Step 11 and Tradition 11 – 12 Steps/12 Traditions Workshop – Part 3 of 7 – Chris R.

And you've had an opportunity to get refreshed. Up next is the longest stretch of the workshop. We'll try to take it easy on you and provide a break. We'll be going until 5 p.m. Pacific time this evening. We are on Step and Tradition 11. To help get us started this afternoon, I give you our prayer chair, Joy. There she is. Thank you, Jen. St. Francis Prayer from the book 12 Steps and 12 Traditions, page 99. Lord, make me a channel of thy peace, that where there is hatred, I may bring love. That where there's wrong, I made bring the spirit of forgiveness. That where they're as this board, I'm a bring harmony. That where their air, I mean, true. That where the doubt, I make bring faith. That where are there is despair, I might bring hope. That where those shadows, I maybe bring life. that where there is sadness i may bring joy lord granted i may seek rather than to comfort than to be comforted to understand and to be understood to love than to beloved for it is by self-forgetting that one finds it is by forgiving that one is forgiven and it is By dying, that one awakens to eternal life. Amen. Thank you, Joy. I give you Chris R. from Ingram Solutions Group presenting the next 30 minutes on Step 11. There it is. There it ist. Thank y'all. Thank you. It was so fun sitting there at break and listening to all y'alls. Just like I said, so much knowledge. There's so many of you out there that are so dadgum smart. it's just yeah enjoyed uh being a part of that uh that little nest i can't get on this without learning some stuff and uh you know every time billy shares i you know i cringe a little bit because i've you know I remember the times that I've stepped in myself and not adhered to the traditions and and um you knowI said this you know the other day yesterday when we were talking It's my absolute desire to continue to grow in this, and I'm not going to reach any spiritual mountaintop. I don't think anytime soon, but it's on any given day. I can see where I'm making mistakes, and the whole purpose is to try to improve and try to get better. So I appreciate the opportunity to do just that. And the 11th step, y'all, and I get my little book here. Softening prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, funny little squiggly lines, as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. golly it's pretty simple it seems i got a buddy named charlie charlie p some of y'all know him and he shares from the podium he talks a lot about it he said the 11th step is not extra credit it's uh it's amazing to me how many people i come across that pay lip service to the 11 step but they don't actually do it i've got a um a guy in my sponsorship lineage named paul uh paul m paul martin he's been dead a million years he's a wonderful guy and some of y'all maybe have had the chance to meet him he did a lot of speaking out there guys if you ever get a chance he was from riverside uh chicago and uh he was an author and he wrote a ton of stuff he wrote probably 18 19 articles for the grapevine over the years and uh really good a lot his articles he talked about the 11 step stuff talked about meditation and he was a voracious meditator and i'm in my lineage and i was just kind of brought up with it i uh that my whole idea uh it was just something that was so necessary for me to do mind 9 000 miles an hour and needed something to kind of slow it down, so one of the things that I wanted to hit on, watching that clock, one of the things I'm going to hit upon, meditation in these pages, Bill Wilson's talking about from page 85 to page 88, three pages that we're going to talk about this meditation stuff. The meditation that we are talking about here is not the meditation that you hear so much out there. again there's a thousand websites out there you can go to meditation sites you can meditate with hundreds of thousands of other people at the same time which is pretty cool kind of a neat deal but that's not what the big book is talking about if you look at get one of those old dictionaries that everybody's been talking about and look up meditation like in a 1938 dictionary the the book refers to this as thoughtful contemplation when we take the directions directly out of the big book instead of what you hear in meetings it reinforces this idea of thoughtful contemplation as meditation it's uh this whole idea thoughtful contemplación goes against what so many people teach as meditation we're you know you know working or treatment for years and being in seminars and workshops and everybody wants to got some of y'all in here do it too the idea we said we're going to empty our mind and we're going to go off to the astral plane and you know just it's okay there's lots of ways that you can meditate what bill wilson meant when he wrote this was not that what bill will read the history what bill Wilson wrote about here was this thoughtful contemplation we're gonna get quiet with God and we'RE gonna start we'RE going to start uh listening paying attention the Oxford movement was all about guided meditation they were all about you know uh two-way meditation meditation in groups you know to get guidance the whole purpose of this is to get guides it's not so i can relax it's that's so few people kind of get get on that same page with it the thoughtful contemplation let me let me put it another way i think the question is not once we get to this place in the steps once we've we've cleared out all the clutter the fourth step we've done that in the fifth step we may be some stupid amends we know we we've We've done some stuff. We've got some truth about ourselves. In the earlier steps, there's a thing that's going to happen is that there's going To be some communication with his higher power. The question