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Source: Various S – Total Surrender – RS 17665 – 1990-07-04.mp3 File: various-s-total-surrender-rs-17665-1990-07-04.mp3 Duration: 01:09:23
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I'd like to call this marathon meeting to order and welcome you all to the 1990 International Convention of Alcoholics Anonymous. My name's Ken, I'm an alcoholic. I'm Jim. 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 achieve sobriety. I'd like to advise all present that this marathon meeting is being sound taped, not video, but sound taped in its entirety.
Now, I've asked Dick to read how it works. Morning, everybody. I'm Dick. I'm an alcoholic. How it works. Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, particularly men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates.
They are not at fault. They seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average. There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest. Our story is disclosed in a general way of what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now.
If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, then you are ready to take certain steps. As some of these we balked. We thought we could find an easier, softer way, but we could not. With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas, and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.
Remember that we deal with alcohol. Cunning, baffling, powerful. Without help, it is too much for us. But there is one who has all power. That one is God. May you find him now. Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We had lost His protection and care with complete abandon. Here are the steps we took which are suggested as a program of recovery. One, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.
Two, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Three, made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. And four, made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Five, admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Six, were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Seven, humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. Eight, made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. Nine, made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Ten, continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. Eleven, sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Twelve, having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs. Many of us exclaimed, what an order, I can't go through with it. Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines.
The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection. Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas.
[00:05:06]
A, that we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives. B, that probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism. C, that God could and would if He were sought. Thank you for letting me read this. Thanks, Dick. Dick was willing to go to any length. I called him at 6 o'clock this morning to come down and read this. He said, for Christ's sakes, I didn't get home until 4.30. And I said, you want another day of sobriety or not?
So he called me back, he says, yeah, okay. So thanks, Dick, I appreciate that. I've asked Greg to do the promises. Morning, everybody. My name's Greg. I'm an alcoholic. These are the promises from the Big Book of Alcoholic Phenomenons, page 83 and 84. If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
We will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity, and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.
Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us, like this one. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them. Thanks.
Thanks, Doug. This is officially a non-smoking room. However, I noticed some people have been smoking. So if we could take a group conscience on that, whether to smoke or not. And I think there's a few people probably opposed to the smoking. And I happen to be one of them. All those opposed? I guess I don't leave too many for it, does it? Okay, what we're going to do here, before I introduce the guest speaker, he's come from England.
And he's going to talk for about 15 or 20 minutes. And the topic of this whole thing is supposed to be total surrender of this particular meeting, I should say. So now I'd like to introduce Jimmy H. from England. One of the parts of an A meeting that I love most of all is the part where we have a few moments' silence to gather our thoughts on why we're here. Why it's important to me is because I think it's important to all of us.
is the part where we have a few moments' silence to gather our thoughts on why we're here. Why it's important to me is that beforehand, people are talking about many other things. They might be talking about their financial problems, their home problems, their car problems, their sexual problems. But when we have that one moment of silence, we all have one mind. That's what I believe anyway. And that one mind is gathered to sobriety.
And sobriety is a wonderful, powerful thing in the whole world. And I think when I feel that power of sobriety in that mind, it's all one. And that's the part I love. We gather together with one mind. I went to my first meeting in Liverpool. And I loved it. And I've loved Alcoholics Anonymous ever since. I got a feeling in that meeting that I never had. I never had it with my mum and dad. I never had it with anybody.
I had a feeling of belonging. I didn't belong in the pubs I drank with, the people I drank with. I didn't belong to me mum or dad. I didn't belong to anybody. But I had this feeling of belonging. And I loved it. It was terrific. I wasn't the only one. What gave me that feeling of belonging was a man spoke about himself. He didn't tell me what to do. He just told me what he did and he told me what happened to him.
[00:10:01]
And that's what I loved about AA. I loved the preamble of AA, the freedom of AA. He didn't tell me what to do but what he did. And what he told me is, he said he came down. There was a big party in his parents' house. He came down, walked down the stairs. He was completely in his nude and peed in the fire. And I said, isn't that marvellous? Because that's what I did. I always lost me clothes. I was waking up in strange places with no clothes on.
I didn't know where they were gone. And I was not the only one who lost me clothes and peed here and done that. And I said, God, do other people do that too? So, that's what I loved about it. And that's all he told me. And he'd been sober two years. One of the wonderful things about that happened. And that was on the 6th of April, 1967, on a Wednesday. 21 years later, on the 6th of April, I went into the same meeting and the same man was in the chair, telling the same story.
And it never changes. And that's what I like about AA. The stories never change, just the same. Total surrender was a word that I never knew anything about. I never knew words. I couldn't read, couldn't write. So, words had no meaning. I suffered from them, but I didn't know what they were. And if somebody asked me what surrender meant, I'd say it's something to do with the war, isn't it? What they do in wars, and they surrender, they give in.
That's the only idea I would have about it. But as I was attending meetings, I heard the man's voice saying, if you don't take the first step, you will drink again. Now, I don't know if that's true or not. But what I do know is I haven't had a drink since I first came into Alcoholics Anonymous on the 29th of March, 1967. And I believe maybe that's what happened to me. I listened to him. And I couldn't do what he asked me to do.
I didn't want to drink no more. I wanted to stay in AA. But the first step asked me to admit I was powerless over alcohol, and I couldn't do it. It was impossible for me to do. How can you admit you're powerless over alcohol if you don't know? Now, I had a list in front of me. I was arrested 40 times for drunken disorderly. I'd lost every job I had from the age of 15 to 26. I was in trouble at home.
