Chris R. – Stop Qualifying the Drunks – 2016

me welcome tonight chris r from texas my name is Chris R. i'm very grateful recovered alcoholic i am so not anonymous in this group i mean this is family here this is nuts chris r don't get me started guys i'm just i'm somebody asked a minute ago i'm i'm a little overwhelmed i gotta tell you i i uh i met patty my wife at a fellowship with the spirit my first fellowship of the spirit i was married to somebody else at the time but i met her i don't a lot a lot changed in that year but uh you know and we'd come up a bunch of times whether i was speaking or not we'd Come up and and see you guys some of you cats in this room i mean i've known forever that was my first Fellowship of the Spirit was the august right before 9-11 and uh and before that i didn't know anybody up here you know and then i knew everybody up here and i was so worried when all that was just there's this huge connection up here diehard yankee fan thanks to patty and uh it's just i don't know we can't eat pizza any place but new york well never mind i just she's turned me into a snob that's all there is to it I am delighted to be here. It's great to share with Myers, and we lobbied for Chris to come with us and do this because we've got to share the podiums before around the country, and oh my gosh, it's so nice to share the podium with somebody that you're not going to have to rebuttal the next session, you know? God, it is just, you know, you do some workshops with people you don't know and you end up just contradicting everything they said, and I don't want to play that game. Having said that, I'm going to give you the same kind of lead-in that Myers did. Guys, all I can do is we want to share our experience up here, and that's all I can do. I'm gonna try to do a couple things, and one is not cuss too much, and I've been pretty successful at that for about 10 years. Any of you guys listen to old tapes? I cuss like a sailor, and I still catch flack oh you're that speaker that cusses I mean bite me I don't know don't I don'T I get an E for effort I mean I I don' t cuss so much anymore but but but all I can share is my experience and and it's it's you can't argue with somebody's experience you know my experience may be different than your experience and next Friday night when it's your turn to share you can share your experience and then and that's you know it's just it's god it's amazing i've said this from a thousand podiums you know we asked the little newcomer we want you to be open-minded until you're sober about five years and you can just close that name completely you know you don't have well my sponsor said you know well my counselor said well my big book said i mean that's that's where we're coming from and i we're gonna we're going to do our little stories tonight and we're then tomorrow we're gonna we're going to take a quick run through the steps somebody commented uh not long ago we did a similar deal and somebody commented well you know i wish we'd spent longer in those i said guys this is the problem that i think we see sometimes with the steps is that we've made this thing so complicated i've sat in workshops where it's 10 o'clock on a saturday night we've been here all day long and and then i did my fifth step you know and you just want to you know it's just it's not that damn complicated i mean if you read the history of how Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob took it, nobody will argue the fact that Dr. Bob sponsored 5,000 people. He didn't do it like we see people doing it out there. I meet with my sponsor every week and we read line for line. That's fine if you're with somebody that can't agreed. That's not what the big one is. I'm just saying. Whatever works. In other words, all this to say we're not there to argue with anybody. If we say something, I've got to reiterate what Meyer says because it's so important. If you say something and you're confused with it, that's the cool thing about getting to share for a couple of days here is that we get a chance to talk about this and visit sometimes it's what you hear you know maybe i said it goofy i don't know whatever uh but it's perfectly okay in this fellowship as far as i'm concerned to disagree you don't you we don't we don'T have to agree with everything each of us says to love one another i i just we just DON'T everybody in this room is going to take people through the steps differently can i get an amen on that i mean bill wilson talks about each of US in our own way you're going to do this and so you know sitting down lighting this out where you've got to do it this way or this way buddy i'm going to tell you something i don't care if you do an extended four column inventory i don'T care if YOU stand up sit down fight fight bite on the third step prayer i DON'T CARE i DONT CARE i DON' I JUST THINK IS THE CLOSER WE WE MIRROR THE DIRECTIONS OUT OF THE BOOK THE LESS CHANCE WE HAVE OF SCREWING THIS THING UP GOT A LOT OF PEOPLE OUT THERE WANT TO ADD ON AND DO THIS AND I mean, sometimes I just think it gets way overcomplicated. I've got to tell you, some of y'all I met in Atlanta, Patty and I. Can y'All believe it was a year ago? I mean we were in Atlanta sweating our butts off, and Patty andIwere coming home. I've told this story to some of you, but we were coming home early on Sunday and