The Oklahoma State Conference in Oklahoma City, OK

But getting back to that saving the last, the best the last, we've been very fortunate on the program that has been presented to us throughout this meeting. We're indeed fortunate here in Oklahoma to have with us on this occasion, one of the cofounders of the movement of Alcoholics Anonymous. He doesn't need much of an introduction to anybody. And I'm happy at this time to present Bill. In this fine hour, I know that we are all possessed with a great emotion, And that is gratitude for the wholesale miracle that has befallen the children of the night.

We of the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. And our compelling thought in these happy days just past has been how best can we serve the end of this society? In gratitude, we praise God whose grace has made this thing possible. And immediately, we think of the great numbers of people and circumstances who have formed this fellowship, who have composed this happy conspiracy. We think of our friends of medicine.

We think of our friends of religion. Or as you must know, AA something like a farmer's tree like a no stool, supported in one side by what we have learned from medicine, on another corner by what we have drawn from religion, And the other leg, of course, is our own experience of drinking in the cup. A synthetic concept that has made all its fun. So do all of our friends in medicine and religion we're all in the same position. We're all in the same position.

We're all in the same position. There are some of the men and women of press here who have been encouraged over the past years of our message to all the world. And never a syllable of ridicule or criticism have these ever written of alcoholics and honor? Their work has made possible the recovery of tens of thousands of afflicted ones. So to them the goodwill of the citizens of this time, are those in government, are those in many places whose goodwill means so much to us.

What a fine expression that just was that 4 of the citizens church. And I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna tell you, respectable one to make us feel needed and wanted in this community. In fact, this is not a rather singular circumstance that a gentleman from the sheriff's office should be saying to a bunch of grunts? Did you ever thought of that? And speaking of my own special reason for gratitude, I find no words to describe my feeling about what has happened here.

As I bring you congratulations from AAs all over the Earth. For today, the sun never set upon the society of alcoholics and all. And these send you their greeting and their brotherhood and their affection. And I thank all who have made this happy event possible. Those whose labors have been on the scene, but which have flowered in this wonderful occasion.

And the hospitality, you'll extend it to me. Alteryx Anonymous is now about 16 years old and yet we sense that we have passed through 3 periods, a period of infancy, a period of adolescence, and now we think we are upon the threshold of maturity and face our future. We are now taking destiny by the hand. So I think it would serve the purposes of this meeting. If I led you through the years of infancy during which time we develop the principles and apply the principles upon which individual recovery is found.

And then I took you through that exciting period of adolescence when we lived and worked together, during which time the tradition of Alcoholics Anonymous was generated. That body of principle, of group conduct, which we hope may contain us in unity for so long as God shall need it. And I would especially like then to emphasize the fact that we like to acknowledge the knowledge, faith is dead without work. In other words, this is a society of action. Action is the mark is the magic word.

So I would like to dwell a bit upon the whole idea of service as we now see it as it applies to what I hope will be a great and happy future. For some 16 years now, you and I have been watching a great building under construction. Towards about the Holy of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart to us is a veritable cathedral of the spirit into which a 120,000 of us have now entered and herein have found peace and a brotherhood and a freedom of which we could never have dreamed in yesteryear. So let me take you back now to the very beginning, leading you down through our infancy and adolescence to where we are now.

Marking as we go those important realizations and decisions which have so deeply affected our debt. In a sense, AA has just been a succession of realizations and decisions taken by individuals and groups of individuals. Let us see what some of those were. In the summer of 1934, I lay in a hospital devoted to the care of alcohol. It was the end of a long road.

And for the first time, I understood the futility of my position. I knew that I was utterly focused. I knew that I had no power of my own to go on live. And that verdict had been pronounced by science. What you said, the alcoholic is 1 who has an obsession which condemns him to drink against his will.

An increasing physical sensitivity that condemns him in time to go mad or die. And those terrible facts in my case had come home to me in flood time as I lay there on my bed. So without realizing, I was having a realization that is absolutely indispensable to each one of us before we may make any progress to recover. A realization which has been shared by every alcoholic in this room. I had hit 5 and knew it.

I was not the only one who shared this realization. Downstairs in the hospital, a famous doctor was talking to Lois, my dear wife. And like many a woman before and since, she was asking these questions. She was saying, doctor, for a year, Bill has wanted to stop. He has desperately wanted to stop.

He has been willing to do anything. Now doctor Bill was always a man afraid of will power. In other matters, why doesn't his will power work now? Why can't he stop, doctor? And, doctor, how serious is this bit?

