Transcribers note:
The following address was delivered by
Bill W. at Guest House, a treatment
center for alcoholic priests in Lake
Orion, Michigan shortly before his
death, possibly in 1968 or 1969. Where
words are unintelligible, best guesses
appear in brackets.
Well, I like the informal
discussion type of approach. It seemed to me
that on an occasion like this questions have
something of infinitely more value than a
lecture or a story. But Ripp* suggested that
I make some remarks here tonight, and I'm
only too glad to do that.
*Transcriber's
note: probably refers to Austin Ripley,
who founded Guest House in 1956.
And coming down on the
plane, I got speculating with myself about
the early days of AA and about the meaning
of them in terms of the grace of God. I read
somewhere that if a grain of wheat which has
been stored for centuries in a dry place is
exposed to the right soil and the right
climate and to enough light from above it
will manifest life and it will unfold and it
will grow. But this presupposes the right
soil, the right climate and, above all,
enough light. Well, I think it's that way
with AA. I remember, years back, when we
first began to get publicity, and the first
very large occasion was a feature piece done
in the Saturday Evening Post which all at
once produced us about six thousand members.
This was in '41, and by then a number of
medics had become close friends, some of
them psychiatrists. And these fellows
allowed their names to be used (a rather
audacious step in those days, I assure you)
their names were used in the Post article.
I make this point because,
when later asked to testify on another
occasion, they refused to do it, and these
were the circumstances: the first gal that
got sober in AA is one known to many of you
as Marty, still very much a going concern in
the educational field. Marty was a most
difficult case. God knows we're all complex,
but Marty was really a champ. And she had
been under the care of a Dr. Foster Kennedy,
a man of very wide repute in that time,
worldwide renown, a neurologist. And he
watched Marty as she was planted in the new
soil. He watched her receive this light.
Well, he was tremendously impressed. He came
to some meetings and soon he said to me,
"Bill, would it be possible to have two or
three of the psychiatrists in institutions
who have seen recoveries of very grim cases,
people that you say are friends of yours and
who have testified for you in the Post
piece, couldn't we get a group of this sort
to come to the Academy of Medicine and
explain what they have seen?" Well, we
thought this was just great, because in
those days there were few friends, indeed.
So shoring by these people, by reason of Dr.
Kennedy, well, what could be better? So, one
by one, we went to them, and we said "would
they come to the Academy" and we supposed
they would. After all, some of the Kennedy
glory could brush off, and, you know, they
were friends anyhow, and they'd proved it,
so why not? And not a one would do it! And,
when pressed for their reasons for not doing
it, each one of them separately said the
same thing. In effect, each said, "Look,
Bill. You folks have added up in one column
more of the resources which have been
separately applied to alcoholics than anyone
else. For example: you have this kinship in
suffering; you have possibilities of
communication that others don't have; you
have a crude form of self-examination or
analysis and of catharsis; you have a great
new outgoing interest; you reduce guilt by
restitution and you have this great
compelling interest in helping others. And
then there is the religious factor. And then
there is this factor of the hopelessness, so
far as the resources of the individual are
concerned, of this malady. Now this is a
formidable list of forces, but we still
can't come to the Academy." "Well, why not?"
"Well," said they, "we see in AA, sometimes
in weeks, in a few months, shifts in
motivation that even the sums of these
forces couldn't begin to account for,
because we all too well understand the
difficulties of this subtle compulsion. And
the sum of them won't add up to the speed of
these transformations in these very grim
cases. So, for us, there is an unknown
factor at work in AA. And, among ourselves,
being scientists we call it the 'X' factor.
We believe you people call it the grace of
God. And who shall go to the Academy to
explain the grace of God to that body? No
one can. And we simply won't."
So, I think it is just as
futile as ever for any of us to presume to
explain this matter of grace around which
our entire galaxy of principles and
activities gathers and clusters. We can't do
that, but we can examine this matter of the
soil and this matter of climate and this
matter of illumination [for] which, for some
reason or other, we have made ourselves
ready. Clearly, God's grace is in and
through all. "So," it might be said, "why
haven't alcoholics sobered many times more
often through grace than they have? It's
available. Why hasn't religion been more
successful, numerically at least? Why hasn't
medicine been more successful? How is it
that laymen seem to be doing this thing?" So
I would like to tell a story depicting, at
least as it seems to me, what the soil is
and what the climate is and what the light
is, these things of which we have been
placed in such treasured possession.
There is no doubt that in
an ordinary sense of time AA began in the
office of a psychiatrist, and we might be
mindful of this when we criticize people in
this profession. Of course, for most of us,
the origin is two thousand years old, for
some of us perhaps older. But I am speaking
of the situation in an immediate sense: how
was it precipitated? This too is a matter of
conjecture, but here's how it seems to me.
