The Delegate Who Openly Trips on Psilocybin – Billy N.

I'm Billy, I'm an alcoholic. We will open this up with the Serenity Prayer. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. I would make a quick announcement. If you, in your young people's travels back in the day or Southeast region or somewhere else, if you came into contact with Jennifer D., past delegate from North Carolina, she's having some pretty major surgery tomorrow. So if you know her, send her a text. Otherwise, just add her to your prayer list. Some of you from Texas might know her mother lives in Dallas, so she's into fellowship too. Anyway, we are here tonight to discuss Tradition 3. Some quick ground rules, anyone who hasn't been here before, this is recorded. We will allow a couple of people to share for two minutes each. as i said last week hopefully i call on somebody first who i know and that person goes over two minutes so then i can cut off somebody i know so it doesn't look like that i'm cutting off somebody just because i don't know them um so it's two minutes each that's it um we have a no strike policy here if you've never heard of that i know some states for criminals have three strike policies but at this meeting we have the no strike policy which means if you do something in that two minutes you just are never allowed back here again there's plenty of other meetings to go to it's the only way we could possibly regulate this um when we get to questions the speaker and i will answer them i'll read them and we'll answer them to the best of our ability probably by telling you where to find an answer in a literature but please it's conference time the conference is coming up if you have a question about something to do with the conference agenda topic please take it to your DCM or your delegate or if you service sponsor but we try to stay away from conference items here with that we're on tradition three tonight I'm going to read the short form first, and then I am going to read the long form. The short form of tradition three, most people know it by heart, unfortunately. The only requirement for a membership is the desire to stop drinking. I'll just make another public service announcement. We make this one a lot. There really is no such thing as the long form. Those are the traditions. It wasn't like the short form was written and we decided to write longer ones nope the long ones are the original ones and they just decided to cut them down and make them easier for people to live uh to read but they are not um any kind of substitute or new addition uh the long form the original traditions are the traditions so the long-form of tradition three our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism hence we may refuse no one none who wish to recover nor a membership ever depend upon money or conformity any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an aa group provided that as a group they have no other affiliation and the only two things i'm going to say quickly before the speaker and then i'll share a little bit as this that it's um i wish more people knew that this tradition is like our original diversity and inclusion statement it's about who gets to be a member of alcoholics anonymous it's not about arguing between codependency and sex and drugs and gambling and god knows what other outside issue in alcoholism um it's more about are you a man or a woman are you black or white are you gay or straight or bi or trans are you uh catholic or methodist or muslim or a non-believer you know it's about that whoever you are if you suffer from this that being alcoholism you get to be a member And then the second thing I want to say is that often sometimes, and I hope anyone here who's talking about the traditions, if you're looking for any advice, like sometimes when you talk about tradition three or five, it's easy for people to brand you some kind of person who wants to throw people out of AA or want some litmus test or something else. And I would tell you that the effective way to speak about it is that we're talking about saving lives, like this is not a small matter. It's not somebody with a cut hand or a nosebleed. It's somebody who could be suffering from the fatal disease of alcoholism, but could be suffering from a fatal disease or something else. And it's not about kicking people out of AA it's it's about making sure people get where they need to go so I am very happy tonight that from the three legacies group and Bend Oregon my friend Carrie is joining us and I could think of no better person to speak on tradition three for all of us tonight so carrie it's all yours thanks billy uh gosh like old times it's been a while we used to do this stuff together all the time thank you for having me tonight um my name is carrie i'm a recovered alcoholic and my home group is the three legacies group of alcoholics anonymous in beautiful bend oregon and i live in District 5, Oregon Area 58. I currently serve as the CPC chair in Oregon Area 58. And there is nothing more that I like talking about than the 12 traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous. And for those of you who have heard me maybe before and realize that I am very passionate about this, some people call that passion condescending. That's the way I usually come off. Um, I don't mean to, uh, so, um, it, my passion sometimes comes off as arrogant and condescinding. I'm going to be mindful of that. Uh, I was recently, um figured out kind of why I never heard that in my own voice before. Um and then listened to a recording of myself and about a year and a half ago, I was officially diagnosed autistic. And so there's some things that I can't hear in myself or in you, like when you are condescending to me, I don't notice it. So anyway, um, I'm just going to get that out there for a disclaimer. So the first thing I want to talk about in tradition three, well, in the traditions in general is i learned the traditions by breaking them every single one of them when i came to you i was i would call myself an aa anarchist um i wasn't a rule follower i did not like rules i realized today that the traditions are not rules or laws um that they're spiritual principles and although I kind of still feel the same, I'm less and less about rules and laws because rules are meant to be broken and laws can be paid off. Like I park where I want and I pay my speeding ticket, right? Or whatever. I'm trying to fit in more to society now, but I have wholeheartedly fit into Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's because although rules can be broken in laws can be paid off. These are spiritual principles and my life depends on them and the future of Alcoholics Anonymous depends on themselves. So they're much more important to me than rules or laws. Um, so with that said, I didn't always feel that way. I, you know, said things like third tradition is the only one that we need because that's the one that means I can break all your other traditions and you can't kick me out, you know? And that was true. Um, thank goodness, because I did not just fall in alignment with this stuff right away. I fought tooth and nail ever. Like if I would accidentally show up to a tradition meeting, I would leave, but not before telling you why I was leaving and whose fault it is. And so I, you know, some things come to people easily. The traditions did not come to me easily. I had to pay the price of pain with almost every one of these spiritual principles. So I am speaking from experience. um and so to get kind of on to tradition three there are a couple of myths and misconceptions that i kind of want to clean up right right first and foremost the first one would be and if anybody has i don't know do i have i don'T think it's even in aa literature it's not because it's not conference approved literature it'S the blue card i'm just going to google it real quick blue card. There we go. Okay, so one of the myths and misconceptions, I think, and Billy kind of spoke to it a little bit is that, you know, there's a big difference between Tradition 5 and Tradition 3. They definitely go hand in hand, but there is a confusion. And when people talk about Tradition 3, they will sometimes reference Tradition 5. For me personally, I blame