todd
02-21-2008, 07:29 PM
Montgomery History Conference 1991
Tape 3
Speaker: Bob B.
Lawrence. Reading: The Twelve Traditions of Narcotics Anonymous.
Speaker: Bill
This morning what we are going to do is go over the 50s, 60s, and any other information on Narcotics Anonymous. We have Bob B. Bill B. and Betty if she is up she is on her way. So what we will do is have Bob start the workshop off.
Speaker: Bob B.
My name is Bob and I am an addict, hi Bob. Good morning and I hope you all had a good nights rest and I know you didn’t because I know most of you were up with me. Laughter) I think one of the things that we were talking about where Narcotics Anonymous came from and did not come from. I think initially we can say we came from God; it was a present from God. The need existed and somebody tried to fill that particular need. Much of what is deep into the controversy probably in terms of history is concerned is where it came from, where the name originated, who was initially involved and I think one of the things is, is that I think we have to realize there are many pioneers in terms of discovery of things happening. Just like there are many concepts or ideas that come into the religious folds, they say they come from different leanings and so forth. Trying to obtain the same goal, ours happen to be recovery from our addiction and how do you best help addicts, and you are talking about a time when we think that it is a new era when we are thinking about our recovery or the need for a place to recover. That was not so because I think the were a number of times that there were vain attempts to start something to help the addict to recover, not too much success, the nature of the disease itself and the social attitude and people acceptance as to whether addicts were treatable or not became part of the question.
But during one of their amazing discoveries at this particular time they said what they would do was that the government decided they would isolate the addicts so they could put them under the microscope and study them very intensely so they could see what they could do about dealing with addicts at large. If we had them in one place maybe, we can tell what to do and how to do it and by deep analysis or discussion, we could come up with some idea of how we could help these poor souls. Because addiction has been around for a lot of years not just in terms of talking about 30s and 40s we are talking about going back into the 1800s they had problems with addiction. They had whole nations; China had a big drug problem. They almost lost all of China due to drug addiction. They found out it was a controlling factor in terms of dealing with addiction. Dealing with a country or dealing with people, if you kept them addicted they had lost the will to resist and that was how you control. They had a big controlling factor, opium wars that went on for years and lost whole dynasties as a result of drug addiction. So drug addiction is not new, how they dealt with it was becoming a new concept. They say what do you do about it very often the case was you hide them away, stow them away, throw them away whatever the idea was at the time as to that is how you treat drug addicts. You just isolate them, keep them in confinement wait for them to clean up and then let them go again, and to do that over and over again and so you always have a repeat performance in terms of what you were doing in terms of recovery. But all of you may think they call it recovery, they use to say getting well. They did not know that it was an ongoing process that went on rather than talk about getting well. During the early 20s they said to have come up with an idea that they needed, one place they needed to do in this isolation thing was to open up a hospital so they would have a facility to do this great study. Even after 20 years of study, they did not really come up with any real conclusions of what to do with addicts. They know that they lied and that they loved candy bars, they knew that you now. (Laughter) The rest of it they say was kind of vague, they knew some of the characteristics they knew what some of the addicts would do, they knew that it was a continuing thing, that they came back and came back and came back. During that time, they say that is when they established the United States hospital down in Lexington and one down in Fort Worth after that, but they had still been trying to understand what the addict was all about. What happened was they say that an onset say AA had started a little movement on the east coast and it seemed to take off like wild fire. Then came along some other people about the same time that said they were not dealing with that particular concept of alcohol being a drug. They thought it was something else and they thought it was different. Somebody came up with the idea they said that maybe those concepts and ideas would work and so as a result of that, this is probably where some of the issues come up in terms of saying where it started and did not start and so forth. The idea, the name was all the publications that I have seen pointed to people that participated in that exercise during that particular time. Some of them are still alive and some of them wrote their own case histories as to where they came from and what they were involved in.
I have here in, I think there is a copy in the back to be copied that will give you reference to some of these people that were around at that time. What they call at that particular time what we are talking about in the 40s, a thing called Narcotics Anonymous, but it was called a number of other things prior to that. They called them Addicts Anonymous, Narco Group and they called it a number of things until probably in 1948 or 49 when Danny Carlson got out from Lexington and kind of spearheaded an idea that under the auspices of the Salvation Army seemed to be kind of in the forefront of helping people. One of the few places that I donate to without any problems with is Salvation Army and it is because they seem to always be available when a person comes and sticks out their hand and says I need help they will usually will go out of their way to get you some help. It was usually providing facilities for people to house them or keep them or to rehabilitate or to help them in any type pf venture that they thought was worthwhile. They would give Danny a meeting, subsequent to that he started a meeting in New York, he started a meeting in Lexington, and they called it Narcotics Anonymous it was that simple in that respect. However, one of the things that happen during these periods of times they say is that there was no meeting place there was no central headquarters or no central point of functioning. No place to say who do you call, you had to get in touch with this particular person by going to the Salvation Army and saying what night is the meeting on so to speak, and they would tell you Thursday, Friday Saturday whatever the night the meeting was and that was when you got there when that meeting was. I guess whoever was there was who started the meeting and the thing of home groups and such was kind of unheard of. It kind of followed the pattern of AA or the AA concept but they still called themselves Narcotics Anonymous but they were kind of undercover. It was kind of undercover due to the laws of the land at that particular time. The laws of the land stated that addicts did not congregate people that had been felony or on parole could not congregate, so they were almost like an undercover operation. It could not be out in the open it could let be known that they were congregating because the police had bad attitudes about drug addicts and they would maintain that attitude for a long time. They still some of them have that attitude but it has changed market ably because of our own, what we experience today we are able to do all these things that we were not able to do for many years.
During this time as I said we had many attempts at trying to start and maintain the idea of addicts helping another. I have two articles here, on the table here that were part of the conflict was they said , the question arises out of these articles out of 19, well speaks back to early 1940s or the mid 40s to Narcotics Anonymous. I mean whatever you want to think of it is okay, I mean the articles were written and people come to me and say well what about this or what about this. Or they come and bring me one of these people’s articles. A fellow wrote where some of these people wrote a case history or a story about themselves which you will find in this reference here of as to that story what book it is in, go to the library, go to the store and buy the book where he references through their recovery in Narcotics Anonymous that proceeds 1953. For whatever you want to do with that is okay it has nothing to do with what we are here for, I think we are talking about information or non information or whatever you want to call it.
