The Line in the Chapter to the Agnostic That Saved Him – Scott J.

Well, thank you, Al. Hi, everybody. My name's Scott and I'm an alcoholic. Wow, what a wonderful day, huh? Geez, really good. I proved today that I still have a drinking problem. I drank four cups of coffee, a bottle and a half of water, and a glass of pop. And I tell you what, I'm getting exercise going to the restroom. It's been a busy day. And you know, just listening to all of the talks reminds me of what AA is, that this is about the language of the heart that Bill talked about. What comes from the heart and goes to the heart. That's what makes Alcoholics Anonymous work. Whether it's in a live-to-live, eyeball-to eyeball meeting or whether it's online or however we're doing it, it's what comes out of the hearth. heart always will reach the heart you know and uh you know I was just my name's Scott I'm an alcoholic and my dry date is March 1st 1976. I'm kind of a relic you know. I don't know much about what Tom was talking about other than I understand the history being in the making. My home group is the Aurora, Minnesota Big Book Group. Our Aurora, Minnesota is about 1,500 people and we're in the middle of the Iron Range in northeastern Minnesota and it's ice cold here most of the time in the winter and we are kind of one of those isolated communities. There's no such thing as 90 and 90 around here when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous. You would have never dreamt of that. There was nine meetings within 50 miles of this area. So, you know, 90 and 90 was something we heard people from the big city talk about, you Know, I have a sponsor, and I've had several sponsors over the years. Obviously, when you've been sober nearly 46 years, it's pretty hard to have the same sponsor for that entire time uh several of my sponsors have passed on and went to the big meeting up there and but they all have taught me about the richness of where we come from the richness of alcoholics anonymous and its heritage and and and the depth and the meaning of of what this message is, you know, and as Tom was talking about a vision for you and he read a couple of lines out of there, it reminded me of a talk I gave a while back and I ran off quick and I picked it up and it was an 80th anniversary meeting that was held last summer for a group in Hibbing, Minnesota. And they started in 1941. And it so brought the vision for you alive to me. Because as I read the letters from these people and from GSO and from the Saturday Evening Post article to this wife, wife to the sheriff and finally to this alcoholic it made me understand more deeply what this thing is about especially what this book is about because that line and I think Tom said it although you be but one man with this book it just brought it to life because here's this man in northeastern minnesota and he's the only alcoholic sober for 65 miles there might have been a there was a a group trying to form 65 miles away otherwise the nearest group was in minneapolis which is 200 miles away and here's this guy in this little town up in north eastern Minnesota with this big book. And who's sponsoring him? Just like Tom said, that book is his sponsor. That book is the directions that he had to have in order to start an AA group. This all goes on throughout the summer of 1941. And finally, by August of 1941, not only is he sober, but there are four members sober. And in July he wasn't sober. So in a month he has carried the message to either three men or four men. In September, he's got two more. So he got six. In November, we've got 13 men have gotten sober. Maybe women, I don't know. the records don't say who they are. By the 1st of 1942, there are 17 of them. This all comes from one man with this book. One man with his book can do miracles. And you know that thing that happened in Hibbing, Minnesota in early and mid-1941 and through the year 41 happened all over the United States and Canada in 1941-42 throughout the 40s. There was one man with a book in Winnipeg, there was one man with the book in Fargo, there's one man what the book into mine was one man with a book in Omaha, all throughout the country. There was one person with the book Alcoholics Anonymous. And look what has happened. You know, I thank you guys for all of the presentations, all of this technology, all the wonderful research. I'm probably not going to go into much of that sort of thing. I am going to just mostly talk about my love for Alcoholics Anonymous and for the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and the big book. And I got introduced to the big book very, very early in recovery. I came to AA. I was 23 years old. Young, hip, slick and cool, you know. And I walked into this meeting and it is full of old people and they're wearing clad double knit polyester clothing I never owned any of that stuff you know uh some of them a couple of these guys had on a couple of the worst toupees I have ever seen I wasn't sure if they went out and just skinned something off of some animal or what the heck they did but you know so I'm wondering and I am just so grateful that not one of them guys came up to me and said if you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it because I'd have ran out the door i didn't know if i wanted what they had uh but you know that ego you know i'll step back a little further in time i had been in the spin dry