The International Convention in Minneapolis, MN

Oh, with all that applause, I can hardly wait to hear what I've got to say. Good morning, good evening, or whatever it is. I'm not sure. I've only been here 3 days. Maybe I'll catch up somewhere down the line.

My name is Searcy, and I'm an alcoholic. By the grace of god and your help and, alanarm, alatine, alicot, alatorade, in between, I have not had a drink since May 10, 1946. The only reason I mentioned the length of my sobriety is because I'm damn proud of it. That's the only reason I'm here. If we're not glad to have whatever we we've got in sobriety, well, we don't deserve it.

If we're not grateful for every minute and every hour that we've been given by the grace of God, we don't deserve it. But I am my boat loaded with gratitude to all of you people who stayed the course and are here to show course and are here sober today, and thank God for you. You know, repetition confirms and strength and habit and faith comes naturally. I've been talking ever since I got here, and this is the first time I've had baptismal services in a Lutheran church. But I'm a recovering Baptist, you know.

So so I hope they don't kick me out of the church. I hope to have all these guys have been carrying the message up to whoever that they're saying. I hope they bring me something to say. Keep plugging in. You know, we have fun staying sober.

I do. If I didn't have fun staying sober, I'd start to go to drinking again, I I guess. I don't know what I'd do, but I've had fun ever since I've been in the program. From the beginning of Alcoholics Anonymous, it had been a revelation of fun and fellowship and and, for being sober and being able to talk and help other people and to help ourselves. And, I was a bad drunk, and, I don't know of any good ones.

But and I I, I hope I don't get into a long drunk alarm. I don't plan to. And a lot of times, old timers, you know, we get into a drunk alarm and it last 4 or 5 days. That's the reason we're not asked to talk too often, you know. Talk to somebody that can cut it down, you know.

And, but there's no way I can cut my chalk down because it's been it's, it's happened over such a long period of time. I'm I have three important numbers in my life. They're 90, 65, and 54. I'm 90 years old, been married to the same woman for 65 years, and I've been And I've been sober 54 years. But I'll tell you one thing, the most important one of those numbers, and those are not my measurements.

The most important number of those is the 54. If I didn't have that, I wouldn't have the 90, and I wouldn't have the 65. I'll guarantee you that. And I I in this position and, ordinarily, old Smitty, doctor Bobson, and I travel a lot to go around spreading the disease over the country. And, I always talk after him because they're letting Al Anon talk first usually in an AA.

And, they turned it around here, so I'm gonna have to watch what I say. He's gonna follow me up, and I don't know what the hell he'll tell you about me. I have no idea. But let's remember this, that Bob is the only living human left in god's world that was there when we started. The only one left.

Some of old moss of us old mossheads have been around a little while after it started and for different periods of time in there after it did start, but we weren't there in the beginning. And, my cuff run is over for Bob and Bill, who stayed the course from the beginning. They stayed this is good. This is our god. This is it will help the alcoholic, and we gotta stay with it, and they did.

Thank god for them staying to court. They saved our lives. I'm not gonna as I said, I won't do a long run for long, but I developed alcoholism. I was not born with alcoholism. I have no idea if I was born without because my father and mother and and all my family never did drink.

Not at all. They were Baptist and missionary Baptist, and they didn't drink like Methodist and Catholics and all those people. But but I was, I was born and my father and brother, we had, 7 children in my family, and we were poor, very poor. And, and we had a lot of hard times. But those hard times, just like in Alcoholics Anonymous, those hard days we have and the hard times we have tell us that if we stay the course, it'll work.

If we stay the course, it'll stay in there and we'll stay sober and it'll work. And my father and mother, they still stayed the course, although on that old farm, we had very little income. And and a lot of lot of hazards, a lot of bad things, and we prayed to God that it would rain so we'd have a crop and something to eat from week to week. If you're not as close to God as you once were, make no mistake about who moved. And if you never were close to him, make no mistake about who should move.

