The Psychiatrist Who Said He Wasn’t Ready for AA Yet – Dick M.

Good afternoon. My name is Dick Martin and I'm an alcoholic. Everybody, by the grace of God and actions of A and sponsorship, I've been sober since September the 15th, 1965, and I'm very grateful for that this afternoon. I've been assigned the task of talking about a couple of things for our primary purposes, one of them, and helping others is another, and I don't know what I'm going to talk about this afternoon. I'm probably going to add some of that in there one way or another, but as we traditionally do in Alcoholics Anonymous, we share our experience, strength, and hope with each other, and that's what I'm going to do. One of those things is, by the way, traditionally in Alcoholics Anonymous, when you have the steps and the traditions displayed as we do here, the steps are to the left-hand side, the audience, and the traditions are on the other side, but that's neither here nor there. We've got them a little mixed up here, a little confused, but don't get too confused by it. It's really easy for me to turn here and say that the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking, and that serves our primary purpose to a degree, and it serves our primary purpose to a degree because I think it's important to understand that we're not just a group of people that goes to their respective PHP lately, but we are everybody's company, and you try to think before our profession really, because in the影ed by BLM, what exactly does BLM 5 zinc is, and what do I mean by a MON terrific button? Well, here's the thing. BLM 5 is at its peak when all mobile and IQ's go live, and that means when milk is have been working on a product down at banks and you need to just push the save button to the root again. You can all move into the damn, and that's a typical man's line. Am I here now as you lol axis? Well, we'll solve the problem, with the bar association or the medical associates, or yes. There are those two left-hand sides. Okay. Another great thing you can do. You can find yourself, but if you during there's no ребен passenger association if you're of that ilk. In other words, if you're a doctor and you have the money, you can join those things. But you have to be a doctor and you have to have the money. In some places, you have to be nominated, and it's either by acclamation or it has to be no blackballing or there is a possibility that someone could blackball you so that you can't be a member. In Alcoholics Anonymous, we don't have that at all. We have only one requirement, and that requirement is a desire to stop drinking. If you have that requirement, then your membership in Alcoholics Anonymous is guaranteed. You can also have a desire to stop doing a lot of other things if you want to, but we don't really care as long as your primary purpose for drinking is to stop drinking. Your primary reasoning is the fact that you have a desire to stop drinking. It's really very simple. There's nothing complex about that. I mean, it doesn't take any genius to be in Alcoholics Anonymous. If it took geniuses, none of us would be able to make it, unfortunately. When I first came into AA, it was very commonly heard, and for good reason, I believe. It was very common. It was very commonly said that, well, alcoholics, if you compare an alcoholic and a non-alcoholic ditch digger, the alcoholic ditch digger will be a better ditch digger. Or if you have an alcoholic doctor and a non-alcoholic doctor, the alcoholic doctor would be a better doctor. And the implication was that if you're an alcoholic, you're going to do better than non-alcoholics do. I haven't always found that to be true. And the only people who were saying that were members of Alcoholics Anonymous. Their spouses, the Al-Nans, were never saying anything like that at all. But there was a reason for that, and there was a good reason for that. Alcoholics Anonymous is a program of attraction, and it being a program of attraction, the idea that we're exceptional. And so when you try to sell AA on the basis of that, you'recribe the president and to to say, we want you to do something that could be appealing to a newcomer. And they were trying to sell AA. Because when I came to AA in Doncs never meant anything in life, and it never made my life much easier. But I said, book this book. Just don't worry about it. Because there are thousands of books, just don't worry about it. It was presenting that history. Just don't be afraid of it. It was presenting that history. Yes. No. You know, I composed a셨� of books. It just didn't happen. Just let it go. See, now I can assure you there are just hundreds and hundreds of AA meetings. And I got sober there in Washington, D.C. I live in Bellevue, Nebraska now, which is a little town of about 42,000. Our largest suburb is Omaha, which has, oh, 500,000 or 600,000. But, you know, we consider it a suburb because we think that what we do is important, just like the people in Omaha think that the things that they do are important. But having gotten sober in Washington, D.C., I was exposed to a lot of the East Coast variety of Alcoholics Anonymous, which seemed to be more of sharing our experience and our experience and our experience rather than sharing the solution. And when I moved out west, in 1975, I'd been sober for 10 years, and moved out west in 