Big Book Study – Part 8 – Chris – 2001

Let's chat about these war stories, huh? Let's chat about the reason that we can't keep the young adults in our fellowship. Let's chat about why so many women are leaving this fellowship. Who do you think you are with those war stories? I'll go back to Bill's story. I've been thrown under the bus so many times with this. People come up after I talk, and I just see it on their faces. They're coming up. I know, I know. You don't have to say it. Our stories are all we have, because that's what we're taught. Our stories are all we have. Folks, let me tell you something. I didn't fly all this way up here 12 hours in an airport yesterday so I could come up here and share a stupid war story with you. Now, I'm going to tell you something. I ate out of the dumpsters in Houston, Texas, and I've done some stuff on the street that I wouldn't talk to about in mixed company. I've done some crazy, stupid, stupid things. You all with me? But I'm not up here to talk to you about that. I'm up here to talk to you about my life today and survive. I'm up here to talk to you about my life today and how absolutely as cool it is to wake up and have that obsession gone. And if we have more people pulling people with a vision of that stuff, instead of trying to scare some moron into these rooms, we would have success rates where we had them before. Let me tell you what the difference is. All of you all want to take this and run with it, because, of course, I have some stories. Let me tell you what Bill Wilson did. Ebby comes into his kitchen, and they talk, and they visit a little bit, and they share a few little stories, and it gets Bill's confidence. They identify a bit with their drinking. You with me? And then Ebby does this. You all can't see this on tape, but you all see it. Some of you all fishermen will know what I'm doing, right? And Ebby, he sets the hook, you know, and he tells him about God and what he's doing, right? And then Bill does the work. Bill Wilson, he goes and sees. After a bunch of false starts, Bill gets sober, and he goes to Dr. Bob's house, right? And he sits down with Dr. Bob, and they share a few drinking stories. They sit down and start talking a little bit, and Bob understands that Bill really understands what he's talking about. And then he... sets the hook. He tells him about God and the steps. You all with us? And Dr. Bob gets the deal. And they go to alcoholic number three. It's the stories in the back, in a vision for you, and it talks about them going to the third alcoholic, and they do the same thing. They tell a few stories. Do they tell all their stories? Do they tell a big, long repertoire of drunkologues to bore the poor son of a bitch to death? They don't do any of that. I'm going to go into an AA meeting and Randy's going to be in there. And she's not in a good place, and she's irritable, restless, and discontent. She's suffering from depression that only an alcoholic truly understands. Do you all understand that? And the fear that we've talked about all day long has eaten her ass. And she's contemplating at the moment, if this doesn't work, you know, my only solution is to go off myself. You know, because this has ceased being fun. The party's over. I want to die. Now then, I have some nasty stories I could tell her about the dumpster. But she looks like a businesswoman to me. I could share some of my business stories with her and how I showed up at work loaded. You with me? She could identify with that. I could talk to some of my... You see, folks, I was not always eaten out of dumpsters. Sometimes I was living in a penthouse in Houston, Texas. You see, and I have to look and see, where is my story best? Where is my story best going to help her? That's called 12-step. Speaking from the podium, telling your story is called telling your story. Let's don't get this shit confused, folks, because all of us are doing it. We're walking into a meeting, and the first thing I'm doing, hell, honey, you don't want to end up like me, do you? And she backs up a little bit. Let me tell you about eating out of dumpsters. She backs up a little bit more. And before that, too many minutes has gone on, I have separated myself from her completely because I have a message of hope for her, but I'm not going to get a chance to tell her because we've already separated each other with the stupid war stories. I need to tell you a little bit about what's inside, folks. I need to talk about the spiritual malady that Mark and Dave have been talking about all weekend. I need to talk to you about this feeling of emptiness and the boredom and the depression and the anxiety and the gut-wrenching fear that we live with on a daily basis. And I'm going to tell you something. She'll relate. And I don't have to give her any stupid war stories. She'll relate to that. And then I can set the hook and tell her exactly what she needs to do to come out the other side smelling like a rose. It's called work the 12 steps. Not any way you want it. Exactly the way the book outlined. Is she going to do it exactly the way I did it? No. She'll put her own twist on it. Guys, I'm down with that. But she will work the steps. And as a result of working the steps, she will get the absolute guarantee that she's going to be able to do it. She's going to be able to do it. She's going to be able to do it. We've got too many people standing around this fellowship who have never had a spiritual experience talking like gurus from the podium. We've got way too many people in meetings sharing their damned opinions with a newcomer. We don't have enough people standing for what this needs to be about, which is truth. We need some people that are going to stand and listen to somebody say, listen, folks, if you tell an alcoholic, and I'm going to say this one time. I mean, I realize this is an AA. But I know we've got some crack addicts in here. We've got some crack addicts in here. We've got some cocaine addicts in here. I'm going to tell you straight. If you ask a cocaine addict or somebody who is truly an alcoholic to wait a year before they get active in this fellowship, they're dead. And what's the truth with my bullshit when I'm standing in front of a newcomer telling them to take their time to work the steps? We'll get on that next week. What's the truth? The truth is I don't want them to take their time so they can do it thoroughly. The truth is this. I don't have time to mess with them because I'm too busy with my own stuff. Isn't that the truth? I dust them off. I dust them off. In 1987, after that suicide attempt, folks, I'm going to tell you something. I was so done with living, it wasn't even funny. Antidepressants I'd taken all my life had stopped working. And I was... Guys, the paranoia was gut-wrenching. And I was starving to death because I was too afraid to even go in the store and buy food. And I had no money. And it was just... And it was right before Christmas and here it was again. I had no money for gifts. And I had plenty of love around me, a lot of family that loved me. But my life was in the... a toilet. And I'd wake up in the morning and say, I'm not going to drink and I'm not going to do any drugs. And by that night, I'd be doing it again. I didn't know exactly how to get around this, you know, but I've always had somebody to blame. And at the last resort, after that suicide attempt, I landed back in a room full of alcoholics and full of alcoholics who were all carrying big books. Guys, I cannot tell you how many times I travel. I travel hundreds of times a year. Folks, I'm going to tell you, little groups, big groups, wherever it is, and you walk in the room and you look around, oh, excuse me, you got a big book on you? A big book? Oh, no, they sell those back up at the central service office. It's like walking into an emergency room. You know, it's like, anybody got any medicine in here? Oh, yeah, but it's all locked up in the fucking storeroom back over here. Guys, we have one message. It's the big book. It's the 164 pages. It's the 12 steps. That's the message. And you know, guys, if you haven't worked the steps, I hear Mark, my sponsor, he talks about all that. How do you know what you don't know? You know, if you've never worked the steps and you've never had a spiritual experience and you've never felt that pain and that weight that you've been carrying for years miraculously lifted off of you because you got off your ass and finally made that amends, you know, finally got connected in that fourth and fifth step and doing the stuff. If you've never sat in a room, walked in unexpectedly and caught one of your sponsees, one of the guys that you've been sponsoring, sitting over in the corner and he's got a big book open and he's eating some guy's ass, you know, telling him about God and the steps and he's up to his butt in it. And right, and then you, and it becomes so clear how this all goes around and how the message was carried to me and how I carried it to him and now he's carrying it to somebody. But you see, if you've never experienced that, then how would you understand my