The East Texas Roundup in Longview, TX – April 8th 1972

We don't know what the physical difference is, so we don't spend anytime on that, but a couple of the aspects of the physical part of the disease are most necessary for me to remember, keep uppermost in my consciousness all the time. Number one, once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.

There is a case in medical history where anybody like me ever returns successful drinking.

I must keep that forever

in the uppermost regions of my country. Secondly, the physical part of the disease gets worse with the passage of time, even during long extended periods of total abstinence. Now, this is tough for us to see,

Sota, because when we get a little distance between US and Judd, the old subconscious starts telling us you're building up some good drinking time,

you're getting strong,

you know you're building up some good drinking time. There's no such thing as an hockey building enough good drinking time. I'm actually 26 years worse off as far as successful drinking liquor is concerned than it was when I got here,

and I know it.

And I don't have to take a drink to prove it.

That's one of the greatest arguments for staying close to and being active in Alcoholics Anonymous that there is, because all you got to do is to be in these meetings. Keep your eyes open

because your friends are forever taking that drink for you, you know?

And if you watch it, you won't have to take it.

You'll have to watch a bunch of them die, and you're not going to like that at all, because many of them you would rather die yourself.

It's a bad old lesson, but it's very effective. I've never caught myself once in 26 years toying with the idea that I might handle a little light wine in fear.

Not one day, because I know better.

I know the physical part of the disease gets worse with the passage of time, even during long extended periods of total absence.

Lastly, the physical part of the disease is incurable.

Some mud out there at our place. Was standing up here talking to our group the other night and he says, you know something? He says if Howard Hughes was an alcoholic, he'd have to come to us for help,

and that's him now.

And as much as there's nothing we can do about the physical but accept it, we do that and then turns the other half of disease, the obsessions of the mind that cause us to drink,

the obsessions of mind that caused us to dream. When the body is dry, there is no physical demand for the first drink is mental. The second drink in the 542nd drink is physical, but the first one is mental.

And if you and I want to get rid of the bottle, we have to be rid of its cause, the obsessions of the mind. And that's what our program is all about

now, The American Medical Association has said in recent months

alcoholism is a disease. It has symptoms. It is treatable but not durable,

and the only way an alcoholic can successfully live is not to take that next drink.

But they cannot tell us how not to take the next drink.

They can't tell us. They can tell us not to take it, but they can't tell us how not to take it.

But our program does. It gives us a formula that is absolutely foolproof,

and all you and I must do is to fulfill the conditions of the formula and something happens and we don't have to drink it.

Something happens and we don't have to drink.

I told you I was periodic for the last 10 years. I was physically absorbed by them tonight between every two drunks,

but I always think again.

Even looking at a record with physically sober eyes,

I still got drunk again. When it came my time to drink, I got drunk

for 10 years

and I've built up quite a record for that time

and it was all bad. I never had one good drunk in the last 10 years, but I kept trying.

The obsessions of the mind are greater than the willpower.

Now. That's the reason I believe our book

when it says lack of power without.

And if we lack the fire, we had to find one. And it must be a power greater than we are, obviously.

Obviously,

I believe it,

the Duck says. Under certain conditions, certain circumstances, it seems that there's only one defense against that first slug,

and that has helped from a power greater than herself. And I believe it just as much as I believe I'm standing right here

and for justice. Simple to read. If I could have remained sober, I wouldn't believe it. I could not remain sober, therefore I believe it. Because something happened 26 years ago and I haven't had to have a drink or pill since

and I didn't do it.

So I believe that it's necessary that we have help from Power Greater himself.

But in the same breath, I say that I think one of the biggest hurdles we have as individual members of Alphabetics Anonymous

is in our attempt

to get that help from invariators.

Isn't that a terrible thing to say?

But I believe it as much as I believe I'm here.

Because you see, I did not come to this program to find God. I did not come to this program to get my wife back. I did not come to this program to get the love of my kids back. I did not come to this program to get my job back or my health back.

All of these things were gone and should be gone and I knew it. And I wasn't even entitled to have them back. And I knew that.

I came here hoping against hope that I might find a way to live that didn't include that first slug

they got rid of that flip I had had it.

