Wynn L. author of the story Freedom from Bondage

Next speaker is Lynn L. From Oxnard. Thank you, Sue. Thank you, Charles. Would you believe I have a granddaughter that can read that beautifully?

I want to thank those of you who asked me to be here, and I wanna commend you on a convention without parallel in my personal experience. You've done a beautiful job. It's gone so smoothly. And I feel like I'm quite an authority on conventions. For half my weekends of each year and half my weeks, they're spending conventions of different kinds, but never with the spiritual uplift that I find here.

For the rest of the time, I'm working someplace. It seems to me that my story has been told by everybody that's spoken at this convention. I never go to an AA meeting I don't hear my story told. And I rejoice in the affirmation of those things that we know. This program works for those who work it.

And I believe with all my heart that this program is the way to the life, the life we have to make for ourselves through our application of this program. But this book, this beautiful textbook, the way to the life, These simple principles applied to just the best of our personal ability, one day at a time, And the program works. But you need to know that this is true in my instance too, that I am an alcoholic too. And so with your permission, I'll tell you an experience out of my drinking history that perhaps will identify me as a really worthy member of this great fellowship. A number of years ago, in the city of Los Angeles, I was invited by some very dear and very close friends of mine to a formal dinner party in honor of the mayor of Fort Worth, Texas.

Now I wanted to go, and I wanted to be on my very best behavior and dressed to the teeth because I feel about Texas like Texans do, and I wanted to do Texas proud. And for a number of days before this big party, I made plans. Now I lived in a world of alcoholism, even then, without title and without recognition. And I lived in a constant state of preoccupation with alcohol. Do you know this experience?

I lived in a constant state of deciding how much I would drink or how little, how I would explain the drunk I'd just come off of, or the one I was just about to embark on. And I threw my sponsors into much research and hard work when I came to this program because they kept asking me what kind of an alcoholic I was. They said this was important. They needed to know whether or not I was a periodic grandson. And we finally concluded after researching my past at great length that I am an habitual periodic.

I drank daily and got drunk on benches periodically, and it's a combination that it took a while to figure out. And so I was preoccupied with alcohol. I was preoccupied with what I would wear. I never thought at all of what I might contribute to any occasion that I might be going to. Simply, how I would get the center of attention I know now.

And so for several days I toyed with how much I would drink. Finally I concluded I'd take 1 cocktail. Well, maybe I'd take 2. But certainly no more than that because I knew that I could still control my mind, or thought I could, with 2. And the day of the party rolled around and I changed costumes 3 times that day.

I didn't change clothes, I changed costumes 3 times that day. And I went to the party and I took my one cocktail, then I took my 2. And because even then I was a sick sum of this 2 fold disease of alcoholism, I was immediately in trouble. The obsession was constantly with me, I had taken the drinks and now the compulsion had a firm grip on every fiber of my being. I wanted more to drink.

I wanted more to drink than I wanted to have those very dear and and old valued friends. I wanted more to drink than I wanted to make an impression on the mayor of Fort Worth, Texas. And yet, sure enough, mentally, I was still in command. And so I had to find a way to get out of there. And I had to find socially acceptable reason that would get me out of there.

When I quarreled with the word insanity on this program on a personal basis when I came here, I looked up rationalization in the dictionary for this was my constant state of mental attitude, rationalization. And when she says that rational ization is giving a socially acceptable reason for socially unacceptable behavior, and that socially unacceptable behavior is a form of insanity. And I had no further call. And so I looked quickly mentally for an excuse and I came up with an excruciatingly painful migraine headache. Now I've never had a migraine in my life.

I'm not even subject to headaches, thank God, but I'd always heard they came on very suddenly. They were blindingly painful, and it sounded dramatic enough to appeal to me. And I used it as an excuse to leave the party. And everybody said they were sorry to see me go, and they were most delicious. And I went home and drank whatever part of the sip of whiskey was necessary to black me out on my feet, because that's the kind of alcoholic I was.

And like the true alcoholic I am, I went back to the park. And speaking of costumes, Apparently, this had been a sudden impulse because I was told later that I arrived at this party and wiped that in sleeping pajamas which was an act of God because I don't sleep in pajamas. That I had cold cream all over my face and my hair was up in curlers and I was barefoot and I had taken a taxi that somebody had to pay for. And I've often wondered in passing passing whatever became of those old, dear, valued friends of mine in Los Angeles. I lost more friends that way.

