Welcome to Sober Sunrise, a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience, strength, and hope from around the world. We bring you several new speakers weekly, so be sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at sober-rise.com.

Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. >> Hello everybody.

My name is Hilda and I am an alcoholic. >> Um, I'd like to welcome everybody to our 73rd uh, Alcoholics Anonymous birthday bash, I guess you would call it, uh, celebrating uh, AA's 73rd. I'm going to go ahead and introduce James.

He's going to be um he's going to be doing our traditions workshop today. James M. >> Okay.

All right. >> Thank you, Hilda. I'm James Morell.

I'm an alcoholic. >> As only by God's grace and the power of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous that I had my last drink July 11th of 1981. And >> I'm just absolutely thrilled about that period of sobriety.

For 9,835 days, I've had the best days of my life. I love this program. This program took a stumbling, mumbling, bumbling drunk, drugged me out of that cave that alcoholism had become.

You know that cave we all end up in. You know, drinking started out fun, hadn't it? Oh, it allowed you to be one of the guys and dance with the girls and get out there and be something that you won.

Spend money you didn't have to impress people you didn't like. But maybe your drinking like my drinking ended up in that cave of that dark dark cave of alcoholism, lonely and alone and unable to get out of my own kitchen. And and you brought me out of that.

You brought me into the light. You gave me some wonderful people to live my life with. Today we're celebrating the 73rd.

Uh God, I'm a little nervous. I'm always nervous when I start these talks. You know, my first sponsor, Ed Harding, the old goat.

Uh Joe Lanny, some some of y'all knew uh uh knew Ed. You know, he he called himself the old goat. Everybody called him the old goat.

It looked like an old goat. And I was telling him, uh, he he died when I was three and a half years sober. You know, that man not only taught me how to live, but he taught me how to die.

I want to tell you that there wasn't a happier man in the VA hospital as he was awaiting his end up there. He had a joke for everybody. The nurses would come by because he was constantly telling stories.

He taught me how to live and he taught me how to die. I've seen people die drunk and I've seen him die sober. And sober's so much better.

So much better. He went to the big meeting with with no fear and only gratitude in his heart for what this this program had given him. But I remember about a year before that I was telling Ed, I was I was having to make one of my one of my great talks.

I think I was the 15-minute speaker at in a group, you know, and I was saying, "Gosh, Ed, I'm so nervous. I'm so nervous before I speak. I'm just so nervous." Ed says, "Well, you know, James, Ed was a taper like me.

That's how I got into taping before he died. He told me to take over the taping." And uh uh and he died before I get him to change his mind. I said, "Hell, Ed, I don't know anything about Tabin.

I'm a lawyer." He says, "Ah, you'll learn." Uh so I said, "Ed, I'm I'm just so nervous before I speak." And Ed listened to all the great talks, you know, either in person or on tape. And uh he said, "Well, James, I've listened to a lot of the great speakers and I've talked to them. And the great speakers in Alcoholics Anonymous say that nervousness is a divine characteristic.

It's uh it's part of the spiritual energy that these great speakers feel. And I I'm starting to get puffed up and I'm thinking, "Ah, he's finally recognized my talent." And he kind of looked at me. He says, "But in your case, I think it's God just trying to shake the truth out of you." Oh, well, okay.

73rd AA birthday. 73rd. Aa 73 years old.

That's almost as old as Joe, isn't it? No, not not not nearly. Gosh, what an honor it is to be invited back to speak here at the Bayou Casian Group.

I spoke here the first time in 1990, and y'all must be a sick group of puppies because you keep inviting me back. Maybe you just didn't quite catch what I had to say. I don't know.

But I I love you and you always feed me so well. That meal was just wonderful. Wonderful food.

The kou and the white beans and a green bean casserole. potato salad, everything there was just Mexican dish, whatever it was. It's just wonderful.

But that's the kind of hospitality and fellowship, you know, you say, "Why why does somebody drive, you know, I'm going to drive 300 miles round trip today to talk talk to you folks? Why do I do that? Why do I do why are you sick puppies sitting out here on a Saturday afternoon on a on a beautiful summer's day when you could be out fishing, listening to me?" It's because we found something special here.

We found something special. I want to tell you what, I need this program more now than I did almost 27 years ago. Because I've got a lot more to lose.

This program has given me everything that I ever desired in life. Most of which I didn't know I desired when I got here. When I got here, it's given me something vastly more than merely being dry from alcohol.

Because I tried being dry from alcohol. I think I did it one time for seven weeks to impress my psychiatrist that I was not an alcoholic. And that's when I became convinced I wasn't an alcoholic because I went seven weeks without a drink and I became batshit crazy.

I mean, I was just nuts. And one night I finally picked up a rum and orange juice because I said, "You can't get drunk on rum and orange juice. Women drink rum and orange juice.

I'll have a rum and orange juice. That's not a that's not a man's drink. Anybody can drink a rum and orange juice.

I drank a rum and orange juice. Nothing happened." So, well, nothing happened. I better have another one.

Obviously, I was making too big a deal out of this. So, I had another one. Had another one.

Went into a blackout. Few hours later, I'm startled out of my blackout by a fire alarm. I'm at my house.

The house is burning down around me. And uh so my conclusion out of that, out of coming out of that and burning my house down was that it's not safe to not drink because you get out of practice. So that's the kind of alcoholic that's talking to you today.

That's that's the kind of mental processes that uh going to be up here. But I want to talk to you a little bit today about Alcoholics Anonymous and about where we came from. I think it's a lot the story of AA is a lot more interesting than James's story.

And let me set the stage by uh telling you that uh you know I'm in Bro Bridge, Louisiana now. Hurricane Katrina blew me out of New Orleans, refugee in Lafayette for two and a half years and my wonderful daughter and son-in-law uh helped me get a home on the banks of the Bayutesh. But I grew up on the banks of the Tesh in New Iberia.

Graduated Catholic High there back in 1960. And a year ago, we had a class reunion. And there were 30 of us that graduated in 1960.

Amazingly enough, were all still alive. And 17 showed up for this this reunion. 17 showed up.

Four and away the most successful guy from an economic standpoint in the in the class. And and the class did pretty good. You know, we've got uh I mean, we've got a district judge there.

We've got a retired naval pilot, a commander in the Navy. Interestingly enough, the uh current district judge and the retired commander in the Navy and I all spent one night in jail together when we were 17. Uh we got liquored up on vodka and started throwing cherry bombs at this guy's house because he hadn't invited us to his party.

And the guy who's currently the district judge's father was the sheriff and he was not amused. And he packed us all into the little drunk tank. It was a one-man cell.

He put all three of us in there, left the window open. It was a cold December night. One of those cold fronts had come through and we started to sober up and then we started to get sick and then we got sick all over each other all night long.

And in the morning they came and let us out in a a sadder group of guys you had never seen in your life. Well, you know, if drinking made you an alcoholic, all three of us should have been alcoholics. If just simply drinking, cuz everybody at Catholic High drank.

All the people I grew up with drank. All the people I went to LSU with drank. But they got out and they're like it talks about in chapter two.

They were hard drinkers. But given sufficient reason, well, I've graduated from high school. I've graduated from college.

I've got a family now, they moderated or stopped altogether. But the real alcoholic, me, possibly one other guy in that class, he hadn't recognized this problem yet, but I tell you what, he was bobbing and weaving at that reunion. He was bobbing and weaving.