is not whether you're going to be given messages, the question is are you going to hear those messages? And some of you guys will click off, you know, click, click, they're all leaving, you don't, everybody starts thinking it's correct, but that's the absolute truth. I depend on it. That's, God's been trying to scream instructions at me forever. It's just a fact. The problem is I haven't been listening. I've been too cluttered up with fear and anxiety and all this other stuff going on, and when I shut up for a few minutes, get quiet, and ask God, and there's lots of ways to meditate, guys. Bill Wilson wrote about it. There's a great little article out there about Bill Wilson learning transcendental meditation right before he passed away, and Bill died in 1971. This was in the late 60s, early 70s when Bill was actually sick. He was actually in a bad way, and a friend of his had, from a family, had known about Transcendental Meditation and come and taught him that in this article about how much Bill Wilson enjoyed it. I mean, Bill was smitten with this idea of communicating with um spirits with with our higher power and a lot of people don't want to talk about that but it's if you read the history stuff it's it's there and uh i gotta tell you guys it's i can tell you a thousand examples of how it's changed my life if we start uh getting quiet um i do it here at this desk a lot times i like nature sometimes i'll get up in my backyard and talk to the squirrels for a few minutes and uh you know i got a little fenced in area so i'm quiet nobody thinks i'm weird out there and i could just i can get quiet but i can do it here in front of all my little aa stuff that people have given me over the years and it's a safe place for me i gotta tell you when i can and i don't listen i don'T play music i DON'T DO i JUST GET QUIET i start to breathe and pay attention to my breath and uh YOU KNOW MY PRAYER IS ALWAYS you know god show me what you want me to to hear and uh guys i i may do this forever and uh you know for periods of time and not get much guidance i always i never meditate in the morning unless i've got one of these this is a trusty little uh half you know small legal tablet and i've always got one on my desk because a lot of times when i'm meditating folks stuff will start coming to me you know i'll get guidance the thing is you want to start arguing with it and that's what i've learned with some experiences i stop arguing with i'll i'll write it down and then after my meditation period which lasts usually you know 10 or 15 minutes i'll uh i can look at this again and i can see is this is this just indigestion you know or is god actually trying to talk to here and give me the guidance that i need i gotta tell you i'm gonna give you a couple little examples i uh um if you hang on just a second book talks about different types of meditation some people do it in the morning some people do it at night when we retire at night we constructively review our day where were we resentful selfish dishonest or afraid do we owe an apology have we kept something to ourselves that need to be discussed with another person at once? Were we kind and loving towards all? What could we have done better? Were we still thinking of ourselves most of the time, or were we thinking about what we could do for others, of what we can pick, I can't read, pack into the stream of life. But we must carefully not drip into morbid remorse or morbid reflection, for this will diminish our usefulness to others. After making our review, we ask God's forgiveness and inquire correctively our measures, what corrective measures we should take. I mean, he's given us the instructions. How many of you guys do nightly reviews and send them to your sponsor or send them To Other People? It's like it's not 10-step stuff they're doing. This is nightly review stuff. And if you get quiet and get this, you can do it in the morning again. Guys, you could do it In the evening. I don't care. Evening's a bad time for me because I've always got so much stuff going on, it seems like. But early in the mornings, I'm all by myself and I can get quiet and this stuff will start coming to me. But it's in this stillness that I start getting guidance. I'll tell you what it looks like. A couple examples, this was a couple years ago. I was in meditation and just this guy's name crossed in front of my little face. You know how you just think of somebody when you're driving down the road and think why don't I call this guy you know whatever but this is in meditation and I got this little call from this just tapped me on the shoulder and I made a little note and after my little meditation 15-20 minutes later I picked up the phone and called this this guy and actually I didn't I waited a couple hours because he's out there towards the east coast I mean the west coast it's earlier they didn't want to wake him up but I still it was about eight o'clock out there in california when i finally called him and um uh he'd been a this kid had been a host of mine when i spoke out there one time and he picked me up airport and hauled me around and and just just a nice little guy all lathered up about the steps and stuff and he's just just a wonderful kid we stayed in touch for years and years guys that would have been you know 10 years earlier and uh i call this guy in the clear blue sky and i just get him on the phone i recognize his voice and says buddy how you doing and he said what why did you call me I said but you just crossed my mind this morning in meditation are you okay and he got real quiet he says can I call you back absolutely anyway I went on about my my work and in 30 minutes later he called me he said I can't believe you called me this morning I said buddy what's up his voice he was in trouble he was not in a good spot. I