before i got to alcoholics anonymous and i'm one of those people who during their fifth step not even knowing what the fourth step was who during their fifth step with a priest was able to experience the presence of a God that was personal to me. I had that spiritual awakening that is talked about on page 75. Well, I forgot to turn my timer on again, so just holler, okay? And I had this spiritual experience that I was living on when I was in Alcoholics Anonymous in those early months. But pretty soon, my ego started to return. And pretty soon on, you know, of course, my egos returning, I'm thinking of these guys as a bunch of old guys and wondering what am I doing hanging around with them? Why am I going to these four meetings a week after it was the get in that get in the car kind of sobriety, you know, they show up for your house and say, get in a car and you'd get in The car and you'd go you know you didn't ask any questions but I'm kind of getting bored with it all and pretty soon I'm thinking about drinking you see that obsession starts long before the thinking about drink the obsession starts I think when I start criticizing you taking your inventory and wondering why am I wasting my time doing Alcoholics Anonymous and the obsession is starting to return to me. And then it moves into the planning stage. I'm starting to plan my next drunk. My parents are going to leave. I'll have two weeks. I can probably get a, you know, have a few drinks, maybe get away with it. Nobody will know the difference. This thinking is going on and I'm going to three, four meetings a week. And I've had this spiritual experience. and they talked me into going to something they called a roundup, I don't know if there was supposed to be a bunch of horses there or what, I didn't know what a round up was, you know, geez, man, you Know, it's a conference, get together, whatever you want to call it. Finally, they convinced me to go to this thing, and it was the biggest blessing probably that had happened in my life up to that time, and I didn' t know it. I went to this place right in town. And there was three old time AAs there. Now, we had an old time AA member in our group already. There was a man there who had been sober since 1947. There'd been another member there had been there since 1957. But I had never heard what these three guys were talking about. These three guys work Don and out of Moorhead who had Been Sober Since 1947 or eight. And Wesley P who had been sober out of pompano beach florida back in 47 or 48 and paul m out of chicago who again had been sobre that long and paula m and wesley p were both very very big book oriented a members uh until the days they died in fact wesley was one of the proponents for the charlie enjoy things so you know i'm hearing this stuff and i'm going holy cow and and wesley talked about after five years of sobriety that obsession to drink returned and that his life had been destroyed again by his self-centered life and when he asked his sponsor about it his sponsor basically said i'm embarrassed to know you yet consider you a member of aa but he said you're a two-stepper and he went on to explain the two-step process well after I left that roundup that day our home group meeting at that time was only one meeting around here for 15 miles there was one meeting I went to that meeting at Monday night and I did something that I had never done before I asked those people for help I asked I made a surrender and you know what the help had always been there but I was incapable of receiving it until I made a surrender until I was ready to let you take charge and they did two things for me that night first thing they did is they taught me about commitments they elected me to the co-chair of the group. Co-chair was a wonderful job. Anybody offers you a co-chair job, take it. For me, that meant you sat at the front of the table next to the chairperson and did nothing. Perfect service job for a guy like me, I'll tell you. One night he didn't show up and I had to learn how to do it. But they taught me to make commitments to my own recovery. And the other thing that they did. The guy with the worst toupee, he may have had the most polyester on too. He came up to me and said, you got one of these blue books? One of these here books? I said, yeah, they gave me one of those when I was in treatment. He said, I suggest you get it off of the shelf, and you start reading it. And when it says to do something, you do it. When it says to write, you write. When he says to pray, you pray. When you make the amends, you do these things. And he guided me through the book Alcoholics Anonymous in the summer of 1976 for the very first time. My first big book was a second edition. It fell apart real soon. The last printing of the second edition was probably the worst public, I don't know what you call it. The book was terrible. It fell apart. I have found many of them over the years, the same exact printing and you open it up, I think it's to page 30 and the binding is broke. So there was a weak spot someplace in the press, I guess. But anyway, that was my first book. And that was the first time I went through the book Alcoholics Anonymous. and my life has never been the same but I can tell you also this that when I took somebody else through the book Alcoholics Anonymous my life had been changed forever my life was changed forever you begin to know