The OA Big Book Study in Winnipeg, MB, Canada

But at any rate, well, we'll talk about that. What I want to do is start reading to you and telling you a bit about a, a history and, and the importance of a, a history and understanding what step 12 is all about. This is where we are. This is why we've done all the things up to now. Even though we came to lose weight or to gain weight or to reach a healthy body weight, we came because food was our master. And we want to get rid of that mastery, want to be free of the bondage of food. What we have discovered is

taking that right turn or that left turn or by veering off into a completely unknown direction of searching for a spiritual awakening rather than finding the right diet or finding the right way to the right support group to help us control our weight. We have found this freedom, but we also find ourselves with a different notion of what will is we now have to carry out God's will. Now Step 12 is having had a spiritual awakening as

the result of these steps. And big book thumpers will always say as the result of these steps, not as the result of these steps,

because we like to emphasize that step 12 gives us a promise. It's a promise that's inherent in step 12. That is that these steps give us a spiritual awakening. And that's the only purpose of the steps to give us a spiritual awakening. So those of us who are big book thumpers, someone actually once gave me a, a, a fur, a little stuffed thumper, you know, from, from Bambi with a big book attached to it. It's kind of nice.

I should have brought it,

But at any rate, big book numbers like to say, having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to compulsive eaters and to carry and to carry this message in into all of our affairs. To carry this message, to practice these principles in all our affairs,

tried to carry this message is another part of AA history.

I told you that Bill. I talked about how Bill recovered and he recovered. His last drink was on December the 12th of 1934. That's when he walked into the towns hospital and with a bottle of beer in his hand and said, Doctor Silkwith Dr. Silkworth, I think I have something

a couple of days. Then he and Silka says, I think you do, my boy. And he dried him out. And three or four days later, Bill had this incredible spiritual experience with the wind rushing through the mountaintop and and after he is done the steps with Abby, he talks to Abby. He makes an inventory of his defects of character. He talks to Abby about them. They work out a method of making amends. He's on the way of making amends to his wife by changing his life completely. The most important man he could make him. She was a

person and suddenly has a spiritual experience, which is what is promised to us halfway through the step, Step 9, right? That's the promises of Step 9, the spiritual experience. And he has it and he calls in the doctor. If we call, he says in my nuts. And the doctor says, no, whatever you have is better than what you had. Hold on to it.

Well, the birth of a A doesn't start when Bill recovered. For six months, Bill tried to get other drunks sober. He tried to practice what he had learned from Ebby and to get others sober. He would go to the Bowery. You go to places where people there were drunks and he'd take them home to their little place on Clinton St. In Brooklyn, NY,

where he'd sober them up and give them a place to stay

and talk and talk and talk to them because he had nothing to do and Lois was working. He wasn't. And he talked and talked and talked and they would get drunk.

They would get drunk and one committed suicide in his house and one took a butcher night a kitchen knife to Lois and attacked her once stole her fur coat. They would just

take whatever Bill gave them and go off and get drunk. And for six months this was like that.

And although I haven't found it in any documentation, I've I've heard two people who have said that Lois told them this story. And I believe it to be true, that one day Bill was sitting around with Lois and said, I haven't been able to get a single alcoholic sober. And Lois said, yes, you have. You're sober.

And he began to realize that there was something in what he was doing that was keeping him sober.

Around that same time

he went to see Doctor Silkworth

and he said, I don't know what's going on. I can't get anyone sober. I know that this program works. Sorry, wouldn't have called it a program there. But I know that these simple precepts work. I know that the simple thing that Abby told me about to get honest with yourself, you get honest with another human being. You make amends for the harms you've done. You give of yourself without hope of reward, and you pray to God for guidance that that these simple precepts work for me and they work for Edby and they work for Roland. But I can't help anyone else

understand this. What's going on

now? If you recall, when Abby met with Bill,

two things were true. One is that Bill knew Abby's story intimately. Bill knew that Abby had been a drunk all of Ebby's life. They have been childhood friends, they grew up together and they drank together. And every seem to build to be always a worse strength than Bill was. Probably not true, but certainly as bad.

