AA Slickness and the Big Book – Ppg Santa Cruz Sponsorship Workshop – Part 2 of 2 – Myers R.

Oh, well, well. Howdy, y'all. My name is Myers Raymer and I'm an alcoholic. What a treat. It is an honor. I'll tell you, it's the first time I've ever done a talk barefooted. I just... Just... Take that back. I did a little kind of a talk in a sweat lodge in an Indian sweat lodge one night. That was kind of interesting, but a little sweaty. When you're as claustrophobic as I am, it was not the most pleasant experience I've never had. And it's funny, I've been to California a bunch of times. But my experiences in California a lot of times are schedule-wise that they're so fast in and so fast out that I don't get a chance to see things. And so yesterday I got here a whole day early and spent Julianne and Jason, we were in San Francisco. First time I've ever been to San Francisco and I've got to tell you guys, I'm just kind of blown away. The more time I spend here... You know, I like San Francisco because it's... I'm not being offensive, but it's weird. I mean, the people are kind of strange and I'm right at home with that. I mean it's like the stranger they are, people are just talking to themselves and I am just going, but I get that. Here, I will stand here and talk to myself too. I guess I dig it. It is just the coolest thing to... I missed Haight-Ashbury and all that. I missed it by like a year and a half. And it just kills me because I can't imagine what my life would have been like if I'd have been here instead of Dallas, Texas. It's just like... But the architecture blows me away and then there's those people. I don't know. I just kind of fell in love and I come over here and I thought, well, we'll be out of San Francisco. You guys will be all straight-laced and then I got over here and I'm going, you know what? These guys are as weird as they are in San Francisco and it was just like, it was so cool. It's Just So Cool. George Bernard Shaw in a quote from a billion years ago said the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. And I'm prefacing this whole thing with that, okay? Because here's the crux of the thing. If I go into a roundup or to some kind of a deal like that and I do a one-hour talk and then I leave, it's amazing how often people come up afterwards and go, well, I didn't like it when you said this. And I'm going, but I didn' t say that. And they go, oh yeah, you did. And I' m going, it' s my talk. I just did the talk. I didn'' t say it. And then they go oh, well, what I say and what you hear may be two completely different things. And so if I say something that grinds you up that you kind of go like, wait a minute, what did he say? Come see me. I' l m here. I' ll be here late and we can just talk a little bit. It was never my goal ever in a talk that I've ever done, it was never My goal to come and make you do something different than you're already doing. I'm just simply relating some experiences of an old dude from Texas that's been around for 24 years and has seen what I think is the good, the bad, and the ugly in AA. I've seen the very best of this fellowship and I've see some of the craziest crap you've ever seen in your whole life in our rooms. And we just talk about it a little bit so that we can get an idea. I mean, the idea that everything that happens at AA is perfect. I think you need to travel some if you think that. I think You need to come to Texas. Come to Texas and see some of the crap out there. I mean it will be some of things that pass for AA. But the problems that it causes, guys, is that it... Oh shoot, I forgot my disclaimer about guys. Okay, let me back up a second. South of the Mason-Dixon, everybody says y'all. Okay, and the deeper in the south you go, the more you'll hear it. Y'all this and y'all that. In Texas, everything is guys. Listen, guys, and it's not guys and girls. Guys means everybody. Girls and guys, okay? And I'm not being offensive and I'm nicht sliding you. I'm telling you right now. I have three daughters and a wife I absolutely adore and my best buds in AA are women and the most profound things I've learned in AA I learned from women, not guys. But I'm tellin' ya, there's nobody here that's a bigger fan of women in AA. I love you to death and I would not slight you or disrespect you in any way if I say guys I mean gals too it's just I had a lady at a talk I did recently that she came up and she was so angry so angry at me she was shaking she was like she was just so mad and she says you disrespect women when you say guys and I said sweet pea did you she said see you're already disrespecting me and I'm one I'm not going to win here I can already tell but I said did you happen to hear my talk last night when we spent 15 minutes talking about women in AA? She goes, well, no, I missed that. And I said, okay, my bad. I wish you'd been here. I don't know what I can say. It is indeed my problem. But it becomes so tedious going ladies and gentlemen or guys and girls or if I have to be generic like that, if I had to address both every time I open my mouth, we never make any progress. I talk quick. I do. But I can't talk quick enough to do that every time. I'm just not disciplined enough as a speaker. So just kind of tune it out, know that I love you to death, and we'll take a bullet for you right this second. Before we get started with this stuff, I want to say congrats to the Primary Purpose folks. Primary Purpurpose Group Dallas is my home group, and we started that group, or Cliff Bishop started that group 24 years ago. The same month that I sobered up, January 15th, 88, they started Primary Purpose Group Dallas. I didn't go to that group for seven years. It would be later. It would save my life later on. Since then there have been hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of groups worldwide that have set up to study the text as the basic format of their meeting to study. Not so that we could study and get smart and then go beat people up with a big book. If you're doing that, quit. It's offensive. We don't want to do it. But to study the text and then get out there and try to help somebody so we're clear what it is that we're supposed to be carrying. We have far too many of us in our rooms who are wonderful, loving people who haven't quite figured out why we're here. I mean, we got sober, I get that. But past that, there's more to it than that. We got sober for a reason. And so this is why we do this. And this is the reason why I'm always so proud of groups that will take a little bit of heat take a little flack I don't know why it's there in the first place but it is we did for years too to set a format that guarantees that anybody that comes in anybody is going to immediately begin learning what our basic text talked about which I think is pretty amazing yeah buddy that was pretty polite And so here's the, I tell you what, let me do this. What we're going to do is we're gonna hit it kind of hard and fast for one hour, for 50 minutes and then we're go take a break and in order for us to do this, what I have to do is I have to make you feel a little uncomfortable. I know, wait a minute, I paid good folder money to come be uncomfortable? No, listen. Hear me out. If you never get uncomfortable, then you're never open to any different ideas. I mean, let me ask you this question. When you were out there acting a fool and doing crazy