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Big Book Audiobook - Bills Story
Big Book Audiobook · 27:24
Big Book Audiobook - Bills Story is a recovery audio transcript in the Big Book Audiobook series from Big Book Audiobook. This 27:24 talk is searchable with synced captions and centers on Big Book, Alcoholism, Spirituality, Sobriety, Surrender.
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Chapter 1 BILL STORY
War fever ran high in the New England town to which we knew young officers from Plattsburgh
were assigned, and we were flattered when the first citizens took us to their homes,
making us feel heroic. Here was love, applause, war, moments sublime with intervals hilarious.
I was part of life at last, and in the midst of the excitement I discovered liquor.
I forgot the strong mornings and the prejudices of my people concerning drink.
In time we sailed for over there. I was very lonely, and again turned to alcohol.
We landed in England. I visited Winchester Cathedral. Much moved, I wandered outside.
My attention was caught by a doggerel on an old tombstone.
Here lies a Hampshire grenadier, who caught his death, drinking cold small beer.
A good soldier is ne'er forgot, whether he dieth by musket or by pot.
Ominous warning, which I failed to heed.
Twenty-two and a veteran of foreign wars, I went home at last. I fancied myself a leader,
for had not the men of my battery given me a special token of appreciation,
my talent for leadership, I imagined, would place me at the head of vast enterprises,
which I would manage with the utmost assurance.
I took a night-law course, and obtained employment as investigator for a surety company.
The drive for success was on. I had proved to the world I was important.
My work took me about Wall Street, and little by little I became interested in the market.
Many people lost money, but some became very rich. Why not I?
I studied economics and business, as well as law. Potential alcoholic that I was,
I nearly failed my law course. At one of the finals I was too drunk to think or write.
Though my drinking was not yet continuous, it disturbed my wife.
We had long talks, when I would steal her forebodings,
by telling her that men of genius conceived their best projects when drunk,
that the most majestic constructions of philosophic thought were so derived.
By the time I had completed the course, I knew the law was not for me.
The inviting maelstrom of Wall Street had me in its grip.
Business and financial leaders were my heroes.
Out of this alloy of drink and speculation, I commenced to forge the weapon that would
one day turn in its flight like a boomerang, and all but cut me to ribbons.
Living modestly, my wife and I saved one thousand dollars.
It went into certain securities, then cheap and rather unpopular.
I rightly imagined that they would some day have a great rise.
I failed to persuade my broker friends to send me out looking over factories and
managements, but my wife and I had decided to go anyway.
I had developed a theory that most people lost money in stocks through ignorance of markets.
I discovered many more reasons later on.
We gave up our positions, and off we roared on a motorcycle,
the sidecar stuffed with tent, blankets, and a change of clothes,
and three huge volumes of a financial reference service.
Our friends thought a lunacy commission should be appointed, perhaps they were right.
I had had some success at speculation, so we had a little money,
but we once worked on a farm for a month to avoid drawing on our small capital.
That was the last honest manual labor on my part for many a day.
We covered the whole eastern United States in a year.
At the end of it, my reports to Wall Street procured me a position there,
and the use of a large expense account.
The exercise of an option brought in more money,
leaving us with a profit of several thousand dollars for that year.
For the next few years, fortune threw money and applause my way.
I had arrived.
My management and ideas were followed by many to the tune of paper millions.
The great boom of the late twenties was seething and swelling.
Drink was taking an important and exhilarating part in my life.
There was loud talk in the jazz places uptown.
Everyone spent in thousands and chattered in millions.
Scarface could scoff and be damned.
I made a host of fair-weathered friends.
My drinking assumed more serious proportions,
continuing all day and almost every night.
The remonstances of my friends terminated in a row,
and I became a lone wolf.
There were many unhappy scenes in our sumptuous apartment.
There had been no real infidelity,
for loyalty to my wife, helped at times by extreme drunkenness,
kept me out of those grapes.
In 1929, I contracted golf fever.
We went at once to the country,
my wife to applaud while I started out to overtake Walter Hagan.
Liquor caught up with me much faster than I came up behind Walter.
I began to be jittery in the morning.
Golf permitted drinking every day and every night.
It was fun to caroom around the exclusive course,
which had inspired such awe in me as a lad.
I acquired the impeccable coat of tan
that one sees upon the well-to-do.
The local banker watched me whirl fat checks
in and out of his till with amused skepticism.
Abruptly, in October 1929, hell broke loose
on the New York Stock Exchange.
