The History of AA at the Robbers Roost AA Group's Back to Basics men's retreat in Cuyamaca State Park in San Diego, CA

K. Let's have a moment of silence to invite God into this deal. Amen. I got to be a part of this thing. God, your understanding.

Alcoholics anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other so they may solve their common problem and help others recover from alcoholism. This is a combination of traditions 1 through 59. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. That's tradition 3. There are no dues or fees for a membership.

We are self supporting through our own contributions. That's tradition 7. AA is not allied with any sect and I'm real careful about reading that. You know, the first meeting or so I was at, I reading that preamble and I thought they're saying AA wasn't allied with any sect and I was thinking, man, I might have to give that up too. Hell, Belle.

That was not good news. I hadn't had any in a long time now, you understand. You know, I'd I'd kinda become bisexual by the time I got to AA. You know, if I wanted sex, I had to buy it. Anyway, it says AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution.

That's tradition 6. Does not wish to engage in any controversy, not endorses nor opposes any causes, that's tradition 10. Our primary purpose is to stay sober to help other alcoholics achieve sobriety, that's tradition 5. So you see, in effect, each time we read the preamble at, a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, we are referring to most of our traditions of how we hang together. There's one other story that really needs to be told is how do we become Alcoholics Anonymous?

As I've said, we were originally affiliated with the Oxford Group. We We went to Bill in New York. Bob and Akron went to Oxford Group meetings. They tended, drugs tended to hang together. The Oxford groups were upper and upper middle and upper class people.

They didn't like the drugs very much. We kind of hung together For a while, we were called the drunk squads of the Oxford Group. Then we were called a nameless bunch of drunks. In 1937, Bill started separating from the Oxford groups because they didn't think much of us working with drunks. And slowly in Akron, separation started to develop, which really wasn't actually accomplished till 1939 with the Oxford groups.

And there were some problems about staying with the Oxford groups because the Oxford groups, were became around this time prescribed by the Catholic church saying Catholics couldn't be members. And we were worried about whether we're going to get any Catholics in if we stay close to the Oxford group. So and, you know, there's a lot of divine intervention in here. Like when Bill originally wrote the steps, he put in there humbly on your knees, asked him to remove our shortcomings. And somebody pointed out to Bill, said, Bill, Jews don't pray on their knees.

Bill said, we don't have any Jewish members, but you know what? We might get one one day. We might find a drunk that's that's Jewish, and and we'd exclude him if we put on our knees in there. He put and he took that out. So there was just a lot of little divine coincidences being being at work.

And they were getting ready to publish this book in, the spring of 1939. They still didn't have a name for the for the thing. You know, they couldn't decide what to call it. Bill wants in all humility suggested the Bill W movie that was kind of shouted down. You can imagine, you know, As Kip sees it.

Yes. Don't don't worry, Kip. If I ever get that far in the steps, I'll I'll make amends for my comment if I ever get that far down in the steps. So Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, they had suggested some other thing. They were gonna call it a 100 men and Florence Rankin got sober for a little while and she says, no, you don't. You'll call it a 100 men and a woman. And, they said, well, that's that's a little long, so let's scratch that one.

They were all in favor of a title called The Way Out. And somebody suggested, well, there may be some other books called The Way Out. So they sent old Fitzmaier down to the Library of Congress in Washington DC to research the title. And he reported back that there were already 12 books published with the title of the way out and now call us being superstitious, didn't wanna be number 13 of anything. Meanwhile, Bill was dragging some drunks out of Bellevue Hospital out of the psychiatric wards trying to, sober up some of them.

And, one of them, they really wanted to get sober because this guy really had Buck. His name was Joe Wirth and he had been the original publisher and founder of the New Yorker Magazine, which, of course, is still still publishing today. Old Joe liked to drink a bit and by 19, 1938, he drank himself into, literally, Karcicoff syndrome, the wet brain syndrome. And he had been hospitalized at at Bellevue. They dragged him out to a meeting at, the Clinton Street House that Bill was living in.

