Bob D. and Sandy B. - AA Speakers - Spiritual Awakening - THE M2 THE ROCK SHOW - Michael Molthan

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
My name is Bob Darryl, and I am an alcoholic
because of God's grace that I've accessed and maintained through
the program and Fellowship Alcoholics Anonymous. I haven't had a
drink or anything else to treat my alcoholism except AA
since Halloween nineteen seventy eight. And for that AOAA my life.

(00:24):
Good morning. Somebody had mentioned before the meeting that said, well,
there's not that many people showing up. I'm surprised anybody
shows up for a tradition's workshop. You know, I understand it.
When I was new, I don't think I would have
I would have got tradition. Ah. It's funny. Last year

(00:48):
I did a workshop on the traditions at a conference
in Chicago, and they build it spiritual principles and relationships,
and nine hundred and some people showed up because you
know how we are today is I want stuff that

(01:08):
has to do with me right? Oh I I'm in
love with alcoholics Anonymous. And how could you not if
you're involved, and you're making amends and you're repairing the damage,

(01:29):
and you're getting your parents and people in your life back,
and you're fixing those impossible, irrepairable relationships through this amazing
process in AA, and you're returning to society and you're
sponsoring people, and you're watching them homeless guys by their
first house, and guys that were so depressed and alone

(01:51):
they'd never be free. And they're sponsoring guys in the
lights on and you walk guys down the aisle and
watch watch have their first kid, and you watch what happens.
I've I had a mother that come back into my
life that I ended. I loved her, always did, and

(02:12):
a sister and a father and all through alcoholics Anonymous,
how could you not love the thing that's making that possible?
I mean, how could you not? Really? And I a
guy of the things that I've seen happen in the
guys' lives that I sponsor, guys that I've some I've

(02:35):
been in, guys that have been in my life, some
of them over twenty five years.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
And I.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
But it wasn't always that way with me. I came here.
I was so self obsessed. I think I was in
AA six months before I realized there was anybody else
here except me, you know, I mean really, because it
was all my stuff. It was like you were just
cardboard cut out for me to throw things at, you know,
in my life. And and then I started to connect

(03:04):
with some of the people here and and realized that
they were I started to identify and realized that they
were like me. And I started to care about the
things that were going on in their life. And then
I started sponsoring guys, and my my consciousness expanded out
off of me and eventually into to the Fellowship Alcoholics Anonymous.

(03:25):
I really I belonged to a home group, and I
really care about the people there. Some of them annoy
the hell out of me, I'll tell you, but I
care about them. And uh, if you're if you if
there's nobody in AA annoying you, you're not going to
enough meetings. I mean, you're not You're not doing nothing,
You're just sitting at all. I mean, but how else

(03:47):
do we learn love and tolerance and how to deal
with that stuff?

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Really?

Speaker 1 (03:52):
And you know that, Uh, I'm not an expert on anything,
probably except my own failure. But I'm gonna try to
share a little bit about my personal experience in the
application these principles. And I'm gonna do a little bit.
And then Sandy's gonna tie it up and I tell you,
I'm so and I don't want to embarrass Sandy, because

(04:15):
if I was reverse to embarrass me. But I want
to tell you I've he is. God has gifted him
with an ability to communicate the things that people like
me think. And I feel since I my early sobriety,
I've listened to him talk. I've many, many, many times,
and I've always just this is one of my favorite
guys that listened to I. I kind of feel like

(04:37):
starting this, I feel like the garage band opening for
the Rolling Stones. You know, I'm not gonna embarrass him anymore.
That's enough, you know.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Some of you might might be wondering, well, why what's
the big deal? Why do we have to have these traditions,
these rules, these this stuff, and and if you know
anything about the history of alcoholics anonymous, and it took
me a while to even care about it, but I started,
as I fell in love with AA started, I started
to want to know about how we got here, what happened.

(05:13):
And I most of you know the story of Bill
and Bob meeting in the Cyber and Gatehouse in nineteen
thirty five May, and how Bill had been sober almost
six months with no success, and he'd had a talk
with a guy named doctor William Silkworth before this trip

(05:35):
to Acron. He got a little new idea and he
started a new approach, and he started sharing with this
washed up proctologist, a guy that I have always identified with.
Matter of fact, that they when Bill wanted to talk
to him, he couldn't talk to him at the moment.
He was taking a nap under the dining room table.
You gotta love a guy like that, you know, I mean,

(05:58):
you really do. I get that. I'm a nap I'm
under I'm under the booth, taking a nap kind of guy.
You know, I'm just that kind of guy. I understand that.
And they finally they met the next day, and Bob's
son and I became very good friends. He's been in
my house. He died a while back, and he was

(06:21):
a great man. I used to love to sit in
rooms and listen to him tell the story of Anne,
Bob's wife dragging him in the car and the kids Smith.
He's sitting in the back and taking him to see
this yankee, and he don't want to go. He don't
want some yankee telling him about his drinking. He's had

(06:42):
people preaching to him about his drinking for years. And
he walked in there, an amazing thing happened. He said
to him, he said, fifteen minutes, I want to get out.
You get to get me out of here. Fifteen minutes.
That's it. I'll take it for I'll take it for
fifteen minutes. When he came out four hours later, almost
And because he went in there and Bill Wilson did

(07:04):
not talk to doctor Bob about doctor Bob's drinking, Bill
Wilson talked to doctor Bob about Doctor Bob's drinking. And
Bill just sat there and his defenses were down because
he wasn't being talked at. And for the first time
he connected with another human being. And he was enthralled
with the whole prospect. And Bill had had this these

(07:26):
principles that were kind of he was trying to flesh
out that would eventually be the twelve Steps. And they were,
there was about six of them at that time, and
and and he loved them all. He loved the God,
he loved the God deal, he loved the confession of shortcomings,
he loved helping others. He wasn't big on this Amen's
thing though, I mean, it just seemed a little extreme.

(07:49):
He kind of dug his heels in. You know, he's
you know, you gotta understand, Bill, I have almost ruined
my reputation in this town already. I'm not gonna and
he wouldn't do that. He dug his heels in. Consequently,
he drank again, and he came back from a medical
convention so drunk that the conductor didn't know what to

(08:10):
do with him. They laid him on the platform at
the Akron station off the train, and his office manager
came down, and they eventually ended up back at the
Ardmore House. Bill was living there, staying there because he
kind of Bill wasn't real flush financial. It was just
convenient that Bob got sober, actually, and he came to

(08:36):
on what most historians believe was the morning of June tenth,
nineteen thirty five, and he came to like, I've come
too off of an extended drunk, you know, with the
shakes and wanting to jump out of my skin, and
just in the anguish and the remorse and just falling apart.
And he said, what day is it? And they said, well,

(08:58):
it's June tenth, and he said, no, oh, it can't
be June tenth, and he had a surgery to perform
on the morning of June tenth. And Doctor Bob's a proctologist.
He he can used use your imagination what kind of
surgery it might have been. He's shaken like this. Imagine
being the patient laying on the gurney watching your doctor
Covey I've liked and Bill gave gave him his last

(09:23):
drink and sent him into the surgery. And he did
gave him his last drink at a sedative because he
didn't know what else to do. I mean, the guy
was coming apart at the seams, and he went into
that surgery and performed that operation. And we don't really
know what happened to the patient. We know he lived,
that's all. And I have a friend who's spent his

(09:45):
whole sobriety twenty some years as trying to be in
a historian and went back to the Akron Hospital actually
looked through the records trying to find more information about
this guy, wanting to know what would happened to him.
And I'd like to know. I mean, we know he lived,
but I mean, did he whistle when he walked or
what I mean? We don't know. I don't know what happened,
how that went. We just know the guy lived. And

(10:05):
doctor Bob came out of that surgery late that morning
and disappeared, and Bill and Ann thought he'd probably went
and got drunk. He came home just about midnight and
he was something was different about him, and he went
out and he searched out every person he could find
that he was afraid to approach, and approached him and
started to mend that separation between him and those people

(10:29):
and get free. And consequently, doctor Bob Smith never drank
again the rest of his natural life. And the low
estimates is that he personally helped five thousand people. And
how many people did they help, That helped people, that
helped people, that helped people. And I think most of
us are sitting in this room indirectly as a result

(10:53):
of this man. The second member of Alcoholics Anonymous, finally
getting sober, and they tried to already doing twelve step work,
and eventually Bill went back to Akron and the fellowship
didn't grow very much. As a matter of fact, when
nineteen thirty nine, which is four years later, when the
Big Book was published, which was a turning point in

(11:14):
AA one of them. You know, they say in the
forward first hundred members, it wasn't really a hundred. It
was low estimate, seventy some to eighty three. It was
kind of in there. It's historians that really tried to
research that. I know, guys that they give you different figures.
But it wasn't really a hundred. But he said a hundred.
And I know why I said a hundred, because I'm

(11:35):
that kind of guy, you know, I just I would
have said sou was better. I mean, it's not it's
not lying, it's creative. I mean, it's it's just that
I have that kind of disposition myself and A hadn't
grown too much, and they published the Big Book and
that some people came in as a result of that.

