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 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 and in this chapter there is a solution we’re going to talk about two Powers we’re going to talk about the power of the fellowship and we’re going to talk about the power of the vital spiritual experience and if we who are power lless could get both of these powers in our lives then maybe we could overcome alcoholism also on page 17 for those who are power lless he writes the prescription here he talks about the two Powers Abby presented bill with a solution and now bill is going to present us with a solution in the same way he said there is a solution and a friend of mine back home says there’s as many different types Solutions as there are people in AA and I said if you look at the chapter heading on page 17 it’ll tell you how many solutions there are there is a solution one he said we and there’s that big word again we of Alcoholics Anonymous know thousands of men and women who were just as hopeless as Bill nearly all have recovered they have solved the drink problem said we are average Americans today we can say that we’re average citizens of the world because of my last count there was a AAS in 154 countries around the world so all sections of this country and occupations are represented as well as many political economic social religious backgrounds we are people who normally would not mix and I think that we’re probably the most mixed up group of Alcoholics in the world here this morning here in Laughlin Nevada you know if we didn’t have alcoholics to talk alcoholic synonymous to talk about or drinking and Recovery there from I wonder what we would drink about talk about there’s hardly anything told you I had a good memory it’s just short we wouldn’t we wouldn’t have anything to talk about but we are it says that we are people who normally would not mix but there exists Among Us a fellowship and a friendliness which is indescribably wonderful and I hear that this morning and before the meeting all the talk and the laughter and the going on that’s the fell ship of Alcoholic Anonymous the spirit of Alcoholic Anonymous and I got sober on the spirit of Alcoholic Anonymous that was the only thing keeping me here so it’s a powerful thing The Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous kept me sober for quite some time now he’s going to describe this Fellowship of Alcoholics anonimous by talking about something he already assumes that we know about it or he know thinks we already know about it and all great teachers have always done this when they want to teach you something new they would talk to you you first about something you already know and use that as an example to teach you something new you know we had a great teacher that lived 2,000 years ago and he was really good at this when he wanted to teach something to a shepherd He told he would tell him a story about sheep but if he wanted to teach the same thing to the fisherman he would change his story this time it would be about fish then when he went to the farmer he talked about cattle and Grains all good teachers do this billly is going to use the example of the great passenger ship he said we are like the passengers of a Great Liner the moment after rescue from shipwreck when camarad joess and democracy pervade the vessel from steerage to Captain’s Table you know Bill is referring to a time in the 30s when your mode of transportation from one continent to another was by the great ocean liners and on those great ocean liners they had what they call the steerage section and people who were immigrants that didn’t have very much money they usually book passage in the steerage section way down in the bowels of the ship very little fresh air domator style living I called it the cheese sandwich section not very good down there now if you had a little more money though and you wanted better accommodations you could pay for fourth class and come up a deck or two then you could go third class and come up another deck or two then you could go second class and come up another deck or two and each time the accommodation and the food were better if you had enough money you could go in what they call First Class In First Class they had big fine State rooms they had great dining rooms they had good food fine waiters access to Fresh Air all the time but that still wasn’t the most elite place on the ship if you had the right kind of money old old money old money if you had the right religion the right ethnic background the right everything you might be invited to dine at the Captain’s Table just a few select people could do that and at the Captain’s Table you had the best of everything the best service the best food the best everything now that’s a long long ways from the Captain’s Table to the steerage section and in the journey across the ocean those two people should never have met each other in fact most of those ocean liners even had separate stairwells so the first class people never even had to see those who rode in the stage section they had nothing whatsoever in common then I think about the Titanic and the night it hit the iceberg and these two guys are standing there at the rail of the ship and one of them got his tuxedo on his shiny shoes and his little bow tie and everything that goes with it standing next to him is the guy from the stage section got his old work overalls on his old brogans never wor four tie in his life these guys had nothing whatsoever in common with each other until they jumped overboard and when they jumped overboard and their butts hit that cold water they had something in common how in a Hell do we save ourselves and they grabbed on to each other and held on to each other and I doubt very seriously if the man from the Captain’s Table asked for a financial statement from the man from the stage section and when these two guys were rescued and got back on another sh or back on land there was a feeling amongst them which was indescribably wonderful this is always been true when people escape from a common Peril there is a feeling that ties them together and it’s one of the greatest feelings in the world and that’s what we got in the fellowship of alcoholic synonymous we don’t care who you are we don’t care where you came from we don’t care how much money you got we don’t care what your education