So that when Ebby came to Bill

and wasn't drinking anymore and explained that he no longer wanted to drink, Bill had Ebby's whole story behind him.

And Bill was able to say there was no more power in Abby than there was in me. And yet Ebby had a miracle and I don't. And therefore what he's do, what he's done, these simple precepts have in fact given him the recovery and allowed him to find a power greater than himself, which restored him to sanity.

But the other fact that was true was that Abby's introduction to what he did was, you know, Bill says, come, what's all this about? I queried, right? And Evie says I've got religion. And Ebby starts to talk about the Oxford Groups and the spiritual experience that he had with these simple precepts.

Abby Bill's way of talking for the first six months to all of these different Alcoholics drunks that he had scraped off the sidewalk was to talk about his spiritual experience, to talk about he no longer was drinking. And here's what he learned from the Oxford Groups. And here's how you find God.

And when he met with Doctor Silkworth, Doctor Silkworth gave him advice. And this is found in a masterpiece of a book that Bill wrote called Alcoholics Anonymous. Comes of Age.

Look, Bill,

Doctor Silkwith said

you're having nothing but failure because you are preaching at these Alcoholics. You're talking to them about the Oxford Group precepts of being absolutely honest, absolutely pure, absolutely unselfish and absolutely loving. This is a very big order. Then you top it off by harping on this mysterious spiritual experience of yours. No wonder they point their finger to their heads and go out and get drunk. Why don't you turn your strategy the other way around?

Aren't you the very fellow who once showed me that book by

the psychologist William James? This is a book called The Varieties of a Religious Experience. It's the only book that's actually mentioned in the big Book. It's available on the Internet or you can buy it for, you know, fifteen 10-15 dollars

in the library easy. It's a very well known book. It's it's not an easy book to read. I I have read it and it's, it's very, very thick, but it is an incredible book. But anyway, so this this book was a book that Abby gave to

Bill in the towns hospital when when Bill went for the third time Anyway, aren't you the very fellow one showed me that book by the psychologist James, which says that deflation at great depth is the foundation of most spiritual experiences. Have you forgotten all about that? Have you also forgotten the doctor Carl Jung and Zurich told a certain alcoholic at Roland, the one who later helped sober up your friend Abby, That is only hope of salvation was a spiritual experience. No Bill, you've got the cart before the horse. You've got to deflate these people first.

So give them the medical business and give it to them hard. Pour it right into them about the obsession that condemns them to drink and the physical sensitivity or allergy of the body that condemns them to go mad or die. If they keep on drinking coming from another alcoholic, one alcoholic talking to another, maybe that will crack those tough egos open deep, deep down. Only then can you begin to try out your other medicine, the ethical principles you've picked up from the Oxford groups.

And Bill had a revelation from that. He didn't talk about his own experiences as a drunk. He had never talked about why he had been hopeless or how he had been hopeless. There was no identification. All these drunks didn't know Bill. They knew him as a guy who took them off the streets, but they didn't know him as a person who had been a drunk. They just knew him as a guy who talked about this wonderful religious, spiritual experience he had. He could have been a preacher.

He he wasn't talking from his own experience. Abby. Of course, Bill knew, so Bill didn't have to hear Abby talk about his experience.

But who knew Bill

Bill? In another talk, he gave a talk to medical societies.

