Springtime in the Ozarks Big Book Study – Part 5 – Chris S. and Charlie P. – Eureka Springs, AR – 2010 — Chris A.

not to drink. And we do that a lot of times by, you know, patting them on the head at the meeting and telling them to keep coming back and giving them a meeting book. And, you know, we do a lot of that work, help encourage somebody to not drink and to keep coming. But that pales in comparison to what it tells us to do in the chapter working with others. In the chapter working with others, it tells us to show them how they can be free of alcoholism, how they can recover from alcoholism, how they can completely transform their life into something unbelievable. One of the promises, one of the forgotten promises is that the best years of your life are ahead of you. You know, what is that, Charlie? You know that one better than me. The best years of our existence lie ahead of us. The best years of our existence lie ahead of us. That's a promise, okay? Now, you get that by working the steps. You don't get that by going to meetings. Meetings, going to meetings does not treat alcoholism. Going to meetings creates, at best, creates a period of time where you can be sober. Going through the steps creates recovery. But the difference between recovery and sobriety are huge. Sobriety is just not drinking. You can get sober by punching a cop. You'll have a brief period of sobriety for sure after that. You know, but the steps are about something really, really different. And this guy who freaked out and kicked over the chairs and kicked over the tables in the 1992 convention or whatever it was, he didn't understand the difference between sobriety and recovery. He was trying to help his guy stay sober because that's all he knew. It wasn't in his experience. Recovery was not in his experience because he had never done it. And he didn't understand it because he had never done it. And he thought that I was crazy because it wasn't an experience that he had. Now, the thing is, no matter how far down the scale you've gone, you'll find your experience can help others. The same thing can be true is you can go down the scale pretty far. And the people that go down the scale pretty far really, really need a transformational experience. A complete personality change at depth that will enable them to recover from alcoholism. And if we're not offering people that, if we're just offering the mere encouragement not to drink, it's not enough. It's not enough for most people. Most people can't not drink and go to meetings. Charlie, just don't drink and go to meetings. Most people can't do that. They need more power. To withhold that power or to be too busy to offer that power or to not have the experience to offer that power is near criminal. People die every single day. 100,000 people in America every year die of alcoholism. 100,000 people. You know, that every single year. And there's about 3 or 4 million people in Alcoholics Anonymous. If we get about the business of, of doing what this chapter says, I know we can cut that in half. I know we can. Because it tells us to seek out these still suffering alcoholics. Don't wait for them to show up in your closed-minded discussion meeting on Tuesday night. Seek them out. Go to where they're still suffering. Yeah, they're probably suffering in the closed-minded discussion meeting. But take a little bit more initiative. Take a little. A little bit more initiative. Go to the detoxes. Go to the mental hospitals. That's what these AAs did back in the day. They tried to find people who needed this. Then they tried to, then by telling their story and trying to set the hook with identification, tried to get these people interested in recovery. And then hopefully these people would say, well, what did you guys do? How did you guys? How did you guys recover? And they didn't say, we, you know, I got a home group, you know, and sober softball. I mean, they didn't say that. They said, they said, I went through the 12 steps. I've had a spiritual awakening as the result of the 12 steps. Would you like to go through the 12 steps? In the very, very early days of AA, it was more, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was more appropriate to start working the steps before you even got to the meetings. You know, in the early days of AA, they had a recovery program, which is the 12 step process with a support fellowship. The fellowship was in support of that recovery program. There are places today on this planet where what you have is you have a recovery fellowship with maybe sometimes a support program. If someone has even a clue or any experience at all. And that's, and that directs. Directly directly relates to the difference in the success rates that early AA had and what, and what AA is experiencing today. Now, now success rate statistics are ambiguous at best, but you can get, you can glean a little bit of the truth of them. If, if this book says 75% of the people who came to AA and really tried ended up sober and recovered. You cannot tell me 75% of the people that are walking into our groups today are, are recovering. It's, it's nowhere near that. In the Grapevine magazine, about a year ago, I think it was March or April of last year, they, they reinstituted the gray pages. What the gray pages are is they're basically statistics and information from the professional community on alcoholism. And a group, an independent group did a study on 12 step success rates on 12 step fellowship success rates, not just AA. But what they did was they went around and they sampled a whole bunch of different 12 step groups. And when people were coming out of the meetings, they just asked them some simple basic questions. And when I read the statistics in this magazine, I was horrified because it basically said that 45%. Of the people attending 12 step fellowship meetings today have been sober for less than 30 days. 45% are sober less than 30 days. Is anybody else horrified with that statistic? If we were doing, if we were doing a really good job, you would have the same amount of people celebrating 20 years that celebrate 90 days in your life. Right? Right? Right? Right? group every year. But we know we're not that successful. We know we lose people. Now, like I said earlier, I believe that you have to