Working With Others – D. and Chris S. – Big Book Workshop – Austin, TX – Part 9 of 10 – Bob D,Tom I

I'd make a good sponsor. You know, my personality is such that I don't really, you know, that doesn't really seem to fit with me. And, you Know, this is incredibly important. I think what becomes incumbent upon us as we go through this test is to share this experience with someone else. It just becomes second nature. I don' t know so many people who have really gone through this task who haven't been excited about trying to pass this on. So if you found a cure for cancer and you're going to go home and watch TV, you know, you're excited about it, you'RE excited about it, and you want to share this. And I'll tell you what, this is an important chapter. I believe in Alcoholics Anonymous today that this chapter is being overlooked more than it should be. If you look at the instructions, there's a balance. Geez, I'm really bad with... I'm numerically dyslexic, but somebody who counted them said there's like 160 instructions or something in this chapter. I mean, how many of us are aware of these instructions? How many of use them? How many people are using this process when we're working with other people? So often, we become drama coaches We become the type of people whose phone rings and, you know, it's another disaster. And we think that we need to help them manage their disaster. We're helping somebody manage a life that should have been thrown in step one is unmanageable. How do you manage something that's unmanangeable? So this chapter really tries to keep our eye on the ball. What should we be working with, with other people? I started a riot once at a convention. It was the New Jersey State Convention. I was asked to share on Step 12. This was somewhere in the late 90s. And here was the format of the meeting. I was to share my experience on Step 2 for 20 minutes, and then open up the meeting to discuss it so people could hear. Here's what I did. I thought, you know, I took this commitment very, very seriously, and I did some preparation, and I decided, okay, here's what I'm going to do. For the first ten minutes, I'm gonna talk about my experience with steps one through eleven, and then for the second ten minutes I was going to share my experience on carrying the message of the first eleven steps to another alcoholic, how I did that. And when I got done, someone took exception to my experience. There was an old-timer there who, you know, he was one of these cranky old-timers. I mean, they're in practically every group somewhere. They don't like anything. And here's what this guy did. He went after my wife, who was scared before him, you now, insulting her. And then he went after me. And he basically did this. He said, all right, Gary, you know, I listened to you talk. You sound like some counselor or something. You know, talk about all these stats and all this stuff. I mean, you don't have to go into that stuff. That's not the way I do it. Let me tell you how I do It. I get my deal and I throw them in a car and I take them to a meeting and I love them because I can love themselves. Those are crap that you're talking about when I hear it before. And, you know, the problem he had was I was leading the meeting, you know, so I had rebuttal rights. Now, basically what I said is I said, you know, thank you, Harvey, for, you know, sharing that wonderful opinion of yours. But, you know, it's funny, there's actually a chapter in our basic text that talks about working with others. And you know, I'm pretty familiar with that chapter. And I'm almost sure there's nothing in that chapter about throwing somebody into a car, taking them to a meeting and loving them so they can love themselves. And he freaked out! He really freaked out. He started throwing chairs and kicking over tables. I have never seen this in any meeting before, but the chairperson shut the meeting down. So people are dwelling for the exits. You know, I've got to tell you, I'm not someone who wants to create controversy in meetings, God forbid. But this guy only knew what he knew. He knew about taking people to meetings. That's an important thing. I don't mean to denigrate that. That's very important to get somebody to a meeting. But there's a bigger picture here. There's a figure picture here of, you know, think about it like this. You know, let's say somebody needed to fly to really recover from alcoholism. And all you ever did was take them to the terminal and sit there and talk to them and never let them get on the plane and never help them get a ticket to get on the plane. Would they ever understand what flying was? If all these people sit there and talk about, boy, there's December 27th, I'm grateful for that. You know? Would that really make any sense? So in this chapter, it's fairly detailed about, you know, what our responsibility is. You know, when this book was written, one of the intentions of this book was to be able to mail order it around the country as a guide to recovery from alcoholism. Their expectations didn't really work out this way, but their expectations were that they could mail this book to Peoria, you know, to somebody who's asking for information on alcoholism, and then they'd open it up, they'd read it, they do what it says, and they'd recover from alcohol. You know, real experience in alcoholism is found that it was much more effective for one alcoholic to carry the message to another, you know, face-to-face and in person. But it talks about, in this chapter, basically how to... I don't even know if sponsor is the right word because the term sponsor hadn't really developed yet in 1939. You were to call the person that you were looking for to take to the steps. You were going to go out and try to seek people who needed this recovery process. And they were basically called prospects if you saw somebody who really needed alcoholics anonymous. And then they become protégés when they started to work the steps with you. That's really the terminology in this book. But it's teaching you how to be effective in carrying the message to another person. Now, I think sponsorship, I think we all would like to be good sponsors. If we're going to start sponsoring, I thing we all want to be good sponsors, we want to do right by the people we're trying to help. You know, this chapter when you first read it it looks just too hardcore. That's not the way they do it in the loony-noony over in Maristown. You know, if I was to require all this stuff from somebody, you know, they probably would go and get another sponsor. You know. I've got a really soft sell on this thing. Remember the mistake I told you about in my first eight years of sponsoring? I allowed my sponsors to dictate the terms of their sponsorship, how much time they would have and what they'd be willing to do. That was a terrible error. Most of the people that I worked with back in those days are not around anymore. You know, until the process that I was willing to participate in was laid out and they agreed to become part of that process, I really didn't have any success. I had no success. There's two things you can do. One is encourage somebody to quit drinking, and the other is to show them a recovery program whereby they can get more than relief. they can get freedom. You can carry the alcoholic to the message, or you can carry the message to the alcoholic. This chapter is about carrying the message to the alcoholics. All I was doing was encouraging people to stay sober and go to meetings, which if you really understand step one, is kind of futile. If