Step 1 and the Hopeless State of Mind and Body – Dick M.

Good morning my name is Dick Martin and I'm an alcoholic everybody but for the grace of God and actions of AA and sponsorship I've been sober since September the 15th 1965 and are very grateful for that this morning. I did speak here at the first convention and enjoyed doing that, enjoyed being here And I do back the efforts of the group and what it's doing and trying to help newcomers and take them through the big book and get them started on their road. And understanding that this is back to the basics, the basis of Alcoholics Anonymous is some understanding of the program. And I'm not going to tell my story specifically this morning. I'm going to talk about something else a little bit. and we have a chapter in our big book which is not the beginning but it introduces the 12 steps of AA and it's called how it works and for those of you who are new I don't want to give you impression that AA starts with the fifth chapter because it doesn't start with a fifth chapter a the big book starts in the beginning with the preface and the preffice to the first printing in the first edition talks about we first 100 men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body and all through the book itself it that speaks of recovering and recovered alcoholics. And I would like to say that in the sense of the big book, I am a recovered alcoholic. In the sense OF THE BIG BOOK, I'm a recovered alcoholic because I no longer have the mental obsession or physical compulsion to drink. That was removed from me. And so I have recovered from that seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. and that's something I never thought that I would get over I tried to get over that by myself I tried to get over that with help I tried to get over that with psychiatry I tried to get over that with medicine I tried to get over that with religion and I even had a mother-in-law that lectured to me and that didn't work either and the whole premise The premise that I could possibly do this by myself was dashed because I tried for years. Can I really get watered now? And it was just dashed aside because, very simply, I couldn't do it. I tried and I tried but I couldn' t do it anymore. I tried a lot and I could stop drinking for short periods of time, but I could' n't stay stopped. and the purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous very simply put is to stay stopped it's not to stop drinking it doesn't say anything in the big book about stopping drinking it says in the Big Book that we have to change our lives we have to remove the obstacles to sobriety is what it really amounts to and I think with sponsorship that's the key to that because that wasn't something that I could do myself and in the ABCs it does simply talk about the fact that of and by ourselves we couldn't do it and other people couldn't do it either because there's no outside force that seemed to be able to help us get through that stage of the obsession to drink and the physical compulsion. We just couldn't do it. In today's world with their treatment centers on every corner, now that the treatment centers are beginning to close down and there's not so many of those, there are people who are counselors and alcoholism they've opened up and hanging their shingle on every street corner and these things don't seem to work either as an employer and as you know i'm an employer maybe you are too but we see alcoholics come and go and there doesn't seem to be any way that we can expect an alcoholic to recover at all except through the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. The program of Alcoholic Anonymous has the one single most effective program that's ever been known to man in the 4,000 years of recorded history. If you put all of the other recoveries together it would not match the numbers that we have in AA today. Here this morning, although there are not many people here, by the time that AA was a year old it really didn't have many more people than us. We had a sobriety countdown last night and Tagg and Francis and I were the three who who had been sober the longest, and Francis has 39 years. Tag came in before me about six or eight months, and the next fellow after that was 18 years. It was a 10-year discrepancy between Tag and I's sobriety and the Nextfellow doubt. Cliff, he's here this morning also. And from there they're on down and down and done. And I know that everybody in Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't go to conventions. But I know that the people who go to conventions are the ones who seem to stay sober. And that's one of the reasons why I've always been a convention attendee. I went to my first AA convention in October of 1965, and it was in Luray, Virginia. And it was called the Blackstone AA Retreat, and that's still going on today. They have one in October and one in April of each year. and it's a large gathering now of AA members as I recall when our first when I went down the first one there were maybe three three hundred and fifty people there I couldn't tell you who spoke I don't have any idea I've tried to find out but I can't seem to find and as a result of that however this gathering of the more articulate members of Alcoholics Anonymous something something happened to me. And what happened to is I became convinced that the people who were talking at the meetings where I was going were saying the right thing, because I had this idea if all these people would come from all across the country and deliver their message, and deliver it in such an articulate manner that there must be something truly, truly different about Alcoholics Anonymous. And that truly different thing about Alcoholic Anonymous was that in fact these people have changed their lives and they've made drastic changes there are people who had been arrested many times and incarcerated and put in nut houses and tied down and gone through convulsions and there were people who have been put away in insane asylums and put him penitentiaries and on and on and on it off and those were not the story of my life that was not my story That was not what had happened to me. What had happened to me indeed was something different than that because I had been drinking since I was 14 years old and when I first drank, when I took that first drink it did something to me as my sponsor said what it did was it altered my perception of reality it made my life seem different, it made the world seem different It made it acceptable to