With drink, I done burnt myself. I set the house furniture on fire. I peed myself. I pooed myself. I had all history, but that didn't mean I was powerless over alcohol. That's just got into trouble with it. I didn't know, so I couldn't admit it. I wanted to, but I couldn't. So, I was frightened. And what I did is I went back to my room in the psychiatric hospital. And that was my surrender. I couldn't speak any more at meetings.
I just sat there back. But there's another surrender. And that was with Jimmy. I am Jimmy. I was never Jimmy. Jimmy died. Jimmy never lived. Jimmy wanted to be Danny. Jimmy wanted to be you. I wanted to be you. When I was sitting at meetings and you told me you'd be able to do this. Why can't I be like you? Why can't I do these things? I can't do nothing. And that was my whole attitude in life. Why?
And as I was at my meetings, I'd sit and listen to people and tell me they lost this and they lost that. And I'd say, how did you get them in the first place? I never got anything. I'd never kissed a girl in my life. I'd never had a date. I'd never bought shoes. I'd never bought anything. And these people telling me they lost cars. How could they spend money on cars? How can they do these things? And they had children.
I don't know what I could… Didn't know how to do that either. I never did it. Couldn't do it. So, I said, I wish I could have done it. If I could have done those things, I might have been alright. But I couldn't do nothing. But the surrender was to me. It was letting Jimmy come alive. And I was at a meeting. And I said, why can't I be like you? And Stan B said, why don't you be yourself, Jimmy? And I said, who am I?
And I went home that night and I looked in the mirror. I said, who am I? I was at home that night and I looked in the mirror and I said, Who am I? And the voice said, You are Jimmy. I said, Am I? He said, Yeah. And I was a 15-year-old boy. And I'd never had a day in my life, I'd never done anything and these are the problems I had. They were secondary problems. But I was able to bring them to secondary problems to AA and I spoke about them. I spoke about my sexual impotency and it helped me.
[00:15:27]
I could not drink. I was able to talk about it. So, what was happening now was that I was stopped. I came across a book, actually, and it was called The Sermon on the Mount. I came across this book 20 years ago. I went on a 12-step call and this man was there and I got this book and I said, It's marvelous. And I came across the words, Resist Not Evil. And I read this chapter and it's talked about not fighting. Not fighting anything. And I came across a passage in the big book which uses the same words in a different way and it says, We have stopped fighting anything or anyone.
And that's an absolute. Don't fight. And I stopped fighting. And as I sat down, I started to think about me and about what happened to Jimmy. And Jimmy was a young boy who didn't do anything. I couldn't sing. I couldn't dance. I couldn't write. I couldn't read. I couldn't sit in television. I'd never been to cinema. I'd never done anything. I'd never been in a restaurant. Never been on vacation. So, all my life was, I can't do this. I can't do that. And I was at an AA meeting and I can't speak at AA meetings. And I went to an AA dance. I can't dance. That was a lie.
What I was saying is Jimmy was not alive. Jimmy never took part. And that's what happened. Jimmy never got involved in life. Jimmy was dead. And I seen that as a lie. Because what stopped me from dancing was a pride. I had an inferiority complex and that's another form of pride that stopped me. So, I wrote a letter to our magazine, your equivalent to your grapevine, and it was about me. And it was, I wrote something like this. I can't speak at AA meetings like Bill Wilson, but I can speak at AA meetings like me, Jimmy. I can speak.
I can't read books like my wife, Pat. She reads books by the millions, but I can read, like Jimmy. I can do it. I can't dance like Fred Astaire, but I can dance like Jimmy. I can dance. You might not like it, but I can do it. And that's where I started to be positive. And I came across a part that I, 1975, I was in Denver for the international convention. And my first convention I got a, I went to was in Ireland. And everybody sang songs. And I couldn't sing.
So, I got a million Irish song books and tried to learn them, but I couldn't. To go back the next year to sing. And I couldn't sing. But this man, Christy T, from Dublin, in 1975, he was over in Dublin, in America, we were as a crowd. And they had a sing song. And everybody sang. But Jimmy. Because Jimmy can't sing. And then this girl got up. And she's the worst singer that ever heard. But she didn't get up once. She got up twice. And one of the songs she sang was that she got the whole world in her hand. But she got up twice and she was lousy.
So, with that example, she can do it, I can do it. So, I'd never learnt a song out of all of those Irish books. But I did learn a few words years ago of an old Elvis Presley song. It was Heartbreak Hotel. So, Jimmy got up to sing and I got up. Since my baby left me, I've found a new place to dwell. It's down at the end of Lonely Street at Heartbreak Hotel. And that was Jimmy singing. So, what I'm actually saying is, let you sing. Let the person in you sing. Even though you're lousy, you sing. You demonstrate you. Because that is who's dead inside. That's the spirit inside. That's what's dead.
And the A's brought this spirit out. And I can sing. I can talk. And I can disagree with you. And I can disagree and share my… Now, that is my total surrender to Jimmy. Don't fight Jimmy. Let Jimmy come out. And that to me is what total surrender is. Letting Jimmy come out. Don't fight him. Demonstrate him.
[00:20:16]
And I better stop now and pass it over and let you demonstrate who you are. Thanks very much. Okay, what I'm going to do is call on some people that I've kind of picked out ahead of time. And I don't know any of them. And they've graciously volunteered to come up for about five minutes. So, we'll start with John R., who's got 31 years from Santa Barbara, California. Good morning, everybody. My name is John R. I am an alcoholic.
