Emotional Sobriety — Bill Wilson Admitted at 23 Years He Had Been Doing It Wrong – Russell S.
About This Speaker Tape
Russell S., a 76-year-old man in his 45th year of sobriety, delivers an unflinching, confrontational talk at the Life Is Good Group in Boca Raton, Florida as part of a step series. He opens by warning the audience that he has no prepared remarks and intends to be brutally honest, even if it upsets people. He describes himself as an "acquired taste" who has sponsored hundreds of people over 35 years, attends a daily 7 a.m. meeting called Serenity Now, and views his bluntness as a product of working the program assiduously rather than any personal virtue.\n\nThe bulk of the talk is a passionate, historically grounded argument that Higher Power must be the absolute central factor in an alcoholic's life
. Russell traces AA's origins through Dr. Bob's insistence on the Bible and the Sermon on the Mount, Bill Wilson's white-light experience and his later retreat from explicit Higher Power-language under social pressure, Henrietta Siberling's rebuke that AA without Higher Power is just the Rotary Club, and Hank Parkhurst's push to soften the manuscript with "as you understand Him." He reads from Appendix II of the Big Book and argues that Bill Wilson wrote it at three and a half years of sobriety, long before he understood what long-term recovery actually requires.\n\nRussell shares his observation that most people who reach 20-plus years and fall apart or relapse share one common problem: they never developed a genuine, deep relationship with Higher Power.
He references Bill Wilson's 1958 essay on emotional sobriety, where Bill admitted at 23 years that he had relied too heavily on people, places, and things. Russell contrasts Bill's evolving, sometimes wavering stance on Higher Power with Dr. Bob's unwavering faith, and credits his own growth to years spent in Bible study outside AA.\n\nHe closes by redefining spiritual experiences as the painful, unglamorous moments of showing up sober through financial ruin, cancer diagnoses, marital crises, and suicidal despair.
He argues that Higher Power consciousness means thinking about Higher Power most of the time, which naturally crowds out selfishness, lust, and materialism. He compares AA to a self-cleaning oven that periodically burns away the people who never got serious, and tells the audience not to worry about agreeing with him because life itself will eventually teach them the same lessons.
Topics
Timestamps
Full Transcript
My name is Russell S.. I'm an alcoholic. It's good to be here with you guys.
So I'm gonna, I'm gonna, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna do something.
We'll see how this works out. I'm gonna be honest with you. I try to...
So I'm gonna, I'm gonna, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna do something.
We'll see how this works out. I'm gonna be honest with you. I try to...
My name is Russell S.. I'm an alcoholic. It's good to be here with you guys.
So I'm gonna, I'm gonna, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna do something.
We'll see how this works out. I'm gonna be honest with you. I try to really be honest and open
at each meeting, whatever meeting I do, and I'm gonna be honest with, and the reason I want to
be honest is not because I'm an honest guy, but because I have nothing, I have no idea what I'm
gonna say. So whenever I have no idea what I'm gonna say and I'm fishing around for an idea of
what I'm gonna say, I all of a sudden hear this voice that says, why don't you just be honest with
these people? So I'm just gonna be honest. I don't teach these things. This isn't a teaching. It may
sound like I'm teaching or I'm telling you what to do. That's not my intention. I once asked the
Attorney General of the United States from many years ago. I was at a place where he was at.
I knew he was a Christian guy. I'm a Christian guy, and I was befuddled by how a guy who, you
know, falls.
You learn all that sort of stuff, how he could live in Washington, D.C. and be, you know, involved in
politics. And he says, he said, you know, Russ, my, my religion forbids me, inhibits me from trying
to push my, my faith on anybody. I said, I don't do that. I'm not here to impose my faith on anybody,
but I, but I'm here to expose my faith. And that sort of lines up with Alcoholics Anonymous. It
says, I'm not here to tell you you got to be this and you got to be that and you got to be another
because there's a million different voices in AA that'll tell you a million different things.
Then we have people in there, even though the big book says, if you're an atheist or agnostic,
these things have to be pushed aside. They got to be abandoned. Even though he says that,
you can stand up in an AA meeting and say, I'm an atheist. It works just fine. You don't have
to believe in God, even though it's completely the opposite of what the big book says.
So what I do is it says in the big book, it says every alcoholic, but he's not a mean,
in his own language and from his own point of view, expresses how he,
he came to believe and grew his relationship with God. And so that's all I do. That's my deal.
May not be, you may not like it. You don't have to like it. I mean, we're all alcoholics. You're
permitted to hate anybody you want and you can walk out of here. You know, I've had people walk
out of me and that's fine too. It's okay. But I'm going to be honest with you. And, uh, I, it's not
for, for me, look, I came in when I was 31 years old at 76. Now I'm in my 45th year of sobriety.
And, uh,
and I, I'm not that it's, it's worked. It's worked. All I can tell you is unfortunately for
you guys, AA has worked. In other words, fear of people is gone for the most part. And nothing's
ever perfect, but it's pretty much gone in AA. I don't, when I speak at conventions,
I don't worry about what they're going to think. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not here for
a personality. What is it? Uh, personality contest or popular. I'm not here to be popular.
You know what I mean? I absolutely believe me. I realize some guy called me, I was doing something
at the convention a few weeks ago. He said, you know, Russell's an acquired taste. They
have ready sort of chocolate. I said, well, you're laughing now, but you haven't heard me yet.
You know, you'll find out what that's all about. I mean, I'm acquired taste. I'm going to talk
about what I'm going to talk about. It's going to piss some people off. That's okay. You know,
as a matter of fact, when it pisses people off, I know I'm,
I know I'm getting somewhere. I'm probably telling the truth, you know, cause alcoholics need to be
confronted. You know, it's, you know, I sponsored, I don't even know how many people they didn't tell
me. If somebody asked me how many people he had sponsored, I said, I didn't know I was supposed
to count them in the last, you know, 35 years, hundreds. And, uh, and I love them all. And I
try to help them all. And I get phone calls. I try to help people and the bottom, but the bottom
line is, is that this is a drastic program and people are going to die. And, and the truth of
the matter is I never, I never let slide when it's appropriate, the opportunity to hurt somebody
feelings when they need, because that's really, that's, I mean, if you haven't had your feelings
hurt prior to coming to AA and been crushed prior to coming to AA, you have a different,
you have a different disease than I have. So better to have your, your feelings crushed
or being spanked by a sponsor who loves you, then have it spanked by being arrested for
vehicular homicide, which just happened to a guy I know that he's facing 25 years in jail now.
So you really want, you want to be confronted in here and not because the world has a funny way of
confronting you outside in, in public. So I, I never shy away from saying things and I know
they're going to, people are going to disagree, but that's okay. You know, it's going to kill you
to disagree with somebody. All I can tell you is that, that I've lost, I, I'm for the most part,
I've lost fear of being myself. Even somebody who doesn't like what I have to say, they want to
walk, that's fine. It's okay. You know, my sponsor once told me, one of my sponsors told me when you
throw a rock and do a pack of dogs, the one that yells loudest is the one that gets hit. So, you
know, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's,
you know, and we have a spiritual axiom, whenever you're disturbed, no matter what the cause,
there's something wrong with you. So what I try to do is disturb, disturb as many people as possible.
It's sort of like a, because that separates out the people who are actually emotionally sober
from the people who are still childish. You understand what I'm saying?
Because the only thing that tells me, when you get upset, the only thing that tells me when you
get upset by something I said, it's like, you're not sober. It's as simple as that. See, just,
isn't that, that's a tough thing, right? It's, it's a crummy thing to, don't you
think that's a crummy thing? I think it's a mean thing to say, you know, I think a guy comes up to
you, you ask for help and you tell him something, they get upset. I said, you're not, I don't
consider you sober. You know, it's mean, isn't it? It's pretty cruel. That, that's the only thing
that they'll remember for the next five years. Because that's what alcoholics do. They remember
shit like that. They don't, they don't, they remember, they remember people through, you know,
how we get a new person? You know, how we get a new person? You know, how we get a new person?
perspective by repeated humiliations. And the final question of our self-sufficiency,
you know, that's not only because of alcohol, because alcohol is, but a symptom
that has something to do also with spending money. You don't have to buy shit. You don't
need to impress people. You don't like that also has something to do with, uh, with, with
having a total lack of integrity and being a liar and being a cheater and lying to yourself and lying
to others. That has a lot to do, you know, and you find something in your life. That's going to
look you in the eye and lose your friendship by telling you the truth and pissing you off.
You want to, you want to hang on to that sort of stuff, you know, because the last thing you
want to do, one thing that the Lord has done for me is he's never allowed me to get too comfortable.
He's allowed me to get comfortable. Maybe sometimes he's even allowed me to get too
comfortable, but you're getting that, you know, you don't want to go for a long period of time.
Without being brought up by the short hairs and being spanked a little bit, having something come
into your life that really sort of scares you or upsets you, you know, that's God's way of saying,
you know, don't get too proud of yourself. Don't get so, so happy because the truth is it's the
humiliations. It's the problems. It's the things that we've gone through that sort of keeps us
from becoming, uh, what's that thing that causes you that causes us to rest on our laurels.
