The Scared Kindergartner Was Still Inside Him Until the Steps Knocked Down the Wall – Chris S.

Hi everybody, my name is Chris. I'm an alcoholic. I really appreciate being invited down, breaking with format a little bit here and being asked to share some of my experience, strength and hope, and history. I had a littlebit to do with the forming of this society. I suppose I can be considered a co-founder. founder. A lot of the ideas came out of a basic need that I and some other people saw in the community for something like this. Although I've not been really involved in the formation, I was there in the very beginning. Some people like Ray T., Jimmy have been really really, really active and involved in forming this fellowship and being very, very generous with their time as far as taking other people through the steps, providing them with a spiritual awakening and then sending them out to do the same with other people. There's a real need, there was a real needs and is a real needed for what ANA does and I'm very, very proud to be asked to participate in it. I'm going to tell a little bit of my story but more than that I want to talk about why there's a need for something like ANA when you have NA and you have AA out there. What do we need one more fellowship for? Well, there's some very good reasons and it comes out of my experience and out of some other people's experience who were influential in the formation of the society. Basically, I'm an alcoholic. I'm one of those tongue-chewing, knee-walking, coming after you, just car-sleeping, calling up Mary Lou McGillicuddy from third grade on the phone in a blackout type of drunk. I mean, I was just really pathetic. By about 8 o'clock at night, I would just be in a delirious blackout, staggering around the house, wondering where all the babes were. I mean... I was a mess. I did a lot of drugs in my day. Mountains of them. And there were periods of time in my life where they were a real issue. you. There was a heroin period, there was a cocaine period, and there certainly was a Xanax and prescription tranquilizing period that was fun. Try pronouncing five syllable words when you are doing handfuls of Xanaxes. There is a period of time when I smoked more more dope than Jerry Garcia back in the 70s, and that really destroyed a lot of my short-term memory. That's why I can't remember names. I even went to one of those Dale Carmichael memory courses, but it didn't work. Anyway, the drugs were an issue, but something always happened with them. I always, you know, with the pot, I kept smoking until I became paranoid and decided I wasn't going to smoke pot anymore. And I didn't. Cocaine, it got to the point one time when I bought a quarter ounce for a party and nobody showed. And if anybody in here knows what it's like to try to decide to save some for tomorrow when you're snorting some coke. Well, I ended up snortin' coke for three days straight, chirpin' like a squirrel. my jaws were locked the FBI and the CIA were after me which was kind of unusual why would they be spending all that money on overtime for somebody like me but they were out there so I kind of decided that maybe cocaine wasn't the thing for me and I was able to move away from it without too great difficulty I started to use heroin to control my drinking If you're new or just coming back, I'm not recommending that. Heroin is not a good form of sobriety. What happened was it got really bad with the heroin. Certain rules and morals and ethical codes of behavior seem to become less and less important when you're on heroin. This one day, I did too much of it coming back from New York City because I was drunk as a goat and decided to talk a friend of mine into going into town and getting some dope. And I did two things. I did so much on the way back and I went out and I woke up on this guy's garage floor in the middle of winter and he's throwing buckets of cold water on me. and I was mad I don't like buckets of cold water being thrown on me just in case you don't know he's saying man, you went out I thought that you were going to die I was trying to revive you I go if I'm going to Die, I'm Going to Die don't throw cold water on me what's the matter with you so I got the impression that with the way I was drinking alcohol it was probably a bad idea to have heroin around. I'd do a Jimi Hendrix or something like that without even knowing it. So I was able to back away from that by using Xanax and alcohol to wean myself off of the heroin. One day on the XanaX, it used to be a big thing on the pill bottle. It used to say no alcohol on the Zanax bottle. And I would pour them out of my hand. I wouldn't even count them. I'd just weigh them. Okay, I've got a quarter ounce of Xanax here. And then I'd chug it back with some vodka, which that big letters no alcohol, that was certainly not for one of my caliber. I've gotta tolerance to this stuff. And then, I would destroy the furniture in the house for about four or five hours until I finally passed out. But this one day, I allowed myself to be over-medicated. Has that ever happened to anyone in here? You ever allow yourself to be over-served or over-medicated? It's, you know, it's rough. And I took way too many Xanax and I drank way too much booze. And I'm one of these guys who goes to work the next day. You know what I'm saying? I make it to work. Because that's like the last thing I'm hanging on to is being able to make it to work so this guy picks me up for work and he takes one look at