what the book is about when you sit with another alcoholic and you share your experience strength and hope with how this process works and you help one another go through it um i had a lot of wonderful notes and i do this all the time and i usually just ignore the things but maybe occasionally i'll pop back on to them but the book is about taking actions to me, about taking spiritual actions to me. And the book is a book that I don't I've never read a book like Alcoholics Anonymous. It tells me to do this. And then on the next page or maybe the same page, it will tell me what the results should be if I took those actions. You know, sometimes we call them promises. I just call them results. If you do this, this will happen. How many other books are out there that can do that? That do do that. Very few of them. Even the rest of AA literature does not do that It's only the book Alcoholics Anonymous that does that. and then you know it's not about knowing what's in the book it's not about memorizing what's in the book it's not about philosophizing and theorizing what's in the book it's about doing what is in the book my old friend Tommy G from up in Winnipeg Canada he had this saying long before Nike got it do it do it do it that's all he would always say you got to do this. This isn't about sitting around thinking about it. It isn't about reading about it, it's about doing it. And no, you know, I think sometimes in AA today we fall under a false belief that we need to do this exactly this way. Whatever way our sponsor is teaching us, whether it's the Joe and Charlie or the whatever way. We have to do it this way, and that's the only perfect way. I went through this book when I was a newcomer, and I tried to follow the directions the best I could. I could understand the inventory. It isn't very difficult. I have a high school education. These things aren't difficult to do. The only obstacle I have ever found in working the steps in my life has been me and my big fat eagle, and me and my ability to not make a surrender, and me always thinking that there must be a better way. And there isn't necessarily a better way. To me, this has always been the way, the simple, direct method of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. and uh you know i think it's been talked about how many big books have been sold i don't know i think its probably close to 40 million big books have been solved and i don' t know if that would just count in the english language or in all languages AA is basically in every dang country in the world we just heard this in iran You know, it's everywhere. And the big book is in many languages. The Library of Congress has recognized the book Alcoholics Anonymous as being one of the most important books of the 20th century. bill wilson was recognized as being one of the most important people of the 20th century for his work in alcoholics anonymous and we're always still we're all sitting around here trying to fix aa but it seems to me that works pretty damn good already uh you know i'm not much of one who thinks we need much fixing I think what we need is a lot more action in doing the work, reaching out our hands or through our devices to reach out and to carry this message to others. My biggest problem in AA is my own complacency. And the complacency I see sometimes in the group. And the other thing is, is that how uninformed we are about where the recipe to recovery really is. We'll read Living Sober, we'll read The Twelve and Twelve, we're not always willing to sit down with another drunk and go through the book Alcoholics Anonymous and get the true solution. uh i'm gonna be kind of soapboxy i guess today that's all right my turn uh i just love it um so you know i i love this too and it's been touched on a little bit that the these four words start three different sections of the big book. We of Alcoholics Anonymous. We have Alcoholics Anonymous now I'm not going to tell you what three sections if you don't know, they've been a couple of them have been shown for sure today already. But we have Alcoholic Anonymous is a big clue in there. They repeated that statement three times. We of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm not alone anymore. I am not alone anymore and that there is a solution for me. And how do I become a part of the we? It is by putting the solution into my life. That's how I become part of The We. Otherwise, for me, until I started getting into the book Alcoholics Anonymous and getting involved in AA, I stood on the outside watching AA and watching people be sober and watching this all going on. And you know what the results were? The obsession to drink came back because I didn't become a participant in my own recovery. If I don't participate in my own recovery, I don t have a chance because nobody else can do this thing for me unless I take actions and become a part of AA. And again, you know, I've been sober a long time. It's easy, especially now with the COVID, to sit back and complain about nobody does nothing in AA. But I think we all still have the same responsibility, no matter what the situation, is to try to get out there and carry the message to alcoholics. To still try to figure out a way to do the public information work. To still get out There and try to carry the Message in prisons and treatment centers. to carry a's message because uh i believe bill was talking about