Physical Allergy and Mental Obsession – 12 Steps 12 Traditions Weekend Workshop – Part 1 of 5 – Billy N.

Well, hello everybody. My name is Pete and I'm an alcoholic. New Horizons is my home group. We're so glad to have you all here today. Welcome everyone to the 2021 Steps and Traditions Workshop Weekend of New Horizont's Group of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's Super Bowl weekend and we're going to have a super time this weekend. Thank you, Joel, for taking care of some of the housekeeping items before we get started. Thank You for that. Once again, I'd like to welcome you to the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions Weekend Workshop. Chris R. from the Ingram Solutions Group will be taking us through all 12 steps this weekend, and Billy N. from the Alpharetta Unity Group out of Georgia will be taken us through all 12 traditions. We'll be going, as Joel said, until 8 p.m. this evening because we don't want you to miss out on anything. We're taking a 10-minute bathroom and smoke break in about an hour. Tonight we have introductions, and we'll be hearing from both of our presenters on step and tradition one. Tomorrow we have a full day starting at 9 a.m. Pacific time. We'll be having a Q&A session the last hour on Sunday, and you'll find the link to the digital ask it basket posted in the chat. Please make sure to get your questions for the speakers in by the end of Saturday evening. I'd like first to introduce our workshop committee Chair to say a few words about the purpose of this workshop. I'll give you to our General Services Representative, Carrie B. Thanks, Pete. My name is Carrie and I am an alcoholic. New Horizons is my home group. I would like to welcome everyone to the 2021 12 Steps and 12 Traditions Weekend Workshop. We're glad you're all here. What is the purpose of this weekend? This is a quote from AA Comes of Age, page 139. AA's 12th step, carrying the message, is the basic service that our fellowship gives. It is our principal aim and the main reason for our existence. AA is more than a set of principles. It ist a society of recovered alcoholics in action. We must carry AA's message, otherwise we ourselves may fall into decay and those who have not yet been given the truth may die. This is why we so often say that action is the magic word. Again, that comes from page 139 of AA Comes of Age. I'm 10 years sober. When I was first taken through the 12 steps, I was rocketed into the fourth dimension of existence. The steps, our first legacy rocketed me clear over our second legacy, the traditions into our third legacy of service. I was on fire. I Was trying to carry the message to anyone and everyone who would hear it. I am sure no one in this room can relate to that. Although with good intent, I created a lot of wreckage. I didn't have any guardrails. I Didn't have an understanding of the 12 traditions and just how vital they really are. I became involved in general service and soon after at an area assembly in the marathon meeting room, I met a couple of people who although very involved in general service knew very little about the big book and they didn't really have a working knowledge of the steps. Although not my story, I see that it can work both ways. I've been taught that the 12 steps is the message. It's the only message that we offer and the 12 traditions are here to protect that message. That's what we're doing here this weekend. Hopefully those of us in love with the big book can have an open mind and a new experience with the traditions, and those who may have already been acquainted with the tradition may have a new experience with The Steps. Please allow me to share with you a bit about our home group. Before the pandemic, we met in the Trinity Episcopal Church in downtown Bend, Oregon. Currently during the pandemic, we have been meeting on Zoom. The New Horizons Group of Alcoholics Anonymous is over 30 years old. Our workshop committee has been in existence for about six years now. The primary purpose of our workshop committee is to help carry the message of all three legacies of Alcoholic Anonymous outside of our group to the greater AA community. Question number one, the group inventory offered on page 29 of your AA group pamphlets asks, what is the basic purpose of our group? Well let me explain to you the basic purpose of our Group by closing with the New Horizons mission statement. In the words of Bill W., sobriety, freedom from alcohol through the teaching and practice of the 12 steps is the sole purpose of an AA group. In addition to staying sober and helping the alcoholic of today to achieve sobriety, we also recognize our responsibility in helping to ensure the fellowship's future in the years ahead. The big book states that our literature preserves the integrity of the AA message. Using AA literature to study, teach, and practice all three legacies, the 12 steps, 12 traditions, and 12 concepts, our goal is to help provide the opportunity for future alcoholics not yet born, the same chance to find in AA that rebirth that has brought us all back to life. Thank you for allowing me to be of service. Enjoy your workshop. Thank you very much, Carrie. To get us started, I'll now introduce our prayer chair, Michael P. Thank you, Pete. My name is Michael and I am a recovered alcoholic. New Horizons is my home group, welcome everyone. Please allow me to lead us in a prayer for open-mindedness before we get started. God, please help me to set aside everything I think I know about AA, the fellowship and our 36 spiritual principles. Please allows me to keep an open mind and the ability to learn something new through the literature this evening so that I may have a whole new experience with both a fellowship as well as these 36 spiritual principles. Amen. Thank you very much, Michael. Without any further delay, sharing a brief 35-minute version of his story and what AA and the steps have done for him, to get us started, it's an honor to welcome our friend Chris R. from the Ingram Solutions Group. Chris? They don't want to give me control of any buttons anywhere. We, we end up in trouble that way. My name is Chris R. I'm a very absolute grateful, uh, recovered alcoholic. Uh, God, I'm glad to get here. I, uh... I'm blessed. I gotta tell you folks, I, in this time, it's so cool to be in here on a Zoom. I won't take up a bunch of time. I want to get cut to the chase, but looking around this room real quick, I got on a little late. I was in a little trouble because I'm stupid, and dadgum, I just look at some of these people. Some of you guys I've known forever, and I just absolutely love this format. It's just so cool to see y'all. Y'all all look great, and i'm honored to be here, and real quick before I mention this, as always, anytime I speak, I've got a chance to speak for Carrie's group before, And some of y'all I've spoken at your groups, too. I just want to say it. I'm going to get the absolute privilege of spending the weekend with some of my besties here and my buddy Billy. He's on some back pages over there someplace hiding out. But he I haven't seen him in ages. And it's just it's so cool to be to be here. All I want to do, though, guys, is I wantto share my experience. My experience may be different than your experience. And