The reason Bill was living there is it still belonged to Loyce's parents. It was about to be foreclosed on, but, they had a place and they were having a meeting there. And, poor old Joe, although he had once been one of the most dynamic businessmen in New York City, was a babbling idiot back over in the corner and they were having a meeting on what to call this movement. We didn't have a name. And they were debating these various titles going back and forth, back and forth, and somebody noticed that the babbling, guy back in the corner was saying anonymous alcoholics, alcoholics anonymous, anonymous alcoholics, alcoholics anonymous.

So I said, wait a minute. What's this guy saying? And then he spoke up very clearly and said, call it Alcoholics Anonymous. And they said, Alcoholics Anonymous what? He says, alcoholics anonymous, period.

I looked at him. I looked at each other, and then it started buzzing and talking around. You know, and this title started being debated. It started being debated. And when the way out was rejected, this being number 13, we decided to call it Alcoholics Anonymous.

And that's how we got our name. We got our name from a babbling idiot out of a mental hospital who would return back there and never left the mental hospital again till the poor guy died, of his alcoholism in 1946. So, I hope you start in a sense the chain of divine providence that has taken place in the founding of this fellowship. How this incredible cast of characters has has has come together. How they've been able to make decisions and take actions that they didn't even fully understand at the time, which have affected your lives and have affected mine.

And to see that there is a certain divine alchemy at work here, there is a certain providence at work, that out of our craziness and our alcoholism and our greed and all that, somehow or other we came together. Somehow or other we came together and this book got published and the growth was real slower even after the book got published. And I've listened to a tape by Jim Burwell, who was one of the original members. He's the guy that's responsible for God as we understood him being placed in in there very prominently. He's the atheist that's spoken of in the big book.

He's Jim the used car salesman in chapter 3. And I heard his tape and he said, yeah. We had a 100 members coming and going, mostly going. But But he said after the book was published, we had something upon which we could all agree. And he says, and then and only then did growth happen.

And it started very slowly at first. You know, there was a little article in Liberty Magazine 1939, a couple hundred people came in. It was a little too gaudy, the the article. You know, it was called Alcoholics and God. And, in February 1940, John d Rockefeller hadn't been heard from him for several years, gave a dinner for AA.

And they thought he was gonna get a fortune again. And all the royalty and famous were invited to the dinner. But at the dinner, Nelson Rockefeller was later to become vice president of the United States, stood up and said, my father can't be here because he's very, very ill. He was to die shortly thereafter. He'd be here.

He loves his work. He thinks it's one of those fabulous things that ever happened. But we're happy to announce to you this is a work of goodwill and you don't need to commit commit any money to it. We're upon $10,000,000,000 got up and walked out of the room without giving a a any money. Thank you, god.

So and doctor Bob were not happy The, growth was real slow until the spring of 1941 when a man named Jack Alexander, who was probably the most prominent reporter in the country at the time for the Saturday Evening Post, which, an article by Jack Alexander would be the equivalent to receiving a major segment on 60 minutes today. He was well known. He exposed a lot of the, rackets in the mafia and went to talk to Bill Wilson. Bill said, would you keep an open mind and come to some of our meetings with? So he started coming to some meetings, went out to Akron, went to some meetings, and became the biggest fan of Alcoholics Anonymous in the country.

He saw that we really had no agenda other than to help other alcoholics. We weren't out after a buck. We were something different. He published an article, and it appeared in the spring of 1941 in the Saturday Evening Post. It was extremely favorable and thousands upon thousands of requests came in.

As a direct result of it, the first people got sober in in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in California right around right around that time. There'd actually been a meeting a little earlier. A guy named Mark had showed up drunk from Las Vegas with a big book in his trunk and didn't never knew how it got there. You know what it was, but he'd run out of whiskey, so he ran the damn big book read the big book and and called the called the first meeting of AA shortly before the Saturday evening post article.

