Aa history Lovers 2004 moderators Nancy Olson and Glenn F. Chesnut page

But then I came to AA - I began to work this materials in English - made

translation, correct translations of another people. Then I began to work

this e-mail. And I have to answer for letters from another countries - this

help me to "remember" English. I don't think my English is very good, but I
think - it become more better since I came to AA.
About AA journals. During last year I got numbers of "Grapevine" - it was a

gift from members of AA in America. It was very useful for me - I find many

interesting articles, some of them we translated to Russian and one or two

was publish in Russian AA journal "Rodnic". I want to translate some more

articles from numbers of "Grapevine", which I have.
But - my main problem - I have a little time and I wish to do so many things

in AA. And this translation - not the first things for me. I have some

deals, that I think more important. And translations can be done by another

people. But I can say - it was very interesting to read "Grapevine", it help

me in my sobriety (and in my English too).
So, I must stop this letter - tomorrow I'll send it (I have Internet only on

my work - and I can send letters only 1 or 2 times a week).

Newsletter.

enough+) - you may do it.

Buffs. As I understand from her letter - it is very interesting group for

me. I am very grateful for this suggestion. But I have some problems to join

this group -

are not good enough. So, I have my own name in Internet, but I have

technical problems to connect with my internet provider from my home

computer. And I connect from my place of

telephone line from work, but+ Usually, I have only 10-15 minutes to send my

and get e-mail letters, convert them to Word file and put them on the

mini-diskette. And I read this letters at home in the evening.

special ZIP-archives - it take less time to get such e-mail. So, I afraid,

that in this group (AA History Buffs) I may get many letters, and I shall

not be able "to process" them.

once in 10 days) - so, you may understand, that I can't answer letters very

quick.
I have a hope - to do some manipulations with my computer during summer and

to get connection from my home. If it will be so - I'll join AA History

Buffs. But for today I must wait. But I am ready to contact with you and

with Nancy (if she want this), to have individual correspondence.

Russian AA (it was written by one member of Russian AA). But I think it will

take time (perhaps month or more) - I have many duties (in AA and in my

usual life) today. If I will do this - I'll send it to you.

it will be 2-4 letters in a week - it is normal, but more then 10 - it is a

problem for me (and if this files will be not very "big' in kilobytes). But

if it is difficult to do this - I'll understand. I know, that it take time

to do individual selection. You may not do it for me. In any case - I'll be

very glad to get letters from you.

letter, but as I understand - this is address of a group. And as I said -

today I may have only individual contacts.
Marina K.
(Marina gave permission for me to correct her English, but I wanted to keep

the flavor of her own words.)

race through Urals. I would like to say I came to Yekaterinburg (central

city of Urals region) 2 May two years ago on this gathering after some cars

of this race arrived there! Maybe I saw Marina but I don't remember. Guys

did a great job. It was inspirational experience for local AAs!
I'm not so advanced in history of AA of Russia. The first group in

Yekaterinburg appeared just 8 years ago. There are some groups one among

them in prison. I had been there twice (in prison's group Svecha-Candle).

Also there are some groups in towns of Middle Urals (AA ,Al-Anon, NA). I'm

the only Loner by correspondence. We have't meetimg-by-mail for Loners,

Homers etc. in Russia. In my first year I asked myself, my friends in groups

of Yekaterinburg- What should I do with my sobriety in my small settlement

without group? I would like to mention that then my husband still drunk. I

attended speaker meeting for the first time in December 98 in Yekaterinburg.

Speaker was Tom from US. I was impressed. I remember I wrote down all that

he said in my notebook! It was turning point for me. After meeting one sheet

fell into my hands-it was information from Moscow AA Office about LIM. One

brother Felix (he died in last year) told how he tries to set up something

like LIM in Russia. I wrote to him immidiately. I thought just about

corresponding in Russia & not presumed about Inernational corresponding-I

knew nothing! He mentioned if I understand English I can write to GSO. I

thought I knew! Now I know it was just a beginning. He did a great job.
I wrote to GSO. After they published my letter in LIM bulletin I got a lot

of letters from different countries! I'm grateful to my Higher Power for

this gift! Still I have many pen pals but now prefere using e-mail because

postage on "snail-mail" still rising.

in the AA Grapevine, Millenium Editon, January 2000, page 22 "A Hard

Spiritual Labor". I was so impressed that immidiately found in Russian AA

Directory & wrote a letter to Krasnodar to Valery M. You can picture his

shock! -He could't imagine that someone could read Grapevine somewhere in

such nook as my settlement! Now he is my close AA friend & the first person

with whom I corresponding in Russian! Misterious way!
I found pen pal in my own country via English-speaking Grapevine!
I live just near geografical border Europe/Asia about 15 km from the point.

Through my sister in Australia I got last AOSM newsletter. Russia among many

countries of this zone was included in AOSM. Our candidate was present on

last AOSM in Seoul in Oct. 2001. I got Final Report too.