a lot of yall were going to the big closeout festival. We'd been there four days. We were ready to go home. We had all the AA we wanted forever. and we're back on the train going back to the airport and you know everybody's it's so funny everybody's so anonymous you know they get the hats and balloons and shit big flashing AA on their chest you know and it's like oh we're so worried about anonymous we used our last name you're gonna the AA police are gonna come he's like what bite me again god we just descended on that town it was so cool to see all those people there and it was great anyway we're on this on this train we're heading back out to the airport and and uh i'm an old west texas boy you know and it's getting crowded and this nice little lady gets on the on the planes older lady and she's got this little girl in tow and and uh and i get up you know so so they can sit down that's what we're supposed to do and that's by god what way it is and so i getup and i'm standing on the pole like this and i might because patty's sitting there too and and this lady starts to talk and she says okay dear now remember you know don't get overwhelmed by all this remember what we talked about all you got to do is just work one step a year and you're going to be okay of course i'm looking at this lady and patty patty's looking at me because i'm fixing to thump this woman on the head but i didn't there may have been a day in my 28 years of sobriety that i would have done that guys i just that lady loves alcoholics anonymous as much as i do and if taking her little knuckle heads through the steps one at a year it works for her i'm good lord i mean she's a murderer but other than that i mean everybody gets to do it the way they i don't know this will be fun in the morning real quick because in the morning at nine o'clock you know we got meditation in the morning if y'all get up with bill because he does a great job of that i'm going to start at nine o'clock doing the first step now historically what happens is we do this and then then y' all party all night long smoke too much drink too much coffee you're up all night longer and then you drag your butts in about noon okay but y'al try to get here early if you can so we can talk about this first step stuff it's just uh it's uh it hugely important i think to help us with our our whole cause here in a membership this thing about qualifying the drunks is extremely important So y'all get here early, and the day will go by fast, guys, because we're not going to beat this to death. It was short sections, and it'll be a lot of fun with the three of us. And I'm looking forward to it. I was born out in West Texas. When we were about 11, 10, 11, we moved to the hill country down by San Antonio. We're about 60 miles northwest of San Antonio, and my father couldn't wait to get us out of the flatlands and bless his heart, and he was a sweetheart, just like Myers was talking about. He was the kindest, really talented craftsman. He was a printer, a lithographer back in the day, and he was pretty phenomenal, but he was a pretty fine drunk, and he was what we call a periodic. Can y'all relate? Look, there's a whole bunch of people over here. I didn't see y' all. Hi. Y'all Y'all Y'alls sitting in the cheap seats over here There'll be at least one of you I tried to ask you a question I kept raising my hand Some of y'all haven't noticed I'm handicapped folly if they run if they rush the stage warn me okay just let me know because i want make some noise he was a periodic drunk and he'd stay sober for long periods of time and you could tell when he was he was not drinking his stomach had flattened out he'd you know he'd be going but but he'd bring a six pack of beer home and you knew that the wheels were fixing to come off because it wasn't going to stop with a six pack six pack of slits beer and um uh in my worst days i didn't drink that stuff no no he was a sweetheart but i got to tell you when we myers and i caught the bullet my little sister didn't my older sister they i can't tell you guys how many times we do christmas and there'll be that little wine you know and little little mimosas cheers you know then set it down and like of course myers you're gonna drink that or not You know, it's like, she says, no, no It tastes a little off Off I don't care if there's a turd floating in it Do you notice there's A theme that's already started with feces What? Guys, I don' t care We're going to drink We're not drinking for the color of the taste We're drinking for the effect produced by the chemical. That's what we do. We drink, and my first drink was Boone's Farm apple wine. Feel the love. Feel the luck. It's the prettiest stuff in the world. I see it every once in a while in the store. You know, I saw it. I was in Canada not long ago and saw it in the stillness store. It just brings back memories of puking straight up, you know? It's never seen a grape. I don't know what it's in it, but you can hallucinate on it. But I remember sharing a bottle, a small bottle with a friend of mine. It was January, my senior year in high school. It was actually between my junior and senior year and it was the month that Bill Wilson passed away is when I took my first drink. And guys, I got to tell you, I drank that down. He didn't like the way it tasted. He didn' t want any. He took a couple of