this that I've heard about, and I would just love to talk to you about that after the meeting. Thank you very much, Cheryl. I appreciate your point.
Hi, my name is Jim. I'm an alcoholic. I'm still in Massachusetts. Hi, darling, one moment. I just want to tell you we've got three minutes. I'll be quick. Thank you. It's more of an observation. I had an experience in my life where I've been sober five years, and a year ago, I stopped using sugar and caffeine, and I had a dramatic change in my personality. And all the conferences I've been to, there's been no mention of nutritional therapy, and I think it's lacking, and any people that are dealing with treatment centers and in recovery should be aware of the nutritional aspects of this disease. That's all I really want to say.
We have one minute, and then we're going to close with the Lord's Prayer. Well, if I only have one minute, I can say my name is Jay, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Jay. I'm from California, and I'm really happy to be here, and happy birthday. Hi. Hi, everyone. My name is Joan Yip. I'm an alcoholic, and I'm the chairman of the Treatment Center Committee here in Montreal, and it's a bilingual committee, and we have 24 hospitals and treatment centers which we bring the AA message into, and we have hospitals for the chronically ill. We have handicapped hospitals. We have mental hospitals. We have regular hospitals where we work closely with the psychiatric department, and we even have a French group for the hard of hearing, and I'd like to say that I'm very happy to be able to be doing this work, and I learned it through being a sponsor of one of these groups, and I used to go into this group every single Wednesday night, and I used to open up the meeting, and we meet these very sick and confused members, and they don't even know if they're alcoholics when they come, but by the time they do recover, if they
[01:25:02]
keep coming long enough, we do follow up with them, and I'm really happy to be here, and thank you all for sharing. Thank you. I would like for all of us to thank again our wonderful panel this morning. Thank you very much.