this on the blue card. I'm just going to be upfront about that. Yep, that sounds arrogant and condescending. I take that back. Let me just read what it says and you guys can decide what you think. So Tradition 4, remember, means that we focus on alcohol. Tradition 6 opens the door so wide that any alcoholic with any problems in addition to alcohol can come in and feel welcome and sit down and sit all the way down. And it doesn't matter what other problems we come in with, right? Tradition five is the one that says, well, because we all come in avec all these problems, because our door is so open let's close the focus on our one similarity instead of our myriad of differences right let's let's focus our attention to just alcoholism because i i don't want to be any better than or worse than or most importantly no different than because my life depends on it right so when the blue card suggests well i'll read it so this is an open meeting of alcoholics Anonymous. We are glad you are all here, especially newcomers singling out the Newcomer Breaks Tradition 1 because we are a fellowship of equals. No one person is more important than the next. That's just a fact. I don't like the blue card. In keeping with our singleness of purpose. Now, our singliness of purpose is the fifth tradition and our third tradition, which states that the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. We ask all who participate can find their discussions to their problems with alcohol. So that is solely focused on our discussions, on what we discuss. That's a fifth tradition issue. It's not a third tradition issue. So the third tradition, which shouldn't be mentioned in the blue card, in my not so humble opinion, is our membership, our membership tradition. It just simply says who can be a member. It doesn't say what we can talk about, what we can't talk about. Doesn't say like technically I'm not breaking the third tradition if I come in and I introduce myself as my name is Carrie. I'm an alcoholic drug addicted shopping addict who's an atheist but I go to a Christian church and you know as long as I throw alcoholism in there somewhere, I could probably use up my whole three-minute share just identifying with all my andas. And I'm not breaking Tradition 3 because I am just as much of a member as anyone else because I have alcoholism, right? Because I suffer from once I take a drink, I get that phenomenon of craving. That's the only information that you need to know about me that allows me to be a member here. Yes, once we get to Tradition 5, we start saying, hey, how about let's drop the andes so we can all focus on our one similarity instead of our myriad of differences. But that has nothing to do with tradition three. So I am going to post some references in the chat because I'm going to reference quite a bit of literature. So first of all, I love what Billy was saying about the long form being our tradition. It is our only tradition that we have. The short form doesn't mean anything different than the long form. I love Billy's stop sign analogy. If you guys haven't heard it, maybe he'll share it with you today. It's not mine, so I won't share it, but it makes a lot of sense to me. And my analogy that is similar to the stop sign ideology is that the short form and the long from don't mean two different things. It's just one of them is an abbreviation, right? It's like saying GSR and general service representative. One of them ist more easy to understand. One of those is more descriptive. And so in Appendix 1 in the back of the big book, I love these first three paragraphs in Appndix 1, in the back of the big book. I love them, but I'm not going to read them. I hope you read them! The one thing I want to focus on is in the fourth paragraph, it mentions a word that I had to look up. It says that the long form is more explicit. That's why it's reprinted. Now when I looked up the word explicit, it means stated clearly and in detail, leaving no room for confusion or doubt. I have to admit, when I was new and all I heard was the short form being read in every meeting, I was confused. I was in doubt. And there was a lot of room. There was a Lot of detail left out. And I kind of had my own idea of what those traditions meant, especially the ninth tradition. I'm like, what is it even talking about? Like first, it says the aas as such ought never be organized and then in the same sentence without even a period it says but we create service boards and like what does that even mean it's like saying one thing and then saying the opposite right so i love the long form because somebody like me needs um information to understand something so um a couple another thing and billy already read the short form in the long term so i don't need do that but another kind of myth and misconception i think and i don't normally like to go to the 12 and 12 for the traditions because a i think that it's overused and b we have so much oh amazing and beautiful literature that explains the traditions so much better than the 12 and 12 And but there is because it's widely used. I just wanted to point out some of the some of the things that I hear. I was in a book study, a tradition study where they read out of the 12 and 12, and everybody kind of takes a turn reading a paragraph. And so there's a couple of quotes that I want to say that I've heard misquoted. You may have heard them misquotted, maybe not, but in the last sentence in that essay, on the last page of that essay what the essay closes with, this is how it was read by a member and not one person in the entire meeting noticed. And I don't think that it was intentional. They said, so the hand of providence early gave us a sign that anyone is a member of our society when he says so. And what the quote actually says is it says that any alcoholic is a member when he says so. And then another quote that I hear all the time, that's not necessarily misquoted, but it might be cherry picked, is what it starts with, what this essay opens with. It says, you are an AA member if you say you are. I hear that all the time. Some people even misquote it and say, you're an alcoholic if you said you are, I don't know about you, but go sit in a chicken coop and call yourself a chicken and I'm not going to buy it. But you are an AA member if you say you are. But what this is actually saying in context, if you read the beginning of the sentence, it says for what AA is really saying to every serious drinker, you are a member if you say so. So there is a little bit of, you know, there's no disqualifiers in AA. But that right there is our qualifier. That right there is your ticket to be an AA member, and it does not matter what else you are. Nothing else matters, no matter how far down the scale you have gone, right? No matter if you just fresh out of prison, if your history is one of I'll just say it, like the worst of the worst, right, child molestation If you're an alcoholic and you show up to my home group because you need help to stop drinking, I don't care what your history is. Tradition 3 says, I do not care. It says, offer you a bad cup of coffee in an uncomfortable chair next to me. and um so i love the um while i'm on the 12 and 12 i might as well go off on this little rant there's another miscommunication a misunderstanding of um one of the stories in the 12 and 12 about this man with the double stigma right and a lot of people say that that man with the devil stigma was a heroin addict well there was an alcoholic who was also a heroin an addict that came in eight years later after this incident happened that it's written about. But the truth is, that man was, in his words, not mine, a sex deviant. So, you know, this sex addict who comes to us and asks for admission, and is embarrassed because he may be having sex with i don't you know um some people said it was the same sex and back then that's you know maybe not as acceptable or whatever some people have said it might be animals whatever the case may be but they were like this guy is going to make us look bad right but it had nothing to do with drug addiction this guy this guy you know like billy was saying it doesn't have anything to do with drug addiction the guy was an alcoholic and you know you guys are probably