and guys, we're just going to all get on the same page with that. I am not, I would just, I just wanted, been doing this for a long time, guys. I got sober finally November 13th, 87 and it's, got started speaking from the podium a few years later and it just kind of been nonstop and I'm honored to ever chance to get to do that but I don't want anybody to ever think I'm trying to jam it, you know, you've got to do it my way or the highway because if anything I know today at 33 years sober, is that there's lots of ways to do this, folks. I think as close as we can adhere ourselves to what the book is asking us to do, the better our results are going to be, and you know, I'm just here to share my experience about that, because my experience is, I know a lot of people have similar experiences than I had, because I get the emails, and the texts, and the phone numbers all these years, and a lot of people can identify, and some of you might not be able to, so bless you, and an old-timer told me one time, he says, if you want to offend anybody in AA, just say anything. There you go. I know that that's where it's coming, so my home group I mentioned is at Ingram Texas, and Ingram Solution Group, we started about 28 years ago, I guess, and we needed a place where the big book guys could hang out. If you noticed at the beginning, I introduced myself as a recovered alcoholic, and there's places in Texas that'll get you home if you're not careful. You know, people don't like that because we're always going to be recovering, which is just absolute crap. And I'm not going to cuss. That's it. But that's not true. You can recover from alcoholism. I think if Bill Wilson wanted it any different, he would have written it in a book. But you say that, like I said, we wanted a meeting we could go to and study the big book and talk about that and talk About the literature and all the literature and uh god i absolutely love our crew if you ever get a chance we're on right on i-10 driving right through central texas and so you ever gets a chance y'all can stop and see us we uh we meet on mondays and wednesdays and uh just would be delighted to have you i grew up here in the hill country folks and we're i'm like 60 miles west of san antonio northwest we're just not far from the geographic center of texans and uh um you know we was raised here. My, my father was a printer out in Odessa, Texas and moved us here as kids. And, and he was the nicest, sweetest guy in the world, alcoholic, but an absolute sweetheart. And my twin brother and I caught that little genetic bullet. And I've got two sisters that never had a problem with alcohol. And we can talk about that some of this weekend, but I, Myers and I headed off to Houston. I wanted to be a professional chef and we started on this little journey. He was a drinker just like i was but god we gotta have a long period of time when alcohol works for us and uh i uh you know i'm drinking it on the job because i'm in the food business and everybody can do that and uh no problem and um and i'm not having a lot of problems and you know externally everything looks like we're doing pretty good and internally the depression's starting to kick my butt this is mid-70s and i i start moving around a lot geographics not that any of y'all have ever moved trying to change your life but uh i laugh about it i still drive a pickup because you never know when you might need to move again that's just that's the way it is and um i i'm bouncing around thinking if i could just get that job or just just move to that state and uh you know everything would be okay and truth is guys early on i kept trying to changed my outside so my insides would feel better and uh wasn't didn't have much luck with that and uh i got married I mean, on one of my geographics, I ended up back in Houston. I was in and out of there a bunch and loved that city and got married, moved up to North Texas and had a really good paying job. And we just bought a little house, first little house I ever owned. And again, on the outside, everything looked great in my life. On the inside, I'm just not a happy camper. There's a great line, guys, page 152 in the big book. Bill Wilson, I'll paraphrase it. I won't take time to look at it, but he talks about it. So you're going to get to a place with your drinking where you won't be able to imagine life living with it and you won'T imagine life living without it. And then you're gonna know loneliness like few do. And guys, the truth of the matter is most alcoholics, I'll change that all alcoholics that I know as in stage alcoholics as the illness progresses we're a miserable bunch of people. It's just that's the bottom line. My first wife left. She told me she's I'm not leaving because you're drinking. I'm leaving because I can't stand your depression. I just can't be around you. There's always a drama, always something going on. I just, God bless her for putting up with me the few years that she did. And in trying to save that marriage, I ended up going to Alcoholics Anonymous. I promised her I was gonna quit and I meant it with every fiber in my body, folks. And I've always got to say it when I share my story short or long, I've got to tell you, I've gotta say it. When I told her I wasn't gonna quit, i meant it and uh you know i worked in the treatment business for about 27 years folks and i do clerical work for a hospital and i i get to talk to lots of little knuckleheads and that i can't tell you how many of them come in here with just tears in their eyes and they're begging for help and they want to get well what they don't understand is they don'T have the power to manage the decision to stay stopped now i took off i mean i went going to meetings i'm you know week and a half later the chef asked me to stay after for and i drank a beer with him went home pat myself on the back because i didn't get drunk and um and that was it for that marriage see i didn't promise her that i wasn't going to come home drunk i promised her i wasn'T GOING TO TOUCH ANOTHER DROP AND THAT'S HOW ALCOHOLISM WORKS FOLKS I CAN TELL YOU ONE THING ONE DAY IN THE NEXT YEAH AND THEN SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT DOWN BUT IT'S THE INSANITY THAT BILL WILSON TALKS ABOUT WE'LL TALK IN A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THAT BUT I SPENT SEVEN YEARS IN ALCOHOX ANONYMOUS IN AND OUT in and out, in and Out. And they were the nicest people on earth. I would never take a shot at those people. They were wonderful. But during that particular time, guys, in the late 80s, early 90s up in North Texas, there wasn't a lot. My experience, the way I remembered it, there was no big books in the place. There was a steps and traditions on the wall, but nobody ever talked about them. The only reason we were there was to talk about your problem. And we affectionately They call them dead cat meetings. And I know in this group, there's some of you go to those meetings and I hope they're full and well tonight. I bless you. I'm not knocking those meetings. I just struggled staying sober in those meetings because I couldn't identify with a lot of that stuff. And, uh, I'm just sitting in meetings, just waiting to be offended until the obsession comes back. And then I go, I go get drunk. And in 1987, November 