Step 11 and the Way He Stopped Thinking His Way Out of a Hole – Scott L.

Good evening, my name is Scott Lee and I am a very grateful alcoholic. Wow, what a fabulous weekend this has been for me. I don't believe it's possible to give without receiving. I don'T believe it'S possible to receive without giving. I believe that's spiritual law. Let's have a few moments of silence one more time. I'd ask you not to read along. Just free information, I'm on page 153, but just listen if you would. Years ago, in 1935, one of our number made a journey to a certain western city. From a business standpoint, his trip came off badly. Had he been successful in his enterprise, he would have been selling his feet financially, which at the time seemed vitally important. But his venture wound up in a lawsuit and bogged down completely. The proceeding was shot through with much hard feeling and controversy. Bitterly discouraged, he found himself in a strange place, discredited and almost broke. Still physically weak and sober but a few months, He saw that his predicament was dangerous. He wanted so much to talk with someone, but whom? One dismal afternoon, he paced a hotel lobby, wondering how his bill was to be paid. At one end of the room stood a glass-covered directory of local churches. Down the lobby, a door opened to an attractive bar. He could see the gay crowd inside. In there, he would find companionship and release. Unless he took some drinks, he might not have the courage to scrape an acquaintance and would have a lonely weekend. Of course, he couldn't drink, but why not sit hopefully at a table, a bottle of ginger ale before him? After all, had he not been sober six months now. Perhaps he could handle, say, three drinks, no more. Fear gripped him. He was on thin ice. Again, it was the old insidious insanity, that first drink. With a shiver, he turned away and walked down the lobby to the church directory. Music and gay chatter still floated to him from the bar. But what about his responsibilities, his family, and the men who would die? because they would not know how to get well. Ah, yes, those other alcoholics. There must be many such in this town. He would phone a clergyman. His sanity returned and he thanked God. Selecting a church at random from the directory, he stepped into the booth and lifted the receiver and reached into his pocket and pulled out a nickel, which in 1935 was the price of a telephone call and he made the call that led him to his meeting with dr bob and who's to say that the nickel that you hold in your hand right this second is not the very nickel that bill made that call with thank you scott what a moment in our history If your lives hung in the balance and it was me, you'd be in a lot of trouble. I'd have been in the bar. But thank God for Bill Wilson and thank God for his dedication to helping other alcoholics. Chapter 7, Working with Others. It says practical experience shows that nothing so much ensures immunity from drinking is intensive work with other alcoholics. It works where other activities fail. I believe it works where all other activities fail when I am absolutely insane and I am getting close to the return of the obsession to drink and I'm spinning in my head and my emotions are putting the screws to me Reading spiritual literature doesn't seem to help. I'm too past that. Calling my sponsor doesn't seem to be a good idea. It doesn't help because he says, I can't hear him. I don't know what he's saying. Going to a meeting doesn't help because I can hear you because I'm so focused on me. The only thing that seems to help at those moments is I need something If I can't drink, then I need something else that will relieve me of the bondage of self. And that's when it says an intensive work with other alcoholics works where all other activities fail. It works when praying fails. It works for going to meetings fails. It works with calling your sponsor fails. It works. When getting laid fails. It works from buying a new car fails. It works when getting a raise at work fails. It works where all other activities fail. I am the alcoholic of the Bill Wilson variety. When I quit drinking, I suffer from alcoholism. I am an everyday member of Alcoholics Anonymous because of the membership requirement in the long form as originally written in the third tradition, which said that membership should include all who suffer from alcoholism. I do the things that I do in Alcoholics Anonymous because if I don't, I begin to suffer from alcoholism but when I suffer from alcoholism, often I don�t know it. Often it looks like I�m fine but you are really screwed up all of a sudden and so I do certain things in Alcoholics Anonymous to treat that alcoholism and when my first four years of sobriety, I stayed sober without really much work in the steps. I made some efforts to do some inventory work but it wasn't really what it talks about in the book. I had never, consequently, I could not carry out or even come close to being God's guy. It was too wrapped up in me. I had no idea of what it was like to carry out this decision in step three, and consequently, I suffered from deep depressions on a regular basis, even going to 15 to 20 meetings a week, doing two hospital and institution meetings a week, being on every committee in Alcoholics Anonymous, having and calling a sponsor, praying every day, and I still fell into depression from time to time. And I think I survived that period of time through a lot of intensive work with other alcoholics. And I am a slow study. I'm telling you, for a long time, I didn't have a clue why these old-timers are hammering me to do service in AA, hammering my dad into the prison, hammering him to go back into the detox and try to help the newer people and to go into the end of the prison and to go on 12-step calls. I don't get it. I thought it was some kind of pyramid multi-level marketing thing of AA or something, you know, like they're trying to pump up their membership by getting little clones like me to go out and try to get newcomers or something. I have no idea why they're pushing me to do 12- step work, but I'm doing it because I'm doing everything they asked me to do and one one day I come home one evening I come home and I I'd been to two meetings that day I'd called my sponsor that day and I had prayed that day and I'm sitting on the sofa and I've sinking into a deep depression I don't just get depressed I drink of my emotions like I drank liquor you know I get into it I just get in I mean I just wallow around in it, and I just really get into it. And I'm sitting on the sofa and sinking into this depression, deeply pondering my life. I don't know. You know, I have never deeply pondered my life joyously. I do not know why. I just never, I've never said to myself I'm just going to go think about me for a few minutes and came away feeling like happy joyous and free it's always I come away just thinking what's the use you know it's it's always that way and so I'm pondering my life and the more I ponder it the bleaker it looks and I'm still a victim of a delusion that we talked about earlier the delusion that I can rest happiness and satisfaction out of this world by managing well which you know what that means? It means I think I can think my way out of a depression. If you've ever tried that, it's like trying to dig your way out Of a hole, you just go deeper and deeper and deeper. And the more I ponder my life, the worse it looks. In no time at all, I realized that the job I have is going nowhere, how they're taking advantage of me, the relationship I just broke up, I'll never find another one. I'm going to grow old and alone. Nobody's ever going to love me. It's just, you know what I mean? Just sinking into the, you start imagining that it doesn't matter because I probably have cancer anyway. That's where I go. That's funny today, but I'll tell you something. When you're in the middle of that, it's bad. It's really bad. I got so depressed, so depressed that I felt like I weighed a thousand pounds. Can you if you could? I don't know if you've never had this depression. You will not understand this, but