The Rip-Roaring Case of Alcoholism – Step It up Big Book Workshop – Part 2 of 2 – Myers R.

Hi, y'all. How y'al doing? Hi, this is good. This is good everybody out there still smoking some of you guys are still kind of wandering in Thank you so much for your hospitality last night For the taping world. This has Myers Raymer a recovered alcoholic and I'm so delighted to to be here It's weird in doing these things over the years I'm amazed at how you would think that I would know my voice from Chris's voice But on CDs, they sound a lot alike. And I'm going, Chris, was that you or was that me? And so it's kind of weird. We look enough different that it's not a big deal. But man, that voice. We're going to talk a little bit about 2 and 3 and this idea of the way that we approach this stuff. I mean, we've already had so many great comments and so many of you guys are already on page doing the deal. Some of you are already and have been doing this for a long, long time. This is not new stuff. it's an interesting thing. The one common thread that runs through most everybody in the room that is doing things a little bit differently is that they take some heat. You'll take heat in your home group, you'll take hate in the groups where you travel and this kind of stuff. And we shouldn't be taking heat for doing what the book asks us to do. We talked a little about this last night, this idea that we could begin to very, very gently look at what our experience is, look at the text says and then try to see and determine where we're getting off into the weeds. And so it's because there's ideally what would happen is that our experience in how we teach and how we do this stuff ought to overlay what the big book says and we shouldn't have a whole bunch of conflicts. We shouldn'thave a bunch of crazy stuff. But it's an amazing thing. Let me ask you a question. How many of you guys have ever been in a situation where you were in an AA meeting and you introduced yourself as a real alcoholic and had some pushback? I mean, guys, let me just tell you something like that. I've seen some of the craziest crap like this. You say, oh, I'm Myers-Ramer and I'm a real alcoholic. And you'll see 20 people in the room roll their eyes and look at the ceiling like they don't... People don't recognize that it's big book. Bill Wilson was clear on this kind of stuff. The stuff that Chris was talking about this morning, I never get tired of hearing it because the reality is we don't all get here at the same deal. starting with the Hughes Act in 71 and we ended up with all of these people getting here and there were thousands and thousands and thousands of people that got here overnight and some of these guys were bona fide some of those guys were not bona fides but because we found ourselves in a place where we stopped qualifying people, we stopped trying to help people see where they really were in this deal. They just sat and sat and sat. Listen, I have no problem at all with the moderate drinker being in AA. I've got no problem at all with him being in there like that. I just don't know why he's got to be the loudest guy in the room. I don't Know why he come stay but shut up I just y'all get that right because it's the moderate drinker not the real alcoholic that'll defend to the point of fisticuffs his right to take people a year to get them through the work or his right to bring in all kinds of outside stuff like this to prop all this stuff up. And I just... The only requirement for membership is a desire to stay sober. If you want to be in our room, be in Our Room like this. But qualifying for membership in AA and qualifying to be an alcoholic are two distinctly different things. Distinctly different. And we've got to pay attention to this kind of stuff. Remember last night we were talking about this idea that line that I'll keep going back to it because it was so profound to me. This idea, We told him what we knew about alcoholism. And they would repeatedly do this stuff. And this is the stuff that I find fascinating, is that we end up with so many people that want to talk about... Guys, we have tens of thousands of people in our rooms every day that wantto talk about alcohol, but very, very few that wanto talk about alcoolism. And there are two distinctly different things. And so, I know some of you are going, I don't dig this. and I think you're, let's, there's a reason why we do this and kind of stick with me for just a second. Everything that I do, everything, every time that we do these workshop deals, one of the greatest pieces of experience that I ever had was that I began to recognize that anything worthwhile in AA, anything that would save the day in AA usually came through strong sponsorship. Now, I don't know, some of you guys already do this because I've seen this for years like this. If I say the word strong sponsorship, you automatically go to short-leashed controlling sponsorship. And that's not what I'm talking about at all. Let's be really clear about this stuff. Things that are goofy, things that happen, things that are strange, all of these things could be rectified if we would just simply lean into the idea that we could be a little more dogmatic about how we take guys through the work so that we could be a little more focused on what it is that we're doing. Because that was the whole thing. The first seven years that I was in AA, I ended up with a bunch of buddies, no real sponsor. I did have a guy that was my sponsor, but I picked him because he drove a fancy car and he wore a nice suit of clothes. That's why I picked Him. He didn't know anything about the big book. Nobody carried big books. We just talked about a bunch OF stuff. It didn't make Him a bad guy. It just made him an ineffective sponsor. And so my view of what this was, and so you can imagine, I mean, I felt like I'd been emotionally bitch-slapped when Clifford got a hold of me and started teaching me this stuff and I was just going like, wow, so hold on. And there was some pushback. I'm telling you guys, there was pieces of me that were going, whoa, whoa, Hoss, this is not a race. And I had memorized all of these little one-liners and aphorisms and stuff like this I drove my group nuts for a year. I mean, I just drove them crazy, the new group that I'd become a member of, because there was a piece of me born out of pure arrogance and maybe some fear that I just kept wanting to tell you what I knew. I just keep wanting to share because I was taught to share, you see? And so I want to get clear on that main thing right there. It's a point that I want make. we teach what we're taught. And so if you were taught to share, then that will be your mantra. That will be where your focus is. I'm just going to share on this kind of stuff. If you're retaught that perhaps what you share needs to be out of the text, see, what I'm blown away with is how many people that we have in our rooms that want to share but they want to show things that aren't in our text. They want to just share all these other things and I see the importance of it in certain respects but in the bigger picture I also see, because I've been doing it a little bit and looking back on it, I see the damage that it causes of just this nonstop love affair with the discussion meeting where we just share whatever we want to. Somebody brings a problem, throws it up on the table, everybody tries to clean up the mess, and then we go home. And at the end of the day, we talked about this stuff last night, at the End of the Day, sometimes the guy that suffers the most are the brand new men and brand new women sitting in the room trying to connect it all up like this. And we think because our conversation about our mother-in-laws or our grandkids or this kind of stuff, we think it's exciting and it was such an old... I love that meeting. But we don't stop and recognize sometimes that what we're doing is we're boring the crap out of the new guys in the room that could care less about our families, could care Less about our situational deal. They could care Les whether we could find a job or not. I'm not being mean, but that's the reality. They want to know, when I get up in the morning, can I not obsess about drinking and drugging? Can I get up and be okay in the morning? That's what they want to know. And that's fair. That's not wrong to do that. Guys, over the years, I'm blown away by how often... I had a kid that worked for me for years and years and year who was the best foreman. This is when I was in the bindery biz. And he was the most successful and the best shop foreman I'd ever had. He worked for my almost 20 years. Brutal alcoholic. Would come in, relapse. He was kind of a periodic and he would go back out and eventually got his third DWI. They sent him to the pen. He came back. When he got back, I hired him right off the bat like this, and he got