He Rescued a New Guy Who Was Backed Against the Wall with His Eyeballs Popping Out – Kent C.

Thank you, Al. And before I get started, thank you for asking me to participate, sitting here and hearing all of the good things that are coming up. How exciting. I'm a guy who, to this day, and I can't wipe the smile off my face. When you say Alcoholics Anonymous, I start smiling. I am as excited to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous as I was when I got here and finally surrendered. It took me a minute, but it's lit a flame in me that each and every day through imperfectly practicing these principles. But I'll tell you what, I take a stab at it every day. I love, there's a reading in the 12 and 12. And it talks about, you know, at first we do it because we must then we do It because we know we ought to. And then ultimately, we do it because we love the quality of life that it brings. And I'll tell you, it is so good that when I get in the way and get away from it, I don't stay away from It long. I mean, I'm a human being, and when these crop up, and they certainly do with me as they do anybody else, it's just so uncomfortable now to be disconnected from God and from you that I just don't want to stay there. Tonight, Al asked me to speak a little on unity and uh particularly focused on traditions one three and five and let me say this right off the rip um i believe that the exposure and teaching of the traditions is a responsibility of sponsorship um i have the privilege of working with a lot of people in alcoholics anonymous and they will tell you that they're going to get that 12 and 12 out. And we're going to go through each of them. And I do that with them individually, so that they can ask questions. Um, this is the way that I was sponsored. I, of course, I questioned it when I was told about, we were going to be doing that. And my first sponsor said to me, how can you be a contributing member of this fellowship that you need to stay alive when you don't know what it is. You don't know where it came from. You don't know what it's not and you don't know how it works. That made sense to me then and makes sense to me now. It is something I take responsibility for. There are a lot of groups I know that do traditions after the meeting and that's fantastic. I think any way we can expose um new people to these traditions to these concepts to all three of our legacies um i think is is fantastic but as a sponsor um i do not want to send the people that i sponsor into a group uh with no knowledge of the traditions and concepts of alcoholics anonymous and expect them hopefully to pick it up um so it is something that i'm very passionate about um so tonight uh i want to before i get going um i want to read from the long form uh i am a proponent of the long formula traditions i got nothing against earl treat many of you don't may know earl tree in chicago well wrote the short form of the traditions and dr bob was his sponsor and uh i you know and i got nothing against that. But there is a spirit in the long form of the traditions that I think cannot be overlooked. And we heard a little bit of it when my brother Rick read the preamble to the meeting. But let me very quickly, from the long-form tradition one, each member of Alcoholics Anonymous is but a small part of a great whole. AA must continue to live, or most of us will surely die. Hence, our common welfare comes first, but individual welfare follows closely afterward. Three, our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. Hence we may refuse none who wish to recover. Nor ought AA membership ever depend upon money or conformity. Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an AA group, provided that as a group they have no other affiliation. And tradition five, each Alcoholics Anonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity having the one primary purpose, that of carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers. So, you know, and I've always said, you know, the steps gave birth to recovery. And the steps created a fellowship. And that fellowship, that burgeoning fledgling fellowship that grew out of the Oxford movement. And I was thinking today about those old Oxford group house parties and they were the literal precursor to the meetings that we have today in a lot of ways, more ways, I think, than a lot of people realize um and and gave birth to the need for tradition which in turn once we had tradition and we began to grow as a fellowship and our groups gave birth to the needs for the 12 concepts and i know uh i think billy was with you guys recently talking about the warranties and, and concept 12. And so I call it spiritual synchronicity. It flows like a river. And it's, it's literally, it seamless. When I think about, you know, when they said Bill Wilson was the greatest social architect in the 20th century, right? When you look at the steps and how seamlessly they flow into the 12 traditions and how seemingly the steps and the traditions flow into the concepts it's an incredible it's a airtight never fail formula for recovery for alcoholism into the annals of time It's timeless. It's seamless. And how one flows into the next without the steps, right? Because the traditions, we just heard a spiritual entity and tradition too, right, our