After one of those days of inferno,
I wobbled from a hotel bar to a brokerage office.
It was eight o'clock.
Five hours after the market closed,
the ticker still clattered.
I was staring at an inch of the tape
which bore the inscription XYZ 32.
It had been fifty-two that morning.
I was finished, and so were many friends.
The papers reported men jumping to death
from the towers of high finance.
That disgusted me.
I would not jump.
I went back to the bar.
My friends had dropped several millions
since ten o'clock, so what?
Tomorrow was another day.
As I drank, the old fierce determination
to win came back.
Next morning, I telephoned a friend in Montreal.
He had plenty of money left,
and thought I had better go to Canada.
By the following spring,
we were living in our accustomed style.
I felt like Napoleon returning from Elba.
No St. Helena for me.
But drinking caught up with me again,
and my generous friend had to let me go.
This time, we stayed broke.
We went to live with my wife's parents.
I found a job,
then lost it as a result of a brawl
with a taxi driver.
Mercifully, no one could guess
that I was to have no real employment
for five years,
or hardly draw a sober breath.
My wife began to work in a department store,
coming home exhausted to find me drunk.
I became an unwelcome hanger-on
at brokerage places.
Liquors ceased to be a luxury.
It became a necessity.
Bathtub gin, two bottles a day,
and often three, got to be routine.
Sometimes a small deal
would net a few hundred dollars,
and I would pay my bills
at the bars and delicatessens.
This went on endlessly,
and I began to waken very early
in the morning, shaking violently.
A tumblerful of gin,
followed by half a dozen bottles of beer,
would be required
if I were to eat any breakfast.
Nevertheless, I still thought
I could control the situation,
and there were periods of sobriety,
which renewed my wife's hope.
Gradually, things got worse.
The house was taken over
by the mortgage holder.
My mother-in-law died.
My wife and father-in-law became ill.
Then I got a promising business opportunity.
Stocks were at the low point of 1932,
and I had somehow formed a group to buy.
I was to share generously in the profits.
Then I went on a prodigious bender,
and that chance vanished.
I woke up.
This had to be stopped.
I saw I could not take so much as one drink.
I was through forever.
Before then, I had written lots of sweet promises,
but my wife happily observed
that this time I meant business,
and so I did.
Shortly afterward, I came home drunk.
There had been no fight.
Where had been my high resolve?
I simply didn't know.
It hadn't even come to mind.
Someone had pushed a drink my way,
and I had taken it.
Was I crazy?
I began to wonder for such an appalling lack
of deep seam near being just that.
Renewing my resolve, I tried again.
Some time passed,
and confidence began to be replaced by cocksureness.
I could laugh at the gin mills.
Now I had what it takes.
One day, I walked into a café to telephone.
In no time, I was beating on the bar,
asking myself how it happened.
As the whiskey rose to my head,
I told myself I would manage better next time,
but I might as well get good and drunk then,
and I did.
The remorse, horror, and hopelessness
of the next morning are unforgettable.
The courage to do battle was not there.
My brain raced uncontrollably,
and there was a terrible sense
of impending calamity.
I hardly dared cross the street,
lest I collapse and be run down
by an early morning truck,
for it was scarcely daylight,
and all night place supplied me
with a dozen glasses of ale.
My writhing nerves were stilled at last.
The morning paper told me
the market had gone to hell again.
Well, so had I.
The market would recover,
but I wouldn't.
That was a hard thought.
Should I kill myself?
No, not now.
Then a mental fog settled down.
Gin would fix that.
So, two bottles and oblivion.
The mind and body
are marvellous mechanisms,
for mine endured this agony
two more years.
Sometimes I stole
from my wife's slender purse
when the morning terror
and madness were on me.
Again I swayed dizzily
before an open window,
while the medicine cabinet,
where there was poison,
cursing myself for a weakling.
There were flights from city
to country and back,
as my wife and I sought escape.
Then came the night
when the physical and mental
torture was so hellish,
I feared I would burst
through my window,
sash and all.
Somehow I managed
to drag my mattress
to a lower floor,
lest I suddenly leap.
A doctor came
with a heavy sedative.
Next day found me drinking
both gin and sedative.
This combination soon landed
me on the rocks,
and people feared for my sanity.
So did I.
I had little or nothing
when drinking,
and I was 40 pounds underweight.
My brother-in-law is a physician,
and through his kindness
and that of my mother,
I was placed
in a nationally known hospital
for the mental
and physical rehabilitation
of alcoholics.
Under the so-called
belladonna treatment,
my brain cleared.
