Steps 10 and 12 – Sandy B. – Saturday Morning Live – 1994

Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome to the Saturday Morning Live group of Alcoholics Anonymous. My name is Sandy Beach, and I'm an alcoholic. How are you all doing this morning? It's really good to see everybody here this morning, and as we do every week, why we want to start out by welcoming anybody who hasn't been here before to the Saturday Morning Live group. We just hope you get something out of it, hope you enjoy it, and we ask you to keep coming back. And if you're new to AA, if you're just arriving in our fellowship, well, I just want to tell you that everybody in this room wants you to make it. They've all been through exactly what you're going through right now. We all sat out there at these meetings in the very beginning wondering how we got here and how do you get out of here and why do I feel so nervous and afraid and I don't think I'm going to fit into this outfit and all of those things. And besides... They keep talking about not drinking, and I don't think that's a good plan, and so all of those internal conflict and everything, if you will just stick around, believe us, all of that is going to calm down, and there's a lot of wonderful things in store for you. You just can't see them yet, so take our word for it and disregard your better judgment and stay here. That's all. That's what we'd like to tell you. And then later on, you can make the judgment. It's customary to start our meetings with the preamble, Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problems and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership. We're self-supporting for our own contributions. AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, or church. We're not allied with any sect. We're not allied with any sect. We're not allied with any organization, politics, organization, or institution. Does not wish to engage in any controversy. Neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. And you'll hear that read at just about every meeting, and it serves as a wonderful reminder to all of us exactly what AA is and what we're all doing here this morning and at about 250 other AA meetings today and every day. And we'll get more information on AA in the Washington, D.C. area. So there's a lot of meetings, no matter where you live, where you work, in the morning, noon, nighttime, men's meetings, women's meetings, you name it. And so there's just plenty available. We've got a couple of announcements to get out of the way. Okay, if you haven't been here before, let me say that we run the meeting a little bit different than most of our meetings. It's done in a classroom setting, and we talk about the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. if you're new you'll find that most of our other meetings are speaker meetings or discussion meetings but this was started this type of meeting was started 25 years ago somewhere in there and it was the thought that it would be good to have a place where you could go and know ahead of time that somebody who's been in AA a long time was going to share on the steps and therefore you could just sit back and relax and you wouldn't have to worry about what you were going to say in order to look smart when it was your turn during the discussion meeting or whatever and so this meeting started I guess we're coming up on 18 years somewhere in there and we've been doing that ever since I think the other meetings all go through the steps three at a time but we shift it over to one at a time so the format here and we're on step 12 today and that will complete the cycle of the steps then we'll have one week on the traditions of AA then we're going to try this question and answer thing we'll see whether that works or not then we have two weeks on the history of AA and then we have we talk about how this amazing organization got started and all the funny stories back in the 30s and 40s and then we start all over again and so it takes 15 weeks to run through this whole thing being on step 12 today which is sort of the wrap up of our whole program gives me a chance to kind of review the whole package here this morning so it's a big mouthful to get through talking about our 12th step but in order to even make a beginning at that let me just start because there's always new people in attendance and tell you a few things about our steps and then start talking about step 12 I'm sure if you've been in AA even a week you have seen the steps written down somewhere somebody gave you one of these little cards with a serenity prayer and gave you some literature and everywhere you go you hear people talking about the steps and perhaps you've even picked it up and glanced at it and looked at it and said and like the rest of us you probably didn't relate to it at all you know you just read it and went well that's very interesting but I've got a lot more pressing problems than this and I'll get around to that later on it's very hard to see the relationship between those steps and your own personal situation today and that's not unusual that's very that's what happens to all of us but those steps are alcoholic anonymous that's what this whole program is are those 12 steps that is what individual members of alcoholic anonymous do in order to stay sober and happy and you have to have both of those things happen I'm telling you that right now if you're new it is absolutely essential that you get sober and get happy with not drinking because if you don't it's going to be just like being on the wagon it's very hard to stay sober and miserable for any experience that's what we did before we got to AA