And the good man was compelled to tell her that my habit of drinking had slowly turned into an obsession, a veritable incentive, which condemned me as much to drink as to cut the maniac is condemned to steal. And that my physical condition has deteriorated, Perhaps my brain already a little. And that that was the age old dilemma of alcoholism. Unlike many another woman, the lawyer said, well, what does that mean, doctor? Gentlemen that he was, he had to tell her it means, missus Wilson, that you might soon put him away somewhere.

Else, he will go mad or die. So this realization of hopelessness, now so important to every one of our society and invited in our the very first step of the A program came not only to me, but to one very near and dear. How well you women and the husbands of alcoholics know. Leaving the hospital, I was very badly frightened. For a time, great vigilance kept me so.

But little by little, as I felt better, my fear were away. And in November of that year, the obsession had me. There I was alone drinking in my kitchen, lowest working in a department store to support me. I no longer dared go in the streets lest I be taken up by the police. Drinking, the 5th is to be high for day, 2 to be tight, and 3 to be drunk.

Drunk most of the time. Continue. Could not stop. Well, at that juncture, a friend I hadn't seen in many years had a realization, and he took it as savior. He too had been visited by this dire malady.

I had known him to be a hopeless one for a long time. Suddenly, the telephone rang. Here he was on the end other end of the wire. I knew it once he was sober. I'd never known him to be in New York City.

So and I said, come over, Abby. My friend, I'd love to see you. We'll drink together, and we'll talk about the good old days. Ah, what a significant remark. The good old days indeed.

For you'd see to me, the present was unbearable, and there was to be no future. Yes. We drink together and talk about the good old days. Well, I met him at the door. And by some psychic sense, so I saw at once that he had something more than just surprise.

I couldn't make it out. He came inside of the kitchen table. I pushed over a full tumbler of gin. He said, no. Thanks.

I said, Eddie, what's God in here? You want the water wagon? Oh, no. No. I'm just not drinking.

I was puzzled. I was disappointed too. We visited a little bit. I was very curious. I said, Come, my friend.

What's God to do? Simply and smilingly he looked at me and said, consent. Too bad. He may as well have hit me in the face with a wet mark, for I was one of those agnostic. I was one whose modern education had told him there is no God.

Oh, the poor fellow. Well, one had to be polite. So I said, well, I mean, what kind of religion have you got? Oh, he said, I wouldn't really call it religion. You might call it the religion of common sense.

I just picked up some ideas from a group of people. 1 of them have to be a drunkard like myself. And here they are. Very simple ideas. None of them knew.

He said, Under their advice I got honest with myself as I had never been before about my personal respect. I quit the accursed business of living alone and confessed my defects to another person in confidence. Gave me a lot of relief. Then I made a survey of my broken relationships and of the damages my drinking had done. And I went to all those concerned to make amends, to ask forgiveness, being careful not to confess their sins in the process.

And then these friends had advised me that, I ought to learn of a new kind of gift, a kind of giving that demands no reward. And he said, Bill, here is the final point of my simple way of life. I discovered that I could not put these principles into daily operations and make them work on my drinking and on my problem of living unless I ask God for help. Now, Sidi, I know that's a thing. You're an agnostic, a giant, but that's that.

Well, as you see, my friend came with no new idea at all. I certainly heard about honesty and I'd heard about confession and restitution. And the faith without works is dead. I'd even heard about people praying. Didn't like the idea.

Nothing new. Yet, somehow, these simple principles presented by him struck me with tremendous force. Why? And now we uncover another fundamental of aye. One alcoholic was talking to another.

Another. I knew that he had been a denizen of that strange world in which I was living. I knew that it was a hopeless world, and I believed it when he said that he had been released from his upset, from his obsession, that he was just no longer on the waterway. As he put it, it seemed as though my obsession had been taken from me. And yet I was revolted at this idea of a God.

Well, very wisely he didn't try to evangelize me. He just said he thought he'd pay me a call. Let me know what had happened to him, thereby exercising what our theological friends called me virtue of truth. It's a lesson we've had to well learn in AA. And presently he was gone.

I continued to drink for the next week or 2, but in no waking hour could I get the vision of my friend out of my mind as he sat across the table setting out these temporal principles to me. And at length I thought to myself, Well, after all, who are beggars to be choosed? You, Bill Wilson, are just like a cancer, Victor. If you had cancer, you wouldn't expect to cure it yourself. You would depend upon any principle, any surgery, any physician that could check the growth of those terrible cells.