It's a pamphlet to put out by A. A

says this and I I love the words

he says. In fact we aim to produce a crisis, to cause him to hit bottom as A as say. Of course you'll understand this is all done by indirection. We never pronounce sentences, nor do we tell any alcoholic what he must do. Relating the seriousness, seriousness of our own cases. We leave him to draw his conclusions. But once he's accepted the fact that he is an alcoholic, and the further fact that he's powerless to recover unaided,

the battle is half won. As the AAS have it, he's hooked. He's caught, as if in a psychological vice. If the jaws of A do not grip him tightly enough at first, more drinking will almost invariably turn up the screw to the point where he will cry enough

say he is softened up. This reduces him to state of complete dependence on whatever or whoever can stop his drinking. He is in exactly the same mental fix as the cancer patient becomes dependent, abjectly, hopelessly dependent if you on what you men of science do for cancer. That's what Bill called doctors, men of science. I love this next sentence. Better still, he becomes sweetly reasonable, truly open minded as only the dying can be.

Sweetly reasonable, truly open minded as only the dying can be.

That's the seriousness with which a Ayers approach their task and with which we have to approach our task. The Big Book starts off the chapter Working with Others, which is totally devoted to How to find and how to sponsor

an Alcoholic on page 89 with some promises.

I have a nice little note here written in that someone once said you have to live your life beyond reproach. You may be the only copy of the big book anyone ever sees.

Anyway, practical experience shows that nothing will so much ensure immunity. Well, I'm sorry, you know what? Go back one page

after they talk about step 11. The last paragraph on the on the previous page, on page 88 says, you know, you can pray and meditate all you want, but this is not all. There is action and more action. Faith without works is dead. So that's an again, if you don't do step 12, you're dead. OK, so now back to page 89. Practical experience shows that nothing will so much ensure immunity from drinking

as intensive work with other Alcoholics. It works when other activities fail. This is our 12th suggestion. Carry this message to other Alcoholics. You can help when no one else can. You can secure their confidence. When others fail. Remember they are very ill. Here are the promises life will take on new meaning. To watch people recover. To see them help others. To watch loneliness vanish. To see a fellowship grow up about you. To have a host of friends. This isn't it

experience you must not miss. We know you will not want to miss it. Frequent contact with newcomers and with each other.

These promises have come true for me. I mean, I've been lucky enough to have helped to found a few meetings, Co found a few meetings and I did. I never did it alone. But this, the meeting on Sunday morning occurred because the Saturday morning meeting was told it was a large meeting at 1:00. It still is a wonderful meeting, but it was a wonderful meeting. When I went there,

we we were told, well, we're getting a lot of phone calls from the South end of the city. People would like to have a meeting there. So another person I who went to the Saturday meeting said, well, we'll set up a meeting on Sunday in the South end. So we set this meeting up and we set it up because there was a need for it and to watch this meeting grow. You know, our meeting on Sunday mornings is ranges from between 20 and 30 people every Sunday. It's a wonderful meeting. You think I don't feel kind of great about it, that I don't feel as if

I was there at the beginning. I'm just a member, but I feel, but you know, I've watched people recover. I've seen them help others. I've watched loneliness vanished. I've seen a fellowship grow up about me. I've had, I have a host of friends and, and, and, and, and these promises are all true. I've also found it another meeting Friday, new meeting, which fell into the toilet and deservedly so, because I, I was relapsing all the time and I was the only constant person there,

you know, So

it was, it was, it was a great meeting while it lasted. But, but I'll tell you what I learned about meetings from that meeting was, was two things. And one was that the people who go to that meeting should have some sense of what the hell they're doing And, and not just

and, and, and if, if they're relapsing, know that they're relapsing and do something about it and look for recovery instead of using that meeting as a comfort meeting, which is what I was doing. And secondly, that a meeting should have some direction to it and a sense of what the steps are, because that Friday noon meeting was a really nice was designed as a pick me up meeting for people who went to the Tuesday evening meeting, which was a very directed meeting. We, we read the book, we read the big book, we read the a 12 and 12. Those were the books that were available to us at the time

and we read them and we studied the steps as we as we work through the meeting and we did them in rotation. Well, the Friday noon meeting was we decided we'll just have talk, you know, we'll whatever the leader wants to read that day from OA or a, a literature will have a reading and we'll talk about that.

