The development of the Twelve Traditions in Laguna Beach, CA

Hi, everybody. My name is Cybill Corwin, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Sybil. And by the time this thing is over, I will be perky and bright and shiny and sparkling and, I won't have cotton wool in the head and, I'm just not a morning person. Most of you people know me, and Matt in particular who drove us down, will tell you that I am not very sharp until about noon.

But that's not because of advancing age. I never was. I always did sleep in. I never did like to go to a morning meeting. I do, but I sit when I do and that's easy to do compared to being up here.

And supposed to tell you something about the way it was in the old covered wagon days of Alcoholics Anonymous and how it came about that our traditions were born. Can you imagine such a thing from an ex this is my, the way I spent my earlier years. Ex taxi dancer, ex, bootlegger, secretary, real estate broker, a fruit tramp, fixed fruit going all the way up to Oregon, apples, depending on what was ripe at the time, grapes down around Fresno, and so on, peddling door to door, milk, coffee, whatever, a good job and a bad job, and chambermaid over in Catalina so that I could, enjoy Catalina, clean the room so that I could walk on the beach and get a good can. Didn't matter. Sandwich factory, Made sandwiches.

I know how to make Bob's sandwiches in less than 1 minute. I can make 4 or 5. Just lay out the bread, put the peanut butter on one side, the jam on the other, wham them together, wrap them up in foil, and here you are, Bob. And that's it. I can do all those things.

But in those earlier days, I couldn't quit drinking, and, I tried very hard for 17 years. And as a great many of you know, I was fortunate enough to find AA in March of 1941 because of the Jack Alexander Saturday Evening Post article. I was in a Turkish bath sobering up once again, wondering why I behaved the way I did and wanting with all my heart to be a good wife and mother because I had a good husband who was providing for me extremely well and taking care of my little daughter that he had adopted, and now my my drinking had progressed to the point that I I had attempted suicide on many occasions and, the geographic cure and everything but sanitariums because I didn't know about them and I didn't know about pills. I didn't in marijuana, it was just something, I ran across once in my brother touched his bootlegging joint, and I smoked 1 and didn't smoke it correctly and got no buzz, no glow, nothing. Just bad smoke.

And now those things had been prevalent because I started drinking as a teenager and I quit when I I quit drinking when I was 32. I came in AA in March. My 33rd birthday was in May, 2 months later, which makes me 72 years old this coming May, and I will have been sober 39 years, March 23rd, coming up. You're not applauding me because you're applauding Alcoholics Anonymous. And I was going to add that when I came in, I had to think it over very carefully and agree in my head to do it on an all time basis with no metal reservations whatsoever because that's the way they opened the meeting then in Los Angeles.

Mister Baker, meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in California were banned a 1000000 women who band together for the purpose of staying sober on an all time basis with no medal reservations whatsoever. And I sat there shivering and shaking, and I said, what an order. I can't go through with that. First woman on But I was the first woman on the East Coast. Marty Mann was the first lady on the, on the West Coast.

Marty Mann was the first lady on the East Coast. She'd been sober 9 months when I came in or thereabouts. And, they made a fuss over me after they finally found out I was an alcoholic. At that first meeting, they thought I was a wife, and it was a closed meeting. And they told me to wait out in the lobby, and I thought they had excluded me, so I had hysterics.

Called up Cliff Walker very drunk and demanded that he send an AA ambulance and pick me up, which seemed reasonable because in the Saturday Evening Post, article, there was a picture of a very sick man, on a stretcher being put in an ambulance and being hauled away. And I was in this church's the steam room, you know, and I thought they were wheeling him off to a a hospital. So when I called Cliff to tell him my sad story that I'd gone down to the meeting at the Elk Temple as Ruth Hock had asked me to do, she wrote me the letter from New York. In that Turkish bath, I scribbled off a desperate plea after I looked at the article and, you know, turn the pages over and that's about it. Got the box number at the end and wrote for help.

