David A from Texas at Joplin, MO August 27th 1994

And, and with our speaker this morning, I, I didn't know David

very well. I knew, I knew that David was in the program and I've attended several meetings that David spoke at, but I didn't know David that well other than what he had shared. So I had gone to people that I had observed David speaking with or sharing with, you know, like Wayne and Heather and

and even got greatly off to the side

compiling at least a four or five page report of what I could I could share with you in introduction of this man,

One of the old timers of the group said, Wilmas said just shut up. Let them know that David is here and he will tell you his story. Would you help me? Welcome please. David A from Dallas, TX

thank you Bill. Hi everybody, my name is David A and I am an alcoholic and only because of God's grace through the miracle of alcoholic synonymous and my soul for this day and for this I am so thankful. And first of all, let me thank the committee for inviting both Grace and myself to be here this weekend and hadn't been a wonderful, wonderful weekend

and allow this alcoholic the freedom to share this alcoholic with you and your the freedom for you to share yourselves with this alcoholic.

The only thing I know about being an alcoholic is hard drink alcohol. And when I tell anyone, any place, anywhere that inner air out of a that means I fit every word, every line, every comma, every period, every paragraph, every page. And the book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I know no other way to live sober

only by the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. And since April the 20th and 1967, I have not found any reason whatever to leave Alcoholics Anonymous to find an easier way to live sober, a more socially acceptable way to live sober, a more fun way to live sober, nor a more exciting way to live sober. Thank God I haven't had to go to one of those action reaction courses. Confrontation Movement Related Disorders Institute

What

when I got to you people my wife was related disorder

hang in there till your drawer saw off baby sexual dysfunction seminars. I'll tell you if you get as old as I am and been able to stay sober only as long as I have. Only by the grace

today. I do not need a sexual dysfunction seminar. I need a memory course

now. We hear a lot of things today. You know, I'm an adult child of an alcoholic dog, cat, snake, kangaroo, gorilla, zebra, glue bottle, et cetera, et cetera. And you know and inner child,

the only human being that I've ever known that knows 100% about a human child inner child is a pregnant woman.

But I'll let you know right up from and I'm adult spouse of an Allen on

our stories disclosed in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, what we like now.

I found myself laying in the county jail once again, maybe not a county, maybe a state, but once again this county jail. Everything dear and dear, what I thought had been gone.

And I found out something planning that jail. Until God calls you home, you ain't going nowhere. You hear it all time. And after these meetings keep coming back. Well, why don't we just stay and then we don't have to keep coming back

and I'm laying there in my entire life flashed before me

to where I could constantly remember as a youngster

and I was born and raised in one of the finest families that God ever put on this earth. A mother and father who dedicated their two lives to give to the two sons that were born into that marriage. And I've been the oldest everything that was denied them when they were growing up. And if one of the sons going to become an alcoholic, I do not know of a better deal When you've got a mother and father that's willing to go to every in any length to keep you from hurting and to keep you from suffering and to keep you from bringing shame and disgrace on

name and the family of religion in the family of heritage. And the alcohol was always in the home that I was born and raised in. It was on the dining room table. It was on the side boards. It was in the closet. My mother did not drink alcohol. My father would come home every night at 6:00 right there and then. You knew he wasn't alcoholic. And he'd take his bottle out and he'd pour exactly 1 ounce of alcohol and a glass of whiskey,

fill it up with a little water and drink it. Put the cap back on the bottom and say, Mama, let's eat supper.

When we were just little youngsters, my father would allow us to taste it and he would always tell us that alcohol was good for the system, good for the appetite. But drunkenness was a scent, was a disgrace. And I don't know, my brother, he is, was the most stupid drinker of alcohol than anyone ever been around in your life.

But I don't know what it was, whether I was different or whether it doesn't make a better difference. All I know is that when he gave me that teaspoon full first and then later a tablespoon and later a shot glass and then I stole everything from then on.

I liked what it I liked it, I liked it, I liked it and a little did. I realized that as you planted something in my head that David, ever chance you're going to

get, you're going to take a drink of alcohol to reproduce what that effect was when you were just a longster. And I didn't know where I was in that time, but I knew that alcohol did. And then I and then I would, I did something and I was injured and I lied to my mother with a very, very serious, bold ailment in those days called osteomyelitis, before all the modern therapies that we have.

