The Three Frogs on a Log and the Decision to Jump – Don M.

Thank You Pat and good morning everybody my name is Don Major and I'm an alcoholic and I am real grateful to be here this morning got some apprehension about what we're going to do but not a whole lot and the reason I don't have a whole lot about it doesn't have anything to do with having confidence in myself It has to do with just exactly the opposite of that. It has a whole bunch of things in my life that I can't do, that I've found out that I have a loving God that will do for me. Bottom line here is that I'm just real sure that God doesn't think I'm important enough to trust me with the welfare of a room full of folks. and some of us are going to get what we need regardless of how badly I might mess it up. So, I've been told that there are no big deals except God and the 12 steps and any time I make a big deal out of anything that's not God and in the 12 steps, what I'm really making a big deal out is me and I'm back into ego and I am back into alcoholism and I believe that. So while these 12 steps that hopefully we're going to talk about today are a big deal, what I've got to say about them is not a big thing. And I'm not a teacher. There aren't any teachers in Alcoholics Anonymous and I'm real, real grateful for that. If there were any teachers in AA, I wouldn't want to be one because I've known some folks that seem like they had aspirations to teach and awful all those folks got drunk and and i don't want to get drunk um a lot of the things that i'll say today um hopefully almost everything i'd say is going to be based on my own experience with with the big book and with the 12 steps um i'll probably express some opinions and please feel free to either take those opinions or leave them because they are my opinions if That's what I'm expressing and are no more nearly right or more apt to be right than yours or anybody else's. But before we start on the steps themselves, I'd like to talk just a few minutes about the book Alcoholics Anonymous and the program of recovery. camille mentioned the three parts of the triangle well when i first started coming around aa i had a lot of confusion between the fellowship of alcoholics anonymous and the program of alcoholics unanimous i thought that if i was going to meetings i was in the program i thought if i had a desire to stop drinking that day i was on the program well as long as i had the desire to stop drinking as long as I have it today, I'm certainly in the fellowship. And thank God it's that way because there are times when that's all that I had and that's All I could hang on to and that wound up being immeasurably better than nothing. But the program I found out is an entirely different thing. My first sponsor explained to me that there's only one program of recovery and that's steps one through nine which are the program of recovery in its entirety he explained to me that i could figure that out by the very complicated and obscure process of looking at how it works where it says that here are the steps we took that are suggested as a program of discovery and he also told me that I could could look the look through the other the first 164 pages of the big book, and I wouldn't find anything else called a program of recovery. And I'll save you folks the trouble of going home and doing that. I did it, and nothing else is referred to as a program of recovery." He went on to explain to me that these steps are not some sort of vague philosophical proposition that I'm supposed to study learn and understand and somehow embrace psychologically and get magically transported to another dimension of understanding he explained to me that they an extremely concrete series of actions and that this book which is a textbook and is written in in the format of a textbook really is not a philosophy book but is a simple instruction manual for my actions and he pointed out things to me like in the foreword to the first edition where it says um in italics that it's the main purpose of this book to show others precisely how we have recovered but later on the book it says that later on we will we will give you specific instructions we will answer such questions questions specifically and it says we will show you what we did so i expect today that we're going to be talking a lot about action. And please, anybody, feel free to raise your hand, interject a question or comment at any time. I don't want to sit up here for six hours and just run off at the mouth. I'm going to try to leave some time at the end of each session for us to have some kicking around of questions and ideas and that sort of thing. they explained to me about this time that there's a reason that the steps are called the steps you know they could have called them the 12 principles the 12 propositions the 12 tenets they could call them the twelve lots of things but it was explained to me that they were called the steps for a reason and that that reason is that they built one on another like a staircase it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have a staircase with a fourth step that doesn't have a first second and third step and they explained to me that the steps dovetail into one another and that they are just a real real specific process that you either do the way the book says or you don't do and it was explained tome that these steps work on alcoholism, the same way penicillin works on an infection. You know, if I've got an infection that's going to kill me if I don't do something about it but will respond to penicilli, I don' t need to understand my infection. I don'' t even need to be intellectually convinced that that infection is what's wrong with me and is causing all those terrible things to be wrong with magnificent me. I d' n't need to understanding one single thing about how penicillin works in the human body i don't even need to believe that that little bottle of penicilin tablets can take care of everything that's wrong with me and i don'T even need to want to take the tablets if i've got the infection and i take the templates as directed and they were very careful to underscore the as directed for me because i have a big problem with as directed but if i take those tablets as directed i'm going to get just fine and it was explained to me that the steps work on my alcoholism exactly the same way this disorder of the ego that i've got that that has caused all these other things this incurable progressive and fatal thing and the spiritual mental physical and emotional illness that's all flowed from that basic disorder of the ego, that if I'll do these steps the way the book says to them, I'll get healing. I'll, I'll be healed. I'll have a good recovery. And I may have already mentioned showing the word recovered and I don't want to, it would, would be my hope today that, that I wouldn't talk about anything that would be controversial because I'm, I'm not here to, to start an argument and I hope I'm not here to grind any axe at all, but I was taught very early on that the use of the term recovering alcoholic is fine and that if that's helpful to me to use it, that I was free to use It. But I was also taught that that was a treatment center and a psychology innovation that came along a long time after the initial program of recovery. And by the time they were telling me that, I really was quite a big book scholar. i was quite a big book scholar before i got sober i used to quote it while i was dying around that so i wanted to know where they had hidden it in the big book and they let me know that they'd hidden it three times in the foreword to the first edition where they talked about we over 100 men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless condition of mind and body and they showed me a lot of other places that it had been hidden in the Big Book where it says that uh you know we're going to show you precisely we're going to tell you exactly what we did so that we could recover after some years of sobriety i finally began to grasp why my first sponsor and the folks around me felt like that was important takes me a long time to to grasp some things and the reason i believe that that distinction between recovering alcoholic and recovered