plugged into a group. He had no car then, and so he was going to go to a meeting right down the road, and I was familiar with the group, and I knew that this could be problematic. But it was close to where he was like this. And so day by day, I would be asking him questions when he was at work. He'd be leaning on a cutter working, and I'd be sitting there going, so, Brino, tell me what you're doing around step work stuff. And he'd go, well, we're not doing any steps yet. And weeks withdraw into months and months withdraw into more months. And pretty soon I'm going, so, Brian, tell me where you are in the steps. Well, we're just, Brian's, I don't want to hear it. You're driving me crazy. What are you doing? Well, smoking and visiting and just, you know, I love this guy. And I said, I bet you do. I'll bet you due because he's not asking you to do anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, does he? Well, no. But he says we're going to get to it six months into the deal. I see the signs of restless, irritable, and discontent in my star employee. And I'm going, buddy, here's the deal that I'm making you. You will either begin working the steps today. It can be with that sponsor if you want to. But you will either start working the footsteps today or I'm gonna fire you. It's that simple. Okay? The next day I asked him what he did. He said, well, he said that probably by the end of the week we would start. And I said, you know, Brian, I said look, I've been thinking about this. Rather than fire you, I'm going to be your sponsor. I always said I wasn't going to do this, but in this situation, I'm gonna do this kind of stuff. And we started doing the work. And let me tell you something. Within a month, this guy was completely transformed, completely altered. And he's never had a drink since and he's about as bulletproof as you can get. But there seems to be this worldwide, this seemed to be this kind idea that we have all kinds of time and that we can do all kinds of – that there's no real urgency to this stuff. The stuff that Chris read, this stuff on page 24 is huge in the bigger picture. So everything I talk about in terms of how it revolves in the steps is seen through the eyes of what I think sponsorship should look like based on what's been handed to us through the archive guys and through personal conversations with old dudes that were there in the middle of this kind of stuff. It's like old school 101. It's just old school because I think it's better. I thought that they had a better beat on kind of what we were doing because nothing changed. Did alcoholism change in the last 70 years? Still the same stuff. They've invented a few more drugs, but in the bigger picture, this stuff is the same step we've been dealing with for years and years and years. It didn't change. Why is it that we think that we're so much more sophisticated now, we know so much better? I understand that, but it didn't chance the solution any. it didn't change that at all like that so I want to tell you a quick I got to get out of this stuff running down your back is not normal that feels much better listen I wantto tell you this quick story I was in I was in Kent, England this may be 8-9 years ago doing a men's retreat a workshop and we had like 70 or 80 men in this room and we were doing this little thing, and there were some things that were said on the break between some sessions that got to be problematic. I just kept hearing this, there was just some things That Were Said that didn't jive, and I kept thinking, well, there just seems to be so much confusion around what we're talking about. So I asked these guys at one of the sessions as it began like this, I said, guys, let me ask you a question. How many of you guys are clear in your head what you would do in sponsorship stuff? How many of you are clear what you would do in terms of just A, B, C, D? I mean, 1, 2, 3, 4. Are you clear in your head? And 70, 80 hands went up. Everybody in the room raised their hand and I went, interesting. So we did that session and then when I came back, I had collected up a bunch of index cards and those are the little stubby yellow pencils that you see like that. And so I just passed an index card and a stubby pencil out to every guy that was in theroom like this. And I said, okay, listen, before we get started, I want you guys to do me a big old favor like this. Based on what you said earlier, would you guys write down the first three things that you'd do around sponsorship? Just give me a... Do you want me to write an essay? Just a line item of what you would do with a brand new guy that just walked through the front door. And from my perspective here, looking out this way like this, two men picked up a pencil and started writing and then I looked around and nobody else has picked up the pencil. And I went, we're on to something. You see? I got a head that tells me, you know, I'm okay. I've got this thing worked out. But when it gets to be black and white, when you actually have to start writing it down like this, all of a sudden we had a room full of men who were wonderful but who were very, very, very ambivalent and confused about their responsibilities to the brand new guy. They just simply didn't know. And so that sort of changed gears. I just hit the brake and we backed up and then we just started heading out in a different direction and we started looking at these things from a different angle. I want to cover this real quick. I don't want to confuse anybody on it. I want you to know that I'm going to be talking about this book in just a minute. I want because I want to get into two and three. We're going to talk about this kind of stuff. Remember, this is not two and three as we work through the book because some of you guys are already book technicians. You already know and understand this kind of stuff. I'm looking at it again through the eyes of sponsorship of what this looks like in the bigger picture. If I'm sponsoring every one of you, this is what two and three looks like from my perspective working with you. And I think it'll give us a little bit different viewpoint on where we are on that deal. The very first thing that I think, on our metaphorical index card, I think that the very first thing that we ought to all address is the idea that when a brand new guy gets here, male or female, we owe them the responsibility of helping them see what their truth is. Here it comes the dreaded q word we qualify them again i'll say i said it last night i'll say it again i am unclear why that seems to raise all kinds of of goofiness around the word it's like oh you mean being exclusive or or i'm not uh-uh don't go there with me come on man because i just simply think that the idea of seeing uh of letting people sit and sit and sit Chris hit on it dead on on this kind of stuff like this if I let you sit in a meeting long enough under the guise of getting comfortable we just want to love them and let them sit here and they'll know when it's time to do the work guys I understand it intellectually where you're coming from I understand the thought process around that whole deal I just don't agree with it it does not line up with my experience let me tell you what my experience has been in being a student of watching brand new people come in if I let you sit in that room long enough, what you will do is you will slowly but surely build a case against us until the I ain't one of you outweighs everything else and pretty soon you just gently push off. It doesn't have to be demonstrative. You're not throwing anything down. I'm not coming back to this stinking place. It does not happen like that. You just go away. You justgo away because there is no real reason for you to be there. The motivation is not there. You see? This is problematic because my head keeps telling me over and over andover again that this thing about alcoholism is not such a big deal. Look at Bill's story and all the examples that we got. He tries self-knowledge, he tries self will, he tries fear, he tried all of these things and nothing connects it up. Y'all clear? The quicker that we can give you a rip-roaring case of alcoholism, remember Bill and Bob when they had their first meeting? Listen, I'm going to sit and chat with you for 15 minutes and then we're going to be done with this conversation. That's what he had allotted for the conversation. Six hours later, Bill and Bob are finally saying goodnight. Six hours late, what did Bill do with Dr. Bob? He gave him a rip-roaring case of alcoholism. And Bob realized what the deal was for the very first time in his existence. He began to understand and connect up this dot that perhaps I am sick, perhaps I have an illness that's going to take me out of the game if I don't get better. You're sick, not weak. It ought to be our mantra, guys, because I'm telling you, society