13th, 1987, it was a Friday the 13th. It was the day before on a Thursday night, I went home. I don't know guys, I was just done. I picked up a stack of return checks and I'm looking at myself in the medicine cabinet window and I've, I'm living in a town I don'T want to live in. I'm working for my twin brother, which is, I'M grateful I had the job, but I'M just, I' m a miserable camper. There's nobody in my life. Nobody wants to be around me and I'M drinking myself spitless and I' M I I can't – I'm not – I just can't. I've been in AA for seven years, and I can'T get sober. I've never in seven years picked up a 30-day chip. I'm just in and out, and I gravitate to the little relapsers. The little relapse is an AA. I mean, they're my peeps. You know, I don't know. My twin brother picked up one Desire chip. I just loser. I don'T know. he's the best, he's the best. I took him to his bed, to the best meeting up in North Texas at the time, where we were talking Big Book, so I get credit all, the credit's all mine I tried to commit suicide and aborted that attempt, I believe God intervened in that little experience and made myself sick and laid down on the side of the bed and promised I'd go back to AA the next day Guys, I watched people in AA get sober I knew there were people getting well in AA, there was no question it just wasn't me you know obviously I didn't want it bad enough that's what everybody kept telling me and uh I ended up back in these rooms guys the next day and little girl stopped me from leaving the room I mean all those stars you know how it works when you all the little stars started lining up and I just ended up in the right room and chairperson knew me from North Texas and and um real quick he um I'll never forget the old boy he he made me sit at the big table with everybody else. My seat is in the back of the room against the wall about this far from the back door so I can get that out, and he went around the room. He said, why don't we tell Chris? We got a newcomer coming back in, and uh he's been around a long time, so why don'T we tell Chris how our lives have changed as a result of working the steps, and I because I've never heard that guys in all the years. Y'all know what a first step meeting looks like in Texas. I don't know about every place else out there, but you know, a lot of these meetings when they do, you got a newcomer coming back in. You said, well, let's tell Chris how we got here. And then everybody goes around and tells their stupid war stories. And I'm not knocking that. I'm just knocking that this idea that we can scare an alcoholic into recovery. We're going to talk about it this weekend, guys, just get comfortable with it. Okay. It's just, your stories are important. Don't click off yet, but they're not going to scare somebody into recovery, guys. Our job was supposed to be to pull. Bill Wilson wrote about it, talks about pulling the newcomer with a vision of what life can be like, and these guys went around the room, and that's what they ask. I mean, oh man, I'm sitting up on the edge of my seat, and this lady crossed the table, had a little set of car keys. Some of y'all have heard me talk about this before. A year and a few months sober. She just got her a brand new car, and I had just been turned down for a car loan two days earlier for an old pickup truck I was trying to buy. My credit was so bad, I couldn't get it, you know, and the guy next to her had started a little landscape business, and he was all excited about making a little money again, and He just had just a short time sober. He was less than a year sober. Lady at the end of the table, she was a little older. I was 35 years old, guys, and she must have been 40, I guess, whatever, but she had a sketch pad, and she'd gone back to art school, and she was all excited about getting her art degree, and I just like, golly, you know, and this guy sitting right next to me, he's on my blind side, so I couldn't see him, literally, guys, he tapped me on the shoulder, I jumped, and he had a billfold with, y'all remember Polaroid Cameron? Yeah, he had the little Polaroids pictures of his little rat kids, and this kid had come into Alcoholics Anonymous a year or so earlier, year and a half, I guess, and met a girl in AA and they got married and they had a couple of these little kids and he had to have been older than that two years at least for the little kids but he had these pictures and he showed them to me and had tears in his eyes and he's showing me this little family that he's got. Guys, I'm less than 24 hours away from a legit suicide attempt and these people in Alcoholics Anonymous gave me the one thing I needed more than anything else, hope and I will forever be grateful to those people, folks. Forever be grateful. Guys, I got to tell you, and I'm going to talk more about it when I talk about working with others because those old timers got real insistent with me about helping others and about getting me involved. They didn't pat me on the butt and tell me to keep coming back. They said, Chris, come on, let's get active. You want to be a home group member, you, you come, come into the, into the fold. And, and I don't know guys that same very week, you know, they stayed after the meeting and they showed me what we're going to talk about in an hour or so about first step stuff. And they opened the big book and they, and they shown me what the first step was. They showed me, they qualified me for the first time I understood what it was to be an alcoholic. I've been in IOPs guys. I'd done all this other stuff, folks. I've been, anything in the world to try to get sober, I tried, and now these two old geezers, these old beat-up guys were so cute. They were this, well, I was laughing about it. The guy that was trying to help me, he was a typical Texan. He had a big old cowboy hat. It was so big, you know, yeah, had a belt buckle about the size of a dinner plate. You know, this guy's from Texas, man. Drove a Cadillac with bullhorns on the front. I ain't kidding. I can't making this up, And he sat down with me and opened the big book. I didn't own a big book, y'all understand that? Some seven years in Alcoholics Anonymous, I don't own an alcoholics book. I don' t own a book. I don''t know where you get one. I know what they are, but I don ''t own one. And he opened it up and he showed me the first step stuff. It took him 20, 30 minutes to do, guys. It didn''t take him long at all. But I went home that night with tears in my eyes because I understood for the first time in my life what it was to be an alcoholic. That old boy saved my life. i gotta tell you guys they got me really active the next day they showed me how to make coffee and uh i can i'm i'm working on a four-step bam you know i've got a completed four-stepped two weeks in and we've done a little third step prayer and we'll talk about it this week but they said chris we got a group conscience at the end of the month with next week's group consciousness we want to nominate you for chairman of the cleanup committee and I'll never forget it guys. And I said, no, absolutely not. I don't, you know, and I said okay. Anyway, I went to my first group conscience in seven years. Went to my first group conscious. There was about 40 people in that