Step 11 and Running the Show – 6th Annual Emotional Sobriety Workshop – Part 2 of 2 – Alice S.

It feels mysterious, but it's practical. We know that it works from experience. In thinking about our day, we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here, we ask God for inspiration and intuitive thoughts or a decision. Check it out. We relax and take it easy. We don't struggle. if I'm struggling that's my voice that's not God's I'm still surprised how the right answers come after I've tried this for a while I'm not going to read quite every line in here but I want to share some personal experiences actually I'm going to go down to 87 at the bottom where it says as we go through the day we pause when agitated or doubtful and ask for the right thought or action constantly remind ourselves we're no longer running the show um you know and here's where 10 and 11 are intertwined and i'll share a recent experience and was it 10 was it 11 i was watching for self-centeredness i paused when agitate it or tell the numbers fall away at this intersection you know because it becomes a working part of my mind but a few months ago and we've already established I'm a bit of a crazy cat lady and um our dear cat Becky um little black kitty who would always some of you guys have seen her because she would always sit next to me in zoom meetings um she she lived to be we're 20 years old just a just a legend this little cat and um she spent all her time with me all hertime right next to me when i'm zooming and um you know 20 she um her health started failing and it got a little harder for her to move around and one day my husband said I think it's time I think it's time that we take her to the lab and put her down and I said no she helps other alcoholics on zoom every day with her presence my husband's in New York he's like okay that might sound a little weird but that's true She, you know, she was a constant presence when I'm in a meeting or meeting with sponsees. And my husband said, you Know, the last thing I want is for her to fall and hurt herself and die painfully at home. And I'm like, I know, I get that. I get That but no. And he said, Oh, it's your call. And a week later, she fell and hurt herself. And I'm home. My husband's at work. And I called the vet. And they couldn't get us in for another six hours. It was like 10 in the morning, and they had an appointment available at 430. and I'm crying and I call my husband at work and he said you know this is what I was talking about this is what I was worried about and the words that came to mind were don't say I told you so, honey. Just don't, not now. Don't say I told you so. But I paused. And the words that came out of my mouth were, you were right, honey? And in that moment, I realized how many times have he and I had a disagreement? And I win, you know, because whatever my opinion is, is what we go with. How many times have we done that? It's my fault. We disagree on something. We're not fighting. I think we're just having a little disagreement. And then the conclusion is, we do it my way. And I think I'm respecting his opinion. How many times Have I just dismissed, dismissed him? And I was shocked when I said you were right baby because i you know i wasn't planning on saying those words that was god and of course it it diffused everything you know my husband he was like he's like honey i'm coming home he didn't say i told you you know he didn't Say I Told You So and he came right home and he and i got to um comfort her and we gave her three bowls of whipped cream And you know what? She acted like she wasn't in any pain. Her body was literally falling apart, but she acted like she was in no pain. She got to meet with some sponsees that afternoon, and she was purring, and we get down to the vet, and she was just ready. She didn't cry. She even nuzzled the vet's hand, like, let's do this. And I got to be there for my husband, too. And I realized, oh my God, there was a time that I would have just thought I'm the only one grieving. You know, it just wouldn't even have occurred to me what any other human being is experiencing in this moment. And I got to comfort him. And my husband's a big guy. He's a strong guy and he does not like to cry. It's really embarrassing. It's very uncomfortable for him. And I had to be there for him And then I realized, like, oh, my God, I have a speaking commitment at 6 o'clock. And my husband goes, you should probably do it. He knows. He's like, you Should probably just, you know, go ahead and do that speaking. I'm like, yeah, I really should. There's nothing hard or mysterious about this. All I did was pause. And look what God gives me. God gives me this opportunity to be kind and loving and thoughtful where I would have made a situation worse and felt right about it you know like oh my god on my own when I think I'm right I'm making things worse thank God for God I'm going to read another little part of the original manuscript. Check it out. Nevertheless, you will find that your thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration and guidance. You will come to rely upon it. This is not weird or silly. Most psychologists pronounce these methods sound. I kind of wish they left that line in, right? This isn't weird or silly. It's not. It's never apologized for our reliance upon God. It's really does. I'm going to the middle of 87. We ask especially for freedom from self-will. careful to make no request for ourselves only we may ask for ourselves however if others will be helped careful never to pray for our own selfish ends so i pray for myself but it's always bearing on my usefulness to others and i'm careful not to tell god what to do about other people like this person's bothering me can