Steps 1 & 2 – Sandy B.

Well, good evening everybody. My name is Sandy Beach. I'm an alcoholic. How are you all doing? Thanks for inviting me out and I think this is a good idea to celebrate Bill's sobriety date. And I like the lineup of people that you have because I'm looking forward to listening to them. They're some of my favorites, and I've been asked to kick this off by talking about Steps 1 and Steps 2. I was trying to think how to start it on how important Bill thought these steps were, and it occurred to me that on page 60 of the big book, there's a line that says, being convinced we were at step three. So we have 60 pages devoted to one and two plus 20 pages in the Roman numerals that are leading up to, and I think we're up to 40 pages in the big book before we get to step two. So there must be something incredibly important that happens in the taking of step one. And I'm of the opinion that if it doesn't happen, happen, the recovery is nowhere near what it could be and in many cases doesn't work. And we can look back coming around five years or something and wondering why people with three years have gone by us. We can see how serene they are and they seem to be getting a much better handle on things and in many cases, if we look back, it has to do with the fact that we did not take step one in its entirety. That we did nicht sit down long enough to understand the full implications of the first step and what it means. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. And so that's what I'm going to try and do tonight, is to share what I think needs to be done in order to put ourselves in the maximum position to have the rest of the program work. I came up with a trick question, which is, there's many answers to the question, but I'm going to just say, give you mine. Why is AA a spiritual program? Now the answer I came up with, because it has to be. And you go, well why does it have to be? Because the disease of alcoholism requires nothing less. In other words, there's no non-spiritual answer to this problem. And that's saying a lot. In otherwords, it has to be a spiritual program. There's just no other way of addressing the situation that we have. And so we start out just reading the doctor's opinion. and I can imagine as a new I wasn't asked to read it when I first came in we were slow up in Washington I swear we didn't get around to the steps until about four years we just put the plug in the jug and went to meetings and there were different parts of the country that did that some of the old timers just said just putthepluginthejug and so I became familiar with a lot of this later on and became totally engrossed in the steps and the spiritual part and realized how much I had minimized my own surrender in the beginning. And I came in out of a nut ward with the straitjacket and the wristband and all of those things and still found myself thinking that my case wasn't as bad as yours, that it's just, I've got a problem, but I am setting it up in my own mind that it is not this urgent one that the book talks about. And so in that part in the doctor's opinion where Dr. Silkworth said, nothing less than a complete psychic change will ensure recovery. In other words, it's saying to the new alcoholic, we want you to sit down and think about your situation until you agree that unless you have a complete psychic change, you have no hope of recovery. Now, that's not what a lot of people own up to when we come in. Yeah, I got a little problem with drinking, but I certainly don't need a complete psychical change. change. That's an overkill for my problem. I need a good home group and a sponsor, and I'll get to meetings, I'll go to these conventions, and I'll be fine. I'll be fine, I'm be fine." And Tom and I were together not too long ago, and we're talking about nowadays compared to the old days, and in order to make this point, one of us came up with the fact that maybe 60 years ago in a good-sized city and in every town there was only one meeting. One meeting a week and people were staying sober at a higher percentage than people are staying sober today. So you imagine yourself, now how are you going to stay sober on one meeting a weak? Well, one thing, you're going going to be really looking forward to that meeting. That's going to be one thing that's going on. It's going to be a pretty important event in your life. Well, two more days and I'll be at that meeting and then the second thing is you probably find somebody else who's in that group and maybe meet him for coffee to break up the week. Mostly Honestly, you prayed like hell and prayed and prayed and now we have 6 a.m. meetings, 8 a. m. meetings noon meetings, 4 o'clock meetings, midnight meetings conventions, clubhouses, CDs, pamphlets on every single thing in the world We have a support system that is so widespread widespread, you don't have to hardly pray at all. See, I'm talking about your personal spiritual growth. You don't have to hardly pray at all, I mean, and when we think about that, let's say, just hypothetically, that it's It's possible to have fairly good sobriety, having put in a good effort in the beginning and then sort of allowing the support system to hold you there at a level of pretty good sobrietty. And Bill, I think somewhere quoted Abraham Lincoln as saying, the good was the biggest enemy of all of the best. And I think that the point of the program is to experience the best, which is a close relationship with a personal higher power. There's some sentences that make the point that I haven't memorized. And so sometimes I will take a big book or a 12 and 12 out and read what I'm trying to say. And that's because my memory