it that moral psychology part of this is we need to learn how to be useful to others and uh this is thank god for this format this has made it possible for many of us to become useful to other people otherwise we'd have been locked up and gone stir crazy and nuts i can't imagine how many suicides that have been if we wouldn't have been able to go to Zoom AA meetings. I mean, it goes stir crazy. I means, there was months we couldn't do anything. So, I mean it's just wonderful that we have this. I've told you my story already a little bit about it and I want you to remember that in 1976 when I was introduced to the book Alcoholics Anonymous, there hadn't Ben, Charlie and Joe. That didn't exist for us. We've never heard of them before. I'm sure they were doing their deal in Oklahoma and Arkansas. There were no four-step guides. You had to take a legal yellow legal pad. I think I got one here. You have to take one of these and then you had to draw the columns and then you had to put all the things that it says in the big book at the top and then you started to do your own writing and you know what it worked pretty doggone good it worked pretty good so if you can't find one of those guides which now you can find anywhere on the internet just sit down and draw some lines on a yellow legal pad that's when I used to do a third step with the one of the guys I sponsored that's what we would do after the third step I would give them one of these one of These legal pads and a pencil and explain what we are to do next that was the way we worked it and it worked very very well worked very well you know I think the the national movement for the big book I think started before the Charlie and Joe stuff though I think it started probably, not that there hasn't always been big book people in Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean, my God, my sponsor used the big book. He sobered up in 1965. And after he passed away, I got another sponsor who sobered out in 63. He used the Big Book to get sober with his sponsor. And the guy that introduced me to the Big Books sobered off in Chicago and they used the Book. book so there's always been people using the big book thank god are we i don't believe we would be here today but i think the the resurgence of the bigbook i think started in 1975 before i sobered up in the international convention in denver colorado and there was a guy maxi from up in winnipeg came down and uh he was he may have been part of the general service conference or part of international but max he was a member of the golden slippers group in winniPEG and he brought down the method that they used at their group in WinnipeG and i think that got passed on to the denver young people's group who at that time had members like Don P and Bob Oh, who's still around. I believe. I don't think Bob's doing any speaking anymore. And Gary, Gary B, who's now up in Indianapolis, who's till around these guys picked up that ball that Mac brought them and they spread it around the country and they put it into practice. You know, that, That's some of the beauty of it. And then along came Charlie and Joel, and that I think came along in 1980 at the International Convention. And we're very, very blessed today. And yet we still have a lot of people who don't understand the importance of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. And we sometimes let our big fat egos get in the way where we want to change everything. and I don't know who said it this morning somebody said it maybe it was Drew maybe it was Bill or maybe it Was just somebody in the audience you know says that once we try to change anything in the book it opens the door so that we can change everything in the book i think that was drew i heard after he spoke and there lies the danger of changing anything in the book alcoholics anonymous we don't seem to have any self-control if we you know our group conscience is sometimes not very well informed and let's face it not everybody in this fellowship has worked the 12 steps from the book Alcoholics Anonymous and understands its importance even know it is our basic text. It is our textbook, just like it says right on the cover. Oh, where are we at here? Okay. Boy, I'm way ahead of my notes even. That's really good. But the book hasn't really changed, nor do I think it ever needs to change. I don't think it every really ever needs to change. If something works very well, why do we want to change it? And if it's not working very well for you, do it again. Do it with somebody else. Invite somebody else into your life and go through the book with them. In the beginning of 2020, my life was a shamble because my sponsors had died and I was sponsoring myself. And I had really made a mess out of life here at our house. It was very disturbing. It was a mess. It was, it was very heartbreaking. Things were not good here. and i in tears one day called up one of the men i sponsor and i said can you come up here and he came up and we he talked this is in the pandemic and and he's got all kinds of problems with his health but he was willing to come up here and we sat and talked and we made the decision that we're going to go through the big book. I'd see, I've been sponsoring him for 40 years. We know each other very well. We've done this routine before, except it was the other way around. And we sat down and we went through the book Alcoholics