June G. – Step 12 – The Slow Educational Variety of Awakening – 2021

Hi, my name is June. I'm an alcoholic and thanks very much for inviting me and allowing me to be a part of your group tonight. And particularly in case there's anybody new and because I know that we have at least a couple of people who are visitors to Alcoholics Anonymous, I like to start out by saying the most important thing that I'll say the whole time, no matter how long you hang in there listening, because even today, I don't always listen to the whole meeting. I sometimes have to get back to thinking about myself or something, but I'm not an authority on Alcoholics Anonymous, on alcoholism, on step 12, which is the topic that I'll be talking on or really anything else certainly that I'd be talking about tonight. I'm just a member of AlcoholicsAnonymous and you know, there's a couple things I like people to be sure to know about Alcoholicsanonymous. Actually, I think that, you know just in the preamble that Rick read, you can really hear pretty much a very good understanding about what AlcoholicsAnalymous is, but it's really important to me because people come to Alcoholics Anonymous in so many different ways. And nowadays, so many people get sober through hospitals or, you know, different types of programs. And also, of course, still through families, through judges, through a lot of different things. It doesn't really matter to me how anybody gets here, but because it gets a little confusing, I would like you to know that AlcoholicsAnonymous itself is absolutely free. If Alcoholics Анonymous had not been free, I couldn't have come. And if it hadn't stayed free, I couldn't have stayed. I was over 10 years sober in Alcoholics Anonymous before I could ever afford to put a dollar in the basket, so it's really important to me, and I'm very, very grateful that AlcoholicsAnonymous is free and doesn't have any membership dues or fees. You know, I once talked at a meeting, and a guy came up to me afterwards and stood in a line to thank me, mainly probably because his sponsor was standing behind him and told him he should do that, I guess. And he shook my hand and he said, I wanted to thank you for your story tonight. He goes, I don't really believe it was your story, but I liked the way you told it. And that's one of my favorite things anybody ever said because it's such a tribute to Alcoholics Anonymous because I'd like to assure you that when I came to Alcoholic Anonymous, I looked exactly like my story and I look like my story for a long time after I got sober. And so it really is the tribute that someone could doubt I came from where I came from, but I used to live and act and feel the way that I used to. So I am going to talk on my on my topic, which is the 12th step. And I'm going to read that really quick, just so that you have some context of what you know, I'm supposed to stay focused on. But I'll also warn you that I'm very much like one of those dogs in a Disney movie. So if I see a squirrel, which could be any topic, I kind of drift off. So i'm sorry to tell you that. But i wanted to warn you about, you know up front so that you'll know. Step 12 is having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry the message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs. So I will get back to that topic, but I do think that for the sake of Alcoholics Anonymous, the way I've been taught, it's really important that I give you a little bit of reference of why I'm here, that I'm not just an intellectual professor that didn't have anything to do. So, I just dropped by to talk about what that step would mean, but to let you know that I am an alcoholic, that I'm one of the hopeless variety that it talks about in the book, in our doctor's opinion. And that alcohol saved my life actually. So I'm very, very grateful because life just hurt way too much for me. And I started to drink on a regular basis when I was eight years old and I didn't drink as long as many other people in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous did. it. But by the time I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I didn't have any place to live anymore. I didn'T have any relationship with my family. I dropped out of school in the seventh grade. I was pretty much incapable of really functioning. I DIDN'T know how to live, but I knew how to survive. But I was tired of surviving and I really just wanted to die. And I couldn't even do that. You know, I tried really hard to die before I got sober. I tried to take my own life, tried to put myself in a position where other people would take my life. And I really want it out. And you know, one more thing, particularly for anybody who's new or visiting, when I say that, you know I'm not a spokesperson for Alcoholics Anonymous, I believe the greatest strength or certainly one of them that we have in AlcoholicsAnonymous is that we are people who normally would not mix. So I guarantee you that if you go to 10 different meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, you could hear the widest range of different types of alcoholic drinking or alcoholism or the backgrounds. And so we do all come from different backgrounds. I did come from an alcoholic home, I did Come from a place with a lot of violence, and a lot of broken promises. And because of coming into Alcoholics Anonymous and not drinking no matter what, and beginning to do the things that were asked of me to do. Initially, those were really service positions, showing up on time and setting up meetings or being there early or doing greeting or whatever the commitments might be, none of which I thought were going to help or make any difference in my life. I mean, I came to Alcoholics Anonymous as many people do, completely broken. I hated everything about myself. I dated everything about my life, and quite honestly, when I got here, if they had said to me, June, if you continue to live like you are living and you keep drinking the way that you're drinking we guarantee you you're going to be dead in less than six months if they had told me that when I got here and promised me that I would