is we don’t care what your ethnic background is what your religion is or anything else all we want to know is are you alcoholic and if you are there is a feeling amongst us which is indescribably wonderful even though we are so different from each other we are still bound together now watch him he’s going to give us a warning unlike the feeling of the ship’s passengers however our joy and escape from the disaster did not subside as we go our individual ways these two guys when they finally got back on Shore they looked at each other they said well we really don’t belong together and they separated it probably never to be again but we will always be alcoholic and this feeling we have for each other never goes away and we find it again in city after city after City and Country after country one of the greatest things I’ve been able to experience in my lifetime is to go to an AA meeting in a foreign country and feel just exactly as good as I did at home even though I don’t know those people we are bound together because we’re alcoholics the feeling of having shared in a common Peril is one element of the powerful SE in which binds us but that in itself would never have held us together as we are now joined in other words this feeling we have for each other in the fellowship of alcoholic synonymous is one of the things that bind us together but then he said that itself is not enough the tremendous fact for every one of us is that we have discovered a common solution we have a way out on which we can absolutely agree and upon which we can join in brotherly and harmonious action this is the great news this book carries to those who suffer from alcoholism not the news of the fellowship but the news of the common solution and later on we’re going to see where the common solution is the spiritual experience brought about through the program of action now if we could get the power of the fellowship which supports us and helps us and if we could get the power of the spiritual experience which changes us and add the two together then that will be enough power to overcome our power lessness over alcohol and we can recover from that condition I think one of the greatest tragedies that I see in the world today and there’s lots of tragedies going on in the world today one of the greatest that I see is we people who are in The Fellowship of Alcoholics synonymous are spending literally hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars hundreds and hundreds and thousands of men and women work hours trying to attract other alcoholics to The Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous when we’ve got thousands and thousands who are already members of Alcoholics Anonymous who are sitting around dying from untreated alcoholism because they’re doing nothing about the common solution and the reason they’re doing nothing about the common solution is nobody’s telling them about it nobody’s talking about it nobody’s saying look here’s the program of action nobody’s saying let me take you by the hand and walk with you so you can have a spiritual experience and there Fellowship only in after a while they go back to drinking and they said well AA don’t work for us no they didn’t work for AA they didn’t do the program and again it’s not their fault it’s our fault because we’re not insisting that new people work the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and we’re letting them die around as thousands of us are dying every day who already members of The Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous I think it’s our responsibility to see that every newcomer knows about page 17 and knows there’s two pels the power of the fellowship and the power of the spiritual experience and we’re not going to recover without both of them now we might stay sober for a while but we’re not going to recover from alcoholism without both of them no more preaching today guarantee you that preached a little last night preach just a little bit this morning we’ll try not to preach anymore a good textbook never tells you anything but what it doesn’t back it up and prove it the first half of this chapter is designed to show you and I why Fellowship alone is not sufficient the last half of this chapter is used to show us the solution to alcoholism the vital spiritual experience let’s look for just a few minutes at why Fellowship alone is not sufficient and then we’ll take a break let’s go to page 20 he said you may already have asked yourself why it is so all of us became so very ill from drinking that L you are curious to discover how and in the face of expert opinion to the contrary we have recovered from a hopeless condition of Mind and Body now if you’re an alcoholic who wants to get over it you may already be asking well what do I have to do it’s the purpose of this book to answer such questions specifically remember last night we talked about precisely PR specifically with clear-cut directions well here’s one of those words we shall tell you what we’ve done before going into detailed discussion may be well to summarize some points as we see them now how many times people have said to us I can take it or leave it alone why can’t he why don’t you drink like a gentle and quit that fell can’t handle his liquor why don’t you try beer and wine and lay off the hard stuff his willpower must be weak he could stop if he wanted to she’s such a sweet girl I should think he’d stop for her sake the doctor told him that if he ever drank again it would kill him but there he is all L up again now these are commonplace observational drinkers which we hear all the time back of them is a world of ignorance and misunderstanding we see that these Expressions refer to people whose reactions are very different from ours now we’re going to look at two kinds of drinkers but these Expressions that Joe just read would refer to them so modered drinkers have little trouble in giving up liquor entirely if they have good reason for it they can take it or leave it alone remember we talked about them last night they have a couple of drinks they get a slightly Tipsy out of control beginnings of a nauseous feeling alcohol is no big deal for them if they have any problems with it they simply leave it alone those expressions that Joe read would certainly refer to the moderate Drinker then we have a certain type of hard Drinker he may