1975, and people out there were talking more at that time about the big book than they were talking about in Washington, D.C. They were talking more about the steps than they were in Washington, D.C. at that time. What they're doing now in Washington, D.C., I don't have any idea. But the whole idea of, you know, the big book, that was called The Big Book, and it was a big book, it was a big book. It's a big book. It was a big book. And so I did a lot of research about it. the big book had been de-emphasized by AA World Services in the late 50s and early 60s, and had been de-emphasized by a number of people who realized that Bill Wilson wasn't quite all there. He had emphysema and wasn't getting a lot of oxygen to his brain, and he got a little goofy at the end. Not badly so. He wasn't nuts or anything, but he was just less than he had been. As all of us are as we get older, we're just not quite the same. We might be mentally sharp, but physically we may have some problems that slow us down in some other fashion. But because of this and because of the jealousies that arise in Alcoholics Anonymous with the idea that Bill Wilson is a good guy, and that he's a good guy, and that he's a good guy, and that he's a good man, and that Bill Wilson is a good man, and that he's a good man, and that Bill Wilson was making a ton of money, and so on and so forth, off of the big book, and on and on and on and on, there were people who de-emphasized it. And our brothers and sisters in Alcoholics Anonymous in the states of Texas and Oklahoma, I don't know whether they got together in Texas and Oklahoma or not, but the fact is that they recognized the fact that the big book was important, and it was very, very important, and it was the real crux of Alcoholics Anonymous. and they went to GSO and said, if you continue this effort, what we're going to do is we're going to stop contributing to A World Services. And A World Services looked at Oklahoma and looked at Texas and saw that they were large contributors and felt that maybe this little bit of pressure that they put on by the purse strings was important. And so they ceased their efforts in deemphasizing the big book. I don't know whether AA in Washington, D.C., and there are some of you here, I'm sure, who are members of AA in Washington who could tell me, but I don't know whether AA in Washington, D.C. has caught up with places like Texas and Oklahoma and some parts of California and parts of Nebraska and other parts of the world. AA. AA World, where the big book is a very important factor. And if the big book is important, what ends up also being important is the steps, because the steps are embodied in the big book, and the explanation, the simple explanation, is in the big book. And so that's our primary beginning place. That's where we start. We start with the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And as far as any explanation of the steps are concerned, thereafter, there are a number of people who wrote all kinds of in-depth discussions about the steps and so on and so forth. And there were stools and bottles and a little red book and all kinds of strange little pocket-type books, which were very popular in their day, and up until the time that Bill Wilson, in the 40s, wrote the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. And when he wrote that, he wrote, he was at that particular time going through terrible, terrible, terrible depressions. And he was having a terribly tough time of it all because of these depressions. Some, you know, I'm not sure, but I think that there are sometimes, some people in AA that I've met would be better off at sometimes just pulling the cover over their heads and staying in bed that day, and, you know, not saying anything to anybody, and so they, they can get up the next day and go on with, go on with life. Sometimes I know that I have been the type of person that occasionally I just, I just seem to collapse. I just, I'm not worth anything to anybody. And I, I say at times, you know, I might come home in the evening and I just crash out in the chair and I'm a couch potato and that's it. And don't, don't even ask me questions because I'm probably going to be, I'm probably going to be half asleep during the time that, that the news is on. I mean the early news, not the late news. And, you know, there will be some weekends where I just, I just don't do anything. I just, I just can't. I just don't have whatever it takes. And it's not because I'm depressed because I've, depression is something that is a state, it's a medical condition. And it's, it's a primary symptom, clinical depression by the way. And, we all, we all exaggerate, I think, our feelings and about whether we feel good, bad or indifferent. There's a guy in Canada whose name is Mac Cheater and he's dead now. Fine, fine AA and a fine speaker in Alcoholics Anonymous. He said we have these magnificent magnifying minds. And God, he's, there wasn't a better line that I've ever heard in Alcoholics Anonymous. And, but we magnify everything. You know, we magnify, if we feel good, we magnify, if we feel bad, we magnify, if we feel in between, we magnify our ardor for one another or whatever it happens to be. But, when we describe ourselves as being depressed or being depressive, I would like to tell you one of the major symptoms of clinical