thinking well how does she know all this and was she making stuff up well just because i want you to have um your own hear it from bill wilson's words bill w's words i put uh in the chat a recording of bill telling this story um and also the transcript because it's a little hard to hear because it'S AN OLD recording but uh download it listen uh with your own ears from our own founders words and voice and um and that's just part of our history um one other aspect of tradition three because the way i've heard it explained and i i just love it because i need clarity i need charity and so one of the things that i've hard explained is And I love how Billy says that this is our original safety and inclusion policy is tradition three, because back when black people and white people couldn't sit together on the bus. you could in AA. Back when, you know, I mean, AA was the first place to say nothing else matters. Do you have a drinking problem? Then you're welcome. We don't care what color of skin you are. If you're Democrat or Republican, if you're an atheist or Bible thumper, come in, sit down. And if you have a problem with alcohol, you're welcome. In the AA group pamphlet, and I did put a definition in the, I put some links, you guys can go through them if you want. But in the AA Group Pamphlet on page 12, it reads, Some AAs come together as specialized AA groups for men, women, young people, doctors, LGBTQs, and others. okay special interest groups right listen carefully if the members are all alcoholics qualification number one and if they open the door to all alcoholix qualification number two regardless of profession gender or other distinction and meet all other aspects defining an aa group then they may call themselves naa group i had the best um experience with this i thought you know for a long time that women are only allowed in women's meetings i can't go to men's meetings I can't go to young people's meetings because I'm getting older I can go to get you know lgbtq meetings because i'm straight all this stuff and I started learning about the traditions um and even though I knew by this time that I I was, I'm an alcoholic and I'm allowed to attend any meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous that I want. Um, I was in, uh, Arizona, I think it was Arizona or Las Vegas. Anyway, I Was speaking at a conference and I had this hotel room that they got me right next to, uh across the parking lot was this clubhouse. I could tell that it was an AA clubhouse and because it had, I mean, you could tell. And so I'm looking out my window going, you know, I have two hours. I'm going to go, I'm going to go check it out. So, I went over and I walked in and I didn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to know that I was in a men's book study, right? Bunch of men sitting around a table all with good books in their hands. And so, I'm like, excuse me, you know, and I excused myself walking out. And I get halfway across the parking lot when I have these two guys running out after me. Are you an alcoholic? I'm like, yes, yes. I'm an alcoholic. Thank you. Well, come on in and join us. It's an AA meeting. And I said, you know what? I know I'm not in need of a meeting. I're not going to interrupt your guys' meeting. I can tell it's a men's meeting. However, I want to thank you for practicing the 12 traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous, because if I did need a meeting, you guys are a really good example, you know? And so I'm so grateful that I know I, if I ever need a meet-up, I can go to any meeting of Alcoholic Anonymous. I want to, because I'm an alcoholic. There is some questions that Bill answers in Problems Other Than Alcohol. I have the excerpts here with me i have the full version too but he just gets straight to the point i mean i love this he says can an alcoholic or bill or can an alco no i'm sorry let me start over first question can a non-alcoholic pill or drug addict become an aa member answer no not no except for when just no can such a person be brought in as a visitor to an open meeting for help and inspiration yes no yes except for just yes um if so should these non-alcoholic pill or drug users be led to believe that they have become aa members nope can a pill or drugs user who also has a genuine alcoholic history become a member of Alcoholics Anonymous? Yes. And even if their other problem is their main problem, I would hope that they go to the right fellowship to get help. But even if there are other problems as their main problems, but they do have a genuine alcoholic history, maybe they haven't drank for 10 years because they found a sufficient substitute. Right? But if they have a genuine alcoholic history, not only can they be a member, they're just as much of a member as anyone else. No second-class citizens. And with that, with those four clarity, with those Four Questions that Have Clarity, this is what really helped me a speaker a while back was sharing on tradition three and he had I don't know 20 minutes to share and his share was maybe two minutes long because he said tradition three is this simple if you are an alcoholic and you're also a heroin addict, you are still eligible for membership of Alcoholics and Alchemists. If you are an alcoholic and your are transgender gambling addict really into politics you can even be a political figure you you are a member of alcoholics anonymous if you are convicted sex felon but you're alcoholic you're a member of alcoholix anonymous no matter how many other problems you have if you have a genuine alcoholic history you're remember flip side of the coin if you have addiction issues genuine addiction issues but you're not a drinker and you don't have a desire to stop drinking because you never started maybe you tried it once or twice and you didn't like the effects produced by alcohol you're not if you're any color and if you have any you know any problems and we feel sorry for you because you might be you know really needing help and you're homeless and we want to help you so bad if you don't have a drinking problem you're not a member and it's as simple as that it's the only really black and white tradition that we have there's not much gray area it's like do you have i don't have to call myself an alcoholic but i have to have had a drinking problem i have be able to 12 step somebody with that magic of me too and say when i start drinking i i can't stop it's not the same as when i start drinking, I pull my chair up to the refrigerator and I can't stop eating after I take a drink. It's when I start drinking. I can stop. And that's the magic of me too that was born on Mother's Day 1935 when after two and a half years of Dr. Bob trying to get sober in the Oxford groups, not even being able to put two and a half days together. Another drunk came and said, when I can't do when I start drinking, I can stop. Dr. Bob said me too. Now Alcoholics Anonymous was born on the foundation of that single purpose of our single similarity. So with that, I'll turn the floor back over to Billy. Thank you for having me thank you so much for being here tonight what was the thing you said that i say that you hope i say about the stop sign with the lights around it oh yeah okay i got it so thank you very much so one of the things i want to talk about is what carrie was talking about is the intersection of tradition one and tradition three in that it's very important to understand that our tradition invites everybody in fact one of my favorite quotes in the big book you don't even need to go to the 12 and 12 is no one is too discredited or is sunk too low to be caught to be welcomed cordially if he means business that means that tradition one tells us if you act like an idiot in aaa or in the aa parking lot or something to do with aaa we can kick you out of a meeting or a group we can't kick you out of aa we can pick you out at a meeting at a group what we can t do is kick you at of a meet ing or a group because something you have done prior that we've labeled you as unsafe for a we don't do that we we don t care what you've done prior we do care if you don't behave in aa we do care if your disruptive we do if you're a predator we care of all those things but not if you did things