Of course, Sybil, who died just a few years ago, got sober as a result of that and stayed sober for all those years. She ran the central office. And but thousands and thousands of of alcoholics started to join. You know, within a year, our membership had jumped up to like 10,000. Meanwhile, the year before, they had a big article in Cleveland and in the Cleveland Plain Dealer Newspapers and a 1000 or 2 joined in Cleveland and period of great growth was was was upon us.

Actually, the first meeting ever called Alcoholics Anonymous was held in Cleveland in May of 1939. Before then, no nobody had known what to call them. We just published this book called Alcoholics Anonymous and a crusty old guy named Clarence Snyder said he was gonna have a meeting in Cleveland. He was gonna call it Alcoholics Anonymous after the title of the book. And we started having these meetings, and they started being called AA, Alcoholics Anonymous.

And we grew and we grew. And even as World War 2 broke out, our growth continued. And through the through the years of the war, we found that people could be in the service and still stay sober, and some of them carried the big books with them. And and, at home, growth continued. But there was a lot of problems.

There was a lot of problems in all in all this growth. It just expanded. It just grew like crazy. You know, by the end of World War 2, we may have had 20,000 people or better. Remember, this appeared 4 or 5 years.

All of a sudden from from a 100, we got, like, 20,000 people all across the country. And people were doing a lot of crazy things. There was a guy down in Florida selling memberships, all the groups are adopting all these series of rules, the things that you have to do to join, and groups were looking for the pure alcoholic. And Bill was getting all these rules in there, and he looked at that and says, my god. Doctor Bob and I couldn't even be members if we had to follow all these things.

You know? And there's that famous story found in the 12 and 12, which is the absolute truth. I have a copy of the card. Connecticut, this group adopted 61 rules that they were gonna follow, and they all ended up getting drunk. And the guy wrote in to Bill and says, Bill, we've decided to abolish the 61 rules, but we have adopted rule 62.

And it's a little card on the outside, it says rule 62. You open up on the inside, it says, don't take yourself so damn seriously. So AA, as of right now, only has one rule. We got 12 tradition. We got one rule.

And rule is rule 62. Don't take yourself so damn seriously. And I hope we haven't done that today. But there was this enormous period of growth, but a was falling apart. People were breaking anonymity all over.

There was controversy as to whether certain age could go on the radio or, at the time, you know, of course, TV really didn't exist to any great extent and, which direction Alcoholics Anonymous was going in. And at that point, a guy named Milton Maxwell, who was not himself an alcoholic but was great friend of Alcoholics Anonymous. He, later became a nonalcoholic trustee. AA World Services had is run by board of trustees which, consists of 14 alcoholics and 7 nonalcoholics. People that just love us and willing to serve with us, you know, and help us out.

At times, there were more non alcoholics than alcoholics on board of trustees. They were afraid all the alcoholics get drunk, run off with all the money, of course didn't have any money, but they were still afraid of it, you know. We were gonna get some soon. You know how we are. Milton Maxwell wrote Bill and actually sent along a little article which was published in the great mind saying, Bill, have you ever heard of the Washingtonians?

You remember we talked about those this morning? And Bill, you know, a 100 years later, Bill has never heard of the Washington. Had to go down to a library to research it. And said this group in 18 forties, which almost had the solution as I pointed out to you this morning, tore itself apart and dissolved. And Bill looked at that and said, my god.

That's what's happening to us. We got people out striving for power and prestige. We've got people breaking anonymity. We've got all this craziness going on. Maybe I need to do something about it.

And in 1946, he sat down and started writing from our experience, not from the so much the good experience, but from the weaknesses as he as he points out in his article. He said, you know, these 12 traditions are confessions of our individual weaknesses, our individual character defects, and our character defects as groups. And he wrote a series of articles which were published in the grapevine 46, 47, right around in that period. Again, you can find these original articles Then he later on adapted it to the idea of being traditions. They were written originally in what we call the long form.

I passed out to you and if anybody didn't get it, and now you find these in your in your big book, but I I wrote it out here because there's one place I had something from an alcoholic, put it in your big book. Works for the guys that I sponsor. And what I've done here, just so you can make a comparison, the long form of the tradition is in black and the short form of tradition is in blue. And I've I've put each each tradition there there together. Bill wrote these things and initially there was a lot of resistance.