me. Life seemed acceptable to me. Something had happened to me when I was born, I guess, and I don't know what it was, but whatever that was, it seemed to, I seemed to be more sensitive than other people. I seem to have a feeling of inadequacy that other people didn't have. I looked at other people and they seemed to have it all together. They seemed to know what they were doing. They seemed to have some direction in their lives. Even as a little boy, I remember going to Sunday school and I remember people coming in there, other kids coming in there and they seemed to be delighted with the idea of being there. And I wasn't delighted with it. I didn't want to be there at all. And I don't know why I didn�t want to there. I just didn't wanna be there. It just didn� t make any sense to me. And they were talking about things that just didn �t seem to be appropriate to me and It just didn't seem to work for me. And I could believe that there was a power greater than myself very logically and very reasonably. My parents were a power greater than I was, and I could look up to them and I would see that they had that power because they were able to feed me and care for me and I wasn't able to eat and care for myself, so they had a power greater than mine did. So I knew that there is a power greater than them because they had been raised also. And so it was logical for me to assume and to believe that in fact there was a power greater than myself and it was a power of greater than man because there seemed to be things going on in the world in nature and all around me that were inexplicable to me and inexplicably by others to me that they couldn't explain and they explained it by saying well god did that and that made sense to me and I was able to grasp onto the idea that there was something and God was the term that people used for that something that was a power greater than man and so I didn't deny the existence of God I really ended up not ever denying the existence OF GOD but I denied that GOD would ever have anything to do with ME and GOD wouldn't have anything to DO WITH ME because eventually I became sort of a person where I felt so dirty on the inside that God wouldn't want to have anything to do with me at all. That if God really knew what I was, that he would destroy me, that I would be zapped and that would be the end of that. And I knew that I didn't always respect my parents. As a matter of fact, there was someone who spoke here this evening or this weekend and said that they didn't like their mother. and i didn't like my mother either i never did like my mother i loved my mother and i respected my mother for who and what she was but i didn t like her and i didn't have to like her that isn't a requirement in life i found out the requirement in life is that we love and respect it doesn't mean that we have to like people as a matter of fact my first sponsor explained that very well to me he said you know if you like everybody in aa you're not going to enough meetings and that makes sense to me and it makes sense to me yet today you can't like everybody in the world and there was no way that I could do that and on the other hand my father who was an alcoholic and died as a result of a drunken fall down the basement steps he was a functioning alcoholic he'd been nominated for a federal judgeship and he was celebrating that and his birthday and took a tumble down the pavement steps and ended up with a brain concussion and died and uh earliest memory i have of my father coming home drunk and my mother raising hell with him and that's the first thing i can remember i don't i don' t remember what she said i don''t remember what he said i don ''t i just remember there was a lot of yelling and screaming and and unhappiness and she was cursing him blessing him out he was cursING her blessing blessing her out. And it was one of those things, if you would only, from either side. And I didn't realize, I didn t know that either one of them was inadequate or whatever. The only thing I realized is that somehow or another they were staying together and they weren t happy with each other. And I d n t know why people stayed together if they weren t happy because it seems to me that they had a choice. As I grew older, I never really did understand that but then they took a vow that that's what they were going to do and so so they did it as I grew older I also learned at my grandfather my mother's father had gone through the Keely cure many times in North Carolina and had been dried out and hosed and everything that they did with the Keely Cure and they gave high colonic irrigation as a matter of fact that was part of it, part of the treatment. The idea of that is just abhorrent to me today I can tell you but he had gone through the Keely cure many times and it hadn't worked for him and he divorced his wife and told her that she didn't deserve the sort of a treatment sort of treatment that he was giving her and he left her and left her in three small children and his brother supported them until such a time as they had finished school. I had never met my grandfather. I had Never met the man. I never knew him. I never, to this day, I don't even know his name, to tell you the truth. I know his last name, of course, but I don' t know his first name. But he was a disgrace. He was someone that was not talked about in the family. No one ever talked about him. And so I distantly, I say distantly because I had not experienced alcoholism personally I had experienced alcoholism in my own family and had seen what it had done and somehow or another I don't know why but I think I took on the idea or the assumption that this, my mother was at fault and I don' t know how I got that idea but I got the idea it was her fault. I didn't get the idea that it was my father's fault, that he drank. I got the idea it was his fault because if she hadn't been such a harrod then he would have stayed home and he wouldn't have had to drink. And that was the understanding that I got. And I frankly kind of agreed with it. My mother was a disciplinarian in the house and I was always doing something. I was one of these kids who was always getting into trouble I wasn't getting into serious trouble at first but I was doing things that I shouldn't do I was taking things it didn't belong to me and I was learning to lie adroitly and I had to learn to do that I had to learn the lie because I had get out of the situations that I put myself into and if I'd have gotten caught for anywhere near half of what