Step 12 Gave This Alcoholic a Purpose in Life – Mike C.

I'm Mike, and I'm an alcoholic. Wow, that's a loud microphone. Keep it down a little bit, which is kind of hard to do when I'm sharing at a group of alcoholics anonymous because my butt is always on fire to get up in front of a crowd and speak. So again, I hope I just said that I'm Mike and I am an alcoholic, my sobriety date is 6-1-88. and I would like to get a couple of things out of the way. First and foremost, aside from Ron, is there anyone else new to the fellowship within the 30 days? Okay, we'll get that one out oftheway because that's always important to me. And the second thing I'd like to do, we have a birthday today, and it's one of the friends that I've made since I've been coming here, and that's our friend Dewey, and DeweY is celebrating 14 years today. So congratulations to him. And I want to really thank all of the committee and all of the folks who were so kind to make a decision to have this alcoholic show up and speak in front of you. Hello. Okay, well, we got that out of the way. I kind of got into this the fun way when I first started. Yesterday I showed up in town and I hadn't heard from anyone here in a while, since maybe last year, a few others, maybe Butch and a couple of others. And so I just thought I was supposed to show up and go to my motel room and, you know, get myself all set up, kick back and show up today and get in front of your folks and talk. So yada, yada. That's what I did. And I'm in my motels. I'm kicking back and I'm relaxing. And Butch, I left a message with him and I left the message with Bill I that I was in town and,you know, where I was going to have supper and blah, blah,blah. and I look at the door and I hear this bang, bang, bang and I go holy crap what have I done wrong now you know of course it's always about me and I open the door and there's Kojak from the AA police wondering where the heck have you been Mike? Well okay I guess I kind of made a oopsie boopsie and I'm supposed to be at another motel here in town than the one that I'm in and I'm also supposed to be at this picnic so I hurriedly got dressed and you know what's funny about all of that more than anything is I really like Jeff and I was only teasing him about being Kojak but when we took off and we started going you know South World Run Riot it's all about Mike blah blah blah I'm trying to tell him my plans And he's saying, no, but you don't understand. There's other plans. And I go, okay, okay. I guess maybe it's time for me one more time to surrender. Wow, what an idea. Surrender. Here I am close to 24 plus years in the program and I'm still learning about that surrender stuff. So what I ended up doing is I've made Jeff now my higher power for the weekend. So he's got multiples of tasks. He is not only my chauffeur, but he is also my higher power. So while I'm up here, I didn't quite give him these instructions, but there's two important things that he still has left to do before I get done speaking. And the first of those is if I start taking myself too seriously because he's my higher power he's supposed to holler out rule 62 mike and and if that don't work then he's also supposed to hollar out kiss and and that doesn't mean you know it's time for us to kiss or anything like that it's fine for me to keep it simple stupid you know so okay well we'll embark i got all of that out of the way there's another fun thing that i like to do um before we get started i'm I know a majority of the people here, and I consider you family. And I feel a real privilege in being able to stand up in front of you and share my experience, strength, and hope. But there's a few people here that I don't know, and I'm assuming that there's also a few other people here that there are a few more people here that you don't even know. So just for a brief second, turn around to whoever is behind you or alongside of you and introduce yourselves and make them feel welcome into the fellowship. There we go. That's what we like to do. Okay, isn't that just absolutely wonderful? That is exactly the way this fellowship works. we come into this fellowship we don't know anyone we're quaking in our boots what are we ever going to do you know holy mackerel lucky I even had any brain cells left and you know that's exactly what my experience was is somebody came up after my first meeting and they stuck their hand out and they said welcome to the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous Mike keep coming back keep coming back oh my goodness you don't know who you're dealing with so that's kind of like the beginning of where it started but what I would like to do today and I don't want to stay too much in what it was like I think there's a few of you that have heard bits and pieces of my story and I think you probably know that I really qualify for my spot in alcoholics and on as my chair but for me I know that there's someone out there who needs the identification process that we go through when we share our experience strength and hope a little bit of what it was like what happened and what it's like now so I was born in 1946 in Fort with Texas and went on a pilgrimage. That's the only way I can describe what was going on with my family at the time. It's not my business up here to qualify any of my family members or any friends or anyone that I know as being an alcoholic, but I will say there was a tremendous amount of alcoholic-type behavior going on. And so I don't know where I wrote this rule book. I discovered this later when I got into AA, but I thought for some reason, you know, I'm a product of TV. I don't know if anybody's ever seen one of those, but you know I started out kind of early. We didn't have electricity where I was at in Montana when I was first growing up. So when we got to Indiana, we got electricity