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Source: 1985 Montreal International Convention – Unknown Speaker – SPONSORSHIP WORKSHOP – RS 06313.mp3 File: 1985-montreal-international-convention-unknown-speaker-sponsorship-workshop-rs-06313.mp3 Duration: 01:13:00
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Drinking, Alcoholic, Let's Have a Moment of Silence in Gratitude for the AA Recoveries of the Past Fifty Years, Please All Join Me in the Serenity Prayer, God, Ramble in Serenity, Accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. There may be some 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.
If you are interested in the tape of this meeting, you may obtain tape on the main floor from the tape sales booth. If you wonder what this is, this is a workshop entitled Sponsorship. Each speaker will speak a predetermined length of time, about 20-25 minutes, and this workshop is due to end at 3 p.m. Sponsorship. The only thing I remember about sponsorship when I was new in the fellowship a friend of mine came up to me after I was badgering my own sponsor.
He said, remember, he is also an alcoholic, and he needs all the help he can get, so kind of spread the wealth around and share your experience, strength, and hope, and pain, and all the other little problems that I had at the time with other people. And I remember that. My sponsor was just another alcoholic who was certainly staying sober with me. Our first speaker is a past trustee from Canada, and I had the privilege to serve three years with Al at the General Service Office and at the conference.
Al H. from Saskatchewan. Hi, everybody. My name is Al Hurgot, and I'm an alcoholic. A particular welcome to the young folk from Moorhead, Minnesota, who I hear are here in for us. Hi, fellas. I stand before you sober today by the grace of God and the miserable SOB by the name of Cal P., who was my sponsor. Cal came into my life. His sponsors come into most people's lives. I want to share with you that I'm grateful that my sponsor wasn't one of those who believed in a myth that I hear going around, Alcoholics Anonymous, from time to time, and that you don't come on 12-step people who are drinking or who don't make the phone call themselves.
I came home on the morning of July the 21st, 1971, having consumed a rather large bottle of Lemon Heart Black Navy Rum, and I was somewhat drunk. And I said to my wife, Diane, don't worry, I'm going to call Alcoholics Anonymous. And she was thrilled to death, as you can imagine. I'd been to AA five times and had been out five times, and she didn't have any reason to think that this would be different.
So I tried to call the man who was to become my sponsor, and I didn't get him. The reason I didn't get him is if you're as drunk as I am, it's extremely difficult to get seven numbers in the proper sequence. And I got all kinds of strange people out of bed. So I asked Diane, will you please call AA? And she called, and this man came into my life. He walked into my house at 8 o'clock in the morning, found me as drunk as I was, and said some very spiritual things to me.
What he said was, put the little S.O.B. to bed and call me when he wakes up. And that was the beginning of a long and somewhat testy relationship from time to time. You should understand a little bit about myself. When I came to AA, like perhaps a few of you in this room, I didn't know how to live sober. And Cal was the person who God chose to put in my life to teach me how to live sober. To give you an idea about how confused I am, when I was a young man growing up in the prairies
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in Saskatchewan, in a small town of about two and a half thousand people, we have in our province an institution called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who I came to know rather intimately over time. And they used to arrest me from time to time. Now in a small town in rural Saskatchewan, what happens when you get arrested, it's much more homey than in the big cities. They sort of pull you over, and the RCMP are extremely polite people.
They pull you over and they always ask you, or they say something nice like, good evening sir, may I see some identification please, and you go through the driver's license and all that kind of stuff. And they used to always arrest you on Friday and Saturday night when you're 18 or 19 years old, and they always asked me for I.D. After about seven or eight times around this thing, and continuous Saturdays, and showing up in court on Mondays to pay my fines, I knew damn well that they knew who I was.
So when they pulled me over again and asked if they could see some I.D., I was smoking at the time, and I grabbed a pack of silver paper off of my cigarettes, and I rolled it up in the shape of a bullet, and I handed it out through the window of my car, and I said, this silver bullet will tell you who I am. And I discovered there's more than one way to exit the door of a 48 Studebaker coupe. They weren't all that bright, they put me in jail, and I was swearing at them, and they said, if you don't shut up, you little punk, I'll kick you out of here, which I thought was kind of a neat thing anyway.
But that's how I was when I came to AA. I didn't know who I was or what I was. I knew by now that I suffered from an illness called alcoholism, because I'd been around you people since I was 19 years old, for short stays varying from six weeks to six months, and I'd always found it necessary again to drink to ease the pain I found in my life. So I came to AA hopeless and helpless. I decided I was one of those who you talk about in chapter five of the big book, who was constitutionally incapable of being honest enough to get sober, and my view of life was that I would drink until I ended up on Skid Row, and from there I would die.
And I had long ceased praying for sobriety, I had simply began to pray for death before I ended up on Skid Row, because I just did not want to be there. I got sober that morning, or decided to again try to stop drinking that morning through a special person that God put in my life, who I don't know who she is. I want you to know that I was a high class drunk. I only lived in good places in town, I couldn't afford to pay the rent, but I lived there anyway until they caught up with me and threw me out, or whatever it is they did with people like me, and I always dressed as well as I possibly could, and I wanted to be dignified.