And drunks just like you

who were not drunk,

said to me, if you want these things, do these things. Here's the things we did not do them doing the best of your ability, one day at a time.

Let's see what happens. And I didn't have any more sense than to do it.

And I still haven't got any more sensing to do it. I'm still doing and I haven't had to have a drink or a pill now. A lot of other things have happened too

that I wasn't working for,

you know.

So I, my big hope is that we might quit hunting for God and do these things for surprise. Because when we fulfill the conditions, we eventually wake up to the fact that the conditions for sobriety and the conditions for the good life and the conditions of God are all the same.

They're all the same,

and by doing them things happen and by not doing them nothing happens.

How many times have you heard I tried? Alcoholic synonymous didn't work for me,

you know. Of course it didn't, and it never will.

Alcoholics Anonymous is a formula. Formulas don't do anything. Recipes don't bake cake. It's a way to bake a cake.

This is the best formula that has ever been conceived in the mind of man through the grace of God

for an alcoholic to obtain and maintain surprise if he does it for sobriety.

But if he gets down to step three and says, Oh no, wait a minute. We let his season turn our Wellness over the shelf. Guys, we understood him, don't understand him. I got to get me another book.

I gotta get me a tour

and they choose all over the place and still do.

The best way in the world to stay drunk and start interpreting the steps.

You interpret nip and nip it. Interpret, interpret nip

hanging up and don't interpret.

Don't say here the steps we interpreted.

Yeah, the steps we took.

This again is what's wrong with this problem. You and I know we're drunk. That line couldn't be nothing.

There's only one five letter word in it here. The step we took

had a drunken read that and and just pass it up.

We like big words.

If there were a couple of psychedelics in there,

Thomas, we've had a few traumas in there, you know,

we're stopping look at it because those are big words. I don't know what to mean, but they're big words.

But no, it says here the steps we took. So don't be nothing but life. It's all me. They're the steps we took.

Now when you and I get simple enough to took them, we're home free.

Until we took him, nothing happened.

Now I want to leave that land. Play a little while.

You know a lot of things happen to you as you go along in this society.

Lately, we're getting lots and lots of youngsters in our program at home.

Many, many youngsters. And I mean young.

I sat in the meeting the other night with a kid 11 years old that had 40 days of sobriety,

11 years old,

40 days spread, the confirmed alcoholic.

Now a lot of these kids telling me how to help, You know how I feel. You know you haven't had a drink for 26 years. You're too far away from it.

You don't know how I feel.

Well, I guess I know how I feel

because you see, I haven't quit working with wet drunks.

There is no way that you can get any older than your last session with a wet rumor

that's as old as you are. And I thought it's none,

so

I'll never quit.

Everything goes before you when you're working with a wet drum.

You know, every feeling that he has, every pain that he has and every thought that's going through his mind

and it's just as fresh as yesterday. You know,

people say to me,

when do you think is a good time to take the 4th step?

And I say you don't ask the wrong man,

you asked the wrong man.

Because I think the best time in the world to take the 4th step is when you've taken the first, second and third.

Right then, there's a beautiful time to take 4.

You can't drink for it. You're taking 1-2 and three

because you're not that honest, you know?

And then the fifth step,

I getting bad every time I come down here

because a lot of people in this part of the country that think you got to run every 3rd Tuesday and they had an inventory. Fifth step.

Just step all over again. You know,

two years ago I was riding someplace with somebody down here and they told me they'd taken 26 step steps

since January, and this was November.

I said what the hell you trying to do, kid yourself?

I am thoroughly convinced

that anybody that takes the 5th step twice is bragging.

A lot of people want to shoot me for that

because it's a wait a minute, I wasn't honest enough to put it all down the first time. Of course you weren't. And you're not enough honest enough now to put it all down.

I and they're never going to be honest enough to put it all down because you can't speak of it in one second.

But again, if you're working with wet drunks, you're taking a continuous 5th step and you don't even have to think about it

because every session you're in, something new comes out and you share it with the guy you're working with, and you're taking an everlasting 5th step and I'm not even thinking about it.

You know,

now,

I've been talking a great deal with the guy this weekend

That makes you have a hell of a problem in front of him. And he does if he keeps trying to do it.