before you came to aa that you have some label that society has put on you either legally or in the press we just don't do that um the thing about the flashlights you know or the blinking red lights around the stop sign i'm sure you've all seen it in certain places is sometimes you come up to a stop sign and it has flashing red lights going around the edge but if you look it up in the law there's no difference between a stop sign and a stop-sign with flashing red lights you still have to stop there's no difference the flashing red light is put there to warn people this is an intersection that bad things have happened in before this is an intersection has a high rate of accidents kind of like if you look at tradition 10 the blinking red stop sign is the three things we should watch out for we don't want any outside issues in aa but the blinking red lights are for politics religion and alcohol reform like we know those are ones that always cause trouble um i do want to say you know it's sad that the world has come to this but this is just a true story last week I was speaking at a large event and my topic was traditions related and one of the things I was talking about was was uh tradition three and tradition five and when I got off the stage I have my phone in front of me right now when I Got Off The Stage I got the following text at 204 p.m Saturday I think you know blank first name and last name question mark and I simply wrote back, don't tell me. And they wrote back I'm sorry, it's not good news. And then I quickly got to a place where I could make a private phone call. Now unfortunately those are not unusual in a today or people who are around people in a and the reason I said don't tell me is because I knew this person did not have an alcohol history but had really really bad drug history and yet people kept trying to sponsor him in a and you know there's outside issues and then there's things that happen in a a so then they're not outside anymore they're right inside our a living room or meeting room and you it's important for us to know on the life-saving side of this you know Carrie mentioned and do I have my big book I do Carrie mentions dr. Bob and I'm so glad that they put this line in the forward to the second edition, because I hear so many people in AA say it doesn't matter what their first step problem is. Steps two to 12 are the same. What it says in the forward to the second edition is this physician, meaning Dr. Bob, had repeatedly tried spiritual means to resolve his alcoholic dilemma but it failed but when the broker gave him dr silkworth's description of alcoholism and its hopelessness the physician began to pursue the spiritual remedy for his malady with a willingness he had never been able to muster before that the steps are pretty drastic for most alcoholics no one just wants to do them the hopeless can only be helped by someone who is equally as hopeless now one of the confusing things and boy god knows carrie and i have had a million discussions about this in the past but you know what it was a young woman in heroin anonymous at a heroin anonymous convention that really got me to like really talked about it so simply which was she was like billy the outside world might tell me that if you're a heroin addict you're an alcoholic you're codependent you're this you're that you're everything but that's not what any of the 12-step fellowships believe and she said you know I'm not an alcoholic she said and I don't drink and she said you why because people who drink do dumb things not just alcoholics it happens to people who get drunk they do stupid things and she for me the dumbest thing I could do is shoot a bag of dope she said no different than why you probably don't want to smoke pot because people who smoke pot do dumb things and the dumbest thing you could do is take a drink and this kind of belief that has invaded AA goes counter to the traditions in alcoholics anonymous narcotics anonymous heroin anonymous crystal meth anonymous the belief that everybody is the same and everybody can be fixed regardless of where they are without identification is false it's funny i heard a speaker with a lot of time like 50 years so a different generation than me but she said at a meeting just this weekend and she thought crystal meth was the new girl at the meeting and i was like wow but i do want to say this without talking about the outside issue but talking about the issue that has invaded Alcoholics Anonymous, if you don't know this? Because it's important that at least we talk about it in AA. If alcoholics are going to start sponsoring opiate and heroin addicts, they need to know. They need to know the medical facts that people new or returning to using opiates, OD at such a crazy percentage level higher than people who are constantly using it. Because the reintroduction after being clean when your body has lost the tolerance is dead And the reason I say that from an AA perspective, because I want everybody to know who thinks they can sponsor everybody, is I've been in AA a decent amount of time. I know a lot of people who have drank. A lot of People. Some, it turns out, were an alcoholic. So that old thing, if you wind up in an AA meeting, that means you're an alcoholic? Not true. Lots of people wind up in AA. I know some people who have very good lives but I do know people who've had tragic consequences who left a from drinking my experience and I'm sure someone has a different experience but I know a lot of people who left AA and drank of all the people I know who've tragic consequences none has happened that first day they drank. Well, if you're sponsoring opiate users, you need to know that it is very common that the tragic consequences come the first day they pick up, okay? That it's the killing fields, that their body has lost tolerance. And so I'm not about kicking people out of AA. I'm about making sure that we don't put our pride and ego of having more people in AA or more sponsees in front of saving somebody's life. Like the big book says to be of maximum service to God and those about us. The big book talks about doing service outside of Alcoholics Anonymous. Some of the greatest service you can do is to keep meeting directories for other fellowships on your phone or near you. Some ofthe greatest serviceyou can do is by knowing people from thosefellowships and being able to introducepeople to them. And the other thing that we can talk about not doing, because we always say in AA, you know, there's good speakers, bad speakers, but sometimes you hear what you need to do. Sometimes you hear What you don't need to Do. Sometimes you see an example of what you want to do, sometimes you see An example in AA of what You don't want to Do, that's just, you Know, that That's the way it goes. but we need to be very careful and again this goes for all 12 traditions one of the biggest mistakes we make inside regular aa meetings is we think that if we say something out of bounds dumb a little edgy that it won't have an effect on anybody now i go to a lot of meetings and then sometimes i walk outside of them shaking my head saying i can't believe what i just heard that person say but you see i say to myself i'm going to be back here tomorrow I have a foundation in Alcoholics Anonymous. I know what AA is and what AA isn't. But we forget the newcomer doesn't have that. What they hear you say, they may believe is what AA believes. Or they may belief is the AA program. Do you know how many times I speak at an AA event and i talk about people talking bad about other fellowships and people come up to me from those other fellowship's and say thank you so much for mentioning that narcotics anonymous is not some no solution program some of them say to me i wish these people in aa would realize that we have more of a singleness of purpose than you guys do sometimes we're a lot stricter but when we talk bad about other fellowships with sending the message to the newcomer who might not be an alcoholic and may need that fellowship to save their life that it doesn't work and it's so deadly um it's the 1961 conference report by the way that carrie was mentioning um bill w finally talked about the guy in the 12 and 12th in ohio uh he was just guilty of being a gay