The Responsibility of a Sponsor to Stop Playing Junior Therapist – Myers R.

You guys, see my little Iceland t-shirt in that groovy? I don't know whether I was happier this morning just to get warm or to get a shower. Finally, you know, my luggage got lost and I saw I'd come walking in so I actually have clothes to change into so I can hug you guys again and I was so nervous last night. People said, here, let me hug you and I'm just going, 38 hours of traveling with no shower and no brush teeth, and I was going, oh, this is not good. For you guys I haven't met, my name is Myers Raymer, and Iím an alcoholic. And Iím a member of the Primary Purpose Group of Dallas, Texas, and my sobriety date is January 15th, 88. And I canít tell you, I can hardly wait until in the morning to talk because Iím blown away by how many of you guys I remember from the last time I was here a couple years ago and it's not that you're all great guys but what it is is that you are here still anytime people stay in AA, NACA any of our 12 step fellowships I'm always just delighted because you can see the thing working it's always my great fear to know that there would be some of us out there as cold as it was last night and this thought that there were people out there on the street doing what we do on the street, it just breaks my heart. And the fact that you're here this morning and warm is real comforting to me. The stuff that we're talking about this morning, I want to do a little clerical work here and make sure that we are all gathered up here. We are talking about unity and 12-step work and sponsorship and these kind of things. And I am going to talk for about 30 minutes and 25 minutes or so and then we are going to take a fast smoke break, smoke a butt real quick, everybody can come back in again. Brian is going to share for a few minutes and then we're going to do a Q&A deal. And so if you've got questions, this guy was talking Icelandic a minute ago and he may have been saying exactly what I just said. It just dawned on me. He may have said all that. I don't know. You know, God didn't just tap me on the shoulder weeks ago and say, say, Myers, I want you to go to Iceland and straighten them sumbitches out. He didn't say that. But no matter where I go, no matter what country we're in, no matter who I am around AA stuff, I am often terrifically caught off guard by how our fellowship as a whole has slidden sideways around certain issues. issues. I used to hear these old timers, we'll talk about this a little bit in the morning, but I used here these old-timers all the time talk about, well you know wherever that circling triangle on the door, God's there too. And I used believe that lock, stock and barrel for a bunch of years, but you know I'm not sure I do anymore. I'm not sure i do. What I believe is that God would like to be there, would dearly love to be there in those those rooms. But the arrogance and the sickness, we call them toxic meetings, these things, some of our meetings have just gotten so sick that I think God would rather be fishing someplace. God says, see you guys, I think god comes to Iceland because he's so sick of the United States he could scream, you know? It's just like, don't get me started. So here's the deal. Kip was hitting on it dead on a minute ago. There's this assumption that we must be kind and gentle to the guys that got here, the new guys. We've got to scoop them up, hug them, love on them, tell them everything's going to be groovy. Well, we can tell them that and it may be, but we also have at the same time, we have to start beginning to teach these guys what it's like to be sober members of Alcoholics Anonymous and quit leaving it to chance because the chance may come where they may not get it because they're so sick and they're so headstrong and they are so full of what? Selfishness and self-centeredness. That we think is the root of our problem. They're so full themselves that they can't get well. And there's where we run into the problem. And collectively as a fellowship, we allow this stuff to go. People brand new are allowed to sit in meetings and spew all kinds of bizarre nonsense and we just ignore them. We just sit back. Well, the new guy that's sitting in the meeting here detoxing, he's listening to this stuff. Day one in the meet-up, what have we got? We've got guys that don't know the solution teaching new guys that are detoxing in our meeting what they think the solution is. And it's no wonder we get so sick. It's no matter things get so convoluted and bizarre and people, you know, a week into the deal, they're not doing anything. You guys have seen this. Every one of you in here has experienced exactly what I'm talking about. The two areas that get abused the most in this deal are around the areas of 12-step work. Oh, oh, I couldn't do any of that. I'm not well enough. Okay, you selfish jerk. That area and the area of sponsorship. You see? See, now I'll