The topic of Spirituality through the Steps

Hi. My name is Frank, and I'm an alcoholic. And I'm freezing my ass off. Bobby, you gotta do something about that air condition. It must be a way we can at least turn it down.

See, when we get warm, then we can turn it up. When we get cold, we can turn it down again. I, I spoke at the first Cajun conference. There's no question about that. Tomorrow, you'll probably think I spoke last week here.

And after I spoke at the first Cajun conference, I thought it'd be the last Cajun conference, I'll tell you. It was really an impressive little thing. Now some of you think I have an accent. I want you to know that I didn't have an accent when I got on the plane in Chicago. I got this accent when I got off the plane in Lafayette.

So if you don't understand me, that's okay, because I don't understand you half the time. We're gonna have fun here. We're not gonna I don't know how you do things here. We're gonna do them the way we do them back home because that's the only thing I know. It doesn't make it right.

Maybe what you do here is right. But what we're gonna do is we're gonna share. We're gonna all be in these tapes if there's gonna be tapes, because this is about sharing, I think, and we're not gonna be sitting here for hours reading a book. You can do that at home. And I'm not a teacher.

And you, I don't think you're gonna learn anything or gain anything if you listen to me read. I'm not a good reader. Now I was told that the subject or the title of this workshop is, Spirituality Through the Steps. I'll tell you what, we could have doubled the crowd had we called it sexuality through the steps. AA is packaging.

Sometimes the way we label things discourage people. Isn't that funny? Because spiritual, that sounds like it's good or holy, maybe holy. I don't know how it would spiritual. Do you hear that word spiritual?

What do you think it means? I don't know. Holy, godlike, god fearing? I don't know. I'm not holy.

If you wanted a holy man, you could have found him here. I guarantee you that. You'd have to reach out to Chicago to find that. My sobriety date is November 3, 1971. And by some standards, that's a long time.

Other standards, it's a short time. Now we don't have any format here today, and I'm gonna guarantee you one thing. We're not gonna be here as long as this program was planned because I don't wanna make this a tedious thing. See, one of the strange phenomenons about people in Alcoholics Anonymous, The people that should be here aren't here. The people that are here don't need to be here.

And that's I mean, that's that's true. Your willingness to take out out of your life a day after you worked all week to come here indicates to me that your willingness would carry you to do whatever action is necessary to lead a better life. And just by coming here, you've proven that. Unfortunately, people that really need to be here don't come here. And that's kind of the story of Alcoholics Anonymous, I think.

Most of the people that need this program don't come to this program, and so many people that come here don't stay here. How many people in this room today have longer continuous sobriety than me? 2. You know that's a sad commentary on Alcoholics Anonymous. We've had 54 years to acquire Alzheimer's.

We've had 54 years to acquire old timers. And yet the newcomers, each and every year, outnumber the old timers 10, 20, 30 to 1. And, you know, we all think about that all the time. I go around the country and do a lot of talking in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I I hear people talk like, oh my god. Alcoholics Anonymous is growing and growing and growing and growing.

I don't think it is. It barely grows in proportion to the population explosion. When I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, the population of the United States was almost one half of what it is today. The growth of alcohol, it's anonymous, is that it's grown less than the population, proportionately. Ain't that weird?

Now if you hear that, you can say to yourself, was he saying an alcohol synonymous doesn't work? No. I'm not saying that at all. I think there's a certain dilemma about the disease of alcoholism that's not true in any other illness. This is the strangest illness.

This is an illness as while it's killing you, it's telling you you're okay. It's their fault. You don't really have a problem. You're not dying. And to suffer from this illness doesn't wanna get well.

Won't do anything to get well. Will talk sometimes like they want to get well, give some lip service to something, but to take any action. And I believe that most people in Alcoholics Anonymous never take the steps. Think that most people in Alcoholics Anonymous cheat themselves. I think they talk about the steps, and they pretend they take the steps, or they kinda take the steps, or they're gonna take the steps.