things, what was it that finally got you to come here? Wasn't it pain? I mean you take a blowtorch and you turn it up and put it right up against my skinny little butt and leave it there for a little bit until I get to a... I mean when the pain gets enough, I'll go, Enough! Enough! I'm done. I'll come play. And I go. And so it's the exact same thing with change in AA. Now, we'll talk a little bit about this because I think that there's some things that need to change. Now, the disclaimer here is that if you go to a meeting where everything is warm and fuzzy and it's always been warm and fussy and it will always be warm and fizzy, stay. I'm not here trying to change what works. The guy and the gal that I'm trying to address here are either the people that just got here and are unsure about the whole thing or, more importantly, I think, the men and women who have been here long enough to start getting A.A. slick. You've become enamored with your own knowledge and you've gotten to a place to where you... I'm that. I'm the poster boy right there of that, okay? But we find ourselves a lot of times in places where the meeting that used to be exciting and rich has become tedious and we start making excuses why we can't go there anymore, why we don't want to be over there. We've heard horse gyms stories 10,000 times and you understand what I'm saying? Depending on... And so for a lot of us, it's how do we stay here? Because lives depend on whether we stay hier or not. How do we say in the room and stay vibrant and stay excited about the idea of helping others? And I think this is the thing that we need to address. And sometimes in order to look at that, we have to look at why we need to change anything. And if I'm going to say anything that offends you, that's it. Because some of you guys are sitting in meetings where it's all warm and fuzzy and you're going, man, I'm fine. I go to a woman's meeting on Saturday morning or a men's meeting on Wednesday night and that's the only meeting I go too and we have a great time and they're my buddies and blah, blah, bla and I'm just going, great, terrific. I'm glad you got yours, slick. but what about the thousands and thousands of people coming out of treatment that aren't sure about what's going on they're detoxed now what what about all the people that are struggling what about your grandkids and your kids who are struggling with a disease right now that need to be here see these are the it got real personal when my oldest daughter finally got to a place at 27 where she was flat done cooked it all got real personal I can be really loving and tolerant and I can just look the other way as you do stupid things over here until she got in the same room you see and now all of a sudden it's like holy shit we just got to kind of pull them up and go come on let's get back in the trenches so how do we know where that is how do мы know where the baseline sets that's the stuff that we need to address so I want to read you a letter okay this is This is, I'm going to try to be careful and not. This lady sent me this. It was about a group that she goes to. And they were trying to peel off. They had like 30 discussion meetings a week in this group. And they Were trying to do this. They were trying To peel off one night a week To do a big book study So that they could learn some text And do the deal. You'd think it would be a slam dunk. You'd Think that they'd say, Hey, y'all, this is a great idea. The reality of it was, was it started a firestorm within the group that just went on for a couple of weeks. I mean, it was pretty contentious. And so she called me and she said, could you help us straighten this out? And I said, listen, I'll do my best. But one of the things that she sent me was this letter. And I just want to read you a little piece of this thing and just see what your reaction to it is and just where you stand with this. So this was a letter that this man wrote to my friend based on a conversation he'd had with his wife. I mentioned to my wife, and I took her name out, that there had been a motion to make Thursday meetings Big Book study. Her comment was, isn't it more than about the Big Book? I agree, the wussy. Okay, I agree. Wussy's my ad. To me, the main purpose of the meeting is to share our experience, strength, and hope. Much has changed since the early days of AA, and our experiences, if expressed in our own words, reflect that. Wow. we'll get to it newcomers newcomers need to see that although we agree on the need to practice certain principles our actions vary some dedicate their lives to a attending meetings every day others find it better to spend less time on aa and more with family church and interest i don't know what that has to do with any of it i personally would not attend big book studies because they are of no interest to me that's underlined at the bottom of the letter and then he goes on a little bit farther like this but i'm saying but okay i get it does he have a right Of course he does. Of course he does He has a right to share anything he wants to and she has the right to feel that way too if she wants to do that too I'm just a little troubled by the common thread through everything we talk about for the next couple of hours is if that works sharing your experience strength and hope over here then how come our success rates over here are so bad how come we can't show a positive when your entire fellowship is laid flat or one year out of the last ten we had a raise of about a fraction of a percent. One year, every other year we either lost membership or stayed flat. Our success rates worldwide are less than 10%, less than 5% in Europe, you see? And so if you say that just sharing and just being in a meeting is enough, you better show me success rates to go with it. You better show мне a connection with the two. If not, we got a dilemma. We got to have to talk about it. It doesn't mean you've got to change squat. You don't. It does not mean that you have to change anything, but we ought to at least talk about it. Dig? I mean, just a little bit. We'll see. So let me read you this little piece, okay? I've got some of this we'll do in the first hour and then the second hour we won't do any of this because we're going to talk about sponsorship stuff. But I think it's important to see what it is that we're talking about and why this is necessary because the underlying thread here is that if there's a problem here, if we identify a problem here then it can be fixed with better more effective sponsorship you understand what I'm saying? Worldwide it doesn't matter where I've been worldwide the single biggest problem that I see is that we have this weird subjective idea about what AA looks like and what recovery looks like and what our program looks like and it's like anything goes in the act of love and tolerance everything is acceptable the problem is guys is that we get to a place where nobody's getting well, but we still want to be love intolerant and let them do exactly what it is that they're doing. And the book talks seriously about some... They draw some boundaries of what it looked like. And we have too many people that just simply don't know where the boundaries are. They just don't. They just won't know. I'm not judging them. Please, don't go there with me, okay? You guys, I love you to death. Please, I'm nicht judging them Well, maybe I am a little