Mental Obsession – 12 Steps/12 Traditions Workshop – Part 1 of 7 – Chris R.

Hey everyone and welcome to the 2023 Steps and Traditions Weekend Workshop. My name is Jen and I am a recovered alcoholic. My home group is the Modem to Modem Group in Oregon Area 58, District 9, Northwest Southwest Portland where I currently serve as alternate DCM. Thank you to the hospitality crew and especially Mike there and everyone participating today for taking care of some important housekeeping items before we get started. I'd also like to welcome and thank in advance Chris R. from the Ingram Solutions Group out of Texas, and also Billy N. Chris will be taking us through the 12 steps, and Billy will be taking us Through the 12 Traditions. We'll be going until 5 o'clock p.m. Pacific this evening, stopping for a one-hour lunch break from 12 to 1 p. m., and because we don't want you to miss a moment of the action. We'll also be taking a 10-minute bathroom smoke or get yourself a snack break later this afternoon. Tomorrow, we will have another full day starting again at 9 a.m. Pacific. There will also be a Q&A session tomorrow night to close out this wonderful weekend. You can find a link to the digital Ask It Basket posted in the chat. Please make sure to get your questions in by 3 30 p.m tomorrow. I would now like to introduce our workshop committee chair to say a few words about the purpose of this workshop. I give you District 5 DCM, Carrie B. Thank you, Jen. Hi guys, my name is Carrie and I am an alcoholic. New Horizons is my home group and I'm practicing steps 10, 11, and 12. I would like to welcome everyone to the 2023 12 Steps and 12 Traditions Weekend Workshop. We're glad you're all here. What is the purpose of this weekend? Well, this is a quote from AA Comes of Age, page 139. AA's 12th step, carrying the message, is the basic service that our fellowship gives. It is our principal aim and the main reason for our existence. AA is more than a set of principles. It is a society of recovered alcoholics in action. We must carry AA's message, otherwise we ourselves may fall into decay and those who have not yet been given the truth may die. This is why we so often say that action is the magic word. Again, that comes from page 139 in the book AA Comes of Age. I'm 12 years sober. When I was first taken through the 12 steps, I was rocketed into the fourth dimension of existence. The steps, our first legacy, rocketed me clear over the second legacy, the traditions, into our third legacy of service. I was on fire. I was trying to carry the message to anyone and everyone who would hear it. I'm sure no one in this room couldn't relate to that. With perfectly good intent, I created a lot of wreckage. I didn't have any guardrails. I didn't know the 12 traditions and just how vital they really are. I became involved in general service and soon after at an area assembly in the marathon meeting room, I met a couple of people who although very involved in general service knew very little about the big book and didn't understand the steps. I see that it can work both ways. I've been taught that the 12 steps are our message. They're the only message that we have to offer in AA, and that the twelve traditions are here to protect that message. That's what we're doing here this weekend. Hopefully those of us in love with the big book can have an open mind and a new experience with the traditions, and those who may already be acquainted with the tradition may have a new experiences with the steps. Thank you for allowing me to be of service this weekend, and please enjoy our workshop. Thank you, Carrie. And now to officially get this workshop party started, I'd like to introduce our prayer chair, Joy. Thank you so much, Joy, Recovered Alcoholic, and I am honored to be the prayer chair for this weekend. I have a home group, and i have a sponsor, and im active as a member in Alcoholics Anonymous, and this is a prayer for open-mindedness to get us started. God, please help me lay aside everything I think I know about AA, our steps, and our traditions. Please allow me to keep an open mind and the ability to learn something new through the literature today so that I may have a whole new experience with both the fellowship as well as 24 spiritual principles thank you joy and now without further delay here to share his story with us it is an honor to welcome our friend chris r from the ingram solutions group chris you have 35 minutes thank y'all so much for letting me come dad gummit i uh i sure do appreciate it. My name is Chris R. I am a recovered alcoholic, sober date November 13th, 1987, after years of stumbling around with this, and we got a little big book group in Ingram, Texas. It meets on Monday and Wednesday, and we study the literature, and that's it. We love it to death. Y'all are welcome if you're ever up in the hill country in Texas. We're about 60 miles just west of San antonio we're up in the hills kind of right in the center of texas and y'all are sure welcome if you want to want to come visit uh if you could uh it wouldn't be too much trouble if you can bring some rain with you when you come we would appreciate that i'm gonna tell you texans is dry so i really want to again thank everybody perry and mike and all everybody had anything to do with putting this together i um we did this a while back with billy and billy and i've known each other forever i've sat in yankee stadium and watched the yankees play with billy back in the day and and um i uh i married a yankee that's why i ended up marrying uh meeting billy a gazillion years ago and looking forward to spending a few hours with him as well i um i want to remind everybody i'm i have over the years of doing this i have mastered the art of watching the clock and speaking at the same time, so I'm paying pretty close attention to that old clock, so if you guys don't get, I'm not going to go over. I do, it's been pointed out thought pretty fast, and I'm going to try to slow that down. I will fail miserably. I'm going to do the very best I can, but that's the way that works. I want to make a kind of a little declarative statement here always do when i speak i'm going to share for the next two days i'm gonna share my experience with the steps and and and my experience again may may be different than your experience and one thing i know a long time ago i just beautiful the lead-in which carrie was talking about you know i spent a bunch of time as a zealot in alcohol it's anonymous and uh you know very critical of anybody that wasn't doing it my way And I got to tell you, folks, there's is I think the closer that we adhere to what the big book is asking us to do, the better it's going to be. I'm just I'm going to say that. So, you know, your way and if you disagree with something, that's just perfectly OK. Guys, I'm Just my my experience is is seven years in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous, not not being able to stay sober. And I've also spent a bunch of years in the treatment biz doing clerical work for a treatment center. And I'm not a therapist or counselor, but watching thousands of people come in and and and leave and have watching their experiences in our beautiful