and we got televisions. And one of the programs that I was really gravitating towards by that time, because my biological father and my mom had broken up, and you know, there's been a lot of chaos. And there was this dune and beaver cleaver family. Whoa, I'm telling you, these guys was really cool, man. I mean, they showed up with suits and ties for supper, and they were polite, and there was no food flying, no fish flying, you know. I means, this was just awesome, man, And I thought, wow, that's exactly who I want to grow up with. But it didn't happen that way. One ended up happening with me, and I'm not being disparaging when I talk about my own family, but this was a little bit like the Beverly Hillbillies meets the cast and crew from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It was a Little Dysfunctional out there. And so, you know, long story short on all of that, a lot of traveling, a lot of that kind of stuff going on. And what was happening to me more than anything without me even knowing it is I was starting to withdraw inside myself. I was started to isolate. It was easy for me to gravitate into books and that kind thing. But, and I don't know when, you know, there was a lot adult parties and before you know it, you know, they're making me and my brother the bartenders for the party thinking that that's really cute to see us new walking drunk and that progressed by the time I got to junior high. I wouldn't say that I'm a full-blown alcoholic but I'd say I had good education on how to drink successfully. My mom at the time was getting denatured alcohol 180 proof out of the Portsmouth Naval Hospital, that's one of the easier things to water down. So what I would do is I had a little medicine bottle. I'd fill that thing up, put water in that, and then I'd put a little food coloring in that and I'd go to school. And at lunchtime, you know, that's what I did. And I learned how to smoke. I gravitated to the... I don't know if you want to call it that, but the wrong side of the tracks. I was attracted to those kind of people. I like fighting, I like cussing and all of that lying, cheating, stealing stuff that went with it. And you know, that's exactly the way that my life went until I was 17 years old. I'm failing in school, I'm not fitting in at all and I conned my mom into going into the service at age 17 and I don't know if there's anybody out there that's ever heard the cucumber and the pickle story but by the time I got into the surface at age 16 I was no longer going to be a cucumber. I was officially a pickle. So, I like referring a lot to this wonderful textbook called The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. This is the third edition. This is not the current one, but this is my get-a-start book when I first came into the program. It's all marked ups, all kinds of groovy things on it. It's falling apart. I love this book. Just love it with all my heart. And I think the book better describes who I was than me trying to sit down and tell you because there's an important part of what I'm trying to say today is that first and foremost, I'm a blackout drinker. I don't know if anybody can associate with that. But from the minute alcohol came into my system, that was usually a part of my story was that I would wake up in these different places doing different things that I was always ashamed of. And so a lot of what I'm saying today is hearsay, but aside from it being hearsay I had a lot car accidents, I had lot of bar fights, I have a lot that kind of stuff happened in my life and I went back to college after I got sober and got tested out for short-term memory problems. And now, surprise, surprise on top of everything else, I'm getting older. And my memory is really starting to get you know a little bit sketchy at times. So I'm not saying that to give me an out for anything that I say today. God's in charge, Mike's not, or better yet, Jeff is in charge. But let's refer to the big book and let's talk just a little bit about what it was like from the big book, in the doctor's opinion. And it says, it did not satisfy us to be told that we could not control our drinking, just because we were maladjusted to life, that we were in full flight from reality, or were outright mentally defective. How rude of them to put something like that in this book. Don't they know who they're dealing with? Well, of course they know what they're doing. That's exactly why they wrote stuff like that. Because that's the kind of person that opened up this big book in the very beginning and started reading it. And it was not until much later in my sobriety where I had finally, again we're back to the surrender thing, where I'd finally after about my fifth year turn my will and my life over enough to where I could really get through the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and really get into this big book and really start holding it as a part of my life. Another thing that I like to read when it comes to, in this side of the doctor's opinion, more about exactly what it was like for me when I was out there drinking. It says, men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that while they admit it is injurious, and it was, that they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. Ooh, boy. To them, their alcoholic life seemed the only normal one. Wow. They are restless, irritable and discontented unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks. Now that's the only part in this book that I may have a little bit of a problem with. I never took a few breaks. It was always on, and it was always on full-blown. Drinks which they see others taking with impunity after they have succumbed to the desire again as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops. They pass through the well-known stage of a spree, emerging