His Sponsor Said the Miracle Is Your Life Won’t Be Run by an Idiot Anymore – Sandy B.

My name is Bob Darrell and I am an alcoholic because of God's grace that I've accessed and maintained through the program and fellowship Alcoholics Anonymous. I haven't had a drink or anything else to treat my alcoholism except AA since Halloween 1978 and for that I owe AA my life. Good morning. Somebody would mention before the meeting that said there's not that many people showing up. I'm surprised anybody shows up for a traditions workshop. You know, I understand it. When I was new, I don't think I would have got traditions. It's funny, last year I did a workshop on the traditions at a conference in Chicago and they builded spiritual principles in relationships and 900 and some people showed up. Because you know how we are, traditions, I want stuff that has to do with me. Oh, I'm in love with Alcoholics Anonymous. And how could you not, if you're involved and you're making amends and you'RE repairing the damage and you'Re getting your parents and people in your life back and youRE fixing those impossible irreparable relationships through this amazing process in AA and you´re returning to society and you''re sponsoring people and you are watching them, homeless guys buy their first house and guys that were so depressed and alone they'd never be free and they're sponsoring guys in the lights on and you walk guys down the aisle and watch them have their first kid and you watch what happens I had a mother come back into my life that I loved her always did and a sister and a father all through Alcoholics Anonymous this. How could you not love the thing that's making that possible? I mean, how could you not really? And I got the things that I've seen happen in the guys lives that I sponsored guys that I have some of I've been in guys that have been in my life, some of them over 25 years. But it wasn't always that way with me. I came here, I was so self-obsessed. I think I was in AA six months before I realized there was anybody else here except me. No, I mean really, because it was all my stuff. It was like you were just cardboard cutouts for me to throw things at, you know, in my life. And then I started to connect with some of the people here and and realized that they were i started to identify and realize that they were like me and i started care about the things that were going on in their life and then i started sponsoring guys and my my consciousness expanded out off of me and eventually into to the fellowship alcoholics i really i belong to a home group and i really care about the people there. Some of them annoy the hell out of me, I'll tell you, but I care about them. And if there's nobody in AA annoying you, you're not going to enough meetings. I mean, you are not doing nothing. You are just sitting at home. But how else do we learn love and tolerance and how to deal with that stuff really? And you know, I'm not an expert on anything, probably except my own failure. But I'm going to try to share a little bit about my personal experience in the application of these principles and I'm gonna do a little bit and then Sandy's gonna tie it up and I tell you, I'm so and I don't want to embarrass Sandy because if I was, it would have reversed or embarrassed me, but I want to tell you God has gifted him with an ability to communicate the things that people like me think and I feel since my early sobriety I've listened to him talk many, many, many times and I've always just this is one of my favorite guys to listen to. I kind of feel like starting this I feel like the garage band opening for the Rolling Stones you know that's enough I'm not going to embarrass him anymore that's it you know some of you might be wondering well why what's the big deal Why do we have to have these traditions, these rules, this stuff? And if you know anything about the history of Alcoholics Anonymous, and it took me a while to even care about it, but I started as I fell in love with AA, I started to want to know about how we got here. What happened? And most of you know the story of Bill and Bob meeting in the Cyberling Gatehouse in 1935, May and how Bill had been sober almost six months with no success. And he'd had a talk with a guy named Dr. William Silkworth before this trip to Akron. He got a little new idea and he started a new approach and he was he started sharing with this washed up proctologist a guy that I have always identified with matter of fact that when Bill wanted to talk to him, he couldn't talk to him at the moment. He was taking a nap under the dining room table. You've got to love a guy like that, you know? You really do. I'm under the booth taking a lap kind of guy. You know, I'm just that kind of guy. I understand that. And they finally met the next day and Bob's son and I became very good friends. He's He died a while back, and he was a great man. I used to love to sit in rooms and listen to him tell the story of Ann, Bob's wife, dragging him in the car, and the kid Smitty's sitting in the back and taking him to see this Yankee, and you know what? He don't want some Yankee telling him about