The 12 Steps as a Common Solution Not a Therapy Session – Myers R.

All right, and now for our second workshop speaker, Myers Raymer, who is also from Primary Purpose Group in Dallas, Texas. Myers is my grand sponsor, and I just got the opportunity to meet him tonight. And I love my sponsor, and so I love Myers Raymar. The message has made a huge impact in my life. I would not be here tonight if not for the message that they carry, so welcome. Howdy, y'all. My name is Myers Raymer, and I'm an alcoholic. Y'all hear me okay? Okay, good deal. What a treat. You know, in a lot of this traveling, a lot of times you'll go in, do a talk, and leave. And I've traveled all over the world, and a lot OF times these things are real quick in, real quick out, and you never get to meet anybody you never get to see anybody i mean uh i remember going to australia one time that's 21 hours of travel from dallas to to do two talks and i never saw anything but the inside of a conference hall it's just the craziest thing and so but you the thing that i don't like about that stuff is is that you never have any chance to talk to people and it's like you guys if you've been around very long you know and understand that sometimes what i say and what you hear are not the same thing. And so it's important that if you go, whoa, what did he say? He didn't really say that. Then we've got time to talk about it. If I'm here just for an hour and leave, then you'll go to your deathbed thinking I'm a little dick. And I'm not. But I want to have an opportunity to talk abut some of this stuff and especially tomorrow as we go through this stuff, We decided a long time ago, a year ago, when Angie and those cats asked us to come do this, we decided that we were going to make sure that this thing stayed loose enough that we could talk back and forth. And so that if something came up that you were log jammed in or something that sounded contradictory to what you've been taught, that we Could just talk a little bit. I mean, nobody said that we Were the authorities on anything. Scouts honor here. I've never done one of these that I didn't learn a bunch from the people That were already here. And so it's what's made it really, really cool. It's just a trip being here. I mean, Dallas, I always thought Dallas was kind of fancy schmancy until I got here. Holy cow. Driving up and down those roads, I'm going, holy, these people, I mean this is like another world out here. You guys must, holy cow. Man, if I lived out here, my head would be this big. I'm going, yeah, I'm from California. Screw you guys. It's just like, man, this is architecture and then all the cool stuff, and I don't think there's any ugly women in California. I've not seen one yet. It just freaks me out. And he goes, I keep looking straight ahead. Don't look at them. Just don't look At them. It's Just crazy. And then throw the ocean in there, and it's just pretty amazing, pretty amazing. we're going to buy some surf shirts tomorrow and I can't wait I don't want to actually surf I just want the shirt I don' t want to do something I got this shirt out in California so here's the game plan here's kind of what we're after we'll talk a little bit tonight and then tomorrow We're going to do this work, but there are two ways to do this. We could go through this thing line by line and we could break this stuff down, but most of you guys know this book as good as I do. I mean, this is not a... I don't know that there's that much benefit in doing that. But what I do think there's benefit of it is going through this thing and what we're goingto hope to do tomorrow is go through this things from the perspective of sponsorship because it's the weirdest deal. It's like if you... I'll tell you a story right now. It's as good a time as any to tell it. Four or five years ago, I was in Kent just right down below London doing a men's retreat. And there's like 80 guys in there and they're all lathered up and everybody's having a great time like this. And there was some disturbing conversation between one of the breaks. I mean, it was just like these guys were saying things that didn't line up with big book stuff. I mean it was kind of like where did this come from? And so I got talking to this guy and I thought we've got to do something. So when the session started, I had a bunch of index cards and a bunch of little yellow pencils and I passed them all out like this and I said okay guys let me tell you in this last session I asked the question is everybody comfortable with the idea of carrying people through the work? And everybody said yes. And they did. I mean, there wasn't a single, maybe two people in the whole room didn't raise their hand if I said, okay, now do you guys know if a brand new guy walked through this door right now, would you know what to do? And everybody says sure. So I tell you what I'd like you to do is if you would, just for a second, just humor me. Before we get this session started, I want everybody to write down the first three things you would do. And let's just see where we stand on that. And so everybody's feeling uncomfortable, and a couple of guys start writing something, and everybody else is just looking straight ahead. Most of the room was just looking right ahead. They never even picked a pencil up. And I went, interesting, interesting. I said, why don't we talk about that? Because see, guys, what seems to happen here is we find ourselves in a situation where if you ask me if I know what I'm doing intellectually, I'm going to tell you every time I know what I've been sober and fill in the blanks. x number of years i know what i'm doing the reality of this thing is is that we have a we have an amazing number of people in aa who don't know what they're doing it you're you're reading that well he's judging me listen if you if you don't Know the first thing you do when a brand new guy walks through the door i'm not judging you i'm just pointing out a flaw in the program as we understand it okay what we're trying to do is get everybody we're not trying to get Everybody exactly the same. All God's kids are different. But what we're trying to do is get it where we're at least on the same page about what we'll do. You understand what I'm saying? Depending on where you are in the country, you'll have guys over here saying, well, I work my guys