bit. Just a little teeny bit. But that's okay. I'll deal with it. And listen to this. Some guy sent me this, and it's called 12 Steps to Nowhere. It was an op-ed piece out of Playboy magazine. And they just sent this. I don't get it. I was hoping for the whole magazine, but it isn't. I'm funny. But it's pretty interesting. It's written by this knucklehead, and all I'm going to do is I'm going to read like three or four quotes out of this. It's real fast, but I want you to see if you react the same way that I react, okay? Now, a lot of this stuff is she's quoting our buddy Charlie Sheen. There it is. You already know where this is going, but just listen to it. Just listen to him, okay. Earlier this year, Charlie Sheen rants about blah, blah, blah, bah, blah. Oh, I was shackled and oppressed by the cult of AA for 22 years. He told radio host Alex Jones, it's vintage, outdated, and stupid, and it's followed by stupid people. We heard that, and that was on the news. Down a little bit it says, they read from the big book, recite the 12 steps, and talk about their jobs, money, and relationships, or lack thereof. They believe such public therapy is necessary to keep the alcohol cunning, baffling, powerful at bay. Now I'm starting to get a little uncomfortable, okay? The first one pissed me off. Now this one just makes me feel a little uncomfortable. And then at the top, diabetics don't spend three nights a week talking about their childhood and marriage to other diabetcs, but that's essentially how AA treats addiction. Now I am starting to sweat a little bit and one more and then I will stop. AA is a remedy designed for the population that does not have good judgment. Okay, now stay with me, okay, And just stay with me a second and let's just talk about this for just two seconds, okay? Yes, this guy is offensive. And yes, I'd do anything if I could sponsor this knucklehead. Seriously, I would do anything. I'd pay folding money, my folding money just if I can sponsor him. But the question that I've got to ask you is is that don't we as a fellowship have to own some of this? I mean, he didn't make this up. He didn't made it up. This is reality in meetings that we see all the time. Don't we sometimes look like a cult? Don't sometimes we look like crazoids out there to normal rank-and-file people? Yes. I'm not saying you do where you are. I'm just saying all you've got to do is travel around and visit some, and you'll begin to see that there's a lot of this stuff going on, and it makes you really uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable. I'm going, wow, I've gotto own some of this shit. And so you begin to think. If you turn to the foreword of the first edition, I'll read it. You don't even have to reach for your book. I was so delighted that some of you guys brought books. I was got all weepy seeing it a minute ago. In the foreword of the first edition, we have Alcoholics Anonymous for more than 100 men and women who have recovered. There's that horrible recovered word that everybody hates so bad. From a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body to show other alcoholics precisely how we have recovered, there's that other... Again, I wonder if they think it's important. Fifteen times before we get to Bill's story. Fifteen time. We'll say... They'll refer to us as recovered alcoholics. Not recovering. I'm just saying is the main purpose of this book for them we hope these pages will prove so convincing that no further authentication will be necessary they didn't waste any time at all getting us into the idea of what was going on they introduced us to a spiritual solution and they began to define boundaries of what it is that this thing looks like it's of great interest to me if you sponsor a lot of men it will be of interest to you too and a lot OF women you're going to find this like more and more and MORE we see people that are coming in that don't know anything about the basic text at all. I don't care how old you are or how long you've been around, I'm baffled by how many times I have had simple conversations with people. Tonight we're going to talk about it a little bit. But let me tell you this fast story. I got this guy, five guys that I work with right now that I've been working with them for about a year now. All these guys are my age. I'm 58 and all these guys who are my size or my age or older, they've all been sober at least 20 years and one of them has been sober 30 years Collectively, in those five guys, they've sponsored five guys. Collectively. They had over 100 years of sobriety there, and they've sponsoring one guy apiece and one guy has sponsored two, and it just kind of freaks me out. So I've kind of collected these guys up in one little bitty pile, and we kind of heap up in a back room at that church where we meet, and once every week we sit and we study the text separate from our regular study. We're going to study together because what we have here is five men who, I understand this, who have a head full of ego, a headful of arrogance and they don't want to admit to anybody that they don' t know what they' re talking about. I get that. I'm that guy. I know exactly what it's like to have some years in AA and not know what's going on. And so we were sitting back there and I said, guys, flip over to Fred's story and let's talk about a couple of things and I want to hit a couple high parts here before we get into the deal. And so they get their books out and they're kind of like this and I'm looking over there and they' r all in the back of the book looking at the stories. I go, yeah, Fred's story. You know Jim's story, Fred story, the Jay Walker, this kind of stuff and they're still all back in the back of the book like this and I'm going, holy cow. And so I go guys, it's back in the front of the books and so they go and they find her and I finally just pointed it out to them and just turned their books over like this and said, now these guys have got over a hundred years of sobriety sitting in meetings talking crap. Nice men, I'm not judging them but they have no clue where Fred's story is in our text. Now that tells me volumes about where we are in the bigger picture of this stuff. This tells me volume about this. And this is the reason why we need to be real careful about this and we need to stop assuming that just because you have gray hair you know what you're talking about. Or, on the other end of that equation we need to stop thinking that just because you're a young guy with milk still on your mustache that you don't know anything about the text because we see a whole lot of that stuff. We've got a bunch of guys that are 17, 18, 19 years old that are absolute big book. I mean, they know this stuff. They get this. And we still have AA meetings in our neck of the woods where we discount them like they're disposable. Ah, screw them. Wow, really? Really? I just... We'll look one more in the book. We'll go back to it in a minute. But look on page 17. Let me just read it to you real quick. This thing. The feeling of having shared in a common peril is the one element in the powerful cement which binds us. Now, we're going to talk a little bit about this stuff. You've read this a hundred times sitting in meetings. You've probably been through this thing. The feeling of having shared in a common peril is one element in the powerful cement that binds us. Every one of us