(11:57):
I remember hearing a guy when I first got sober
from California, one of the earlier members, talk about how
they got sober out off the Big Book of Alcoholic
Exonymus in California because they had didn't have a connection
with New York and Akron and different parts of the
country where that happened. So the Big Book started, the
fellowship started growing, and then a couple of things happened.
There was a baseball player in Cleveland who was interviewed

(12:22):
and he mentioned that he was sober in AA and
it changed his life, and all of a sudden, the
Cleveland group of alcoholic exonymous was inundated with just they
were swarmed. And then the thing that probably put us
on the map. One of the things. Anyway, there was
a guy named Jack Alexander who was an investigative reporter,

(12:45):
no nonsense kind of guy, a guy that couldn't be
bought off, a guy that no crap. And he somebody
said to him, you know, look at this AA thing,
and he said, yeah, I mean, there's got to be
a scam going on there somewhere. Somebody's getting a toaster
for helping these people or something, right. And he was

(13:08):
one of those kind of go in and dig out
the truth kind of guys. He exposed a minister and
he exposed some corruption in one of the unions, and
he was it's that kind of guy. And he went
in there and he went to us, and he started
looking at us and to his I imagine in his
business delight and amazement that we weren't anything that he
thought he'd find. We were exactly what we said we

(13:30):
were there was nobody here profiting from this. That we
just were people who were dying of alcoholism that knew
that we had to help others for fun, as Chuck
used to say, for fun and for free. And he
wrote this article on the Saturday evening composed of one
of my sponsores gave me an original when I have

(13:51):
it at home, and it's an amazing article. And Alcoholics
Anonymous was flooded with requests for help, flooded. There was
a gas in California. I think Larry probably knew her
that I'd met on several occasions named Sibyl. She's one
of the first women and a it ever gets sober,
least the first one west of the Rockies, and she

(14:12):
came to Alcoholics. The Alcoholics Anonymous at that time was
so flooded with requests for help that when she got
to AA, they she's not even done shaken yet, and
they gave her a stack of letters from women and
told her to go out and start helping her. And
Sybil never drank again the rest of her life, and

(14:33):
A started growing, and with it growing came a lot
of growing pains and a lot of insanity, and people
were there was huge bickering going on, and one little
group's having judgments against another group, and you know, and
then that we're doing it. The Akrony. The Akronites had
it right, and the New York people were crazy, and

(14:55):
the New York people didn't thought the akron people were
backward in their days, gonna never get anywhere unless they change,
and a lot of bickering, a lot of stuff going on,
a lot of there was a They had no no traditions,
they had no principles that there was just they were
everybody shooting from the hip. All they have is the steps.

(15:17):
There was a I have a letter and then bring
it with me at home from written in nineteen forty
one by the It's from the Executive Committee of Alcoholics
Anonymous in the Los Angeles area, written to a woman
by the name of Irma Lavoni. And I one of
the guys that signed it was a guy I knew,
al Marino. He died years ago. He was one time

(15:39):
one of the I don't know, one of the older
members of AA still alive in the California area. And
in this letter they revoked Irma's membership and Alcoholics Anonymous
see and they and I talked to Sybils daughter, who

(16:00):
and Sybil had told, used to tell the story, and
they revoked it because Irma liked liked men. She like
all kinds of men, single men, married men, She don't care.
She's like men. She's very flirtatious. And they thought, this
is a travesty, it's gonna ruin alcoholics, and they revoked
her membership. I mean, some of the most dynamic women

(16:22):
in AA that I know were not didn't they wouldn't
have been allowed to be here. I mean, I tell you,
if my daughter ever ended up, my daughter ever ended
up an alcoholic. She is so far, so good, but

(16:43):
if she ever did need help, I'd probably send her
to one of those fallen women. I just.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
You know.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
That's so, you know, we are not saints. And weird,
weird stuff started happening like that, and there's all this
craziness going on. And a guy from the Carolinas wrote
a letter to the submitted to the Grapevine, and Bill
saw it, and he talked about the Washingtonians. And Bill
had never heard of the Washingtonians, and he did some

(17:10):
research and he discovered that there was a group that
started in Maryland in the mid eighteen hundreds and without
public transportation or telephones or any of the modern stuff
that we have today as far as communication, just one
alcoholic trying to help another. In just a half dozen years,

(17:32):
they grew to tremendous proportions. It's really unclear how big
they actually got. Some people say that the low estimates
are one hundred thousand. You know, in six years AA
was barely over one hundred high estimates, or maybe close
to a half million or quarter mo. Nobody knows for sure,
but they were huge. They grew so fast, and they

(17:54):
started all this bickering and confusion, and they started back
in other stuff, and they one of the worst things
they did is they started getting involved in the temperance movement,
and within not even they didn't even make the decade,
and they fell apart. And here alcoholics anonymous in the

(18:15):
mid nineteen forties is a decade old, and we're falling apart,
and we're dying, and Bill scared and everybody, and there's
people getting drunk and craziness happening. And Bill thought, my god,
this is to say we're doing the same thing. And

(18:35):
in the history of the human race, there's never been
anything like us. We have existed the longest to this date,
and more people, more alcoholics have been able to find
lives as a result of alcoholic exyms than anything in
human history. And Bill, we're losing it, We're falling apart.

(19:00):
And he wrote a set of what he called originally
the Tenants to Ensure A's Future, which later became known
as the long Form. They weren't known at the long
Form at that time because there was no short form.
I mean, they were just the that was, it was
the deal. And for the next couple of years Bill

(19:21):
tried to get the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous to adopt him,
or at least to read them in the meeting. He
couldn't even get people to read them. And I understand why.
I mean they read them at my home group once
a month. And the problem with the what's now called
the long Form is that they're long. I mean, they're

(19:42):
very they read them at the beginning. To me, they're long,
and in my home group, by well, every the first
Thursday when they read it, you watch the newcomers roll
their eyes, you know, And I understand the early memories.
We don't want that, we don't want to read that.
That's taken away too much time that should be used
with stuff to do with me. Right, I understand that,

(20:05):
I'm perfectly I'm going. I get it. I get it,
I get it, I get it. But we're in trouble
and there's pressure on and Bill. Eventually some guys started
throwing out some ideas on how to abbreviate them. One
of the guys was a guy from the early Grapevine,
and the pressure was on, and Bill agreed to be

(20:28):
part of this abbreviated version and to put out the
hoping to get people to at least read them. And
they've started publishing them in a series of Grapevine articles,
and in nineteen fifty they created a conference which has
been to become our international and they created it to
cement or try to put the traditions in place and

(20:48):
the fellowship, and as a result, we are still here.
As a result. In nineteen seventy eight, when I was
standing on a bridge trying to get up enough courage
take my own life, there was somewhere for me to go.
The result was that when the student was ready, there
was still teachers breathing. And my life got saved as

(21:13):
a result of it, and I came into alcohol exonymous,
and after a while here I started to get into
these traditions. The first time I really looked at him
was I was at a meeting and I did something
and some old timer jumped on me. I's gets the traditions.
I don't even know what the traditions are, but I'm
going to find out because I want to be the

(21:34):
If somebody to be jumping on somebody, it's going to
be me. I'm the kind of guy that the cat
scratches me. A week later, I kicked the dog, right,
I'm that kind of guy. Right, So I want to
be the guy that says he and I don't want
to get no more flax, so I want to start learning.
I started reading about the traditions, and I got involved
in general service and started going to a lot of

(21:55):
panels and workshops on the traditions, and I started to
really see the amazing spiritual principles that are embodied in this.
You know, I think that there's a cause and effect
in the universe. I think that when the spirit of
an individual gets sick, everything in his life follows around,

(22:17):
follows along, and when the spirit of a group or
a business or a family or a committee or anything.
The spirit gets sick, everything else involved with them follows along.
And I don't think. I think the steps of alcoholics
anonymous are designed to save my life and keep me

(22:37):
from killing me, and this traditions are designed from keep
us from killing each other. It allows us to function
and get along here, and I've tried to apply these.
I ran, I sold a business, successful business, did very well,
sold it retired very comfortably young couple of years ago,

(22:59):
and that business was run by the twelve traditions. You
could talk to the members of my staff who are
still working there today, that some of them are working
for the new owners, and they don't know what they're called,
but they know the principles because we used to talk
about them in the staff meetings, a lot about common welfare,
about our purpose, about putting principles of the business ahead

