Step 1 – Twelve Step Workshop – Part 1 of 4 – 2002 – Bob O.

The reason why I'm down here, I mean, I'm clear about that. I'm here because I want to share with you anything you want to know about what's happened to me since I got sober in 1973. I'll just mention a couple of things about the kind of group that I belong to. What we do, and I belong the Happy Way Group in Englewood, Colorado. We are people who are probably close to literalists about the big book. I believe that you don't stop doing this stuff. I don't think you go through it once and then not do it anymore. I write, I go all the way through the steps once a year. I just got done about probably two months ago, but I'm still getting messages from that whole procedure. So I think that my only salvation as an alcoholic is to constantly throw myself at God's feet and say, I need your help to get me where you want me to go. My favorite prayer in the book is, God, please remove my fear and show me what you would have me be, not what you Would Have Me Do. So I think that this is a lifestyle. I think that the thing that the book asks us to do are things that if we want the benefits from this program that we go do and I've been practicing that for almost three decades so if you have reservations about anything in that process if you have questions about what happens over time when you keep doing this over and over again if you have fears about what God's got in store for you let's talk about that and we can do it in the light of the steps the book talks about working in the light of a person's experience who's been through this process and I know that many of you have but what I'm really just here to serve you in any way that I can so one of the things that I'd like to know is what is it that you want to do you know i can get up here and start talking about my experience with one thing or another but unless i know exactly what it is you want uh we may be shooting in the dark here would you be kind enough to tell me why you came here just raise your hand and tell me you don't have to be bashful with me. I'm like an old coat. Okay? Yes? I want to talk about how the women of prejudice about knowledge. You know, you hit the nail on the head. I am not sure I like what I think I have to do. Okay. One of the things I would like to second and third step today. Okay. Who else? Yes? I am here on the second okay. Okay. What did the rest of you come here for? Yes. Really? Okay, good. That's a good step. Yes. Please. Yeah, is this thing on? Yeah, otherwise people in the audience, if they're listening, they don't know. Can you not hear? No, they won't be able to hear you with the tapes. I'm sorry, I just thought I would help you. Oh, I see where... That's all right. It was a late night. Okay. All right, who else? Yes. What worked my ears up was when you made the statement about taking the big book literally. Yes. And I sometimes think that things get very flowery. So what I'm interested in hearing is the basics. Okay. The lady just asked about the basics and said that she was interested in a comment about taking the big book literally, and we'll talk about that. Singleness of purpose. Oh, boy. That's about singleness of purchase. Anybody else? Now, if we don't get to some of this stuff, raise your hand and remind me, OK, because I've got a mind like a piece of Swiss cheese and sometimes things fall in there and they don't come out. So. So, well, why don't we start at the beginning and just and talk about. Well, let's talk about this. First of all, in the foreword to the first edition, just so you know, and I'll read it. We of Alcoholics Anonymous are more than 100 men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. To show other alcoholics precisely how we have recovered, in italics, is the main purpose of this book. The business about taking this book literally is right there. It's about showing others how to recover precisely. Now, if you're going to sponsor people, it's a good idea to know what you did. Now, that sounds pretty obvious and sounds like, well, it sounds pretty obvious. But the truth is that if you don't know what you did, you can't show someone else what to do. And one of the things that my sponsor did for me when we went through this process was to ask me when мы were done with each step, if I understood what I had done. And so, so I had to explain to him using the book where the directions were and what I Had done to go through that step. And when I got done with that process, I'll tell you, I got halfway through and I was scared to death someone would ask me to sponsor him because I knew then how incomplete my knowledge was about this process. And then when I got through with it, I could hardly wait for somebody to show up. Do you know that we kind of become evangelistic when we learn how this thing works. And just bore the hell out of our friends. Do you know that? And it irritates all kinds of people. You think you're driving people out of AA, but you can't drive someone out of AAA who wants sobriety. If someone is here because they don't want to drink anymore and they're scared to death of what the future holds for them, you can't say anything scary enough to drive them away from Alcoholics Anonymous. And as offensive as part of this process is to our egos, people will do it out of pure desperation. So to show others precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book. Now