sips and then I finished the bottle and I didn't get squashed. I didn' t rob a liquor store. I didn''t take my clothes off. I didn ''t do anything stupid. I just walked across this big old field out by our house, big old full moon, cold January night, and it was crystal clear why my dad drank. This is why he drank. It wasn' t partying. It wasn'' t avoiding responsibility. It was just something clicked, and I was okay. And guys, I got to tell you, for a long time, that worked for me. I was one of those functioning alcoholics that we hear people talk about. I sponsored a kid one time. It was so sad. He'd had two drunk driving charges. He drank twice. Both times he drank to a blackout. I mean, this kid ended up going to jail. He had no social time with alcohol at all. Just hardly seems fair. Come on, because most of us in here, though, we had a period of time when the crap, when this when it was working you couldn't touch me and i got to tell you something folks i know there's some alan on here maybe some family members y'all will never understand that this is y' all think this is all about partying if i've had a thousand calls i work at the same facility where myers works and he's like i get family members that talk about it all the time oh he she just parties too much she just partied she no that ain't that ain'T true sometimes it becomes a party in the middle of the afternoon but i you know but it didn't start out that way i hadn't had any problem early on controlling it holding it together most of the periods of time and we can talk more about that first step stuff but as as time goes on i'm in the hospitality field i was a bus boy when we were kids and i wanted to be a cook and it turned out that this guy allowed me to to apprentice with him and i ended up in houston in a big hotel an apprentice there and i've got to be pretty good we call it living better chemically you know with alcohol and methamphetamine there were periods of time when it worked really really good i don't mark my old sponsor used to call it our alcohol enhancers you know cocaine or methane we just oh my gosh you know because as it progresses see that's the first thing y'all got to look at early on if you're wondering if you've got problems look at look at your tolerance levels because the alcoholic if he's the guy that's out drinking everybody in the room you know that's i can't be an alcoholic i'm out drinking anybody you missing the point buddy you're you kind of kind of missed this uh i could out drink everybody i myers was a bartender and i'd go bartender with you know with him sit at the bar and he'd bring me everybody used to look at that little skinny one-eyed sumbitch look how much he drinks oh my god look how much because i could put it away buddy i mean i just i was awesome back in the mid-70s john travolta had some big old platform shoes y'all laugh okay guys when it worked it was good and i you know gradually it stopped working. In the hospitality field, they don't give a rat's butt if you drink or not. They don't care. If you show up and do your job, you can do whatever you want to go do. And everybody seems to gravitate to that. Y'all realize that we end up usually in professions around people. We date people that are not going to call us on our drinking. If you want end our friendship, say something. I'm a little concerned about your drinking. so long dummy bye-bye I'll come up with an excuse to get the hell out of there because I don't have to listen to it because you don't understand just like your families don't understand I watch these people come to treatment and I got to tell you the courage it takes for them to do this we're asking them they think we're going to make a lifestyle change and we're going to not drink you don'T understand you're asking me to set down the one thing that makes me feel okay in my skin. The courage it takes for us to do that. Mid-70s, I found some other outside issues to go to and I'm also seeing a psychiatrist for the first time. I'm seeing a doc in Houston for my depression. It's the chicken and the egg deal which came first, you know, but it's the same stuff. Number one symptom of untreated alcoholism is depression. I'll put this front on that I'm happy camper guys, but you've got to understand that that's part of the illness. Alcoholism is depression and a lot of us end up treating it medically and I'm not going to get into that truck. It's just, I don't have a problem in the world with that, but it won't fix the problem. If what you're dealing with is alcoholism, then you're going to have a problems. You can take all the medications you want. It doesn't fix that problem. Does that make sense? Anyway, I'm trying to deal with that and i'm seeing seeing a nice psychiatrist and every time i turn around i'm seeing another doctor uh trying to figure out kind of what's wrong i can stop drinking guys i'll stop on a dime the problem is i can't stay stopped i'm i'm gonna fast forward i'm in seven years in alcoholics anonymous and i've never picked up a 30-day chip i can top giving sufficient guys i can start for a couple weeks for the ugliest woman in the place i i don't have to have a really good reason to quit i just i just you're concerned okay i'll stop or it's making affecting my job or so this that and i'll quit but two weeks into this my mo is about two to three weeks