But because there are a lot of women alcoholics here and because we have a language all our own and understand each other pretty well, I'd like to tell them, or they will know what I mean, that the next time the mayor of Fort Worth came to Los Angeles, I was the only person they called. And so you see, I qualify for this fellowship. And my drinking progress, and my incitement progress, and my lack of purpose and meaning in my life became a living breathing thing with me all my waking hours. And I surrendered before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. Not to life, but to death.

I come to the conclusion that there was no answer, no solution to the miserable failure of my life. It seemed to me I've made every effort. I got up off the map so many times and I couldn't do that anymore. And I made up my mind I would die of alcoholism, and nobody would understand that it had been intentional, and I couldn't further hurt people through actual suicide. You see, I knew you could die of alcoholism.

I knew it because members of my family have died of alcoholism. I've seen alcoholism killed, and I knew it could be done. And I went on, please God. Please God. The last drunk I'll ever go on.

I've heard it said many times in Alcohol Anonymous and I believe it with all my heart. There's one good drunk in every alcoholic's life, and that's the one that brings to this fellowship. That's the good one. And I went on the good one for 60 days. Drunk around the clock for 60 days.

A healthier pup than I had realized at the time. And they tell me a great many interesting things about those 60 days. They tell me, for instance, that I canned a 100 and 34 pints of strawberry preserves during that drought. And I think this is extremely interesting because I don't know how to can strawberries. I went to jail twice on that drunk for being drunk in an automobile.

I was out with my favorite drinking buddy, my stepfather. We had the same melody, I came to know. And I came to know too that on both those occasions, the officers would have taken us home and we wouldn't have gone to jail. I for a drunken auto, he for a 502, if I had not insisted on recounting the ancestry of the officers that were doing the talking in such terms that the choice was removed. And I had a way of recounting the ancestry of people who bucked me in those days.

And I cherish the experience of having gone to jail. Everything that happened to me had to happen to me. For me to accept this and embrace this wholeheartedly without reservation. To surrender to it completely all these things that happened to me, had to happen to me. And I've blessed them, everyone.

I saw the first copy of the Alcoholics Anonymous book I'd ever seen in jail. It was being read by a beautiful black girl who had her suit on wrong side out, and she got my attention right away. And I said to her, did you know your suit's wrong side out? And she said, I always turn it wrong side out in jail. It stays cleaner that way.

It was a learning experience. And because she knew the nature of my grave illness, she offered me the book. And I was waiting out the 5 hours necessary to be bailed out in LA jails in those days, And I skimmed through this book, and God forgive me. I said, my, it isn't very well written, is it? Because of course I couldn't say I need it.

And finally, my mother interfered with my life. And she had a habit of doing that in those days. And she said, something's got got to be done about this. She must be sent to an institution or sent to a sanitarium or something must be done. And she called a doctor in San Diego that she knew I respected highly.

And Thorpe Wells said to her, call Alcoholics Anonymous. You'll find their central office listed in the telephone directory. And I bless the doctors, men and women, who have bothered to find out where they can send their patients who have this disease and who have become convinced that Thorp had become convinced. It was the answer the answer to alcoholism. Mother said she kept trying to tell doctor Wells, but he obviously didn't understand.

But finally he said, look it up, Then call. And my mother calls the LA central office. And Bill Labe answered the phone. And mother said the doctor said for me to call you about my daughter who's drunk. He said, what's your name and address?

And she said, I don't think you understand. She's drunk. And she's not very nice when she's sober. And when she's drunk, she just is unbelievable, and I don't think you understand that I'm just doing this because doctor Wells said to do it. And he said let us take it from here.

We'll take it from here. And I bless you, all of you, who go when you haven't been asked, who go when you're not wanted, who go because you know that the basic principle of this program lies in calling on sick alcoholics. I remember that I used to ask my sponsors over and over in the first few months because I needed reassurance. Why did you come to see me when you knew how I would treat you? And they explained so patiently for they knew how sick I was.

Oh it's great to see an alcoholic recover. It's really great. But we made that call for our benefit. We made it for the spiritual benefit we receive when we get out of ourselves and our self obsession and get to do something for somebody else. The principle of service.