depression and one that you may be able to identify with. I can't identify with it, because it's never happened to me. But one of the primary symptoms is the fact that you see things in tones of black and gray and white. You do not discern color. And if you don't have that, then you don't have clinical depression. So you got something. We're a little bit down. We aren't feeling that good that day. You know, that's what it really amounts to. Some days, I'm just down. I just don't feel like good that day. You know, it's not a big deal. I, if I make that, if I make things like that, if I make my feelings the biggest deal in my life, what I am going to do is to say that I'm a victim and I can't do anything about it. You know, that's the way I feel. And nothing can be done about the way I feel. You're not responsible for the way I feel. I'm not responsible for the way I feel. It's something. It has to do with my mind and the way I feel. And I can express to my wife, you know, well, it makes me feel so and so over that I feel this or I feel that which really neutralizes a conversation until I actually until I use it to my advantage. And then Peggy will say something like, I don't give a damn what you feel like just do it anyway, you know, man. So, okay, you know, just get back into it. Get back into my rut. Which I like, by the way, I like my rut. It's my rut. And by golly, I don't want anybody to screw it up. Bill Wilson in the 40s. As you would notice, if you would read the 12 and 12 in the description of the steps, especially, he talked about various and sundry things with almost a slight psychological tilt to it. A slight psychological tilt, not full-blown or anything like that, but just a little bit. A little tilt towards the psychological and which is understandable because at the time, well, these depressions he was being treated by Harry Thiebaud, who is an eminent psychiatrist and a great friend of Alcoholics Anonymous. And kiddingly, I will tell you this. If you're being sponsored by a psychiatrist, it's no damn wonder you think psychiatrically, you know, Bill Wilson and I don't mean to give you the impression that I think in any fashion, that Bill Wilson was a, was a, was not a hero in my life because he was a hero in my life. The efforts that he put out and the obsession that he had to, to put Alcoholics Anonymous together saved my life. And it saved my wife's life. And it saved my son's life. And it saved my daughter's life. And it saved thousands and thousands and thousands of my friends lives. And anything that is that good, anything that that sort of effort has been made for has got to be, by acclimation, agreed to be good and not only good, but excellent. And his effort to put AA together and to have Alcoholics Anonymous work was a, was an effort beyond which I can imagine my ever having the energy, or the, or the focus to be able to do that. And I don't know anybody else that can. Which is, by the way, why there are many of us who have periodically discussed possibility that, you know, we would really, we, there's a lot of people in Alcoholics Anonymous today that say things, maybe the new wave AA or something. And they say that the big book Alcoholics Anonymous is old-fashioned. It uses, you know, old-fashioned language and so on and so forth, which is really not understandable. And they talk about being on a, like passengers on a great liner and people don't have any idea what that means. And the way I understand it, the great liners are being filled up with members of Alcoholics Anonymous today. So maybe they'll understand what it means. But the language is old and, and it's not, it's not modern. And the phraseology is such. And, a lot of people say that the big book should be rewritten. And they, they say that it should be made politically correct. And it's a reference to him and her and that sort of thing. And I think that that's a good idea. The only trouble is I don't know anyone that's spiritual enough to be able to do it. That's the real problem. The real problem in creating any new literature for Alcoholics Anonymous, is that the fact that we don't know anyone that's spiritual enough to be able to write a book, that we would all be able to agree and to follow. As the big book is, and as is mostly the 12 and 12. And, you know, as the sayings of Bill and as Bill sees it. I don't know what any of this has to do with our primary purpose, for helping others necessarily. Except this is where we came from. This is the meat of the nut. This is where it all began. It began with those sorts of things going on. Alcoholics Anonymous began with conflict. And it always stays that way. And because we are people who are in conflict with the ordinary world. Because of what the things that we have done and our defensive posture to take care of those things. I think, again, as far as our personal primary purpose is concerned. Alan read it earlier. This is a different stent on the same thing. But our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve survival. That has been stated many, many times in Alcoholics Anonymous. It's all through our literature. The primary purpose of our book is to put us in closer contact with the higher power. That's the exact purpose of the book. Paraphrase. So we're not talking about something that's foreign to us here. What we're talking about is an