Sandy B. Writing My Way Out

Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome to the Saturday Morning Live group of Alcoholics
Anonymous.
My name is Sandy Beach, and I'm an alcoholic.
How are you all doing this morning?
We'd like to start off by wishing everybody a Happy New Year, and I'm sure that if you
canvass the Washington area of large groups of people that this audience has fewer hangovers per 100 people than most audiences.
So we're getting off to a good start.
Those of you with a hangover, better check with your sponsor.
If you're new to AA, we want to extend a very special welcome here.
We have this meeting every week, and we hope you'll come back.
and this is an absolutely wonderful fellowship
and everybody in here
really wants to get to know you
they know exactly how you feel
if you're just starting in AA
all those feelings about
being frightened and angry
and I don't want to be here
and this doesn't work
and I'm not an alcoholic
whatever all those feelings that are inside
if you can just put them off to the side
and actually come to these meetings
and let the people that you meet help you
you're going to find a whole new way of life that you never even dreamed of.
This could be the best year you've ever had, bar none.
So please, if you're new, stick around.
It's customary to start our meetings with our preamble,
Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women
who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other
that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism.
The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.
There are no dues or fees for AA membership.
We're self-supporting for our own contributions.
AEA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution.
Does not wish to engage in any controversy.
Neither endorses nor opposes any causes.
Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.
And for those of you that are new, you'll hear this read at just about every meeting you go to.
And it's a wonderful little entrance to AA because it's just week after day after month.
It'll serve as a reminder of exactly what we're doing here this morning
and about 250 other AA meetings every day in the Washington, D.C. area.
So there's a lot of people doing what we're doing here this morning.
And as we say, it won't take you too long to figure out what's going on.
what happens is
we're able to do something as a group
that none of us would be able to do on our own
somehow that's the miracle of AA
that you take a bunch of people
who are out there
trying to survive as alcoholics on their own
and fail totally
we put them all together in one room
and we get success
and that's what happens in AA
somehow we have the power
to help each other
in the group stay sober
and when you become part of a group and the group succeeds,
then you succeed right along with it.
And it's one of the great miracles of this fellowship.
Now, we've got a couple of announcements to get out of the way.
Charlie, you've got the first one.
Thanks, Charlie.
If you haven't been here before,
let me welcome you and point out that this meeting is a little bit different
than most of our AA meetings in that it's run in a classroom setting.
We have four or five of these in the Washington, D.C. area.
where somebody in AA who's got five or ten years will come,
and you know ahead of time that they're going to talk the whole time on the steps.
And I think all the other groups go through the steps three at a time each week
and finish all 12 in a month.
We did that for about eight years,
and then for variety we shifted over to our present system of one step every week.
New Year's Day, coincidentally, we're on step one,
so we're right at the very beginning of this whole program.
And on Saturday morning, we go through them one at a time, so it takes 12 weeks to get through the 12 steps.
Then we have one week on our traditions, which are very, very important,
and then two weeks on the history of AA, and then we start all over again.
So today is fun just getting started into this thing.
If there's anybody new to AA, maybe you'll find this particularly useful.
and our first step which we talk about in our program simply says that we admitted that we're
powerless over alcohol and our lives became unmanageable and this is the doorway in to
Alcoholics Anonymous is through that first step but before I get to that first step let me just
make some general observations about AA and our steps to sort of start this thing out
Alcoholics Anonymous is now in probably 120 countries with 60,000 to 70,000 AA groups
and 2 million miracles of sobriety where hopeless alcoholics are now living very happy and productive lives.
And so the reason for mentioning all this is that it works.
It's not a theory.
When you look at these 12 steps, you don't look at them and go,
God, I wonder if this would be any good.
You know what I mean?
Which is how a lot of us read this stuff.
Well, I don't know.
That doesn't seem to apply to me.
The point is, this has been working for a number of years.
AA was started in 1935 with just two people,
and we talked about that in our history.
And now, in this relatively short period of time,
there's hardly a town in this country that you will go to
that there isn't an AA group.
