Step 11 and Service – 12 Steps and Service Workshop – Part 5 of 6 – Don P. and Jerry E – Don Pritts and Jerry E

At 11, I really thought of it as a go-stair-at-your-navel step, where you go off and find some secluded place and think great thoughts and all of that. And certainly there's a place for that. There's truly a place for feeding the soul, for just quietly finding a place. I'm a guy that loves water and I don't like to get in it all that much, but I just like to be around it. And there's nothing to me more restful or soothing than to get around moving water. I just love kind of getting rapids and stuff like that and waterfalls. And I wanted a pond for a number of years and thought about building it, but I'm not smart enough. And so I finally wound up getting somebody that I wanted it, but I didn't want to take that money. and so I gave it to my wife for her 33rd wedding anniversary and I thought I was being real slick I'd been talking to her for 10 years about how much I wanted that thing and I said, it's yours she's starting to like it a little bit but that was something I really wanted and so my morning deal now where I do a lot of the meditation and stuff like that I sit out by that pond the beast and I sit up there have my coffee and read the paper and stufflike that so I like that you know there's a great place for just sort of getting spiritually prepared to do stuff but when I look at 11 I find it now to be one of the most powerful action steps in the program. If I'm really wanting to let this program become the guide for my way of life, because what it says is that there are a couple of components to that. One certainly is to sit by the pond and think heavy thoughts and to get spiritually connected and to improve that relationship. Very, very important. But for what purpose? and right in the middle of that step it says praying only for knowledge of his will when I'm seeking through prayer meditation, praying only for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out. And therein lies my purpose now I don't think it comes in just one failed swoop of saying okay you're supposed to go do a workshop in Virginia I don'T think it happens like that but it does open me up to being willing to serve. And so that step to me becomes a powerful thing where I am now willing, now that I'm able, now thatI've gotten rid of the baggage, now thati've gotten open to be of service, I think this is where it starts to formulate a plan of action and that I am responsive to the things that come along. I want to know the knowledge of God's will for me and the power to carry that out. And my God, does it ever happen? Does it ever happened? The minute I become willing. And from the time that I became willing, it's been a long, long time since I've had an empty agenda. I mean a long long time. I've been doing stuff like we're doing here. I don't mean workshop, but stuff here for 40 years. For 40 years I've been doing it. And first, somebody reminded me yesterday, the first conference I ever spoke at was the Virginia State Convention in 62 at Equality Inn on Highway 64. Not that I remember what it counted, but in 1962 at Norfolk. And from that time to this, I've done a lot of this kind of thing and a lot of stuff in AAB on it. I've made it a practice, and Don said it this morning, that I never say no, Never say no to a genuine request for service. The way I look at it, these steps help me to get a new manager in my life. And if I'm going to be the guy who's the resident critic of what the directions are that come, what the opportunities to come, if I're going to pick and choose on the basis of what I think fits me best, I'm contradicting the whole process. So I've made it a practice of never saying no. And it's a phenomenal thing in a way, this stuff of getting on airplanes and doing things. In 40 years, I have never had to miss one single commitment, except one, except one. And I'm not mystical about stuff, but I was out in Tennessee, and I was doing a little traditions thing at an assembly and in the course of it something brought it up and I mentioned that I had never missed a commitment and never had to because of illness, weather broke planes or anything it's always worked out and I said gee I'd love not to have said that because I bet I'll have to miss the next one well next week I'm supposed to go to Florida and we had two feet of snow in North Carolina But we don't get two feet of snow in North Carolina. And when we do, we sure don't know what to do with it. There was absolutely nothing moving in North Carolina. I could get out of my driveway for three hours. It really was an important lesson for me in that thing. I was on the phone with the guy that was my contact in Florida. It was about like the death watch waiting on a call from the governor. And I'm calling down there and saying, I'm trying Amtrak. And then Lillian called back, didn't work. We're going to try this. Well, I tried everything and nothing was there. Finally accepted the fact that I wasn't going. So I called him up like I'm delivering the fact. I'm sorry, man. We're gonna have to unplug the life support. And I said, I don't know what to do with it. I'm just not going to be able to do it. There's nothing smoking getting out of here. And he said, oh, what the hell? I thought that was absolutely perfect. It was absolutely appropriate. It was totally appropriate that I was highly concerned about that. It was even more appropriate that it didn't make that much difference. It didn't made much difference to them. In fact, he told me later they already had another speaker lined up. They knew I wasn't coming. But they let me go through all of that stuff to do what I was doing. So that to me is the way I like to look at how I want to be available to carry out God's plans for me so that when I find out what's God's will, I don't get in the way of it. I mentioned