Rule 62: Don’t Take Yourself So Da*n Seriously — George

I'm a grateful alcoholic. My name is George. Before we jump into the fourth tradition, we're going to review a little bit of the third tradition. Start with the long version of the Third Tradition because it's really a lot different than the only requirement for any membership is a desire to stop drinking. That's the one we all know, but that is not what the long form says, the long form of the tradition. It says our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. Hence we may refuse none who wish to recover. Nor ought AA membership ever depend upon money or conformity. Any two or three alcoholists gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an AA group provided that as a group they have no other affiliation. It's a little different than just a desire to stop drinking. In the very beginning it was an honest desire and AA comes of age, they say a sincere desire and you can go on and on. I'm glad I didn't need that qualification. I just knew I needed to be here and I'm glad the doors were open wide enough for me to get here. In the pamphlet The Traditions and How It Was Developed, my little coloring book I like to call it, it talks about isn't every organization entitled to have rules for membership? Why did decide to forego this privilege, to be inclusive, never exclusive. That's easy. Early members tried it the other way and it just didn't work. As a fellowship, as the fellowship was nearing the 10-year mark, the office was served as headquarters, asked the groups to list membership rules and send them in, Bill recalled. If all of these edicts had been enforced everywhere at once they would have been practically impossible for any alcoholic to have ever joined. A is about nine-tenths of our oldest and best members could never have gotten by. So the rule books went out the window and were replaced by the uncomplicating sentence of Tradition 3, which is the second one I read. But somebody may ask, isn't this tradition itself a rule? It It does state that the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. Who determines whether or not newcomers qualify, whether they want to stop dreaming? Obviously nobody except the newcomer themselves. Everybody else simply has to take their word for it. In fact, they don't even have to say it out loud. And that's fortunate for many of us who arrived at AA with only a half-hearted desire to stay sober. We are alive because the AA road stayed open to us. The problem faced by this tradition is not just past history. It keeps coming up. For instance, when a group debates whether to exclude alcoholics who are hooked on other drugs, the tradition mentions no such negative requirements. No demand that the prospective member must not be a pill addict or homosexual, an ex-convict, a person with a record of mental illness, all alcoholics are welcome. What about the group that seems to impose extra positive requirements beyond the desire to stop drinking? This might be a special interest group or a collection of groups which, for example, each member must be a physician, a young person, a man, a woman, a priest, a law enforcement officer. By their own account, those who belong to international doctors of AA or young people in AA consider themselves an AA member first and attend general membership meetings as well as those to fill their individual needs while remaining devoted to AA's primary purpose. The special interest groups offer only one instance of a wide variety of the fellowships. Our traditions allow unparalleled freedom not only to every AA member but to every AAA group. It says we've thrown away all membership rules and regulation that we might keep, that we may not keep you out. We want to have the same chance for sobriety that for the newcomer that us older people here have been gotten by the people who were before us. Who didn't put those rules and regulations on us? You know your hair's too long, you're not wearing the right color shoes, you dress funny, you have an earring in your ear. If those were rules when I walked into here, when I got here, I don't think they would let me in the room. This is all the young part I know, the too old part maybe. We aren't a bit afraid that you might harm us, never mind your twisted or violent natures. And that's right out of one of our pamphlets. And I love that pamphlet. There are some questions that I want to read a quote first from Bill Wilson in 1948 where he talks about the membership because the third tradition really is the concept that we're gonna use to apply the fourth tradition. The membership rule allows the group and the individual to have a lot of freedom, and we're going to talk a lot about freedom tonight. And there's a lot different ways that groups show their freedom or different ways they do groups and we'll talk about that in a minute. And it says our membership traditions does not contain however a vital important, it doesn't contain one vital important qualification That qualification relates to the use of our name, Alcoholics Anonymous. We believe that any two or three alcoholics gathered for this sobriety may call themselves a group provided that the group they have no other affiliation. Hence, our purpose is clear and unequivocal. For obvious reasons, we wish the name AlcoholicsAnonymous to be used only in connection with straight AA activities. One can think of no AA member who would like, for example, to see the formation of dry AA groups, white groups, Republican groups, Communist groups. Few, if any, would wish groups to be designated by religious denominations. If we do, we shall become hopelessly compromised and divided. We think that AA should offer its experience to the whole world for whatever use they can make of it, but not its name. Nothing could be more certain. Let us of AA therefore resolve that we shall always be inclusives and never exclusives, offering all