through the work in a year. And then you have guys overhear going, well, you know, we usually take about 30 days to work our guys through their work. You see what I am saying? There should be some tightening of that gap in there someplace. We ought to be a little more consistent within the stuff that we're doing, right? We'll talk about this stuff some, and you'll see. If you're already getting sweaty, you're just screwed. I don't know what to tell you. We're in a lot of trouble. The other reason I really like these things like this is that a lot of guys get to travel and come, and I walk in, and it's like old home week, all these cats that I know. And I know some of you guys hate Facebook, but I know there's a dark side to Facebook. But I'm telling you, there is such a coolness to being able to keep in contact with people that you don't know in AA land and just a quick click and you're talking to them for a second just to stay kind of connected up. And so a lot of times tonight I got to meet four or five people that I've been back and forth with on Facebook for a while. And I sound like I've Been doing this for years. My middle daughter hooked me up with Facebook about six months ago, and it transformed my life. That's what happens when you have a smart daughter. I just like, I've got three daughters and so the women in AA are special to me and I just, pretty cool stuff. Any of you guys from families with drunks? Let the taping record show. Oh man, it's the same all over the world. It's exactly the same. And every one of us who were raised in a family like that said we would never ever do it. I bet you were just like me going, I'm never going to touch any of that nasty stuff. And we mean it right up until the point that we drink some of that nasty stuff. And then the dots get connected for some of us and all of a sudden we're off to the races and that was exactly the way it was for me. I'm holding out all through high school. I'm not drinking that stuff. You sinners, y'all can do that. I mean, I'm up there like Mr. Pharisee judging the entire world. I'm no longer going to drink that stuff and I'm still not going to do that nasty stuff right up till I did. And then I remember sitting on that little concrete embankment overlooking that little river over by fredericksburg texas and i'm looking up through those trees and man the moon's coming out behind those clouds and i'M TELLING YOU GUYS I'M I'M AN OLD DUDE THAT WAS THAT WAS A LONG TIME AGO AND I CAN STILL TELL YOU EVERYTHING ABOUT THAT EVENING THE WAY THAT THE WAY IT FELT ON MY FACE THE WAY THE WIND WAS THE WAY it smelled that night with those cypress trees that i can tell you everything about it it was the most magical night i'd ever spent drinking that beer all by myself sitting in that little creek and I knew I got back in that car with that guy that brought me over there and we drove back to Kerrville and I'm thinking I know exactly why the old man drank the way he drank I just wish he wouldn't drink so much of it I'm not going to do that well I didn't for a little while but it would take no time at all for wheels to go off and and the evil twin Chris would be right there alongside me and it would be just like like wheels off And guys, I remember at 21 years old sitting at the Mason Jar restaurant in Houston, Texas. And we're drunk as skunks. They're already looking at us. You know that look like, I'm done with you. You're getting ready to have to leave. That kind of look. And they've already given us that look. And I'm looking at Chris and I'm saying, man, we're drunks just like Pop, right? And he goes, yep, just exactly like him. I said, what are we going to do? And he said, well, we are going to have quit. But not now. You know, it'd be 35 years old when I quit. And guys, I've got to tell you, I'm not a big storyteller around the drama because it's really fairly embarrassing. I mean, I wish I had some cool stuff to tell. The reality is my story was just pathetic. I became the thing I didn't want to be. I became a bully and a coward and I pushed my wife around and I did things that I swore I would never do Chris introduced me to the joys of outside issues which sort of sped things up if you catch my drift and it was just kind of wheels off I couldn't go anywhere without being loaded let me ask you a question do any of you guys, do you remember what it was like right before you quit and you're afraid of everything you don't want to go out of the house you don' t want to do anything I just knew what was going to happen And if I left the house, I'd get drunk. If I got drunk, I would get in a fight. If I get in the fight, there is no telling what would happen. In the last six months I drank, I got in trouble three times with the law, all of them for public intoxication and there was violence in all three cases. And I tried to kill a liquor store clerk one night and you see what I mean? It's just stupid stuff. I mean it's just crazy stuff. I didn't get up one morning and say, hey, I think I'm going to be a bully today. I think i'm going out and try to kill somebody. You see? I mean, I had every reason to kill him. He embarrassed me in front of my wife by calling my house because he wanted a good credit card. Why would somebody do that? I don't understand it. I've been a good customer for years. I gave him a bad credit card because everything's maxed out. My wife doesn't know it and I'm embarrassed. Why would... You guys don't leave. I was just getting to the good part. I was getting ready to tell the story about the gerbils. Oh, okay. The only story about gerbils that I know of is the way that my buddy John Kelly looked the night he came back in after that big long drunk and he walked into primary purpose group and it looked like gerbiles had licked his hair dry. It was just a mess. It was the funniest looking... I was sitting back on the back of the room going, there's my boy right there. It was so good. It was such a great day. So good. so chris sobers up january 15th i mean uh november the 12th of uh 87 and two months later he takes me to my first meeting of of alcoholics anonymous and i fell in love with aa absolutely fell in love with it and um i got one sobriety date january1588 i stayed chris had chris has almost 10 years of trying to get here before he stayed. And I walked in, fell in love with it. We're