Chris S. from New Vernon, NJ talking the chapter Bill's Story at a Big Book study in Winston-Salem, NC

It's really good to be here. I love this. This, this is a clubhouse. Is that what this is?

This is absolutely phenomenal. A group of Alcoholics this size and a place like this. I'm really enjoying myself in North Carolina and you know, I want to

thank everybody for being so welcoming to me. When I came down here

the last couple of weeks. We did like a little bit of an intro. You know, we, we talked, we talked about a few things

doctor's opinion last week, this week. What I'd like to do is talk a little bit about about Bills story

now just just to qualify a little bit about my knowledge of, of Bill Wilson. And I became very, very interested in Alcoholics Anonymous history and especially the cofounders and the early groups. And what was going on in the first say decade

of the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous was very, very interesting for me. I truly believe that my life had been saved because of AA, the fellowship and the recovery principles. I really believe that. So, so it interested me to see where this came from

and I paid attention for several years at least. I paid real strict attention to some of the historical studies that were going on. There's been a number of books written about Bill Wilson. There's probably at least half a dozen that that you know, are are easily available. And I've read all those. There's some conference approved history

that I've certainly read and then there's some non conference approved history that's at that's out there. And I find the non conference approved history very, very interesting.

The more you you compare the two, the conference approved from the non conference approved, the more you see that, you know, they're telling you,

they're telling you the good stuff in the conference approved literature. And you know, there's some there's there's some dark sides of of a a history too. And I, for one, you know, have no problem with with our cofounders not being Saints. It actually makes me feel a little bit more comfortable being an alcoholic synonymous to know to know that, you know, are are some of some of the earlier

founders of Alcoholics Anonymous had had had feet of clay. Because,

you know, I, I don't know about anybody else. I was talking about this with somebody before the meeting. You know, I, I didn't come in here to be perfect. And, you know, I don't even know that I like perfect people.

Think about it. Do you know anybody that's perfect? You know, you don't even want to be around some somebody. Like sometimes it's our imperfections that make us lovable, you know, and, and certainly I think that's the that's the way it is with my perception of

the earlier, you know, the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, now Bill Wilson, basically Bill Wilson story was that he was a war, War One that he came back from World War One. He he moved to New York City and, you know, he went to law school. He was going to be a lawyer, but this is very alcoholic. He gets right to the last exam

and stops and decides the law is not for me.

Is anybody else in here relate to, you know, changing your mind, you know, right. You know, like, like you. Well, yeah, you know, I went to school for four years, but you know that last week. Yeah. I mean that that's so perfectly alcoholic to to change his mind like that.

He was meeting people from Wall Street.

I, I spent the 1st 20 years of my sobriety less than an hour away from Manhattan. I've sponsored a lot of people who were money managers in New York City, you know, and I understand, I understand the, the mentality and the, the climate pretty well from being that close to it. There are good times in the financial industries and there are bad times in the financial industries. We're, we're going through a bad time right now.

I'd say 1/3 of the money managers in Manhattan have been laid off, downsized, pushed out. And it's a really, it's a downtime. But during up times, idiots can make a fortune. You know what I mean? You can be, you can be dumb as a bag of hammers and you can make $1,000,000

during the good times. And Bill kind of landed in Manhattan during one of the good times. There was money moving around and you know, he got caught up in this and, and he, you know, he, he loved to do a lot of his business in the bars. Does that ring a bell with anybody? You don't know about you, but I,

I got a lot of business stuff not really done but thought about in the bar. I started a lot of businesses, you know, sitting on the bar stool that I never started. I came up with a lot of great ideas on the bar stool that I never implemented. You know, that's kind of the way it was with with Bill, but he came up with a couple

ways to part you with your money. And one of them was that he would tell you about really good stock deals. And if you were to give him the money, he would invest it for you, pretty much guaranteeing you're going to make a lot of money and he'll take a percentage of what you what you make. He was like he was a stock speculator

and during good times, you know, 9 stocks out of 10 were going up in value. So he was he was making some decent money.

Now that's OK during a good time,

but his drinking was catching up with him. I'll read, I'll read a little bit, a little bit out of the story, the things that I relate to. There's a Bills story exercise that I'd like to share with everybody tonight. One of my, one of my spiritual advisors had me do this and I, I got a lot of value out of it.

