Bill W. in the 3rd General Service Convention

This wonderful conference of ours, this new instrument of AA is no longer. It is a magnificent reality.

It is a high adventure into the realm of the spirit that already promises great success.

Well, if you realize it yet,

I think that we who are gathered here

have become the keeper of the conscience for all of this fellowship.

Despite our preoccupation with

facts, figures

and funds. This is no business operation

that can be simply illustrated

when you and I

error is suffering brother or sister

and we get into the family automobile,

having to drive perhaps 50 miles to pay a call.

Wait, look at the needle on the dashboard and see whether there is any gas in the tank.

And if there isn't, we go to a garage and we get it filled, and we pay money and put gas into that tank,

not with the idea of giving our fellow supper a drink of gasoline, but with the idea of propelling us to where he is.

Thereby the material and money side of this thing serve the spiritual purpose.

When we arrive,

we offer our friend love and we offer him understanding, and that is the cup of which

he drank.

Neither is this conference, in any sense

a political body.

None of us

have come here with any idea of gain and personal prestige

or of money.

We have come here not to govern,

to ensure that these services of ours

move on

and fill their appointed task.

I'm sure that in a few years

everybody will realize

that this

yearly gathering of ours

is in reality the true voice of Alcoholics Anonymous,

the short conscience of our society.

And it's beating high,

bringing new water,

while those who don't get enough

in the early days.

The conscience of this society

resided among a few scattered individuals,

at first not known to each other, at fault,

and in them

this divine spark,

'cause them

to think the right thought and to do the right thing.

Very few of us no

that this spark, which was to become Alcoholics Anonymous,

was first struck in the soul of a psychiatrist,

noted Carlio. He had a patient treated him for a year.

There was no result.

And then that very great man put aside his professional pride, he said to the patient. It's of no use. My art cannot help you. You're an alcoholic of such hope that only a spiritual awake

can expel your obsession.

Saw that man, who I shall call Roland, went out to see such an awakening.

He found it in the Oxford Group

of that time,

and this was a body of people

full of goodwill, trying to get the right thought

and trying to take the right act.

And he found there the experience the Doctor Jung hoped he would get.

He became subtle. He and another alcoholic came to an old friend of mine, the one we saw affectionately. No, it's heavy,

and temporarily every. So the government

and then Spark was struck in every and he came to me

as each of us have since come one to another

and he set the flame going

in then paired another individual,

a variable founder of this movement

and he was non alcoholic.

Doctor Silkworth at Town Hospital

and I can never forget that day so critical for Alcoholics Anonymous.

When the doctor came into my room after I had my spiritual awakening

and I asked him in great anxiety, Doctor, have I gone crazy? Well, as a professional man,

he might have said, yes, you're a hallucinate,

But he didn't.

That little man with the healing art in his hand and the love of drunks in his heart said to me, No, Bill,

you have got hold of something.

I don't know just what it is, but it's real. You'd better hang on to it.

Another man with a conscience

who got the right thought and did the right thing at just the right count.

And with that assurance,

I went out to work with alcohol

wherever they could be found.

And the little doctor at risk to his reputation Let me come back to that hospital and work there.

Well, I guess my conscience wasn't in very good working order. It has spelled like that

because for six months nobody got sold.

But during that time, I discovered that working with these others

had a great bearing on keeping me. So

then came my journey to Akron.

Well, I thought my business career might be a robot.

You remember how that flopped,

how discouraged I was, how frightened I became when for the first time, it seemed as though I might get drunk.

Then you remember how I realized

that now I needed another alcoholic as much as he needed me.

So in seeking out this

other alcoholic in a strange time,

I called up

a number of people who might put me in touch with such a person,

but they were all busy with their own affairs,

accepting one at the end of the list.

OK, she was a non alcoholic,

but she had time

and she cared enough and she said I think I know the man you want to meet.

Well, that Lady was Henrietta's father of Akron,

and it was she who brought Doctor Bob and me together.

Another person

whose conscience gave her the right thought

and the right action. Then Doctor Bob and I went to work in Akron, and the spark was passed from us to very few others. Returning to New York

more humble,

realizing now that I needed drunk just as much as they needed me, another group began to take shape.

