A Member’s Eye View – AA Service Workshop – 2025 – Part 21 of 27 – Billy N.

evening everyone i'm billy i'm an alcoholic welcome to uh monday night remind you that it's uh what's today's date april 28th i guess is that the date that is the date the general service conference is currently going on in new york i would ask you to send all prayers and great wishes to all members of the conference to have great week um and a little heads up uh do not hunt your delegate down like this saturday to find out what happened like they're probably gonna get very little sleep this week they're probably going to be talked out the information will be transmitted i am sure quickly in some areas um but just wanted to let you know that so tonight first of all i think the um it was just put in the chat the google link is there um if you're not in a private facebook group and you need to get recordings of monday night they are all there um tonight on the schedule if i am correct is a member's ivu it is the last monday night of the month so we take a break from all the crossing the eyes and semicolons and paragraphs and subsections of the conference charter and concepts and everything else and talked about good old recovery or a piece of literature that maybe comes from the service structure that has to do with recovery tonight we're talking about one of my favorites which is a members i view um hopefully if you don't have it you can go to aa.org you can even go to google the s search engine optimization is excellent if you just put in aa members i view it's the first thing that comes up you can click on it and then you can read that and it actually says if you would like a pdf you can clic right here and you can download that pdf um a member's ivu written by alec mick i will not use his last name i do not know any members of his family give me permission to break his anonymity even though he is deceased he was a member of the brentwood beginners group if you didn't know that that's a group in los angeles california in the brendwood section And as the pamphlet says, it starts off right on the opening page and says. This pamphet is designed to explain the people in the helping profession how AA works. Though the AA program relies upon the sharing of experience, strength and hope among alcoholics, the recovery process itself is highly individual, adapted by each member to meet his or her needs. therefore the program is described here as it appears to one member but the pamphlet does reflect fellowship thinking since it has been approved by the aa general service conference the author of this paper delivered it first before a class on alcoholism counseling at one of our large universities a world services inc wishes to thank him for his genuous permission to reprint and distribute this talk so this was something presented at a university to people who are going to be working with alcoholics and what he says there which i love that the aa program relies upon sharing of experience strength and hope we're a storytelling organization we have a textbook but at our heart we're storytelling organization and it says the recovery process itself is highly individual so a respect that not everybody does it the same way which i love um and then it says adapted by each member to meet his or her needs so he's quite open-minded um this pamphlet probably the problem with it though is it says it's designed to explain to people in the helping professions how aa works well it's really easy to tell your story and to share your experience strength and hope but it's difficult to explain what really is the secret sauce like what makes aa work that could be a million different answers from every different kind of person in aa in the world one of the things though is that we know how does not work and we have to remember it's 2025 it is not 1935 when aa started it's not 1925 10 years before aaa when the oxford group was going strong it's not even 1970 1980 1990 it's 2025. so what's in this pamphlet is just aaa there's a lot of things in the modern world that are not in there on purpose we don't have anything about medicine or science or other ways to get sober we don t keep track of metrics you know people in 2025 i just got off a conference call for a board that i'm on and we were talking about strategic planning and everybody wants measurable goals and metrics, because that's so 2025, right? Everybody wants measurable goals and metrics. We don't do that in Alcoholics Anonymous. We don't keep membership records. We don't have a membership. We don't, we don't do scientific studies. We do a, uh, you know, a survey, a PI survey, uh a membership survey, but we don't do any statistics. Um and sometimes that's hard for the modern world to understand that. So I'm just going to go through the pamphlet and just point out some things that I really love, but if you have not read this pamphelet, I hope that you do because I think it's one of our best. I think It's so good because even it probably gets some people in AA mad, which is good. You know, he's not some kind of zealot. he says in the opening paragraph on page seven, tonight I have been asked to talk about that therapy and the difference becomes immediately apparent. He's calling AA a therapy. Some people would