He
Sold Himself Short
But he found there was a
Higher Power that had more faith in him than
he had to himself. Thus, A.A. was born in Chicago.
I
grew up in a small town outside Akron, Ohio, where the life was typical
of any average small town. I was very much interested in
athletics, and because of this and parental influence, I didn't drink
or smoke in either grade or high school.
All of this changed when I went to college. I had to adapt to new
associations and associates, and it seemed to be the smart thing to
drink and smoke. I confined drinking to weekends, and drank
normally in college and for several years thereafter.
After I left school, I went to work in Akron, living at home with my
parents. Home life was again a restraining influence. When
I drank, I hid it from my folks out of respect for their
feelings. This continued until was twenty-seven. Then
I started traveling, with the the United States and Canada as my
territory and with so much freedom and with an unlimited expense
account, I was soon drinking every night and kidding myself that it was
all part of the job. I know now that 60 percent of the time I
drank alone without benefit of customers.
In 1930, I loved to Chicago. Shortly thereafter, aided by the
Depression, I found that I had a great
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deal
of spare time and
that a little drink in the morning helped. By 1932, I was going
on
two- or three-day benders. That same year, my wife became fed up
with
my drinking around the house and called my dad in Akron to come and
pick me up. She asked him to do something about me because she
couldn't. She was thoroughly disgusted.
This
was the beginning of five years of bouncing back and forth between my
home in Chicago and Akron to sober up. It was a period of binges
coming closer and closer together and being of longer duration.
Once
Dad came all the way to Florida to sober me up after a hotel manager
called him and said that if he wanted to see me alive he'd better get
there fast. My wife could not understand why I would sober up for
Dad
but not for her. They went into a huddle, and money away so that
I
could get no liquor and had to sober up.
One
time my wife decided to try this too. After finding every bottle
that
I had hidden around the apartment, she took away my pants, my shoes, my
money, and my keys, threw them under the bed in the back bedroom, and
slip-locked our door. By one a.m. I was desperate. I found
some wool
stockings, some white flannels that had shrunk to my knees, and an old
jacket. I jimmied the front door so that I could get back in, and
walked out. I was hit by an icy blast. It was February with
snow and
ice on the ground, and I had a four-block walk to the nearest cab
stand, but I made it. On my ride to the nearest bar, I sold the
driver
on how misunderstood I was by my wife and what an unreasonable person
she was. By the time we
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reached
the bar, he was willing to buy me a
quart with his own money. Then when we got back to the apartment,
he
was willing to wait two or three days until I got my health back to be
paid off for the liquor and fare. I was a good salesman. My
wife
could not understand the next morning why I was drunker than the night
before, when she had taken my bottles.
After a particular bad Christmas and New Year's holiday, Dad picked me
up again early in January 0937 to go through the usual sobering up
routine. This consisted of walking the floor for three or four
days and nights until I could take nourishment. This time he had
a suggestion to offer. He waited until I was completely sober,
and on the day before I was to head back for Chicago, he told me of a
small group of men in Akron who apparently had the same problem that I
had but were doing something about it. He said they were sober,
happy, and had their self-respect back, as well as the respect of their
neighbors. He mentioned two of them who I had known through the
years and suggested that I talk with them. But I had my health
back, and besides, I reasoned, they were much worse than I would ever
be. Why, even a year ago I had seen Howard, an ex-doctor,
mooching a dime for a drink. I could not possibly be that
bad. I would at least have asked for a quarter! So I told
Dad that I would lick it on my own, that I would drink nothing for a
month and after that only beer.
Several
months later Dad was back in Chicago to pick me up again, but this time
my attitude was entirely different. I could not wait to tell him
that I wanted help, that if these men in Akron had anything,
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I
wanted
it and would do anything to get it. I was completely licked by
alcohol.
I can still remember very distinctly getting into Akron at eleven p. m.
and routing this same Howard out of bed to do something about me.
He spent two hours with me that night telling me his story. He
said he had finally learned that drinking was a fatal illness made up
of an allergy plus an obsession, and once the drinking had passed from
habit to obsession, we were completely hopeless and could look forward
only to spending the balance of our lives in mental institutions---or
to death.