we tried to just not drink and make a big sacrifice and we walked around and people would see us and we'd go I'm not drinking and you could see the neck muscles and you're and you kept track at all times you could say I haven't had a drink in six hours I mean it was just like a bomb getting ready to go off and it was Saturday night and you watching everybody else's drinking and I'm not and it was full of self pity and I'm not drinking and all that that just cannot go on for any extended period of time and so the steps are designed to enable us through the power of these steps in this program to not drink and to get very happy and comfortable with not drinking and that is why they're so important to do now in the very beginning we just hold on and not drink and it's tough but as we start working this program and going to meetings and talking to people and talking with our sponsors we will be given this wonderful gift of sobriety and at first you may not recognize it as a miracle you may not even see what has happened because it happens so subtly but very often what's going to happen is you've been coming around to these stupid meetings for a couple of months and you know you're not even telling anybody you secretly like it a little bit because that would be uncool but something is going on and you sort of have met some people and they're nice to you and they seem to understand you and the more people talk the more they seem to have had the same problems that you've had and then something very unusual happens and maybe you've been coming around two or three months and all of a sudden it occurs to you that you forgot to worry about drinking last week you forgot to worry about drinking it's almost like you had a mental breakdown or something my God because you have been obsessing about alcohol for years and all of a sudden you forgot to obsess about alcohol last week and you almost feel like writing down don't forget to obsess about alcohol I mean it's such a part of our nature it's hard to believe that it could be lifted out but that is exactly what a spiritual solution looks like something that has been bothering you for a long time stops bothering you and you don't understand why it is very different than the intellectual solutions we've been used to before we came here we're used to problem solving instead of problem removing we like to figure things out we assumed we would come here and learn all about alcoholism and we would study and learn what it does to our liver and what it does to this and what it does to that and instead we come in here and we surrender it out and we surrender it out to alcoholism we just surrender to it we don't have to learn anything about it except it's going to kill you if you keep drinking it doesn't matter why we started or what causes alcoholism it's irrelevant in the spiritual world because we're simply going to work towards its removal the one thing we know about your alcoholism is it bothers you or you wouldn't be here it is causing you a problem and that is your alcoholism your alcoholism your alcoholism your alcoholism whatever it is doing to your life it's probably very similar what it did to everybody else's life but it's causing a lot of problems and this program will show you a path to follow that will cause those problems to stop happening without figuring them out now a lot of times our intellect doesn't want to accept this kind of an answer I don't like stuff just being removed I want to figure it out I don't like fancy from the West Coast talks about a tip on you know an alcohol except for an alcoholic who was on the Titanic is standing up there as it's going under in the lifeboat is sitting right here and he goes I'm not getting off this baby till I figure out what happened you know what I mean I want to know what caused this crash then I'll get off then I can let go of it we have a slogan let go and let God it works a hundred percent of the time we just don't want to let go you mean simply let them off the hook when we're talking about resentments to other people? Just let them go? Wait a minute. I've got a judgment here. I've got to think this through. I don't want to just be free of all my problems. I want to hold on to them until I figure them out. You see what I'm saying? Our intellect isn't used to this type of an approach where you can be set free from your problems without figuring them out. We like to analyze everything. We like to figure everything out. You will never figure your alcoholism out. They've been trying to figure alcoholism out since I got sober and I don't think they're any closer today than they were 30 years ago. I think trying to figure alcoholism out has been about similar to figuring sadness out. When they come up with a cure for sadness other than a higher power, then I'll know we're on the track. Other than drugs, we all knew how to cure sadness back when we were drinking. So anyway, we all have this in common and we come in here and we are given this plan for living called the 12 steps. And the main thing, we've talked week after week, the main thing this plan does, it stops your plan. We have a thing in our chapter 5 where it says, Old ideas availed us nothing. You and I put together a plan for living before we got here. And it was a combination of our childhood and things we learned in school and things we learned from other kids and things we learned off of bathroom walls and things we learned in movies and things we learned in church and all kinds of stuff got put together in our head and that was our perception of the world and we put together some rules for living and that was your little code of how to live. And