Charlotte B. at the 1st Young Peoples Conference – 1987

Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership. We are self-supporting through our own contributions. AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution, does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes, our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. Again I'm Charlotte and I'm an alcoholic. I haven't been to too many workshops in AA so I'm not real positive of what I'm doing or what I'm supposed to be doing. So like everything else in AA I'm just gonna wing it. I do have Mavis® P agreed to come and help me with this today. If I get stuck, you know, and we're like all of us, I'll probably get halfway through, you know, and go blank. And about that time I'll yell, Mavis! I know that this workshop is on sponsorship, and I don't think that there is a more important area in Alcoholics Anonymous than sponsorship. There's not a whole lot written about it that way. Usually if you want to find something on sponsorship, you have to look under 12-step calls or whatever. Bill wrote quite a bit about it, but none of it ever mentioned sponsorship. And when I was sitting last night writing, trying to, you know, just put an outline down of what I thought I might try to cover, I ran across... some things that Bill wrote. And he talks about helping the alcoholic, and he talks, you know, one-on-one about his 12-step call with Dr. Bob and Ebby's 12-step call on him, but he never mentions the word sponsorship. And I was then thinking, I'm also Charlotte from your central office here in Kansas City, Missouri, and I had the privilege of talking to Bill and I had the privilege of talking to him and I had the privilege of talking to him and I had the privilege of talking to him and I had the privilege of talking to him and I had the privilege of talking to him and I had the privilege of working down there for about eight years with Ken Sperry, who is the number one sobriety date here in Kansas City, Missouri now. I think it's 45 years, something like that. He's been sober. And so this was like sitting with a history book for eight years, because he was there when Bill used to come to Kansas City, you know. He was there when Ebby came to Kansas City, who is the person who 12-step, Bill Wilson. And so he knew them one-on-one. And so he would talk about these things. And I remember one time, somebody I was sponsoring called the office or something like that. And it was a very intense, concerned conversation. And I got off the phone and Ken said, I sure like the way you women sponsor your people. And I went, oh. And he says, you know, we didn't have sponsors. And we, we didn't learn how to sponsor when we first came in. What they did was, you know, there was an ad in the paper that said if you're having a problem with drinking, write this post office box number. And as happens today, many times it wasn't even the alcoholic who wrote the post office box. It was the spouse, you understand. And they didn't make phone calls back from those letters. They made house calls. They just kind of showed up on your doorstep. Well, we got this letter, you know, saying somebody here wanted some help. Can you imagine the shock, you know, when you answered the door? I mean, it was bad enough when I called them myself. You know. But he's, you know, and he said they would come and they'd sit down and they'd talk to you. And then they'd tell you where the meetings were. And they'd offer to come and go with you to the first meeting. He says, and then that was it. You were on your own. And I thought to myself, boy, I wouldn't have made it. Because my sponsor hauled me around for a long time. She even hauled, she took me places in Kansas City. I still haven't found them again. But they were all AA places. And I can remember one deal. She took me to, and it was a, obviously, it was a group anniversary. Now, I didn't know that at the time. You know. And I can remember, she was way off over here doing her thing. And I was way off over here trying to figure out what was going on. And it was like 10 years later that the light bulb went off in my head. And I went, oh, that was North Kansas City's anniversary that I was at. Never knew where I was or what I was doing there. Just that I was there and I heard a speaker. And it was friendly people. Yeah. And it's really kind of weird to look back on that. But Ken also used to say that, you know, they only had one meeting a week when AA started here in Kansas City. And that was Kansas City wide. One place that they had what was, would have been a closed meeting. But they didn't even have those terms yet. You know, it was just a meeting. It wasn't too long then after that that they began, you know, giving out, you know, a meeting. And it was, it ended up being a closed meeting. And I remember the first time that I was there, you know, the first time I was there, you know, it was just a meeting. And I remember the first time I was there, you know, it was just a meeting. It wasn't too long then after that that they began having a meeting at a different place. that they began to then have a second meeting a week and where their wives could come with them and we fell into the open meeting type of a situation. In between times the guys that went and it was at that time it was all pretty yeah in the very very beginning there were no women coming to the meetings here in Kansas City and the guys would meet for lunch or drop in on each other at businesses and say well let's go to lunch you know what and that was