still thinks you're weak. Your family still think you're week. And that's a problem. You're not weak. Hell, some of you guys have willpower that would crush normal men. I'm just telling you. I'm Just telling you some of your little dope things to know exactly what I'm talking about. You've been on a three day meth run or four day meth run like that. Come on. Tell me it doesn't take willpower to persevere through all of that. You bet it does. You're not weak with that. You're sick Yeah. Some of you are sicker than others, but we get that. We'll understand that. And so this idea that we're just going to sit and visit with you a couple of minutes and help you understand. Let me paint you a mental picture of this kind of stuff like that. We don't even have to wait. I'll lose some of you right here because you don't believe this. We don'T even have TO wait till it comes up as a topic in a meeting to talk about first step stuff, to talk abOut this kind oF stuff. I know that, but if we were talking about what we should be talking about, it would rotate through on a regular enough basis that it wouldn't be a concern. But if you sobered up like where I sobered Up, where we're never talking about it like that, the chances are you'll be dead before we ever get to the topic like that. So it could be, just stick with me, it could mean that the very best place to approach this subject would be sitting on the tailgate of my big old gas guzzling truck sitting in the parking lot before the guy ever even walked into meeting. Hey, boss, how are you doing? My name is Myers Raymer. What's cooking? How come you're here? Just visiting. Yeah, I know. It's a badass truck. I like it. But it sure eats some gas. And we talk about some crazy stuff for a minute like this. And then we sit on the tailgate and we're just kind of talking. This guy's starting to relax a little bit and feel comfortable. And we're talking about it. How about them Rangers? How about how about them pathetic cowboys? How about why can't we? I did that just I did that just for my buddy Amanda. Hey, listen. She doesn't have to live in the town with the losers. I do. It's embarrassing. I just like... We're just visiting with this guy and just talking like this. And in the course of the conversation, the talk will go to alcoholism and we'll talk. And I'll say, hey, bud, what makes you think that you're an alcoholic? Well, you know, and they'll do just what he's been taught to do. Well, I got this DWI. And I said, okay. I said anything else? Well, no, I just got this DWI and I just, huh, interesting. And so I'm going to take him to page 44 and we're going to have this little conversation. If you've got a book real quick, this is one of those things that you got to have marked. I will never, ever, ever tell you to mark something in a big book, but I'll tell you this one, okay? This little first paragraph on we agnostics, I want to read this real quick. We're going talk about it and I promise you we're getting ready to get into two and three, But I've got to set the stage for this first, okay? In the preceding chapters, that's the first 51 pages, we've learned something about alcoholism. We hope we've made clear the distinction between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic. Interesting. Why would that be important? Bill and those guys knew it would be important. The non-alkoholic is going to look at recovery completely different. Fellowship is enough for the non‑alcoholics. Good times, sober bowling, whatever. All of this stuff is enough voor the non­alcoholik. But they want to find out, well, what about the real alcoholic? And then he's going to ask you two distinct questions. If when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or when drinking you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably alcoholic, hold your finger right there on that piece like that. We're talking about choice and control, the stuff that Chris was talking about. If you say you're never going to do it again and then you find yourself starting again and starting again, then you've lost the power of choice. If you drink one, I'm just going to have one beer when I finish mowing the lawn and you find yourself having three beers or six beers or ten beers or whatever the deal is, then you're going to lose and you've loss the power of control. Choice and control. That's what it all comes down to. The drama, guys, never figured into the picture. Ever! We've got to stop letting our drama define us as drunks and addicts. We've Got to stop doing that. It has nothing to do with it. Zero. It was those two distinct questions like that. Chris hit that stuff on the head, and one of my very favorite lines in the whole big book is the stuff that comes next on the next little part of the thing. Look at what it says. If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only 90 meetings and 90 days will conquer. Whoa! I'm sorry, that's where I change my book. What did it say? If that being the case you may suffer from an illnes which only a spiritual experience will conquer. Bill continually used words like that in the big book in these declarative statements that he made. He was always using these kind of things. And guess what? I'm going to let you in on a little secret like this. I know it's going to be a shock to some of us. It was certainly to me like that. There are some musts in the Big Book too. Any of you guys ever go through the book and circle or underline all the words musts? if I hear one more old dude sitting in a meeting going, there are no musts in this big book, I promise you, I don't want to kill them. I just want to hurt them. Just a taser across the table like this and he falls down and pisses himself and then I would be okay. I would, I would do that. I would feel okay. I know it'll be on my next inventory, but it drives me crazy. But that's the stuff I'm talking about. That's the old ideas that we bring into this thing that's based on something that somebody said that thou becomes doctrine. And this is the stuff that we need to investigate. And as you get to 20 or 21 times, and there's 30 some odd of them when they talk about this, or maybe it's... I don't remember. But there's a whole bunch of them. But by the time you get to like 20 places where it says you must do this, you must or it kills us, you must, or when you start reading that you'll stop that idea that this big book is subjective. Guys, I'm telling you, wherever there's a group of men and women together regardless of what piece of literature it is, we remember, we did this exact same thing to the big, big book. The other big book, like exactly the same thing. We gathered it up and we made it subjective. And what we managed to do is we took the teeth out of the whole thing and made it some wussified, limp-wristed powerless program and we did the same thing with the big book. We took everything out of it that had any teeth to it like this and we got some little toothless, clawless creature crawling around on the deal, a weak, weak facsimile of what AA used to be. A little hard? Maybe so. Maybe so, but I've got to tell you guys, I've sat in a lot of those meetings and some of you still do that. Some of you are still there and it's painful to watch. That's the reason why we have so many people that have some crazy-ass ideas about what recovery looks like. Y'all dig? I'll be nice, I promise. This is the best. So let's ask a couple of questions. So the very next thing that I would do, once we've got this guy qualified and I have a sense that he knows why he's here and he's saying uh-huh or uh-uh, this is again not subjective. These are black and white, yes or no kind of questions like that. Then I'm going to ask this guy the second thing that you're going to do that I think is important. You can add to the list. This isn't doctrine. This is just my own ideas about this stuff. You can Add to the List. The second thing I think is important is I want to find out what he thinks about God. Where's your head around the idea of God? Listen, I'm not trying to sell you one idea or the other. I just simply want to know and understand. Am I dealing with somebody who's had God shoved up his cross sideways and he's all goofy and push-offy about the whole idea of a spiritual path? Am I doing that? Am I going to be dealing with a Satanist? Am I deal with somebody that's completely ignorant of spiritual deals like that? We would approach it a little different, wouldn't we? in this kind of thing. But it would be nice to know ahead of time just in conversation. This is not a long, drawn-out deal. This is a two-minute conversation. Are you cool with the idea of God or are you like some of us that got here when God is just simply something I cannot deal with? I need to know that. So let me ask you, why would it make any difference? If I've got somebody that's okay with