And around here there's meetings morning, noon, night, midnight meetings, men's meetings, women's meetings, you name it.
There's meetings just everywhere that you go.
And society is pretty well accepted, AA, and it's just a remarkable phenomenon.
And so we have the meetings, and we have sponsors, and we have the literature, and we have conventions, and we have retreats.
We have all kinds of activities.
But let me tell you something.
The heart of Alcoholics Anonymous are the 12 steps.
That's the deal.
All the rest of it is just the atmosphere, the AA world that we're in,
that pushes us back to the 12 steps.
If there's anything that happens in sobriety, you will find, if you've been around a while,
is that we just go to meetings to keep reminding each other what the answer is.
because our own brains are out there during the week
making up a new answer,
which is how we used to be.
And we found the world was too intimidating
and I better move to California.
I better leave my family and go get a new one.
I better quit this job.
I better punch this cop in the nose
and I'm out of here.
Those were all the old answers that we come up with
and our brains still think that way sometimes.
And so we come here to constantly remind each other
No, this is the answer.
In spite of what you think, this is what the answer is.
And the answer is these 12 steps.
And so when we think about them, if you're new,
what do we mean when we say these 12 steps?
Well, I like to think about them as a game plan for living.
That's what it is.
If you just joined some team, they would show you the game plan.
This is how it works.
And that's what these 12 steps are.
And the main thing that happens when you try the 12 steps,
it's like jumping ahead, you know, 15 miles all on the first step.
The biggest thing that happens when you try the 12 steps is you stop doing it your way.
And that causes an immediate reversal of direction for most of us
and all kinds of wonderful things to happen because think about it.
most of us don't want to change.
We come into here and we have our own plan.
No, this is me.
This is the real me and this is how I live
and this is the way, this is my style.
This is how I operate.
And you put it together, so it's yours.
And our pride doesn't want us to let go of our game plan.
When we come to AA,
no one goes through the theory of your game plan,
but they will be very abrupt about a few things.
They'll look at you and they'll say,
You know, as I look at you,
I draw the conclusion
that your plan for living sucks.
That's just sort of my inference
as I look at you.
Because let's face it,
when you arrive here,
you're not on a roll.
There aren't too many people
who come into AA on a roll.
You know what I mean?
Like, wow, my life is so good,
I think I'll add AA to it.
put on my resume, you know,
and show that I'm a humanitarian.
People come in here when their ass is on fire.
And so you come in here,
you're wearing a wristband,
family won't talk to you,
car won't run,
clothes don't fit,
you have no friends,
you can't stand your job,
you're thinking of committing suicide or murder or both,
and you want people to follow you.
You know what I'm saying?
You want to hear my ideas about how to live?
No, I don't want to hear your ideas.
I want to hear your ideas
so I could end up like you.
So what I'm saying is
AA is very result-oriented.
We don't discuss theory.
We simply say,
see these 12 steps?
There's no theory to discuss here.
We're just going to tell you how they work
and show you how to do them.
We're not going to discuss
the logic behind them
or prove them in any fashion.
We're simply going to do this.
We're going to say,
now, your plan for living
has produced you.
So we've got to abandon that plan.
Okay, that's out.
We've got to get rid of that.
Right?
Wouldn't you agree with that?
And then you've got to look in the mirror
a couple more times and go,
Okay.
Now, what we're going to do, we're going to take you to AA meetings all over the place.
And at AA meetings, we're going to have drunks stand up and they're going to talk.
And some of them are going to be tall.
Some of them are going to be short.
They're going to be old.
They're going to be men.
They're going to be black.
They're going to be white.
They're going to be Oriental.
It's going to be a Spanish.
And they're going to get up and talk.
And you're going to get to look at the results of the 12 steps.
And then we're going to ask you to just do one thing.
Go look in the mirror.
look at the results of your plan
and then look at the results
of what you see here
and make a decision.
Which do you want?
And that's what happens.
And we have that in our chapter five.
If you want what we have,
what we have is what you see at the meeting.
You see people with happy sobriety
who seem confident,
who are looking forward to every day,
who talk in a way that is appealing to you,
who have the sense of humor about life
and you just go, I like that.