Anonymous and we did the fourth and the fifth step. And then we did this sixth and seventh. And I made my amends and it put me back in the middle again and got my thinking going in the right direction. And I got a sponsor. I have a sponsor today, I recommend you don't sponsor yourself. It's a bad deal. The worst sponsor I ever had was me. He's an idiot. I'll tell you. I will co-sign anything I think, you know, I need to have a sponsored. I need to have different perspective on my life than my own perspective. Because my own perspective is just a little bit biased towards me and what I want and what i think i need so i've gone through the book again in 2020 completely and then through this format i was introduced to two young men from another meeting who had never met in my entire life they made contact with me we made contact we set up a zoom and i was able to take those two young men through this book and you know for the most part i don't think they've had any trouble understanding the language you know i always say get a dictionary once in a while there'll be one that you know I think the one guy asked me what armistice day was he didn't know have a clue what armstice day was you know it's veterans day they don't know you know that's okay it's not important they understand the actions and we've gone through the steps and then you know what an experience what an experienced Alcoholics Anonymous is I you know I probably should go through the book but I don't I don' t know if I'm going to go through any of the book I just think that we need to remember how important this this whole thing is in our lives and that without this you and i wouldn't be sitting here together today and if there's somebody new in this room please get a big book and just like the guy told me get a book dig your book out and let's go through this thing together you know the the first thing that always jumps out at me is on the title page it says alcoholics anonymous The story of how many thousands of men and women have recovered from alcoholism, have recovered from alcoholismo. It was true in 1939 when this came out. It's true today, except the numbers are probably millions, not just thousands, but millions of us have recovered. And this isn't an intellectual exercise by any way shape or form it's a spiritual process you know you don't have to worry about how much you know or what you don'T know it's about what you do in here and I you know things are pretty simple you know the forward to the second edition the forward of the first edition you just can't miss our group reads the first paragraph Drew's group reads one of the last paragraphs but we read one of the first paragraph that says, we of Alcoholics Anonymous are more than 100 men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. And to show other alcoholics precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book. And then we have a little thing there, and it says, and that is the purpose of our group too, to show others how to recover with this book and you know alcoholism hasn't changed the solution I don't think the solution needs to change the second edition forward just gives us the traditions and a bunch of history and a lot of and the growth of Alcoholics Anonymous and on page Roman numeral 20 in the fourth edition it still has this beautiful line and I hope they never pull that out of there, of alcoholics who came to AA and really tried, 50% got sober at once and remained that way. 25% sobered up after some relapses. And among the remainder, those who stayed on with AA showed improvement. And I know a lot of people say, oh man, our success rate is so much lower than that. Of the men who I have worked with over the years who have really tried not just showing up at a couple of meetings, not just getting a court card signed, but of the people who have been willing to sit down and go through the book Alcoholics Anonymous. That number is much higher than 50%. The number looks so low to us in AA today because so many people don't get sponsored, don't get sponsored with the big book they don't do the deal they come in go to 30 meetings or whatever they have to whatever the court told them to go to and they leave or they come around to a meeting where there's nobody offering a solution shame on us shame on us for holding a meeting called Alcoholics Anonymous and not offering a way out to the newcomer. The way out isn't 90 and 90. That's not the way out. The way out is contained in this book. It's contained in the fellowship also. The 90 and 90 is fine, as long as the book is part of the 90 and 90, and the sponsor is part of the 80 and 90. But I'm a believer that the success rate is just fantastic. It's very high for people who get sponsored with the big book. And then it goes on the doctor's opinion, we have Alcoholics Anonymous. And good old Dr. Silkworth gives us the allergy. He tells us about what is the matter with us, that we have this physical aspect of alcoholism. We have this phenomenon of craving that after we take a drink, we got to have another drink. I identified with that when I read it. I knew what he was talking about. It's the first time I had seen anything like that. It explained what had been going on in my life, why I couldn't go to Hank's Bar. Here's just a brief example of the allergy and the obsession. I would tell myself, I'm going to go up to Hank'S Bar. I'm not going to go