said, what's going on? And he said, well, I've left AA. I said, are you drinking? He said, no, I'm just not going to go to AA anymore. You know, I had a conversation with an old timer in a meeting and I said something and he didn't agree with it. And this old timer kind of ate my butt in front of everybody. And I am just done with that. I'm not going to put up with it." So, I got you. i said what happened i said nothing we got a yelling match in the stupid meeting i said oh i see little bit more is involved here yeah yeah he said yeah yeah i know i i called him some pretty pretty mean things and and uh okay all right but listen let me tell you what you need to do come hell or high water you know you can you can um you can leave aa anytime you want you don't have to be mad or have a reason if it's not working for you just want to go go but uh but you can't be doing what you just did why don't you go back and talk to this guy and clean it up well god i don't know why i have just you don't have to i buddy i was just concerned about you when i called you you maybe god intended for this conversation to take place go clean your mess up and then call me back in short conversations well i didn't hear from him for about two days and i'm getting a little worried you know i was going to call him make sure he's okay and out of clear blue he calls me again and i uh pick it up i said buddy what happened he said god damn chris you're not gonna you're not gonna believe what happened that's what do you mean well i went to him and i told him says i apologize to him for for calling him those names and and for us having a big old fight in that hey hey meeting i said yeah and then what he said well of course he turned right straight back around and apologized to me for being a poop and uh talking to me the way you did and i i said yes see sometimes that's the way it works when you make amends he said yeah you're not gonna you're not going to believe this i got me a new sponsor oh he said yeah he's my he's my bestie now so like oh okay this guy had gotten away from the program he started drifting away and all of a sudden he's you know got back because he's doing the things he knew to do the spiritual actions that were taught now all of Aston he's back in the saddle again you know he's got the same old guy you know sponsoring him and he's out there kicking butt probably not long ago. He's still kicking butt. That's what this stuff is about. You think it's a coincidence that I called him that morning? Guys, this was real clear marching orders. When I get a name in my face, I'm going to reach out to that person. I had a lady in Houston call me about a lady that had come to the facility where I worked for detox and she'd been sober a long time. She'd been sober about 26 years, and I don't know if any of y'all have had experience with this during COVID, but there were a lot of people during COVID that, especially early on, a lot OFUS, I included me, were never going to get on Zooms because, you know, it was stupid. And, you now, who knew that in some parts of this country that our meetings were going to be shut down for as long as they were and there were a lot of people I never ever in my history around Alcoholics Anonymous which is over 40 years I have never seen more double-digit sobriety lost than I did during COVID in those early years 2021 and this lady had pulled back I'm not going to go to those zoom meetings and she had she was meeting maker stuff she just wasn't going to go to meetings anymore because the meetings were shut down because of that and she ended up in trouble. Short order, the insanity came back and she got loaded and she ended it up back in treatment. Anyway, this friend of ours in Houston had told me to check on her and I looked for her, couldn't find her and one morning I'm in prayer and meditation getting quiet and I think about this lady and I made a little mental note and And that day I was looking for a bookcase for my office, and there was an office on the other side of campus that I maybe had been in in my 30 years there, had been here one time. And I went over to look at this bookcase, and I walked right into this lady. Nobody else around, it's just me and this lady in the deal. So I got a chance to see her. And I said, are you? And she said, yes. And we got to sit down and talk. And I've got to say it, guys. There was no coincidence about that. If I'd have seen her on the side of the sidewalk out there, I couldn't have talked to her the way I needed to talk to her. Because she had been there for a week and a half, and she was hiding out. She was mortified that she had relapsed. Y'all follow? She had 26 years of sobriety, and she had lost that sobriete date. And she was not going to do anything. She was coming back in, remorseful, beating herself up for what had happened. And I had to talk to her. And I'm going to tell you guys, we've still got a bunch of people in this room. If you're one of those out there that has had some sobriety under your belt and lost it, the last thing you need to be doing is beating yourself up. and I'm going to say this if you have a sponsor this lady had a counselor that was telling her that she needed to come back as a newcomer that she needs to come back in and humble herself and just listen and I am telling this lady that was not my experience and I tell anybody listening in here while I have a captive audience if you happen to be one of those people that lost that some sobriety, some length of time. Don't come back as a newcomer. That is absolutely ridiculous. You had all of this experience. Now you have the experience of stepping on yourself and losing that sobriete date. You need to come back and get in the trench as fast as you can. The big book is so crystal clear. Intensive work with other alcoholics is what's going