And well do you already know that your alcoholism is a cancer of the emotion, a cancer of the mind, and if there be such a thing, a cancer of the soul. So who are you to say there is no God? Who are you to say how you will get well? Just like the cancer You had better be dependent on whatever position there is who can help you. So I started for the hospital.

I thought I'd have the doctor sober me up. I would have to look at this religious idea through completely sober eyes. I mustn't have any emotional conversion nonsense. I presented myself to 93 Central Park, work, my old drying out joint. On the way up there, I had got very tight and deep.

The grunts here will tell you why. On our way to be cured for the last time we always get stiff. May never get another drink, you see. Through the fog I could see the doctor and I waved my bottle at him and I says, doctor, at last I've got something. And very sadly the old man looked at me and said, My boy, I'm afraid you have got something.

You better go upstairs. You go to bed. Well, I had come to the hospital early. The Larry and Tremans wouldn't have caught up with me for another month or 2. So in 3 or 4 days' time, I'm free of liquor, and then he said it is given.

But now I'm horribly depressed. I kept thinking about my friend, but again I rebelled about the great position. Suddenly, there he stands in the door. Here it is early in the morning. My first thought was, just the thousands of AAs I've since got, this man practices what he preaches.

Then I became a little fearful. He'd evangelize but no, he's proved. Said, Bill, I heard you were up here. Thought I'd come up and tell you what. And he made me ask him again, What were the terms of his deliverance.

And quite simply he stated, Well, he said, Bill, I get so honest with myself, talked it out with another person with confidence, cleared away the daydreamed my past as well as I could, and trying to help other people without any demand for reward. That's why I'm up here. Helps me as much as I use. And he said, I pray to God as I understand it. And that's all he had to say about it.

Soon he was gone. And then there fell upon me the greatest realization of my whole life. My depression increased. It seemed that I was in the bottom of an infinite pit. And at last I cried out, saying, No, I am willing to do anything.

Then, with no hope at all, I exclaimed, And if there is a God, will He show Himself? Then I was granted one of those sudden strange experiences. It seemed to me that the whole room lit up with a great light. I was filled with an ecstasy that no man could describe. I suddenly realized that I was free.

In the mind's eye it seemed as though I stood on a mountain. And a great clean wind was blowing, when I knew at once that it was not of air but of spirit. At length the ecstasy subsided. Of course, I am still on the bed. But now I lie in a new world.

I fell in 1 with a universe. A great peace stole over me. Me. And I thought to myself, this is what the preacher of Thomas. This is the God of the preacher.

Oh, I lay there a long time in this wonderful state. Then my modern education got a hold of me. I began to be frightened. I panicked. I said, oh, this must be hallucination.

Can this be real? I better call the doctor. Have him examine me. He's a good alienist. So when he came, and at this moment, the destiny of our society hung by a very slender presidency.

I told him what had happened. In fact, I could. Most doctors would have said, oh, well, Bill. Just a little hallucinosis, spoon pads off. But, no, this skeptical man of science, being a great human being, listened sympathetic, asked me a lot of questions.

And finally, he said, no, my boy. He said, you're not Christ. He said, there has been some very psychic upheaval in you. Somehow you are different. I can't put my finger on it.

Maybe you've had one of those conversion experience that once in a blue moon sobers up alcohol. Well, I think you have something, my boy. And whatever it is, you'd best hang on to it. It's so much better than what had you only 1 hour ago. So I've been hanging on ever since.

There has been no relapses that day. And so have a lot of other people. Now you friends who come in here may say, Do all of the members of our colleagues Anonymous have an experience like this? And my answer is yes, they do. They all have an experience that enables them to do that which they couldn't do before.

In most cases it comes on very, very slowly. What happened to me in 6 minutes happened to them in 6 weeks or 6 months, or even the area. But eventually all of us become conscious of the presence of a greater kind who can do for us what we cannot do alone. So that is a common central realization. Well, such a realization, of course, called for decisions, and I made the same decision as thousands of AAs have sent to me.

The decision was I wanted to help other alcoholics find this release. This release which had come on these very simple terms, yet with such mysterious power. So, I began working with alcohol, frantically, in the mission. This docker at risk to his reputation let me come back and work in this process. There wasn't any result called the 6th points.

When I told of my sudden experience, the alcoholics would just tap their heads and walk off. Couldn't blame them, couldn't. It. In fact, the cynical still report of that experience as Bill Wilson's hot flag. Well, I fear that I had a little sense of divine appointment.