leaders are trusted servants, right. A loving God, as he may express himself in our group conscience. I mean, Like, where did I get a loving God in my life? Where did I get a relationship with a power greater than myself from the steps, right? So the steps prepared me spiritually to begin to apply the 12 traditions. Now, recovery is progressive, obviously. I'm not in the same place spiritually as I was when I got here on May 18th of 1992. Thank God I'm the same place i was because i wouldn't have lasted if i had not moved from that place so it's but but the the sooner right that we get new people connected to and exposed to these traditions the better off we are one of the things that uh i was told to do when i was new and again i uh i balked at it i questioned it as i did everything when I was there, was to go to Toledo, Ohio, to a group called the Inner City Group. And they have a traditions meeting on Saturday mornings. Still do. It's virtual right now. And at that meeting, many of you may remember Mel B from Toledo. Mel was one of the authors of the book Pass It On and a lot of other AA literature. Mel died. He was well over 60 years sober when he died. He was at that meeting. Rufus Bloom, it was a litany of people from the 1940s and 1950s. And all the old timers sat in the back at the traditions meeting. and we read from the 12 and 12 each tradition and they shared with us you only do like a page or two um each week and then they would share with us and they wasn't sharing with us um from you know the book or reading out of a book these were people who had experienced these things that ended up being written in the 12 and 12. And, um, what a powerful, my first sponsor made me go there and he lived over by Cleveland. I said, how would you know about a meeting over by Toledo? And, you know, he told me what he always did shut up and do what I told you. So I did. And then you find out later that all these old guys knew each other. I mean, A.A. wasn't very big, and so a lot of those people from the 40s and 50s, my first sponsor came to A.I. in 1958. They all knew each other, and he said, I want you to go to that meeting, and I want your to listen, and um and so I began to go through that meeting almost 30 years ago, and I still do. And I still listen to all those guys are gone now. And we who are left get to share with those new people, all of the wonderful things that were shared with us. And in tradition one, big we little me, right? I mean, one of the things that we know from our history is that this thing really took off when what happened, one alcoholic shared with another. And it started over in Akron in 1935 when Dr. Bob got with Bill and Dr. Bob had been seeking some kind of answer to this drinking problem. And he had eventually ended up attending the Oxford group for two and a half years. Bill had been going for six months, but Bill was sober and Dr. Bob was not. And Bill was able through following a little formula that he had gotten, I think really Dr. Silkworth and also from Lois, the need he got from Loas to stay sober by helping somebody else. And Dr. silkworth who told him quit preaching for God's sake, go in there, tell the guy how you drink, talk drunk to a drunk. Then once he identifies, then you can start to share what happened to you and what you're doing now. So Bill shows up. He does this with Dr. Bob. Dr. Bob's response to this is he says to his wife and not first off, he said 15 minutes is all I'm giving this guy. This guy don't know nothing. I don't want to listen. But and and wore the britches in the family at that time. And she said, go, Dr. Bob knew he needed to go. So Dr. Bob goes, and this meeting lasts five or six hours. And he says to Annie, can we take him home with us? He understands. I ask you, how many people listen to me right now? When was it you were in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and somebody shared something that touched you in a place that no one else had been able to touch you. It happened to me at my first AA meeting. I thought, man, how could somebody say something out loud? It's like you're describing what's in me and I don't tell anybody this stuff. And so it was almost a magical experience that first minute. I didn't know what AA was. I didn't know what the steps was I had a big book and didn't even know what that was I'm brand spanking new but there is something that happened in that group in that meeting that night that changed me it was the first of a lot of us and I think if if I look back over you know my years in Alcoholics Anonymous there's been pivotal moments of things that stand out that change me um or got me moving in the right direction and and so understanding that together something happens when we come together that individually alone by ourselves we would have scan chance i think it says somewhere in the book um here and there now and again alcoholics have had vital spiritual experience i'm looking about you know one in five million is the chance and somebody told me of that actually happened dr silkworth himself said out of all the people that he worked with at towns hospital he estimated his rate of success with real alcoholics at two percent so it's not certainly but when we come together, there's something that happens. But spiritually, having