yesterday about paying attention to hunches. And when I get a hunch about something, I have to take it pretty seriously because it normally has some real weight to it. And so being available to service, being available for God's plan, my belief is this. It's just mine. It doesn't make it right. But my belief isthat for every one of us who goes through this program of recovery, whether we're AA, Al-Anon, Alateen, whoever, if we work these steps and they become a way of life, I believe an avenue of service will open up. And it may be many things, many things. But it will open up. And I personally believe that without any question the quality of my recovery will hinge on how I respond to that. If I'm able to just take a look at the avenues of service that open up and walk away, I'm the loser. I'm a loser. and when I do that and walk away I'm diminished in the process if I can take a look at a need that needs to be addressed and I'm capable of addressing it and I walk away I lose I lose and so it's critical for me in terms of becoming a real functioning well rewarded member of the world and member of AA that when those opportunities come, that I do them. I think everybody in the world has a story that somebody needs to hear. You've got a story that somebody need to hear They don't need to here mine. They need to your yours. And when I selfishly withhold that, I lose big time. And so a real action step of finding a way to serve, of being open for those kinds of experiences that bring me out of myself. Get you into some deep water. I tell you this, that even though that has been my track record, I have never yet taken on an activity that I felt perfectly comfortable to do. Never have. now even though I bet you I've talked 10,000 times in AA I have never done it without a certain level of tension and anxiety you know it's not like the first time I did it when I blacked out I mean I've lived blacked back the first time I ever spoke and but it's always there and I personally think it always should I sort of got it in the back of my mind If I ever get to the point that I can just comfortably get up in front of a group and talk with no neurons firing, I think I'm going to sit back down because that means that it's moved to my head instead of my heart. And there's something intimate and personal about what we do in AA or else it loses its meaning. And so I think that's really appropriate. It was also appropriate that when I responded to those things, recognize that I had to step through the fear. But recognize the value of stepping through the field. If I live within my comfort zone, I'll never go anywhere. And so really important for me to be in the spiritual condition that I'm ready and willing to serve and I'll become able. Awfully important for me. And in the 12th, we're talking about the stuff of really making this a way of life. Where having done these things, there's 200 words in the steps. And having done what's laid out there, what it says to me is that I'm going to have a spiritual awakening. I'll have an awakened spirit. I'll have a different way of looking at things. This mind of this chronic alcoholic will be geared a different way. And that, to me, is a real promise that's embodied in what we do. And then having had that happen, we do a couple of things. One is we try to carry this message to other alcoholics by whatever method that we possibly can, no matter what it is. It's like what we're doing here today. I've been watching the stuff that's going on. Don and I have done the visible part of it. But the stuff that's behind this, what a powerful service that is. Now I watched how those things appeared on that table back there. I watched How They Happened Yesterday. Tremendous service involved in that thing. Somebody got to this hall. I watched people straightening up these chairs. All of those are really valuable services that help make something happen. So opportunities to serve, opportunities to carry a message go far beyond just what I can personally do. And so I think it opens up and so our task as laid out in there is to try to carry this message by any method that we can and then practice the principles in our affairs. That's the kind of thing I was talking about in 10. it sounds easy except I'm going to oh here it is I thought I lost my coffee it sounds kind of cliche like to say that practice these principal affairs and I don't want to skim by that too lightly and I'll just touch on this thing and then maybe come back to it a little bit when we get into this other part I think it's awfully awfully important for these principles to be engaged in this process to keep from self-destructing. We can self- destruct in this program if the principles aren't solidly in place. And there's an important thing that I think was important for me is to understand the difference between real purposeful action in Alcoholics Anonymous and activity. Big difference in that. You know, purposeful action as opposed to activity. When I was first in the program, and I didn't even know what purposeful action meant, I was a guy who was fantastically active. And I don't second guess that one bit today because it served its purpose. It protected me from myself. It kept me too busy to get in trouble. It kept me getting out of myself and getting acquainted with other people and learning about the program. I don't question it. I know that I was hid in that activity for a while, and it helped me get the muscles to start engaging in life. So nothing wrong with that. But if I see a guy with a good number of years of sobriety who's still frantically making seven meetings a week, I'd be about as concerned about that person as it was somebody making one meeting a week because there's something really out of whack with that the learning the difference between activity and action is tremendously important Don talked about a thing about how we get trust