There was a certain
business man of great attainment. He's cut
down by the grog, he runs the gamut of
treatments in this country, and this would
be in the year about 1932 when he was just
about at the end of his tether. So, he went
abroad and became a patient of Dr. Carl
Jung. And, as all of you know, Jung was one
of the founding fathers of the "art" (I
prefer that instead of "science") of
psychiatry. And Jung, Adler, Freud were the
three founding fathers, but, of these, only
Jung seemed to think that man is something
more than two dollar's worth of chemicals, a
bundle of instincts and an uncertain
intellect. Jung thought that man had
something beyond this, that man has soul. So
our traveler had found a truly great human
being, great, indeed, as events [spell or
fell] out. He placed himself under that dear
man's tutelage for a whole year, becoming
more and more confident that the hidden
springs of this baleful compulsion to drink
were being understood and removed and cast
away. He began to feel more free. There was
no drinking while he was under treatment. At
the end of a year, he left Carl Jung and in
one month he was tight. And the bender was
terrific. So, in infinite despair, he came
back to Carl Jung and said, "Is there
anything now for me? You were my court of
last resort." And this great man said,
"Roland, I thought for a time after you
first came that you might be one of those
rare cases in which my art has been helpful.
Otherwise I should not have encouraged you
to stay. But, alas, I am obliged to conclude
that you are not, and that there is nothing
that I have to offer you. My art has failed
you." I need not say that, coming from a man
of his eminence, this was a statement of
beautiful humility. And the whole destiny of
AA, you and me and all of us, has since hung
on that sentence. So then Hazard found that
agony was added to despair, and he cried
out, "But is there nothing else?" And this
was the answer he got: "Roland, time out of
mind, alcoholics have recovered here and
there, now and then, through religious
experiences, spiritual experiences let us
say, or very truly through conversion (a
naughty word for us AAs; we don't use it for
obvious reasons). But," said the doctor,"
this benign lighting seldom strikes, and no
one can say where or when it will, or for
the resuscitation of whom. So I simply would
advise you to place yourself in a religious
atmosphere, remembering the hopelessness of
your doing anything about it on your own
remaining resources alone, and cooperating
with your associates and casting yourself
upon whatever God there may be."
So Roland aligned himself
with the Oxford groups of that time, a
rather evangelical movement, rather
aggressive (very easy it is to criticize).
It was nondenominational, however, and it
used simple common denominators of
religions, simple moral principles. It
called upon its members to admit that they
could not solve the life problem on their
own. It called upon them for
self-examination. It called upon them for
restitution. It called upon them for a kind
of giving in the Franciscan manner, the kind
of giving that demands no return in money,
power, prestige and the like, the losing of
one's self in the lives of others. Such was
the nature of the crowd with which he became
associated. Unaccountably, to him, the
obsession to drink left. And for some years
he had no more trouble. At the time in the
groups there were a few alcoholics sober.
There is one now at Ann Arbor that goes back
to that time, an old friend who never became
an AA. Sobered up in the Oxford Groups.
So Roland returned to
America. And the groups here in those days
were headed by an Episcopal clergyman called
Sam Shoemaker. And in his congregation and
among the groups were two or three other
alcoholics that, for the nonce, were staying
dry. And Hazard had a summer place near
Bennington, Vermont. And these friends, one
of them son of a local judge and himself an
alcoholic, described the plight of a boy who
was a school-time chum of mine, Ebby
Thatcher. And Ebby had been deteriorating
horribly. There were summer folks in the
town above Manchester. Ebby had run his car
into the side of the farmer's house, pushed
the wall of the kitchen in, the door could
still be opened to the car, Ebby stuck his
head out and, to the poor woman cowering in
the corner who hadn't been hit, he said,
"Hey, what about a cup of coffee?" Well, the
town fathers had had it. They were going to
commit Ebby for alcoholic insanity, so the
judge's son and Hazard picked up the man who
was to become my sponsor.
Meanwhile, I had gone the
route with which you're all familiar. I had
sobered up the summer before, scared to
death by the verdict of my doctor, Dr.
Silkworth, the one we have since named "the
little doctor who loved drunks," and must
have then because in his lifetime he dealt
with some forty thousand of them as a hack
doctor in a drying out place. And he had an
idea that this thing was an illness having
several components: a spiritual illness, a
moral illness and also a physical illness.
And, perhaps oversimplifying, he was apt to
describe an alcoholic as a person condemned
by a compulsion to drink against his own
interests, to drink in spite of his perfect
willingness to stop, and that this drinking
was coupled to an increasing sensitivity of
the body which, if the drinking went on,
guaranteed his insanity and, one day, his
death. So this sort of a sentence had been
spoken to Lois at long last by my doctor,
Dr. Silkworth. So you see the soil was under
preparation. We were beginning to learn a
little more about climate. Ebby and my other
friend Roland had received a considerable
amount of light.