you please make them understand that you know oh like you know and granted there's some good places in the 12 and 12 that talks about this how you know praying for another person like oh my gosh i hope aunt mary is cured of her cancer for example okay that's a that's good act it says that's fundamentally good act however um side by side with this fundamental good act can be a certain amount of presumption and conceit within us because i'm telling god what to do as if i'm informing him you don't know this but there's someone who is sick and you need to fix it like that sounds silly but if i pray god how can i be helpful to aunt mary i'm just sticking with the hypothetical of going through in there how can i be helpful to her god save me from fear your will not mine that's a constructive prayer and i do receive guidance because i have to rely so much on step 11 as i'm working with others i get to work with a lot of people, and people are different. And we have a set of directions in this book, and we have wonderful guidance in chapter seven. And, you know, I'm a big fan of the clear-cut directions that we have in here. However, when I'm face to face with another human being there can be no script i followed this guidance but where i rely on step 11 as i'm working with each person because situations will be different the timing will be different um step 11 prevents me from playing god responsees seems like it's the easiest place to continue to play God in our lives is with sponsees and family members, you know? And everyday interactions, oh, you know, pretty good. But then, oh my God, I want this person to recover. Or I want that person to, you know, whatever, you know, fill in the blank. And that's not where my peace and happiness comes from. My peace and happiness doesn't come from me trying to change you. It has to come from the source. But it can't even be what I'm seeking, you know? Believe me, I was seeking happiness before I came into AA. Did I ever have it? No. But if I seek to comfort another, if I see to be useful, and I seek to understand and grow more, if I speak to know this power better, if i'm trying to remember but my reliance is on God that I'm not running the show as a byproduct we get pretty happy you're pretty happy joints and free just can't be what I'm seeking you know just like I couldn't get myself sober I couldn't stop drinking by trying to stop drinking the needed power wasn't there sobriety becomes a by-product hadn't step promises that I'll spread I had it backwards for so long I could never receive what I was seeking when I was trying to comfort myself and be heard and be understood and and so much energy wasted I'm trying to do that no I'm I'm going to say, you know, yeah, wasted energy. However, I'm grateful for every drink. I didn't want to drink. I'm thankful for every mistake. I'm Grateful for how painful self-centeredness has become because I wouldn't, wouldn't be here otherwise. You know, seems like the spiritual awakening, the, I don't know what word I'm looking for. But, you know, we have that line, pain is the touchstone of spiritual growth. Like, yeah, so I'm not so scared of pain anymore because it moves me. I'm going to read page 88. Whoops. Bottom of seven. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show. Was I ever running the Show? I just thought I was. i tried to you know i'm no longer trying to run the show humbly saying to ourselves many times each day but i will then much less danger of excitement fear anger worry self-pity foolish decisions would become much more efficient okay i'm stealing a line that i heard um gosh and i can't even credit her because i don't remember who it was um but i heard a speaker say once saying that you don't have time for step 11 is like saying you don' t have time to get gas so you'll just walk right this is my fuel man and when I rely upon it I can fit so much more in the day than I ever thought I could and I can also relax and take it easy I'm not arranging things I'm not seeking balance anymore I'm seeking God I don't tire so easily if I'm burning up energy as foolishly as I did when I was trying to arrange life to suit myself it works, it really does we alcoholics are undisciplined yes so we let God discipline us in the simple way we have just outlined I used to think that I still kind of like have this word association that discipline means punishment and the simpleway we have just outlined I haven't read a single thing that's punishing I'll share too you know in these passages it's talking about meditation I had this idea that meditation had to be timed, it had to be quiet, I had to envision a leaf flowing by and nothing else and those are wonderful practices but it doesn't have to be. Meditation is not defined by time or quietness as instructed in this book, in the big book but I'll share with you something that really um it'll stay with me um in early recovery i started attending an 11 step meditation meeting where the format was we read 85 through 88 and then we have a timed 20 minute silent meditation and then share and this particular group not in the best area of town and um we would often have people experiencing homelessness come into the room to get coffee or use the bathroom or just hang out or whatever and at first I would get irritated I'm trying to meditate you know and then I realized my mind would latch onto something I regret from the past or fear in the future, or I'm just trying to relax and I can't. I'm trying to meditate and this is still going. And when someone would enter the room and make a little noise, I was brought back to the present. And so I started saying thank you. And not even from a, like yes there, but for the grace of God go I. but not from a place