She told me where the meeting was and I concluded they just wouldn't have anyone who looked like me in their meeting. And I had been rejected and ejected from bars for so many years. It's well, I couldn't bear that, and I gave Cliff a bad time and said send that ambulance and take me to the AA hospital so I can get cured. Well, of course, you know, he straightened me out on that one, but I was never going back because I was hurt. I was wounded.

I didn't think there was any hope for me anyway, and I never would have gone back if my brother Tex hadn't come over, insisted on going with me to that next meeting, and I couldn't talk him out of it. And I tried very hard, and that was reverse psychology because I didn't know that he was hurting as bad as I was and that he inside himself knew that he couldn't quit drinking either because he protested very loudly that he can handle it. But he finally agreed that he would go with me to the next meeting sober, so they wouldn't be able to peg him a nonalcoholic, which he says, of course, I am. And so we did go back to that next meeting. Now at that meeting, there were about 12 or 14 members.

There would have been one more, but Hal Silverton was down here in San Diego trying to start AA. Now Hal Silverton was one of the 4 men that heard about AA in the county hospital in the general hospital in Los Angeles and and this in 1939. Johnny Howe, the psychologist there who knew very little about this illness, was reading the big red book that Kay Miller, a nonalcoholic wife of an alcoholic, had left for someone to read who cared to, and it happened to be judge Ben Lindsay who passed it on to Johnny Howe. So Howe Silverton and Barney Haller, Clarence McFadden, a bartender, All three of those stayed sober from day 1, and, Owen Fallon had an the Californian, and I was a dancing fool when I could stand up. And I used to dance to his orchestra all the time, so he was one of the 4.

He didn't stay. But Hal came down here and had a hard time. Imagine one man going around trying to start a group. There was nothing in a big book that told us how to start a group. There was nothing to guide those people downtown on how to start a group, and I expect that's why we made all the mistakes we did.

And when I went back, Frank Randall, who was leading the meeting, and incidentally, I'll point out here and now that Frank Randall and Mark Joseph, they were our leaders and speakers for 2 years, and I love them deeply very, very much. But at this meeting at the end of the meeting now, all of this mail had come in from the Saturday Evening Post and Frank Randall handed it out according to area. If you lived in San Diego, you got it. If you lived in San Bernardino, you got a lot of 12 step calls. If you lived in Riverside, you got some.

San Joaquin and wherever, Santa Barbara. But he got down to the last bundle of letters and he said, I've saved these for Sybil because she's an alcoholic, the first lady that we've had here, and we've never had any luck with women alcoholics before. So now I'm gonna put Sybil in charge of all the women that come in. And my god, I I sat there with my arms folded and shaking, and I thought I was down here last week, and I got thrown out, and now I'm in charge. So they gave me all those letters, and I went home with them and my brother Tex came over and we went to see all those drunks and took as many as we could to the next meeting and everybody else did the same.

So you can imagine that we moved from the Elks Temple right away to our permanent meeting place at 22100 West 7th and had about this many with short period of time with microphone and everything. And I'm gulping around in the back and hiding because I can't participate. I had a nervous tick, I was scared, I could not participate. So now, let's think about, tradition 1, unity, and our personal recovery depends upon it. Everything that we did then made these traditions today.

Now, I'm not saying that California alone was responsible for this, but we know the same pattern followed in Akron and Cleveland and then in Houston when it started, the mistakes that we made. In the 1st place, I was in charge of the women until they almost threw me out. There were a lot of women came in in their 1st 2, 3 months. And I was I went had my book up there in front, and I was ticking off the names. Margie, she called on Leah, Leah, she called on so and so, and they all balanced up beautifully.

I could look over the crowd, see where all the 12 step calls were and how they were handled, and they had to really be on the sticker. They heard from me, and, I was on the phone with them and training them all the time. And I was truly in charge until one time a gal walked in the door. She lives in San Juan Capistrano now and, incidentally, has never had another drink. She was Pearl Harbor, baby.