tell you a common thread. We'll talk about this stuff this morning. We'll talked about it again in the morning for sure. I've never done a talk that we didn't talk about this thing. What is the common thread that keeps every drunk and every addict clear of working with others and sponsorship? Because those two things are sort of joined at the hip. They're different and their responsibilities are different but they're basically the same kind of deal. They're joint. But what's the common common thread in the reason why we don't do this stuff. When you guys got here, what is the one thing you didn't want to do? I don't wantto do 12-step work and I don' t want to be a sponsor because I am afraid. Deep down inside, I know some of you arrogant little piss ants don't think that you are, but I'm telling you, the common thread is I'm afraid. I don''t want to do this because I don ''t know for sure what. There's this huge dose of anxiety Anxiety around the whole deal. Do I really know how to sponsor somebody? Do I Really Know How to Sponsor Somebody? Do I Realty Know How To? And if you'll take that thread of thought and carry it back, it always goes back to this same thing. Do I realty think and know that I have worked that work and have had that spiritual experience? If you've got a big book, and you better all have a bigbook, don't you show up up here without a big... go to in our book it's on 50 page 60 wherever the steps are look at step 12 and i'm going to read this to you and then i want to bust this one little piece down having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs we've read it a million times right but look at this having had a spiritual awakening as the result of These Steps pretend that comma there is a period period, new sentence, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics. What's the message that we're trying to carry guys? That we'd had a spiritual experience as a result of these steps. So the next common thread is, have I had this spiritual experience? Ah, there's what we don't want to talk about, you see. see? Oh, yeah. I understand that, guys. Listen, I'm telling you, you guys that know me and have heard me talk before know that I come from a background of middle-of-the-road solution. I was seven years in this deal trying to recover and not being able to. I'm seven years in this thing, and I'm suicidal, and i'm batshit crazy, and you know I'm just a fruitcake because nobody would hold me accountable to do the work. Nobody would make me do what I'm supposed to do. And so at seven years sober, I get hooked in with this guy, this crusty old guy, and he starts taking me through the work Now, the very first question that he implied when we started talking was, have you had a spiritual experience as a result of doing this work? And I'll remember it like it was yesterday. I went, well, Cliff, you know there are many types of spiritual experiences and he's just looking at me like this I mean this guy on one level this man loves me a great deal and on the other level he's going I'd rather be taking a crap right now than listening to you run your mouth you know and I'm trying to play hip slick and cool AA guy guy. And his patience is wearing real thin because I keep trying to give him my psycho crap that I picked up in all these goofy discussion meetings. I'm trying to dazzle this guy and he's sitting here scratching his head and finally he says, Myers, stop. Let's see if we understand something here. For seven years you've been trying to do this and you've not been successful. You haven't had a drink or done any drugs but you're suicidal, you can't hold a job, your wife's getting ready ready to leave you. All areas of your life are crumbling at your feet, and yet in your arrogance you want to tell me all of this crap. And I'm going, well that about sums it up, I guess. It does. That about sums het up. And so what I had to do was do what he suggested, which was shut up and listen and begin to ask Ask hard questions. And Cliff Bishop, and I'll bust his anonymity, and I'm never sorry when I do it, and guess what? I'll burst it again in the morning when we talk. Because this thing of accountability, the very first thing that we need to do as members of this deal, let me make sure I don't get long. The very first things we need do on this deal is to get some cojones, get some balls. We need to get some strength about us, about what we're doing and quit being so afraid that we're going to offend some busted up drunk that comes in here. We're not. Guys I'm telling you right now there's a common thread and collectively it is this. Everybody that comes to this deal that has not worked the work has no clue what a spiritual experience is. They don't know and they need somebody to tell them what it is. And you're the guy or you're the woman. Tell them what they need to do. This crap of letting people twist and turn and bounce around in our fellowships and all