I would get physically debilitated, almost like I can't get off the sofa as if I just weigh heavy, as if everything is saying, you know, it's horrible. It's just awful. And, you know, when I was drinking, self-pity and depression wasn't too bad with a bottle of vodka. But sober, it's hideous. And I don't like it. And I'm just scared. And I didn't know where my breaking point is, where I'm going to frantically try to drink something or take something to make myself get out of this. And I am sitting on the sofa and I am scared. And so I say a little prayer because I don' t know what else to do. And I just said, God help me. And I looked at the clock and it's about 10 o'clock. It's about ten minutes till ten at night. And there is an AA meeting at 1015 not too far from my apartment up on the strip in Las Vegas called the Between the Shows group. And I thought to myself if I could just get there and get to that meeting maybe I'll hear something. Maybe something would happen to snap me out of this abyss. And somehow, I don't know, maybe through God's grace, I muscled myself off of that sofa. I was hard to get up. And I shuffled out to my car like a mope. And I got in the car and I drove up to the meeting. And there was a parking space right in front of the door to the chapel. And it was underneath this big billboard on the strip where they do advertising, right? And it's where all the pigeons hang out. So by parking under there, I'm going to get my car decorated by the pigeons while I'm in the meeting, which will better fit my mood, I am sure. So I park under the billboard like I'm asking for it, you know, like make my car feel like I feel, you know. And I go into the meeting and I'm sitting in the back of the meeting and I can't hear anything because everything is so distant because I'm so locked up in myself that what's going on in the meeting is like music in a doctor's office. It's so distant and nothing gets through to me and as I, it's from way back deep inside myself as I look out at the meeting I don't like what I see because what I do is what I say is a room full of people that are obviously doing a lot better than I am. A room full of people that are grateful. The subject of the meeting was gratitude. Oh, my God. And I just ended a relationship, you know, and every... It's some kind of cosmic joke when you end a relationship all of a sudden you're in a world of happy couples. What's that about? You know, where does that come from? And it's like one of those meetings, right? and I'm just, oh it's horrible and I can't hear nothing and sitting across from me in the meeting is a guy who's in really bad shape. He's coming off a drunk and he's sitting there as if grabbing himself like he wants to jump out of his skin and he is rocking back and forth like he can't take it and then he can even sit still. He gets up and he is pacing back and forth like a caged animal behind me. And then there's a door right there to the bathrooms and periodically you can hear me in there dry heaving. And you know something, I have a lot of problems here I'm trying to figure out and this guy is annoying the crap out of me. I mean, I'm try to figure this stuff out. The meeting's over, it has not helped me. I'm probably worse. I stay after the meeting to help this guy Charlie Parker who's the secretary of the meeting and I'm going to help him with the trash and setting up the chairs and cleaning up the room for the chapel so Charlie and I are the last two guys to leave the meeting and Charlie's on his way to work he works at the graveyard shift at one of the casinos so he has to go right to work and we're standing on the front door of the of this chapel and he's locking up and we look over and the guy that was coming off the drunk is laying on the ground in front of my car in a fetal position. Now, I'm going to have to step over him to go home and ponder my life more deeply, which I'm embarrassed to tell you I probably would have done except Charlie's there and Charlie says to me, are you going to help this guy? And I'm looking at this guy and I'm looking at Charlie, and Charlie's got a big mouth. If I don't help this guy, he's going to tell everybody in AA what a lousy member of Alcoholics Anonymous is. He'll tell my sponsor. He will tell the people in my, oh, it's, you know, he is a big-mouthed, one of those people. And I'm looking at Charlie and I am looking at this guy and I do not want to help this kind. I go over to the guy and he peed his pants and he smells and I have got to put him in my car and I start to talk to him and he's in bad shape. He's afraid he's going to have a seizure. And he'd had seizures before and I don't know, and he doesn't have any medical insurance and he has no money. And it was a time in Las Vegas before they opened the detox that we have now where there was a period of a couple years that if you didn't have medical hospitalization, medical insurance, and you didn't have any money and you needed a medical detox, you were in a lot of trouble. There was no place to go. And what we used to do in those days, and I'm grateful that I've had this experience of the last generation, is that we would often sit with two guys at a shift for maybe four or five, six hours, and we'd give them a shot of vodka with orange juice about every hour, hour and a half, just to keep them from going into seizures. And sometimes they'd go to seizures anyway, right in front of you. They just start flopping around. Matter of fact, back in those days, people didn't even think much of that. I remember being in a meeting and some guy went into a convulsion in the meeting. Somebody reached over, stuck a wallet in the guy's mouth and kept on sharing. They didn't Even stop the meeting, it was like, oh yeah, another day, you know, like it happens so often, right? It was like at least once or twice a week, you'd be in a meeting and some guy would start flopping around on the floor it was happened all the time now now it'll stop a meeting people wring their hands oh my god he's calling an ambulance we did those days it was just yeah yeah it was part about part of getting sober so so i can't sit with the guy round the clock because i gotta get up for work in the morning and i don't have anybody to sit you're supposed to do it with another person and i i don' t know what to do with this guy There's only one thing left to do, and there's a county hospital in Las Vegas. And back in those days, because they got certain government funding, they were required to take a certain amount of ingenent patients off the street. And I'd been down there before with guys, and I'll tell you something, it was tedious. They'd treat you like a redheaded stepchild. You know, they would cut... No, really. They treat you like we don't want to treat you. We would rather deal with legitimately sick people rather than you self-induced alcoholics who are probably going to be back here in three weeks anyway. And that was their attitude. So what would happen is you'd go down there with guys and they would often make you sit in the waiting room for five or six hours until they had nothing else to do and out of boredom, they take the alcoholic. And I know what's coming. So I get this guy, smelly guy in my car, right? And I'm going down there and I know I'm gonna be there all night. And I're in the car and I'm thinking to myself, you know, isn't it enough that my life is crap? I gotta do this too. Doesn't anybody else step up to the plate in AA except me? The key word is me, right. But I'm not saying this to the guy. I'm just driving, and we get down there, and we check into the emergency room, and we sign up on the paper, and we're sitting in the waiting room, and I'm talking to the guys, and I'll tell you how weird this was. People nowadays in the States can't believe this, but she used to be able to smoke cigarettes in hospital waiting rooms years ago, and I've given him cigarettes, and he's smoking, and he is like coming apart at the seams, And there was a vending machine there, and I'd go to the vending machine. I'd get these little cans of orange juice, and I'd take them. And we didn't have any