And I was condemned to be a cripple in my life. They were going to remove my right leg. And I'm laying in the hospital with all these, in the Catholic hospital with all these nuns running around looking like Penguin, you know,

and, and, and I was the only one on the orthopedic ward that was a child. And I was their pet. And I found out long ago that you could fake pain and everything else, then they'd give you these elixirs for pain. And it all has alcohol in it. And I left that hospital on crutches, condemned to be a cripple the rest of my life. And I couldn't run and play with the rest of the youngsters. And so my mother and father decided that I was going to be a concert pianist. And I didn't want to be a concert pianist.

And my father bought the 1st baby grand piano at South Dallas had ever seen. And I'm sitting there with my little Buster Brown hair cut on, you know, and all that and they're out there playing and doing all those things and God Almighty. And then I said, well the heck with this, not get into Daddy's whiskey. And that leg looked like it's getting better. And I had a boyfriend

whose father had a business down on Skid Row. And Jack said to me one day, he said, you know, you are so miserable, why don't you come down? We'll park you on top of an apple crate. And he'll count the trucks as they're being loaded and unloaded and off the wind. And I went down and I was 10 1/2 years of age

as I went down to the first kid row that I was to live in and out on. And I've lived on three of them. Living out on in my lifetime, one for over six years, one for over 4 years and one for the last one for 14 months was the toughest.

And I'm not going to stand up here this morning and share life on schedule with you. The skid roles that I lived on, there was number day and there was number night and there was number sun and there was number move and there were no stars. There were no clouds. Just

days and weeks and months and seconds and minutes and hours. Just in and out of blackness and darkness. And the best way I can describe that kind of an existence, just bodies and feet. You don't care if you live, you don't care if you die. You don't care if you bathe. You don't care if you don't bathe. You don't care if you eat. You don't care if you don't eat. You don't care if you see your loved ones. You don't care if you see them. You just don't care. And an alcoholic cannot stay on schedule. An alcoholic has got to get off of Skid Row because an alcoholic will lie about that alcoholic's drinking and that alcoholic

hide that alcoholic bottle. And I'll tell you right now, if you hide your wine bottle down on the road, you're not long for this earth. I don't mind telling you. As I said, I didn't have to be down there. And I went down the first day and I got in with 11 Blacks and big. We started drinking Bay rum and wine and that was the standard fare. And later on, as I grew older physically and get more money in my pocket, I could go from that Bay Room and that wine to that good stuff and never miss a lick and come back down from that good stuff down to Gypsy Rolls and Thunderbird and never miss a lick. I don't know about anybody,

NIA. I don't nobody in this meeting. I don't know about any alcoholic anyplace. Anyway. I frank it because I like what it did to me and with me and farming, and when it got in and down and threw me, and I like what it allowed me to do 2 You are against you when it got in and down and threw me. And I learned a lot of things down on Skid Row. Little that I ever realized the way I drank and the way I lived would ever be worth a tinker's darn to another human being.

I learned a lot of things down on schedule. Never get you back up against the walls. Didn't have a back door window you could jump out of If you smoke or eat anything. Keep both hands free so you can hit and run.

Always been 5 foot six. I was born 5 foot six and I drink that juice and I'd be 7 foot tall. I've had hundreds of fights, never one-on-one. My nose has been where my naval is. My navel has been right here. I've been all rearranged when I was 14151617 years of age and runoff and joined Ringling Brothers and Barnum Baylor Circus. And God, what a wonderful weekend has been to be shared with Millie.

Millie came on the show after they run me off and and and and I went in the days, Oh God, when the wrinkling show was the finest and largest under canvas of the entire world. And it comes to a town and all the elephants and all them, you know, they dragged the wagons down, found with the colossi going and good God Almighty and and and I went with them and

went because you could drink and you could fight.

And I look around here and I don't see any circus looking drinkers. Maybe old Millie was, I don't know,

and I learned to drink the most beautiful concoction in the circus that's ever been devised by a man called Green Lizard circus style. A tremendous drink. The lecture sodium bromide, lucky Tiger Harris on it. And I'll tell you, I used to drink those that stuff and I'd see Bambi and those animals and technical or long before while did you put them on?