of pity or like oh my god that could be me homeless you know not nothing like that it was just you are me we are the same we are equals thank you for helping me my judgment and assumptions can get in the way of that but I truly don't think there's a human being on the planet that that doesn't have something I can learn from and and I only learned that through God's guidance when I came in here I didn't know what they needed you for so thank you for teaching me. I hope I can continue to stay open-minded and grateful, and continue to rely on this power in these directions that are not weird or silly. It really works. I think that's enough out of me. I love you guys. Thank you so much for having me, and looking forward to hearing and chris coming up next thank you alice very inspirational i love the way you speak um i love the way that you tell on yourself without you know flagellating yourself you can tell you know your shortcomings or things that happen to you and it very that means you have you know you have been you you have arrived you you're able to handle it that's what i i uh understand um for for me in front of the teachings i have so you have a lot of sobriety good sobriety behind you even though more than me and I'm only leading you by a few months so I believe but thank you for today so much James F. is supposed to start recording stopped okay James F is supposed to introduce our next speaker um who is chat chat um excuse me i'm sorry um chris alice was right chris looking for james um um i do want to say thank you so much everyone sorry to interrupt um uh we are running nine minutes ahead or eight minutes ahead so um if we want to just take a quick pause and maybe open the chat for a second because, um, we don't want to like, uh, have anyone miss or whatever. So, um. That's okay. Yeah. James is here. If you'd like, I can go ahead and introduce him. Oh, you got him? Yeah. Okay. I was looking for him so I'm going to mute him. But, um yeah, if we could, uh. We can try and stay on schedule a little bit. Um. So I'll go ahead and introduce Chris, if you like. No, if we can hold off for about just a few minutes, because like I said, he starts at noon, and we're a little early. And sometimes early is good, but not too early. Yeah? Sounds good. Yeah. Okay. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to open up the chat for a minute here. And can you do that for me, Debbie? Because I'm trying to talk and walk, and that's not working. Thank you. All right. So Debbie's going to open the chat so you can show some of the speakers some love. You're also welcome to send them direct messages. My name is Carrie. I am a recovered ED, as Alice stated. Alcoholic, not cured, just relieved of the obsession. through the work um you know i i am just so happy the god has just not let us down never does doesn't take us this far to drop us i i have to be reminded by that constantly by my sponsor carrie didn't take it this far and she's like oh my god i'm so sorry i'm sorry i didn't drop you um and you know everything comes together i i want to say alice has been sitting in the sunlight of the spirit like literally like it's so cool that she did a step 11 talk and she's just like this beam of sun sitting down on her i don't know if y'all or maybe it's light whatever we'll take artificial sunlight um so um and i want to thank again everyone who's come together katie you want to jump in and say a word or two during the i don'T want to you know we are co-hosts, so I don't want to you need me to I don' t know why you can't unmute Yeah I don''t either because I get stuck if I go into participants I get stuck in that screen Yes, I did want to thank everybody, all of our speakers, especially Alice great to see you again and Alice with an incredible share very inspirational for me and I know at least that we there was uh over 250 people here not to i mean if you're going to get nervous you're not nervous now um and i don't mean to put that off on chris but i am grateful that we have been able to contact so many people um and they've been ableto come out and and listen to all of the speakers today. Yesterday we even popped over 300 and I didn't get the exact number but I think it was over 325 We got up to 350 Oh, 350. I knew we were getting close up there Yeah, so that was awesome So I just wanted to say thank you for the opportunity for me to participate in this conference so let's see how we doing on time oh we can it's a 11 56 57 yeah maybe one more minute will do or two if anybody has anything they want to share like if If you'll raise your hand, we could take maybe one or two short. Erin? Oh, how about, yeah, that's a good idea. Thanks, Debbie. Does anybody have any anniversaries this month that they would like to share in June? Erin? Oh, Erin? Yeah, thank you. Thanks, everyone, for being here. My name is Erin. I'm an alcoholic. It's good to see you, Alice. It took me a long time to understand that I couldn't stay stopped on my self-sufficiency and self-reliance. And I've been listening to you continue to share that message. And I'm finally being willing to work with a sponsor and accept spiritual help. But it wasn't, it was your message that kept, like, I can't stay stopped. And I heard you loud and clear, and I had to hear it a lot. you know as I was bottoming out so thank you and I'm glad I saw the name on the flyer and I was like I need to be available and thank you for being available have a good day everyone yay thank you Erin we got time for one more anybody I can't see who's raising their hand this is a phone number 1201 424-6912 thank you thank you so much to everyone for this amazing workshop I'm Sadia, I'm a Grateful Recovered Alcoholic and June 7th was 30 years thank you both