man in ohIO in the 1940s that's what his other worst stigma was just being a gay man carrie was referencing that sometimes people go on a long diatribe in meetings about the black cross-dresser wearing a blonde wig that happened wrong story uh the man in the 12 and 12 was just gay and um we have to give newcomers the time to find out who they are sometimes that means telling people to go to another fellowship one day a week and see if they can get some identification the first 50 or so pages of the big book are about identification or about are you an alcoholic do you have what we have and let's use this book to help you find out and you know i heard a great answer recently because most times I hear questions like this I just want to end the meeting before the person gives an answer usually but the question was what's the difference between alcoholism and drug addiction and the person actually gave a great answer based on the literature of both fellowships or all three fellowships they said well for drug addicts the craving starts before they use the first drug for alcoholics the craving starts after we have the first drink it starts as a result of the first drink what we have before the first drink is the mental obsession that's what we have and I was so happy that they gave such an easy to understand answer um and then went on to explain and you know this is the last thing i'll say but you know alcoholics have an unnatural reaction to alcohol that only 10 or less of the world's human population have they have an abnormal reaction to alcohol that most people don't have with a lot of drugs people have a normal reaction that's what's supposed to happen when you take it that it makes you want to take more and you know i would tell you this story that i'm a lightweight when it comes to drugs i guess um but you know we have no idea what we're dealing with i had some surgery not too long ago um and i was told i had to take this small little pill before i showed up at the surgery center and i don't even like taking that so i did not file directions and took half by the way i'm pleading guilty okay i took half and then when it was time for me to have the procedure I was too awake so they gave me another one so now I had one and a half inside me and then I had my procedure however hour or two it took and went in the recovery room and then somebody was picking me up to take me home and you know about a week later I was talking to the person who drove me home i just thought they picked me up and drove me home that's what i thought they were like wow you were really crazy when i picked you up and i was like what it's like what do you mean they're like well you got in the car but then you saw there was a golf store next to the surgery center and you insisted on going into the golf store because you needed golf balls. And so you went in and then you came out with four boxes of golf balls, and I was like, no, I didn't. There's no way I did that. And they were like, you know, you should look in the back of your car because there's four boxes of Golf Balls and a receipt. And I went out to my car and they were right. and i thought to myself and you know i asked my doctor about that and he said yeah you had a very normal reaction to that medication that's what happens to people who take it and there are certain drugs that that's the natural reaction but it's so important to get an alcoholic to realize that we have a reaction that very few people have most people get alcohol in their system and they don't want to drink anymore and we want to drink more. So I am going to open it up for a couple of shares, like three or four. If you raise your hand, I will call on you. You will be unmuted. You will get two minutes. You'll be timed and then your microphone will be cut off. And then we will take some questions. And the questions will come in, be sent in via chat to me. um so do I see anyone who has their hand raised yes I do Tasha you're first hey I'm Tasha I'm an alcoholic Carrie thank you so much for your share I had shared with her privately the importance of um of practicing tradition three I was in Brookings Oregon last summer and I happened to need a meeting desperately I showed up at the Wharf Street Meeting Hall and there was a men's meeting happening and I let them know I'm an alcoholic I do need a meet and they welcomed me in all six of them and it's a it's life-saver so thank you for those that practice that thank you for that story please mute yourself thank you next correct me if I pronounce it wrong please i have resin from oakland california and correct me if i pronounced it wrong thanks rizan alcoholic um i i was sponsoring somebody who told me that she she has a very bad alcohol problem and also smokes weed she said she's sober now and so we started working on the steps she smokes weed every now and then never brought it up again i actually forgot about it until we were about to get into diagnostics and she mentioned smoking weed at that point i told her i don't have the experience of practicing these steps while smoking weed so i can't take her anymore i don t have that to share with her but as far as this goes and like offering it to i mean i had other ideas but that's just what i said to her like my ideas was well i don't have that experience and i don' know if it works and what would you do okay we're gonna save your question to be the first question after we let people share we'll let a couple more people share and then we will go back to your question thank you Kat R., please share for two minutes. Hey, everyone, I'm Kat, alcoholic. So the experience I have with this tradition kind of shook me one time. I was at my home group and there was someone that was asking me to bring them to the meeting. And so I did. And I was like, you need to ride to a meeting. I'll be that person. You know, we should all be that person in these rooms. We know how important it is. But they could not string a week together. They always came to the meeting either drunk or hungover and they were disruptive and they Were disrespectful. And me being very young in recovery at that point was like well they have a desire to stop drinking so they belong here. but the key component about my naivete there is I never actually asked them if they had a desire to stop drinking. I assumed that them asking to go to a meeting indicated desire to stop drinking and this is where long timers in the program who know more than me are such a blessing because there was a gentleman in my home group who had been there much longer than me and after the meeting one time he actually stopped us before we got into my car and he goes hey do you actually have a desire to stop drinking like do you want to stop drinking um and the person i was with very pointedly didn't answer the question spent the entire car ride back um in this victim like how dare he he doesn't know my life story situation um but then i didn't hear from them they didn't ask to come back to the meeting for months and i like lost sleep over it for a second but then nine months later they text me and they said or they called me and i you have 10 seconds just warning you they said i need a meeting and instead of bringing them to a meeting i sent them the listings in their area and i said i i hope you find that the help that you need because maybe it wasn't at my group um but that was just an experience i had and it was interesting so i'm happy to share thank you very much please mute your microphone next will be derek from calgary hey thank you guys for your talk my name is derek i'm an alcoholic you know nelson gave us talk on problems other than alcohol he tells us that you know we wanted lots of our friends in any because they have their problems too we wanted them to unfold you know that includes the alanons and he tells us regretfully we found that this was impossible right they cannot make straight a talks hence they cannot do continuous 12-step work you know before bill went to akron he uh he was working with a lot of drunks and he was able to stay sober and he was mad because he couldn't help the other people you know almost 100 of them none of them stayed sober but he could and when he was going to adequate he talked with silkworth and silkworth