And we're heading for trouble, if we do, you know, there's, I'll tell you, so I'm going to say some
things that are going to bother people. And, uh, all I can tell you is this. I'm going to say some
shit that's going to bother people. They're going to say, this guy should never be allowed to speak
at an AA meeting, but understand something. I'm a product of working these steps assiduously
for 35 years. I'm a product of sponsoring anything that moves for 35 years and do this. I can go to,
a sponsor i'm a product of going to three meetings a day forever you know what i mean and doing this
thing and reading the book and all that is other books so so don't blame me because i was uh once
a guy who hated all this stuff you know what i mean i'm a product of alcoholics anonymous and
working this program so i may be full of shit you know what i mean but it's not my fault it's the
big book's fault it's the 12 and 12's fault it's dr bob i'm a good old-timer it's the bible it's
therefore that's it's god's fault you know so i mean just blame him don't blame me you know i'm
just not really like this if you should see me the way i'm really like you know like my my former
wife saw me when i told you to her face my wife my beautiful wife and mother and my child my child
when we were at marriage council and i and he said what do you want to change about your wife
and i said i just want to date other women so that's who i really am that's who i really am
i'm a cruel asshole that doesn't give a shit about anybody
myself that's who i really am so so trust me i'm i'm i'm really not this i'm the other deal
you know so i'm just going to talk about what what what what with this whole thing about the
11 steps what it means to me now i now obviously you know when you're 76 years old and you've been
doing this thing for like 35 years you know i to squeeze this into like 30 minutes i'm going to
try to explain to you what's going on but you know but i'm going to try to do the best i can
now i go to a meeting every morning at 7 a.m in the meeting it's a
zoom meeting it's called serenity now i'll tell anybody about it they want to come it's great
meeting we get 40 or 50 people from all over the world and at that meeting you're only allowed to
speak under a minute a minute or less i think that's wonderful you know i mean i get to do
this stuff like you speak for an hour and do it all the time but and and i used to i used to hate
crap when i used to hate when they'd like time you and they cut you off in mid-sentence i used
but now i love it because what happens is
you sit there and you have to discipline yourself and you have to say what am i going to say
that may be helpful to somebody else that's honest and not shit not bullshit and you've
got to think about rather than just droning on or complaining is there something i can bring that's
constructive to this deal and oddly enough you know if i if i focus on god i always come up with
like a 30 second deal i can i can do i can say what i have to say which may be helpful and truthful
seconds you know what i mean that's not necessarily going to happen tonight you know because i got to
fill in the time you know it probably could happen tonight so i'm just going to tell you a little bit
about and and i cannot do this without giving you opinions and you may disagree with my opinions my
opinions are kind of out there they're all in violation of the traditions i guarantee you
they're all in violation of traditions i'm not a big fan of the traditions not because they're not
good i'm not saying they're not good there's a reason why you know i'm not saying they're not good
because i think it's the traditions are good good how people interpret the traditions as keeping you
in a box see the way there's some people that interpret the traditions and i guess i used to do
that is that is that you can't do anything unless it's conference approved in other words bill
wilson at 15 years brought together a group of alcoholics all had less than 15 years at a business
meeting somewhere and they came up with these traditions
nothing bad about traditions i like traditions they're okay they're harmless and then down the
road it morphed into people telling other people well that's a violation you read the bible that's
a violation of traditions you're talking about this that's a violation of traditions that book's
not conference approved when all they used for the first four years in aa we have a book that
says rarely have i seen a person fail has thoroughly followed our path and the only thing
they used in aa was the holy bible dr bob says the books we found absolutely essential were first
things 13 sermon on the mount and the book of james the book says rarely i've seen a person fail
who's failed who's thoroughly followed our path and their path was to read the holy bible if you
ask dr bob what's this thing all about he'd say why don't you read the bible you'll find out what
we're all about if you ask them what's first things first he'd say seek ye first the kingdom
of god and his righteousness and all things will be given to you so somehow aa has turned
so yeah how about this one bill wilson said in alcoholics numbers number three when uh
when uh bill dotson was trying to figure out why he had this release he said he said listen
the lord has been so wonderful to me curing me up what do you think he was talking about
he used the word lord he didn't say hi has been so wonderful to me right after he came out of the
hospital where he had that white light experience you know what i mean he said so this is the god of
the prophets what do you think he was talking about he right after that he says the lord has
been so wonderful to me during me of this terrible disease i got to keep talking about it and telling
other people i had to keep talking about it and telling everybody today what the lord has done for
me and that's the and it's called the golden text and bill dotson said he said that changed my life
that was the answer bill was very very just so grateful for what the lord had done for him he
had to tell he gave him all credit he had to tell other people and that turned into
after the traditions that the guy didn't have more than 15 years three years before he started taking
you know that that came into you can't talk about don't talk about god because you're killing people
dr bob went up to clarence the brewmaster in the hospital in 1937 it's in our literature
comfortable literature first thing he said to him he says do you believe in god young fella
clarence says what does that have to do with the dr bob says everything there was nobody there to
tell him he's not supposed to do that because it violates their traditions he says well i guess i'm
doing guess nothing i'm just using his words guess nothing it's in the book dr guess nothing
you either believe or you don't believe there is no middle-of-the-road solution
i believe good get out of the bed get down on your knees you're gonna give your life to god
and you know what clarence said he said he said i did what i was ordered to do there were no
suggestions so what am i supposed to do when everything they did was about the lord about
god about reading the book and now i go on the meetings and i can go to a meeting for an hour and
and people talk about their problems,
not one person mentions God.
And if a guy mentions God,
you know, somebody comes up to him,
some guy with 13 years or 15 years
and tells him how he's violating the traditions.
So to me, what the traditions do,
how some people use them,
is they keep you in a box, in a coffin, you know,
where you're not allowed to step out of that coffin.
AA, to a certain extent,
if you use it a certain way,
is more religious than any sanctimonious religion
on the planet.
You give me an AA guy that says you can't do that,
you can't say that, you can't talk about that,
you know, don't put down religion.
This place could become more strictly religious
in telling people what they can't do.
And I'm going to tell you something,
you know what it does?
It kills people.
Because they never get to be rocketed
in the fourth dimension of existence.
Because in order to do that,
you got to get involved in the great fact.
The great fact is this is nothing less.
Nothing less than this.
God has to become the central factor of your life,
which has something to do with the 11th step.
And you've got to be convinced.
Not say, well, probably, or likely,
well, I sort of, none of that,
none of that, any of that agnostic bullshit,
you know what I mean?
You've got to be convinced that
God is living in your heart
in a miraculous way,
allowing you to do things
that you wouldn't be able to do by yourself.
Now, that's the big book.
God is everything, or he's nothing.
God is everything, or he's nothing.
If you don't think God is everything,
and the most important thing in your life,
then don't tell anybody you believe in God
because it's bullshit.
It's alky-bullshit.
It's not really, listen,
you either understand the English language
and the sentences, or you don't.
You're either a lying, delusional alcoholic
who can't separate the true from the false,
who's alcoholic thinking is the only way,
somehow, everything is a fucking loophole,
a way you can slide out,
well, you've got your program, I've got mine.
No, there's only one program.
God is either is or he isn't.
Well, I'm an atheist.
Well, I've got news for you.
God either is or he isn't.
There are no atheists in AA.
If you're an atheist and you're in AA,
you're not doing the AA program.
You're doing something that you've sort of made up.
I know why, because in the big book it says,
which is our basic book, we all agree,
you know what it says?
Atheism, agnosticism, these things have to be abandoned.
You've got to abandon yourself to God.
How do you do the 11th step
if you haven't abandoned yourself, if you're an atheist?
How do you do that?
I guess you pray to yourself.
You just sort of pray to yourself, say,
thank God I'm wonderful.
Thank God I'm spiritual, not religious.
You know what I mean?
Why do I tell you these things?
This is what I believe.
This is my opinion.
Stand up.
Leave the thing.
That guy's so full of shit.
It's fine with me.
You can discover what's really going on
when you're 25 years and you start drinking again.
Or when you're 15 years and you feel like shit
and you don't know why,
because you're going to a lot of meetings
and they're not working for you anymore.
So it's entirely possible,
as full of shit as you think I am,
you may change your opinion 10 years down the road.
So in other words, when I read the big book now,
this is never the way it used to be.
And I say, Bill Wilson talking all about God,
all about God.
He's everything or he's nothing.
And then two months later,
going up to Henrietta Sireling,
I'm getting this all out of our literature,
and saying, Henrietta,
I think we talk too much about God and religion.
I think we ought to back off of that.
Because he got slapped down
for the same reason why you guys don't want to talk about it,
because you're scared somebody's going to slap you down
at a meeting or tell you you're stupid.
And he gets slapped down.
And Bill Wilson immediately gave up on God,
threw him under the bus,
the same guy that is the only...
And Henrietta said to say,
Bill, the only reason you're sober is because of God.
And if you don't talk about God and give credit to God,
you might as well be the Rotary Club, for God's sakes.
You've got to talk about God.
And he says, finally, Bill agreed.
And then he writes this book with the help of other people.
And it's all about God.
All of it.
It says,
there is one who has all power.
Has anybody ever read that?
I'm not making this shit up.
This isn't Russell S. is making it up.
There is one who has all power.
That one is God.
May you find him now.
Because if you read the Dr. Bob and the Good Old Timers,
the only way you could go to an AA meeting back then
is you had to get down on your knees
in front of everybody in AA.
If we were doing this thing the way they did in 1935,
every one of you would have already,
before they got in here,
gone down on your knees in front of everybody else
and given your life to God.
Or else you wouldn't have gotten in here.
Really, I've seen a person,
Bill, who's thoroughly followed our path.
They're not even doing this thing the way they did it.
So now I got Bill all of a sudden.
He's writing this book.
He's putting that all in this.
And Hank Podhurst or whatever the guy's name comes up to him,
Parkhurst,
and says, well, you can't do that.
Say, as you understand, everything like that.
And Bill,
because he's worried about what people think about him,
and he's more interested in getting in the numbers
than doing the Dr. Bob thing,
you either,
you do or you don't.
No, don't do that.
You do it.
What about if people walk out?
They may not like us.
You know what I mean?
So Bill says,
puts this little thing in it
so it allows you to sort of slide in.
Good, bad.
I don't even make that judgment.
Maybe that's what God wanted.
Even the atheists in here,
so we can hear this message.
I don't put that down.
You understand what I'm saying?
So all of a sudden,
he writes this book and it's all about God.
And then he slips in after saying,
God, God, God, God, God.
Last page.
Your real reliance must be on God.
This is Bill Wilson's words.
He will show you how to create
the fellowship you crave,
which I have a feeling
isn't an atheist fellowship.
You know what I mean?
See that your relationship with him is right
and great events will happen
for you and countless others
and you'll meet us in the fellowship of the spirit.
Now listen,
I was born at night,
but I wasn't born last night.
I know what the fuck they're talking about.
You understand what I'm saying?
I'm not stupid.
If you don't understand what those words mean,
I don't tell you like Alki's stupid.
I don't know.
You're just delusional.
You just want to do it your way.
You know, that's the bottom line now.
You see, that's an opinion.
But it's an opinion based upon honestly reading the book.
Not honestly reading the book,
but doing it my way anyway.
It's either doing what they say in the book
or saying, well, I want to do it my way anyway.
You know, I mean, really, it's one or the other.
So I mean, if we're going to,
if I'm going to start talking about what happened to me,
as far as the 11th step, I have to be honest with you.
You know, even Bill was backing off.
Bob never backed off of that.
I used to be a big Bill guy, a big Bill guy.
Why not?
Bill was a wonderful guy.
I mean, I'm not putting him down.
You know, he writes in the big book every once in a while.
A new man used to be a drinker, says, feel better, look better,
have a drink.
We're having a better time.
We laugh at such salary.
Soon we know he'll try the old game again
because he's not happy with sobriety.
He'll know loneliness if you do.