of us are praying that they're going to make it and yet why should they make it? Why should they? Most of our meetings have gotten toxic and there's no solution there anymore because we're too busy talking about Sally's divorce or Joe's lack of being able to get a job or or we're just talking crap all day long, and why should they recover? Let's ask ourselves the question first. Have I as an individual had a spiritual experience as a result of doing that work? If I have, then what are my responsibilities to AA? To go scoop some cats up and go work with these guys. Let's go help somebody. On page 132 there's a little paragraph down at the very bottom and it says we have recovered and been given the power to help others. The illusion with every one of us is, I'll never be good enough to help anybody. I'll Never Be Smart Enough, I'll Ever Be Bright Enough, I'llNeverBeQuickEnoughOnMyFeet, I'llEverBeBlahBlahBlaW, you just fill in the blank. Listen, if my buddy over here can do it, I'm telling you, we can all do that. Most of you guys have heard stories. I'm not busting any man, I know him, I love the guy, I've known him for years. it's the truth we've been given the power to help other people and we need to stop making excuses why we're not out there on the firing line helping somebody well I gotta wait till I get all this stuff done listen guys we have this illusion that what we need to do is we call it in my group we call het the trinity the job the girl in the car I gotta get all these three things set up first and once I get these three things done then I can go help a drunk on. Don't do this, don't do this. Any of you guys ever work with a guy coming out of treatment? In the States our treatment stuff is generally 27 days and it's usually expensive. The guys are dropping $20,000, $25,000 on a 27 day stay in a hospital and it is funny when you go talk to the treatment center guys and you got them in a room collectively and you are going through this stuff and you got this guy right here, I will pick on him, Tomorrow I'll pick on somebody else, tonight I'll pick on you. He's in treatment and he's been there for five days. He's all busted up, he's just come off the Thorazine and stuff and now he's just in full reality of where he is and what he's doing, man. And so he knows he's got 20 days to cool his, 25 days or so left to cool His jets in treatment, right? And so He's willing, He said, I'll do anything, man, I'll du anything I can to stay sober. Great. We're going to work through this work as best we can while you're in here. We're going to do what we can to see if we can't get you on a straight and narrow. I'm ready, man. I'm already. And he is. And He just blows and goes for about two weeks. Now, we're five days from Him getting out of treatment. And you go back in and you see Him? He's a completely different guy. It's like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Because guess what? During the night, you know what He started thinking about? Was it God? Was it service of others? Was It AA? Nuh-uh. What He got to thinking about was the Trinity. The job, the girl, and the car. And And I'm telling you guys, this is classic stuff here. For the next five days, this man will think of nothing else except the job, the girl, and the car. That's it. All he's thinking about was, I've got to get out of here, and I've Got to get this job. And then when I get the job. Then I can get the car thing. And then When I Get the Car Thing Here. Then I Can Get the Girl Back. Because I Can't Get the Girls Without the Car. See, in Texas, you can't do crap without a car. It's too spread out. It's Too Spread Out. So You've Got To Have a Car. And then we may convolute it a little bit. I've got to throw the house in there, I've gotta get the house back and I've Gotta Get This Thing and then we're all focused on this stuff. I've Got Things, I've Gotcha Makeup for All This Lost Time. I've Spent All These Years Drinking and Drugging and Acting a Fool and I Gotta Get It All Collected Up. Oh, don't do this. Don't. What I had to do as a good solid sponsor and a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous I'm gonna take that knucklehead and we're gonna stand outside and I'm going to grab him around the head just like this and I'll give him a little noogie thing and I'm going to go, stop it. Don't do this. You're getting ready to screw up 20 days of hard work on this thing because of your own fear and anxiety. Stop doing this. God's got everything under control. The job, the girl in the car, everything that you've wanted plus some. And what makes you think at 20 years, 20 daysof being sober that you know what you need anyway? Which is true, you know? Most of us know so very little and we limit our whole lives down to these little minute things and we want everything all clean and boxed up when God's got these grand plans and He's just saying, buddy, get out of the damn way. If you'll just