we have to all men save our title. May the barriers be thus levied, may our unity thus be preserved, and may God grant us long life and a useful one." That was written by Bill in 1948, and I think that still holds true today. The fourth tradition says each group is a...well before we get to the fourth tradition. Autonomous accepted matters affecting other groups or AA as a whole. There are some questions the third tradition in the AA Tradition Worksheet does which has to do a lot with the relationship, the relationship of the individual to the group, with the group to AA as-a-whole into other groups outside of this one. Tradition three is the only requirement is a desire to stop drinking. In my mind, do I prejudice some newcomers as losers? Is there some kind of alcoholic whom I privately do not want in my age group? Do I set myself up as judge of whether a newcomer is sincere or phony? Do I let language, religion or lack of it, race, education, age, or such things interfere with my carrying the message? Am I over-impressed by celebrity, by a doctor or a clergyman, an ex-convict, or can I just treat this new member simply as naturally as one more sick human like the rest of us? When someone turns up at an AA needing information or help, even if he can't ask for it out loud, does it really matter to me what he does for a living? where he lives, what his domestic arrangements are, whatever he had been before he came to AA, and what his other problems are. That last question, when I came in here, I don't know what most people do. I don'T know most people's last name. I mean, I give out my last name in a closed meeting, except in a case like this because I know it's being recorded and I try and stay traditional in that. If I wasn't recorded in a close meeting, you'd hear my last name so somebody could find me. Dr. Bob talks about that, the anonymity. And we'll get to that later on. But in this fourth tradition, when I came in here, I could have sat in any meeting and I judged everybody. And I didn't think I belonged. I was looking for a way out. And I'm grateful for the people that loved me enough to let me be who I was at that specific time. I would rather sit next to a guy, and I don't want to name anybody's name, but there are some people in here that are pretty well known, whether in the music industry, whether in financial industries. And I'd rather sit next to somebody that I know that has a job that makes a couple hundred thousand dollars a week or a month than somebody who came out from under a bridge because he might be able to buy me something later on. So when we walk in here, the first traditions got uphold that we're all equal, that unity, that no alcoholic is better than another one. I shared it at one of the earlier meetings that there are no big shots in AA, there are little shots, one shot and we're shot. And I heard that when I came in here And that's really important to me from going from the third tradition into the fourth. If I answer these questions, not only about alcoholics in my group but other relationships I have outside, I can see where the selfish self-centeredness and the self-seeking comes in and how do I get rid of it from that third tradition? In theory, it's great, and Bill struggled with this a lot between tradition three and tradition four, into the forth tradition where each group is autonomous except the matter is affecting AA or other groups as a whole. The word autonomous means self-governing. Each group is self-governed, it's on its own. At the beginning they talked about all these rules that the groups had when people came in and if everybody followed the rules Bill and Bob themselves could not be an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous. One like Sedatives and one like Barbiturates, it was that simple. They were not a pure alcoholic either one them so they probably would have not fulfilled all the membership rules of all the groups and bill was writing you know and call the groups this is what we want you to do this is what i think you should do and uh the groups wrote back to bill i think it's a great idea some of your suggestions you will take and some of them we won't uh suggestion yes uh dictation no so we have these two authorities going on uh alcohol and god these are the two authorities that we talk about when we get to this step so we have self-governing and the fourth tradition cannot be in place without the first and second the first one is unity that we all get along together whether we because we may look different we may come from different backgrounds there was a lot of a lot chaos in the early days of alcoholics anonymous uh that created a lot of hard won experiences the way it's put out and what ends up happening is the second tradition there's a loving God as he expresses himself in the group conscience. Now, the group will either bend to the will of God or they will fragment and dissolve. And that's directly out of our literature. And there's many groups that I've seen fragment and dissolve. Requirement, the requirement in the third tradition is just a requirement. It's not a rule. There are people that come in here that don't have a desire to stop drinking and stay here long enough and find out they're an alcoholic. There are other people that come in here with a tremendous desire not to drink, and they stay in here because they have a desire not to drink and they want to live a better life. So the third tradition is, as I said, that's the requirement. The fourth tradition is the application of that requirement within the group and with me as an individual. When I sit in a room, because I may not like the way somebody behaves, and I had an example this afternoon, and somebody came in and introduced himself in a closed meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous as an addict and went off on a subject that was not related to alcohol at all. And there's a loving