Step One and Surrender – Workshop: 12 Steps – Part 1 of 4 – Local AA Speakers

I want to welcome everybody to the Saturday morning live group of Alcoholics Anonymous. My name is Sandy, and I'm an alcoholic. How are you? And AlcoholicsAnonymous 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. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership. We're self-supporting for our own contributions. AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization or institution does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety and we have a lot of new people here today and I'll just briefly mention that preamble is a quick reminder of what this organization is and what everybody is doing here this morning and I've come to look at it as a very simple fact that we're able to do something as a group that none of us was able to do on our own, and namely to stay sober and happy at the same time. And I'm one who believes that this is an essential ingredient in long-term sobriety, and if you're NAA and you're not happy, you're doing it wrong. It's that simple, and it puts it on your back to figure that out and to get a handle on this program so that the power of it can come in because it's real hard to stay miserable and sober for a long time eventually it just runs out and we're in the next 45 minutes we're going to try and get through three steps this opportunity is particularly welcome to me I feel that in sharing about the 12 steps is something I can do with a lot of enthusiasm I do it with the hopes there's some new people here that will find something useful out of it. Before I get rolling on that, I always like to point out that in the program, if someone is sharing on the steps or their story, whatever it might be, that there isn't anybody who is the ultimate expert on anything in AA. We're just one drunk sharing with another one and if something that you hear is confusing or it doesn't seem like it's acceptable, why maybe I said it wrong, maybe you heard it wrong. We urge you to talk to us or talk to your sponsor. The program and these principles are designed to be quite flexible to give us some elbow room especially in the beginning. It was a program that was put together by drunks for drunks. It was not developed by college professors and the early drunks knew themselves very well and they knew that this thing was structured in a way that said, you will do this, there would be nobody at the meetings. I mean, it's just that simple. You tell a drunk that he has to do something and he does just the opposite. That's just the nature when we first arrived here. So it's very interesting. If you look at the 12 steps, you'll see that you're not in them if you're brand new and you're just hearing about them for the first time. Your name isn't mentioned or anything. Thou shalt do this. It's all a report of action taken by the people who came before you And it is presented in a manner that you can see the results first. And so it doesn't require as big a leap of faith as one might think. This program recently celebrated its 50th anniversary and was started by two guys from Vermont who ended up in Akron, Ohio. and one of them was a physician and oneofthem was a stockbroker and both of them had been exposed to a thing called the Oxford group which was something that preceded Alcoholics Anonymous where people not alcoholics just regular people were getting together in an attempt to simply try and become better people I take my hat off to the human beings in the world like that I am astounded that it exists I can't I just don't seem to make progress until I feel the heat obviously there's some people of higher character who do it through choice very interesting proposition but we don't find that many here but out of this came the guidelines and principles that were incorporated into Alcoholics Anonymous and I mention that because the steps are really a group of principles as the forward to the 12 and 12 says which are spiritual in nature and if we practice them as a way of life they'll do two things they'll get rid of the obsession to drink and they'll enable the suffering alcoholic to become happily and usefully whole, which is an interesting goal. Happily and useably whole. These principles have been borrowed from religions and philosophies and medicine and have been around for as long as man has found some mechanism of dealing with life on a spiritual basis. And so there really isn't anything in the Twelve Steps that is new. What's new is who is presenting it and the manner in which it is presented. And it came through the trial and error of the early days, and as we find out, much of it was borrowed from existing history. Unfortunately, in the Oxford Group, it wasn't working well for the alcoholics because it's very difficult to practice spiritual principles and drink. This was the main dilemma that they seemed to have. There was great sincerity, especially on Dr. Bob's part in the group out in Akron. I mean, we're talking about trying this over a period of a couple of years. And his wife and some wonderful neighbors, and they're there and they'RE meeting sort of similar to an AA meeting. they're talking about the higher power and certain spiritual principles and then you go home and drink and it just they just don't mix well together and very often we find in the early days in the program we'll find people who are trying to find an easier softer way and I remember it occurring to me gee if I could work