The OA Big Book Study in Winnipeg, MB, Canada

Now you notice that asterisk right next to deep and effective spiritual experiences

and you'll see that the asterisk leads you to footnote at the bottom says fully explained Appendix 2. Appendix 2 is mentioned in two other footnotes. The next one on page 27 says for amplification seat Appendix 2 and then on doesn't matter what other page it is, but but on that page it says please see Appendix 2. So we'll go to Appendix 2 in the 3rd edition is 569 and the 4th edition is 567.

Now Appendix 2 is entitled Spiritual Experience and it was put into the Big Book

in the second printing of the 1st edition. It wasn't in there in the first printing of the 1st edition. The the first printing has was 5000 copies. If you have, if you ever come across one of those, it's worth in the hundreds of thousands of dollars because it's such a rare thing to find an unmarked copy. I mean it's, I don't even know if there are any around that are unmarked. In 1941 it was reprinted and they they published I don't know how many, maybe 20,000 copies. It was in that second

in 1941 that they added this appendix on spiritual experience.

I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I'll point out a few things in it. Right at the beginning says the term spiritual experience and spiritual awakening are used many times in this book, which the book upon careful reading shows that the personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcohol. Alcoholism has manifested itself among us in many different forms. So the first thing that we see is that they say that the book Alcoholics Anonymous shows

that a spiritual experience or a spiritual awakening is, can be defined very simply as a personality change sufficient to overcome our addiction.

And that for me is extremely important because as an agnostic, I have no notion of spirituality other than what this book talks about, a personality change sufficient to overcome my addiction. And that's the sort of the generic, the simple definition. It's not a highfalutin one like spiritual experience or spiritual awakening

and that it's come among us in many different forms. Bill, I quote Bill is saying God comes to most men gradually, but to me he came suddenly. Most of the experiences that were described in the first printing of the, of the Big Book, actually in the 1st edition, the Big Book were very sudden moments of conversion. God hitting in the forehead and hitting these guys in the forehead. And they were all guys. One was a woman. But I've just seen the light. I don't drink from that moment on, I never had a drink. You know, my, my life was transformed.

And what happened was they kept meeting. A lot of people say, well, I haven't had that. I don't want to drink. But I haven't had this sudden experience like Bill on the mountaintop with the winds, the cold, clean, cool wind going through me. And, and they realize they have to write an, some kind of part to the big book saying it's not like that for most of us. For most of us, it isn't sudden. For most of us, it's gradual. And that's what this appendix is all about.

And they actually the, the step 12, the summary of step 12 used to say having had a spiritual experience as the result of these steps.

And they changed it in the second printing to say having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps. And they did that to make certain that people understood it wasn't necessarily sudden. An awakening is gradual. It happens. And and the big book talks about in in in the in the last paragraph on that same page among our rapidly growing membership of thousands of Alcoholics. Such transformations, the sudden ones that God, the God consciousness, though frequent, are by no means the rule

of our experiences or what the psychologist William James calls the educational variety, because they developed slowly over a period of time. Quite often friends of the newcomer are aware of the difference long before he is himself. He finally realizes that he has undergone a profound in his reaction to life, not in his actions, but his reaction to life. It's all the personality changes is our reaction to life. Life happens. How do we react

to it? And that's where the personality change we'll find out occurs,

that such a change could hardly have been brought about by himself alone. What often takes place in a few months? This is the slow kind. A few months. Sudden as a day, slow as a few months, not years. A few months could seldom have been accomplished by years of self-discipline.

The other thing that is worth reading

is right at the end of this appendix

A, a quote that's described to Herbert Spencer, the

English philosopher. Actually, it looks like he didn't write it. There was a scholarly article on this that's available on the Internet. It's referenced in the book that you have in front of you as to who might have written it doesn't matter if the quote is great. There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. That principle is contempt prior to investigation.

It's a wonderful quote. You know you can. You can continue to be ignorant

as long as you have contempt for things before you investigate them. And all they're saying here is try it, investigate this program. So that's the appendix, and we'll go back to There is a solution,

page 26.

They tell the story of a certain American businessman,

and this certain American businessman is a man named Roland Hazard.

Depending on how you spell, it might be two ZS or or ZS

or one and Roland might be spelled with a WROWLANDI think that's how we spelled it, or just Rolland.

