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Source: 1985 Montreal International Convention – Unknown Speaker – WORKING WITH OTHERS – RS 06340.mp3 File: 1985-montreal-international-convention-unknown-speaker-working-with-others-rs-06340.mp3 Duration: 01:09:33
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Please join me for the serenity prayer. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. I'll read the preamble first of all. 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 need to read the anonymity tradition before we start. 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 and 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. Just an announcement, the tapes of this meeting will be available at the tape sales booth in the convention center. And our first speaker today is Lois J. Let's welcome her. Hi everyone, I am Lois Jacobson and I'm an alcoholic.
And you know, I wasn't really nervous about this much today until I walked in here and found my whole county here. And you know, there was a story I was going to tell you and now I'm going to have to tell you my story because they're all here to keep me honest. I think that, before I can talk about working with others, I need to talk about a little of the work that was done on me. And I really believe it was substantial from the time that the message was carried to me because in no way was I an alcoholic.
I had known for a long time that my life was unmanageable and however I preferred to think I was going insane. It had a little more class. Nobody wanted to be a drunk and this way I could run around to the psychiatrist and as long as the money held out we could kind of talk about Lois's nervous problems. And I really think I preferred this. I knew a lot of people drank more than I did. And this was very obvious and so consequently it was extremely difficult for me to picture myself as an alcoholic.
The other thing that went against this was I worked every day and I took care of a big house and some children and an ornery husband. And anybody that was as good as I was sure as heck wasn't a drunk because my kids were always clean and I managed to attend all the PTA meetings. And this kind of thing will keep you in everlasting darkness. While you're looking good on the outside there isn't any way that you want to admit to yourself that your main problem of anxiety and feeling of impending doom and excruciating fear is caused by the alcohol that you drink every night when you get off work from the time that you go to bed until the time that you get home from work until the time you pass out in bed.
And the fact that you get up every morning and go to work at 7.30 has absolutely nothing to do with it because by that time I had reached a place in my insanity that I could no longer even drive my car down a freeway. I was so terrified. And once in a while I'd even have to have a little something to drink in the morning. One of the things that happened to me when I was at one point working with others was I was calling on this gal, this was down south, and she was laying in a bed and she was covered with wine sores.
And I sat down as I had been taught to do and held her hand and told her a little bit about myself. And when I got to the place in my talking to her where I said that I could no longer drive my car down the freeway in the morning to get to work and I had to take all these little side roads
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and that once in a while when my husband had poured out all the booze the night before I would drink vanilla in order to be able to do this. She rose up from her bed about three inches and she looked at me and she said, thank heavens I didn't have to go that far. And I thought, my goodness, if this isn't the insanity of our disease, the denial, you see. But nevertheless I was in total denial as to why I had these fears.
And my only solution for this was to think about committing suicide. And I had all these plans made to commit suicide and I had the wherewithal to do it. And I had no quarrel with the second step when I got here because it had to be insanity that motivated me. I was waiting for the proper time to do this when it would not affect my children. And every weekend for several weekends I would look at this bottle of pills and I would think, okay, now next weekend I am going to take these.
I am no longer going to live on this earth because I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm going insane and I don't know why and I don't like the way I'm living and my husband is this and my job is that and I can't get it together so I might as well leave this earth. And this is when the first person to work with me, so to speak, came into my life. I was sitting in my office and this young lady walked in and she came up to my desk and she took my face in her hands and she said to me, Lois, you're sick, aren't you?
And I said, yes, Jean, I am and I don't know what to do about it. And she was very young, she was 27 years old and she was very beautiful. And I knew that Jean didn't drink but I never thought much about it one way or the other. But she proceeded to tell me what she thought was wrong with me. And you guessed it, she was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and she had the kind of courage that I see among the members of Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon.
The kind of courage that you don't see too many other places. That she would put her job and everything else on the line by coming into my office and telling me what she thought was wrong with me. And she told me that she thought I was an alcoholic. That some of the symptoms of my behavior she thought were alcoholic. And she asked me what I thought I was going to do about it. And I told her that somewhere along the way I had thought about committing suicide.
And she said, well, instead of doing that, why don't you come to this meeting with me on Thursday night? Now, I want to tell you that I agreed to go to that meeting. What she had said to me I didn't identify with because she started drinking when she was 15. And every time she drank, between then and the time she was 22, she went into a blackout. And this was not the way I drank. I had drank for 20 years.
And it was only through the progression of the disease within me that I came to this point of having blackouts and having losses of memory and so forth. But it was a very slow process. But something that she said convinced me that I should go to this meeting with her. But I want to tell you the attitude I had. I thought, well, I'm going to commit suicide anyway this weekend, so what have I got to lose?
I'll give AA two days to show me something. And I went to that first meeting, and it didn't take AA two days to show me something because I heard everything that I needed to hear that night, which was 15 years ago in January. And I haven't had to take a drink since because when I heard the fifth chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous read for the first time in my life, I knew it was me. And I knew I wanted what you had, and I knew also that I was willing to go to any lengths to get it.
And I knew I belonged, and I would have danced naked around a maypole at midnight if that's what I had to do to stay here. Because that's how much in love with this fellowship I was immediately. At that point, that's all it was to me was a fellowship because I didn't know any of the principles of the program. All I knew was there were people in that room. Some said that they had been sober five years.
Some said six months. And then there was the old-timer, and we've seen plenty of them around here, that was sitting down the back and said that that time had 25 or 30 years. And, of course, I didn't believe them.
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If they wanted to lie, that was their business. But I could deal with six months or a year or two years of someone not having a drink, and I knew I wanted what you had. And even if I didn't believe what you said, I could not disbelieve the way that you looked. And what I was told was that this was a place to come where you could take care of a disease called alcoholism. And having a disease beat the heck and gone out of being crazy.
