Knowledge and Experience – Workshop – the Lost Tapes – Part 8 of 8 – Mark H.

My name is Mark Houston. I'm an alcoholic and my God-given sobriety date is October the 19th of 1982, and I stress God given. I hear a lot of times in AA meetings, God brought me to AA and somehow there for me alcohol had a whole lot to do with the two probably did for a lot of you I normally try and take five or ten minutes when I when I do these things to to clear the things that that I guess are between me and what what I hope takes place here I always find it interesting when I'm asked to do big book workshops and seminars because I am not an individual who believes in studying the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I am a person who believes In doing the work out of the big book of Alcoholic Anonymous, and there is a big difference in that. There's a little story that I always like about it tells the difference between knowledge and experience, because I suspect that there's some of you that might have came here with the idea of picking up knowledge or perhaps even information. And what I want to submit to you, that if we're willing to do a few things, maybe in fact what we can all have is an experience. But there's a story that sums up for me the difference between knowledge and experience. And there's these two brothers in about age 14, one day in biology class, the ideaof having an orgasm got brought up to them. And their twin brothers are identical. They made the decision that they were going to find out everything you could about having an orgasm so one brother he took the path of knowledge he finished up high school and he went on to college and he Went on to get a PhD and he went to Harvard and he was teaching a class on everything he always wanted to know about having another an orgasms and the other brother uh he was a little bit smarter he went around trying to find a little girl for about two weeks and he finally found one and they had sex and an orgasm and which one of those two people do you think knows more about having an organ the one with all the knowledge is the one with the experience I sat in Alcoholics Anonymous for two and a half years and I had a lot of knowledge and I was dying of that part of the disease that is seldom talks about in Alcoholic Synonymous today and it's a part that we're certainly going to talk about I also always laugh about who shows up at these kinds of things. You know, and I'll share some of this as we go along, but just imagine, God forbid, if you took this group of people and you put us all back in the bar and we were drinking alcohol. God forbid. But let's say we did that. And what would happen in there is about a third of this group, they would be pretty much up at the bar just sipping on the drinks and whining in their beer and that type of a thing. That would be about a third in the room. and then about a third of the room would be sitting at the tables, and they'd be a little bit more active because they know they can get a little bit more out of alcohol than the guy or gal just sitting up at the bar sipping. And then there's a third group, and I fit in that group, and I call them the mad dogs. They're knocking the guy's drink over that's up atthe bar. They're trying to dance with the wife of the guy sitting atthe table. They're out doing dope because theyknow there'sa hell of a lot more in alcohol than what those other two groups of people know. And that's the way I was with alcohol, and that's the way i am with this wonderful thing that I call recovery. And that has been my experience traveling most of this United States. There are three groups of people in Alcoholics Anonymous very similar to the three groups people that I just talked about. Sad but true we reached a place in Alcoholic Anonymous where it is our individual responsibility to make a decision whether or not to do the work out of The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I say sad but true because the message in the fellowship is not the message that's contained in The Big Book, and a lot of you are going to find that out this weekend. If you bought a new big book recently... I want to mention something about, I guess, qualifications. I am NOT an expert on The Big book of Alcoholic Anonymous, what I have to share with you is experience i'm going through the work out of the big book following the precise specific clear-cut directions and meeting the requirements for the 12th time uh and so i am up here to share my experience with you with that process and maybe to give you some practical tools that you can use if you too would choose to have this experience and i'm gonna present you probably with a lot of paradoxes this weekend uh here's one of them uh those of us that choose to go through and do the work out of the big book and follow all the instructions do everything it says we do that because we have no choice the spiritual life is full of paradoxes i have to admit in the first step that i'm powerless over alcohol my life's unmanageable in order to be given any power i believe that the spiritual life is not a theory that we have to live the spiritual wife and you see what's always been difficult for me every time back through the work is I'm raised with a mind that wants to compute everything from a logic standpoint, but that won't happen. But if you buy a new big book and when I go back through The Work, I do that, and the reason I do that is because the book I used the last time through The Work and all the things that I have highlighted and underlined now becomes a barrier from me learning anything new. So when I bought the last big book, because i started going back to the work in february on the title of this book was a cover page and i want to read something it says the basic text pages 1 through 164 remains unchanged this is the aa message just as it was introduced in the 1939 alcoholics anonymous the book that gave young fellowship its name and i can tell you from from experience from in the last six months being in kentucky and louisiana and several other places that the message that i hear in the fellowship of alcoholics anonymous is not the message in the big book of alcoholic synonymous and the sad news is is that if you're a real alcoholic you'll die from what i call middle-of-the-road solution and uh hopefully we're going to let the experience and what the book talks to us about smash a lot of the middle-of-the-road solutions that that we bring into this thing you know as is we're going to do a couple more things and then we're gonna shut the tape