go crazy hearing that, right? He's just saying in his language at the time. And he says, it seems to me I should try to be as objective as possible. And this seemed to me to call for advanced thought and preparation. How objective a member can be about an organization which he feels has helped save his life and his insanity is a moot question, but I can try. In other words, so people like us whose our lives have been saved by AA, we're not the most objective people to ask. And the other thing you've got to remember is think about doctors and scientists and social workers and all kinds of people in the first 20 years of AA, 1935 to 1955. Especially the people, Dr. Silkworth Sage, who lived half of their professional life with no AA and the other half of their professional life with AA. At that time in the world, the smartest people in the World, doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, clergy people, they were just happy that something came along that worked for alcoholics. Remember, up until this time, people like you and I are society's throwaways. and i think we forget that because you know and i'm not talking about the outside issue why it happened doesn't matter but my i listen i grew up in a town with one of the largest state psychiatric facilities in the world i grewup in kings park long island home of the kings park psychiatric center, hundreds of acres with like, I don't know, 80 buildings. When my parents moved there in 1967, there were 25,000 inpatients, 25,00 people locked away. And not too far from where I grew up was Pilgrim State Psychiatric Center, Central Islip Psychiatric Center. Of course you read in our history about Tom the fireman at Rockland County Psychiatric Centre. So it's important to know that at this time like in the early days of AA all the way up until the mid 80s when state psychiatric centres were closed most of them 95 of them across the world across the country like i know why we have a lot of homeless alcoholics because we have a lot who are homeless um but there used to be another option that society had for people like you and i they sent us to a place like king's park and they lock this up for an indefinite period of time not even a jail sentence just you are locked up you're a ward of the state and you get put on some kind of wet brain or alcoholic unit where you're shot up with thorazine every day and you barely survive right like that's who we are like i know a lot of yous look good tonight it's great awesome but that's who we're talking about a time when they were still doing lobotomies on alcoholics like cutting out a piece or dissecting their brain cutting a piece of it from attaching it to another we're talking about a period of time when a woman alcoholic who wanted to be released would have to be agreed she'd have to agree to have surgery that she could no longer have children like we're taking about barbaric archaic times and that was the only solution for people that society had for us to keep us away from the rest of the world so when you think about the psychiatrists and the clergy and the scientists and the doctors and the psychologists who had all been trying to help alcoholics and the only real help was put them in a state psychiatric center and medicate them. So all of a sudden, an organization appears that is taking alcoholics and, as the big book says, giving them a rebirth, resurrecting them to a new life. Professionals back then couldn't do... They shouted from the rooftops how great AA was. Today, I'm not saying there aren't professionals that love AA because there are. but we also live in like a super judgmental world and if something isn't based on science people want to throw rocks at it um so you know this pamphlet just talks about who we are and and i love this line uh my cast tonight is more difficult than it would first appear because as those of you who are members of AA already know, there is no official interpretation. That drives people crazy too. I sometimes think that drives people in AA more crazy than people outside AA, but there's no official representation. There's no party line, no official body of dogma or doctrine to which the members subscribe no creed we recite even if the surviving co-founder of a himself were standing before you tonight he would tell you only how it all appears to him i personally consider this i love this line i personally consider this absence of orthodoxy one of aa's strongest and most therapeutic principles and I hope to cover this in more detail later. The fact remains that whatever I say tonight is and must remain a total personal statement. In fact, what I am about to say might be very well titled A Member's Eye View of Alcoholics Anonymous. That's where it gets its name. He was just saying this is his view. If you go on to page eight, it says, why have I been asked to say it? I think you already know, since one of AA's strongest traditions is that our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. I'm not here to try to sell it to you, whether you are a future counselor or a present alcoholic. AA's track record as compared with other methods of recovery from alcoholism speaks for itself. And I am sure you have long since been apprised of that record in this classroom. and then it