I had done I'm sure that I would have been dead by this time because I was certainly severely punished many many many times and this is not going to be a story of some feeling of child abuse because I really felt that I deserved every whipping that I guess as I got and I got a lot of them and I got him with switches on my bare legs until my legs bled I got beatings with a belt and sometimes with the buckle in when I wouldn't respond by crying or yelling out and so I know what that sort of thing is. I know What that kind of life was, but I didn't think that I was being abused. I thought that I was getting what I deserved and I did. Frankly, I deserve something, but as I look back on it now I don't deserve that. I've had three children as an adult two while previously married and one with Peggy and I've never touched any of those three children and it isn't because I'm afraid that I would do something to them it's because I don't think that a I think that whipping children takes away their dignity and I don't want to do that and I have never done that in my life I never intend to and I'm 62. I don't have that much of a life left, maybe another 30 years. My family, they last a long time. I don' t know why that is. But I don''t intend to do that. I don ''t see that as part of my life. It''s just something that I don'T do. And maybe like my father, I'm not the disciplinarian in my family. But it is just something that I've never done. I've never raised my hand to my children, and Peggy has never raised hers either. And it's just something we don't believe in, and it's not in my nature to do that. However, when I was drinking, it was my nature to always do that. I was always getting into trouble. I was arrested 23 times for public intoxication and disturbing the peace, and twice for being in possession of a vehicle while I was drunk, and once for urinating in public, and I was always doing something as you can tell. And I was a bar drinker. I drank outside mostly. I would drink anywhere but I drank mostly in bars. I would spend time drinking by myself or with others. I really didn't care. It didn't make any difference to me. All I wanted was the effect that drinking produced and the effect that drinking produced is it it altered my perception of reality and it made life acceptable to me all of a sudden my drinking made me feel like I was okay it didn't make me feel at first superior to other people necessarily but it just made me feel like they appeared and I took that drink and it changed me and I needed that change. All the promises came true when I drank, every damn one of them. Every one of them because what happened is that it ended up that I just didn't care. I simply didn't care. I didn't care that I had character defects. I didn't care that you had character defects unless they were getting in my way. I didn't care what was going on. I had no feeling of responsibility for being honest or having any integrity or being truthful or any of those things at all. I didn't feel any responsibility for that and I didn't care, and if you said something to me about it my attitude was screw you and that's the way I felt. I really felt that way. I felt like I really didn't care. It didn't make any difference to me but when I was not drinking I felt in an oppositional sort of a manner. I thought guilty and dirty and ashamed and then I I felt like I was not equal to any situation or equal to life or equal to any relationship or equal to being an employee. The other people that I worked with, I always looked at them and when I was sober, I looked at them and I thought to myself, they really do this a lot better than I do. I really don't know what the hell I'm doing. I'm doing it but I'm really fooling people into thinking that I'm doing it. I'm not really doing it and I was like two of your previous speakers I was a salesman I was abroad sold broadcasting time and I wasn't broadcasting for 27 years and it I was training people to become radio and television salesmen and I was the salesman myself when I was doing this but I had to give the the capacity to be able to teach people, and so I was a training manager, if you will. And I did that, and these people, they were getting promoted beyond me. People that I had trained were becoming my superiors, and I didn't understand that. And I resented it, and hated my boss, and i hated the place where I worked, and I hated the people that I worked with, and and I resented those people that I had trained, and they were only doing what I had suggested that they do. There's no reason why I should feel that way. But I had these terrible waves and feelings of inadequacy. I can remember even as a sober alcoholic, as a sovereign member of Alcoholics Anonymous, I can Remember sitting at my desk from time to time thinking to myself, if the boss really knew how inadequate I was, he'd fire me. and i can remember doing that when i was sober one time and uh just after i had that thought i got a phone call and it's from my boss and he asked me to come up to his office and i thought oh jesus you know this is a this is the end he's gonna fire me he knows and i went up there and he complimented me and said what a great job that i was doing and i was you know i would I was a sales manager, and he said that you're doing the best job that's ever been done here. And he said, it's hard for me to say that because I was the sales manager here once too. But he says, I want you to know that. And he says that's going to show there's going to be a tremendous bonus on your paycheck at the end of the year. And I walked out of there, and I thought, Jesus, what's wrong with me? What's wrong that I think of me the way I think of me and that others think of me the way they think of me. How can he think that of me when I was feeling so inadequate just moments ago? How could that be? What is wrong with me? Well, there's something basically wrong with my thinking, obviously. There's something basically wrong with the way I think of myself. There are periods of time when I don't think that well of myself, and that is even true today. There are There are some times that I just have these revisitations of feelings of inadequacy and feelings of being dirty and guilty, and that I should be ashamed of myself. But they don't stay, and they come less frequently, and the duration is less. I just get that feeling every now and then. I can remember one time walking across a parking lot, and I was doing very well. Financially, I was doing well. I had been married to