(23:26):
of our own personalities and what we want. And I
believe that that business did well because of those traditions.
I started realizing that the traditions are set up a
lot like the steps and the twelve steps. The problem

(23:47):
is defined in step one, lack of power and an
absolute inability to manage anything worthwhile. In here, drunk or sober,
I can't fix me. And as you go through the
process of the twelve steps, by the time you get
to step twelve, the solution has occurred. And what is

(24:08):
that solution? You've had an awakening, something's happened to you.
And the same thing is true with the twelve traditions.
In the first tradition, the problem is defined in a
lack of unity. It said in the short form says
our common welfare should come first. Personal recovery depends upon

(24:29):
AA unity. I was in a halfway house in nineteen
seventy late six seventy six, I think early seventy seven,
and I had a run and mate in there, a
guy that we used to go. We hated AA, and
we'd go to AA meetings and we'd sit in the
back and judge everybody. And you got to have a
run in partner if you want to judge properly. You

(24:49):
need that to get that torque on the personalities. You know,
we'd sit back there and talk to you. I, I
guess catch full of crap, you know, just all that
stuff really a bad influence of disruptive force in AA.
Both on and we were both on marijuana maintenance. We
knew we can't drink. I mean, we are that kills us, Yeah, yeah,
but we gotta do something. And I drank again, and

(25:09):
I drank again and got thrown out of that place.
And I'm living on the streets like an animal, and
I'm dirty, and I got hair down to hear and
it's matted, and I got a long, pre zeazy top
beard and it's you know, with twigs and stuff and
all a natural. And I would go back up to
the place I was thrown out of to panhandle Nichols

(25:31):
and dimes for another bottle of Richard's Wild Irish Rows.
And the guy that was my running partner came out
one morning and saw me, and he gave me a
couple dollars and a look that cut me, a look
that we all see from time to time, that look
that's a combination of pity and contempt, you know that look.

(25:51):
I hate that look. If I go through the rest
of my life and never see that look on another
human being's face, I'll tell you I'm over in AA
And unbeknownst to me, he it this snapped, this guy
seeing me, because what I guess he saw is he
saw his near future coming at him, and I was pathetic,

(26:16):
and he went and got a sponsor. Not just a sponsor,
he got one of those fanatical step talking, grateful for everything,
God loving guys. Oh you know the ones that just
make you crazy if you're sitting there belligerently in a
state of untreated alcoholism. Well, oh you just hate those.
And he got one of those guys. He changed his

(26:37):
sobriety date started getting involved in alcoholic songs. Now I
don't know any of this, but later on that year,
I'm in an institution and I'm sitting in the day
room waiting for the do gooders from AA to come
in like they always show up, and he's lead here.
He's coming, he's leading the pack, and he's got two
guys he sponsors with him, and something's different about him,

(27:00):
and he's real involved in alcoholics anonymous. And I got
it that he was recovering and is recovering because he
became a part of you, and I didn't. It was
later on, in my last drunk I came off of
it and somehow, I don't know where this came from,
somewhere inside of me, I knew I had to be

(27:20):
a part of you. I got it that my personal
recovery depended upon me being unified with you and a
part of you that I could not stand alone. And
the bad part about that for me is that there's
only one thing I really don't like about AA is

(27:41):
it's got people in it. And I don't like people.
I'm awkward around people. I feel uncomfortable around people. I
try to fit and end up saying stupid things. I
just I'm you know, I'm not a good I'm not
good with people. I'm good by myself. I think I'm crazy,
but I'm all right. But I had to become a

(28:02):
part of you, and I had to start joining you
and doing everything that you did. And oddly enough, as
I did everything you did, I started to feel like
you felt. I started to be connected, like you were
connected as a result of taking the actions. And I
think that I think at the core of my malady

(28:25):
is a lack of unity. I drank alcohol because I
didn't fit. I never was connected. I had an inability
sober to integrate myself in groups of people, and I
felt when I had sober up, I'd feel like I
was dying a loneliness until I would return to drinking again,

(28:46):
hoping to be able to come out and play and
feel like I'm a part of and laugh and have
a good time and be all of that stuff. I
drank to fit. I drank because of a lack of unity.
And Carl Young, who was mentioned in AA literature several times,
he very influential, actually indirectly in some of A's pieces

(29:11):
of the puzzle coming together to allow us to be here.
Carl Young in a letter to Bill Wilson that he
wrote in the early sixties, right before Carl passed, he
said to Bill Wilson that he always believed something that
he had been afraid to tell Roland Hazard, but he
believed that based on his experience in dealing with alcoholics,
that he always believed that the alcoholics thirst for alcohol

(29:35):
was a low level thirst of his being for unity,
for connectedness to be a part of or is expressed
in he says, or is expressed in religious medieval terms
of union with God. I drank for connectedness. There were

(29:56):
times in my early drinking man where I'd get half
lit up and I was so a part of man,
I'm that guy. There were times not only was I
connected to a group of people, I seemed to there
were moments where I'd get connected to the universe. Just
remember those those evenings where you're just about three o'clock
in the morning and you can finally see the big

(30:18):
picture and you think to yourself, Oh, this is what
Buddha saw. You know, Remember that you just feel plugged in,
man plugged in. I'd say that three o'clock more, I'd say,
stuff blow my mind, just a huh. I drank for unity,
and that's really a lack of unity is the problem.

(30:40):
It's a problem in my personal life, and it's a
problem in alcoholic exonymous. It was a problem in my business.
It's a problem in relationships. If there's a problem in
a relationship, it's usually this. And so that we start
through the process that's designed to fix this, to treat

(31:03):
this lack of unit, this disconnectedness that we can have
as a fellowship or an individual, or as a family,
or as a business or wherever you apply these spiritual principles.
Tradition number two is an amazing tradition. AA is so
unlike anything else in the world, and it says, for

(31:25):
our group purpose, there is but one ultimate authority, a
loving God, as he may express himself and our group conscience.
Our leaders are but trusted servants. They do not govern
Alcoholics Anonymous The only place I know where you come
in a big shot, and you grow up to being
a servant. Right everywhere else it's the other way every

(31:49):
place else. You come in, you scrub the floors, and
eventually you're the boss, and newcomers come in. They're the boss.
They know what's wrong with everybody. They know it's how
to and they if you're lucky and you apply stuff,
you eventually will become a servant. They'll eventually fall in
love with this thing. And you just want to help.
How can I help? You need someone to do the chairs,

(32:09):
You need somebody to go on a twelve step call?
What do you need? And you know, we have guys
in my group. They come up to me because I'm visible,
and which bothers me sometimes. But there's new guys that
come into a and they're looking for who's in charge,
who's in charge? And if you give them the right answer,

(32:31):
they just look at you. Well, God, yeah, come on,
who's really in charge? Because you want to get the
new You want to find that guy and kind of
get up next to him. See how you can get
his spot, you know, I mean, you.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
Just need it right.

Speaker 1 (32:44):
Larry and I were talking about this in the restaurant
last night, about this vying for control in AA. It's
a very disrupting, disunifying deal. Power struggles and alcoholics anonymous
our ultimate authority. There's a loving God, as he may
express himself in our group conscience, in the group and

(33:07):
in form group conscience. I believe is infallible. It's not
always what you might, not always be your way, but
it's the way of something or some force that is
greater than us. And isn't that isn't the essence of
surrendering to AA, giving up your way for a greater

(33:31):
purpose and a greater ethic. I had a guy that
I sponsor. He sober twenty one years and when he
was about eighteen years sober, he about six seventeen years old.
He came to me and he was just frazzled. He
had one of those days where nothing's going right and
he just wants to you know, all this kind of days,
we're going to explode. He's just uptight. And we started talking.

(33:53):
He said, Man, I just hate it when I get
like this. I said, yeah, I know, I said, I
hate that feeling that you get when you're not getting
your way. He said, yeah, man, I know, I know.
I said, well, I think you're sober long enough to
hear this. I can tell you how you will never
feel that again, How you will never feel that that

(34:16):
anxious conflict of not getting your way again. And he
lit up. He said really, I said, yeah, he said
what what what I said? Just don't have a way.
And he looked at me like, oh, that's true.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
Don't have a way.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
Subjugate your way to the way of a power greater
than yourself. Maybe it starts with your sponsor, who's who
is like God's lieutenant, until you actually connect with something.
Tradition number three, you know this thing about our leaders
have a trusted servants. I don't know why I remember

(34:59):
weird things from my childhood in school, but one of
the pieces of English literature I remembered is after I
got an AA and I hadn't gone back and read
it or anything, was Milton's Paradise Lost. And there's a
part in there where Lucifer has literally cast himself out
of heaven by his own will, and as he's leaving,

(35:22):
he's shaking his fist at God, the angels of Heaven.
He says a classic line. He says, I'd rather reiin
in hell than serve in heaven. And I don't know
about you, but when I'm raining, it feels like hell,
and when I'm serving, it feels like heaven. And the
whole difference between your experience in Alcoholics Anonymous, or I

(35:45):
think anywhere is there you a guy that's trying to
rain or a guy that's trying to serve. And man,
if you try one week, you try to be a rainer,
the end of that week, you'll know this ain't no good.
And if you try to be a servant at the
end of that week, you'll go, yeah, this is the deal.