The 1st 8 pages of Bill's story is basically, you know what it was like, what his drinking was like. So what you do is you highlight anything in the 1st 8 pages that you relate to as far as drinking, thinking or behavior. This is a Bill story exercise,

and it's a way of identifying a little bit with Bill. When I first read Bill's story, I read it in a treatment center

and the first thing I thought was what a loser. You know what any like the guy's wife is working. It doesn't even look like he's back to work yet. You know, I mean, I was reading, I was reading this with, you know, very prejudice eyes. I didn't know how to read this story,

what Bills story really is. And one of the reasons why I think it's in the beginning of the book is it's a beautiful example of a 12 step call in print. It talks about what it's like, what happened and what it's like today in a very well balanced way. And it's a beautiful example of what they would do when they would do 12 step calls at the hospitals and stuff. They would tell their story in much the same way

Bill's story is laid out. So anyway, you highlight anything that you personally relate to from your own experience drinking, thinking, behavior in the 1st 8 pages. The 2nd 8 pages you look at what Bill did to recover. It's pretty specific, like what he did to recover,

and you highlight anything that you have resistance to. This is a good first step exercise. It's a good

identification exercise. But anyway, I'm going to I'm going to read just bits and pieces from this. This is on page three. My drinking assumed more serious proportions, continuing all day and almost every night. The complaints of my friends terminated in a row and I became a lone wolf. There were many unhappy scenes in our sumptuous apartment. There have been no real infidelity for loyalty to my wife. Health at times by extreme drunkenness kept me out of those scrapes.

Most of the stuff in this book is true.

You know, most of the statements that Bill makes are are accurate. I have an issue with this one, I think. I think, I think maybe extreme drunkenness kept them out of some scrapes. When he got sober it was a whole different a whole different ball game unfortunately.

Oh liquor cease to be a luxury. It became a necessity. Bathtub gin. 2 bottles a day and often three got to be routine. Does anybody know what bathtub gin is?

It's basically, it's, it's basically grain alcohol with distilled water. And

what the heck did they put in it?

God, I forget. It's it's like pot. It's like pine needles,

pine salt. Anyway, it's it's got awful stuff. It it will take it will take it'll take the the the tar up the bumpers of your car, that stuff. But it,

you know, this is during prohibition and stuff and you could get you could get alcohol, you could get straight alcohol for different purposes. It's just kind of tough to drink the straight alcohol. So he'd make the best to make the bathtub Jen

come. Sometimes a small deal would net me a few $100 and I would pay my bills at the bars and the delicatessens. This went on endlessly and I began to waken very early in the morning, shaking violently. A Tumblr full of gin followed by half a dozen bottles of beer would be required if I was to eat any breakfast. Now again in this book, in this book you you hear about very low bottom Alcoholics. Bill was a real low bottom alcoholic and most of the 1st 100 were really low bottom

Alcoholics and low bottom alcoholic. You know what I mean by that is they went down the scale really far. They had lost practically all power, choice and control over over the drink and they were really physically addicted and they would get so drunk that they would go into withdrawals. Only about 15% of Alcoholics experience delirium tremens like build experienced. Only about 15% get that bad because there is a progression

alcoholism. Most, most of these first 100 were people who had experienced the delirium tremens because he was pulling them out of hospitals and they were in the hospitals to detox.

So another warning, if you're an alcoholic that's gotten to the point where you experience this really violent withdrawal, the delirium tremens, understand that you need to be medically detoxed because 15% of the people that experience

die from them. So you don't want to be one of those, one of those statistics.

Now it talks about things to get worse, things that get worse and worse and worse. I don't know that I was,

I was as low bottom and alcoholic as Bill. Now I needed to be medically detoxed, but that was relatively late. That was in the last several years of my drinking. I think Bill went through about 10 years of drinking where he was experiencing the DTS. That's that's a horrific, horrific

on on one's physical condition. Now it says here I woke up. This had to be stopped. I saw I could not take so much as one drink. I was through forever. This happened to Bill all the time. He was through forever. He saw that the first drink would get him drunk.

OK, that slogan, that advice, that wisdom teaching that you hear in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous is very, very true. But it is not a defense against getting drunk. Knowing that you shouldn't get drunk is not a defense against getting drunk. Knowing that the first drink will get you drunk is not a defense against taking that first drink and getting drunk. Unfortunately, it's one of the most misunderstood parts of alcoholism. So many people think we're making a conscious

to get drunk one more time. We even think it, but it's not true, okay? It's an obsession. An obsession is a thought that overrides all other thoughts. It goes to the front of the line and there's nothing weak and really say about it until we have what's known as a spiritual awakening, a personality change sufficient to overcome alcoholism that that that complete rearrange

of ideas, thoughts and attitudes that they talk about in this book.