they're powerless, if they're hopeless, mere encouragement or mere meetings is It's not going to be enough for them. You know, this book really was written for the hardcore, critically chronic alcoholic. And the good news for everybody about that is no matter where you are on the scale of alcoholism, this process will work for you. You don't need to be a hopeless low bottom. If you do what it says to do in here, you're going to recover from alcoholism. So, there's a lot of great information in here. Some of the promises come right out of the gate, the 12-step promises, and there's a lot Of them in here, life will take on new meaning, to watch people recover, to see Them help others, to wash loneliness vanish, to See a fellowship grow up about you, to have a host of friends, this is an experience you must not miss. You know, I've experienced this, and this is really, really true. Being a part of a fellowship is, you know, I always wanted to have friends. I always wondered what it was like to be a member of a group. I always thought I wanted to be in a group that had a crew, you know, to have people that I could count on. And on the bar seat is like the last place you're going to get that, if you drank like me. These are incredible. This is like getting back out into society. Developing really special relationships. The guys that I work with, you know, I've got a core bunch of guys and really what they did is they went to the steps. They're about the business of the maintenance of their spiritual condition and they're out there in the trenches working with other alcoholics. These are guys I can count on I can pick up the phone and say, Ray, Ron, you know, need you here. And I can almost guarantee that they're going to show up and they're going to be there. They're goingto be part of whatever process, you know, we're involved with in trying to help other people. They say yes to commitments. They arrange their schedule around their recovery program instead of arranging their recovery plan around their schedule. And, you know, they're in this. They're taking very, very seriously AA. And that shows in their life. Frequent contact with newcomers and with each other is the bright spot of our lives. Now, if you haven't gone through the steps yet, frequent contact with newcomers may not be that big of a highlight. I got to tell you, you know, when I had six months, you know, I was a six-month guy or whatever, and some newcomer raised their hand in meeting, I'd be like, oh no, what is he going to share about with six days? Oh my God, here he goes. You know, there was no connection like there is today with the newcomer. Today, I see the newcomer as really the hope for the future of Alcoholics Anonymous. I also see them as integral to my own personal recovery because I'm going to need to continue to work with people the rest of my life. So newcomers are a good thing to have around. They're going to perpetuate this fellowship and hopefully become part of the recovery process and may save my life someday. You know, so frequent contact with newcomers. I've done it in commitments to detoxes, to rehabs. I go to beginner meetings a lot because, you know, I really try to share my experience in a beginner's meeting because there may be somebody in there that might respond to what I have to share. And it's good. Some of the beginner's meetings are my favorite meetings to go to. You hear the greatest stuff at a beginner's meeting, somebody right off the street. It really, really is wonderful. It brings me back to the picture of why I need a primary purpose, why I needs to continue with this. You know, the stark face of acute alcoholism is staring right at you. Some of these meetings where it's three or four old-timers who have been around 100 years and it's just about getting a coffee and talking about golf and when a newcomer comes in, they're ignored. You know? I don't really think that that's vital AA. There's no spirit in that kind of AA. There was a group that I was going to. It was a step meeting on Thursday night. And I won't mention the town of Millington, New Jersey. And it was that kind of a meeting. Now, I'm new. I don't know too much. But these guys, you know, kind of like patted me on the head like I was the new drunken mascot. And, you Know, I would sit in this meeting and, You know, I'd share with my head down because of my lack of self-esteem. Anyway, there was an alcoholic who had been in that group a long time. His name was Jack. And Jack had gotten cancer and had a really aggressive operation on his throat. And they actually had to cut a hole in his throat, and during all of this he relapsed. There was some really aggressive treatment, and he relapse. And what he was doing was he was actually taking the vodka bottle and putting it into the hole in its neck and pouring the vodka down. That's how he was drinking. Now, some of the people in the area heard about this and rushed over to get Jack to throw him in the car and bring him to the meeting. And that's exactly what they did. And when Jack came in, he was a little buzzed. And it immediately went back to a first-step meeting. You know, that's what would happen when somebody was brand new, which is appropriate. And people started sharing, and Jack would mumble. He couldn't really talk, but he'd make these guttural noises because he was appreciative. He knew everybody was sharing about him, and he was trying to be thankful in his drunken way. And at the end of the meeting, a bunch of guys congregated over in the side of the room and started to have a group conscience. And the group conscience was about they were really disturbed that a drunk person came into this meeting And they were trying to make a rule that no more drunk people could come into their AA meeting and disturb it. And I didn't know much, but I was pretty horrified about that. Most of the meeting, these guys had been sober 100 years. And here's somebody in desperate need of help, and they want to exclude him. You know, there are areas, there are meetings, there is just those little bands of alcoholic synonymous all over the place who've really lost sight of a target. They have dropped the ball. So when we have our frequent contact with newcomers, the best way to keep AA vital is and the best one to solve every problem that's in AA today is through informed and experienced sponsorship. together. You need to be an informed and experienced sponsor, and we can help change the atmosphere in a lot of areas to take it away from the type of groups that are so self-interested they don't even want any drunks in them. Where are you going to go? AA is the last stop on the bus for many of us. You know, this is, it's the last stop on a bus. If we cut somebody out, you know, that just isn't right. Then it starts to talk about where are you going to find some of these alcoholics? Remember, this book has been mailed to you in Peoria. I don't know where I can find any alcoholics. Well, it gives suggestions about going and finding some alcoholics who need and might want this process. And then it describes how to do a 12-step call, how to share your experience. There's visit number one. There's exit number two. There's leave this book so he can read it. There's a number of really great instructions in here. But it also tells you, it gives you a lot of tips about how to approach the alcoholic. Now one of the lip flappers that I used to hear, the little one-liners in AA years ago was, you know, if somebody's ready, there's nothing you can do to hurt them. If somebody's not ready, There's nothing You