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So but one of the problems during this time as I said where they would like to state in these particular articles which jumping up is Danny Carlson’s name and there are a number of articles of the same type that are around and exist which brings up questions very often in terms of our history. Talking about our history, I think we are talking about new beginnings and I think this is where we are coming into a time to talk about new beginnings. The new beginnings are that we have a number of pioneers that become involved in that new beginning. Because I think some of these ideas have been transferred, transplanted, or transported from one place to another and they arrive at a certain destination and they say let us try it here too. Those pioneers who were open enough or far thinking enough to present the idea, as we know it today. Amongst those people at that time was Jimmy Kinnon, and probably one reason that he stands out very vividly is because of the work that he put into and the dedication that he put into maintaining, opening the doors, keeping the doors open and being the person that you could contact when you could not contact anybody else. Very simple, I would not be here today if I could not have picked up the telephone and called Jimmy Kinnon, very simple. I probably would not be here if my wife had not picked up the phone prior to me getting here and called Jimmy Kinnon. Actually, she called Jimmy Kinnon’s wife, and Jimmy Kinnon’s wife told her about this organization Narcotics Anonymous and did she want to talk to her husband that has this meeting going on in Studio City. So my wife took the information of where they were going to meet and how to get there and gave me instructions about let’s go to this meeting or let’s go check this out and I sent her to the meeting because I was not ready to clean up. The thing is the contact was made and subsequent to that, because of the pressures of family and so forth. With the case of you are going to have to do something about your that **** that stuff you are doing, because the reason I hooked up with her was because she was going to help me get my **** together. Part of the thing was we are going to have to go and get some help. Now there were not that many places to go and get help in 1959 they were far and few between. Lexington was one of them and I think I still have an application for Lexington floating around in my papers over here. But I use to carry one in my pocket at all times because when I went down to the court I was always going to lay it on them, what are you going to do about your problem Mr. Barrett. I have my application to go to Lexington, huh. Along with that application to go to Lexington I had that little yellow book down there with Narcotics Anonymous on the front of it and I am, trying to get, my **** together and they would tell him “lock him up”. You know because I came with that it was a regular thing, I came with these things and I am going to get it together tomorrow. My application has not been accepted yet, and I am just waiting to go this place in the sky to get my stuff together. So you can understand that my attitude about addiction because I was one of those guys that had some preconceived ideas that I was going to be an addict forever. That is what everybody told me. I was led to believe that I was hopeless, the military had gotten rid of me and put me out on the street and told me go for it, and I was going for it the best way I knew how. You know everybody’s store, every time somebody would lay, something down I would snatch it and go. So I would go to jail just to come back out and to ruin my health all over again through the same process, but I would always go back to the meetings to see who was there. I would go back and make my inspection. They use to ask me, Bob when you get out you want me to come down and, we could go to a meeting or we could talk. It was always the case of, no, I will see you later, I will get there, and I will see you at the meeting. Always had to stop in between the jailhouse and the meeting you know for old time’s sake a little taste and I always ended up with another case. But they would always come visit me when I got locked up. They would always come visit me and write me letters to me but they would never put any money on the books, never put any money on the books. That is all they would allow was three dollars anyhow on the books, but they would never put that three dollars on the books. I would look forward to a visit I would think I am going to get duckets, nope no money just a letter and a how you doing Bob, you want us to come and pick you up when you get out. No, it was a constant thing at that. I think that the vigilance that went on here at this particular time and the person that was available for this information was was Jimmy. That was a contact point. In other words, we had a telephone; we also had a post office box that we would maintain. The fact is the Post Office maintained that box even when we were not paying. They would say we know you are going to catch it up, we know you are going to pay it off later. They knew we had problems with money, called none we did not have any. It was always the case of if you needed to print you would have to start literally months ahead of time in order to raise a hundred dollars for the printing. I am talking about a hundred dollars for the printing; we are not talking about a thousand dollars for printing. However, we were lucky along this line because we had another person in the program that had a printing company but he just could not keep carrying Narcotics Anonymous forever or what we knew as Narcotics Anonymous at times forever. So it was always the case of say we always paid our bill eventually, it was always a struggle but we got a bill today and we would have to get an extra dollar here and get the dollars together and go pay this bill for our printing. But as I said, I got out of places and came back to meetings during those early years. It was always a case of, not the same people there. With all the years, you would want the same person there and that was usually Jimmy. He would be sitting by the coffee pot reading the book and saying come on in you know and it was a constant thing of come on in let’s talk. I think I spent numerous hours after meeting in distant places, on the side of roads in coffee shops or wherever talking to Jimmy in his dream in his ideas as to his hopes for Narcotics Anonymous. It was a slow process because as I said the attitude, the social attitude at that particular time it was of such you did not talk of addicts to readily. You did not congregate to many addicts together at any given place without some suspicions being aroused. Therefore, we had some difficultly in terms of trying to lessen the feelings, threatened about going to meeting because there was always a fear that you were going to be picked up before you got to a meeting or be picked up after you left the meeting. They were sitting there, very often, you would come out of the meeting and look down the block and one of those cars was sitting down the block. You know because they had heard somewhere that addicts were going to congregate and they did not giving a **** about Narcotics Anonymous. Whatever it implied it did not mean nothing to them they knew they were swooping up addicts and that is what they were doing, swooping them up, locking them up. At the same time, I think what was happening here there were more people being exposed to this thing called Narcotics Anonymous by the exposure and the printing of that little yellow book was one of the things of exposure. You had something concrete, and it was only a few pages in it, there were questions on the front of it, it had what the program was and the steps, and some of that was misprinted. See we did not have a lot of proofreaders at that time like we have today. We did not give a **** about the proof reading and the, this, thus and they’s were and the periods and commas were in the right lace. If it was misspelled and you understood what it was, you understood, what it was you did not have to worry about the misspelling. The steps did not change and recovery is in the steps not all this here other text and things we bring around it. Now very often even n the reading I had great difficulty with reading anyhow as far as text was concerned. My head I could read the word properly I put the comma and period in the proper place but my head would change it, it would alter the meaning the words would change and it did not mean what it said anyhow as far as my head was concerned. So I usually had to go to another individual to explain it to me and they made it very simple, they would make it very simple of how it worked. They would talk about formulas, they talked about recipes, they talked about all these things and made it very simple for me because I tend to have a problem with understanding what is being said. Because even in the first step I could not get the concept of being powerless over my addiction, because the first thing we use to talk about was I am a dope fiend. First thing, **** near everyone around the table to see how further out they can be in a meeting. They would how I am a dirty dope fiend; well I am a slimy dope fiend, well I we always tried to do one up on everybody else. So it was not understanding what the first step was even talking about cause we nothing about the nature of the disease called addiction and we had these teachers like Jimmy that would have to teach us what addiction was about. That is where we needed to have that learning taking place is in understanding what we are reading. It was always the case as I said one of the things I could always rely on is if I needed to talk to somebody I could call Jimmy, because if you were like me my phone was cut off most of the time, if I had a phone. It was a continual thing of not only being cut off.
I think one of the things that happen here is that we carry the message. We become the messenger by our contact with one another because people ask us, where you been , what you been doing and you will pass on perhaps , if they say man I need some help, and I say well have you ever tried Narcotics Anonymous? I may have not even been clean and telling them to try Narcotics Anonymous, because between 1959 and 61 I did not stay clean. I was making that revolving door, but at the same time, I kept that book and I mashed it on other people. Boy have you ever read this, hell of a concept here man, **** **** man check this out. Not that I was doing it but in them moments of clarity I seemingly had some substance to go by or some direction to follow when I choose to follow them, see because I did not choose to follow them. The idea of me cleaning up with somebody else was ridiculous. I made vain attempts to try to make it look like I was trying to clean up for another individual and that did not work. So we reach that point of crisis I think that usually occur is most of our lives that we clean up or die, very simple, clean up or die. Now some people choose to die and that is very unfortunate, but once you have come to Narcotics Anonymous you have heard the direction and know the steps the responsibility is yours, you cannot give it to nobody else, the responsibility is yours. It does not need no great amount of text to go around that because the formula is in the 12 steps but first me must understand the concepts and the ideas of what those 12 steps mean. We must understand those steps and there is always a process that goes along in understanding what it said, not what you think is going on, you must know by the process.
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So it is an ongoing process what happened during this particular time we are talking about the early 60s now is I had to go do some time because I owed the state some time so I went up to Hatchbee. Once again, they sent me some books. Jimmy one more time sent me some books into Tahatchbee to start a meeting. I kept contact and I think I had some kind of desire to want to do something about what was happening because the things that they told me were happening to me. They talked about jails institutions and dieing, the only thing I had not done yet was die. I had come close to that on a number of occasions but my last occasion I had almost really died at the hand of others not my own hands. It got my attention real abruptly you know like that will get your attention, shotguns and **** will get your attention. So they had my attention you know and I kind of made that first part of that step in terms of surrender, which we talk about in the first step, is surrender, I gave up. It was not this type of giving up it because I had given a lot of them up. It was something inside that I gave up and said well I will try it. So during the early early onset of this time here there were other instrumental people that came along. There was the little Sylvia that got out of Lexington that came along and found Jimmy and she became kind of like a mainstay for a long time. She use to go out and be on the telephone and she would go out and hustle up addicts because she had a car. See that was a rare thing for addicts to have cars back then. See if you were like me that state had already taken my license so I did not have a car. No I can’t say that, I had your cars, that is not true I had your cars but I did not own a car and any car that I may have owned at that time was somebody else’s you know or I had one of those fifty dollar special. You could get one of those fifty dollar specials, cause you would get one of those fifty dollar specials that you put a nickels worth of gas in to try to get to the connection, on flat tires, balled tires no oil in it, all those things that we do you know.