honey because we used to give guys orange juice and honey or orange juice in K-Rose syrup to stabilize their blood sugar fluctuations. So I went to the coffee thing, and I got regular sugar and put it in the orange juice. And I'd give it to the guy, and he'd try to keep it down. He's sitting there, and he's just coming apart. And he starts to tell me about himself. and he starts to tell me about the shame and the remorse that he feels for the things he did to the people who loved him and he said to me that he couldn't even seem to drink it away anymore and then he told me that for some time he's been wishing he could kill himself and just get it over with and then He really hooks me. He says to me He says, I don't know why you're wasting time with me. I'm not like you. You see, I always drink again. I always drank again. And he's telling me about me. And somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, I fell in love with that guy. Not for any logical reason. He can't get me a better job. There's nothing he can do for me. chances are he's not even going to stay sober and give me some kind of credit for something you know he can't do anything for me except that he suffered from alcoholism exactly like I suffered from alcoolism and I fell in love with him and it was years later that what I realized is that I fell in love with the me that is in him. A part and an aspect of me that I could never love directly and never accept directly but I could love it and accept it in him and I know I couldn't love it. I had a therapist one time who was big on learning to love yourself and she used to tell me you gotta to love yourself. And I said, oh yeah, I love myself. She gave me these positive affirmations. You know, I'm supposed to stand in front of a mirror and look myself in the eye and repeat over and over. God loves me. God forgives me. Got accepts me. I love me. All right. Forgive me. I accept me. Good. Loves me. Go through gives me God accepts me, I loved me. Oh God. I know what a bunch of crap i just couldn't do it you know i could have stood there till the planet blew up saying that over and over again and it would not have changed how i felt about myself but somehow in loving and caring unconditionally about people that are like me something between me and me started to change and i didn't know that that was happening and And they eventually, they checked this guy in there. They gave him bed. And I'm driving home and the sun's starting to come up. And I've got a lot of work to do. I'm not worried about going to work and being tired. I'm Not Worried About Anything. But I'm crying. And I'M CRYING NOT BECAUSE I'M DEPRESSED. I'M CRYING BECAUSELY DON'T KNOW IN MY WHOLE LIFE IF I EVER FELT MORE RIGHT, MORE COMPLETE, MORE USEFUL. I felt the presence of God move into that car I didn't ask him to come in but I think what happened is there was enough of me out of the way that something else showed up in my life there's a covenant in Alcoholics Anonymous that when two or more of us show up together for the purpose of recovery something will be in the midst and something was in the mix between me and this guy something showed up and I don't know if it was God or if it was the spirit of love for this other drunk, but I know I drove home that morning and I felt better than I'd ever felt. And I understood finally why these old timers were hammering me to work with others and hammering me to go to the hospitals and institutions and hammered me and pushing me to do 12-step work because they knew something about me that I didn't know. They knew that even the self-obsessed, self-concerned, self absorbed, narcissistic depressive that I was. That if I stayed in that venue long enough one day something would happen. And what happened is you could probably hear it in Scotland this loud pop as my head came out of my butt. and I actually appeared here and that's really what happened is I got relieved of the bondage of self through helping this other guy and I felt as good that morning driving home as I felt on the very best day of my drinking when five shots of whiskey really worked. I felt that free, that complete and that right about myself and I knew at that moment that this was my primary purpose that this is what I was divinely crafted to do was to help people that are just like me I don't know that I can help everybody I can't really but I'm real good for people that are sick like I'm sick and from that moment to this that has been my primary purpose except for one little period when I was about 19 years sober and I got seduced by tremendous wealth and abundance back into a life where I was the center again and consequently got depressed again. That was the only time in 28, well, since that moment, that's the only times where I've been unfree. See, I knew something when I drank. When alcohol worked, it really worked. I could lose my job. I could loose a relationship. I could have a bad day. I could Have a good day. And a drink of alcohol did something very magical for me. And I get the same thing out of the guys I sponsor and my commitments in the hospitals and institutions. There's a guy that I sponsor that talks about 12-step work, and he says, That's the good dope. i'll tell you something when i drank whiskey i wanted the best whiskey i could get and when i do aa i want the best aa i can get i want to buy this whole package i didn't go into a bar and ask for a half a beer and i ain't coming here and asking for half a solution either I want this whole package and if you're sitting here and you've done a lot of the steps in Alcoholics Anonymous but you don't help anybody except yourself I'm telling you I think you're missing it I believe that any life or view of spiritual recovery or development that's all about you is an illusion it's an illusion of self everywhere in this book that talks about spiritual growth. It always talks about things like we turn our thoughts to someone we can help. We ask God to remove the defects of character not that stand in the way of you being happy or rich, but of the things that stand In the Way of You Being Useful. Matter of fact, it is the purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous. In the very back of the big book, in an obscure section that most people don't read on page 570, this doctor nails us when he says four lines down, he's talking about us and he says they know that they must never drink. They help others with similar problems. In this atmosphere, the alcoholic often overcomes his excessive concentration upon himself. I must somehow find the freedom from myself that I found in five shots of tequila. If I can't find that here, then the best I will ever have is a half-assed depressive state where abstinence will feel like I'm doing time. And there's a loneliness about untreated alcoholism sober that is actually more painful than alcoholism when you're drinking. At least when I was drinking, I could always have the hope of oblivion. Untreated alcoholism sober is more painful because you're experiencing the alcoholism without the benefit of anesthetic. It's a bad deal. And if you're depressed or if things aren't right for you, check your 12-step work. I would not be here if it wouldn't have been for the encouragement of the old timers for me to do service and get off my butt and go out and try to help other people. We have an old saying in AA, you want to be goosed by the spirit? You got to get up off your ass. And it's really that's why in our book we have a chapter into action. We don't have a chapter into pondering or into thinking or into considering. Figuring it all out. Or into figuring it all out. into action and working with others. Scott? Thanks, Bob. I love the way he does that stuff. I don't find the word sponsor or sponsorship in the basic text, but I find the description of it very clearly laid out on page 96. I've been talking for several pages about a 12-step call. Someone said they might like some help. Went over there and talked to him about my drink, and he talked about his. We laughed a little. We cried a little, and I left him the book. It says in the middle of 96, suppose