Step 2 and the Recovery Disk for a Corrupt File – Adam T.

Thank you, brother. Thank you. Thank you so much. My name is Adam. I am an alcoholic. I want to first thank the committee for inviting me to come talk tonight. It's always an honor and a privilege to be asked to participate in Alcoholics Anonymous. Ultimately, it's a responsibility to give back what was so freely given to me. Thank you Cole for all your hospitality. He was my host. Paul for invitingme here. Welcome to the people who are new. You know, if you're trying AA one more time, if you don't want to be here tonight, if you think this will work for you, if your sponsor made you come. I mean, I didn't get to AA because I had a bad weekend. You know? I had some bad days. I had couple of bad decades. And, you know, it's interesting because before I came here, I thought Southern California where I live was the mecca of recovery. and what I saw tonight and what I've seen this weekend, this is it This is it. Minnesota is it It is it We got a lot of meetings. We have 3,000 meetings.We don't have a lot groups You know we've kind of grown so big that we've lost that intimacy that I saw in all those groups serving coffee tonight.It's so heartfelt.You have something so special here For me this became a matter of life and death. I mean, every meeting has their perpetual newcomer. You know, especially in a small town, we see that lost soul recycling through the rooms over and over and over. And that was me. I stood up in AA in my area for 17 years. And it became ridiculous. You know? I had so many chips and key tags. You don't know what I mean. I could have played poker with them. It's horrible. No, I remember one secretary saying, give them back. And I did that walk of shame over and over and over again. And what I would do as a newcomer is I would go into your head and I would look back at myself and I'd think, oh my gosh, what a loser. Why can't you get this? What's wrong with you? And I know the old timers were judging me. You know, if you're new, we're judging. I mean, I'm not that spiritual. really i mean my home group makes bets right i love it when they say don't judge anybody right you ever hear that don't judge anybody in aa what do they tell you five minutes later stick with the winners that's not confusing right i can remember sitting in my counselor's office i'm in another detox and i'm sitting there across this table and he looks at me and he says, now, don't make any major changes in your first year. I come to my first meeting, get a sponsor. What's the first thing he tells me? You've got to change everything. Right? Don't make many major decisions in your second year. Don't change anything in your third year. Anybody seen The Third Step? How about don't get in a relationship in your first year? No one knows if that works. No one's ever done it. I always look for the people that aren't laughing, right? No, really. I mean, there's always a saint in the crowd. If you've got a halo, don't let it choke you. But the one I love is God doesn't give us more than we can handle. You know what? If I really believed that God didn't give me more than I could handle, I wouldn't need God's help. And the longer I've been sober, the longer I've be separated from alcohol, the more I eventually came to terms with the fact that I absolutely, desperately need your help. I need AA's help. God's help. And if you're new, help is the dirtiest four-letter word in AA. The hardest thing for me, like a lot of us, to relinquish control, to admit defeat, to say that I can't do this on my own. And I thank God for the unconditional love of the old timers. A lot of the old timERS in our area that aren't with us anymore. You know, like I was just talking to Pete with 57 years, you know about the world convention And you know a lot of those old-timers aren't with us anymore And they said stuff to me like you know what don't even bother taking chips. Just sit in the back shut up You know in a loving way right But they also made it really clear to me and if you're new I hope you hear this They made it really clear to me, those old timers, that if and when I was ready, because you know what? They could see it by my demeanor, my lack of interest, my fidgety nature. They could say that it wasn't right now. But those old-timers made it real clear to be that if, and when, I was really ready that the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous would always be open to a drunk like me. And I think if I lived to be a hundred years old, if I live to be a hundred years old I could never pay AA back for the love and the kindness that, you know, some of you people have shown me. Not all. If you like everybody in AA, you know what it means? It means you're not going to enough meetings. So, eventually what happened to me is I started coming to meetings drunk. Now, the interesting thing about AA 2019 is if you actually see a drunk person in an AA meeting these days, people say stuff like, oh my gosh, what's he doing here? And I don't want to bash the therapeutic community. I know where I am. Is this the land of 1,000 treatment centers? Oh, it was lakes, right? But, you know, because of treatment, which is now, you know, this event that happened to AA about 30 years ago, and it's grown up about Alcoholics Anonymous in the last 30 years. It's now, right next to annuities in the Wall Street Journal. $30 billion a year industry. And the problem is treatment kind of swoops a lot of us up in our most desperate moments, right, throws us into yoga class. No offense. Craft hour. I'm making like belt buckles and bongs. Nature walks. What I'd do is I'd go to 7-Eleven, get a big gulp cup, fill it up with liquor, put a little Coca-Cola on top so no one would notice, and then I would walk into the late night candlelight Hollywood AA meeting. Do some of my best sharing. If you're new, we have a chapter in the big book, The Chapter to Wives. I know I'd never read The Chapter to Waves. Never had a wife. Right? Not on my very own. No, seriously. If you read The Chapter to Wides, The Chapter to Wires talks about four types. Type 1, type 2, type 3. It enumerates them. And if you read that chapter, the fourth type of alcoholic described in the chapter to Wise is the type of alcoholics that's been placed in one institution after another. The type of alcoholic that typically drinks on his way home from the hospital. And in the 17 years that I was recycling through Alcoholics Anonymous, that's what I became. By the time I finally got sober in Alcoholics Anonymous I'd gone through residential treatment for alcoholism 28 times. I know not 28 days like the movie, this isn't Hollywood. Twenty-eight consecutive times, and I wore that like a badge of honor. I thought, that's what made me an alcoholic. And I remember telling my sponsor, I said, you know, I went through treatment 28 times. I was hoping that would, like, get rid of the guy. You know, ruin his batting average. Loser. And he laughed, just like you guys are laughing. He laughed, and he says, you now, Adam, going through treatment 28 times, that really doesn't make you an alcoholic And I thought You're kidding He says, oh no, that just means you paid half a million dollars for a big book. And I didn't think that was funny and I wasn't laughing. And I'm not going to start citing and quoting pages tonight out of the big book but page 101 of the Big Book says any scheme that attempts to shield the alcoholic from temptation is doomed to failure. See, treatment was a great place to fatten me up for another run but treatment never solved the problem. Even Bill Wilson had gone through treatment. It has its rightful place in the process of recovery, but in and of itself, it never solved a problem. And as an alcoholic, like so many of us, I always thought the problem was liquor. I thought it was alcohol. And I remember someone in AA saying to me, Adam, if alcohol is your problem, that drink, that shot glass, that 12-pack, that little glass of Chardonnay, if that's your problem you're probably not an alcoholic. And then in the very next breath, he says to me, and if you are in fact an alcoholic, the type that's described in the doctor's opinion in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, your problem is an alcohol. And I remember thinking, what? It went right over my head. It was almost like some kind of cruel riddle. It took me another decade to understand what he was trying to tell me. And i started to understand