alcoholic is important to me is that those folks that were working with me when I first got sober knew a lot more about my personality than I know. They knew that if there was anything that I could grab hold of to make me continue to be different from my fellows and continue to need to be treated specially, that I would do that. And they knew that if I could keep from meeting life square on later on because I was a poor little recovering alcoholic who needed to be mollycoddled and treated differently than other folks out here i'd sure grab hold of that horse and ride it to death and my sponsor told me that if i had worked the first nine steps the way the book says work them and was living my life one day at a time on 10 11 and 12 in order to maintain my spiritual condition and not lose my recovery and fall back in the pit and dab this incurable progressive and fatal thing that i've got then i was living in a state of recovery from alcoholism and further i was at least as well equipped to face life on life's terms as a person out here who had never had alcoholism instead if i was not then i needed to go back and redo the first nine steps because i hadn't done it properly and that's been very very that that that served me well they knew what they were doing because it it takes away that crutch of i'm a little weak suffering recovering alcoholic and i need to pamper myself here uh for for me that is not true i needと make sure that i've done the first nine and that i'm living on 10 11 and 12 and then i can live life as anyone else can live like all through the day we're gonna probably be talking about self on one hand and god and other folks on that because in every one of the every one of the action steps anyway that's right at the center of it that the problem is me The problem is always me. And the solution is always trying to do my higher power's will and trying to be helpful to God's kids. The solution is Always Trying to Help God's Kids Do What They Need to Have Done for Free and for Fun Because I Want to. The solution involves that if I'm doing anything as a means to an end, as chuck c says or said i'm robbing myself you know that i need to i need to live in this moment and and give to this moment for the moment itself uh in fact chuck said that that going to heaven is is a good uh you know then that's a good goal but if i'm doing something just to be spiritually good and going to heaven that i'm still robbing myself because i'm not living in the moment i'm not doing it for for its own very sake well the first uh and i was told with regard to the big book um and i had read it through several times and had philosophized about it and criticized the literary style before i got sober and when i was taught that it wasn't a philosophy book that it was a simple instruction manual for my actions and that this deal of recovery is not a learning process. There's nothing in this universe that I can learn that will give me a heartbeat of sobriety or recovery, but rather a doing process. I was told that I needed to pick the book back up and start at the front cover and go through it line for line, reading only the black part and not interpreting anything, and not looking for anything to learn, but rather looking for something to do. And I was taught that if I wanted to live when I got the suggestion that I do something that it would be a good idea for me to go ahead and do that as much like the book says as I could. And they explained to me that the first two steps are different from the other ten. And how they are different, they explained to me, are that steps three through twelve all require action on my part. But steps one and two don't require action they require the reaching of conclusions in fact i've been sober a long long time before i even noticed a little phrase that immediately follows what we read when we read how it works right after the abcs the next paragraph starts with being convinced we were at step three and it never occurred to me until a few years ago well being convinced of what and i believe now that it's simply being convinced of those conclusions that are involved for me in steps one and two the doctor's opinion in the early part of the book i think for me is a wonderful discussion of alcoholism and what's what's wrong with me this physical allergy to alcoholism i've got this couple with the mental obsession later on the book makes it clear that even though i'm physically as well as mentally different from my fellows when it comes to my reaction from alcoholism that the problem mainly mainly centers in my mind if the problem didn't mainly center in my hand after the problems that alcohol caused me once i got it out of my system i would never have picked up that first drink so the mental obsession is is what gets me what happened with bill i think when we look at bill's story is that that ebby brought rather dr silkworth told bill what his problem was dr silk worth defined his problem said you know you you're hopeless alcoholic and without some sort of great moral upheaval or spiritual experience, I don't think you use that word or that term, but something along those order, that order, you're hopeless and you're going to die. And Ebi Thatcher showed up at Bill's kitchen table and Ebi brought him the solution. Ebi bought him the Solution, which was a higher power, was a spiritual awakening. and then later on through god and and and other folks the program the actual implementation of the solution was made clear to bill and and that's what we live on today the book says at one point that every day that every simple talk at bill's kitchen table multiplies itself and i hope that that's why it'll happen for us today is that there'll be a little multiplication of every simple talk at Bill's kitchen table. The conclusions that I was told are involved in step one have to do with the first, of course, is the powerlessness over alcohol. One of the first things I had to get straight was that that did not mean powerless over my elbow. I spent a long time trying to get sober in AA, and I really was trying to gets sober in AA as best I could, and thinking that AA wasn't working because I still wanted to drink. See, part of my, at the very core of my illness is a conviction that what I think, feel, and believe is the true reality, and then my actions must necessarily follow along behind what I think, fear, or believe. And if there's going to be any change in me, something's got to magically change my insides to make me think feel or believe differently and then i can act differently see all my life i would look at good people and i would think you know if i felt like they feel and if i wanted to do the right thing like they must want to dothe right thing i could be a good person too the difference between them and me is the way we feel and if I felt that way and wanted to do it, I'd be okay too. And I believe now that I was right about some things. I believe those people were good people, and I believe I was not good people. But I believe the only difference was they were doing good things and I wasn't. I realize now that they may not have felt a bit more like doing the right thing than I did. The difference was that they weredoing it. And guess what went in the record book? What they did and what I did was what went in the record book. But see, I've always had that like so many things, 180 degrees turned around. I always thought that that reality was the feelings and the thoughts and the beliefs. And I thought that as long as I hadn't been struck by lightning and immediately transported to that neutrality from alcohol, that AA wasn't working. So the first thing I had to understand was that neither God or anybody in AA was apt to ever knock a drink out of my hand. The bad news on that was that for me to get sober, I had to do the first mature acts I'd ever done in my life. And that was for a while I had be prepared to do and do some things I really didn't want to do. And I had not do some thing that I really wanted to do, and that was the first time I'd every done that. I was 37 years old when I got sober in April 1981, and I believe that was the first series of mature acts that I ever did in my life so that was kind of my