And another great book, then another great teacher tells us about this thing, the. And so you came to me. Mike told me later that I had a lot of questions. I asked them all and I answered them to my complete satisfaction before he had his mouth open, and I expect he was right. And the next night the 2 little nicks, Ruby and Eddie Gibbons came to see me.

And Eddie took a look at my bottle by the side of my bed, and he spoke a language to me that I didn't know anybody else in the world knew. There was about that much in a pint. And he said, is that all the whiskey she's got? And when they said yes, he said, that won't last her through the night. She better go get her another bottle.

And I didn't know that anybody knew that much whiskey wouldn't last you through the night. I didn't know that. Anybody but me knew that. And Eddie talked this language and said all these glowing things, and we communicated with that simple statement. For he was saying to me that he knew what it was like to wake up at 4 o'clock in the morning with the whiskey burned out, and not a drop in the house to drink.

And how you shake and sweat until you're about to fall apart, until the bars of the liquor stores open at 6. If you've got the money, and if you've got the strength to get this. He was telling me he understood about 4 o'clock in the morning. A biographer of Beth Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that he said to Fitzgerald, why do you drink like you do? We all drink and we all get drunk, he said.

But we go on and do our job. Why can't you function like the rest of it? And he said, Fitzgerald said, have you ever wakened at 4 o'clock in the morning and not had a drop to drink in all the house, and you've got the shakes and the jingles and the sweats? And he said, yes, I've had that happen to me. And he said, because every hour of my day is 4 o'clock in the morning.

And I suspect that those of us who come here have found that every hour of our day is 4 o'clock in the morning. And Eddie was telling me that he knew what it was like to have to get up and stand first on one foot and then on the other because of the leg cramps and the feet cramps. Medicine says that we're in the first stages of acute alcoholism, that these are withdrawal symptoms. The calcium's been burned out, hence the leg cramps and the toe cramps. And I will appreciate any of you who go out and buy calcium for foot cramps and leg cramps to please not tell your doctor where you got the information because one girl has already got a case against me for practicing medicine without a license.

So you're on your own. And so Eddie knew too that I was in no shape to make a decision about this program. He knew that I could not make any kind of a rational, sober decision about anything, and he said to my folks, she's got the right to a sober decision. You don't have the right to keep her from this opportunity. She must be allowed to sober up, and then this can be presented to her.

And then she can make her own decision. Because he knew and they taught me that this is so important, this self decision. For only I could do the things necessary to get me sober and keep me sober. So the decision had to be mine. It couldn't be made for me.

And they sent me to a sanitarian to be dried up, where I might come in time to make a sober decision, a decision for myself. And something happened to me in the sanitarium. I developed a brand new resentment just like I needed one. I became aware for the first time in my life that as a practicing alcoholic I have no right. They have all been taken away from me when I'm a practicing alcoholic.

You can do anything you wanna do with me when I'm drinking and I can't lift a finger to stop you. You can throw me in jail. You can cut off my whiskey. You can throw me in a sanitarium. You can take away my money.

You can do anything you wanna do with me, and I can't lift a finger to stop you. And it made me mad. And yet it seemed to me as I thought about it, that no matter where I began, I ended only with the knowledge that the only way I could restore my rights or have them restored for me was to get sober and stay sober. And with this resentment, I came out of that sanitarium Alcoholics Anonymous the Motion Picture Group in Hollywood. Now they told me before I went into that meeting that there were three things necessary for me to remember.

That these were the essentials they've reminded us of this in his story. The essentials of the brand. But they were indispensable. And what I please take these 3 essentials with me in my thinking. Honesty, open mindedness, and willingness.

And I went into that meeting totally unprepared for the thing that happened to me. I knew that somebody read something out of a book, and I didn't know what book, and I didn't know what they read. And I knew that some people got up and spoke and I didn't know what they said. And none of this was important to me that night at all, for something else that happened to me that had never happened to me before in my life. Something happened to me through my emotions, through my insides.

The thing that I I didn't understand had happened to me. It was the thing I sent but that I couldn't explain. And I went away from that meeting that night puzzled. But this thing that had happened to me was enough to get me all through that night without having to take a drink. And I got through all the next day without having to take a drink.