And 15 years later, 15 or 16 or 17 years later,
he was right there and he was using LSD to try to experiment
to see whether he could find a better way of doing it
besides the God thing.
Because he wasn't like Bob.
Bob was different.
As a matter of fact, it's kind of, in my mind,
reading everything that happened,
it's almost like Bob was the rock that was sponsoring him.
You know what I mean?
Bill was from Manhattan.
You know, I'm from New York.
Manhattan, I get that thing.
Bob was from the Midwest.
He was a believer.
He was the real deal.
He wasn't here for the fame.
He wasn't here for the, you know, you can read about Bob.
Read Dr. Bob.
For God's sakes, read it.
Read about him.
The first meeting was done by Dr. Bob.
You know what he did?
Put his foot on the rung of a dining room chair
and read Matthew 5, 6, and 7, the Sermon on the Mount.
That was AA for Bob Smith, the Sermon on the Mount.
And people, let me tell you something.
Why don't you call up New York and say,
say this, ask him this.
Is the Bible disapproved?
I don't think you'll ever have AA pass some sort of law or rule
saying the Bible is disapproved because then, you know,
people who are serious Christians will leave AA.
You'll see a lot of people leave AA that are solid.
You'll see a lot of people, you know what I mean?
So the bottom line is I have opinions.
You understand?
But I'm being honest with you.
I got opinions about stuff.
And so then Bill, what he does is after he put all this stuff in there about God,
God, God, he puts in appendix two.
I'm not a big fan of appendix two.
I got to be honest with you.
I see a lot of good things.
I see stuff in it.
It makes some sense.
But he throws in appendix two, which sort of says, well,
we believe in the God thing, but you do whatever the fuck you want to do.
Well, I understand.
I use the F word.
What the hell?
We're all outies here, right?
You know, I'm not perfect.
I've got my problems.
You work on your problems.
I'll work on my problems.
I'll take this up with the Lord when I see him.
He'll say, use the F word so much.
I said, listen, these guys love the F word.
That's all.
They use the F word all the time, even though they're not saying it.
It's floating around in their brain.
You wouldn't believe what's going on.
You wouldn't believe.
If you distilled them all and we put them all in a mixer and we just push the button,
all that would come out is fuck, shit, all this sort of stuff.
Just come up.
They're just full of shit.
You know what I mean?
There's a guy back there saying, I like this guy.
He talks like I think.
You know what I mean?
Talks alky.
He's not trying to put on airs or anything like that and make himself look bigger.
But, you know, I understand people saying, this guy's a crummy Christian.
I am a crummy Christian.
When he became a deacon of the church, I said, I'm an alcoholic.
I'm crazy.
He says, you'll be the crazy deacon.
Anybody who comes to the church that we think is crazy, we're sending them to you.
You know what I mean?
So that's the deal.
I'm here for the crazy people.
So, you know, I'm not here to say I'm perfect.
I'm not here to say I'm perfect or anything like that.
So that's the deal.
So that's where I'm coming from.
You understand?
But that's only after many, many years.
So now that I said that, I want to read appendix two.
And I want to talk.
I'm going to use that as the jumping off place to give you an idea of what this is, what I'm talking about as far as.
So I'm going to read.
I'm not going to read the whole thing.
Just a couple of paragraphs.
And then we're going to talk about.
About your education.
We're talking about spirituality.
A lot of people use the word spirituality.
Everybody ever say, well, I'm spiritual, not religious.
You ever say I'm spiritual, not religious?
Is there anybody who actually believes that?
Don't raise your hand.
I don't want to embarrass you.
Does anybody actually believe that they are now spiritual?
I mean, they've been in AA 33 years or 25 years.
And Russell, you can tell this to a newcomer, but I'm a spiritual person.
I'm not religious.
I'm just spiritual now.
Good.
Because I'm calling up the IRS.
I want to take all the money out of your account.
We're going to see how you're doing.
We're going to have the doctor say you got cancer and you got three months to live.
We're going to see how you're doing with that.
We're going to see how spiritual you are when things don't go your way.
And a lot of things don't go your way because I'm not spiritual.
I'm a material man.
And I am the original.
I'm a material girl, even before Madonna, I am material girl.
I am a man.
I know myself well enough to know you are a material.
You know, you know why every once in a while I'll get anxious because I still do.
Every once in a while, I get anxious every once in a while.
I get, you know, a little worried every once in a while.
You know why I never get perfect on this thing?
Because I'm still in the flesh.
I still feel pain.
I still feel worried.
I'm a, I'm a material man in a material world.
I'm a material man in a material world.
And you want to know something?
It even says in the big book, when it talks about step six and seven, we don't want to deprecate material achievement, but nobody's ever made a worst move of living by.
If I only had a new car, if I only had a new woman, if I only had a new job, or if I only was married, if only this, then us, I, I was a material man.
When I walked in here, I'm the guy who's sitting in a meeting, turned to my sponsor.
I say, look at the blonde in the front row.
He's saying, you see that blonde in the front row?
I said, yeah.
He says, that's a, for you, that's a bottle of scotch with legs.
You know what I mean?
I am, I am.
I spend one hour in a meeting.
Maybe I hold hands and say the Lord's prayer.
Maybe I say the serenity prayer.
And then I walk out of the meeting, and then I spend the rest of my life looking at TV and running around, looking at the girls and cars and everything in the material world, and it screws me up.
It screws me up because I'm a half-assed believer.
Because I'm not focused on God, because he's not the central factor in my life.
So let me read you the, the appendix two.
You know, everybody likes to point to appendix two as being something important.
So let's do that.
Okay.
It says, the term spiritual experience and spiritual awakening are used many times in this book, which upon careful reading shows that the person has a spiritual awakening.
It says, the term spiritual experience and spiritual awakening are used many times in this book, which upon careful reading shows that the person has a spiritual awakening.
It says, the term spiritual experience and spiritual awakening are used many times in this book, which upon careful reading shows that the person has a spiritual awakening.
And it says, the person has a spiritual awakening.
It's a reality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism.
And you're going to learn that alcoholism is more than just stopping drinking.
Listen, I sponsor many people, and I am an alcoholic.
And I know for one thing, as soon as you put down the drink, then you really realize how crazy you are.
Before you stop drinking, you think everybody else is freaking crazy.
You know what I mean?
That the world is crazy.
You stop drinking.
and you realize that you are fucking nuts.
You understand what I'm saying?
That you are crazy.
Okay.
The terms spiritual experience and spiritual awakening
are used many times in this book,
which upon careful reading shows that the personality change
is sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism,
from the crazy thinking and the crazy emotions.
Alcoholics are addicted to their feelings.
They call me up.
They want to talk about,
wouldn't you believe what happened?
You know, I just got this note.
You cannot, you know what, who would do it to you?
They call me up.
They're going 78 RPM about their feelings
and what's bothering them and everything like that
because they love feeling sorry for themselves.
They love hating people.
They love thinking about themselves.
They love how life is unfair.
They love their feelings.
And here's what happens.
They can be brilliant.
But when you mix feelings with brilliance,
you know, with intellect, you know,
the feelings trump you.
With intellect, then you do stupid shit.
You write your boss a letter.
You get fired.
You do stupid shit.
And you know something?
You're not addicted to alcohol.
You're addicted to feeling sorry for yourself,
which is sometimes why I have to say to an alcoholic man at least,
you know, I say to him, I say,
you're 40 years old.
When are you going to fucking grow up?
Oh, don't worry, Joe.
It's going to be a year.
You know something?
You're pathetic.
Pathetic.
You know?
Call me up.
I feel like committing suicide.
Fine.
Why don't you go ahead and do it?
I don't have time for your bullshit.
You know why?
Because I don't want to be sentenced to Al-Anon.
They're all in Al-Anon.
They've been trying to fix us for a year
and they wound up sucking their thumb in Al-Anon.
The term spiritual experience and spiritual awakening
are used many times in this book,
which upon careful reading shows
that the person will not only change,
but it's sufficient to bring about
recovery from our craziness
has manifested itself among us
in many different forms.
Yet it is true that our first printing
gave many readers the impression.
Well, why wouldn't it say that?
Because that's what it said.
That's why it gave us an impression.
But now that I'm Bill Wilson
and I don't want you to not like me,
I'm going to sort of like water everything down.
First printing gave many readers the impression,
just because I saw it,
white, white, and I changed,
and Bob is, and we're talking about
reading the, you know,
the Sermon on the Mount and all that shit.
Don't get the wrong impression now, okay?
Yet it is true that our first printing
gave many readers the impression
that these personality changes
or religious experiences
that we all talked about
must be in the nature of sudden
and spectacular upheavals,
happily for everyone,
that conclusion,
is erroneous.
Well, okay, fine, it's cool.
You know, I'm going to tell you
just about my experience.
In the first few chapters,
a number of, I don't have any problem with that.
In the first two chapters,
a number of sudden revolutionary changes
were described.
Though it was not our intention
to create such an impression,
well, then you shouldn't have written it down
in the big book in the first place.
You know, don't come back later on
after you write down all this incredible stuff
that happens to people.
You know, where they get rocking
in the fourth dimension and it says,
well, it's not our impression to do that.
Then you shouldn't have written down
what actually happened.
Many outlaws have nevertheless concluded
that in order to recover,
they must acquire an immediate
and overwhelming God consciousness
followed by, at once,
a vast change in feeling.
Now, listen to me.
Let me explain something to you.
This is important you understand.
You know when he wrote this?
When he had three and a half,
four years of sobriety.
Anybody have more than four years
of sobriety in here?
I mean, I,
I have, you know,
I'm in my,
one of my 45th year,
you're in your 33rd year.
Let me tell you something.
You'd be amazed at the changes
you're having in your thinking
between three and four years
and 35 years.
You understand?
You'd be amazed.
You may find this hard to believe.
You try to find a person
who has 40 years
who doesn't believe in God.
Try to find,
let me tell you something.
You're going to find
one of these days
when you start looking around the rooms,
they have all these,
what do they say?
They stand up
and sit down at the conventions.
You know,
you're going to find that,
that thinking this way
will keep you sober
for five years
or 10 years
or 15 years.
You're going to find
somewhere around 20 years,
everybody drops off
like they drop it off a cliff
and only one half of 1%
stay sober,
one in 200.
And only maybe one in 400
stay sober for more than 30 years.
And you're going to find
that even the ones
that make it past 20 years,
there are many of them
that are unhappy
with their sobriety.
I mean,
Brent,
one of the things
I think he just said,
he says,
I was sort of lost
and I had like 20 years,
20, 30.
I get these,
I get people all,
see the difference
between you and me
is I get people
that call me up with 30 years.