Therefore, what occurred here was you get to the meeting and little Sylvia would, she was like a little mother hen. She use to Shepard you around make sure that you were there where you were suppose to be or meet her at work when you got off or whatever the case is. In other words, she did not soft pedal this thing called Narcotics Anonymous, you know one of these hard nosed. She was about that high and full of grit and would talk long ****, and she did not take no **** from no addict. You know she had been one for a lot of years and she had got worn out. So she had become very instrumental in terms of like being Jimmy’s right hand person. Kind of stand on the right hand, do the calling and running around because during this same time here Jimmy was getting ill due to something from working on those roofs and things breathing that tar and his lungs were giving out. He was developing some tuberculosis so he was becoming somewhat sickly and was not able to get around as well as he use to or as much as he use to. Therefore, Sylvia was pretty much the Shepard of the flock for a long time. She was kind of like the one opening the doors and making sure the coffee pot was there and that the meeting got started and all these other types of things. Then there were other people that came along at this same time. We had what we called big Sylvia and little Sylvia and people would get them mixed up. I do not know how they would get them mixed up because one was about six foot tall and the other was about five foot tall. So you got two diverse people that are two different people, one was an early and one was a late. Sylvia got out of jail and she got the message brought to her in jail, Zona brought her the message in jail because she was doing a violation on a from a penitentiary and she went up to the county jail and met Sylvia. Once again, the little book plays its part, have you ever tried Narcotics Anonymous that is it baby. So big Sylvia arrives at the meeting you know to find out what this thing is all about because she had a desire to want to be clean and she got very active. Then there was another lady that just got out, Penny just got out of the penitentiary and they seemed to be like little mother hens around there taking care of all the kids, like where are you, what you doing they were always questioning what is going on. They always seemed to have those mothers around because if you are like me you needed a mama. I needed somebody to take care of me. So I feel in that real good, when I was around mother me, because I missed it at home so I needed it somewhere. I was always hunting for a mama so it fit me real good. I had mother substitutes all over the place you know worry about Bob, **** I needed help.
So what evolved from this was periodically Jimmy would send message as to what we needed to do and one of the things we needed to do was to become more organized in terms of letting more people know what was going on at Narcotics Anonymous. We were becoming somewhat not respectable but we were becoming an organization that people were staying clean and carrying the message by whatever means and it was usually hand to hand and mouth to mouth. However, it was becoming more widespread, more people were getting the message and if they went away somewhere, they would carry it with them. They would carry a book they would carry this contact person they had the post office box, they had the telephone that they could call somebody. But part of what Jimmy comes up with was he kind of outlined a plan of a kind of a parent organization. The parent organization of Narcotics Anonymous you might see on something as the early, as a direction we chose to use. Almost like an organization or how you organized things, chain of command so to speak a direction, a formula to hold things together, for no better word, somebody in charge of or responsible for the duties that needed to be taken care of. They needed to be outlined in terms of saying directly as to what you are suppose to be doing or how you were to be doing it. So you derive this here thing called the parent organization that is pointed out a certain amount for leadership, a certain amount of people that come before you that have some sense of direction of how to do things. It functioned fairly well in terms of functioning because we only had a small core or group of meeting, which constituted about three or four meetings. Most of all those meeting were centrally located in southern California.
Now 1965, 1966 came along and the colleges were getting on the bandwagon, they were going to study addicts. They had grants, they had money to study addicts in addiction, flower time, flower children, and money people were getting hurt. Money people were out in the streets with no direction, so they decided they were going to study the phenomena of why kids run away from home, ran to the streets, and use all of these crazy drugs. So Berkeley undertook a study, they developed a thing called Ad-Center. Now what they needed were some addicts that were clean to give them some direction or some ideas of how to do this thing. Now they came, they knew where some addicts were because one of the ladies that wee involved was a lady named Vargas that had worked in the Social Service system. She said I know where there are some addicts that will staff your study. They went to Southern California and took all the people that had time and that would leave and took them to Northern California and offered them a job. You know most addicts need jobs because they are either under employed or not employed at all. So at the advent of that Sylvia was one of king of like the mainstays that went up to Northern California with Penny and Ron, Russ. It was a core group of about eight to ten people that went to Northern California and started Northern California NA. They would have an outgrowth of that of starting many meetings in that particular vicinity of Northern California. At the same time flower children traveled, they traveled all over the country and this here little book would pop up all over the country and inquiries would come from all over the country as to what is this thing called Narcotics Anonymous. They had one reference point, Jimmy was that reference for a long time but once again and what did happen here was they started contacting other people on the fellowship. As I said at this point, Jimmy was sick during this period of time right after the early 60s or the mid 60s and he was becoming more incapable of doing those particular tasks. Those tasks were left to people like Sylvia, Penny and I happened to be around, I seemed to have a permanent address, and I had a telephone because I was clean and I had been working and I started maintaining these ideas of having a telephone right, getting a car and being available. One of the differences I think that usually happens was I was becoming a useful member of society in spite of me, by doing these things that people suggested I do. It became a very slow process of growing through this method. Now what happened at the same time here in the 60s were we had a lot of changing going on in terms of who had the resources of where was the money going once again because we had very little of it so we didn’t have to worry to much about it. It was usually in somebody’s dresser drawer of shoe or something or whatever the case may be. So probably what the growth that went on here we did maintain some semblance of organization, somebody being responsible for getting the message out to other addicts , what other materials we did have being in one place there was not much of that and for a lot of years I was accused of carrying around the office in my car. A lot of that is true because if you needed something you would have to call me and I would have to deliver it to you out of the back of y car. Therefore, I had this information here and I usually carried it around in a box in the back of my car. They knew to call Bob because that is where Bob would have it in the back of his car, Bob had a car, and he could get there. See so it became a thing that I might have transported what was considered the office around in the back of my car for three or four years.