way to do that, and it was the old way when I used to come in where somebody would say, do you have or desire not to drink? If not, get out, find another room. That's how I came in. That's what I heard when I got here. I didn't know better. And if people know better, then you have a right to shut them down. But there's loving way tell somebody that they're not within the requirements of that membership requirement because if you don't have a desire to drink, what are you doing in a closed meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous? We say it's for people who have a desired to stop drinking. I was told is for alcoholics only. If you're not an alcoholic, if you have a shopping problem, gambling problem, there are other fellowships that's where you need to go for those things. Now when I got here, I'm glad that they didn't make that a requirement because I had an addiction problem and they let me be who I was till I can find out about respect to the room I'm in. When I'm an Alcoholics anonymous, I'm an alcoholic. If I have other problems, I'll go to other fellowships for them and I will introduce myself accordingly because of the unity of the first tradition and I believe there's a loving God that doesn't want me to go in there to be apart from everybody else sitting in here. So I practice that in any meeting I go to and that's really hard sometimes because I want to tell somebody how they're supposed to behave and my third tradition tells me I don't have a right to do that. Bill stated he always had tension between Tradition III and Tradition IV. The reason he had tension is because even though a group has a right, and I'll use some of the examples. We're going to talk about special interest groups in a minute. In a lot of the letters they write, they never give you a yes or no answer to anything if you're right to New York at all. They will say two things. We suggest or we find that our experience shows. They never say do this or do that. As I'll say, our experience with the tradition says this may not work for you, but you have every right to try anything you want as a group. That's the right to be wrong we talk about in this tradition. There's a group that was in Middleton that was formed. They talked about it was the Middletown Group which believe it or not was not in New York. Everybody thought it was Middlton, New York, I believe that group started back in, I have it written down somewhere. The Middleton group, I'm not remembering where it started but the group started and when the group started they came up with an idea that was a great promoter. He wanted to have the first floor to be treatment, the second floor to have a bank, the third floor to recovery rooms and he had this grandiose idea and he has 61 rules and he wrote to New York saying he wanted to incorporate it and he's going to have 27 different people in each different section and the group said it wasn't a good idea, you have every right to do it but our experience shows that this wasn't going to work in Alcoholics Anonymous. Well he said I don't care what you guys say, I'm going to do anyway. And he went about and did it and the groups fell apart in a very short time, they talk about it in 12 and 12, they talked about it as the bang that was heard in the clapboard factory in Middletown New York and the whole thing fell down and what ended up happening is that group leader realized there were 61 rules and he sent a little golf card into all the groups in the United States and one to New York. And on it, it says, Middletown group number one. And when you open it up, it say, Rule 62, don't take yourself so damn seriously. And that was a very big lesson for that particular group in humility. And because of their mistakes, they learned how to move forward and be helpful to a lot of other people after that. So that's one of the stories. There's the other story of Jim, who's in the first, second, and third edition of the big book. He was the first black man that came into AA to start a group and he started in Washington, D.C. He was a physician. Last week we talked about the two guys that came out of an institution. Bill invited them into a group meeting and when they got there they said we don't allow blacks and it was in New York because you had some southern people and some other people and there was a lot of fighting going on, and we don't care what Bill said, was the comment that went back. Bill does not run this group. Bill's a member of this group, and what they did decide that they would allow people in of color or because of... We're talking about in the 30s and 40s because of the purpose of being that they have a right to recovery like anybody else, so they kind of applied that third tradition and let them in as observers, and that's how special interest groups, part of special interest groups got started. What is a special interest group? Well the first special interest group was women, believe it or not. The first special interest group was an all-women group founded in Cleveland in 1941 making AA's inaugural specialized interest group. Women in New York, Memphis, Salt Lake City and San Diego followed suit. In the mid-40s the ratio of women to men in AA populations was roughly one in six. A lot different today, it's almost 50% today. Not quite but almost there. Women's groups lit the way for other specialized groups which eventually included those types of young people, elderly, gays, lesbians, doctors, lawyers and other professionals. I know there's a meeting down in Fort Lauderdale every day and it's in the courthouse and you have to be a professional to be there. You can't just walking off the street and that is what specifies a special interest group if an alcoholic does have a problem and there's a men's meeting right here in the afternoon a couple of years ago and this story is told over and over again there was a woman with a lot of years of sobriety