The topic "How the traditions came about" at the Men with men group in Copenhagen, Denmark

My name my name is Clancy Iblisland and I'm an alcoholic. I'm gonna tell you something that's gonna startle you. That's all I know. That would be a nice start. I'm I'm, I come from a Norwegian background, so I know how to say yay and air, but I had to find out fluent dance from my host here.

Thank you. I'm glad to be here tonight and I'm glad to be part of this AA meeting and glad to be part of this weekend. And I I wanted to come before you looking shaved and clean, but Scandinavian Airlines lost my bag. So as the week progresses, you're gonna just see more and more. But I was thinking today, but they suggest I might wanna talk for a few minutes tonight To talk about something that tomorrow, I'm gonna tell my story and tomorrow afternoon, I'm gonna tell it maybe a little bit of where I should go from here.

Now I'll talk about something. I know we have some new people here tonight and some people who are quite unfamiliar with AA. And a little a little bit of a chapter of AA history that is I thought it was to be very fascinating. Most of you know that AA struggled very much in their first few years. They just couldn't get anywhere and they're having a terrible time and then and then, a magazine or a newspaper magazine, the Saturday Evening Post had a man who specialized in unveiling corruption.

He just finished writing a series of articles on the corrupt labor unions in Philadelphia. His next assignment was to wiggle your way into this thing called Alcoholics Anonymous and blow the whistle on them. And he got in there and much to his surprise, they were what they said they were. They were honest and decent and outgoing and helping each other, and he hard hardly couldn't believe it. She an article in this magazine called Severine Post in 1941.

It came out in March that just transformed the first time in the history there ever been any knowledge of anything that really worked for alcoholics of our type. And they were just flooded with letters and flooded with people wanting help. And all over the country, a started chapters and chapters in every state and just wonderful, just great. And it was exciting and bills Wilson, the founder set in New York and just over all of this. And then in about a year or 2, he started getting letters from these people in these groups saying, know, our group is becoming extinct.

No one comes to the meetings anymore. And, we're having great fights in our group and people are getting drunk over it. And little by little, A was diminishing. They don't talk about it much but A a was really shrinking badly and rapidly. And in an effort to try to hold a a together, he started this little thing called the grapevine.

It was now it's a little magazine like this, but then it was a big tabloid sized paper. He thought thought maybe some articles would help people. It didn't seem to help much at all. And in 1945, he was just about distraught because a, he was on the way up. And the man said in an article for the grapevine from a place called North Carolina saying, Bill, you ought to see this.

Maybe this will help you. And Bill read this article and he found out something that he had never known, had never heard of. Just a 100 years before that, there'd been an organ 6 drunks got together in a bar in Baltimore, Maryland, and one of them was just out of jail. And you're telling the stranger, you know, these people, the chaplain to others says they understand how I feel. They don't understand how I feel.

None of them do. You 5 guys are the only guys who even know how I feel and I know how you feel. They said, yeah. That's true. But we're all drinking badly.

Maybe you would help each other stop drinking. And so they they drew up a little one page constitution and they all signed the elected officers, president, vice president. Only one guy was an officer. He must have felt bad. But they're gonna take this vow to help each other stay sober.

And, you know, everybody laughing at these idiots. They can't keep themselves sober. They're gonna keep each other sober. And, but as time went wrong, they somehow stayed sober. Every time one felt like drinking, the other 5 would help him.

And again and again and again. And a couple of guys came down from a city called Philadelphia and saw this and went back to fill Philadelphia and started a little group. And they they didn't have a name for themselves so they they thought there never has been in history a place where drunkards are keeping drunkards sober. It's very unusual just like the United States is unusual. Our first president, unusual, one of a kind, George Washington.

So they named themselves after him. They called themselves the Washingtonians. And the group came from Washington DC and started a group in Washington, and the group started in Boston. And little by little, all of a sudden, here's a whole bunch of drunken slobs staying silver here and there. And, they, did very well.

And they at the end of the year, they were in about 7 different states. Not too many but they started to grow really rapidly. And at the end of the second, what happened was in those days, you know, there's no radio, television, no nothing like that. So most entertainment public entertainment came from public speakers who would speak to orations to big crowds. And they got a couple of good orators in the a or into the Washingtonians.