their sponsorship that was their meeting after the meeting and just kind of getting together for lunch maybe once or twice a week and then one meeting a week you know and I look at that and I think to myself boy that would have been a tough way to make it it really would have been a tough way to make it but they made it and but but we've got something that the old-timers like to look forward to you know they look forward to it. I look up to what we've got our way of sponsoring people today and all of our meetings because they they know they missed something not having all of that. I said that there's not much written on on sponsorship and yet in the big book chapters 7 8 9 10 11 all talk about sponsorship. That's 75 pages. That deal with how to sponsor you know how to work with the newcomer all of that kind of thing so you know you can't really say there's nothing in the big book about it and I pointed that out to Ken one time and he just kind of looked at me and went well I'll be darned. As Bill sees it has 38 pages on 12 stepping or sponsorship and of course I'm not going to say that's not a big deal but I think it's a big deal. As we all know as Bill sees it are excerpts of Bill's speeches letters he's written things like that so that's straight from Bill's mouth on how to work with a new person. I'm not going to I'm really not going to read everything I found in as-Bill-Seeces and all that about it but if any of you have got pencils and and want to take jeden So get a pen because I've got ONE... him mik takes 10 pages and two will 80 pages or double as many, but so that sort of bag wouldn't make any stupid choice because it kind of runs up the middle of your hand trying to find something to draw some way. taken this down, I do have some really good numbers, page numbers, that are just fantastic on sponsorship that I found in As Bill Sees It. I've got some extra pens up here, and there's those handout sheets, plus I've got plain pieces of paper. And this is all in As Bill Sees It. Okay, I'll wait till everybody gets a chance to... As always happens, whenever you try and get ready for something like this, I learn twice as much as I'm going to be able to give you, you know, because when you start digging, you're the one that learns. In As Bill Sees It, page 24 and 21, didn't do that right, 69, 105. That one's important. He even tells us how long to hang in there and when to drop them. I didn't know that until I dug 165, 190. 275 is just plain how-to sponsor. 314 has to do with young people. Way back when the book was written, it talks about how to 12-step young people. 331... 217... 242... 324. And I think that's my favorite one. Page 324 is where Bill talks about Ebby's 12-step call on him. And he ends up by saying that AA in action calls for much time and love. Page 325 is where Bill says, I'm going to be a little money. And I thought, that's neat, because that really is what it's all about. One of the things that always concerned me about trying to be a sponsor for anybody was that I was afraid it'd demand too much, I wouldn't know enough, and that it would cost me more than I was able, you know, to pay. And that hasn't been the case at all. I had heard about a lot of people, you know, who sponsored people by bailing them out, giving them money, doing this and doing that. All of those examples that I saw, they didn't make it. You know, so I didn't copy those examples. And there's been very, very few times that actual outlay of cash has been demanded or even been requested as a sponsor. So that hasn't been as big a thing as I thought. The other thing is, is that every one of us, I dare say, when we first are approached to be a sponsor, our first reaction is total shock, you know. Oh, not me. I'm not ready. You know, oh, I couldn't do that. I barely can keep my own feet, you know, on the ground. How could I help somebody else? The important thing is, is that you learn. You learn twice as much as you probably give to the people you help. You learn to be a sponsor. You learn to be a sponsor to the person you're sponsoring. And anybody can sponsor. Ebby, the person who started the whole shooting match. Ebby was the person who made the 12-step call on Bill. Ebby had gone to the Oxford group and got sober, stayed sober for a while, knew his friend Bill was in trouble, called on Bill and talked to him about it, planted the seed and the idea. And he was happy with it. And Ebby went back to drinking. Ebby wasn't successful. Bill's sponsor was not successful. He, I don't really know how many years it was from the time he made the 12-step call on Bill until Ebby died. It was many years. And I know that Ebby finally died with just two years sobriety. He did make it in the end, you know. But he'd been around, you know, probably, I'm going to guess, 15 years. He hadn't been able to make it. So you don't even have to be able to make the program to be a good sponsor. And I, just prime example, you know, don't worry about not being able to handle it. The whole shooting match of AA came from an unsuccessful sponsor. That's pretty neat. Um, a few of the things I'd like to touch on. I'd like to touch on is, is, and I, we're doing pretty good. We've got a lot more early waker-uppers than I thought we would. And I feel good about that. I thought if we wanted to, we've got three real important areas that I think we all need to talk about. And we all need new ideas on sponsors from treatment centers, from courts and DWIs, and from groups. You know, we all need new ideas. We all know how to be a sponsor or can