And that was about the last thing I wanted to do under any conditions. I was a booze fighter and I wanted you to know that. I lost a couple of rounds, but what the hell. And that's about the way I felt. The reason I went to the Alco-Aids Club, which was a kind of a social club, I guess, for members of AA and Al-Anon, was that I understood that Alcoholics Anonymous would teach me how to drink. I knew a couple of guys that had been in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, they said. And by golly, these guys seemed to be able to drink better than me. I didn't see them in the saloons anymore, and I didn't see them in the bars, and I didn't see them in the streets. But every now and then I used to see them and they looked pretty good.
So I kind of figured that if they could understand and control their drinking, that maybe I could too. And they are the ones that told me about the Alco-Aids Club and invited me down to have a cup of coffee, which I thought was one way to start drinking, because I always used to like to put brandy in my coffee. My problem was that when I went to the Alco-Aids Club and they offered me a cup of coffee, I kind of felt that they didn't have any brandy. I looked around at the shelves and there wasn't any brandy.
Make a long story short, it wasn't very long before I understood what the purpose of the Alco-Aids Club and the Alcoholics Anonymous groups that were meeting there. Over a process of maybe five years, over a period of five years, it took me some time to understand the process of stopping fighting everything and everybody, which is what I had been doing up till then. I fought my way to the top of a business. I fought my way to an unsuccessful, unhappy, miserable family life because of my drinking.
I fought my way to the bottom of my own opinion of myself, fighting all the way with fists clenched every inch of the way and every second of the time, because that's what I felt was the way to go. It took me some years to understand that, for me, winning in life did not mean fighting. In fact, for me, it meant to take this hand with a clenched fist and begin to relax it and to begin to open it slowly, so that I didn't have the white knuckles that indicated that all of my will was tied up in my fist. And when I became able to understand some of the concepts of Alcoholics Anonymous, I was able to relax that hand and I was able to feel the flow of sobriety, not only in my fingers but throughout my entire body.
I learned, for example, that the people that I encountered in living, in business, in my home, my neighbors, were just as afraid of me as I thought they were.
[00:25:14]
And that was a horrible thing. I was engendering combat in other people by fighting. I looked like I wanted to fight, and I did. And in the period of time that I've been in Alcoholics Anonymous, perhaps the greatest lesson I ever learned was that the other guy is as important to himself as I am to me. And I didn't understand that, couldn't conceive of that. And because I was estranged from other people, because of my alcoholism, I was ready to fight, and many of them were ready to fight back, and usually they won.
Let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, fellow members of Alcoholics Anonymous and Elinor, life is a hell of a lot easier now, not just because I'm sober today, but because my perspective and my understanding of my fellow man and fellow woman is a hell of a lot different now than it used to be then. I no longer come charging out of my corner of the ring ready to take you on. In fact, when I come charging at you, it's more likely that I want to hug you and embrace you, rather than slug you, which is the way it was when I was a booze fighter.
The last thing I want to say, and I'm grateful to you for the opportunity of speaking with you this morning, the last thing I want to say is that perhaps in the 30, almost exactly 31 years of my being in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I don't think I've ever had the thrill and the excitement and the gratification of being a member of this fellowship. As much as I did last night at that tremendous opening ceremony. Thank you very much.
Nels. This is Nels P. from Montlake Terrace, Washington, downtown Montlake Terrace. My name's Nels, and I'm an alcoholic, and I have a resentment. I told him if he couldn't find anybody more interesting than me, have him call. I guess there's nobody here more interesting than me, so I'll talk. Surrender. Jimmy, I love what you had to say, because you told my story. I grew up as a big kid. I was always bigger than everybody, and I came out of a drunken family, and we lived on violence.
A Saturday night argument in my family was usually ended up with my mother getting her teeth knocked out, or possibly a stabbing, or something like that. And I grew up, I thought all the neighbors did that. And when I went to somebody else's house as a kid to spend the night, and nobody punched nobody, I thought, boy, are they on good behavior, because I'm here, you know. And the sad part about it is, I carried it on. It's a part that Alcoholics Anonymous and Sobriety has allowed me to share. I did 20 years in the military, three tours in Vietnam. The word surrender was not in my vocabulary. The word love was not in my vocabulary. The word caring was not in my vocabulary.
So when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I came, just like the gentleman said before, just to learn how to control my drinking, get my duck in a row, and get on with my life. It'll be another two months, it'll be 10 years sober, and my whole life has totally changed. I came here because my oldest daughter, at that time 13 years old, decided to kill herself because of the insanity, violence, and crazy in our family. I carried it forward in the tradition of my family.