that's an interesting thing. Right in the beginning, they tell you that. So what we did and what I do with new people and what we do in our step workshops in my home group is we start at the forward to the first edition and then when we read everything through the front portion of the book and every time it says to do something, we do it. And we either do it individually or as a group. Now, I think, just addressing singleness of purpose in one area, I think that poetic license is the biggest threat to Alcoholics Anonymous. I think the people trying to put their thumbprint on this process is the greatest danger that we face. you know it's a typically alcoholic thought to say gee this is good but i think it'd work better like this and a lot of people do that individually and the great the great spiritual virtue of doing these steps is doing them precisely as they're designed and so if we decide to do it a little differently we'll do it a little worse okay alright so I guess we can just start talking about steps what are the instructions for the first step do you know what are they somebody tell me Do you know? Where's the instructions? Come on, guys. You know this. Well, there is, but there's a central one, and that is we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people or presently may be has to be smashed. What's that mean? What's it mean? What does our presently will be mean? Or presently maybe. Huh? Yeah. Our presently may be means that we're never going to be that, okay? We are different. Now, we may only be different in that respect, although that's rarely the case, okay. You know... When the book talks about certain types of alcoholics and there's one description in there about an alcoholic who is normal in every other respect, right? I have never in my life met one of those people. So the truth is that we are different in several respects, but the greatest one being our reaction to alcohol. So one of the things I want to do here is that I want you to be part of this. I don't want to just sit here and talk all day, all right? I want your attention to what's going on in the room. I want for you to share with me what your experience is with these things or if you have any questions surrounding a step or if You're confused about something, bring it up so we can talk about it. But I want this to be a dialogue, all Right? So, somebody want to tell me about your first step? What would you like to say about your first step. How did you find out you were an alcoholic? Were you an alcoholic and just had a sudden vision and came into AA or were you an alcoholic for a long time and didn't know what to do with it? What was your experience? I'm an alcoholic. My name is Kim. Hi. I knew I was an alcoholic for at least 10 years. I knew for a fact, no shadow of a doubt. For 10 years before that, I thought, well, maybe I am. But then for 10 solid years, I knew it was and could not. And we had been in AA, in and out of AA for 15 years plus and just could not plug in anywhere. And what finally happened with me was that I was desperate enough to receive sponsorship. And my sponsor took me through the first four chapters of this book, word by word, page by page. And the conclusion was that I identified with all of the symptoms of what the book describes of alcoholism and that I was one. And that in itself wasn't really enough, though, because I had to discover that my case was hopeless. I mean, that I had alcoholism and all of its ramifications. That I suffered from a hopeless state of mind and body and that I was beyond human aid. Good. What was the key word in that? Beyond human aid, sir. Okay. What was it that she felt that threw her over the line? Better, something even more than that. Desperation. Desperate. Desperatio is a gift, all right? It doesn't feel like one. Desperating is a gift. You know, people who try to come in and out or try to get sober in this program and can't ever get a grip on it, it's desperation that will solve the problem. that in my experience, people will never, ever, ever turn to God unless there is no other choice. All right? It just... At some point, you have to be so sick and tired of who you are and what you represent to yourself that you don't want to be that anymore. And when the book says that we were reborn, it's not kidding. It's not particularly a Christian thing. It's just that we Were Reborn. We came from a position of total desperation where there were no other choices. And we finally prostrated ourselves at God's feet and said, I can't do this. I'm out of gas. I am dying here and I need your help and if there isn't any help this deal is over, okay? And sometimes in fact most of the time we need to be there. Now what happens once a year you know why I write inventory once a years or you know why I go through the steps once a year? Because I get so damn sick and tired of being me. I really do. I mean, I just, I get sick of me. And I'll sit there and I just don't want to be me anymore. And so what I'll do is I'll jump back in the fire. And I will go through and I will question everything about me. I will ask God and I'll question everything I believe, everything I can dig up, my whole thought process and I do this through inventory how I act I'll challenge almost everything and I'll see whether that's something that I want to be we were having a discussion this morning earlier and there