goes at the bottom of page eight to say this let's see if we can do better in aa's basic textbook the volume alcoholics anonymous first published in 1939 and written by bill w with the help and advice of the first hundred alcoholics who are able to achieve a year of sobriety in chapter five entitled how it works we find these words oh i love that they say this because it reminds me of like how arrogant i am um our description because you've heard this a million times the end of how it works our description of the alcoholic the chapter to the agnostic and our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas a that we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives B, that no human power could ever lead to alcoholism. C, that good God could and would if he was sought. I mean, it used to drive me crazy because my brain thinks a certain way and works a certainway. It says there are three pertinent ideas and then says ABC. Like, why not one, two, three? There are three part of the idea. Three pertinent ideals, one, twothree. But I've been in AA quite a while. Doesn't seem like anyone else cares that it's ABC. seems that that's just the way my mind works. And then it says, these so-called ideas, while more specific, are certainly not unique to Alcoholics Anonymous. Man has been beaten to his knees in an admission of personal helplessness since time began. Likewise, since time begun, he has turned to the idea of a supernatural being who would deliver from him his fate if he performed certain rituals and observed certain rules. there is obviously no new or different fact here yet the three ideas we have heard are the very cornerstone of aa's philosophy so we can turn now in our effort to to isolate aa's uniqueness what makes us different and then it says the first sentence of the first definition i read to you contains the only is statement I have ever been able to find in all of AA's literature. Let's listen to it again. AA is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. Once again, is there anything totally new here? The experience of alcoholics are essentially the same. While they may differ in circumstance, the theme is always the same, a progressive of deterioration of the human personality and the levels of strength and hope these men and women possess vary from day to day in both degree and substance. What then is the constant factor? What is AA's unique difference? Could our answer lie in the manner in which this experience, strength, and hope are shared and much more important, who is sharing them? Is the secret contained as most secrets are and how it all began? And that's on page 10. Long before there was a definition of AA, before there Was a book or steps or traditions or a program of recovery. There was a night in Akron only a short 33 years ago. Remember, 33 years before he gave this no AA. A night when a man named bill w alone in a strange city shaken and frightened concluded that his only hope of maintaining his present hard work one sobriety was to talk to and try to help another alcoholic and here's such an important line so far as i know that is the first recorded instance where one alcoholic consciously and deliberately turn to another alcoholic not to drink with but to stay sober with such a great line the first time in the history of the world one alcoholic turns to another alcoholic not to drank with in the fateful meeting of bill w and dr bob the next evening was an answer finally given to that rhetorical question which was asked 2 000 years ago if the blind lead the blind shall they not fall into the pit and in 1935 was the answer strangely enough no but perhaps what occurred that evening was not a contradiction perhaps who was a little less blind one who was at last able to discern vague shapes and forms described what he saw to one who still lives in total darkness much more important than that was what was said that evening then what was said that evening was who was saying it so not what bill was saying but the fact that another alcoholic was saying i just think this guy had such a good view of alcoholics he says long before the average alcoholic walks through the doors of his first day a meeting he has sought help from others or has been offered or been offered to him, in some instances even forced upon him. I mean think about that. Long before the average alcoholic walks through the doors of this first AA meeting he has sought help from others or help has been offered to him in some instance even forced upon him." That's the story of so many people in AA. And then it says this, But these helpers are always superior beings, spouses, parents, employers, priests, ministers, rabbis, swamis, judge, policemen, even bartenders. The moral culpability of the alcoholic and the moral superiority of the helper, even though unstated, are always clearly understood. In other words, for us, before AA, anyone trying to help us was always some kind of morally superior person. And I love this line, and you know I'm a chronic teenage alcoholic. I love This Next Line. The overtone of parental disapproval and discipline in these authority figures is always present. I cannot be the only one here who knows what parental disapproval sounds like and looks like, and not only from parents, from