Higher Power’s Direction – Blueprint for Receovery Big Book Study Weekend in Vancouver, BC, Canada – F20070223 – Part 5 of 5 – Chris R.

Listen, God is giving you direction. The truth of the matter is, all of us in this room, we're being screamed at. God wants to show us what to do. Welcome to humanity. This is my life. This is a knot. And what we're trying to do is untangle this knot. And the more we untangle it, the more мы fight with it, the tighter it gets. What we have to do is we have stop and we have start asking God's... Give me the guidance. Sam Shoemaker, the cat that brought a lot of this spiritual stuff to Bill Wilson, he talked about this. His prayer was, God, put me where You want me and keep me there. One of the problems I had in early surprise is I couldn't stay any place at one time. I just wanted to go. I want a quick fix. Quick fix. I watch the guys trying to get out from under their amends financially. They want a quick fix. I need a big job paying $100,000 a year so I can go make all these amends. Why don't you shut up? Why don'T you stick? Why donT you work at that 7-Eleven making $7 an hour? You with me? And in two years, you'll have all those amends made. But we want to make it all at once. See, God will show you where you need to be. And there's a bunch of you in this room that don't believe that. A bunch of you in here don't believe that God gives a rat's butt what you do with your life. You're wrong. It's not been my experience. My experience is that God does want the best for me. And if I'll get out of the way and listen, God will show me what to do. Here's what it looks like. I'm going to run out of time here. I had this kid that wanted me to come to a little place in Arizona. And I was booked solid and I told him so quick on the phone. Buddy, can't. Booked up. Thanks. Bye. Click. He called back. Putty, maybe you misunderstood. Man, I'm booked up. I can't click. He called by. It was the most persistent little cuss you ever saw in your life. And he wore me down. I finally said, dang, okay, just to shut him up, I said, okay. Do you want to see where that went? Did you hit anybody? Got anybody in the men for that? And so this guy, anyway, I went out to Arizona and I did this little talk and it was great seeing this little guy. He was a pistol. He was in a few years sober in the program, a couple of years sober and I just fell in love with him and just a good egg. I left, and we exchanged one or two emails, and then I lost track of it. Well, in meditation, I started thinking about this kid. And my job is real high pressure while I'm there. I mean, I'm working all the time, and I kept thinking, I'm going to call this kid, I'm gonna call this kids, but I never made time to do it. There never seemed to be time to it. And when I had time, I wasn't thinking about it. You follow me? And one day I came in after doing a lecture, and I came and I sat down and I was starting to answer messages and it was called this kid. So, I looked at my date planner and found his number where this was months past and I called the kid. He answered the phone and I recognized his voice right off the bat. I said, hey buddy, this is Chris Craver in Hunt, Texas. How you doing? How you been? And the phone went dead quiet and he started crying. I could hear him sobbing on my phone. He said, why did you call me? I said, buddy, you've just been on my mind. For weeks you've been on mine. I just finally slowed down long enough to call you. He said you would not believe what's going on right now. Same stuff. Girl problem. He decided to twist. Had a problem with a guy in a meeting. Guy hurt his feelings. He told him to go kiss his ass and he'd split. Hadn't been back to the meeting since. He was still sober, but he was spiritually bankrupt. He was miserable. You'll follow? Why did I call that day? Because I got the instruction, call now. It was different than the ones before. You might ought to call this guy. It was call now! I stopped what I was doing and called. And this guy cried. I told him what to do. I said, I made him some suggestions what he could do to get past it, which was 10-step stuff. Go own your stuff. Go back and make an amends to that guy that you got mouthy with in that meeting. You were wrong. He was wrong too, but your job is to clean off your side of the street. So go clean it up. You with us? He did. He called me back the next day and he was just the old kid that I used to know and love. He was kicking butt taking names. Now why? But why? Because he got a call from an old geezer up in the hill country. I could spend an hour telling you how this stuff has happened to me. I was in a pharmacy one time and I said, how long is it going to take to get this medication? She said, Chris, 15 minutes. 15 minutes An hour and a half later, I'm still sitting there and Mr. Spiritual is coming unglued. I've scheduled my day pretty tight and I do not have time for this. You'll follow? It was obvious they were busy, but I mean, come on guys, it's not like I was getting some weird goofy medication. I mean this, come one. I'm grinding my teeth. There's got to be a reason for this Chill out. Got my meds. Walked out. You know, one of these Thank you. I'll show you. Chris is leaving the pharmacy and he's pissed. And I want everybody to know that I don't appreciate being treated this way. And I walked right out of the pharmacy and I walked straight out the door and I went right into my stepson who I hadn't seen in about eight months. I knew he worked at this store. You follow me? I've been talking to God about this. I need to see this kid. I need talk to him. I need make sure he's okay. This was after our divorce And I walked right into him. If I had gotten those meds in 15 minutes, I'd have been home down the street and nothing would have been accomplished. God said, buddy, put the skids on this. Just slow down just a minute. I've got something for you here I want you to take care of. And I walk right into it. You with me? Thousands of stories just like that. When you attune yourself, when you align your will with God's, that's the stuff that happens on a daily basis. That's the spiritual path that we're talking about. It's not just about not drinking one day at a time. It's about a spiritual path that we can all benefit from. You'll find out who you're supposed to be with. You'll found out the career you're suppose to be in. The