Chuck C. from Laguna Beach, CA speaking in Portland, OR

Thank you. I'm Chuck C. from Laguna B. I'm an alcoholic, too.

Hi.

You know, that last guy, uh, you're dreadin', but he couldn't count.

And Denny or Dennis or whatever his name is, you can take over now if you'd like.

I'm ready.

Congratulations to y'all for your 30th birthday.

And to Chet or whatever his name was for his 14th,

AA birthdays are a little special, I think, because we don't have much to do with them.

Whether it's the birthday of a group or an area or an individual,

it's only possible because of a miracle.

So how are you gonna celebrate a miracle?

I think, and the way I do it, is to remember from whence it came and be grateful.

I like to turn the clock back for 38 years and think a little bit about Bill and Dr. Bob

and the rest of them who started this thing, including Abby.

And maybe say a little prayer for them.

And then make the anniversary a day of rededication.

Rededication to the spirit and to the principles that have made this thing possible.

Had it not been for a cold turkey call 38 years ago,

most of us in this room would be dead, including me.

So we have something to be grateful for.

I particularly have a lot to be grateful for

because I couldn't even investigate what y'all have

as long as I had the power of choice.

As long as I had the power of choice, my choice was never to come to Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I never came as long as I had the power of choice.

I had to run out of everything, including the power of choice, before I could come.

And I think that's one of the reasons that I've been so slap-happy for 27 years.

I can't take any credit for living long enough to come,

and I most certainly can't take any credit for coming.

Had it been possible for me to survive in left field, I would still be out there.

And so, I'll make a couple or three comments that we don't usually hear in present-day society.

Number one, the greatest single event that has ever happened in my life,

and I'm 70 years old,

happened in January 1946,

when the bottle beat me to death.

It beat me into total and absolute nothingness.

And it was only then I could come here and investigate.

And of course, that's the greatest single event that's ever happened in my life.

It was impossible up until that time for me to say, I'm an alcoholic.

Therefore, I was drunk half the time.

If any one of you had called me an alcoholic prior to that time,

then I could have gotten up off the floor.

I'd have kicked you right in the teeth if I could have seen you.

That's something that nobody must know, not even me.

And we went to any length to keep anybody from knowing it.

But now, one of the easiest things I say is, I'm an alcoholic.

I'm neither proud of it nor am I ashamed of it.

That's the way it is with me.

I am an alcoholic.

Another thing that is very repugnant to most of us

is something that I say very easily, too.

I have a lot of fun with this because nearly everybody alive is afraid of failure.

I often talk to groups who are not alcoholic

or who are not members of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I sometimes tell them that I have the advantage of them.

Very greatly I have the advantage of them

because here there are 1,700 of them.

Every one of them afraid of failure, and I'm not afraid of failure at all.

I am a failure.

And they fall out of their chairs

because everybody is afraid of failure.

I'm not.

At the ripe old age of 43, I was a failure as a husband, a father, a businessman, a man, and a drunk.

And I think that's as many as you can be.

I don't know anything else that I didn't fail in.

So I can say that very, very easily, too.

It's very easy for me to say I'm a failure.

It makes absolutely no ripple in my serenity.

I have to say that had it been necessary for me to surrender

the first time consciously,

I would have died without coming to this program

because I could not surrender.

I had been conditioned for generations to believe that surrender was for the weak.

The strong man wins his battle.

The weak man surrenders.

And it was impossible for me to surrender.

So I thank God that it was done for me the first time by the bottle.

I didn't have to.

I got to this program totally surrendered.

And therefore, everything in Chapter 5 was something I wanted to do

the first time I ever heard it read.

Everything in Chapter 5 was very acceptable to me.

One thing I couldn't do, not because I didn't want to,

but that was to think about Step 3 of our program.

I didn't think it was cricket to believe that I could give this thing that was me

I wouldn't have taken me with a large dowry.

And while I had no objection to turning my will in my life over,

I'd have turned it over to a jackass if I could have gotten rid of me.