what it meant to be an alcoholic and one of the things that happened to me is I got around a home group. I got around a group of people that took, they were big book zealots, big book enthusiasts. You know, they have a lot of mean words to talk about those kind of people now. Somehow, you know, if you want to hide someone from an alcoholic, you don't know where you put it, right? Put it in the big book. They'll never find it. It's like somehow the big book's making a big comeback in AA, right, but these guys were people that took the statements in the bigbook of Alcoholics Anonymous, turned them into questions and directed them at me. It was almost like a method. Did I drink because I liked the effect produced? Was I in fact restless, irritable, and discontent by nature? Was my greatest obsession that somehow someday I would control and enjoy my drinking at the same time? Did I pursue that to the gates of insanity and or death? And as I started to see that for the first time, I saw the truth. And one of those truths I saw, the most obvious truth is that I was never able to live successfully with alcohol. Even as a teenager, I was peeing in my pants, drooling on my desk, passed out under the bleachers. My nickname in eighth grade was Space Cadet. I couldn't find homeroom. No, really. People are picking high schools. I was already picking rehabs. But if you're new here tonight, alcoholism, it comes in people. It doesn't come in bottles or shot glasses or six packs or little glasses of wine. It comes in people. And the greater aspect of this spiritual illness, as Bill Wilson describes it, centering in my mind, if going through the considerations in the big book shows me anything at all, it shows me that an alcoholic of my type, this type, cannot live without alcohol. Not successfully, not happily. And part of what it really means for me to be an alcoholic, if I'm honest about my relationship with liquor, is that I seem to have a mind that will consistently take me back to booze. Every time I get released in an emergency room, a hospital, a fancy Malibu treatment center, men's central jail, 5374, roll it up. I'm like drunk. I don't even stop for my property. Once I make a decision to drink, I'm done. And my experience continues to show me that what it really means for me to be an alcoholic, if I'm honest about my relationship with alcohol, is that I have a mind that will continue, if you're new, to take me back to that first drink. It's almost like my default mode, like on a computer, and I always talk about, you know, I've got the privilege of sponsoring some programmer guys, far my intellectual superior guys that write program and code, and, you know. We were talking about the language that Bill Wilson uses in 1939, and how really advanced it was for that time period, because today we use the word program all the time. It's common vernacular. One of the definitions of a program, if you look it up in the dictionary, very simple. It is right there. It has a sequential set of instructions that brings about a result. Now listen to the language. What do you do when you get a corrupt file on the computer? Oh, you install a recovery disk. And what is its function? It restores it. Second step. And later, after I did the work in the big book, I understood that 10 and 11 were the viral scan. And it took me a couple decades to understand that, because I didn't understand the difference between the fellowship and the program. It never occurred to me when Wilson says in that second chapter that the fellowship, that common peril is just but one element in the powerful cement that binds us. It'd never occur to me when he says principles before personalities, that it was our founders' future hope that these spiritual instructions, these guidelines would hopefully have more weight and more impact than the opinions in the rooms. And I will never disrespect the fellowship, the love, the kindness, the welcoming arms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I saw it tonight how powerful that is. How important it is when someone remembers your name. They give you a hug. They invite you to a conference like this. How powerful that ist. But see, the fellowship in and of itself, it gives me enthusiasm. It gives me inspiration, it gives me encouragement, it gives me hope. It gives me brotherly love, compassion, fellowship. Some people even get relationships and employment here, right? But if you put an alcoholic of my type into a large group of people like this without guiding principles, my character defects thrive. I almost get sicker in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous without spiritual instructions. And what that means is I become, I'm untethered. I become more separate, more different and more alone. And what that means is separated from God, different than every single person here. It's called terminal uniqueness if you haven't heard the term. And alone. You know that loneliness in the heart of every one of us that we never talk about when we hit that pillow at night that really has nothing to do with the proximity or closeness of other people? It actually has to do avec my inability to connect. And you put a couple of drinks in me? I'm calling people from fifth grade saying I love you. God, I go right into amends. Get me loaded. Put a couple of drinks in me. I'm at one with the universe, right? I'm in peace with self and I'm connected to every soul in this room. I lose interest in selfish things and suddenly gain interest in my fellows. That transition that happens upon ingestion of alcohol is really what makes me different. It is not just the phenomenon of craving. what I know now as an alcoholic is that solution is very similar. That's why we talk about you can fall off the edge, but you cannot fall off center. And today I know these three pillars of recovery are somehow I need to feel protected by God, and I hope that doesn't offend you. The second is to be accepted by self. That means I no longer lean internal or external validation. I have what's called an internal locus of control, an unshakable foundation. And the third element is to be connected to a community. If I can feel protected by God, accepted myself, and connected to a community, I go from being the weakest link in my family, in my community, to 20 years later, the strongest link. And that is impossible for people like me. It is impossible. And I'll tell you this again tonight, that they say alcoholism is the only disease when treated that will actually leave the sufferer in a better position than if they never had the disease and I could have never believed that. I could never believe that. Until I became willing to take actions here, I didn't believe it. Until I became willing set aside some of my old ideas, and I got good sponsorship, I got good direction, and i got this gift of willingness. And I know now that willingness is one of the most powerful and indispensable qualities that any newcomer can have, the relationship between surrender and willingness. And I look back at 17 years of failure when I look at that walk that I did around Alcoholics Anonymous. What I see now is my defiance towards spiritual principles. We have a group in the San Fernando Valley, and they have on the wall the original manuscript of chapter five, and it says, rarely have we seen a person fail that's thoroughly followed our directions. It doesn't say path. And Bill obviously thought that was a little too strict for us. And he's right. I don't like directions. I don'T even like being told not to do something I already don't want to do, right? Sound familiar? No, I will argue with anybody about anything at any time. You tell me it's black, I'll tell you it's white. You tell him it's big, I'LL tell you IT'S SMALL. You tell ME TO GO LEFT, I go RIGHT WITH AN ATTITUDE. Oh yeah, and then I'll blame you for eternity. right that's why we say denial is an acronym it stands for don't even notice i am lying it's courtesy of mickey bush and i start to understand what that means it means that you can tell an alcoholic but you can't tell a munch oh you don't believe it try sponsoring somebody and what it means is you can lead me into the gates of hell but you can't push me into heaven and if you're new in the 11 tradition when we talk about attraction rather than promotion what that eventually meant for an alcoholic of my type is eventually I would come to Alcoholics Anonymous on my own terms not because sober living wanted