with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, unless this person can experience an entire psychic change, there is very little hope of his or her recovery. I put the her in there. I don't like to sometimes add things into the book, but you know, I'm speaking to a mixed audience today. I'm not in one of my men's stag meetings, which I absolutely do love. So, you know that, that kind of paints the picture. By the time I got into the Navy, I am full-blown, I m full drinking and I'm getting into more and more, you know I heard it said in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, first it was fun and then it was Fun and Trouble and then it was nothing but trouble. By this time I'm emerging out of definitely out of the fun stage I'm borderline now getting out ofthe fun and trouble stage and we're getting ready to go into full blown trouble period. And so one of the brief incidences that I talk about is that I woke up one time out of a blackout and I'm not really sure where I'm at. And I'm looking around myself and everything's on fire. Holy crap, what happened here? And, you know, of course, naturally when you're like me in a blackouts, you know anything could be possible. And I thought, well, holy mackerel, maybe I guess I've died and gone to hell because, you now, really that's where I thought I was going to end up with the behavior that I'd been exhibiting. I'm in the Navy at this time Vietnam War is going on I've missed ship's movement and that finally dawns on me and I come to enough to realize that what I'd done I woke up in a junkyard in Lackawanna, New York I'd been hitchhiking from my home in Maine going to Boston where my ship was at and I'd gotten in this car with a group of people with the back seat full of long neck bottles of bud and yippee-tay-yay the clothes are going out the door And I'm going to Florida with these folks is the last clear thing that I have. And then I wake up in this junkyard and it's time for me to correct my errors. And so what's the first thing that i do? Do you think that of course now by this time i've added up a whole bunch of other these incidences like this. That it's Time for me To sit down and think about the consequences of my actions? Not a bit. They turned me into the reserve center in buffalo new york. And they left me alone. there was no locks on the door and so what is Mike doing? he's silently creeping over the fence at night going into Buffalo to get himself a few drinks, to get him calm down and having this phenomenon of craving taken care of and eventually got back to the ship got into a lot of trouble and to the end of my naval career what ended up happening as I was with a couple of other guys this guy just got back from Vietnam We're celebrating, and we hit a telephone pole. My stepbrother was in the back, and I came as close as a guy can come to dying. And again, I wake up. I come out of a blackout. This is now, and I don't know it, three days later, and I'm in the enforcement naval hospital. I've been here before when I was younger, so I knew at least where I was at. And I had to go to the restroom really, really bad, And I'm begging for a bedpan. And all these corpsmen are roaming around me, like, bedpan, bedban. And everybody's ignoring me. And it got to that point, again, you know, this out-of-body experience. I thought I had died and that this was me outside of myself experiencing this experience. Finally, the head nurse came on. She talks to me and she says, do you know where you're at and who you are and blah, blah, blah? And I said, yeah. You know, we went through all the questions. And I asked her, I said well, how come somebody hadn't bothered to take care of me? And she says, that's exactly the way you've been for the last two days. You've been in and out of some sort of like a delirium phase, and you've just been screaming and hollering and acting crazy. And she said it was all we could do to get you in here, to get your trunk down enough just so we could find out what was wrong with you. And so I only share those things briefly because that's the kind of alcoholic drinking that I had. I got out of the service, went and got married. I thought that was going to solve my problems. Ended up in New York City to the lady that I married. And within a brief period of time, I'm back in Maine where I was originally living. And within seven years, that marriage had failed. That was 1974. And the minute that marriage failed, all bets was off. I went from the fun and trouble stage into the full-blown trouble stage of my alcoholic drinking. And I spent a very, very long period of time from 1974 until I ended up in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1988. And my story, and I am definitely, there's nothing to be funny and there's something to be proud of. But what ended up happening to me, I was a drunk driver. A seriously bad drunk driver And before I actually hurt people I would be taking family or friends and people with me And they would be hollering, they'd be screaming at me Pull this damn car over, Mike You're going to kill us, you're goingto kill us And I never ever paid any attention to that Long story short, by the time I ended up in Arizona in 1977-76, I was married to my second wife at the time. And we divorced, and the minute we divorced I went into party phase and woke up out of a blackout and I'd rolled my pickup truck and I almost killed two guys. And they were in the hospital because of my drunk driving. Now you'd think that that's pretty serious consequences in that, you know, I'd finally face up to what was going on and I may have a problem with alcohol and get some help. And the first thing I did, which was my normal MO whenever I'd get into trouble, was run. I don't know if anybody else is a runner in here, but I was a big runner and I took off and I went to