We had arguments, and if I proved a point to my children, I would throw a chair through the window and say, now, when you grow up, you'll learn how to be an adult like me. And I could never understand why when I got called into counseling sessions with my children's teachers, they kept looking at me from across the room and say, I'd like to talk to you about your children, and they would move away from me. I know now why.
from me. Yeah? I know now why. I kid because in my, I guess the words not shame but in my
[00:30:02]
realization of what I did and who I was, humor sometimes takes some of the pain away. But anyway that girl tried to kill herself. And I made a stupid remark in a world tour as I walked around her backyard on a rainy November day and said, if you'll never try suicide again, I'll never drink again. And being a good drunk, I did not mean that. You know, I just want to get through this shit, get two weeks of love, you know, drive them on Sunday rides and get everybody back in the groove of a dysfunctional family. And you know what I'm talking about when you, uh, uh, after a good drunk and you get the whole family in the car and you're heading up the highway saying, Oh God damn it, we're going to have fun today because we're a family. I'll start laughing back there. And then when the kids start laughing in the back, pretty soon it's shut up. You know, I, I'm glad there's no video of my life cause you'd see me standing along I-5 out there in my car screaming at my family going, God damn it, if we can't have fun, I'm walking home. And they're going, okay, we're sorry. It's our fault. I often feel that we drunks could probably go to the Mideast and teach the terrorists how to take hostages cause we're good at it. Um, anyway, I had 14 days of sobriety and my daughter said, you're not doing anything about your sobriety or you're not getting sober or doing anything. And I said, I haven't drank in two weeks. And she said, you have to go to treatment. Well, I couldn't go to treatment because I was a key member of my family. And you know, what would they do without me? Somebody had to direct the madness to keep them moving. Here you go there. You'd be ashamed. You cry.
You'd be happy or I'll hit you. Uh, anyway, uh, so I said, I'll go to that. She said, and she's the littlest one in our family. She said, why don't you go to AA? Oh yeah, right. Bunch of trench coat. Why no drooling people ugly, but I went and I was right. No, no, my, my first meeting, they all look like you. I don't know why that is, but, uh, but I, the word is surrender. And, and, and even I got there, I felt something, but damn it, I couldn't let go. I just felt if I hang on for six months, I can get that goddarn dysfunctional family squared away. Cause I can see we had a rebellion going on now and it wasn't the usual lollipop and we'll get well. Now I had to hang on for a while and I was a little nervous.
And then my wife went down on and everything turned to shit. Oh, you know, be careful what you pray for. Right. Greatest thing that ever happened. She's in a meeting this morning over at another hotel talking about me. So it works out. Okay. But anyway, I, I get rambling on, but it's, it's the love that I have learned now to give to you, to each other, to my family that I've never known before. Uh, that daughter, uh, three years ago, asked me to walk her down the aisle and be the father of the bride. And I got to do that and, and, uh, hug me. And it was important to her that I was there because we'd healed the wounds, not through my genius IQ smarts, through what you people taught me in the big books and the steps and all that. I couldn't do it alone. I didn't know shit. You know, you people taught me, you took a big, large, cute rascal and taught him all kinds of good stuff. And then I have two other children that have grown up and the one I want to share about real quick and I'll shut up is my son. He's 16 years old.
He has 9 million hormones going 9 million different directions, you know, and I'm going to guide them through it. All my hormones are dead, but he's big. And through the years, almost 10 years of this program, he's learned it's okay to love and touch. You see, cause when he was little, he would come to me and I, as the male of the species wanted to pass on to him, don't get too close. Don't kiss me goodnight. Be tough. Be rough. You know, and God, I don't want to ever have him live up to those messages because it's not any fun, you know, and, and, and I'm in Mount Lake Terrace. And some of the people here that know me, I can go to a high school football game and I get a whole bleachers by myself because you see, I cry at football games. Yeah. And they go, who is that guy? You know? Well, they don't understand. You know, they probably had nice Sunday rides where everybody did ride together and didn't scream at each other and stuff. But you see my son out there, big as a house. And he looks up and he waves, hi dad. You know? Oh my God, I start crying, you know? Oh shit. You know, look at me and he loves me. You know, and my daughter who just graduated from high school plays soccer and she comes over at halftime and will hug me. And not because she has to or I'm going to kick her butt or I got some money. Well, maybe the
[00:35:01]
money, I take that back. It's an honest program, you know, I'd like to believe, but you know, and they love me and, and, and they do because, because you people have made me lovable that I could never have been myself. And, and it's just wonderful. It is. And my, like I say, he's 16 years old and, and, and last year, anybody that has a children, teenagers, you know what I'm talking about, you know, it's hi, I'm your parent. And they go, you know, you can talk to him, call me, you know, my friends are here. Oh, they don't have any parents. So I guess you're strange. I don't know. But, uh, but I'm very lucky. I can, I can go to, to functions or around the school.
And if he's there or my daughter, they'll come up and grab me and put their arm through mine in front of their friends. There was a time, like I say, my older kids wouldn't even acknowledge me. I was kicked out of little league coaching because I was a drunk. I dropped my drawers at the gymnasium of a high school basketball game to tell a referee what I thought of his last call. I did get his attention, but the sad part, mom, my daughter's friends were there too. And I had 20 years in the military. So I have tattoos that probably most people will never forget.
Ten years of sobriety, I still walk through Linwood and die, people going. So anyway, I just want to surrender. It's the hardest thing I ever did, but it's the greatest single thing I ever did because you see, now I belong to the human race and I'm a person, you know, and I, and I just love you, man. I really do. And I'm goddamn you can't, I'm done with my resentment. I'm even like him again. Thank you. I've been listening to this guy for seven and a half years. That's where I get my serenity and surrender from is him.
Okay. Burr S. from Michigan. Hi, my name is Burr Snyder. I'm an alcoholic. I just told him he left me a terrible act of foul. I had no idea that this was even happening. I walked in here and he talked to me. So it was all off the top of my head. And he says, surrender. The man just said it. That was the toughest damn thing I ever did. I come from a, if you're wondering, it's Michigan, it's a Petersburg, it's a little berg, it was a geographical cure. Because where I worked and lived in the city, there was only three bars and most of the drinking was done at home. Moved to Petersburg and there's 10 bars on the way home. You don't have to be an Einstein to figure that one out.