But the most successful man in that class is a man named Ruben. and he and I drank together a lot in high school. And Ruben uh uh started off in the car financing business, ended up with a series of car lots.

Then he bought a helicopter leasing company. Then he bought several helicopter leasing companies. And I was saying, "Ruben, I haven't seen you in seven or eight years.

You still got your helicopter?" He said, "No, I sold him out for a chain of hospitals." I said, "A chain of hospitals." Said, "What what do you do?" He says, "Oh, we do drug rehabilitation." I said, "Oh, really? That's interesting." uh tell me about it. He he was telling me they've got a a couple here in Louisiana, one on the Gulf Coast, they got one in Aspen, Colorado that the Stars go to.

And I said, "Well, do you uh and what do you treat there?" He says, "We just we just treat we treat drug addiction." I said, "What about alcoholism?" He said, "James," he said, "we we just stopped doing that." And I said, "Why is that, Ruben?" He said, 'Well, we're really, really good at getting people off prescription medication. We even had some success with uh crack addicts. We've got a pretty good success with the opiates, with heroin addiction and stuff like that.

He said, "But our record was zero with alcoholics." Our record was just zero. He said, I said, "Well, but these people can pay." He says, "James, there's more to run in a hospital than uh simply the income that's coming in." He says, "I've assembled the best doctors, the best nurses." He said, "And if you but if you're running 100% failure rate in dealing with alcoholics," he says, "that brings the whole hospital down. It it depresses people to see failures.

People in order to continue working need to see some successes." I said, "Well, what what do you do with the alcoholics?" He said, "Oh, they're treatment centers that treat them or else they can go to that uh AA thing." Now, he doesn't know I'm an AA. He doesn't know I'm an AA. Now, what's the reason that I'm telling you that story?

Here is a man with every economic reason to take in and treat alcoholics. Here's a man who, although not a medical doctor himself, owns a whole string of hospitals. I mean, he's worth big, big bucks.

He has the best medical advice that money can buy because Reuben always had this amazing talent for spotting other talent and getting that talent to like him and to work for him because he's really one of the most personable guys you've ever met met in your life. He's from St. Martinville.

And yet he recognizes that medical science today, the year 2008, has no cure for alcoholism. Has no cure whatsoever. All right, let's go back not 73 years to 1935.

Let's go back another three years to 1932. In 1932, one of the wealthiest men in the country, his name was Roland Hazard. Have you all ever seen these Burlington coat factories?

You know, you know what I'm talking about? You know these stores that you see at the malls and stuff like that? That's his family.

that's still in the Hazard family in the Perry family. Old family came came here way before the American Revolution. Uh, one of his ancestors was Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry who won the battle of Lake Eerie in uh in the War of 1812 and uh uh one of the Perry's got to the North Pole and you know the Perry's and the Hazards constantly uh intermarried and were related and stuff like that.

And in 1932, he was the head of the family. The problem was that he was a a bad bad alcoholic. He had tried every drying out center in the country, including Town's Hospital in New York where Bill eventually uh eventually wound up.

And he would stay sober for a little while and get drunk. And his family was just pulling their hair out cuz they loved Roland. I mean, he was good at running the company, but he'd get off on these drunks and cause havoc and and disappear for long periods of time.

So, they had a family meeting. Has anybody ever had a family meeting on you? You know, one of those meetings where you're there, but nobody's either listening to you or talking to you.

They're there talking about you. And they said, "What are we going to do with Roland?" They said, "Let's get the best doctor in the world." So, the first person they tried was Sigman Freud, but fortunately for you and for me, uh Freud was a little too sick. I think he was recovering from one of his own cocaine addictions or something like that at the time.

But um and so they went to the other great psychiatrist, the other co-founder of the science of psychiatry, Dr. Coral Jung in Switzerland. And this story is told in our book of experience.

It's told in chapter 2 about the businessman who went to Europe and sought the greatest doctor in the world, Dr. Jung. And he stayed with him a year.

Didn't have a drop to drink. At the end of the year, Dr. Young says, "Well, it's time for you to go on back to the country and go run your go run your companies." And incidentally, they own not only Burlington uh coat factory, but they own Burlington Mills, which is a uh carpets and fabrics and all that kind of stuff.

They own Allied Chemical Company, which next to Dupont is the largest chemical company in the country. Still a family company. Still a family company.

We're talking about very prominent people. A guy who had all the money in the world and all the incentive in the world. He wanted to run that company.

His family wanted to run that company. And he left there after a year just like James after seven weeks just like perhaps you at some time when you tried without this program to not drink without any program at all. He left there in high spirits knowing that he had it licked.

Of course, this is the days before airlines. So, he took the train to Paris and then he was going to take another train to a port and then get on a steam ship and come back to the United States. And uh he would have made it except somebody in Paris asked him the wrong question.

I said, "Uh, Roland, would you like to have just one drink?" Roland thought, well, it's been a year. One drink couldn't possibly hurt me. Cut a long story short, within a week, he was faced down in the gutter and Paris dead drunk.

didn't remember the last three or four times. Went back with his tail between his legs to Zurich, Switzerland. Went back to Dr.

Jung and said, "Doctor, you got to take me back. It didn't work. I've, you know, told him what had happened, that he'd been drunk." Now, here Dr.

Jung, just like my friend Reuben, with every financial incentive in the world, one of the richest men in the world sitting there with a blank check on his desk, says, "No, Roland, I'm not going to take you back." And Roland says, "Well, why not? Why not?" He says, "I I I'm really sorry, but I think I misdiagnosed your case. I thought you were a manic depressive.

I've had very good luck with manic depressives. I've worked with them. But Roland, I see that you are what is called an alcoholic.

And to the best of my knowledge, and this is the greatest medical doctor in the world, 1932 talking. To the best of my knowledge, there is no medical treatment for alcoholism. Roland says, "Well, what am I supposed to do?" He says, "Well, Roland, you're going to intermittently drink until you die or you go mad.

Uh, the only thing I can think of to do is you might, since you have enough money, hire a bodyguard to keep you away from alcohol. You might voluntarily lock yourself up someplace. And Roland at this point was really down.

And he said, "Well, is there anything else?" And here Carl Jung said, "Well, here and there, once in a while, but it's so rare as to be a phenomenon. I mean, I I've never seen it personally. I have read and have been told of people who've had what's called a vital spiritual experience and they change and uh and they don't drink again.

And Roland brightens up at this point. He says, "Oh, that's all right. I'm I'm a vestriman in the Calvary Episcopal Church in New York City.

I just bought him a new stained glass window. I'll go back and buy him a couple more." And the young says, "No, no, Roland. You're you're just not you're not getting it.

What I'm talking about, I mean, that's fine. You have a church membership, but I'm talking about something different. I'm talking something that grabs you on the inside right to the depths of your spirit and turns that spirit around and changes it and transforms you.

It gives you an entirely different outlook on life and on how you would live that life. And Roland says, "Well, how do you have one of those experiences?" Jung says, "Nobody knows. Nobody knows.

Nobody knows." Jung left there dejected but surrendered to the fact that he was a hopeless, helpless alcoholic. He sought some help. Uh Jung did give him one piece of advice though.