And I accepted it right then and there. But at that time, this young lady was not very well physically, and she was hospitalized. And she turned me over to the second person who was going to work with me in my life. And he was a grizzly old man who wore cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. And he came up my front walk, and I thought, what on earth can this man say to me? What can he possibly say to me? But the truth was, it was everything.
Because when I looked into his blue eyes, I knew I could never lie to this man. Because I tell you, he saw right through me. And he was exactly what I needed in my life, because I could not, I absolutely could not lie to him. And I had this capacity to make people feel sorry for me. And I can remember calling him up at 5.30 in the morning and saying, you know, Denny, I couldn't sleep all night. And he'd say, no one ever died of insomnia, and he'd hang up.
And I'd call him up, and I'd say, I cried all night. And he'd say, at least now you know what you're crying about. And he'd hang up. And I'd get in his car to go to a meeting, and I'd start to say something about my husband. And he'd say, Jake never asked me for help. And if you want to talk about your drinking, maybe I can help you. But until such time as Jake asks me for help, you and I will discuss your problem only, because I am not a marriage counselor.
Now these were the things I needed, but these were the things that he taught me. And I went around AA for many years in this fashion. I admit, I've mellowed out a lot since. But in the early years of my working with people, I did very nearly fit the image of the tough old sponsor very well. And I think with the people that I worked with, the people who became close to me, perhaps they found what they needed in that.
Because all I had to tell them was what was told to me. I had nothing to make up, and I had nothing new to offer. What we used to hear at that time from some of the old timers were things like, the name of the game and the rules of the game are the same. You don't drink. And as long as you don't drink today, you've done the most important thing that you can do for anyone else on this earth, even if you never do another thing.
And that is that you didn't drink alcohol today. Because even your car is a lethal weapon in your hands. And while it may not be a moral obligation or a moral problem becoming an alcoholic, because none of us certainly set out to become alcoholics, you have a moral obligation not to drink once you know you're an alcoholic. Because your car is a lethal weapon in your hands, and because you destroy the life of the people around you.
And I believed this, and I still believe this today. I believe that I have a moral obligation today not to drink alcohol as long as I know I'm an alcoholic. And the kind of people that we ran around with in those days were the kind of people that if you called them up and you told them you were in a body cast from your neck down, they'd say, did you have a drink today? And if you said no, they'd say, then you're okay.
You know, then you're okay. If you haven't got any arms to use, have someone else read you the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. But back then, we didn't have any kinds of detox, or we didn't have any recovery homes or treatment centers or anything else in the town in which I got sober. The closest place to us was about a couple of hours' drive away. There was a woman's recovery home. And once in a while we would take a woman down there, and it was one of those kinds that you brought your baby.
We used to call them. I know pigeon is popular. Today everyone says sponsee, you know. But we would take this baby in the car, and they might be heaving up all over the car, and you'd take them down there, and they'd stay one day, and some doctor would pass through and fill them full of Thorazine or something. And the next day you'd get a phone call from the director of the establishment, and she'd say, Well, your pigeon is well. Come down and get him.
Well, you're pigeon as well, come down and get him.
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So you thought twice before you took somebody this far. You were pretty sure in your own mind that there wasn't anything that you could much do and that they needed this kind of thing because it wasn't easy running back and forth with people to these places. So we used to do quite a bit of that babysitting around the clock. Today, we don't do this anymore. The joys of this used to be you'd get a call and you'd go out and you'd talk to someone that was really drunk and you'd work with them for two or three days and then you got to take them to a meeting and hold them up by one hand and say, this is my baby, you know, because they hadn't had a drink for 24 hours.
But we don't do these things much anymore because nowadays there's a lot of facilities and so forth where people usually go to actually get over the first round of drinking. But it wasn't unusual for us to call somebody at five in the morning in order to get them before they had the first morning drink and say, come on, I'm going to take you for a ride and I'm going to get you out somewhere and we're going to do this today and we're going to do that today.
And then maybe you won't have to take that drink. And maybe you can go 24 hours without taking a drink. And if you go 24 hours without taking a drink, you're going to find out you can go 24 hours. And that's the way we do this thing is one day at a time. That's all you have to do is just not take a drink for the 24 hours. And so there used to be a certain kind of a feeling that you got from doing this kind of working with others.
But time marches on and we all have to march on with it. And then there comes the kind that we do lots of times today, which is working with people who have come out of a recovery facility or working with people maybe who have come out of a treatment facility in which they have already some sort of a basis for their sobriety in that they've already been introduced to AA meetings and they've already been introduced to the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And perhaps they even in some ways have begun a start on their steps. And then in some ways this is a little different thing to do. And sometimes it's been necessary for me to get my ego out of the way and to let these people believe that they knew as much in one month as I felt that it took me two or three years to learn. And that is not always hard either, but I think that's God's way of sometimes saying, all right, Lois, there are things for you to learn too.
And one of the most satisfying ways that I have had the privilege of working with others has been as a service sponsor. I've been very active in service ever since I was sober through the efforts of this first sponsor of mine. And I was instructed more or less in when I was to come up to the podium and read the fifth chapter and when I was to be secretary of a meeting. And I had said I would follow instructions, and I did.
And I was also instructed as to when I was to be a general service representative and so on. And it seemed like from then on the people that I worked with automatically gravitated into service because as soon as they stopped smelling and asked where the money goes, I was carting them around to service-type meetings. And so it became a part of their life too. And during the course of my service life is where I met my second sponsor who is here today.
And I think we have a very interesting relationship in that she's my recovery sponsor and I'm her service sponsor. So that way we get to get even with each other a lot. But we started going around even though we live in different towns to these service meetings together and also to conventions. And we're here at this one together. But this has been a very rewarding part of my life. And this is beginning to catch on all over, having a service sponsor.
And many times it will be the person who worked with you in recovery that just continues on and you bounce things off each other. But being here today, of course, is one of the high points of my life. Being here with you because that's what it's all about. I can still remember a certain man in California, in Southern California, who died recently. And he was pretty well known all over. But when he would get up to speak, he would say lots of times that the story of Alcoholics Anonymous is one drunk talking to another in the dark room.