Well, I got drunk in about
two months, even in spite of this sentence
that I would have to be locked up or go
nuts, maybe within a year. And then my
friend Ebby, who had been brought to New
York from Vermont, who had unaccountably
sobered up for the time being in the Oxford
Groups, came to visit me for I too was in
great despair. Despair is the primary
ingredient, indeed, of this soil. In the
medical jargon we might call it "deflation
at depth." Some deflation, huh? So, Ebby
came to see me. And he pitched at me this
list of moral (you might say) cliches.
Nothing so new about that. I was in favor of
honesty. I was in favor of helping other
people. I was in favor of practically
everything he had to say except one thing: I
was not in favor of God, for I had received
on of these magnificent modeled modern
schoolings, scientific schooling, that
assured that by a series of stages, picking
up increments from somewhere as they went
along, I could be traced back to a single
piece of ooze in prehistoric seas. And this
was my faith. And science was my god. So
along comes Ebby, and along comes Jung, for
whom I had respect, and here was my doctor:
Science can't do it; medicine can't do it;
psychology can't do it. Religion? Sometimes.
That was his story. But how could I buy
religion? So I felt trapped. In other words,
I was gripped in the trap which we every day
construct for the drunk who appoaches us
saying, "Well, I think the group life must
be great. Helping other people? I'm for it.
But I couldn't get the spiritual angle (as
our jargon has it)." Now, as you know, this
gentleman is the newcomer, like me, is being
caught in this trap. When you and I talk to
another alcoholic, and we identify ourselves
as having been denizens of this strange
world, and, having emerged, and we describe
this malady in the terms of our god,
Science, and THAT god pronounces the
sentence of hopelessness upon us, the
sentence, we are deflated at depth. And then
we learn that now we have accepted our
personal hopelessness, there still isn't any
hope because we cannot go for the God
business.
And this was the awful
dilemma into which I was cast by my friend
Ebby, bringing, on the one side, all of this
bad news, but on the other side, the
spectacle of his own release, and that was
the word to use. He didn't say he was on the
water-wagon; the obsession had just left him
as soon as he became willing to try on the
basis of these principles, and, indeed, as
he became willing to appeal to whatever God
there might be. And this was reducing the
theological requirements an awful lot.
Well, I went on drinking
about three weeks, and in no waking hour
could I forget the face of my friend, a
spectacle of release as I looked out through
a haze of gin into his face, as he pitched
this "synthesis" at me. So I thought, "well,
I better go up to the hospital and get
sobered up. A conversion experience is not
for me: I'm an obstinate Vermonter. Besides,
I can't buy it. People say to me, 'Have
faith.' And I believe I'd have faith if I
could have it but I can't. But anyhow, I'll
go and get dried up." So I went to the
hospital. I must have had a little optimism,
because I came in with a bag of beer (I had
tried to share it on the subway up). I was
waving a bottle. Dear little Dr. Silkworth
came out and I yelled at him, "This time,
Doc, I got it!" He said, "I'm afraid you
have, Bill. You better get upstairs and go
to bed." And he looked very sad, for he
loved me. So I went upstairs, and went to
bed. I was there while I entered the D.T.s.
So, in about three days, I was all in the
clear. But, the more sober I got, the more
awful the despair, the depression. So, I
think it was the morning of the third or the
fourth day that my friend Ebby showed up in
the doorway, and my feeling was ambivalent
at once. So I said, "Well, this is the time
he's going to pour on the evangelism." And
on the other hand I was saying, "Well, he
should be looking for a job. Why is he up
here at eleven o'clock in the morning to see
me? He does practice what he preaches."
So, Ebby knew my
prejudices, and so he waited for me to ask
him again for that neat little formula
through which he had achieved release. And
dutifully he went through it: you got honest
with yourself, with another person in
confidence; you made restitution; you helped
others; and you prayed to God as you
understood Him (I think he might have even
used that phrase). And without much more
ado, he was gone. No pressure. And again I
couldn't have truck with the God business.
And again the despair deepened until the
last of this prideful obstinacy momentarily
was apparently crushed out. And then, like a
child crying out in the dark, I said, "If
there is a Father, if the is a God, will he
show himself?" And the place lit up in a
great glare, a wondrous white light. Then I
began to have images, in the mind's eyes, so
to speak, and one came in which I seemed to
see myself standing on a mountain and a
great clean wind was blowing, and this
blowing at first went around and then it
seemed to go through me. And then the
ecstasy redoubled and I found myself
exclaiming, "I am a free man! So THIS is the
God of the preachers!" And little by little
the ecstasy subsided and I found myself in a
new world of consciousness. And one of the
early reflections in this world of great
peace which stole over me was that all is
well with God. I am a part of His cosmos at
last. Even evil in His hands can be
transmuted into good. So I had been deflates
at depth by a fellow sufferer who used the
scientific verdict to deflate me, who used
his ability to communicate to me through our
kinship of common suffering, and who made
the example of a person who practiced what
he preached. So, then, for me, here indeed
was the soil, here was the climate, and, God
knows, the light was great.