off for a few minutes we're going to ask you a series of 15 questions and by the time we get up to the third step we're to find out whether or not there's movement in terms of maybe those 15 questions and we're also going to utilize a prayer for those of you who perhaps came here to have something more than picking up knowledge or information and like any good alcoholic what was a simple prayer that my sponsor gave me because I hooked up with him at two and a half years dying of untreated alcoholism told him what I knew of what I thought I knew of AA and recovery and he said I have enough information to be dangerous to myself and anyone else that I ever work with so he gave me a simple prayer and that's now been called a set aside prayer and it really doesn't matter what it's called but it's a prayer that i use every single time through the work because when i begin to go through this process called a spiritual experience we call them the steps they're spiritual exercises the biggest noose around my neck the day i start that work is everything i think i know about myself my disease these steps and most of all god that is that that will be the biggest news so i use that prayer as i go back through the work every time. What I can tell you about that is when I do that, the things that I read in my new big book I have never read before. Example, two years ago through the work in the 10th step there's a phrase we've entered the world of the spirit. I've never understood that. I know why. I spiritually understand what it's like to have entered the World of the Spirit today. That happens for me every single time through the Work when I utilize a new book. so we're going to do a few things and then those of you that prayer is going to be in that packet that you've been given and uh we're gonna pause for a minute we're to go ahead and say that prayer together and uh so that maybe you too between this evening and tomorrow in your own way can have an experience and not just pick up knowledge and job not just pickup information see because if you walk into a spiritual experience with an answer ie those of us sit in this room right now now that are sitting here saying, I absolutely know I'm an alcoholic. You cannot begin a spiritual exercise with an answer. Let me say that again. You can not begin a spiritual exercise with and answer. If you want anything to happen, you have to begin with a question. You have to begin with a questions. I go through the work every time. A coin has two sides to it. The question that I ask myself since I have distance between me and a drink is Maybe I'm not an alcoholic, and maybe I don't need God. And when I go through the work and I pose myself with that question, what I find out is what a desperate alcoholic I am and how desperately I need God." There are three ways that one can go through The Big Book and go through these steps. And at one time or another, I will be, unfortunately, in all three. The first is the man of contempt. The man in contempt says, I know I'm an alcoholic. I absolutely know that, and that is the attitude that he or she would take in going back through this work. They have what's called contempt prior to investigation. You have another way of going through the work, and that's the attitude of the pious man. Pious man accepts everything. Piousman loves to read Dr. Addict Alcoholic. the third and that's the path that i'm going to ask you to consider is what i call the path of consideration see here's what i've learned in my journey through a spiritual experience when posed with a question i discovered one day that my alcoholic ego used an answer to shut off learning anything i discovered that the most that what really happened for me is from the length of time the question was asked me until I answered is when I begin to have movement in there. So, the path that I'm going to ask you to take as we move through this experience is what I call the path of consideration. To be on both sides. Maybe I'm not an alcoholic. Maybe I am. Maybe I don't need God. Maybe I desperately need God and to take what I called a path of consideration so that I can be open and so that I can maybe have a new experience with what we call the steps out of that book. I want to take about 30 seconds to qualify myself. There's absolutely no emotion in my life about me and alcohol prior to getting here. I discovered something three years ago that my alcoholic ego was doing. I would sit in meetings, and I'd hear myself say when I got here, when the topic was brought up and when I got here. And you know what I realized? When I got hier is not where I'm living now and that when I Got Here was keeping me from looking at where am I now with this relationship that I have with God today. So when I God here today has no relevance for me because that prevents me from experiencing the presence of God now in my life. i took out i took my first drink of alcohol when i was 16 i drank till i was 36 and in between there i broke all laws of man and all of god and i checked myself into treatment in 1982 with brain damage kidney damage and liver damage and everything i owned was in a duffel bag that's how much fun i had with uh with alcohol and i reached the place several years before i checked into treatment that I couldn't control how much I drank, I couldn t control where I was going to go when I took a drink and I couldn d quit drinking. And I harmed every human being that ever loved me and ever did anything for me. And when I checked into treatment in 1982, I did not want to live anymore. Or even worse, I didn t want to feel the way I was feeling that day. And that s really all I want to tell you in terms of qualifying myself around me and alcohol because as i said spending too much time there keeps me out of experiencing the presence of god now so you won't hear a lot from me anymore when i got here uh i mean i here's the other thing i discovered i can't defeat my ego but it's neat to know what the little what the little guy's up to he has three major objectives and if you're an alcoholic a fourth will be accomplished. Here's the first. He wants me separated from God, myself and you and if that happens for me long enough then I will be in a barstool drinking alcohol again and there are many many ways in which my alcoholic ego will begin to do that and one of them is to have me live in the past as to when I got here as opposed to being honest with myself about those of you who have been around AA for a period of time. Here is an interesting question for you to ask yourself, is it possible that