Colorado. And the minute I landed in Colorado, I started living with a lady and less than six months later I took her brand new T-Bird out, ran head-on into a Jeep and woke up in a blackout in the Denver County Gale and not knowing where I'm at and not knowing what I'd done. That was before computers, that was before the courts were sending you to AA, that was before they really knew who they were really dealing with. So what ended up happening to me next was that this court-ordered antabuse program didn't introduce me to AA but they did give me a little bit of alcohol and drug counseling. They knew I had some problems with that area too. and a quarter of interviews showed up every day for the interviews camp, right? Yada, yada. Now you'd think that a guy who's gone through what I've gone through in my life already would have woke up to the serious consequences of his actions and I hadn't. And that whole nine months that I was there did I think one time of the three people that I had almost killed in those accidents? Not a bit. Not one single bit. Powerless over alcohol, life unmanageable. all I could think about was the party was going to be on and as soon as that was on put the top down in the middle of a snow storm after all of the anabuse was out of me and one more time I'm getting a DUI and I'm escaping and I'M HEADING FOR HAWAII so you know that's pretty much the way that it was for this alcoholic until in 1988 Memorial Day come out of another blackout little house that I'm living in Zaltora people that I don't know blood urine feces i mean it was just a total nightmare one more time and i said you know what to myself and this was evidently when jeff got into play here this is when this higher power thing started to kick in and i couldn't do it anymore i absolutely could not do this anymore and my best thinking at the time was either i'm going to drink myself to death because i'd already He tried a variety of other forms of suicide and was not very successful at it. Or I was going to go do a serious enough crime and get locked up, or I was gonna go back to the funny farm again and tell them to take the key and please don't let me out ever again. And I don't know where it came from. I do now. At that time, I didn't. That, you know, there was this still quiet voice said, well, hey, why don't you make a phone call to the crisis center? And I called the crisis center and they said, well, there's a central office in Salinas, California where I was at at the time. And they said well hey why don't you call this phone number and there'll be someone on there from Alcoholics Anonymous and talk to them. You might have a problem with your drinking. Okay dokey. So I make this phone call and they tell me where a meeting is on Thursday at the Bank of America meeting. I walk into my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous knowing nothing at all about AA. Thank heavens for that, because if I had known anything, I don't know if anybody else in the room has this problem with contemporary investigation, but I'm a big one on that one. And I would have probably blown the whole thing off. And I walked into my First Meeting and I said, My name is Mike and I'm an alcoholic. and without me knowing it at that time several things happened first and foremost and I understand that today I got struck big time with the disease of alcoholism stick I don't know if anybody else has ever had that happen but I wasn't an alcoholic until I got to that meeting and I said my name is Mike and I'm an alcoholic. Another thing that occurred when that happened is I can't undo that, whether I ever do or drink again. You know, it's on. I can undo it. And that's a good thing. That's a really good thing for this alcoholic. The third thing is that I found from where I got sober that this was a self-diagnosed and a self treated disease. Now, I know that it's not good at the podium to talk about self too much but in that respect I think we have to because the ball ended up in my court and it was up to me to turn around and do something about the problems that I was experiencing so again I'd like to refer to the big book and I would like to go to a vision for you and again this is exactly like it was at the end when my drinking was finally over, that day when I made that call. And it says, the less people tolerated us, the more we withdrew from society, from life itself. We became subjects of king alcohol, shivering denses of his mad realm, the chilling vapor that is loneliness settled down, a thick endeavor becoming blacker. Some of us sought out sore places, hoping to find understanding, companionship, and approval. Momentarily we did, then would come oblivion and an awful awakening to the face of the hideous four horsemen terror, bewilderment, frustration and despair on happy drinkers who read this page will understand. And I surely did. But, you know, so now we've gotten into all of the, like I would like to say, the doomy and gloomy part of this whole thing. But then, and I didn't discover this right away, but then eventually you go over to page 17 here and there is a solution. And it says here, the tremendous fact for every one of us is that we have discovered a common solution. We have found a way out which we can absolutely agree on and upon which we kan join in brotherly and harmonious action. This is the great news this book carries to those who suffer from alcoholism. And that was exactly who this alcoholic was. Briefly, for myself, I've had some really absolutely unbelievable experiences in my journey in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I love this program. I love what it's done for the man that's standing in front of you today. The man who's standing in frontof you today is not the man who was first going to meetings in the very beginning. I was very disruptive. My