are some gifts that I think you should be aware of and that God will allow us to have And the gift is about choosing who we are. We get to choose who we are, we get to chose what we are, we get choose who our friends are, we get chose what our principles are. And if we do that with God's vision in mind we can become that. And one of the greatest gifts about knowing who you are is that other people can't tell you who you are. When other people come up and tell you who you are, you already know. So that always comes as kind of a surprise or as something humorous because you've already established that work toward it and act like it. And so we have those choices. The problem is if you don't make those choices for yourself, somebody else will. And they'll start telling you who you are because that's what they'll want you to be. Okay? And if you choose to be what someone else wants you to do, you will never be who you are. So I don't want to talk in circles here, but we have those choices today. And every time I go through this process again, I know what I would like to be. And what I'd like to be is not what I am first, but I also know what I want to be, and I write down the principles that I want to live by. Principles, incidentally, are something that are very vague in Alcoholics Anonymous. And we'll get to that in inventory when it talks about people, institutions, and principles. How many people do you know that have ever written an inventory about principles? rarely happens, okay? All right. So the gift of desperation is wonderful. It'll take us to where we finally have to be. It will finally put us in a position where we give up, where we virtually say whatever you got in mind. Now, if our mission here is to carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities, We can't do that unless we're willing to let go of the vision of our will. So it's important that we understand that we are... I love the thing in the book that says we're on the leading edge of God's ever-advancing creation. That means we're the shock troops. Okay? Yes. we're the people out in front and I had mentioned this last night being in God's army is not an easy deal it's not you'll be called upon to do things that are going to irritate everybody in the room but you're either going to do this or you don't you're neither going to believe what you believe or you're not and you're never going to be able to and you either going act in that manner or you not and so the one thing that I wanted that I would really like to give you is the ability to to stand for something one of the things that people I had there's a guy in Denver that asked me questions that I hate but he's very good at it and And he looked at me one day and he said, What do you stand for? And I'm thinking that's a pretty broad, encompassing kind of question and I didn't know how to answer it. And I said, Well, I don't know. And he said then you don't stand for anything. Whoa. Get the hell out of here. it just you know i thought about that and i i thought what do i stand for you know if somebody's dying in front of me am i embarrassed to challenge them if i know this program and i'm not willing to give it away because i might look bad what am i up to you know si go through this process if i'm sitting in a room like this and I know, I learn what the process is and then I'm afraid to share it because somebody might not like me? What am I up to? We're not talking about a popularity contest here. We're talking about helping people to stop dying from alcoholism. And am I so interested in holding my ego above all of this that I don't want to look bad even when someone's dying from this disease right in front of me? No. Okay? We need to ask ourselves that question. Are we willing to step up to the plate here? You know, I don'T see anybody in this room that's drunk, okay? So we all received this enormous gift from God and one that was where He virtually prevented us from dying from alcoholism and then we turn around and we're afraid to share what we got because we might look bad. Okay? If you choose who and what you are and what your principles are, you don't have to worry about what other people think about you because you already know who you are. You chose it. Okay? and you go well that's what I am and then if somebody comes up and goes you're a jerk you go yep sometimes you know you can't argue with someone who agrees with you so we have this enormous gift and we have been given choices which we would do well to take and especially like this. I mean, if this was some suburban meeting where everybody came in and practiced fear and fellowship and talked about what kind of drugs they were on or whatever the hell they were doing, that's one thing. See, but by the very nature of the fact that you're in this room, you have some level of interest about recovery. I mean why the hell would you come here if you didn't? I'm not that sterling a speaker. I mean, why would you, what would be the point? So by the very nature of the fact that you're here, you have some interest in honing your skills in sobriety. And so that's what we'll talk about. Who else would like to talk about their first step? I have just a question. Please. Today, and I guess always in Alcoholics Anonymous, there's a lot of things coming in from the outside. In the last year, probably about 60% of the people that come to our group that haven't