Tom Tuesday: AA History What AA was like

SPEAKER_1 (0:06)

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Tom Ives (0:27)

All right, folks, thanks very much. An alcoholic. Can you hear all right if I don't get harnessed up up there?

Let me know if it starts getting, if that old man over in the corner can hear. Anybody can, I think. So do let me know, it's kind of aggravating Thank you. I can't hear, even if it doesn't make sense. I'm glad to be here. I'm a member of the primary purpose group of AA in Southern Pines. And we meet on Thursday night also at 8 o'clock. We're not the easier, softer wake crowd. We meet at 8 o'clock. And if you happen to be in the neighborhood, drop in. We'd love to have you. Dave tried to do that, my buddy Dave from Tampa over there, tried to do that a couple of weeks ago, and he... brought us the ice storm that we're just recovering from, and he took a look at it and headed to Florida. So glad to see you made it all right.

What?

I'd like to do that format.

And the problem is you're gonna have to keep me honest now, because you let me have too much time to prepare. Oh, by the way, in case you start to get feeling too good about the financial condition of the district, it ain't real good.

I got tired of messing with the airlines, and I said, why don't you do it? And I'll just live with whatever you say. That was a bad mistake. I had no reflection on the company, but I got on the train air this morning. It's quarter of six, I think, something like that. And I'm two hours from the airport, so you know where I spent the night. You know, it was trying to get that two or three hours sleep between times of waking up, looking at the clock. It's time yet, you know. At three o'clock, I'm boogieing down, saying, oh, what a thrill. I'm going to Florida at three o'clock.

So I'm going to get my $69 worth out of that flight, I guarantee you that.

I got to go back tonight because I got to do two workshops tomorrow in North Carolina. They're in the same end of the state, but they're on different sides of the state. So my God, I'll be loving Tran Air by the time I get through driving. So I really am glad to be here, though, and particularly glad to be meeting with folks that are interested in talking about groups. To me, when we call it the heartbeat of AA, it surely is the heartbeat of AA. Most basic unit of service that we have and probably the most important thing. I don't know of any problem that I worry about in AA that I don't almost automatically look at the group as being the most solid solution to that problem. And so I'm a great believer in groups, the value of groups, the power of groups in terms of what they do for personal recovery. So it's not only the heartbeat of AA, it's the heartbeat of Tom I. You know, my home group is a part of me. It's a part of my identity. It's something that goes with me everywhere I go. I'm never away. You know, it's not something I attend on Monday and Thursday night. It's something that's a part of my life all the time, you know. And I engage in fights sometime with my group when I'm up in the air, on the train of air. They didn't finish the last business meeting to my satisfaction. I'm still having a group conscience by myself and hoping I'll get to land.

Let me tell you what I'd like to do. I'll do as much of it as I can, as quick as I can. You ever heard of a speaker, I'm sure you have, run into a speaker that just launches in to philosophize and just sort of eulogize in the program or philosophize about something? You know how long it takes you to cut him off?

Not long, does it? You let somebody start just pontificating at us, we don't last long. We're folks who seem to have a real value on drinking whiskey. You know, if you don't drink whiskey, all the philosophy doesn't hook to anything. You know, it's just sort of free-floating thoughts, you know. So we need to anchor it to something. And when I talk about groups, I want to spend just a little bit of time on, like we do when we tell our stories, what it was like, what happened, what we're like now. And I have to be careful and do keep me honest. It's now noon. No? It's 20 till 2, right? And we want to stop for what time? About an hour. All right, we'll stop and then we'll come back.