AA - Alcoholics Anonymous
May 27, 2024
(0:00 – 0:29)
Get on with it. Thank you, Earline. Good evening.
(0:30 – 0:53)
You probably didn’t think I was going to be this good looking. Could we close the doors in
the back, please? I don’t want to keep anybody awake out in the hall. My name is Paul
Martin, and I’m an alcoholic.
(0:58 – 1:25)
Through the grace of God and the AA program, I haven’t had a drink or a pill or an
impure thought since August 15th, 1947. Judy and I appreciate the hospitality here. Judy
and I met in a travel agency.
(1:25 – 1:32)
She was looking for the last resort. Get a little old. I was 25 when I came into AA.
(1:32 – 1:55)
I was 76 last May. For years, I was worried about dying young, and now it’s too late. A
while back, I stayed in one of those motels with a mirror on the ceiling, and I woke up in
the morning and looked up and I thought I was being attacked by a giant prune.
(2:01 – 2:15)
Actually, I’m only 11 in dog years. I’m an adult child of an Amway salesman. I got to be
so old this year I hid my own Easter eggs.
(2:19 – 2:24)
I go to the gym three times a week. As you can tell, I’m in superb condition. I’m a lean,
mean, senile machine.
(2:27 – 2:48)
I want to say thank you to the folks who worked so hard in setting this up. It’s a lot of
hard work that goes into putting one of these together, and I have had nothing to do with
this except to sit around and eat too much. One thing about talking at these things, you
will never suffer from malnutrition.
(2:50 – 3:11)
But I’ve suffered a lot in my life. I’m a Cubs fan. Have we got any Sox fans here? Your
magic number this year is 9-1-1.
(3:14 – 3:30)
I’ve had a lot of interesting things with El Nino and the weather. It rained so much in
Florida it ruined spring break for Teddy Kennedy. I’ve got a friend here who goes to our
meeting.
(3:30 – 3:44)
I’m a member of the Wednesday night step group in LaGrange at the LaGrange YMCA. It
meets at 7.30 on Wednesday night. We have a meeting there at 7.15 on Friday night,
one at 10 o’clock in the morning on Saturday.
(3:45 – 3:53)
If you’d like to come, we’ll be happy to see you. It’s a working step group. We don’t talk,
philosophize, or think about the steps.
(3:53 – 4:00)
We work them. It has a tremendous effect in our lives. One of the men here, Harris,
comes in from Marengo.
(4:00 – 4:09)
Harris’s story is in the big book. It’s called Growing Up All Over Again. It’s hard to believe
Harris turned out pretty well.
(4:09 – 4:27)
It’s hard to believe that when he was a kid he was so ugly. His mother used to tie a pork
chop around his neck so the dog would play with him. When I was sober less than a year
in the spring of 1948, I heard Paul Stanley talk.
(4:28 – 4:47)
Paul Stanley was the number five AA. In his talk over and over and over, Stanley said, AA
is of itself sufficient. I didn’t quite believe him at that time because I thought that
perhaps I needed more advanced things in the AA program.
(4:49 – 5:04)
Today, with 51 years of sobriety, next Saturday, I believe that completely. I think that AA
is of itself sufficient. It is a spiritual way of life, and the 12 steps will treat what’s wrong
with you and me if we don’t drink.
(5:05 – 5:18)
Going to meetings and not drinking do not treat my alcoholism. Working the 12 steps
treats my alcoholism. If all I do is go to meetings and not drink, eventually I suffer from
untreated alcoholism.
(5:20 – 5:37)
And that comes out as depression, anxiety, fear, hostility, apathy, boredom, and
sometimes drunkenness. And the answer is to use the answer which was here all the
time. Work and rework every one of the 12 steps.
(5:37 – 5:49)
There was a Zen master who was in New York City, and he went up to a hot dog stand.
And the hot dog vendor said, what do you have? He said, I want a hot dog. Make me one
with everything.
(5:50 – 6:10)
So he got his hot dog, and he gave the vendor a $20 bill. And the vendor put it in his
pocket, and the Zen master said, what about my change? And the vendor said, change
must come from within. And of course, that’s how the AA program works.
(6:11 – 6:27)
I belong to a home group, and I show up there every Wednesday night, and I go to the
meeting on Saturday morning. I go there because I would very quickly forget what has
changed my life. And what has changed my life is not therapy or Prozac.
(6:28 – 6:46)
What has changed my life, incidentally, they’re mixing Prozac with Viagra now. So if it
doesn’t work, you don’t worry about it. I suppose you’ve all heard about the Valium diet.