me and says, Chris, man, you better just go home. You are not in any shape to work. What do you mean? I'm going to work! And I'll never forget, the parking lot's way down, the place where you've got to park your car is way down at the end of the lot and you have to walk up the lot to the shop where the boss would hand out the job assignments. And he's sitting there in front of a big window and he turns and he looks and I'm walking serpentine up to the stop. I can't even walk straight to the show. I'm back and forth like this. He starts... and he yells at me and humiliates me in front of my peers which I just hate being made fun of in front of my fears was just as low as I could go and I decided that I better get off of these Xanax and I was able to drink my way off of those Xanaxes I just had to increase my vodka and bourbon dosages alcohol Alcohol, you know, I had lost a lot of things drinking. I lost a family. You know, like I married this wonderful codependent. Anybody in here, you try to find somebody that thinks about you more than you do. And that's a perfect fit. That's what I did. I found the one who loved me more than I did, and we hooked up. She was a Catholic, so the night of our wedding, she became pregnant, you know it's like clockwork and you could time the birth of the child to the wedding and I'm just drinking, I'm irresponsible I'm dropping out of college so they decide that I'm not able to provide a safe environment safe nurturing environment for a family with some type of emotional security so they leave I crash a lot of cars too I mean I'm from an era where Friends let friends drive drunk You know what I mean I don't know about anybody else But you don't hand over your keys To nobody That's about That's the weeniest thing You could possibly do And so The drunkest person always drove We would We'd walk to the party Get really drunk And go back home And get the car You know That's just the way it was So I crashed a lot of cars, a lot of fun wrecks. I went through the front windshield once, the passenger window. I got thrown out the back window of a car one time. That was fun. I totaled nine cars and drunken blackouts, three DWIs. I walked for practically the entire 80s. Not that I remember much of the 80s, But that was kind of, you know. So I mean, a lot of things that would get the attention of some alcoholics or some addicts, a lot OF things that WOULD GET THE ATTENTION OF NORMAL PEOPLE did NOT get my attention. It was, so I threw my family in the hat to pay for drinking, all right? Okay, I'll throw the family in that. So I threw, you Know, 13 jobs in the Hat because I would lose jobs like crazy. That wasn't too high of a price to pay for drinking, you know. So I threw my driver's license into the hat three times. Oh well, you know. But along about 1988, 1989, I am drinking about as much as my body can stand of hard liquor. And it's really getting my attention. I'm waking up in the morning shattered, you know. I just want to die. And there's no way I can back away from this booze. Every single day I make a decision to never drink again. And by that afternoon, I've got vodka or I've got bourbon and I'm drinking it again. I had, I was powerless over alcohol. Through one of my, trying to get my license back for DWI, I went through an outpatient program. And what I learned at that outpatient programme, besides I hated Father Martin's guts, besides Besides that, what I learned was that if there was a time and a place where you absolutely had to get sober, you could sign yourself into this rehab. So the time and the place came, and I signed myself in. I'm going in. And I went into this rehabilitation. I went to this rehab, and I thought it was a good place at the time, but I've been doing treatment facilities work for about 14 years now. Now, I'm a guest lecturer at Elena Lodge. I do work with UMDMJ. I'm all over the place doing something or other. A lot of times lecturing to would-be alcoholism counselors, you know, the people who go through like nine years of school and an AA meeting is optional, you know. So anyway, not to digress. Anyway, I look back on this rehab and this rehab was ridiculous it was ridiculous you sat around in group and did group anybody in here ever been in group where you sit in a circle and you talk about your issues and your stuff let me tell you if you're in real trouble if you are a real alcoholic or a real addict that's like trying to stop a semi with a cobweb you know what I'm talking about if youre in real trouble you need a little bit more than doing group so anyway I go through this 28 day program And I get out And I swear to God there's not a person in the world That wants to separate from booze more than me I signed myself into the booby hatch Okay I had them take away all my rights I had designated smoking areas They told me what to do They made me clean up the kitchen Alright I mean I had to make my bed I don't know if there's anybody else in here But I hate that stuff you know what I mean I never would have been good in the military but I made the ultimate sacrifice and put myself in this place because I was serious about separating from alcohol I knew it was killing me I needed to get away from it so I get out of this place I got the $13,000 big book and the pat on the butt to AA and off I went I'm going to two AA meetings a week two outpatient meetings a year where I paid $35 an hour to drive there at night and to do group Good God. Anyway, today I used to tell people things like