And he would repeat that, one drunk talking to another in the dark room. And it doesn't matter how many of us there are, even here in a place like Montreal with so many of us, that's all we basically are, no matter where we came from. Just one drunk talking to another. And that's how we recover.
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And one day at a time, if we don't drink alcohol, we may all be together in one other day or place because we have a habit of running into each other in all of these wonderful affairs of Alcoholics Anonymous. Thank you. Applause Thank you very much, Lois. Our next speaker is Bill R. from Georgia. Applause Hi, I'm Bill R. from Atlanta, Georgia. And I got confused. I thought it said working others. I didn't know it was working with others.
So I've been out on the streets gathering people. I went on the metro last night and got people to come, met some people here, and they said, who's a good speaker at three o'clock? I said, there's three of them. You'll love them. I'd send them here, you know. So I see most of them showed up, too. I like people, alcoholics, they'll obey. It's unusual. I've had the privilege. I was going to give you a very inspirational talk that would have just made you have a good day.
Probably would have made your whole convention. You'd have gone home remembering me. Probably would have forgot a lot of them, but you'd have remembered me. And then my sponsor showed up. Laughter Some bitch said I got to tell the truth. It's going to be a short meeting. You know, when I had this weekend and we came up to a pre-convention trip, and it's been one of the highlights of my adult life. And I've seen so much fellowship.
You know, fellowship's a great thing at AA. It's fellowship. I'll tell you a story about fellowship. You know, you can get too much fellowship. I'll give you an example. One time, there was a shipwreck. And on the shipwreck, they finally made it to the desert island. There was a Jewish rabbi, and there was an Irish Catholic priest, and there was a member of AA. When they got on the island, the Jewish rabbi sort of set up the details of preparing everything.
And the Irish Catholic priest was into the calendar and figuring the holy days. And the member of AA, just like fellowship, made the coffee, always had fellowship, fellowship, love fellowship. And one day, a bottle washed up on the shore. And the genie got out of the bottle, and they said you could have three wishes. And they gave the Irish Catholic priest a wish. And he says, you know, if my calendar is correct, Notre Dame is playing Southern Methodist in South Bend.
I wish I was there. And poof, he was gone. And the rabbi says, you know, I've never gone to Jerusalem. I would like to go, and I think this would be the opportunity. And poof, he's gone. The alcoholic looked around and says, where'd everybody go? I wish they were back. Awww. You got to watch out for fellowship. I came in Alcoholics Anonymous January 3rd, 1957. I didn't know I was an alcoholic, didn't know I had a drinking problem.
My wife and I got married when we were 19 in Chicago, and she didn't know she was an alcoholic or that she had a drinking problem. We didn't know that we were both blessed with the disease of alcoholism. Since that time, one of my children, Glenn Roop, that's to get his name on a tape. He likes that. Got that, Glenn? Glenn Roop is an alcoholic and has got five years on the program. And for that, we're grateful.
And the reason I say we're blessed is because, see, I was a Baptist. And Baptists don't sin. I don't know if there's any Baptists out there. But we don't sin. We don't sin facing each other, I'll tell you that. And I grew up in an Irish Catholic neighborhood. And if you're a Baptist in an Irish Catholic neighborhood, you know what discrimination is. Irish Catholics only like Irish Catholics. They don't like Polish Catholics or Lithuanians.
And Baptists, they don't like it all. And when you're a skinny kid with an Adam's apple and a hooked nose and they think you're a Jew, you have a real problem, you know. I'd say, I'm a Baptist. Bullshit, you know. If I had nothing but problems, you know. And my mother had died when I was very young, so I felt rejected. I didn't know that until I got an AA. You learn a lot of things in AA. And my father married another woman and I went to live with her and I didn't like her, so I was raised by my aunt, so I felt rejected by my father.
But at a very young age, I didn't feel that I liked myself or my lot in life. So at the age of about six or seven, I used to steal from the Baptist church. See, I can't blame drink for any of my character defects. God blessed me with character defects before he ever showed me alcohol. And I used to take the nickel out of the mission money and go over to the store at the age of six. And at that time, you could get a large bag of candy for a nickel.
And I would hand this out to my little friends in the Depression because I knew they liked me better. I was buying friendship at a very young age. This continued. I always lied because I wasn't happy with my lot in life. So I used to lie because I didn't like where I was,
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so I figured I'd be somebody else. Now when I discovered booze, this enabled me to sing better, dance better. I was much wittier. I could even discuss the science of ontology much more succinctly. In case some of you don't know what that is, that's the science of that which is as against that which is not. A lot of people don't know about that, but if you've gone to a Jesuit or a Vincentian father's school, they teach you that important stuff that stood me in great stead in the bars.
I'd be sitting next to some good-looking girl and other guys were trying to get close to her and I'd say, Honey, do you know about ontology? And I would have a long discussion. You know, it came in very handy. I only learned those things so I could put people down because they taught at the college level, they taught a different brand of Catholicism than they did at the parochial level. I would learn something, I'd go in the bar and I'd say, Sullivan, blah, blah, blah.
Sullivan, say that isn't true. And I'd say, check with your priest. And he would and I'd be right. So I was known as a very spiritual giant and knowing a great deal. See, I never learned anything new in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'd known everything that you folks had talked about before I came here. I just never thought of using it. It was only something to learn to get good grades. I'd never thought that this was a way of life you should follow.
And I'm grateful for coming into Alcoholics Anonymous and finding the tools that you use. I'll give you a couple stories. I have never been punished for anything I've done while drinking. I've done most things that people have gone to jail for, but for some reason God in his infinite wisdom did not see fit to get me into that sort of punishment. All he did was let me walk the streets until I got so sick of myself I couldn't stand me.