fellowship. So I'm coming from a perspective of, you know, of that. So we deal with a lot of newcomers and watching what works for them and what doesn't work for them. And just some of the stuff that I want to talk about and I'll kind of interweave it with the with the things we're going to be talking about. But I got a twin brother that's an alcoholic. Some of y'all know Myers. He's in recovery, been here a long time. And he and I caught the bullet. I've got two sisters. We were born out in Odessa, Texas. Far West Exodus is out in the oil field. My father was a printer. And that's one big disclaimer I want to make since I came from a wonderful family. You know, I listened to some of these speakers And they're, you know, they were raised by a pack of wolves and, you know, God, everybody sits there. No wonder they're an alcoholic. That was not my experience. You know, we were on the front row of the Baptist church every time the door opened up and, and dad was the hardest working man I ever knew. He was an alcoholic and you can look at both sides of my family tree and there's active alcoholism in both sides. And, uh, but my twin brother and I caught the bullet and my two sisters did, we've been trying to get them drunk for ever since we got sober. They, they just won't do it, you know? So. and they're a sweetheart. My little sister actually lives up in Oregon, and I'm going to get to see her in a few months, but Pop's moved us to the hill country in 1964, soon after I lost this eye in a rock fight, and just we have an idyllic life, guys. I mean, I wish I could turn the camera around and show you that right down here on the Guadalupe River, and a beautiful little place. I'm about five miles downstream, upstream right now from where I took my first drink, and a Boone's Farm apple wine. Yeah, buddy, I was in high school, and kids bought a bottle, and we were down there on the river leading up against one of those 700-year-old cypress trees, and I drank a bottle of Boone'S Farm, and January 1971 is when I took my first drink. Yeah. I mean, I know it, and that's the month, the year that Bill Wilson passed away i took my first drink and um it was good folks i've heard a thousand speakers say the same thing guys i get i'll never forget that first drink and uh because it was the first time i remember i dad had given me sips of his beers over the years but this is the first time i had enough alcohol in my system to to change the way i felt in any way and uh i remember walking back across that field and told her about here in the hills and and And I felt, I mean, I was okay. I was comfortable. I was breathing all the way in and all the Way out. And I just, God, I Was always such a nervous little guy. You know, I Just, it was always just Uncomfortable. I was full of fear. I was shy as I could be. Still am pretty shy. But it's just like alcohol allowed me to Be comfortable in my skin. And I mean you know it was a small Bottle. I didn't rob a liquor store or get Blacked out or do anything crazy. I just got comfortable and I was going to do it every chance I could. And the next year in high school, football, you know, Friday night stuff, go out and get a keg of beer and everybody drinks. And it's just guys, it was just nothing big going on. Everybody was doing the same thing. I was not hurting, you Know, doing crazy stuff. Couldn't wait to get out of the hills and move to Houston, the big city. Golly. And we were in Texas. We were still too young to buy booze. you know I was 18 19 years old you had to be 21 back in the day and uh but my next door neighbor is there and uh we got a little raggedy apartment Houston my brother and I think seven other guys it was not all the kind of place it was green shag carpet beanbag chairs oh my gosh all of you old 70s know exactly what I'm talking about anyway it was good and we were drinking and no problem, but I got to tell you, it's, there was something that started to slide in along with the alcoholism, and that was depression, and, you know, therapists always want to talk about, well, which came first, the chicken or the egg, but one of the number one symptoms of untreated alcoholism is depression, folks, and the only way that I can get comfortable in my skin is to drink, and I'm starting to do what so many of us in this beautiful room have done. I'm starting to look around me for solutions because I'm not really happy now listen again I'm not getting in trouble with alcohol but I'm changing a lot of jobs I'm convinced that if I could just get the right job and the right woman in the right town then I'd be comfortable in my skin I wasn't doing this so I could stop drinking I was doing this just so you know I could be happy all the time not just when I was drinking and I golly guys I never got fired from the job but I quit 34. I'm in the food business as a professional chef, and of course any of y'all in the food business knows, but you can quit a job and two hours later have another one, and I'm pretty talented at what I do at the time, and went to Austin, Texas, went to Atlanta, Georgia, came back, went To Vernon, Texas. Came back, went to Houston again. I just, I was constantly moving, guys, catching up with me, and yeah, not a happy pamper let's say that i uh ended up uh getting married in one of those little geographic cures and i married a nice girl and uh moved up to north texas i walked away from a little restaurant we'd started and moved up the north teXas to be closer to my twin brother got a job at a country club and and uh you know steady drinking starting to do little outside issues only time i'll mention that and uh mixing it with the alcohol we called it our alcohol enhancers but you know guys yeah not happy and uh i came home one night after a day at work drinking and uh in the restaurant business again guys they don't care if you drink on the job or not as long as you show up do your job nobody cared uh it uh i don't remember what the fight was about but i had a little cushion match with my wife and and she asked me to leave and i did and came back a few hours later, and I sobered up a little bit and apologized to her and explained to her what I'd been doing. And she had no idea how much I was drinking. And we had the conversation that I needed to quit drinking. I'm all for this, guys. There comes a time when alcohol worked, and then there comes a times when alcohol stops working. And that's the tough part. Bill Wilson talks about it. You're going to know loneliness like you do. You get to that place where you can't imagine life living with it, you can't image life living without it. And I just like, okay, and I looked her in the eyes with tears, and said, I will stop drinking, and we had a conversation. No, you, let's make sure we're on the same page, and, uh, I was. I poured all the alcohol and stuff out, and the next day, I called Alcoholics Anonymous. This was in the early 80s, folks, and, um, I went to my first A&A meeting the next Day, and a week and a half later, the chef asked me to stay after and have a beer with him, go over the function sheets for the next week, and And I drank a beer and I came home. I pat myself on the back because I didn't get drunk. My deal