Can Do To Help Them. I don't know if that's true. In this chapter, it basically says if we make mistakes, the other person can pay with their life. If we don't approach this seriously and in the right way, we can actually cost someone their life I've only had somebody do a real 12-step on me once. it was an old guy his name was Foster and he got sober in 1959 he was one of the old, old timers in our area and he had heard that I was an electrician so he invited me over to his house ostensibly to do a little bit of electrical work but that's not really why he invited me over there. He sat me down after I fixed his light or whatever and he told me his story he basically told me what it was like what happened and what it's like now. And he encouraged me to identify with him and share my own story. It was only months later that I realized the guy did a 12-step number on me. You know, old school 12-stepper number on him. And you know, today I really try to follow a lot of the suggestions in this chapter. Are you going to lose some people if you do what's in here? Absolutely. A lot of the half-measure crowd will be out the door, and they'll go get the sponsor, who all that sponsors can ask them to do is be the cookie guy. I'm going with the cookie-guy guy. You're asking me to do all this stuff. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Remember, when I was allowing people to direct their own recovery processes, No one was staying sober. No one was staying sober. When I got to the point where I was trying to follow to the best of my ability as many of these suggestions as I could, the people who engaged with me, every single one of them is still sober. There's been some relapses here or there because of injuries that involved opiate medication and whatever, but they came back and they're still doing good. So everyone from my personal experience that's gone through the work is still sober today. Everyone that I allowed to basically try to lay out their own AA sponsee plan, they're all gone. I don't know if they're drinking. They just aren't AA members in my area anymore. I don' t see them anymore. I don''t know what's going on with them. But I started to see we learn so much from our experience. If alcoholism truly is a progressively fatal illness, and there is something that everybody can agree on that works, why should we be doing it our way or by the seat of our pants? That really, really is irresponsible. And I was an irresponsible sponsor for a long time. I can tell you that. I needed to be exposed to some people who really had some experience with this and could share that experience before I became effective as a sponsor. I wanted to be your friend, you know? I wanted you to like me. I was afraid to tell you that what you were doing was wrong because I didn't want you to think less of me. It was only until I recovered myself did I not care what you think of me. I'm unattached to people's opinions of me in a way I never was before and that was because I went through these steps. It says in the 12th step, having had a spiritual awakening is the result of these steps, we try to carry this message to other alcoholics. That's pretty clear. If you read the black part, it basically says after you've had a Spiritual Awakening after you've gone through the 12 steps, you try to share that experience with somebody. You know, 90% of the sponsors in my area where I first got sober, I can guarantee you they never went through the steps. They probably engaged in spiritual practices. They probably paid lip service to some things. But mainly they kind of went about their business trying to just improve their life. And so their form of sponsorship was basically to disseminate a whole string of wisdom teachings at you. You know, little one-liners, little wisdom teachings. Well, kid, you know, underneath every skirt's a slit. What do I do with that? You know? I need to remind you, I'm burdened with a mind. You know, I don't know what the application of that would actually be. But thanks. I'll pass that on to everybody I sponsor at ad infinum for the end of time too. Because maybe I just don't get it, you know. And because of that, I think that happens a lot in Alcoholics Anonymous today. And there's many reasons that I'm not going to get into. What I'm really interested in, though, is anybody that comes to me, you know, I want to be sure about some stuff. I want To Be Sure that we're staying with the program of recovery that really is Alcoholics Anonymous' program of discovery, not Chris's suggestions, you know. So, listen, think about how badly I ran my own life, living at home with mom. Why would I give you my advice? Why would you want it? You know, if I wanted your advice, I'd call up your mom and see if you weren't busy, you know. But one thing I do know is I do now this recovery process. I've experienced it. I can pass this on. And I think as you do this more and more, you become more and More proficient at it. And you start to see things more clearly. You become more intuitive as far as how to handle your sponsees. So, you know, I would suggest to anyone who is a sponsor or planning to be a sponsor, wants to be sponsored, You know, really pay attention to the practices and the suggestions in this chapter, working with others. It will save you a whole hell of a lot of time. I wasted more time trying to help somebody manage an unmanageable life than you have any idea of. Phone time, driving around in the middle of fights between husbands and wives. It was a mess. So anyway, the first 11 steps prepare us for the real work of Alcoholics Anonymous, which comes in step 12. Don't shortchange yourself of this process. This will become the highlight of your life. It's become the spotlight of mine and the spotlight of a lot of other people that I know. Thanks. I'm Bob, an alcoholic. I've really enjoyed this weekend very much. I'm really glad to have been able to do this with Chris this weekend. I'm glad to see some old friends here and to have made some new ones. But this is, he just said something that is really very true. This is the end game here. They call it our primary purpose. Primary means number one above everything else. To meticulously do the first 11 steps and not do step 12 would be like going to practice, a football team going to practise every day and never going into a game. or working on the best race car you've ever made until you've got it. It's the fastest race car in the world, and you never put it in a race. This is really the end game here is to help other alcoholics. And when it says that nothing will so much ensure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholists, it works where other activities fail. You may be able to stay physically sober by going to meetings and praying and talking to your sponsor and sharing your feelings and all that stuff for a while. But inevitably there comes a time when that's not enough. When one of your kids was just killed, or you catch your wife sleeping with your best friend or your husband, sleeping with your best friend. Or you come back from the doctor and you're terminally ill and there's a slim hope you may not die of this cancer. And something hits you I don't know about you guys but when I've got something heavy like that on me I can pray and it's meaningless. I might as well because I'm so locked up in this problem and in these emotions, I am absolutely disconnected from God. I can go to a meeting and everything in the meeting is just wah, wah, Wah, Wah because this thing owns me. I am shut off. And it is in times like that