been in AA for a while are on antidepressants or they're generalized anxiety disorder, bipolar, clinically depressed. And that's going to come in from society because we're problem people. How does your group help to sort that out for them, or do you do that? I'd just like to get your ideas on how, because there are so many people today coming in here on this. when you have a group that is cohesive. Now, the cohesion in a group comes from having a common solution. The book talks about it. You know about the shipwreck? It talks about people from all kinds of different strata in society being held together. And it says that they're not held together by a common peril, which was the shipwreck, but they're held togetherby a common solution, which is life-saving. The book also talks about depth and weight, that being a message that is clear, precise, unafraid, and understandable. okay so so first of all if the first thing you can do is you can make your home group strong and that is by carrying a consistent and precise message to other people in your group over time that has I can't tell you you can polarize a group. Absolutely polarize it. And this is the truth, and I'm done. You can go into a group that has no solution at all, one person. And as long as you sit in that group and you do two things, you talk about what the book says and you talk about what your experience is, because people can't argue with either one of them because they don't know what the hell's in the book. And they can't argue with your experience because it's your experience. So no one can take exception with what you say. If you sit in that group and you consistently, and you can't just go on a strafing mission in somebody else's group. That doesn't work. You know why? Because you don't come back. And you think you're going in there and planting seeds and all you're doing is you're planting derision. Alright? So you go into that group and then you stay there, even over their protests. And you carry a clear, precise, and quiet message. You go in there and you say, well, they'll say we're going to talk every once in a while. They'll talk about steps or whatever. And you go, well the big book says da-da-da, da-ta-da. And my experience is da-ra-ta, da ta-ta da, and then shut up and that's the end of it. And you'll sit in there for like three or four months and nobody will talk to you. And then all of a sudden somebody will come up and they'll go, I didn't do it like that. And you go, oh, I know. And they'll say, but did I do it wrong? And you'd go, I don't know, what's the book say? And they'd go what? I don' t know. And they would say, well how did you do it? You go, well, I did it like this. And then, huh? Yeah, and they'll go, can you show me how to do that? And you go, uh-huh. If you're willing to do this, then let me tell you what the deal is. And then you tell them about sponsorship and what their responsibility on both sides of that equation are. And if they agree to it, you'll start plowing the ground, okay? and you get that person through the book and they usually have friends in the group and then they will see the lights come on. There is a spiritual, visible, spiritual change in people when they do this. And I'm inclined to think that that's God sort of beaming out of them. Okay, and other people will see that. And my favorite word about this process is inexorable. It means you can't stop it. It is going to move whether you like it or not. And that whole process at that point will become inexorable because you're standing there and you are carrying a clear and precise and unafraid message and people will hear that and they will be attracted to it. Now, people in AA are... This is a word kind of odd in the respect that in Alcoholics Anonymous likes attract, okay? That means that all the BSers are going to hang out with all the B.S.ers, and all the people who really want to get well are goingto hang around with the peoplewho want toget well, okay? It just breaks out like that. You don't have a lot of middle-of-the-road stuff in AA. You've got them hanging out in either camp, okay, and if you make your group cohesive... I'll get to the thing about drugs, But first of all, before you do that, you've got to have a group that's held together by a common solution. Once that occurs, here's what happens. Your group will put peer pressure on everyone else in that group to be actively engaged in the process. it's difficult for some people to come into a group like the one I belong to and not be doing the steps because people are going to be in their face you know, you have a certain portion of your group that's evangelistic at every given time and man, they are out there picking off the cripples And so you get this cohesive group with a common solution that has peer pressure to engage in the process. Now, once that's established, people who come in who are taking those substances will watch that. And they will want to become a part of it. and I am extremely reluctant to tell people to get off of drugs. Not because I don't think it would benefit them, but because I'm not a doctor. And there are people who are medically enhanced seriously by taking drugs. people who would be unable to perform in society without them. By the same token, there are people whose drug use, from my point of view, is virtually superfluous. It's unnecessary. It's like handing someone a binky or