his drinking. He's had people preaching to him about His drinking for years, and he walked in there and an amazing thing happened he said to him 15 minutes I want to get out you got to get me out of here 15 minutes that's it I'll take it for 15 minutes we came out 4 hours later almost because he went in there and Bill Wilson did not talk to Dr. Bob about Dr. Bobs drinking Bill Wilson talked to Dr., Bob about Dr., Bobs drink and Bill just sat there and his defenses were down because he wasn't being talked at. And for the first time, he connected with another human being. And he was enthralled with the whole prospect. And Bill had these principles that were kind of, he was trying to flesh out what would eventually be the 12 steps. And there was about six of them at that time. And he loved them all. He loved the God thing. He loved The God Deal. He loved Confession of Shortcomings. He loved helping others. He wasn't big on this amends thing, though. I mean, it just seemed a little extreme. He kind of dug his heels in. You know, you've got to understand, Bill, I have almost ruined my reputation in this town already. And he wouldn't do that. He dug his hills in. Consequently, he drank again. And he came back from a medical convention so drunk that the conductor didn't know what to do with him. They laid him on the platform at the Akron station off the train. And his office manager came down, and they eventually ended up back at the Ardmore house. Bill was living there, staying there because he kind of – Bill wasn't real flush financially. It was just convenient that Bob got sober, actually. And he came to on what most historians believe was the morning of June 10th, 1935. And he came to like I've come to off of an extended drunk, you know, with the shakes and wanting to jump out of my skin and just in the anguish and the remorse and just falling apart. And he said, what day is it? And they said, well, it's June 10th. And he says, no, no. It can't be June 10. And he had a surgery to perform on the morning of June 10, and Dr. Bob's a proctologist. He can use your imagination of what kind of surgery it might have been and he's shaking like this. Imagine being the patient, laying on the gurney, watching your doctor come in. And Bill gave him his last drink and sent him into the surgery. And he gave him this last drink and a sedative because he didn't know what else to do. I mean, the guy was coming apart at the seams. He went into that surgery and performed that operation. We don't really know what happened to the patient. We know he lived. And I have a friend who spent his whole sobriety, 20-some years trying to be an historian and went back to the Akron Hospital, actually looked through the records, trying to find more information about this guy. Wanting to know what happened to him. And I'd like to know. I mean, we know he lives. But, I mean did he whistle when he walked or what? I mean we don't know. We don't how that went. We just know the guy lived. And Dr. Bob came out of that surgery late that morning and disappeared. and Bill and Ann thought he'd probably went and got drunk. He came home just about midnight and something was different about him and he went out and he searched out every person he could find that he was afraid to approach and approached them and started to mend that separation between him and those people and get free and consequently Dr. Bob Smith never drank again the rest of his natural life And low estimates is that he personally helped 5,000 people. And how many people did they help that helped people, that helped people, and I think most of us are sitting in this room indirectly as a result of this man, the second member of Alcoholics Unarmed is finally getting sober. And they started doing 12-step work and eventually Bill went back to Akron and the fellowship didn't grow very much. As a matter of fact, in 1939, which is four years later when the big book was published, which was a turning point in AA, one of them, they say in the foreword to the first 100 members, it wasn't really 100. It's low estimate 70-some to 83. It was kind of in there. Historians have really tried to research that. I know guys that give you different figures. But it wasn'T really 100, But he said 100, and I know why he said 100, because I'm that kind of guy. You know, I would have said 100. That was better. I mean, it's not lying. It's creative. I mean... I have that kind of disposition myself. And AA hadn't grown too much, and they published the big book, and some people came in as a result of that. I remember hearing a guy, when I first got sober from California, one of the earlier members talk about how they got sober off the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous in California because they didn't have a connection with New York and Akron and different parts of the country where that happened. So the big books started, the fellowships started growing. And then a couple things happened. There was a baseball player in Cleveland who was interviewed and he mentioned that he was sober in AA and it changed his life. And all of a sudden the Cleveland group of