most of us were proud of that. We were proud of our code because we put it together. But what's pointed out when we come into AA, we don't analyze your code at all. Matter of fact, we don't even want to hear about it. What we do observe are the results of your plan for living. And generally, they aren't too good. You puke every day. You have no friends. You're afraid of your own shadow. Your family doesn't want to speak to you. The police are looking for you. Bill collectors. They're looking for you all over the place. You're thinking of suicide, but you want to hold on to the plan. You see what I'm talking about. Actually, it's basically a pretty good plan. It's just got a few little areas that need... And from our perspective, we feel you should get as far away from that plan as you can. That's our feeling. And so when we start this, the idea of trying to live by the 12 steps, one of the great things that happens is we stop doing the old plan. Just stop living that way and try this. And so that's one of the big pluses. The other thing is, this plan gets wonderful results. So you don't compare the theory of your plan for living with AA's theory. We compare the results of your plan, namely you, with the people in AA who stand up and tell you, I've got three months, I've got six months, I've got five years, blah, blah, blah. And tell their stories. It's a big show and tell operation. You get to live and look at the results of the plan of AA at meetings all the time. So it's not that big a leap of faith at all. And then we make the statement in chapter five, if you want what we have, this is how you get there. It's through these 12 steps. So that's what the steps are. They're really the heart of the whole program for individual members of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now the meetings and the sponsors and all the rest of these things, this is the atmosphere within which we encourage and push each other to keep doing the steps. Because no matter how long you've been sober, the steps will never look like they work. They don't look like they work. Meetings don't look like they work. Church doesn't look like it works. It doesn't look like I'm going to walk in there and then when I walk out, I'll feel better. You know what I mean? But on the other hand, a bar didn't look like it should work. Did it? Here's this crummy place to people who don't drink. Do they wonder why people go into bars? Why would you go in there? Why would you go in there? Wonderful things happen when you go in there. That's why you go in there. I go in there to get a power inside of me that makes the world look wonderful. Why wouldn't you want to go in there and make the world look wonderful? Well, the same thing happens here. It just doesn't look like it should work. Neither do these steps. Now the only other difference is this takes longer to work. It's not an instant change like alcohol and drugs work. Where you went in and go, BAM! So you have to be patient. But it will work. It is promised in our promises that all of these things will come to pass and it won't take that long. It just takes a complete willingness to let go of our old way of living and try this new way. So now having said all that, we get to the doorway into this whole thing. And you've heard it said it's a spiritual program. So that scares most of us right back out the door because we're not very familiar with anything spiritual. We may have had some religious bad experiences as children or something and we've long since abandoned that. Or we stuck with it and are convinced that it doesn't work because we've been drunk all this time. So we have old ideas about religions but we have very little knowledge, most of us, about spirituality as separated from religion. And this is a spiritual program. There is no religion here. Religions can teach you about a whole lot of things. There is no religion here. There is no religion here. There is no religion here. There is no religion here. We don't have a higher power and tell you what this higher power is and what his name is and the history of it and all of these things. In AA, we don't have any of that. We just have a higher power as you understand him. So it's going to be up to you to determine what this higher power is. But what we have are some time-tested principles that are common to many religions, philosophies, and the early experience of AA itself. And these are the principles that we have. And these are the principles that we have. And these are the principles if followed will put you in touch with a power greater than yourself and then you can explain to yourself what this power is. But you will feel it. You will experience some changes in your life that are not attributable to anything other than spirituality. And if you choose, you can try to explain it and go back to a church and you'll have your explanation. For many of us, it remains the power of the universe that gave us AA and we're not as curious about what this power is. We know this power by the results that we've achieved in our lives. And so if you ask me what's your definition of my own personal higher power, I would tell you, well, it gave me this and it gave me that and it gave me that. So my higher power is whatever gave me all this. So you can see we don't have to get hung up on is this higher power right and that one's wrong or all of that. We just say the reason and we talk a lot about this. AA does not try to prove the existence of God. You don't see us trying to do that. We don't try to convince anyone of the existence of a higher power. I'll tell you what we do do and we're very good at this. We specialize in