English. Mainly in English. I'm really blessed I can translate & read. But I

take responsibility for not violating copyrights of AA. Yes, I have an

opportunity to translate, to print, to copy. But it 's tremendous

responsibility as AA member. I saw illegal BB made in Germany there a couple

of years ago (free of cause).

events, gathering etc. Recently I got a couple of addresses of new loners in

Russia! Now I have a couple of pen pals in my country at last!
Thank you for listening!
Margaret, you can send my letter on the group if you wish.
If someone have questions I will be glad to answer.
Irina
Margaret then forwarded this letter:
When I read story about visit to Soviet Union [see next post] I recalled

those times during Communism. If Communism wouldn't fall it would be

impossible my sobriety & my participation in AAs! I remember well this time

- from 1970 to 1990. It was the country of militant atheism. The only "cure"

for alcoholics were labor camps. If police had stopped drunks on streets of

town they were dispatched into special sobering-up stations. "Alcoholic" is

still like stigma in community. I tried to prove I'm not alcoholic. My folks

had said "where is your will power?"

"too much" posting up on special board-administration of plant think that

these poor workers must be ashamed! These boards were used in former Soviet

Union at every plant.

community yet not open to "open" talk. I could make sure in it. It's legacy

of Communism that touched mind & spirit of people.
I believe that through new market economics & freedom, reforms, cooperation

something will change. People will be more free & open. Russian society is

not the same as 10 or 20 years ago - I can compare those years as I was born

in 1964 in Yekaterinburg (former Sverdlovsk). By the way as it turned out I

was born in this city twice-in 1964 & in 1998. It's not a coinscidence!
Irina
(As with Marina, I did not attempt to correct Irina's English.
My profound thanks to Barbara and Margaret for sending the list these

letters.)

those who have visited Russia

From: NMOlson@aol.com . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/20/2004 4:04:00 AM
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These were compiled from earlier posts which have been deleted.
Mike B. wrote:
I was privileged to be on two of the trips sponsored by CASW to the

then-Soviet Union. My first was in April 1987 and then again the following

April - 1988. To my knowledge, trip #1 in April 1986 marked the first public

AA meeting in Moscow and that is considered by most as the beginning of AA

in Russia.
On both of my trips (CASW # 3 and # 6), our group met in Helsinki and the

Finnish AAs, then went into the Soviet Union. On the '87 trip, we went first

to Estonia, and held the first AA meeting in Tallin. We also met with the

Anti-Bacchus Society, a sobriety club in Tartu.

initially through the Department of Health and the hospitals. In Leningrad,

it was the Bechterov Institute and in Moscow, Hospital # 13.
During these trips, I met several Russian alcoholics, some in the hospitals

and some in their homes. On the second trip, we held workshops on how to

take an inventory and how to make a twelve-step call; it was fascinating

stuff. I remember one woman named Marina being in our meetings, but this is

a very common name in Russia.
___________
Bobby D. writes:
I had a most blessed trip to Russia for 10 days before I went to
Minneapolis, it was an incredible experience. The highlight, of course, was

to sit in a meeting in Niznhy Novgorod and hear the beautiful language of

the heart spoken by 60 or 70 wonderful Russian people.
I have to tell you a funny thing. There were no meetings listed for that

city in the International Directory, so I took it upon myself to go looking

for some drunks to work with!
I contacted a pastor who contacted several others, but what I got was a

group of pastors, doctors, psychiatrists, etc.

second night, there were 100 of them, and there were also some real

alcoholics in the bunch! I was thrilled. I spoke to them and told them my

story on the first night, and what the Big Book tells us about each of the

12 steps during the second night.
Then an amazing thing happened. Several of them had questions, and soon it

became apparent that they knew things about AA that the average person would

not know. So after the second night I asked them if they had attended AA

somewhere. They said, "Oh yes. We belong to one of the two groups here in

town!" I was thrilled, and they invited me to speak at their meeting.
I went and was met by 60 or 70 beautiful alcoholics!
They all understood why I cried, I think. I was moved to tears with
gratitude. Never in my life did I imagine that I would be sitting in an AA

meeting half way around the world. What a beautiful experience.

me 4 nights in a row (including the AA meeting). Then one sweet Al-Anon lady

spilled the beans.
She had come to the meeting, she said, and was afraid they might not let her

in, since it was a closed meeting. When she arrived,

you could have kept me out," she said, "because I figured I'd never again

have the chance to meet Dr. Bob of AA fame..."
My mouth dropped open! These people had actually been telling everyone in

town that Dr. Bob was visiting them! Can you BELIEVE IT?????

them. I said, "This is a case of mistaken identity.... My name is Bobby

Davis. But I'm not a doctor, and certainly not Dr. Bob! He's been dead for

about 50 years..."

mistake they had made. There was much laughter, and afterwards, I was

hugged, kissed and fawned over like I have never been before in my entire

life!
They are wonderful people. And they ALL BELIEVE IN GOD! WOW.

