Physical Allergy and Phenomenon of Craving – Workshop – Wilson House – VT – Part 7 of 7 – Raymer W.

to get detoxed and to get treated for his alcoholism. His in-laws actually had some really good medical connections, so even though he didn't have any money, they would take him in Towns Hospital, which was kind of an upscale rehab at that time. And there was a guy in there, Dr. Silkworth, who put together some theories. Listen, he treated like 10,000 alcoholics in the course of his jobs up there. And he started to see patterns. He started to put together some theories about what is going on. You have to understand that alcoholism, like any obsessive-compulsive disorder or any addiction or ism, is unorthodox. It's unorthadox. It's very, very difficult to define. They've had so much trouble in the past to define what is an alcoholic. Give me a definition of an alcoholic. Even Alcoholics Anonymous had a hard time doing that. It's an unorthodox illness, and it presents in very, very strange ways. And it's difficult for the medical or the psychiatric community to fully be able to deal with it. It's spiritual. How do you wrap verbiage around something that's spiritual? Sometimes it's an experience. It's not really something that you can fully define. But Dr. Silkworth came up with some theories, and a few of his theories were these. He believed that the alcoholic had a physical allergy. that's kind of a bad way really to describe it if you're looking at medical terminology in this day and age but I understand what he was saying he was basically saying that when the alcoholic puts alcohol in their body something happens to them that does not happen to a non-alcoholic and what that is it's a phenomenon of craving And he called that an allergy, because an allergy was an unusual reaction to a food or a beverage. So that's why he used the terminology analogy. We have unusual, as alcoholics, we have unusual reactions to alcohol when it goes in our body. It creates a phenomenon of craving. And the best way I can describe this is this. the first drink will almost invariably do one thing with us it will ask us to take a second drink the second drink will insist on the third drink the third drank will demand the fourth drink and the more alcohol in our body the more strong this physical craving is this craving to put more alcohol on our body And this is the reason why we'll go out and we'll just stop at the bar after work to have two and end up closing the place. It's because what happens is that phenomenon of craving becomes paramount and you end up drinking, and a lot of times, especially in the last stages of alcoholism, you drink yourself into a blackout and unconsciousness. and that's the way my alcoholism was the last four or so years of my drinking every single time I would start drinking I would drink myself into a blackout, pass out it was a terrible type of existence but that's what part of step one is the physical part which is that craving but another thing that the doctor kind of tried to wrap his hands around was, okay, it's easy sometimes for us to understand that when we start drinking, we're going to finish the deal. I mean, I knew that for the last 10 years of my drink and I didn't want to drink with somebody who was going to have two and go home. You know, that would freak me out to drink avec people like that. No thanks, I've had enough. You ever drink avec with people that had enough on you? Man, that's disconcerting. what do you mean you've had enough it's only 11 o'clock let's go to the city that was me, come on I want more out of this experience but every once in a while I'd be drinking with non-alcoholics who want to just have a little bit of fun but they've had two or three drinks they figure I'm not going to be driving well if I drink anymore I'll feel bad in the morning if I don't drink anymore Or I've had enough. Well, that's never my experience because I had that phenomenon of craving. But here's the thing that's really difficult to get your hands around. And this is where treatment professionals, the people that treat us for alcoholism sometimes don't understand this. Many of them. Our families don't understanding it. You know, a lot of times we don't even understand it. And that is, with our negative experience of what alcohol does to us and how sick it makes us and how it puts us in positions to get DUIs and in trouble with the family and embarrassing situations and all this, why do we return to it? Why don't we just say, you know what, this alcohol is not treating me right anymore. I think I'll give it up. There are a lot of people that can do that. I drank, I had a roommate after I went through college down in Tampa, Florida. And we rented this animal house. It was just one guy was a Quaalude dealer, you know. And me and the other guy, we were blackout drinkers. And we would joke with each other. Let's have a blackout tonight, you Know. And he was a rum drinker and I was a bourbon drinker. And we'd buy fifths or quarts. and we'd drink as much as humanly possible until we would pass out. And that's how we drank. Now, what happened with him, you know, he looked just like me. He looked just Like Me. He drank Like Me, he crashed cars Like Me he did vomiting calisthenics in the morning Like Me but what happened was he met a cute little girl and started dating her and she wasn't really into having a blackout drinker out on a date with her so he made it known to him that he better get his act together if he wants any part of this and you know what, all of a sudden I lost my drinking buddy now do you think a pretty little woman would have straightened me out as an alcoholic? No a couple of them tried and I tried for a couple of them but the problem was, is I had what Silkworth and Bill and some of the early people called the mental obsession. And the mental obsession is what makes us unable at certain times to have a mental defense against putting alcohol or whatever, drugs, whatever, back in our body. We don't have, we can't access the will to not use. And this is really, really hard to understand, especially for people who haven't experienced this level of powerlessness. It's about power, it's about choice, and it's about control. And there are certain times where we don't have access to that. I'll give you an experience because when I'm working with somebody, I always ask them to find their own truth about the obsession of the mind and it's a good idea to find from your own personal experience times when this happened to you and here is basically my story about this alcohol had got my attention in a big way I knew it was going to take me out I was about 50 pounds underweight, my eyes were yellow some mornings from liver failure because I was killing my liver with hard liquor. I knew that if I continued the way I was going, I was going to die soon. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. So I didn't want to die. I had a young daughter. I didn' t want to dye in disgrace with my daughter 8 years old. I just had a little bit of desire to not die. So i signed myself into a treatment center. Literally, Iwas the only person in that treatment center that wasn't there through some kind of coercion. People were there for DUIs, people were there for interventions from work because I asked these questions of the people that were in there I really was the only person that decided myself to sign myself into this treatment center so that shows you right there I was serious about separating from this alcohol stuff I went through the 28th day I paid $13,000 to go through this thing at the end they basically recommended two things, they recommended that I go to some AA meetings and they recommended outpatient so okay I'm going to outpatient so two nights a week I'm paying $80 a night to sit in a circle of people talking about their day one knucklehead after the other talking about how their week was and how they're staying sober and I was paying $90 twice a week which was probably half my paycheck back then and I was going to two AA meetings a week and I told everybody I'm done with drinking I am never going to drink again I'm gone, I'm going to AA I went to outpatient I got treatment, I am done I am cured I am telling everybody this now somewhere around 85 days sober I am driving to an AA meeting and the thought crosses my mind that I haven't been drunk in almost three months. You know, I don't even really remember what it's like to be drunk and it doesn't feel like I'm really plugging in with this recovery stuff. You know? What I think I should do is I think i should buy a gallon of vodka. I think should drink that vodka because it will make me feel so bad that I will re-understand why I'm doing this and it'll push me back into AA and I'll do a really good job. Now, think about that. I decided to buy a gallon of vodka and drink it to improve my sobriety. Makes perfect sense. To an alcoholic, it does. It makes perfect sense Listen, alcohol doesn't care how it's going to talk you into buying it and putting it down your throat. Alcohol doesn't matter. If it has to convince you it's good for your sobriete, it'll do it and all of a sudden I understood experientially what the obsession of the mind is you know uh Myers and I work with a lot of people I'm sure I'm certain there's a lot of people in here that work with these people that relapse you know they seem so sincere like yeah I really want to stay sober you know please help me uh you know I want to put my family back together. And all of a sudden they relapse. You know, they're telling the truth when they're telling you that they never want to drink again. They're telling you the truth. When they're saying I'm going to do better. I swear to God, this is never going to happen again. They're Telling you the Truth. If you hook them up to a lie detector, the lie detector would say they are telling the Truth, they are going to Do Better, they're promising to do Better. And All of a Sudden, All of A Sudden they come home drunk, or they give you a call from a crack house or something and you're sponsoring them. Even sometimes me, I'm like, what happened? Listen, powerlessness is powerlessness. They wouldn't ask us to admit to powerlessness if they didn't mean it. The first step would be made a decision to never put alcohol back in our body. You know, that's what the first step would be if they thought we had the power to do that. The early AAs were mostly all real low-bottom alcoholics. They had ended up near skid row kind of deals. They were all really, really critical. Most people that come into AA didn't really achieve those levels of chronic, critical alcoholism like the early guys. But what they understood was, they understood this that when they put a pledge in the family Bible never to drink again, they meant it. And then two weeks later they're drunk. What is that? Well Dr. Silkworth called it a mental obsession. And what happens is on our own unaided will, I'm going to read one sentence and that's going to be all I'm gonna read out of the book on step one. Myers will do what Myers is going to need to do, but this is from page 24, one paragraph down. The fact is that most alcoholics for reasons yet obscure, you know, we don't know why and we don' t need to know why. Sometimes knowing why is the booby prize. Sometimes we refuse to get off the Titanic until we find out who was supposed to be watching for icebergs, you You know, listen, you're going down. Who cares? For reasons yet obscure have lost the power of choice and drink. Our so-called willpower becomes practically non-existent. We are unable at certain times to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink. the whole point of this book is to show you where your defense is going to need to come from that's what the book Alcoholics Anonymous is for but step one is admitting that you need that defense, that you don't have the power, you are powerless so often so often what I see I've been very very committed to the fellowship AlcoholicsAnonymous for many years and some other fellowships but I've been consistently going to meetings for 24 years now, and I've seen a lot in that time. And I've seeing a lot of people come in. Listen, it's easy to show up in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's really hard to stay. And I used to hear the exact opposite. I used here, it is really hard day to come into AI, and it's a lot easier to stay." I kind of understand what they mean there, but this is my experience. It's easy for people to come in. Just look at how many people celebrate 90 days in your home group and then ask yourself how many People are celebrating 20 years? How many People Are Celebrating 15 Years? They're gone. You know what I mean? And those people that are celebrating 90 days, most of them are going to be gone in two or three years. so I believe it's really easy to come in we pay a big price don't get me wrong we have shot ourselves in both feet by the time we show up in Alcoholics Anonymous but to stay here and to stay sober and to experience recovered to experience that that's not everyone's experience you're in the minority if you're a recovered alcoholic in Alcoholic Anonymous today You are. There's a lot of sober people in Alcoholics Anonymous. There's not a lot Of recovered ones. Now, what I have seen over the years is I've