give to AA to get enough power back from AA to be able to stay. I totally, totally believe that. But I also believe that the chapter, working with others, is something that we need to start paying attention to. It says practical experience shows that nothing will so much ensure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. What is intensive work with other alcoholics? Charlie, here's my phone number. Give me a call if you feel like drinking. That's not intensive work with other alcoholics. They go on to explain what intensive work with other alcoholics is. It's basically taking those prospects, taking those prospects through the steps of the alcoholics. They become protégés, and then at the end of the step process, they become friends. You know, in Alcoholics Anonymous today, sometimes we tend to degrade the people that we work with, or denigrate the people we work with. In the book, Bill is very non-judgmental. He says, like, the people who, people cannot or will not, you know, give themselves to this simple program. You know, those are the people who don't make it. They cannot or they will not give themselves to the simple program. Well, in this chapter, it basically says, if somebody cannot or will not work with you, don't work with them. If they're not willing to go through the steps with you, you are not supposed to be spending time with them. You can remain helpful with them. You know, you can tell them where the meetings are and everything, but so often in the past, I made the mistake of spending a lot of time with these guys that didn't really want to change. They would find every excuse in the world to stay away from the fourth and the fifth step. They would find every excuse in the world to not go out and make direct amends or start a prayer, a prayer and meditation discipline or to help other people. They were absolutely uninterested in helping other people, yet they wanted me to be their drama coach. You know, Chris, Chris, you wouldn't believe. I, you know, I need to talk to you. I need to spend some time with you. I need to cover some stuff with you. Well, you know, how about, how about if we, how about if we, if we inventory some of that, some of that, you know, I mean, inventory, hell, I got real problems. And, and, and there was a period of time where I was sponsoring psychonics, you know, like, like I'm, I'm not, I mean, real psychotics. Two of them are in, two of them are in prison now. And, you know, I mean, it got, it got really, really bad. These, these people were sociopaths. They were using me for cover. They were using me as their sponsor, you know, to give them legitimacy as they maneuvered around AA and raped, robbed, and pillaged, you know, and, and I was, and I was allowing this, I was allowing this to go on. If I was following the instructions in this chapter, that never would have happened to me. I would have, I would have been able to hold them accountable. I, you know, I would have, I would have been able to, to, to, to say, okay, well, you're, you know, I'm, you're not willing to work. Steps with me. Look, there's only one way I know to recover from alcoholism. What you want me to do is something that you're coming up with. You, you, you want to, you want to define how I help you. The, the, but I only know one way of, of over, of overcoming alcoholism and that's going through the steps and you're unwilling to go through the steps. I can't help you. I can't help you. Go find somebody who you respect enough to follow their direction, you know, because, because it's not going to help you to use me as a drama coach. I'm not that good at it. You know, you want to, you want to talk to me about relationship issues. You want to call me up at 11 o'clock at night and ask me advice on relationship issues. You'd be better served somewhere else. Probably. You know what I mean? You want to talk to me about legal problems. I'm not a lawyer. You know, you want me to be your, your counselor. I'm, I don't have a counseling degree. I can't, I can't counsel you. What I can do is I can help take you through these steps that will give you a spiritual awakening at death that will enable you to be in the sunlight of the spirit, safe and protected where, where you're, your problems are just going to start melting away from you because you're going to be living along spiritual lines. That's, that's what I can do. You know, counseling, counseling you or, or sitting on the phone with you every day. You know, I can help you. I can help you. I can help you. I can help you. I can help you. I can help you. I can help you. I can help you. I can help you. You know, while you update me about your drama du jour is a, is a waste of my time. I, I, I, I don't have the time for that. What I do have, I, what I can do though is I can block out some time and have you come over to my house and we'll sit down and we'll start going through the book. Now, now I've got some guys that have gone through the work with me. The ones that have made it through every single one of them are card carrying AA members in good standing. Their quality of life is out the roof and they're all continuing, uh, continuing to be consistent at meetings and they all work with other people. They all take other people through the steps and do 12 step work. Every single person that I took through the steps. Now, every single person I tried to help in AA is not still around. The people I tried the drama coach are not around. The PR the people who would call me up when they were in a jackpot, you don't want me to help them out of the jackpot are not still around. The people who went through this work, are still around. So this, this book doesn't, it doesn't tell us not, not to work with the people who are unwilling because you know, we want to be exclusionary. It basically says we have a finite amount of time. We want to be able to help as many people as we possibly can. So by, by making sure that we're taking people through the steps, we're doing the maximum amount of good we can do for somebody. It's, it's, you know, it's not about, you know, being exclusionary. Now, today people know enough about me to know not to ask me to sponsor them if they're not willing to go through the steps, but that wasn't, that wasn't always true. So usually the people