A.A.'s Three Legacies

And have therein found a liberty, a brotherhood they can't deserve. Man and God, I wish none of us could have dreamed in yesteryear.

Nowadays,

as this structure approaches completion,

we clearly CAA in three dimensions,

the dimension of recovering, the dimension of unity and by dimension of service.

Without anyone of these, AA couldn't fund me.

The individual must lose his obsession.

As groups and as a movement, we must need to remain in unity

and above all, a a being, a program of action. We must function or without us, far without of a, a faith without words. He's very dead indeed.

As we look out upon our destiny, let us pause and mark those moments,

our realization and decision

that have made A A What it is to do

when you stop to think about it.

A A is made-up of a series of such realizations and decision by individuals and by groups.

Let's see what some of those were.

The first one is common to every alcoholic here. Tonight

it came to me,

one summer day in 1934, when I lay in town, hospital

and new for the first time,

that I was utterly powerless to go on live.

I know that I was in a grip of a power greater than myself.

And he was John Balikon.

It is by a singular paradox.

That's that conviction of publicness

is a cornerstone of our success. It is the essence of the first step of the A A program.

So I came to that point on that summer day.

What This realization was not only shared

by May, it was shared by another.

It was shared by Lord,

my Good Wife,

who sat downstairs talking to Doctor Silkwood.

And the Goodman went on to explain that my habit of drinking had become an infection,

almost an insanity

that guarantee that I would go on against my will, drinking to the very end.

And she said what do you mean doctor? By the end

then, the good man had to explain that since my obsession condemned me to drink, my increasing physical sensitivity or allergy

was finally condemned me to madness or death,

perhaps within a year.

So as we Alcoholics present tonight have shared the conviction of hopelessness,

so I'll have our good life and mothers and fathers and friends.

Well,

leaving the hospital that time I'm kept sober by fear for sale few months.

What the obsession cost me once more. November 11th, 1934

and I fell to drinking again, this time alone in the kitchen at 182 Clinton St., Brooklyn.

I was alone because Lloyd. Why does it work in a department store supporting me?

Not long after that,

a realization came to a friend of mine,

himself a hopeless alcohol I had so branded here, but now he had been released. And being released, he thought of me

just as your friends in their turns have thought of you and bought this message.

So presently he's in the kitchen. That's sentence tree

sober. I had none of it being sober in New York for years,

I said to him.

What about a drink, Abby?

No, he said. I'm not drinking

that. Are you on the water wagon? No, I'm just not drinking today.

Very curious that question,

I said. What got into you, my friend?

I'm looking at me, he said, simply and smilingly. I've got religion.

I had a giant thought that was

I fancied that he had

exchanged alcoholic insanity for religious insanity.

Well, one had to be polite. I said. What brand of religion have you got?

He said. I wouldn't call it a religion at all.

The religion of common sense, perhaps?

I met up with a group of people

and I drew from damn certain essential ideas, not peculiar at all to them,

about a way of life

that did the job for me. And here is what I did. I got honest with myself as never before.

I talked over my personality, the facts, with another in confidence.

I visited the people I had harmed and made restitution,

thereby sweeping away the debris of the pen.

And then I had learned of a new kind of giving, kind of giving that demand no reward either of money or press speech.

And he said, Bill, I know that you're I've a very skeptical 1.

That's my drive. But I found that I couldn't make that simple program of living work until I asked God as I understood God to help him. Such was my friend's story over the kitchen tape.

The impact on me was terrific.

Why? Well, you all know one alcoholic was talking to another. One alcoholic was carrying this message where no other person on earth could.

What? Like many of you, since I rebelled at his concept of God.

Fortunately he didn't try to evangelize me.

He still took his leave. He left me to think it off. And think it over I did. In nor waking moment thereafter could I get the vision of his face

and the sound of his voice out of my mind.

Drinking on a couple of weeks,

I finally said what all Alcoholics here have said. In effect, I said to myself, after all, who are beggars to be true?

Who am I to say there is no God

and if there is a great position,

perhaps I had better seek him out.

I will try my friends. Simple fun.

Well, I started for

Towns Hospital

and on the way I bought a bottle. You know it is customary with us who are about to be killed for the last time to get terribly sued.

Arrived there. I waved the bottle over my head

and shot at drunkenly at good old doctor. So forth. This time, Doc, I've got something.

So three or four days later,

I'm not in bad shape, free now from alcohol and sedative.

I'm just depressed, terribly depressed.

So are you see, I still rebelled a little.

Then one morning, something happened.