Peggy for oh I don't know maybe 15 years or something like that and we had an excellent marriage as we yet do today and my relationships with the people around me was good. I find sponsor I had many fellows that I'd sponsored, there was a lot of recovery around me and there was a good feeling about me and I remember walking across this parking lot one day going to lunch. I was going to lunch by myself and I thought to myself why? Why is this? Why am I doing this? What's the use? What's sense in all this? What is the sense in this? It just doesn't make any sense. It was the big question. Why why am I even here? Why should I go through this? It doesn't make any sense it doesn't any sense and I Got in a car, and I drove to a restaurant, and it was a some fast-food place I went in there before I got out of the car I noticed that I had a book in the car and I had 12 and 12 and uh i just reached over and grabbed it and went over and sat down at my lunch and i was sitting there and reading the 12 and 12 i don't have any idea what i read in the 12 and 12. i don' t know what i opened to it doesn't really make any difference but i had a sandwich and i had cup of coffee and i felt better and i walked out of there and i feeling good good again. And then I looked at myself and I said, what in the hell was that? Why did that happen? And it wasn't that I was particularly hungry, angry, lonely, or tired because those things have visited me too. I put myself in a position of being that way. And it wasn't bad. It was just being visited. It Was being visited by perhaps one of those those hideous four horsemen that we talk about in Alcoholics Anonymous. And it's just a short visitation, and it didn't last long. It didn't say, why don't you drink? Or why don'T you draw out all the money from the bank account and go to New Zealand? Because I always kid about that. I think things get rough here, Peg. Let me tell you what I'm going to do. I'm gonna take out a mortgage on the house, which is paid for, and I'm going to withdraw all the funds that I have in IRAs and savings accounts and I am gone baby and I will go to New Zealand and she says well what about me and I said what about you if I do that I won't care about you I only care about me and she said yeah but you poor son of a bitch you are going to be taking you with you too aren't you but uh i've always kidded about that and it just so happens that i have a very good friend in aa name of russ conchie and uh russ is living in new zealand and he was always wanted me to come out there and visit with him and aa it up sometime and i've thought about doing that maybe i'll do that, maybe I'll just take out a mortgage on the house and go out and see my buddy. But when I – my attitude about that has changed entirely because when I first came to AA, I lived in Washington, D.C., and I would see the planes coming in to land at National Airport, which is one of the busiest airports in the world. And I wanted to be on that – on a plane. I didn't care whether it was going out or coming in because if it was coming in I'd been somewhere and if it's going out, I was going away I just didn't want to be where I was and that's all it was to it. And I felt this terrible feeling of restlessness Irritability and discontent when I was new in AA and it was always there It wasn't there some of the time it was ALWAYS there and I didn't know what in the hell to do about it and it gradually by taking the steps and being sponsored and by attending meetings and doing the things that we do in Alcoholics Anonymous it went away now I don't want to get on an airplane believe me you know the idea of getting on an aeroplane and going somewhere is I don' t mind flying I don''t mind the travel doesn' t bother me particularly but I'm tired I'm tired of going, and I'd just like to stay still for a while. I'm more active in AA now than I've been since I've ever been in AA, and more active today at 28 years than I was when I was sober for 28 days or 28 months. And I was telling somebody between what I do for a living and between speaking at AA conferences. I haven't been home since the second weekend in July. I haven'T been home on weekends since the 2nd weekend in july. I'M going to be home next weekend. I'M looking forward to it. I can see myself now. I'M just not going to know what the hell to do. Why am I not somewhere else? but that's what my life leads me to and very fortunately I've learned to live my life a day at a time so I don't have to look forward to 26 weeks of weekends of work or travel or whatever it is I don t look at that I just look at them one at a time and I just do this one I just what's in front of me to do and I can do that then that's the only way I can there's just no other way I I can do that because if I look at it on an ongoing basis, if I looked at my calendar for next year for an example, I'd say I don't want to be there. You know, I don' t want to b e next year. You know I want to this year. I want o b e nex weekend is what I really want o be. I just want to n ex weekend. I dono want to d this weekend. I wanto b e n e x weekend and I don o want o b e any of the weekends thereafter. But that's the way my life is and I'm always been an active member of AA and I've always been someone who's been into taking the actions and trying to help others to take the actions. And I've found that it's easier for me to do that if I'm taking the action myself. There isn't anyone that I sponsor who says to me, well, Dick, I'm awfully tired. I put in 60 hours at work this week because they only say it once. They only have one opportunity to do that. And then I start explaining to them what I do, and I've got guys that are 40 years younger than I am that I'm sponsoring that I am more active physically and more active mentally and more actively in AA than they are, and they're very active members of Alcoholics Anonymous. That's not bragging because it's not a question of doing what I want to do because Because of and by myself I want to do nothing, as I explained to you. I don't want to anything. That's my nature, to do anything. It isn't that. I just do what I'm asked to do. And that's all I have to do, that's what life is about, doing what you're asked to do. I never, I have been taught from the very beginning that I'm not supposed to turn down an AA request unless I have another commitment. And I have never, to my knowledge, turned down an AA request. And when I've been asked to do something for Alcoholics Anonymous, I've always stood up and