you should really persevere with that outpatient. Your chances of recovery are better if you complete it than if you don't. I no longer believe that. I think that by getting involved in a very active, very enthusiastic recovery community is about 10 times better than paying $35 to do group. But that's just my own opinion. Anyway, I'm on my way to an AA meeting. it's about three months into my sobriety. And I'm on my way to an AA meeting and the thought crosses my mind that it would be a good idea to buy a gallon of vodka and drink it. And that's exactly what I did on the way to ANA meeting. There couldn't have been a crazier thought in my mind. And I justified it in a couple of ways. One way was, it's been a long time since I've been drunk. I don't even know what it's like to be drunk. How can I keep going to AA without remembering what it is like to get drunk? you know I just how stupid I can't do that and another was you know I'm not really I haven't gotten a sponsor yet there's a lot of things that they're asking me to do I haven'T quite you know I haven'T quite really clicked with the group yet I'll bet you if I drink a gallon of vodka it will make me feel so bad I'll rush back to AA and do what they tell me to do so in effect I bought a gallon of vodka to improve my recovery and in the long run I think that it helped me because because it gave me an absolute 100% assured understanding of what powerlessness means. Powerless is powerless, okay? Powerless does not mean I'm going to keep myself sober by going to a bunch of meetings. Powerless doesn't mean I can keep myself sober by going through a bunch of meetings and going through the steps. Powerless do not mean I can go through the step with a sponsor and do a lot of service work that will keep me sober. That's not what powerless means. means. Powerlessness means if I go to meetings consistently, if I work the steps with a sponsor and then I get involved in service, maybe, maybe that will put me in the atmosphere where God can remove my obsession to drink. And that's what powerlessness is. There's a wonderful line in the book the 12 and 12 say, who among us wishes to admit complete defeat? Who wants to say that unless an act of providence comes down out of the sky and gives you the whammy, you're dead. Who the hell wants to admit that kind of powerlessness? But I learned it by buying that gallon of vodka. There was not a person in that AA meeting who wanted to stay sober more than me. I know a lot of people that get into ANA have relapsed, have had hard times in maybe AA or NA. I understand that. Has anybody ever told you that you weren't honest? That's why you picked up. That you weren'T being honest. Has anybody every told you you just didn't want enough? Do you really believe that? I don't I think anybody that makes the effort to come into recovery to try to participate it's the scariest thing in the world to come to a 12 step group and raise your hand tell everybody honestly about yourself who the hell wants to do that I believe that anybody that wants to do that has a desire to not drink and to not use the problem is powerlessness ok I do not believe to not not drink and not use and go to meetings is a treatment for alcoholism or drug addiction. It's not. That's not a treatment. Back when I first got sober, everything was don't drink, go to meets, don't drank even if your butt falls off. No matter what, just don't pick up a drink and you're a winner. I don't believe any of that stuff anymore. I think that yes, we need to make as much of an effort as we possibly can to not drink and not drink. But there are periods of time where it's out of our hands. in the second step of Alcoholics Anonymous which translates over to A&A it says come to believe that a power greater than yourself can restore you to sanity I just want to tell you what I've learned about sanity and what I try to explain to alcoholism counselors and people who are in treatment facilities because it's very very important to understand this sanity is a term that if you follow If you follow the root origin, the word origin, it will trace back to 16th century English law. What happened was they used to have a lot of laws for a lot of things back then and they were putting a lot of people away and they felt bad about it. They were putting the village idiots and the nutcases in prison for long periods of time for doing things that they really weren't responsible for doing. They didn't know right from wrong. They didn't have the capacity to truly understand the ramifications of certain actions. So they came out with an insanity defense so that they wouldn't have to unnecessarily and cruelly punish these people who really didn't know what they were doing. Well, that's where sanity-insanity came from. I believe that once I am told that I need to be consistent with 12-step meetings of my choice, I need to work through the steps with a sponsor or a spiritual advisor and do all of them and then do the same thing with other people take other people through the footsteps and be of service wherever I can be I believe that once I've been told that that's the treatment for my alcoholism or my drug addiction it's now my responsibility but prior to knowing that prior to know that it's not you're not responsible for picking up and using you're NOT responsible for drinking and you're not responsible for using, you get put in what the book Alcoholics Anonymous terms is a strange mental blank spot or a subtle form of insanity that