first conclusion about one of my early conclusions that I had to reach was that my powerlessness was over the alcohol but not over my elbow it wasn't an abdication totally of my responsibility now the good news with that for anybody who's new is that after a couple of months there hasn't been a day for over 14 and a half years now when I have wanted to drink. I don't think I've had a thing removed. I think it's all still there and 15 years bigger and meaner than it ever was, but I believe that every day for those years that I've been given my daily reprieve by the love of God. Next part of my conclusion was that I had to get it through my head that I was powerless over alcohol whether or not I had it in my system. See, I had grabbed hold of the physical allergy end of it because you would have had to really be dumb not to grab hold of a physical allergy about alcohol where I was and had been for a few years when I got sober because once I got the stuff in my body this phenomenon of craving that the doctor's opinion talks about so beautifully would set up in me and I'd physically lost the ability to stop drinking the stuff on my own. I mean something had to intervene and stop me from drinking it And when something did intervene, it took three or four days for me to be physically able to do something like sit up in a chair. Well, wherever I was, in a home or somebody's home or in an asylum or hospital, I would be shaking that out and I would think, you know, these people are right. And of course, I had intellectually known I was an alcoholic since my mid-teens. But for all those years, you see, it was just, it were all sort of like having a withered arm or something in a way except far more romantic it was going to cause me some inconvenience and maybe shorten my life 10 or 15 years but i could live with my alcoholism i could outsmart it i could Outrun it if necessary i could even brag it but one way or the other i would be able to live with it and that was a mistake that almost killed me was the idea that i could live with my alcoholism that the failure to accept that in me it's truly incurable progressive and fatal and that i will either recover from it or i will die from it and this happened to everybody who ever had this thing called alcoholism and i'm not about to be the first exception in the history of the world now i would sit in those places shaking it out and i would think you know this is that this is right yeah i can't handle this stuff i'm powerless and once i get through this and get it out of my system i'm not going to do this anymore and sure enough you know a few days later whammo because i i didn't know about the mental obsession i i don't know that i miss that without these steps without these tips to work on what's really wrong that disordered ego that makes it absolutely impossible for me to be comfortable inside myself on account of my self-obsession without something from outside to go in there and fill up that emptiness and do something about that pain that my self obsession causes that without these steps to do that i wind up as powerless over the first drink as i am over the second drink or the 23rd drink and i had to accept that i hadto reach that conclusion as part of my powerlessness And, of course, the book in that first 64 pages going on up to the fourth step talks about and, in fact, mentions several times that remember that we are going to reach the point where we have no defense against that first drink, that the defense will have to come from a higher power. So in my conclusions, I had to conclude that I'm as powerless over drink one without the program of recovery, the 12 steps and the fellowship and this God that we'll get to in step two that I had started acting as if I believed in in order to live. I also had to include in my case that I was powerless not over alcohol but over any mind-altering drug because I would be in an asylum coming off alcohol and I would think, you know, this booze has really got me. It's got to the point where once I start, I didn't know the term phenomenon of craving, but that was what I was thinking about. I didn' t know the terms, but I knew the feeling. And what I've got to do is just stay off this boozy and I get out and I'll chip on various pills and dope and I' ll be all right. And, of course, I'd get out and I'd chip on those and I'D be back on everything and i'd wind up back in the asylum and and then i'd be in there and i'll be coming off some sort of drug other than alcohol and i think you know i really didn't have all these problems when i started mixing all this other stuff with the booze things were going reasonably well with just the booze and uh that's what it is is that i've got all this dope mixed up with this so i get out here and i just go back back back to drinking and that worked for me for years that'll drink again that'll work again so i'd get out and i'd go back gonna drink with some sort of control you know and of course in 72 hours i was back on everything probably in another 24 hours after that back in another asylum so i had to accept and had to conclude that as part of my powerlessness i'm powerless over all mind-altering substances and including alcohol and then the step talks about admitted that our lives had become unmanageable and that's been so important as to what an unmanangeable life is for me and fortunately before we go any further let me say this you know Hadworth says no one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles and thank god that that is true because i have never been ableto do any one of these steps with anything like perfection but it's turned out that my willingness to in good faith trying has been just fine you know that's been plenty and i'm never going to do any of these steps to anything like perfection my whole and and lest i should forget to say it later on i won't tell you that my entire spiritual journey in alcoholics anonymous has been a process of stumbling a couple steps in the right direction forgetting what i'm trying to do getting eaten up with self-centeredness falling on my butt getting up remembering oh yeah i did a third step back such and such time such such place i'm supposed to be trying to do this god's way instead of man and and i did a sixth and seventh step i'm opposed to have laid all myself at god's feet and have given up my self-determined objectives and and stumble another couple of steps in the right direction and fall on my butt again and get up and dust myself off and there have been many days when i've done that literally a hundred times they're still in my life today at almost 15 years sober many days when that happens to me literally a hundred times. And the good news is that seems to be just fine with my higher power. My higher power doesn't require perfection from me, but my higher power seems to reward persistence. That seems to be maybe the most important quality in spirituality for me is persistence, is to keep on trying, to not quit just because I've messed up. You know, there's a part of me, a powerful part, that once I've messed up on anything says, oh, what the use? What's the use, you know, you can't do it, you've blown that anyway. But just keeping on stumbling, keeping on doing the best I can when I'm convinced that I've got it so messed up that the best that I can is not nearly good enough, but keeping on doin' it anyway. So my conclusions about manageability today are far different than my conclusions about manageabilty when I got sober. But my willingness to act on the ones that I was able to reach when I got sober was enough. That was enough, but today, well, when I first approached step one and unmanageability, it wasn't a bit of problem to admit that my life was a mess. you know you would have to have been blind not to see that my life was a total mess and admit that it was a mess so there was no discussion about that even with myself you know we talk about the committees in our head the committee in my head was in absolute and total unanimity that my wife was a mass so i thought at first that the fact that my live was an absolute mess was admitting that my life was unmanageable. And it was also extremely clear that I couldn't have managed more poorly, and