(36:05):
Tradition number three. And I want to talk a little
bit about this in the long form, I don't know
this is I don't want to get into an opinion,
but I'll come up with an observation. I think that
something changed in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous when we
walked away from the long form and we adopted the

(36:27):
short form. The membership requirement became different, and consequently the
flavor of the fellowship altered minute a little bit. In
the original membership requirement is that it's outlined in the
original tradition, the third tradition. It says, our membership ought

(36:49):
to include all who suffer from alcoholism. Hence we may
refuse none to wish to recover from alcoholism. And it
goes on talking about membership and conformity, and that never
has to do with some conformity or money. And it's true.
But I'll tell you in the short form, the membership

(37:11):
requirement's different. It says the only requirement for membership is the
desire to stop drinking. Let me tell you something.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
In my.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
Observation, there's a big difference between having a desire not
to drink and suffering from alcoholism, because the suffering from
alcoholism begins where the bag in the bottle ends. It's
the restless, the irritable, the discontent, the low level depressions,
the feelings of misery and depression, the feelings of uselessness,

(37:42):
all the stuff it talks about in the Big Book
on page fifty two and in the Doctor's Opinion, and
throughout that whole book. It's a description of how guys
like me, what is alcoholism? Once I stop drinking? What
do I got to apply these steps? To I'm an
everyday member of Alcoholics Anonymous because I suffer from alcoholism,

(38:05):
and in direct proportion to my involvement in this spiritual
way of life. I don't even know it. Most time,
I'm very comfortable in my life. But if I start
diminishing my involvement in AA, I start to suffer from
alcoholism again. And it's it's insidious for me because when

(38:27):
I start to suffer from alcoholism, I don't get it
that there's anything wrong with me. What it looks like
is there's just a lot of really out aligned people
around me, and they're making and they're irritating me, and
I'm restless, so I need to straighten them out, which
makes abstinence a lonely, lonely business. I'm an everyday member

(38:55):
of Alcoholics Anonymous because I suffer from alcoholism. I didn't
come here with desire not to drink. Really, I had
a desire to stop hurting. I desire to stop suffering,
a desire to stop ended up in jail, desire to
stop having wine sores, a desire to stop feeling like
I'm dying, desire to stop being homeless, a desire to

(39:18):
get away from this remorse and the shame, but to
stop drinking. What if God would have come to me
when I was new and given me one one wish.
I think I would have said, let me drink like
I drank when I was eighteen years old again, because

(39:39):
then alcoholism was a treatment, or alcohol was a treatment
for my alcoholism. I came to AA and I'm an
everyday member because I suffered from alcoholism. And what happened
I think in the fellowship as a result of the
chan the altering of the membership requirement, is that we've
opened the doors to anybody who might have have a

(40:00):
problem with drinking or even think that drinking is probably
not a good idea. And everybody on the Atkins diet
has a desire not to drink. They don't want the
carbohydrates I mean. And and what happened is what happened
in this is my view. What seemed to happen in
AA is that we now have a percentage of our

(40:22):
fellowship that their alcoholism ended where the bottle ended. They
don't suffer from alcoholism, they don't really need the steps.
And I know guys sober a lot of years, guys
that are friends of mine that I like a lot,
But they're a different type of alcoholics and of alcoholism.
They don't they don't need a sponsor, they don't need

(40:42):
to help others. They I mean, it's they think it's nice.
They don't they need they don't need to write an inventory.
A lot of them never work the steps and they're fine.
They're great social members of alcoholics anonymous. Their alcoholism ended
where the bottle ended. They all they need to do

(41:02):
is just don't drink that Nancy Reagan just say no
thing kind of works for them. And they come to
AA because now that they're not going to the bars
and the parties, that they have a little social void
in their life. So they come to AA because they
want to be with like minded people on this drinking issue.
And to them, alcoholic's honest, like the sober Elks or something.

(41:25):
You know, it's it's a place where, oh it's great.
But they don't what their experience in abstinence is not
my experience. I relapsed for seven and a half years
because of untreated alcoholism, because I suffer from alcoholism when
I stop drinking, and the suffering from alcoholism is subtle

(41:47):
and it grinds away at me until one day in
the face of overwhelming experience that the worst thing I
could ever do would be to take a pill or
drink or smoke something. I do it again because I
need relief, because I suffer from alcoholism. So I come
to alcoholics anonymous and I and the only the only

(42:07):
thing about I tell the guys, I sit with the
guys I sponsor. Let's try to find out are you.
Are you the guy that this book was written for.
And if you are, then your life's on the line here.
You need to do this stuff. It's not I mean,
if you don't, you're you're not gonna stay sober. That
is our experience. Matter of fact, there's five six places

(42:28):
in this book it tells you you'll drink again if
you don't do this, or if you don't do that.
I've seen and I've spent the last almost twenty eight
years the end of this month, and in hospitals and
institutions it's my heart. And in Las Vegas, I'll tell
you there's not a week that goes by I don't
see somebody that drank again after many years of sobriety,

(42:50):
all from untreated alcoholism. Tradition Number four. Each group should
be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or A
as a whole. This is really where our freedom comes from.
Every group has the ability to do anything as long
as it doesn't reflect badly on alcoholics anonymous. Now, when

(43:11):
it starts in the long form, it talks about and
not in the fourth tradition so much, but it's in
the in the sixth it talks about our affiliation, that
we can do anything we want as long as we
don't apply imply affiliation or endorsement of anything else. That's

(43:35):
why an alcohol exonymists can do have any format, any group,
any format they want. But when they start saying that
this is a AA Bible study that implies affiliation or
endorsement of something, and I think that we have to
hold the line or else, what will happen is twenty

(43:57):
years from now, somebody will come into AA and they're
not going to know what AA is. It'll be so
if it you know, and there is a solution. It
talks about the the unifying force in AA is not
so much our our suffering is drinking, but that we
have a common solution that we can unanimously agree on
and enjoin in harmony. Ammonious and brotherly action that we

(44:21):
should keep alcoholics anonymous. Alcoholics anonymous, And I know there's
a sediment in the world that in AA a lot
that well, it's all good. Well I think I think
the Washingtonians thought it was all good. And the next
time you want to go to a Washingtonian meeting, you'll
have a hard time finding one. They don't exist anymore.

(44:42):
And I I don't want my daughter's children if they
end up with that thing that I got to have
nowhere to come. I really don't. Tradition number five, each
group has but one primary purpose, to carry its message
to the alcoholic who still suffers. Not only does every

(45:07):
group have a primary purpose, I think is an alcoholics
anonymous member. I do too. And I've watched groups and
alcoholics anonymous that become inundated with the kind of good
old boy thing, and there's a lot of sociability, a
lot of camaraderie, but they lose sight of why they're there,
and those groups the spirit of them changes. I think

(45:34):
a group of alcoholics anonymous is this idea that came
in here out about out of treatment centers that we're
supposed to use AA for self fulfillment or gratification, as
if a meeting should be my personal vehicle to ventilate
my feelings, to take the whole group hostage on my

(45:54):
personal problem is nonsense. It's the most self set, injured,
selfish approach to a guy like me could ever have.
Alcoholics Anonymous exists to be a vehicle to help the
new people. And I think every group that gets sick
gets sick because they lose sight of their primary purpose.