And I had consumed this bottle of black rum, and it's real hard to be dignified when you've done that, because you have strange stains on the front of your suit jacket, and your hair is sort of messed up, it's back when I had a little bit, and I was walking down this wonderful street at seven in the morning on this beautiful morning in July, and I walked by this fine home where two young girls, I guess four or five years old, were playing in a sandbox, and one of them stopped and pointed to her friend and said, Look at the drunk, and I stopped and wondered, What in the hell would a drunk be doing in a nice neighborhood like this?
And I realized they were talking about me, and for some reason, coming from that small little girl, it hit me where nobody else had ever been able to hit me, the psychiatrists, the police, the counselors, the clergy, my wife, and my mother-in-law, and all those other people who tried to tell me the same thing over time. So I called AA, and this person came into my life. And he began to teach me how to be sober.
He also took control of my life, and I want to talk about that a bit later, because that didn't work out too well between myself and Cal as time went on. But when I first came to AA, I needed that. Cal made me check into his service station where he worked every morning at 8 o'clock for instructions, and he made me check in again at 5 o'clock in the evening when I came off work for instructions, because he knew my car had a character defect and always wanted to go to the bars about 5.15.
And I had to do those things. One day I decided to test him, and I want you to know that I had a good job as secretary and everything, and my ego required those things, and I decided one morning to test him, and I drove by his service station at 8 o'clock in the morning and thought, like, what can he do about it anyway? Well, I found out. He left the service station, walked into my office in front of my staff, and totally humiliated me.
Laughter Applause And that's what I needed, because as you've probably been able to understand by now, I had a small ego problem when I arrived at Alcoholics Anonymous. As a matter of fact, there are those in AA sitting in this audience who might think I may still have a small ego problem, and that's probably true.
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But Cal was my guide. He was my teacher. He's the one who taught me how to do things that I didn't know how to do, and that was to be sober. He took me to AA meetings. He sat beside me. He embarrassed me. One time that comes to mind, I was sober for about three or four months, and they were doing the steps. And I want you to know that I didn't think Cal was all that bright. He only had a grade four education, and I really wondered what it was he had to teach an intelligent person like myself. He told me the one thing he had is he was sober for 17 years, which gave him something that I obviously didn't understand. But we sat in that meeting, and they had done step four, and I'm not dumb. I knew that five comes after four. So I knew next week they'd be doing five. So I got the book out, and I studied.
And I became an instant expert on step five, and they had a deal. They went around the room. The only thing that might change is they might start at the left and go right, or the right or go left. But I knew they'd have to get to the middle sometime, so I got there early, and I sat there. And it came my turn to speak, and the chairman said, Al, do you have anything to say on step five? And I rose to my feet. You do not deliver those kinds of edicts sitting down.
I looked across the room, surprised to see Cal had also risen to his feet. And he said, say your name and what you are, because that's all you can say without lying. And I think at that point I completed step three. I'm not exactly sure. However, Cal and I were to have a parting of the heart. And I were to have a parting of the ways. In the first year of my sobriety, he was not my friend. He is now my friend, and he is still my first sponsor.
But Cal did not want to let go of me. He wanted to make my decisions in my life, I think all the time. And I began to feel sort of closed in and unable to function as a mature adult. And I found it necessary to seek a second sponsor. Cal really says that what that really means is that I'm so sick I have to be sponsored by a committee. And that could be entirely true. But I had to grow, and I got very interested in service.
I ended up being a trustee on the General Service Board. And I want you to know that probably impresses you a hell of a lot more than it impresses me. Because I have this image of Cal, my sponsor, that first morning when I was drunk laying on my couch. Walking in and saying to Diane, my wife, we'd better treat this one carefully because there lies the next Western Canadian regional trustee. I somehow doubt that went through his mind at the time.
But I got involved in service and I got a second sponsor. Not a different sponsor. I still view Cal as my sponsor. I still love him. I still cherish him. We still spend an awful lot of time together. And he still tries to run my life. The difference is now I just don't let him very often anymore. I've grown enough to believe that I have opinions and they also count, not just his. And I got a new sponsor and we began to trudge the road of happy destiny involved in service to Alcoholics Anonymous and all the kind of things that we do.
I'm very privileged in that the people who sponsored me, who spent time with me are people who believe that I should have all of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous not just a part of it, and therefore inducted me and taught me about all three legacies of AA. I never knew that there was any choice about not being involved in service. It kind of had to be. I got to be the delegate from Saskatchewan by very spiritual means.