answer to your health problems, they will be answered. Sounds like humbo jumbo, doesn't it? It's just my experience. It was Bill Wilson's experience. It was Dr. Bob's experience Those cats wrote extensively about this prayer and meditation. It's real. It takes discipline on our part. You down with that? I know some people that don't want to do it because they're afraid of what they're going to hear. I understand that. What if God tells me to do something I don't wants to do? It's a guaranteed given. God is going to tell you To do something That you don't want to do Eventually That's exactly what's going to happen So what? You can continue To fight this battle And try to untangle this yourself Or you can relax Take it easy We pause When agitated or doubtful Y'all with us? We stop fighting the world And we just cruise right along It's like being in a rapid river Guys You even go with the flow that you can try to swim up it. Some of y'all are in here, you're swimming up it I don't know why I'm getting the shit beat out of me because you're not listening to what you're supposed to be listening to. You with us? Nobody gets let off the hook here, folks. God has got a voice for every single one of you. God doesn't love one more than the other. You're not going to be more in tune to this than the others. You do the work, clean out all the wreckage of your past so you don't have all this guilt and shame stuff to be cropping up in your head. And I guarantee you, if you'll get quiet, you'll start hearing this guidance. Y'all cool? Let's take a quick smoke break and come back. We're going to do 12. See ya. It's going to be mean. Ed made a peep all afternoon and it freaks me out. Obviously an example of good parenting. I'd like the kid that I'll get stuck with tomorrow on the way back, I can assure you. There's nothing I'd rather talk about than 12-step stuff. I've got you for an hour. It'll be a quick hour. and we'll be done. And we can all hug. This is a grinder. There was not one of you in here that I wouldn't hug. I mean, I'm down with that. You guys are all on the same page. It's so... You talk in certain groups and you get so much resistance. All of y'all are on pretty much as far as I'm concerned. I've not seen one that wasn't on the on the other side. On the same basic page doesn't mean that you agree with the letter of the law and everything I've said, but you kept a real open mind to all that we've talked about. And that's what's important. I do a lot of these step studies, but I don't care how you work the steps. As long as you work them. You put your own twist on it if you want to, but the closer that we seem to be able to adhere to what the big book says, the better the results seem to be. It's been my experience. And most of y'all in this room that I've talked to are, it's an honor to know you. Some of you with long-term sobriety may take exception with this, but you may not. There's some problems in Alcoholics Anonymous, okay? I love AA. I'm not taking their inventory. I'm saying we have some problems there in the fellowship. Our success rates are not very good in certain areas. They're downright dismal, again, because people have taken the 12 steps and kind of put them aside and done it their own way. Lots of reasons, but one of the main reasons we ended up in trouble was a thing called sponsorship, which has been practically non-existent for a lot of years. A lot of people pay lip service to sponsorship. But real true sponsorship is what we started talking about last night. We qualify the newcomer, we teach the newcomers, and then we hold them accountable. It's not governing their lives, it's not telling them what to do, it's allowing them to get connected to God so that God can tell them what they need to do. Piss poor sponsorship, weak ineffectual sponsorship has caused us a lot of problems in our fellowship. we've seen some real problems happen and we've also watched us not take care of it in 1971 I was talking to some of y'all about this earlier but in 1971 in the United States Nixon on his way out the door one of the last things he did he signed in a piece of legislation called the Hughes Act which opened the door for anybody that wanted to open a treatment center, you could. Make sense? In other words, you had to have a certificate of need up to a certain point. You had to lobby for the right to open a facility. And the Hughes Act did away with that so that anybody and his dog could open up a treatment center. The United States had thousands of them opened up. Insurance companies got on the bandwagon here. The lobby around this was part of the reason if if we can as an insurance company make money off these these damn drunks then we're going to do that so every treatment center in the country i mean literally guys they open thousands of them now the problem was that some of these hospitals were excellent and some of these hospitals work crap run by people that didn't understand this problem insurance companies decided that they weren't going to pay for God and the 12 steps. That could be an addition. You can teach that too, but what we're going to teach is much more advanced, much more effective means of sobriety. The experiment went so well that in 1993, over 600 treatment centers in the United States went belly up. In one year, 600 treatment centres went out of business. Thousands of these hospitals went out of business. Why? Because the insurance companies that pushed this legislation to begin with decided that they weren't going to keep doing this because they weren'T making any money doing it because we weren'T staying sober. You follow? And we thought it was a great idea. We'd stick this insurance policy out there, stick a little treatment rider on there, and we'd clean up. But the problem was we're not going to treatment once. We're going to treat them six times. And it starts costing the companies money. So they stopped paying. And without the payment, the insurance companies went out of business. You follow? We got into such a tizzy in the 70s and 80s. Our idea of 12-step work became let's take you to treatment. Now, remember I work in a treatment center. I'm all for treatment. Proper detox, especially with some of the things that you guys are sticking in your bodies today is important. It's very essential in many cases. Especially detoxing off things like Pills Dangerous Highly dangerous to detox