when the people I sponsor and my commitments at the detox and my signing up to go on 12-step calls will do something for me that nothing else will. It will relieve me of the real problem. Chuck Chamberlain used to say something, and some of you aren't going to get this because I didn't get it for a while. It didn't make sense to me. I believe it absolutely today, that there is only one problem and within it contains all problems And there's only one solution, and within it contains all solutions. And what's the one problem? The bondage of self. It looks like your marriage problem. It looks Like your financial problem. It looks A lot of stuff. The problem is you're in the bondage Of self. And the answer, the one Problem is to abandon yourself of self And move towards God. The problem is when I'm stuck, I can't unstuck myself. My experience with this is very, very much like Bill Wilson's. On page the bottom of 14 and the top of 15, Bill says something that has absolutely been my experience. He says, for if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life. So he's going to tell us by what method we will perfect and enlarge our spiritual life and it's not through prayer and meditation. It's not true inventory. He says it's will perfect an enlarger spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others. And then he goes on to say something that is almost a promise or a vision of cause and effect that's going to happen to you. It's inevitable. For if he doesn't, for he could not survive, for if you don't do this and perfect your and enlarge your spiritual life through this stuff, you'll never survive the certain trials and low spots ahead. I think sometimes we're building a weapon we don't even know we need until all of a sudden that thing happens to you. As in my 11th year of sobriety when I found out my wife had been sleeping with my sponsee and best friend for the whole last year of my marriage, and in one day I lost my best friend, my wife, and my daughter in one sweep. And then a lot of people in AA knew about it and they wouldn't tell me. And I was in a lot OF trouble. What saved me at that moment, what saved me was working with newcomers. I don't know if I've ever talked about this before. I was sponsoring a guy who owned a casino in Las Vegas, and he was very connected. And he had set me up to meet this guy Saturday morning who was a hit man. and I had a bunch of money in a safe deposit box and for a stack of $100 bills this guy was going to make my problem go away and I felt like, and I was so crazy that this made sense to me and I had a commitment Thursday night, I'm supposed to speak at the state penitentiary and i don't want to go first of all i'm so insane with this resentment and this hurt that i don'T think i got anything to give away well we have a funny dynamic in aa first of alL we don't wanted we don'T want any speakers that think they have something to say And if you're brand new and you can't wait to do 12-step work, we may not want you to do any. But if you don't, if you are brand new, and you think, oh, I don't have anything to give away. I really can't do it. Oh, you're the guy we want. You're the God we want, and so I don�t want to go to this prison, and one of my sponsees said to me, and I hate it when they do this. He said to be, well, you always told us that you have to show up where you're supposed to show up and do what you're supposed to. Boy, when they give it back, it's nice giving it to them, but it's not good getting it back. I'll tell you. And he says that to me. So he puts me in the car and I'm a basket case. He takes me out to the state prison. I'm in this meeting and I am in the chapel and I talk a little bit about what it was like. A little bit about what happened. And then I just started. I couldn't help it. It was like a gusher. I started dumping what was going on in my life right then. this guy comes up to me after the meeting and he says hi you remember me no I don't he said I met you in the care unit, you used to bring meetings in there and I brought meetings until they went out of business I brought readings in there every Monday night he says I don�t really remember you maybe you remember when I was on the news I said no he told me what happened well while I was in the car unit I found out that my wife was sleeping with a guy at the casino she worked with. I got out of the carry unit, I went and I got my pistol. I went up to the casino, I'm going to shoot him, I'm gonna shoot her, and I'm gunna shoot myself. And I shot him. And the security guards jumped me and they took the gun away from me. And the casino threw them, they had a lot of juice and they threw the book at me. He says, I don't know if I'mma get out of here for probably 15, 20 years. and they threw everything they used all their political clout because they wanted to squash this and deter anybody from bringing a gun into another one of their casinos again and he said to me the guy didn't die, he said I just wounded him and he's raising my kids now and they're living together and it was like a postcard from God dear idiot Bob this could be you and I called that guy up and a friend of mine with the casino I called Key up and I said tell your friend I'm not going to meet him and Key said I'm really glad he says I was afraid you were going to go through with that he says my family's done a lot of that and we I'll tell you I've never got it's never been right with me and going up there and doing that service saved me from me. How often it will do that. I'm a Bill Wilson type of alcoholic. Bill says in here, my wife and I have banded ourselves with enthusiasm to the idea of helping alcoholics to solutions to their problems. It was fortunate for my old business associates remained skeptical for a year and a half during which I found little work. I was not too well at the time and was plagued by waves of self-pity and resentment that sometimes nearly drove me back to drink. And Bill, he says you're here a year and a half. Bill carried that depression for years into his sobriety. Matter of fact, when he moved, he found a solution to it that he's going to talk about here in a couple lines. And then when Lois had a chance to get her dream house and they moved out of New York City and he stopped going down to Towns Hospital every day and he stopped going to the Calvary Mission and he had his dream house out in the country removed from the trenches that he was in every day is when the depression really started to come on him again. He says, I was not too well at the time and was plagued by waves of self-pity and resentment. I don't like that word self-pitie. I like depression. Depression is a nicer word, isn't it? It's not really self-pity. It's depression. They'll buy you a drink for depression. They don't buy you crap for self-pitty, I'll tell you. You get bills for depression, they don't give you nothing for self pity. He says this sometimes nearly drove me back to drink, but I soon found that when all measures failed, Work with another alcoholic would save the day. Many times I'd gone to my old hospital in despair. Talking to a man there, I would be amazingly uplifted and set on my feet. It's a design for living that works in a rough going. How did that happen? It happened the exact same way it happened to me. I go out on a 12-step call self-obsessed and depressed and I don't even want to go, and I'm making it because I don' t want to have to face my sponsor and say I didn' t show up. And so I go, or I go down to the detox, and then I'm scared because I just found out I took a