And they've got to talk about the Washingtonians. I got a lot of people signed up for it. They really started to get because there never been anything like it. And but near the end of the second year, they sent out a letter to all the chapters they could find and they knew about and said on on our we're gonna take Washington's birthday, February 22nd as our anniversary because we started in March. It's close enough and it's like Washington's birthday.

But on our anniversary date, have somebody from your community, some leader of your or somebody's somebody's decision maker, come in and give a talk. Not that we wanna hear what he has to say, but we want them to see that we're not crazy, that we're really doing something good. So all over the country, February 22, 18, 42, people came in. And in Springfield, Illinois, they got a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln who was the guy that came in to give a talk. He wasn't very famous yet.

In fact, if you ever look through a book of Lincoln speeches which you may or may not ever see, there's a book there's a major talk in there to the Washingtonians. And he talks about he talks for a long time, but the the gist of it was this. I, I know many of you people here in Springfield, and you're you're intelligent fine people. And I know exactly but I don't think I don't understand. I don't understand your thirst.

I don't have that thirst, but you have that thirst. I'm glad you're doing something about it. And continue to grow and really flourish. By 1845, they had what they estimated as best they could estimate a 100,000 sober drunkards in America. Unheard of.

Now that may not be impressive to you but stop to think AA after 5 years didn't even have a 1,000 sober people. They had a 100 without a telephone without And then in 18/45 these guys got thinking about things that seem right to them because it seems right to some people in a day. If we could help drunkards, we should really help a lot of people. We should help people with narcotics problems who aren't drunkards. Not heroin and cocaine like today, but opium and, things of that nature.

We should really get involved in politics because we got a lot of guys here who are really well mannered. We should help people. Maybe we can get into the antislavery movement. Help work towards the antislavery movement. Maybe we should work towards annexing Texas in the United States.

Maybe we should do maybe we should work on stamping out the sale of alcohol because then there wouldn't be any drunkards. And on and on. And they really all got involved in this. And they all got took on a course and they worked off and 3 years later by 1848, the movement was extinct and a very few changes, they all died drunk. I have a book home written in 18/61 by one of the few survivors.

I don't know what happened. We were doing so well. Then people didn't wanna come in the meetings. They didn't wanna help new drunkards anymore. They just seemed to all get caught up in their own thing and boom, 1 by 1, they got drunk and down they went.

And they became extinct. I'll tell you how extinct they became. Just a 100 years later, Bill Wilson had never heard of them. And nobody else had ever heard of them. And Bill Wilson read this article and thought, my god, so many of the things in there they're talking about.

People for publicity. One of the things they got from the Washingtonians, the speakers got fighting who got the most publicity and who is best known. And they're fighting about all sorts of things, power, prestige. And he thought, god, this is the same thing I'm seeing in my letters coming from all over the country. What can I do?

And in desperation he sat down and thought about it for days weeks. And the last gasp effort to save Alcoholics Anonymous, he wrote the 12 traditions. Now not the way we heard them read tonight, although read very well. I need a ride back to the hotel. That's what I said.

But he wrote them in the long form. I'm sure most of you know the long form. If you don't know about it, on the back of the book, across the short form is the long form. The same thing only at length because really describes what they're saying. In my home group in Los Angeles, which incidentally is the largest group in the world, a 1000 people every Wednesday.

We read the long form once a month so the new people will know what the hell it's about. And he wrote these long form, these traditions in an effort to save AA based on the the experience of the Washingtonians and his own experience. And he published them 1 by 1 in this new little paper called the grapevine. Now would be wouldn't you know it? Most of AA refused to accept it because AA had the same problem then that they have now.

It's full of alcoholics. Nasty bunch. We don't want any rules. We came here to find love. We don't want your goddamn rules, you know.

And, people wouldn't accept it. And he started a campaign. He'd drive around in his motorcycle all over Eastern United States going to meetings to talk about tradition. Sometimes if you read read about it in the history books, have his wife in the sidecar with him. He'd go places.

He'd go give talks. And And interestingly, it got to a point this is really kinda sad. Say, Bill, would you come and speak at our anniversary? Only if you promise not to talk about the traditions. If you have a truth, don't don't come.