a lot of different people. I love that line, the overtone of parental disapproveal and discipline. And then it says this, for the first time 33 years ago, an alcoholic suddenly heard a different drummer. Instead of the constant and menacing rat-a-tat-tat of this is what you should do, he heard an instantly recognizable voice saying, this is what I did. First time. And then he says this, I am personally convinced that the basic search of every human being from the cradle to the grave is to find at least one other human being before him whom he can stand completely naked stripped of all pretense or defense and trusted that person not to hurt him because that other person has stripped himself naked too this lifelong search can be the end can begin can begin to end with the first aa encounter that none of us ever met another human being like us who was in our place but found a way out i'm going to turn to page 12 at the top second paragraph it says if the alcoholic responds to this invitation he then encounters what i believe is aa's second unique factor a.a treats the symptom first it may come as a surprise to some that from a short 30 years ago when the idea was fairly revolutionary alcoholics anonymous has constantly emphasized its conviction that alcoholism is to units to use its own phrase the symptom of deeper troubles however a also believes that the cleverest diagnosis of these troubles is of little benefit if the patient dies. Autopsies do not benefit the person upon who they are performed. Sometimes sooner, sometimes later, AA seems to be able to get over to its neophytes that total abstinence is the name of the game. In AA, the cart does come before other horse. The first step is still the first step. No newcomer in AA is ever left in any real doubt that recovery can only begin with a decision to stay away from the first drink. That's it. And he soon learns that no one can or will make that decision for him. In fact, he soon further learns that if he makes the decision, no one kan or will force him to implement it. In AA, the choice begins and always remains with the alcoholic himself and while the big book says we've lost our power of choice the choice he's talking about is the choice to be an active member of alcoholics anonymous i might have lost the power of choice when it comes to alcohol a long time ago but i have the power to be inactive member of Alcoholics Anonymous the desire as well as the ability to make this decision often results i believe from what appears to be aa's third unique quality the intuitive understanding the alcoholic receives while compassionate is not indulgent that sounds a little bit like tough love to me but they make it sound so much better the intuitive understanding the alcoholic receives while compassionate is not indulgent the therapists in a.a already have their doctorates in four fields where the alcoholic reigns supreme i love this line it's probably one of the greatest sentences in all of a history the therapists and a.i already have the doctorate in the four fields where the alcoholic reigns supreme phoniness self-deception evasion and self-pity i mean incredible this guy's presentation absolutely incredible he has not asked what he is thinking he is told what he istinking no one waits to trap him in a lie he istold what lies he is getting ready to tell in the end he begins to achieve honesty by default. In the end, there's not much point in trying to fool people who may have invented the game you're playing. I love that. One of the greatest lines about sponsorship ever written. There's not much point and trying to Fool people who may have invented The Game You're Playing. In regular language that you can't use at a podium or recording it sometimes you'll hear you can't blank a blank right that's the saying we hear and then it goes on to say on page 13 there is a yet a fourth factor in aa which i feel can be found nowhere else and that is the recovered alcoholics omnipresent bottomless enthusiastic willingness to talk about alcoholism it's in and its outs, its whys and its wherefores, its becauses and its begats. Without the newcomer ever being fully aware of it, his fascination with alcohol, his thirst, his desire, yeah, even his need for a drink is literally talked to death. It has always seemed exquisitely fitting to me that people who once used their mouths to get sick now use them to get well. Amazing. Finally, there is a reversal of form which AA's educational process takes. The newcomer to AA is asked not so much to learn new values as to unlearn those he comes in with. Not so much adopt new goals as to abandon old ones. Amazing. There's a story in the current fourth edition of the big book, I'm forgetting the name now. a young woman who got sober, but I love her one line because I got sober young at a young age. And she writes, most people change their drinking to meet their goals. She changed her goals to meet her drinking. That's my story. Drinking comes first always. Number one no matter what now sometimes this pamphlet you know people say oh it's too dogmatic and it's really not but this one paragraph i'm going to read is probably why it gets the bad rap and i think because you know there's a lot of us in aa who are in and out for a long time Or