done it. And I'm going to continue to do that, and I hope to do dat until I die, very simply. Because if I spend too much time with myself, even yet today, I find myself not being very good company. I need to be occupied. I need to occupy my mind, and I need to occupy actions. And if I occupy my mind and my actions in doing something that's responsible, then I feel okay about me, and my life is okay. But if I sit still too long, I get mold or I get moss on the north side, if you know what I'm talking about, and And my life begins to deteriorate because I begin to think of myself. And I don't need to think of myself anymore. What I need to do is to think of others. I need, upon awakening, to think what I can do for the alcoholic who still suffers. And I can remember when I first came to Alcoholics Anonymous hearing that and reading it in a big book and thinking to myself, oh, isn't that cute? but the point about it is if you're active in Alcoholics Anonymous by the time your feet hit the floor and you say good morning to God my life begins with thinking what am I going to do today what am i going to do about John, what amI going to about this guy what ami going todo about that one so on and so forth because it permeates my life AlcoholicsAnonymous is not something that I attend occasionally. I don't just go to a little AA meeting every now and then. Alcoholics Anonymous is my life, and that's what it is. And surprisingly enough, as busy as I have been in Alcoholics Anonymous ever since I've been sober, I've Been very successful in a number of other things. I've worked in broadcasting, and I was a salesman when I came to AA. and after I was sober for about six or eight months, I began to realize that I was very capable of being a salesman and I did a very good job of it. And the reason why I did is because I worked at it, not because I was particularly bright or particularly energetic or anything else. I was just there. When I went to work, I was willing to do what was put in front of me to do because that's what I'm supposed to do. And I realized that if I did that, that I was working probably six or seven hours a day and the other people around me were probably working four. And so I wasworking harder than they were and so naturally it produced additional results, better results than what they had produced. I didn't do this, I don't think, because it made me, if I worked harder, I felt equal to. It wasn't that. It was that I wanted to be occupied. I didn't want to have spare time on my hands. I just needed to be doing something. I needed to being occupied. I needed it to be mentally and physically occupied so that I wasn't thinking about me. I've heard off and on ever since I came into Alcoholics Anonymous with something that just drives me crazy. And that is that you have to learn to like yourself and to love yourself before you can like or love anybody else. And I've always been perplexed by that. And I'm not going to lie to you and I've been perplext by that because when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and before, I didn't like me, I didn' t love me, I hated me and I detested me. me. I would have killed me if I didn't think that I would be depriving the world of something fine, but I really would. I thought about committing suicide, I thought about it on a regular basis before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and the primary reason why I didn�t commit suicide was out of ignorance because I had two children that I was supporting and I knew that if I'd, I thought that if I died with suicide that the insurance wouldn't pay off and they wouldn't be able to be supported. And that's the reason why I didn't do it. Now if anybody in here think has an insurance policy and you're thinking about committing suicide let me tell you something if you have that insurance policy for a year you can commit suicide and it'll pay off so go ahead and do it I don't want to hold anybody back from committing suicide just for that purpose but i didn't know that at the time and that ignorance probably saved my life i uh i'll tell you something even yet today even yet today if i had to like me and to love me before i could like or love another human being I couldn't do it. I can't do that. I just simply don't understand the, I don't comprehend the idea. And the reason is that it has not been my experience. It has not be what I have seen and what I've done. It has no been that. Because my experience has been that when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I didn't have a desire to stop drinking. I had a desire to stop hurting, but I didn' t have a desire to stop drinking. And I started going to an AA meeting every night, and I started calling my sponsor every day, and i started spending more and more time with people in Alcoholics Anonymous as much as I possibly could. And i started reading AA literature, and I started doing those things. And as a result of that, I know a lot of people in Alcoholics Anonymous and I got to see their lives and know that they had changed and that they started where I'd started and they were not there anymore. They were up here and that I had something to reach for and so I got to know and to like and respect these people in Alcoholics Anonymous. And it was just a short time, it was over a short period of weeks where I wanted what they had. I wanted what they have and I wanted what they've had so badly that I took a look at it one time and I thought to myself you know, I know these guys and I like them and I respect them and they pay attention to me and they're helpful to me, and they've been kind to me, they really care about me and they've been making all of this effort. I really want to be like they are and they were sober and I realized that they were sober. And that's when the desire to stop drinking came in my life, when I wanted to be liked they were because the only thing that we have in Alcoholics Anonymous is really the words and the people. We have the words that are spoken in AA, we have the word that are written about AA and NAA, and we have have the people. And the people in Alcoholics Anonymous and the words in Alcoholic Anonymous are not the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I think that the words and the people are the fellowship of Alcoholic Anonymous, I know that this convention this weekend is the fellowship of Alcoholix Anonymous I know that the relationship that I have with my sponsor is the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. I