(46:14):
And I got sick when I was about eighteen nineteen
years sober. I started getting sick because I lost my
primary purpose here in this frightening thing is I didn't
even know I was losing it. And what happened to
me happens to a lot of us. I started reaping
the rewards of a spiritual way of life. I started

(46:37):
getting financially successful. I started owning a lot of property,
getting prestige, getting power, or an illusion of it. I
came back from a trip to Maui, where I stayed
for a four star hotel on the beach and had
an amazing time. I'd rented a Harley for the time

(46:59):
I was there. I ate at some of the greatest restaurants.
I came home. I sat in my house. I have
a big house up on a hill looks out over
the city of Las Vegas. I had every toy I
could buy. I had a brand new Jaguar of this
model that just came out as the first one in
Las Vegas to ever get one. Had a brand new
Corvette of seven forty ILBMW two custom Harley Davison's enough

(47:24):
money in my bank account that I'd never have to
work again the rest of my life. And I was dying,
and I don't know what's wrong with me, and I'm depressed,
and I'm I'm just gott my No matter what, everything
I look at in my life, it ain't no good. Now.
I don't know why it ain't no good. It's just
the shine has worn off of everything. And there's this

(47:45):
big vacancy inside of me that keeps drawing my attention inward.
So I'm sinking into a depression and I don't know
what's wrong with me. And I went a guy in
alcoholics Anonymous said something to me. It snapped me, he said.
He said, you know you still go to meetings. You're
on your mouth a lot in AA, he said, But

(48:07):
I don't think your primary purpose is helping drunks anymore,
he says, I think your primary purpose is you, And
I thought, oh my god when he said that. You know,
they say the truth will set you free, but I'll
tell you it'll ruin your day first time. And he
was right on the money. I don't know how that happened.

(48:29):
How does a guy who spent his first probably fifteen
years of sobriety just on fire. All I cared about
was helping other people. And the business stuff was great,
but I'm just doing a good job to be a
good example. But my real purpose is to be of service.
And then all of a sudden, incrementally, now my focus
is me, my finances, my toys, my relationships, Me me, me,

(48:51):
me me. And I understood exactly what the problem was,
and I threw up my hands and I with the
In a week, I got two three new guys in
my car. I've turned up the volume on my commitment
alcoholics anonymous, and I'm back right in the middle again.
And I never left. I never stopped going to meetings.
But I'll tell you what this is. It is pathetic too,

(49:14):
and I hate to even admit this, but I became
the kind of sponsor that if you came up to
me after a meeting and you had a problem, and
you're sharing with me your problem, I want to talk
about it. I'm just standing there going yeah, yeah, like
as if you hurry up and get this over with
so I can get back to the important thing me Right,
I became I don't even know I'm that guy, but

(49:36):
I'm that guy. I had reinundated myself with self, and
all of a sudden, there was a whole bunch of
me between me and you, and a whole bunch of
me between me and God. And I was no wonder.
I'm dying. I'm in the shadow. I've blocked the light.

(49:57):
I've put too much of me between me and God.
I put too much of me between me and you.
And I hope, I hope to God, I never get
back into that to that depth again. I'm always gonna
have a problem with this self centeredness, but I hope.

Speaker 2 (50:19):
There we go. Well, good morning, everybody. My name is
Sandy Beach. I'm an alcoholic, and I've never seen two
thousand people at a tradition's workshop.

Speaker 1 (50:28):
This is.

Speaker 2 (50:31):
That's really amazing. Bob did a wonderful job of setting
up the whole picture of our traditions, and like Bob,
I didn't have any interest in them when I was new.

Speaker 1 (50:48):
But as the.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
Years went by, I found I became very interested in
AA history because I got curious, how did this all happen?
That I got saved? My interest in AA history changed
my mind about history. I was one of these guys
growing up and that'd go, hey, do you want to
take a history course? And I'd go, why should I
do that? It already happened, Well, why would you be

(51:14):
interested in that? I saw no value in history, and
now all I read about is history. It is so
essential to put the third dimension in everything, to really
see what it's all about. I mean, it's the most
fascinating thing in the world, and probably the first forty

(51:37):
five years of my life, I thought it was a joke.
So you can see how our own perspective gets changed
in a process of spiritual growth. And it's that change
in perspective that makes everything wonderful. As a matter of fact,

(51:57):
that's why we drank it to change the world. It
was to change how we saw it. And you walk
into a bar and live in the damnest world. They're
all awful. About three drinks later, you go, now that's
more like it that Now things are looking good. It
all was a personal transformation inside, and I'm sure these

(52:20):
traditions caused the transformation in alcoholics, anonymous, and we ended
up with a very amazing world wide bend through all
kinds of problems and came out stronger than ever. And

(52:42):
that didn't happen by accident, because we people getting arguments
all the time with one another. But there's something magic
about their traditions, even if they don't seem magic when
you read them. And there's something magic about the steps,
even though when you read them you don't see any
magic there. What is that? I remember looking at those

(53:04):
steps and my sponsors said everything you needed right in here.
I'm going, Oh, I've read them for a week. Where
is the money step? I don't see it. So I
couldn't see the value of the steps until I did them.
And we really don't see the traditions until you've been

(53:25):
around a while, and then you see them in action,
and then they become quite miraculous. So it's hard to
express them in a lecture. If you follow what I
mean to capture the power that they have and the
importance they have in our own lives. And I think
it's the longer we're sober, the more we realize how

(53:48):
precious sobriety is and how valuable because of all the
changes that it made in our lives, and we go, Wow,
this is really a bigger deal than I thought. I
thought I was just going to get sober. I didn't
know I was going to be transformed, that I was
going to actually see the whole purpose of life. I
didn't know that was going to happen. I thought I

(54:08):
was just going to stop drinking. And you just go,
oh my god, this is a much bigger deal than
I thought. And so the traditions are they really are.
They're a bigger deal than they might appear as we
try to present them. And actually, I'm just going to
start with seven and wrap it up. Every AA group

(54:35):
ought to be fully self supporting, declining outside contributions. Now
this was written by people who were broke. Okay, is
that a miracle? Hey, we got some money. Somebody wants
to leave us ten thousand dollars in their will. What

(54:56):
do you think we ought to do? What do you
think they ought to do? We're broke, We can barely
get the word out.

Speaker 3 (55:06):
Well, let's see, every AA group ought to be fully
self supporting, declining outside contributions.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
Why shouldn't we take the money. Money has a lot
of strings attached to it. Let's say, for example, that
you are looking for a place to hold an AA meeting.
Your group is just bursting at the seam, so you

(55:43):
need another location. You can't fit in the room anymore,
So you get a little committee and somebody says, you know,
I think our church would love us. Let me go
talk to the minister. Talk to the minister. And the
minister said, oh my god, he himself had been praying
for an A group to come to his church because
there's a lot of alcoholics in his congregation, And out

(56:07):
of the joy of this group requesting it, he goes,
you can have it. What night would you like it.
We will make our doors available for you free of charge.
We will even supply the coffee. That's how much we
love the idea of you coming. That's pretty enticing, isn't it. Wow,

(56:30):
I don't even have to pay rent. They love us
here wonderful And we might actually start out that way.
And then you've been there about three years and every anniversary.
The minister talks that you're to say how happy you
are and our group. And then he comes to the
group one night and he said, listen, our membership's falling

(56:54):
off in the church itself. Mind if I make a
little pitch your meeting to maybe see if some of
you AA members would like to join the church itself.
After all, you are here every week. Now, you haven't
paid any rent and you're getting free coffee. It's harder

(57:15):
to say no, isn't it a lot harder to say no?
But if you've paid no moments when we first started,
we go no, sir, We're going to come up with
a rent amount. Whatever we come up with. It isn't
the amount, it's the fact that we are insisting on
it fifty dollars a month, whatever it is, and then

(57:39):
we pay it every month. We have a check written
out to the church and we decline the coffee offer.
We might not even use their coffee pots. We go
buy our own coffee pots. It is to symbolize this,
we are responsible for ourselves. We want to take responsibility.

(58:00):
And it went all the way up to AA and
people in their wills leaving large amounts of money and
the idea of turning it down that it will cause
us to lose our perspective, it'll change the way we

(58:20):
see things. You want to see a problem. Have an
AA group collect a lot more money than it needs
and not send it anywhere, and all of a sudden
the group has let's pick the number two thousand dollars
in it, and then the word gets out, you know

(58:43):
we got two thousand dollars in our group. Well, let's
sit in figure out what we ought to do with that.
Wouldn't that be tempting? What do you think we ought
to do with that? Well, you know it's too hot
in here. We ought to get an air condition That's
what we ought to do with it. No, I think
we ought to send it up to New York. Up

(59:05):
to New York. That isn't going to help me.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
I'm hot.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
Why would we send it up to New York? Well,
I think we ought to get decaf coffee. We haven't
had any. You know, maybe we'd hire somebody to make
the coffee and then I won't have to come in
here of im. Screw you, you ain't getting air conditioned.
I'm not coming back. All over what money? All over money?

(59:32):
I could see us here right now, we're taking sides.
What do you mean, don't send it to New York.
Somebody over here going, I hate being hot. New York's
got plenty of money. They're getting the book revenue.

Speaker 1 (59:43):
Now, screw them.