We don't get up here and go,
you know, I'm a big shot.
I have this job and I have this.
Screw that.
Big shots with jobs commit suicide.
They're alcoholics.
That's not what we're talking about.
We're talking about how people feel on the inside.
There's no resumes getting into AA.
As a matter of fact, if you're new to AA,
you're going to find we brag in the other direction.
Before you come to AA,
you talk about, well, I went to school here
and I am this and I got money in the bank
and I'm very important.
You come in here and it's like,
you were arrested 12 times,
I was arrested 13 times.
And my drinking took me way down,
way further than your drinking took you.
So, in here you find people exaggerating
in the other direction.
That's the strangest thing you've ever seen.
Oh, I'm much worse than you.
Because we notice that discussion meeting.
The guy says, well, I've been arrested 12 times.
Everybody listens, you know.
It sounds like one of those stockbrokers, you know.
Well, my broker is Charlie B.
And Charlie B. says,
Oh, it's just the New Year's.
We're going to settle down next week, I promise.
So what we're saying is,
we know it's very difficult to let go
of your control of your life.
And we're not going to try to analyze it.
We're just trying to very humorously go directly to the point
that it's stupid to continue the plan you've been using,
that you are the result of it.
And if you're so happy, write a book.
I mean, you just, when we come here, we're miserable.
And yet we cling to these old ideas.
And so this plan, and it's a spiritual plan.
It's not an intellectual plan.
So you've got to get used to some changes here.
And you'll find that there's a lot of paradoxes in a spiritual plan.
It is, things don't look the way they really are.
You take certain actions and it doesn't look like they would do anything.
It doesn't look like it should work.
When you study, and you will in spite of yourself, you will study the 12 steps.
You will come up to them, if you're new, skeptically.
Well, now what is this?
Now they've convinced me I'm an alcoholic and I ought to stick around.
Maybe I will do this.
And then your intellect will take over and you'll go,
okay, I'm going to admit I'm powerless.
I'm going to come to believe in a higher power.
Yawn.
I'm going to make amends to people.
I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that.
And you're going to go through all the 12 steps
and you're going to conclude that it's not going to really do much of anything
because that's what your brain is going to tell you.
Your brain is going to tell you, disregard the information you have by looking at all those happy people in AA.
Forget that.
You're smarter than that.
You can read this and it just isn't going to work for you.
That's what our brain will tell us because it doesn't look like it should work.
I'm going to tell you that ahead of time so that you don't get faked out.
AA doesn't look like it should work.
It doesn't look like it should work.
You explain AA to the social scientists of the country
and they still are very skeptical about it
because it doesn't look like it should work.
You take a bunch of drunks,
you stick them in a basement from 8.30 to 9.30,
they talk about resentments,
hold hands, say the Lord's Prayer and go home
and it works?
That's it?
That's the whole deal?
Uh-huh.
Except we smoke a lot too and drink a lot of coffee.
that's what happens there
and it works
yes it does work
so it doesn't look like
it works
because
it's a spiritual solution
drinking didn't look like
it should work
did you ever try
and analyze drinking
suppose you were
16 years old
you're afraid to go out
on the dance floor
and someone said to you
Fred
come over here
see this glass
chug a nugget
you will
know how to dance
now if you were sort of the doubting teenager you would go what i drink that and i will know
how to dance what the hell you smell it it smells like motor oil you know what i mean it's some kind
of rot gut whiskey and you say it doesn't make sense i drink that i know how to dance no prove
to me ahead of time that if i drink that i'll know how to dance how could you do that you couldn't
This guy could be 70 years old and never have a drink
and still claiming that if he drank it, nothing would happen.
Because it's one of these things you can't understand, you have to experience.
And the same thing with this program and these steps.
They won't make sense until after you do them.
And then you'll go, whoa, now I see.
Now it is revealed to me what happens.
Just like when you poured that whiskey down
and you got like Steve Martin, those happy feet.
Woo!
And you were out there doing the dances people never saw before.
But it came to you.
In other words, something happened.