with her wasn't that I wasn't going to come home drunk. My deal was that I wouldn't touch another drop. And I never gave it a second thought. Y'all understand that? That's the insanity of that first drink. Bless her heart. She was done. And I spent the next seven years, guys, in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I need to tell you, I am not taking being critical of any of those people up there. i just happened to be in an area at the time the meeting i was going to there weren't any big books in the place there were no there were steps and traditions on the wall we read how it worked from the plaque and uh we you know i didn't have a sponsor and uh i'm working the steps uh not because we're not talking about the steps in the meetings we're talking about everybody else's problem and uh I'm going crazy guys and a lot of y'all hear me talk before if y' all heard me You know, again, I'm not being critical that there's a lot of meetings like that out there, folks. And they're just more power to them if they can get sober that way. I just this is not a problem solving fellowship, folks, this is a spiritual program of action, just like Carrie just read. Our our main job is to get these newcomers connected spiritually and in their own of their own understanding and have this experience so that that obsession goes away. And I can't do that. Listen to you talk about your dead cat. I'm just saying. I'm pretty direct, guys, but I can't, and neither can you. I'd come back in, pick up another chip. Those old guys would shake their head. I knew that little one-eyed guy wasn't ready, and then here we go. You know, they'd go around the room and tell me how they got here and try to scare me into recovery. It is the number one complaint that I have in Alcoholics Anonymous is that we believe that's how they get the newcomer to stay. Identification is so important. But, guys, unless we connect the drama with the symptoms, these guys are not paying attention to that. They're sitting there just like me with their arms folded, rolling their eyes, saying, I've never had a drunk driver charged. I've ever robbed a liquor store. I don't take my clothes off in public. All the crazy stuff that some of y'all are doing, I'm not doing. I did take my claws off in private one time. I'm just saying. But that one time, I know normal people have done that though. So what the heck? I just, I don't know. It's like they're trying to scare me into recovery and that's just not going to work. 1987, I'm done with AA. I am, it hadn't worked. I've got a therapist. I'm an IOP, intensive outpatient. I'm, you know, I've learned all about my triggers and everything. And I'm, you know, I can't I can stop for short periods of time, guys. But in the long run, I'll become so uncomfortable in my skin, I can't stand it. And that obsession comes back and I'm off to the stupid races again. So I came home one night and picked up some return checks and in the mail and guys just just got up and to the medicine cabinet tried to off myself. I had some pills stashed up there and I just, I'm just done. I've been in AA for seven years. I can't stay sober. I've bene to therapy. I've ben to church. I've done everything anybody's asked me to do. I'm on all kinds of vitamins and I can' t stay sober and I ca' n't keep living like this. And I got those pills that hit my stomach and about that time I heard a voice said, don't do this, go back to AA. I don't know what I heard, guys. I believe God intervened on me that night. And I made myself sit, laid down and conked out on the side of the bed. Next morning, I woke up and that voice was still in my head. Don't do this. Go back to AA. And as luck would have it, I was running late the next day. I couldn't go back to my old home group. I'm convinced I would have not had the same experience. I went to a meeting I'd never been to before, but some old timers had caught me after a meeting one time and told me about it and said it was a big book meeting. I had no idea what that was. But it didn't sound too good, I got to tell you that. But I knew where it was and I was running late and I wasn't going to go by and let them know I was coming back to AA and then I was going to be home and detox, Kentucky Fried Chicken home and that was it. And I went to this meeting and this little girl stopped me from leaving because I got in and got real self-conscious. I said, I can't believe I'm doing this again. Why would it work now when it didn'T work for seven years? I just need to say it. I don't know where that little girl is That stopped me from leaving Her sponsor was across the way And couldn't get to me But she saw that I was leaving And she pointed, she said, get him And she stuck her finger in my belt loop And sat me down in a chair And said, sit down cowboy You're not going anywhere And I'm not a cowboy She sat me Down in a Chair And I, I'm looking like this She got me a cup of coffee And I stayed for the meeting I, it, I, I'm convinced That I wouldn't have gone back Y'all thought I'd have gone home And finished the job I started the night before don't ever think that you know who God's going to use to help you. You're probably going to be wrong, and a lot of times it ain't the old guru sitting in the corner. You know, it's... Bless her. Real quick, guys, and I'm going to mention it in the step stuff. They went around that night and shared a bunch of hope with me, and there was nobody in there. Let's tell Chris how we got here. That chairperson said, let's tell Christ how our lives have changed as a result of working the steps, and I went holy I've never heard that as a topic and uh it was like a gratitude meeting and they went around and they talked about getting their new car and uh lady across the way had her car keys and she was holding them up she was about a year and something three months I think and she's got her brand new carand the guy sitting next to him started a little little business little landscape business and he was all excited about making a little money and I thought that was the coolest you know he was just his big old grin on his face and lady at the end of the table had gone back to art school i was 35 years old when i was sitting in that meeting guys lady at the end of the table was a little older than i was but she'd gone back to school she got her got her art degree and y'all can see i love art none of it's mine i'm talentless but i love arc and the guy sitting next to me had opened his billfold and had two little polaroid pictures of his little rat kids you know he was just holding them up and he'd come to aa and met this little girl and they got married and had a little family and he had little tears in his eyes I was looking, just talking about these. End of the meeting, they asked me if I was ready to stay sober one day at a time, and I picked up what was going to be my last desired ship. It's in the closet right behind me. Yeah. And on the way out, these two old geezers stopped me, two old cowboys. They had big books in their hands, and they stopped me and said, Chris, I know you've got to go get detoxed, but can you sit with us for just a few minutes? So maybe we can help you figure out why you can't