I was trying to preach. And we yet lack another element. So after a season of failure my doctor, good old doctor Silkworth, who passed away recently, said, Bill, shouldn't you emphasize the idea much more in this work that alcoholism is an illness, a favorable progressive illness. And then it began at dawn upon me, that that might open up these drunk to such an experience as I had had or to some enabling thing that would remove their obsession. In other words, if one drunk projected it upon another, they're not only here to release from alcoholism, but also that it is a fatal progressive disease, an obsession of the mind coupled to an allergy of the body.

That message coming from one alcoholic to another might strike him deep and humble it enough so that the grace of God might expel his obsession. So I began to emphasize this idea of illness very much. At that juncture my wife's relatives begun, had begun to say: Well, when is this guy going to go to work? When is he going to quit being a missionary? When is he going to get a lawyer out of that damn department store?

Well under such building I began to go over to Wall Street and sit around in brokerage houses, which made it look like I was involved. Sitting there one day I fell into conversation with a stranger. Curiously enough that led to a business deal. You see, my old business friends would have none of them. This business deal took me to Akron, Ohio.

I had insinuated myself by accident into the middle of a big proxy fight. Suddenly it looked as though I had a controlling interest in a situation which might have made me president of a little company out there. All elated now I go out to Akron. I think well God is rewarding me for all his good work I've done, although not think one single drunk with sober yet. Arrived in Akron the business deal fell through.

The other side put more proxies on the table. My new found friends disappeared in the direction of New York, left me in the Mayflower Hotel with a $10 bill in my pocket. And great waves I felt pity, and anger swept open. Suddenly I realized that I was in danger of getting something. I began to panic.

I began to walk up and down that lobby, looking in the Briar Room at one end and at the other end asked in my immediate church director. Well, as I remarked earlier, I don't know what this AA would have done without friends. So I called up the person. I told him of my need to find another alcoholic to work with. I told him that I needed another alcoholic as much as that alcoholic could need me.

Well the clergyman was a little 9 plus. His experience has been that 1 alcoholic at a time was enough, why bring 2 of them together? Anyhow, he gave me a list of people I might inquire among in my search for an alcoholic. I began to call them on the telephone. They'd all see me in church done, or they were going away for the week.

But my need was urgent. But none were prepared to fill it, excepting the very last one on the list, a nonalcoholic. I called her it was a famous name and actress. I was very reluctant. I explained my name and she said, Yes.

But my life got in an awful jag. Why I couldn't get out of it. I understand what you mean by spiritual awakening experience. You come straight out here. So here came a non alcoholic friend, 1 who cared about it, 1 who understood, 1 who would take time.

And I told her my story. Straightway, she said, there is a doctor here in this town. Used to be on the staff at the city hospital. Wonderful chap. Everything is falling apart.

He's lost his pulse. The bank the bank is about to foreclose his house. His wife has happened in length from these years of drinking. Doctor Bob asked, should I call them up? I think I will.

So my new friend Henrietta goes to the phone, gets hold of dear Anne, doctor Bob's wife. Says that the stranger from New York will think she has a cure for alcohol. Well, Anne said, this is very interesting, Henrietta, but Doctor Bob is just from home. It's Mother's Day. He has brought in a potted plant, out of deference to me.

The potted plant is on the table. But alas, Henrietta, he is so potty that he is on the floor. We can't get here today. Well, not a witness, courage, my friend Henry Eddington. How about tomorrow?

Let's all have supper here. So at 5 o'clock the next day doctor Bob and Anne entered that house. Henrietta put us off in the lab room. Doctor Bob said he could stay only 5 minutes. He was very shaky, you see.

He needed a drink. We talked for 5 hours. And this time it was on a different stage because now I realized that I needed that man as much as he could possibly need me. And right then and there, we of AA, think, the spark that was to become Alcoholics Anonymous was struck. Before you see my first friend who later fell by the wayside and has not been picked up yet.

Anne Smith then said to me, Bill, would you like to come and live with us for a few weeks? You could keep an eye on doctor Bob. We could keep an eye on you. Maybe you could revive your business days. So I went to live with doctor Bob and Anne in what to many of us is, really, Howard's home.

Presently doctor Bob said, Well, girl, if only in self protection, don't you think we'd better be doing some work with some drunk? I said, Yeah. So he called the city Hunter. Got the receiving water. Spoke with a nurse there, he knew, said that a friend was in from New York, Thought he had a cure for alcoholism.