the God of my understanding can take me further in every area of my life than I can even imagine if I am willing to take some action? Is God truly everything in my life? Or with time between me and a drink of alcohol, has my agnostic belief system come back hand. Does your ego tell you if your external world looks a certain way that that's sufficient to keep you drunk and in close personal relationship with God? And we'll consider some of those things. I'd like to take a minute, and I would like to shut the tape off, and then we want to ask 15 questions. Okay, my name is Mark, and i'm an alcoholic. We went through a series of questions. And before we do this prayer, I want to share something that's important. I do not share this to brag. I share this because I'm proud of this, and this is my sponsorship lineage. And those of you who either have sponsors or are going to get sponsors, I would strongly suggest you find out your sponsorship lineage because if you're a real alcoholic like me, this is a life-and-death program and sponsors can only give you what's been given to them. My sponsor is a man named Don P. He has been sober 27 years. Got sober in the penitentiary. Just to show you what God does, he's now in charge of the drug and alcohol programs at 16 penitentiaries. You don't get from there to there. It's impossible. His sponsor is a man named Gary B., and he lives in Indianapolis, Indiana. His sponsor is a men named Paul M. Paul M is 47 years sober, still very active and very involved in Chicago, Illinois. Paul M's sponsor was a man name Paul S. He was the first sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous in Chicago. And Paul S was sponsored by Dr. Bob, and of course Bill Wilson carried the message to him. I share that with you to try and give you an idea that the message that God delivered to me had no middle-of-the-road solution to it whatsoever. And as my sponsor said, you now have a responsibility, and that responsibility is to carry into the fellowship and when you are working with others the message out of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Real beautifully, as I sat in AA for two and a half years, and I worshiped all the fingers in AA and here's what the fingers are. Get a sponsor, I did that. Go to a lot of meetings, I Did That. Get a home group, I Do That. Read the big book, I DiD That. And study the big books, go to big book studies, I Did Dat. Go to conventions, I Did Dat. Sponsor people, I DeD Dat. And I was real, real confused because at two and a half years I was dying of a part of the disease that we don't talk about in Alcoholics Anonymous. What's really wrong with me? It's that part of the disease that's called the spiritual malady. And I was real confused by that. When I went to these two men who I asked to sponsor me, sponsors give you what's given to them. The first one we met in Denny's for a few minutes, and he asked that dangerous, lethal question, are you powerless over alcohol, Mark? Are you an alcoholic? And I said yes. I was sober two and a half years telling you I was a drunk but didn't have a sliced idea what that meant. Let me tell you how important just the first half of the first step is. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous devotes 53 pages to the first half of The First Step. The first 43 pages, 10 pages in The Doctor's Opinion. The chapter into action is 17 pages long and has seven steps in it. Why do you think The First Stop is the foundation of this prior program when i got done with the first step doing the work with don i begin to pursue this process with desperation there's two lines in the big book that that speak to me about how to go after this thing called recovery one's on page 28 it says to seek recovery with the desperation of a drowning man and the others in chapter 5 how it works we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start so i went to see this man and we sat across from each other and uh those of you who have uh books if you'll turn to the title page just one second let's do something i want to pause for for a second and then i would like us those of who would care to to join me in this prayer that's in that little handout you have it just says uh it just says prayer number one on it and that's the prayer that we use to uh to be open to a new experience in in leo lights lay aside some prejudice those who care to would you join me in this prayer god please help me set aside everything i think i know about myself my disease these steps and especially you for an open mind and a new experience with myself my disease these steps in especially you if you've got a big book if you'll open to the title page i went to see don and he'd asked me to bring my big book and I went over and he asked me what I'd done in Alcoholics Anonymous and I shared all that with him and at that point in time he introduced me to this prayer and the reason he introduced me to the prayer was I had a lot of prejudice about what the message in the big book was all about and one of the ideas I had prior to sitting down with him was I thought I was in AA and what I discovered is I wasn't in AA I was only in AA I was not in AA I was a member of AA I was one third of the program I was part of the fellowship but he took this title page that says Alcoholics Anonymous the story of how many thousands of men and women have recovered from alcoholism that's the first promise of the big book for those of you who answered that you're always going to be recovering the title page smashes that idea real quick the big books tells you somewhere between 30 to 50 times that you have recovered from a hopeless state of mind and body and it starts out telling you that on the title page i believe if they wanted to use the words recovering they would have done that i think some confusion comes in in that In the tenth step, I am told that I am not cured of alcoholism, and I'm not. But I am a recovered alcoholic. We will see that word in this book over and over and again. A woman who is a spiritual advisor of mine, 37 years sober in Denver, says that people who introduce themselves as a recovering alcoholic have never made all the amends. So when they introduce themselves, that is probably true. so we looked at this little thing called a circle in the triangle and i never looked at this before and the question was asking me of what do you think unity is i said well i think that's the fellowship that's going to meetings and he said are you in that part of the fellowship and i said absolutely i said you know that i've been going to a lot