We don't want you to come in the building. I mean, that's that's bad news. And so there's this there are some people accepting them. A lot of people didn't. A lot of people getting drunk.

A lot of people having fights. And so there were 2 people, some of you who are new don't know this. There were 2 founders of a cofounders, Bill Wilson and a guy out in Akron, Ohio named doctor Bob Smith. And they got along very well, but their followers never got along. That's why it always says, hey, every time you have more than one group, there's 2 people who don't like each other.

But the people in New York thought that the, they were too really religious in Akron because they're in Akron, they were still hanging out to a lot of the old Oxford movement for which the AIDS is from. And in Akron, they didn't think New York was spiritual enough that there were too action oriented enough spiritual love. So I got it. We got to get these people together because we're all we have a lot of problems. So they decided country to come and sit down and we'll explain the traditions to them and they'll understand it.

So they said to their followers, give us a place to meet. The people in Akron said, well, we'll go to a meeting. We won't go to New York. And the people in New York not to be outdone in spirituality. So we'll go to a meeting.

We won't go to Akron. So Bill and doctor Bob got together today. Come up with the Solomon like solution. Cleveland, Ohio. Okay.

So July 4th weekend 1950, the largest group of sober alcoholics that ever sat in one room together sat down there. And they, was really interesting me. They're Bill talked. Doctor Bob doctor Bob, at this time, was dying of cancer. He'd been the second he was just behind the old somebody at 15 years sober.

And they said you probably do wanna talk about you're dying. Oh, no. I've gotta talk. I'm 15 years sober. I'm next to oldest sobriety in the world.

And I want these young people to know know that it works. So they that day, his son on one side and an old veteran on the other side helped a tall, gaunt, sick, dying man to the podium. And, it was it was possible to hear us talk on tapes. They have it have it written down various places. But he started off just not so much.

Nothing very important. So I wanna welcome you all to Cleveland. I hope you go back and tell the boys and girls in your home group that, we're all doing the same thing. We all get out and able to put into it. We often work together and we're on the same path.

He said I want to as I look over this room, he said, I'm grateful that some small thing I did 15 years ago was helped with something. I wanna apologize for my health. I've been very sick. I'd hope to be better by now, but I'm not. And then he said, but I wanna call your attention to 2 or 3 things.

And then he gave words that just echoed down the halls of history and Alcoholics Anonymous forever because they're just as true tonight in Denmark as they were that day in Cleveland, Ohio. Because he was a great AA and he wanted so desperately to convey what he had found before he died. And he, got it boiled down to 3 things. He said, 1st, let us remember to keep our program simple. Let us not louse it all up with Freudian complex.

It may be of interest to the scientific mind but has nothing to do with our work here. Our work here when reduced to the last consists of love and service. And we all know what love is. We all know what services. And secondly he said, let us guard that erring member, the tongue, and try to treat treat one another with dignity.

And that sounds kinda silly, but, you know, everybody in this room knows how that is. When you're feeling good, we're all just loving and kind but let somebody hurt our feelings or do something we think hurt us and that tongue cuts and slashes and burns. And finally he said none of us would be here today if someone hadn't taken the time to maybe explain things to us, to take us to a few meetings, to give us a pat on the back when we needed it, let us never reach that stage of smug complacency when we are too busy to help our fellow alcoholic. Thank you. Sat down.

He was dead shortly thereafter that. Great talk. And then the next day what they had, 6 young guys, very enthusiastic. They used to have 2 traditions and they tried to explain. But these are rules these are suggestions we're trying to save a and you know one of the things that we said we don't need the rules how you're gonna enforce it.

There's no enforcement in the traditions. You can break every tradition in there and we can't be there's no punishment allowed. Some of us old timers feel there should be AA police. Not necessarily for that but in my home town, unjustly, of course, but I have known as something of an AA dictator. I tell newcomers what to do.

You're gonna go to this meeting? I'm not reading that way at all. I just said, you're gonna go to this meeting. I'll tell you. But what people don't realize is that it's impossible to be a dictator in AA AA without the absolute agreement of the dictateee.