GROUP FORMED IN MOSCOW. THEIR INTERPRETER WAS ALSO WITH THEM, AN AMERICAN,

WHO WAS NOT AN AA MEMBER, BUT GAVE HIS HEART AND SOUL TO THE PROGRAM OF AA

IN RUSSIA. HE WAS EDUCATED AT WHEATON COLLEGE AND BECAME A MINISTER WITH

MISSIONARY ZEAL. BILLY GRAHAM WAS EDUCATED AT THE SAME SCHOOL.
THE MINISTER, WHO ALSO HAD HIS HOME IN WHEATON, IL BUT SPENDS MOST OF HIS

TIME IN RUSSIA, WAS INTERPRETER FOR THE THREE SPEAKERS FROM RUSSIA. IT WAS

FELT BY EVERYONE THERE THAT NO INTERPRETER WAS NEEDED. THIS WAS THOUGHT BY

MOST OF THE ATTENDEES, ABOUT THREE HUNDRED.

CAME INTO THEIR EYES, SHAKING VOICES, AND THANKFULNESS TO AA. WE WERE MOST

STRUCK BY THEIR BY THEIR LOVING HIGHER POWER WHICH THEY DECIDED TO CALL GOD.
THEY KNEW THAT THEIR SURRENDER TO GOD WAS ONLY AS GOOD AS THEY PRAYED EACH

DAY.
AS I LEFT THE MEETING WITH MY NEW AA FRIENDS FROM RUSSIA, I WAS ALL BUT

OVERCOME BY THE EMOTIONAL IMPACT THEY LEFT WITH US. IT WAS A MIRACLE MEETING

THAT SATURDAY NIGHT.

earlier posts.

From: NMOlson@aol.com . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/20/2004 5:12:00 AM
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I came upon this interesting article in The Alcoholism Report of July 11,

1975:
"Dr. John L. Norris, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Alcoholics

Anonymous, urged the development of cooperative efforts between the U.S. and

Russia in the area of alcoholism. He offered to go to the Soviet Union to

share the AA program with the Russian people.
"In comments made on his arrival in Denver for the 40th Anniversary

International Convention of AA in Denver July 4-6, Norris said: 'My hope is

that AA may soon find its way to every nation on earth -- including the

Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain countries. We are told that alcoholism is

a major health problem in these regions. AA could alleviate it. We are

apolitical -- so there should be no conflict on that score.

requirements for AA membership. Therefore, our program would work in Moscow

just as it works in Denver or London or Sydney or Paris. It is refreshing to

observe that some of the barriers between the U.S. and the USSR seem to be

softening. I urge the development of cooperative efforts in the area of

alcoholism.

leaders in that country who are concerned about the problems of addictions.

We would be pleased to share our program with the Russian people. Alcoholism

transcends all barriers. The alcoholic in Russia suffers the same pain

experienced by an alcoholic anywhere. He or she deserves the same relief

from pain.'"

or cultural heritage have any meaning when it comes to our recovery process.

celebrating their first anniversary as an AA group. The meeting opened in

Russian with the Preamble, then a reading of the Twelve Steps and the Twelve

Traditions. The chairperson said, "This is a Second Step meeting," and they

began to share.
One member spoke up. He was an enthusiastic Moscow businessman who was five

months sober and beginning to work the Steps. When he spoke, I heard my own

alcoholism, I heard my own history of destruction and pain.
"I have no history of God in my life," he said. "But I began to do what they

said to do here. And I have found a spiritual power within me. I think that

might be God."
This man is now working with three other alcoholics in the group who also

had no history of God in their lives, but who together have found a

spiritual power they can rely on.
Inasmuch as AA can be official in any way, this was an "official" visit from

the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous in the United States and

Canada to some very specific people in the Soviet Union. Over the previous

year or so, there had been a number of communications back and forth between

the Soviet and American governments concerning alcoholism; and AA, while not
affiliated with these efforts in any way, had cooperated in full.
In September 1987, the general manager of the General Service Office in New

York traveled by invitation to the Soviet Union with sixteen other

individuals related to the field of alcoholism, as part of an exchange

program between the two governments on the topic of alcoholism and drug

abuse. Then, in May of 1988, a return visit was made by a group of Soviets.
Through the course of these exchanges, it became clear that there were quite

a few people inside the Soviet Union who had a growing interest in

Alcoholics Anonymous. We began corresponding with some of these people -

Ministry of

psychiatrists, narcologists, sobriety clubs - and in the course of this

ongoing dialogue, another visit was set up which was to be independent of

the previous trips.

from the United States and Webb J. from Canada - along with Sarah P., the

GSO staff member assigned to the trustees' International Committee. In

addition, since we'd be talking primarily with Soviet professionals and

doctors, it
seemed appropriate to have a doctor along with us. So Dr. John Hartley