i start coming undone in here now what i don't understand if somebody had known what was wrong with me they says oh my god chris the spiritual malady is kicking your kicking your butt you know the alcoholism is returning that's not what we're hearing chris you're not an alcoholic what you are is bipolar well here's some medication Chris no no no buddy yes you're having trouble focusing aren't you damn right I mean meth and alcohol does that I don't know I love it when they come to treatments the first question we ask of their oldest just all zoned out of it fucking are you depressed it's like oh my god yeah this stuff starts to come back and I'm you know I'm two weeks in and be bopping around and feeling pretty good and then just about two weeks I start feeling irritable restless and discontent again as gradually the depression comes back the fearfulness the anxiety that Myers is talking about I cannot tell you how many times I'll just get on a loop in a big city in Dallas where I could just drive around, you know, just drive. And what's wrong? What's wrong. How come my mind's racing? I don't, I don'T, I hate my life. This radio sucks. You know, everything is bad. Everything, you Know, and you go into a 7-Eleven and grab a Dr. Pepper and you hear this little voice said it from a, You could probably have one beer. No, that counts? No. If I have one bear, like I said, it always ends up and I'll be drinking a six-pack tonight and I'm drinking a bottle tomorrow. And I just, that's just, no, it's okay. Seven, this is, drink's okay." What are you, a pussy?" No. No, I'm not. I'm out. put the dr pepper seven up whatever it put it back grab a beer stop lady sitting next he's looking what the what are you doing grab it like that look at it put it back grab a court if it's going to be one beer it's going to be a big one beer knock the edge off have y'all ever noticed have y'all ever seen it no really you got this beer and you go to the deal like you're fixing to pay like that you know and there's a guy up there with scratch off tickets and he's bought a bunch and he is going to stand there at the counter and scratch the back okay if he had done that coming in and I had a Dr. Pepper in my hand I would have killed him and I said oh buddy good luck no no we are rooting for you brother go ahead I haven't even got this bear open yet and everything's okay y'all imagine the power of this i don't even have it in my system but it's going to be okay go ahead no take your time that's okay just shop shop yeah every go sit in the car don't ever turn the damn thing on texas summer heat 100 degrees out there y' all follow turn the radio on oh listen to that so i love that song everything's just Carol King. Oh, my God. Wouldn't matter what was playing. It was a good... I ended up... I tried to get married. Well, I did get married, but just not very long. Myers was working at a place called the Roundup in Houston, Texas, over there by the Astrodome. I mean, come on, guys. This is pretty country crap here. You know, the roundup, get it? And I'm in there with a black eyepatch and a cowboy hat, you know. I mean I'm about as cowboy as – well, I'm not. Anyway, I asked God. There was a cocktail waitress in there. She's a sweetheart. And I said, but, God, if you'll let me marry this girl, everything will be okay. And I'll quit drinking and we'll put some roots down because counselors have been telling me I need to put some roots down and be better. And, God, we're alcoholics as a bunch. We're fast-talking buckaroos, you know? And she married me, you Know, and I just, I don't know, two weeks later, I've still got those rental tuck shoes in the closet, and she's shoveling them Cheerios in her mouth, and I'm thinking, Goddard, if you could just kill this woman, everything's going to be okay. i still i still see it though all the time guys we're just we're trying to get sober and we're just convinced if we could get this thing how many of y'all have done that if i could just get that job i could stay sober if we can just get that car all right we could just get the house if we Could just buy the little ranchette if i Could just get out of the food business if i Could just oh if i Can just get into sales everything would be good because salesmen don't drink oh my god i'm trying to change everything external and i'm not uh i'm dying and uh i're not a happy camper i made a promise with her one night that i wasn't going to drink and uh came home and i had been drinking and uh it was states over two weeks and came home and had beer on my breath and she said what what and we had a little shoving match in there and i I left the house and came back hours later, and after all the dust had settled, and she said, what are we going to do? And she says, I'm going to quit. I'll quit drinking, and I'll pour out the dope, and I will do this. She said, if you want to stay married to me, you will, because I am not going to play this game. And I did. I made a promise to her. And with absolutely no humor in my voice, I need to tell you that when I looked her in the face and told her that I was going to quit, I meant it. What I didn't understand was that I didnít have the power to manage the decision to stay stopped. I get really tired of people in Alcoholics Anonymous making us all sound like weíre all a bunch of liars. If an alcoholicís mouthís