know that the relationships that I had with the people that I sponsored is that very simple fellowship of Alcoholic Anonymous, I know the four meetings that I go to when I'm in when I'm in town that I do each week. I know that that's the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. The program of Alcoholic Anonymous that we discuss is something that's inside me, is somethingthat I do. It is my life. It is what I am supposed to do. It's what I'm about. There's no one that I've ever met in AlcoholicsAnonymous who can adequately explain the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and I have been to step studies and step meetings and I put them on myself and I've been this you know if you really want to get screwed up go to a step meeting there's 12 people sitting around the table and they're talking about something as simple as the first step you get these twelve different divergent ideas on what on what the first step means to them what value is that it's driven me nuts periodically I think Jesus you know you're never gonna stay sober if you think that way then I think no dick you're never gonna stays over if you think that way I finally read a piece of literature that Bill Wilson had read it was in a little pamphlet and it said that the purpose for meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous is to take newcomers so they can be 12-step and then I said oh now I understand I understand what this is all about because anyone who's new has to have a divergence of ideas before they they can grasp and develop an idea of themselves. Because what we really do is we take a newcomer and we place them in the environment where they can get well. We have to create the environment, and one of the creations of the environment are the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. That's an environment where они могут выбрать свой способ, потому что так как мы хотим думать, что мы соберем большую книгу в их зубах, or cram the steps down their throat, or crAM the traditions, or crAm the concepts, or whatever it is, or whatever an idea it is. It's almost impossible for us to do so. And we know it's impossible because it was impossible for our sponsors to do that to us. We can't... It just didn't work. I think a typical example of this It was something that I, years ago, I started telling this one fellow, a fellow named John that I sponsor yet today. He's been sober 18 years. And I was telling John, I said, John, I don't care whether you want to do it or not. Just do it. And I told him this every day. I mean, every day, because he was one of these obstinate jerks who really, I mean he just didn't want to do anything. He really just said, well, I don't want do that. He was one these whiners, you know. And I don' care John, just do it. I don''t care whether you want to or not, just take the action. You don't have to judge whether it's a right action or a wrong action. You know, all you have to do is just do it. You don't even have to like doing it. You can hate doing it, but damn it, do it! And I told him this day after day, week after week, month after month. Then I was sitting at a meeting, and John was in the meeting. He said, you know, I went to a noon meeting the other day, and Ralph said something that really struck me. and I was wondering what this was gonna be. And he said it really doesn't make any difference whether we want to take the actions or not, it's taking the action that counts. And I thought you son of a bitch. I've been saying that to you every day sometimes two or three times a day and you hear it from Ralph. Ralph Ralph isn't even sober today, by the way, and John is. John heard it. And then he would always say, well, as Ralph said, you know, I wanted to wring his damn neck. Not that I wanted credit for it, but if he's going to give somebody credit for it, by God, he should give it right. But he didn't hear it from me. He didn't listen to me. He didn' t hear it for me. Ralph heard it from m e, and Ralph told John. It's just simply the way it was said and the environment. It wasn't me, it wasn't the message that I had because I'm not sure, for John I obviously didn't have a message but Ralph did. He could pay attention to Ralph because he was not intimidated by Ralph and he was intimidated by me and I realized that. But I still intimidate John on a regular basis. He's gotten so he likes it now. But that's a typical story of thinking that somehow or another that I have something, that I Have a message or that I can be helpful. Because if I am helpful, it doesn't happen here. It happens over there someplace. It happens Over There. It never seems to be a direct response. It seems to be an indirect thing that happens. And I think that God does that so that we don't get some idea that we know what the hell we're doing. So if the purpose of AA meetings is to take newcomers to be 12-step, then why do we take them through the 12 steps? Because we try. and we can give them some piece of the message. We can give him some basic idea of what the steps mean. It's not going to be adequate for them, I'm sorry, but it never has been adequate for me to hear what one person says. I am a product of many people's words words and many people's actions with me and on me and for me and directed to me and directed for me to take. I don't have the answer. I know the solution. What you have to do is you take a human being who's an alcoholic and you place them in an environment where they can get well so that they can choose their own recovery so that they can choose to participate in their own life and as a sponsor you know and I know too that the simple thing that goes on it's kind of like I think maybe like planting a seed that we part the earth put the seed in in there, and we water it. Then the sun bakes it, and God creates the miracle that happens. All we can do is to simply place the seed, the person, in the environment where it can get nourishment, where it kan get water, where you can get the heat of the sun or the power of God, and they get well. We don't get them well. It was kind of funny in AA when AA was was new and it was young the people seemed to have the idea that they were going to fix people they used to fix them you know they're going to cure them give them the cure and they tried to do that sort of thing it i don't think that they're very successful because a it's grown so slowly over the years when uh when tag and i came into alcoholics anonymous it was said then and i I presume that these numbers make sense, but