move, I'll deal with this stuff, man. I'm going to bring you a killer woman and a great job and a Great Bitchin' Car and all this stuff. It's all right there, but you've got to get outoftheway, man, you see? And so my job as a sponsor... Here's the Reader's Digest condensed version of sponsorship. My job as a sponsor is to make sure that he does get out of the way, that he doesn't get in the way of me. That he does stay clear of his own self and his own selfish interest in this deal. Chapter 7, Working with Others in the book, goes into great detail about how to 12-step somebody. And there's all kinds of information gleaned there about what our responsibilities are in helping a new guy get into this work and then get through this work. We've taken on a great deal. I think a lot of the fear about sponsorship and 12-step work comes on on the stuff that we've added to this process. We've brought all these other deals in here. I've got to play junior therapist, so I'm sponsoring a guy, and he's got bipolar issues. Who am I to give this guy information on bipolar disease and manic depressive stuff? I'm no doctor. Why should I think that God gave me the wisdom to know how to deal with this cat's meds? Isn't that stupid? And yet every one of us seems to want to do that. We gravitate in there. I know some of you are going, I've never done that. Oh, okay. How about when he had legal problems? How much time did you spend trying to give him advice on his legal problems?" Yeah. I know. I've been there too. And the guy walks out of the room at the end of the conversation and I'm sitting there in a room all by myself going, what the hell do I know about the law? What am I doing giving this guy legal advice and giving him... You know, same thing with relationships. Same thing with money. Same thing with finances. Same thing with... You guys get the drill. What I want you to do is sometime when you don't have anything else to do, get your big book out and you go back in and you look at everything from let's say page 85 over to page 164. Go through the rest of the book and see if you can show me where it tells me in black and white that I'm supposed to shoulder those responsibilities. It ain't in there. I'm going to save you a bunch of time and effort, okay? It's not in there It is not our job. It's not our responsibility in any form or fashion. That's God's biz. We are not bankers. We are NOT lawyers. We are Not doctors. We areNot psychiatrists. We're not... Please, stop trying to play junior therapist with these guys. Let God do what God's supposed to be doing. Let's go ahead and get these guys ganged up. We have one responsibility. My responsibility to that man is to make sure that he gets through that work work so that he gets to God as quickly as he can, there's where my responsibility begins and ends. Because once he's plugged into God, remember the book tells us in like three places in the first 25 pages of the book that we've placed ourselves beyond human aid, which means that my sponsor's not keeping me sober, my group's not keeping Me sober, My preacher's not Keeping Me sober. My wife's not. You know the drill. No man or woman is going to keep Me sober no external external circumstance is going to keep me sober. My sobriety is going to come from a God of my understanding that I'm going to reach and reaffirm and connect with through the process of working the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. So that's what I got to do when he starts crawfishing and says he doesn't want to work the steps my job is to make damn sure he does or dust his ass and send him on. See ya nothing personal you know but you see when you do that when you take all this other stuff and you scrape it off out of the way and you get it all back here like this and you look at the clear-cut message of what my responsibilities are as a sponsor, it becomes fairly easy to see and do. And a lot of the anxiety and the responsibility goes away. If I know I don't have to deal with this guy's bipolar issues, it makes it real simple. You see? What I can suggest he do is, go call a physician. If his meds are screwed up, let's go see if we can get you hooked up with somebody else. But it's not my responsibility to give you all this advice. We're all clear on that, right? We come into contact with this so often and that it's just mind-boggling. There's nothing wrong with... Let me mention this real quick, and then I'll slow this thing down. We'll take a smoke break. This deal of qualifying a drunk, why is this stuff so offensive? I run across this so often in Texas and in the groups that I get to go see. We get all goofy around this idea of qualifying the drunk. Those statistics that Kip gave just a minute ago, 80-90% of people stayed sober up through about 1955. After 1955, things started kind of going down the toilet. 