the concept of a spiritual solution like this, there's not a lot of reason to spend a lot more time in that area. You understand? Because I'm not in a situation where I'm trying to get this guy loaded up with a bunch of doctrine. I'm just trying to find out, is he open to the idea spiritually or not? Now, guys, stick with me. So what happens if he says, I'm, I don't know, I'm I'm that big and got it all, which happens lots of times. You know, it's like we're going to hit the breaker and just slow down. We stop right there. And this is a guy that I'm going to spend a little time. we're going to go back through and we're gonna read We Agnostics. We're gonna actually read it. We're going actually look at some of the ideas on this kind of stuff and see if we can break down some of intellectual arrogance around a lot of this stuff. Or sometimes it's just ignorance of really what's going on. Sometimes it's fear that we're dealing with. Garden variety, I'm just too afraid to look at it kind of thing. It's cool. You can deal with it all, but it's helpful if you kind of know what's happening. And so then we would see. For the example like that, Let's just for a second assume that he said, I'm okay. I'm pretty distant from God right now, but I'm Okay with the idea of a spiritual solution to a problem like that. And we're just dealing with it like this. Remember now, we haven't even gone inside yet. The meeting hasn't even started. We're just sitting on the tailgate of my truck talking some stuff, okay? And the next thing that I was going to ask this guy is, I said, listen, in the event that you decide that you want to do what we do, in the event that you want to recover, are you willing to go to any length? Now stick with me guys because some of you... I don't think it's fair to ask that question without telling people what that means. I don'T think it'S fair to say that are you willIng to go to any link? Well, remember willingness and honesty are key in this deal. At that moment he may be willing but he's going to be willing in two weeks. I don' t know. I don''t know. And so I need to show him what that stuff looks like and ask. Somebody asked me one time, I just think that he'll be able to tell us when he's ready to do the steps. And I'm thinking, I mean, I just feel like I just don't think that it doesn't line up. It's like finding out that you have cancer and then just saying, okay, well why don't you just kind of write out your own protocol of how we're going to treat your cancer? He's completely ignorant to what was going on until moments ago he didn't even understand the disease concept of what it is that's kicking his rear and now we're going to let him run roughshod through a program and pick and choose what it is that he wants, what it isthat he doesn't want. We already know what he's going to pick that he doesn' t want. Anything that makes him feel uncomfortable, he's gong to throw out the door like that. And so why don't we... Let me ask you a question. Any of you guys ever sit in a meeting and read how it works before the meeting? Everybody. There's nobody that hasn't sat in at least 10,000 meetings. Most groups read it at the beginning of the meeting, the first part of how it works before you get to the steps. Rarely have we seen a person fail that part. Look at halfway down that page if you've got the page up, page 58. If you've Got That Up, look at what it says. Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like and what happened and what we are like now. And here it is. I think it's fascinating that we read it over and over and again so many times that we don't hear it. We just simply skip it like that. Look at what he says. If you decided that you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, then you're ready to take certain steps. You see what I'm saying? If you've decided that you want what we have and you may not know right off the bat, but at some point in time you're going to sit in a room full of people seeing them laugh and you're gonna go, I think I want what those people have. You're gonna want that. That's a requirement that you have to want what it is that we have. And then second time, if you're willing to do that, if you want to go any length to get anything and I'm getting ready to tell you what any link looks like, then you're ready to take certain steps. This was the key piece of this document that helped us understand when it was time to start working with somebody through the steps. You see? Because within our fellowship, there seems to be a great deal of ambivalence about that. Do we start in their first week? Do we wait until they're there for six months? Do we Wait a year? Do we? Wait what? What? And this is based on how you answer the questions. This would determine when we began to start the work. So, let me get to a place. I've got one more piece to say about this. And this is where some of you guys' hair will go and catch on fire and you'll run out of the room like that. Just chill, okay? Serious. Let me just ask you the hypothetical question. Is it possible, based on what we've been talking about, is it possible to have somebody say this first step, second step, and third step, is it possible that they could be ready to do their third step before they ever even went to an AA meeting? Yep. And for those of you that think that that's impossible, we probably need to chat in private and I'll try to explain to you as dogmatically as I can how many hundreds and hundreds and thousands and hundreds of men I have worked through the steps doing it just like that. Listen, I've seen it from both sides. I've said let's do a step a month for a year and you'll be done at the end of the year. I've done that for a long time. I've paid attention to the deal. And I can tell you without any shadow of a doubt, if your work is solid in the beginning of this thing and you're not trying to rush somebody, we're not try to jam the steps down somebody's throat. I'm just mindful of the stuff that Chris was reading on page 24. I'm mindful of that thing that's in italics there that says that we won't remember the pain and suffering of even a week or a month ago. You understand? This is real stuff. I can't determine. I don't know when restless, irritable, and discontent is going to come back and kick you in the rear end. I don' t know when that's going to be. But I think that the area that we make the biggest mistake is assuming that the meeting will treat restless, irritable and discondent and we just let them come and sit and come and sin. Well, if that works, how many of us have seen people sitting in the room that we already love dearly that began to get sick sitting right in front of us, right there across the table and they're getting sick day by day by day. We watch them just slowly unravel. They just get wrapped around the axle until pretty soon they either explode or they don't come back or they start making some bizarre decisions. You see? In this situation, guys, this is where as a fellowship we need to shoulder some of the responsibility because the question that needs to be asked were we trying to love this guy into sobriety at the exclusion of some action with the steps? Which I think is important to understand. I think it's important to see this stuff. So if I hadn't pissed all of you off, let me throw one more little bomb in the middle of your laps, okay? I think that probably one of the things that during the darkest part of the night looking at the ceiling when you're just simply reflecting it's you and God and yourself just reflecting on some things. The idea that love is enough to get somebody sober. Guys, listen, I've been covered up over the years by people who take offense to anything that looks like action, but they love the idea of loving each other into sobriety. A lot of women really feel this way. A lot OF Al-Anons swear by this that we can just simply love you enough to bring about recovery. And I just want to throw out one little fly in the ointment. Just one little teeny one, okay? I think if we look at our personal experience that if love had been enough, your mom and daddy would have got you sober. Seriously. that your husband or wife would have got you sober. The people that loved you to death would have gotten you sober The problem is is that love is a great thing. I'm never ever discounting the power of love in our rooms. I'm Never ever doing that. To this day I get emotional just talking about how cool it is that I can be in a room full of strangers and feel love that's so profound that it affects me on all levels. I get that. But I've also seen hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that we thought our love was enough and we should have known better. We should have know that unless they take some action, then there's going to be a problem. That this thing could blow up in their face