But I didn't think I had any chance to give it to God

because I didn't think he liked me any better than I did.

So I just let it lay.

And I grabbed the last third of 12

and practiced these principles in all of our affairs

and discovered many months later

that I'd already taken the third step before I got here.

If I don't forget it, I'll tell you about it.

You know, there is a condition for sobriety, the first condition.

Way back in Chapter 3.

It's the first line in the second paragraph of Chapter 3.

It says,

We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholic.

This is the first step in recovery.

Now, why in the world would the first condition for sobriety

be clear back in Chapter 3?

The 12 steps are in Chapter 5.

But here it is.

We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholic.

This is the first step in recovery.

Why is that back there?

I think it's because if we be alcoholic,

we are caught in a trap that we cannot spring.

We have to have help,

and we can't get help until we recognize the need for it.

It's impossible for us to get any help until we recognize the need for it.

For instance, on my next to the last drunk,

I had a little experience that was rather interesting.

I took a little trip 6,000 miles in a blackout.

I drove from Beverly Hills to Louisville, Kentucky, to North Michigan and back to the coast.

And I don't remember 5% of it.

One thing that I'll tell you that is in my memory,

because it was a rather unique experience,

I came to in the middle of the night and there was a train coming.

And the headlight went right across the nose of my car,

and the whistle was blowing and the bell was ringing.

And I said to myself, uh-oh, I'm on the railroad track.

But there's nothing I can do about it.

So I just sat there, and the train went by just within an inch of the nose of my car.

And when the headlight was gone, it was awfully dark.

It was frightfully dark.

And it was rather nerve-wracking, you know.

So there wasn't anything for me to do but to reach under the seat and pull out a fifth

and drink till daylight, which I did.

When daylight came, I cased the situation,

and I was down in the bottom of a canyon about 500 feet off the highway.

And you couldn't even get down there.

I mean, it was impossible.

And so there was no chance to get out.

So there was nothing left to do but drink, which I did.

And evidently, when I got drunk enough, I drove out just the way that drove down there.

Because the next time I came to, I was in jail.

That was the least little old jail I was ever in.

It only had one cell in it, and I had it.

And there was nobody even in the building but me.

Everybody had gone home for the weekend, I guess.

And so I didn't know what state I was in, what town I was in,

but I know where I was.

I had been there before.

And there wasn't anybody around again until the middle of the night.

And this time, there wasn't any seat to reach under.

So I had to wait until somebody came the next day, which they eventually did.

And it happened to be the state trooper who had captured me.

Now, he thought this was rather funny.

He said I'd been driving down Highway 66 on the wrong side of the street, scattering traffic like pigeons.

And when he dropped in behind me, I thought it was a great joke, and I really took off.

And he said he had a little difficulty capturing me.

But he got me all right.

Well, to make a long story short, I bought my way out of that and went on home.

I remember getting home.

I remember my family trying to talk with me.

My dad and mother were both pretty old, even at that time.

And they couldn't even talk with me because I was too drunk to talk.

And I broke the hearts of the whole bunch of them.

I visited them all.

You do these things upright, you know.

And I'm related to everybody in that part of the country.

And I visited all of them.

They tell me.

Eventually, I came on back to the coast and went to bed to finish my drunk.

I finished all my drunks in bed the last ten years that I drank.

I never quit drinking until I couldn't even roll out of bed to see if I had any more liquor in the house.

When that time came, I had to quit.

And that time came, and I quit.

And maybe 24 or 36 hours after my last drink,

I was able to go to the kitchen after a glass of buttermilk, which I did.

Mrs. C. and Dick were sitting in the living room.

They heard me let out a beller and heard me hit the floor.

And they came running out there expecting to find me in an alcoholic convulsion.

But I wasn't convulsing.

I had used up all of my alcoholic convulsions.

And I was just lying there on the kitchen floor as peaceful as anybody ever saw.

I wasn't doing nothing.

They tell me I was a peculiar color.

I was blue.