seen a lot Of people come in and expect to get the experience By sitting in the chair. I thought early on that working a program Was consistent meeting attendance. That's what I thought because that's what I was being told. I'm sure that like Myers was saying last night, these people were not trying to hurt me. They were sharing their experience and a lot of times it's what I hear and how I hear it. It's a good thing to tell somebody to be consistent with meetings. Come with us. Stay with us You're going to be safer if you stay with us That's true but I thought they were saying come with us, stay with US If you stay with us, you'll stay sober and everything will be okay. And that's not really true. There's some work that needs to be done. We need to do some work to really experience the recovery that's available in Alcoholics Anonymous and that's described in the book AlcoholicsAnonymous. So a lot of people miss this fact. There were even meetings early on. They don't do that as much these days in my area. But there are meetings where if you got up to celebrate and grab your coin, everyone would go, how did you do it? And you would think that you were expected to talk for a few minutes on how you kept yourself sober. And a lot of those messages go counter to the message that the big book is saying. The big book is saying that at certain times we are going to be unable to protect ourselves from alcohol. And it's almost not going to be our fault. In step two, I'm going to finish with this and turn it over to Myers. In step 2 it talks about us being restored to sanity. Sanity is a term that you would think comes from the psychiatric or the mental health disciplines, you would think that insanity, but really it comes from a legal origin and it comes from about 400 years ago over in England what was happening is magistrates were having to put really stiff sentences on people who were mentally challenged what was happening is somebody who obviously doesn't understand right from wrong good from bad would maybe steal an apple off of a fruit cart downtown and get arrested. And the punishment for stealing is to chop your hands off or something. Now, the judge would be sitting there with someone obviously incapable of knowing he did anything wrong. And they just couldn't stand putting these penalties in place anymore. So what they did was they established what is known as the insanity defense. what the insanity defense is if you ever want to get off using an insanity defense what you do is you need to prove that you didn't have access to right from wrong good from bad you didn' t have the capabilities of understanding and accessing that, that's what sanity means, so in step 2 it says we can be restored to sanity that's wat it means we don't have the ability to think a drink through. At certain times, we don't have access to sound, solid reasoning about putting alcohol back in our body. You know, we are... It talks about the subtle forms of insanity that precede the first drink. You know? The strange mental blank spots that preceded the first drank. This is all stuff right out of the big book. It's very, very difficult to describe because, you know, here we are. we've just had a DUI, we've promised the family we'll never drink again and we're walking home with a 12-pack of beer. They're like, what is wrong with you? Has anybody ever asked you what is WRONG with you?! And you look at them like, I don't know! We don't know! What is wrong with you, you've got a 12-pack of beer under your arm, you just got your third DVWI! What is WRONG with you! What is wrong with us is there's an insanity that wraps around the way we, our relationship with alcohol. At certain times, we don't have access to that power, that choice, and that control. My name is Myers Raymer. I'm a recovered alcoholic. Man, what a difference some sleep makes. Holy cow, I got up this morning and went, oh, so this is what it feels like to be rested. Good. I've been fighting this insomnia thing for about a year now a little over a year. I've never struggled with it at all like this and all of a sudden a year ago it kind of came in from left field and so I just don't sleep much anymore. And last night I hit the pillow, I was reading and I woke up at 5.30 this morning with my iPad laying on my chest where I'd left it and had not woke up and I'm just like going, man, this is some special stuff. We spend more time talking about this Step 1 stuff than anything else that we do because what Chris was saying was true. We have a whole fellowship of men and women who want to talk about alcohol and precious few that want to talk about alcoolism. Two distinctly different things. All the war stories we like to talk about and all the other stuff. They play a role. They're important, but it's interesting why we keep running across hundreds and hundreds of people sitting in our rooms who don't know what alcoholism is. They don't now what the disease looks like and so they have trouble. If I don't understand it, how do you teach it when the new guy comes in? Well, I'm an alcoholic because I got a DWI. Excuse me? Your DWI didn't define your alcoholism. There's a face on alcoholism and we can show you what it looks like. Bill Wilson did. So let's look at it like this. In the doctor's opinion, what is Silkworth talking about? 98% of everything in the doctor's opinion addresses one thing the physical allergy the physical component of alcoholism once I put it in my body then bizarre things happen this way I'm different from normal people like this then we have Bill's story sets up and as soon as we get clear of Bill's story we slide off into more about alcoholism and there's a solution we have 23 pages all the way up to We Agnostics, chapter 4. Everything between Bill's story and their We Agnostics addresses the second thing that's baffling, the mental component of alcoholism. Why is it stone cold sober do I still find myself back with a drink in my hand? Promising that I was never going to do it again and then finding myself... I can't tell you how many times, folks, I was going to a great big Pentecostal church in Houston, Texas and I'd have everybody in the church praying for me I'd be blowing snot bubbles and crying it would just be a mess up there I'm done with all of this stuff and then by 3 o'clock that afternoon the Houston Oilers were set up to get beat again and I had a 12 pack of beer sitting next to me on a couch you understand what I'm saying? A minute when I said that in front of all those people that I didn't want to do this and yet the mental component and it would take me years to realize the scary thing that is it possible that the decision to drink