to keep us sober and you're coming back from a relapse and now we're going to tell you to come back as a newcomer and sit on your butt and feel sorry for yourself not going to happen i told this lady what she needed to do was get out there and start kicking some butt again nice we sometimes we we get sick again okay that doesn't mean we're bad that doesn'T mean we're it's like sometimes in alcoholics anonymous it's just like we shing are wounded like we're punishing them we just need to stop that nonsense for big time you need to jump back in and start picking up where you left off and let's just continue to go on i feel pretty strongly about that yeah because i watch a lot of people continue to relapse and never come back after some well-meaning person who didn't have a clue what they were talking about told them to do that i don't need punishing when i realize i need love i need to feel useful again this lady got back in the trench and she got back started chairing meetings in her group and i got to tell you she's kicking butt i saw her at christmas time she was at a little alumni deal we were doing and she's up there just doesn't even look like the same woman she's just she's all excited about her life again i'm so grateful for that guys it was not a coincidence that i ended up walking into this lady where i did this is the stuff i cannot tell you half the time i said it earlier it's not a question of whether you're going to hear god's guidance it's a questionof whether youre going to listen or not pay attention to what god's showing you can't tell you how many times i'd sit there and get quiet i um i left uh the place i'm working I left in 2010 to go do another little deal, and it turned out kind of crazy. And anyway, I'm working at this place, and I'm loving it. I love the place. But every time I would get quiet meditation, I would think about this old place I used to work. And it was just this little line in my head always, go back there. And I'd be out, you know, through the day. It would just continue to come up. and one day I just got tired of listening to it and I made some little research on it and found out if it would be possible and I went back to the place that I had worked for 17 years before and it was so cool to get a chance to come back to this place and I loved it to death I was listening to God's guidance God will tell you what to do I need to say this folks I might not get a change in the next session to do it but But God wants us happy. You know, I listened to an old geezer in a meeting one time. He says, there's nothing in the book about being happy. It just says we're going to stay sober. You know obviously you don't know where your big book is because mine says it over and over. We absolutely insist on enjoying life. You have a little line, happy, joyous, and free? Does that sound familiar to anybody? You know, guys, we didn't get sober so we could be miserable. And there's too many people out there not working the steps that are miserable. And I think because they are, everybody else has to be too. And I'm just saying, sometimes God places things on our heart to get us out of a different situation. I know this is AA and we're talking about this. There was a little article, you can Google it on it. There's a lady named Debbie Ford wrote it. And it's called Thank God for Your Discontent. It's a really good article. But basically the gist of it is thank God for your discontent. Sometimes God will put this stuff on your heart to wake you up and pay attention. If you're walking through your day, driving to work, and you're miserable, going through your day, you're vulnerable, sitting at the dinner table at home and you are miserable, there is a problem that's not okay. And you're going to sit there and justify this. This self-pity stuff, self-pitty kills more alcoholics than anything else out there. Fact. I can get a witness on this group right here, I guarantee you. How many times have I got a case of that, you know, to heck with it and got loaded? It's just not okay. But this self-imposed crisis, you know, this idea that we're all martyrs. Well, I just got to learn to live with it. No, you don't. Life is about compromise. There's some things that we have to do. I'm with that. But I don't care if you're 18 or 80. If you're not okay in your skin, when my insides don't match my outsides, I need to make some changes. Good sponsorship showed me that. Because you won't stay sober being miserable. You won't staying sober. And so you start getting quiet in this prayer and meditation. What happens if God starts talking to you about changing your careers or your relationships or the town you live in? And then again, immediately you want to start arguing why you can't do that. Well, I don't have enough money to do that well. I'd be too old to go back to school. I can't possibly do it. Shut up. Be quiet. It's in the stillness that we know God. Just be quiet. Listen. figuring out how to do it god will show you god places it on your heart i guarantee you god will tell you how to open the doors i've never seen it fail i just say it's a soapbox of mine obviously guys right right right you know it is i just i i watch so many people sitting in our rooms not happy believing that they've got to stay in those situations and it's just not my experience. It's time to go back to school and learn something that you really want to do. I guarantee you, we've got a bunch of people in this room. We've got nearly 400 people in here. I guarantee there's a bunch Of you right now that are doing things in life because somebody else wants you to do them. That's not good. You set these parameters. I've got to tell you. There's some great quotes out there about getting to a little place of understanding God continues to put this stuff on your heart in this