Alcoholic Anonymous This was inundated with just, they were swarmed. And then the thing that probably put us on the map, one of the things anyway, was that there was a guy named Jack Alexander who was an investigative reporter, a no-nonsense kind of guy, a guy that couldn't be bought off, a guy with no crap. And somebody said to him, you know, look at this AA thing. And he said, yeah, there's got to be a scam going on there somewhere. Somebody is getting a toaster for helping these people or something, right? And he was one of those kind of go in and dig out the truth kind of guys. He exposed a minister and he exposed some corruption in one of the unions. And he's that kind of guy. And he went in there and he went to us and he started looking at us. to his, I imagine in his business, delight and amazement that we weren't anything that he thought he'd find. We were exactly what we said we were. There was nobody here profiting from this, that we just were people who were dying of alcoholism that knew that we had to help others for fun, as Chuck used to say, for fun and for free. And he wrote this article in the Saturday evening post One of my sponsees gave me an original when I have it at home, and it's an amazing article. And Alcoholics Anonymous was flooded with requests for help, flooded. There was a gal in California, I think Larry probably knew her, that I'd met on several occasions, named Sybil. She's one of the first women in A&A to ever get sober, at least the first one west of the Rockies. And she came to Alcoholics. The Alcoholics Anonymous at that time was so flooded with requests for help that when she got to AA, she had not even done shaken yet. And they gave her a stack of letters from women and told her to go out and start helping. And Sybil never drank again the rest of her life. And AA started growing. And with its growing came a lot of growing pains and a lot of insanity. and people were, there was huge bickering going on and one little group's having judgments against another group and you know, we're doing it. The Akronites had it right and the New York people were crazy and the new york people didn't thought the Akron people were backward and their day is gonna never get anywhere unless they change and a lot of bickery and a lotta stuff going on And a lot of, there was a, they had no traditions. They had no principles. It was just, they were everybody shooting from the hip. All they have is the steps. There was, I have a letter, and I bring it with me at home, written in 1941 by the, it's from the Executive Committee of Alcoholics Anonymous in the Los Angeles area, written to a woman by the name of Irma Livoni. And one of the guys that signed it was a guy I knew, Al Marino. He died years ago. He was at one time one of them. I don't know, one ofthe older members of AA still alive in the California area. And in this letter, they revoked Irma's membership in Alcoholics Anonymous. this. And I talked to Sybil's daughter, who Sybil had told, used to tell the story, and they revoked it because Irma liked men. She liked all kinds of men. Single men, married men, she didn't care. She didn't like men.She was very flirtatious, and they thought, this is a travesty. This is going to ruin alcoholics. And they revoke their membership. I mean, some of the most dynamic women in AA that I know were not, they wouldn't have been allowed to be here. I mean. I'll tell you, if my daughter ever ended up an alcoholic, she is so far so good. But if she ever did need help, I'd probably send her to one of those fallen women. I just, you know, we are not saints. And weird stuff started happening like that, and there's all this craziness going on. And a guy from the Carolinas wrote a letter submitted to the Grapevine, and Bill saw it, and he talked about the Washingtonians, and Bill had never heard of the Washingtonian, and he did some research and he discovered that there was a group And it started in Maryland in the mid-1800s. And without public transportation or telephones or any of the modern stuff that we have today as far as communication, just one alcoholic trying to help another. In just a half dozen years, they grew to tremendous proportions. It's really unclear how big they actually got. Some people say that the low estimates are 100,000. You know, in six years, AA was barely over 100. High estimates are maybe close to a half million or quarter million. Nobody knows for sure, but they were huge. They grew so fast and they started all this bickering and confusion and they stated back and other stuff. One of the worst things they did is they started getting involved in the temperance movement and within not even, They didn't even make the decade, and they fell apart. And here, Alcoholics Anonymous in the mid-1940s is a decade old, and we're falling apart, and we'RE dying, and Bill's scared, and there's people getting drunk and craziness happening. And Bill thought, my God, this is the same. We're doing the same thing. And in the history of the human race, there's never been anything like us. We have existed the longest to this date, and more alcoholics have been able to find lives