He does if he keeps trying to do it. If I'd have to workout my defects of character one at a time, I'd have died 26 years ago.

If I could workout my defective character in first place, I wouldn't come here.

Our music. I won't even need God if I could have worked out my life.

I'm hard down someplace. I had to be hauled out.

I'd be told for a while

now I don't read my book

that I have to go and beat my brains out of my defects character. My book says we made a searching and fearless moral inventory writing it down.

We write it down, we share it,

and they give us a good

push with a pitchfork

because they say you got to share it with God and yourself and another human being. That's another bad thing to put in there.

Well, I can get under the table here and share it with myself and God, but if I have to lay that dirty linen out before another human being, you know

at the king sized ego Buster.

Do you have much? Eat your left after that when you ain't done it.

So you write it, you share it, you become willing to give it away, and you give it away.

You become willing to give it away, and you give it away. We weren't God are ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Humbly ask him to remove her shortcut.

Now. That's the easy way to do it. The hard way is to beat yourself to death. I got a lot of work to do.

I worked on my alcohol problems for 10 years.

The last five years,

90% of my waking time we spent on the property

and the harder I worked, the worst of God, the more I looked at it, the bigger it grew. It was just like fertilizing, watering and cultivating the weed. It grew out of all proportions and it never quit growing until I quit looking at it and started looking at and trying to live in this answer and the problem disappeared and I didn't even know when left.

The help is here when we do the thing for sobriety.

So

let's not try to do this thing

all by ourselves. Let's share it with our partner in business living.

People say to me,

big tough men say to me,

Chuck, when did you get rid of your fears?

When did you get rid of your fears?

Big tough guys.

And you know, it's, it's tough

because I can't tell him

because my fears died with me.

My fears died with me 26 years ago,

and I can't say, well, I'm different,

but I am not because I shook difference or drank different,

you know,

or sounded different when I was working out of sudden dry heat.

I don't believe that neighbors have known whether it's me or you,

but I couldn't get here until the bottle had killed me,

and I got here with no expectancy at all. No expectancy at all.

I didn't expect nothing from nobody. No time,

and at 3 1/2 years of the most

beauty freedom that anybody ever heard

appeared of the greatest sequence of miracles that I ever lived through, because every little piece of the jigsaw puzzle of life fell together and I was 3 1/2 years. But something bad happened too.

Some bad happened in that 3 1/2 years I became somebody again.

Yeah, that writes.

And when you got rights, you got to defend them,

and you're in trouble all over again.

Now, a book tells us that the greatest

obstacles you and I have is Alcoholics is resentments. Resentments kill more people than anybody. OK, there's a book that resentments don't come first,

Rights come first.

And so I had to start surrendering all over again consciously after 3 1/2 years. And this offered one of the great problems in my life. I couldn't understand how this damn eagle came back

after I've been without it for 3 1/2 years, you know,

and I looked at that for 12 years and I could not find

any reason for that ego to come back.

And I had some pretty rough times. My 11th year was the worst year I ever lived drunk or sober,

because I had to lose and win in my 11th year when I was right, dead right, but I still had to lose and win. And if you think it's tough to lose and win when you're wrong, try it when you're right.

Like a big mid death

and I kept looking at this thing. Why does this have that when I'd been totally free

and I was already 16 years, 16 1/2 years in this program before I came to see something good

and the human ego

and I got an answer that's just as just as comfortable with me as an old pair of shoes.

This is the bird under the saddle.

This is the thing that keeps you and I walking,

and after we've made a commitment, we have to keep walking. Life will not let us stop.

We have to keep walking,

so this is the thing that keeps you slow.

We get uncomfortable

and we after a while we get very sensitive to being uncomfortable and we start having to look and find what has what we have allowed to get important enough to get between us and our program and our God and we have to eliminate it

through an additional surrender. The time will never come in my way of thinking, but it won't be necessary for you. Unite to surrender.

Continuously surrender

and we have to keep walking. Now my last 10 years along with my Good Wife. She's a non alphabet. She does lots of work with the island. On

the last 10 years, the biggest part of our time has been spent with men and women from 10 to 25 years sober

who are exploding right in the middle of their skin

play.