so much for my sobriety and thank you for blessing me with this workshop it's off the charts, love it thank you yay, congratulations thank you wow And I just want to say, again, if you have any questions or want to hear the recordings or anything, you can get all the information in one place at emotionalsobrietygainesville.wordpress.com. And that's the dot, not the word dot. Just making sure. All right. Anyhow, I'm going to turn it over. I'm sorry, Claudia, we can grab you maybe in between the next one. And I think James is ready. Katie, yeah? Good? Yes. Excellent. Thank you, Katie. Oh, where are we at? Okay. I think I made him co-host here somewhere. I'm here. I rejoined on my computer. Sorry. All right. Are we all set? Yes, sir. All right. Good afternoon. My name is James F. Excuse me, James. I forget to click record. One second. Recording in progress. I'm sorry. You had to hear me twice and now it's recorded. Good afternoon! My name ist James F., I'm an alcoholic and my sobriety date is 9-22-23. My home group is the New Freedom Group in Gainesville, Florida and I love it and I owe my life to it. We meet every day at 1215 to 115 at the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Gainesville, Florida. I have the privilege of introducing Chris S., and let's give a round of warm introduction, I guess, for Chris S. right hello everybody my name is Chris I'm an alcoholic and it's a pleasure to be with all of you today I am asked to speak on step 12 there's been an enormous amount of wonderful information and great speakers that have talked about the recovery program of steps 1 through 11. And I think what happens when someone is painstaking about the process of step 1 through eleven, there's an organic shift within you that it drives you to be helpful especially with other alcoholics that's that's been you know my personal my personal experience so so alcoholism it's a really unorthodox illness and I believe like like Chris R was speaking about in the beginning that it's genetic, I totally believe that as well. I think many of us try to figure every way in the world to blame our alcoholism on something besides genetics and you know, it may even be helpful to do so, I don't know but I certainly got hit with the genetic bullet, you can take an Excel graph and the day I started drinking when I was 13 years old, you could just draw a solid line down from 13 to 33 and that line could represent personal relationships it could it could really it could represent you know ability to uh to be a good boyfriend or a good husband the ability to be a good employee the ability of being a good neighbor all my all my emotional suffering you know everything is just on a downward trajectory since the day i i picked up uh a drink it just got worse it was it was never really high to begin with but but i mean it all it all went south and yet yet i held on to alcohol longer than i held on to a family longer than I held on two driver's licenses longer than a health fund two jobs You know what I mean? I held on to that alcohol. I became loyal to this thing called alcohol. And that makes it very unorthodox if you're talking about a disease or an illness because everyone from the outside is looking at you. How can you be so weak, stupid, and irresponsible? You know, you know what i mean? Like didn't you just get a DUI last month? what are you doing driving around drunk again, you know? And the loyalty to alcohol is such that you don't even get a question like that. You don't Even process a question Like that, you Know, so that's my experience The last couple of years of my drinking I would need to be detoxed if I separated from alcohol I was in end-stage alcoholism. I would suffer the delirium tremens if abruptly separated from alcohol. And yet, and yet, I had this obsession in my mind that there's no way I can cope with this world. This world is coming at me. There's no way I can cope with this world without having the anesthesia of intoxication. And just utter insanity, utter insanity. So we all have separation experiences. We all, you know, you can call them whatever you want. You know, surrenders, moments of clarity. You can call it whatever you like. But we all had these separation experiences And if we're lucky, within that separation experience will come a realization that abstinence from alcohol is going to become necessary. And you're going to have to do some things that you're not going to want to do. You may not even think they're going work. You may even think their stupid, but you become desperate enough to take those actions. And that's really what my first step looked like. I showed up in Alcoholics Anonymous. I came to believe that by going to Alcoholics Anonymous consistently, I could stay separated from alcohol. That was my rudimentary caveman-esque step two. And I made a decision to go to a meeting every night. That was my initial step three, and I did those things. And I'm going to meetings, and now I'm sober, right? Now, I believe that when you separate me from alcohol, what happens is you create a condition of toxic self-consciousness within me. And what that looks like is massive resentments, massive self-centered fear, all kinds of guilt, shame and remorse and self-pity and just feeling incredibly uncomfortable with myself and my environment. And that's how alcoholism presents when you separate me from alcohol. And I'm going to meetings and I am not a happy camper in these meetings. I don't like any of you, you know what I mean? I think this is a new level of lame that I can't remember ever experiencing in my life, sitting in these meetings. And what it was was, this is like the late 80s in northern New Jersey, and I had made the unforced error to go to just a bunch of