is, it's getting embarrassing. But one of them is in there is a solution. The reason these are important things is this is the thinking process or the education process or whatever, the explanation process that ought to go into allowing each one of us to understand the nature of our problem. And it's funny that this is a chapter called There Is a Solution. And when you stop and think about it, a solution has no value unless there's a problem. Who needs a solution if you don't have a problem? So the whole point of this is how big a problem do we have? And the bigger the problem, the more need there is for a solution. solution. And so it is in the understanding of the magnitude of the problem. And so where Bill writes there is a solution, he gives us a little glimpse of what should happen to each of us. And as I read this, you've all read the big book a million times, this is page 25, see if we could all stand up and say, yep, that's that's exactly what happened to me. There is a solution almost none of us like, the self-searching, the leveling of our pride, the confession of shortcomings which the process requires for successful consummation. But we saw that it really worked in others and we had to come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living it. When therefore we were approached by those whom the problem had been solved, There was nothing left for us to do but pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools laid at our feet. And then, boy, there is no transition. He just goes, we have found much of heaven and have been rocketed in to a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed. The great fact is just this and nothing less. So this is sort of a summary of what is the essence of what happens to someone who tries this program from the vantage point of powerlessness. The great fact is this and nothing less, that we have had deep and effective spiritual experiences which have revolutionized our whole attitude towards life, towards our fellow, and towards God's universe. The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous. He has commenced to accomplish those things for us, which we could never do by ourselves. I mean, what a gift that is! to have a very personal experience where we are absolutely certain that our own creator is now in our hearts and is causing the world to take on an entirely new dimension, as Dr. Silkworth suggested, an entire psychic change. Well, when we hear all this stuff, we just go, Whoa! You know, what I want is to get my job back. that's what I want you say the doctor's opinion says you have to have an entire psychic change well maybe I'll get another opinion he's not the only doctor in the world I got dough I'm going to go around and I'm gonna explore explore. And I'm going to find somewhere a doctor who can show me a non-spiritual solution to alcoholism. And he searches and he searches. Now this is fictitious, just making it up to make a point. And He searches and searches and He finds a guy and the guy says, yes, I do and I've seen it it work? And I can give you both a short-term solution and a long-term solution. Well, I'd like to hear about it. He said, okay, short- term solution. You go up to a street corner where a cop is standing with no warning. Bam! Try to knock him out. Knock him right down. This should get you six months. And if you're in the jails in this town, there will be no booze and you will come out with six months sobriety, guaranteed. Now the problem is, after you're out, it won't be long before you're drinking again and you're going to need another short-term solution. And ifyou keep repeating this, you can get six months, six months six months and that's our short- term solution. solution. What about the long-term solution? Kill the cop. Now I make these things up to make a point, there isn't a non-spiritual solution to this disease. So now we're back Back to this Dr. Silkworth and entire psychic change, we're powerless over this. I mean, it's like we start squirming. We start going, you mean I have to reassess my own assessment of how bad it is? And I can remember my sponsor finally got me to be honest. And he just said, well, tell me about your life. You know, what is it like to be inside of you? And I said, oh, I want to make sure no one's listening. It's awful in here. You won't believe how awful it is in here, I'm afraid all the time, I don't know what the hell's going on, I know people don't like me, I can't decide anything, and I yell at myself all the time. I stay up all night long. I'm sweating. I'm anxious. I'm just going around, you know, and that was happening while I was flying airplanes. It's just, you're a piece of crap. Yeah, I know, I Know, but would you let up a little? I'm trying to land on the carrier. You're rotten. You're no good. It's Just Awful in Here. and then I had seizures and blackouts and fitness reports that were terrible and then I finally had a grand mal seizure and I've been locked up for six months in the nut ward I've never been so depressed I'm sick malnutrition I lost 50 pounds it's ah and he said well you know if you keep drinking it's going to get bad what he was trying to tell me was your problem is much worse Worse than the one you just described. I'm going, worse? Worse. So the point of all of this is to come to grips with the exact nature of being powerless. A lot of times we come up with the idea, and I did. I like to, you know, the person whose opinion I respect the most is mine. I mean, I listen to me when I won't listen to anyone else. I don't know about you all. And I remember coming in here and my sponsor was trying to have me listen to someone else instead of me, which