The spark that was to become Alcoholics Anonymous

have been struck.

Well, in those days

we were very anonymous indeed.

You see, the good old Oxford Groupers had given us certain principles that we could use,

but many of their attitudes were unsuitable

through the nature of the alcohol.

Thereby I can testify that we owe them a double debt. They taught us both what and what not to do.

We were obliged to withdraw from their company

and go it alone.

Three years passed, years of terrific uncertainty.

A slip in those days was a terrible thing because we all looked at each other and said who will be next?

Then comes another great turning point. Doctor Bob and I sit in his living room in Akron. At the end of three years we commenced to count No.

And lo and behold, here are a couple Scar people.

Terrible drunks indeed. Or in those days we could only deal with the very worst. Only they would admit they were licked.

And looking over this lift, we suddenly realized that enough time had elapsed on enough cases

so that

something new

had come into our Dark World.

No new ideas to be sure, just the new assembly of old ideas.

And these had come into us

through the several channels I have named and others

as the grace of God

setting His blessing on what was to happen.

Following this realization,

we at once began to consider how this message could be spread.

For the first time in reality, we began to think in terms of function and of service and of an outgoing love that could place this message before all the drunks in the world. So we ambitiously said, even back then,

how could that be done?

Well at this point

we began to see the group concert manifest itself.

There was a little meaning, like T Henry Williams House in Akron, one of our great non alcoholic friends out there,

and the meeting was called to consider Ways and Means of spreading this message.

We invited itself into two parts.

One said let's keep it simple. If we complicated with money, paraphernalia like hospitals, paid people, we shall be ruined.

And then there was another part of the meeting which said,

but if we don't do some of these things,

people will die because the message will not reach them in time.

Our story may get horribly dark.

Perhaps something ought to be done

so the group conscience as such spoke, or perhaps first time,

and it directed me,

who had only begun to sense that I was its servant rather than its master,

to go back to New York

and get a hold of a lot of money. To set up a chain of hospital to get quite a lot of people on the payroll

because the going had been so tough that we thought we ought to extend our experienced members to our city.

And above all, we thought that an instrument of propagation

would be necessary in the shape of a book

which would state our experience in recovery.

Saw a book, some missionaries, some hospitals. We must have.

I came back to New York

full of these ideas,

convinced that we should have all of these things, and right away. The quicker the better.

I did a good deal of solicitation

our people from

but everybody fortunately looked the other way.

One day I was in my brother in law's office and he's a doctor,

and I was grousing about the stinginess of the rich when it came to fixing drunk.

And he said, you know,

I remember a man

by the name of Willard S Richardson.

I believe he was very close to the Rockefeller family, had something to do with their charity. I'm not sure he's even alive,

but supposing I crawl up over there at the Rockefeller offices and find out again, a critical turning point in our state.

Somebody with the right thought and the right act.

Immediately Dale Willard Richardson, one of the greatest friends in society will ever have, came on the wire, and he said to my brother-in-law Leonard, where have you been all these years?

Soon we were in a job. I was telling the stock.

He listened with great attention. He said let me call together a group

of France.

I think they'll want to hear this.

While her fellow needed a lot of money. I thought he did. This all looked pretty good.

So on When There's Nine and 1937 we all sat down and Mr. John D Rockefeller's boardroom.

We are all meaning a few of us Alcoholics, Willard S Richardson, my brother-in-law Frank Amos and Leroy Chipman who are still with us on our board,

Mr. Scott, Chairman, the Riverside Church, Doctor Silkworth, perhaps a few other.

Well, we alcoholic for rather stunned by this turn of events

and then I have a hauling fashion. Each one of us told his story of recovery

and then the chairman of the meeting, Mr. Scott, said. Well,

how can we help you?

And by this time I got in good voice again and began to enlarge on our great need for lots of money for hospitals, missionaries, and particularly as some needed to publish a book. Experiment

right there, Miss Scott said. Well,

isn't it a fact

Bill at the great power in this thing to sober up drunk. He's dependent upon the non professional character of your work. Isn't it this goodwill, message, carriage and person

without any demand for award that really counts?

I am powerfully attracted to this because it's like the original Christian story.

Aren't you afraid that the responsibility of plant property management and all that sort of thing goes forward?