the steps while drinking until I have a spiritual awakening it would be real easy to quit then because you'd be a new person or whatever happens to you when you have one of those things, whatever that means in the 12th step. Maybe I could get it done that way. But you realize the problems involved. It's hard to get back out of jail and it's hard to get out of nut warts and there's all these things that interfere with the plan. And so it wasn't working that well for the drunks in the Oxford group. But it was working in human beings' lives, and it did work in a friend of Bill's. And I just would talk about this little story as a lead-in to the program as a whole. Back in 1934, Bill, our stockbroker co-founder, had reached the absolute bottom. He had lost a fortune that he had made on Wall Street and was basically unemployed, had been hospitalized a number of times. His wife was now working, and he was borrowing money out of her pocketbook in order to go to the bar to get the creative thoughts generated in your head so that you can then amass a fortune and put the money back in the pocketbook. You remember that train of thought? And it was on one of those Saturday mornings that she had gone off to work and he had pulled out his hidden bottle of gin to settle into some serious creative thinking. When the phone rang and his old drinking buddy, Ebby, wanted to come by and see him and he was all excited about this visit. He hadn't seen him in a while but he was disturbed with one thing and it was that Ebby was sober and it had Bill quite upset and nervous when your drinking buddy is sober and sounds good you know something is wrong. You know what I'm talking about. And when he arrived at the kitchen table, Bill saw there was many things wrong. He looked good. He was healthy. He was smiling. His eyes were clear. And the first words out of his mouth were, Bill, I've got religion. And this has to be the lowest moment that you can imagine. When you're sitting there with your bottle of gin and your old friend is showing up and he looks good and he starts talking about having religion and this was very disconcerting, but he was quite persuasive about this Oxford group that he had been involved in and he got carrying on with Bill into sort of a discussion and it was at that point in time that Bill expressed his hostility to the idea of a higher power. He had been in a... involved in church as a child and had thought it all through and had dismissed it as just being something that wasn't going to work in his life. There was too much dogma, it was too restricted, and it was too confusing, and besides, it just didn't work. And during this discussion, Ebi came up with the idea, which he presented to Bill, why don't you choose your own concept of God? The wonderful thing, and of course you see that has been adopted into Alcoholics Anonymous, the one thing that is beautiful about that is, it's hard to argue against it. it really takes everything away from you you've got all that hostility to the thing and you go well then you just come up with whatever you want and it's hard to go that's not acceptable you know what I mean and so it just catches you off guard and you suddenly have to open your mind up a little bit which is what and it stuck with Bill and during his next hospitalization obviously he didn't stay sober or anything it just stuck with him as an idea and during his next hospitalization in the recovery process that's why he did cry out for a higher power to help him and had a rather pronounced spiritual phenomenon occur to him that certainly doesn't occur to the vast majority of people most of us have the garden variety change that takes place in our sobriety but in Bill's case it was one of these singular events where in the matter of a few minutes he had experienced a great freedom from alcohol and a great sense of hope about the future. He essentially went from a very bleak outlook all in the matter of few moments into a great expectation about the future and the freedom from alcoholic realization that he had come close to his higher power and really experience something in great depth and the wonderful thing we owe a great debt of gratitude to the psychiatric profession at this moment in time because you've got to realize we're in the lock-up place and you call the psychiatrist to describe what just happened. And there was a wonderful chance that the doctor could have said oh, forget it man that was just a DT's and that may have been a great detour in the origin of AA had that happened but Dr. Silkworth was not a person like that and he was quite familiar with spiritual principles and the spirituality that it can be used in recovery and he did not dismiss it but rather encouraged Bill to take advantage of it and explain that these events do happen to human beings and that it does change their lives significantly and that he should mark it as a great moment of hope which Bill did and he went forth from that day and never had another drink and charged out with the enthusiasm of someone who had something like that to sober up the world. And we still see that in AA. In the early months, many of us go racing off to the bars of our friends with the good news that they don't have to suffer anymore. Joe, put down the beer. You don't Have to Suffer Anymore. And Joe says, I'm not suffering. Go away. but we all know that great message carrying that you have I can't believe it's possible to get up in the morning and not puke