discussion meetings. I don' t know anything about Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, I don't know anything. I'm not familiar with any literature. I see some stuff up on the wall. But my experience is going to meetings and listening and listening to people talk. And I'm going to these discussion meetings. And the crazy stuff that's going on in these discussion meetings, it's very hard to convince me someone talking about not being able to start their lawnmower is going to be of any help at all with my alcoholism. I just don't get it, but I'm desperate enough to do it. I have no other options, right? I have nothing else. So I'm going to all these discussion meetings, and I get myself a sponsor, and uh and back then the what a sponsor really was was someone who would uh assess your consistency at aa meetings and give you a phone number and if and if the world starts to blow up you know give me a call i mean i mean that's what a good sponsor was doing in 1989 and 1990 in my area you know we're talking we're Talking specifically about a 12-step process and we're talking about the spiritual mechanics of actually taking these steps, you know, none of that was going on when I got sober. It was meeting-based, abstinence-based sobriety and that's okay unless you're in real trouble with alcoholism and you've got that toxic experience of self-consciousness washing over you making you cranky you know what i mean like i am cranky and uh and you know what happened with me was was uh i got somebody handed me a set of 90 minute tapes and it was an early an early workshop an early 12 12 step big book based workshop and i listened to that and and it shifted my consciousness not in a good way at first, not in a good way. At first I listened to these workshop tapes and I'm like, if, if the guys are writing on these tapes, then everybody in every meeting I go to, including my sponsor is wrong because, because, because what they're trying to do is they're tried to do a group therapy experience. And what the people on these tapes are talking about is, is is an action-based spiritual conversion process. And so, you know, I saw the duality in both of those things. And it upset me. However, the information on these tapes haunted me. Haunted me because there was truth in them. There was truth to them. They spoke about inventorying my resentments. They talked about looking at my anxiety and my self-centered fear. They talked abut all these specific spiritual exercises that were going to lead to a freedom from this toxic experience of self-consciousness. consciousness. And that was an attractive message to me because, you know, I just felt horrible all the time. I mean, what it looked like to me was I was always caught up in the past, all right? And what that would look like is this. You know, my head would be thinking at me you know and it'd be like oh i can't believe you know a couple weeks ago stupidest thing where my boss you know i can i can but she left me you don't i can believe she left you know and i'm living in this town i got no money all the stuff and i just i never got to break you you know that is that is the toxic experience of living in the past a toxic experience of living in the future would look like this oh man you know i'm not i gotta go to work tomorrow and i'm gonna go to work it's gonna be 10 again i screwed up today really bad so you know what's he's gonna yell at me if he yells at me in front of my crew you know i'm going to have to hit him and you know if i hit him you know he's going to fire me and then i'll end up with no job i won't have anybody these are the rabbit trails that my mind is suffering me from and i'm sober six months nine months you know you know and i i'm experiencing this stuff so so so that's what i'm up against you know when i first came in i thought i was up against the bottle you know into it listen to a degree i am but it's a much larger problem than that. It's a much larger problem than that. All the speakers that spoke talked about steps one through 11, which bring about a spiritual awakening. Bill Wilson is using 1939 language and he's doing the absolute best job he can. The book Alcoholics Anonymous is by far the best piece of literature that exists if you're an alcoholic who wants to understand what's going on and wants to, wants to understanding what the solution for it is. You know, it's absolutely the best document in the world, but he calls it a spiritual awakening. He, he called, you know, he describes it like having a new attitude and a new outlook on life. You don't get being up, being able to be alone at perfect peace and ease that there's, there's There's all these references to the unraveling of my thoughts that really is my real problem, just being sober. I need my thoughts to be untangled. And this process of the first 11 steps is really what does that. Now, I've had an awakened spirit. What is an awakened Spirit? The best way I can describe it from personal experience, you know, everybody is different. Alcoholics and cannabis has millions of different people who've had different experiences. But what the experience is with me is I see things as they really are now. I didn't before. Before I went through the first 11 steps, I did not see the world with a healthy perspective. my problems were always coming at me people were always doing me wrong and i was convinced of a lot of things that were absolutely not true and and not a healthy way to view anything but it's just going to cause me great unhappiness to remain in this this fog of untreated alcoholism so So what's happened for me is I believe I see things clearly today. I put things in proper perspective. And being at that place, I understand that there's more than