The second sponsor had come up to me and said, I think you should put your name forward. And I said, I don't want to. And he said, if you don't, I'll break both your arms. That's how I got to stay in service. But it saved my life, I think. My second sponsor, John, had some difficulties in his life and I want to share this with you. A year and a half ago, in Peggy's Cove, in the wonderful province of Nova Scotia to the east of us, sitting beside a lighthouse I had the dubious privilege of 12-stepping my sponsor who had found it necessary because of the pain in his life to go back to the only source of solace that we all know when the pain gets that bad and that he had to drink. And by luck I found him at a meeting that wasn't even AA in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
And I'm proud to say to you that my second sponsor, John, is now sober again a year and a half in Alcoholics Anonymous. And the worm has turned. It's my turn now. I'm privileged today to sponsor people in Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't know whether
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that means I'm wise or special. I don't think it does. I just think it means I've been around a bit longer than some of the guys that come to Alcoholics Anonymous. And I shave and I take showers, so I smell better than they do. And from time to time, they come over and ask me to be their sponsor. Up to about four or five years ago, when I sponsored new people into Alcoholics Anonymous, I was much like my first sponsor, Cal. I decided that if I was to be your sponsor, there were clear and specific rules and regulations, and you would do this and you would do that, and I would take over your life and I would tell you what to do and what to dress and where to be and what to eat and all those kinds of things. And I did those things. And in spite of me, a lot of them stayed sober, not because of me. Then I came to understand some things, because God and his wisdom put some pain into my life from time to time, and I found it necessary to run back to some people for help that could keep my head above water. Because I believe, from watching what happened to my friend John, that when the pain in sobriety becomes greater than the pain I recall drinking, I may find it necessary to do what John found it necessary to do and pick up a drink. And I didn't want that. So I went to my friends and shared the pain within me. And I sometimes wonder what I would have done had they chosen to lecture me and to beat on me and to hurt me more than I was already hurting, because I was hurting a lot. All they did for me was they cherished me and they loved me and they respected me and allowed me to make the mistakes that I had to make to recover and to get through the things that I was doing.
Because of that experience, I've changed my mind about how I sponsor people. I now try to just love them and to cherish them, to support them, to allow them the dignity to make their own decisions, to allow them the right to bear the consequences of those decisions and the pain that comes from making bad ones, and then to support them when the pain gets too great. And that's all I see my role to be. I no longer feel that I have any particular wisdom to impart to anyone. I've come to realize as the result of my experiences since I've been sober that I have all I can handle is running my own life besides caring anybody else's around. And my job is simply to care.
And I think back to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous when I went down the next day after I had sobered up. And I didn't go through detox or any of those kinds of things, so I was vibrating a tad. And I went down those stairs and they gave me a Coke. They wouldn't give me a coffee because they were afraid I'd spill that hot fluid on a part of my body that I might find useful again someday. I'm happy to report that's turned out to be true.
And I don't recall a whole lot about what was said. But for some reason the thing that I can recall about that meeting and always have, I never understood for a long time why it always stuck in the forefront of my mind. At the end of the meeting they stood up and said the Lord's Prayer, and they held hands like they do in lots of groups. And I have no idea to this day who was standing to my left that I can recall his hand. It was hard and it was calloused, and it was obviously a man who worked hard in some kind of a way.
And he was big. I recall that. Of course, when you're 5 foot 9 and 140 pounds, everybody's pretty big, but he was big. And I remember him squeezing my hand as a total stranger and telling me that he cared for me. And I remember as I stand before you how good that felt. And I remember today how good it feels this morning when I meet old friends and we hug each other and tell each other that we still care for each other, how good it feels.
And I think about those long black times on the street drinking, and the loneliness and the blackness and the frustration and the feeling of being unloved and unwanted and uncared for, and how badly that hurt. And I just feel I don't have the right to inflict that on anybody who comes to me with their hand out for help. So all I do now is I listen to them, and I give them a little help from time to time, but not a lot, and I hug them and I invite them to my house to be part of my family, and I watch them get sober, again in spite of me, not because of any inherent wisdom I have. And I've come to understand that if I am anything, I'm simply an instrument of a loving God, as I understand him, who's chosen to put me in the lives of other people, as other people have been given to me to use as they see fit. And I think that's about all I've got to say in sponsorship. I just want to say while I'm up here, to all my friends from Quebec, as a Western Canadian, I have had just one hell of a time in your city. And it's right on. And I can't thank all of Montreal or your good Mayor Drapeau, so I'll thank you for him, and I'm sure you
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can convey my messages to him. Thank you again for listening to me. Thank you, Al. Our next speaker, thanks to our service structure, I had the opportunity to meet when she came to New York as the delegate from Delaware. Debbie? Hi, everybody. I'm Debbie, and I'm an alcoholic. I was thinking this morning before I came here, and believe me, I was thinking about coming here, that I have heard so many things since I have been here in Montreal this week that I intended to say to you this afternoon.
About love, about caring, all of those things, and that to me is what sponsorship is, and we're all sponsoring each other, aren't we? At home, I have a small cross-stitch sampler, and on it, it says, a sponsor is love. That's all it says. And it was a gift from a newcomer, and I believe that no matter how we sponsor, and we all do it in many different ways, it is love in action. I also believe, and this is my personal feeling, that you should have had one to be one. I say that because what I know, or a lot of what I know, about getting sober and staying sober, I learned from my sponsor, and most or all of what I know about being a sponsor, I learned from my sponsor. When I came into the program, the very last thing I wanted to do was to ask somebody to be my sponsor. I didn't want anybody to get that close to me. I didn't want anybody to get that close to me. I didn't want anybody to get that close to me. I didn't want the responsibility that having that close a friendship or relationship carried with it. And besides, if they got that close to me, they might know that I wasn't perfect, that I didn't know how to work this program without any help.
All of those things, my pride, my ego, and I did not want to do that. But on the other side of the coin, and I say this gratefully, I was such a blob when I got here. There was no or very little defiance left. There was no rebellion left. There was very little ingenuity or originality, if you would, for rewriting this program left in me. And thanks to my higher power, I became willing and had the good sense to ask someone to be my sponsor.