But the actual taking of 12 simple actions or surrenders is so overwhelming to them, so threatening to them, that they refuse to do it. And the shame of it is, is a lot of old timers Don't take steps either. And I wonder why that is. I was giving a talk in Canada a couple of couple of years ago, And I said, I think there's a hypocrisy about many of us in Alcoholics Anonymous. Sometimes we sit in these meetings for years until the rest of the people assume we're getting better.

Newcomers keep coming in, and we become elders 2 years, 3 years, 4 years sober. They presume we've taken the steps, and we live on that presumption. We live on that presumption. And I said that I really think that most of us in Alcoholics Anonymous cheat ourselves. In a kind of a way, I think, a lot of people in Alcoholics Anonymous live a lie in Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I went into that, and I said, oh, that's not I'm just as guilty of that as anybody else. I mean, when are we gonna stop cheating ourselves? When are we gonna privately, simply do what is the only suggested program of recovery given thus by Alcoholics Anonymous? And after that meeting, a guy who was a high profile, big shot in Alcoholics Anonymous, a wonderful man, So over 37 years came up to me and said, can I talk to you? I said, sure.

We went outside, and he started to cry. He said, I've been a delegate. I've been this. I've been that. I've been this.

I've been that. I sponsored hundreds of people. Everybody I'm the oldest sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous in my city. He said, you know, I haven't ever taken a step. He said, I've kinda taken a step.

I've never written an inventory. I've never taken a 5th step. I never made any list of people I'd harmed. He said, you know what it's been like the last 20 years? He says, it's been like hell.

But I pretended for the newcomers. Keep coming back. Gets better and better. He said, you know, I don't care if I'll ever die. I can't even get up anymore in front of these people because I just can't tell another lie.

And I said to him what I say to other people who are in that dilemma. You know, it doesn't say when you have to take the steps. When the pain is sufficient, if that pain is after 3 years or 3 months or 3 days or 30 years, the grace of God just doesn't come to us when we're new comers. God doesn't just come to us the day before or the night before the morning we join Alcoholics Anonymous. The grace of God is a continual flow, never is unavailable.

And you know there's nothing wrong if you have skipped taking these actions, start taking them after a year or 3 or 5 or 10 or 20 or 3. Don't know all of that. You don't have to announce that to the you can just do it. You can just do it. Because I don't get the difference between staying here and leaving here.

That's my opinion. Now let me just tell you this. Whatever you hear from me today is my opinion. I have no credentials of any kind. I am not appointed or anointed.

K? No one has sat in judgment and said, yep. He's our man. Nope. I have no special insights or understandings, and I have not, gone to any schools or taken any counselors' courses.

I haven't been certified by a treatment center or a hospital. I'm just a member of Alcoholics Anonymous who's been sober since November 3, 1971, and I'm a good observer. I'm a good listener, and my life's at stake. See, this is not a social function for me, membership and alcoholics anonymous. I believe my life is at stake.

Now it's not life like my heart will stop if I don't come here. No. And that I'm not afraid that if I drink again, I'll die. No. I'm afraid if I drink again, that I won't die.

And I'll have to live like that. 1, 2, 10, 20, 30 years. That's what I'm afraid of. And now I come to Alcoholics Anonymous because I like to be an alcoholic synonymous. I don't think that if I didn't come here this weekend, that I'd get drunk tonight or tomorrow.

I don't believe that if I stopped going to meetings next week and the week after that I'd get drunk. I think that the quality of my life would slowly deteriorate. Because I've had that experience in Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't know if you have. There have been times in my almost 18 years of sobriety that I have taken little vacations from Alcoholics Anonymous.

Sometimes it's like, I'm gonna take a vacation, and I'll be gone for a couple weeks. Well, I know they have AA meetings there, but I think I'll just kind of be relaxed and have fun and just I owe it to myself. I'm not going to any of those meetings. It doesn't take too long for everyone around me to know that I'm not going to meetings. I start to become critical.