stay sober. And of course, I'm indignant. Y'all understand? I've got the best psychiatrist in Dallas, Texas on my payroll. I mean, it's like, yeah, all the professionals out there have not been able to help me stay sober. And now these two old country bumpkins with busted up big books with duct tape around the back end of them to hold them together. Now they're going to help be safe. So now, you know, OK, but for the first time in Alcoholics Anonymous, guys, this is my truth for the first time somebody opened the big book and they started showing me the first step and they explained it didn't take them 20 minutes to do and i went home that night it was about 30 minutes later guys i went Home and they said chris if you work these steps with us quick quickly i guarantee you'll have a spiritual experience and you can recover from alcoholism and of course i've been around a long enough to know you can't recover we'll always be recovering and here we go compacted with a bunch of information i heard a lot of people share but can't be verified in the big book i got to tell you all those old country boys of my life they were integral parts of my early sobriety and i went home that night excited for the first time that I might have a chance of actually beating this. Next morning, I got up and they showed me how to make a pot of coffee. And we ended up doing a third step prayer after the meeting in the back room. They explained the prayer and we did the third step. And they gave me a notebook after lunch. They took me to lunch. And afterwards, they gave you a little notebook and told me to start working on a fourth step. Showed me the directions on how to do that. And guys, I get emails all over the world me doing this kind of stuff here. That's too quick. It's not. Bill Wilson is detoxing on day three in Towns Hospital, making amends letters from the hospital as Ebby's trying to show him how to do these spiritual principles, these spiritual actions. I mean, he didn't have a spiritual experience because he went to detox. He had a spiritual experience because you finally got off his butt and started actually doing something. Just saying. guys i gotta tell you the rest of my story is pretty i mean they got me involved in service like that and i started sponsoring the first year i was sober you know a few months in i started sponsoring some little newcomers and and they were watching me like a hawk they they walked me right straight through it and uh the rest was history man we ended up five years later ended up coming to the hill country and we opened this little little aa group where we could talk about being recovered, without getting our heads handed to us. And I heard a speaker on a Zoom last night and says, you want to piss anybody in AA off? Just say anything. Sooner or later, there's going to be somebody going to disagree with you. That's all there is to it. So we wanted a place where we could study the literature. And we've got a little AA club that's called the Outpost. It's a little recovery club, and you can have a meeting there anytime you want, but it's got to be literature based. So there's plenty of other places for the open discussion, just talk meetings, but we sure have watched a lot of people get well. I got to tell you, I think one of my biggest observations over the years, based on my own true experience, but also watching other people downstream, the people coming into treatment, people that are coming into our AA group. And they're just disgusted. I mean, how many times have I heard this? I've tried AA. It doesn't work. And then you talk to them for a few minutes and you find that they didn't try Jack. All they did was go to a bunch of meetings and I'm not knocking meetings guys. It's a part, it's a Part, our fellowship, the unity piece of it. It'S a Part. We've got to do that. But there's nowhere in the big book that says, if you go to immediate, you'll stay sober. It's not saying we're supposed to be working the steps, and part of working the steps is being around other people and helping others and being of service, and that's what this whole thing boils down to. I wanted to read this real quick. Some of y'all know this because I've talked about it before, but there's a pamphlet out there. I'm sure Carrie can show you how to get one if you're local, whatever. Can y' all see this? There's a glare on it. it's a member's i view of alcoholics anonymous it's an old pamphlet it's one of the older ones uh guy named alan mcginnis wrote it uh wonderful it was done on a talk he did in the i think it's early 70s 1971 uh it was an excerpt from a book from several talks that he did it was one of the first uh well and alcoholics autonomous took it made a brochure out of it and there's some of best stuff out there in this brochure. So if you can get it, it's actually P41 is the number. You want to jot that down and you can go online and order it from GSO. But one paragraph. There is a widely held belief in AA that if a newcomer will simply continue to attend meetings, something will finally rub off on you. And the implication, of course, is that that something which rubs off will be this so-called miracle of AA. Now, there's no doubt in my mind that many people in AA accept this statement quite literally. I observed them over the years. They faithfully attend meetings, faithfully waiting for something to rub off. The funny part about it is that that something is rubbing off, death. They sit there week after month after year while mental and spiritual and physical rigor mortis slowly sets in. man okay I'm not knocking meetings don't anybody leave thinking I'm doing that, I'm Not I go to meetings every week we're killing people out there by telling them all they got to do is 90 meetings in 90 days and everything will be okay I was listening to a lady the other day in a meeting in town where I was at and she told this little newcomer He said, OK, well, you go to 90 meetings in 90 days and then and then I'll sponsor you if you can do that. But you see, this lady that she's talking to is a real McCoy, is a Real Alcoholic. I've known her for years. She's not going to stay sober 90 days until she actually does this work. It just freaks me out that people have gotten this message so garbled up. I know it's easier to tell somebody to keep coming back, and I don't want us to stop doing that. But if that's all we're doing, we're not doing that newcomer a bit of good. These old timers stayed after the meeting and sat down with me and showed me the pages, explained what this disease looked like. And for the first time, I understood. Once you're convinced you're a real alcoholic, folks, those are Bill Wilson's terms. He talks about it. I'll read them in a minute. Bill Wilson talks about the real alcoholic. Once you find out that you are, nothing will stop you from doing this work. But I got to tell you guys, and I'm not trying to be divisive whatsoever. Alcoholics Anonymous is chock full of hard drinkers. There's a lot of people in our fellowship that are not real alcoholics. They don't have to have a spiritual experience in order to recover. They don'T have to get involved in service. All they got to do is come to meetings