Now you know what happened next. I loved it. And she, just as Al has said, she took me to meetings. She led me through and guided me through the steps. She introduced me to a little bit of service. She took me on 12-step calls and all of those things. And she was a big part of my life. She still is. But she started after a year and a half or so to let me go, to step back, as she should have done. And you know what? At 53, I wasn't that grown up. I couldn't stand it. I became very jealous of her other newcomers. I resented the time she spent with them. And things got pretty bad. It was dangerous. And I was upset and I felt horrible inside. But of course, I couldn't talk to her about it. I wouldn't dare let her know. But she had trained me well. And I went to someone else and talked to someone else in the program. And they suggested I do another fourth and fifth step. And I did.
And I didn't have to drink over that. I was thinking, too, I would like to share some of the things that she taught me that have been, they were then and they still are awfully important to me. This business of letting people know you, the comfort that sharing
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and the fun, if you will, too, that sharing brings. Letting somebody know you. Letting somebody love you. I also learned that it was okay for me to say I love you to somebody other than my husband. To say it to my children more often. To say it to my friends when I meant it and felt like it. I had not done this before I came to this program. She taught me how to accept a compliment. To accept love, as I said. I didn't have to go into a snit and a tailspin if somebody said they liked the dress that I had on. You know, just say thank you and go on. And most, I guess most importantly, but importantly for me, she emphasized over and over again about making a beginning to take action. I was, my bar was my kitchen.
And for a long time I would stay in glass in hand at the kitchen sink, gazing out the kitchen window, making plans that I never fulfilled. I wasted an awful lot of time and of course then I would get frustrated because I hadn't done what I was supposed to be doing and I'd have to drink to get over the frustration and so forth. So it was important for me to hear this, to make a beginning. That the steps were for doing. It was fine to read them and fine to study them, but they were for doing. And this she also ding-donged at me about. She told me a lot about keeping my programs simple and she thought she kept hers or thinks she keeps hers pure. That I didn't, you know, I could read the step for instance in the fifth step it tells us to talk about the exact nature of our wrongdoings. And that I didn't have to go into chapter and verse and on and on and on and on. And that in the sixth step that I would become willing to ask God to remove my shortcomings and not spin my wheels on things like that. It was important to do it and to do it as the program was set down. She also taught me that it's okay to give a gift in a brown paper bag.
Now that has lots of meanings for me. The first time she gave me a gift it was a book and it was in a brown paper bag and I sat there and I thought, hmm, she didn't even bother to wrap it. That was my gratitude. That was my feeling. But I, you know, I have since, that has meant something to me personally because I, you know, it's not the gift or it's not, it's what's inside of me that's important. It's not all of these masks that I put on on the outside. She taught me, as I said before, to stand on my own two feet when I went into the snit over her backing off from me. In many ways she taught me that because I had made a father out of my husband. I leaned on everybody. I wasn't in too good shape when I got here. I say I was a blob. She taught me the joy and also the pain of trying to grow spiritually. She suggested that I go to 11 step meetings regularly and I did that and I don't do it as much now as I should or I would like to, but I know that when I'm off the track or off my trolley, I go back to the 11 step meetings on a regular basis and I, and it helps. She taught me to read the 11 step in the big book as it's described in there and if I read it over and over and how helpful that has been. She also, and I believe Al mentioned this, that she has warts and that she needs sponsorship too. And she needs friendship and love and you know I had her up here on the pedestal and she didn't need anything from anybody I thought and that of course is not so. I am a product of a rehab and I heard this morning at a meeting that I, I said I'd heard all the things I was going to say. A man said that going to a rehab is discovery and coming to AA is recovery. I was taught at the rehab about my disease of alcoholism and I found out what ailed me. I also found out that So I found out that, what do I want to say, I learned what was wrong with me right, and
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I learned that AA was the way to go for recovery. But I did not know when I left rehab how to live on a day-to-day basis in the real world without alcohol. I had been a daily drinker for a long, long time, and I did not know how to live without drinking, and this is where my sponsor came in. I did not know, and she, we have an expression at home, I suppose it's everywhere, this business of mastering the ordinary.
Again, the good orderly direction in my life, I needed that from a sponsor. All of the tools that she gave me have been helpful for living, but the bottom line is that they were the tools I needed to live without drinking. As far as working with other people, most of all, I keep learning over and over again that I don't get anybody sober. I keep trying, but I don't do it. If I present the program, and if I just do that and let the God of my understanding work with the newcomer also, the job gets done.
It nicks away and helps me with my humility. I learn, and I continue to learn the importance of back to basics, the importance of go to meetings or don't drink, go to meetings and work the steps, and it'll get better. It takes time. Those basics I need to hear over and over again myself, and I think we all need to hear them over and over again. I learn to really listen to people. I'm trying to remember that.
I sometimes try to keep a jump ahead of the person that's talking to me, the newcomer, if you will, so that I'll come up with the right answer or the right suggestion. If I will listen with my ears and my heart and try to work out whatever the problem is with the newcomer, then we both make out a whole lot better. I found that I don't really have to like a person an awful lot as long as I care and love and understand enough to try and help them.