off pills Alcohol is the same as always It's the most We lose more people around alcohol detox Than anything else The Idea of taking somebody to treatment Is a very altruistic thing A very Christian thing to do Very important thing to doing But it doesn't take the place of this thing Called the 12th step Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others. We tried to help others get well. Make sense? And that's where sponsorship was. And we've got a whole bunch of people that have been let off the hook thinking that some people are going to be good sponsors and some people aren't. Some people are gonna be crappy sponsors. You with us? That's not true. Everybody in their own way gets a shot at this. The early guys, if you read the history books, Some of the books that we talked about. We talked about Clarence Snyder's history that Mitchell Klein wrote. It talks specifically. Ernie Kurtz has written some wonderful stuff out there. Dick B. has written som e great stuff. If you all want to email me for bibliographies on all this kind of stuff about 12-step work, I'll tell you. There's tremendous stories. Bill Wilson, in our own book, was on his ninth day in Towns Hospital as a direct result of a little guy named Ebi Thatcher coming and 12-stepping it. With only a few weeks of sobriety, he got on a bus and went and found Bill Wilson. He tried to carry this message. He understood the spiritual principle is we give it away, we get to keep it. Goes around, comes around. Make sense? They knew that. Bill Wilson gets out of treatment. The first thing he does is start working with other drunks. Doesn't have much success in the first six months. In fact, he scares the daylights out of a lot of people because he's out there preaching. See, he's missing some pieces here. But he gets with Dr. Bob six months into this deal in Akron and they, are you with us? Dr. Bob after a little glitch June 10th supposedly is the day he goes out and has his last little bender and he comes back finally gets off dead center and makes his amends do y'all understand why Dr.Bob got loaded? Dr.Bob got loaded because he wouldn't make his damned amends I'm a doctor, if I make these amends it'll ruin my practice, his practice was ruined anyway, but after the relapse he realizes, buddy I'm in trouble here and he goes and makes all of his amens and now he's back on track, dig? They go find alcoholic number three. Now, none of these guys got a year sober. Only a few months. They find alcoholic no. 3, Bill D. He gets sober. Then they go find alcoholics no. 4 and no. 5. And I'm alive today because they did that. But now we've got a fellowship where we're going to go out of our way to tell people that you can't work with others until you've been sober a certain amount of time. I stay sober because I work with others. Not because I come speak from the podium like this, but because I sit down in my AA group and sponsor men in the fellowship and give this message of hope back to them. Same message that was given to me in 1987 by a bunch of people that loved me enough to tell me the truth. You're down with this so far? It's the ripple effect. Bill Wilson Dr. Bob and it just gets wider and wider. Now there's millions of us sober, but there's Millions more of us out there that are dying Of this disease How many people are sitting In our fellowship absolutely bone Powder dry, miserable Well I'm Sober one day at a time You know you just You don't want to light a match next to him Because he'll just implode I mean because guys That's called being dry and I guess It's now I don't know if it's even Better than drinking That's not what this is about. Happy, joyous and free is what it's about. But you see, nobody wants to tell the newcomer that the key to this... Somebody said it earlier. Why is the newcomor the most important person? The newcomer is the most important person because that gives us an opportunity to give what we've been taught. And each individual one of you that gets a chance to sit down on a table and carry this message of hope gets to feel that power. Here. It's an article. Well, some of y'all heard me talk about this on CDs. It was an excellent article. It was written in the Grapevine years ago. Not the Grakevine, Box 459. And it was a Christmas edition. And it said, the title is, Intergroups Ask Where Have All the Volunteers Gone? Now, this is in New York City, the home of Central Service Office. Dig? AA's headquarters. This is the article about that city. It's about cities all around the world. But here's specifically. The most frustrating thing about answering intergroups' phones, says Bob R., manager of the Intergroup Association in New York City, is finding an AA member willing to take a 12-step call from some sick alcoholic who has phoned us for help. Sometimes it takes up to 20 calls to identify just one willing volunteer. hear? Some of the responses we hear when a live member actually does answer the phone. What's a 12 step call? How did you get my phone number? Do you mean you actually want me to talk to someone who's still drinking? The saddest response came from a member who exclaimed, no, I can't do it. I'm busy all day. Today is my sobriety anniversary. I love that one. Boy, would I like to be alone in a nice quiet room with him. Guys, this whole idea... Do you know the word gratitude? We used to have people come up to the AA club that I got sober in and that's the only time you'd see them. They'd come up and pick up their anniversary chip. And it's like, I'm so grateful to the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm picking up my 20-year chip today. Oh, that's great. How nice for you. Where were you Wednesday night when the treatment centers let out three buses outside our door and there was only three of us in the meeting? But we're all supposed to go pat you on the back because you've got 20 years. Thanks for nothing. I can't... I've done well all day and not spoken in tongues once and it's fixing to happen. I just, it takes my breath away. This idea, I can't live off the food I had last week, nor so can I live off the spiritual experience that I had 19 years ago. I don't get this excited about Alcoholics Anonymous folks because of the spiritual experience that I told you all about last night. 