My wife and I got married and I went overseas. I came back. We had one child, two child, three child, four child, five child. It was in seven or eight years we were big and having children and she wasn't even Catholic. But being raised in a Catholic neighborhood I knew what to do about having children. So we had a lot of children. We also had a one bedroom apartment. My mother-in-law was in there and my wife and myself and Peggy, Johnny, Billy, Glenn.
We had quite an active group there. My wife was getting very unhappy. I was over at the university though I was getting educated and solving big problems and studying things like ontology. So I wasn't really at home taking care of the kids. My wife wanted to get out of there so after I graduated we moved to Park Forest, Illinois where our whole life was going to change. In Park Forest, Illinois I met another bar.
I met some more people and we had a good time. See my wife and I didn't know we were alcoholics. We didn't know we were alcoholics when we came here. We never thought of not drinking. Life was grim when you were sober. The only time life was fun was when you had some booze in you. What was it somebody said today? They said it twice that there were daily drinkers that went on periodic or weekly drunks.
That was about the way we were. If we had a good life going we'd have a party that Saturday night and be drunk. But we always drank. We thought drink was the answer. We didn't think it was the problem. We went out to Park Forest and we met a brand new bunch of people out there and I have helped the United Nations a great deal. I've helped the United States a great deal too. I not only won World War II that's in the ETO.
Some of the guys won it in the Pacific but I took care of the ETO. But I also helped a fellow named Klutznick who was the head of the he's one of the people that started Park Forest. There was three very enterprising Jewish gentlemen wonderful men. Three of them worked at the Federal Housing Association. They could see the war was going to end so two of them left. Left one of them there. The one that was there approved the loans that he gave and he put them down.
They did a wonderful job. But I helped Klutznick. He became ambassador to the United Nations the United States ambassador. And he dealt with a lot of thieves and he dealt with a lot of immoral people and he dealt with a lot of dishonest people. I had sort of conditioned him how to handle that before he went there. He was trying to evict me for non-payment of rent. And I had said, Mr. Klutznick, I'm not the type of fellow that would allow you to be stuck.
We have done damage to that house and it isn't fair to you. I will get up the money and I'll be back to see you because I'm a fine moral gentleman. And I left him. Two months later he calls me and again he says, now we're four months behind in the rent and I tell him I'm not the type of guy that would leave you stuck with these bills. And he said something to me that I never forgot. He said, Bill, if you ever get over drinking, come on back.
You're a nice guy. See, because I was a nice guy, but when I drank, I was irresponsible. Now, I came in to the house and I said, Bill, I'm not the
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type of guy that would leave you stuck with these bills. Now, I came in to the house and I said, Bill, I'm not the here, one of my pigeons. You got Jack Harris and Jerry Cape. They get mad if I don't mention them. That's the only reason they come. But who did I forget? Oh, Kirk. Oh, Dick Scully, Kirk, they're all here. You know, it's been interesting. I'm going to get into sort of working with others because Homewood 17 taught me a great deal. Homewood 17, I believe this is right, Jack, correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think we had a Big Book, did we? Well, maybe we did have. It was on the poker table. It wasn't open. But the reason I mention it is because these people lived AA. They're up on the Golden Oldies now. Jack's got 38 years and the rest of them. See, they didn't drink. They were alcoholics that came into this organization and they lived the Big Book. They were teaching me at a very young age when I came in. See, I came in a loser. I came in a very negative individual. I was very destructive. I was well-educated, but I was extremely destructive. I felt I was a loser. And even if I accomplished anything, I felt if I could do it, it had no significance. And if I was somebody else, then you'd like me. So I always had to be somebody else. I come into Homewood 17, and I'll give you an example. They had a card game. Jack mentioned the card game. Now, they had some rules at the card game. You had to put a dollar in the pot in the collection or you couldn't sit in the card game. So I'd always have a dollar to put it into the collection.
And then I'd borrow 20 bucks from somebody to get in the game. And if I won, I'd give them 10 dollars back. And if I lost, I gave nothing back. And after a year or so, I was talking to Jack and I said, Jack, why did you guys put up with me? And he said, we had a meeting, you were staying sober, and you weren't costing us too much. See, now that is unconditional love. They didn't love me because I was a nice guy or a guy that was doing well. They loved me because I was an alcoholic who had the disease of alcoholism who wasn't drinking. So I, today, realize the greatest thing that Bill Rupp can do as an alcoholic is not to take a drink. I had a sponsor that God has sent me. This is a God-given program. God led me here. I didn't know I was an alcoholic. I didn't want any part of God when I came here. So I found out it's not important that I know what I am.
And the only thing I'm going to share with you is the way it's been with me and not the way it should be. So I didn't know what it was like. I came here. I went to my first meeting and a fellow said, can you stay away from a drink for 24 hours? I had never thought of staying away from a drink. I never thought of not drinking. It never entered my mind. I'd never been in a treatment center. I'd lost jobs, but it was for doing things like commingling funds. It's a little innocuous term. See, I'm the type of fellow that they always make treasurer of every outfit. Still doing it today in AA. I'm dressing better.
And so the reason I had this problem with commingling funds, if I was out with a lovely lady like Kate there and I ran out of my five dollars and I had 300 of the company, we'd immediately go into partnership because I didn't want to stop the evening. And you know when you become silent partners with companies, they find out it gets up to $10,000 or $12,000, they get mad and they fire you and that sort of thing. So that was my problem, not drinking.
Drinking was never my problem. I woke up on the floor of a girl's house. That's why I got in AA. She was in AA. I didn't know anything about AA. It just seemed like a nice thing that she was in. I used to go over in this year when she was in AA and I'd bring a six pack and we'd have something to drink. I didn't know that in AA you didn't drink. I really didn't know what I knew about AA, but somehow this girl planted an idea in AA. And when I called the number, two guys showed up, which weren't my social equal. One of them, his name is Art H. I always respect his anonymity because otherwise he calls up and gives me hell. And Art was the fellow that sat at a table and kept shaking his head like this.