and go to work and I've been to work 11 days in a row tell people at work I've seen you 11 days and someone says I've be here for 11,000 days hardly a record we soon learn that we're excited about doing things that people have been doing forever, you know. We just have latched on to a little bit of life for the first time. And so this enthusiasm led Bill out into all over the place telling people about sobriety and how wonderful it was and he's now got three months going around sharing this message and you've got to realize the message will put you off a little when you come up and go Let me tell you, I was sitting there and all of a sudden a bright light came into my room and I heard the wind blowing and I felt like I was on a mountaintop. And the guy says back to him, that happens when I drink rum. If our program was built on that, we just would still be getting off the ground, but that's the only experience that Bill had to share and so he was desperately trying to share this going around out of great generosity, sharing this good feeling with people and getting no one sober. But his heart was in the right place, and he was simultaneously putting together a business deal with a machine tool company in Akron, Ohio that made various machines for the rubber processing. And if he could get this proxy deal put together, he would end up being the president of this new company, and that would be appropriate for an alcoholic who's been all the way down, is to make a full recovery back to a millionaire in six months. Only, right, why waste time? Let's get there in a hurry. And so our co-founder certainly had the same impatience that many of us have. I'm going to get everything back fast. And out he went to Akron. And we all know the story that the deal fell through and his business associates came back to New York and he was left there for another couple of days to wrap things up. And alone in the Mayflower Hotel, and it occurred to him that life just wasn't quite right. And how could this happen to him? He'd tried so hard, not drinking anymore, being a good guy, and look at this terrible deal. And he stood in the lobby of the Mayflowers and heard the piano music coming out of the bar and heard all the laughter in there and just said, you know, I could go in, cheer myself up a little bit, And they'd go back to New York. And it suddenly dawned on him that that would probably mean absolute death and back to the insane asylums. And his eyes went to the other side of the lobby, and he saw a list of church directories. And it was out of a sense of desperation that he got the names of some ministers off of that list and called them in order to find a drunk that he could go talk to so that he Could Stay Sober. It wasn't giving anything away because I've got to go work with somebody for my own sobriety. And the minister, Reverend Tunce, led him to Henrietta Seibeling of the Seibelings Millionaires, and she was a member of the Oxford group, and she said, do I have a drunk for you? Yes, I do know someone. He is a, and it was Dr. Bob, who little did Dr. Bobby know that he was about to have a 12-step call played on him. And Henrietta called up Dr. Bob's wife, Ann, and said, Good news, there's a man in town from New York who knows all about staying sober, and I just know that if we get Dr. Rob together with him, that all will be well. So let's set up a meeting right now. And Ann said, I'm sorry, I agree with you, we've got to have the meeting, but we'll be unable to hold it today because tomorrow is Mother's Day and Dr. Robert is going to be in New York. Bob went out to buy me a Mother's Day present, and he just came home with a potted plant, and he and the plant are under the table right now. And neither one of them is moving, and so it looks like the meeting will have to be tomorrow. So now we got our co-founder, Dr. Bob, well-known Akron surgeon, lying under the table. And when he wakes up with his hangover, he is greeted with the wonderful news from his wife that there's a guy from New York who knows all about staying sober and they're going to meet with him. You remember how we just got led around? You're going to meet with this and that. And Dr. Bob said on the way over, I'll give him 15 minutes in a famous last words. And they met in the gatehouse of the Cyberling estate and the meeting lasted for five hours. There was that instant chemistry between two people who suddenly realized that they desperately needed each other, that together they could do something that just knew they were on to something. And that was the origins of this fellowship of AA. And it was trial and error as it grew in the early days and years. Dr. Bob was quite distinguishing for a number of reasons. And I suppose the first thing he did was to have A.A.'s first slip and he did that about five or six weeks sobriety he suddenly realized there's so many new people I've had pigeons who do this there's about six weeks sobriete they suddenly go I've neglected my education all these years and I'm taking off this weekend for a seminar on economics in Las Vegas anyway Dr. Bob went off to a medical convention in Atlantic City and came back drunk and had to perform an operation the next morning and Bill worked with him all night trying to get his hand steady enough and as the story goes they gave him a bottle of beer a half hour before the operation to keep his hand study And he went in, performed the surgery, and that was his last drink. And so AA got