I thought was preposterous. I know more about me than anyone else in the world. Why would I listen? Why would they listen to something else? And he said, well, they're not in a nut ward. I said, okay, I'll listen to them until I get out. Such is the resistance of our own self-centered ego to listening to anyone else except ourselves. And as we're taking the first step, we have to be led down the road where we're going to rely on everything other than ourselves. ourselves. As a matter of fact, the entire program is set up so that we rely on everything except ourselves. Self-reliance is gone. Self sufficiency, Bill writes about that all the time. We have to get rid of that. Well, what's going to take its place? Somewhere in the 12 and 12, I'll be the hole in the donut. Who will I be? And it turns out that that we have a problem so serious that we have to put aside the rules and regulations of the material world and start learning the rules and regulations, I don't call them rules, the principles of the spiritual side, which is what this entire program is. And since we've spent our entire life Life being controlled by all of these ideas from the material success, and they're all true. I look back on them, and almost every lesson I was told was true except one. I was taught that if I studied hard in school, I would get high grades. If I got high grades, I could get into college. If I studied hard in college, I could graduate very high in my class and I could get a good job. And if I worked hard at the job, I would get promoted. And if got promoted, I can work hard and be creative and then I would earn a lot of money. And when I earned a lot money, then I can get married and have a family and have two cars and be respected in the neighborhood and then buy a yacht and then eventually I'd have a great big house with a large bank account and all of that was true. But then came the lie. And then you'll be happy. See, happiness does not occur out there because if we were happy, we wouldn't need to buy any crap. And the whole system would collapse. So we've got to keep going. Don't forget, you're unhappy. Buy Adidas. You're unhappy, you'RE unhappy, You're unhappy, you're unhappy. Yeah, I am, I'm am, what's missing? Whatever it is, Jaguar, money, prestige. So those are the rules and we played by them but we did finally find out, but you don't get happy. And then we come over on this side and we find out what the deal was. was. And one of the books that Bill mentions in the big book is Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. And I remember trying to read that when I had about a year. If you have about a Year, forget it. Don't even go near it. It's too hard. This guy is He was too smart. He's talking in all different languages. He's quoting people. I mean, he was a great educator and, of course, was the father of psychology in the United States. And he didn't write a book. He gave a series of 19 lectures at Edinburgh University in 1892 or something like that. and they asked him to come over and all the intellectuals of Europe were going to be there and they said would you mind coming over and addressing religion and he talked to his brother who was a famous writer and he said I've always wanted to think about religion you know what I mean it was like the guy that liked to study things you know I'm going to study astronomy I'm gonna study this and I've almost wanted to study religion so that's what he did he just thought about it and studied, and then he went over and gave these lectures that went on. You know, they were long. And he went on and on to describe what he saw when he studied all of the religions and what has religion contributed to civilization. And to make a long story short, he basically concluded that the pomp and circumstances and the creeds and the hierarchy and the entire church structures and all of that had not contributed anything. Nothing. Sounds like a pretty bad rap, doesn't it? Well, he wasn't finished. He said, however, because of religions there have been a large number a number of individuals who have had profound spiritual experiences. And those individuals are the most precious thing that ever happened to mankind. People like Bill Wilson. One profound spiritual experience, and you and I are having a pretty good life. and so you know you can go back through Saints and different people or Gandhi I suppose and people like that and you see and so that was his assessment that that was the real value and therefore they're very important because these people these teachers these messengers have contributed the most valuable thing that has ever happened to the to our civilization It's just his opinion, but it's an interesting way of looking at things. And then he came up with a wrap-up at the end. And he said all religions can be described in two two-word sentences, the dynamics of all the religions. And the first sentence was an uneasiness. that was the first just two words period and he went on to say that men and women at their very best when they're doing their very best are still aware that there's something wrong they don't know what it is but they're aware there's nothing wrong there's missing, there's something wrong and they have an uneasy feeling about it so that was one One. Two, it's solution. In other words, that's basically what he said. So the churchers are going, you know that uneasiness? Yeah. Come here. We have the answer to it. We have The Solution. And so they had identified or he had identified identified that this uneasy feeling was really a spiritual problem. Now, out in the material world, it's not treated as a spiritual problem. I don't know how many diagnoses