the committee was also in unanimous agreement on that, that I could not have managed More poorly. And surely I had admitted that my life was a total mess and that I had completely and totally mismanaged it, therefore I had admitted my life was unmanageable hadn't i no i hadn't because you see if all that's wrong is that my life is a mess because i have managed poorly the solution is for me to manage better and i don't need step two there's no reason for meto go you know casting around here looking for power greater than myself to try to solve my problem because if the problem is that i have fail to manage well the solution is for me to manage better and i don't need any of the rest of the steps but you know if i've got a car that i'm not driving very well i'll be having wrecks and i'll been banging into things and and having all sorts of bad things happen to me with that car and if i improve my driving take driving classes whatever but somehow i improve my driving then i'm going to solve those problems but if i've got an undrivable car i can go to every driving school in the country and i'm still not going to go an inch because my car is not drivable it doesn't make any difference how good a driver i am him. And that's what it means to me today, that my life is unmanageable. It doesn't matter how good a manager I might be or what I might learn about managing. The book says it a thousand different ways. It says that we remain the victims of the delusion that somehow we can wrest satisfaction and happiness from life if only we can manage well. Well, folks, my car is undrivable. And when I truly admitted unmanageability, I had admitted not only that I was powerless over alcohol and other things, whether or not I had them in my body, but I had admitted that my life was a mess and that on my own I could have done absolutely nothing to have prevented it from becoming a mess, and that On my own, I can do absolutely nothing to clean up that terrible mess that I have made. Now, when I've done that, I have truly admitted that my life has become unmanageable, not just that I failed to manage well. And I've reached that perfect dilemma that step one has to be to be effective for us. Step one has a perfect dilemma because most of us are not really open, even if we've got strong religious affiliations at the time, when we really get down to it, We're not really open to casting around for a personal relationship with the higher power to intervene in the small things of our daily lives to save our lives. So it takes that absolute dilemma of step one to put us to step two. Now, once I've reached all those conclusions, then I better reach for step two because I don't have any place else to go. I'm not reaching for step three as a self-improvement process. this. I'm reaching for step two because that flimsy reed is the only thing I've got to hang on to. I've just admitted that I couldn't have prevented the mess, I can't clean it up, I've Got This Powerlessness, I'm Mentally and Physically Different, and I'm a goner. There's no human power, including me, especially myself, that can do anything about me at all. And Incidentally, AA, I was taught and I believe with all my heart, is not a self-help program. It's the opposite of a self help program. It is a God help program for helpless people. And that's the way it works for me. So in having reached my dilemma in step one, I started casting around for step two. And now step two liked to have killed me, folks. It really liked to have got me because I was one of these intellectual ones, whereas I had some sort of intellectual theory about creation. The idea that there was a personal power that would intervene and have something to do with the daily run-ins of my life was just absolutely unacceptable to me. I believe what it was, it was unacceptable to me that there was any power greater than my brain as far as running the daily things that my life had to do. And I stayed around AA for two and a half years, and I had read To the Agnostic. And anybody who's having any trouble with that or even if you're not having any problem with that, please take some time and read the chapter. We Agnostics is the title of the chapter, which I think is interesting. Bill penned that chapter pretty well single-handedly, and I think Bill's talking about himself and his approach to it and talking about we agnostics. But I had tried for two and a half years of really bad latter-stage alcoholism, dying of alcoholism to get hold of this second step and I couldn't do it and I thought I had to die and I believe the conclusions in the second step are fairly simple conclusions the conclusion first is that somewhere in this universe there is some power of some nature that could clean up that mess that I just described in step one that I could not have prevented making and I can't do one single thing about cleaning up. Step two doesn't reach any conclusions that that power has even got any interest in cleaning up that mess or that there's any way that I can get that power to help me clean up that mass, to clean up the mess. Step two just simply becomes a willingness to believe and Bill is very clear about that in the book that this step two thing is a real big hoop it's easy to jump through we've got to either come to believe or be willing to believe that there's a power greater than ourselves out there somewhere that can that that can can can help us with the mess that we've gotten the second conclusion has to do with insanity um that the power could had the power to restore us to sanity um i know i've never had any problems with with concluding that i had been insane uh insanity uh when the book talks about it usually is talking about action when it's talking about an insane person it's talking about a person who is acting insanely and see all my life i had thought that insanity was was a state of mind in fact i was in an asylum one time um and a fellow straightened me out on that he said don you know they don't put you in the asylum for being crazy and then huh well they sure put me in here for being and said no no said they put you in here for acting crazy and said they don't let you out for being sane don't make a big difference whether you're saying or not they let you have for acting sane so when the book talks about insanity it talks about acting insanely and i believe with all my heart that the best definition for me today of sanity and insanity is regardless of how i'm feeling regardless of the turmoil regardless of what the swirling if i am acting in the same rational manner i am sane on the other hand regardless of how centered i may feel if i'm acting crazy folks i'm crazy and when i look well when i looked in fact i found out over the years that i can be real real crazy and it doesn't hurt a thing except make me uncomfortable for the time being. It's only acting crazy that'll kill me. In fact, sometimes I can be real, real crazy and nobody ever knows because I don't act crazy. And when I'm crazy and I don' t act crazy, it very soon becomes funny that I was crazy. But you let me act crazy. I want to tell you there are things that still aren't funny after decades than i did so i need to look at my sanity and insanity as my actions and when i look at sanity and insanity is my actions i don't have a bit of problem the my actions could scarcely have been more self-destructive they said scarcely could have been more destructive to the people around me to everything involved going right back to the same thing that has beaten me to death and beat me to dead and trying that same thing over and over and either expecting a different result or just having given up and going right back to it over and over so so i don't have much problem with the uh with the insanity conclusion what happened in my life with step two which is to me one of the most important things that without it i would be dead i had tried and tried i'd been around alcoholics anonymous for two and a half years in and out of asylums and going to a lot of meetings between trips to the asylum and that sort of thing. I remember I was walking through a clubhouse in Nashville, Tennessee where I got sober about two months before I got sore when a great big old tall boy