But I'm trying to live 3 colds of living. I'm trying to live the cold of living that society was demanding that I live and that's go to school and become a useful human being

and to be of service to whatever God I believed in or didn't believe in and to my fellow man and not end up later on in that lives and in coverage and sleeping on steam greats and

cardboard boxes, jails, goonie roofs, you name them. Then I'm trying to live the code of living. My mother and father wanted me to live and they had all the money. And if you had already been in all the trouble I'd been in was in and getting ready to get into it takes a lot of money to get you out. So you get back in it again.

And then I'm trying to live the code of living that alcohol was demanding all my life. And you're way ahead of me. You know which one went out? You certainly did. How are the circus That was wonderful in those days, Tom Mix and his trick, Harsh Tony. They ran the Wild West show, you know, and and all those things and and I drank with the most delightful drunks that I have ever drunk in my life. And it's the only ones that that were shorter than me and I taller than all of them. I drank with all the midgets

and let me tell you that is the wildest bunch and this God's world. First of all, they are tremendous athletes and they get into every, we'd get into every kind of trouble that was imaginable under that man could possibly do. And one day John Ringland N called me up before me, and he said, boy, you got to leave.

You're running my midges,

I said they're running me. And I went back to the midgets and I said he's making me go. And they all went to see him. And he said if he goes, we go. And you can't have a good circus without wild animals, clowns and midgets. And my mother and father would find me and they jerk me back and put me back in school. But my body would be in the school chair but my mind would be way out there because I had already experienced and seen some things in life, particularly down on Skid Row to where life meant nothing.

Cut people's throats and to walk over them and that was it. And just disregard them just like human garbage.

And, you know, and, and, and, but my mind was out there, but I had to get sober and Alcoholics Anonymous to find out that the reason my mind was out there, the reason that I wanted to go back out there and drink because I wasn't through drinking.

If you're new and Alcoholic Anonymous,

or if you're still wandering around about our remarkable recovery program, and I'll tell you it is the most precious recovery program for an alcoholic because the world has CDs either every will see,

for God's sakes,

fit in with

our description of an alcoholic.

Our description of an alcoholic. Not the National Council,

not treatment modalities description, not society's description, but our description of an alcoholic. We have 3 descriptions of an alcoholic. Thank God A has never been

the final authority because it's designed for freedom, for lettuce. Our own selves determine who we are and what we are as a result of coming and and believing and then come to see. Come to see. We have 3 descriptions of an alcoholic.

The first one there were many women who have lost the ability to control the drinking. It doesn't say you're an alcoholic because you guys drunk the road hot checks you run the old lady all shot the policeman there did this or that. No, where many women have lost the ability to control the drinking,

and that the obsession of every abnormal drinker is to somehow someday be able to control

is drinking. A normal drinker doesn't have to control it to enjoy it,

but an abnormal drinker has to control it in order to enjoy. The second description we agnostic that if when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely or if when drinking you have little control over the amount that you take. A is very generally said that you are probably alcoholic, but it also says if this be the case,

then we're gonna have to have this spiritual experience

in order to begin to survive. And then the third description of an alcoholic is our first step with Billy. We were pilots or alcohol that our lives covered management

suffering from A2 fold illness of mind and body, a mental obsession so powerful. And and Johnny, last night just brought so many memories back when he talked about Papa

and Papa, like you called your son,

you won't have any truth with. He'd look the other way.

Yeah,

from the old school

probably used to talk about this twofold illness of mind and body. The mental obsession, so powerful it was condemning me to drink against my own will in the physical nature of the illness, was condemning me to die for, continued to drink,

continue to drink. And I did not know this. I did not know this. I thought I was having fun. I thought I was changing this little weakling with this bad leg and this little thing that was a coward on the inside into some human being that was becoming macho, that human being. And then little did I realize what the purpose was and the reason for it until I come to alcohol. It's an honor,

and somebody sat down with me. Another human being, an alcoholic, a member of a

you could see in me when I couldn't see it myself and begin to tell me their story. But that was many, many years later, many, many years later, I finally graduated and I was late there in that jail cell and, and I realized that, that I, I still stayed down on Skid Row, but went on to school, went to Southern Methodist University and graduated Southern Methodist University and,

and World War Two was coming on. And if you're about half hot, they'd give you the permit. They allowed me to go to professional school and, and at the first year, at the end of the first year, my professional school, I clunked out, still living down on schedule. I didn't flunk out because of my laziness. I didn't flunk out,

I couldn't stay sober, I couldn't concentrate.