me to not because the parole office wanted me to, not because DCSF wanted me to. I mean, on our side of the country, everyone gets sober for the trust fund. But if you're new here tonight, hope doesn't matter to someone like me until I'm hopeless. You think hope matters to me when I got a half a million dollars in the bank, hot girlfriend, brand new truck? You think I need hope? Please. and you know what's so funny is that god doesn't matter to me until my back's against the wall i can remember laying i'm laying on this gurney right now i'm bleeding out and i'm still conscious and i you know i've got the little paramedics over me with the paddles all i know is god right i mean if you're an alcoholic and you've got your head in that toilet every morning puking your stomach out with the dry heaves? Who prays more than trunks like us? If you don't relate, you don'T relate. I prayed more than anybody on this earth before I got sober. Every day I prayed, God please help me. And I get four days away from that last drink and now you've got to write this whole elaborate chapter called We Agnostics to try to prove there just might be a power in this universe? The arrogance that stands between me and surrender is absolutely astonishing if you're new. And I had to look at that, what it was that blocked me. That thing that grows between me and the power that we talk about here. Because it's not denial about the problem. Most of us don't have to think twice about whether or not we're alcoholic. We know It's denial about the solution, that these time-tested steps, this roadmap to spiritual success, this design for living isn't going to work for me. And you know why I think that? Because it wasn't my idea. Now, Dr. Harry Thiebaud, who's in the big book and one of the contributing members to Alcoholics Anonymous, to our literature, and an advisor to Bill Wilson, He says the four qualities of an alcoholic are grandiose, sensitive, immature and omnipotent And those are our finer qualities Stick that in your next Tinder ad And I start to see what it is that's blocking me There was a guy named Father Martin who used to do that chalk talk And he said, the four things that block a newcomer from recovery are wealth, health, youth, and brains. I had every single one of those. And every single One of those blocked me from early recovery. And later when I got to that second surrender, there's a whole set of ideas with resentment, dishonesty, selfishness, and fear that I eventually see will block me from God. And if I can be rid of those, suddenly I become empowered. And I know, we were talking about the Oxford group. They used to have these ideas, surrender, catharsis, restitution, service. They called it a conversion experience. But their idea back then was there was a word called enthusiasm. And what enthusiasm, the word actually means is God within, theos. And they believed that if someone could be unblocked, you know when someone's shut down, they can't look you in the eye? When someone became unblockED, suddenly the light would shine through them. That light that Abby had when he sat with Bill Wilson, when he said, that boy's on fire. You know that when you see it with people in AA. That suddenly they're lit up with it. And once they're lid up with nothing material will solve that problem. I cannot solve a spiritual problem with a physical solution. And I know now that if I become willing to take actions and Alcoholics Anonymous that I do not yet believe in. That this can happen for every single person here. That's why we get so excited about this. because we see it. That's what it means to be amazed, to see people come here. You know, you never hear people say, I came to AA on a winning streak. I did this work and now my life sucks. You never see that. You hear people come to AA the day before they died with broken dreams and broken lives and ruined marriages on the gates of death. And you see him come up here and testify that they have amazing lives because they became willing to face some very simple ideas, like Silkworth talks about, to follow some simple rules. Trust God, clean house, help others. We can say it a million ways. But we know without a doubt, and they'll tell you, oh, AA has no evidence-based results. Really? Go to a world convention. Go to a world conference. Go look at 60,000 people. Not on their dad's insurance, on their own money. And they fly from all over this amazing, beautiful planet we have. And you think about all the lives that have been positively affected, the families, the wives, the employers, all the people that have infected by those people and they can stand there and say, we have no evidence-based results? Come on. Please. Thank God we don't look like our stories. So one of the things that happens to me, okay, is I'm in one more treatment center. I'm 120 pounds. I stink like urine. I'm missing about three or four teeth. My fingers are dirty. You know how we look, right? I look like I just got out of a concentration camp, you know, and I'm in my nightgown with my ass hanging out in the treatment center judging the speaker. I mean come on, we're the only people that could be on the curb and look down at the world. I got two speeds, grandiose and comatose. And I'm strutting around the detox bragging about Robin Brink's trucks. I finally did my four step. It was a bread truck. And it was empty. So I'm sitting there in this treatment center with my fellow associates and this woman comes in on an H&I panel. H&Is stands for Hospitals and Institutions It's a committee that brings meetings into prisons, detoxes, treatment centers, hospitals. Anywhere where clients, patients, or inmates can't get to meetings. I know that for you guys the equivalent would be treatment and corrections. But our H&I, by the way, just a little plug, is about 250 people. And they're fighting each other to get on panels to talk to people in treatment centers that don't care. but i would say that h and i probably has one of the lowest relapse rates in all the recovery when i look at the cohesiveness of those people so this woman's on this panel she's doing her aa talk and at the end of her talk she looks us all up and down like this and she says if i could give you all the gift of recovery i wouldn't do it no and i looked at her and i look to my friend and i said What a bitch Because I didn't understand And then she said something that would later change my life She said the reason I wouldn't give you The gift of recovery The reason I would not give it to you Is because I wouldnít rob you of the journey And all these years later Iíve come to understand That that journey to recovery Just like that journey To surrender that each and every one of us has had to walk is personal. And if you're new, we can't give it to you. And I don't want to be divisive. I pray with all my heart that if you are new, you stay here. But you know what they used to say? They say a lot of things in AA. Well, they certainly did 30 years ago that they're scared to say now. They said stuff to me like, if you were in an AA meeting and you really don't wanna be here, don't worry about it, kid, you won't be. I mean, that's like rough. That's like the takeaway at sales. At sales, we have a thing called a takeaway way, like, you know, maybe this product isn't for you. You know, maybe you just go back to your cot and die, you know? We're not saying that. But I had to, they used to say, the old timers would say, if you don't like the old-timers in AA, don't worry about it. You'll never be one. That's rough. Let me tell you, I have these guys, friends of mine, we do this service work at the VA, and you get around these soldiers, and they talk about Vietnam, and they'll tell you that guys would come into Vietnam every week, and they would go out in body bags every week. And what you had to do if you wanted to survive there is you had find an old-timer that'd been there a month or two and hang with them. And if you're new here tonight, why would you go through an uncharted minefield without a guide? To come in here and think that you can do it on your own like I did for all those years is absolutely foolishness. I had to ask for help. I said, I'm not going to do this. I had be willing to say, please show me. It was so great when I heard Terry talk in that moment when she became teachable. When all that resistance was gone and that was the ingredient I needed. I became teachible. I called my sponsor, I chased him around, I