passion? Don't expect you to. Our fellowship's in the toilet. It is. And why? And why? Because we've walked on eggshells, we're, we're so afraid of hurting somebody's sensitive little feelings. I've said this on every tape I've ever done, folks. A nice lady like Randy comes in here and she needs help. But oh, you're having a bad day, so go ahead and share with the group. And we'll listen to you for an hour, piss and moan about your chicken shit day. And then she'll sit right here and quietly get up and leave, pick her coffee cup up, go drop it in the trash, walk out the back door, and die. Who are we here for? Are we here for the alcoholic that's gonna die? Or are we here with somebody who's too friggin' cheap to go get a good therapist? Thank you. Start the car, Jeannie. You can always tell when the temperature of the room changes. I'm already in this far and I love every one of you guys. I'm gonna read something here and get out of here. I need to tell you real quick before I do. I honor and respect every one of you, but I'm gonna say this point blank to you and anybody else. It's right, straight to your face. It is not your fuckin' right. It is not your right to ever come into a meeting and use it as a therapy session. Guys, we have a world full of great therapists. And I'm gonna tell you, most of these cats work on a sliding scale to think that AA is there for every little problem that you have. If you're working through some deep issue or a relationship problem or, you know, I mean, I don't, the, ah, go find, find the help that you need. Call me and I will help you get that help. But, but couldn't we please understand that the early days of Alcoholics Anonymous were about prayer and worship, were about, somebody came up after a meeting, after one of the first talks I ever did, and he says, well, priest, what do you think AA should be? A damn pep rally? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Everybody should be in here with one eye glued on me and the other on the, on the door for the newcomer walking in the door. My very life depends on working with that newcomer. It is not here so you can work through your chicken shit little problem. I'm going to tell you guys, if I, if I knew the answer, we'd help you, but I'm going to tell you, I don't know the answer, what you need to do in your relationship. I don't even know what to do with mine. What am I going to do talking to you? But it's the truth. I don't know what you need to do with your job. You need to move to Texas. No, the whole purpose of working the steps is so that we can get connected to God. And that's what we have to do with a newcomer. We don't have a year to wait for you to get connected. We need your help now. I mean, we don't have enough people carrying the message. We've got a lot of people in the fellowship talking shit and spouting one-liners, but we don't have enough people to carry the message of hope to the newcomer. What's happening in our service structure today? You know, I've got to tell you straight. Box 459, a couple of years ago, last year they did this big deal. It was a great article. I can't believe that they actually printed it. Intergroup, they did interviews with different intergroups around the world. And they did one from Japan and they did one from New York. And a cat from New York said, you know the most frustrating thing about working intergroup is to find somebody to go do a 12-step call. He said, sometimes we've got to call. This is a quote. I was going to bring it to read it, but I couldn't find it. He said, sometimes we have to call as many as 20 people in a row just to get one person to go do a 12-step call. And you wonder why the fellowship? It's in the toilet. You wonder why we give out desire chips like they were like candy. Why everybody wants to talk about relapse being so acceptable in this fellowship. Listen, folks, relapse is not acceptable. A lot of people go die around a relapse. It's not acceptable. The book says that if you go work with others, you won't relapse. Only prerequisite to go work with others is to have worked the steps and have a message to carry. We haven't got time for you to sit on your ass and get comfortable while we wait patiently for you to come help us in the trenches. We did a service workshop up in Ingram where I go to meetings and we have a little clubhouse called the Outpost. How country is that crap? It was a barbecue beer joint before that, and so we just left the same name. But it was a place called the Outpost, and we had this deal. We invited the 31 groups in our district for this service deal. You know how many people showed up? How many groups were represented? Five. Mark Houston and I, two years ago, did a deal down in Pasadena, and they had 120 groups represented in that district. Do you know how many showed up? Eight. Now, you know, listen, guys. Everybody looks around and gets uncomfortable with this, but whose responsibility is this? Let me tell you what it is, folks. This will be the icing on the cake for some of you. I'm off your Christmas card list forever after this. Let me tell you what it is. It's just exactly what I've heard my sponsor say a thousand times. It's called piss poor sponsorship. Every problem that we have out there is, well, I look the other way. You think it's okay for you to come into a meeting and not chair and not participate and not do anything, but you're, at least I'm sober today. Big deal. Big deal. That's not the, come on. We need your help. You think it's okay for you not to participate in the group service stuff? It's not okay. We need everybody on the firing line if we're going to turn this around. I'm going to tell you something, folks. Everybody wants to spend, including me, spends a lot of time in AA and NA and all the fellowships, bad mouth and treatment centers. You know, it's my prayer that we put all the treatment centers out of business. Because I'm going to tell you this right off the bat, folks. If AA was doing what they were supposed to do, most of the treatment centers would be out of business anyway. All we would have is a bunch of detox facilities. But you see, they can't get it in AA anymore because we're too busy talking about your chicken shit problems. We got the message, but nobody wants to talk about it. If that offends you, I don't know what else. I don't know what to say. Look at the statistics. Look at the statistics yourself and see what it's about. I'll say this again. I know, I know. All right. Guys, on a chapter called We Agnostics, this is a chapter I skipped for a long time because I wasn't agnostic. I believed in God. But right up until the time I got Mark as a sponsor, he made it pretty clear that I was the biggest agnostic in the group. I'm in there whining about money and whining about my relationships, whining about the car, whining about everything. He said, you just got everything or nothing, Chris. Well, God's everything, but God damn it, he could throw a little more money my way. You know what I'm saying? Isn't that the truth? I'm too busy looking over here to see what you've got on your plate. You know what I mean? When I finally got that from here to here. My life's never been the same. I am charmed, folks. Thank God this program is not about justice. It's about mercy. Thank God for that. Page 45, it says, lack of power, that's our dilemma. We had to find a power greater than ourselves, obviously, but where and how are we going to find this power? This is the crux of the problem here, folks. I need some power. Well, that's exactly what this book's about. Its main object is to enable you to find a power greater than yourself that's going to solve your problems. You with me? Okay. And I go into meetings, and all I hear is people talking about powerlessness. If the main purpose of this program is to give the newcomer power, to give the alcoholic some power to overcome alcoholism and drug addiction and the spiritual malady and the selfishness and self-centeredness that's eating us alive, to get past the depression and the fear, and to go out there and have a cool life, why is it that we just want to continue to talk about powerlessness? You know, and I think it's doing a lot of people a great bit. A big chunk of disservice by doing that. You know, I think it's one thing for a bunch of us smug sons of bitches who've got a little money in our pocket to sit in a meeting and say, yeah, we're powerless, all right. We're powerless. And then you get somebody that's coming off the street, somebody of color who's been discriminated all their life, some woman who's just been gang raped in a goddamn crack house, and then we're going to come in here with this flippant bullshit about being powerless. I'm just powerless. I'm powerless over people, places, and things. That is so much crap. That is so much crap. Guys, powerless is only used once in the big book. We only talk about it when we're doing the steps, and then it says we were powerless. I am not powerless, folks. I am not powerless. I am not powerless. I am not powerless. Y'all understand that? I'm with a woman I want to be with tonight. I got money