meditation. Start listening and start paying attention. I wanted to start a business one time, and in prayer and meditation, I started thinking, you know what? Maybe I could do that, and I went to Alcoholics Anonymous right before my AA meeting, and then I started talking to them about what I might could do, and and I was all getting excited about maybe starting this little business, and the guy sitting catty-cornered across from me said, Chris, I've got a warehouse full of that equipment you need. Man, you come help me clean that out, and I'll make you a deal on all that equipment. He did. He practically gave it to me. Just a coincidence, right, guys? That I'm talking about this stuff that's been on my heart for the last few days and has been coming up in meditation for weeks, and now all of a sudden I'm taking it. I'm just talking about it, and all of the sudden the solution to the problem appears. Guys, we're spiritual beings. We're walking a spiritual path. Start listening. Start paying attention because I guarantee you God's got some guidance for you. One other thing the book talks about, I'm not going to get back in the reading. We just touched on it. Avoid remorse, this reflection, this looking back. This is not meditation. When I'm sitting there feeling sorry for myself, hurting, that's not meditation, stop. you're we want to start staying focused on the good some of us in this little gathering guys i tell you we've spent so many years in therapy looking at the bad stuff that we it's we're having difficulty seeing the sunlight outside let me give you a real quick little analogy before i let you go some of y'all know i'm a cycling uh cycling guy i'm a bicyclist. A guy in the program got me riding bikes. That was about five years sober, and I started riding. I still do, folks. I'm getting old geezer, and can't ride as often as I used to, but I absolutely love it. One of the things they tell you when you start riding bicycles for any newcomer, some of y'all know exactly what I'm talking about, look at where you want to go. If you're riding a road bike or a motorcycle, the same thing. Look at where you want to go don't look at where you don't want to go if you're looking at the guardrail you're going to come awful close to the guard rail if you don't hit it stop looking at the pothole look at the clear path next to it and your bike will just turn right straight over it you'll miss it look at where you want to go in life stop looking at the crap in the back stop looking at where you don't want to go because we got way too many people out there i did it for years doing that this is what meditation is about guys bill wilson's old prayer was put me where you want me and keep me there look and see what bill wilSON did with the help of bob and those first guys that started at Alcoholics Anonymous. Come on, I'm a big history buff. Y'all know it. Just read the forward to the second edition and it'll give you a little rundown about kind of what happened. Look and see what happened. Bill Wilson's in Towns Hospital with Abby carrying the message. And Bill says, yeah, and they start talking about maybe what they could do to help other alcoholics. And this whole big dream came about. That's God's stuff right there, guys. That'S God's Stuff. God's going to put you in a spot where you could help other people. God will change your life if you'll give it a shot. Whatever power you're praying to, folks, I guarantee you, I've never seen it fail. It's in the stillness that you will know God. So in the mornings when you get a chance or in the evenings when you get a change, get quiet. Just get quiet for a few minutes and take a couple of deep breaths and ask God to show you what he wants to show ya. And then pay attention to what he shows you, because I guarantee it's going to be good. Thank y'all so much. Thank you, Chris. And now speaking on Tradition 11 for the next 30 minutes, once again from the Tell It Like It Is group in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, I give you Billy N. Thanks, Billy Alcoholic. Hope everyone enjoyed their break. Let me set my timer right now. so tradition 11 i'll read the long form first of course our relations with the general public should be characterized by personal anonymity we think aa ought to avoid sensational advertising our name and pictures as aa members ought not to be broadcast filmed or publicly printed our public relations should be guided by the principle of attraction rather than promotion There is never need to praise ourselves We feel it better to let our friends recommend us The short form Our public relations policy Is based on attraction rather than promotion We need to always maintain Personal anonymity at the level of press, radio And films I would tell anyone That's listening you can go to aa.org You can search public information Or anonymity And there are a couple of Things that will pop up The Public Information Workbook, the Anonymity Pamphlet. If you have Traditions Illustrated, there's a picture that says our society is not a secret society. We carry the message anywhere we can. And then it says, but we must be ever aware that self-appointed Messiahs speaking for AA through public media can do us great damage. there's a couple of things it says here that I love and maybe it's some things and if there is anyone here involved in service I know what I'm going to say is controversial but I'm taking it from the literature so for people doing public information panels hold on you can hear me right awesome So for people who are involved with sending speakers into schools or other places like that, what does it say right here in the pamphlet? It says alcoholics who have recovered through our program are themselves the strongest attraction that AA has. So I just want to repeat that, alcoholics Who Have