have run out and kept drinking that's all I wanted I just needed a way out and alcohol wasn't working to give me that way out anymore and I couldn't stand living the way that I was living and so I was at jumping off place when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous But what they told me here, what I have seen and known to come to be true as I've watched other people, many of them very close to me in Alcoholics Anonymous, is that if you're an alcoholic of the type that we talk about in The Doctor's Opinion and in Alcoholic Anonymous. then it's going to get worse, never better. And that you or I have always believed I would be one of those people that could have gone on living for another 10 or 20 or 30 years continuing to drink and hate myself and hate everyone around me as I continued to live, you know, that isolated, lonely, pitiful life that I was living before I got sober. So I'm very grateful that they told me that and that I had better find something that could work. And interestingly enough, When I was drinking and looking for a way out, I loved finding out many years later that they were originally going to call the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous The Way Out. I'm very grateful that I have found a way up. It talks about in the back of our big book about Alcoholics Anonymous in the spiritual appendix, it talks about the fact that for most of us to recover, we need to have some kind of a psychic change or a spiritual awakening. We use a lot of different terms that somehow are sometimes synonymous. Some people might say they're not, but I think a lot of them are. And so I know for me that I have had that psychic change here in Alcoholics Anonymous by applying these principles. And I don't know exactly when it happened and I don' t know exactly how it happened. I just know that it happened, and I know that in my case it has been the slow educational variety. Again, we have different people. You know, if you ask someone to describe their spiritual experience and you called on every person in the Zoom or meeting or any other meeting, you could get as many answers as you call on different people. And I love that Alcoholics Anonymous allows that flexibility. You know, so for me, that spiritual awakening is almost kind of like I think about when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, it's almost as if I had, you know, boards that were kind of, like, nailed up and hammered against my windows, all the windows of my spirit and my life. And slowly in Alcoholics synonymous by showing up and not drinking and doing these service commitments and beginning to try and work these steps and these spiritual principles. It was like some of the boards got loosened. And so a little bit of light, you know, was able to come through. And then eventually some of the board's actually, you Know, I was able To take them down with the help of others, you know, and then it was like, I still had those heavy drapes, though, you know, it wasn't just a really quick experience. And then eventually, maybe I got to those like kind of feathery drapes that they sometimes have in a hotel. And if I don't practice the things that I need to do on a regular basis in Alcoholics Anonymous, I can go back to having those dark drapes and I can feel overwhelmed with life and with sadness. So it's really important that I stay current. And quite honestly, I had a really rough morning this morning. I mean, it wasn't the roughest morning I've ever had. And thankfully for me, it's been many, many years since I've thought of drinking or even killing myself as a solution, but it was a rough morning. And I love an Alcoholics Anonymous that I've learned through the old timers that came before me. I've learnt to start my day over, to just say, you know what? That was a rotten couple of hours and I don't want to do that the rest of this day. And, um, and I was able to literally start my day from then on and it's been better, you know. Um, but that doesn't mean that there aren't things that are going on, you know, in our life. And I believe that these steps and principles and the members of Alcoholics Anonymous and a sponsor, they help us keep going. Hopefully they help us laugh as well because I think that that's really important. You know, in the very beginning when you read step 12 in the 12 and 12, the very first line is the joy of living is the theme of AA's 12th step and action is the key word. Here we turn outward toward our fellow alcoholics who are still in distress. Here we experience the kind of giving that asks no rewards. And I do believe that these steps and that these principles are designed to help me stop, uh, to get relief from the bondage of self and to begin to think of others. You know, um, that's part of what the promises talk about, you know, for each of us. And I wanted to just tell you guys a few stories. You know, that's just kind of the way that I remember things and the way things that have mattered to me. You know when I got sober there was an old timer that used to talk about, he used to tell an Eskimo story. And so this story was, there was a guy and he was drinking in a bar, and he wasn't an atheist, and a religious man came in and was drinking at the bar with him And the atheist said to the religious man, he said, you know, I gave your God a chance one time, but he failed me. And that's why I've continued to be an atheist. And the religiousman said, well, what kind of a test? What kind of chance did you give God? And the atheists said, Well, he says, I was in Alaska and I was stuck in a terrible snowstorm. And I couldn't see which way to go. I couldn' t even tell which direction was up. And so I said a prayer to your God. and the religious man smiled and he said, well, you must believe in God because you're here. You got out of that snowstorm. And the atheist said, no, just some Eskimo came along and gave me a ride and saved me. It wasn't, you know, God and in Alcoholics Anonymous, I've been touched by a lot of Eskimos. Um, you Know, and actually when I look back on my life, even before I got sober, there were Eskimas in my life that