started back in 1935. And here we are 50 years later with a million and a half people in over 100 countries. And the basic ingredient in all of this success is the 12 steps. These 12 steps are what individual AA members all over the world end up using as a way of life. It seems that most of us with our alcoholism missed out on Life 101. You know what I mean? We know a lot of things, but we just don't have a handle on how you just sort of get through a day. You know, one of those basic things. And since we get here, we're 25, 35, 45, 55, 65, whatever age we get here, it's real hard to own up to the fact we haven't figured it out yet. And we just pretend everything's fine and that we know certain things. But deep down inside, we are filled with resentments and anger and self-pity and fear and anxiety and confusion. And none of it makes any sense. It never has. We have a very cynical look at the world. We don't really trust people. We're not too excited about the future. We'd rather forget about the past. And there isn't too many comfortable places we can park. And we're always on the move, you know, just keep moving. I'm here and it's not comfortable here. I'll sit over there. It's not uncomfortable there. I'll go to a movie. I don't like the movie. And everywhere we go, we're there. That's our problem. when we first get here and learn about alcoholism and learn that we're powerless over alcohol and we encounter our first step we're apt to be given the wrong impression that the mere knowledge of our situation will carry us through and in the writings of the AA literature, Bill mentions this many, many times. He probably mentions this as much as anything is that self-knowledge avails us nothing. In other words, it serves no purpose to know that we're an alcoholic and to learn about alcoholism as a disease and it does this and it Does That. If that's all we had to rely on, we would then have what we call an educated drunk. We'd have someone who is lying on the floor drunk but knows exactly why whereas before we were lying there wondering why i wonder what now we lie there saying just as drunk as ever and we know exactly why we're there well i'm here i'm an alcoholic i have this thing and i have that but it doesn't help in sobriety knowing there was just that has no bearing on it because that's not our problem our problem is not ignorance of alcoholism if that's all it was we would just go take a crash course at rutgers or someplace walk out with a phd in alcoholism and never drink again but our problem is phrased well in the first step it says we're powerless over alcohol so the only answer to the being powerless is power we have to somehow get the resources the wherewithal to stay sober and it can't be done on our own and so it is something that we get out of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, and so it is very important to come to grips with that in our first step. There seems to be, the big book talks about there's no defense against the first drink. Bill writes about we don't have the same kind of defense that you have when you go to put your hand on a hot stove. In other words, it's almost as if the mechanism, you don't really think about that, you're walking in there and your hand wanders near the gas burner as you're doing this, and it comes back all by itself. You know how that whole process, ah, ooh, wow, and then you look over, hey, stove is on. You don't go like this. I smell something burning. Hey, I wonder if I left the gas on. You know, in the meanwhile, the hand has melted off, you know, as we sit here and debate the issue. Am I really powerless over fire? It just boomed. And so we have the same thing. We have all this knowledge, we have all this internalization of what our drinking did to us. Every time we drink, we go to jail. Every time this happens, if I drink again, the doctor told me my liver, I'll probably have a convulsion, I'll do that, I'LL DO THAT, and then this will probably, oh, I just had a drink. It was like, it just came in. We had no defense against it. All of a sudden, the thought to have a drink found its way into our computer, and it was immediately followed by a drink, and then when we're asked later, how did that happen? We're at a loss to explain it. We just seem to part company, and our track record goes on and on and on where it is proven to us there is no way that we're not going to eventually take that first drink again. And this obsession to continually think about drinking stays with us, and the common denominator that we all have is we're unable to solve this dilemma on our own. So our first step of AA really takes us down this path of surrender, And we strongly suggest anybody who is new that you spend time on this and realize what 100% powerless means. The more you can come to grips with being totally, absolutely hopeless case, the happier your sobriety will be. It is one of our first paradoxes that total surrender will enable you to win. because if we don't surrender to the first step totally, then the remaining steps are optional. You know what I mean? They're out there as things that we might want to engage in at some time as opposed to this is what can get us out of this situation that the firststep and surrendering in the firststeppedid. I like to compare the transition from the first step to the second step because I used to fly with thinking about jumping out of a plane without a parachute there's a certain feeling of control you have if you're