have the Habit badly enough to gradually impair him physically and me mentally and it may even cause him to die a few years before his time now if a sufficiently strong reason ill health falling in love change of environment or the warnings of a doctor becomes operative if they do this man can stop all or moderate although he may find it difficult and Troublesome and may even need a little medical attention now we call this this guy the heavy or the hard Drinker they drink like we alcoholics drink but they are not alcoholic if a good enough reason presents itself to them they’ll do one or two things they may learn to moderate their drinking they do not have the physical allergy they make with drinking entirely and stake with they do not have the obsession of the mind they drink like us but they’re not alcoholic and you and I see them all the time they’re the guy that said when I was in the service I was an alcoholic also but when I got out of the service I got married went to church quit drinking don’t see why in the hell you can’t no they’re not alcoholic the Expressions that Joe read in the beginning would refer to the heavy drinker but what about the real alcoholic now he may start off as a moderate Drinker which many of us did he may or may not become a continuous hard drinker some of us stayed periodic but at some stage of his drinking career begins to lose all control of his liquor consumption once he starts to drink now then we’re going to describe the real alcoholic and when you see a description in there that fits you would you please raise your hand we’d like to see if we’re in a room full of real alcoholics he said but at some stage of his drinking career he begins to lose all control of his liquor consumption once he starts to drink Charlie talked last night about he talked last night about crossing over that line he talked last night about crossing over that line but I don’t know what line he was talking about but I know one thing I was drunk when I I went over it okay now here’s the fell who’s been puzzling you especially in his lack of control he does absurd incredible tragic things while drinking is a real Dr Jackel and Mr Hyde he’s seldom mildly intoxicated he’s always bore less insanely drunk anybody like that in here yeah bet you his disposition while drinking resembles his normal nature but little I always get good looking and out of debt soon as I start drinking like that he may be one of the fellas in the world yet him drink for a day and he frequently becomes disgustingly and even dangerously antisocial we got any of those people in here he has a positive genius for getting tied at exactly the wrong moment particularly when some important decision must be made or engagement anybody like that in here always getting drunk at the wrong time now everybody holds their hand up on this one he’s often perfectly sensible and well balanced concerning everything except liquor but in that respect he’s incredibly dishonest and selfish he often spe possesses special abilties skills and aptitudes and has a promising career ahead of him anybody like that in here I’ve never heard anybody but an alcoholic say that though I’ve never heard an alanon say it yet he used his gift to build up a bright outlook for his family and himself then he pulls the structure down on his head by a sensibly serious of spre anybody like that in here he’s he’s a fellow who goes to bed so intoxicated he ought to sleep the clock around yet early the next morning he searches m for the bottle he misplaced the night before any bottle hiders in here if he can afford it he may have liquor concealed all over his house to be certain no one gets his entire Supply away from him to throw down the waste pipe anybody spread him around wherever you might be phis and I used to buy a lug of whiskey which is three fifths and one to share and one to hide from each other as matters grow worse he begins to use a combination of high-powered sedative and liquor to quiet his nerves so he can go to work anybody ever have to have a little something in the morning then comes a day when he simply cannot make it and gets drunk all over again perhaps he goes to a doctor who gives him Mor or some s to wish to taper off then he begins to appear at hospitals and treatment so excuse me sanitariums never did taper off I always tapered on for some reason I don’t this is by no means a comprehensive picture of the true alcoholic as her behavior patterns Buri but this description should identify him roughly you now if our government has ever done anything right in the field of Al alcoholism it’s an education of the public as to what alcoholism is and what it isn’t because of that a lot of the stigma has been removed from alcoholism many many people are getting us today before they have to do everything here that describes the real alcoholic but I’ll guarantee you if you real alcoholic you found yourself in there somewhere at least one of them are going to fit you in my case practically every one of them one in particular 7 years after after I got sober I sold a 40 acre 45,000 Broiler chicken operation for years after that every once in a while I would run into the guy that bought it and sometimes he would wave and smile and say hey Charlie we have found another one and he’s referring to partially empty vodka bottles yeah behind corner post under rocks Hollow of trees falling out of feet bends h found them for years in there now here’s the question why does he behave like this if hundreds of experiences shown him at one drink means another debacle with all his attendant suffering and humiliation why is it that he takes that one drink why can’t he stay on the water wagon the moderate Drinker can the heavy drinker can why can’t the alcoholic what has become of the Common Sense and willpower that he still sometimes displays with respect to other matters perhaps there never will be a full answer to these questions opinions very considerably as to why the alcoholic reacts differently from normal people we’re not sure why once a certain point is reached little can be done for him we cannot answer the riddle we know that what the alcoholic keeps away from drink as he may do for months or years he reacts much like other men we are equally positive that once he takes any alcohol whatever into his system something happens both in a bodily and mental