by the name of Joe Debbie in fact Joe's still around and gives some talks around Joe's about 6'6". Walked up and looked down at me and said Major, I'm beginning to think that you are too intelligent for this program. Now I had been around for over two years for over two years i had been exposed to alcoholics anonymous on a regular basis but my only only reaction was just to swell up and think well it's about time these people figured out who they're dealing with here but he went on and he said and you know don that's a real shame because we have never had anybody too dumb for this program and we bury you buttholes all the time and that grabbed me you've heard that expression something felt like an icy hand grabbing you inside your chest that's what that felt like to me and it stuck in my brain and it was still there two months later and when i stumbled back into that clubhouse and i believed that a loving god had given me some gifts at that time i didn't know that i'd been given any gifts because i didn'T feel any different coming off that last drunk than i did the 199 before it if i'd waited until i felt like i could get sober until i thought this program would work for me until i though that alcoholism was really all that was wrong with me, until I believed that these 12 steps would work, until I believe that there was a power greater than myself that would intervene in my life. I would have been dead many, many years ago. But God had given me the first little ability that I'd ever had, and I call that today for me teachability and humility. And Lord knows those are precious qualities for me because they've always been in such short supply. and i don't think i had any until i got sober and and god had given me the first ability to open up my mind and and do some things that were suggested about my life even though i didn't understand them i didn'T agree with them and i DIDN'T think they would work see that doesn't even sound bad today you're 15 years sober that sounds pretty reasonable doesn't it then i'm not going to voluntarily do anything about my wife unless i understand it and i agree with it and i think it'll work uh and certainly until i got sober uh that didn't feel like the ultimate veto power in the universe that felt like common sense you know why should i do this i realize now that with what i've got wrong with me as long as i left that veto power in my brain that i'm not going to do it if i don't understand it or i don'T AGREE WITH IT OR I DON'T THINK IT'LL WORK i was under death sentence with what I'VE GOT WRONG WITH ME I WAS GOING TO DIE AS LONG AS I left it there and the little gift that you know the big gift that god had given me was a little bit of the teachability humility and i stumbled back in that clubhouse and i asked those guys what to do and they told me don't drink go to meetings and read the big book and they it's about that time they they explained to me uh some of the things i've talked about today about being the program for recovery and working like penicillin works on infection didn't matter whether i understood the steps or believed the steps would work or wanted to do the steps just to do the steps. Then they told me, if I wanted to live, I'd better get down on my knees and ask a power greater than myself to get through the day without drinking and drugging in the morning, get down On My Knees at night and thank that power. And the tears literally started to come. And I said, I can't do that. The second step is what's been killing me for these two and a half years because I've tried so hard. I've tired so hard to think, feel, and believe the way it looks like to me that you guys think, feel, believe. And I really had. I had tried every way I knew to somehow adjust myself inside, you know, flip those switches and turn those valves to make myself start thinking, feeling, and believing the way it looked like to me that You Guys Thought, Felt, or Believed. And I thought I couldn't recover unless I could make myself think, feel, and believe that way. I thought that was it. Then they told me some very interesting things that I was finally able to hear. They told me not to worry about that in the first place. I was way too sick to have any valid thoughts feelings or beliefs and they also told me that my thoughts feelings and beliefs were my disease and my disease is my thoughts, feelings, beliefs. There's not even any overlap and they told me the issue of whether I lived or died was going to be determined solely by what I did. What I thought felt or believed wouldn't have a thing to do with it so they told me if I wanted to live I better get down on my knees and start saying those words morning and night and nothing could be more beside the point than what I was thinking feeling or believing about it. And I remember being on my knees like two or three weeks after I started acting as if in April of 81 and thinking, Lord, if they catch me down here talking to this wall, not even drunk, they'll put me in the asylum and they'll never let me out. But by the grace of God, I kept on doing it. I remember I would do things like wad up a note and put it in the toe of the shoes I was going to put on the next day. And that wasn't hard because I only had one pair of shoes at that point. So that if I forgot to pray, that when I put my shoe on, my toe would hit it and I would remember. And the miracle of the second step happened. It worked just like we agnostics said when I became willing to be open to the idea that there might be a power greater than myself. As unlikely as it appeared to my wonderful man that that might be the case, but I still became open to go ahead and take the actions and act like a fellow would act if a fellow thought there might just be this flimsy reed out here, since there's no place else for me to turn after that dilemma in step one. When I became willing to take those actions, that flimsey reed, like the book says, turned out to be the powerful and the strong hand of God for me. And when we talk about some of the later steps, particularly the eleventh, that getting on my knees more than all of this is gone, and none of it counts. None of it accounts at all, and that's the thing that I have to do. I haveと do that. God's going to help me, and you folks will help me. But I can't abdicate the responsibility for that. The responsibility for what I put in my body always remains mine. Well, I started approaching Step 3 after this miracle of coming to believe had happened. and I want you to know when I started coming to believe when it started looking like to me hey, you know, I might live this thing might work for me the vistas started opening up the vista's really started opening up and I got to thinking about the process of turning Don Major's life and will over to the care of God and I wanna tell you it was like a Cecil B. DeMille movie you talk about a big deal that was gonna be a big deal what was going to happen was that god and i were going to get together and we were going to roll out the entire tapestry of my life and then god and I were going walk up and down this tapestry you know and and uh i was going point out some things and god was going say well gee don i never thought about that that's good yeah we'll do that and and then we'd get the whole thing mapped out you know, and then i would know God's will from now on and i could go on cruise control and just cruise on down. So I started talking to my sponsor, Cherry Carpenter, who was incidentally a very, very loving man. Sometimes when I talked about him, the fact that he was rather blunt and that he believed that this book means just precisely what it says, just precisely what it means, and he believed there was no recovery from alcoholism except through doing these steps the way the book says do them. Sometimes, when I talk about the way he talks to me he sounds like a mean overbearing ogre uh i think lots of times tough love and sponsorship is really just a masquerade for beating somebody up and and and cherry didn't do that cherry didn't try to belittle me cherry didn'Try to motivate me negatively with fear and embarrassment and that sort of thing cherry told me the unvarnished truth he didn'T pull the punches But he did it