It's happened to all the Alcoholics and their families. My friends stood in the dock.

As you all thought, so did I. I said to myself. Here is a man who practices what he preaches.

You see, I hadn't

seen him for years. What was he doing up there so early on this morning?

Well, again, he's prudent, he said. Well, I've just come to pay a visit. Bill, Sorry you're up here. Thought I'd drop by

and he put me on such a spot that I finally had to ask him what my friend is. That neat little formula by what you got released, as you say, from your alcohol. Oh yes, he said. Why? It's very simple. You just said honest with yourself, talk it out with another, make amends to people you harm, try to help somebody

without any demand for a warrant and trade or whatever God there is. For me it was as simple as that. And when I had done these things wholeheartedly,

I was relieved of my obsession. It seemed to me that it was taken away from me. I don't feel like I'm on the waterway.

Soon after repeating with simple tail, he left.

Then came to me the great realization of my life,

the central one of it all, and the very same one which has come to each a a membership.

Rebelling a little still, I sunk into a deeper and deeper depression,

and in the bottom of that set, I suppose the last trace of my obstinacy was crushed up.

I was in fact a child crying in the dark

and I said, as you have said now I will do anything to get well,

anything to get left. God knows this is more serious than cancer,

and indeed I have a cancer.

Are the mind, are the emotions and of the soul. Yes, I will do anything to get well.

And then with no hope,

no faith at all, I cried out. If there is a God, will he show himself?

My experience was granted to me very suddenly. It seemed to me that plate lit up

in a great white light in the mine. Guy, I seem to be on a mountaintop.

A great wind is blowing,

and I know it is not a there, but a spirit.

There are no word to describe those minutes.

At length I find myself on the bed.

But now I lie in a different world.

I am at one with the whole universe.

A sense of presence is around and through me

and I say to myself,

saw this is the God of the preacher.

Thank God that I'm a free man.

I lay there a long time

in this new state.

Presently, however, my modern education got busy. It began to say to me, You're hallucinating,

you had one of these emotional conversion experiences. Maybe it isn't so better calling the doctor.

So comes

that grave and good old man, Doctor Selfless. I tell him that. Sorry,

how many skeptical men of science would have said to me

all bail, You'll feel better tomorrow. Don't be worried about this little hallucinosis.

But he didn't say that. He listened carefully, sympatheticly, because he was a great human being.

At length he said, No, my boy, you're not crazy. There is some subtle difference in you. I can't put my finger on it.

Some great psychic event has happened here.

I have never witnessed one of these conversion experiences,

but once in a blue moon they do sober up drunks. I've read about them in the books.

No, my boy, said The great man. You are not crazy, and whatever it is you found, you'd better hold on to it. It's so much better than what had you only a brief hour ago.

Some here will say, but I didn't have an experience like that.

My answer is yes you did, and yes you have

had an identical experience

in with you 2 have been unable to do the impossible by a far greater than your own and I. And I fancy that had your experiences come in 6 minutes instead of six months or six weeks, you too would have seen the sky at 1:00.

So a pair is another cornerstone principle and I,

well,

I was terribly impressed

by the impact of this experience,

wondered why such simple principles in the hands of my friend could have produced such a powerful effect.

It must have been that he somehow struck me at a deep level. Joan Hoppeth obsessed that was it. 1 alcoholic talking to another.

Then I did just what you have done would have done. I began frantically working with other Alcoholics.

Nothing happened for six months. I was preaching. When I talked about that hot flash, the guns just tapped their heads and said, well, you know.

Meanwhile, Dr. Silk Works

kept insisting on emphasis upon the medical side of the picture,

he said. Why don't you pound it into them

that this is a fatal progressive malady, an obsession that condemns them against their wills to drink and so to die?

And I had just begun to do this. Things were looking up a little bit

when some of my relatives and friends began to say, when is this guy Bill going to go back to work and get lost out of that damn department store?

Goaded by these remarks, I began to go over to Wall Street.

I had no friend.

I began to step in brokerage shop

pumping like macabre that something would turn out, and sure enough, it said

a chance acquaintance with a stranger. A business deal I'm taking to Akron, OH, looks very promising. I may even become president of a small company.

Then the deal falls through the crash.

I'm alone in the hotel.

My fair weather friend had gone home.

Then, for the first time in months,

I thought about drinking.

I got frightened. I said to myself, Lookout, this is it. I'm walking between the church directory and the bar room at the other end of the lobby.

Then another essential idea put in. Its apparent.

I realized how much working with these other Alcoholics had meant to me,

though it had meant nothing to them yet.