that ask me to sponsor them stay sober. I've got at least a 75% sobriety rate for the people that, that asked me to sponsor them. You know, at least 75% of them stay sober. Now that's not typical in Alcoholics Anonymous today. So, this chapter is ultra important. Now, are there people that are showing up in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings that want no part of these steps or no part of going around and making amends or no part of praying and meditating or no part of working with other people? Yes. Are they welcome in Alcoholics Anonymous? Absolutely. Am I responsible for working with them and helping them? No, no. This chapter tells me, I'm, I'm supposed to work with the people who are willing to go through these steps. The other people, you know, I can pat them on the head every once in a while and encourage them to keep, keep coming. You know, but, but, but the big mistake I made in my first 10 years was saying yes to everybody that asked me to sponsor them and then getting dragged into their drama. That was a huge mistake. I would have been better served to insist on adherence to these principles the way this chapter tells us we must do it. You know, there's wonderful information in here. There's, you know, I'm not going to sit here and read it, but, but, um, read everything, but this is how you do the 12-step call. You tell them exactly what happened to you. Stress the spiritual feature freely. If the man's atheist or agnostic, make it emphatic that he does not have to agree with your conception of God. He can choose any conception he likes, provided it makes sense to him, but he must choose a conception of God. He can choose any conception he likes, but he must choose a conception of God. The main thing is that he be willing to believe in a power greater than himself and that he, that he live by spiritual principles. And then it, then it talks basically about how to outline the program of action. The 12 steps explaining how you made a self-appraisal, how you did a four-step, how you straightened out your past, how you went out and made amends. This is what you're supposed to do on the 12-step call. Uh, why you're now endeavoring to be helpful for him. It's important to realize that, uh, for him to realize that your attempt to pass this on to him plays a vital, uh, uh, part in your own recovery. Um, your candidate may give reasons why he need not follow all of the program. Um, tell him that you once felt as he does, but you doubt whether you would have made much progress had you not taken the action of the steps. Uh, you will be most successful with alcoholics if you do not exhibit any passion or say to reform. If he is not interested in your solution, if, if he's not interested in going through the 12 steps, if he expects for you to act as only a banker for his financial difficulties, a nurse for his sprees, a coach for his drama, you may have to drop him until he changes his mind. You're supposed to drop them if they're not willing to go through the steps. This stuff has, has pretty much been forgotten in Alcoholics Anonymous. And, you, and that would be okay if it wasn't for the fact that people who are in real trouble still come into Alcoholics Anonymous. The real alcoholic still shows up in Alcoholics Anonymous. And without a deep and vital solution to their problem, they're gonna die. They're gonna come into AA, they're gonna go to a couple of discussion meetings, they're gonna, they're gonna, you know, go to the sober softball and, and the sober dance, and, and they're, they're gonna, they're gonna see you that there's not enough there for them. It's not a big enough answer. There's not enough power in something like that for them to be able to stay sober. But when you take somebody through the steps, you expose them directly to the power of God. And the people who are willing, rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed the path. How can we possibly not offer the path to people if we have the possibility of doing so? And again, when I first got sober in North Jersey, it was all about just keep coming back. You don't get it, it gets you. And the problem was I was a real alcoholic. And I was suffering emotionally and spiritually so much that I couldn't get out of bed. So much. Going to 13 meetings a week. Making coffee till the grinds came out of my ears. Going to the sober dances where my feet felt like lead. Going out to the diner with the alcoholics after the meeting. I still wanted to kill myself after about a year of that because I had untreated alcoholism. Because all that activity was not action. The action it talks about in this book, is step action. So if I sound passionate about this, it's because I almost died because I wasn't exposed to this. I had to expose myself to it from a bunch of tapes from people in Arkansas, if you can imagine. You know what I mean? And I thank you all for that. I truly feel like coming down here, and doing a big book workshop in Arkansas, would be like Einstein asking me to do a talk on physics at Princeton. You know, it's an unbelievable honor. And I really want to thank all of you for being here, and being part of this weekend. I'm going to give the last 10 minutes to Charlie. Good stuff, Chris. Thank you. Thank you for that. That was really terrific. Having a real answer for yourself, the only thing better than having a real answer for yourself, is feeling like you've got a real answer for the new guy. That is where the real magic takes place in this program. And when a guy comes in, when you get into this work, all of a sudden people will be coming up to you going, can I get your phone number? And anyway, you could go through the work, and it is such a wonderful feeling. And they go, absolutely, absolutely. You got a big number. You want to buy a book? If you don't have a big book, we'll buy you one. Let's sit down here and let's start going through the book. Bam, bam. Have you had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps? And I can show you exactly what I did in order to get it. It's unbelievable. Because I sit there and I go, there was a long time when I could pipe up and I could say something really funny in a meeting about how sick I was, and the way I acted out in the world, and the way I acted in traffic and