in this old creepy building and everybody's in there smoking cigarettes. I mean, everybody got like six cigarettes sticking out of their mouth. I means, it's a mess. I even was lighting cigarettes in there and I've never smoked in my whole life, man. It was just crazy. Yeah, give me one of them things. It's just wheels off discussion. No program, no big book, know nothing. It's just sharing. It is crazy and I am proof positive that you can go to those meetings for a while and stay okay. You can stay clear of the booze. I am not guaranteeing how happy you will be and I'm not guarantee that you are not going to be doing a bunch of other weird stuff during that period of time. My serenity in that area lasted about two years. At the end of two years, I am beginning to write hot checks all over Denton County. They got a real high burn rate on those credit cards Every woman in AA looks more exciting than my wife, which is not a good thing. And I just can't believe that I'm not feeling the way I felt when I walked into that room. I'm just not believing that I could be uncomfortable in AA because I thought I'd arrived. I thought, I was the poster boy. I'm doing this deal. I got one sobriety date. I was breaking my arm, patting myself on the back. And I'm thinking that these meetings are treating my alcoholism. Well, two years, three years, four years, five years. But at the end of five years, things have gotten ugly. My wife has again moved to the other end of the house. She's completely baffled by my behavior. I mean, she thought the nightmare ended the day I got sober, right? She thought it was done. And now here I am, five year later, five years from my last drink and my last drug, and she is baffLED because of my behavior." And so she's getting ready to leave. Listen, the reason I'm telling you this part of this thing is because there's this weird thing. I don't know whether it's genetic. I don' t know what it is. This allegiance, this feeling of closeness with where we sobered up. Any of you guys know exactly what I'm talking about? Wherever I sobered that's like sacred ground and I'm going to stay there. Listen, they could have been sacrificing pigs in the back room and I'd have stayed there. I didn't care. It was my home group and it was there and I wasn't going to question anything. I was just going to do my deal and it Was fine. The problem was is that I was day by day getting more suicidal. Now listen guys, I went through a lot of crap and I never thought about killing myself. And here I am almost six years sober and I can't think of anything else except killing myself every day. It's a thought. because I can't fathom the idea. If this is sobriety, if this is as good as it gets, you get it? The pain of being sober in big quotation marks, if that's what we call it, the pain of not having any booze in me is killing me. Killing me. And I can' t figure any way to treat it. And every time I bring it up in a meeting, they tell me the exact same thing. Myers, Myers, Miles, Myers. I know we've been through this already, pal. We've already told you what you're supposed to do. Go to some more meetings? Yeah, yeah, brother. You got it. You got It. I'm already going to six meetings a week. How many does it take? You see what I'm saying? It's just frustrating. I know, but some of you guys are brand new and you're still engaged with the idea of the meeting. You still love the ideaof the meeting and I'm not saying don't hear me for a second say don't go to meetings. I didn't say that. I want everybody right here. You see me. I didn' t say that Because some of you guys are already reaching for your cell phone. He just told me I don't have to go to... I've been here before. I got the emails to show it, okay? I'm not saying don't go to meetings. I'm just saying there's nothing in the text and there's nothing in our collective experience that will say that going to meetings will treat the internal condition which is alcoholism. And you need to be careful if you're counting on the meeting to keep you sober careful please we love you and we want you to stay and i don't want you to get as miserable as i got i swear i don t because it's an i'm not sure that there's an uglier place on the face of god's green earth than to be sitting in meetings dying of untreated alcoholism and not knowing what that there s a solution you would think that there would be people in the room that would know and sense what was going on and say hey slick have you ever tried working the work but nobody said anything they just kept telling me to come to some more meetings. So anyway, I get a hold of a guy called Chris one night. My twin brother has now moved to the Hill Country and he had gotten something called a big book sponsor. I don't know what that was. Don't really care what that is. What that was, all I know is is that every time I talked to Chris, he was happy. And I called him and I said, hey listen man, I almost drank last night. It was really weird and it was a miracle I didn't. And he said, listen, Mark and I are going to be in Dallas in a couple of days and doing a deal and they tell me that there's this old dude up there and I want you to... If he's who he says he is, we're going to go to that meeting and if this guy looks like he's promising, I'm going to get you hooked up with him. And I said, Chris, I mean, what do you... I need another meeting? And he goes, no, no. Seriously, I think this is going to be something you need to do. And I say, whatever. I'll do anything. And I would have. Guys, I'm telling you, I'd eat a handful of spiders if I thought it would fix me. I'm just, well, maybe not a whole handful. Maybe just a little handful, okay? So that's how it rolled. Chris showed up, goes to this meeting. He calls me and he says, you ain't going to believe this old dude, man. You need to go see him. And I said, Chris, I'm real busy. I'm blah, blah, bla. I'm making all these excuses. I mean, a couple of days later, I am so desperate I want to kill myself. A couple of years passed and now I am bulletproof again. You ever sponsor anybody like that? That all of a sudden gets up, there's a little wind under the sails and now they don't need you or the program or anything else like this. She walked into the room and it's all rosy again. I don't know why I was making such a rough going of this