He still does it. He's got 38 years of sobriety and still shakes his head. I thought he was a loony. And on top of that, he was a piano player, still is. I never hung around with piano players. Piano players, somebody gave a sawbuck and said, play Melancholy Baby while you discuss things with the woman. He didn't socialize with them. And here one showed up at my house and the other guy is John H. And John was a fellow who worked in the steel mills and he was talking about how he hid bottles in the lockers. I never hung around with Polacks in the steel mills. Now I'm going to have to do that. Now John H., at the time I was an itinerant storm window salesman. I hadn't sunk to that. I'd risen to it. I'd been unemployable three years before. So I went to the meeting that night. They said, can you stay away from a drink for 24 hours? This was God working through AA. I said, no.
Yeah, I can stay away from a drink. Why would I want to do that? And they said, if you stay
[00:35:02]
away from a drink for 24 hours, your life will get better. And that's how I came in AA, in the second part of the first step. I knew my life stunk. I knew I didn't fit in places. But if all I had to do was not take a drink, my life would get better. That's the hook that got me and it's been getting me ever since. The Art H. that I talk about is a very spiritual guy. Always has been. He says, it's an inside job. You have to look within. Man, that's the last place I wanted to look was within.
So I used to make fun of Art H. I figured he was a loony. In fact, I'd make fun of him. I'd say, hey, he's offering one of his spiritual kicks. But they sent me Jack M. And I'd go over to Jack M. and say, Jack, I don't think I'm going to make it. I kited checks. He'd say, did you have a drink? And I'd say, no. He said, then you don't understand. An alcoholic that doesn't have a drink is doing something that 80% of the alcoholics can't do. You're staying sober. You're a winner. And don't ever forget it. When you go to bed that night without taking a drink, you're a winner. And Jack Murray opened the door so that I became a winner. That was very important to me because I came here completely destructive, suicidal, and alcohol is the only thing that kept me alive. When I got sober, I couldn't stand me. So I wanted to destroy me. Now I put the cork in the jug. I get to face the rotten SOB that I am and I have no place to hide. And I come to AA where I have to be honest with myself, a guy I don't even want to see. So Jack Murray had helped me a great deal and I became a winner. And I pass it on to people today. Now Jack Murray helped me in another area. I was on the program three or four years and I had a letter. It came from the state's attorney. And the state had said that there was a possibility they were going to press criminal charges on some money that I had sconded with. I went over to Jack Murray and I said, Jack, I'm very upset about this. You brought me on this program. You say it's a spiritual program. I've been 12-stepping people. I've been instrumental in starting groups and picnics. I stay very active. And all the time I wanted to be punished, I was never punished. And now that I've come along this outfit and have done all these wonderful things, they want to prosecute me. And on top of that, this company is still making over $1,500 a week and an accounting system I set up as a bonus. I have set up another system where they're picking up another $3,500 a week. I set up a sales floor. In the middle of my wonderful soliloquy, Jack interrupted. He said, Bill, did you take something that didn't belong to you? And I said, yeah, I guess I did. He says, then you're a thief.
You see, I never thought I was a thief because I never took anything that I didn't plan on paying back. I never took anything that I meant to take. I was getting a loan. So until Jack Murray said I was a thief, I never knew I was a thief. So it's the love of the people here that have enabled me to take a legitimate first step, knowing what I am. Because I had so many layers of protection devices that I didn't know what I was when I came in. I just thought what I dreamed I was, what kind of dreams I was into. I really didn't know what Bill Rupp was. So Jack Murray was very instrumental. Homewood 17 was very instrumental because as I said, they were a very basic group. They had unconditional love. They gave me love, not because I was a nice guy. They loved me because I was a sober alcoholic.
So Homewood 17 started me on the path of this wonderful life of sobriety. It was mentioned earlier by one of the speakers that, and I used the expression, what I did when I put the cork in the jug, I entered into sobriety. See, Alcoholics Anonymous, I like to use it as a concept of a large, beautiful house. You got a key, and the key that you put in the door is I'm not taking a drink for one day. Now I'm inside the house. If you've been laying out in the rain and you're cold and you're miserable and wet, and if they put you in the coal bin, dirty but it's warm, you're better off than being outside. Then later on you may want to wash up and go up to the kitchen and you can start smelling the bread. And if you want to wander in the library and enjoy the beautiful paintings and maybe read a book or two, and then maybe wander in the music room, that's all possible in this house of Alcoholics Anonymous. And it depends on what price you want to pay.
If you want to get into the spiritual books, you're going to have to do a lot of sewing in the spiritual areas. Jack had always said that there's nothing but spiritual areas in AA. Show me anything material, and I buy this. AA is a spiritual tool that God gave us to help drunks like me. One of my friends in Atlanta uses a concept, when you come in AA, you wander in and most people want to find God. Chuck C. talked about the problem that an alcoholic has is a separation from his God. You want to find God, so you start reading books, you search for God, you look for God. This fellow suggests, don't worry, you've got a wall up between God and you, and you're trying to get over the wall to see Him. He says, get into the steps. Start working with others. Start giving of yourself.