moving, heís lying. Itís disrespectful for one, itís not true for the other. Most of the alcoholics that I know are pretty straightforward individuals once you take the disease out of the picture. When I told her I was gonna quit, I meant it, and a few weeks later, I had beer on my breath, and she said, I'm done, and I had five, six more years left in me. Of course, blaming her is nuts. Thank God I can work for my twin brother because I can't cook anymore. I'm worthless, and I'd have been on the street if he hadn't taken me in. His wife co-signed a little lease for me so I could get little apartment and I'm thinking it's going to be okay and it's not I'm going to meetings on a daily basis and it just like what Myers is talking about meeting makers make it and I go in and I can't get a 30-day chip I i just but north texas guys we were not talking about the 12 steps we were not talking about work we were talking about meetings we still have a tendency to want to push that depending on what part of the country you're in i'm not knocking meetings i love those people i love the meetings but but i'm not staying sober guys i got to tell you and i'm just going to say it now because there's no other way to say it meetings don't treat alcoholism nowhere in the book does it say that it's it's a part it's uh it's huge piece of this i would be lost without the meetings but but it's the same breath as a big book thumper i need the meetings as much as any y'all follow but i also need the 12 steps and i need sponsorship and so but i'm not learning any of that i'm just going to a bunch of meetings and i'm staying sober 1987 cold november night i picked up a stack of return checks and went up to my little apartment by myself and fed the little ferrets, and they were sweethearts. They didn't care if I was drunk or not. I picked up a 12-pack of Black Label, and I'm a mess, and the best. And I'd bounced a bunch of checks, and I was going to have to go to my sister-in-law and get her to write me a check to cover those hot checks again. I'm 35 years old, guys, and I'm broke. And I got an old beat-up pickup truck, and I'm just, I'm not a happy camper. And I've been on medication, seven medications, doctor prescribed medications a day I take. Antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, you name it. Everything but Viagra, and I would have taken that if they'd had it back then probably. but I took these pills and was going to check out. I heard a voice that night that said, don't do this. About the time those pills hit my stomach, I heard this voice that said don't do this, go back to AA. And I'm arguing with the voice. I've done AA. How many times have I? Myers was talking about how many times do we get patients come to treatment and they look up, come out of detox and look up on the walls and see the 12 steps on there and go, shit. I figured for this amount of money there'd be something else besides 12 step stuff we're going to talk about. He says, buddy, 12 steps work. He says, no they don't. I've tried AA. It doesn't work. I bet if I've heard that once, I've heard it 10,000 times. Not an exaggeration. But you talk to them a little bit and you find out what they've done is go to meetings. They haven't done anything else. That was my experience. That's what I did. I can sure relate to those little knuckleheads. I made myself sick the next day. I went to work and saw a doctor that morning And at 6 o'clock that afternoon, that evening, I went to this meeting I'd never been to before. They were talking big book at that meeting. And supposedly, this guy showed me where the meeting was. He said it's a big book thumper meeting. He says if you want to know about the steps, go to this meet. And I made a mental note. I'm not ever going to go to that meeting, you know. You're never going to get laid in that meeting." And that's all that was happening to me. I wasn't staying sober something was going on and it was nuts but I got out of that truck it was part of my first miracle I got in the back door a lot of y'all have heard talks I've done I can't not say it it was a long big old smoky building and I walked in we ruined it for you smokers used to be able to smoke in every damn AA meeting in the world and we ruined because we couldn't smoke just one cigarette We had to smoke. We looked like porcupines with seven cigarettes sticking out of them. I walked in, and they're laughing like we're laughing, and I'm getting real self-conscious. I'm like Myers. I weighed close to 200 pounds, and it was all right here, a little stick boy with a big gut. I had big old long hair and a big old nasty beard like Myers wears. and always got a little food, like a little snack in there, you know. That was the joke. Everybody said, Chris, we didn't know when you got here if you were wearing an eyepatch or an earmuff. Kind of slid around a little bit and I got a Little Old Fruit of the Loom T-shirt on and one of my pairs of Levi's and I mean that's all I had in the closet. You know, it's just, I looked like hell and I, you know those through the looms with the little pockets on them and you wash them about a thousand times and they shrink and so you've got a pocket right here. You look like a drunk kangaroo. You know, I don't know. Put your dip in that little deal. But I walk in and everybody's laughing just like this and I get real