Well, we rejoined that we were scared. On the other hand, we were scared to do nothing and let this thing run from by word of mouth.

The upshot of that meeting was that

one of those pleasant Frank Amos, always sitting right over there

at his own expense, went out to Akron to look over the situation.

We directed him toward Akron because the first group that really started there, it was a typical community.

And also we know that Smithy was a little bit harder up than I was. He was about to lose his house.

Frank went out there and came back with a glowing report.

And it was the spirit of the thing that had moved him.

He made out a report, but he saw, I believe he recommended that some sort of arrest home be set up out there and Doctor Smith could be put in charge as a doctor rather than as a professional therapist for Alcoholics.

He recommended a sum of money

that wasn't large, but large enough to make us poor drunks kind of gas.

The recommendation was carried to Mr. John D Rockefeller.

So here comes another man with a right thought and the right idea at the right time.

And the thought was totally unexpected and at first very disappointed to us,

Mr. Rockefeller and he said looked up to his friend Dick, who had bought him a report,

said that. Don't you think that money will spiral?

Something about this that is deeply moved.

We must spoil it with money.

Well,

Mr. Richardson was an entirely sure, but Mr. Rockefeller, for some strange reason, was very sure

and maintain that attitude ever since,

and he has since told me that nothing more affecting has ever crossed his life than the contract with this Society of ours.

At any rate, he put a little money in the Riverside Church treasury, and that enables Smithy and me to wiggle along

when we went out among the Alcoholics here and got money to publish our book.

And then we set about its right.

Well, the hassles, difficulties we experienced in getting that book together are simply beyond description. At that point I was sure that this group of drunks had no conscience whatever because they quarrels much,

but nevertheless a series of right actions and right thoughts, right time brought the A a book into being,

although it seemed in 1939 after it came out

that we would soon loathe it to the printer because again we were broke.

But here was our first great instrument of service.

This was something that could reach out over plains, mountains and perchance the sea

to the distant alcohol.

And it was our hopeful dream,

letting mine through the pages of that book were cut and bring recovery to those about

In the very next year, 1940,

Mr. Rockefeller reappeared and seen again suddenly saying that he'd like to give a dinner.

He would invite his friends, many of them prominent and wealthy. He'd invite some of us. Again, our hope for large funds flared up. We said to ourselves, this is it.

The stories were hard at the meeting.

Even the bankers Pleasant were visibly impressed. Things look good when John D Rockefeller, or rather Nelson Rockefeller, got up

and said that his father was very glad he could not,

that his friends could

hear this story, but that this was a moment which rested upon goodwill

and needed little, if any month.

I never can forget

the terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach as I watched about $5 billion walk out the door.

Now that story went on the

AP and the UP press wire

story, and Mr. Rockefeller had stood up

before the whole world and pointed to this struggling Society of drunk and had said for all men to hear this is good. I believe in it.

He did this at risk to himself,

at personal cost.

He gave it himself,

but not of his money.

Accepting for a little bit

after the dinner, he wrote a personal letter. All those had been invited, as well as to those who actually came,

sent them a pamphlet describing what had happened, publishing the talk.

By the way, Dr. Harry Emerson Closet came down and gave us a great plug. So did Foster Kennedy. They celebrated neurologist. Our friends of medicine and religion had begun to appear, you see.

So this letter contained a little paragraph at the end

which said, well, this is a movement of goodwill,

doesn't require much money, perhaps a little temporary aid.

And Mr. Rockefeller is very wise idea of a little temporary aid was in the statement in which he said I am giving these people $1000.

Well, when the bankers received the letter, they sort of prodded it up on the cuff, you know, and said, well, if John Dee's given $1000, I'll send in 10, which one of them really did.

The result of that was $3000. And we had $3000 a year from those dinner people for five years. And praise God, that's all of the outside money this society ever had. We were throwing on our own resources.

Then in the fall of 1939, another kind of person was the right thought came to our aid. A non alcoholic in the portion of protein houses. I was just taking his leave of us. He was then editor of Liberty. We were completely unknown. The Reader's Digest had turned down, turned us down on their promise of publicity.

We needed to let the world understand what this message was.