deal. I know, I know. So there's just like dead air on the other end of the telephone and Chris is still there. And I go, Chris, are you there? And he goes, not for long. He says, listen, you're driving me nuts here. You either go see this guy or don't call me anymore about you hurting in AA. I said, all right, I'll go see him. And I did. I went and saw him. And I won't tell you all of this stuff, but I've got to tell you guys that when I met Cliff Bishop, I'll bust his anonymity all over the world every chance I get. When I met this old dude, I wanted somebody to love me into AA like I'd been loved before. I want a bunch of hugs and a bunch of nurturing, and it's going to be okay. Pat on the butt. You can do it. I want some of this stuff. And what I get is this gruff old guy standing in front of me and he said, where's your big book? And I go... I have no idea where my big book is. I mean, like, it's the dead last thing I wanted to talk about. I almost leaked you. I'll reach out there in a minute and tap you. That's the death last thing that I wanted to talked about. He said, I don't have the big book. I said, I think it's at home someplace and he took his big book like this and he goes here and he hit me in the stomach and I went like this and he says, don't ever come back over here without it. I want you to have a big book every time. You might as well get you some markers too. Yes, sir. Now, I'm not talking any love and I'm nicht fühlen any love. All I'm thinking is, you know what? I could be out in my truck that's parked out there on that curb and I can be gone like that and he'll never know how to get a hold of me. He doesn't even know who I am. And I'm thinking like that. And by now, he'd already turned around and walked inside. There's a long hallway that goes down to where his little family room is and he had already turned round and walked outside and I'm thinkin', wow, man. And I'M thinkin' what do I do? And I've goin', well, I'm already here and there was this sort of intuitive maybe this old fart knows something. It was just like that and I just walked on inside. I met his wife. She was in there and he was there and he starts reading me through the book a little bit and he started asking me these questions. Now, I'm not talking about complicated questions, guys. I'm talking AA 101 questions. Who wrote the big book? Some old dudes? I don't know! I know you guys think I should know, but I don' t know. Nobody taught me that stuff and we didn' t ever talk about that stuff. I don''t give a rat's... I don'T care! And so he goes, Okay, and so he asked me another one. I didn' T know that one. He asked me anoth er one. I don´t know that. And after a little bit, I didn't have an answer for anything, but I had some BS at all of it. I'd go, well, you see, it's a little more complicated than you make it. You've met guys like that. I bet you've sponsored some guys like this. I want to make it more than it is. The nuts and bolts of this thing is, guys, that I'm too lazy. I'm just too lazy to actually read and study the text to see what the program looks like. And so it's much easier to be spoon-fed your version of what the programme looks like." I know some of you are going, well, that's not kind. Well, listen, let me... But it's the truth. And you'll see it worldwide, this problem with an oral transmission of the big book. If you've got your big book, turn to page 17. Let me just read. If you don't have it, I'll read it anyway. Don't ever come back in here without it. Two-thirds of the way down, you guys have read this in a hundred meetings. Listen to this. The feeling of having shared in a common peril is one element in the powerful cement which binds us. Read discussion meeting. Okay? Read that. That's what they're talking about. The fact that we're all here and that we've had a common experience, this common peril as how they refer to it, is one elemento in the power of the cement which bind us. but that in itself would never have held us together as we are now joined. I wish he hadn't written that. If he hadn'T written that, we could just stay with the discussion. We could just say talking about our common peril, right? But then he says, hey, that's not going to do it. The tremendous fact for every one of us is that we've discovered a common solution. What's the common solution? The common solution is the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Spiritual in nature, which could get us to a place sufficient enough to bring about recovery from alcoholism. Well, we're all drunks. That's our commonality. Well, it is. But that's not what it just said right there. They've moved us from the problem into the solution and the solution should be common. Well, if we're sitting in meetings and I'm telling about my jail time and he's talking about beating his wife and she's talking abut stealing and you understand what I'm saying? And she just wants to talk about her grandkids And she just wants to talk about it. It goes on down the road. I'm not making light of any of it, guys. But I'm just saying that where's the common solution? And this is the problem that we run into. This is the reason why these kinds of weekends become really important because we begin to... What we're trying to do is we're not trying to get you to stop talking about the things that are important to you. What we're trying to get everybody to do is simply look at what's important and investigate that. Look, remember the old parlor games, the telephone or telegraph or whatever it was like this? And Rob's sitting right here, and I'm going to whisper something pithy in Rob's ear, and he's going to move down here. And by the time we get down here, by where J.K. is, it's begun to alter. We make the turn by Margarita and Peter, and we get back up here. By the time мы get back over in here, it'S begun to change completely, right? By the time you guys are just screwed over here, there's no way that you guys back there are going to hear this thing. That's the nature of oral transmission and it's scary how different it can be and how weird and convoluted some of these theories and ideas are. And what we're trying to do is we're try to look at this thing in its whole and as we begin to study, we begin basically take everything that we know about AA and just sort of set it on the floor. Just start pulling