Start going and sharing and being a part of the spiritual program. And you'll see holes coming in the wall, and God will come through. God will come through. And the amazing thing about it, when it's all over and you've worked the spiritual program, God wasn't lost. God's been within me all my life. God wasn't lost. I was the one that was lost. What I had to do was plug into the power that's within me. Today, I have found out that in Alcoholics
[00:40:05]
Anonymous, you can be anything you want. As a man thinks, so he is. You want to have resentments? I know guys with 20 years resent people. I try not to resent people. I try to get rid of resentments on a day-to-day basis because I cannot be free if I'm resenting somebody. It ties me to the ground. When I'm going through a period of growth, or my pigeons are going through a period of growth, I realize that it's one of the greatest blessings I can have because it's like the story of the eagle. Remember, they put an eagle into a nest and they make a nice downy cushion and the little eagle is in there eating the little things that they give him. And after about a year, the mother eagle starts pulling and the father starts pulling the little down away. And all of a sudden, he's getting stuck by the briars and he doesn't like it. So, the mother eagle puts her wing in there, the eagle gets on it and they soar up and the mother eagle shakes the eagle loose. The eagle doesn't know how to fly. He starts tumbling and then the father eagle will pick it up and take it. And finally, after many times, the eagle sets its wings and starts to soar. If you want to soar with the eagles, be happy that you're uncomfortable where you are because if you're unhappy in a bad place, you'll never leave it if you're comfortable there. So, anytime I'm in a bad place and I'm uncomfortable, it gives me an opportunity to soar with the eagles. And for that, I'm grateful. When I'm in my Job period, I appreciate being in my Job period because as it says in the other big book, Job started, had some bad luck, got a lot of boils, what have you, killed a lot of people, his relatives, but at the end, he ended up with seven times what he started out with. And that's why when I'm dealing with people, my pigeons, and they're going a period, if they're in the barrel, as I like to call it, it gives me an opportunity to give them basic AA principles. Why is it important that I do this? Because it may not help them at all, but whatever I plant in my subconscious will become a part of me. If I look at you and say, you jerk, it doesn't hurt you a bit, what it does is become a part of Bill Rupp. So, this is why I choose not to have resentments today. Even jokingly, I'll try to not do that because my subconscious doesn't have a sense of humor, it just plants whatever I put there. So, if I want to be a new person in a new life, I need pigeons. Now, why do I need them? Well, the first pigeon I got was a criminal lawyer.
Now, wasn't it nice of God to send a crook, a criminal lawyer? Didn't even know I was a crook, first guy shows up, criminal lawyer. So, I started telling him, don't drink, go to meetings, your life will get better, and he started keeping me out of jail, keeping these people off my bed, it was a good trade. Now, there was one other thing you may, if you ever sponsored lawyers, this may come in handy, a couple of my lawyer friends are sitting over here on the floor where they belong, lawyers shouldn't sit on chairs. But I learned this from a lawyer up in Chicago, he was doing all sorts of work for me, keeping me out of jail, taking care of me, and I went over to him and I said, Art, with Art O'Donnell, I said, Art, money has broken up more friendships than any other tool. I will never pay you for any work that you do for me, because I don't want our friendship broken up, and I never have. When I came down to Atlanta, they sent me Jack H. I explained to that lawyer, who was a criminal lawyer too, the way the game is played, because we don't want to break up our friendship, and he's been very helpful to me on many occasions. Now, both of them have come up with this concept, I don't think it's fair, but they've come up with it, that this is not something I can pass on to my kids. My children have to pay for their own.
When my son Glenn was in bad trouble, my son Richard, Glenn was in other trouble, Glenn was, Richard was in bad trouble, I went over to Jack and Jack explained that to me, that it wasn't free for Richard, you know. Okay, they send me people, the reason I 12-step call is when the door opens, a ring, it's somebody God is sending to me to help me. See, my pigeons were more responsible, a drunk, than I was sober. Jack Harrison, I mention his name because he'll buy the tape that way. Jack, after four years of sobriety, we went out to a shop, he's buying some clothes. I said, Jack, what are you doing buying all the clothes? He said, I never had the money to buy them when I was drinking. See, if I had a credit card, or if I had a blank check, I never had any problems with money. I just sign them, fill them, you know, spend the money. The problem came when I tried to collect. Jack, drunk, was more responsible than I was, maybe after 12 years sober. So God is sending me people to help me, because if you sponsor one of these responsible guys, you got to be more responsible. So every time I get a pigeon, I always wonder, I get some young guys that I look at them and they're immoral, illicit, they're everything. I figure, now what could he possibly do to help me? But I'm sure somewhere, John, you'll find out. But I keep hoping. Very instrumental in my AA. Every year I go out and thank him for my life. He lives in California now, and I go out there and thank him.
My life, he lives in California now, and I go out there and thank him. This is the story of Bill Rook. People with unconditional love, loving me when I was a real rat and no good,
[00:45:01]
and not the spiritual giant you see today. However, it doesn't say anything about working with others while they're drunk. The Twelve Steps don't say, these Twelve Steps are to teach you how to live without drinking, I mean, of giving up drinking. If you put the cork in the jug, and now you have to face a person you don't like, who you are, now the Twelve Steps give you a new way of life, so that you can be whatever you want to be.
If you want God, do what I do, go where people are, that's where God is. I didn't want any part of God, I started twelve-stepping, I always have, I'm big on twelve-stepping. That's where God was. One danger in twelve-stepping, and it didn't happen to me because I'm too sharp, but some people fall into this trap. You never have to grow if all you do is twelve-step. If you always find a new pigeon, you can always tell them, hey, the basics.
You may steal a little, you may do a little, and then when the pigeon finds out you're phony, there'll always be a new one. So if you constantly work with new people, you never have to grow. But if you start having people embarrass you and try to make you grow, the pigeons will help you grow. So there's a trap in just twelve-stepping, I found out. I do it, but I also want to make sure that I help them grow, because then they'll help me flower and blossom, and that's what I want to be.
I don't want to soar with the eagles. I want everything out of life I can have. Today I got it. I am a blessed individual. I'm blessed to be here at the 50th anniversary of the greatest bunch of people. Last night I was in tears. They had the flags. I saw people running around. In closing, I'm going to show you, working with others doesn't just mean an AA. You never know where God places you. We just got off on a side trip.
We've been to Quebec City, and while we were in Quebec City, the people on our tour bus had fallen asleep. It was very tiring. The young woman in her 50s, the guide, our tour guide, was sitting up with me, and she started saying she'd heard a little about Alcoholics Anonymous, heard us talking about AA and Al-Anon and what have you. She said, Alcoholics Anonymous, is this for people who drink? I said, yes, it is.