I start to become impatient. I start to become restless. And on and on and on. And that, you see, I think that alcoholism is a disease that continues into sobriety. Some people have things that.

There seems to be 2 kinds of people that come in the alcoholic's house. I'm sure there's a lot of categories, but I seem to be able to identify at least 2. 1st part, class of people, come in here believing and they'll argue and argue and argue that the only problem in their life is they drank too much too often. And that the purpose and goal of Alcoholics Anonymous is to become sober and to stay sober. And for them, that may be true.

For me, in my class, that's not true. There's more wrong with me. There always has been, and there always will be more wrong with me than I drink too much too often. I'm sober long enough to know that sober can be crappy. Sober can be full of fear, anxiety, depression.

See, I'm sober long enough that I know that's true for me, not for you. So you gotta remember, I'm not saying anything for you. I don't know you. And even if I did, I would not be qualified to make any judgments about you. Because I don't live in you.

You do. And you're the authority on you. So if I say anything that you disagree with, not only are you wrong no. I don't mean that. That's right.

If I say anything that you disagree with, don't get mad at me. That's how I see it for me. And I share it because if you're like me, you may see it that way too. And if you don't, okay. That's why we have a lot of people in that in Alcoholics Anonymous that speak from these microphones.

Because everyone sees and understands everything differently. And no one is right. And no one is wrong. It's how you feel and how you see it today. Now the most wonderful thing about Alcoholics Anonymous is if you keep an open mind, you'll discover that what you were certain was true today, maybe tomorrow, you won't think was so true.

That's called growth. You see, our opinions and our judgments and our values change in recovery. And that's why I try not anymore to be so dogmatic. When I was new, and I was sober a year, I knew what was true in Alcoholics Anonymous, what wasn't. What was right and what wasn't.

I thought I knew that. Now I don't know that I know any of that. See, I'm sober long enough now to probably have identified the questions. The answers keep changing as I keep changing. And that's what I think Alcoholics Anonymous is.

I think Alcoholics Anonymous is an adventure in living. I think it has little or nothing to do with drinking. It has to do with living sober. And being able to stand living sober with me. Now when people tell me, well, no.

That's not what AA is about. AA is about not drinking. Then I accused doctor Bob and Bill Wilson of being liars. And they must have been so mentally ill that they would perpetuate a hoax on millions of people who were to follow them, because they lied to me when they wrote this book. If the purpose of Alcohol Synonymous was not to drink, why didn't they say the first step in the program of recovery is do not drink alcohol?

Why didn't they tell me that? What were they trying to do? Play some kind of mind game? Were they so sick that they wanted to bury the truth? Or did they not want people like me to get well?

Why didn't they say that? Why didn't they say, Liggett, you wanna get well? Don't drink. They never said that. What happened is, as I understand it and as I have observed it and as I have been taught, we have, some of us, so watered down Alcoholics Anonymous that we have really almost changed its total identity in an effort to solicit membership and to help other people.

These slogans and these statements that you hear and you see on walls and you see on bumper stickers have nothing to do with the recovery process in alcoholics and vitamins. They are helpful, comforting, and useful. Gimmicks. But they are gimmicks. They are good.

And they help, but they're not the program of recovery. In addition to the program of recovery, they augment that program of recovery. What's happened sometimes as AA travels west, north, and south from its beginning. It was the message was carried by people, and they invented these things. Over the course of years, sometimes, we replace the program of recovery with these gimmicks.

And then we wonder why people don't stay here. Why don't they get well? Why aren't they so happy they just keep coming back? Because you can only get so well on one day at a time. You can only get so well on live and get let live.

You can only get so well saying keep it simple, stupid. You can only get so well and easy, does it. And I really think that's kind of the dilemma of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now I'm going to repeat a statement I made earlier. More people leave AA than stay in AA.

More people leave AA than stay in AA. And that's not because Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't work. The truth of the matter is, I think, Alcoholics Anonymous works nearly 100% of the time. Most alcoholics don't do what's suggested as the only program of recovery by Alcoholics Anonymous. They simply refuse to do it, and they all have their own justifications of why their case is different.