(6:47 – 7:02)
You take four Valiums for breakfast, and the food falls out of your mouth the rest of the
day. But ours is a working step group. It’s a step group where, incidentally, can
everybody hear me in all the corners? Good.
(7:03 – 7:12)
At my age, I never know when I’m going to get a chance to talk again. But ours is a
working step group. Each week, we take one step.
(7:12 – 7:15)
We start at one. We go up to 12. Then we go back to one.
(7:16 – 7:24)
Then we go through the steps, and we go up to 12. And we do this over and over. And
we continue to work the steps in our lives.
(7:24 – 7:43)
I took my most recent fourth step about six weeks ago, and I took five fifth steps with it.
For the first 16 years, I was sober. I suffered from that familiar misconception that we
work the first nine steps once, and then we do 10, 11, and 12 the rest of our lives.
(7:43 – 8:00)
And I’d never heard any different. And when I was sober 16 years, I ran into a
psychologist at the University of Illinois, Dr. Hobart Maurer. And Maurer said that there is
great benefit in letting everybody know all the truth about us.
(8:01 – 8:19)
That depression, anxiety, fear, and all of these kinds of problems are a result of
dishonest, irresponsible, secret living. So I thought, well, I took a fifth step when I was
sober about a year and a half, and I haven’t taken one since. So I did an inventory, and
then I started doing fifth steps with people.
(8:19 – 8:52)
I had, through the years, worked 10, 11, and 12, I felt, very diligently. But I very quickly
found out that by doing these written inventories, and then opening up with more and
more people, some things changed in me that had not changed before. And then I found
that when I worked with other alcoholics on this basis, that people who had not been
able to stay sober started to stay sober, with not just one fifth step, but a number of fifth
steps, and going on, of course, and making amends.
(8:52 – 9:08)
And then I thought, boy, everybody’s going to want to know about this. And then I
discovered a lot of people didn’t want to know about this. I found that some of the places
I got the biggest arguments was from people who had never taken even one fourth and
fifth step, much less repeated them.
(9:09 – 9:30)
I had thought that for a long time I could conquer my defects with my willpower, because
I was able to use my willpower for exercise and these kinds of things. It turned out I was
wrong. You probably heard that old Myron Cohen story about the lady who was chiding
her husband because he had no willpower.
(9:30 – 9:37)
She said, you’re disgusting. She said, Goldberg has willpower. She said, Goldberg
smoked three packs of cigarettes a day for 20 years.
(9:37 – 9:49)
Five years ago, he said, I quit. He hasn’t smoked since. She said, that’s willpower.
You haven’t got any willpower. She said, Ginsberg has willpower. Ginsberg was drunk
every day of his life for 30 years.
(9:49 – 9:52)
Six years ago, he said, I quit. He hasn’t had a drink since. She said, that’s willpower.
(9:54 – 9:59)
And her husband became incensed. He said, I’ll show you what willpower is. From now
on, I’m going to sleep in the guest bedroom forever.
(10:01 – 10:27)
Six months later, he was awakened by his wife shaking the bed at three in the morning.
He said, what do you want? She said, Goldberg is smoking. The alcoholic who still
suffers, The alcoholic who still suffers is not necessarily one who is just fresh sober.
(10:28 – 10:44)
I’ve run into a lot of people through the years with fair amounts of sobriety, suffering
from untreated alcoholism. Eight years ago, one of the members of our group got a call
from a man in Madison, Wisconsin, who was sober 22 years. He was also an alcoholism
counselor.
(10:46 – 10:58)
And he had been cutting a loaf of bread. He was going to a psychiatrist because he felt
so bad. He was cutting a loaf of bread and he thought seriously of sticking the knife in
his stomach and he thought that might be a bad sign.
(10:59 – 11:11)
So he called somebody in our group. And he came down from Madison, which is a two
and a half hour drive, to our meeting and we showed him how to do a fourth step. And
he did some fifth steps with some of the people in the group.
(11:12 – 11:23)
We helped him write his eighth step. Very, very quickly, he lost the symptoms of
untreated alcoholism. That’s eight years ago, he’s sober 30 years and he’s in great
condition.
(11:25 – 11:54)
And I think that we have, people ask me from time to time, how does AA differ today
from what it was like when you came in? Well, we have a huge amount of therapy that
we didn’t have when I came in. We have all kinds of pills that are answers. And I think
that unless the person is an epileptic or a schizophrenic or a manic-depressive, he or she
in AA can find his or her answers in working and reworking every one of the 12 steps.