Smith, a nonalcoholic trustee from Canada, was added to the team. Of course

it wouldn't have done much good to send us off without a voice, so we also

added a nonalcoholic fellow who is a simultaneous translator.

first, we wanted to take care of jet lag and be fully adjusted to the time

change; and second, the Finns have been carrying the AA message into Russia

for some time and we wanted to coordinate our efforts so that each of us

might be as effective as possible.
Now, I've been around drunks most of my life, but I've never seen quality

drunkenness until I saw the Finns. They were big, they were like redwood

trees, they were stoned, and they were moving. Finnish AA members are

incredible, too. They give the same depth of love to AA that they gave to

the bottle - and then some. One of the ways in which the Finns practice

anonymity

fellow who first brought AA to Finland.

was one of the most beautiful cities I'd ever seen. There were buildings

there which had been built in the 1400s and were still in use. Estonia was

in the Soviet Republic, but it is a separate culture.

though I knew we'd be stopped, I had no idea how this literature would be

received. I've been through plenty of tough customs checks before - and

after one of them, I ended up in prison - and I was getting a little

nervous. I'd brought along a pocket knife to open up the box with, but I

couldn't find it anywhere and ended up having to open up the box with a

plastic pocket comb.
The customs lady took out a piece of literature, looked at it, and walked

off to show it to a fellow in a suit standing back in a corner. Our

interpreter leaned over and whispered to me, "It's an ideology check."
In a short while, the customs lady returned with a smile on her face. She

called over a uniformed guard. I thought, "There goes the box." As they

talked together, the interpreter leaned over. "They like it," he said.
With another burst of conversation and a nod of the head, she waved me, the

box, and the interpreter on through. On the other side of the check point,

the interpreter translated her last comments to the uniformed guard for me.
"Look," she had said, "they are here to help us in our struggle with

alcoholism." This seemed to set the tone for the entire trip, and we started

handing out literature wherever we went.
Each one of us on this trip had a sense of the immensity of our task, and

each one of us had a real desire not to promote anything but rather to share

our experience, strength, and hope with the professionals we came in contact

with so that they might better understand AA and perhaps allow AA to happen

in the Soviet Union. At one of our meetings with the Sobriety Society of
Estonia, the people involved in helping alcoholics there tended to dominate

and tell us of their program and to slant the conversation politically, but

eventually we got across to them that helping alcoholics was our only

interest.

have read your book [the Big Book]. How am I going to work with these AA

principles if I don't believe in God?"
"Well," I said, "that's no big deal. I didn't believe in God either when I

came to AA. It's not a requirement, you know." With this, the girl visibly

relaxed and I heard a sigh of relief.
We also met with a doctor there, a former government official, and he kept

saying how the program would have to be changed to fit the Russian people, a

people with no historical cultural background of God. "It won't work here"

was something we heard a lot. I must admit that I did get a bit of a chuckle

out of this. Quite a few times I heard people say, "We don't have any
historical background of God," and then in the next breath would ask, "Would

you like to see the cathedral?"

talked so openly about alcoholism and about ourselves, they too began to

share openly. We discovered that whatever else they might be doing in terms

of treatment, they were already using some of the basic principles of

Alcoholics Anonymous: admission of powerlessness, an honest belief that some

sort of recovery is possible, and the importance of taking a personal

inventory. It was rigorous, but they were doing it. They had a

thirty-question inventory that had to be renewed every six months with a

doctor and a peer group. Treatment was a three-year process, and if you

slipped, you went to a labor camp for two years. The official position was

that after six or eight weeks of effective treatment, the patient was no

longer an alcoholic. There was a cure, they believed, and it took about six

to eight weeks. The only catch was that they had to keep renewing this cure

or they became alcoholics again. However, the drunks we talked to said, "We

know it's important to understand that we're alcoholics forevermore." And

they completely understood the need to pass this information on to the next

person. This, then, was the foundation of whatever was going on in the

Soviet Union, and it seemed like fertile ground for AA principles to

flourish in.
I was looking forward to the trip from Estonia up to Leningrad because we

were going to be traveling by train and I hoped it was going to be like the

Orient Express. But it turned out to be more like the milk train instead.
They put the four of us into one compartment with all our luggage, one bunk

apiece, and gave us a cup of black Russian tea. It was an experience that I

wouldn't have missed for the world, but I certainly wouldn't want to do it

again.
In Leningrad, we met with a doctor who had alcoholic patients who were

trying to use the AA method, but he didn't believe it would work because of

the emphasis on God. Eventually this man brought some of his patients to see

us and it is our hope that the sharing that went on will one day be of some

use to them. One of the exercises this doctor has his group doing for

therapy
purposes is to translate the Big Book. "It's not a very good translation,"

he said, but they don't seem to mind.