And in order to survive, you have to learn how to do a lot of illegal things. And finally I met this wonderful gal

and we and we started kind of communicating

and finally we decided we're going to get married. And I told Grace, I said, well, if we're going to marry, we're going to have to marry. It's going to be some conditions on this thing. She said, what's that? I said, your parents are going to have to pay half our living expenses. My parents going to have to pay half our living expenses and you go to work and I'll go back to school

and we were married under those conditions. And that's ideal for a practicing alcoholic. You don't have to do anything. Somebody feeds you, somebody clothes you, somebody bathes you, somebody gives you money, somebody bails you out all the time.

And then I finally got through professor school by hook or crook, and the United States Navy made a very tremendous mistake. They declared me an officer and a gentleman

and I went silent forth the service with my wife and the first time I didn't get in too many troubles I was on Jeep carriers. Oh, I forget miss ship couple of times. You don't know what it is to be extremely drunk and unsteady of balance and you fall off the fantail of a battleship

and that thing is in dry dock.

And I fallen off to New Jersey two times, once in dry dock in Bremerton and once off the Inchon. And I finally come back and come back to Dallas and, and, and I opened up a dental practice and I began to make more money than there's money. And I put the money in my right hand pocket, steal it with my left hand, Didn't pay taxes. You know, a drunk when he's moving and he's busy and he thinks he's a High Roller, he ain't got time for all them things, you know. No, one of these days I'll straighten out, you know,

and and and and beginning to get in a lot of trouble. And it was on the last Sunday in August the 1950s.

This Sunday in August,

50 years ago today,

I mean for 195044 years ago, a group of fine sober members of Alcoholics Anonymous invited me to come to an open a a meeting at the Suburban group in Dallas, TX.

The Wednesday before that Sunday, I stumbled into one of Dallas is more affluent Barber shops and I sat down at this manicurist table and I was reasonably more at myself that morning. And that means that, you know, I could sit in the chair for about 10 minutes without falling out of it. I can navigate to in the front from the men's room and go out and get me another bottle whiskey. I sat down, this old husband guy looked at me and she said David, and right there and then I should have known something's wrong. She didn't call me doctor.

She said, David, I belong to a deal called Alcoholics Anonymous and I have not had a drink of alcohol in one year. And I looked at it and I said you're a liar. Nobody stays over a year, maybe a day, maybe two days, 3 days at the most, but not not a year. They just look like a drunk old look, like sort of female looking Bill over here. You know,

her face wasn't real pretty. It looked like a trucking run over it and then backed over to see if it's done a good job.

Her nose have been broken so many times this large leaned on the left side of her face

you know, and the best way to describe it is looks as a drunk. You know in our part of the country and in this part of the country if your car is caught out in a hail storm it's pretty badly beaten up right when you get your insurance truck. Some wise brother said I don't get it fixed. Let it sit out in the hot sun for about 3 or 4 weeks and all the dents will pop back. Her dents never popped back out but God she was a great gal. Now, when is with drinking and I drunk alcohol

reputation of being the meanest, ugliest fightness, nastiest woman drunk that God walked on this or she could I drink any man, any place, anywhere on the moon, off the moon, around the moon, on the earth. She carried a big black purse. Always had two pints of whiskey in that purse and she'd kill you if you got in that purse.

And here I looked up at her.

Here I looked up at her. I didn't realize at that time and that moment that she was planning the Seed of Attraction and Alcoholics Anonymous.

I looked up at ears and God, her lipstick was on her lips and not an eyebrow.

And back in those days, you know, before pantyhose, the gals, you should wear holes which seams up the back. And he used to hold them with Garter belts, you know, to pull their drawers down, their socks up, you know, And I left and hers weren't drooping.

And I sniffed her and she didn't spell halfway of cleaning Avon bottle and Avon woman in a whiskey bottle. But more important. And I noticed that she changed when she's giving my manicure that morning. She was buffing my nails instead of my knuckles in my ears.

But I noticed the real change, and the change was in her eyes.

And Alcoholics Anonymous, we have two kinds of eyes. We have those sad, sad, sick eyes. And then we have those happy, dancing, laughing, sparkling, living, sober eyes. Oh, yes, we've got another kind of looking eyes, those glassy eyes. You know, they don't get up behind one of these things like I am had to drink alcohol, you know, and then fall over.