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Now we are up to probably the late 60s by this particular time 60s getting close to 1970. Let me backtrack just a little bit. Part of this formation in 66 was part of this development of organization was selecting a BOT, starting regional and area service committees, and having somebody to chair the parent organizations which was Southern California. So you can see we had a loose organization, very loose because we knew very little of organizing anyhow, best we were lucky to know how to stay clean. But the things out of staying clean were the thing of following the steps and working together with one another. We became very intimate in terms of our relationships because if we had fifty members we all went to the same meetings, I do not care where they were we all went to the same meetings. I remember many a night when I had to transfer addicts on a radius of twenty-five or thirty miles in a circle, because we would load up a car and I do not care if you lived in Long Beach or the valley or wherever the case is. We would just make the circle, get home whenever we got home, and get to work whenever we would get to work. It did not make any difference we became working together for a long time in that process. Therefore, we were growing because more people were staying clean and other people were getting out of these institutions called like Tahatchbee, Louie got out and he started a meeting. We were talking about last night we had all kinds of meetings that we started up just because we decided that we needed a meeting. We had what we called jazz meeting, it was at Louie’s house on the blue light and music in the background and we were talking about our problem and we had to go through the den in order to get to the house that was having this meeting. It was in like a court and you had to pass all these places where they were dealing drugs out in the street. They kind of like included themselves on occasion asking like what’s all this **** about baby, some would wander in and like hey what is happening. You know we had the blue lights on and they thought that we was using I guess because the blue lights and the music in the background I mean hey the atmosphere was right. But I mean as the case goes people were staying clean and I think that is one of the key because they were staying together, working together and doing things together. We use to go on Twelve Step calls together. We did not dare go on a Twelve Step call without calling someone else and saying hey man, I got a hot one. We usually very often scared people to death because you can imagine four or five dope fiends running up to the door of anybody’s house and they using, that is fear. I do not know about you but anytime anything like that happened at my house “Oh no what is happening here”. That is the kind of thing that was happening during those particular years, so we developed you know and kept on developing I think the BOT kind of became kind of a core of core of authority, core of responsibility, core of whatever, and core of chaos whatever the case may be. Because what we did at that time was try to run things in a since of speaking. It is not that we dictated or anything but, we set up conditions by which we operated, by which we functioned to the best of our ability. Now we called that other organizations office occasionally to ask them about certain things. The fact is we called them a lot of times to ask them certain things and they were, the letters we usually received were very non-committal not very directive. They would tell you to do it to the best of your ability or I think you are doing a good job and good luck that is about the extent of it. But we were still growing, we were still growing the message was getting out. We were becoming more responsible as far as the organization was concerned like starting a bank account, which was one of the difficulties in terms of addicts. We needed to become more business like in our doings. It became very difficult of who was going to sign the card to get the money out because if you were like most of us you had bad records in terms about signing anything. So it became difficult and you had to hunt very judiciously to find a person who did not have a dirty record perhaps to sign a check. Not that there was a lot of money involved, we were talking about a hundred or two hundred dollars at any given time, but we needed to learn how to start keeping records of these types of things. What happened here is as I say theses records very often they said if a person would change their residence and move somewhere very often they would carry those records in the back of their car, or carry part of those records somewhere else. So we had no central location for to put these here things. Jimmy was in the hospital so we could not leave them with Jimmy because we needed access to these particular things. Therefore, Sylvia had them for a while, Ron and Cathy had them for a while, I had them for a while, you now and they kept bouncing around. Whatever records we had were bouncing around. The great idea came about that we needed to do some things more in terms of organization because we were becoming somewhat of a national organization. We had meetings going on in Pennsylvania, meetings going on in Cleveland, meetings going on, inquiries from everywhere and we were doing the best we could with a voluntary type of operation. Now we got a lot of flack from the east coast because they were not getting their materials fast enough. They wanted to know, demanded to know why they could not get their mailing (side Two)
Therefore, you continually are trying to do something with a rag tail organization, which there is a certain amount of dedication involved here true enough. Apart of this dedication is they say do you have the time and the energy to give to that particular project that you are trying to get done. So we are right at the edge of 70 now and the thing we have become very aware of is that we need to carry the message at a greater, more at large. We needed an office; we needed a central place to put the records that we were accumulating. We needed to get them out of the back of people’s cars and put them in one place and have a central location to respond to or go from. We had no idea how to get this money because we had been pleading with the fellowship of send us some money so we can continue printing and so we can continue this thing called getting the message out. So we came up with the bright idea of lets have a convention. And entailing this having a convention we were going to have conference and convention together where all the people from all the meetings and their committees of all the meetings like their secretary and treasurer whoever is the steering committee was going to compose this here part of this here conference. So how we got together on this here first convention was we got together in terms of we went into our pockets, those of us who was working at the time and we financed the first convention out of our pockets. On the onset of that in La Mirada we had, what we called our first World Convention and the World Convention was somewhat of a small occasion. We had approximately 200 people at that first convention and that was a smashing turnout. Jimmy was out of the hospital, he was able to get out of the hospital for the occasion and he came and spoke at our convention at that time. While he was in the hospital, he developed the logo. He was like the person who loved to do arts and crafts and leatherwork and all this type of stuff. He made the logo and he presented it and said this is what I would like the logo to be. What do you fellows think? Hey, looks good to me, group conscience, looks good to me. That was it, it was accepted, and we had no problem about the logo. We had no fights over it, looks good to me, great let us do it. That became the logo, and we did not need to go to no copyrights and all this other stuff to see if it was legalized or stamped right or whether it was authorized. We declared it; we declared it okay, end of session.
At about this same time we are talking about the conference. The first conference we had in Ventura County. The Tree was developed in terms of greater organization. We had a conference which would further this organization in terms of how we should operate and how we could or should or would operate. So we were coming along, we were growing, and in the process of doing this work we were staying clean. I think one of the things we were doing in many instances demanded upon the fellowship to follow our lead. It was not a question of asking what your conscience was, it was called a case of this is what we have decided. Very often, we may ask what do you think about it, maybe we might ask you what do you think about it. It was usually a case of this is what we decided at our gathering and we got very little response in terms of saying yeah, nay or otherwise. You have to realize it said I think very often addicts like ourselves at sometime once we get clean we have other ideas of what we approved yesterday. All of a sudden, we become clear that we want to go in a new direction or do something else different. Sometimes we will become very verbal about that response and so we start jumping on tables and pounding podiums and cursing people out and getting in fights in the parking lot. All of those because we have not learned to work together and tried to come to one understanding of a direction of what we want to do and how can we best do it. We don’t have to I don’t think like or love each other in that respect but we must love each other enough hopefully that when we come through the doors of Narcotics Anonymous that we are working toward one goal, collectively working toward one goal. I do not have to sleep with you but I have to work with you. It is just like if you go to the job, you might not like everybody at that job but you go to that job for a purpose. We come here to Narcotics Anonymous in the term in the theme of service and I think that sometimes we do a disservice because we go so far a field to what the objectives is.
I think one of the things that is happening here today is I think hopefully we are coming to some understanding as to what the history is and hope we can maintain some of that idea of we all need to work towards history. The little bits and pieces that we need from you to make it all; to put it all together is necessary. We do not have no history with out these little pieces together. I do not have all the information, I do not think there is any one person here that has all the information but collectively we have all the information. Now we must come to some common ground or understanding of how to put that information together to best present it to the fellowship out there who is waiting for it. Now they are waiting for it, but you will have to do the work and look to be criticized in the process. (Laughter) It is almost a forgone conclusion that you are going to be and sometimes it becomes very frustrating and I know some of these things are labors of love, but they can become very frustrating because of our roadblocks that are thrown constantly in the way and say that is not the way I want to see it. I think we have to take into consideration because the minority opinion sometimes becomes very important, because they may have that little key that we need in order to open up that door we need to open up. So we cannot discard anyone, we must be inclusive in terms of our undertakings in order to include all of the information all of the resources. Regardless of what we believe or think they should be, because very often I have to accept what the group conscience is whether it is my conscience or not. Sometimes that is very difficult to give up my right to have my opinion. I still got my opinion but sometimes I have to accept the conscience as to what is acceptable or what thy want to have or what they think they should use. I have to be accepting of that and I found that hard to give up because I am a person who loves to bite into things and hold on. I hate giving up things, my idea and I think very often if we are addicts like myself we are very tenacious about that and we like to hold on to things and we hate to give up what we think is a good idea. There may not be anything wrong with your idea do not get me wrong, but the conscience or the group said no, just that simple, no. They may go back or change to that at another point, I have seen that happen here too. The Tree had been disassembled three or four times, it is still a piece of literature that they still refer to as the Tree. Do you know that it has been disassembled fifty times because they did not like the way it was written in the first place and do you know that it is right back almost, where it started originally. So somebody must have been thinking somewhere along the way, but once again we are talking about the conscience of the group and their understanding as they get to a certain place of understanding.
(Audience) Excuse me, I hate to interrupt but on the agenda it is allowing this time to speak about the 50s and the 60s, the 70s will be this afternoon.
Well I am sorry about that; I was just up to the 70s here.
(Audience) Well, the Tree
The Tree, when was the Tree? The Tree was in the 60s. Well I heard you mention the 70s.
Well I am just up to that cut off point. I am just about finished anyhow; I am just trying to wind this up because as I said there is a lot more history that goes on as you are saying. I would have liked to have stopped earlier anyhow, but anyway I think one of the things as we become aware that there is information available rather than to say there is no information. Sometimes we must ask the question and there is somebody here that can reference you to some information, so I want to thank you. (Applause)
Tape 3
Speaker: Bob B.