Hydrotherapy and mild exercise
helped much.
Best of all,
I met a kind doctor
who explained
that though certainly selfish
and foolish,
I had been seriously ill,
bodily and mentally.
It relieved me somewhat
to learn that in alcoholics,
the will is amazingly weakened
when it comes
to combating liquor.
Though it often remains strong
in other respects,
my incredible behavior
in the face of a desperate
desire to stop
was explained.
Understanding myself now,
I fared forth in high hope.
For three or four months,
the goose hung high.
I went to town regularly,
and even made a little money.
Surely this was the answer.
Self-knowledge.
But it was not.
For the frightful day
came when I drank once more.
The curve of my declining
moral and bodily health
fell off like a ski-jump.
After a time,
I returned to the hospital.
This was the finish.
The curtain, it seemed to me.
My weary and despairing wife
was informed
that it would all end
with heart failure
during delirium treatments,
or I would develop a wet brain,
perhaps within a year.
She would soon have to give me
over to the undertaker
or the asylum.
They did not need to tell me.
I knew and almost welcomed
the idea.
It was a devastating blow
to my pride.
I, who had thought
so well of myself
and my abilities
of my capacity
to surmount obstacles,
was cornered at last.
Now, I was to plunge
into the dark,
joining that endless procession
of sots
who had gone on before.
I thought of my poor wife.
There had been much happiness,
after all.
What would I not give
to make amends?
But that was over now.
No words can tell
of the loneliness
and despair
I found in that
bitter morass of self-pity.
Quicksand stretched around me
in all directions.
I had met my match.
I had been overwhelmed.
Alcohol was my master.
Trembling, I stepped
from the hospital
of broken man.
Fear sobered me for a bit.
Then came the insidious
insanity of that first drink.
And on Armistice Day, 1934,
I was off again.
Everyone became resigned
to the certainty
that I would have to be
shut up somewhere,
or would stumble along
to a miserable end.
How dark it is
before the dawn.
In reality,
that was the beginning
of my last debauch.
I was soon to be
catapulted into what I like
to call
the fourth dimension
of existence.
I was to know happiness,
peace, and usefulness
in a way of life
that is incredibly
more wonderful
as time passes.
Near the end of that
bleak November,
I sat drinking
in my kitchen,
with a certain satisfaction
I reflected there was
enough gin concealed
about the house
to carry me through
that night
and the next day.
My wife was at work.
I wondered whether I dared
hide a full bottle of gin
near the head of our bed.
I had needed before daylight.
My musing was interrupted
by the telephone.
The cheery voice
of an old-school friend
asked if he might come over.
He was sober.
It was years since I could
remember his coming
to New York in that condition.
I was amazed.
Rumor had it
that he had been committed
for alcoholic insanity.
I wondered how he had escaped.
Of course he would have dinner
and then I could drink
openly with him.
Unmindful of his welfare,
I thought only of recapturing
the spirit of other days.
There was that time
we had charted an airplane
to complete a jag.
His coming was an oasis
in this dreary desert
of futility,
the very thing, an oasis.
Drinkers are like that.
The door opened
and he stood there,
fresh-skinned and glowing.
There was something
about his eyes.
He was inexplicably different.
What had happened?
I pushed a drink
across the table.
He refused it.
Disappointed, but curious,
I wondered what had
got into the fellow.
He wasn't himself.
Come, what's all this about?
I queried.
He looked straight at me.
Simply but smilingly,
he said,
I've got religion.
I was aghast.
So that was it.
Last summer,
an alcoholic crackpot,
now I suspected
a little cracked about religion.
He had that starry-eyed look.
Yes, the old boy was on fire all right,
but bless his heart,
let him rant.
Besides, my gin would last longer
than his preaching.
But he did know, ranting.
In a matter-of-fact way,
he told how two men
had appeared in court,
persuading the judge
to suspend his commitment.
They had told of a simple
religious idea
and a practical program of action.
That was two months ago.
And the result was self-evident.
It worked.
He had come to pass
his experience along to me,
if I cared to have it.
I was shocked,
but interested.
Certainly, I was interested.
I had to be,
for I was hopeless.
He talked for hours.
Childhood memories rose before me.
I could almost hear
the sound of the preacher's voice
as I sat on still Sundays,
way over there on the hillside.
There was that proffered
temperance pledge
I never signed.
My grandfather's good-natured contempt
of some church folk
in their doings.
His insistence that the Spheres
really had their music,
but his denial of the preacher's
right to tell him
how he must listen.