it out and setting it onthe floor. You'll have a big old pile of ideas and opinions, some doctrines, some not, sitting right at your feet. And then we're going to pick every one of them back up and look at it. You see? Is this Big Book? No. And thenwe'll just file it. I didn't say forget it. I just say we're gonna file it We're just gonna move it over to one side. But what we're gunna be doing is re-evaluating what our program looks like so that all of us are carrying basically the same message of what the steps look like so that we don't have a bunch of weird, convoluted craziness. Okay? We're going to talk about that stuff some this weekend, guys, so we can sort of see... Let me... My head's so full of stuff, it's about ready to explode all over this lady down here like this because there's a bunch OF stuff that I want to talk ABOUT, but listen to this. Some of you guys that have heard me before know that I've talked at length about groups in Texas that are charging money to hear fifth steps. Weird, isn't it? Charging money to hear fifth steps There are two groups in the Dallas-Fort Worth area where you can't even take a big book in. You can't go in there with a big books. We got two intergroup offices in California that are shutting groups down if they're studying the book. I want to make sure that the taping record hears this. There's two in California that are shut and groups down if you're studying the big book. Now, if you want to share your day, rock on. That's AA. But if you wanna study the text, we're not even gonna recognize you as an AA group. Listen, I got a call a couple of months ago from this girl. I'd done a talk out in... I'm just gonna say West Texas. That covers a lot of ground, okay? I'm not gonna tell you exactly where it is. West Texas and I had just gotten back to Dallas and I get this call from this lady and she said, I can't believe we missed you and I was talking to her and she said, my husband's drunk and he's in real trouble. Can you talk to him? And I said, yeah. And so I said but let me ask you a couple of questions first and I get a little background on this guy and I'm trying to get a little beat on what's going on and I said well listen how long has he been sober now again and she says well probably two maybe three weeks and I say well what's his AA guy saying? He said oh well he can't go back to AA I said excuse me and he said oh they told him in AA he couldn't go back until he was sober for 30 days. I mean, come on guys. Does that, does that drive you? I mean can you, does it sound like something that we should be telling people and that we see this stuff all the time? I don't, I don' t. Why do I mention any of this stuff guys? I mention this stuff because out in AA land worldwide there's just some crazy stuff going on. There's just, just some craziness. In Australia 98% of every meeting in Australia is what they call an ID meeting. It's just a meeting where we share how we got there. Now, you notice I didn't say we're sharing our solution to how we get clear of alcoholism. 98% of every one of the meetings in Australia is an ID meet-up where we just share how he got here. We tell our war story. That's it. Can you imagine how tedious and painful that got after a while? Hearing the same story over and over and over and I'm not making light of it. We all better have a good story but there better be more you see there better be more let me tell you a quick story yeah okay um ah well okay I'll yeah I'll tell you this story okay um so this is the easiest story for you to misinterpret and this is the reason why I'm always a little cautious but it points It's a great finger to what we're going to talk about this weekend. I did a talk in another part of Texas. That's all I'm going to tell you because they'll kill me if they find me. But we were in another parts of Texas, and it's a rural area, and everybody wears cutoffs and shorts. It's in the heat of the summer, and nobody dresses up. Tank tops is the rule of the day. And I pull up to this place. It's the middle of nowhere, and I pull into this place 40 minutes early, and a guy pulls into the parking lot about the same time I do. He unlocks the thing, walks in ahead of me, and he just keeps walking all the way through the place and walks out the back door. And as I walk in the front door dressed just like this, he kind of just does like this with his hand like this and just walks outthe back door Now, I'm sitting in this clubhouse I've never been to before, empty. It's just me sitting in there. Ten minutes drifts into 15, 20, 25 minutes like this. I'm just sitting there all by myself. Pretty soon another couple of guys come in, a couple of old dudes come in. And they're sitting over here, and they just kind of wave like this. And I kind of waved back like that. But nobody's talking to me. Nobody's saying anything. Now, they said a couple of words to themselves, but they weren't directing anything to me, and I'm just kindof sitting there reading my big book, acting a fool, and feeling really, really hung out. Well, we're ten minutes before the meeting's supposed to start, and the room's starting to fill up just a little bit like this, and this girl walks in, and she's got this great big plastic doll. You heard me, a big plastic dog. And she walks in and she sits over here like this and she sits down at a table catty-corner across from where I am, and she just starts dressing this doll. It's got a little big fluffy dress-like thing, and she's playing with that dress and like this kind of stuff. And then I go, look over here, and she is walking this doll on the table like this, and I'm thinking, man, you don't see this in AA every day. And about that time, another lady walks in, a larger version of that girl. I'm think it's a mother-daughter deal, but I'm not sure. And she's got her doll under her arm, and she walks in like this and they've got different dresses on and they're talking a little bit. Now, you guys, nobody else over here is talking to me. I'm just sitting here like this trying to ignore them actually. Pretty soon, guys, there's not a sound in this room. The only thing that you can hear in that room is this sound which are these little plastic feet hitting the table where they're walking them on the tabletop and then they start talking doll talk back and forth to each other. So