whatever they call those things. You know, it's like letting people suck their thumb. I don't know. It just... Some people, you know, are so into being victimized and so into being unable or unwilling to stand face-to-face with life that they are constantly complaining about their emotional conditions and go to doctors and doctors are more than willing to give them things that would change that viewpoint. I have recently taken a number of people to emergency rooms. And I was telling Valerie this morning, there's a drug out there called Klonopin. Jesus, I just don't know who the hell made that one up. but I hope it benefits somebody because everyone that I've seen that took it, I had to take to the emergency room. So, you know, which is not to say that some people don't benefit from it, but the drunks I know go, they'd go off the deep end with that shit so fast that just... So what we do is we put peer pressure on people to engage in the process. And one of the things that happens, And we don't say you have to get off the drugs. We say, well, I was on Librim and Valium when I was drinking for a long time to the point where I had some serious side effects when I came off it. And I quit drinking and quit taking drugs at the same time, which was a real three-ring circus. So people will have a clear enough mind so they say, maybe I can operate without this stuff. and then they'll start challenging their physicians about whether they really have to use it or not. And one of the things is that when we turn from where's mine to what can I do for you, a lot of that silliness that goes on in our head goes away. You know, if I get up in the morning and I do my 11th step my mind immediately goes to God. And then when I'm practicing those things through the day, which are in the 11th step, my mind tries to stay in God. And then I'm not worried about myself all the time. And that's really what a lot of that stuff is about is poor me and what's going to happen next. See if you write a list of the things you're going to do during the day like all this stuff in the eleventh step. That blows all that stuff out of the water. There is an enormous psychological advantage to doing these things. You know, it's like I don't think 10% of the people in AA do the 11th step. I just don't thing they do. And the truth is that there are things in there which will keep you emotionally stable all through the day. And there are some people who would rather cry about their emotions than to do anything about it. Well, let me tell you, the other day, three weeks ago, I was seriously ill and I didn't know what to do anymore and I was trying to get out of bed in the morning basically and was having some difficulty doing it. And I was having this conversation with God about his management style. and I was highly critical. And then I said my favorite prayer, God, please remove my fear and show me what you'd have me be. And what I heard is, why don't you get off your ass and get out of bed? Really? And I thought, okay. And I went, this doctor of mine, His idea of solving problems is giving you more medication so you can cover the symptoms. I'm not offended by him. That's his job, I guess. I went to a bookstore and I bought a book on my condition. I'm an adult-onset diabetic. I got a book on my situation and within 48 hours I had stabilized the whole thing. All right? And then I was taking so much medication that it became practically lethal. And I got in there and killed myself with the medication. And then, I went to the emergency room and got the doctor over there and said, this has got to stop. I'm not doing this anymore. This is not a lifestyle that I want to continue. So, today, I'm virtually off medication. My blood sugars are normal. Blood pressure is normal. Cholesterol is normal, I'm 20 pounds down in a month. My energy level is twice what it was. And see, if I don't listen to these messages, if I Don't Listen to My Intuitive Thought, I might as well take a gun and shoot myself in the foot. If I want direction, all I've got to do is say, God, you've got give me something to work on here because I don' t know what to do anymore. And I get those kind of answers, and you can too. This is an enormous adventure. You know, if you have any curiosity about the spiritual life, you wouldn't believe the stuff that happens here. And the miracles start and then they don't ever stop. You know sometimes we have these outrageous miracles that happen to me like how about get off your butt and get out of bed. That's a miracle to me because I couldn't have got to the bookstore and I couldn't have got the book and I could not have done something that nobody else seemed to know how to do. And God is just saying, Bob, you've got to go do this but I'll take care of the problem for you. And that's what happened. Just another miracle in my life. And they don't stop and sometimes they are outrageous. I mean, sometimes they're spooky. And you would never find this out unless you go looking. So anyway, Alan, the point of that whole thing is that peer pressure in groups from my experience will drive people into the process. And once they get in the process, they will start feeling the benefits of having been in there. And as any good alcoholic will believe, if this is good, more is better. And they'll go looking to feel better and to feel more spiritual. and at some point it will occur to them that