In my area, the man that's the oldest in the program is 32 years in the program

and I sat with him the other day on the bed. This is Chuck has given up.

This is nothing left for anymore

and he's 30 years, 32 years in this program.

God, this just kills me.

It's just killed me, you know,

because all we got to do is to surrender out of these things, make them opportunities instead of crises.

We surrender, we make that next surrender and turn the crisis into an opportunity. And this has been a mess to see in my greatest activity in the last several years.

You see, don't make a damn bitter difference what happens to you or to me.

It don't make a damn better difference what happens to you or to me.

It's our reaction to what happens that kills us.

If we don't react,

nothing's happened,

no.

And so it's necessary that we keep doing these things forever. For instance,

I wish I had all day. What time is it this time I was quitting.

I'd like to talk about this all day long.

This is one of these days we have to come to see that people don't act like the act because they want to at all like because they have to.

NI NI alcoholic in this room

quickly admit

that he drank against his own will,

that the obsessions of the mind are greater than the willpower.

So we take unto ourselves the privilege of hiding behind obsessions of mind, but we won't give them to the alcoholic, the non alcoholic world,

they haven't got any right to have obsessions to mind. They're not Alcoholics. This is part of our disease,

you know.

But they have obsessions of minds, as we do, You know.

The man never lived and hates me bad enough to want to tear me down.

There's nobody thinks that much about you. One of the greatest things that ever came out in the Grapevine. Which people wouldn't be so concerned about what other people think about them if they knew how seldom they did?

Let me tell you what I'm talking about. 30 years ago. My wife says to me, Chuck, why can't you drink like Ted

Asheon said that to me

because she immediately gave me a project.

It was absolutely necessary from that second forward to me for me to get Old Ted falling down drunken in front of my wife.

Now, I didn't dislike that I loved him. She was not only one of my greatest friends, but he was

my benefactor.

His company fed me for 20 years, 40 years actually. They were my best customers. We're drunk together, gambled together, played, sang and danced

and Ted was one of the best drinkers I ever saw,

and still is.

But it was noted he was perfect.

He stood exactly correctly. He spoke precisely

and with perfect English, just before he'd fall on his face.

But see, that wasn't an alcoholic and I didn't want to get him drunk because I hated him.

I love him, I always did, but hell, I couldn't let my wife think, why can't you drink like Kim? Try to get him drunk

now. Just to give you a little parallel to that, two years ago I went from Laguna Beach to the Ohio St. Group.

Some of you have heard of Clancy.

That's his hang out up there

and I went up there and it was on a Saturday and I've been drinking coffee all day. And I got up there and course my first stop as a little boys room. And there was a guy in the little boys room and he took a look at me and he says, oh, he says are you speaking here tonight? And I said thank you. But he said I wish I'd known this. I'd have gone to Malibu.

I said, you still got time and I got the money

I did. You go out there in the hall and call a cat and I'll pay your cab fare to Malibu and back, and there's going to be a good meeting up there. They always have a good meeting on Saturday night. So you run along up there and I'll pay the capture. All right, Since I was just kidding. And he started to leave, but he couldn't make it. He came back and he said, Steph, you know how you ruin every talk you ever make for me? And I said no, I'd be interested,

he says. You take your coat off. I said there's another good reason for you to go to Malibu.

I said this is a pretty warm night and I'm just liably stuck out of this jacket anytime,

so you run on up there. I said don't kid me. He said. You don't take your coat off because you're hot, you take it off for the effect. I know because I'm a public speaker too

now. Not too long ago, he couldn't have gotten out of there with the truth in his head.

Everyone of them had a bit of his stomach because I had to knock them down there.

But this time what happened?

I didn't have a project.

My ancestors, the boys heard. The boy is hurt. I hope something comes out that'll give him a clue,

you know? Now, this is the difference.

People don't act like you act because you want to, but because they have to. And when we come to see this, they can't hurt us. There's no way they can hurt us

because we know that all of God's kids are doing the best they can according to their light, That is, according to their understanding. When we know better, we do better.

Now, a lot of people would say to me, that's not true.