understanding of direction. And I don't understand, frankly, how people could get confused and walk into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and feel that, you know, feel unwanted because they identify themselves as something other than an alcoholic. And, uh, if I went into a bridge club, I don't play bridge. If I don't want to, if I went into a bridge club and identified myself as a bridge player, I would shortly show them that I wasn't a bridge player by my lack of skill and being a being a bridge player. There are people who come into Alcoholics Anonymous who shortly show us that they're not alcoholics because they don't know the language of an alcoholic. Because they can't share their experience. They can't share their experience, strength, and hope with each other. Because they can't describe their alcoholism as an end result of an obsession and a compulsion. They describe their alcoholism as they drank too much. I may have drank too much. But the problem was that it wasn't that I drank too much. The problem was that I was obsessed with drinking. That this time it'll be different. I can get away with it this time. That was the problem. The problem was that I couldn't stay stopped. I could stop but not stay stopped. Because somehow or another I would think this time it's going to be different. And I can go ahead and have a drink. And you know I can have two or three drinks and that's it. Maybe I would. Maybe I would. Frequently I did. Just you know sometimes I just had a couple of drinks that day or at that hour. And I didn't drink until the alcohol took a hold of me. Until I stopped fighting the obsession. Until I stopped fighting the compulsion. And gave in to what I really was. And gave in to my own nature. And my own nature was primarily that of an alcoholic. I was someone who had to have something to drink. I was someone who had to drink alcohol. And there wasn't anything else that I ever found. That was going to take the place of that. That would make me feel different. That would make me feel as good as drinking alcohol did. If there had been I'm sure I would have done that. And on the contrary to that. We're in a meeting now. Right now of Alcoholics Anonymous. If there were some other place that I could go. That would make me feel more. Whole if you will. I would go there. If there were some other place that I could go. I mean I went to a psychiatrist. I played that route to the hilt. I was seeing a psychiatrist for 18 months twice a week. Before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. That's more intensive psychiatric care. You're getting the best nut houses. And he ended up telling me that. There wasn't anything apparently that he could do. And I asked him if I should go to AA. And he said no you're not ready for that yet. My first sponsor I related that information to him. And he said he's he said I wasn't ready for that yet. What did he mean? He said well you still had money. So I really like that. That was such a cynical answer. And. And. And. And. It was things you know. He thought. I had gone to see the psychiatrist. I'd taken a battery of examinations and written examinations. And he had me look at Rorschach. The pictures of the. Didn't look like deer dancing in the park to me. But anyway he showed me a series of dirty drawings. As far as I know. I was concerned. And. They were interesting. They were interesting. I enjoyed watching looking at them. But. He. I asked him as an end result on the last day I went to see him. I said you know I took all this battery of tests. And I said you know what's what was the resultant. And he said you seem to be preoccupied with sex. And I said well when do you think I'm going to feel any relief from these life problems. And he asked me how old I was. And I said I'm 33. And he said it took you a long time to get here didn't it. And I thought Jesus. You know. I'm going to have to go to the son of a gun for 33 years. You know before I can feel any better. And. Then I asked him the big question. I said. Do you think I should go to Alcoholics Anonymous. He said no. You're not ready for that yet. He said you have to drink 20 long years before you become an alcoholic. And. At that particular time I'd only drank for 19. And. Obviously I wasn't an alcoholic by his right by his knowledge. But I hadn't been drinking the way he described an alcoholic would be drinking for all those 19 years either. I drank sometimes like he described an alcoholic. You know. I drank sometimes like a like you would see a derelict with a brown paper bag and a bottle. I drank sometimes that way. But most of the time I didn't. Most of the time I. You know I drank in places like. Town country bar and Mayflower Hotel. That's a pretty good watering hole. Even yet today. See somebody nodding their head. I remember you there too. No I don't. You're not that old. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. But. I think that the thing that ended up happening to me is that I had no other hope I had no other place to go. There wasn't any possibility that I was going to be able to. Have psychiatric treatment that was going to going to work. I'd seen two ministers and they prayed at me and those sky palettes were good people and they meant well. One of them said if I got sober that he would. Have me Chaperone. had me chaperone the children on these campouts on the weekends. I thought he was crazy. But that's the last place I'd want to go with a hangover or not a hangover to be around a bunch of kids. That would be insanity for me. I like kids as long as they're somebody else's I think is what it amounts to. Although I've sired four children and helped to raise three. And I loved them and I loved them then and I love them now. But I wouldn't want to do that on a regular basis and take a bunch of kids out in the woods and camp out. That doesn't sound like something I'd want to do. That was no reward for good behavior. And they wanted to pray. And we prayed. I didn't feel any different after we prayed. I just felt kind of foolish for doing something that I didn't think was going to work in the first place. That's the way I felt about it. And I didn't have any other place to go. So in a moment of desperation I went to Alcoholics Anonymous. I started going to a meeting every night and I started spending a lot of time with a sponsor and I started spending a lot of time with people who had been in Alcoholics Anonymous for a long time. And as an end result of my doing that I ended up discovering that I was an alcoholic. I ended up discovering that, one, that was not an alcohol. That was it. That was not an alcohol. I was trying to get a baby. I couldn't say a lot of sex around me because I was a nonce mother. She said the people who had gone on adventures have never said to me the word alcohol. Now even though I was an alcoholic, he said I shouldn't drink alcohol. I should have maybe had Fif Fed before I got my diet. Anyway, I took a little picture there about doing a focus exercise. So this was in February, I was getting off work and going to do the kind of relations plan that I had within the whole organization. About engagement, around selection. I had a big group of people that was teaming up for five or six hours. So I People give me a pat on the back, and maybe my wife would invite me back to the big bed or whatever it happens to be. You know, this is all very well and good. But after about three or four days, everybody that came in contact with me, I wanted to kill them because they were coming between me and a drink. I had a spring on the inside of me that the longer I went without a drink, the more strength that had to the point where I felt like I was going to explode. And I'd have a drink, and it would take all the pressure out of that spring, and it would just relax. That's why I drank, because it worked, because it made me feel okay when I was sober. So people like me, we go to Alcoholics Anonymous, and we find out that there are other people like us there, and we are able to relate to them. I went to these meetings, and I met people, and I saw them over and over again at these meetings, and there were people that I began to like them and respect them. And if you like and respect people, you want to be like they are. And I discovered that I wanted to be like they were, and I tried to find out what they were. And the one thing that they had in common is that they were sober. One thing that they had in common was a desire to stop drinking. And if I wanted to be like them, then I had to be like them. I had to have that desire to stop drinking. I had a desire to be like them, and I discovered that they were sober, and therefore, I had a desire to be like them. I had a desire to be sober. And I learned that in Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't learn it anywhere else. That's the only place I knew it to be. So what do you do when you go to AA under those circumstances then? I had a sponsor who told me, gave me direction, told me these are the things that I want you to do. If you do these things, you'll end up being sober. You'll end up being safe in Alcoholics Anonymous. And what are those things? What are you supposed to do in AA? And over the years, I've compiled a list of things that we do in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm not going to read you a long list. I have a long list, but I'm not going to read it to you. Except one by one, and I'm going to talk about them as we go here this afternoon. These are the things that my sponsor and those people who came before me said that I should do. These are the actions that I should take. If I took these actions, it was guaranteed that I would be able to stay sober. And I like the idea of some sort of a guarantee that's going to happen to me. First one, don't take the first drink. It's really very simple. And I was told if you don't take the first drink, you don't set up the physical compulsion for another drink. And the longer you get away from the first drink, the less the obsession is going to exist because it's not being fed by the alcohol itself. So we stay sober. In order to find out what we're supposed to do, I had to go to meetings. And I went to meetings. I went to a meeting every night for the first six weeks. And at the end of that period of time, I said, well, I've been every night for the first six weeks. Now what do I do? I said, well, how about going for another six weeks? You know, you seem to like this thing. And I did. I was a little bit frightened that maybe after six weeks I wouldn't be able to go every night when I was relatively new in AA because I was one of these people who somehow or another fell in love with