Without the power greater than ourselves, we would not have alcoholics and all. And I'm not gonna preach to you about religion because I don't know anything about it. And I am a recovering mavist. I still don't know anything about it. But I can tell you that spirituality is the reflection of godliness in the channels of human living.

It is what we aspire to be. It's what we would like to be. It's what we want to be. But we're not there. We don't seek perfection.

We seek progress. And we've got it. I want to tell you a few things. Well, anyhow, on my road to alcoholism, as I said, I I was not born an alcoholic, but but I set out on the course to become 1, and I did by doing these things that I did. And as a result, I became an alcoholic.

I, I wanted I didn't I didn't like that farm at all. I hated the damn farm. I just hated it. I had to chop cotton and pick cotton and all, and and I did a a lot of surveying too. I used a mule tail for a comfort.

You know? So I finally finally got off that farm with an old aunt of mine who lived in the little city close to us, and, I could stay with her and have room and board and work in a drugstore and finish high school. And the day I finished high school, I went to, Midland, Texas to play semifro baseball in the old West Texas league. And it was a pretty good league. The the we had big oil companies out there and big motor companies and big corporations that sponsored players.

And we had to play baseball on the weekend, but we had to work during the week doing something we were supposed to work. And, so, I don't know about you, but my drink I never did like to drink with a sorry drinker. Did you? You drink with somebody that'll take 2 or 3 drinks and pass out, or they'll take 2 or 3 drinks and say, I don't like the taste of the stuff. You know, I like to drink it.

They'll drink it down, puke it up, and drink some more. Just keep on. I'm amazed a lot of time. It's a waste of money that is about alcohol. My wife will once in a while order a grasshopper, whatever that is.

Got salt all the way around the top and steel chip on it. And then when you get through eating, it's still there. That's just a waste of money. Why, they'll drink it down and order up 3 or 4 more, you know, and get more. Drink it.

Anyhow, I I set out on the course to, alcohol changed my life from being ugly and look how I've improved. But, you know, alcohol will change your course of life. I'll tell you that. If you I I I I I drank alcohol and it made a new man out of me, and then I want to give the new man a drink. You know?

I played baseball with a company, a big motor company. They hired me to play baseball to work for them for a few days a week. And, our baseball manager was a guy named Doc Ellis, and Doc had a funeral parlor, and he was our manager. And that's a hell of a combination, there. Funeral parlor and a baseball manager.

But, anyhow, that's what happened. We had a 3rd basement, and I have to tell this story about Red Hill with the 3rd baseman. He's a sorry drinker. He'd drink 2 or 3 beer and just pass out. Ridiculous and and very, very disappointing to we who could handle it so well.

You know? And so, anyhow, we got, I'm sure lost the the game that Sunday night, but we were back at the funeral parlor and, drinking beer. We drank home brew. Now home brew I don't see very many home brew faces here, but there's a few. And what what home brew was, it was macaroni and cheese, spaghetti, and I don't but it's fermented and it'd make you drunk.

I know that. They called it home brew. At the funeral parlor after this game, this Sunday, while Red Hill had a couple of beers and just passed out on the funeral floor floor. And, we decided we who had so much knowledge and about able to drink, we decide we'd get even with him. It's very, very embarrassing.

And we picked him up and put him in a casket. And we folded his arms and put some roses around on him here and there he goes. And we stood back to see what his reaction would be. And finally, read around a little, and he fell to himself. He fell to the side of the casket, and he looked up and all around.

Then he we heard him say, if I'm not dead, why am I here? And if I am dead, why do I have to go to the bathroom? I think later on, red came in the program. Don't you? But what you do is and they gave me a job when I I finally made general manager of this motor company, a big distributor company.

We had everything from Abilene to El Paso, 600 miles. And they gave me a I made me general manager, finally. And, I had to do a lot of entertaining. And, you know how that is. You you don't wanna, disappoint your customers, and I understand the hell out of them.