(11:56 – 12:07)
The answers are here. I ended up working or writing for a living. I did a lot of things
before I got into that when I was, well it was actually 1966, I was 44 years old.
(12:08 – 12:28)
Sometime back, I was in the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador where Darwin
got the idea for the theory of evolution from the giant tortoises and the finches. And I
learned that tortoises get to be 500 and 600 pounds. I learned that during mating
season, the male tortoises get so excited, they try to mate with large rocks.
(12:29 – 12:45)
It’s pretty much like your average AA picnic. I sobered up and started looking for honest
employment and I couldn’t find any. And wrestling was big in Chicago.
(12:45 – 12:58)
It was about 1949 and I was, at that time I was bigger and the wrestlers were smaller.
And I spent several years as a professional wrestler. Some of you may remember the
shows at Rainbow Arena at Lawrence and Clark.
(12:59 – 13:06)
Ray Fabiani was the promoter. He was the most crooked human being I ever met in my
life. When he died, they had to screw him into the ground.
(13:06 – 13:20)
They said that he had… They claimed he was from Philadelphia. They claimed that he
had been a violinist with the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra. I don’t know if that’s true
or not.
(13:21 – 13:33)
But I know that later on, he got in trouble with the IRS for fiddling with his income tax.
But we had a lot of unusual people. We had a lot of Indians at that time and some of
them were real Indians.
(13:34 – 13:45)
A couple of them were Bohemian. They got their feathers in Berwyn and they looked like
dumplings. And things were all like the boy next door provided you live next door to the
Brookfield Zoo.
(13:47 – 14:07)
But I found when I went to New York, I had a friend who knew Bill very well and in the
spring of 51, I went to New York and he took me over to Bill’s home. I was fortunate to be
a guest in Bill’s home on several occasions and go with him a couple of times when he
was going somewhere to talk. But it turned out that Lois Wilson was a great fan of the
wrestling shows that came out of Rainbow Arena.
(14:09 – 14:23)
And she kept asking, you know, I kept trying to avoid telling her the truth when she
wanted to know if wrestling was fixed or not. There is a certain amount of cooperation
that you may have noticed. But I finally got out of that.
(14:23 – 14:41)
I went to work on construction. When I was drinking, they told me that I was a smart
young man and would go far. And with four and a half years of sobriety, I found myself
working as a laborer in northern Greenland, 850 miles from the North Pole, which was
quite a bit farther than I had planned to go.
(14:42 – 14:49)
We worked 10 hours a day, seven days a week. I worked four contracts up there. I
worked in Iceland.
(14:49 – 15:06)
I worked in Point Barrow, Alaska in 56 and 57 when they were building the dew line up
there. Most of the time, my AA came out of the big book in the 12 and 12, though we
had a man in Greenland, Nick Gray. His father was Jewish, and his mother was Eskimo.
(15:07 – 15:23)
And Nick always used to say that to his knowledge, he was AA’s only Jewskimo, and I
suspect that may be correct. But I got a great benefit out of reading that big book. I’ve
written for years, and I’ve sold a lot of magazine articles, and I’ve written some books.
(15:23 – 15:54)
There is no way in the world that I, with 51 years of sobriety today, could write anything
approaching the power and the sanity in that big book, Alcoholics Anonymous. It’s
sometimes said, if you want to hide something from an AA member, the best place to
put it is in the big book, and I’m afraid that might be at least partially correct. But I came
back around Chicago then in 1959, and I became a hyperactive AA.
(15:54 – 16:28)
I wanted to be very important, and I became a banquet speaker, and I became a
delegate, and then I ran into some strange problems with people who didn’t understand
God’s will when I explained it to them. I ended up with a lot of very bad relationships that
had nothing to do with my being an alcoholic or a disease. It had something to do with
defects like dishonesty and greed and pride and hostility and trying to get my own way,
which still happens occasionally.
(16:29 – 16:46)
But I ended up with some very bad relationships with people in AA, and when I was
sober, well, this would be 1968, I went to a meeting, and I wasn’t feeling that good. I was
sober 21 years. I know this is a surprise to my friends.
(16:46 – 17:10)
I’ve had a considerable problem with resentments. And after a meeting, several of us
were talking, and I said, you know, I don’t feel as good as I should. What should I do? And
one of the men that I sponsored, who was sober three years, said, why don’t you write
out a new Eighth Step and go around and make amends to these people? And I thought
that was pretty ridiculous to tell to one of AA’s leaders.
(17:12 – 17:24)
But I went ahead and did it, and I made amends to these people. Everything is
connected to everything else in my view. If I lie, cheat, and steal over here, it corrodes
my life over there.