Her eyes were sparkling and they were jumping and they were laughing and she looked like she was having a lot of fun living sober. And then she turned another manicurist and shot by the name of Moina. And she says Moina here is my sponsor. And she has 15 months over in this deal called Alcoholics Anonymous. And back in those days and Alcoholics Anonymous, and when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous,

anytime we mentioned or talked about our sponsors, it was with reverence

because we respected our sponsors,

because we literally turned our lives over the care of their experience and not their opinions. Because we find as a result of our experiences in Alcoholics Anonymous and opinions in many, many instances have a tendency to make sick people sicker and in some instances physically kill people. All we have to share is our own experiences of what it used to be like, what happened, what we're like now. And I did not know this.

And I drunk far more alcohol with Molina. I never did with Edith

and I looked at Moline and I said Molina, you are bigger lie than goofy over here. I said Molina, we had a drink. She said, no David, I've not had a drink of alcohol with you or anyone else or myself in 15 continuous months. It has not had a drink of alcohol in 12 continuous months. Little did I realize that those precious words that fine lady said to me that morning would stick with me for many, many years. She talked about continuous sobriety.

At that time, I had no reason whatsoever to know,

but it was one day at a time

because I knew of nothing. I didn't know the nature of my problem.

I thought that it was just natural for me to do what I was doing.

This is what Doctor Silkware talks about it for real. It's real. It's real. And I didn't know this. I certainly didn't. And then Molina says, David, she said this Sunday we have an open AA meeting and it's open so the public can come in and hear and see how an alcoholic lives. The recovery program of Alcoholics Anonymous and how an alcoholic

lives the a way of life.

Only members of Alcoholics Anonymous will participate in the meeting because because it's an A meeting.

Just because it's open doesn't mean it's open for every idiot to come in and talk. That's exactly the word she said.

Because they don't know nothing.

So we're going to share our experiences. And then the last Sunday of the month, it's tradition of the group to have a sort of little birthday party for those who have one or more years of continued sobriety. And she said we would like for you and your wife to come to that open meeting and stay afterwards for that birthday party. And I thought that the only reason that people such as you would invite someone such as me to come to one of your A A meetings and stay to one of your A functions is that you needed to have some good looking, outstanding and successful professional man. Come

you uglies in community

and I'm glad to come help you. So I went home and I told my wife Grace and God she was thrilled because people are long since quit asking us to come around. Grace used to ask me why they were not asked to the outdoor BBQ, square natches, round dances, nightclub, supper party, swimming pool parties, card parties, domino parties. I said it's you, it's you.

And then every time we're asked to go out on Saturday night, you start on me on the Monday before you start screaming and you start hollering. Don't. You're not going to drink, you're not going to get drunk, are you?

He wake me up out of a sound sleep 530 the next morning screaming. Did you hear what I said? And you keep it up. Tuesday, Tuesday night, Wednesday, Wednesday night, Thursday, Thursday night, Friday, Friday night. And what a tremendous price societies had to pay is paying. I guess we'll always pay

those who love us, those who hate us, those who do not even care that we exist on this earth. What a tremendous price those people are paying to find out that the more you scream in our kind about our drinking, the more we're going to drink. I said. Then furthermore, when we get to where we're supposed to get to, before I can even park the car, you're out of the car. You run in, you grab the host and the Hostess. You chase them through the kitchen and the den in the backyard and the alley and the bushes and the garbage and the neighborhood screaming. Don't you give him a drink?

Well, when you're sick, that's what's wrong with you.

But she said through tearful eyes. We go to the meeting and I said yes. And so that Sunday morning I got up at 5:30 in the morning to get ready to go to an A meeting 5:30 in the afternoon

when I was a good self respected drinking drunk dude when he gets up 5:30 on Sunday morning drinks alcohol. That's what it is. Just let's face it, very simple. Golfers, golf, fishermen, fish, drunks, drink. There's no miss. I started sucking on a brand new bottle of juice. You know how it is that gets you breathing started.