years, and one of the group had three years sobriety, another had one year,

and another had seven months. These people were allowed to come and visit

with us in our hotel rooms, something unheard of just a few years back. On

our end, we were not restricted in any way in our travels. We were allowed

to
just wander wherever we wanted.

point during our stay in Leningrad, just prior to our scheduled meeting with

the Temperance Promotion Society, an American movie was shown on Soviet TV -

a movie about one woman's struggle with alcoholism and her eventual sobriety

viewers, and the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda printed a piece with some of

the hundreds of requests it received asking for more information on AA. We

had the article translated and were moved by the overriding tone of the

responses:

home. I have not gone anywhere and will invariably get drunk. And once I go

on a binge, it lasts a long time.
"I don't work anywhere. I would love to go to heaven, but my sins won't let

me. I'm twenty-four. My employment record is like an index of available

jobs. Besides which, last summer I was released from incarceration.
"What should I do? I don't visit my neighborhood duty officer because I know

his crowning remark: 'If you don't have a job in ten days, I'll send you to

the Labor-Rehabilitation Camp.' Who wants to go there? So I hide. It was

better in jail. I don't know how AA can help me, but I am writing

nevertheless."
The newspaper article also carried the comments of the first deputy chairman

of the Temperance Promotion Society (TPS), which had recently come under

fire for what appeared to be a lack of effectiveness in supplying adequate

answers to the huge problem of alcoholism facing the Soviet Union. Of AA,

the first
deputy had this to say: "We will not forge an alliance with them. Their

method is interesting, but is only partially useful for us. And we will

reject it primarily because certain interested parties from across the ocean

are very clearly using it to promote the American way of life. The pretext

is a good one; there is nothing to be said against it. But still I will

block it."

minds - we went off to our scheduled meeting with the TPS. Of course, we got

lost along the way, literally, and as things hlostave a way of going in AA,

it turned out to be one of the greatest days I've ever had.

were very cordial, very kind, very open, very pro-AA. While we were there

talking, a television producer showed up with her camera crew asking for

permission to do some filming for a ten-minute documentary on Alcoholics

Anonymous for Soviet television. We started to explain our Traditions, of

course, and she cut us off; she understood them quite well, she assured us,

and promised to maintain our anonymity. So, as we began to talk with the TPS

people, the cameraman went to work. Rather than showing any faces, he

focussed in on our hands as we were talking.
At the end of the meeting, the producer commented that she didn't think ten

minutes was going to be nearly enough to give a sense of Alcoholics

Anonymous to the Soviet public. So what they intended to do, at their own

expense, was to travel to the United States in order to prepare a more in

depth documentary on AA. We made plans to send them copies of some of the

films and

"It Sure Beats Sitting in a Cell," and "AA - An Inside View," hoping that

this material would add to their understanding of AA principles and

practices.

the Moscow Beginners Group. There will be debates forevermore about which

was the first AA group in Russia, but this group had as good a claim as the

next. It was started by an Episcopal minister who was living and working in

Moscow,
and it now had a number of regular attendees. It was the first Soviet AA

group registered with the General Service Office in New York.

book about alcoholism and recovery, and a good part of it was about AA and

its principles. The book, it seems, was a huge popular success and had

already sold out. They were going to have a public debate about this book,

and a big hall had been opened up at one of the cultural palaces where
everyone - police, antagonists, proponents, everybody - showed up to debate

the ideas in this book. We were invited to come. It turned into quite an

afternoon - one we never could have planned.
The author of the book and several other narcologists fielded most of the

questions about AA and were quite right in their understanding of anonymity

and the purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous. These people proved to be great

advocates of AA. And by the time the debate was over, a spokesman for TPS

Anonymous.

Anonymous will work in the Soviet Union?" My compatriots looked at me.

pretend to be an expert. I had been in her country only thirteen days. How

could I possibly base anything on that? But I did say that we have the

experience of 114 other cultures who have used AA quite effectively, and

that the only purpose of our visit to her country was to share our

experience with them if it could be of any help.

made the statement in Komsomolskaya Pravda. This fellow was a very short man

with white hair - very charming, very cordial, and tough as nails. There was

no question about who he was. The first thing he did was give us a cup of

tea and say, "Now, here are the rules for this get together." He laid out

how the
meeting was to be conducted and said, "Since you have requested this

meeting, I have asked a number of people also to be here. They are

alcoholics with another way of doing things." This was all done very

graciously, however, and it was clear that he wasn't opposing us in any way.
So, off we went into another room, and sure enough there was this other

bunch of people there. These were alcoholics from a sobriety club formed in

1978, and the founder of the club was there. He was now twelve years sober.

The club was formed to give alcoholics something to do in their spare time.

They were responsible for forming their own activities - staging plays, etc.