This alcohol contained the power when it got inside of you
to literally transform you and the way you looked at things.
And that's why we drank.
Alcohol had a very definite parallel to a spiritual program.
It was certainly not an intellectual way of life, alcohol.
Alcohol was a power, and we relied on it to change us so that the world looked good.
The world actually stayed the same when we drank.
The world didn't change, but the way we looked at the world changed, and we liked it.
It's like it changed the world into technicolor.
And so drinking was my game plan for living, and it was for most of us alcoholics.
What was your plan for living?
It wasn't a very complicated one if you're a typical alcoholic.
Your plan for living was step one, get a drink.
Right?
A problem occurs.
You're trying to make a decision.
You're tired.
You need energy.
Whatever it is, what was step one in your plan for living?
Go get a drink, and then more will be revealed.
Do you remember that?
It was like, you didn't really see the whole thing.
You just knew if you did certain things, you would come up with the answer
and you would know how to function in life perfectly.
And so that was, alcohol was a very, sort of a chemically spiritual path
because it just did the same sort of thing that the program does, only much quicker.
It was sort of an instant conversion.
and you just got three drinks down
and you became serene.
It was a marvelous transformation.
And it all takes place
in the privacy of your own body and mind.
And nobody sees it coming.
They see you all uptight
and then 15 minutes later they see,
hi, you know,
you're buying everybody a drink
and you don't have any money.
And you have a day at a time philosophy.
Each one can be married.
Tomorrow we could be dead.
Who needs to rent money?
It's not due for a week.
I may be dead at the end of the month
and I won't owe the rent
you know it's that wonderful freedom
to be stupid
so anyway there's a
there's a marvelous parallel between that
so all of this
requires no intellect
that's the point
if you can check your brain
at the door
when you're beginning this program
and simply follow it
like you did when you went to kindergarten
you know you just become
like a little child because what you're going to be done if you're new you're just going to be led
out of the darkness by the people who are coming before you and it's just that's how it works the
longer people have been in a the closer they're getting to the to this wonderful answer and
they're pulling their pigeons and they're pulling the next crowd and we're all just going and so
when you're new you just stick your hand out and you get a sponsor you get a home group and just
Allow them to lead you right along.
Now, if you did that, you'd have the most wonderful sobriety you can imagine.
The problem is our brain and our ego, me being led, that doesn't look good.
I've got to start interjecting my own thinking into this thing.
Besides, at discussion meetings, they want to hear what I have to say because they call on me.
And I certainly want to look good when it comes around to my turn.
So we're always trying to come up with something intelligent to say at meetings so that people will like us.
Well, they already love you.
We don't have to do that.
You just have to share from your heart how you're feeling that day.
You don't have to come up with the answer to the universe.
And so the program is a very simple thing, but I'll guarantee you, you will complicate it.
You will complicate it by resisting.
That's all that will happen.
And you will resist every damn step along the way.
And Bill writes about this in our literature.
But the first step is the one that we cannot compromise on.
The rest of them are things that we work towards
and they are perfect goals that we're trying to achieve.
But the first step we can't screw up on.
We cannot fail to do it 100%.
And that's what we're going to emphasize for the next 10 or 15 minutes.
is what does this mean in this first step?
When it says we admitted we're powerless over alcohol
and that our lives have become unmanageable.
It's basically saying my game plan for living
has to be thrown out the window.
I am going to do a lot of changing here.
And you know what you have to change?
And this is almost insurmountable when you first come to AA.
You have to change your mind.
this is you know like an alcoholic changing his or her mind it's like the queen elizabeth turning
around in the potomac you know what i'm talking about it's like 50 million tugboats are pushing
on this end and that ends and finally the alcoholic goes okay i'm an alcoholic you remember
the decision that you weren't an alcoholic no i'm not an alcoholic the denial and all that
went on for years and then finally at whatever it was all right bye so i am an alcoholic and have
been for 31 years and that's an amazing transformation yesterday you're not an
alcoholic and today you've been one for 31 years just think about
the mental turnaround on that particular one right there
And, well, the rest of sobriety is going to consist of hundreds more of changing our mind.