He said, "You could try putting yourself in some sort of a spiritual atmosphere. Not necessarily a church, not necessarily buying stained glass windows, but put yourself in some sort of spiritual atmosphere and hope the divine lightning strikes you." Now, to put it another way, you've got about as much chance of being struck by lightning as this happening. But you, you know, you wanted something to do.

Go do this. Go do this. If you forward 30 years later, Bill Wilson rem wrote in 1960 a letter to Carl Jung.

You can find it in uh language of the heart which is published by the grapevine which is a collection of Bill's writings to thank Carl Jung for the part that he had played in the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous. And Jung in January of 19 uh on January 30th of 1961 wrote Bill Wilson back a letter. And it was fortunate he did it then because Jung was to die only two months later.

And he wrote him back a letter and I put copies of this letter up here. Y'all are welcome to as many copies as you would like. In which Jung said the story you've reported because Bill told at more length than we find in chapter 2 the story of Roland coming to Yung and and dear Mr.

Wilson, your letter has been very welcome indeed. I had no news from Roland Hazard anymore and often wondered what had been his fate. And he goes on to say uh uh he had adequately reported what had happened to you.

In other words, Jung was confirming yeah this is exactly what happened with me and I was curious to know what had happened to him. He goes on to say that the craving for alcohol and the alcoholic is the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for God. He says, "But how could you tell somebody that without being totally misunderstood in those in those days?" He says, "The only right and legitimate way to such an experience," and he's talking about a spiritual experience, I believe, is it happens to you and can only happen to you when you walk on a path that leads you to a higher understanding.

You might be led to that goal by an act of grace or through personal and honest contact with friends or through a higher education. He says, "I see that Roland chose a second way by walking along the path with a spiritual group of the day called the Oxford group." He goes on to say, I'm strongly convinced that the evil principle prevailing in the world leads the unrecognized spiritual need into predition. In other words, the alcoholic not recognizing his spiritual need is led straight to hell.

Predition is another word for it if it's not counteracted either by real religious insight over the protective wall of human comm community. An ordinary man not protected by action from above and isolated in society. Get that?

Isolated in society. Any of y'all try ever try to stay sober on your own. cannot resist the power of evil which is very aptly called the devil.

But the use of such words arouses so many mistakes one can only keep aloof from such as this. And he closes by saying you see the word for alcohol in Latin is spiritus. And you use the same word for the highest religious or spiritual experience.

And he says the formula therefore is in Latin is spiritus con contrapiritum which means the spirit over veils or prevails against the spirits of alcohol. Anyway, I got copies for that letter up there. Roland stayed sober a little while, dragged a fellow name fellow uh drunk out of jail named Ebie Thatcher.

Uh Ebie Thatcher was sent off to uh New York because the judge didn't uh the only way the judge would let Ebie out of jail was that uh Roland agreed to take him out of the state, you know, get him out of here. I mean, he had just driven a car into a farmer's house, landed in the kitchen. He was drunk.

The woman is standing startled in her own kitchen with his car standing there. Evie smiles out the window and says, "I just stopped by for a cup of coffee." Well, Vermonters are not known for their sense of humor. And she called the cops.

So the judge says, "Get him out of my state. Just take him and go." So he took him to New York City where this spiritual group called the Oxford Movement from which we got many of our ideas, but which was very highly evangelical and wasn't exactly AA, but we got a lot of our spiritual principles for them. It was an organization that was non-denominational.

They didn't care what denomination you were. They met in people's houses. They uh uh initially at least tried to practice anonymity.

Then they kind of got lost in uh uh seeking the rich and powerful to endorse their organization and kind of faded from existence. But for a while there they were flamed very brightly on the spiritual horizon back in the 1930s. And they did attract a lot of the rich and the famous.

President Herbert Hoover was a member. President Harry S. Truman was a member of the Oxford group.

Walter Chrysler, head of Chrysler Corporation. Uh Walter Firestone, head of Firestone Tire and Rubber. You see a lot of the real big shots in the country.

Some of their meetings, they had one meeting in the Hollywood Bowl that drew 30,000 people. They would regularly fill Madison Square Garden with their with their spiritual meetings. So, it was a big movement at the time, but it faded because they sought power and prestige and money and they abandon their early principle of anonymity.

We'll get more into that later. So, Ebie's back in New York and Roland is saying, well, one of the principles of the Oxford group is you had to go witness to somebody. You had to and we'd call it 12 stepping, but they call it witnessing.

And it was a good deal more evangelical than what we do. I mean, A's attitude was, "Well, I saw Lanny Lane in the ditch the other day. If he lives, we'll get him, you know." Well, they don't wait for that.

They go out and and scour the ditches and drag you in and and uh put healing on you and sell it to you, you know. And uh so they were saying, "Baby, you got to you you got to go." They were saying, "Well, I don't want to go witness." They said, "Well, would you like to go back to uh Vermont and see the judge?" No, I think I'd rather rather go witness. Then he thought about his old drunking drinking buddy, Bill Wilson.

And they had never been sober together. They had never been sober together. And uh uh and he looked around, found Bill living over in uh over in Brooklyn.

Uh Bill hadn't worked, although he had been a millionaire on Wall Street several years before. He had drank himself to the point where just like James, he couldn't get out of his kitchen. Loyce was at the department store working and Ebie went by to talk to him and and you can you can read the rest of the story in the book.

Eie brought him a simple message. The most simplest of the messages was as Bill says in Bill's story, he was sober. I had never seen him sober before.

And he was happy. And Bill said, "How did you do it?" He says, "I got religion." And Bill felt like he'd been slapped in the face. Bill was a agnostic bartering on atheist and he just said, "Oh no, don't don't give me this religious stuff." What just And then very sarcastically, Bill's drinking his gin and pineapple juice.

And the more Evy's talking about his spiritual awakening, the faster he's drinking his gin. And uh uh Bill said, "Well, just what kind of brand of religion is this?" And every more in exasperation than anything else say something that is the basis of this program that saved your life and has saved my life. He said, "That's no particular religion, Bill.

Why don't you just choose your own concept of God?" Now, how in the hell do you argue with that when somebody says, "Well, you just choose your own concept and see if maybe you can find a way to pray to whatever concept that happens to be." Bill did a little more drinking, uh, checked himself back into that town's hospital, that fancy drying out joint. It was sort of the Betty Ford Center of the day. If you were rich and famous and powerful, you went to Town's Hospital, just like today, all the celebrities go to the Betty Ford Center.

And the only way that Bill could get into the town's hospital, because Bill was dead broke, Loys was working down at Macy's department store, you know, making not much money at all, even though she had been a high society gal uh earlier, and even though he had been a millionaire earlier, and the only reason he could get in there was that his brother-in-law was a doctor who was good friends with Charlie Towns, who ran the hospital, and Dr. Silkworth there and was actually paying for his uh uh room and board there at a at a reduced rate. And Bill went in there and Bill just in frustration on the night of uh early in the morning perhaps of December 14th, 1934 just threw up his hands and said, "I I don't think I can do that.

If there's a God, would he show himself to me right now? Reveal yourself to me." And Bill was the recipient of one of those one ina- million strikes of lightning. He records that the room lit up that he he he felt he was on a a mountaintop somewhere that that a wind not of not of air but of spirit was blowing through him that uh uh he felt and his great cry was I'm a free man.

I'm free at last. I'm free. I'm free.