Lawrence. Reading: The Twelve Traditions of Narcotics Anonymous.
Speaker: Bill
This morning what we are going to do is go over the 50s, 60s, and any other information on Narcotics Anonymous. We have Bob B. Bill B. and Betty if she is up she is on her way. So what we will do is have Bob start the workshop off.
Speaker: Bob B.
My name is Bob and I am an addict, hi Bob. Good morning and I hope you all had a good nights rest and I know you didn’t because I know most of you were up with me. Laughter) I think one of the things that we were talking about where Narcotics Anonymous came from and did not come from. I think initially we can say we came from God; it was a present from God. The need existed and somebody tried to fill that particular need. Much of what is deep into the controversy probably in terms of history is concerned is where it came from, where the name originated, who was initially involved and I think one of the things is, is that I think we have to realize there are many pioneers in terms of discovery of things happening. Just like there are many concepts or ideas that come into the religious folds, they say they come from different leanings and so forth. Trying to obtain the same goal, ours happen to be recovery from our addiction and how do you best help addicts, and you are talking about a time when we think that it is a new era when we are thinking about our recovery or the need for a place to recover. That was not so because I think the were a number of times that there were vain attempts to start something to help the addict to recover, not too much success, the nature of the disease itself and the social attitude and people acceptance as to whether addicts were treatable or not became part of the question.
But during one of their amazing discoveries at this particular time they said what they would do was that the government decided they would isolate the addicts so they could put them under the microscope and study them very intensely so they could see what they could do about dealing with addicts at large. If we had them in one place maybe, we can tell what to do and how to do it and by deep analysis or discussion, we could come up with some idea of how we could help these poor souls. Because addiction has been around for a lot of years not just in terms of talking about 30s and 40s we are talking about going back into the 1800s they had problems with addiction. They had whole nations; China had a big drug problem. They almost lost all of China due to drug addiction. They found out it was a controlling factor in terms of dealing with addiction. Dealing with a country or dealing with people, if you kept them addicted they had lost the will to resist and that was how you control. They had a big controlling factor, opium wars that went on for years and lost whole dynasties as a result of drug addiction. So drug addiction is not new, how they dealt with it was becoming a new concept. They say what do you do about it very often the case was you hide them away, stow them away, throw them away whatever the idea was at the time as to that is how you treat drug addicts. You just isolate them, keep them in confinement wait for them to clean up and then let them go again, and to do that over and over again and so you always have a repeat performance in terms of what you were doing in terms of recovery. But all of you may think they call it recovery, they use to say getting well. They did not know that it was an ongoing process that went on rather than talk about getting well. During the early 20s they said to have come up with an idea that they needed, one place they needed to do in this isolation thing was to open up a hospital so they would have a facility to do this great study. Even after 20 years of study, they did not really come up with any real conclusions of what to do with addicts. They know that they lied and that they loved candy bars, they knew that you now. (Laughter) The rest of it they say was kind of vague, they knew some of the characteristics they knew what some of the addicts would do, they knew that it was a continuing thing, that they came back and came back and came back. During that time, they say that is when they established the United States hospital down in Lexington and one down in Fort Worth after that, but they had still been trying to understand what the addict was all about. What happened was they say that an onset say AA had started a little movement on the east coast and it seemed to take off like wild fire. Then came along some other people about the same time that said they were not dealing with that particular concept of alcohol being a drug. They thought it was something else and they thought it was different. Somebody came up with the idea they said that maybe those concepts and ideas would work and so as a result of that, this is probably where some of the issues come up in terms of saying where it started and did not start and so forth. The idea, the name was all the publications that I have seen pointed to people that participated in that exercise during that particular time. Some of them are still alive and some of them wrote their own case histories as to where they came from and what they were involved in.
I have here in, I think there is a copy in the back to be copied that will give you reference to some of these people that were around at that time. What they call at that particular time what we are talking about in the 40s, a thing called Narcotics Anonymous, but it was called a number of other things prior to that. They called them Addicts Anonymous, Narco Group and they called it a number of things until probably in 1948 or 49 when Danny Carlson got out from Lexington and kind of spearheaded an idea that under the auspices of the Salvation Army seemed to be kind of in the forefront of helping people. One of the few places that I donate to without any problems with is Salvation Army and it is because they seem to always be available when a person comes and sticks out their hand and says I need help they will usually will go out of their way to get you some help. It was usually providing facilities for people to house them or keep them or to rehabilitate or to help them in any type pf venture that they thought was worthwhile. They would give Danny a meeting, subsequent to that he started a meeting in New York, he started a meeting in Lexington, and they called it Narcotics Anonymous it was that simple in that respect. However, one of the things that happen during these periods of times they say is that there was no meeting place there was no central headquarters or no central point of functioning. No place to say who do you call, you had to get in touch with this particular person by going to the Salvation Army and saying what night is the meeting on so to speak, and they would tell you Thursday, Friday Saturday whatever the night the meeting was and that was when you got there when that meeting was. I guess whoever was there was who started the meeting and the thing of home groups and such was kind of unheard of. It kind of followed the pattern of AA or the AA concept but they still called themselves Narcotics Anonymous but they were kind of undercover. It was kind of undercover due to the laws of the land at that particular time. The laws of the land stated that addicts did not congregate people that had been felony or on parole could not congregate, so they were almost like an undercover operation. It could not be out in the open it could let be known that they were congregating because the police had bad attitudes about drug addicts and they would maintain that attitude for a long time. They still some of them have that attitude but it has changed market ably because of our own, what we experience today we are able to do all these things that we were not able to do for many years.
During this time as I said we had many attempts at trying to start and maintain the idea of addicts helping another. I have two articles here, on the table here that were part of the conflict was they said , the question arises out of these articles out of 19, well speaks back to early 1940s or the mid 40s to Narcotics Anonymous. I mean whatever you want to think of it is okay, I mean the articles were written and people come to me and say well what about this or what about this. Or they come and bring me one of these people’s articles. A fellow wrote where some of these people wrote a case history or a story about themselves which you will find in this reference here of as to that story what book it is in, go to the library, go to the store and buy the book where he references through their recovery in Narcotics Anonymous that proceeds 1953. For whatever you want to do with that is okay it has nothing to do with what we are here for, I think we are talking about information or non information or whatever you want to call it.