self-conscious and the chairperson saw me and says, Chris, welcome back. and that was it. I backed up and I took a step back because I'm going to leave and I'm gonna go home, I'mma get some Kentucky Fried Chicken this is a Friday, November 13th 1987 and Ima go give me some chicken and chill out for the weekend detox and I'll come back Monday and I took a step back and this little girl had gotten between me and the door and I stepped on her foot and she got her finger in my belt rope and said sit down cowboy you're not going anywhere honest God her sponsor was across the room couldn't get to me she saw that i was leaving and she said get him and this little girl armed with the facts about herself and understanding the fifth tradition which says that the only responsibility she had was to help me she stopped me from leaving the room i get emails from all over the world we we speak in europe we speak all over and everybody well you know in our country men sponsor men and women's but i didn't say this woman sponsored me she stopped me from leaving the room. Do you realize that one of the problems that we have in AA worse than anything to these days is just we're inundated with people that just don't give a shit? Probably could have put that a little differently. How many times have we watched a little newcomer come in and we're sitting there visiting, I mean I'm guilty of it, and our little buddy's around and we'RE talking with our little group, a little new comer comes in, looks uncomfortable and leaves. well somebody will get him no they won't this this night the miracle was this little girl stopped me she got a cup of coffee for me and i'm squeezing it and spilling it those styros and and uh paper towels and you know everybody was laughing at me trust me we were laughing our butts off and and i am shaking like a big duck i am detoxing in this meeting chairperson took charge and says let's tell chris how our life has changed as a result of working the steps Let me tell you real quick, guys, before I run out of time. If they'd have said, let's tell Chris how we got here, I'd have shot myself. I'm saying, guys. I don't know why we do this. A newcomer comes in. Let's tell him how we go. Oh, shit. Let me guess. You drank too much. Come on, Bo. Am I close? No, we've got to hear all the drama. Guys, seven years. That's what we listen to. Because, buddy, I'm picking up a desire chip all the time. And every time I do, well, we have a newcomer coming back. let's tell chris how we got here i don't give a rat's butt how you got here number one complaint that i hear about alcoholics anonymous is that all we hear is the war stories all we hear is guys our stories are so important it's not even funny tonight friday night when you go back to your home group speaker meeting tell your story in a 12-step call you have to have a story you can't talk to them about the work until you get their their understanding until there's a there's identification between the two of you you've got to have a story sitting in an aa meeting with somebody that's sober six months they don't need to hear our story again there's no chapter in the back of the book called interfere you know i into scare and uh i'm gonna sew this up for you real quick. They went around the room, and they talked about getting their credit cards back, and they talking about all the cool stuff that happened to them. A little girl at the end of the table held up her car keys and got a brand new car out front. She had a year sober, and I had just been turned down for a new car loan that week, and I'm thinking, you know what? I'm less than 24 hours away from a suicide attempt, and these people shared the one thing that I needed to hear worse than anything. Hope. Hope that something could be different. After the meeting, I picked up a desire chip and these two old guys got around me and they had them old glasses on like I swore I'd never wear and they looked over them and they said, Chris, could you stay with us? This was a 6 o'clock meeting. It was at 7 o' clock. Everybody's going home. Everybody's go into dinner. I know these guys are married. They've got families. they're supposed to, can you sit with us for about 10-15 minutes and just let us visit with you a little bit we've watched you for 7 years up here in North Texas picking up these chips there's something not right here would you stay for a minute and let us talk to you for a moment and I said, you know, and I remember balking a minute you know like I'm kind of feeling like, he says I know that's why it's just going to be quick I said okay, they chewed everybody out everybody left the meeting, they had big book Guys, I've got to tell you, they opened the big book to the title page that used to have our circle triangle on it. That's why I carry my little rubber stamp everywhere. And back in the day, for 36 years, we had that little circle triangle in the front of our book. And they said, Chris, we can find out right now why you can't stay sober. I says, I'll tell you why I can't say so. It's the girl. It's this. I'm blind in one eye. I mean, I'm going to get the laundry list planned out. As I've done treatment, I know I've been in a lot of trouble. I've gone through a lot. I've gotten therapy. I got all the reasons in the world. You know, trauma, I've got this. He said, Chris, we're going to ask you