19 years ago. I get excited about my current experiences with you people today. My current experiences with the guys that I sponsor. It's current, not past. It's the old Janet Jackson song. What have you done for me lately? Current. You'll follow? We've gotten off the page. Our idea of 12-step work is let's send them to treatment. The problem is They're not hearing the solution in treatment. They're getting a lot of good information. I'm not knocking that. But, you know, guys, my job at this hospital is to monitor the people after they leave. We have five of us on staff, and that's all we do all day long is hang off the telephones and sit in front of emails and contact these patients that have left to make sure they're okay. Everyone that we can get connected to a good group. You with us? I've got a bunch of phone numbers from you already. If we ever have a patient coming back to Vancouver, I've Got Their Butts Covered. Buddy, you call this guy. He's going to take care of you. You with me? Call this lady. She'll take you to the meeting. She'll show you around. Now when we have patients that do that, they stay sober. When the patients don't do that... They don't! Treatment doesn't fix us. Treatment is not recovery. treatment is discovery you can benefit greatly from that experience the nutrition, the doctor's lectures the therapeutic stuff that we go through you can profit from all of that that will not stop you from drinking it's what happens when you leave that treatment center that counts make sense? guys now listen this hospital has been in business 35 years we know what we're doing there and I'm the guy that compiles the stats I'm telling you exactly how the cow ate the cabbage here the patients that walk out and don't finish this work that we've asked them to start relapse I don't care how good of work they did at that hospital if they don't continue to do the work this fatal progressive illness will reach up and grab them in the butt and they'll fall flat on their yeah Again Whose responsibility is it To snag these guys And get them through the work It is ours We talked about it Friday night Everybody's waiting for something to happen In our fellowship In our treatment industry That's going to treat the alcoholic and drug addict better There's no better way than what we're doing right here But if you can get somebody back into a corner And qualify them And then make sure that they finish doing the work Everything's goingto be okay But as early as the early 40s, Bill Wilson started writing articles and letters about the watering down of our message. He could already see the success rates going through the toilet. He could уже verificar o o disseminar o o o a mensagem clara que nos foi dada em 1939 já estava sendo diluída por um monte de opiniões das pessoas. Tome seu tempo para trabalhar esses passos. 90 reuniones em 90 dias. Obrigado. Meetings don't treat alcoholism. Meetings are where I go find people to work with. But you're no use to me unless you've worked the 12 steps, so let's get going. Big difference, guys. I want to read something to you quick. Turn to page, if you've got your books, mark it. Page 14, bottom of the page, Bill's story. He's talking about Ebby, the little guy that 12-stepped him. My friend had emphasized the absolute necessity of demonstrating these principles in all my affairs. Particularly was it imperative to work with others as he'd worked with me. Imperative. Faith without works was dead, he said, and how appallingly true for the alcoholic. For if the alcoholic fails to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others, He could not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead. If we didn't, we'd surely die. The rest of the paragraph. You follow? This is how I grow spiritually, folks. I don't grow spiritually by praying. If that was the case, the churches would be cranking out a bunch of sober people. They're not. I don'T grow spiritually by talking about my day. If that were the case treatment centers would have a much better success rate. They DON'T. I grow spiritually by work and self-sacrifice for others. That means it's Monday night and the meeting's over and I'm heading out the door and a little newcomer comes up and says, Chris, buddy, have you got a few minutes for me to talk? And I'm thinking, buddy I can catch the very end of The Sopranos or I can sit here and talk to this bozo. You with me? But you see somebody stayed late and talked to me in 1987. I'm sure they had something that they wanted to do too. but that got around me and guaranteed me that I would know what the solution was. I can do that. My mama always asks me, she's asked me a dozen times, she says, when's your debt? She rides Myers too. Bless her heart. I love her to death. She's the finest mother that ever lived. But she still doesn't understand what this is about. When's your Debt to AA going to be paid? Because she sees us gone all the time. She sees the sacrifices that we make and the sacrifices going to the meetings and stuff. Just when's your debt to AA? You see, my mom wasn't in dumpsters in Houston, Texas. And she wasn't with me alone in those apartments, those endless apartments, by myself watching the TV late at night, ripped out of my gourd. She wasn't there. She wasn'T there when I took those pill bottles out of that medicine cabinet and tried to commit suicide. Depression? She doesn'T have a clue what that's about. Not like us. I'm not knocking her. The world doesn't understand. I'll never have my debt to this fellowship paid up. A completely different life? Uh-uh. What do I got to do? Get out of my head a little bit? Stay late? Help you out a littlebit? Give you some advice to make your day a little better? I can do that. And I don't have to go back to school to do it. All I've got to do is share my experience. The shit that I've already been through with a newcomer. Instantly bond. And that's what we do. That's what 12-step is about. You get with somebody brand new, you share a little of your story. They share a lot of their story. They see that you know what you're talking about. And then you... You a fisherman? Tell them, Ian, that's right. You set the hook. you tell them about the spiritual experience. You tell them about the 12 steps that will bring about a life-saving change. You with us? They may leave. They may stay. If they stay, you show them how to do it. You offer your service to them. I'll show you how to get from point A to point B quickly so that you can have this amazing experience