How, when I work with others,

those waves of South City

anxiety and delight would magically disappear. And I thought to myself,

now I need an alcoholic just as bad as he could possibly need me.

I'm in danger of getting drunk. I must find another alcoholic in this town. And right now I

called a preacher.

He was a little puzzled that I was a drunk from New York who wished to find some drunks to work on.

Drunks. Drunks, one at a time, seemed not to him, but he finally caught on and through a series

of confidential circumstance,

I'm face to face with Doctor Bob in the home of the non alcoholic.

One who understood

and one who cared enough.

Doctor Bob and Ann

had entered that room at about 5:00 in the afternoon.

It was in June 1935.

Bob couldn't stay but a minute,

but we talked for five hours

and this time

there was real mutuality. I told him at once, Please stay, I need you as much as you could possibly need me. And so I told my simple tale. I was drinking of recovery and pounded home the medical nature of the mouth.

Of course, Doctor Bob was a medical man,

but this was the first time he had ever heard alcoholism described as a disease,

and he too was stuck deep, as all of us have since been.

And right there,

I think the spark that that was to become Alcoholics Anonymous

was also struck

and then said to me, Bill, why don't you come and live at our house? You could keep an eye on Doctor Bob. He could keep an eye on you

soon. I go to stay in that really Halloween household

presently, Doctor Bob said. Don't you think we'd better be working on some drunks?

I'll call up the City Hospital.

He got hold of the nurse on the receiving ward

said to her that I

had come from New York

as a friend, an alcoholic who had a cure for alcoholism. She retarded while Doctor, Why don't you try it on yourself?

But he already had.

Then she went on to say, well, we've got a wonderful case for you here. Has just arrived. Been here six times in the last four months. Member of the City Council in this town or why

it's in a terrible state.

He can't even get home from here without getting drunk.

He's just blacked the eyes of one of the nurses.

We've now got him strapped down and full of peraldehyde. How would that one do you, Doctor?

So Smith, he said. Fine,

Medicaid him and we'll be down by and by

a little later. Doctor Bob and I saw psych that 10s of thousands of us

has since seen, and God willing, hundreds of thousands of us shall still sit.

It was the site of the man on the bed who didn't know

that he could get well.

The man on the bed was no optimist.

We told him our stories. We told him how he had been released.

We call him the nature of his ailment, but he still shook his head. Said he. You fellas understand this business, all right? You've been in the ringer, but you're in only up to your knees. I'm in up to my neck. It's too late. I don't dare go out of here,

we said. May we come back tomorrow? Oh, sure, he said. Please do. Please do. You know how lonely this business can be? And you really do understand.

Back we come on tomorrow and there we see the now familiar sight.

The man's wife is at the foot of the bed

saying, husband, what has got into you? You seem so different. Excitedly he pointed to us and said, yes, there they are. They are the ones who understand. Then he told how during the night a little hope had come, and then more. And when he had resolved to follow this simple formula,

it seemed as all great weight were lifted often, and he felt that curious sense of freedom

that we all know so well.

And by now Hope was swelling into a great confidence,

so much so that he said, why fetch me my clothes, we're going to get up and go out of here.

So a a #3 rose from his bed, never to drink again.

That was the beginning of the first group, though of course we know it not.

The three of us worked on a lot of alkies that summer in Akron.

One or two clung, but the failure was immense. I returned to New York

more humble now,

more chasing,

more export. That group started here.

Little by little, we grew.

No, failure was our daily companion.

Then three years later, there came another tremendous realization.

Doctor Bob and I thought that talking together in his living room. It is the fall of 1937.

We have got together for the first time to count up the results,

not how many failures they were legion, but how many successes, how much dry time had elapsed on how many individuals

we added it up and then it burst on it. That's something new had come into the world.

A new life could be seen clearly shining upon us, children of the dark.

That realization brought with it a terrific responsibility

that had taken up

almost three years to sober less than two score people.

How could what we feel new be carried to the million who didn't know? Even there in Akron, people were dying within gunshot of it. How could we transmit this thing? Dare we wait for it to spread painfully slowly by word of mouth?

Dare we risk it being garbled, distorted? Didn't we need hospitals before we had discovered the hospitals didn't want us?

Didn't we need to send some of our old timers to distant cities on a temporary subsidy to start other centers? And above all, didn't we need some kind of literature, some kind of book?

In other words, we realize for the first time the need are some sort of organized service effort.

Well, we presented these ideas to a little meeting there in Akron,

Many said. Let's keep it simple.