Then that second drink regulates you breathing. Then that third drink goes down to both heels. Just set you there. Now you're ready to do some real drinking Orange. And I'm drinking and I'm looking up at the birds and the bees and the trees and I'm hearing the neighbor screaming, Johnny, get dressed, we'll be late for church. And I said all those sick people,

they do not know what living really is. If they could just learn how to control it and enjoy it like I was doing, they would find out that right after breathing in and out. Alcohol is a second greatest gift God's given mankind. Amen. Took another drink, drank half of that 5th. Put the other half the 5th in the trunk of my car

because I knew I was going to be required to have another drink of alcohol. Maybe a minute later, maybe an hour later, maybe 6 hour later. I knew it not. And I didn't know the exact reason until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm one of these that firmly believes that if and when an alcohol alcoholic comes to us, then until then, unless that alcoholic is willing to find out what's wrong with that alcoholic, that alcoholic will never be able to find out what can get right with that alcoholic. And I went into the Bay and the shaved and

everything in life and rich looking to impress those four sick people and Alcoholics Anonymous. But on a beautiful brand new tailor made suit white on white monogram shirt monogram Hank if monogram tie monogram drawers put on my diamond ring my diamond watching the trademark of every good self respect for high rolling drinking drunk

brand new pair of custom made alligators shoes. I looked just like a used car salesman

or a dope dealer.

And at 10:30 in the morning I'm out in my long road Master Buick honking a horn and I can't race with the rollers in her hair. And she has on it that all your fault kimono that they just love to live in and dwell in and dying and crying to where she lost the string around the middle and spin together with a big baby diaper pen. And she's pulled all the threatened and the patent and the fuzzing and the buttons off the front,

front just covered with tears, stains and cigarette burned. That's what us drunks and Alcoholics Anonymous lovingly call the Al Anon Designer House Code.

And meanwhile all the neighbors are gathered out and her side is lined up over here and my side is lined up over here

and I can still hear the fine ladies of the neighborhood saying, isn't it a shame it's such a beautiful and fine lady and the mother of two beautiful little boys married to such a sorry, no good drunk like him and my bunch over here hollering. I let her have it. David Letter

and that used to be the weekend entertainment and ever, ever neighborhood we lived and we moved 24 times before we come to our Cosmopolitan sometimes at midnight, high noon day breaks head of the sheriff, sometimes with the sheriff sometimes behind the sheriff just kept moving. I said let's go to the meeting. She said don't get started for several hours. You're no good drunk.

And that she turned on her heels and went back in the house. And that started 7 tough hours here. It was Sunday and I'm sucking on the only bottle of juice that I got and knowing I was going to have to have me a drink. And when I was drinking, I rolled it all the way. And one of the biggest problems I had before I got sober, with the exception of the last three years of my drinking,

people would pull me off my drunks and I wasn't through drinking. And I'd come in and I'd pledge and I'd cry and I get all my knees and I put my hand on the Bible, in the Bible around the Bible, on the cats back under the belly. It didn't make a difference. I'll never do it again. And and I'd wait till they wrote me a check and some money and tucked in my shirt pocket. And as soon as they've turned their back, I'd run off to finish the drum. Now I was going to stay away from home kind of drunk, not on purpose. I'd get drunk and I ended up in countries I never knew existed.

Earth. I ended up in institutions I never knew they ever had on his her. I ended up with people many times I've never saw before in my life. Sometimes with money, sometimes without. Sometimes with clothes on, sometimes the other way. I've gone one time they tell me 11 months I really don't know and I come in the house wearing the same clothes I guess I've been in for about 5 months and no one knew where I was. My mother, my father, my wife, my children, my enemies, my patients, my friend. No one knew where I was.

I'm running in the house and I asked my wife this brilliant question. Did anybody call?

That does not make for good marriage relationship. I'll tell you it certainly didn't. So I knew that if I drank, I'd either have to call a bootleg or taxip. And I knew that I blow the deal.

You see, when I got out of the service the first time in 1947, the sober members of Alcoholics Anonymous in Dallas, TX tried to let me. They tried to let me in 48, to try to let me in 49. They tried to net me in January 1950 and they thought set the trap. On the last Sunday of August of 1950, I finally found enough just to nurse me along and keep the edge going and got it. But that's the hardest drinking that there is when you drink it. And I honk the horn and the outcomes. Grace. And off we go to the meeting

and we go in and it must have been about 50 members of Alcoholics Anonymous and their wives and the kids and the poodle of two jumping up and down. It looked like to be they were all smoking cigarettes and they were hugging and they were kissing and they were laughing and they were scratching. And I stepped back and looked at those people and I said, by gosh, you fear alcoholic and they're not drinking alcohol and they're that happy. Then they have to be a dope. Then I looked around. I saw them signs in an aid group. And I said, my God, I'm in a kindergarten.