And he never looked back on that. you know, from time to time. Now, a good thing happened the next day.

Eie came to see him because Ebie knew he was in the hospital and Ebie had been there the day uh the day of his spiritual experience. And once again, very prudently, didn't try to evangelize Bill, just outline, well, this is the things that I've done. You know, I talked my problem over somebody else.

I admitted I was licked. Uh I tried to pray as best I could to where whatever power there might be, and I tried to go help some other people. You know, that was the simple formula that Ebie was given and that Roland was given.

Sounds a lot like most of our 12 steps, doesn't it? Well, Roland had been telling Ebie that you need to advance your spiritual development. So, Roland had given Ebie this book called Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, the great uh he's considered really the founder of the American School of Psychology.

He was a Harvard professor of moral philosophy they called it then and uh uh he had given this series of lectures in 1899 at the University of Edinburgh which at the time was considered perhaps the foremost university in the world being asked to deliver that Gford series of lectures with uh the equivalent today because this was before the Nobel Prize of receiving the Nobel Prize. It was literally the highest academic honor that could be extended to a human being on the planet in 1899 was to be asked to come talk at Edinburg for this Gford series. The Nobel Prize didn't come along for three or four years after that and he delivered a series of lectures on spiritual experiences and he examined spiritual experiences differently.

He had looked at not uh what they ought to be but what the people reported. He examined the spiritual experience of St. Paul on the road to Damascus.

You know Paul in some of his writings talks about some hidden character defect. I suspect Paul was a drunk like us. I mean look at it this way.

He was on he was taking a geographic cure to Damascus. He fell off his ass. He landed on his rear end.

He started seeing lights, hearing voices. He was blinded. I mean, that sounds like some of my drunks.

But whatever happened to him changed his entire life. He reported others. The spiritual experience of John Wesley who founded Methodism and uh Booth who founded the Salvation Army and St.

Teresa and just just St. Augustine just right on down the line. Here was the difference with Bill Wilson.

Every other spiritual experience that William James reported, the people who had had this experience and William James said the true test of the spiritual experience was did your life change afterwards? Did your life fundamentally change? Were you a different person afterwards?

But Bill instead of identifying it with religion identified it with helping drunks. His first thought the next day was, "I've got to go carry this message to other alcoholics." Well, the next day, Bill never heard of William James. The next day, Abby shows up with this book that his that Roland, who I guess was the Oxford Group equivalent of a sponsor, told him he had to read.

A didn't want to read this book. Didn't want to read. I've read that book.

I've read it several times. You want a good night's sleep? Get William James, lay in your bed, and start reading it.

If you make more than three pages, you've got serious insomnia. It works better than a pine of bourbon and three joints. So EIE doesn't want to read this thing.

So he thought, "What am I going to do?" Oh, I'll take it up to Bill. So Bill's in the hospital. So Eie takes it up there and gives it to Bill.

And Bill didn't want to read it either. But then something caught his eye and he started reading it and it validated what had happened to him the night before. He found in there that yes, men did have these kind of experiences and and that they were changed that they could take this message and go forth with it.

Go forth with it. Six months later, he he wound up in just to cut the story of a short of how we got founded 73 years ago. after six months of not of trying every possible thing he can do to help other drunks and not getting one single person sober and his relatives are saying, "Well, you need to go back to work.

You know, lo, you haven't had a drink in six months. Loyce is uh still supporting you. Be a man.

Go to work." So he he took a a flyer on a stock speculation and went out to Akran to try to get a hold of a small rubber manufacturing company out there that made moles to make tires. Akan was the big tire city at that time. I think guess it still is where Firestone and Goodyear and all that are.

And he went out there and that of course ended in disaster. You know it they weren't able to take it over. He's left alone in the Mayflower Hotel.

All his business partners have left town. He's got 10 bucks left in his pocket. It's a Saturday afternoon.

He knows absolutely nobody there. The crowd starting to gather in the in the lounge there at the Mayflower. And I've been there.

I visited uh Akran one time. Joe, I think you you've been there too, haven't you? Maybe some others.

Uh uh the noise is starting to come out of the bar. Now, here's a necessary part of the protective wall of human community. Here's Bill Wilson who 6 months before had God Almighty himself in his hospital room and Bill's thinking, I can go into this bar and have a ginger ale.

That's called alcoholic thinking. But he had been restored to sanity because he remembered that he needed a drunk and he went over and uh got change. And now he went into the bar to get changed.

You know, I mean, you you know, that was such an alcoholic act. I I'd have gone there to get change. Where else do you go to get changed?

And he started calling ministers till finally somebody put him in touch with somebody. And it was a woman named Henrietta Cyberling. And he didn't want to call her because the Cyberlings were the people who owned Good Good Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.

And when he called her up finally and he says, 'Look, I'm I'm a drunk from New York and I uh I need I'm a member of the Oxford group and I need somebody to talk to and your name was given to me. Do you know anybody?" And she says, "Well, of course you called me. I've been waiting for your call." Bill says, "What do you mean?" She says, "Well, a member of our Oxford group here, a doctor, Dr.

Bob Smith confessed to the group two weeks before that he had a drinking problem and he's been coming for three years. We knew he was a drunk, but he didn't want to tell anybody and three weeks before he did and he he asked for help and we didn't know how to help him. And so I've been praying for two weeks for somebody to show me how to help Bob Smith.

Of course you called me. You come right on out to my house right now. They tried to get Bob out that day, but it was the day before Mother's Day and Bill and Bob had bought Anne Smith a potted plant, but Bob was more potted than the plant was currently passed out underneath the table.

And uh so they came the next day and Bob's first words to Bill, but what what what can you possibly say to me? I'm a medical doctor. He's the right kind of medical doctor for an alcoholic.

I mean, what's the specialty of choice for an alcoholic? Dr. Bob was a proctologist.

We know where we've all got our heads up when we come in here. Who else would we go to see but a proctologist? Well, maybe a veterinarian.

They're used to dealing with dumb animals that won't tell them their symptoms, but one of the two. He Bob said, "What can you possibly tell me that will help me with my drinking?" And Bill said to him in all sincerity, "Oh, you misunderstood. I'm so sorry, and I really do appreciate you coming, but I'm not here to help you.

I'm here to try to stay sober myself, and it seems to help if I tell my story to another alcoholic. Would you mind listening to me a little bit while I tell you about my drinking, and then maybe I can avoid taking a drink?" and Bill started talking to him about his drinking and instead of the 15 minutes that Dr. Bob said he was going to give and uh many of us in or several of us in this room I'm sure have met Dr.

Bob's son who was who had driven his father to the meeting because his father was too hung over to drive his car said they stayed in there five or six hours and they talked and they talked and Bob was to say later he's the first man that ever talked to me about myself from his own experience and they set out and Bob had one more slip and then on June the 10th of 1935 Bill and Anne had been sobering Bob up. I mean, doctors in those days didn't make much money, and he'd been too drunk uh to get very many patients. In fact, the joke in the medical community at the time was, "If you go to Dr.

Smith, you're really betting your ass." They sobered him up enough to do an operation, gave him two beers to set steady his hands. My sponsor never gave me two beers, huh? Anyway, uh and sent him off to the hospital.

And those were the last drinks that Bob had until he died in 1950. And from the two grew more and grew more and and alcoholic synonymous started to grow. In 1939 we published a book called the the book Alcoholics Anonymous which was the experience of the first hundred more or less probably less than more.