I I really did entertain them. And I always had plenty of booze and I always drank plenty so that I could could transfer my wisdom and knowledge, and alcohol helped me do that to them. And, so you follow a pattern of things you wanna do and it suited me exactly. That's what I wanted to do because alcohol made me unafraid to dance and and be the best dancer or to be the best salesman, the best sales manager, whatever it was. Alcohol was doing it, I thought.

And in your development of alcoholism, you keep on drinking and drinking and drinking, and and then you start drinking for a different reason. And you just start drinking to get away from the effects of drinking. And if you do that long enough and you follow that pattern, it gets worse and worse if you have that x factor in your life, and I had it. And because of that, I kept and finally, I crossed the line into compulsive, pathological drinking. That's the only drinking that's a disease.

And I know it's a disease because it doesn't respond to self treatment. And the reason I know I tried self treatment on it for 25 years, it didn't work. And when I finally turned it over to God and they, hey. It didn't work pretty darn good. But, you know, these bad things that happened to us on the way to alcoholism and after we reach alcoholism, and, badly, your luck changes.

You ever notice that? It's not because of drinking, you're just bad luck. You know? And so and then then you start losing jobs, and I started working for a narrow minded employer. Very narrow minded.

And I remember, now the line from there, they finally decided that they could get along without me in the automotive industry. And so I, I went they moved me to credit managers of Packard Automobile Company and sent me to Corpus Christi. And I went down there and, to show them how to drink, and I did a pretty good job. But, you know, after a while, you know, if you if you can't handle your booze and and you're developing alcohol and you're in to the throes of alcohol, then bad things start happening. You you're you I wrote those 4 horsemen, Terror, bewilderment, frustration, and despair.

I rode those 4 horsemen all the way down the line. And I was desperate, but I didn't know what was wrong. I had no idea that alcohol was the problem. But then these bad things, all kinds of bad things happened to you. And then I I lost all these jobs, and then I started taking the geographical cure.

That is unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. And I a lot of those things, I I I lost y'all on account of my belief. I got to believe in other people's things were mine. And fear fear set in. Fear of all kind.

No faith. And, and I had had faith in God and had faith And because I heard my dad and my mother pray and for faith, and and they express to me what faith was. That faith is believing that if you need and god's need for you to have a reign, you'll get it. And if he doesn't, you won't. But fear, they told me, is a dark room where negatives are developed.

Write that in your book. Fear is a dark room where negatives are developed. And if you keep having fear, then you'll have a negative attitude and breathe more sorry things in your life than you can dream of. You fear and the reason you fear because you have no faith. And if you don't have faith, you don't have much future.

So we have to develop faith. And I only did that when I came into Alcoholic Economics. I never really had faith. So, anyhow, I went in the service. I, at first, I got out of jail in Corpus Christi and went to Dallas, and I went to work for a defense plant.

We built bomb doors for for a plane, bombing plane. And, you know, alcoholics are screwed. We're smart as hell about observing people and what their capacities are and what they can do and how they can do it. And they had me observing those people working in there and what they did and what it's paying off. And with all my knowledge and everything, I observed that we were gonna lose the damn war if we didn't get rid of those sorry people in there that would were trying to be a bomb door.

And so I I volunteered and went in the service. And I was 33 years old, and I've been drunk hoodie in those years, and I was not in very good physical condition. They ran my tail off day and night, my tongue out, and I just had a hard time getting through basic training. But I got through that. And, anyhow, about 11 months later, after I had the main corporal and they and they put me in charge of a platoon to go down to the frontier days in, Cheyenne, Wyoming, and I sent my ass my platoon down there and dismissed them.

Now I went down to a hotel and stayed there 3 or 4 days. And the sir the service took a damn view. And they dismissed me after about 11 months. They decided they're if they were gonna win the war, they better get rid of me, and that's what they did. And when I when they got rid of me and I came back to Dallas, I was given a job with a, a large, automotive company out of Toledo, electric auto light company.