Alcoholics Anonymous right from the very beginning. And I knew somehow or another that I belonged here. And I knew that I didn't belong anywhere else. There was no other place for me to be. If I'm going to go to a meeting, I want to go and I want to see the same people all the time. I want to see the people that I know and the people who know me, the people who say, hi, Dick, how are you? When I walk in, I can say, hi, Tom, or hi, Clay, or whatever, whoever's there. I want to have that. I want to have the recognition of other people who are like I am. And so the obvious thing to do would be to go to the same meeting every week. And we phrase that in Alcoholics Anonymous as having a home group. So you've got a home group. So I go to my home group. My home group is the Tuesday night Foxhole group in Bellevue, Nebraska. It meets at 36th and W Street. It's not a bad little meeting for a little town of 42,000. We have about 450 enthusiastic members of Alcoholics Anonymous who attend that meeting every Tuesday night. It's a speaker meeting. It's the hub of Alcoholics Anonymous there, right there in that place, in that town. It's where I see all my friends. It's where I see the people that I sponsor. It's where I see the people that they sponsor. It's where I go to see my people. And I don't mean people that belong to me. I mean people that I belong to. That's where my peers are. That's where people who think and act like I do. That's where they go on Tuesday night. And I show up there every Tuesday night unless there's a death in the family. And the death is mine. And that's all there is to it. I just go. And I make any difference whether I want to go. And there are many times when I have not wanted to go. I don't just get up out of the chair after dinner and dance on my tippy-toes and say, oh boy, I get to go to an AA meeting tonight. Hooray, hooray, you know. Sometimes I get up and I don't want to go. I don't want to do anything else. I mean, not anything particular in mind because I don't know what to do on Tuesday nights if I didn't go to an AA meeting. Maybe you know what to do, but I don't. That's the night I go. I wouldn't know what to do on that night. I understand there's a couple of good shows on television, but it's really very simple. I have one of the guys that I sponsor. He videotapes NYPD Blue for me, and I look at it on another night. No big deal. It gives him something to do. He thinks he's being in service. I have a VCR. I could do it, but I'd rather him do it. So, as I say, I just don't know what to do on Tuesday nights. On the several times where I've been ill or several times when I've been out of town on a Tuesday night, going to meeting time, sit around like this, look at my watch. It's time for me to go to the meeting. I'm not supposed to be here. I'm supposed to be somewhere else. I feel an unease about my life. I get restless, irritable, and discontented for a few moments until I realize exactly what it is. I realize what it is is I'm used to and acclimated to for 33 years of going on Tuesday night to an AA meeting, a particular AA meeting. So, getting a home group is very important. It becomes a good habit. Get a sponsor. Use a sponsor. Not just have a sponsor in name only, but have someone that you have a meaningful conversation with at least once a week. Now, the meaningful conversation doesn't have to be a long conversation, just a conversation, a meaningful conversation. Not, how are you? Hi, how are you? Goodbye. I made chocolate chip cookies today. Everything is going fine. Talk about what's going on in my life. Talk about what... what I'm planning on doing, what I'm thinking about doing. And talking about the plans that I had made before that are culminating and they're finishing up and how they're going. Talking about the fact that I'm going to go have a physical. Talking about the fact that I had a physical and the doctor discovered something wrong. They got it repaired or whatever. You know, being conversant with someone else about parts of your life. The intimate parts of your life. The things that are really going on. Things that are necessary for me to talk about. When I was drinking, I couldn't talk to anybody about any of those things because it was none of their damn business and they were going to interfere with the way I did it and I knew how to do it better than anybody else, which is not really true. That's not one of the reasons why I ended up in Alcoholics Anonymous because I made such good decisions. So, get a sponsor and use a sponsor. Study AA literature. Don't just read it. You know, the big book is described as the basic text and a text is a book that you learn from. So read it over and over again. You know, nothing big deal. No big deal about it. It isn't going to hurt one way or the other and it may help. Our experience, our experience is that it helps. Pay attention. When you go to an AA meeting, pay attention to what's being said. Strangely enough, it's not the things that I say that are going to keep me sober. It's the things that I hear and the actions that I take. My doing this isn't going to keep me sober. I don't listen to what I say. I listen to what you say. You light my fire. I light your fire. Somehow or another, I think that deep on the inside of us, maybe it's that nature of God. Maybe it's not. But I like to think of it