So Bill is learning this hard lesson on step one. He is deciding not to drink. He's writing, he's writing pledges in his Bible. He's he's pledging to his wonderful wife, Lois. Lois, I swear on, you know, on, on my, you know, on my soul,

I will never do this again. I'm finished for good. You can see his Bible. If you go up to stepping stones in the Wilson house, you'll, you'll see a copy of the Bible with, you know, these promises in there. But they never, they never, they never were promises that he could keep. He couldn't keep them because he didn't have the power,

the choice or control over whether he put alcohol back in his body again, because he was in a place called powerless. And he's learning this lesson in his story here. Shortly afterward, I came home drunk. There had been no fight. Where had been my high resolve?

I simply didn't know. It hadn't even come to mind Someone had pushed a drink my way and I had taken it. Was I crazy? I began to wonder. For such an appalling lack of perspective, seem near being just that.

You know, I've I've listened to a lot of those and tapes in his tapes, he tells his story. It was called the bedtime story. Everybody joked about Bill. You know, whenever Bill would show up in an AA meeting that he normally didn't go to everybody go Bill, Bill tell the bedtime story and they all wanted him to tell the story of the foundation of AA and meeting Abby. And you know the whole thing and and it was called the bedtime story because he it toward the end of, you know, end of Bill's life, it would

about 2 1/2 hours to tell it and everybody be asleep by the end.

Listen, every word out of his mouth was phenomenal, but he talked like this.

Well, you know my name is Bill and he just would put you to sleep.

Here we go the remorse, horror and hopelessness of the next morning are unforgettable. You know this is when this is one of the last drunks. The courage to do battle was not there. My brain raced uncontrollably and there was a terrible sense of impending calamity. Anybody ever have that sense of impending calamity choosing because

is impending? You know, if you drank anything like me,

I hardly dared cross the street lest I collapse and be run down by an early morning truck. For it was scarcely he was afraid to cross the street. He was in such, such delirium. And all that place supplied me with a dozen glasses of ale. My reading nerves were stilled at last. And then he talked about how the stock market crashed. OK, he's in the middle of the stock market now. He went from maybe putting a deal together that would net him a couple of $100 every few months

to nothing.

His literally the last several years, his wife worked in a department store making maybe 10 bucks a week or whatever you, you made back then and that kind of kept them going.

All right, He's he's, he's going in and out of town's hospital and he, he's learning some stuff he's getting involved with hydrotherapy and mild exercise and and belladonna treatments and all this stuff in towns hospital. But

these learnings and things from from from Doctor Silkworth

and here he says it relieved me somewhat to learn that an alcoholic's the will is amazingly weakened when it comes to combating liquor, though it often remains strong in other respects. This again, is that this is the thing that so many people misunderstand. People in Alcoholics Anonymous misunderstand it, Especially in the treatment industry for addiction treatment, they misunderstand it.

Counselors that counsel you for alcoholism misunderstand it. Certainly our families and neighbors and everybody misunderstand it.

They don't understand that there's a that this is a lack of power, choice and control. It's very, very difficult to understand powerlessness unless you have experienced it. If you've personally experienced it, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, you don't.

And a lot of times in a A, there are people who've experienced this desperate hopelessness.

I absolutely want to stop drinking. I'll do anything to stop drink. I'll sign myself into treatment. You know, I'll take the pledge. I'll go back to the AA group. I'll do whatever I need to do. I absolutely want to separate from booze. And you find you can't. Once you've experienced that, you know what powerless means. There, there are, there are people who treat us for alcoholism. There are people who counsel us for alcoholism.

There are sponsors who sponsor us in a a who don't understand

powerlessness experientially, and they expect you to just toe the line. You know, how could you have drank on me? You know what I mean? You know what I mean? How could you have not?

I, you know, I work,

I work, I work with a lot of treatment centers. It's one of the things that I do for a living, and I remember

sending this, I remember sending somebody to this treatment center and the individual drank while in treatment and got thrown out. Now think about this, OK, think about this for a minute. I'm sending somebody who is powerless over alcohol to a treatment center that's going to charge them 15 grand a month to treat their alcoholism.