And 2 or 3 times the next day, I had physical twinges in my body that I couldn't understand. And it took a while to understand at last that what I was feeling was anticipation. It had been so long since I had known anticipation, and it came that day, these twinges of anticipation. Every time I realized there was another meeting I could get to that night, and that maybe I'd find that thing in the room again that night. And I went by my self to that meeting, way out on Hoover Street to the old Mayflower group.

I had to find out to see if that thing I found was peculiar to the master's club, or if I might find it out on Hoover in that American Legion Hall. And I walked in, and a beautiful woman came rushing up to me with her hands outstretched, and she said, are you new here or are you visiting? She didn't need to ask, she knew of course, but it's typical of how gracious you are when you come to meet us. She said it doesn't matter at all. Let me take you down here and introduce you to some of our friends.

Our friends. And she took me clear down to the first stroke. And you moved over and made room for me that night. And you would move over and make room for me tonight, and I know that. And it's one of the great things about this program that never changes.

And you'd have to make twice as much room tonight as you had to make sense. But you do that too because that's the kind of people you are. And I sat there with an awareness for the first time in my whole life, I had a sense of belonging, and I've never had a sense of belonging any place in my life before. And sure enough, there was the thing in the room, and it was all around. Now they had a round robin meeting, and a lot of people from many groups were giving short little pitches I came to know their call.

And I couldn't hear anything for a little while. I couldn't because there was a bird up in the rafters. And I kept trying not to look, but I'd have to, you know, and I was afraid somebody would see me look. And it wasn't until somebody said, my, I wish that little bird could find its way out of here, that I relaxed and realized that everybody saw the bird. And then I could listen.

And a man got up and he was shaking like a model t fender. I've never seen anything like it in my life. And I remember thinking, gee. If we could just can that we'd have it make because that's a very unusual interesting rhythm. And then he got my attention.

He said, I don't shake like this as a rule. I don't shake at all. But he said, I've been on a dry drunk. A dried drunk. He said a very traumatic experience came my way, a real emotional upset.

And he said, mentally, I got off into a squirrel cage. I've never heard a better description for that state of mind than squirrel cage. And he said, I reacted to everything that happened exactly as if I were drunk. And he said, the only thing that saved my neck was that for 4 months I've been coming to AA meetings. And at every meeting, I've heard somebody say, if something happens to you that you can't cope with, get to an AA meeting if you can right away, and call a member of Alcoholics Anonymous because you can depend on somebody being squared away that you can talk to until you can get to a meeting.

And because he had remembered these things, he said, he had weathered this experience without having to take a drink, and you gave me the bigness. That here's the way to live without having to take a drink. And I began to collect your names and telephone numbers. And it wasn't long until that little book was exhausted, and a big one came into play. And there was never a time that I had to call you, no matter how trivial it may have seemed to you that you didn't take me seriously, and that I get to a meeting.

And so you see, it's all due to you. And I began to study this book. Read, and study, and talk, and discover. And I remember the patience of all of those who have been around as they listened to me. For I wanted to claim authorship of the discoveries, and you led me furthermore.

It wasn't for a long time that I began to realize that I've been playing back everything that I'd read in this book. When I talk to you about the importance of motive, you listen to me as if I just discovered this. And I know now that you had been through this on your own, and that you had found it in the book too. The patience you exhibited. Now in the group that I bounced around with, we went to meetings almost every night, and we went every place to meetings, and we followed certain speakers.

And Cliff Walker was one of those that I went to hear as often as I could find where he was speaking. And then on Saturday night, we'd say, let's have fun on Saturday night. We'll have a party. So we'd gather at somebody's house and we'd start to place your rates, and it wouldn't be 15 minutes till somebody would be acting out easy does it and somebody, you know, and 15 minutes till somebody would be acting out easy does it and somebody, you know, and then we'd start the usual discussion of the book and we'd sit there and argue. And I remember one night that my sponsor said, you know, I can't understand why we keep saying there are no must in the Alcoholics Anonymous program.

The word must is used, he said, 92 times in the AA book. Now there wasn't one of us going to admit we didn't know this. And we certainly couldn't challenge him because we hadn't any idea in the world how many times it was in the book. And that party broke up very early that evening. We all had some thing we had to do, and we all had to get home and get to our AA books and start underlining the word must to find out how many times it isn't 92 musts in the book, isn't 92 months in the book, you just go home and underline them as you read it.