And they gave me 5 states to travel out of Lubbock, and they moved me from Dallas to Lubbock. And, anyhow, the short, version of this story is that the company knew I had a drinking problem. They didn't know how bad. But on a day, I was I had a terrible hangover, and the fellow I was traveling with, his car broke down, and I told him to get it fixed, and I'd go back to the hotel where we were staying. And, the reason I did that see, we all thought it was a while as there was a liquor store between there and the hotel.

I went by and picked up some refreshments. And, what now? And then from the hotel, I ran into, the guy that would help me come into Alcon Art. Name was Bob Skiverhart. He and his mother owned a big oil company in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and we did a lot of drinking together.

And, he was a sorry drinker too, but he had a lot of money. And he would drink and pass out, and I'd steal his money and stay drunk. That would keep me drunk for quite a while. But I ran into Bob, and I said, Bob, let's go have a drink. I'm about to die.

And he said, I'll go with you. And he went with me, and I poured him a drink, and he didn't take it. He pushed him back. He said, you go on drink. You need a drink.

And I had a couple, and then I I I quit. I couldn't understand. He'd never turned the drink down that I knew I'm gonna like. And then I asked him. Him, I said, what kind of a neuro disease you got, Bob?

And he said, I have some bad things started happening to me because of my drinking. He said, I'd get up at night and drive with a carload of liquor. And in front of the airport there in Dallas, I ran over an automobile with 3 ladies in there, and they all were killed. You can imagine the anguish and the problems that my mother and I have had having killed somebody drunk. And he said, I had to find a way to stay sober.

And in Dallas, there are we have about 12 or 13 hours, and we have a group called Alcoholics Anonymous. And he said, I've been sober 10 months, and I couldn't believe that, that he'd ever be sober 10 months. But he told me that he said, well, you go as far as you can go. You can't go one step further. You call me, and I'll try to help you.

You need some help. You need to quit drinking. And I had no idea about alcoholics anonymous or anything. I I had read that article in the in the Saturday Evening Post, but I didn't I thought that was for you people. But Bob told me and made me know that there was a way out because he had found it.

And he sent me the big book, And he said, I'm gonna send you a book that tells about how to stay sober and how these people just like us have survived and are sober today. And I said, well, you'd be damn sure you send it to the hotel where I don't send it to my wife, she'll think I've got a drinking problem. In November, I lost that job, a good job, and I stayed drunk from November 1940 5 till April 1946. And a moment of clarity came that I remembered what Bob told me, and I had gone as far as I could go. I couldn't go a step further.

And I got on the plane, went to Dallas looking for Bob, and a couple of days, he came back in the city. By that time, I was drunk and and in real bad physical condition everywhere. And he put me in an ambulance and took me out to a drying out joint. We didn't have treatment centers in. We had drying out places.

They'd give you an ounce of alcohol every 4 hour to keep you from having DT. And, those hours, I'll tell you, were very short. I I I needed to drink badly. But somehow, someway, by the grace of God, I did not have to have some more drinks. I did not have to have drinks as I had been doing.

I had to have a drink to to live. And so the second day there, they call call and Bob said, we're gonna take you to Alcoholics Anonymous. And we got in the car and went downtown Dallas, 912 and a Half Main Street, parked in front of a liquor store. And then I knew damn well A. Edwards.

But we didn't go at a liquor store. We went up some stairs up there, and then at at at the over the doorway, there was a sign said, welcome your home. And that's the first time a welcome sign had been turned around where I could read it in a long time. We went in there and here's the important thing. I wanna tell each and every one of you here.

You may think you're not important. I don't care who you are, where you came from, or how you came there. You are the only one that can help somebody that's out there looking for a way right now to stay sober. You're the only one. I've heard from Jay to say, I I don't know much about the program.

I haven't been in very long. I don't know anybody I can help. You can help somebody tell me a story of what happened. Every single one of us, and it's our responsibility to stay sober in order to help somebody else stay sober and save their lives as our lives have been saved. And it's it's, we're responsible.