Speaker 2 (59:46):
Do you see what happens? Do you see? It's so
these were written by people with character defects who didn't
want the character defects to win. That's what this is
all about, to prevent us from ruining our own heaven
that Bob was talking about by being in charge. By

(01:00:09):
being in charge, there's a great deal of humility in
these traditions. There's a great lack of ego all the
way throughout them, starting with the one that Bob talked about,
with unity, that AA is more important than me. It

(01:00:29):
starts right there, and as a matter of fact, everything
else is really designed to preserve what he was talking about,
the unity, And certainly this one is fully self supporting,
declining outside contributions. That's what gives the group its autonomy,
which is a very important thing within alcoholics anonymous where

(01:00:53):
nobody can come to a group and say, wait a minute,
you can't have twelve speakers during an me Well, that's
the name of our group, the twelve speaker group. What
do you mean you can't have twelve speakers? They all
talk five minutes and then we go home. Nobody can
come some AA policemen and go you can't have a

(01:01:15):
twelve speaker group. They just go, well, that's a stupid idea.
I won't be going there. But they are going to
do it the way they want. And that's where the
autonomy comes from. Is we're managing our own affairs. Okay.
Tradition eight, Alcoholics Anonymous should forever remain non professional, but

(01:01:36):
our service centers may employ special workers. Now, as Bob
was talking about in tradition six, we're not going to
endorse anything outside of AA. The early plans for Alcoholics Anonymous,
when you study the history, Bill's mostly Bill. You know,

(01:01:59):
Bill was the idea man, and Bob was to put
the blanket over the idea man before he before he
runs off and sells AA to Hollywood. You know, they
I got some ideas because he was a Wall Street
guy and a promoter, and so was Hank Parkers his partner,

(01:02:23):
and to promote, promote, promote, I didn't know anything about
program of attraction. It was promote and his original plan,
I mean when he called those first twenty guys together
and they said, you know, we've got something here. We
should start spreading this. His plan was very simple. We

(01:02:44):
need paid missionaries, and we need a chain of drunk
tanks or hospitals AA paid missionaries and AA chain of hospitals,
and we need a book. Those were the three things
that were necessary in Bill's mind to get this thing

(01:03:06):
off the road. And so you could see right off
from the bat it was going to be professional. We're
going to paid missionary. And of course nobody would give
him money. It was it was God that was blocking
Bill's plan. It wasn't Bill changed in his mind. He'd
go there, I got this great plan. You know, hey,
we're going to sober up the world. How about donate

(01:03:28):
some money. No, I think I'll give it to the
boy scouts. No, no, no, And everywhere he went he
was blocked from getting any money. So we had to
spread the word on our own in a non professional way.
And it worked slowly, but it worked. And to establish

(01:03:51):
something that may not have been visible from the start,
that an alcoholic will listen to a non professional more
than they would to a professional so when you go
through treatment and the counselor is giving a lecture, there's

(01:04:15):
a whole different energy than when you get a sponsor.
And the sponsor is there because he loves you and
isn't getting paid, and you go, why would he spend
all this time with me? And we get come all
the way back to the entire point of alcoholic anonymous,

(01:04:36):
which is one drunk talking to another, which is what
Bob said right in the very beginning. Everything else and
alcoholics anonymous is designed to ensure and support one drunk
talking to another. Nothing replaces that. Everything else just helps that.

(01:04:58):
It helps that to happen. It creates phones and inner
groups so that the alcoholic is put in touch with
the person who's going to talk to him, the one
on one. That's what everything else is for. That's why
we have conferences and where we talk about traditions. We're
going to keep this entire system working. But the system

(01:05:20):
gets no one sober. The only sobriety happens one drunk
talking to another. I don't care what we'd like to think.
Oh yeah, we had this very big convention. Two thousand
people came there and fifty seven of them were saved. No.
Fifty seven number might have said, well, maybe I'll talk

(01:05:41):
to somebody, and then it happened, And so you can
see how important the non professional. Now having established that,
there then came the controversy when treatment centers and outside
people were trying to help with the disease of alcoholism,

(01:06:03):
and they saw that some of the people who could
be hired as an employee happened to be members of AA.
What better person to train to be an alcohol counselor
at a treatment center than a alcoholic. It would be a
very wonderful thing. They could go back and do some

(01:06:23):
studying and then they could be do whatever the treatment
center wanted them to do. But they're not doing twelve
step work. And if we want to have an inner
group where the phones demanned all day long and see
who come in by literature, they'll type up the list
of meetings, They'll do all kinds of things, organize a convention, whatever.

(01:06:47):
It's only normal to have paid employees there. Who's going
to work for nothing. I'm not going to sit in
that office all month for no pay. Well, who would
be a good person to do that? Maybe a member
of it. So while that member of AA is in
the office, answering the phones, arranging for one alcoholic to

(01:07:09):
talk to another. They are not doing twelve step work,
so it's perfectly okay for them to be paid. But
in the beginning you used to hear this in the sixties,
especially when the treatment centers really started taking off. Oh
and you know, look at there's Ralph. He's getting paid
for twelve step work. Look at that for Ralph. You know,

(01:07:29):
obviously we'd run out of stuff to gossip about. Nobody
was getting divorced or nobody was having an affair. And
you know, so, hey, Ralph, did you hear it? But
you know, you just run out of gossip. You got
to find some. So there it was, and Bill put
all this to rest in this tradition and carefully in

(01:07:52):
the central Office in New York. It's manned by alcoholics
and non alcoholics, but those are jobs. They are not
twelve step work. So that clearly was established in tradition eight. Okay,
Tradition nine AA as such ought never be organized. But

(01:08:15):
we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to
those they serve. And sometimes when I'm talking about the traditions,
I like to start out by saying AA is so
big now, I mean it's in one hundred and thirty

(01:08:38):
countries and I don't know, two hundred thousand groups and
four million miracles, and I mean, now you don't how
they have a TV show that doesn't have a subplot
with somebody going to an AA meeting, you know what
I mean. It's just everywhere. So everybody really knows about it.
And so if you were a sociology student, you might

(01:09:01):
suddenly go they ought to have a college course on AA.
What is this social phenomenon? What is this? So you're
a student and you come and you go, could someone
please explain this phenomenon of alcoholics? Anonymous? So who's in charge? Please?

Speaker 1 (01:09:18):
God?

Speaker 2 (01:09:19):
Like Bob said, well but but but well, how do
you determine your members? How does that set up? Because
I hear there's a lot of members. Oh, the members
decide if they decide they're a member.

Speaker 1 (01:09:35):
They are.

Speaker 2 (01:09:36):
Oh, you're not involved in the process, you AA No, no, no,
they decide that they're a member. We don't have anything
to say about it. Oh really that sounds backwards. That's
that's just quite amazing. Well, who's in charge? Well we
already covered that. Well, how do we donate to it.

(01:09:59):
How do you get your money? Well, we passed the basket.
That's it. You just passed the basket. How do you
run a budget? How do you know anybody's going to
put anything? We don't haven't got a clue. Well, what
are the treasurers? How do you sit down? And how
do you know you're going to have the rent money? Faith?

(01:10:23):
But that's not Nobody else is organized like that. Are
you sure this can work right? Well? How is it organized?
That's what I'd like to know. There must be an
incredible organization for something that loose to function. Oh yes,
let me read AA as such or never be organized.

(01:10:45):
That's our basic that's our basic guideline for organization. At
this time, the kid is going back to the school.
And I don't think we want to do a course
on alcoholics anonymous because it's not true. It doesn't exist

(01:11:05):
and they don't have all those things. And it's just
a rumor that there's it's in one hundred and twenty
five countries because it couldn't be based on the principles
that they use. No one is in charge of anybody.
There is no one in an ape. Like Bob said,

(01:11:27):
they've voted somebody out. Clarence got voted. I've written a
book on Clarence Snyder. He was such a dynamo and
controversial and everything and breaking his anonymity. And so the
members of his home group held a meeting without him there,
voted him out that you're no longer remember this group,

(01:11:48):
and he said, okay, but I'm still coming. The only
requirement is a desire. I still have the desire, and
I'm going to sit right here as a Well then
they realized that what a joke it was that you
can't do that. There's no one that could enforce this.

(01:12:10):
There's no one in charge, there's no one that can
tell anyone else in AA what to do. A delegate
can't come to a group and go as the delegate
from this area. You can't run a group like this,
well watch this run it that way. What AA can

(01:12:34):
do as they do in the tradition Bob was talking about,
they could send a letter and they could say it's
come to our attention that your policies in this group
are such and such, like a group in Richmond that
was serving beer. Now the other groups were going nuts. Well,
you got to realize back then when you drank. You

(01:12:56):
drank whiskey and you've got beer from that. Your daughter
shot a whiskey and to go, what do you want wine?
Beer or ginger ale or some soft drink chaser. So
it was seen as just a chaser. So these guys
just starting the group, well, we'll just have beer, And

(01:13:17):
of course they wanted to stop it all the other group.
Can you believe.