precedes the first drink. The first 60 pages of the book AlcoholicsAnonymous is devoted to telling you that this happens. They smash home upon the alcoholic reader the fact that powerlessness is powerlessness. somewhere along the line in Alcoholics Anonymous I can't really speak for NA I don't have any experience there but somewhere along the line in Alcoholic Anonymous people started to think that it was incumbent upon the individual to keep themselves sober that's not what our book is about that's now that's what the 12 steps are about the 12 Steps are about introducing someone to a set of spiritual exercises that result in a spiritual awakening that places one in an atmosphere whereby one can recover and God can enter in and provide the power to do the things that the individual does not have on their own. This is really what A&A is about. It's about power. It's About Finding That Power. Somewhere along the line in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I know this from other people telling me, somewhere along the lines in Narcotics Anonymous It became okay to allow someone to languish in the back of the room and not hold them responsible for working the 12 steps which would bring them into recovery. They would allow them to maintain a tenable, very, very tenable sobriety for however long, who knows, a very tentative, very unknown amount of time type of sobriery and not hold them accountable to work the steps. ANA is about the first decade of AA. It's about doing what they did in the first decade of AAA. The first decade of AA, they were running a 50% recovery rate for people that walked through the door. They were running an 75% recovery rate after people relapsed a couple times, coming to the conclusion that they better listen to what they are talking about in AA. And even in Cleveland, Ohio, they claimed a 93% permanent recovery rate for people that went through the steps. Somewhere along the line it became okay not to do the steps, then our recovery rates plummeted to who knows what they now. now. I was speaking the other night and I said it's about 6% and somebody took me to task after the meeting about that. Where do you get that statistic? And I go I don't know, I've just heard it. I mean statistics in an anonymous fellowship are bogus really but I mean think about I've been around a long time and there's been a lot of people who've come through AA and let me ask you this. Let's say you've got a group that celebrates 90 days and you You know, four or five people celebrate 90 days. Four or five people should be celebrating 20 years at the same time if you had 100% recovery. But you don't get that. You get maybe one person a year celebrating 20 days. So you know that we lose... Here's what happens. In the first five years of any fellowship people learn that they're really not alcoholic. They're really non-drug addict. That happens all the time because they discover that they have the power to choose whether they drink or use or not. They've got the power. Alcoholics Anonymous is filled with people like this. The first time a boss yells at them, they go to AA and they stay sober the rest of their lives and they wonder about you fanatics that do the steps and sponsor people because all they do is go to two meetings a week and sit there and smile. And they're fine. These are heavy drinkers. They're not alcoholics. They can keep themselves sober on their own unaided will. However, there are a lot of people who can't. The first five years of any fellowship weeds those people out. Most of them. Some of them stay and hang around, but most of them disappear. They find that primetime television is a little more interesting than listening to bummed-out Bob share about his new drama. So they'll disappear. But after five years, anybody that's been around five years is usually an alcoholic or usually a drug addict or else why would you still be there? Well, half of the people who have over five years have less than 10. Half of the People Who Have Over 10 Years Have Less Than 15. Half the People Whom Have Over 15 Years Have Less Then 20. You see what I'm getting at? We lose half the fellowship every five years in both NA and AA at the very least. So our statistics are pretty abysmal. So, I think it's important to look at why the statistics were so good in the first decade of AA. What were they doing? Because whatever they were doing, it was working. I'll tell you what they were done. Before they allowed you into the fellowship, before they allowed me to do this, before they allow you to take a meeting hostage with your drama de jour for 10 minutes in a closed-minded depression meeting, before they allowed you to do that and just dump all your garbage out on the table they made you go through the steps there's a couple of books that document this that's where the back to basics have actually come from they went back to all the inner groups and they looked over all their records this guy did a huge history of it and he found out that they had beginners meetings They would assign an individual to take the people into another room and get the people through the steps before they were allowed to populate the main meeting. And that way, they at least knew one of two things they knew. They knew, number one, that the person is serious because nobody serious is going to get up to amends. Who the hell wants to go back and make amends to your third grade teacher for like poisoning her apple or something? I mean, who wants to do that