room and they unanimously voted me in as chairman of the cleanup committee. Yeah, I felt so railroaded and I went back and I was mad, you know. I was just like pouting because they railroaded me and I asked the guy after the meeting with cleaning up in the kitchen. I said listen, can I get a list of my committee members so I can organize the cleaning rotation for this club, and he spit coffee clear across that kitchen. He laughed his butt off. He said, Chris, there's no committee. He says, you're the janitor here. You're it. Oh, my God, and I stayed away two days. I was going to punish him. I was going into a meeting. Two days later, I snuck in, and I cleaned that club at about one o'clock, and I cleaned that club like a big boy, and about 5.30 in the evening, meeting starts at six, and I'd made coffee, and was sitting in there all by myself in this big old clubhouse, and there's a bunch of rooms, and I'm sitting in here, and the matriarch of this group walks in, and I can hear her shuffle. She's like, she's a million years old, guys. No kidding. She had to have been at least 150 years old. And just, I don't know, little, she looked like a little question mark you know what she just shuffled in and like you could hear her squealing in the kitchen and she looked back around the corner where I was sitting in there panting and she said oh my gosh she said did you clean this place and I said yes ma'am she I'll never forget it I always want to cry every time I say it she shuffled back around on the back of me like that she got a little bony arm around my neck gave me a little back hug and she says boy we need you here for a guy that had been about three weeks away from a suicide attempt because I felt so useless, it changed my life. You're going to hear a pervading thread of everything I talk about this week, this idea about being useful to the fellowship that saved our lives. I've never seen anything like it. She, yeah. I mentioned this. being around the rooms all those years and being around alcoholics and animals, once I got sober about five years later, I gave up my cleaning, you know, my committee chair at that group and moved to the hill country up here back where I grew up and started going to meetings in town. And it's a big recovery community down here because there's a bunch of centers, treatment centers in the area and have been forever. The VA hospital, state hospital, there was a bunch of facilities down in here for years. And, uh, and so the recovery community was, was quite large. It was just delight to be a part of. And we eventually started our own little group, but guys, I come across so many people in today that come into the outpost with us in the club, or I see folks coming in, you know, into treatment and this, you know? And so many of them, they're all banged up. I've seen, I saw this exact same thing three days ago and I went down to see one of my little guys from town. It was, it was in the, in treatment. And he just cleared detox and you could always tell with Ativan starts wearing off. And I walk into his little room, he's got banana pudding all over his face. You know, always, I don't know what it is about banana pudding and treatment centers. They always give it. And this guy had this stuff all over and he's just starting to look around and come to. And so, and he looks at me like that, you know, and he said, Hey, how, how you doing like that i said fine i said well what's this going to be about i said baby you know we're gonna help you out blah blah blah anyway he starts putting two and two together realize that this is this is we're a 12-step based deal we're always about the the 12 steps and and he he's he just gets all depressed about it and looks down and he gets i said buddy what's wrong i said you know what you know i'm 12 step guy i mean i'm all about the fellowship and he He said, yeah, I know. But I've tried AA. It doesn't work. I bet you I've heard that a million times. Maybe an exaggeration. 10,000 times. And then I sit and talk to him for a few minutes and find out he did exactly what I did for seven years sitting in Alcoholics Anonymous. all he did was go to meetings he never did nothing else that's what i did and look what i got nothing and i watched so many people come i tried aa it didn't work and you talk to them they all went to 90 meetings in 90 days and they all did it i don't know i'm sorry i'm just not a fan there was a guy in my sponsorship lineage an old boy named don p up in colorado and he was wonderful man. And he used to talk a lot about it when he shared from the podium. And he said, at a certain point in our history and Alcoholics Anonymous, we stopped talking so much about recovery and started talking about sobriety. You think, well, it's the same thing. It's not. You can not drink one stupid day at a time if you want, but that's not what the big book's talking about. The big book is talking about getting taken to a place where you can recover those 10 step promises we'll talk about tomorrow. But I mean, this is this whole thing is about so you can be comfortable in your skin. Guys, I'm not even going to suggest for a second, please don't take anything in the short time I got with you. I'm taking a shot at those people up in North Texas. But there was nobody. There was just so many rules and regulations. You can't sponsor until you're this sober. You cant chair a meeting until youre this sober you can't. These guys in Louisville when I got sober up there, they They didn't none of that. They said, Chris, come on up here. Let's show you how to chair a meeting. I said, buddy, I'm a new guy here. I just got sober. I've just got a few weeks. He said, yeah, seven years and two weeks. You've been around the program. Come on. You're not a newcomer. Come on up Here. Let me show you How to do this. And they just kind of took me under their wing and they showed me they got one of my favorite deals is that you had to be in that little district. You had to be two years sober to be an intergroup rep, and I guess I was sober about a year, and they said, Chris, come on in here, buddy. Anyway, they pulled some strings, and I got to be an intergruppe rep for the whole time I was there for my group. I got to represent my group at the intergroup level. They just got me involved. Y'all follow that cleanup committee stuff? They could have gotten anybody back in their stupid floors. They got me in there because they knew i needed a job in alcoholics anonymous i i needed to feel a part of something i gotta tell you guys that those people say my men and women folks those ladies in that group took me on to raise i gotta say it because i don't want to run over they they i'd walk in a room like that one of those ladies like that she'd shake her head says no turn around you cannot wear that shirt in here you know just all dirty or something some stupid drug saying on the front or something. I don't know, just inappropriate. No, no, you got to go home and change now. Bye-bye. They just showed, they raised me, folks. The men and women in that group, they just took, they just, yeah, when it came time for me to start a little business, they said, go, let's go. End of the week, I'm going to talk to you into Sunday. We're going to talking about working with others. Guys, they've