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So but one of the problems during this time as I said where they would like to state in these particular articles which jumping up is Danny Carlson’s name and there are a number of articles of the same type that are around and exist which brings up questions very often in terms of our history. Talking about our history, I think we are talking about new beginnings and I think this is where we are coming into a time to talk about new beginnings. The new beginnings are that we have a number of pioneers that become involved in that new beginning. Because I think some of these ideas have been transferred, transplanted, or transported from one place to another and they arrive at a certain destination and they say let us try it here too. Those pioneers who were open enough or far thinking enough to present the idea, as we know it today. Amongst those people at that time was Jimmy Kinnon, and probably one reason that he stands out very vividly is because of the work that he put into and the dedication that he put into maintaining, opening the doors, keeping the doors open and being the person that you could contact when you could not contact anybody else. Very simple, I would not be here today if I could not have picked up the telephone and called Jimmy Kinnon, very simple. I probably would not be here if my wife had not picked up the phone prior to me getting here and called Jimmy Kinnon. Actually, she called Jimmy Kinnon’s wife, and Jimmy Kinnon’s wife told her about this organization Narcotics Anonymous and did she want to talk to her husband that has this meeting going on in Studio City. So my wife took the information of where they were going to meet and how to get there and gave me instructions about let’s go to this meeting or let’s go check this out and I sent her to the meeting because I was not ready to clean up. The thing is the contact was made and subsequent to that, because of the pressures of family and so forth. With the case of you are going to have to do something about your that **** that stuff you are doing, because the reason I hooked up with her was because she was going to help me get my **** together. Part of the thing was we are going to have to go and get some help. Now there were not that many places to go and get help in 1959 they were far and few between. Lexington was one of them and I think I still have an application for Lexington floating around in my papers over here. But I use to carry one in my pocket at all times because when I went down to the court I was always going to lay it on them, what are you going to do about your problem Mr. Barrett. I have my application to go to Lexington, huh. Along with that application to go to Lexington I had that little yellow book down there with Narcotics Anonymous on the front of it and I am, trying to get, my **** together and they would tell him “lock him up”. You know because I came with that it was a regular thing, I came with these things and I am going to get it together tomorrow. My application has not been accepted yet, and I am just waiting to go this place in the sky to get my stuff together. So you can understand that my attitude about addiction because I was one of those guys that had some preconceived ideas that I was going to be an addict forever. That is what everybody told me. I was led to believe that I was hopeless, the military had gotten rid of me and put me out on the street and told me go for it, and I was going for it the best way I knew how. You know everybody’s store, every time somebody would lay, something down I would snatch it and go. So I would go to jail just to come back out and to ruin my health all over again through the same process, but I would always go back to the meetings to see who was there. I would go back and make my inspection. They use to ask me, Bob when you get out you want me to come down and, we could go to a meeting or we could talk. It was always the case of, no, I will see you later, I will get there, and I will see you at the meeting. Always had to stop in between the jailhouse and the meeting you know for old time’s sake a little taste and I always ended up with another case. But they would always come visit me when I got locked up. They would always come visit me and write me letters to me but they would never put any money on the books, never put any money on the books. That is all they would allow was three dollars anyhow on the books, but they would never put that three dollars on the books. I would look forward to a visit I would think I am going to get duckets, nope no money just a letter and a how you doing Bob, you want us to come and pick you up when you get out. No, it was a constant thing at that. I think that the vigilance that went on here at this particular time and the person that was available for this information was was Jimmy. That was a contact point. In other words, we had a telephone; we also had a post office box that we would maintain. The fact is the Post Office maintained that box even when we were not paying. They would say we know you are going to catch it up, we know you are going to pay it off later. They knew we had problems with money, called none we did not have any. It was always the case of if you needed to print you would have to start literally months ahead of time in order to raise a hundred dollars for the printing. I am talking about a hundred dollars for the printing; we are not talking about a thousand dollars for printing. However, we were lucky along this line because we had another person in the program that had a printing company but he just could not keep carrying Narcotics Anonymous forever or what we knew as Narcotics Anonymous at times forever. So it was always the case of say we always paid our bill eventually, it was always a struggle but we got a bill today and we would have to get an extra dollar here and get the dollars together and go pay this bill for our printing. But as I said, I got out of places and came back to meetings during those early years. It was always a case of, not the same people there. With all the years, you would want the same person there and that was usually Jimmy. He would be sitting by the coffee pot reading the book and saying come on in you know and it was a constant thing of come on in let’s talk. I think I spent numerous hours after meeting in distant places, on the side of roads in coffee shops or wherever talking to Jimmy in his dream in his ideas as to his hopes for Narcotics Anonymous. It was a slow process because as I said the attitude, the social attitude at that particular time it was of such you did not talk of addicts to readily. You did not congregate to many addicts together at any given place without some suspicions being aroused. Therefore, we had some difficultly in terms of trying to lessen the feelings, threatened about going to meeting because there was always a fear that you were going to be picked up before you got to a meeting or be picked up after you left the meeting. They were sitting there, very often, you would come out of the meeting and look down the block and one of those cars was sitting down the block. You know because they had heard somewhere that addicts were going to congregate and they did not giving a **** about Narcotics Anonymous. Whatever it implied it did not mean nothing to them they knew they were swooping up addicts and that is what they were doing, swooping them up, locking them up. At the same time, I think what was happening here there were more people being exposed to this thing called Narcotics Anonymous by the exposure and the printing of that little yellow book was one of the things of exposure. You had something concrete, and it was only a few pages in it, there were questions on the front of it, it had what the program was and the steps, and some of that was misprinted. See we did not have a lot of proofreaders at that time like we have today. We did not give a **** about the proof reading and the, this, thus and they’s were and the periods and commas were in the right lace. If it was misspelled and you understood what it was, you understood, what it was you did not have to worry about the misspelling. The steps did not change and recovery is in the steps not all this here other text and things we bring around it. Now very often even n the reading I had great difficulty with reading anyhow as far as text was concerned. My head I could read the word properly I put the comma and period in the proper place but my head would change it, it would alter the meaning the words would change and it did not mean what it said anyhow as far as my head was concerned. So I usually had to go to another individual to explain it to me and they made it very simple, they would make it very simple of how it worked. They would talk about formulas, they talked about recipes, they talked about all these things and made it very simple for me because I tend to have a problem with understanding what is being said. Because even in the first step I could not get the concept of being powerless over my addiction, because the first thing we use to talk about was I am a dope fiend. First thing, **** near everyone around the table to see how further out they can be in a meeting. They would how I am a dirty dope fiend; well I am a slimy dope fiend, well I we always tried to do one up on everybody else. So it was not understanding what the first step was even talking about cause we nothing about the nature of the disease called addiction and we had these teachers like Jimmy that would have to teach us what addiction was about. That is where we needed to have that learning taking place is in understanding what we are reading. It was always the case as I said one of the things I could always rely on is if I needed to talk to somebody I could call Jimmy, because if you were like me my phone was cut off most of the time, if I had a phone. It was a continual thing of not only being cut off.
I think one of the things that happen here is that we carry the message. We become the messenger by our contact with one another because people ask us, where you been , what you been doing and you will pass on perhaps , if they say man I need some help, and I say well have you ever tried Narcotics Anonymous? I may have not even been clean and telling them to try Narcotics Anonymous, because between 1959 and 61 I did not stay clean. I was making that revolving door, but at the same time, I kept that book and I mashed it on other people. Boy have you ever read this, hell of a concept here man, **** **** man check this out. Not that I was doing it but in them moments of clarity I seemingly had some substance to go by or some direction to follow when I choose to follow them, see because I did not choose to follow them. The idea of me cleaning up with somebody else was ridiculous. I made vain attempts to try to make it look like I was trying to clean up for another individual and that did not work. So we reach that point of crisis I think that usually occur is most of our lives that we clean up or die, very simple, clean up or die. Now some people choose to die and that is very unfortunate, but once you have come to Narcotics Anonymous you have heard the direction and know the steps the responsibility is yours, you cannot give it to nobody else, the responsibility is yours. It does not need no great amount of text to go around that because the formula is in the 12 steps but first me must understand the concepts and the ideas of what those 12 steps mean. We must understand those steps and there is always a process that goes along in understanding what it said, not what you think is going on, you must know by the process.
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So it is an ongoing process what happened during this particular time we are talking about the early 60s now is I had to go do some time because I owed the state some time so I went up to Hatchbee. Once again, they sent me some books. Jimmy one more time sent me some books into Tahatchbee to start a meeting. I kept contact and I think I had some kind of desire to want to do something about what was happening because the things that they told me were happening to me. They talked about jails institutions and dieing, the only thing I had not done yet was die. I had come close to that on a number of occasions but my last occasion I had almost really died at the hand of others not my own hands. It got my attention real abruptly you know like that will get your attention, shotguns and **** will get your attention. So they had my attention you know and I kind of made that first part of that step in terms of surrender, which we talk about in the first step, is surrender, I gave up. It was not this type of giving up it because I had given a lot of them up. It was something inside that I gave up and said well I will try it. So during the early early onset of this time here there were other instrumental people that came along. There was the little Sylvia that got out of Lexington that came along and found Jimmy and she became kind of like a mainstay for a long time. She use to go out and be on the telephone and she would go out and hustle up addicts because she had a car. See that was a rare thing for addicts to have cars back then. See if you were like me that state had already taken my license so I did not have a car. No I can’t say that, I had your cars, that is not true I had your cars but I did not own a car and any car that I may have owned at that time was somebody else’s you know or I had one of those fifty dollar special. You could get one of those fifty dollar specials, cause you would get one of those fifty dollar specials that you put a nickels worth of gas in to try to get to the connection, on flat tires, balled tires no oil in it, all those things that we do you know.