I get people
that call me up with 25 years
and they're suicidal.
You don't get that.
You don't see that in meetings.
You see people
with three years
that have problems.
You don't see people
with 25 years
that have problems
and every single one of them,
every single one of them,
their problem is not
they don't know
how to do the fourth step
and most of them
are still going to meetings
and that's why
they're calling me up.
Every single one of them
knows how to do the steps.
Every single one of them
has tried intensive work
with alcohols
and it's just a band-aid
and now they're lost
and every one of them
don't have a decent relationship
with the Lord.
So it's possible
I may see things differently
than the way
Bill Wilson saw it
at three and a half
or four years.
Do you understand
what I'm saying?
So you read this
like it's the Holy Bible
and I read this saying,
well, I'll tell you something.
I've been around
for a long time
and I'm thinking
a little bit differently
and then I read about
how Bill Wilson
at 25 years,
it's been 1959,
publishes an essay,
Emotional Sobriety,
The Next Frontier
and he says,
I was going nuts
at 25 years
and he says,
but I've run into
a few people
that really have
their shit together,
the benighted ones
and he says,
perhaps they will be
the spearhead
of the next major
development in AA.
A close relationship
with God.
He says,
you know what my problem was?
I relied too much
upon people,
places,
things
and alcoholics
and alcoholics
anonymous.
And alcoholics,
so I walk into a movie
and everybody worships
the big book
and they worship
Bill Wilson
and they worship
everything in there
and they want to beat up
and crucify anybody
that says anything
that may throw some shade
on this shit
and I walk in here
with experience.
I walk in here
with, you know,
45 years of experience
watching what happens
to people
that don't really get
what they were saying
in their first impression here,
don't get it
and that they die
in the vine
and they drink again
and I tell my story
and they walk out on me
because they don't want
to hear that shit
because they don't want
to do it anyway
because in chapters
in the agnostics
they said if a miracle
to morals
or a better philosophy of life
would have helped us
we'd be sober a long time ago.
It doesn't help us.
We have to find the power
by which we can live
and therefore,
of course,
we have to talk about God.
Okay, which of course
Bill Wilson regretted
saying that
I guess after he got
three months later
that's when he wrote
Appendix 2.
We had to have a God
and he says here's
where we have problems
with we're agnostics.
These are not even people
that are atheists.
They say well I do
or I don't.
They're namby-pamby.
They're half-messians.
Here's where the problem
happens with agnostics.
So when you see
the people walk out
and they get pissed off
at what I'm saying
you say oh,
those guys must be
the agnostics.
You don't have to
try to figure it out.
They raise their hands.
They say wait,
that's bullshit.
Wait a second.
As you understand them
it's you know
those are the agnostics.
So you get to make
your decision.
You get to make your decision.
So wait,
let me keep on reading this.
Among our rapidly
growing memberships
of thousands of alcoholics
such transformations
though frequent
are by no means a rule.
And then it says this.
It says it talks about
they are frequent
and there are no means
to rule.
Most of our experience
are what the psychologist
William James calls
the educational variety.
The educational variety.
I'm going to skip
the paragraph that says
most of us think
that the awareness
of the power greater
than ourselves
is the essence
of spiritual experience.
Our more religious members
call it God consciousness.
So I want to talk about
the educational variety
and God's consciousness.
Wrap this up
in about five minutes, okay?
Welcome to what you're going
to find out
is your education.
You know what the educational variety
Listen, I had a spiritual experience.
I want to tell you something.
I had a spiritual experience.
I'm not going to tell you about it.
Not that I'm ashamed of it
but I'm not going to tell you about it
because you may have it
you may not have it.
Let me tell you about the education
in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Let me tell you about
the spiritual experience.
When you come to AA
and you pick up a white chip
and you want to stay sober
and think about it.
Things aren't going well
and you're nine days sober
but you go to a meeting anyway
even though you have no money
and you're broke.
That's a spiritual experience.
You could be depressed as hell
but you go to a meeting anyway
and it's a spiritual experience.
When you sponsor your first person
even though you're stupid
and you can't sponsor somebody
but you know you're supposed
to sponsor somebody
and God says you need
to sponsor somebody
or do anything
and you end up doing it
when you don't want to do it
but you end up doing it
that's a spiritual experience.
I don't give a shit
about your feelings.
That's a spiritual experience.
Okay?
When you feel like
you want to blow your brains out
you know what I mean
and that your life
is going crappy
but instead of picking up a drink
you pick up the phone
and you call your sponsor
and he says go to a meeting
and you start going to more meetings
and you're reading the big book
and you're doing this
that's a spiritual experience.
You know?
Well here,
let me tell you something else.
When you have a wife
and four children
or three children
or two children
whatever it is
and you're broke
and you don't have $50
and you can't even fill up
your car with gas
and you don't know
where money is going to go
and you don't have money
where money is coming from
and you're waking up
at three o'clock in the morning
and you're waking up
at three o'clock in the morning
and you have no idea
what's going on
so you pick up the big book
and you start reading
a couple things
and at least you get to the point
where you can go to sleep
and then you wake up
thinking about the money
and that happens for days
and you know something
and you get on your knees
and you pray
and that's a spiritual experience
and you don't drink
that's a spiritual experience.
When the doctor tells you
you've got cancer
three times
and you've got to either
have an operation
or you know
you've got to go through radiation
and stuff like that
and you've got to go through
and stuff like that
and instead of
whining or crying about it
you say okay
I understand that
and you say thank you Lord
thank you Lord
let me have a doctor
and you're not scared
or anything
you know something
that's a fucking
spiritual experience
that's a spiritual experience
you know something
when you go up
to your sponsor
and you tell them
you want to divorce your wife
you know what I mean
because she said something
or did something
or something like that
and you've got
ten years of sobriety
and you're sponsoring
everything
and everything
and you're doing
all that sort of stuff
and he says
you know something
it says
the only reason you're upset
is because you're upset
about why don't you
grow the fuck up
you know what I mean
and you stay married
and you do what you're
supposed to do
and you have some integrity
you know what that is
that's a spiritual experience
that's a spiritual experience
I'm just telling you that
that's what it is
you know
I mean there's a lot of things
that are going to happen
to you in your life
where you're going to think
they're horrible
and they're terrible
and everything like that
and they're all going to be
spiritual experiences
and every one of them
is going to change you
but you're not going to be
changed necessarily
because of the good times
good times you're going to enjoy
you're going to rest
you're going to put up your feet
you're going to say
isn't that great
I'm sober
everything is wonderful
you're going to change
you're going to change
in times that feel
so unspiritual
they're going to feel
like they're horror stories
you know what I mean
you know
and you're going to get
through them
and you're not going to drink
and you're going to
you're going to do service
or you're going to do
something else
those are all
spiritual experiences
you know I know
they're spiritual experiences
because that's what it was
for me
you know I know
and they're going to change you they're going to change your stupid thinking they're going to
change your materialistic thinking thinking you're going to lose people are going to die on you
you're going to lose money you're going to have all sorts of health problems i mean crap is going
to happen it's going to be a spiritual experience and with every experience you have where your legs
are cut off from under you and you realize how unspiritual you are and you realize how worried
you are and you got so much pride false pride you can't tell anybody about it you can't even talk
to your age group because you're worried about they're going to think about you and it's killing
you and then finally you talk to somebody and you go up to them and you tell them at 11 years
or 12 years i don't know what to do and the guy says you know you need to start going to bible
study and get serious about this stuff and serious about god and you look at him and say what are you
stupid let me tell you something i'm an a a for 12 years i'm spiritual not religious you know what i
mean and you wind up in a bible study on thursday morning at old cutler presbyterian church church
and you don't even know why you're there let me tell you something
that's a spiritual experience and you fall in love with all the 40 men there that are talking
about god and talking about their life and talk about everything we're talking about in the year
but the only difference is every single one of them even though they're going through cancer
they're in uh stage four cancer they're dying stuff every one of them ends up talking about the
lord and what god has done for them which you never hear in aa and nobody says you're stupid
you know
and when they hold up a picture of a squirrel and they say what is this
then you know it's a squirrel
but you know the answer is jesus you know what i mean because it's always jesus you know what
i mean that's a spiritual experience you know what i mean and you know the only difference is
all those people are men and i mean a man i'm not talking about babies i'm not talking about children
about thumb sucking cry babies they got their together they raise kids they take their
life serious they don't whine and cry and they take the lumps and they get through it that's
a spiritual experience and then you get to walk into alcoholics anonymous and listen to what's
going on i'm going to tell you something if you don't think you get different opinions based upon
growing sober in aaa and out of aaa and watching what's going on in here you may think i'm crazy
you may think i'm sacrilegious okay stay sober for 30 years 40 years let's see what you think
let's see what you think you know yeah we all are very proud of ourselves and we love
each other and we hand out stuff and that's all well and good i'm not putting it down
i'm just telling you bill wilson wrote this big book when he had three and a half years
at 23 years he was saying
i screwed the whole thing up i was totally right read it read what he says i was totally wrong
bob smith's last words that to bill wilson was let's not screw this thing up keep it simple bill
he saw it he knew what was going on so you know listen this is not about worshiping the big book
of alcohol so i was worshiping big will bill wilson or even dr bob or even me whoever it's
not about it's about understanding that they were right the first time
we were right the first thing time
i was dumped around public education so this is gonna give in we 교육 поступ 네가
is
just
a
sign
you know
i'm a
molecular
cellar
cellar
cellar
cellar
cellar
cellar
consciously thinking about God. And when you're doing that 80% of the time, you know what you're
supposed to do? You're supposed to improve that. When you do it 90% of the time, you're supposed,
you know what you're supposed to do? You're supposed to improve that. And you know why
you're supposed to improve that? That God consciousness? Because that's one of the steps
that you guys think you're doing thoroughly as you walk out of the meetings with somebody who's
talking about God. And you know what happens when you're consciously always thinking about God?
All of a sudden, you stop thinking about getting laid. All of a sudden, you stop looking at the
women in the room. All of a sudden, the women stop looking at the men in the room. All of a sudden,
you stop thinking about why you don't have a new car. All of a sudden, you start thinking about
all the things in the world, and all you do is think about God, and then you don't do stupid
shit. So you don't have to make a lot of amends. And you change into a different type of human
being. And drinking is totally out of the question, not because it's not, not because,
because you haven't conformed.