couple hundred grand hit through my business in the morning. And now I don''t want to do the detox. I mean, I need to sit here in the office and think about this stuff. I need really figure this out. And I got commitment to go down there and detox. and just like I'm on the verge, I'm so full of anxiety it's starting to turn inward and I'm coming towards self-pity and depression and I go down to that detox and I'll run into some guy I knew in AA that had been sober 10 years and he drank again and he can't get back and he says I can't stay sober I can never get sober again and maybe I'm sitting there with him and he's starting to tear up a little bit as he's overcome with his own hopelessness. And He sets me free. And I've walked out of that detox exactly like Bill's experience where the problem I went in there with, it doesn't even mean anything anymore. It doesn't ever happen again. It doesn' t even mean anythin'. Because there's only one problem and there's ony one solution. I went in there thinking that the problem was the money and the business and the stuff. The problem was I was in the bondage of self, and that guy set me free. Isn't that what alcohol did? Ever walk into a bar with a bad relationship problem or a bad financial problem that's consuming you to the point of depression and somewhere on about the third shot of tequila, where'd that problem go? Screw that problem! Because what happens is you just got you right off of you. The alcohol... In the early days of my drinking, it relieved me of the bondage of self. And it set me free. and in my early sobriety I understood that I had to do this I understood that I was buying myself islands in my life where I was free from me very much like drinking alcohol bought me islands in the world in my own life where I was free I was finding the same thing in service in Alcoholics Anonymous so I threw myself at this stuff. I fell into a group that was not real big book oriented even though it was a big book group it was one of those, these groups used to exist all over AA back in those days. They felt like they should read the big books so they had a big study they'd read anywhere from five paragraphs to a whole chapter of the book in one meeting and then talk about their day or talk about their drunk-along and that was it. And it wasn't these were good people. These were solid members of AA. It's just that nobody had ever turned the light on when it came to the book with them. But they knew intuitively the importance of service, and they knew about amends. They knew the importanceof amends and the importancesof service. They couldn't have. I don't think there was anybody in that group that could have told you how to actually lay out a fourth step from the book. But they new service,and they pushed me into service. And I'll tell you, I am a selfish, self-centered, self involved, self focused, self absorbed person by nature. And I don't want to do anything unless it benefits me. And I didn't want to do this. It was inconvenient to me. I'll call you. You want me to go on? You want to go to that? I don' t want to do this and they pushed me and pushed me to do it And it kept me sober for a long time. But I'm doing 12-step work without any principles. And if you don't have any kind of spiritual structure in place and any parameters on the road you're on when you're taking these actions and going down these streets, you're going to go all over the place. Because if you Don't Have Principles, what do you got left? You've got personality. And my personality is very ego-oriented. So all I got to bring to the table in early sobriety and 12-step work is ego. So it becomes about me. So I'm going to go on this 12-stepped call, or I'm going to pick this guy up out of the detox, and I'm getting sober. I want to kill him if he doesn't stay sober, because if he drinks again, I'm going to look bad to the old timers in AA. And I get these calls. We had an answering machine, answering service rather, at central office at night. And they were not in AA, so they were just a hired service for years. And because to them it's a business, all they cared about is when they got the call, they were supposed to hook the call up with somebody on their list. Well, what they would do is they'd find out that there would be one person that would take the calls at 3 a.m., so he got all the calls At-3 a.M. And they found out that I take the calls in the middle of the night, so I got all the calls in the mill of the knife. And I couldn't sleep well that anyway. I would sleep intermittently because I think a lot and I would just do that. And I'd get a call at 3 o'clock in the morning and the guy's on the other end of the phone. Now, I don't follow any of this in the book. I don'T interview him. I DON'T try to ascertain if he's alcoholic. I DONT try to see if he'S ready to go. I don't do none of this. I put on my white cape. I jump in the car. I turn on the soundtrack to Mighty Mouse. You know, here I come to save the day, right? And I'm ego-driven to get this prospect because I can picture another notch in my big book. You know? I get this guy sober. I'm going to look good. And I go and I start jamming sobriety down his throat. I tell him the horror stories I used to have this one story, I heard it in the media I used love to tell these new people about this guy that yeah he didn't think he was much of an alcoholic and he got sober for a little while and he drank again woke up in jail up in the northeast and found out that he killed his wife and his family in a blackout and then tried to kill himself and here he was in jail I tell, like, these horror stories. Like, I'm going to scare you into abstinence, and you're not going to drink again. I'm a little good, right? And I didn't have anything to give away. I could tell you to go to a lot of meetings. I could Tell you to pray. I could Tell you to try to help others. But I don't know what to give. I don' t have a message really to give you other than that. And I'm not interviewing people. I'm getting guys that don't really want to be sober. and I should have known this because I was this guy there's a thing that happens in alcoholism where it's 3 o'clock in the morning you've run out of vodka and you're lonely I used to call alcoholics on this I'd call suicide prevention I'd called ex-girlfriends I'd calling my parents and crying to the phone I think you messed me up when I was a kid I don't really When I call AA, I don't really want help. I don' t want to get sober. I just want somebody to talk to. Well, they're not even on the phone a minute with me, and next thing they know, he's coming over? You know, like I go over there and I try to save them. And I probably did, not probably, I'm sure I did more harm than good. Out of that period in my first couple years of sobriety where I did an intensive amount of 12-step work. I hate to call it 12-stepped work. I'd say I did an intensive amount of Alcoholics Anonymous crusading. There's only two people that are still sober that I've sponsored from those years, and one of them is about he's the guy that I took him through the fourth step in the book before I did it. And he's still sober. It's 30 years. And the other guy is about 31 years sober, but he's never worked his steps and he's on medication and he is a very uncomfortable guy. The book says you can't transmit something you haven't gotten. I didn't have it so I couldn't give it to him. He made me a bad guy. It made me an uninformed guy. But I'll tell you, when it comes to alcoholism, I think ignorance and lack of knowledge can