That was really nice if we continue to go to the Tuesday evening meeting. But those of us who went to the Friday new meeting, because hey, it's more convenient to go to this one. It's nice. It's not at night, you know, it's a lot of fun to talk about these things. And there was absolutely no direction and there was no sense of the steps. We just read whatever we wanted to read, however we wanted to read it. I was the, I was the, the, the guy who convened the meeting. I had the keys and, and all that. So I was the constant there and I was relapsing. I was getting bigger and bigger and talking about how wonderful the program was,

you know, well, no wonder people stop coming, you know, and finally, we, we, we, I killed it because there's no one else left. And we, I put an announcement out if, if you want the Friday morning and Friday new meeting to continue, you know, you better start coming because we're going to close it as of a particular day. And no one came. And so the message was pretty clear. So we closed that meeting should die. Some meetings deserve to die because there's no recovery in them. There's no sense of recovery. Not that not

every meeting has to have a recovered personally, because there are all kinds of places in this world where there's no one who has recovered, but they at least have to have a plan for recovery. They have to think about what they're going to be doing and then they can help each other recover. But a meeting that doesn't have a sense that the recovery is available is a meeting that really is just a coffee clutch. It's a support group that has of no value because it isn't giving the message of the 12 steps, which is the message of recovery.

I want to talk a bit more about meetings because I'll be talking a lot more about sponsoring and carrying the message.

Our regular meeting starts for me, a meeting that

that means something is a meeting in which there is hope. That hope can be expressed by people who have recovered, who are there and speak about their recovery and speak about their experiences in a way that those who come in without hope gain hope. That meaning can also be people who haven't yet recovered but are able to talk about how they're working the steps and what their plan is. And, and there are many meetings, I mean, all over, all over the world, there are small little towns where no one's recovered. People have got the literature from and they decide to

a meeting. I mean, you can't ask them to to, to say, well, I've recovered before they've recovered. But what you can ask them to do is to develop a meeting that makes sense, that gives a sense of what this program is about. And the meetings that that I go to and that I'm aware of that work around the world are meetings that center around the 12 steps and that don't send around anything else. Because that's the message that we have to give in this program, the message of the 12 steps.

There are also meetings that are joyous and have humor in them. Because when you have hope, you have humor. When you have hope you can laugh. You might be hopeless

and that's OK to be hopeless, but when you go to meeting, there should be hope there and that should be able to make you able to laugh.

Going back to the history of

Bill gets this message from Doctor Silkworth. You got to talk about your experiences. You can't just talk about your your drink You're drinking experiences and you have to talk about them in such a way that the person who hears them understands that if he or she is like you, he or she is as hopeless as you were.

Because if you can't make them hopeless, why the heck would they take that veering right or left turn or whatever the the veer away from concentrating on food and concentrating on diet and losing weight or gaining weight or whatever. Why would they take that turn and search for spiritual awakening? It seems so foreign from what they came for. They're coming and they come to you with a problem. I can't stop drinking. I can't stop eating. I can't stop taking drugs, I can't stop using or whatever.

And then you say them, oh, you've got to have a spiritual awakening that will relieve you of this problem. They say, you know, find me someone Hussein here. You know, I, I, I just want to stop drinking. I don't need to find God,

you know? I mean, really. And I gotta tell you, I was like that, too. And most people are like that, you know? What's the diet? What's the what's the program? What do I do? Do you guys help each other? That's what I hear A A does. That's what I hear OA does You just help each other keep from drinking? I can call you anytime, right? You know, And you'll help me. You'll help call me. Calm me down. And I won't drink anymore. And, you know. Well, yeah, I suppose that's true. But that's not why we exist.

We exist to say that a spiritual awakening in our experience has given us a freedom from food, which is completely different from what support groups do for a person who wants to drink or or eat or anything like that.

Support groups give support. And sometimes for some people, it enables them to stay away from foods, doesn't solve their problems. It doesn't mean that they're free of those foods. It means that if they feel like eating a food, they know whom to phone. That's not what our program offers. I mean, it, it, it, it gives that, but it's not what it offers.