you're now making your second visit to a man. So that was the first one. He has read this volume, says he's prepared to go through with the 12 steps of the program of recovery. So there's the definition of the Program again. And I love the language here. Look at me if you would. It says he is prepared to GO THROUGH WITH THE 12 STEPS. That'll be good. We'll settle for that. We don't get that many eager ones, right? We'll SETTLE FOR THAT. And he says he has read the book or he's tried to. Have you had the experience of reading and your eyes are moving across the page and your mind is moving across the universe. Have you had that one? If you read out loud, you'll stop that. I can trap my mind in the moment by reading out loud. So that for me defines someone's responsible. He's made an attempt to read this book. He understands the 12 steps are the program and he's willing to go through with them. Great. And then for me it describes sponsor in the next sentence. Having had the experience yourself, you can give him much practical advice. What experience? The experience of going through the 12 Steps. What advice? advice on how to go through the 12 steps there's sponsorship in two sentences laid out very very clearly and i think anything beyond that is me playing god i want to talk about a number of little things that just didn't seem to fit real well anywhere else and then talking about sponsorship i believe for the longest time that my responsibility number one to the men i sponsor was to take them through the twelve steps and i don't believe that anymore i believe that's number two i believe my first responsibility is to love them I'm told that God is love, and when I give love, I give God. It's the highest gift. I have the privilege today of loving the men that I sponsor without exception. And then I take them through the steps. I've had the experience on a couple of occasions of needing to change sponsors. I told you about a sponsor I had that was sleeping with new women, and he was married. I had another experience where I needed to change sponsored. and I called my sponsor and he's one of the most spiritual men I've ever known. That beautiful stuff, I think it's beautiful that I talked about in steps six and seven about I don't work on my defects of character and self-control, push stuff out of the center. That's all from this guy. Beautiful. One of the Most Spiritual Men I'll Ever Know. It was necessary for me to change sponsors and I call him on a Friday and I left him a message on his answering machine. I need to talk to you. He responded to my call on the following Tuesday afternoon. I was in the middle of a divorce. The reason I changed sponsors was because he didn't have time that I felt like I needed, and I think that's a very good reason. And I said to him, I had been coached by my new sponsor. I said, how do I do that? He said, I want you to drop him, and I said how do i do that. And he said thank him. Thank him profusely. Mike, thank you for all you've given me. Thanks for the beautiful things I've learned. Thanks for your commitment and the time that you've put into what I'm doing here. God knows you are a blessing in my life, but it's only fair for me to tell you I'm changing sponsors. Adults don't have to answer questions. And he didn't ask. If he had asked, I would have told him. I think he knew why. But that doesn't matter because he had a sponsor himself. If he's got a problem, he can go process it there. And by the way, if he gets angry at that point, I've absolutely done the right thing because he got his ego tied up in sponsoring me. Three years ago, I was dropped by two guys, both with long-term recovery and both for the same reason because I have the privilege of doing this a lot. And I was gone so much, and when I'm in town, I'm pretty busy. They felt like they needed more. I think that's a fabulous reason to change sponsors. I have a goal for the men that I sponsor, and it is that they would outgrow me spiritually. I can't think of another worthy goal. How could I be unhappy if he did and could move on to somewhere else and get more? How could i possibly be offended by that? The other piece, and this one's a little bit more controversial, is dropping someone that I'm trying to sponsor. And before you come to disagree with me, and we're not going to go there and look, middle paragraph on page 95, top of page 96 are very clear about that. I do not allow the men that I sponsor to work with men that don't do what they ask. And I don't doing it either. And I got that lesson from this Mike I was just telling you about. I had five years. I called him one day and I said, this guy I sponsor, what shall I do? And he said, drop him. I said come on Mike, I'm being serious. He said, I don't believe you. He said what are you asking him to do that he's not doing? And I said well let's see. Call me every day, look for a job, call his parole officer, go to a meeting every day and open and close his days following the directions in step 11. He says and how much of that is he doing? I said, well, he's not doing any of it. He said, you are not his sponsor. He is. You are his fire chief. And when his tail feathers are ablaze, he calls you and siphons off some of your serenity and puts out his fire and goes right back to doing it his way and you are NOT helping him. And then he said, how do you feel when you work with him? I said it feel like they pulled the corks out of my heels and the blood ran out. I feel like I've been wrung out. He said uh-huh. And how do you feel when you work with Bill K? I said, well, he lights me up like a pinball machine. He said, really? And what are you asking Bill to do that he's not doing? I say, well he's doing it all. He says, uh-huh. He says it doesn't matter a thousand, but you can pretty well tell when you work with somebody whether it's worth it. Sponsorship is always a two-way street. If it's working for one, it's looking for both. If its not working for the other one either. It's always a two- way street. You are currently co-signing a lie. You're allowing the man to think that he has a sponsor and that he's in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And he's not, he's in the fellowship, but he's nicht allowing you to coach him into the program. And you're co-signing a lie. And, he said, could you stay sober on the program he's drinking or he's working? And I said, no, I don't think so. He said, can he? I said I don�t think so. He said you are probably right. And when he drinks again, I want you to be able to sleep knowing that you told him the truth because he could go to prison for a long time or kill somebody. There's no telling what he could do when he's drinking and I want you to be able to sleep knowing that You told Him the truth and with heavy heart, I went to this guy to tell him I couldn't sponsor him anymore. The last time I saw him, he bounced off of both sides of the clubhouse door coming in so drunk he couldn't stand up and was arrested out of that meeting. His car was parked up against somebody else's car in the parking lot. That's the last time I saw Him. The other reason that I must tell him the truth is that the next time he wakes up in a jail cell in a pool of his own blood and vomit, I want him to have three options. And those options are to continue to live that way, to commit suicide, or to try the program of Alcoholics Anonymous knowing he hasn't tried it because I've told him the true. If I don't tell him the truth, I've signed his death warrant. I had to do it twice this year. I picked up two new men to sponsor this year and I've had to drop them both. It broke my heart. I have coached every man I sponsor through dropping someone at least once. And a guy, I'm his grand sponsor, called me the other day. Couldn't get his sponsor and he'd had to do it and his guts were on fire. I said, great. I hope it tears you apart. I hope that you're not throwing away his chance. He is. You're telling him the truth. You're making it easier for him to come back. He can sit on bar stools and say it doesn't work for him but he'll know it's a lie because you've told him the true. You may