and visit with their friends and go home. And that's so cool. It's not what we're about. That little newcomer, I got to say it, folks, there's a lot of people out there looking for the cure for alcoholism. Every time we turn around, there was another pharmacist coming up with another pill that's going to fix this problem. Another therapeutic technique is going to come down the pipe and help. There's not. there's this little fellowship called Alcoholics Anonymous with a program that's so absolutely guaranteed to work it's not even funny if we will actually do the work I'll say this real quick my time's getting short sometimes I was on a zoom not long ago and there was a guy doing the steps in there and this was actually a newcomer's meeting on this Zoom. And I was visiting it because I had a friend that was chairing it and I was watching this Zoom and this guy up there had a board up there behind him and he was doing a bunch of chalk work. Y'all ever see the movie, A Beautiful Mind? Y'All remember when this guy's up in his room like that and he's got this chartboard and his pens and this lines connected to this and then this brings us over here and this brings over here and it's like, oh my God, how confusing can this possibly be? One of the things that's happened to us in the fellowship is that, and it's propagated by some of us old timers, is that we get bored with the simplicity and we want to complicate it so we have something new to talk about. Which is fine if you happen to be 20 years over and you want a new experience and you wanna learn something different. There's lots of things out there that you can add to this. But when we're working with a newcomer, I really think it's important that we open the book and start cherry picking and showing them how to do this work. I'm not sitting down with my guys and reading the book, you can if you've got time, I'm opening it up and cherry picking, I've got a little guide that I use a little quick outline to qualify a newcomer. And that's what the same thing those old guys did for me 35 years ago. And I've gotten I could email it to you. I'll put my little email at some point in the in the chat, you guys can holler if you want it, I'll be glad to send it to you." But the deal is, is to get them through this work quick. I'll say it and quit the old timers used to I still hear people in meetings all the time well this is not a race yes it is it absolutely is a race because that obsession's coming back so the sooner I can get them through the work the better that's going to be I just now the guy that brought Alcoholics Anonymous to Texas a guy named Larry Jewell had never been to a meeting. He needed to get out of the cold environment. AA took up a collection and got him a big book and a train ticket to Houston where he had a job. And he got on the train and he read the big book and he came to Texas and he started a meeting, never been doing it, started a meaning and I started sponsoring people and you should see that the connections, the group that started here in Kerrville area where I live was started by one of his sponsees. It's pretty cool. It's a race, folks. And it's a race to get to the little place where you can actually start being of service and that's guaranteed spiritual experience that takes place. And that's where I'm coming from. The next couple of days we're going to talk about this and so this working through the steps is going to be a pretty fast-paced deal. Guys, it's not that complicated. And again, I'll mention certain things. If you want to email me, I can send them to you. All stuff right out of the big book. All AA stuff. and would be honored to do that. Guys, I am so blessed that I am sitting in this gathering. I'm looking forward to the next couple of days and I'm really looking forward to getting here. Billy, he's sharp as a tack. Thank you all so much. Thank you so very much, Chris. We really appreciate you taking the time to spend this very special weekend with us. Next, please allow me to introduce our next speaker this weekend to share his story with us for about 35 minutes billy n from the tell it like it is group from palm beach gardens florida thanks i'm billy i'm an alcoholic and i took my tie off that i had on this morning uh but chris and i are going to be here the whole weekend so ties seem a little extreme i'm even going to try to be outside as long as the weather is good um but it's really good to be here i want to thank uh the district for hosting this event and anyone who had anything to do with it. It's great to be with Chris and thank him, really thank him for mentioning what might be the greatest paragraph in any AA literature. I mean, I know that's a pretty strong statement, but that little talk that Alan gave, that paragraph, and I'm actually going to talk a lot about that in Tradition 1 today after I tell my story that sometimes i feel the most disunifying thing we do in aa is not talking about aa regarding recovery and uh we should not be afraid to embrace that talking about um you know i mean i'll just read it now uh if you're not familiar with this it's uh story 105 uh and as bill sees it which used to be called a his way of life but the top of it goes like this to spend too much time on any one alcoholic is to deny some other an opportunity to live and be happy one of our fellowship failed entirely with his half first dozen prospects he often says that if he had continued to work on them he might have deprived others who have since recovered of their chance and then perhaps maybe be the greatest statement in all of this book our chief responsibility to the newcomer is an adequate presentation of the program if he does nothing or argues we do nothing but maintain our own sobriety if he starts to move ahead even a little with an open mind we then break our necks to help in every way we can so um you know one of the things that's interesting i have a half hour which is awesome um because when you only have a Half an Hour you got to cut out a lot of fluff And one of the things that you realize when you stay here for a little while Is a lot of the Things you used to think were very important When you told your story Are not important And a lot Of the things you used To think were not important Are really important Like really, really important And We've already Mentioned that You know, and I'm going to start off Talking a little bit about the allergy and a mental obsession for this reason, because in my life right now, in my current life, in the last four months, I have had an insane amount of people who are close to me die. Okay? Pass away. Including Tom I. Including Chris B. at a very young age a few weeks ago. and um and i'm not going to say that it's been easy and i'M NOT GOING TO SAY THAT I HAVE LIKED IT AND I'M NOT GONNA SAY THAT YOU KNOW I I HAVEN'T LIKE YOU KNOW HAD THIS KIND OF EMOTIONAL STUFF ON MY MIND IN A WHILE BUT YOU KNOW WHAT CHRIS WAS TALKING ABOUT AND IN MY OWN STORY WHAT I WANT to make sure is important is you know what it says on page uh 52 is this we had to ask ourselves why we shouldn't apply to our human problems the same readiness to change our point of view not to our alcoholic thinking not to Our