And this is the story that is contained in the Big Book, although there is some question as to whether it's absolutely accurate among some historians, but it doesn't matter.

Roland was clearly a terrible alcoholic, comes from a rich family. He, his family decides to send them to Europe to be psychoanalyzed by Sigmund Freud. This is in the early, late 20s, early 30s. And Sigmund Freud was too busy. So he went to Alfred Adler, a disciple of Freud's and he was too busy.

So you and that was in Vienna and he went then to Zurich to Carl Jung, who had who was a a protege of Freud but had split with Freud and Adler on on issues relating to spirituality. Young was a much more I was a person and there may be people here in this room will know a lot more than I do about this. But as I understand it, Young

was not as sexual oriented as as Freud was, and I'm much more spiritually oriented to the point that some people thought he was really going beyond what psychoanalyst should do. There's no question, though, that Jung was one of the great psychoanalysts of his day and that Roland had psychoanalysis with Young. How long it was no one. There's some controversy according to the big Book, and Doctor Young confirmed it in a letter, which I'll read to you. It was, it was quite some time. And by the end of that,

Roland felt that he had cured his alcoholism, that he no longer wanted to drink, that he understood all the the drives and hidden past that that now gave him the freedom not to drink.

He leaves young and he gets drunk within days

and whether it's on the ship or on the on the train from Zurich to to the port, I don't know. But he goes back to Jung and he says

what happened

and on page 26,

the second last paragraph, he begged the doctor to tell him the whole truth and he got it. And the doctor's judgment, he was utterly hopeless. He could never regain his position in society. He would have to place himself under lock and key or hire bodyguard if he expected to live along. That was a great positions opinion

and on page 27 there's a quote from the doctor. The doctor said you have the mind of a chronic alcoholic. I've never seen one single case recover where that state of mind existed to the extent that it doesn't you. Our friend felt as though the gates of hell had closed in on him, had closed on him with a clang. He said to the doctor, is there no exception? Yes, replied the doctor. There is exceptions to cases such as yours have been occurring since early times

here and there. Once in a while Alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences.

To me, these occurrences are phenomena. Phenomenon. Phenomena is a plural of phenomenon. A phenomenon is an occurrence which has no explanation. So Young is saying I don't know why this happened. I only know that they it has happened.

They appear to be, He can describe them in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements so that emotions are moving over and changing position in people.

Ideas, emotions and attitudes, which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly and again suddenly as Young's experience. But there will be a footnote here that says go see the spiritual experience appendix, because they're saying for us it can be gradual too. But Jung says they're suddenly cast to one side and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them. So Young says this has happened. People have been cured of alcoholism. I don't know how to do it because I've been trying to

some such emotional rearrangement within you. With many individuals, the methods which I employed are successful. So he has been successful with some people, ordinary people, but I've never been successful with an alcoholic of your description. So Roland says great spiritual experience. I'm a Deacon of the church. I'm quite active in my church. Isn't that good enough? And Young says, no, you need something else.

So here's the story. And here's the story of how a A was created. It's a wonderful story. I'll tell it briefly,

it's told in much longer ways that all kinds of different talks and books. There's a great talk by, by the great AA speaker Clancy, one of the funniest people you'll ever hear. I, I know we have tapes of them in our library. And he, he has a sort of a talk called the, the threads which hold a a together and their moments at which a a could have just had the thread snapped, but somehow was brought together anyway. So this story is part of that.

Roland goes back to the United States

and he finds a group called the Oxford Groups. Now the Oxford Groups had been created by a man named Frank Buckman, who had been a minister in a church, I think in Pennsylvania.

And he had broken with that church. He had certain arguments with them that caused him to break with him in a very vicious way. And he left that church angry and went to Oxford, the town of Oxford in England, to, to, to think of the study. He didn't go to Oxford University, just went to the town of Oxford.

And in the course of his thinking and studying, he realized a couple of things. One is that he had completely lost his passion for the God that he believed in. He no longer had this sense of devotion that he had. He believed in God, but he didn't act according to that. He wasn't living the, the life of, of the God that he believed in. And he also realized that he had wronged his congregation,

and so he wrote them a letter apologizing for his action.