begged him and when he saw that I was serious he took me through this process and I never looked back. I cannot tell you that all this time this amazing life was sitting right there and all I had to do was walk into it. It was sitting right next to me and if you're new that's available to anybody here. You know, I know now that that gift of desperation, it's a great acronym for God, the gift of aspiration. But for me as an alcoholic like a lot of us, it was almost like I had to get to a place in my life where my head couldn't get enough and my body couldn't take anymore. And if you know what that's like, if you're new, when my head can't get enough or my body can't take any more, I'm knocking on death's door. Then God means something totally different to me. It means grow or die. Then suddenly I'm confronted with two very, very rigid choices, just like the book talks about. One is go on to the bitter end, right? Blotting out the consciousness of my intolerable situation. Skid row's full of people like that. And the other one is to accept spiritual help. And it actually implies these are not easy choices. I mean, really? Go step over to a supermarket. and do a survey. Jails, institutions, and death? Happy, joyous, and free. What's your choice to be? It's a no-brainer. You step over to my cell in Men's Central Jail, and I'm thinking, how bad an alcoholic death? Can I talk to my parole officer, my counselor, my therapist, my MFT, get back to you on Monday? There's a saying, God cannot use a man until he comes to the end of himself. And I know people on Skid Row right now with livers out to here that are as yellow as a banana, and they still think that it's someone else's fault. And i just, i understand now that the longest, we always say the longest trip for an alcoholic is from their head to the heart. I know the shortest trip is from my knees to the ground, and i don't think that we can give that to you if you're new. But I had to search my heart, like our first speaker was talking about, because if I really look at my life, if I look at, like the Wilson says, the heaps of evidence, if I Really Look at That, I see that eventually I become cornered, just like Bill said. He can't live with it and he can't Live Without It. And I know now, if you are new here tonight, that really the bottom is the same for everybody. From Yale to jail, Park Avenue to Park Bench, The bottom, like in Dr. Bob's story, it's when I ask for help and I'm actually willing to receive it. A lot of people ask for health, but then it's kind of like, I don't want to offend anybody, but I throw you a life raft, right? And you look at it and you say, you know, I was looking for a blue one. How do you work with a guy like that? I really don't like the way you threw it. That's rough sponsorship right there. And I start to see it, if you're new, I had to look when I go through the book, when it talks about me being in full flight from reality, from an outright mental defective, and I argued with that. And my sponsor would look at how I justified, minimized, and rationalized that first drink in light of all that evidence. It was undeniable. Because we talk about the first two steps really being experiential. They require no action, but at some point it did require reflection. And eventually I saw that hopelessness where suddenly I was cornered. I mean, if you're new here tonight, we're the only people that actually want a reward because we ran out of a burning building. No really, I mean If you're feeling heroic Because you sacrificed your big Friday night You know To hang out with us This is the only place on God's earth Where they'll applaud Because you came in to save your own life Please Sitting in AA tonight wondering when the miracle's going to happen? You're in an AA meeting, Friday night, miracles happen. Yes. What a gift to have this recovery. I heard there's three prayers in this life. The first one is God help me. It's the alcoholic prayer. What's the second one? God give me greatest distraction on earth. But the prayer I'd never said was, God use me. And I get to be here with all you amazing people tonight. I could never have dreamed of my life being like this. You know, and I always tell people, I've been practicing in psych wards and detoxes for years and this is where I end up. I do a lot of HNI. I should, right? I'm an alumni from everywhere. And if you're new, we have these panels we do with the VA. We have a really big VA on the West Coast. Soldiers come from all over the country to get treatment there. We run these AA meetings and we get a room like 100 guys full of soldiers and we're running an AA meeting so they ask us to pick a topic. So I'm a smartass. I pick surrender. Room gets dead quiet. Especially Marines But as an illustration One of the greatest illustrations of surrender I'd ever heard Came out of one of those panels pertinent to AA And this is what it is if you're new If you ever watch a soldier surrender Like in a theater of combat The illustration's perfect You'll see the soldier take the rifle Very slowly lay it on the ground Sit down on the side of the road Wait for someone to tell him what to do, right? I mean, when you got 40 AK-47s pointed at your head, you don't throw down the gun with an attitude. No offense to the court card people. You're not sitting on the side of the road looking back at the gun because if you do, someone's going to shoot you. And if you're new tonight, I really had to understand my relationship with alcohol was very similar. It was almost like I was in the high school gym 20 years later. the band was gone, the lights were out. I'm in this cold empty room all by myself saying where's the party? There's no disco ball where I was drinking but that's a euphoric recall. That's the peculiar mental twist. That is the lurking reservation that Bill Wilson talks about so profoundly. That idea that precedes the first drink. That life had its moments and for those moments, an alcoholic of my type will forfeit my life to recapture and recreate the magic that I once found in alcohol. And it's a ghost. Like that saying, Oz never gave the tin man anything he didn't already have. I remember people saying, what are you trying to put in you that's not already there? And what I've discovered about Alcoholics Anonymous is that if you take booze away from an alcoholic Of My Type and you don't give me something better, I will never survive here. And I believe over a long period of time that Alcoholics Anonymous, these very specific ideas and actions outlined in the basic text of AlcoholicsAnonymous will replace tenfold what I search for in alcohol. To have a real connection with my community, to have purpose, to have a type of self-acceptance, like I said before, which is unshakable. And to feel an overall sense of protection in my life. It's a sense. It is not actually something that we can describe. But a lot of people and alcoholics will tell you that there is a type of thing here called the God consciousness. And I don't want to offend anybody. We are so scared. We will send all kinds of nasty stuff on the internet, right? But as soon as I start thinking about God stuff, I got to think, who am I going to offend with this, right? It's crazy. Crazy. My sponsor asked me, he said, Adam, I want you to buy a black suit when I get sober. And I said, why? And he said well, unfortunately, he got very serious. He said, if you stick around AA, unfortunately, you're going to go to a lot of funerals. And then he laughed and he said oh and by the way, if your drink again, at least we'll have something nice to bury you in. But it's brutal really It's brutal As much as that's humorous When you've lost somebody Like I've lost a lot of people in my family Behind alcoholism I know now that if you baby the alcoholic You'll bury him I need to hear the truth about alcoholism It is fatal, it is progressive It is chronic It's like being on a train And the destination is always the same The high may be different The bottom is the same The destination is jails, institutions, and death. That's what it is. And I can't see that. The problem is I can' t see it. One of my friends who's passed away, he used to talk about, he'd go to Mexico a lot on these holidays, and he would always talk about standing on this beautiful cliff overlooking the ocean. And he's looking at this strip of water that goes out from the shoreline, and he asks the guy in the hotel, What is that? And the guy that works in the