figure out how to be a sponsor to the guy we meet in the meeting next to us. You know, I always have said, boy, I'll take, I can sponsor anybody that walks through the doors of AA. You know, because they're there. They probably want it. But some of these that we have to approach, like they're in the treatment center or they're in the court system, are really hard to deal with. Treatment centers need contacts. They're not necessarily set up as a sponsor or whatever, but they need people from groups that are close to the treatment center that are willing to leave their name and number with the staff for either the staff to call or the patient to call when the patient is told to contact somebody. And they probably will be, you know, in the process of their treatment. But it's really difficult for a patient who's in there and not knowing anything really about AA to reach out to something. And if we had a few more phone numbers there, or even if we had a few more phone numbers at central office that we knew when the hospital called in, then we could call the people. That would help a whole lot. Or do we need to be there? You know, that's another question. Treatment centers are beginning to bus their patients out to AA groups. Do we want whole busloads coming into AA groups? Or should we get some individual people there where we can go in individually and take them out to visit at what would be their home group or whatever? And that way we won't have these huge busloads coming into AA meetings. I can remember one about a... I'm still getting flack about this one. I don't have anything to do with it, but I'm still getting flack about it. A whole busload from a hospital in Kansas went to a meeting north of the river in Missouri. And the bus door opened, and the person who brought them and all the patients trooped up the stairs. And somebody met them at the top of the stairs and said, Go back and hold your meeting on the bus. We don't want all of you at once. And they did. Obviously they left. I mean, who wouldn't? I work in the central office and people are still screaming at me about it. I'll go to a meeting and I'll meet somebody and they'll say, Oh, well, yeah. They'll say where I'm from or whatever. They'll say, Boy, yeah. Were you there when? You know? I have one person's opinion and it shouldn't have happened, but it did happen. You know? So we need to be able to talk to the treatment centers one on one. Let them know what we need, what we don't need. Institutional work, CPC work gets into this, but obviously not enough. Because these things are still happening. The courts are a little bit harder to approach. I used to work in a DWI school. I used to teach at one. And so therefore I made a great liaison between the courts and AA and such. And I would just filter them out and shuffle them like a deck of cards where they belong. But if you don't have somebody working in that court system that knows what AA is about, it gets really screwy. We have parole officers calling wanting to check attendance. And sometimes they're pretty irate when you say, Hmm. We don't do that. You know? Even if we did, I wouldn't tell you. You know? And they don't like that. Employers don't like that either when you tell them. But we get those kind of phone calls at central office too. And somehow or other we need to figure out a way to get with the attorneys, the judges, these court schools, and the parole officers. It's almost impossible to get to the parole officers because it's changed so often. You know? More in get one batch educated than they've quit and you got another whole batch to educate again. But we need to get a working system going there so that we can handle them as they come in. And again, they don't come in big swarms, you know? And try and get them to open meetings until they're ready to sit there and be quiet. You know? There's nothing worse than a court-appointed judge. Right. There's nothing worse than a court-appointed AA person or, well, not even AA, court-appointed client there mattering hell because he's there and upsetting my meeting. And that's when I want to kick him. You know? You're welcome, but don't upset my meeting. So we really need to be able to work in those areas. And I think another important area is groups. Very few groups have appointed sponsors. Temporary sponsors. And I think the influx of people coming in, we're going to have to do something like that. Because it used to be, you know, we were smaller and it was easier to just kind of pull your chickens in and handle it until they'd been around long enough to see somebody they really identified with and was willing to ask them to be a sponsor. We're getting so many new people and the groups are getting so big. I don't go to enough meetings at my own home. I don't go to enough meetings at my own home group anymore. And I have been approached and asked if I was new. That's a real weird feeling. You know, but that's the truth. We are just getting so big that you can't tell who's new and who isn't new. And I know that they can't know each other well enough to ask anybody for a sponsor. So maybe groups need to form committees. And as new people come in, have, you know, appointed sponsors. And I think that's the real thing. You know, appoint them. That's a terrible word. But appoint them just like we do unit leaders. For a certain night's meeting, okay, you're the unit leader meeting and you're the temporary sponsor person. Now if a new person comes in tonight, you walk up to them and say, Hi, I'll be your temporary sponsor until you've