Therefore, what occurred here was you get to the meeting and little Sylvia would, she was like a little mother hen. She use to Shepard you around make sure that you were there where you were suppose to be or meet her at work when you got off or whatever the case is. In other words, she did not soft pedal this thing called Narcotics Anonymous, you know one of these hard nosed. She was about that high and full of grit and would talk long ****, and she did not take no **** from no addict. You know she had been one for a lot of years and she had got worn out. So she had become very instrumental in terms of like being Jimmy’s right hand person. Kind of stand on the right hand, do the calling and running around because during this same time here Jimmy was getting ill due to something from working on those roofs and things breathing that tar and his lungs were giving out. He was developing some tuberculosis so he was becoming somewhat sickly and was not able to get around as well as he use to or as much as he use to. Therefore, Sylvia was pretty much the Shepard of the flock for a long time. She was kind of like the one opening the doors and making sure the coffee pot was there and that the meeting got started and all these other types of things. Then there were other people that came along at this same time. We had what we called big Sylvia and little Sylvia and people would get them mixed up. I do not know how they would get them mixed up because one was about six foot tall and the other was about five foot tall. So you got two diverse people that are two different people, one was an early and one was a late. Sylvia got out of jail and she got the message brought to her in jail, Zona brought her the message in jail because she was doing a violation on a from a penitentiary and she went up to the county jail and met Sylvia. Once again, the little book plays its part, have you ever tried Narcotics Anonymous that is it baby. So big Sylvia arrives at the meeting you know to find out what this thing is all about because she had a desire to want to be clean and she got very active. Then there was another lady that just got out, Penny just got out of the penitentiary and they seemed to be like little mother hens around there taking care of all the kids, like where are you, what you doing they were always questioning what is going on. They always seemed to have those mothers around because if you are like me you needed a mama. I needed somebody to take care of me. So I feel in that real good, when I was around mother me, because I missed it at home so I needed it somewhere. I was always hunting for a mama so it fit me real good. I had mother substitutes all over the place you know worry about Bob, **** I needed help.
So what evolved from this was periodically Jimmy would send message as to what we needed to do and one of the things we needed to do was to become more organized in terms of letting more people know what was going on at Narcotics Anonymous. We were becoming somewhat not respectable but we were becoming an organization that people were staying clean and carrying the message by whatever means and it was usually hand to hand and mouth to mouth. However, it was becoming more widespread, more people were getting the message and if they went away somewhere, they would carry it with them. They would carry a book they would carry this contact person they had the post office box, they had the telephone that they could call somebody. But part of what Jimmy comes up with was he kind of outlined a plan of a kind of a parent organization. The parent organization of Narcotics Anonymous you might see on something as the early, as a direction we chose to use. Almost like an organization or how you organized things, chain of command so to speak a direction, a formula to hold things together, for no better word, somebody in charge of or responsible for the duties that needed to be taken care of. They needed to be outlined in terms of saying directly as to what you are suppose to be doing or how you were to be doing it. So you derive this here thing called the parent organization that is pointed out a certain amount for leadership, a certain amount of people that come before you that have some sense of direction of how to do things. It functioned fairly well in terms of functioning because we only had a small core or group of meeting, which constituted about three or four meetings. Most of all those meeting were centrally located in southern California.
Now 1965, 1966 came along and the colleges were getting on the bandwagon, they were going to study addicts. They had grants, they had money to study addicts in addiction, flower time, flower children, and money people were getting hurt. Money people were out in the streets with no direction, so they decided they were going to study the phenomena of why kids run away from home, ran to the streets, and use all of these crazy drugs. So Berkeley undertook a study, they developed a thing called Ad-Center. Now what they needed were some addicts that were clean to give them some direction or some ideas of how to do this thing. Now they came, they knew where some addicts were because one of the ladies that wee involved was a lady named Vargas that had worked in the Social Service system. She said I know where there are some addicts that will staff your study. They went to Southern California and took all the people that had time and that would leave and took them to Northern California and offered them a job. You know most addicts need jobs because they are either under employed or not employed at all. So at the advent of that Sylvia was one of king of like the mainstays that went up to Northern California with Penny and Ron, Russ. It was a core group of about eight to ten people that went to Northern California and started Northern California NA. They would have an outgrowth of that of starting many meetings in that particular vicinity of Northern California. At the same time flower children traveled, they traveled all over the country and this here little book would pop up all over the country and inquiries would come from all over the country as to what is this thing called Narcotics Anonymous. They had one reference point, Jimmy was that reference for a long time but once again and what did happen here was they started contacting other people on the fellowship. As I said at this point, Jimmy was sick during this period of time right after the early 60s or the mid 60s and he was becoming more incapable of doing those particular tasks. Those tasks were left to people like Sylvia, Penny and I happened to be around, I seemed to have a permanent address, and I had a telephone because I was clean and I had been working and I started maintaining these ideas of having a telephone right, getting a car and being available. One of the differences I think that usually happens was I was becoming a useful member of society in spite of me, by doing these things that people suggested I do. It became a very slow process of growing through this method. Now what happened at the same time here in the 60s were we had a lot of changing going on in terms of who had the resources of where was the money going once again because we had very little of it so we didn’t have to worry to much about it. It was usually in somebody’s dresser drawer of shoe or something or whatever the case may be. So probably what the growth that went on here we did maintain some semblance of organization, somebody being responsible for getting the message out to other addicts , what other materials we did have being in one place there was not much of that and for a lot of years I was accused of carrying around the office in my car. A lot of that is true because if you needed something you would have to call me and I would have to deliver it to you out of the back of y car. Therefore, I had this information here and I usually carried it around in a box in the back of my car. They knew to call Bob because that is where Bob would have it in the back of his car, Bob had a car, and he could get there. See so it became a thing that I might have transported what was considered the office around in the back of my car for three or four years.