as a result of alcoholics than anything in human history. And Bill, we're losing it. would have fallen apart, and he wrote a set of what he called originally the Tenets to Ensure AA's Future, which later became known as the Long Form. They weren't known as Long Form at that time because there was no Short Form. I mean, they were just the – it was the deal. And for the next couple years, Bill tried to get the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous to adopt them or at least to read them in the meeting. He couldn't even get people to read them. And I understand why. I mean, they read them at my home group once a month. And the problem with what's now called the long form is that they're long. I mean they're very – they read him at the beginning of the meeting. They're long, and in my home groups, every first Thursday when they read it, you watch the newcomers roll their eyes. You know, and I understand the early members. Ah, we don't want to read that. That's taking away too much time that should be used with stuff to do with me, right? I understand that. I'm perfect on that. I get it. I get It. I get I get But we're in trouble and there's pressure on and Bill eventually some guys started throwing out some ideas on how to abbreviate them. One of the guys was a guy from the early grapevine, and the pressure was on. And Bill agreed to be part of this abbreviated version and to put out hoping to get people to at least read them. And they started publishing them in a series of grapevine articles. And in the 1950s, they created a conference, which has become our international one. They created it to cement or try to put the traditions in place in the fellowship. And as a result, we are still here. As a result in 1978, when I was standing on a bridge trying to get up enough courage to take my own life, there was somewhere for me to go. The result was that when the student was ready, there were still teachers breathing. And my life got saved as a resolve of it. And I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, and after a while here, I started to get into these traditions. The first time I really looked at them was I was in a meeting, and I did something, and some old-timer jumped on me. That's against the traditions. I don't even know what the traditions are. But I'm going to find out because if anybody is going to be jumping on somebody, it's going to beat me. I'm the kind of guy that the cat scratches me, and a week later I kick the dog, right? I'm that kind of person. Right. So I want to be the guy that says, hey, you're not, you know, and I don't want to get no more flack. So I will start learning. I started reading about the traditions and I got involved in general service and started going to a lot of panels and workshops on the traditions. And I started to really see the amazing spiritual principles that are embodied in this. You know, I think that there's a cause and effect in the universe. I think that when the spirit of an individual gets sick, everything in his life follows along. And when the Spirit of a group or a business or a family or a committee or anything, the Spirit gets sick and everything else involved with them follows along? And I think the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are designed to save my life and keep me from killing me, and these traditions are designed to keep us from killing each other. It allows us to function and get along here. And I've tried to apply these. I sold a business, successful business, did very well. Sold it, retired very comfortably young a couple years ago, and that business was run by the Twelve Traditions. You could talk to the members of my staff who are still working there today that some of them are working for the new owners. And they don't know what they're called, but they know the principles because we used to talk about them in staff meetings a lot, about common welfare, about our purpose, about putting principles of the business ahead of our own personalities and what we want. And I believe that that business did well because of those traditions. I started realizing that the traditions are set up a lot like the steps. In the 12 steps, the problem is defined in step one, lack of power and an absolute inability to manage anything worthwhile in here, drunk or sober. I can't fix me. And as you go through the process of the 12 steps, by the time you get to step 12, the solution has occurred. And what is that solution? You've had an awakening. Something's happened to you. And the same thing is true with the 12 traditions. In the first tradition, the problem is defined in a lack of unity. It said in the short form, it says our common welfare should come first. personal recovery depends upon AA unity. I was in a halfway house in 1976, early 77, and I had a running mate in there, a guy that we hated AA. We'd go to AA meetings and we'd sit in the back and judge everybody. You've got to have a running partner if you want to judge properly. You need to get that torque on the personalities. We would sit back there talking, I like this guy's full of crap, you know, just all that stuff. Really