stuff? it's humbling so they know that people that have started on amends are serious and number two you get you get a change in perspective you start to have a spiritual awakening by the time you get to step nine and you're not going to blither on about your daily drama you're going to talk about the excitement of recovery you're gonna talk about how best to help other people you're gunna talk about things not of the self but unselfish so that's why they did this in the first decade of AA You see the parallels with ANA? That's why ANA in the last couple of years has grown to seven meetings, is it? Counting the commandments, seven meetings already. A couple of hundred people. It took AA four years to get 80 people. So what's happening in ANA is working. There's an enthusiasm about this group. It's also inclusive. I don't think anybody is going to care what your drug of no choice was. You know what I mean? I don'T think anybody's really going to have an issue because we don't want those Quaalude addicts over there polluting our straight cocaine meeting. Nobody's going to carry it. ANA focuses on recovery. Now, here's what happened in my own personal experience, And here's what led up to me taking a lot of people through the steps and then led to the formation of some of these groups. I'm a real alcoholic. I'm not stumbling, bumbling, shooting myself in the foot alcoholic. I am the real deal. You can find me in the early chapters of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, I got sober and I started hanging out with Radio Shack Mike Mike, and a couple other people who were fresh out of rehab. The young people, they were going to all the sober dances. They were doing all kinds of stuff. Now, looking back on it, I know exactly what happened to me. I was a real alcoholic, and I started hanging out with a bunch of heavy drinkers, a bunchof recreational drug users. And they came into AA, and they immediately turned it into their social setting and started doing the social AA things, like socially going to the bars and hanging out and socially going to the clubs and dancing. And they were dragging me along. Now, I had a sponsor, and many, many sponsors back in 1989, 1990 were not of the type who were going to drag you, kick you, and scream you through the steps. That's not... It was an oral tradition area in North Jersey at that time. What they would do is they would give you wisdom teachings. Well, my sponsor says, you know, underneath every skirt's a slip, Jim. You know, like wisdom teachings like that. And you'd go like, wow, yeah. Oh, my sponsor's so wise. And meanwhile, you'd relapse like a sumbitch. But anyway, that's the type of sponsorship I was born and bred on. So I'm hanging out with these people who can keep themselves sober. They can keep themself sober plenty fine. Thank you. And I'm dying with these people. I am getting sicker and sicker every day, and I'm starting to act as if everything's all right. Chris, is everything all right? Yeah. How are you doing today, Chris? Fine. If I was truthful, I'd say, well, I've got these homicidal delusional fantasies of killing everybody and then myself. You know, how are you? How are we doing today? But, you know, I knew that that wouldn't go over very well, so I kept my mouth shut. And I am restless, I'm irritable, I'm discontented, I'm suffering from misery and depression and remorse and guilt and anxiety and some sort of fear. And how are you doing? Fine! You know, fine. I'm an untreated alcoholic. If you lit a match around me, I'd go up like a gasoline rag. So anyway, I am hanging out with these people who are getting better. They are getting bitter. They are listening to Louise Hay tapes and doing affirmations, you know. they made the mistake of giving me a set one time and then I started listening to it it said look in a mirror and say to yourself a hundred times Chris you're a wonderful guy so I'm sitting in the mirror I'm a wonderful guys smash the mirror affirmations don't work on real alcoholics that's like doing group anyway so I am dying One of my friends at that period of time Was listening to some tapes And he tossed me a set of tapes By a couple of guys from Arkansas Joe and Charlie Some people in here might have heard of Joe and Charlotte I get these tapes And I don't like people from Arkansas Never met any You're from Arkansas I hate you Stay away from me I hate people from Texas too Oklahoma and any better So it took me a while to play them but finally I threw them in the tape deck and I'll synopsize them in like one sentence here's what they said Chris, you have zero program what you're doing is you're being active in the fellowship it's a three part illness with a three heart treatment you're in one treatment it's three fold disease with three fold treatment you're two fold short you don't have a program because you're not in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. You're not working through the steps with a sponsor. And at the most, you can carry people to the message because you don't have a message because you haven't gone through the Steps. You have to go through the Steps to have a Message. So you may be driving people to The Message but you're carrying one because all you're doing is sharing your drama de jour probably. This is what these tapes said to me. I was upset, okay? Because at that period of time I was going to 7 to 12 meetings a week. I was sponsoring people because, you know, the tugboat with the most steam sometimes gets the