Hey, hey, you've been transformed by God. And you become a whole different person who could
talk this crazy shit at meetings, and say stuff like this, and be like this. Not because you're
good, because you're a whack job. Because he's good. Because God is good. Because that's what
God does to you when you focus on him. And that's really what the big books is all about. And when
you understand what the big book's all about, all of a sudden, all these sentences that I've
took right out of the big book, make sense. Because what happens if you look at the sentences,
you'll understand what this thing is all about. But if you look at the paragraphs, what happens,
you can always find the loophole. You'll find something because you're an alcoholic saying,
Yeah, but that applies to you, but it doesn't apply to me. It does apply me. But the good
news is this, and then I'm gonna end with this. The good news is this, I don't want
you to worry about it.
it's like a giant self-cleaning oven every two years the alcohol comes through the craziness
comes through and wipes out all the bullshit you understand and cleans us up because if that
didn't happen there'd be all sorts of fights and shit going on in here and she's on cleaning out
all the bullshit and what's left over is you know what's left over is what's left over
you understand what i'm saying so you don't have to worry whether you believe me or you like me or
you don't like me you think i'm a little rough i used too many curse words whatever the hell it is
whatever the hell it is that i've said that you don't like which permits you to ignore everything
i said you go with that you know what i mean i ain't worried at all because i know there's a
great world out there filled with material stuff just looking to beat the shit out of you
you understand what i'm saying it's just out there
you
and if you haven't figured that out you just haven't been sober long enough
god bless you thank you very much
So I'm gonna, I'm gonna, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna do something.
We'll see how this works out. I'm gonna be honest with you. I try to really be honest and open
at each meeting, whatever meeting I do, and I'm gonna be honest with, and the reason I want to
be honest is not because I'm an honest guy, but because I have nothing, I have no idea what I'm
gonna say. So whenever I have no idea what I'm gonna say and I'm fishing around for an idea of
what I'm gonna say, I all of a sudden hear this voice that says, why don't you just be honest with
these people? So I'm just gonna be honest. I don't teach these things. This isn't a teaching. It may
sound like I'm teaching or I'm telling you what to do. That's not my intention. I once asked the
Attorney General of the United States from many years ago. I was at a place where he was at.
I knew he was a Christian guy. I'm a Christian guy, and I was befuddled by how a guy who, you
know, falls.
You learn all that sort of stuff, how he could live in Washington, D.C. and be, you know, involved in
politics. And he says, he said, you know, Russ, my, my religion forbids me, inhibits me from trying
to push my, my faith on anybody. I said, I don't do that. I'm not here to impose my faith on anybody,
but I, but I'm here to expose my faith. And that sort of lines up with Alcoholics Anonymous. It
says, I'm not here to tell you you got to be this and you got to be that and you got to be another
because there's a million different voices in AA that'll tell you a million different things.
Then we have people in there, even though the big book says, if you're an atheist or agnostic,
these things have to be pushed aside. They got to be abandoned. Even though he says that,
you can stand up in an AA meeting and say, I'm an atheist. It works just fine. You don't have
to believe in God, even though it's completely the opposite of what the big book says.
So what I do is it says in the big book, it says every alcoholic, but he's not a mean,
in his own language and from his own point of view, expresses how he,
he came to believe and grew his relationship with God. And so that's all I do. That's my deal.
May not be, you may not like it. You don't have to like it. I mean, we're all alcoholics. You're
permitted to hate anybody you want and you can walk out of here. You know, I've had people walk
out of me and that's fine too. It's okay. But I'm going to be honest with you. And, uh, I, it's not
for, for me, look, I came in when I was 31 years old at 76. Now I'm in my 45th year of sobriety.
And, uh,
and I, I'm not that it's, it's worked. It's worked. All I can tell you is unfortunately for
you guys, AA has worked. In other words, fear of people is gone for the most part. And nothing's
ever perfect, but it's pretty much gone in AA. I don't, when I speak at conventions,
I don't worry about what they're going to think. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not here for
a personality. What is it? Uh, personality contest or popular. I'm not here to be popular.
You know what I mean? I absolutely believe me. I realize some guy called me, I was doing something
at the convention a few weeks ago. He said, you know, Russell's an acquired taste. They
have ready sort of chocolate. I said, well, you're laughing now, but you haven't heard me yet.
You know, you'll find out what that's all about. I mean, I'm acquired taste. I'm going to talk
about what I'm going to talk about. It's going to piss some people off. That's okay. You know,
as a matter of fact, when it pisses people off, I know I'm,
I know I'm getting somewhere. I'm probably telling the truth, you know, cause alcoholics need to be
confronted. You know, it's, you know, I sponsored, I don't even know how many people they didn't tell
me. If somebody asked me how many people he had sponsored, I said, I didn't know I was supposed
to count them in the last, you know, 35 years, hundreds. And, uh, and I love them all. And I
try to help them all. And I get phone calls. I try to help people and the bottom, but the bottom
line is, is that this is a drastic program and people are going to die. And, and the truth of
the matter is I never, I never let slide when it's appropriate, the opportunity to hurt somebody
feelings when they need, because that's really, that's, I mean, if you haven't had your feelings
hurt prior to coming to AA and been crushed prior to coming to AA, you have a different,
you have a different disease than I have. So better to have your, your feelings crushed
or being spanked by a sponsor who loves you, then have it spanked by being arrested for
vehicular homicide, which just happened to a guy I know that he's facing 25 years in jail now.
So you really want, you want to be confronted in here and not because the world has a funny way of
confronting you outside in, in public. So I, I never shy away from saying things and I know
they're going to, people are going to disagree, but that's okay. You know, it's going to kill you
to disagree with somebody. All I can tell you is that, that I've lost, I, I'm for the most part,
I've lost fear of being myself. Even somebody who doesn't like what I have to say, they want to
walk, that's fine. It's okay. You know, my sponsor once told me, one of my sponsors told me when you
throw a rock and do a pack of dogs, the one that yells loudest is the one that gets hit. So, you
know, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's,
you know, and we have a spiritual axiom, whenever you're disturbed, no matter what the cause,
there's something wrong with you. So what I try to do is disturb, disturb as many people as possible.
It's sort of like a, because that separates out the people who are actually emotionally sober
from the people who are still childish. You understand what I'm saying?
Because the only thing that tells me, when you get upset, the only thing that tells me when you
get upset by something I said, it's like, you're not sober. It's as simple as that. See, just,
isn't that, that's a tough thing, right? It's, it's a crummy thing to, don't you
think that's a crummy thing? I think it's a mean thing to say, you know, I think a guy comes up to
you, you ask for help and you tell him something, they get upset. I said, you're not, I don't
consider you sober. You know, it's mean, isn't it? It's pretty cruel. That, that's the only thing
that they'll remember for the next five years. Because that's what alcoholics do. They remember
shit like that. They don't, they don't, they remember, they remember people through, you know,
how we get a new person? You know, how we get a new person? You know, how we get a new person?
perspective by repeated humiliations. And the final question of our self-sufficiency,
you know, that's not only because of alcohol, because alcohol is, but a symptom
that has something to do also with spending money. You don't have to buy shit. You don't
need to impress people. You don't like that also has something to do with, uh, with, with
having a total lack of integrity and being a liar and being a cheater and lying to yourself and lying
to others. That has a lot to do, you know, and you find something in your life. That's going to
look you in the eye and lose your friendship by telling you the truth and pissing you off.
You want to, you want to hang on to that sort of stuff, you know, because the last thing you
want to do, one thing that the Lord has done for me is he's never allowed me to get too comfortable.
He's allowed me to get comfortable. Maybe sometimes he's even allowed me to get too
comfortable, but you're getting that, you know, you don't want to go for a long period of time.
Without being brought up by the short hairs and being spanked a little bit, having something come
into your life that really sort of scares you or upsets you, you know, that's God's way of saying,
you know, don't get too proud of yourself. Don't get so, so happy because the truth is it's the
humiliations. It's the problems. It's the things that we've gone through that sort of keeps us
from becoming, uh, what's that thing that causes you that causes us to rest on our laurels.