in a loving way. He did it in a civil way. He observed the simple rules of courtesy that aren't, you know, that aren' t suspended by anything. Simple rules of courtesy are just there and he did. But while observing those simple rules of courtesy, when I started talking to him about this process of turning Don's will and life over to the care of God and all the magnificence involved in it, he drew me up pretty short and said, wait a minute, Don. He said, don't quote it to me god knows i know you can quote it but paraphrase the third step tell me what the thirdstep is and i said well it's turning my will and life over to god and he said no no no no no has nothing to do with that said it's merely making a decision to turn your will and life over the care of god and i sad oh come on cherry uh you know you're splitting hairs over semantics for goodness sakes uh he said don this is always so terribly hard for me but i'm gonna try to get up on your intellectual level. He said, let's suppose we've got three frogs sitting on a log and one of them decides to jump in the pond. How many are left? And I said, two. And he said, no, you dumbass, three. He just decided. He hadn't gone anywhere. And then he explained to me that I can decide today that I'm going to New York Monday. And I can truly make that decision. And I Can share that with every one of you folks. Hey, I've decided I'm Going to New york monday and there's no way i can more strongly make that decision than i've made it but unless i get on the telephone and start doing a whole series of specific acts and making arrangements i'm not going to get across the ohio river monday folks my decision will amount to absolutely nothing and then he uh he explained to me that anytime i heard folks sitting around a discussion meeting wondering if they had done the third step of alcoholics anonymous not to worry about it because they hadn't. Because he explained that none of the steps is explained with any more or described with any mere specificity than the third step is described on pages 62 and 63 of the Big Book. He explained to me that today we always have an understanding person available to us. So what that means, unless I have gone into a room with an understanding personal and intended for that to be the watershed moment of my life, intended for it to be there. And I had to look up watershed. I thought I knew what everything meant, but it's where on one point all the water flows this way and on the other side of the watershed all the Water flows this Way until I meant for it be the Watershed Moment of my Life, until I went in there with that understanding person and I got on my knees and said words similar to those on page 63, I hadn't done the third step of Alcoholics Anonymous. Cherry went on and explained to me that the early AAs, before we even had the 12 steps, before Bill wrote the book and wrote the steps out into their current format of 12, but it was still the same basic program of recovery, the Oxford group as adapted by Bill and the early folks. The third step, what we know as the third step was considered so basic and so important that a prospect was not allowed to go to their first meeting until they were willing to go into a room with somebody that was already in the fellowship and get down on their knees and say words very similar to those on 63. And he explained to me that the reason they did it that way was that they thought that if a person was not willing to do that, they didn't have an ice-cube chance in Hades of staying sober and there wasn't any need in wasting time on it. And then Cherry led me through the book talking about the third step. And incidentally, none of this may do any of you all any good, but it sure does me a lot of good. And I looked over the third steps the other night and in three and a half pages from page 60 through 63, the word self in different forms is used by my account 21 times and and cherry led me through that you know selfishness self-centeredness that's the root of our troubles and i know now that that's where he got the idea that the basic thing wrong with me is this disorder of the ego and everything else flows from that he led me threw let me through where it says that the book is going to tell us that we can't get rid of this self without god's help and we've got to have god's helper we're going to die and the book's going to say this is the how and why of it in other words it's goingto tell us exactly what we need to do says first of all we had to quit playing god what i was told that meant is that i'm going to leave the patterns up to god and i'm gonna stick to stitching you know i've spent my whole life looking around trying to see where God's taken my life so far and where God's going to take my life in the future. Meantime, I'm not listening to where God is telling me to take the next step, that next stitch. Cherry explained to me that any time that the only glimpse of God's will that I am ever going to get is for me in the right now. He explained to me that anytime I'm contemplating God's Will for any other human being to call him that i'm crazy and he said anytime that i am contemplating god's will for me in the future whether it's two years or five minutes to call them that i m crazy but that if i'll be still and leave the pattern of my life up to god and listen that that spark of the divine that's in every one of us is going to tell me exactly what that next right stitch should be and where it should be taken and then he went on to explain to me that if i would do that that if I would do that, that God would have a pattern in man that was more beautiful than anything I was even capable of conjuring up, much less reaching. After Jerry had gotten me... Well, let me back up and tell you this, that after he had gotten be convinced that it truly was just a decision to do the third step, I thought I still knew where the complication was. I said, okay, Jerry, okay. So it says decision, and that's what the step actually is. But once I know if I'm going somewhere, I know how to do that. I know How to Implement That Decision. But once i've decided to turn my will and life over to God, how do I implement that decision? And he said, that's just a something. He said, all you're deciding to do is work the rest of the steps the way the book tells you to do it and do the next right thing instead of what you want to do. In other words, take that next stitch where God tells you to take the stitch and leave the pattern up to him he said don if you will do that god will make your will in life what god would have your will and life be and that's all you have to do is this good thing because that's always capable doing it's that next stitch but then in going back to the book he said that uh where it says hereafter in this drama of life god is going to be our director he explained that if i was going to being a pro in a play the director would give me a script and that if I looked at that script and said now wait a minute my character shouldn't say this my character should say that and my character shouldn't move here at that time my character should move there well the play will be a flop if my character does what this silly script says here so I'm going to improve this and I start improving that I am going to have chaos the only possible result of that is chaos because the director is in charge of the play and until i'm willing to follow the script instead of what my brain tells me would be better would put my character in a better light and make the whole play better until i start following that script i'm going to have chaos i'm not going to get anywhere and he explained to me that the script is that spark of the divine that thing that will always let us know what the next right thing is that will give us god's will for us in the instant and no broader picture of God's will but always perfectly on that if I'll just stay in the instant that God will let me know that next right thing or to take that next stitch and once I start following the script then I'd ignore it all my life because I knew so much more about the part and so muchmore about the play than the director did until I stop ignoring that I'm going to have the chaos and it says that