dropping from 20,000 down to 500 you know what I mean you see these free fallers and they can do figure eights and you just can really be free as a bird but at the last moment as the ground is coming up it's very comforting to realize you have a parachute it's sort of a very important feature of the trip is to have that and if you were to picture how you would feel as you watch see from way up high the relative motion you don't pick up on it and it just seems like it may take forever to get down but the closer you get it just starts moving up real fast and uh it's right then when you go to grab the cord you go oh my god the whole thing is gone that you may have a sense of what the first step is all about what being powerless over alcohol is and we if we could work it somehow we would take everybody in who's brand new day and go up on top of a parachute tower and throw everybody off without a shoot just get that feeling of powerlessness and about ten feet from the ground a hidden hand would shoot out and grab you at the last second before you hit and we'd have a little voice that said excuse me we're conducting a survey do you believe in God? that's the only way to move from step one to step two If you do step one right, then step two becomes very appealing. We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. We would come to believe there has to be a higher power because of the nature of the situation I'm in. You see what I mean? It removes all the debate over the issue. And if there's anything the second step is, it is a huge debate over the existence of a higher power for you. And all human beings seem to engage in this, and we are hardly the exception. The typical person who arrives in AA has become an agnostic if not an atheist, and the question of coming to believe in a higher power brings out some great negative reactions in us. It hurts us right down to our gut as we start going, I don't mind admitting defeat, but you don't have to hit me with this God stuff just because I'm down. I mean, it just feels awful. And we are confronted with what I call the Jack Benny choice in the big book where Bill writes a very interesting sentence in there where he says to die an alcoholic interesting sentence in there where he said to die an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis is not always an easy choice to make and only us drunks would relate to that we're just going okay sir you get your choice which would you care to choose you can die an alcoholic death let me show you what it looks like here's a nut ward here's the guy in the final stages here's advanced liver disease oh god that's awful we get a full briefing on an alcoholic you get that or you could live on a spiritual basis how long would it take to get that kind of boy this is going to be rough I mean we're all back over here into the alcoholic death we're going well maybe I'm the exception to this maybe I'm doing that there's such an aversion to whatever this living on a spiritual basis whatever the transition to higher power is that there's tremendous reluctance to consider doing it it is at this point that we can look at AA itself that we an look at the record of the program that we realize that it is a result oriented that we are not making a choice on the basis of theory that one meeting after another we have people standing up in front who are examples of what these principles can do and we see graphic examples of ourselves compared to Alcoholics Anonymous. In the middle of this debate, a typical sponsor if you have the kind of sponsor that I had will not discuss theory with you. They will simply point out that you are wearing a wristband from a nut ward and this person who's doing the step has his own car. That'll be the basic Ph.D. level discussion and I know you want to get into some debate about religion and they keep pointing to your wristband and it comes down in its absolute simplicity at this point in the program to where someone is going to say the reason you should try the 12 steps is because your way stinks and so this keeps it very simple Dr. Bob was very big in this keeping it simple came from him and it is your way stinks your way doesn't work you are the product of your whole game plan for living and in the past you were thinking well it needs slight modification remember that that was a slight little thing fine tuning I need a better lawyer so I get out of jail sooner that's where we were thinking you know, that kind of a thing let's see maybe I could find a way to puke painlessly this is the type of thinking we could come up with well if I could have convulsions and maybe there's a pill so you don't feel convulsion maybe there is this but no way were we into I'm not going to drink and try a spiritual program that just was totally unacceptable because we didn't fit in that mold and we came from all different backgrounds approaching this second step we came in here and felt threatened by the AA way of life. We came in here with a preconceived idea that we had already tried that. That we had tried a way of faith and it didn't work when we were seven. And so that's out. No sense finding it now that I'm 64. And we realized that that was probably a very childish attempt, that we weren't really serious about it. Maybe we came in here, intellectually self-sufficient. We felt a little bit superior. We had this feeling of intellectual self-sufficiency that we had a little secret that we didn't even share here in Alcoholics