And that once he wrote that letter, he experienced the passion again. He he had this spiritual conversion where once again he felt this incredible passion for the God that he believed in. And he started to think about this experience and did more studying and began to develop a series of very basic precepts which he thought would get people back. The passions that they might have lost, even though they had some beliefs,

get them back, in effect, their whole belief system. They might believe in something. You don't live a corn. You believe you. You're not living according to the whole system. OK,

And these were very simple things, and Ebby expressed them to Bill. You get honest with yourself, you get honest with another human being, you make amends for the wrongs you've done, you pray to God for guidance, and you help others without hope of reward or prestige. As simple as that. Around him began to develop a group of people which called themselves the Oxford Groups. After the town in which he had developed these principles, he came back to the States, but it became a worldwide phenomenon.

He came back to the States and it began to spread like wildfire. It was not

a religion in and of itself. It didn't call people to practice within it. It was designed to get basically Protestant Christians back into their churches active with the fervor, the passion of what they called 1st century Christians.

And it spread like wildfire. It came to Akron, OH in 1933. I think there's a picture in the Akron newspaper. The reason I mentioned Akron is that that's where that's the birth place of a, a We'll talk about that in a little while, probably on Sunday. But came to Akron. There's a picture from the Akron newspaper showing 400 people, most, almost all men sitting at the, at a hotel listening to speeches. And I, I don't know if Buckman was there, but listening to speeches from the Oxford groups in Akron,

whole group of people began to meet

to talk about

the wrongs they had done and how to help others. And it was a whole way of life.

Well, Roland discovered the Oxford Groups

and he got honest with himself, made an inventory of himself. He shared it with another human being. He made amends for the wrongs he had done,

he continued to pray to God for guidance, and he began to help others without hope of reward, our prestige. And he stopped drinking and he no longer wanted to drink. And he remained sober the rest of his life.

Into his life, into his world one day came two guys with names that I absolutely adore because I've never encountered them before. Shep and Zebra CEBRAC as he was known. I guess I'd know him as C if I anyway. And they, they were Oxford Goopers and he knew them. And they have been working with a guy named Debbie Thatcher in in Connecticut now. Abby. Abby

found me was very wealthy and they owned a property,

vacation property, a summer property in Connecticut, in a small town in Connecticut,

which is where Bill found and met him because Bill lived in that town and they played every summer, they would play together as kids and every had been sent to this town to paint the summer home

and to stop drinking because he was hopeless and he didn't stop drinking. As a matter of fact, when some pigeons befouled the paint job, he took a shotgun and shot them and ruined the whole side of the house with shock pellets. He drove his car right into the kitchen of the next door neighbor, right to the wall,

got out of the car and asked for a cup of coffee.

He was about to be committed for alcoholic insanity by Cyprus father or uncle, I can't remember. I just read about it, but I can't remember which it was because I was the only solution of this guy. He was a hopeless alcoholic. But Zebra and Shep have been talking to Abby about the Oxford Groups. They were not. They had not been alcoholic. So they went to Roland and said, you know, you've been an alcoholic. You were no longer an alcoholic. The Oxford Groups have worked for you.

Will you talk to

the judge and offered to take EBBY under your care and see if you can sober up Ebby using the principles of the Oxford Groups? And Bowen said sure. And that's what happened. Abby

went, the judge committed him in effect to the Oxford groups. Abby got honest with himself, got honest with another human being, made amends for wrongs he had done, prayed to continue to pray to God for guidance, and began to think of whom he could help. And he thought of Bill, his old friend. He thought of the Bill, the guy that when they first found out that the first airplane was going to land in this Connecticut town that they both loved, that Bill had grown up in and that Abby went to every summer. They decided they charter plane before to arrive. Three days before

that plane was scheduled to arrive and it did arrive at the chartered plane arrived. They had unfortunately brought along some liquor with them and they had to be carried off the plane in front of the entire

populace that had come out to see this first airplane.

Every thought of Bill

and Abby went to see Bill. Now Bill had something that Abby did not have and that the Oxford and the Roland did not have. Now Roland got an the solution from the solution was a spiritual experience. Doctor Young didn't know how to get one. Roland got from the Oxford groups the way to the solution, how to get a spiritual experience. This very simple set of practical directions that gave you a spiritual experience. How do they do it? No one knows, but it gave you a spiritual experience

that the Oxford groups have developed. Bill had the missing link. Bill knew what the problem was. Bill knew it desperately because Doctor Silkworth had explained it to him and had. And Bill had proved that the truth of that statement to himself. I can't stop once I've started, but I can't stop from starting. The solution is never to start again, but I can't stop from starting. My mind is gone. I have a mind that continues to go back.