I'm responsible to stay sober. How? Because they gave me a way not to drink. And I couldn't imagine ever living life without alcohol. What the hell would you do if you didn't drink?

I couldn't imagine. Anything. Anything you could do. But anyhow, the importance and there the 12 guys that were there at the AA group. The important and this is the important thing of that first contact that somebody give you away and the importance of sponsorship.

This guy, Burrow McInerny, was probably the only one of the 12 that would take the time and and and would would tell me exactly what to do. And he said, do you believe in God? And I said, yes, I believe in God. He said, do you admit your power is over alcohol? Your life's unmanageable?

I have no problem with that. Well, he said, I don't want any of your your, proposition and your promises. I want a commitment. Before you get out of bed every morning to God, not to me or anybody else, but to God that you'll not take a drink just for 24 hours. And he said, if you don't drink today, you never will drink.

Never. And I didn't know I was in a crap until the next day came. That was the day, so I couldn't drink. And every day since then, it's been like that. I make that commitment in the morning, so I can't drink today.

I'm not gonna drink today. I don't care what happened. But I made a commitment to god this morning not to drink. Anyhow, we started, I went back. There was not a group of Alkali synonymous between Fort Worth and Phoenix, Arizona.

1200 miles. Not a group. And we had 12 members. So it was pretty lonely. Can you imagine how lonely it was for doctor Bob and Bill with the 2 of them trying to figure out and did figure out a way to stay sober, then they wanted to figure out how to way to help us stay sober.

But can you imagine how lonely it was with those 2 people meeting over talk to your little group today with 2 people and see how how long it'll take you to to get a bunch of people. Anyhow, the first 100 finally got together. We had a 100 members. How do we know alcoholics anonymous work? It Finally, we got a 100 people members in our hearts of mouth.

45 of them were agnostic. They didn't believe in god. So Bill Wilson told me that they met and met. Yes. They're all agnostic, and all we're powerless over our fault.

Our lives are unmanageable. No problem with that. But what do we do? They met and met and met and met. They said, well, we've been trying to do it ourselves and this and that and the other, but what's missing?

And you know what happened? The agnostics and all of them finally said, yes. There is some kind of power greater than we are. And if that power can restore it to sanity, so so be it. And they went on that road, and it's been working ever since.

I don't care whether you're agnostic or what it is, you have to believe that there's some kind of power greater than we are that can restore it to sanity. And it it worked. It worked from the beginning. And look at the spiritual significance, the spiritual threads of spirituality woven in all the fabric of AA. All of them.

Bill Wilson, drunk for the 40th time and in town hospital for the 40th time. And, old Eddie came in, an old schoolmate, and he's in the Oxford group. And the Oxford group had 4 absolutes, Absolute honesty, absolute faith, absolute everything over. And I asked Bill Wilk for a time, what what why didn't you stay with those 4? He said, an alcoholic can't absolutely do anything.

But he said, we can be shown how to accomplish something, and we can do that if we're shown how, but not absolutely. So they what they did Bill asked Abby, he said, what's this religion you've got? He said, well, it's not religion, really. Well, he said, what's the bottom line? What do you do to stay sober?

You're sober. And he said, we curse God, clean out, and help others. And of all the literature we have, and all the books, and everything, and all the knowledge we have today, still the bottom line is trust God, clean house, and help others. It's still the second. Look at the spirit reality.

Bill got on his knees that night and said, if there is a God, show himself to me. And if you read the big book where the salt wind blew over me, and he never took another drink. And that's the grace of god. All of you who feel like you've been surrounded by the grace of god and his goodness, and you've surrendered to that, well, stand up with your hands up. That's all of us.

We've been surrounded by god's goodness and god's help. And without that help and without that power greater than we are, we wouldn't have AA today. So anyhow, 6 months after that time, Eby resumed drinking and goes down the Bowery in New York, and he stayed drunk drunk drunk drunk, but Bill never took another drink. So when we started groups around in West Texas and all over that country, there were no groups. We started little groups here and then drive 100 of miles to help somebody start a group to save ourselves.