And they couldn't wake me up.

Now, as serious as this is, it tickles the hell out of me.

How many, many times did I come off a drunk

to discover that everybody that knew me were looking for me?

Ninety percent of them just to tell me they never wanted to see me again.

Why in the hell didn't they leave us alone?

But they've got to ferret us out and tell us they never want to see us again.

And I'm quite sure my wife and kids had been praying for me to die for at least five years.

And they came out in the kitchen and found me dead.

And they got all exercised and called the oxygen squad at Beverly Hills Receiving Hospital.

And they came down and I think they woke me up.

I remember what happened after they brought me to.

There was a young doctor with them and he told me that to all intents and purposes I'd been dead.

That they'd had a very tough time bringing me around.

It was their opinion, said he, that nobody would ever bring me back again under those circumstances.

And he told me very seriously if he were me he wouldn't do that anymore.

I got the impression that they were getting it.

Maybe another 36 hours went by and I was able to get the old dirty bathrobe on

and start walking up and down the living room floor.

You see, I never knew that there was such a thing as a drying out place.

The only way I ever knew to sober up was to die until I could get well.

And I did it mainly walking.

So here I am with the old bathrobe on walking up and down the living room floor.

Mrs. C was standing over by the fireplace.

We had a corner fireplace in the Beverly Hills house.

She was standing over there and I was walking away from her.

And she said to me, Chuck, don't you think you might get a little help if you'd read the book Alcoholics Anonymous.

She might as well hit me over the head with a ball bat.

I turned on her and I said, you, my very own wife, suggesting that I read a book written by a bunch of drunks.

I, who have read all the good books by the good authors, and you want why, says you wound me deeply.

I'd just been dead 48 hours before and she wounded me deeply.

And I polished her off completely by saying, and besides, I can write a better book than that myself.

Now at that particular time I had been drinking for 25 years.

And this was only 90 days before I came crawling into this society of ours.

If the entire membership of Alcoholics Anonymous, which at that time was supposed to be 50,000,

had have called on me just 90 days before I came in here,

I would have agreed with them that I was worth saving.

I would have told them that I was very happy that they had found a way to take care of their problem.

And then I would have invited them off my property,

telling them that I would take care of my own problem, you know.

We're a peculiar breed of cats.

We can't hear till we can hear, and we can't see till we can see.

And this is an awfully good thing to know when we're trying to carry the message.

Because we feel so much so often that we should be able to, you know, make somebody hear.

But we can't hear till we can hear, and we can't see till we can see.

And how long it takes, it takes, and what it takes, it takes.

So you see why that line is in chapter 3.

It's impossible. God can't even help us until we recognize the need for help.

The second condition for sobriety is in chapter 5, but it too comes before the 12 steps.

It says if you've decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it,

any length to get it, then you're ready to take certain steps.

Now that means that sobriety must come first.

And I am one who believes that unless and or until sobriety comes first, we can't have it.

And unless it remains first, we cannot keep it.

Because otherwise, no alcoholic is going to take step one.

These conditions have to come before step one.

There isn't an alcoholic, I think, on earth that can walk up to step one and take it cold without a little preparation.

So I think that one of two things has to happen to us if we be alcoholic.

Either we have to drink the last dregs out of the bottom of the cup, and that's the way it happened to me,

or we have to come to see that there's nothing ahead of us but permanent insanity or an alcoholic death.

Otherwise, we will not fulfill the conditions.

Because step one is a twofold admission of defeat.

We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol, physical, that our lives had become unmanageable, mental.

We've lost the battle twice over.

And no alcoholic is going to make that admission if there's any way that he can keep from it.

A twofold admission of defeat.

The second step is worse than the first, because it's a left-handed admission that we're insane.

We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

There is an implication here.

It isn't necessary to restore a sane person to sanity.

So if we need to be restored to sanity, we're nuts.

So number one, we've lost the battle of life twice over.

Number two, we're nutty as a fruitcake.