Anonymous and that was that we were born gifted. We have a little extra thing that a lot of people don't have but we also have humility and so we don't tell people about it. We don't embarrass them by constantly reminding them they're in the presence of greatness and we used to go to low-class bars and drink in there just to let them osmosis what it feels like to be around greatness even though they probably wouldn't appreciate it and we often sat alone and made little circles on the bar with our glass of beer wondering why nobody appreciated the fact we were there that's those sort of wonderful secret thoughts will cause us great dilemmas in coming to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity. We may also find ourselves partway, totally bigoted about the idea of a spiritual way of life. We're just not even interested in it. We find that religions and all of that are just a bunch of hypocrites and we remember back to the days we sat on the front porch on Sunday morning with our beer belly hanging out and a spotted t-shirt and a 16 ounce Budweiser and our sunglasses and we burp a couple times and watch the people go into church and go look at those hypocrites going into that church there's a banker going in there that guy rips people off every day there's an lawyer going in here that guy's ripping off you know in other words we just specialized in taking everybody else's inventory except our own and had that feeling you know that isn't it this is out this is not but we may have even been in the category where we were in that crowd. We were up there every Sunday morning. We went down there, went to our church, took a pledge afterwards, and then got drunk. And people are going, God, I just don't think for this man or woman that this concept can work at all. And as we come in, we find that all of them had their fall, all of these various backgrounds had their shortcomings, that the guy who was full of faith and reeking of alcohol wasn't even serious about it. The last thing he really wanted was for the pledge to work and it was the first time here in sobriety that we're able uh to look at all of these various backgrounds that we arrive here with and see them for what they really are and come to realize that maybe we can start out by just having uh the program take over our drinking problem and that gets us into the third step where we made a decision to turn our willing our lives over the care of god as we understood him and it is willingness will get at the beginning oh this idea of turning one's life over may sound very esoteric and intellectual but boils down it's a rather simple um discussion our problem had been self-centeredness and what this step is designed to do is to get us un-self-centered. That's the whole process. We, as self-centered people, were, as Bill writes in the big book, like the actor ever trying to rearrange everybody on the stage. In our own head, we had a vision of how the day ought to go and we saw Cousin Susie doing this and we thought our daughters and sons over here dressed this way then they all do that and then if these people come in then I come in and then this is how the deal goes and God what a happy ending we even put a happy ending into this thing so then we walk out and nobody where they're supposed to be nobody has even read our script nobody has the vaguest idea and so we try even harder to control the situation and to manage it and we just have no concept of what the problem is and we learn that perhaps we ought to be kind maybe that's it we're going to have to be nicer to people And so we go up and we find when a self-centered person can only act kind, there is no way that they can be kind. And so even when we're acting kind, we're doing it for selfish reasons. We go, you know, if I could get the reputation as a kind person, people would like me. If I could give the reputation of an honest person, then people would do business with me. But we aren't really honest or we aren'T really kind or we have no idea of what love is because all we're doing is acting it. We're just going, oh, that's what it looks like when you love your children. You smile nicely at them and you touch them every so often and you show up at their birthdays. But there is, when self-centeredness is involved, there's a very painful realization that we're trying to get something out of the birthday. We always have to be the recipient. And this problem, this painful perspective on life is the problem of the alcohol. This is a classic that we arrive here is we are painfully aware that it's warm in here. We're painfully aware of all kinds of things and don't seem to be able to stop focusing on that. We don't seem to being able to do that to stop doing that and that is the problems of self-centeredness and so the third step of AA is the technique that is used in getting rid of self-centeredness. It is making a decision to become God-centered, to become God- centered. In order to do this, we suddenly realize several things. Number one, I'm not in charge of writing the script. Well, if I'm not in charged of writing this script, who writes the script? In other words, unless there's a higher power, there's no such thing as a master script. There's no such thing as the master orchestrator who has put together the musical score that we are all playing, and if we're all following the same music, we can play in harmony. But unless I concede that there is such a thing as a higher power, there's no