all those substances are keeping them from seeing the truth, from having clarity. Anybody else? Yes. Linda? And my first step experience has a lot to do with fatalness of purpose and I have shared this experience with other people who have had it, and it's not about being cast aside by AA at all. It's about my choices. But I came into AA because I couldn't stop drinking on my own. But I still smoked pot. So one day I decided to ask this guy, you know, so maybe you can do it with me. And he said, no, Linda, you need to go to N.A. So, you know, being a good little alcoholic, I did what I was told. And so for the next, this is an ugly time, but the next three years in untreated alcoholism, going back and forth, you know really set out to piss people off in the first place and did that. Yes. So God placed this woman in my life, and I asked her to sponsor me. And she took me through the doctor's opinion. And then I finally got clear about the fact that I did not have this craving for drugs, and that I wasn't a drug addict. Right. But I had tried to be so hard, so long, because I wanted to be part of something else. I did now want to be a part of AA. They're all old. We've talked to these people before. Thank you. I see that God led me back where I needed to be. Yes. Also, I can't be so quick to jump in and tell somebody what they are or are not before we investigate that through the process. Right. So that's just big in my heart. Did you ever hear a speaker named Janice Del Campo? I've heard of her name. That's her story. didn't know what she was. A lot of people come in here and don't know whether they're fish or fowl, okay? And there's a very, very blurred line today. And the reason why is because almost no one comes into Alcoholics Anonymous anymore just having taken, just being a drunk. My experience with that, after years and years of Librium and Valium when I was drinking was that in my mind I believed that I might be able to stop drinking, even though stopping drinking for me was horrible. It was about DTs and all kinds of silly stuff. I didn't believe I could ever get off those drugs, although I didn' t know what they did. Didn' t feel them, just believed I couldn' t operate without them. Quit it all at once. and then when I went through the process to treat my alcoholism any interest in any of that other stuff went away and so you know some people come in here and their ego is so pumped up wanting to say they're junkies or they want to stand up in front of everybody and go I'm a dope fiend and you know I sit back there and go you're full of shit But there are real junkies, and they do belong in N.A., but a lot of people who come in here are confused about what they are. And the acid test to that is to go through the process and see if it works. You know, if you're a junkie, this is based on a very good premise. And the premise is that you can't have a spiritual experience based on a lie. So I've seen people come into Alcoholics Anonymous who are cocaine addicts. And, I mean, they didn't even care about drinking. And they'd come into A because they couldn't get anything in C-A. So they'd become alcoholics anonymous. They'd come over here because they felt that we had a stronger program, but when they came in here, they'd say they were alcoholics, and then they'd wonder why it didn't work. See, that's an obvious lie. even clear to them. And a guy in Los Angeles asked me that. He said, well, but there's a lot better sobriety basically over here than there is over there. I want to stay here long enough to figure out what we're doing and take it over there or works on cocaine too. And we in my home group have step workshops for CA and for NA. and that we have junkies that come to us and say teach us the steps and then they go back to their home groups and they take that message to them and there's an awful lot of people who are walking around today that always throws me clean and sober who came to AA to find out what the message was but they came right They said, will you show us how this process works? Yes. Getting back to the singleness of purpose, one of my spasis came to me and she was very distraught. She said, what is our singleness or purpose? And she said, well, I don't know. What is a common solution? She said I go to these different meetings and I hear all sorts of things. but what really got her tail wagged up is that she came out of a meeting after it was a big book focus meeting, and three women were sitting there, and they were comparing. Why? I take value, and that makes me feel better, and I take prosackage. Oh, that's a better one. And she said, well, what do you think about that? And I said, I don't have any experience with that. But the other thing that I see, and my question is, is what I see with people that are on a lot of medication is that it takes away their desperateness. Yeah. I know that when I came in, if they would have given me any of those happy drugs, I would have been probably happy and may never have gotten sober. That's my experience. Right. But because I was so damn desperate. Right. And that was the solution, and I heard the consistent message that I went ahead and surrendered. But if I would've had any other way out, I never would've done it. And that's the only thing that I see, is that because I've taken people through the work that I'm pro with that, and they see when they do their four-step, they