in the people that we enter or we're really closely related to think about this a minute we say sometimes, I used to say it but I don't say it now that AA has to come first it has to come before everything else I don't say that anymore because I don' t believe that anymore because when I try to operate under that banner I set up some real red flag conditions in the life of me and the people who are close to me if I say to my wife if she doesn' t understand the difference between and what I'm committed to, and what I'm just doing. I've got a lot of trouble. If I say to my wife that, well, Wednesday I'm going to run over here and I'm gonna do this, and she's got some trouble with that, and I say, well, you know, AA's gotta come first. Well, there'll be a fight at my house. I don't know about you, but there'll be a fight. Because there are other things that are important. What But what I have to do that's critically important for me, and I am an extremely active member of A.A., and it's doubly important for an extremely actively member, and know some of you are. My family fully understands, everybody who knows me understands that I have some commitments that are not negotiable, they're not negotiables. home group is a commitment that's not negotiable and if I'm not there it's because I've got some I either cannot get there or I've got some service that I'm doing that I think is worth making the move to do but otherwise it's an absolute commitment and like Don was saying if you want to find Tom Ivester you go to Moore County you say where is that boy if it's Monday they'll tell you to go over to the Baptist Church in Southern Pine. You'll find them. If it's Thursday, they'll say, They'll tell me the same thing. Now that's important in terms of being trustworthy. If my family understands that that's a commitment and there's absolutely no conflict, that's who I am. And you can trust me that that is exactly what I do. And so the other day my son came to town and it was a very unique experience. He wanted to take us to dinner. And he's been a struggling medical student for a lot of years, and he's now self-supporting as a young physician out in Tennessee. And he could finally afford to take uns to dinner." And so he said, "'Dad, I want to take you guys to dinner.'" I said, "'That's great.'" And the only thing is that he caught a little look in my eye. And he caught himself. I didn't have to say a word. He said, oh, wait a minute, this is me tonight. He said, we'll do it a different time. No problem. But suppose I'd have said to my young visiting physician, I'm sorry son, I've got something to do at 8 o'clock tonight and that's more important to you because that's got to come first. You know what I'm talking about? Just the simple thing of letting people know who I am and what my commitments are, not what my values are about them as opposed to this. So when I say to somebody, hey, you've got to cum first, That's an insult to somebody. And it's a contradiction of practice and principles. There are also principles involved in a marriage. There are principles involved in a parental relationship, in a work relationship. Sometimes we get into a box of trying to compartmentalize our lives. People talk about balance and they'll use some sort of graphic demonstration of so much time for work and so much time for play and so much time for AA. And it's not real bad thinking, it just sort of misses a very important point is that if I'm doing it right, if I am practicing these principles as a way of life AA does not compete with anything in my life does not complete with anything in my life. If it does I'm not doing it right. If it doesn't make me a better employee where I work, I'm going to be a better person. I'm just not doing what I want to do. I'm doing what's right. If it does make me a better parent, a better husband, a better employer, I'm done with my life. Because this is a way of life. It's not an activity. It's something that I go do and get what I need and then get on with my own life. it undergirds and makes happen everything in my life. And so that's what's so important to me about having real commitments about what I do in this program and then having commitments to other things as well so that I can have a well-balanced life. And so if I do it that way, I'm not running into opposition and roadblocks and creating friction in things. I can resolve that on the basis of the principle. And so, I go into that a little bit because it lends to stuff that when you start thinking beyond your level of what I call the circle of your personal magic, when you started thinking beyond that, You've got to get into broader issues than just how I do my sobriety and how I do my home group. And then when we start thinking in those terms, it starts looking at some expanded kinds of activities, expanded kind of thinking. And awfully important to me to be well-grounded and to understand that difference about committed actions as opposed to just frantic activity. when I look at what I want to get done as an A.A. member I guess if I had to identify a mission and you probably got your own if I wanted to identify a mission of what is it that I really want to contribute to Alcoholics Anonymous in gratitude for what's been given me It would be something very much like this. I want to do everything that I possibly can, contribute everything that i can to ensuring that the next man, woman, boy or girl who comes through that door gets as good as was given to me. I don't think I can do any less than that. And that's what I want it to do. Now that's a tall order. Certainly what I do in the circle of my own personal magic is a vital part of that. Certainly there's a contribution to be made. Like, I welcome people to Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't care where I am. I guarantee you I do it at my home groups. If somebody gets out of my home