it's in this dead silent room you hear this, like this. And I'm just going, I mean the hair is standing up on the back of my neck and I'm juste thinking, this is the creepiest thing. I know some, I can tell by your faces that some of you guys are just saying, you shouldn't judge people. Hold that thought, okay? So, ten minutes after eight, they still haven't announced anything. I'm still listening to this crap. Nobody's saying anything to me like this. And I'm getting pissed. And I want to, I'm get ready to leave. And this guy finally stands up and he said, well, we were supposed to have a speaker tonight. And I looked at him like this and I don't know whether to bitch slap him and leave or whether to just do it like this and I just looked at Him and I said, I bet that's me. And He goes, okay. And He sits down. He didn't even, I mean, you guys understand there was no opening. There was no prayer. There was not anything else. There was just this. And I get up and I do my talk. And then I left, and nobody said thanks. Nobody said anything. I mean, it was just like, I've got to tell you, that was the night that the term spank-a-thon got invented. It was a bloodbath in that room because it needed to be bloody in thatroom. I'm telling you, I know some of you guys are going, well, in AA we can do whatever we want to. You keep thinking that, and then you keep paying attention to how many people die, and you will stop thinking that. you will realize that sometimes things happen in AA that shouldn't happen in AAA. Now, hold that thought, okay? Because we're going to get back to this thing in a much nicer way here in just a minute. I promise you. We're done with the uncomfortable part. As you judge me mercifully for judging them. But listen to this. Somebody sent me this the other day. This was an op-ed piece out of Playboy magazine. They didn't even send the rest of the magazine. They just sent me one stinking sheet with a picture of Bill Wilson on it, and that was all I got. I'm not going to read you the whole thing like this, but what I'm trying to do, I'm going to set this thing up so you can see where we're going with this thing, okay? So here's what it says. It's an op-ed piece that this lady wrote, Melba somebody or another. She's an idiot. And the title of this thing is called Twelve Steps to Nowhere, okay ? And what it is, it's just a judgment of Alcoholics Anonymous. And so this guy calls me and says, how dare they say these things? And so I read through the article. I'm going to read you three highlights in here. Of course, it leads off with Charlie Sheen's rant about AA. We know how much we love him. He says, I was shackled and oppressed by the cult of AA for 22 years. He told radio host Alec Jones, it's vintage, outdated, and stupid, and it's followed by stupid people. Okay, that was the first one. And then skipping on down, it says they read from the big book, recite the 12 steps, talk about their jobs, money and relationships or lack thereof. They believe such public therapy is necessary to keep alcohol cunning, baffling, powerful at bay. And then it's it's switched over there to the other side. It said diabetics don't spend three nights a week talking about their childhood and marriage and other diabetcs. But that's essentially how AA treats addiction. And then lastly, AA is a remedy designed for the population that does not have good judgment. It just got worse. There was stuff in there I didn't read like this. I know, but look, every one of you guys get creeped out by hearing that about our fellowship, right? Okay, follow me. Just hang with me for just a second. How much of this do we as a fellowship have to own? Sheen and those knuckleheads didn't make this stuff up. They experienced it. You understand what I'm saying? This is the reason why collectively as a fellowship, collectively, worldwide, we need to check ourselves and see what it is that we're doing. Are we on task doing what we're supposed to be doing, giving people a clear message of recovery like the first 100 did when they wrote the big book? Or have we turned our fellowship into some freewheeling therapy session which helps few? I'm not trying to be this isn't some kind of drive-by guilting I'm trying to get us to see how much of it is real now listen, let me go back to the doll story seriously, because I've had a long time I mean I had 200 miles to drive on my way back home after that talk and so I'm tooling through the Texas countryside listening to some preacher out of South Carolina that I love and I'm just kind of listening and thinking in my head about what I just heard with those dolls and that experience and I decided I'm not supposed to judge those guys I'm also not supposed to do it it's not my job I gave up judgment a long time ago and it all sounded great and it sounded great right up into the point that my oldest daughter called and said she was in trouble and she needed help in this fellowship and then guys it got real personal you understand what I'm saying if your grandkid or your daughter or your kid or your cousin or nephew, some family member decides to come into AA, what meeting do you want them in? What if my daughter Sarah had walked into the goofy doll meeting? You see what I'm saying? I mean... If you can't see the problem with that, then we have a problem. What I'm hoping is though is that you can see the problematic. Listen, the way to fix it, I'm telling you right now, the way to fix it is to simply be accountable within your own frame of reference to do what the book asks us to do. Be willing to study. Be willingto learn. Be willingtodo what we need to do to carry a clear message of recovery to the other guys. We'll work through it, I promise you. I promiseyou. Cliff Bishop in that living room finally his little wife Elaine got so uncomfortable that she got up and left later years later Elaine Bishop would become my Al-Anon sponsor and she told me that meeting in the living room with that little family room with Clifford and me was the single most uncomfortable meeting that she'd ever been in I mean she's sitting there knitting or reading or something I don't remember what she was doing over there like this but she said watching me squirm as I tried to talk my way out of this stuff was the worst. And I get it. I mean, I understand it now because I've got guys that