see what they're learning. But then it doesn't seem to change with them because that's my experience and not for, you know. I know you've had some different experiences, but you still can't tell them at the same time. but the common solution is consistent yes we have different solutions some people say would just take act as if just take the right actions you keep acting right it will happen and but then there's other people say what so you got to work the steps and so our common solution I think it's been sort of diluted and then you bring in the treatment center people on right and so And that's why, getting the common solution, that's where I agree with you. Thank you. Camille and I, in early sobriety, hung out at the same clubhouse in Denver. It's a place called York Street, which is sort of the mother house in Denver and that was a great old time. An awful lot of people that are still sober that did that. Well, it wasn't mentioned last night, but the question that I ask people when they're curious about whether they're really alcoholics or not is this. There's a description in the book that says if when you honestly want to, you find you can't quit entirely, okay? And then it says or, which means that either that or the one that follows it are sufficient by themselves, right? So if when you honestly want to, you find you can't quit entirely. Entirely means you don't start again, okay? You know, I used to quit all the time. But if you honestly wanna, you really say my life sucks and I don't want to do this anymore. I'll tell you, your life can suck without doing this. You don't have to be laying that stuff on top of it. Even when you honestly want to, you find you can't quit entirely if you can stop and stay stopped when you really want to. Or once you start, you have little control over the amount you take which means can you say this I am going to regiment my drinking I'm going to be a what do they call those not social drinkers temperate average temperate drinker I'm gonna be I'm trying to be an average tempered drinker Jesus, what a dream and what I'm going to do it's called a Marty Mann test Marty Mann was one of the first women in AA I'm going to take two drinks a day for a month no more, no less and if I can pull that off I'm not an alcoholic now I'm not sure that that's totally reliable but it's a pretty good indication about whether people are out of control. I've seen somebody pull that off every once in a while, and sometimes you wonder why they're an AA. And incidentally, do you know there's a lot of people in AA who aren't alcoholic? This is like a landing zone for nuts. You know how you can tell? They do the steps and nothing changes. And then there... I shouldn't even say this. Sometimes people will get in Al-Anon and think they're not in the big leagues and they'll jump the fence. Isn't that awful? I hate to even say that, because there are some people who come through Al-Anon who are real alcoholics, and that's how they find out. And I certainly wouldn't imply that everybody that jumps the fence is over here just to get in the big game. And that is the big gain over there for people who are living with alcoholics or who have other alcoholics around them. So there are a lot of people who show up in Alcoholics Anonymous who have no real reason to be here. And the acid test is if you drive them through the work, they're not a speck of difference. They just have been through the worked. Where were we going with all that? Yes. Don't you find those are the people that say, just don't drink and go to meetings? Yes. You've got to work the steps. Yes. You know, the steps are good, but just don'T drink and GO to meetings. And I watch them, and they just DON'T drink, and THEY go to meets. They're fine. And that's where the common solution gets diluted. Because we're over here saying, you've got TO work the Steps, you've GOT to do a service, you'VE GOT to DO this and this. And they're just saying, oh, no, no ,no. Just DON'T DRINK and GO TO MEETINGS, and it's going to be fine. Well, I was up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey speaking at a convention and a bunch of young guys came up and they said, hey we have a step group going here. We're in the book and we're doing it and we are really having fun but I got to tell you these old timers here are telling us that we don't have to do any of this. In fact, we're wrong in doing it. And he said, what do you do with that? And I said, tell them they're full of shit. Excuse me. I shouldn't. And he says, can you do that? And I say, absolutely. And he say, great. And the next thing I knew, they ran this guy up that had 30 years of sobriety. and this guy came up and he shook my hand and he was very solemn and everything and he said well I really enjoyed what you said tonight but I didn't believe that stuff about this and that and I said well that's right out of the book and he says well I don't believe it and I say well I guess that shows how much you know about this program huh and he just got mad and turned on his heel and walked away and I looked at this guy and I did just like that okay you know what if you're full of crap you're full of crab and sometimes it works real good if you tell people because they've been getting away with that manure for a long time and they think that they're protected by how long they've been in the program and i gotta tell you if you