and they could be as baffled as we seem to be. Why didn't they make it? We were so loving him every day in the meeting. It's going take more. It's gonna take more Y'all get that. Let me just ask a quick question. Does the idea of trying to help somebody see their truth... Twelve hours ago, it may have seemed goofy. Are any of you a little more relaxed around the idea of spending a little time around somebody helping them see what their truth is on this deal? There seems to be a lot of pushback sometimes around this. But I've got to ask you, if there's pushback, what I want you to be able to tell me is why there's pushback. Is there a bona fide reason why helping somebody see their truth... And again, half of you already have this in your head like that. You're going to stand there and point a finger in their face and say, you don't belong here. I didn't say that. I didn' t even intimate that. But this idea of letting people sit and sit and sit must be looked at at least investigated sometime and see where we are. Because there were a lot of us that struggled mightily because of just that thing. The fact that I was seven years in the program before I knew what the face of alcoholism looked like, before I could begin to describe it to somebody else. Listen, if I'm going to describe based on what they say, we told them what we knew about alcoholism, if I're going to fit myself to that ideal theoretically, then what I need to be able to do, guys, is to be abe to explain what alcoholism looks like. The stuff that Chris was talking about this morning and step one type stuff, I need tp be able tp explain that to new people, guys. If you don't understand it yourself, how do you ever expect to teach it? And if you don't expect to teach it, how do you expect to stay in the room happy? I know that's a stretch for some of us like this. I'm not judging any of you because I was a bona fide card-carrying, flag-waving, I don't want to do any of that shit. That's me. That's my job. That's mine. So there's not a judgmental bone in my body if you're battling with this whole idea. I will never, ever judge you for that kind of thing. I get a little passionate about it and I get kind of over the top sometimes because I want you to understand that some of the grooviest stuff of your entire existence lies simply barely outside your reach and the only reason you haven't got there is because you haven' t reached. Because you haven''t simply remained willing to learn something different and approach something different and some of this has to do with just how we're taught. Well, my sponsor said... Okay. But guys, let me tell you something. What I finally had to do was simply get to a place God bless you I had to get to where a place where I would just simply be willing to go. Are the things that were taught me in AA, or is it based on text, on big book, or is it based upon opinions and ideas? I didn't say it was bad stuff. I just said I've got to ask the question, and then go on. And what I found out was, guys, is that I had a head immensely full of chicken shit one-liners, pithy aphorisms, and all kinds of... But very little of it. was doctrine. Very little of it was big book. And so in the end, I ended up having to unlearn a whole bunch of stuff and then gather up another pile of stuff and go ahead and do that. This step two stuff that we were talking about from a sponsorship standpoint like this, I need everybody to understand from the taping record, I want to make sure that everybody is clear and understanding. I'm a flag-waving Christian. I love Jesus, okay? I'm totally digging it. However, it's not my job with a brand new guy That's bleeding out of every hole he's got It's not My job to impose a doctrine on him I don't know his past I don' t know his history Maybe he was completely demoralized Listen, I've got to be clear on this I think it's important to talk about it like that I had a really, really, messed up experience In vacation Bible school when I was 12 years old and it tainted everything about how I looked at all religion for years and years and so I'm the guy that wants to sit on a bar stool at 2 o'clock in the morning and go, you are an idiot because you believe that stuff I'mthe guy that just simply wants to argue to the mat that there is no God. Imagine my surprise later on when I would begin to be pursued by that same God and I would wake into this idea that all of a sudden, wow, there's a whole lot of cool stuff out there And there was a burning, this yearning inside me that said, go deeper. Go look. There's more. There's More. There's MORE. And I did. And there it is. It sort of unfolded like this. Had I died of alcoholism, is it possible to get too sick that you can't seek anything? Absolutely. You see it all the time. You've got to be alive first. And so my job these days is to keep you alive and then God does whatever God does. I mean, it's not my job to dictate all this kind of stuff. Y'all understand where I'm coming from on the deal? Some of y'all aren't digging any of this stuff. Y'ALL SHUT OFF RIGHT AT THAT CHRISTIAN. I HATE CHRISTIANS. QUIT. Just, on a piece of inventory, Myers is M-Y-E-R-S. It goes in the first column. And then we can work across and we can get past this stuff, guys. Let God do the lifting that He was intended to do. You weren't intended to lift some of the burdens that we want to carry. That's the reason why so many of us get crushed by this stuff。 We weren't intended to carry all these burdens like that. So brand new guys coming in, I just want to find out what the deal is like this. How I would approach a guy who's had some schooling in spiritual matters and how I approach a guide that's a Satanist may be two distinctly different things. You see what I'm saying? I'm going to kind of look at this thing a little bit different. And so I sponsor a guy right now whose idea of God is Thor. No, God's plural. And I said, excuse me? He said, yeah, God. and I said, what do you mean? He said, well, Thor is one of them. I went, interesting. Next, we're going to get on paths. God's going to deal with this guy and it's an interesting thing to see. When I met him six months ago, he had no concept and no idea and he couldn't stay sober 24 hours. And today, he's sober, kicking butt, taking names. And I think that what will happen with most of us is, I think if we look at our experiences, what will happen is that as you get into this thing, you will sense there's more. Any of you guys ever do that? You're okay, I could have a stick man for a guy and that's okay in the beginning. I was talking to my little buddy last night at dinner and you start out one place but where you start off may not be if you're a year into the deal and that stick man is still sufficient I'm just going, I don't know let's maybe, and I'm going to throw some stuff in there to kind of mix the pot up a little bit like this but I think what's going to happen is is that for most of us like this, the deeper we go, the deeper We want to go. And pretty soon, and I'm going to say this and it's just an opinion, it's an opinion based on some observations, is that most of Us we find will seem to come around full circle like this and most of US seem to end up back in the religion of our youth and it is kind of crazy. I hate that stuff. And where did I end up? Crazy stuff. But I see this all the time like that. But you can see. But Bill is clear about it. He spends all this time. Why do you think Bill Wilson spent so much time in We Gnostics, chapter 4? Because he realized that it was going to be a stumbling block for so many of us because we had so many weird ideas. You talk about an area where old ideas will kill you. You got to. I don't know if there's any way that they could have made the idea of approaching this simpler than that. Y'all cool? And so listen, if a guy says he's ready to start and he's willing to look at the idea that there's something out there bigger than him, whose hand is going to stay on the tiller? Yours or somebody else's? Something else is, we're ready to move on. I mean, people for months sitting in meetings, oh, I'm working on my second step. I'm work on my third step. I'm looking on my first step. I'm look... Rock on. But let me just say this and we'll move on from a sponsorship standpoint. It drives me crazy that you have to have a full formed idea of a theology before you're willing to turn your will and your life over to the care of that. And I'm telling you right now, guys, most of the time, at least from my experience, that does not happen. It does not happen that way. It's not a full-form doctrine that we're turning our will and lives to. It's the idea that something out there is bigger than me. Does that take courage? Yes! Yes. Sometimes the very best thing that you can do is say, listen, Hoss, quit trying to intellectually connect all this stuff