group without me arm-wrestling with them, you can bet that they hit, because I'm going to get that turkey if he walks in there. Home group members, everybody. I'm going to make sure that everybody who walks in there knows they're welcome or they're going to know that they've been harassed, one way or the other. That is their choice. So I can do that. I can doing that and that has its value. One of the minimum values that it has is that it makes every meeting I attend a warm and welcoming place because it starts with me. And so I'm not somebody who hides in corners and this kind of stuff. I'm somebody who gets right out into the mainstream of the action. And so, I can do that. But that's limited, isn't it? That's limited. That's just one little thing. It's valuable. Like, I went in to speak at a little meeting down below where I live. And I just did my usual thing. You know, I'd just walk around shaking hands with folks and all that stuff. and I met some lady I didn't know. And she came over afterward, and she said, can I ask you a personal question? I said, sure. What? She said, what do you sell? I said nothing. Well, I said wait a minute. You have to... I said I sell recovery, and I got one hell of a deal on that. And that's true. That's true So because if I want to be somebody who contributes to the attraction of Alcoholics Anonymous, I can do that. I can doing that and it'll have some value. So that's one of the things I could do, but that's the limited thing. And so if I won't AlcoholicsAnonymous to be a place where somebody can count on getting as good as I was given, that's 1 little contribution, but it's tiny. So what do I do beyond that? I'm somebody who believes that a home group is a vital, not only a vital but the most vital single ingredient in alcoholic synonymous. We call it the basic building block. And I believe that it absolutely starts with a home groups. See, my circle of personal magic is going to have influence, but limited influence. And when I meet with somebody, whether I'm doing it individually or whatever, I can do my thing, but if I don't have a group that delivers on what I promise, I've sold them a bill of goods. And I have to recognize that my personal magic is only going to go so far. And so I've got to have a group that I can trust to deliver the goods. And so when I take them in there, I want that group to be a place where alcoholics have a good chance to get well, a good change of mind, a good sense to know that they're in the right place. And so i have to think bigger than just me and my magic. I've got to think about my dependence on a group to get what I need and to be sure that folk get what they need. And I'll tell you what's important. Well, I don't need to tell you. You know what's interesting about that. I had a 12-step call one day, and I messed with the fellow all day long, and he was actually agreeing with some stuff. And I got him to a meeting. and I wanted to take them to a newcomer meeting for obvious reasons. And I remembered a group that had a newcomers meeting and I went over and they had a huge group and they announced how they were going to break up and the newcomer meet was going to stay where we had convened and then others were going to scatter out to other meetings. Well, I bet 85 people stayed in a newcoming. I said, my God, they've had an epidemic up here. Everybody's drunk. Well, and all it was was just people hanging out, you know. In an ill-defined newcomer meeting, you'll get a lot of mixed baggage. You get some newcomers, and there were a couple in there, I think. You get a whole bunch of newcomers. And you get a load of people that want to hide somewhere to keep from doing anything. And you got some that wantto beat up newcomers if they get an opportunity. and so here we sat 85 people I got a brand new drunk sitting with me and they start some almost sounded like a who's got a problem meeting and we were just going into some mundane kind of conversation and I'm sitting there talk about throwing up let's talk about something that made sense to a newcomer and I mean it wasn't nothing happening nothing happened and this guy was more brain dead than I was and normally I'm not somebody that just likes to speak up in a meeting. I just don't like that. I learned not to volunteer very much, and so I just don't Like It A Bit. But that time I did. I figured if I wanted him to hear it, I better say it. He'd been listening to me all day. I wanted somebody else to say it to me. So he sucked my hand up, and I started talking newcomer stuff. And an amazing thing happened. I just said a few words, and you could see people turn around looking like, where'd this guy come from? And started listening because I was not the only guy in there that was totally frustrated by a newcomer meeting that wasn't a newcoming meeting. And such a simple little action can make a difference. Now it's not going to make a permanent difference, but it made a difference in that meeting. From that point forward, I didn't chew anybody out and say y'all are misrepresenting. I just started demonstrating what ought to happen in a newcomer meeting. And then people jumped right in. The meeting never went back to what it had been before. Now, that's not a major solution, but at least it's an action. And the point is that if I want my group to be effective, I've got to be careful that it's a group that has the capacity to be effected. If it's a newcomer meeting, it needs to be a newcomor meeting that actually does newcomer stuff so that when somebody comes in I can count on that resource being delivered effectively as we're capable of doing. And that's part of that thing about thinking beyond just my own limitations, my own personal circle of my own personality, but starting to think about how the group becomes a huge resource I want to be sure that when somebody comes into my group, they know it's a meeting