I started explaining to her. She says, my husband's an alcoholic. We've been married for 30 years. Two years ago, he got fired for the last time. He has never been able to get another job. He won't admit that he's an alcoholic. She says, I've been going crazy. I've been keeping everything within me. I'm going nuts. She's surrounded by love. She said, this is in confidence. I said, all right. So that night I told everybody on the bus.
That'll teach her to trust Yankees. And the next day I went up and I told her what I had done, and she was horrified. And I said, the reason I tell you that is you also are on the boat Titanic. We are all survivors of the Titanic. The reason we love each other and care for each other is because we have sunk. We have hit a bottom. I said, you're on that boat with us and we love you, and you're going to get more love before this boat trips over than you ever anticipated.
By the time the trip was over, she knew what it was. We also, because she was trying to support her family, I have a prudent reserve that some of my fellows contribute to over there. I don't contribute to it myself. I just skim a little off the top. And we were able to give her some fairly substantial amount of money because I think it's important also not just to say, this is a wonderful organization, and I hope you get a coat if you're cold.
I think it's important to help people get coats. We're not a funding organization. But I think it's nice if somebody doesn't have shoes, maybe to give them shoes to help them out. So we get a chance to help wherever we are. And we had a chance to help in Canada. And now I know why I came here. I didn't come here to be able to speak at a convention. I didn't come here to see my friend Jack Murray or to be with my pigeons.
God sent us here to help other people. And it's wonderful to be aware and have the sensitivity to know it. God bless you all. I love you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Bill. And our third speaker is Larry G. from Massachusetts. Good afternoon. My name is Larry Granger, and I am an alcoholic. I'm a member of the South Hadley group in South Hadley, Massachusetts, the best group in the world. I have to say that because to me it is.
I have not been educated as well as the previous speaker, thank God.
[00:50:03]
We have to praise him for everything he gives us. But I did identify with the sponsor of the first speaker. I have been very, very blessed. My drinking career was seven years long, and I have been sober almost 23 years, which is three times. See, I had to figure this out. Over three times the length of time that I drank. My drinking was blackout drinking. I had a disease, and I did not know that I had a disease.
I figured everybody that drank had blackouts. I didn't know anybody didn't, because I had them from the beginning. I got married, I had a couple of children, all before I was 21. I had a job, and I had a bar that I stopped at every night on my way home from work. I would stop for one or two beers. Three or four or five nights a week I would end up drunk, and I would not remember getting home. I had a lot of fear.
I had a lot of anxiety. I didn't know where I was going or how I was getting there. The worst thing towards the end is I didn't care. I was on a spinning world, and I wanted to get off. In 1962 I wrecked five cars in about seven months total. I was 24 years old. I was running scared, and I didn't know what of. During my last caper, I fired a shotgun at my ex-wife. You can understand why she's an ex-wife.
I missed her, thank God, and I ended up in an institution to be checked out for 35 days. The judge had just sent me there. There I attended my first AA meeting. I heard a speaker that had blackouts like myself, that assaulted his wife in a similar fashion, and I was on my way into Alcoholics Anonymous. I joined a group of Alcoholics Anonymous where I guess the average age at that time was about 50, 60 years old.
I was 24. They told me that they spilt more than I drank, but that didn't matter because it's what drink did to me that brought me there, and that was the important thing. What happened to me when I took a drink? I had an old sponsor. They were all old, but this one was. He told me to take the cotton out of my ears, stick it in my mouth, and sit in the front row. Don't ask no questions. Just do as we tell you. You'll be okay.
One day without a drink, you're on your way. Don't drink. Go to meetings. Keep it simple. There was a sign on the wall. It was THINK. It was crossed off, and underneath it was written SCHEME. I asked them about it. He said, that's because you don't know how to think. You only know how to scheme, and this is a guide to bring you to me. And it was, because I didn't know how to think. I hadn't been able to think for as long as I can remember.
Everything had an angle. Now I'm starting to sound like that second speaker. Laughter Because it doesn't matter how your vocabulary is or where you were trained. When you're an alcoholic, you've got a problem with booze, which gives you a problem mentally, physically, and spiritually. And I think to work with others, you first have to work with yourself. And that took me a long, long time. I was very arrogant.
I was very young, but I was sober. I went to a lot of meetings, and I asked a lot of people a lot of questions. I questioned the program. I attacked the program. I tried to read-write the steps. Today, they have step meetings, and they have big book meetings. They have all different types of meetings based on the literature. We didn't have that back then. We had sponsors. And when you're arrogant, and you're young, and you've got your father sitting on your lap all the time, and that's what I felt like.
I had to believe what they were telling me, but I didn't want to. There had to be a simpler, softer way.
[00:55:01]
I think we've heard that before. I looked for it in every way but in taking a drink. I refused to take a drink because I was scared to death. The fear of what would happen to me if I took a drink was the only thing that kept me from taking a drink. For 17 years, I bounced around in the program dry with the only spiritual guidance I had was the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. I did not look for anything beyond that.
My mother would say to me, go to church. I don't need a church. I go to a thousand churches. There's churches. There's meetings in every church in the valley. I don't need to go to church. The God of my understanding was a God that I wanted to understand. I was my own God in a lot of areas. If I got in trouble, I prayed, get me out of this. I'll do whatever you want. But that's the only time. I had no conscious contact, not really.
I was piecing and stealing a little bit of everybody's God in the rooms around me. I was never, never really comfortable even in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Some 17 years down the road, I was going through my second divorce. The second divorce was a marriage while I was sober. You can make mistakes sober. And you don't want to lose. You don't want to give up. So you try to keep a marriage together.
That was a mistake from the beginning, even though you know it. And I did that. I did that for 10 years. And I went through a divorce, and I had a lot of pain. A lot of pain with me. Because here I again was losing it. I was losing it again. I was losing it. And I didn't want to lose. I was a winner. I was in the program while I was sober 17 years. My mother hit me again. Why don't you try a novena?