have saved his life. and I hope it tears your guts up. I hope It tears mine up every time, because who am I if it doesn't? And I had a fellow that I went, and I said, okay, I'm dropping you. He said, no, no. Please don't. I'll do anything. I said okay. Read the first eight pages of Bill's story. Look up one word on every page. Call me tonight, 815. Phone rings, 8 15. He looked up the words. We rock and roll for about two weeks, and then I realized I'm putting more into his recovery than he is. I said I'm dropping you. He said no, I'll drop you. I said no. I'll not do anything." I don't know how many times we went through that little deal, and finally my sponsor told me he said this is the last time and you're not going to warn him and the next time you go to drop him he's staying dropped and i said yes sir and i went to him i said jerry i'm dropping you said no no i said no i'm gonna last chance you into your grave i'm through and i hope you'll get with someone who's done these 12 steps and allow them to coach you through this work and he got with another longtime member of my home group that day and surrendered to him and he will tell you today i saved his life that day so important we got a guy that shows up in my group about every six months he was just there a couple of months ago and he comes to me and he says now look i know the last 12 times i was here that i said i'd do anything you said and you gave me an assignment i didn't do it but i'm really serious i really really mean at this time would you sponsor me i say sure read the first eight pages in bill's story look up one word you know whatever assignment like that but something with the look up the words they can't fake that call me tonight 8 15 he don't call and he doesn't think he's got a sponsor and i don't think he does either and i'm not throwing away his chance he is because the next time he does that and calls me at 8 15 with a dictionary we're going to rock and roll it's an interesting approach to this thing but it's it's so important because if i don'T do that if i DON'T follow directions in the book and drop those people i'M betting his life on my amateur psychology And it makes me sick to have to do it. And I hope it always does. That's one of the hardest things I've got to tell you. Do you know the difference, by the way, between a good habit and a bad habit? I'll tell you, good habits are easy to break. That's the difference. Yeah. If I'm going to have good habits, I'm going to need to pay the price to keep them because they won't stay on their own. This is a gift from a girl in my home group. she said she'd been tells us in a meeting when they said i've been to a dog race and um the little mechanical rabbit takes off and they shoot the gun the cages pop open the dogs take off and she said that the the mechanical rabbit malfunctioned in the first turn and stopped and the lead dog is tail over tea kettle with this mechanical rabbit into the ditch and i thought where in the world is she going with this and then she said i'm just exactly like that dog. I'm shot out of a gun chasing some dead gum mechanical rabbit that ain't going to be what I want if I can catch it. I said, wow. And she said, and you know that dog smarter than I am? They'll retire that dog no matter what they do. He will never chase another mechanical rabbit. He only has to catch one of them. He'll never do it again. Not me, baby. I'm after the next one. Boy, isn't that the truth? Oh, I got here as a taker. I've been a takER all my life. And I thought I was going to transition from takER to giVER. Not so. Because a takEr can't take anything worth having. I had to transition form takER to receiver first. And for me, the difference is a receiver acknowledges that someone else gave and says, thank you. I had to give up the John Wayne thing and humbly say, thank you and may I have some more. Having done that for a while puts me in the position to be a giver, but I can't go from taker to giver. And then I believed that it was my willingness to give that was going to keep the channel between me and God open, and I do believe that it does, but the big piece is my willingness to continue to receive because that contains humility. When you're hurting and I find out about it and I get to love on you. I get this wonderful feeling of closeness to God by giving when I'm hurting. If I don't let you know, I block your chance to get close to God. By giving. Um, I have a pretty good working knowledge of this book and our program of recovery. I've been around a long time. I sat at the feet of the sages. The most important things I take to my home group are my pain and my mistakes because it makes it okay for other people to be real. And it puts me in a position of receiver so that you can have your chance to give. So important that I keep that piece in place. I was at the kitchen of the old Woodbine Club sober about two years, and I was having a discussion with another member. Now, not being as spiritually developed as I am, you might have thought it was an argument. And it was something really important, like whether I'm a recovered alcoholic, recovering alcoholic, something that really needed to be hammered out. And I don't know how many new comers came through there that we missed while we were doing that. And old Joe B walked in, and Joe had been sober since about a month before the earth began to cool, and was very intelligent, which clearly puts him on my side of this burning issue, which I still can't remember what it was. And I posed the question to Joe, and I said, what do you think? And Joe said, I am not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution, and I wish to engage in any controversy. Neither endorse nor oppose any causes. My primary purpose This is to stay sober, help other alcoholics achieve sobriety. By which time my opponent and I were laughing pretty hard. It took me a while, and I had what I call a revelation. Sponsors will recognize this. A revelation, revelation, is when I figure out for myself something you've been trying to tell me for six months or longer. Right? Right? That's a revelation, right? And I went to old Joe, andI said, You meant that. He said, Oh, yeah. joe b was living the aa preamble is the most peaceful man i've ever known in my life you could not get him into a controversy he wouldn't come he had a primary purpose it was to stay sober and help others achieve sobriety and he would not let anything get between him and that nothing what a powerful example that was for me i i asked my sponsor at about six months i said i'm hearing people say spiritual side of the program this is spiritual side of the program, that. If there's a spiritual side of the program, it's got to be at least one other side. What's the name of it? He said, there are two sides. There's the spiritual side and the drunk side. Pick one. You may have noticed Bob and I giving our last names here in keeping with our tradition of anonymity. If that didn't make any sense to you, I'd like to recommend the book, Dr. Bob and the Good Old Timers, page 270 in the pamphlet, Understanding anonymity. Anonymity, in part, is about protecting me from my own ego and protecting the fellowship from my ego. Our friend Cliff says that the 12 traditions are a set of principles that are designed to protect Alcoholics Anonymous from my very best motives. And I believe that's right. So part of anonymity is so that you can find me. My name is Scott Lee. I live in Nashville, Tennessee. Look me up in the phone book if you're coming through. I'm looking for your call, especially if you're a newcomer. I mean, so somebody in my home group goes into the hospital. So I walk up to the reception desk. I say, excuse me, can you tell me what room Chainsaw Mike is in? Excuse me, pardon me, ma'am. Do you have, is Janet from another planet at this hospital? So I think it's important that we be able to find each other. And I think that there are people who need to remain anonymous. We know some federal judges that are in the fellowship who really need to be first names only, and there are exceptions. But I believe that generally the rule is