who had a problem and needed some help and she walked in the door and they took an immediate group conscience and they let that woman in not only to share but to walk out here feeling a little better than she did that is where the third tradition overtook the fourth tradition because the group's purpose was a men's meeting but the third tradition says everybody has a right to walk in the store if they need help and when you keep someone out if you follow the history this group would know if they said no to that woman to that hour this group would not be an AA meeting anymore it would be just a meeting of men they're getting together because if an alcoholic is sick and suffering we need to let them in because all these traditions help us carry our fifth tradition. Then in 1942, AA's prison group started. The first prison group was in 1942. Chairman for a prison reformer of Clifton D. Duffy, warden of San Quentin Prison in San Francisco, calls it addressing special needs of inmates who have been drinking while committing a crime. Duffey speaks and said the advice from the California AA members leading to the formation of prison group in San Quinton, the inmates hold their first meeting in 1942. Prisons that we hear about people getting available to come out from is a special interest meeting, believe it or not. So we carry the message to the alcoholic who's in prison who needs help because they can't get out to a meeting. And then the first French-speaking meeting happened in 1944 and that was Dave Bee of Montreal and an ex-bank clerk and an accountant who had slipped away way down the ladder because of his alcoholism, sobers up after reading the big book that was sent in by his sisters. He contacts his New York and soon starts holding meetings in his home, launching the first French-speaking AA meeting. I'm telling you about these meetings in the home and these beginning meetings because they're really important. In our history and AA's meetings, 1936, 1935, 1937, there was no such thing as an AA meeting, even though they met. They weren't AA meetings. They were Oxford group meetings and the AA members would break away from the Oxford groups and have their own meetings. New York broke out of the Oxford group in 1938. They started breaking away fromthe Oxford group meetings, the affiliation withthe Oxford groups. And in 1939, Akron broke away. And that was a Christian society fellowship. First century Christianity it was called. Clarence Snyder, whose sponsor was Dr. Bob, and two other alcoholics who were Catholics wanted to have a meeting but because of their affiliation, religious affiliation they were not allowed to go into the Oxford groups because it was against their faith. So Clarenced Snyder went to Dr.Bob and asked Dr. bob if it would be alright if they started meeting in their house Dr. Bob says, do they have a desire to stop drinking? And he said yes and he said as long as they have the desire to start drinking so they started the meeting at Al G's house and that meeting took place I think it was the first 1930s 1938 or early 1939 and what ended up happening was the Oxford group got so upset with them that they got in a car and really went and went down to Cleveland to have a fight with them, good Christian people that they were. They were going to fight with the alcoholics. We started cooperating through Dr. Bob and the Oxford Groups what ended up happening is the Oxford groups all said it would be alright for them to have an AA meeting that didn't interfere with the Oxford group stuff and in New York and Akron and the same thing went through that we would not affiliate we would cooperate and that's part of what this fourth tradition is about, is that we can't cooperate with other people. We don't affiliate with them. And that started the first AA meeting in someone's home and it was breaking away from a religious thing. And that's why our meetings as we get to know him today. Bob, his input in the fourth tradition was about coexisting not only with the opposite group but with other outside of AA. And that is real important stuff because our fourth tradition prevents any group any group do whatever they want to. The kind of groups that we have, when I got in here there was hour meetings, there's hour and a half meetings, there's candlelight meetings, there's beach meetings, there's outdoor meetings. Some people read these steps as part of chapter five, other people don't read part of Chapter Five, some people read how it worked and more about alcoholism, some people reading promises. Each group has a right to decide for themselves how they wanna do it. You can have anniversary meeting once a month, you can have one-on-one a day. It's parts of this country when you say hi my name is George everybody yells back hi George. In other parts of the country they don't do that. They don't say anything. So each group has its own little flavor but there's something that's very unique about that flavor because when you walk into the room we're all pretty much the same although they may be so different and varied in their formats and the way they do things This particular group does a step in tradition, a concept, some history, and they upload it for other people to get the message. Part of what the fourth tradition is doing is lightening this up so we can help carry that fifth tradition. That's real important. So each group has its own flavor, but when you walk in here, there's a loving God that's going to express himself in our group conscience. The fourth tradition is all about freedom. freedom is a big word freedom is not free by the way freedom is very expensive for us there's two authorities that gave us our freedom when we got here when you get freedom, freedom brings with it acceptability accountability and responsibility I didn't have much acceptability when I got here I was not accountable when I Got Here and I sure as hell wasn't responsible