Speaker 1 (01:13:21):
Beer over there?

Speaker 2 (01:13:24):
Well, no one could stop it. However, it did stop itself.
No one could remember what night of the week the
meeting was, and it fell by the wayside of its
own weight as being a bad idea. Now, the letter
that came would be suggesting it was a bad idea

(01:13:45):
and that it probably isn't going to work. But if
you didn't want to read the letter from General Service
Office advising you to the contrary, the letter would simply say,
it's our experience. In other words, we've heard of a
group in Holland that tried that. We heard of one
South Africa and it didn't work there. We just thought
we'd pass it on to you, so you can see.
There's no one in charge, no one in authority in

(01:14:10):
AA at all, and yet AA works. It's got to
be organized somehow. Yes, there are jobs that have to
be done. There are committees to put on this conference,
and volunteers go, I'd like to be on that. No
one can force you to be on it, not like

(01:14:31):
at work where they go, okay, you three are on
this committee and you three are on that committee. It's voluntary.
So as we get all these volunteers, then we might
have lent among ourselves somebody to be in charge of
our decorations committee to hold the meetings so that we
can decide what kind of decorations we want. And this
is what we're The only organizational part of Alcoholics Anonymous

(01:14:55):
is is in the volunteer in the servant area, so
that we can can get things done that will enhance
one alcoholic talking to another. That's what it all comes
back to. We need the more pamphlets. So we said,

(01:15:15):
this might help somebody with a handicap, but we'll write
about handicapped alcoholics, and that'll help someone with a handicapped
or a gay person, or a black person or an
American Indian. I mean, they tried to come up with
all the differences that we have old people. Now they're
writing on old people. I feel like writing now, we

(01:15:35):
don't need any help. I know I'm old. What are
you writing a pamphlet on old people for? There's probably
somebody being helped in spite of my judgment that we
don't need it. You follow what I'm saying. And so

(01:15:56):
the only organizational structure is in service, which ties in
with the entire thrust of spirituality and humility. How should
we organize the servants in order to get the service
work done? You know in New York I don't know
if they still do it. When I've took my first

(01:16:17):
tour of the office up there, there are I forget
how Bob may be able to correct me. There's like
seven key positions literature, loaners, conventions, organizing the General service conference.

(01:16:38):
So there's these staff people that have these key positions.
Every year they move over one office. Now I'm in
charge of loaners. Just to make sure you aren't the
expert at You follow what I'm saying, which would happen.
I've been ten years in this and now I am

(01:16:59):
I'm just a servant everybody else, and next year I'll
be serving over there. It's almost rotating, like we do rotating.
I hate it when they tell me. I can't make
coffee anymore. I love having the key open the room
and make the coffee. I don't know why, but that's
my favorite job and I got it now. I have

(01:17:20):
a Monday night where I'm doing that. But I know
it's been almost a year and they're going to be coming. Well,
you know what I do, and I shouldn't admit to this,
but maybe somebody takes it over and after a couple
of months they go, I hate coming here early. I said,
I'll take it over for you. Then I get another year.

(01:17:48):
I don't think that's in the traditions, but they haven't
caught me yet. Okay, where was I? Ten Alcoholics Anonymous
sais no opinion on outside issues, hence the AA name
never be drawn into public controversy. Bob was talking about this,

(01:18:10):
but I wanted to go into it in a little
more detail because the story really dramatizes this tradition, and
the story really begins many many years ago when six
guys were drinking in a bar. If they haven't heard
this story, it's a good one. And these guys were

(01:18:32):
middle age, they were very successful businessmen. They had families,
they were happy, they had money, but they all knew
that they were alcoholics and that they were going to
lose it. They could feel their disease, and they used
to kid each other. You know, Joe, you're going to

(01:18:52):
lose your business. And your wife, I mean, my wife's
told me that she's your wife is thinking to leaving. Yeah,
your wife told me that my wife is thinking. You
know what I mean. They saw the handwriting on the wall,
and so one of them one day said, this was
back when pledges were big, the temperance movement was running

(01:19:13):
all around the country. And one of them said, I'm
going to come up with a pledge. I'm going to
write it myself, and then we'll all take it and
we'll see if the six of us in our pledge
can stay sober. So he wrote up a pledge, we
the undersigned, do swear, solemnly swear in front of God
and all our witnesses, and I will never take another

(01:19:35):
drink of intoxicating alcohol for the rest of my life.
And then they all signed it, and they started staying
sober just from the pledge, and then other guys and
so then they went out and they they knew somebody
else that was in trouble, and they said, Fred, you
ought to come sign our pledge. So the entire program

(01:19:55):
was the pledge, and they made a big deal out
of it. They would have a ceremony in town. Now
we have ten pledge takers. Anybody else want to be
on the pledge. And they've looked for somebody like the
mayor and get him to sign the pledge, and then
lots of other people. And at the end of the
first year in this city in Baltimore, they had a

(01:20:17):
parade with a band and they're putting all the pledgers
are walking down and I think they had something like
five hundred five hundred of these guys just taking the
pledge and staying sober. And then the original guy was
such an organizer. He said, all right, now you go
up to New York and start to take this pledge
up there and get a bunch of people, and you

(01:20:38):
you go over to Pennsylvania and he sent different guys
that had taken the pledge, and they started this thing,
and they were looking for a name, and they said,
we want something that'll make it really important. And of
course nothing could be more important at that time, you know,
in the eighteen forties and fifties than George Washington. I mean,

(01:21:00):
that was the name. So they said, we'll call ourselves
a Washingtonian society after George, and that'll get a lot
more people in. And as Bob said, in a matter
of the very few years, the numbers I saw was
four hundred thousand people had taken the pledge and it

(01:21:22):
was in city all over the place. It had a
bigger percentage of the population in their movement than AA
does now in the United States, we're nowhere near that
percentage of the population that they had. And when you

(01:21:43):
have a mass a large number of people outside forces
look and they go, that's a potential power base. You
follow what I'm saying that AA would be a very
big power base. If I had a product and I
wanted to sell it, and I said, AA endorsed it,

(01:22:04):
there's a lot of AA members that my buy it.
You follow what I'm saying. So wouldn't it be nice
if I could get AA? So we had the endorsement
thing that Bob was talking about. But this is more
why would I be tempted to do that? Well, I
believe in that what they want me to endorse. I
liked the idea, And one of the issues was slavery.

(01:22:26):
This was just to start leading up to the Civil War,
and not drinking prohibition. We get those two things. What
could be more God's will than wiping out this horrible
thing called slavery and wiping out this terrible thing called
alcohol that is killing and ruining the lives of all

(01:22:47):
these people. Very tempting to get involved and to take
an opinion on a noble cause. As Bob said, within
four years they were gone. It divided, They just disappeared,

(01:23:11):
took them away from their primary purpose. Oh primary purpose,
Stay sober and straighten out South Africa. You follow what
I'm saying. Just pick something, pick your favorite cause, stay
sober and and goodbye. They were gone so much that

(01:23:33):
when Bill was right in the traditions, someone said, well, Bill,
you ought to look into the history of the Washingtonians
that maybe there's some lessons there for you. And he
had never heard of them. That's how far they had disappeared.
They're just gone. So if they ever went, it would
be gone. You know, when you're gone, you're gone. You

(01:23:55):
don't hardly see anybody running around with hula hoops. I
remember when everybody had one. But when they're gone, they're gone.
It's just they're gone, and I don't want to see
AA gone. And so that's what this is. An opinion,
just an opinion. Now, in order to have opinion, you

(01:24:20):
have to be wilful. It's the only way to have
an opinion. I'm right and they're wrong. You know how
that goes. I'm right and they're wrong. An opinion, very
unspiritual thing, just the opposite of God's will. Who wants
to give up your opinions? Not me? Well, then you

(01:24:42):
can't let go and let God. You can't hold on
to any of those and be guided by your higher power.
Oh kind of hard, isn't it. In the seventies when

(01:25:06):
oh God, Hughes Harold Hughes from Iowa was a US
Senator and the recovered alcoholic, and he's the man who
decided that there ought to be a law passed making
alcoholism a disease and allowing insurance companies to cover treatment

(01:25:27):
of this disease in a hospital, much like other diseases
are covered. In other words, it's to make it a
disease and therefore eligible for medical help. It would legitimize it.
It would make it so that you don't have to
be ashamed it would go, it would help in many,
many ways. So he got the law passed, and that
was the first time that Congress got involved in an

(01:25:50):
alcohol issue other than prohibition, an alcoholism issue, and they
created the National Institute on Alcohol and Alcohol Abuse, which
Marty Man had actually started, and so all this happened
out of that. Well. About eight years later, in the
Health and Human Services Committee of the US Senate, somebody,