sense which makes it virtually impossible for for him to stop the experience of any alcoholic will abundantly confirm this now these observations would be academic and pointless if our friend never took the first drink thereby setting the terrible cycle in motion therefore the main problem the alcoholic centers in his mind rather than in his body would you read that again please therefore the main problem the alcoholic centers in his mind rather than his body now we must remember that always just before we take the first drink we are stone cold sober or Stark raving sober or Stark raving sober one of the two and the real problem centers in our mind telling us we can drink while sober rather than in the body that ensures that we can’t drink chances are you’ll never go put your hand on a hot stove again to see if it’ll burn you the second time you know I remember as a kid growing up back in the Depression years and there’s there’s a few of you here old enough to remember that too and back in the 1930s we didn’t have very much we didn’t have hot and cold running water we didn’t have forced air heat Joe said his family was not so poor they had to live in a tent but he said by God if we’d had the money we’d have lived in a tent that’s about how bad it was but I remember in those days even though you didn’t have anything you were very poor people cleanliness was still Next to Godliness and every Saturday night night everybody in the family had to take a bath now whether you needed a bath or not it’s beside the point you still had to take one and one night in the middle of the winter mother had heated the bath water on the old heating stove in the living room put it in a number three zinc Wash Tub setting behind that stove now every kid in the family takes a bath in the same water I’m the baby of the family but the time it got to me the crud would be about an inch thick on it mother said get in there and get yourself clean I thought to myself how in the hell did I get clean there but I didn’t dare say that to her you didn’t talk to your parents that way in the 1930s I scraped the crud back I got in the tub began to wash myself heating stove standing here red hot somehow I managed to lean over and stick my rear against that hot stove burned a blister on my rear end about as big as my hand hurt me worse than anything that ever hurt me before and do you know I’ve never had an obsession of the mind to stick my ass on a hot stove since then I have never jerked my britches down backed up to a stove and said burn me again now alcohol has burned me over and over and over and over and over just as bad as that stove ever bur be and for some strange reason my mind cannot remember that left on my own resources I start thinking about drinking and after a while I think about only what it’s going to do for me that great sense of ease and comfort that great exciting incontrol feeling that comes from the first couple of drinks and my mind keys in on that I forget about the jail housee the hospitals and the divorce courts and I don’t see a thing in the world wrong with taking a drink and I take a drink and I trigger the allergy and I end up drunk over and over and over again like last paragraph page 24 so now when this sort of thinking is fully established an individual with alcoholic Tendencies he has probably placed himself Beyond human Aid and unless locked up may die go permanently insane if we’ve placed oursel Beyond human Aid then the fellowship of alcoholic annonymous will not bring about recovery because the fellowship is made up of a group of human beings who are just as powerless over alcohol as I am so there’s got to be a solution to that condition that we just talked about and page 25 gives it to us there is a solution let’s go to page 25 let’s begin to look at the solution we could see that the uh Fellowship gave us enough power to support us for a while but we were told that Fellowship alone is not sufficient and then it explained why Fellowship alone is not sufficient so now on page 25 we’ll start looking at the real solution to alcoholism he said there is a solution and almost none of us like the self-searching the leing of our pride the confession of shortcoming which the process requires for successful consummation but we saw that it really worked in others and had to come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life that we had been living it when therefore we were approached by whom the problem had been solved there was nothing left for us but to pick up a simple kit of spiritual tools laid in our feet and we have found much of have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of of existence of which we had not even dreamed the great fact is just this and nothing less that we’ve had deep and effective spiritual experiences which have revolutionized our whole attitude toward life toward our fellows and toward God’s Universe the central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our creator has entered our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous he has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we could never do by ourselves and you notice up there it says the Great fact is just this and nothing less that we’ve had deep and effective spiritual experiences and there’s a little asteris there referring us down to the bottom of the page it said fully explained on appendix 2 and later on we’ll refer to it on page 27 it says for further application see appendix 2 and on page 47 referring to the asteris says please see appendix 2 they want to make yeah must be important very important they repeat it three times and they’re talking about spiritual experiences and spirit spiritual Awakenings and in the first printing of the book they didn’t have this little asteris in the there and they didn’t have the reference to the spiritual experience in the back of the book and a lot of people would WR into that little office to Bill and say Bill what do you mean by spiritual experiences and spiritual Awakenings we’re not we’re doing the same things that you’re doing but we’re not having the same experiences that you have what do you mean by that you know and it was very important for me looking back at it now that I know this because I had this spiritual experience mixed up with a bunch of things that I learned when I was seven or8 years old cuz when I was 