12 and 12 was written, which kind of watered things down a little bit. We thought it was going to help, but it really got things a little convoluted. And then by the 60s, things got pretty bizarre. By the 70s and 80s in the United States, AA had become a cesspool of bizarre ideas that were guaranteed, they used to call it second stage recovery and all this other crap. And it was just horse crap is what it was. It was work guaranteed to confuse and befuddle. And as a consequence, fewer and fewer people stayed sober for any length of time and the quality of the sobriety was not what it should have been. And there were people getting sober, guys, I'm not saying that, But there were people still, you know, staying plugged into the steps too during that period of time. But the vast majority of us stopped doing that and things got pretty convoluted. And that's why – see AA, alcoholism has not changed any in 70 years. It hadn't changed any In thousands of years. But I mean since the beginning in 1939 of this thing or when the big book was written, we'll use that as our starting point, drunks have not changed anything nor have drug addicts or anything else, but it's just, but our program has. We're not giving this clear-cut message anymore like what we used to. But a lot of what happens is that we stop qualifying guys. When they come in, in the old day, they used to be qualified immediately. Somebody would say, why are you here? And they'd say, well, I'm a drunk. Oh, are you? Well, tell me about it. And they talk and they're going to qualify this guy. See, today we could take these guys straight to page 44 and we could ask those two questions on page 44 and qualify this guy and find out, are you a real drunk or not? We're going to find out if this cat's a recreational, if we're an N.A. or C.A., we're goingto find outif this guy's arecreational drug user or if he's a real deal addict. Guys, I've got to ask you from a purely selfish standpoint, we're all busy people. And if you have a recreational drug user and you're in N. A. or C. A., why do you want to spend a bunch of time carrying this cat through the work if he's not an addict? By the same token, if you're an alcoholic and you're a busy alcoholic, why would you want to spend weeks of your time working with and carrying a guy through the work that's not a real drunk? Statistically, the vast majority of people that come to AA today are not alcoholic. They are not. They are heavy drinkers and problem drinkers that have a blowtorch right on their butt. They're in trouble. The wifey poo says, says i'm not i'm gonna i'm going to break it off in you if you come home drunk again i mean it just it's just or the law the legal system has said you're going to jail if you get drunk again or or are the medical guys say man you're gonna you're in trouble medically if you keep drinking this kind of these these that's what what sends so many people to our fellowship but because we don't qualify anymore we have fellowships rooms full of um we did this as a it was a kind of fun You'll get a kick out of this story. I didn't get a kick out of it. I wept for two days when we did it. There was a small group in our area and we had taken that group collectively like this. I got to know a bunch of these guys that started that group. They had probably 40 or 50 core members of the group and they had a lot of visitors that came and it was just one of those glad hand kind of groups. People laughing, joking around like this but there was no solution. They deal and we did the deal. And then at the end of it, I said, look, guys, I want to do something and I'm not doing this to embarrass anybody. But what I want to do is just for the sake of this example, I want to qualify each and every one of you on an individual basis and find out what we find out. They said groovy, no sweat, let's do that. And so I took each individual guy there. There were 42 people there that night and I went, I took each one of those guys into a side room. I just stepped in. I had my book, my big book out, turned to page 44 and I read those two paragraphs right there. If when you honestly want want to, can you stop? We're talking about the power of choice and control. We'll talk about it some in the morning. And I ask them the two questions. Next, next, next. The whole thing didn't take me 20 minutes. They drank coffee while I did it. We get done with the deal, come back out like this, guess what? 42 core members of that group, 10 alcoholics. That's it. That'sit. The rest of them were just heavy drinkers that were there because because they got in trouble. They weren't real alcoholics. Now listen, you think they were surprised? Yeah. The guys that I qualified that we talked to, God damn, I mean, they're going like, man, I said, well, how did you get here? How do you know you're an alcoholic? The judge said I was. My wife said I wasn't drunk, so I had to come. Guys, remember, the problem drinker, the heavy drinker and the alcoholic drink exactly alike. the differences only materialize