Bill would go around trying to talk about these traditions and everybody would say, god, Bill, don't don't tell us about your traditions. Tell us about your hot flash spiritual spirits. Tell us where you hide your bottles. Tell us some drinking stories, but for god's sake, don't talk about these these traditions. But Bill of single-minded purpose and realizing that if AA didn't hang together, it would not survive it would not survive, kept hammering away at these traditions.

There was still a lot of division in the movement. The Akron people hated the New York people and New York people hated the Akron people. Now Bill and Bob got along just fine. They never had an argument. But all the people around them, you know, the people in Akron wouldn't talk to the people in New York.

People in New York would not talk to the people from Akron. Bill and Bob agreed there had to be something done in order to get people together. Suggestions made, well, let's have a let's have a convention and get everybody together, see if we can agree on these on these traditions. People in Akron said, we're not going to New York. People in New York said, we're not going to Akron.

So I came up with a solution. It was go to Cleveland. So they went to Cleveland in July of 1950. And we have our 1st international convention. Almost 5,000 alcoholics attended it.

And it closed the convention. Group of men went up and I had the original tapes of that deal. You can hear them get up and each one talked about 2 of the traditions, sell them to the to the conference and at the close of the conference, our 12 traditions were adopted. And these traditions, just like the 12 steps, it was later decided cannot be changed except not one word in them can be changed except by a vote of 3 quarters of all the groups in the world after giving 6 months notice. So it's unlikely that because you can't imagine you all trying to agree on imagine my group trying to agree on some changes in the thing.

So we pretty well decided this is the basis upon which we're going to hang together. And the first tradition said each member of Alcoholics Anonymous is but a small part of a great whole. AA must continue to live or most of us will surely die. It's our common welfare comes first, but individual welfare follows close afterwards. I don't know of a society on the face of the earth that cares more about individual welfare than alcoholics anonymous.

I don't know any other society, where people will get out of bed at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning to to travel across town to spend time with another drunk. I don't know any other place. As soon as we're talking about it out there, Scotty and I, about how our our doors are always open and we never know when we, come downstairs in the morning which drunk is going to happen to be on the couch at that time. We're certainly concerned with individual welfare. But to some extent, we have to give this up when the group holds together because we lose our group.

If you lose the Robert's roof, baby, you got no place to recover. If I lose a strange camel's group, I got no place to recover. And sometimes this gets challenged. It gets challenged by Kip and I were talking about it and and some of the others were talking about it. You know, sometimes you get these people being sent there by the courts and you wonder, these people aren't part of us.

They don't wanna be there. I think everybody was there Thursday night. The Roberts' room wanted to be there. Way it looked to me way it looked to me. I mean, we don't test sincerity there, but generally everybody was there because they they wanna be there.

Sometimes and I've I've seen groups fall apart. My group started because the group I was going to was being bombarded with busloads of people from treatment centers, mostly adolescents, who do not wanna be there, running around the room. I got a resentment, grabbed the guy and said, let's go to my house and read the book to each other and screw this. That's how we get started. Resent them in the coffee pot.

You know, that's how AA grows. I think the greatest story on that, oh, Don Pieth from Aurora, Colorado tells a story in 89. He took the message over to Russia and a got started in Russia. And he got back to his office in New York 2 weeks later. He says as I walked into my office, the general service office in New York, the phone was ringing.

And I lift up the phone and there's this Russian voice on the other line that says, this is Ivan from Moscow group number 2. Don says, I thought you only had Moscow group number 1. He says, Moscow group number 1 was not doing it right. We have started, group 2. Is that alcoholic tomorrow?

Yeah. That's how Robert Roos got started. That's how strange. Cowles got started. It's how Muska group number 2 got started.

So when we see a threat to our own unity, but some things isn't doesn't feel right in there. And our tendency is to, you know, we've gotta do 1 or 2 things. We've got to either cure it right then or or many times we go start another group. Better just to cure it right then, you know. We we talk to each other and I'll call it synopsis and that's tradition too.