convincing you of the need for a higher power. That's our position and we have found that as soon as people are open to the idea of a higher power because they need it, they need it. Because if there isn't a higher power it's all over. We talk often about our first and second step being powerless over alcohol being very similar to a person who for whatever reason maybe they were born into a family of parachute riggers and they watched them putting the silk in there and they saw that sometimes they were drunk and sometimes they were smoking and sometimes they were screwing around and they just came to believe that it wasn't safe to use a parachute because they saw them packed. So they were sort of non-parachute believers and they went through life and people would say you want to go parachuting? No. No goddamn way. I'm never going to do that. I've seen them packed. I'm never going to ever, ever have my life rest in the balance of a parachute until someone threw them out of a plane one day with a shoot on and you're on your way down and you're about to hit and someone suggests why don't you just pull the ripcord anyway? Even though you don't believe anything's going to happen what have you got to lose by pulling that other than being wrong? Some of us would go ahead and hit because we wouldn't want to look bad. Ha ha ha ha! Bam! You didn't see me checking out and change my mind, did you? And we think they're going to write a rock and roll song about us. What a guy, hung in there all the way to the end. What a hero. What a... And of course they do write a song and it's called What an Asshole. You know, so... So this is how our spirituality begins in AA. We come up against a situation in our personal lives through our drinking where we suddenly realize we're going to... get hurt real bad if this doesn't stop. We're about to hit a bottom and that's what our first step says. You're powerless over alcohol. Your life is unmanageable. And when you say you're powerless whether you understand it or not what you have said is unless there's a higher power I'm screwed. That's what powerless says. It doesn't say I have to go study and learn a bunch of things or it's all over. Because that's not what it says. It doesn't say you're ignorant about alcohol. It says you are powerless over alcohol. And so unless something comes along to take care of that you're going to keep drinking and you're going to die drunk. That's what being powerless is. So it's a good time to change your mind about a higher power under those conditions. And so that's why we specialize in convincing people of the need for a higher power. And we talk on and on about that. That's the first step. Because if you don't take it 100% none of the program will work. It just won't work because it's not an intellectual program. It's a spiritual program. And if you don't totally surrender if you aren't 100% alcoholic if you think that unlike all the rest of the lowbrows in this room you have sort of an alcohol situation. You see what I'm saying? The rest of them I can see. They're all screwed up. What I have is sort of situational maladjustment to alcohol due to unusual childhood circumstances and coming from New England. So that could be whatever the hell it is. So you sit in the middle of meetings sort of separate from the rest of the crowd but you don't tell them that because you don't want to upset them. So you sit in there but in your mind you're just a little bit different. You're almost the same as everybody here. You're almost an alcoholic. You're almost, you almost need a higher power. You almost need a sponsor. You almost need to do these steps. And you almost get sober. You just miss it by that much. And of course almost getting sober is like almost having a parachute. God, you know I almost took one of those damn things. It's the same as never having heard about AA. Almost. And so that's why we say we have to do that first step 100%. Totally surrender to the fact that we're powerless over alcohol. And that means we're powerless when we don't have any alcohol in our system. And a lot of times we have to explain that to new people. The problem is not that when you drink you get all screwed up. The problem is when you're sober and you understand everything there is about yourself and your problem you still take the first drink. And there's nothing that can stop you from taking that first drink. That's what being powerless over alcohol is. Alcoholism occurs when there's no alcohol in your system. Alcoholism occurs when there's no alcohol in your system. There's a drop. Hasn't been any alcohol in your system for a week. Now alcoholism attacks. And it says to you go have a drink because life is so unbearable you need relief from life and besides this time it's going to be different. This time you're not going to get in all that trouble. This time now you go in and you get all screwed up again. And so that's what being powerless is. And believe me there's no way to get out of that on your own. So we surrender to that change our mind about a higher power and then our whole AA journey takes us to step 12. The whole point of joining Alcoholics Anonymous and moving all the way through the steps is contained in two words in the beginning of our 12th step. And the beginning of our 12th step says having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps. We tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs. And the key word is spiritual awakening. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps. So the steps starting right from the beginning are designed to do one thing to cause a spiritual awakening. So what do we mean by this? Is it some great bush catches on fire in front of your eyes and you go whoa look at that. No. That is not what is meant by that. What is meant by a spiritual awakening is a profound personality change. Where a person goes from being a frightened angry resentful negative person whose view of the world is one of great turmoil and turmoil into a very positive person whose view of the world is very positive bright happy and joyful. And nothing in their lives changed. They still don't have a job or they still are going through a divorce or they still haven't solved their financial problems and they're still going to the doctor for some health problems but for some unexplained reason they're happy about it. They're positive about it. So the person changed from this one personality to this other personality and there's no external reason for this change so it must have taken place inside. A tremendous dislocation as Bill wrote about Carl Young was trying to cause that in Roland takes place as a result of these meetings and these steps and we call it for lack of a better word a spiritual awakening and it comes about as a result of taking these steps. So Bill writes in our 12 and 12 that the rest of the steps are how we prepare ourselves to receive this gift because it's absolutely a gift it is just given freely to anyone who makes themselves ready to receive it. I think it's been there waiting to be handed to each one of us we just were not in a position to receive it. It reminds me a little bit of the mail service. You know if you live out in the country or wherever it is and you want to have mail delivered to you you've got to put a mailbox up and they got certain standards and sizes and put on a post and put on the road where the guy drives by and you have all this and maybe an alcoholic might just say forget that just throw it on the lawn but that's not how the deal works. If you don't have this mechanism for receiving it then they won't deliver it to you and we may claim I never get any mail. No one ever writes to me. You see what I'm saying? Everyone else gets mail but I don't. And so when we close ourselves off spiritually to all the wondrous wonderful things that spirituality can bring none of them can get in causing us to honestly feel they don't exist. No higher power. I've never seen any higher power. I've never seen this spirituality. I don't feel any joy come roaring through my life. I don't think that stuff is real. And from your perspective my perspective before I got here it wasn't real. I never had a glimpse of any of this. So it caused me to think that people were making stories up or that they were different than I was or something crazy was going on. But I have a thing called free will which allows me to block out anything even a higher power. I can block out but I can't block out the need for a higher power. Even as I block out a higher power the pain of not having a higher power inside of me magnifies. And I think a lot of times that's why a lot of us alcoholics think about committing suicide. That something inside of us is telling us that life is unsatisfactory. That something is missing in our lives and we can't go on without it. And we misdiagnose what's missing. And we think it's sex or we think it's another relationship or we think it's money or we think I've got to move to Hawaii. If I was there man this pain would be gone and it turns out that we misdiagnosed the pain and the pain was spiritual pain. What was missing was a higher power. What was missing was this whole part of ourselves, the spiritual side of ourselves, was being left empty and it felt like it was money and it felt like it was sexuality or it felt like it was power or whatever it may be but those were all wrong because many people who have achieved these other things, lots of money, they still talk about it's still not there. And even in those circumstances with everything you could want, people walk around miserable because they haven't addressed what's really missing. So that's what the steps are designed to do is make us eligible or open, if you will, to receiving this. And as we study our steps we find out that all the rest of the steps talk about removing obstacles to the flow of a higher power. That's what inventories and sharing character defects are. They are blockages to the entry of a higher power in our lives. And so we got to set about figuring out how to get them out of the way and how to keep this channel open so that we are never deprived of a higher power coming into our lives. And when resentments, when things come along that upset us and we cut the channel off, we start blaming it on other things. This happened and that happened. And really all that happened was we got cut off from our higher power. Almost like getting cut off in a bar. That's the worst thing that can happen in a bar, right? Oh yeah, you can come in here anytime you want. No drinks. Why would I come here? I mean, man, you're cutting me off from, you know, it's kind of like going in and visiting somebody in the hospital and standing on their oxygen hose. Hey, how you doing, John? Oh, I'm doing pretty good. Doing so well. It's good to see you, you know, and after a while, what's happening? I don't know. I don't know. So call the doctor and tell them my blood pressure is going up. They've got all these symptoms and they're trying to diagnose the whole thing and finally go, oh, sorry, stepping on the hose here. But all these other problems look like that we may need several new specialists and all kinds of things. The complete misdiagnosis of it is stepping on the hose. And the same thing here. We just go around diagnosing all the problems