remember what it was like to come in and walk into an AA meeting and sit there and you're looking down at the floor and you are really uncomfortable and you just sit there going, fuck, Alcoholics Anonymous, jeez. I mean, most of us, we don't want to look up. Could it get any lamer? or my life is just a, and you just, and about halfway through the meeting maybe you'll start looking up a little bit and you start looking at people and they're looking back at you and you sense something that's so profound, that's such a great thing. That's so cool. These guys aren't judging me. They're me. They're, they're me and you Just, it's the coolest thing in the whole wide world. The fact that we're all little busted up addicts and drunks, this is, this Is groovy but look what He says. But that in itself would never have held us together as we are now joined. Bill, why didn't you just leave it alone, man? It could have been just a big old hug fest in there. It would have been great. But it just told us that that's not enough. That there has to be more. The tremendous fact for every one of us is that we've discovered a common solution. It may not be profound now, but it's going to be. It will be amazing later on when you begin to realize and understand this thing. So what we want to do is, in a couple of minutes here, we wantto look at and identify what a common solution looks like. Why is it important? In the same meeting, let's pretend this is just one big old AA meeting that we're in right now. In this exact same meeting what you have is you have a guy over here that wants to take a full year to work his protégés through the steps. A step a month. You have somebody over here that wants do it more aligned with the big book which is 45 days, 30 days, something like that. More aligned with what they did with Bill and Bob and Bill Dotson and the rest of those cats. And so does that look common to you? No. So you've got guys over here that came up through the meeting makers make it deal like this and their whole podium pound is go to the meeting, don't miss the meeting. Go to the meetings, don' t miss the meetings. And then you've guys over her going, I'm not clear. The book seems to tell me that the most important thing may not be that meeting. Wow! Wow! I mean that's heresy in some meetings. They'll look for a piece of rope in Texas, they'll hang your butt for doing that kind of stuff. You understand what I'm saying? It's just like, but do you see the conflict? 90% of everything that we're going to talk about until I go home and finally get on the plane and you guys are going, he's gone. 90% what we're gonna talk about is this conflicting piece of information that comes in. And it doesn't mean that they're... Listen, this would be so easy. If you guys were jerks, if everybody in AA that was saying things that go against this text, if they were jerps, I'd go, this'd be real easy. We'd just say, get rid of the jerks. We'd fight back because they're jerks The problem is that they're us. They're loving, wonderful, kind people that love us to death the moment we're here. You see what I'm saying? You see why this gets weird? But the problem is that we've been spoon-fed ideas of what recovery looks like by a bunch of people that we love to death. How could that be wrong? Well, it's not wrong for a little while. It's groovy right up to the point that it's naught. Right up to the point that that guy says you have a year to work the steps. Some of you may, but I know some of you little duly addicted guys, you'll be lucky if you've got a week. You better get in the steps, brother. I mean, I just see it. It seems too often. This is why this thing takes on some importance. Some of your guys are already squirming. I don't like the way this is going. It's okay, just stick with me because it gets better. It all works out like that. In the Dallas-Fort Worth area right now, there are places where they're charging money to hear fifth steps. There are groups where that's a standard operating procedure. They'll charge you money if they want to hear your fifth step like that." Somebody said, well, how much do they charge? And I said, Well, I asked them that question and they said, Well, what kind of fifth step do you want? Yeah. But you stop and think about this, guys. I mean, can you imagine what Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob would be doing? Listen, right there. Didn't you hear it? They just turned over in their graves. Didn't you hear it? I mean, these guys are just screaming from the grave, stop this crap. Let me, I got one for you. I got a gal that called me the other day and she said, she was so disappointed, she said, I just heard that you were up here where we are and we missed you. My husband really, really wanted to hear you and I said, well, thank you, and we talked a little bit. And I said, so how's he doing? And she said, well, he's not doing real well. And I asked her, what happened? She said, Well, he relapsed. And I answered, well how is he doing now? And he goes, well he's sober. He's been sober about a week and a half. And I say, wow, okay. But he's all plugged back in. Is he talking to his sponsor again and stuff? And she goes, oh no! They told him he couldn't come back for 30 days until he'd been sober for 30 years. For 30 days. I mean, I'm looking at the telephone. I'm going, what the... My wife's going, What happened? What happened?" I go, are you, you understand what I'm saying? I mean, this is the kind of stuff that you just kind of. I don't know. It's just whether it's the atheist bunch in Texas now that's getting all uproar. I mean there's a million stories that I could tell you where things are just kindof whacked and people are thinking that they're on page doing what we're supposed to do. there's a lady that called me about two years ago and they wanted to start a book study we're taping it so I'm not going to say where it was because they'll come kill me but it was out west not here but out west and northwest and anyway she calls me and she says we're trying to start this book study could you help me and I went absolutely there's nothing in the world I like more than helping folks start book studies and so we're talking about the nuts and bolts of this deal and she saw it really excited and so I mean this is a real young girl she's like 21, 22 years old real excited real all tatted up and just like I mean she's just a wild little girl and she's just flat kicking butt and taking names and she is out there starting all this stuff and getting everything going and so it's like every other day she is getting her head handed to her in AA I mean the old dudes are sitting back there and they are just judging her and just ripping her up and she says all I want to do is have a meeting where we can study so we can come back into the discussion stuff and know what we are talking about we just want to study some they just kept making it tough on her and the last time I heard from her she said man I am so depressed I can't stand it She said, I just can't get, if they'll leave us alone, we can do this. But now they're getting real aggressive and they're coming after us. And I said, buddy, just let it go for a little while. Let it die down and we'll see kind of what happens like this. And a week later, I get a call from this guy and he said, did you hear about, what's her name? And I says, no. And she