we make of that particular situation. I'm like, I don' t know, Doc, I just have this feeling there's something missing in my life. I've done all this and I don''t know, I'm feeling a little depressed, rest. I'm feeling a little this. Not many of them go, oh, that's the old spiritual uneasiness. You need to find a spiritual program. There aren't many that do that. And so we get many other answers to this because it is a material world and it would be a rare bird where you had had a top-line psychiatrist who would look at this problem and go, I can tell you what it is. You need a spiritual experience. But if we know AA history, we all know of one just like that. When Dr. Young looked at Roland Hazard, Richard, a millionaire who came to him because he had experienced everything that the United States had to offer. And unless he could find a way of staying sober, it was pretty clear that he was not going to be the success that his father was. And he was nicht going to have the wonderful life that his dad had, that he would probably end up in a sanitarium. and the consensus was that Carl Jung was probably his last hope because this was a psychiatrist who had branched out and had a broader perspective than Freud and had talked in limited way about spiritual things and so he went there and spent a year and Dr. Jung tried to cause caused the profound personality change. And at the end of the year, he told them that he had done everything he can for him. You understand if you drink again, you'll probably end up in a sense, oh yeah, I understand all that. And not long after Roland left, he was with friends and somebody said, you want a drink? And he said, yeah, that would be great. And he had a drink and boom, he's an alcoholic. We know that his life started collapsing. collapsing. And so he went back to Dr. Young and he said, I need more help. I don't want it to end up. What can I do? What can i do? And this is that situation that I was making fun of earlier. Where are you going to find a psychiatrist who's going to look at this guy, a millionaire, charge any fee you want? And he looked at him and he says the great words that are so helpful to our program. There's nothing I can do for you. That is called helping someone take a first step. You follow what I'm saying? You know, at the end of chapter, when we read chapter 5, we get to the ABCs, where alcoholic couldn't manage their own lives, and then B, let B say no human power could have relieved our alcoholism. Every time I read that, I think to Dr. Young. This is it. There's no human power beyond him, and that human power just looked me in the eye and said, there's nothing I can do for you. That just about rules out anything on the planet helping you. It almost ensures a sanitarium, even though you've got millions. That is not a comfortable position to be in. So Roland's pleading now. He assumed he'd stay there another year. Well, it's too final. You know what I mean? It's like you're walking up the gallows or something. But I'm a doctor. You're the great doctor. Yeah, there's nothing I can do for you. Zero. Nothing. But this is a real first step. This is taking it in spades. And then he said, Now I have read of a few cases like yours where people have found a spiritual calling, a spiritual program, a spiritual group of people and they have experienced a great spiritual psychic change and they are staying happily sober. So if I was you, I'd go try and find one of those. Now my point in telling this story is what if the first time that he came to see Dr. Young Dr. Yang didn't treat him at all but said hey you know what you ought to try you oughta try one of these religious psychic changes see you later in other words a suggestion was being made here's what you want to try he had not the rug pulled out from under him yet and he would have said oh man, that ain't going to do any good I'll go find someone who will spend a year with me in other words the point of the story is we had to have exhausted every possible alternative until we are willing to do something as drastic as seek a profound psychic change. That's what I get out of that. And Roland did, and he did experience a tremendous relief from the disease of alcoholism and passed the message on to Evie, and Evie passed it on to Bill. And so we had a marvelous thing that took place as a result of a psychiatrist saying, there's nothing I can do for you. Isn't that odd? This is helping us understand our powerlessness. In other words, as we are sitting here thinking, we're going, well, am I as bad as Roland? And the answer is yes. Yes, that's what being powerless over alcohol means. That's the type of first step that will give the most open mind possible to doing this transformation coming out of that world and now listening to the principles of the spiritual world or the spiritual program, whatever you want to call it. the other thing that Young wrote when he talked to Bill after Bill wrote him and thanked him for helping him start AA and he said oh yes I knew that alcohol spiritus contum spiritu I knew it was for alcoholics drinking was a spiritual quest that they really had a thirst for or a spiritual solution and found it in alcohol, and so I saw the connection and I realized that, and yes. Then he just makes a general observation about human beings in general, which I always found interesting. He just is saying, you know, every human being that arrives here has to deal with evil. Now we would say character defects, but we know what we're talking about. All the things inside of us that don't want us to have it turn out well. You know those things? Yeah, I know you'd like to stay home and be a nice father, but we