Alcoholic Mind but to our Human problems and why do i mention that in talking about my story because i have a partner at work and another executive and we work closely and we have for almost i don't know almost eight years now and um he had a very kind of emotional thing going on in his life the last week regarding one of his children. He has other human problems too, just like I do. But what's the difference between him and I? Why are these other human programs so mentioned and stressed in the big book? See, because my partner with these other humans problems, he's allowed something called a drink. He's allowed to have a drink or two at the end of the day. It does what it's supposed to do. And I wish I had learned at a very early time, but I didn't. That for people like me, there are two kinds of people in the world. There are people who can drink and people who cant. And if you're a real alcoholic as described in the big book, then you're a person who can't I can't drink I am mentally and physically different from most people my partner at work he can see because if I let those other human problems gather up on me see one drink is lighting a nuclear bomb one drink is setting off a course that I don't know where it's going to end and you know I came in very young you know I come from one of those raised by wolves houses I do that doesn't make me an alcoholic I come from a long line of alcoholics that doesn'T make me an alcoholic either there's lots of stuff around that house that maybe I thought was important a long time ago but it'S not really important what'S really important is, as Dr. Silkworth described to Bill W before he went to Akron, what's really important is the medical estimate of alcoholism as it pertains to me. So there I am, a young kid, a teenager, and I already have problems. I have other human problems. I don't get along with people. I don'T like authority. i've realized that even though like i'm not the kid who was picked last on the baseball team i wasn't picked first but far from last i'm that stigmatized because of you know i was last kid picked on the kickball team but early on i knew by the time i was in sixth and seventh grade that there were a couple of things i was good at much better than other people i knew i remembered basically everything i read i knew I could do complicated math in my head I knew I COULD DO VERY COMPLICATED MATH ON A SMALL PIECE OF PAPER SO I KNEW I WAS GOOD AT THAT BUT UH THESE OTHER HUMAN PROBLEMS UH LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING ANY SELF-DISCOVERY I MAKE I NEVER USE FOR GOOD OKAY I JUST WANT TO BE CLEAR ON THAT When I have my own self-discovery, it never pans out well. So when you're in sixth to seventh grade and you've already decided I'm smarter than the teachers. And by the way, if I insult teachers or social workers or Al-Anon members, I'll clean it up before the end of the weekend. OK, I'm just talking about my view back then. And I believe teachers have an immense important role in society to prepare children. And I am indebted to people who chose that profession. But if you're talking about me as a punk little kid who knew you could remember everything and was good at math, yeah. I thought teachers did it because they couldn't do it. That's why they taught it. And I thought that I knew more than they knew. and you know while there's only a few things that make us an alcoholic the allergy and the obsession um if you've worked with a lot of people in aa you get to know that there are some things in common that we have it doesn't make us alcoholic but it sure does seem to uh be common among people that have the same problem as me you know and one of those problems is, if you tell me not to do something, I do it. I just have to. It's just I have to do it on the on the extreme opposite. If you tell Me to do Something without telling Me why I will never do it, you're just telling Me something to tell Me To do something without telling Me the legitimate logical reason why I'm not going To do it if you Tell Me not to go somewhere and I am Going to go there and probably quickly. And the last one, if you tell me not to hang out with certain people, I know they're my kind of people. Okay. That's just been a rule for the, my whole life. Right. And by the way, still today, I'm like a magnet at a hockey game or a football game ora concert to be seated exactly next to the last person I should ever be around. It's like, it's like a Magnet in my life. Um, but the reason i tell you that is my mother had pointed out who the bad kids were in the neighborhood and she pointed out that they all hung out in the woods and um you know finally one day one of those older kids said billy why don't you come to the woods and i couldn't wait to go i could not wait i didn't know what happened in the woods, but when it comes to things you're not supposed to do, I have this sixth sense that I'm always, that I'm going to love it. Like, I don't know what they do, but I can tell I'm going to live it. And, you know, that night in the woods, I always say, you know, the line and Bill's story, I had arrived, you know, I arrived that night and there were only four things in the woods that changed my life. There was a bonfire in the woods i'd never been to a bonfire in the woods there were girls in the woods there was loud heavy metal music if you're from my generation everybody traveled around in their group with some kid who had rich parents who had a big boom box with like eight speakers and double cassette right so they had a lot of zeppelin and a lot of ozzy in thewoods and they had alcohol and by the day after that date in the woods my life didn't need to get any better than that truthfully if all my life was was a fire in the woods and girls and heavy metal music and alcohol my life would be fine you know from that day for a few years forward I didn't know about the medical estimate of alcoholism. I didn t realize that no matter what, every time I started drinking, I had no control, that my body didn t process alcohol. I have an abnormal reaction to alcohol and that I keep drinking and keep drinking. I could tell you my progression. By the time I was in eighth grade, ninth grade, the only thing I thought about on a Monday morning is where are we drinking on Friday night? Whose parents are away? You know, who has fake ID? Whose brother or sister can get us what we need? By the same time, by the time i was in 10th grade, the only think i really thought about was i can't make it to friday night. Friday night might as well be next year. Friday night might be telling me you can drink next on St. Patrick's Day, Billy. And where I come from, St. Patrick's day is a season, not a day. Right? You could tell me all this stuff, but I needed to drink by Wednesday. Maybe Tuesday. But no one told me that I had this mental obsession and this allergy no one told me that when i got physically sober i was uncomfortable in my own skin and once i found king alcohol and a way to become comfortable in my skin i would all my mental obsession would take me down that route to be comfortable to have the first drink now i am very thankful to a judge in juvenile court who i met when i was 14 years