gave me an opportunity, um, to go on one more day or one more hour. And, you know, the depth of commitment that people in Alcoholics Anonymous had in those early years when we first began, it's just it's absolutely unbelievable. You know, there's an old timer. Sure, a lot of you have heard him or maybe, you Know, heard his talk or, you know whatever name Tom Iverson and Tom's from North Carolina. And when Tom was 26 years old at the end of his drinking in a blackout, he killed two pedestrians and he went to prison for a long, long time. And while he was in prison, he was invited to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and he ended up going to that meeting and he got sober in that group. And he would say that that was one of the finest groups of Alcoholic Anonymous he was ever a part of. And that he learned there about the traditions and about the steps and about all these different principles. And while Tom was in that prison and in that group before he got let out, they made him the secretary after he'd been sober for a while. And back then, so this would probably be, you know, in the 50s, I'm guessing, I'M sure, as the secretary, he didn't have access to the phone as a prisoner. So he would write letters to members of Alcoholics Anonymous, inviting them and asking them if they would come and speak. and he wrote a letter to a guy named Johnny Snow. That's the way I remember it. It could be wrong, but that's theway I rememberit. And Johnny Snow was a Native American who lived on a reservation and Johnny Snow wrote back and said, yes, I'll come speak at your prison meeting. And the night before Johnny Snowwas supposed to speak, he left the nightbefore because it was 60 miles to that prison and Johnny snow didn't have a car and he was hoping he'd get picked up and get a ride but in case he didn't he left in plenty of time so that he could walk that 60 miles so that He could show up so that HE could be an example of what Alcoholics Anonymous had given to him you know and I remember you know hearing stories of the early members of AlcoholicsAnonymous you know they used to keep a row of coats at the meeting for the guys because Alcoholics Анonymous was mostly guys in those early days so that if they were asked to participate or if it was their birthday even though a lot of those guys didn't have their own sport coat. They would have them put one on before they would share in a meeting about Colics Anonymous and they would give them each a little bit, um, a little carnation to put in that little pocket, you know, in the jacket so that it would be a program of attraction. And so I try to remember when I'm asked to participate in a Meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, I try put a little extra effort in, you know, trying to be a Program of Attraction in how I look and how I present. It's maybe not the way I go to every meeting, but I try because I want Alcoholics Anonymous to be attractive to someone who's coming in and to know that this works, you know, and that I live completely differently because of Alcoholics Anonymous than I did before. I wanted to tell the story about Sybil, who was the first woman to get sober west of the Mississippi, and Sybil got sober in 1941. one, but before she got sober in her drinking, she was a mom. She was married and she had a daughter and she was married to a man. And Sybil was the kind of a drinker who she would go to try and get a quart of milk. And then she'd be gone for a couple of days. And she didn't want to be that kind of drinker. And her husband was not an alcoholic and he didn't like it. And he told her, he said, if you ever disappear again, he said I'm going to go to court. This wasn't even his daughter. You know, he had adopted this daughter, but he said, I'm going to go to court and I'm going to take your daughter away. And Sybil didn't want to lose her daughter. And she didn't want to act like that. And She didn't wanna be, you know, this kind of a woman that could be gone and leave her daughter and risk losing her daughter, But she kept drinking even when she didn't to, and she did it again. And came to one day and she was terrified that all of these things were gonna happen. And was shaking and was sick. And happened to, she went to a bath house to try and dry out and shake out. And while she was there, she got a copy of the article that had been written way back in 1941, the Jack Alexander article. And in that article, she was too sick to read the article about Alcoholics Anonymous, but there was that picture that we often see of two men sitting by a guy in a hospital bed. And so she wrote a letter to New York. She was in San Francisco actually at that point, even though she lived in Los Angeles, she'd come to in a different city. But anyway, she wrote a letter to New York and she said, please send your AA ambulance because I'm a sick woman alcoholic and I need to go to the hospital right away. And they wrote her back and they said, we don't have an AA hospital, but it happens that in Los Angeles, there's a meeting once a week on Friday night, and you should go to that meeting. And Sybil, as I said, she was very scared and she was sehr sich und sie war sehr bescheidert, of who she was. And she went to that meeting, but she was so scared. She asked her husband to go with her and he did. He went with her. And they went to that meeting. It was the mother group in Los Angeles in 1941. They showed up at that meeting and there were men and women outside there where the meeting was and they were all chatting and all of a sudden one man stood up and he said, all right, we're going to start the meeting. And all the women have to leave because they've never had a woman alcoholic. So all the women left, but Sybil didn't know that. And she just thought that they were so ashamed and horrified by the kind of person that she would have been to be an alcoholic. They didn't want her in there. So then they went into the meeting, but they took her husband in because he was a man. Now back then in Alcoholics Anonymous, there was this one meeting a week. There weren't very many roads even back then. And