have other plans. And away we go. We have a power greater than ourselves pulling us off in many directions. And so here's what Dr. Young said. and people struggle against that and they always lose isn't that terrible they always loose and then he goes with one exception people who have profound spiritual experiences and actually he says and or are in a society that helps them maintain that spiritual condition That sounds a little like Alcoholics Anonymous. It is the maintenance of this spiritual connection that is why the fellowship is so important, is to help us maintain it. Just having it is a life-transforming experience. experience. But I think as Bill had that in the hospital, it was almost like two things occur. You have this monumental new way of seeing things and at the same time you have this absolute urge to pass it on. I got to give this to people. I'm going to give these to people." It's almost like, yes, it's generous that I'm gonna go give it to people, but there's also an awareness if I I don't, I'm not going to keep it myself. You see what I'm saying about this psychic change or this spiritual awakening, whatever we want to call it. Bill called it a hot flash. Yeah, I had my hot flash up in the hospital. But we all know what he's talking about. He had something rather enormous happen personally to him in his life and that constituted his his own personal awareness that this was true. It's a funny thing about spirituality because C.S. Lewis is another great writer about spiritual things, and he makes this point that there's only one, you know, for the scientific amongst us, the scientists, and we want proof, we want this and that. He said, there's only one laboratory where spiritual experiments can be performed. That's inside of each of us. That's the only place that a spiritual experiment can be transformed. And so in a way, this is what is being asked of us once we are willing to accept the desperate nature. We are then said, well you see the rest of these steps? these will lead to a solution to your situation. Your job is to perform the experiment and see what results you get. So in a way, you can look at this almost as I'm doing a scientific experiment. They told me if I did this stupid inventory, I would start getting peace of mind. All right, I'll just keep track. I got none now. now. Okay, here we are, December, what is it? The 10th? December 10th. No peace of mind. 11th, no peace of mine. And then, hey, January 15th, little peace of mind. Just a coincidence. January 16th. Hey, what's going on on here? Are we seeing results from an experiment? So we're suspending our own control over the management of our lives due to the desperate nature of our situation, but we're still in charge of evaluating the results. And I always like to look at the big picture that way, That that's what the deal is. I was telling Sue before dinner that if someone asked me to describe Alcoholics Anonymous, the program, not the fellowship, the program of AlcoholicsAnonymous in two words, these are the words I would use. Seek God. That's it. That's it. That's the whole deal. But first, we're never going to do that unless we have to. You know, you can agree that that really is, that probably would be the most healthy, rewarding gift I could give to myself. But I'm not going to do it until I get a yacht. I'm Not Going To Do It Until... I mean, there's too much pleasure and there's too much out here. So the only people that we know, people like us, that do that are people who have to. So if you look back on the gifts that are given to us, the gift of desperation is the number one in my book. The gift of aspiration. So that now I suddenly go, go, it's not an option that I seek this. And when I say God, it is God as I understand him. It doesn't mean any definition. It means something bigger than myself, my own creator, whatever we want to fill in, that I have to get in touch with this. And then we can go back in the early pages of the big book and it tells us what the purpose of the book is. What is the main objective of this book? What is this book for? What is The Big Book? What is it supposed to do? And it says its main purpose is to enable us to find a power greater than ourselves that will solve our problems. And that gives us, right at the very beginning, a clue of what spiritual guidelines do. The finding of the power is the solution. That's a very important point to understand. The findingof the poweris the solution We are not given information on how to solve the situation. We simply seek this power, and as we do, problems are removed. There's a big difference between how problems are addressed. They are simply lifted out. I just don't have it. And I think the most classic example is my obsession with alcohol. I mean, you can try to not think about drinking on your own as hard as you want. You remember that? I remember doing that. Yeah, but drinking's my problem. All I do, I think about drinkin' all the time. They're right, they're right. But I don't want to cave into your solution, so I'm home coming up with... I'm going to teach myself how to not Think About Drinking. And I'm gonna start at 8, as soon as the clock gets to 8. So go ahead, beer, beer beer, okay, now. Now, here we go. Hey, birds singing, hi, hi hi, I'm not thinking, I am just talking, Iam just going Budweiser, ah, ok I'll start over again and then I'll go and any of you that have tried it, the harder you try to not think about alcohol, the more you think about it, it's just, it is there Ok, I get off work in 12 minutes 12 minutes, I can last 12 minutes I can quiet down there, ok, we are going to be fine, we're going tobe fine, 8 minutes Eight