that we have. I got this, I got that. That's not it at all. Stepping on the hose down here. Get your foot off of there. And that's where we come back to meetings. And when you study step 12 and Bill talks about all the different problems that can come into our lives, there's one answer. It just keeps coming back to this one answer. Oh, just grow more spiritually. Grow more spiritually. That's what first things first means in our slog. It's to learn how to put spiritual part of our lives ahead of everything else. What it's suggesting is if you will change the way you live to make a top priority of always checking your spiritual condition first and then take another look at all other areas of your life, you'll find those other areas straightened out by themselves. That they weren't the ones that needed attention. That this was the ones that needed attention. But it doesn't look like that. It'll never look like that and that's why we keep coming back to the meetings to remind each other of this. I always tell a story about when I first got sober and I guess I had two years of sobriety, went to a meeting every single night and the Marine Corps saw fit to release me. I was making a career. I had 14 years of commissioned service and they just said goodbye. Well, I thought I got screwed. I mean, I really thought that if you went to a meeting every night for two years, this shouldn't happen. That I should have turned my life around. So I went to one of these discussion meetings and you know how the leader has a topic but he always says, is there anybody here who has something? I got my hand on. I never raised my hand in one of those places but I was so damn upset with this injustice that I decided that I was going to bring it out here in the AA meeting so I raised my hand. Yeah, I got a topic. Getting thrown out of the Marine Corps, that's my topic. So the group sort of coughed a little bit and finally some guy raised his hand. Getting thrown out of the Marine Corps, serenity prayer. That's the obvious answer to that, serenity prayer. I remember giving him that look, you know, what about a god damn job? You know, I need a job. You know, I don't want to hear this, whatever that kind of advice you're giving is, I need something better. practical here, you know, serenity prayer. Whoa, whoa. So anyway, next person has their hand up, thrown out of the Marine Corps, I would double up on your meetings. You got a lot of time anyway. Double up on your meetings. Double up on the meetings. Next person said, oh, thrown out of the Marine Corps, work with new people. Get your mind off yourself. Get a new person and just help them with their program. Thanks a lot. Last guy, oh, thrown out of the Marine Corps, prayer of St. Francis. Right out of the 11th step, prayer of St. Francis. Perfect thing for getting thrown out of the Marine Corps. I sat there and took all this in and said, I'm getting a new home group. That's what I said. You know, I said, the predominant thought in my mind was, I don't think I explained the problem right. I got to go home and take a course in communication because I obviously failed to communicate my problem or they never would have given me that kind of, what is that that they just told me? I mean, it was just crazy. They told me that, well, so another eight years went by. I never raised my hand at a discussion meeting during that eight years. I got straightened out and got a job, got moving along. All of a sudden, again, terrible things are happening. I'm suddenly being divorced. Another guy's moving in. I'm out. I go, what is this all about? Going to meetings every day for eight, nine years. Somebody had a discussion meeting. I got a topic. Getting thrown out of your own house. How's that for a topic? First guy, thrown out of your house. Serenity prayer. That's what you need. Getting thrown out of your house. Serenity prayer. Next guy says, thrown out of your house. Got nowhere to go. Double up on your meetings. Double up on your meetings. Thrown out of your house. Work with somebody new. Get your mind off of that. Work with somebody new. Last guy, prayer St. Francis. Anytime you get thrown out of a house, prayer St. Francis. Perfect thing to do. Six years went by. Never raised my hand again in one of those meetings. Then I was in the real estate business and the mortgage money is drying up. I can't get any money and I'm going to be going into bankruptcy. There were a lot of years of sobriety. I went in there and said, I need some money so I'll drop a hint at the meeting. Thrown out of bankruptcy. Not supposed to happen to nice people. You know what happened. Bankruptcy, hey, trendy prayer. You've got to say a trendy prayer in bankruptcy. Bankruptcy, double up on the meeting. Just don't put anything in the collection. Work with new people. They can drive you to meetings. All right. And the last thing, prayer of St. Francis. So what do we got here? We got just one answer. One answer for all problems. One answer for all problems. Doesn't seem possible. Does that seem possible? Does anybody in here sort of going, one answer for all problems? I find that difficult to believe. You do? I thought you were an alcoholic. What did you do before you got here? Did you have one answer for all problems or not? I did. I never remember having a problem where I said, boy, here's one problem I won't be drinking over. One answer for all problems. So we already know about that. Why are we sitting here resisting this? One answer for all problems. So that's what all this journey was, was to cause us to understand that if we went to this, we could have this thing called a spiritual awakening. Spiritual awakening, this personality change, puts us in touch with the fact that this is amazing. I heard spirituality explained at Midtown one night, many years ago, when the younger people started coming in more and more numbers and all of a sudden there was something like a 16-year-old girl is sponsoring a 14-year-old girl and she was explaining spirituality. She had three years. 