said that there are about 250,000 people sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. That was in 1965. And today it's estimated that there were about two and a half million people sober in Alcoholic Anonymous, and over a period of 28 years, AlcoholicsAnonymous, you think and I think that it's all over the place, and we have hundreds of meetings. When I first got sober, there were 60 meetings a week in the Washington metropolitan area in Washington DC for an example and now I am sure at any given hour of the day there's a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous from Washington DC and they have I know over 600 meetings a week and they're just you know you I've heard people talking about going to the International in Seattle and saying well I used to like it when it was smaller you know Montreal was big enough. You know before that you know I really liked New Orleans but in Seattle there was just so many people and so on and so forth. There were a lot of people there, some 48,000 people attending that conference. In New Orleans for an example there it was closer to 23,000 people and I think that the reason why the old-timers say things like that is is that in 1980 in New Orleans, the Giants and Alcoholics Anonymous, as I have known them, many of them were still alive. Chuck Chamberlain was still alive, Norm Alpey was still live, Joe Leith was still life, those are certainly three of the people that I knew and knew well. And my first sponsor was still a lot. There are a lot of people that I look to as being giants, my heroes in Alcoholics Anonymous. I do have heroes in AA just like I have heroes anywhere else. There are people who have been outstanding in my life who have expressed AlcoholicsAnonymous to me and expressed with me the idea that I can be something different than I am. And they have shown me how they have done it and they said that you can do this if you want to do it. And if you don't want to, you don' t have to do it. But there are the giants in Alcoholics Anonymous to me and that they're still there. There's some of them that are still around. There are some of them that ahead of me that I have a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for. One of them is my sponsor Clancy. I think that God, I'm rambling this morning. I think that when you take into consideration that AA has only grown tenfold since we have come into AA, I think it's kind of a shame, really. And I really do think it is a shame. And I think its our shame. I don't think it their shame. It isn't their fault. It's our fault. And I thinks its our fault because somehow or another we've lost the idea that what we have to do is to reach out and help somebody else. and I think that we have lost the idea as is expressed in chapter 7 which says which is entitled working with others and it starts off and it says practical experience shows us nothing can so much ensure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics George told that story George told that story Friday night and when we forget to do that when we forgot to reach out and give the guy a pat on the back and encourage him to keep coming back and spend time with them helping them and being a sponsor to them and showing them how the value of changing their lives and show them that yes it's just a little thing it's not a big deal but if you change this little thing today day and make that a permanent part of your life, maybe tomorrow you can change another little thing and make it a permanent. Maybe you can start exercising a little muscle in doing things right instead of doing things wrong. And if you do that the muscle develops and you will then have muscles of character assets instead of having muscles of character defects because the more you use your character assets, the less and the weaker your character defects are going to become. Because somehow or another in this great cosmos, God sees us when we're trying to make an effort to help somebody else. God sees US when we are trying to do something right. God sees Us when we were making an effort to do the right thing. And somehow or other He takes away the barriers from us. he removes the barriers of our life that prevent us from being the people that we want to be I realized that most of my life after I came into Alcoholics Anonymous I realized that most of my life was a failure it was a failure because I failed to do what I was supposed to do when I was supposed to do it I realized that I failed because I wasn't where where I was supposed to be when I was supposed to be there and I began to do those things that I was supposed to do when I was supposed to do them and gradually my life turned around and it became important to me and it became valuable to me my life became valuable to me because I didn't have these feelings of oh god I wish I'd done this oh god I wish I'd done that why didn't I do this all the time instead of occupying my mind with things like that I occupied it on the other side was saying and tomorrow I'm going to try to do this I'm gonna make an attempt before I go to bed I'm gonna give George a call and see how George is doing and give him a little encouragement he's been having a bad time making those efforts and that changed me that changed me gave me a feeling of adequacy and it took took away this feeling of guilt and dirt and feeling of being embarrassed for the air that I breathed. And it gave me a feeling of all right. It didn't give me a feeling of superiority. I would have liked that feeling, but it didn't give that feeling to me. But it gave a feeling of being equal. I am now equal, and I know that, to any human human being. There's no human being that I see, that I know, that is superior to me because we're all God's kids and it really doesn't make any difference. I don't see people as being inferior to me. I see their circumstances in their life being inferior to mine perhaps and I see people's circumstances in life being superior to mine in ways of maybe intellect or maybe talent but I'm not embarrassed about it nor do I feel inadequate or ashamed about it. I've often wondered why it is that I'm sober. There are more people out there, there are people out there in the world I think who are certainly intrinsically better human beings than I am and that are drunks and that haven't been able to make it, and that they're as deserving of this program of Alcoholics Anonymous as I am. And I've often wondered what that was. I've often wondered why it was that I was sober. And there was a