If you have books, if you have missionaries, if you have hospitals, you're going to create a professional class, you're going to bring in money. We're going to quarrel. It'll break it up. Let's not do any of these things. Let's keep it simple, said the Orthodox people of that day.

But the promoter element in that meeting,

plus the indifferent ones who didn't care too much

to send me back to New York to raise a lot of money

for this mighty enterprise to be undertaken by the 40 drunks. I thought raising money here would be a stench that the left would gladly invest in the future of 40 drunks and those to come. But apparently the race had already had too much experience with drugs. They were not interested. Neither was the Rockefeller Foundation. One day,

after a period of frustration which always brought on an imaginary ultra attack in me, I went to my brother-in-law. He's a doctor. He reassured me about my ulcers. I commenced the gripe about our lack of money, said he. Why don't you see Shirley win? He shares an office with me here. He used to be health commissioner in New York,

so I'm soon talking to Shirley, he said. Well, you certainly have got something if you got 30 or 40 of these fellows with real time behind them. That's something.

Those fellows are tough. I really ought to know.

Besides, he said, you surely need a lot of money. What about the Rockefeller Foundation? I said. No, we've tried them

then, he said. I got a better idea. What about Mr. John D Rockefeller himself?

This gets his every interest as a social aspect, medical aspect, alcohol aspect, religious aspect you couldn't miss. You ought to see Mr. John D Rockefeller.

Well, how? I said, Doctor, when? How about seeing the Prince of Wales? How do you get this introduction

then and there our destiny hung on a very slender and tenuous threat, and the thread seemed to be attached around my brother-in-law scalp. He commenced to scratch his head. He said when I was a young fellow, I used to go to high school. I knew a girl. I think the girl had an uncle,

an old man. He may be dead. Seems to me his name is Richardson,

and as I remember it, he was somehow connected with a Rockefeller family or their charitable enterprise.

Don't you think I might call up the Rockefeller offices and find out if there is such a man, if he is alive? Well, I said, it's a long shot, my friend, but try it. He called up.

There are Lillard Riches,

one of the greatest friends that society will ever have, immediately came on the wire. My brother-in-law told him that he had a relative working on Alcoholics. There had been some success. Could we come over for a chat? And the old man said, yes, come over.

And we walk right straight into Mr. John D Rockefeller's private office, and we're soon talking with one of the closest friends that family has ever had. Well, as a fellow promoting money, I felt kind of good. It looks like we were getting close.

I, uh, called the story. It was immediately interested. I had lunch with him the next week and this eventuated in the late winter of 1937. In the meeting the some of the Akron Alcoholics, some of the New York crowd, Doctor Bob and me. And what do you think? We met in Mr. Rockefellers private boardroom.

I felt that we were really getting warm now. In fact, somebody said that I was sitting in a chair just left by Mr. Rockefeller himself.

So it looked like we were going to get next to the big money.

Again, the Alcoholics told their stories. Again, these friends listening

and we're deeply impressed. Don't One of them drew our attention to the perils of property ownership

and to the perils of professionalism and asked isn't this a work of goodwill, one carrying the message to another.

Well, our argument was that it was still more dangerous to do nothing, that something must be done at length. One of them, Frank Amon, still on our board of trustees. Why don't out to Akron to see Doctor Bob and his group there A a group number one at Akron, OH. He came back with a glowing report. The report was put before Mr. Rockefeller

and again, Providence intervened.

Mr. Rockefeller read and reread that report.

I'm turning to his old friend Deck, he said.

Deck. This is, in practice, made deeply

and strangely. It may be the beginning of something great,

but something tells me not to give this thing money. I'm afraid, Dick, that money in any quantity would support.

Don't ask me for money.

And right then and there, John D Rockefeller Junior took a decision that probably saved Alcoholics Anonymous.

One was surely did say,

prime professionalism

and great property ownership.

Loudly. Drunks were terribly disappointed.

The mortgage was high on Smithy House Lawyers for stealing that damn department store.

A lot of the drunkstug jobs fixing other drunks would be good. So did I.

Well, we commenced having more meetings with these friends.

We almost convinced them that Mister Rockefeller was mistaken. We convinced him to such an extent that they created for us something known then and today as the Alcoholic Foundation. At the close of the summer,

at a trustees meeting,

Frank Amos

said. Bill, why don't you take the two chapters of that perspective book down to Harper's?

I think they'll be interested.