boats. And I gave good share so people would ask me to sponsor them. Some of them are even still alive. But I was driving the boobies from the hatch to the meeting. I was a secretary here. I was an no-show GSR there. I mean, I was getting involved, and I was doing what I thought was getting A's in AA. I wasdoing more than anybody I knew, so I thought I wasdoing great. And all of a sudden, these guys named Joe and Charlie tell me, you're going to die. You don't even have an understandingof what recovery is like. When you're in a step meeting, you're sharing an opinion on an experienceyou've never had. You ever go to a stepmeeting, and somebody raises their handon the ninth step and says, says, well I haven't done this step formally. You ever hear that? And then they take the meeting hostage for ten minutes sharing their opinion on a step that they haven't taken but what it might be like if they ever did. You know, that was me, okay? So I'm upset. I'm obsessed. I listen to these tapes. I threw them on the shelf. You know these guys. Now I really hate people from Arkansas. I got good reason now. But I'll tell you what, the truth haunts. There's a part in the book that says if we've disturbed you about your alcoholism, this is all to the good. Because what happens is when you get hit with truth, the truth about your nature, your stock and trade, it will do one thing. It will upset you. It'll make you very, very angry. But, you'll have to come to terms with it somehow. You're going to have to comes to terms with it some how. Most of the really, really important truths I learned in Alcoholics Anonymous made me upset first. Pissed me off first. So anyway, my life continues to get worse, I end up hooking up with a woman in AA and the relationship explodes. It's like, you know, and I get to a point where I have to go back and I have to listen to these tapes again because there was something about these tapes, there was something about the message of Alcoholics Anonymous that really captured me. So I got these tapes out, I put them in a tape player, I opened up the book Alcoholics Anonymous and I started to the book. See, where I got sober there was nobody in my area that had experience working through the book Alcoholics Anonymous. If you were to do the steps they would tell you to go to a bunch of step meetings. What I found about step meetings are where about 80% of the people in the group have never done the steps but they share about them. They philosophize about them, they read about them and they think about them and they go to meetings about them they just don't do them. It would be like going to the airport and hanging out in the terminal night after night after night and never getting on a plane just talking about what it would be like to fly that's what step meanings are like it's like talking about what it'd be like to have a spiritual awakening if I ever decided to make some amends so anyway that's where it was going on back in 1990 around me anyway I start through the book I'm not saying I did a great job doing the steps no one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles, especially when you don't have a guide and you're going through it yourself. But what happened was I was sponsoring a bunch of people who were relapsing on me at this period of time. Ever have somebody relapse on you? Make you look bad? You know what I mean? And then people come up to you and you go, Hey, what the hell is going on with T over there? Don't you sponsor him? You know? And I'll lie. I'll go like, No! No! He's not mine! You know, but So people were relapsing on me, which was just beyond me being able to tolerate. So I had just gone through this book and I'd gotten somewhat of a spiritual awakening. I mean, I actually had a list of people to make amends and I actually started making amends to these people, which surprised the hell out of people in my home group, I'll tell you, when I started talking about it. They started looking at me like, You're really doing this stuff? You're in a 12-step program, and you're doing the 12 steps? So anyway, I started bringing people over to my house. And we'd start on the title page, and we'd go through the book, line by line, sentence by sentence. And wherever there was an instruction, the individual that I was working with, I would say, are you clear on this instruction? You're going to do it? Fine. He's one of the first victims of this method of sponsorship. And that was got to be 11, 12 years ago now, right? A long time ago. A long Time ago. Anyway, here's what I found out. I found Out something very, very significant. One of the things was is that every single person that went through and did a four step, did a fifth step, did their amends and stayed consistent with these spiritual exercises, every single one of them is still around, still a member in good standing, helping other people and sponsoring other people. Their quality of life is through the roof. Every single one. The people that balked on step four and step five, step eight and step nine, like I don't really need to make those amends, allowed their ego to dissuade them from making the amends. Most people... You know, I'm not saying they all drank. A lot of them did. Some of them, you know, most of them just drifted away. They're not around in the meetings anymore. They didn't find something significant enough in the meeting to keep them coming. You ever see, you know, why do people drift away? Why do we lose all the old-timers? Why do мы