stuff. But at the end of the meeting, there wasn't anybody coming up wanting what I had. And all of a sudden I started getting lined up with some of these guys and listening to these CDs and doing this work and actually getting it. And next thing you know, people are coming up going, can we talk? Is there any way we could sit down after the meeting? It's good stuff. I've got one thing I want to finish with. Studying all this stuff that we've been talking about in here is really great stuff. I'm drawn to it. I love it. But going to conferences and going to big book studies and that sort of thing will not do the job. This is a program of action. And what happens is, maybe I'm suffering a little bit. And I think, you know what, I'm going to go to a conference. And I get to a conference and I get around the solution. And I get around people that are talking about the solution. And I get around people that are experiencing the solution. And I even, you know, I get an uplift in feeling because I reconfirm that the solution is there. But what happened in my life for a long time was I'd go back home come Sunday afternoon and I'd fall back into my life. And next thing you know, it's my wife and it's my kids and it's my job and this sort of thing. And what happens is, getting all this knowledge about this stuff just can be so much more self-knowledge. And really, I think, you know, the book speaks clearly on page 39 when it says the actual or potential alcoholic, with hardly an exception, will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge. See if you think this is important. This is a point we wish to emphasize and reemphasize to smash home upon our alcoholic readers as it has been revealed to us out of bitter experience. This is a program of action. If you've been in these rooms for a while, you know, when I talk, I love the newcomer. And there's some newcomers in this room and it's the lifeblood of our fellowship and I'm always so happy that there's new people here. I think there's plenty of message of the hope of recovery out there for the new man and woman rolling into AA. The people I like to talk to are the people that have been sitting in these rooms for a while. You know, they've been sitting around here for two years, five years, 15 years, 24 years. Dying of untreated alcoholism. Sitting in these rooms going, I'm not experiencing what I hear you people talking about. You know, the people that are getting up at these podiums are talking about something that is not happening to me. And you can see it in your own group. Okay, this is another line I'm stealing from Katie. But when next time, you know how we all like to laugh it up in the meetings and we'll say stuff and everybody's just cracking up laughing? Take a second. Look around. Not everybody's laughing. There's people in that room that don't think a damn thing is funny. And that's the people, when you're talking about looking for somebody to work with, you go over to that guy and go, how you doing? You know, and a lot of times they're the one going, not good, not good. You know, I'm not drinking, but it ain't good. You know, and getting into this work and having the experience that the book talks about, it turns out the big book is not the answer. I'm an unapologetic big book thumper. I mean, I love the big book. It cracks me up how in meetings people, it doesn't crack me up, it pisses me off, how people in meetings go, listen, I'm no book quoter, you know, or I hope I don't ever quote the book. And you're like, oh, no, don't do that. You know, we'd much rather hear a bunch of crap out of your head, you know, than the big book, you know. I mean, but it turns out that the big book, you know, is not the answer. The big book is not the answer to my problems today. Studying the big book is not the answer to my problems today. The big book is a description of actions that if I take them in my life on a regular basis, they will produce the solution to my problem. And that's where the real magic happens. And that's when a new guy comes up and you go, absolutely. I got, you know, we need to sit down and talk because I've been right where you are and I'm on the other side of it now and I can show you how we did it. It is, it's the real magic of this program. I'm seeing more, there are pockets of enthusiasm all over the country. We whine about discussion meetings and stuff, and I don't know that we need a squillion of them. But there are people out here into the book, and I really believe that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is making a big comeback in AA. You know, and you're seeing people all over the place that are starting to see the failure of what happens just trying to get by and just going to meetings. So, I mean, now Chris is one of my favorite guys, and whenever, getting the opportunity to come in here and talk to you people, and you know, and I see plenty of nodding heads during this thing. I know there's a lot of people in here that are on this same page. It's been a real honor to get here to come with you. I was able to come here last year and talk, and then this year Katie's going to talk tomorrow night, for those of you all. It's, I love the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, and you know, to say that it has saved my life is such an understatement. I've got a whole new medium. I'm really excited about the meaning for that, because one day I was driving past this prison where my best friend from my using days was in there, and it was the fourth time he'd been to the penitentiary since I'd been sober, and he was doing 36 years at that time. And for some reason this thought popped into my head of the period of time we get to spend on this planet, you know, that my life is the amount of time that I get to spend here. And I was looking at what alcohol and outside issues had done to Rex's life, you know, and it basically robbed him of it, and it gave a whole new meaning to the term Alcoholics Anonymous saved my life. Because when I look at what was in store for me, and how I was plucked out of that and experienced this program, it gives a whole new meaning to this deal saved my life. So to that, I am truly grateful, and we are so happy to be in here, and I hope you enjoyed it and got something out of it. Thank you.