All he ever had to say is screw you. And the dictatorship is over. That's where we should have a police could come in the night and say, did you say screw you to your sponsor? Come with us back to the training camp for a few weeks. But they explained the purpose of AA, but these were things to save AA.

And then they accepted them that day in 1950. They've been with us ever since. Unfortunately, over the years they've become just a part of our a lot of people don't pay no tax or anything they are. They're just they're just something to see if newcomers can read it and say anonymity. You know?

What does it mean? But they are so important. But most of the things in there are not very difficult to accept as we heard tonight. He wrote them in order that he thought they were important. He said the first one should be unity and that certainly is true because there's always there's always conflicts.

In AA. If we all work in unity all the time, we're not gonna achieve it, we have to work towards it. And secondly, there was a feeling that he was gonna try to become dictator of AA. So he said there's the only authority here is the group conscience. And then he got the 3rd tradition and the 3rd tradition has been under some fire.

It has been and continues to be. It, said the only requirement for membership is the desire to stop drinking. And so as a result of that, over the years, we get some strange people who come to AA. They're not even alcoholics at all. But they sit here and say, I've got a desire to stop drinking.

I belong here. You can't get me out. And, it really puzzles a lot of people. How do you deal with those people? Some of you can come to the meeting smelling like booze week after week and talk and say, I'm gonna share a sun ring and screw you.

And then then you have to the the problem is this. In order to make the traditions a a little more a little more, condensed, when they accepted them, they they make one version of them in a condensed version. And so that's what we read. We read the short form of the traditions. The long form more fully explains it.

Now the 3rd tradition says the only requirement for membership is the desire to stop drinking. It's kinda hard to deal with that. But if you look at the long form of the 3rd tradition says, we are here to help all those who suffer from alcoholism. Not to desire to stop drinking at all, but to help alcoholics of our type. Then the 4th tradition I'm gonna go through all the tradition.

I'm just giving you an idea. The 4th tradition talked about there's no question about that. Every group is autonomous. You can do whatever you want in your group as long as you're not making a look bad or hurting another group. The 5th tradition is under the most heat and has been for years.

It says, our primary purpose is to the alcoholic who still suffers. And people say, what? That's nonsense. Why do we have what's this deal about carrying the message to alcoholics? You know?

How about drug addicts? It's all one big disease. Remember that phrase comes from? One big disease? It comes from a treatment center that only had one van.

That's where it comes from. But to understand why you have to carry the message to the alcoholic yourself, I'm gonna talk about this a little bit Saturday afternoon too so you don't have to come. But the whole concept of Alcoholics Anonymous, there's nothing in here that's remarkably wise. There's nothing in anything we do here that's remarkably new. The only thing is this.

It is the only organization where one drunkard is talking to another drunkard. There have only been 2 times in the world's history where groups of people like us have been sober. 1 was in the 18 forties with the Washingtonians. 1 is now in a a. They are the also the only two times in history where drunks dealt with drunks.

Now why is it so important that drunk should put a doctor or psychiatrist or ministers that we know more about things than we do? Maybe they do. But the great symptom of every alcoholic in the world is I know you mean well but you don't understand. My case is different. The universal cry.

And we're not in a none of us need advice. Christ, we've had enough advice to last us for 10000 years. Passers by think they should give give us advice. Here's what you ought to do. The point is this, if what happens if you are fortunate in AA, you may hear people describe emotions of their own or feelings or histories of their own that you could say, my god, I thought I was the only one who knew about that.

It's called identification. My god, I identify with this guy. I never thought I would and the reason that is so important that if I identify with them and I'm fortunate that nonsense advice from that person becomes meaningful information. I can believe what he is saying because he knows. And little by little, it opens up the armor so that the steps and the stuff can get in here.

Because I'll tell you, I'm in a situation none of you are in. A few years ago, I resigned a nice job in Beverly Hills where I was doing very well because I had reasons of my own which I hate to even think about. But when I go to work in the morning now, I live out by the ocean in Los Angeles. I drive downtown. I park in my parking lot.

Then I have to step over the bodies of men, women, and children dying from alcoholism and drug addiction to get to my office. I spend all day trying to figure out ways to help those poor sick bastards. Then I step over and then I go home. We're not a treatment. We're we're blood.