16 years old had three years of sobriety and she's explaining spirituality to the 14-year-old as well as I ever heard it explained. She just looked her right in the eye and she said, this shit works. Basically saying, paraphrasing what Clancy says, is that we end up taking a series of actions that we don't believe in. Of course we don't believe in them because you can't believe in them until after you do it. That's what faith is all about. So we take these actions even though they don't make sense to us ahead of time, any more than drinking made sense ahead of time. Did drinking look like it could show you how to dance? Did it really look like that? You tell me if I drink that I'll know how to do that? Are you kidding? How can you just drink it? Shut up! And there you were, right a stare. You're out there. You intuitively knew how to handle situations that used to baffle you. So one answer, for all problems. So that's what the second half of that step is, one answer for all problems. But I did leave out the message to alcoholics. And that doesn't really need a lot of explaining because I think that comes intuitively. That as soon as this good news hits us inside and you experience it personally, you really do want to share it. I've never met anybody who didn't want to go give this good news to the next alcohol if it just seems to come. And there's a wonderful message to be learned about yourself when you experience this. When you find yourself running over and you've only got two months and here's some guy with one week and you can see that he's right where you were six weeks ago and he's thinking of leaving and you have the most power to stop him of anybody at that meeting. Somebody with 30 years goes over and talks to him and he's going to say, who the hell is this weird guy? But if somebody comes over with one month more than him, hey pal, I just got here a month and a half ago myself, but let me tell you what's going to happen and you can tell him what he's going to feel like the next three weeks and everything he's going to cling to you like glue. And this is tremendous power that you have. You have the power over someone else's life. You can exert a tremendous amount of good in someone else's life. The strange thing about spirituality is all of the very negative, the worst parts of you, that you couldn't stand, turns out to be your special gift to save the next person because that's what they connect with. They connect with your awful past and the recovery that you've made and that's why you can talk to them when psychiatrists can't. So it turns out our alcoholism, all the ugly, filthy, rotten past that we have is the wonderful spiritual gift that we pass on to the next person and that's why they cling to us. Because they know we came out of the same cesspool that they're trying to get out of. And so isn't it ironic that that very awful part turns out to be the most wonderful thing that we can pass on and we just go come with me, I've been exactly in that hole that you're in, I can show you how to get out and there's a wonderful joy in wanting to do this. Now when that happens to you, think about it. What is that in you that is reaching out to these people? I thought you were self-centered, selfish, no good, who cares about the rest of the world person. Maybe you're not that at all. Maybe all that is just not the real you. Maybe for the first time in your life you are seeing what the real you is. It's a loving person. It's not a hating person. That's the wrong you. That's why you're in so much conflict. That's not who you are at all. You are just like everyone else in this whole world a child of a higher power who wants to give love and has been blocked by old ideas and by whatever got us here and alcohol and all those things. But the real you is going to be exposed by these twelve steps and cause this spiritual awakening and cause all these wonderful things that happen in this journey inward. And that's what this sobriety is, is a journey inward. And in closing, I just want to I always like to read something that I pasted in here. First of all, it's the last few sentences out of our big book. Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. Admit your faults to Him and to your fellows. Clear away the wreckage of your past. Give freely of what you find and join us. We shall be with you in the fellowship of the Spirit. You will surely see some of us as you trudge the road of happy destiny. May God bless you and keep you until then. And then some years ago, I found this song by John Lennon, and I pasted it into the 12 and 12, and the song was called Watching the Wheels. People asking questions lost in confusion, well, I tell them there's no problem, only solutions. I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round. I really love to watch them roll. No longer riding on the merry-go-round, I just had to let it go. And if there's anything we find here is, if you will let go of those problems and stay in the solution, the problems will go away. They will be lifted out. And if you're new, we hope it happens real soon. We've got a great way to wrap this up with a Lord's Prayer for anybody who would care to join in. Glory to heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. Keep coming back. It works if you work it.