up. Can you just simply look back, look around the room and see how many people are here laughing their asses off, having a good time and comfortable in their own skin. How many people can you see that? Well, everybody in the room just about. Exactly. What do you think did this? Did these guys just read a bunch of self-help books and get better? No. These people were transformed because of a belief system that they were willing to at least begin on a path that they Were at least willing to get on. And then there it was. You're all clear with that, right? Okay. I will say this. I have known in my experiences men and women who were categorically opposed to the idea of God. They didn't want to do anything like this. And my experience was if they would go ahead and work the work, that experience would happen in spite of themselves. And some of you guys have had those same experiences like that. If you've ever worked with a real militant atheist, it's a fascinating thing to watch as they go through the work to see what begins to happen and they're just simply transformed. And it's some of the funnest stuff that I've ever done in my whole life to watch these guys start. Can we talk about spiritual stuff tonight, Myers? Wow. Yeah, we can. We certainly can. Turn to page 60. I'm going to ask the question because I think it's always... Once we get past the ABCs and they ask us these questions on this kind of stuff And it says down at the bottom, being convinced we were at step three, which is that we've decided to turn our will and life over to the care of God as we understood Him. However simple that happens to be, it's not a big old, big old deal at that stage of the game. And then they start talking about this thing. Listen, I'm going to read just one little piece of this and we're going to talk. The first requirement is that he be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success. Guys, so stick with me. Am I the only one in the room that thought that Bill Wilson was nuts for putting this stuff in here? I mean, we spent 50 some odd pages talking about what it is to be an alcoholic. What alcoholism looks like. It's booze, booze. There it is. And then all of a sudden, it's like he taps the brake and we stop talking about it completely. There's no mention of our addiction in this thing. They introduce this idea from complete left field we get sort of bitch slapped with this idea. Bam! That perhaps you are selfish and self-centered. No, I'm not. No way. And then he spends three pages kind of dismantling and unpacking the idea that perhaps you are. In the same way that he did the same thing with God in spiritual matters and we agnostics, he's doing exactly the same things here to help you see what your deal is. So let me make sure, I want to make sure we're real clear. Is anybody in here still falter under the delusion or illusion that the booze was the cause of all your nightmares? We talked a little bit about this last night. But it was such a big ticket item with me. I was 100% convinced that underneath this patina of drunkenness and addiction was this super special man that my wife was just lucky to have. I mean, it was her lucky day. And then imagine to my chagrin when I sober up and that I find out that I am a card-carrying, complete fruitcake on many levels. Character defects that are pouring out of me and my wife is dismayed. How many times do we see these guys where we get guys that recover and then years later their families have had enough of them and they say, oh, you've got to go. I can't stand it. I can'T stand it anymore because we're not addressing the bigger ticket items and this kind of stuff like that. over here in a minute is going to say selfishness, self-centeredness, that we think is the root of our troubles. Guys, I just remember the first time I read it and I had not ever read it before. I was seven years into the deal. I'm sitting with Cliff Bishop and I'm reading through this thing and he reads this thing and I said, uh-uh. Clifford, I don't believe that. Canadian whiskey and methamphetamines, that is the roof of my problems. That is. And once I get that clear, I'm going to be okay. Guess what? I just, that we think is the root of our troubles. And then they go through this whole deal like that. So our troubles are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves and the alcoholic is a stream example of self-will in our own right, though he usually doesn't think so. Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. There's one of those musts. You might as well go ahead and start marking them now, okay, because you're going to end up doing it later anyway. And then we must or it kills us. That's another one. And who makes it possible? God. It didn't have anything to do with how many books I had on my iPad, on my Kindle app. It didn' t have anything with any of this kind of stuff. God makes that possible. This idea, and it's clear in perfect Bill Wilson black-and-white declarative statement on that deal. Above everything, alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. And so what we've got to do is we've got to get you into a place where you see how selfish you are. And that's what we're going to talk about right after lunch. We're goingto talk specifically about that idea. So let's put this into perspective real quick here. Because this idea of selfishness and self-centeredness, I think that today I see the wisdom of where they put it. I understand. Because it looked like it had just gotten stuck in the middle of the book for some weird reason. It was like Bill and them had the manuscript, and then all of a sudden somebody in the back of the room goes, hey, Bill, what's this? And Bill goes, oh, crap, shit, stick it right there. And he just stuck it in the middle of it because it didn't seem to make any sense because we changed gears so fast and went out. We were zigging, and all of a sudden he zagged, and we just went, what, what? Where did this come from? I thought I had this perfect. I thought i had this worked out. I'm going to be a perfect man as soon as I can put together some sobriety. And Bill's going, au contraire, you're going to find out that for some of us, this is where we begin to see things at their clearest. And then you begin to say how often we covered up the character defects with the booze and the crazy stuff and the behavior and stuff. And there it was. Some of you guys are perfect. I'm just telling you, I met some of you already and I would already move you over to the perfect column. You are. And you may not have had to see any of this truth, but there were some of us that were knuckle-dragging idiots and we needed to see this stuff. Let me tell you where you'll see it the quickest and the easiest. Let's look at it in relationships. So for every woman that's in here that's ever had a relationship with a man, I want to ask you this question. Could you not, in your experience, see the man of your dreams, or maybe it was just some guy you went out on one date, but could you see a guy in the same evening be a prince and a total jerk in the same night. Depending on how the evening is going. If I think I'm going to get lucky, I'm gonna stay nice all night long. If I see you heading for the exits, I'm gunna be demonstrative. I'm guanna be whatever it takes. I'm ganna be either more witty or I'm goanna be more demonstrative or I'm going to be just whatever in order to get what I want. I want what I Want, and when I want it is the battle cry of every drunken dope bean I've ever known in my whole life like that. And this is important to see. But this is the reason why Bill put this here. This is the region why he got it set up like this. We're getting ready to slide into this inventory right after lunchtime, and the problem is if you don't see the selfishness and self-centeredness, if you're not at least introduced to the idea of the selfishess and stuff like that, that you will just skim right over it like this because there's still this idea. There was a sister in here last night that gave me something about egoism and I was going to read it this morning and I left it on my nightstand last night when I was cleaning out my big book and it was perfect. And the idea here, if I can recognize the ugliness of it and there'll be some definite pushback, Some of you will just simply not want to look at the fact that you're selfish and stuff. But once you get on the other side, there it is right there. Thank you like that. Egotism is the anesthetic that deafens the pain of stupidity. And I love that. Thank you. I absolutely love that like that because it's true. My ego always wants me in a place where I'm right and you can be wrong all you want to but I'm always going to be right and I'm going to defend it. Some of us will defend it to the death, this idea that I'm right. And so this idea that we're going