For our group purposes, but one ultimate authority, a loving god as he may express himself in our group conscience. And I wanna tell you that as close as I can come today, if I was gonna stand up here to give you a talk on James' concept of the higher power, what I have come to believe in in this program, I could not express it any better than what exists in my heart today as a loving God as he seems to express himself in our group conscience in our group conscience. When alcoholics talk to each other, when we are gathered together for the purposes of this Friday, I believe that God, as I understand him, is is is is their is their present. And I believe that it comes out of the group. It can't always just come out of just me.

K. I saw it at Robert's Roost on on Thursday night. I'll tell you how I saw the group conference work. There was one guy in there that's been having a lot of slips, and he was making a lot of complaints about the group wasn't doing right. And we're hanging together and weren't staying sober and everything else.

I heard the group consciously. You know, I heard Scottie pipe up and talk for a while, Mike kind of talk for a while. And they were saying, as I heard the group, consciousness was, yeah. But we do do things together. You know, we're getting ready to go this weekend and all be together.

We're gonna hang around in the parking lot after. We're gonna be over at these people's houses. You see, and I and what I'm listening for there is this one just Scotty and Mike speaking. It wasn't Billy speaking. He talked, on a deal.

This was the group of alcoholics anonymous. This was something that Scottie and Mike and Billy in and of themselves just as James in and of himself. It's not real good at coming up with thoughts like that. But in our meetings, where the spirit is in there and the spirit was in there Thursday night, the spirit's in here to die. This is what keeps me coming back to Alcoa Snobs.

We bring the spirit in this room. We leave here, this is gonna be just any other room. Just any other room. We'll get to that later. It's bioclocks.

No. I'm just bothered on churches or property or something like that. Because we bring the spirit the spirit lives. And it's the spirit of of god as our understanding. Now I can't get any more complicated than that.

And we learn to listen to each other. As Alcole, what Bill called us, rebellious nonconformist, unwilling or unable to conform to the laws of god or man, who have never listened to anybody in our lives. We pretend to listen. We pretend to listen especially if the guy person has with calls out of Louisiana to come see on us. You know, if the judge is talking, if she who must be obeyed is talking, you know, if somebody's talking, we say, oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. But we're thinking. We're coming here and we learn to listen to each other. We learn to listen to each other. My first sponsor, the old goat, told me that it's not important what you say in an AA meeting.

Because, you know, I'm always obsessing over what I'm getting ready to say. It's not important. It's not even important if you talk. So you hear a lot of meetings where you say it's important. You go around the room and everybody talks.

It's not true. Not true at all. He says, what's important is what you hear. It's what you hear at the meeting. If you're called upon to share, you share or you pass.

But it's what you hear. This is the first time in your life you have sat there for an hour each day and you have listened to other human beings open up their heart, and speak to you in the language of the heart. And some of that is going to penetrate if you keep coming back. And he says, that's the group conscience. What is the conscience with that still small voice inside of us that knows that knows what's right and what's not right.

That still small voice inside of us speaks to us of the presence of god. Book talks about it in chapter 4, deep down inside every man, woman, and child is this fundamental idea of God. And we expressed that at these meetings. That's the group conscience. So we need to listen to each other and just popping off at the group isn't necessarily a group conscience.

But you're one person after another after another as we did Thursday night saying, wait a minute. This is how our group feels. This is how we act. This is what we do. That is the group conscious talking.

That is my viewpoint. The voice of God speak. So we listen. We listen to each other. We listen to each other.

What a miracle. What a miracle. The finest meditation I'm told, I was told that I will ever do is go to a meeting of alcoholics anonymous. Meditation, step 11, is a word. It comes from 2 Latin words, medi, meaning middle, and terry, meaning to terry, to to linger, to hang out, To hang out in the middle of.

I always thought it was my girlfriend Kathy, sitting necking on the bed after smoking Doug going, you know. And I was gonna go. I'm still not gonna go. I get into silent meditation and I start thinking about sex, you know, just right away or money. 1 of the 2.