just encouraged me from top to bottom to get involved. Somewhere along the line, we've got this idea that newcomer is too fragile, too frail to be able to help and do anything buddy that's our responsibility we're supposed to be teaching these newcomers what to do because we need them i gotta tell you we need him in the trench and they got me excited guys i remember sitting in uh on the back end of my pickup truck um two years excuse me about two two uh two weeks in i've got that completed four step sitting on and on my desk and ready to do a fifth step when my sponsor gets back in town, and they're teaching me the disciplines of 10, 11, and 12, and buddies for the first time ever. They got my nose stuck in that book, and they've given me one, and everything changed. I'm sitting on the tailgate, and I'm looking around, and I's surrounded by liquor. Guys, it's Friday. I got a pocket full of money. There's a stop-and-go 7-Eleven right across the street, and a bar I gotta tab in right catty corner to where I'm at, And I'm sitting there cold, cold up in North Texas and I'm sitting out there looking around and it just absolutely dawns. It knocks me over. I'm standing there thinking, I don't want to drink. Bill Wilson writes about it. Dr. Bob writes about you read any of the old timers, any of the stuff they're talking about. They all write about it that that obsession leaving some of them struggled. That's fact. I watch people do that with guys. Once you get involved, my experience is that recovery thing happens pretty quick. When I say it, I'm not trying to be controversial at all. I'm a recovered alcoholic. I haven't thought about taking a drink in 33 years. I'm still goofy. I'm Still trying to get better on a regular basis and you know, bless those old timers for spending a little time with me and showing me what I needed to do to get involved. This entire thing is about action. Carrie said it earlier. This entire things about action and sitting in a meeting is not action. I'll argue with anybody about it. that's sitting in a meeting. If you're not sharing, all you're doing is sitting. Okay. I'm not knocking it, but that's not what we're supposed to be doing. We're supposed to be out there looking for that little newcomer so we can go help him. One of the cool things I got to say, guys, one of the things I learned from my sponsorship lineage and the people that were around me for so long, Billy knows a lot of the guys that I got sober with and a lot of the little knuckleheads in New York. There were just so many fine folks that I got to meet over there. I met my wife in Newark and Patty's waving. She said, tell you all hi. And one of the things that everybody continued to talk about though was this idea of staying current in the work and to stay on top of things. I don't want to continue to live off an experience. A spiritual experience I had 33 years ago was pretty profound. Sitting on the tailgate of that truck realizing that I didn't want to drink when I could was like earth shattering to me. But guys, I can't live off that experience I had 33 years ago. What I got to have today is a current experience with God. I want to continue to learn. I got my notebook right here. I wanted to learn more about the traditions from Billy. And I want To learn from question and answers we're going to get about the steps. What I want to try to do, folks, is become more effective member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Me having 33 years doesn't mean jack if I can't relay that message effectively to the newcomer. What am I doing today to show my gratitude to this fellowship? And I got to tell you a lesson I learned a long time ago. It's not traveling around speaking from the podium. I've done that a lot, and it's, I've been blessed by everybody I got to meet. Just absolutely, that's not, that'S not, I'm talking current today in my home group, when that little knucklehead that I met at that meeting the other night calls me on the phone, am I dusting him? Yeah, let somebody else mess with, or am I picking him up? And that's some of the stuff we're going to talk about this week, just ways that we can, things that I've learned over the years that allowed me to be a more effective sponsor to be able to work with more people, not less. Those are the things we can talk about folks. And I'll say it again real quick and let y'all go. Again, anything I say up here, I'm sure Billy will say the same thing. Anything I say appear, if you don't agree with it, that's just, we're not here to argue. I just, I'm gonna share the experience, the stuff that has worked effectively for me. I sponsor a boatload of people and I'm just so honored to have those folks in my life. I got to tell you, this crazy year with all this coronavirus stuff, guys, I'm so grateful that I have all of these little knuckleheads surrounding me. You know, I am deeper in the fellowship today thanks to Zoom than I ever was before. It's just a fact and I'm sure I'll say it later in the week. I hope when all this stuff is said and done and we're back to normal and not wearing masks anymore, I still hope that we have a whole bunch of these Zooms because it's the absolute coolest to be able to pop on. we got people from all over the world in this gathering tonight how cool is that and i sure want to be a part of that i'm gonna sometime during the week i'm going to put my email in that little chat and uh if any of y'all ever want to holler at me or visit um i can send you some little handouts that i've got that might help you if you're any media if you ever want that i'll probably regret offering that but i'm but i've been doing it for a long time I'm going to do it anyway. So anyway, I'll be more than glad to spend some time with anybody that wants to, wants to say hi. If, and I guess we'll turn it back over to the chairman. And if I'll see y'all here shortly to do this little first step thing. Thank you all so much. Thank you very much, Chris. We really appreciate your willingness to take your time and spend this special weekend with us. Thank you. Next, please allow me to introduce our other speaker this weekend to share some of his story with us for about 35 minutes. This is Billy N. from the Alfreda Unity Group. Billy? I'm looking for him. I can't find him. If the other co-hosts find him first, please feel free. You can unmute right now. Thanks. I'm Billy. I am an alcoholic. My sobriety dates January the 5th of 1990 in my home group, Zia Alfredo Unity Group. I want to say quickly, since we're here to discuss a bunch of things this weekend, I did not say my last name. If you're wondering why, because I want to make sure that sometimes we talk over people, there could be somebody brand new to AA here. I did not say my last name because this is being recorded, which means it could wind up in a public forum. Often things I've said have wound up on YouTube and other places and I didn't put them up there. But I know that they can go up there, so I don't say my last name if we were in a regular meeting that wasn't being recorded i would have no problem with you knowing my last named um i want to thank the new horizons group uh very much for putting this on it is really good to see my old friend chris uh i was uh i know we have this meeting