Now that's pretty fast going for an alkie, isn't it?

But number three is worse than both of those put together.

Number three, we have to give up the keys.

Now the only way anybody ever could get my keys was to wait till I passed out.

I had come out of the pub at three o'clock in the morning with my wife or yours.

And we'd head for the parking lot and she'd say, honey, give me the keys, I'll drive.

And you'd say, whose car?

Whose car are you going to drive? This is my car.

If you're going with me, get in.

You might be there at daylight, you ain't gone no place, but you still got the keys.

Step three says we made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God.

What a thing to have in there, right there in the third spot.

We've made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God.

Did it ever occur to you that if we've turned our will and our lives over to the care of God,

there is no further room for self-concern?

Did it ever occur to you?

Self-concern has no further place in our lives.

Because self-concern simply means this, that we say to this higher power,

look, dad, I don't believe you're quite as familiar with this problem as I am.

I got to get you a little help on this.

In Australia, Australia, they have aye-aye in Australia.

Drink Thai down there instead of coffee.

But in Australia, they say the measure of your anxiety is the measure of your distance from God.

Isn't that fantastic?

It's beautiful.

You know, if I had asked this audience how many of you believe in God, maybe 97% of you would say I do.

But if I had asked you how many of you trust God, I might get a different answer.

Now, I'm belaboring this a little bit because I am thoroughly convinced that this is absolutely necessary.

If you and I could have gotten out of this jug alone, we would not be members of this leper colony.

No.

This is a pretty good-sized audience. I wouldn't believe it if I wasn't looking at you.

But I bet you there's not one alcoholic in this room that analyzed himself and decided to turn himself in.

Alcoholics Anonymous.

That isn't the way it happens.

This is the port of last call.

We made a decision to turn our wilder lives over to the care of God.

The next step is worse, of course, than all three of them.

It says we made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Now, you're looking at the guy that inventoried everybody that he ever knew and many people that were just walking by.

This is a little different. I'm supposed to take an inventory of me.

We made a decision to turn our wilder lives over to the care of God.

We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

A searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Now, if you think that's an ego builder, get a thick pad and a long pencil and start writing.

We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

That's a rough deal, and I'm one who believes that it must be written down.

That's the way I read my book, and that's the way I like it, and that's the way I did it.

And it's pretty good, that deal.

The fifth step, I suspect, is the worst step that anybody will ever have to take as long as they live.

That's a roughie.

After we've written this stuff down, it says we admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being.

Now, that's rough.

I admit to God and to myself, hidden out here behind the building.

And nobody knows but me and God, but he slipped another one in there.

We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

We have to lay this dirty linen out before a flesh-and-blood person.

Somebody's going to be walking the streets, knowing what's inside of me.

That's a killer.

If you have any ego left after that one, you ain't done it.

Start over.

It's wicked.

And after we have written this down and shared it, we have to become willing to give it away, and give it away.

Now, let's spend one little bit of time on this, because I find all over the country people who are continuously trying to work out their defects of character.

Continuously taking those fourth and fifth steps and trying to beat their brains out, doing away with their defects of character.

Many of them even get involved in trying to figure out the difference between defects of character and shortcomings.

I suspect there have been a few million hours of argument in our society about the difference between defects of character and shortcomings.

I asked our beloved Bill about this when he was still with us.

And he says, oh, I don't know.

He says, I think I probably just didn't want to end two lines following each other with the same words.

There's no difference, according to Bill.

Now, that's going to ruin a lot of good arguments, isn't it?

But I don't read my book that way.

I think that my book tells me that I'm to write this stuff down, share it, and then become willing to give it away, and give it away.

We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

Entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

Humbly ask him to remove our shortcomings.

Now, that don't sound to me like I'm supposed to do it.

If I could have done that, I would have done it without coming here.

It wouldn't have been necessary for me to come here if I could have done those things for myself.

I could not do them, and I am not inclined to try.

I'm a very simple guy, where it says become willing to give them away and give them away.