And and we finally got some groups, and we started calling them clubs, you know, AA clubs. And a lot of things, they had caused a lot of problems, you know, like, Mary ran off with the club money, and Bill did so and so wrong, and he ran off too, and what happened, all of that. But we were keeping old Bill awake all night with all the problems we had that we had created on our own. And so Bill came to, Texas, and I in the 1946, we had the 1st state conference in Austin, Texas in 46, and Bill Lawrence came back the first time I met him. And we formed a relationship that lasted from 1946 or 71 when he died.

We were very close, and we associated with each other. We helped each other. And I had, I'm not bragging because, I'm I'm just, by the grace of God, was under his wing until I could experience the 12 steps of Alkarch and not. So Bill told me the problem we had as we went along. And so in 1948, Bill Wilson came to the Amarillo section, and I met him.

We got on a plan to go to Lubber, and he reached in his pocket and pulled out some handwritten note. And he said, I want you to read these and see what you think about them and hand them back to me. And I've been sober 2 years, and I was pretty wise. I'll tell you that. But I ran them over and I said, Bill, this is alright for you Yankees, but we don't need it down here.

We love each other. God, how we love it. Nothing will ever happen to us. We'll always be loving each other. What it was was the 12 traditions he'd written out.

Aren't you glad I didn't start this late? Here's what happened. In 48, back then, I didn't think we needed, and I didn't see a reason for it. 2 years later, by the grace of god, I'm still sober by my association, the help from Bill Wilson and so and others, of course. The these things started to to happen, and unbelievably and by the grace of god, it started to happen.

So we we formed groups, and Bill would come down and help us start groups and have a this and that. Yeah. We had a lot of help from a lot of people, especially Bill. He likes to come to Texas for some reason. I don't know why.

Anyhow, we spent a lot of time there. And by 1950, I had become aware that we needed the 12th tradition. And and I had become aware that we damn sure needed them badly. And, so in Cleveland in 1950 at the International Conference, the first one, I was there. And, Bill and Bob had me up in the room scooting me on how to get vote.

We were at 2:45 that afternoon. We were going to vote whether to adopt or accept the quell tradition. And they were we wanted to be sure it would pass. And so Bob and Bill schooled me on how to get votes, and I was down in the audience. We had a big crowd there, about as many people as you have here at the First Internet.

I hear people say, I'm thrilled. I'm excited. This I've never seen people here the first time. We were just as excited with 5 or 6000 in Cleveland as you are right here with a 100000. This is exciting because if something tells us this thing works, this this is unity.

This is what it's about, and and we're thrilled and and excited about it. So, Bill helped to start groups all over that country, And, they will start to and they stayed on the right courts as long as we we stayed with the 12th tradition. But some of the I'll tell you some of the early we have we made some mistakes. Yes. We did.

Believe it or not, in spite of in spite of the, 12th edition, they always made some mistakes. But let me we talk about the 12 steps of recovery. I'm gonna tell you 12 steps of how not to recover. You never hear that, do we? We hear how you recover, and now this is here's how not to recover if you'll follow these twelve steps.

This is what we did. We admitted we were powerless over nothing that we could manage our lives perfectly and those of anyone who would allow us to. We came to believe there was no power greater than ourselves and the rest of the world's insight. We made a decision to have our loved ones and friends turn their will and lives over to our care even though they couldn't understand us at all. We made a searching and printed moral and immoral inventory of everybody we knew.

We admitted the whole world at large the exact nature of everybody else's wrong. We were entirely ready to make them straighten up and do right. We demanded others to either shape up or ship out. We made a list of all persons who had harmed us and became willing to get even with all of them. We got direct revenge to set people wherever possible to accept when to do so would cost our lives or at least the jail set up.