His fearlessness
as he spoke of these things
just before he died.
These recollections
welled up from the past.
They made me swallow hard.
That wartime day
in old Winchester Cathedral
came back again.
I had always believed
in a power
greater than myself.
I had often pondered these things.
I was not an atheist.
Few people really are,
but that means blind faith
in the strange proposition
that this universe originated
in a cipher
and aimlessly rushes nowhere.
My intellectual heroes,
the chemists,
the astronomers,
even the evolutionists,
suggested vast laws
and forces at work.
Despite contrary indications,
I had little doubt
that a mighty purpose
and rhythm underlay all.
How could there be
so much of precise
and immutable law
and no intelligence?
I simply had to believe
in a spirit of the universe
who knew neither time
nor limitation,
but that was as far
as I had gone.
With ministers
and the world's religions,
I parted right there.
When they talked of a god
personal to me,
who was love,
superhuman strength
and direction,
I became irritated
and my mind snapped shut
against such a theory.
To Christ,
I conceded the certainty
of a great man,
not too closely followed
by those who claimed him.
His moral teaching,
most excellent.
For myself,
I had adopted those parts
which seemed convenient
and not too difficult.
The rest I disregarded.
The wars which had been fought,
the burnings and chicanery
that religious dispute
had facilitated
made me sick.
I honestly doubted
whether on balance
the religions of mankind
had done any good.
Judging from what I had seen
in Europe and since,
the power of God
in human affairs
was negligible.
The brotherhood of man,
a grim jest.
If there was a devil,
he seemed the boss universal
and he certainly had me.
But my friend sat before me
and he made
the point blank decoration
that God had done for him
what he could not
do for himself.
His human will had failed.
Doctors had pronounced him incurable.
Society was about
to lock him up.
Like myself,
he had admitted complete defeat.
Then he had in effect
been raised from the dead,
suddenly taken from the scrap heap
to a level of life
better than the best
he had ever known.
Had this power
arisen in him?
Obviously it had not.
There had been no more power
in him than there was in me
at that minute.
And this was none at all.
That floored me.
It began to look
as though religious people
were right after all.
Here was something at work
in a human heart
which had done the impossible.
My ideas about miracles
were drastically revised
right then.
Never mind the musty past.
Here sat a miracle
directly across the kitchen table.
He shouted great tidings.
I saw that my friend
was much more
than inwardly reorganized.
He was on a different footing.
His roots grasped a new soil.
Despite the living example
of my friend,
there remained in me
the vestiges of my old prejudice.
The word God still aroused
a certain antipathy.
When the thought was expressed
that there might be a God
personal to me,
this feeling was intensified.
I didn't like the idea.
I could go for such conceptions
as creative intelligence,
universal mind,
or spirit of nature.
But I resisted the thought
of the heavens,
however loving his sway might be.
I have since talked
with scores of men
who felt the same way.
My friend suggested
what then seemed
a novel idea.
He said,
why don't you choose
your own conception of God?
That statement hit me hard.
It melted the icy
intellectual mountain
in whose shadow
I had lived and shivered
many years.
I stood in the sunlight at last.
It was only a matter
of being willing
to believe in a power
greater than myself.
Nothing more was required
of me to make my beginning.
I saw that growth
could start from that point.
Upon a foundation
of complete willingness,
I might build
what I saw in my friend.
Would I have it?
Of course I would.
Thus, was I convinced
that God is concerned
with us humans
when we want him enough.
At long last,
I saw,
I felt,
I believed.
Scales of pride
and prejudice
fell from my eyes,
and a new world
came into view.
The real significance
of my experience
in the cathedral
burst upon.
For a brief moment,
I had needed
and wanted God.
There had been
an humble willingness
to have him with me,
and he came.
But soon,
the sense of his presence
had been blotted out
by worldly clamors,
mostly those within myself.
And so it had been ever since,
how blind I had been.
At the hospital,
I was separated
from alcohol for the last time.
Treatment seemed wise,
for I showed signs
of delirium treatments.
There, I humbly offered
myself to God,
as I then understood him,
to do with me
as he would.
I placed myself unreservedly
under his care and direction.
I admitted for the first time
that of myself,
I was nothing.
But without him,
I was lost.
I ruthlessly faced my sins
and became willing
to have my newfound friend
take them away,
root and branch.
I have not had a drink since.
My schoolmate visited me,
and I fully acquainted him
with my problems
and deficiencies.
We made a list of people
I had hurt
or toward whom
I felt resentment.