in my pocket tonight. I'm surrounded by friends that I know and love. A lot of y'all I've known for years. I have been eating out of a dumpster in 13 years. I got some great power in my life. And when we want to stop watering this message down and getting so shmarmy with a newcomer, in the back of the book, I usually try to stay out of there, but there's some great stuff back there. But the basic text is in the front. Well, one more time, you know. I mean, you're going to see it in the fourth edition coming out. You know, they've changed a bunch of the stories. You should have seen the first original stories that they took out of the, when they did the second edition. You know, some of the best stories about God they took out. You know, I mean, who arbitrarily decides this crap? You know, I mean, again, back in success rates of nearly 100%, 66 years ago, and we just keep jockeying with it, turning it around, you know. So somebody can identify. I mean, who has, why does this deal about identification? We just got to get somebody, get people off their butt and do the work. I mean, I don't understand. Jesus, unbelievable. Here. Here. Let me give you this so I can get out of here. Here's what it says. This is in a great story. It's called Me, an Alcoholic. It's a great, it's, this is pretty good. He goes, this guy goes to this doctor, right? And the guy can't get sober, and finally he gets down to the doctor, a lot like Ebby did with Carl Young. He says, he gets down to Bradford. And the doctor finally says, it says, then God, he said, then why in God's name haven't you told me during all these years? He just told him that he was an alcoholic. He said, two reasons he's talking to the drunk. He said, first, I couldn't be sure. The line between a heavy drinker and an alcoholic is not always clear. Amen. It wasn't until just lately that in your case I could draw it. Second, you wouldn't have believed me anyhow. Okay? I had to admit to myself that he was right. Only through being beaten down by my own misery could I have ever accepted the term alcoholic as applied to myself. Okay? Now, however, I fully accepted it. I knew from my general reading that alcoholism was irreversible and fatal. And I also knew that somewhere along the line I'd lost the power to stop. Okay? He said, well, doc, what are we going to do about it? How many of us have done that? Well, what are we going to do? Doctor, here, there's nothing I can do. This is a doctor. This is an honest doctor saying that he can't treat alcoholism. Another pill ain't going to fix it, folks. I've heard of an organization called Alcoholics Anonymous and some success with people like you. They make no guarantees and are not always successful. But if you want, you're free to give them a shot. It might work. Many times in the intervening years, I have thanked God for that man. A man who had the courage to admit failure. A man who had the humility to confess that all of his hard-won learning of his profession could not turn up the answer. I looked up an AA meeting and went there alone. Now, this is what I did. Let me tell you how this went. I tried to commit suicide on November 3rd. I tried to commit suicide on November 3rd. I tried to commit suicide on November 3rd. I tried to commit suicide on November 13th, 87. I aborted that attempt. It was the 12th. On the 13th, I went to a doctor that morning and had this same conversation with a doctor. I'd never read this. I had the same conversation with a doctor. The doctor said, Chris, you need to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. He gave me some Librium to get me through the detox, to help me with detox. I had no money. I couldn't go to any kind of inpatient facility. And I sat in my first meeting that night, November 13th, a cold November night up in North Texas, and detoxed in that meeting. With those people around me with plenty of paper towels to clean up. That's the mess I was making. You all with me? And so much love, you couldn't believe it. And we didn't talk about war stories. And we didn't piss and moan about problems. We talked about God. And we talked about hope. Here I found an ingredient. It's just what I found that night. Here I found an ingredient that had been lacking in all other efforts to save myself. Here was power. Italicized exclamation point. Power, folks, in the meeting. In a room full of people. Here was power to live to the end of the day. Power to have the courage to face the next day. Power to have friends. Power to help people. Power to be sane. Isn't that great? How many of you guys have ever been certified to be crazy? Power to be sane. Yeah. Power to stay sober. That was seven years ago and many AA meetings ago. And I haven't had a drink during those seven years. Moreover, I'm deeply convinced so long as I continue to do this in my bumbling way towards the principles I first encountered, I'm going to stay sober. Here it is. What's that power? It says, With my AA friends, all I can say is it's a power greater than myself. Be still and know that I'm God. You with me? Next paragraph. This is what I want you to see, folks. Please, in case any of you think that I was making fun of your issues earlier, I want you to hear what I'm saying. My story has a happy ending, but not of the conventional kind. I had a lot more hell to go through. But what a difference there is going through hell without a power greater than myself and with it. As might have been predicted, my teetering tower of worldly success collapsed. My alcoholic associates fired me, took control, and ran the enterprise into bankruptcy. My alcoholic wife took up with someone else, divorced me, and took our remaining property. The most terrible blow of my life befell me after I found sobriety through AA. Perhaps the single flicker of decency that had shone through the fog of my drinking was a clumsy affection for my two children, a boy and a girl. One night, my son was 16 and was suddenly and tragically killed. The higher power was on deck to see me through. And I think he's okay there with my son too, and it's what he's talking about. And I haven't lost a son, but I sit in these meetings and I listen to what y'all have been through, and I know life's not perfect. And everything just didn't come up rosy because you got sober. Life's a bitch. Life's tough. On a given day, it can just go to hell in a handbasket, folks. And that's why I'm so passionate, and that's why this thing is so important, a message to not dilute. Anybody can stay. Anybody can stay. Anybody can stay. Anybody can stay sober when life is good. But what are you going to do when the ill winds turn towards you? What are you going to do when she leaves, or when the job goes, or the health goes? What are you going to do when things don't go exactly your way? Lack of power is the dilemma. I can't keep it together myself. I need to turn to all things to the Father of light. Isn't that what the book says? And you can't do it alone. And the fellowship is not going to do it for you. You can sit in these meetings until the cows come home, and nothing's going to change. That's why we have these rooms so unevenly divided with people who have had a spiritual experience and who are people who are just staying sober one stupid day at a time. We've got to get to this place where we understand that God's grace is there for everybody. But the book says a price has got to be paid. We talked about doing a fourth step this afternoon and a fifth step and sitting down and making amends and this prayer and meditation life. Guys, all of this takes effort. Don't you all understand that? Don't you all understand that? Don't you all understand that? And most of the people won't take it. They won't take that effort. But when they don't and they relapse, just like we see thousands of people from my hospital do, let's don't look the other way and just pretend that nothing happened. I heard some son of a bitch in a meeting in San Antonio last week say, well, it just wasn't their time. What arrogance. Who are we to say when it's your time to get sober? Let me tell you something, folks. In 1980, I needed to get sober. I wanted to get sober. I had to get sober. And I didn't get sober for seven more years because nobody ever slowed down. I said, buddy, buddy, buddy, easy, easy. Let's start this work. Let's do this work. Let's work these steps in a few days, in a few weeks. Let's allow you to have a spiritual experience so that the obsession to use will leave you and you can get well. They finally cared enough about me and my relationship with God than they did my sensitive little feelings. Somebody finally stopped walking on eggshells around Chris R.. And they said, buddy, do you want this or not? It wasn't placed to me as a suggestion. We're not a social organization offering you membership in the fellowship of love. I got to puke. Folks, let me paint a clearer picture for you. This is what they call the last house on the block. This is the only solution for alcoholism and drug addiction that we know. And shame on us if we who have the answer is not out there kicking butt and taking