that it's a violation of tradition to not give my last name in a meeting. That's how I understand it. The other side of anonymity is about anonymous giving. It's about doing something good for somebody else and not getting caught. Now, that's not my style. Beside, I think you should know me better, especially if I do something good. I think you should be informed about that but I had an experience a couple of a number of years ago where I actually did that did something good for somebody nobody else found out about it and the feeling was like there was a piece of sunshine about the size of a golf ball that lodged itself in my chest and I could think about what I'd done any time of the day or night this thing would glow and send light through my whole body. I think I see some people know what I'm talking about And so I never told a soul for about six months. And when I told, the thing got out. And I'm going to tell you because there's another lesson that came on this. And what had happened was I had one of those magical days. My business day was over at noon. I had nothing to do. Fishing gear in the trunk. I go to a park. I'm fishing in the stream. There's a family having a picnic. They've got a seven-year-old boy. It looks like he and I are going to fish together today. I'm gonna cast. He's gonna do everything else. Had a really good time. met the family no fisherman in the family he clearly is one i was at a place in my life where i had time i got to know the family i took this young lad on a number of very short fishing trips just to be sure and when i was convinced he and i launched on that buffalo river i was telling you about put a canoe on that river floated five miles uh and about 10 hours caught over 100 fish that day kid caught a four pound smallmouth bass he got my fish is what happened about a mile from the takeout suddenly the sky's blackened and i hear the thunder and we're going to get it there's some trees and i kind of parallel park this canoe up under these trees i'm about to pray did you happen to notice by the way saint scott down there at the boy and he got my fish i'm About to do this prayer you see and this beautiful little boy looks over his shoulder at me and he says, is it okay to fish here? And that's the question. See, I prayed the third step prayer in a minute and I forget that. And when the skies in my life blacken and I hear the thunder and I know I'm fixing to get it, I think that's a prayer I'm supposed to take to my father. Is it okay To fish here because like Bob, I I think that's my assignment, and I'm strangely designed to be able to do it. As Ms. Linda says, God's will is a good deal. I told you earlier about those who were here last night. I talked about flying a high-performance airplane. It's this one if you want to look when it's over. I took off on my last flight in a high performance plane. I leveled at 40,000 feet three and a half minutes after break release. i'm 80 miles west of jacksonville florida and uh they gave me a barrel it's called it's a 30 mile circle around a point on the ground and an altitude block because you're going to play at 700 miles an hour they have to give you some room it's like that's a good rule and and they gaveme more altitude than i was supposed to have and that was back in the days before the radar told them your altitude and um i just wondered out how it would go now they told us a couple of times a week not to go above 45,000 feet in this airplane. And they said there were two reasons. One is that you could die. The other was that you would get killed very quickly and you would owe them an airplane. Those are the two reasons not to above 45 because there are things that can happen at high altitude that you will not recover from. But I was young and immortal. So I pulled the nose up a little bit, rolled it into about 15 degrees of bank and I started climbing in this circle at military power, which is everything short of afterburner, and at nine-tenths of the speed of sound. I'm not supposed to be above 45. At 52,300 she was done. She's not going up anymore. And I have done an instrument climb. I've been looking at my gauges. I've not looked outside. I rolled out on a northerly heading, and I looked up for the first time. It's 930 in the morning on a clear day. The sun's coming up over my right shoulder. I'm in a bubble canopy. above me the sky is jet black at 9 30 in the morning on a clear day at 52 300 and i looked out to the west and saw the curvature of the earth and i didn't see it a little bit and in 1967 there weren't many people that had seen it and i was one of them this this the horizon was bent and this thing we're writing is this magnificent blue ball just floating in space and i believe it's held there by love i sure didn't see anything else just floating and i sat there and looked at eternity and i had a feeling like something warm had been poured over me and slowly ran down me and i can't explain that in the poem high flight the author says i reached out my hand and touched the face of god and i did that that morning and i set there for a minute or two very dangerous sat there for just a moment or two and looked at that looked at eternity and eased him back and brought it down and shot one approach and landed and i couldn't tell them if i tell them they'd believe me i'll get court-martialed and i might have been the town drunk i'm not the village idiot i don't tell him and um and i never told the whole time i was in the air force and burke harlan was one of my aa mentors get one of burke's cds and uh i spoke at his 12 year birthday when I had five years and I heard myself telling that story for the first time. And, uh, and I can remember saying, I don't know why I'm telling it. And of course, you know, I got to the end of the story and realized that that was my first spiritual experience. You can't do something like that and not want to do it again. For over 30 years, I wanted to see the curvature of the earth again. I used to sit in airplanes and say to other pilots, I can't even believe they pay us to do this. And yet I walked away from my dream with five years. Alcoholism took away any chance my dreams had of coming true, and Alcoholics Anonymous brought them all back. It brought them ALL back. Four years ago, Ms. Linda and I chartered ourselves a Learjet. And I didn't drive, I sat in the back. That particular Lear will go to 51,000 feet. That's close enough. Yeah. I've learned to dream big. I a big God. I hope you're dreaming big. We serve a big god. I'd like to publicly thank that god. I asked you in our first couple of sessions to invite your god to join us. I hope You did. Last night or this morning, I'm not sure which, I invited you if you don't have a god to borrow mine. If you did and you got touched, borrow them again. I sit here before you on stocking feet. I take my shoes off. I did last night when I spoke because we've invited God here and my feet could be on holy ground. And I've tried to carry that in my heart and I hope I have. And I have asked him to use me and I know he did. And my great mentor died about three years ago in May. And I spent his last Thanksgiving with him, my wife and his wife. And we were sitting, Don and I like this and the women right here and they didn't see this happen. And I was finally able to ask the man the question I've needed to ask him for so long. I used to take him the unanswerable question, and he always had a principle-based answer that I knew was correct. He was an amazing guy. This was one of four men that took aid of Russia. He was such an astounding guy. And I finally asked him the question. I said, Don, what are guys like Scott going to do when guys like Don are all gone? And this humble man cupped his hands and leaned forward at me like this, and he looked in his hands and he said, I have been bringing you hands full of water go to the river he said it wasn't him that he had made contact with a power and a wisdom far beyond his own and he'd only brought me small portions of that and that he believed was possible for me and I believe it's possible for all of us to go to The River and I want to close my portion of this weekend by saying thank you and by telling you what I think is the single most important thing that has been said this weekend. Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery. Bob? Thanks, Scott. I'm Bob. I'm still an alcoholic. I have been delighted to be here this weekend I've got to talk to some of you. I've gotten connected to quite a few of you I hope I hear from you in the future. Scott when he does these workshops takes his shoes off because he feels like he's on spiritual ground I always wear thick-soled shoes or boots because I feel like I'm going to step in it and it's just my approach that's all because I'm prone to stepping in at any minute you know those of you that I wish we had more time and we do next summer there this chapter working with others is a blow-by-blow description of how to work with a newcomer how to sponsor someone even how to give an AA talk it tells you what to say when to say it what to do when to do it what not to do and why you shouldn't do it. And unfortunately, I started throwing myself into 12-step work before I ever read this chapter. I didn't go to my sponsor for direction. I just was like a cowboy or a loose cannon. And consequently, I did probably as much damage as I did good. Because I think as an alcoholic, we're carriers. We're either going to carry the disease or we're going to carrying the message, you're going to carry one or the other. And I think a lot of my early sobriety in my 12-step work, I carried the disease and I didn't even know any better. It cautions us in this book to never put our work with the new man on a service plane. That if we start to do that, he will start to rely on us and he'll clamor for more help and more of this and more of that when our ultimate goal really is to take him through the 12 steps so that he can connect with a power greater than himself which is his ultimate reliance and instead of doing that I started I came to 12-step work with an ego and an inferiority sense and it became all about me and I was going to get these guys sober even if it killed them because if they drank again I'm going to look bad to the old timers and so i'm doing everything wrong and i'm trying to fix their problems i'm getting guys jobs that i have no right i'm not there an employment counselor i'm getting them jobs because i have a friend today as the company goes to work for the guy in a and then he gets drunk and robs him right uh there was a guy that i was sponsoring who really didn't want to do AA, but my ego is so tied up in this guy staying sober. And I can't get him to do anything. If I'd have known what I know today, I would have fired him day two. He won't do anything. The only way he'll even go to a meeting is I got to go pick him up, right? He won' t even go to the car to the meeting. He just whines to me nonstop about these warrants out for his arrest in another state. And, you know, I can't, I'm just depressed. I don't know, why should I do AA? I'm going to probably go to jail and on and on and on. And so I go to a guy named Roger in the fellowship who's a federal judge. I didn't really understand. Roger went to meetings I went to and Roger really liked me and we were good friends. He was sober a long time. I had no idea what a powerful man he was. He was so powerful that if you come, he died about 20 years ago and they named the federal building in the state of Nevada after him. And to this day, you go there and you'll see that federal building and it has his last name in big letters over the entrance to the federal building. He's a very powerful federal judge. And I went to Roger and I could get into his office and you couldn't even I didn't realize that you even the governor needed an appointment to see Roger but I could just go into his office because I knew him from the meetings right and I would I went into Roger's office and I said can I talk to you and he cleared his so he said yeah and he called his secretary. I sat down and I says I need your help and I lied to him and here's what I told him. I said Roger I'm working with this new guy so-and-so and he really wants to be sober. Well, that's not really the truth. Here's the truth, the truth is, you know, I'm working with so-and-so and I really want him to be sobre, that was the truth and then I lied to him again and I said, and Roger, he, he wants, he really isn't doing the AA, he's really doing AA. Well he wasn't doing AA, what was true is I really wanted him to do AA and I thought that if I could get him some help on these warrants, that maybe he would realize what a blessing Alcoholics Anonymous is to become a stellar member, get a year. He'd mention my name. I'd get credit. It would be really good. So I told Roger about these warrents out for this guy's arrest and I gave him his phone, the guy's full name and where he was born, his social security number, et cetera. And Roger said, let me see what I can do. And Rogers picked up the phone and made some phone calls and that guy's police record disappeared. He was drunk within a week and to my knowledge he's never made it back to Alcoholics Anonymous. You know something I think it would have been better if I would have stuck a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. I robbed him of the most important thing he had going for him, the thing that brought him to the table and was keeping him, an alcoholic synonymous, and keeping him at least calling me was his desperation. And I fixed that. And when I fixed that, he didn't need God, he did not need us, and he did NOT need recovery anymore. He very well has died of alcoholism in the ensuing years. I know that I've never seen him in a meeting since then. And I knew at one point he was drunk and he was living in this place called St. Vincent's. There's an old adage that says, if you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. But if you teach him to fish, they'll eat it for a lifetime. And if you're new, you've probably been clamoring to the old timers for fish and they keep wanting to give you fishing lessons and you don't know what that's about. Tighten your belt, take the lessons. Take the fishing lessons and maybe you'll eat for a lifetime. I want to read something, two things and we'll close. One of my favorite passages in the 12th step is on page 100 it's a brief paragraph but it's it's a vision of exactly what we find in Alcoholics Anonymous and it's a vision for spiritual growth and progress and it starts out the first paragraph it says both you and the new man must walk day by day in the path of spiritual progress and I think any view of spiritual process has to include someone else In other words, the admission to the dance is to bring somebody to the dance. You don't get in alone. Both you and the new man must walk day by day in the path of spiritual progress. And if you persist, remarkable things will happen. You know what those things are? Those are the things we talk about at coffee after meetings when we talk about to just see Susie got her kids back. Did you know that Jim got a doctorate degree from a university? Remember when he couldn't even read chapter five? Did you remember Joe lived in the bushes out behind the Alotta Club? You know, Joe bought a house. Do you remember that mope that used to come into the meetings and whine and so depressed all the time? Did did you see him with his group of sponsees after that meeting and he was laughing and making fun of them? Did you see the light in his eyes? Remarkable things will happen. Boy, they do. I'm telling you, we see stuff in Alcoholics Anonymous that Hollywood would want to make a miniseries about and we see it every day. Matter of fact, I think most of us become blasé about the miracles we see in AA. We take them for granted. I mean, think about it. You're getting a cup of coffee. Some guy comes up to you and tells you about a homeless guy by the house. You go, yeah, yeah. Where's the sugar? I mean you know. We just take it for granted here. Remarkable things happen here. Remarkables. Remarkableness. We live in not only a fellowship but we live right in the middle of an age of miracles. Right