Came in December 7, 1941. K Riley. She walked in the door. She had 6 women with her, and they hadn't been cleared through me. And there was much disunity about that because I I went up to her and I challenged her, and I said, where'd you get these women, k?

They're not in my book. She says, you bet they're not, Sybil. They they live in Culver City where I do, and it's quite natural for me to call on women in Culver City that need help. If they wanna get sober, I'm gonna bring them down here from now on, and I'm never never gonna report to you again. And I tell you, I got tears in my eyes, and I just I just was shaking like a leaf, and I lost my little job.

I knew that. And I went out to Huntington Park to talk it over with my brother who had stayed sober and had started a group, the hole in the ground. And you know what happened? I went out there to tell him my problems. He said resign, honey, before they throw you up, and I did.

Because I was governing. Our leaders are for trusted service. They do not govern, but I was governing. But, oh, that hurt. That hurt.

That hurt. Now the reason Texas out there in Huntington Park instead of down there at the mother group was because he had been excommunicated. Now that sounds strange because we had no traditions, you understand, and we could do those things and did those things. There was text, excommunicated. He didn't pay much attention.

The reason really, the reason he wasn't down there is because he had a group of his own. The reason that the excommunicated him is he started a group and that was being disloyal to the mother group and so they just said get out of here, and he laughed at him. And when he got good and ready, he came back, and he was the first one to be excommunicated, but not the last. Not the last. I even helped, excommunicate or try to excommunicate, in quotes, a young man who would go to a sanitarium and sober up and come back to the door and pass out the cards to the members as they came in.

Johnny Miller sanitarium, $35 a week. All the medication you want, you don't hurt a bit. You don't even have to miss a meeting. And we knew that now without any traditions, we knew that, we were scared, wetless. We knew that our program was gonna go down the drain with this guy promoting that sanitarium.

Everybody get drunk during the week and coming come back on Friday, and he said, look at me. I look pretty good. Well, we put up with that when he had 2 slips, and when he came back and looking pretty good again and started the card routine, we went up to him and we said, listen, Lee, now you had 2 slips and we put up with that. But now we just wanna tell you right now, 3 slips and you're out. His name was Lee Bauer.

And Harry Chisholm, Pete Cunningham, 1 or 2 of the boys said you can't do that. The boy doesn't know any better. He's happy with a bunch of people here. That's about all he knows at this point. And so if he does drink, he doesn't know anything better than to get sober so he can come back here.

We'll try to explain to him that we ought not to to to get mixed up with sanitariums and and stuff like that, and they didn't. It was an instinct. They really hadn't followed it through, but they knew it wouldn't work. They talked to Lee, and he did get sober. And he was one of our most stable one of the stable younger people in the group at that time.

I don't know where he is today, but he never did drink again to my knowledge. But these were terrible things that we're doing. This is not a tradition. However, we did, used to pass out medication to our 12 step workers. Pete Cunningham would sit there at the table, and Frank would boom out and say, no.

Those of you who got your 12 step calls tonight, be sure and see Pete before you leave because, we wanna get those drugs down here by next Friday. And, so bring them down any way you can. If you have to give them a pill, Pete will fix you up. Protecting our little puzzle, but we went up to the table and we got our little juniper alphabide and and we got 2 limnitol, and we were on our way. And that would create quite a lot of disunity today.

But we didn't know any better until we went back the following Friday. And Frank said, hear that. Hear that before the regular meeting started. Sorry. 1 of our members gave a guy a pill.

He had a pump ticker, and his heart stopped. We called an ambulance. We put him over here in the hospital. He's gonna be alright, but we could've killed him. We could've murdered this man.

So I want you to hear this and listen good. Come up here and give Pete back your medicine, and we all went up and dumped her purses out on the table. He said, from now on, we're not gonna play doctor. We're not gonna play nursemaid. We're not an employment agency.