till nine, and I'm only going to have four tap beers between nine and ten. You already see the obsession working right I'm telling myself all kinds of lies and then I'm going home yeah right I've never done this in my life but you know I'm at that stage of my alcoholism now well then I have that first tap beer well by 9 15 I've drank my four tap beers and you know how that is then you know there's the allergy it's already kicked in boom i'm off you know i'm gonna look at the clown sitting on this side of me and the clown's sitting on his side of him you know thinking what am i doing in here with these guys and i you know if i'm going to hang around in here i better have another drink you know uh i'll get a headache if i only have this many and it would i would get kicked out at about one o'clock when the bar closed the allergy and the obsession it just works that simply in my life. And the thing about the allergy, I still have it. I've been sober almost 46 years and I know that I have the allergy to alcohol. It is a physical factor and it is permanent. And then we jump into Bill's story. i break bill i call it the genesis the beginning and and i break Bill's story just on into three parts three parts of his alcoholism one there's a big fat eagle you know and he talks about it i had arrived and you know hadn't my talent for leadership but you know he's chasing around Walter Hagen on the golf course, his ego. And we all have it in our own lives. And then we have the surrender, the alcoholism becomes so bad that there's this remorse and horror and hopelessness. And then, we have the recovery that was talked about so well this morning on pages 11 and 12 and and ebby coming along to him uh the the line in in this chapter that hit me when i was brand new and i identified with was on page eight no words can tell of the loneliness and despair i found in that bitter morass of self-pity quicksand stretched around me in all directions. I had met my match. I had been overwhelmed. Alcohol was my master. And I read that and I identified, I had been there. I had done that. And then he goes on. I love Evie's words, the squiggly writing on page 12. Why don't you choose your own conception of God. I think that line has probably saved more of us drunks than maybe any other line in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, because it just knocks the crap out of that agnosticism. Choose whatever you want. Choose whatever you want we don't care find a power greater than yourself and then the next squiggly writing it's just a matter of becoming willing to believe becoming willing to believe even I could do that even I could do that I'm trying to watch the time here and on page 20 and there is a solution I had this question just like it puts it here I couldn't figure this out when I first went through this book. How was it possible that these guys in 1939 that published this book and wrote this book in the 30s, how could they be saying the same things I'm saying? It says, what do I have to do? I was there. What do I need to do now? What do you have to know? And it tells us that it's the purpose of this book to answer such questions specifically. We shall tell you what we have done, not what you must do, but what we Have Done. It's just amazing. And because I'm a 23-year-old snot and I don't really like all these old guys with bad wigs and polyester on page 21, but what about the real alcoholic. He may start off as a moderate drinker. He may or may not become a continuous hard drinker, but at some stage of his liquor, of his drinking career, he begins to lose all control of his liqueur consumption once he starts to drink. That was my first drunk. That was my second drunk and that was every drunk after that i'm a real alcoholic i'm a real alcoholic i was a real alcoholic when i was 12 or 13 when i got when i went on my first drunk so you know i don't know how much time we got it's about 10 to right now more about alcoholism to me explained why i was so insane when it come to the booze. And again, I thought it was very well explained earlier today that this is about me believing that lie. And I love the first page of More About Alcoholism where it uses the word obsession. You know, that great lie is the most predominant thing in my mind. And that there's a delusion. First, there's the persistence of the illusion. What is an illusion? you know just think of a magician you know they're always fooling you well I'm fooling myself then there's the delusion that I believe the lie no matter what happens I believe The Lie and I do it over and over and ever again uh I wish there was more time but I don't think I'm going to go through the book much more I just want to really wrap it up with a A little bit. Some of the changes that haven't been covered maybe today is the Dr. Silkworth's opinion was on page one originally in the book. Bill moved it to before the chapter one. In some ways, I understand why, but in many ways, And I wish that it hadn't have been changed, because I don't know how many people have come to our meeting and have been sober for a while and working at the book. Never read The Doctor's Opinion, because it's before page one. It's kind of just like how many of them haven't read Appendix Two, The Spiritual Experience, because you have to turn the page and go to the back of the book So there's a lot of people walking around in AA that don't even