What it offers is freedom

to the 12 steps.

So you have to be desperate to do that. You have to realize that you're hopeless before you try something that's completely different. I mean, if you go back to the chapter and we agnostics, that chapter basically says what you're doing doesn't work. Try something different that clearly works in us. If you're like us, nothing works for you other than what we've tried, right? I mean, that's what we agnostics. That's the argument used to the agnostic or the atheist. Try it

because it has worked for us.

So the, the whole approach here is, is, is very different. And just going back to the a, a history.

Bill goes on a business trip to Akron, OH. Bill lives in Brooklyn, NY and he goes on a business trip to Akron, OH. He hasn't had a drink for six months. He's feeling really good. And he has a chance with a group of other investors to take over a mechanical company that supplies machines to, to rubber making companies. And Akron was one of the centers of tire makers and rubber makers in in, in the United States.

They go to Akron and they get involved in this business deal and it falls flat on his face. The shareholders don't vote for them, they lose it,

and all the other investors leave Bill with the task of figuring out whether or not there was some fraud in the voting. There wasn't, but maybe there was. Maybe they can salvage this thing out of out of their defeat.

And

Bill describes this in the chapter A Vision for You

on page 153, beginning page 153.

This is May of 1935, six months after Bill recovered

right at the bottom. Years ago, one of our number, this is Bill made a journey to a certain western city. From a business standpoint, I was Akron, OH. From a business standpoint, his trip came off badly. Had he been successful in his enterprise, he would have been set on his feet financially, which at the time seemed vitally important or on page 154 now. But his venture went wound up in a lawsuit and bogged down completely. The proceeding was shot through with much hard feeling and controversy.

Bitterly discouraged, he found himself in a strange place, discredited and almost broke, still physically weak and sober but a few months. He saw that his predicament was dangerous. He wanted so much to speak with someone, but whom? One dismal afternoon he paced a hotel lobby, wondering how his bill was to be paid. This was the Mayflower Hotel in Akron, OH. If the building still exists, it's become a senior citizen's residence. I spoke to someone recently. Who

pressed the buzzer

at the entrance to this place? And a voice said, yeah. And she said, well, we, I oh, come on in. And. And she came in, the guy meets her and and her husband and says, all right, this is where the hotel directory was. This is where the bar was. You know, because people make their pilgrimages to Akron, OH to see all these places where

their history is, I mean, where they found recovery. It's right there. You can see it. You can look at the coffee pot the doctor Bob and Bill drank out of as they had their meetings. You can go to the Gatehouse where Bill met with Henrietta Cyberlink. Well, I'll talk about that. But I mean, and the fact that I sat at the kitchen table that Abby and Bill sat at, you know, I mean,

to be able to, to look at my, at, at my recovery and know I owe it to 100 and thousands of people,

but to be able to trace it to that kitchen table or that coffee pot is really an incredible thing. Having said that, none of these people were gods and, and, and, and we, they were ordinary human beings. Bill once wrote a, a wonderful article called why can't entitled, why can't Doctor Bob and I become members of a A and it was an article that said, you know, you keep treating us with kid gloves. We're just drugs.

We covered drugs. That's all we are and we're no different from you. I don't know if any of you ever saw that wonderful movie called My Name is Bill W with James Woods and James Garner. James Wood played Bill W and and James Garner plays Doctor Bob and that is what I mean. James was such a great actor right at the end. A A has been formed in his big and Bill goes to A

an AAA meeting with I guess 100 people under 50 people

somewhere in some town, I don't remember where, but somewhere W maybe even a California

and he's sitting right next to a guy from who goes this meeting and this guy says, Oh, you're new here. Where are you from? Bill says, I I'm from New York. Oh, have you met any of the original people there? Maybe the some of the people who were there when it first began. And you can see in James Woods face. I mean the whole thinking. Do I tell him that I'm the star? Do I tell him who I really am? Won't I mean, and the other side is no, I've got to be humble and you just see this war in in 10 seconds of acting. I mean, it's just

superb acting until he says, yeah, I've met a few, you know, and that's how it ends, as I recall. I mean, very powerful moment, but it's this whole thing. Yeah. It's wonderful to look at the coffee pot. It's wonderful to sit at the kitchen table to say I'm connected to that. But at the same time, they were just human beings and they were nothing more. They were messengers of higher of a higher power. Anyway,

So 1 dismal afternoon, noon, we're back on page 154. He paced a hotel lobby, wondering how his bill was to be paid.