that way. Deep on the inside of us is a small ember. And that small ember is a small ember. When fanned, shows us as God's kids. It's the God energy in me, for an example. And the God energy in you. And I can fan your ember. But I can't fan my own. I can't make this happen in me. But I can hear you and see your example. And it can happen in me. That's why we do this thing together. That's why we admitted we were powerless over alcohol. That's why we pay attention. That's why we do those things. Meetings are monologues. When you go to an AA meeting, only one person talks at a time. We don't have any cross conversations and alcoholics and non-alcoholics. Confrontation is a conversation. It's something between my sponsor and me. He confronts me. I don't confront him. If it gets to the point where I am confronting my sponsor, I think that, well, in the first place, he'd say, screw off, you know. But, and I know he would. But, that isn't the reason I don't do it. The reason why I don't do it is because I respect him. You know, it's just that simple. So, I don't confront him even when in my mind I know him to be wrong. Wrong he may be, but right he is for me. It doesn't make any difference. I have to become involved in my own recovery. I have to get up out of the chair. I have to go to meetings. I'm the one that has to do it. I have to pick up my chair and somebody else's and put it away after the meeting. You know, I have to get in line and thank the speaker. I have to do some job, some service function in Alcoholics Anonymous. I have to be willing to be of service to others. I have to be willing to go to an AA meeting. I have to be willing to go on a 12-step call. I have to be willing to be there for someone else. And I have to not cut corners. I can't cut corners because if I cut corners, it's going to diminish the effort that I make. And if I do that, if I diminish the effort that I make, it diminishes me. As I say these things and I talk about these things and I talk about being involved in my own recovery and I talk about doing these things, I don't want you to get the impression that I believe in any fashion that I do these things to a degree of perfection. I do these things to the best of my effort, the best I can do. I do. I do as good as I can do. Sometimes that's excellent. Sometimes it's piss poor. And I don't, you know, and that's the way it is. Sometimes I'm not a very good AA member. But I try. And I try to do as good as I can do. And that's what we're about here. We're about getting better. We're not about being perfect. I think the big book says something about that. Talking about spiritual growth, not perfection. And it's funny, even as imperfectly as I do those things, and the longer I stay sober, the more I have an eye for my own imperfections. Because of my magnificent, magnifying mind, I can see my imperfections better than I used to be. I don't have any more imperfections than I used to be able to. I still know that the longer I stay sober, the more I love God. And the more He loves me. And I know that. So regardless of what happens, I seem to grow anyway. As long as I'm doing as good as I can do. As long as I am taking my inventory and attempting to do better at my life. So I have to become involved in my own recovery. One of the things that I have to do is to make commitments. I was asked last year to come and do this, and I was willing to do it then, and I said I would. And I showed up, and I'm here on time. I'm doing what I said I was going to do when I said I was going to do it. I'm where I said I was going to be when I said I was going to be there. I was getting off of the airplane when Alex very nicely came over and picked Peg and I up, and we got off the airplane, and he was waiting for us. We were there when we said we were going to be there. We were there when we said we were going to be there. We said we were going to be there when the airplane got there is what we did. It was a few minutes late. We weren't late. We were on the plane. The plane was late. We did the best we could to be there on time when we were supposed to. Act better than I feel. It may not seem that way, and Peggy lives with me, and every now and then she takes my inventory, as she did several days ago. She said she'd listen to me whine about heart surgery and through this aortal surgery and all this and that and the other and the aches and pains and headaches and foot aches and chest pains. She'd listen to all that crap about as much as she wanted to until she left. She'd listen to it again. I'd never believe that I whined that much because I was very careful not to. Hey! Yeah, but that's my viewpoint. I thought to myself, you ought to get back in your kennel with your puppies, honey. But I didn't say it, because I wouldn't say anything like that. I thought to myself, I will never complain about anything again. I don't care if I die. But then I thought, you know, I just can't wait until she complains about something. So in the meantime, we laugh and we're okay. It's no big deal. Things are not any big deals. So we have to act better than we feel. And believe me, I act better than I feel most all the time. We have to pursue the principles. Meaning, what do I mean by that? Just being honest, open-minded, and willing. Willing to be of help, willing to be honest, willing to go out of our way