I lived in a, was raised in an old area in the city of Monroe. If you're wondering where Monroe is on the map, it's way down in the southeast corner. An ethnic neighborhood, I'm not here to tell any ethnic jokes, but this old man said something that I've carried with me all my life. And it's become very profound. In this neighborhood it wasn't built up too much at that time. This man raised some goats. And of course when you got some nanny goats, you got some billy goats. I don't really know why, but that's the way it works. As young kids we'd play ball down there and whatever and the man had the goat out there and we'd tease that billy goat so he'd tuck his head down and charge at us. In his own way, he used to come out and say something that since I got into this program has become very profound. And he'd come screaming out of his home yelling, you want to die before you live. You want to die before you live. And we laughed at him, teased him, teased the goat more and whatever, because then it was funny. Today it's not funny. Every one of us in this room have died just a little before we find a way of life.
If not physically, spiritually dead when I got here.
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I can relate with the man telling the children, you know, screaming at them and threatening them and such as that. Through no fault of mine that I can think of, maybe partially, I've been married three times. There's been a death, a divorce, and now the lady, the woman, my wife, we have been married 26 years. It wasn't all happy time, but it's through this program and by these marriages it brought three families together and there are 10 children.
And all of them, most of them have had college, high school educations. I destroyed two, almost destroyed two children. One of them is in Alaska yet. He got up there to get away from me. And a daughter just graduated from the University of Michigan with honors. I told her I don't need a lawyer anymore. They said to talk about surrender. I lived in one of those dysfunctional homes and didn't know what dysfunctional was because the man that was, I called dad, was an invalid.
In those days they apparently had infantile paralysis. Later on they call it polio and they've got a cure for that today. He walked with a cane and I called it a club. And so that's the background. It's through this program and the grace of God and new people, and I will not knock Eleanor in any way because it's been a beneficial thing to us that we stand here. I have something else, a couple of things. I don't know how this man just come up off the top of his head, but today, this day, July the 7th, 1971, I had been through the doors of AA, but I opened them up and have been here ever since that time.
Thank you. We have gone to many conferences. The man mentioned Denver. We were in Denver, we were in New Orleans, we were in Montreal, and we're here. You see, this program with my surrender that there's something wrong with me when I drink has let me see a good portion of this world. We're friendly with people. The kids come to see us. In fact, they complain that they have to call us up to get an appointment.
What a difference. It's a lot better that way than being told, well, we can't come out there because you're drunk or whatever. It's just things like that has made this life for us so much better. This was all unexpected. I didn't expect to come up here, but the two or three people ahead of me, there's a guy who was in the Marine Corps or in the military pushing people around. I did that without being in anything. I have a physical problem and I was a reject. That was probably part of the reason, different, no good, whatever.
We hid in a bottle for a long, long time. In fact, coming here to surrender, I came into this program and I walked in and someone said the first drink got me drunk. The individual up here said the first drink got him drunk and he had 11 years sobriety. I'm on my way out and a little guy was my sponsor at the time, was hanging on for dear life. He got me outside and backed me into a tree and told me some things and said, if you don't take the first drink, you can't get drunk. This is surrender. The first step.
This Is Surrender, The First Step, So We Admitted We Were Powerless Over Alcohol, Our Lives Had Become Unmanageable, This Is Surrender, And If We Totally Surrender To That, And It Tells Me In The Big Book, In The Twelve And Twelve, This Is The Only Step That I Can Take In Its Entirety, All The Rest Are Goals To Seek, And Some Of Them Take A Hell Of A Lot Of Work, When We Look At These, They Told Me I Was Insane In The Second Step, We
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But Thank God They Gave Me A Prayer To Use In The Third Step, It Says, God I Offer Myself To Thee To Do With Me And Build With Me As I Will, Remove Me A Bondage Of Self, I Found Through This Surrender In This Program, As Long As I Get Self-Centered Out Of The Way, Things Seem To Work A Lot Better On A Day At A Time, This Is Standing Up Here, I Don't Know If I Went Long Enough Or Short Enough Or Whatever, But Maybe I Have Let Someone Know That This Is A Program, If You Are Wondering If It Works Or Not, The Man Up Here Is Thirty Years, Myself With Nineteen And A Few Others Around Here With Many Years Of Sobriety, All Done A Day At A Time, And I Thought That Was A, The First Few Days, The First Days At First Were Awful Long Days, But That's Okay, Today We Don't Have Enough Time In A Day To Do All The Things We Want To Do, And So It Has Been A Busy Time, We Are Enjoying Ourself Here, And I Want To Thank Every One Of You, I Will Close In My Usual Way, If You Look In Your Big Book, In The Doctor's Opinion, The Very Last Line, He Says Maybe You Came To Scoff, Now Let's Say It This Way, Maybe Like You, Like Me, Came To Scoff Instead Of Pray, I Met God In The Morning When His Day Was At His Best, And His Presence Came Like Sunrise, Like A Glory In His Breast, All Day Long His Presence Lingered All Day Long, He Stayed With Me, And We Sailed In Perfect Calmness Over A Very Troubled Sea, So I Think I Know The Secret, Learned From Many A Troubled Way, You Must See God In The Morning If You Want Him Through The Day, Thank You And God Bless.