1 of the 2. Usually women. You know, I'm I'm not good at that. But I can hang out in the middle of an AA meeting. I can do that kind of meditation, voice of God speaking, group conscience, speaking.

That's James' experience on it. That's the finest meditation I do. I do that when I'm listening to text. That's meditation I can do. Listen to another alcoholic sharing his spirit, strength, and hope.

Boy, Scott speaking there because that was recorded in a meeting. So we listen to each other. The first tradition one one says we hang together. This is 72 says we listen to each other. Not only during our means, but we can listen to each other out here in between the means.

We've been listening to each other out before the meeting. We're gonna gather after this meeting and listen to each other. We're gonna talk to our sponsors. Voice of God speaking. 3.

This is a misunderstood tradition. Let's talk about this just just just a moment or 2. District 3 in sharp pharmacist, the only requirement for a membership is a desire to stop drinking. Well, better understood in the long form. Long form says our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism.

So in the short form when they said stop drinking, they're talking about suffering from alcoholism. With case we get some people in and say, well, I have a desire to stop drinking. Have you ever been drunk? No. But I have a desire to stop drinking, you know, and the, clinic sent me over here because, you know, look at them goofy.

Jesus. They usually don't come back after a while. But for meanwhile, it kind of disrupt the meaning, you know, the this and what is a desire? You know, in my own personal experience just a sort of want to want to wasn't a desire. You know, well, I think I might and I kept getting drunk.

You know, when I'm talking about desire, I'm talking about the heat you felt at 17 in the back seat of the old Chevy at the drive in with Nancy. I'm talking about desire, baby. I'm talking about what you wanted right then. That's desire. That's desire.

Says in the 5th chapter, if you want what we've got, desire what we've got. I'm willing to go to any lengths to get it. That's the kind of desire. And we don't need to fool anybody. Like I said, my group would say if you've got even a suspicion that alcohol has anything to do with your problems because hell, no, when everybody got here, most of us would rather been drug addicts or most of us rather been schizophrenic or major depressives or some other fancy deal.

I know I would. Nobody wants to be an alcoholic. Even today with all the publicity and everything and the so called removal of the stigma, we're still at the bottom of the food chain. It's much more respectable to be an addict or a schizophrenic or something like that. Nobody wants to be a whino.

And not only that, it's hard to figure out you're an alcoholic. So we welcome in anybody who has even a slightest suspicion that drinking might possibly, conceivably have something to do with the current fact that they have had to go to the incredible step of coming to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, you know. We're not listed in the social register, you know. This isn't something you can put on your resume. And but if you aren't suffering from alcoholism, I'm sorry.

We can't help you. We can't help you. You know, this, the question was raised as early in their articles in here that we have pamphlets on. Problems other than alcohol and and those goofballs, both both pamphlets. 1958.

Think this is a new problem? 1958 in the grapevine, Bill is dealing with the questions of of whether a non alcoholic drug addict can be a member of AA. He says experience has taught us that this can't happen because they're not alcoholic. Then he goes on to say though, if you're alcoholic and you also have a problem with drugs or anything else, you're welcome. But you gotta be an alcoholic first.

You know, you hear this crap coming out of treatment centers. A drug is a drug is a drug. Well, next time you have a headache, take a handful of x laks. Jeez, I'm just an alcoholic, but I've used and I've used in our uppers and downers and and and everything to to know that a drug and the drug is not a drug for crying out loud. You use the downers to get down, you use the speed to drink all night, you use the, you know, you you you know, you wanna feel omnipotent, do a little coke.

You know, wanna run the world. The principle that Alcoholics Anonymous works on is the fact that Bill and Abby could get together because they were both alcoholic. Bill and doctor Bob could get together both because they were alcohol. Both Bill and Bob used drugs. So what?

It's in their stories. It's in the book. Bill talks about using being given sedatives in the next morning drinking gin and sedatives. What the hell do you think he's talking about? Doesn't matter what the hell you've used.