said, well, she killed herself last night. And I just went, oh, fuck. And I remember I set the phone down and I just started crying and my wife was sitting there. My wife is my business partner. She's always sitting right across from me. And my wife's looking at me and she said are you okay? And I say, buddy I'm just so sick of this. I'm just so sick of the ignorance within our fellowship by a bunch of people. Were those people up there jerks or knuckleheads or crazoids? No, they're just people who have firm, solid opinions about things that are based on ignorance. They just don't know and understand. Meeting makers make it. I'm here to tell you some meeting makers don't make it There are some guys just like me that were dying sitting in those meetings and some of you know guys just liked that. We have to stop with this chicken shit one-liner thing where we're just trying to sponsor with a bunch of one-liners. The text gave us everything we needed to know to get us plugged into a spiritual path that was so amazingly profound that it would change everything about what we do. And we just want to sit in meetings and just, you know, ah, quit. It's just killing me. And I watch these little young guys that get excited get their heads handed to them by people that don't understand and have lost the enthusiasm that they had when they got here. Wouldn't it be cool if every meeting that you walked into was enthusiastic like that? That was exciting like that. I mean, I don't want to bug you guys anymore with that stuff, but there's a theologian, a guy named D.A. Carson. He's not in AA. I keep thinking one of these days he's going to call me and say, would you please quit using my name in your talk? He's just a theogian and he's wicked smart, wicked smart. Anyway, he did a talk and one night I was listening to a transcript of this guy's talk and it blew me away one of the things that he said. He said, we drift towards compromise and call it tolerance. And I went... Because this is where we find ourselves sometimes. We find ourselves in a situation where we watch people compromise our text and we watch People Compromise, the program And out of love and tolerance, we just say, it's okay. It's okay, it' s okay. And right up to the point that at some point in time as responsible members of AA, we need to start looking at what it is that we're doing, and is it okay? Could we shore that up a little bit? Could we set some boundaries in this stuff like this? When they talked about a common solution, could we identify what alcoholism looks like? Could we see what recovery looks like ? Could we at least get on the same page? People go, well, you just want everybody as big cookie cutter deal. I'm going, no, I don't. I'm not trying to create an army of a bunch of cookie-cutter zealots out there beating people up with the big book, although some people think that. That's not true at all. What I would like to do is have enough people in the trenches that knew and understood the text so that we could identify and quit trying to be what we're never intended to be in the first place. And that's what we are going to talk about in the next hour is some nuts and bolts parts of what sponsorship actually looks like so we can do. This is necessary. I know some of you guys are squirming in your juices and wanting to throw something. You can throw it afterwards, because it makes me feel uncomfortable talking about it. I don't want to be contentious with anybody, and I don'T want to make anybody feel uncomfortable. The problem is, though, is that we get... You notice how sometimes we just get kind of stiff-necked about anything new. Mark Houston used to always say, How do you know what you don't know? I mean, we find ourselves in a situation where we simply say, Well, I know everything I need to know about AA. Oh, really? Really? wow I just think that because I came up through AA in a weird way I got one sobriety date January 15th of 88 and I've been here ever since, my problem was staying here once I got here the evil twin Chris Chris's problem was getting here in the first place he was 7 years in and out he just couldn't stay I didn't have any trouble, I fell in love with him we'll talk about it tonight But this idea, I get so tired of seeing people sitting in meetings struggling to be here. The largest single group of people killing themselves in the United States today are people in 12-step recovery programs. Did you know that? It's a fact. Okay, look at me. Hear me out, okay? The reason is that the meeting doesn't treat your internal condition, which is alcoholism. And if you think that it does, you're setting yourself up for an ass-whipping. You are. The meeting does not treat it. I'm not saying don't go to meetings. Half of you guys are going, is he really saying don'T go to a meeting? I didn't say that. But if you're putting all your eggs in that basket, meeting makers make it. If it's all about the meeting, you've got to be careful, guys, because not everything that you're hearing in the meeting is kosher. You've got that, right? The guy that drones on for six hours seemingly about his divorce for the hundredth time that week. You understand? I mean, I'm NOT making light of it. He needs a place to do this. I just think sometimes the meeting usurped the sponsor's responsibility. We allowed the meeting to take over a lot of the responsibility that should have been the sponsorís over here. You see? I think that you need a place. Iím not making light of anybodyís problems. All Godís children got problems. And I think we need a space to share it and process it and talk about it, but I think a sponsor is a much, much healthier place to do that. I do. Than to sit in a meeting and talking aboutÖ You donít believe me. You donít buy that. Okay, let me ask you the question then. Can you imagine? Doesn't it seem odd that if I'm having trouble with relationships, I'd walk into an AA meeting and share my relationship stuff hoping to get advice from... I'm not being disrespectful. I'm just saying, but isn't it funny? In any given meeting in any place in the United States, there's probably 600 marriages and divorces in one AA meeting. I mean, it's just like we don't come to the table with a lot of social skills around relationship stuff. Most of you men are classic hostage takers, aren't you? And she smiled. I own her. I'm already looking at the dates for the marriage. I mean we do this kind of stuff and then we want to... I know, that's disrespectful. I'll quit that. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in an old, old, long song there was a quote in this thing that said Confusion Has Its Cost was one of the lyrics out of it like this. And I'm going, I had a guy up after a talk one night come up and said who is that group? I said Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. He goes oh, I never heard of them and I just went screw you, I hope you get drunk tonight. I don't know. This is like you, come on. This is talk about disrespectful confusion has its cost. The problem is is that we have a bunch of people that love us to death but there's enough confusion around what recovery looks like, you don't believe it? Do this. The next time you have an opportunity, go into an AA group, into a regular rank-and-file discussion meeting anywhere and ask people to describe alcoholism. Tell me what alcoholism is like. And let me tell you, if you'll sit back and hush up, don't lead them. Don't say a word. Just sit back and rush up. Yeah, go ahead and you lead off and watch what happens. I promise you every man and woman in that room will do one thing. They'll go straight to the drama that brought them in here. Well, it was that DWI I got. Or she left me. Or that stuff took me to jail. And then he wants to talk about it. Do you understand what I'm saying? Wrong answer. And that's what we have to fix. This idea that the drama... You are not defined by your drama. You are NOT. Quit it. Well, our story is all we've got. No, it's not! Quit that! It's not. It's not. You have much, much more. If your story is all you have, shame on you. I'll just say that. Shame on you! Come learn this stuff. Come learn and understand this. Guys, I'm telling you right now, there is a dark side to the non-stop discussion meeting that was forced on us years ago. There is a darker side to that. Yes, I know it's warm and fuzzy sometimes. And yes, I knows we've all said and done and heard things that helped us. I understand that. But I'm tell you, There is a dark side that nobody wants. It's the 400-pound naked guy sitting in the room is the dark side of that nonstop discussion. Because let me tell you what the discussion does. What the discussion doesn't, it alienates us in a lot of ways. We say, well, they're trying to identify with us. Uh-uh. That's not been my experience. That may be your experience, and I would not argue with you a second. But my experience is, you show me a person sitting in a meeting long enough and what he's doing is, he's not trying to identity. We go, we're not going to do any step work until he's here for five or six months and he's identifying and we know. Wow. Really? We're going to wait for five of six months for him to come to the conclusion that he's an alcoholic? Interesting. I'd love to see how that turns out. But the interesting part is what they end up doing is they end building a case against us. They sit in a meeting and then they listen and they listen and they all of a sudden they hear this guy go something about it. It's the same for all of us. He goes, snap, it was the straw that broke the camel's back. Now I'm just going to walk out. I'm going to leave. I don't identify anymore. I didn't go to jail. I didn' t black out. I didn''t drink every morning. I mean, even Bill's story. Even look at the stories in the text. Dr. Bob's story and Bill's stories. If you try to identify with these cats, there is a bigger picture there in the test of what they are trying to describe. But if you just look at their stories, I didn ''t get up and have to drink in the morning. Check. I didn.''t get a DWI. Check. How many checks does it take before you realize that you are not identifying with these people? This is the reason why we have such a hard time getting women to come and stay in AA sometimes. They're listening to all these hairy-legged guys pontificate about their crazy jail time and all the drama that went out there. Listen, I'm not saying it's not important. I'm just saying it passed due. They're here. They're in the room. Hush up. Let's quit trying to scare people into AA. Why don't we give them some hope? Why don'T we just... You understand that, don't you? Why can't we just give them somE hope? Just hug them up and say, Buddy, let me see if I can describe to you what alcoholism looks like. Alcoholism looks like a physical allergy. When you drink, go to page 44. Let's talk about it real quick. Okay, I won't rant anymore. It could be a little teeny lie, But here's the deal, guys. If the whole part... Yeah, the first paragraph in We Agnostics. If the full part of this is about sharing your story as we do so often... You know in Australia that 98% of all the meetings on that continent are what they call ID meetings? They just identify with each other. They just tell their stories back and forth and back and fourth and back again. Back and forth. 98% percent of all those meetings on that content they hated my guts it was crazy it was like a bloodbath over there but there's a whole little subculture interestingly enough the little sub culture of guys getting in the book and getting excited about this thing are native aborigines and it will blow you away the stuff that's coming out of the mouths of these people they're rewriting stuff in their native language and all these little guys for the very first time are starting to get the deal and it will blow you away, the stuff that's happening. But they're in the trenches doing the deal. So here's the deal, I mean if Bill Wilson had been, if they thought that sharing your story was important and there is a perfect place for that and we'll talk about it, but if Bill Wilsons, don't you think it would have been like this? It'd say step 13, share. Well it did, I mean people go well you know, Or in the old days when I was unraveling at that first group that I sobered up in, I was there for almost seven years and I was just suicidal. I mean, I was nuttier than a squirrel turd. I'm just crazy. And these guys would go, well, Marsha, what you need to do is you just need to go to some more meetings. And I'd be going, guys, I'm going to six already? Okay, I'll double up. You understand what I'm saying? But don't you think years later I would go if it was so important, don't YOU think Bill and Bob and those guys would have written, let's see, step 13, go to meetings. but they never said it we're getting ready to look into it just a little bit I'm not saying don't go to a meeting I'm just saying there's more let's look at that in the preceding chapters that's 51 pages that we just finished reading while y'all were sleeping I read it you have learned something of alcoholism we hope we have made clear the distinction between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic why is that important because treatment for a non-alkoholic is different from treatment for an alcoholic so we need to know who we're dealing with and we don't leave it. Listen, would you walk into a doctor's office and say, man, my whole arm hurts like this. Let me tell you what I think it is. And then you just tell the doctor and the doctor goes, yeah, that sounds about right. Like that's next. I mean, you wouldn't do that, would You? You wouldn't go in and say tell me what it is but in AA we have this idea that it's okay to let them come in and diagnose themselves. Now, I can't label you. My job is not to sit here and say Ross, you're an alcoholic. I mean that's not my job. His wife had already told him that. That's her job. But you know what I'm saying. There's a fine line here, but let's pay attention to it because it will change everything about how you look at what you're doing here. So they're going to ask us two questions. If when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, that's a question, or when drinking you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably alcoholic. It's a loss of choice and control. And they never said... Now, if you have a DWI, Guys, normal people have DWIs all the time. Heavy drinkers, social drinkers little recreational dope fiends everybody gets in trouble out there like that. They're not us. They're nicht uns and we need to identify this stuff. This stuff goes way back to a time when the problem started way, way, away back there guys but it's an amazing thing to see. From 1936 to 1976 