You know when I wrote this book in 19 let me get this book. And this book came out in 1939. I'm just gonna read just a little something that I'd like to talk to you about. They put in a chapter and they said, we'll call this chapter how it works. Here's what they said.

Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. That means that between 1935 and 1939, their observation was that people who did the subsequently listed things, almost to a person, succeeded in effectuating a recovery. Rarely have we seen anyone fail. That translated means hardly ever doesn't at work. Or opposite, the flip side is, it almost always works who have thoroughly followed our path.

Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program. Simple program. Usually, men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. Those are the only people they've ever seen not make it. That's what it says here.

And I don't think they were so mentally ill that they put things in this book to hurt or mislead or misguide people like me. They said, our experience is that, and our observation is, since we started this thing in 1935, 100 and 100 of people have come through, and hardly to a man or woman has anyone failed who have done these things. And the only people who seem to have failed are people who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. Not with us, not with their employees, their employers, the police, the courts, themselves. It's a simple program, they said here.

They are such unfortunates. They're not at fault. They seem to be have been born that way. I read that, and I took offense. When I first read that, I thought I wasn't born that way.

I wasn't born incapable of being honest with myself. I don't know who they were talking about. You know where I was born? I was born a little kid that believed in Santa Claus. I was born a little kid that believed in God.

I was born a little kid. I was a little kid. I was 3 and I was 4. There was no lack of honesty. To be dishonest was an exception to the rule.

I was a good little kid. I'm not hurt anybody. You don't wanna be hurt. I didn't go around when I was starting to walk punching people on the nose. I thought this was a nice life.

There was the Easter bunny, and the tooth fairy and Santa Claus. It was when I was about 20 and I found out there wasn't a Santa Claus that started my problem. These people that fail, this book says, seem to be incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living that demands rigorous honesty. That's all this program, it says, demands. Rigorous honesty.

Now maybe they shouldn't put the word rigorous in there. Because I don't know what rigorous means. But it sounds awful. Then it I mean, what's rigorous? Do you have an idea what rigorous is, sir?

What is it? Unbending. Okay. And when you're new the gentleman said unbending. And when you're new, that threatened me.

Because I, by the time I come into Alcoholics Anonymous, have lied so much. My life is a lie. I am a lie. I don't know how not to lie. It would seem to me, when I'm new, that rigorous, unbending is impossible to me.

It would be like purity, perfectionism, perfect. And I know I'm incapable of that. Rigorous is maybe unbending. Maybe it's not as unbending as unbending. Maybe it's more forgiving than unbending.

I think that now, at this stage in my sobriety, I would say, for me, it's unbending. On November 3, 1971, It was do the best you can. Be as honest as you can. Risk it. Risk being honest just a little bit.

Just open the door a little bit. Just tell one truth. Tell somebody I'm scared, I'm in trouble. Or the worst thing of all, maybe I'm rigorous if I just say I need help. Maybe.

I don't know. The chances are less than average. There are those 2 who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest. Our stories, in a general way, disclose what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now. If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, then you are ready to take certain steps.

I would say the dilemma of alcoholism as I see it. Right now, back in my group, 3 people who have an operable cancer, Doctors in each case have had certain hopes for each one of them. Tell you about a story. 6 years ago, one of the guys that I sponsor came to me, And he said my wife has just been diagnosed having a very strange and rare muscle cancer. Some sort of a cancer of the muscle.

Now I'm not a doctor, and I'm not gonna be able to really explain this to you, but just to tell you that that's what it was. And somehow, this lump on her back grew, And it was first misdiagnosed by a doctor who operated, and then it grew back a few months later. And then she went to a teaching hospital near Chicago, and they said that she had something, a form of cancer, that they've only seen medical history 20 or 30 times that's been documented in the medical books. Her name is Joan. And after all the tests, the surgeon said to Joan, there's only one chance if you wanna live.