lose all those people? Because there's not anything significant holding them in. Go through the steps. Start sponsoring a bunch of people. You're going to have something significant to hold you in the fellowship. You aren't going anywhere if you do that. If you stay on the outskirts or you want to be an alkanaut and just like orbit the groups and come in for a landing every once in a while, you know do a touchdown, that's fine. But you're putting your sobriety at risk doing that. You know what I mean? So anyway, all of a sudden I've got a bunch of guys who went through the steps. Now they're looking for victims. And they start taking other people through the footsteps. Ray T., a lot of people in my area. There's Ron, there's a bunch Of people that are still in AA That didn't go over to the dark side yet, you know, the ANA. but they're really active they're taking a lot of people through the steps there are literally hundreds of people in my sponsorship line that have gone through the Steps now, bring us to our issue about ANA again, I'm not here to disparage any other fellowship I really am not I know that NA is for a lot of people and I know AA is for a lot lot of people. I also know A&A is for a lot of people. The feedback I was getting from some of the guys were their main drug of no choice was usually drugs. That's usually where they ID'd with other people. In the first step, you have to come to terms with your truth about what you're powerless over. It can be booze, it can be drugs, it can me both. It could be tower sniping, it could be too many chocolate cakes. It doesn't matter what you are powerless over, but you've got to come to terms with what you're powerless over. You have to admit to it and you have to understand that you cannot overcome this yourself. So if you're a drug addict you can't come into AA and say you're an alcoholic night after night after night and start a spiritual program that demands rigorous honesty off with a lie. I'm an alcoholic. No you're not. Come to terms with your own truth, whatever Whatever that is. This is one of the reasons for ANA. We don't care. I shouldn't say we. These guys don't CARE what your truth is. You know what I'm saying? So, step 1 and step 12 are very important. You need to understand what you're powerless over because in step 1 you need to admit to it and in step 12 you need help other people with the same problem. I made the mistake and it wasn't too recently either. I made this mistake of really believing I could significantly help an addict being an alcoholic myself I really thought that I could and I made a good effort I sponsored a lot of people who were drug addicts usually they got sicker with my help that's usually what happened they usually ended up relapsing yes, they learned about the recovery process there were some positive things about going through the steps with me but there was not a connection it was always, I'm not like you I'm on the outside and I'm looking in. So it's very, very important to do your 12-step work with individuals that have the same powerlessness as you. What I was hearing was in NA they were trying to carry a big book message and because NA like AA is not affiliated with any outside enterprises they have a tradition of not really caring to see the book Alcoholics Anonymous on their tables in an NA meeting. I'm not being preferential I'm sure that if everybody showed up at a step meeting with the NA basic test there would be some people in the AA step meetings that would have a problem with that I'm just saying that some of the people that I was working with were having trouble identifying with people and having trouble working with other people in other fellowships because you can only give away what you have and if you've gotten your recovery through the big book through the 12 step process that's all you can give away you're not going to make up something you're going to take them through the way you went through you're gonna share your experience in recovery and they were getting a hard time sharing their experience in some of the other fellowships because their experience came from the book Alcoholics Anonymous so there was some prejudice I'm sure there was some prejudice on the AA side with the way everything was going to. So there was room in the community for an inclusive fellowship that uses the form of recovery that has been shown to work the best, and that's first decade AA recovery using the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Remember, people got sober for a long time before the stepbook was ever written, and they got sober some thirty-some years before page 449 was It's what made AA from year 4 to year 10 grow from somewhere around 80 people to somewhere around 100,000. And that can happen here. You're at a historic turning point in this fellowship. This fellowship is still in its infancy. It's still maturing. It's an exciting time in this scholarship. Jump in here. Become part of it. there is something happening here that's special, that's exciting it's not new it's just being emphasized, the right things in A&A are being emphasized I don't think they really care too much how you feel in A & A I think they certainly care about what you do because what you DO is going to bring you recovery what you FEEL is irrelevant Irrelevant. Right, Jim? Absolutely. That's right. Anyway, I think I've talked enough. I have no idea what time it is. You got a few more minutes if you want. I'm done. Cool, brother. Thanks a lot.