names. Two weeks after I walked into that fellowship, folks, I got out of my truck after a Friday night meeting. Two weeks to the day, I got out of my truck after a 6 o'clock meeting. It was just like this outside. It was overcast just like this. And I got out of my truck. And I'm going to tell you something, folks. Everything had shifted in my life. All the anger and hate that I'd brought into that meeting two weeks ago had gone. All the fear, the depression. You with me? Guys, I'm in a fourth step. I'm in the fourth column of my fourth step where I get to start seeing God. Seeing that I set the ball in motion. That I wasn't a victim. I'd volunteered for every mission. Oh, pick me! Pick me! I'd volunteered for all of that stuff. Because of my selfish and self-centeredness, I'd found the sickest women in the world to go out with. The most dead-end jobs. I'd put myself in all of these situations to be hurt, right? Steady blaming everybody because I can't catch a break. And I finally, that night, sat on the back of my truck and cried real dog tears. I'm telling you, I was... I couldn't believe what had happened. And you know, as I'm sitting there trying to gain my composure, I realized that the obsession to use had been lifted from me. And I got liquor stores all around me. I got a drug dealer that lives in the same apartment complex. Folks, let me tell you something. I'm surrounded by, quote-unquote, triggers. Jesus. The obsession had been removed from me. I was not keeping myself away. Like, y'all understand... I was talking to a guy the other day. The capital of Texas is Austin. It's about 120 miles away. And he said, Chris, I can't go back to Austin. There's too many triggers there. There's too many... I said, where are you going to move? He said, Houston. What? It made sense to him. I understand that. But it's not right. I can't hide from alcohol and drugs, folks. The obsession has got to be removed or we don't get well. Y'all with me? This program is about power. It's about responsibility. Give me one minute. One minute. Folks, the reason I'm so controversial and the reason I get under... Some of you will be emailing for the rest of our lives as close friends because we're all on the same page. I've talked to a lot of y'all all day long. And bless every one of you. Every one of you that have a week's sobriety and that are out there actively trying to carry the message, thank you for staying. I'm going to say this. Any old-timers in here that have multiple of years that are staying in this fellowship, because I'm telling you, the old-timers are leaving by the thousands because they're sick and tired of listening to the shit that has become Alcoholics Anonymous. And I can't blame them for doing that. I wish they wouldn't, but it's their right. And I understand why they do it. Because if they don't get in a place where they can hear some solution, they're going to die too. And they don't want to drink either. It takes courage to change the tide, folks. And that's one of the things that comes with spirituality. Dave talked about it today. Mark talked about it. It's called discipline. And you've got to discipline yourself and stand for something. Why is it that we're so worried about what that person's going to say? Just because that person has 10 years of sobriety? I heard a guy with 30 years of sobriety say that alcoholism wasn't a disease and you could stop whenever you got ready to put the plug in the jug. And wherever he is today, I hope he's healthy and happy. But Jesus, how many newcomers did he kill with that bullshit? But he had 30. He had 30 years of sobriety, so who's going to listen? Everybody. See, if you can't reconcile it with what's in the book, you might want to forget it, folks. For every woman that's come into this fellowship and stayed, I'm going to tell you, I get weepy around the women. We don't have enough women in the fellowship to do the work, okay? One of the problems that Dave talked about today, you know, is this deal. A lot of us guys have ended up having to sponsor women, not because we wanted to, but because there was nobody left to do it. You see? AA women have a tendency to come in and get sober. They don't want to do it. They don't want to do it. They don't want to do it. They don't want to do it. They don't want to do it. And they get married, and they get home, and little hubby decides he doesn't want to hang out and go to those meetings anymore. So all of a sudden, we've got a new higher power in our life. It's the husband. And I'm going to tell you something, folks. I've said it every time I've talked. Some of you women need to get some courage behind you, a little back there, and say, hey, listen, little buddy. You don't like me giving back to this fellowship. You can get your little happy horse ass out of here. Because I serve one God. I serve one God. We all serve the same God. And I'm going to tell you something. We don't have enough help in the trenches to turn this tide. Everybody thinks the treatment centers are going to do it. Everybody thinks medicine's going to do it. We're going to do it. We're the only people that are going to do it. When your meeting goes down the toilet, stop it. Say, excuse me a minute. I'm not chairing this meeting, but it seems to me that we've gotten a little off the subject. Can we perhaps go back on the subject? You will not be popular. But you might save somebody's life. If somebody's monologuing, and they're not going to do it, we have a little bell at our meeting in the hill country at the outpost. We have a little bell. Very nice little bell. Nothing outrageous, you know. But you've got five minutes to share your stuff. And in our preamble, it says, we're not here as a dumping ground for your problems. If you don't want to talk about anything else that's not in the literature that we're covering tonight, you might want to be quiet. And you can talk for five minutes, and then we're going to get a little bell and ding it, and everybody has a good laugh, and then we go on to the next person. But nobody has to sit there and listen to some idiot pontificate in a meeting. Because you see, I may hear, what I need to hear tonight from you, but I may not get a chance if the person over here doesn't shut up. See? I've got one hour a day. We've got two or three meetings a week that maybe we can go to. Folks, we can't live in AA. Don't expect you to. Let's make those meetings as powerful as possible. If you're going out of that meeting, and we're shaping you came in, folks, I hear that all the time in AA. I never was in a meeting I didn't get something out of. You're a goddamn liar. No, I mean, I just, you know, I appreciate your spiritual connection, but I've walked out of meetings suicidal. I mean, I just like, what the shit did we just listen to? You with me? At some point, we've got to stop it and say, no, excuse me a minute. We're going to talk about God and the steps. And after the meeting, let's go talk about that cool stuff that you need to talk about. Because the fellowship can help you with that problem too. But in the meeting, we're going to try to help somebody not drink today. Is that cool? I love every one of you. Thanks. Wonderful. One thing I would like to share, and this is my experience is that when I come into a meeting, and I know it's a lot of other people's experience. When you hear a message like that, it touches something in your soul. This man shared stuff that I'm sure we all have felt for years in AA and didn't have the guts to stand up and talk about it. All right? If you were going to speak at an AA meeting in the next week, let me save you from some inventory you're going to end up writing. All right? Listen to the message, not the messenger. All right? He's a passionate man. He's like me. We get fired up about this message. It's not open season on Dark Tunnel AA. All right? What you have to do is stand up and share your experience. What you need to be is a beacon, a shining beacon. The rays of the spirit of hope should shine out of you and they should be attracted to you like a moth to a flame. If you see the meeting going south, don't stand up and say, everybody that shared is a bunch of idiots. Stand up and say, you know, my experience differs a little bit from yours and here's my experience and share a barn burning experience like you just got here tonight. And they will not be able to deny the truth of what you share. They may not like to hear it. They may say, well, that guy's an idiot. I don't want what he has. But you've planted the seed and if they really want what you have, the mad dogs will come running. And they won't do it probably in the meeting. They'll wait to you in the park. They'll be lurking in the shadows. You'll be heading for your car. Hey, buddy, come here. Because we're not dumb. Even we know that that's not middle of the road today. Even in the old days, it probably was because that's who we worked with. We sought out the newcomer. Another thing that I would add to his message is do not walk up to a guy and say, here's my phone number, call me. What are we talking about when we get to step 