We have to cut you in half. What we have to do, Johnny, is we gotta take your body, and we've gotta cut you from the neck straight down to the hip. You're gonna lose your shoulder and your arm and your breast, half of your chest and half of your back. Now if you do that, there's a chance you will live. You know Johnny did?

She got the operation. And I tell you, the day, the night before the operation, Joni's not a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Her husband is. The night before the operation, Joanie asked me to come to the hospital. She wanna talk to me.

When I got to the hospital, what she wanna talk about is how John was gonna take this. Amazing. Now I'm gonna tell you, that's proof. John's not out loud. Because I she's concerned about how John was gonna be able to handle this.

And something happened that just brought me it got my attention. While she talked to me, she manicured her nails on the arm that they were going to remove in the morning. Now I just know that this wasn't a conscious. She just did it because, I guess, Shelley's did it. And she's talking to me.

She's filing these nails and putting on this nail polish, And I can't stop looking at that arm because I'm saying to myself, Joanie, they're gonna throw that arm in the garbage in the morning. In my mind, she wanted to talk about how John was gonna handle it. And she also said to me that the reason she was gonna do this is because she wanted to live. She said, Frank, there are beaches I have yet to walk. She had the operation, and she's half a lady.

She's a whole lady, but she's half a lady. She just wanted to live because she was certain that without that operation, she would die. Alcoholics come here, and they don't have that certainty, they mustn't believe they're gonna die, or their quality of life will be so diminished that life will have no meaning. Because if they did, wouldn't they take these simple steps? If a doctor if you were losing your sight, you're gonna be blind in a month.

And the doctor said, now all you have to do, and it's hardly ever failed, all you gotta do is these 12 things. But you gotta do them. And you gotta do them in the order in which I suggest them to you. How many of us would not do them? What would be the dilemma?

Would we say, well, I'll do one, but I wanna think about this others, or I'll do the first and the third and the 12th? Would we say, well, I'll do a couple, and then we'll see, though. We'll see. Or would we say, tell me what I can do to save my sight. There's no question, doctor, I'm gonna do it, and I'm gonna start the minute you tell me I can start.

Only the sufferer from the disease of alcoholism refuses to take the medicine. And when Clancy said some years ago that alcoholism is a disease of perception, he could not have been more correct. What amazing, amazing. Think of that. All they say here is hardly ever does it ever fail.

We've never really seen anybody fail unless they were constitutionally incapable of being honest. And I don't believe there's a person in this room who feels that they are constitutionally incapable of being honest. And those are the only ones who can't make it. Everyone else can. In our history and everything we observe is if you do these simple things, you will recover.

Why then don't we do it? What's the big deal? What's the big deal? Why is it so hard? Is this any more less life threatening alcoholism than that cancer or that blindness or that diabetes or the myriad of other illnesses and diseases, why don't we do it?

And that's the dilemma that has made people wonder about alcoholics. You know that non alcoholics see that in us? They see in us the unwillingness to get well. And that's why I think in most instances, you hear about we're misunderstood and prejudiced against, And they don't understand. They think we're evil, and they think we're weak, or they think we're this.

They just observe our unwillingness to do anything but talk about it, argue about it, theorize about it, and delay simple simple actions. What's the big deal? I think the first thing that we do and where I come from guys, I'm sorry you're late. We did all the sex stuff right at the beginning. Actually, we didn't it wasn't just sex.

We did masturbation to mutual fund. I don't know that you because when we come in, I don't know that all of us know what an alcoholic is. And maybe we start, many of us, on the wrong foot. I don't know. I wanna repeat.

I don't know how many of you people have heard this goofy test tube thing that I do in my beginners class back in Illinois. I'm gonna do it for you. Maybe you think it's crazy. Maybe it is. I don't know.