gave him a bit of heck and said you know you're preaching at these guys you're talking about these spiritual experiences and that's not what ebby did with you he debbie came and talked about your drinking right one of those was crawling out of his skin and he got set up with dr blob he said i was very careful on the fireworks of religious experiences i just went there and talked about my drinking until he got a good identification with me and started until he started nodding his head yeah i'm like that right and dr bob's nightmare he tells us even though he'd been going to the author group way longer than wilson did four years was far more spiritually trained knew what the solution was he tells this this is the first time i had ever talked to someone about drinking the way i drank and it got her to open them up and that is a gift from god and if you don't have drinking stories you cannot identify with newcomers or do continuous 12-step work the 12-stop calls the basic service we provide and they're not interested in letting us talk about step one two three right they're scared they don't know what's happening when they let us another house i think the world's afraid of them think we're here to try to save them And Wilson told Bill, I'm not here to save you. I'm afraid of drinking. Can I talk to you about my drink? Because I think it will help me stay sober. And that is the lever which we get in the door, I believe. Thank you. Thank you! Please mute your microphone. Next and last is Jim S. Jim, you have two minutes. Thank you, Billy. Good evening, everyone. Jim alcoholic. One's close to Derek's. I, you know, my experience is that I've had the privilege to work with a lot of people that are, they suffer from alcoholism and other things. And, you know. The biggest thing, well, not the biggest thing or the hardest thing for me over the years, it's gotten easier is for me to give them enough information for them to have enough clarity about the truth about themselves so that they feel more comfortable about where they you know where they fall whether they are more alcoholic or more of an addict or to be an NA or CA or HA or just NAA um you know because when I qualify them or you know when I first get to meet them I ask them flat out um you Know do you have a problem with alcohol and they'll tell me yeah I do and I said well you want to do something about it and they say yeah it's like they have the answers and I well what are you willing to do and they would say anything and i then i'll be like all right we'll see i said but if there's if i show you what what i've learned and you know and take you through this this book um do you promise that you'll pass it on and they said of course of course i said well that's great that's good that's the good news the bad news is if you don't you won't be able to keep it and that that's The key to this whole thing is that 12th step about passing it on and giving it away so we can keep it, so that we get better at doing it ourselves. That is the practice of going through the steps for me. And if I'm talking and I'm around people that I can't identify and meet them where they're at, they're not going to have the art of being able to do that with someone that's not like them. They've got to be able to meet them where their prospect is at also just like i do with my prospects and when i can do that you have five seconds i'm walking on water and it works thank you thanks please mute your microphone so um we have a couple of questions we'll get to resin's question um uh someone actually asked while carrie was speaking they said their problems other than alcohol didn't have the answers to the questions that's because you have the large version of the pamphlet that doesn't have any answers in it not the small abbreviated blue and white one so that's the one that you want that has the actual answers right there it's one of the few things from gso where there are ever clear answers there's no fancy like service talk it's just yes no um i do want to say i forgot to say before that um i have great faith that most people here are big believers in the big book it breaks my heart sometimes unfortunately that very rigid dogmatic big book gatherings are sometimes the least respectful of tradition three and five that they become so alive with the big book they think they can help everyone now i would just be curious not with your virtual hand but just with your regular hand who here has heard since you got sober and maybe you started to get literature in response or whatever else that if you don't know what a word means you should look it up in a dictionary and who else besides me is i mean yeah i mean we all hear that right it's great advice but my experience at most big book gatherings is that they want to look up every word except for alcoholism or alcohol like because i would tell anyone here to look those words up in the dictionary that alcohol is a liquid that you imbibe meaning through your mouth that's what alcohol is that's what the dictionary says alcoholism is for people who suffer from problems from imbibing alcohol there is no such thing as a powder form of alcohol that is a made-up saying um and i'll just pass on this because i run into a lot of young new people number one clue that i am dealing with not an alcoholic is when they tell me that after they take a drink they have to smoke crack or they have to do a line of coke or they have to do this like that's not alcoholism alcoholism is after you take a drink you need another drink that's alcoholism and should be a big clue when you're working with people so Carrie you want to go first on Resin's question about... Go ahead. Can you remind me? When you find out that someone that you're sponsoring is smoking weed. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I loved Rezan's share. I'm so sorry that I'm getting your name wrong. I loved that share because what you said to your prospect is exactly what I say. So I think the first kind of confusion that we have is that there's only one requirement for membership in AA. Membership is an entirely separate side of the triangle as recovery. As we all know, the big book, the program of recovery has a lot of requirements, right? I mean, the first requirement is this. The next requirement is that. And so to recover from alcoholism, it's got a lot of musts and requirements. For me, it did. And my experience is much like the big book. But to be a member of the fellowship, there's no requirements other than a desire to stop drinking. And so I once got a question in a Q&A, ask a basket or whatever from somebody who said, what happens when somebody shows up to my meeting and they just smoked a bowl outside? Everybody saw it. And they come in for a 30, 60, 90 day celebration or coin or cake or whatever you do. and I said well that's depends on two my answers are two polar opposite answers like what do I do as a member of AA in service to that group um that is not sponsoring that person I say congratulations on 30 days sober from alcohol and if it's something else I say before I give you a hug to celebrate take the needle out of your arm or whatever else you got going on but congratulations 30 days sober. Not somebody I sponsor. There's some requirements for the people I sponsor, and one of the requirements is that the definition of sobriety in AA literature is freedom from alcohol through the teaching and the practice of the 12 steps, not through the teaching in the practice at the marijuana maintenance program. So if they do want to stay sober in a different way than what I have to offer, then what my experience is, then they And they need to go and find somebody with that experience. I'm not one who has that experience Thank you. I get this question a lot. It's amazing how many times it comes in now, in relation to groups that elect the secretary or a chairperson and then find out the person is smoking weed. And my answer is like the same that Kerry just gave. Like when you celebrate your anniversary in AA and you come up to get your coin and maybe say two minutes, we don't have a clipboard. We don't see like, oh, Kerry B. Oh, wait a minute. Three speeding tickets this year. No coin for Kerry up John D. He cheated on his girlfriend. no