God is the principle and we are his agents it was explained to me that's simply employ your employee I'm working for a guy a guy takes me off early in the morning drops me off says Don I want you to dig three holes right over here along this line I want them to be a foot in diameter 18 inches deep and two feet apart guy gets in his truck heads off now look that's not the place for those holes first place that's where he needs them ground is too rocky don't need to be a foot inch diameter it needs to be 8 inches don't needs to be 18 inches deep it needs to be 20 don't need to be this far apart need to be that far apart that guy comes back at lunch i'm gonna have chaos because he's in charge it isn't until i start digging the holes where the boss tells me to dig them and the boss is not going to tell me that the project is none of my business digging the holes is my job and the bus is not gonna make me privy to the overall project he's just gonna tell me where to he or she is just gonna give me where they dig the holes and until I start digging in the holes where God tells me one step at a time to dig those hold. I'm going to have chaos. Next thing, it says that he is the father and we are the children. Kid's not going to eat the spinach. Well, if the parent is consistent and firm, and our loving heavenly parent is always consistent and firmly, the kid will either eat the Spanish or the kid will have chaos until the kid eats the Spanish because the parent's in charge. And the same thing with me until i eat the spinach i'm going to have chaos and then cherry explained to me that that this that this simple concept in fact the reason that all of this is so so difficult for me and i think so many people is that it's so simple that that's all there is to that third step it's just simply getting on my knees and making a decision that i'm gonna do the rest of these steps the way the book says whether i think that'll work or not and i'm to do the next right thing instead of what I want to do, knowing that usually the enemy of the right thing is not going to be what I thought it was. I thought that the enemyof the right thing was going to usually be greed and lust and all that sort of thing, and it is maybe one percent of the time. Ninety-nine percent ofthe time the enemyoff the rightthing is fear, the fear that if I do that right thinginstead of whatIwantto do, if I go aheadand put that $300 in the bank and let it go through the taxes to slide it in my pocket that I'm going to lose something that I don't want to lose that I am not going to get something that i really want that Iam going to look bad you know that we are going to look bad that's at the bottom of practically everything for me when I get honest about it and it's that simple this is what was explained to me that means this keystone of this arc that we're going to walk through the freedom is that we truly are going to start stitching and let god take care of the patterns of our life and we're going to be willing to do that next right thing when we don't understand it and we don'T agree with him we DON'T think we WE DON'T THINK IT'S GOING TO WORK IN MATERIAL TERMS BUT WE'RE WILLING TO GO AHEAD AND DO THAT NEXT RIGHT THING THEN THAT'S THE KEYSTONE OF THAT ARC THROUGH WHICH WE WALK TO FREEDOM AND THE THE THIRD STEP PROMISES TO ME ARE PROBABLY THE MOST beautiful promises in the book i'm going to take just a minute and and read those i know we've all read them but says that when we sincerely took such a position all sorts of remarkable things followed we had a new employer being all powerful he provided what we needed if we kept close to him and performed his work well established on such a footing we became less and less interested in ourselves our little plans and designs more and more we became interested in seeing what we could contribute to life as we felt new power flow in as we enjoyed peace of mind and as we discovered we could face life successfully as we became conscious of his presence we began to lose our fear of today tomorrow or the hereafter and then i love this this little short sentence we were reborn. We were reborn. And how much stronger than that can we get on the phone? Cherry told me, and my sponsor's name was Cherry Coppiter, by the way. Cherry died almost six years ago. In fact, I guess it was six years ago. Cherry told me in the concept of the third step that there's only one definition of courage, and that's doing the next right thing when I don't want to do it. And I knew, of course, that I was infinitely better read than Cherry and that he just didn't know that there were myriad definitions of courage other than that. And I want to tell you that after almost 15 years, I believe there's only one definition of courage, and that's doing the next right thing when it conflicts with what I want do. And knowing that usually I'll want to do something other than what I know in my heart is the next thing out of fear. Sometimes it will be those other things but usually it will be just plain old fear that if i do that next right thing it won't work out the way i need it to work out for me to be all right he explained to me that the bondage of self that i ask in the third step prayer to be relieved from and also would take just a moment and read that this is the suggested prayer and And it says, of course, the wording is quite optional as long as we express the basic idea. But, you know, any ad-libbing of mine might or might not work, but I know this one works. So I'm just real comfortable with this one, the way it's written. It says, God, I offer myself to thee to build with me and do with me as thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do thy will. Take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of thy power, thy love, and thy way of life. May I do thy will always. Terry explained to me that the bondage of self was my home, my health, my profession, my daughter, my wife, my car, which I didn't have a lot of those things at the time he was explaining it to me, but now that I have them they are. That those things are the bondages of self and that that's what I'm asking to be relieved of in that prayer. And what he explained to me that that meant, and this has helped me so much, is that on any day that I try to own my home, my car, that I'm responsible for my health, that that man is my right, that my relationship with my daughter and my wife is my rights, that that car out there is mine, that that home is mine. That I'm going to have a real, real bad day because those things are such a burden. They are truly a bondage of self when they are mine and I'm responsible for them and I've got to keep them and I have to keep everything in order. But on the days when all those things are on loan from God, and I know I'm supposed to have them just for today because I've had them and that I'm going to try to use them today in a way that God would have me use them. And tomorrow we'll see when God deals the cards again what God wants me to have to use tomorrow and if God wants to change what I've got to use tomorrow then that'll be okay because God's not going to let me down and not going to let anybody down when I can get in that frame of mind it's just so easy and it's so easy to love all those things and I feel healthier and I love my car and it is so much fun when it is not man and I don't have to worry with it and my wife is so wonderful when her being with me is a gift from God today for today and she's not mine and what she does doesn't reflect on me and I don't need to make sure what she Does in this pattern to wind up here over there. And when I'm just freed from all that, I don' t know whether we're going to be together tomorrow or not, but it sure is nice that you're here today. And When I can get in that day and do that, it just works so much better for me. Works so much Better. I actually am winding up here to the point where We are going to have a few minutes for discussion, and that's a gift from God, folks, because I usually get too wound up and don't leave any time. But that basically is the way the first, second, and third steps have worked for me up to this time in my life. And I appreciate your attention, and I'm going to open it up, and