been around long enough to see who you'd really like. And they would, you know, immediately be kind of drawn to you. And they would, you know, immediately be kind of drawn to you. And they would, you know, immediately be kind of drawn to you. I know we exchange phone numbers. You know, at least we always do in my group. But again, I'm noticing a difference. It used to be that we exchanged phone numbers with new people in the meetings and they used them. But we're getting so big and so many. You give out your phone number and you never hear from them. And neither does anybody else. They come and sit and they don't use those phone numbers and they just go somewhere. And I'm not a bit concerned about my anonymity. But I'm getting a little bit concerned about who in the hell all has my phone number. But I'm getting a little bit concerned about who in the hell all has my phone number. Because, you know, it's really kind of weird. And I get some of those phone calls from a few of them that have that phone number too. But, you know, and this, we need to work on that too somehow. And I want, you know, I hope you can help me with some ideas there. And I want, you know, I hope you can help me with some ideas there. And I want, you know, I hope you can help me with some ideas there. When it gets right down to sponsoring, I think one of the important things is never talk down to them. Don't talk over their heads. But don't talk down to them either. But don't talk down to them either. Um. Um. I can remember when I came in. And I didn't have the slightest idea what was going on. But she acted like I did. And I stuck around long enough until I did. But she never talked down to me and it helped. Now I've had a few people, you know, that were a whole lot more intelligent than me. And I've had a hard time getting them to listen. Getting them to listen. But you can't get argumentative with them either. Because that blows the whole thing. I also think it's important to hit lightly on the spiritual side of the program in the very beginning. Now I don't mean ignore it. At all. But you do have to kind of hit lightly the first few meetings. Because I've seen more people. Because I've seen more people. Get a disgusted look on their face in the middle of a first or second meeting when it was getting too holy. And walk out the door and never come back again. And I think it's because they feel like I did in the very beginning. Oh shoot. Here we go again. That didn't work before so it won't work again. We have to let them be exposed to the spiritual side. See it working. See it working in us. And they have to want it before we just hit them over the head with it. Another part of it is, you know, I know that I didn't want too much to do with the spiritual side in the beginning. Simply because I didn't think it would work. I just kind of sat back and watched. And I think it's something that really did work for me with a very agnostic little gal. She wouldn't even say the Lord's Prayer with us when she first came in. And finally she said something about, you know, I don't want anything to do with the higher power or with God. But I wish I had your relationship with him or something like that. I don't remember her exact words. But it was pure impulse. It was right after the Lord's Prayer. And once again she had stepped back out of the circle and refused to hold hands and say the Lord's Prayer with us. And then she said this about wishing she had it and yet being, fighting it. And I just automatically, I just held my hand out and I said, here. I know you don't have any faith and I know that you can see mine. Take some of mine. Just until you get some of your own. Just borrow mine. Don't worry about it. And she went home. You know, and I went home and I said to myself, good God, what a corny line. What a stupid thing to say. Months later she, I think in a speech, I was sitting in the audience or something. And she says, you know, the weirdest thing happened to me one day. Something that if anybody would have ever told me. About I would have just said, oh yeah, sure. But that worked for her. She literally, every time she'd get in a situation, she'd remember that that hand was there. And the faith was there and all she had to do was reach out and take my hand. Now she could touch my hand. Whereas she couldn't touch the group and she couldn't touch God yet. And it just eased her into it. So it was really pretty neat. So, yeah, and again, there we go. Just understanding and sharing is all it's ever about. A few others are be there, be available, and be honest. You know, be there, be at the meeting so they can see you and hear what you believe in. Be available by phone or whatever, you know, works with them. Because emergencies do happen. You have to be willing to take a few steps. You have to be willing to take a few late phone calls. It doesn't happen very often. But it does happen. When I first came in, there were two women that sponsored me. And I happened to be the kind of person, my family didn't even know I was an alcoholic. Because I never got drunk in front of them. I always got drunk after everybody went to sleep for the night. And so therefore, you know, I'm a late night drinker and drink myself to sleep every night. When I, when my first two women came to call on me and began to sponsor me, they both said, call me anytime, but don't call after 10 o'clock at night. I thought I was sunk. I really did. Because I didn't even start drinking until 10.30, ever. I made it. Just pure stubbornness, I made it. But I don't suggest