coin for john up and martha she has not been paying taxes like no nope no coin from author like the beauty of aa in its membership is that the only thing we kind of define is freedom from alcohol and so if somebody wants to smoke weed and run for chairperson it's their business now it's my business that i would never vote for that person that's where now it is going to be interesting because in one of the 93 areas this year there is a current delegate who is going to the general service conference who has openly told their area that they trip on psychosomatic whatever psilocybin uh whatever i was just asked this a couple of weeks ago what's my view of it i said my view if it is no different than an active bank robber i'm not electing that person to become delegate okay like you get to exercise who you want to represent your area but that person is probably still considering themselves sober in a a there are a couple other questions here let's see my home group is a closed big book study that breaks out into three small groups one of these groups is for women is it okay to tell men who want to attend the woman's breakout group to please go to one of the other two kerry i mean i think that there's the letter of the law and the spirit of the tradition and if there is a meeting that is for women at the same time as the one that's for men unless somebody is you know non-binary or they identify as something other whatever but if it i mean if there's an option what is what is your motive of going to what would my motive be of trying to go to the men's group instead of the women's one if there is if there's one at the exact same time that's available to me what would thank you the next question is a good one If someone has been to both programs, chooses to attend AA, calls themselves a member of AA, but doesn't think they are an alcoholic, what do you do? Do you sponsor them? Do you tell them they don't belong or aren't welcome? So I'll give an answer. Kerry can go after me. But what I would tell you is this, we just got to kind of change the like myths around this stuff. If you happened to be going to your local bank and a robbery broke out and you was shot three times, do you want to be brought to a dentist? do you want to be brought to a foot doctor or do you want to be brought to a trauma center emergency room that can save your life and so when I think about this scenario I separate what I would tell someone versus what I consider none of my business at a meeting is that if that person is not an alcoholic they cannot reach the me too moment with another alcoholic with somebody who is an alcoholic it's like bringing a gunshot victim to a dentist now if that person listen we don't have a police force here if they want to come to aa but if i was sponsoring them it would be a complete different discussion carrie yeah and i would just add to everything billy said um that the open meeting is you know if there's no na meeting at that time or OA meeting at that time. Open meetings allow for observers, you know, welcome them in, get a cup of coffee for them. They don't participate if they don't have a problem with alcohol but we're kind and we're loving and maybe someday they will find they have a problem mit alcohol. We don't want to have them leave a bad taste in their mouth and so in my home group in our script we have a place in the beginning of the meeting that says um do we have any non-alcoholic uh observers today visiting from other 12-step fellowships um the professional community you know we have a list of people that we want to welcome that we want to make feel welcome um we just ask that they they observe but they're welcome in open meetings things. And if they want to participate, that's a different story. If they don't have a problem with alcohol, I don't know how that would be possible. Although if we did decide to break that tradition, I would much rather break it in a closed meeting where we don't invite the clergy and the professionals and the nursing students and everybody to learn what AA is and is not, because an open meeting is we're on a showcase, right? And we want to make sure that we carry a clear message of what AA is and is Not, because that's the whole entire 100% reason for an open Meeting. And you can find that in the 12 and 12 on page 2 of Tradition 10, right smack dab in the middle of the page. 12, Tradition 12, sorry. the next question is just clarifying in a meeting tradition three it's okay to introduce yourself as an alcoholic and addict tradition five has us narrow the focus well i would tell you that it's not okay i would also tell you that what's not ok about it is the person who is only an alcoholic or doesn't even know if they're an alcoholic yet and they hear everybody introducing themselves as an alcoholic and a codependent or an alcoholic and a gambler or an alcoholic and an addict. And again, the newcomer may be believing that you have to be all these other things, that we're a singular focused program. Carrie? Yeah, let me be very clear. According to Tradition 5, which comes after Tradition 3, which I believe is for a reason. Of course, it's not okay to identify with a problem other than alcohol because that insinuates that in a single purpose fellowship that we have a duality of purpose if you have a duality of problem. What I said, what I meant to clarify is it's not breaking tradition three. And when people get tradition three and tradition five confused, They'll say, well, tradition three says that the only requirement is. Well, yes, they're true. And you're not breaking tradition three if you identify as 100 different things so long as you throw alcoholism in there. But that's for new people. But once we get to tradition five, right, that's where my sacrifice comes in. And if I am a recovered member of Alcoholics Anonymous, it's not about me anymore. I have to sacrifice my personal ambitions and my personal uniqueness for the common good. And so, I would much rather have somebody identify themselves as not even an alcoholic than to identify themselves as an alcoholic and something else. Somebody who is saying, my name's Carrie, I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous or my name is Carrie, I have a desire to stop drinking and then sharing about alcoholism great i would rather you not even call yourself alcoholic than call yourself an alcoholic and something else but that's in a tradition five my diff my my point was there's a differentiation between three and five because we should probably get rid of the myth probably one of the worst things we say in aa is when somebody starts to share there and doesn't introduce themselves and like six people have to yell out who are you why are you here we don't care there's no requirement that you have to say your name there's no requirement That You Have To Say What You Are this this kind of labeling thing we didn't even do that in the beginning of A.A now there's a great question here along these lines if you're giving someone time to decide how they identify that says they're not 100 sure whether they're an alcoholic or drug addict desperate for sobriety and they ask you to sponsor them would you suggest inclining until they figure it out no way i think one of my jobs is to help them figure it and i would also say you know carrie redd i thought i would get through one zoom without running and grabbing a a group pamphlet but didn't make it you know she read from the special interest section but the closed meeting section is so overlooked on two levels how about the person who says well i can't go to that aa meeting i'm not an alcoholic and the person who says just tell them you have a desire to stop drinking that's not enough to go to a closed meeting. You have to have a desire to stop drinking and a drinking problem. It says it right there. Closed meetings are for AA members only, or for those who have a drinking problem and a desire-to-stop drinking. You don't have to think you're an alcoholic to go to a closed meeting. If you have a drink problem and desire to stop drinking, you're welcome at a closed meeting and bill w says in the traditions essays we should be patient with new people we should open the door wide we should give them the time to figure out