But if you come in here, catch alcoholism. We have a program of recovery for you. We don't care what else you are. Don't tell me you're an ANDA. I'm an alcoholic and an addict.

Well, I'm sorry. You're screwed because we ain't got no ANDA program. We got Alcoholics Anonymous in here. That's right. There's a great difference between being an ANDA and being also.

I sponsor men who are alcoholics, and they're also members of cocaine anonymous. They're and they don't go in there and say they're a member they're an alcoholic. They go in there as a member of Coke. I'm I sponsor a guy as a member of Narcotics Anonymous. He's also a member of Narcotics Anonymous.

He goes to that fellowship and doesn't screw that fellowship up with bringing his alcoholism in, and he doesn't try to screw ours up. As long as you're something else, it's just that old desire, I'm different, I'm special, I'm better than you, yang yang. You know? And we can't live like that. Ego deflation at death.

I have to deflate that ego that I'm separate, I'm different, and I'm anything other than just like you are. My experiences may very well include drugs. They may may well include a lot of other perversions or strange things, you know. Most of which best say for a 5th step except around this group that offers ministry things around here. But, by and large, it's I'm just an alcoholic.

Okay? And I found a way to recover from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body called alcoholism. Alcoholism. And I also sponsored men who have died because they didn't know that. Harvey, I could not get to go to NI, He was just barely, maybe some bought an alcoholic.

It was a real live heroin junk. You know? And I can't get him to go to NA. And he keeps coming to us and he keeps coming to us. And I don't wanna go there.

I don't wanna go there. And 1 morning, 3 AM, he rigged himself up and he OD, he died. Who's he gonna call? Me? His his alcoholic sponsor?

You know, he's hardly ever been drunk in his life. And he didn't have that what did Carl you call it in that letter that I passed out to you? The protective wall of human community? He had nobody in NA to call and say, my god. The walls have closed in whatever I'm gonna use.

I'm gonna, you know he didn't have anybody. He didn't have anybody. That's why, believe me, I respect cocaine anonymous. I respect narcotics anonymous. I respect Al Anon, O'Reason, any of those deals that uses the 12 steps and the 12 traditions.

We aren't all things to all people. We're gonna talk about this more in tradition 5. You have to be an alcoholic to be a member of alcoholics. None. I mean, isn't it amazing I'm even having to stand up here and say that?

I mean, that's her name. Anyway, it kinda seems like how that that works. And, just because you got sitting here on court card don't mean you're an alcoholic. You know? People say, well, you got a 502.

We call it DWI back home. I had to start over in this program when I was 5 years old. Lost all my money, Got into some crazy stuff. My sponsor died. Didn't bother to ask anybody's advice.

Built condos in the French part instead of practicing law. Crashed bankrupt. Still living at $350,000 house near the New Orleans Country Club, living at a $175 a month to walk up apartment on Magazine Street, had to start over by instead of handling 6 figure personal injury cases, I'm going down the traffic court and hustling DWI cases. Now I've read it up representing a I stayed sober incident, I started without taking a drink. I represented 100 of DWI cases down there is how I started over.

There's no better percentage of people who get their first DWI that are alcohols than they're on here. Most of them are social drinkers who've got no damn business drinking and driving a car. We do a lot better drinking and driving than they do. They're a menace to society. They need to be taken off the streets for Christ's sake.

But they're not alcoholic. They're what the book called problem drink, you know, with the heavy drinker, the problem drinker. We'll probably do them some good by exposing to us if they're not alcohol. You know how you tell the alcoholic who's got a DWI? It's real easy.

The non alcoholic says, oh, god. I shouldn't have drank so much. I'm not gonna do it again. Most of them never do it again. The alcoholic says, man, they wouldn't have stopped me if I remembered to turn my lights on or if I I I I dropped my wallet on the floor or, the cops are picking on me.

He was deliberately waiting for me there. He's out to get me, and I only had 2. I say, hey. I wanna talk to you about a little deal I go to, you know. Come come let's talk about this.