And because they manifest the exact symptom I'm asking this treatment center to to treat them for,

they get thrown out.

Think about that. If you were going to a cancer, you're going to keep to cancer treatment and your cancer flared back up. What do you think you'd do if they said, oh, your cancers back, you're going to mess with our numbers, you got to go. You know what I mean?

So I got back a hold with the streamers and I go, what the hell is the matter with you?

You want me to send you people that are, well, you know what I mean? Is that what you want? You want you want me to send you Alcoholics that aren't drinking anymore? I thought you were going to treat this guy

and that they, would they, they, they didn't understand what I was saying. But he drank.

Of course he drank. He's an alcoholic.

Maybe I'll, maybe I'll just send you, you know, disco drunks from now on. You know what I mean? God,

my incredible behavior in the face of a desperate desire to stop was explained.

Understanding myself now, I fared forth in high hope. OK, It was now explained to him that he's got over his willpower. Doesn't work really well with alcohol. So now, now, like a lot of newcomers or a lot of people that you sponsor early on, they're like, well, thanks for the information.

I got it. Now you know I'm powerless. OK, Now that I know I'm powerless, I won't drink.

That didn't how it works.

No one is the booby prize in a you know what I mean? The only thing that's going to help you is a spiritual recovery process that will lead to a complete transformation in your personality and spiritual condition. So again, knowing that the first drink will get you drunk and knowing that you're powerless over alcohol is not a defense against

the next drink. And Bill finds that out. It was not for the frightful day came when I drank once more

and then it was really, really bad.

Bill basically knew that he was going to die soon. Most of the time at towns hospital. They they were it says that they're loath to tell you the truth, like you're a hopeless alcoholic and you're going to you're going to drink yourself to death. So, you know, pick out a coffin, make sure that the, make sure, you know, make sure that the life insurance is paid up and, you know,

good luck, You know, I mean, that's a lot of times the, the, what you, what you would get from towns. So he was at that point where he could tell by the looks of the doctors that, you know, he was one of those guys that just wasn't gonna make it. Now, the great thing about Bill was, you know, he, he, he just didn't want to give up. He didn't want to give up. He, he, he was hanging on to life. He was looking. He, you know, he desperately wanted to find a solution.

Now it says in here. Then came the insidious sincerity of the first drink on Armistice Day. Here's what happened with Bill on Armistice Day. I've heard this from his story on tape.

He had been sober a while, but one of the last drunks just scared the hell out of him. And like some of us, we can say sober for a period of time, a couple of months, you know, six months, sometimes a year, sometimes more. Well, he was on like a two-month, two months sober, sober period where he just was so scared that he was able to stay away from those. And he decided that there was no work, but, you know, he was, he was going to go play golf.

So he went down to the golf course and he went into a bar. He wasn't going to have a drink

and he sat in that sat in the bar and he's going to have going to have some food or something. And he chats up the bartender and he starts telling the bartender about his story. He goes, you know, you know, bartender, I'm an alcoholic and let me tell you a little bit about my life. And he tells him a little bit about his story about how awful it was about how he would go through these horrific detoxes about the suffering and the and the pain that he would go through and his and how he couldn't get away, couldn't separate

from this alcohol and out just tore him the hell. And you know, he was explaining what the times that he's been in treatment and all this and you know how horrible it is. And the bartenders like looking at him like, whoa, that's really bad. And then Bill goes double bourbon

and the bark, and the bartender looked at it, looked at him like, are you crazy? After what you just told me, you're going to put alcohol back in your body. And Bill goes, yeah, I guess I'm crazy.

Make that a triple, you know? And he started drinking. Now think about that. Think about that. He was very, very aware of what alcohol did to him. He kept his memory green. He was sharing his story with a bartender about how awful it was. And at the end of that story, he ordered a triple bourbon.

Now, if that isn't an example of powerlessness, I don't know what is. You know, if, if we if we can't make a decision to stay away from booze and have that mean anything, that's what a hopeless alcoholic is. And that's where Bill Wilson was at,

at this point in time.

Umm, now that's the 1st 8 pages. Near the end of that bleak November, I sat drinking in my kitchen. With a certain satisfaction, I reflected that there was enough gin concealed about the house to carry me through that night. And the next day my wife was at work. I wondered whether I dared hide a full bottle of gin there. The head of the bed. I would need it before daylight. This guy had to drink pretty much around the clock because he would go into withdrawals.