I have also learned that rigidity doesn't work, that we're all different and need different kinds of guidance, perhaps. For me, it has been beneficial to pass it on, if you will. By that I mean the newcomer, that if I'm spinning my wheels and don't seem to be able to help in any way, then it is far better for that person especially if I pass them on and let somebody else try. Perhaps the next person will have what they need to hear or what they are able to hear.
I have roar stories about my sponsoring. Two or three of the gals that I have sponsored have died. The first lady that I sponsored was twenty years old and she was beautiful and she looked a good bit like Twiggy. She had big beautiful eyes and anyway it still hurts inside, but she couldn't get it and she shot herself. And I again needed a sponsor badly when that happened. I had to go back and be sponsored, believe me.
Again I don't get anybody sober. Usually there are some that are out there sober and feeling good and they are working with others and that's what it's all about. I try to sponsor the gals and I realize all of us are not interested in service, but I sure try to encourage anybody that is to be involved, to know the great satisfaction there is in trying to give back some of what's been given to us and just the fun of meeting so many wonderful people.
I'm learning that I don't dare have a set of straight rules, that I need some common sense rules, as I said, like passing people on or that I don't get people sober. But if I can have enough understanding inside of me to explain my feelings, then we will make out okay. I believe I have to be patient enough or try to be patient enough when I'm working with a brand new person to go through the emotional ups and downs that we all have, I believe,
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and through the doubts that we all have, at least I had about the program and about me and about the sponsor and everything else. I realize that we all don't work or do the steps the same way and I can't control the new person, that again, if I have the understanding, then I can allow her, if I will, to choose her path. There is a little book that I have of articles that were written to the grapevine by a member some time ago about how he worked the steps after he had been sober seven years and then again after 14 years, and in that he talks about the understanding heart.
I like it and I'd like to just quote a tiny bit from that. He says that we should try to remember always that we are alcoholics only temporarily recovered, that we should keep memory green, realistic comprehension ever ready, and these are the guides to an understanding heart. I like to say to myself, you know, to whom much is given, much is required. I'm very grateful for the privilege and the opportunity of trying, maybe I better start first, I'm grateful that I was able to receive the love of a sponsor and I'm very grateful for the privilege of trying to pass that on and to give the love to the newcomers as they come along.
The dividends are the friendship, of course, they're wonderful, and the opportunity of seeing people get better is a marvelous experience, I think, and as it says in the big book when it's talking about the twelfth step, it does indeed. My life has taken on new meaning, and thank you very much. Thank you, Debbie. Well, that's it, folks. That's the end of the sponsorship. You just heard the humility part of the program.
Does anyone in here need a sponsor? Our next speaker, if there are 28 hours in a day, from what I understand, he carries the message, and he has many, many people that he sponsors, and many have stayed sober over many, many years. I'd like to introduce to you Clancy Eye. My name is Clancy Imuslund, and I'm an alcoholic. It wouldn't be fitting for me to start without saying something in extreme bad taste to offend half the people here, but I've noticed this charming young lady on my left who is doing the interpretation for the hard of hearing, and we, a few years ago, I guess we were a little detached from the mainstream out in California.
We tried that same thing, and it didn't work very well, but as my friend Clint H. and others know, we didn't do it quite the same way. The speaker would get up and say, my name is Fred, and I'm an alcoholic, and we just had a man next to him saying, my name is Fred, and I'm an alcoholic. Well, here comes, I had to say that just as the general manager of AA World Services strode in. I think this is an excellent subject.
My, the first two speakers didn't quite use up all their time, I'm sorry to say, and so we probably will get, if we get through early, there will be time for questions. There's also a possibility there won't be any line at the coffee bar downstairs, but
[00:40:01]
I don't think so. My voice is a little gone because my friend Kevin J. from Washington, New York asked me to help him a little bit in the flag rehearsals yesterday, and unfortunately, he's a wonderful director, but he doesn't deal well with West Coast alcoholics who provided these guides. He was saying to them nicely, I think it would be a good idea, maybe if you would walk over here and then cross. What do you think of that idea? And I said, no, Kevin, that's not the way they've been trained. You, over there!
And then late in the afternoon, the flag bearers themselves showed up and they were a recalcitrant bunch and this one guy just made me crazy, just made, I kept telling him again and again and I finally just gave him about five minutes' ration of strong direction. I said, look, take the flag and dip it twice, then step back, and then just stand there. Can't you understand that? And I gave him five minutes, and he turned to me with a big smile and said, Trump is ready to go!