12? The guy took every bit of energy and pain, that he had to get his ass in the meeting. Don't hand him a death sentence and say, here, call me. That telephone might as well weigh 1,200 pounds. He's not going to call you. Did Ebby say, hey, Bill, call me? No, Ebby sought out Bill. Bill sought out Dr. Bob. Bill and Bob sought out Bill Dodson, alcoholic number three. This is a program where we carry the message to the alcoholic. Do I give a guy my phone number? Absolutely. And you know what? I get his number. I write it on the inside cover of my big book. That does two things. It means I carry in a big book in an AA meeting, which makes me unique. And then I make an effort to call the guy the next day. And I say, hey, man, remember me? I met you the other night. How are you doing? I start the conversation. Now, if he wants what I have, he will reciprocate. Then we can carry this message together. Powerful, powerful message we got tonight. And I just wish he didn't disguise it so well. I really wasn't quite sure where he stood on some issues. But I think since I got his email, I'll email him and ask him a few questions and maybe he'll share them at one-on-one. I sure hope that that becomes the tape of the month. That would be a wonderful thing to see that get shotgunned out. And if I can convince Glenn to put his email address on it, they can send all the complaints to him. So what's the deal? The deal is questions. Bart, where is he? These are they? Any particular order or grab them at random? Is that what the promise was? Okay. We'll start off. Let's see if these. It says, please read this. Thank you and God bless. Today, my spirit woke up due to the fact that I had a baby when I was 19 and gave her up for adoption 15 and a half years ago. I have wrote, talked, and prayed. Why am I not free? I am not resentful towards my baby. I am resentful towards the guy who raped me. I wanted to be free. How can I mend the hole in my heart? Well, boys, who wants to take this one? Come on the next one. We'll come back. Come back to it? Yeah. Okay. That's a great one. That's a great one. Wait. Wait for a second. Pray about it for a minute. Yeah. We're not trying to get out of it, whoever wrote that. No. One of the things you need to do, with something that's that powerful, sit with it. It's like a fine wine. You sit with it for a while. God will motivate you. Anybody. What do you think of no relationships in the first year, 13 steppers? How many sponsees is too many and exactly what is selfishness? We have absolutely no idea about no relations in the first year because nobody ever does it. The big book is really clear on this one, at least from my perspective. We are not the arbiter of anybody's sex conduct. One way or another, they're going to have an experience. Good experience, bad experience. They're going to have an experience. The guys that come to me and they say, oh, I want to do this. I share my experience when I was doing 13 stepping in AA and I let them know that it's one of the three times the big book says that you will drink if you continue to harm people in the sexual arena knowing full well. You shouldn't. I got a half dozen sponsees that say, but I told her all I wanted was, you know, sex and she was okay with that. Delusion. You're telling them, yeah, you can sign a contract. Yeah, that's what you're telling them, but that's not what she's hearing. She's emotionally imbalanced. I'm saying she, it works the exact opposite way, guys, for the women. The receivee, let's call it that. The receivee isn't hearing it in their mind. They're thinking, I can change him. You know, to use Mark's line, once he tastes the water of the Nile, he won't go anywhere else to drink, you know? And then all of a sudden you take a powder and now they got another excuse why he doesn't work. He took advantage of me. Here comes the victim. You know, you guys want to comment on that? Yeah. You got yours is hot. My own personal one. One of the things that was pointed out to me early on to this might, this might seem hard for some of y'all. To believe, but because everybody, everybody talks about 13 stepping and they look right at the guys, you know, it's like it can work both ways. And there was a time in my earlier years when I was quite cute. And humbly speaking, geez, you don't have to be cute at all to get 13 step, but the bottom line, but somebody, somebody pointed out to me early on and we hear it often enough. This is a real problem in the fellowships in our sister fellowships also. And this is a, this is a tough deal. The response, if you're not interested in getting it. The relationship is, uh, is, um, I believe something goes along like this. I'm here to get sober, not to get laid. Thank you. And then word will travel like wild fly, you know, just all through the group. And, and then you don't have to worry about it. After a period of time, everybody will understand what, what's, what's going on. The, the, the parameters that you, we, we teach people how to treat us, but it's the bottom line. You, you're going to treat every guy that comes in contact with you, how to treat you. And then the bottom line is they're treating you with disrespect. But I'm pumped. You've, you've, you've said it's okay. You've taught them what they can get away with and what they can't get away with. And so us in the fellowship, I don't believe it's any of our responsibilities to walk around and police this fellowship. Uh, uh, but we certainly can help the newcomer understand that it's, uh, perfectly okay to say no. It's okay to say no to the Lord's prayer at the end of a meeting. If you feel uncomfortable with it, it's okay to somebody comes up and wants to give you a hug. Excuse me. I'm not okay with that. Back off. Just because they want to hug you. It doesn't mean you want to hug them back. Isn't that right? It's about some boundaries there. Guys understand that everybody's not on the same page as we are and you may be perfectly okay with it. The poor other person may not be okay with it. That's what I got. My experience with that is the old timers. When I came, got sober, did police AA, my, my, my, my buddy Joe, his dad, uh, he died with, I don't know, 40 some odd years of sobriety. I think when I showed up at a meeting, he took one look at me and could see me. He's scouting the crowd and he came walking up to me and he says, excuse me. He said, I noticed that you're looking at the women in this meeting. We don't take kindly to that. And I may look like an old man to you, but I can get a bunch of these young bucks and we'll kick the shit out of you if we catch you messing with the women. I stopped going to that meeting. But you know what? I didn't kill any of the women that meeting either. And today I'm tremendously grateful, you know, because I've had the opportunity to meet the opportunity to 12 step his son back into the rooms of AA, you know, so what goes around comes around. That was a message of love. He didn't say it maliciously. He was calling me on my bull crap, you know, Mark, how many sponsors is too many? Um, I think that has a lot to do with the roles that God has assigned. You know, if you're sitting there and you have a family and you have a job and you have all those other kinds of things. I think all those factors play into it. I have been single for quite some time and in hindsight, pretty well, I devoted my life to being of service in AA. Right now, for example, I'm sponsoring seven people. That's fixing the change. But so that's the only way I know how to answer that. Um, uh, if I think you, it's important, your goal is to fulfill each and every role that you have assigned. Uh, so you, you have to take it, you have to take a look at that. There's only so much energy in your life and there's only so much energy on a weekly basis. And, uh, for example, if you have a family, you know, the book gets pretty clear what's going to happen if you fail to practice this thing at home. So if you're sitting there and you have a job and, and, and in a family and those kinds of things, uh, you know, possibly one or two, uh, those of you who are in that situation and have sponsored more have, have, uh, ultimately had a discussion probably with your family about that. Um, so that's my experience with answering that. Uh, I have, uh, uh, gone both sides of not working with enough, uh, more, more lately in the last 10 years at times, probably working with too many because of working with others is work. It takes time. It really takes time. Um, so I guess that's the easiest way for me to, uh, to, to answer that, uh, you know, that question. See, that can be a trap too. Um, uh, continually adding to it. And then what you are, you're caught up in numbers, but you're not caught. See, I'm interested in the quality of the work. I'm not interested in the numbers of work. So, um, you know, I think that gets down to how, how do you sponsor and what are the other roles that you have in your life that, you know, are important to you. It also depends. What's your concept of a sponsor? What is a sponsor? Got to understand the history of where it came