be as deadly as malice. I never intended anything for those guys I tried to work with except good, but I didn't have what they needed. And there was a guy named Andy who I was in those early days of 12-step work, And I hooked up with Andy, and he asked me to sponsor him. And I really got very close to Andy. You know, the kind of close you get with a guy when you sit in coffee shops for hours and just talk about all the stories from your past, everything from your childhood up to your last drunk. And I told Andy everything about me, and He told me everything about Him, and I got really close to Him. But Andy was the kind of alcoholic I was. And fellowship, no matter how strong, wasn't enough for him. Lack of power really was Andy's dilemma. And Andy called me up one day. It was late. It was about 930 at night. And he had just come from his second meeting that day. He had prayed. And this was his second phone call to a sponsor. And he says, I'm nuts. He says, I feel like drinking. He says I know I can't drink. I shouldn't drink because I feel like I'm crazy. And I don't know what to tell him to do. So I said, well just go to another meeting. Well he went to the 1015 meeting with Duffy's and he got out of that meeting. He got on his Kawasaki motorcycle and he went out and he was driving down the street and pulled right into a bar and got drunk and he came to the next morning and he could not come back here So he took his Kawasaki 1100 and got it up to 110 miles an hour on the Lancaster Pike and watched for a tractor-trailer truck coming the other way. And he literally vaporized himself on the front of that truck. The truck's probably going 70, and he's going 110. I don't even can imagine the kinetic energy that was released there. And I was one of the pallbearers at Andy's funeral. there wasn't enough of him to embalm they had a little bag we didn't see it but we were told about it just a couple little smidgens of body parts and flesh and bone that they were scraped off out of the wreck and they put it in a bag they couldn't even embalme it they put some fluid in it and they weren't carrying it it was like nothing in the casket it was a closed casket I remember the smell I'd never smelled that before it was horrible it was an awful smell and we set the casket up and I'm kneeling there, sitting and kneeling, kind of half kneeling and half sitting in this pew in this church and I am crying because I miss Andy and I know a couple things. I know I didn't kill him but I also knew that I didn' t have what he needed either. I was at a turning point. A lot of people that have these experiences will throw up their hands and never try to help anybody again. But I know something else, I know I can't do that. I know that I have to stay active helping other drugs but my God, I don't ever want to be at another funeral service with a guy I was that close to again. And Andy drove me into this book. And Andrew drove me into listening to the first time I ever listened to Joe and Charlie. Because I knew now from listening to speakers like Don Pritz and Franklin Williams and Parrish that there was more here. And I don't want to be in that spot with Andy, so I started going after it. See, I can't stop doing 12-step work. It's the only little tiny bits and pieces of freedom I found in abstinence. And I needed that, but I don't want to be that guy anymore. And Andy really changed me. I don'T know that I would have survived myself if I wouldn't have thrown myself into the investigation of the process by the time I was a little over four years sober and I was suffering severely from untreated alcoholism. Without Andy, I probably wouldn't Have had a solution in place in my life that I could start to implement. I wouldn't have known about it because I wouldnít have looked. So you know that there are, I know guys, I know guyís to this day that go to like a menís stag and a couple other meetings in Vegas, and thatís all they go is this one place. Theyíre 30 years of abstinence, and theyíve never done any of this. And they stay sober. Iím not going to say theyíre comfortable. Theyíre like that guy Chris was talking about, the angry kind of uptight and semi-depressed at times. And they stay physically sober by a sense of camaraderie at that men's stag. And they go hunting with the guys and they have a social network that seems to... And they do a little bit of 12-step work. And I think what it says in here is true, that nothing will so much ensure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. I think it's absolutely possible to stay sober a lifetime on step one and step 12. Now, you may not be happy, but I think you can stay physically abstinent if you throw yourself enough into it. I've seen guys do it for decades. Decades. They don't have anything I want. I don't even think they have anything they want. I can't imagine it's what they want but they have abstinence but I'm a real alcoholic I never liked watered down whiskey or I never like my drugs stepped on and I don't want my recovery that way either I come at alcoholics synonymous like I went into a bar to get it all I went into a bar. You got something to snort, count me in. You got some to smoke, count me in and give me a double shot of that. I'll give it beer. Oh, you got the stronger beer? I'll take the ale. Give me the ale I want. I want I want that way. And I come to alcohol with synonymous like that. I want it all here. I don't want my I don' t want it. I don''t want anything watered down here. I want them all. Does it mean I couldn''t stay sober with less? Maybe I could. But I wouldn''t settle for Why would you? Get it all here. Get it off. And a lot of it comes through the 12-step work. You know, if I would have, I was sober a lot of years before I started really getting into this chapter and it changed my whole approach to recovery. Because in a sense this is, this chapter you could consider a sponsorship manual. It pretty much tells you what to do, when to do it. It tells you whatnot to do whatnot to say. It shows you what to say There's an interviewing process that's in here that in the old days you couldn't even get to Alcoholics Anonymous unless you went through the interviewing process I don't know what happened to us I guess we became so popular and so successful now that our doors are wide open You know, we exist in a fellowship today that anybody off the streets can go, well, maybe I have a drinking problem. I think I'll go to an AA meeting. Hi, this is my first meeting. Yeah, I'll share the meeting. Sure, I'd be glad to. Well, let me tell you my life story. How did that happen? How did the inmates take over the asylum here? and it happened on our watch I mean what happened here I mean there's some I've been to meetings where I think probably a third of the meetings not even alcoholic and another third are alcoholic but they don't want to do any of this stuff and then there's one third that they're just lost So we take people through this interviewing process We try to ascertain some things We try To ascertain, are they a real alcoholic? I always sit with guys You know I'll go through the doctor's opinion Sometimes I'll give them assignments Depending upon what my intuitive sense Of the guy is Maybe the assignment is I want you to read the doctor's opinion, and I want you to answer me a couple questions. I said, I want to know why it is. Try to tie in your experience with what Silkworth says, and let me know, why is it that when you start to drink, you can't seem to stop? And then I want to also try to tie your experience in with what Silkworth