So, my voice is just about gone, but I'm very happy and privileged to be… Shut up! I have been very pleased to hear our first two participants. They're both very nice people and I enjoyed what they said. And they deal very well with sponsorship. I, in a sense, I think I've been thrown in here as some hope to those who do not respond to any known love that is available. In Los Angeles, it's a rather common threat. If you don't shape up, we're going to send you to Clancy. That catches them. But I, because I was a long-term slipper. I was a long-term slipper, and after many years of slipping, I had developed a rather devious and sly and nasty, cynical response to people who had showed affection or unjudgmental love for me. And I, in looking back now, I think I understand that, in a sense. And it's something to think about when you deal with people like this. And that is this, and this is not a joke. This is actually correct, that when you are out of self-worth, people who like you, you like them, but you don't respect them because they're too easily fooled. And the people who treat you as down deep, your own Puritan ethics, as you should be treated, you hate them, but you respect them. And it has always been my feeling, that is why I could never have had a friend to be my sponsor, because I would not turn to a friend in time of sponsorship, because I could get whatever answer I needed. Somewhere inside of me, whatever spark of life was left, told me that I needed something different, but I didn't want it, but somewhere there was an instinctive thing that needed it. And I went through a number of sponsors, and I've said this several times, and I believe it. And it may be a small percentage of alcoholics, but alcoholics who have become so caught up in their own rationale that they've just lost any response to reason. And that is the idea that if I would have found two more people to love me and hold me, I would be dead. I needed to find someone, I needed to find someone who just did not put up with my crap. And I used to lie awake at night and hate that guy and think of ways to kill him. And again, I've said this many times, but it's certainly true. At one time, I got fired as a dishwasher after six months of sobriety, and I, and he cursed, the man
[00:45:00]
who came to talk to me was the first man I ever believed had felt the way I felt. And that was the great turning spot in his life. And the next guy they got, this Bill from Kentucky, who resented their intrusions upon his solitary drunken splendor in that hospital. And on and on. And it's one alcoholic talking to another. That is what makes Alcoholics Anonymous different from all therapies everywhere.
Now there are a number of people who have, and it's interesting too, Dr. Bob's last talk, the last talk he gave at the first of these international conventions in 1950, he said several things that we still remember, such as, keep it simple, let's not louse our program up with all sorts of Freudian complexes. Secondly, he mentioned that number one thing that we all talk about, all in the bottom analysis, all there is here is love and service.
And he didn't even have to define them. He says we all know what love is, and we all know what service is. And the other point he made was, let us never become too busy to stop and turn back and give a helping hand to those behind us, because none of us would be here today if someone hadn't done it for us. Which is certainly the emblem of the sponsorship concept. Techniques of sponsorship vary, methodology of sponsorship varies, but nothing varies in the basic premise that when you go out there and give some guy or girl your best shot, you are upholding the number one spiritual principle of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I believe. If mouthing pretty phrases and telling people the answer to your problem is on page 149, if that's all there was to it, we'd all be home free. But what we are sharing is ourself. We are sharing our feelings. I was a product of strong, strong sponsorship. Almost beyond strong, almost too contemptuous is a better word. And in fact, I found out later, this guy did not like me. Hard to believe.
But he would give me things to do just to keep me out of his way a lot of times. And as one of our speakers said, you get into that little bit of peer jealousy. He had other people he sponsored. One of them that did me some good, he was one of the dead-end kids in the movies. And I used to look at him and think, if I was a star, he'd be nicer to me, I'll bet. But he gave me specific instructions. I mentioned this the other night at a meeting here, but, you know, to me, when you're a cynic and a boob, sponsorship, I always looked for sponsorship.
I never believed in AA because I'd been in AA in and out for nine years. I believed in important things. I believed in searching for truth. At one time, I was, to the best of my knowledge, I don't want to offend any of you people from the Lone Star State, but at one time, to the best of my knowledge, when I was on the faculty of the University of Texas directing a grand opera, and I was deeply into searching for the inner self, I became one of six people that I know of in the state of Texas who knew truth.
Unfortunately, the next autumn, I was directing the Christmas pageant at the Texas State Insane Asylum. The moral I drew from that is, in Texas, they don't respect truth, that's all.
[00:50:02]
But I knew that my problems were much deeper than those who came to AA for a drinking problem. I was here a long time before I discovered what we all suffered from was not drinking, but alcoholism, which manifests itself in extremely conflict-prone sobriety, as well as the surge that comes from drinking. So most of us have come here feeling different. Most of us have, I suppose, if there's any unifying factor that every alcoholic that I've ever known has, is they come here feeling different, and the door is locked from the inside.
It is not locked from the outside. If pretty words could get that door open, we'd all have people. But somehow you have to reassure that frightened boob living in a wall of defiance to somehow release the lock on his side of the door and open the door a little bit. Some of us have our doors bolted as though we were living in a New York condo, nine bolts, two locks, and a chain, and a window. And so my sponsor, it didn't make any difference why he had me do the things, because as it turned out, I did them and got better.
He had me take AA actions. He had me go to meetings. He had me say not say no to AA requests. He superimposed his judgment over mine. Now there's a question of whether or not we should do that in AA, and I think if possible, you should not do it. But there are places where you do it, and the reason you have to do it is if the guy knew what to do, he wouldn't be in that position. There are people who seem to respond well to love, but there are people who do not.
They need physical direction. We should all have our own gas station somewhere. What impressed me about that story was not the fact that he went to the gas station, but when he didn't show up, the guy came and found him, you know. Hey, son of a bitch, you missed your call. Now that's what I call love. But I had a great value there because I did the things my sponsor said. I tried to stay out of his way so he wouldn't think of too many things, but he always would say things to me like, you know, I'm used to having a sponsor who loves me and call him late at night and say I'm drunk, for example, because I always had sponsors in various cities, and the kind of sponsor I was looking for, and I found him a lot, would say things like, you're not sick, I mean, you're not drunk, you're sick, you've had a relapse, that's all, and I'm coming over and I'll get a couple of the guys and we'll sit with you till morning and we'll get you through this, and if you need some money, let us know and we want you to make it.