some of these people had driven maybe two or four hours just to get to the one meeting that there was in Southern California. They'd come from Fresno, they'd come from San Diego, Riverside, you know, wherever it was. And so the meeting did not just go for an hour. The meeting went as long as the meeting needed to go back in that day. And when they got in there, Sybil's husband told them that he wasn't really an alcoholic, but of course they'd heard that sort of thing before from a lot of people. So they kept him in there for a couple hours talking to him about denial and all the things that really, you known, were going on. finally after a few hours they let him out of the meeting where Sybil was sitting out there waiting and they ran out ofthe meeting and they left and Sybil took her husband home dropped him off at home and she went to the bar and started drinking and after she'd been drinking for a while she remembered that this letter had a phone number on it and so she called that guy one of the early members in Los Angeles named Cliff Walker and she called him in the middle of the night drunk and she said, I just want to let you know I'm going to report you tomorrow when I call New York and I'm gonna have you fired. And Cliff said, Sybil, we've never had a woman alcoholic. They asked you to leave because they asked the wives to leave because the husbands wouldn't be comfortable sharing in a meeting. So please come back next week and come back Next Friday. And he said, I'm not working and I'll be there and I will watch out for you. So now it was time for Sybil to go back while her husband was never going to another meeting again. He wasn't going to go get locked in that room again, and so Sybil mentioned to her brother that she was going, and Sybil's brother drank as much as Sybil did, but he wouldn't drink with Sybil because she always got him in a lot of fights, so they went to, they were going to go to that meeting the next Friday, and Tex was his name, and he was one of the great 12-steppers in LA, early AA LA history, started one of our first and oldest meetings here called The Hole in the ground later on but Tex worked on a farm he owned a farm and he said to Sybil he said you know a lot of these guys that are working for me they drink too much so he said I'm going to tell them they either have to go to AA with me next Friday night or they're fired. So Tex the next week he got his pickup truck and he put Sybil in the front seat and he Put about eight of the guys that work for him in the back and they went to the AA meeting there were more of them than there were sober members of Alcoholics Anonymous at the meeting because it was you know like I said early days. And Sybil came in and they went in there and they sat there for the whole meeting. And at the end of the meeting, the guy who ran the meeting was named Frank Randall. He stood up there and he started bringing in pillowcases, you know, pillowcases full of mail because after the Jack Alexander article, Alcoholics Anonymous got thousands of letters asking for help. And so in these pillowcases they had sorted them out and they had a pillowcase that was for Fresno and they had a pillowcase that was for Bakersfield. They had a pillowcase. That was for all the beach cities outside of Los Angeles, they had one for San Diego. And he was passing them out to the guys who had driven all those hours to get there. And at the very end, he had one pillowcase left. And he said, Sybil, come on up here. And she didn't want to she was shaking. She was really sick. Now he said now we have a woman alcoholic. And He said, Cybil, these are all the letters in this pillowcasethat we got from women alcoholics asking for help. And he said, I'm going to put you in charge of all the women. And she said, oh, don't do that. She said, i've never stayed sober. I can't stay sober. And He said, well, i'm gonna you know Give you this and you go out there and you write you tell them you wrote a letter just like that and see if they Want help? She said well, I don't know. I don'T know what to say. What will I tell him? You know, she said I I DON'T KNOW WHAT THIS THING IS AND HE SAYS NO YOU DON'T You know He said you can tell him I WROTE A LETTER and I went down there and it looks like maybe they know what they're talking about and would you like to come to a meeting with me? And Sybil got that whole stack of letters and her and her brother drove all around the city of Los Angeles going and knocking on doors and asking those women if they were interested or wanted to know more about Alcoholics Anonymous and they would take them to the meeting and Sybil never drank again. And her brother Tex also died sober and when Sybil died, she had 57 years sober. And at that time, she was the longest living sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Nowadays, we have people with lots more. I go to a meeting regularly with one of my friends who's got 64 continuous years of sobriety. She got sober in 1957. But back then, Sybil was that. And you know, I think about that a lot in the sense of Sybil didn't hardly know anything about AlcoholicsAnonymous. But if we get back to the foundation of this being one alcoholic talking to another, Sybil had something to give. She was a woman alcoholic. She knew the pain. She new the pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization that most of us experience at some level or another before we come to Alcoholics Anonymous. And she was practicing the 12th step, you know, and she didn't even know what the 12 step was. But she was one alcoholic, talking to an other, she had something To give, and he wasn't going to get anything for it. And yet she was, you know, she didn't understand how that works. You know, this bizarre thing where we give back more than we give back and we can never get paid off here in Alcoholics Anonymous. We can never give back all that's been given to us, you know? Um, and so I was, uh, you know, I was thinking about, you know, like even tonight, you know, um, with Tom, you You know, I signed on early because Al had sent me a message that there might be some