At one end of the room stood a glass covered directory of local churches. Down the lobby a door opened into attractive bar. He could see the gay crowd inside. In there he would find companionship and release. Unless he took some drinks, he might not have the courage to scrape an acquaintance and would have a lonely weekend. Of course he couldn't drink, but why not? Said hopefully at a table, a bottle of ginger ale before him. After all, had he not been sober six months now, perhaps he could handle, say, 3 drinks no more.

Fear gripped him. He was on thin ice again. It was the old, insidious insanity,

that first drink.

With a shiver, he turned away and walked down the lobby to the church directory. Music and gay chatter still floated to him from the bar. But what about his responsibilities, his family and the men who would die because they would not know how to get well? Ah, yes, those other Alcoholics. That's how Bill talks. You can get all kinds of tapes of him talking, and that's what he sounds like.

There must be many such in this town. He would phone a clergyman. His sanity returned, he thanked God, selecting a church at random from the directory. He stepped into a booth and lifted the receiver. And Bill tells a story in a bit more detail. It's it's an interesting story.

Excuse me,

He get he phones one guy name is Walter Tunks. He's a minister. Bill and Lois talk about why Bill would have chosen that guy's name. And they both said I reminded him of some guy he knew. And for me, the connection between tongues and drunks is so obvious that I, I just seemed to me that that's what happened. Anyway, Tongue says, well, I and Bill said something like I'm a rumhound from New York, a member of the Oxford Groups. I've got to find another

alcoholic to talk to. Do you know any Alcoholics I can talk to? And as Bill points out in Alcohol Comes with H, he said when the Goodman learned that I was an alcoholic looking for another alcoholic to work on, he had first apparently envisioned two people drunk instead of 1.

But he finally got the point and gave me a list of about 10 people might be able to direct me. So you're going to list about 10 people? And each one of those said, no, I have no time, I'm busy, I'm leaving town. Remember, the Oxford Groups had been in town

a year and a half earlier, as I think I told you

on Saturday, yesterday, and, and they had left quite a group of people who were members of the Oxford Groups. Tanks wasn't but he knew people who were. But these people weren't able to help him. But one other person gives him a list of a couple of other names, few other names. One of those names is Henrietta Cyberling. And Bill knew Mr. Cyberling, a a Mr. Cyberling who had been the the owner of the Goodyear Rubber Company and he didn't want to phone Mr. Cyberling's wife and sort of announced he was an alcoholic and you know, stuff like that. So he

kept her name off to the last, but finally it was only her name that was left. No one else could help him. So he phoned her up. It turned out that Henrietta Cyberling was the estranged daughter-in-law of Mr. Cyberling, that she and her husband had separated. She was living

in the family estate, but not in the mansion. She was living in the gatehouse. And there's a picture in this book of the gatehouse that's like a mansion, but there was a mansion behind the mansion of, you know, a lot of money in in Akron, OH, I guess. And she says, come right away. I know exactly who you can talk to and you can talk to

now. I heard her interviewed once and a tape of her interviewed once and and what she, she tells this story, she says, remember the Oxford groups and in the Oxford groups was this wonderful doctor named Bob Smith. Doctor Bob Smith. Everyone loved him. He had a wife named Ann Smith. Everyone loved her. She was an absolute St. He was a hopeless drug, but he never admitted it. He was a proctologist

person who comes in from behind and literally and and he was a surgeon and the thought, the thought of him