We continue to take the inventory of others and when they were wrong, copy and repeatedly told them about it. We saw it through bitching and nagging to improve our relations with others as we couldn't understand them at all, asking only if they knuckle down and do things our way. Having had a complete physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual breakdown as a result of these steps, we've tried to blame it on others and get sympathy and pity in all our affairs. I'll guarantee you that's the way not to do it. But we had some early promises too.

The promises didn't just happen the least day. We had those early promises too along with these steps, and they are these are the 12 early promises. Number 1, you'll know your full name and address. Number 2, you'll be able to shave yourself. Number 3, you'll be able to dress and undress yourself at the appropriate time and place.

You at all times know that you at all times know the city, state, and country you're in. You'll routinely be able to find matching socks. You'll be able to smoke if you wait for that burning hold in your clothes or the furniture. You'll lose the fear of food. You'll spend less time in the bathroom.

You'll be able to walk a straight line and pass the balloon test. You'll lose the fear of police cars in your rearview mirror. You'll be able to answer the doorbell without looking through the keyhole first. You'll realize what a mess you've been in and thank God for AA and L a lot. The real the real twelve reward we have twelve, twelve, twelve, everything.

And the real 12 rewards are this, faith instead of despair, courage instead of fear, hope instead of desperation, peace of mind instead of confusion, real friendship instead of loneliness, Self respect instead of self contempt. Self confidence instead of self of helplessness. A clean conscience instead of a sense of guilt, the respect of others instead of their pity and contempt, a clean pattern of living instead of a purposeless existence, the love and understanding of our families instead of their doubts and fears, the freedom of a happy life instead of the bondage of an alcoholic obsession. And those are the real, real reward of the program of Alcoholics and Novel. Let's look back and see how some of these things happen, those threads of spirituality and how they happen.

6 months after Abby, told Bill how to stay sober, and Bill and he Abby was always Bill's sponsor. And, Ebby went and got drunk. He stayed drunk on the bowery for 9 years. And in 1953, well, I put take it back in 1948, Bill Wilson, I wanted to know all the details about everything about Alcoholics Anonymous or about AA and alcoholism and all. And I'd ride around with Bill Wilson asking him to sit down and he quit.

Finally, he said one day, he said, why don't you go to the Yale School and study alcoholism? And maybe you'll brighten up and know what's going on. And I said, how do I go? And he said, I'll send you. Gladly.

So I went up there, and we studied alcoholism from one end to the other. We were really up on alcoholism, and I had knowledge about a little bit of everything. And we had, some and dear friends that really helped us over the years and helped out her in, especially the beginning year. And one of those was doctor Jelinek, who was a scientist, and he came from South America. He was a banana scientist in South America, and he came to head the Yale School in New Haven.

And, so I asked him, doctor Gellanek one time. I said, how in the hell did you a scientist go from bananas to alcoholic? He said, they're just alike. They get away from the bunch, they get peeled. We studied how to make, alcoholics out of cats and mice and all everything.

We had a lot of knowledge. I'll tell you. One thing that that the the only thing that really impressed me was we had a cage with a lot of mice in it. And they had a we had some kind of a whistle, a loud whistle, and they put in that cage. And we'd give those mice, water to begin with, and they would start adding alcohol to it, and we increased those doses as we went along.

But in the beginning, when they were drinking that little booze in there, you could blow that whistle and they'd just run crazy, tear that cage down, and, and make all kinds of noises even. And you keep adding that alcohol to it, increasing the dose to go along. Finally, you got to read the blast that air in there. They didn't give a damn. You just keep drinking.

Reminded me of myself. Anyhow, in 1950, doctor Gellernac became ill. And, he said, sir, the greatest need we have in this country is a medical hospital where an alcoholic can go and sober up, and then where AAs can come in and help them and take them to the group and help them do the experience the steps. And so we established 4 hospitals, 1 in Dallas, Houston, Lubbock, Carbab, New Mexico. And they they they we did just that.