to kind of kick this door open and begin to look at the fact that maybe... So let me ask you the question. Again, I'm not trying to be provocative but I want to see where you stand on this deal. How many of you sobered up and then realized in the middle of your sobriety, in the midst of your in the center of some time there with no booze or anything in you like that, did you realize that what's looking back at you in the mirror is a third grader. You see? So let me ask you, how many of you guys have ever gotten mad? This is primarily directed at guys because we seem to be bad times ten and women may be the same way. How many ofyou have ever reacted to something that happened so amazingly, just horribly, jumping up and down, throwing things, acting like a moron like this, And then a couple of seconds later went, God, where did that come from? And your loved ones are going like this. Your loved ones Are going like, oh, my, my. How does a 60-year-old man act like a third grader? Go ahead and prop up a persona that's not you, and it's real easy. It's sickeningly easy to do that kind of stuff. And so this is the stuff, as we get into this, this is what we want to talk about so that it's part of understanding what it is that's going on. This idea of self that's gonna be entered. So look at the very bottom of page 62. Let's read this for just a second. This is the how and why of it. First of all, we had to quit playing God. It didn't work. Next, we decided that hereafter in this drama of life, God was going to be our director. He is the principal. We are His agents. He is The Father. We are his children. Now, most good ideas are simple. And this concept was the keystone to the new and triumphant arch through which we passed to freedom. It's not complicated. It doesn't take months of thinking about this kind of stuff. It's real simple. There's a tiller behind you that controls where you go and what you do. Is your hand on that tiller or is God's hand on it? Is God's hands on that teller? It's that simple. Unfortunately, unfortunately, I don't know about you, but I tend to do this. God, I am delighted that in the arena of addiction your hand is on that tiller. And then I knock his hand off and then I turn around and I go but in these other areas of my life relationships, work, school, church all of these other areas, my hand on the tiller is satisfactory, thank you. I know you're a busy man thank you for dealing with the addiction part like this but I'm going to go ahead and control the rest of this kind of stuff. But you can't do that like that. It's like it all... I don't remember who it was, Bob D or... I can't remember whoever it was that said it one time. This stuff is like peeing on one side of a glass of drink of something you're going to drink. It's just like peing on one slide and thinking that you're going to be able to keep it separate. It's not like that at all. It's it's like, it's just you can sometimes I wish I hadn't said things and there it is like that, but it is a visual I didn't even really want to go to. And what bothers me more is watching you try to pee in a glass. I just like, I can't get the image out of my head now. But it's the way that we behave. It's theway that we operate on this stuff that begins to get us into some trouble on this deal. You can't, so look at this thing. They're going to give us these hugely profound ideas in the beginning of this thing If we performed his work well, established on such a footing we became less and less interested in ourself. Check. Our little plans and designs. More and more, we became interested in seeing what we could contribute to life. Guys, that's a novel idea for me. Totally and completely novel. Because I'm a card-carrying, bona fide taker. I just want my piece of this life. I just wanna grab my part of this deal. This idea that I actually have an obligation to give back, to put back into the stream of life, was completely noveled. Some of you guys were raised better than me. But I'm telling you, that was so ingrained in me that I had to really, really, really pay attention to what was going on as we felt new power flow in, as we enjoyed peace of mind. Guys, let me tell you, how many of you guys can remember times in recovery where you would simply be obsessed with the voices in your head? Just the chaos. You can't go to sleep. You can'T function because of the chaos in your head of you trying to see what's yours and sort life out and run like this. This idea that I can be peacefully in my own head. Guys, I'm telling you, To be able to sit still and be okay. You remember as you began to practice this idea of meditation where you could just simply be okay in your own skin? This is huge, huge stuff. Guys, I'm delighted that you're not addicted. I'm glad that you no longer fight that battle like this. But more importantly, I'M DELIGHTED THAT YOU COULD BE AT PEACE. That you could be okay In Your Own Skin. That we discovered we could face life successfully. Wow. This idea, we were reborn. Let me ask you, is there any of us in here, is there a single individual in this room that was never in a situation where you just simply went, I wish I could be reborn. I wish if I could just get... God, I just need one do-over. Just one. I just want to be different. You see? And here it gives us like this. One more little quick thing and then we'll slow this thing down. In the center of that prayer, was I the only one that thought that the prayer was a little weird? Because I did. For a long time, I would look at this prayer and they would say it's how important it was and then I would look at this thing and what I noticed in the center of this thing or in the prayer, there's no mention of booze. But in the centre of this line is this line that always fascinates me. Relieve me of the bondage of self. Come on guys, I keep waiting for the call from GSO. Myers, we think you ought to rewrite that prayer because you're such a spiffy guy. Why don't you just rewrite it? And I would have. I would Have written it. Relieve Me of the Bondage of Good Canadian Whiskey and Methamphetamines. that's how I would have written it and yet Bill knew that my real problem guys when you get up in the morning and you're sitting on the edge of your bed and you take a deep breath and you look out like this it is not booze and stuff like that that's waiting for you it's not within two steps how many of you guys have taken two steps away from the bed heading for the bathroom and already your head is spinning around a selfish thought this is going to happen today this is what I got to do today this is how I need to progress this is why I need today to make me happy This is how I need to present myself in order to make sure that everybody else thinks I'm happy. And we just go through the deal like that. How many of you would get in the bathroom and you're just standing there like this and all of a sudden, your head's kind of stewing on something and your head attaches to something that's kindof goofy and you go, uh-oh. And then by the time you go and you sit there eating some Cheerios and you are grinding your teeth and you already like this, you get through traffic and you get irritated and you walk into your office place and you say, come on. Hoss, say something. It's like, you see what I'm saying? But what drives that? Let's be clear. What is it that's driving it? It's not addiction that drove that. It has nothing to do with addiction that drove it. It drove that what drives that is that you're selfish and self-centered to the core and you've already dictating how it is that people are going to make you happy. And if they do not do that. Then there's a price to pay. You see, and this is a horrible, horrible way to live. And this is the reason why so many of us struggle mightily. This is the reasons why so may of us just simply come apart in recovery is because we don't do the rest of this work, we don' t do the stuff that we are supposed to see. Identifying it as a problem is huge. That's a starting place for the deal like this. But in order to do this thing you're going to have to make a decision and if you're gonna make a decison then you have to take the necessary action to say that the decision was ever made. Otherwise it's not even a decision. Decisions are followed by an action that you're going to have to take that's going to change the course and they give us clear-cut directions that are going to follow. We'll talk about this stuff right after lunch and we're goingto talk about that stuff. Everybody cool there on the deal? So from a standpoint, I just want to wrap this up real quick. So from an sponsorship standpoint, there is nothing in steps one, two, and three that should take any appreciable amounts of time. I'm not saying they've got to do it before they go into the meeting, But could they do it before they go into a meeting? In