I've listened to a tape of one of the first hundred Jimmy Burwell who's responsible for giving us the phrase God as we understood him because Jimmy was an atheist at the time and he didn't want to hear any of this God stuff. And as part of the general collective effort in the writing of the book, the the pinmanship was bills, the words were bills, but everything got passed through the group in New York and in Oxford and in Akran. And uh Jimmy Burwell's contribution was God as we understood him.

He's uh in in chapter 3, he's the used car salesman. You know, you've read his story in there who wanted to go out to the country bar to find a prospect for a used car. I mean, only an alcoholic is going to drive out of town to a bar to find a car sales prospect and drink scotch and milk.

That's weird. But anyway, Burwell says that there were maybe there were a hundred AAS at the time coming and going. He says mostly going pro probably weren't more than 30 or 40 that had more than a year's sobriety.

Remember, Bill only had three and a half years when he wrote this book. But Jimmy Burwell says with the book once we had a common solution once we had a common solution we began to grow by leaps and bounds. We had something upon which we could agree.

A first exploded in Cleveland later on in 1939 through a series of articles in the Cleveland plane dealer and pretty soon had a thousand people in Cleveland. Growth was slow for a year or two. Then uh one of the great uh they call him muck rakers back in those days be sort of the equivalent of uh to have uh this guy Alexander show up at your doorstep would be sort of like having Mike Wallace with saying I'm from 60 Minutes stand there with a camera.

I mean he was a exposer of rackets you know of frauds. He was a sensationalist writer and he was going to expose Alcoholics Anonymous. So, Bill and Bob said, "Well, before you expose us, would you simply come to some meetings?" He came to some meetings and was totally transformed.

Wrote this wonderful article in uh the spring of 1941 on Alcoholics Anonymous. And then people started coming in by the tens of thousands. And uh 100 after four years.

We had 10,000 or more members at the end of 1941. Then the war came along, but the growth still became. And then they started just simply having a lot of problems.

They had growth problems. They had people selling memberships. One guy down in Florida was selling memberships.

New Bill wrote him says, "You can't sell memberships in AIA." He says, "Oh, yeah, I can." He says, "People don't value what they're not getting for nothing." He said, "Besides, I turn the money back over to the group anyway, but you know, I I'm charging for them by God, and you can't tell me I can't do it." You had other people appearing on radio. You had people breaking anonymity. You had uh uh a group in Connecticut deciding to go into business.

They uh wealthy guy got sober, bought a three-story building. He was going to put a uh a club on the second floor or a loan company on the first floor cuz alcoholics all owed money and a hospital on the top floor. And you know, just crazy stuff like that.

And he wrote all these rules. He's the one that wrote the 61 rules for Alcoholics Anonymous. And of course, they all got drunk.

And about a year or two later, and the story is in your 12 and 12, he wrote Bill back a letter saying, "We've abolished the first 61 rules, but we have firmly adopted rule 62." And he sent him a little card and it said, "Rule 62." And when build opened up on the inside, it said, "Don't take yourself so damn serious." So that's the only rule left in AA. But at the end of 10 years, it looked like a was starting to fall apart like like so many movements like the Oxford group had fallen apart in the 1930s. In the 40s, it looked like uh we were falling apart.

And uh a member from North Carolina named Maxwell, Milton Maxwell, contacted Bill and said, "Have you heard of the Washingtonians?" Bill said, "No, never heard of the Washingtonians." Bill went to the library and looked him up. And back in the 1840s, there was a group that had just grown enormously at a time when the country had 40 perhaps at most 30 or 40 million people. Within four or five years, they had sobered up.

The lowest estimates 150,000, the highest estimates 550,000 alcoholics. But then they collapsed. And Bill read the story of why they collapsed.

You know, they were very successful. They didn't have our spiritual program particularly, but they did have the idea of one alcoholic talking to another alcoholic, carrying the message, bringing people in. But then he found out that they put their names in the papers and then when one of them got drunk, it cast disrepute on the rest of the people.

They got involved in political causes of the day. Some of them were pro-slavery. Some were anti-slavery.

Some were pro for the annexation of Texas. Some were against the annexation of Texas. Some were for the total prohibition of liquor.

Other people believe, well, maybe you can drink or not drink as it suits you. They just got involved. They they decided they could help all sorts of people.

They started taking in the uh uh they were drug addicts in those days. It wasn't uh heroin and crack. It was uh opium and lauedom, you know.

Well, if we can help them, help drunkards, we can help. Alcoholic wasn't even a popular word at the time. If we can help drunkards, can help them.

These problems persisted so that from approximately 500,000 members in in 1845. By 1848, they were virtually extinct. They had exactly two uh places left.

One in Boston and one in where it started in Baltimore. And a 100 years later, nobody had ever heard of us. Bill took that to heart and he wrote a series of articles for the grapevine in 1945 and 46 and he called it 12 points to assure our future.

12 points to assure our future. These are what became the 12 traditions of AA. You know you see this on the front of this podium here we have this circle and triangle.

I wouldn't be here if I didn't have recovery. So recoveryy's got to be the basis of that. Now, if you hadn't brought me the 12 steps, which is a way to manufacture the divine lightning that Dr.

Carl Young was talking about, the amazing thing that came from the from the pin of Bill Wilson that cold December day in 1938 when he sat there alone in his Brooklyn apartment underneath the stairs in a tiny al cove and didn't know what to write and he said the the words just came as though as though God were giving them. I don't know where all these words came from, but the 12 steps came from that. A series of 12 actions where if I admit that I'm powerless and I and and I start seeking some power greater than myself, i.e.

get out of my cave, stop living alone. And then I go in search of this power and I talk my problems over in confidence with something else and I try to set right my wrongs. And then I I reach a point at somewhere and we call it our t where I become willing to change my life and I realize that in and of myself I cannot change.

If I could have changed I would have changed. I'm a smart guy. I have a law degree.

I I had a very successful life where I totally screwed it up and I couldn't change me and you couldn't change you either. But we ask God to help us and take certain simple actions. And then we set right things with others.

And then we reach that point of repose in the 10 step where we no longer have to be right all the time. And that's when life starts to get smooth. That's when life starts to get easy.

That's when this becomes the best life that a human being can have. When you don't have to be right all the time, you say, "Well, I was wrong. Huh?

I was wrong." Try that out there in this in their in their world. You'll never hear that. You may hear, "I'm sorry." Huh?

They say, "I'm sorry." All the time. Everybody's saying, "Apologize. Apologize." But nobody says, "I was wrong." We say, "Well, I was wrong.

I'll try, you know, try to do better. Try to do better." And we pray to whatever God there might be and and we go out and try to help somebody else and try to put these steps into our life in such a way that uh um we can live a comfortable life that we can have a new way of life that we can gather here in Galliano, Louisiana on a Saturday afternoon in June of 2008 and have fellowship and wonderful food and and a feeling of being together and a feeling of hope wholeness. And that is unity.

And Bill recognized in the first point to assure our future which became the tradition that that the most important thing was it I couldn't do it by myself. The most important principle that I currently have to practice today is to remember that in and of myself I cannot do this thing. It wasn't until I asked for help from a God that I didn't believe in, wasn't sure was there, because my my cry, and I submit to you, if you're sitting here sober today, you've said something like this on July the 11th of 81, was, "God, if there is a God, I don't want to drink that vodka.