applied these steps to my life, which is the first thing that we do with new people, and of course, we try to get them engaged in traditions and in a group immediately. There was an understanding, even though I was new, um i began to understand very quickly um some things about what's really important and that the group is more important than i am the first group that i was a member of and this is still the group i'm a memberof today is the friday night venice group, which is a group that started as an Oxford group meeting in 1938. And there were four members of our group who got sober in the mid-1940s. They're all deceased now, obviously. But when we had a group conscience meeting, we always discussed the tradition before we started. and then I got to watch how the group functioned like the first crisis we had was um we had to leave the church we were at it was a big meeting we was getting about 250 people it was the Friday night speaker meeting right and so you guys know what those meetings are like it's an open speaker meeting and um it got so big um the church uh they got some new members of their board and they decided to raise our rent, I think to like a thousand dollars a week. They wouldn't say get out. Right. But they came with that and they said, you got all them people down there. You guys should have that much money. Right? And so the handwriting was on the wall. So we had a group conscious meeting and I got to watch how people bought different opinions to the table as to where we should go, what we should do. There were some people that wanted to go to a smoking place. We were a non-smoking meeting um there were people who felt like we shouldn't leave there that we had the money if we had the month we should try to negotiate it down there was all kinds of different uh perspectives on that and i watched how the group listened to everybody before any voting was taken, we had what we call an informed quorum where we all heard everything that was on the table, the right of participation when you start to think about the concepts. And when we voted, you know, all information was on the table. I had my own opinion. I was not encouraged to voice it even though i could have i was trying i was told listen and learn and um and then we decided what we were going to do and and you know like i was new i was all tied up in knots over this and what's going to happen to our group and all this and then i saw the beauty of unity i saw that beauty of people putting aside their own personal agendas and personal preferences once the group conscience spoke once the vote was taken okay everybody was like okay we're good and and on we went and um you know all these years later we still around um unity um it's often been said the steps uh the the traditions are to the group what the steps are to the individual and in order for a group to survive and thrive um then these traditions are not an option um i've seen a lot of groups come and go and it's a funny thing is where I live at 75 groups approaching 80 years, it's common. It's common. The Saturday night group is 77 years old. My group is old. Thursday night, poor Clinton 75. I mean, it just they're all and they've lasted this long where I've seen and like a lot of you have seen, you know, a lot of other meetings just kind of come and go right in my hang around for a year or two and then they're gone and haven't attended some of those meetings um if you ask me what was the thing that was missing you know it was the traditions um an adherence to uh a primary purpose in unity and and all of the things that um tradition one step one powerlessness right and so the next 11 steps are designed to do what to get me connected to a power greater than myself a god of my understanding that can solve my problem let's keep this real simple and that's what the rest of the steps do in the traditions unity right is what's most important. What do the next 11 traditions do? Is show us how to preserve our unity, and that's exactly what they do. So the dynamic is there. So with the steps in my life, right, and I was new and still working on them and, you know, learning how to apply them to my life, making amends, doing all of those things, and you know how that is every day. The light shines a little bit brighter, you get a little bit freer. The traditions started to make some sense. Right? And so our common welfare always must come first. The group always has to come first. My recovery depends upon the existence of the group. And that's really the essence of Tradition 1 and what it teaches us. Tradition three, our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. It is amazing how... I've always said that we are not... I don't believe people intentionally do things that are harmful to alcoholics anonymous i believe that most things are done out of ignorance um because we don't expose new people to what we are what we're not, what we do, what we don't do, and we don t teach that to them. It leaves the door open for misinformation. We spend an inordinate amount of time, a lot of groups spend an inordinate number of hours amount of time talking about things and arguing over things that were settled 75 years ago already settled but they don't know um i've never i never condemned people for what they don'T KNOW um we started