motel says, Oh, it's a riptide. and he says it's horrible because every year we lose like 10 11 tourists they get caught in this thing and they they fight even though they're great swimmers they get tired and they die out there and he said well that's ridiculous it's only five feet wide it just goes out 20 yards why don't they just let go and what I see now looking back is I had fought I have a coin it says the greatest battle in a man or woman's life is not against his brother or sister. It is against himself. And to realize that later, having had a psychic change, having a spiritual awakening, that we want so desperately to impart that to people here tonight. That if one becomes willing, like I did, to take actions in Alcoholics Anonymous that I did not believe in consistently over a period of time, I would have a change in perception. I could not believe it, but I had to see that it happened in you. And there was a big difference between the act of surrender that got me into AA over and over and over again as a newcomer and the state of surrender that's keeping the old timers here. And it's a completely different concept. It's like looking at the light at the end of that tunnel. The old timer knows it's the way out. The newcomer thinks it's an oncoming freight train. It's like watching a swan glide across A pond of still water It's so beautiful, it's so effortless It's such a great experience It's just so graceful But what's that swan doing under the water? He's paddling like hell And if you're new we have a chapter in the big book Into action Right, have you noticed there's no chapter into feelings? I know the therapists are going to be offended No chapter into thinking I know There's going to be a chapter into sharing how my day was. No offense. We have a, I just get a great tradition to tell you about our home group. We have, this is going to offend half the room. We have an awesome home group that, what we do is we, the format of the group, my girlfriend's been there, is, you know, we talk about, we do a paragraph at a time and we talk abut how we would take a newcomer through that paragraph in the big book. And we say that if you do not have experience with this paragraph, taking a newcomer through this paragraph. We ask you to reserve your comments to questions. And then we say, this is not a meeting to talk about how your day was or your relationship. And we always have like four people walk out, but that meeting's still there. We still got our 60 people every week. And I learned how to sponsor there. I learned How to Sponsor There. I was just, I was in a meeting in Atlanta. I don't want to offend anybody, but I've probably you already done it. But there was a meeting like 300 people, and at the end of the meeting they said, will everybody that's willing to sponsor stand up? The whole room stood up. I was electrified. I mean, I felt like I was levitating. I said to the secretary, I go, that's amazing. In my area, only two guys stand up. And he goes, well, what we do here, Sonny, is when a newcomer comes into the room, we take him through the steps as a group. Three people will take him Through Steps one through three. Maybe Joe over here will do four through seven. Cole over here, we'll go knock on doors with him and make amends. And if he doesn't want to do it, we tell him to find another home group. I was hardcore, hard. But to see when I looked at the enthusiasm and I looked at that group and how and no one was over like 50. These were all young people and they were so excited and people were outside reading the book to each other. And somehow they had gone back to this old philosophy of taking each other through the big book, doing what the big book says. Prayers, promises, warnings, and directions. You could take four highlighters and go through the book like that, and it's startling what comes out of that. And I know, again, this is not popular in AA to talk about this, but you know, that's what happened to me. I got around a group of people that did some very strange things. Like they said, take the stock market, take World War I, and take golf out of Bill's story and ask four questions. Did you drink like Bill? Did you think like Bill? Did you feel like Bill, or were you as hopeless as Bill? And then I come to an AA meeting and I think, did I think like these people? Did I feel like these People? Was I as hopeless As these people, right? Did I drink Like these people. When I do that, all of a sudden, I become so connected to the people here, because suddenly I can take all that that's different, and I can look at the things that really bring us together. What is the common solution? And that was such a different way to look at Alcoholics Anonymous. this. It really was. And again, I don't want to bash the therapeutic community, but going through treatment 28 times, I started to speak a foreign language in treatment. Oh, you know what it is, right? It's called victimese. I don'T UNDERSTAND HOW THE DRINK BONE CONNECTS TO THE JAIL BONE. No, I need a class for that. What is it? Relapse prevention, right? It's kind of like, I met her in rehab. I can't believe she drank. You don't think that's funny? Write inventory. I knew he was a crackhead. Can't believe he stole my iPhone. So my book talks about making decisions based on self that later leave me in a position to be hurt. And you know what? Until I connect those dots, I continue to play victim. If you're new, that's why we say surrender or be dragged. And I had been dragged through my first couple years of recovery because of not only my ignorance but my unwillingness to take actions in Alcoholics Anonymous that I didn't believe in. And eventually, I got in so much pain that I had two choices. Go on to the bitter end, pick up another drink, or to accept spiritual help. And for me, part of that spiritual help, like the word spiritual is ritual. I became willing to take actions in Alcoholics Anonymous that I didn't believe in. And that was remarkable. It was remarkable to understand that these simple ideas, like the 10th step, we say if you're going to eat crow, do it while it's still warm, promptly. But I was told that 10th Step is almost like going to the ATM machine. My friend said, I said, what does that mean? He said, well, you go to the ATM machine, you put in the card, you put it in the code, you take your money. You put in a card, you putting the code and take your mind, you put in a card, and after a while, you have this epiphany. You stop doing it. And my friend said, why would you stop doing that? Do you realize what's going on behind the wall? I said, no. He said, the account's being debited. What happens is I continue to stay intent. I continue to do this nightly review. And what happens is, I start to become emotionally separated from the events that used to own me. Wherever there's hysterics, there's historics. Wherever I have an emotional response, I have history. And what happened is by taking these very simple spiritual actions consistently over a period of time, I started to get free. It's almost like normal people are intellect over emotion. They think, they process and they act, right? I'm exactly the opposite. I'm emotion over intellect. I act, process and then think. Oops, 10th step. Oh, come on. We're the only people that burn bridges ahead of us. right if you're laughing you're relating so I start to understand what it really means to have a psychic change to have a shift in my perception and once that started to take hold once I started to understand that phenomenon of continuing to take actions I didn't believe in in perpetuity what happened is I started to get free of this I startedと understand what I meant and if you like me as a newcomer, see, fear wouldn't keep me sober. Even Bill Wilson said fear sobered him up for a bit. But it was insufficient for me. Getting a third strike, living on the street, being homeless, losing my career, throwing away my education, did scared straight work for you? It went right over my head. Now, the book talks about the problem drinker. It actually illustrates the problem drinking as someone that can stop or moderate given sufficient reason. Big difference between a problem drink and a real alcoholic. Think about it. You get a problem drinker and a real alcoholic in a drunk tank. Remember the drunk tank, the rubber room for drunk driving? You've got two completely different philosophies going on. You've get the problem drinkers over here on one side