We're just trying to keep people alive on the street. And you think, well, why would you help those people? I can't tell you how much I've helped them. Try to help them. But you know why people die from alcoholism?

There's to give psychological reasons and economic reasons and genetic reasons, but the number one reason is this. I thank you for trying to help me, but you don't understand. My case is different. The armor stays up. And somehow, to help anyone, we've got to get through that armor at least to open it up just a little bit.

Because without that, it just everything you know bounces right off them. Anybody here who's ever worked with alcoholics know that. Some guys are able to do it and some guys you get it's almost impossible. Most most of them die without finding out. And that's why it's so important that you have to be an alcoholic anonymous.

Not because it's better or worse or anything else. It's because that's the only place you're gonna find identification. That is why a number of years ago, 1958 or so, a guy I knew, a friend of mine, went to New York and got permission to use the 12 steps for his new organization called Gamblers Anonymous. The first time they ever used the steps outside of AA. Then shortly after that, a guy from a narcotic addict who also was an alcoholic and when he brought his narcotic friends, they didn't identify.

He got permission to start narcotics anonymous and cocaine anonymous anonymous and overeaters anonymous. All these are from people who are alcoholic with a secondary thing where they're trying to help other cases. There's a couple of things. The guy that founded GA, Gavnerstown, was a good man named Jim Willis. By the mid sixties, it was growing.

It that has also become the most successful of all the non a's programs. But by the mid 1960s, he was so busy in GA, he really didn't have time for it anymore. So really sad when he got drunk and died. But as I said in GA, we're very sorry but he never gamble again. This is if we're someone here would say, he didn't drink.

He gambled again. We didn't care. I never re I never really understood the theory of identification so clearly. When I was about 2 years sober in 1960, I, had this new I I gave a little talk to me like this, you know, just on obsessions because I've always been an authority on obsessions. Not what to do about them but about the obsessions them self.

And some kind of plump lady about her. She's, oh, that was wonderful. We have a new organization called Overeaters Anonymous. Would you come and talk to our lady, Sunday? And I had no front teeth.

I weighed about a 130 pounds. I said, here. Give a treat. I don't know where they're on. I don't know where they're on Sunday.

These fat ladies sitting around a table. Do I see somebody who's always a 100 and 30 pounds? I got a baby. And I gave a talk. Quit talking up sessions and when I got done talking, they had a little sharing session, which probably won't have time for tonight.

I'm sorry. But that little shit, woman over here said Top white. Top white. It was her son's birthday. She made him a 2 tiered birthday cake, and he was down in Long Beach to a military school.

Her husband went out to get the boy. She had one little piece of cake to see what it tastes like, then another, then another, and it came back. The cake was gone. And I didn't say anything because I'm too nice a guy but I thought, did you just cry? Just have a piece of cake and let it go with that.

What's wrong with you? Is your kid's breakfast? Woman over here talk about eating ice cream and eating ice cream and sending out for more ice cream. I didn't say anything. I'm too nice a guy, but no wonder you're fat.

It's not much ice cream. Oh, the kiss of death was this one over here. She said she ate she ate till she couldn't eat anymore then put her fingers down the throat and vomited so she could eat some more. I thought, Jesus, don't bother shaking hands with me after the meeting. I mean, I can see doing that for drinking but not eating.

I've done it for drinking a lot while the sun's still up high. Now what is different? What is different? I understood exactly what they're saying, but there was no identification. It was just information that had meant nothing to me except just kinda silly.

And that's the way we sound to people who don't understand the problem. They say the answer, but they don't. Because unless you're like us, unless alcohol does something special for you, they can't under ever understand how you drink. Identification is so important. I have to find someone who will say yes.

And here's here's a bit you had these emotions. How do you know? And so the 5th tradition is rather important. And that's why in our group, we have to make sure that when people talk or involved, they're they they can be an alcoholic and an addict. They can be an alcoholic and a gambler.

They can be an alcoholic and twist baby chicken snacks for all we care. But you gotta be an alcoholic. And then you gotta recommend to them that they talk primarily about drinking, not primarily about drinking, not about drugs. Not there's anything wrong with drugs, but we're trying to help alcoholics identify. Now I got, I got 3 daughters who are turning 16 this year in AA, and I got a grandson who's in AA.