At this juncture, the good doctor flushed deep red, for the nurses said to him, well, doctor, why don't you try that on yourself? Well, doctor said, yes. But if you got a prospect down there, that's the part of the process. We wanna work on another alcoholic. Said the nurse, we have got a dentist.

He just come in here. He used to be on the city council. Well known lawyer around Akron. He's done all the pieces. He's been in the city high school 6 times in the last 4 months.

He can't even get out of here and home without getting cut. I'm pretty sure he wants to stop. He's got the DTS right now. He's whacked 1 of the nurses' eyes. We got him loaded with braille to hide and strap down.

How would that one do you, doctor? So, said Doctor. Bob, well, put him in a private room. We'll be down as soon as he clears up. This is the medication you should give.

A little later, Doctor. Bob and I saw a site which tens of thousands of us have since seen and, God willing, 100 of thousands of us shall still see. Sleep. It was the sight of the man on the bed. It was the sight of the man on the bed who does not yet know that he can get well.

The man on the bed in this case was no optimist. He listened as we told our stories of drinking, of the simple precepts of our recovery, of our release, and, of course, we bore in him in on him hard about alcoholism that fatal illness. And late the man on the bed shook his head and he said, No, it's too late for me. I don't even dare go out of here. Oh, yes.

You fellas have been through the mill alright, but I guess you're only in the ringer up your knees. With me, it's up to my neck. It's too late. Don't talk to me about religion either. I used to be a deacon in the church.

Funny thing, you know, sweetie, I still got a kind of faith in God. Well, I guess God hasn't got any faith in me. I don't know what the matter is. I can't stop. Well, we said, may we come back tomorrow?

Oh gosh, he said, this is a long commitment. He said, I'd love to have you come back tomorrow. So on tomorrow we came and the man's wife sat at the foot of his bed. We heard her saying, as we entered the room, Why, Husband, what is God in you? What makes you so different?

And seeing us in the door, he pointed and said, Yes, they are the ones they are the ones who understand you. And then in happy excitement we're told about the long hours of the night before. And finally, the thought had come. Well, maybe if they have been granted relief in this thing, Maybe I can have that gift too. And he began to have hope.

And then as he became entirely willing to follow our set of precepts, he felt a singular sense of relief I am free and confident, which now I have swelled into such a great time. Then he said to his wife, My dear, fetch me my clothes, but we're going to get up and get out So AA number 3 rose from his bed, walked out of that place, never to break again. And that was in June 1935. Although we realize it's not. The 1st day aid group is a, was gone.

I stayed on for a few weeks more. The 3 of us worked with other alcohols, mostly failures, but 1 or 2 did turn their faces to the light. Returning to New York in the fall of that year, Now a little more chastened, a little more experienced. They grew good shape there. Then came much tell what we knew to the million who knew not.

How were we to do that? It had taken us nearly 3 years to produce these recogments. How are we to transmit this mess? Could it call it snail safe? We realized that within gunshot of where we sat people were dying like clouds.

People said there were a 1000000 alcoholics in America and 3 or 4 1000000 more in the making. How could we let them know? Well, naturally, we thought in terms of hospitals. Hospitals didn't want drugs. They never paid their bills.

They never got well. You couldn't blame the hospital. So we thought, well, our society will have to have a string of hospitals. And then we thought, well, our older members will have to go to other localities with our group. And surely we should have some kind of a book so that our strength can speak what's on tape, so that it won't get darker, so that those millions who don't know can at least read about what happened to us.

So that very evening the Akron group met with doctor Bob and me, and we took a decision over the objection of some that I was to go back to New York and raise money so that we might have a chain of hospitals. We might, tell our members, older experienced ones, to go down the city, and so that we might have a book. Monday, I go to my brother-in-law with an imaginary ulcer attack. I'm grasping how stingy the very rich were when it came to drugs. He said, why don't you talk to Shirley Wynne here in my office, former health commissioner?

Shirley gave me a fine reception. He said, yes. He said, this will need a great deal of money. I can see that. Next thing you know, he says, why not the Rockefeller Foundation?

I shook my head. He said, oh, no. He said, the fellow for you to see is John d Rockefeller person. Well, I said, doctor Wynne, I don't wish to be facetious, but could you not also give me an introduction of the Prince of Wales he might be interested too? No.

He said you should see John d Rockefeller firstly. Then here were here was this thread of destiny, so thin, so tangled. My brother-in-law stands there scratching his head and he says, when I was in high school, I knew a girl, and she had an uncle, probably, an old man now. I think he's a friend of the Rockefeller family. I don't know that he'll remember me.

Shall I call him up?