complications, you know, with and I always try and sign on 15 minutes early. It's just one of the things I do, because I think part of this is having an opportunity for fellowship as well in Alcoholics Anonymous. And, you Know, I don't I don' t want to just sign on one minute before because then I don''t really feel like I'm a part of the meeting. So I sign on a little bit early anyway. But like I said, Al made me a little nervous and I wanted to make sure I'd have time to get in. And I signed on a half an hour early and Tom was here. You know, Tom was taking his time to be here for anybody who might sign on. And I've actually been to meetings a couple of times in different cities and countries. I went to a meeting in Costa Rica a few years back when I went down there. Mark and I went downstairs surfing and we went to some meetings and, you know, went to this meeting. And when we walked in, there was a person sitting there and they go, oh my God, we're going to have a meeting. she was so excited because every week she just sat there you know she'd have she'd make a pot of coffee and she had her big book and sometimes nobody'd show up so she'd just read her book for an hour but that night you know because we were there you knows she was going to actually have a meeting and that made me think too again remember I'm I tell you I'm like that squirrel but these things you know to me are really practicing the 12 steps in Alcoholics Anonymous you know there are different ways to be of service than we sometimes think are the way You know, there are different ways of practicing these principles, you know, in all our affairs, because really at the end of the day, in my opinion, the greatest gift that we can give someone an alcoholic synonymous is that one alcoholic talking to another and giving our time. You know that's usually what people seem to really remember. They don't necessarily remember something that we read it to them from the big book. they don't necessarily remember a lot of things but they remember the kindness of somebody setting aside that extra time and so i was thinking about when i um when i was a couple years sober by the way my sobriety date is the 13th of july 1972 so i've been continually sober for 49 years in alcoholics anonymous and you know when i came to alcoholics autonomous um if you asked well they were guessing my age at 37 years old, but my birth certificate said that I was 13. And I felt about 2000 when I got sober and Alcoholics Anonymous. And I didn't think there was anything in this book or these steps or these commitments that could ever, ever take away feeling 2000 years old. I thought maybe it could get better. But I mean, how much better can it get when you feel 2000? you know? And slowly through time here in Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, I feel younger today than I did when I got to AlcoholicsAnonymous. That's a hell of a good deal, you know, really. I mean, and most of us are, you Know, we're always looking for a good deal. So I found several here. But anyway, when I was a couple years sober, one of the guys out in North Hollywood, a guy named Don Locke, who's still sober, he's got 51. I think I think Don's got 51, maybe even 52 years now. But anyway, so we were having the International Convention of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1975 in Denver. And Denver is not all that far of a drive from Los Angeles. Although I don't remember exactly how far it is, but I'm going to say it was 16 hours. But I'm known for making things up. Maybe it was 18 hours, whatever it was. So Don started thinking they were having their 40th anniversary of Alcoholic Anonymous at that time. Like right now, Alcoholics Anonymous is 86 years old, but at that time it was going to be, if they were celebrating 40 years. So Don thought, he goes, what if I could get 40 people to go to the 40th convention and I could keep it at $40, you know, so that I could really get a lot of the guys and people, not just guys, but people to go from this area, from Los Angeles. And so the only way to really do that was for them to camp out, just to stay in tents. But, you know Don kind of organized it and he got this whole thing and he just got really excited he had that enthusiasm about Alcoholics Anonymous he wanted more people to get this opportunity and he arranged all this stuff and he found tent sites and borrowed tents and got some cars together and they all were going to meet at one of the local clubhouses at midnight because these were alcoholic cars and the international is always in July so it'll be hot and they were gonna have to drive across the desert so these cars wouldn't have made it unless they drove in the middle of the night so they were meeting at midnight and so here he was outside the international I mean outside the clubhouse get waiting for people you know as they showed up they put six of them in Tom's car and you know four of them you know in Kayla's car and you whatever it was whoever showed up you know they put as many as they could and this drunk guy showed up because he thought that maybe there was a meeting there I guess you know because it was a clubhouse so he showed up and he was drunk and he's like how are you doing you know and they're like well we're fine they go what you doing and he said Well, we're driving across the country. We're going to an international convention. He goes, I want to go to an international convention, so they threw him in one of the vans where they had some extra room and he passed out and they drove along and the first stop was a place called Beaver, Utah because they'd found really cheap campsites and so they got there, you know, late, you know in the morning and they set up all their tents in the daylight and they probably all took a nap and got something to eat and then they went to the local meeting in Beaver Utah that night and there was one guy there guy just sitting at the meeting sat there every week and in came 41 people and uh and this guy had a great meeting and he begged don afterwards he goes don this was like the best night of my life to have a meeting with 41 people