There were there were AAs in there day and night, and 75% of those people stayed sober. Not because of the hostile hospital, because somebody helped them, with the 12 steps and experiencing those steps. And not knowing them, not reading them, not memorizing, but experience those 12 steps of alcoholism. Anyhow, in 1953, Bill Wilson came to to see the hospital we had in Dallas, and he visited all the 15 patients in there. And he was impressed at the how successful it was in helping drunk.

And we had wanted to have lunch, and I said, Bill, a lot of things have happened in AA since since the beginning. What would you rather see happen now that's never happened before? He said, I'd rather see AB have a chance to get sober. This is what we mean pass it on. There's nobody hopeless and helpless in alcohol.

There's somebody, some way, somehow that can help you and establish the the the the absolute sureness that you can't say so if and provided you'll experience 12 sets. But anyhow, we got a hold of we got in touch with Eddie finally on on the he's down the valley in New York and been drunk there 9 years, and we finally got with some whiskey and stuff like that around for a ticket to promise to come to Dallas and, sober up. And, he was mad as hell, resentful, hated everybody, doctor Bob. Bill hated me, cussed me out every morning, and, I listened to that. He was a cantankerous old wrestler.

And, and his room was right across from my office in the hospital. And he'd come over and cuss me out in the morning, then he'd take Bill in the afternoon, doctor Bob at night. You know, he'd take my back. So but, anyhow, after about 6 weeks, I told the nurse in there to get him ready, and I called Bill Wilson. I said, we're not I don't believe we're helping heavy.

He's not getting sober. He's he's sober, but he's he's still got a bad attitude. And, and so Bill said, stay the court if you can, if you can still put up with it. Go on. Do it.

And we stayed to court. And I asked a nurse in there who was a member of a a an RN one day. She came in and said, I believe I see some improvement in the ABBY. And I said, well, you I don't I don't see any at all. And I in fact, the matter, he's gonna ship out pretty soon.

I left, was out of town for about a week and came back, and this nurse came in and said, I see a little different attitude in Abby. And notice that went on fine. A week later, he came in, but he said, where are you going? I said, I'm going to the a group. Well, he said, can I go with you?

And he went over there and and visited a while. The next day, he went and stayed all day. And and every day, the weeks there after, he went over there and stayed. And ends up, about 6 months from then, he went on on a ranch out in West Texas where he didn't know a damn cow from a from a horn and and stayed out there and stayed sober stayed sober three and a half years. And then he he, helped there was an r an RN, a nurse that worked in the hospital who became a dicky to, drugs.

And she was bedridden, and Abby stayed with her for two and a half years, didn't take a drink, waited on her night and day, and that when when she died, he got drunk. But he stayed sober most of the time, and let your people know who are in doubt, he was sober two and a half years when he died. That's in upper state New York. That's that's what Bill meant when he said pass it on. Don't give up.

And a lot of thing I I I see a lot of people work with a lot of people. You find a company who say, they don't they don't wanna get sober. How the hell do I know? I'm just saying it. I'm just saying it.

But you look down the line, you see them later on. I've seen some of them here in this congregation that I didn't think would make it, and here they are showing. And I'm damn glad of it, and that's the way it worked. There's nobody helpless and hopeless in this fellowship. It it it just worked.

I wanna give credit for those old timers that before me and on back there that paved the way and made it possible for you and I to be here today sober. And one of them is Sybil Corbin, her mother. She was a great lady, and and and she has, I can't spread the gospel in the right way for many, many years. She has helped a lot of people for a long, long time. And the only thing that I regret about her is that she's got more to write in than I do.

Well, as I told you, I finished high school in Stamford, Texas in, 1927. And, I went to school with a guy named Stuart Hambley. Some of you, especially the older ones, and maybe some of you remember some of you saw, like this old house and, and a lot of other he went to Hollywood and he wrote all of the the, spiritual songs and the religious movies for years, and he became an alcoholic. And he called me, wanted me to be a sponsor, And I said, yes. I said, only if you'll promise me one thing.