Now, I venture this
assertion [that every member] of AA has a
spiritual awakening or experience of exactly
this character. Certainly it is not for me
to dicker with theologians, but let me say I
prefer to think that there is no essential
difference between what happened to me and
what happens to each sound AA, excepting the
time element. Going back to those
psychiatrists who said, "We can't understand
this tremendous shift in motivation despite
all your resources." Well, in my case the
shifts ...[tape paused].. but the fruits
have been the same. And one of the most
terrible compulsions and obsessions known
has been expelled from us almost wholesale.
It's true, this happy synthesis of medicine,
religion and our own experience in
suffering, in recovery and sharing the grace
of this, one with the next. So, fellas,
there's my speech.
Q: Bill, is
that light relative in the sense of
illumination? It must be. Not every one
of us has gone through the experience of
ecstasy or any light shining or ...
OK. Maybe... You know,
this is a curbstone opinion, but here's how
I look at it. You go to AA meetings and
somebody gets up, and this happens time
after time,and he says, "Now, folks, I ain't
got the spiritual angle. Yet. I'm making the
group my Higher Power. They're sober and I
wasn't. So I got a Higher Power, I ain't got
the spiritual angle the way you fellas did.
And as for Bill's thing, well, he looks sane
in other respects, but, you know.." Now,
this guy will get up there and tell a story
of losing this compulsion and of its being
cleared out of him and his being
re-motivated in many other ways, just like
those psychiatrists said, in a matter of
months, or of six months or a year. Now just
take one of those fellows and try to imagine
all of those shifts in motivation taking
place within six months, or within six
minutes instead of six months. I think, had
this happened to that fellow, he too would
have had ecstasy. So I think it's a time
element, and I personally see no great
advantage in these tremendous experiences,
save in my case only one. It did give me an
instant conviction of the presence of God
which has never left me from that moment, in
spite of the worst I can do (and it's often
been damned bad), and no matter what the
pressure. And I feel that that extra
dividend may have made the difference
whether I would have persisted with AA in
the early years or not. Actually, it has
some liabilities, and I've seen it in others
who have had these experiences in AA, and
there are quite a lot. And this is the
penance, and I think you theologues give us
some excuse for it too, of beginning to
think that, because we have these tremendous
illuminations, that WE are something
special. So, you begin to develop a kind of
a paranoia alongside of a perfectly valid
experience. And this is just what happened
to me. I damned near botched up the whole
works by coming out of this working
furiously with drunks and, before anybody
had been sobered up, I got so far off base
as to loudly declare on time to an audience
by no means spellbound that I was going to
sober up all the god damned drunks in the
world! Now THAT is pure paranoia if you
ever... So, don't long for the illumination.
I think you're apt to have the experience
that's appropriate.
Q: Well, I'm
not longing for it. I...
Well some people do. You
know: "Oh, my God! If I could only have one
like Bill's!" Now, actually, this may be
said very sincerely because this may be a
guy who's slipping around, but he may be
slipping around on account of the fact that
he's a little schizy and needs some of them
vitamin B3s, so now we'll put on Hawkins.
Moderator (probably
Austin Ripley): Well, you heard it
from the horse's mouth, fellas. Very
inspiring and illuminating, the things
that Bill [tells] of how this all began.
Now you've gone with him you know what
the purpose of their meeting is here: is
on niacin. And tomorrow we'll have Dr.
Hoffer and Dr. Osborn and a couple of
other people. But one of the most active
in the field with some startling
developments is Dr. Dave Hawkins in New
York, and I'll read you a little bit of
his background: both his Bachelor of
Science degree and medical degree were
received from Marquette University. He
interned in Columbia Hospital in
Milwaukee. He then graduated from
[end of tape]
Transcriber's note:
According to "Pass It On", Dr. Humphry
Osmond (not Osborn) and Abram Hoffer
were English psychiatrists working in a
mental hospital in Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan, principally with
alcoholics and schizophrenics. It was
they who introduced Bill to LSD. Later,
they gained some success in treating
alcoholics by administering vitamin B3,
also known as niacin. Bill felt strongly
that this was the key to the "allergy of
the body" that Dr. Silkworth had
suspected, and spent the remaining years
of his life actively promoting niacin
therapy (much to the consternation of
the AA fellowship).