he goes promise me you'll bring them you promise me come back promise me we'll come back and so uh don actually started the beaver utah uh roundup it's still happening every year labor day weekend you know a bunch of people drive up there and uh you know they uh they just help alcoholics anonymous that you know and have some fun camping out and uh and i just you know i think oh and by the way the guy who passed out he's still sober um so you know you never know i mean you know like don didn't go you know arrange that to help that one guy get sober he didn't even know that one boy was going to show up i I mean, we just never know. You know, when one of my favorite stories, you know, when I first got sober in the early years, I went to 21 meetings a week the first couple of years that I was sober because I didn't have any place to go, by the way. It wasn't like I was so devoted to Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean I had no place to Go. I didn' t have a TV. I didn''t have a place to live. I mean there were just no options. So if I wanted to be indoors, I went through a lot of meetings and I'm very grateful that they had all those meetings. So I would go to those meetings. And one time I was at this meeting and we have a lot of speaker meetings in Los Angeles, which I really love. They're some of my favorite meetings still. And so this one night I was At My Home Group and this woman was speaking. I don't remember her name, but she was speaking and she said at the very beginning, she said, now I'm not asking this. She did. She said, could I see the hands tonight of all the people in this meeting who have read the entire big book of Alcoholics Anonymous? And my home group at that point, I'm going to say it was maybe around a hundred people. I don't know, maybe there were 75. I mean, who knows? It felt like a lot of people to me, you know, when you're new, it really was a lot of people, but anyway, so, you know, I had not read the entire big book about coxonymous because there were a lot of chapters in there that I just didn't think applied to me. You know, um, I mean there were just most of the chapters I didn't think were really important to somebody like me. I had a lot of real problems. I had court cases. There wasn't the problem, you know, that the one about there shouldn't be a chapter in there about, you know, how to handle your court cases, you know, I mean, you don't not be having a job, how to handle not having a place to live. I mean these are not the chapters instead they had stuff like two wives. I didn't have a wife to employers. I was totally, you know, unable to keep a job that the chapter of the family afterwards my family wasn't talking to me. So I just didn't read a lot of the chapters. So she said can I see the hands tonight of all the people who've read the entire big book of Alcoholics Anonymous? I could not raise my hand. I looked around my home group and I'd say about half of them raised their hand. But I'm sorry to tell you this, but I have to say, I think a few of them even were lying. So when that happened, I thought, I wonder how often this woman talks, you know, because I don't want this to ever happen to me again, where, you Know, my ego, I mean, I want to be able to raise my hand that I've read the entire big book about hoxonomous. So I went home and I read the entirely book about Hoxonomus cover to cover so that the next time she asked that question, I was going to be ready. And I just want to let you know, um, that was, uh, probably 48 over 48 years ago. No one's asked that question yet, but I am ready. I have read the book, you know? And so again, it's like one of those things where I did something and I did it for terrible reasons, you Know, and yet it helped, you know, and it added tremendously to my life. And I found one of my favorite stories in the family afterward. Um, and I wanted to just tell you guys a little bit about it. I don't, you know it's very short so don't panic um but um it's about when we start learning you know when we've been sober for a little while and we start to see that these spiritual principles are actually adding something to our life that like in a way that we don't quite understand because i think there's a lot i personally find there'sa lot of mystery here in alcoholics anonymous and i love that you know and so we can get pretty excited you know um i mean i don't know about you guys But, you know, I thought anybody if I saw anybody having a drink anywhere, I thought they were an alcoholic in my early days and I would try to get them to Alcoholics Anonymous. I wanted to help them right away, you know, and all my family. I tried to, you know, when they did invite me back, I would, you know, I thought, well, they've had two drinks. I mean, they've got to be alcoholic. I just thought everybody needed to go to AA and I was not, you know, particularly gentle, you know, about telling them what I thought about that. I don't do that anymore. But at the time I was pretty enthusiastic and excited it just you know would see these things all over so in the book it talks about father they refer to him as father in the family afterward and they say father feels that he has struck something better than gold for a time he may try and hug the new treasure to himself he may not see at once that he is barely scratched a limitless load which will pay dividends only if he minds it for the rest of his life and insists on giving away the entire product. Now, even today, when I read that, I think you're supposed to give away the entire product? I mean, shouldn't you keep like a prudent reserve? I mean you should give away everything. I mean what about taking care of, you know, but that's the thing here in Alcoholics Anonymous is that we've, you know, it's all about giving it away and the more we give away, the more we somehow get back so that we constantly find in Alcoholics Anonymous, that for me, I was always a taker. I was almost looking for, you know, how to get something for me how to take care of me what I needed what I want, I mean, me, and somehow by practicing these spiritual principles, I learned