of alcoholics and honors. I don't want them to have to guess what we're meeting about. I want them To Know. Now, that sounds like a throwaway, but I'll guarantee you I've walked into many meetings in this country that would have defied Bill Wilson to interpret it as a meeting about alcoholics. You couldn't tell what it was. well I can handle that but suppose I'm a brand new person that's trying to see if there's any hope for me at the last stop on the bus line and I walk into a meeting that's so ill defined that you can't tell what it is and that's a very real issue in this country a very real issue and so part of what I can do is try to be sure that my place talks Alcoholics Anonymous. That it's not Myriad Problems Anonymous, it's AlcoholicsAnonymous. That's what it's about. And recognize that we've got a clear purpose to be served here. One of the things that we deal with enormously now and have for a number of years is this thing about, I guess it all sort of came from the time when we started doing wholesale treatment of folks. And we started getting just various people sort of shifted into Alcoholics Anonymous. The thing of dual addiction or just addiction is an enormous problem around this country. And when I get off an airplane in most any city that I go, there are two problems that are paramount when I start asking how things are. One is the thing of dual addiction, that we just don't have real alcoholics anymore. We've got hybrid types and we've got such an influx of addicts that we просто don't know how to deal with them. It's a huge, huge problem around the country. there are places where it's no longer an issue. Folks have just given up. Just given up and let it become whatever it is. I would suggest to you that that is a tremendously piece of bad news. Tremendously piece of, piece of tremendously bad news when we start giving up any pretense of being what we say we are. Some people are tired of fighting. They've just given up. I had a good friend, he died a while back, an old-timer. He was just almost the heart and soul of the group in Norfolk, the central group in Northam. And I was talking with him one day and he said that he was no longer in the central groups. And I said, why? My God, man, you've been there since day one. Why? and he said, it got so bad I couldn't stand it. And he did that white flight thing, you know, like he ran out of the city and hid in the suburbs. Now, I can understand that. I can understanding getting frustrated with the fight. But that's what happens when we start to give up the battle. So what happens to folks who go into central groups? Now, that kind of issue is the kind of thing where I think it's awfully important for those of us who want to serve effectively to recognize some responsibility in how we deal with this and how do we do it. And so in my home group, I can be sure that we do as much as I'm capable of doing to see that we have a genuine meeting of alcoholics and non-alcoholics so that when the person walks in who's alcoholic, he can have that sense of trust that he's in a place where folk understand and not walk in and have to guess at what the agenda is. That's like a minor thing. I'll tell you a thing that happened and some of us were chatting about it a little bit last night. A group I was in, in fact, I think it was one different group, Don was talking about it. And there was one night, and a guy came to me after the meeting and said, Tom, we need a group inventory. I mean, that's an unusual kind of thing for somebody to say. I said, why? He said, you've got too many addicts in you. And I said what are you talking about? So he told me it, and what it turned out. I said let me take a look, see if I see the same thing you do. And so I took a look at what it was. There was an adolescent treatment center there in town that had a bunch of youngsters. And they were herding them up and bringing them over to the group. And people at that point didn't have a clue what they were. They just knew that they were kids in trouble. That's all they knew. And they knew the catchphrases that they'd heard. They didn't know if they were alcoholics, addicts, or outer space marshals. So they come in, and the problems that happened were mostly created by us. In order to try to make them feel welcome, we would have them get up and read something. Well, that's a little bit of a contradiction when you've got a 16-year-old drug addict doing the presentation, it looks like, at an AA meeting. And that's what it was. So we had a little steering committee meeting and said, let's see what we can do about this. Talked about it, and they decided that somebody ought to go over to the facility and talk to people about the problems. They asked me if I'd do it, and I said, yep, be glad to. So I went over and met with the director of the facility. And a nice lady, nice lady. She'd never heard of a closed meeting. She just knew it was a place that sent people with problems. And so I explained to her what the problem was. She said, oh my gosh, yeah, we'll take care of that. No problem. See, nobody had ever bothered to tell her what we were about. We just expected her to magically understand. And then we want to get mad at them and go burn their place down because they're thinning for it. But if I want to do something about it, how do I do it? So that was one thing. But that was the least important thing. The problem wasn't them. The problem was how we dealt with it. And so what we did is we set up a newcomer program that is an open meeting. And we don't care what he is when he comes in there because we recognize that when somebody comes out of halfway houses or treatment facilities or jails, there's a good chance that they're going to be thoroughly confused about what label fits them. And so what we don't want to do is have that resolved at the public level by embarrassing them in front of a crowd of