from. The Oxford group days. It was a closed society. You couldn't go to just walk off the street to an Oxford group meeting. They had a, basically a guard at the door and he'd say, anybody know this guy? And somebody from the group would say, oh yeah, I know him. He's okay. Let him in. He sponsored you into the fellowship, into the prayer meeting. All right. Then we wanted to do some 12 step work. Bill Wilson got in here and wanted to go out. So he started going to asylums and sanitariums. You, in order to get somebody released from a sanitarium, you had to sign on the dotted line that you were going to accept responsibility for him. You're going to make sure they had a place to stay. If they didn't get back that night, that you're going to make sure they got fed and they didn't get in trouble. You sponsored them out of the sanitarium. And then the term became the person, the first person that took you through the work, whether they stayed sober or whether they drank. To the day Bill Wilson died, Ebby Thatcher was his sponsor. Even though Ebby got drunk a number of occasions, it was still Bill Wilson's sponsor. We tend to confuse spiritual advisor with sponsorship. You know, Bill Wilson had a number of spiritual advisors. You know, he worked with Tebow, Father Dowling, I mean, he worked with a whole bunch of different people, but Ebby was always his sponsor. Ebby is the one who carried the original message to him that helped him have his awakened spirit. And then he added to it. So you'll hear everything under the sun about sponsorship. I mean, and in AA, the rumors are rampant. You know, just this month, somebody came up to me and said, hey, Dave, I heard you're sponsoring 300 guys. I went, oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. News to me. I'll work with just about anybody if I have the time, but they have to prove to me, what's the one thing I have on this physical journey that's left? A limited amount of time. Is my time worth this person's effort? I'm looking at their shoes. If they're saying, oh, I want to do a fifth step with you, and they're not doing any of the work, they can call me whatever they want. They can say I'm their sponsor, but it's a name only if they're not doing the work with me. I have other people that have another sponsor, but who won't take them through the work, and so they'll call me up when it's time to hear a fifth step, and I'll sit in, and I'll hear their fifth step. Does that make me their sponsor? I don't think so. The guys that I actually work with on a regular basis, there's probably six or seven, and they kind of ebb and flow. Most of them are double-digit sobriety, so it's not like I'm getting called every day or even once a week sometimes. I hear from them periodically, good stuff and bad. They'll just call me when they have a problem. So it varies as to how willing they are. If they're willing and they're showing an effort, it's a spiritual law. I don't have any choice. I must care for them. If they don't care about their sobriety, it's a spiritual law that I can't. AA is for people that want it, not for people that need it. I cannot want their sobriety more than they do because then I get sucked in. And by the way, if you're going to be a sponsor, you're going to be a sponsor. You're going to be a sponsor. You damn well better have Al-Anon. This program originally, for the first 13 years, it was one program. There was no AA in Al-Anon. And then the newcomers got upset because the wives were telling them what to do because they didn't treat them like they were equals, so they kicked the Al-Anons out. It was a family program. If you showed up at Dr. Bob's house without your wife and kids, he'd look you straight in the eye and say, where's your family? And if you said, well, they're at home, he'd say, you bring them next week or I'll go get them myself. Family program. Family disease. And we're all in the same sink and life raft. We need to help carry this deal with each other. So as a sponsor, I'll get suckered into their drama unless I have some Al-Anon tools. And what if I go do a 12-step call and all of a sudden in the middle of the 12-step call, the guy says he doesn't want it, yet there's a crying wife in the kitchen? Do I walk out the door and say, have a nice life, call me when he gets worse? No, I have to have some Al-Anon contacts so I can lead her to Al-Anon because that's what the book says. I believe what the 12 steps used to be written as. Our 12th step changed. But wait a minute, there's no changes to the big book, right? Guess what? Three or four of the original 12 steps have been rewritten in the big book. The 12 step used to say, we carry this message to others, comma, especially alcoholics. So if you walk in and the alcoholic doesn't want it, you've got a responsibility to carry this message to the Al-Anon. Same 12 steps. And the Al-Anons, they're so frigging insane because the big book isn't conference approved by Al-Anon. They're saying, you can't use the big book. There's no way to get the big book in an Al-Anon meeting. Yet, if you read the Al-Anon traditions, guess what it says. Al-Anon practices the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Where are the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous located? The big book. So the Al-Anons are out there killing Al-Anons now. Because of the same half ass crap that Chris was talking about. They picked it up from us. Because they got resentments against alcoholics. Because we all say, oh, they're the sisters of perpetual vengeance. Worst thing that ever happened to me was my wife got into Al-Anon. The best thing that ever happened to me was my wife got into Al-Anon. to me personally was my wife got into Al-Anon. She's a black belt in Al-Anon and thank God because she may be the last person that sees me before I go to a liquor store. You heard me share about it already. Nobody else may be telling me I'm in deep shit and she may look at me and say, honey, I think you should call your sponsor and run. And that may be enough to say, whoa, maybe I should call. All right, I'll call them on the way to the liquor store. That may be what saves my life. How did I get off on that tangent? It's Chris's fault. That's it. Exactly what is selfishness? Well, the definition. I'm mainly concerned with my own well-being. Next question. Do you hold those who go to meetings and don't drink in contention? That's a great question. You want to take that one, Chris? No, not at all. Not as long as I keep their mouth shut. Here's a question. After everything we've covered this weekend, are they doing the best they can with what they have? Are they spiritually asleep? To what they're doing? Yep. Leave them alone. You have to carry the message. We want to point at them and say, look what they're doing instead of us standing up and saying, what the hell am I doing? I am responsible when anyone anywhere reaches out for help. I want the hand of a always to be there. And for that, I am responsible. The group I got sober in, we did not close with the Lord's prayer. We did not hold hands. We opened the meeting with a serenity prayer and we closed with. I am responsible. And by the time I was a week sober, I had, I am responsible memorized because I wanted to fit into that group. And then my sponsor taught me what that meant. What does it mean to be that you're responsible? You know, important stuff. You know, it's written on all of our literature, just about all those little pamphlets we have. You'd be amazed how many people have no idea what I am responsible is. They've never heard it read anywhere. They don't know the declaration of unity. Be honest. How many people in the room know the declaration of unity? Guaranteed, those people have been to service commitments. Before this weekend, how many people knew there were six warranties in AA? Look at the same exact hands. Service people. How many people ever heard that there were 12 concepts before here? Ah, there we go. Well, if you knew there were 12 concepts, why didn't you know there were six warranties? Because you never knew there were six warranties. You never read the concepts. Yes, that was a trap. Enough said on that, you know. Actually, I'm jealous and envious of those people. I wish I could do that and have a happy life. But real quick though, but I think everybody needs to understand this idea about responsibility. My responsibility to the newcomer, there's, as Bill sees it, there's a little little book and a little compilation of Bill's writings. And one of those pages, he talks in a letter he wrote in 1942, he says, he says, my chief responsibility to the newcomer is an adequate presentation of the program. And an adequate presentation of the program should explain to the newcomer what this whole thing is about, that you can't believe everything you hear in a meeting and just because somebody's sitting in a meeting, I mean, it's like, you know, you go out and sit in a chicken coop, they don't make you a chicken, you know. Well, but it may end up on your inventory. But it may end up. And half. If you're from Ingram. Some of you, some of