that. Because it was very hard for me. And I drank a few times when I don't think I would have had to, had I felt like I had the right to pick up the phone late at night and talk to somebody. So I've never given anybody any hours to call me or not call me. Most people, if it's an emergency, they'll call me and I'm more than willing to talk to them. They get a little bit sober and a little bit responsible. They won't bother me when they should in the middle of the night. You know. So. So by and large, we do pretty good at monitoring ourself. I think for now, that's all I've got to say. I think Mavis has got a little bit to say about the goods and the bads and whatever about sponsorship. And then maybe we can break up into some little groups for these different areas. And I also put plain pieces of paper out there. And if anybody, like an ask it basket. If anybody has any questions, you know, they want to ask, you can raise your hand and ask it if you want to. But if you don't want to raise your hand, just write it down and we'll collect them and we'll try and answer them here towards the end. Okay? Thank you, Charlotte. My name is Mavis and I'm an alcoholic. And I didn't know I was going to get to speak here. Charlotte asked me if I had any ideas. And of course, the ideas that come to me are the things that I've experienced and observed. And I've seen things happen with sponsoring that, in my opinion, I didn't agree with. I don't claim to be a good or exceptional sponsor. But I sure agreed with a lot of things that Charlotte said. One of the things that jumped at me was not to talk down to someone. I've always had a problem with the way some people treat a new person. You know, when I came into this program, I felt whipped. I felt I didn't have the right to take up the space I was taking. And if someone talked down to me, I don't think that built my self-esteem at all. Um. I appreciated being treated like I was acceptable. It amazed me because I could not accept myself. Um. I have seen, of course I've observed mostly women sponsoring women. And I have seen some women take other women in hand. And, and, well, the word hostage comes to mind. I heard that just recently about that. I heard that there are a lot of women who are taking hostages. And they will call their sponsoree every morning before they each go to work. And read the 24-hour book to them or give them a drill. And I thought, wow, you know, how are they going to learn to do this for themselves? Where is the desire to do anything for yourself when someone is making all your decisions? Um. To me, the best way to get someone to be willing to become close enough for you to sponsor is to just be a good friend. Uh, say, well, why don't we go out for coffee? Um. I remember, and it's true, the first time someone asks you to sponsor them, it's terrifying. It's like when someone says, come on, we're going to go speak. Oh, oh. But this, this is the way it is. But this, this woman did ask me to sponsor her. And, um, I had no idea what being a sponsor was, really. I guess I never consciously thought that I had been being sponsored. And so I wondered, what do you do? How do you sponsor somebody? And, uh, I just kind of watched her, and she seemed to kind of hang around on the outer fringes of everything. Uh. She would sit kind of away from everybody. And I thought, well, I don't know how to get her involved in this program. I don't know what's going to bring her into it. And so I just called her and took her over to a friend of mine that has a pool, and we just spent time. As far as she was concerned, we were there to swim. But what we were really there for was to get acquainted. To get to know one another. To get to know one another. To start building some trust. And I think that's very important in the sponsorship. And as Charlotte said, to be honest with them. But not necessarily hit them with a two by four. Um. I do think there's a difference between, uh, as I've seen, men sponsoring men and women sponsoring women. I think most women need to be treated maybe more tenderly. Uh. Well, no, not all of them. That's true. That's true. Some of them need a two by four, too. But, uh, I've seen an awful lot of women come in that were like me. And I guess that's what I compare to is me. And, uh, I was told that I was a whipped puppy. And I really was. And I didn't need somebody putting me down and, and, uh, tearing me down. Uh. And, uh, tearing my ego apart. And, in fact, the first time my ego reared its head, I didn't recognize it. I was surprised that it was there. And I thought, what's that? So, it's true. Each person is an individual. And, uh, each person, uh, cannot be treated according to a, a pat set of ideas or rules. Um. Uh. And, uh, I think it's a, it's a, it's a very, it's a very interesting way to think about how we treat people in the community. And I just, it's a very interesting way to think about, uh, how we treat people in the community. So, it's, it's a very interesting way to think about how we treat people in the community. And I think that's what really, uh, helps us to be better in our lives. Thank you. Thank you. Uh. One thing I just experienced this last week. Charlotte was talking about, uh, the treatment centers. Uh. I'm from Raytown. And we have, uh, one of our members that, uh, works at a treatment center for adolescents. And we have a women's meeting on Tuesday night. And she's been bringing these young girls to this Tuesday night meeting. Now, I don't know what's wrong and what's right or what's good or what's bad. I go