And drop me a note and tell me how many there really are because I don't know. But what he said to all of us that night, and what we had to come to know and understand, was that I cannot say to you, you must. But I jolly well better say to win laws, you must. You must, oh, girl. You muster you die.

And those important ones. We must be rid of this selfishness. We must be rid of this self seeking. We must, the book says, or we die. Now a great many things have helped me on this program and a great many people.

I belong to another organization that believes in prayer, and I'd like to share a prayer that we share at our meetings in, believe it or not, National Business and Professional Women's Clubs. Because though it was written in 19 4, it seems to me to be the epitome of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I carry this in my purse, for I need to be constantly reminded. Keep us, oh God, from pettiness. Let us be large in thought, in word, in deed.

Let us be done with fault finding, and leave off self seeking. May we put away all pretense and meet each other face to face without self pity, and without prejudice. May we never be hasty in judgment, and always generous. Let us take time for all things. Make us grow calm, serene, and gentle.

Teach us to put into action our better impulses, straightforward and unafraid. Grant that we may realize it's the little things that create differences, that in the big things of life we are at 1. And may we strive to touch and to know the great common human heart of us all. And, oh, Lord God, let us forget not to be kind. And that helps me, and has through these years.

But in the beginning, I had no prayers, and had no faith. I've been an agnostic for a lot of years, and it takes almost all your time to really be a good hard practicing agnostic. You have little time for anything else because the evidence to the contrary is around us all the time, and we spend all our hours denying. And so it was with me. But you had said that if I were willing to come to believe, willingness was all I needed.

And oh my, I was willing. And so I took a prayer out of the a book, and I open every morning of my life with it, because it's indispensable to me. You know the one I made. My father, I offer myself to thee, to build with me, and to do with me as thou wilt. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to your power, your will, and your love.

May I do thy will always. And I began to practice. We hear it said, and we've heard it said here, that faith without works is dead. And certainly, we know this is so. But let me tell you that works without faith is not dead.

Works without faith build faith that this is your goal. And it seems to me that this is all I could do in the beginning, was to offer to serve any place I could serve, whether it was to drive somebody to a meeting, whether it was to deliver a message, whatever it was to give a book, I cleaned more people's houses than I've ever cleaned my own in my sobriety. I cleaned 1 one woman's house every Friday afternoon because her son was coming home from Military Academy on Friday night. And for 6 weeks, I was sure that as soon as he went back to school on Sunday, I could get her to a meeting, you know. So every Friday for 6 weeks, I cleaned her apartment until I learned that she was not going to come to a meeting.

So it didn't help her alcoholism, but it sure did help mine. And I learned, by such simple service, how to stay sober. And so I know that works without faith is an important part of the answer to alcoholism, if in the beginning you have no faith, but you have a willingness to work. And I heard a woman say at a meeting one night that they needed people out at Norwalk State Hospital, Sunday morning at 9 o'clock. And I thought, now there's something I can do.

I can be there every morning because she said they needed people from the outside to be present at the meetings, to show the patients there that we really stayed sober. And so I went. And I went every Sunday morning, with the exception of 2 weeks, for the next 5 years at 9 o'clock in the morning. And I must confess that those people who had that meeting knew a live one when they saw it, you know. And I will bless the day that I learned about institutional work and its value for us as alcoholics.

And I began to pray, and practice, and listen, and try to learn, and try to change my thinking through the day by saying over and over, thy will be done, not mine. I began to practice the principle of trying to pause when agitated, as the book says, and to ask for guidance and direction. And the book says when we practice this simple principle of pausing when agitated, that we begin to find that our days are increasingly free from anger, and tension, and impatience, and intolerance, and that we grow more efficient. We don't tire so easy anymore, the book says. And it promises us that what used to be the rather out of the ordinary infrequent hunch becomes the frequent inspiration when we pause and ask for guidance and direction.

And one day out at Norwalk, I made a phone call at 2 o'clock in the afternoon to an attorney downtown to ask him what time I should meet him the next day, for he had told me that he had arranged for a $1,000 debt to be paid to me the next day. And when I talked with him, he said, when I goofed, I didn't do something within the proper time limit, and I'm afraid you don't have the 1,000. And I hung the phone up, and I thought I'm in a state of shock. I'll be alright in just a minute, and I'll be over there in that desert and down to 7th and Spring, and I'll scratch his eyes out. But right now, I don't seem to feel anything.