7even or8 years old I told myself I said self if I ever get big enough they can’t catch me I’m not going anymore to church that is and I got big enough they couldn’t catch me and I didn’t go so when I arrived at Alcoholics Anonymous I had the spiritual knowledge of a seven or eighty old boy which was practically none and that that I did have was all mistaken and M and mixed up in lots of emotionalism things I didn’t understand the times that they would catch me take me to that Revival they had a Revival there quite often in my area in the southern baptist Southern Baptist really Southern and uh when I would get there and and they would be preaching all day and singing songs and having dinner on the ground and prayer meetings all day long and church way into the night bored the heck out of me but one night my aunt mut and she’s a big woman Aunt M that’s the reason they called her that but aunt M kind of got in the spirit of this thing that night and she began to jump up and down and and she began to talk in a strain language that I never heard of before squealing and holling rolling around in the sawdust scared the heck out of me so when this book began to talk about spiritual experiences and spiritual Awakenings I thought that was what I was going to have to have and I was dreading it I tell you I was but thank God for people like me who didn’t know any better they put this information in the back of the book talking about spiritual experiences and spiritual Awakenings and this is the is used all throughout this book and they want to make real sure that I understand what they mean by that so let’s go back to page 569 and see what they mean by the term Spiritual Awakening and spiritual experiences so on page 569 the term spiritual experience and spiritual awakening are used many times in this book which upon careful reading we all know that alcoholics don’t do careful reading shows that the personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism has manifested itself Among Us in many different form forms okay the first paragraph we see something we see that the term may be spiritually experienc or it may be spiritual awakening and in either case it’s going to be a personality change sufficient to bring about recovery Dr silkworth referred to this as a psychic change a change in the way we think and the way we feel and our attitude so we could see several terms spiritual experience Spiritual Awakening person personality change or psychic change all meaning the same thing spiritual experience happen suddenly like it did with Bill and some of the people in the back of the stories in the first book and then we have a spiritual awakening which developed slowly over a period of a long time said yet it’s true that our first printing gave many readers The Impressions that these personality changes or religious experiences must be in the nature of sudden and spectacular upes well happily for everyone this conclusion is erroneous in the first few chapters I number of sudden revolutionary changes are described though it was not Our intention to create such an impression many alcoholics have nevertheless concluded that in order to recover they must acquire an immediate and overwhelming God Consciousness followed At Once by a vast change in feeling and Outlook among our rapidly growing membership of thousands of Alcoholics such Transformations though frequent are by no means the rule most of our experiences are what the psychologist William James calls the educational variety because they will develop slowly over a period of time now bills was a sudden spectacular change some of the others in the stories in the back of the book were sudden spectacular changes but what he’s saying here is that most of us it won’t happen that way most of us will have the educational variety and we will change as we learn and as we apply slowly over period of time sooner or later though we awaken to the fact that we have changed also and then we’ll call it a spiritual awakening so it really doesn’t make any difference whether it’s sudden and spectacular or whether it’s a slow thing that involves over a period of time in either case it’s going to be a personality change sufficient to bring about recovery now I can begin to think with this I can live with this kind of idea but when you start talking about what anunt much had in the Baptist Church I couldn’t live with that idea at all cuz I was raised in the Southern Baptist Church too and my idea of a spiritual experience was an entirely different thing thank God for this appendix that let me know what it really is a change in my personality my personality is made up by the way I think by the way I feel my attitude and Outlook upon life people places and things in general that’s what determines my personality I come here Restless irritable and discontented filled with shame fear guilt and remorse if I can change from that to Peace of Mind Serenity and happiness I’ve undergone one hell of a change in my personality this educational variety the type that we’re having this weekend right we won’t be the same after this weekend none of us will none of us will no see quite often Friends of the newcomer are Weare the difference long before he is himself he finally realizes that he has undergone a profound aeration in his reaction to life that such a change could hardly have been brought about by himself alone what often takes place in a few months could seldom have been accomplished by years years of self self-discipline with few exceptions our members find that they have tapped an unsuspected inner resource which they presently identify with their own conception of a power greater than themselves most of us think this awareness of a power greater than ourselves is the essence of spiritual experience our more religious members call it God Consciousness but most in factly we wish to say that any alcoholic capable of honestly facing his problems in the light of our experience can recover provided he does not close his mind to all spiritual concept he can only be defeated by an attitude of intolerance or belligerent denial we find that no one need have difficulty with the spirituality the program willingness honesty and open-mindedness are the essentials of recovery but they are indispensable there is a principle which is bar against all information which is proof against all