Recovered. so when someone says oh just send a young kid because it's a high school nope send a recovered alcoholic now it happens to be a young Kid who's recovered that's great but the same could be true for any kind of special audience in the public you go to talk to it's a recovered alcoholic and then it goes on to say but many of us have chosen to tell our friends neighbors and employers co-workers doctors or spiritual advisors that we are in aa when we do so we are not breaking our anonymity in the meaning of this tradition giving the general public an accurate picture of aa is the chief job of our public information committees in addition they often carry the message to certain groups from police officers to personnel directors whose work involves contact with active alcoholics so it's so important to understand that this is our public relations policy i know anonymity gets all thrown up in the 11th tradition but this is our public relationships policy how do we relate to the public if you have an a.a comes of page um and you go to page 128 it says therefore the responsibility fell on us to develop the best possible public relations policy for alcoholics anonymous and then there's another one of these gems here about its big book quality on page 129 i love this sentence that says we knew we had to exercise self-restraint where have you heard that before where have you heard about discipline we needed to have self-rastraint and then it goes on to say this they were genuine genuinely baffled by our assistance upon anonymity that's the public in the news media and then It says this but they soon got the point here was something rare in the world. A society which said it wished to publicize its principles and its work, but not its individual members. Again, I want to point out about speaking at outside groups. What does it say? Wish to publicized its principles. It is not wrong to talk about the steps or the big book or being recovered. If people are telling you that we should have some other message, that's not what it says in our literature. A society which said it wished to publicize its principles. I don't know why sometimes that we get so worried about transmitting what is AA. It just makes little sense to me. Now, I do want to talk that we've already talked about open meetings but i do want to talk about you as an individual aa member and the public information that you can do it's all a public choice for us as to whether to share with people whether you're a sober member of alcoholics anonymous that's your choice as long as you're not publicizing at the level of press radio and film your last name your public picture of your full face but I just want to really like get the point across a lot of people do not know what alcoholism is although most people have ran into an active alcoholic they have no idea what a recovered alcoholic looks like and that's because it comes in so many different forms you know when i was 15 years old i thought i thought a looked like a bunch of people going to church that's what i thought it looked like when i Was 15 but you know you know the way we hear people say in meetings well i thought alcoholics was somebody who like you know lived under a bridge or wore a long trench coat and had a bottle and a bag like but we all know that active alcoholics come in lots of shapes and sizes same with recovered alcoholics one's outward appearance has no is no judgment whatever about their inward spiritual condition that's why when i hear people get so caught up about you know i don't care what you dress like i don' t care how long your hair is i don´t care how many earrings you have I don't care how much ink you might have on your body. None of that, none of that has to do with being a recovered member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Zero. But I do know, and I'm just going to tell you a recent story in my own life. It's about a year old. The house that I'm sitting at, I bought like a year and three months ago. About a year ago when I was getting everything situated, I realized, you know, I need to get a doctor closer to me. otherwise my doctor is going to be like 40 minutes away and i went to this doctor that i checked out it had really good she was considered one of the best doctors in where i live and so i went through all the stuff when you see a new doctor i got a full physical i got all my blood work i got everything i gave her my history i filled out the form that a lot of doctors ask you to fill out it asked me if i drank check no it even had a section below if you drink how many drinks per week that kind of shocked me because it was like one to three three to five and five to eight like a week the largest scale there was 8 drinks a week I was like wow this really is a different universe than where I come from drinking but I actually wrote next to that question sober 32 years recovered alcoholic that's what I wrote and so after all my blood work came back and everything else the doctor called me and said let's meet and we can go over and make sure everything's okay and when we got to that part of my medical history because I have some other medical history I don't have a left kidney I don'T have a spleen there were other things to discuss I've had a couple of knee surgeries she's like sober 32 years like and I'm going to quote her. She said, not even one? And I said, no, for AA, for Recovered Alcoholics, that's what sober means, like not even once. And so then we went on to have about a half-hour conversation, and what I could tell you is she knew very little about alcoholism, and she knew nothing about Alcoholics Anonymous or recovery or the world that all of us live in every day. There's so many chances for us at the not public level to work with people like that. And they'll always remember that. They