I'm not mad or anything, and I couldn't understand this. And I kept walking across the campus, as we used to call the hospital grounds, and up to ward b. And I heard the door clang closed behind me for the women's meeting in the middle of the week. And a woman said, you look puzzled. And I said, I am.

I should be so mad I can't stand it, and I'm not. I don't feel anything at all, and I should be awfully mad. And she said, what happened? And I told her. And she said, what did you do when you got up this morning?

And I said, oh, you know, I asked for guidance and direction, and I asked for protection and care, and I particularly asked for protection against a very destructive behavior pattern. She said, you got it. And I'm afraid it was a little like the minister in the tire. I'm afraid, I said, well, I'll be damned. You know?

And she was right. I had got it. To accept the things we cannot change. And that afternoon on the way home, I found myself laughing my head off in my car, and I laughed every time I remembered how many times I'd said, I give $1,000 for a good night's sleep. And I slept like a baby every night of my life.

And so the years roll along just a day at a time. I went back to Yale to the school on alcohol studies, and I heard a man back there say, the alcoholic is one who has failed to keep his engagement with ongoing time. Poetic science, it's called. The alcoholic is one who has failed to keep his engagement with ongoing time. And that evening, the AA's that were at Yale gathered together and said it's about time they learned about one day at a time.

And this professor said, this is the alcoholic, hands together like this. This is yesterday, and this is tomorrow. And if we would help the alcoholic, they said, we would help them separate these 2. We would help them push yesterday with its remorse and its recrimination and its hurt and humiliation back into proper perspective. And we would help them push tomorrow with its anxieties and fears never realized into its proper perspective.

And we would help that alcoholic live in the day he's in, keeping his engagement with ongoing time. And I thought I've never heard it said more beautifully. But I went to Canada a year ago last March, and I heard it said more beautifully. A woman alcoholic in a closed meeting got up to speak, and the tears were running down her face. And she said, I have a wooden leg, and I was sitting here thinking that if I didn't have an artificial limb, I'd get up to speak to you and I'd fall flat on my face.

And she said, then I thought that if I didn't have this program, I'd be drunk, and I'd fall flat on my face. And I thought that's pretty good. And then she went on to tell us that in her family, they were making a real effort to practice spiritual principles all the time and to actually do spiritual living in a very graphic way, and that she had small children, and that each night before dinner, it was their practice to say the Lord's Prayer. And one night her little bitty one, who was very hungry and very cold and anxious to get on with it, said after the Lord's Prayer, why do we have to do this every night? Can't we just ask for our daily bread once a week?

Do we have to ask for our daily bread every day? And her sister said, listen, dummy. The reason we ask for our daily bread every day is because we want it fresh. And, oh, my dears, it'll never be that better. And that man who said out of the mouths of babes certainly knows what he's talking about.

And through the years, I've got to know many of you and love you for all that you've given me. And I got to know too, I'm a lucky gal, the founder of this program, and in a lesser way, the cofounder. And he gave me something because he knew me very well. He knew me the minute we met, before we met, as one alcoholic knows another. Lee knew my new needs too.

He gave me this said it to me many times because it took me so long to understand it. He used to say, when don't ever forget that the good is very often the enemy of the best, and I didn't understand it right away. I know what he means now. I know that I must never settle just because it's good. But I must keep trying because it can be better.

And I know that the good can be the enemy of the best if I will let it. And I don't want to let it because it was 25 years, the 25th July last, that I went to that first meeting in the master's club in Hollywood. And it's been my great good fortune and my privilege to be sober a day at a time. You've given me my life in sobriety. You prayed for me when I was dying of cancer, and I lived.

And you've given it to me intermittently many times through these years. But because wherever you are gathered, there is that thing in the room. And in this convention, it's been so overwhelming. I've had to walk out of it a few times. For it seemed as if my heart could hold no more.

And the thing in the room is wherever you gather, because you bring it. It emanates from you in the spiritual way of life you live, and I want it I want it forever. And I never want to settle for the good when the best is here for all of us. Thank you.