to think about others before I think about me. And there have been so many examples in Alcoholic Anonymous of people, you Know, that they set the bar really high around here, I'll tell you, you You know, one time a few years ago, I called my buddy Sandy Beach and Sandy had almost 50 years of sobriety when he passed away. So I'm going to guess Sandy had about 48 years. Sandy lived in Tampa. I live in I'd lived in Los Angeles then. I'm still not too far from there. And I called Sandy one day and I got his voicemail and, you know, three hour time difference for him. It was a little bit later. So I left him a message and I go, hey, Sandy, I've got a friend and her sister lives in the Tampa area and she thinks her sister would be interested in going to a meeting. if you get a chance, you know, if you know a woman there that I could get a phone number, I'd sure appreciate it. You know, thanks. And so about 11 o'clock that night, his time, you know maybe 12, I think it was like 12 o'lock his time. So this is like nine o' clock at night. My phone rings and it's Sandy. And then I go, Oh, Hey Sandy. I can't believe he's up at midnight, but he is, you Know, he's in his eighties and he goes, Oh hey June. Hey, I'm so sorry. I didn't get back to you a little earlier today because I've been in the emergency room all day, but I just got home. I got your message. And so here's a phone number. Now I'm thinking, you know, like if I come home from the emergency room all day, I'm going to call you tomorrow, you know? Um, but Sandy knew somebody wanted some help in Alcoholics Anonymous, you know? And, uh, and there he was, you know, and I think so often about these old timers. I mean, I am so grateful. And of course I'm, I' m getting into that range, I guess now with 49 years, I am starting to be one of the long timers, so the torch is being passed here, you You know, but I think about all these people and how they've gone to meetings in Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, and they've shown up and they didn't go because they were going to drink. You know? They just went because they wanted to give back something that had been so freely given to them. And they missed a lot of Monday night football games. Some of these guys, you Know, they missed some different, you Know, events in their life, but they wanted To be there to give Back what had been given so freely to them and and that's what I want to try and do And, you know, I also want to try and bring some cheerfulness and laughter, which it talks about, you know, in our book that we find that that makes for usefulness, you know, because there's some tough things that go on in the world. You know, there've been some tough times in the last couple of years for a lot of people and not just because of COVID, but, you know, certainly that's one of the things that's happened. There's been lots of other tough things that have been happening too, and they've happened before, you know this pandemic and they'll probably be happening afterwards, you know? And so I want to try and see if I can bring some light and bring some cheerfulness and show up. And, you know, that idea of, you Know, sometimes you look on a meeting and, You know, I don't know about you guys, but we have a, You Know, I have my home group and I'll look and some of those people never say anything, but they're there. And I look, I flip through my screen and I see them there. And I see that sobriety date 1964, see that Sobriety Date 1957. And, You Now, here's the thing I've seen so often in Alcoholics Anonymous. If you came to my home group right now and you sat there and you looked at the different little faces on there and you listened to the pre-meeting, how we're talking and welcoming some of the people that are coming in and sharing and asking about each other and the stuff after the meeting, you wouldn't be able to tell which one of those people has a brain tumor and that they're undergoing treatment. You wouldn't know which one of those guys just got out of the hospital and has been in and out of a hospital because he's laughing and sharing and making fun of some other people there while he's there. you know, and you wouldn't know that six of those regular members of that group have lost a child in years that they've been sober through a variety of circumstances. You know the people in Alcoholics Anonymous that I've seen walk through difficulties that I hope I never have to even come close to facing, you know? And they do it with dignity and a sense of humor and they show up and they want to see what they can do to help somebody else, you Know? And that's just kind of how it works here. And that's what I believe the 12th step is really all about, you know, um, is, you know learning to stop thinking about me all the time and to see what I can add. And it gets bigger than just adding it to my group. You know, I want to try and practice these principles in all my affairs. So that means practicing them at work. That means practicing them in my family. It means practicing a little bit with my neighbors. You Know, my neighbor next store just got out of the hospital yesterday. And we don't know him super well, you know, but we're going to be, you Know, we've already sent a message saying, Hey, you know, if there's anything we can grab for you at the store, or if we can drop off, you know? Because this is where I live and I want to be a good neighbor. So, you know, it's these kind of things. You know, when I got sober, we had an old timer that I'm sure a lot of you've heard of. And his name was Chuck Chamberlain. And Chuck would always talk about, you Now, this idea of being of service. And he would talk about how we, well, he would say his prayer every morning was, um, he'd say good morning, uh, to his higher power. And he'd Say now I'm going to move it around and you just show me where you want me to move It. And, uh He said, I'm gonna try and help God's kids do what they need to have done because I want to. And there's more to that than just saying that. Because for me, it's like in parts sort of like the 12th step, you know, I want To do it. And then I