And we're heading for trouble, if we do, you know, there's, I'll tell you, so I'm going to say some
things that are going to bother people. And, uh, all I can tell you is this. I'm going to say some
shit that's going to bother people. They're going to say, this guy should never be allowed to speak
at an AA meeting, but understand something. I'm a product of working these steps assiduously
for 35 years. I'm a product of sponsoring anything that moves for 35 years and do this. I can go to,
a sponsor i'm a product of going to three meetings a day forever you know what i mean and doing this
thing and reading the book and all that is other books so so don't blame me because i was uh once
a guy who hated all this stuff you know what i mean i'm a product of alcoholics anonymous and
working this program so i may be full of shit you know what i mean but it's not my fault it's the
big book's fault it's the 12 and 12's fault it's dr bob i'm a good old-timer it's the bible it's
therefore that's it's god's fault you know so i mean just blame him don't blame me you know i'm
just not really like this if you should see me the way i'm really like you know like my my former
wife saw me when i told you to her face my wife my beautiful wife and mother and my child my child
when we were at marriage council and i and he said what do you want to change about your wife
and i said i just want to date other women so that's who i really am that's who i really am
i'm a cruel asshole that doesn't give a shit about anybody
myself that's who i really am so so trust me i'm i'm i'm really not this i'm the other deal
you know so i'm just going to talk about what what what what with this whole thing about the
11 steps what it means to me now i now obviously you know when you're 76 years old and you've been
doing this thing for like 35 years you know i to squeeze this into like 30 minutes i'm going to
try to explain to you what's going on but you know but i'm going to try to do the best i can
now i go to a meeting every morning at 7 a.m in the meeting it's a
zoom meeting it's called serenity now i'll tell anybody about it they want to come it's great
meeting we get 40 or 50 people from all over the world and at that meeting you're only allowed to
speak under a minute a minute or less i think that's wonderful you know i mean i get to do
this stuff like you speak for an hour and do it all the time but and and i used to i used to hate
crap when i used to hate when they'd like time you and they cut you off in mid-sentence i used
but now i love it because what happens is
you sit there and you have to discipline yourself and you have to say what am i going to say
that may be helpful to somebody else that's honest and not shit not bullshit and you've
got to think about rather than just droning on or complaining is there something i can bring that's
constructive to this deal and oddly enough you know if i if i focus on god i always come up with
like a 30 second deal i can i can do i can say what i have to say which may be helpful and truthful
seconds you know what i mean that's not necessarily going to happen tonight you know because i got to
fill in the time you know it probably could happen tonight so i'm just going to tell you a little bit
about and and i cannot do this without giving you opinions and you may disagree with my opinions my
opinions are kind of out there they're all in violation of the traditions i guarantee you
they're all in violation of traditions i'm not a big fan of the traditions not because they're not
good i'm not saying they're not good there's a reason why you know i'm not saying they're not good
because i think it's the traditions are good good how people interpret the traditions as keeping you
in a box see the way there's some people that interpret the traditions and i guess i used to do
that is that is that you can't do anything unless it's conference approved in other words bill
wilson at 15 years brought together a group of alcoholics all had less than 15 years at a business
meeting somewhere and they came up with these traditions
nothing bad about traditions i like traditions they're okay they're harmless and then down the
road it morphed into people telling other people well that's a violation you read the bible that's
a violation of traditions you're talking about this that's a violation of traditions that book's
not conference approved when all they used for the first four years in aa we have a book that
says rarely have i seen a person fail has thoroughly followed our path and the only thing
they used in aa was the holy bible dr bob says the books we found absolutely essential were first
things 13 sermon on the mount and the book of james the book says rarely i've seen a person fail
who's failed who's thoroughly followed our path and their path was to read the holy bible if you
ask dr bob what's this thing all about he'd say why don't you read the bible you'll find out what
we're all about if you ask them what's first things first he'd say seek ye first the kingdom
of god and his righteousness and all things will be given to you so somehow aa has turned
so yeah how about this one bill wilson said in alcoholics numbers number three when uh
when uh bill dotson was trying to figure out why he had this release he said he said listen
the lord has been so wonderful to me curing me up what do you think he was talking about
he used the word lord he didn't say hi has been so wonderful to me right after he came out of the
hospital where he had that white light experience you know what i mean he said so this is the god of
the prophets what do you think he was talking about he right after that he says the lord has
been so wonderful to me during me of this terrible disease i got to keep talking about it and telling
other people i had to keep talking about it and telling everybody today what the lord has done for
me and that's the and it's called the golden text and bill dotson said he said that changed my life
that was the answer bill was very very just so grateful for what the lord had done for him he
had to tell he gave him all credit he had to tell other people and that turned into
after the traditions that the guy didn't have more than 15 years three years before he started taking
you know that that came into you can't talk about don't talk about god because you're killing people
dr bob went up to clarence the brewmaster in the hospital in 1937 it's in our literature
comfortable literature first thing he said to him he says do you believe in god young fella
clarence says what does that have to do with the dr bob says everything there was nobody there to
tell him he's not supposed to do that because it violates their traditions he says well i guess i'm
doing guess nothing i'm just using his words guess nothing it's in the book dr guess nothing
you either believe or you don't believe there is no middle-of-the-road solution
i believe good get out of the bed get down on your knees you're gonna give your life to god
and you know what clarence said he said he said i did what i was ordered to do there were no
suggestions so what am i supposed to do when everything they did was about the lord about
god about reading the book and now i go on the meetings and i can go to a meeting for an hour and
and people talk about their problems,
not one person mentions God.
And if a guy mentions God,
you know, somebody comes up to him,
some guy with 13 years or 15 years
and tells him how he's violating the traditions.
So to me, what the traditions do,
how some people use them,
is they keep you in a box, in a coffin, you know,
where you're not allowed to step out of that coffin.
AA, to a certain extent,
if you use it a certain way,
is more religious than any sanctimonious religion
on the planet.
You give me an AA guy that says you can't do that,
you can't say that, you can't talk about that,
you know, don't put down religion.
This place could become more strictly religious
in telling people what they can't do.
And I'm going to tell you something,
you know what it does?
It kills people.
Because they never get to be rocketed
in the fourth dimension of existence.
Because in order to do that,
you got to get involved in the great fact.
The great fact is this is nothing less.
Nothing less than this.
God has to become the central factor of your life,
which has something to do with the 11th step.
And you've got to be convinced.
Not say, well, probably, or likely,
well, I sort of, none of that,
none of that, any of that agnostic bullshit,
you know what I mean?
You've got to be convinced that
God is living in your heart
in a miraculous way,
allowing you to do things
that you wouldn't be able to do by yourself.
Now, that's the big book.
God is everything, or he's nothing.
God is everything, or he's nothing.
If you don't think God is everything,
and the most important thing in your life,
then don't tell anybody you believe in God
because it's bullshit.
It's alky-bullshit.
It's not really, listen,
you either understand the English language
and the sentences, or you don't.
You're either a lying, delusional alcoholic
who can't separate the true from the false,
who's alcoholic thinking is the only way,
somehow, everything is a fucking loophole,
a way you can slide out,
well, you've got your program, I've got mine.
No, there's only one program.
God is either is or he isn't.
Well, I'm an atheist.
Well, I've got news for you.
God either is or he isn't.
There are no atheists in AA.
If you're an atheist and you're in AA,
you're not doing the AA program.
You're doing something that you've sort of made up.
I know why, because in the big book it says,
which is our basic book, we all agree,
you know what it says?
Atheism, agnosticism, these things have to be abandoned.
You've got to abandon yourself to God.
How do you do the 11th step
if you haven't abandoned yourself, if you're an atheist?
How do you do that?
I guess you pray to yourself.
You just sort of pray to yourself, say,
thank God I'm wonderful.
Thank God I'm spiritual, not religious.
You know what I mean?
Why do I tell you these things?
This is what I believe.
This is my opinion.
Stand up.
Leave the thing.
That guy's so full of shit.
It's fine with me.
You can discover what's really going on
when you're 25 years and you start drinking again.
Or when you're 15 years and you feel like shit
and you don't know why,
because you're going to a lot of meetings
and they're not working for you anymore.
So it's entirely possible,
as full of shit as you think I am,
you may change your opinion 10 years down the road.
So in other words, when I read the big book now,
this is never the way it used to be.
And I say, Bill Wilson talking all about God,
all about God.
He's everything or he's nothing.
And then two months later,
going up to Henrietta Sireling,
I'm getting this all out of our literature,
and saying, Henrietta,
I think we talk too much about God and religion.
I think we ought to back off of that.
Because he got slapped down
for the same reason why you guys don't want to talk about it,
because you're scared somebody's going to slap you down
at a meeting or tell you you're stupid.
And he gets slapped down.
And Bill Wilson immediately gave up on God,
threw him under the bus,
the same guy that is the only...
And Henrietta said to say,
Bill, the only reason you're sober is because of God.
And if you don't talk about God and give credit to God,
you might as well be the Rotary Club, for God's sakes.
You've got to talk about God.
And he says, finally, Bill agreed.
And then he writes this book with the help of other people.
And it's all about God.
All of it.
It says,
there is one who has all power.
Has anybody ever read that?
I'm not making this shit up.
This isn't Russell S. is making it up.
There is one who has all power.
That one is God.
May you find him now.
Because if you read the Dr. Bob and the Good Old Timers,
the only way you could go to an AA meeting back then
is you had to get down on your knees
in front of everybody in AA.
If we were doing this thing the way they did in 1935,
every one of you would have already,
before they got in here,
gone down on your knees in front of everybody else
and given your life to God.
Or else you wouldn't have gotten in here.
Really, I've seen a person,
Bill, who's thoroughly followed our path.
They're not even doing this thing the way they did it.
So now I got Bill all of a sudden.
He's writing this book.
He's putting that all in this.
And Hank Podhurst or whatever the guy's name comes up to him,
Parkhurst,
and says, well, you can't do that.
Say, as you understand, everything like that.
And Bill,
because he's worried about what people think about him,
and he's more interested in getting in the numbers
than doing the Dr. Bob thing,
you either,
you do or you don't.
No, don't do that.
You do it.
What about if people walk out?
They may not like us.
You know what I mean?
So Bill says,
puts this little thing in it
so it allows you to sort of slide in.
Good, bad.
I don't even make that judgment.
Maybe that's what God wanted.
Even the atheists in here,
so we can hear this message.
I don't put that down.
You understand what I'm saying?
So all of a sudden,
he writes this book and it's all about God.
And then he slips in after saying,
God, God, God, God, God.
Last page.
Your real reliance must be on God.
This is Bill Wilson's words.
He will show you how to create
the fellowship you crave,
which I have a feeling
isn't an atheist fellowship.
You know what I mean?
See that your relationship with him is right
and great events will happen
for you and countless others
and you'll meet us in the fellowship of the spirit.
Now listen,
I was born at night,
but I wasn't born last night.
I know what the fuck they're talking about.
You understand what I'm saying?
I'm not stupid.
If you don't understand what those words mean,
I don't tell you like Alki's stupid.
I don't know.
You're just delusional.
You just want to do it your way.
You know, that's the bottom line now.
You see, that's an opinion.
But it's an opinion based upon honestly reading the book.
Not honestly reading the book,
but doing it my way anyway.
It's either doing what they say in the book
or saying, well, I want to do it my way anyway.
You know, I mean, really, it's one or the other.
So I mean, if we're going to,
if I'm going to start talking about what happened to me,
as far as the 11th step, I have to be honest with you.
You know, even Bill was backing off.
Bob never backed off of that.
I used to be a big Bill guy, a big Bill guy.
Why not?
Bill was a wonderful guy.
I mean, I'm not putting him down.
You know, he writes in the big book every once in a while.
A new man used to be a drinker, says, feel better, look better,
have a drink.
We're having a better time.
We laugh at such salary.
Soon we know he'll try the old game again
because he's not happy with sobriety.
He'll know loneliness if you do.
And 15 years later, 15 or 16 or 17 years later,
he was right there and he was using LSD to try to experiment
to see whether he could find a better way of doing it
besides the God thing.
Because he wasn't like Bob.
Bob was different.
As a matter of fact, it's kind of, in my mind,
reading everything that happened,
it's almost like Bob was the rock that was sponsoring him.
You know what I mean?
Bill was from Manhattan.
You know, I'm from New York.
Manhattan, I get that thing.
Bob was from the Midwest.
He was a believer.
He was the real deal.
He wasn't here for the fame.
He wasn't here for the, you know, you can read about Bob.
Read Dr. Bob.
For God's sakes, read it.
Read about him.
The first meeting was done by Dr. Bob.
You know what he did?
Put his foot on the rung of a dining room chair
and read Matthew 5, 6, and 7, the Sermon on the Mount.
That was AA for Bob Smith, the Sermon on the Mount.
And people, let me tell you something.
Why don't you call up New York and say,
say this, ask him this.
Is the Bible disapproved?
I don't think you'll ever have AA pass some sort of law or rule
saying the Bible is disapproved because then, you know,
people who are serious Christians will leave AA.
You'll see a lot of people leave AA that are solid.
You'll see a lot of people, you know what I mean?
So the bottom line is I have opinions.
You understand?
But I'm being honest with you.
I got opinions about stuff.