of meetings now i didn't go to meetings where where he went because uh he came to the treatment center and spoke and i saw him a few times around aa and he scared me um so i stayed away from meetings he went to because they talked about this book all the time and they talked about doing this work and uh so i said to him that that yes i was in that part of this circle in the triangle and he said to me mark what is the only requirement for membership and i said the only requirement for memberships is desire to quit drinking and he turned over to the top of page 24 and it says at a certain point in the drinking of every alcoholic he passes into a state where the most powerful desire to stop drinking is of absolutely no avail he said mark you need to understand something a desire to not drink allows you to occupy a chair in Alcoholics Anonymous but has absolutely nothing to do with you staying sober and he smashed one of the main middle-of-the-road solutions that I had heard in this fellowship and that was that if I went to enough meetings and I had a desire to quit drinking that I would stay free from alcohol so we determined that I was in that part of the circle in the triangle then he asked me what I thought recovery was and I've been wrong around long enough to say well that's going through the big book and doing the steps and he said to me have you ever done that and I'm an alcoholic I cannot answer yes or no questions so I begin to pontificate about my experience with these two men and he stopped me and said from now on my relationship with you he said when I ask you a yes-or-no question I would like a yes or no response so let me try this one more time have you ever gone from the title page to page 164 of this book and done this work and And I said, no. Then he said, you are not in recovery and you have never been in recovery. And that made me angry and that never bothered him very much. He told me one day, he said Mark, I love you far more as a child of God than I care about your feelings. And most of the time he said my experience is every feeling I've ever had has proceeded with a thought and if your thinking's all screwed up like yours is, it's going to produce some real interesting feelings. Don never lied to me and I won't lie to an alcoholic I won' tell them middle of the road stuff like take your time work the steps when you're comfortable I share with them what this disease is all about and what's in the big book which is seek recovery with the desperation of a drowning man so at two and a half years I'm told I'm not in recovery because I've never done the work out of the book and then he asked me what I thought service was and I said well I think that's going to meetings and emptying ashtrays and doing some of that. He kind of chuckled again, and he said, Mark, if you're willing to do what I did, and he says, I only know one way to sponsor. Start on the title page, go to page 164. Every time the book asks us to do something, we're going to go ahead and do it. He said, that's the only way I know how to sponsor because he said I can't keep myself sober. I cannot keep you sober. But he said when we go through and do this, when we get to the 10th step, if you've done this work, you will see that the book tells you that you have entered the world of the spirit and then you can take your awakened spirit out to be a service to god and your fellow human beings in every area of your life from the time you get up till the time you go to bed and since you've never done that never been in recovery then you've also never been in this part of the program he said mark that's your dilemma you felt that way most of your life he said this is a circle and a circle represents wholeness you have a three-part disease a body mind spirit you've only been in one part of alcoholics anonymous you've only been taking your body to meetings you have been missing out on two-thirds of what is wrong with you and everything he said fit and everything he said made sense so out of this crazy little thing called the title page he also said to me he said do you know that there are 36 spiritual principles that you can live your life by there's a spiritual principle behind each of the 12 steps There's a spiritual principle behind each of the traditions, and there is a spiritual principal behind each of the concepts. So he took a simple title page that I'd never really looked at and pointed out to me that I'm given the first promise and statement of hope that I can recover, that I could be whole again, that I have a disease of body, mind, spirit, and I could give 36 spiritual principles to live my life by. and I left his home and I have never been the same since because I left there with hope because at two and a half years and some of you may or may not relate to this there's a paragraph on page 52 which describes untreated alcoholism there are three words I use interchangeably one is called the spirituality the second is untreated alcoholicism and the third is unmanageability in a two and a half years sober i was restless irritable discontent under constant fear and tension and all that stuff on page 52 was full blown in me i was having trouble in personal relationships i could not control my emotional nature i was a prey to misery and depression i couldn't make a living now i had a job was drawing a paycheck but i didn't like where it worked i didn'T like the people i'd gotten in two fights they informed me that that was not part of their training program i was full of fear i was unhappy i felt useless and i could not be of help to others and at two and a half years away from alcohol all that stuff on page 52 was exactly what's going on he said mark you're dying of untreated alcoholism he said you you know mark that you can die a physical death and a spiritual death He said, you've been sitting in AA thinking your problem's alcohol, didn't you? And I said, yes. He said Mark, if your problem was alcohol, given a little distance between you and a drink, don't you think you'd feel a lot better? I said well, I never thought about that. He said mark, we're going to find in the first step, the first 43 pages, that the disease of the body and mind are just symptoms. That what you suffer from is a spirituality and that only a relationship with God can treat that, Mark. no human power see i was confused i told you the state i was in when i came to aa and two and a half years down the road i'm living in a new home there are two new cars sitting in my garage there's money in my bank account i'm making money i'm married i even