So Pork Knives lure caused to be published in Liberty Magazine a piece called Alcoholics and Drop and to our great joy, this brought in 800 scattered in court

and we wrote each one very carefully from our little office, which had by now been established

another step in the service picture.

We also sold these Alcoholics and their wives and friends a few books, and that book income sort of kept our little office going down here in Peasy Street in New York so we could answer those in for.

So he had taken another second service,

another step, an outgoing love toward all those who still didn't know.

Then came

the great chaos.

Attention had been attracted to us,

the editors of the Saturday Post Saturn

conference, one day trying to figure out why they publish a piece about it.

Mr. Curtis Bob

sat there, one of the owners of the Post. I believe

the editors were very much in doubt about this obscure society. So here was another man with the right thought at the right time.

And he said, I know of several recoveries.

They are nothing less than miraculous. I think we should publish a piece about this. And that's how, in 1941, Jack Alexander published

that marvelous story in the Saturday Post that brought in thousands of frantic inquiries and made us a national institution overnight.

Now that is a brief count of our pioneering time in which you see the spirit of service and the idea of spreading this message

beginning to develop.

You also see how we were saved from the perils of professionalism, large property ownership, and all of that. We were saved in spite of ourselves by our friend.

After the post please

pandemonium broke low,

we wrote all these inquiries, every single one a person letter.

Some more books moved out,

we began to get lift

of our brother and sister Alcoholics still suffering in other cities and distant places,

and we got track of traveling businessmen and salesman out of the few established group. And we put this these lists in their hand

so that when they went to district Town, they could call

upon those alcoholic and this mushrooming process

begin. AAA began to spread just like wildfire.

Thus we entered our period of adolescence

and a very exciting and dangerous period at work.

We know that God had given us a formula

by which the obsession of alcoholism could be expelled,

but we didn't know whether we could live and work together in unity

and have sufficient unity to carry the message to those who still didn't know. That was the primary problem of our adolescent courage,

so that the problem of this service office down here in New York was not only that of receiving inquiries from individuals

groups. Frantic was problem began to write in about

a court a began to be filled up with promoters. Most of us are salesman of a sort. And again, our early temptations were were were presented to us thousands upon thousands of times.

Temptations to make a lot of money out of this thing. Temptations to put AA in a business.

Struggles for press themes

among individuals.

All sorts of crackpot schemes were tried,

and out of this vast Weller of experience

which gradually informed and instructed the group conscience,

there began to evolve the tradition of Alcoholics and not,

and each of us began to see

that this Society of ours was of immensely more important than any individual in it. We began to find that in certain respects the Commonwealth Fair would have to come ahead of individual welfare and especially of individual ambition.

By this time

we found that the group conscience,

which had appeared solely erratic,

was a better girl to what we really need

in the shape of action and sound principle, than the inspired wisdom of any leader.

Now that gone very slowly upon me, I must expect

everyone of those AA traditions

represents what was a great temptation to me

from which I was not saved so much through any virtue in me as I was from the wisdom that is inherent in this group by its welfare is concerned.

So I conceded that the welfare,

the Commonwealth Fair,

had to come first. I can see that

reluctantly too, that the group conscience was often wiser than either.

I conceded that in membership matter, nobody could keep an alcoholic out of a A

I conceded, rather rebellious,

that each group ought to be autonomous,

that there could be no such thing in our society as a central government to be run by me or any hierarchy.

That each group would have to have liberty of action.

Saw we had group tongue.

Then came that struggle with the idea of whether we would, after all, become professional.

And at one point I was tempted to become a professional therapist. What the drunks in the meeting in my living room over in Clinton St.

When I announced this plan,

look at me and one of them finally said,

Bill, you can't do this to us. Happily, I listen

to the group conscience as it felt through this man,

and I beg. And so the age Bishop developed 1 by 1.

And I was not the only reluctant one. Each of us went through our period of reluctance about these principles because each one of them was deflationary to us personally.

They ran counter to our natures. They ran counter to our natural desires.

That was especially true when we come to the non controversy tradition,

Jane, we love to fight, but we very early saw that there were certain things that we couldn't fight about and survive. The kind of things that the outside world falls about, religion, politics.

No. Neither could we quarrel in public about anything, or attack anybody that became sure.