a few questions. Do you think you could answer these questions kind of like yes or no? He says, what's this circle triangle? What's on the bottom? It was a recovery. What do you think that is? I says, 12 steps. He says have you worked the 12 steps? And I says I'm working the steps to the best of my, and he exited. He had a little pencil, he exitted. He says no, it's a yes or a no. Chris, you've either worked the steps or not. Well, I haven't. What's unity? It's the meetings. You go to meetings? Yeah, yeah, meeting makers make it. And he rolled his eyes and he gave me a check. We didn't discuss it. He says this third legacy, service, what is that? And I says, well, you know, he X'd it. what give me at least give me a chance to answer the question he said okay on how many people are you sponsoring in seven years and alcoholics anonymous how many have you sponsored well none thus the X he's Chris we're not trying to make fun of you here we're laughing but word come on this is why you can't stay sober if you'll get in all three parts of this program you will stay sober no matter what. No matter what happens externally, you're going to be okay. You'll have a spiritual experience. The obsession to use will go away and you'll get out there and start kicking some butts. Bill Wilson says back up in 1415, he says at the bottom of page 14, he talks about not being able to stay sober unless we grow spiritually through work and self-sacrifice for others. Bill Williamson, all them old timers used to say, you got to give it away to keep it. You've got to give it away to get it. Don Pritch, we were talking earlier, a guy in our sponsorship lineage, a lot of you guys knew him, especially you older guys. He'd been passed away a long time from Colorado and just a wonderful man. One of the things he talked about, in fact, he talked About it on a bunch of his talks. The last talk he ever did, he referred to it again. He talked about at some point in our history of Alcoholics Anonymous, we stopped talking about recovery and just started talking about sobriety. In other words, it was just don't drink one day at a time instead of, man, wouldn't you like to get well and have a completely changed life? Because that's what Dr. Bob used to talk about. That's what the old-timers used to tell us. Guys, we live life a day at the time. I'm not going to knock that. I understand we have a daily reprieve. But guys, how many times do we get up in conferences like this or go into your home group and listen to somebody with 20 years sober get up and introduce themselves as recovering? My name is Jennifer, and I'm a recovering alcoholic. like, well, when the hell are you going to get well? Can you imagine how the power that we would have, and we're going to beat it to death tomorrow sometimes, but with the power we would have if we would understand the promise on the title page of the book, the story of how many thousands of men and women have recovered. Guys, it doesn't mean that I can't get sick again. It just means that the obsession, the seemingly hopeless state of mind and body, I have recovered from that. I haven't obsessed about alcohol in 28 years. Do you think I'm going to stand up here and call myself recovering? This is why nobody wants to be a part of our fellowship. Who wants to be a parte of a fellowship where you've got to admit you're sick every day? I can forward you the documents that shows you how many dozens and dozens of places in the book where it says that you can recover from this illness. You should see how uncomfortable some of y'all are getting. that's okay it's good this is what we're going to talk about guys because we want to visit with y'all hopefully and tonight and tomorrow with chris talks and on sunday morning we're gonna talk about some stuff that's gonna make you think i don't know what to tell you guys but but that's why i want to hear a speaker when i was getting sober in 1987 i wanted to hear speakers that would talk about something other than how many cars they wrecked how many times they were beat up by the gang. I want to hear about some stuff about our program, about the history, about the... Man, there's a lot of power in this and I want to talk to people that understand what that's about. This is a crappy, stupid program if all we have to do is struggle a day at a time. Some of you in this room may be struggling to stay sober a dayatatime. Thisis the stuff we're going to try to talk about this weekend so that you guys can get taken to a place where the where the battle is over the book says we cease fighting anything or anyone including alcohol i don't have to fight it today what i have to do is stay in all three parts of that circle triangle i gotta get this because i gotta let you go one of the things that takes place to jump off what's one ofthe things that meyer says is that we have a whole bunch of people out there who get well get sober get their feet on the ground and then gradually stop doing we have big book studies at our group that's all we do we go through the book and uh we don't have any open discussion where you talk about your day there's thought there's plenty of those meetings out there if you want to go to those well ours are just studies so that we can come and understand what's in the literature and we can bring the newcomers along with us that's why we're but a