We're not going to lend you any money. We're not here to give advice to the loved ones. From now on, we're going to do a very simple thing. We're going to simply carry the message of Alcoholics Anonymous to those who have a drinking problem and want to get well, period. And now we'll start the meeting.

And that's the way it was and there was no more medicine this past, thank God. But, you know, I I, when I think about the mysterious way that I felt about AA when I went to my first few meetings, the word anonymous. I was all a girl with the word anonymous that I was special. The stigma and the shame that I had felt about my drinking was gone because here I am now with a bunch of people, It was a kind of a vision that I had that we would go to meetings with robes on and masks, and we would just sit there and say, we're anonymous. It was a great feeling, and I walked down the street the neighbors, and I used to put bottles in their cans out in front, you know, so I wouldn't have too many in my own trash can.

And I would look at the neighbors as I walked down the street, and I think they don't know it, but I'm anonymous. I wonder if newcomers today get, sort of a feeling like that. I know that I did. It was just a a very special feeling. And, of course, they petted me and pampered me and let me be in charge and made a fuss over me.

And they say, how are you doing, Sid? Oh, I'm fine. How long you've been sober? 9 days. Well, great.

I I certainly didn't expect I'd be sober over 30. I didn't even tell my father who lived with me until I've been sober 30 days because that was a lifetime. It was absolutely a lifetime. It didn't start then, but soon after, as time went by, we got into the habit of saying, we have only one authority and that's this big book and we would pet it and pat it. We only have one authority and that's the big book.

And then we were taught that that isn't so, that there's only one ultimate authority from a group standpoint, and it's a loving God as he may express himself in our group concepts. Our leaders are but trusted servants, and they do not govern. And Bill will know better than I or Cliff or one of the a delegates or ex delegates, Rosa, who is one also, will remember when we got some material from New York in recent years saying don't do this, please. I mean, very mildly, of course, because the general service office is always very mild about the distance, but they did put it plainly and it it read very clearly to me that we ought not to say that the book is our bible and that it's the ultimate authority, that it's truly, a loving god as he may express himself in our group conscious. And it was just a habit that we probably started when I first came in because the big book was all that we had, this great, big, fat, red book.

Big, fat, red book. And I have one at home that Jimmy and Rosa gave me on my 20th birthday, and I look at it all the time and I treasure it. Money could never never buy it. I I don't even I don't even take it to meetings ever. People that come to my home can touch it and see it and read it.

And the program is the same, but the drinking stories are different. The only requirement for a membership is the desire to stop drinking. Corley Fowler and Tex Adams and all the other people that we tried to throw out. And what would have happened if we if we hadn't really come to our senses and thought the thing through? One guy would be dead that I know in this audience, and that's Bob.

I I met him in 1952 along about the time that my brother, Tex, died as a hole in the ground, and I had known him and even been a neighbor. And I used to babysit his little kid, and everybody loved Bob at the hole in the ground. But Bob was an atheist, and he'd come down there and argue with us all the time, and he couldn't stay sober. And he'd come to the door a lot of times, and he'd be dirty, but he wouldn't wanna come come in. He told me this after we were married.

And the the hole in the ground was in the basement, and so the windows would be at street level, sort of like that. And after the meeting started, he would he would look through the window and put his ear up against the glass, and he'd think, I can't go down there because there's Sybil talking and there's Jim Valle talking. Jim is here today. And all the other people who loved him, they and that he knew well, but he's been in and out so often. He could not come in and get the medicine that he needed to take He was a lost soul.

When he told me that, I just cried. I feel like crying now because, surely, there are other men and women here who've had relapses, and they came in too soon or for the wrong reason and went back to drinking. I would have that terrible feeling that I belong back there. The meeting is beginning. I wish I was there instead of here in the bar, but I mustn't go back because I can't bear for anyone to scold me or look down on me, and and they're all successes and I'm a failure.

Again, I'm a failure. I was a failure out there. Now I'm a failure. I can't stay sober. They feel that way.