want to do it because I want to. And that's a whole nother level of working on my attitude rather than I've got to, or I'm just doing it out of duty. I want To do it, you know, out of a spirit of wanting to, I'm sorry to tell you, I I'm not always there. Uh, I, I've Got a long way to go still, but I'm working on it, You know, and, uh, and I'm still a human being. I never get above that, but you know when I was listening, Chuck used to say something else too. And I'll just tell you this. And then I think I'm going to start wrapping this up. Let me look here to make sure. oh good I think this will work out pretty well we'll get out a little early but you know what the hell um you know when uh when I was new one of the things that Chuck would say a lot of times at the meeting was he would say now if you go to work Monday through Friday just to get a paycheck he said then you are cheating yourself and everyone that you come in contact with He said, because you're going to work Monday through Friday and you don't really like it. And then Saturday, maybe you have an okay day, but Sunday you start thinking about the fact that you're gone back to work to this job that you really don't like just to get a paycheck. And he said, and if you're doing that, he said then you're cheating yourself and everyone that you come in contact with because you are making yourself miserable six days unless you work on some kind of an attitude or find some other way. And I used to think, well, that's something that only somebody who's rich would say, because it's obviously about a paycheck. You know, I mean, what the hell is he talking about here? And it was very much listening to Chuck was like he was speaking Latin. It really was. But anyway, years later, I was working as a waitress and it was one of my jobs when I was going through school and I was workin' as a watress and I was, you know, going in the back and I was trying to count my, you know, tips to see if I was going to how much I was gonna make that night. And if I'm going to be have enough of the rate, if I made this much tonight, then if I don't make this much tomorrow night, I mean, I'm gonna have trouble making my rent. And I was just spinning, you Know, like a hamster wheel, and I was just going over all of this kind of stuff. And, you know, as I said, I mean, in my first 10 years sober, I couldn't even put a dollar, you know, in the seventh tradition to help be self supporting. Thankfully, over the years, I've been able to be self supporting, and I can regularly contribute to my own home group and to the New York general service office and central office, which means a lot to me. Um, you know, that, uh, that I'm able to do that and that Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't take any money from anybody who's not a member. I love that about AlcoholicsAnonymous, but anyway, so I was working as a waitress going back there and counting my tips and, you Know, thinking about money and, You know, just freaking out and worried and, you know whatever. And all of a sudden I started thinking about that thing that Chuck said And I thought, huh, you know, like, uh, you know, the thing about like, just, you know, what if I was just helping? What if I Was just trying to add something. And then I started thinking, you know, Like, what If that guy over there that just Asked me for mustard, you Know, what If that Guy he's Like he's Building he's Building a Hospital he's Helping he's A construction Worker and He needs To have That mustard Because that's What makes The sandwich Taste good So that he Can get The strength So he Can go Out there And do That job And what About that Woman over There that Just asked me for extra ice like she didn't ask when I took the order no I had to wait and make a separate trip now because she wants extra ice you know what I mean but I'm like you know if she needs extra ice because she's going to be you know she's a doctor and she's gonna go do some surgery and later on she's to get over there and so I started to see that I have this small tiny little job here as a waitress but then I was being of service and I was helping other people by doing what I was doing with my mustard and my iced tea and you know maybe being polite to somebody you know, I was helping them go on and be able to go out there and be of service. And it really changed my attitude, you know, and my tips did get better, you Know, but it wasn't like I wasn't doing it to get the tips to be better. I can't quite explain this exactly. But I was doing it so that I wouldn't hate the job that I was Doing because that was just that's a really big price to pay, you Now, and, and so I've had that experience a number of times where I've been able to, you know, figure out a way to change my attitude if I can't change what's happening. You know, we were talking before the meeting about one of my buddies that I got sober with, you know Howard Polance and, and Howard used to say, you know, try to enjoy what's happening because it's going to be happening anyway. And, and to that level of acceptance, you know, has made a huge difference, you know, in my life. And then, you know, it talks about in our promises, you know, we'll lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. And that has been one of the greatest gifts for me that I've had some relief from that bondage of self so that not always, but so that sometimes I'm able to think of others and not be so wrapped up in myself. And as a result of that, I've been overpaid beyond anything I could tell you. It talks about in our literature that great events will come to pass for you and countless others. There isn't enough time, no matter how many hours you gave me, where I could tell you all the incredible great events that have happened for me and countless others that I've known as I've kept trudging the road of happy destiny. So I hope that if you are new or if you're visiting or if you're having a hard time, I hope you'll stay close to Alcoholics Anonymous. I hope you'll keep trying to give back what was so freely given to you. And thanks for letting me be part of your meeting tonight.