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Now we are up to probably the late 60s by this particular time 60s getting close to 1970. Let me backtrack just a little bit. Part of this formation in 66 was part of this development of organization was selecting a BOT, starting regional and area service committees, and having somebody to chair the parent organizations which was Southern California. So you can see we had a loose organization, very loose because we knew very little of organizing anyhow, best we were lucky to know how to stay clean. But the things out of staying clean were the thing of following the steps and working together with one another. We became very intimate in terms of our relationships because if we had fifty members we all went to the same meetings, I do not care where they were we all went to the same meetings. I remember many a night when I had to transfer addicts on a radius of twenty-five or thirty miles in a circle, because we would load up a car and I do not care if you lived in Long Beach or the valley or wherever the case is. We would just make the circle, get home whenever we got home, and get to work whenever we would get to work. It did not make any difference we became working together for a long time in that process. Therefore, we were growing because more people were staying clean and other people were getting out of these institutions called like Tahatchbee, Louie got out and he started a meeting. We were talking about last night we had all kinds of meetings that we started up just because we decided that we needed a meeting. We had what we called jazz meeting, it was at Louie’s house on the blue light and music in the background and we were talking about our problem and we had to go through the den in order to get to the house that was having this meeting. It was in like a court and you had to pass all these places where they were dealing drugs out in the street. They kind of like included themselves on occasion asking like what’s all this **** about baby, some would wander in and like hey what is happening. You know we had the blue lights on and they thought that we was using I guess because the blue lights and the music in the background I mean hey the atmosphere was right. But I mean as the case goes people were staying clean and I think that is one of the key because they were staying together, working together and doing things together. We use to go on Twelve Step calls together. We did not dare go on a Twelve Step call without calling someone else and saying hey man, I got a hot one. We usually very often scared people to death because you can imagine four or five dope fiends running up to the door of anybody’s house and they using, that is fear. I do not know about you but anytime anything like that happened at my house “Oh no what is happening here”. That is the kind of thing that was happening during those particular years, so we developed you know and kept on developing I think the BOT kind of became kind of a core of core of authority, core of responsibility, core of whatever, and core of chaos whatever the case may be. Because what we did at that time was try to run things in a since of speaking. It is not that we dictated or anything but, we set up conditions by which we operated, by which we functioned to the best of our ability. Now we called that other organizations office occasionally to ask them about certain things. The fact is we called them a lot of times to ask them certain things and they were, the letters we usually received were very non-committal not very directive. They would tell you to do it to the best of your ability or I think you are doing a good job and good luck that is about the extent of it. But we were still growing, we were still growing the message was getting out. We were becoming more responsible as far as the organization was concerned like starting a bank account, which was one of the difficulties in terms of addicts. We needed to become more business like in our doings. It became very difficult of who was going to sign the card to get the money out because if you were like most of us you had bad records in terms about signing anything. So it became difficult and you had to hunt very judiciously to find a person who did not have a dirty record perhaps to sign a check. Not that there was a lot of money involved, we were talking about a hundred or two hundred dollars at any given time, but we needed to learn how to start keeping records of these types of things. What happened here is as I say theses records very often they said if a person would change their residence and move somewhere very often they would carry those records in the back of their car, or carry part of those records somewhere else. So we had no central location for to put these here things. Jimmy was in the hospital so we could not leave them with Jimmy because we needed access to these particular things. Therefore, Sylvia had them for a while, Ron and Cathy had them for a while, I had them for a while, you now and they kept bouncing around. Whatever records we had were bouncing around. The great idea came about that we needed to do some things more in terms of organization because we were becoming somewhat of a national organization. We had meetings going on in Pennsylvania, meetings going on in Cleveland, meetings going on, inquiries from everywhere and we were doing the best we could with a voluntary type of operation. Now we got a lot of flack from the east coast because they were not getting their materials fast enough. They wanted to know, demanded to know why they could not get their mailing (side Two)
Therefore, you continually are trying to do something with a rag tail organization, which there is a certain amount of dedication involved here true enough. Apart of this dedication is they say do you have the time and the energy to give to that particular project that you are trying to get done. So we are right at the edge of 70 now and the thing we have become very aware of is that we need to carry the message at a greater, more at large. We needed an office; we needed a central place to put the records that we were accumulating. We needed to get them out of the back of people’s cars and put them in one place and have a central location to respond to or go from. We had no idea how to get this money because we had been pleading with the fellowship of send us some money so we can continue printing and so we can continue this thing called getting the message out. So we came up with the bright idea of lets have a convention. And entailing this having a convention we were going to have conference and convention together where all the people from all the meetings and their committees of all the meetings like their secretary and treasurer whoever is the steering committee was going to compose this here part of this here conference. So how we got together on this here first convention was we got together in terms of we went into our pockets, those of us who was working at the time and we financed the first convention out of our pockets. On the onset of that in La Mirada we had, what we called our first World Convention and the World Convention was somewhat of a small occasion. We had approximately 200 people at that first convention and that was a smashing turnout. Jimmy was out of the hospital, he was able to get out of the hospital for the occasion and he came and spoke at our convention at that time. While he was in the hospital, he developed the logo. He was like the person who loved to do arts and crafts and leatherwork and all this type of stuff. He made the logo and he presented it and said this is what I would like the logo to be. What do you fellows think? Hey, looks good to me, group conscience, looks good to me. That was it, it was accepted, and we had no problem about the logo. We had no fights over it, looks good to me, great let us do it. That became the logo, and we did not need to go to no copyrights and all this other stuff to see if it was legalized or stamped right or whether it was authorized. We declared it; we declared it okay, end of session.
At about this same time we are talking about the conference. The first conference we had in Ventura County. The Tree was developed in terms of greater organization. We had a conference which would further this organization in terms of how we should operate and how we could or should or would operate. So we were coming along, we were growing, and in the process of doing this work we were staying clean. I think one of the things we were doing in many instances demanded upon the fellowship to follow our lead. It was not a question of asking what your conscience was, it was called a case of this is what we have decided. Very often, we may ask what do you think about it, maybe we might ask you what do you think about it. It was usually a case of this is what we decided at our gathering and we got very little response in terms of saying yeah, nay or otherwise. You have to realize it said I think very often addicts like ourselves at sometime once we get clean we have other ideas of what we approved yesterday. All of a sudden, we become clear that we want to go in a new direction or do something else different. Sometimes we will become very verbal about that response and so we start jumping on tables and pounding podiums and cursing people out and getting in fights in the parking lot. All of those because we have not learned to work together and tried to come to one understanding of a direction of what we want to do and how can we best do it. We don’t have to I don’t think like or love each other in that respect but we must love each other enough hopefully that when we come through the doors of Narcotics Anonymous that we are working toward one goal, collectively working toward one goal. I do not have to sleep with you but I have to work with you. It is just like if you go to the job, you might not like everybody at that job but you go to that job for a purpose. We come here to Narcotics Anonymous in the term in the theme of service and I think that sometimes we do a disservice because we go so far a field to what the objectives is.
I think one of the things that is happening here today is I think hopefully we are coming to some understanding as to what the history is and hope we can maintain some of that idea of we all need to work towards history. The little bits and pieces that we need from you to make it all; to put it all together is necessary. We do not have no history with out these little pieces together. I do not have all the information, I do not think there is any one person here that has all the information but collectively we have all the information. Now we must come to some common ground or understanding of how to put that information together to best present it to the fellowship out there who is waiting for it. Now they are waiting for it, but you will have to do the work and look to be criticized in the process. (Laughter) It is almost a forgone conclusion that you are going to be and sometimes it becomes very frustrating and I know some of these things are labors of love, but they can become very frustrating because of our roadblocks that are thrown constantly in the way and say that is not the way I want to see it. I think we have to take into consideration because the minority opinion sometimes becomes very important, because they may have that little key that we need in order to open up that door we need to open up. So we cannot discard anyone, we must be inclusive in terms of our undertakings in order to include all of the information all of the resources. Regardless of what we believe or think they should be, because very often I have to accept what the group conscience is whether it is my conscience or not. Sometimes that is very difficult to give up my right to have my opinion. I still got my opinion but sometimes I have to accept the conscience as to what is acceptable or what thy want to have or what they think they should use. I have to be accepting of that and I found that hard to give up because I am a person who loves to bite into things and hold on. I hate giving up things, my idea and I think very often if we are addicts like myself we are very tenacious about that and we like to hold on to things and we hate to give up what we think is a good idea. There may not be anything wrong with your idea do not get me wrong, but the conscience or the group said no, just that simple, no. They may go back or change to that at another point, I have seen that happen here too. The Tree had been disassembled three or four times, it is still a piece of literature that they still refer to as the Tree. Do you know that it has been disassembled fifty times because they did not like the way it was written in the first place and do you know that it is right back almost, where it started originally. So somebody must have been thinking somewhere along the way, but once again we are talking about the conscience of the group and their understanding as they get to a certain place of understanding.
(Audience) Excuse me, I hate to interrupt but on the agenda it is allowing this time to speak about the 50s and the 60s, the 70s will be this afternoon.
Well I am sorry about that; I was just up to the 70s here.
(Audience) Well, the Tree
The Tree, when was the Tree? The Tree was in the 60s. Well I heard you mention the 70s.
Well I am just up to that cut off point. I am just about finished anyhow; I am just trying to wind this up because as I said there is a lot more history that goes on as you are saying. I would have liked to have stopped earlier anyhow, but anyway I think one of the things as we become aware that there is information available rather than to say there is no information. Sometimes we must ask the question and there is somebody here that can reference you to some information, so I want to thank you. (Applause)