with us. And then you can come help us help others. Y'all down with this? That's what we do. We're fishermen. That's all we do We don't have to chase the damn drunk. But we're going to have to go out of our way a little bit to explain this to them, to talk to them about it. We've got AA clubs all over Texas. Y'all don't do too much of that up here. A lot of people up in the north, they go to churches and they go down to basements. We've Got AA Clubs where everybody, all the old geezers sit in there with multiple years of sobriety and play dominoes and talk about women and blah, blah, bla. Look up every once in a while with one eye and see the door. A little newcomer comes in all kind of geeked out, freaked out, doesn't know what to do. Doesn't know if there's a meeting going on What meetings? Nothing. Looks around. I've watched it. Looks around, leaves. I don't worry about him. Alcohol will drag him back. No, no he won't come back. He'll go drink himself to death because you didn't stop your domino game and go get him because you didn't understand the full word of responsibility. That's my job. Sitting there at my AA meetings, talking in my little clique and my buds and all the guys and the homies and we're sitting talking just, you know... And a little newcomer comes to the door. I'm watching. I'm going to watch for about one minute and if my guys, the guys I sponsor, are not on him, they'll be hell to pay tomorrow. and I have every right to give it. See, we maybe have one shot at that newcomer. Let me ask you a question. A delegate once asked this. I heard a cat... When did it become totally acceptable not to tell the newcomer how to get well? at what point in our fellowship did it become acceptable not to tell the newcomer how to get well keep coming back that didn't tell me shit next time you're in your AA meeting your CA meeting, your crystal meth anonymous meeting your NA meeting, whatever meeting you go to. Sit in the back of the room. Get you a cup of coffee. Sit inthe back ofthe room and close your eyes and then listen. Then listen. Listen to that. Don't share. Just listen. If you were a newcomer sitting in that meeting, would you hear what you needed to hear? Would you hear enough to understand what was necessary in order to get well? Did you get pulled with a vision? Did you get enough hope drilled into you in that meeting to know what this was about? I tell you, in my own home groups, I have to think about it. I have TO THINK ABOUT IT. No. That's why I get outside myself when people want to send me emails and get pissed about me not talking about anything you want in a meeting. We're here for one reason. Primary purpose. That's what our traditions say. Primary purpose, to carry the message of hope to the newcomer. What's the message? The 12 steps. But we're not ever going to talk about it because we're too busy talking about everything else under the sun. Trying to be a junior, I get so sick of it. The junior therapists, they come out of the woodwork. Never forget being up in Ohio. I told them I'm talking Toledo the second time that they took me to Akron. And they did, it was the bomb. But they took us to this meeting and said, This is the best meeting you'll ever want to go to. This is a great meeting. And I walked in and there's the usual group of old geezers in there and they had their lilies there. Oh, this is so-and-so. She's been sober like 30 years. She's, I don't know if you remember how many, 20-something years. And so I'm sitting at this table. It's an open discussion meeting. Chairperson brings the topic. Fourth step. I says, hot damn, that's pretty good. We're going to talk about the fourth step in here. First lady starts off. She's got this resentment against her ex-husband. Fourth step, you with us? Great. Husband's pissed. She didn't bring the kids home one time. He's taking the kids. She's pissed, she feels like she's been shit on. She's wrong. She should have brought the kids home on time. You with us? Grow up. Own it. But we didn't talk about that. All the little junior lawyers came out. Well, this is what I think you should do about that Well, you ought to sue that son of a bitch. She's got no right to tell you nothing. You with me? Listen, I'm sitting here. Right side, some of you might have noticed I'm blind on one side. I can't. I heard this sound. I'm standing there listening. It was like... I looked next to me and this guy Slammed his head on the table He's from a treatment center And they bring him to this meeting every week And I looked up and I patted his little back And I said buddy are you okay He says he looked up one eye He says it's the same Every Saturday morning It's the sane The old poop in the back In your easy chair Sits up smoking cigarette We got 60 people in the room Everybody needs a chance to share, but she's got to finish smoking first. But she's Got the Floor. Puts the cigarette out. Well, this is what I'd do. I'd get me a good lawyer and I'd sue his ass. Oh, thanks. I'm coming unglued. You with me? The lady that brought the topic, the lady that came with the problem, she's going to leave with the same problem except she's gonna be armed with enough information to keep her a victim the rest of the day. She's justified. You with us? Nobody told her how to cowhide the cabbage. Nobody told here about the freeing steps. They told her about what to do legally like we're a bunch of lawyers in these meetings. We're not. We're not therapists. We're nicht doctors. How many times have we heard it in meetings over and over and over again? If you're taking antidepressants, you're not sober. Oh, doctor, I didn't know you were here. Each of us as sponsors get to decide if we want to sponsor people taking other medications. That's up to us. It's not up to me. It's up up to a person to tell a person to get off those meds. Shut up! You've got no right. You've Got No Right. We watch people die of it every year. Make sense? What's our primary purpose? Our primary purpose is not to fix your problem. Our primary focus is to get you connected to God so God can fix your problems. I've said it a thousand times. You with us? I want to read you something. Turn to page 129. Bottom paragraph. It's a great chapter and they're working with others. I mean, this is in a chapter called Family After. A lot of you guys skip it because it's about the women or something. I don't know why you