know about the allergy, the physical aspect of alcoholism. So I wish they, in many ways, I wish They Would Have Left It. You know, and originally in the first editions, they had bold printing in three or four places in there, and then it would be followed by the italicism. They were emphasizing a point, and I don't know why they dropped that either. But Bill was involved with a lot of that. You know, the forwards change, the prefaces have changed, the dust jackets have changed those kinds of things. I don't see that there's any problem with changing those things, you know, especially when you get a new edition, you put a new forward in. I think the forwards need to be looked at very closely before they're approved and stuck in a book because we don't necessarily even know who's writing them nowadays. so we i think they need to be looked at and approved by the by at least the conference um so let's see here i just want to tell you a couple of things i've heard at meetings over the last just over the month and they're good things uh you really have not taken the steps until you have gone through the book with another. I recently heard that and I thought, yeah, you know, absolutely. That is the power of Alcoholics Anonymous. And here's one I just heard this probably last week. I went to a big book study and I heard, and I saw myself in the pages of the book reading, Never been to the big book meeting before, but when you went to that big book meeting, all of this came alive. The last quote is, I found the instruction book. Good Lord, let's not hide the instruction book. Let's get it out there. I mean, I don't think we need to buy one for every drunk that walks through the door, but we need make it available for them. If you're like me, I've got about 35, 40 old ones laying around here. They can always have one of them. I don't care, you know. So my life was destroyed by alcoholism. As it says in the big book, a self-imposed crisis. And I came to AA and I made a simple surrender. It was horrific, actually. It was a tough thing to do. Asking for help is one of the hardest things there is for an egomaniac to do. I made that step and I was given directions. And it may be the only thing that I brought to Alcoholics Anonymous that was useful. I was capable of following directions and I Was Given Directions That I Followed. and to be a part of this thing is just amazing my sponsorship goes back all the way to the man I was reading about in the very beginning in Hibbing Minnesota and as far as we can tell his sponsor was Pat C in Minneapolis who was the first AA and Pat C's sponsor we think was probably Chan F. out of Evanston, Illinois, and his sponsor was Earl T., Chicago. And we all know who Earl T.'s sponsor is. It's Dr. Bob, who's Dr.-Bob's sponsor, Bill. It doesn't take much for us to go back in our lineage, if we look, to see that my life is connected to their lives. through the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, and the book Alcoholics Anonymous has played a major role in that for me. God, I was making so many notes. Tom said something about the book is the sponsor. And I remember my old friend, and Al knew him too very well, my old friends, and I remember him saying, my old old friend Earl from Oklahoma City always said that the big book was the sponsor, that was the original sponsor was the book alcoholics anonymous and earl was connected to those early early members in oklahoma and so you know i i'm a believer in that absolutely and uh let's see what else i'm i think that was my pretty much the end of this but i just wanted to say that until you have gone through the book Alcoholics Anonymous and you tell you have shared your life with another person where you shared the tears where you watch somebody come in just like me who has absolutely nothing I've been homeless if it weren't for my parents putting up with my crap had no money I didn't own anything I had zero and I've sponsored many guys like that living in their cars no jobs no prospects and then to start working with them and you start going through the book pretty soon you start to see a little shine in the eyes a little light in the eyes that wasn't there before pretty soon yeah you can hear them laugh at things that they hadn't they hadn't laughed for a long time I hadn't laughed at anything unless you got hurt or something you know you felt somebody fell down or something that was funny but I hadn'T had that inside belly laugh for a Long Time to see that start to happen to see a smile come on their face to watch them go from being in desperate and dire conditions maybe facing felony charges maybe facing bankruptcy and to watch all of these things slowly slowly taken out of their lives and being replaced with recovery being replaced by smiles and being displaced by joy and being placed by marriages and children's jobs and maybe they even receive a pardon like i did i received a governor's pardon for god's sakes who would have believed that you know that these things start to happen and you see them happening to others you can't help but be in love with alcoholics anonymous you can help But being in love with where the whole thing kind of starts, it starts between the covers of the book called Alcoholics Anonymous. When we put it into action, we have our lives changed and we change the lives of those around us in and out of AlcoholicsAnonymous. Thank you, Al.