a book study here um that grew to be very very large um really large and and we're not doing it right now because we are in the crosshairs here of uh Because of COVID, the county that I live in is number one out of 88 counties in Ohio for the spread of COVID right now. So we can, I can't bring 200 people together into a room right now, but we started a book study here and, you know, we did the first 164 pages. And then I decided, well, we should do at least a month on the traditions. And my personal thought was meeting attendance will drop off dramatically when we get to the traditions, but I don't care, right? And let me share something with you. It did not. It did nicht. The same people came. there were more questions asked when we did that i got a sponsor ronnie ronny said man we should do like some traditions workshops and concept workshop so we actually set up a couple of saturdays to do that and um the traditions workshop was pretty full and when we didn't concepts i told them i said run off about 40 inverted triangles if we get 40 people for this we'll be doing good. And we were running into the office at the intergroup to print more, we had over 120 people show up. And one of the things I said was, you guys are hungry, aren't you? And they were like, yes. And there were people there from four weeks sober to 44 years sober who had not been exposed to these things, who wanted to know how a group functioned, who wanted to know who is the delegate, who wanna know these things. So one of the things I learned is I gotta not listen to my head tell me that people don't wanna know stuff because they do. They just haven't had that exposure. Again, my first sponsor used to beat this like a drum that all of the so-called problems that we have in this fellowship will be addressed when we get back to good sponsorship, when we start taking responsibility for what a sponsor is supposed to do. I believed it then, I believe it now. But we can still look for fun, creative, inventive ways to bring people together who aren't getting that, who aren' getting exposed to it and share it with them. Well, we had people bring food when we did those things, people ate fell asleep it was man we had a heck of a time right doing doing traditions and concepts with just a heck up the time so so when we get to tradition three our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism that's meant to be inclusive not exclusive it's not meant to exclude anyone what it's saying is if you got other problems join the club who walks in here with one problem right and i love i love how they talked about in the early days because of fear you know that's always the enemy and fear out of fear of what people would think of them well we can't let these people in here we can'T let these peOple in here wE caN'T let people who got this problem in here WE can'T right and so when they had all the groups send in their membership requirements they realize quickly no one qualifies to be here under these conditions right so so i always tell people listen you got other problems join the club dude listen i get it we're not here to talk about problems we are here to share solutions you got a problem with alcohol quite as important was the discovery that spiritual principles will solve all my problems i'll take them to that in the book right there is a power right that we get a relationship with in here but in here right all you got to do is have a problem with alcohol if you got problem with other stuff you can talk to me after the meeting you know you got problems with food. And it's one of the reasons why, and I want to talk about this real quick that I have built relationships with other people in other 12 step fellowships. When someone comes, it is our responsibility to sit down and talk to them. And this is something that at our home group, I mean, we probably, I don't know after I moved back here from Las Vegas, that's It's been a while now. But we sat down and we started to get inundated with a lot of young people and a lot to open speaker meeting. We still get a couple hundred people. And so we sat out and we like, OK, like let's let's start talking to these people. When somebody raises their hand and says they're new, we all what do we do? Clap and go home. okay let's get to them we had a couple times that we had a new guy raise his hand and so many guys had this guy cornered after the meeting I had to go rescue the guy and pull him out of there he was backed up against the wall with his eyeballs popping out and man did I love seeing that right so let's talk to him let's find out what brought you here right you have a problem with alcohol. Let's talk about that, right? Because my experience has been this, and some of you may have had different experience, but when somebody comes into our fellowship, the first thing they will identify with is the beast that brought them to the door. And sometimes that's alcohol, and sometimes it ain't, but it doesn't mean that they're not alcoholic. They will identify with the beast that brought them to the door. They will call themselves all kinds of things. I'm an addict, I'm alcoholic, I am cross-addicted. I am this, I are that. They don't know no better. And most of this stuff comes out of treatment centers anyway, okay? So it's our