They're dead wrong. I will speak and I shouldn't do this. I speak for Rosa and Bob and and Pat here and the the places that I see that I believe that if a new man walks in this door, a new man today who was drunk a month ago and has had a lot more trouble, that if he walked in this door today, we would maybe even be happier to see him than a new man or girl who walked in who had never heard of AA before, they'd never been drunk after coming to AA because we realized how terribly hard it is for him to come back. I got that all through Bob's eyes. I will say this until I got that through Bob's eyes, it down as a hole in the ground slipper oos were given short shrift.

They had to sit in the back row and shut up. No. But, really, I wanna tell you most everybody stayed sober. We were clinging so desperately to this lifeboat. We were so afraid that we were all gonna be tossed back in the drink and drowned together.

That if anybody got drunk, I mean, we just looked upon them as with horror. The first person that got drunk, besides Leaf Hour that I knew about when somebody said, you know, Phyllis or whoever it was is drunk. I said, no. Really? Oh my god.

I just thought it it it was worse than if they had said she got run over by a truck. I just couldn't believe it. And then, of course, we we realized then that a lot of mothers, a lot of wives, a lot of judges, a lot of different people, Probation departments were making people come in who really want to be somewhere else, and that they all come back sooner or later if they live. We don't lose any. So I don't believe in statistics too much.

I don't think we know how many we have because we counted ourselves here today. And if we go back to the general service office, try counting us down in Los Angeles. Bill Blake down there to be counted in the Wednesday group or whatever and whoever visits LA and we could count ourselves over and over and we don't know how many we are and we never will and that's okay. Now, if we do things at AA that will affect AA as a whole or even affect our group and if we do things, we're self governing, absolutely self governing, but we ought not to do anything that could possibly hurt AA and no AA member would do it knowingly, really and truly. But it is such a difficult thing when it comes along and well meaning AAs will sometimes do these things.

I'll give you a not a very good instance, but it happened. There was a fellow in Texas group that wanted Texas job. Let me point out quickly here that if in those days you started a group, you owned it. Let's let's go to Texas group tonight. No.

I don't wanna go to Duke's group out in Willowbrook. Well, no. How about going over here to Hank's group over at Maywood or wherever? Well, alright. So, you own it.

And, I mean, you really stood to the ground, boy. You didn't get thrown out easily. But this fella, he was he was eloquent. He was known as the book. He's been dead many years.

He was known as the book because he would get up at Mecatov and it would be the book, almost word for word, but you had to be cunning and you had to be well read to detect it because he could start in any chapter and he'd never miss a word. The reason for that that he was legally blind and his wife had read the book to him so many times that he had memorized the whole thing. So he was known as the book. Very eloquent, very helpful to everybody, but he wanted the hole in the ground, and he couldn't have it. And there was many a fight about that.

And so he just went 2 doors down the street, about where that building is right there, and he rented a church. Alright? Now there could have been, a big gang war there about that. To have that that that meeting the same night, who's there'd be whispering, you know, are you going to Charlie's tonight? No.

I'm gonna stick here with Tex. Well, I don't know. I think I'll just come early and and and stay for part of Texas meeting and then go on over and answer and and hear the book talk. Yeah. That sounds like a good idea.

And so this was going on. When I threw sheer instinct remember, autonomy is self governing. Charlie shouldn't have done that. He should have moved off somewhere a half a mile or a mile and ready to group on a different night as we do today. You don't hear about people trying to put other people out of business now.

Really don't. But with this deep instinct that tech had, and this oh, so many years before the traditions, he got up with a big smile at our group one night. He says, well, I tell you folks, it's 8:30 and it's time for the regular meeting of the hole in the ground, but up on your feet, boys and girls. We're gonna go over and visit good old Charlie. And so we disarmed him completely because we all trumped into Charlie's meeting, and there we were, a hole in the grounders and Charlie's meeting, just one big happy family, and Charlie took one look, the book, and he began to call on us as death.