(17:24 – 17:42)
If I make an amend over there, it helps my life over here because everything is
connected. Though I may not see the connection until I have done the work which would
give me the understanding. So I made amends to those 12 people, and I started out
growing up in Oak Park.
(17:43 – 17:49)
My father was a Lutheran minister. I come from a long line of Lutheran ministers. In spite
of that fact, I believe in God today.
(17:51 – 18:03)
My father was a Lutheran minister who became a fundraiser, and he was also a very
badly behaved alcoholic. My father was listed in Who’s Who. My grandfather was in
Who’s Who.
(18:03 – 18:12)
He was a doctor of divinity. I had another grandfather who was a medical doctor. I’m the
only professional wrestler our family has ever produced.
(18:14 – 18:26)
But I had been… My father… I grew up in a little town down in southern Georgia. My
father, when I was 12, left Oak Park because my mother wanted a separation. And that’s
1934.
(18:26 – 18:46)
I was 12 years old, and he went down to south Georgia where he had a sister and came
back that fall and he picked me up coming home from school and drove me down there
and entered me into school. The town was so dull that if you took LSD you’d have had
visions of Lawrence Welk. But it was a very confusing time of my life.
(18:47 – 18:59)
And alcohol became a very good friend. Now, that didn’t make me an alcoholic. I would
have been an alcoholic no matter what happened because when I was 8 or 9, if
somebody left some beer or wine in a glass and I found it, I would drink it.
(19:00 – 19:09)
But I got drunk the first time when I was 14. My life was very confused at that time. I had
been a very good student at Oak Park and became a very bad student down there.
(19:09 – 19:18)
All of my energy went into sports. I played every sport there was with varying amounts
of talent. My favorite sport was boxing.
(19:19 – 19:24)
I wanted to be middleweight champion of the world. Now, it would have been except I
had a bad handicap. I couldn’t whip anybody.
(19:26 – 19:38)
I’ve had my nose broken in three places, Georgia, Illinois, and California. But alcohol
became a very good friend. I mean, it really changed everything.
(19:38 – 19:47)
You know, we talk about how it glues us together. And I knew I didn’t have to get smart.
All I needed was the price of what was in that bottle.
(19:47 – 20:03)
I entered a college near Atlanta. I lasted there a year and a half. And then when I was 19,
in 1941, I came back to Oak Park where my mother was living and entered college and
was boxing for a club on the west side of Chicago.
(20:04 – 20:13)
And drinking more and more, World War II had come along and I decided to be an
aviator. I went into the Navy. I had this act that I had glued together.
(20:13 – 20:25)
It was the genius and the sophisticated and the lover and the athlete. And now I was
going to be a naval aviator. And I went into the Navy and I took flight training.
(20:25 – 20:38)
I got commissioned, which was good because then I could get drunk all the time. I had
two decorations in World War II. One was a linoleum rug.
(20:38 – 20:44)
I won in the late radio quiz program. I can’t remember the other one. I destroyed two
aircraft in World War II.
(20:45 – 21:03)
They both belonged to the United States Navy. A friend of mine pointed out if I’d gotten
three more I would have been a Japanese ace. I flew single-engine seaplanes that were
catapulted off cruisers and battleships.
(21:05 – 21:17)
You went from zero to 60 miles an hour in the space of about 40 feet. It wouldn’t cure a
hangover but it really took your mind off of it for a little while. But these were the kinds
of things that I brought into AA.
(21:18 – 21:48)
After I’d made those 12 amends to those people in Chicago in 1968, a business trip to
Miami worked out and I went to see my father who still lived in this little town in South
Georgia. Now he had gotten sober on his own and I used to call him and suggest we get
together and he would always say no. I could make an honest case and think I still can
that 99% of the harm in that relationship had been done by him.
(21:49 – 22:14)
But I went to see him unannounced in October of 1968 and I rang the doorbell and he
came to the door and I made an amend to him and then I told him who I was and said I’d
like to come in and talk with you. And I talked to him for perhaps half an hour and then I
went home and in March of 1969 I got the feeling I should go see him again.
Unannounced and we had another good visit.
(22:14 – 22:38)
After that second visit I was home several days later having a quiet time. Everything is
connected because by improving that relationship, that critical relationship in my life, I
saw ten more names that went on my eighth step from before sobering up. Everything is
connected and if you have something in your life, easy does not do it.