lot of folks that don't go to them what happens is they gradually go crazy and this little ego they got smashed when they worked the steps to begin with y'all follow my little ego wants to think i'm better than you are worse than you. Make sense? And what I want to do is get on a place where I'm not better or worse. We're just buds. We've thick as thieves. If I can stay in that spot, I'll never drink again ever. When I start thinking I'm better than you, that's when I start judging everybody, picking you apart, doing this, that, and the other. And I start to get in this bad spot. What kicks my butt, what I've watched thousands of alcoholics struggle with, is self-pity. Page 62 talks about selfish and self-centeredness. But guys, that' what we end up having to watch. pretty soon we start feeling like life's passed us by and we've been screwed over one more time you know blah blah blah and pretty soon our heads are telling us that it's time to go take a drink some of the stuff that we're going to talk about we'll look at some of those statistics tomorrow and uh and try to get some of that clear guys because this thing absolutely works in the treatment field i cannot talk without coming from a place of perspective around it because i work in the industry for 23 years and i've watched so many people come in a lot of people are out there with waiting for the pharmaceutical companies to fix this or waiting for something new to come down the pike. Guys, still to this day, the number one platform for recovery for alcoholics and them little dope fiends is our 12 steps. But it doesn't happen as a result of reading the book. It happens as a results of getting off your butt and doing the work. I will forever owe those guys my absolute life because they took time after that meeting. Instead of running home, they understood that their place was there to try to help me understand what this was about and it took them about 15 minutes to qualify me and when I finally realized my first step, my bottom was sitting in that AA room listening to the truth about what the first step looked like. We got to start looking at the symptoms and stop looking at the drama because the drama is going to separate everybody in this room in the morning at nine we get a chance to talk we'll talk specifically about that but it's going to be one of the absolute coolest things to do i got to thank everybody i i didn't at the beginning of this uh mark and everybody on the committee that asked myers and i and chris o to come talk andrea for doing everybody that's pitched in and done everything you should see the gift bag Y'all probably got one in your room, too. Or not. I know, I know. I got to close with this, guys, real quick. One of the things that we see out there, and we're going to talk about it again, we'll touch on it tomorrow, but one of the thing that we see around the country is everybody wants to talk about this, you know, continuing care, continuums of care and recovery. And, you know, I heard a counselor the other day talking about, well, you're going to get sober and all you've got to focus on is your recovery. You know, it's like a job and that's all you're gonna do. I'm gonna contradict that like a big dog right now. I'm just gonna say it right now, it' s absolute 100% crazy talk. Guys, what our collective experience shows us, Bill Wilson wrote bunches about it, those of us that come in these rooms and get sober, and start getting excited about our lives, we have a much better chance of staying sober than you can ever imagine guys it's really time for us to get out there and start kicking some butt start some new businesses go back to school what i'm watching all over the country are people that leave treatment good treatments they got a good basis they've been given an adequate presentation of the program they go to these halfway houses they sit on their butts they don't do anything just go to meetings every day talk recovery live recovery that's all they do y'all follow they're not staying sober the guy that gets out of here and goes to meetings and got a sponsor and starts working the steps on oh by the way starts getting excited about going back to school picks out that little sketch pad that they've dusted off you know hadn't messed with in years picks it up and starts painting a little bit starts doing a little artwork makes that little garden in the backyard starts doing something they're the ones that are staying sober folks this isn't this just not drinking one long scary boring day at a time is not what this is about that's not what the big book talks about and if you read the subsequent writings a lot of people are out there a lot of studies that are out their buddies it's time to get excited about this work get out there start kicking some butt and getting out there and start doing what you're supposed to do when your insides don't match your outsides, you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of staying sober. And too many of you have been lied to by well-meaning people who have asked you to slow down. And I'm going to end with this. The number one mistake we make in our fellowships, why our recovery rates are so low worldwide, is that we go too slow with the newcomer. We're not mentally deficient individuals, folks. Well, some of you are. I look forward to seeing you guys. Thanks so much.