And then he said to text, hey, old Tyra, you know what? Next week, we're gonna do the same, and he did. And so there was no problem because it was done with love and laughter and a deep instinct to keep this thing going and not fight over it, you know, and it worked. That's just one instance that a group ought to be self governing and and not try to do I heard of a recent instance, and this was within the last month. 1 of our old well settled groups, some of the members got unhappy about something or other, and they did go down the street and they did rent a hall on the same night.

I happen to be speaking at this old group. It's been in business over 30 years, and very quietly, the secretary said, we want to wish a new group well, who is now meeting down the street. And so in order that they may be successful, we are going to change our meeting night to, and he named a Wednesday or Thursday. We're going to change our meeting night, and that's what they're doing. The 30 year old group changed this meeting night and wish the new group well.

Fine. That's the way we work because we don't wanna lose anybody. We wanna keep growing, and I guess that's the way it always was and will be. Now, actually, what we wanna do, I think all of us have learned this well, is to carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers and not get tangled up with any other thing, whatever that maybe. The primary purpose is to carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers.

We know this when we work in the central office or when we're in general service, we're trying to carry the message and we're trying to do it the very best that we can. Now if we didn't do that and we diluted this program and got it tangled up with anything else at all, then it would be a simple dilution as is mentioned in the 12 and 12. They tried everything in those days. They tried AA hospital. They tried, education for the alcoholics.

They had, they not only had a a hospital, they had educational facilities, and they all flocked. They built a monumental great big, several stories, you know, with education on one floor and drying out place on the next, and meetings on the top story or on the bottom or whatever. And it was diluted, and they found out and they quit doing that. And somehow or other, we pull out of these things. I'll never know exactly how that there hasn't been a major calamity in Alcoholics Anonymous, but there seems not to have been.

And most of us who come to meetings now, we hear the traditions read and we we they may not play back at that moment, but but we're aware of them. For instance, these outside enterprises that we have or have heard of, they never work permanently. I received a letter in the mail with my full name on it about, 6 months ago asking me to send a whole bunch of the bedding and, all kinds of stuff, canned goods and everything. And I had talked in this county before and and, whoever this person was that had asked me to speak used my full name, said it, and was trying to get some donations for an outside enterprise. And I saw red.

I got mad and I got very angry and I ran to the telephone and I was really gonna tell him what's what, but I cooled off first. And in fact, I waited 2 or 3 weeks. And then I called him up and explained that I I said you had my name on your list as a speaker, as secretary of a group, and now now you hit me up for money and goods, wares, and merchandise, and I don't like that. I don't like that at all. And he said, I'm very sorry, Sybil.

Well, I'm not sorry that I did that because you have to do what you have to do. Like I did at a meeting, the old timers meeting in Pasadena, and I'm kinda chicken. I'm a timid person. And I went to that meeting, and, when we got to the door of the old timers meeting and I was a participant, I said, hey, Bob. Do you have any money?

He said, no. You brought the money. And I said, no. I didn't. And we didn't have anyone.

And the people at the door said, you can't come in. And I said, yes. We can. And she said, it's 2.50 or whatever. No.

I said, we didn't bring any money. And we spotted Harry Riverberry. Hey, Harry. He was way down back. And Harry came over and gave us $5 and we paid.

The brochure had been put out by some good AA, and at the creditors, they had either lost it up or whoever had printed the brochure didn't really read the copy or or didn't register. It said AA meeting and dance 250. And so when it came my turn to speak, I got up there and I said, well, this is the first time that I've ever had to pay to get into an 8 an AA meeting since it was in Bakersfield in 1952. I said I couldn't get in tonight till somebody came up with a 250. I said, what if a new man had come to the door there and tried to get in and he couldn't get in?