had a dog for god's sakes and i'm dying inside and i don't know why and i can't figure it out but my alcoholic ego it won't let me come into meetings and say what's going on what am i missing he told me exactly what i was missing so he and i began that journey he smashed your mother middle of the road stuff i love these sponsors that say call me every day he said to me i work i have two children i go to bed early do not ever call me past 10 o'clock at night i can't keep myself sober i canít keep you if in fact you think you're going to drink alcohol, hit your knees, pray, get in your car and go to the 24-hour club. He said my role here is to sit across from you and take you through this work. That man never gave me advice about anything. When I called him he did two things for me which is the only way I know how to work with people. The first is he asked me if I prayed. I learned to lie because if i didn't he'd hang the phone up the second is he would say get out your big book and you see the gift he gave me he made me understand something very quickly i was going to stay sober and live life based on a relationship with god and that if i was a real alcoholic maybe if i did these things these spiritual exercises we call steps that maybe i could develop that relationship because see i knew people had gone to a lot more meetings than me and drank alcohol. And I knew people who worked with a lot of people and drank alcoholic. And I know people who were of service and drank alchohol. He said, Mark, we just hope that in the midst of you doing all that somewhere in there you would develop a relationship with God. See, I see people worshiping in AA the fingers of AA. Meeting, meetings, home group, sponsor, the steps. This is all about a personal relationship with God. If you went to an international convention and went to a meeting of loners and you heard these men and women talk about AA, you know what you would hear? You know what AA is to them? It is a personal relationship with God. Sometimes I think meetings get in the way of my relationship with God. I don't know. But that's all I want to talk about on the title page. If y'all turn to the table of contents. Don asked me a question. By then i learned to be a little more honest with him he said where do you find the first step in the big book and i said i don't know now common sense should tell us something the big book the first time it tells you you're at a step it says being convinced we're at step three so obviously everything in the Big Book from the title page up to being convinced must be steps one and two but i didn't know where to find step one so he laid out this big book for me he said mark in the first step we're going to take the first step in two parts the first part is he said we're gonna look at the fact that you have a disease of the body and mind and the second part of that we're gunna look at unmanageability we're ganna look at the thing called the spirituality and he said everything in the big book from the doctor's opinion to page 23 we're gunna looking at mark when he takes a drink of alcohol what's wrong with mark physically and from page 23 to 43 we're guinna look it mark when he has no alcohol in him so there's no craving taking place we're going to look at the fact that mark has no mental defense against the first drink we call it the obsession of the mind and we're gonna use the big book and we are not gonna look for answers we are gonna take statements out of the bigbook and we will turn them into questions to find out in my gut and not in my head does my experience confirm I have a craving of the body and the obsession of the mind he said we're going to find the second half of the first step on pages 44 45 and one paragraph on page 52. there's one sentence on page 54 that says when the spiritual malady is overcome we straighten out mentally and physically what's really wrong with us steps four through nine is where the spiritual Humility is overcome. And so that tells me where I'm going to find the first step in the program, and I think that's real important if you're working with a new person. We're going to look at the second step in we agnostics right up through the ABCs. And then chapters 5, 6, and 7, we're going to look in steps 3 through 12. and then if you look in your table of contents chapters 8 9 10 11 is where we're going to be given instructions on practicing these principles in all of our affairs so now i know how the table of contents in the book is laid out now i don't need if i need to find out where i'm at with a step or i have some questions i know where i can find it and i'm going to give you the same exercise that he gave me which is to go through this big book and particularly the 164 pages and to take statements out of the book and turn them into questions and i will take some of those and i'll show you how to do that see he confused me because all my life when i went into a book i went in to a book to find answers he said no mark you can't do that he said we have to go into this book and we have to ask a whole bunch of questions and we have to answer those questions deep down within ourselves are you a real alcoholic because mark only you can diagnose yourself so that laid out the big book in terms of the table of contents if you turn over to the forward or to the preface and again we're going to use the the title page right up through the doctor's opinion primarily as a means of giving you some general information about the program of AA and a couple things he pointed out to me in the preface ones in the second paragraph was this book has become the basic textbook he said to me I know you've gone to college you've taken a lot of classes so he said a textbook mark he said is designed to transfer information this book is different in that it is designed to transmit a spiritual experience he said in meetings of aa we go in to read chapter five how it works all the time he said that's a great danger in that he said for you to read Chapter 5 is like someone who's never even had basic math and you tell him to go do calculus he said from the title page up through Chapter 5 we're going to learn basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, division. We're going to learn algebra, geometry, and when we get to chapter 5, now we can do the calculus. So we're going treat this book like it's a basic textbook, and we're going to start at the beginning, and we're gonna go through this process. Now if you'll turn over the forward to the first edition, several of the questions that we ask are going to