is being made for you that it is not a mental you just need to pull yourself up by the bootstrap thing. And that's what powerlessness looks like when something's happening to you that you have no control over like that. This is why this stuff becomes so scary and we seem to let people come on to this decision on their own sitting in meetings and if you're in a place where people are talking solution in the meetings they might hear that. They might actually get that message. But what happens if they sobered up in Dallas, Texas epicenter of middle-of-the-road solution? You might sit there for 10 years and wonder why it is that you're 10 years from your last drink or drug and you're sitting there with a gun in your lap half the morning of the week that you are suicidal that you can't hold a job that you cannot be in a decent relationship that you spend way more than you make that you cant stop eating that you can't stop. You understand what I'm saying? All these other addictions just shooting out sideways. They're coming from all kinds of places. Any of you guys remember the Hughes Act in 1971? Some of you weren't even born in 1971. You kids, God. In 1971, I was a junior in high school and I had taken my first drink. My dad was an alcoholic and I swore I was never going to drink and then I found myself drinking one night and I went, holy cow, now I see why he does what he did and I was off to the races. Bill Wilson would die later that year. In 1971, that same year that Bill died, the last piece of legislation that Nixon signed when he went out of office when he left office was the Hughes Act. It was the greatest piece of regulation for us anyway that came down the pike because it put teeth in the medical component the medical piece of alcoholism and it allowed treatment centers to charge money for treatment in a profound way. Almost overnight, stick with me. You'll see why this is important in just a second. Some of you are going, what's this got to do with Step 1? It really and truly has got a lot to do mit Step 1. Almost overnight treatment centers, some of you guys that were around then, remember it was like there were treatment centers up on every corner. I mean like drive-thru treatment centers. At one point in time in the early 80s, 40% of all medical beds, all medical beds in the United States were detox and treatment center beds. Hospitals were pushing cancer patients to one side and saying, Pooey on these guys, we've got some real guys we can make money off of right here. And they were just filling these beds with, you don't think you're an alcoholic? How about your, oh, I know you're this. And it was really, there were some good things that happened but there were som wheels off crazy stuff that happened through that period of time. Now, up to 1970, I want to just double check that and see. Up to 1935 to 1971. From 1935-1971, that's 35 years to get the first 500,000 members of Alcoholics Anonymous. Between 1971 and 1976, 5 years, there was another 500,000 people added to the roles of Alcoholics Anonymous. So in five years we had done membership wise what it took us 35 years to do before. And so our rooms had filled up with all of these people. Were they welcome? Absolutely. Did we love them? Absolutely. Did they say some really crazy things? Absolutely! It was because all of a sudden we were sitting, the stuff that Chris was talking about like this, a lot of these cats that were coming to us in the early days I mean, there was just simply, we spent a lot of time qualifying them when we got here. Everybody knew, I mean you just knew that you were in a room full of bozos just like you. And it was, but now all of a sudden we're sitting in meetings where we're talking about our day. There were a lot OF instructions, if you feel bad just go share your day. And there was the advent of the discussion meeting in the mid-60s that just sort of moved most of our traditional AA to one side in favor of people just sharing their day. I'm not can we just get something on the table real quick just so you'll know where I'm coming from on the stuff like that has there been some profound things that happened during a discussion meeting can we all agree that we've heard some pretty cool things when people were sharing one or the other with that same deal can we also agree that we've had some of the craziest shit in the universe sitting in discussion meetings wheels off, crazy stuff and you're sitting there going is he ever going to shut up? Yeah, it happens like this. There was just some crazy stuff that went along. Well what we began to see was we beganto see success rates that were pretty successful. The book tells us close to 90% in the forward of the first edition and toward the end of the book they're talking about at worst case scenario we were 50% success rate 50% of the people that came and so today worldwide our statistics are running anywhere from 5% on the low end to 15% on the high end worldwide. Now, it's baffling to me the Minaret group in Minnesota and some of these places used to keep detailed records of all the people that were coming and staying. They had written records for years and years. Finally, some people, the pressure to stop doing it became great enough that they just stopped doing it. But we've got years and year of statistical data from those periods of time that were running better than 90% of the people that came, stayed, and had long-term sobriety. And today, worldwide, it just makes you weep. Some of us sit there in our meeting and we get all stoic about it. Well, we're sober. I know, but how many of your friends are not sober? How many people do you know over the years that came and didn't stay? This is the important thing. So stick with me a little bit on the deal. In Dallas, the last statistical stuff that I've got from intergroup sales, from chip sales. There was close to 17,000 in 2012. There were 17, 000 desire chips and 1,490 day chips, 1,200 one-year chips. So we're talking about 14... So you've got 17, 00 people that came and in a year you've got 14, 000 people gone. You understand what I'm saying? I mean, so listen, I'll hand it to you. Could some of those guys have just decided that they didn't want what they had when they got here? I mean, if they just came in and said, yeah, I just don't think I want to do that, and left. Absolutely. But folks, look, at some point in time, don't you think that we as a fellowship need to shoulder some of the responsibility for what's going on? Why some of those people... I'm just throwing this out there. Is it possible that these cats that came didn't hear the same message that they heard when Bill Wilson and those guys were