He'd say, so they charge for AA. What if a new girl and her husband had come there and couldn't get in? I said, I know it was a mistake, but it ought not to be that way. And I said, the reason that it happened in Bakersfield is we were doing the 12 step play, and Bakersfield had asked us to come up there and do it, which we did. And I said when we got up there, these well meaning people not knowing anything and the traditions had just come out and nobody was reading them.

Nobody wanted to read them. They finally did, of course. And so what Bakersfield had done, they had printed posters saying, celebrated Hollywood actors will portray the birth of AA. The 12 step play, which Rosa remembers well. Then we did the central office play, and my brother, Tex, started the 12 step play back in in the forties.

And Jimmy Burwell was the atheist, and he would play him. And it was a very good thing. It it it showed people how the steps were born. We did it in all the groups instead of a regular meeting. But these people had sent their little kids around the barbershops and windows in this town there.

They have these placards in every store up and down the coast, And 100 and 100, about 2,000 members had come from far and beyond. And horses and buggies and automobiles, trucks, vans, and what have you, and they were parked around that Bakersfield in there. And they wanted to see the birth of AA. And I guess everybody in town did. It didn't matter whether you were alcoholic or not.

It was just too 50 to get in. So we got there and in those days, we'd have 12 people. Each one would do one step, you know, would pretend to do a step. I'd be rooftop, and I copy down what they said, and then you'd be Bill Wilson, and Bill would say, well, now what's keeping you sober, Sam? And Sam would say, well, I just had to admit that I couldn't handle booze.

And Bill would say, so you actually, your life was unmanageable? Yes, Bill. It was. And I'd write it down. What have you got there, Ruth?

And I'd read it back. I'm cut it short, but that's what we do. We'd have 12 guys do this, and I'd be Ruth, Bill's secretary. And then Jimmy Burwell would stride in and raise hell about the word God, and we throw it out, which is just about what happened back there, I think. And Jimmy and Rosa went with us to Palmdale 1 night when we were doing the play and Jimmy Burwell, the real Burwell sat out in the car.

Nobody had ever laid eyes on him. And then when we got to the point about throwing out Jimmy Burwell, the fake Jimmy Burwell who was playing his part, we ran and we raved and we shoved him out the door. I said, will the real Jimmy Burwell stand up? And he stood up and the the crowd fell apart. Well, now here at 1st in Bakersfield and my troop of actors, some of them been sober half an hour.

Isn't that about right, Bob? Have you been sober about a half an hour? They began to quote traditions to me and wouldn't go on. Hug, hug Hovland was 1. That's against the traditions, Steve.

We can't do that. And I stood there a minute, and I thought about these well meaning AAs who didn't even know them, know the traditions or anything like that, you know. And I said, I'm going to invoke rule z, which the traditions are guides. The members that are in that hall don't know that that this was done improperly and that the public should not have been invited and, you know, broke anonymity and all that sort of thing. As I said, this town, they don't know anything about their traditions.

So if you guys don't wanna be in it, forget it. Just sit on out there on the audience and have a good time. And the rest of us, you guys take 2 steps apiece instead of once. We're gonna do the play. And we did.

And we threw out Jimmy Burwell as usual. And, it was a rip roaring evening. Now they made money and built their Alano Club out of the proceeds. And a year later, they called us up and asked if we do the 12 step play again, and I said, yes. If you're treated as a regular meeting as we do locally here, we simply get up there and at 8:30, and we're over by 10 o'clock.

They pass their hats, and that's it. And they read the traditions and so on. It's a meeting. It's not a financial enterprise. And that's what happened there.

That's what I told them at the Pasadena old timers meeting. I said, this is the first time I ever had to pay to get into a meeting since 52. And they held a caucus when that meeting was over of the committee, and they came up to me and thanked me, and I thought they'd throw me out for for mentioning it. And they don't do that anymore, so we don't mean to do these things. We simply don't.

You know, our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. On attraction, and maintain personal anonymity at the left level of press, radio, and film. I heard a speaker say one night, and I believe he was right, and it was at the big book group in Bellflower. He said we and AA have a bad habit. We don't mean to have this habit.