get answered. This first paragraph has always been since the time i sat down with him extremely important and still is today it says we of alcoholics anonymous are more than 100 men and women who have recovered that's the second time to use that word from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body to show and the word show is important doesn't say to tell it says to show other alcoholics precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book he said to me what does the word precisely mean to you mark i said don i think that means exact he said we here in the fellowship all the time there's a lot of ways to work these steps don't we and i said yes he said what'd the book just tell you i said well the book you said they're going to show me precisely and he said yeah a little bit further on they're gonna show you specifically and a little bit further on they're going to say we're going to use clear-cut directions, and a little bit further on, they're gonna say be thorough. There is only one way to go through this process, Mark, if you're gonna follow the book. He introduced me the idea of squiggly lines. He said every word in here is important, but when you see a squiggly line, you treat it like it's a neon light. So in that sentence, we were told the book is gonna show other alcoholics precisely how we have recovered third time it tells me i will be recovered and that's the main purpose of this book it says for them we hope these pages will prove so convincing no further authentication will be necessary i sit meeting sometimes and i hear a person struggling with whether i'm an alcoholic or not and i hear elders say go out and do drinking the book doesn't suggest we do that till page 31 anyone who's struggling with the first step what i point out to him is this sentence i'm willing to go through the first 31 pages of this book with you and maybe in those 31 pages what you see will be so convincing no further authentication meaning drinking is necessary that's what it's asking me that's what the book's telling me mark are you willing to go through and take a look at yourself in the pages of this book maybe if you are and you're one of us and you tap into this solution maybe you never need to pick up a drink again goes on to say we think this account of our experiences will help everyone to better understand the alcoholic Many do not comprehend the alcoholic is a very sick person, and besides, we're sure our way of living has its advantages for all. So in the foreword to the first edition, look what I'm told. That I can recover from a hopeless state of mind and body. I'm getting introduced to what maybe is wrong with me. That this book will show me precisely how to recover, and that that's the main purpose. That maybe if I'm willing to go through here, these pages will be so convincing to me that i don't ever have to pick up a drink again that i'm a sick person and this book will show me a way of living now i've read this hundreds of times in those first two and a half years i've gone to big book studies page 18 is going to explain something to me basically what it's going to tell us and it's another paragraph of squiggly lines it's gonna tell me that little or nothing's gonna get accomplished in my recovery until I sit down with someone who's had this experience and they take me through this work. And that has been true for me and countless others I've sponsored. I want to comment on that, if I may. I've lost track, and it's not necessarily important, but here's what I wantto share with you all. I probably had an opportunity to do the work with well over 200 people, and in that process of those who have gone through and done this work, there have only been two who have relapsed only two and of all those numbers of people they've sponsored hundreds and hundreds and there's been virtually no relapse and those two who relapses one did not finish all the amends the other had finished all the amendments but stopped doing some things on a daily basis the point that i want to make is nowhere in this big book does it tell me that is necessary for me to relapse or to ever drink alcohol again if i'm willing to do what is in this book but i told you this before we reached the point in aa where we must decide if we're going to do this work for people that have been around alcoholics anonymous for a period of time and perhaps haven't done this work the question i ask them is and i and i give them an exercise i've sponsored people up to 28 years sober and the reason is because in meetings i would talk about having distance between me and a drink and dying of untreated alcoholism and that stuff on page 52 and they come up and say let me talk to you and i gave him a simple exercise those of you got distance between you and a dream if you're willing to get honest and look at some truth, take those eight areas on page 52, say a prayer, and really write down and see what you've done with the grace and power of love in God and what you're getting out of this program. Meaning, first question, how am I doing in personal relationships? Am I having trouble? And if you've got 10 people that you interact with some consistency, husband, wife, boyfriend, mother, father, employer, get really honest about how you're doing in those relationships. Get honest with where you're at with controlling your emotional nature. Are you afraid of misery and depression? Get honest with making a living. Get honest with full of fear. Are you unhappy? Can you seem to be a real help to other people? And if you've got distance between you and a drink, you're going to get an idea what you do with the power and grace of love with God. And if you're like me, you know what you're going to see? You're going to see what my alcoholic ego does after about six months of operating in 10 and 11. I mentioned to you, I'm going through this work for the 12th time. I do not do that because I am a healthy, well-adjusted individual. I do that because the first time I went through, I developed a relationship with my creator, and once you taste the honey, you cannot go back and i do that because i operate today in the world in 10 and 11 and i can't the way that i operate in 10-11 came to me in the truth i saw in steps one through nine i cannot conceive of operating today based on looking at 1-9 in 1993 this woman 37 years sober said something to me if 12 months from today you and i sit down and we talk and you have not undergone major changes you are headed for a drink of alcohol and you are missing out on what it's truly like to live in the