says, how does he explain this weird thing of, you know the times you swore you weren't going to drink again, and you did? What What happened to you that made you succumb to the desire to drink again when you knew that it was a bad idea? And I'll send the guy, he'll come back to me and he'll go, I got an allergy to alcohol. Right. And isn't it odd that when he finds it, it's stronger within him than when I tell him? Right. there was a guy I sponsored who used to say he says everything we do here somehow we have to make it our idea you know what I mean when you make it your idea I think that's when a lot of this stuff happens in your inner most self I've got a guy right now who has relapsed for a lot of years, he's pretty new in his first couple months And his last sponsor sent him to Al-Anon because he thought, he told him, I think Al-Anon will help you more than AA because you seem like you're codependent. And this is a real alcohol. This is a guy who's relapsing himself to death. He's been sent to counselors and he's been said there by people in AA. Hey, I said, didn't any of these knuckleheads ever suggest the steps? No. No. You know what I got him doing? He hasn't done his four. He's going to do his four-step in the next week. He hasn'T done his fourth step yet. I got Him out there farming for newcomers. I told Him, I stood firm. I said... I said.... He said, shouldn't I wait? No. I want... I want you to do... I want You to... You have a car. if you have a car. You've got a car! I want new guys in that car! I want you bringing new guys to meetings and on the way to the meeting, on the road, on the other way to taking it back to the halfway house, I want to try to open yourself up and tell them a little bit about your alcoholism and try to find something you could say to them that might give them hope. And I'm starting to watch a transformation in this guy. It was the thing that happened to me that got me here and kept me here. Thank God I didn't fall into the hands of people that thought I should stay sober a year before I tried to help anybody. Thank God Bill Wilson didn't have anybody telling him that. None of us would be here. No, Bill Wilson rolled his sleeves up the day he got out of town's hospital and started looking for drugs to help. The day he Got Out. It's a work in progress. See, God doesn't pick the qualified. He qualifies the picked. As you start to help others, you will learn how to help others. You'll make mistakes. Of course you will. Look who you're bringing to the table here. You're going to make mistakes. But that's how some of us learn to do this. And I encourage you to try to do exactly what it says. If I have any great regrets, I have several regrets over the years in my sobriety and one of them is that I did a lot of activity in this area without any principles. If I had only I suspect that there may have been many guys that would still be sober to this day if I would have come at them from the suggestions in this chapter rather than being a cowboy who was shooting from the hip. But I was putting My personality ahead before the principles, and now I try to put the principles before my personality. A couple things that it says in here that I think are amazing. One is it's off of page 90. It says if he does not want to stop drinking, don't waste time trying to persuade him. I know a guy in AA when he talks to newcomers if he doesn't think they're getting what he's saying, he raises the volume of his voice it's an old Persian proverb about trying to convince people or trying to get people to do something they don't want to do it's like trying to teach a pig to sing Not only does it not work, it annoys the pig. Don't annoy the pigs. Leave them alone. Go on to the next guy. Next. Next. And you'll find people that will work with you. But if you spend a lot of energy trying to get somebody sober that's not ready, all that energy could have been in the next five guys that would have been there for you to help. And then towards the last three lines in that second paragraph, I think is the approach that we, I try to do this not only with the guys they sponsor and encourage them to do it in 12-step work. I think it's a vital principle in step nine. It says if there's any indication he wants to stop, have a good talk with the person most interested in him. usually his wife, get an idea. Get an idea of his behavior, his problems, his background, the seriousness of his condition and his religious leanings. And then here's the kicker right here. You need this information to do the most important thing you'll ever do. To put yourself in his place. To see how you would like to be approached if the tables were turned. there's a power that happens here when we get out of ourselves. When I put myself in your place, I'm getting a sense of your pain and your hopelessness and your desperation. In that moment, I have other-centered myself into you and I'm free from me. And it's in those times that God can work through a guy like me. Because I'm into you. And there is, we are given something here that is amazing. Every one of us who has worked this process, who has cleared ourselves and is awake to ourselves, has an ability to do something that a guy with five doctorate degrees cannot do. and that is to go within yourself to a place where you really get this person and you know why you really get them? Because that's you. And you can go within your place where all of a sudden everything out of your experience lines up with that person in a usefulness And then all of a sudden, you'll find yourself saying the perfect things to that person. And you know why? Because it's what someone could have said to you when you were in that spot and you could have heard them. You can't teach that in school. If you can't go with inside yourself to the place where you get that person, you can come up with that. And that's what this honing ourselves to be of maximum service, to grow in understanding and effectiveness is taking us. To this place where I can do something that no one else on earth can do. I can go within me. And when you start to do this, some amazing stuff happens. I would be willing to guess that most of the people in this room got sober with one or two things that you were so ashamed of you hoped no one would ever find out you did that. Things that disgust you and create a sense of self-loathing that is hard to bear. In time, behind the primary purpose, those things that you hated about yourself They wished you could sweep so far under the rug they'd never see the light of day will become some of your greatest assets. In time, you will find yourself easily sharing these deep, dark secrets with someone and you will observe something amazing. You'll observe how you're making a connection and a man who was dying in the loneliness of alcoholism will see a bit of light as he realizes he's not alone. That there's someone else here that did the thing that he despised the most. And at that point, what was the worst about you becomes useful. And if something's useful, it is not unright. There's a rightness about everything that's useful. and all of a sudden as a result of this the worst in me started being integrated within me. There's a subtle separation in me between me and you and me and God there's a separation between me and me it's like I've done so many things in my life that I loathe and so many thing that are out of character that I don't even know who I am anymore. I try to be so many things to so many people because I'm so afraid of what you think of me that by the time I get