being drunk and doing things like that where it's just awful thought. But at any rate,

he,

Henriette, and he would go to the Oxford Groups. He was very spiritual man, and he tried his best to act according to the Oxford Group's precepts and to do with the Oxford Groups told him to do. And he he kept on drinking, but he wouldn't really admit that he was an alcoholic. And Henrietta talked about how she actually, in concert with a whole bunch of other Oxford Goopers, organized a confession meeting

where people would confess their deepest, darkest secrets. And they all knew what they were going to say. I mean, they weren't lying. They did confess their deepest, darkest secrets, but they all did it in the hopes that Doctor Bob would confess that he was an alcoholic. And he did. And he broke down and they tried to minister him. He still couldn't quit drinking. So Henrietta said that's the guy you have to speak to

and

she she phones him up. This is Saturday, May the 11th, 193435. She phones him up and Ann answers the phone and, and, and, and could she and Doctor Bob come over and Ann says, I'm sorry Henrietta, I don't think we can make it today. Bob always makes a great fuss over me on Mother's Day. He's just come home bringing a big potted plant. What Anne didn't say was that the plant was on a table and the Bob was under the table so potted he couldn't get up.

Henrietta said. What about tomorrow? Why can't both of you come over to dinner and said they would try to make it.

And Bob tells a story that he had got a promise. He said yeah, OK, we'll go. We'll go for Henryk sake. They called her Henry. We'll go for Henry. But only 15 minutes. We said we you said we'd go, but I'll only spend 15 minutes. He came at five. He left at 11:00. Bill took him into a side room

after dinner, offered him a beer to to sort of and, and, and, and that showed Doctor Bob the Bill understood that there was a withdrawal issue there and he had to give him a beer.

And then Bill proceeded to talk.

Now, what is it that Bill said? And Bill remembered what Doctor Silkworth had said.

And this is how Bill describes it. He says, now talking with Doctor Bob, I remembered all the Doctor Silkworth had said. So I went very slowly on the fireworks of religious experience. I just talked away about my own case until he got a good identification with me, until he began to say, yes, that's me, I'm like that.

In our first conversation, I bore down heavily on the medical hopelessness of Doctor Bob's case, freely using Doctor Silkrist words describing the alcoholic's dilemma, the obsession plus allergy theme, the vicious circle. You can't stop once you've started. You can't stop them starting. Though Bob was a doctor, This was news to him, bad news. Always better versed in spiritual matters than I, he had paid little attention to that aspect of my story. Even though he could not make them work, he already knew what the spiritual answers were. He had been a member of the Oxford Groups for a year longer than

be a little bit a member of the Oxford Groups. He knew the Oxford Group's precepts and principles. What really did hit him hard was the medical business. The verdict of inevitable annihilation and the fact that I was an alcoholic and knew what I was talking about from personal experience made the blow a shattering one. In Doctor Bob's story is afterwards written for the book and years later in his last full length talk at Detroit, he made this point very clear. It was not any spiritual teaching of mine, rather was those twin

of madness and death, the allergy plus the obsession that triggered him into a new life. It was Doctor Silkwith's idea, confirmed by William James, that struck him at great depth. You see, our talk was a completely mutual thing. I had quit preaching. I knew that I needed this alcoholic as much as he needed me. This was it. And this mutual give and take is at the very heart of all of a as 12 step work today. This was how to carry the message. The final missing link was located right there.

My first talk with Doctor Bob. I need you more than you may need me. The fact that you've given me the privilege of being able to speak to you gives me something that you may get nothing out of. Who knows what's going to happen when you leave, but you've given me the greatest gift I could have, the opportunity to tell my story. And I've sponsored and I've met with tons and tons of people who have left this program,

which means that probably,

well, it means either that they didn't identify with me and that they didn't have my problem, or that I did a lousy job of identification. Who knows? But whatever it is, they did me good. No matter what happened to them, I never wasted my time with them because they kept me abstinent. Step 12 is absolutely necessary for me and Doctor Bob in his story, which is found in the big book in Under Doctor Bob's Nightmare

on page 180

says this.