How can I stop from starting? And Bill realized that the solution

that Doctor Jung was talking about and the steps of the solution that the Oxford Groups had were in fact the very solution, as you saw in Ebby, to the problem. You get sane. You get a spiritual experience that relieves you of the insanity of all these reasons for going back to the alcohol or to the food. So Bill had step one. Bill understood the problem. And once Ebby brought him Doctor Young's solution and the Oxford Group steps to the solution,

that became the original 6 steps and ultimately the 12th steps of Alcoholism and Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's how it was all brought together. The story of how it began to spread is I'll talk more about tomorrow when I talk about step 12. I spent a lot of time talking about step 12 because I think that in OA is something that is that we miss a lot of we don't. And I, I have enough experience in, in a way to to know or to be able to say with some certainty that we don't spend enough time on what

12 really is about. So I I spent a lot of time on it.

So that's the story of rolling. I think it's a really neat story. All of the information I have, by the way, is available in books written in in in a series of books. AA is published histories of Bill and of Doctor Bob Bill himself wrote a history of a a called the a a comes of aids of brilliant, brilliant, wonderful book. You can find other books about the history of A, A and the web is full of history of A, A, full of all kinds of information, some of it not that wonderful, some of it showing the dark.

Of the and there is a dark side of of of 12 step groups, a dark side of Bill. There's a dark side of Bill. But you can find so much on the web and, and if anyone's interested, I can, I can give you more information

on page 29. They, they just described this book and they say right at the top, further on clear cut directions are given showing how we recover clear cut directions, you know, and, and, and I fail to see that for years in this program that they're really talking about directions. OK Chapter 3 Page 30

Most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real Alcoholics. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows. Therefore, it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain, futile attempts to prove we could drink like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. I I mentioned that before. Control and enjoy.

Have moderate amounts and still enjoy them. I've never been able to do that. I've never been able to have moderate amounts of ice cream and enjoy them. I always wanted more. If I had more, I'd never I couldn't control it. And the same with the alcoholic. You can never the alcoholic, the real alcoholic can never control and enjoy alcohol. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursuit into the gates of insanity or death. We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost cells that we were Alcoholics, that we are compulsive eaters. This is the

first step in recovery. The delusion that we're, like other people are presently, maybe has to be smashed. We care Alcoholics or men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control. But such intervals, usually brief, were inevitably always followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.

We are convinced to a man that Alcoholics of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period, we get worse, never better.

I personally believe that. I believe that for myself, I've been absent now for over almost 16 years. I believe that if I went back to eating, it would be as if my illness had been growing all the way. Some cancers are like that, you know, they can be put into remission and then suddenly they appear and they're as if they have been growing it at the same rate

for for, for the number of years that they were in remission. Someone who says, people say in the program outside of these walls, your illness is doing push-ups in the hallway.

And I believe that. I believe it would be worse for me if I went back than it would have been 15 years ago.

We're like men who are at the bottom. We're like men who've lost their legs. They never grow new ones. And again, this is that simple acceptance of a disability. People who have lost a leg don't go around saying, I think I still have this leg and I'll act as if I still have it. They may wear prosthesis, but they know they wear prosthesis and they accept the wearing of her prosthesis. Those of you who may have seen Monty Python on the Holy Grail will remember the story of the Black Knight who meets King Arthur and wants to fight

King Arthur. And King Arthur says, I'm the greatest swordsman in England. I don't want to fight you. No, let's fight. Let's fight. I don't want to fight you. Let's fight. And they start to fight. And Arthur says, you know, if we go any further, I'm going to have to cut off your arms. No, no, no, I'll, I'll win. And he cuts off his arms. And I mean, it's very funny in his bloody kind of way, with the blood spreading off the arms and all that. It's it's very Monty Python esque.

And well, let's fight, let's fight. And Arthur says I just cut off your arms. Oh yeah,

I just cut. No, you know you haven't. Let's let's fight.

And he said, well, well, butt heads, you know, and Arthur says, you know, if you continue to do this, I'm going to have to cut off your legs. Continuous fighting. Then you see the guys buried Dude, he's got no legs. I just cut off you. Let's fight. I just cut off your legs. No, you haven't. No, you haven't. I mean, that's the denial, right? And and and and and that's what we're like. I don't have this problem. That's the problem. That is our real problem, that our mind persuades us that we don't have this problem.