will always remember that sometimes people i work in a profession i've been in that industry a long time now i have i guess somewhat of a high profile executive position in that industry i don't break my anonymity publicly in that anywhere but i can tell you that as a result of practicing these principles many times a year do i get a phone call and someone wants to talk to me about themselves or their son or their parent i get all the calls because i was a troubled teenager alcoholic from parents who don't know what to do with their out-of-control alcoholic kids but the point i'm making is i've been able to be effective without having to break my anonymity i've Been Able To Carry The Message Of Alcoholics Anonymous To Let A.A. Speak At The Public Level The First Public Service Announcement We Call A P.S.A went on tv in 1966 today there are public service announcements on tv and radio someday i hope we'll see them on netflix and youtube and other things we already have a youtube channel where all our public service announcement videos are posted so that someone searches certain words like i want to stop drinking or alcoholics anonymous they can go right to YouTube and see one of our PSAs. There is a chance, I would tell you, because this is the only tradition in the last 40 years that has come to the level of the General Service Conference to change the short form specifically because it's what people see on the poster in the meeting every day. They wanted to add and new media technologies Now, the conference in a service piece has added that, but they have not changed the tradition. But we have so many places we can fall down. If you happen to be a professional that gets asked to speak, be careful about wearing only one hat at a time. Be careful about your public image in the industry that you work in. There is a treatment center organization that has a treatment for so-called C-suite executives, chief financial officers, chief accounting officers, chief risk officers, Chief Marketing Officers, high level executives. That's who goes to their treatment center. They have a once a year alumni reunion. A couple of years ago I was asked to be the keynote speaker at their reunion. After much thought and prayer and talking to people that I take advice from, I declined. I don't want to be known at that level as the poster child alcoholic in my industry. That's not what I want to being known as publicly. I know that I can say I'm an alcoholic and not say I am a member of AA and I'm not breaking the traditions. We don't own the word alcoholic. We're free to say we're an alcoholic wherever we want. however i hear people do things like say well i'll just say i'm a member of a 12-step program i don't know what 12-stepprogram the alcoholics go to if you said you had a gambling problem and you're a memberof a 12 step program you don't need to be sherlock holmes to figure out you go to gamblers anonymous i mean that is not a nifty angle to shoot to get around it if you're speaking publicly for AA at a public information gathering, you need to make sure that whoever is the first speaker or the leader is recognizing that possibly there's members of the press here. I would ask you to not use our last names. I would tell the members speaking to not us their last names I would ask the press or anybody there to not take pictures that show our full face I know a lot of people don't want to believe this, and I know if you look at Facebook, you will see it. But there is an advisory action that we don't use cameras in AA meetings. It doesn't matter if you're taking pictures of AA members that are later going to be posted on a secret group. Think about the new person coming to AA. Half of our name is anonymous. They don't know what you're doing with those pictures. if i see a person taking picture at the golf club i go to i have a feeling that they're going to put pictures in the monthly newsletter if you go to church and someone's taking pictures there maybe your church has a weekly or monthly newsletter what is the newcomer going to think when they see somebody taking a picture i've seen family members hold up their phones to take video when someone is celebrating an anniversary while i know they are so proud and thankful what does that do for the person who came there because anonymity made them feel safe that's why it's half our name social media a whole other different animal but we don't want to be too secretive remember i told that story about the nurse that said you must be famous there's 50 lunatics giving the security people a hard time about coming up to visit you well if i don't know your last name how am i going to visit vous at the hospital we don't hide from each other and i think i said it already but i'll say it again it's no problem using your last name in a regular meeting. But I will tell you this, there's a lot of recording that goes on in AA where people don't tell you they're recording things. It goes on in meetings and workshops and all other places because technology makes it so easy to record today. So you have to be careful of your last name for sure. The long form of the tradition also says we think AA ought to avoid sensational advertising what is sensational advertising well whether it's on a billboard or i've seen it you know alcoholics love diners at the end of a long night of drinking a good diner uh a lot of diners have placemats that have advertisements from all the local businesses. That's a great place for an AA public service announcement, as are shopping carts, as are signs in airports, as our billboards. But we come up with things that just focus, if you're an alcoholic, we may be able to help. There's a catchy phrase out there I see a lot. If drinking or alcohol is your problem, that's your business. If you want help, that's our business. What