Right at the bottom.

Yeah, right upon. I spent a great deal of time passing on what I learned to others who want and needed badly. By the way, remember that. Who want and need it badly. We'll see later on that Doctor Bob was really, really tough. He actually

kicked people out of the drunk ward of the hospital where he where he practiced if he didn't think that they were that interested in pursuing the program. And we'll see the Big Book talk about that.

I do it for four reasons. One on page 181, Sense of Duty.

Two, it is a pleasure. Three, because of so doing, I am paying my debt to the man who took time to pass it on to me. How many men and women do I have to pay back what debts I owe to how many people? He had a debt to one person. I have a debt to thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people.

4 because every time I do it, I take out a little more insurance for myself against a possible slip. So that's Doctor Bob's very simple answer to why he does it now. Doctor Bob

in in, in his last major speech to to a A in 1940,

1948 in 1950. And it's, it's available on tape. You can actually, I mean, the Internet is just a wonderful place. You get all these things

for free on podcasts and things of that, Sir,

he says. A few things.

So one, as he says this, he said, I said I was quite human. And I get to thinking every once in a while that this guy Bob is rather a smart individual. He's got this liquor situation right by the tail proof didn't demonstrate it. Hasn't had a drink for over 13 years. Probably could knock off a couple and no one would be the wiser. And on the tape you can hear people laugh, says I tell you, I'm not trying to be funny. Those thoughts actually do enter my mind and the minute they do I know exactly what has happened.

You see in Akron we have the extremely good fortune, have a very nice setup at Saint Thomas Hospital. The war theoretically accommodates 7 alcoholic, but the good Sister Ignatia sees that it's stretched a little bit. She usually has two or more others parked around somewhere. Just as soon as that idea that I could probably Polish off a couple enters my mind, I think uh oh. How about the boys in the ward? You've been giving them the semi brush off for the last few days. You'd better get back in the job big boy. These guys talk funny. You better get back on the job, big boy, before you

get into trouble. And I patter right back in a much more attentive than I had been before I got the funny idea. But I do get it every once in a while, and I'll probably go on getting it whenever I get careless about seeing the boys in the ward. Any time I neglected them, I was thinking more of Bob than I was of the ward. I wasn't being especially loving. Those fellows had come there indicating their desire for help, and I was just little too busy to give them much of my time. As if they had been pan landing, panhandling on the street. Don't be bothered with a fellow $0.10 to get rid of them. Well, that's easy. Could even stand two bits. Not because you love,

but just to be relieved of the nuisance of his hanging on your coat sleeve. No one's selfishness, no love at all indicated in that kind of transaction. I think the kind of service that really counts as giving of yourself and that almost invariably requires effort and time. It isn't a matter of just putting a little quiet money in the dish. That's needed, but it isn't giving much for the average individual. In days like these, when most people get along fairly well, I don't believe that type of giving. Whatever, keep anyone sober but giving of our own effort and strength and time.

Is quite a different matter and I think that is what Bill learned in New York and I didn't learn in Akron until we met. OK, now I'm going to break in a few minutes. So I'm just going to leave you with this. Then we'll break and we'll we'll start the meeting. You know, we'll come back when the meeting starts.

Doctor Bob has something else that he says. And, and for me, this is so important. He says this,

this is and this is not in the book. This is in the pamphlet that contains the last speech, major speech he made in 1950.

Says. In my mind the spirit of service was of prime importance, but I found that it had to be backed up with some knowledge in our subject. I used to go to the hospital and stand there and talk. I talked many times to a chap in the bed for five or six hours. I don't know how he ever stood me for five or six hours, but he did. We must have hidden his clothes. Anyway, it came to me that I probably didn't know too much about what I was saying. We are stewards, guardians, trustees of what we have, and that includes our time. I was not giving a good account of my