And I'll tell him on the way over here. I got a great grandson who's 2 years old. He either is an alcoholic or he's the child of the devil. That's all I know. I hope he's an alcoholic.

But, so he can come in here. So he can come in here and hear people talk about their emotions and feelings and their what it used to be like, what happened, what it's like now. Not here a bunch of psychological babble from some treatment center counselor but to hear the only thing that has ever worked for alcoholics in the history of mankind. And most of the other traditions are pretty clear that anonymity is the only one that really is some people today say, well, god. I mean, especially Riley, these movie actors say, I'm I'm a movie actor.

I'm a sell and I'll talk to them. That's gonna make people wanna come in. Now tell me what happens. Funny thing. I've never seen anybody who breaks their anonymity who did have a problem afterwards.

Remember when I was new, 1958, a woman named Lillian Roth, famous singer in America, She wrote a book called I'll cry tomorrow. They made a movie of it. And, she wrote her book. I'm a member of alcohol examiners. They said you really shouldn't do that, Lillian.

Oh, no. I wanna help this organization. And a couple years later, when she's laying face down drunk in her own puke in Palm Springs, I don't know what they thought about then. Treated her today. It killed her.

John Barrymore, a very famous actor, his daughter wrote a book called Cry Tomorrow. Probably Too Much Too Soon. And she, about the same time, and she even made it even better. She she'd been helped so much by a that she could now have wine with dinner. She died she died in a holding cell in Malibu, soaked on her own wallet, and on and on.

I've been watching this for years. Now the you might think the purpose of anonymity is to conceal you so people won't know. Maybe it wasn't 19 35 or some place or 45 but that is what it is now. The last letter Bill Wilson ever wrote before he died was dealing with anonymity. What how important what a spiritual concept.

There we submerge our egos into the ultimate good. Now what an anonymity means, it doesn't now because the nature of my work, I'm on television a lot and I've had articles written about me in the newspapers and readers digest other things. And I tell them I'm a recovered alcoholic and speak to you broke your anonymity. No, I didn't. I am a recovered alcoholic as far as they do.

I'm not recovered, really. I'm recovering, but they didn't know that. What I cannot do is mention AA. I can see I'm a recovered alcoholic. I mean, caught.

But once I ever mentioned AA, you must never see my face or know my name because I must submerge my ego into this ultimate thing. And, it is a very difficult thing because I think I don't know why breaking around in a way should so harmful except my concept is this and I've talked to a lot of people about this. In fact, once upon a time I I said, I may be the only person in this room who sat and talked to Bill Wilson for 45 minutes when I was a young guy. Wish I could remember what he said. But the gist of the conversation was when you break your anonymity, you are now going to help AA.

You have reversed the roles. A is no longer helping me. I'm not helping the little people in AA. And that's the beginning of the end because there's nothing over here now. Just you and you and you.

And the spiritual concept of anonymity is such a vital thing and it's a difficult it's a very, you know, interesting. Bill Wilson, who had a great ego he had to continually fight. In the 19 fifties, AA Alpha Epsilonis won the Alaska Award as the most significant health progress of the year. And Time Magazine put Bill we're gonna put Bill Wilson on the cover. And he turned it down.

Had Had to just kill him because, God, he because I understand that too. I'm the same way. I I like we said, can we shoot you in the back? He said, no. I'll still be noticeable.

Not me. But that's a perfect example of what you have to do. You have to submerge your ego here. So really the traditions are really very important. People who don't follow the tradition and groups that don't follow the traditions go down the toilet.

I watch I watch them again and again and again. As long as you're maintaining AA and helping people, you survive. When you don't, you gradually die and wither and die. So all you have to remember here is that, you know, we are here to help alcoholics and that we are help alcoholics by identification. So we have to be alcoholics and talk about drinking primarily and we must maintain our anonymity.

All the rest of the tradition are really debatable. But these traditions have been around so long and so many people have never have any idea what they're all about. Ever ever. And so, these are things we gotta remember. If we're gonna keep a successful and complete and complete, and our lives continue to regrow.

Thank you.