They provide some suggestions for seeing if you really do have this problem. Stay away for a year.

I talk about all kinds of methods that you may have tried,

and then they give some examples. The first example they give is on page 32. I'm going to summarize these. I'm not going to speak at great length about this chapter because I have already spoken about the middle obsession.

A man of 30 was doing a lot of drinking. He realizes if he continues to drink, he'll never get ahead in business. So he decides to stop drinking and he stops for 25 years. He's able to retire at the age of 55, which is pretty good, in 19 in the 1930s.

And then it says he fell victim to a belief, which practically every alcoholic has, that his long period of sobriety and self-discipline had qualified him to drink as other men. Out came the carpet slippers at a bottle. And he's dead in four years. And they say here's the lesson. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. On page 33, the last sentence of the first full paragraph there,

if we are planning to stop drinking, their must be no reservation of any kind, nor any lurking notion, hidden notion that someday we will be immune to alcohol.

And then the next two paragraphs are designed to appeal to the people who the writers were, not young people and women. And they try their best. They say. Young people may be encouraged by this man's experience to think that they can stop as he did on their own willpower. We doubt that many of them can do it, because none of them will really want to stop, and hardly one of them, because of the peculiar mental twist already required, will finally can win out.

And then they go on. In the next paragraph they say to be gravely affected. 1 doesn't necessarily have to drink a long time or take the quantities some of us have. This is particularly true of women.

Potential female Alcoholics often turn it the real thing are gone beyond recall in a few years. So they're, they're talking about women and and young people who I mean, these people were older men, you know, but they're trying to say you can be an alcoholic whether or not you're in the gutter. You don't have to have been in the gutter. You can still be an alcoholic even if you're just a moderate drinker, even if you're young, even if you haven't got that bad

and better you discover it sooner rather than later. And I'm lucky I had my friend in a a get me in when I was still obese but not morbidly obese.

I was on my way to becoming morbidly obese. There's no question in my mind that I was on my way.

I remember thinking to myself, and my wife's going to kick me out soon. I remember this. My wife's going to kick me out. She's going to say, I can't bear to have the kids watch you die. I love you, but you can't live with us. And I remember picking where I was going to live. It was going to be downtown in an apartment hotel. I was going to have all my books, all my food and all my records. I was going to listen to music, eat and read simultaneously, of course, because that would sort of get me lost in the world of my own. And I would have been through your 400 lbs. I was all I

quite 200 but I was on my way there and I was I would have been 400. I have no doubt I would have given up completely without my kids and my wife. Luckily my friend in a A told me that I should take my eating as seriously as he took his drinking. By the way, I didn't say this yesterday and I should say it.

It's in our path of dignity of choice. People will say, and I've met many, many people, it's harder for the compulsive eater than for the alcoholic. The alcoholic just stops drinking, but the compulsive eater has to keep on eating. And the answer to that is really simple. The alcoholic continues to have to drink. The alcoholic just doesn't drink alcohol. Every person, every human being needs to take liquids in,

and I have to eat, but I don't have to eat the foods that caused me my problems. The real issue is that we don't always know,

or I accept, that there are certain things we can't eat or certain eating behaviors we can't. Intelligent,

page 34,

right at the bottom. How then, shall we help our readers determine to their own satisfaction whether they're one of us? The experiment of quitting for a period of time will be helpful, but we think we can render an even greater service to alcoholic sufferers and perhaps the medical fraternity. So we shall describe some of the mental states that precede a relapse into drinking.

This is the crux, the heart of the problem. What sort of thinking dominates an alcoholic who repeats time after time the desperate experiment of the first drink? Isn't that great language? That doesn't that? Doesn't that just describe ultimately what we all do? The desperate experiment of the first drink, the first bite.

Friends who have reasoned with him after a spree which has brought him to the point of divorce, of bankruptcy, are mystified. When he walks directly into saloon. I mean,

take the analogy, you know, friends who have reasoned with the 400 LB person who has just come out of the hospital are mystified when he walks into or orders from the pizza parlor

or the buffet.