of this cell thinking, why did I drink so much last night? I knew I shouldn't have drank so much. Why didn't I take Uber? Real alcoholics are on the other side of the cell thinking why did they take I-94? Now the court card people never laugh at that joke That's not funny Right? Should have stayed on surface streets You could have been home cleaning your pipe tonight Problem drinker's wife says Honey, if you don't stop drinking, I'm leaving you Problem drinkers Problem drinkor cleans up his act Doesn't drink in the house Gets a little visine Now, if my woman says, honey, if you don't stop drinking, I'm leaving you. You know what I'm thinking, right? I'm thinkin' about single life. I mean, come on, if anything got in the way of alcohol, if you're like me, it was out of my life. Alcohol was the love of my wife. It had me from hello. Oh, come one, it completed me. You think I'm gonna let go of the love of myife without a fight? I can't even let goof a bad relationship. Everything I let go of has claw marks all over it. And if you're new here tonight, today my relationship with Alcoholics Anonymous is identical. If anything gets in the way of AlcoholicsAnonymous for this drunk, it's out of my life. A woman, I don't care how beautiful she is, how in love we are, my soulmate. I know, I remember the first time I said that In an AA meeting There she was in the back of the room She's like, sweetie, gosh You really don't look like an alcoholic Why do you have to go to all those meetings All the time And then she's like You're not really speaking again Are you? It's the weekend, honey Then she tells me You know that AA It's getting in the way of our relationship So a couple months later We're still dating Now it's the big night You know the big tonight, right? Meet the parents' night So she gets me a suit and tie, dresses me up, puts me at the head of the table. Mom and dad, brothers and sisters, out comes the exotic wine. She's like, honey, you can have one glass of wine. Oh, come on. It's just a glass. It's a toast, sweetheart. Everyone's here. It's natural wine. Four more rehabs. I stole her purse that night. I went down to the hood and got an outside issue And she came to detox with a get well card I know, poor girl I think I got four cards from that one I know I tried to send her to Codependents Anonymous She wouldn't go You know why? She didn't have anyone to go with. Now, I'm sorry. I can always tell the Al-Anons. They don't think any of this is funny. Right? Can't stand to see us have a good time even here. When I look back at the shame and degradation of alcoholism, when I look at what happened to my family, What happened is, you know, I eventually, my mother had moved and didn't leave a forwarding address. I'm an only child when I was in an institution. And what's so amazing about this is that five years later, I came back into her life. And at that time, I had a job. I had home. I had car. I had relationship. And I came in that woman's life to give to her. And I didn't understand that she'd been around Al-Anon. We have a little Al-Alanon humor. You know how many Al-Alanons it takes to screw in a light bulb? None. The Al-Lanon detaches and lets it screw itself. So, the big problem with AA is it's full of alcoholics. And what I eventually had to do is I had to understand that in order for me to have long-term progressive, healthy relationships, is eventually I had to understand Al-Anon. I had understand that I didn't cause it. I can't control it. I can cure it. And to understand I had generational dysfunction in our family. My mother's brother committed suicide drunk. My father's brother committed suicide drunk. I come from a long line of suicide, mental illness, and alcoholism. And I'm coming out of treatment, and my mom's like, what are you, better than us now because you don't drink? But at the same time, she couldn't handle it when I did. And what happened is I started to apply these fundamental ideas. I startedto understand that it, in those three Cs, is this dysfunction. That I learned how to mind my own business and have some business to mind, but I also learned how to take the traditions off the wall and apply them to a relationship, that our welfare comes first. Our family depends on our unity. For our family's purpose, there's a loving God that expresses himself, that it's a democratic process. Neither one governs, that we do this as a unit and start to understand, do we really have an honest desire to be together? That intimacy is not two people playing different instruments in the same music, right? It's not two people looking at each other. It's two people playing different instruments in the same music, and I start to understand what autonomy is. It means self-governing, and as I went through those simple traditions in our family, what happened is suddenly we became very, very connected. I became my mom's best friend. I got to take her to doctors, to museums, and i got to be everything that she had hoped for. I get so lucky that when I did the work in the traditions, that I was able to apply that to my mom and dad's life. I hated my dad. My dad was never there for me as a little boy. And you know, I'd written all this inventory and I blamed him for all my failures. And I had a sponsor take me through this process to look at my dad's history. And what I saw was when he was five years old, his mom was hiding him under tables when Hitler was bombing London. When he was nine, my grandma died of cancer. When My dad was 14. He joined the military and fought in the Korean War, and I'm expecting this guy to treat me like Mr. Brady. And if you don't know who that is, go to Hulu. But what happens is when I started to let that go and I startedto understand that genetics loads the gun, that dysfunction pulls the trigger, and how to be rid of that dysfunction in our family, my dad, one day he looks at me and he says, Son, I am so sorry I wasn't there for you when you were a little boy. And I, like it said, like it said the theme tonight is I was amazed. I was amazing at the relationship we've had in the last 10, 15 years. You know, I dragged this old guy around the golf course. He's like 80 and it's like it's so beautiful that what I understand is forgiveness now is releasing someone from the prison of my own mind. It also means that somehow I had been the prisoner and eventually I was able to let that go and there was a lot of healing in my family because of that I know that doesn't work for everybody I know for some people there's so much dysfunction that the only thing to do was to separate but for me I started to understand even outside issues like I can get along with a communist as long as I talk about food kids and music I just don't talk about politics and it was the same thing in my familia when I started on a piece of paper what the issues were what those emotional hotspots are and I just don't talk about it. And I start to find out what they love and I start focus on those things. I developed really good relationships with the people that I loved in my life. And, I was able to set aside those things because if something was 90% great and 10% bad, I would try to fix the 10% and destroy all of it. And, what I've learned to do is to nurture that 90%. And, that's been really powerful for me as an alcoholic. I sponsor guys that pay more in taxes than I earn all year. They have these huge careers, these little tiny programs. I've never seen one of them stand the test of time here. What do I do for a living? I stay sober. What do i do for money? It's over there. I get those two things mixed up, I'm back in handcuffs. I get both of those things mixed up, I'm in an emergency room. Or I get a doubleheader, I'm handcuffed to a gurney in an urgency room. If you're new, puke smells the same in a Mercedes. and it took me years to understand when Wilson talks about separating the spiritual from the material how humility must come before intellect these very simple ideas and until I really understood what the problem was this solution wouldn't work the dog's opinion talks about some of us being entirely normal in every respect except the effect produced by alcohol right talks about able normal friendly people talks about several different types there, but that's not the type I am. I'm the type that's restless. Like, what's a new word for restless? Oh, ADD. But see, I really don't have ADD because if Ralph here had a couple million dollars in the trunk of his car, I'd follow him