here's some of your folks' ideas. Now, on any question, I'm going to repeat the question because Ed, the taper, doesn't get the question unless I repeat it. So I will repeat any questions that we get and I'm just going to open it up and let's talk. Wilma? That was great. I want to tell you, I've been on a lot of meetings where we've been, this is not a wedding, it's a stay-in. And the thing that's been most helpful to me with AA itself, and that's not in the big book itself, but the list, I don't think it is, is doing the next right thing. That's the most helpful thing ever did. I turn my eyes and look down at you, Arnie, because I'll go to the wall. You know, I might be hurt again, but that's the next thing that sets me off. Thank you, Wilma. Wilma was saying that doing the next right thing is the most important thing in her life and it is in man too, Wilма. Thank you. Yes, sir? How much sobriety should a person have before they work 12 steps? The question is how much sobrietty should aperson have before they work the 12 steps. I think a good question is how much sobriety can a person hang on to if they don't work the 12 steps Dr. Bob was running around Akron doing amends the afternoon following his last beer that morning. Now, that doesn't mean that folks that I sponsor, that I suggest that they be doing amens the day after their last drink. And certainly I think people need to get a good grasp of the conclusions in 1 and 2 so that they, you know, are solid with what they're doing on step three. I don't think there is a timetable. And one thing I didn't mention here that I guess I would have mentioned at the beginning of step four when we get back, right after the third step, the book says that while step three is a vital and crucial step, it will have little permanent effect unless followed at once by step four. so my response to that is that for me as long as I wasn't rushing through and just doing something ridiculous like trying to work all the steps in a week or something moving on with the steps was the thing to do you used to hear a lot I haven't heard a lot of it lately but you usedと hear a loоt about now don't do that fourth step too early you'll get drunk and you'll know when to do a fourth step and let your group tell you when to do a fourth step, and you'll see a burning bush and know you need to do a fourth steps. And what the book says is, fine, go ahead and wait if you want to, but be advised that your third step's not going to amount to a hill of beans unless you do it at once. So I don't have an answer saying, well, you ought to be sober a month or you ought to be over 24 hours or you're over a year. I think it varies. A person should follow the lead of their sponsor with regard to when they should move through the steps. It's my feeling on it. Thank you. Is there anyone else? I guess we're about ready. Oh, yes, sir. My name is Frank. I'm not... Hi, Frank. Thank you, John, for sharing. In Bill's story, he talks about humbly offering himself to God in the hospital room in the town hospital in New York and Dr. Shepard came in and Bill told him about this experience. And according to AA history, he replied, well, you better hold on to it, Bill, because it's a lot better than the way you were before. And I believe that was in December of 1934. Now, Bill got out and started working with a lot of people there. He told Walsh maybe while he was working and she said, yes it is because you're saying something. I guess the question I want to ask you was, was you feel it was that day in that hospital room that he had his moment of surrender that he recognized as power to power. Your question is, do I feel like Bill had his moment of surrendering in the hospital room? I suspect that would be right, Frank. I really don't know. So I guess in my own case, my surrender has been more an evolutionary process. That big book in the appendix talks about the educational variety of spiritual experience rather than the sudden like Bill had. But I think that would probably be the spiritual awakening point that Bill would talk about the surrender yet. Thank you. Yes? Well, I personally think that you're sober if you're not drinking. But that's just the definition of word. There are a lot of people who define sobriety as quite something else, just for whatever it's worth. I probably can't stay sober in other words I probably can't keep from drinking if I don't do these steps I most certainly cannot comfortably stay sober if I'm not if I don't do these steps the reason I'm answering your question and the question was which I had forgotten to repeat I think the question was is sobriety not drinking or is sobrietry working these steps my sponsor told me that he didn't believe in the term dry drunk He said, you're either drinking or you're not drinking. You're either drunk or you'm not drunk. He said when people talk about dry drunk, what they're talking about is a case of the red butt, except he didn't say red butt. And he said the only cure for a case the red bud is to soak in a tub of gratitude. But he thought it was confusing to talk about somebody who wasn't drinking and wasn't sober. He certainly didn't deny that you could be crazy as the devil not drinking, in fact said if you didn't drink and didn't do these steps we were promised that we would be restless irritable and discontent just like the doctor's opinion said but I don't know whether that answers it or not but for me you're sober until you pick up that drink may not have very good sobriety you may not be sane but you're so sober time for one more I guess that's it. There are a couple who know him. Oh, Gwen. Well, I'm really thankful you're coming out and spending a lot of time with us. And one thing that I've really done in your process is touch one, two, three, six. I've never said that you can do touch one to one through the sponsor. And if I had listened and I wouldn't have felt like it was much of a piece of it, probably I wouldn' have started doing the steps all by myself. When I get to step four and five is when the sponsor comes in. When you sit, in 1, 2 and 3 when you talked about, see I was so into myself and I did all this stuff by myself the first couple of times and we do stumble sometimes, but the mere fact that we're sitting here is an indication that we'll really, and that's really what you're getting to in the first second or third step, it's getting to the point where you're making a decision to do this. you kept saying that you couldn't think and feel your way that was really important for me because I kept thinking that I can't handle those feelings and thoughts and people and all of this and then I was a treasure to sit here and listen to all this and I really didn't believe it see and that kept me back for a while and so it's really I think it's probably important that you brought that out in a very good way that you did because it is an important thing to do because that's what we're proud of. And it takes us a while to kind of put it in. Thanks, Matt. Thank you, Graham. Thanks, Clayton. A couple of announcements. Will the people that are responsible for our displays please stand up so we'll know who you are and so if we want to talk to you during these breaks we'll be able to do that. We'll know where to talk. You're correct, Keynote. I'm Jim Skees. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Jim. Hi, James. I'm the correctional civil history person. Okay, thank you. My name's Graham. I don't know. My name is Nancy. Great, thanks. Anybody else? There's one. Please enter. I'm Bob Browning, area chair of the Recruiters Association. now this is being taped and the four tape album will be $20 and if you must leave early you can go ahead and order the tapes and they will be mailed to you and there will be tapes available right after the last session so Don my friend thank you Bless your heart. Anyhow, we'll see you all back here at 1210 for lunch. And there's no smoking, no eating, no drinking in this area. However, if you want to smoke, no smoking really in the whole church. You smoke outside and we have little things there for you to put your cigarettes in. I guess that's all. And if you wanna sign up for a pizza and have your shamrock, Thank you.