I know the religious editor Gene Action,

so I'm in this gentleman's office. He reads what are now the first two chapters of the book. Alcoholics Anonymous showed immediate entry in further hoppers would advance me $1500 in advance. Royalists, which by then, after our deflation, seemed like a huge sum.

Well, I'm elated. I never tried to write anything before, he said. Mr. Wilson, could you finish a whole book like that? And I lied valiantly and said why, of course, of course.

Coming away from hoppers though my spirit South,

I realized that if I used Up Eight up there's $1500 while the book was being prepared, then we'd still be out of money for a long time because these were advanced royalties. Besides,

if the paper is a magazine print printed accounts of AA and we had a lot of inquiries, there'd be no money to answer those. The final thought lies, Should a private publisher own this book? Shouldn't this book become the property of our society?

And then the idea of publishing the book ourselves burst on it.

So a friend and I went to a stationary store, bought a pad of stock certificates, began to offer them two drunks and investment in this new book, $25. Prior Works Publishing. Have some Alcoholics. It's going to be wonderful.

Well, that was my first experience in trying to pry any real money out of drunks.

And you know what they said? They said, well you fellas, I gotta find nerve trying to sell U.S. stock in a book not yet written.

Well, The upshot of it wise that we got the Reader's Digest, The Promise of Peace,

and that convinced the Alcoholics that we could sell these books by the Carla. And so the Shares and Works publishing began to be sell be sold.

Some fellas contributed as little as $5.00 a month between the fall of 1938 and the spring of 1939. The very few Alcoholics in this area and their friends put $4500 into that site.

Besides that, we hit Hook, the proprietor of Towns Hospital for $2500 more and then went to the Readers Digest only to be told they decided not to print anything about it.

Well, that meant that the book was broke.

Lois and I were broke, all right. The bank foreclosed Clinton St. And that was the state of Alcoholics Anonymous. After four years, we had 100 members and we had this book

and we were all low.

Well, Liberty magazine in the fall of 39 printed a piece that moved some of the books, enabled us to keep our little office open next spring. Let the Rockefeller, who we hadn't heard of for three years, suddenly decided to give a dinner for a a called in a lot of his important friends. Doctor Fosdick was there, Doctor Foster Kennedy was there. The Alcoholics were planted at each table with the bankers. And we thought now our money troubles are all over. But

now at the conclusion of the dinner, Mr. Nelson Rockefeller, who came in place of his father, who was sick, rose and said nothing more affecting has ever touched my father's life. He is so glad that his friends could witness at the beginning of this great and promising thing. But fortunately, gentlemen, this is the work that requires

no money.

Well upon about about $2 billion worth of bankers got up and walked right up.

Soon after Mr. Rockefeller wrote each other in the Ladder sent him a book.

We sold those books to Mr. Rockefeller very cheap, too. Only a dollar a piece is promotion material.

And he also gave them a letter in which again he reiterated his interest, again stated that this work required little or no money. And then he said, I am giving this society $1000, which was something like his father giving a dime to the folks in Sunday school.

And the other bankers kind of figured it up on the cuff quickly, and they said, well, it's like the Rockefeller's giving $1000. How much would that mean for me?

So one guy, Rich Backer, sent us $10. Look at that. The result of that dinner was $3000. And each year for five years, we raised $3000 in that fashion.

And that $3000 was divided equally between Smithy and me so we could keep going.

And praise God, this movement was saved from professionalism, big property ownership, and perhaps complete dissolution as I have described it to you. Then the Great Ten Strike came in 1941. Somebody else, not an alcoholic either, took a decision, and that was no less person than the owner of the Saturday Evening Post.

The editors down there

had been thinking of a piece about Alcoholics Anonymous.

They had almost decided against it. Too controversial

medically and religiously might turn out to be a cup. The drunks all might get drunk after all. Ridiculous.

I believe it was Mr. Curtis Bach who was pleasant at fascinating and he said, gentlemen, I don't like to interfere with editorial policy, but I myself know two of these miracles and I am positive this thing works and I'm positive it's going to spread. I do hope the peace

is published by The Post.

Uh, what a decision for how many of them?

And instantly Jack Alexander's piece appeared. Thousands of frantic inquiries began to descend upon our little New York. Off

we had to come. A national institution.

I ordered my program had been translated into 12 steps, fence into a book. And now our friends have begun to rally around her. Friends of Madison, Friends of Religion, and now this great friend of the Christ.

At that moment, Alcoholics Anonymous stepped out of its infancy.

At this point, Alcoholics Anonymous entered a new phase, the phase of its adolescence.

Adolescence is if there are some exciting time, and ours was no exception.