argument and which cannot fail to keep a man Everlasting ignorance and that principle is contempt prior to investigation see I knew so many things that were not true when I arrived and Al College synonymous lifelong theories that were not true I live my life on based upon those things and they didn’t work and they were so true in my mind that I was almost impossible me to learn something that was true so I’ve had to lay a lay aside a bunch of old ideas to be able to accept new and I needed an open mind in fact I need an open mind more today than I’ve Ever Needed an open mind because there’s so much more to learn throughout life okay now we pointed out the fact a while ago that bill loves to teach by using examples of something we all already know about to teach us something new that’s what he did when he used the great ocean liner another Trend that bill has and I think it’s very important for us to realize it is like most writers he did repeat himself quite often but every time he repeated himself he would normally find a different word that means the same thing and if you see what he’s doing you can understand him if you don’t though you’ll think he’s talking about something different there seems to be one key word in this whole thing dealing with spiritual experience and that is the word change let’s see how many times he said change on p on page 569 and how many different ways he had a saying it in the first paragraph he talked about a personality change sufficient to bring about recovery in the second paragraph he again mentioned personality changes but then he said in the nature of sudden and spectacular upheavals an upheaval is to change something entirely in the third paragraph first sentence he said sudden revolutionary changes to revolutionize something is to change it entirely third paragraph last sentence he said immediate an overwhelming God Consciousness to overwhelm something is to change it entirely third paragraph last sentence he said vast change in feeling an Outlook fourth paragraph first sentence he said such transformations to transform is to change fourth paragraph about the middle of it he said profound alteration to alter is to change so the key thing here is to change from what we were when we came here to something entirely different up here in our minds to go from Restless irritable discontented selfish self-centered human beings to go from that to one who has Peace of Mind Serenity and happiness and the willingness to help others is an entire change in the way we think that’s a spiritual experience that’s a spiritual awakening that’s a personality change sufficient to recover from alcoholism that’s a psychic change now I can buy into that to go from what we were to something entirely different in the way we think religion has nothing to do with this at all we make the change through spirituality it seems that’s the only real way that people change is through spirituality they talked about change and I told you when I got here I had become everything I detested in a human being and I didn’t like who I what I had become and who I was so they talked about change and I thought they meant for me to become something that I’m not so I looked around the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and I find me some Heroes some people that I wanted to be like and we need those heroes in in the beginning I still need my heroes Charlie was one of my heroes so I set about to be exactly like Charlie I didn’t like me so I want to be like Charlie and I almost made it thank God I didn’t we don’t need one Charlie but I tried to emulate and be exactly like him cuz I didn’t like me and that’s a good that’s good I needed that so the type of change I I think they’re talking about today is to change from what I had become to that which God intended for me to be just me just me and that’s a marvelous experience in alcohol it’s Anonymous and in life just to become who you are and what God intended for you to be only and there’s only one of those thank God now let’s go back to page 25 he said if you’re as seriously alcoholic as we were we believe there’s no middle of the road solution we were in a position where life was becoming impossible and we had passed into the region which there’s no return through human Aid we had but two Alternatives one was to go into The Bitter End blotting out the conscious of our intolerable situation as best we could that’s step one remaining powerless and the other to accept spiritual help that’s step two to accept the need for the power greater than we are said this we did because we were honestly wanted to and we’re willing to make the effort now we saw where step one the physical allergy the obsession of the mind we saw where that came from from from Dr silkworth in New York City now you would think that the idea of the spiritual experience would have come to us through religious people let’s look on page 26 and let’s see where this idea really did come from now we’re talking here about a certain American businessman this is this fellow named Roland Hazard he was the one that stepped in between eie and the judge said a certain American businessman had a good sense and High character for years he had floundered from one sanitarium to another he had consulted the best known American psychiatrist then he had gone to Europe placing himself in the care of a celebrated physician the psychiatrist Dr Yung who prescribed for him though experience had made him skeptical he finished his treatment with unusual confidence he didn’t go there for a 28-day treatment program he was with Dr Yung for a full year Dr Yung psychoanalyzed him one day a week for 52 weeks his physical and mental condition were unusually good above all he believed he acquired such a profound knowledge of the inner workings of his mind and its Hidden Springs that relapse was Unthinkable nevertheless he was drunk in a short time more baffling still he could give himself no satisfactory explanation for his fall so he returned to this doctor whom he admired ask him Point Blank why he he could not recover he wished above all things to regain self-control he seemed quite rational well balanced with respect to other problems yet he had no control whatever over alcohol why was this he begged the doctor to tell him the whole truth and he got it and the doctor’s judgment he was utterly hopeless