all I knew was I was in pain and I didn' t know how to make it stop with responsibility and accountability comes discipline I get up every morning, I do the steps I start working on discipline I go to a meeting, I start workin' on discipline and I didn't like discipline and out of that discipline I find out from being here a while that there are two authorities going on here one is alcohol and the other is God or as my sponsor used to tell me very plainly one is pain and the others love Those are the two authorities that work in this room and any room that you go to in our false mountains. You come in here in pain, and you see the love through a second tradition. Loving God is expressing himself through people in the rooms and through that love you start to feel hope and faith, and those things start working their way in you. That freedom at the beginning, the first freedom, I come in hier for that freedom. I'm searching for that freeom, that pain, to get away from that pain. First because I must get away from active alcoholism. Then I get away and start living these principles after I must get away from them because I ought to get away from them, because it would be healthier for me if I didn't go back to the old behaviors. And then I start going to that freedom because I want that kind of freedom. And that freedom that I get through working steps and the traditions in Alcoholics Anonymous is a love that is something that I couldn't put my hand on or understand when I got here because it was so foreign to me but I believe that I stayed here through the many different groups I go to, through the many different meetings that these traditions themselves were infiltrating my life without me even realizing through the steps. I believe they really come into my life and they start making sense the longer I stay here the more I start understanding that the authorities we have in here, the best authority we have or the best we'll ever get is just to be a good member of Alcoholics Anonymous and a good member of Alcoholics Anonymous is someone who didn't drink today. Now that isn't amazing for someone like me who's trying to figure out how this thing all works. The way it works is real simply, I'm not in control anymore. There's a loving God, he walks in this room as long as I don't pick up a drink and I want to be part of you instead of being a defiant rebellious individual which I was when I got here I became one of those orthodox AA people and when I hear somebody doing a meeting not the way I learned it well but when I got here this is the way it was when I start thinking like that I'm closing my mind to the presence of God because if it's good enough in a a whatever what a group does if it really good enough a itself will pick up those principles and apply them that's one of the reasons we keep changing the stories in the back of the big book to show what the fellowship and membership is like as we change. If it's not, it'll go by the wayside. So I've got to learn that my opinion in the room really doesn't amount to much, but my opinion and group conscience does. I can sit back and let the room do what it needs to do. I could sit back and not be one of those people that has to be right. Sometimes I can just sit back and let things happen. Sometimes, I have to be responsible for how it falls synonymous. I learned that in the fourth tradition. I do have a responsibility. Bill wrote in a couple of things that I want to read, in A Comes of Age, Tradition 4, as one of the people who helped start this movement, I thought for a long time that I ought to be able to manage it from New York, but I soon found out I could do no such thing, neither could anybody else at AA headquarters. The group said to us, we like what you're doing. sometimes your suggestion and advice is good, but whether to take it or leave it alone is going to be our decision. Out of the groups we are going to run new shows. We are not going to have a personal government in New York or anywhere else. Service yes, government no. That's a nice statement. Hence A's tradition of group autonomy. It didn't take long to formulate that one. They told us just what they wanted and that it included the right to be wrong. There's groups that have been wrong and have learned from being wrong. There's other groups that have been wronged and continue doing that and those groups are no longer here. There's a group I guess it was 1983 I think is when that story was, there was a group in California that had a 10 o'clock at night meeting and every 10 o', they'd have a glass of wine. And the group went out and got drunk and fell apart after a year. I wonder why an alcoholic having a glass of wine at every meeting. The group had a right to do that. But it didn't work very well so any group can set any set of rules for themselves they want not all of them will apply enough all its anonymous there's a whole lot in tradition for that I like some may think we carry the principle of autonomy to extremes for example in its original form it declares that any two with three gathered for sobriety may call themselves in a group provided they have no affiliation. This means that two or three alcoholics can carry, could try for sobriety any way they like. They could disagree with all of AA's principle and still call themselves a group. When this was written in the 12 and 12, and there's a little note in the 12 and about that, when Bill put that in there he was really talking about the third tradition. That's how hair splitting three is to four. And it's in the twelve and twelve that way. It's in AA comes of age that way, it's the language of the heart that way because is so closely related. One is the concept and the other is the application, and the concept is stronger than the application. It's very hard for me to get myself around. Ultra-liberty is not as risky as it looks. At the end, the innovators would have to adopt the AA