presence of god that is why i continue to go back through the work i finished all my amends with the exception of two that i have to make at a grave site in Iowa, which I'll do in the first week in July last year. And when I'm done making amends, I operate in 10 and 11, and I use 10 to move out into the world and 11 for that relationship with God. What I get a chance to see is after about six months what my alcoholic ego does with that love and that grace. When I went back through the work this time, I had 57 resentments. now some of my friends say if I'd work a program that wouldn't happen that hasn't been my experience every time through the work I see truth at a deeper deeper level and I get a chance to see what my ego does those same three things I talked about separated from God separated from me and separated from you and I Get A Chance To See What My Ego Does with information and with knowledge. If you'll turn the page forward to the second edition, you're going to see some general information about the fellowship and how it grew. They're going also tell you again about recovered alcoholics. Bottom of page XVI, I want to mention something that's important. and there it's going to talk about when Bill and Dr. Bob hooked up I seem to only sponsor two kinds of people those that have black belts and relapse or those who are in Alcoholics Anonymous dying of the spiritual malady that have never found this solution and my experience with those people who have relapsed is they've never understood the first step they've heard the solution and there's some of you sitting in this room they've heared the solution but here's what you need to understand that's so critical bill wilson was told by dr silkworth who treated over 50,000 alcoholics at towns what was wrong with him bill was given the problem dr bob the book's going to tell us spent years using spiritual means to try and quit drinking and he couldn't bill went out for six months tried to beat up alcoholics with a solution god didn't do too well didn't get any of them sober that tells us went back to dr silkworth dr silkware says no bob or bill you need to talk to the alcoholic about the hopelessness of what's wrong with him so when he hooked up with dr bob He told Dr. Bob what was wrong with him, and then Dr. Bob told Bill what the solution was, and when now when I had both, my foundation, I got to know what's wrong with me, disease of body, mind, spirit, before I'll seek the solution. I've absolutely got to no both. Somehow prior to that point in time, just seeking God for the alcoholic didn't work, and or just knowing what was wrong didn't work we must know both and having worked with literally hundreds of people who relapsed not a single one not a simple one has ever understood the first step they were attempting to go through a set of spiritual exercises based on a lie let me explain when we get done looking at the first step and we use questions and you go within yourself to see this as you. And you find out that you have a disease of body, mind, spirit. Now I've laid my foundation and I know what's wrong with me and I'll go through these set of spiritual exercises and I will develop a relationship with God and I won't be able to do it. I will be given freedom and power in a sense of direction and happiness. If I think my problem is alcohol, disease of the body and mind and I go through the steps, I'm going through the steps based on a lie, and that will not last. I was two-and-a-half years sober not knowing what was wrong with me, thinking my problem was alcohol. Some of you in the room that I've done some work with, woman, ten years sober, didn't know it, drinks alcohol. woman, five years sober going to meetings had sponsors very active in AA had gone through the work based on a lie thinking their problem was alcohol I cannot build as Big Book says we're building a spiritual arch through which I walk a free man I cannot built that spiritual arch based on lie I must build it based on truth and we're gonna look at that in this first step in fact Mark do you have a disease of body, mind, spirit. Does your experience. When I talk about truth, understand this. I've done the work with a bunch of people that found out they weren't alcoholics. And those people have as much power and freedom finding out they weren'T alcoholics as I did when I found out I was. Wouldn't it be incredible if you truly went through this work and found out you weren'T an alcoholic? Wow. My good friend Joe H., The lady he's going to get married to, NAA, eight and a half years. Couldn't figure out why. She never felt connected, never sponsored anyone, never felt at peace. Went to his group, found a woman, went through the first 43 pages. She's not an alcoholic. She got as free finding out she wasn't as I got when I found out it was. Wouldn't that be incredible? We're going to find out in the doctor's opinion. When I talk about the truth, we ask the question, alcoholism and drug addiction. We're going to find out the truth. You're goingto need to know. Am I bold? Maybe not. I am an alcoholic who's powerless over drugs. And when we get to about page 23, I'm going to explain that, and I'm gongo give you a series of exercises to show you that alcoholismand drug addiction are not the same. Yeah, alcohol is a drug. True. A drug is a drug? True. Alcoholism and drug addiction are not the same. When I went through the work with my sponsor, who did heroin for eight years, he's not an addict. I went through the work him and found out that you give me a sufficient reason, I put down drugs. But you put drugs in my body and I break out in gravy. You give me sufficient reason and I can never lay down alcohol. So what I am is an alcoholic who's powerless over drugs. I went through the work those first two times with men thinking I'm an alcoholic and an addict, and I went to the truth based on a lie. Remember, I cannot do spiritual exercises based on lies. I need to do them based on truth. When we get to page 23, I'll give you a couple of real simple exercises. There's nothing complex about it. I think it is important that you find out your truth We do this in AA. We take addicts, and we tell them, well, if you're an addict, you're powerless over alcohol too, and they come to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, and they do not get well. They do not getting well. We will find some truth in here. And I talk about that because I see a lot of it. I have done work with addicts who found out they weren't addicts but they were drunks, And I've done work with drunks who found