a bad influence, a disruptive force, and we were both on marijuana maintenance. We knew we can't drink. I mean, we are, it kills us, yeah, yeah. But we got to do something. And I drank again. And I drunk again and got thrown out of that place. And I'm living on the streets like an animal. And I've got hair down to here, and it's matted, and I've It had a long, pre-ZZ top beard and twigs and stuff and all the natural. And I would go back up to the place I was thrown out of to panhandle nickels and dimes for another bottle of Richard's Wild Irish Rose. And the guy that was my running partner came out one morning and saw me and he gave me a couple dollars in a look that cut me, a lookthat we all see from time to time, And that look that's a combination of pity and contempt. You know that look? I hate that look. If I go through the rest of my life and never see that look on another human being's face, I'll tell you I'm overpaid in AA. And unbeknownst to me, this snapped his sky seeing me because what I guess he saw is he saw his near future coming at him. And I was pathetic. and he went and got a sponsor not just a sponsor he got one of those fanatical step-talking, grateful for everything God-loving guys the ones that just make you crazy you're sitting there belligerently in a state of untreated alcoholism oh, you just hate those people and he got on board one of these guys he changed his sobriety date started getting involved in alcoholic science now I don't know any of this but later on that year I'm in an institution And I'm sitting in the day room waiting for the do-gooders from AA to come in, like they always show up. And he's coming, he's leading the pack. And he has two guys he sponsors with him. And something is different about him. And he is real involved in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I got it that he was recovering and is recovering because he became a part of you. and I didn't it was later on in my my last drunk I came off of it somehow I don't know where this came from somewhere inside of me I knew I had to be a part of you I got it that my personal recovery depended upon me being unified with you and a part of you that I could not stand alone And the bad part about that for me is that there's only one thing I really don't like about AA. It's it's got people in it and I don't Like people. I'm awkward around people. I feel uncomfortable around people I try to fit and end up saying stupid things. I just I'm you know, I'm not a good I'm like good with people. I'm good by myself. I think I'm crazy, but I'm all right. But I had to become a part of you and I had to start joining you and doing everything that you did. And oddly enough, as I did everything you did, I started to feel like you felt. I started being connected like you were connected as a result of taking the actions. And I think that at the core of my malady is a lack of unity. I drank alcohol because I didn't fit. I never was connected. I had an inability sober to integrate myself in groups of people and I felt when I would sober up, I'd feel like I was dying of loneliness until I would return to drinking again hoping to be able to come out and play and feel like a part of and laugh and have a good time and be all of that stuff. I drank to fit. I drank because of a lack of unity And Carl Young, who was mentioned in AA literature several times, very influential actually indirectly in some of AA's pieces of the puzzle coming together to allow us to be here. Carl Young in a letter to Bill Wilson that he wrote in the early 60s right before Carl passed, he said to Bill Nelson that he always believed something that he had been afraid to tell Roland Hazard. But he believed that based on his experience in dealing with alcoholics, that he always believed that the alcoholic's thirst for alcohol was a low-level thirst of his being for unity, for connectedness to be a part of. Or as expressed in religious medieval terms, a union with God. I drank for connectedeness. There were times in my early drinking, man, where I'd get half lit up and I was so a part of. Man, I'm the guy. There were time not only was I connected to a group of people, there were moments where I would get connected to the universe. Just remember those evenings where you just about 3 o'clock in the morning and you can finally see the big picture. And you think to yourself, oh, this is what Buddha saw. You know, remember that? You just feel plugged in, man. Plugged in. I'd say at 3 o'clock in the morning, I'd save stuff and blow my mind. Just a hug. I drank for unity. And that's really a lack of unity is the problem. It's a problem in my personal life. It's an alcoholic synonymous. It was a problem with my business. It's problem in relationships. If there's a problems in a relationship, it's usually this. And so we start through the process that's designed to fix this, to treat this lack of unity, this disconnectedness that we can have as a fellowship or an individual or as a family or as business or wherever you apply these spiritual principles. Tradition number two is an amazing tradition. AA is so unlike anything else in