(22:38 – 23:31)
Do it now because two weeks after that second visit he died and I went to his funeral,
keenly aware that had I not been to see him when I did, a very important part of my life
would have never gotten straightened out. I think that one of the big differences
between the twelve steps and any therapy I know anything about, and I know a lot about
therapy not from having it but from being close acquaintances with some very wellknown psychiatrists and psychologists who say that people break down not because they
had too strict toilet training but because they lived so dishonestly, selfishly, secretly,
irresponsibly. But what happened from healing that relationship is some scar tissue
within me that I could never get at disappeared.
(23:32 – 23:54)
I think we can reach back into the past and change it so that we live better in the
present. And if you’ve got anything like that in your life, I would say go do it right now
because next week the opportunity may be gone forever. Tradition 8 says that the long
form says that alcoholics anonymous should remain forever non-professional.
(23:55 – 24:09)
We define professionalism as the occupation of counseling alcoholics for fees or higher.
It’s probably the most completely ignored tradition in our fellowship. Now we have
issues.
(24:09 – 24:19)
We don’t have problems. We have issues. Issues are deep psychological difficulties best
resolved through overpriced therapy or counseling.
(24:20 – 24:34)
If you have a problem and you’re an AA, in my experience what you and I need to do is
work the 12 steps. You know it’s sometimes said used to hear that alcoholics are smarter
than other people. I don’t know where that came from.
(24:34 – 24:50)
It was certainly never started by anybody in Al-Anon. But in AA we used to have slips.
Now we have relapses and something called relapse prevention.
(24:51 – 25:10)
A relapse is a slip that happens to an alcoholic who has insurance that will pay for
generally useless treatment. And the best way to prevent a relapse is to work and
rework the 12 steps. As it says in How It Works, if we do these things we’re not only
going to stay sober but we’re going to be healthy in all respects.
(25:12 – 25:33)
And the 12 and 12 on page 15 it says AA’s 12 steps are a group of principles spiritual in
their nature which if practiced as a way of life will expel the obsession to drink and
enable a sufferer to become happily and usefully whole. And that’s been my experience.
In my own life and with many many alcoholics I’ve come to know through the years.
(25:34 – 25:49)
A lot of strange things happen to alcoholics. I heard about a man who one armed man
who went into to get a shave from this barber who had a bad hangover. The bartender
the barber was shaking so badly he cut him on the nose and on the chin and on the ear.
(25:50 – 26:05)
He said, Haven’t I shaved you before? The man said, No, I lost this arm in a sawmill
accident. You know, I heard Gary talk last night. It was an exceptional talk.
(26:06 – 26:21)
When Gary was drinking he was sitting in a bar and there was a beautiful lady sitting
next to him and they were chatting and he said, What do you do? She said, I’m a
professional entertainer. He said, Well, what’s a professional entertainer? She said, Well,
I entertain. She said, I’ll do anything you want for $200.
(26:22 – 26:28)
He said, Anything? She said, Absolutely. He said, How about $100? She said, No, $200.
He said, Anything.
(26:28 – 26:34)
She said, That’s right. He gave her $200. She said, What do you want me to do? Gary
said, Paint my house.
(26:46 – 26:57)
But I continued to drink after I came back to Oak Park. I went on the service, dragged my
way through it. When I was 23 in 1945, I got pneumonia, which went into DTs.
(26:58 – 27:14)
I was drunk the last, I was in the hospital for four weeks and I got drunk the last nine out
of ten nights. I got out of the service in the fall of 19, in December of 1945, December
8th. I got separated at the Great Lakes.
(27:14 – 27:32)
I traveled for three days and three nights and got to Oak Park where I was living 50 miles
away. And in the fall In February, I decided to go, or rather, over New Year’s that year, I
decided to go to Cincinnati and get drunk. I ended up drunk in Milwaukee for three days.
(27:33 – 27:42)
And I drank myself sober on New Year’s morning. And I had a kind of transforming
experience. I ended up with what had to be the worst looking woman in the Middle West.
(27:42 – 28:04)
She frightened me into six weeks of sobriety. She reminded me of my judo instructor,
except he didn’t have a mustache. She looked like a million dollars and the only reason I
say that is because I’ve never seen a million dollars and she looked like something I
never saw before.
(28:07 – 28:16)
So I figured, well, I’ve got to do something about this drinking. And I went on the wagon.
I stayed sober for maybe six weeks.
(28:17 – 28:38)
And then a friend of mine and I got drunk and I got bitten by a dog and I had to take
rabies shots just to be on the safe side I made out a list of people to bite in case they
didn’t work. I always drank and I drank in sophisticated places. Does anybody here
remember the backstage bar on Wilson Avenue? It was very sophisticated.