carrying the message? Is it impossible? I think it is. I think het is. How do I know because I've sponsored hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and thousands of men in the last 26 years. And I am baffled by how many men don't know squat about this deal. Guys, I got a group of guys, I'm not going to tell you what I call them, but there's five old guys and it's just disrespectful. But anyway, there's 5 old guys that are my age or older. Collectively, they've got over 120 years of sobriety, collectively. and collectively they sponsored five men. I got two of those men that never sponsored one guy and all the time they've been sober, they've not sponsored one man. And when you talk to them, it's like you just sit back and go, what? You guys didn't get anything? You didn't learn anything through this stuff like that? I want to tell you, we were sitting in a meeting before the meeting and I sat with these guys and I had been doing this for six or seven months and they would come and we'd study the big book before our big book study. And we're sitting there like this and I said, guys, before we get started, I want to talk about Jim's story. Flip over and let's talk about Jim's Story for a second. And I'm looking up and I'm already at the page and I look up and these guys are kind of looking at me like this and then they're looking at each other and then their back over in the back of the book looking through the stories and I went, Jim's Stories. Jim, Fred, remember those guys? Oh, oh yeah. And they're just kind of looking back in the back of the book. And finally I just put my hand out and put it on this guy's book and I flipped it back over to the front and set up the page for him like this. It said, In the front of the books, guys, right here. And these guys looked at each other and they smiled at each another and then we started our study like that. Nobody wanted to admit that all these years in AA and nobody knew where Jim's story was in the frontof that book. it baffles me so here's the deal if there are things that separate us from normal drinkers a physical component and a mental component all of this being driven by a spiritual component that Bill will introduce to us over on page 64 why is it that we don't want to talk about that why is that that we just want to sit in meetings and share and talk about all kinds of stuff at the expense so we've got this kind lady and she's sitting there in a meeting like this and we're going to leave it to a chance that she might hear what she needs. In Dallas, we just say, well, they'll get comfortable and there'll be plenty of time to work the work later on. And I'm going, that's not my experience. Because let me tell you what my experience is. My experience is, based on what he read right there, that she won't. She'll stay around for a little bit and then she will get disconcerted and she will begin to build a case against us until she finally just says, I'm not one of you. All the hairy-legged guys start talking about beating up people and going to jail and all the war story stuff that we love to talk about and she's just sitting there with her purse on her lap wanting to know can she get up in the morning and not walk into her kitchen and start drinking? Is that it? You understand what I'm saying? We've got thousands of people that do that. And it was so simple when they started explaining for guys that I'm sponsoring. you've got a book, turn to page 44 what Chris read just now when they were talking about you won't remember the pain and suffering of even a week or a month ago this idea that we would know how many of you have ever worked in a treatment center or done 12 step work in a 12 step facility at some kind of treatment place. It's an amazing thing. You guys know exactly what I'm talking about. You'll walk in, meet a guy. He's sitting back in the back of the room. He's got his hat on sideways and he's all crying and he'S all just beat up. He's been detoxing for two days and he''s really ready. He''s real pliable and he wants to do what you want him to do. I'll read it real quick, brother. And so he said, I'll do whatever you want to do I said, okay, we'll get started on this stuff. You do what they ask you to do here and then in a couple of weeks I'm going to come back and we'll start working work and we will see what we can get done. 27 days later this kid has been eating good working out he is 27 days from his last drink and you walk in and he is sitting in the back of the room completely ignoring you. I mean he sees you he knows you are in the room but he is just looking the other direction like this because his ego has rebuilt itself physically and mentally he is much better off he is convinced that he doesn't need a program and he doesn' t and at that particular moment, he doesn't. You see? This idea that we have an unlimited amount of time with which to start people through the work that this component of this thing, this mental craziness won't rekindle itself is ludicrous, guys. All we have to do is look at our collective experience. Look at your own experience. I'm not, and then I do. That's just the craziest. And so here's what I want to throw out real quick in the last couple of minutes before we break. Like, we've got a brand-new gal that shows up. You just happened to be there. I'm sorry. I'm just going to pick on you until you just move someplace, I guess. So we've Got This Brand-New Girl, and we automatically love her. She's a sweetheart, and she's sitting right there in our room. And so we want her to keep coming back. We keep telling her to keeps coming back and this kind of stuff, and she may for a while. If she doesn't get plugged in, she may start drifting, and then we can talk about her when she doesn't show up and then some old coot in the back of the room is going to say something about her not wanting it bad enough that alcohol will drive her back in here. And I'm saying shame on us. When she was here, when she was out there in front of the building smoking a butt before she came in, couldn't we have sat with her for a couple of minutes and helped qualify her? That dreaded Q word. Everybody goes, qualifying. Listen, go back and read any piece of history. Go back and talk to any archivist that has done any research. And there was an amazing amount of time spent with people qualifying them to help them see, A, if they were one of us, if they even needed to be in the room, so that we could know and understand how to help him. The danger awaits if we don't get them on a spiritual path pretty quick. It just simply does. You'll just drift. So this is what we were going to do. The interesting part is I could sit