you guys that think that a drug is a drug is a drug and it's all the same, you need to sit down and do a fifth step with an alcoholic and then the very next day do a fifth step with a crack addict. Two different things, but it's another world apart, you know. But explain to the newcomer that you can't, you're welcome, it's an open meeting, anybody's welcome in there. But be careful, that's why we use the big book. You know, if you can't reconcile it, you might want to be careful. Be careful with it because you do, you hear so much stuff that sounds good, but it might kill you if you're trying to stay sober doing it. And you know, we're not just killing alcoholics. We're killing people from every single fellowship. There's over 250 fellowships that use our 12 steps because they were God-given. They change one word, whatever they're powerless over. And have you noticed there's a trend within AA? We're making all of our meetings closed because we want to hide our warts. We don't want people to see how mediocre this program's got. We're starting to shut it down. A lot of times, OAs, NAs, they're not hearing the message there and they're saying, well, where did this stuff come from? It's an ancient parable. You know, if you want to go study, you want to get the information that the master has, study what the master studied. So they're coming to the source, to Alcoholics Anonymous, and we say, sorry, you don't have a desire to stop drinking, have a nice day. What are we afraid of? Do we need closed meetings? By all means. But not as many, if you notice the book, they're almost all, they're changing, at least in my area, it's changing radically. Almost every meeting used to be open. There was maybe one or two closed meetings a week and now almost all of the new meetings come in and are all closed. Why is that? What are the early warning signs that an inventory is needed? If done periodically, how often? Ask your wife. Well, if you're doing, yeah, that's the best answer. Somebody said ask your wife. Ask the people closest to you. An evening review ought to be some indication. If you're working with meditation, a lot of chatter in your mind could be another. If you're awake at all, the presence of fear on a fairly consistent basis, I'd say those would be pretty good indicators it might be time to do something again. Annually or semi-annually is what the 12 and 12 says. And even though I'm a big book thumper, let me put a plug in for the 12 and 12. It's a fantastic volume. Except, read page 17 of the 12 and 12. It says those essays are to expand on what is written in the big book. So you can't use the 12 and 12 without the big book. They go hand in hand, all right? And it talks in there about annual or semi-annual housecleaning. It talks about a whole different kinds of housecleaning and a lot of people get it wrong. And they say, well, Bill Wilson got the steps backwards. Not if you look at the whole deal. He knew what he was talking about. Page 52. Every once in a while, look at page 52. Page 52. Page 52. Page 52. Page 52. Page 52. Page 52. Page 52. Page 52. Page 52. Page 52. Page 52. If you're doing 12-step work with another guy, every time you go over page 52 with another guy, you're asking yourself those questions. I put it in the first person. Is Dave having trouble with personal relationships? Can Dave make a living? Has Dave been preyed to misery impression this week, this month? If I answer some of those questions, guess what? I'm blind. I'm missing something on 10 and 11. My slate isn't clean. It's time to write. If I get to six months and I haven't done it, it's time to write. I always write before I do one of these deals because if I don't I'll be up here at the up here at the podium sharing lies, and I'll be sharing laurels, and I'll be killing somebody, especially me. Are you using the 12 traditions and 12 concepts in your life? If so, I would be interested in hearing some examples. I feel like I keep talking. Do you guys want to take a shot at this one? If you're going through life relatively happy, finding moments of contentment, you find some joy, your creative juices are flowing, you're excited about your day, you're working this step, you're doing the deal. As an alcoholic suffering from a spiritual malady, drunk or sober, folks, just say we're sober or dry, not drinking. If you're not doing the things, you're heading for the toilet. Check inward. Some of you got the little issue man buttons. Check inward, because that's where it's at. It'll eventually affect everything on the outside, but inwardly when you're driving to work, listen to the radio, where's your head? We talked a lot this weekend about being awake. Are you awake to the moment? Are you enjoying the day? If you are, folks, you're working the steps. You're spiritually connected. Otherwise, you're going down the toilet. You know what that's like. Most of us in this room have had periods. We weren't drinking today, but we weren't happy, joyous, and free. There's more suicides committed in sobriety, folks, than when we're drinking. Y'all understand that little nasty piece? The bottom line is that. You're either well or you're not. Examples. I work the 12 traditions in my relationship. I work all 36 spiritual principles on the triangle. My kids know the 12 traditions and 12 concepts. They're 6 and 3. Classic example. My son says, I have a proposal I want to put on the floor. I propose after dinner that we go to Dairy Queen. Now we have a group discussion. We throw it out there on the floor. We have a little discussion. Well, there's probably not enough time to get a bath and go there, but we have some ice cream in the refrigerator, so maybe we could do that. Okay. I have a motion. We have a motion on the floor. What's your motion? I want to have ice cream after dinner. Okay. We have a second. Second. All in favor, aye. Boom. We have a business meeting in the house. It's a wonderful deal. My wife says, there's not enough time. They're going to get all messy. Nay. She goes nay. And I say, okay. The nays have it. Let's go. You get an opportunity to pitch your idea a second time, and then we take a second vote. And we use substantial unanimity. And guess what? More than likely, we'll probably eat ice cream that night after supper. You know? It sounds funny, but it works. The traditions work in your home life. All right? The right of decision, the right of participation, the right of appeal. Nothing can be personally punitive in my family. You know, just because I'm pissed off at you and I have a resentment, I can't make, because you did something over here, and make it personally punitive and that's why I'm going to hold you to this, you know, you did something simple and all of a sudden I come along with a hammer and I slam you, and that's going to be your penalty, your punishment for this little infraction you did. That's personally punitive. And you can bring it back to the court system in the family and say, you know what? That was personally punitive. I feel wronged here. The judgment doesn't meet the crime. That's concepts in action. My wife is running the finance committee right now. We have committees. All right? She's running the finance committee. She'll say, you know what? I'm thinking about moving the money we got into these funds over here. And I go, okay. She'll go, don't you want to have any input in it? And I said, hey, honey, you got the right of decision and the right of participation. It's your deal. You know, unless there's something that's out of the norm that's not a standard thing, you want to go speculate with our funds, then we're going to have a family group conscience about it. Otherwise, right, a decision and participation, it's perfectly within your rights. That's 12 concepts and actions. Twelve traditions and action. Tradition number one, right? Greatest good for the greatest whole. To paraphrase it down, God's going to express himself through the group conscience. That's what we do when we have that group vote. Every once in a while, my wife will say, the kids will say, we want to go to the park. And we'll say, no, we really don't want to. And then they'll tell us why they want to go to the park. It's been a week. They've been at school, you know. The God will talk to our hearts and we'll say, you know, that's a 12-step call. They're saying they want quality time with us. How cool is that? And next thing you know, the vote changes. When we take that second vote, it's in their favor. God has spoken through the group conscience, all right? Tradition seven, we should be self-supporting physically, emotionally, financially, spiritually if we can. Now, obviously, a three-year-old can't support himself financially. But you know what? He understands money, you know. He gets a dollar from the tooth fairy or something. He understands that some of that's going to go into savings and some of that's going to be spent for whatever. Buying toys, whatever it is that he wants. Teaching him fiscal responsibility, you know, at that level. He needs to be self-supporting. Emotionally, he can't come running to us all the time for