We have a bad habit of killing celebrities and everybody jumped. He said, we don't mean to, but he says it's a fact. He said the rest of us can enjoy our anonymity and be as anonymous as we choose, not in an AA group because that's not the way it's supposed to be, but we can be anonymous as anonymous as we choose. But when it comes to our convention or our meetings, the first thing we wanna do is to make sure a lot of people show up. So we call the central office and we ask them to send us a celebrity for our speaker.

When I was in the central office as Executive Secretary for 12 years, there was never a day that passed that a letter or a phone call didn't come from Montreal or from Canada or from some other states saying, Sybil, can you get us Mickey Rooney or Jonathan Winters? And I don't know whether they're members or not and couldn't care less, and I'd say no. And then they say, well, can you get us so and so and so and so that I would know would be on the program and I'd say, well, no, I can't. Well, why not? Well, they choose not to speak.

They they haven't been sober long enough. Oh, well, we want a big house. Yeah. We we want a lot of people this year. Well, but gee, I've got a list of speakers here in the speaker book.

Here in California, right in this room here today, we got the best speakers in the United States, and there's no doubt of that. Wonderful speakers. But, yes, they want the celebrities and the poor celebrities who've only been sober anywhere from an hour to 8 weeks, 8 months, or whatever, they're going flying around all over the country, and they get drunk. They're not able to handle it. They're not able to handle it at all.

And so this statement was made at the at this Bellflower meeting. I'll tell you who made the statement, it was Bob. And during the coffee break, a fellow in that category came over to me, all sweaty, you know, a lot of sweat and his eyes watering. Very well known man. And he said, well, you're civil?

I said, yes. He said, was Bob telling the truth about celebrities? And I said, well, yes. I've seen it happen. He said, well, I had 9 months sobriety, and I went on TV and gave my full name and talked about all these things.

And I said, what happened? He said, I got drunk. And I said, how long have you been sober now? And he said, 7 days. And, oh, I said, I see.

And he says, that that really, really got to me. Well, it happens. It happens. Is it actually, this is a program of attraction, not promotion. And as I say, you can point the finger at the speakers here today that can fill us full of good AA and and do it a a 1000 times better than I ever could, And they can go anywhere, any state in the union, and deliver a good message.

And we do not have to break the anonymity out of a celebrity or ask them to go every time now if it so happens that we have celebrities who've been sober long enough to have what it takes to do this and promote it, okay. When I was in the Central Office, there was a Torch Stinger by the name of Lillian Roth. I as I say, n n NAA, right here. We are not anonymous. It's at the level of press, radio, and film.

And I went out to the 63100 club and made a call on Lillian Roth, and she was a very sick girl, and her husband was there. We spent the afternoon with her. Now then it wasn't long before that that this thing, our cry tomorrow, came out, and we had to hire extra people at the central office to take care of the 12 death calls. And the AAs were calling up and saying, isn't it wonderful? We've never had such brisk business.

And I said, no. It's terrible. And they said, why? And I said, because we this gal here, no no matter how how she means well, and I'm sure she means well, of course, she's an alcoholic and she's sober and she's grateful, but she has broken the anonymity of Alcoholics Anonymous and it it never pays off. Never.

These these short term benefits, it'll wind up bad some way. It always does. It always does. There is a reason for this thing. Then the movie was made.

I tell you, business was booming at the central office. But what happens and what happened to this poor girl? And god bless her. She may be dead or she may have many years sobriety. Now I have no way of knowing.

I'm just giving this as an example. She was stoned in Las Vegas publicly, and then the the view that we have, so many of us at least, is that there would be a sick girl, many sick girls, looking at TV, reading newspapers, and would hear about that and would say, oh, that thing doesn't work. My god. My god. After all the money she made out of that book and that movie and she could do anything she wanted to, and now she's drunk and, oh, that thing doesn't work.