Their charter stated that members couldn't drink until death, and they told

us that only two people in the last nine years had slipped. They wanted to

demonstrate the sober life. The trade union bosses had helped to organize

this club. It was all done through the workplace. If you were an alcoholic,

your name was on the wall at work. They knew who you were and lots of peer

alcoholism. They wanted to have a whole generation of people who were living

good, healthy lives without drinking alcohol.
One of the interesting things to come out of this meeting was our awareness

of how little they really understood of the concept of anonymity. "How can

you get well when you don't even know each other?" was the basic question

the head of TPS asked us. He said that in these sobriety clubs, people

weren't anonymous to each other - they got together frequently and were much

like a
family.

all alcoholism treatment in the Soviet Union. This guy was tough - not in

any antagonistic way, but he wanted "the facts, please." He wanted to know

organizational things: how AA was set up, and how his agency could use AA.

He voiced his biggest concern, however, by calling AA an "uncontrolled

movement."

pointblank, "What can we do to get this thing started here?" Our response

was very simple: "Give them space. Give them rooms to meet in and a little

bit of space to grow in." We told him we'd send him a lot of AA information,

especially the organizational stuff he was interested in.
I believe that the purpose of our visit was accomplished. More and more

professionals in the Soviet Union now know about and trust the process of

Alcoholics Anonymous, and we've seen indications that they're willing to

give it a try. We've also found that there are some necessities that the

General Service Office can provide to these people, the greatest of which

would be to provide portions of the pamphlet "The AA Group" in Russian so

that some of the how-to questions might begin to be resolved. They also need

the pamphlet on sponsorship, and of course the Big Book.

no history of God in his life. I am a common, garden-variety drunk with all

kinds of other problems, whose very best thinking got him into a

penitentiary; a man completely without moral standards, a man you could not

trust, a man for whom the ends always justified the means, a self centered

and domineering man. And yet, because of Alcoholics Anonymous and the grace

happen to anybody reading this.

alcoholics. There are only alcoholics. Of this I am now certain.

From: Rob White . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/20/2004 10:29:00 AM

Issues.
Nancy Olson (former staff to Senator Hughes and expert historian on AA

history) will be speaking at a conference on 4/15/04 in Baltimore.
Her two presentations will include:
Morning Plenary : Nancy Olson - The Politics of Alcoholism

(Book Signing to Follow)

what do we know about them

Please pass it on.

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NCADD - Maryland Tuerk Conference

Baltimore, Maryland

Alcoholism and Drug Dependence - Maryland Chapter, (Co-sponsored by UMMS

and Med Chi) will feature Claudia Black, PhD as the Keynote Speaker.

Dr. Black is a renowned lecturer, author and trainer internationally

recognized for her work with family systems and addictive disorders.

Since the mid 1970's, Dr. Black's work has encompassed the impact of

addiction on young and adult children. She has offered models of

intervention and treatment related to family violence, multi-addictions,

relapse, anger, depression and women's issues. She authors books,

interactive journals, and creates and produces educational videos for

use with both the addicted client and families affected by addiction.

Since 1998, she has been the primary Clinical Consultant of Addictive

Disorders for the Meadows Institute and Treatment Center in Wickenburg,

Arizona. Workshop Titles Include: Depression and Addiction; History of

Alcoholism; Relapse Issues; Adult Children of Alcoholics; Psychotropic

Medications; Advocacy; Women, Work and Recovery; Substance Abuse

Management; Gay and Lesbian Addiction Treatment; Anxiety and Addiction;

Treating Borderline Patients; and Chronic Mental Illness and Addiction.

March 5, 2004 $80.00 General

Registration: Postmarked March 6 - April

2, 2004 $90.00 Early

Student Registration: Postmarked by March 5,

2004 $40.00 General Student

Registration: Postmarked March 6 - April 2, 2004

$50.00
(Proof of full-time student status must accompany

registration.)
On-Site Registration:
After April 2nd, only walk-in registrations will be accepted at the

cost of $120.00.

and continuing education credits. Please note that parking is not

included.
For More Information or to Register:
Please contact NCADD - Maryland at 410-625-6482.
Additional information, including on-line registration, is available at

our website

each step

From: jsrmeat@aol.com . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/21/2004 4:44:00 AM
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I have found prayers in the fifth chapter of Big Book.Pages 76 line 7,God

save me from being angry, thy will be done.-Page 68:3 We ask Him to remove

our fear and direct our attention to what He would have us be.-Page 69:2

Weasked God to mold our ideals and help us to live up to them.-Page 69:3 We

ask God what we should do about each specific matter.Page 70:2 We earnestly

pray for guidance in each questionable situation, for sanity,and for the

strength to do the right thing.
I have the belief when I am directly asking or petioning God I am praying

and have been directed to do so by our book.

that we know him better.also the ninth step-page79:1 we askthat we be given

strength and direction to do the the right thing, no matter what the

personal consequences may be. THere probably are more but I have to sign out

for now.
Ask Him in your morning meditation what you can do for the man who is still

sick.
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From: NMOlson@aol.com . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/22/2004 2:52:00 AM