And in the beginning, most of us want to call a press conference.
Hi, I'd like to announce to the world I'm about to change my mind.
You know, like, I've never done this before and I'll probably never do it again,
so I thought I'd call everyone together.
We hold on to our old ideas.
You know why?
Because you put them together.
You're the author of all those old ideas.
Even though they suck, you hold on to them.
I know they're terrible, but I thought them up.
It's that wonderful ego that if you're in jail, you know that song,
if I was still drinking, that would be my theme song.
I did it my way.
I know I'm in deep shit, but I got here.
I mean, there's some value there, right?
And it's almost like they're going to write a folk song about me.
The ultimate loser.
and they'll
and everybody will go
what a guy
what a guy
you know
look at that
he's in jail
and he's puking
and he's dying
and he refuses to ask for help
boy he's hanging right in there
puking
and oh he just went down the toilet
let's write a song about him
and I sort of have this
you know
as you're going down the toilet
you sort of imagine
everybody just going
what a guy
wow
what a guy
and they're not
they're going
what an asshole
you know
that's what they're saying
but we don't see it that way
we just sort of glorify
wow I'm hanging in here
with these stupid ideas
when a weak guy
would have caved in
and followed some good advice
a long time ago
and straightened his whole life out
oh no not us
not our arrogant pride
oh no no
I'm not straightening out
and asking for help
and you know
chickening out
I'm either going to do it myself
or fail
and of course
if you're up against alcohol
you're going to fail
because it's a power greater than all of us
that's what makes us alcoholics
so it's this marvelous thing of
either go down the tubes or ask for help
and you're stuck there
how far down the tubes is down the tube
you know
so the first step is saying we're going to have to give up
totally
totally surrender
so what do we mean when we say we're powerless over alcohol
this is a very important thing
and I always like to probably emphasize it
at every meeting
but especially here today
where I know we have lots of new people
most people think
when we say what do you mean
when you're powerless over alcohol
this is what most people will say
when they're new
they'll say oh that means
that whenever you drink
you get all screwed up
that when you walk up
and you take alcohol
and you pour it in
all kinds of bad things happen
you never know what's going to happen
and that's what being powerless over alcohol is
that once you pour alcohol into your system, it's Russian roulette.
That's what it means.
And we say, no, that's not what it means.
That that, what I just described, is not a very big problem.
What I just described is not a very big problem.
If your only problem, now listen to this closely,
if your only problem is, whenever you drink, you get all screwed up,
then you don't have a very big problem
because you are exactly the same
as someone who has discovered
their body is all getting covered with rashes
and they lose their breath
and they don't know what it is
and they go to the doctor
and he says,
oh, I've done some tests
and you are allergic to lobsters.
And so whenever you're out eating seafood,
if you eat lobster,
You're going to have this happen to you.
So now we know exactly what this person's problem is.
Whenever they eat lobsters, they get all screwed up.
They don't need to go to meetings with other lobster eaters
and say to one another,
how did you not eat lobster at that seafood place last night?
Oh, it was awful.
They brought some claws around and waved them in front of my face.
and I carry these claw crackers around in my pocket just in case
and I got a bib ready.
There's none of that.
You just find out that you're allergic to this kind of seafood
and all by yourself for the rest of your life,
you just don't eat it.
People go, want some lobster?
No.
That's the end of the problem.
So do you see the difference between that and the drinking problem?
if we said, hey, we found out what your problem is.
It's alcohol.
Just don't drink anymore.
Are you as happy as the person who was told,
don't eat lobster anymore?
Not quite.
Not quite.
Because there's really a much bigger problem, isn't there?
You know what happens if you don't drink alcohol
for the rest of your life?
You're going to be sober for the rest of your life.
all the time.
24 hours a day,
365 days a year,
you will be sober.
Remember that?
I forget that comedian
used to drink a lot
and he said,
when I get out of bed in the morning,
when the guy who doesn't drink
and I get out of bed in the morning,
that's as good as he's going to feel
all day long.
You know what I mean?