Okay? She handed me a novena after I said, alright, give me your damn novena. So she did. It was St. Bridget's Novena. I don't know if the Irish Catholics say it, but she had it. It's a prayer on the passion of Christ for every insult, spit, and laceration he got during his life. I'm not trying to sell you Christ, but this is part of my story. You have to say these prayers every day for a year. There's 15 prayers.
St. Bridget was told by Christ through dreams that there was 5,480 inflictions on her, on him rather, during his passion. And this is one in honor of every one of those. So I started this novena for her. Three months down the road, I've got it on tape. I get up in the morning. I start making my breakfast. I turn on the tape recorder. I say the prayers with the tape recorder. And I'm doing it. And I'm playing also in the Massachusetts State Lottery, 5,480, cover all bases.
Now mind you, I am 17 years sober at this time in the program. I am still scheming. Holy Week comes along, and I'm asking for a sign. If you're really there, show me. Holy Week comes along, and I don't play the number. I forgot to. Tuesday, I realize I didn't play the number. Thursday morning, or Thursday afternoon, this paper comes out, and it says, according to the astrologers, this is the day Christ was crucified.
This is Holy Thursday, according to the position of the moon and whatnot. And the number down in the corner is 5,479. This kind of blows my mind. This is my sign. I go to my mother. I show her the paper. She says, Signed, Baloney. God don't make mistakes. I said close enough. I went home, and I was thinking about this, a little bit disappointed, because mothers have ways of telling us things that nobody else has a way to tell us.
I took out my calculator, and I multiplied 15 times 365 times 4, plus 15 for leap year, and I divided by 4. The number is 5,478.75. It blew my mind. He doesn't make mistakes. It blew my mind. He doesn't make mistakes. I continued on with St. Bridget's Novena.
[01:00:00]
And I started feeling a lot better about myself. I heard a priest talk on a program put on by the diocese. And I sent away for his series of talks. And I got a bunch of people together in the program. And we all went through what is called a fully alive experience. Because I felt it was a lot like AA. I was coming into the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous through another door. And I didn't know it. I really didn't.
This is Father John Powell. I think he read an awful lot about AA. And 13 of us went through this fully alive experience. It took 10 weeks, 2 hours a night. And all of a sudden, I was aware of the steps. I was aware of what was coming down. I realized what I had in Alcoholics Anonymous. I went through it 2 other times with 2 other groups. Some of the same coming back again. I plan on doing it some more.
I love it. It's a great way to go. It's not AA. But it is the way I found a good part of the program. I can remember way back when I was talking to Fred Mack out in the hallway. And I said to him, Alcoholics Anonymous is not aligned with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution. How come they say the Lord's Prayer to end every meeting? He looked at me. You don't ask a sponsor a question like that.
You really don't. He looked at me and he said, The next time you say the prayer, think about what you're saying. Because you are saying what the whole program is all about. And he went through it simply something like this. I'm hoping I can duplicate a good part of it. He said, The first step starts with we. And the first word of the Our Father is our. You never have to be alone again. We and our. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our lives become unmanageable.
We. You're never alone. Our Father. The second step. A power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Our Father. Which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done. Step three. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over the care of God as we understand Him. Thy will be done. For a long time it was my will be done. Not thy will be done. Thy will if it fit my will.
But only if it fit my will. On earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread. One day at a time. What we need. Not what we want, what we need. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Made a searching, fearless, moral inventory of ourselves. And don't forget to forgive yourselves. I did not forgive myself for a long time.
That was my biggest hang-up. I couldn't accept myself. I wouldn't look at myself. That was where my problem was. It was within me. It wasn't within you. Nobody ever let me down. God didn't lay me down. I let myself down. I had to face myself before I could turn that around. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Admitted to God and to ourselves and to another human being the exact natures of our wrongs.
To ourselves the exact natures of our wrongs. I had a very difficult time with that. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. We're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Humbly ask him to remove all our shortcomings. Made a list of all persons we have harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. Lead us not into temptation. Made a list of all persons we have harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
Made direct amends to them whenever possible. Except when to do so would injure them or others. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
[01:05:02]
Continue to take a personal inventory and when we are wrong promptly admit it. For a long time I read that step and it didn't apply to me. I was never wrong. How can you admit being wrong if you're never wrong? I was never wrong. It was all in how people took what I said. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand him.
Praying only for the knowledge of his will and for the power to carry that out. I didn't know how to do that. It took me a long, long time to know how to do that. I today pray daily. I consciously have a contact with the God of my understanding. I am aware of him. He is aware of me. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, I tried to carry the message and to practice these principles in all of my affairs.
All of them. The outside world as well as the inside world. The shop as well as AA. Everywhere. That is very difficult to do. I still have a problem with that. I have a problem trusting people. The best thing and the only thing that AA really taught me was how to love myself. And in learning to love myself, I was able to learn to love others. And by loving others, I am now able to understand the individual.
I heard a speaker on the TV. You know when they used to close it down around midnight. This reverend, whatever he was, said there were two kinds of freedoms in this world. There was a freedom to do what we want to do and a freedom to do what we ought to do. And when we can find that what we ought to do is what we want to do, we know the true meaning of freedom. When the inner struggle ceases to be a struggle.
I think in myself I haven't been able to touch a piece of this. I don't believe that I am perfect at all. But I am able to share emotions. I am able to share love. I am able to share love. I am able to share pain. My pain and your pain. And this for me has been the greatest gift that this program has been able to show me. The gift to be able to feel pain, to feel loved, and to feel human. Because I didn't know what I was.
I really didn't. And it was a long time coming. The young kids come in today and I look at them and I get a little upset with them at times. But I was there. That was me. So when I get upset with them I have to be able to identify. Because I was arrogant. I wanted it yesterday. And because I wanted it yesterday, I was losing it today. But we have to get there. We have to get there. Our own way and our own time.
And the people in this program gave me the time and the love and the space I needed in order to arrive there. And for this I thank my higher power and I thank each and every one of you. I love you. Happy Birthday. Thank you. I just would like to thank the speakers tremendously.