All of a sudden the telephone rang and it's Ebby Thatcher,

Abby. Abby was exposed to the Oscar group through Roland Hazard. And this guy, Shep Cornell, he had a choice of going to jail or going with the Oxford Group, or so he said. I'll go to I'll go with the Oxford Groupers. And I talked a little bit about the Oxford Group over the last couple weeks,

an evangelical Christian organization where where they got you really busy that they were strong fellowship, they dragged you in and every single night they had something for you to do. And there was a lot of spiritual activity. There was a lot of personal work that you did with other Oxford Group members that brought about spiritual growth.

And if you participated in this at a certain level, what it did was it apparently

offered you protection from the first drink. It changed you in such a fundamental way that you now had access to the power, the choice and the control that you didn't have if you didn't participate in the Oxford Group. So all of a sudden, Abby Thatcher shows up. Bill and Ebby had been drinking Buddy's

he basically he basically sits down and he does a 12 step number on Bill. Now Bill is drinking. He's not really happy about, you know, about this religious thing, you know, because he'd be Debbie basically says to him, Bill, I got religion. I don't know about anybody else, but but that, that wasn't my, my favorite

3 words. You know, when I was drinking, if somebody came by, you know, I've got religion. Well, I've got the door for you, you know, you know, it's basically what, what, what I, what I would say. But, but anyway, you know, they were all buddies. So, so Bill, Bill let him, Bill let him rant on,

but he started to see, he started the glimpse a little bit of the freedom, a little bit of the spiritual condition of his buddy. Hey, Evie was a worse drunk than Bill was at certain periods of time. And Bill is looking at the sky. And you know how when the lights are on with somebody like, like if you sponsor, you know, you'll get somebody through a fist step or they'll, they'll just they'll go out and they'll do a whole bunch of amends. And all of a sudden, the lights on, you know, there's somebody home upstairs for the first time in a very long time.

Well, that's what that's what Bill was. Bill was looking at Ebby and he's saying, you know, this guy's different man. This guy's healed.

There's something really going on. He's got self-confidence. He looks really healthy. You know, he, there's no manifestation of fear or, or, or uncomfortability in this guy. And that caught his attention. That made him wonder what the heck was going on now.

Now Bill drank again. But Abby had kind of placed himself into Bills life.

Remember this as Alcoholics Anonymous members in the early days. They went after people who they saw needed this it. You know, one of one of the things that you hear in a a lot that gets misunderstood is it's a program of attraction, not promotion. It's not.

Program of attraction, not promotion are public relations policy. Here's attraction, not promotion. We are very much about promotion, OK? We're supposed to be out there promoting the hell out of this thing. We're supposed to be going to the detoxes, the treatment centers, the rehabs, the insane asylums, the prisons

that we're supposed to be promoting this like crazy. Our public relations policy is attraction, not promotion.

So anyway, anyway, what happens was

he came to pass along his experience if I cared to have it. I was shocked, but interested. Certainly I was interested. I had to be, for I was hopeless,

he talks about. I had always believed in a power greater than myself. I had often pondered these things. I was not an atheist. OK, but what what he didn't believe is he didn't. He was agnostic.

Now I believe what the difference between an atheist and agnostic? This is my own personal opinion. An atheist is somebody that absolutely denies the existence of God. You know that you know this, this is science. You know, this is all a cosmic accident there. You know there's no God that's an atheist. And agnostic is somebody that doesn't know for sure. They can believe very much in a God.

They just they just don't have the knowledge

to be able to say absolutely for sure anything. And that's really what an agnostic is. AG meeting no gnosis meaning knowledge agnostic. Now Bill was an agnostic. He had had spiritual experiences before He had one in the Winchester Cathedral one time while while he was over in Europe during the war, he had had those feelings. We I think we've all had those feelings. It's a feeling of

connection

with the world at a deep level. You know, it's a spiritual experience. And he had had those and I think we've all had those. I had some of them when I was doing LSD. I don't know about anybody else, but, you know, just being right with the world, you know, and

wow. Anybody remember? Wow.

So, so you know, so he, he wasn't an atheist. He just didn't, he just did, you know, he didn't take absolutely for granted what the religious people were saying. He he couldn't buy into that. He couldn't buy into any of the party line, but he knew that something was going on now.