around us and we don't see it most of the time. and it says when we look back we realize that the things which came to us when we put ourselves in God's hands were better than anything we could have planned the things that came to us I didn't make them happen I didn' t manipulate them I didn''t manufacture them matter of fact this is a very good definition of God's grace unmerited gift they just come they just came to me only as a result of putting myself in God's hands and it says they're better than anything we could have planned most people that I know that are sober over 10 years if they would have made a list when they were 60 days sober of what they would like to see happen in their life over the next 10 years, and they looked at the list 10 years later, they realized unanimously that if they would have gotten what was on the list, they would have shortchanged themselves. It's better than anything I could have planned. The things of real substance and value in my life, I wouldn't have even had, I wasn't even awake enough to ask for them or even want them. I didn't know that the most valuable things in my life today was how I feel about myself and how I feel about others. I wouldn't know that one of them, how would I know that the most valuable thing in my Life was the security and the comfort that comes in knowing that I'm in the hands of the Creator of the universe, that I am safe and protected. To know that I part of a fellowship that is there for me where I I am part of because of who and what I am, that I fit here. I would have never asked for that. I might have asked for some money, a car and maybe a girl with big mammary glands or something. I don't know. I mean, I would've been that shallow, you know? Because I wouldn't have known. I wouldn'T have known what to ask for. Better than anything you could have planned. follow the dictates of a higher power and you will presently live in a new and wonderful world no matter what your present circumstances no matter what you're afraid you're going to go to prison doesn't matter you're worried you've dug yourself into a hole that you will never get out of doesn't mater you think it looks hopeless stick around here Take the fishing lessons. Realize that you're wrong about all of that also. The impossible in AA just takes a little longer, that's all. It just takes it. It just a little bit longer. For all my sobriety, I've resented people who read poems in AA meetings. It's tacky. It is. It's Tacky. And it's, you know, the rhyme and the things. It's tacky. I'm going to risk being one of those people to read a poem that was written by one of Bill Wilson's spiritual advisors when he was new in New York. A guy, he's mentioned in AA literature frequently. His name is the Reverend Samuel Shoemaker. And Sam was one of the leaders of the Oxford Group in New York City. And you've got to remember, if you know historically about the Oxford Group, not all of the Oxford Group liked the alcoholics. Some of them referred to us as the drunk squad. Matter of fact, there was a big falling out between Bill Wilson and Frank Buckman, the founder of the oxford group. Because Frank Buckmon wanted Bill to leave these drunks alone, go down to wall street bring into the oxford group some of those captains of industry they'll swell our coffers they'll give us credibility and bill wanted to go down to the mission on skid row the calvary mission and he wanted to work at towns hospital a knickerbocker hospital he wantedと work with the hopeless he wanted то work with guys like me And Sam, I believe, fell in love with Bill for that. And I don't know that Sam wrote this poem about Bill and the early members of AA, but I suspect he did because it's really about us. And it's called I Stand by the Door. I stand by the door. I neither go too far in nor stay too far out. The door is the most important door in the world. It is the door through which men walk when they find God. There's no use my going way inside and staying there when so many are still outside and they, as much as I, crave to know where the door is. And all that so many ever find is only the wall where a door ought to be. They creep along the wall like blind men with outstretched, groping hands, feeling for a door, knowing there must be a door. So I stand by the door. The most tremendous thing in the world is for men to find that door, that door to God. The most important thing any man can ever do is to take hold of one of those blind, goping hands and put it on the latch, the latch that clicks and opens only to that man's touch. Men die outside the door as starving beggars die on cold nights in cruel cities in the dead of winter, die for what is within their grasp. They live on the other side of it and they live there because they have not found it. Nothing else matters compared to helping them find it and open it and walk in and find him. So I stand by the door. Go in great saints, go all the way in, go way down into this cavernous cellars and way up into the spacious attics. It is a vast, roomy house, this house where God is. Go into the deepest of hidden casements of withdrawal, of silence, of sainthood. Some must inhabit those inner rooms and know the depths and heights of God and call outside to the rest of us how wonderful it is. Sometimes I take a deeper look in. Sometimes I venture in a little further, but my place seems closer to the opening, so I stand by the door. There is another reason why I stand there. Some people get partway in and become afraid, lest God and the zeal of his house devour them. For God is so very great, and he asks all of us. And these people feel a cosmic claustrophobia, and they want to get out. Let me out, they cry, and the people way inside only terrify them more. Somebody must be by the door to tell them that they are spoiled for the old life. You see, once you've tasted God, then nothing but God will do anymore. Somebody must be watching for the frightened who seek to sneak out just when they came in to tell them how much better it is inside. The people too far in do not see how near these are to leaving, preoccupied with the wonder of it all. Somebody must been watching for those who have entered the door but would like to run away, for so for them too I stand by the door. I admire the people who go way in but I wish they would not forget how it was before they got in then they would be able to help the people that have not yet even found the door or the people who want to run away from God I guess you can go in too deeply and stay too long and forget the people outside the door as for me I shall take my old accustomed place near enough to God to hear him and know that he is there but not so far from men as not to hear them and remember that they are there too where outside the door thousands of them millions of them but more important for me one of them two of them perhaps ten of them whose hands I am intended to put on the latch so I shall stand by the door and wait for those who seek it. I had rather be a doorkeeper, so I stand by the door. And from the bottom of my heart to the men and women of Alcoholics Anonymous who have given of their time to go into institutions and detoxes and county jails on the odd chance that they might find one guy like me. And for the men and women who stand at their home group and they're awake enough to see the new guy like me coming in the door who's scared and suffering and is about to run away, and you reach out to me. I want to thank you for my life. We're going to close in a very unusual manner. We are going to whisper the Lord's Prayer together. I am going to ask you to remain seated. I would like to note that the last word in the prayer is Amen. I get sober before the chanting and i'd like you if you would after the amen to have a fairly long moment of silence i want you to see if you can feel what's in this room i'll let you know when that one's over if you would let's have a few moments of silence in honor of those that carried this message to us that are gone lord's prayer our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever Amen God bless us all safe travel. Thank you.