out they weren't drunks and found out they were an addict. So that's what we're going to look for as we go through there. All right. Something else I want to mention on page XX, it gives you some statistics about Alcoholics Anonymous, and they talk about of alcoholics who came to AA and really tried, 50% got sober at once and remained that way, 25% sobered up after some relapses. That's a 75% recovery rate. I shared that the message in the fellowship and the message in the book have gotten some far distance. I've heard various numbers, but I've heard as low as 20% of those who come to the fellowship now are coming here and staying sober. And my experience is it is because, again, the message in the fellowship is not the message in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Hopefully, and this is going to make some of you perhaps a little uncomfortable, this book and this weekend is going to smash a whole bunch of middle-of-the-road things like just don't drink and come to meetings, things like go to 90 meetings in 90 days, things like going to big book studies, Things like, you can't ever make all your amends. Things like make living amends Things like I'm others in the process of amends Things like take your time Things like use the Hazleton inventory form Or one of the 947 others that are out there We're going to go through the book and through a process Smash a lot of middle-of-the-road solution You see, middle-of-the-road solution may work for someone who's not a real alcoholic, but I've never seen it work for a real alcoholic. What is an absolute delight and pleasure to me is that I'm looking at a whole bunch of faces in here of people who were living in middle-to-the road and kept relapsing and some had sobriety for a period of time and they are now engrossed in this work and some have completed and they aren't free, they are recovered the problem has been removed it does not exist that reconfirms to me my responsibility to carry this message because their lives have changed dramatically i look at jason in the back and i see shirley and ed and david and i c jeff and i can go on and on naming some other names of you in here who've been around this fellowship got middle of the road drank alcohol in, out, in, and out. Dying of untreated alcoholism who have now done the work and have gotten free. Dan sitting in the back. J.D. at eight years. This thing works and it's all about a personal relationship with God. And it's from a message that's out of this big book. Let's turn to the doctor's opinion. And again, I'm going to encourage you to take statements out of the big book and we're going to turn them into questions and that's something I'm going to have you do on your own because time won't allow us to do that but I would like you to turn over to page XXIV and understand again in the doctor's opinion that you have a man who, I've been doing some research lately because I like history and Dr. Silkworth treated over 50,000 alcoholics so he certainly has some experience with working with the alcoholic, but where it says the physician at our request gave us this letter, he's been kind enough to enlarge upon his views, another statement which follows. It says in this statement, he confirms what we who suffered alcoholic torture must believe. So here's what I do. I take that statement and turn it into a question. Mark, have you suffered alcoholic nurture? Goes on to say the body of the alcoholic is quite as abnormal as his mind. Mark, do you think your body is as abnormal as your mind? It says it did not satisfy us to be told we couldn't control our drinking just because we were maladjusted to life, we were in full flight from reality, or outright mental defectives. I always liked that part. These things were true to some extent, in fact, to a considerable extent with some of us, but we're sure there are bodies we're sickened as well. Mark, did you ever feel like your body was sickened as well when it came to you and alcohol? In our belief, any picture of the alcoholic which leaves out this physical factor is incomplete. The doctor's theory that we have an allergy to alcohol interests me. As laymen, our opinion as to a soundness may of course mean little, but as an ex-problem drinker, we can say his explanation makes good sense. It explains many things for which we cannot otherwise account. Don had me do an exercise. He said, I want you to understand something in the doc's opinion. We're looking at one thing. You've got a bottle of booze sitting in front of you and you've taken a drink. The book spends very little time, but in the docs' opinions, that's what we're looking at. I've taken the drink. Alcohol is in my system. Don said, do you have a dramatic story which demonstrates that you took a drink, you intended to do one thing and something totally different happened? And I said, yeah, hundreds of them. He said, what's the most dramatic? I'll tell you the most traumatic. And it's important you need to sit and look at that. I'm living with a lady. She has two children, young baby. I're going up to get some milk. I stop at Bennigan's to have one drink. I wake up eight days later in Jackson Hole, Wyoming in a strange bed with a strange woman without the slightest idea how I got from Denver, Colorado to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And I had that happen to me hundreds of times. That just happened to be the most dramatic. So if you want to look at where you're at with this thing called craving, think of the times that your intent was to be here for Christmas, to be here, to being there. You took a drink and never made it. That shows me what happens to me and explains many things for which I could not otherwise account. See, because I don't know about the rest of you, but I had a lot of guilt and shame and remorse. A grandmother that I'm going back to Iowa to make an amend in her grave. I loved her dearly. She died. I'm in Alaska. I have three days to get down for the funeral. Six days later, I wake up in St. Louis, Missouri. That was not my intent when I got on the airplane with no alcohol in me because I loved her and my intent was to be there for my mother and the rest of the family and I never made it. And the reason I never made it is because I'm allergic to alcohol and you put alcohol in me and I'm going to follow that alcohol wherever it takes me. Now, for those of you who got distance between you and a drink, I'll give you an exercise. Because I haven't had alcohol in me in over 11 years. So a man gave me an exercise and here's what he did. In your meditation