such thing as all these other things for us to be part of. And that was the problem of being self-centered. Everybody doing their own thing. I've got to keep all my options open. All of these philosophies that sound so great in the saying. I remember hearing that. You've got to keep your options open. A fantastic, very appealing to a drinker because that means you should stay at a bar and drink and never move. Then your options are all open. You don't have a job. You're not supposed to be anywhere. You're totally free to go in any direction, any opportunity that comes along. But as soon as somebody says, would you like to come down here and dig ditches? And you're down there digging, all the other options are closed because you're digging down there. So keep them open. You've got to just stay there and drink and be available. And I like that. The problem is you run out of money and they won't serve you anymore and you have to so in other words in order to not be that way in order to keep my options open I can't move in order to do my own thing I'm in conflict with everybody else who apparently is doing their own thing it was a revolutionary concept for me I don't know about you all to even concede that there was a whole bunch of other people who were out there focusing in on something bigger than themselves and that's why they were in harmony. That's what led to all of the harmony in sobriety was to concede that there was something, and here was the bottom line, that there was such a thing as the right thing to do. And sobriery ended up consisting of an endless series of doing the next right thing. But in order for that to be possible, there has to be a higher power and the mechanism of finding out what the next right thing is is the process of the 12 steps the process of getting rid of self-centeredness and intuitively starting to be communicated to as to what the Next Right Thing is and we start talking about unself-centered terms we start seeing prayers that say I pray I may be youthful and that was never a word in a self-centered person's vocabulary you just didn't go okay i'm going to be useful it just didn't occur when i'm gonna go out and get them i'm Gonna go out And climb over him but being useful never seemed to be the driving motivating force so as we get in the program we start coming across more spiritual terms and so this particular step is an action step It begins with willingness, and it may begin by starting out turning our drinking problem over to our AA group and to our sponsor, and we see the results we get out of that. And then we realize that our sobriety, what we're going to spend the next 50 years, however long we're gonna live, hopefully, is going to consist of turning over as much as we can discover in the same sense that we turned over our drinking problems. And in order to do that, we have a whole remaining nine steps where we inventory, find out what these things are. And so the third step in the 12th and 12th one, we'll wrap this up right now, brings an interesting concept in called willpower. Now I would like to talk about willpower because you hear it saying there's no way that willpower has anything to do with sobriety. and that is an absolutely true and false statement. It's true in the sense that there's no way an alcoholic can stay sober just on willpower. There's noway you can just take your willpower and go out there and say I am going through my own resources to not drink and stay sober. We may be able to do it for a certain amount of time how each person has a different amount of willpower I have about two days worth. Other people I've seen them clench their teeth can go for a whole damn year. I'm not drinking, I'm not drinking. It's like who can hold their breath as long as it's underwater? Some of these people can do it for eight minutes or something like that. I'm good for 15, 20 seconds. So there's a great variety in the amount that can be done on our own. But the one thing we all have in common is eventually you run out. And when you run out that's the end. And so in that sense you can't possibly stay sober on willpower and yet the steps and the program are all done through our willpower. It is our power and our choice that gets us in the car, that gets us to the meeting. It is our will power choice itself, ourselves that goes and buys a 12 and 12 and goes home and works on it and gets the pencil and the piece of paper and does an inventory and physically does the steps. And so what Bill writes about is we want to get our will Power in harmony with that of a higher power. And when that is done, we have suddenly are using our selves to go over and turn on the electricity instead of trying to produce the light ourselves. We learn all this power that is available to us if we're willing to use it, and as we find in the remaining steps, there's a lot of pride, ego that stands in the way of asking for help. Alcoholics do not specialize in asking for help, we are very independent people, and we go, yes, I agree health is available. I know if I call my sponsor I will get the help. But I prefer to handle this alone. And then they pick us up one more time and carry us off and sobriety and the remaining step is the process by which we learn how to bring all of this health and power into our lives. We're at the end of the time. I would remind everybody we have another meeting in 15 minutes for anybody who would like to come in for a discussion meeting. Thank you for listening.