He
laid great stress on the progression of his attitude toward life and
people, and most of his attitudes had been very similar to mine.
I
thought at times that he was telling my story! I had thought that
I
was completely different from other people, that I was beginning to
become a little balmy, even to the point of withdrawing more and more
from society and wanting to be alone with my bottle.
Here
was a man with essentially the same outlook on life, except that he had
done something about it. He was happy, getting a kick out of life
and
people, and beginning to get his medical practice back again. As
I
look back on that first evening, I realize that I began to hope, then,
for the first time, and I felt that if he could regain these things,
perhaps it would be possible for me too.
The
next afternoon and evening, two other men visited me, and each told me
his tory and the things that they were doing to try to recovery from
this tragic illness. They had that certain something that seemed
to
glow, a peace, a serenity combined with happiness.
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In
the next two or
three days the balance of this handful of men contacted me, encouraged
me, and told me how they were trying to live this program of recovery
and the fun they were having doing it.
Then
and then only, after a thorough indoctrination by eight or nine
individuals, was I allowed to attend my first meeting. This first
meeting was held in the living room of a home and was led by Bill D.,
the first man that Bill W. and Dr. Bob had worked with successfully.
The meeting consisted perhaps eight or nine alcoholics and seven or
eight wives. It was different from the meetings now held.
The big A.A. book had not been written, and there was no literature
except various religious pamphlets. The program was carried on
entirely by word of mouth.
The meeting lasted an hour and closed with the Lord's Prayer.
After it was closed, we all retired to the kitchen and had coffee and
doughnuts and more discussion until the small hours of the morning.
I was terribly impressed by this meeting and the quality of happiness
these men displayed, despite their lack of material means. In
this small group, during the Depression, there was no one who was not
hard up.
I stayed in Akron two or three weeks on my initial trip trying to
absorb as much of the program and philosophy as possible. I spent
a great deal of time with Dr. Bob, whenever he had the time to spare,
and in the homes of two or three other people, trying to see how the
family lived the program. Every evening we would meet at the home
of one of the members and have coffee and doughnuts and spend a social
evening.
The
day before I was due to go back or Chicago---
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it
was Dr. Bob's afternoon
off---he had me to the office and we spent three or four hours formally
going through the Six-Step program as it was at that time. The
six
steps were:
1. Complete deflation.
2. Dependence and guidance from a Higher Power.
3. Moral inventory.
4. Confession.
5. Restitution.
6. Continued work with other alcoholics.
Dr.
Bob led me through all of these steps. At the moral inventory,
he brought up several of my bad personality traits or character
defects, such as selfishness, conceit, jealousy, carelessness,
intolerance, illtemper, sarcasm, and resentments. We went over
these
at great length, and then he finally asked me if I wanted these defects
of character removed. When I said yes, we both knelt at his desk
and
prayed, each of us asking to have these defects taken away.
This
picture is still vivid. If I live to be a hnudred, it will
always stand out in my mind. It was very impressive, and I wish
that
every A.A. could have the benefit of this type of sponsorship
today.
Dr. Bob always emphasized the religious angle very strongly, and I
think it helped. I know it helped me. Dr. Bob then led me
through the
restitution step, in which I made a list of all the persons I had
harmed and worked out the ways and the means of slowly making
restitution.
I
made several decisions at that time. One of them was that I
would try to get a group started in Chicago; the second was that I
would have to return to Akron to attend meetings at least every two
months until I
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did
get a group started in Chicago: third, I decided I
must place this program above everything else, even my family, because
if I did not maintain my sobriety, I would lose my family anyway.
If I
did not maintain my sobriety, I would not have a job. If I did not maintain my
sobriety, I would have no friends left. I had few enough at that
time.
The
next day I went back to Chicago and started a vigorous campaign
among my so-called friends or drinking companions. Their answer
was
always the same: If they needed it at any time , they would
surely get
in touch with me. I went to a minister and a doctor whom I still
knew,
and they, in turn, asked me how long I had been sober. When I
told
them six weeks, they were polite and said that they would contact me in
case they had anyone with an alcoholic problem.