on my instincts a lot of times. But these young women, they don't want to be there sometimes. Some of them. Some of them do. Okay, what do you do? You say, you don't go and you go. And you can go and you can't go. She brings the ones that are willing to come to the meeting. A couple of them sit through it stoned once in a while. Anyway, some of the other women have become somewhat resentful about these adolescents sitting in our meeting. So last Tuesday night, several of them said, we're going to have two meetings. And so I walked by the door where these young girls were sitting and they were the only ones sitting in there. And I thought, this isn't right. You know. What are they going to share with one another? Someone needs to be responsible to share something with them besides what they know, which isn't a great deal. They haven't been in the program very long. And so I went ahead and went in. The next thing I knew, a couple more came in and it turned out real well. But I do think that many people don't realize sometimes we're there for ourselves, but it goes beyond that. And any time I'm sponsored. I'm doing something. I always know that I need to hear what I'm saying to them. It never fails me. Because this little thought will be here. Did you hear that, Mavis, what you just said? It's amazing. You know. God works through the people I sponsor. Because many times I need something that's been filed away to be brought forward for me. And they will come up with it. And I'm not going to be the one to ask that question. And I didn't even know that I still had the answer. And it helps us both. It's a two-way street. I too am one that does not set a time on calling. I've had some weird calls at 2 o'clock in the morning. And I figured that was okay. Because the ones that came at 2 o'clock in the morning that were needed, I was at a time limit. And as Charlotte said, there's not that many. And so what? You know. How many times was I up at 2 o'clock in the morning pacing the floor because I was drinking and miserable and hurting and upset? So I can surely wake up at 2 o'clock in the morning to talk to someone on the telephone. So they won't be drinking and walking the floor and miserable. And I'm really grateful for the sponsors I've had. And I sit there for a while. I really hated for somebody to ask me to sponsor them because they never talked to me again. I've had that to happen. But those that have talked to me have been because we had something special happening. And it grew. And I've never experienced anything like that before. And I treasure them. I really do. I don't see myself as a sponsor after a while. Because we get to be such good friends. I forget who's the sponsor. And I think it's pretty neat. I think that's all I've got to say, Charlotte. Thank you. You brought up a couple of things I thought about that made me think. It gets to be really weird when you end up sponsoring your sponsor. Really feels strange. But I've had that situation a couple of times. And it's neat. It's a very close friendship type of a thing. But your sponsor's in trouble and you can see it and they don't know it. And you've got to be honest. It's weird. It's scary. But again, and you also brought up that God made me a sponsor so that I could listen to myself. Some days that's the only good thing that comes out of it. I needed to hear it. I just had an instance. It doesn't have anything to do with any of this except Friday night, a friend. Not even in the program except that I guess I have within the last year, I have gotten her to start going to adult children meetings. Because she has been in that situation for years. But it doesn't have anything to do with her and I or anything like that. We've just been close friends forever. But we sat there and we were talking. And we talked for about an hour and a half. And that woman said three things that I needed to hear that I hadn't even thought of. And I mean it was really weird. And I looked and here's Al-Anon, ACOA. It wasn't even to do with my program. And she's only been going a year and she's my kid's age and all of this. And I just sat there and I went, thank you. In fact, I literally did it. I just said, thank you God. I needed this conversation. I needed to be told what she was going to say to me. And that's the neat part about it. It really is. We can be sponsored by anybody if we'll just open our ears and listen. What do you want to do? Would you like to break up into two or three groups to discuss some of the stuff? Or would you just like to ask some questions? Or I shouldn't give you a choice. I know that. Okay. You're going to force me to make a decision, aren't you? Let's break up into about three groups of about five each. Count off in threes, I guess. Start back there. One. Four. One. One. Two. Three. One. Two. Three. One. Two. Three. One. Two. Three. One. One. I guess. I'll be three. You want to be anything? Sure. You'll be one. Okay. All the ones back here in this corner. All the twos over here. And all the threes up here in the front, I guess. Let's see. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. All right. Let's have just a little report from each group of any good ideas they came up with. Let's start with this group over here. Let me just say this for you. First up, let's look at the last group. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Hi, I'm Mike. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Mike. We were discussing sponsorship with the courts, and this gentleman over here was talking about some POs that are willing to work with you and work with people that make that a little bit more pleasant. I mentioned the fact that where I attend meetings, we have a lot of people come from courts and treatment centers, and we have a lot of slips to be signed and stuff, and for about the last six months, we've had a big placard in the front with a stamp that says, you know, if you want to have your slips signed, this is the stamp that's for that. We don't sign slips anymore. You know, if you want to attend a meeting, fine. If you don't, I mean, we have people come in with a stack of slips like that. They just stamp them all, and they're out. If they don't want to be there, if they want to be there, then we're more than willing to share with them. It's been working real good for us. It keeps the meetings a lot less rowdy, and you don't have to ask as many people to leave. My name's Steve Alcock-Addox. Hi, Steve. Our topic was groups, although we talked briefly about that. One thing we came up with was that a lot of people who do come in, the newcomers coming in have a lot of fear of people and just simply don't understand what's happening and what's bothering them. They don't know what sponsorship is and what the 12 steps are and everything. And that one thing they can do is have people there who can explain what is happening to them and let them make the choice. And one thing that we do in my home group is that we put up on the board people who are available to sponsor and their number. And when a person feels comfortable, at least they can go to a board and say, yeah, I know that that person has time and I can go to them. So it eliminates newcomers. So we just sort of, we kind of had a job looking for like the music and the new music. So those kinds of people may have a hard time using the otherenas really. And that's what we did. It worked quite well. And the first time that we had one thing that we spoke about was that they were many times afraid of finding that minimum wage out of gills. So we talked to a couple of local groups and we asked, you know, what are the best ways to implement judgments and welcome their opinions and there we were and all this. We're beginning to know, treatment centers and what weren't the good sides of treatment centers. And since I didn't get to speak, they conned me into doing this. But that's the way my life is. But one of the things that was not mentioned there because I didn't get to say it, and my concern was about what about the people that can't get into treatment because I was not allowed into treatment. And ever since then I've had a resentment against treatment centers. And it holds very reasonable to an extent because I've seen other people not being able to make it into treatment centers because of either they didn't have the money or the fact that they were nuts or they just couldn't make it in for some reason or another. And, you know, when a treatment center is supposed to be there to help an alcoholic, where does it stop and where does it end? And, um, that's what we talked about. Thank you all. Anybody have any other questions? My name's Mike. Hi, Mike. All the meetings I've been to so far down here, one thing I have noticed is that when I'm at a meeting, no one says there's a Friday date. So can anybody really tell how long you've been out? I don't know if that would make a difference to a new camera or not. I might be embarrassed to come up and ask somebody how long they've been sober if I just came here not knowing anything. But you brought it up. It's a good idea. I've thought it before too. Yeah? In my own group, they put out a roster of people. Whoever wants to be on the roster, he has a Friday date with a phone number. And that also helps. I like both of them. I have a check. There's nothing in alcoholics and non-drug users that calls for this first date. This is basically a 24-hour program. And not to take the first drink for 24 hours is the foundation of this program. When you start compiling all this date and all this guru and respect stuff, you're deviating too much. You're injecting the element of time too much into a program that was meant to be almost timeless. That's the major objective because it wasn't the way it was put together. It wasn't the way it was meant to work. It's something that people do. I'm not going to stop it by asking you a question. I'm sober 24 hours at a time, and that's all. That's a good point of view. I like both sides of it, as per usual. I'm caught in the middle. I like both sides. One of the meetings that I go to gets a bunch of other people in treatment. And I think I have a couple of carloads of people halfway out. There's one car that's driven. A lot of them have got like 20 or 30 people. Some of them have even got 20 years of sobriety. They went to a bunch of group breaks, got three wed. So it ends up there's just two or three of them that are willing to go talk to those people. Mm-hmm. We had that for a while too. We finally had a group conscience meeting, and that kind of helped a little bit. What you said about the . . . Is that the . . . when you jump in, is it . . . I mean, you don't need it, for example. All you're doing here, you're not taking the first drink for 24 hours. That's what this program has. It's not a psychological treatment or anything else. It's a 24-hour program, and for the first 24 hours, you don't take the first drink for 24 hours. That's all there is to it. The rest of the program supports that basic intention. How many newcomers are aware of that? It's just a question of whether they're