I always knew better than to drink whiskey. No, you didn't. If you didn't know him better, you wouldn't have drunk. You know better now, and you don't drink it. You see,

I hated whiskey when I was a kid

because I knew what it did.

We are off of poor

and I worked from the time I was born and I finally got enough money

to send cousins over. I can give me a trench coat. You remember those trench coats and God I was proud of that trench coat. This was the greatest thing that you know you never had store bought and closed.

I had a 3 1/2 year old brother. I mean, a brother is 3 1/2 years old and I was and I got his clothes.

I never had any clothes of my own until I could buy them. And I got this beautiful trench coat and I'm so proud. And one day my dad bought it without my permission and he went to a labor meeting

and it came A5 storm. And we live quite a little ways from Riddle.

My name is coming home and he got down two or three times and my trench coat runs, you know,

got elected. All the dough I'd save, I'd put in that coat, and my dad ruined it because he's drunk, you know?

So I hated liquor,

just as I hated many other things in life.

And I won't tell you this morning

that I'd be afraid to hate the devil now,

because everything I ever hated in life I've had to do

now. Think about that.

Everything I ever hated in other people in life, I've had to do myself.

So we learned that that's not the right motive.

You know, Alcoholics Anonymous is fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope one with another in love. And that's why it works.

Now I'm gonna close up shop

again. I don't like to because I never feel like I've said anything. I don't think I've said anything yet

to what's coming down here for

like to talk a long time, but you got to go home

now. I believe with everything in me, that we, the people out here in this room and people like us all over the world,

are the most fortunate segment

of God's children who live on this earth.

We are the most fortunate. There's nobody as fortunate as we are.

Why? Because we have a terminal illness,

and because our illness is progressive,

and because the time comes when it's no longer possible for us to survive without an answer.

And at long last, we come here

hoping for one thing, that we might live till we die

without having to drink, because we want to spend that time rubbing out the record that we've already written on the blackboard of life.

And people drunk should not drunks. They share the things we did and we do them for survival,

and we start making discoveries.

Now you can't discovery before discover before the fact. You discover after the fact. It has to happen before you can discover that it's happened,

you see. So in six months I discover that I'm sober and have been all the time.

From the minute I said to myself, from the second I said to myself, if I ever left to get out of this bed, I'll find out all his numbers. Until right now, I've never had a drink or a pill,

so I discovered that after six months,

and that was the first in the series of discoveries. The second one might have been another six or eight or ten months, and I discovered that something had actually happened in our household.

The war seemed to be over.

You know, they quit chasing me with a blue paper

and they're living like kittens.

Yeah. And that was quite a discovery. Beautiful discovery.

Some months later, I discovered I was still allowed in the office trying to clean up my desk.

That boss of mine had come in so Mrs. Winter, but he didn't do it because he recognizes something had happened. I didn't know it, but he did, and he didn't throw me through the wind. And I'm still down there trying to clean up my desk. And business is good.

Everything's going funny at the office

and what a beautiful discovery this is. And months go by again and I discover that my state of being, the the my my, my life

is much better than I ever dreamed it would be.

Life is good

and that's a good discovery.

And

maybe five years, maybe six years have gone by by now,

and I discover that I'm never alone anymore.

I have worked alone all my life and I'm never alone anymore. I've got a God. Am I very old?

And wherever I am, he is.

I've got a discovery. This is this is the great discovery. When we make this discovery, the search is over and life begins.

Life begins. It's fantastic. And it comes about just as simply and beautifully as attending these meetings and doing these things and sharing our love one with another, helping each other over the hurdles of life. And it comes about.

And of course, the great, great discovery includes the knowledge that freedom is an inside job.

Freedom is an insight to

my own Peace of Mind and serenity. Purpose depends on nothing but my own relationship with my very own life.

Now, a few little things that I love so much.

In the very early days, the kid came up to me, after me, and he said to me, Chuck,

your rights are hard for us to find, God. And I thought, Oh my God,

I've got to sit here and listen to two hours discussion. You know

that sign in God. And they didn't want to.

I wanted to get out of there, but he had me trapped and I had to say no. Why is it so hard for us to find God? He says he because he ain't lost

because he ain't lost.