there's a lot of us who are in and just decided to be miserable instead of becoming sole-fledged members of AA. We have those people too, right? And this is it, the paragraph on page 14. There is a widely held belief in AA that if a newcomer simply continues to attend meetings, something will finally rub off on you. And the implication, of course, is that something which rubs off on will be this so-called miracle of AA. Now, there is no doubt in my mind that many people in AA accept this statement quite literally. I have observed them over the years. They faithfully attend meetings, faithfully waiting for something to rub off. The funny part about it is that if something is rubbing off on them is death they sit there week after month after year while mental spiritual and physical rigor mortis slowly sets in i think that's why some people say this pamphlet is too strict but all it's doing is calling out what most of us have done we want the barest of aa possible Or we make the worst mistake. We rate our bottom on like a chart in our own mind. I'm really not the bottom of the bottom, like my bottom was kind of like here. And then we think that where your bottom is has something to do with how much of the AA program you need to do. and this is why the first 50 pages of the big book don't talk about bottoms they talk about the allergy and the obsession we don't care about were you homeless were you locked up were you thrown out of your house did you lose you we don'T care about any of that we care about, are you a real alcoholic? And if you are, this is what you need to do. He says, I believe the real miracle of AA, the something that will rub off, we hope, is simply the alcoholic's willingness to act. Why he finally becomes willing, I hope to touch on later. Right now, let's turn our attention to what he becomes willing to do. AA has been happily called a program of action. In fact, one of our most quoted aphorisms is, action is the magic word. When the newcomer hears this, he invariably gets a mental picture of his attending meetings, making what are known as 12-step calls on other alcoholics, speaking at meetings, joining committees in general, a kind of constant rushing to and from. Let's see whether this is what it really is. Quoting again from chapter five of the book Alcoholics Anonymous, here are the steps we took which are suggested as a program of recovery. And on the top of page 14, it lists all the steps. And at the page bottom of 15, it says this. First, does it come as a surprise to you, as it did to me, that there is nothing physical in this program. No leafy green vegetables, no vitamins, no daily calisthenics. I think this is because from the very beginning, the alcoholic and AA has believed that the physical aspects of our disease would have little import if they were not accompanied by an equally progressive spiritual deterioration. if the major thing we had to worry about was the physical allergy to alcohol i love this line then i believe aaa would have never happened because it would have not been needed listen to that if the mayor thing we had to worry about was a physical allergy to alcohol then i believe a would have never happened because it would have never needed to at various times i have been strongly allergic to various foods to strawberries but but I've never had to join Strawberries Anonymous. I didn't have to change to pork, but I didn' t have to change my religion to abstain from it. If then alcoholism is largely a spiritual disease requiring a spiritual healing, does it come as a surprise to you as it did me that there is nothing new in a spiritual sense, nothing startlingly different or unique in this program? Most of the ideas have been around since man crawled out of the cave many of them existed even in primitive societies and every alcoholic no matter how irreligious or unethical he may have succeeded in keeping himself at some point in time must have used some or all of them as a set of values by which to measure himself to believe that the alcoholic who approaches aa is an unprincipled untaught barbarian barbarian suddenly transformed by the previously unavailable spiritual illumination of the 12 steps is to me utterly foolishness once again we are confronted with the aspect of a's therapy which has a total new impact without apparently any accompanying newness of substance and it says i believe it lies in the way the steps are presented rather than what they contain they are reports of action taken rather than rules not to be broken or the underpain of drunkenness. Past tense, we talk about what they've done for us to new people. And then on page 17, it says, whether by accident or design or supernatural guidance, the 12 steps are so framed and presented that the alcoholic can either ignore them completely, take them cafeteria style or embrace them wholeheartedly. In any case he can report only on what he has done. Till he does he knows that he is more of a guest of AA than a member and this is a situation that is finally intolerable to the alcoholic. He must take at least some of the steps or go away. In my opinion this is the answer to what finally rubs off on the waiting inactive often hostile a member and also the answer as to why it happens this guy writes so well