we don't do is we don t publish billboards of crashed cars or somebody at a DWI checkpoint taking a sobriety test. We don t have public service announcements with somebody s head in the toilet puking after being out drinking all night. we we stay away from sensational advertising the other part in the long form that it says um our public relations policy should be guided by the principle of traction rather than promotion but don't let people twist this around for inside aa there is nothing wrong with promoting aa inside aa again not individuals but aa how else will newcomers hear about the alkathon that's on thanksgiving christmas and new years how else Willa a newcomer here that there's an aa event and Chris already talked about loneliness is something that plagues alcoholics what alcoholic in their journey through becoming a recovered alcoholic hasn't learned the gift of being able to be alone without being lonely but that takes a lot of time the newcomer needs to know that Alcoholics Anonymous is basically available 24 hours a day There's all kinds of events going on, service events, workshops, big book weekends, conventions, roundups. There is nothing wrong about letting people know about that. Now on social media, if you don't have a restricted friends list, you could break your anonymity and not even mean to. when facebook started with the thing unfortunately it started when there was no wi-fi in the plane but i learned my lesson i travel for work a lot so there used to be this little thing where you could check in it's still there and you can say where am i i'm at the airport and then facebook automatically recognizes you're at the passport and says where are you going to billy and i write i'm going to los angeles and then all of a sudden the public post is out there billy's going from atlanta hartsfield jackson airport to lax nothing about aa and then i'm up in the air for five years five hours and then when i land what's there like 30 comments welcome to la and then and then inadvertently they can't help themselves you're hitting any meetings while you're here what meeting you're going to same thing when you post publicly even if you don't write you're a member of aa if you write you've been 10 years without a drink somebody in aa is not going to be able to help themselves in that comment section i just already read about our problem with self-restraint and with with social media it's not one comment it's the aggregate of comments that can break your anonymity it's to letting people put a story together by all the different comments that are out there now if you take the time you can have a friends list that's just members of AA, or in a secret group, just members of AA. I'm not a big fan of pictures inside a meeting in secret groups because we have a group conscience that says we don't use cameras inside meetings. But we still have to be careful inside secret groups. I know we talk about AA doesn't make coins, and sobriety coins usually don't say Alcoholics Anonymous on them but if you post a picture with a circle and a triangle that says unity, service and recovery or first things first or God knows what else or a picture of Bill and Bob even if you say nothing aren't you announcing your sobriete to the world and I know there's a big movement that's anti anonymity I want to go back to the big book for a second Chris talked about there's a lot of heavy drinkers in Alcoholics Anonymous I don't deny that for myself what I've learned over the last 30 something years the real alcoholics DNA is not wired to handle success because they're sober our dna is not made up that we can handle fame based on sobriety and so when you're out there doing that you're just putting yourself at risk you're making yourself the poster child of alcoholics anonymous and and we don't know how long aa is going to work for any individual We don't want AA based on any individual reputation. We want it done on Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole. There's lots of different things out there about how do you protect anonymity. I would tell you if you get invited somewhere, talk to someone who knows about public information. Talk to someone Who knows about speaking to people outside, you know, to non-AA audiences. There's actually a helpful pamphlet, Speaking in Non-AA Settings. There's so many tools that we have. The last thing I want to say is this. I am not saying don't be proud for being sober. For most of us, a day of sobriety is a miracle beyond miracles. and i'm not saying it's not okay to be proud that you're doing what's expected to stay sober at alcoholics anonymous it's just when you take it over the line and you want everybody else to think that and one more thing i'm just going to say about public anonymity i spent a good portion of my early sobriety in new york city new york city is a city where you take subways and buses and walk everywhere you are constantly running into people in alcoholics anonymous please tell your sponsees when you're working with them new about what is aa and what's not aa When I meet somebody that I know in AA and they're with somebody else who I don't know, it is my sacred obligation to speak in that conversation like that other person does not know this person, a friend of mine, is in AA. not until they give me their permission that the other person knows they're in AA am I allowed to say that now if I run into him alone of course are you going to the meeting tonight haven't seen you in a while what's your home group now that's great if you run into him along with you but I travel for work all the time I try I run into other people traveling for work if there was somebody that they work with. I have to act like their anonymity is important, and it's their choice whether to break it, not mine. Thanks, everybody.