Step 12 and the Inconvenience of Helping Someone Else – Dick M.

So the principles are ones of being honest and open-minded and willing. It's impossible to ask a newcomer to do any of those three things, as you well know. We ask them all the time. We don't expect it, but we ask it. So we ask them to be honest and opened-minded. We ask him to be open-mindedly and willingly. We ask people to take on faith in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, whether they believe it works or not. It really doesn't make any difference. We don' t care whether they belive it or not, just take the actions that we have taken. These are the things that we have done. If you want what we have, which is sobriety and hopefully some comfort in our lives, if you want that, then you do the things that we did. And what did we do? Well, there are certain steps you've got to take. We have to pass that on. And it's the principle of being willing to help someone else. The principle of coming from love instead of coming from fear, and the attitude of being willy to lay your life on the line for somebody else to go out of your way at your inconvenience to help somebody else and that's what it's all about. That's what AA is all about It isn't about anything else it's just that simply put In chapter 5 after the steps were written in that paragraph following it says many of us exclaimed, what an order I can't go through with it. You know what if God looked down at us and we asked for help and he said, what in the order I can' t go through without it. I've often thought about that. What in the order I ca' n't go through with all we have to do is be willing to try. We have to try to do these things, to try to take the actions and try to pass this on to somebody else. Try to be understanding and capable and loving and considerate of them, and understand they're like we are. They're going to make mistakes and they're going fall but they're not failures. We don't have any failures in Alcoholics Anonymous as long as they're willing to get up and try again. And we have to reach our hand to them so that they can get up, and try again. we have to say, just get up and try again. We have. And it'll be okay. It'll work. It's worked for us, and it'll work for you. The failures in Alcoholics Anonymous are the ones that walk out of AA's door and say, that won't work. And there's a lot of them. But they don't stay here. They go. the rest of us seem to be winners to one degree or another I think the winners in Alcoholics Anonymous are the ones that go on 12 step calls and the ones who go out and hold their hand out to help somebody else and act responsibly towards AlcoholicsAnonymous and I think that's what the winners in AA are I don't think the people have been sober for 30 years and go to one meeting a year and get their cake and disappear here. We were talking about some people that we know go to a lot of conferences, and there's a couple of conferences I go to where they have an old-timers get up and talk, you know, whoever, they do a sobriety countdown and this, that, and the other. And there's a young people's conference I go too. This old guy that's been sober for 40 years or 44 years always shows up so that he can be the old-timer there to give the newcomer the big book. And he's just goofy, is what he is. I mean, he's juste goofy. And, you know, because all he's doing is out of his own ego trying to get some sort of recognition. And I think he's especially goofy because if he didn't show up, I'd have the longest-term sobriety there and I'd be able to do it. No, I really just don't think that I would do what he does. I think that i would do and I do because doing what I've done has made me comfortable with myself. I would send you greetings from my sponsor except he didn't say to say hello to you. But he's doing well, and he's done well for me. I've had difficulties in my life just like everybody has had difficulties in their life. I could tell you that I had a very bad year last year, but in fact I didn't have a bad year, I had an excellent year last year. I had some things happen last year in my life that didn't seem to be good. Somehow or another last spring I got involved with something, And I don't know what in the hell it was, but I just began to get unhappy and I got depressed is what I got. I really just got terribly depressed. And I woke up one night in the middle of the morning and I lay there in my bed and I didn't know that I was depressed. I mean Peggy told me I was depress but I didn�t pay attention to her. just things were colorless to me. I wasn't interested in things the way I had been. And I woke up one night and it must have been three or four o'clock in the morning, you know suicide hour. And i lay there in bed and i contemplated, i really tried to figure out how i could commit suicide and bring the least harm to those people around me who cared for me. And then i thought, what in the hell are you doing? But I seriously thought that. I seriously had that thought. And that's the first time I'd seriously hadthat thought since I was sober. And I thought, Jesus, this is just absolutely goofy. And I went back to sleep. But I woke up the next morning and it worried me. It worried me that I would seriously contemplate something like that. and so the first opportunity I had I called my sponsor and always when I call him I always say good afternoon Clancy how are you? This is Dick Martin he said I'm fine Dick how