Thank You, I Was Just Looking At My List Here And I See That I Appear To Be A Chauvinist, Is There Any Female Alcoholics Out There That Would Like To Get Up And Share With Us For A Few Minutes? You Were Up Here A Few Minutes Ago, You Want To Come Up Again? Yeah. Hi, I'm Mimi, I'm an Alcoholic. Hi Everybody. Well, When I'm Asked To Speak I Say Yes, And That's Why I Said Yes Now. And The Most Important Thing For Me To Remember About Surrender Is How Long It Took Me. I Knew I Was Alcoholic At The Age Of 27, I Started Drinking On A Daily Basis When I Was 20.
My Father Is A Member Of Alcoholics Anonymous And Has 30 Years In AA. His Mother Was An Alcoholic. I Have Five Sisters And One Brother. Of My Five Sisters, The Eldest Is Obese, The Other Four Are Alcoholics Or Alcoholic Addicts, And My Only Brother Is A Psychiatrist. In My Case I Feel It Is A Family Thing. We Have Our Difficulties And I Think That Although When I Was Little I Knew That It Was Something Bad That Daddy Was An Alcoholic, I Didn't Really Understand It That Well.
I Asked One Of My Older Sisters One Time, Well What Does This Mean That Daddy Is An Alcoholic? And She Said That Means That If He Ever Takes A Drink Again He Will Go Crazy. And It Was A Pretty Good Definition Although It Didn't Make Much Sense To Me At The Time. So At The Age Of 27 When I Returned From Studying In West Germany For Three Years Where I Had Done A Tremendous Amount Of Drinking Both Social And Drinking Alone. I Saw My Sisters In The Course Of A Few Weeks. I Had Not Seen Them For Some Time. And The Four Of Them They Were Killing Themselves With Alcohol.
And I Looked At Them Because They Had Taught Me So Much. I Was Them. I Had Grown Up Under Their Influence. What They Did I Did. And I Looked At Them And Thought If I Don't Do Something About My Drinking This Will Happen To Me Too.
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One Of My Sisters Was Drinking On A Daily Basis. Couldn't Take Care Of Her Two School Aged Children. Another Sister Had Been Pregnant. Had Born A Baby In The Six Month Of Pregnancy. The Child Lived For Ten Days And Died. A Third Sister Had Been Pregnant And In The Seventh Month Of Pregnancy They Forced Her Into Labor Because They Said Her Baby Had Stopped Growing As A Result Of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
And The Prognosis For That Child Was Very Unclear. And I Saw These Things. So I Handled The Problem The Way I Had Been Taught Through My University Education To Handle Any Problem. I Went To The Library And I Did Library Research On Alcoholism. And I Was In Davis, California At The Time. Small Town. One Little Shelf Books On Alcoholism. And I Leafed Through Them And I Found The Twenty Questions. And I Went Through Ticked Off The Yeses. Sixteen Yeses. Then At The Bottom It Says Key To This Test. If You Have Answered Yes To Three Or More Of These Questions You Are Definitely An Alcoholic.
And I Looked At That And I Thought What A Rigorous Interpretation Of This Test. And I Trotted Home And I Said To My Husband I Have Done Some Research On This Drinking Issue And I Believe I Am At Risk For Alcohol Addiction. And He Said Oh. He Said We Don't Have To Drink The Way We Have Been Drinking. We Can Cut Down On Our Drinking. That Is Not A Problem. I Said Okay. And He Did. He Cut Down On His Drinking. No Problem. And I Couldn't. So For Three Years I Tried To Control My Drinking.
And I Could Go For Weeks. Months At A Time. But That First Drink Was Always There And I Would Pick It Up Under No Provocation. And It Makes Tremendous Sense To Me In The First Few Chapters Of The Big Book Where It Is Written Most Of The Time If You Ask An Alcoholic Or A Problem Drinker Why He Went On That Last Binge. The Real Answer Is He Doesn't Know Why. And I Never Knew Why. And I Have Thought A Lot About The Fact That I Did Not Want To Become An Alcoholic. And For A Long Time In My Early Sobriety I Thought It Was Because Of The Stigma Attached To Women Drinkers. Women Alcoholics. But You Know As I Have Become More Honest I Have Realized I Know The Reason Why I Didn't Want To Be An Alcoholic.
Because I Knew What Happened To Alcoholics. My Dad Was An Alcoholic And I Knew That If You Were An Alcoholic You Couldn't Drink Ever. And I Didn't Want That. I Did Not Want To Give Up Drinking. So Those Three Years Of My Life Were Definitely The Most Miserable. At The End Of It I Was Sneaking Drinks. My Relationship With My Husband Was Absolutely Kaput. And I Surrendered Because I Could Not Live With Alcohol In My Life Anymore.
That Doesn't Mean I Was Willing To Come Into AA. I Went To An Outpatient Treatment Center. And The Intake Counselor Sat Me Down And Said We Would Like To Know Why You Are Here. And I Said I Am Here Because My Life Is Out Of Control And I Know I Cannot Drink. And I Didn't Know What The First Step Was When I Said That To Her. So They Took Me In This Outpatient Center. And For Five Months I Was There As A Weekly Patient. And I Got As Much Individual Counseling As I Wanted. And There Was One Women's Group A Week Where They Would Discuss Issues Surrounding Alcoholism.
And To One Of Those Women's Groups Came A Young Lady Who Was Everything I Wanted To Be. She Was Blonde And Beautiful And She Had A Profession And She Was Calm. She Could Sit Still And Talk About Herself Coherently. And She Said That She Went To An AA Meeting Every Single Night. And I Couldn't Believe It. And After Five Months Of Being Sober. Of Being Willing To Do One Thing. I Was Willing Not To Pick Up A Drink. I Had A Real Problem. These Were My Problems In Those Days. I Had Made A $10 Gasoline Purchase On My Credit Card And When The Bill Came At The End Of The Month It Said $100. That Was Devastating.