skip it. There's some great stuff in there. Even if he displays, last few sentences, even if he display a certain amount of neglect and irresponsibility towards the family, it is well to let him go as far as he likes in helping other alcoholics. During those first days of convalescence, this will do more to ensure his sobriety than anything else. You with us? During those first days of convalescence, when you feel like dying, when you feeling like you're going to die, when you're feeling worthless, if you'll go reach out and help somebody else, you'll start feeling better about yourself. Make sense? Well, the book said in the first days of conralessence you need to go work with somebody else. But you've got this old geezer sitting over here 20 years sober telling you you can't work with anybody until you've been sober a year. You can't chair a meeting until you're sober six months. Why? How's a newcomer going to get involved unless we let them. I'm telling you, it's our responsibility to show people how to do this. You don't turn them loose. Here, you chair tonight. You pull up the chair next to him and say, buddy, let's chair this together. Let me show you how to chair a member, chair a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. You with us? Pick somebody to read the traditions. Pick somebody. Come on, I'll show you. I'll tell you how you have to do it. Do you got a little topic? Let's talk. Okay, help me out here. And they showed me how to be that. They showed me how to work with newcomers They gave us shit enough To show me, to teach me They didn't just turn me loose Y'all down with this? We start working with others folks We'll have less and less people relapsing Because you'll start feeling responsible I've never seen anything like it I'll never forget the first time A guy called me from a meeting I was about three months sober And I shared something I'm in the food business for years And I said something about cooking And this guy keyed on that and started talking to me after the meeting. He worked at a little fast food joint down the street, a little breakfast joint. And I'd seen him up there flipping eggs. And we talked about flipping eggs, for God's sake. But anyway, I gave him my number, and he called. Jan picked up the phone, this girl I was living with at the time, and she picked up, she says, it's for you. I said, who is it? It's the guy you met at the meeting tonight. Cool, here, get the... Oh! No. I'm not here. She said, yes, you are. You follow? I'm uncomfortable. She handed me the phone. Hey, bud, what's happening? And he's coming apart. He wants to drink and he's crazy. He says, can you come talk to me? And I said, well, yeah, I guess I could. He was down at the restaurant fixing to go before his shift. I said, I'll come down and we'll talk eggs. I don't know. I'll calm down. And I sat down. I took my little book and I went down. I said what do I say to this guy? He said, buddy, talk about your story. Tell him. Explain to him what happened to you. And I did that. This guy stays over a while and then ends up getting loaded. Don't know where he is tonight. The point of the story is I walked home and went back up to my little apartment and walked in the door and this girl that I was living with looked at me and she says, what happened to you? I was going to be gone 15 minutes and it was two hours later. But I walked in and there was a visible change in my demeanor. I was working with a drum. That's what happened. What happened to me? I was given back. Never been the same since. I've taken mountains of medication I've been in 10 years in therapy dealing with low self esteem I've stood in front of mirrors and told myself that I was a beautiful child of God and then turned right around and tried to commit suicide and I sat down with a guy and talked about my experience of drinking and what I did to get well and I saw this flicker of hope in this little guy's eyes and it changed me. And I realized for the first time why I survived the dumpsters, why I revived all the crazy shit I did so that I could help that little guy. You walk into an AA club sometime Man, freaking girl. You walk into an AA club sometime and look over in the corner and see a guy that you've sponsored and worked through the steps. You just talked to him last night about making some more amends and you're working him through, right? But he's got him a little guy cornered, right ? He's big book open and he's looking down. Now, listen here, buddy. This is an important part. I want to show you about this right here. You know what I'm saying? He's all lathered up and you can walk in and you could just feel the excitement in the room, you know, because he's fixing to set the hook here. He's telling them about the power and peace and the sense of direction that he's going to get as a result of working these steps. And you look over at the other little guy and you see a little flicker of hope in this guy's eyes. You know, he says, yeah, no shit. You mean I can wake up in the morning and then the obsession would be gone and I wouldn't want to smoke cocaine anymore or drink alcohol. That's exactly right. Yeah, that's the ticket. and he's all excited. The little guy that I worked with is working with this little guy. You see how it goes? And then this little guys catches fire and he starts working with that little guy We've got a group of guys the guys that I sponsorship in my lineage we do a little group every other Thursday called the Mad Dogs It's pretty good Because I was a mad dog drunk I drank like a maddog You know what I mean? I drank up the bar You know, I didn't sit on the I Mad dogs On a road less traveled We got t-shirts Only way that you can get in my group is to be in my sponsorship lineage because it's not AA. It's a men's accountability group. There are no women in there because I don't sponsor women. Men, guys I sponsor, guys he sponsors, you with us? There will be 40 of us in a room on every other Thursday. For one hour, we break into groups and we have an accountability. Where are you at in the program? We want to know. You've got two minutes to talk. Where are YOU at inthe program? What step are you working on? How many commitments you got? How many guys are you sponsoring? What are you doing about your health? You with us? And we're taking notes. How are you with the sex and the checks? Own it. Because we're going to