Hornets. The club manager was Rollie Hemsley. His career as a player was

with the Cleveland Indians as a catcher. He caught three of Bob Fellers no

hitters. Could this be the same player mentioned in "AA COMES OF AGE,"

bottom paragraph P-24?
The following are excerpts from the replies:
That is the same Rollie, referred to as "Rollicking Rollie" in Bob Feller's

autobiography. Before the anonymity tradition, sports pages gave much

attention to AA's role in sobering up Rolllie.
_________
I know that this has little to do with AA, but as a practicing baseball

history lover/buff, I felt I should correct the facts here. Rollie caught

only the first of Feller's 3 no-hitters. It was the most
famous one though, the one on Opening Day, 4/16/40.
Feller threw his other 2 no-hitters on 4/30/46 and 7/1/51. Hemsley was a

Phillie in '46, and was not an active major leaguer in '51.

From: Chrisjon10@earthlink.net . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/22/2004 9:41:00 AM

the Big Book? Thanks.

Richmond, VA

From: jlobdell54 . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/22/2004 6:10:00 PM

interested in the 2004 Multi-District Central Pennsylvania History &

Archives Gathering, now scheduled for June 5, 2004, near Harrisburg

PA. We are awaiting word from several of last year's speakers/

participants, and a couple of those who couldn't come last year,

when it was held April 5th (2003) at Central Pennsylvania College.

It will have a different venue this year, but it will still be

focussed on the Mid-Atlantic region, especially Eastern (and

Central) PA, with archives exhibits -- we hope -- at least from PA,

MD, and NJ. The feature old-timer last year, Trainor H. (sober 56

years), died three months after the Gathering, but we hope other old-

timers will be back, for our mixture of historians of AA,

archivists, history lovers, AAs in service, and oldtimers. My email

address is jaredlobdell@comcast.net, or jlobdell54@hotmail.com, or

jaredlobdell@aol.com. Will let you know more details as soon as I

have them. -- Jared Lobdell

From: Mel Barger . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/23/2004 10:37:00 AM

Humphry Osmond, 86, the British-born psychiatrist who introduced the word

"psychedelic" to describe the effects of hallucinatory drugs.

You can read about Dr. Osmond and his colleague, Dr. Abram Hoffer, in

Chapter 23 of "Pass It On." Bill Wilson met them through Aldous Huxley, the

celebrated author of "Brave New World" and one of the pioneers of the New

Age movement. In the 1950s, Osmond and Hoffer experimented with LSD as a

possible treatment for schizophrenia. Bill saw this as a chemical means of

achieving what he had found in his 1934 spiritual experience and became

their advocate and ally in the experiments. He later withdrew from the LSD

experiments but continued to proclaim the benefits of massive doses of

Vitamin B-3.

I first learned about Bill's LSD involvement from Ernie Kurtz's "Not God." I

feel that any use of LSD by a recovering person is a dangerous flirtation

with disaster, but Bill apparently surivived without any trouble and

continued to say that LSD was not addictive. I was skeptical about the

supposed benefits of LSD, although I did read that it helped actor Cary

Grant recover his potency!