So I Went To The Gas Station After Work One Night To Get This Fixed But The Manager Wasn't There So He Couldn't Help Me. And I Sat In My Car And Cried Because I Could Not Solve This Problem. And I Thought To Myself Is This What Life Without Alcohol Is Going To Be Like?
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And That Was Enough Willingness For A Little Door To Open Up In My Head And A Little Voice Said Well You Could Go To One Of Those AA Meetings. And I Got Out Of My Car And I Went To The Phone Book And I Called And I Found The Thursday Night Meeting That That Blonde Linda Woman Had Said Was Her Home Group And I Went That Very Night. And That Was The Beginning Of My Involvement In AA. But It Didn't Come Easily For Me. I Wouldn't Follow The Rules Which Was Very Unusual For A Young Lady Who Would Follow Rules In Every Other Aspect Of Life. No Here No No Not When It Came To Taking Suggestions And Doing The Things You People Said Would Work To Give Me A Better Life.
So After Two Years Of Sobriety With Maybe One Meeting A Week Or One Meeting Every Two Weeks I Had No Sponsor I Had Not Worked The Steps But I Had Not Picked Up A Drink Either. And What Happened My Relationship With My Husband Was Still In The Drags It Was Awful And I Realized That Something Had To Change. And Obviously Not Drinking Was Not The Magic Solution. I Did Not Automatically Become A Better Person Because I Put Down A Drink. Putting Down A Drink Is The Foundation Of My Entire Life Today. But To Become The Person That My Higher Power Truly Has In Store For Me I Have To Follow The Steps Of This Program.
And That Finally Hit Me When My Brain I Think Was Clear Enough After Two Years Of No Alcohol In My System. And That's When I Surrendered To This Program. That's When I Went To A Meeting Every Day. That's When I Went Up To A Woman I Had Seen Twice Who Was Again Looked Exactly Like The Woman I Wanted To Be. I Went Up To Her And Asked Her To Be My Sponsor. I'm With Her Today At This Conference. That's When I Started Working The Steps. That's When I Had Enough Faith To Overcome The Fear To Put Down My Behavior Patterns Of The Past. Just Like It Says In The Big Book We Do Step Four. And See What Person I Had Become Because Of My Past. Because Of My Drinking. Because Of My Behavior. And To Look At That Square.
So That Surrender Took Me Approximately Five Years From The Time When I Really Knew I Was An Alcoholic To The Time That I Picked Up The Kit Of Spiritual Tools That This Program Gives Us And Use Them. So Where Am I Today? Today I'm Four Months Pregnant. My Husband And I Are Together. We Have A Wonderful Life. And I Was Talking To Leslie Earlier And That's Not Given To All Of Us. We Don't All Get To Regain Our Family Ties. But You've Heard All Our Speakers Today Say That They Have. We Really Can Get Our Families Back.
And That's What The Joy Of This Program Is. And As Far As My Profession Goes. I Got An Education In A Field That Was What I Really Thought I Wanted To Do. And My Profession Has Not Turned Out That Way At All. Now I Have Nine Years Of Experience In A Completely Different Field. That Was Not My Plan For My Life. That Is Enough Proof For Me Looking At It Today That There Is A Higher Power Who Has A Plan For My Life. And The Only Way I Can Fulfill That Plan Is To Wake Up This Morning And Say God Please Keep Me From Taking A Drink Today And Run My Life For Me Today And I Accept This Day The Way You Give It To Me.
And That's Surrender For Me. Not To Try To Run My Own Life Today. Thank You Very Much. Greg? Thanks Ken. And That Wasn't Honest. I'm Greg. I'm An Alcoholic. You Know I'm One Of Them People That I'm Pretty Much Convinced That I Was Born An Alcoholic. I Come From Generations Of Alcoholism And Some Drug Addiction In There Too. And You Know I Did Dysfunctional Things Before I Ever Picked Up That. My sponsor, of course, when I did my fourth step with him, he knew I was sicker than most, but when I did my eighth step with him, it definitely, definitely made that permanent.
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Like at 12 years old, the next-door neighbor lady had left on vacation and I used to mow her lawn. And she left and said, mow it twice while I'm gone. Well, she comes back, it's two feet tall, I go over there, I said, I mowed it twice, I collect $20. And she looked at it and, you know, I really didn't know at that time that she realized that I hadn't done it, but I collected the $20, you know. And I started the ninth step about two months ago and I had to go back after 10 years and make amends to this lady before I ever picked up a drink.
And it was definitely an experience. Doing that eighth step brought me to where I realized that I did dysfunctional things before I ever picked up that first drink. I started drinking shortly after that, about 13, you know, and alcohol was just a great release. It was something that was taught to me. This is what I've seen my parents do, my grandparents. It was a very accepted thing, violence, drinking, bikers, working on cars, animals, just animals, you know, complete animalism.
That's basically what I was taught, you know, kids watch what they see, you know, and they do what they see. And to surrender, boy, it took a while, you know. I'm not proud to say I dealt drugs all the way through high school. My parents just thought I had a lot of friends. I was a real popular guy. You know, I did it out of their house and everything. And I had this girlfriend I had gotten in ninth grade and we stayed together for about five years.