minutes, we'll be getting a drink. Seven, seven, seven. Hold out, guys. We're almost there. No seizure. Come on, come on, comes on. Then we go in the bar and we don't want anybody to know whether you have this problem. And we go, go ahead and wait on him. I'm not in a hurry. And down inside, there's a whole rebellion going on. What the hell are you talking about? We're in a hurry. And it's just... So, if you're new, and I know your sponsor is working with you, and you're on this step, the first step, this is the one Bill says we take 100%. No reservations. I'm powerless over alcohol and my life is totally unmanageable, meaning I don't know how to manage my life. I make decisions against my own interest. I'm the last person that should be in charge of me. I mean, that's a big admission. It is not that when you drink, you lose control. control. As Clancy said, I've heard him say it many times, that's not a problem. If that's your only problem then not drinking will solve it. You follow what I'm saying? It's like if you have an allergy to strawberries but you don't know it. But you know sometimes when you eat you have this terrible thing and you can't breathe and you're covered with blotches and you feel terrible and And after years of testing, the doctor says it's strawberries. If you simply don't eat strawberries, you will never have any more of those attacks. You'll be absolutely free of the problem. And you don't. You go to your neighbors and they have strawberry shortcake and you say, no thanks. I'm not going to have dessert tonight. That's it. You've got the information and you're on your way. You don't meet with other people who can't eat raspberries. And have a little group in your house. How'd it go today, Tom? Oh, it went okay until I got over to the ice cream place and this rubber, he jumped out at me. So that's not a problem. The fact that when alcohol comes in the system, it destroys us. That is solved by saying to someone, hey, we figured it out. when you drink everything goes to hell just don't drink oh thank you God that's very helpful really appreciate it problem solved it's all over now that's not that's the problem because what's going on in your head you're going ahead if I don't drink something's going to happen that I don' t think I'm going to like I'm going to be sober all the time I'm gonna be sober 24 hours a day 7 days a week all month all year all the time and there's never gonna be a break that's what not drinking means to an alcoholic it's a death sentence and then we go but look if you drink and then we can just go we can just say look women I know it's going to be hard but if you do drink let me show you I'm going to take you in I'm going to show you a wet brain I'm going to show you people in the midnight mission this is what is going to happen do you see yeah yeah God well I understand now that I'm an alcoholic my soul understands that I'm I'm an alcoholic. And that's pretty big acceptance. That's pretty big education. I have an understanding of my situation that I never had before. And with this newfound understanding, I'm going to be able to make it. And guess what happens? A month later, we're explaining our situation to our bartender where we still eat sandwiches. Fred Fred, boy, they told me about alcohol. I can't believe it. Do you know about alcoholism, Fred? Do you realize? Were I to have a beer, not only would my liver be shot in six months, but my wife will leave me in a week. And my boss said... I'll have a beard. And my Boss said... And the bartender watches in absolute astonishment as we explain exactly what's going to happen and drink the beer. So when we say you're powerless over alcohol, we mean when you're sober with no alcohol in your system and you know everything about it. You're still screwed. That doesn't help at all. Is that what you thought your situation was? Or did you think it was a little less than that? Yeah, I got a problem. But I don't have a problem that requires an entire psychic change. Now, why would we be thinking that? Well, guess who loses if you have an entire psychic change? Your ego. Your separate identity. You're on the center of the universe. And it is not going to go down without a fight. And as a matter of fact, it fights all the way through all the steps trying to get control back and never turn over our entire lives to some invisible power. I mean, that's what's in store if you would buy into this. So we start saying, well, it can't be true. This theory, I can't see a higher power. I can see that. And that's when we go, and the whole book does that. Oh, no, no. We don't talk about that stuff. You know who was the first guy to suggest that, that we don't talked about that? Dr. Silkworth. Bill was running around trying to sober people up by describing the mountaintop experience and how wonderful it was. Guys, you're not going to believe it. Forget the alcohol. You can have an experience like I did. I was on top of the mountain. I saw God himself. I heard the wind. And when I came out of it a few minutes later, I was free. I was a free man. I'm sitting here. It's the most, wow, it's just great. And nobody was wanting to stop drinking. They'd look at him and go, oh, that happens to me when I drink rum. There's no attraction to the solution without a problem. A solution has no value without a program. Problem, and Silkwood said, Bill, stop talking about that end of the equation. Go to the hopeless nature of the problem. That's how people will come in. And, of course, that's what we do to this day, and we have 60 pages plus 20 describing the first two steps, steps, making sure that when we finish step one, we know in our gut that unless I have