what they are we should do all those things and i just put up in the chat a link to the difference between an open and a closed meeting um per general service conference approved literature it's a printout if If you guys want to use it for your group or your clipboard or your phone. Thank you very much. I'll just add to that, that for me, and this is my personal 12 step work, which ought never be organized. And so you guys can take what you want and leave the rest from it. But what I do is I definitely use the clear cut directions from the big book. and it doesn't say that they have to um be satisfied that they're a real alcoholic it says that i have to be satisfiedthat they'rea real alcoholic and i don't get to diagnose anyone or pronounce anyone alcoholic but i definitely ask some questions and it can go one of two ways or anywhere in between the first is somebody who says oh yeah no i'm definitely alcoholic i i i do um i do meth alcoholically i eat alcoholically i have sex alcoholically well do you drink alcoholically do you well i don't really like the taste of alcohol okay but i don' t either do you like the feeling that it produces no not i mean not really not alcohol specifically but other things i'm definitely addicted to and i'm going okay i have a list of phone numbers that this person might you know and then there's the person who doesn't want to call themselves alcoholic and they say no no I'm not alcoholic. I need a sponsor because I want to quit drinking, but I just have a little drinking problem. And it's like, well, tell me about that. Well, I mean, I just, I have a low tolerance for alcohol. So I like, once I take a drink, for some reason I end up drunk like every time. And so I could never be addicted to alcohol because I can't even, I can'T even be a daily drinker. Cause I, I'm like three days recovering from it. And now I'm going, Oh, qualified. And don't have to tell them that but i can say let's start going through the book because i'm satisfied that they're a real alcoholic one of the things that um we sometimes hear is aa as a whole loves to blame the treatment industry for all the non-alcoholics who come to aa but that's out of our control The real problem is the amount of AA members who have become comfortable sponsoring non-alcoholics. That is what has caused all these issues, not who's sending people to meetings. It's the members who are sponsoring people who are not alcoholic. Not only the members Who are sponsoring, unfortunately, the members who are serving on public information and cooperations with the professional community committees unfortunately since i've been the cpc chair for my area um i have done some powerpoints that i personally think are amazing because they all come from a general service conference approved literature all of the quotes but the reason i've done some powerpoints is because i've seen some other power points and they are scary and they are created by CPC committees. And I would just say, if we want to blame the professionals and the treatment facilities for sending us non-alcoholics, what are we telling them that we are? If you don't know what AA is and is not, what we can do and what we cannot do, please don't serve on a PI committee or a CPC committee. It's better not to have a committee than to offer misinformation there's two great questions unfortunately i would say i'd let carrie take the one that she likes the most but they're both such so good questions but um i love the first one because this is how people learn i didn't know there was any other place to study the traditions except the 12 and 12. can you tell me some other places Yes, we could tell you a whole bunch. We would tell you that AA comes of age is required reading to fully understand the traditions. We would Tell You the Traditions Illustrated is a great little piece of literature. We would tells you pamphlets like the AA Group Pamphlet and Problems Other Than Alcohol. We would told you that the traditions are actually in the big book even though they weren't written until years after the big was written but they're old. language of the heart is another one um so i'll post them in the facebook group tomorrow um just so they're out there but i know carrie's gonna love the next question so i'm gonna let her answer it first what about places with no aa any suggest with no na any suggestions Thank you for letting me take this one. Well, wherever there's two or more narcotic addicts gathered together, they have a meeting of Narcotics Anonymous. I will just read directly out of the pamphlet, Problems Other Than Alcohol, because it uses some pretty strong language. You can also find this essay in Language of the Heart on page 224, I believe. And the whole essay goes over everything we can't do. And it uses some very strong language. If you're familiar with Bill Wilson's, like his language, he uses stuff in the traditions kind of like ought not and suggested. And there's only one place in all of AA literature that he says no exceptions. And that's this. There's no way of making non-alcoholic addicts into AA members. experience says loudly that we can admit no exceptions. Now, after he goes over the myriad of things we can't do, he finally gets to, but what can we do for these people who suffer from other things? And it says AA members who are so inclined should be encouraged, not discouraged, encouraged to band together in groups to deal with sedative problems and drug problems but they ought to refrain from calling themselves AA groups. There seems to be no reason why several AAs can't join if they wish with a group of addicts to solve the alcohol and drug problem together, but obviously such a dual-purpose group should not insist that it be called AA. So I would suggest if your group is getting a lot of drug addicts, take an inventory and say, do we want to be AA or NA? Do we want to be all addictions anonymous, all addictions, anonymous and drug addicts anonymous both use the big book of alcoholics anonymous. Now for me personally, what I did because there was no heroin anonymous in the central Oregon is I took an alcoholic who was also a heroin addict, took them through the 12 steps they recovered, they started heroin anonymous i didn't carry the message in heroin anonymous not even one single time but i helped her behind the scenes to call heroin anonymous world services to get her script together to get the meeting room um at the church that we met at and so there's a lot that we can do yeah i just want to say also what you can do is is you can have a big book study or a step study in your backyard or your living room or your garage if you're hearing people say there is no solution well then provide them with the solution aa has provided their steps to over 180 other anonymous fellowships there's nothing wrong with you having you know sharing that with them so that they can bring it to a meeting and make it a strong one just don't use the aa name is the only thing that the literature asks you can use everything else there's a there's a question about accessing the recordings i will say again how um there's a secret facebook group i can't post it here because it's not visible you would have to send me a friend request on facebook and then say you want to join that group i've put my whatsapp and my text number in the chat if you don't have facebook um just send me a whatsapp or a chat and i will send you a youtube link that the recordings automatically update in and we will get that to you so that you can get the recordings billy somebody just asked me in the if it would be okay if i could post this stuff in that i posted in the facebook group i was going to ask you that too yeah we will post everything that carrie referenced tonight in the Facebook group so that it's there and that's it i think we have had enough a geek fun for the night it's 10 25. i really want to thank carrie for coming out tonight and uh really thank her um and next week we will be talking about one of my favorites tradition four so uh with that we will close with the responsibility statement i am responsible when anyone anywhere reaches out for help i want the hand of aa always to be there and for that i am responsible thanks everyone have a great night Thank you.