(28:40 – 29:11)
Entertainment was provided by ladies who danced on the bar while removing various
articles of clothing and performing a selection of various stimulating movements. While
the dance steps were too skillful and the corks were clumsy, there’s no doubt in my mind
that many people in that audience experienced physical awakenings as a result of those
steps. But if you were worthy, they would drink with you.
(29:12 – 29:32)
And a friend of mine and I were worthy and a couple of them drank with us and then our
money ran out and they ran out because we weren’t any worthy anymore. And from that
and similar experiences, I concluded that if a lady who drinks with you and says she
loves you, don’t trust her. She might not be sincere.
(29:34 – 29:44)
But I kept trying to find ways to control my drinking to stay sober. I’ve had a continuing
problem trying to be smarter than I actually am. I’m of German ancestry.
(29:45 – 29:55)
And the problem with being German is every time you have two beers you want to cross
somebody’s border. And I began to make various experiments. And I would drink only on
weekends.
(29:55 – 30:04)
I drank only beer. I knew what an alcoholic was from living with my father. And I began
to make a variety of experiments.
(30:05 – 30:11)
I began to read everything I could get my hands on. And they all had one thing in
common. They didn’t work.
(30:12 – 30:20)
I went on the wagon in the early part of 1947. I stayed sober for three months. I got
drunk and I couldn’t get sober for three months.
(30:21 – 30:33)
I knew I was an alcoholic but I didn’t realize that if I’m going to stay sober that
knowledge is not sufficient. And finally in August an interesting thing happened. You
know, all the usual things happen to me.
(30:34 – 30:44)
I had automobile wrecks. I was always losing my car. There was really nothing more
beautiful than an alcoholic who has been reunited with his lost automobile.
(30:45 – 30:54)
I would stumble about and there’s my car. I’d say, my car. And I’d wipe away a tear and
drive off and run into something.
(30:56 – 31:05)
You know, it was a lousy life. I’m not, it wasn’t funny at the time. When I worked, if I took
more than half an hour for lunch, they had to retrain me.
(31:08 – 31:22)
Finally, I got a wonderful gift. I got drunk in August of 1947 and I sobered up and I
couldn’t lie anymore. I’ve gotten in more trouble in my life lying to myself and you and
everybody else.
(31:22 – 41:43)
I couldn’t lie. I had lost the ability to lie and that continued for a week. And I kept
thinking I’m going to quit on my own or I’ll do something else or I’ll quit on my And I kept
thinking I’m going to on my own or I’ll do something else or I’ll quit on own or I’ll do
something else or I’ll quit my own I’ll quit my on my own on my own or I’ll quit on own I’ll
quit on my own or I’ll quit on my own or I’ll quit on or I’ll I’ll quit on I’ll don’t my own or I’ll
story is in the big book, The Man Who Sold Himself Short.
But if you look at the story, Dr. Bob took Earl up to step nine in the first three weeks, and
then he came back to Chicago and started AA. So that’s what we try to do in our group.
And I think if somebody had done that with me, it would have changed things, which
caused a lot of trouble for me as my life went on sober, because I was sober and I
started to make money, and that was very bad for me.
And with a year of sobriety, I got into a great deal of trouble from some very, very
dishonest business activities. And I was talking to some friends of mine. I’d done nothing
with the steps.
And this friend said, I said, I think I’ve missed something in this program. They said, my
boy, you missed the whole program. They said, you kept such an open mind that the
whole program just blew right through.
And I said, okay. And I did an inventory, and then I did a fifth step. And then I started to
make amends, and then my life began to change, because I began to understand I didn’t
believe in anything when I came to AA.
I believe in God. I believe in God, and I believe in you, and I believe in this fellowship, but
I couldn’t separate one from the other. And I began to understand that I do have here
those things that I need.
So when I sponsor somebody, I work with him on the basis of those 12 steps. And I take
him right up through one, two, three. Two, we look at that on the basis of sanity equaling
honesty, because if I lie about anything, I lose the ability to see the truth about
everything.
And we take step three aloud, as Gary talked about last night, as it says on page 63 in
the big book. And then I help him do an inventory. We don’t use the Hazelden Guide.
If I’d ever used the Hazelden Guide, my few remaining hairs would have gone plunging
to the floor in confusion. We have a book called Alcoholics Anonymous, and a book called
The Twelve and Twelve, and it suggests resentments, dishonesty, selfishness, self-pity,
fear, the seven deadly sins. And I help him write that inventory, and then he and I swap
a fifth step.