you had 36 years of time in there for us to get the first 500,000 members of Alcoholics Anonymous. It took us 36 years to get 500,000 members. From 1976 to... Well, the next five years. Within the next... It only took us five more years to get the next 500,00 people. The Hughes Act, which came out... The last thing that... What's-his-name did? Nixon did before he bailed out of office was to write into law the Hughes Act, which said that alcoholism could be treated as a disease and treatment centers sprang up, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them almost overnight. I'm not knocking treatment. I work for one. I'll tell you that again in a little while. I workforone. I don't...I'm not knocking it. Treatments helped a lot of people. I'mnot one of these guys that likes to bash them. But I'lltellyou this. There were a lotof people that were in treatment that were not really alcoholic. And when they left, they told them come here. They came here, and our job was to help qualify them and help them see their truth once they got here, but we didn't do that. We just let them come and stay because we don't want to be offensive. I don't wanna be controversial here. The book asks us to qualify them. Early AA, they qualified them. They helped them see what their truth is, but we, as a fellowship at large, it's kind of gotten a dirty cachet to it. It's just kind of like, well, they'll figure it out. Let me tell you what they'll do. If they're really us, if they're really us they'll just get sick and if they get sick with no steps to help them they're going to die and we see this left. This is the reason why success rates got so crazy because we let this stuff happen. They were talking about two things. They asked us two distinct questions. Have you lost the power of choice and control? If Marcus got off work and he calls his wife and he says man I'm coming home. I want to go up this little place. I'm going to drink two beers with it. No just one beer. Okay. Start dinner. I'm going to be there and I'll be there in just a couple of minutes. And then five or six hours later, Marcus shows up. He's lost the power of control. Once he drank, he couldn't call his shot every time. Could he, could he do it? Could he say, I'm just going to drink one and mean, I miss going to drink one that tells me there was no allergic reaction set up, no allergy to the booze set up like this. So, so if you're talking to a guy and you're helping him and you've got trying to help him see his truth and he goes, no man, I drink one beer every day when I come home from work? And then that's suspect. Put a question mark, okay? Because he doesn't line up with the definition of what alcoholism looks like. It had nothing to do with his drama. The fact that he wrecked a car and the fact that He can't keep from punching Enid in the face. You see, it didn't have anything to do with that. He didn't. That was a bad example. Because I love her. You understand what I'm saying? So the next question that they ask is or Or, the first way, if you honestly want to, you finally cannot quit entirely. Can you stay stopped once you stop? Look at it this way. When you were out there drinking and acting crazy and you came home embarrassed, your family is just baffled by your behavior and you told them that you would never drink again, did you mean it or were you just playing games with them? You need to know this. You need to understand it deep down in your heart. You need zu understand this thing. Most of us meant it when we said it. When I told my wife I'd never drink again, when I'm on my knees begging her for forgiveness, when I tell her that it'll never happen again, I meant it. The problem is I couldn't ever make it stay. I couldn' t make it stick. I'm a great quitter. I'm telling you right now, I've quit drinking a million times it seems. I'm just a pretty good starter though. And I just, you know, let me run out 48 hours. And there'll be some trivial reason. There'll be a little thought. Well, you could just drink one little beer on the way home from work. What's one beer? And then our heads start selling us the idea and pretty soon we bought into the idea this is the mental component of alcoholism. In the doctor's opinion, they spend 98% of the doctor'S opinion talking about what? One thing. The physical allergy. The physical part of alcoholismo. Everything from the doctor's opinion all the way over to right here, the title page in We Agnostics, everything in there is primarily about what? The mental obsession. Why is it stone cold sober can we not stay stopped? Why is that we keep going back? You see? Our family thinks we're fruitcakes and they're kind of getting close to the truth. You see, there's some insanity around this drink, this first drink. I mean, if the idea is, if booze is the problem but I'll just stay stopped, that's all I'm going to need to do, then that's what I'm going to do. That's all we need to do, right? Thank you, Nancy Reagan. Just say no. I mean, I'm not knocking her, but you understand what I am saying? Just stay stopped. And if we could, that would be groovy. The problem is that for most of us we found ourselves in a situation where at some point in time we are going to get so uncomfortable in our own skin, the internal condition driven by a spiritual malady, the internal condition becomes so intense that we simply cannot, cannot make it work. We can't hold it together. And this little thought comes in your head, you know what? One of those Zima things, that might be good. That's not really alcohol or whatever it is. Whatever your thought is. And all of a sudden, we're back at it again and then we're going, why, why, Why? I mean, come on, look at the worst drama in your life. Maybe you got locked up. Maybe you Got divorced. Maybe your family left you. Maybe like me, you got the crap kicked out of you at every bar in Texas because I couldn't walk into any place without getting hit. You think I'm obnoxious sober. You should have seen me drunk. I mean, I was just like, phew. Wheels off. Let's beat the skinny kid up. I mean it's just like let me ask you a question that's purely a side thing. Why is it that the scrawniest guy in the room always has the loudest mouth? It's some kind of cosmic rule book stuff. I don't know. It always just freaks me out. I didn't quit drinking because I wanted to stop drinking. I quit drinking because I got tired of getting beat up. That's a fact, man. where was oh yeah so so we understand this stuff but but when you look at the worst drama of your life wouldn't normal i remember going out with my wife when we were just dating and we had a couple of brewskis and she she just she just doesn't drink hardly at all but she drank a couple of beers and and she's sitting there and all of a sudden the the uh this piece of meat and his hamburger fell out hit the table and fell into her lap and she was mortified i mean i'm talking i can still remember looking at her and i'm looking and she's just her face gets beat red and she pushed the beer away and she said that's it i'm done and i'll tell you right now she just wouldn't normal people react differently i mean you notice that right i mean did you ever remember in high school when when you'd normal people would get sick at a party and they'd go i'm never touching this stuff again and it may be 20 years before they take another drink because they remember