Why does he of what is he thinking? They then go through three examples. The first example they is a man named Jim who is an alcoholic to the point that he loses a family owned automobile sales business, been in the family for years. He gets on his feet, he joins a a he makes a beginning, they say. He then ends up working for the same car agency that he used to own

and he goes back to drinking. So he tells his story. What was what was in his mind

when he went back to drinking? On page 360 tells a story. I'll summarize it. He comes to work on Tuesday and he has some words with the owner. Nothing much, but you can just tell he's just not happy that he works for a place that he used to own. He goes into the countryside to look for prospect to visit a prospect who might want to buy a car. He stops by at a diner where he eaten many times before. He orders a sandwich and a glass of milk. No problem.

And then he decides he'll order another sandwich and orders another glass of milk.

And then on page 36 in italics,

Suddenly the thought crossed my mind

that if I were to put an ounce of whiskey in my milk, it couldn't hurt me on a full stomach.

And I don't know about you, but I've got all kinds of analogies for that. It's whole grain can't hurt me. It's a nutrition bar can hurt me. In fact, it may have like 25,000 tablespoons of sugar and 10,000 grams of fat shouldn't bother me. It's nutritious. I mean, haven't you done that, you know, or I've, I've, I've exercised, you know, for at least 1/2 an hour and that's, that's good, you know, and that now I can have this ice cream. It's my reward for the exercise. Fact that the exercise may have used

about 100 calories up and the ice cream has about 900 calories. Well, forget about that.

Page 37.

Whatever the precise definition of the word may be, we call this plain insanity. How can such a lack of portion of the ability to think straight be called anything else? And you know the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And that's what we've been doing all of our lives. You may think this an extreme case to us. It's not far fetched, for this kind of thinking has been characteristic of every single one of us.

We've sometimes reflected more than Jim did upon the consequences, but there was always the curious mental phenomenon. Again, a phenomenon is occurrence for which there's no explanation. Curious mental occurrence that parallel with our sound reason. They're inevitably

always ransom, insanely trivial excuse for taking the first drink. And imagine, you know, the good and the bad Mickey Mouses or the good and the bad, Donald Ducks or Goofy's. If you remember the old Disney cartoons on either shoulder, you know one saying

you can't eat this, this is bad for you, you have an allergy to this, once you start eating it, you won't be able to stop. And the other one is saying, really, all it says is,

you know, come on, you're depressed. Come on, you're happy. Come on. That's all it's saying. Come on, come on. And no, you know, this is really bad for you shouldn't be doing this. This is wrong. Remember the last time you remember the time before that? You're weighing so much. You've got diabetes. You're going to die. You shouldn't do this. This is life or death. Don't do it. Come on. OK,

right. I mean, isn't that what happens?

You know, and, and whatever that reasoning is, it's just sort of their parallel and what just hits the other, It's gone. And that stupidity, whether it's deep emotional turmoil that you go through. And I've been through deep emotional turmoil and turn to food for the sense of ease and comfort that he gives me. Whether it's deep emotional turmoil that's happy or deep emotional turmoil that's sad, whether it's suicidal or

high, the high that I'm feeling because of love of life, food has always been somehow the thing I've turned to that's been some kind of solution to a problem that only gets worse when I take it. But sometimes it's been as stupid as I'm standing up.

I might have no emotional issues whatsoever. I might be flat. Emotionally, everything's fine, no problem. Nothing high, nothing low. I might have gone to counseling as I did for a while, and feel really good about myself and feeling really understanding about the world. Nothing really, no real problems.

And someone comes along and says, here's a taste you've never had before. And I'll say fine,

you know, I stopped eating ice cream before Ben and Jerry's ice cream came to Winnipeg. So I, I, I, I might have had a taste of it years and years ago, but I, I've in the states, but there's so many flavors now and I understand it's wonderful ice cream. I have no interest in Ben and Jerry's ice cream there. There's a new flavor. I'm told it's called, yes, pecan, which I think is pretty, pretty funny, but I have no interest in it.

But I can tell you that before this program, I would have tried every taste. And I, I remember going to various ice cream parlies in the States before the days that, you know, we had baskin-robbins stuff come to come to Winnipeg where I would try, I tried bubble gum ice cream, I tried onion ice cream. Well, you know, just to try them. And, and when, when we had ducks made in Winnipeg, I, I had, I used to have triple deckers, peppermint, licorice and banana. Those my three favorite flavors. And boy, were they good. I mean, it was a great, great ice cream product. I used to

for my birthday, so I get the free ice cream, you know, I mean, no matter what was all going on my life, I turn to that and the alcohol does the same thing in the drug addict does the same thing. Stupid, stupid. They can be emotionally deep, but they can also simply be stupid.