he could never regain his position in society and he would have to place himself under lock and key or hire bodyguard if he expected to live long that was a great Physician’s opinion but this man still lives and is a free man he does not need a bodyguard nor is he confined he can go anywhere on this Earth where the other free men may go without disaster provided he remains willing to maintain a certain simple attitude now some of our alcoholic readers may think they can do without spiritual help let us tell you the rest of our conversation our friend had with his doctor the doctor said you have the mind of a chronic alcoholic I’ve never seen one single case recover where that State of Mind existed to the extent that it does un you our friend felt as though the Gates of Hell had closed on him with a clang he said to the doctor is there no exception yes replied the doctor there is exceptions to cases such as yours have been occurring since early times here and there once in a while alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences to me these occurrences are phenomenal they appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements of and rearrangements change ideas emotions and attitudes were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side change and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them change in fact I’ve been trying to produce some such emotional rearrangement within you change with many individuals the methods which are employed are successful but I’ve never been successful with an alcoholic of your description Aster bottom of the page for amplification see appendix 2 can you imagine this this is the world’s third most well-known psychiatrist at that time it was Dr Freud Dr Adler and Dr Yung Roland goes to Dr Yung and is treated for a year goes out and gets drunk and comes back beg the doctor to tell him the whole truth and this doctor had enough humility to say Roland I’ve done all I can do for you with my knowledge of the mind and my skills I just can’t help you anymore you’re probably going to die from alcoholism you know he could have said Roland I think you’re suffering from a bad valume deficiency let me write you a prescription you come back for another year he was a good enough man not to do that and Roland said are there no exceptions to this and this guy was great enough to go out of his field and say oh yeah yeah yeah once in a while I’ve seen people like you have a vital spiritual experience he said I don’t understand it it’s phenomenal to me but I have seen it happen now they tell us that Roland tried to get to Freud first and Freud wasn’t taking any more patience he tried to get to Adler and Adler was too busy Yung was the third choice now Adler and Yung were both students of Freud and Yung had fallen out with Adler and Yung on one thing only Adler and Yung thought all answers would lie within the mind I mean Adler and Freud Yung thought some people might be able to be helped through spirituality you thank God that Roland didn’t get to Freud or Adler we’d sitting around today psychoanalyzing ourselves rather than depending upon spirituality and unfortunately that’s what we’re doing in a lot of our AA meetings trying to psychoanalyze rather than depend upon spirituality and what blows my mind to think is this we alcoholics who are so proud of our 12 steps and rightfully we should be I think we need to stop once in a while and remember where they came from Step One came from a non-alcoholic neurologist in New York city named Dr silkworth step two came from a non-alcoholic psychiatrist on the other side of the world named Dr Yung the last 10 steps came from a group of people called the Oxford groupers who were non alcoholic practicing first century Christianity to the best of their ability everything that you and I use for Recovery came to us from non-alcoholics I think we need to remember that it might be good for our humility to do so Joe is that odd or is that God you know I think I think about Dr silor he he knew what the problem was he observed that through working with 50,000 of us alcoholics and it became his opinion but he didn’t have a solution for it Dr Yung had a solution for alcoholism the vital spiritual experience but he didn’t know what the problem was the Oxford Group had a some tenants that we could work they had the plan program of action so to speak but they weren’t in in in the problem or the solution either one begs the doctor to tell him the whole truth and this doctor had enough humility to say Roland I’ve done all I can do for you with my knowledge of the mind and my skills I just can’t help you anymore you’re probably going to die from alcoholism you know he could have said Roland I think you’re suffering from a bad volum deficiency let me write you a prescription you come back for another year he was a good enough man not to do that and Roland said are there no exceptions to this and this guy was great enough to go out of his field and say oh yeah yeah yeah once in a while I’ve seen people like you have a vital spiritual experience he said I don’t understand it it’s phenomenal to me but I have seen it happen now they tell us that Roland tried to get to Freud first and Freud wasn’t taking any more patience he tried to get to Adler and Adler was too busy Yung was the third choice now Adler and Yung were both students of Freud and Yung had fallen out with Adler and Yung on one thing only Adler and Yung thought all answers would lie within the mind I mean Adler and Freud Yung thought some people might be able to be helped through spirituality now thank God that Roland didn’t get to Freud or Adler we’d be sitting around today psychoanalyzing ourselves rather than depending upon spirituality and unfortunately that’s what we’re doing in a lot of our AA meetings trying to psychoanalyze rather than depend upon spirituality and what blows my mind to think is this we alcoholics who are so proud of our 12 steps and rightfully we should be I think we need to stop once in a while and remember where they came from step one came from a non-alcoholic neurologist in New York city named Dr silkworth step two came from a non-alcoholic psychiatrist on the other side of the world named Dr Yung the last 10 steps came from a group of people called the Oxford groupers who were non-alcoholic practicing first century Christianity