I take a thorough one with him, and he takes a thorough one with me. In our group, we
believe that men should take fifth steps with men, and women should take fifth steps
with women. We believe that working on that basis, there is less tendency to generate
new material that requires additional fourth and fifth steps.
And then we talk about steps six and seven, and we pray to have our children and our
defects removed. I do that every morning. I take step three and seven with myself every
morning before starting meditation.
And then I help him write his eighth step, and encourage him to get right to work on the
amends. And Gary again talked last night about how important these amends are if we
don’t do them. I was never able to sit and meditate until I had made all of the important
amends I could find.
And I keep finding them as a result of doing additional fourth steps and fifth steps. And I
think that if I were not writing inventories, I would not continue to have looks in the past
that enable me to change my life in the present. I think that the readiness to have the
defects removed is indicated by my willingness to work and rework all of these 12 steps.
I think if I’m really ready and interested in doing this, then I’m going to continue to do
this work with the steps. And I think that, you know, we don’t talk, in our group, we don’t
talk about making amends to ourselves. We don’t put ourselves on that eight-step list.
Many years ago, it was 1964, a man who was sober about four years at that time was
talking with several of us. And he said, I’ve got something that bothers me because
when I was going to prep school, several friends of mine and I framed a kid to make it
look like he was stealing. He said it wasn’t true, but he got expelled from school.
And the night before he left to go home, he hung himself. And he said, I don’t know what
to do about that. I said, well, I don’t know either.
But I said, you better figure out something because it’s going to get you eventually. And
12 years later, he went back to drinking and he never did sober up again. And I think
there is a one-to-one relationship with the refusal to face that grievous amend and the
inability, finally, to stay sober.
So we’re very serious about the program in our group. And our whole effort is to inspire
other people to work the steps. I mean, the message is certainly not picnics and
banquets and bowling.
We don’t have any hierarchy in our group. We’re all thumbing our way along, trying to
wake up spiritually with, as you can tell, very slow progress. But when I take step one or
step 10, excuse me, which I try to do every day, when I do that, I try to look at my entire
life.
Obviously, if I’ve harmed people, I’m aware of that. If I’ve stolen something, I’m aware of
that. And that’s obvious.
But I try to look at my whole life on the basis of how am I spending my time and my
energy? Do I really believe that the spiritual life is important? And if I believe that, then
I’m going to be doing all of these things that the program demands. What do I do with
my… As I say, I go to the gym and that’s part of the thing, I think, to stay in as good
physical condition as I can. Paris is a tither, and I’ve been a tither for quite a while.
I give 10% of my off-the-top to what I consider to be good charities. I heard about that
when I was over two years and my income was terrible and somebody said, well, if you
tithe, it’ll help your income. And I thought, well, that’s pretty easy because 10% of
nothing is not too tough.
But I have found that very important because I think that’s a measure of my sincerity.
When you talk to people about making amends and sending back some money, then
they very often get very skittish. I had a guy in our group, Dennis O’Brien, very good
guy.
And somebody was telling him that he couldn’t find somebody that he owed an amend
to. And Dennis said, if he owed you $1,000, you think you could find him? And the
answer, of course, was yes. So I try to look at step 10 in relationships to my entire life.
I started meditating when I was working up in Greenland in the 50s, and I worked 10
hours a day, seven days a week. And before that, I had experimented with half an hour a
day, 45 minutes a day. And up there, I started doing an hour and a half a day.
(41:43 – 42:06)
And I discovered that the difference between 45 minutes a day and 90 minutes a day is
not that 90 minutes is twice as good. It’s probably four times as good. And I discovered if
I double that, this again becomes four times as good, not twice as good.
I do a lot of other things in my life. I travel a lot. I was thinking that I was talking to
somebody.
(42:09 – 43:35)
Clinton’s been in office about five and a half years, and I’ve been to 14 different
countries in that time, and all these people have had some interesting things to say
about Clinton. Incidentally, Hillary is selecting his next intern. It’s Lorena Bobbitt.
But my work has given me an opportunity to travel. I heard about the man at the beach
in Fort Lauderdale, and he kicked the bottle, and a genie jumped out and said, I’ll give
you any wish you want. He said, I want to spend the night with three famous women.
He woke up in the morning, and he was in bed with Tanya Harding, Lorena Bobbitt, and
Hillary Clinton. His knees were black and blue. He was missing an important part of his
anatomy, and he didn’t have any health insurance.
So I work at meditation as I do my exercise. I think it’s part of my program to say, in as
good condition as you can, at 76. And it’s a very, very simple method.