Please help me." And my life changed. Then I had to go ask you for help because God of my understanding speaks to me through you. He speaks to me in these meetings in the meeting before the meeting and the meeting after the meeting and when my sponsor and I get together or when I'm 12st stepping a wet drunk when I'm working with the guys who honor me by calling me sponsor.

That's when the magic happens when one alcoholic is speaking with another. That was the magic that happened in Henrietta Sireling's gate house in May of 1935 when Bill and Bob talked. That was the magic that happened when Ebie came in brighteyed and sober to Bill's drunken kitchen in November of 1934.

That's the magic. That's the magic that happened in your life and my life. And that means unity.

That means unity is the most important principle. That's the first tradition that I have to live my personal life out of. You're not responsible for I'm responsible for my own unity.

I'm responsible for staying unified with you. That whenever a calls, I've got to be there. There's nothing more important in my entire life than being right here, right now with you people.

I was told early on in this program that a had to come before family. It had to come before my law practice. It had to come before my girlfriend.

It had to come before the house, the payment, the sailboat, the it had to come absolutely first because without this program, I had no family. I hadn't seen my children in two years. A sheriff was trying to serve me with papers to have all parental rights taken away.

The law practice was simply gone. I was still I was living off borrowed money. The house was was in a was in a mess.

I hadn't been out on that damn sailboat in six months. What good is it do you have have a fancy sailboat out at the yacht club if you're too drunk to get out to it? You know, I may have had a Cadillac in the driveway.

It had a bullet hole in the door from an argument at an intersection during a drunk, you know. But I was told that if I put this program first before all of that and kept it first, everything that came second would come first class. And I want to tell you what, I've had a first class life since then.

I have a first class experience right now with that darling daughter of mine who that that little girl that I hadn't seen in two years because of this program. I started seeing her and and and I've got a picture of my grandson who's four years old sitting up on this table up here. And I'll be glad to spend more time than I'm talking right here right now telling you about my my grandson Douglas.

You know, my law practice restored to me. My life was restored to me. The feeling of wholeness because of unity.

Because of unity. And so that's the first tradition I've put up here. The traditions weren't written in this short form that you see on the wall up here.

They weren't written in this form. They were written in what's called the long form. It's found in your big book right at the end in your big book.

That prints them both in the short and the long form. And it's very important to read them in the long form. The reason we didn't got them printed in short form was that somebody contacted the editor of the Great Vine and said, "We're writing an article on AA and I'm looking at all these traditions.

Don't you have something a little bit shorter? And so in about 1948 or 49, the editor of the grapevine condensed the traditions down to what we currently have on our wall in our first day international convention in uh July 4th, 1950. These traditions were adopted in the long form as they are printed here.

The first tradition in the long form is uh it says our common welfare c comes first but individual welfare comes shortly thereafter. Uh, interesting enough, being drunks, the second tradition in the long form is shorter than the second tradition in the short form. You know, but consistency has never been our virtue.

And in the short in the long form, it just says for our group purposes, one ultimate authority, loving God as any may expressing ourselves in our group conscience. What does that mean? What does that mean?

Real simple. Let's see. How long have I got?

Oh, I'm going to subject you to another 10 or 15 minutes of this and let's let's just go through these things briefly. I thought it was more important to tell you the story of Alcoholics Anonymous and how do we got to these traditions, you know, but the most important one is unity. And the second one is just like in the steps, I need to listen to somebody other than the noise in my head.

This committee that meets up here when I'm in the road, I can be riding down the highway with this with just just surrounded by the board of directors, you know. So, I need to listen to somebody else. And that's one of the reasons I come to the meeting on the off chance that in listening and talking to you, I'm going to hear the voice of God.

And I've heard it for 9,835 days. And I've heard it here once again today. But we listen not just in our business meetings, but we listen to each other.

We listen to each other. And in the process of listening to each other, that conscience What is conscience was but spirit a sense of right and wrong of good and bad of of beautiful and ugly comes in that's why we listen to each other now not everything we tell each other is the group conscience I mean you you you you could have 12 Wallers says passing gas at the same time and say, "Well, that's a group something or other, but it ain't a conscience." You know, but if we gather together and earnestly seek his guidance, we have always gotten it. Proof of it.

We're here after 73 years. Proof of it. A group that I spoke at 18 years ago is still here.

Happy, joyous, free, and prosperous. Cajun Joe's still here. Lanny, so many of y'all are are still here and still crazy enough to listen to me.

You know, we're blessed. We're blessed people. Every other organization I'd ever belonged to in my life, you know, and they had all kinds of rules and regulations and membership things that were being passed.

Every group was passing all these rules and regulations. Bill started collecting them from all the groups when he was trying to write these traditions and said, "God, I've read all these rules and regulations. Neither Dr.

Bob or I can be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, we we don't even meet meet at all. But, you know, in the in the when when they originally started in the preface to the first edition which says, "We are more than 100 men and women of alcoholics uh who have uh recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body." And it goes on to say that uh the only desire we're talking about page X I I I and X I I V you know the Roman numeral pages.

It it outlined some of the traditions were there from the start. We're not an organizational in the conventional sense of the word. Uh there are no dues or fees whatsoever.

The only requirement for membership is an honest desire to stop drinking. You know when the tradition was first written it was written as an honest desire to stop drinking. Then Bill and some of the other members scratched their heads and said, "How many honest newcomers have you ever met?" Nobody could think of one, so they took honest out.

You know, we'll settle for any kind of a desire to stop drinking, you know, but the tradition is best read in the in the long form. Alcoholics Anonymous, and you might have a clue from the name, only helps alcoholics. We cannot fall into the same mistake the Washingtonians did and believe that they could help every ill known to mankind.

We can't fall into the same problem that the uh Oxford group did and said, "Well, if we recruit all the better people on the face of the planet, uh we're going to change the whole world." We just said, "Well, you can come in here. You're an alcoholic if you say you are." That's an absolute principle. But it says in the third tradition in the long form when we talk about drinking I mean have you ever seen anybody drinking a rock?

Have you ever seen anybody drinking a joint? Have you ever seen anybody drinking a handful of pills from your friendly local right aid pharmacy? It's drinking long form.

Our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. Alcoholism. Hence, we may refuse none of which to recover, nor a membership ever depend upon money or conformity.

Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety, may call themselves an a group, provided as they have no other affiliation. We simply can't help narcotics addicts. That's why there's NA.

We all have a meeting here in this hall for NA because they have the principle of identification, but their first first step's different. First step for overeaters anonymous is different. The first step for prostitutes anonymous is different.

I think it's something like don't turn that first trick, you know. I don't know. Thought about hanging around one of their meetings waiting for one of them to have a slip, you know.

Uh but we we've loaned the 12 steps to any number of groups. Why would they have bothered to borrow them from us unless they felt the need for personal identification? We wish them well.

They wish us well. But and now you could be as long as you're an alcoholic, if you've got a pill problem, a crack problem, or a prostitution problem. You know, I even saw in the Akran Ren Group newsletter recently, there's a group up there called Anonymous.

Now, that that's a real self-help program. But anyway, uh we don't care what your other problems are. We really don't care.