people. We think that a person who finds themselves an Alcoholics Anonymous at a minimum ought to get a warm welcome and guidance about where they need to be. They don't need some angry old man like me humiliating them. And that's what happens sometimes. We'll try to deal with these things rather than having a responsible way of dealing with it and helping folks figure out how to deal mit their problems. If they can't get a warm welcome from us, it's a pretty bad news message. And so that newcomer program, what a tremendous resource. It's been one of the most valuable additions to our group I'm in now. I doubt that I'll ever be in another group that I don't lobby hard to have that as part of it because it's a way of effectively dealing with that. In all of the years that we've been doing that, with that newcomor deal, there have only been two incidents where there was any kind of an unpleasant exchange, You know, like an argument over something. Only two times. Both times it was caused by our member who didn't know how to communicate something in anything less than negative terms. But we precipitated our own problem. And that's been a tremendous reason. So when I start thinking about certainty, I can't go out and change the world in that regard. But I can doggone well change the way I deal with it. and I can contribute to how our group deals with it so that you're in one place where somebody can come in and they can clearly understand that this is a program that is for them. And so we have that open thing at every one of our meetings so that we can deal effectively with that. So when I want somebody to get as good as I was given, that's one of the things I can do. And, by the way, if anybody wants to join in any time or just throw anything up, just have at it. You know I won't try to tease you out of it. It's just to jump on. How I Do My Group is a tremendous contribution. That isn't enough. And it's important for me to recognize that it's a sneaky kind of a thing, but I'm glad that I belong to a strong group. I'm really glad that i belong to this strong group, but it's imporant for me the recognize that that by itself isn't enough. I have to recognize that it's no better than the group next door. I have to recognize that most alcoholics in my county will not come to my group. They're going to go somewhere else. So while I value having a sound and solid group, part of what I want to evaluate is what kind of a neighbor are we to the next group? Is our contribution holding ourselves in contrast and saying, geez, you ought to be like us? Is that the way I approach it? Or do I approach it in a way of how can we contribute to this community? How can we distribute to the groups around us? Autonomy doesn't mean isolation. Our tradition about that says we're autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or as a whole. So if all I can do is just sort of pump up with how wonderful Well, we are. Does that have a little impact? I suspect it does. I suspect It does. And sometimes those of us who get into good, strong groups like that get carried away with that kind of arrogant sense of self-righteousness or whatever. So it's very important for me to be connected and recognize that I'm a part of Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole. And just being one sound member or in one sound group is not going to do it. I've got to be connected to other things. Another thing that I can do and do is to be connect to Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole. I'm the alternate DCM in my district, and it's a good job. I don't really have any responsibility, but I've got a lot of work to do. I sponsored the DCM, and my job is to make him look good. And so we do some stuff. We do some step at a district level that can help us be a good neighbor to other groups around. So I can contribute that way. I can try to be a well-informed member who's conscientious about what this fellowship's about. And I can try to be of service at the various levels that I can contribute. I'm the area chair, the state chair for A&A Corrections. And it's not that I'm not heroic in particular. It's just that it's kind of like I was saying earlier. I saw a contribution that I could make. You probably get it from Don. I had a long career in corrections. and I retired a year and a half ago and the day I retired I had already been elected to be the chair of A&Corrections the day I retired so it did be legal then so the only thing I did, I just retired all I quit doing was getting a paycheck and I moved to the other side of the fence there were two reasons I did that And I hope that you'll think of this in terms of your realm of influence, the realm of where you can have impact. When I retired, I'd been for 39 years dealing with problems that are related to corrections and I had watched what we do in corrections on a daily basis. And if there was anybody in the country that understood the frustrations and difficulties of trying to work with corrections, it had to be this guy. And so when I left, I knew that I was in a unique position to be able to make a contribution. And the system, I was the oldest employee in the system. Knew practically everybody in there. And I'd hired half of them, it seemed like. I swear to God, it seems like most of them were folks that I'd known when they were looking. And so when I walked out, I knew that I had access to that system like nobody else ever would have. And I knew that there were tremendous problems associated with AA members trying to work in corrections. And I thought, my God, man, how can I take a look at that and walk off and not do something about it? And so I took on a job. It's a two-year commitment. and I'll finish it up about 150 days from now in December. And there will be two things that I will hope to contribute to getting done in that two-year period, and then I will phase out of that