principle, at least some of them in order to remain sober at all. If on the other hand they found themselves better than AA or if they were able to improve on our methods then all probability we would adopt if it was discovered for general use elsewhere. This sort of liberty also prevents AA from becoming frozen in a set of dogmatic principles. I think that is very important that we do not close our minds and think we have the only answer. There's some newcomers that come in here and teach me more than them. I've heard from old-timers for years and years and when they're in a meeting, You'll hear the pearls that come out of newcomers because I hear God speak through them in ways. And that doesn't mean AA is going to change to adapt to that, but what it does is it opens my mind up to listening to somebody else, maybe not the way I would if I didn't keep that open mind that let me come in here as an ander, which I am not anymore because I have respect to the room I'm in, or let me go in here and let me talk about my other addictions without beating me up and throwing me out, although that's what I was looking for. That second tradition opened the door very wide for someone like me. You know, there's a whole thing called the young peoples in AA. The young people in AA, I think it's a wonderful thing. It's where young people can get together and they still go to regular AA meetings, but it's just a bunch of young people. And when they say young, they don't mean young in age only. They mean young and recovering. When I first got here, I thought it was about young inage. I was 44, so I didn't think I belonged because they were all 19-year-olds. It's not true. I was new in recovery, and if it wasn't for that first conference and thing that I went to, I wouldn't have felt part of it. That was the first event I went to in Alcoholics Anonymous. So when we talk about young people, we have these dogmas we've got to let go of. Until I let go of my old ideas absolutely as it talks about and how it works, I'm stuck in self, and self can't fix self. So I have to keep that open mind to allow everybody else in. there's another declaration it says Tradition 4 is another confident declaration of mutual trust and love as it flows from each AA group one to another we give each group full autonomy, an undescribed right to manage its own affairs. To make this condition doubly permanent and secure, we have granted to all AA groups that they will never be subjected to any centralized government or authority. In turn, each group agrees that it will never take any action that could injure us all. Rarely indeed has an AA group ever forgotten that precious trust. And that's what this tradition is about. It's about freedom and trust. The fourth tradition was very difficult because I picked meetings that I liked. There were certain meetings that they were on the beach. I wasn't paying attention to the meeting, but whatever the reason I went there, I still heard that loving God. And slowly but surely, by opening myself up to enough different kinds of meetings, I started finding the meaning that worked for me. What works for me can get somebody else drunk. What works with somebody else could get me drunk. I learned that real early on. So I had to keep an open mind because there's so many different personalities today in AA that we all have to find what works for us. And the tradition of anonymity does that. There's a great story written in, I think it was 1960, in Language of the Heart. And it's called... It's called, I have it here. Oh, what is freedom in AA? And freedom in AAA is autonomy, self-governing. Not only on an individual basis, but on a group basis. If this group, for instance, there's a group, let's say, right across the street and we decided because we wanted to steal their members or draw away from them, and I like the word steal today, draw away from them and have them come here because we didn't like somebody that was running that meeting. We opened a meeting directly opposite. Well, if we don't confer with that group and other groups around, we are in the spirit of violation. There's many meetings that are at 6 o'clock at night but I don't think any of them are that directly related to this particular group who has this particular format at this particular time so we're not affecting other groups and we're definitely not affecting AA as a whole. So this group has a right to run its meeting that way. If this group was in direct conflict with another group right across the street, then we need to talk about that group and have communication. And that's what Dr. Bob talked about a lot, that we need be able to communicate with each other and utilize each other without breaking us apart. And that is what he did with the Oxford groups at the time and that's why we try to do it with individual groups. That's why we have intergroup today, because what that does is help keep each group's own flavor and us open for different members, different meetings, so we don't fragment and so we don't die. The two authorities that keep us here in Tradition 4 is a loving God and alcohol. Alcohol will kill you. It says you better do God's will. It said the two authorities are alcohol and God. Alcohol says if you don't do God's will I'm going to kill you and God says I'm waiting for you to do my will so please come in, sit down and relax and join us and that's what we do in the fourth tradition we open up for anybody who walk in here and know that they're equal coming in here through a first tradition and that there's a loving God that's running this not an individual through a second tradition if you have a desire not to drink you're here on the third tradition and then you can pick the flavor of the group you like because there's a lot of flavors out there. Like somebody once told me, we're all sick but thank God we're not all sick on the same day. Thanks for letting me share. Thank you.