My friend sat before me and he made the point blank deck declaration that God had done for him what he could not do for himself. His human will had failed. Doctors had pronounced them incurable. Society was about to lock him up

now. Bill understood that at a deep level. Bill understood that lack of power, choice and control. And he knew Eddie was an alcoholic too. Now. Abby had found something. He had found power, choice and control and he had found it somehow. That's what got Bills attention. That's what that's what allowed

Bill to say. I think I want this thing. Tell me a little bit more. And as 12 steppers, that's what we need to do too. When we're talking with Alcoholics, when we're trying to draw Alcoholics in to the Alcoholics Anonymous process, you know, what we want to do is we want to identify with them so that they know we have felt and been where they are and we're not there anymore. You know, that's the best message that we can have as 12 steppers.

And that's what Eddie did with Bill.

Had this power originated in him, Obviously it did not. There have been no poor power in him than there wasn't me at that minute, and that was none at all. I saw that my friend was much more than inwardly reorganized. He was on a different footing. His roots grasped new soil

now. Still, Bill had a little bit of resistance. You understand that? Alcoholic resistance. I mean, you know, how many years did we suffer pretty much because of our resistance to this thing?

You know, nobody, nobody goes, hey, here's the number for AA in the phone book. I think I'll go in and, you know, do my best in there. I mean, that's just not what happens. We come in here fussing and and pushing and fighting and, and, you know, arguing. We're, you know, we're really not happy to be here.

That's really, that's really what happens with us.

So Bill is still a little bit, you know, this God thing. I understand the power. I understand there's some power. You have some power. But this God thing and Evie got mad. Now there's two stories. There's Bill story and you got to remember he's drinking bathtub gin. So you may not be remembering this really well. And then there's Evie's story. And I've heard, I've heard Abby's story. There's tapes of Abby telling this story and he tells a different story.

He tells the story that he got pissed off at Bill and started yelling at him. OK, OK.

You know, you know, you know, you know, you've got all these problems with God. Why don't you just make up your own conception of God? Make God. It's whatever the hell you want it to be. And and that's basically what he did. And that opened the door for Bill to be able to accept

a spiritual recovery process.

Now it talks in this book about what what's definitely going to defeat us. What What will defeat us is belligerent denial. What will defeat us is, is unreasoning prejudice. What will defeat us is an absolute refusal to have an open mind on spiritual matters. That will defeat us in Alcoholics Anonymous if we're an alcoholic. So there needs to be an open mind on these. What opened Bill's mind was the conception that he could make up

his own conception of God.

That statement him he heart. It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years. I stood in the sunlight at last.

It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a power greater than myself. Nothing more was required to make my beginning. And that's the way it is with us, too. I really believe that we just need to be willing. I saw that growth could start from that point upon a foundation of complete willingness. I might build what I saw, my friend. Thus, I was convinced that God is concerned with us humans when we want Him enough.

Now

I'm absolutely convinced. I've had spirit, I've had spiritual teachers who have ripped away every vestige of me thinking I've done this myself. You know, if I'm going up to get a, if I'm going up to get a shift and somebody yells out, how did you do it?

My first thought is I didn't, you know what I mean? Without the power of God, I, I would not be standing here sober. However, we need to cooperate. We need to participate in in our own recovery because there's certain things God will do and there's but there's but there's certain things that we have to turn ourselves will over.

The story, the story I like to tell about self will is this it goes back to adamant and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve are running around there, they're partying it up. There's food everywhere. They're running around naked. They're having an absolute blast. OK. And God just tells him, look, I just got one rule for you. This does a tree over there, a tree of self knowledge, a tree of self centeredness. And I don't want you to go near there because that's just going to blow your whole your whole world view up. And that's just going to be a really bad thing. So,

you know, I want you to enjoy paradise, so stay away from that tree. What happens? You know,

maybe Adam was an alcoholic. Who knows?

Wow, if God doesn't want me to have that, it's got to be really good, you know, so they eat of the apple. They both eat of the apple. Now God shows back up in the garden and sees them and they've covered themselves with fig leaves. They've got all kinds now they've now they've got self-centered fear and that you know, they have anxiety and and you know, they're, they're like all shy and

uncomfortable and God figures it out. He goes, shit, you ate it. You ate in the tree, didn't you? I told you not to do that. Now God loved them so much and he said, OK, if you want self will that much, you can have it. You know, you've shown yourself to want to, to be self-centered and to have self will.

That's fine, you can have that. But you can't stay in Eden. You can't stay in paradise. You gotta go E to Eden, to the land and nod. Anybody in here ever been to the land and nod?