but you know people talk about that are you a visitor an attendee or remember because there is a middle category of attendee away from visitor But have you really joined? I mean, that's a question for everybody to answer themselves. The presentation of the 12 steps as reports of action taken rather than as commandments to be followed also forms the basis of AA's conspicuous absence of any formalized body of dogma or doctrine. Amazing. We talk about what we did, not what they need to do. on page 18 it says the founders of aa it is obvious felt that alcoholics needed the help of a power greater than themselves but again whether by accident design or divine guidance they have wisely refrained from strictly defining this power while aa literature has used and continues to use the personal pronoun which describes the concept of a personal deity. A belief in this concept is by no means required. In fact, I am convinced that the greater a member's years in AA, the less important the nature of his power becomes. Just that you have one. I and most of the members I know seem to progress over the years from a search for a god we can understand to a belief in god who understands us founders of a also hasten to clarify their original use of the term spiritual experience and spiritual awakening to describe the personality change they believe to be indispensable to permanent recovery there it is someone asked me one times because i say those words all the time permanent recovery is not in any a literature it is it's in a member's eye view it's right here indispensable to permanent recovery in the appendix to the book alcoholics anonymous we find these words among our rapidly growing membership of thousands of alcoholics such transformations i.e sudden spectacular upheavals of a religious nature though frequent are by no means the rule most of us experience most of our experiences are what the psychologist william james calls the educational variety because they develop slowly over a period of time he the newcomer finally realizes that he has undergone a profound alteration in his reaction to life that such a change could hardly have been brought about him alone in the 12 traditions aa claims but one ultimate authority a loving god as he may express himself in our group conscience and then he says this however i would remind you that these groups are made up of alcoholics and by the time it can be determined what the collective conscience has decided even the most militant atheist or persistent agnostic can have stayed sober for years at the bottom of page 19 it says this here it would appear is an organization that on one hand claims there is no moral culpability involved in the disease of alcoholism and on the other suggests to its members that recovery entails a searching and fearless accountability of his culpabilty to god and to other human beings i personally feel this apparent paradox results from the empirical knowledge gained by the founders of aa i believe they found as we all have that no matter what you tell the newcomer about the disease of alcoholism he still feels guilty he cannot blind himself to the moral consequences of his drinking the blight he has visited upon those around him and the shame and degradation is he inflicted upon himself. This load of conventional guilt, and I use the word conventional advisingly, as well as the alcoholic's stubborn and pervasive wish to cling to it, is the oldest of his old ideas. It is the eldest because it started first, and in most cases it will be the last to go. But go it must if the alcoholicís attitude towards himself and hence the world around him to undergo any basic change that's why i believe the founders of a learned in their own experimentation that the alcoholic must be given a conventional means of unloading this burden of conventional guilt hence the fourth and the fifth step it goes on in the bottom of page 20 to say an often quoted sentence from the book alcoholics anonymous is self-centeredness as the root of our troubles and one of the earliest evidences of the basic change in the personality of the recovering alcoholic is the slow hesitant frightened but persistent offering of himself to others alcoholics are numbered among the great gimmies of the world i love that he says that give me a break give me an opportunity chance give me time give me understanding give me love in aas these same gimmies come to be numbered among the great givers and lo some of them often learn to want nothing in return the house today helps a man build for himself is different for each occupant what a beautiful line because each occupent is his own architect we're not the stepford wife club we're nicht kool-aid drinking club a helps a man build for himself is different the house different for each occupant because each occupent is the architect for many aa is kind of going home a return like the prodigal son's house to the and the faith of his fathers to others it is a never-ending journey into lands they did not even dream existed. It does not matter which group you fall into. What is really important is that AA has more than demonstrated that the house it builds can accommodate the rebel as well as the conformist, the radical as wellas the conservative, the agnostic as well