How do I know whether I've done it or not?

Very simple.

If I still got them, I didn't do it.

So you have to keep working on it until you ain't got them.

Because when you give them away, you haven't got them anymore.

Right?

There are certain parts of the country where they just keep inventorying and doing this thing all the time, practically.

I was riding from Shreveport to Dallas with a carload of people here not too long ago.

And one of these gals sitting in the car said to me,

I've had 64 inventories since January 1st.

And this was November.

And most of them had been written.

And she had been going to somebody that is sort of professional at hearing in voice.

Now wouldn't that be nice? I'm not speaking of you, Father.

This is all right.

He don't charge for them.

I don't think.

I don't think.

We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

Humbly ask him to remove a shortcoming.

Now we've got two more steps in the first nine.

Eight and nine.

Two of the most immediately rewarding steps in the whole bunch.

We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except one to do so would injure them or others.

Now if you haven't done these things, do them quick.

The weight of the world slips off your back when you do these two steps.

They're fantastic.

And I've got to tell you a little story about it.

Some years back I got a call on a Friday night from a guy in Whittier.

And he says, Chuck, I'm sitting here with a six gun in my lap, and I'm going to blow my brains out.

But he says, Jim told me not to shoot myself until I'd talk to you.

And I said, what have you got to say?

And I said, well, you called me on a bad night.

I said, I'm talking tonight, tomorrow night, and Sunday night.

But Monday night's open.

If you want to see me, come down Monday night, and if you don't, go ahead and blow your brains out.

Seven-thirty Monday, the doorbell rang.

And here he was.

And at two-thirty the next morning, we were right where we are now.

Steps eight and nine.

Now this chap not only was alcoholic, but he was a compulsive gambler.

And he had lost considerable money that he didn't have to professional gamblers.

And here in the middle of the early morning, I'm telling him, now here's what you've got to do.

You've got to go to these people, and you've got to tell them that you've found a way of life

that might let you live one day at a time for the rest of your life without drinking.

That you're an alcoholic.

You're not the big shot that you would have had them believe.

That you admit to debt.

And that you'll pay them as quickly as you can, but you ain't got no money.

Well, he says, Chuck, I can't do that, they'd kill me.

And I says, so what? You won't have suicide on your mind.

And the old boy started laughing.

And he hasn't quit yet.

And he's been walking the streets since that night a perfectly free man.

And he don't owe anybody anything.

These are two beautiful steps.

The weight of the world goes off our back when we do it as honestly as we know how.

Now that's nine steps.

And anybody that will take those nine steps as honestly as they know how

will be surrendered at this point.

That's what the first nine steps are for.

To squeeze us out of ourselves.

To get rid of that damned ego

that has ridden us like a cowboy for a lifetime.

I guess the one question I get more than any other

is how do you surrender?

And that's the way to surrender.

To honestly apply these first nine steps to ourselves.

It's just like putting your head in the vice and every time you come to a step

somebody takes a crank on the vice.

It squeezes us right out of ourselves those first nine steps.

And we get to ten we are surrendered and ten keeps us level.

We continue to take personal inventory and when we're wrong promptly admitted it.

This is a beautiful step to me.

Up until I got here it was impossible for me to say I don't know.

I couldn't anymore say I don't know than I could fly.

I always answered when I was asked.

You could have asked me how to

well let's just take the Einstein theory.

I'd explain that to you.

Right now I wouldn't have hesitated.

If you'd asked me how God created the world I'd have told you that too.

And I'd have probably said now on the third day we did thus and so.

I simply couldn't say I don't know.

But now it's one of the easiest things I say I don't know.

If I don't know I don't know.

And I say it and I did it in business for the last 25 years I was in business.

Which is brand new for me and it's an awful easy way to live.

And the next thing is I was wrong.

I'm still married to the lady that was divorcing me 27 years ago.

Come the 24th of June if we live that long

we will have been together for 48 years.

And that's absolutely indecent in California.

Live with one woman for 48 years.