mind was gone. I was a blathering idiot. I could hardly hold sentences together and this is not funny but I knew that I was going to have to approach this program and one of the things that I had to do was get myself a sponsor and the sponsor that I got at the time had this little bet going as to how long this alcoholic was going make it before he picked back up the drink again and I didn't find that out until later and I did not find that very funny at the same time and honestly there was not very much funny for the first maybe three or four years of my program because I was still overburdened with the burden itself and I hadn't let go enough to finally allow the process to start to make the change. After about my fifth year, I got serious with the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and that's where the change started for me, truthfully started. I never really had much of a problem with the first step but where I was always getting into trouble with the First Step is I was almost always forgetting the first word in the first Step and that shoe folks, it's we And it was through the we process that I started to learn more about the degree of unmanageability and powerlessness that I had when I picked up that first drink and the phenomenon of craving kicked in. The second step was fairly easy, the first part of that, to admit that I was cuckoo because, again, back to my early family. and one flew over the cuckoo's nest and you know all of that I mean it was pretty easy to absorb that but that part about the power greater than myself restoring me to sanity I'm not too sure on that one I walked in six years before I got sober to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous I was ordered to go there because the rubber room place that I gravitated out to said you have a problem with alcohol and you need to go to AA And I showed up at my first meeting of AA, walked in, and I heard the word God. And five minutes later, I'm back under the bridge drinking. I don't have nothing to do with that kind of stuff. A bunch of holy rollers and all of that kind. You know, that was my pitiful and incomprehensible mind working. And that was also that mind that had contempt prior to investigation. And so eventually, you know, I came into this program. And slowly, through the educational variety, through those steps, I found that power greater than Mike Chapman, who was able to restore me somewhat to sanity. I started getting better. Surprise, surprise. The third step was a little misnomer on my part. it says the word a in there which means one time i was supposed to turn my life over and get through this and what happened to my life after that one time was absolutely none of my doggone business and guess what i keep taking it over and over back one more time my will my will that's why jeff had to be my higher power and come knock on my motel room telling me i'm not in the right I won't tell because I'm taking it back one more time. Well, anyway, we get to the fourth step. I did a variety of four steps. It doesn't matter how you do these things. It doesn'T say anything in the big book about the right way or the wrong way. It's that you do it. That's the worst part of the fourth stop is not doing it. I got through that. I got though the version of resentments. I got throughthe version with fears. I got through the version with going through the seven deadly sins, not overnight, not in a way, you know, this is a process. But I did get through it. The amends part of the process and the telling all of my secrets to another human being, it's easy for me to talk to God by this time and let him have it, but I'm not going to give you all those secrets. And eventually what happened is I realized that if I didn't do this, I was going to drink. And I went to a meeting up in the mountains in the Sierras. I found an old guy at the meeting that I really liked. I was listening to him share. We went out and we had coffee. And I said, would you like to have the last of my fifth step? Because I knew this guy wasn't ever going to run into him again. And he says, oh yeah, okay. And so I give him the last OF my fifth steps. He looks at me across the table and he goes, is that it? Is that what you've been holding back? he says holy mackerel listen to this and he spilled the beans on some of the things that he'd done and I don't know if it was his opportunity to get the last of his fifth step out but I can tell you that the process was great and both of us walked away from there feeling much much relieved and the amends part of the process was difficult as a blackout drinker so eventually what I ended up having to do in my amends process for myself was some letter writing, some things like that. But more than anything, what was suggested of me on my sponsor at the time was to take my most valuable commodity, my time, and donate it to some of the things where I had serious issues. And one of the serious issues that I had was women. It was very abusive, not maybe physically so much, but definitely verbally and emotionally and that kind of stuff. And I started donating my time to the Women's Crisis Center in Salinas, and that was a real eye-opener for this alcoholic. I really got an opportunity to look at the other side of the coin and to really see, truthfully, the kind of damage that I had done. Got through to my 10th step, and that was the step where I was told that this is going to be the opportunity for you to maintain your spiritual condition. You're going to get a daily reprieve, but it's going to be contingent upon the maintenance of that spiritual condition found in the 10th Step, which means don't create any wreckage today, Mike. If you're starting to get resuscitable, discontented with people, places and things own up to it right away don't cart it off into tomorrow and screw up