fellow named Chuck Chamberlain who explained this to me in a very simple way. He said, Dick, he said sometimes we have to understand that in the first place everyone is equal you know the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike if you're out there you're going to get wet whether you're a good person or a bad person if you'RE standing in the rain you're gonna get wet it really doesn't make make any difference. And God's grace is that way. God's grace falls on the just and unjust alike. God loves every person and each person with an equal amount of power. The reason why you're sober, and some of these other people are not sober, is because you recognize his grace, and they don't. So somehow or another this morning we're gathered here and we can say what we want to say and we can say the words that we want us a and we can talk about things that are you can tell our stories and we could we can do any number of things but as an end result what this meeting is about all meetings end up with a feeling of gratitude and it's a gratitude for the fact that I and that you have recognized the grace of God today and we're sober today. The more I stay sober and the longer I stay sober, the more I realize how important it is for me to just stay sober today that's why I go to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous so I don't take that first drink. It puts me in touch with the people that I can help very simply. I go meetings of alcoholics anonymous so I don't take that first track. Maybe that sounds too simple. It shouldn't, because that's what it's about. I often have wondered and pondered like all of us have on the nature of God, and I think that all thinking people, all humans think about the nature of God and what is this thing and I don't have an adequate answer for that I have a lot of answers but a lot of things know some things but I know this that I'm sober today and I know that still yet today 35 out of 36 alcoholics die drunk that means that some of the people in this room are going to die drunk maybe you maybe me me. But I think today, as long as I keep doing and acknowledging the grace of God that I'm going to be able to stay sober. And that acknowledgement is done by me, not by prayer in the common sense of the word, not my words but by the actions that I take. I believe I call these foot prayers it's putting one foot in front of the other and going out of my way to do doing something that I don't want to do it's taking the action and I think the foot prayers work getting up going to work going to a meeting getting a cup of coffee for a newcomer getting a cup of coffee foreign old-timer being helpful just putting one one foot in front of the other. That's worked for me. I thought when I came into AA, as I heard Chapter 5 read, which says rarely have I seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program. usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. And I thought to myself, I am that. I am constitutionally capable of being honestly with myself. And I know that I am. But by God, I don't want anybody to ever call me that. And so I'm going to try not to be that. I know it's not going to work. I know AA isn't going to go work. I know this whole thing is a bunch of crap, but I'm going to do it anyway because I didn't have anything else to do. I had no other place to go. There was no other places for me to go I came to Alcoholics Anonymous because it was the last resort. There was simply no other placed for me to go and I didn' t know that then but I know that now I know in retrospect. Those are some of the things that have happened to me. I think that perhaps the nature of God is beyond my comprehension, because God's nature is infinite, it's everything. As the book says, he is either everything or he's nothing. And I can't understand everything. I can even really understand me, or you. But I can understand that I don't understand. And that is a beginning of a relationship with God and it's a very simple one. i'm not god and god is you're not god god is that's all i know i don't have to know anything else beyond that i always felt inadequate in talking about that until i read something that bill wilson or i heard something on a tape that bill Wilson had said it. And he talked about the living presence of God. And in talking about the living presence of God, he talked about the feeling of being all right, of just being okay. He talked about the feeling that it's perfectly okay just to be who and where you are. It's you feel peace when you're around people recognize that as the living presence of God I noticed that I felt better when I was in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and with people of Alcoholic Anonymous because they were well-meaning towards me and I felt better with them than I did other times and so I seek today to spend time with those people who are well meaning towards me and what I seek today is to live in the living presence of God because that's where it is for me anywhere where I feel that I go anywhere where any person that I feel like that from I get closer to because I know that if I get closer to them then I am getting closer to him. So if you want to know the nature of God draw closer and understand the nature of man because I believe man is God's finest example. We've had moments of silence this weekend. And I think during those peaceful moments where we're thinking about how we can help the still-suffering alcoholic, that's probably as close to the feeling of the living presence of God that we're going to get. I have a strong feeling that unless you make a commitment or unless I make a commitment that I want to stay sober the rest of my life, I'm not going to be able to do that. Unless I make it commitment to stay sober for the rest my life I'm not going be able to stay over for the rest of mine. When I was new in Alcoholics Anonymous I realized that I had to make that commitment and when I realized that I had to make that commitment, I did. I turned my life and my will over to the care of God as I understood Him. And I do that on a daily basis. And it's done through acts of surrender, just giving up. And as a result of those acts, I have stayed sober longer than I ever expected to stay sober. I don't know whether I'll stay sober till I have 29 or 30 or 35 or whatever years and I really don't care because I know I can stay sober today because you've taught me how to do that. I just don't take that first drink one day at a time. Thank you very much. Thank you.