Mel Barger
~~~~~~~~

Mel Barger

melb@accesstoledo.com
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++++Message 1676. . . . . . . . . . . . Humphry Osmond dies

From: Mark Stephen Kornbluth . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/23/2004 2:45:00 PM

Humphry Osmond, 86, Who Sought Medicinal Value in Psychedelic Drugs,

Dies

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

the drugs to which he introduced the writer and essayist Aldous Huxley,

died on Feb. 6 at his home in Appleton, Wis. He was 86.

The cause was cardiac arrhythmia, said his daughter Euphemia Blackburn

of Appleton, where Dr. Osmond moved to four years ago.

Dr. Osmond entered the history of the counterculture by supplying

hallucinogenic drugs to Huxley, who ascribed mystical significance to

them in his playfully thoughtful, widely read book "The Doors of

Perception," from which the rock group the Doors took its name.

But in his own view and in that of some other scientists, Dr. Osmond was

most important for inspiring researchers who saw drugs like L.S.D. and

mescaline as potential treatments for psychological ailments. By the

mid-1960's, medical journals had published more than 1,000 papers on the

subject, and Dr. Osmond's work using L.S.D. to treat alcoholics drew

particular interest.

"Osmond was a pioneer," Dr. Charles Grob, a professor of psychiatry at

the University of California School of Medicine, said in an interview.

"He published some fascinating data."

In one study, in the late 1950's, when Dr. Osmond gave L.S.D. to

alcoholics in Alcoholics Anonymous who had failed to quit drinking,

about half had not had a drink after a year.

"No one has ever duplicated the success rate of that study," said Dr.

John H. Halpern, associate director of substance abuse research at the

McLean Hospital Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Center in Belmont,

Mass., and an instructor at Harvard.

Dr. Halpern added that no one really tried. Other studies used different

methodology, and the combination of flagrant youthful abuse of

hallucinogens; the propagation of a flashy, otherworldly drug culture by

Timothy Leary; and reports of health dangers from hallucinogens (some of

which Dr. Halpern said were wrong or overstated) eventually doomed

almost all research into psychedelic drugs.

Research on hallucinogens as a treatment for mental ills has re-emerged

in recent years, in small projects at places like the University of

Arizona, the University of South Carolina, the University of California,

Los Angeles, and Harvard. Though such research was always legal,

regulatory, financial and other obstacles had largely ended it.

Huxley's reading about Dr. Osmond's research into similarities between

schizophrenia and mescaline intoxication led him to volunteer to try the

drug. Dr. Osmond agreed, but later wrote that he "did not relish the

possibility, however remote, of being the man who drove Aldous Huxley

mad."

So in 1953, a day Dr. Osmond described 12 years later as "delicious May

glass of water and handed it to Huxley, the author of "Brave New World,"

which described a totalitarian society in which people are controlled by

drugs.

three I could see that all would go well," Dr. Osmond wrote. He said he

felt "much relieved."

Dr. Osmond first offered his new term, psychedelic, at a meeting of the

New York Academy of Sciences in 1957. He said the word meant "mind

manifesting" and called it "clear, euphonious and uncontaminated by

other associations."

Huxley had sent Dr. Osmond a rhyme with his own word choice: "To make

this trivial world sublime, take half a gram of phanerothyme." (Thymos

means soul in Greek.)

Rejecting that, Dr. Osmond replied: "To fathom Hell or soar angelic,

just take a pinch of psychedelic."

Lester Grinspoon and James B. Bakalar in their 1979 book "Psychedelic

Drugs Reconsidered" pointed out that by the rules for combining Greek

roots, the word should have been psychodelic. They also said that even

in the late 70's, psychedelic had mostly been replaced by

hallucinogenic, a vocabulary shift they said Dr. Osmond himself made.

In addition to his daughter Euphemia, Dr. Osmond is survived by his

wife, Jane; a second daughter, Helen Swanson of Surrey, England; a son,

Julian, of New Orleans; a sister, Dorothy Gale of Devon, England; and

five grandchildren.

Humphry Fortescue Osmond was born on July 1, 1917, in Surrey. He

intended to be a banker, but attended Guy's Hospital Medical School of

the University of London. In World War II, he was a surgeon-lieutenant

in the Navy, where he trained to become a ship's psychiatrist.

At St. George's Hospital in London, he and a colleague, John R.

Smythies, developed the hypothesis that schizophrenia was a form of

self-intoxication caused by the body's mistakenly producing its own

L.S.D.-like compounds.

When their theory was not embraced by the British mental health

establishment, the two doctors moved to Canada to continue their

research at Saskatchewan Hospital in Weyburn. There, they developed the

idea, not widely accepted, that no one should treat schizophrenics who

had not personally experienced schizophrenia.

"This it is possible to do quite easily by taking mescaline," they

wrote.

also directly inspired other scientists, Dr. Halpern said.

"There was a certain point where almost every major psychiatrist wanted

to do hallucinogen research," Dr. Halpern said, adding that in the early

1960's, it was recommended that psychiatric residents take a dose to

understand psychosis better.

Perhaps the most famous psychedelic researcher was Dr. Oscar Janiger, a

Beverly Hills psychiatrist, who gave L.S.D. to Cary Grant, Jack

Nicholson and, again, Huxley.

Dr. Halpern said that today's understanding of serotonin, a

neurotransmitter important in causing and alleviating depression, grew

out of research into the effect of L.S.D. on the brain. L.S.D. and

serotonin are chemically similar.

Dr. Osmond's most important work involved alcoholism research, done with

Abram Hoffer, a colleague at Weyburn. Originally, they thought L.S.D.

would terrify alcoholics by causing symptoms akin to delirium tremens.

Instead, they found it opened them to radical personal transformation.

"One conception of psychedelic theory for alcoholics is that L.S.D. can

truly accomplish the transcendence that is repeatedly and unsuccessfully

sought in drunkenness," "Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered" suggested in

1979.

Bill Wilson, a co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, met Dr. Osmond and

alcoholics.

As psychedelic research became increasingly difficult, Dr. Osmond left

Canada to become director of the Bureau of Research in Neurology and

Psychiatry at the New Jersey Psychiatric Institute in Princeton, and

then a professor of psychology at the University of Alabama in

Birmingham. He mainly studied schizophrenia but was disappointed he

could not pursue his research into hallucinogens, Mrs. Blackburn, his

daughter, said.

"I'm sure he was very saddened by it," she said. "It could have helped

millions of people."