And I mentally and physically and everything tortured this gal, you know. And finally around about my senior, or actually my junior year, I had been kicked out of the house already. And my mom, my old tape is, you're an alcoholic, you're just like your dad, you know. And I heard it over and over and over and over and over and over. And she said, when you want help, come and see me. And what brought me to my bottom was finally this gal left me, you know.
And it brought me to an emotional bottom. So that very night I walked a couple of miles to my parents' house, broke in, stole a half gallon, drank half of it on the two-mile walk back home. Somehow that night I ended up on my bathroom floor with my gun loaded in between my legs, laying on the bathroom floor and about ready to pull the trigger. And I was drunk and so I called her up and told her I was going to do it.
And she said, do it. And that kind of took the enthusiasm out of it. I wanted her to shower me with some more blessings, you know. But she said, do it. And the only thing that stopped me that night from really doing it was that my roommate would have to come home and see it. He'd be the first to see it. And I thought, oh, he'd see the mess, you know. And so I didn't do it. I ended up on the phone to the treatment center that my dad went to.
And it was funny. I went in two days later. I definitely stayed drunk and everything. I could only go home because I was two months late with the rent and had no money for bills. And two days later I went in for my interview for the treatment center. And this lady told me that I should go inpatient immediately and anabuse and all this other stuff. And I said, no, you know, I'm in control here. I'm going to go outpatient.
Maybe I'll do this thing. And dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And I had the worst hangover. You know, and I felt something just with that lady. And I found out later she has a lot of years in this program. And I felt something. I felt something strange. And I did go outpatient. And she said, can you not drink tomorrow and come to the meeting Tuesday? I said, well, I'll do my best. And I did. I went self-will for one day.
And I went to that outpatient meeting. And so I went through treatment. I hit that pink cloud, you know. I was still a permanent fixture in Disneyland. I just couldn't comprehend anything. I just, oh, man. But I hit that pink cloud, you know. You hit that pink cloud. And I just going, yeah, right on. You know, I was really pumped on being sober. And the whole thing was, you know, I was mind-screwing myself.
But the whole thing was to get sober was to get her back, you know, the love of my life, you know. The one I couldn't figure out wasn't coming back because I just treated her like dirt, you know. I really did. And so I went through this treatment, pink cloud, and went to AA meetings. They told me I had to go to two meetings of AA. And I said, what's this? You know, I had never heard of it. I was 20 years old, and I had never heard of it before.
And they told me to go. And I went to my first meeting. And thank God the secretary of that meeting who was sitting out there was a young guy like me.
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And I said, yeah, he had long hair and down to his butt. And, yeah, you know, said I'm right where I'm supposed to be. And, you know, but that's all I did for six months is I just went to meetings. I went to treatment. I looked for another girlfriend to fix me, of course, someone to fix me. And, of course, I came across a few. And, well, I couldn't handle myself, let alone them. They couldn't handle me either.
And at six months, I was sitting in the club I go to, and I was flipping through my 12×12, my big book. And I was at that point where I wanted to drink or I wanted to die right then. I wanted to drink or I wanted to die. And someone placed themselves in my life, you know. And I don't remember if I opened up my mouth first or if he did. But he showed me how someone showed him how to do a first step.
And for the first time in my life, I actually did something, you know. I thought that I was God because I went to treatment and, you know, I'd been sober for five, six months. And I did this first step, you know. And it was a miracle. For 30 nights, I wrote. And I did it every night for 10 minutes. And he showed me what to do with this thing. And there was a profound change in that one month's time, very profound, very profound.
You know, this sponsor really carried me. He gave me a job. I was unemployable. It was a worthless job, and I realized I was unemployable. And, you know, I still couldn't show up to work on time. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't do anything. I was just, I was still a permanent fixture in Disneyland and still detoxing really hard. I did a lot of drugs, a lot of drinking. And he really carried me through, you know.
And then he showed me how to do a second step. And, you know, and through all that, you know, I've got a different job today. I've got myself. God has done for me what I could not do for myself. I'm sober today for myself. That girl still don't talk to me. I can't figure out why, you know. But that's okay. I've made those amends, you know. I did what I was supposed to do for today to stay sober. And that willingness, you know, it's always been the great motivator for me, pain.
I've got to experience a lot of pain before I do anything, you know. And it's still sometimes true today, you know. I'm procrastinating on the last two amends of a night step. And I'm telling all you that. And that's going to kick me in the butt. And, you know, it's just hard to tell people you owe them money and they don't know it, you know. I'm sure some of you have experienced that, you know. It just doesn't seem too easy to me, you know.
But, you know, I'm going to do it, you know. And it's in God's time, not mine. And, you know, I'm very grateful to be sober. You know, I can't believe last night in the kingdom listening to that gal who came in at 13 years old and blew my ego. That story really touched me. I was crying. I'm looking around and no one's crying around me and I'm crying. So I'm still in an emotional basket case. I'm very grateful to all of you, you know, and Alcoholics Anonymous.
And I'm sober today. Thanks. Thank you. Every time I talk to Greg, I look at him and smile. And I tell him, man, you're living proof this thing will work for anybody. But, well, I want to thank you. And it's time to close. And we'll close with the serenity prayer. And we've got about 15 minutes to get out of here so they can bring in a new meeting. Either that or you can sit down and go to another meeting.
So let's do it right in our seats, I guess, probably the quickest. Or you can stand up. Stand up. Okay. This is control. I like this. Up, down, up, down. God. God. Grant me the serenity to accept the things that cannot change.