as the believer. The absence of formalized dogma, the lack of rules and commandments, the non-specific nature of its definitions and the flexibility of its framework all the things we have thus far considered contribute to this incredibly and happy end he goes on to say this the formless flexibility of a's principles as interpreted by their different adherence finally pushes our alcoholic into a stance where he must only himself as a frame reference for his actions and this in turn means he must be willing to accept the consequences of those actions in my book that is the definition of emotional sobriety i love that you're responsible for your own actions. There's something I want to read before I stop. Hold on. The bottom of page 24, AA will probably always number among its ranks those who in their fear and in their anger would make of AA a kind of spiritual ghetto, a sort of co-ed monastery where alcoholics hide and lick their wounds, coining childish and defensive words like normsy and alky and pointing accusing fingers at all the tigers out there. There must come a day, it seems to me, when every alcoholic in or out of AA finally sits down in the presence of his enemies. When he does, he will amaze to discover that he is attending a meeting of one himself. I heard a lady at Midnight Madness in New York City say a long time ago, I don't know if she ever read this pamphlet, but during her talk, she said, The enemy brushed my teeth this morning. The enemy brushes my teeth every morning. i start the day off with the enemy and i mean that line when he when he does he will amaze to discover that he is attending a meeting of one himself it occurred to me then that this is what a had been for me and i hoped would always be for others a ridiculously simple jerry-built noisy clanky but sturdy fiercely loved and joyous kind of vehicle that has asked me and all its other passengers to turn it turn it and ourselves around so that all of us could head back up the hill we came down back up where we could once again see the bridge the bridge to normal living tonight if i could find one fault with aa it would be that we have not yet begun to tap the potential hidden in the last seven words of the 12 step practice these principles in all our affairs i love this maybe one of my favorite line paragraphs and all the literature top of page 26 i'm sitting in an aa meeting i am never aware that i am sitting next to another white man another catholic another american or a frenchman mexican jew muslim or hindu black man or brown i am aware only that i am sitting next to another alcoholic and it seemed deeply significant to me this feeling of common humanity had been purchased by me at the cost of considerable pain and suffering should this hard one understanding of and feeling for others be confined to the meeting halls and members of aa what does it remain for me to take what i have learned and what i have experienced not only in aaa but in every other area and endeavor of my life to lift up my head and to assume my rightful place in my family can i then can i there in the household of god know that i am not sitting to another next to another white man another catholic another american nor yet a frenchman mexican jew muslim hindu black or brown man nor even another alcoholic and i can finally at long last please god come home from all the wars and say in the depths of my soul i'm sitting next to other human being some of the greatest writing in all of a is those two paragraphs And in the end, which he uses, he talks constantly about no dogma, no doctrine. He compares it at the end to people going to church, but he's talking about AA, not people going to church. And he says this, this coming Sunday in the churches for many of our members, there will be read the portion of the Gospel of Matthew, which recounts the time when John the Baptist was languishing in the prison of Herod and hearing of the works of his cousin Jesus. He sent two disciples to say to him, Art thou he who is to come or shall we look for another? And Christ did as he so often did. He did not answer them directly, but he wanted John to decide for himself. And so he said to the disciples, Go and report to John what you have heard and what you have seen he uses that as an example of what christians talk about he does not say everyone should believe in that and he says go to report to john what you have heard and what you've seen the blind see the lame walk the lepers are cleansed the deaf hear the dead rise the poor have the gospel preached to them and then he says this but back in my childhood cataclysm days i was taught that the poor in this distance did not mean only the poor in material sense but also meant the poor in spirit those who have burned with an inner hunger and an inner thirst and that the word gospel meant quite literally the good news ends with this more than 16 years ago four men my boss my physician my pastor and the one friend i had left working singingly and together maneuvered me into aa tonight if they were to ask me tell us what did you find i would say to now to them what i say to you now i can tell you only what i have heard and seen it seems the blind do see the lame do walk the lepers are cleansed the deaf hear the dead rise and over over