I sponsor that try that same kind of stuff all the time. Clifford said, I want you at a meeting on Thursday night if you want to do this, come on and study and we will. And I did. I showed up on a Thursday night and I'm sitting right over there listening and I judged you mercilessly. If you had a big book in front of you, I judged like nothing you've ever seen in your whole life. I hated your guts because you were uppity, self-righteous, big book thumpers. I didn't know you personally. I didn' t know who you were or what you stood for or anything. I didn''t know any of this. All I knew is what I had learned in AA. Stay away from those big book thumpers and you'll get drunk if you hang with those guys. Am I the only guy that ever heard that? It's the craziest thing in the whole wide world. You take a bunch of guys that want to take some responsibility and learn and do what we do like this, and you're judged and ridiculed in your own fellowship. And it needs to stop. It needs to start. There is some ugliness among big book thumpers, and we're going to talk about that tomorrow, and we'll nip it in the bud, and it will never happen again, and you will be free of that kind of scrutiny. I promise you. We're going deal with that specifically. But Dr. Bill in the 60s wrote this letter. I want to read this little piece to you here. By the 60's, the discussion meeting has been introduced to AA. We're approaching the early 70s when the Hughes Act would unleash 6,000 treatment centers. Things were getting ready to change dramatically within AA land. And Bill already saw the ugliness of where a lot of this stuff was going. Remember in those days everything came back through Bill Wilson, either through telephone or letters. Everything came back though the foundation in New York. And so he saw what was happening to the fellowship, That what started out to be fairly ferocious was ending up fairly domesticated and not too effective and things were getting just kind of wheels off, groups doing things that didn't even resemble AA. And he saw that. And so he wrote this letter. It's reprinted in two or three different places. I pulled this one out of an old grapevine. And it says, it's called Whose Responsibility? An AA group as such cannot take on all the personal problems of its members, let alone those of non-alcoholics in the world around us. The AA group is not, for example, a mediator of domestic relations, nor does it furnish personal financial aid to anyone. So for you guys that have went broke loaning money to drunks like me, Bill Wilson was saying, let's rethink this. We may not need to be doing this. There may be another way. Though a member may sometimes be helped by such matters by his friends in AA, the primary responsibility for the solutions of all of his problems of living and growing rests squarely upon the individual himself. Now, should an AA group attempt this sort of help, its effectiveness and energies would be hopelessly dissipated. And here it is, the last little piece that I want you to hear. This is why sobriety, freedom from alcohol, through the teaching and practice of AA's 12 steps, is the sole purpose of the group. If we don't stick to this cardinal principle, we shall almost certainly collapse. And if we collapse, we cannot help anyone. See? Bill Wilson in 66 was trying to move us slowly back in line with what we came to do, which was to carry a common solution to the suffering alcoholic sitting in our meeting. They never figured that we were going to turn it into a junior therapy session, that we Were going to spend 90% of our meetings in Texas talking about stuff we don't have any business talking about in the first place. Somewhere along the line, guys, what's happened is that we've usurped our authority as sponsors to the group. So instead of the people that we sponsor bringing the things that are important to them to discuss in sponsorship confidentially, they dump it in a meeting. Because isn't that what we're taught? If you leave with a problem, if you don't dump it into a meeting, you'll just leave with that problem or something. It's been shortened and cleaned up, but that's the point. You understand. It's that same kind of deal. And I think that the solution to everything that we do in AA, the solution to everything that seems tarnished in AA could be effectively changed through strong sponsorship. And so our job here and from now on is to slowly but surely move ourselves around so that we can stand a little taller, understand a little more, and get ourselves a little bit more in line with what the first 100 carried to us in the basic text in 1939. And as we begin to do that, we begin to see that the success rates will go back up to where they were. That we'll have a clearer shot at helping folks. And we won't have so many people leaving. Remember guys, worldwide less than 10% of us are staying sober. It's pretty far down from 50% or 90% from some of the places that we're keeping specs. At the worst it was 50%. But it didn't take a mental whiz of which I am not one, to know that 10% and 50% don't even look like each other. Terrible, terrible. Clifford would take me into this deal, and over the next three or four weeks of going to those meetings, I would be transformed by the kindness and dedication of a bunch of men and women who understood the value of studying the text. And what would happen would be is that I would be transformed by this this uh this information it was it was not so much that i would be just book smart but i wouldbe ready to get out there and carry a message of recovery we're going to talk about that stuff tomorrow um um so that we can get a clear run at this thing um i remember calling chris one time and i told him i said chris i said i know this sounds weird um this is like a month after i started going to primary purpose and i said I know this sounds weird, but man, I'm feeling like a beginner. I mean, I like a new guy again. And he said, can you make that a little clearer? And I said, yeah, it's like pink cloud. And he started laughing and he said yeah, so? And I went, I know, but I mean pink clouds are for beginners. I've been sober seven years. And He said, let's make sure we got this straight. You have not been sober for seven years, you've been dry for seven years, and you've become nuttier than a squirrel turd, and