protected so if you go to no video your picture can't come up and funny i found a picture of chris and i which reminded me how old i am now um i found a picture of uh chris and i from a long time ago um and i particularly love you know over the years when i've ran into somebody who's very passionate who uh says well you know chris r says this and i said i'm sure he does Would you like me to call them? Because it might shock you to find out that we're good friends. But, you know, it's funny that we are here tonight, you know, because the traditions and the big book and the steps intersect each other all the time. I only have 35 minutes. I can tell you a little bit of my story but then I've got to save a little of that time because I can't just go into tradition one without talking about how we got here with the traditions or how they became um but you know one subject that chris and i have been pretty passionate about the last 20 or so years is and god knows i tried my hardest is you know he mentioned don p and i'll mention don p again in a little bit but you go to a big book study a lot of times he would open up the book and he'd say to the crowd let's all read together from page one and the crowd would read war fever ran high and don would read the page one in his big book which was a doctor's opinion you know chris and i have felt for a long time it is unbelievable still that the fellowship refuses to return the doctor's opinion of page one. It is an integral part of those first 164, I'm not going to argue 110 104, whatever you whatever number you use inside that first part of the big book, I m not going to debate. But what I will debate is that the doctor's opinion is critical. Especially because, you know, when we talk about war stories or drunk-a-logs, drunk-o-logues are important, but they shouldn't be about war stories. They should be following the advice of Dr. Silkworth that he gave to Bill before Bill went to Akron. Because two things we know that don't work with newcomers are preaching about God and war stories. When Bill was the most unsuccessful 12-stepper in the history of AA. Now, if there is anybody from the Worldwide Fellowship of Al-Anon Family Groups, I want you to know I have the utmost respect for you. And I love that fellowship. But I'm a chronic teenage alcoholic. I did not always feel that way. There are a lot of people in AA who say there's nothing worse than a belly full of booze and a head full of AA. That is not my story. If you know my story, you know, my story there's, nothing worse to my belly full of boozes and my mother's head full of Al-Anon that is a lot more painful. I assure you a lot more um but you know when dr silkworth asked bill because lois was ecstatic you know bill complained he couldn't get anybody sober and lois said who cares you're sober you see any of those movies you read those books it's the big al-anon kumbaya who cares you're sober but i'll tell you who cares the 431 of us in here if bill stayed on that disastrous path lois dies having buried a sober husband and none of us are sober if bill remains on that path and when bill meets with dr silkworth which is talked about in a comes of age and another book i love not god and dr silkwood asks him what his approach is bill tells him and dr Silkworth is very candid with him you can't be talking to drunks about your window blowing open in the middle of the night in the hospital and god coming through the window and you feeling like you're floating on the top of a mountain. Drunks don't want to hear that. You need to talk about the medical estimate of alcoholism. In other words, the physical allergy and the mental obsession. And that's the problem with drunkologues today. The drunkologue is not the problem. It's the focus of the drunkologue. There is a great old Al-Anon speaker named Mary Pearl T., one of my favorites, and she always used to say, the newcomer will not accept your solution until they are convinced you have their problem. And that's what Dr. Silkworth told Bill. You have to sit down and talk about what happens to you when you drink and you don't drink. And anytime you heard Dr. Bob talk about his meeting with Bill, which was only supposed to be 15 minutes, what would Dr. Bob say? Why did it go a couple of hours? It went a couple of hours. Because for the first time, Dr. Bob realized he was sitting down with something with someone who had the same problem as him. The same physical allergy, the same mental obsession. And you know, it's funny, you can basically lay the doctor's opinion over working with others. Working with others is nothing more than Dr. Silkworth's advice before Bill went to Akron as to how he should work with newcomers. The only thing that's different is the book didn't exist when Bill went to Akran. And so, you know, I can tell you a little bit about my story. I am a chronic teenage alcoholic. People have been asking me the same questions for a long time. And by people, let me put them in a couple of categories for you. Parents. You know, mostly my mom. School psychologists. School social workers. guidance counselors, principals, probation officers, juvenile court judges. That's when I say people who I'm talking about. They've all been asking me, Billy, why do you drink so much? Billy, why can't you just drink like the other kids or the one I love the most now, but didn't even know what it meant at the time was Billy. why do you always have to take things so far? I was probably sober 15 years before I knew what that meant, but I have a handle on what that means today. But if I had a time machine and I was able to go from where I am today, which I never wanted to be, which is 54 years old, and back to age 14 or 16 or 18, I would have known the answer to their question. I would've been able to give them the answer because today I know the answer. I would Have been able to sit in front of that school psychologist and simply say, if you knew what it felt like for me to be sober, you would never ask me why i drink the way i do if you could just feel for five minutes what it's like for me to be sober you would ever ask me those questions again you would understand why i drank the way I do now you're not on any kind of uh path to success when you come into alcoholics anonymous at age 14 Right. That's not something people write in their high school yearbook, you know. You know, what are you looking forward to? What are you most proud of? Made it to A.A. at age 14. You know and for other people here who've gotten sober young. I mean how many times now I miss it. I used to hate it. Now I miss It because I'm not young anymore. But how many times does a young person tell their story and someone needs to either share from the audience or come up afterwards and talk to you and say, God, you're so lucky getting sober young. Well, let me just explain what it feels like at 14 years old to be an AA. It does not feel lucky. You do not feel like you won the lottery of life. It does Not feel lucky at all. Now, today, I know blessed beyond measure. But I only have two experiences in AA, age 14 to 23 and age 23 to today. You know, when I showed up in AA. I was not dressed like I am today. I had a uniform. My mother hated my uniform. I didn't even go to a Catholic school, but I wore the same