I have a group in Illinois that I belong to, and it's called the Lamont Oaks Group of Alcoholics Anonymous. About 14 years ago, after a series of misadventures in Alcoholics Anonymous and not being able to fit into Alcoholics Anonymous, I fell into a group of 6, 7, 8 men who were just like me, losers in alcoholic tsunami. And we met in a little church way out further away than you are from Lafayette or wherever we're away from. Okay? There's no visible human life where we met.

K? Nobody could find us if they wanted to. And if you knew you we were there, you wouldn't wanna find us. And that's where we met. Today, that group numbers just under 500.

That group. We are a group. We meet on Monday nights. We don't have a clubhouse. We don't have any buildings.

We rent now a big gymnasium in a junior high school. But now we have just under 500 members of our group. See, we think group is different than meeting. We think group is the commitment to make it together. And we don't care who you are, what you are, what you do, what you don't do.

We do believe, where I come from, that little growth are the measure of recovery. But we tell you that you have hardly any chance to fail if you'll stop lying and pretending. We started them out with that. And in 1980, I walked into a class, we call it a class because we do a lot of things together in that little class. It's a class because they identify themselves as the class of 1980.

Okay? You know, when you come into Alcoholics Anonymous, it's hard to become part of. You know, you come in a meeting, you're all on every scene, you know each other. How do you get in? How do you get in?

We get them in immediately. You're wrong the cost of 80. You and him and him and her. So in 1980, I walked into that group and there were, I don't know, 10, 12 newcomers. Monday night, last Monday night, there were 151 people in the beginners class.

151 people who were brand new to Alcoholics Anonymous in one room. We have more beginners in our beginners class than most meetings in the whole world have in their meetings. That doesn't mean that we're doing anything special. You can do that right here. It's called enthusiasm and truth.

And I said to those people in that room, I don't know what an alcoholic is. And I had been sober at that point 10 years. I mean, I don't know what the definition of alcoholic is. And I've looked at all the books that Alcohol Anonymous has ever written or approved. And I've never found a definition for alcoholic.

Now if I knew what an alcoholic was, I could figure out if I am 1. They like that idea. That made sense. They smile like you did. You know, even through their defiance and their pretense.

Isn't that wonderful how the newcomers you ever see newcomers come in? They always pretend they're okay. They come in as if, well, they're just visiting. They come in as if they don't have to be here. And I understand that.

Because you know the truth of the matter is, if you don't gamble, you never think of going to a Gamblers Anonymous meeting. If you're so tired of being overweight, unless you're so tired and you feel obese, you never think of going to Overeaters Anonymous or Weight Watchers. It never dawns on you to do that. Now, alcoholics never think about coming to an AA meeting. It never enters their mind.

When you think about coming to a meeting, you gotta go to a meeting. When you think you have a problem, you have a problem. And yet they'll come there, and they'll be defiantly disinterested. But when I said to them that I'd like to know what an alcoholic is because if I had a measure or definition, I could look at it, apply it to me, and maybe I'm not. And when I held that hope out to them that maybe there were, they wanted to participate.

Why? To be reconfirm their alcoholism? To deny their alcoholism so they could leave. And that is how 90 percent of all the people come into alcohol synonymous. And that's why I think sometimes it's a dangerous thing to bring newcomers, and we think that if we tell them these horrible war stories, they will relate to that.

So often, our speakers relate to I was in chains for 47 years in a dungeon for raping the Prince's daughter. I was in prison. I murdered my best friend. I was in 30 7 treatment centers. I tried to kill myself 9 times.

Look at the scars. I was divorced 11 times. And on and on and on as if we're gonna then give them something to relate to. If they're like me, most newcomers, when I came into alcoholics, I know how to relate to your stories because I didn't wanna be an alcoholic. I mean, I don't know anybody that I have never met anybody who wanted to be an alcoholic.

I never ever met anybody who was happy they were an alcoholic, who said, my god. I fulfilled my life's dream. I'm becoming an alcoholic. I've never seen anybody write in the yearbook. What do you wanna do the rest of your life?