when we try to stop. If you can quit drinking on a non-spiritual basis, you're not an alcoholic. This is the facts of the deal, guys. I didn't make this stuff up. People always want to jam me up after a talk and take exception with this, that. I didn'T make it up. I'm just explaining to you what I've learned as a result of going through this stuff. So if we have collectively a fellowship that followed those same deals there, you're looking at like what? what? 50% of the people that are in AA are not real drunks. They're just guys that got in trouble. Why is that an issue? It's a real issue on the second generation. You can come in here, I don't care if you're drunk or not, you can come here and sit all you want to. It's not affecting me in the least. Let me tell you when it starts affecting me though. When this man and this man start working together as sponsors, he says, would you help me with the work? And he starts carrying him through it. At some point in time in this, the non-alcoholic will go, you know, no, the reality is I didn't work any of these steps and I've stayed sober all this time. Or he goes, hey, look, man, dude, I don't care if you take six months to work this work. It's okay. Hell, take a year. It's Okay. Because he didn't need to. See, he's not a chronic... The disease is not chronic in his life. There is no desperation of a drowning man. Right? And so that's how it gets all convoluted. So now you've got a non-alcoholic sponsoring a guy who is a real drunk. monk. There is no fellowship, there's no contact, there is no connection there. And so we wonder why this man is struggling so bad to stay sober. Why he's slipping and sliding like a big dog and he can't do what he's doing. He's just chronically relapsing. The solution was never there, man. He didn't get the solution, he didn't even get the message from the guy that was working with him. I've got to clarify this. Did this man love him any less? No. No. I'm telling you what, guys. Our fellowship is full of men and women who love each other dramatically. The first seven years I was in this deal, those men and woman loved me like nothing you've ever seen in your whole life. But the reality is the first two sponsors I had weren't drunks. They were heavy drinkers hiding out in AA. They came. They liked the coffee. They liked it. They liked to fellowship. They stayed. But buddy, they never held me accountable to do anything. And if I wanted to share some horse crap I'd picked up someplace, they let me. They let me if I didn't want to do that inventory. No, I don't worry about it. It's OK. You're here, aren't you? You're sober today, aren'T you? I want to weep not for me, but for the men and women, the men that I tried to sponsor the first seven years that I was sober because we're just like parrots, aren' t we? We just transmit what we've been taught. And so I'm taught a bunch of middle-of-the-road stuff. I'm a card-carrying member of that club. I'm the poster boy of middle of the road solution. And that's what I teach my guys. And so to tie it all up, that's why I'm here today. That's what the whole thing is about. What we need to do is change AA one man at a time. We need to take in one woman at a Time. You women who are struggling mightily in this deal because there's no strong women, find you a strong woman. Pray for it. God will bring that woman into your life. You hang on to her for dear life. And as you get strong, you go out and start sponsoring some. And what we'll do is we'll end up with these guys, these little groups building within other groups of strong men and women doing this stuff. And you will be so excited. Once you begin to experience AA on that level, nothing in your life will be unchanged. Everything will be affected by this deal of being surrounded by men and women who have the same common solution that you do. and want the same thing that you do. And as God moves into your life and begins to move through your friends and family, you'll begin to see things that you've never seen before. The jobs will begin to straighten out. The car begins to straighten up. All this other stuff comes and you guys are walking testaments to that. Some of you guys I've known for years and I know how strong you are in this work and I'm sure you're going to be and I got news for you whether you know it or not. Iceland is, besides being my personal heroes, grows. Worldwide, people use Iceland as an example of where Iceland was in AA and where Iceland is today in AA. And it's an amazing thing to see. When we were in Denmark last fall, I'm blown away by how many people I talked to who go, yeah, we want our AA here to be like like Iceland's AA. This is cool. Yeah, go ahead. This is cool. I tell you what let's do. It's a good time to do that. Why don't we go smoke a butt and then, I don't know, 10 or 15 minutes, whatever, and we'll come back and we will let Brian talk and then we will do some questions and answers.