areyou and I said well I'm not doing too good and I told him what had been going on in my life and life had been dull and lackluster and so on and so forth and the thought that I'd wakened with in the middle of the night the night before that I had called him for some suggestion out of this. And he asked me, he said, how old are you, Dick? And I said, I'm 60. And he says, when were you 60? And I says, last December. And he said oh. He said well let me tell you something. He said 50 is the watershed year for women And 60 is the watershed year for men. At that time, they think it's all over. And he said, Dick, I don't want you to think it'S all over, but it is. Now, you may not think that that was helpful, but that made me laugh and it helped me. and I've been getting better ever since. The next week, I talked to him because I didn't have to call him every day or anything like that because I saw the ludicrousness of my own life. I saw how silly the whole damn thing was. And the next week I called him up and he said, how are you doing? And I said, well, I'm feeling better. And he said well, all the evidence isn't in yet, dick. Now, who would think that that would help someone with a problem like that? I certainly wouldn't think so. But it was. It was just exactly the right thing. Just exactly the Right Thing. I haven't thought that way since. That doesn't sound like a good deal, but it was a good thing. It was a very good deal. Something happened to me that was very difficult in my life, and I got over it. and I was able to laugh at myself and see the folly of my own thinking. That was good, and I stayed sober, and I didn't drink, didn't take any mood-altering chemicals. I didn' t have to go to a psychiatrist and take Xanax or any of those things. I was just able to put one foot in front of the other, take some more foot prayers and be a little more active, as active as I could at the time. But unfortunately, at the same time, I was falling apart physically, too. And I reached the point where I could walk about three-quarters of a block without my legs hurting me so bad that I would have to stop. I discovered that I had a blockage in my aorta and gradually discovered that the medication I was taking wasn't doing that any good. And I discovered that what was going to happen as an end result of that, if I didn't take some action, that gradually it would come to the point where I wouldn't be able to walk across the room. I literally wouldn't being able to do that. I wouldn' t be able walk across a room and I would be in a wheelchair. And that quite potentially, if something wasn' t done about it, it would be blocked so high that I wouldn''t get any blood to my kidneys and I wou' d die from kidney failure. So I didn' t have much of a choice as to what I wanted to do. You know, there wasn't, you know, it wasn't really a choice there. I couldn't say, well, I don't think, I think I'll just pray about that, you know. You know what I did was I started going to doctors who knew something, knew more about that than the doctor I was going to at his direction and I took the steps that were necessary and I went in, I had an operation and I had a aortal bypass in my abdomen and now I have great blood flow to my legs and I'm in good shape. At least in legs and I'm in good shape. And I have much better circulation. I feel better mentally and physically. I feel good, and I feel above, and I feels like I've had an entire psychic change, and I don't feel like it's all over. I feel like its just beginning. And I feel those things that happened last year, I went through those things and I didn't take a drink. And for an alcoholic to go through those things and not take a drank, I think is damn good, and I think I had a goddamn good year. And I don't care what people say about good years and bad years. I think any year that you don't take a drink if you're an alcoholic is a great year for you because I've found it to be a great year for me. I've been able to discover the good in my life instead of only look at the bad and only look AT the poor and only look AT those things. I'VE BEEN ABLE TO DISCOVER THAT THERE IS GOOD. you know there's a good result of taking actions so i think that what i'll do is i'll continue taking my foot prayers and i'll look behind me and look ahead of me and see if i see your feet padding down the way and see si we're walking this road together and we're trudging the road of happy destiny together i hope that somehow someday that that uh you'll be able to do what i have done today because if you do this you will learn more about yourself and more about what you have done than anything else that you've ever done. I hope that somehow those things that I've been able to talk about today have been of help to you and it's cleared away some of the confusion that you have had in your life and that you can understand that you too can recover if you just take the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and you do it to the best of your ability and with the help of a sponsor to give you a few foot prayers along the way for you to take, and I think that you're going to be fine. And you and I will be able to stay sober for the rest of our lives one day at a time because that's what I want to do. I wantto die sober. I can do that because I know how. I just don't take that first strike, and I stay with you right here, right now, with you in the living presence of God. Thank you very much. Thank you.