the right situation, under the right circumstances, they certainly could do that. How do I know that? Because I've done it hundreds and hundreds and thousands of times. It's pretty amazing to get a guy on his knees in a parking lot or in a little side room at a church someplace where you're meeting doing a third step prayer and he's never even been to AA yet. I know it just drives some of you crazy. But I'd rather do it like that than I would be to have him sit in dozens and dozens and dozen of meetings getting mixed messages about what his recovery is going to look like. You see what I'm saying? Because he's got this thing in the middle that's rearing his head. This is good. Anybody have a major question real quick like that? We've got like five minutes and that's it, and we're going to go set up and get a little bit to eat. Everybody cool? I'm perfectly clear that some of this stuff, as we talk about working the steps in a timelier fashion, There will always be somebody saying that all I heard you say is that we've got to shove this stuff down their throat. I'm not saying that, guys. I'm saying that what we end up doing is we endup waiting too long and couldn't we just lean into the idea that we could be a little more proactive about getting these guys into the work? If you want to let them sit a week and go do their deal, rock on. But we'll do it like that. Real quick, do you have a question? Sure. However, I think Wally P. and those guys did a great service to our fellowship in getting us to understand what a lot of the basic stuff in the early days were like this. Given on par with everything else out there, I think it's a fine piece of information for new people to have. And in groups where they're practicing that format on the deal like that, let me tell you the only one caveat that I've had, and I've talked to Wally about this before, the only thing that's got me a little bit, just a little but goofy about that idea is that this idea of doing a third step with other people in the room, sometimes because we're so easily moved and persuaded by peer pressure. It's like you have ten people in a room that are going through Back to Basics and we get to a place where in a meeting collectively we're all going to do a third-step together. But we've got two guys in there that have been struggling with this idea about God and they're not quite there yet, but they don't have the courage to say, guys, I'm not ready to do this yet. But we're going to make them do this third step prayer in unison with everybody else. So what they've done is they've based the rest of their program on a step that wasn't well thought out and they weren't really ready to do this. I'm not really ready to turn my will and my life over to the care of something I don't understand yet. And so then they do. And then later, if they start kind of coming apart at the seams, if it gets fuzzy around the edges, a lot of times that's where we'll find it in their thing. In Dallas years ago, There was a big movement within AA that these group step things were really important. And I was a part of them. We'd have 50 or 60 men in a room doing a third-step prayer at the same time. And my observations were that sometimes these men were basing everything on an experience that they weren't ready to have yet, that they wasn't done. But on par, let me tell you something. I'm all over it. I love it. Yeah. At least they're in the book. Yeah. Real quick. That's a great question. I'm going to continue to be this guy's friend until the bitter end. He may be my new best friend. I don't know. We're just going to talk about this thing. He's welcome to come. Where I go, all the meetings are open and he's welcome to come sit in the meeting and be there for a little bit. I can help him. I can be there to help answer questions and this kind of stuff. But my responsibility always from a sponsorship standpoint, my responsibility is always to tell you the truth. Always to tellyou the truth if you're acting a fool, I'm going to tellyouthetruth. If you'reactinggreat, I'mgoingto tellyouthetruth and in this situation I just say, Hoss, based on what you answered and based on how we are like this, I'm not really convinced that you even need to be here. Please stay. Please enjoy the fellowship. Please just be here if you want to and we can talk about it some more. We can work back through this stuff if you want to like this. I'm not trying to run you off, but based on the way that you answered this thing... I talked to a guy one night. We were sitting in a car with a bunch of guys and we were talking about this stuff. And I heard this guy and I said, wait a minute, what did you say? And I'm looking in the rear view mirror and I asked him, what Did you say ? And he said, well, I just said if I go to a party and they don't have Michelob Light, I just don't drink. But do you understand why I would be suspect of this guy's alcoholism in that circumstances like this? I mean, it just... Yeah, this is one of those guys I'd go, You know, let's talk some more. Let's talk Some more. At the end of the day, it is not my job to run you out. It's not my Job to do that. I just simply want to tell you the truth based on what I see. All I ever ask for is that people tell me the truth, and that's what I want to be sure that I teach. Y'all cool? Real quick. It would depend. I wantto know kind of what the situation is. It would, it would depend, I just, I just want to, this is one of those situations that it may take a day or two, just because I'm ready to have him in the room, just because i'm ready to love him and want him here and for him to get well doesn't necessarily mean that he's ready to do that kind of stuff. And so sometimes we have to just be a little more careful about this kind of thing. I'm not going to force anybody to do anything that they don't want to do and I'm Not going to strong arm them into doing it like this. If they if they don' t want it, they want to wait a little bit. They buddy, come on, sit. Why don't you sit with me tonight in the meeting like this and I'll be there to answer whatever questions that come up like this and then we can see. And at some point in time, Usually within 24 hours, at least that's been my experience, within 24 horas they'll contact you and say, buddy, tonight when we're at that meeting, would you do a third step prayer with me? I'll say, absolutely I will. And we get on with it. They like that. Let's make one thing real clear though. We have one message to carry to the alcoholic who still suffers. Y'all all good? We're going to qualify these guys, one, to help them find out, are you an alcoholic? Are you a drug addict? Are you combination of the two? To help them see their truth so they can get comfortable. I can't tell you how many people I've talked to, they're just really uncomfortable. I don't know which room to go to because they did more dope than they did alcohol. But if you sit down and ask them the questions, they go, shit, I'm an alcoholic too. Welcome. Like I said, most of us in here qualify for a whole bunch of 12-step fellowships, and that's the ticket. If I'm talking to somebody, though, and the second step, the consideration is, am I willing to believe there's something out there bigger than me? And this guy just continues to say, no, there's nothing else I can do. I'm not going to jam it down their throat, but I'm nicht going to do the rest of the work with you. We only have one solution for you and that's the spiritual experience. And if you're not willing to do that, you'll follow? There's too many people dying out there for me to waste time with somebody that believes they can do it another way. And listen guys, I'm going to say this. If you can do that... I can think of three other fellowships out there that have taken God completely out of the fellowship. SOS is one of them, Save Ourselves. Moderation Management is another one. There's several. Rational Recovery is another one. They're all 12-step. Based on the 12 steps, they've taken the spiritual experience completely out of the fellowship. If you want to use that, then that's fine. Let them go there. See, I don't worry about them sitting in my AA group. I worry about themselves sponsoring a real alcoholic downstream who may desperately need this. We're not trying to jam anybody up. I'm just not going to waste my time with somebody that's not willing to go with what we've done. And that's part of the problem with what мы вели. We watered the whole thing down so everybody can feel comfortable. That's not my job. My job is to carry a clear message. So we'd be gentle with them, just like Myers said. We talk to them. We spend some time. I'm not going to jam them, help them out, escort them out the door. They're welcome. They'll stay. But I get to choose who to work with. Y'all good? Y'All ready for lunch? Let's go.