I expressed my entire willingness
to approach these individuals,
admitting my wrong.
Never was I to be critical of them.
I was to write all such matters
to the utmost of my ability.
I was to test my thinking
by the new God consciousness within.
Common sense would thus
become uncommon sense.
I was to sit quietly
when in doubt,
asking only for direction
and strength
to meet my problems,
as he would have me.
Never was I to pray
for myself,
except as my requests
bore on my usefulness to others.
Then only might I expect to receive.
But that would be
in great measure.
My friend promised
when these things were done,
I would enter upon
a new relationship
with my Creator,
that I would have the elements
of a way of living
which answered all my problems.
Belief in the power of God
plus enough willingness,
honesty, and humility
to establish and maintain
the new order of things
were the essential requirements.
Simple, but not easy.
A price had to be paid.
It meant destruction
of self-centeredness.
I must turn in all things
to the Father of Light
who presides over us all.
These were revolutionary
and drastic proposals.
But the moment
I fully accepted them,
the effect was electric.
There was a sense of victory,
followed by such a peace
and serenity
as I had never known.
There was utter confidence.
I felt lifted up,
as though the great clean wind
of a mountaintop
blew through and through.
God comes to most men gradually,
but his impact on me
was sudden and profound.
For a moment I was alarmed
and called my friend the doctor
to ask if I was still sane.
He listened in wonder
as I talked.
Finally, he shook his head saying,
Something has happened to you
I don't understand.
But you'd better hang on to it.
Anything is better
than the way you were.
The good doctor
now sees many men
who have such experiences.
He knows that they are real.
While I lay in the hospital,
the thought came
that there were thousands
of hopeless alcoholics
who might be glad to have
what had been
so freely given me.
Perhaps I could help
some of them.
They, in turn,
might work with others.
My friend had emphasized
the absolute necessity
of demonstrating
these principles
in all my affairs,
particularly it was imperative
to work with others
as he had worked with me.
Faith without works
was dead, he said,
and how appallingly true
for the alcoholic.
For if an alcoholic
failed to perfect
and enlarge his spiritual life
through work
and self-sacrifice for others,
he could not survive
the certain trials
and low spots ahead.
If he did not work,
he would surely drink again,
and if he drank,
he would surely die.
Then faith would be dead
indeed.
With us,
it is just like that.
My wife and I
abandoned ourselves
with enthusiasm
to the idea of helping
other alcoholics
to a solution
of their problems.
It was fortunate
for my old business
associates
remained skeptical
for a year and a half
during which
I found little work.
I was not too well
at the time,
and was plagued
by waves of self-pity
and resentment.
This sometimes
nearly drove me back
to drink.
But I soon found
that when all of the
measures failed,
work with another alcoholic
would save the day.
Many times I have gone
to my old hospital
in despair.
On talking to a man there,
I would be amazingly lifted up
and set on my feet.
It is a design for living
that works in rough going.
We commence to make
many fast trends,
and a fellowship
has grown up among us,
of which it is a wonderful
thing to feel apart.
The joy of living
we really have,
even under pressure
and difficulty.
I have seen hundreds
of families
set their feet
in the path
that really go somewhere.
I have seen the most
impossible domestic
situation righted,
feuds and bitterness
of all sorts wiped out.
I have seen men
come out of asylums
and resume a vital place
in the lives
of their families
and communities.
Business and professional
men have regained
their standing.
There is scarcely
any form of
trouble and misery
which has not
been overcome
among us.
In one western city
and its environs,
there are one thousand
of us and our families.
We meet frequently,
so the newcomers
may find the fellowship
they seek.
At informal gatherings,
one may often see
from 50 to 200 persons.
We are growing
in numbers and power.
An alcoholic in his cups
is an unlovely creature.
Our struggles with them
are variously strenuous,
comic, and tragic.
One poor chap
committed suicide
in my home.
He could not
or would not
see our way of life.
There is, however,
a vast amount of fun
about it all.
I suppose some
would be shocked
at our seeming worldliness
and levity.
But just underneath,
there is a deadly earnestness.
Faith has to work
24 hours a day
in and through us
or we perish.
Most of us feel
we need look no further
for Utopia.
We have it with us
right here and now.
Each day,
my friend's simple talk
in our kitchen
multiplies itself
in the widening circle
of peace on earth
and goodwill to men.
Bill W.,
co-founder of A.A.,
died January 24, 1971.
A footnote here
informs that A.A. is now composed
in 1978
of more than 30,000 groups.