I wanna join Alcoholics Anonymous. People come to Alcoholics Anonymous with a resistance to the term alcoholic, to a resistance from the idea that they are at the end of their rope, and they come here to deny and justify that denial so they can leave. And when we tell them these terrible war stories, they say I didn't do that. Good. I'm not an alcoholic.

I've never been arrested. Shit. Alcoholics are people who get arrested all the time. I've never been divorced. Well, I was, but I I should've been divorced.

What does that have to do with? That guy's been divorced 7 times. They've been arrested 15 times for drunken drama. I've never been arrested. I'm only arrested once.

And they leave these meetings reinforced that they are not like us because they spend the time in the meeting not trying to hear what they can compare to, but what they can compare against Because they don't want to be alcoholics. And I don't blame them. Because I don't want to be one either. So what we do in our meeting is we don't tell horror stories. We hardly ever mention drinking.

We never, in the beginners group, ever talk about drinking. We presume you know about drinking. We presume when you walk into that room, it has something to do with drinking. We presume you know everything there is to know about drinking. We presume you are the world's authority on drinking.

We presume you drink more than most people that you know. Or that you not that you like, but that you know. We presume that. That's a safe presumption. I walked into that room in 1980, and I said, what's an alcoholic?

And they looked at me, and I said, maybe if we find the definition, we can get out of here. They wanted to play the game. So I asked them to pretend. We're all good at pretending. We know how to do that.

I said, let's pretend we're in a laboratory. Let's make an alcoholic. Let's make an alcoholic in this laboratory all by ourselves. Nobody's here. Nobody will know.

Nobody will see. It's a private little secret laboratory. And I asked him just for a minute to come into that laboratory with me and I held up an invisible test tube. I said, let's put in the ingredients that you think are necessary in order to make an alcoholic. And let's make one.

When we make it, we'll look at it and we'll know if it's like us. If it is, maybe we'll wanna stay. And if it isn't, we don't have to be here. And I held up an invisible test tube in 1980 to a little group of people. And I don't even remember.

The truth of the matter is they're having a reunion in November and they sent me a picture that was taken after that meeting. And there's like 30 some of them in there. But that little group of people looked at that invisible tester that I have held up. And here's what they did. Remember now, they're not like you, hon, and me.

They weren't 18, 19 years sober. They were brand new. Okay? This was their perception speaking. This was their experience speaking.

They didn't know anything about alcoholics and all of us. They had no teaching about alcoholics and all of us. This was their guts talking. I said, you make me an alcoholic. I wasn't gonna make it, because I don't want what it is.

They made this. They said, the first person that spoke was a little girl who was almost more than 16 or 17 years old. She said, put in fear. This is somebody, brand new alcohol columnist, never read a book, never had anything. Her guts are talking.

Put in fear. Put in anxiety. Put in shame. Put in guilt. Put in depression.

Put in impatience. Put in anger. Put in remorse. Put in self loathing. Somebody else said put in ego.

Put in perfectionism. Inferiority, someone said, put that in. And someone right after that said, put in superiority. Wow. Same test tube.

Inferiority, superiority. I'm thinking my god. What are they making here? Loneliness, guilt, negative self image, self loathing. They went on and on, and that's what they put into this test tube.

Now this is a fact. This happened. This isn't made up for this meeting or any other meeting. They filled that test tube with things like that and those things. And here's the key.

Do you know what those brand new people right off the street, right off the street before we prejudiced them or said them bad information? Well, you know what? They did not put in. What do you think they did not put in? Alcohol.

Because nobody had got to them yet to tell them. Alcohol is your problem. Nobody was there to give them that bad information. That's why the first time I heard Franklin Williams speak, it was years years ago. He got up in front of the Evans Avenue group in Chicago.

It was a big big meeting. He made 1500 people. And he said, folks, there's a lot of information available in Alcoholics Anonymous. Unfortunately, most of it is bad. And I thought I'm gonna like this guy.