And you just, you're not sober. Besides that, what's wrong with the pink cloud experience? He said, you know, if you played your cards right, you could actually feel like this the rest of your life. Guys, I remember, I was sitting at the bindery in Dallas and I remember hanging up the phone and I'm just looking across the room. I've always shared an office with my wife who's my business partner and the smart one. And and and and Landa was looking at me and she said, are you OK? And I said, yeah, I'm OK. I just there's just something Chris just said. And I just I can't from where I was a month ago to where I am right now. And he says, based on what he is understanding in his experience, that I could actually maintain this the rest of my life. And I'm going, listen, this is I just can't believe that that's true. And the reality of this deal is that was 17, what, seven, 18 years ago. and I can tell you it's true. It's absolutely true. You can get up every morning and look at the ceiling and smile and go hot damn! Another day! How cool! Another day to go help somebody. Another day to be effective in somebody else's life. Guys, collectively we're the world's biggest takers. We've been taken since the day we drew our first breath. I'm telling you right now we're this most selfish self-centered people on the face of God's green and to be in a position where our life is so transformative that we could actually get out there and do for others to an extent that we can not only affect change, but in a lot of times save lives. It's pretty heady stuff. It's prety amazing to think about this stuff. Anyhow, the game plan is this. Come back in the morning and what we're going to do is we're gonna slide off into some step stuff and what we are going to do is we are gonna do this thing through the eyes of sponsorship and we are gong to answer those questions so that you would know and understand what you are going to do when somebody comes walking through that door for the first time and needs help so that there is no ambivalence there is not looking the other way hoping that somebody else will get him you understand we do this worldwide And in our group, let me tell you something, guys. There's 250 people in that meeting on a Tuesday night. On a slow night, we'll have 220 people in there. And it's a big old, big old study. And within an hour of that meeting, I'm facing like this looking at the door. And my guys that I sponsor are in there and they're talking and they'RE greeting people and we'RE talking to other folks like this. And if a guy walks in that I don't know, my head mentally does this, 1001, 1002. And I don' t care who I'm talking to, whether it's a guy sponsor or whether it' s somebody else in the group. It doesn' t make any difference. I' m watching him. And if somebody doesn' d get him in three seconds, he' s mine. I' ll go get him. And you better not get in my way either. I gave you three seconds. I gave You a three-second lead to get to him and You didn' t do it. And I' M going to get him because I' am telling you right now, guys, there are some things that we' re going to talk about tomorrow. I can tell you right now, people don't come to meetings to read a big book before the meeting. They read a Big Book before the Meeting because they're lonely. They're hung out. They need some kindness. So let's go give them some of that kindness, you see? Guys, don't go in looking at the floor. Remember how hard it was when you walked into your first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous? I mean, years removed, we get real aloof. We got our buds. We can talk about golf. We can talke about all these things. There are a million things that we can talk abut. I'm watching this guy right here. I've been fired so many times by guys going, you know, I just don't like the way you treat me in a meeting. Well, screw you. I don't care. I'm telling you right now, once you draw a sober breath, your responsibility is to go get that brand new guy. And you know that. I'm the most successful man in the world. You can call me from 430 in the morning when I get up until I go to bed at night. You can called me anytime. You can stop by my shop 24-7 when I'm there. I'm talking to drunks all day long. But at that meeting, it's let's go get them time. You see what I'm saying? And so what I want, what I am hoping to do, guys, is to get everybody feeling that same way. If we can get everybody to have a little bit more intensity inside to help the suffering drunk that's dying out there, we'll have more people staying. Dig? And could anything be sweeter than that? I love you guys. Y'all show back up in the morning and we'll do this, okay? Thanks. All right. Let's give another round of applause and thank both John and Myers for sharing their experience. We look forward till tomorrow learning about the steps to take for permanent sobriety. We kick off the workshop tomorrow promptly at 9 a.m., but please arrive at 8.30 to enjoy breakfast and get a good seat. Quickly, those that have worked the 12 steps and have the time and willingness to sponsor, please raise your hands high. And anybody who is looking for a sponsor, please see one of us after the meeting. I would like to quickly remind everyone of the new Big Book Study Group Primary Purpose Group in Mission Viejo, which has its first meeting next Friday evening, January the 27th. It starts at 7 p.m. Flyers and information is on the table, or please see Vance Beckner if you have any questions. Oh, I was supposed to ask somebody to read something, and I didn't. Does anybody want to read? Okay. I have asked Stacy to read the 10-step promises starting at the bottom of page 84, top paragraph on page 85. We need a book, too. Sorry. All right, so page 84 to the top paragraph on 85. So 84, right here. We have seized everything. Mm-hmm. Right. All the way down, right? Yeah. Yep. Okay. My name is Stacy and I'm a recovered alcoholic. Hey, Stacy. And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone, even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes. That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it. Neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality, safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition. all right thank you stacy um all right grab someone's hand and we'll say the lord's prayer thank you