And then I saw a butt for the grace of God. My head ducked because I knew at that time that I was not living card to dictate to God's will for for me.

And I wanted it to firmly believe that if women alcoholic comes to us, that even though many of us come to Alcoholics Anonymous without a full string of lights in her head, that deep down inside every one of us know this.

If there is a principle

that we very seldom if never hear disgusting Alcoholics Anonymous,

they were born human beings first.

Not all, but so many get carried away and they're brainwashed before they get to us

about this syndrome. Born an alcoholic? Hey, interested. And if you're born an alcoholic, if you want, let's get the idiot out of the ditch and go about living. We get so carried away when we cross the invisible line. How can you know when you cross an invisible line, when it's invisible

and they get on all these syndromes and all these other things? No, no, interesting that that's the reason why Definitely A doesn't have a definition of alcoholism. It has descriptions of an alcoholic

and allows us to freedom to come in and begin to live under what is one of God's great kids and of this most precious program that we have. You see, every one of us are born human individual spurt human beings, and when we're born human beings and given the most precious gift

than a human being I'll ever have been allowed to be begin to breathe in and out right there and then is the creation, formation and development of self assistance, self centeredness. And from this selfishness of self centeredness stems all of our defects of character, those defects that we refuse to recognize that made our lives

unmanageable. Resent myself as dishonesty and fear and I want to tell another human being I don't phony we are or what's really churning on within side of us. Because you see, Alcoholics Anonymous does something that formalize organizes. Religion will never have its success. They have

medicine has not, is not will ever be able to do it. Psychiatry has not is not will ever be able to do it. Government agencies has not is not will ever be able to do it. Social services has not is not will ever be able to do it. Human willpower has not is not will ever be able to do it. Treatment modalities has not is not will ever be able to do it. Correctional facilities has not is not will ever be able to do it. Horoscopes has not is not will ever be able to do it.

By rhythm Charts has not is not will ever be able to do it.

Acupuncture has not is not will ever be able to do it. Hypnosis has not is not will ever be able to do it. Witch doctors have not Alcoholics and honor reaches down the innermost depths of a human being,

this fine precious thing that only God gives a human

deep within us when we're born and after we come, it gets physically comfortable from the agent that forced us to come to Alcoholics Anonymous. That fine precious thing that says that's fine. Still, quiet voice. Thank you Little Alcoholic

for not drinking alcohol today. Thank you, Little Alcoholic for finding a way

to have a reasonably good night's sleep. But more important, thank you, little alcoholic, for finding a group of people who love you no matter what you have done, what you are doing, or what you ever will do.

And that is where the power of our society lies. One drunk talking to another. That's what's made Alcoholics Anonymous.

That's the reason that every self help group in this God's world and over 150 some might they want what we have, but they haven't gone through the frustrations of humans in the line of keeping Alcoholics Anonymous directed in zeroed into one thing, the singleness of purpose. That's what's made Alcoholics Anonymous because and, and God will allow us to have it as long as we remain singleness of purpose and until after that, I don't know what

will do. And every a group with no exception, the ones that are in constant turmoil, the ones that are always scratching for money, the always that they're this or that have all hewed away

from the singleness of purpose

when that drunk comes through the door

that's looking to live once again under the canopy of God's love and grace. And we're derelict when we get involved in everything except the recovery program of Alcoholics Anonymous. When that alcoholic comes and sharing one-on-one and giving opinions and letting them read books that God Almighty, I read those books before I got here and I'll tell you right now,

I darn it went crazy

when I'm reading the book about that's the only book I ever read for series is that book.

1212, the second book that I read for Sirius is the most second precious book I have and XA comes to page because there is where I found where the Alcoholics and the frustrations in everything they did to come right back to the where the reason that our traditions are all about that each group has one primary purpose to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers and it's it's message and a a message or is it some other message and every all we we're derelict if we don't look at ourselves when an alcoholic comes

leave, say, and goes back to drinking and so easy to say, well, they'd rather be drunk than sober. They're not ready yet. I don't know about you, but I've been in a group over half of this world and I've never been in a group where they got an estimate where they stick in up, down and threw an alcoholic to see if they're ready or not.