write it down, and we're gonna hold you accountable. And if you come back two weeks from now, and you're still doing the same stuff, I'm working on six and seven. You're gonna have seven, eight guys in my little group that are gonna eat you one after another. It's like a little mini steel on steel, and we'RE gonna hold YOU accountable. and you have to sit there and take it undefended. The bomb. You ought to see what happens when they do it to me. I thought when we started doing this that they were going to let me off the hook. Chris is the pooh-bah. We're not going to hold him accountable. Chris, we need to be talking to you about something kind of important here. Notice that you've been kind of tired here lately with all this travel and blah, blah, bla. And we think maybe you might consider... I was pissed. I was so pissed. Who do you think you're talking to? I didn't say anything because you can't. it's undefended. I have to sit there and listen to these little pukes I sponsor hold me accountable. Oh man talking about humility oh that's the, how cool is that? It's the bomb. I got the formats I can show you. Any of you guys ever want to set those up? It's The Bomb. I'll show you Our job is to carry the message to the new guy If they want it, great. If they don't want it we don't chase after them, we go to the next guy Don't worry. There's plenty. We got an endless supply of people. And you know, guys, you don't have to just look at the detox centers. There are people in our own groups with multiple years of sobriety that are bone powder dry, miserable. You can show them how you got past it. Make sense? The spiritual malady can be treated by working the steps again. Hey, Chris. Yeah. How come you don' t sponsor women? Because I don't. You can't sponsor them? I won't sponsor them. I'm glad you asked. You want me to tell you why? It's not because I think anything goofy will happen. Two things happen when I sponsor a woman. We're an AA group and I start sponsoring her. Immediately, every mouth in this room starts to wag. Chrissy's banging some so-and-so. Here we go. You with us? And I'm not. I have a wife at home and she understands that my heart is in this fellowship. But at 2 o'clock at night when she calls and I'm in the living room having a little chat with her, all purely honorable and you with me? It makes her uncomfortable. It's not fair to her. You can do it if you want to. I'm not saying don't do it. I know lots of men that sponsor women. I'm saying the other thing it does, it takes away another's gift of that woman. If I sponsor, another woman can't sponsor. And that's the problem with so many of us. Women, I hear it all the time. I relate better to men. no shit let me translate that for you you manipulate us well I never knew a woman yet that couldn't run rough shot on me all they gotta do is start that crying stuff and I'm okay forget it you're right we're pushing this too fast don't worry about it they need to learn cause I had a tough time You know who I had a tough time with when I got sober was men. A little skinny guy. I've never been a big sports nut, football guy. I never had much to... I was an artist all my life. I was fascinated by music and art. I was a sculptor. You know, in my head anyway. And you know what I'm saying? And I related more to women. That's who I hung around a lot. And what I had to do was get in the room with a bunch of hairy-legged boys and learn. And those are my mentors today. I've got men mentors. Some of you all in this room will continue to be my mentors. But they'll be people that I will talk to because you've had the experience. I know how to stay sober 19 years. I don't have a clue how to stays sober 20. Some of your guys in here are going to show me how to do that. Make sense? That's the only reason I don' t. I know a lot of people that do. My sponsor does and has for years, but I just don't Because, mostly because of Patty. I don't want to freak her out. Cool? And because I might have sex with him. Okay. I know. The hour is late. Y'all have been great. I want to say a couple of quick things, and I'm out. I'm over and out. The question is asked often. We've all talked here, and I'm sitting up here from this podium and watching you guys nod your head. A lot of y'all are in agreement with most of the stuff we've talked about, especially the need to go do good, strong 12-step work and to carry a clear-cut message of hope in our meetings. Everybody seems to be on the same page there. The question is, how do you do it? A lot of you guys, you'll end up listening to CDs I've done and other speakers. And then you go into meetings like gunslingers and you want to eat somebody's butt. You follow? And that's not how to do it. A lot us in this room that I've had a chance to share with. I mean, so many of y'all know this book well. We have enough information to be quite dangerous at times. You're with us? I mean you can't go into a meeting and hear somebody not misquote the book. And, of course, in our attempt to be helpful, I want to correct you. Well, that's not exactly what that says. And if I do it in the wrong tone, I can do more damage than I do good. You follow? The problem is not... If I have a format that allows us to say anything we want to say in a meeting, then I can't complain when a newcomer or an old-timer says anything they want to stay in that meeting. The fourth tradition allows us... We're autonomous except in matters affecting other age groups as a whole. We can set up our formats any way we want. What happened was, in the 70s, after that Grapevine article, we got in this rut of this idea that the only acceptable meeting is the open discussion format. We need to stop it. We needs to start going to some of these meetings. In Dallas, Texas, there's over 1,500 open discussion meetings a week. You with us? If you want to go to literature-based meetings, my last count was about 25. five. Make sense? So if you want to go study the literature, you've got to go look for one of those meetings. If you wantto go talk about your stupid divorce again, you can go to, I mean, they're everywhere. We need to change our formats to some of these meetings. We need to go back to the original premise. Early days of Alcoholics Anonymous, the meetings were divided into like two main things. We had speaker meetings where somebody got up from the podium and shared their terrible war story