and move on to something else, to whatever I do. But the point is that what I said earlier, if I could have looked at that situation, certainly after 39 years, you know that the last thing I wanted to hear was a door slammed behind me. You know that. But if I could have looked at that level of need and my ability to contribute to it and walked away, I doubt that you would have wanted me to be here this weekend because that would say an awful lot about me. If I can take a look at a need and then just back away and say, gee, somebody ought to do something and not step up to the plate, I'm the loser in that. And so when I look at effectiveness and how I can do something in this program, it's very important for me to recognize that it's kind of like I mentioned earlier, sometimes we get so locked in to looking for excellence in our personal recovery. And we'll get into sort of an endless series of workshops and studies and things like this, And if we don't watch it, that can be a real narrow world. A real narrow world where I'm spending my life checking my emotional pulse on a regular basis. And so tremendously important for me, the vision is how can I start thinking bigger than that and how can i start being participant in things that will truly make a difference. And so to me that's a lot of where when I look at effectiveness, that's the kind of things I've got to do. There's a thousand more. but let's stop and now you see any kinds of reactions, questions comments or whatever I'll take a drink of coffee yeah I thought it was really interesting how you said strong mood to go and speak with neighbors because I tend to be arrogant which I don't like but I don' t know how to be a good neighbor What types of activities would you like to sponsor, workshops, or ask someone else to join in? Well, being a good neighbor, what she was talking about was this idea of a strong group being a Good Neighbor to the other groups around. And it's just like being a GOOD Neighbor in the neighborhood, you know, being friendly with the folk around and to be kind in our thoughts. You know, a lot of times we want to criticize. Like I was pretty critical of stuff I was saying earlier about meetings that bear little resemblance to AA. But if I went there, I would try to go with an open mind and make a contribution. Last Saturday, we had something I was scheduled to do canceled and I wound up not going anywhere. And so we got a bunch of folk from our group and just broke out some groceries. And you'll always gather a crowd if you break out groceries. So we got as much folk show up. Andso we pigged out and goofed around, went to swim pool, chase horses and stuff. Then we bunched up and went to a local meeting. And we just dropped in. We weren't there to tell them how to do anything. We were just there to be a good neighbor. You know, we just sort of went in there and they were so thrilled that we were there. It doubled the size of their meeting that night. We just came in and ate up all the donuts. Simple things like that, you know, of just being and not getting caught up into that sort of subtle superiority that we're doing it right and they ain't. What I have to keep in mind is that we don't have a quality control department in Alcoholics and Obstacles. And nobody can tell you when it's right. We're about as generous as any organization could possibly be. That anytime two or more of us bunch up and our purpose is to stay sober we can call ourselves an AA group, and nobody has to approve that. We can meet for the purpose of trying to get an insurrection against alcoholics not if we want to. Nobody is going to be able to challenge our right to function. So even though I talk about the variations of quality, nobody can say what is or is not a group. So, from my personal standpoint, some of the things have no semblance to what I think a group is. But that's not my business, really. Mine is to try to contribute however I can in the ways I describe it, how I can make a good, strong group, how I Can provide some leadership and help to tie that into the groups around us, how I contribute overall. And so if I approach it in a way of how to be a good neighbor, how to be helpful to folk, the ways come out, including folks in. I won't go into all of it, but one of the things we have to do is deliberately avoid taking over our district. We have to avoid that because when we go in, if you don't watch it, we'll have every office, whether we intend to or not. And so we haveと deliberately manage so that we don't take over the district. And so things like that are just kind of thoughtful things to do. Anybody else? When you say you started newcomer meetings to deal with problems like school addiction, what exactly do you do in those meetings? How do you sort of communicate? We have an agenda. We don't throw it up for grabs. We don'T just have a free-for-all, you know, let's all talk and reason together. We have an agenda, and it's not a school, but it's a thing built around introductory stuff. What we asked people to do when we revised it last time was remember when you came in. What did you really need to know? What did your family need? What did they really need together? And so our agenda is our memories of what we needed. And so it's got specific things on there. We go for, we repeat it for I think three cycles. I believe that we repeat, we do the same cycle and then we repeat the same thing over. So it's structured that way. We try to involve the folk somewhat in the meeting, but it's not a discussion meeting. It's to give that information and then to engage them just like this. We did a whole bunch of presentations, a little bit of interaction. But that's what it is. It's just introductory material based on what we believed we needed when we came in, and the other folk are not going to be radically different. It really works well. Yeah. Who else? Say what, Steve? Yeah, it