responsibility as members of Alcoholics Anonymous to sit down and let's talk to them. Well, what brought you here? Well, smoking banana peels, really, really. Smoked a couple of peels myself back in the day. You know, so we talked about that. Well, you know, how about drinking? You know, this is Alcoholics Anonymous. You drink, drinking. Good Lord. No, I got five DUIs. I can't stop. When I started, I started drinking before. I can'T stop. Boom. Now I got you. Let's talk. Let's Talk. And now we can talk about what we do in Alcoholics Anonymous and it makes sense if they say no, you know, I've never drank right now. I've not had a problem with alcohol. Okay. I got some numbers for you, right? So I'm going to get you connected to wherever it is that you need to go. I'm not going to tell you to sit in here and fake it like, well, anybody can come here. No, no, because there will be no identification. And if there is no identification, my experience is that person ain't going to stay. They ain't gonna stay. There's no identification Why would you? Why would You? Right? So it's extremely important that we talk to new people when they come. They're not going to understand this, and Lord knows what other people have told them before they come That's the age that we live in now I don't know about where you are, but where I am I mean, there was no treatment here for 20 years And now, I mean you can't throw a rock and not hit some kind of halfway house or treatment place It's the age that we live in right now, right? And so these people are going to be coming to our meetings, which they're welcome, right, it's an open meeting, you're welcome. But we'll sit down and we'll talk, and we're going to make sure that you get the best possible chance to recover. And so I have built relationships, not only here where I live, but around the country. I had a call not all that long ago where somebody said, hey, I know somebody in Albuquerque, New Mexico who needs would like to get to Narcotics Anonymous. I said, really? OK, so I called the guy in New York who I know is very active in Narcotic Anonymous sponsors people around the country. It took about two hours to have somebody at that guy's door, and they picked him up. So it's important for me to be able – I'm here to help. And so what my first sponsor told me is you have to become a resource to new people. So whatever help that they need, that's our primary purpose is to be helpful to others. So, but when it comes to Alcoholics Anonymous, right? It says clearly our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. Since we may refuse no one who wish to recover, nor ought AA membership ever depend on money or conformity, any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an AA group provided that as a group they have no other affiliation. That's another thing. And we don't talk a lot about the affiliation into this thing, but I think we should talk about it here for a second. I was approached by somebody who their group was meeting in a halfway house or some kind of treatment facility. but this facility was dictating who could come to the meeting like if you had been there and hadn't completed the program you were not allowed to come to this meeting and they called me and asked me about it and i said well if i was new and i had left there and i wanted to come there to AA and I was told that I couldn't, would I not then think that this, that AA is connected to this treatment? Would I not think that? Would you think that, right? How would you not know? I'm brand new, right. So, so I told them, I said, you know, you might want to think about going somewhere else because affiliation whether real or implied is still affiliation and if people believe that and there's a lot of this stuff going on right now so i think it's really apropos um that when we go somewhere and we decide you know this would be a good meeting place That we understand this tradition, that we understand affiliation, and that we understand that if a new person believes by what's going on, that Alcoholics Anonymous is the same as this treatment place or whatever else it may be. We got a problem. We got to problem in something we don't talk a lot about, but I've had several people in the last, since this treatment center halfway house boom started, um, who have come to me about the role of whoever owns or runs the building has in the group. Right. And we are affiliated with no one. We pay our own way. We are self-supporting. We thank you for the use of the room. We pay, we leave it cleaner than we found it, right? We do all those things. But when it comes to actually, we don't keep anyone from coming to our meeting. We don't keep anyone from coming into our meeting that flies in the face of everything that these traditions have to say. So affiliation is something that we want to keep our eye on there's a lot of good stories um there's some in the 12 and 12 right about um people coming who are different um i know that um they're where i live at there's a lot firsts um the first all-black aa group was in cleveland uh the garden valley group And I know that Dr. Bob went to that meeting so that people would begin to allow minorities to come to other meetings. You have to remember, this is the 30s and 40s, right? So America was a lot different. There's