to help somebody else, willing to be there, willing to be counted on, and being accountable. Those are all principles. If we are going to sustain the principles, we have to be accountable. We have to be willing. We have to be able to be our own. We have to be able to be our own. If we don't, we don't care. We have to be able to help somebody else. We have to be able to say, this is the best thing we can do for our own benefit. We have to be able to protect our own. We have to be able to be our own. And that's the most important thing. And you know, we're going to sustain our sobriety if you're an alcoholic like I'm an alcoholic. All alcoholics are not as I am an alcoholic, by the way. AA meetings where I've heard had some grizzled old timer sitting there saying well I never wrote a fourth step and did a fifth step and I ain't gonna do it either matter of fact my first sponsor sat on in my living room he was 30 some odd years sober and said you know most of my friends in AA have done a lot better than I have he says I don't mean I don't mean financially he said I just mean spiritually they seem to be more at ease than I am and he said I think I know why that is and I said why is that and he says because they have taken the steps and I haven't and he had stayed sober and he had stayed sober for many many years he died sober but he wasn't at ease as I can sometimes be at ease and you can sometimes be at ease my degree of ease is better than was better seemingly than his because I have never had the problems that he had those natures so taking steps is an absolute necessity if you're if you're an alcoholic of my type the big book talks about alcoholics of our variety alcoholics of our type and those are the people who have to take the steps they're describing the people that the big book fits and the people that they're talking about and they're discuss other massive those who don't have the other it says folks believe that they don't need to take any Czy let's carry it on and so they do give a而 and I was looking at our brother who is in horseback history with who is an enthusiast and he really kind of he really like all the things that he's said the Get to Rent you know actually is really important for you because he says there is a is a fine knows what people have to do and what people don't have to do. They only have their own limited experience. My experience is one of being in Alcoholics Anonymous for years and seeing people recover and seeing people do well and seeing people be happy. Usually these people are people who don't have jobs. I don't know whether you notice that or not. You know, they're kind of AA bums. They sit around the clubhouse and make passes at every female that walks through and talk about how they're going to make their next million and they haven't made the first one yet. And they're 70 years old. I think we have to be examples now, Alcoholics Anonymous. I think we have to be good, positive examples now, Alcoholics Anonymous. I think we have to show other people that this works. I'm wearing a coat and tie today. I'm wearing a coat and tie not because I have a coat and tie. I've always had a coat and tie. If I didn't have a coat and tie, I'd be able to go to the Salvation Army and for $5 buy a coat and tie and a jacket and a pair of pants, which I've done for newcomers time and time again so that they can go to an AA meeting and feel a little bit better about themselves than they did. I wear a coat and tie when I get behind the podium of Alcoholics Anonymous because I honor Alcoholics Anonymous, because Alcoholics Anonymous is important to me. And I want you to know that it's important to me. I wear a coat and tie when I go to my home group. I don't wear a coat and tie when I go to every meeting that I go to, but when I go to my home group, I wear a coat and tie because it's a reminder to me that this is important. What I am doing is important for me. And it's important for me to be able to do what I do. And at the same time, I end up being an example for others in doing this. A good example instead of a bad example, which I was at every effort that I ever made before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. Clean up my act, that's all. Prayers. There seem to be two different camps. In Alcoholics Anonymous, there are the people who say, well, what you should do if you have a problem is you should go home and pray about it, and God will let you do that and imply that you will get the answer that God will apparently will call down to you and tell you what to do. That was always my impression when somebody said that, that I was going to get a clear-cut message as to what I do, what to do if I pray. And I never got a clear-cut message. In the first place, if I was in a position where I had to make an ardent prayer to find out what to do, my brain would be so messed up that if God talked to me, that I'd scramble it and screw it up anyway. You know, I need to have somebody say, why don't you pick up the newcomer and take him to a meeting tonight? Why don't you take that guy home? Why don't you say hello to that guy? Why don't you say hello to that guy? Why don't you say hello to that guy? Why don't you say hello to that guy? Why don't you say hello to that guy? Why don't you say hello to that guy? It's not that hard to do. You can walk up to anybody in AA.