thing every day. So I wore that to my first AA meeting. I wore my black engineer boots. I wore My Levi Dungarees or corduroys. I wore MY Heavy Metal Concert T-shirt. I woreMY Levi Dundaree jacket with an Ozzy Osbourne Diary of a Madman oil painting on the back of it. And I had a pack of Marlboro Reds stuck down the front of my pants, Because by age 14, I had learned that the people at school didn't really search as well as cops. So if I just threw them down my pants, I was fine. But that's who came to AA. And, you know, I don't blame the people in AA for me not getting sober. if i saw some lunatic get out of their car in a church parking lot with a big book that they bring to the meeting i'm just not talking to you i mean what kind of lunatic needs to bring their own book to a meeting when you know that there's already like 20 books there for everybody to read. So I was not shaking anyone down. And you know, I hate, hate, hate the saying time doesn't matter. Not because I believe time makes you better. But because I belief in permanent recovery. Because I believe that we don't promise people a day of sobriety or recovery. I mean, AA would have been out of business a long time ago. We have a permanent solution. You know, but I wasn't interested in that solution. I'll just jump ahead a little bit. I went to my first anniversary meeting when I was 16 years old. Now, I had figured out I couldn't really manipulate my mom because she was in Al-Anon. But I knew one thing I could manipulate her with, and that was AA. She wanted me to go to AA. And so if I was grounded, which let me just skip to the chase and get rid of like nine years of my story. between ages 14 and 23 i was either suspended from school or in detention i was grounded at home i was neither on juvenile or adult probation it was every day was groundhog day and let me just make a quick tangent off to the side because chris mentioned don and he mentioned effective And I want to mention Tom I, who celebrated 64 years this week on February 4th. He's been sick for a few years now. But Tom always stressed, are you into activity or action? Because they're two separate things. Activity does not keep people sober. And he always stressed is what we're doing effective? That's the only question. And it doesn't matter if it sounds good. It doesn't mater if it looks good. The question is, is it effective? Now at 16 years old, what was effective for me if I was grounded is telling my mom that I wanted to go to an AA meeting because then I could get out of the house and then I can be with a whole bunch of people who let me smoke. For the first time in my life, I was surrounded by adults who encouraged me and lent me cigarettes and was awesome. And so my mom drove me to this anniversary meeting, and I had heard about the big anniversary meeting last Friday night of the month. I had read about it. And some old lady turned the lights down halfway. She was like 34 years old. and some old guy came in with a cake with candles on it that were lit and he was like 40 and all these people sang happy anniversary and I sat there thinking my life is over these people just want to take away my party they all got to party until they were like 30 or 40 years old and they want to rip my party out of my hands it's funny because you hear some people say their worst day sober is better than their best day drinking i don't know who those people drank with i'm not really sure that's not my story i tell people all the time checking into a correctional facility at four months sober was not better than the first day of spring break Fort Lauderdale 1986 like I know which day was better it's because like I explained about drunk logs and how it's important for identification not important for war stories but same with that stupid saying my worst day sober is better than my best day drinking they're misquoting a line out of our big book. The line in the big book says, I wouldn't trade the life I have today for the life of yesteryear. Well, that's a whole different question. That's not even remotely the same. Now, what I can tell you today about my teenage years until I'm 23 is that I have the physical allergy, number one. I have that physical allergy. When I start drinking, I cannot stop. It is impossible. Now, while I love the big book, you know, I always say Superman has kryptonite, alcoholism has the first drink. Our book is useless regarding the physical allergy. Once I take a drink, my internal body chemistry takes over. I am mentally and physically different from my fellows. See, but I didn't know that my problem was really my mental obsession. I thought my problems were what happened when I drink because I tend to attract all kinds of trouble. I didn't realize, see, I like to get up at four o'clock in the afternoon. I don't know about you. In sobriety, I'm not a morning person, but I've had to learn to get back to sleep. I get up in the morning, but I still love to stay up late. And I, for 30-something years, have been willing to try everything to get up early in the morning except go to bed early. That just seems way too drastic. I'll set three alarms. In the old days, I'll put an alarm clock across the room before we had phones with alarms. But that's like the first drink. I'll do anything to stop drinking except stop drinking see because I like to get up at four o'clock in the afternoon I preferably like to get up when there's at least one cigarette left on my nightstand because by the time I was 16 I figured out that if you light a cigarette before you get out of bed when your feet hit the ground your hangover is somewhat a little bit more tolerable if you're smoking already. And then I like to get out to a Dunkin' Donuts or a 7-Eleven and get a cup of coffee and a fresh pack of cigarettes. See, I didn't know that in that first couple of hours, the boogeyman arrives. That I feel uncomfortable in my own skin. And like the book says, whatever happened the night before, the week before, the month before. It doesn't matter. My brain tells me I'll feel okay if I have a drink. Now, I heard all those old people say the first drink gets you drunk. I felt sorry for those people. What kind of good drinker gets drunk on the first Drink? I knew by the time I was 18 years old, I figured it out with a school psychologist. It was the first shot after the eighth beer that did me in. If I could just stay away from shots, I would be okay. It definitely wasn't that first beer. And that's my whole life, from 14 to 23. Now, I wound up going to this correctional facility, and I just want to say quickly, in my last eight minutes. I heard a Tom I tape there. I listened to it on a Walkman. For those of you younger people, a Walkmen was a square box you could put a cassette in that had headphones that were attached to it that you could listen to music on. The number one song at the time was hammer time. But these outside people brought in speaker tapes. And I want to stress here, since we're going to talk about all 12 traditions. I was not in some kind of half of AA group inside that correctional facility. I Was not inside some AA group that had like Seven Steps and Five Traditions, I was in an Alcoholics Anonymous group. No different than us tonight, no different than when I attended an in-person