tomorrow's sobriety you don't do it today that was great, that was good advice I don't always follow advice I have sponsees I'm very blessed with that and I always tell my sponsee please take my advice I'm not using it and they believe me They truthfully do believe me. The 11th step, I'm constantly working on that. I'm consistently developing a newer approach to that. I have what I like to call godsidences in my life today. This alcoholic gets to know for sure exactly that there is a power called Jeff in his life I was at the Summerfest in Eugene last weekend, and one of the speakers was from Toronto, Canada on Sunday. And I went up to him and I talked, and I'd made friends seven months ago with another guy from Toronto in Florence, and he was on his way to Salem, I mean to Seattle to see his daughter, and took him out kayaking, and we made good friends, and yada yada and of all doggone things when I started talking to this guy Eric who was the speaker on Sunday oh yeah, I know Peter oh yeah we're good friends he's on Facebook and you know those are the things that's how I know there's this power out there working in my life keeping me plugged in it's important to me to stay plugged in the last and most important step that I believe in for myself more than anything That's the twelfth step of Alcoholics Anonymous. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, that's the message to any of you that are still in the rooms, that are stiII suffering. You know, that's t he message that I try to bring to you today. Spiritual in the dictionary is knowing the difference between right and wrong. And when you break it down in the dictionaries, it goes into morals, that kind of thing. And again, some of this is not right here in the book, But it also says in this book, and I'm very blessed about that it does say that, is that I can use other material, other literature to help me in my recovery. And I've done that. That 12-step has been the saver for this alcoholic. It's given me a purpose in my life. It's put people in my wife that I would never have had before. And I've got sponsees right now that have been with me over 15, 16 years. I'm really, really blessed with that. I truthfully am. And eventually, and this is just what happens to me, is when you have long-term sponsorships like that, the line between who's the sponsor and the sponsee gets blurred. And I like that part of it. And I think that's all a part of the humbling process of the approach. We're getting really, really close to the end of this thing, I'm assuming. I don't want to take up too much time. Where the heck are you? But the last thing that I like to share, and we talked briefly last night at the WARF meeting, and that was always a lot of fun. And I love getting this roundup started that way is show up, do the hike and do the work meeting, get my ice cream. And we talked a little bit about the promises. And of course, the book is just absolutely chock full of promises. But I don't always talk about the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. There's a lot of other wonderful literature in the program. We have wonderful pamphlets if you're new to sponsorship that helps you with sponsorship. if you're new to a home group there's pamphlets on home groups there's books on the history of Alcoholics Anonymous there's a whole batch of really good stuff later on when you feel comfortable and you're ready to do it to help you in your journey and one of the things that I used when I was especially doing my steps was the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions book of Alcoholic Anonymous and I know a lot of people call it the 12 by 12. Well, you know, if I'm a newcomer and I'm coming in, a 12 by12 looks like something you're going to hit me with. Whereas the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions book is a book that you open up and it helps you to guide you through these steps and traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous. And in the foreword to the 12 steps and 12 traditions book is what I like to call the promise before the promises. And it says these principles spiritual in nature which have practiced would expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become usefully and happily whole. And that's exactly, almost to the degree what has happened to me as a direct result of walking into my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous June 1st, 1988 and saying I'm Mike and I'm an alcoholic. The last thing that I would like to leave you with will be out of the well, I'll tell you what let's set aside the big book and we'll just take a brief moment I have these little handouts that I give anyone who's interested that has those promises before the promises it's got the humility statement from Dr. Bob on it Dr. Bob's prescription for staying sober on his prescription pad, trust God, clean house and help others. At the bottom of this is something that I just recently started to discover for myself and I really find again that this is giving me an awful lot of good impact into my program, helping me to improve on my journey which is always important for this alcoholic and you can take the time if you want, bow your heads or not This is not really like, you know, we say the Our Father prayer or the serenity prayer. But I put my glasses back on. This is the set-aside prayer, if you've heard this or not. But it goes like this. Dear God, please set aside anything I think I know about myself, about my disease, about the big book, the 12 steps, the program the fellowship the people in the fellowship and all spiritual terms especially you God so that we may have an open mind and a new experience with all these things please help me to see the truth Amen and thank you very much for letting me share my experience strength and hope applause