Our experience suggests that if you are an alcoholic and if you take these steps, most of those other problems are going to fade into insignificance. And if they don't, you have another fellowship to go to. You have another fellowship to go to.

We came up with the idea that each AIA group ought to run its own affairs. And that's what all autonomy means. Autonomy doesn't mean independence.

Autonomy means with respect to its own affairs it runs it. But the in even in the long form it says you know when when uh your actions of your group are going to affect another group you ought to take that into account. For example, if you were going to have this workshop today and there was another group that met down the street.

It's just plain politeness to confer with them saying are you having a dinner and a workshop on the same day? And if they say yeah say well let's work it out. maybe you could have it this day, we'll have it this day.

It's just as simple as that. If your action is going to affect some other group, plain common courtesy says go talk to them. Find out what's going on.

Try not to conflict. And in my own life, too, I have to live my life independently, but there are things that I do in my life that may affect other people. Plain common courtesy says, uh, for example, I was going to spend the weekend down here with with Joe and Betty.

I'd forgotten to consult my daughter. I mentioned to darling daughter yesterday that I was going down to spend the weekend with Joe and Betty. She says, "No, you're not.

Father's Day is Sunday. We have a full schedule." So, after this talk, I'll see you later. I have a higher power in life.

It's call my daughter. But anyway, that's that's the principle of autonomy. I I I've forgotten it was Father's Day.

I didn't think about consulting her. Isn't it wonderful though that I have a family to consult? On July the 11th of 1981, I didn't have anybody.

I didn't have anybody. Tradition five, very short in the long form says each alcoholic synonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity. We're not a social club.

We're not a finance organization. We're not an employment agency. We're a spiritual entity.

Now, maybe some of those other things kind of sort of come out of our individual things. God knows we do a lot of fellowshipping. We help each other out.

We I can't tell you how many alcoholics I found jobs for or occasionally hired myself with greater or lesser results. It's always interesting when you hire drunk. uh having but one primary purpose that of carrying message to the alcoholic who still suffers.

And who's the alcoholic who still suffers? I'm almost 27 years sober and I'm a suffering alcoholic a lot of the time. I need to be 12step by you just as much as you need to be 12step by me.

Every person who comes to this meeting suffers from alcoholism. We have to 12step each other constantly. And if we do that, when that new man or new gal walks through that door, believe me, if the rest of the group is 12step each other, they're going to carry a message of of light and hope and joy and welcome to that new person that comes in.

Cuz when you first come to this deal and you you know, we read that that how it works, you know. Yeah, that's how sick we are. You know, if we had any sense at all, we'd only have to read that thing about once.

But what do we do? We read it every night. Read it every night.

Every night. You know why? Nobody knows how it works.

So, we just read it every time. You know, we just keep reading it. But it does work.

We know that. And it says in there, "If you want what we've got, well, what do you got?" We don't know. But we got it.

You come on in. I don't know what you had when you came in, but I'll tell you what you did have. I'll tell you a quick uh just a a quick little story.

I hadn't been to the noon primary purpose meeting in life yet in about a year. I don't hit a lot of noon meetings, but uh about a month ago, I decided to to go back there and I went to this huge Baptist church complex hall. And I got there and it wasn't there.

It wasn't in the room it had already been. And I was thinking, maybe they moved to another church or something, you know, or something like that. And then from way down the hall, and this is a huge building.

I'm I'm talking about 200 feet down that hall. huge school complex. You know, I hear laughter coming from down there.

I hear the kind of belly laughter that only comes from an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. And I start walking down that hall towards the laughter. And sure enough, they had simply moved to another room.

And it was that same laughter that when I came to my very first a meeting, which I'm sad to tell you was a year and a half before I got sober. The concept of not drinking between meetings, I was a very slow learner on on that that deal. But y'all hooked me with your laughter that first night.

Laughter had disappeared from my life. There was no laughter in that nutouse I had just gotten out of where they told me, "Oh, you're depressive. You're not an alcoholic.

You're depressive. take these pills. I looked at the pills.

It says do not take with alcoholic beverages. I thought, hm, you know, James, you're a lawyer. You know the PDR.

What they're trying to say is that alcohol potentiates makes stronger the effect of these pills. They want to sell you more pills so you'll drink less. If you pills are expensive, if you wash this pill down with bourbon whiskey, it would work better.

Now, if you understand that kind of thinking, you're in the right place. But anyway, it was your laughter. There was no laughter in that hospital.

There was no laughter in group therapy. What? How dreadful was group therapy?

Maybe a little nervous Twitter of embarrassment, but that first day meeting was that belly laugh, that that that sound of the soul, that language of the heart that kept me coming back to you again and again and again. And that's the primary purpose. And I have one primary purpose today in my life, my personal life.

I'm out to carry the message. I'm out to carry the message by and I've been granted a very special vocation to carry it by by tapes of I have an identity crisis. I'm James Serenity tapes.

They're no more tapes. They're all CDs. James Serenity CDs doesn't sound right.

I don't know what I am, but anyway, I passed the message along, you know, and uh and and it's been a great great joy of my life. I have a primary purpose today. And as long as I have a primary purpose, remember what I said, everything that comes second comes first class.

And in the long form or the short form of tradition says just about the same thing. Problems of money, property, and prestige really affect us. We got to divide the material from the spiritual.

We can't go into business. You know, this clubhouse right here is owned, am I right, Joe? By separate uh separate deal and just rents the deal and then rents it out to AA rents the meeting to NA.

We're just paying rent here. We don't own this. We could discard it in a second.

A has no property. Every time A is attempted to go into business, uh we, you know, we've we've had a we've had a serious problem. Uh so we don't go into business.

We don't bind ourselves to anybody b business-wise. We own almost no property. Let me check the time.

>> Okay. I got 10 minutes left on the CD. I'll shut up.

10 minutes. Give me 10 minutes. We'll finish through these things because the rest of everything follows from unity.

Everything falls from unity. If you set unity that that James needs you and you need James as your first goal, the rest of these things fall into place. They're simple politeness.

They're simple suggestions. They're simple little guidelines of how how how I can live my life. Tradition seven, self-support.

We don't accept any money from outside sources. We're the only organization on the face of the planet that doesn't get help from United Way and the government and have can shaking at intersections. In fact, if somebody walks through the front door and is not a member of AA and wants to give money to it, we turn them down.

We are absolutely unique on the face of the planet in that regard. Well, with our sister brother fellowship of Alanon and Alatine, uh, I presume NA and Cocaine Anonymous and whatever have the same same tradition, but I can't speak for them. But I can speak for our deal.

That means we're completely independent of them. We're beholden to no outside sources. And when I came in here, I've been chasing money and property and prestige all my life.

And you know what? I had gotten a lot of it. I had a long run where I got everything that I ever set out to get.

But it doesn't do you any good to have a sailboat at the yacht harbor if you can't get to it. It doesn't do you any good to be listed who's who in America if you can't get out of your kitchen. It just doesn't do you any good.

doesn't do you any good because you see every time I got her or I got the next honor or I bought the radio station or I did got the law partnership I was trying to fill a god hole with human accomplishments. A that we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives. B that no human power could relieve our alcoholism.

The sailboat wouldn't. The girl wouldn't. The family wouldn't.

The listing and who's who wouldn't. The law partnership wouldn't all the money. There's never enough money for a drinking drunk.