with her outside at the butthut just smoking a cigarette just out there talking and qualify and help her see a lot of the things that she's done I've done lots of step one two and three sitting out on a car and they've never even been in an AA meeting yet you understand what I'm saying this idea that we have to let people sit and get comfortable and this kind of stuff after they're here and sober let them get comfortable all they want to like that some of you may disagree with me but I just what was the motivator that got you here in the first place wasn't it pain I mean, you put a blowtorch up to my little skinny butt and I'll go, okay, okay. Okay, stop. I'll do it. I'll, I'll do it and then I'm motivated to do some stuff. You let me sit back, get me a hot cup of coffee and look at a bunch of real pretty girls in the room and sit back and have guys telling me jokes and we'll talk about a little golf or we'll talk about... I'll get more and more comfortable. I'll get more and more until the mental obsession begins to set itself up again like this and then I'm off to the races and I disappear again. This is what we see. Australia 98% of all the meetings in Australia are what they call ID meetings. They just, ID meetings, and all they do is just tell their war story, how they got there, over and over. We're going to talk about this in the morning at some length. Your war story is important. You better have a good one. If you don't, make one up. I don't care. It's just like, you need to have a story. When we're sitting there at the butthut talking about this stuff, we need to be able to identify, and she's going to go, yeah, you sound just like me. You're just like me and we identify like this. But once she's in the room and she is here, why do we keep doing that? Why do we keep beating that gum like that? We got them here. Why don't we pull them with a vision of how cool sobriety can be? Why don'T we talk about what it's like to work steps? What it's like to begin and have a relationship with God that is so amazingly profound that it changes everything about our life. Why can't we talk about that? I don't know. I got her out there and we're talking like this with men I sponsor the very first place I take them is page 44 and we are just going to ask the questions it's real simple they ask two things they are talking about choice and control and they ask these two questions if when you honestly want to you find you cannot quit entirely or when drinking you have little control over the amount you take you were probably alcoholic keep your finger right there on that right there you were probably alcoholic they ask these two questions When you told your wife you were never going to drink again and you meant it, if you're like me, you meant but you found yourself drunk again, you've lost the power of choice. Check that mark. Okay? If you called your wife from work and said, sweetheart, I'm going to go down there and I'm just going to go drink one beer with these guys after work and then I'm gonna be home and you end up drinking 6 or 10 or 30 or don't come home at all or it's midnight. If that happens, then you've lost the power of control. That's it. Nothing else defined you. The DWI didn't. The family abuse didn't, none of this other stuff. I'm not saying it wasn't important, guys. I'm just saying that it's not necessary in order to define who you are. Non-alcoholics get DWIs every year. Thousands and thousands of people mess up, drink, get in their car and drive. It happens all the time. It does not mean they're an alcoholic. Why is this important? I'll tell you why. Do we still love them? Absolutely. Are they still welcome at AA? Absolutely! Membership in Alcoholics Anonymous is different than what it takes to be an alcoholic They're two distinctly different things. Why is it important? It's important because I'm a knucklehead alcoholic and he's a disco drunk. He just got in trouble. He's just a wussy drunk. And so we're sitting in meetings talking. What do you think the wussy drunks are going to be sharing? Wussy stuff. I mean, just crazy stories like that. I go for a jog in the morning and that keeps me sober. I mean he's throwing up. All he's got is just not programmed. You see? And so you have to pay attention. The man that you love sitting next to you in a meeting that shares all this stuff, he may not be the real deal. Is he welcome? Yeah, don't get me wrong. Some of you guys are looking at me like I'm talking heresy here. They're welcome to be sitting in the meeting. The problem is my concern is not for me. I've been sober for 26 years almost. I understand what it is that he's saying. I understand the difference between opinion and real life program stuff. But she doesn't. She doesn't Our brand new little member sitting in a room soaking up this stuff like a sponge, they don't understand what's real and what's not. Their BS meter's not even turned on yet. They don't know, so everything you say becomes doctrine. And if I get a head full of enough spoon-fed doctrine, I don't need that stupid book. And I sure don't needs your program that makes me uncomfortable. And I can just sit and gel and be friendly. Do some people stay for long periods of time like that? I did. I stayed for seven years and never cracked that book. Didn't even know what was in it for seven year. You can do it. Sure you can. Here's the question. Can you do it and be happy? Folks, there's the big bugaboo right there. Because of this thing called restless, irritable, and discontent, the farther I am away from my last drink or my last drug will determine where my head is. I'm a 48-hour wonder, guys. I can stay sober and have been sober. I've been clean of booze and dope both for periods of time at about 48 hours, removed from whatever it is that I'm treating my addiction with, removed from that, I began to start slowly unraveling. You guys ever experience this stuff where you will go to bed a spiritual giant and the next morning you get up and something's just not quite right? Enter the spiritual malady, the spiritual component of alcoholism. And there's just something that's just like you can't quite put your finger on it. You just know you're sitting on the edge of the bed and you just know something during the night has shifted. And by the time you get to the bathroom, your head's going click, click, and it's twisting and you're just kind of like... And bythe time you're up there and you are eating Cheerios and you got that thousand yard stare and you just wonder who you are going to kill today. I mean, it's just like spiritually you are just not where you are supposed to be on this kind of stuff. You get to work and youre