the world. And it says, for our group purpose, there is but one ultimate authority. A loving God as he may express himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants. They do not govern. Alcoholics Anonymous is the only place I know where you come in a big shot and you grow up to being a servant. Right? Everywhere else it's the other way. Every place else. You come in, you scrub the floors, and eventually you're the boss. And newcomers come in, they're the boss. They know what's wrong with everybody. They know it's out of check. And if you're lucky and you apply this stuff, you eventually will become a servant. You'll eventually fall in love with this thing and you just want to help. How can I help? You need someone to do the chairs? You need somebody to go on a 12-step call? What do you need? And, you know, we have guys at my group, they come up to me because I'm visible which bothers me sometimes but there's new guys that come in and they're looking for who's in charge who's to charge and if you give them the right answer they just look at you well God yeah come on who's really in charge because you want to get the new you want find that guy and kind of get up next to him see how you can get his spot you know I mean Larry and I were talking about this in the restaurant last night about this vying for control and AA. It's a very disrupting, disunifying deal. Power struggles in Alcoholics Anonymous. Our ultimate authority is a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. And an informed group conscience, I believe, is infallible. It might not always be your way, But it's the way of something or some force that is greater than us. And isn't the essence of surrendering to AA giving up your way for a greater purpose and a greater ethic? I had a guy that I sponsored, he was sober 21 years, and when he was about 18 years sober, about 17 years sober. He came to me and he was just frazzled. He had one of those days where nothing's going right. And he just wants to, you know, all those kind of days where he wants to explode. He's just uptight. And we started talking and he says, man, I just hate it when I get like this. I said, yeah, I know. I said I hate that feeling that you get when you're not getting your way. He said, Yeah, man. I know, I Know. I said well, I think you're sober long enough to hear this. I can tell you how you will never feel that again. how you will never feel that anxious conflict of not getting your way again. And he lit up, he said, really? I said, yeah. He said, what, what? I said just don't have a way. He looked at me like, oh. That's true. Don't have away. Subjugate your way to the way of a power greater than yourself. Maybe it starts with your sponsor, who is like God's lieutenant until you actually connect with something. Tradition number three. You know, this thing about our leaders are betrusted servants. I don't know why I remember weird things from my childhood in school, but one of the pieces of English literature I remembered is after I got an A.A. and I hadn't gone back and read it or anything was Milton's Paradise Lost. And there's a part in there where Lucifer has literally cast himself out of heaven by his own will. And as he's leaving, he's shaking his fist at God, the angels of heaven. He says a classic line. He says, I'd rather reign in hell than serve in heaven. And I don't know about you, but when I'm reigning, it feels like hell. And when I am serving, it feel like heaven. And the whole difference between your experience in Alcoholics Anonymous, or I think anywhere, is are you a guy that's trying to reign or a guy that's time to serve? And man, if you try one week, you try to be a rainer, at the end of that week, this ain't no good. And if you tried to be servant, at that end of the week, yeah, this is the deal. Tradition number three, and I want to talk a little bit about this in the long form, I don't know. I don' t want to get into an opinion, but I' ll come up with an observation. I think that something changed in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous when we walked away from the long-form and we adopted the short-form. The membership requirement became different, and consequently the flavor of the fellowship altered a little bit. and the original membership requirement as it's outlined in the original tradition the third tradition it says our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism hence we may refuse none who wish to recover from alcohol and it goes on talking about membership and conformity that never has to do with conformity or money and it's true But I'll tell you, in the short form, the membership requirement's different. It says the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. Let me tell you something. In my observation, there's a big difference between having a desire not to drink and suffering from alcoholism because the suffering from alcoholicism begins where the bag and the bottle ends. it's the restless the irritable, the discontent the low level depressions the feelings of misery and depression the feelingsof uselessness all the stuff it talks about in the