old and I didn't talk about judges this nicely for a long time either but you know I don't know when the miracle happened and for all you who do service whatever you do I'm extremely extremely thankful because I don'T KNOW if it was a day before a week before a year before or five years before I DON'T KNOW IF IT WAS SOMEBODY IN HIS FAMILY WHOSE LIFE WAS SAVED BY ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS OR IF IT Was An AA Service Committee That Whispered In This Judge's Ear but somebody told this judge that someday a young boy or girl boy or a girl not even man or woman a boy or a girl might come in his courtroom and it's possible they could be an alcoholic and if that's the case he should send them to aa now what's important about my story there is a choice that i made and this is how real alcoholism is this ishow real the allergy and the mental obsession are i was offered to go to a juvenile correctional facility where i would go to school there judge even told me and my mother billy won't have to worry about getting you will not have to worry even because even when i left the school sometimes that didn't mean i went to school if i was leaving for school and kids were buying beer and hanging out in the woods well i would do that this judge told me if i went to this place i wouldn't have to worry about that they had a school right there where you live see i had not been institutionalized at the time so i didn't know better i was scared to go away to that place because i thought i wouldn'T be able to drink and by age 14 that was not an option for me there was no way I could agree to go to some place where I could not drink so he gave me these other choices which one of them was to go to AA meetings and you know I was in and out of AA for from age 14 to 23 and like Chris said I have lots of good drinking stories most of the world has good drinking stories that's my experience I've traveled with people for work having dinner for 20 years with people they all have good drinking stories you know what they also have that I don't have? They go to work the day after they drink they stop drinking when they feel a little out of control they don't need to drink every night of the week there's times when they have one drink and times when they have three they've all done stupid things drinking doing stupid things drinking is what drunk people do Bill W said that in a talk to a bunch of religious people in the early 60s alcoholics don't have the market on doing dumb things while drinking it's what everybody does i was on probation my whole life real probation i'm not good at probation if i'm still drinking i am a bad probationer i went to that early aa if i saw you with a big book i knew you were a lunatic if i Saw You Get Out of Your Car in a Parking Lot with Your Own Big Book i Thought You Were the Taliban, you were like some complete over-the-top crazy lunatic AA not going to talk to you. I went to my first anniversary meeting when I was 16 and I can tell you that I sat there thinking they want to take my life away. They do. They want to take my party away and i thought to myself i'm i was 16 at that point 26 36 46 like even if i make it till i'm 46 years old my big night of the month is going to be the friday night anniversary meeting with the old lady who's 34 years old who uh shuts the lights down halfway and the old 40 year old guy who brings a cake with candles on it like that's going to be my big night out and you know that's why you know the literature is so important because we can hear so many things in meetings that are not in our literature i hear people say all the time that their worst day sober is better than their best day drinking that is absolutely not my story that is not even remotely close to my story i guess it is for some people, but not me. You want to tell me that going into a correctional facility five months sober was better than the first day of spring break Fort Lauderdale 1988? No way. I know which day was better. I think they steal it from a line that they paraphrase in the big book that goes something like, I wouldn't trade the life I have today for the life of yesteryear. now that's not even a remotely close question of course i wouldn't trade my life for today but you see i tried everything you know if you've ever been on a cruise or somewhere and you know or you've been in the supermarket or somewhere and you heard somebody say a code word that like you heard them say something like wow maybe they're in the club you know and you ask them are you a friend of bill w's you Or if you go on a cruise, they'll have a sign for the friend of Bill W. meeting. But you know what I'm more concerned about when I meet somebody in AA? I'm More Concerned If You're A Friend Of Fred Or Jim's, Not If You'RE A Friend Of Bill's. Like, do you have a personal relationship with Fred and Jim? Because even though Fred and Jimmy were much older than me, their story is mine as a teenager into my early 20s. you know what some guy by the way if you're new just a little helpful hint if you'RE looking for like I know everybody in the world is a life coach these days it seems we have more life coaches than we have sponsors but if youRE looking for life advice there'S a couple of places you shouldn'T take it the newcomer table at a diner after a meeting the probation department DWI school, these are places where you should not look for life advice. I did. Some guy told me, oh, Billy, like I thought my problem was the first shot after the eighth beer. If I just didn't do shots, I'd be okay. It can't be that first innocent looking drink. And then I thought it was hard alcohol. You know what some guy at DWI school told me? Billy, you should try white wine spritzers. I didn't even know what a white wine spritzer was. You know what I know about white wine spritzers today? I can drink like 40 of them in one night. That's what I now. I know that I drink like 40 of em and I wake up in the morning rolling ice in a beach towel to put on my head back in bed. That's wat I know abut white wine spritzers. I know nothing I've tried every single thing like Fred and Jim talk about. But sooner or later, the obsession comes knocking on my door. Now, I spent a good bit of time in a correctional facility after I got sober this time. And for those of you that have heard different, I just want to let you know that the best AA inside a correctionAL facility is real AA. There's no special prison or jail AA. There's not kind of a couple of traditions here, a couple steps there. Nope. Good old AA is what works best. I was lucky a miracle happened. I listened to a story. I'm dating myself. I had a Walkman. Some of you don't even know what that is. It was a little square box. You could put a cassette in and listen to music on headphones that were attached by a wire that didn't that like went in and had to be attached to listen. uh the number one song or the popular songs at the time were like you can't touch this in hammer time right um but i heard tom eye's tape and i got some i got a little bit of hope got some hope when i was released i lived in new york city i needed to live someplace that i couldn't i was not gonna have a driver's