just going, come on, say something. I'd walk through the bindery like this and everybody would go, not a good morning to talk to Myers. You know, it's just like restless, irritable, and discontent. Sometimes when you're just sitting with them, see if you can remember which one kicked your ass the most. Was it restlessness, irritability, or discontents? It's funny, it'S different with different people like that, but you'll go, yeah, that's me. So here's the problem. When restless, irritated, and content rekindles itself, this is the motivator that moves most of us back into the world of alcoholism and drug addiction like this because the pain of living like that becomes so amazingly severe. It becomes so amazingly strong like that I cannot be happy in my own skin. And so when she leaves or the job goes away and the income stream is cut off or when any of these things happen or when your candy bar melts on the front seat, it doesn't make any difference. Whatever it is. Some guy flips you off in traffic like that. It doesn't makes any difference but when something like this happens and spiritually you're not fit, it doesn' t take much to push you back over into the toolies and then you get crazy again. Everything about recovery is based on an experience and a deepening relationship with the God of our understanding. Once this relationship is here, the spiritual malady is tamped down and right-sized so that it's a manageable situation and we know how to deal with this stuff. And if I can deal with the spiritual component, remember page 64, if Ican deal with this spiritual component then I can get clear and the rest of the stuff just kind of falls into place. One more little piece and then we're heading for the butthead. Bill Wilson wrote this years ago and Chris read a little piece of this last night. I'm just sort of... I love this thing. This was written from an excerpt from a letter that he wrote in 1966 and it says, An AA group as such cannot take on all the personal problems of its members let alone those of non-alcoholics in the world around us. The AA group is not, for example, a mediator of domestic relations nor does it furnish personal financial aid to anyone. Now Bill's already seeing this stuff. Wilson already sees what's happening with the discussion meetings and we're taking on a lot of responsibilities we were never intended to shoulder and we are moving away from program and moving more towards treating alcoholism as if it was a behavior problem instead of a disease. You can see this. You can also see this in our literature. We're going to talk a little bit about it if we have time later on this afternoon. You can See This in our Literature as it came full circle. Though a member may sometimes be helped in such matters by his friends in AA, the primary responsibility for the solutions of all of his problems of living and growing rests squarely upon the individual himself. Should an AA group attempt this sort of help, its effectiveness and energies would be hopelessly dissipated. And here it is, the little piece that I want you to remember. This is why sobriety, freedom from alcohol through the teaching and practice of AA's 12 steps is the sole purpose of the group. If we don't stick to this cardinal principle, we shall almost certainly collapse and if we collapse we cannot help anyone you see we've got a huge distance in our program we're lovely people all wanting to help but sometimes we spend so much time trying to help people over here with creature comforts and other stuff letting them share their day that we forget that there was actually a program that could be worked over here that we were supposed to be teaching at least if you believe what Bill Wilson wrote we're supposed to be teaching that some of us are and some of us aren't. I didn't for years and years I'm not speaking from some spiritual mountaintop judging anybody I know how easy it is to ignore and push aside a program of action that looks like ours. I know how easy het is to do that. What I'm hoping to do over a period of time is to get more and more people leaning more into the idea of becoming teachers of the 12 steps and will a little less of this junior therapy stuff. God bless you. Let's go smoke a butt. We'll see you guys back here in about ten minutes, okay? Yeah. It's kind of cool when it's like this. If you get a smaller bunch like that, you kind of see. So if you decide not to come back, we know you didn't come back. And we can sit here and judge you mercilessly. Let's do it, man. Or hunt you down. That's it. I'll be writing the inventory. That group in column one, I know, you'll see it. I think I've met everybody here. My name is Myers Raymer and I'm a recovered alcoholic. And I got to tell you that I know from experience, I know just doing a bunch of this stuff that there are some things that we talk about that make people squirm a little bit. I mean, sometimes there are things in AA. We've got a 400-pound naked guy sitting at the table and nobody wants to look at him and nobody wants to address it like this. But you know, the reality is everything in AA is like cause and effect. If you do this, you get this. You see it in sobriety. You see het in sponsorship. You see et in all this kind of stuff. And so it's like at some point in time, collectively as a fellowship, we have to begin to look a big ticket items and make decisions and go, is this working or is this not working? Have we, under the guise of love and tolerance, have we began to ignore the things that we need to address? Helping somebody. One of the most contentious arguments that I ever had was with a lady after a talk one time that thought that qualifying the drunk was being exclusionary. And I went, I don't understand it. I mean, she was adamant about it. And she had every right to voice her concerns. I certainly got that. My problem was that a year later, she was still sending me the nastiest, most vile emails that you've ever seen. It got personal, you see? Because she thought that I was trying to be... You're just trying to keep people out of AA. I'm going, uh-uh. But listen, folks, if you don't belong in the room, if you're only here because you're lonely, you're welcome to AA. I mean, I'm not saying leave AA. Come and sit. Enjoy the fellowship. I just want you to be careful what you share. I just wants you to careful about what it is that you're trying to teach because you may not be in the saddle. My buddy that I've been picking on all morning, we were just talking about some sponsorship stuff and we're going to talk about some of this through the rest of the weekend One of the things that I wanted to tell you is a real quick