big book page 52 and in the doctor's opinion and throughout that whole book it's a description of how guys like me what is alcoholism once I stop drinking what do I got to apply these steps to I'm an everyday member of Alcoholics Anonymous because I suffer from alcoholism. And in direct proportion to my involvement in this spiritual way of life, I don't even know it most time. I'm very comfortable in my life. But if I start diminishing my involvement in AA, I start to suffer from alcoholicism again. And it's insidious for me because when I start to suffer form alcoholism, I don't get it that there's anything wrong with me. What it looks like is there's just a lot of really out-of-line people around me, and they're irritating me, and I'm restless, so I need to straighten them out, which makes abstinence a lonely, lonely business. I'm an everyday member of Alcoholics Anonymous because I suffer from alcoholism. I didn't come here with a desire not to drink, really. I had a desire to stop hurting. A desire to start suffering. A desire that ended up in jail. A desire of having wine sores. A desire for feeling like I'm dying. A desire from being homeless. A desire getting away from this remorse and shame. But to stop drinking. If God would have come to me when I was new and given me one wish, I think I would have said, let me drink like I drank when I Was 18 years old again. Because then alcoholism was a treatment for my alcoholism. I came to AA and I'm an everyday member because I suffer from alcoholism And what happened, I think, in the fellowship as a result of the altering of the membership requirement is that we've opened the doors to anybody who might have a problem with drinking or even think that drinking is probably not a good idea. And everybody on the Atkins diet has a desire not to drink. They don't want the carbohydrates. I mean, and what happened is, this is my view, what seemed to happen in AA is that we now have a percentage of our fellowship that their alcoholism ended where the bottle ended. They don't suffer from alcoholism. They don'T really need the steps. And I know guys sober a lot of years, guys that are friends of mine that I like a lot, but they're a different type of alcoholism They don' t need a sponsor. They don''t need to help others. I mean, they think it's nice. they don't need to write an inventory a lot of them never work the steps and they're fine they're great social members of Alcoholics Anonymous their alcoholism ended where the bottle ended all they need to do is just don't drink that Nancy Reagan just say no thing kind of works for them and they come to AA because now that they're not going to the bars and the parties, they have a little social void in their lives, so they come to AA because they want to be with like-minded people on this drinking issue. And to them, Alcoholics Anonymous is like the sober elks or something. You know, it's a place where everybody's great, but their experience in abstinence is not my experience. I relapsed for seven and a half years because of untreated alcoholism because I suffer from alcoholism when I stop drinking. And the suffering from alcoholism is subtle, and it grinds away at me until one day in the face of overwhelming experience that the worst thing I could ever do would be to take a pill or drink or smoke something, and I'd do it again because I need relief because I suffer from alcohol. So I come to Alcoholics Anonymous, and the only thing I tell the guys, I sit with the guys I sponsor. Let's try to find out. Are you are you the guy that this book was written for? If you are, then your life's on the line here. You need to do this stuff. It's not I mean, if you don't, you're not going to stay sober. That is our experience. In fact, there's five, six places in this book. It tells you you'll drink again if you Don't do this or if you Don't Do that. I've seen and I spent the last almost 28 years at the end of this month in hospitals and institutions. It's my heart. And in Las Vegas, I'll tell you, there's not a week that goes by I don't see somebody that drank again after many years of sobriety. All from untreated alcoholism. Tradition number four, each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or AA as a whole. This is really where our freedom comes from. Every group has the ability to do anything as long as it doesn't reflect badly on Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, when it starts in the long form, it talks about, not in the fourth tradition so much, but it's in the sixth, it talks a lot about the importance of the alcoholics and it talks to us about our affiliation, that we can do anything we want as long As long as we don't apply, imply affiliation or endorsement of anything else. That's why an alcoholic psalmist can have any format, any group, any format they want. But when they start saying that this is a AA Bible study, that implies affiliation or endorsement of something. And I think that we have to hold the line or else what will happen is 20 years from now somebody will come into AA and they're not going to know what AA is. It'll be so – you know, and there is a