Let's hope they go on, they say. Next day we'd ask ourselves in all earnest is necessary how it could have happened in some circumstances. We've gone out deliberately to get drunk, feeling ourselves justified by nervousness, anger, worry, depression, jealousy of the like. I remember thinking to myself, this is a nice way to commit suicide. My wife will not, will not blame herself. I told you that yesterday. I remember stinking that way. Yeah, I'm doing this. It's killing me, but it's OK.

At least people will say of him what he might have been. I didn't have to do anything. I He might have been something,

but even in this type of beginning, we're obliged to admit that our justification for a spree was insanely insufficient in light of what always happened. We now see that when we began to drink deliberately instead of casually, there was a little serious or effective thought during the period of premeditation just before

of what the terrific, terrific in this case means horrible consequences might be.

So they give another example now. And this is an example that I've always loved and most people love reading, I'm not going to read it, about the jaywalker, a guy who jaywalks and he loves it. He loves the thrill of it. And sometimes he gets hit and he breaks a leg or something and people say, no, this is getting dangerous. No, it's fine. And he keeps on doing it and he really loves the thrill of it. And then he breaks his back and he is gets out of the hospital. He goes and you know, and he keeps saying, well, now I better stop. And he keeps doing it. And then he gets out of the hospital for the last time and he's hit by a fire truck. I think

that's what it says. Yeah. And his back is broken. Such a man would be crazy, wouldn't he? Page 38 second last paragraph. You may think our illustration is too ridiculous, but is it? We have been through the ring or have to admit if we substituted alcoholism for jaywalking, the illustration would fit this exactly. However intelligent we may have been in other respects where alcohol has been involved, we've been strangely insane. It's strong language, but isn't it true? They say, and you may be thinking, you know, all I need is self knowledge. All I need to know is that

allergic to this stuff and I can't have any drink. I can't drink it all. I can't eat the stuff that I know about. Well,

page 39 they say that may be true of certain non alcoholic people who though drinking foolishly and heavily at the present time, are able to stop or moderate because their brains and bodies have not been damaged as ours were. And I give you an example of my friend who just stopped eating cheese or people who go on diets and prosper on those diets. They're not like me. They're people who simply have learned what it is to eat moderately and are happy with that.

God bless them. I mean, I'm not like that, but there are many people like that. And that's why,

you know, people who say, well, Alcoholics Anonymous isn't the only way to cure alcoholism. It probably isn't anyway. But there are all kinds of people who may be heavy drinkers but who don't need what Alcoholics Anonymous gives them. There may be all kinds of people who are heavy eaters but don't need what OA brings them

because all they need to know is what not to eat. Alcoholics, people who drink hard, drinkers, maybe all. All they have to know is not to drink and they don't have the mental problem.

But they say, but boy, if you have our problem, the the actual potential alcoholic, with hardly an exception, will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on on excuse me, the basis of self knowledge.

This is a point we wish to emphasize and reemphasize to smash home upon our alcoholic readers as it has been revealed us out of bitter experience. Let us take another illustration. Here's Freddy's experience. He's a partner in accounting firm they he gets drunk, He realizes he can't drink. He says thanks, but I don't need Alcoholics Anonymous. All I know is I don't have to drink. He goes to Washington on a tax matter. Everything's great. He solves it to his satisfaction. Everything's wonderful. The sun is shining. He goes back to his hotel. He dresses for dinner,

which I guess people used to do in those days, and not a cloud in the in the sky.

And on page 41, as I crossed the threshold of the dining room, the thought came to mind that it would be nice to have a couple of cocktails with dinner. That's all, nothing more.

Why not? And that has happened to me so much in my life. And he goes back to drinking

her. Page 43 is the end of this pair of this whole chapter. It summarizes it once more. The alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink, except in a few rare cases. Neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense must come from a higher power.

So here is the whole story of

this chapter. It is that we have a mental, if you're like me, you may not be like me, but if you are like me, you have a mental obsession that prevents your mind from remembering at certain times that it can't eat certain foods or indulge in certain eating behaviors that your experience has proven to you. Once you indulge in, you won't be able to stop. And so you can't stop from starting again. And that's all that step one is. It is a an acknowledgment