does. It's a good package. We've used it. What Steve was saying is there's, in the literature, there's a listing for it. But that one, we quit using it, not that there's anything wrong with it, but because there were some things that just were not adequately addressed in it. So we use a little something different now. But that's a great package for, if you look at the introductory material, it's right there in print. And it's cheap too. Always think about that. Thanks, Steve. Anybody else here? Name it and claim it. What we talk about, I don't know, maybe it's the stuff that you need to think about, but what we talk About, to me, it's a tremendously important dimension to gain an alcoholics nominee. I'll just say this and we'll wrap her up. I think there's a lot of tremendous junctures and turning points in the program. For those of you there Friday night, I think I alluded a little bit to one of the junctures is in going through the steps is when we get through with inventory and there's a real critical decision point of deciding to move forward and do the rest of the program. An awful lot of people never get past that juncture and opt out and wind up seeing Alcoholics Anonymous as just a place to go and get what I need and you can absolutely go to the bank on it, I believe that people who make that decision are going to have a time-limited recovery because it's only a matter of time until you start getting saturated. If that's all you can see, it is a place to get what you need. And if I don't get to a point where I become an active channel in carrying this to other people and into getting those things straightened out in my life, I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to have a good time in Alcoholics Anonymous. And there's another juncture, and I think it's the one we're talking about right now, where this program has to shift from a me focus to a we focus. A buddy of mine in Raleigh used to say it well, that it's a selfish program, no question about it. Those little examples I gave about the kind of selfish, you give it away and you can't give away more than you get. Yeah, I used to say it's the strangest selfishness in the world. It's about 10% gimme and about 90% give. And if I don't learn that, I'm going to have difficulty in alcoholism. I have to get to a point where I can recognize that my greatest insurance is how well I can actively try to serve others. And in the process, I get more than I could possibly imagine. but if I don't learn it if my motivation is always on what can I get I miss the whole spirit of what this thing's about and that's what it's about this morning it's just about seeing that it's great for me to be a decent sponsor to guys I work with it's good, it's great for you to do the best I can something like this but I have to recognize that it's got to be bigger and so if I can't tie in and see how I can contribute to this thing as a whole not going to get much effectiveness done. Anybody have any last thing? Well, I agree with Donald. Y'all have been a great bunch. I've had a good time here this weekend. Yeah, Sam? Tim? Earlier you were talking about you've had a couple of conflicts that they rooted from members of AA with the income My question is, we've had a couple incidents of AA members who are also involved in religious groups who are taking meetings into treatment facilities and are representing themselves not only as members of alcoholics and nomads, but inviting people to this women's group. And it just came up this past week. And it's a concern because we don't, I mean, the way I'm raised in AA is we're not affiliated with anything else. And so I was wondering how that could be approached in a loving way. Like, I blow things out of proportion. but she's talking about folks that have a whole bunch of agendas different agendas than this it's tricky and there's no real simple kind of a response to that other than to say this. The surest resolution for those kind of conflicts I know is focused on the primary purpose, as stated, you know, that each group has one primary purpose. It carries message that alcoholics still suffer. When you start trying to handle it at the personal belief level, it's always a big fight. But the more you can focus on the principle, the principle of the primary purpose. That starts to define what moves toward it and what doesn't. And so I think you've got to do it. And in the planning, it's like that correctional facility thing we're going to do this afternoon. We'll be talking about the primary purpose there. If we got into individual fine-tuning about how we do it, how each one does it, but what we'll try to do is come to that primary purpose. And so what I'm suggesting is that the personal level is not always the best place to attack that. It's to get it in a neutral ground, like if you've got a treatment facilities committee. If you get that committee to put that on the agenda, and the agenda is the primary purpose. What are we doing to satisfy the primary purpose? If you start trying to do it just on the basis of personal debate, there's always a real sticky wick in it. And so that's one of the places I think we have to broaden the agenda of it. Sir, are you suggesting that we should do workshops within the committee on primary purpose? Or just have the committee meeting around the primary purpose. You know, review what you're doing. It's like we did in newcomer business where we set an agenda on the basis of the collective experience of what achieves the primary. You know it doesn't need a workshop. I think workshop stuff to death. Sometimes you just take the principle and then try to work around it. You know how do we get this thing accomplished? is the thing and the way I would go at something like that you've got to broaden it from just that personal kind of combat thing committee it to death okay thanks guys thank you very much