Now that's what I always called sponsorship, and I got this boob who'd say things like, kid, call me any time you want, a day or night, if it's late at night, it better be awfully important, call me any time you want, up till the time you take a drink, once you take a drink, don't call, because all you're going to hear on my end of the line is a click and a dial tone, and I thought, this guy don't know much about it, I'll tell you that, I've been around longer than he has, and he would tell me to do things and I would do them, which may not be the right way for most people and I would never defend it, but I know this, when you have strong sponsorship, now I have the opportunity that most people don't have, and a lot of people have it but a lot of people don't, to travel around the country, to travel in Canada and Mexico and all but two of the states to talk at AA meetings, and I see AA all over, and every time I go to an AA town, if I can, I go to one of the local meetings and just sit there with a 50-50 thought, I hope they don't recognize me, I hope they do.
[00:55:04]
So far it's been on the wrong side a lot, but I have noticed in the United States and Canada, I'm sure that anyone who gets around has noticed this, there are pockets of enthusiasm in AA, there are areas of enthusiasm followed by deserts of rather passive gray areas, then another pocket of enthusiasm, and that's true, I'll tell you there's no question about that, anyone who travels understands that, and I'll tell you something else that I believe because I have seen this and it may not be correct, but my opinion, wherever there is a pocket of enthusiasm, there is a strong sponsorship ethic.
There are a lot of meetings where there's a lot of noise that masks for enthusiasm and excitement, but when you go back through a year later, it's an entirely new group manifesting enthusiasm and excitement, you feel something is not structured quite right. I believe that strong sponsorship, at least for people like me, not for most people in AA, but for people like me, gave me a way to go, it gave me actions, it was the epitome of again, what is, I've always believed since I've been sober a while, to understand, the difference between AA and all therapies everywhere, and all therapies in the history of mankind have said this, we were talking about it before the meeting, or talking to somebody, nearly every therapy says to disturbed and lost people, come to us, we will change your thinking, and eventually your actions will change. AA through luck, celestial intervention, whatever it might be, stumbled upon the greatest gift you and I'll ever have.
We say, you come to us, we will change your actions, and eventually your thinking will change. Which is why I believe that they say in our book, love is not the magic word, even spirituality is not the magic word, although these things become essential, action is the magic word, and action seems to work when all else fails. What it says in our book, it doesn't say, when all else fails, go into a meditative coma. In our book, it doesn't say, give yourself one last hour in front of the mirror, looking at the only one you've ever loved. It says, when all else fails, work with another alcoholic. The greatest gift that anyone you will ever work with will do for you. It's nice if they get a cake, and you can give them a cake, and say, yes, I saved that man myself. There's a certain joie de vivre for our French friends.
But the greatest gift is this, when I am listening to their crap, I'm not thinking about my crap. The function of sponsorship, I have, again, in pursuant, I think we all are in agreement here, when people are sober a while, I don't think you can hang on to them. And I think that one of the hardest lessons I've had to learn over the years is releasing What I've had to learn over the years is releasing people little by little, because, you know, every once in a while a little group will find a Mr. Christian and charge the quarter deck and they're…
[01:00:02]
I'm sick of being put over the side in a spiritual longboat. So you learn little different techniques, but I still believe in the same thing for new people, because the new people I work with are people who are lost. And so sometimes the more lost they are, the more apparently defiant they are. And you must realize this newcomers and slippers are not arrogant. They may look arrogant because that is their defense mechanism, but arrogant people are not in that school where you are debating which hurts least, the rope or the river.
That is not a mark of arrogance. What we're dealing with here are people who are afraid and frighten people, keep people at a distance so they won't find out they're afraid. And I did that. I was a master at that for years. What are the… Again, that's the closed door. And you got to start with the realization. We find these defiant people and we say, we're going to pull down your ego and make you humble or find some degree of humility.
And it's an interesting thought, and it may not be correct, but it's what I believe, is that you don't tear them down to humility, you build them up to humility. As their self-worth increases, their defense mechanism comes down. And eventually what we consider to be getting nice is not getting down to nice, it's getting up to nice. So I can take away, but nobody can maintain it all the time, anybody.
That's why we need each other on a continuing basis, I think. But to get that door open, and that's, I think, the same thing that Bill Wilson did in the Cyberlink Guesthouse in 1935, is what some of us, maybe, I hope all of us will be doing sometime in the next month. Sitting down with someone who is afraid and desperate, who knows their case is different, who knows there is no hope, and somehow by sharing my experience, strength, and hope, and saying there is a way, and if you don't feel you can do it, I will show you how to do it.
Primarily, I will show you by doing it myself. Secondarily, I will tell you. Telling isn't half as well as doing for it. I know that I never act better than when I'm working with a new guy. I never act better. I just, like when I'm teaching my kids to drive, I never drove that safe before or since. We have to stop here, son. This says Boulevard Stop. Christ, if he was in that car, I would have been there by now.