not a lot of documentation about these things in AA. And when I was in Toledo, when I was new, a lot OF that was shared with us by the old timers in Toleto. They told us that the Black members in Tolento, you were allowed to come to the meeting, but you could not stay afterward as soon as the meeting was over you had to leave there's a lot of things um in our history i think that that aren't talked about and what a treat it was to be in a room with people who not only knew about it but were a part of it who lived through it right and so we watched the evolution of tradition three, like grow as time has gone on. And it's a beautiful thing. We don't care who you are. We don' t care what you've got. We don''t care if it's Park Avenue or Park Bench. We could care less. You've got a problem with alcohol? Come on in. We got something for you, right? If you want it, right. And it's the beauty of Alcoholics Anonymous. I've always felt at home in Alcoholics Anonymous and I hope you have too. Tradition three, but again, meant to be inclusive, not exclusive. And if someone, and I tell the guys this all the time, if someone needs something else then we need to know where it is for them to go the same with the family with alanine i'm just gonna throw this in here real quick i was made to get alanine phone numbers alanine meeting schedules and to have them so that when i got somebody new that they could give that to the family where else would they know to go get The sponsor did that. And so to this day, I continue to do it. I get calls all the time. Somebody needs an Al-Anon contact. So I tell the guys, our sponsor, you know, I expect you to do that. I expect You to have Al-A-N-O. Honestly, most of them do where you can guide the family to some help, family disease, family recovery. Right? So out of tradition three, um just the inclusiveness just you got a problem with alcohol the rest of it we unconscious let's come on in let's sit down and let us explain to you what we do and how we do it and and um and that's a real fun thing to be a part of tradition five each alcoholic synonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity, right? What is a spiritual entity? What does a spiritual entity? Well, I think you really kind of got to look at tradition too that laid the foundation for that, right. A loving God as he may express himself in our group conscience. It's a pretty good description of a spiritual entity, isn't it? Right. A loving God as he may express himself in our group conscience so we are guided spiritually through the application of principles not only in our lives but as a group with unity being paramount and all of these things that we do to preserve our unity each group ought to be a spiritual entity having but one primary purpose that of carrying the message to the alcoholic who still suffers and it's fun to read a history and you know it all started uh in 1937 i believe it was in october when the meeting took place in akron well it started at dr bob's house when they counted over 40 people desperate cases of alcoholism sober for more than six months and oh a new light has dawned into you know the world of alcohol ism they got on their knees at 8 55 and ann smith led them in prayer bill looks out the window and says well how are we going to carry this out there and what he comes up with is paid missionaries hospitals and a book and anything that diverts us from our primary purpose. And then if you read the history, and I love how Al is preparing to expose so much history in these upcoming meetings, how God intervened on behalf of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I truly do believe that because God works through people with skin. You got people like Leroy Chipman And Frank Amos and all these old guys hanging around Rockefeller talking about, man, we can't put no money in this. And Bill Wilson running around trying to get a dollar, man. Let me talk to John D. Let me tell you, John D said, I ain't going to be the one to mess this up. Don't come up here looking at me, right? I'll give you a couple of dollars to make sure you stay alive long enough to do what God wants you to do. But I ain'T giving y'all nothing, right. God intervenes through people with skin, right? To keep us doing what? Our primary purpose. One of them said, this is a work of Christian charity. I will not put money in it. I will now put money on it, right. And so nothing to divert us from what we are and what we do. What it is that we do is we carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers. Baby, that's what we're doing. I ain't nothing else. Nothing else. We ain't opening no hospitals. It's a bunch of guys in Toledo. This is another thing I learned at this meeting. This was hilarious, but there was a bunch of guys into the leader. We're talking early forties and they scrapped up some money and they felt like, okay, like we need to have a hospital. These hospitals ain't treating us right. The hospitals don't treat alcoholics, right? Cause alcoholics don't pay their bills. That's why they don't feed us. Right. But anyway, we go over our own hospital. So they scraped up some Money and I'd be danged if they didn't do it. They got some little building in downtown Toledo. They went to try to, and the whole thing obviously went up in