to the best of their ability everything that you and I use for Recovery came to us from non-alcoholics I think we need to remember that it might be good for our humility to do so Joe is that odd or is that God you know I think I think about Dr silkworth he he knew what the problem was he observed that through working with 50,000 of us alcoholics and they became his opinion but he didn’t have a solution for it Dr Yung had a solution for alcoholism the vital spiritual experience but he didn’t know what the problem was the Oxford Group had a some tenants that we could work they had the plan program of action so to speak but they weren’t in involved in the problem or the solution either one and here’s a whole seral Miracle has happened from that moment until this if you will he said but you know prior to this he said the exceptions to your case has has been occurring since early time here and there just once in a while alcoholics are had what are called vital spiritual experiences to me these are phenomenon he went back and joined the Oxford Group plan and took the plan program of action of the tenants of the ostra group and he recovered and he was able to help eie and heie brought this to Bill and Bill was over there getting all this other information jailed in the mind of Bill Wilson one person but the miracle is this back in those days it was just here and there once in a great while today we can look around these rooms at each other and say to each other here and now every time an alcoholic will apply these things to their life they too can recover and they call it Alcoholics Anonymous a wholesale miracle has happened I am not the miracle the miracle is alcoholics synonymous and I get to participate in it I no going see Bill now as he finishes up with chapter two probably sitting down and reviewing what he’s told us up to this point saying to himself that in the doctor’s opinion in my story I was able to show them the problem in chapter two I was able to show them solution now let’s look at a little picture for just a moment illustrating the solution before we go any further Joe where is it no it’s up there it’s up there and that little picture we have up here on the screen we’ve talking about what is the solution and on the left hand side of the picture we see the fellowship which supports us where the older men members through the sharing of their experience strength and hope with a newcomer provides enough support for the newcomer to be able to stay sober for a period of time and by the way it’s a two-way street as we older members support the new member then we draw strength from that too great strength in the fellowship it’d be almost impossible to be in AA today for very long and not begin to believe there’s some power greater than human power working within this thing when you hear countless hundreds of people saying it’s only by the grace of God or because of God as I understand it for because of the power greater than I am I haven’t found it necessary to take a drink in next number of days weeks months years or whatever you can hardly hear that over and over and over and not begin to believe there’s some power working within this thing the instant the newcomer begins to believe that that opens the mind and they become with to investigate and upon investigation we find that simple kit of spiritual tools laid at our feet the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous as we work and apply those steps in our lives we undergo a personality change sufficient to recover from alcoholism and we find the power greater than human power when that happens to us we then have become older members of of Alcoholics Anonymous now we can go back to the left hand side of the sheet and we can help support the next newcomer help them work their program so they can have a spiritual experience also the book plainly states you cannot give something away that you haven’t got now somewhere down the line when they quit working the program out of the book then in self-defense they started measuring success by how long have you been sober rather than by the quality of that sobriety in the beginning everybody was expected to work the program have a spiritual experience if they didn’t want to do that they were told you might as well leave here cuz we can’t help you if you don’t do that so older membership was based on quality of sobriety rather than quantity of sobriety now today you see all all kinds of people in AA you see somebody that’s been in here maybe 6 months they got a good sponsor they got immediately into the program they’ve worked the steps they’ve had a spiritual awakening they’re always laughing cutting up having fun always helping AA and doing what they can for other alcoholics they are a delight to behold and you just love to be around them only been sober 6 months you’ve got others that’s been in here 6 8 10 years treated it like a cafeteria took some but left what they didn’t want now they’re better than they used to be but you never know what kind of shape they’re going to be in when you run into them one day they’re up the next day they’re down they’re kind of like a yo-yo going back and forth then you see some people that’s been in here 15 16 18 20 years never worked a step damn proud of it and they’re the ones that say by God if you want what we’ve got and you’re willing to go to any damn links to get it know some of those guys feel so bad you’d like to buy them a drink you know they would feel better with a drink see so we’re not talking about quantity of sobriety here we’re talking about quality of sobriety and only those that have had the spiritual experience can help another have a spiritual experience you simply can’t give away something you don’t have have I see Bill running this all through his mind and he probably says to himself they’re not going to like this idea of a spiritual experience any more than I did you remember he had an aversion to these things he and EBY argued about this for a long time and I think bill says I need to tell them just exactly what’s going to happen to them if they don’t have this spiritual experience and he writes another chapter chapter and he called it more about alcoholism and in this chapter he talks about one thing and one thing only he talks about the insanity of alcoholism 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