I read a lot of things, and I knew for a while that I was destined for a lot more spiritual
growth than the rest of you people. And as I said many times, I realized eventually that I
had developed a metaphysical hernia. I had strained myself spiritually.
(43:36 – 49:33)
I spent a lot of years as a retarded mystic, and I finally gave up on that. I take a word or
a phrase, and I just repeat it for as long as I can until my mind quiets down. If I do it first
thing in the morning, it works a lot better than otherwise.
And the quantity influences the quality. If you haven’t tried it, all I can say is try it,
because it’s a tremendous part of the program and makes tremendous changes in the
lives of anybody who will do it regularly. So I think it’s like exercise.
I think it’s like working the steps. I didn’t come in here looking for God. I came in because
I was frightened and I was a mess and I had no hope.
And you people whom I had never seen reached out your hands and you said, how can
we help? And you’ve helped me every day of my life since, and you continue to. And for
that I’m certainly grateful. I think the message is summed up in step 12, having had a
spiritual awakening as the result of these steps.
And the work I did in the steps when I was sober a year or 10 years or 30 years will not
carry me today any more than the food I ate in those years will carry me today. I have to
continue to work and rework all of these steps. We’ve had a great many people come to
our area from various parts of the U.S. and Canada suffering severely from untreated
alcoholism.
And they come for a weekend and they do not one, but a series of fifth steps with other
people who swap, as Gary talked about last night. And they always go back with a new
weight step and they always go back refreshed. And these are people who come in
depression and anxiety and terror in the midst of everything else.
And their whole lives change as a result of this concentrated work with the steps. It does
work. 1965, 66, 67, I was on the Board of Directors that Dr. Holgert Maurer had.
He had two grants from the Eli Lilly Foundation. And the whole thrust was that if you’re
going to get better, forget therapy. Start doing what you’re supposed to do and get open
with people.
One of the men on the Board of Directors was Dr. William Glasser, who had just written a
book called Reality Therapy. Some of you may remember Glasser. And Glasser said a
couple of things that I’ll never forget.
One is that when you pay a therapist, you’re buying a friend. And the other was that if all
the therapists disappeared today, it wouldn’t make any difference because people would
find somebody else to talk to tomorrow. I was writing an article for Christian Century on
Alcoholism many years ago, and I talked to Holgert Maurer.
I said, Holgert, what about psychotherapy for the sober alcoholic in AA? And he said, if
the alcoholic will work the 12 steps and develop the fellowship within AA, this will be
more effective than any kind of therapy I know anything about. And what he points out is
that the steps are here to deal with what’s wrong with you and me if we don’t
anesthetize ourselves with alcoholism. It’s always good for me to remember that AA is
where the clergymen come to find God’s help to stay sober.
And AA is where the psychiatrists and psychologists come to find the kind of group
therapy that will bring order and meaning to their lives. So that’s the message I
understand. There’s a guy that I knew in AA who bounced around for 15 years.
In 1972, in January, he sobered up once again. He’d gone to many, many meetings.
Sobered up once again, and this time he started to work the steps.
He came to our meeting, and he never drank again. Guy came to see us in 1984, sober
24 years from Toronto, in terrible shape from untreated alcoholism. He did a series of
fifth steps, went back with a list of amends.
He had one amend that involved a lady who had become pregnant before he came into
AA, and he had abandoned her, and he wanted to find her, and he didn’t know how to
find her. And he said, well, make the amends you can find, and it’ll work itself out. He
made all the amends he could find, and he was an artist having an exhibition in
Brampton near Toronto.
A lady came up and tapped him on the shoulder, and it was this lady he’d been looking
for. AA works if I will simply start wherever I can. So that’s the message I understand.
It’s summed up, as I’ve said many times before, in the experience of a man who was in
AA for maybe 12 years and never stayed sober. In January of 71, he came back once
again, this time with a difference. He began to work the 12 steps, came to our meeting.
He had three boys, the youngest of whom was eight and was in a class for retarded
children, because he couldn’t learn, because the father was such a badly behaved drunk.
And as the father stayed sober and worked the steps and changed, his son went from a
class for retarded children to a regular class doing average work. And as the father
continued to get better, the son continued to get better.
And I had lunch with the father when his son graduated from high school. I said, how’d
your boy do in high school? He said he made the honor roll every grade period, but one.
He was a varsity football player.
He said none of this would have happened if all I had done is quit drinking and not work
the 12 steps. And that’s the message I found with you. And I’m here because without
your help, I could not remember it.
Because I think if we work and rework these steps, we change. This change is reflected
in the lives of everyone with whom we come in contact. Thank you very much.
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