everything. He understood the coolest, absolute coolest the other day. Closet doors open, just a crack, skinny little closet. My wife goes, what the hell is that? She looks over the top. She's like, come here. So I go walking over there and there's my little six-year-old on his knees talking to God in the closet. Six years old. The cat dies last year. My wife and I are sitting on the love seat, bawling our eyes out because this stupid cat died, right? He comes, traipsing along, pops up in our lap and says, let me see if I got this right. The cat died. We said, yeah. And the cat's in heaven with God, right? He said, yeah. He said, well, so what's the problem? The cat's with God. That's what a deal. And besides that, God gave us another cat. We got Nipper. We can love Nipper. And can I have a picture of Peeper? Because I want to remember. That's the two-year-old type deal. You know, I mean, at the time he was four or five talking to us. God was expressing himself. That's how cool this deal can be. When I said work in the traditions in your relationships, that's what I'm talking about. When I'm talking about working the concepts, I'm going to give a disc to somebody who mentioned it. Yes. And I'm going to give her a disc. I think I got it here. She's going to stop at Kinko's and I should have those printed for tomorrow. So, do I put myself on the eight step lift? If so, why? I think we talked about that already today. Yeah, you put yourself on the eight step lift because you harmed yourself. And how do you fix the harm? Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Be true to yourself. To thine own self be true, right? Do the best you can with what you got. One of the greatest gifts I gave myself was cleaning up the wreckage of my past. It freed my conscience. And it opened my heart up and then I gave pieces of other people's hearts that I had taken back to them. So, that's my experience with that question. What do I do when you're a real alcoholic? You're not an addict and an addict asks you for help but there are no addicts around doing the steps out of the big book. You already heard my take on that. Original twelfth step. Carry the message and lead them to another addict. Yeah, my experience is the same way. Don't leave them blowing in the wind but get to work with them and ask God to guide so you can send them somewhere because it's identification. And real quickly, I'll tell you this. Two men who I had taken through the steps who were addicts and not alcoholic, wonderful men. They both died three years ago of drug overdoses. And one time one of them had twelve years, one had seven, and one died of a drug overdose of heroin. And their whole deal, once I had taken them the steps, it was very clear they were not alcoholics. And they gave that standard deal of, well, they don't have recovery in AA, blah, blah, blah. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Eww. Eww. Eww. Eww. blah, blah, blah. All the reasons why they're not going to go to the fellowship that they belong. So basically what I said to them, and I said, well, so let me make sure I understand this. A manner of living which demands rigorous honesty in every meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, the first thing out of your mouth is going to be a lie. And, you know, can you live with that? And you need to be working with your people. Because, you know, the big book's very clear. This thing starts with identification, one alcoholic with another alcoholic. And those two men, I believe, are dead today because they wouldn't go to the fellowship that spoke the language that they spoke, identification. I can't tell you how many times I've seen this. So when I'm helping someone in that area to find their truth, if I find out that they're not we find out experientially that they're not an alcoholic but an addict, then my deal is you go to CA or NA. So that's my experience with that. Anybody who thinks that the alcoholic addict is the same, I invite you to come to an AA convention and then go to a CA convention. And they are not the same. It's not the same animal. Now, there are some, like myself, who are both. But find out your truth. A manner of living which demands rigorous honesty cannot be based on a lie, a fundamental lie. All you're going to do is get sicker. Find out your truth, go to the fellowship that speaks to what your step one experience is, and then watch what happens to you. Anain He says, well, to be honest with you, I drink after I've been out screwing around. I can't stop having affairs in the whole nine yards. It turns out the guy is a sex addict, hiding out in AA because he, somebody bought, somebody told him he was an alcoholic. Qualifies like a ophthalmologist. Should he be a ophthalmologist? Told him he was an alcoholic. Qualified in no way for Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't drop him. I took him through the 12 steps. Carried the message to others. How do we keep our memory green? It's not by telling drunkologs at the podium. Hopefully you've heard that. We keep our memory green by looking into somebody else's eyes and you're smelling the puke on their breath and there's puke on your shoes and you're seeing the pain and the guy's holding onto the table and he's shaking to death right in front of you. And you remember when that was you. That's how you keep your memory green. What does it say in the second step? Just commence spiritual growth. Leave aside the drink question. So once we get past step one, the very first instruction we get in step two is put aside the drink question. Now we're talking about God. I can take that guy all the way through the 12 steps until he gets to working with others and then I have to send him to his people. And if you're AA and alcoholic, the guys, from my experience, that I see get picked off, the dually addicted, let's say I'm working with Mark. He's working with lots of alcoholics and he's not working with any cocaine addicts and that's part of his truth. Guess which one he's going to slip on. His memory's going to be real green with the alcoholic and the cocaine's going to come up and bite him in the butt. I've seen it happen over and over and over and over and over again. Whatever your truth is, and I don't care what it is, I've taken OAs, SAs, gamblers, Al-Anons, I've taken the soup to nuts. Through the 12 steps and they've had spiritual awakenings and I send them off to their people because that's where you need to do your 12-step work. It's whatever your truth is in step one connects to step 12. The steps are circular, not linear. Real quick, this idea, and I think we've hit on it, we won't belabor it, but you can't give away what you don't have if you've got no experience in a particular drug to stand up there and, I mean, how arrogant of us, you know? I mean, we've got pill addicts dying everywhere because nobody understands the pill addict. Nobody understands the pill addict like another pill addict. That's why we have all these 12-step groups. Nobody understands another cocaine. That's why Cocaine Anonymous 19 years ago came about. It wasn't that AA wasn't doing the job, it's just they couldn't relate to the cocaine addict. It's different. We had a question initially that started earlier with this nice lady, I'm sure we'll end up going back to it, that talked about this tragedy with the rape. What's going to take place in this woman who this happened to? I can assure you the miracle will not happen because she sat down across the table from some of the people or from some hairy-legged man. It will be that she sat down across the table from some woman who had survived that tragedy and was able to walk her from point A to point B because she'd had that experience. There's a world of difference between knowledge about something and experience about something. And Mark talks a lot of that to me. Don't try... It's like I hear people trying to talk... Oh, I sympathize with your... You know, I understand what it's like to be a black man. What are you, nuts? I don't have... What are you, new? I don't have a clue what it's like. I don't have a clue what it's like to be a woman. I don't have a clue what it's like to be molested. I can sit here and be empathetic and try to help you, but if I've never had any experience, my arrogance better be out of the way and my ego better be out of the way and I better direct you to somebody. When it came time for me to learn how to work a computer, as much as I hated to do this, it was my then 10-year-old son that told me how to work a computer to turn it on. Now listen, guys. I didn't want to go to that little guy. I'm going to tell you that for a fact. It was torture to finally say, come on, let's get this over with, you know. Be gentle with me. He led me through this, but I'd been reading the manuals, folks, and I'd been talking to a lot of people, but this little kid knew how to turn it on and he knew how to make it run and he showed me how to do it. Y'all with us? If you haven't got any experience, you need to keep your yap shut. Truly. We're going to flip and then we'll jump right back. We'll be right back.