and we got to identify and bond. You with us? And the other were step studies where we talked about the actual work. How do we do this? How do мы go do a proper 12-step call? What are these traditions about? What is acceptable? You follow? Literature-based meetings. We didn't sit around and talk about our problems. Now that's documented. Today, we need to go to group consciousness. Some of you guys, you say, well, I need to get courage and go in there and tell those people they're wrong. No, you don't stop setting yourself up for a butt whipping how are they wrong they're doing just what they were taught you need to go to group conscience and you need a powerful case of returning to the literature to that group conscience. And I'm going to tell you your experiences like mine you won't have any problem changing a bunch of those open discussion meetings back to literature based meetings we don't need to get rid of people misquote me all the time You're saying we need to get rid of all those open discussions. I'm not either. A lot of y'all like those. A lot people benefit from those. Some open discussion meetings where we can talk about our day, I think that's a great idea. The book says we set aside one night a week to go talk about our problems. That's a good idea. That's such a great idea. One night a week. Preferably the night that the Sopranos are on. So that we can go. Those are great meetings to go troll for newcomers because that's where all the newcomers end up going. But guys, for the rest of the week, can't we have a few literature-based meetings? The topic in our meetings, we've set format up at the Ingram Solution Group. We've got a format. It says clearly. We read the preamble, the open or close meeting, and we say this is not a dumping ground for your problem. Please feel free to come before or after the meeting if you just need to talk. but during the hour we're going to be talking about the topic being presented out of the first 164 pages of the book and it's the responsibility of this chairperson to make sure it stays on that topic. We have a bell ringer we're gonna ring it. Everybody gets five minutes to share. If you get off topic or talk longer than five minutes, the bell ringers will ring a bell. We got that straight out of a Grapevine article. It works great everybody gets the bell rung on them once and then they're sharing and watching the clock because it's embarrassing When it happened to me, I said, like, I can't believe it happened to me. But you start paying attention You start paying attention to what you're saying Come on guys, anybody that talks longer than five minutes they're rambling anyway, they're repeating themselves They're saying the same thing over and over And what makes you think that what I've got to share is more important than what you've gotto share We've got 40 people in the room I want to hear from as many points of view as we can The chairperson brings a paragraph or two as a topic, maybe one line maybe one word, and that's what we talk about. How are you experiencing this in your life? What do you think Bill Wilson was talking about here when he wrote this down for us? And over a period of weeks, months, and years, we get a chance to study the whole damn book. It is a cool thing. More of those and we would be a lot better off, folks. What you got? I just want to say before I end that I believe I can hear God's Word and His love for me. Bless you. Bless your heart. What a kind thing to say. I just want to thank you because in my six months over, there's only very few times that I felt alive with such hope and power. And I have that today. Bless you for that. What a nice thing to stay. You can thank this group because that's where the power comes from. Let's go to group conscience. Let's change some meeting formats. Let's watch the tone of our voice when we're sharing in meetings. Remember, love and tolerance is our code. We're not there to beat anybody up with a big book. If somebody makes an ass of themselves in a meeting, we ask them to come outside, talk to them before or after the meeting, and perhaps share a better way that they could have shared, a better ways that they would have done things. There's no reason to go into meetings and embarrass people. Make sense? Let's be loving and kind to the newcomer that may not know what to do. We are teachers. You with us? I'm going to read it. Some of you all heard me read this before. When I talk about 12-step stuff, I can't help but do it. It's great. It floated around the Internet for years. It's called A Drunk Fellow in the Hole. And I think it sums up what we've talked about. And I'm gonna read this and then close and be out of here. I'mma try to do it without crying. A drunk fell in a hole and couldn't get out A businessman went by The drunk called out for help The businessman threw him some money And told him to get himself a ladder But the drunk couldn't find a ladder In the hole he was in A doctor walked by And the drunk said, help me I can't get up I can not get out The doctor gave him drugs and said, take this It will relieve the pain. The drunk said, thanks. But when the pills ran out, he was still in a hole. A renowned psychiatrist rode by and heard the drunk crying for help. He stopped and said, how did you get there? Were you born there? Were you put there by your parents? Tell me about yourself. It will alleviate your sense of loneliness. So the drunk talked with him for about an hour. Then the psychiatrist had to leave. And he said that he'd be back next week. The drunk thanked him. But he was still in the hole. A priest came by and the drunk called for help. The priest gave him a Bible and said, I'll pray for you. He got down on his knees and prayed for the drunk and then left. The drunk was very grateful. He read the Bible, but he was still stuck in the whole. Recovered alcoholic happened to be passing by. The drunk cried out, hey, help me. I'm stuck in the hole. Right away, the recovered alcoholic jumped in the hole with him. The drunk said, what are you doing? Now we're both stuck here. The recovered alcoholic said, it's okay. I've been here before. I know the way out. That's our only answer, folks. we're the only people that know the way out we've got to turn around and use that power that God's given us to help the next little knucklehead y'all have sure been wonderful thank you very much Thank you.