And that's the way it is with new people. They come down to where I work, and we go across the street to eat. Better stop. The light is turning yellow. I wish, if he weren't here, I'd be done with two courses by now. But one of the things it does for me is I act better, because I want to show them A.A. Works, and I want to explain to them. And I want to do what I'm asking them to do. Now, you can't do everything you're asking them to do, because you've done a lot of it, and you've got other things to do as you get sober longer.
But by God, you can show the flag, and you can be a presence. I think that one thing that is difficult today, and I don't want to tromp on anybody's toes, because last night I made a vow. I'm never going to say another controversial thing in sobriety. But today, a lot of people construe a twelfth-step call as picking up someone and dumping them off at a treatment center and saying, good luck. That is not a twelfth-step call.
That is a taxi. This in no way implies you shouldn't take people to treatment centers, but there's got to be a deeper connection between you eventually, sooner or later. Because the long-term basis is, I believe, I've never seen it to fail, I've had the opportunity in the past few years of sponsoring people who've been so bad that they've had to come to me, and long-term slippers, and you know, I have a psychiatrist who is more than a body
[01:05:01]
can bear. As soon as he gets straightened out, I'm going to ask him some advice, but not quite yet. And top-notch people who come down on their MGs and skid row where I work to say, what will I do about this? And I said, I don't know, how do I get an MG? But the function of the sponsor is to teach the guy to take the actions, not to keep them sober. I agree with him, no sponsor can keep anybody sober, but you can use all of your abilities to get them to take the actions that will keep them sober.
Only these actions of AA that I know of will keep people sober. And if they're dying, I don't want to preside over their death. I would rather have them dislike me. I don't want to say, do them if you think they're right. I'd rather have them say, do it! One of the great experiences that comes to anybody who's been sponsoring for a number of years is when you see people who lie on the floor sick and can't move, and just ten years later, they're on podiums around the country denouncing your cruelty.
It does take a while to appreciate that, though. I want to use one little analogy, because I think it breaks it down into sponsorships. I'll sit down. I've got three minutes. Three o'clock? No. Some of these people have to get downstairs and order tapes. But I've used these analogies, I've used this analogy a couple times, and I don't know any better way to explain what I construe to be sponsorship.
That is this. Today, there's a lot of question. Why do old-timers say, why do these new people go to treatment centers? And people who've been responding to treatment centers, why don't these people understand that treatment centers are helping us? Why do they insist on not going to treatment centers? I got sober in the 1950s when there was only one treatment center in Los Angeles that was called Shire's Dryer, and their cures sometimes lasted till the corner.
And so I came from a school of old-timers, you don't go to one of them drunk hospitals. You do it as a man, you hear me? And I've always, like old folks who get like me, I was against them for years, but over the years I've watched various treatment centers who seem to be following what I think they should be following, or what appeared to be teaching them AA there, not mumbo-jumbo. And they are wonderful treatment centers.
There are also treatment centers who are lethal, I think, who still advertise on television and the radio that they can cure alcoholism in 30 days. And I, not alcoholics of my sort, they're not going to cure in 30 days. Maybe alcoholics of your sort. But and the analogy I think about, it's like a guy going, why would a young guy or anybody go down to go to a treatment center? It's like going down to the beach in Santa Monica, and somewhere over the horizon is Catalina Island.
And here's a lovely little small skiff, and it has men in white suits and pleasant smells wafting out of the galley. And a man saying, this is the SS Treatment Center. Come with us, we're heading toward Catalina. And down the beach there's some goof, saying, oh, don't worry about that, I'm from AA. You want to ride in my invisible boat? And if you got insurance, you go on the yacht, I'll tell you that.
Now, they do exactly what they say. They get you well, they feed you, they tell you what has to be done. But unfortunately, any treatment center sooner or later has to say, well, this is as far as we go. We have to turn back and get another load. What do I do now? Swim like a sumbitch, baby. And you're out there swimming, and here comes this guy buying his invisible boat.
[01:10:02]
He said, you want a ride? Yeah, I'll get a ride. Then you get in the boat, and you realize there's no boat here. This is silly, this is craziness. And you dive back in and swim. I'd rather swim than, you know. And you drown again, and here he comes again and puts you in the boat. What do you want me to do? Just row. Row what? 396 South Los Angeles Street, I'll be there on Monday. And they want you to row, but there's no boat, there's no oar.
Do it in the old-timers meeting. I want to just get this done, then I'll sit down. But finally you get so sick, and here comes this guy again, he says, get in the boat, there's no boat. What do you want me to do? Row, there's no oar, but I got no choice. You pick up an invisible oar, and you row. And as you row, the boat appears, but it doesn't appear until you begin to row. That is the function of a sponsor, to get you to row a boat you can't see with an oar you don't believe in, and as you do it, the boat appears, and you get where you're going.
I am glad to be here this afternoon, one of the greatest honors anyone can be given is to be given a chance to participate at such a convention as this. I am deeply touched by it, but I hope when we leave here, we will not go home and think about all the folks we saw, but also in addition to that, perhaps we can remember, somewhere out there, there's a guy who is swimming, and he's got no place to go.
You've got to tell him about your boat, you've got to get him into it, give him an oar and say, row! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'd like to thank Al, Debbie, and Clancy for a terrific meeting. We all stand in an unusual manner.