And so then Bill, what he does is after he put all this stuff in there about God,
God, God, he puts in appendix two.
I'm not a big fan of appendix two.
I got to be honest with you.
I see a lot of good things.
I see stuff in it.
It makes some sense.
But he throws in appendix two, which sort of says, well,
we believe in the God thing, but you do whatever the fuck you want to do.
Well, I understand.
I use the F word.
What the hell?
We're all outies here, right?
You know, I'm not perfect.
I've got my problems.
You work on your problems.
I'll work on my problems.
I'll take this up with the Lord when I see him.
He'll say, use the F word so much.
I said, listen, these guys love the F word.
That's all.
They use the F word all the time, even though they're not saying it.
It's floating around in their brain.
You wouldn't believe what's going on.
You wouldn't believe.
If you distilled them all and we put them all in a mixer and we just push the button,
all that would come out is fuck, shit, all this sort of stuff.
Just come up.
They're just full of shit.
You know what I mean?
There's a guy back there saying, I like this guy.
He talks like I think.
You know what I mean?
Talks alky.
He's not trying to put on airs or anything like that and make himself look bigger.
But, you know, I understand people saying, this guy's a crummy Christian.
I am a crummy Christian.
When he became a deacon of the church, I said, I'm an alcoholic.
I'm crazy.
He says, you'll be the crazy deacon.
Anybody who comes to the church that we think is crazy, we're sending them to you.
You know what I mean?
So that's the deal.
I'm here for the crazy people.
So, you know, I'm not here to say I'm perfect.
I'm not here to say I'm perfect or anything like that.
So that's the deal.
So that's where I'm coming from.
You understand?
But that's only after many, many years.
So now that I said that, I want to read appendix two.
And I want to talk.
I'm going to use that as the jumping off place to give you an idea of what this is, what I'm talking about as far as.
So I'm going to read.
I'm not going to read the whole thing.
Just a couple of paragraphs.
And then we're going to talk about.
About your education.
We're talking about spirituality.
A lot of people use the word spirituality.
Everybody ever say, well, I'm spiritual, not religious.
You ever say I'm spiritual, not religious?
Is there anybody who actually believes that?
Don't raise your hand.
I don't want to embarrass you.
Does anybody actually believe that they are now spiritual?
I mean, they've been in AA 33 years or 25 years.
And Russell, you can tell this to a newcomer, but I'm a spiritual person.
I'm not religious.
I'm just spiritual now.
Good.
Because I'm calling up the IRS.
I want to take all the money out of your account.
We're going to see how you're doing.
We're going to have the doctor say you got cancer and you got three months to live.
We're going to see how you're doing with that.
We're going to see how spiritual you are when things don't go your way.
And a lot of things don't go your way because I'm not spiritual.
I'm a material man.
And I am the original.
I'm a material girl, even before Madonna, I am material girl.
I am a man.
I know myself well enough to know you are a material.
You know, you know why every once in a while I'll get anxious because I still do.
Every once in a while, I get anxious every once in a while.
I get, you know, a little worried every once in a while.
You know why I never get perfect on this thing?
Because I'm still in the flesh.
I still feel pain.
I still feel worried.
I'm a, I'm a material man in a material world.
I'm a material man in a material world.
And you want to know something?
It even says in the big book, when it talks about step six and seven, we don't want to deprecate material achievement, but nobody's ever made a worst move of living by.
If I only had a new car, if I only had a new woman, if I only had a new job, or if I only was married, if only this, then us, I, I was a material man.
When I walked in here, I'm the guy who's sitting in a meeting, turned to my sponsor.
I say, look at the blonde in the front row.
He's saying, you see that blonde in the front row?
I said, yeah.
He says, that's a, for you, that's a bottle of scotch with legs.
You know what I mean?
I am, I am.
I spend one hour in a meeting.
Maybe I hold hands and say the Lord's prayer.
Maybe I say the serenity prayer.
And then I walk out of the meeting, and then I spend the rest of my life looking at TV and running around, looking at the girls and cars and everything in the material world, and it screws me up.
It screws me up because I'm a half-assed believer.
Because I'm not focused on God, because he's not the central factor in my life.
So let me read you the, the appendix two.
You know, everybody likes to point to appendix two as being something important.
So let's do that.
Okay.
It says, the term spiritual experience and spiritual awakening are used many times in this book, which upon careful reading shows that the person has a spiritual awakening.
It says, the term spiritual experience and spiritual awakening are used many times in this book, which upon careful reading shows that the person has a spiritual awakening.
It says, the term spiritual experience and spiritual awakening are used many times in this book, which upon careful reading shows that the person has a spiritual awakening.
And it says, the person has a spiritual awakening.
It's a reality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism.
And you're going to learn that alcoholism is more than just stopping drinking.
Listen, I sponsor many people, and I am an alcoholic.
And I know for one thing, as soon as you put down the drink, then you really realize how crazy you are.
Before you stop drinking, you think everybody else is freaking crazy.
You know what I mean?
That the world is crazy.
You stop drinking.
and you realize that you are fucking nuts.
You understand what I'm saying?
That you are crazy.
Okay.
The terms spiritual experience and spiritual awakening
are used many times in this book,
which upon careful reading shows that the personality change
is sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism,
from the crazy thinking and the crazy emotions.
Alcoholics are addicted to their feelings.
They call me up.
They want to talk about,
wouldn't you believe what happened?
You know, I just got this note.
You cannot, you know what, who would do it to you?
They call me up.
They're going 78 RPM about their feelings
and what's bothering them and everything like that
because they love feeling sorry for themselves.
They love hating people.
They love thinking about themselves.
They love how life is unfair.
They love their feelings.
And here's what happens.
They can be brilliant.
But when you mix feelings with brilliance,
you know, with intellect, you know,
the feelings trump you.
With intellect, then you do stupid shit.
You write your boss a letter.
You get fired.
You do stupid shit.
And you know something?
You're not addicted to alcohol.
You're addicted to feeling sorry for yourself,
which is sometimes why I have to say to an alcoholic man at least,
you know, I say to him, I say,
you're 40 years old.
When are you going to fucking grow up?
Oh, don't worry, Joe.
It's going to be a year.
You know something?
You're pathetic.
Pathetic.
You know?
Call me up.
I feel like committing suicide.
Fine.
Why don't you go ahead and do it?
I don't have time for your bullshit.
You know why?
Because I don't want to be sentenced to Al-Anon.
They're all in Al-Anon.
They've been trying to fix us for a year
and they wound up sucking their thumb in Al-Anon.
The term spiritual experience and spiritual awakening
are used many times in this book,
which upon careful reading shows
that the person will not only change,
but it's sufficient to bring about
recovery from our craziness
has manifested itself among us
in many different forms.
Yet it is true that our first printing
gave many readers the impression.
Well, why wouldn't it say that?
Because that's what it said.
That's why it gave us an impression.
But now that I'm Bill Wilson
and I don't want you to not like me,
I'm going to sort of like water everything down.
First printing gave many readers the impression,
just because I saw it,
white, white, and I changed,
and Bob is, and we're talking about
reading the, you know,
the Sermon on the Mount and all that shit.
Don't get the wrong impression now, okay?
Yet it is true that our first printing
gave many readers the impression
that these personality changes
or religious experiences
that we all talked about
must be in the nature of sudden
and spectacular upheavals,
happily for everyone,
that conclusion,
is erroneous.
Well, okay, fine, it's cool.
You know, I'm going to tell you
just about my experience.
In the first few chapters,
a number of, I don't have any problem with that.
In the first two chapters,
a number of sudden revolutionary changes
were described.
Though it was not our intention
to create such an impression,
well, then you shouldn't have written it down
in the big book in the first place.
You know, don't come back later on
after you write down all this incredible stuff
that happens to people.
You know, where they get rocking
in the fourth dimension and it says,
well, it's not our impression to do that.
Then you shouldn't have written down
what actually happened.
Many outlaws have nevertheless concluded
that in order to recover,
they must acquire an immediate
and overwhelming God consciousness
followed by, at once,
a vast change in feeling.
Now, listen to me.
Let me explain something to you.
This is important you understand.
You know when he wrote this?
When he had three and a half,
four years of sobriety.
Anybody have more than four years
of sobriety in here?
I mean, I,
I have, you know,
I'm in my,
one of my 45th year,
you're in your 33rd year.
Let me tell you something.
You'd be amazed at the changes
you're having in your thinking
between three and four years
and 35 years.
You understand?
You'd be amazed.
You may find this hard to believe.
You try to find a person
who has 40 years
who doesn't believe in God.
Try to find,
let me tell you something.
You're going to find
one of these days
when you start looking around the rooms,
they have all these,
what do they say?
They stand up
and sit down at the conventions.
You know,
you're going to find that,
that thinking this way
will keep you sober
for five years
or 10 years
or 15 years.
You're going to find
somewhere around 20 years,
everybody drops off
like they drop it off a cliff
and only one half of 1%
stay sober,
one in 200.
And only maybe one in 400
stay sober for more than 30 years.
And you're going to find
that even the ones
that make it past 20 years,
there are many of them
that are unhappy
with their sobriety.
I mean,
Brent,
one of the things
I think he just said,
he says,
I was sort of lost
and I had like 20 years,
20, 30.
I get these,
I get people all,
see the difference
between you and me
is I get people
that call me up with 30 years.
I get people
that call me up with 25 years
and they're suicidal.
You don't get that.
You don't see that in meetings.
You see people
with three years
that have problems.
You don't see people
with 25 years
that have problems
and every single one of them,
every single one of them,
their problem is not
they don't know
how to do the fourth step
and most of them
are still going to meetings
and that's why
they're calling me up.
Every single one of them
knows how to do the steps.
Every single one of them
has tried intensive work
with alcohols
and it's just a band-aid
and now they're lost
and every one of them
don't have a decent relationship
with the Lord.
So it's possible
I may see things differently
than the way
Bill Wilson saw it
at three and a half
or four years.
Do you understand
what I'm saying?
So you read this
like it's the Holy Bible
and I read this saying,
well, I'll tell you something.
I've been around
for a long time
and I'm thinking
a little bit differently
and then I read about
how Bill Wilson
at 25 years,
it's been 1959,
publishes an essay,
Emotional Sobriety,
The Next Frontier
and he says,
I was going nuts
at 25 years
and he says,
but I've run into
a few people
that really have
their shit together,
the benighted ones
and he says,
perhaps they will be
the spearhead
of the next major
development in AA.
A close relationship
with God.
He says,
you know what my problem was?