again in the middle of longest day or the darkest night the poor in spirit have the good news told to them god grant that it may always be so so that is without a doubt one of my favorite pamphlets it's taken out of context so many times because like i've said before it's easy to take a line from any piece of literature or a bill w letter or anything and use it to your own advantage i could pick out so many lines in this and say oh that's way too rigid it's too christian i could say a million things but if i read the whole pamphlet he uses those examples to say of what we are not and he really talks about the alcoholic and i love the parental uh supervision um wow hold on one second i want to tell somebody um somebody from australia just sent me a message about a person that needs help I just want to I haven't talked to this person since I met him outside smoking a cigar outside some meeting in Australia but to that person I just put my email and my WhatsApp and they reminded me who they were when I met them by asking the question and I'll remind all the people in the United States and Canada how spoiled and lucky we are with AA anyone who knows me for a long time i wore a band on my hand i still have a band but i had a different one and it said be the least disturbed person in the room sandy b and uh i was outside this meeting this person wrote to me and they said hi billy my name is i'm not going to say it and they said i met you in adelaide last year you gave me your sandy b bracelet outside the hotel i did like i realized how spoiled we are he's like god you never met sandy b did you i said yeah i met him quite a few times and heard him speak because he had noticed my bracelet and i said well i said you can clean this i said but you should have this more than me like i got to see sandy over and over again so to that person who has a situation where people need help or somebody needs help please um send me a whatsapp or an email why do i think some wanted to retire this pamphlet i think maybe because it's written for professionals and it doesn't tell professionals we have any kind of scientific or special medical process we have a way to get in touch with the higher power through the power the 12 steps and maybe that doesn't fit into 2025. uh the general service conference did not retire this pamphlet that was the last question so um next week i am guessing um we must be on concept seven i'm guessing but i am gonna confirm just to make sure that i am uh not making that up let's see five five tradition seven and concept seven um please i put it in the private facebook group i know everybody's so humble i get it but if you happen to be moderating a meeting or chairing a meeting or speaking at a meeting at the international convention send me a message so i can put it in the whatsapp group not because we're going to worship you not because not about any of that it's because some people here might want to meet some other people here and uh we would let people know so that's it just send me that message um would there be any benefit to have this printed as a story in the back of the book in the new edition maybe that sounds like something you should change to your group in your district and maybe send in an agenda item for next year fifth edition isn't going to be printed for a while probably not this year probably not next year probably at least two years out um so maybe so that's it everyone uh please concept seven is complicated legal versus the spiritual please read it ahead of time and we'll talk about tradition seven and i will close with the responsibility statement oh you know what i'm going to answer this one question sorry quick question the new preamble you mentioned this before since this updated a writing do meetings have to use it or can they say they are autonomous you said it before and i cannot remember obviously when this guy gave his presentation the old version of the preample existed. I will give you my thoughts on the preamble. They're my thoughts. Throw them out if you want, but I can't be arrogant. I'm arrogant enough, so I don't want to be more arrogant to think that I can make my own group consciences. The General Service Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous changed the preamble. I wouldn't want somebody in my group to change the big book, or as Bill sees it, or the 12 and 12 when they were reading it. I would just like them to read what's in the book when we're on that book. If I expect them to do that, how could I justify that I get to change the preambles? That we have one tradition, unity. We have 11 others to keep that unity. And I know some people don't like the decision or how it was made or anything else, but I really mean that. Like if you ask somebody to read how it works in your group and they change the words, but you are a group who changes the preamble, then why can't they change that? Why do you get to change something and other people don'T get to changed it? it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me but what do i know that's it after a moment of silence the responsibility statement i am responsible when anyone anywhere reaches out for help I want the hand of AA always to be there and for that I am responsible have a good night everyone