flames. People got drunk. They was arguing over money. And to hear a couple of the guys at that meeting was involved in that group that did that, right? And it was hilarious, some of the stuff that happened. Some guy ran off with some money. It was just nuts, right. And they realized, and this is what they told us. we realize that we only know how to do what we do. And what we doing is we help the alcoholic who still suffers. That's what we're doing. That's not what we want to do. So we stick to our primary purpose as a group. We don't get involved in anything outside the scope of our primary purpose. And that's just to carry the message to the alcoholic, suffers. And there is so much work to be done within the span and scope of that primary purpose. And to me, this is where the real fun in Alcoholics Anonymous lies. Because I tell the guys I sponsor, I say, look, you get in where you fit in. You bring your gifts to that group, Whatever it is that you do that's helpful to another alcoholic, you are big. I sponsored a guy, Al Walk. And Al Walk was about 6'4", about 280 pounds. He's a big old teddy bear. And Al walk was the greatest greeter that I have ever seen in Alcoholics Anonymous. That's what Al Walk did. He bought that to carry the message of love to the people that came to that door. Al Wong did not die sober. Al, he lost sight of his primary purpose and decided that he wanted to make some other things a priority. And he is no longer with us. He stayed with us for seven or eight years. He did. And people still talk about him. One of my sponsees read a list of people. And we have a sponsoring meeting on Tuesday night of people who had influenced him when he came and Al was on that list. And it all, it just, I just, tears just run down my face. Our primary purpose, right? To carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers. And there's so many ways you can be creative. You can do weekends. You can go to church. You can retreats. I got involved with a group of people, really people that my first sponsor sponsored, literally hundreds of people. But these guys dragged me with them to the Jesuit retreat house. We we would go into Cleveland and we would get guys and we were take them on to retreat for free. Right. And it's just there are so many avenues for us to be able to carry out this primary purpose as a spiritual entity. It's beautiful how all this the steps and then our traditions and how our spirit as our spirit awakens. This is what feeds it. It's hungry. It's like, man, it's like a radar. When you wake up to this thing and your spirit wakes up, I've never had to work with a person who their spirit woke up. And I said, now, you know, you got to go help somebody. Try to hold them back is what you got try to do. Because man, they trying to bust a hoop. Let me, let me, and that's what feeds this. so for me like we get them in here we get them engaged in these steps right because man ain't sober obviously and the earth ain't nothing else don't matter and then we introduce him to these principles right and then we help them understand how these principles this is where the icing get on the cake and then I'm gonna shut up Al this is what I see get on the cake man if you can take these principles home. You can take these principles to work. Is there unity in your home? Is it big we, little me in the house or is it still my way or the highway, right? Do we have any kind of group conscience, right, a loving God as he expresses ourselves? Do мы pray together? Do we do that? Right. It's just it's amazing. Right. Are we inclusive? Do we include everybody in the house and what's going on, the decisions we make? Do we value each other? Right. Do we have a primary purpose? right? You can take this to work, right? Am I part of unity at work? Do I fight everybody or am I trying to be a contributing member of the whole, right. So these principles at home in our relationships at work but for our purpose tonight in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, are we sharing them with others? Are we showing the way or are we sitting around and complaining about all these groups don't do the right thing? I went to the meeting the other night. I saw eight traditions broken. Look, I ain't here. Listen, people can't do better today, no better. What am I doing to make this better? That's my primary purpose, not the city judgment of people who don't even have exposure to these things what a great opportunity what how many ways we can find creatively to do this but our unity is what is paramount without that we're all gone we're All Gone it's like Bill Wilson said if this thing goes away we go back into the caves that we came from right and talk about what a good thing this could have been right so we have this thing but we have it and uh let's feed it let's share it right and let's lead by example i'll tell you something um and i'm gonna shut up um it's attractive a group that abides by these traditions is a well-attended group because it's attractive. What is it that attracts? I'll tell you what attracts, spirit. Spirit attracts. It attracts. People can't even put it into words, but I like to go to that meeting because I feel better afterward. That's a group. That abiding body is tradition. That' all I got. Thanks a lot for having me here.