Neither could we give endorsement or form alliances to do even the best of good work, lest it compromise our single name, which it settled down by then to carrying sobriety to the alcoholic. Who wants,

then, in that matter of anonymity?

Many of us have had our temptation,

and no one more than I have.

My temptation was to sign that a book, but I could hear the group conscience speaking

and it said no, you can't do this to us.

And then I found what each of us have found, little by little, with respect to a age 12 step and age 12 positions.

At first we were death,

then we're reluctant,

then we intellectually accept these principles, saying beans are good things. These are what we should have as persons. These are what we should have as a society.

And then we take one more step,

and

intellect is transferred into right emotion, and we say that is what I want

for me and for a year. And thus we pass through the period of adolescence.

Meanwhile, our friends had rallied around us. They'd helped form this thing that we call the Alcoholic Foundation, which acted as a custodial board, our little office, which once just got out. The book expanded into the service office. The title of the book was transferred to the Board of Trustees.

Our public overall public relations were given into their custody.

The Grapevine

fell under their direction and so filed this cluster of services here in the center that enabled

AA. The function is 4.

But several years back, some of us began to be very concerned

because we felt there was still a missing link in this picture.

We realized that this foundation and its central activities

was still very remote from the group,

that there wasn't too much knowledge of it.

We couldn't talk too much about it. Like that Clock defeated itself,

it would look like it was self served.

Smithy and I awoke with a start to discover that we were the main links between these services

and those served. So after the hottest kind of debate, I assure you.

And after a lot of real dissension,

in which I often acquitted myself Ignobley,

the conscience of this group finally came up

with this basic idea. Our central services must be made the function of the whole movement.

We must build many links from these services

out to you

while we are now on the threshold of mature.

The principles of recovery or establish the principles of unity are established.

Now you must come and take your third leg.

This legacy of overall service to this movement

and a while who haven't arrived in it yet.

And that idea

began to germinate, began to grow,

and became fulfilled 3 sessions back

when in 1951, we held the first General Service Conference of Alcoholics and Arms.

That leaves us where we are this morning.

We are standing on the threshold of maturity,

although no one could say in truth that we are really mature.

This process of the touring.

Of course, we'll go on as long as we last.

Now I have been asked to speak on the milestone. The Head

and I had dwelled at length on the milestones we have already passed. Because I dislike the role

of a prophet. Well, I certainly am not that I have been mistaken to walk,

but I think that we can take a look ahead to this extent.

We can look at the problems

that occupy our immediate

forward

now. It is plain to all of us

that unless this society can develop enough brotherhood

and partnership among its members,

we shall someday fall into this unit.

And the basis of partnership and brotherhood has to be greatly improved.

Personal relations not as true

that the love of 1 drunk or another

is a wonderful thing to behold.

When the stranger is on doorstep

and we carry this message to him, we don't think our personal war

in any ordinary state. He isn't going prepared.

He may not even love.

We don't expect a thing

except the inner glow which one gets from having love

and from offering the right kind of love to a fellow human being,

in our case another drunk especially.

Shall we make him be awful

if he turns us down? Well, we say they're putting more drunk. If he carries it on and we see no more of him,

we say, isn't that wonder if he returns to become our bosom friend? Well, then we're really joyful. But we realize that that joy,

that gladness, that satisfaction is the extra dividend

of a a life

they're really sustaining thing is that we receive God's love just in proportion as we have love for others and try to give that away. So that in our 12th step

there is an expression of almost pure love,

kind of love that has no price tag.

Now then, what happens though when we move away from 12 step

and our relations with people to come closer

there we tend to revert the type again.

Take this whole subject of domestic relation.

How many of us are there now?

Oh, can

go home

with the same kind of love

for a faithful and long-suffering wife that we have had

down at the clubhouse for our alcoholic pub.

Well, lots of us can, but lots of us can't,

not yet, because there has been a profound distortion in family life due to our drinking. This is one of the overheads. So there is a whole area of personal relationships which has to do not only with sobriety, but it has to do with emotional sobriety, it has to do with the joy of living. And there is an area

I think I ought to refer to these family groups,

our wives and husbands. The wives and husbands of Alcoholics are realizing that they too have become distorted and are now forming themselves into group to find out what the matter is with them

and how the 12 steps can help help them to be better part. Numbers of those groups have increased in the last year from 200 to 400, almost like the early pyramiding process in A and I think that they will help build this huge factor. But we Alcoholics too must do our part.