aware of it. This is what they've got to do. When you come in here, you've given them a set of rules, and the simplest rule is you don't take the first drink for 24 hours, and after that 24 hours, you don't take the second drink for 24 hours. I've never done that. That's what I'll . . . I should say . . . No, I guess that's the way I chose my sponsor, just my way of saying it. What I hear is what I like. Yeah. That's why I chose my sponsor. That's the way we work. That's what I'm talking about here. Sponsorship is something you play more by ear, and actually it's a function of the spirit, I think, more than anything else, because you can't apply any rules to it. We're trying to set different sets of rules here, and the rules break down. You have to depend on your individual initiative. If you think that you can help somebody, you go try to help. This isn't a matter of sponsorship. It's responding to the need of another person. I think that's what sponsorship is all about, really. Okay. Okay. The qualifications for responding, what the hell are they? You're both interested in not taking the first drink for 24 hours. You were talking about somebody was using for sort of an emotional twirling. Sponsorship is . . . Amen. Sue. Hi, Sue. Actually, a person who's been sober just, been sober a couple weeks, which is wonderful, but they can't see the other end of it. That's, I'm not debating, but there's, the value in time is that somebody can pat you on the back and say, you keep doing what you're supposed to be doing, working the steps, and this is someone who's been through the steps, through all of them, which to me is a qualification for a sponsor, to work the 12 steps, have the psychic change, and be able to say, yeah, that higher power is gonna pull us through. We're gonna make it. You know, and that's, and it's something to keep coming back. Like, when I came in, I heard somebody who's been sober 10 years, I said, you know, I might have a life ahead of me here. I just might make it, and that's not taken away from the, you know, I wanna have 30 days or whatever, because you need that to get the next one. But there is value there because, there is, you know, there are the people that can say, hey, it's gonna work. And that's really all we, that's all any of us do, is hang around here long enough and live long enough to say, it does work, and it's worth it. You know, and it's not, it's not judging anybody. It's not saying because you don't have 10 years, or you don't have five years, or whatever, that you're not, you're not as valuable of a member. We just each have our different, our different little places in the program at different times. There were times I wouldn't have given a flood nickel for my sobriety, and there might have been somebody with two years less than me, and I'd have liked to have what they had for that day, and that happens all the time. But you can, there's certain things you can take an overall view of, if you've been around long enough, when everybody else is getting afraid, ready to run away, you know, in group controversies that do happen, they can say, it'll work out. I've seen it happen before, and God loves us, and he's gonna watch over us, and he's our ultimate authority, so it works out. And that's where, you know, it's more of a comfort than anything else. It's not a judgment call. I'm just, okay, I'm gonna turn it in, and it's good to be here today, and I'm glad you guys are here, and that's all I have. Thank you. . That's right. Well, you know, that's something else, too. I look back on, I remember when I came in, those people that were there at the meeting, they were so smart, you know, and they still are. But, you know, the longer I've been in, I found out how, some of them have days more than I do. And I thought they had years more than I did when I came in. Just the fact that they were there and cleaned up and talking reasonably, I thought they had years. You know, so it can be, like you say, it can either be important, something to lean on, or it's just, it looks good, you know, they look good, and they really didn't have a whole lot, and it's not that important. I think the way to choose a sponsor, too, is to, if that person's got what I want, the kind of support, the kind of life I want, then that's the person I want to ask how they did it. I'm kind of unusual in my life, or in my situation, because I'm the only one in the whole family that stopped drinking. Everybody else is still out there at it. And I didn't think there was any way to work that out. It's absolutely no problem. But I had to have some people around me in here, that maybe had walked through that, to know that it was, you know, I was able to do it. Today I'm grateful that it was there. The one last thing, I forgot to even mention the pamphlet on sponsorship, which I know we've all seen, but I brought a bunch of them in case anybody wants one. They're up here. That's one of the things that we do hand out in a packet of a few pamphlets to the newcomer each time they come in. And... We do like to see that the sponsorship one is handed out, because otherwise people can go months and never have sponsorship mentioned. So it's important to let them know it's there. The only other thing is on the bottom of the sheet, all of these that I tried to be funny with when I drew them up, the kind of sponsors not to be. The bottom line is the important one. A sponsor is the one who holds the light while you dig. Sponsor doesn't do the work. She's just there holding the light, helping. Thanks for being here.