story. I was in Kent, England. By the way, if you've never seen the area around Kent, England, put it on your bucket list and go. I'm telling you, flying in there over countryside that it's the most beautiful countryside I've ever seen in my whole life. And I'm doing a men's workshop. There's 90 guys there. and I got through most of the morning and somebody had said something. I can't remember exactly what it was that he said, but somebody said, I wish we could find out where these guys are around sponsorship. And I thought, hmm. And I brought a whole big old stack of index cards for a little exercise thing that we were going to do and a bunch of little pencils. And so I passed out these little index cards and pencils to everybody that was sitting in the room. And I said, guys, how many of you guys think that you know and could clearly formulate in your head how to sponsor somebody? I mean, let's say, would you be able to write down, would you being able to tell me like how you would start the process? And everybody collectively in the room, everybody goes, yeah. Yeah. I said okay, cool. Well, I'll tell you what, do me a favor. Gentlemen, pick up that little pencil and you've got that card in front of you like this, just write down the first three things that you would do if you met somebody brand new in AA and it looked like you might end up sponsoring them. But see if you could write down the first 3 things that you Would do. And guys, let me tell you, from my perspective where I was sitting, I'm looking at their faces like this and like 2 heads dropped down and 2 guys picked up pencils and everybody else just kind of looked straight ahead and I said, just the first3 things, I mean you don't have to I'm not looking for essays gentlemen and I'm just looking for the first three things that you would do. And nobody picked up a pencil like this. And I go, okay, let the taping record indicate that what we have here is a room full of men who think that they know, they think that они понимают and may to some extent do understand but they're not able to formulate it. They're not actually able to bring it to something that they could actually communicate. And I said, could we agree on that? And everybody goes, yeah, yeah. And everybody's this heavy side, this relief because I'm not going to make them do anything else. And I wasn't trying to make him feel uncomfortable, but I'm telling you right now, guys, if you had asked me at seven years sober when I'm crazier than a crap house rat, if you'd have told me that and asked me if I knew and understood what I was doing in AA, hey, I would have gone, absolutely, absolutely. I knew every one of these one-liners on the wall. I mean, it was like sponsorship by one-liner. I knew everyone of them, you know? Just don't drink even if your ass falls off. I mean I thought that I knew what I was doing and it wasn't until I got into a room full of people that did know what they were doing that I began to understand how much deficit there was, how much unbelievably large blank spots there were in my program. And so what I want to do, for two seconds I want to talk about this index card with these three things on it and then we're going to talk a little bit here and then we'll address it again in the morning about some of the stuff. This is not written down. This is NOT doctrine. This is my personal opinion. Based on what Bill and those guys wrote and based on what the thing that they did the first three things that they did on almost every piece of archival stuff I've ever been able to pick up. One they qualified them. They spent some time trying to find out Do I have me a little drunk in front of me or do I have a crack addict from hell sitting in front of me? I need to know, guys. Does it mean I'm going to kick the crack addict to the curb? No. It just means that I've got a friend that's a crack attic from hell and I'm gonna start moving him over there towards the little crack addict. The old treatment center saying, well, an addiction's an addiction is an addiction. I'll give you part of that. The solution is the solution is the solution. The solution is the same on all of these kind of things like this But sit down with somebody that's an overeater and tell them it's just like my alcoholism. It's not, guys. It's Not. Tell me that drug addiction and alcoholism are the same thing. Go ahead. I just want to ask you something. In your spare time, go back and look at the stories. Go back and Look at the Depth of Guilt and Remorse. Some of you little dope fiends that are sitting in here, I are one. Go back And Look at The Depth Of The Guilt And Remorse And The Shame Around The Things That You Did In Dope Land that never will line up. Most of us drunks are just sloppy. We wreck cars, we wreck relationships, we bust jobs, we do some of these other kind of stuff. But things in dope land will take you places you never dreamed you'd go doing the things you never dreamt you'd do. And the guilt and remorse is different in trying to address those things. You understand what I'm saying? I want to know who it is I'm talking about. So I'm going to qualify this guy's sin. The second thing I'm gonna do, mind you, this is not necessarily in the confines of a meeting. This is just maybe sitting on the tailgate of somebody's pickup. Everybody's got to pick up. And so the second thing I'm going to do, guys, I'm gonna look at this step two stuff that we're getting ready to talk about here. I want to find out where you are around the idea of God. I don't need to know the full doctrine of the thing. I don' t need to what's going on in all of it. I just want to know, Do you hate God? Or are you okay with the idea of something spiritual? Are you a Satanist? Are you... Are you complete militant agnostic? Are you militant atheist? Are you...? I just need to know who I'm dealing with. You understand what I'm saying? If I've got somebody that's cool and she says, listen, I was raised in church and God's kind of sideways in my crawl right now. I'm not digging God very much right now, but I'm okay. Would we need to sit down and read the agnostics completely? Probably not. It's probably a waste of time. She's here. She already gets... But what if I got me a little atheist like this? God, you've got to be kidding me. No way. Guess what? I just went, you didn't feel it but I did I just tapped the brake we're going to have to sit with him a little bit we're gonna have to kind of work through agnostics a bit we're gunna have to see if we can break down some of the old ideas and some of prejudice around the idea of God so that we can make some progress at the center of this program unapologetically is God