And I often find myself now saying to my wife my very own wife.

Look honey I was wrong.

I would have sworn I was right but I was dead wrong.

You were right all the time.

Isn't that awful?

To a woman you've been married to for 48 years.

But it makes life awful easy.

You don't have to be bothered about it.

I don't know I was wrong.

That's the good part of step 10 I think.

Step 11 I wouldn't be here if it weren't for step 11.

I would have been dead 27 years if it weren't for step 11.

Because you see I can't run my life.

I can't run my wife.

I can't run my kids.

I can't run my business.

I can't run anything at all.

And I know it.

And again this is one of the easiest things I say.

I can't run nothing.

I don't need to because I've got step 11.

I have lived in total expectancy of guidance and direction for 27 years.

And I get it.

And you might say to me how do you know?

I have the simplest little yardstick in the world on this too.

I never had it so good.

This is the only easy life I've ever known.

The only good life that's ever been mine in my entire lifetime.

Because I live in total expectancy of guidance and direction.

And this is very simple to me again.

I get up in the morning and I say look dad I'm reporting for duty.

Now I'm going to move it around.

I'm going to do the best I can with what I got today.

And all I want out of you is a little guidance and direction and the power to carry it out.

Sure thank you and I go about my business.

In total expectancy of guidance and direction.

You know it's interesting to me.

Because I was a problem solver.

I attempted to solve problems for 43 years.

I analyzed myself 10 years before I came to this program.

Came up with the conclusion that this was a personal weakness.

And the only way I could get rid of it was to beat it.

It never occurred to me that total abstinence was the way to do it.

I figured that any weakling could quit drinking.

But it took a pretty good man to meet this thing head on and beat it.

And I worked on my problem for the next 10 years.

The harder I worked the worse it got and the worse it got the harder I worked.

The farther backwards I went the more obsessed I was with the necessity to win.

I was saying to myself 5 years after everybody quit listening to me I'll beat this thing if it's the last thing I ever do.

And it came that close to being the last thing I ever did.

Nothing happened to that problem until I took my eyes off the problem and started looking at and trying to live in the answer.

And the problem disappeared.

And today if I find myself bound up in a problem.

And sometimes it's a subconscious thing and you get all tied in a knot over some problem.

And I catch myself at it and I give that away too.

I say look dad I'm beating my brains out here trying to get an answer to this thing and I don't know the answer and you do.

Soon as you get ready to give it to me I'll be glad to have it.

Sure thank you.

And I forget it. I dump it and don't pick it up again.

And in short order I either find that it wasn't a problem in the first place or I have the answer to it.

And again this is an easy way to live.

It works with me.

I can't solve a problem.

Can't run anything.

But I have step 11 and don't need to.

Now that gives us one more step.

Step 12.

Step 11.

Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood it.

Praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry it out.

Step 12.

Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these first 11 steps.

We tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all of our affairs.

Now this is a lifetime job.

It's spelled out for us.

I'm one who believes that nobody can honestly take the first 11 steps and not have a spiritual awakening.

I think many of us don't recognize it for what it is until sometime later.

But I don't believe that we can honestly take them without having a spiritual awakening.

And then our job from then on is to carry this message to the alcoholic who still suffers and practice these principles in all of our affairs one day at a time.

To the best of our ability.

A lifetime action pattern.

Now this is all I've done for 27 years.

It's all I've done.

Nothing else.

I didn't come to this program to get answers to a lot of related disorders.

Oh, I wish I hadn't said that.

If there's anything that I dislike, it's related disorders.

I've got to tell you a little about this.

I had flu shortly after Christmas.

And I started in Siberia and came over to Russia, to Moscow, and then to London, and then Asiatic, and then Hong Kong.

I think I had them all.

And it was real rough.

And I never, I don't get sick.

First place, I don't believe in it.

Give me some water.

And the second place, I just don't get sick.

But I got pretty sick.

And when I got well enough, I started getting out into my big chair there in the living room and looking out over that terrific view of mine.