And that's how I thought about being sober.
When somebody said, you're going to be sober all the time,
I suddenly blurted out, well, wait a minute.
That's my problem.
Every time I'm sober, I don't like it.
We really ought to call this sober anonymous.
Why do you think I went into a bar?
A bartender, could you come over here a minute?
You're not going to believe this.
I'm sober again.
Have you got something that could fix this horrible situation that I'm in?
Yes, have three of these.
You will not be sober after...
Thank you.
One, two, three.
Ah, there I am.
Thank God.
Relief from sobriety one more time.
So we had a different problem.
Us alcoholics have a problem that alcohol fixes.
Everybody focuses in on the problems that alcohol cause,
and that doesn't help you understand alcoholism at all.
I mean, if you could get a non-alcoholic, put a funnel in their mouth,
hold them still long enough, and pour enough of that stuff in there,
they would have a lot of the problems that we have.
They would throw up a lot, and they would get liver damage,
and they would have high blood pressure.
They would have a lot of the things that we associate with alcoholics.
but it wouldn't help us understand alcoholism at all.
So when we say that we're powerless over alcohol,
what we really mean is, yes, there's some bad things that happen whenever we drink.
But the real problem is, even after alcohol, its damage, the illness,
everything is explained to you in excruciating detail about you personally, you still go out
and drink. That's the problem. There is no way that you, on your own, can avoid taking the first
drink, which sets up all the rest of the problem. This is the real problem. It occurs when we're
sober and our brain is working 100 percent and we walk in we may not do it exactly this way
but we walk into a bar and we're we say i'm an alcoholic mr bartender if i drink again i'm going
to lose my family i'll probably be in jail again and the doctor says a lot more health problems
are going to happen to me can i have a beer um i'm going to get arrested again probably have to
go through DWI, make that two beers,
and go through DWI, thank you.
And it's like we understand the problem,
but we're going to do it anyway.
We're going to do it anyway.
It is insanity what that is involved there.
That's what powerlessness over alcohol is.
It is a situation where we have no defense
against the first drink.
We may last a month.
We may last a year.
but there's going to come a situation
where we decide to take that drink
and it'll start the whole rat race all over again
and if you haven't had it in your own life
you can talk to the people in here
who've gone out and slipped and slide
and let them explain to you what it's like
after some little period of sobriety
to go pick up a drink
just one
and then BAM
it's off to the races
and the beating
and all of that
it's just horrible
and this progression that alcohol takes us on
and this downward slide is devastating.
If you think you've had trouble,
if you've just gotten here
and you think you've had trouble from drinking,
that's just the beginning
if you don't stick around here.
What's left is just five times worse.
It just gets worse and worse,
and there is no way that you can learn anything
that will help you not take a drink.
If there's anything you pick up here this morning,
this is a spiritual program.
We don't learn anything.
We surrender into it.
We say, I am powerless.
When you say you're powerless, you shut off your intellect.
Because your intellect keeps wanting to figure out your alcoholism.
Even as I'm talking right now, part of your brain is saying, yes, but maybe I can figure it out.
Maybe up in Canada they will develop some new powder that alcoholic rats are taking and they seem to be improving.
and you find yourself in a health food store
getting some powdered carrots,
maybe because your brain doesn't want to accept
that there isn't some way you can drink again.
It just doesn't want to do that.
So we have to totally surrender
and get involved in this program
so that our brain doesn't keep taking over.
And that's what surrender is in this first step.
Admitting that we're powerless over alcohol
and that our lives became totally unmanageable as a result.
That we really weren't in charge.
A lot of people are reluctant to turn their lives over to AA, to their sponsor,
to their higher power, whatever we talk about in the spiritual program.
And you're going to find that that's our second paradox.
That if you want to be totally independent,
the way you do it is to become totally dependent on a higher power.
Then you can be independent.
Because we may think that you are free,
you may think you're independent,
but you have no control over your life at all
as an alcoholic
or as an immature, sober alcoholic
because your emotions are totally in charge of you.
You get up in the morning and you say,
well, I think I'll go out on a job interview.