meeting. And that's what Tom I talks about being effective. When we bring meetings to treatment centers and correctional facilities, our job is to be effective. That's it. And the people who brought AA into where I was were effective. Now, I met Joe and Charlie when I was like three years sober. Now, Chris was talking about 90 meetings in 90 days. You know, there's a lot of things I don't argue anymore. I don' t argue do meeting makers make it? You know why? Because they all make it to the same place. It's written in the big book. They make it through the fork in the road. Are they going to blot out their existence or accept spiritual help? only people like us we're going with blotting out existence spiritual help seems a little too much for my kind of problem especially if spiritual help means not drinking you people disguise spiritual help with not drinking kind of like serenity with boredom it took me probably 11 years to figure out that i wasn't bored that's actually serenity but for a person like me it's a hard but i went to that first joe and charlie uh workshop and guess what happened when you go you know why i don't argue 90 meetings in 90 days because most newcomers i know go to about 300 meetings in90 days they got nothing else to do and when you go to 300 meetings in 90 days you know what you know you know that person i talked about who gets out of their car with the big book you get to know who all of those lunatics are at every meeting because every meeting has like three or four of them you know there's like three or five of them and you're like oh my god three or three of those overly passionate people at every meeting and when you go to a Joe and Charlie workshop, every one of them for 100 miles is in the lobby of the hotel. If you hate AA like I do, it's like the worst place in the world to be. Like every person that I can't stand in every AA meeting is now within like 100 feet of me. Every person. But you know, that weekend, I learned a lot of important things. You know, I learned when they said that the big book doesn't say the top five things in the big book. It doesn't stay the 10 most important things it doesn't. Say this is kind of important. What it says is the main purpose of this book is to find a power greater than yourself that could solve your problem. That's what it says. It doesn't care about the second, third, fourth, fifth or sixth important part of the book. The main purpose. See I've been calling myself an alcoholic for 13 years by that time. I knew that when I went to AA I had to say my name's Billy. I'm an alcoholic. That was my ticket in the door but you see that weekend I learned what it meant to be an alcoholic. So let me tell you quickly, I met Tom, I as a result of that, I have a story like Kerry's. After that big book workshop, I joined a big book home group. But I felt like everybody in my service meetings never talked about the big book and everybody at my big book meeting never talked About the traditions. And I asked a taper, does anyone and talk about both. And he said, well, you need to listen to this guy, Don P from Aurora, Colorado. He's actually the guy who brought the message to Russia. And I eventually met Don and talked to him. And if you ever went to Denver, if I wanted to see him, I had to go to his crazy meeting at 6 a.m. 6 a!m. That's when his meeting met. And it was called NAA group, you know, because the service manual said whenever two or three people gather, they may call themselves NAA groups. So that's what he called this meeting. So I'm here to talk about the traditions this weekend. And so a couple of things I want to say quickly before I get to tradition one in my last couple of minutes here. i'm going to talk about zoom zoom is like correctional facilities the traditions apply just as much here in alcoholics anonymous meetings there's no such thing as a zoom meeting we have aa meetings that are located on zoom just like we have a meetings that Are in clubhouses and church basements if you've never been through the traditions i just want to let you know i'm sure a lot of people here would agree. If you ran into someone at a meeting who said they've been through the steps but never went through the big book with someone who's been through the big books, you might shake your head a little bit when you walk away. I would do the same thing about A.A. Comes of Age. If you're going to go through the traditions, you have to read A. A. Comes of Age, you know that the 12 traditions are our 12 biggest mistakes between 1935 and 1945. i also want everybody to know that we talk about the traditions with newcomers before the steps all the time we just don't say they're their traditions because newcomers have questions how much does this cost they don't know about self-support newcomers see god and prayer all over our walls they think you got to believe in a god that we believe in. We talk about these traditions long before, but I want to give a couple of warnings out there. Here's my warnings. You can't listen to the traditions from me this weekend and go through the traditions. And I love Chris, but you can't put a Chris RCD in your car and think you went through the big book. You Can't go to a Joe and Charlie big book workshop for a weekend and think you did. It requires action on your own part. Yes, it's good to hear people's experience, but you've got to do your own footwork. Two things I'm going to end with right here. Number one, the embrace and not enforcement rule. Some of you may be familiar with law enforcement. I'm sure a few of you. i'm sure you know that enforcement does not work with alcoholics it is shocking for other people enforcement and penalties is meant to teach a lesson that if you do this wrong we're going punish you so that you never do it again that is 100 ineffective with alcoholic only embracing spiritual principles whether the steps traditions or concepts works with other alcoholics if they see you embracing them and the results that you've had as a result they'll want to embrace them and then my favorite the last thing i'll say behavior matters tone of voice matters rolling of eyes matters how you treat people matters compassion matters how many times have i seen where the behavior reacting to a tradition's violation is a hundred times worse than whatever they're trying to correct that does not send a good message so i'm really grateful to be here tonight you know that line i talked about the main purpose of this book i was an atheist and an agnostic for a couple of years in in aa i never listened up in how it works that last pertinent idea yeah i always thought i heard them say god could and would if he were found And that's not what it says. It says God could and would if he were sought. We're not in the finding business here. We're in the seeking business. So thank you very much for having me here tonight, and I look forward to the weekend. Thank you so much, Billy. We appreciate your willingness to take your time and spend this very special weekend with us here. We'll now take a short break, And we'll meet back here to start step one and tradition one. And we're going to meet at 630 sharp or half past the hour, wherever you are. But 630 Pacific time, we'll start back and we'll start with Chris on step one.