They didn't put alcohol. Now what we did to carry on this experiment is we then said, okay. I said to them, you know, you didn't put in any alcohol. I said, well, then let's put in some alcohol. So in our laboratory, in this invisible test tube that was full of the things they said, they felt necessary ingredients to make an alcoholic, We started to pour in alcohol.

And here's what they said they visioned occur. When you put just enough alcohol in a test tube that has fear in it, alcohol seems to make fear go away. It dilutes fear. They said that as we poured alcohol into the test tube, initially, anger was subsided. Inferiority was corrected.

Superiority was diminished. Guilt went away. It seemed to them that in the early drinking, when they drank, good things happened. Good feelings happened. They felt good about themselves and the people around them.

They reported that alcohol to them used to work more often than not. Now there are some people who do not have that experience. But the vast majority have explained that they have. See, if you have nothing in your test tube but good stuff, why do you drink? What does it do for you?

Then if you have nothing in your test tube but good things, and for some reason you drank too much too often, and then stopped, you gotta be happy. It's gotta be and that's the end for you. Sobriety is the name of the game. If that's true, were you drunk every day of your life? Weren't you ever sober between drunks?

And if so, once you were sober, and sober is the answer, why did you stay sober? I don't know. Because I don't understand that segment of the population. But what these people reported was very simple. That alcohol used to work for them and it used to make them feel better about them early on.

And they had forgotten about that because they only remember the end. But they were caused to remember the beginning through this experiment. As we continue to pour alcohol into that test tube, what happens is called alcoholism. And it only happens for some people. Some people, it doesn't happen to.

It never happens through social drinkers. How many people are here that have less than 6 months of continuous sobriety? Okay. Hold on just a minute. Okay.

Alright. Let me tell you a secret. If you're like me, and you're here now, you're kinda glad you're here, but you're not entirely too glad you're here. And you don't mind being here so much today, but you don't know for sure if you're gonna wanna be here tomorrow or a year from tomorrow, 3 years from now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from tomorrow. Jesus.

If you're like me, maybe when you come to Alcoholics Anonymous, you really think I'd really like to be a social drinker. And if I could ever become a social drinker, that's all I'd ever want. Alright. I'm here to tell you, if you're new, and you fan on the idea that you would like be a social drinker, I'm gonna tell you a secret. If I had a pill that could make you a social drinker, it was guaranteed to make you a social drinker, you would not take the pill.

You wouldn't take it. You think to yourself, oh, yeah. It would. Definition, what's a social drinker? Before you decide that you wanna be 1, let's find out what it is.

No sense rushing into this. We don't wanna rush into social drinking anymore. We're gonna rush into Alcoholics Anonymous. You can find out you're in the wrong place. Wouldn't it be terrible if social drinking is the wrong place?

You ever see a social drinker? You know social drinkers do? They say to each other stop and have a drink. They stop, they have a drink, they go home. How'd you like to live like that?

Social drinkers, when they sit at the bar, bartender puts their drinks and follow-up. You know what they do? They talk to each other. And then they talk some more. And the drinks are there.

And they talk. Then they take a sip. And they talk. How do you like to live like that? One day at a time.

Social drinkers, when they're offered the second or third drink, know what to say. No. Thank you. I'm starting to feel it. They do this all over the world.

They do this in every cocktail party, in every wedding, in every reception, and in every home in the United States every night. Say, no, thank you. I've had one. You've had what? I've had one.

No shit. No. Thank you. I've had to. No.

Thank you. I've had enough. You know what they mean? You know why I say I'm having I haven't had enough? Because every human being that takes alcohol into their system notices change occurred.

Change occurs from alcohol. Everybody feels a change that occurred. I don't care if you're in France, or Tibet, or Australia, or New Zealand, or Tahiti, or San Francisco. Any human being that takes alcohol in their system notice a change starts to occur. When that change starts to occur, nonalcoholics don't like that change.

You know what that change is? They start to feel different. They start to feel different. They don't wanna feel different. They like how they feel.

They start seeing things differently. They don't wanna see things differently. They like how they see things. They like how things look to them. I drink because I don't like how I feel.