Let's talk about this. You know? We don't connect our drinking with our problems. We don't connect our drinking with our problems. That's the essence of the alcoholic condition.

So there are a lot of people who come here that are not alcoholic. We can be helpful to some of them, especially at our open meetings, our open public meetings, but at our closed meetings for alcoholics so that we can feel this common bond that we feel here this weekend. Tradition 4 is real simple. Long form says each gay group should be responsible to know other authority than its own conscience. And the short form, it says autonomous.

Autonomous is another another but a big fancy word that means self governing. You know, I've learned my own life to be self governing just to do things that I needed to do. Get up in the morning, make my bed, go to work, do things like that, be self governed. Group has to learn the same thing. Says it's Robert Ruth group.

It's gonna it's gonna take care of its own affairs unless it's gonna get ready to do something that's gonna affect day as a whole. Suppose you guys you guys are getting ready to plan a dinner and you find that inner group is also having a dinner the same night. Well, this tradition suggests that we cooperate. We call up and say, hey. Either you move your dinner or we'll move ours, but let's let's just agree, you know, because that's gonna affect you.

Common politeness, it's all it is. It's not a complicated tradition. But it allows each group the right to be wrong. Y'all we do things differently from 1 group to the next, you know. My group holds hands say a large prayer.

Y'all just stand there and say the large prayer, you know. And you don't hold hands at the end of meeting. You did Thursday night, that's okay. That's group custom. We a lot of us do things just real real differently.

We have the right to do things differently. I may open we may open our meeting a little differently or run our deal. So what? That makes a great variety and wonderful things. But it's you as your group conscience that decided to study tradition kind of build one upon the other.

You said we're gonna get together, we're gonna listen to each other and this is what we're gonna do. We think we can stay sober. And the evidence that whatever you're doing is working is all the guys that are in this room at 4:10 on a Friday, Saturday afternoon when there's a beautiful day out there and y'all are all in here doing Alcoholics Anonymous. You have newcomers here. You got guys here with 8, 9 days, and 80 days, 90 days.

And, you know, it's it's that's just amazing. A bunch of newcomers sitting here listening to this stuff. So you doing this working right. That's the 4th tradition. That's the 4th tradition.

5th tradition, if there's any one tradition that's under attack, and I talked a little bit about it in 3rd because it and the 5th kinda go together. In the long form, let's look at it in the long form. The short form says each group has one primary purpose. Garrett's master is the alcoholic who still suffers. The 5th tradition in the long form says each alcoholic synonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity having one primary purpose.

We're a spiritual entity. We're not an organization or anything else. We're a group of people that have gotten together for spiritual purposes with one primary purpose. We're one trick pony. There's one thing we do, and that's help alcoholics.

We cannot be all things to all people. And I have seen group after group after group dissolve because people have brought other agendas into that group. When I come into this meeting, I am an alcoholic, period. I'm an alcoholic, period. No.

And I've seen people bring a lot of agendas into groups. No. I have no use for a black in alcoholic synonymous. I have every bit of love in the world for a couple of black men that I sponsor who just happened to be black with their first and foremost members of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I know you used for homosexuals and Alcoholics Anonymous.

But some of the people who helped me the most when I was first getting sober were members of Alcoholics Anonymous who just also happened to be homosexual. I couldn't have made it through the 1st year without Wally. He died of AIDS. He died of AIDS. And I I'm mourning to this day.

And I I swear to God, I couldn't have made it. First and foremost, he was a member of our false norms. He didn't bring in some other agenda. He come in here to plow his his homosexuality and Jerome didn't become in here. The guy sponsored he's the postman to flout his blackness.

You know, one of the great experiences I had, I went down to the post office late one night, big post office in New Orleans. He gotta understand Jerome's a goofy guy, man. Comes in, he's about ready to get fired and and sponsor him, you know, he gets sober. And he calls me one day and he says, James James, I gotta talk to you. I gotta talk.

Oh my god. They fired Jerome. So meet me in my house right away. Meet me in your house. Jerome, what's the matter?