one of us here. You know what I mean? Like there are other people that are suffering and the shift into a service ethic happens, you know, with these first 11 steps. And certainly with the consistency of applying these spiritual practices as best one can, you Know, in their lives. So my job here is to talk about Step 12. I wanted to set the stage with a little personal context before I did that, but I can tell you that from about nine months sober until currently, which I'm 34 years sober now, I have continually sponsored a lot of people, right? I mean, over the years, it's like a constant movement of people through my lives. Some of them stick. Like the very first guy I ever sponsored, I still sponsor almost 34 years later. But it's been basically a movement of God-driven movement of people through life with this sponsorship. Now, I'll tell you how I sponsored in the beginning. I did what my sponsor did. I gave them a phone number. I said, these are the meetings I'd like to see you at. And we can talk at the meetings and you can call me anytime. And what was happening was a lot of those people were drinking on me. You ever have somebody drink on you and make you look bad? It wasn't their fault a lot of times that they were drinking. It was my fault. I wasn't offering them a sufficient recovery answer for them to be able to stay sober. I was just telling them to go to meetings. So somewhere around year two, year three, after I'd gone through the steps, I started to do things a little differently. I started To bring the people who asked me to sponsor them over to my house. And we would open the big book and we would start on the title page. And we Would go through page by page. And whenever there was an instruction, you know, I made it very, very clear that that was a marching order. This is an instruction. This is what you're going to do. And what happened was I would say 40% of the people who asked me to sponsor them would make it up to step nine or further. A lot of people would come to the conclusion that they've overreacted asking Chris to sponsor themselves. You know, because Billy over here, all he wants me to do is be the cookie guy. You know? I'm going to go with the cookie guide. Chris wants meto do all this homework, you know? But the people that stuck with me, I know where every one of them is to this day. Thirty-some years later, Iknow where they all are, okay? They made it through the steps. I believe to be able to stay in Alcoholics Anonymous, if you're an alcoholic, I believe if youre going to stayin AlcoholicsAnonymous, you need to do enough work. You need to do enough work to want to stay, to organically know that you need to stay. There needs to be enough step work done. So I started taking people through the steps that way, and that's really worked out well for me. Now I want to use the book a little bit. Everybody here has used prodigious amounts of material from the book. Again, I want to put this in context. This book was written in 1939. There were two groups of Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, two groups of drunks. It wasn't even Alcoholics Anonymous yet. You know, really the birth of Alcoholic Anonymous was when the book was published and groups started to call themselves after the book. But there was the Akron and the New York groups who were staying sober. It was very early on when this book waswritten. It's remarkable that it's so So it's as good as it is, being that there was maybe 60 or 80 of them, you know, bopping around causing trouble when this thing was written. But anyway, this chapter, the chapter working with others, is very specific about what we're supposed to do. And my first understanding of this chapter was, wow, that's kind of how they had to do it back in the old days. Whoa, you Know? Well, today we've got beginner meetings. I mean, that's really what I thought. And slowly over the course of time, I started to pay more and more attention to this chapter and I started using it more and more on 12-step calls with families. You know, when someone asks me to sponsor them, I really started to use the principles and the instructions that are in this chapter. And I'll tell you what my experience with that has been. I've got great results from following the instructions in this chapter, really good results. Like maybe my first 10 years, my first thought would be, you know, somebody asks me for help. I can't stop drinking. I can't stop drinking. Okay, you know, I'm going to pick you up. I'm gonna take you to a meeting. I mean, you Know, that's, that was my first initial response. It was very hard to break that response and pay attention to this chapter. It really was because meetings are so much today. There's so much of our experience and I love meetings. I've gone to almost 30,000 AA meetings. You know, one day I did the math, okay? I love Alcoholics Anonymous, but it doesn't say take them to a meeting in this chapter. There's different instructions. There's differing instructions in this chat. And when I started to pay attention to them, I started getting really, really good results. Let's look at some of them, okay. So it says here, I'm looking at page 90. When you discover a prospect for alcoholics and economists, find out all you can about him. If he does not want to stop drinking, don't waste time trying to persuade him. You may spoil a later opportunity. Go down a little. Sometimes it's wise to wait until he goes on a binge. so here's the thing it's talking about timing, it's telling about our communication and our timing with that communication my last drunk was horrific okay I came out of a multi-day blackout finding out I had done horrific things and going into horrible detox it was just absolutely awful.