home tonight. I've got what's called selective interest disorder. I'll only interested in stuff that concerns me, right? It's enough about me. What do you think of me? Right? I don't think much of myself, but I'm all I think about. We all hear that stuff, but it's actually true. That self-centeredness is the root of my problem. I have an irritability, which means I'm quick to anger. I'm slow to forgive. I keep score in every relationship that I'm in, right? I remember everything I should forget. I forget everything I shouldn't remember. You know when you're on the phone with AT&T? That frustration And then I have this discontentment Which means the shine wears off everything right away It doesn't matter what I get I get a brand new car Save it all year for the car I don't even get it off the lot It's the wrong color Right? I get an old car I get another new house I'm not even out of escrow Hate the neighbors I just signed the paperwork And their dog I get a new job, I'm making more money I've ever made in my life I'm sitting in the office doing the math Getting ripped off So I start to see this undercurrent There's something more If alcohol is the problem The solution is abstinence But if everything the book tells me Is true Then I start To understand that A lot of people I drank with It's amazing, as soon as they put the drink down Everything works for them they fit in, they're part of, their career welcomes them back. They come to meetings once a year, never work a step, and their life gets consistently better. They've been serene since their ass hit the seat in AA. It's not my experience. My experience, every time I put the drink down, the first thing they say to me is, boy, you need to be on medication. Why are you so angry? Why can't you sit still? What's wrong with you? And I'm crying at dog food commercials. see when I'm not drinking I have a whole other set of problems they're outlined on page 52 when I am not drinking I am a prey to misery and depression when Iam not drinking I can't control my emotional nature when Im not drinking I can' t manage my personal relationship sound familiar? when I' m not drinking I' am full of fear when I Am not drinking I' M basically unhappy and the way that plays out for me in untreated alcoholism is I don' t fit in I' Am not part of you don' T understand me everybody' S in my way life' S not fair They're not paying me enough, for God's sake. I got a drink. And what's interesting is as soon as I pick up a cocktail, I intuitively know how to handle situations they used to baffle me. Right? Couple more drinks, fear of people and economic insecurity leave me. I'm buying the whole bar of drinks. Hell, I'll write you a check. Not only are you getting better looking, honey, I'm getting better lookin'. Give me a couple Vicodin, I can comprehend the word serenity and I know peace. Give me a little cocaine, I want to start a business with you. See, alcohol creates the illusion that my life is manageable. And if you're laughing at any of that, there's something really wrong with you guys. That doesn't occur in the normal or temperate drinking. Really, I mean, the AMA classifies alcohol as a depressant. Nine out of ten people, they have a couple drinks and they say stuff like, You know, I got to slow down. I'm feeling. I got work tomorrow. I have a couple drinks, and honey, I want to get married. I want to go to Vegas tonight. I'm trying to find the car keys I hid for myself before the first drink. See, for me, alcohol's a stimulant, and that's what makes me bodily and mentally different. And that's what the Al-Anons don't understand about us. They can't figure out why we drink. We can't figure out how to drink. They can figure out why you don't. And it's because alcohol does so much for me. honey, that you don't know. I don't care what it's doing to me. It does so much for me that I don'T CARE WHAT IT'S DOING TO ME. AND IF YOU'RE NEW, THAT WAS REALLY WHAT IT WAS FOR ME, THAT I DISCOVERED LATER THAT ALCOHOL IS AN ARTIFICIAL MEANS TO A SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE. THESE 12 STEPS ARE A PRACTICAL MEAN TO A SPECIAL EXPIRIT. YOU TAKE BOOZE AWAY FROM ME, YOU GOTTA GIVE ME SOMETHING BETTER. AND THAT'S WHAT THIS IS ABOUT. LIKE WE SAY, IT GAVE ME the wings to fly, and then it took away the sky. And self-knowledge won't work for me. I've had every relapse prevention class known to man. I can't make it past a liquor store, right? And I'm back on skid row behind a dumpster drooling on myself, reciting chapter five out of the big book. And the bum next to me is like, well, you shut up, man. You're ruining my high. And I's crying because I can get back here because I got a head full of Alcoholics Anonymous. I got a belly full of booze, and I'm separate, different, and alone one more time. And if you think that's painful, it can be just as painful to be here tonight, be a real alcoholic, and not work the 12 steps. Coming to meetings late, leaving early, not having a sponsor, not have any commitments. I mean, that's why maybe we should have a moment of rec... You know, we always recognize 30, 60, 90 days. We can have a movement of recognition for the person in their last 30 days. You can always spot them, just ask them how they're doing. I'm fine! I'm like, really? Why don't you tell your face that? No offense. See, but I know what it's like. I know what it is like to sit in the middle of a big crowd like this and make a decision to drink and not tell anybody. I KNOW what it'S like to be in all these happy people. And all of my life I was one decision away from a drink. And if you know that's all it is. It's not true. They say everybody's the same distance from a drink. I don't believe that. You got this guy here, he's got four or five commitments. He's doing service work. He got a sponsor. He working steps. He has got a home group. You think he's the same distance for a drink as this guy that's not doing anything? And I don't mean you, but... So being in a 12-step program and not working in 12 steps, It's kind of like staying in a five-star hotel and sleeping in the bathroom. We know a lot about bathrooms. So unless I really understand what the problem is, the solution won't work. And part of the problem for me as an alcoholic is when I stop drinking. What happens when I stopped drinking is the outsides get better, but the insides get worse. And the longest bridge that I will ever cross, the longest journey that I'll ever walk as an alcoholic in recovery is that little dash between the first and second half of step one. It's telling me I've got a body that can't process alcohol, but more importantly, I have a mind that cannot process reality, not to my liking. So I've gotta body that CAN'T drink and a mind THAT HAS TO? You don't think that's a dilemma? And that's what the normies don't understand about us. And for years I thought, because I drink, therefore my life's unmanageable. That's like looking at the tip of an iceberg and seeing the broken home, ruined marriage, financial destitution, the failing health, and thinking that's a problem. In fact, that's what the treatment centers were telling me the problem was. That's why I'm sitting in one more treatment center in my nightgown learning about my triggers, and I'm like, excuse me, counselor. Counselor, waking up is a trigger for me. I'm awake. It's like, sir, will you please go back to your dorm? Button up your nightgow. They didn't know what to do with me. And what I discovered in Alcoholics Anonymous over a period of time Is that for alcoholics of my type, the trigger's actually on the inside You ever notice when an alcoholic's not having a good day? You know when I'm not havinga good day When I'mnotgettingmyway Oh, come on, we're all like five-year-old kids here With old people's faces Oh, you don't believe it? Cross one of us I'll resent you for decades And your grandkids the problem in latin resentment means to refill it means i've taken an event from my past of consciously or subconsciously attached an emotion to it and then i refill it i rethink it i reenact it in every area of my life my life is like groundhog day it's a spiritual groundhog day and when they say unless i can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of my recovery i started to understand that famous line when carl jung is sitting with Roland Hazard. And he's a guy, you know, heir to Allied Steel, a blue blood that had all the money at his disposal. And Carl Jung says, you have the mind of