sober, I am lost. I don't even know who I am anymore. And in this process of trusting God, cleaning house, and helping others, I start to find myself. And I'll find myself often in finding you. When I was new, I fell into the hands of some amazing people. They knew exactly what to say to me, and they knew how to say it. I was brand new. I was just out of the detox maybe a week. I don't even think a week in. And this guy pulls me aside at the old Alana Club where I got sober. He says to me. He says, I got a job for you, kid. I said, well, what's that? I was amazed that an old timer was talking to me and I said yeah, what is that? He says, we need someone in the meetings that's new to watch for the new people and to go up to them and do something that I think you can do. And I said, what's that? He said, we want you to go out there and let them know that there's somebody in the room that's new enough that you understand how hard it is to come to AA and how hard it is to get sober and how awkward it feels to come in here where you don't know anybody and let him know that you know that and then try to make him feel welcome. And I think they gave me this job as the greeter and I was supposed to look for and shake people's hands and then look for the new people and then trying to make them feel welcome and I thought, I can do that. I can't give you any profundities. I can'T give you any wisdom, but I know how stupid I feel coming here. And this guy singled me out because he could tell by the look. He knew enough about himself to get me. And what he got in me is he knew I didn't really feel like I fit in AA. And I didn'T. You seemed... Everybody seemed to know each other here and then there was me. And so he gave me this job. And I can tell you I did this job for a while. I don't know if I've ever made anybody feel welcome, but I felt welcome here as a result. What happens is you get what you give. I started in no time at all as a resultado of that meeting. This was my group. I started feeling plugged into it. I couldn't wait to get to those meetings at that club. I'd start looking for those new guys after the meeting. Great thing. I'll tell you, I'll end with a little story. I really hope if there's anyone in this room and you're not stepping up to try to help other people, I hope you find some encouragement to do that. And I hope if I come back to Austin in a year that you'll come up to me and say, You know, when I met you a year ago, I never sponsored anybody. And here's three people I sponsored. If that happened with just one or two people as a result of this weekend and you were taking them through the steps out of this book, I'll tell you, I would feel like we did something good here. I was up in Northern California. Yeah, Michelle and I were just up there a month or so ago up near the Oregon border. And I was up there probably 20 years ago for the first time. And I wasn't in any event, and I had a day to sightsee. So this guy sticks me in his pickup truck, and he takes me to this forest that had these amazing trees. Some of them were like 20, 25 feet in diameter, 250 feet high. Very impressive stuff. I'd never seen trees like this. And we get in the truck, and he wants to take me down to the ocean and show me these rocks that come out of the water, these monoliths, and this coastline that's very pretty. And we're driving. We have a little ways to go, and we're diving, and we'RE passing these meadows and fields. And the guy says to me, he says, Do you notice how you don't see a 250-foot tree all by itself in a field? I said, Yeah. He says, You know why that is? I said no, I don't. He said, well, God's designed these trees in such a manner that they cannot help by their nature to aspire to grow to these magnificent heights. It is their nature. He said what happens is if they grow up alone, what literally will happen is that in time they will outgrow. Their roots are very shallow and they will outro their roots capacity to hold them up. and they will eventually topple over and die on their own aspired magnificence. What must happen in God's plan because of their nature is that they must grow up in community, and they Will intertwine their roots into a net below the floor of the forest, and this feeds them and supports them and allows them to hold each other up, and they can grow into their nature. and that is what has happened to me here I didn't know that when I got a sponsor and I got commitments in Alcoholics Anonymous and I started sponsoring people and started honing my end game here through the 12 steps so I could be of maximum service I didn' t know as I intertwined the roots of my life with yours that you would allow me to grow into a nature that I had never achieved I had ever found me I didn't know who I was. You see, I've had one defective character all my life. I have it to this day. I'll probably never be free of it. And that there's always been something within me that is just thirsted and yearned and hungered for more. I've always been the guy that's just wanted to take a little bit bigger bite out of life. I've wanted to feel more, have more, experience more, see more. I've always been that guy. And that innate defect within me just about killed me until I got to you. And as I intertwined the very roots and foundation of my life with yours, what has happened is you've allowed me to grow into my nature. I have a spectacular life today really and truly I have people in my life I love very much and I am loved and can feel it that's amazing when you're really self-centered that you can feel love because I was the black hole of love I couldn't feel love you love me that's all you got you know you couldn't love me enough and I can feel people's love today and I feel it because I returned and you guys have done something for me that I couldn't do for myself, you tapped me into a source of power that is most vital in community I have a sponsor and more importantly I try to, I really try to remain sponsorable I don't want to be the I know guy in my own recovery anymore and I sponsor guys and I am trapped between these two pillars of accountability my love and concern for the newer people and the guys I sponsor gives me an accountability and a desire to grow along spiritual lines because the truth is I start to care about these people, I don't want to be a bad example to them and I have a sponsor who is, I'm telling you this guy you can't even get two sentences out of your mouth, and if it's self-indulgent, he's on you. I mean, he could smell a rationalization from 250 miles away on the other end of the phone. I've had conversations with him that have took my breath away, especially when he first started sponsoring me. I was used to a guy that was a little bit nurturing. I mean this, I'd call him up, and I'd start to talk, And he said to me, he says, what a bunch of bullshit. He said, call me back when you want to stop bullshit. Meaning, I didn't even finish the sentence. But when you've sponsored 400 guys for 50 years, I guess you get a little good at spotting stuff, you know? And I'm getting a little better at it. I'm not as good as he is. But I'm getting a little better because I'm armed with information about myself. See, my sponsor sees in me what he found in himself and I see in the guys I sponsor what I found in me. And then they get to see in people they sponsor what they found in themselves. And we pass the experience forward and we pass it on. And it's an amazing thing. I want to thank you all for listening this weekend I feel like I've got more than I brought and God bless