Needless
to say, it was a year or more before they did contact me.
On my trips back to Akron to get my spirits recharged and to work with
other alcoholics, I would ask Dr. Bob about this delay and wonder just
what was wrong with me. He would invariably reply, "When you are
right
and the time is right, Providence will provide. You must always
be
willing and continue to make contacts."
A few
months after I made my original trip to Akron, I was feeling
pretty cocky, and I didn't think my wife was treating me with proper
respect, now that I was an outstanding citizen. So I set out to
get
drunk deliberately, just to teach her what she was missing. A
week
later I had to get an old friend from Akron to spend two days sobering
me up. That was my lesson, that one could not take the moral
inventory
and
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then
file it away; that the alcoholic has to continue to take
inventory every day if he expects to get well and stay well. That
was
my only slip. It taught me a valuable lesson. In the summer
of 1938,
almost a year from the time I made my original contact with Akron, the
man for whom I was working, and who knew about the program, approached
me and asked if i could do anything about one of his salesmen who was
drinking very heavily. I went to the sanitarium where this chap
was
incarcerated and found to my surprise that he was interested. He
had
been wanting to do something about his drinking for a long time but did
know how. I spent several days with him, but I did not feel adequate to
pass the program on
to him by myself. So I suggested that he take a trip to Akron for
a
couple of weeks, which he did, living with one of the A.A. families
there. When he returned, we had practically daily meetings from
that
time on.
A few
months later one of the men who had been in touch with the
groups in Akron came to Chicago to live, and then there were three of
us who continued to have informal meetings quite regularly.
In
the spring of 1939, the Big Book was printed, and we had two
inquiries from the New York office because of a fifteen-minute radio
talk that was made. Neither one of the two was interested for
himself,
one being a mother who wanted to do something for her son. I
suggested
to her that she should see the son's minister or doctor, and that
perhaps he would recommend the A.A. program.
The
doctor, a young man, immediately took fire with the idea, and
while he did not convince the son, he turned over two prospects who
were anxious for
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the
program. The three of us did not feel up to the
job, and after a few meetings we convinced the prospects that they,
too, should go to Akron where they could see an older group in action.
In
the meantime, another doctor in Evanston became convinced that the
program had possibilities and turned over a woman to us to do something
about. She was full of enthusiasm and also made the trip to
Akron. Immediately on her return in the autumn of 1939, we began
to have formal meetings once a week, and we have continued to do this
and to expand ever since.
Occasionally, it is accorded to a few of us to watch something fine
grow from a tiny kernel into something of gigantic goodness. Such
has been my privilege, both nationally and in my home city. From
a mere handful in Akron, we have spread in the Chicago area, commuting
to Akron, we now exceed six thousand.
These last eighteen years have been the happiest of my life, trite
though that statement may seem. Fifteen of those years I would
not have enjoyed had I continued drinking. Doctors told me before
I stopped that I had only three years at the outside to live.
This
latest part of my life has had a purpose, not in great things
accomplished but in daily living. Courage to face each day has
replaced the fears and uncertainties of earlier years. Acceptance
of things as they are has replaced the old impatient champing at the
bit to conquer the world. I have stopped tilting at windmills
and, instead, have tried to accomplish the little daily tasks,
unimportant in themselves, but tasks that are an integral part of
living fully.
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Where derision, contempt, and pity were once shown me, I now enjoy the
respect of many people. Where once I had casual acquaintances,
all of whom were fair-weathered friends, I now have a host of friends
who accept me for what I am. And over my A.A. years I have made
many real, honest, sincere friendships that I shall always cherish.
I'm rated as a modestly successful man. My stock of material
goods isn't great. But I have a fortune in friendships, courage,
self-assurance, and honest appraisal of my own abilities. Above
all, I have gained the greatest thing accorded to any man, the love and
understanding of a gracious God, who has lifted me from the alcoholic
scrap help to a position of trust, where I have been able to reap the
rich rewards that come from showing a little love for others and from
serving them as I can.
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