So you need a job.
And fear says, don't leave the house.
So you don't leave the house.
You see what I'm saying?
and something else, you get an idea,
you're free now, go do anything you want,
you're free, you're not drinking,
and you have the idea and then some other emotion,
maybe jealousy, says, no, don't go make the amends,
don't be nice to her, don't do this.
And so your emotions are just jerking you all over the place
and what the program, by becoming dependent
on the program and a higher power,
you are given the power to put all those emotions in place
so that you are now free to make your own decisions that last.
And so, that's the second paradox.
The first one that we're talking about is in the first step.
How do you beat alcohol?
How do you beat it?
And here's the paradox.
You beat it by surrendering.
You see, it's just the opposite.
How do you win anything?
by giving up.
That's exactly what happens here.
It's like a person that's drowning sometimes.
They're struggling so hard,
the lifeguard has to knock them out
in order to save them,
in order to save their lives.
And in order to save an alcoholic's life,
they have to totally give up.
They must abandon the old way of living
and stop struggling against this new plan
or you won't make it.
And that's why we have sponsors and meetings
to just keep going,
wrong!
I mean, I can't remember my sponsor
how many times
he'd just come right up in my face
and just go,
wrong!
Wrong again!
And I didn't want to hear that.
But all I knew was my old way of living.
So when they'd say,
well, what do you think about that?
I think we ought to punch them.
Wrong!
Wrong!
And so that's what happens in here
is that we get people who are willing
and what we basically do,
if you're new,
And we're at the end of the time.
We'll stop in a couple of minutes.
What we basically do, whether we realize it or not,
we give other people in AA permission to interfere in our lives,
to come over and talk to us at a level that you don't normally do.
In other words, I walk into a meeting, and if I'm not doing too well,
people walk over and go, what's the matter?
You know what I mean?
And I go, nothing.
Don't tell me nothing.
What's the matter?
They have my permission to go beyond that normal social thing where you don't cross that line
and go right in there and go, what is it, what is it, what is it?
Force it out of me, and then we help, and then they get me back on the path.
And so we do that to each other, and we make sure.
We don't see somebody for a while.
We call them up.
Normally you wouldn't do that.
You say, well, you can't stick your nose in their business.
We've got to stick our nose in each other's business.
I mean, that's what we do to each other when we come here is give,
everybody has permission to stick their nose in my business.
See me not looking good, come up and ask me, what's going on?
Because that is concern.
And so this is why this succeeds in here, is because of that.
And that's all part of this surrender.
So if you're new, think about this step and really work on it.
You must take this 100%.
If there's any must in the program, I think it's around this first step.
You just have to abandon any thoughts that there's some way that you can manage being an alcoholic
and not surrender into this spiritual path.
Because I'm sure it doesn't take people long.
They look ahead and all of a sudden steps 2 and 3 and 4, 11 and so on down,
you start seeing God.
And you go, well, I don't want anything with this God or higher power stuff,
so I'm not out of here.
I'm not going to really do this seriously.
Well, let's save that for when we get to those steps.
But we understand that resistance.
So if you're new, start the new year out by just picking up a handkerchief.
You know what I mean?
And just go, this is it.
I totally give up.
But this is what you're in charge of.
You don't give up everything.
This is your job.
Totally give up.
Just follow what the damn sponsors in the meeting tell you to do.
Go to this meeting, go to that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
and then your job is evaluate the results.
Compare the results of this new stupid plan,
which you know can't work,
with the way your life was going.
That'll be your job over the rest of your sobriety.
And we do that at meetings where we stand up and we tell our story.
And we just go, let me give you an evaluation
of what it's been like to follow this stupid plan for 29 years.
Fantastic!
You see what I'm saying?
And you hear our evaluation of this plan.
So if you're new, give it up.
Totally give it up and then report to us how well it's going.
We've got a great way to wrap this thing up with the Lord's Prayer for anybody who would care to join in.
Hey, talk to us.
Heart in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day
our daily bread
and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power,
and the glory
forever and ever.
Amen.
Keep coming back.
It works if you work it.