what it was like. You puked straight up and it came right down on top of you and you just said, okay, I'm ready. Let's go. It's like nothing is going to stop me from the sense of ease and comfort that comes from taking that drink. Nothing is goingto stop that. And this is where it all... Y'all get that, right? This is why it's so important that we understand this deal. Alcoholism looks the same regardless of where you are, regardless of your gender, regardless of whether you're black, white, Vietnam vet, not Vietnam vet. gay, straight. I don't care. It's all the same. This is the reason why I get so goofy around special interest meetings and this kind of stuff where they're taking people out of the meetings. I'm going, wait a minute. I didn't know you had gay alcoholism? Wow. You had young people alcoholism?! Wow. Stay in the room. Go to that meeting if you want to go to that meeting, but stay with us, okay? Come on. Because some of the most profound things I've heard were from these little fringe groups that when they're sitting in our meeting and they say this thing and I'm going, holy cow, where'd that come from? That cat brought some heat in that meeting. It was just the coolest day. This is why it's so important that we understand the truth of this stuff. If we can understand your 12-step deal, we're going to talk for two more minutes and then we're gonna go smoke a butt. If you... Or if your butt looks like mine, we're gotta go get up and scratch your butt, okay? It's just like, I don't sit well for a long time. Now, it's like your story is real important. Some of you guys think I'm making light of your story. Your story and how you got here is so profoundly important in a 12-step call. Julianne calls me and she says, Buddy, I'm in trouble. Can you send some people over? And I grab some girls and we go over and we see her and we sit down and we talk to her like this and we share a little piece of our story so she understands that we're not just up there trying to... We're not a bunch of do-gooders. You understand? She'll understand that we did what she did and we're nicht judging her in any way. Oh, I touched one of those too. I know, I did the exact... We tell her story. That's when it's important. A day later we bring her to her first AA meeting and we're sitting there and I tell you what now, worldwide, I don't care where it is, what they do at the very first meeting, let's tell her how we got here. And so we go around the room sharing how we Got Here. She's here! Why are we trying to talk her here again? She's hear! I'm not... You get that, right? Y'all understand that. Let's stop taking up... It's not that I mind an occasional meeting where we talk about that stuff, but why is it that there's so many of them? In the Dallas-Fort Worth area, you'll go 50 meetings in a row and you will never hear anybody talking about the steps or God or a solution. They're simply talking about war story stuff and playing these war story kind of games. And I promise you, the meeting that was exciting when you got there Go ahead and give it six months of listening to the same people share about the same crap again with no solution in the deal. And let me tell you what you'll do. In the end of it, it will become so tedious that you will scream restless, irritable, and discontent. You'll be so restless in your own skin that you can't see it. And the part that baffles me is that we sit in meetings and watch it happening. We watch it. We watch the guys disconnect and move to one side of the room. We watch them sit there and be real quiet. We watch depression come back. We watch horrible behavior come back into these men and women. We sit and we watch it and we do nothing to check it. Everything about this man's action says, I'm getting sick again. I'm dying here. Can you do something? Well, let's share our day. No, let us not. Let us not do that. Let us see if we can help him understand that he's got a chronic disease that's going to take him out of the meeting, that's gonna kill him if he doesn't understand what the lowdown is. There's two reasons we need to understand this stuff, guys. We need to understanding it for our own sake because it's part of our own recovery. And then we need understand it because it is this very information that makes it possible for me to help Ross when he comes in and says I need help. This is why it's so important. This is, this is why we have so many people in our rooms that are ambivalent about the idea of sponsorship. Why they, why they get, push off and they make some, they get, did you ever have a guy eyeball you in a meeting and he's looking at you and you go, oh no, he's going to ask me to sponsor him. And so you start, you start looking the other way. I'm not being disrespectful, but I mean it's, but it's funny because I did that for a long time. There's a part of me that's so excited about the fact that I think I sense this is going to happen. You see? And, and, and there's a part of me that wants it to happen, but there's also a part OF me that's going, damn, I don't I'm too busy. I'm Too... You fill in the blank. I'm To Slow. I'm Tu... You fill it in. It doesn't make any difference, but we all have a trump card. I'M STILL TOO SICK. I COULDN'T HELP ANYBODY. I CAN'T HELP MYSELF. Trump, Trump. I MEAN, YOU'VE GOT A POCKET FULL OF THESE TRUMP CARDS AND YOU JUST KEEP PLAYING THEM. THE PROBLEM IS THAT EVERYTHING THAT IS IMPORTANT HERE, EVERYTHing THAT'S POWERFUL AND DYNAMIC IN OUR PROGRAM comes about as a direct result of what you're willing to do to help somebody else when they come in. If you just want to sit on fences and play sober dominoes, rock on. Rock on. I'll just ask you to please, please refrain from sharing. Just play dominoES. Stay. We love you. We respect your dominoEs. But I'm telling you, I'm not making a lot of dominoE's. I love domino E's. But I am just saying there is more. And the idea that we could crawl off into a trench and affect somebody's life in such a profound way is something that once you feel it, once you do it, it will change everything. Everything. And we're going to talk about that. We're goingto talk about it in the next hour and then tonight I'll talk a little bit about it too so you can kind of get a beat on this thing. So listen, here's the deal. Whatever you do, don't leave. If I made you feel uncomfortable, there was a reason for it and we'll talk about It. We'll get it all sorted out. I talked my wife to one of these things about six months ago and it was a setup kind of like this. It was a little longer during the day and my wife's a smoker and so she'd sit out there and she'd smoke and these girls would come up and they'd sit and they'D all be out there talking like this and this lady comes up and she goes, I don't know about that guy. Just like this and she says, oh, time out. I'm married to him like this because she knew what was coming. You understand what I'm saying? And I've been throwing grapefruits at them. I hit you guys a lot harder than I hit them but the idea is some of us have already gotten stiff-necked. Some of us have already gotten a head full of old ideas that say that we already know everything we need to know. Well, my sponsor said it takes a year to work the steps. Well, your sponsor's wrong. I'm just telling you. Your sponsor needs to rethink that idea, okay? Come back. Oh, I love your sponsor, though. Honest, honest.