You know what I'm talking about.

Yeah, you can do whatever you want in the land of Nod, but it gets it gets pretty bleak after a while, OK? You start drooling on yourself and you start calling people on the phone drunk and you start you start getting pilots up the DUI and being misunderstood by everybody. That's that's the land and not now.

Here's the thing about Alcoholics Anonymous, we can get back into paradise. We just have to come back and turn our self will in at the door and we need to now have a will to align ourselves with what God would have us be and what God would have us do

and we can get back into paradise. I think recovery is paradise. It's shown itself to be that for me

now, now, but this doesn't come easy. We are, we are a tough crowd. You know, we, we got some resistance. Yet you ever work with like newcomers? You know, I was working with, I was working, working with one, you know, really trying. If you do this, they'll, they'll be a good outcome. If you do this, it'll be a good outcome. If you do this will be a good outcome. Well, you know, I think I'll hook up with a chicken. Go cross country.

All right,

OK,

let me know how that works for you.

How how long are you sober? 84 days.

Okay,

maybe she's the one that really understands you.

Maybe she's Mrs. Wright, maybe she's God's will for you, you know? Maybe she's got relapse tattooed on her forehead.

It's the matter with you anyway.

OK, here is a great thing. This is page 13 and I want to go over this because it's so important and we miss this when we go over this. It's so important. At the hospital, I was separated from alcohol for the last time. Treatment seemed wise for I showed signs of delirium tremens. This is when they start shoving belladonna down his throat and some other, you know, some other psychoactive ingredients that helped with detox. Nowadays you get liver and you get Ativan and you get you get some, you get some decent, you know, detox medication. Back then, all they had was was

Donna, which is like a weed that you get like in the backyard that's like poisonous. So, you know, it was really a tough, it was really, really a tough detox. Basically, the belladonna was given to you so that you would vomit continuously. They thought, well, if they, if he vomits continuously, he'll get rid of all that poison in it. Yeah,

so for about 3 days, you know, wretching and vomiting. So you got under, you got to take in context what's what's going on where he was at

in treatment and treatment of Ebby came back and visited him says here, there, I humbly offer myself to God as I then understood him to do with me as he would. I placed myself unreservedly under his care and direction. I admitted for the first time that of myself, I was nothing

there without him. I was lost. I ruthlessly face the sin, my sins and became willing to have my newfound friend take them away. Root and branch. I've not had a drink since. Let's let's look at that. That really is a great surrender. That's a, that's a great first, second and third step. And it's also also a good six

7th step when you look at it, you know, being read, being facing your sins, facing your character defects and being willing to have God remove them. My schoolmate visited me, Abby Thatcher shows up and I fully acquainted him with my problems and deficiencies. This is a fifth step. This is a confessional well, the Oxford Group confessional process.

We made a list of people that I had heard her toward whom I felt resentment. I expressed my entire entire willingness to approach these individuals admitting my wrong. Never was I to be critical of them. I was to write all such matters to the utmost of my ability. This is him doing an 8 step list, preparing to when he leaves the hospital due a ninth step.

Now I'll tell you what, the treatment centers, most of them aren't even called treatment centers, they're called recovery centers. The places that I support really strongly personally out there that are that are taking us in for, for treatment of alcoholism.

Places I really support are the recovery centers that really try to do a lot of this step work with you. The good ones, the good ones, when you leave, you have a, you have a list or you have index cards with all of your amends and they are going to help you through the aftercare process. Go out and actually make direct amends

to the people you've harmed. This is right after treatment or the recovery process. Those are the places I support. They have the highest outcomes of any treatment centers, those recovery centers that get you to do that. Here's a statistic for you.

Five years after alcoholism treatment, 5% of the people are going to still be sober.

Five years after doing a fifth step, 60% of the people will still be sober. Think about that. Think about that. So I support the people who help you through this process. We a lot of times, yeah, we can. We can. We need some counseling. We need some therapy. We need to have a little bit of our head shrunk, you know, sure. We need to deal with our issues. We need to deal with some issues,

but the thing that keep, the thing that offers us protection from the next drink is the spiritual awakening. The spiritual awakening,

we have to work for that. It can't be taught to us. We can't pick it up in a lecture. You know, what we need to do is we need to work for it. And this is what Bill is doing and preparing to do on his on his detox bed in the hospital.

Think about that. He's gone through the first eight steps and he isn't even out of his detox bed.