Well then, in a A

as I say, we sometimes quarrel a great deal, not often about things that matter too much,

but there is a great deal of unnecessary anger, ambition,

5A tendency to dominate people or a tendency to claim the people. All those problems of personal relationship which have to do with emotional sobriety, happy sobriety,

are yet far from solution. And when we have moved on

and made a great gash in those problems, we shall have passed another milestone.

Vendor is the problem of the

complete A.

He comes in and does good work, The family is reunited, family is happy, income is good, kids don't get into any trouble,

and he assumes that he's killed. He thinks he's done his bit for A

well. Most of us know that

at some time him was a great big lump which he is nowhere near prepared to spot.

So he

and those who are causing blister

might take another look at our 12 steps, not just the 1st and the 12th, but all those in between,

and try harder to apply them in all their affairs and try harder to be more responsible about their AAA obligation.

Great progress can be made there.

Then this matter of

sponsoring new people,

since we have got

log

any number,

careful attention that we used to give is sometimes denied new people. They come into our larger meetings, they wander about. Our sponsorship is still defective. We can do much about improving that. We can remember the kind of chance that somebody gave us,

and the desire can again burn in everyone of us to give that next fellow his chance and not leave the job to Joe Dole.

Now, to be prudent is not necessarily to be careful. Curiously enough,

this society as a whole is a society which has never had a problem that is cut clear across it.

The individual has been cut to pieces with problem

and he has grown together, so it grew so there. But a IS hall has never been cut across

by a great problem or a great collapse.

Now we are living in the world

seems largely filled with nothing but problems and collections.

And for all of these lads,

17 or 18 years, God has spared our society anything that looks like a big problem.

In the meanwhile, this has permitted our reputation to be made secure in the public month.

We are not prepared to meet serious problems if it can,

and it is not fearful to say that serious problems will still

someday come to a as a hall.

Just take one not too serious and let us try to think how we would behave if this occurred.

I know of an author for example, who is a humorist on the sarcastic stuff.

I think he canceled him by belittle himself

and two or three years ago he got together a material for a funny book about a A

which would have roundly ridiculed it. The book was never published because he found too many of his old writing cronies in a A and they destroyed.

But supposing that he had published that book,

you know what our first reaction would have been? It would have been

a reaction of great race.

He can't do this for us,

but does that necessarily have to be our reaction

when we are unfairly criticized, loudly criticized at some time in the future, or actually attack?

Are we prepared

to take such attack

in and in dignity with no thought of retaliation?

And if there is any truth in some, we humbly say that our society stands correctly.

To meet the larger problems of the future, we will have to think about how we would behave and act

if this society would survive. Otherwise, we can become hopelessly involved

controversies at the public level

and destroy this wonderful reputation we have, which is already, I must say, a damn sight better than our character

today. The world is full of political division,

warring philosophies, warring nations.

Supposing that those divisions cut deep in this country sometime

and our society as such.

Start Quote.

Shall we find the wisdom and grace at such a time

to say no,

As of all these are matters on which a AS can never quarrel within the confines of the society.

This is the sort of quarreling that can destroy us, and the chance for sobriety in a new way of life for all who might come.

Shall we be able to put that temptation aside when it arrives? Conceivably we could have a religious division.

I don't believe we will,

but we might.

How shall we deport ourselves then?

And on how we act,

much will depend,

much will depend on what this bodies

the conscience of Alcoholics Anonymous is, Paul says. And bugs at such a critical juncture,

not personally face that seems to play

pop

because I think we are ready for them really.

I think we can manage them,

and I think we can manage them because of what I see here before.

I see God

speaking through the good class

in this room,

and I feel

that our guidance will be true,

that the voice of Alcoholics Anonymous

will remain clear, that its conscience is now so experienced and well related to God that it can apprehend the right thing to do

at the right time.

Despite all these perils of the road,

I know that you share with me and utter confidence about our future.

Now there's just one more temptation

through which this movement may be projected.

All around us,