solution. and it talks about the unifying force in AA is not so much our suffering as drinking, but that we have a common solution that we can unanimously agree on and enjoin in harmonious and brotherly action. That we should keep alcoholics synonymous, alcoholics anonymous. And I know there's a sentiment in the world in AA a lot that, well, it's all good. Well, I think the Washingtonians thought it was all good And the next time you want to go to a Washingtonian meeting, you'll have a hard time finding one. They don't exist anymore. I don't want my daughter's children, if they end up with that thing that I got, to have nowhere to come. I really don't. Tradition number five. Each group has but one primary purpose to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers. not only does every group have a primary purpose, I think as an Alcoholics Anonymous member, I do too. And I've watched groups in Alcoholics Anonymous that become inundated with the kind of good old boy thing and a lot of sociability, a lot of camaraderie, but they lose sight of why they're there. And those groups, the spirit of them changes. i i think a group of alcoholics anonymous is this this idea that came in here out about out of treatment centers that we're supposed to use aa for self-fulfillment or gratification as if as if a meeting should be my personal vehicle to to ventilate my feelings to take the whole group hostage on my personal problem is nonsense. It's the most self-centered, selfish approach to AA that a guy like me could ever have. Alcohol and synonymous exist to be a vehicle to help the new people. And I think every group that gets sick gets sick because they lose sight of their primary purpose. And when I was about 18, 19 years sober, I started getting sick because I lost my primary purpose here. And this frightening thing is I didn't even know I was losing it. And what happened to me happens to a lot of us. I got, I started reaping the rewards of a spiritual way of life. I started getting financially successful. I started owning a lot OF property, getting prestige, getting power or an illusion of I came back from a trip to Maui where I stayed at a four-star hotel on the beach and had an amazing time. I'd rented a Harley for the time I was there. I ate at some of the greatest restaurants. I came home, I sat in my house. I have a big house up on the hill that looks out over the city of Las Vegas. I had every toy I could buy. I had a brand new Jaguar, this model that just came out. I was the first one in Las Vegas to ever get one. I had a brand-new Corvette, a 740 IL BMW, two custom Harley Davidsons, enough money in my bank account that I'd never have to work again the rest of my life. And I was dying. And I don't know what's wrong with me. And I'm depressed. And I've just got my – no matter what, everything I look at in my life, it ain't no good. Now, I don'T know why it ain'T no good, it's just the shine has worn off of everything. And there's this big vacancy inside of me that keeps drawing my attention inward. So I'm sinking into a depression. And I don't know what's wrong with me. And I went, a guy in Alcoholics Anonymous said something to me. It snapped me. He said, you know, you still go to meetings. You're on your mouth a lot. He said but I don'T think your primary purpose is helping drunks anymore. He says, I think your primary purpose is you. And I thought, oh my God, when he said that. You know, they say the truth will set you free, but I'll tell you, it'll ruin your day first time. And he was right on the money. I don't know how that happened. How does a guy who spent his first probably 15 years of sobriety just on fire? All I cared about was helping other people and the business stuff was great, but I'm just doing a good job to be a good example. but my real purpose is to be of service. And then all of a sudden, incrementally now, my focus is me, my finances, my toys, my relationships, me, me. And I understood exactly what the problem was and I threw up my hands. And within a week, I got two or three new guys in my car. I've turned up the volume on my commitment to Alcoholics Anonymous and I'm back right in the middle again. And I never left. I never stopped going to meetings. But I'll tell you what, this is pathetic too, and I hate to even admit this, but I became the kind of sponsor that if you came up to me after a meeting and you had a problem and you're sharing with me your problem and want to talk about it, I'm just standing there going, yeah, yeah. As if you hurry up and get this over with so I can get back to the important thing, me. Right? I don't even know I'm that guy, but I'm not. I'm the guy. I had re-indated myself with self. And all of a sudden there was a whole bunch of me between me and you and a whole punch of me in the middle of the room. A whole buncha me between be and God. And no wonder I'm dying. I'm in the shadow. I've blocked the light. I put too much of me betwee me and God, I put to much of be between me an you. And I hope, I hope to God I never get back into that depth again I'm always going to have a problem with this self-centeredness but I hope