(01:26:12):
one senator I forget who it was, I was working
as a lobbyist back then. They came up with, we
ought to put warning labels on alcohol like we do
on cigarettes, you know, because if it was there. I mean,
I don't know how you feel about labels. I don't
read them myself, but that was the bill, and they

(01:26:34):
were having hearings on should we put warning labels and
one of the committee's staff said, I'll tell you who
is the perfect source to get an opinion on putting
warning labels on bottles, and that's alcoholics anonymous. Let me
call the central office in New York General Services and
see if they could send somebody down and say, yeah,

(01:26:55):
we'll send somebody down to talk to you. So they
sent a staff person down and they've got them in
the committee staff room and they said, listen, here's what
we're going to do. What would AA think about this idea?
And they looked at him and said, we have no
opinion whatsoever on that. But it's alcohol. You guys all

(01:27:15):
drank bottles, bottles, bottles, bottles. I mean, who would know
more about that than you? And they said, we have
no opinion whatsoever on putting label on a bottle and
went back to New York and then they went back
to the Senators and they said they have no opinion whatsoever.
I think the originator of the bill was insultpid. He

(01:27:38):
felt we were saying his bill wasn't important. But that
was in the record that AA had no opinion on this.
That's not to say that individual AA members don't have opinions.
We can have opinions all over the place. And I
have an opinion on that issue, and I'm going to
share it with you right now. I believe there's would

(01:28:00):
be warning labels on alcohol bottles, and I know what
it should say so that it'll do some good. This
is what the label should say, warning this bottle may
run out. You should consider buying two, and then we

(01:28:27):
won't have alcoholics going home. They thought they had enough,
they finished the bottle. It's midnight. They don't have enough.
They get in their car, they're drunk. They're going back
to get a second bottle. They get a DWY. If
they had the second bottle, they wouldn't have done that.
So we'd finally have a label that would do some good.

(01:28:48):
So opinions opinions, I mean, how wonderful to have an organization.
There's no opinions on anything except one drunk hevine another again,
eliminating controversy, keeping us focused focus, focus on being a servant,
focused on God, focused on the most important thing we
could ever do in our lives. The last two traditions

(01:29:12):
have to do with anonymity, and I'll wrap them up
and we'll be out of here in seven minutes. Public
relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We
always need maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio,
and films. And when you read the Tradition book or
the AA history, anonymity and the wonderful value that we

(01:29:33):
have came about as a result of fear. There was
this fear. It was the unknown. When you're getting sober
and starting something like this to go help drunks who
are not looked on too kindly by society. You want
to keep it secret, you know what I'm saying. Let's
not brag, let's kink a wall over. Somebody might shut

(01:29:55):
us down. And then the other fear was, look, there's
only five of us, and we know this like nine
million alcoholics in America. But if the word got out,
nine million guys showed at our door, there wouldn't be
enough of us to help them. So let's keep it
a secret. We'll call ourselves alcoholics, anonymous, no names, Nobody

(01:30:20):
be able to find us at home, you know, and
get sixty thousand calls a night. None of this was true,
But when you have fears, you have big ones. And
so that's what was going on in the beginning. And
then as it started to unfold, they realized the power

(01:30:40):
of anonymity on two levels. One was on making it
a program of attraction rather than promotion. And Bob talked
about the Jack Alexander story where this guy came to
investigate AA, found out what it was, and he went

(01:31:01):
out and told the good news.

Speaker 1 (01:31:04):
To the world.

Speaker 2 (01:31:05):
Wasn't AA telling the good news? It was a skeptical reporter.
I went there, and let me tell you what I found.
So a program of attraction relies on others to tell
our story, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer perhaps one of

(01:31:26):
the greatest events to tell the AA story was the
John Rockefeller John D. Rockefeller black Tie dinner in nineteen
forty one in New York City where he invited all
the elite, all the top bankers, the church people, the
cream of the crop in New York City to come

(01:31:48):
to a dinner honoring AA. He got a lot of criticism,
he must be office rocker. Black tie dinner for drunks.

Speaker 1 (01:31:57):
What is that?

Speaker 2 (01:32:00):
And it was in all the papers. It was in
all the papers. And what it did. It legitimized the
disease of alcoholism and alcoholics anonymous in one big story.
And so our story is told by others and is

(01:32:22):
so amazing. Think about this. I don't know if you've
observed this, but I think in the last twenty years
there's an element in the press that delights in digging
up dirt. Maybe I'm wrong, but it just seems that way. Well,

(01:32:43):
if I was one of those reporters and I wanted
to dig up dirt with no effort, whatsoever. I would
just park out in front of AA meetings and see
there's the mayor's assistant bingo. Could I could have enough
stories to go on for I never have to work.
I just go down to the inner Group office, get

(01:33:03):
the meeting list, pull up to the meetings and watch
and I have all the stories I want and they
don't do it. How do you like that? They'll do
it everywhere except AA. Isn't that amazing? They understand this

(01:33:28):
tradition sometimes better than we do. Sometimes our own members
want to go and I'm also a member of AA.
And the newspaper editor says, take out the sentence where
he said he was a member of AA, because we understand.
When they had this tradition, they wrote to all the
newspapers in the country and they said, we want to
maintain anonymity at personal anonymity at the level of press,

(01:33:52):
radio and films. And it is amazing what that desire
for no publicity did in terms of getting publicity. Let
me tell you about the people that don't want publicity.
What a story that is. Here's people that don't want
any attention. They just want to help drunks. How could

(01:34:16):
you tell that story? Yourself and be believed. I'm holding
this press conference to let you know that we're only
interested in helping drunks. My name is Sandy Beachman. Want
me to stand this way. Okay, you see the difference.
It's a wonderful powerful thing, this maintaining and the rate

(01:34:40):
relationship between AA and the press. That came about almost accidental.
The last one. What they discovered out of here anonemies
the spiritual foundation of our traditions, ever reminding us to
place principles before personalities. They realized as they did this,

(01:35:01):
of not being anything. They realized that when you say
someone asks you who are you? Now, if you're somebody
who's successful here in San Francisco and someone outside of
AA says who are you? Tell Joe, you've just sat
down here with five other guys who don't really know

(01:35:22):
each other, who are you? You would go well, I
went over here to the college in San Francisco. I
studied this, I wrote these three books. I'm on the
board of directors of a book that a Bump and
if you been about And I go to this church
and I give talks on this, and I also am
and I am also an expert engineer and I've let well,

(01:35:44):
and that's who I am. You follow what I'm saying? Now,
what is that? That's ego, that's who I am. You
see what I'm saying. It's a big thing. Look about
a resume. You're going, you're looking for jobs. You write
a resume. What do you put on a resume? Everything
that will get you more? Hey, don't forget. Put those

(01:36:05):
three courses you got DOWNE might be worth five thousand
a year. Oh yeah, And we pumped that thing up,
and we pump it up, and we pump it up.
And when we got this piece of paper in front
of us, we go, this is what I'm entitled to.
You see the energy as a resume goes out. Now,
let's say we come and run everything through AA and

(01:36:26):
we come in here and we go, well, who are you?
I'm Fred I'm an alcoholic. That's it for Yeah, that's
about it. And we know you better than if we
read your resume. You told us everything we need to know.
You see what I'm saying. You told us you're interested

(01:36:46):
in helping others. You're not interested in yourself. You don't
even care about telling us that you happen to own
half of San Francisco. No, that's not me. I'm Fred
an alcoholic. I'm Fred. So what the freedom it is
for Fred to just be an alcoholic and not be
all the rest of that stuff. What a great freedom
to just come in here and just be another guy,

(01:37:10):
another gal. I'm just another gal here. I don't have
to be all those other things. And Bill saw the
great freedom in being anonymous. And so the next time
we take a look at a resume and we go,
what's on that resume? Oh, what's on this resume is
a list of all of the attributes that God gave

(01:37:33):
me that enables me to be useful to the place
where I work. Here's the list of the things I
can do for your company. That's what this list is. Wow,
a lot of different energy going out of that resume.
It's going the other way, doesn't ask for anything coming back.

(01:37:55):
It just wants to share service of God given skins, skills,
and trust that God will take care of us. And
Bob ran his business that way, and his business was
better than if he tried to make a lot of money.

(01:38:16):
And your career will be better than if you tried
to advance yourself. That is trust in anonymity. Okay, we're
at the end of the time. I don't know how
we're going to wrap this up, but I'm going to
sit down and thank you for your attention. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:38:42):
We hope you enjoyed this recording.

Speaker 2 (01:38:44):
If you're interested in other speaker tapes or CDs from
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(01:39:06):
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Bob D. and Sandy B. - AA Speakers - Spiritual Awakening

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