I relied too much
upon people,
places,
things
and alcoholics
and alcoholics
anonymous.
And alcoholics,
so I walk into a movie
and everybody worships
the big book
and they worship
Bill Wilson
and they worship
everything in there
and they want to beat up
and crucify anybody
that says anything
that may throw some shade
on this shit
and I walk in here
with experience.
I walk in here
with, you know,
45 years of experience
watching what happens
to people
that don't really get
what they were saying
in their first impression here,
don't get it
and that they die
in the vine
and they drink again
and I tell my story
and they walk out on me
because they don't want
to hear that shit
because they don't want
to do it anyway
because in chapters
in the agnostics
they said if a miracle
to morals
or a better philosophy of life
would have helped us
we'd be sober a long time ago.
It doesn't help us.
We have to find the power
by which we can live
and therefore,
of course,
we have to talk about God.
Okay, which of course
Bill Wilson regretted
saying that
I guess after he got
three months later
that's when he wrote
Appendix 2.
We had to have a God
and he says here's
where we have problems
with we're agnostics.
These are not even people
that are atheists.
They say well I do
or I don't.
They're namby-pamby.
They're half-messians.
Here's where the problem
happens with agnostics.
So when you see
the people walk out
and they get pissed off
at what I'm saying
you say oh,
those guys must be
the agnostics.
You don't have to
try to figure it out.
They raise their hands.
They say wait,
that's bullshit.
Wait a second.
As you understand them
it's you know
those are the agnostics.
So you get to make
your decision.
You get to make your decision.
So wait,
let me keep on reading this.
Among our rapidly
growing memberships
of thousands of alcoholics
such transformations
though frequent
are by no means a rule.
And then it says this.
It says it talks about
they are frequent
and there are no means
to rule.
Most of our experience
are what the psychologist
William James calls
the educational variety.
The educational variety.
I'm going to skip
the paragraph that says
most of us think
that the awareness
of the power greater
than ourselves
is the essence
of spiritual experience.
Our more religious members
call it God consciousness.
So I want to talk about
the educational variety
and God's consciousness.
Wrap this up
in about five minutes, okay?
Welcome to what you're going
to find out
is your education.
You know what the educational variety
Listen, I had a spiritual experience.
I want to tell you something.
I had a spiritual experience.
I'm not going to tell you about it.
Not that I'm ashamed of it
but I'm not going to tell you about it
because you may have it
you may not have it.
Let me tell you about the education
in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Let me tell you about
the spiritual experience.
When you come to AA
and you pick up a white chip
and you want to stay sober
and think about it.
Things aren't going well
and you're nine days sober
but you go to a meeting anyway
even though you have no money
and you're broke.
That's a spiritual experience.
You could be depressed as hell
but you go to a meeting anyway
and it's a spiritual experience.
When you sponsor your first person
even though you're stupid
and you can't sponsor somebody
but you know you're supposed
to sponsor somebody
and God says you need
to sponsor somebody
or do anything
and you end up doing it
when you don't want to do it
but you end up doing it
that's a spiritual experience.
I don't give a shit
about your feelings.
That's a spiritual experience.
Okay?
When you feel like
you want to blow your brains out
you know what I mean
and that your life
is going crappy
but instead of picking up a drink
you pick up the phone
and you call your sponsor
and he says go to a meeting
and you start going to more meetings
and you're reading the big book
and you're doing this
that's a spiritual experience.
You know?
Well here,
let me tell you something else.
When you have a wife
and four children
or three children
or two children
whatever it is
and you're broke
and you don't have $50
and you can't even fill up
your car with gas
and you don't know
where money is going to go
and you don't have money
where money is coming from
and you're waking up
at three o'clock in the morning
and you're waking up
at three o'clock in the morning
and you have no idea
what's going on
so you pick up the big book
and you start reading
a couple things
and at least you get to the point
where you can go to sleep
and then you wake up
thinking about the money
and that happens for days
and you know something
and you get on your knees
and you pray
and that's a spiritual experience
and you don't drink
that's a spiritual experience.
When the doctor tells you
you've got cancer
three times
and you've got to either
have an operation
or you know
you've got to go through radiation
and stuff like that
and you've got to go through
and stuff like that
and instead of
whining or crying about it
you say okay
I understand that
and you say thank you Lord
thank you Lord
let me have a doctor
and you're not scared
or anything
you know something
that's a fucking
spiritual experience
that's a spiritual experience
you know something
when you go up
to your sponsor
and you tell them
you want to divorce your wife
you know what I mean
because she said something
or did something
or something like that
and you've got
ten years of sobriety
and you're sponsoring
everything
and everything
and you're doing
all that sort of stuff
and he says
you know something
it says
the only reason you're upset
is because you're upset
about why don't you
grow the fuck up
you know what I mean
and you stay married
and you do what you're
supposed to do
and you have some integrity
you know what that is
that's a spiritual experience
that's a spiritual experience
I'm just telling you that
that's what it is
you know
I mean there's a lot of things
that are going to happen
to you in your life
where you're going to think
they're horrible
and they're terrible
and everything like that
and they're all going to be
spiritual experiences
and every one of them
is going to change you
but you're not going to be
changed necessarily
because of the good times
good times you're going to enjoy
you're going to rest
you're going to put up your feet
you're going to say
isn't that great
I'm sober
everything is wonderful
you're going to change
you're going to change
in times that feel
so unspiritual
they're going to feel
like they're horror stories
you know what I mean
you know
and you're going to get
through them
and you're not going to drink
and you're going to
you're going to do service
or you're going to do
something else
those are all
spiritual experiences
you know I know
they're spiritual experiences
because that's what it was
for me
you know I know
and they're going to change you they're going to change your stupid thinking they're going to
change your materialistic thinking thinking you're going to lose people are going to die on you
you're going to lose money you're going to have all sorts of health problems i mean crap is going
to happen it's going to be a spiritual experience and with every experience you have where your legs
are cut off from under you and you realize how unspiritual you are and you realize how worried
you are and you got so much pride false pride you can't tell anybody about it you can't even talk
to your age group because you're worried about they're going to think about you and it's killing
you and then finally you talk to somebody and you go up to them and you tell them at 11 years
or 12 years i don't know what to do and the guy says you know you need to start going to bible
study and get serious about this stuff and serious about god and you look at him and say what are you
stupid let me tell you something i'm an a a for 12 years i'm spiritual not religious you know what i
mean and you wind up in a bible study on thursday morning at old cutler presbyterian church church
and you don't even know why you're there let me tell you something
that's a spiritual experience and you fall in love with all the 40 men there that are talking
about god and talking about their life and talk about everything we're talking about in the year
but the only difference is every single one of them even though they're going through cancer
they're in uh stage four cancer they're dying stuff every one of them ends up talking about the
lord and what god has done for them which you never hear in aa and nobody says you're stupid
you know
and when they hold up a picture of a squirrel and they say what is this
then you know it's a squirrel
but you know the answer is jesus you know what i mean because it's always jesus you know what
i mean that's a spiritual experience you know what i mean and you know the only difference is
all those people are men and i mean a man i'm not talking about babies i'm not talking about children
about thumb sucking cry babies they got their together they raise kids they take their
life serious they don't whine and cry and they take the lumps and they get through it that's
a spiritual experience and then you get to walk into alcoholics anonymous and listen to what's
going on i'm going to tell you something if you don't think you get different opinions based upon
growing sober in aaa and out of aaa and watching what's going on in here you may think i'm crazy
you may think i'm sacrilegious okay stay sober for 30 years 40 years let's see what you think
let's see what you think you know yeah we all are very proud of ourselves and we love
each other and we hand out stuff and that's all well and good i'm not putting it down
i'm just telling you bill wilson wrote this big book when he had three and a half years
at 23 years he was saying
i screwed the whole thing up i was totally right read it read what he says i was totally wrong
bob smith's last words that to bill wilson was let's not screw this thing up keep it simple bill
he saw it he knew what was going on so you know listen this is not about worshiping the big book
of alcohol so i was worshiping big will bill wilson or even dr bob or even me whoever it's
not about it's about understanding that they were right the first time
we were right the first thing time
i was dumped around public education so this is gonna give in we 교육 поступ 네가
is
just
a
sign
you know
i'm a
molecular
cellar
cellar
cellar
cellar
cellar
cellar
consciously thinking about God. And when you're doing that 80% of the time, you know what you're
supposed to do? You're supposed to improve that. When you do it 90% of the time, you're supposed,
you know what you're supposed to do? You're supposed to improve that. And you know why
you're supposed to improve that? That God consciousness? Because that's one of the steps
that you guys think you're doing thoroughly as you walk out of the meetings with somebody who's
talking about God. And you know what happens when you're consciously always thinking about God?
All of a sudden, you stop thinking about getting laid. All of a sudden, you stop looking at the
women in the room. All of a sudden, the women stop looking at the men in the room. All of a sudden,
you stop thinking about why you don't have a new car. All of a sudden, you start thinking about
all the things in the world, and all you do is think about God, and then you don't do stupid
shit. So you don't have to make a lot of amends. And you change into a different type of human
being. And drinking is totally out of the question, not because it's not, not because,
because you haven't conformed.
Hey, hey, you've been transformed by God. And you become a whole different person who could
talk this crazy shit at meetings, and say stuff like this, and be like this. Not because you're
good, because you're a whack job. Because he's good. Because God is good. Because that's what
God does to you when you focus on him. And that's really what the big books is all about. And when
you understand what the big book's all about, all of a sudden, all these sentences that I've
took right out of the big book, make sense. Because what happens if you look at the sentences,
you'll understand what this thing is all about. But if you look at the paragraphs, what happens,
you can always find the loophole. You'll find something because you're an alcoholic saying,
Yeah, but that applies to you, but it doesn't apply to me. It does apply me. But the good
news is this, and then I'm gonna end with this. The good news is this, I don't want
you to worry about it.
it's like a giant self-cleaning oven every two years the alcohol comes through the craziness
comes through and wipes out all the bullshit you understand and cleans us up because if that
didn't happen there'd be all sorts of fights and shit going on in here and she's on cleaning out
all the bullshit and what's left over is you know what's left over is what's left over
you understand what i'm saying so you don't have to worry whether you believe me or you like me or
you don't like me you think i'm a little rough i used too many curse words whatever the hell it is
whatever the hell it is that i've said that you don't like which permits you to ignore everything
i said you go with that you know what i mean i ain't worried at all because i know there's a
great world out there filled with material stuff just looking to beat the shit out of you
you understand what i'm saying it's just out there
you
and if you haven't figured that out you just haven't been sober long enough
god bless you thank you very much
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