See, all we got to do is come back home and find he's always been there. We've been away

and then an old boy came up

from Texas. Incidentally,

he was originally from Flint, MI,

and his name is Big Smith. I haven't seen him for several years now, but Big Smith had done everything there is to do, like running his car off of Piers, you know, in the ocean and through brick buildings and stuff. And he had one leg about that much longer than the other. And he walked like he was sneaking up on somebody.

And he gave him the group I was in that night. And he had a plaque on his arm and he'd gotten it in a in a hospital down right down here in Texas someplace.

And he had this plaque on his arm. And he said to me, read this

and it says, if you're not as close to God as you'd like to be or as you once were, make no mistake, you're the one that moved.

Somebody says, you see, all we got to do is come back home.

Everything that God's always been there. We've been away.

And the kid again, and I saw him just the other day.

I didn't know for years who had said this.

This is 20 some years ago

and it was a Sunday night like this and I'd talk at Highland Park

and three or four hours were standing in the middle of the room and we were talking about how fortunate can a man be?

How fortunate can a man be

for tongchu and Babble and idiot drunks to have a life like mine? You know,

How fortunate can you get? And one of these kids wasn't saying a thing

and pretty soon he looked at me and he said, Chuck, I'm ignored.

He said I never read no books.

He says no sense to me reading books because I don't understand.

He says I don't know nothing about the Bible. I don't know nothing about God,

but this no man can take away from take away from. When I do these simple things, one day at a time is the best of my ability.

I feel clean inside and good things happen in my life.

And when I could talk,

I said, man, don't ever read. No books,

no time.

This is what the book is written about. This is the thing itself, that we might feel clean inside and have good things happen as we go down the court of life.

And so again,

when we come back home

and get honest enough of themselves to perform according to the best we know, one day at a time,

something happens. And with Brother Lawrence, we can look deep within ourselves and find ourselves, which includes our relationship to each other and to God.

Freedom is an inside job

now when we find assess what we're supposed to do, go about our Father's busy

and we've got it laid out for us in the 12th step.

Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message S on and to practice these principles in all of our affairs. A lifetime job written right down there in the 12th century.

And so we go about our father's business,

trying to help his kids do things they need to have done because we want to.

And he takes care of,

that's not my business, that's his business.

My business is to do these things. It's his business. Take care of me. And he's done an infinitely better job than I ever did,

and I'm so grateful. Against thee,

I'm sure I like to think of it every once in a while. I like this. And with this, I quit.

You know, out on the coast we call new people babies.

I think you do down here to back East to call them pigeons.

But a couple of 1000 years ago, there's a guy around here. He had a few babies too.

He had 12, you know, followed him around, helped him

and each counselor and we're not going to sort of maverick.

He might have been an alcoholic.

Shouldn't say that down here in the Bible Belt

but he might just might have been an alcoholic

because when he caught got caught with the goods on him he lied out of it.

And maybe he didn't do that, but that sounds suspiciously like me.

And so, maybe because he was a maverick, the Carpenter loved him better than anybody else,

and it was about time for him to go. And so he called Old Pete in

a lot of a lot of people call him Saint Peter, and I guess I should too. But I call him Old Pete not because I just, I, I don't respect him, but because I do. I love him, love him to death.

So I call him Old Pete. So he called him Old Pete in and his disputed You love me

and Peter, says Jaylon.

They just turn my sheep.

Can you turn right around and ask him again? He says, Peter, do you love me? Yeah, Lord, he says tend my sheep.

And the third time he asked him,

you love me. And the third time he says, tend my sheep.

Now it begins to appear that he meant 10 machines.

Now that's Alcoholics. None.

We could take that third step this morning and for just a minute

we could change it a little. We could say that, trust me, we could say having a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps. We tried to tend these sheep

and practice these principles in all of our faiths.

And of course, it's intending the cheap

that we come to know the shepherd. God bless you. Thank you very much.

Just remain standing, if you will,

your close meeting in the general way.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy King come, thy will be done.

Give us this day Our Daily Bread, and for give us our trespass, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not in temptation, but deliver us from evil or thine Kingdom of power and the Lord our heaven army.