Just doesn't matter. You're going to spend at 150% of income with gusts up to 200. There's just not enough money.

You know, believe me. But you gave me a different goal here. You said all I got to do is be self-supporting through my own contributions.

And when I put this into effect in my private life, there's always been enough for 26 and a2 years. And there have been some lean times in there because a lot of those chickens came home to roost. I had one suit that I used for nothing but to go borrow money at the Whitney Bank.

It was an elegant suit. I was good at signing those 90-day notes. I get sober and find out they want to be paid back.

So, it took a it took a while, but there's always been enough because I have that simple idea that uh it's enough. Tradition eight, professionalism. We are not professionals.

We don't charge for our 12 stepping. I'm not charging you one thin dime for coming down here today. And yet I'm being paid beyond all measure.

Our speakers that come to these conventions and roundups receive nothing but their airfare and their meals in their hotel room. And yet they travel all over the country. They could be earning honorariums.

Most of them are better speakers than are on the professional speaker circuit. They could all be earning 10, 15, $20,000 an appearance. We charge absolutely nothing because we're not professional.

We're giving it back for fun and for free as it was given to us. We're not professionals. We just simply take our best shot.

Tradition nine was written for James. It talks about not being organized. I am not organized.

But what it says is in the long form is that we need the least possible organization. We have to have a certain amount of organization. The group's got to have somebody to uh pass the basket and keep enough money to pay the light bill and to and pay the rent on the on the hall and and to uh uh coordinate the me.

You know, we need a we need a certain amount of organization, but we don't have any people that actually govern AA and we believe in the spirit of rotation. Tradition 10 is probably the reason why AA is is so along with tradition 7 is so well thought of throughout the world is that we have no opinion on outside issues. We don't even have an opinion on drinking.

We don't care whether people drink or don't drink. Sandy Beach tells this wonderful story about how Congress, he was a uh Marine fighter pilot who then became a lobbyist and he was working for a congressional committee and they were considering a bill back in the 70s on on uh uh putting warning labels on liquor. Uh you know, like they got on cigarettes and and somebody in the committee says, "Well, who would know any better than Alcoholics Anonymous about whether we ought to do this?" Because they were seeking expert witnesses.

And so they they send they call AA in New York and they say, "Oh, we'll send somebody down to talk to you." So, uh, representative from the general service office comes down there, one of our trustees, and they say, "Well, what do you think? We ought to have these warning labels, and if so, what should it say?" The guy says, "Well, we have no opinion whatsoever on it." What do you mean you have an opinion? You're alcoholics and we don't have any opinion on.

You don't have an opinion on drinking. Not at all. Why could you be a and not have an opinion on drinking?

Only thing we've got an opinion on, if a drunk wants to sober up, we're willing to help him. End of story. Now, Sandy Beach ends it by saying personally, he thought that they really should have been, he says, now this is just a personal observation.

He says the the senators and congressman were astounded that a had no opinion. He said personally, he thought there ought to be an opinion. He had an opinion on it.

He thought there ought to be a warning label that would really save some lives. The warning label ought to say, "Caution, this bottle may run out. You ought to consider buying two." I thought, "That's a good warning label.

Anyway, uh we try to have no opinion on outside issues and uh my life goes better when I don't listen to Chris Matthews or Russell or CNN or Glenn Beck or whatever, every once in a while if I want to really get all upset and everything, let's go watch about four hours of news in a row, you know? >> Yeah. Watch a Raleigh or watch any of them.

Doesn't doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. left, right, center, anything.

I can get really balled up and the only way I can center myself back down is come back to you folks and say, "Look, I really don't have, you know, I better leave that to people better qualified than I." There was a time when when I was qualified out there to do that sort of thing. It was a time when I played politics. You know, I've played politics at a fairly high level in this state.

I've been on the campaign committees, the inner circle of a couple of guminatorial candidates, but I drank my way out of that. I faulted that. Right now I'm on the inner circle of AA and you are too.

And you are too. This is the only thing I've got an opinion on right now. Anonymity.

There is no tradition that you hear more nonsense on. Read the black print. It says we maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, TV, and films.

>> Yeah. I got three minutes. I'm gonna wrap this thing up.

My last name is Morel. Dr. Bob said there are two ways to break anonymity.

Number one, to break it at the level of press, radio, TV, and films. Number two, to be so anonymous in your home group and in Alcoholics Anonymous that nobody knows how to get in touch with you. >> Try going up to the hospital.

If Joel was in the hospital and we all wanted to go visiting, we should all show up at the desk and say, "We're here to visit Joel." Uh, Joel who? Uh, beats me. I don't know.

Joel. Joel. You know Joel.

Joel C. They'd probably put you on the fifth floor. That's where they kept the nut ward in New Orleans.

But anyway, let's say No, no, no, no. We are not anonymous. Although if an individual, especially a newcomer, wants to be totally anonymous, especially when they get here, fine.

It's up to each individual. I won't break your anonymity. You don't want me to mention your last name, I won't mention it.

But I want you to know mine because you need to know how to get in touch with me. And because this is not the level of press, radio, TV, and films. >> So you'll hear a lot of nonsense on it.

When you start hearing some lecture about anonymity, why don't you suggest the novel idea to read the black print on the paper? Now, why do we do all these things? Anonymity is something else.

Anonymity is a spirit of giving without expecting anything in return. I was told that I couldn't keep this program unless I gave it away. And the more I gave, the more I would get.

And I want to tell you what, that's been my experience. But it's not barter. It's not barter.

You know, if I give something to Hilda, I don't expect anything from returning Hilda, but from some entirely different direction, completely unexpected, the blessings will flow. And such has been my experience in life. It's been the idea that uh the the more I give away, the more I get.

And indeed, I am so richly blessed today. I'm just, you know, I can't tell you how wonderful it is to be with you folks, you know, and I didn't want to bore you by just going through the traditions and explaining them to you. I mean, I I've done a whole day workshop on this.

I can give you the experience if you ever want to talk to me of any number of groups and stuff on every one of these traditions, but I just wanted to tell you something of the story of Alcoholics Anonymous. I want to tell you something of how we got here and how James got here and how truly truly blessed we are to be here and that alcoholism is just as incurable today by medical science, by pills, by psychiatry, by uh all of the witch doctors, whatever you're going to try. I met an alcoholic in Jamaica at a meeting down there who had tried witch doctors that Obi-man that he called him and uh but alcoholics anonymous works as 73 years ago two men decided that if they helped each other and called on the power of whatever god there might happen to be that maybe they could stay sober.

And today from one end of this world to the next three million plus people are active members of Alcoholics Anonymous. That's that's quite a deal. You know that final tradition says we of Alcoholics Anonymous believe that the principle of anonymity has an immense spiritual significance.

Reminds me we're to place principles before personalities. Notice that doesn't say instead of personalities, we're nothing but personalities in here. That's what's attractive about the deal.

But it just says we try to keep the principles of our steps and our traditions a little bit above our individual personalities. And why do we do all of this thing? Why have we gathered here this weekend?

Why do we do all of this? In the long form, the tradition expresses it better than I ever could. It says, "We do this to the end that our great blessings may never spoil us and that we may forever live in thankful contemplation of him who presides over us all.

Thank you for listening to me this afternoon. May God bless and keep you." >> Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message.

Until next time, have a great day.