license for a while a good many years um i got involved in service i got involved in the international conference and young people in a.a i got a home group but my sponsor had two things that were not optional for everybody and um the one thing was we had to go to the bill w dinner that was the dinner for the new york intergroup and he told me how important it was that meeting direct you know because I know world the life is different right now but back in the day a meeting directory was like gold like that was my handbook I went nowhere without it in my back pocket I had people's phone numbers on it and some old time has circled meetings that had cookies and coffee because I had no money The other thing that wasn't optional was the Joe and Charlie Big Book Study. That was in 1993. That weekend, my life changed. It didn't change immediately like on the outside, but on the inside, it changed. I learned about what it means to be an alcoholic, a real alcoholic. I learned how important identification is for one alcoholic working with another. i learned that we say when we read it rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path but that really means rarely have We've seen a Person Fail has done steps four through nine i learned how important steps 10 11 and 12 are i learned it from two old guys who were not experts they looked like two old guys Who just like to get a sit around and talk about a book that they loved I got involved in service I put my hand up to be an alternate GSR and a GSR um you know that same sponsor gave me a community college application at the time I said to him if I go back to school now I won't finish till I'm 40 and he said well unless you die you're going to be 40 and at least you can say you tried that was a long time ago I learned about a commitment to a home group I learned about being compassionate to meeting newcomers all this time life has had challenges for sure life brings challenges one of my biggest challenges was because of my so-called you know my self view of my brain i didn't believe in god and again i don't want to insult anyone here i'm just telling you how arrogant i was i thought god was some mystery man smoke and mirror show in the sky that people who weren't as smart as me and didn't understand science they believed in that's what i thought today i believe in god not because of what i've read not becauseof what anyone has said but because by being an active member of alcoholics anonymous i have witnessed miracles and other people's lives that are not possible in the human world. I've seen things happen, and this is what I want to kind of end with. I just want to get the quote so I don't mess it up. The heavy drinker, the social drinker whatever they are maybe all these modern means work. I don' t know. But I'll go with what it says in the literature. An obsession for destructive drinking that only an act of providence can remove from us. That's it, an act of provience. That's what we're selling here. You know, it is, we are not selling that whoever got up the earliest this morning is the most sober. That's like the craziest thing ever. You know, like if you got up early this morning, you're more sober or all we're selling is one day of sobriety. That's all we can offer you here. We want you to put all your faith in us and our literature and our program. But we can only give you a day. First of all, a day at a time only appears in the service manual. And it has nothing to do with the steps. It has to do WITH YOUR EMOTIONAL WELL-BEING. We sell permanent sobriety here. For a long time, I was a customer that chose not to want permanent sobrietty, who chose not to want three legacy AA membership. And today I've had to learn and it's a hard lesson and I've failed at times. My life has to be at least 51% dedicated to somebody else's life. i'm too much of a taker otherwise i'm too self-absorbed my life has to be one of service but there's a lot of pitfalls in aa and i watch out for them i try to watch out for them because i know i've fallen in some of them there's the pitfall of don't let the podium become your home group that'll kill you it might not kill you physically right away but spiritually it'll kick your ass don't let your assembly become your home group don't get lost at aa service is the only contact you have with aa aa is best in all three legacies i have a rule for myself for every one of these things that i do these things meaning like this or speaking at a convention or speaking at a meeting, I need to do two other things in AA where I am not the center of attention. I'm a regular attendee of my home group still today. I'ma regular attendy of other meetings. I believe that there is no more spiritual place in the world than the AA parking lot. And while I'm so happy we did this a year ago, I think I have like a minute or two left if i'm not mistaken um i'll say this on one hand zoom has been amazing if this was january the 1st of 2019 and chris and i were doing this the next day there would be emails flying around that chris r and billy n have lost their minds they're now doing workshops on tv with lots of people like what has happened to them and so there is so much good as tom i would say when god has work to do the walls come down so much goodness and so much love good this platform can do but it can also do so much evil and so much damage a.a was meant to be local and community based when the dark night of the soul visits you and it will it comes in all different forms it's not going to be a bunch of people online that are going to save your life you know what it's going to be a bunch of people who drive you crazy in your local meeting at a waffle house you know why do I love AA I'm going to close with this two members in AA who don't know each other told me the same story about the power of the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous they didn't know each other and they told me the story years apart in their own life and the story goes like this they were in the hospital for something serious for a couple of days both people had the nurse come up to them and whisper in their ear the same thing and what the nurse whispered was this i know the name you're here is false and that you're famous and both people looked at the nurse and said what are you talking about like i'm a plumber or i'm mailman like what are talking about and the nurse gave the same response to both these members in the hospital i don't care what you tell me there's 50 lunatics down at the security desk all fighting and lying to get one of the visitor passes for the two visitor passes at the time. Like when the chips are down, you want 50 people in the emergency room fighting with the security guard to come and see you. When the chips ARE DOWN, you WANT 50 PEOPLE IN IHOP OR THE WAFFLE HOUSE AROUND YOU TAKING CARE OF YOU. WHEN THE CHIPS ARE DOWN YOU WANT PEOPLES BRINGING FOOD TO YOUR HOUSE BECAUSE THERE'S NO TIME TO COOK FOR YOUR FAMILY. THAT'S THE REAL BEAUTY OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS. THANKS. GOOD TO BE HERE. Thank you so, so very much, Billy. We really appreciate your willingness to take your time and spend this very special weekend with us.