a chronic alcoholic. I have never seen one single case recover. And He talks about the gates of hell slammed shut. And he talks about exceptions. And that exception was ideas, attitudes, and emotions that are once the guiding force of these men or women are suddenly cast to one side. And that is exactly what happened when I went through this process. That suddenly I looked back, and I thought, my God, brother, how did you ever live like that? That was the amazing part. And I was telling Joe, I was in an airport, get to fly around a little bit, and this guy comes running up to me. He's a jail guy, and he's all tattooed with a slingshot. He's like, you don't remember me, do you? And I'm like, no, sir, I don't. And he says, you see these two beautiful little girls? I said, yes. He says, you see this beautiful woman? I said, yes sir. He goes, he goes 20 years, 15 years ago, he says, you spoke in a prison panel and something you guys said changed my life. He said, these are my daughters. This is my beautiful wife. And we were crying. We're like these, like hogging and crying. It was like, that was one of the most pivotal moments in my life because, you know, you do service and it's like watering a garden, and nothing grows. And you water it, and all of a sudden, one becomes a great son. All of a suddenly, one goes to law school. All of the sudden, someone comes running up to you at an airport and says, it's something you said changed my life. And, you know what? My sponsor said, Adam, you have a big mouth and a good memory. That's all you got. He said, you can use it to swindle old ladies out of their iris on the phone, or you can do something that'll actually have some value. And he left me with that thought. He left me with that singleness of purpose, that he said if you're not willing to reach back in your community and try to help other drunks, you're going to die. Because I got here the day before I died. And that's what's so amazing about Alcoholics Anonymous, that, you know, I got her the day before I died. That is something that if you are new here tonight and you know that you are cornered, that you have these two choices. I hope you pick up this kit of spiritual tools. Get involved with the home groups in your area. Make it your business. Get a commitment. I had to walk into these groups like I own the place and ask for help. And that was something that I mean, it really, really became remarkable for me to understand that. And, you know, it said that if someone did to me what I did to myself, I hate to say this, but you know what? I would have killed them. If someone did to me what I did to others, I would have killed them. And then I come to AA and you want me to pray to God? I didn't want God to find out where I was. I've become bankrupt in those very simple relationships. When I really look back at the steps now, the steps really recreated those three relationships. Steps one through three, recreate and develop a relationship with God. Four through seven, recreate and development a relationship with self. Eight and nine, recreate and developer a relationship with others. Very simple idea. Ten maintains, develops, and grows my relationship with self. 11 maintains, develops, and grows my relationship with God. 12 through service maintains, develops, and grows my relationship with others. So coming out of this step a selfish, self-centered drunk like me is not only easily able to control my desire for alcohol that's right out of the doctor's opinion but for the first time in my life I'm able to live in harmony with God, self, and others. There was a great spiritual teacher he was asked what's the most important thing of all your teachings? He said love God with all thy heart love thy neighbor as they sell. And if you're new and God scares you out of AA, don't worry about it. If you're a real alcoholic, booze is going to scare you right back in here. So when one through three, I give it up. Four through seven, I clean it up eight and nine. I make it up 10, 11, and 12. I keep it up. Very simple. Einstein said, I would rather live my life pretending there's a God and finding out there isn't than live my light pretending there is no God and finding out there is one. One of the most amazing things, because we're talking about being amazed. My sponsor, my new sponsor, because my sponsor died of cancer, just such a beautiful guy, But my new sponsor goes, there's two kinds of people in AA. There's people that are amazed with it and people that are putting up with it. I'm amazed by it. I am absolutely amazed by It. Every once in a while, you see somebody walk in the back door of an AA meeting, right? Totally broken, willing to do anything. And you see that guy put a life together. I mean, I've got a lot of those stories down. I just, I never saw that coming. I never Saw That Coming to see people that come in so broken and so played with despair. Like Wilson said, taken from the scrap heap of life to a life better than they've ever known. That's what happens here. If you don't think that's amazing, nothing else was amazing. If you don't think that's amazing when I saw that so one of the things that happened to me and i'll close this I know we just got a little little time here I got out of that 28th treatment center and the guy who was running this treatment center He says to me adam Why don't you come back to the treatment center next week and tell all these people in detox? How you survived the whole week if you could make it And he acted like he didn't care. So immediately I got a big resentment, right? So, I mean, it was enough that for the next eight years I sat in two hours of bumper-bumper traffic from one side of L.A. County all the way to the other side to tell these strangers in the detox how I made it another week. And guess what? I was tricked into service. There's a poem in Notre Dame that says, I sought my God, my God I could not see. I sought myself, my soul I could never see. could not free. I sought my brother, and I found all three. And that's why we talk about nothing ensures immunity from drinking more than intensive work with others. It is our 12th and final suggestion, and it is through that that I found empowerment. So later, when I started, my friend goes, you know, you're going to become an expert at the doctor's opinion. I said, what does that mean? He said, well, you'll read a guy the doctor'S opinion. By the time he gets to Bill's story, he'll have a career, right? By the time he gets to there is a solution, he'll be in love. And by the time you get some more about alcoholism, he won't need AA, right. If everyone came your state, we'd be at a Coliseum, right, feel like 30,000 people here. So what I started to understand is when Bill Wilson went through his fourth trip through Towns Hospital, he's depressed. He's lost all this money in the stock market. He is looking all the damage in his life like a lot of us and and he's depressed, and he gets this idea, this idea that maybe if he goes back in to town's hospital and talks to some of the patients, he'll feel better. It's such a simple idea, and then he calls Silkworth, and Silkworth says with some misgiving, which means, Bill, you want to do what? But he said he allowed Bill to come in, and what Dr. Silkworth saw from 1935 to 1939, he said was absolutely amazing. That's the word. That's the word he used. He was a neurologist and a doctor. He was a physician. They don't say stuff like that. They're not amazed too often, but he was amazed at what he saw when he saw people like us that he had seen through his career die of alcoholism with very little hope. Suddenly, like Abby, all of a sudden the lights came on and he saw people that were empowered. And that's what this is. That's what This Weekend's about. It's about empowerment. It''s about being amazed. You know, there's a definition of hell. It says, hell is, you know, if God were to show me all the things I might have accomplished if I'd only believed in myself. And you know what? When I came here, if you're new here, I couldn't believe in myself anymore. I was so broken, I could not. But I believed in the power of AA. I believed în the collective consciousness and the love that I see like I see here tonight where everyone was offering me coffee, everyone was shaking my hand, People were inviting me to hang out at their home group over and over and over. If you're new, you have won the lotto if you're here tonight. Thank you so much for my life.